Congressional leaders appear to be suffering from malfunction in the translation system.  Translation from weasel words to plain English, that is.  In order to help Congress see this weasel Mukasey for what he really is, and come to the correct conclusion that, for the sake of our democracy and moral standing in the world, he must not be confirmed as Attorney General, I have secured the services of an automated weasel-word translation service.

Last Thursday night in Boston, an unarmed wing of the thug caste attacked acclaimed monologist Mike Daisy at the ART in Cambridge, MA.  Eighty-seven members of the audience walked out at the same time – but they didn’t walk quietly out the back.  They noisily walked out the front, past the artist.  And on the way, they intentionally destroyed the original copy of his handwritten script by pouring water on it.

These thugs were high school students and their chaperones from Norco High School in southern California, and were apparently offended because Mr. Daisey uses swear words and refers to sexual acts in his act.  

What was their response to their burning ears?  Was it to slip quietly out the back?  Was it to talk to the artist after the performance, and try to convince Mr. Daisey that swearing was inappropriate?  Was it to turn the other cheek?  No.  It was to disrupt the performance, physically menace Mr. Daisey, and destroy his property and art.

When two men working for a marketing company placed textbook-sized electronic devices consisting of batteries, wires, circuit boards, and LEDs in the pattern of a cartoon character on several locations in Boston's transportation infrastructure, such as the bottoms of rail and road bridges, was it a bomb hoax?

No.

The guys were just doing their job.  It might have been illegal, but in small ways – you can't just post signs up wherever you want to.  It may have been imprudent – monkeying around on bridges is pretty stupid.  It may even have been a fundamentally bad idea – it had a possibility of misinterpretation, and, after all, the cartoon character was making an obscene gesture.  

But at the time those two guys put the devices on the bridges, they weren’t thinking "Gee, maybe everybody will think these are bombs, and the police will come and everything."  They were thinking something more along the lines of "300 bucks for this?  Sweet!  Heh heh, look at the Mooninite giving everyone the fingah."

That doesn't make a bomb hoax.  What does?

I was sitting there watching the holo-vid with my granddaughter, when I saw a nightmare from years past flicker across the room.

"Grampa, who's that man?" asked little Allie.

Oh Jesus, I thought.  There the bastard is again.  Bedraggled and long-haired, he looked like Ted Kozinski on a bad day.  Withered, manacled, his smirk fossilized into a crazy glare, George Bush was being dragged from his cell at The Hague to trial.  Again.

"Uh, sweetie, that's George "Dubya" Bush."

There is an important way to look at George Felix Allen's recent "macaca" outburst, which I haven't seen discussed.  Racial epithets work in two directions:  they create a `them," and, at the same time, they create an "us."  In many cases, it is the creation of the "us" that is the most important.

Many of us were introduced for the first time to George Felix Allen by the public flap and the ample controversy over just what "macaca" means and why it was said.  Perhaps different things stand out for some who learned of him in this fashion.  For some, the things that stand out about Allen's history may be his father, the famous football coach;, his college history of Confederatophilia, and his being a Republican Governor and now Senator from Virginia.  For others, perhaps one of the things that stands out most is that Allen, who is not from Virginia, was insulting a man, Siddarth, who was born and bred in Virginia.  Welcome to Virginia?  Hold on a sec.  

Who is the real outsider here?

I was reading a news analysis in the Boston Globe that talked about the Republican catchphrase "cut and run" sticking to the Democrats.  Though I heard a fellow on Ed Schultz yesterday talking about how the Republicans Cut and Run - cut services and run up the deficit, I just don't think that's going to stick.

I'd read earlier about how funny it was to think of cheating scoundrels like Guiliani and Gingrich running for President on a values platform.  And right there on the page above the analysis was a picture of some really tired-looking Louisiana National Guard.  And an idea just popped into my head.  Cut and Run, hell.  The Republicans don't just cut and run, they deploy and abandon.  They mandate and underfund.  They talk a pretty picture and then sneak out of their responsibilities.  You know what they are, I thought...

Here's a little Fitzmas Carol. Break out the hot cocoa, put another log on the fire, and let's all sing together.

--
It's beginning to look a lot like Fitzmas
Ev'rywhere you go;
Take a look in the MSM, critical once again
And calling for Dick Cheney's head to roll.
It's beginning to look a lot like Fitzmas,
Rumors on every blog,
But the prettiest sight to see is the frog march that will be
Out the White House door.

Indictments for treason and juries that reason
Is the wish of Barney and Ben;
Flacks that will talk and a public perp walk
Is the hope of Janice and Jen;
And Bush and Rove can't wait until Al Qaeda bombs again.

It's beginning to look a lot like Fitzmas
Ev'rywhere you go;
There's a Grand Jury in Washington, one in Texas as well,
The sturdy kind that doesn't mind the press.
It's beginning to look a lot like Fitzmas;
Soon the chips will fall,
And the thing that will make them stick is the witnesses who flipped
In the jury hall.

Could somebody pull this bastard's Christian card already?  Pat Robertson has just proposed, on national television, to assassinate Hugo Chavez.  

Last I checked, it was both immoral and illegal to murder people.  It's against the Sixth Commandment, and it's against United States and international law.  But it's just fine for that immoral bastard, Pat Robertson.

If it happens, Pat Robertson should be pulled in on a conspiracy charge.

I was reading the Times this morning, and I just got to the end of disgust with a certain distortion.  Why is it that every single reference, no matter what media it appears in, to Bush's property in Crawford calls it a Ranch and not an Estate?  I mean, I just googled "Bush Estate," and there's not one single entry!  Well, I'm putting an end to that right here!  

Here's the deal:  on a ranch, you've got cattle.  Bush doesn't have any cattle.  Ergo, it's not a ranch.  What is it?  It's an Estate.  Fine, I know there actually are some 200 cattle grazing on his property; he leases grass to the former owners.  But they've got nothing to do with him, and vice versa, because he's scared of horses and cattle.  It's a 1583-acre estate, with only the faintest pretense of productivity.

Now, I know that the SCLM will be slow to pick this up, but I think the responsible leftie media should stop accepting the spin that gives some kind of Texan rural machismo to our President, who is really a Connecticut garden pantywaist.  Stop calling his estate a ranch!

I'm sorry.  I've heard so many theories:  it's his thumb... it's a pen (a la Bob Dole)... now he's pointing up with his index finger.  This is really grasping at straws.  Maybe he was asked "Who is truly indispensable in your administration?" and he pointed up at God.

I call BS.  He's flipping the bird.  It's very clear when you watch the movie.

I would kind of like to know what question preceded Bush flipping us the bird.  Since we'll probably never know, we might as well make it up.

So... I can think of a few... help me out here...

I was talking to my mother today about this Schiavo mess.  She sad it's ridiculous and hypocritical for our congressmen and governors and president and all those TV talking heads to be making such a big circus over Terry Schiavo's body's impending death when there are people dying all over America for lack of health care, on a daily basis.

So my mother said, gee, we should round a whole bunch of dying poor folks and wheel them up Capitol Hill with loudspeakers and signs and do a vigil until they all die, do a countdown.

"Well, it's day six of the Healthcare Vigil, and Mrs. Chastity Jones of Almsville, Ohio, has died because Tom DeLay doesn't think she's worth as much as Terry Schiavo."