Quickstrategy... It's entirely understandable that someone could get mixed up regarding Fawn and Ollie; the whole charade was designed for that. What I liked most were her words, "above," the law, as though sent down from God, rather than "below," like a bank robber, or "around," like a Republican white collar swindler.

Throw in "written," which somehow denigrates written law as some sort of trial lawyer gobbledygook, and you have a true Nixonian passage, in which, as Lillian Hellman memorably said, "everything... is a lie, including "and" and "the."

Thanks for your enlightening posts today.

Pedinska,

Never in a million years would I suggest that MoDo would be included in any shopping expeditions that would include other humans. When she finally realizes that it's turban time, she'll have to do it like she does everything else. Alone.

Pedinska, Whenever your paw gets tired, I'll take over. These lame' slippers are steel-toed.

Sysprog, I am utterly humbled that I got my "Great Cocktailhags in History" backward. Thanks everso for the link, but in the future, could you be more sneaky about it?

As certain commenters make clear, the defining trait of the authoritarian right is to accept and cheer on violence against those they dislike, and when called on it pull some random act from "the other side" of their blinkered, black and white world to "justify" it. Thus, a beheading here is reason for a bombing there, and on and on. Krauthammer is comfortable with his specious, self-discrediting reasoning simply because he understands the mindset of his followers, who can always be relied upon to clamor for, and glory in, more violence against their "enemy" du jour.

That's why it was necessary, but obviously ineffective, for that official in the first Bush administration to condemn terrorism, "....even when to is directed toward those with who we have no political sympathy." No one on the right believes this. If Ayers had been accused of bombing, say, anti-war groups, he would be a revered hero to Krauthammer and his ilk.

When any of these types condemn violence; it is only for cheap political points, or to justify more violence. End of story.

Right-wing violence good, left wing violence bad, be it perpetrated by government (US, Israel) or guerillas (Bosch, Contras, etc.)

LWM puts it best when he says, "They've all lost their marbles. In continuing to pander to their increasingly deluded base, the Republicans now are making George Bush look like a hippie. I find it comical, not to mention immensely reassuring. That kind of eliminationist twaddle will go over like a fart in church in the general election, despite mind-numbing acquiescence in the Serious Media. These people have become caricatures of themselves, living, as WinSmith and Baldie say, in a bad action movie.

The fact, which is becoming increasingly clear, is that the American economy, and its long-suffering citizens, simply lack the wherewithal to support more disastrous military adventurism.

This talk will blow up in McCain's cancerous, lumpy face in the fall.

Bring it on.

Quickstrategy, maybe Lieberman heard about that woman on the plane, and adjusted his politics accordingly.

All those years of trying to get by on his personality weren't paying off.

Holly, one of the reasons Israel can never be questioned is because they can so often be called into service as the "id" of American militarism in the Middle East. Remember how helpful they were to the Reagan administration during Iran/Contra? For American righties, having a bloated, violent, and unscrupulous military ally here and there in the world is always useful, and if the government in question has a scary "enemy" it lives to nurture by tormenting, so much the better.

And unlike, say, Pinochet, Israel enjoys a substantial, well-funded propaganda arm here to enforce a code of silence amongst American politicians. Try to imagine any other country developing nuclear weapons, defying multiple UN resolutions, and generally treating a large segment of its population the same way South Africa did in its heyday being held up as a sacred cow, to nary a peep of criticism.

Without Israel, our current policies toward the Arab world would lose their vanishingly thin veneer of legitimacy, and we would lose perennially valuable regional provocateur.

We need them more than they need us.

Normally I would never unilaterally issue a coveted Ewwww Award without consulting my fellow co-juror (Pedinska, where are you?) but in this case I'm opening the envelope.

And the winner is, Northwestwoods, for conjuring up the image of GWB's (very) little friend being eagerly serviced by the Canadian PM.

I'm cooking dinner, for crying out loud.

Derbig, who knew that you were secretly wishing for any race to disappear? Et tu, moose-ay? And aren't all peace processes inherently, and drearily, interminable when the militarily superior aggressor continues to take land, displace people, and conduct "collective punishment?"

Gosh, the things you can learn from racist freaks with a persecution complex.

Color me enlightened.

Che, I always thought that the fetching lump in the flight suit over which Tweety so embarrassingly swooned was augmented by, say, a potato, but it never occurred to me that our Dear Leader's whatchamacallit was actually missing, but your hypothesis would explain a lot. No wonder he never had an intern problem.