Free idea for George Bush.
Replacing Gonzales won’t be easy. Few rats volunteer to come onboard a sinking ship. And naming one of the incumbent rats like Michael Chertoff merely relocates the problem because then you have to replace him.
But just look around at some of the brilliantly qualified folks among the unemployed. Eight first-rate U.S. Attorneys, recently fired, all need jobs and have outstanding management experience in the Justice Department.
Any one of them would be happy to take a job as the boss of some of the cockroaches who conspired in his downfall. And most would be quickly and happily confirmed by Congress.
It’s one last chance to do something competent.
Oh.
Can anyone help me find the Fed’s discount window?
They’re giving out loans at 5.75% there, but I’ve looked all over the place and the window is nowhere to be found. It’s not at the ATM, and if it’s inside my bank, it’s not marked.
I heard that the Fed had dropped the discount rate that it charges banks, so they can now borrow directly at the discount window and pay less. The Fed says it’s eager to lend, especially to encourage banks to issue home mortgages.
In a conference call Friday, Fed officials told major banks that discount window borrowing would be viewed as a sign of strength, not weakness. I think that means it will be viewed as a sign of weakness, not strength. They probably take your picture, too.
I don’t pretend to be a bank, but lending directly to homeowners would be cheaper and faster. I don’t know why they didn’t think of that.
Maybe I’ll try the Post Office.
(In the News: Error in Arkansas law allows kids to marry)
Baby, knock them squashed vegetables on the floor and kiss your momma goodbye.
We’re gonna git married while it’s still legal. You can be any age at all in Arkansas and get married as long as you have a parent’s consent, and daddy’s drunk enough to sign anything.
By the time you’re three and I’m six, Baby, we’ll have our own house, and a doll house and a dog house and a pickup truck. This ain’t Kentucky, where we’d have to wait until you’re twelve.
They say they’ll fix that law, but they always say that. Rip off that bib, kid, we’re gonna knock the socks off Little Rock.
There are some news stories that always remind me of Big Daddy in ‘Cat on a Hot Tin Roof’, listening to what his son has told him and saying, “But … that’s only half a story!”
Such is my reaction to the announced Rove resignation. There is no point in rejoicing … the constitutional damage is done and the hundreds of thousands dead in Iraq are beyond any rescue. Nor is there glory in the Defeat of Evil. If there was anything to the fundamentalist reading of the Bible we’d have seen Rove’s eye go blind and his arm wither during a Fox interview just prior to his turning into a pillar of salt.
But it is just half a story. What is missing is the Why? To use Neil Gaiman’s observation, “Never trust a demon. He has a hundred motives for anything he does… Ninety-nine of them, at least, are malevolent.” Malevolent, or self-serving … I just keep waiting for that other shoe to drop.
But besides his resignation, the other curious things about Rove’s action were his parting observations that Bush’s poll numbers will improve and that the situation in Iraq will get better. It is a fact of poll numbers that the closer you get to zero approval, the more likely it is that it has to get better since, finally, that is the only option available.
And I’ve long maintained that the Iraq fiasco couldn’t get any worse without involving a zombie uprising.
Rove’s predictions remind me of the Ukrainian sharpshooter who was so good because he shot first, and then drew the targets.
I wish I had better news to report, but – as usual – the latest dispatches from the world of science are relatively useless. Still you should know what they’ve discovered.
1. Viruses are Republicans. No brains. No morals. Nasty, brutish, and short.
2. Enzymes are Democrats. Natural catalysts, except the ones currently in Congress, which consists almost entirely of adipose tissue.
3. Bacteria are Independents. They freely exchange DNA, switching sides to gain small advantages rather than waiting to evolve. Examples: e -coli and j-liebermania.
4. Energy Crisis?. There isn’t any. All the energy our nation could possibly use is pent up in road rage, airline rage, and anti-Bush/Cheney rage. The trick is to harness this latent force for useful work, a project currently blocked by fatty deposits in Congress.
5. An Electronic Black Hole. TV writer and blogger Chris Kelly of L.A. has discovered an anti-Hillary website (StopHerNow.com) that is so weak it drains your computer battery, house wiring, TV, and refrigerator.
6. Watched water boils after all.
7. Orangutans ride bicycles. No, check that. Orangutans have been observed to display bipedalism in Sumatra. That throws into a cocked hat the prevailing theory that more modern hominids were the first to stand erect, thus freeing the hands and paving the way for touch-typing, eyebrow pencils, AK47s, and cognitive dissonance.
8. One for the Gyppers. Turns out the Korean team caught faking evidence of stem cell cloning in 2005 had accidentally made an even more significant breakthrough. They had produced stem cells from an unfertilized mouse egg – thus removing the process from all religious objections since no embryo was involved. But they didn’t realize they had done it.
Moral: Had he not used steroids, Barry Bonds might be celebrating his 900th home run instead of his 756th.
9. You can grow your own brain. Not in a terrarium, in your head. For decades, we’ve been taught that we’re stuck with the brain we were born with. Now it turns out you can grow new neurons, even if you’re old and sick (as the experimental subjects at Salk Institute were). What factors promote neuron growth? Exercise, estrogen, antidepressants, marijuana, stimulating environments, and high social status. Take your pick.
What factors retard neuron growth? Aging, stress, sleep deprivation, barren environments, and Ritalin. As to the well known correlation between shrunken brains and right-wing politics, researchers have yet to determine which is the cause and which is the effect.
10. Abstinence-only sex education doesn’t work. We all knew that, but the Bush League spent $170 million in 2005 alone on such programs. Then the CDC determined scientifically that all the money was wasted. Of course they were soon bulldozed into removing those findings from their website.
It takes two wrongs to make a right wing.
For any liberal exasperated by Congress — and that might be roughly 105% of us — Judgment Day does not arrive in November of 2008.
It comes earlier, in the Primaries next spring. With Congressional Democrats unwilling to consider impeachment of Gonzales, Cheney, and Bush, unable to act on any of the scandals and crimes it has unearthed, and now caving in on passage of the Bush domestic spying regime, it’s clear that the enemy is inside our tent.
It’s time to get rid of these hypocritical moles, these faux progressives who piously recite their brave words and then either fail to act or cravenly switch sides when it’s time to vote.
What good are they? They’re far worse than useless; they are traitors who have double-crossed their liberal supporters, and they’re taking up the space intended for authentic supporters of American values and constitutional government.
A third party is a tempting antidote, but that hasn’t worked in 100 years, since Teddy Roosevelt. So the answer is not a new Bull Moose party but a good old fashioned real Democratic party.
Yes, there are some honorable exceptions but, basically, spring is the time for housecleaning, and this spring that means to change Democrats.
First, full disclosure. I took eight credits in theology and minored in Thomistic Philosophy at a Catholic university. No, not OPtimistic philosophy – Thomistic, as propounded by Thomas Aquinas, who was later canonized but fortunately escaped unharmed.
Later, I converted to Avarice, Concupiscence, and Sloth; but the point is, I do know about angels, saints, sinners, virtues and vices, mortal sins (felonies) and venial sins (misdemeanors).
The cardinal virtues are wisdom, courage, temperance, and justice, the practice of which, at the moment, risks federal prosecution or, at the very least, vituperation on talk radio.
The Christian virtues are faith, hope, and charity, to which some moralizers have added patience, humility, and what used to be called long-sufferingness, later rebranded as suffering catfish.
Abstinence, quite properly, was never part of the deal. Abstinence is a counterfeit virtue developed at the James Dobson hypocrisy factory and espoused by right-wingers and extreme fundamentalists as God’s own political solution to teenage pregnancy and retro-viruses.
Now I learn that among Evangelical Christians, according to several recent studies, teenagers tend to have sex sooner (and with bigger grins on their faces) than mainstream Protestant kids.
Of course people who preach abstinence don’t necessarily practice it, and kids wise up to that fact early on. As for people who do practice it, nobody listens to them anyway. How else would they have become abstinent? So, back to my original question:
Do angels have sex? And, if so, do they sire baby angels to populate the earth?
Empirically, how many angels do you know? And where else would you look for angels – in the loftiest realms of society? How many angels do you see in the White House, the Congress, and the great mega-corporations who decide what you’ll have to pay for gasoline, health care, or cable TV?
And, by the way, how many angels can dance on the head of a pin? None, you idiot; stick to the point.
In Darwinian terms, a non-reproducing species is not long for this dog-eat-dog world. (Do dogs eat dogs?) Clearly, angels are absent. Inferentially, either they are abstinent or they use condoms. Or, they never came down from the clouds after all. Absence of evidence is not evidence for abstinence.
Bottom line: there is a significant cleavage between preachment and practice, and teens with significant cleavages are subjected to temptations that militate not only against abstinence but against the very existence of angels.
So what is there left to believe in?
If you’ve tried hard to be a good parent, you should believe in your kids.
