Oddly, he claims that if only the rest of us spent more time in Iraq, we'd understand that amazing progress is being made. We simply can't know how wonderful life is there because we're not there.

In a complete reversal, he claims that you can only see the progress in NOLA by NOT going there.

Somewhere, the Mad Hatter is pissing himself.

Like a lot of the posters, I still dig a great deal of Nugent's music. Unlike most of his right-wing brethren, I can seperate my appreciation of art from the foibles (or worse) of the artist. In that vein, I could never understand the burning of Dixie Chicks records by people who only days earlier would have killed for a pair of tickets to see them.

With that in mind, I recently went to a Nugent concert at a weekend fest put on by a middle-class Chicago suburb. At the outset, I was particularly disturbed by the large percentage of neo-nazi types in the crowd. I also saw and heard first-hand the rap that's depicted in the video posted (which really just skims the surface). I kind of expected that, though, being aware of Ted's leanings and bombast.

But what was really amazing was the utter lack of irony in the encore as he tore through Great White Buffalo, which at its heart is an indictment of the ignorant "white man" who destroyed the natural world and way of life of the indigenous peoples of North America. An indictment of the very attitudes Ted and his shaved-headed, swastika-tattooed acolytes proudly embrace today: we have the power to bend the world to our wishes, so we will, and fuck 'em all if they don't like it.

It's important to remember that American political life is nothing if not a big pendulum, which can never deviate too far from the center point, nor hold it's apogee for too long. While a galvanizing personality (eg Reagan) or watershed event (the Depression, 9/11) can incrementally slow or speed the movement of that pendulum, no one factor can exert enough force to freeze it's motion for more than a relative instant or shift the center point.

I think Rove understood the inexorable swing tendency, but believed you COULD move the center point, by various means both on and off the radar. The next few years will tell whether he's right; I suspect he was not.

I dread the day when CBS and the NCAA realize how much they could be hosing us for the pleasure of watching nearly all the Men's BBall Tourney games, live, on-line, for free.

Let's just fix this thing once and for all.

Each state will have its primary/caucus all on the same day for the 2012 presidential election. It will be held on January 28, 2009. We can then have a full 46 month campaign between the two parties' nominees. This will also allow us to eliminate conventions.

You're welcome.

Odd that someone on the right would be unaware of the expression: "And ye shall reap what ye soweth."

Excuse me. This 17 year old has her own spokesperson to explain her Facebook page? The mind reels.

In response to one of the posters, Buerhle says it won't be him that cracks the 300 club, since he has no intention of sticking around 21 years. The article was posted 8/4 on the White Sox website.

I'm curious. Did the several branches of the armed forces have any recruiters there? And if so, how many of the war-mongering little snots signed up?

As long as Bush has 49 senators that will toe the administration line on nearly everything, not much can be done by that body. Specter is highly regarded by a lot of his colleagues, which is why what he says AND what he does is important. If other, less powerful, GOP senators see that even Specter falls into line when needed, they will hesitate to break ranks. The converse, however, is also true; if Specter demonstrates that he actually has cajones, instead of merely talking about them, there may be just enough others who will take his cover, and once the foundation starts to crack, the walls will fall.

Only 9 GOP senators need to crack to break a filibuster (OK, 10 if you count the fact that Lieberman kisses Ws heinie almost as much as Fredo). A genuine tough stand by Specter -- as opposed to his illusory posturing -- could embolden those in "purple" states up for re-election in '08 to show a little conscience, too. It may be a fantasy, but until the Senate's rules change, we'll have to hope.

Were it not a French expression, I would have no problem envisioning Bush declaring: "L'etat, c'est moi."

I heard something today that I had not caught in any of the other reports on this (although it may have been covered in some of the more in-depth analyses), which put this in a bit more perspective. That was the news that Murdoch is getting ready to launch a Fox Financial news cable channel in the next few months. Clearly, all this blather about how much "Rupert loves newspapers" is just that. What Murdoch wants is additional content and cross-promotional value between that new channel and the WSJ.

With that in mind, and given Murdoch's track record with other newspapers (particularly, in my experience, the Chicago Sun-Times -- ruined initially by Murdoch before being dealt a near death-blow by Conrad Black), I have a bit more trepidation about the loss of the news portion of the Journal.