Okay.  I know this isn't the most important thing happening today, but I hope you will take a moment to read this diary.  It's short.  It may be a little self-serving.  And it involves my sanity.

I know this isn't the most appropriate topic for a diary, but I really do need help, and/or technical expertise.  I don't particularly like tinkering with computers (I'm a reformed PC-user, so I've had more than my fill of dealing with glitches, viruses, spyware, etc...) but i know that many folks here do, and so I'm asking for your help.

I have been silent for too long.  Too long have I stood by while this grave miscarriage of grammatical standards is perpetrated on a daily - nay! hourly - basis.  What am I talking about?  I am talking about "this".  And "this"!  Dare I say "this"?  Well no more.  It is time to put an end to this travesty.

"The following is a Public Service Announcement from the Bureau of Grammar Nazis."

I am so sick and tired of hearing people say they want to leave this country.  Things getting a little too ugly for you?  Afraid that by this time next year you're going to be living under a fascist dictatorship?  No problem.  Leave.

And while you're at it, you might as well leave this blog, because you're no damn good to anyone any more.  But I have news for you: if you think fleeing the country - if you think leaving America in the hands of sadistic madmen -  is going to save your ass, it isn't.  How long do you think it will be before those same twisted sadists are standing on the doorstep of your next country, staring at you with soulless eyes, a humorless grin, and a thousand tactical nukes perched over the horizon?  Or the next country?  Or the next?

Like each and every single one of you (right?) I did my civic duty, sending emails, making phone calls, etc... in the ongoing effort to put a stop to that right-wing propagandistic POS known as... I can't even say it.  You know what I'm talking about.  But never did I expect to get a response back that was anything more significance than a form letter.  So imagine my surprise when I open my inbox to find a response from none other than the vice president/general manager of my local ABC affiliate.  Jump...

HERE

I don't know about you guys, but I'm sure gonna miss old Bob Schieffer.  And to think he's getting replaced by that human carcass Katie Couric.  Damn.  That's just wrong, man.

I'm not here to exhume anymore post-election corpses - that's been done to death.  But I would like to take a minute to look at what at least one member of the media establishment had to say about CA-50, and how it bodes for the Repub's future prospects.  Needless to say I was a bit surprised.

It has been said that you can never really know a man until you know his dreams.  Back in the days before the Great Depression, Americans got to know the dreams of the humble traveling hobo in the iconic American folk song, "Big Rock Candy Mountains" recently re-popularized in the film O Brother, Where art thou.  The song described a hobo's paradise: an idyllic land where the cops are slow, the booze flows like water, and the cigarettes grow on trees.  It was a land of sunshine and leisure.

But these were simple men with simple dreams.  Is it possible to capture the hopes and aspirations of say a modern world leader or a titan of industry as was done with our happy hobo from yesteryear?  What kind of song would, say, Dick Cheney sing?

I have a confession to make: Daily Kos makes me sad.  There, I said it.  In the year or so that I have been a member of this community, I have become an angrier, more bitter, more resentful person (not to mention a nuisance to my friends and family who, despite their liberal leanings, think I've gone past the edge of reason into the land of zealotry.  And they're probably right.)

Though it probably shouldn't come as a surprise, the insidiousness of this oppressive administration still has the potential to amaze me.  Yesterday, in an exchange with a couple of people in this diary thread, I caught a glimpse of that insidiousness and it sent a chill through me.    In the grand scheme of things, this exchange would barely register in the minds of most kossacks, but I think it portends certain troubling implications, which should be of concern to us all.

Welcome to the inaugural edition of the Daily Kos Literary Forum!  This is an experiment I have concocted mostly in an effort to make myself feel more useful.  But it is my hope that you will find it useful as well.  Okay, maybe not useful, but at least thought provoking.  Or if not thought provoking, then perhaps a welcome diversion from the sometimes suffocating incessancy of modern political discourse.  If not, well, then I'll have only suffered the brief indignity of a lonely descent down the recent diaries list before landing in the dustbin of well-meaning efforts.  (We've all been there, am I right?)

Much is made here at DKos, and throughout the progressive community, of the failings of our ineffectual media and a stultified congressional body that refuses to fulfill its constitutional and domestic obligations; and rightly so, in my opinion.  For these institutions have clearly abrogated their responsibilities and must be called to answer for this.  Many, if not most, of our congressional leaders have failed to fulfill their obligation to the people, and there is no excuse for that.  No excuse, except the People themselves, that is.  The apathetic, the ill-informed, the cowed, the willfully indignant People.

We Kossacks will of course exclude ourselves from this characterization.