...because nobody will want to talk about GW Bush anymore.

I'm not sure what's going on with some of the (whining) posters on this column. You keep reading it, so why complain? Go somewhere else.

Mr. Keillor's words always leave me with an impression, positive or not. Isn't that what good writing is supposed to do?

...it's about employment for lawyers and drug enforcement officers and private prison administrators.

seriously, lawyers make laws. lawyers profit from the laws they make. society suffers. all lawyers should spend a week in jail, just because.

media hype = 'hero'. patrick's correct.

i'll remember this one when the asteroid really does hit...

was this: http://www.discourse.net/archives/pix/GOP_logo_600.jpg

back to this: http://www.goplogo.com/images/gop_rgb_rkqw.jpg

that old one was one fugly scary elephant. it would make small children run screaming from the room... me too.

I'm actually more inclined to do something substantially less friendly ...

putting your private information in a 'cloud' is ok until some guy with an airplane flies up there to take a peek at it.

still, gmail, et al, is so damn convenient that I keep all my mail there.

government must be tickled pink that so many people want to have the intimate details of their lives traverse a transparent medium like the internet whenever they want to access it.

there's still a lot to be said for the privacy of information in a binder in a locked drawer, vs. floating in a 'cloud' somewhere.

maybe we should change 'cloud' to 'bubble'...

then you'll have a truly clear head. stop for two weeks and you won't hardly miss it.

you quit drinking, that was the difficult, socially acceptable one. maybe your circle of friends smokes dope - if so, consider a new circle.

really, in no time at all, you won't miss it...

Hey, think about it. They can never find my luggage when I land there, and by the end of his life, Reagan couldn't find his either.

Cruel? Not as cruel as Reagan giving funds to the right-wing death squads in El Salvador or helping 3rd world dictators 'disappear' dissidents or letting his wife start a phony war on drugs so she could have a better photo-op than feeding the homeless wearing Oscar de la Renta.

Reagan a myth? You betcha!

rome burns. film at 11.

Daschle was a hack, not of any benefit (no pun intended) to the American people or the President, only to his lobbying clients.

Good riddance, see ya...

because they don't want to limit executive pay...

he'd be singing a different tune. too bad he didn't invest with Bernie Madoff...

I agree that nothing beats a landline, but between the telcos and and FCC, they are killing landline service.

I have access to Qwest in Denver and wanted the cheapest landline service, which is supposed to be about $14.99 a month for basic unlimited incoming calls and metered outgoing calls above a certain number of minutes per month.

Fine, I just want people to be able to call us if we need to talk with clarity.

Well, first thing was, "someone" sold our number to the telemarketers, and the damn phone was ringing off the hook. So, call to Qwest, how about caller id?

Well, you get that as part of a "package" and though they told me that I would get a special bundle deal that was supposedly cheaper when you include call waiting and call forwarding (I never use either - the person who invented call waiting has a special ring of hell reserved just for them), my first landline bill showed a whopping $59 after custom calling fees, FCC taxes and incidentals.

I won't go into the head-smashing hassles and numerous lunch hours spent on the phone and in the Qwest office ("Yes, I know that our customer service has some issues") getting the service disconnected and our money back.

It's no wonder that Qwest was the only telco not to turn over customer calling records to the NSA - they can't even find them for their customers...

I settled for landline service from Vonage (VOIP), and while not perfect, this works great for us as long as we don't use the internet too heavily when we're talking.

Qwest (our internet DSL provider) does not offer very high speed where I live (yet) and I refuse to pay COMCAST for internet service, so voice quality sometimes suffers - but we call back and then it usually works fine afterwords.

Vonage is $34.99 a month for two lines and unlimited USA long distance, and free calls to specific European cities.

This in combination with grandcentral.com lets us block & screen calls. Oh, and T-Mobile is my work cellphone and almost always works everywhere. My company pays $25/month for what is effectively a corporate voice / data unlimited plan, while my wife pays $79 / month for virtually the same service, on a consumer plan.

Someone needs to form a co-op and aggregate cellular service for consumers under a corporate plan - it's dramatically cheaper, even if the phones aren't always subsidized.

just before they went extinct. newspapers will be no different...

I believe that Verizon FIOS - fiber to the home - has much wider bandwidth than AT&T U-Verse - which is a copper cop-out stopgap technology.

Again,

FIOS = fiber optic to the house,

while

AT&T U-Verse = copper net distribution...