Boise State fans make me laugh

Sometimes when I'm in the need of inspiration, I wander over to YouTube and watch highlights from last season's Fiesta Bowl, featuring Oklahoma vs. Boise State. In case you haven't seen it, it was probably the greatest college football game in history, featuring high-scoring offenses (final score was 43-42), overtime, multiple lead changes, and a series of trick plays that never fails to amaze. However, what made me laugh today was a comment made by one of the viewers of this clip.



I have no love in my heart for Oklahoma (seeing as how it features the two dumbest people in the US Senate, Tom Coburn and Jim Inhofe), so I have to tip my hat to this random YouTube commenter.

Arlen Specter has a future in the movies!

I was thinking about Arlen Specter after that last post, and it hit me. If this whole Senator thing doesn't work out, he's definitely got a future on the silver screen, perhaps for the next two Harry Potter movies.

Once again, Specter plays the dupe

Senator Arlen Specter (R-PA) is going off on his high horse about how shocked, just shocked!, he is about the continued idiocy/incompetence/lying/bassackwardness of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. After Gonzales perjured himself in recent testimony before the Senate, Specter has demanded that the White House explain the "inconsistencies" (read: lies) in his testimony. The Hill reports today:

“Given the difficulty of discussing classified matters in public, I think it is preferable to have a letter addressing that question [of Gonzales’ veracity] from the administration … by noon tomorrow, which will be made available to the news media,” Specter wrote in the statement. “The administration has committed to producing such a letter.”

Ooooh, a letter! This is sure to resolve the situation to everyone's satisfaction. Let me hazard a guess--informed by, oh, everything that has happened in the process thus far--about what will happen:

1) Fred Fielding will write an incredibly annoying letter saying that Gonzales did nothing wrong;
2) He will not answer the question at all;
3) He will simply say that Gonzales' testimony was "consistent with previous testiomy";
4) Leahy and Schumer will freak the hell out;
5) Specter will do jack squat.

That's pretty much the way these things go. The White House does something stupid, the Democrats freak out, Specter goes on TV and makes scary pronouncements about how support for the White House is eroding, the press dutifully reports it, the White House makes an arrogant and misleading statement, and Specter backs down. That's what will happen again. Hope I'm wrong. But I doubt I am.

Simpsonized

Thanks to my friend towwas's blog, I learned about this nifty website that will let you turn yourself into a character from the Simpsons. So, without further ado, here is your humble blogger:



Try it for yourself

Grampa Romney tries to learn us here kids about the interwebs

Given the relative success that the Democratic candidates enjoyed at the "YouTube debate," you'd think it would be logical for the mass of Republican candidates to accept similar terms for their YouTube debate, right? Riiiiiiight. Turns out, most of them are afraid to attend, worried, it would appear, that (a) they'll get asked tough questions that differ from the softballs their supporters normally lob their way, or (b) the public will see that conservative voters, i.e., the people asking the questions during the debate, are total freaks. Either of those is possible. So the basic reason for them not wanting to do the debate is sheer cowardice. However, they have to come up with satisfactory reasons for declining the invitations, and given the general idiocy on the Republican side of things this year, we can count on some hilarious explanations. First out of the blocks, Willard Mitt Romney:

Democratic consultants are rubbing their hands together at being able to portray their general election rivals as being — as one put it to me — "afraid of snowmen" or simply ignorant of techonologies that many Americans use on a daily basis. Indeed, Governor Romney today, in the context of evincing concern over Internet predators, supported that suspicion: "YouTube looked to see if they had any convicted sex offenders on their web site. They had 29,000," he said, mistaking the debate co-sponsor for the social network MySpace, which has recently done a purge of sex offenders from its rolls.

Hey, all those internets are the same, right? The kids today love the MySpace and the Facebook and the YouTube! I'm hip, kids! This is a tough call: on one hand, I think Romney is a scary, pandering, lunatic. On the other hand, his lunacy will provide nonstop hilarity for the next year. So I'm not sure where I stand on his candidacy.

Today's lesson in anthropology

The mating ritual of the human Scientologist is a wonder to behold. The male approaches the willing female in a submissive posture, quite unlike his counterpart in most species. Dropping his jacket low around his waist, he grabs her around her waist as she dances what anthropologists refer to as the "funky chicken." Below you will see an example of this behavior in the wild.

IKEA: proud producers of shelves, beds, couches, herring, wall units...

The big news here in Portland (OR) is the opening of a massive IKEA store down by the airport. The expected community pandamonium is expected to be so hectic that travel agencies are warning customers to plan for an additional 30 minutes on their drive to the airport. Yow. That's a lot of Sensbøldd wall units, man! So, like any good consumer, I thought I'd check out the IKEA website to look for some shelves that I need to install in my home office. And, what do I find on their frontpage but the following horrific piece of debris:

Um, yes, average American consumer? WHY THE HELL are you buying HERRING from IKEA? It is a freaking furniture place! You wouldn't buy cocktail weenies from Crate and Barrell, would you? (Yikes, maybe you would.) Unreal. And who would ever expect that a modular furniture place would have to recall the glass jars of herring sold in their stores??? Crazy times.

Greatest moment in baseball history

Ok, Japanese baseball history. Whatever. This is a totally sweet pitch. The one thing I can't figure out is why the stands are empty. Nevertheless, a great pitch. However, clearly not a strike, I think the ump was just overwhelmed by the general craziness of it all.

Ay, que lastima, Brangelina!

Reports a reputable foreign news source, "Deciden Jolie y Pitt separarse "un tiempo" por crisis en su relación."

My version of the story, based on what I know about Angie and Brad, and summoning the product of my years of high-school Spanish classes, is this: ella quisiera adoptar 546 ninos, y Sr. Pitt solamente quisiera hacer el sexo.

Basically, I think it says that Brad likes to get away from the hassle of family life by driving off on his motorcycle, that Angie doesn't like Brad's family still staying in touch with Jen, and that Pablo esta bien, pero Luisa tiene catarro. Or something.

Hilarious juxtaposition of the day, Fred Thompson edition

Oh, New York Magazine. I don't read you, but I admire your website editor's wacky sense of humor.

Lou Dobbs asks the questions other reporters refuse to ask. Because they are smart.

Here's the latest poll question from CNN's Lou Dobbs, the man who never misses an opportunity to hate on the Mexicans. Truly, he is asking questions that you simply do not see elsewhere in the main-stream media.



And, I would argue, there is a reason for this. Because typically the main-stream media does not ask the type of questions that stoned 21 year olds ask each other at 2am as they sit in the hallway outside their dorm rooms listening to Widespread.

Laughably inaccurate headline of the day

Today's award for the headline that is so obviously wrong that anyone viewing is likely to fall on the floor amidst great peals of laughter is the following, courtesty the Associated Press:

Las Vegas mayor: Gambling allegations won't hurt city's quest for a team

Uh, really? You mean that the allegations that an NBA referee bet on basketball games, and that he fixed the outcomes so that his friends would win bets, won't affect the odds that the NBA will locate a new team inside the capital of organized gambling in the United States? Now, I know that Oscar Goodman (mayor of Las Vegas) has to say this, because it's not like the guy can come out and say "oh, yeah, we're sunk, I mean, that's it. Might as well get Celine back for another two years of shows." Nevertheless, anyone with any amount of brain tissue still functioning knows that they'll never get a team. Never.

Dog food/human food, who can tell?

Every once in a while, some story will come along that kind of lifts the veil that typically shrouds the food industry. Remember that pet-food scare a few months ago, when it became obvious after reading the stories that most pet foods in the country use the exact same products? This past week saw a new scandal, as cans of "Hot Dog Chili Sauce" (note: wtf is that?) were recalled due to fears that they might harbor botulin. But beyond this, I could not help notice the following passage:

The recall by Castleberry's originally affected only 10 products, but the expanded move involves more than 80 types of stew, chili, hash and other products.

Four canned Natural Balance brand pet food products, which Castleberry's co-packs for Natural Balance, are also being recalled.

Got that? Yeah, they make human food and dog food on the exact same line. Given the automation that exists in this industry, is it totally unreasonable to imagine some poor sap in the midwest opening up what he expects to be a can of corned beef hash and instead finding a can of dog food, that syrupy gravy oozing over the plate? It's not hard to imagine that at all, and, even more frightening, it's also quite easy to imagine said poor sap going ahead and eating the dog food. Really, hypothetical person... how could you?

So now that makes sense

I happened to read a short piece on ABC's "The Blotter" page about a deal that may or may not be in the works to free some Americans who are in custody in Iran. At the tail end of the report, which was filled with the usual amount of conflicting information from various State Department functionaries, I read this

The officials say a fifth American, former FBI agent Robert Levinson, is not part of the deal. Levinson disappeared in Iran in March. U.S. officials believe he is in a Tehran prison although Iran has never acknowledged he is in custody.

This story has always interested me. The guy disappeared, I think while on a "fishing trip" (fishing? in Iran?), and his family has no idea where he is. Then it emerged that he was a "private consultant" (translation: CIA employee), and a bunch of people suddenly thought he had been arrested and imprisoned by the Iranians. Ok. However, reading that last line about a prison in Tehran, I suddenly remembered a story I had read earlier this week

Military officials said 25 heavily armed parachutists who landed in a cornfield on the grounds of a Colorado prison last week were on a training mission but landed about 3 miles off target.

"Those were Special Operations Command forces conducting routine training," Army Col. Hans Bush, a spokesman for the command at MacDill Air Force Base, Fla., said Monday. He declined to identify the units that landed at Fremont Correctional Facility but said the target was Fremont County Airport.

The special operations troops, which could include Navy Seals or Green Berets, began dropping from the sky at about 4:50 a.m. Thursday. Guards on duty, who are trained to watch the skies following a helicopter escape in 1989 from a prison near Ordway, Colo., held their fire after noticing the parachutists were soldiers.
...
Guards who stopped the men and asked for identification were presented with documents that identified them only as Defense Department employees, Colorado Department of Corrections spokeswoman Katherine Sanguinetti.
...
"We don't know who they were and I'm not sure we'll ever know who they were," she said. "Everyone acted appropriately."
...
The Fremont Correctional Facility is a mixed custody facility that houses inmates classified from minimum to administrative segregation. It houses 1,471 inmates and employs about 450 people.

Interesting, no? An American, probably a CIA agent, is in an Iranian jail, and we're having random groups of Special Forces guys dropping from skys and landing in prisons here in the states on a "training mission"? Hmmm...

George Lopez stars in "Fredo's Revenge: the Alberto Gonzales Story"

This mortgage advertisement Just. Got. Serious.

Today on the way home for lunch (ever notice how many of my blog posts begin with precisely that phrase?) I heard a radio ad for one of my favorite companies*, Lennox Financial Services, whose owner has the most hilarious line ever (about his mortgages): "It's the biggest no-brainer in the history of earth." Ok, well put, very understated. But in today's ad he was talking about how he likes to avoid predatory lending practices. He said (paraphrasing): "I believe what goes around comes around. If you hurt a kid [note: wait, what?], you'll get yours, in this life or the next one. Someone's going to work on you with a blowtorch and a drill." Stop. WTF? The guy starts the ad talking about closing costs, and ends by talking like an especially pissed off version of Charles Bronson. Crazy. But, kind of awesome. I'm torn on this one.


*"Favorite" in this context means my favorite to make fun of.

Ah, the entertainment provided by email spam

I get dozens of email spams per day, most of them never seeing the light of daylight thanks to a pretty sweet spam filter. However, one message slipped through, and I thought the contents were too awesome to pass up. It's as if someone set up a program to just automatically take words from the English language and fit them into something somewhat coherent. It makes sense, but not really.

From: [sender]
Subject: If she had partaken of myflesh.
Date: July 29, 2007 9:01:18 AM PDT
To: Me

The vulnerable programs include Microsoft Office 2000 Office XP Money 2002 Money 2003 Project.
Could have been another reason that few people felt the effects of the attack.
As the imminent US/UK action on Iraq gains momentum we are expecting.
According to mi2g this is the largest number of attacks to take place in a single day.

Wha? Isn't the whole point of spam to get someone to buy your stupid weight-loss/wang-lengthening powder? What's the point of writing some incomprehensible babble? (And, no, it didn't have a malicious trojan or whatever attached.)

Most hilarious political ad of all time

Former Governor of Taxachusetts, Willard Mitt Romney, has released what is probably the most hilarious--and in that sense the worst--political ad of all time. First of all, it features imagery most commonly associated with feminine hygine products. This ad does not make me want to vote for Mitt as much as it does want to rid myself of that " not fresh" feeling. Second, his voiceover is done in a compelling Shatner-esque delivery--"Shortly after THECOLUMbine SHOOTings, PeggyNoonandescribed CULture as the OCEan..." and so forth. Totally, absolutely, absurd. Here, watch it for yourself:

Garfield reminds us all of the grim march of time...

File this under "huh?"



Slighty scary, no? I would imagine that absolutely NO grandparents clipped this particular strip out and mailed it to their grandchildren, lest they be accused by their children of trying to depress the grandchild into an early grave.

How you start feeling old

Really, there's nothing that makes you feel older than when you see the photo of someone who you remember looking really young looking really old. And this is one of those photos.


Source

Ok, what the hell is actually IN Spam??

Yesterday, my office-mates had a summer party, and my team was dominatingly victorious in the inter-office softball game. As our reward for our athletic triumph, we were each gifted a can of Spam Lite. That's right. Not just Spam, Spam Lite. Delish! And, as you will note from the photo, Crazy Tasty!

After I got over the thrill of victory, I took a minute to read the list of ingredients on the Spam. The first: Pork with Ham. Wait, isn't ham a kind of pork? What the hell, Hormel. Second ingredient: "Mechanically separated chicken." Huh? If this doesn't evoke the very worst parts of The Jungle, I don't know what does. I get this image in my mind of some gigantic metal whirring device into which all manner of chicken bones are fed, and out emerges this gray lifeless product that is then sent on to the giant Spam processing center. Seriously, ugh.

CNN: reliably, stupidly, pro-oil

Today CNN published an interview it conducted with "gas price survey maven" Trilby Lundberg. How refreshing it would be to subject some of Ms. Lundberg's absurd statements to the same sort of treatment recently given to Michael Moore's documentary on the US health care industry. But, no, of course Ms. Lundberg is a big booster of the oil industry, so her statements are allowed to just sit there. Observe:

Q: Where will we be in five or 10 years in terms of gas prices?

A: I think the chief determinants will be these three things: whether or not there is a disruption in world oil supply, intransigence in petroleum politics among some of the producers, and U.S. interference with its free gasoline market. The various energy bill proposals that are on [the] table in Washington, D.C., can have a deleterious affect on price or on gasoline demand or both. Forcing subsidized non-petroleum fuels on consumers can greatly add to cost.

Got that? It's the energy bills that are raising your gasoline prices!

Q: As far as conservation, what are the trends you are seeing?

A: I'm hoping that consumers will see through the rhetoric about consuming less, demanding less, as faulty. It is not a given that consuming less will be good for our economy or for our personal freedom. It is not even established for our environment that we [should] deprive ourselves of gasoline for our personal mobility as well our commerce. And to suppose that it is good to do that, and pretend that we have consensus and put our heads together to deprive ourselves of this great product that makes the country go around, commercially and individually, I think is flawed. I'm hoping consumers and voters will see through that and be able to ignore some of the most extreme suggestions....And the No. 1 item among those affecting current oil politics in Washington is the boogeyman, also known as global warming.

I don't accept it as established fact, nor do I accept that it would be caused by petroleum consumption, nor do I accept that the human species should not affect its environment. So even if it were someday to be shown to have some small effect on the environment, I see no crime. In fact, taking into account the many, many millions of people around the world that envy our way of life, it would seem more humanitarian to wish them the kind of plentiful petroleum products and vehicles ... that we enjoy ... to lift themselves out of [a] backward, poor way of life.

Yay oil! Global warming is a big hoax! Environmentalists are bad and want you to live in a cave and use a freaking tin can to talk to your neighbors...who are probably dead anyway! Gah!

Sheesh, that they allow this to just sit there, unquestioned--not even so much as a "um, but don't virtually all scientific studies show that global warming is real and actually pretty bad?"--is the very height of journalistic irresponsibility. That they would do it so soon after subjecting Michael Moore to some pretty shoddy "fact checking" is simply absurdly hypocritical.

Oregon Ducks: Most Powerful Team in NCAA History

The Oregon Ducks are the most powerful team in the history of college football. How do I know? They just managed to GO BACK IN TIME and win the 2005 Holiday Bowl. Holy crap! How often does that happen?

Oklahoma must erase its wins from the 2005 season and will lose two scholarships for the 2008-09 and 2009-10 school years, the NCAA said Wednesday.

The Sooners went 8-4 and beat Oregon in the Holiday Bowl to end the 2005 season.

Make sense? The Ducks technically "lost" to the Sooners, but due to the fact that the Sooners were illegally playing with several players who had gotten fake jobs at car dealerships, the football gods have ruled that the Ducks in fact won that game. If I had bet money on the game, and still had my betting slip, could I go back to the casino and claim my winnings? It's a valid question.

There is no institutionalized racism in America

Got that? There is no racism in America. Unless, of course, you are the assistant attorney general in New Jersey. But that's the only time. From the "letters to the editor" section of today's NY Times:

An Objection to Hip-Hop Coverage

Q. Why does The Times devote as much space as it does to covering rap and hip-hop? Indeed, one might ask why it gives any coverage at all, but I won’t go that far. It would seem that the audience for this type of ephemera is not generally likely to be reading The Times, though I have been wrong before.

More to the point: while rock criticism may have seemed like a silly venture when it started, considering the thinness of the material, it would seem like deconstructing Beethoven and Rilke when compared to analyzing the trite, repetitious, crude, and juvenile stuff that is the mass of hip-hop.

— Peter G. O’Malley, assistant U.S. attorney, District of New Jersey

At least he comes up with a fairly polite way to say "blacks don't read." Unbelievable. Perhaps with all the hubbub going on about the US Attorney firings, Mr. O'Malley concluded that know was the appropriate time to issue his brilliant missive.

I do not think that thing means what you think it means

The AP reports today that the recent US "surge" in Iraq is so very successful in limiting the ability of Al Qaeda to strike back at us that they may end up having to...strike back at us.

The U.S. military expects al Qaeda in Iraq to strike back with "spectacular attacks" after major U.S.-led offensives that have disrupted its activities, a military spokesman said on Wednesday.

Um, wha? Huh? Explain to me how this is possible?

Things Which Are Not Cool, and, In Fact, Make You Look Like a Jackass Loser

Being the kind of fashion-forward person that I am, I thought I would do my substantial readership a service and list several things that are decidedly uncool--in fact, they are so profoundly uncool that you risk being forever lumped with the type of people who consider Olive Garden to be the height of Italian cooking if you affiliate yourself with them. Without further ado:

1. What Would ________ Do? First, there was the What Would Jesus Do? bracelets, rings, books, stickers, etc. Stupid, and annoying. But in recent years, there has been an absurd overuse of the phrase, often attached to the celeb du jour. But, seriously, this is no longer clever, ironic, funny, interesting, or even noteworthy. So take that "What Would the Unabomber Do?" mug off your desk right now, please.

2. Livestrong bracelets: Officially no longer cool. Officially the kind of thing your dad would wear. Imitation bracelets are also not cool. The whole trend needs to go away.

3. "Got _______?" The "got milk?" campaign was fresh and interesting for a month...at the most. But that was about, what, 10 years ago? Seriously, people, adding your product/college/etc. name to the word "Got" and then making it into a question is the very opposite of fresh. Nothing tells me I'm in the presence of a person or institution with no imagination than finding out they've used the phrase "Got ______?" recently. Remember that Calvin Klein "CK" campaign of about 10 years ago, where all of a sudden every t-shirt had "CK" on it, and then every company/city tried to do the same thing with their name? That got old, fast, and that's where the Got _____? thing is right now.

Overcome by pride, or, Upon Raccoon Crap

Mere words cannot express the overwhelming pride and sense of accomplishment I feel when I pause for a moment and reflect upon the fact that THIS VERY BLOG is the second link on a Google search for "raccoon crap." Here's a link to the original post that started all the madness.

Also, while we're on the subject, the people who arrive at this blog after doing google searches for "pregnant strippers"? You scare me.

Three quick questions about Iraq

A prize to the first person who can answer these questions:

1. Who are we fighting in Iraq? (And I mean who specifically--no points for "terrorists" or "evildoers," or whatever.)

2. Why are we fighting them? (That means, what strategic goals are we hoping to accomplish--no points for tautological answers like "because they are fighting us.")

3. How hard would it have been to answer that kind of question in 1944?

GOP anti-war caucus touts own ineffectiveness

Here's what I don't understand about the recent wave of anti-war statements coming from various GOP Senators. In recent weeks/months, we've seen Gordon Smith (OR), George Voinovich (OH), Richard Lugar (IN), and Pete Domenici (NM) come out against the war--or, at least, against the war as it is being waged. It's not difficult to see that in many cases, the people on this list are releasing these statements to defeat credible challenges in upcoming elections.

Clearly, the attempt is to tell voters back home: "Hey, look, I may have voted for the war at one point, but I've clearly seen the light, and am now urging the President to reconsider his policy." That sounds fine, but the proof is in the pudding: since these guys have released their statements, has anything actually changed? Have any troops left Iraq? Have we reduced our numbers? Have we stopped spending money at such an insane rate? The answer, plainly, is no. So in my mind, what these guys are doing is touting their own spectacular ineffectiveness to the folks back home. They are in the President's party, and in some instances (Domenici, Lugar) are senior, well-respected members of their party. These are the people who should be able to bend the President's ear and get him to deviate from what they believe to be a foolish strategy. But they haven't been able to do it. They talk, but nothing changes. I'm really not sure that this "The President doesn't listen to a thing I say!" strategy is the wisest one to pursue in the months before an important election.

Come to Glasgow, and we'll set about ye!

Check out this sweet, sweet video of John Smeaton, the now-legendary Scottish baggage handler who singlehandedly defeated last week's terrorists while on a smoking break. To tell the truth, as soon as this incident happened I knew that the silver lining of having a terror attack in Glasgow is that it would yield plenty of awesome Scottish one-liners. And "this is Glasgow, and we'll set about ye!" may be my new favorite.

Local news station asks the hard questions

There's all kinds of news in the world this morning: the continuing fallout from the "pardon" (not yet in word, but soon) of Scooter Libby, a scorching heatwave in the western US, news on the recent bombing attempts in Britain, the war in Iraq, and so forth. So what does KATU News, one of my local news stations here in Portland choose as the subject for its incisive, laser-beam-like gaze? The purported phallocentrism of local traffic impediments. Truly a subject worthy of the local news, about which Garrison Keillor once remarked, "you could learn more about the world drinking gin straight from the bottle."

My neighbor gets his swear on...

The other night my wife and I were sitting on the couch in our front room, watching episodes of "Undeclared" (Judd Apatow's criminally underappreciated--and hence cancelled--sitcom of a few years back), when a horrific automobile crashing sound came from the corner up the street. Indeed, two cars had collided, and the impact was rather severe. As I ran towards the scene of the crash, one of my neighbors (a 45 year old skateboarding guitar player), who lives on the corner where the crash occurred, ran out, saying, "Did someone run a stop sign here tonight? Goddam motherfu----- piece of sh-- ass----!" As profanity goes, it was quite a performance. He then said "She ran the stop sign, so fu-- her!!" several times in the next ten minutes. Each time, he said it loud enough for the driver in question to hear.

For some reason, it's one of my favorite things in the world when people introduce profanity into casual conversation, especially if I don't know them that well. I don't know why that is, but it makes me feel special that they assume I have no problem with gratuitous swearing. Which I don't.

Greatest Obituary Ever, or, Why I Do Not Understand the Europeans

I take great delight in reading the obituaries of wealthy Europeans. They are filled with all manner of innuendo and intrigue, and offer glimpses into a decadent class of people that we can only dream of emulating here in the States. Today's Telegraph does not disappoint, offering up the obituary of one Gottfried Alexander Leopold Graf von Bismarck-Schonhausen. The entire piece is classic, but here's an especially noteworthy passage

When not clad in the lederhosen of his homeland, he cultivated an air of sophisticated complexity by appearing in women's clothes, set off by lipstick and fishnet stockings. This aura of dangerous "glamour" charmed a large circle of friends and acquaintances drawn from the jeunesse dorée of the age; many of them knew him at Oxford, where he made friends such as Darius Guppy and Viscount Althorp and became an enthusiastic, rubber-clad member of the Piers Gaveston Society and the drink-fuelled Bullingdon and Loders clubs.

Really, you have to admire anyone who casually uses the phrase "jeunesse dorée of the age" in conversation.

David's translation service

Here is where I will perform a valuable service for the press, giving them the uncoded meaning of one of George Bush's recent statements.

Check it: when George Bush says "I haven't ruled out a pardon of Scooter Libby," that means: "I will pardon Scooter Libby."

You're welcome.

Bush vs. LBJ

"I find him serene," Kissinger said. "I know President Johnson was railing against his fate. That's not the case with Bush. He feels he's doing what he needs to do, and he seems to me at peace with himself."

Evidently so.

Worst. Terrorists. Ever.

Look, I don't mean to detract from the danger posed by the London/Glasgow bombers, but can we please take a moment, catch our breath, and examine just what these guys have managed to do? They (going on the assumption that the London "bombers" and the guys who crashed the car into the Glasgow airport are the same people) managed to poorly wire explosive devices in two Mercedes sedans, and destroyed one Jeep Cherokee. The only person injured was one of the bombers. Moreover, the explosive devices were fairly meager in nature. One need only look at what exactly happened to the Glasgow bomb in order to see that the reaction to the London bombs has indeed been hyperbolic. Though gasoline works well as a flammable liquid, it does not work so well as an explosive agent. I mean, it "explodes," but rather weakly, and certainly with not enough force to propel thousands of nails through the air.

That's not to say that the bombers posed no threat, and there is certainly something worrisome to the reports that the bombers are well educated members of the middle class, but their efforts at this point are more likely to inspire ridicule than copycat attacks.