Attorney General Mango

tries to work his witchy powers on the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Today, during the Bush Domestic Wiretap Scandal Hearings, America’s Top Lawyer -- Arch Weasel Alberto Gonzalez -- spent the day simultaneously insisting on the following (more or less):

1. The President has Magic Imperial Power to do whatever the fuck he wants by Divine Right, as well as legislative and Constitutional intent.

2. That even though the Supreme Court told him he couldn’t spy on Americans, Bush’s Magic Imperial Power superceded even that of the Republican Supreme Court on matters of the interpreting the Constitution. So a big “Fuck You” shouted out to The Supremes.

3. That Congress actually gave him Magic Imperial Power, even though they didn’t know it and told him "No" when he asked.

4. That Congress actually couldn’t have been asked to give him Magic Imperial Power because that have tipped off the terrorists.

5. That Congress was consulted on the Magic Imperial Powers thing.

6. That Congress wasn’t consulted on the Magic Imperial Powers thing because the Preznit already had their approval -- even though they didn’t know it, and has already told him “No” when he sorta hinted that he wanted to spy on Americans without oversight or warrents -- and already had the legal authority – even though the Supremes had told him No Fucking Way.

To anyone who pays attention, this is the same “When the Preznit is caught lying, throw everything you can lay your hands on at the wall and go with what sticks” tactic the GOP pulls out of the Rove Trick Bag every time Dubya gets caught wiping his bee-hind with the Bill of Rights.

Which is to say, weekly. These days they keep a copy of this playbook -- open and with key parapgraphs hilighted -- on their desks because, in case you hadn’t noticed, the lies are now flying thicker, faster and more desperately than at any point in the last five years.

So, for example, this is identical in every way to the Mighty Morphin’ Casus Belli that has been under continual contruction-destruction-reconstruction-further-down-the-block-“To serve you better!” flight from the original WMD lies the Administration told to get us into Iraq in the first place.

Also the “cost of the war” lies. The Social Security lies.

The “What insurgency?” lies. The “Last throes” lies.

The “Dude, I thought you had the exit strategy?!” lies. The “We do not torture!” lies.

So many, many lies.

Of course, the Republicans are a Party divided: on the one hand, you have the congenital liars, thieves, bumblefuckers and traitors that actually operate the Party.

On the other hand you have the Lindsey Graham wing of the Party (Well, not “wing” exactly. They’re mostly extinct by now. More like the “Leftmost Pinfeather” of the Party.) The liveried chauffeurs of the criminals who run the show, who dutifully drive the getaway cars but occasionally grumble under their breath about how it shouldn’ta, oughtn’ta be this way.

And sometimes their peevish mumblings – the whispery ghosts of long-dead Conservative Consciences struggling to communicate with the world of the living -- are overheard by their masters in the back seat, and which point Cheney or Rove or Frist has them pull the car over, get out, and strip to their skin.

That’s when the bag of oranges comes out.

And after the beating – GOP obedience hierarchy restored and clearly reinforced – what’s left of the Moderate Republican will shamble back behind wheel (shitting blood all over the nice, Cordovan leather upholstery) and drive their Masters over to the Smithsonian for a midnight Founding Documents bonfire and weenie roast.

The Dems knocked some heads today but good, but of equal interest was the GOP's behavior.

Whatever their mood of the moment, from Jeff Sessions' loud protestations of his undying adoration of all things fascist, to Arlen Specter's performance as the cuckolded suitor for Mango's affections -- full of poll-tested ire, but unwilling to even put the AG under oath -- one thing is clear:

The GOP

loves their little Mango.

Slogan’s Heroes

While the Bicycle Chief illegally mass-taps American’s phones because he doesn’t think mere law applies to His Glorious Republican Self...

While his surrogates call Democrats weak and un-American for standing between the Constitution and the Imperial wood chipper...

Under their collective noses actual, mass-murdering terrorists walk out of jail....

Cole Attack Planner Escapes Yemen Prison

By AHMED AL-HAJ, Associated Press Writer

An al-Qaida operative sentenced to death for plotting the USS Cole bombing that killed 17 sailors in 2000 was among a group of convicts who escaped from a Yemen prison last week, Interpol said Sunday in issuing a global security alert.

Officials set up checkpoints around the capital of San'a, where the prison was located, to try to catch the escapees before they could flee to the protection of mountain tribes, according to a Yemeni security official speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the press.
...

Yemeni officials said Jamal al-Badawi — a man convicted of plotting, preparing and helping carry out the Cole bombing — was among the fugitives, Interpol said. Al-Badawi was among those sentenced to death in September 2004 for plotting the attack, in which two suicide bombers blew up an explosives-laden boat next to the destroyer as it refueled in the Yemeni port of Aden on Oct. 12, 2000.

A Yemeni security official announced the escape of convicted al-Qaida members Friday but did not provide any details or names. The official said only that the escapees had all had been sentenced last year on terrorism-related charges.

Interpol said in a statement that at least 13 of the 23 escapees were convicted al-Qaida fighters.

The convicts escaped via a 140-yard-long tunnel "dug by the prisoners and coconspirators outside," Interpol said. The Yemeni official said the prison was at the central headquarters of the country's military intelligence services in a building in the center of the capital.

Another of the 23 escapees was identified as Fawaz Yahya al-Rabeiee, considered by Interpol to be one of those responsible for a 2002 attack on the French tanker Limburg off Yemen's coast. That attack killed a Bulgarian crew member and spilled 90,000 barrels of oil into the Gulf of Aden.
…

Forget “The Shawshank Redemption”.

This wasn’t an honorable man that took twenty years to patiently excavate his way out of an unjust imprisonment.

This was “The Great Escape” staged by just about the only terrorists we have (sorry, "had") in custody who we know actually murdered Americans. Through a football-field-and-a-half-long tunnel. With what must obviously have been the substantial long-term assistance of many, many people both inside Yemen's military intelligence services and out.

And frankly this is the kind just the latest and scariest example of what happens when your entire foreign policy has been manufactured for the domestic political consumption of your base.

When you let your Smearmeister-In-Chief run the country like one, long Swiftboat Campaign and petroleum-industry fire sale, and can't be bothered to take the governance of a great nation seriously.

When you see nothing wrong with telegraphing to the entire Muslim world with every breath that you think their niche in your Fundy Ecosystem is to pump us cheap gas, drive our cabs and not make White Christian Men uncomfortable.

Or we’ll kill them.

When you decide to blow off the hard, patient, unglamorous steps necessary to actually make America safer in favor of amping up your base on cheap, quick, political meth. Feeding them fear for partisan gain, and put frat rats like Mike Brown in charging of protecting American cities from disaster, ‘cause wheeeeeeeeeee!

Who gives a fuck?

We won!

This Administration could play lawn darts in the Rose Garden with Lincoln’s shin bones…and the Red State Rush Monkeys would still vote straight-party GOP.

They could peel the flesh from Muslim women, stitch it into a quilt with threads from Christ’s winding cloth, and play naked Twister on it… and the Freepers would stand up on their hind legs and cheer.

So I have to wonder what difference it might have made if we didn’t keep hinting broadly to our “allies” that while we may need them today, we also hate them?

What the world would look like if our eye had stayed steadily focused on the people that actually attacked us instead of having our national grief and resolve hijacked by Dick Cheney and Karl Rove…to get a man like Dubya re-elected…so that politically wired thieves and incompetents like Jack Abramoff and Michael Brown could continue to feed unmolested at the public trough while the world fell apart all around them?

What difference it might have made if we were led by a team of seasoned experts and experienced statesmen with a purposeful vision of public service instead of Slogan’s Heroes?

And how long it will take Scott McClellan to insinuate that this was somehow all Bill Clinton's fault?

Leftover Photo Blogging

Some e-pics I've had floating around for months. Please scroll on by: this is just me fiddling around in a medium in which I have very limited skills :-)

When revenue, law and property rights collide.

A stretch of public thoroughfare that hits peak traffic and parking needs at exactly the same hours when the parking regs become mysteriously draconian. The clock ticks over and suddenly that block is aswarm with tow trucks and ticketteers. It has nothing to do with safety, or law-n-order. It has everything to do with generating revenue; the big-city equivolent of a Hicksville speed-trap. Here, a driver took exception to being fleeced under the color of the law and refused to "step out of the vehicle".


However, I prefer this view of the same scene:

Less "Law and Order: Trivial Crimes Unit"; more 1985 video arcade.



A bright day, with fat dollops of light falling through the buildings. However...

...the dead and gone haunt almost every block. Faintly visible against the brick is the ghost signage of the Kimball Piano Company.



"...All your crying don’t do no good
Come on up to the house.

"Come down off the cross, we can use the wood
You gotta come on up to the house..." -- Tom Waits, Mule Variations.



What kind of pets could they possibly sell here?

I don't know. And I don't want to know.



And then one day,

there were no pickles.



Finally, a purdy tree.

Here solely because it came out well, and is a vivid little reminder that it was warm once, and the sky was blue.

Sunday Morning Comin’ Down

In which we play “Find The Boehner”!

Everywhere his dead, blue eyes stared out at me.

So I ran. I ran so far away.

Which reminds me: Iran was discussed here and there. Widespread agreement that Iran is worrisome and that “all the options” should be on the table.

Really?

Including the option of pouring a couple of hundred billion into a Manhattan Project for Time Travel?

So we can go back four years and try to unfuck the Bush Iraqi Debacle before it happens?

And come at Iran with a pre-Bush arsenal of robust, Powell Doctrine, military power, a full treasury and a hat-full of international goodwill instead of the reckless, post-Bush world of patches, tatters, debt and mistrust the GOP has left us to cope with?

Then again, we’d have to go back thirty years and try to prevent Red State Christalopithecans (Read it. Learn it. Use it in a sentence.) from getting so intractably dug like wood-tics into their bone-deep-dumb -- and packed to their gill-slits in bad religion to paper over their stupid -- that they would actually be rabid-lemur, leg-chewing, crazy enough to elect (and then re-elect) this bumbling gang of thieves, liars, cronies and Dominionists.

And even with a limitless supply of wood chips and switchgrass – and every dime that Republicans have pissed away in earmarks and into the sands of Iraq magically restored -- I doubt there are resources enough to make even the first down-payment on such a powerful WayBack Machine.

Ah well.

On "Fox News. The King Of All Spies, followed by The Boehner. Followed by three conservatives kicking the cartilage out of Fox’s boneless pet liberal. Like watching the weather reports from St. Thomas: always the same, so today I’ll pass.

On "Face the Nation" -- Senators Leahy and Sessions.

Juicy, except…what's that I smell?

On “This Week”… -- It’s Kenny Mehlman! Yay! Bye-bye, CBS; I’ll check back later or hope C&L has excerpted the good stuff.

Mehlman sez we’re gonna get more scientists and engineers and stuff! Yay! But…but… where’s Mars? What about Mars? Are we there yet? Huh? Mars? Are we? Arewethereyet arewethereyetarewethereyet?

No?

Ok, well in the State of the Union spirit of publicly stating numbers and dates firmly and clearly and then backing off of them at 120 m.p.h. mere hours later, let me say that while the high points of the following are indeed chock full of yummy-yummy “Truthiness”, this conversation didn’t actually take place.

But it should have.

George Stephanopoulos: Well how about a little taste ‘o Chuck Hagel from last week, calling Dear Leader out on his using National Security for partisan gain bullshit? Whaddya think of that, Ken?

Ken Mehlman: I agree that this shouldn’t be a partisan issue. Which is why the Democrats need to shut the fu…

("A Shot 'o Rye When They Lie" GOP Drinking Game Players now take a drink.)

George: Wait just a fucking minute. What about Karl Rove’s long, venomous rant against Democrats just last week? Isn’t Rove the King of all Haters?

Mehlman: Iraq is the Central Front on the War on Terra, and Copperplate Boldface is its Central Font! When Democrats question Dear Leader’s wisdom in font-usage or in Iraq they’re aiding the terrorists! They might as well be packing them lunches, helping them onto planes and midwifing their terrorbabies! Dots, George! Connect the dots! They're all Pre-9/11-y!

George: But what about Republicans who ask exactly the same questions?

Mehlman: We welcome people who ask questions. Questions like, “How can Dear Leader be so vewwy, vewwy wise?” and “Isn’t he working too hard? Can’t you let the poor man take another vacation and rest his massive brain?” and “What can I, a mere citizen, do to make Dear Leader incrementally more Imperial? Does his dog perhaps need a soothing hand job? Or a kidney?”

(GOP Drinking Game Players have another shot.)

Mehlman (cont'd): A few questions here and there are fine. But disputing Dear Leader’s wisdom on the Central Front on the War on Terra is pre-9/11. Non-dotty-connecty. Brimming with anti-pixel-interlacitude. We welcome debate, except when it leads to disagreement.

George: Are you high? Seriously, do you even listen to the shit that comes spraying out of your Duyba Anal Pleasuring Module anymore?

Mehlman: It’s about the dots, George. Dotsdotsdots. “Dots” is the new “flip-flop”. It’s the latest thing in neurolinguistic programming. The Majyk Conjure Word that we have pre-programmed into the meat pudding that fills the skulls of our rank-and-file Golem. Repeat “dots” four times fast and it shuts down the tiny frontal lobes of Red State Republicans long enough to get them to and from their polling places. And anyway, you have to look at the dots strabismally to really, really see the really real deal.

George: Strabismally?

Mehlman: Squinty-like. The way our Dear Leader looks at the world all the time. Like he’s staring into the Sun. And that’s the key to understanding the pointillism of terrorism, George. That you have to look at the spots in a Barney Googly way. Cross-eyed, like one ‘a them dot-puzzle dealies from the ‘90s.

It's something these hateful Democrats refuse to understand. They insist on debating our Dear Leader's Perfect Testosterosagacity instead of joining us.

Bent over.

Ankles daintily grabbed, in what Yoga Masters call the "Crouching Lieberman" stance.

Offering their love cushions to the Wise Leadership of the GOP while pushing the dots together with their noses like one ‘a them egg-rolling Easter dealies…which God-hating Liberal haters probably hate!

George: Ok, we’ve got about another minute before Wormwood comes and hauls you back to whatever dank netherplace it is that you nest. Anything to add about the possible presidential candidacy of Hillary Clinton in ‘08?

Mehlman: Hillary has a lot of anger. People don’t elect an angry candidate. She votes most of the time with Democrats, for God’s Sake! She’s angry! A woman out of control! I just want to slap the crap out of her angry face and scratch her angry eyes out! And those shoes! I mean, what’s that about? Such angry shoes, and not at all flattering to the ‘ol onion.

(GOP Drinking Game Players just kill the bottle and be done with it.)

George: So…any picks on the Super Bowl?

Mehlman: We are in the Super Bowl, George, for all the right reasons. Strabismallariffic reasons, like Freedom. And dots. And the troweling out of Dotty Democracy with our mighty, uh, Freedom Trowel.

It will be a Long Super Bowl, George, and only cowardly, traitorous Liberals -- who we respect, even though they’re angry and insist on arguing about the fact that they are cowardly traitors [Which only helps the Terrorists!] -- would insist on a fixed timetable for the game, some kind of artificial “Half Time”, or a false "score keeping" metric for measuring success. All of which would only encourage these football dead-enders to wait for us to leave.

George: What the fuck are you talking about? It’s a simple question, Ken: who do you think is going to win the Super Bowl?

Mehlman: Houston Oiler’s. By three. The Dear Leader has decreed it. Anything less and the terrorists and Liberals have won.

George: For Christ’s sake, Ken, the Oiler’s aren’t even in the fucking game. They…they don’t even fucking exist! They moved to Tennessee in 1997! They’re called the Titans now.

Mehlman: Why are you so angry, George? Why do you hate America?

On the “This Week…” Round Table: Feh! Three polymer-based-haircuts weeping Botox at each other while George Stephanopoulos tosses them nouns to fondle and punch.


Back to CBS, where it’s Karen Tumulty and David Effing Brooks. Aughhh! Why is this talentless oaf everywhere!

Small Gummit BoBo is very comfy with Big Brother reading his email and tapping his phones. In fact, he’s more comfy with a machine reading it. ‘Cause people are scary but machines are cuddly and harmless.

Bobo welcomes his new, stainless-steel overlords!

Also the snicker/head-bob combo that he breaks into every time he agrees to the wisdom of fresh, Republican horrors might be popular working the rentboi booths at Rancho Ragnarok, but out here in the clean air it just looks damned creepy.

On the Meet the Press, it’s BJ and The Bear! Oops. Sorry. I mean it's Timmuh and The Boehner!

Timmy sez that Iraqi oil is being skimmed and sold to fund the insurgency. So, what’s up with that, House Majority Leader?

And if you want for scientists and engineers and stuff, why are you cutting the guts out of student loan programs?

Sadly, that was the moment when the results of the GOP Drinking Game whiplashed into my solid hour of Sunday Morning eye-crossing, trying to make the GOPixels make any kinda sense at all, giving me a moby headache and an overwhelming desire to shower in antimendacitiotics for a week.

So ta-ta for now.

And Go Oilers!

Degreed Idiot Embarrasses Species.

"Of course Hitler is evil, but he has tenure. So sadly, we can do nothing but respectfully disagree with him.”

-- quote from Chancellor Winston Churchill…from my non-existent novel, "The Man in the High Ivory Tower" (title poached from Phillip K. Dick) about an alternate reality where university presidents govern the free world.

This story answers the age old question: “Can a kooky Northwestern University professor find true polyamorous happiness in the clammy arms of Iranian fundy lunatics?”

Sure, as long as they have rabid antisemitism to keep their love strong and their cloven hooves warm at night.

In fact, they have their own song (sung to the tune these song from “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” -- "Love Is All Around" -- written and sung by Sonny Curtis)

1…2…3…

Who can turn Tehran on with his bile?
Who can take a wretched lie, and try to make seem much less vile?

Well it's you bitch, and we all know it
NU's Nazi flake, and every time you speak up you show it.

Your lies fly all around, but sinecure saves you.
’Cause Hitler’s favorite clown has tenure at NU.

Where do you get the fucking gall?
Where do you get the fucking gall?

Here’s the appalling story.

NU professor backs denial of Holocaust by Iran chief
Jewish leaders fear support could add credibility to view

By Jodi S. Cohen
Tribune higher education reporter

February 4, 2006

A Northwestern University professor known for denying the Holocaust happened has publicly sided with Iran's hard-line president, who has been on a campaign against Israel.

Engineering professor Arthur Butz said Friday that he agrees with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's remarks calling the Holocaust a "myth." Butz said his comments supporting the president recently were published by the English-language Tehran Times and Iran's semi-official Mehr news agency.

Butz, a tenured professor whose views have been known in the United States for years, is being promoted by Iranian news sources as one of the world scholars who support Ahmadinejad's views on the Holocaust.

"I congratulate him on becoming the first head of state to speak out clearly on these issues and regret only that it was not a Western head of state," Butz said in a Mehr news report. He posted the same comments on his Northwestern-provided Web site.

…
"I continue to maintain those three theses, which have become core features of what is called `Holocaust revisionism.' Apart from some nuances of wording, the three theses were repeated by President Ahmadinejad. Therefore, there can be no question that I endorse his remarks in those respects," Butz wrote.

Since 1996, Butz has posted his views about the Holocaust on his Northwestern-affiliated Web site, including information from his 1976 book "The Hoax of the 20th Century: The Case Against the Presumed Extermination of European Jewry."

Northwestern University spokesman Al Cubbage emphasized that the university does not agree with Butz.

"As certainly has been made clear on many occasions, Northwestern University as an institution obviously does not endorse or agree with the personal opinions of professor Butz," Cubbage said. "At the same time, however, the university does believe that its faculty members are entitled to express their own personal opinions."

It doesn’t surprise me that some affectless, ethical abend of an engineer would seize on Holocaust denial as a freak cause/obsession/road-to-contrarian-infamy. It seems to be a disease of a certain subspecies of that breed. They live with a vital chunk missing from their Edward Teller souls. A hole blown out where their humanity should be, and the cavity topped off with that particular and polluted pitchblend that magnetizes them in some horrible way, luring them inexorably towards the ferrous pleasures of fascism.

No, what revolted me was the response from Northwestern. To repeat:

"As certainly has been made clear on many occasions, Northwestern University as an institution obviously does not endorse or agree with the personal opinions of professor Butz," Cubbage said. "At the same time, however, the university does believe that its faculty members are entitled to express their own personal opinions."

The existence and extent of the Holocaust is not a matter of opinion, personal or otherwise.

And some wannabe goose-stepper – tenured or not – doesn’t get to hide behind “opinion” any more that you or I get to assert that the freezing point of water or the distance from the Sun to the Earth are matters subject to our private belief systems.

If this feep wants to go Full Metal Goebbels and opine that the Nazis were heroes, and mass murder was a noble act, fine. As vomitous as it is, that would qualify as a “personal opinion”.

But existence of the Holocaust is non-negotiable.

Which is why the tepid, boneless response from NU makes me sick. These are the kind of people I know, and this summarizes to a tee exactly what has gone wrong in the “tolerance gone wild" culture of the academy. A mealy-mouthed response to Butz’s comments from NU was not only sadly predictable and reflexive, but also entirely unnecessary and self-defeating.

What they needed to say was something like...

“The reality of Holocaust -- both as moral catastrophe and historical fact -- is beyond debate and Mr. Butz’s insane comments are an insult to intelligent humans everywhere. Mr. Butz’s free speech rights are, of course, respected, and since he somehow managed to snag a tenured position here, it is true that we can’t fire him unless he fondles a coed.

However it is also true that we wouldn't exactly be disappointed if Mr. Butz’s hair caught fire…and he chose to try to douse the flames with a shotgun.

Or a coed.”

Straightforward and unambiguous.

And yet with 100 PhDs-per-square-yard, somehow Northwestern can’t form their collective mouths to denounce this ass and, more importantly, the basis of his despicable assertion in language that is simple, clear and muscular.

She will be mine.

Oh yes.

Well Rosario Dawson has apparently been ensorceled by a guy who is merely talented…

…and prosperous…

…and has that kind of surreal, bi-lateral Aryan symmetrical handsome thing usually not found outside of 1939 German Heroic Propaganda posters.

Ah, Rosie.

And Lucy Liu’s bodyguards (Hey, Duane. Hey, Ray-Ray) have threatened to switch over from rubber bullets to buckshot and up the amperage on their Tas-O-Matics if I persist.

So just when it looked like my chances of making a little time with a celebrity personage who stands tall in my fantasy Universe would begin and end with the afternoon when I had fast, bad sex in accidental proximity to a “Charlie’s Angels” lunchbox…this pops out of the ether.

Lance Armstrong & Sheryl Crow Split

February 3, 2006

In another shocking celebrity breakup, LANCE ARMSTRONG and SHERYL CROW have split, according to People magazine. The seven-time Tour de France bicycling champion and the rockstar musician got engaged in September 2005, when Armstrong proposed to Crow in Sun Valley, ID, not long after he retired from the pro circuit in July. He and Crow officially became an item back in early 2004.

"After much thought and consideration we have made a very tough decision to split up. We both have a deep love and respect for each other and we ask that everyone respect our privacy during this very difficult time," a joint statement released to People through Armstrong's spokesman read.

…

I don’t mean to make light: Breakups are enormously painful, and when every pinching, nerve-scraping nuance of it is played out in the public eye, it's got to be so very much worse.

Seems like everyone I know has just lost someone or is on their way to losing someone, one way or another. And unless the person you loved has so completely mutated into a rabid mako that you feel nothing but relief at their leaving and they cast not the slightest shadow of pleasant nostalgia for even the one or two good times you had, there is no way you can have that talk, or make that mignight move, or take that million-mile walk down the crowded hall at the county court house without something dying inside.

That being said, I have always had a thing for Sheryl Crow (and although as a rule I don’t know or give a shit about the comings and goings and scandals and diets of the pretty famous famous/pretty, there was always something faintly “Monroe/DiMaggio” about her marriage to Lance Armstrong. So I'm figuring -- hehehe -- that maybe she's up for a writer next time around.)

And I will certainly let a respectful interlude elapse before making my move, but that, it turns out, is a very tricky business. In my life I have already let more than one opportunity for happiness (or at least naughty good fun) slip by while I was busy being gentlemanly-concerned about the well-being of recently singled women friends.

Let’s say, for the sake of conversation, that one such occasion takes place on a Tuesday.

Well attracted to her or not, a gentleman doesn’t start pitching product while she’s tearful, raw and vulnerable. Opportunistic diseases rush in and feast on fresh wounds, but gentlemen do not. Period.

And then on, say, that Thursday, she’s all perky and abubble and happy as hell about this new guy she just met…

Idiot!

So timing here is critical, and I have learned my lesson about the fate of he who waits.

So does this make me a common rebound whore?

C'mon, is the Pope German? Does Bobo shit in his shoes and then wonder where that poo smell is coming from?

That being said (and see how Honest and Trustworthy I am) one thing I can promise you, Sheryl, is that I would never, ever pressure you to wear a Ciclosport HAC4 Heart Monitor/Altimeter/Computer


Or a Polar Cadence Sensor

In the boudoir.

Unless, of course, you’re into that.

The Christalopithecus Stands Alone.

I’m a Googlewhack.

Again!

What's a Googlewhack? Go here to find out...

Working at a gallop for the last two days, and back into the scrum again today, threading the needle between the Scylla and Charybdis of responsibilities and available time. And for goofs, I heeded commentor “waiting for fitz-o”’s observation – “You'll have a googlewhack as soon as they get around to indexing this.” – and took a peek.

And lo and behold…


First time was the phrase (w/o quotes” “driftglass ovipositor”) which used to guide one to this – and only this – post…until I myself stepped on it.

Ah, you never forget your first whack…but I am still waiting on that check from Google.

And now, all these months later, I look back and find that I’ve done a little of this and a little of that.

Actually coined a new word or two, and bumped some old words together in a way that made me smile once or twice.

So I’ve got that going for me :-)

Bush breaks own record for disavowal.

Vows to break the “Eight Second Lie” by ‘07!

This is more headshakingly amazing than anything I’ve read in a week. Not shocking. Sadly, not surprising. Just…perfect, in its own small, malignant way.

I just hope the White House doesn’t have it’s own SOTU drinking game: Every time Dubya tells a lie, they all do a shot.

And every time he gets caught, they blow a spy’s cover for spite.

From the Mercury News (emphasis mine.)

Administration backs off Bush's vow to reduce Mideast oil imports

BY KEVIN G. HALL
Knight Ridder Newspapers

WASHINGTON - One day after President Bush vowed to reduce America's dependence on Middle East oil by cutting imports from there 75 percent by 2025, his energy secretary and national economic adviser said Wednesday that the president didn't mean it literally.

What the president meant, they said in a conference call with reporters, was that alternative fuels could displace an amount of oil imports equivalent to most of what America is expected to import from the Middle East in 2025.

But America still would import oil from the Middle East, because that's where the greatest oil supplies are.

The president's State of the Union reference to Mideast oil made headlines nationwide Wednesday because of his assertion that "America is addicted to oil" and his call to "break this addiction."

Bush vowed to fund research into better batteries for hybrid vehicles and more production of the alternative fuel ethanol, setting a lofty goal of replacing "more than 75 percent of our oil imports from the Middle East by 2025."

He pledged to "move beyond a petroleum-based economy and make our dependence on Middle Eastern oil a thing of the past."

Not exactly, though, it turns out.
…

Asked why the president used the words "the Middle East" when he didn't really mean them, one administration official said Bush wanted to dramatize the issue in a way that "every American sitting out there listening to the speech understands." The official spoke only on condition of anonymity because he feared that his remarks might get him in trouble.
…

Well the lie about "the Middle East" is easy to figure out: the Prezit and his goons are Fear Vampires. They need their pinhead followers to be terrified -- all the time -- lest they every wake up to the fact that the liars and degenerates that lead them are stampeding them over a cliff. So they're never going to miss a change to trot out the "Middle East" bogey man; it's just a reflex to them by now, like cowering behind the troops.

But 75% is a very goddamned specific target, and 2025 is a very goddamned specific year. Each as clear and unambiguous as, say, the Moon, and "the end of this decade" .

When Kennedy set the space program in motion, he didn't mean "well, y'know, someday" or, "Well, maybe not the Moon exactly, but, y'know, everybody knows where the Moon is. And what the President really meant was that we're just shooting for that kinda general area..."

Jesus Christ!

Kennedy was a leader. Kennedy set a real, actual, measurable goal and time limit, and put the energy and focus and resources of the entire federal government behind getting it done. To put men on the Moon, we had to change the country...and we did. We fundamentally changed the school system to crank out more engineers and scientists. We spent real money. We invented whole new technologies that have paid dividends a thousand-fold.

And we did it. By God, yes we did.

But Bush is not a leader.

Bush is a hack; the very model of the dim, detached A.D.D. CEO who gets pumped up about whatever his handlers tell him will sell. What catch-phrase will push product this quarter. He throws a few words at it, takes a few pics, puts some dimwit college pal in charge -- at a fat salary -- who's previous job was cleaning the resin out of the frat house bong collection before the Friday night smoker.

The leader of the Party of Personal Responsibility then wanders away to the next shiny object, orphaning -- sometimes in a matter of mere hours after the Very Important Announcement -- his Very Important Project in the hands of cronies, looters and rich twit friends.

And thus New Orleans and Iraq were lost.

But once upon a time they had a lag of a year or two – or at least a couple of months – during which the conspirators could get their stories straight, or blame Clinton, or cook up some little Reichstag fire to keep their Christalopithecan thralls pissed off and distracted.

Like, say, a war of Christmas.

But now, not 24 hours after Dear Leader Speaks Hour is over, he’s busted slipping the Truth a double-shot of Rohypnol and trying to rip her panties off while she’s passed out.

The State of the Union is the single most prepped-for event in the Presidential calendar. Like your wedding, if you had an unlimited budget, God’s own Rolodex, the full resources of the most powerful government on Earth to draw upon, and hot-and-cold running wordsmiths raking every syllable to perfection like a zen garden.

This was not just another shot-from-the-hip baloney-missile that is daily casually fired over the heads of the press corps by the likes of Scott McClellan, or Big Dick or even Dubya; this was the Presidential Cirque du Soleil, where every moment and pause has been researched and practiced and tested -- and then done all over again – because they know that a thousand cameras and a billion eyes will be watching.

And they lied.

Just stood up and fucking lied.

Again.

And had to retracted it.

Again.

And told us all it was no big deal.

Again.

Right out in front of God and everybody.

And why?

Simple.

Because they are liars, and lying is what liars do. It’s not a whole lot more complicated than that.

Liars make shit up whenever they fucking well feel like it. To cover their asses, or steal from you, or to bullshit you into doing something you would never do otherwise, or just for the hell of it.

And liars only get away with lying when no one will call them on in to their faces and keep calling them on it until they stop.

And that is the magic, little secret that keeps this Administration chugging along when, by all rights, they should be holed up in a Maryland body shop, holding hostages and negotiating the terms of their surrender: that neither the Republican voter nor the main stream press gives a damn anymore that their President is a liar, and that American blood and treasure has been -- and continues to be -- stupidly, recklessly and unforgivably wasted behind his lies.

They care about queers and tax cuts and guns, but wouldn’t pee on the Constitution to save it from burning.

Because in the Dubya Era a person can be a Good American, or a Good Republican, but they can no longer be both.