He's not the Road Warrior, he's a very naughty boy

Just watched the coverage of the 9/11 hearings by Nightline and the Daily Show. Once again, the latter had better political analysis, and even better editing, interspersing Condi Rice and Scott McClellan, who attacked Richard Clarke in literally the same words. If the Bush admin had coordinated half as well in attacking bin Laden as it has against Clarke...hell, if it did anything as efficiently as it does character assassination...

What’s wrong with regular tv news is its he-said-she-said-edness, so that regular news anchors wouldn’t express incredulity, like fake anchor Jon Stewart can, at Cheney’s claims that the anti-terrorism tsar was “out of the loop” on terrorism, or the absurd claim that Bush couldn’t have pressured Clarke to frame Saddam because he wasn’t even in the situation room on Sep. 12, 2001--what on earth are they saving the situation room for? Stewart also pointed out the extent to which they are attacking Clarke personally rather than addressing his accusations.

I like the thing about how Clarke’s just trying to sell books. The problem is that there is an issue there, just not that one. His publisher is in the same media conglomerate as CBS, which explains the long interview on 60 Minutes. To what extent is coverage by the competing conglomerates affected by that?

Bush, still convinced, perhaps with good reason, that he can utter any lie he likes, says that Kerry voted to raise taxes 350 times. That includes votes not to reduce taxes, and votes for tax cuts that were smaller than R’s wanted, and it includes counting a single vote on a bill with multiple provisions as if it were a bunch of votes, and multiple votes on a single provision.

Richard Clarke, in yet another interview, for Salon, comments on the attacks on him, “the Bush White House assumes that everyone who works for them is part of a personal loyalty network, rather than part of the government. And that their first loyalty is to Bush rather than to the people. When you cross that line or violate that trust, they get very upset.”

Scotland, the culinary center of the universe, has come up with the fried chocolate sandwich: two slices of white bread smothered in chocolate sauce, dipped in batter and deep-fried, then covered in sugar and more chocolate sauce, with vanilla ice cream.

Suddenly, I’m both hungry and a little nauseous.

Although, really, white bread, how unhealthy can you get?

To cash in on the success of Mel Gibson’s little Jesus movie, Monty Python’s Life of Brian is being re-released. Extra points to any theater that runs them in a double bill.

Once again the NYT (Wed.) has the oddity of the editorial page commenting on a story the news section never bothered covering, the new prime minister of Haiti’s consorting with death squad and coup leader types.