Traffic Jam outside of Albuquerque, New Mexico

“— and right now I need to know: is an eight-year old boy capable of evil? He blew his father away with a shotgun! What do you do with this eight-year old child? And more importantly, could there be a child who is the spawn of Satan? ”

Turn the AM radio dial to the left as I swing out of New Mexico. A fuzzy blast of Sunday morning gospel music plays: “— and I will trust you when your spirit speaks to me, with my whole heart I will agree —”

Flip again and land on Rush Limbaugh, screaming and frothing: “Great, folks! Big oil has to play this ridiculous ‘green game’ and produce ethanol by federal mandate – and now they’re getting sued for it! After causing starvation problems around the world, we now learn that homeowners in Florida are reporting problems with their lawn equipment —”

Flip again. “That’s irrelevant! The risk comes into play when some things drop in price but not others. In other words, your salary drops but the price of what you’re buying doesn’t drop as much. A perfect example is your mortgage —”

And again. “— yeah, I’m a Boy Scout and I take kids to the Boundary Waters area in Northern Minnesota and up back into the mountains there and, well, I lost my camera and I’m wondering what kind of digital —”

Back to Rush and I swear he’s about to have a stroke right here on my car radio: “There are different kinds of Republicans now! You and me, we’re conservative republicans. But we also have to deal with liberal and moderate and Rockefeller republicans in our party. So the party has lost its primary identity: strong national defense, tax cuts, smaller government – it’s lost its identity! The party has too many people who want the government to grow! Let’s just spend the money on different groups of people in order to get votes! It’s called Liberalism Lite! They’re calling it redefined conservatism.”