But let's give credit where credit is due - few people can get in front of a camera and make stuff up with the bravura of Bill O'Reilly. He seems to believe what he's saying, though no one should know better than him that it's not true. And he sells it - you can see why so many people in his audience believe it. (Well, sort of; don't these folks have memories?)

The right wing die-hards may still want to quibble about definitions when it comes to Iraq, but two "experts" from opposite ends of the think tank spectrum think quibbling time is over: it's a civil war in Iraq.

I have to say I'm as pessimistic about the Middle East as the next guy, but most of this broader existential gloom about America is absurd.  The U.S. is in extraordinarily strong shape economically and socially.

Now that Rumsfeld is actually gone, the media can't get enough of the latest form of navel-gazing: have we all been too hard on poor Rummy?

If your neurological system is functioning properly and you've managed to avoid the coma state, you know that offshoring/outsourcing is alive and well, and making many workers in this country unwell.

As a sidebar to a story on the religious right, The Independent newspaper from the United Kingdom offers a brief review of some of the incredibly large Evangelical churches that are at the forefront of the movement:

Phyliss Schlafly as economic populist?  Immigration rights lawyer as total labor globalization advocate?  New issues cause new alignments and new divisions in the political realm, and globalization appears to be in the midst of such a political realignment as we speak.  

Evidently, the Jesus who the religious right prays to is more concerned with boycotting Hollywood for releasing Brokeback Mountain than with feeding the hungry or global warming.

Not that we need more examples of Republican corruption; they just keep falling out of the trees.  Take California Republican Congressman (recently reelected) Gary Miller.

According to Missouri Governor Matt Blunt:

The fact that in such a horrific national climate we had such a successful election here in Missouri, really I see as a validation of what we've accomplished. It's a validation that people believe in small government, low taxes, an efficient government, investing in education. They like the improvements they've seen in our state's economy and lawsuit reform and regulatory relief, and they see that in job creation and ... the growth of personal income that's occurring in Missouri.

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