Mr. Blumenthal is, as ever, on target and eloquent. But I fear this message won't reach the majority of America unless it is converted into a Movie Of The Week. Sad as it is to say, I fear that's about the only way to reach most people now, via the emotional hooks and simple narrative of the two-hour televisual format. The hospital scene alone, if done right, could swing a significant portion of the demographic.

As bad as this administraton is, I still believe the single greatest anti-democratic and divise force in the country is the mainstream media. Sure, it's nice that we'll only have to wait a couple more years for this administration to be gone, barring any suspension of normal voting rights. Now if we only had a similar deadline for when we could expect a new and more honest MSM to take over.

Does anyone else feel this way about Sidney Blumenthal?

No.

But then we aren't delusional trolls whose heads are coterminous with their rectal apertures, either.

There is a lot to like about some portions of the libertarian philosophy. Unfortunately, the current political definition of libertarian appears to be "someone who thinks a nuclear reactor runs better without the control rods".

Call me back when your movement has less invisible hand and more visible head.

"I was just fluffing the pillow when the nurse walked in and mistakenly reported I had it over John's face."

For a while I've been thinking, "yeah, we don't need impeachment with the lame duckness abounding, and why give the wingnuts a martyr?" Because you know the caterwalling will briefly spike should any impeachment (or indeed any legal action of any form) be levelled against Il Dunce and his mob.

Then I realised, "fuck, they're going to wail no matter what happens, because that's what they do". It's like refusing to remove a big hornet's nest from over your front door because it's going to rile them up for a moment. So rather than put up with a brief unpleasantness, we let the nest stay and live in fear instead.

Time for the Democrats to get a broom and knock the hornets down. I'll be inside baking a (im)peach cobbler to celebrate when they finally do.

Several posters seem to be dampening their own relief with the bromide that "this doesn't matter, because there's always another fascist demagogue waiting to take his place". But that's not strictly true.

Certainly there isn't another with the same kind of media penetration he had, ready and waiting to jump in the hot seat. Nor is there another with his financial and political clout, ballooning over the horizon to cast an new dark age shadow over us. He was a rather singular part of the apparatus, and no so easily exchanged as one might assume.

Even if you disregard that, there is still a measure of relief to be gained by his now and future absence from the national discourse. Removing some of the cancer in your body is much to be preffered to removing none of it. Likewise it's beneficial to kill of part of an infection, even if only on the way to removing it completely down the line.

So do not temper your optimism with the notion that this is an insignificant change and that the vacuum will soon be filled with an identical villian. This is a very real change, the removal of a foundation stone in an edifice of deceipt and hatred.

Damn, is it too late to add the © symbol to my name? Because I have no desire to let my profound erudition enter the public commons where any slackjawed yokel can appropriate it willy-nilly.

Also, I would like to complain as to the lack of alacrity in Salon assigning my Editor's Choice red stars. You are late on over 100 of my posts now. Surely this is due strictly to Salon's inattention, as the alternative is inconceivable. Chop-chop, people.

© 2007 Howard K, a division of Polychemtechcorp Co., headquartered in the Cayman Islands. All rights held in perpetuity. No words used in this post or any other post by Howard K© may be used without permission of the author. Including the word "the", you intellectual property violating luddites.

Here's hoping they finally bury this soulless walking corpse before he pops up to eat the brain of another American institution.

And I see this article must have been linked on some wingnut alert site, as the usual gumflappers are here, cutting and pasting prescripted defenses from their cowardly masters and not listening to a damn thing from the real world. Still, they serve as a useful reminder that there will always be fascists in our midst, ready to defend the crimes of those they most wish to resemble.

Thankfully the press has discovered another Missing Girl!

http://salon.com/wire/ap/archive.html?wire=D8P6BLTG0.html

At last we can get out from under all this tedious political stuff. I look forward to another news cycle dominated by poignant photos and somber speculation, and narry a word on the collapse of our government, country and world.

Like fucking clockwork, innit?

Why the end of June?

Because that's when the $400,000 bonus (reported elsewhere on Salon) kicks in. If he is still technically employed then, he gets it, hence the stipulation.

It truly is another world, this place where failure and corruption pays more in a day than some honest people earn in a lifetime. Were we not anethstetized by popular media we might even do something about it.