This is almost too sad for me to respond to right now, but I’ll try…

The deficit is about to go above half a trillion dollars, the economy is still losing jobs, the triumph in Iraq has turned to dust and ashes, and Mr. Bush’s poll numbers are at or below their pre-9/11 levels.

Nor can the members of this administration simply lose like gentlemen. For one thing, that’s not how they operate. Furthermore, everything suggests that there are major scandals – involving energy policy, environmental policy, Iraq contracts and cooked intelligence – that would burst into the light of day if the current management lost its grip on power. So these people must win, at any cost. – “Exploiting the Atrocity,” New York Times, September 12, 2003.

Of course, this is—sorry, no other way to put it—complete and utter bullshit. There can only be scandals if people care about what’s happening. But folks are pretty well convinced that going from the largest surplus in U.S. history to a half-trillion-dollar deficit in just about two years time is okay. Unemployment continues at high levels and claims of an “economic recovery” indicate that existing employees are being worked harder to make up for the absence of those who would work. Throughout the world, the United States is increasingly viewed as out of control and some even believe the dangers of living in a world controlled by the U.S. “are fraught with the same dangers as the Nazis taking over the world.” (Don’t get mad at me! I’m quoting!) The world “mood has been expressed in different ways by different people, from the hockey fans in Montreal who boo the American national anthem to the high school students in Switzerland who do not want to go to the United States as exchange students because America is not ‘in.'” ( – “Foreign Views of U.S. Darken Since Sept. 11,” New York Times, September 11, 2003.) We’ve waged a war that is costing us about four billion dollars per month; by July, it had already cost $48 billion and Bush recently requested about $87 billion more. (Perhaps the fact that this still hasn’t caught the attention of the average voter explains why so many people can’t control their own credit card debt.) How many schools could we build with that? How many people could be gainfully employed, so that those who are working could have lives, too?

Elsewhere in the world,

the Republicans hope remapping will help them gain as many as seven seats. [Ed. note: If you can’t win an election any other way and you don’t want to use the courts again, remap!]

Arguing for the state, Ted Cruz, the solicitor general, contended that the two-thirds practice was not a hard and fast rule and that the decision to suspend it did not merit the court’s intervention. [Ed. note: If you still can’t get what you want, then, in addition to remapping, change procedural rules.] – “State Senate Democrats Return to Texas,” New York Times, September 12, 2003.

Chief Judge Kazen of the Federal District Court there comments on fines levied (without a quorum, which, technically makes them illegal—but that hasn’t stopped anyone yet) against the Democrats and says he “would hope some sanity would prevail” and that they wouldn’t have to face returning to these fines.

Sanity, these days, just doesn’t seem to be a word that fits well for the Republican Regime. The sad part of it is that I’m not enamored of them Dems, either. Sadder still is the realization that I realize this means my vote no longer counts in the United States unless I make radical compromises. Who is the lesser of the two evils?

With the world being divided up into such stark black-and-white these days—when there is only darkness and light, with nothing in between—there can really only be one result: More of us will live in darkness.