I know many of us are not believers. But there's something about this piece that transcends labels, just as A.A. often does, and since some of us are alone and dealing with overwhelming problems this holiday season, it might help.

I miss the stories Anne Lamott used to write for Salon, because they got me through some of the roughest times of my life. (How can you not love someone who refers to herself as a "cursing Christian"?) Anyway, reminded by several other bloggers who also posted this, an excerpt from one of my favorite columns. I hope it gets to someone who needs it:

So I called my Jesuit friend, Tom, who is a hopeless alcoholic of the worst sort, sober now for 22 years, someone who sometimes gets fat and wants to hang himself, so I trust him. I said, "Tell me a story about Advent. Tell me about people getting well."

He thought for a while. Then he said, "OK."

In 1976, when he first got sober, he was living in the People's Republic of Berkeley, going to the very hip AA meetings there, where there were no fluorescent lights and not too much clapping -- or that yahoo-cowboy-hat-in-the-air enthusiasm that you get in L.A., according to sober friends. And everything was more or less all right in early sobriety, except that he felt utterly insane all the time, filled with hostility and fear and self-contempt.

But I mean, other than that everything was OK. Then he got transferred to Los Angeles in the winter, and he did not know a soul. "It was a nightmare," he says. "I was afraid to go into entire areas of L.A., because the only places I knew were the bars. So I called the cardinal and asked him for the name of anyone he knew in town who was in AA. And he told me to call this guy Terry."

Terry, as it turned out, had been sober for five years at that point, so Tom thought he was God. They made arrangements to go to a meeting that night in the back of the Episcopal Cathedral, right in the heart of downtown L.A.

It was Terry's favorite meeting, full of low-bottom drunks and junkies -- people from nearby halfway houses, bikers, jazz musicians. "Plus it's a men's stag meeting," says Tom. "So already I've got issues.

"There I am on my first date with this new friend Terry, who turns out to not be real chatty. He's clumsy and ill at ease, an introvert with no social skills, but the cardinal has heard that he's also good with newly sober people. He asks me how I am, and after a long moment, I say, 'I'm just scared,' and he nods and says gently, 'That's right.'

"I don't know a thing about him, I don't what sort of things he thinks about or who he votes for, but he takes me to this meeting near skid row,where all these awful looking alkies are hanging out in the yard, waiting for a meeting to start. I'm tense, I'm just staring. It's a whole bunch of strangers, all of them clearly very damaged -- working their way back slowly, but not yet real attractive. The people back in Berkeley AA all seem like David Niven in comparison, and I'm thinking, Who are these people? Why am I here?

"All my scanners are out. It's all I can do not to bolt.

"Ten minutes before the meeting began, Terry directed me to a long flight of stairs heading up to a windowless, airless room. I started walking up the stairs, with my jaws clenched, muttering to myself tensely just like the guy in front of me, this guy my own age who was stumbling and numb and maybe not yet quite on his first day of sobriety.

"The only things getting me up the stairs are Terry, behind me, pushing me forward every so often, and this conviction I have that this is as bad as it's ever going to be -- that if I can get through this, I can get through anything. Well. All of a sudden, the man in front of me soils himself. I guess his sphincter just relaxes. Shit runs down onto his shoes, but he keeps walking. He doesn't seem to notice.

"However, I do. I clapped a hand over my mouth and nose, and my eyes bugged out but I couldn't get out of line because of the crush behind me. And so, holding my breath, I walk into the windowless, airless room.

"Now, this meeting has a greeter, which is a person who stands at the door saying hello. And this one is a biker with a shaved head, a huge gut and a Volga boatman mustache. He gets one whiff of the man with shit on his shoes and throws up all over everything.

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From what I know of Big Pharma, I'm not really surprised. Companies are frequently given a mild slap on the hand and get off with a promise to report themselves for breaking any more regulations. And knowing Mitt Romney's worship of the marketplace, of course he doesn't want to regulate businesses, so that doesn't surprise me, either. But you'd think that one or two of the mainstream media might want to point this out for the people who don't already know:

The fatal meningitis epidemic sweeping the United States can now be traced to the failure of then-Gov. Mitt Romney to adequately regulate the Massachusetts pharmaceutical company that is being blamed for the deaths.

At least 344 people in 18 states have been infected by the growing public health crisis and 25 have died so far.

But the epidemic may also play a role in the presidential campaign, now that state records reveal that a Massachusetts regulatory agency found that the New England Compounding Co., the pharmaceutical company tied to the epidemic, repeatedly failed to meet accepted standards in 2004 — but a reprimand was withdrawn by the Romney administration in apparent deference to the company’s business interests.

“It goes all the way up to Mitt Romney,” said Alyson Oliver, a Michigan attorney representing victims of the outbreak. According to Oliver, on at least six occasions, NECC was cited by authorities for failure to meet regulatory standards and almost subjected to a three-year probation. “It goes directly to the heart of what Romney says about regulation, ‘Hands off. Let the companies do their thing.’”

“When the person who is supposed to be in charge of oversight does not believe oversight is necessary, this is what happens,” Oliver added.

“The philosophy of the Romney administration was to have lax regulations across the board,” Philip Johnston, a former secretary of health and human services in Massachusetts before the Romney administration, told Salon. “It speaks volumes about the tragic outcome of Romney’s view on regulatory issues. There are two dozen people who died needlessly. It was clearly the responsibility of the company to protect them, but it was also the responsibility of the government at various levels, and, as far as I’m concerned, they failed.”

On Oct. 28, Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., called for “a full investigation” into the regulatory issues that led to the epidemic. “There’s a regulatory black hole here,” he said, “but the full assessment of responsibility, state to federal, is ongoing. We need to know everything.”

The owners of NECC have made campaign donations both to Romney and to Massachusetts Republican senatorial candidate Scott Brown, Salon has learned.

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Glenn Beck seems to be irked at the people digging into his past. But then, that's because his past is truly a disgusting thing to behold. I wouldn't want people looking at it either, if mine were anything remotely like Beck's.

He ranted about it last night on his Fox News show. He thinks we should be paying more attention to his phony "scandals" than to just what kind of character we're watching implore us to seek greater moral goods (as he sees them) every night.

He's no doubt thinking of Alexander Zaitchik's impressive three part series in Salon, the first of which does indeed point out that his mother's death remains a mystery -- and that Beck's own later assertion that it was a suicide was a peculiar event.

It was an incredibly revealing series -- particularly this nugget from the second part, describing Beck's antics when he had a falling out with a former radio-show partner named Bruce Kelly, who became a competitor in the Phoenix market. Beck was known as "the king of dirty tricks," including an invasion of Kelly's wedding.

The animosity between Beck and Kelly continued to deepen. When Beck and Hattrick produced a local version of Orson Welles' "War of the Worlds" for Halloween -- a recurring motif in Beck's life and career -- Kelly told a local reporter that the bit was a stupid rip-off of a syndicated gag. The slight outraged Beck, who got his revenge with what may rank as one of the cruelest bits in the history of morning radio. "A couple days after Kelly's wife, Terry, had a miscarriage, Beck called her live on the air and says, 'We hear you had a miscarriage,' " remembers Brad Miller, a former Y95 DJ and Clear Channel programmer. "When Terry said, 'Yes,' Beck proceeded to joke about how Bruce [Kelly] apparently can't do anything right -- about he can't even have a baby."

You have to wonder if Kelly contemplated returning the favor when Beck's second daughter was born with cerebral palsy.

But then, he'd have been forced to sink to the level of Glenn Beck to have done something like that.

Stop me if you've heard this one...

A lesser-known candidate attracts a small following of dedicated supporters by the promise of being different than your usual Washington DC elected officials. Taking advantage of these supporters' talent in getting the word out over the internet, scheduling meetups of other potential supporters, raising funds and generally building up a wave of enthusiasm that carries the candidate to national prominence, that same candidate starts taking on the trappings of traditional politicians-consultants, pollsters, campaign managers from inside the Beltway-and slowly, but heartbreakingly surely, the candidate moves away from those netroots supporters that got him where he was.

Sound like anyone you know?

Well, to Lowell Feld and Nate Wilcox, authors of Netroots Rising: How A Citizen Army Of Bloggers And Online Activists Is Changing American Politics this is altogether too familiar a story. Lowell and Nate are veterans of several netroots campaigns, such as Wesley Clark, Jim Webb, Tim Kaine, and Mark Warner. Netroots Rising documents instance after instance where candidates are profoundly grateful for the support and work of the netroots only to distance himself after surrounded by those desperate not to change the status quo of the power circles.
I am hosting the Book Salon discussing Netroots Rising at Firedoglake starting now 5:00 pm Eastern/2:00 pm Pacific. Come join us and let's discuss the growing power of the netroots and how we can get our voices heard.

The fabulous Digby is hosting and moderating FireDogLake's Book Salon this afternoon with Sen. Harry Reid, discussing his latest book The Good Fight: Hard Lessons From Searchlight to Washington, beginning now at 2:00pm PDT/ 5:00pm EDT.

If you have some questions for the Senator, who has risen from his beginnings in a ramshackle cabin with no indoor plumbing in the Nevada desert to Senate Majority Leader, go on over and say hello.

For all of the misguided talk about Mike Huckabee being a "populist," his enthusiastic support for a regressive national sales tax should effectively end the discussion.

In case there's any lingering confusion about just how ridiculous this policy is, Jon Chait sets the record straight:

Basically, trying to explain why the Fairtax is a bad idea is like trying to explain why having trained elephants perform open-heart surgery on every first-grader in America is a bad idea. The whole idea is one bit of lunacy stacked upon another, so when you focus on any one element of it, you let the other side suck you into into arguments about details -- Maybe there could be benefits to preemptively fixing the hearts of six year olds! Perhaps elephants do have the potential intelligence to one day perform this task!! -- that inadvertently make the plan sound semi-credible.

If you're still not convinced, take a look at Brad DeLong's piece in Salon this week.

Download | play Download | play (h/t Heather)

George Clooney congratulates Julia Roberts in a recent tribute, but channels a much different newsmaker.

SITE UPDATE: We've been trading emails to try to make this work, and we finally have a date. Unfortunately, it's short notice, but we wanted to give you the opportunity during the holiday shopping season to pick up this fantastic book and support one of our best. So therefore, Crooks & Liars will be holding our first Book Salon TOMORROW to support Lee Jackson aka NonnyMouse's latest book, Redemption. Please join us from 12:00 noon Pacific/3:00 pm Eastern and Nonny will be here to answer your questions and discuss.

Sidney Blumenthal, Salon contributer and executive producer of "Taxi to the Dark Side" wants the Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs to do her job:

One Defense Department official, believing the administration policy on detainees and torture to be illegal and counterproductive, told me that in his and others' efforts to reverse it they approached you as a last hope. After all, you have virtually unrestricted access to the president. But he recounted that you rebuffed them, and described your attitude as dismissive.

Your complicity in the torture policy is one reason that I am writing you. Despite the futility of those inside the administration in bringing the problem to you, you still remain in place to redress it. As the undersecretary of state for public diplomacy, responsible for defending America's reputation in the world, you must engage the issue that has most seriously damaged our image. Your obligation will continue so long as you hold your post. Those who care about the good name of the United States will not cease viewing you as a last resort, even if you disdain or ignore them, because they cling to the desperate hope that a nagging conscience or its sudden awakening will compel you actually to do your job.

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Joan Walsh at Salon:

Last week we told you that Salon was running two "Opus" cartoons, featuring spiritual seeker Lola Granola's stint as a "radical Islamist," that many newspapers, including the Washington Post, declined to publish. This week, Salon is running Berkeley Breathed's original, unedited version of the Lola Granola finale, and it's slightly different from the one approved for distribution to newspapers by the Washington Post Company.[..]

As I noted last week, Editor & Publisher and others reported that some newspapers had concerns about running a cartoon that might somehow be construed as insensitive to Muslims. I'd like to insert a line here about Salon's courage in running these two strips, but I didn't see anything that made me think twice about them -- except the news that others wouldn't publish them. We're proud to have Breathed as a contributor, and sad about what this episode says about newspaper publishing today.

There are basically two ways to look at the David Vitter/DC Madam story: shame (senator cheats on spouse) and hypocrisy (moralistic blowhard champions sanctity of marriage, gets caught as an adulterer). CBS News’ Brian Montopoli reports today that the mainstream media is focusing on the prior, while the blogs care about the latter.

The blogs are having a field day with that hypocrisy…. The mainstream media, however, has largely steered clear of focusing on Vitter’s past statements, opting instead to play the story relatively straight. The Washington Post, noting only about his rhetoric that Vitter is “reliable conservative vote in the Senate,” didn’t front the story, opting instead for A3. Rather, it’s the blogs and liberal sites like Salon that are jumping on the story and hammering Vitter for statements at odds with his behavior.

If you want a straight news story, then, you can stick with the traditional media. But if you want a spotlight placed on Vitter’s hypocrisy — and the rush of satisfaction that comes with experiencing schadenfreude that you can justify — you can head over to the blogs. Is it any wonder that the latter get so many clicks?

That Vitter championed “family values” is pretty much the only thing that makes this story interesting. Why would traditional reporters sidestep the obvious?