"21st Century Schizoid Man" by King Crimson!

So 31% still believe Saddam was involved in 9/11? This week's Rasmussen survey shows that an almost identical percentage (32%) of Americans approve of the administration's handling of the Iraq war. This simply tells me that should Bush propose repealing the First Amendment or, for that matter, legalization of eating one's own young, polls would show that some 30% were in favor.

If it's so goddam important for this to go away, then, instead of posting one lengthy item after another on the subject why don't we just SHUT THE HELL UP about it and go back to talking about something more relevant like: the war, the corruption, the deficit, the war, Mark Foley, the war, health care, stem cell research, the war, global warming, the war, Afghanistan, the war, Osama, Gitmo, the war, Rumsfeld, the war, habeus corpus, Jack Abramoff, the war, ...

Blah, blah, blah, John Kerry, blah, blah, blah, ...

This Kerry crap is SO 2004. How about we just IGNORE it and talk about something relevant? Ken Mehlman, Rush Limbaugh, and all the other apologists for 6 years of abysmal Bush administration policy failure realize that they're going to get their butts kicked in this election, so they've reverted to trying to re-win the LAST one. Yes, the electorate has snapped to the fact that they've been sold a shitload of one-way tickets to Suckerville, and on Tuesday, they're going to mail them all back to the RNC.

Let's LET the Republicans wallow in the past. Let's get OURSELVES on to what Tuesday is all about and what happens after that.

Here's a few I came up with (annotated, where necessary, for the acronym-challenged):

No abortin'!

Start deportin'!

No more married queers!

Terrorism! Terrorism!

Fear! Fear!! FEAR!!!

*****

Lean to the right!

Lean to the right!

IN-vade EYE-ran!

Fight! Fight!! FIGHT!!!

*****

Two bits, four bits,

Six bits, a dollar!

That should be the minimum wage!

Stand up and holler!!

*****

Don't tax the wealthy, that's our plan!

Put that back on the common man!

Capital gains and dividends FREE!

But AMT that UMC!!

(AMT - Alternative Minimum Tax)

(UMC - Upper Middle Class)

*****

Jesus! Jesus! He's our Saviour!

Controls those pesky voters' behavior!

They cast their votes for the GOP,

While we send their jobs to the PRC!!

(PRC - Peoples Republic of China)

The woman is going to have TEENAGERS when she's in her SEVENTIES!!

You forgot to mention those communist sympathizers in the Veep's office who enticed Libby to make false statements to the FBI and lie under oath in the first place!

Similarly ludicrous comparisons:

Smarter than George Bush

Skinnier than Dennis Hastert

More sensible than Lindsey Lohan

"Truthier" than Mary Matalin

Better looking than James Carville

Funnier than Fox News' (now defunct) Half-Hour News Hour

When the Democrats kept a Republican majority from pushing through items on the White House agenda (e.g. judicial appointments), they were called "obstructionists." Now that the Republicans are employing the same tactics, the Democrats are somehow "ineffective."

If this were basketball, it would be as if in their first game, the Democrats played a slow-down, "four corners," keep-away style game and sportswriters accused accused them of being "boring," not playing straight-up basketball. Then, when the Republicans employed the exact same tactics in a second game, the writers accused the Democrats of having an ineffective offense.

If there's anything ineffective here, it's the Deomocrats' message machine. In fact it's WORSE than ineffective. I'd say it's nonexistent.

What would a "midshipman" (a Naval Academy or NROTC student officer candidate) be doing on a ship of war in a war zone in January? As far as I am aware, midshipmen serve on active duty only during the summer and not typically in war zones.

As numerous biblical scholars will attest, the Bible HAS been amended, and continues to be. Just a few examples:

The synoptic gospels (Mark, Matthew, and Luke) contain numerous, similar, and yet different versions of the same stories. Most scholars believe that Matthew and Luke were partially drawn from the book of Mark as well as a no longer existent source typically referred to as "Q." These similarities and differences combine to make it clear that none of them are likely true to the original, almost certainly oral versions.

The first editions of the Old and New Testaments were written long before the printing press. New copies were made by hand copying older ones. Numerous examples of changes to the original texts have been cited by scholars, some as late as the Middle Ages. For example, the parable of "casting the first stone" (almost certainly added by a zealous monk).

In the third chapter of John, Jesus' declares famously to Nicodemus that "You must be born again." Nicodemus is confused and Jesus delivers his speech about being born "of the spirit." This exchange is dependent upon a double entendre in the Greek language wherein the word for "again" and "from above" are the same. But Jesus and Nicodemus didn't speak Greek. They spoke Aramaic, a language in which this dog don't hunt. The conversation almost certainly never took place, but the gospel was "amended" to include it.

At least two of the gospels contain genealogies dating from Jesus back to King David. These not only do not agree, but are also different from family trees cited in the Old Testament going back to Adam. Again, these have been "amended" to meet the authors' objectives, which, in the case of Matthew, is to demonstrate a pattern of greatness every 14 generations in the lineage of David.

So, yeah, let's clutter up the Constitution just like we have the Bible, so it will conform to someone's particular view of what God thinks.

Charles "Wall Street" Schumer voted to confirm Mukasey because he was "as good as we're going to get under this president." I humbly suggest we would be better of with nobody.