The rocking political rap team of Bob and Hillary, better known as RUN DLC, are gearing up to lose big for America. I can already sense the impending doom, unfolding inexorably like a Gypsy curse in the second reel of a old horror film.

As a side note, I can only assume Shrum is pronounced "shroom", since he would have to be continually stoked on hallucinagens to believe he had any credibility after his appalling track record. Maybe he should do us all a favor and wander off into the political desert Castaneda-style.

Br'er Clinton is a gift to the GOP in more ways than one. They don't see her only as a way to win the '08 election, they see her as the catalyst to rejuvenate her whole movement. Right-wing hate radio and hardbound screeds are plummeting in popularity, but with a single stroke President Clinton could revive them all. Vicious animals only prosper with fresh meat, which the malfeasance of the current administration has robbed them of in spades. Clinton represents a convoy loaded with porterhouse steak coming over the horizon.

You know, like Hell claiming its own before the judgement? If so it must be underway, though at the moment it seems to be narrowly focused on fat ugly white guys with souls made of shit.

Can we really expect better of a country that accepts new V. C. Andrews books when the women herself has been dead since 1986? We as a nation have longer stopped caring what's under the wrapper as long the brand is one we trust. Just keep those pretty lies coming as long as it means we don't have to change our ways for one more day.

"Western forces" in Afghanistan have, in fact, "been killing civilians at a faster rate than the insurgents have been killing civilians."

So there's at least one thing we're better at over there.

Woo-hoo! U-S-A! U-S-A!

For crying out loud Farhad, don't you read The Register or any other decent IT news website? They've already torn this excuse to shreds in their own discussion section. Of course my fellow Americans are a lot less perspicacious than our European counterparts and therefore they'll take a while to catch up, but I expect a bit less eager credulity on your own part.

Unless you've got a net traffic log in your hands that says enough people logged in after the update at exactly the same time to rival, say, the Eastern Seaboard's typical workday bootup, then this is a just flimsy excuse, cooked up by one group of tech incompentents to placate another.

Is there someone at Salon who reads technical news instead of press clippings? How about giving them a blog?

"We're done beating that dead horse. Now we're gonna sodomize it."

When considering the lifecycle of a nation, consider the parallels to be found in the generational behaviour of an immigrant family.

The First Generation arrives in a new land, often poor, without many means, and frequently fleeing oppression. They settle in and work hard, making sacrifices in order to insure a better life for their children.

Those children, the Second Generation, grow up mindful of the labors of their parents and grateful for the benefits those labors have secured. They avail themselves of the opportunity to leverage the security their parents won into a chance for education, prosperity, and stability. This is what they bequeath to their children.

These offspring, the Third Generation, grow up with their convenince and comfort secured by the generations that came before. They are detached from the sacrifices of the First Generation, taking for granted the freedoms those elders won. They are inurred to the efforts of the Second Generation, taking for granted the progress they made. Their primary concern no longer becomes freedom or progress, but perpetuance of their state of comfort.

So America is now in the grip of the Third Generation, inheritors of a legacy of greatness that do not possess the character to wear it properly. The freedoms that our ancestors died for are now easily shed, like cherry blossoms falling upon the Tidal Basin, wrested from us with the promise that their removal will maintain the comfortable world. Similarly the foundries of progress are allowed to dry up, the knowledge the contain now too unsettling, the work they demand now too onerous.

Like the spoiled rich grandchildren of poor immigrants, we have no connection now to the efforts that won us our ease, and we are all too willing to piss away everything if it means keeping the party going just that little bit longer.

Any student of classic horror films will tell you that a protest is only effective if the mob is dressed in burlap and carrying torches and pitchforks.

Nothing else will get the Evil Madman and his Monster out of the castle.

So is the other side of this callow equation "no debate means no American deaths"? Of course not. Because there are an unlimited number of monsters under the bed, ready to lay deadly talons on the unwary American foot as it races to get under the covers.

Thank god we've got so may big daddies in DC to point out every one of these monsters and ensure that we never get one night's peace.

I'm with ondelette on this one. My despair at the Democrats ever doing anything right again is so palpable that it's like a cloak of lead around me. I want to know what we can do to get them to stop playing Beltway Bubble games and start representing us.

Please tell me what can we do, either individually or collectively, to get our representation back.

Gonzo went from one alcoholic father to another. Any wonder he always wore the whipped-but-hopeful expression of a boy who only wanted praise from Daddy while expecting instead a smack?

I can't recall any other time in America's history when we were governed by representatives from every single category in the DSM-IV.