Happy, Happy, Joy, Joy

I am laughing so hard right now I can't see straight. I'm so happy. Porter Goss quits and it has nothing to do with Hookergate? Come on! Of course it does. And on top of that, a new AP-Ipsos poll that says 45 percent of conservatives disapprove of their man Dubya, and that 65 percent of them disapprove of congress! Yar-de-har. So what are those same conservatives going to think when Hookergate hits the mainstream press. Let's face it, the broadening Duke Cunningham scandal is hot in the blogosphere but hasn't exactly hit Ma n' Pa Kettle yet. What are all the "I trust the president because he's a Christian" types going to think now of their fearless leader and his merry men?

Oh, this is getting really fun, and Abramoff hasn't even named names yet!

Rummy Gets Colbertized

I think this is great: Stephen Colbert has been inducted into the vernacular. In reference to yesterday's episode in which former CIA analyst Ray McGovern called out Rumsfeld on his pathological lies, a French blogger coined the phrase "Colberise" -- to hold a politician accountable, face to face. Read Marty Kaplan's piece on Huffington Post:

I Love Ray McGovern

Add former CIA analyst Ray McGovern to the list of patriots not only willing to speak truth to power, but also able on the spot to cite chapter and verse to back up their accusations with facts.

On a good day, if we're really lucky, a media account of a sparring match between the likes of Rumsfeld and Cheney and some adversary will also include file footage of them saying exactly what they deny they ever said. The niceties of MSM coverage preclude using the word "lie," so juxtaposing matter with anti-matter is the closest most networks or papers will come to mentioning He Who Must Not Be Named (you know, Pinocchio). But Ray McGovern not only had the goods on Rumsfeld -- he more than met the SecDef's condescending demurrals with withering facts. It's hard not to contrast his courage and steadfastness in real time with the Pentagon brass (and the ex-brass Secretary of State) who wilted under the scorn of the neocon crackpot consensus.

A headline on ManuMilitari coins the perfect description of what McGovern did: "Rumsfeld se fait 'colberiser.'" I know, it's in French, the language of frog-eaters who wouldn't follow Bush blindly into Iraq. You can guess what it means: Rumsfeld gets Colberted. The blogger who posted that defines it this way: "Colberiser: Régler face à face, ses comptes avec un politicien." It means: to hold a politician accountable, face to face.

This time around, it won't be enough to say that Ray McGovern wasn't funny enough, or that he was rude, or went on too long, or the rest of the courtier dyspepsia being attributed to Colbert. McGovern is doing what, shockingly, national Democrats haven't been doing; he's doing what the kewl kids in prom clothes in the Fourth Estate haven't been doing; he's doing what Left Blogistan and a handful of columnists have been doing, and what born-again furies like Chris Matthews are at long last doing. "Civil discourse" is the last refuge of scoundrels. It can't be long before the ideological bubble boys who deceived us into this misbegotten folly retreat to ticketed events and the comforting embrace of Fox News. Yet wasn't it the codpiece-in-chief who said, "You can run - but you can't hide"? It'd be sweet if that impotent bragodoccio finally came home to roost.

No Virgins for You

Well our ever eloquent President commented on the Moussaoui sentence yesterday: "Zacharias Moussaoui has been sentenced to life in prison, which means he will be spending the rest of his life in jail." Oh really. I had no idea that's what that meant. Naturally Dubya invoked 9/11 about 400 times in his comments regarding the sentence, which btw, I agree with because clearly the nut wanted to die for the glory of Allah and have his carload of Virgins and all that stuff.

Yeah, yeah, so Moussaoui screamed like a Bingo winner when his sentence was handed down and he gets all the press. But Judge Leonie Brinkema had a few choice, truly eloquent words for the convicted. Here's what AP reported:

"Mr. Moussaoui, when this proceeding is over, everyone else in this room will leave to see the sun ... hear the birds ... and they can associate with whomever they want," she said. She went on: "You will spend the rest of your life in a supermax prison. It's absolutely clear who won."

And she said it was proper he will be kept away from outsiders, unable to speak publicly again. "Mr. Moussaoui, you came here to be a martyr in a great big bang of glory," she said, "but to paraphrase the poet T.S. Eliot, instead you will die with a whimper." "You will never get a chance to speak again and that's an appropriate ending."

MEANWHILE BACK IN FRANCE...

The French are saying they might as the US to have Moussaoui serve his sentence over there. Yeah, not gonna happen. And Little Zackie's mom is real upset about that. "Now he is going to die in little doses. He is going to live like a rat in a hole. What for? They are so cruel."

Yeah, aren't we though.

Ah Spring...

I took this in my garden a week ago before the dew burned off.

Gotta love a photogenic tulip.

Intelligent Design Proved!

I love you Stevie!!!

When you look up Lampoon in the dictionary, I think you should see Stephen Colbert's face. I've watched the tape of the White House Correspondents Dinner half a dozen times and laugh harder with each viewing. The Press Secretary audition tape was pee-your-pants funny. And the whole Helen Thomas gag was a gas.
So a pox upon the "legit press" who couldn't even laugh even though they wanted to. Stevie's got balls of brass and he knows just where to swing them. But hey, Scalia thought he was a scream!

Yucca - More Insidious than the Republican Party

I live on a corner and have a steep driveway on the sidestreet next to park. Some genius previous owner decided to plant Yucca down one side of the driveway. They are huge and not very attractive so Kevin and I decided to remove them.

Evil thy name is Yucca.

These things are damn near impossible to remove. They're probably about 50 years old and the main roots are the size of a coffee can in diameter. They're tuborous and fiberous, so you pull on a root, it breaks. Trying to dig these puppies up is a nightmare -- thousands of little "fingers" of roots that are everywhere. If you leave so much as one little piece of plant in the ground it will reroot and come back. The labor is backbreaking and we barely put a dent in it. Kevin took a chainsaw to the tops and we started hacking away with axes and trying to pry them out with leverage. I want to just pour gasoline on them and send them to Allah but supposedly that doesn't even kill them. We had dinner last night with an ex Navy man who suggested homemade Napalm, but I'm not even sure that will do the trick. We're starting to think we might have to rent a backhoe and dig out the entire side lawn just to get rid of these ugly waterhogs.

I am going to kill each and every one of those plants if its the last thing I do. I'm going to kill them along with the little SOBs who took spray paint and Sharpies to the playscape in the park next to the house. I spent Saturday morning scrubbing slides. Little kids trying to play should not need to see "fuck" in white paint if they want to ride a swing. I have to say Goof Off does a great job on graffiti. One of the messages read: "If you read this your fucken dum." No, stupid little shithead tagger, you're fucking dumb.