mindset that has become the new left (an Overton window effect). The only really progressive candidate was Kucinich. I viewed Obama as essentially a reasonable conservative (compared to the alternative), and so I am not disappointed or surprised. The best it seems we can hope for in our form of government is a competent representative of our real governing class: the corporations. Sort of a good boss/bad boss thing, but at the end of the day the boss serves the company. And I never expected a company man to buck his true bosses. And I am truly glad to see (and this is not snark) that even the job of main frontman and manager of the corporations' workforce for the military/industrial/pharmaceutical complex, is now a racially integrated position. I hope I am not wrong about him being a reasonable, good Prince, for I know for a fact democracy died when corporations were given the rights of a person by the Supreme Court.

You wrote:

If enough do, Democratic control will be threatened. Moreover, even isolated primary challenges force party resources to be devoted to primaries instead of building party power by fighting against Republicans. Moreover, primaries can be powerful examples - if you take down one incumbent, it affects the behavior of others afraid they'll be similarly targeted.

But are not the supermajority of both parties simply members of the corporate-owned party? It is your own writings that have helped make this crystal clear to me. And if that is so, then surely those in power in either party are not really troubled (except in a kind of game playing who is on top for this round late at night boasting at the bar kind of way)about who controls the congress or even the white house. Because "win" or "lose", they win.

In that case, does not our strategy and wisdom need to focus on how decent people can live in and survive the empire with their soul's intact? So we speak up and challenge the fools, but with a sort of realism that notes the real stakes are not some kind of political victory but rather the kind of person we find ourselves to be, the kind of friend we can be to those who share our idea of what it means to be a decent human being. Elie Wiesel's comment comes to mind: Why do you protest if no one ever really listens, if the power structures do not change? To remind myself what it means to be human. So I do not become ashamed.

But I will be happy to be wrong about whether there is still some room to make things really better in the political sphere.

for continuing to highlight the foolishness that masquerades as journalism. If only Mark Twain were alive to write about it in our new gilded age.

The link to the "veal pen" article was very useful, too: when I read about van Jones being ditched I had the suspicion that it was because he was for real (in the liberal sense).

I am not disappointed in Obama because I always thought he was just the best corporate frontman we could get at this time (a conservative vs. the arch-conservative choice, as it were--and in addition one that did not have a total incompetent as vp).

How sad it all is, to have the evidence become ever more conclusive that the experiment in self-governance initiated with the American revolution has failed.

when my daughter was in fifth grade, which sort of sums up my reaction to much of the style of discourse found here today:

"Calling people names" is using rude words to address people. Example: "You are a jerk!" Reply: "You don't have to call me names." Another example: "You shouldn't call people names." Another example: "I would never date someone who called me names."

You call a person names when you use rude words to insult that person. Example: "What a fight they were having. You should have heard the names he called her." Another example: "Just because you're angry, you don't have to call me names."

When you use impolite words to address people, you are "calling people names." Example: "Mom! She is calling me names!" Another example: "When we were children, we used to call each other names."

Note: when we were children, we used to call each other names.

Glenn’s point would be a tu quoque if he argued that Iran should not be challenged on its policies by the US because the US has done the same things (as if, when a doctor told me to lose weight, I said, well, why should I when you are fat too?). He is not saying Iran should not be called out on its torture because the US tortures! Instead, he is saying it is inconsistent to call out Iran and not to call out the US for doing the same things.

If even you are made to despair at the irrationality of the state secrets debacle, what are we to do? We begin to approach the realm of those absurdities than which none greater can be thought, the absolute absurd, as it were: now we are only left with Sartre, perhaps, and his nausea, with Washington D.C. as the place with NO EXIT.

whose own hand tried to strangle him when he tried to keep it from giving the Nazi salute, soon O'Reilly will do himself in :)

you understood this film at all. There is a proverb: some works of art are like a mirror: if a donkey looks in, no saint can look back out.