"Reform feels good, take it from me. To correct course and avoid the reef and find clear sailing is the great tonic of life. A man grows a beard for the pleasure of cutting it off. And now I have the pleasure of boycotting bottled water for tap.

There is much we do not understand - power cords in the briefcase, for example: you set them in neatly and a few hours later they are completely entangled with each other, and who knows why? - but the stupidity of buying bottled water in America is easily grasped by even the dullest.

And now, if liberals can cut consumption of foreign water, then maybe conservatives can start to face up to the disaster they visited on this country with the election of the Current Occupant. None of the current Republican hopefuls can quite bring himself to do this.

Face it. When you push an incompetent frat boy on the country, what you get is what has happened.

Republicans prize loyalty above all things, so the Republican Congress carried the White House water for years, not bothering with any sort of oversight, but loyalty to the Occupant now is like marriage to a drunk, a very iffy proposition. If they can't get a grasp on this, the Republicans can't win in 2008."

Garrison Keillor, host of the public radio program "A Prairie Home Companion." This article was distributed by Tribune Media Services