Note:  The concept for this bit of satire materialized in my e-mailbox a few days ago.  I have failed to identify its creator.  I rewrote and significantly extended the original concept.  Douglas Palmer of Brooklyn, N.Y. suggested the  "birth disqualification" section.

In a bold move that could dramatically alter the playing field of the  2008 GOP presidential race, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee today named Jesus Christ as his vice presidential running mate and personal savior.

The next time Michael Mukasey is called to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee I suggest that he be strapped to a stretcher, a rag placed in his mouth and water poured in the rag until he begins to answer completely and truthfully the questions put to him by the committee.

Now that waterboarding has become an accepted form of interrogation in these United States, I recommend that it be utilized not only with Mukasey, but with all future witnesses before committees of the congress. I think that there are subpoenas kicking around out there for Condi Rice and other executive department figures who have been less than forthcoming in past appearances, so perhaps as our favorite republican tough guy Rudy Giuliani says, we should question them aggressively.

It might be a good idea if the voting public were able to use the same technique in questioning the presidential candidates on their positions. For the rest of the debates all candidates should be wheeled in strapped to stretchers and aggressively questioned using this simulated drowning method.

Using these methods we may begin to get the truth from our "public servants" and declared wannabes.

This will not work in Atlanta however, they don't have enough water at the moment to achieve any kind of satisfactory results.

Bob Higgins
Worldwide Sawdust

The topic below was originally posted in my blog, the Intrepid Liberal Journal, as well as The Peace Tree, the Independent Bloggers Alliance and Worldwide Sawdust.

One autumn evening several years ago, I needed to blow off steam after a stressful day at work. I was fed up the way employees often are in their jobs. You know that toxic feeling when your superiors are overpaid while contributing little to the effort other than gratuitous criticism, while those on your pay grade won't bust a nut to get the job done because they know you will? How often have you felt that way? I felt underpaid, under-appreciated, was mad as hell and ready to drown my anger in beer. It was self-pity really as plenty of people in this world had it far worse than me but I wasn't in a perspective mood.

So I walked about forty blocks south from my day job in mid-town Manhattan to clear my head until coming across a dive bar with sports on television and hardly any patrons. Perfect, that's just what I wanted. Typically, I'm not the sort to talk with strangers and certainly wasn't looking for any conversation this night. Somehow, I became engrossed in a three-way conversation with two middle-aged registered nurses. We talked about how friends, families, communities and countries gloss over pain and misdeeds through symbolism and empty platitudes.

The American people are very dissatisfied with the present state of affairs in their country. Polls taken in July revealed that less than 20 percent of Americans approve of the direction in which the United States is going. Furthermore, they are not naive as to the reason for this wrong direction: well over half the citizenry understands that a few billionaire tycoons have rigged our political system and media in order to advance their unfettered global business interests.

Been doing the Progressive Democrat since shortly after the 2004 election. It originally grew out of my attempt to keep people's grassroots spirits up after the 2004 election and originally it was just a handful of readers. When I spend time on it, nowadays I get around 80 hits a day. Though when I am away on vacation and not keeping it up, that drops to more like 25 hits a day. Still, since I originally had less than 100 readers period, that's growth.