Universal Suspect Located

'Admitted 9/11 mastermind' Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is sure going to close a lot of cases:

During the hearing, Mohammed also acknowledged he planned, financed or ran training for a catalog of high-profile terrorist attacks, including operations to assassinate several U.S. presidents and to destroy world-famous landmarks such as Chicago's Sears Tower, the Panama Canal and London's Big Ben.

He said he was behind Richard Reid's attempted shoe bombing of an airliner over the Atlantic, the Bali, Indonesia, nightclub bombing and the 1993 World Trade Center attack.

I've also been informed by sources close to the investigation that he put the bop in the bop shu bop shu bop and the overalls in Mrs. Murphy's chowder.

And I strongly suspect that this individual moved my cheese!

Inquiring minds want to know...

What's the state of our extradition agreements with Dubai?

Here. We go. Again. ... sigh ...

For those of you who haven't been following the Fox News - Dems Debate story, a recap: The Nevada Democratic Party got together and organized the first debate of the '08 election cycle, to be held in Nevada, and aired on ... (wait for it) ... Fox News. A number of people were outraged/alarmed; after all, why should they trust the staging and presentation of a Democratic event to what is essentially the Official House Organ of the GOP? Fox guarding henhouse? The pun's just laying there, people. Do with it what you will.

John Edwards gets out in front on this one, refusing to participate. The left-most part of the blogosphere agitates and seethes. The Nevada Dems probably realize at this point that they hadn't thought this thing through. Fortunately, there's always Roger Ailes on hand with a good quote or two, and he steps up to the plate:

It is true that Barack Obama is on the move. I don't know if it's true that President Bush called Musharraf and said: 'Why can't we catch this guy?'

Pshew! Casus Belli achieved! And the Nevada Dems use this handy excuse to cancel FNC's participation.

But wait! Naifs from the left and the disingenues from the right both correctly point out that the joke was actually on Bush, a dig at how stupid he is.

Technically true. But please, don't come around me with that stuff, okay? I don’t have to tell you about message management and subtext, do I?

For instance, it’s quite true that no one in the Bush administration ever claimed that Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11. And yet a surprising number of people picked up the idea that this is exactly what they were saying. Many of them still believe it to this day, AND they believe they heard it directly from Bush. How did the administration pull off this feat of linguistic legerdemain of speaking the careful truth and causing people to hear what they wanted them to hear? By making grim pronouncements about the ‘lessons’ of 9/11 and then seguing, without transition, into the dangers posed by the lawless regime in Iraq. If the logic-impaired chose to see a connection between these two statements (and they did and still do), that’s their problem, right?

Anything that gets the Obama-Osama meme circulating helps the GOP and hurts Obama. Don’t think for one second that it doesn’t.

The Gay Hustler Gap

Every election cycle, there's some new group that the demographers tout as the latest Must Have demo to win elections. The Democrats have to learn to appeal to People of Faith, pollsters warn. The GOP has a problem 'getting their message out' to minorities. Well, never mind your soccer moms or your NASCAR dads, the Dems have a bigger problem! Why are all the gay hustlers choosing the GOP over the party of inclusion??

I mean, it's counter-intuitive. The GOP isn't kind to gay people (never mind prostitutes) - they believe they're either sick sinners going to hell (the evangelical wing); or mental deviants who made bad choices and should Stop Doing That (the moral arbiters); or that they should stay out of sight and don't let anybody see them (the Dick Cheney wing). They don't believe gays should be allowed to serve in the military, or adopt children, or be able to marry the partner of their choice. Some go so far as to claim AIDS is God's just punishment for gays' sinning ways, and would even criminalize or institutionalize gays.

And yet for all this, all the gay hustlers flock to the GOP in lieu of the Democratic party, which at least believes that being gay is not a clinical psychosis but a condition of birth, and that some form of legal recognition of gay unions ought to be allowed. At its most inclusive, Dems are actively for gay marriage, if not perhaps gay hustling.

We're supposed to be the party of Sodom and Gomorrah, not those other guys. Just ask Newt Gingrich, he'll tell you - it was the If It Feels Good, Do It lifestyle so beloved of commie-pinko-hippy-liberals, he said, that caused Susan Smith to kill her children, after all. You should expect Do Anything liberals to embrace and accept your bad boy pasts.

Yet time after time, gay hustlers break our hearts by choosing conservative media outlets to pander for, conservative televangelists to snuggle up to, or prefer Ann Coulter's chilly embrace to our own. I simply do not understand it.

What do you need us to do, gay hustlers, to make you love us? Is it the self-loathing you find so attractive on the other side? We can self-loathe - really we can. We frequently quote Will Rogers on the subject of organized parties. Honestly, if I hear the term Circular Firing Squad one more time I shall scream. We often eat our own. It's what we do. Come on over to our side, Gay Hustlers; we can make you feel bad about yourselves in ways those other guys never dreamed of.

Not for the faint of heart

Painting of Dick Cheney... on black velvet

I'm serious - don't click link if you are not in good health.

From the purveyors of "The Tackiest Mexican Velvet Painting There Ever Was", the Famous Satan on the Toilet painting.

Headline says it all

Priests to purify site after Bush visit

Pop quiz

Three states, Alabama, Arkansas and Georgia, all suffer devastating tornadoes. Two states are comfortably red, with GOP governors. One state has a Democratic governor and threw out their GOP reps in '06. Which state was not declared a federal disaster area, which would have made them eligible for assistance from FEMA, to include trailers for the people made homeless?

Oh, come on, people - this isn't a hard question.

And why does it take an act of congress to get federal agencies to act like they serve all the people and not just GOP people?

Reason stirs

Vermont Votes to Impeach Bush/Cheney

When Vermont Governor Jim Douglas, a Republican with reasonably close ties to President Bush, asked if there was any additional business to be considered at the town meeting he was running in Middlebury, Ellen McKay popped up and proposed the impeachment of Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.

...

"It became clear that no one was going home until they had the chance to discuss the resolutions and vote on them," explained David Rosenberg, a political science professor at Middlebury College. "And being a good politician, he allowed the vote to happen."

By an overwhelming voice vote, Middlebury called for impeachment.

So it has gone this week at town meetings across Vermont, most of which were held Tuesday.

Late Tuesday night, there were confirmed reports that 36 towns had backed impeachment resolutions, and the number was expected to rise.

In one town, Putney, the vote for impeachment was unanimous.

My only question is, what took so long?

A good start

This is a good list: The Must-Do List. Start here.