The gang over at Wampum have nominated this blog for a much-coveted Koufax award (blog most deserving of wider recognition); last year, you will recall, we were up for “best non-liberal blog”… yes, I know. Well, right now, things are looking grim for this blog in that category at press time, so for those of you care enough to vote for this humble source of screeds and rants, well, you will have my gratitude. Those of you willing to contribute to the mammoth dollar cost that Wampum is incurring to run this annual contest, please contribute generously. You will have...

While the President is too busy proposing to destroy the (not broken) social security system for future benficiaries, his brother, Florida Governor JEB Bush, attempts to confront a much more pressing and current problem: how to destroy the Medicaid system for current beneficiaries. His answer, obviously, is called “ration care”. Remember when Saint Hillary of Chappaqua first proposed her 487 volume health care proposal (because she was afraid that simply saying “mandate that employers pay 80% of health insurance premiums for all workers” sounded too much like “employer mandate” which is bad, and had to be obscured by 487 volumes,...

And so, the asinine decision by Dan Rather and his crack team of zealots to beat the dead-horse-story of the President’s use of his Daddy’s name (as always) to evade military service, rather than a RELEVANT STORY LIKE ABU GHRAIB, has caused CBS to sack four producers responsible for the TANG (Texas Air National Guard) story and subsequent defense of said story. I realize the conventional wisdom is that bloggers somehow brought this story to light. Of course, this conveniently overlooks that those “bloggers” were Republican operatives, just using the cool new medium and some pseudonyms, and the speed it...

This brief visit to the People’s Daily tells us of the arrival of the 1.3 billionth Chinese citizen. China regards this as a success insofar as they managed to put off this day (thanks to brutally repressive family planning measures) for over four years (the target date for this number was the end of the 20th century). Well, one massive, now mobilized labor force, all working for low wages, and kicking our ass, while acquiring claims against our assets. What can you say. A scary number. Obviously, it could be a lot more, if the family planning measures were lifted...

Obviously, we’re not talking about Iraq. Iraq will have something called an election in precisely three weeks’ time, but “democracy” implies something different from the Kurdish/Shiite self-governance referendum and Sunni boycott/aremed assaults with a preposterous “national list” system (used only in “I” countries Italy and Israel, both notorious for a lot of fringe parties and wildly complex parliamentary maneuverings and frequent failed governments; it means literally that if party A gets X% of the national vote, it gets X% of the parliamentary seats; not ideal where an ethnic group of around 20% of the country probably can’t vote because of...

Coalition forces apparently bombed the wrong house near Mosul , killing at least five, and letting “the targets” get away. No word on whether an Islamic wedding ceremony was taking place inside the house. Doubtless, just more winning of Iraqi hearts and minds as the election on which we are banking everything draws near. If it weren’t going to show Al Qaeda “our sensitive side”, to quote a mocking Dick Cheney, perhaps a sound truck blaring “We’re terribly sorry for any inconvenience” (in English, of course) might be dispatched. Would that any of this were funny.

In this week’s visit to Pravda, we get this good old assault on Western values, noting not without bitter irony that the cost of our butchery in Iraq (I may use that term more regularly) hovers at around $200 billion (it’s really much more, of course), whereas the entire Western world got together for a mere $4 billion in relief aid for tsunami relief (and less than 10% of that is from the American government, the one that committed hundreds of times their aid package for the purpose of murdering swarthy people in Iraq (for some still unexplained reason that...

And so day one of the Alberto Gonzales, Arlen and Leahy Circus, a/k/a Alberto Gonzales’ senate confirmation hearings to become our nation’s 80th attorney general. As to his prior advocacy of torture and dictatorial presidential powers and the purported obsolecence of the Geneva Conventions, Gonzales told senators something like “mistakes were made”. Well, the right honorable gentlemen will duly grill Mr. Gonzales, and then debate. My advice, not that anyone wants it, is that the Senate Democrats express their disgust, and then note that they have no interest in undermining the President’s choice of “his team”; the people elected the...

The White House has manufactured another “crisis”, requiring immediate (and thereby, preferably, swift and thoughtless) Congressional action. Joining the panacea January 30th Iraqi elections, which will solve all problems in the Middle East, if not the universe, and removing the “security” aspect of social security, the President brings his brand of Texas cruelty to the nation writ large, by proposing at Collinsville, Illinois, a venue purportedly where large medical malpractice verdicts are reached, proposing that all pain and suffering awards in medical malpractice cases be capped at $250,000. What the President will not tell you is that the National Practitioner...

The House Republicans themselves took action to reverse themselves on a revision to an ethics rule that would have permitted Majority Leader Tom “Bugs” DeLay to maintain his leadership position, even if a Texas prosecutor decided to indict him. I understand perfectly why rank and file Republican House members would have wanted to make this rule change reversal. What is astounding is how suicidally worthless the Democrats are. I mean, I swear, the so-called leaders of my own party make me sick– they are really that bad. And I would say that Congresswoman Pelosi should be ousted as Minority Leader,...