Four more years ! Four more years !

It's time to get back into my hunker-down mode. Based on the signals we're getting these days, it's almost definite the next four years are going to look a lot like the last eight.

First, media cheerleading. From the time W announced his candidacy for the 2000 Repub nomination until the bottom fell out in 2006, the news media were signed on. Rove and his staff sat around the White House and planned what the news was gonna be, then sent it out and the media printed and broadcast it damned near verbatim. When Cheney decided we needed a war in Iraq, the media were cheerleaders for the effort from day one and did their part in selling all those lies that some dumbass Americans still believe to this day.

Now we see them doing the same kind of cheerleading for Ace and Sweet Pea. It's not that Ace isn't making any mistakes, it's just that they aren't getting reported in the news. And the Pea is almost totally a media creation. You don't skyrocket from the anonymity of Wasilla, Alaska to the office of VP without some really good publicity. The absence of an adversarial press made it easy for W's gang to get away with stuff bordering on high crimes and misdemeanors; based on all the signs so far, it looks like Ace and Mooseburger will also be getting a free ride.

Which leads to the second signal. The defining characteristic of W's administration, besides gross incompetence, has been secrecy and lack of accountability. Having the so-called free press as willing accomplices made it easy for the executive branch to dummy up any time it suited them, and of course Congress was also out to lunch. No accountability ever, until the majority of the damage had been done. Now we have one of Ace's campaign staff honchos announcing the media won't have access to Mooseburger until they've learned to be suitably deferential. Yeah, the motherfrakker actually said that. If it's starting this early, you can bet Ace's presidency will be just like W's when it comes to secrecy and no one ever being held accountable for anything.

It looks like the Dems picked the wrong year to mail in a forfeit.