"Dear Mr. Data, You Made Me Love You"

Trust Camille Paglia to provide the most exuberantly accurate diagnosis of Star Trek. [UPDATE: Link fixed courtesy of tip by commenter.]

"You know that crushing feeling of general helplessness that envelops you like a leaden blanket? Vodka can make it go away."

Amelie Gillette comes up with the best marketing campaign ever. Check it out.

I had no idea how much conservatives hate Bush all the sudden...

Greenwald surfs the right-wing blogosphere so we don't have to, to get the flavor of conservative reaction to Bush's big new immigration red herring, and comes up with astonishing news to report: apparently, the full-scale abandon-ship of the axis of right-wing bitterness. After carefully hand-crafting a political engine of xenophobia, it's tough to stay on for the whole ride.

And they say the Democratic base is just a loose collection of independent interests - the interests don't get more independent, or more mutually opposed, than the cheap-labor-loving big-business interests that provide the money and command the truly heartfelt loyalty of the GOP, and the social conformist-isolationists the GOP has counted on to get out the vote and who are now turning immigrants into the new scapegoat.

Bush's approval rating was already going to keep tanking - the bungled Iraq war alone is enough to keep pushing the national sentiment toward those responsible for it ever further downward, for as long as it goes on - whether or not America has as much righteous indignation over warrantless domestic spying and prisoner abuse as it should. But with the very core of his base now finding excuses to desert him and trade fantasies of impeachment, I would not place even money on Bush finishing out the summer without pulling a federal version of a Bob Taft, and hitting a new all-time lowest approval rating of any president in the history of polling.

If only the country would stop thinking of impeachment as a drastic step, and think of it more like a European parliament voting no confidence in their prime minister. Impeachment is a vital tool for expressing the democratic will - in this case, the democratic will to dispose of executives who commit not just high crimes, but even just misdemeanors - even just little infractions - as we would expect of an executive who remains subservient to the people and their elected legislature, as the Framers intended.

"Bush approval rating hits new low" - again... and again... and again...

How many times does this headline have to run before it's no longer newsworthy to note that Bush's approval rating has once again inexorably declined? It's kind of like a headline that says "Thousands dead from old age". I guess it will be newsworthy again when Bush actually breaks the record for lowest approval rating of any president in the history of polling. But at this rate, that's coming up in about two weeks - the papers might as well hold off til then to keep the story fresh.

Zen blog koan: what is the sound of an empty post?