The Dems' Idea Man

Howard Dean had some thoughts to share recently in The Christian Science Monitor.

There is a consensus that we cannot continue to have a permanent commitment to a failed strategy.... One, we are going to support our troops and two, you are going to see a ... desire to resolve the situation ... by turning this over to the Iraqis and bringing our folks home. The only thing that is left up to some modest differences is what the timetable is.

In other words, there's no debate among Democrats as to whether we should surrender. The only question is what time the Last Helicopter departs from Baghdad. The Democrats give a new twist to an old adage: When the going gets tough, the Dems get going.

And wait until the African American clergy, the folks at Sojourners magazine, and all the other liberal-left anti-war clergy read this:

The religious community has to decide whether they want to be tax exempt or involved in politics.

We're quite sure that when Howard realizes what he has said and how it would affect the Democratic party if the religious community really were to distance itself from politics, he'll be eager to let this latest piece of intemperance fade quietly into political oblivion.

The Democratic party without a politically active African American church and religious left is in the same shape as a hiker in Death Valley with no water. He may not be dead, but he soon will be.

He also suggests this as a Democratic slogan for 2008:

One of our slogans is probably going to end up being 'tough and smart.' Because what the Republicans have done is tough and not very smart.

Tough and smart. Catchy. Ironic, too, considering that their plan for Iraq is best described as wussie and dumb.

Take Our Rights and Let Us Alone.

Old free speech warhorse Nat Hentoff laments the deplorable state of the first amendment on the American campus. Not only are our colleges worshippig at the altar of all the liberal pieties, but in some cases they're actively suppressing any challenge to the fashionable orthodoxies adhered to by leftist true believers. Now it appears that many of our institutions, both educational and entertainment, have voluntarily submitted themselves to a state of abject dhimmitude.

Muslims must be surprised that the putative bastions of free speech have caved with so little resistance. Who would have thought that the West would have surrendered their precious rights so easily. "Here, take what you want," we seem to be saying, "Just don't hurt us."

No Hurry. Yet.

Edward Luttwack argues at length that there are three reasons why it would be a mistake to takemilitary action against Iran just now. His essay is a little long but well worth the time it takes to read.

Making Moral Judgments

Ann Coulter draws some good lessons from the Duke Lacrosse team fiasco and along the way remarks upon our peculiar reticence to condemn certain behaviors as stupid and/or immoral. Here's an excerpt:

Yes, of course no one "deserves" to die for a mistake. Or to be raped or falsely accused of rape for a mistake. I have always been unabashedly anti-murder, anti-rape and anti-false accusation -- and I don't care who knows about it!

But these statements would roll off the tongue more easily in a world that so much as tacitly acknowledged that all these messy turns of fate followed behavior that your mother could have told you was tacky.

Not very long ago, all the precursor behavior in these cases would have been recognized as vulgar -- whether or not anyone ended up dead, raped or falsely accused of rape. But in a nation of people in constant terror of being perceived as "judgmental," I'm not sure most people do recognize that anymore.

It shouldn't be necessary to point out that girls shouldn't be bar-hopping alone or taking their clothes off in front of strangers, and that young men shouldn't be hiring strippers. But we live in a world of Bill Clinton, Paris Hilton, Howard Stern, Julia Roberts in "Pretty Woman," Democratic fund-raisers at the Playboy Mansion and tax deductions for entertaining clients at strip clubs.

Read the whole thing. She's right on target.

We might add the observation that as a society we've become conditioned to dread being called "judgmental," and as a consequence we're loath to make moral judgments. We've become so accustomed to hearing the refrain that we shouldn't impose our morality on others that we shrink from asserting that hiring a stripper, or being one, is morally wrong.

The fact of the matter is that "being judgmental" is merely making moral judgments without a proper consideration of all the relevant facts. Of course we shouldn't do that, but it doesn't follow that we should not, therefore, make moral judgments at all. Moreover, the person who takes us to task for being "judgmental" when we make a moral judgment is a hypocrite. By making a judgment about our behavior he's doing exactly what he criticizes in us.

Besides, the idea that we shouldn't impose our morality on others is itself a moral notion. It has force only if one believes that moral right and wrong actually exist, but there can only be moral right and wrong if there exists a transcendent moral law-giver. If there is no such moral law-giver then whatever I do is neither right nor wrong. Thus, whatever I have the power and the desire to do, I may do. That includes imposing my morality on others. I am obligated to respect the "rights" of others only by God. Nothing else can obligate me in any moral sense.

Moreover, the person who says that you shouldn't impose your morality on others is, of course, doing himself exactly what he reproaches you for doing. He's trying to foist upon you his sense of what is right and what is wrong, but he's too dull to see his own hypocrisy.

At any rate, as Ann Coulter suggests, whatever happened at that house in Durham, none of it was good, and a lot of it was morally debased. All concerned should feel deeply ashamed of themselves.

Much Spoken, Nothing Said

The following exchange on CBS's Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer nicely illustrates the Democrats' difficulty. They can't talk about Iraq and Iran without sounding like they've been fraternizing with Jefferson Airplane's white rabbit. Here's New Mexico governor and potential Democrat presidential candidate Elliot Richardson traipsing along the edge of incoherence:

SCHIEFFER: Where do you think we are right now [in Iraq]? And, I guess, more importantly, Governor, where do you think we go from here?

Gov. RICHARDSON: Well, where we go from here is, I believe the time has come for a strategy, an announcement on disengagement. I believe that the war is very badly run; our objectives are not being fulfilled. I would redeploy those forces that we have in Iraq to the surrounding area to deal with real threats to America--the war on terrorism, our increasing lack of influence in Afghanistan with al-Qaeda. Right now the situation in Iran is potentially another Iraq. I believe what you need now is a very strong effort to get the three leaderships in Iraq, the Shiites, the Sunnis, the Kurds, to form a coalition government, put maximum pressure for them to do that, and then redeploy American forces to where we really have true national security threats. Our problem right now...is our obsession with Iraq has caused us to lack paying attention to real threats to our country like terrorism...

When Richardson is not simply saying that we should do what Bush is already doing his suggestions are either recipes for disaster or they are incomprehensible. What does he mean, for example, when he refers to our increasing lack of influence with al-Qaeda? When have we ever had any influence with al-Qaeda? Even Schieffer isn't sure what the governor is trying to say:

SCHIEFFER: But are you saying that we just need to turn and get out of there? Because won't that be taken as a sign of weakness, won't the terrorists think they have won, and won't that encourage them to strike someplace else?

Gov. RICHARDSON: No, what I would do, Bob, is early next year I believe we fix a date certain for the start of an American withdrawal because right now our policy is just not working, and the civil war is getting worse. What I would do is call a Mideast conference, a summit, of Muslim countries to help with training the Iraqi security forces along with us; and then secondly, a real reconstruction effort among other Arab countries, wealthy countries, that deal with the reconstruction of Iraq. But our policy is not working, and we have to change course, and this is why Secretary Rumsfeld and the president need to at least admit that what we're doing is not working and have some course corrections. They're unwilling to even do that.

Now there's a brilliant strategy. Place Iraq in the tender care of other Muslim countries. How clever. May we ask, though, which ones? Which of the Muslim countries is best suited to tutor Iraq in its quest to establish democratic institutions and to nurture a decent regard for human rights? Tough question? Well, no matter. Our current policy isn't working. We've been at it now for three whole years and Iraq is still unsettled. We need to do something different. It doesn't matter how idiotic, as long as it's different.

SCHIEFFER: Let's shift to Iran. You just mentioned that there are reports that the Iranians, of course, are enriching uranium, the next step toward building a bomb. What should we do about that?

Gov. RICHARDSON: Well, first, we recognize that we cannot tolerate nuclear weapons in Iran, but, having said that, I would do totally different from what the Bush administration is doing. I would engage the Iranians directly, talk directly to them about nuclear weapons, about Iraq. They have major influence on Iraq.

Of course! Talk to them. Why didn't the Bush administration think of that? How much is CBS paying Mr. Richardson to appear on this show, anyway?

Secondly, I would stop outsourcing our foreign policy to the Europeans, to the International Atomic Energy Agency, to the UN Security Council. I believe if we talk directly to them, but build an international consensus, international support--this is why the fraying of our relationship with the Europeans, with the allies, has been so costly is because we can't build a true international coalition that engages the third world also and surrounding countries to get Iran to stop developing nuclear weapons.

No, the fraying of our relations with the Europeans had more to do with the fact that toppling Saddam cost them some lucrative military contracts and deprived them of a handsome income from oil for food kickbacks. Europe is Europe. They're not going to confront Iran over nuclear weapons any more than they were willing to confront Hitler, Stalin, Milosevic, the Hutus, or Saddam. Heck, France won't even reform its own laws to save itself from economic dilapidation if it means having to confront a few thousand malcontent students. It's certainly not going to stand up to a lunatic like Ahamdinejad.

Now, we have some time. We have five to 10 years before they develop a nuclear weapon. What we need to do, in that process, Bob, is use diplomacy, coercive diplomacy, potentially sanctions, special envoys, instead of talking about using military options. The fact that the Pentagon leaked that we would use tactical nuclear weapons is ridiculous.

What on earth is he talking about? Nobody in the administration has said anything about using nukes. Seymour Hersh, a journalist, said that. Of course, that nukes would be an option if matters came to war is not news. It's simply common sense. If you have a weapon then that weapon is an option. That doesn't mean that the weapon will be used. Much less does it mean that the administration is talking publically about using them.

Military options should always be on the table, but you don't bring it out first. You exercise your full diplomatic engagement and tools, and the start of that is talking directly to them about borders.

Thanks Elliot. Great advice. You'd make a fine president of the Kiwanis Club.

Ramirez Cartoon

Thanks to No Left Turns.

Finally Seeing the Light

It only took Patrick Moore 35 years to learn what most people have known all along:

In the early 1970s when I helped found Greenpeace, I believed that nuclear energy was synonymous with nuclear holocaust, as did most of my compatriots. That's the conviction that inspired Greenpeace's first voyage up the spectacular rocky northwest coast to protest the testing of U.S. hydrogen bombs in Alaska's Aleutian Islands. Thirty years on, my views have changed, and the rest of the environmental movement needs to update its views, too, because nuclear energy may just be the energy source that can save our planet from another possible disaster: catastrophic climate change.

Look at it this way: More than 600 coal-fired electric plants in the United States produce 36 percent of U.S. emissions -- or nearly 10 percent of global emissions -- of CO2, the primary greenhouse gas responsible for climate change. Nuclear energy is the only large-scale, cost-effective energy source that can reduce these emissions while continuing to satisfy a growing demand for power. And these days it can do so safely.

Every argument Mr. Moore adduces in the rest of this article in support of nuclear power has been in circulation for over three decades. They're certainly not new. Meanwhile, because of the efforts of radical environmentalists like him, our energy efforts have focussed on carbon-based fuels which have filled the atmosphere with carbon dioxide and acid and lined the pockets of Arab sheiks. When future historians consider the number of lives lost because of pollution and the toll taken by terrorism funded by oil-rich Muslims; when they consider the economic cost of both the damage caused by pollution and the attempts to control it; when they consider that a relatively clean and cheaper (in the long run) method of energy production was all the while available in nuclear fission, they will shake their heads at our stupidity.

We can be happy that Mr. Moore has finally seen the light, but we're entitled to ask, what took him so long?

Screwing in a Light Bulb

The question debated is "How many Darwinists does it take to screw in a light bulb." Check out Cartago for a humorous bit of satire at the expense of some of the major players in the ID/Darwinism debate.

Israel's Three Choices

Another Palestinian suicide murderer claims seven Israeli lives. Hamas justifies the atrocity by calling it a legitimate act of self-defense. Evidently, in the radical Palestinian mind, such as it is, Israeli restaurant patrons are serious threats to the safety of the Palestinian people.

Israel cannot allow the slaughter of their citizens to continue. The Palestinians have clearly shown they're not interested in living in peace with Israel. Ed Morrissey at Captain's Quarters puts it this way:

The Palestinians will never disarm under their present political structure. They have proven over and over again to have Israel's annihilation as their national goal. The only hope that the world has in ending this conflict is either to allow Israel to complete its withdrawal and border wall to seal off the Palestinians altogether, or to allow both sides to fight an open war with the entire area as a winner-take-all. The Palestinians have voted for this approach twice. They will not change until they understand that they still have something to lose in the process. Until the impulse for peace and rational co-existence comes into being in the West Bank and Gaza, we have to acknowledge the reality that the Palestinians do not want either.

There is a third alternative for the Israelis. They could pack up and move to Greenland. Their choices are wall, war, or walk. The last isn't likely, and the left, by opposing the first, makes the second almost inevitable. War would be tragic, but that's what the Palestinians voted for when they voted for Hamas.

Making the Right to Carry Universal

Armed citizens have done much recently to demonstrate the value of right to carry permits. Check out this sample of stories courtesy of Civilian Gun Defense Blog. See here, here, and here's one more:

The fatal shooting of an aggravated robbery suspect in the 1200 block of Canterlane about 3:30 a.m. today will be referred to a Harris County grand jury, Houston police said.

The identity of the deceased suspect, who had been shot in the stomach, is pending notification of next of kin.

The robbery victim is identified as Derriun Raney, 26. He suffered a cut on his head.

Police said the suspect, dressed in black and wearing socks on his hands, knocked on the front door of Raney's residence. Raney, who had been asleep inside, opened the door with a pistol in his hand. He said he was repeatedly struck in the head with a tire iron by the suspect.

He then fired several shots at the suspect striking him in the abdomen, police said. The suspect fell to the ground and died on the front yard, police said.

Witnesses told police that the suspect intended to rob Raney.

When it begins to dawn on the human refuse which populates our streets that many of their intended victims are capable of responding with lethal force there will be far fewer attempts to create more victims. It's sad that we live in a society in which old people and shop owners feel they have to arm themselves, but it's quite obvious that we do. No one should be denied the right to protect themselves, or their families, which is why we support universal right to carry laws which would allow anyone licensed to carry a firearm in his/her home state to legally carry in any state.

For Weak Spelers

Those of you for whom spelling is not a strength will find this e-mail we received to be somewhat reassuring:

i cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno't mtaetr in waht oerdr the ltteres in a wrod are, the olny iproamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it whotuit a pboerlm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Azanmig huh? yaeh and I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt!

It is indeed amazing. Not only is it just the first and last letters that are important, though, it is also the context. We have an expectation, based upon context, as to the meaning of a sentence and thus an expectation as to what word belongs in it. Evidently our mind "sees" that word as soon as we receive the visual clues provided by scanning the first and last letters.

We're constantly astounded at what blind chance, time, and physical forces can accomplish purely by accident.

Talk About the Plan

William Arkin argues in The Washington Post that the U.S. is upgrading plans for an attack against Iran and that we should be publicizing the fact. His argument is that Iran needs to know it's playing a deadly serious game.

Unfortunately, we think they know this full well. The trouble is they think they're going to win it.

VDH on the Critics

Victor Davis Hanson surveys the current controversies surrounding the prosecution of our policies in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Iran and concludes that the criticisms are pretty much vacuous and inconclusive:

Apart from the ethical questions involved in promoting a book or showcasing a media appearance during a time of war by offering an "inside" view unknown to others of the supposedly culpable administration of the military, what is striking is the empty nature of these controversies rehashed ad nauseam.

Hanson goes on to write an outstanding piece, putting these controversies into historical perspective. He concludes with this:

What we need, then, are not more self-appointed ethicists, but far more humility and recognition that in this war nothing is easy. Choices have been made, and remain to be made, between the not very good and the very, very bad. Most importantly, so far, none of our mistakes has been unprecedented, fatal to our cause, or impossible to correct.

So let us have far less self-serving second-guessing, and far more national confidence that we are winning - and that radical Islamists and their fascist supporters in the Middle East are soon going to lament the day that they ever began this war.

Anyone interested in the debates over who should be blamed and what they should be blamed for would do well to read Hanson's essay.

Quagmire? What Quagmire?

Despite the almost uniform media emphasis on what's wrong in Iraq there's much happening there that is good. Bill Crawford has a summary of this week's good news from Iraq in which he notes the military and economic successes taking place there.

At the end of his post he describes some wonderful acts of American heroism. Check it out. The whole post is a good antidote to the MSM insistence that we're bogged down hip-deep in an Iraqi "quagmire."

The Universal Acid

One of the strategies that Darwinians have developed to make evolution more palatable to the masses is to insist that there is really no threat, no conflict, between evolution and belief in God. At the level of logic this is true, but in terms of human psychology it's very misleading. The number of scientists who claim that studying evolution as a student drove a stake through the heart of their religious belief is legion. To take just one prominent example consider the late John Maynard Smith who acknowledges in this brief interview the role that reading Darwin played in his journey away from the Christianity of his youth.

It is possible to be a Christian and believe in some versions of evolution, but it is simply disingenuous to deny that evolution is a "universal acid" that dissolves the faith of many of those who embrace it.

Why People Despise Big Oil

Soaring gas prices are squeezing most Americans at the pump, but at least one man isn't complaining. Last year, Exxon made the biggest profit of any company ever, $36 billion, and its retiring chairman appears to be reaping the benefits:

Exxon is giving Lee Raymond one of the most generous retirement packages in history, nearly $400 million, including pension, stock options and other perks, such as a $1 million consulting deal, two years of home security, personal security, a car and driver, and use of a corporate jet for professional purposes.

Last November, when he was still chairman of Exxon, Raymond told Congress that gas prices were high because of global supply and demand. "We're all in this together, everywhere in the world," he testified.

Yes, but as someone remarked on one of the Sunday talk shows, we're obviously not all in it in the same way.

Mahmoud Won't Shut Up

Mahmoud Amadinejad is apparently determined to make it impossible for the U.S. to avoid war with Iran without appearing craven and weak. He's ostensibly thumbing his nose and sticking out his tongue at Israel, but the real target is the U.S:

The president of Iran again lashed out at Israel on Friday and said it was "heading toward annihilation," just days after Tehran raised fears about its nuclear activities by saying it successfully enriched uranium for the first time.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called Israel a "permanent threat" to the Middle East that will "soon" be liberated. He also appeared to again question whether the Holocaust really happened.

"Like it or not, the Zionist regime is heading toward annihilation," Ahmadinejad said at the opening of a conference in support of the Palestinians. "The Zionist regime is a rotten, dried tree that will be eliminated by one storm."

Ahmadinejad provoked a world outcry in October when he said Israel should be "wiped off the map."

On Friday, he repeated his previous line on the Holocaust, saying: "If such a disaster is true, why should the people of this region pay the price? Why does the Palestinian nation have to be suppressed and have its land occupied?"

The land of Palestine, he said, referring to the British mandated territory that includes all of Israel, Gaza and the West Bank, "will be freed soon."

He did not say how this would be achieved, but insisted to the audience of at least 900 people: "Believe that Palestine will be freed soon."

Ahmadinejad is taunting the world to try to stop him, perhaps because he believes that Bush is too weak politically to do it by himself and that no one else will join us in the enterprise. He may be right about the rest of the world, and he's right that Bush is wounded. Where he is very likely mistaken, however, is in his assumption that Bush will be constrained in his decisions by poll numbers.

I fear that Ahamdinejad is "misunderestimating" this president just as so many others have done in the past. Bush is going to do what he believes is right regardless of what everyone else thinks and that may well portend bad news on the doorstep for Mr. Mahmoud.

For more of the same from Ahmadinejad's underlings see here.

Pounding the Taliban

Bill Roggio at The Fourth Rail brings us up to date on developments in the GWOT in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Go to the link and scroll down for three or four posts.

Linda Blair in 2006

Perhaps Maryscott O'Connor is not typical of people on the left. Perhaps she's way out beyond the planet Pluto. But if so there are evidently thousands of people out there with her. Her, and their, hate and venom is, if not pathological, at least indistinguishable from it. These are despicable people, yes, but they are also pathetic and terribly sad. They may deserve opprobrium and contempt but they need our prayers. Read this from the Washington Post - you'll wonder how a human being can be so vicious:

SHERMAN OAKS, Calif. -- In the angry life of Maryscott O'Connor, the rage begins as soon as she opens her eyes and realizes that her president is still George W. Bush. The sun has yet to rise and her family is asleep, but no matter; as soon as the realization kicks in, O'Connor, 37, is out of bed and heading toward her computer. Out there, awaiting her building fury: the Angry Left, where O'Connor's reputation is as one of the angriest of all. "One long, sustained scream" is how she describes the writing she does for various Web logs, as she wonders what she should scream about this day.

She smokes a cigarette. Should it be about Bush, whom she considers "malevolent," a "sociopath" and "the Antichrist"? She smokes another cigarette. Should it be about Vice President Cheney, whom she thinks of as "Satan," or about Karl Rove, "the devil"? Should it be about the "evil" Republican Party, or the "weaselly, capitulating, self-aggrandizing, self-serving" Democrats, or the Catholic Church, for which she says "I have a special place in my heart . . . a burning, sizzling, putrescent place where the guilty suffer the tortures of the damned"?

Darfur, she finally decides. She will write about Darfur. The shame of it. The culpability of all Americans, including herself, for doing nothing. She will write something so filled with outrage that it will accomplish the one thing above all she wants from her anger: to have an effect.

"Darfur is not hopeless," she begins typing, and pauses.

"Ugh," she says.

"You are not helpless," she continues typing, and pauses again.

"Weak."

She deletes everything and starts over.

"WAKE THE [expletive] UP," she writes next, and this time, instead of pausing, she keeps going, typing harder and harder on a keyboard that is surrounded by a pack of cigarettes, a dirty ashtray, a can of nonalcoholic beer, an album with photos of her dead father and a taped-up note -- staring at her -- on which she has scrawled "Why am I/you here?"

These are mean times.

"I just want to see these [expletive] swinging from their heels in the public square," reads a recent comment from someone named Dave in a discussion about the Bush administration on a Web site called Eschaton.

Crude times, too.

"Laura Bush Talks; No One Gives a [expletive]," someone who calls himself the Rude Pundit writes on his Web site, and he continues: "The Rude Pundit doesn't give a retarded dog drool what Laura Bush has to say about the Olympics."

Loud, crass and instantaneous.

"I feel like I'm being molested everytime I hear his voice," one person writes on the Daily Kos Web site while watching a Bush news conference.

What's notable about this isn't only the level of anger but the direction from which it is coming. Not that long ago, it was the right that was angry and the left that was, at least comparatively, polite. But after years of being the targets of inflammatory rhetoric, not only from fringe groups but also from such mainstream conservative politicians as Newt Gingrich, the left has gone on the attack. And with Republicans in control of Washington, they have much more to be angry about.

"Powerlessness" is O'Connor's explanation. "This is born of powerlessness."

To what, effect, though? Do the hundreds of thousands of daily visitors to Daily Kos, who sign their comments with phrases such as "Anger is energy," accomplish anything other than talking among themselves? The founder of Daily Kos, Markos Moulitsas, may have a wide enough reputation at this point to consult regularly with Democrats on Capitol Hill, but what about the heart and soul of Daily Kos, the other visitors, whose presence extends no further than what they read and write on the site?

How about the 125,000 or so daily visitors to Eschaton? Or the thousands who visit Rude Pundit, the Smirking Chimp or My Left Wing, which is O'Connor's Web site?

Put another way, can one person sitting alone in a living room, typing her fingertips numb on a keyboard, make a difference?

"Rage, rage against the Lying of the Right" is the subtitle of O'Connor's Web site.

"If I can't rant, I don't want to be part of your revolution" is how she signs her comments, in the place other people might write "Sincerely."

"I was not like this before," she says. "I was riddled with empathy for everyone suffering in the world. Classic bleeding-heart liberal."

Before:

She signed petitions. She boycotted veal. She canvassed for Greenpeace. She donated to Planned Parenthood. She read the Nation, the New Yorker, the Utne Reader and Mother Jones. She agonized over low wages for overseas workers every time she bought a $40 leather purse.

Then George W. Bush was elected. Then came 9/11, Afghanistan, Iraq, Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, the Patriot Act, secret prisons, domestic eavesdropping, the revamping of the Supreme Court, and the thought "It has come to the point where the worst people on Earth are running the Earth." And now, "I have become one of those people with all the bumper stickers on their car," she says. "I am this close to being one of those muttering people pushing a cart.

"I'm insane with rage and grief.

"But I also feel more connected than I ever have."

The people she's connected to include Shanikka, who decides one day to post on O'Connor's Web site a 737-word "open letter to President George W. Bush" that says in part: "You can't hide from the truth, Dubbya. You also can't hide from yourself. And it is YOU, Mr. President, that you need to run from. Because you are the problem. You destroy everything you touch professionally when you're left to do what you want. Everything."

To which another of O'Connor's connections, Bill, responds, "A most excelentest rant, shanikka, but don't you think you should distill this down to twenty-five words or less if you want [Bush] to read it? Or have it read to him. I'm sure he has ADD."

To which Nite74 responds, "ADD implies that some attention span is already present to be deficient."

To which Linnaeus responds, "I might say, though, that saying he has ADD is an insult to those who actually have it."

To which Bill, responding to his responders, writes, "It was rather though[t]less of me to compare the most asinine, brutal, criminal, disgusting, enraging, felonious, gross, horrendous, incompetent, jaundiced, kleptocratic, lazy, malicious, nefarious, objectional, psychopathic, quarrelsome, repulsive, sanctimonious, treasonous, unfit, vindictive, wasteful, xenophobic, yahooish, zealotic piece of [expletive] inhabiting the White House and the planet to persons suffering with a neurobiological disorder."

And on it goes, every day, around the clock, on Web site after Web site. Since its debut last July, My Left Wing has had some 450,000 visits and is now averaging about 3,000 visits and 14,000 page views a day. At any given moment, several dozen people are looking at the site, and user data shows that they are all over the world -- mostly from the United States, occasionally from overseas and often from Washington, D.C., where the log-on addresses sometimes end in senate.gov or house.gov.

All of which O'Connor finds remarkable, especially when she considers her route to this point -- the complications of which are reflected in the items she keeps close at hand.

The cigarettes are because of a personality that she describes as compulsive.

The nonalcoholic beer is because for several years she drank to excess.

The note that says "Why am I/you here?" is because she is in constant search of an answer.

And the photo album is because of a 25-year-old Marine who died fighting in Vietnam three months before she was born, which she thinks helps explain the note, the alcohol, the cigarettes and the very first piece of writing she ever published online, a rant against the war in Iraq that began, "Every single millisecond of my life was directly affected by the nightmare that was Vietnam."

As for the keyboard, it is where O'Connor finished her evolution from lost soul to angry soul, beginning with that very first rant, which concluded with a wish that Bush, "after contracting incurable cancer and suffering for protracted periods of time without benefit of medication," go to hell.

She wrote it, sent it to Daily Kos, saw it appear online, watched as people responded to it -- and learned something about the effect of being both heartfelt and vicious. "It's impactful," she says. "It gets attention."

It also felt good, she says, transforming even, and soon she was posting regularly to Daily Kos, where she became one of the more widely read diarists with attention-getters such as "Go [expletive] Yourself, Mrs. Cheney" and "Bush Must Be HIV Positive By Now (you can't [expletive] 500 million people and not get infected)."

Then, ready to try her own site, she started My Left Wing, and now she is practically banging on the keyboard as she finishes a 1,000-word piece about the need for sanctions and peacekeeping forces as ways to stop the violence in Darfur.

"You don't think you can do anything? ANYTHING? You're right. YOU can't do anything. But WE can. WE CAN," she writes.

"MAKE SOME [expletive] NOISE ABOUT DARFUR and you WILL be heard, and it WILL be addressed. Keep silent . . . and none of your future 'How could we let it happen' elegies will mean a good goddamn."

Almost finished.

She attaches a photograph she finds on the Internet of a pile of bones and skin that turns out to be a dying little boy.

"All right," she says nervously, after checking everything for spelling errors. "Here it goes."

She clicks the mouse, and "WAKE THE [expletive] UP" instantly appears on My Left Wing, where, at the moment, 57 people are signed on.

A few seconds later, to increase its chances for impact, she sends "WAKE THE [expletive] UP" to Daily Kos, where the number of viewers per hour is about 30,000.

Thirty-eight seconds later, she gets her first response.

"I'M AWAKE!!!!!!" it says.

"I'm going to be proud of this," O'Connor says, as the responses keep building. Ten now. Twenty-five.

Meanwhile, around her, the other parts of her life go on: the two-bedroom rental, the car that got egged at the grocery store because of the bumper stickers, the family.

Her husband, Adam, who works as a lighting technician in Hollywood and is generally calmer about things, comes in from the kitchen. "I have an announcement," he says.

"The disposal is fixed?" she says.

"Yes."

She gets up, hugs him, comes back, sits down, checks the latest responses.

Nearing 50 now.

The front door opens and in comes her 6-year-old son, Terry, home from school, who starts batting around a blue balloon at the other end of the living room, batting it closer to her, closer, closer. She searches through her iTunes library until she finds one of her favorite downloads -- not music, but a speech by a character named Howard Beale in the movie "Network." She presses "play" and turns up the volume. "I want you to get mad!" Beale shouts at one point. "I want you to get mad!" she shouts along, startling Terry. "What?" he says, backing away with his balloon.

Past 60 responses now, and as they keep coming O'Connor describes a trip she took to Washington last September for a rally against the Iraq war. It was a "buoyant" experience, she says, "exuberant," right up until the moment that the speakers onstage began yammering about things that had nothing to do with why they had gathered.

Free Palestine? Free some death-row inmate? End global warming? "That was when I just freaking lost it," she says. "Shut up! Shut up!" she remembers screaming into a bullhorn.

Now, as the responses near 100, O'Connor has a cigarette.

Now, as they head toward 200, she picks up the album about her father, where there's a letter from him to his wife, written three days before he died, that ends, "I love you and the baby more than I ever knew a person could love."

The baby.

He never knew her name, or that she was a girl, or that his wife weighed less on the day their daughter was born than when she was conceived. "Catatonic" is how O'Connor describes what her mother became for a while, and then the mother got better, and then the daughter got worse, and then the daughter got better by becoming angry rather than silent about a new war, so angry she began wishing her president would go to hell.

"I've got to stop looking at this," she says, putting the album away and turning back to the screen.

Meanwhile, over on Eschaton, Dave is writing, "As a matter of fact -- I do hate Bush!"

On Rude Pundit: "George W. Bush is the anti-Midas. Everything he touches turns to [expletive]."

On the Smirking Chimp: "I. Despise. These. [Expletive]!"

And on Daily Kos and My Left Wing, the responses keep rolling in.

"Thank you, Maryscott."

"Thank you for the kick in the [expletive]."

"I wrote to my [expletive] so-called representatives."

"I also wrote to my [expletive] congressman to get off his [expletive] [expletive] and do the right [expletive] thing."

"You know what?" O'Connor says. "I did a good thing today." And for a moment, anyway, she isn't angry at all.

These people don't need criticism, they need an exorcism.

Top Ten Movies About Jesus

Christianity Today offers a Top Ten list of the best movies ever made about Jesus. We haven't seen them all, but there really are only two films on the list that we could recommend: Franco Zeferelli's 1977 Jesus of Nazareth and Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ made in 2004. Nothing else we've ever seen comes close. The others that we have seen seem too stilted, artificial, and implausible to merit a recommendation.

Jesus of Nazareth is much longer (six and a half hours) and has a wider scope, covering most of the life of Christ as revealed in the gospels. The Passion of the Christ depicts only his last twelve hours. Ironically, perhaps, our chief criticism of both Zeferelli's and Gibson's versions is the same: They both present a very unsatisfying portrayal of the resurrection. In both films this incomparable event seems almost like an "Oh, by the way" afterthought. Neither of them film it with the drama and power that one might wish for in such an astonishingly important and miraculous occurrence.

On the other hand, one of the best things about both movies is the actors who play the Christ. Robert Powell and Jim Caveziel do a wonderful job of making Jesus real and their portrayals are appealling and plausible. Both movies also have an outstanding supporting cast and both strive for a realism, or in Gibson's case, a hyperrealism, that avoids the cartoonishness of other films.

We recommend them both with two caveats: Jesus of Nazareth takes a couple of nights to watch and The Passion is not for children.