Andante at Collective Sigh has put together a timeline with pictures illustrating the reactions of George W. Bush to Katrina and those of Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao to the earthquake that struck Sichuan province this week. Take a look. The contrast between Bush and a head of state is, as usual, stunning.

Is this the end of Nixon’s Southern Strategy? (Incidentally, note the lapel pin in the photo below. Do we see a pattern emerging here? For instance, did Mussolini wear a lapel flag?)

The result in Mississippi, and what Republicans said was a surge in African-American turnout, suggested that Mr. Obama might have the effect of putting into play Southern seats that were once solidly Republican, rather than dragging down Democratic candidates.

Another masterful performance by the Little Prince from an interview with Politico.com. For one thing, he looks forward to the day when he can sent emails again. The way things are now everything has to be deleted each time Congress sends over another subpoena.

And for another thing, you will be touched in the appropriate place to learn that Bush gave up golf as an expression of solidarity with the Gold Star mothers whose sons he has killed. Sorry the following post is so long, but there are lots of presidential shallows to be plumbed here.

Q: Mr. President, thank you very much for having us into the Roosevelt Room for the first online interview. In the spirit of the Internet, I wonder if we could ask a question from one of our users, Steve Bailey, of New York, who says: With oil at $126 a barrel, pushing up the price of everything — even food — what can your administration do to help people right now?

THE PRESIDENT: I appreciate Steven’s concerns. With the price of gasoline going up, it’s like a tax. I wish I could give Steven a quick answer. In other words, it took us a while to get to where we are — very dependent on oil, and in a world in which demand is greater than oil. So my answer to Steven is that the best thing we can do is to increase supply, and to drill for oil and gas in environmentally friendly ways at home, and build more refineries. Steven probably doesn’t know this, but we haven’t built a new refinery since 1976, and if we’re truly interested in relieving the pressure on our consumers, then we ought to have a very active domestic policy now…

Q: Mr. President, the one thing we don’t see in here is a computer, and we know that you went cold turkey off email for security reasons. What are you looking forward to when you finally get your computer back?

THE PRESIDENT: Emailing to my buddies. I can remember as governor I stayed in touch with all kinds of people around the country, firing off emails at all times of the day to stay in touch with my pals. One of the things that I will have ended my public service time with is a group of friends, a lot of friends. And I want to stay in touch with them and there’s no better way to communicate with them than through email…

Q: Mr. President, acknowledging those constraints, you’re an oil man — some people say that climate change, global warming could have been your Nixon-to-China. Do you wish you’d done more?

THE PRESIDENT: I did what I think is necessary to actually work, Michael. I mean, I could have signed a — I could have supported a lousy treaty and everybody would have went, “Oh, man, what a wonderful sounding fellow he is.” But it just wouldn’t have worked. I don’t think you want your President trying to be the cool guy and not end up with policies that actually make a difference…

The biggest issue we face is — it’s bigger than Iraq — it’s this ideological struggle against cold-blooded killers who will kill people to achieve their political objectives. Iraq just happens to be a part of this global war. Iraq is the place where al Qaeda and other extremists have made their stand — and they will be defeated. They’ll be defeated through military action, but they’ll also be defeated as this young democracy takes hold. They can’t stand to live in a free society, that’s why they try to fight free societies…

I feel like — I felt like there were weapons of mass destruction. You know, “mislead” is a strong word, it almost connotes some kind of intentional — I don’t think so, I think there was a — not only our intelligence community, but intelligence communities all across the world shared the same assessment. And so I was disappointed to see how flawed our intelligence was.

Q: And so you feel that you didn’t have all the information you should have or the right spin on that information?

THE PRESIDENT: No, no, I was told by people that they had weapons of mass destruction — as were members of Congress, who voted for the resolution to get rid of Saddam Hussein. And of course, the political heat gets on and they start to run and try to hide from their votes. But intelligence communities all across the world felt the same thing. This was kind of a common assessment.

So “mislead” means, do I think somebody lied to me? No, I don’t. I think it was just, you know, they analyzed the situation and came up with the wrong conclusion.

Q: Mr. President, you haven’t been golfing in recent years. Is that related to Iraq?

THE PRESIDENT: Yes, it really is. I don’t want some mom whose son may have recently died to see the Commander-in-Chief playing golf. I feel I owe it to the families to be as — to be in solidarity as best as I can with them. And I think playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal…

Q: Now, Mr. President, President Carter recently told Charlie Rose the next President could change America’s image in 10 minutes. Here’s what he said: “I think the next President could change the image of this country around the world in 10 minutes by making an inaugural speech that would start off and say, ‘As long as I’m President we will never torture another prisoner, as long as I’m President we will never attack or invade another country unless our own security is directly threatened.’”

THE PRESIDENT: Yes, well, what he ought to be saying is, is that America doesn’t torture. If the implication there is that we do now, then he’s wrong. And you bet we’re going to protect ourselves by the use of military force. What he really is implying is — or some imply — you can be popular; if you want to be popular in the Middle East just go blame Israel for every problem. That will make you popular. Or if you want to be popular in Europe, say you’re going to join the International Criminal Court.

Popularity is fleeting, Michael. Principles are forever.

Maureen Dowd today:

Obama breezed through West Virginia, the state he couldn’t charm even wearing a flag pin and promising to invest in “clean coal.”

Jimmy Carter was an expert at this sort of thing, too. His Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare had lately been enraging the tobacco belt by his attacks on smoking — but North Carolina’s support had been a key element in Carter’s election. So during the 1978 midterms the president visited a tobacco warehouse there and and delivered himself of this wonderful straddle: “We must find ways to make cigarettes even more safe.”

And when Carter was governor of Georgia he unveiled a portrait of Martin Luther King, Jr., in the state capitol and soothed the crowd with, “The time for racism is past.” The subtle beauty of this bank shot may be clearly seen by substituting “slavery” for “racism.”

As usual, the Rude Pundit comes right out and says it about Obama’s chances today in Indiana:

Ah, fond memories of living in a town northeast of Indianapolis, of car rides past homes that that flew the Confederate flag on poles on their front lawns (and this was in a medium-sized city, not a small burg), of towns with black populations so disenfranchised and isolated that they are practically invisible, of migrant workers regularly abused by employers when violence wasn’t being committed against them by townspeople. And that’s not even to get into how flat and gray and ugly most of the state is for most of the year, after harvest and before planting season.

When a large swath of a state is populated by people from the Appalachian region who migrated northward for factory jobs decades ago and then those factory jobs dry the heck up for the most part, what you are left with is a bunch of resentful crackers looking to play “where’s the scapegoat?”

By all means go and read the whole screed, but bear in mind that I had to look hard to find an obscenity-free passage as long as the one above. And even then I had to make a substitution, since the word “heck” has never made it out of the Rude Pundit’s computer. What he really wrote, I am sorry to report, was “*uc*”.

Dana Milbank of the Washington Post files “Dispatches from the Twilight of a Presidency” —

7:58 a.m.: By e-mail, the White House Communications Office sends out its “Morning Update.” It lists two events on Bush’s schedule for the entire day: a “Social Dinner in Honor of Cinco de Mayo” and, an hour later, post-dinner entertainment. To react to the main news of the day — thousands of deaths from the cyclone in Burma — Bush sends his wife out to make a statement. She criticizes the Burmese government for its failure “to issue a timely warning to citizens in the storm’s path” and “to meet its people’s basic needs.” Reporters, too tactful to draw parallels to New Orleans, quiz her instead about daughter Jenna’s wedding, and the names of future grandchildren. “George and Georgia, Georgina, Georgette,” the first lady says…

The White House regarded the briefing with an equal level of ennui. The press secretary, Dana Perino, was away, having given the commencement address on Saturday at her alma mater, Colorado State University at Pueblo. White House aides left vacant three of the five seats designated for their use. Behind the lectern, Perino deputy Scott Stanzel took 20 minutes to exhaust all questions from the diminished field of questioners.

Stanzel began with the news that the United States had provided a whopping $250,000 to relief efforts in Burma -- a figure one reporter termed “a drop in the bucket.”

During the Vietnam war a bootleg tape called “What the Captain Meant to Say” circulated among the press corps. It purported to be the recording of a press interview in which an Air Force pilot repeated puts his foot in it and a Public Affairs Officer repeatedly breaks in to clear up the mess. A sample from memory:

Pilot: We were trying to hit the Dim Sum Bridge, but we must have missed the son of a bitch by a good half mile at least.

P.R.O: What the captain meant to say was that his squadron cratered the approaches to the Dim Sum Bridge.

Along the same lines, here’s what our Pigmy President said five years ago tomorrow on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln:

“Major combat operations in Iraq have ended,” Bush said at the time … The “Mission Accomplished” banner was prominently displayed above him — a move the White House came to regret as the display was mocked and became a source of controversy …

“The banner should have been much more specific and said Mission Accomplished for These Sailors Who are on This Ship on Their Mission,” White House press secretary Dana Perino said Wednesday.

A query from Don Heiny:

Wonder if they were able to pry anything from Chuck Heston’s cold, dead fingers?

I offer up for what it’s worth, and you’ll notice I’m not charging for it, my candidate for the bottom half of the McCain ticket. He is shown at the United Nations, holding up a vial which does not contain anthrax so that the world would tremble at the thought of how many people could be killed by a little vial like that if it did in fact hold anthrax. Remember Anthrax and how much fun we all had with it? What ever happened to old Anthrax anyway?

I few days ago I posted on a scummy GOP dirty trickster who tipped off the FBI as far back as December that Eliot Spitzer was supposed to have visited a prostitute in Miami. Since then more information has become available on the tipster, an unpleasant specimen named Roger J. Stone, Jr.

Roger J. Stone, Jr. is the one in the pants suit, below. He’s also Donald Trump’s flack and was a key player during Bush’s 2000 theft of the presidency in Florida. Let this be a lesson to Roger J. Stone, Sr. When you pass along your name, you never know how the little fellow is going to turn out. He might grow up to be president, but even then…

Mr. Stone, who has referred to politics as “performance art,” is a longtime Republican consultant known for hardball politics and a cloak-and-dagger sensibility. He started out as a teenager in the campaign of Richard M. Nixon, and has a tattoo of the former president’s head on his back.

This is your own, personal mantra. Repeat it to yourself silently, over and over, with your eyes shut and your ears plugged. It will help, I promise. It has worked for others.

In case you’re one of the lucky few who’s still flush with cash, Amazon has just the ticket to deal with the problems facing the economy right now. Along with some other useful items . In case that doesn’t work, I know some good root doctors on the South Carolina coast who will be glad to help you out. Just in case voting doesn’t do the trick.

From Reuters, March of 2008:

WASHINGTON — U.S. President George W. Bush got an earful on Thursday about problems and progress in Afghanistan where a war has dragged on for more than six years but been largely eclipsed by Iraq…

"I must say, I'm a little envious," Bush said. "If I were slightly younger and not employed here, I think it would be a fantastic experience to be on the front lines of helping this young democracy succeed."

From Army counsel Joseph Welch to Senator Joe McCarthy, June of 1954:

Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?

Brother Bill emails:

This lead graced the front page of the Pocono Record last week:

“If sewage could talk, it might one day say, “What a long, strange trip it has been.”

Actually sewage can talk, Bill, and here’s the kind of thing it keeps saying:

”We're in a battle with evil men — I call them evil because if you murder the innocent to achieve a political objective, you're evil.”

President Bush at a press appearance in Crawford with Prime Minister Rasmussen of Denmark:

Q: Thank you, Mr. President, and thank you for bringing us to the great weather.

THE PRESIDENT: Yes, back to Texas, man. I cut his teeth in Texas. (Uneasy Laughter.)

(Actually the transcript doesn’t say “uneasy.” I just figured the laughter had to be uneasy, because otherwise it would have to be servile, and these guys and gals of the press are watchdogs, not cringing curs.)

Our new friend Gary Eschman dug this up, emailed it, and kindly agreed to my request to publish it.

George Walker Bush Presidential Library

The Library will include:

• The Hurricane Katrina Room, which is still under construction.
• The Alberto Gonzales Room, where you can’t remember anything.
• The Texas Air National Guard Room, where you don’t have to even show up.
• The Walter Reed Hospital Room, where they don’t let you in.
• The Guantanamo Bay Room, where they don’t let you out.
• The Weapons of Mass Destruction Room (which no one has been able to find).
• The Iraq War Room. After you complete your first tour, they make you to go back for a second, third, fourth, and sometimes fifth tours.
• The Dick Cheney Room, in the famous secure, undisclosed location, complete with shooting gallery.
• Plans also include: The K-Street Project Gift Shop, where you can buy (or just steal) an election.
• The Airport Men’s Room, where you can meet some of your favorite Republican Senators.
• Last, but not least, there will be an entire floor devoted to a 7/8 scale model of the President’s ego.

To highlight the President’s accomplishments, the museum will have an electron microscope to help you locate them.

When asked, President Bush said that he didn’t care so much about the individual exhibits as long as his museum was better than his father’s.

Raw Story reports that a UKTV Gold television survey showed 58% of Britons think Sherlock Holmes really existed, while 23% believe Winston Churchill is a myth.

I don’t deny the mythical character of much of Churchill’s life. Anyone who’s read Geoffrey Wheatcroft’s review of three biographies of the irascible drunk, in the May 2006 issue of Harper’s (subscription only), knows that a huge portion of his life was made up out of whole cloth, or constructed by others under his loose supervision. (Unfortunately his racism was genuine.)

…Churchill the great writer [was] awarded the Nobel Prize for literature on the strength of a book that was largely written by others.

But he did actually live, whatever you think of him. So did Gandhi, Florence Nightingale, the Duke of Wellington (boo!), and Richard the Lionheart.

The post-literate generation may believe that watching pictures move gives them information, but the results prove otherwise.

See? What did I tell you about snorting pig brains?

The packing house, in Austin, Minn. (pop. 23,000), slaughters 1,900 pigs a day, working two meat-cutting shifts and one clean-up shift. Virtually everything is used, including ears, entrails and bone. The 12 sufferers of the neurological illness — most are Hispanic immigrants — all work at or near the “head table” where the animals’ severed heads are processed.

One of the steps in that part of the operation involves removing the pigs’ brains with compressed air forced into the skull through the hole where the spinal cord enters. The brains are then packed and sent to markets in Korea and China as food.

Investigators say there is no reason to suspect that either the brains or the pork cuts were contaminated. Their working hypothesis is that the harvesting technique — known as “blowing brains” on the floor — produces aerosols of brain matter. Once inhaled, the material prompts the immune system to produce antibodies that attack the pig brain compounds, but apparently also attack the body’s own nerve tissue because it is so similar.

As if cheeseburgers were something we should be promoting, a German company is offering them in a can. For a mere four euros, you too can open a tin can and remove a squashed cheeseburger, complete with bun, after a week-long trek into the wilderness. (h/t William Gibson; yes, that William Gibson)

Civilization, Ho!

Far be it from me to poo-poo the smooth.

“It just looks nice and tidy,” said Stuart after his “back, sack and crack”. “Of course it is slightly painful, but in my experience not nearly as sore as having your chest waxed. It’s much better than shaving it, too. You don’t get those awkward nicks and it doesn’t grow back anything like as quickly.”

Men seem better at dealing with the pain, said Senior. “They are always saying ’Oh, it doesn’t hurt’, but I suspect that might be male bravado. Women are never shy to scream the house down.”

Maybe I’m just too old to get it. But while I consider women worthy of praise and adoration, and to some extent imitation, there are things even I consider beyond the pale. So I guess if you were on the verge of sending me a love letter based on the idea that I would submit to a full-body waxing, you can save your stamp.

Are you as good at playing the Air Guitar as I am? I doubt it.

Here’s the biggest craze to hit these shores since the advent of air guitar playing. For all of you bloggers who revel in YouTube blogging , this video displays the proper method of AirBlogging. Many of our newspaper writers and editors have worked so long at mastering this craft and are so good at doing it well, they are even able to create the illusion of producing a legible, seemingly credible copy, at least to a portion of the populace.

I have much to say about this subject since I have been learning the proper method of becoming a real journalist. Please follow along closely, as I want to relate below the fold what I have learned from a great many of the well paid (mostly conservative) journalists working in their respective fields of coverage. But watch the video first before you read the rest of what I have to say — otherwise you will not be able to understand my message.

Okay, I realize everyone’s trying to get the story posted immediately. Perhaps these three (consecutive) paragraphs slipped out, and the WSJ will edit them later.

Today former President Bill Clinton critiqued Mr. Obama’s record while stumping for his wife throughout the state, calling Mr. Obama’s candidacy “the biggest fairy tale I have ever seen.”

Yo! Is the Big Dog taking out his latent frustrations with his wife on the campaign trail?

In the end, it was Mr. Obama’s lack of experience that made many voters opt for the more seasoned Mrs. Clinton. “I like him and I think he’ll be ready in eight years,” said Allison Mundry, a 49-year-old real estate agent in Salem. But for now, she says “We have to vote for someone who can get the Republicans out of office.”

Okay, you’re voting for the candidate who polls the worst of the top three Democrats against the Republicans because we gotta get rid of those damned Republicans? Well, I can pretty near guarantee you they’ll absent themselves from any discussion of a Clinton. They always have.

The Illinois Senator will go on to South Carolina where half of all registered Democrats are African-American and could choose Mr. Obama, the first serious candidate to have a chance at the White House.

“The first serious candidate”? They can’t even bring themselves to say it openly.

Here’s the nastiest bit I’ve come across in a long time. This effluvium emanates, you will be less than bouleversé to ascertain, from the Sultan of the Supercilious, the CEO of Self-satisfaction, the Prince of Pretension, the Poobah of Pomposity, the High Priest of Preciosity, the King Kong of Kondescension, America’s Avatar of Affectation, ladies and gentlemen, give it up for — GEORGE F. WILL!

[Obama] and John Edwards, flaunting their histrionic humility in order to promote their curdled populism, hawked strikingly similar messages in Iowa, encouraging self-pity and economic hypochondria.

To follow this thought to its endearing conclusion, Will feels that the poor, the sick and the homeless have no one to blame but themselves and if they had any gumption at all they’d do like he did — get born to a professor of philosophy, learn loads of loquacious locution at Princeton and Oxford, and then pimp his prissy wee pen out to the power.

I just finished listening to Bush’s year-end press conference, and am thereby mightily uplifted. I was under the impression that things more or less sucked, but it turns out that this is not so. Things are actually swell, so that we can all look forward to the next 13 months with happy hearts.

I also learned, after Bush repeated it three times for me, how to pronounce “an omnibus bill.” You just take a deep breath and say “Anonymous Bill.” Try it for yourself. See how mellifluously it trips off the tongue?

NEW YORK (AP) -- A 710-year-old copy of the declaration of human rights known as the Magna Carta — the version that became part of English law -—was auctioned Tuesday for $21.3 million, a Sotheby’s spokeswoman said.

The document, which had been expected to draw bids of $30 million or higher, was bought by David Rubenstein of The Carlyle Group, a private equity firm, the spokeswoman said.

Sotheby’s vice chairman David Redden called the old but durable parchment “the most important document in the world, the birth certificate of freedom.”

Inside sources tell us that the document will be handed over to President Bush, who will issue sweeping signing statements relative to the document that will make clear that the right of habeas corpus is a nullity and that the divine right of George Bush, religious leader and Supremely elected ruler of the nations, is absolute and forever.

White House spokesman Dana Perino was quoted at a press conference, “now that the President has made clear that the United States Constitution is a nullity, an all out effort will be made to insure that other historic documents that the President disagrees with will be rendered null and void, particularly the Magna Carta with its quaint and outdated definition of habeas corpus.”

Last month I traveled through Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina and back, a total of 1,586 miles. During all that time I spotted exactly two Hummers, a black one and a yellow one.

My question is, where have all the Hummers gone, long time ago? Is there a big Hummer graveyard somewhere, probably Texas, where these gigantic lapel flags all rust away together, dreaming of world domination?

Or are they hidden away individually in supersized garages, as unacknowledged by their owners as those earlier votes for Nixon and Bush? Gosh, let's hope not. Those big babies run $50,000 or so, which is a lot to blow even on a meat-extender with a really gross weight of 8,600 pounds powered by a 3.7 liter in-line 5 engine with 95.5 mm bore and a 102 mm stroke.

Especially if you’re ashamed to drive it.

So next time why not go for the economy golf cart version? This little beauty here can be yours for only eighteen large, and what better way to tell the world that you’re not only an asshole, but a cheap one?

P.S. Check out the link in Buck’s comment below to see stunning pictures of an actual Hummer graveyard. And that was back in 2005!

News from Saturday’s Democratic debate in Iowa:

For all of the good will, with the Iowa caucuses less than five weeks away, the candidates did take opportunities to draw distinctions between each other.

While the Democrats said they wanted to change drug sentencing laws for crack and powder cocaine to erase racial disparities in punishments — more blacks and Hispanics are convicted for crack possession and sales, which carry heavier penalties — Mrs. Clinton said she had problems with making any sentencing changes apply to people already convicted.

“On principle, I have problems with retroactivity,” she said.

Unfamiliar with that principle, I pulled out my well-thumbed copy of Principles for Idiots and there it was, right on page 2008: It is better to let a thousand prisoners rot in jail than to free one Willie Horton.

I used to be head flack for the Federal Aviation Administration, but this pathetic snow job from former jet jockey Bush slipped right past me (and past The New York Times):

We can do better. We can have an aviation system that is improved. And that’s what we’re talking about. Secretary Peters and Acting Administrator Sturgell have been working with the airline industry on practical improvements. I want to announce a series of preliminary actions to help address the epidemic of aviation delays:

First, the military will make available some of its airspace over the East Coast for use by civilian airliners this Thanksgiving. These new routes will help relieve air congestion from Maine to Florida for nearly five full days surrounding the holiday.

Second, the FAA is taking new measures to head off delays. Bobby Sturgell will impose a holiday moratorium on all non-essential projects, so that the FAA can focus its personnel and equipment exclusively on keeping flights on time. The FAA is also partnering with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey to reduce bottlenecks in the New York metro area, which is the source of most chronic delays, etc., etc., etc.

Fortunately it didn’t slip right past Jim Fallows of The Atlantic, a pilot with long experience of east coast air traffic. Here is, as Paul Harvey used to say and for all I know still does, the rest of the story.

Thank God for the Second Amendment, without which we’d be unable to change tires.

Police say he wasn’t drunk, so one must assume a certain level of idiocy in the man from South Kitsap, Washington. Working on his Lincoln Continental, he was unable to remove the last lug nut on the right rear tire. What’s the logical next step? Stand an arm’s length away and fire your 12-gauge at it.

Buckshot and debris peppered him from foot to chin. The Beeb didn’t give his name, nor did it specify whether he’s friends with Dick Cheney.

Another installment of You Can’t Make This Stuff Up. (h/t Cursor)

When American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan sit down for Thanksgiving dinner, private security and military contractors will have guarded the convoys bringing the turkey and gravy.

If not for the private security contractor (PSC) business, there would have been no Thanksgiving at all. For it was a PSC whom the Pilgrims hired in 1620 to join them on the Mayflower and provide security for what would become their new colonial settlement in Plymouth, Mass.

Oh, well that excuses the murders of all those Iraqis then. They’re not Christians anyway, and they wouldn’t be interesting in giving thanks. According to Rat Pobertson:

Ladies and gentlemen, we have to recognize that Islam is not a religion. It is a worldwide political movement meant on domination of the world. And it is meant to subjugate all people under Islamic law. In the Quran, it says it very clearly. There are two spheres. One is the Dar al-Harb, which is the realm of war. The other is Dar al-Islam, which is that part that’s under submission to Islam. There is no middle ground. You’re either at war or you’re under submission. Now, that’s the way they think.

Which is completely different from Robertson’s view, that God punished the United States with 9/11 because we allow pornography and gays, that we should submit to his view of God rather than Muhammed’s, and that we’d better start a new Crusade posthaste. Can we say shadow projection? (Can we say President Rudy? I didn’t think so.)

Whether due to good relations with the friendly local Indians or the deterrent effect of the well-organized militia and relatively well-armed fort, Plymouth never came under direct enemy attack. But other English colonial towns would. Standish and his men volunteered to come to their aid when threatened or attacked, and in at least one case they left the invaders bloodied and dismembered. Some accounts say Standish led revenge raids and, in one case, used a medieval form of intimidation — mounting an enemy Indian’s head on a pike — to protect the colonists from further attack.

Such operations earned Standish criticism for being too harsh. But the colonists held him in high regard. They repeatedly elected him military captain of Plymouth…

It’s good to remind ourselves that the founders of our country were just as bloodthirsty as we are.

I have recently been running pictures of Rudi Giuliani with babies. This is because. as the father and grandfather of 16 past or present babies, I find these pictures terrifying.

Why would these mothers allow Rudy Giuliani to touch their tots? I would sooner entrust an innocent creature carrying my genes to a reticulated python coming off a six-month fast. Have these moms checked with Rudy’s own former tots?

All of which leads up to a plea for help. Google Images only goes so far, and I am about to run out of Rudy-Baby pictures. Please send URLs or JPEGs to jeromedoolittle, followed by the usual symbol, followed by gmail and a dot and then com. Thanking you for your consideration in advance, I remain, etc.

In obedience to instructions proceeding from the highest levels of the administration I was sitting around the house last night feeling scared. Which world leader, I fearfully wondered, was capable of keeping me warm and safe?

Not in some general sense, but specifically, physically. Suppose I’m in some neighborhood saloon, minding my own business but keeping an eye out for anybody who looks a little, you know, different? And suddenly in comes this bunch of terrorists, all of them mean drunk on goat’s milk or whatever the hell it is they drink and out to kill them some Christians.

There’s only one other regular person in the place that could get my back, so who should it be? Which world leader would have the strength, speed, hand-eye coordination, and testicles to save my sorry, aging ass so I could live to fear another day?

I went straight to Google, looking for beefcake shots of world leaders. Mussolini came up first, but he was hanging upside down and had a shirt on. Besides, I needed somebody alive.

Slim pickings. The paparazzi who do such a great job on Britney’s formerly private parts and Lindsay Lohan’s nipple slips aren’t so brave when it comes to heads of state.

All I could find, scantily-clad statesmanwise, was the three gotchas below. Contrast and compare, in one word or less. Which of the three looks tough enough to drag that bogeyman out of your closet and beat him like a borrowed mule?

(The old cowhand from Connecticut is shown as he tries and fails to break a bucking Segway. Although Segways have gyroscopes to keep greenhorns tall in the saddle, the safety feature can be overcome by a sufficiently incompetent operator.)

            

This little tidbit which appears in this morning’s Times caught my eye this morning. At first I thought Chinese official who was quoted might be speaking about Herr Bush or some of the previous recipients of the Medal of Freedom given by Herr Bush, but I was wrong. The Chinese are pissed about a religious leader getting the award. However I have to agree with their sentiments regarding many of those other recipients of the Medal of Freedom given by Bush. Like previous leaders in other countries, Herr Bush does love to hand out his medals and seems to have a passion for it, although it’s quite interesting to note that the fundamentalists who put him in office haven’t yet made it to the list. Like grandfather, like son.

Well, at least the Dailai Lama gets to join such heroic freedom fighters from Bush’s list such as Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus, BB King, Aretha Franklin, Andy Griffith, and we can’t leave out Michael Brown. No need to mention the unmentionable winners involved in the Iraq adventure. You know who they are.

Such a person who basely splits his motherland and doesn’t even love his motherland has been welcomed by some countries and has even been receiving this or that award…

Gritted teeth department, in today’s New York Times:

In Washington, a White House spokesman, Tony Fratto, was quoted by Reuters as saying: “Of course we’re happy for Vice President Gore and the I.P.C.C. for receiving this recognition.”

Rush Limbaugh’s recent attack on soldiers who oppose the war as “phony soldiers” is just another in a long line of right wing lies that go back to the Vietnam War Days. Jerry Lembcke is the author of The Spitting Image: Myth, Memory, and the Legacy of Vietnam. In an article published a few years ago, Lembcke notes:

Stories of spat-upon Vietnam veterans are bogus. Born out of accusations made by the Nixon administration, they were enlivened in popular culture (recall Rambo saying he was spat on by those maggots at the airport) and enhanced in the imaginations of Vietnam-generation men — some veterans, some not. The stories besmirch the reputation of the anti-war movement and help construct an alibi for why we lost the war: had it not been for the betrayal by liberals in Washington and radicals in the street, we could have defeated the Vietnamese. The stories also erase from public memory the image, discomforting to some Americans, of Vietnam veterans who helped end the carnage they had been part of.

What causes me to bring this up? Well, the spitting stories are back. In a recent letter to the editor in a rural South Carolina paper, some character named Curry writes:

Recently in Charleston, at a trendy franchised restaurant; two young soldiers who had just arrived from the war in Iraq were confronted by two college students who proceeded to spit in their food and call them “baby killers.”

These two college students were of course thrown out and the soldiers given new meals on the house. When asked why the soldiers didn't respond violently to these two college students, they said; “We just laughed at them, we had seen enough killing.”

As my favorite conservative writer John Swift boldly says ”I am Paris Hilton”.

I boldly say that ”I am Rush Limbaugh”. And I am here to tell you absolutely and unequivocally that the rest of the story is that the soldiers in Charleston SC were against the war and the persons who spit upon the soldiers were fans of Rush Limbaugh. And you can take that story and run with it.

On Monday’s news I watched a little of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s speech at Columbia and too much of President Lee Bollinger’s introduction. Today I got around to reading the transcript, naturally not in search of enlightenment. To seek enlightenment in the speeches of presidents, whether of colleges or countries, is to go duck-hunting where no duck dwells.

Instead I wanted to be sure that the TV excerpts had fairly represented Lee Bollinger’s remarks, and they had. This was a disappointment, as the president of Columbia had earlier given hints of a certain testicular presence by approving Ahmadinejad’s appearance on his campus.

But of course this had stirred up a perfect storm of the squawking that, when Israel is on the agenda, greets the the most tentative deviation into sense. So now it was CYA time: after a nod in the direction of academic freedom Bollinger turned his introduction into an attack on his invited guest.

This was understandable but it was also unforgiveable. Sins against God, country, and the legal code are merely venial, while sins against good taste are mortal.

Once Bollinger was done with armoring his ass against further assault, Ahmadinejad took the mike and politely said:

At the outset, I want to complain a bit on the person who read this political statement against me. In Iran, tradition requires that when we demand a person to invite us as a — to be a speaker, we actually respect our students and the professors by allowing them to make their own judgment, and we don’t think it’s necessary before the speech is even given to come in — (applause) — with a series of claims and to attempt in a so-called manner to provide vaccination of some sort to our students and our faculty.

Another thing struck me while watching this small, slightly-built man take on a hostile crowd in a hostile city. Ahmadinejad — although every bit as despicable as such other enemies of the republic as King Abdullah, General Musharraf and Vice President Cheney — showed that he is at least no coward.

The Conqueror of Baghdad and the Lion of Guantánamo, by contrast, would have surrounded himself with a battalion of Blackwater mercenaries before running such a risk. Whenever G.I. George ventures out in public his aides even issue orders that he is to be protected from so much as a glimpse of an antiwar button on man, woman or child.

Any little thing from the reality-based world outside, they seem to fear, might pop their boss’s bubble.

Going over some old notes for a political novel I’m in the middle of writing I came across this, copied out of the New York Times of September 29, 2003:

“Members of the president’s political team said they were not overly worried about signs of deterioration in his standing. Mr. Bush is still in a stronger position now in the polls than either Ronald Reagan or Mr. Clinton was at this point in his first term.”

Don’t you just love schadenfreude? It’s my favorite emotion of all!

Let’s start the week with a cheerful video trip down memory lane — the recent as well as the not so recent past.

Hope you didn’t miss the McClatchy cartoonist Kevin Siers on the Republicans with their tired-as-Britney act.

While driving through central Pennsylvania yesterday, I spotted a rather humorous advertising sign which was located near the entrance driveway to a megachurch. Apparently the memos from God’s helping hands on earth haven’t quite made it to the pulpit yet.

As websites are frantically scrubbed of embarrassing material regularly these days, I am pleased to report that Harvard Law School has resisted the temptation to scrub.

We are therefore blessed to have available from the Harvard Law website, presumably preserved for posterity, the wisdom imparted to the the Harvard Law Class of 2002 by the recipient of the Harvard Law School Association Award for 2002, one Alberto Gonzalez. A portion of a summation of the speakers remarks, copied directly from the website, appears below.

The hallmarks of a good attorney — fidelity to the rule of law, compassion to clients, and dedication to the profession — are even more important when the country is at war, said Gonzales.

“I can assure you,” he told the graduates, “that public service will make you a better person.”

Gonzales earlier in the day accepted the Harvard Law School Association Award, an honor whose previous recipients include Harry Blackmun, William Coleman, Mary Robinson, Archibald Cox, Elliot Richardson, and, last year, Janet Reno.

“I will dedicate the remainder of my life to live up to the principles of service and achievement reflected in this award,’ said Gonzales in his acceptance speech.

One can only guess at what Gonzalez surmised that those principles were.

If you haven’t already done so, please go sign the petition being circulated by the Progressive Majority asking companies who advertise on Fox News to stop sending Rupert their money. I haven’t a clue who advertises on Fox since I never watch, but this list is said to be accurate. Next time we’ll order the AMD chip on our computer.

Why sign? Because Bill O’Reilly hates bloggers.

Why does Bill O’Reilly hate the right of Americans to engage in free speech? Because Bill O’Reilly hates America, that’s why.

Sorry to be so cranky and in such a foul mood as to be posting such intellectually stimulating material, but that’s my “tribute to Keith Olbermann” rant of the day. And I don’t want to get into Freud here, but why is Bill O’Reilly causing my mother to hate me even more?

Thanks to Avedon Carol for the link to the YouTube video and the wakeup call about Momma.

Stanford law professor Lawrence Lessig gently jabs the jolly Lucas giant.

A dark force, however, has influenced Lucasfilm’s adoption of Eyespot’s technology. A careful reading of Lucasfilm’s terms of use show that in exchange for the right to remix Lucasfilm’s creativity, the remixer has to give up all rights to what he produces. In particular, the remixer grants to Lucasfilm the “exclusive right” to the remix — including any commercial rights — for free. To any content the remixer uploads to the site, he grants to Lucasfilm a perpetual non-exclusive right, again including commercial rights and again for free.

Upload a remix and George Lucas, and only Lucas, is free to include it on his Web site or in his next movie, with no compensation to the creator. You are not even permitted to post it on YouTube. Upload a particularly good image as part of your remix, and Lucas is free to use it commercially with no compensation to the creator. The remixer is allowed to work, but the product of his work is not his. Put in terms appropriately (for Hollywood) over the top: The remixer becomes the sharecropper of the digital age.

Lessig, who is near the top of the list of folks I’d like to interview, is known for deep assessments and thought-provoking viewpoints on the convergence of reality and cyberspace. He adds to the long list of disses continued through the ages:

Lawyers never face an opening weekend. Like law professors, their advice lives largely protected from the market. They justify what they do in terms of “right and wrong,” while everyone else has to justify their work in terms of profit. They move slowly, and deliberately. If you listen carefully, sometimes you can even hear them breathe.

How bad do your prospects have to look before you can get excited about Ted Nugent’s friend Fred Thompson?

Chants of “Fred” and “Run, Fred, Run,” greeted the actor and former GOP senator from Tennessee from many among the 350 people at the Young Republicans National Convention. The crowd interrupted his nine-minute speech with wild applause and mobbed him when he left.

[…]

Kevin Fickert, a 22-year-old college student in Los Angeles who originally is from Massachusetts, said he liked Romney’s leadership as governor but thinks Thompson has more appeal. “Thompson has this star power about him that I really like,” Fickert said.

Hey, I’ve seen that guy on TV! Oh yeah, he’s, like, an actor, or President. Or something.

Why is it that only crappy actors make it in politics? Or perhaps I’m drawing an unwarranted line from Reagan through Schwarzenegger to Thompson. What kind of childhood generates this immense need for the overwhelming father figure? I thought it was about competition.

Thompson’s pro-abortion lobbying effort, directed at Bush I, appears to have caused barely a ripple among his supporters.

“Whatever choice do we have? Mitt Romney has been on both sides of the issue,” said Paul Boyd, 26, of Memphis, Tenn. “Rudy Giuliani is 100 percent pro-choice. John McCain, at least for the first four years of the Bush term, was against whatever the president was for. Everybody has their flaws.”

Good point (but who says, “Whatever choice…?”). Aim low, keep your expectations within reason, or failing that at least the realm of possibility. And you can see what he means when you read that

[Romney] said he would like to use the country’s leading marketing minds to help sell the idea of American values in the Middle East.

“People will give up half a day’s salary to get a Coca-Cola in some parts of the world. We market Coke well. We market McDonald’s well. We market our rap music, our movies, our jeans,” Romney said. “We market everything America sells brilliantly, but when it comes to marketing ourselves and what we stand for, we don’t do a very good job of it.”

Damn, marketing, of course! Why didn’t I think of that? That’s what we haven’t been doing enough of! If people will give up half a day’s salary for a bottle of sugar water, we can surely get away with torturing them and stealing their oil. We just have to market it appropriately, with a certain amount of local sensitivity and some happenin’ colors.

So you can see why Republicans are turning to the man Nixon called “dumb as hell“. (“But he’s friendly,” Nixon allowed.)

Thompson had his supporters. His mentor, for example, Howard Baker, defended him in no uncertain terms: “He’s tough. He’s six feet five inches, a big mean fella”. What he thought that would buy Thompson as re: his career remains uncertain at this point. A starring role, perhaps.

What does appear certain from the established record is that Thompson was keeping the Nixon White House informed of certain key events.

Publicly, Baker and Thompson presented themselves as dedicated to uncovering the truth. But Baker had secret meetings and conversations with Nixon and his top aides, while Thompson worked cooperatively with the White House and accepted coaching from Nixon’s lawyer, J. Fred Buzhardt, the tapes and transcripts show.

Thompson made his place in history on Monday, July 16, 1973, by asking former White House aide Alexander Butterfield, “…are you aware of the installation of any listening devices in the Oval Office of the president?” Butterfield said, yes, as a matter of fact I am, setting in motion the final act of the Nixon drama, as the tapes proved to be his downfall. Thus, no doubt, Cheney’s passion for secrecy.

But though this was news to the public, it was not to the committee. Thompson was allowed to ask the critical question because he was the lead counsel for the Republicans, whose leader was Baker, and the information had been obtained by a Republican interrogator (which probably didn’t mean the same thing in those days that it would now).

This was a, perhaps the, turning point in the Watergate investigation. Republicans had rallied around their wartime President, a simple, cloth-coated patriot with a dog, who would never stoop to burglarizing an opponent’s office. In fact Baker’s famous “What did the President know and when did he know it?” was, according to historian Stanley Kutler, originally an attempt to show that the evidence hinged on the word of a single person, John Dean, a disgruntled employee if there ever was one, against that of the President of the United States, Leader of the Free World and Political Ass-Kicker Extraordinaire. (I mean, dude, he was friends with J. Edgar; you don’t fuck with those people.)

Unfortunately for Baker et. al., it turned not to be the case. Butterfield revealed the existence of the tapes, and it reached the point where only a Nobel Prize-winning spinner could deal with today’s headlines alone, leaving aside last week’s. It became necessary to look like you supported basic justice, even for Nixon’s moles inside the Watergate committee.

Thompson called Buzhardt over the weekend [before the Monday question] to tip off the White House that the committee knew about the tapes.

“Legalisms aside, it was inconceivable to me that the White House could withhold the tapes once their existence was made known. I believed it would be in everyone’s interest if the White House realized, before making any public statements, the probable position of both the majority and the minority of the Watergate committee,” Thompson wrote in his book.

Scott Armstrong, a Democratic investigator for the committee who was part of the Butterfield questioning, said he was outraged by Thompson’s tip-off.

“When the prosecutor discovers the smoking gun, he’s going to be shocked to find that the deputy prosecutor called the defendant and said, ‘You’d better get rid of that gun,’” Armstrong said in an interview.

Law and Order, that’s what it’s all about. Or is it image, I can’t remember…

Josh has been following the spread of the meme connecting universal health care with terrorism. Seems to have started on Fox Noise, then moved to MSNBC, and now to the New York Sun.

Are these folks really that stupid, or is this propaganda from a desperate position?

The fact that the Al Qaeda plot to detonate car bombs in London and Glasgow was carried out by doctors working for the National Health Service has shocked the British public far more than the fact that they were Muslims.

The notion that the NHS might have been infiltrated by jihadists from the Middle East is as disturbing as the emergence two years ago of young British Muslim suicide bombers.

In fact, it is more disturbing, not just because doctors are meant to save lives rather than commit mass murder, but because the violation of this inner sanctum of the British way of life threatens the whole idea of integration — which is meant to be the answer to Islamism. The line between integration and infiltration is a thin one.

The NHS is the nearest thing to a religion that the British now have. For half a century the British have convinced themselves that the NHS is the envy of the world. It is — for the third world. And it is the third world’s doctors and nurses who keep alive this socialist cult of security from cradle to grave.

Interesting piece by columnist and radio talk show host Colin McEnroe on how the Hartford Courant tanked for Connecticut’s insurance industry when it came time to review Michael Moore’s Sicko.

He also put a headline I wish I’d thought of on the photo he posted of Bush wearing Crocs with socks (the latter tastefully decorated with the presidential seal awarded to him by the Supreme Court) and a to-die-for little cap with a black Scotty embroidered upon it.

Am I starting to sound like Maureen Dowd here? I am, but I can live with that.

Back to the headline: It’s “I'm the Commuter! Of Scooter!” As to my own headline on this posting, it probably sounds like nonsense to you. Which explains why you’re not on the Supreme Court.

Looking for something else, I just came across the transcript of one of Bush’s performances as he traveled around the land in February of 2005 trying to destroy Social Security.

It’s almost too easy to pick on Bush’s rhetorical and intellectual inadequacies, so let’s do it. These specimens come from an appearance in Omaha:

Look, I'm worried about a society in which there's too many lawsuits. I believe all these lawsuits make it hard for people to form capital.

(On the surface, this seems utterly inane. Form capital? And yet something must have been stirring feebly in the presidential brain. All I can think of is that such things as the judgments against the tobacco industry, for instance, may have prevented major stockholders from getting even richer.)

I think there's a group — the life expectancy of certain folks in our country is less than others. And that makes the system unfair. In other words, if you're dying earlier than expected, the money you put in the system simply goes to pay somebody else.

(This time the message is clearer. Not only does the Decider fail to grasp the basic principle of the Sermon on the Mount, he also fails to grasp the basic principle of the insurance industry.)

MS. MORNIN: That's good, because I work three jobs and I feel like I contribute.

THE PRESIDENT: You work three jobs?

MS. MORNIN: Three jobs, yes.

THE PRESIDENT: Uniquely American, isn't it? I mean, that is fantastic that you're doing that. (Applause.) Get any sleep? (Laughter.)

(No argument from me on this one. Bush has got it exactly right. It is uniquely American. It’s how a certain few among us — not Ms. Mornin of course — “form capital.”)

Given the general right-wing bent of the editorial page at the Washington Post, perhaps less shrill than the WSJ but almost equally pro-war, it’s a bit of a surprise to read this editorial in the Post today. They actually disagree with the Supreme Court ruling in the Bong Hits 4 Jesus case!

You probably read about the student in Juneau who put up a banner with the offending slogan across the street from his school during a school event. His banner was torn down and he was suspended, so he sued claiming free speech rights. I expect that’s why the Post feels some kinship with the case, since they told a bunch of whoppers a few years back themselves. They haven’t really processed that yet, with a couple of exceptions like Froomkin. But when they’ve made excuses, they’ve often referred to the First Amendment.

So they can see the kid’s point, or rather the lack thereof:

As Justice John Paul Stevens wrote in his dissent: “To the extent the court independently finds that ’Bong Hits 4 Jesus’ objectively amounts to the advocacy of illegal drug use — in other words, that it can most reasonably be interpreted as such — that conclusion practically refutes itself. This is a nonsense message, not advocacy.”

Perhaps that nonsense thing is what the editors at the Post are connecting to.

Or perhaps they’ve been sneaking out to the alley on break:

Issues of drug use and drug policy are matters of serious contention. High school students must be able to debate them frankly — and that might even involve students taking the position that bong hits are not that bad.

A little quiz from today’s Washington Post:

…Agents have assembled a sketch … that they say fits the “Collector of Injustice” profile.

“It is always someone else’s fault, and the world is out to get them,” Bart McEntire … said in describing people who fit the profile. Eventually, the person’s compilation of wrongs becomes overloaded, and he lashes out violently to right them and get even with those who he believes have caused him misfortune and ridicule.

No, sorry. You guessed wrong. It’s not Bush and it’s nobody from his stable of spavined neo-cons either. It’s the Virginia Tech shooter, Seung Hui Cho.

Because, you know, New Yorkers are nothing if not practical…

A woman arrested for exposing her breasts has accepted a $29,000 settlement from the city, her lawyer said.

Jill Coccaro, 27, was arrested on a topless stroll two years ago, despite a 1992 state appeals court ruling that concluded women should have the same right as men to take off their shirts.

Coccaro, who now goes by the name Phoenix Feeley, remained in custody for 12 hours before she was told prosecutors were not going to pursue charges.

[ … ]

She told the newspaper she had gone bare-breasted after running the 2004 city marathon without police bothering her.

“I’ve always just felt that was something natural,” Feeley said of going topless. “I’ve kind of always done it out of practicality.”

I mean, have you shopped for tops in New York recently?

After a few days the young iguanas move from the low shrubbery around the nesting area and join the older juveniles and/or adults; here they consume the feces of their seniors, and this inoculation ensures the presence of the correct microflora in their guts.

From Herpetology, 2nd edition, p. 272, by Zug, Vitt and Caldwell.

My new congressman, Chris Murphy, recently traveled with five other House representatives — two other Democrats and three Republicans — to Afghanistan and Iraq. After their return, Bush invited them to the White House.

Last month I linked to a story giving part of Murphy’s reaction to the only president we’ve got (as Lyndon Johnson used to describe himself, when he was hip-deep in his own Big Muddy). Murphy then: “I really believe the president is much more intelligent than many people make him out to be.”

Yesterday our congressman gave a fuller after-action report during a meeting with local Democrats in the new gym at Cornwall Consolidated School. At the start he repeated, and I paraphrase pretty loosely, that the president indeed wasn’t as dumb as we might have thought. But you couldn’t prove it by what Murphy went on to say.

First off, it seems that Bush put no — zero, zip, nada — questions at all to six legislators fresh from the scene of his crimes. Whatever they might have seen or learned was evidently a matter of indifference to the Decider.

The incumbent did allow questions, however, which he answered with the same talking points he he has been parroting for years. Murphy said that Bush did this skillfully and articulately, and that he seemed to believe what he was saying.

What do you think so far? Is the president smarter than you thought or what? But wait, the evidence of a lively, engaged mind just keeps piling up. A few direct quotes from Murphy:

“He continues to have a refusal to accept any responsibility.”

“He seems to miss enirely the complexities of the Sunni-Shi’ite battle…”

Oh, what the hell, why go on? This stubborn little floater isn’t going to go down America’s toilet for another 624 days no matter how hard we jiggle the handle.

From an editorial in today’s New York Times:

The lasting spellbinder proves to be Reagan the speech maker, not the diarist. “Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem,” he once declared, setting one of the worshiped pillars of Reaganism. It was a facile turn of rhetoric that has so sadly been turned into fact by this administration.

In a letter to the novelist Owen Wister, Theodore Roosevelt once wrote, “Nothing is more sickening than the continual praise of [President] Wilson’s English, of Wilson’s style; he is a true logothete, a real sophist…”

This raises two questions, maybe even more. What the hell is a logothete anyway? And has any president since Wilson even heard the word, let alone been one? We will start and end our examination with the 43rd president.

George Walker Bush is a logorrheic, true. Logorrhea runs in the family, and Bush has engaged professional logographers to control the symptoms. For a time their treatments were successful, but have lately become less so.

And so the White House began releasing lists of books full of complicated words, some of them French, which Bush was said to have read between brush-clearing sessions at the old family ranch he bought while running for president.

Still, the president’s efforts at logomachy continued to falter, and so lately he has been positioning himself subtly in front of a bookshelf when the television cameras are running. In some polls, his numbers then dropped into the twenties.

Apparently this latest ploy hadn’t made the president stink of the lamp, but merely of flop-sweat. Books in the background didn’t make Bush a logothete any more than being born in Connecticut made him a Texan.

This week’s production of the long running television show 60 Minutes ran a story on the “Stop Snitching” movement among entertainers of the hip hop music genre. Predictably, the story only covered the bit players in the “Stop Snitching” movement.

60 Minutes didn’t delve deeply enough into the subject to point out that the movement has its roots in the highest levels of our government. We must therefore turn to a less biased source to understand how deeply the “Stop Snitching” movement has permeated our culture. Here, to further elucidate the thinking on this subject is a word from those at ThugLifeArmy:

...[W]e didn’t hear about the No Snitching ethos that seems to be practiced by our very secretive Vice President Dick Cheney and Presidential aid Karl Rove. We can talk about the lack of snitching around important issues like the War in Iraq, the firing of Federal Judges. Hell let’s look at 9-11. Also we shouldn’t forget how Cheney went into Stop Snitching mode after he shot his homeboy in the face. The Cheney bunch are the epitome of ‘Stop Snitching’ . They hold that position much harder then Cam’ron or any other rapper.

Hat tip to MrDaveyD.

Cuba and Venezuela want to get their hands on Luis Posada Carriles, a murderous thug and one-time terrorist for the CIA who blew up a Cuban airliner in 1976. However—

An immigration judge has blocked Mr. Posada’s extradition to Cuba or Venezuela, ruling that he could be subject to torture in those countries. Efforts to deport him to another country have failed because so far no other country has been willing to take him.

Has Torture Boy Gonzales heard about this rogue jurist who openly flouts the administration’s core moral value? Why hasn’t Torture Boy charged him with decent exposure and fired his whiny ass? If it’s good enough for all those U.S. Attorneys, it’s good enough for some two-bit “judge.”

My brand-new 33-year-old congressman Chris Murphy, who knocked off the despicable GOP warhorse Nancy Johnson in this past election, had a sit-down with the oldest Bush boy yesterday:

[Murphy] described the White House meeting as “a pinch yourself moment,” and he also left the confab more impressed with the man who occupies the Oval Office.

“I really believe the president is much more intelligent than many people make him out to be,” he said.

So there’s your bumper sticker for the next 640 long, long days: George W. Bush — Not as Dumb as You Thought!

From The Architect, by James Moore and Wayne Slater. Karl Rove is lobbying for the appointment of one of Bush’s office wives, Harriet Miers, to the United States Supreme Court:

On Monday morning, [Karl Rove] called his reliable ally Richard Land of the Southern Baptists, offering reassurance that if [Harriet] Miers were ever to rule against Bush’s political wishes, “it will be seen as an act of gross personal betrayal both by her and by him. And there is nothing lower than somebody who betrays their friends.”

From E.M. Forster’s essay, What I Believe:

If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend I hope I should have the guts to betray my country.

It may be, though, that the freedom-loving Forster and the neofascist Rove are not sisters under the skin after all. For Forster, in the same essay, also wrote:

Tolerance, good temper and sympathy are no longer enough in a world which is rent by religious and racial persecution, in a world where ignorance rules, and Science, who ought to have ruled, plays the subservient pimp.

Rudolph Giuliani, the mayor most hated and mistrusted by New York’s blacks in modern memory, goes with his heart, not with his head:

MONTGOMERY, Ala., April 10 — Answering a question that has become a litmus test of sorts for Republicans campaigning in the South, Rudolph W. Giuliani said Tuesday that he would leave the decision about whether to fly the Confederate battle flag over the State Capitol here to the people of Alabama.

Brigham Young University! This is not a straw in the wind. This is 2,000 board feet of kiln-dried lumber whirling around in a tornado headed for the White House.

“The problem is [Cheney] is a morally dubious man,” said Andrew Christensen, a 22-year-old Republican from Salt Lake City. “It’s challenging the morality and integrity of this institution.”

Let us now turn the pages on our internets to the comforting and consoling words of Eric Hoffer, from whom the following paragraphs appear in his seminal work, The True Believer. (Well, actually, I had to type ‘em out, as the scribes of the right have not yet seen fit to place much of the work of Hoffer onto the internet, the reason for which becomes more and more obvious as I read Hoffer closely.)

Whence comes the impulse to proselytize?

Intensity of conviction is not the main factor which compels a movement to spread its faith to the four corners of the earth: “Religions of great intensity often confine themselves to contemning, destroying, or at best pitying what they see in themselves.”Nor is the impulse to proselytize an expression of an overabundance of power which as Bacon has it “is like a great flood, that will be sure to overflow.”

The missionary zeal seems rather an expression of some deep misgiving, some pressing feeling of insufficiency at the center. Proselytizing is more a passionate search for something not yet found than a desire to bestow upon the world something we already have. It is a search for a final and irrefutable demonstration that our absolute truth is indeed the one and only truth.

The proselytizing fanatic strengthens his own faith by converting others. The creed whose legitimacy is most easily challenged is likely to develop the strongest proselytizing impulse. It is doubtful whether a movement which does not profess some preposterous and patently irrational dogma can be possessed of that zealous drive which “must either win men or destroy the world.”

It is also plausible that those movements with the greatest inner contradiction between profession and practice — that is to say with a strong feeling of guilt — are likely to be the most fervent in imposing their faith on others. The more unworkable communism proves in Russia, and the more its leaders are compelled to compromise and adulterate the original creed, the more brazen and arrogant will be their attack on a non-believing world.

The slaveholders of the South became the more aggressive in spreading their way of life the more it became patent that their position was untenable in a modern world. If free enterprise becomes a proselytizing holy cause, it will be a sign that its workability and advantages have ceased to be self evident.

The passion for proselytizing and the passion for world dominion are both perhaps symptoms of some serious deficiency at the center. It is probably as true as a band of apostles or conquistadors as it is of a band of fugitives setting out for a distant land that they escape from an untenable situation at home. And how often indeed do the three meet, mingle and exchange their parts.

“The thing I like about Bush is I think he hates liberals.” Ann Coulter

In the last fifteen years, the word liberal has been made a dirty word by evil conservatives bent on spreading their True Believer propaganda. However, even the sainted Ronald Reagan promised “liberalization” to the Soviet Union:

General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!

If the right wing propaganda machine truly believes that Ronald Reagan was a saint, they would deliver the goods. Otherwise, Ronald Reagan was a liar and a hypocrite — or the right wingers have gone off into a wilderness far beyond what Reagan envisioned.

Times are tough out there in the land of newspapers, but the Wall Street Journal has a plan! No need to write the bullshit! Just let the readers smell it. And you thought those scratch and sniff cards were a thing of the past, eh? Gotcha!

Atrios says: “....maybe people are tired of reading right wing horseshit”. I would add that there’s a lot of elephant shit out there too. We on the blogs haven’t quite figured out how to do the smell thing yet, but we can direct you to an earful.

It’s hard to imagine that when the late James Brown soul-shouted, “Somebody open a window, it’s gettin' funky in here,” the phrase would ever apply to Wall Street.

But then came the news that The Wall Street Journal is planning to adorn its hallowed pages with Rub ‘n’ Sniff ads.

Such shenanigans might be expected from the tabloids, home to all things wack. But the stoic Wall Street Journal? Why, one can almost see the loosening of ties — which, just in case, also make handy nooses.

The idea behind this daisy-fresh experiment is to draw readers and advertisers back to the newspaper industry, which has seen better times, given the lengthening shadow of the Internet.

So perhaps the first smell that this scheme of schemes is emitting is the musty scent of flop-sweat desperation, masked as ingenuity. An article on the Advertising Age Web site is accompanied by a photo of a wad of greenbacks with the caption, “Ahh...that new money smell.” Bullish optimism at play.

The plan wouldn't have been feasible until recently, because the traditional scratch ‘n’ sniff olfactory experience was far too expensive for use in newspapers. But a company called Scentisphere (how Jetsons - and ridiculously close to Futurama’s “Smell-o-scope”) developed a much cheaper way to apply scent to ads and dubbed it Rub ‘n’ Sniff.

It looks like the Torture Boys are going to be facing a relentless onslaught for the next two years. Only problem is, Chinese water torture was said to have been designed to make the victim go insane. Can an insane person be made more insane? Probably not, but at least they face the music.

This week’s first item of drippage is now out of the faucet and is featured in today’s Washington Post. Stay tuned. There are two more years to cover the last six years of fraud, corruption, graft and malfeasance so there is a great deal of water left in the tank.

Witnesses have told congressional investigators that the chief of the General Services Administration and a deputy in Karl Rove’s political affairs office at the White House joined in a videoconference earlier this year with top GSA political appointees, who discussed ways to help Republican candidates.

With GSA Administrator Lurita Alexis Doan and up to 40 regional administrators on hand, J. Scott Jennings, the White House’s deputy director of political affairs, gave a PowerPoint presentation on Jan. 26 of polling data about the 2006 elections.

Lurita Alexis Doan, administrator of the General Services Administration, is to appear Wednesday before a House committee.

A Political Invitation
In January, political appointees at the U.S. General Services Administration were invited to participate in a videoconference with agency chief Lurita Alexis Doan and the deputy director of Karl Rove's White House Office of Political Affairs.

When Jennings concluded his presentation to the GSA political appointees, Doan allegedly asked them how they could “help ‘our candidates’ in the next elections,” according to a March 6 letter to Doan from Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. Waxman said in the letter that one method suggested was using “targeted public events, such as the opening of federal facilities around the country.”

On Wednesday, Doan is scheduled to appear before Waxman’s committee to answer questions about the videoconference and other issues. The committee is investigating whether remarks made during the videoconference violated the Hatch Act, a federal law that restricts executive-branch employees from using their positions for political purposes. Those found in violation of the act do not face criminal penalties but can be removed from their jobs.

I didn’t listen to Mr. Bush’s speech last night, but I heard about it. He made several references to the term “klieg lights&rdquo. At first blush and without doing a little research, my first thought was that this term must have come out of Nazi Germany. It didn’t. It is an archaic term these days, as the Kliegl Light Company went out of business in the 1990’s, although they had actually quit producing real Klieg lamps in the early part of the last century. Klieg lights were carbon arc lamps that were used in stage lighting, but they haven't been used for at least 75 years. Thus the term is as archaic as Mr. Bush’s use of it is.

Actually, though, stage lighting was first used at the end of the dark ages and the beginning of the period that we now call the Enlightenment. According to my sources, stage lights were first used in 1580 in Italy and helped usher us out of the Dark Ages.

So where could Mr. Bush have gotten the idea to use the term klieg lights to refer to the fact that Congress wants to shed a little sunshine on the dark inner recesses of the White House and the dark age that has descended upon America since he took office?

I did a little googling and I think I have answers for our readers. On February 21, Chris Cilizza of the Washington Post wrote a blog post entitled “Democrats Find it Hot Under the Klieg Lights”. Cilizza’s article was critical of Hollywood and the Democrats. Why would Bush choose such a term that his friends at the Washington Post had used in a disparaging manner against Democrats? I don’t think he believed that anyone would notice, just like he doesn’t think anyone will have the political strength to deliver much needed sunshine into the inner recesses of the dark, shady dealings that are and have been going on in his administration for the last six years.

It’s time to let the sun shine in on the White House. Sunshine is brighter than a klieg light ever was and it’s time to let the sun shine brightly. Make haste, fellow Democrats, make haste.

Keeping Bush’s poll numbers at the high twenty range is unquestionably the result of the efforts of that most illustrious of faux news sources, Rupert Murdoch’s preeminent ideological cable “news” channel, FOX News. Fox leads the market in propagandizing to those who are too senile to know better, those in the leftward most half of the IQ bell curve, and those persons susceptible to the “True Believer” syndrome. Except for the growing market for some of Rupert’s more legitimate news outlets, as some of my friends on the left coast who are True Believers in the genius of Bart Simpson have assured me exists, I assumed Rupert had just about reached market saturation.

Look out! In 2005, Murdoch purchased My Space, a web networking site, which is a favorite among the young, but also features such notable southern geniuses as Jasper Johns, another Simpson News Channel fan. Yesterday, Murdoch’s people announced that MySpace will promote its own news network, which will apparently get quite involved in the upcoming American Presidential race.

My thoughts? I think that Censorspace is on to something. The War on Propaganda is in its infancy.

Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone carves Tom Friedman a new one. Enjoy. You may even learn something. (I didn’t know till now that Friedman is not just comfortably off like any New York Times columnist, but obscenely rich.)

In other words, both Vietnam and Iraq failed not because they were stupid, vicious occupations of culturally alien populations that despised our very presence and were willing to sacrifice scads of their own lives to send us home. No, the problem was that we didn’t make an effort to “re-evaluate tax and spending policies” and “shift resources” into an “all-out” war effort.

The notion that our problem in Iraq is a resource deficit is pure, unadulterated madness. Our enemies don’t have airplanes or armor. They are fighting us with garage-door openers and fifty year-old artillery shells, sneaking around barefoot in the middle of the night to plant roadside bombs. Anytime anyone dares oppose us in the daylight, we vaporize them practically from space using weapons that cost more than the annual budgets of most Arab countries to design.

We outnumber the active combatants on the other side by at least five to one. This year, we will spend more on the military than the re