Please make it stop.

It's hard to believe it's not satire.

Nope, it ain't satire. Y'know, I used to be surprised by this kind of thing, but then I learned to understand it, at least a bit.

First off, humans are tribal, and the default position is to simply defend you side. Second, the media have completely abdicated their mission to inform, and either (at best) quote one D and one R and call it a day, or, at worst, basically call the truth "shrill", or "paranoid", or whatever. People are seriously uninformed.

Secondly, the human brain forms beliefs, such as Dems good, R's evil, or vice versa. Once formed, these beliefs are VERY, VERY hard to dislogde.

Here is an example from my marriage. I said, when my wife wanted to buy an expensive new gizmo, that we didn't have the money, we would have to dip into savings and that we shouldn't do that to finance consumption - it's a bad long term strategy.

With a straight face, she looked me in the eye and said, OK, then I'll just put it on the credit card so we don't have to touch the savings.

I just stood there a while, not quite knowing what to say. The level of financial understanding displayed in that conversation, I would argue, is analogous of the level of political maturity and discourse in the good ol' US of A.

Obama deserves impeachment for this nonsense. Ideally Congress and the courts would put him in his place, but I find the odds of that happening slim and none, and slim is out of town.

Things are unraveling fast - Obama continues to concentrate power in the presidency, and he's got a new crisis to help keep everyone's mind off of the civil liberties issues. AIG just announced a $60B loss, or something on that order. The entire financial system may come down. This economic mess is extremely bad, much worse than most realize.

Peak oil is now a fact, not a prediction. I just checked the Cryoshpere Today site, and it looks like the summer melting season started at the end of February, instead of mid-March (which is typical of prior years) - i.e., climate change is accelerating.

And it's a Monday.

We're fu*&ing doomed.

I'm ready to start impeachment proceedings. It is clear enough already, as Glenn has documented, that Obama is NOT going to reverse many of the abuses of the Bush Administration. He's fighting hard to preserve them.

Wiretapping without warrants, picking up "enemy combatants" and holding them indefinitely without trial are apparantly OK by Barack. These are bright red lines. Violating these principles is simply intolerable and unacceptable. This guy already deserves impeachment, regardless of how enlightened his policies might be in other areas.

Whether she really means it is sort of beside the point.

I for one think it is important. If she spoke sincerely, we might get some movement toward accountability for Bush and his cronies. She's a powerful woman.

I'll believe it when I see it though. We've heard a lot of nice sounding rhetoric from a lot of politicians over the last few years, with nothing concrete to show for it.

I feel the same way towards Dick Durbin, Sheldon Whitehouse, Pat Leahy

Fine with me - give them the same treatment. They are part of the same power elite, Washington establishment, that bleated mildly and then, not content to merely allow the cruelty to take place, in fact put their stamp of approval on it.

And you probably will have to wait until the Dems are thrown out - that's what our country has come to. Politics trumps truth, and the law. As long as you're party is in power, you do whatever you like.

Y'know, I do hate Bush. I find him loathsome and evil.

But the thing I hate the most is that, after seriously weakening my country and completely trashing the values he claimed to uphold, he just rode off into the sunset and got away with it.

He deserves to be tarred and feathered, and then to rot in prison for the rest of his life. Let's give him some "language isolation" too, so that maybe he'll realize just how vicious his policies were/are. He is about as disgusting, low and vile as a human can get.

I don't know - it all sounds good.

But I'll believe it when I see Bush on trial.

I agree that change must be incremental, and the statement is so

Why?

It might be the case. Personally, I find that the most likely outcome too. But sudden shifts in the global balance of power, economic relations, etc. could change things very quickly. Just look at how rapidly the US economy went south. A year ago, very few would have predicted the US would be seriously considering nationalizing the banking system.

Those kinds of shifts are getting more and more likely, IMHO.

Changes of this sort, if they're going to happen at all, are only going to happen gradually and incrementally

This might be true, but why do you think it _IS_ true?

In retrospect, I wish I hadn't embarked upon this particular line of discussion.

I'm sorry if I upset you by keeping at it.

I see you beat me to the punch. And did a better job, to boot.