Indonesia, with a singular lack of understanding of the history of the twentieth century, has hired Henry Kissinger as an adviser on the transition to democracy.

When McCain attacked the Christian right, he specifically exempted homophobe and general asshole James Dobson, presumably as part of the price for his endorsement by homophobe and general asshole and dwarf Gary Bauer. Also, one of McCain's major supporters, Lindsey "No it's not a girl's name" Graham, who you learned to hate during the Clinton impeachment, denounced Dubya's visit to Bob Jones University, although Graham himself has an honorary degree from it. Incidentally, why is the main controversy about BJU (and doesn't a university with such an informal name as Bob sound like a laidback Santa Cruz kind of a place?) the anti-catholicism of its presidents rather than its racism?

Molly Ivins's current column takes Bush to task for his commercials saying that he "passed" a patient's bill of rights, which actually passed over his dead body and after he vetoed the first one, it was passed again with a veto-proof majority and went into law without him signing it.

Robert Mugabe, the increasingly asinine president of Zimbabwe, has been touring the flood damage in two helicopters. There are only 3 helicopters doing actual rescue work. There are also a couple of dozen air force copters, but they're all in Congo fighting that stupid proxy war.

From the wonderful world of sharia, the 3 northern Nigeria states that recently passed sharia just revoked it after quite predictable religious rioting. And Saudi Arabia executes someone, by beheading, for sorcery. (Note to Daily Telegraph: when you say someone is executed for sorcery, a little more detail might be appropriate. If anyone sees anything, please pass it on).

Bob Herbert reports that Dubya said "I know how hard it is to put food on your family."