The average Congressperson's idea of "government waste" is a dollar spent in someone else's district.

Delay won due to the fact that the only people the bothered to vote were loyal Delay "Bushies". There was less than a 7% turnout of registered voters. This is exceptionally less that the usual 15% due to the fact that we have 2 independent candidates running for Governor which has been encouraging people not to vote in the Primary so they can sign the "Independents" petitions for Governor.

Tom Delay is so in deep being a sleazeball, its his second nature and he doesn't see anything he does is wrong. Thats the problem.

The red states as Tom Delay represents are the ones leeching off the blue states. They don't send enough tax money to justify some of the big pork they get. Look at Alaska, a mostly rural state with a small population. That little Sen. Ted Stevens wanted tax dollars for a bridge to nowhere and he got it, but his state doesn't send the kind of revenue to say they put in their fair share. Ted threatened to quit if they made him give it back to use instead for rebuilding New Orleans after hurricane Katrina. What an arrogant self serving bum.

Tom Delay is just as ethically challenged and no amount of classes will change that. He's rotten to the core.

In most jurisdictions, they arrest people who are willing to do anything for money, and call them whores. In DC, they pat them on the back and call them politicians. I guess it's all in the amount charged....

Yeah... I always thought the problem was political until I realized that the problem was man himself. Man by his very nature is evil, lazy, greedy, and corrupt. All religions are an attempt to save man from himself. To bad that there aren't any religions that haven't been corrupted by man.

Maybe its just not worth trying to save people from themselves!!! What do you expect from the state that gave us Phil Graham, Kay Bailey Hutchinson and George Bush... Damn I wish we have never annexed Texas!!

I can not believe that Delay won the primary. Are these Texan brain dead. How can they put this corrupt person back in office. Wake up people!!!

Amen Doug! Keep up the good work. I just read that he won his nomination this morning and I felt sick to my stomach. It's sad that criminals and sleazeballs can keep being elected to political office. Maybe one day the electorate will wake up. Not holding my breath, but I can dream!

Too bad Doug didn't make the call for term limits. If DeLay had been term limited, then he would have to run for the Senate or some other office on a statewide basis. But as it is gerrymandering keeps him and others like him in the same political office in perpetuity. Unless, of course, he retires, croaks, or is imprisoned a la Randy "Duke" Cunningham.

When 7% of the "faithful" turn out to vote, you get Tom DeLay. I often wonder if the total malaise of the American people is not growing and this concept that they are finally coming to and giving a damn, certainly doesn't show it in Texas.

Hell GWB flew in the big plane all the way to Texas to vote for DeLay I'm sure. I think the Republican Party's new motto should be

VOTE EARLY....AND OFTEN

Well, I'm Texan, and I have many friends who live in Delay's district, and some despise him and are embarrassed by his victories. Yet, his money seems to be able to buy a lot of yard signs among these wealthy right wingers who see the world through the lens of a FOX camera. I mean, who else goes to a primary other than die-hards? I've never been to any primary in all my life. Most Texans don't even vote in any election. And after I saw Bush get re-elected, I vowed to never vote again for the rest of my life. We deserve our hell after that stupidity.
And don't blame Texas. How many democrats have stood up against Delay or Bush nationwide? Very few. At least the Dems in the Texas state government tried fruitlessly to flee the state to stop Delay's gerrymandering. That's far more effort than anybody nationally or out of state ever did against these fascists.
Americans are determined to relearn ancient lessons the hard way.

Senator Gramm was replaced with Senator Cornyn, just another rubber stamp.

What is the point to vote in Texas?

People who have served time are not allowed to vote, but criminals can run for election.

8 March

Don't condemn all of Texas. Rep. Dr. Ron Paul, the only Congressman who votes as if he believes the Constitution means something and ought to be followed, comes from there also.

As voters and citizens, we ought to read (or reread) our Constitution and hold our Congressmen and Senators, regardless of "party", to that standard.

The only way to halt the sleaze in Washington is to force our Congressmen & Senators to that spending authorized by Article II Section 8 of the Constitution. It's either that, or continue to watch our Government's debt swell beyond the current $8.2 TRILLION to the eventual meltdown.

I don't see a lot of hope for this country. The reps in Congress don't give a damn about our country or the citizens. And "We the People" don't give a damn about our country or the inherent freedoms guaranteed in the Constitution. If "We" did, then the message would come across loud and clear to Washington, through letters, email, phone calls, and when those did not work, then marching in the streets.

The sad part is this country is so messed up that I believe our police and military would fire on "We the People" as we are protesting the loss of the rights being fought for. I don't know, maybe I'm a bit disheartened today. I fear the masses will huddle until it is too late, rather than rise up against insidious erosion of our rights. Perhaps it is better to be a brain dead zombie than fight against the death of our Constitution.

You have to realize that if they had not reelected this ass they would be electronically surveilled. Fear factor doug, fear factor!

Primaries mean very little anymore unless for whatever reason you have a DeLay type running against a Mother teresa in the same party. It's the election that's important. Nothing would be finer in Texas that give DeLay the resounding, crushing defeat he deserves. That means EVERYBODY who knows what DeLay stands for gets out and votes democratic now or independent should their be another person in the race

The elections of 2006 for house and Senate MUST, MUST send this gang of thugs, regardless of the party packing top send any message at all. If you voted for the Patriot Act and are up for re-election...your history should be the rule of thumb.

If you believe spying on ordinary Americans is OK same fate.

If you want to compromise on the ports deal...DITTO.

It's the ONLY way, The ONLY way for Americans to take their country back to the great nation it once was and still can be....after the changes are made.

After the 06 elections then thoughts should turn towards impeachment...NOT MAYBE...DEFINATELY.
I keep hearing Cheney is going to quit in 2007 but of course there is nothing firm on that or even sustainable as fact.

NOTE: Yesterday Cheney said Iraq will NOT have neuclear weapons. BUSH said nothing. Any doubt as to who's running the store. ??

So the most ethically challenged human most people have ever seen gets re-nominated by his party. OK. Doug is right it should not surprise anyone. Most of the people in his district believe FOXNews is gospel. After all it is the moputhpiece of the Republican Party. The get their marching orders and talking points from FOX. When FOX repeats the the talking points all day, it BECOMES the truth.

I really HOPE that George W. Bush and his crew of goosesteppers do NOT see the upcoming film V fo Vendetta. We do not need to give these cheesedick motherfuckers ANY new ideas for trampling on the Constituition anymore than the already have.

An incumbent in a tiny primary against a handful of mopes? How could he lose?

Doug's title is 100% correct. What else could one expect from a state that worships a war criminal and pathological liar like George W. Bush? Most of the country has woken up from their coma, but not Texas. They're still in their trance and not likely to wake up any time soon.

There you have it!

It's the voters' fault. Gee, that was easy!

By the way, doing the math, Delay getting 65% of a 7% Republican turnout means a whopping 4.55% even bothered with electing yet another yahoo--almost as if the rest (95.45%) understand, and have been reading your words lately, in which you illustrated just how little difference there is between parties or politicians.

There is sleaze and corruption to high heaven in DC, and it is the fault of the voter? Or non-voter? Yeah, right. Feel better now?

Maybe tomorrow you cant rant about how it's really the fault of those 95.45% who agreed with your previous words, and said "no" to all four GOP politicians. I sure it will end up as something like "voter apathy," but then--that will have you, at least, getting a little closer to the heart of the matter.

This morning on C-SPAN the new bill to give the president line item veto was discussed. One of the arguments in favor is the President can remove "pork". Argument against, President will remove "pork" or "projects" of the opposing party.

I wish I had the power to tell all so called leaders that no "pork" can be included in a budget the does not meet the following two criteria:

1) The spending must effect at least 2 states. Federal dollars should not be spent benefiting just one state, period.

2) The proposed "pork" must be related specifically to the budget legislation under proposal.

Therefore a museum cannot be funded in a transportation bill unless it is, say, an historical railroad museum in a state where the railroad was born. This would still meet criteria one as it could be argued that such a historical museum would benefit nationwide education of our nations history.

All other pork projects could be lumped together in one appropriation bill. That bill would not include any operational spending. It also cannot include any must pass legislation. This Pork Bill would have to be open to public scrutiny and comments. This Bill would sit unfunded until the government has a surplus to fund these pork items.

Would the legislature ever pass such legislation, no, not unless honest ethical people are elected to congress, and the public stops electing crooks like Tom Delay to congress.

Tom Delay was just given an award by the National Chamber of Commerce. I wrote to them questioning if they were corrupt, and asked why they would give an award to someone under inditement?

They responded that their handy dandy point system said he was entitled. I guess none of them even questioned if his business practices were in fact corrupt and therefore unworthy of praise as a question of "cheating" practices may have given him unearned points under their handy dandy system.

Have you tried to contact REAL members of Congress, like Dr. Paul and Cynthia McKinney, Doug? If not, why not? All this venting and ranting means NOTHING to those in power. They do what the hell they want, when they want, and the rights of the "cattle" be damned. Doug, with all of your connections on the inside, you could persuade AT LEAST one of them to begin to expose those genuine traitors on the inside.

I have watched this nightmare play itself out for over four years. I have had a sitting US REPRESENTATIVE tell me to my face the truth, as we were discussing what has been happening to our country, and what happens? NOT A DAMNED THING. When I say the truth, I mean THE truth, not the false left/right bullshit. For the most part this person is alone and scared and depressed because NO ONE else for the most part is doing a damned thing about any of this.

Pick your false-flag operation: OKC where the agents on the scen DE-ACTIVATED THREE DEVICES that did not go off from INSIDE the building and then had Gov. Frank Keating say that they were going to get to the bottom of what happened by seeing who designed the devices, 911 WHERE DO YOU BEGIN, London's 7/7 where Visor Consulting headed up by the ex-spokesman of Scotland Yard Peter Power was conducting drills of a terrorist attack at the exact locations at the exact times where Verint Systems was running security and hasn't released the videos from inside the tube, British SAS agents in Basra posing as Arabs killing Iraqi policeman and then when they were finally stopped having their car laden with explosives and then were busted out of Basra with tanks to make their escape, and lastly but NEVER leastly the USS Liberty where our soldiers were murdered by our "ally" to make it look like Egypt led the attack to bring us into what would amount to a WORLD WAR just what Operation Northwoods in 1961 and PNAC on September 17, 2000 called for in their use of the term "a new Pearl Harbor style attack on America"!!!!!!!!!!!

Jesus Christ, Doug, how much more???????????? How much longer are you just going to rant and rave until you realize that you have to have someone from the inside go public and expose this treason once and for all. Once that happens, the house of cards collapses. Until then, all of your ranting and raving means nothing but dots on a computer screen. That is until those camps are built and the sedition laws are re-enacted and all of those brain-dead morons watching FNC or CNN or any of the other propaganda machines, including those on the alternative side, go right along with these traitors and begin to put an end to ANY chance of exposing this once and for all.

How could you sleep at night if you did not at the very least beg and plead with AT LEAST ONE of these people to take a stand for once in their solitary lives and do something that makes a damned difference for humanity.

God knows that I have and that I have had my small successes, and I am just a regular guy working in the service industry, for Christ's sake. But until we come together as a whole and realize that YOU DO have the power to make this happen, we ARE the worthless un-clean, un-chosen, "cattle and dogs" that they believe we are.

PROVE THEM WRONG.

www.whatreallyhappened.com
www.prisonplanet.com www.prisonplanet.tv
www.iamthewitness.com

WAKE UP PEOPLE, because this IS the "Endgame." REX-84, the program for building concentration camps in America designed by Lt. Col. Oliver North, was known twenty years ago. All of this is now being implemented through the $385 million contract given to KBR to build "detention centers" for special programs requiring additional detention space. Did you "rant" about that? REX-84 was when YOU were in DC, right, Doug? You knew about the hearings where Lt. Col. North was confronted about this and what did you do? You worked for the re-election campaign of Reagan and his handler "Poppy Bush" right?

I don't know what to think now that I have seen all that I have seen, but you people had better begin asking the HARD questions and demanding the HARD answers because this is it.

Doug,

The questionable ratification of the 17th amendment plays an important role here. If senators were selected by the states as they MUST be in a republic, a lot of legislation proposed by corrupt congressmen would have much more difficulty becoming law. No, life wouldn't be perfect even with the repeal of the 17th amendment, but it'd surely be significantly better. Who will be the first state to just flat IGNORE the damn 17th amendment (nobody in power adheres to law today anyway), recall their elected senators and replace them with senators approved by the state legislatures. Article 1, Section 3

MARPLE:

Your post makes way too much sense for Texas or for Waashington. Worse it makes way too much sense for the 95% percent of the electorate who currently say "WHY BOTHER"

Personally, I think the Democrats are absolutely stunned and confused by the crap the current administration is getting away with. I think in back rooms they are assessing and learning from it to the point of how to do the same thing better and not just throw it out there....or in some cases how NOT to get caught. These are the ones who capitulated on the Patriot Act, who will do the very same on the ports deal.

I mean just look at this ports deal A SHINING example of the BUSH family and others who will make millions Duncan Hunter, Republican vows to kill it. Other Republicans vow to compromise. How interesting to watch.

If you look at it closely, the lines are so blurred now that the people have lost sight of what is and isn't and most simply don't care.

The Republicans will tell you that the Democrats are the party of Tax and spend, spend spens. They want to have benefits and a committe to manage everything from healthcare to welfare. THe Republicans will tell you that the Democrats want to control every aspect of every persons life with this or that program. Guess what !! They have in the past anyway been very close to correct

Now however we have the Republicans who spend like crazy under GWb and of course just keep printing the money. They believe that American's should control their own destiny...but they are not talking about ALL AMERICANS. They are mearly talking about those that already have. So today they have taken the spending page completely out of the Democratic playbook and enriched the already rich

There is NOTHING wrong with having money. Theree is everything wrong with how this administration gets it...mainly to friends. There is also just as much wrong with say someone who will NOT take a $6.00 and hour job because the benefits are already greater IF THEY DON'T WORK. There is your real problem. Rent assistance, fuel assistance, any assistance for schools, health should come WITH WORK, NOT without it.

If only a system with a little or the best of both were adopted, America could be great again. There is not much right with either right now so it wouldn't be hard to gather up the best of both and leave the criminal element behind. As I say you are thinking outside the box. Unpopular because it makes too much sense

I give this country 25-50 years, before it turns into either a theocracy, a klepocracy, or just goes down to become a 3rd world cesspool, like Haiti, only bigger. I'm just glad that I am old enough so that I won't be alive when the disaster happens.

Dear Doug,

As we all know Texas is different, especially when it comes their defination of "crook." Let's forgive, forget and give Texas back to Mexico.

I think the author of this blog makes a point worthy of a book-size dissertation. His concept is as solid and could be as resounding as the Peter Principle was in its day. People will vote in the candidate that will best achieve their goals, and credenitials like honesty and integrity carry less weight than results that come from dishonesty and greed.

Hey? The way I see it. If more & More Americans are NOT voting. Doesn't this tell you something? It does me. It means more and more Americans know what's going on and they may be ready to do something about it. You folks never looked at it that way. Have you? Keep up the great work Doug.

Know this Congress. I belong to a group of 5000+ and growing in numbers of Pissed off Americans. That are ready to come and help you with your problems.

I'm from Texas. I see the problem in a different light. We have land, we have sunshine,there's no loss of productivity due to snow or ice. Our water supplies are adequate. We are at 546 ft above sea level, no pollution from sewage. Then there is the cost of housing. You can now buy a mansion on the hill for what you got from your northern climate house. All the elite or the newly rich moved to Texas. The large companies came here for business benefits. The employees of the companies are thrilled to death with their new status. Dallas metroplex is 6.1 million.
Texas was Democratic before the huge influx of delighted citizens. They equate with big house, big money, and all the other benefits of their relocation to Texas.
I saw one post that referred to the Bush ranch as a family ranch. No such thing is true. He bought the land and had the house built after his election. The Bush family is from Maine not Texas. When Bush 1 ran for president his Texas address was a hotel room in Houston. Not a suite, nor apartment, just a hotel room.
So from where I am I see our loss of direction as mass influx of lambs lead to slaughter. northern Republicans. Get rid of the simpletons and we will once again be Democrat.
There is no hope that we will recover from the onslaught.
In addition these people work and travel and have no time for just exactly what I'm doing this very second, informing myself. If they fall into their huge bed in their beautiful house they may catch a few minutes of FOX and sleep and start over again. No change will come.Though I try.

Go Hammer, this is awesome.

Overheard . . . one lemming to another . . .

"If only we can just find a better piper, we will get a better cliff."

"read my lips no new texans"

We live amongst idiots who should not be voting when they get their information from TV commercials or are so close- minded, they are braindead!!!

So what??? If the voters put someone else in,in a few weeks they are just as corrupt as the one they voted out. I have just about given up on our "elected officials". Even on the Patriot Act there were only ten who voted against it, the rest just rolled over and played dead. So, I am at the point that I dont give a damn who is in office, there aint a fucking bit of difference. They are all corrupt, crooked, and should be "burned at the stake".

Look at this and tell me you think we are shitting you folks! When I SAY there is 5000+ True Blue patriotic americana in my area, ready to thwort these traitorous despots in DC!

Quote by our friend SLATS! Go Slats
(Quote)"The son's a bitches are clampin' down on everybody just like the Commie's and the Nazi's. Hell, if the Commies think they can come walking down these Chicago streets, there are 200,000 licensed deer hunters in Wisconsin and Illinois waitin' for 'em," said Slats, who once told former Congressman Dan Rostenkowski to "go to hell" at a Polish street dance near Wrigley Field.(End quote)

Hey Washington. We've had about enough of your BS!

For you folks that think Doug and the rest of us are just making this stuff up. We have a Family friend over in Afghanistan who works for the intelligence community. And (I will not name this person to protect Him) But he told us a few weeks ago that if you think the government is doint it. They are. They even know if you are having an affair with your neighbors now. And Or friends has seen the records of these kinds of intelligence gatherings. He couldn't believe it when he saw them . What does this kind of Information gathering on Americans have to do with fighting terrorism? Not a GD Thing, that's what! You can take my info as just salt. But don't say that nobody warned ya! Because youjust have been warned!

I guess I'm the only one who sees a silver lining in Delay winning the primary. It may well increase the likelihood that his seat is won by a Democrat in November. Delay is tainted. Another Repub. wouldn't be so.

This is not to say that the Democrats are any better than the Republicans, but two more years of the GOP controlling the White House and both houses of Congress is too much of a nightmare to contemplate.

Doug,
In spite of all your political insider experience, I wonder if you're just as blind to what the real story is as most people seem to be...No, it's no surprise that DeLay won a primary amongst his own supporters who bothered to go to the polls to vote. That part is obvious.

The real question is whether a candidate's personal failings should be fodder for campaign debate in the first place. Until the discourse about our system of government begins to focus on solutions to problems instead of whether one candidate is a coward and another is a crook, we're going to keep descending further and further into a state of apathetic anarchy balanced by authoritarianism, as the awareness of many of these comments demonstrate.

How about this? We all assume naturally that EVERY SINGLE CANDIDATE FOR OFFICE (regardless of party affiliation or incumbency) is a complete crook already, or soon will be, and we simply make our decision based STRICTLY on what they say they're going to do about the problems we face. And, furthermore, we hold the candidates' feet to the fire until they give us what we want to hear. If they give us bullshit answers to specific questions, we drum 'em out of the list, and find somebody else.

What's wrong with having NOBODY elected to office in a district? Wouldn't that ultimately satisfy everybody who thinks Big Government is the problem? Perhaps COngress wouldn't convene because it lacks a quorum. Perhaps the President would be unable to do anything unless he issued Executive Orders (oops, I guess we'll have to fix that along with the desire for a line item veto).

So all complaints about the electorate are true - we don't expect much of our candidates, or our elected officials. We don't keep them off the lists, we vote for them because of the R or D next to their names, we ignore them once they get to the state house or to Washington. And we don't make our representatives focus on the job we hired them to do at the level we send them.

If this were a business, we'd fire those who couldn't perform, or we'd not hire them in the first place if we have control of that end of the process. The terms of office for elected officials MUST be observed. They shouldn't get any benefits to remain in office, even if they try every trick in the book to protect their own asses. Ultimately, we CAN get rid of them if enough of us do the voting thing...

Good the sleezeball should be easy to beat by any self respecting public servant from another political persuasion when his turn on the general ballot comes up, so we can get on with the business of taking back our country. STAY ENGAGED EVEN THROUGH THE DIFFICULTIES DO NOT FALL INTO COMA.

This is mind boggling to me. Has there been a mass labotomy of Voters in this district or did most of them just stay home out of apathy?

Time to send in the "hit squads", and I am a pacifist. How much of this bullshit do we have to accept from these incopetent, greedy, immoral Nazi's? It is beyond time for impeachment for the "president and vice-president", the riddance of "bug exterminators like Delay" and before it is time for the sheeple to be led to the gulags. They are being built for us, THE DISSENTERS. Ill be there (with Doug) and we can commeserate about drinking/drugs/Vietnam/past presidencies/shared interest in politics/ and how we, at least I, remenber back to Ike, although I was born in '48(Truman). This bastard Bush is the most heartless one-way (thinker?) I have ever seen. He is arrogant, a poor decision maker, a coward, and a liar. Impeachment cannot come soon enough.

The biggest problem of this issue is most people are no more ethical than their Congressman, when it comes down to it.

You have to know that in Texas anybody can vote in either primary each year (but not both). That means that people who are "Liberal Democrats" vote in the Republican Primaries sometimes and that "Conervative Republicans" may vote in the Democratic primaries. If I lived in DeLay's district, depending on my overall strategy, I might be tempted to Vote for DeLay, thinking that he would be a weaker opponent for a Democrat, as opposed to a Republican who is supposedly "a reformer" or less tainted (aren't we all.) It's always tricky to read the outcomes in primary races here for that reason. I wonder if Ciro got screwed in his district the same way.

> The sad part is this country is so messed up that
> I believe our police and military would fire on
> "We the People" as we are protesting the loss of
> the rights being fought for.

> Posted by Janice at March 8, 2006 10:23 AM

Janice...YES! This is a very important point that nobody seems to want to talk about. The journalists and the bloggers and people who comment all say 'Bush is usurping power' or 'Fascism is creeping over America'. But how can that happen? Only if there are agents manning the wiretaps, interpreting the electronic intercepts, firing the teargas grenades, cracking heads with riot batons, etc., etc., etc. WHAT IS WRONG WITH THESE PEOPLE??? What person with any kind of moral sense would participate in this? That is the ultimate shame -- not that the leaders are corrupt; not even that the average people acquiesce in -- and facilitate -- their abuses; but that large (and growing) numbers of people willingly participate in the repression that is destroying democracy in America.

Relax, folks. The only reason we're not living in a world of totalitarianism is because they're all crooked. Accept it, ignore it, or fight it as much as possible, but don't try to change it or we're lost.

you can never find a death squad when you need one

? the Chamber of Commerce gave DeLay an award ???
I think Jeffery Dormer got one too for "having a fantastic restaurant"!

Since we agree that our gov. is corrupt. We also agree that they don't understand that " We the people " are supposed to run all factions. They don't see this, and over the years I can see why they believe this. We gave up and allowed the elected to forget us and why we have a government at all.
It would take 8 years but we would be in control again. If every vote cast was for democrats wouldn't that throw them off their high horse. Next election we elect republications only. In this 8 years " We thee people " would be listened to again.

There isn't anything I can say, that hasn't been said all ready.
Some of the Off Topic posts were interesting. There was mention of forming a Third Party. There is one that has been going on for about Two years now.
They call themselves "The Neither Party" THey have a Web site and that's about as far as they have gotten.
I've never heard of them in the news, on talk shows or any advertising on their own.
It's hard to say just how serious they are about themselves.
You can check them out yourself.
www.neitherparty.org

DeLay is a symptom, not a cause. You've got a system where anybody with any principles gets filtered out and what is selected for is somebody who's somewhat photogenic, is willing to allow handlers to make most of his decisions and is for sale to the highest bidder. Situational Ethics are required for the job.

So, when you select for the lowest common denominator of politican, the lowest common denominator is precisely what you're going to get, and it shows. This country, as a result, is structurally unable to produce somebody like a Winston Churchill, because such a person can't get elected dog catcher, let alone to Congress.

You've got a building full of people who are experts at fundraising and media relations but they're totally lost when it comes to questions of simple governance.

And here's the punchline. This happened before back in ancient Rome. For about 40 years they had a whole bunch of incompetents running the government and the end result was that Caesar decided to grab the Imperial Purple, crossed the Rubicon, tried conclusions with Pompey and the end result is that what was left of the Republic died, and Rome got themselves an Emperor. And it looks like the same process is happening here.

We long ago ceased to be a republic. Instead, we've got an oligarchy with vestigal republican institutions and the whole mess becomes increasingly dysfunctional as those remaining institutions become increasingly marginalized. The Government is eliminating it's negative feedback loop and imposing a reality filter that will insure that it will, as it does now, operate in a permanent condition of future shock and on permanently bad information and increasingly it's going to become more and more brittle because of a paradigm/reality mismatch that leaves it in the same condition as the French Government and Military was in 1940 before Rommel's breakout at Sedan. And because of that, sooner or later a good stiff shock is going to hit Washington and it will suffer the same sort of moral and systemic collapse, because of incestuous thinking on the part of the Nomenklatura that runs the place, and because they've destroyed the only defense in depth that they had when they eliminated that feedback loop.

The bottom line here is that absent divine intervention, this situation can't continue because oligarchies are inherently unstable. Either external or internal forces will shoot the dealer, kick over the table and start a new game, or, somebody's going to proclaim themselves Emperor, or whatever they're going to call it, and start an even worse one.

And I don't know about you, but this scares me to death. And if you're not scared to death, you don't understand the problem.

Delay winning amongst republicans only proves that incess politics with Texas Republicans is alive and well. The republican gene pool is infected and inafective. YE HAW!!!!!

If no one who has held public office is never voted for again; the elected PUBLIC SERVANTS would, after a couple three cycles get the idea.
The problem is they begin to think of public office as public service. It is not necessarily the same.
True, there would be SOME pretty good ones thrown out with the dirty water but, these folks would get to sacrifice as we do.
There are many volunteers who are true public servants. They do not get free health care, free pensions nor do the vast majority become millionaires (if they are not already).

The primaries only got about ten percent of the registered voters to the polls.
That might be a good sign, because it could possibly mean that many of them are "saving themselves for Kinky". You can't sign a petition to put an independent on the ballot if you voted in either primary you know...
Of course, I could be wrong, and the next sixty days will prove if I am.
If the petition rolls are swollen and the highways start filling up with stickers that say "He aint Kinky, he's my Governor", then the primaries be damned and Kinky to the Governor's mansion.

Anyway, that's my prayer...to de-wussify Texas, even it has to be one wuss at a time.

Let's just draw a new border around the western nothern and eastern borders of Texas, then call Vicente Fox and tell him he can do what he wants with it. Damn place would fit right in with corrupt Mexican politics.

Doug,

First, I really enjoy reading your rants. Keep telling the truth. Second, Delay IS a crook par excellence. He is a pimple on the derriere of life.