Good one.

It's "D". I'd like to think that all of Miss P's fans are named Bob. It just somehow seems right.

What a wonderful woman. Her keynote address at the 1976 convention gave me goosebumps. She was my constant choice for the first African-American woman to be elected president. And a lesbian - the total package. Get all those barriers out of the way in one eloquent, principled fell swoop. Good lord - the elocution.....one of Texas' shining stars.

Fascinating.

It's important to note the utter lack of stature of this harmful, clueless man - before, during and (can we just put the lid on it now?) after. Extremely well put Ms. Walsh.

"In short, U.S. taxpayers are paying for U.S. energy companies to buy Arab crude, ship it across the Atlantic to refineries in the U.S., refine it, and then ship it back across the Atlantic so that the Israel Defense Force can use it in its wars."

Why does this sound like a perfect system (if you happen to be Dick Cheney)? Oil companies making beaucoup bucks, coming and going, off the backs of taxpayers, to prop up a destabilizing force in the Mideast. And why does the Gaza Raid feel so much like Cheney's last (tossed-off) "fuck-you" as he departs for the petro-dreams of Dubai?

Great article.

What war was ever in vain, if it accomplished the goals of deceitful, inhumane architects? Cheney's war was won as soon as his military contractors and consultants were showered with taxpayers' hard-earned money. Bush's war was over as soon as he dressed in flight-deck drag, like a publicly-witnessed AWOL do-over. The Neo-con "think tanks" have been free to declare victory, for years now, after Saddam Hussein was hanged, on camera no less (try youtube if you need faux-closure). And yet their war cheers just fade away.

Those were the petty, venal, duplicitous agendas - nothing more high-minded. Petty, venal and dishonest are always achievable.

But for a million people, the war was their waterloo. The dead cannot write history, and plain facts can be spun and twisted in time. But if you raise the question of whether the war was "in vain", you owe it to the victims to try to answer it now.

"Welcome to Splitsville, population You.

"Signed, Homer"

The War Room posts, with the Twitter teasers on the side, are like ancient photographs and old, choppy, soundless newsreels: almost more moving because we have to piece together the connections in our mind's eye.

And what a sight it is! What massive hopefulness, what joy and ease. How deeply moving these fragments of the whole are. What a wonderful moment. Imagine that.

The Gold Standard of Rock Bottom.

It's often played at New Orleans jazz funerals, coming back from the cemetery, and I'm sorry, but it keeps going through my head, as Bush - a pretty damn small man already - gets smaller still. How one inconsequential man could cause so much ill consequence is a matter for Nobel physicists, not just historians. Just proves that one person CAN make a difference.

And I know the one I want to make a difference now.

"One man" - the wrong man, Bush - in the wrong place can be the gaping door that lets multiple scurrilous agendas - neocon dreams, Cheney-cronysism, corporate greed - stream through unchecked. Another man - for instance, Gore - can work hard to make an unpopular topic a viable concern. Leadership counts, even if it never absolves us of our responsibilities - citizens, Congressmen, Fox Anchors. Leadership (or lack of it).....and location, location, location!

Our world would have been a very different place without this particular Bush at its center for 8 years. We'll never know how different, but it's frankly hard to imagine it would have been worse.

I agree with you totally that we had no reasons to be desperate after 9/11 - good point. It was a desperate moment, but the vast majority of us were as safe as anywhere else in the world. And I think that's just it: we lost our 200+ year sense of physical isolation from the rest of the globe - our continental bubble - in one awful moment. We'd never been "invaded" before, and we were always the shining light, in the distance, on the hill; on 9/12 we became just as vulnerable as any nation to crazy terrorism, and our actions in the world had frightening and direct repercussions, on our doorstep. WTF? In a phrase - we bugged out.

For a while, and understandably, we retreated further into the bubble, lashing out at immigrants and, well, the French. But even that could have been short-lived with wise leadership.

The tragedy of the aftermath is that that we allowed a hollow president and his minions to commandeer our solidarity - amongst ourselves and with the compassionate world at large - for all the wrong purposes. We threw away all that good will as Bush spent his dubious "political capital". Some of us saw it coming, but it took several painful years for the media to be forced to show real facts and consequences, largely because a very slowly awakening public did the forcing.

It's particularly poignant, and astonishingly healthy, that the first president elected after Bush's bully pulpit is the most stunningly "multi-cultural" and "world-connected" person you could have imagined. That seems like a powerfully good sign for this country's long-term prognosis, and very good therapy.

Nice having a multi-day conversation with you.

I'm impressed with everything Obama's done this week. I don't feel the need to snipe or gnash until he's had a chance to tackle things in an orderly fashion, which seems his style. I actually think, so far, this is as good as it gets. No miracles, just great and good moves.