All I have to say tonight is, in an ode to Hunter S. Thompson, the situation is bleak.

In other words, we are doomed.

Alito is destined for the Supreme Court. Bush is winning the PR war on his formerly secret domestic spying program. The right-wing media machine marches onward like Christian soldiers, feeding off its 20 percent return on investment.

And the leftists in the East Village and on the Southside of Birmingham sip lattès and New Castle and watch movies about the dangers of God and Government, outnumbered by the high school students and college freshmen impatient for the band to start.

Oh, well, for all the news that fits on a Simpletext Web page, you can always read it and weep on the Locust Fork News page.

For a teaser, it is truly sad when the best news in the world is that the lackluster economic news adds to Bush's woes.

Good morning Alabama, can you hear the Lynyrd Skynyrd song yet? Do you smell the smell of death?

We don't negotiate with "terrorists," so watch for Osama's minions to strike "the heart" of America any day now.

If I was advising the lone 80-year-old security guard asleep in the golf cart at the Montgomery Country Club in the Old Cloverdale neighborhood, I would say you might want to be on the look out.

On the other hand, if I was a liberal reporter living in Silver Spring, Maryland, who rides the red line to and from DC for work, I would also be watching out furtively. You just never know if that long, symbiotic relationship between the Bush family and the bin-Ladens, dating back to Bush's days as a young businessman, will come back to haunt us.