The people who make these shows, I'm surprised Heather doesn't know, aren't all pretty, perfect people. A lot, if not most, of them are the ones who didn't get asked to the prom and so sat in their rooms instead, writing about what it would be like to be pretty and perfect. The pretty people have much too much to do, living their perfect lives, for the frightening drudgery, the frustration, the tearing-up-of-three-solid-days'-work-because-it's-no-fucking-good, the wondering-if-you-took-a-wrong-turn-twenty-years-ago-and-have-been-kidding-yourself-ever-since nightsweat angst of being a writer for hire. The actors are the visible face of Hollywood's product, but don't kid yourself. The people pulling the levers are the weirdest lot of trolls and kinksters you've ever seen.

I haven't time to read every post here, but I've read a lot and I haven't so far seen anyone mention SC's timely appearance on "Sixty Minutes" Sunday.

Watching his performance at the WHC dinner, I kept asking myself in stunned wonder, "Where did this guy get his balls? Definitely not from the same supplier as mine!" Then, on Sixty Minutes it came at least partially clear: SC explained that he came from a family of eleven children and that, when he was ten his father and two of his brothers were killed in an Eastern Airlines crash (DC-9, Charlotte, NC, 1974). After that, he said, nothing could touch him. No one could take anything away from him, so where's the threat, the fear?

Very few of us could turn the personal tragedy of a ten-year-old boy into the greatness that Stephen Colbert has. Bravo!

Colbert has the biggest, hardest stones in the country. Hurray for SC.

But when we talk about the WH press corps, what exactly are these people up against? They feed their families by being reporters. But the administration gets to decide, does it not, who is allowed in and who is chosen to ask a question? Therefore the WH Press Corps feeds their children at the pleasure of those they're supposed to poke and prod, question, cross-examine and lay bare? That's never going to work. Of course they're toadies, it's that or back to covering celebrities' children's birthday parties.

You can't really blame these people for kissing ass and playing softball. You want to be a White House correspondent? Be nice. You're not nice, you don't get picked to ask questions, you don't get invited to the events where you can rub shoulders with the movers and shakers. In short, you go back to doing the weather.

What we need is an institutionalized press conference that is not the administration's press conference, but rather the people's press conference. The press's press conference. Where Power stands up and answers questions that aren't screened and Power doesn't get to choose who asks the questions. How did this "free" country with "representative" government, for the people, by the people, etc. end up with a system where Power gets to decide whether or not to respond to the people's questions?

I know we need to protect ourselves, but somehow I'm comforted by the idea of some incompetence, confusion and lack of coordination at these spy agencies. The kind of people drawn to that line of work -- pistol-packin' cowboys and technocrats hopped up on paranoid fantasies of world domination (ours or the other guy's) -- they make me nervous. I don't want them getting TOO damn good at what they do. Because if they ever go on the fritz and start targeting thee and me...

I was getting all greased up to write a letter here, when I saw that lauralooch had already said everything I wanted to say, and probably said it better than I would have.

Vive la différence!

Early on, the Nazis were considered fringe nutcases by the Germans. Marching around in their brown shirts, buncha pimply losers looking for something to belong to. If Germany had gotten back on its feet after WWI and people had had a life, that's exactly what the Nazis would have remained, as they slowly dissolved into a bunch of disconnected, older pimple-scarred losers. But that's not how it happened. Same thing here. These right-wing Christian fundamentalist nut-jobs are and will stay on, the fringe if everything motors along well for the American economy. But Dog help us if things DON'T go well. If there's a crash, if people lose hope, if chaos and fear rule the day -- and it doesn't have to be riot-in-the-streets chaos, either, just a sense that we've slipped our moorings -- then these crazies will offer something that too many people will want, just as Hitler gave Germany someone to blame (and hate) in its darkest hour.

I'm old, I'll be fine. But it scares the bejaysus out of me for my kids.

They got to you, didn't they.

How does Rove or anyone else in this administration dare to talk about the economy as a gold star on their report card? We're the neighbor who has everything, the new car, the 60-inch plasma screen, the Disney cruise for the whole family -- the envy of the neighborhood until the credit card people come and take it all away. Of course the economy is humming, with hundreds of billions in government debt and a nice little war to keep it going. To say there's ANY comparison with the Clinton, pay-as-you-go years is ludicrous. Bush is going to leave us with a credit-card hangover like none before.

I wanna SEE it!

The snakes and scumbags who populate the consumer-lending industry had better look to their skins. Ridding the world of such parasites at the same time adding to the general sense that we're in this together and can afford to reach out a helping hand...wow. Simple, and beautiful.