On The Mark -- Goodbye for Now

First, I want to thank The Misanthrope and B2 for inviting me to write for Toner Mishap. It's been a great experience.

Second, my hat is off to The Misanthrope and B2 for writing and posting well-written and well-researched articles every day. They were committed to keeping the Toner Mishap fresh with new material every day, no easy chore. The Misanthrope punched us in the gut with his hard-hitting commentary and B2, along with his great writing, opened my eyes to many things that were previously not in my universe.

This change for Toner Mishap doesn't really affect me too much, because I've only been able to post once or twice a week for a while now. I hope to be able to continue that pace. In fact, my next post will be tomorrow. But it will definitely be a noticeable change for my colleagues, because they were creating, researching, and writing every day -- and dedicated to making sure new material was live first thing in the morning.

I did notice one clear trend, though, over the year. Earlier in the year, when this blog would challenge the Bush Administration, we often had intelligent responses from those who support the Administration. But as the year has marched on, as more scandals in the Administration have erupted, the responses we've been getting have been trending toward being rude and childish. We like a good argument. We like a good fight. We like to hear the other perspective, even though we may not agree. There hasn't been much of a fight lately, mostly just name calling, but maybe that's because the Bushies are finding they have less ground to stand on.

We are in an interesting and scary time. More so than any other time in my nearly 50 years of life (that I was old enough to understand, anyway). Now, more than ever, we need critical thinking and writing.