The New Phone Book's Here! The New Phone Book's Here!!!

You know how sometimes when you're feeling really, really low, not just blue but completely black ... you know how when you're in that frame of mind, a kind word or two from somebody you respect profoundly can make a huge difference? A much greater difference than, say, if you were only blue?

If you don't know that feeling, I will never be able to tell you how big a lift I got from reading this:

And here is a very well presented post by the very well-informed Winter Patriot: One Day Forward, 900 Years Back : Democracy Murdered In Broad Daylight. This little bit is ringing bells:

In my twisted and frozen little mind, I harbor a tiny flicker of hope -- that this draconian legislation can somehow be used against those who begged for 9/11 to happen, who made it happen, who have striven endlessly to reap political benefit from a national tragedy, and who now -- once again -- have shamed us all, destroying our birthright in the process. And then, once they have all been hanged for treason, that this bill -- and every other anti-American, anti-democratic bill passed in the last five horrible years -- can be summarily repealed.

It seems likely that the former heads of the AWB, who broke UN sanctions to deal with Saddam, will now be tried under new Australian government anti-terror legislation. I've also heard talk of such Draconian anti-terror laws being turned against Blair and Bush.

Given how these people have demonstrably exacerbated the terrorist threat over the past five years, given how they have relentlessly terrorized their own populations, and given how sorely in need of prosecution they all are under any one of a myriad laws, and given how many goodly people they have pissed off completely with their Orwellian nonsense, perhaps the prospect is not as far-fetched as it may sound right now.

Whoa!! Tonic for my soul!! It's not just the comment, although it's a wonderful, generous comment. But it's the context. And, even more importantly, it's the source.

In the middle of a post in which he quotes Mike Whitney and Juan Cole (among others), the best unknown blogger in the whole world not only quotes your nearly frozen scribe, but also compliments him, and elaborates on the only ray of hope he has managed to find in this whole ungodly mess.

I've been telling people about Gandhi for years. I have had him linked on my sidebar since the very first time I read him. I invited him to The BRAD BLOG in July of 2005 when I was hosting the Blogathon, and he brought us a post that blew everybody away.

I wept when he quit blogging and I danced when he resumed. I've never read any other writer -- blogger, journalist, or combo -- who is as prolific, as articulate, and as zeroed-in all at the same time, all the time. And I've never really been much of a sucker for praise, but as my mother, Winter Matriarch, always told me: "Consider the source."

Please allow me to introduce you to The Source!

I've written something like this before, but you weren't reading me then, were you? So here I go again ...

Bookmark Bush Out (by Gandhi).

Visit it every day.

This is an order!!

You may not refuse!

Someday you will thank me for this.