Morin is the head of the Washington Post polling operation. He recently declared himself to be "mad" and "angry" at readers who asked, during an online chat session, why the Post wasn't trying to find out what percentage of Americans supported the impeachment of the asshole-birth.

When Morin's priggish, stupid, and condescending remarks were widely circulated, he became the target of an e-mail campaign coordinated by Democrats.com. Readers of that site were encouraged to ask why the impeachment question was now off-limits, even though Morin himself was asking the same question about Clinton less than a week after the Lewinsky scandal first broke (i.e., when her name was first made public, well before the Starr report or Clinton's testimony). Morin then became even "madder" and "angrier," of course, and chastised the letter-writers for participating in the campaign. You know the old saw: mass mailings made the letter-writers look like lemmings, their complaints couldn't be legitimate because they were just following somebody's orders, etc.

You might want to contact him: morinr@washpost.com

I sent him the message below. I was trying to be "polite," as we are told to do when participating in these futile and masochistic "activist" mailings. But since it's obvious that Morin is a stupid asshole, I'd encourage you to tell him to eat shit.

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Dear Richard Morin:

When a popular website points out what its authors consider to be a problem with your polling operation, and the readers of that website agree that there is a problem, and then contact you--it behooves you to listen.

The readers of weblogs aren't robots or idiots. I notice or receive dozens of appeals each day, asking that I contact this or that person. I choose, occasionally, to contact one of these people when I think there is a problem. Sometimes I send a form letter. This does not mean I'm brain-damaged. It means that, after some thought, I've decided that the letter represents, with sufficient accuracy, my basic feelings on the issue.

If you get a lot of such messages, it means a lot of people are thinking the same thing. Receiving a lot of these messages is not a reason to ignore them. Does that even make sense?

It's obvious you're looking for excuses to dismiss the questions raised about your polling operation. Why?

No doubt you get lots of messages that raise questions; no doubt lots of the questions are stupid. But you'd better think a bit harder about WHICH ones are stupid, and which aren't.

Sincerely...

Since you asked. Jane Smiley has an excellent piece at HuffPo. The whole thing should be read, but some excerpts:

the Bush administration apparently wishes for and is working toward a chaotic Iraq, a corrupt American election structure with openly corrupt influence-peddlers like Delay and Abramoff in charge of policy, a world in which people suffer and die from weather-related catastrophes, a two-tiered economic structure in the US (with most people in the lower tier), and the isolation of the US as a rogue state from the other nations of the world.

...

In the same way, many people assume that the administration is embarrassed that the extent of the American rendition gulag or the techniques of torture used at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo have gotten into the news along with the use of white phosphorus in Falluja, as if torture and rendition and white phosphorus were something that Bush does not want to do. But let’s say that torture and rendition are something that the Bush administration is happy to do, and doesn’t mind others knowing about. Likewise, many observers, let’s say Jack Murtha, for one, assume that the president does not want to destroy the army. But if the army is destroyed, then the services that the army provides at a relatively moderate expense to the taxpayer can be farmed out to companies like Halliburton. Let’s say that Rumsfeld, Cheney, and Bush have cast their lot not with the draft, or even the volunteer army, but with the mercenary army, which is more profitable, less subject to Congressional and public oversight, and, really, the appropriate army for a rogue state.

...

The outcome of such policies will be a dictatorship or a tyranny.

If you doubt her analysis be sure to check the Toledo Blade's newest story about Bushite corruption.

Since Mr. Bush took office in 2001, the federal government has awarded more than $3 billion in contracts to the President's elite 2004 Texas fund-raisers, their businesses, and lobbying clients, a Blade investigation shows.

On a related note: Smiley also has an excellent must-read piece from November accurately pointing out that the US is no longer a superpower. The Morales election in Bolivia is only the latest confirmation of this. The continued illusion of Empire is delaying minds and energy that would be better spent on building, or rebuilding, the republic. The faster we disabuse ourselves of the notion of our global hegemony the closer we'll get to actually living in a decent society, or at the very least halting the march of tyranny.

Feingold takes it to the rim:

“None of your civil liberties matter much after you’re dead,” said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), a former judge and close ally of the president who sits on the Judiciary Committee.

Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.), who has led a bipartisan filibuster against a reauthorization of the Patriot Act, quoted Patrick Henry, an icon of the American Revolution, in response: “Give me liberty or give me death.”

On with the impeachment.

Why haven't ALL congressional Democrats announced their support for John Conyers' resolution calling for the censure of the asshole-birth and Cheney, and for a formal investigation (possibly leading to impeachment) into the wire-tapping and other crimes?

Because the Democrats are incompetent cowards. They are useless idiots and terrified appeasers. They are NOT REDEEMABLE. We can all vote for the designated and willing loser in 2008, and we probably should. Why not? But we should NOT waste another SECOND talking or even thinking about who that loser will be. It is over. The Democrat party is over. Good riddance. Who- or whatever gets us out of this frozen septic tank, it will not be the Democrat party. There will have to be another way.

Of course I have no idea what it will be. All I do know is that Peter Braunstein, the New York sociopath who set fire to a woman's apartment and then disguised himself as a fireman so he could enter it and assault her sexually, has more courage than Hillary Clinton. Clinton's presidential candidacy is finished--which of course does not at all preclude her winning the nomination of the Democrat party.

She cannot recover from her efforts at "triangulating" on the war/national security "issue" (as if it were possible to "triangulate" between a suicide bomber and his victims). She now has to support Bush until the end, and congratulate him when he withdraws. Perhaps she's planning to criticize him for withdrawing too soon, and to claim that she could have "won" the war. That would be about as convincing as Clinton's recent announcement that she favors a bill that would ban flag burning (though of course she doesn't favor the constitutional amendment that the wingnuts always have at the ready).

While Clinton has been making a fool of herself, Braunstein has courageously led authorities on a nation-wide chase. Before his recent capture in Tennessee, he stabbed himself theatrically in the throat. The wounds were not fatal.

Braunstein's behavior seems to follow the kind of ethical code that I have learned to associate with the best representatives of the Democrat party, like Gary Condit and Michael Jackson. And anyone that can be called "fiend" on the front pages of both the NY Daily News and the NY Post, on the same day, has got to be on the right track. "Fiend" is the word that both of these tabloids use, insistently, for designated hate-objects: Iraqi insurgents and terrorists, cop-killers, and child-absuers. Only when the Democrats are willing to be called "fiends" will I ever have any trust in them again.




A fiend.


Of course it goes without saying that the asshole-birth has infinitely less conscience and intelligence than does Braunstein. The asshole-birth is guilty of far more heinous crimes, and he is not even capable of feeling guilt or any other kind of emotion. The kind of wild, desperate, demented appeal enacted by Braunstein right before his arrest--stabbing himself in the throat as his pursuers closed in--obviously reflects a moral sensibility infinitely more profound and subtle than the asshole-birth's.

Story.

Fascism yet?

BARR: Here again, this is absolutely a bizarre conversation where you have a member of Congress saying that it's okay for the president of the United States to ignore U.S. law, to ignore the Constitution, simply because we are in an undeclared war.

The fact of the matter is the law prohibits -- specifically prohibits -- what apparently was done in this case, and for a member of Congress to say, oh, that doesn't matter, I'm proud that the president violated the law is absolutely astounding, Wolf.

ROHRABACHER: Not only proud, we can be grateful to this president. You know, I'll have to tell you, if it was up to Mr. Schumer, Senator Schumer, they probably would have blown up the Brooklyn Bridge. The bottom line is this: in wartime we expect our leaders, yes, to exercise more authority.

Now, I have led the fight to making sure there were sunset provisions in the Patriot Act, for example. So after the war, we go back to recognizing the limits of government. But we want to put the full authority that we have and our technology to use immediately to try to thwart terrorists who are going to -- how about have a nuclear weapon in our cities?

BARR: And the Constitution be damned, Dana?

ROHRABACHER: Well, I'll tell you something, if a nuclear weapon goes off in Washington, DC, or New York or Los Angeles, it'll burn the Constitution as it does. So I'm very happy we have a president that's going to wiretap people's communication with people overseas to make sure that they're not plotting to blow up one of our cities.