My public defender friend just sent me a picture of her desk and office. It involves a phone covered in postit debris, no computer (!) piles and piles in disarray of case files, an exploding bulletin board,rolodex, a plaque proclaiming "Suck it up", a lovely photo she took when interning at Ketchikan, Alaska and... a taxidermied 2 point buck head. Named Floyd. Wearing a bow tie. On loan from a friend who shares an office with someone opposed to "anti-preserved American."

Maybe you have to know her, but I spent 5 minutes laughing hysterically.

It solidified in '88, but I'd say it started with the Reagan campaigns.

Maybe what I'm thinking is that Dukakis denied the acusation of being a liberal - which also was a turning point....

Oh, I thought possibly that AS wrote that stuff too because then I would say that somebody who can write witty banter might not write good sketches...different skill and all that. But I can't comment on the actual sketches...haven't seen the latest yet. Lee Atwater...died screaming of bone cancer...couldn't happen to a nicer fella. What? When I hold a grudge it stays held. What can I say?

Maybe what I'm thinking is that Dukakis denied the acusation of being a liberal - which also was a turning point....

Nah, you're right that the word itself got to be almost an expletive with the Dukakis campaign -- I was just thinking of the way it was prefigured by the attack on what had been widely assumed-to-be-good social goods and social programs in both Reagan/Carter and then Reagan/Mondale and... god I'm dating myself, aren't I?

WTF? Check out this ad on the "Answers in Genesis" webpage:

[link]

So... if you don't believe in God, you'll get shot? The theory of evolution makes people shoot people?

Dude, did you see the thing from the CBS News? The father of a kid who got killed in Columbine, talking about how the shooting yesterday was because of evolution being taught, and abortion, and godlessness in general. Yeah, in Amish country.

I heard about it.

OK, are there any evils that the theory of evolution doesn't cause?

Apparently not.

The clip is here, among other places: [link]

I like The Unit. A lot. I enjoy the action. But really what draws me in is the community aspect of the military. The wives, the families. It's always sort of fascinated me (I grew up in a community on the fringes, and then my brother joined and friends became military and military wives- my brother was the only military husband I knew, and that was because his term ended before his wife's.) In some ways, it is a forced community. But it is a really interesting one. There are chosen communities, there are those enforced by a lack of opportunity, of a voluntary loyalty to a geography's way of life. But the military community is a little different. It's geography and loyalty and volunteerism (these days ) and...it's just such an odd space.

Excellent essay by Glen Greenwald: Beltway Democrats are seriously flawed, but the election is still critically important

The most important and overriding mandate is to end the one-party rule to which our country has been subjected for the last four years. Achieving that is necessary -- it is an absolute pre-requisite -- to begin to impose some actual limits on the authoritarian behavior and unchecked powers of this administration -- because, right now, there are no such limits.