Did they replace him with this guy?

Vidal is far from a political crackpot, and is certainly deserving of more respect than anything for which Mr. Barra is capable.

Hanging a piece of lumber around one's neck does not make them a writer, much less a critic.

...sending these morons to progressive websites to bait us into playing the game THEIR way?!?

There will always be those who will drink Hitler's KoolAid. It's just part of the human condition, I suppose.

Some people LIKE being told when to wipe their behinds, which direction to wipe and how many pieces of toilet paper to use. They probably fantasize about wearing a diaper and being spanked for spilling their creamed corm with chopped asparagus all over their highchairs.

Whatever. It's someone else's job to tell these pseudo-intellectual lightweights that they're being bad for pooping in their own bed.

But I will say that Europe could have done a better job, as could the present batch of progressives in the US, of lassoing the brown-shirted troglodytes before they ever wormed their way into power.

We always need to speak truth to power; but sometimes we have to do it to the crazy, too.

...but after I worked through my personal raft of issues and demons, I came to recognize my own self absorption and narcissism in Oprah's public behavior. The final break for me happened when I first saw her touting that sycophantic scold, Dr. Phil, on her show.

Imagine having to have your face on the cover of your own magazine every month and what might drive that kind of obsession.

Imagine being so driven to become proud of yourself that you overlook issues of cultural hegemony; issues regarding the tyranny of American values superimposed on the lives of a people who, quite arguably, have proven themselves to be far more decent and humane than we have ever been in the United States.

But this really isn't a shot across Oprah's bow or a jab to encourage her to grow up and get a real life that involves an actual exchange between two whole people. The author of _I'm OK,_You're OK_ committed suicide.

I guess he wasn't okay.

What I really think this story illustrates is the lop-sided manner that American capitalism -- arguably fascism from most historical perspectives -- favors those among us who are quite palpably insane.

Driven to disprove what would be plainly, painfully obvious to a child's eyes, we work 100 hour weeks for months at a time and still feel empty inside. We haul our economic largesse around in wheelbarrows full of cash, but it is all fuel for the fires of a personal hell we would gladly pay all of our life's work back to escape.

Talking about one's "stuff" once or twice is only the barest of beginnings. Most people stop there, become frustrated, and then seek for success in the "outside" world of pseudo joy.

What the wounded child inside requires is not overindulgence, in my experience, but a highly structured process that frees us to become whole, integrating all of our experiences -- good and unspeakably bad -- into a single human life.

But if we do succeed in checking in most of our baggage, Madison Avenue would have nothing left to sell us, and the justifications for war would follow behind very soon.

No one wants that much peace for themselves. Not yet, anyway.

Everytime McCain can make a stand against torture, against policies which does not personally believe in or which are illegal, McCain caves in and plays, "follow the incompetent leader."

It is entirely possible that McCain was programmed, via torture, to behave the way he behaves. I wouldn't be surprised if the US didn't orchestrate it, as backward as some of our black ops can be.

In any event, the man is untrustworthy. It doesn't matter if he served and was disabled by the experience. He is unfit to be a chief executive.

But that's never stopped the Republicans before, has it?

The ENTIRE corporate elite of the 1930's and 1940's, including Charles Lindbergh himself, thought Hitler was just a peachy chap.

They LAUNDERED MONEY for the Nazi war machine.

There is Jewish blood on American hands. And I, for one, am tired of being blackmailed by AIPAC over it.