But anecdotally speaking, the half-dozen or so fat men with pony tails who ride Harleys that I know are also Vietnam vets. They take that pretty seriously, and would probably argue that they don't need to be dropped into Bagdad today to earn their right to proclaim their patriotism. Of course, the guys I know wouldn't go chuckle it up with Dubya either.

There was hardly any sweat.

I feel so bad for those poor, lying, murdering right wingers, the way their crimes against humanity sometimes come back to bite them in the ass.

Admit it. You like the shrill freak-outs these stories produce.

The first time President Obama capitulates to the weak Republican minority over something really important in a farce of bipartisan collegiality, the buyer's remorse of legions of hope junkies will settle in.

But that still makes him lightyears better than Grampa McCrazy. And it won't make the legions of shrieking Hilladroids right -- because she'd do exactly the same thing. She'd just justify it with different rhetoric and then later claim she did nothing wrong.

I mean, Virgin phone shutting off arbitrarily has gotta mess with the boy parts too.

But, ALG has Joan nailed.

I've just been disappointed by what I see as a general descent into weak reasoning and emotionality over thoughtful analysis in Joan Walsh. This primary has been a lot of light and smoke, but no heat, and Joan -- through her vapid editorializing -- has contributed to the unrelenting bullshit. I no longer trust her judgment.

For my part, I've been meh about the Democratic race since it came down to Obama and Hillary, mostly because in the end they're just two centrist Dems who will take every opportunity to capitulate to the weak Republican minority in Congress. I even wrote-in, pointlessly of course, John Edwards on my primary ballot AFTER he endorsed Obama. Not that he's ideal either.

I will vote for the Dem nominee, because either Hillary or Obama is better than Grampa McCrazy. But my excitement died when it became clear that a genuine progressive wouldn't be the nominee.

So, obsessed? No. Joan has, sadly I think, made herself almost irrelevant. Whatever ALG has done away from Salon, I think her letter in this thread (the one right above my last one) is spot on.

There is no better illustration of the dichotomy of BEA than the line of people anxious to see The Shat versus the line of people anxious to Leonard Nimoy. In The Shat line, folks were giddy and silly, the Nimoy folks were more relaxed, eager, but not OMG eager. Meanwhile, the Bugliosi line crossed The Shat line, and you could almost see the Bugliosi folks look down their noses at The Shatroids. Too bad. I wanted to stand in both lines, and in the Ernest Borgnine line as well. Not for the books so much as for the chance to shake their hands. In the end, I settled on Bugliosi because the line was shorter and I had to be somewhere.

By the way, What Happened was, in fact, in evidence in the Perseus area. No free copies and no McClellan, of course. But if you wanted to pick it up and glance through it, there is was.

My own small publisher sees an uncertain but not dire future. The conventional wisdom is the genre fiction is at least somewhat recession-proof, but no one knows if that will hold up this time around. My publisher, however, says that last year was better than the previous, and this one is looking better still. The big players, with their models of only marketing books that will sell anyway and ignoring their midlists, seem to be suffering more. Maybe if they spent less money on thirty-foot James Patterson and Ted Turner banners and more on their lesser known authors they'd do better. But don't try to tell them that. The sky may be falling, but heaven forbid they try something different.

But I find Frank Langella a far more compelling Skeletor than Sarah Jessica Parker.

Explain how Obama challenging Hillary on a policy matter equivalent to Hillary tepidly pseudo-denying that Obama is a Muslim, or Hillary essentially endorsing McCain over Obama, or any number of Hillary people going off the rails on a regular basis about Obama's race, etc.?

I'm not suggesting Obama has been all roses and cream puffs, because he and his folks have been plenty tough at various moments. But as someone who sees the two of them as cut from the same blase centrist cloth, the distinction between their campaigns stands out. Hillary has campaigned far uglier than Obama, even counting the Obama campaign's decision to push the Kennedy assassination thing too hard.

But in your attempt to make a point, you made the opposite point. You see to be a victim of your own True Believerhood.

What strikes me the most about about the supporters on either side today is that the most emphatic among you are basically cult of personality zealots. There is so little daylight between these two candidates that the degree of hyperbole in your rants suggests that you only care about the most superficial differences between these two. You certainly don't care about how different both are from McCain. Otherwise, it would boil down to, "well, my candidate did/didn't win, and/but the policies I support will be represented."

It might be different if the two candidates were genuinely different from each other, aside from the hue of their skin and the plumbing between their legs.

I can't believe people fucking care.

"All right, we're gonna do this a little bit different, say a couple things, that's it."

McLaren then proceeded to read from his prepared statement.

Okay, not technically, but the set-up made it clear he'd planned it out. Contrived, indeed. But what-fucking-ever.

I mean, WTF, Harry?

/ragestorm