If you want to know why this country is in the sad state in which we find ourselves, you can start with the intense pressure in this country to shut the hell up.

Still, while Mr. Geffen hardly needs the money, you can understand why a lot of people here wish he still had a day job. (Mr. Geffen declined to elaborate on his remarks to Ms. Dowd.)

“I don’t think that all of this is productive,” said Warren Beatty, reached on his cellphone. “I think the media is looking for a big political story, and I think it is much more important to talk about the issues.”

The mixture of revulsion and fascination with this episode mirrors Mr. Geffen’s career. He combines a gift for market timing — this is the guy who brought you the Eagles in the ’70s, Guns N’ Roses in the ’80s and Nirvana in the ’90s — with a guerrilla’s touch for instigation.

A "guerrilla's touch"? Now, far be from me to champion a guy with far more influence than I will EVER have, but the constant and troubling demands by people like Mr. Carr and Mr. Beatty that people should remain quiet rather than upset the cozy status quo is the source of so much that is wrong with American politics.

This pressure comes from the right, it comes from the left, and it especially comes from the mushy middle that is desperately afraid of conflict. It comes from the business community, from religious figures and from the hoi polloi that has hated the outspoken since that kid in class wouldn't stop raising his damned hand.

Oh, those nasty voters ... how dare they question their betters?

The Democratic majority was only three weeks old, but by Jan. 26, the grass-roots and Net-roots activists of the party's left wing had already settled on their new enemy: Rep. Ellen O. Tauscher (D-Calif.), the outspoken chair of the centrist New Democrat Coalition.

Progressive blogs -- including two new ones, Ellen Tauscher Weekly and Dump Ellen Tauscher -- were bashing her as a traitor to her party. A new liberal political action committee had just named her its "Worst Offender." And in Tauscher's East Bay district office that day in January, eight MoveOn.org activists were accusing her of helping President Bush send more troops to Iraq.

Tauscher is a serious corporate toady, a militarist, a Vichy Dem of the first order. Believe me, I find it strange to find myself agreeing with that fraud Kos on anything, (his and his allies' feeble attempts to become the new power brokers are doomed to failure), even he is right about this particular target:

Fighting Donk Harry Reid comes out swinging:

SEN. HARRY REID (D-NV), MAJORITY LEADER: This war is a serious situation. It involves the worst foreign policy mistake in the history of this country. So we should take everything serious. We find ourselves in a very deep hole. We need to find a way to dig out of it.

BLITZER: So maybe I misheard you, but you are saying this is the worst foreign policy blunder in American history?

REID: That's what I said.

BLITZER: Worse than Vietnam?

REID: Yes.

Cheney, I hear, wet himself in terror, seeing that Harry was finally gonna strap on his Everlast boxing shorts (why am I certain that the waistband will be pulled up all the way to his tits?) and REALLY let them have it. Why, I bet George crawled right under Laura's skirt and started sucking his thumb! What do Harry and the other Donks have planned?

"My country has been beaten and they are calling me back to make peace and sign an armistice."
- Henri-Philippe Pétain, upon the fall of France

"Now it is time for Democrats and Republicans to join together and make Congress work for every American.''
- Senator Harry Reid, upon the Donklephants gaining control of Congress.

That the Republicans were so ably using the REAL powers of the minority yesterday shouldn't be a surprise. That's what a party that actually functions does. It differentiates itself from its opponents. It drives the debate by refusing to play except on its own terms. This is the power that Harry Reid and the rest of the Democratic Party leadership steadfastly refused to use when THEY were in the minority. Eager to mirror the Republicans, not to set themselves apart. What is important is maintaining the basic functioning of the status quo for the Donklephants ... they stand for nothing else. The few that DO try to fight for liberal values and their constituents are left out in the cold:

President George W. Bush signs the Patriot Act, Anti-Terrorism Legislation, in the East Room Oct. 26.
White House photo by Eric Draper.

Did you REALLY expect the Reid-led Democrats to REALLY work to stop our out-of-control President?  Did you really expect them to do anything more than enable the continued carnage?

Democratic and Republican opponents of President Bush's troop-buildup plan joined forces last night behind the nonbinding resolution with the broadest bipartisan backing: a Republican measure from Sen. John W. Warner of Virginia.

Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) announced the shift, hoping to unite a large majority of the Senate and thwart efforts by the White House and GOP leaders to derail any congressional resolution of disapproval of Bush's decision to increase U.S. troop levels in Iraq by 21,500.

Although the original Democratic language was popular within the party, it had little appeal among Republicans. Warner's proposal drew support from both sides, and it was retooled last night to maximize both Democratic and Republican votes.

What, you thought they represented YOU? What matters to Reid and most of the rest of them is those words in bold:

IT HAD LITTLE APPEAL AMONG REPUBLICANS

Oh, and for those of you who expect Reagan Republican Webb to listen to you "dirty hippie" protesters, you might want to go see what he thinks of people like you who tried to stop another needless war:

I am far past sick of it. Yes, yes, yes, those mean old Republicans, and the media, take potshots at the Dems, oftentimes unfair potshots, but it happens over and over again. Of course, they usually use some version of the truth, and it's all very predictable, like the sun rising in the east. Hell, a lot of the time they do it to each other. It's not the attacks that I'm sick of though, it's the whining. Sniveling, snot-nosed punks, the Democratic Party and their wholly owned "activists" in the blahhhgs cry and piss and moan over and over again, like the runt nursing his bloody nose behind the gym after his latest beating on the playground.

Shut up all ready. This is politics, not a gentleman's debating society following ossified rules, with each side reading off of their little stack of point/counter-point notecards. This is politics, this is big money and big influence and people's lives and hopes and opportunities up for grabs. It's a real battle, war sublimated into a mess of rules and words and cash and raised voices. It's a contest with high stakes, and like war if you really want to win then you have to go into it willing to fight, to take some losses while responding by taking a chunk out of your enemy's hide.

In all the tributes, in all the carefully edited replays of his speeches, readings of his letters, there is an important part of Dr. King's legacy that is neglected.

Dr. King called not only for an end to racism, an end to institutionalized segregation, he called for an end to our imperial wars:

The truth of these words is beyond doubt, but the mission to which they call us is a most difficult one. Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government's policy, especially in time of war. Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought within one's own bosom and in the surrounding world. Moreover, when the issues at hand seem as perplexed as they often do in the case of this dreadful conflict, we are always on the verge of being mesmerized by uncertainty; but we must move on.

These times are full of uncertainty, but I think it is safe to say that Dr. King would have recognized these times as echoes of his own. Once again we slaughter people in a country that didn't attack us. Once again we waste blood and treasure to fill the pockets and ambitions of venal men. Of all his words, it is perhaps those speaking against the Vietnam War that we need most now.

George Walker Bush is a plague upon humankind:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President George W. Bush will tell skeptical Americans on Wednesday he will send 21,500 more U.S. troops to Iraq as part of a long-delayed new plan for the unpopular war, setting up a confrontation with Democrats.

The fresh infusion of troops will join about 130,000 already in Iraq. Senior administration officials said 17,500 would go to Baghdad and 4,000 to volatile Anbar province.

The first wave of troops are expected to arrive in five days, with others coming in additional waves. Under the plan, the Iraqi government will deploy additional Iraqi troops to Baghdad with a first brigade deploying February 1 and two more by February 15.

Senior administration officials said the cost of the troop increase would be around $5.6 billion. An additional $1.2 billion would finance a rebuilding and jobs programs.

image Clay Bennett

Throughout history, there have been diarists, novelists and poets who've gone to war and then based their art from their experiences:

Here, Bullet

If a body is what you want,
then here is bone and gristle and flesh.
Here is the clavicle-snapped wish,
the aorta's opened valves, the leap
thought makes at the synaptic gap.
Here is the adrenaline rush you crave,
that inexorable flight, that insane puncture
into heat and blood. And I dare you to finish
what you've started. Because here, Bullet,
here is where I complete the word you bring
hissing through the air, here is where I moan
the barrel's cold esophagus, triggering
my tongue's explosives for the rifling I have
inside of me, each twist of the round
spun deeper, because here, Bullet,
here is where the world ends, every time. - Brian Turner

Brian Turner, a 23-year-old infantryman and poet, has already received notice and awards for his book Here, Bullet.

"All governments are lying cocksuckers" - Bill Hicks

Governments, of course, are PEOPLE, and so one can carry Hick's observation to it's logical conclusion. It's important to remember this, on this day of wretched excess, when a supposedly restrained and dignified orgy of rememberance entered its second week. The best lies, of course, are carefully stage-managed things. Everything in it's place, the lighting just so, the line-up of eulogies carefully chosen, and rude and disrespectful voices such as your's truly are nowhere to be found.

Not anywhere on NPR or CNN or MSNBC or any of the major newspapers are we liable to find observations like those offered by IOZ:

Americans, I'm told, used to pride themselves as a practical people, not much given to this sort of impious, imperial stagecraft. Reagan's funerary procession was more gaudily pagan, but so was his myth. He was, after all, The Man Who Defeated Communism. That communism had long since defeated itself, at least in the USSR, was inconsequential to the legend. The Jerry Ford hullabaloo is more irksome to me. False modesty in an elaborate state funeral is crass, but Les Médias do love themselves some jus' folks. They loved it in the dauphin when he first ran for office. They didn't love it so much in Ford back in the day, when modest patrician expectations still held for those in high office, but these days it's all about reg-uh-lur people, and Football Jerry fits that mold nicely. The music will be Copeland's "Fanfare for the Common Man." More fittingly they'd have hired a bunch of former South Vietnamese prostitutes to sing Woody Guthrie songs in traditional dress.

Your humble Madman found himself wandering in a dream through the Capitol Rotunda, surprised to hear a muffled voice coming from a coffin laid out in full State-funereal splendor.

"Mmmmmm, mmm, UMMM, mmmmm!", he heard.

Nonplussed, yet having read far too much Carlos Castenada when he was younger, the Madman bought into the spirit of the vision and wandered closer, asking, "Excuse me?"

"My throat is a little dry, but that shameless toady Woodward will fill you in on what I want to say!", he heard a rasping voice declare, as a desiccated figure burst up out of the coffin. The Madman had never noticed before how much our only un-elected President looked like the Crypt Keeper.

"Wha?!!?", he exclaimed, taken aback, only to find a ghoulish man dressed in an ugly suit standing beside the coffin, like magic, with a self-satisfied smirk on his face.

"Oh, Woodward, I recognize you from those circle jerks on Sunday mornings!", the Madman declared. "What's up?"

The grave robber began to declaim:

House Republican Leader Gerald Ford stands by as Richard Nixon accepts the GOP nomination for president

I believe that truth is the glue that holds government together, not only our Government but civilization itself. That bond, though strained, is unbroken at home and abroad.

In all my public and private acts as your President, I expect to follow my instincts of openness and candor with full confidence that honesty is always the best policy in the end.

My fellow Americans, our long national nightmare is over.

Our Constitution works; our great Republic is a government of laws and not of men. Here the people rule.

Remarks By President Gerald Ford On Taking the Oath Of Office As President

Fine, pretty words those. Saying that you respect the Constitution and the rule of law sounds very nice, but is rendered empty when followed almost exactly one month later by this, his statement upon pardoning Richard Nixon:

Saddam's show trial will have it's preordained outcome, upheld upon its meaningless appeal:

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - An Iraqi appeals court on Tuesday upheld Saddam Hussein's death sentence for crimes against humanity and said he should hang within 30 days.

Human rights activists condemned his trial as seriously flawed and called on the government not to carry out the sentence, which comes amid raging violence between Saddam's fellow Sunni Arabs and majority Shi'ites.

Sunni Arab leaders reacted angrily to the ruling, saying it was politically motivated by Saddam's former enemies now in power in a U.S.-backed Shi'ite-led national unity government.

"The appeal court has approved the death sentence. They (the government) have the right to choose the date starting from tomorrow up to 30 days. After 30 days it will be an obligation to implement the sentence," the head of the Iraqi High Tribunal, Aref Abdul-Razzaq al-Shahin, told a news conference.

Thirty days ... I wonder what event is coming up within the next thirty days?

If I could have any Christmas wish fulfilled, it would be to wake up to a world fresh and new, like a field of new-fallen snow that lay unbroken by any footprint or thaw. It is a dream, of course, and Christmas wishes are fairy stories told to children to shield them from a world that doesn't believe in freshness, in newness, in unbroken dreams.

If I could have any Christmas wish fulfilled, it would be to not see the usual Christmas at war stories, of forced gaity mixed with jingoistic patriotism and earnest militarism, stories telling us that our "boys" are getting little pieces of home while they fight and kill in faraway lands for dishonest, warmongering politicians.

If I could have any Christmas wish fulfilled, I would love to wake up to a media where more voices, more perspectives would be heard, especially from the left. There is little or no presentation of ideas that aren't coming from the perspective of American exceptionalism, from a position where we look at our history, good and bad, with clear eyes and honest hearts. We, a supposed Christian people who believe in "progress" and second chances, increasingly act in hateful and unjust ways toward people who don't "belong" here, spending enormous sums to lock many people up while refusing to help our own citizens left bereft and homeless.