The important word for the day is "SAFE,"which means you DON'T drink and drive. Even if you "just" have a drink or two, on the wayhome some sober-but-inattentive ass could screw up and crash into you but if the cop smells alcohol on you it's going to go down as YOUR fault, so why risk that? If you screw up tonight, (let's say you're lucky and you DON'T kill or injure anyone with your dumb-ass wreck, you're going to spend the night in jail with people who are stranger than Republicans and you'd better be built like a linebacker because the strong OWN the weak in jail. Once you get somebody to bail your drunk-ass out, you have to pay the bondsman, the towing company, court costs, a hefty fine, your outrageous lawyer's bill, car repairs and you'll have your license possibly suspended and you'll almost certainly have to go to drunk driving school and you now have a permanent police record which puts your job and future jobs at risk and it just keeps getting worse. If you're recently divorced, you could lose custody of your kids and that's a whole lot of trouble to go thru to save car fare. So don't screw-up and get behind the wheel, even if you"always do" and you've always made it home OK. We're in for the night.I bought some wine for Mrs Bart and some vodka for me. The luckiest cat in America has some new luxury catnip to play with while we channel surf for good music and hot babes and Kathy Griffin will be tormenting that whore Anderson Cooper LIVE, which is a crazy thing to do. Whose idea was it to give Kathy Griffin a live mic? Koresh help us if somebody mentions the handjobs who call themselves "the Christian Right" to her. So stay out of cars if you can and FOR SURE don't drive because it could cost you everything. New page Wednesday and I should apologize now for what my Razorbacks and my Sooners do to poor Missouri and that hapless West Virginia team. ... and we all survived another year, bart

Something that I have not been able to get out of my mind in the past few days is the assassination of Benazir Bhuto. The thing that has been nagging me is to what extent this might be our fault. I really feel that Musharraf had her killed. Perhaps if Bush had not been so buddy-buddy with this criminal we would not have seen the death of the rightful leader of Pakistan again and again on the news.Also, if we assume that Musharraf is telling the truth (which I doubt) and Al Quaeda did arrange her death, would catching Osama bin Laden instead of letting him get away again and again saved Bhuto's life?Another possibility, though more controversial, is that Bush had a hand in this. Given what we know of his disregard for human life, would this be such a surprise?

Paul Krugman, The New York Times, December 31, 2007

Yesterday The Times published a highly informative chart laying out the positions of the presidential candidates on major issues. It was, I'd argue, a useful reality check for those who believe that the next president can somehow usher in a new era of bipartisan cooperation. For what the chart made clear was the extent to which Democrats and Republicans live in separate moral and intellectual universes. On one side, the Democrats are all promising to get out of Iraq and offering strongly progressive policies on taxes, health care and the environment. That's understandable: the public hates the war, and public opinion seems to be running in a progressive direction. What seems harder to understand is what's happening on the other side — the degree to which almost all the Republicans have chosen to align themselves closely with the unpopular policies of an unpopular president. And I'm not just talking about their continuing enthusiasm for the Iraq war. The G.O.P. candidates are equally supportive of Bush economic policies. Why would politicians support Bushonomics? After all, the public is very unhappy with the state of the economy, for good reason. The "Bush boom," such as it was, bypassed most Americans — median family income, adjusted for inflation, has stagnated in the Bush years, and so have the real earnings of the typical worker. Meanwhile, insecurity has increased, with a declining fraction of Americans receiving health insurance from their employers. Read More Here