Glenn, I don't know about you; maybe you'll be different. But there are many liberal publications that criticize Dems for about 3 years and 50 weeks, and then, come election time, instruct their readers once again that, given the deep evilness of the Reps, we can only vote for the Dems irrespective of how little they represent our values. (The Nation is one good example.) That two-party mindset is one of the several roots of our political problems in this country. As I've said many times before, because of the above, Dems quite reasonably take liberal votes for granted which allows them, and politics generally, to move ever further to the right.

As I said, I don't know what you'll say or do when it comes time to vote. Will you say that Hillary Clinton, for all her flaws is better than Thompson/Giuliani/Romney, that, given the makeup of the SC and the overwhelming problems that face the country, this election is just too important to throw away your vote on some third-party candidate?

I don't know what your take is on this, but until liberals tell the Dems with their pocket books and their votes that not standing up for liberal principles is just not acceptable, things will continue to get worse. I love your blog, but lots of writers criticize Dems until election day.

has never in his life borne the consequences of his bad actions or bad judgment, so it is no surprise that neither he nor the people who work for him don't now. Bush got into the finest prep schools and universities not on the strength of his intelligence, accomplishments or grades, but on the strength of his last name. He failed in business, but his father's connections always landed him a step or two higher on the career ladder. He had no qualifications for his post with the Texas Rangers, but he got not only the job but massive profits on the sale of his stock engineered by daddy's friends.

This is why Bush is characterless. It is also why he runs an administration that is oblivious to failure, incompetence and corruption. It is why Scooter Libby had his sentence commuted.

For Bush, there has never been a downside to failure and incompetence. He breezes through life on the wings of his last name. Accountability is for some chump who didn't have the smarts to be born to the manor.

Impeachment is the last opportunity to teach Bush the lesson that the rest of us learned early in life. We'd be doing him a favor.

the actual rate of default. Just because it's higher than last year doesn't necessarily mean it's a problem. This is important information. Why isn't it included in this piece?

Iraq will be held together, if at all, by force. Iraq is not a natural state. It was assembled for the convenience of Western European powers. That is why Saddam Hussein was acceptable to the U.S. and Europe for so long - he had the power and the ruthlessness to hold the factions at bay and provide a counterbalance to Iranian power in the region.

Astonishingly, stupidly, Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld destroyed the Iraqi army and the Baath Party, the only two sources of sufficient power to hold the country together. Those seeds, so stupidly sown, have now sprouted in the form of a government, without effective military or police power. So it's no surprise that the Maliki government can't do much or that the country teeters on the brink of dissolution. A different prime minister won't make any difference; he'll suffer from the same lack of power Maliki does.

My guess is that Iraq will dissolve into its constituent sects and ethnicities. The only endgame that maintains Iraq as a coherent entity will see a brutal dictator backed by an effective army, police force and secret police, i.e Saddam Hussein by another name. Ain't victory grand?

this is more manufacturing of consent. Members of this section of the news media have gotten the message that the U.S may want to bomb Iran in the near future. Therefore, they are hard about the task of getting the public to think the "right" way about that enterprise. If that means lying and making up facts, that's nothing new and certainly no impediment to their overarching goal of paving the way for war. We live in a warfare state and the media have their role to play. They're reciting their lines well enough. The fact that the play is a rerun of 4 years ago is not their fault.

which may fit in your new book. I quote from Richard Slotkin's book, Gunfighter Nation, p. 243. Slotkin is discussing the confusion in the American consciousness of real "tough guy" exploits with fictional ones. "The supreme example of the type is John Wayne, whose role as movie hero became so important to our culture after the second world war that Congress Authorized a medal honoring him as the embodiment of American military heroism - although he had never served a day in uniform."

Sounds like an erstwhile chicken hawk, no? More important is the fact that there is a confusion in the culture about what happened and what happened in the movies or on TV. These guys (like Hemingway) are continuing the pattern which has become quite pronounced in the Bush Administration. Myth, reality, what's the difference? It's all of a piece with "creating our own facts on the ground" and disdain for the "fact-based community."