I hope we don't have to go through Andropov and Chernenko first.

Sidney, you've brought great joy to my morning news and coffee session. Thanks for an insightful, on-point analysis.

Why is it we cannot find great minds like yours to fill seats in the House, Senate and Oval Office?

“Bush's refusal to accept paradox, that his good motives may have unintended consequences, leads him to reject "hindsight."” (emphasis added)

I thought this was a friendly and diplomatic sentence, although completely unsupported by the accumulated evidence on George Bush. Effective leaders set goals and put policies into place to achieve those goals. Perhaps most importantly, they also make regular assessments on the outcomes of those policies – i.e., is it having the intended consequence? Unfortunately, the President’s stated goals (those “good motives” mentioned above) are almost never consistent with his actual goals. And while many of us repeatedly point out these inconsistencies, we grow more frustrated every day as we realize it doesn’t matter. While Democrats rightfully foam at the mouth, we miss the larger point that Bush consistently achieves his only true goal – to maintain the power he feels he and his ilk were granted by birthright. Or to put it another way, don’t be so sure he isn’t looking back at the results of his policies with complete satisfaction!

The central characteristic of a paranoid person is their unjustified distrust and suspicion of others. They fear exploitation and will not confide in those whose behaviors should have earned their trust. Such people are rigid, often litigious, and have an especially urgent need to be self-sufficient. To others, they appear to be cold, calculating, guarded people who avoid both blame and intimacy. When interviewed, they appear tense and often have trouble relaxing. This disorder is especially likely to create occupatonal difficulties: These people are so aware of rank and power that they frequently have trouble dealing with superiors and coworkers. (DSM-IV)

Clearly our ship of state is in the hands of a truly incompetent person who has surrounded himself with equally dysfunctional people. As his universe shrinks (approval of others) he will become more desperate to protect himself (his country). We can expect more and more desperate measures from this person as his time in power fades.

"But Bush may have become such a universally tainted figure that almost anything he says, especially in the language of idealism, is now discredited."

True enough in the eyes of ever more millions, but NPR still seems to start every morning with 'President Bush said..,' at which point, I turn it off.

At this point, who cares what the intellectually challenged 'president' said? Does it have any significance whatsoever?

Blumenthal's commentary, as usual, is incisive and on point. It is disturbing that the public generally is not aroused by the obvious intellectual, moral and political failures of this administration. It is ironic that we are creating, at home, the very demagoguery we have gone to war to abolish and that, now that we know where the weapons of mass destruction are (Iran and Korea), we are helpless in the face of them. It is devastating to realize that Rovian dirty tricks,spin, hype and reducing complex world issues to absurd, fantastical slogans actually seem to work. We now live in an environment where public relations has supplanted actual policy-making. Please, America, wake up before the mid-term elections!

There was an aawesome campaign for the movie that went like this...

10 Seconds: The Pain Begins. 15 Seconds: You Can't Breathe. 20 Seconds: You Explode.

This perfectly describes my experience watching the State of the Union.

The last paragraph of Blumenthal's article sums up exactly why I can't under any circumstances listen to or read anything the Adminstration says. I've been saying for years that the (unintended?) irony of EVERYTHING that spews forth from them will soon make my head explode. We support "Democracy" but demand others overthrow their elected government? "I like the competition of ideas" in any country except my own...except when those ideas clash with mine, and then I denounce them. "Our differences cannot be allowed to harden into anger"...I'm talking to you ter'rist lovin' Lib'rls *point point point*!!!

I have to stop typing...my hands are starting to shake.

...fewer bloody blogs.

I think I too am beginning to feel that impending head explosion too.

Just an hour ago, the AP reports: "The enemy — while weakened and under great pressure — is still capable of global reach, still possesses the determination to kill more Americans — and still trying to do so with increasingly powerful weapons," Rumsfeld said at the National Press Club.

We are winning and will win. Democracy and Freedom ring. The enemy is not defeated and terror lurks with unimaginable horrors. Take heed.

Did 9/11 change everything? More or less than Hiroshima? the Holocaust? the bloodied fields of Flanders? Gettysburg? etc.

Anyway, I really appreciate Mr. Blumenthal's thoughtful analysis; but I think that the politburo has mastered just what it needs to maintain power with a sufficient democratic majority here.

Bush would be the squint-eyed alcoholic school bus driver, blindly weaving his way along the rural Maine route, and the kids on the bus would KNOW that he was drunk, and they'd know that he was mean when he was drunk, and they'd know that with each switchback on the logging roads the bus was swaying drunkenly back and forth across, and they'd know that every 20 minutes or so gigantic Peterbilts pulling double tandem trailers filled with gargantuan logs were steaming toward them at breakneck speed . . . and little Timmy . . in the seat across the aisle but closest to the driver would be eyeing the wheel . . . wondering if the angry drunk is going to get all the kids killed, or if it would be better if he leaped across and grabbed the wheel and eased the bus gently into a muddy fireroad running into the woods. . . so that he and his school mates could escape before the last horrifying vision of the front end of a speeding Peterbilt slammed thru the windshield and brought tragedy to the poverty stricken families scattered across Aroostook County . . .

and so all of us Americans are supposed to sit quietly with our hands folded while this idiot, this nasty, spoiled, rich asshole frat-boy, alcoholic, draft-dodging, lying, cowardly former cheerleader drives the Bus of State thru perilous woods, and if we dissent - it's because we hate America.

God's mercy on the wild Gingerman.