I think the case is as you suggest--if she is fired it won't be for the whoppers she's flung to our national stenographers, it will be for being a really bad liar. What made Fleischer, McClellan and Snow good at what they did was that you knew they weren't shy about the lies. Basically, both had this look that said: "you know I'm lying, but do something about it you pansies".

Somewhere deep within the vast expanse of the Perino psyche lies a shred of integrity that her ambitions have not been able to get at, and you can tell.

The more I watch Fox News--Hannity n Colmes, O'Reilly, etc. , the more I realize that they almost exclusively deal in racist stereotypes and xenophobia. And they are the highest rated cable news network by a wide margin.

We're going to have to start to admit to ourselves that Republicans--whom logic would dictate by now should have support of only the most marginal aspects of society--are doing fine not because of misinformation, but because their base is much more reactionary, racist and mean than anyone can imagine.

Matthews is often one of the only tv news personalities that puts stuff like this out there, but he is so much more hit than miss. With his gleeful acceptance of just about everything that is disgusting about american politics and his oddly mid-western mid-century ideas about women--in fact, even the way he elbows female commentators out of the way to get to his preferred politicking male buddies--he's just a symbol of many of the things wrong with our media. In fact, during the debates he asked the most incredibly sexist question I have heard in a decade or more...something like, workers in Michigan used to be able to support their family on one salary, while the wife stayed home and took care of the kids. How likely is this to happen again.

As if women in the workplace was some kind of deviancy...

I think one of the main reasons that Democratic majority Congress has rested on its collective booty this last year has a lot to do with the same kind of relationships that Greenwald is describing between Rockefeller and Verizon. I would assume that certain corporate entities and their lobbying groups have certain interests in the Iraq war and in this nation's foreign policy in general. There are few Democrats who do not rely on these actors to remain in power, and the ones who don't are notably marginalized not only by the media but economically as well (Mr. Kucinich).

I think we all better wake up to the reality that the Republican party and the Democratic party enjoy a power sharing arrangement, lopsided as it may be. Democrats are not going to break with that tradition any time soon.

And I think this would be a great time for those of us who withstood pariah status for voting for Nader in 2000 and 2004, to get back on the job. All of those who convinced us that it was too dangerous a time to splinter progressive loyalties, have woken up to the late decade reality that, in fact, it was the perfect time. Indeed, post-Iraq war two party polarization has spelt the end of the national feeling of being fed-up with two party politics. Just saying. It doesn't have to be Nader. I'd vote for just about anybody else at this point, even Bloomberg.

If only as a symbol.

I wanted to believe in Obama, but that belief is fading, and it looks like our overlords have already decided that Hillary Clinton will represent our interests. The fact alone that that would represent over two decades of Oligarchic rule (4 years Bush 1, 8 years Clinton 1, 8 years Bush 2, and however long Clinton 2 lasts), should scare the pants off people.

Either you don't read very carefully or you're trying to instigate me into a pointless on-line fight. We both have better things to do.

Ok, thanks for getting that and it was illuminating but I just want to point out one thing. On that same open secrets page you can select "summary" which gives you the number of democrats who took money from 'telephone utilities'--an admitedly broad category that would include many non-usual suspects, I imagine.

The breakdown looks slightly different. Surely, Republicans got the most money by a factor of two to one, but almost half of the recipients of such funds were Democrats. Just pointing out--often the differences between being in the top ten and top thirty are negligible--tops are arbitrary, by definition.

http://www.opensecrets.org/industries/summary.asp?Ind=B08&cycle=2006