Hunting The Muse

Bremer Prophecied Bush

This is pretty amazing:

"What they will do is stagger along until there's a major incident and then suddenly say, 'Oh, my God, shouldn't we be organized to deal with this?"'

Paul Bremer, criticizing Bush about terrorism in early 2001.

Randi Rhodes Is A Bully

I'm really glad that Air America is here now, but today I ended up solidifying my impression of Randi Rhodes, and she's a bully. I was on the fence for a while, but I heard a couple of calls in a row today that were along the lines of someone calling in to say something Randi didn't agree with, and then she wouldn't even let them talk. There was a liberal who considered himself pro-life, and I honestly wanted to hear what he had to say because I find it pretty interesting. But she wouldn't let him say a thing. Same with another guy who was trying to bring up something about Kerry's position regarding withdrawing troops. I don't honestly know what he was trying to say because Randi just called him stupid. Anyway, if I wanted to just listen to a bunch of noise from people who won't let anyone speak if they disagree, I'd listen to Rush - at least that would be more entertaining because his beliefs are so completely ridiculous.

Prozac and pregnancy

MSNBC - Prozac during pregnancy may affect babies

Here's my question about this. Why is this news? Shouldn't this be completely settled and known long before it's prescribed to people?

I have quite a few strong opinions about this whole area of things... it's just so hard to all explain that I haven't blogged about it much. Some opinions there aren't a lot of oxygen for.

Afterhell Available

One of the projects I recently completed is now available for purchase by its producers on CafePress.com. I wrote the music soundtrack and I'm pretty proud of it overall. I also play the part of someone who gets killed (while talking on his cell phone) by an insane virulent serial killer. I got to gargle jello in the recording studio. It was cool.

Parts of Globalization

Pandagon makes a good point about how there are different ways to be bitten by globalization. Wal-Mart and Sam's Club imports products made with child labor and pays low wages to their workers. Starbucks has good health benefits and good wages for their workers. Even though Starbucks is often criticized for the negative impact they have on coffee merchants in other countries. I hear Starbucks and Wal-Mart criticized a lot in globalization conversations, but it's interesting to see Starbucks held up as something that looks good in comparison.

Liberal Religion

TalkLeft has the synopsis of the little religion debate that blazed through liberal blogland recently. In my mind I basically think it just means that religious liberals have to get a bit more used to speaking up and being loud about how their religion reconciles with being liberal.

Buy This CD

"Disturbing The Quiet Enjoyment Of The Home" is the third cd from the a cappella group I founded at University of Colorado. (It's also the title of a ticket they got for violating a noise ordinance.) The cd was even featured on the front page over at cdbaby.com for a few days. They're doing a kick-ass job, and the songs are very cool arrangements of other songs you may have heard before (although you haven't heard them like this). Click on the cd to go to the page and hear some free samples. If you buy it, the money will go back to the group to fund tours, parties, and more cds. (Which is the loose, college definition of "non-profit".) Buy buy buy!

We're working on re-releasing their first cd, which has a couple of my originals on it.

Songs To Wear Pants To

This is a funny site. It also makes me jealous. I wish I had thought of it first.... and had the ability to write one song a day, rather than one song a year as I do now.

Diebold Admits Fraud

It seems straight out of the twilight zone, but Diebold admitted they defrauded California and then lied about it.

"Why did we sell something that we didn't think we could run? Our understanding based on past experience was we thought we could get that certified."

I don't know what their strategy is, do they have some sort of Jedi mind power to convince CA to give them one more chance? That's what they're asking for. I'm afraid it might actually work. What California needs to do is scold them aggressively and publicly and then sue them - maybe that would get momentum going in other states in time for the fall.

Macro Strategy

One contrast that struck me in Bush's press conference is that his vision was on a much more macro level than the criticisms against him.  "We're changing the world," etc.  Leaving aside arguments that his attitude is stupid and simplistic, he is defending a vision that has to do with more than the next six months.

In turn, I'm worried that many of us are getting too micro.  Focusing on every little failure, throwing thousands of tiny darts - it's a good way to weaken a foundation that deserves to be weakened, but it's also a good way to distract ourselves from larger movements.

It can also be taken advantage of - when we get too micro and too aggressive, it's easy for us to be trapped.  Basically any source of information that alludes to a Bush weakness is considered fair game to parrot about and pass around.  What are the chances of disinformation that can be knocked down easily later?

I'm concerned because I think there's risk of backfire.  I've heard from three different areas of my personal sphere that they think the press is ganging up on Bush.  Bush is never going to be seen as the guy that is the source of all the evil machinations of the administration, so it's going to be easier for people to identify with him as an underdog that has been treated unfairly.

The other thing about the micro level is that it distracts us from plans the Bush administration might have in place for the future.  One obvious example is the Saddam trial.  Is this trial going to happen during election season?

No gay marriage in Portland

Torrid's World reports that gay marriage was stopped in Portland today. Damn, it just got more complicated again.

I actually missed that it got turned off in San Francisco.

Harris and Klebold - 4/20

The Depressive and the Psychopath - At last we know why the Columbine killers did it. By Dave Cullen

Columbine affected me personally more than 9/11 did. Columbine was a perversion in a way that 9/11 wasn't, because it was all American kids. Something got corrupted that isn't supposed to get corrupted, unlike massive foreign policies.

The only thing that comforts me about this article is the knowledge that maybe one of the two kids wasn't as completely far gone as the other. But the bit about the psychopath doesn't help me at all. Why do psychopaths happen? In the suburbs?

I know there's the pat answers from the more automatic and snarky among us, ("dude, it's the suburbs! isn't it obvious?") but sometimes things demand deeper delving and greater effort to consider. If we accept the thing about the psychopath, it means a psychopath can emerge spontaneously anywhere, even in a kid in the suburbs. I don't find that comforting at all.

Update: There's supposed to be another great article about the Columbine survivors in the April issue of GQ. (Viggo Mortenson is on the cover.)

Bush - When Does The Wave Crest?

There's been so much stuff coming up about Bush's criminality that it really is quite amazing to witness how... tolerant the nation is. It's like one of those massive storm waves that you keep thinking is about to crest until it swells a bit more and you realize it wasn't even close.

I'm only in my low thirties and don't know anything about Watergate. I don't have a sense of how big things have to get before the structure of an administration starts to crumble.

But we all have this feeling of frustration sometimes - "What does it take for people to wake up?" We hunger for some sort of validation, some sort of mass movement, some sort of collective motion that feels unbidden, unplanned, emergent. Something to show that a nation's integrity really does lie beneath, and under certain circumstances, will stir.

I don't know if this is just such a thing. But I see hints of a paradigm shift, or at least I hope I do. Whether it's witnessing some of my favorite bloggers rethink their views about what is partisan and "beyond the pale", or whether it's just my hope that things have to crumble sometime that makes me believe a shift is starting to happen, it has an effect on me. I feel like I need to see something happen soon. I need to see what happens when a mountain of lies finally starts to fall down, when truth rises up from underneath to cause a symphony of controlled destruction. I need this because to imagine this perversion continuing is sometimes just too much to take.

God. They're both about elections, but Watergate was only bugging a political headquarters. Bush has a deal to work with terrorism sponsors to manipulate oil prices. I ask again, What does it take for people to wake up?

2004 Polling

2.004k.com: Polling Data for 2004 Elections

This is a very nice site that brings together all the state tracking polls for Bush vs. Kerry. As of now, Bush has the lead.

Oregon: Bush leads Kerry

Torrid's World

I wonder if Oregon is actually trending Republican. Bush has a slight lead over Kerry in this recent poll. The other surprise is that Nader only polls at 1%.

Best Entry Nominations Sought

I've mentioned before that I am going to be switching blogs around soon. For various reasons, I've decided that I'm going to start fresh on the new weblog. Hunting The Muse won't be deleted or anything, it's just that my active writing will be somewhere else when it launches.

In addition, I've been working in the background to program some applications having to do with self-publishing. A friend of mine has been pushing me to package together some of my writing into some sort of portfolio, and had an idea to package together some of this weblog. I think it would be a great way to test out some of my ideas.

So here's what I need. Some of you have been reading this weblog for a very long time, others are new. I have a full archive to all my weblog postings on the sidebar. I'm going to go through them to find my favorites, but I'm also seeking nominations. If you have any particular entries that you especially like, drop me an email or contact me through this link and let me know the url for those entries, along with why you want to nominate them.

Since it's going to be a book, the entries should be actual thoughts or essays, not entries that merely link to other entries.

The goal is to turn these favorite entries into a manuscript and then automatically turn the manuscript into a very nicely typeset pamphlet, portfolio, or book.

A Cruise For America

I have this book by David Foster Wallace called A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, which reprints an article he wrote for Harper's Magazine about his experience taking a cruise.

In it, he writes a lot about Celebrity's (the cruise line) marketing materials. This marketing material is foisted upon the guests during the actual cruise, not just beforehand when they're deciding whether to go.

He notes that the Cruise Director's job seems to be assuring all the guests that they are having a good time. He notices that the overwhelming number of maps with big red dots and YOU ARE HERE statements seem to be "less for orientation than for some weird kind of reassurance". He determines that the narratives in the marketing literature of beautiful scenery, wondrous experiences, and pleasurable feelings are designed not to describe, but to evoke; to assert. And then after a while, all the admonitions of "YOUR PLEASURE IS OUR BUSINESS" and "you will say 'I couldn't agree more!' and 'Let's do it all!'"... start to sound vaguely menacing.

It becomes clear it is a mixture of reassurance and condescension. It is not so much that it is upsetting to the cruise that a guest might not be having a good time... it is instead highly inappropriate. You become bullied into satisfaction.

I was reminded of all of this while watching Bush's press conference today. The man is a bully, he dresses it up in passive language, and it comes through in just about everything he says. You could basically pick a statement at random to illustrate it, the first one I saw from a cnn article:

"I don't plan on losing my job," Bush said during his first prime time news conference of the year. "I plan on telling the American people that I've got a plan to win the war on terror. And I believe they'll stay with me. They understand the stakes."

In other words, re-elect Bush or suffer the consequences. But, he believes in the American people to make the wise choice.

The book author's last day on the cruise was, fittingly, witnessing a hypnotist. A mean-spirited man up on stage attempting to put people in suggestible states, making them believe things that weren't true, having them do things they really would not want to do, all the while playing to the audience and telling them everything is fine and that they are wonderful human beings.

Change For America?

By the way, what is up with Change For America? I'm getting no email from them, the comments on their blog entries are often below five per entry, and I've heard nary a peep about their big plans for their conventions in multiple cities. Is it fizzling?

America Votes

Dean's Blog for America announced "America Votes" today, a strategy-sharing coalition of "29 of the largest grassroots organizations in the country" - all for voter education, registration, and mobilization.

Not sure if it's just a press-release thing or something that will have a lot of activity.

Oblique

Tamara is blogging again! Rumor has it that she might be a more regular blogger in the future...

The PDB

Here's the thing about the PDB and 9/11. Bush claimed the other day that he requested the PDB. The PDB mentioned Al-Qu'eida (I've never spelled it the same way twice) was in the U.S., that Bin Ladin was determined to strike in the U.S., and that hijacking was a probable goal.

So, one month later, a plane flies into the WTC, and Bush's reaction is, "What a horrible accident", and "That must be one terrible pilot." Like terrorism didn't even occur to him.

George Bush and the PDB

You are George Bush. You need to go on vacation, but there's this little PDB that's in the way...

(Needs java. Click in it, then you can type in it. If the text gets cut off at the beginning, just type "restart".)

I'm sure this could be improved in some ways. If you have suggestions, you make suggestions by commenting below, or you can add notes here: GeorgeBushPDBNotes

More Support Options

Due to request, I've included more support options on the sidebar of my weblog. I have Paypal donate buttons now. I used Kalsey's buttonmaker to make the buttons. If you have a paypal account with the ability to transfer cash, click the "Cash" button:

Otherwise, if you need to use a credit card, click the "Credit" button, for which I'll be charged transaction fees:

Also, I have a Wishlist. If you click on that, pay attention to the priorites, because there's only a couple of things I'm really craving.

Finally, there's the google ads. Every time you click on one, I get a few pennies, so click away and visit the sponsors that are polite enough to invest in text ads.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming. :-)

Taxes

It feels so good to be done with my taxes. Gearing up for taxes this year has been rough because I've been a bit more disorganized than usual. My accountant tells me that I'm right on the cutoff point - which isn't that high in terms of income - where it would start to make sense to incorporate instead of being a sole proprietor, so I'm continually thinking about that. But doing a Schedule C is rough compared to W-2, because you have to start thinking about things like County taxes, tri-met taxes, business license taxes... and honestly, I only randomly heard about the Business License requirement for Metro Portland, because I live in a different county and only travel there to work onsite occasionally. I don't see where someone who doesn't have an accountant would even hear about the need to file and pay that tax.

I definitely did see my federal tax payment fall this year, but I'm not sure if that is because of Bush, or because I had a lot more business expenses this year, including a weekly drive to Seattle and back. But if it was partly because of Bush, then hell, I'll take that money easily. I'll also vote against him in November just as easily.

Oil Prices Rise Because...?

the american street: Coincidence?

I'm always up for a good conspiracy theory. Assume this series of fires in oil refineries across America isn't a coincidence. What about it would work in Bush's favor? Perhaps having them fixed, with gas prices going down, in time for the election?

Note that it isn't far-fetched at all to suggest that the right wing would be behind a plot to manipulate energy prices. That's what they are being indicted for in California.

Google Match

It appears this weblog is the number one google ranking for "eHarmony sucks", due to absolutely no effort of my own.

Thank you, thank you. Very proud of that random accomplishment.

Political Presence

Sometimes I wonder why political organizing isn't more like insurance agents. I was thinking about this last night as I fell asleep. It's sort of creepy sounding at first, but it makes sense in terms of scaling.

You just get an agent to set up a local office. No elections, they just set up an office. Then they hustle to get donations. Like, a monthly or yearly schedule from as many constituents as possible. They'd have to convince people that submitting money to the Democratic party is worthwhile. Talking about the presidency, educating them about political realities and how it's in their best interest, whatever. The thing is that being able to claim credit for finding these donations would give them party power, and give them access to the DNC. And maybe these local agents would actually have power to change things for that local community, courtesy of the DNC.

And in exchange, these agents get a portion of the money that goes to the DNC. For all the money that goes to the DNC courtesy of that agent, the DNC pays that agent part of the money for services rendered.

So yeah, the creepy part (and possibly illegal, I don't know) is how it can be spun into bundling donations, and how the commission thing is probably against some regulation somewhere.

But, if the money is sent to the DNC no questions asked, and if every citizen continues to have the power to make their donations directly, not through an agent, and it's the DNC choosing to pay the local consultants for giving them information on the region, then maybe it's not illegal.

So that's my brainstorm roughdraft idea of the day. Is it impossible?

Nader Is Not A Spoiler?

One of my subproofs for NaderShouldNotRun is possibly contested:

Discussion on Daily Kos.

Open Letter to Nader Supporter

I posted this as a comment on another weblog and it got some good response. It's similar to what I've written before, but I think I pulled it together pretty well.

Remember that politics is about reconciling passion with what is possible.

If you vote for Nader, the objectives you care about become less possible, not more. There just isn't a way around that. If you vote for Nader, you're basically saying that your personal passions are more important than enacting change.

This whole thing is about a misunderstanding on what it means to have integrity. You're told that if you don't vote your "true conviction", then you're settling, compromising, et cetera, and that committed citizens don't do that.

That's not integrity. You're being manipulated. The truth is that you are being put in a double-bind, where you're damned either way. Either you go against your convictions, or you make it more likely that Bush will be elected. The situations SUCKS and we can all agree on that.

But the way to oppose a double-bind is not to choose one side and then close your mind and claim victory. You actually have to take the double-bind apart.

The double-bind is the electoral college, which is structured in such a way so that it only works well when it's only between two candidates. Work to change it if that ticks you off. Your efforts are better served working to change the voting system so the spoiler effect doesn't happen.

And the double-bind is also Ralph Nader, because it was his choice to put you all in this position. I say his choice, because he actually did have a costless alternative.

Think about it - if his goals were merely to represent your views and to build support (and remember, he's just an independent now, not even trying to build a third party) - he could have run in the Democratic Primary. There's nothing that says in order to run in the Primary, you have to compromise your platform in any particular way. But he chose against it for selfish reasons.

In short. Ralph's goals are not yours. Ralph's actions are not aligned with his stated intent. He knows he won't win. Remember that to win he needs to win several states outright, at least the 11 largest. Even if he gets 20% support nationwide, the E.C. means he won't win a single state. He knows he can't beat the E.C. and there is no other way for him to win. He knows that if he can't win, his presence makes it more likely that Bush will be elected. He knows that Bush being elected will mean the government has less audience for his passions than Kerry would. And he is running anyway. And so Nader is similarly putting himself in a double-bind, forcing himself to choose between his passion, and results.

It is a false choice. Nader's made his choice and he probably isn't saveable. But the tragedy here is that he's conning his supporters, people like you who might still actually care about affecting change.

Politics is about reconciling passion with what is possible. You can't forget that, because when you do, you actually *undermine* what you are passionate about. It is your *choice* to participate in a voting system, but when you do, it's your responsibility to know what the possibilities of that system are. You have to submit to the system if you choose to work within it. It is your *choice* to support Nader, but it's your responsibility to realize that voting for him reduces the likelihood of your passions being represented. And it's your responsibility to make sure that your actions are aligned with your intent. There are better ways to advocate your beliefs than to cast a pointless and *counterproductve* vote for Nader.

Kos and Mercenaries

Well, the political blogland has seemingly exploded with an utterly stupid controversy.

The details are that Kos accused the murdured civilians in Fallujah of being mercenaries, and said he didn't mourn them, and "screw them". Then later, after some people got upset at him, he offered an explanation about his first-hand knowledge of mercenaries from growing up in El Salvador. The original comment was to someone else's diary post, and it was clear that in hindsight it was a hot-headed expression of his emotions that didn't completely express his real feelings on the matter.

So, a bunch of right-wingers seized upon the comment, and started making noise about it. They noticed Kos had three Democratic candidates advertising on his weblog. These right-wingers wrote the Democratic candidates complaining about Kos' statement. First, just reflect on the manipulative dishonesty behind that action. They complained to Democrats. (They also made racist comments and threatened his family and suggested mailing a bag of dogshit to his house, but I don't believe they informed the Democratic candidates of this.)

And, in a stunning display of who really has DeanSpines and who just pretends they do, these Democratic candidates wrote back to these right-wingers, disavowed Kos' statement, and removed their advertising from his weblog.

I wrote one of the candidates the following message:

most of these guys expressing indignation about Markos post about the mercenaries are right-wing wingnuts.  They're strategizing it because they want to hurt Markos.  I know it's politically difficult to appear as if you're agreeing with him, but refusing to pull down your ads isn't the same as agreeing with every comment kos posts to his own weblog.  I think you guys are being manipulated.  The way the right wing wins is to slowly convince their opponents to turn against their own power.  Put your foot down and say that just because you advertise on his weblog doesn't mean you agree with everything he says.  That's what being a democrat is about.

The right-wingers got a reply from this yahoo. I didn't.

Then today, the Kerry campaign publicly delinked Kos.

Many people have commented on this brouhaha.

My thoughts: Delinking Kos was a stupid tactical thing to do. The easiest defense to this would have been to say, "It's a discussion site. We're not responsible for everything that is said on that site. We're just advertising to their audience. No, of course we don't endorse everything they say, you lying idiot. Shut up. Begone, Satan." Well, maybe not in those precise words, but along those lines.

This is a very old pattern that happens over and over again. Someone tries to attain power, gets uncomfortable with it, and then their doubts become large enough that the enemies can dig their hooks in. Once you start realizing that this is what it is about, it's easy to see the pattern. By folding to the right-wing here, these candidates have displayed that they can be manipulated. They're not the real deal. These guys are marked now.

And, this really has nothing to do with Kos, or Fallujah, or the comments he made. It's bigger. For a while, blogs were separate from the real political scene. Even through Dean's candidacy, the blog was like the silly mascot. But now blogs are embedded in the political scene. Whether it was the displays of donating money, or several name bloggers seen at the DNC dinner, or the combination of countless other dynamics, this has just been a bigger, silent, massive wave of new power dynamics that has all of us in its wake. If it weren't Kos and Fallujah, it would have been some other big-name blogger and some other controversial issue. The change is that the bloggers are new cards in the playable deck, and the game is trying to make people turn against their own power.

And to demonstrate how much the old way of politics still doesn't get it - they don't understand that pulling away leaves a lot of space hungry to be filled. No matter how much these folks pander, they can't run away from the fact that supporters are hungry for spine. And this guy is the first to step up and fill it. I don't know anything about Kos' donation rate, but I'd love to see this create some shockwaves. If this guy gets two or three times the expected rate of funds, we could see some more interesting shifts.

And that's the way it should be. Atrios is delinking Dem candidates in return. I think this is precisely the wrong way to handle this. I think that if you girlfriend is unsure about you, the answer is to love her harder, not pull away in response. Show them what free speech is, don't back down, keep the links up, and let them show their true colors. These candidates need to learn that they'll be rewarded for being true leaders that don't fold. I'm thinking of donating money to Seemann even though he's in frigging Ohio, just because I know where he stands now in a way that I didn't about those other yahoos.

Mother Who Stoned Children Acquitted

MSNBC - Mother who stoned sons to death acquitted

This is a Texas trial. It's supposed to be just about impossible to successfully argue an insanity defense in Texas. I'd like to see a good compare-and-contrast article between this case and the Andrea Yates case. Both mothers live in Texas, both killed their children, both home-schooled their children, both called the police afterward. Yates was found guilty. Her insanity defense was post-partum depression. Laney was found not guilty. Her insanity defense was that God told her to do it.

The jury found that she did not know right from wrong. Her defense was that God chose her as a test of faith. That right there - "a test" - says to me that it was something that she otherwise did not want to do. She did know it was wrong aside from allowing herself to be overruled by God. I'm sorry, but that's not insanity. That's following religious beliefs that are incompatible with the law. She phrased it as a test. She knew right from wrong. She only thought it was right to do wrong. There's a difference.

I don't know enough about the case, but there's enough here to really worry me. Yates was suffering and was found guilty. Laney acted with the certainty that she was led by God, and she was found not guilty. I just wonder if some of these Texas jurors were given pause by their own religious beliefs and gave their not guilty belief out of religious fear rather than out of mercy and good judgment.

I personally would have found them both not guilty. Maybe Laney lucked into twelve reasonable Texas jurors and Yates didn't. It just still really bothers me that Yates was found guilty.

Update: Talkleft has more discussion.

When Did He Know It?

According to this article:

A former translator for the FBI with top-secret security clearance says she has provided information to the panel investigating the 11 September attacks which proves senior officials knew of al-Qa'ida's plans to attack the US with aircraft months before the strikes happened.

Now, let's take a trip down memory lane, when a shrewd Dean repeated some rumors of Bush knowing ahead of time, rumors he didn't believe... and how ridiculous it was, how everyone scoffed at it... and how Bush was asked about it in one of his press conferences.

And let's review what I wrote about this at the time:

Now, to my eyes, Bush's reaction was very, very interesting. In the papers he's quoted as saying "That's an absurd insinuation." But his behavior... I don't know, he looks a little bit freaked out to me.

Check Bush's response one more time... looks a little uncomfortable, doesn't he?

Update: It's never simple. For reason to at least pause, check the summary of this reader's research.

A Convert's Weblog

A Likely Story!

Once upon a time someone commented on my weblog. Then I wrote her back. Then she wrote back. Then I wrote back. Then she read more weblogs. Then she started a weblog, and mentioned me in her first entry.

I have a convert.

Democratic Intent

Updated Subproof: DemocraticIntentMustBeProtected.

Seems like all of the arguments supporting Nader's run turn on different definitions of Democracy. I'm trying to gather them together here.

(I think after this it'll be worthwhile to try and identify all the steps that could be taken (or could have been taken) that would have made Nader's run conflict-free.)

Democratic Arguments

I have to say, I'm a little bit underwhelmed lately by all the recent political activity.

This stuff with Clarke is sexy because it fits really well into a journalistic narrative that journalists love. A credible Republican turning against his own, how will the administration react? It's just the sort of thing that the press loves sinking their teeth into.

But it's not really news. It's drama, it's narrative. But it just doesn't really strike me as hard news. I click around the blogosphere, and there isn't near the amount of Iraq coverage that there was before, and we had an exceedingly bloody month over there. We need plans, and solutions, and we need people and bloggers reviewing the plans and solutions, advocating them, advertising them. We need to be prepared for when we have power - which will in turn make it more likely that we'll attain it.

Everyone is examining the past right now. And meanwhile, the present keeps ticking by, with solutions left unimplemented, and other problems getting worse.

I actually think this Fallujah thing would have been a lot more politically damaging to the administration if all the attention weren't already focused on conversations that may or may not have happened two years ago.

Believe me, I understand the counterpoints. Bush has had far too much credibility for far too long. I'm just saying we need to keep our eye on the ball, too. And the ball isn't the election. The ball is what comes afterward.