I've said this before, but it bears repeating. Because the entire MSM actually lives and works on the coasts, their natural, very human, reaction was to freak out on September 11, 2001. This unbelievably horrendous event happened right in their own neighborhood! In order to seem to be professional, of course, they could not openly acknowledge that freak out in their media work. Sadly, it seems as if they've never acknowledged it within themselves, either, nor have they recognized how it did and, in most cases, does continuously skew their perspective. They continue to look at the world through the eyes of frightened children who just want to feel safe again.

From this almost completely unconscious perspective, the world they envision is none other than that which was so ably developed by William Golding in his book "Lord of the Flies." All the desperately tough-person posturing, all the blustering talk about what we must do to save ourselves from... whatever... are just the whimpering cries of children desperate for mom and dad to rescue them, give them a bedtime snack, and tuck them in. The tragedy is, they seem permanently traumatized and stuck in that mode while the American people have largely recovered, adjusted, grieved and are ready to move on.

I suppose the only way out is for all of us to stop watching and reading these children. Perhaps if we do so, their media masters will put them to bed until they are able to sleep the night through without nightmares haunting their sleep. In the meantime the MSM might return to using adults to deliver the news, which, of course, would help all of us act and think more like adults, as well.

Or, of course, we could also amuse ourselves by continuing to watch while listening with an eye or an ear tuned to guessing just how old most people are when they behave the way we're observing...2, 4, 7, 11, 14? Considering the tantrums, I'd peg Rush at about 3?

I can't help but wonder how these numbers are derived. From what you've said of her writing, Andrew, I suspect Ms. Weston is counting each credit card account separately as the total owed by that "family" rather than adding up various accounts owned by all the various members of the family and held by several different Credit Card issuers. This would render markedly lower totals for each family, but would not accurately reflect that family's actual indebtedness.

I also suspect that the families who are in the worst shape, debt-wise, are also the folks who have been doing the most spending. I may be wrong, but I suspect that people who have a greater ability to ignore the constant pressure to "buy, buy, buy" which surrounds us in our society, are also far more careful with their use of credit. They won't buy much less than they have been because they were already buying far less than those among their friends and neighbors who have too easily given in to that pressure to spend money so effectively created by endless advertising on the tube and reinforced by the Bush administration.

The problem is, and will remain for the foreseeable future, that the big spenders who've been pulling equity out of their houses in order to keep their overused credit cards afloat are, by necessity, ceasing to do so. With all the financial cards so neatly stacked against them by the punishing attitude and policies of their various lenders, they will likely be broke for a very long time.

If Obama had called the debate for what it was and left the stage, they would have ripped him apart, especially if he had referred to Jerry Springer. He would then have been accused of insulting every fan of the Jerry Springer show as well as every member of their families, their neighborhoods, and their demographic group. Meanwhile, Ms. Clinton would have prattled on in every appearance about how she's enjoyed watching Jerry Springer from time to time as if it were some kind of guilty pleasure.

What really happened last night was that several thousand more people, perhaps hundreds of thousands, came to the conclusion that the MSM is complete garbage. No doubt the traffic went up on internet news sites this morning, and not those affiliated with the MSM, as people went searching for real information about the world and what's happening. The MSM, in all it's hydra-headed magnificence is committing suicide by trying to feed this garbage to folks who are starving for good information and able to find it easily, on their own schedules, elsewhere.

It seems that those of us who value our nation and understand how the corruption of the current MSM by the NEOConCorporateGOP is setting us up for national/international disaster have two options. 1)We can locate and encourage wealthy folks with a less biased perspective to buy up media outlets (if there are any wealthy folks left whose perspective is not entirely corrupted by their balance sheets,

And/or 2)We do what so many of us are already doing: we completely desert the MSM and seek our information in other places (the internet, perhaps). I suspect last night's debate may have pushed thousands more of us onto the net since it made abundantly clear that there's nothing worth watching or listening to on any MSM "news" program, nor in any MSM "news" paper, nor is there anything worth reading on any of their web sites. Even MPR is trying mightily, right now, to tow the GOP line because congress is debating funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and Bush wants major cuts in that funding.