In both senses of the word.

In the traditional sense, it's still at work with the base. It treated the Clinton victory in Florida as meaningful (their owners want Clinton either because she's most beatable or most palatable -- or both). And they were spinning Romney's loss in Florida as a victory (he's clearly their new choice -- more predictable and manipulatable).

Like the right-wing weeklies, it doesn't matter if FoxNews loses money. NewsCorp makes its money elsewhere. FoxNews is a tool that will vary in effectiveness, but it has already paid for itself a thousand times over in its ability to move the public debate into bizarro land.

Look at how the MSM treats the "bloggers" and "anti-war fringe."

Hell, Glenn, you have pointed out just how "bipartisan" Reid and his crew are. With enemies like those, who needs any friends?

To those who say this, I ask why? Are we content to accept a "democracy" that only gives us moderate control over scraps? Why do we go to such lengths to avoid making the Democrats better? "Don't do anything that will give McCain an edge!"

We can't vote on the war. We can't vote on whether corporations come before people. We can't vote to keep our constitution. We can't vote to raise taxes on the rich. What can we vote on? Progressive rhetoric coupled with GOP approaches, like healthcare and retirement programs that give the poor and middle class a few tax dollars that they must turn over to the private sector in return for something of little value (bottom of the barrel insurance or investment programs).

That our government is not a democracy is our fault. It is the fault of people who treat Democrats as "our team" and not public servants. These people give the Democrats permission to suck.

Even the current FISA law is something the founders would reject, and rightfully so. How sad that we're fighting for that.

This whole war on terror is proof that Americans are idiots. Three thousand people died in one attack, and we have spent well over a trillion dollars in response, brought about the deaths of over a million people, and pissed off the entire planet in the process (upping the chance of future attacks).

What's more, we never even had a credible investigation into the 9/11 attack, despite how central it's become to America's identity. Who financed it? Who pulled the strings? Who sold those airline stocks short and how did warnings get to employees not to go to work that day? I'm not talking guided missiles into the Pentagon; I'm just asking questions about verified evidence that you'd think people would care about, if this were really that important.

Clearly it's all a fucking ruse. No one in government wants to know who was behind 9/11 -- we've decided it is/stops with former CIA ally Osama bin Laden. And certainly no one cares about stopping future terrorism. People in government care about spending money and creating excuses for imperialism. (Yes, there are a few members of Congress who care about real things, but even most of them don't have the guts to say the terrorism threat is bullshit.)

You had an almost zero percent chance of dying from terrorism in 2001 and exactly a zero percent chance in every years since. Your nation is killing innocent people right now with your tax dollars "to protect us from terrorism," we're rolling back our constitution and we're going broke.

The terrorists have won, alright. They've taken away our freedom -- they've destroyed our way of life -- oh, and by the way, they're us.

The idea of the book/movie, is that greed and its related natural resources (oil, silver) suck the humanity out of a man -- recall the matter-of-fact closing line. We aren't supposed to see inside this guy's heart because he isn't human. This movie isn't a character study -- and Lewis, wisely, doesn't show off by playing it that way. Sorry you missed the point, Stephanie.

I will vote for either Dem candidate in the general and do not have a strong favorite (I'd give Obama the edge only in that he is slightly more likely to surprise me).

But he is mostly a blank slate and on many important votes he goes the wrong way, from a progressive point of view. And to Matthews' point, he's championed nothing of great value, legislatively. Contrast that to any Republican, all of whom shovel their base plenty of legislative red meat (at least the money/imperialist base, if not the born-agains).

Contrary to conventional wisdom, the Democrats have bad candidates. Neither of the ones left are very progressive, and neither of them work very hard in the areas where they claim to be progressive. At least Republicans know that their candidates will always try to deliver evil. Our candidates only offer us less evil with some vague promise of stuff that sounds good. That we are so excited shows how low we've set our bar.