The Believers

You kinda knew there was this conservatard death cult out there, objectively wishing for another terrorist attack on home soil to clarify things to the 70% of idjits that no longer have any faith in Big Dick's Endless Snipe Hunt. Of course, such a thing would immediately invalidate their other pet theory, that the Cheney administration's willful rending of the Constitution has been the magic force field protecting us from further attacks in the first place but....well, let's just say logic has never been these folks' strong suit.

Anyway, so some douche-nozzle columnist finally says what's on the Borg hive-mind:

America's fabric is pulling apart like a cheap sweater.

What would sew us back together?

Another 9/11 attack.

The Golden Gate Bridge. Mount Rushmore. Chicago's Wrigley Field. The Philadelphia subway system. The U.S. is a target-rich environment for al Qaeda.

Is there any doubt they are planning to hit us again?

If it is to be, then let it be. It will take another attack on the homeland to quell the chattering of chipmunks and to restore America's righteous rage and singular purpose to prevail.

The unity brought by such an attack sadly won't last forever.

The first 9/11 proved that.

....and the Borg laps it up. The bracing, delusional "honesty" of Bykofsky's polemic is not the problem; the problem is clearly his jumbled mish-mash of false associations, weird leaps of logic, and flat-out speculation and wishful thinking. It's a relentlessly, consistently wrong piece, perfect in its complete lack of sense and honest observation.

Americans do seem besotted with the notion that military actions should be quick, clean, and precise, I'll give him that. But a permanently cowed corporate media has been complicit in allowing them to think such actions are ever that way, when they almost never are. Even covert black ops in the fifties ended up with tragic amounts of blowback, borne almost exclusively by little brown people in places most Americans couldn't find on a map, whose biggest crime was being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Only a sociopath could have assumed that a full-scale invasion of a strategically important country would be quick and clean.

And if "unity" is really your goal, then wouldn't pulling out accomplish that as well, with much less loss of life? Liberals have been clamoring for that already, obviously, while the vaunted 28% meathead demographic can just convince themselves that it's the Democrats' fault or whatever, like they do anyway. Even though the Democrats are still punting on first down whenever Bush shoves them around a bit on anything to do with the war, or funding, or illegal surveillance. Apparently they're just not bending over quickly enough for the contemplative freeper claque.

Anyhoo, the most revolting aspect of Bykofsky's little wish list is just how quickly it got picked up by the flying monkeys of the VRWC. They must just hang out at the same fax machine, waiting for instructions. And they've wasted no time in getting Bykofsky to explain himself.

I think they need this to keep going, and the whole thing smells of an ugly turn. Even though they are unserious, sloppy thinkers, and have no use for facts, it is becoming harder and harder for them to catapult the propaganda, and to find scapegoats. For every ambitious TNR spouse whose milblog gets 86ed with an internal investigation (which, surprise, says he's lying, but provides no details), and thus becomes a cause celebre for the week, there's endless more carnage and death that they have to continually sidestep and ignore.

So now they've started to turn their sights back to the stateside fifth column, the uncooperative doodooheads who refuse to clap their hands and say that they believe in fairies, the way Dear Leader wants them to. I shouldn't even have to say this, but obviously it's tremendously difficult to even speculate as to how another terrorist attack would affect the public psyche. There are too many variables -- the site, the casualties, the scope of the overall damage, even the origin country of the hypothetical terrorists.

Put it this way -- Saudi Arabia and Pakistan got away with one last time, considering the two countries were largely responsible for originating the financing, logistics, and manpower. A second hit by a bunch of middle-class Saudi fanatics trained in Pakistan, and there would be some fuckin' unity, but the consequences would be catastrophic all the way around. Singularity of purpose is not as helpful as one might think in the face of $200/bbl oil and numberless incinerated people.

Regardless, the way these people seem to be genuinely slavering for such an event, merely as an opportunity to reflexively toldjaso the opposition and thus boost their own fatally flawed ideology in their own eyes, is one of the more reprehensible things I've seen, in an era chock-full of them.

A Beautiful Mind

What the hell is Tweety's fucking problem?

Immediately following President Bush’s press conference today, MSNBC’s Chris Matthews spent three unbroken minutes fawning over the president’s “powerful rendition” of his “philosophy” without uttering a single critical word. “I thought in listening to the president, I was listening to one of the great neoconservative minds,” gushed Matthews.

....

“This president is ready to fight like a rock through the rest of his term,” Matthews proclaimed. “He made it clear that he’s going to fight as long as it takes to develop a democracy in Iraq. There’s not going to be any change come September.”

Well, he certainly thinks like a damned rock, but then so does Tweety. Still, what exactly is the upside in this grotesque teabaggery? We know there's not going to be any change come September, asshole; we knew it back in January when all the Serious Thinkers were somberly intoning that this was our for realsies last chance, not like all those other last chances.

Bah. It's kick-the-can one more F.U., and by then it's primary season, and it's the candidates' hot potato. And thanks to no-account morons like Tweety and his fellow fluffers, Bush and his merry claque of violent idiots will get away with the horror and waste they've wrought. Nice job, guys. Really. The value of a free punditocracy proves itself once again. This is what your election-industrial complex is all about, right here.

Can't wait for the next spasm of drooling, preening stupidity from one of these wastes of oxygen. It won't be long.

My Milkshake Brings All The Boys To The Yard

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Electionmania Smackdown

I'm not sure why Tweety doesn't just go in whole hog and draw up his dream electoral match between Hulk Hogan and Macho Man Savage. Between the WWE pseudo tough-guy posturing and the high-school cliquishness (especially his petty sniping at Edwards), it's a goddamned miracle any sentient being still considers that planarian's opinions marginally relevant.

Frog Of War

Pepe Le Pew, en vacances dans l'États-Unis, eh, comment on-dit -- goes le postal on a couple of doofus reporters.

According to FOX News, "before Sarkozy spotted him, Cole had driven his boat up to the patrol boat, identified himself and received permission to be there."

"He was happy and smiling and he waved at the security people as he was coming out," Cole said to FOX of the president. "And then he noticed us taking pictures and his happy demeanor diminished immediately."

Sarkozy apparently had a change of heart as the two men who were snapping photos claim Sarkozy pointed toward them and his boat began moving in their direction.

FOX reports that Sarkozy came next to Cole's boat, and the French president "clad only in swim trunks, jumped aboard and began shouting at them."

"The president was very agitated, speaking French at a loud volume very rapidly," DeWitt said.

And then he waved his farts in their general direction.

Does Le Pew ne comprend pas that when reporters follow you around on vacation, it's so they can verbally fellate you with a cheesy puff piece talking about how you love 'merka so much you vacation here instead of in the south of your own country?

Perhaps Junior should take Sarkozy out for an attitude adjustment in Golf Cart One-and-a-Half. Wheeee!

Friends Don't Let Friends Drive Dork

Again with the golf cart, with the missus on the back. Later he will take his good buddy Hamid out on the ol' dirt bike, and then they will make s'mores and play a couple rounds of Truth or Dare. Or something.

Sometimes I get the feeling that we're being run by Nelson Muntz. That would explain a lot. Haw haw indeed.

[Via First Draft.]

Hayseed Dixie - Ace of Spades

These guys are great. Their cover of Snoop Dogg's Gin and Juice is also pretty amazing. Fun stuff.

Making The Pie Higher

Here's your Eat-Shit-and-Die pie, Mr. Mittster -- I made it special just for you.

[hackneyed Fred Thompson/Dukes of Hazzard voiceover]

Now, when ol' Willard tried to mosey hisself along New Hampshuh's finest dinin' 'stablishments, an' mingle with the common folks like he knew what was ailin' 'em, well, he got hisself a li'l ol' soo-prize when one o' the commoners came up on him an' a-ankle-bit 'im. Oh my, did the front porch a-squeak an' a-rock with laughter. Hell, ol' Cooter durn near choked on the dip o' Skoal he had a-brewin' in his lip.

MANCHESTER, N.H. -- Mitt Romney was about a minute into an answer about his commitment to fighting the global spread of AIDS and health care diplomacy on Wednesday when a waitress behind the counter yelled out a question.

"What about our nation? How 'bout the USA? C'mon!" yelled Michele Griffin, a 12-year veteran behind the counter at one of Manchester's most famous eating establishments.

She turned to walk away, but the former Masschusetts governor and Republican presidential candidate called her back, sparking an emotional and confrontational 10-minute exchange about health care and the needs of the working class. The already hot diner got even hotter fast.

....

"After we pay our huge deductibles for our insurance and our cost for our prescriptions, there's nothing left," she said.

"Are you a Massachusetts resident?" Romney asked.

"No I'm a New Hampshire resident," Griffin said, and then added, before Romney could jump in, that "we pay over $1,000 a month for our insurance. Then we have co pays. Every time you go to the doctor, it's $50 a visit. Then you have co-pays for our prescriptions. Can you tell me what your co pay is?"

"Yes," Romney said. "$10 for each prescription."

"That's very nice isn't it?" Griffin answered dryly.

"Yes. What are yours? Romney asked.

"Mine are like $30-$50. I have three sick children."

I love it when these little publicity stunts go awry. Is it unfair to slap Romney with the Marie Antoinette label? I don't think so. That's not a slam at Romney in particular; he's as indifferent and ignorant as any other swell who literally has no clue about how working-class people eke their way through life, preyed upon by the jungle beasts of the health-care industry.

I have heard several modest proposals toward patching up a fatally-flawed health-care system that is going to collapse under the weight of rapidly aging and dying baby boomers, but I have yet to hear anything approaching a solution. Single-payer proposals are nice, but they will fix very little, because like the rest of the "solutions" they don't address the problem.

The problem is that HMOs, insurance companies, and pharmaceutical companies are, for all intents and purposes, in cahoots to grift as much money out of people as possible. As a result, health care is practically free for the very poor and the very rich. Everybody else gets royally screwed on exorbitant medications, high deductibles, high co-pays, all toward paying outrageous rates on everything.

As you can see in the comments in the article, many people have their own bright solutions. Heh, well, hey lady, maybe you shoulda married up and not had sick kids, heh. Real fuckin' samaritan there, Chief. Good luck with your colon cancer in about ten or twenty years. Maybe your insurance will cover you, or maybe you can mortgage your house to cover the deductible and the co-pay for chemo and meds. Or maybe you can put down your copy of Atlas Shrugged for two minutes and rejoin the human race.

I think it's damned peculiar that so many people rush to defend the vampire, while simultaneously blaming his hapless victims for showing their necks. I think it says a lot about people that they think it's fine that other people should simply work till they fucking drop, just to get by, just to cover usurious expenses contrived by marketers and pencil pushers who make six figures a year convincing people that their nighttime jimmy-legs are some sort of condition that requires medication to "cure".

Last year, my wife had a run of breathing problems, which seemed to revolve around either asthma (which she had never had before), or allergies, or a combination of the two. Since we live in an agricultural area, in a valley beset by winds and dust, the cause was almost certainly environmental. Neither of us have ever smoked, and she doesn't drink, so there were no bad habits to quit. Neither of us have any pre-existing conditions, and we're both about forty years old. It could simply have been a change in type and/or degree of pollen in the air, from crop rotation, smoke from excessive agricultural burning, whatever.

So she took my sucky insurance and went to a few doctors trying to get to the bottom of this. There was definitely no desire to get this or that medication, unless absolutely necessary, but a doctor prescribed a medicated inhaler, and gave her a sample. It worked in the sense that normal breathing resumed, but the steroids in the medication gave her blinding headaches and nausea. Still, she could breathe. Success!

Alas, a 30-day inhaler ran about $120/month, and was not covered by my sucky insurance. The cause was never formally diagnosed, and fortunately the symptoms have subsided to at least a livable extent. But not before she had gone to specialists, pharmacies, the whole nine yards, racking up about $1200 that we don't have in expenses. And the subsiding could simply be due to seasonal change, so we might be right back to square one in a few months. (And yes, we are trying to consolidate our finances and move, but until I finish school and get my student loan repayment figured out, it's impossible to relocate.)

So, to recap -- even though we had insurance, we got dicked around for about five months on this shit, to no small expense of time, money, and sanity. And we just consider ourselves lucky that it was nothing terribly "serious", to the extent that you can regard being able to breathe lightly. Freedom of choice ain't all it's cracked up to be when you're basically forced to pick which predator you want to devour you in the least painful fashion.

This story should be bigger than a mere gotcha on Mitt Romney who, while an enabler and a symptom of the disease that pervades Americans' perceptions of the crumbling health-care system, is not the cause. It's another part of our infrastructure, like our desiccating water sources for our desert oases, like our withering electrical grid, like that collapsed overpass in Minnesota, that everyone seems to think they're entitled to, but no one wants to pay for.

Well, we can continue to let ourselves be grifted by the soulless scamboogery of billion-dollar corporations, whether under the imprimatur of "single-payer" or whatever, or we can diagnose the root of the problem. It's not runaway malpractice costs, and it's not even obese Americans, though preventive health and wellness could certainly be factored into a restructured health system and make it much more cost-effective.

It's about following the money, and understanding which small slice of the American pie is truly benefiting from the system as it stands. And even more fundamentally, if every legislator and politician had to live under the same health-care system that people like Michele Griffin do, they'd find a way to fix it tomorrow. Never forget that. This problem can absolutely be solved, but as long they are being rented by Big Pharma and Big Insurance, it won't be, it'll just get a happy new coat of paint slapped on it, trotted around for a quick view, and nothing will change.

Frag Hags

Just when you figured it couldn't get any worse, the Pat Tillman saga does exactly that, as years of lies wrapped in deceptions and smothered in secret sauce eventually get found out, somehow. It's despicable, through and through, at every level of the game, from the men in the platoon who destroyed the evidence and tried to get their stories straight, all the way up to the thoroughly dishonorable men who chose to use an honorable man as their recruitment prop.

And to what end? Some asshole general who was the last one standing when the music stopped gets reprimanded. Ooooh. A reprimand. That sounds about right.

And I don't want to hear any of this "fog of war" bullshit. Yes, I'm still willing to buy into the essential story that Tillman was a victim of accidental (if meticulously placed, apparently) friendly fire. After that, there was no fog, only cynical decisions made by pathetic, ass-covering freaks who deserve whatever misfortunes life has to offer them.

But this story does not have a retributive or punitive moral, obviously. We can "know" as sure as shit that the true knowledge of Tillman's demise went right up to the top, preceding his funeral, and nothing substantial will ever occur. That is the nature of political crimes -- either people are made an example of and wind up at the end of a rope, or nothing at all happens. Nothing in between, unfortunately, so nothing meaningful will happen to any of the participants in this ugly, manipulative charade.

What it is, however, is very illustrative of the system in general, and the beasts in particular who are currently running it. Because let's face it -- if the evidence had never been made public, they would have been happy to know the truth for themselves, and wrap the lies in a flag and serve it up on a weekly basis. The line between knowing and not knowing is fragile, and realizing how just the knowledge of seemingly simple, isolated events affects our perceptions of the whole process is essential.

Abu Ghraib is another example -- it was something that Iraqis already knew about, obviously, but without the actions of one man, we would never have known about this systematized, deliberate barbarity. We still don't know much; recall that our esteemed legislators, who regard us as children, sat on the second set of photos, deeming them far more problematic than the first. What do you think that means?

You don't even know what you don't know, and most of the people who do know and can affect that, have absolutely zero incentive to change that dynamic for you. It took a corporal who was willing to literally risk his own life to get the Abu Ghraib photo CDs (which were, you recall, trophies of a perverted, sickening sort; they were bragging about this shit) stateside, into responsible, human hands. It's taken three years to find out that Pat Tillman was shot square in the forehead from ten yards away with an M-16, practically point-blank. How many service personnel have been indicted or tried or convicted and sentenced just this year for the most heinous, despicable war crimes?

And that's just the stuff we think we know. Maybe we should keep all these things in mind as well -- as disparate as they may initially seem -- before letting the usual crew of Magic 8-Ball-using Barcalounger Spartans tell us anything about anything, much less about anything important, such as war.

The Carpet Crawl

Froomkin mentions the latest round of choir-preachin' Himself has engaged to show the kids how optimistic delusional he is. There's nothing new here; it's like hearing a crappy song on the radio again (do people still listen to radio stations, and if so, why?), well after it was time to move it off heavy rotation.

"[Bush] spoke very eloquently about Good vs. Evil and even brought the story back to the rug, which was designed with only this Presidential input -- to let it reflect light so as to influence his decision making. Light as in good vs. darkness as in evil."

Good grief, does this guy ever stop yammering about the stupid fuckin' rug? Okay, we get it, it's yellow 'cause no matter what happens, yer a sunny optimist. Jesus, I think the slow kids in the back caught that one by this time. I lawn-darted my country and screwed up the world, but this rug makes me feel better about it. Says it all right there.

Hennen continues: "If every American could have the opportunity I did today -- to sit with the President of the United States and hear him firsthand describe his resolve to win in Iraq and around the world, we would have a very different situation with public opinion. . . ."

That so? Then why, pray tell, do only reliable conservatard stenographers get invited to these little chats? Huh? Hm? If it's that cut and dried, if all it would take to convince "every American" of the rightness of Bush's thoughts and policies, then why get the message out in this fashion?

Well, duh. It's because every time Bush does take his arguments public -- and he does, with regularity -- it convinces nobody. His poll ratings continue to stagnate or drop. The mission here is clearly not to persuade or convince, it's to evangelize, to affirm, and it's impossible not to figure these toadies realize that. But they're like the proverbial pimple on Marilyn Monroe's ass -- just happy to be in showbiz.

"His descriptions of the enemy and their brutal, cold-blooded-killer tactics were enough to make a graying group of radio talk how hosts want to enlist and serve this country in uniform."

Well, almost enough, heh. Perhaps enough to yank their kids out of college and send them? Yeah, right. Besides, this humanoid banana hammock bravely claims to be fulfilling his mission just fine from his stateside laptop, as a rhetorical turret-gunner/surfer for warporn.

These idiots can barely continue to fool themselves at this point; it's either sheer delusion or the professional ethics of a back-alley crack-whore that enables them to even act like they think anyone else is itching to buy their rancid kool-aid. It's just a sordid continuation of the same feedback loop.

Opposition Positions

Today's position: the wheelbarrow, to make the carrying of Republican dirty water all the less challenging.

WASHINGTON, July 31 — Under pressure from President Bush, Democratic leaders in Congress are scrambling to pass legislation this week to expand the government’s electronic wiretapping powers.

Democratic leaders have expressed a new willingness to work with the White House to amend the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to make it easier for the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on some purely foreign telephone calls and e-mail. Such a step now requires court approval.

It would be the first change in the law since the Bush administration’s program of wiretapping without warrants became public in December 2005.

Yes, because the executive branch has certainly not only proven the urgent need to circumvent to the notoriously lax and librul FISA courts, but that they, the Bush White House, are capable of wielding this power in a, um, responsible and non-partisan manner, like pretty much everything else they've touched.

“We hope our Republican counterparts will work together with us to fix the problem, rather than try again to gain partisan political advantage at the expense of our national security,” Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, said in a statement Monday night.

Maybe this is some rope-a-dope strategery Harry Reid has cooked up. Given the lack of focus on this particular issue though, perhaps some of us can be forgiven by the Serious Thinkers for having our doubts.

I think this bit is the real kicker:

The White House has told Democratic lawmakers that it will accept a narrow bill now but will come back later for broader changes, including legal immunity for telecommunications companies involved in the wiretapping program.

Basically how this will eventually shake out is that Fredo and his minions get to do infinite amounts of data mining and sifting on everyone, period, and a blanket retroactive no-backsies immunity for all the gubmint and telecom weasels who cooperate with this, right up to the very day someone somewhere grows a spine and says no to these people. Or, you know, not.

I'm sure this is all Ralph Nader's fault somehow.

Leave It To Cleavage

This is why Robin Givhan's ridiculous stunt coverage of actual people trying to put forth a serious image and address serious issues happens to matter:

From 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. ET on July 30, MSNBC devoted a total of 23 minutes and 42 seconds to segments discussing Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's (D-NY) "cleavage." MSNBC broadcast separate segments on this topic during the hours of 9 a.m., 10 a.m., 11 a.m., 1 p.m., 2 p.m., and 3 p.m. ET, skipping only the noon and 4 p.m. hours. During the same period, CNN devoted 3 minutes and 54 seconds to coverage of Clinton's cleavage, while Fox News devoted none.

Nicely done. I'm sure the fact that MSNBC and WaPo are corporate partners in grime is just a coincidence. I can't stress enough that I am not a fan of Clinton herself, nor of the idea that electing her next year would potentially mean a 28-year dynastic alteration of Bush-Clinton-Bush-Clinton. But she has acquitted herself fairly well thus far in the early (let's face it, far too early) stages, and would be a much better preznit than either the current oaf or any of his potential Republitard successors.

Still. We're talkin' 'bout titties now (which I'm always thrilled to talk about, except in the context of politics), and 60-year-old gilf titties at that. This is retarded. This is counterproductive.

This is your political media. How do you like it?

The Ego Has Landed

I agree with The Rude Pundit 100% -- aside from his demonstrable lack of curiosity and intellectual rigor, probably the most annoying tics about George W. Bush are on a more personal, perceptual level, which he shares with us by what he says and how he says it.

His abusive one-upmanship of subordinates and media lackeys is inexcusable; I grew up busting balls with buddies on the street corner, and even I think it's bullshit. His gratingly palsy-walsy habit of calling other leaders by their first names, even as they stare through him and hew to protocol, is an embarrassment.

And as RP points out, his harping on people who have actually done something with their lives before they hit forty says a hell of a lot more about him than it does about them. It's not indicative of what a superb country this is that a thirty-eight-year-old reporter is covering a preznitential press conference; it is, however, indicative of what an indulgently forgiving country this is that this weird, useless man hasn't already been run out of town, with all his mommy and daddy issues and his pack o' shameless lies and fuck-ups in tow, to hole up at the tumbleweed farm for the duration.

I remember hearing back in 2000 how character mattered, and how we needed to have "the adults" back in charge. This is what we got -- a smartass, towel-snapping frat-boy who still thinks he's branding Deke pledges, whether they're Scotsman Gordon Brown (and Jesus H. Christ, is there a reason Bush is prancing around talking about Scotsmen like they're exotic zoo animals?) or some hapless reporter getting in the way of his funny. You got yer question, Baldy, now bow down and tell 'merka how glad you are to kiss my ass on-camera. Or something. It's unsettling to watch and to read, and it will be nice to eventually pull someone from a pool of non-galoots to clean up the place.

Because, as some would-be village poobah once said, it's not his place.

Culpepper To Raiders

The acquisition of Daunte Culpepper could be a real opportunity for both him and the team, but it all comes down to whether the new zone-blocking scheme on the offensive line takes hold. It would be almost impossible for the line not to improve on the record 72(!!1!) sacks they gave up last season, which is just monumentally pathetic. But it is crucial that they keep Culpepper and his reconstructed knee upright, and give him sufficient time to hit Jerry Porter and Ron Curry. He's still got a cannon arm.

This has been a disheartening off-season for football fans, even before Mike Vick's nauseating little doggy-torture-chamber was unearthed. Between Pacman Jones' idiot antics, the DUI's, the various antics of the Cincinnati Bengals, and so on, I can't help but wonder about the corporate perspective. Because the NFL is nothing but a corporation, albeit one with the most high-profile employee roster in the country, and one which cultivates working-class fans with upscale prices. And Joe Six-Pack doesn't really want to pay $60/head, $10/beer, and $80/jersey to watch a bunch of spoiled thugs play. At least the league is trying to crack down on some of the behavior issues.

But it still interests me in the more wonky disciplines of resource management, negotiation, and the actual strategery of the games, and in that light, the signing of Culpepper is intriguing, and has a lot of potential upside. He has the talent to help bring Jamarcus Russell along, and seems to be a good character addition to a team that needs all the leadership it can get.

Mama He's Lazy

The question is not whether a slick-drawling actor/lobbyist being pushed into the ring by his wife can be the "savior" of his party. Seriously, it is not even remotely a legitimate question, considering the rest of the Republican landscape, which has been laid waste largely by their own excesses.

No, the question at this point is whether such a corrupt cadre of image-spinning idiot-wranglers even deserves to be saved, if this is their last best hope.

"People are not inspired; everyone's flat-lining," says Ken Duberstein, former chief of staff for Ronald Reagan. "Right now, Fred is all things to all people. Everyone's waiting to see if he can live up to expectations."

With those expectations casting Thompson as Reagan reincarnate, it's easy to understand why he's staying out of the race for as long as he can. The next Republican debate takes place Aug. 5 in Des Moines, to be followed six days later by the Iowa straw poll in Ames, an expensive faux election that measures the muscle of a candidate's organization and the thickness of his wallet more than his actual appeal to caucus voters. Thompson advisers decided that the risk of underperforming at either of these high-profile events was too great - and outweighed any advantages that would be gained by launching the campaign over the summer. As one Thompson partisan noted, John McCain's spectacular fall from Establishment front-runner to underfunded underdog proves how hard it is to sustain a lead, month after month, without faltering.

Also, it's gotta be damn near impossible to sustain any momentum with a closet case like Zach Wamp furiously humping your legs for weeks on end. Seriously, have you seen some of this guy's gushing over Big Fred's manly manliness? There's less campy flamboyance in Rip Taylor's love letters to Charles Nelson Reilly. In the stages of official Republican closet gayness, Wamp's slavering mash notes are somewhere between texting teenage pages from the House floor and offering to blow a cop in a public park.

But as far as we know, Wamp is not wearing a diaper, so at least he's got one up on David Vitter. Oh no I di'unt!!1!1!

Of course, as with any good Hollywood narrative arc, right now Our Hero finds himself in a spot of trouble. Oh no! Can he extricate himself in time to save the day and get the girl?

And even before launching, the Thompson campaign has experienced its first staff shake-up. After clashing with Thompson's wife Jeri, acting campaign manager (and close Thompson friend) Tom Collamore was ousted in favor of former Michigan Senator Spencer Abraham and Randy Enwright, a veteran G.O.P. strategist. "I do worry that Jeri is the one really running his campaign," says a House Republican who describes himself as "likely" to support Thompson. "She's smart, but that could be a recurring problem."

Uh-oh. I think we know how the Party o' Gawd feels about uppity wimmins. Quick, to the Cleavagemobile!

Thompson is also playing in a gray legal zone by postponing his announcement. Currently his noncampaign campaign is a "testing the water" committee registered as a 527, a tax-exempt group with disclosure requirements far less stringent than those of a real campaign organization. Federal election law requires Thompson to declare himself a candidate once he decides to plunge into the water, which - given that he has signed up more than two dozen staffers, opened two offices and appointed his second and third campaign managers - he seems to have done.

Per my consistent theses that this whole Run Fred Run is just a big scam, I believe that the key to it lies in the above description about the money train. I don't see how a person can spend their entire adult life being a lawyer, a lobbyist, an actor, and a politician, and not look at everything first and foremost as a money-making opportunity. Why else the reluctance to move past 527 status? Either he's overly committed to cultivating this ridiculous Bob Roberts/Lonesome Rhodes/Joe Don Baker mystique that has the dimbulbs clucking in unison, or he's figuring out how to scoot the money into his pockets after he gets the rubes into one corral and decides to mosey back to Hollywood.

Nothing else makes sense, especially in an early primary season where every week counts. The only possible candidate who would benefit from waiting to enter the race would be Al Gore. He can walk in come October, when the Democratic field will have pared down a bit, poach Bill Richardson for a running mate with serious foreign policy cred, and hit the ground running. But Thompson waiting late belies either a lack of confidence in actual (as opposed to rhetorical) gravitas and the ability to extemporize beyond mere sloganeering, or it's a testament to how truly weak the Republican field is, which means no one man -- not even Fred Thompson, goldang it -- can "save" the party.

The party is sinking on its own. Thompson offers nothing new, but rather attempts to absolve the old and the current, by lamely pointing the finger across the aisle, where even goofball Mike Gravel is a better candidate than any of the serial adulterers and jingoist troglodytes the Republicans have to offer. Fred may not be a terribly innovative political thinker, but he's certainly smart enough not to spend a year of his life auditioning to be an anchor. So my guess, once again, is that he rounds up some funds, gets a decent chunk of voters to pass off to the eventual nominee, bows out with the usual avuncular charm, and delivers the keynote speech at the '08 convention, with the promise of a Cabinet post, on the better-than-average chance that the American public loses its fucking mind once again and decides to vote out of spite instead of sense.

[Update: Reliably "objective contrarian" potato Marc Ambinder steps up to defend the missus -- who after all is a professional political consultant -- la-la-la-ing the whole time right past the transparent shell game Thompson is running. Even more amusing is one athletic supporter for Thompson's sweaty junk, who apparently was trying for some sort of haiku when he wrote, "This is news only because it is news. If it were not news, then the quitters would not get any ink and the whiners would not get any ink. It is their only way of hitting back."

Indeed. It could also be a baby's arm holding an apple. Who's to say?]

Death Paw

I suppose it's a bit morbid, but I just thought this was an interesting odd story:

Oscar the cat seems to have an uncanny knack for predicting when nursing home patients are going to die, by curling up next to them during their final hours. His accuracy, observed in 25 cases, has led the staff to call family members once he has chosen someone. It usually means they have less than four hours to live.

"He doesn't make too many mistakes. He seems to understand when patients are about to die," said Dr. David Dosa in an interview. He describes the phenomenon in a poignant essay in Thursday's issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

....

Dosa said Oscar seems to take his work seriously and is generally aloof. "This is not a cat that's friendly to people," he said.

....

Doctors say most of the people who get a visit from the sweet-faced, gray-and-white cat are so ill they probably don't know he's there, so patients aren't aware he's a harbinger of death. Most families are grateful for the advanced[sic] warning, although one wanted Oscar out of the room while a family member died. When Oscar is put outside, he paces and meows his displeasure.

I used to have a cat with very similar markings to Oscar, and striking blue eyes. Very cool cat, struck down far too early by feline leukemia. It would certainly be strange to be a family member of a patient, and run into Oscar making his rounds, but it sounds like most of them are handling it pretty realistically.

Pantload Of Conscience

Roy correctly susses the burbling hypocrisy 'neath the becrumbed corduroy cubicle uniform of Sgt. Rock Candy™, complete with the epaulets his mom made out of Klondike wrappers.

In other words: liberals like to say they care about genocide, but they obviously don't, because they want to leave Iraq, which stands poised at the brink of genocide (or maybe doesn't, he isn't sure) thanks to the efforts of Jonah Goldberg et alia.

Goldberg is a little like a hostage-taker who, when seized after a ten-hour standoff, wants everyone to know that the hostage negotiator's arguments were really intellectually inferior to his own.

And I'm sorry, but whatever you think of the Kosovo intervention, Iraq makes Kosovo look like we gave everyone in Serbia ice cream and then flew them to heaven in a private jet.

Now, I recall the "what about Kosovo, you meddling liberals" argument from as far back as fall 2002, so in this instance, aside from his usual intellectual laziness and dishonesty, DoughBob is also guilty of either recycling an old hack argument, or pulling a "new" one out of his cornhole, brushing off the cheez-doodle remnants and claiming it for his own, a good five years after better (if more anonymous) minds had already thoroughly discredited it, either by responding to the obvious logical flaws or simply having the nerve to use it.

For the record, I thought that the Kosovo intervention originated from flawed premises to begin with -- much of the rump Serbian fascism in play in that province specifically was the result of UCK (KLA) instigation. Since then, obviously Milosevic' vile designs have been thwarted, but at the expense of apparently turning the area into a distribution point for heroin and prostitution. Still, the aim of preventing more Srebrenicas, or allowing the situation to devolve into a full-fledged Rwanda was accomplished. Unlike Goldberg and his ilk, I can admit when I'm wrong.

And I can even join with the usual U.N.-bashers to a certain extent, when it comes to the subject of humanitarian interventions. Rwanda, Srebrenica, Kosovo, and now Darfur, all got out of hand because of lack of collective resolution in the matter, which is supposed to be what the U.N. is for. Darfur really picked up steam while Sudan gained infamous entry into the U.N. Human Rights Commission. How'd that work out, anyway?

What Goldberg needs to get through his thick skull is that we're not avoiding Darfur because of Iraq (well, actually it is partly because of Iraq), or even because of U.N. dithering. It's because of China, which now has lucrative oil deals signed with the Sudanese kleptocracy, and are not about to allow anything to adversely affect it. Sudan is also, as one of Roy's commenters points out, the world's largest supplier of gum arabic, which is found in all sorts of commercial goods.

But for Pantload to indulge in this preening, ignorant broad-brush of "liberal" do-gooderism (even though it's been primarily evangelical Christian groups which have had the most direct lobbying access on the issue) tells you everything you need to know about where his head is at. Rather than engage in even a moment of self-reflection, in his show of searching for absolution, it's much easier to set up an army of straw men, and light 'em up.

We don't do humanitarian interventions, and indeed, most conservatarian commenters during Kosovo opined that that was a good thing. Kosovo was the exception to the rule because of its strategic proximity to the rest of Europe, it was doable, and Clinton, feeling guilty about Rwanda, was unwilling to take that chance again. And aside from the heroin and human trafficking, it's worked out well.

But let's cut the bullshit, shall we? Even if we had never invaded Iraq -- indeed, even if Saddam had died in the interim and been replaced by happy elves and ponies who immediately turned Iraq into a desert Switzerland -- there would have always been another excuse not to do anything about Darfur, and the larger measure of it would have revolved around the sort of sneering contempt for humanitarian politics that only a sinecured cubicle rat could conjure up.

Goldberg doesn't want to hear it anymore from libruls, if they're not going to endorse the grand anti-genocide pony plan currently in surge mode, but he didn't want to hear it in the first place. That he seems to think no one realizes this is unintentionally hilarious. He should stick to trying to find yet another snappy subtitle for his upcoming opus.

[Update: I was also recently reminded of how some folks attempt to shallowly conjure rough ratios, to find comparative valuations of American troops versus Iraqi civilians. Apparently the low-ball figure is about 1:1000 these days, possibly more since the Iraqis are evidently not interested enough in rebuilding from what all we've done for them.

But let's run that grotesque moral calculus to its natural corollary. If we use the "low-ball" figure of an American soldier being "worth" 1000 Iraqis, then conversely we can extrapolate the current American casualty count of 3,645 to roughly 13.5% of the pre-war population of Iraq. Small potatoes! Factoring in the wounded (26,558 at last count) to dead or wounded Iraqis would complicate things further by comparing severity of wounds, I suppose. But that's why they put formulas in spreadsheets.

It's a fool's errand to take something so monstrous all the way to its logical extreme, but it's still important to recognize the objective implications here. It seems also to be a necessity, not unlike blaming straw-man libruls for everything, among the would-be brute exterminators, since victory is no longer an option, and anything else is past their level of honesty.

And glib metaphors constructed primarily to highlight librul hypocrisies about the equality of life ("if your child and a stranger were both in a burning house, which would you save") illustrate very little, since they purposefully neglect to mention one's involvement in setting the house on fire, and then sanctimoniously lecturing the neighbors about fire safety with a series of sloppy lies. Even for cheap sophistry it's incompetent.]

CUI Bono?

Just the fact that these weirdos aren't having to meet in a crowded outhouse due to lack of funding and membership is proof that some folks simply aren't working hard enough for their money.

Some say they support Israel because Islam is a satanic faith. Others say it's part of their plan to bring about the apocalypse. All seem united in their hopes that someday there will be no Jews. They want a preventive attack on Iran. And Joe Lieberman thinks they're great.

Good for Lieberman, to legitimize a bunch of apocalyptic loons, presumably (as a commenter notes) to use them for his own purposes. One assumes that either he or they patiently await the second coming of Zell Miller.

Dumb Question

Okay, I think we all get that Gonzales is not only a lying sack, and not very good at it, but he's not even trying to be good at it. He really is defying Congress to do something, anything about his blatant falsehoods, changing stories, and tiresome obfuscations. Oooh, a contempt charge. Guess whose prerogative it is to deal with such a charge?

That's right, the Justice Department. Might as well rename it the Ministry of Truth and be done with it.

So Gonzales is all but flat-out telling his questioners to suck on it, that they have neither the stones nor the horses to make anything stick. And he's probably right -- so far, the only Republicans to stray off the reservation even on Iraq policy have only done so rhetorically. Push comes to shove, they meekly tuck their sacks back and side with the same incompetent thugs they made such a show of repudiating when it was convenient. Impeachment, whether of Gonzales, Cheney, or Bush would be no different. It would be several months of tedious bloviating and grandstanding, culminating in a big wad o' nothin', more flippant defiance, more toxic effrontery, just in time for the players to get their campaign faces on.

So here's the dumb question, since it seems that the biggest holes and contradictions in Gonzales' stories seem to revolve around his little midnight prowl in Ashcroft's hospital room: why not depose Ashcroft, even informally? Either he vindicates Gonzales, or he corroborates Comey, simple as that. But let's get some cards on the table, once and for all, and be done with this nonsense. The Republicans have to be badgered into doing what they already know is the right thing, so it's time to force their hand. Ashcroft would seem to be a valuable point witness to accomplish this.

At this point, Gonzales really seems to have the demeanor of a man who knows that whatever respectable career he once had is completely over. He is now bought and paid for by the Bushies, now and forever, and as such, he literally has nothing to lose by serving as an insouciant diversion to buy them time. He'll do it for another six months, if all they're going to do is wave their hands and occasionally vocalize their frustration with his bullshit. It's just another can to kick; clearly, their fallback strategery at this point is simply to run out the clock on everything.

All those backwards counters we have, clicking off the time these criminals have left in power -- and they're doing the same thing. Time's up.

Hey Paula

Apparently my lifelong vision quest to be the lunchmeat in the proverbial Meredith Vieira/Paula Zahn newsmilf sammich has once again hit a snag. O death, where is thy sting? (Better yet: O Sting, where is thy death?)

Newscaster Paula Zahn will leave CNN next month after nearly six years at the cable network to make way for a new prime-time program hosted by freshly hired former NBC News correspondent Campbell Brown.

What, the Campbell Brown who's married to Bush rent-a-shill Dan Senor? That Campbell Brown? How can this be?

Zahn's exit was not unexpected. Her show, "Paula Zahn Now," has struggled in the ratings behind not only Bill O'Reilly on the Fox News Channel, but also MSNBC's "Countdown with Keith Olbermann" and "Nancy Grace" on CNN Headline News.

This is all wrong, dammit. Wrong, wrong, wrong. I don't know about you, pally, but I certainly don't want to continue living in a world where spongy leches like O'Reilly and tentacled, multi-chinned orcs like Nancy Grace can push our sweet midwestern Paula down the ratings ladder. It's like having Arrested Development replaced by Judge Hatchett -- or Jebus forbid, Eye for an Eye.

I'm sure that if we check the handle of the knife, we'll find Wolf Blitzer's paw prints all over it. Anyway, there's always a position for you here at the Hammer, baby. We don't pay all that well, but we treat you right.