Dude! Shaved zebra! That's beyond awesome. I think we should market that!

In other news... DeLay acting as a celebrity auctioneer. Is it just me, or is that a bit of a downgrade from the House Majority Leader? Probably just me. I mean, celebrity auctioneers, they dictate policy, they do. By his ingenious use of well-placed wit, DeLay probably set the stage for a serious takeover of the House by beavers. No telling what that's going to do to American values, ladies and gentlemen.

Well, don't you see? Fox is vigorously balancing out the liberal bias that is setting the nation against our embattled president. They are the one remaining bastion of truthiness in the war against reality-based immorality that is threatening to destroy the very Medieval values that we hold dear...

Oops, did I say that outloud?

My bet is on Santorum, because who else would get such glowing praise from Frist in the first place?

Well, in all fairness, let's not blame it all on Joe. I disagree with him as much as the next tree-huggin' California hippie, but on the other hand, it was Al Gore who picked him as a running mate, and if Al Gore was so politically un-savvy as to create such a lose-lose scenario for the Democratic party, then he shares the blame for what followed. As much as everyone likes to blame the Jewish guy, it's not all Joe's fault, his leg-humping of Bush nonwithstanding.

Ann Coulter is a guy!

Woo hoo!

You know, I think every Jew in the world has this problem. You cannot criticise Israel without somehow feeling like a traitor. Jews have had a heck of a time in the past two thousand years, what with being kicked out of our homeland and made the scapegoat for the manifold calamities that befall the world, it seems, every year. You may excuse our desire to support each other and fervently hope that Israel, our newly regained homeland (even if we don't actually live there), will defeat its enemies and preserve its existence. Which, to some people, for some reason, means waving the blue and white flag and never, but NEVER questioning anything the government of Israel does.

So you can imagine my relief when my feeling of desperate frustration at the Israeli-Lebanon conflict was confirmed by a friend of ours, who actually happens to live in Israel. (He is also a pretty enthusiastic supporter of George W., since he seems to think that the Bush administration is helping Israel. I hope that the recent events have disabused him of this notion.) And reading this War Room entry also was a relief. This means I'm not the only one who thinks that, with this war, Israel is digging its own grave! I'm not crazy! Woo hoo!

The only thing that's missing in this picture is frustration, in Israel, with the Bush administration policy with respect to this war. It's pretty clear that the Israeli military, which already seems to have its head up its arse, is being egged on to commit itself (and its soldiers) to an Iraq-like quagmire. Israel must NOT allow the Bush administration to drag it into the same pit. Then again, maybe I don't read enough Israeli press. For all I know, they're freaking out about this as well.

Yeah, it's always fun to watch this fool kick himself in the arse... but it would also be nice to hear some news about his qualified, charismatic and supercool opponent. Mind you, I don't go digging for the full coverage of the race, but the very fact of me hearing a lot about Allen's screw-ups and NOTHING about his opponent's virtues is terrifying. What happens if/when the Democrats seize control of Congress? Anything good? I'm not so sure anymore.

As a side note: wasn't Mrs. Wilson at one point the director of the CIA's Iraq unit? I seem to recall something (in Salon, actually) about how the Iraq operation in the CIA was expanded shortly before 9/11 and how Wilson was made a director of a unit with something like fifty agents dedicated to it. I may be recalling the details wrong, but this was the gist. If so, then I would not be surprised if she was behind at least some of the evidence that Saddam Hussein, in fact, neither has any "nukular" stuff, nor is trying to get it, nor is in cahoots with Osama bin Laden. If THAT was the case, then her outing seems much less an attempt to discredit her somewhat less influential husband, but rather a move to silence HER. And a method of retribution.

Maybe this is a nutty idea, for all the brouhaha around the leak, I haven't seen anyone suggest that maybe Mrs. Wilson herself, rather than her husband, was the target. (Of course, that would imply that she DID send him to Niger, but hey.)