You're welcome, Keith

Perhaps due to some horrible sin committed in a previous life, I'm blessed with a glut of comments sent by particularly virulent right wingers who've developed an unhealthy obsession with sharing their overly simple-minded views and expressing often mindless anger over the fact that anyone disagrees with them when Rush Limbaugh himself told them so.

These strokers feel a deep need to display their truly amazing ability to ignore and distort reality to fit in with their quivering fear of anything new or different and of the changing world around them.

Hell, the future alone scares the hell out of them, being populated in their fevered minds with various boogie-men ranging from people with skin darker than theirs (also covers immigrants), to secular humanists, to "islamo-fascists", to the convenient catch-all "evil-doers" with hundreds of various objects of suspicion and hate strewn in between. They've bought into the Bush fear program, hook, line, and sinker and proudly display their fear of (hatred towards) things they only pretend to understand and their belief that the opinions they spent 3 seconds arriving are chiseled in stone.

I've long believed that these represented only a handful of blowhards out there that truly enjoy trying to spar with me. (Even though I've long ago gotten bored to death with it.) I had to trust that there are a whole gang of progressives and yes, liberals, lurking out there, despite the fact that they they've apparently all had their keyboards confiscated.

Unfortunately, these fine folks of the Democratic/liberal/progressive stripe apparently are extremely timid and can't quite muster the gumption to actually comment, or perhaps they don't feel the need to offer an opinion if they're largely in agreement? Maybe they think I suck too, who knows?

I have no idea why those who might be inclined towards my point of view rarely comment, and I can only speculate. But I always knew they were out there. (Trust me, this is going somewhere.)

At any rate, Keith Olberman, whose top rated and growing "Countdown" program is a powerhouse on MSNBC, has published a couple books in the recent past. One is a compilation of perhaps the most popular feature of his nightly show, entitled, "The Worst Person in the World, and 202 Strong Contenders".

The second and most recent, "Truth and Consequences: Special Comments on the Bush Administration's War on American Values" is a collection of his "special comments", written whenever something particularly inexcusable or appalling is done by a government official (not exactly rare these days). And trust me, Olbermann does not exactly hold back in his venomous and rightous condemnations of the Bush gang.

This book has been firmly lodged in the best-seller category since it's release. But tonight on his show, Olbermann decided to share something he felt to be very interesting. Book sellers apparently have the ability to track which metropolitan areas are selling the most copies of any given title.

Here's the results for Olbermann's decidedly liberal, Democratic leaning book.



Well look at that will ya? Firmly tied for second place in the entire country for selling more copies of Olberman's collection of strident anti-Bush rants is our good old Quad Cities.

Progressives. I know you're out there. I can hear you breathing.
Stand up and be counted.