To answer the question regarding how many wrong directions can The Shrub take us...we have just seen the surface of what I fear is a very deep dark hole. We are at the Abyss. Thank God for Vermont and New England Yankees with some sense.

I am looking for another planet. Or, at least, somewhere I don't have to watch this unfold. I fear. Long story.

Seeing the LATimes editorial by Daniel Sheer of the War on Drugs as root to The Shrub supporting the lunatics in Afghanistan adds fuel to the fires within. I have recently thought up a quotable summation: "If all the world is music, in this digital age, half of all the people are ones and half are zeros." The zeros have an advantage right now.

BUT, I distrust Doomsayers as mush as the Thinkers Positive. Truth, which is OUT THERE according to the X-Files, is somewhere in the Great Middle. Whether or not we ever learn it, or simply are in constant repeat of variations, it is totally outside my rhelm of influence. I watch, and stay if the show is worth the price of the ticket. Else, I have better things to do. Or not do, depending on the whims of the muses. (OR something like that).

What is going on in the Middle East is every bit as mad as it ever has been. Soon the carnage of the Israeli military will act to defeat its own political ends. With the promise of Paradise to Muslim martyrs, and fifty years of suppression to fester hate, their body count grows. The Shrub will ignore them until Sharon commits an atrocity that surpasses those in the Balkans. Same story, different players. Looking for any leader in this Administration capable of effectual leadership on the scale involved is asking too much. There is none; even Captain Chipmunk (McCain of Arid-Zone-A) is an intellectual midget with platitudes but no plan. It goes on.