Lileks is on a roll today. He starts with a fisking of Patrick Stewart (who now, strangely enough, seems to abhor space)...

Great job, Pat! Nice of you to wad up all the goodwill you've accumulated and flush it down the toilet. Let's review: you're most prominently identified with which character? No, not Ahab. Perhaps Professor Xavier? After 2 more movies and 280 TV episodes, perhaps. No, you're Jean-Luc Picard. That's how millions know you; that's the character that millions enjoyed, because you did a good job of portraying a civilized, intelligent explorer who projected the values of Western Civ into the inky void while confronting the baffling nuances of worlds we have yet to imagine. Many of us aging dweebs enjoyed ST: TNG because you invested the silly thing with gravity and brains, and our wives loved it as well: that shiny skull worked for them big time. In a few years NASA will have a crop of engineers whose desire to put robots on other planets was first sparked by the opening fly-by sequence of TNG. They thought you were on their side. Silly people?

I'm waiting for a Kerry speech in which he seems angrier about 9/11 than he does about tax cuts.

I'm waiting for an ad that simply puts the matter plainly: who do you think Al Qaeda wants to win the election? Who do you think will make Syria relax? Who do you think Hezbollah worries about more? Who would Iran want to deal with when it comes to its nuclear program - Cowboy Bush or "Send in the bribed French inspectors" Kerry? Which candidate would our enemies prefer?

O the shrieking that would result should such an ad run. You can;t even ask those questions, even though they're the most relevant questions of the election.