...he is just simulated that way.

The Guardian has one of the more informative obituaries. The Times of London gives a bit more detail. As for the New York Times, Baudrillard's most significant achievement was having the cover of his book, "Simulations and Simulacrum," featured in the film Matrix. Baudrillard claimed that the filmmakers misunderstood his work, and I probably do as well, but I am sure he would have made something out of how the obituary writer internalized the replacement of reality with media simulations.

The title of this diary is an obvious play on the title of one of his works, "The Gulf War Did Not Take Place" about how the first Gulf War was more of a media event than an actual war, with Saddam simply sacrificing his troops to stay in power while the US just bombed away more for show than to achieve any strategic objective, leaving the power structure on the ground intact.

I want to launch an internet meme adapting the quote from Pastor Niemoeller about the importance of recognizing and standing up to tyranny early on to the current erosion of the Bill of Rights. Could you all help out in revising it into something powerful?

I used to live in upstate NY. It was Mario Cuomo's loss to Pataki as governor of New York State in 1994 that most solidified my impression of the failure of a kind of electoral strategy that keeps the Democrats losing against the party that cannot govern and which I hope the movement around DailyKos can replace. The ineptness of the campaign was strange when one considers Cuomo's skill as an orator.