I said it must be vexing them exceedingly that the country and the airwaves were full of joyful people.

"It is," he said.

Just look at all the pictures. It's not just a good day for Democrats. It's a good day for Americans, and for everyone who's a friend of what we stand for.

I feel something strange stirring inside of me. It's a soft, fluttering sensation moving through my chest and pressing gently behind my eyes. And, my teeth! My god! My teeth are dry and my cheeks are a little sore.

This is pride with a side order of happy, happy laughter.

Teresa #1: I think a lot of folks on the right had built themselves a fact-proof model of the world in which this was impossible. They were the party of the permanent majority, the party that had a natural majority, the party that true Americans always would follow, the party that God had chosen. They were capable of believing this when their guy won in 2000 by gaming the counting rules to resolve a tie in their favor, when their guy won in 2002 and 2004 mainly on the basis of wartime support of the president. They kept believing it, somehow, even when they got clobbered in 2006, and when they were staring with wide eyes up at the freight train of voters' disapproval that just ran over them. And it's still kind-of unbelievable for them.

Is there any good literature written about the folks who believed the Soviet propoganda right up until the day the USSR dissolved? Or who believed the German government propoganda right up until the day the Red Army (if they were unlucky) or the US/British Army (if they were lucky) showed up and took over? Because that's what the reaction of a certain fraction of true believers on the right looks like to me--like people who had completely bought into the propoganda, and have just seen their whole manufactured worldview come crashing down into scrap.

I wonder what happens next. Do most of those true believers go back to believing the propoganda, as spun by Limbaugh and Fox News and such, and just somehow forget the stuff that turned out to be all wrong? Do they fall away from the movement? Do they somehow become harder targets for propoganda? (Alternatively, am I just misdiagnosing what's happening?)

They ought to live here for a while. Hawai'i is so polyglot their heads would explode.

I sincerely hope the FBI is keeping an eye on such people, because believing the government is illegitimate is a proven path to domestic terrorism of the McVeigh sort.

Fortunately, I believe in a law enforcement solution to terrorism, not large-scale bombing and occupation of Oklahoma, Texas, Montana and Utah.

However, I can't completely support Muntadar al-Zaidi - his gratuitous insult to dogs was clearly unjustified and he owes the species an apology.

Patrick Farley, he of the slumbering E-Sheep Comics, has posted

All Circuses and No Bread

http://pfarley.livejournal.com/104911.html?view=783567#t783567

Trying to explain what was wrong with the Bush Era feels like trying to vomit up a cannonball. I don't think my jaw can stretch that wide.

Seriously, where does one even begin? Abu Ghraib? Ahmed Chalabi? Mission Accomplished? The "Battle of Iraq?" Valerie Plame? No-bid contracts? The billions of dollars the Pentagon can't account for, and apparently never will? The Department of Justice firings? The blue Iraqi flag? The staged press conference? The fake Thanksgiving turkey? Terry Schiavo? Freedom Fries?

I can at least say this for Bush: he *didn't* plant any WMDs in Iraq.

But really, Bush himself wasn't the problem. Bush was a cipher, the perfect vacuum at the center of a perfect storm -- an ideological superstorm which rotated, like some slow, sick, wobbling hurricane of raw sewage over America for 8 years, like some brown, shitty version of Jupiter's Great Red Spot. This Neo-Conservative Superstorm, as I'll call it, had three major sources of energy feeding it:

a) a panicked population in need of a Protective Patriarch,

b) a Republican party crowded with brazen and reckless ideologues,

and most significantly:

c) A network of Conservative Think Tanks with deep pockets and a fearsomely coordinated army of media pundits.

And it goes on. Go read the rest.

**Footnote to the footnote: Speaking of openly lesbian daughters, did anyone else notice Liz Cheney entering the Capitol before the ceremony? She appeared to be by herself (i.e., without her partner).

Lee @11: I don't know, and now wish I'd have asked. Most of the shoes were in pairs and looked to be in at least secondhand store condition.

RING RING!

"White House switchboard, how can I direct your call?"

"I'd like to speak to President Bush."

"Sorry, Mr. Bush is no longer the president."

"Ah, thank you."

RING RING!

"White House switchboard, how can I direct your call?"

"President Bush please."

"I'm sorry, Mr. Bush is no longer the president."

"I see, thank you."

RING RING!

"White House switchboard, how can I direct your call?"

"I'd like a moment with President Bush."

"I'm sorry but . . . HEY! I recognize your voice. George Bush is NO LONGER THE PRESIDENT. Why do you keep calling?"

"Please . . . just say it one more time. I can't hear that enough."

Inch-High: "Again. Say it again."
Attendant: [sighs] "Sir, will you please get on the ride."
Inch-High: "Again!"

hee hee hee hee hee

Huffington Post story.

US Democracy Server: Patch Day

Not as simple nor as factual as the robots.txt particle, but a well-crafted piece of satirical beauty nonetheless.

(At least this time the response wasn't, "Already particled, ya ditz!" In the nicest possible way, of course.)

Boxed sets of DVDs?