I am utterly done with these bastards. They took the great moment of hope that was the 2006 election and pissed it down their legs, all in the name pointless triagulation. The image of them as a battered wife is not even an analogy anymore - they are living that cringing, fearful, and pre-emptively appeasing life every day as a literal reality.

If any Democratic "leaders" or their flunkies are reading this, I hope it finally sinks in that this isn't just venting from a few discontented people, nor is it hollow rhetoric. This is wholesale emigration from your failed leadership, and it's not going to stop until your get your head back above the Beltway and listen to what the people really fucking want.

"I know we promised to stand up to the President if he tried to extend the state of emergency by another year. And I'm happy to report that, thanks to our tireless efforts and unshakable Democratic will, we've reached a compromise and the extension will only be for twelve months."

Electoral College hanger-ons. If we can get this fucking atavistic boat-anchor of a system from around our collective necks we can at least start moving in the right direction. Yeah, it means that a resident of Beaver's Ass, Missouri doesn't get 20 times the voting power of a San Franciscan any more, but sometimes life's cruel like that.

Until the mechanism of representation even begins to look like the actual nation, we're not going to change anything for long.

Because he needs a cold day in Hell, which is when he'll be President.

I'll say it again, he's moderately effective where he's at, but he'd be useless any higher up. He's too eager to placate everyone, and too inflexible where it's needed. Just look at this part of his quote:

"If I could wave a wand, and the Lord said I could solve one problem..."

He's mangling that metaphor because something kicked in inside his head and said "Oops, magic bad, must qualify statement for fanatic Jeezus base out there". Don't need someone with a schism like that internalised, thanks.

Apart from his suitability as AG, about which I know nothing at this point, something else stood out in the piece. Namely, this:

"A New Yorker who serves as a judicial advisor for Rudy Giuliani's presidential campaign"

Is this move a gesture marking Giuliani as the heir apparent to this administration now? A signal of tacit or implicit approval of him as successor?

A paranoid could certainly interpret it as so. But remember, you're only a paranoid if there's actually no conspiracy.

The administration can massage and nuance the numbers now that they've got their desired headline, namely that there is a "drawdown" instead of a reduction in the "drawup".

The 28% Bushite deadenders and their incurious mainstream counterparts have heard the good news that "choco-rations are up", so it doesn't matter that their leaders change the quantity from 6 to 4 ounces. None of them will remember the ration was 8 ounces before the announcement anyway.

This is what happens when you put a gun in the invisible hand.

What a clot of unchristian Pompous Pilates they assembled under one circus tent there. Foetus worshippers, Confederacy idolators, and men far too worked up over teh buttsecks, that's your new American right wing.

Seriously, these people are deeply concerned over this shit that has virtually no impact on anyone's actual quality of life, yet turn a blind eye to the global atrocities we commit as a nation? It's things like this that make me wish Jesus really would come back, if only to straighten out these sheep who think they understand him.

So, clearly Blackwater is America's own version of the Tonton Makouts. Which is a parallel that should be disturbing not only for what it says about them, but for what it says about us.

Should read "binding nonsense of the Senate". Remind me again why the GOP is the party of choice for the armed services...

Religion clearly serves a biological purpose. Both scientific studies and anecdotal observation make this clear. If it didn't, it wouldn't be everywhere. Just like animals of one type will show a common behaviour in populations across the world, so religion is with the human animal. It is a structure that provides group cohesion and charity at the local scale, and unity against outsiders at the larger scale. It also provides mechanisms for coping with issues created by complex intellects, including things like awareness of mortality and subsumption of selfish desires to the common good.

Something that is often forgotten is that the localised benefits of religion (group unity, etc) override the global aspects in most regards. That is why I believe it's erroneous to speak of any religion as a "major" religion. When we say Christianity is a major religion for example, what exactly do we mean? Do we mean Roman Catholics, or Southern Baptists, or Mormons, or Ethopian Coptics? They all have some basic tenets in common, but each is customised and localised to a very significant degree, to the point where you'd virtually never see people moving easily from one to another.

Members of large religions like to see themselves as part of a huge community, because this is comforting. It means they have the resources of that vast community to draw on (or at least believe they do), and it also means more primitively that "their side is bigger than your side". But at the core every religion is manifestation of the local gods, whether natively grown or cultivated from a splinter of someone else's tree. And this is a biologically natural and healthy state. It is only unhealthy when the religion is at odds with the local conditions, creating strife and misery, or when it is a manufactured mythos detached from authentic spiritual craving and beneficent social mores.