Hell, if Gore had carried his home state, he'd have won the presidency, regardless of the Naderites, regardless of the GOP's election thievery in Florida. I voted for Gore, but I don't blame Nader for Bush; I blame Gore's weak campaign (and the GOP's outright election stealing, and SCOTUS' disgracefully partisan one-shot ruling) for the loss.

The only way out of the current mess we've got is with more, and not fewer, parties, people, ideas, and outlooks represented. Campaign finance reform would let more people get into the game, and not just the political entrepeneurs we end up with as candidates.

As I said earlier, bitching (still) about Nader is basically arguing that less choice = more good in American politics, which isn't the best place to be for anybody with progressive inclinations.

"Iraq may get better; Iraq may get worse. We may be successful in Iraq; we may not be."

Boy, what a flip-flopper he is.

What, another Sopranos recap? You're still reeling? C'mon! Looks like Chase is a wiseguy, after all!

Instead, we were supposed to get that Tony was killed? So then, why didn't we get it? I noticed that the music ended on the word "Stop," I knew it wasn't a technical malfunction, but I still didn't have any clue what had happened.

Yeah, you were supposed to get that. It was perfect. After all of those years, the body count piling up, Chase still managed to surprise most of his audience. I think it's funny that so many people watched this show, thrilled to the nihilism and the violence and the desolation, and when Tony got popped, they were caught as off-guard as he was, and got mad that they were bumped off, that somebody got the drop on them, that it wasn't done in a way they expected it to be done. Darn those professional hitmen!

It's too perfect. You get to live, Tony died. So, live and learn, right? In the waning months of the Bush presidency, it's kinda ideal, since the Bushies pulled a major hit on this country, and most didn't see that coming, either.

Seeing where Bush has led the country, what the neocon agenda and ideology has been, one understands how brain drain occurs in countries, why people simply flee to places where civility exists, where reason has a chance of prevailing, where civil society continues to thrive. Fight or flight? Against such power, flight seems the rational response for the powerless.

How do you speak truth to Power, that old progressive trope, when Power doesn't listen? When Power suspends habeas corpus, has secret prisons, militarizes the police, politicizes the judiciary, throws money hand over fist to the war machine, guts environmental reform while pretending to uphold it, demolishes international law and order while claiming to defend it. What do you do? Where do you run? With what do you fight?

There's method in the wicked madness of the neocon agenda, in their overbroad and willfully vague sense of what makes a "terrorist" -- anybody the President doesn't like can be sent away. That's a marvelous weapon in the hands of tyranny.

Bush's genius was being the folksy tyrant -- the simpleton king, with Cheney as the iron in the alchemical witch's brew of their politics. It made it easier, the verbal slip-ups, the "What, me worry?" appearance he conveys. The emperor-as-court jester, while the poison of their politics spreads.

The GOP promises a continuation, another dip from the cauldron they've had bubbling for years. What do the Democrats promise, in truth? Can they step back from it, can they undo what the Bush League has wrought?

Europe looks at us with fear and loathing, but whether the Colossus wears a smiley face ("LOVE ME!" it commands) or a frown ("FEAR ME!" it commands), it's still a Colossus, the world still shudders in its shadow, and we thrill to its power. We need to step back from that, and I don't know if the country's capable of it.

I feel like the American leadership takes Lord Acton's admonishment and adds a rider to it: Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely (except if it's American absolute power; then it's okay).