NYT Editorial Edition

Well, today (actually yesterday) was our big Solstice music fest at the store; I didn't get home until 2:30 AM... Unwinding with a bit of editorializing from the NYT. Seems they too aren't terribly crazy about someone crowning themselves 'messiah' in the Senate building:

There's surely nothing new about indulging messianic conceits on Capitol Hill. But a dozen or more lawmakers allowed power fantasies to balloon a step too far when they honored invitations to the bizarre self-coronation of the Rev. Sun Myung Moon as Messiah at a Senate reception room last March. News has just leaked of the loony event — one of scores of usually mundane photo-op toadyings that occupy Washington lawmakers. Now the attendees are fleeing the record of the crowning as if it were a burning building. "I had no idea," said one in post-coronation remorse.

Mr. Moon, an eccentric billionaire, convicted tax cheat, conservative publisher and power broker, grandly donned scarlet robes and a golden crown at the Dirksen Office Building. "I am God's ambassador, sent to earth with his full authority," he announced.

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So far, as nonbelievers wonder at it all, no lawmaker has dared own up to authorizing use of a Congressional sanctuary for such a ludicrous traducing of self-government.

Meanwhile, also in the NYT, Maureen Dowd asks the wholy rhetorical question, "Are they losing it?":

One thing you've got to say for Dick Cheney: No one will ever again dismiss the vice presidency as a pitcher of warm spit. Mr. Major League Potty Mouth has shown that, with obsequiousness to the president and obtuseness to the facts, a vice president can run the world. Right into the ground.

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First Vice chewed out The Times for accurately reporting that the 9/11 commission said there was no collaborative relationship between Saddam and Al Qaeda. Then Paul Wolfowitz called the reporters risking their lives in Iraq craven rumormongers. Then came Mr. Cheney's F-word. (Not Fox, the other one.)

Finally, President Bush got agitated when an Irish TV interviewer said most of the Irish found the world more dangerous now than before the Iraq invasion. "First of all, most of Europe supported the decision in Iraq," Mr. Bush declared. (It's all in how you define "Europe.")

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As they used to say about the Soviet Union, the defensive Bush imperialists have to keep expanding because they're encircled. Mr. Cheney's gloomy, scary, contentious world view has fueled a more gloomy, scary, contentious world.

Duh. Yes, Mo, they lost it a long time ago.