A hilarious piece of satire from The Onion today that comes a little too close for comfort: Exiled American King Triumphantly Returns To Washington. The best passage, funny in a shivery way, reports that "Citizens were overjoyed by the monarchic restoration. 'Huzzah!' said Diane Sowell of State College, PA. 'At long last, we are rid of that corrupt, antiquated system of government known as democracy, a system that has done nothing but maintain the status quo of political inequality, economic stagnation, and social injustice. Our good king will change all that.'"

Really it is hardly a joke when the White House issues statements seriously contending that if the president's own lawyers say he does have to consult Congress about going to war, then he doesn't. Perhaps it was felt that Gen. Musharraf was on to something when he amended Pakistan's constitution by decree a few days ago.

Mickey Kaus: Inside the Beltway and Lost in the Blogosphere
Noted blogger and onetime quasi-liberal journalist Mickey Kaus, of Slate now seemingly an appendage of the Republican party, is clearly living in some alternate universe where raising taxes hasn't been politically impossible for better than two decades (unless the taxes are disproportionately hard on the poor.) It certainly shows how far Kaus's experience and vision doe NOT extend beyond Washington, D.C. "It's easier to raise taxes than it is to cut spending," he writes, desperately looking for some way to defend the return to Reagan era policies of defense increases and tax cuts that will surely create a huge new deficit. Out here in Missouri, the roads are falling apart, many of the schools are substandard, the state universities have high tuitions but can barely afford books and journals for the libraries, among many other things, because of underfunding. My university's budget was cut by something like 10% and they are still having to consider things like layoffs and campus closings! Yet we (including the legislature and the voters in a recent referendum) still can't raise taxes here to save our lives. And the federal tax cuts are making it all far worse. Thanks for the brilliant insights, Mickey. I dub thee Michael the Shrubber.

The New York Times "Week in Review" piece on the political fallout from the stock market decline gives us just a little taste of just how conservative a force even the bastions of the so-called liberal press has become. We learn about "a rift between those Democrats . . . who want to pursue a populist us-versus-them strategy for retaking the House and the White House, and pro-business centrists . . . who want to avoid a lurch leftward." See, those Democrats who actually want to rethink the party's pro-business tilt in recent years, which has made them complicit in the radical deregulation, privatization, and market fundamentalism that have gotten us to fix we are now in, are guilty of mindless "lurching." What could be more mindless and distasteful than actually responding to changed circumstances or the actual problems faced by their constituents? What, show some partisan backbone and offer actual alternatives to Republican policies? Talk openly about who benefits from current economic trends and policies and who doesn't? Recognize that the interests of "investors" and the interests of working Americans don't always coincide? Mention the fact that we are now dealing with the most anti-democratic administration since John Adams, and possibly the most nakedly self-interested and cynical one ever? Why that would be an icky "us-versus-them strategy"? And we know, especially now, that Wall Street always has everyone's best interests at heart. It's just mean to suggest otherwise. And don't even get me started on the pallid caricature of "populism" that the media rolls out every time a Democrat raises his or her voice, rare as such occasions are.