Earlier tonight, I was commenting on acting and Chuck Hagel, at the invitation of RMP.

The play's the thing, as the saying goes, but, more fundamentally, it's all about finding your voice, regardless of the medium.

Reporting, bearing witness, requires a courageous voice.

Go for it.

Play on.

~~~

THE ACTOR'S VOW

I will take my rightful place on the stage

And I will be myself.

I am not a cosmic orphan;

I have no reason to be timid.

I will respond as I feel; awkwardly, vulgarly;

But respond.

I will have my throat open.

I will have my heart open.

I will be vulnerable.

I may have anything or everything

The world has to offer,

But the thing I need most,

And want most, is to be myself.

I will admit rejection, admit pain, admit shame,

Admit outrage, admit anything and

Everything that happened to me.

The best and most human parts of me are

Those I have inhabited and hidden from

The world.

I will work on it.

I will raise my voice.

I will be heard.

- Elia Kazan

~~~

Happy New Year ...

I will save and treasure that and refer to it whenever I need some courage or encouragement.

All best wishes for the coming yea, keep working hard, and never give up.

Glenn has quite an amazing community here, and for that I am grateful -- as he must be.

As for Bloomberg. Huh. Boooo.

Cheers.

I admit I haven't read all the comments, so this may have been covered, but I'm having a hard time understanding how a republican-neocon-in-all-but-name running as a 3rd party candidate does anything but split the republican vote and all but guarantee a Dem victory? What am I missing?

Man, they had to empty the political nursing home for this geezerfest, didn't they? Just what we need, a billionaire

threatening to throw the election if we don't play nice. Grandpa Broder almost dampened his Depends at the prospect, no doubt. Too bad they couldn't exhume Jeanne Kirkpatrick to jump out of the cake. Pitiful.

and he said he won't run. Sounded sure about it too.

To everyone here... all the best in this New Year. Undoubtedly, it will be full of surprises. I'm just glad I can come here to sort things out... and especially for a RealityCheck. Leavened with wit and good humor.

Glenn, you've really built something wonderful here.

Wabanatta_3: I saw him, too, but I didn't completely believe him. He's not ready to say yet...

Thanks so much for all of your good work exposing cretins like this.

It is so good when the indictment happens by their own words.

I've been thinking that the best prospects for an independent winning the presidency are an "imperialist" candidate like Bloomberg taking the establishment vote if the Dem's get a populist like Edwards, and the Pugs taking a fruitcake like Huckabee. Before we saw the new Dem congress in action I thought it might be a good idea because I think the most damaging legacy of the current goverment is the complete emasculation of the legislative branch. I don't see the imperial presidency changing if the Dems manage to win the White House and keep the House and Senate. I had hoped that a weak and bland president (Bloomgerg) coupled with a veto proof majority in both houses of the legislature might be a recipe for a shifting of the balance of power. Unfortunately I don't think the motives of the majority of House and Senate Democrats are any less assailable than those of the Republicans.

"A Bloomberg candidacy would have no purpose other than satisfy his bottomless personal lust for attention and bestow the wise old men threatening the country with his candidacy with some fleeting sense of rejuvenated relevance and wisdom. His political views are conventional in every way and he's little more than an establishment-enabling figurehead. The whole attraction to his candidacy has nothing to do with any issues or substance and everything to do with an empty addiction to vapid notions of Establishment harmony and a desire to exert control, whereby our Seriousness guardians devote themselves to a candidate for reasons largely unrelated to his policies or political views, thus proving themselves, as usual, to be the exact antithesis of actual seriousness."

Preach on, Borther Glen, preach on!!!

@bostonMA

Nice cut. Nice paste. Paid by the hour? Or by the word? Jack London, anyone?

--Anonymous

All I see is a GOP field so piss poor they are desperately grasping at straws. I don't see any electable prospects for a decade, at least. Happy New Year.

I generally don't believe in conspiracy theories, primarily because most conspiracies of the kind I hear discussed in progressive circles would require far too much intelligence and skill to carry out (i.e. - the government being responsible for 9/11, etc.). The sheer ineptitude of the Bush administration for the past seven years should put to rest the idea that they had the ability to carry out such a spectacularly successful, at least from a symbolic point of view, attack on the United States. Moreover, the absolute arrogance of the Bush administration wouldn't allow them to engage in a conspiracy. Given their complete contempt for our democractic system of government and the rule of law, they don't even bother to hide their lawbreaking from the public, as Glenn has so aptly demonstrated in his columns over the past months, so conspiracies are completely unnecessary.

That being said, it does seem rather odd that "moderates" from both parties are suddenly concerned about the lack of bipartsanship in Washington, D.C. This concern has manifested itself only after the occurrence of several political realities: (1) the fact that the Republican Party does not have one viable, or arguably sane candidate running for President; (2) the fact that, barring incompetence of a magnitude rarely seen in history (although God knows if anyone could be so incompetent, it would be the Democratic Party), the Democrats will take the Presidency this year, and likely increase their current majorities in the House and Senate, and (3) that of all the Democratic candidates running for President, it appears that John Edwards, the most progressive of the viable candidates running, could actually win the Democratic nomination. The timing of this sudden concern about the lack of partisanship, given the above factors, seems much too convenient.

I am supporting Edwards for a variety of reasons, the primary of which is that I believe he is a genuinely anti-Establishment candidate. Maybe I'm an idealist, but I see a bit of the greatness and humanity of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt in both John and Elizabeth Edwards, and were he to become President, I genuinely believe Edwards would do his best to redistribute some of grossest transfers of wealth that have occurred in the past 25 years from the upper classes back to those of us suckers who have the misfortune of earning less than a million dollars a year.

Naturally, the political establishment that runs this country cannot tolerate such a scenario, and since Edwards appears to not have any skeletons in his closet that would disqualify his candidacy, and is also wealthy enough to insulate himself from the dangers of blackmail or being otherwise beholden to the corporate oligarchy that owns and runs the country, his candidacy is a genuine threat.

Bloomberg, by comparison, is the very personification of all that is good and gracious to the ruling class in this country, and so is a natural choice to run against Edwards, particularly given the dearth of viable candidates in the Republican Party. Huckabee for President? Don't be ridiculous.

If Edwards wins on Thursday and goes on to win New Hampshire the following week, expect Bloomberg to jump into the race shortly thereafter. The establishment simply cannot allow Edwards to become President. Morover, Bloomberg is the natural and logical result of the decay of our political and governmental institutions - he doesn't have to bother running for President in the conventional sense - he can simply buy the office. If he succeeds, the transformation of our nation from a democracy to a corporate-owned, fascist state will be complete.

Happy New Year, I guess.

BTW, thanks, Glenn, for all you do. You are one of the few who really speak truth to power.