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Please try the poll on the bottom of the page. I'll have more on GWB later, if I don't shoot myself first.

Hucksucker Proxy

Chuck Norris To Mike Huckelberry:

"Even though you were the darkhorse... the thing is, I feel...they all have good points, but I think you've got the big package. 

Not That There's Anything Wrong With It...

From The NYT:

BOISE, Idaho, Dec. 2 (AP) — Four men say they either had sex with Senator Larry E. Craig or were the target of a sexual advance from him at times during his political career, The Idaho Statesman reported Sunday.
The report identified the men and reported details of the encounters that they say involved Mr. Craig, Republican of Idaho.
In an e-mail message sent to The Associated Press on Sunday, Mr. Craig said the latest accusations were “completely false” and criticized the paper as practicing careless journalism.
The article is The Statesman’s latest on Mr. Craig since his June arrest in a sting operation became public in August.

Larry The Senate Guy sure sucks a lot of dick for a straight guy..........

Fear, Surprise, Ruthless Efficiency, and An Almost Fanatical Devotion to George Bush

From Wired Magazine:

Texas Science Curriculum Director Canned for Mentioning Evolution


A Texas science education official forced to resign in October wasn't -- as her bosses inisted -- fairly punished for insubordination. Her real crime: daring to tell people about a lecture critical of intelligent design.
The Austin-American Statesman reported last week that science curriculum director Chris Corner's ouster followed her circulation of an email announcing an upcoming speech by Barbara Forrest, co-author of Creationism's Trojan Horse: The Wedge of Intelligent Design and an expert witness in Kitzmiller v. Dover. That lawsuit was brought in 2005 by Dover, Pennsylvania parents upset with a school board's decision to teach intelligent design -- the belief that some phenomena can only be explained as divinely manufactured -- as a scientific theory comparable to evolution.
A federal judge sided with the parents and legally established intelligent design as religion, not science. But Texas education officials seem to disagree.
Hours after Corner used her work email account to forward the Forrest announcement to friends and a few online communities, Texas Education Agency adviser Lizzette Reynolds emailed Corner's bosses and called for her dismissal. A former legislative adviser to President Bush during his Texas governorship and later a Department of Education appointee, Reynolds wrote, "This is highly inappropriate. I believe this is an offense that calls for termination or, at the very least, reassignment of responsibilities. This is something that the State Board, the Governor’s Office and members of the Legislature would be extremely upset to see because it assumes this is a subject that the agency supports.”
Education Agency officials mentioned Reynolds' e-mail in their decision to fire Corner. Informing people about Forrest's lecture, they said, "directly conflicts with her responsibilities as the Director of Science ... [And] implies endorsement of the speaker and implies that TEA endorses the speaker's position on a subject on which the agency must remain neutral."
That a science education official should avoid politicization is understandable. However, supporting evolution isn't political; it's scientific. But even if that were not the case, Corner's views weren't clear from her email, to which she'd simply added an "FYI" above the lecture's announcement. It was neutral -- and that gives the lie to the Texas Education Agency's allegations.
As the Austin-American Statesman editorialized this weekend,
The education agency, of course, portrays the problem as one of insubordination and misconduct. But from all appearances, Comer was pushed out because the agency is enforcing a political doctrine of strict conservatism that allows no criticism of creationism.

Lest we forget Lady L

Lady Lazarus by Sylvia Plath

I have done it again.
One year in every ten
I manage it----

A sort of walking miracle, my skin
Bright as a Nazi lampshade,
My right foot

A paperweight,
My face a featureless, fine
Jew linen.

Peel off the napkin
0 my enemy.
Do I terrify?----

The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth?
The sour breath
Will vanish in a day.

Soon, soon the flesh
The grave cave ate will be
At home on me

And I a smiling woman.
I am only thirty.
And like the cat I have nine times to die.

This is Number Three.
What a trash
To annihilate each decade.

What a million filaments.
The peanut-crunching crowd
Shoves in to see

Them unwrap me hand and foot
The big strip tease.
Gentlemen, ladies

These are my hands
My knees.
I may be skin and bone,

Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman.
The first time it happened I was ten.
It was an accident.

The second time I meant
To last it out and not come back at all.
I rocked shut

As a seashell.
They had to call and call
And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls.

Dying
Is an art, like everything else,
I do it exceptionally well.

I do it so it feels like hell.
I do it so it feels real.
I guess you could say I've a call.

It's easy enough to do it in a cell.
It's easy enough to do it and stay put.
It's the theatrical

Comeback in broad day
To the same place, the same face, the same brute
Amused shout:

'A miracle!'
That knocks me out.
There is a charge

For the eyeing of my scars, there is a charge
For the hearing of my heart----
It really goes.

And there is a charge, a very large charge
For a word or a touch
Or a bit of blood

Or a piece of my hair or my clothes.
So, so, Herr Doktor.
So, Herr Enemy.

I am your opus,
I am your valuable,
The pure gold baby

That melts to a shriek.
I turn and burn.
Do not think I underestimate your great concern.

Ash, ash ---
You poke and stir.
Flesh, bone, there is nothing there----

A cake of soap,
A wedding ring,
A gold filling.

Herr God, Herr Lucifer
Beware
Beware.

Out of the ash
I rise with my red hair
And I eat men like air.

When The Broken Hearted People Say Whoop Whoop

I saw another fine example of what love really is yesterday. We took an 80 something lady from a nursing home after a wheelchair acident (sounds funny, but it happens). She was demented,but quite able to have a nice conversation with me about the past..just no real idea about who, what, or where she was today. That seems common with the ALZ population, at least before they are all the way gone. Her elderly husband met us at the hospital, and had an obvoius concern and tenderness for his wife. I felt that he was still seeing the girl he fell in love with how ever long ago, even though all I could see was an old fat lady with a bloody nose. We once ran a call at a resturant for an older man and his wife. They were having a quiet meal when she suddenly sat down on the floor, began flapping her arms, and yelling whoop whoop whoop! The old fellow told us she does that quite a bit, but he still takes her to dinner now and then because " that's what husbands and wifes do". That's love, that's the stuff that lasts; not the nonsense Tee Vee tries to sell about mo sex, mo money, mo better. I do remember the SAME LOOK of sadness on the faces of those two husbands ; it is hard to see beauty slowly disolve.

Inside The Beltway Smell A Rat Test

See if you can guess the answers:

I took this picture last spring:

A. Outside a Chuck E. Cheese in Chev E. Chase

B. By the Willard Hotel

C. Before the WHCA Dinner at the Hinkley Hilton


Inside the costume is:

A. Judy Miller

B. Mitt Romney (extra credit if you get the joke)

C. A former Today Show weatherman with the last name of Scott

D. Just another nut (or all of the above)