You're a lot more articulate but yes, you are hysterical. I don't call my cousin who was always like a brother to me any more because all he wants to talk about is how everything is falling apart, the country is a complete shitheap run by crooks and thieves and no one, no one can get a fair shake or a modicum of justice and it's just gonna keep getting worse until the lid blows off. I can't talk to the guy.

As we sit in our dens and offices, typing on our computers, living in the richest country ever, where people of all stripes have more access to justice and security than ever before anywhere -- maybe not as much as in some perfect paradise, but read the history books, man -- it's interesting and even important that we discuss the issues of the day. I have teenage children and of course I worry about the world we're going to hand them. I don't know if it'll be better or worse than what we were handed; I do know it'll be different and one day my kids will worry about what they're going to pass on to their children. Or maybe they'll all die in a plague or the seas will boil or a dictator will arise who lines them up at a wall and shoots them. Maybe. Or maybe something else, something nice. Who the hell knows the future? But there are plenty of possible outcomes that aren't apocalyptic.

So by all means, let's talk about things that matter; if enough people talk about things that matter, we're more likely to get them right, make the road ahead a little smoother and a little straighter. But let's not get nuts. It's bad for the blood pressure.

I will leave the pages to the burgeoning pundits.

Since we all know you'll be back to see how your supposed valedictory was received, Addie old chap...why not fill us in on your plans. Are you going to get off your ass and go do something to avert the coming apocalypse? Take to the streets? But wait, the streets were built by The Man, so taking to the streets is playing his game. Maybe you should take to the skies. Swoop down on TPTB and surprise them as they wallow in the slop-trough of their corruption. Come on, let's see you do something, dude! Don't be one of those of whom it is said, "He has the wisdom of youth, and the energy of old age."

The person you quote is a well-known Salon troll who says outrageous, ugly things in order to see his name on the page as others react. First rule: don't name trolls when you react to them -- or better yet, don't react to them at all.

And yes, of course, Hewitt has his head in a very dark, smelly place: he's pro-Bush and pro-war and pretends to give a shit what happens to Iraqis -- before we withdraw, after we withdraw or at any time in his miserable chickenhawk life. But as interviews go, I thought he listened well and was respectful. So much of what we hear from the RightRadio is spittle-spewing, bilious showboating, at least HH allowed WO to get his point across. I give him credit for that.

They're still going to be around when he's gone, too. It would be lovely to imagine that a significant number of them will awake from their Kool-Aid-induced stupor, ask themselves, "What were we thinking??" and turn into people with whom it's possible to have a rational conversation about matters of pressing national importance without them sticking out their tongues and putting their fingers in their ears. But it's more likely that we'll continue to have a deep division -- perhaps not as deep as during the Bush Dark Ages -- in this country about how we should govern ourselves and what constitutes America's rightful place in the world, and that it will continue to thwart progress toward a Better Tomorrow.

Is that we shouldn't be making ethanol from corn in the first place, and wouldn't be were it not for U.S. governmental subsidies and trade barriers that warp the marketplace for the enrichment of a relatively few large farmers at the expense of the rest of us. Ethanol should be made from cane sugar.

But is anyone surprised that significant elements of the mass media have been completely co-opted by this administration? The money guys monitoring the Money Guys, and we expect what -- that they're going to be hard-nosed, investigative, skeptical? Hell no, they're going to keep Bush's political base on life support if they can by telling the story they want heard even though it flies in the face of reality. Check with Mr. Goebbels, it was his idea first.

Thank God for the blogs, keeping the candle burning.

And I'm really pulling for your Uncle Frank to get his life in order.

I guess the fear is that Reynolds' notions might find an audience because he's a law professor, albeit at a second-tier law school. Thus, Campos and Greenwald take up their cudgels to beat back at his barbarous words. But come on, folks, who's gonna take this guy seriously who isn't already unhinged beyond redemption? Who imagines that this assassination-porn is going to suddenly take root in political or military reality?

The fact that Reynolds has a stump from which he is declaiming his unspeakable strategies for ridding the world of the hobgoblins that beset his dreams does not require the Camposes and Greenwalds of the world to rise up. He's a Nowhere Man, sitting in his Nowhere Land, making all his Nowhere Plans for Nobody. Let him implode on his own and let's work on what to do about the future.