Something is seriously wrong. The pollsters tell us a majority of Americans opposes George Bush's war on Iraq. The one poll that counts--the 2006 Congressional Elections--gave the Democrats a majority in both houses of Congress, with the apparent intent of replacing the rubber stamp Republican Congress with one that would restrain the President and bring his war to an end. Nine months have passed since this new Congress was seated, and the Democrats have delivered--nothing? No, not exactly nothing: they have propelled us a few miles further up the road to instutionalizing a mind-numbingly duplicitous public discourse.

There are the rabble rousers who use congressional resolutions as garrotes with which they strangle dissent. Their latest orgy of pseudo patriotism represents conservative politics at its most demagogic: “The Senate strongly condemns personal attacks on the honor and integrity … of all members of the United States Armed Forces.” Point of clarification: Are we allowed to condemn the torturers at Abu Ghraib? How about the Marines who slaughtered citizens in Haditha? And what of the GI’s who have raped our own female soldiers? Is their honor and integrity also beyond critique? Or is this resolution somewhat rhetorically overblown, and the practical significance is that we are merely forbidden from criticizing generals who spew deceit while promoting the corporate agenda?

Now then, your evidence of a new hope? Your reason for rejoicing? Right here: It seems the remaining core of politicized evangelicals, far from realizing its diminished influence and far from realizing the GOP has largely imploded and far from sensing, therefore, that it might perhaps be time to dial down some of its more unpopular, virulent agenda items, this group is actually aiming to step up its dogmatic demands from various GOP candidates this next election.

Apparently, Bush's GOP has let them down. They have not been content with BushCo's anti-abortion, anti-gay, anti-sex, pro-abstinence, anti-women, anti-science, pro-war, God-hates-Islam stance, nor have they been content with having their trembling hands around the throat of the preceding Republican Congress for half a decade and clearly they have been insufficiently humiliated by the happy slew of right-wing preachers and politicians who've been revealed as meth-loving, restroom-lurking, boy-fetishizing gay hypocrites.

If you had any doubt that the USA has turned into Nazi Germany, this video should change your mind.

Southern white exceptionalism is about race, much more than it is about moral values, religion, support for the military or other explanations sometimes offered.

Republican politicians, who understand quite well that the GOP’s national success since the 1970s owes everything to the partisan switch of Southern whites, have tacitly acknowledged this reality. Since the days of Gerald Ford, just about every Republican presidential campaign has included some symbolic gesture of approval for good old-fashioned racism.

It looks as if the Republican Party is about to start paying a price for its history of exploiting racial antagonism. If that happens, it will be deeply ironic. But it will also be poetic justice.