By 2009, we will have suffered through what was possibly the greatest infliction of 9/11 damage -- the complete corruption and destruction of our freedoms and values by the Bush administration on the basis of a couple of ground zero photo ops and some hollow rhetoric.

Now, there are actually people who would consider buying into 4-8 more years of the same? The war-profiteering, womanizing, Kerik-propping Giuliani in the White House would crank us up to an entire GENERATION of wreck and ruin. All because the people who should have been accountable were asleep at the wheel, and Americans are too lazy to get the facts. Preferring sound bites and and a couple of tear-jerking scenes. Who's your daddy in a crisis? The guy getting pancake makeup before he starts handing out water bottles.

If it sounds like a president (ie: empty posturing) and looks like a president (ie: empty eyes and curling lips) and acts like a president (ie: having a completely personal set of standards and ethics) that seems to be enough.

To paraphrase another hideous example of people making bad choices...if the PR works with good effect....we must elect.

I'm guessing that in a lot of mindless America, Fred Thompson will be a big threat to Rudy...after all...he's been on the teevee. Enquiring minds don't need to know any more than that.

Aaaaargh.

My son just got back from Iraq. My third deployment as a mom.

As many times as I hear or read the casual observations of these people who act as though the war in Iraq is:

a) newly in need of time to work

b) a situation without "human" consequences that needs "time" to brew up the latest cover story

c) all about Democracy

d) the venue for pundits, neocons, detached presidents and NOT of the troops or the people they leave behind

e) an exercise in whitepaper theory and not real life

f) the absolute entitlement of politicians and the war profiteers who own them

....I just want to throw up. Nothing else seems appropriate anymore.

Tim Grieve can only speak up after-the-fact. Where are the reporters asking the questions, and questioning the answers when guys like Trent Lott start belatedly walking the walk, but only to the point where it could actually do some good?

They'll stop at the party line every time. On one side, them. With million dollar book deals and gravy-train jobs, consulting gigs or board seats. On the other side...us, and the bruised, battered, and sometimes dead sons and daughters we may eventually bring home.

He walked among us dressed like a Democrat. He spoke the language of moderation fluently enough in Connecticut to con the voters into re-electing him. Now that he is safely re-ensconced in his Senate seat, with even more power as the "which way will he go" vote...Lieberman finally feels comfortable enough to shed his minimal pretenses and go all the way in revealing his true nature, and his true allegiances. Yes, we already knew, but he hadn't actually walked over to the other side of the aisle when Bush yelled "Red Rover, Red Rover, send my buddy Joe on over!"

He is a dangerous fraud. A man who got into a position to do his part in facilitating and furthering the destructive agenda of the scariest factions of Republican party by conning America wholesale in 2000, and Connecticut in particular in 2006. People in Washington and Connecticut)who still retain their consciences should ostricize him for the cowardly weasel he is...because, unfortunately, this is America, and it is George's government...not mine, so trial for treason and subsequent archane punishment is out of the question. Damn.

Ok. I get it.

The government is W's. The Justice Department is W's. The deciding is W's. The war is W's. And all the shiny things like Saddam Hussein's pistol are W's.

The 3500-plus dead sons, daughters, mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, friends...and the LOSS of voting rights, habeus corpus, liberty, security, opportunity, peace-of-mind, respect, dignity, privacy, hope...those things are ours.

Gee...seems more than fair.

Kind of like shoving democracy down the throats of other people who have their own beliefs and traditions....

However...I digress....I have sent two sons to Iraq, twice. (yes, Mizbinkney...a LOT of us actually have) And if Mitt Romney thinks his sons' religious service is comparable to that, he is as deluded, elitist, detached, and as big an ass as the current occupant. And I thought we had a problem with God in the White House now! Suddenly service to YOUR church of choice is the same as service to your county.

Nope.

Oops. Maybe not so much.

Yes, he's intuitive, and yet...still so "human(e)". I would say a humane society of one, in the literal sense.

I have no actual editorial comment about this ironic take on religious pomposity and egocentrism...

but I do want to say that I just washed my son's Opus stuffed toy and took it with me to Japan to present it to my new grandson -- whose father is the original Opus owner, now in his thirties and who missed the birth of his son because he was in Iraq. Fighting for his life among people who are arguing this very Tub vs. Suds question.

Some things...people...puffins are meant to be immortal. I love you, Opus. I thank you, Berkeley Breathed.