Reply #34: That's why the "culture of corruption" is such an important meme

[MrBenchley]

And yeah, if all of those broke at once it would probably trigger an epochal seachange...but I don't think there's much to do on those lines except write letters to the editors and cross our fingers while the courts work.

The whole Suncruz mess, as some blogger said the other day, sounds like an Elmore Leonard novel. Coingate and the Dukester are also going to be potent (I have a Republican friend who told ME the other day out of the blue that Cunningham should get the death penalty and that what he did was treason!) There's also the whole Indian casino thing (with racist e-mails). And I don't think we've heard the last of Abu Ghraib and the torture issue.

The whole "it's just Bush hating" meme only worked while the illusion that Bush was liked was working; now that it's falling apart, so is the meme. (And by the way, let's just note that the lose/lose scenario Chimpy's cooked up for himself is illustrative of the way he has mis-governed us all...when he was riding his post-9/11 popularity he chose to appear only to cherry-picked audiences of supporters instead of ordinary Americans...so now when things have gone badly, he appears before only cherry-picked audiences of supporters it gets pointed out, and the question becomes, why can't he go near ordinary Americans. But if he goes near ordinary Americans they're liable to be less than enthusiastic and ask questions that he doesn't want raised, so he can only appear before cherry-picked audiences of supporters and thus cannot gain support by appealing to ordinary Americans directly.)

That's why I'm very disappointed to see threads attacking other Democrats at this time. (And don't tell anyone else (snicker), but I suspect some of this uproar is deliberate ratfucking by the Green party. )