Wow, Mr. Leonard -- that's some scary stuff, there. Alternately a sort of science fiction horror wrapped up in political satire, only the guy proposing this is serious.

I've always thought that the rise of the corporation would spell the end of democracy as we knew it -- and when they began playing hard with communities to lighten their tax burden, saying that they'd relocate elsewhere, which almost invariably brings the municipalities to heel, I figured it was a tipping point.

So, this kind of talk is another step in that direction. On one level, it takes out the middleman -- the lobbyist and the politician, who have to be bought and paid for to represent the Company's interest. It basically acknowledges that those with the gold make the rules. I can see Glibertarians getting all giggly over that.

But on the other hand, I see it as terribly sinister -- how could competitors ever enter the field against Governor Pfizer? The war chest would be too deep! And I wouldn't want Mayor Merck having control of its own police force! What about Senator Bechtel? Could it be counted on to vote against its shareholders' interests?

It would be a country as corporately co-opted as ours has become, only more so, scarily enough. Almost a latter-day corporate feudalism. Let's not ignore that corporations aren't democracies -- they are pyramidal, authoritarian structures, deeply hierarchical. I find it absurd to think that something as authoritarian as a corporation would somehow be better for democracy.

James Inhofe, who taught them all about the "far left elitists" and their Chicken Little climate change hysteria. Inhofe's PowerPoint included slides of polar bears and "environmentalists" like Leonardo DiCaprio and Barbra Streisand (boo!).

What a change a few days (and a disaster in Minneapolis) makes -- Inhofe is currently sponsoring a Senate bill with Barbara Boxer to try to address America's infrastructure needs. He's busy talking up these needs. Maybe he's planning on some privatized infrastructure refurbishing, or something.

I imagine, in the wake of 2008 looming large over them, a lot of the Republican politicians will be working that angle to try to camouflage their preoccupation with giving tax cuts to the rich, funding foreign wars of opportunity, and giving the Pentagon and the Presidency and Co-Presidency whatever it wants.

Mr. Conason wrote...

Why should the Shiite and Kurdish parties deal with the Sunnis when we are spending hundreds of billions of dollars and thousands of lives to ensure their continued and uncompromising domination?

That argument could be applied to America's policy throughout the Middle East, if one subtracted the "thousands of lives" part. Why should Israel deal with the Palestinians when we are spending billions of dollars to ensure their continued and uncompromising domination?

Why should Egypt, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, or Kuwait democratize when we're spending billions of dollars to ensure their regimes' continued and uncompromising domination of their countries?

Iraq's just one bloody part of the overall problem of our policy in the region, so it gets a lot of attention, since it's American lives being sacrificed in this policy. Will we be there permanently? I should think we'll be there only until every drop of oil can be wrung from the region -- and some of us might be alive still to see that happen, to watch us pull out of there. 50 years from now, perhaps?

But how many hundreds of billions of dollars will be spent to ensure our own continued and uncompromising domination of the region until that time? Will it be worth it? What will "The Homeland(tm)" look like then, with all of that money funneled over there into the great big Middle Eastern Money Pit? The colossal debt and utter decline of our country will be the legacy of this policy disaster.