Gobsmacked

Best headline of the day: “Outcry after Fish Sex Survey” (Daily Telegraph, about fish changing sex because of pollution from contraceptives). Worst headline, same newspaper: “Stabbed Schoolboy 'Gobsmacked.'”

More vapid values talk (indeed, more vapid values, period). Edwards: “When they talk about values, bring it on.” Bush says Kerry is “out of step with the mainstream values that are so important to our country.”

[Later: WaPo article, “Rhetoric On Values Turns Personal.” Sheesh.]

Bush has already stomped out of a room when a reporter asked him a question about Kenny Boy Lay, but it also can’t help that Lay’s defense--that he was misled by CIA intelligence analysts--seems "separated at birth" from the Senate report blaming Andrew Fastow for misleading Bush about Iraq (or something like that). Neither defense will fly. D's should refer to the attempt to blame the CIA, who do seem to have been remarkably unprofessional but let's face it, Bush was going to war with Iraq no matter what the CIA said, as the Ken Lay Defense. I would like to know how the D’s on the Senate Intelligence Committee got rolled so badly that they signed on to a report that specifically exonerates Cheney and Bush of pressuring the intelligence agencies, while postponing publishing any discussion of Bush admin manipulation of intelligence to make a false case for war until after the election. You don’t release half a report. The D's evidently decided that having a unanimous report was more important than having an honest one, and compromised on the facts and on interpretation to get that false unanimity.