Since Flimsy Sanity popped into the comments from my last post - which is going on three weeks old now - asking if I was still alive, I feel obligated to upload something to the mother ship today. So I'm digging through all these unfinished posts looking for anything that's worthy of completion, but it's all mind-numbing dreck that might just as well be scrawled on a cardboard box in crayon.

The problem is that lately I just haven't been able to summon the indignation that has always fueled my rants. I'm numb. I'm numb because I'm a politics junkie and for the last several months I've been watching the great American experiment in democracy fail.

I'm numb because last November the American people, in a concerted We The People effort to end the madness in Iraq, gave control of both houses of Congress to the Democrats and now, almost almost a year later, we have even more troops in Iraq than we did then.

I'm numb because our Congress wastes time passing bullshit resolutions condemning a newspaper advertisement because it had the audacity to question the veracity of General Petraus when he sat before Congress pulling numbers out of his ass in support of The Surge, while repeatedly failing to pass timid and non-binding resolutions suggesting to the preznit that we should maybe start thinking about pulling out of Iraq sometime soon, no hurry though, you're the boss.

I'm numb because my government and my tax dollars are paying for tens of thousands of mercenaries like Blackwater to do in Iraq what mercenaries have always and forever done. And our Congress, caught completely flat-footed by the total lack of accountability, did what they do best. Nothing. From this blog post by P.W. Singer:

Much of the air was taken out of the hearing by the decision made to restrict from discussion the events of September 16th. There was a sensible reason for this: The FBI opened an investigation the day before (coincidentally or not, depending how much of a conspiracy theorist you are). No one wanted to say anything to contaminate an ongoing investigation. But it sure made things less exciting and less important, since September 16th was what had prompted the hearings in the first place.

A new low, holding hearings to discuss something without actually, you know, discussing it. Sigh.

I'm numb because the man who, as a federal judge, ruled that American citizens can be held indefinitely without being charged with a crime is about to breeze through confirmation hearings to become head of our nation's Justice Department. Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on Michael Mukasey begin today, but the chairman of the committee, Patrick Leahy, has already stated that he expects the nomination to be easily approved. (Yes this is the same Patrick Leahy who said a couple of weeks ago that he wouldn't allow the nomination to go forward until the administration provided documents he requested in the investigation into just how badly Alberto Gonzales fucked up the Justice Department, and no, those documents have not been provided.)

I'm numb because I have finally accepted the obvious. The constitutionally mandated system of checks and balances between the three branches of our government no longer exists. Our country is run by some genuinely evil sons-of-bitches and we the people are powerless to do anything about it. I'm numb because we've lost.