Rummy Rumsfeld probably doesn't want you reading this either

OK, Sy Hersh wasn’t on the CSPAN program, and Thong Girl wasn’t on Fox. That last will be Friday 2:45 pm. Today, they had Peter Ueberroth instead--and gosh I could construct a joke about him wearing thongs based on the movie Bull Durham and he being the former baseball commissioner, but honestly that’s just too much like work.

Bill Maher: “I’m beginning to think that Republicans will do anything to win an election--except get the most votes.”

The US is changing its citizenship oath to remove the archaic language about abjuring & renouncing princes and potentates. Dictators and mullahs these days, I suppose. Don’t quote me, but I suspect the word potentates was intended as a backhanded way of referring to the pope.

We still don’t give them anything when they’ve taken the oath, do we? In Australia, they give you a small tree to plant.

Rumsfeld says criticizing him helps the terrorists. See, now if he’d only told me that before, I wouldn’t have repeatedly pointed out what a jackass he is.

Colombia’s president says the same thing about human rights groups there which, as Amnesty International points out, could be taken as a death list by his buddies in the death squads.

But only Russia has the guts actually to ban punditry, specifically: discussion of candidate’s personal lives, analysis of their policies, forecasting election results, or giving the candidates of all 44 parties less than equal time. Also, officials aren’t supposed to use their positions to campaign for parties or candidates. Putin immediately broke his own decree, endorsing someone as governor of St Petersburg. But of course he has immunity. In that election, one St Pete newspaper is running you know, made-up stories about an election in a, you know, fictional country with different names.

Terrorist-symp Joshua Marshall: “The president has turned 9/11 into a sort of foreign policy perpetual motion machine in which the problems ginned up by policy failures become the rationale for intensifying those policies. The consequences of screw-ups become examples of the power of 'the terrorists'.”

Rumsfeld also says that sending in more US troops would simply create more targets for the criminals, terrorists & Baathist remnants, as he describes them. So if the only function of additional troops would be as targets, what’s the function of the existing troops?

I’m warming to Arafat’s nominee for PM, if only because one of his two names is Abu Ala, which sounds like baby talk.

A doctor driving a Lamborghini in Pennsylvania was going 127 mph over the limit (which was 55). Cool.