Every time I hear (or read) the Dicktator's words, I feel more strongly that Bush is a figurehead's figurehead in this neoconservative/reactionary coup.

The neocons found their perfect go-to guy in Bush, the privileged, possibly sociopathic party boy who found Jesus late in life (I know they paint his 40-something conversion as his "youth" but c'mon), and trusted on their cadres of PR and media handlers, in a servile, ideologically-obedient GOP-led Congress, and in the Dicktator's extensive Beltway connections, to keep things going.

They made Bush a deal -- "You get to be President!" -- while they handled all the messy stuff behind the scenes, counting on that trump card, the full faith and confidence of the President, to protect them. And they lurched from crisis to crisis, always counting on the figurehead-in-chief, who needs them desperately, to bail them out if things got too hot.

Everything the cabal has done makes me think this -- like using 9/11 to ramrod their agenda on the country (including the quixotic tax cuts while waging a war of opportunity). Makes me think that the GOP enthusiasm for privatization is a reflection not of their rejection of public government per se, but their using their strong cards they have to play, by way of industry connections. Bush knows that he just needs to run out the clock, and his people are covered -- the right people made boodles of money, the right people continue to escape justice, accountability, and responsibility. Mission accomplished, no matter what the irrelevant majority thinks.

Better to focus on healthcare, energy and other pocketbook issues first, she said, than to go after the abuses of the Bush administration.

This with a GOP congressional minority that has as its declared strategy keeping the Democrats from getting anything accomplished in this session?? With an extralegal President whose signing statements have scuttled any laws he doesn't feel like following? With a rogue Vice President who has created his own branch of government? With a corrupt Attorney General who won't actually do his job?

Give me a break. After all that's happened from 2000 to present, THIS is the course the Democratic leadership has in mind?! Pelosi needs to get out and talk to her constituents -- all of the Democrats need to. And I'm not talking their lobbyists, their focus groupers, their PR handlers, but their actual rank and file. They need to feel the fire beneath their feet.

As Rich Emery wisely put it elsewhere, impeachment is a tool of functional government -- it's the cure, not the disease!!

They're afraid an impeachment would divide the country?!? The GOP has already divided the country, Representative Pelosi. Or hadn't you noticed that? It's about a 75/25 split, with the majority vastly disapproving of this administration's malfeasance, and a minority who'll be with them regardless of what they does.

Yeah, try to strike a more supine, conciliatory, capitulating tone -- that'll inspire people in the virtues of Democratic leadership.

People are free to do what they do, but I keep waiting for vegans to abandon sex entirely, for maximum hardcore environmental bona fides. Given that the carrying capacity of the planet is seriously stressed by the ever-burgeoning human population, then abstinence is surely the most Earth-friendly activity left to the vegan, to avoid the risk of reproducing and adding a still greater burden to the planet (as an aside: are vegans pro-Choice or pro-Life?).

I'd hate to think of how many toxins everybody in the industrialized countries have in them, vegans included. We not only are what we eat, but we are where we live, and what we drink and breathe.

I wonder if the Dicktator is simply doing damage control/brimstone base morale management with this appearance for the benefit of Bush, or whether this is kind of a rehearsal for a possible presidential run in 2008, see how it plays with the 25% of Americans who think the Leader and the Dicktator are doing a great job. He's got, what, three or four years on that new battery they put in his chest? I can already see his level-headed realism put into play with campaign slogans...

"Look, I've been running the country since 2000; let me run it into the ground in 2008! Vote for Dick! Screw it, elections are cancelled! I win!"