Let There Be No Light

And God said unto Noah, after you get off the boat, take two of each of these creepy eyeless animals and place them in the Great Hidden Cave beneath the Promised Land.

...eight species of animals were found in the cave, all of them unknown to science," said Dr Hanan Dimantman, a biologist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

He said the cave's ecosystem probably dates back around five million years when the Mediterranean Sea covered parts of Israel.

The cave was completely sealed off from the world, including from water and nutrients seeping through rock crevices above. Scientists who discovered the cave believe it has been intact for millions of years.

"Every species we examined had no eyes which means they lost their sight due to evolution," said Dimantman.

Oh great, evolution again? It’s like a broken record with these bookworms. Prove it was evolution. Were you there, Dr. Dimantman? Did you see their eyes fall off? What a crackpot!

I Think I’ll Skip the Convention

There are the guys who have Maria Sharapova pictures on their desktops, and then there are these guys...

Dutch pedophiles are launching a political party to push for a cut in the legal age for sexual relations to 12 from 16 and the legalization of child pornography and sex with animals, sparking widespread outrage.

Woah... Uh...

The party said it wanted to cut the legal age for sexual relations to 12 and eventually scrap the limit altogether.

"A ban just makes children curious," Ad van den Berg, one of the party's founders, told the Algemeen Dagblad (AD) newspaper.

Assuming it is the “ban” that is making them curious, and not just their raging pubescent hormones, I’m sure that their curiosity is more focused on, you know, each other, than on your ancient Dutch ass, Ad.

"We want to get into parliament so we have a voice. Other politicians only talk about us in a negative sense, as if we were criminals," Van den Berg told Reuters.

If there’s one thing I can’t stand it’s those cynical politicians who demonize pedophiles and use sex with children as a wedge issue to win elections. Have they no shame?

Here’s my favorite part – the rundown of their complete platform:

The party wants private possession of child pornography to be allowed although it supports the ban on the trade of such materials. It also supports allowing pornography to be broadcast on daytime television, with only violent pornography limited to the late evening.

Toddlers should be given sex education and youths aged 16 and up should be allowed to appear in pornographic films and prostitute themselves. Sex with animals should be allowed although abuse of animals should remain illegal, the NVD said.

The party also said everybody should be allowed to go naked in public and promotes legalizing all soft and hard drugs and free train travel for all.

What?? Free train travel? How did they get from crazy violent porn during prime-time, naked people doing drugs everywhere and sex with animals to free trains? What the fuck is that? Maybe they should have started with the trains, and worked up to the sex with kids thing. You know, start small. So to speak...

He Works Little for the Money

Joe Conason, the stalwart bringer of truth, hits the nail smack on the head - hey, hey, ho, ho, William Jefferson has got to go.

For those of you still unawares, William Jefferson is a Democratic congressman who got a big bribe in a sting operation, and like right after he took the bribe, the FBI found $90,000 in his freezer wrapped in foil. From what I've seen, freezers have two types of residents. 1) Foodstuffs: meat, fro-yo, Hot Pockets and the like. Those are fine. And 2) Things you are hiding: human remains, drugs, ill-gotten piles of money wrapped in foil. Not as OK.

As Mr. Conason goes on to say, he's innocent until proven guilty in the eyes of the law. But serving in Congress is not the same as walking around town. There is (should be, anyway) a higher standard to serve in Congress. And I'm sorry, when they find a pile of bribe money in your freezer, it's time to go bye-bye. And as Joe goes on to say,

The most powerful reason for Jefferson to quit, however, was displayed at his own press conference in the U.S. Capitol on Monday, when he announced that he would not step down (and cryptically suggested that there are "two sides to every story"). Asked directly whether he had taken a bribe, the congressman declined to answer. Anyone in public office who can't say "no" to that question should leave -- or be required to leave -- immediately.

Hear hear, Joe! And aside from the ethical bullshit -- just because he's a Democrat doesn't mean he's not a fuckface -- the Republicans are going to take this isolated single incident and try to make it look like the ethical lapses are a congress-wide problem, instead of a Republican one. And it will work. You think the hooplehead voters out there can count past two? DeLay + Jefferson = both parties suck. But that's not the case. Jefferson is one guy who has piss poor judgment. DeLay and Abramoff is a widespread culture of corruption; a plan devised by DeLay to permanently imbue bribery into our system of government. And if I just lost you there, I have bad news for you - you're one of the hooples.

Step down, Jefferson. Democrats in congress, publicly insist that he step down. If we want to run as the party of honesty and integrity, we have to actually be honest and have integrity. We're not Republicans!

Republicans Are So Dumb

How dumb are they?!

Republicans are so dumb, they think Stephen Colbert is for real.

I Want My DoG!

Hi, folks. I have to apologize for the lack of effort in the past week. I have recently switched day jobs (for which we should all thank this guy) and as such, I have nowhere near the amount of time available to waste while being paid by the man to do something productive. One could argue - if you really cared about us, Michael, you would go home and give us those wild-eyed rants with little basis in reality we so crave. Tru dat. But at the moment, I'm not finding the energy to do so.

I ask that you keep us bookmarked and check in from time to time. I truly intend to make it up to you with less frequent, but more long-winded essays chock full of insight. Honest.

I don't know what excuse my esteemed partner has for his big ball of lazy...

You're Not A Racist; You Just Want to Protect the Borders

The Republicans are having quite the little catfight over this immigration issue. On one side, you have the Rovian types who want to be able to exploit the fastest growing population group in the country while still allowing their fatcat campaign donors to use that cheap illegal labor free of any human rights concerns. On the other, you have the hard nosed xenophobes pandering to their racist constituency. Bush will split the difference tonight when he tries to do both – a guest worker program combined with an a Korean peninsula style demilitarized zone along our border with Mexico. As the saying goes – a good compromise means no one is happy.

But in order for the Bush/Rove plan to succeed they have to maintain the plausible deniability that the Republican party is a party of racism. But instead you find this guy mucking up the works! (thanks to Crooks and Liars)

And he will be lying, again, just as he lied when he said: "Massive deportation of the people here is unrealistic – it's just not going to work."

Not only will it work, but one can easily estimate how long it would take. If it took the Germans less than four years to rid themselves of 6 million Jews, many of whom spoke German and were fully integrated into German society, it couldn't possibly take more than eight years to deport 12 million illegal aliens, many of whom don't speak English and are not integrated into American society.

Yowza! I, myself, have been guilty of using a couple too many Nazi references in the past. Guilty as charged. But as a general rule of thumb – try to portray the Nazis in a negative light if you do it. Being all, "if only Bush were as efficient as Hitler" tends to turn people off a bit.

Those Cynical Whippersnappers

There's some leftover research in the conference room if anybody wants any...

According to a recent study published in the May issue of SAGE Publications' journal, American Politics Research, researchers conclude that young Americans' political views are negatively impacted by watching the popular The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, which airs late night on Comedy Central as a 'fake-news program.'
...

"If young Americans learn about candidates via Jon Stewart," the researchers conclude in the article, "it is possible that unfavorable perceptions of both parties' nominees could form, ultimately keeping more youth from the polls." These implications for political participation should be explored further.

Seems to me, the solution is easy as apple pie on a summer day -- shut down Comedy Central. What? Oh, what would you suggest? Finding politicians who are honest and sincere, who discuss issues that actually matter to people's lives, and who are capable of inspiring others? I mean, come on! What hippie commune did you crawl out of?

Terror in 10-Point Helvetica

They're only watching the terrorists, right? Not so much.

A senior federal law enforcement official tells ABC News the government is tracking the phone numbers we call in an effort to root out confidential sources.

"It's time for you to get some new cell phones, quick," the source told us in an in-person conversation.
...

Other sources have told us that phone calls and contacts by reporters for ABC News, along with the New York Times and the Washington Post, are being examined as part of a widespread CIA leak investigation.

If you don't care about this, then -- I'll say it -- you don't care about America. The only way we can trust that we don't live under tyrannical rule is to have complete faith in George W. Bush to act honorably and with integrity. He has spent the last 5 years demonstrating why we shouldn't do that. And in any case, the constitution wasn't written based on the concept of faith in one person. It was based on a system of checks and balances. Why? Because the Founding Fathers had just fought for freedom from tyranny. They didn't want to go back.

Now it's only reporters. Who's next? You think a crackhead stands in front of a pile of free crack and only smokes one rock?

Bible Belt

We need to send our children to church and religious camps and Sunday school because it's the only way they will learn morals and values. Morals like these.

He struck his 12-year-old daughter with belts because she lied, because her homework was incomplete and because "it is stated in the Bible that it is OK to spank your children," the father told police.

The girl said she was beaten for not reading well enough, for using slang, and for "not accepting Jesus into her heart," police reported.
...

When asked why he ordered the girl to take off her clothes before striking her, Bilodeau allegedly replied that "he wants her to feel the pain," police reported.

Just like Jesus used to do.

You see, the religious folk judge atheists for being immoral heathens and try to keep orphaned children in orphanages instead of in loving, supportive two parent homosexual households because of the homos' unChristian lifestyle. But they are completely fine with beating a naked child with a belt for not being religious enough. There would be a special meeting of congress if a man beat his children for being too religious. But because he beat her for being not religious enough, this story will remain a minor local story, as it should.

Whatever the case, it is clear to me that whether you believe in Jesus, Allah, a Flying Spaghetti Monster, or nothing at all, it makes no difference on whether you end up being an asshole whackjob unfit for parenthood. And it definitely doesn't make you a better president. Let's stop claiming it does. All that matters is a sense of right and wrong and the ability to recognize and prevent yourself from infringing on the rights of others. You don't need the bible to teach that. Just common sense and a heart.

Jeffersonian Democracy

Salon's Tim Grieve goes on a bit of a rant about the dangers of the government having free reign to look at whatever records it wishes with no oversight or accountability whatsoever. And for the most part he's spot on.

How is the government safeguarding the information? Well, we don't know that, either. Imagine for a moment that an FBI agent investigating a kidnapping wants to see who's been calling you. The Electronic Communications Privacy Act sets forth the safeguards to be observed before the agent can get the records from a phone company. But now that the NSA has all the records, can the agent simply search through them to find what he needs without getting anyone's approval first? Now imagine that the would-be searcher isn't an FBI agent investigating a crime, but a Bush administration official doing some research on a political opponent. Can he run a search through the records, too?

Maybe it's safe to assume that the answer in both cases is no. But the thing is, we shouldn't have to assume. And if we still had a government that operated in the way the framers imagined, we wouldn't have to. The checks and balances would guarantee it. We'd know that the executive branch was obeying the laws that Congress adopted because it wouldn't have its hands on phone records until a court approved a request and a telephone company complied with it.

But I have to take it a step farther, I'm sorry. Even Tim here is operating under the assumption that we will always be a Jeffersonian democracy for the rest of time. I'm sure that's what the Germans thought before Hitler, and if you've watched a single episode of Rome on HBO (which you should), you'll know that's what the Romans thought before Caesar as well. Democracies rise and democracies fall throughout history. We ignore this fact at our own peril.

It's like the steroids debate. If they don't effectively police steroids completely out of the game, eventually it reaches a point where a kid in high school has no choice but to cheat or he absolutely cannot make the team because everyone else is already cheating. If the incumbent administration has unhindered access to an unfair advantage (say the phone records of a political opponent) that he could use to win the most important election of his lifetime, you think we should rely on his integrity and honesty to not look at them? He is going to think "My political life rests on getting this tiny bit of information. And then I promise I'll stop." But then it's just one more. And then one more. And pretty soon the party out of power has no chance of getting back into power. No chance at all. And if that happens, is that democracy? Or is it tyranny?

A vote can provide the illusion of democracy. But in order to maintain a truly democratic republic, you must have much more than just elections. And lucky for us and for the Bush administration, the Founding Fathers wrote all the rest down in a single convenient document. Read it.

Why Do You Hate Moms So Much?

I am going to take a step back from writing long-winded diatribes eviscerating the Bush administration for its totally way uncoolness to eviscerate this guy instead.

A man who was denied a red nylon tote bag during a Mother's Day promotion at an Angels baseball game has filed a sex and age discrimination lawsuit against the team.

The class action claim filed by Michael Cohn, a Los Angeles psychologist, alleges that thousands of males and fans under age 18 are entitled to $4,000 in damages each because they were treated unequally at last May's promotion. Women over 18 received the gifts.

So you are suing in court because you didn't get some pink flowery momish tote bag with a credit card logo on it, you big pussy? What, was your purse not big enough to carry all your tampons?

So this happened:

This weekend's Mother's Day promotion will offer tote bags to the first 25,000 fans over age 18, rather than cater specifically to women. Mead would not say whether the change was in response to Cohn's complaint.

Rava [Cohn's attorney] said the altered promotion still violates the civil rights of fans under age 18.

It reminds me of something my own mother used to say to me when I was a kid going shopping for Mother's or Father's Day complaining it isn't fair that there isn't a Children's Day – "Every day is Children's Day." How many bats, bobble heads, novelty foam hands, and miniature baseballs do they give out only to children under 18 or 12 or whatever? Do I complain about my civil rights or do I think that as much as I loathe children, it's cool to give them some free garbage at a baseball game every once in a while? Is it really so bad to give out gifts to women on Mother's Day?

Hey Cohn, I didn't hear your mom complaining about the gift I gave her last night.

Someone to Watch Over Me

Remember when Bush said that he was only spying on the terrorists?

One question – are you a terrorist? I'm not. But he's spying on all of us.

Take note, the one company that isn't playing along with this abdication of our civil rights is Qwest. They should put that in their ads. I don't want to switch to them to protect my privacy or anything, I just think they should be rewarded monetarily for their courage in the face of fascism.

If you have the means, switch to Qwest.

Politics Over Policy

Like a broken record, we hear over and over again about President Bush's preference for politics to good policy, most eloquently embodied by the promotion of smear merchant, election rigger, and all-around assclown Karl Rove to Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy, the position from which he has recently resigned.

Today, Sidney Blumenthal has an excellent column detailing exactly how the CIA has gone from a dark, soulless intelligence gathering agency to a dark, soulless political apparatus entrusted to support the policies of George W. Bush at the expense of all else, including the safety of the American people. The entire column is disturbing, delving into corruption (bo-ring!) and the attendance of ex-CIA chief Goss and his buds at the Cunningham hooker parties (ooh! Me like...). But for me, the most disturbing aspect of all of this:

But despite urgent pressures to report to the contrary, the CIA never reported that Saddam presented an imminent national security threat to the United States, that he was near to developing nuclear weapons, or that he had any ties to al-Qaida. Moreover, analysts predicted a protracted insurgency after an invasion of Iraq. Tenet, despite the lack of cooperation from the CIA's Directorate of Intelligence, acted as backslapper for the administration's policy.

The White House was in a fury. The CIA's professionalism was perceived as political warfare, and the agency apparently was seen as the center of a conspiracy to overthrow the administration. Inside the offices of the president, the vice president and the secretary of defense, the CIA was referred to as a treasonous enemy. "If we lived in a primitive age, the ground at Langley would be laid waste and salted, and there would be heads on spikes," wrote neoconservative columnist David Brooks in the New York Times on Nov. 13, 2004, citing White House officials and "members of the executive branch" as his sources. Reflecting their rage, he called on Bush to "punish the mutineers ... If the C.I.A. pays no price for its behavior, no one will pay a price for anything, and everything is permitted. That, Mr. President, is a slam-dunk."
...

On April 21, 2005, his mission dictated by Bush's political imperatives, Goss became CIA director. Immediately, he sent a memo to all employees, ordering them to "support the administration and its policies in our work." He underscored the supremacy of the party line: "As agency employees we do not identify with, support, or champion opposition to the administration or its policies."

He installed four political aides to run the agency from his offices on the seventh floor at Langley. Within weeks, an exodus of professionals began and then turned into a flood. In the Directorate of Operations, he lost the director, two deputies, and more than a dozen department and division directors and station chiefs out in the field. In the Directorate of Intelligence, dozens took early retirement. Four former operations chiefs, horrified by the carnage, sought to meet with Goss, but he refused.

See, to me that's frightening -- not surprising, mind you –- but frightening. Getting people who disagreed with the AttackIraq zealots out of the CIA was more important than protecting us from harm. Instead of having the cream of the crop of intelligence analysts, Bush would rather have Republican flunkies. Politics over policy. It has directed every single decision Bush has ever made; it is directly responsible for the mess we're in today.

Are you better off now than you were 5 years ago? Is anyone?

And You Thought Detroit Was Bad...

Hey everyone, things are getting better in Iraq! NOT!

Baghdad's morgue reported that 1,091 people were killed in the city's daily violence in April, the Iraqi president's office said in a statement Wednesday.

In the upsurge in sectarian violence after the February 22 attack on a Shiite shrine in Samarra, slain bodies have been found almost daily in the capital, many showing signs of being tortured.
[snip]
Meanwhile, the toll from Tuesday night's suicide car bombing in a Shiite neighborhood in Tal Afar rose Wednesday to 20 dead and 37 wounded.

Tal Afar is near the Syrian border, about 45 miles (72 kilometers) west of Mosul, Iraq's third-largest city.

President Bush recently cited Tal Afar as an example of the progress of coalition troops against the insurgency.

U.S. and Iraqi troops had pushed insurgents out of the city in 2004, but Tal Afar's security forces were unable to hold the city.

In September, U.S. and Iraqi troops reclaimed Tal Afar after a monthlong operation.

Violence has persisted there, however. In March, just days after Bush's speech touting the success of Tal Afar, a suicide bomber killed 30 people at an Iraqi army recruiting center outside the city.

Wow. So, you know Detroit, right? Consistently rated one of the most dangerous cities? Shitty pro football team? One of the country's highest murder totals every year? Yeah, that Detroit. Detroit had 385 murders in 2004 (the most recent year covered by official statistics). Baghdad's more than doubled that in a month. Imagine if an American city was that out of control. They'd build a wall around it and not let anyone in or out, except maybe Kurt Russell. So, please, don't give us any more of that "nobody reports the good news from Iraq" bullshit. If 1000 people a month were being murdered in Detroit, nobody would care if they opened another casino in Greektown or the slapped a fresh coat of paint on Cass Tech, either.

Seriously, Get Some Help. We're Worried About You

I saw that story about Bush saying the best thing that's happened to him in the last five years was that he caught some big fish one time. I considered writing something about how much of a fucking hillbilly he is that he would specifically single out some fish he remembers catching, and also, you know, the obvious – that the guy was effectively running the world for a few years there, and nothing better than some fucking perch happened to him? That was better than making John McCain his bitch in 2004? Better than dodging the draft and then getting the press to buy into his storyline of a thrice-decorated war hero being a coward and a traitor? Better than getting his lapdog on the Supreme Court?

I thought better of it. Calling Bush a redneck is so 5 minutes ago.

But when I read that even the goddamned fish is a lie?

The only problem is that the world's record for the largest freshwater perch caught is 4 pounds 3 ounces.

So Bush either doubled the world record, and didn't report it, or he's a liar.

Well, I had to say something. It's fucking pathological! Is George W. Bush even his real name? Is he married to a librarian? Does he really have a set of coke fiend twin daughters? Who the fuck knows?

He Lives Until He's Murdered by Prison Guards

If ever there was a case which more aptly demonstrated the barbarity of the death penalty than this Moussaoui case, then I haven't seen it.

Zacarias Moussaoui was a guy who (maybe) knew about 9/11 and thought it was really cool. That's it. But when he went on trial, the prosecutors bombarded the jury (and us) with images of 9/11, the event the defendant, again, had nothing to do with, he simply approved of it in hindsight. In the court of law, as opposed to the Bill O'Reilly show, evidence is supposed to be in the form of facts, not the impressions of the mayor or jury-tainting final phone calls from dead people. Nevertheless, Moussaoui was sentenced to life in prison instead of death. I'm sure he's a monster, but if your standard for execution is anybody who thought 9/11 was pretty kick ass, we'd be executing people until the end of time (although this might explain Bush's foreign policy).

So, after the sentence came down, you have Giuliani and Pataki and Bush and the rest of the pro-state-sponsored-murder set going ballistic about how this madman needs to be executed. He didn't actually do anything! This isn't just revenge on an everyday murderer who took your son's life. This is revenge on a national scale on a guy who is in favor of 9/11. It's the equivalent of being a bully at school because your parents got divorced – a traumatic experience for the bully, but no excuse for taking it out on Nerdly McGeekington.

Does it feel right to you to call for the murder of someone because of his psychotic opinion on world events? What kind of country do we live in where this is considered a mainstream position?

Dammit, I hate it when these Republican douchebags make me defend a whackjob asshole!

If Only They Had Studied the Iraq Intelligence This Thoroughly

Good news everyone! Well, ok, bad news, technically. A study commissioned by the Bush Administration...

concluded yesterday that the lower atmosphere was indeed growing warmer and that there was "clear evidence of human influences on the climate system."

The finding eliminates a significant area of uncertainty in the debate over global warming, one that the administration has long cited as a rationale for proceeding cautiously on what it says would be costly limits on emissions of heat-trapping gases.

Awesome, right? Now we can get on with the business of actually doing something about the fact that we're destroying our ability to live on the planet, right? Right?!

But White House officials noted that this was just the first of 21 assessments planned by the federal Climate Change Science Program, which was created by the administration in 2002 to address what it called unresolved questions. The officials said that while the new finding was important, the administration's policy remained focused on studying the remaining questions and using voluntary means to slow the growth in emissions of heat-trapping gases like carbon dioxide.

Ok, well, 1 study down, only 20 more to go. You know, it kinda reminds me of what I do when I have like a million things I have to get done, but I don't want to do any of them. I'll sit down and make a list of all the things I need to do. You know, like "Mow the lawn," "Clean the garage," Clean the bathroom," "Go to the grocery store," stuff like that. Then I'll usually add some really stupid, easy stuff, such as "Make a list of things I need to do" and "Renew library books" and "Set DVR to record The Venture Brothers." Then I'll finish the list, so I can check "Make list of things to do" off. Then I'll push about 4 buttons on the remote to set up the DVR recording. Then I'll hop on-line for about 2 seconds and renew my books so I can cross that off too. Hell, now I've already got THREE things done from the list! It's Miller time, baby! So I grab a beer and play Xbox for about 6 hours. Meanwhile the lawn is obscuring the entire first story of the house, the car won't fit in the garage, new life is being born in the shower grout, and I have nothing in the fridge except beer. But I've successfully avoided doing everything I know I have to do but don't want to, and justified my procrastination by making it seem like I've actually made some sort of progress. Neat, huh?

So, there you have it. The Bush Administration is running our climate policy the same way some slacker doofus runs his life. The difference is that I have a lovely wife who will take care of all that stuff (or kick my ass until I take care of it myself). Bush, unfortunately, is like a bachelor whose disinterested loser friends (Congress, the courts, the EPA) say, "Whatever dude, that's cool" to anything he decides. So thanks for procrastinating us all into oblivion, George!

Speaking of Sycophants...

Salon's Tim Grieve found an interesting tidbit in The Hill.

Vying for the Joe Lieberman Profile in Courage Award, Democratic Rep. Steny Hoyer took it upon himself Tuesday to defend George W. Bush from mean ol' Stephen Colbert.

Hoyer, the Democrats' House whip, told The Hill that Colbert's performance at the White House Correspondents' Dinner was funny but "a little rough," with some jokes that "crossed the line" and were in "bad taste." We're not sure which jokes Hoyer had in mind, and we're wondering if he made any similar objections about "bad taste" when the president made jokes about those missing WMD at a press dinner a couple of years ago.

Somehow, we doubt it.

Bush "is the president of the United States," Hoyer said Tuesday, "and he deserves some respect."

No, no, a thousand times, no! I will admit that the president, to start, doesn't have to earn our respect. It is given to him freely when he starts out. But it is possible to lose our respect and be forced to earn it back. This president has lost our respect because he has demonstrated no respect for everything America stands for. Where's the president's respect for the Constitution? His take on three equal branches of government? On human rights? On treason in the form of war profiteering? On treason in the form of undermining our national security? On invading a country that had neither the will nor the ability to attack us? On protecting the little guy from the raping and pillaging being done by the monstrous corporations? On bribery and corruption at the highest levels of government?

When the president starts respecting the American people, we will return that respect once again. I'm not holding my breath.

Great American? Or the Greatest American?

Why did they hire him to do the show? Seriously. Had they never seen his act? Did they not know what sort of thing he might do? Or did they, you think, say to themselves – We'll hire Stephen Colbert, who does a show mocking the president and the pathetic state of the media today and he'll tone down his act out of respect for "The Office", because that's what all the rest of the sniveling obsequious sycophants do.

Well, he didn't. For the first time in his presidency, Bush had to hear what people out here really think. And now everyone is beside themselves with outrage and Bush is apparently pissed off. Aides are scrambling to point out how much funnier the twin Bushes skit was compared to Colbert. (And if I were Stephen I would totally take comedy advice from a bunch of suit-clad uptight conservatives so devoted to their jobs they work 20 hour days.)

Honestly, what did they expect? Besides, he's the president of the United States. If the man can't handle having his feelings hurt, maybe he should find another line of work. It's not our job to protect him. It's his job to protect us. And by the way, he's been doing a pretty crappy job of it too.

Meanwhile, 84% of Gawker readers say the piece was "one of the most patriotic acts I've witness of any individual."

And grippy too.

Credibility Gap

Right from the start, I'm going to tell you a little secret. I hate our national anthem. I think it's a terrible song encompassing a vocal range too wide for most people to sing, with trite war-based lyrics that no one remembers, written about a battle we know nothing about. And I particularly hate having to endure forced patriotism just because I want to watch a baseball game.

Now that that's out of the way, the other day Bush insisted this is America, dagnabit. We should sing our national anthem in American. The funny thing about this is that I sort of agree with him. Not because I give two shits about the "sanctity of the Star-Spangled Banner", but because I believe in the sanctity of the written lyric. You don't translate Cosi fan tutte into English because most Americans don't speak Italian, just as Mick Jagger didn't translate Start Me Up into Mandarin when the Stones played China a few weeks back. I'm a musical fundamentalist, perhaps. Although because I also don't care what happens to the national anthem, I couldn't care less if someone wanted to sing it with the lyrics all changed into fart jokes or twist it into some sort of bizarre sarcastic performance piece. My solution for our Spanish speaking brothers and sisters out there? Just don't sing the fucking thing. Spend your time doing something worthwhile.

But because I enjoy pointing out Bush's hypocrisy, it bears mentioning that the United States State Department actually already has a number of foreign language versions of the song on its website. (Or so the newspapers say, I can't find anything on that goddamned site.)

And most interesting of all, I have it from a reliable source (The Al Franken Show) that Bush actually had the anthem sung in Spanish at certain events during his 2000 presidential campaign. I can't find anything about it online, so take that as such. But it seems about right, right? If that's a good enough standard for cable news, it's good enough for me.

So the question:

• Bush is pandering now.
  
• Bush was pandering then.
  
• Both.
  
• Neither - history is merely a lie agreed upon.

You decide.


UPDATE: Atrios has the goods on W's penchant for singing the national anthem in Spanish.

Do They Have a Check-In Desk in the Sewer?

The Secret Service is going to release the records relating to the White House visits of admitted criminal and known douchebag Jack Abramoff. In the AP story, there's this line:

"I don't know exactly what they'll be providing, but they only have certain records and so I just wouldn't view it as a complete historical record," McClellan said.

This is their defense? Sure, you'll find out he was here dozens of times, but you won't know about the literally hundreds of times he climbed in through the president's bedroom window.

All You Need is Balls

Did you see the greatest thing to happen in Washington in at least five years? You didn't? You simply must watch the video of Stephen Colbert standing less than 10 feet from the president while tearing the man's policies and politics limb from limb. It was brutal... and hilarious.

Then go to Thank You Stephen Colbert and express yourself.