I'm so glad that Salon saw fit to give Glenn his own blog here, and this is about as prescient an observation as I've read yet. There is cause for hope. President Bush can veto the war spending bill if he likes, but the Democrats have sent a message that the will of the people will be ignored by this administration at its own peril. I see many signs of this coalescing and crystallizing of opinion and thought across the entire spectrum of discourse. It is heartening to see and we need to keep feeding it, keep making it grow stronger. Bush and his merry gang of thugs are soon going to face in concrete, tangible, and inescapable fashion the real world consequences of their own disregard for the law, the Constitution and the freedom of this country. Those consequences will likely unseat the Republican party and its paranoid ideology for decades to come, ushering in a rebirth of the progressive spirit which is this nation's true character. It's been a long time coming. Like spring, in a way.

Many of us have been waiting for this sea change for a long time. Seems like not only it is happening, it's snowballing in short order.

Back in surreal days of 2002-2003, there were times when the only solace I could find were the words of Abraham Lincoln:

"You can fool some of the people all of the time

and you can fool all of the people some of the time

but you can't fool all of the people all of the time"

Now, these words are about to be proven once again. And, in style.

Good for America.

Atrios' High Broderism is an inspired example of fitting a name to a pathology, but it seems to me that we could use others. How about Vulgar Krauthammerism? Or Limbaugh-Imus Syndrome?

Jon Stewart is himself both the best example of this conversion while at the same time being one of its greatest catalysts. One only needs to look at his interviews with McCain ansd Allawi last week to see his frustration boil over with the trivial excuses from our leadershhip for perpetuating this war and also the overwhelming compassion most of us feel, which is rarely acknowledged publicly, for the breadth of destruction that we are leaving behind.

On the other hand, he moves far beyond simple criticism to being one of the sharpest and most insightful political analysts that we have-while the rest of our lauded pundits bemoaned how pathetic Gonzales' testimony was, Stewart was the only one who clearly portrayed it as a callous attempt to preserve tthe unitary executive and resist any form of oversight.

Is happening at a lower level, seen most apparently in the sudden resurgence of corruption investigations flooding the news over the past week. Gonzalez may be hanging tough, but he obviously lacks the pull to impede justice any more. Yesterday, supremely loyal Bushie Randall Tobias had to resign because of the "DC Madam" scandal. On Monday, radical neocon Paul Wolfowitz is going to reveal himself as the arrogant, hypocritical jackass he is when he tries to defend his egregious behavior, and he is going to be dismissed. More and more cases are moving forward in the Cunningham, Abramoff, and US Attorney firing cases. Congress may not be in a position to take down the top dogs yet, but the underlings are being picked off left and right and public opinion is solidifying against the administation. Even Republicans outside of the central committee are breaking ranks. I'm not certain, but I think it's only a matter of time before Rove, Cheney, and/or Bush are caught in their own web of lies. At the very least, they're going to be so preoccupied with fending off prosecution that they won't be able to move forward with their insane scheme to provoke war with Iran. The only thing that worries me is that they will do something really desperate, like manufacturing another terrorist attack on US soil and using it as an excuse to seize control militarily. It horrifies me that I can actually conceive of our own government doing something like that, but I can.

...If you live in the Bible Belt like me, then you look to different factors in order to determine change.

Down South, Bush was (and still is to a large extent) framed as the Great Christian President; the white answer to the black (both in color & in deed) Bill Clinton.

During the Clinton years, every national calamity was, by Falwell & that ilk, heralded as due to "God judging America for having a wicked president."

So my point being, what every happened to that meme?

As it turns out, Bush is being revealed to be infinitely more wicked than Clinton.

That's one reason the right wing radio culture is struggling currently; they know Bush makes Clinton look like Jesus & they are having a hard time shielding their listeners from that reality.

Add that to Olbermann, News Hounds & others watchdog entities educating the public on the machinations of Fox, & it really appears a new era is dawning.

As a last observation, it seems Colbert got the ball rolling with his appearance @the D.C. shindig last year.

"This letter was signed by Sen. Reid's 50 colleagues in the caucus." [WP citation]

"all 50 Democratic Senators other than Harry Reid" [yours]

There aren't "50 Democratic" senators even with Reid. Two are independents. Anyway, does this mean that the ailing senator is doing well enough to at the very least sign on to such a letter? Any update on his condition?

Also, I was thinking that we need to be philosophical about current events. A around a decade ago, I didn't a presidential impeachment or popular vote loser was in the cards. A bit of 1990s naiviete, perhaps. Each generation tends to have its challenges, and this is ours. Or one of them. A perfect storm of corrupt and incompetent governance is upon us. Probability dictates it would come.

Our job is to see the dangers of what IS (not just can be) and let it serve as a warning of what bad citizenship (etc.) brings forth.