The Sound of the Crowd

A great book, and one that I’d sure like to see updated, is “Crapshoot” by Jules Witcover, a history of the vice presidency through Quayle. You come away with the knowledge that nine times out of 10, the reason presidential candidates pick running mates isn’t the reason it should be, namely: Because they could die. No, it’s usually because they think the VP candidate will help them get elected. The reason I hope this book is updated soon is because as has been often commented, the last three VPs brought little to their ticket in convential wisdom.

And because, as Washington Monthly’s Kevin Drum has it, Dick Gephardt is currently in the lead to be John Kerry’s veep.

Why are we here? Because we’re here. Roll the bones.

That Debra Messing being forced to miss a few episodes of “Will & Grace” will mean they’ll actually present a few stories about Will’s love life?

Yeah, me too. But, place your bets, place your bets…

I’m so dissapointed in Will & Grace. At the beginning of their run, I could see playing it a little too safe. But as the show has gone on to great success, multiple Emmy-awards and general critical acclaim, I guess I hoped a show as obsessed with childish testicle jokes as this one is would grow a pair.

And I guess I was wrong.

Josh Marshall is “a little surprised that the White House’s new insistence on a joint private meeting with President Bush and Vice President Cheney hasn’t elicited more notice.”

He offers three possible explainations for this insistence, finishing with:

“The third explanation is that the White House does not trust the president to be alone with the Commission members for any great length of time without getting himself into trouble, either by contradicting what his staff says, or getting some key point wrong, or letting some key fact slip. And Cheney’s there to make sure nothing goes wrong.”

Bing. Bing bing bing bing bing bing bing…

FAIR has put out a media advisory about those funny WMD jokes Bush’s been telling. It’s the same performance that I referenced here a few days ago (perhaps unsubtly, I compared Bush to Denethor in LotR).

It’s a well-written piece, ending with the pointed observation that:

“The problem is not that someone told a joke about WMD. It’s that as the chief purveyor of the WMD falsehood, which resulted in the deaths of hundreds of Americans and thousands of Iraqis, it is beyond bad taste for George W. Bush to joke about WMD. It’s the difference between a comedian making a joke about O.J. Simpson looking for Nicole Brown Simpson’s “real killer,” and O.J. Simpson making the same joke.”

All this also reminds me that, as anyone who has read many of the books on Bush knows, this is a man who also mocked a woman on death row whom he was about to kill, in his role as Governor of Texas. Now, I lean towards being against the death penalty but it’s not one of my big issues. But I think we can agree it’s not something that should be treated lightly and callously by those agents of the state responsible.

Y’know, I hate to turn this Richard Clarke thing into my own personal dead horse, but it’s important…and the hits just keep on coming.

That’s a little suggestion of what we might expect in the next day or so. Fun!

Ink 19’s server was down for a few days, but thanks to the efforts of Ian “up all night” Koss, we’re running on a least a couple cylinders again. Couple of things I would have posted at the time…

My Sunday movie this week was The Ladykillers. Unfortunately this is one of those movies that just doesn’t work. Tom Hanks is fun to watch and the movie is fitfully funny, but more in a quiet smile way than a laugh-out-loud way.

–and–

Washington Monthly review of the Clarke book. BTW, Clarke is going to be on The Daily Show tomorrow night. Should be worth pumping your fist in the air for.

Mark Evanier very kindly links to my earlier entry about Air America Radio and the Al Franken show, adding his own comments.

I particuarly agree with what Mark says about Rush Limbaugh, oddly–as a broadcaster I don’t have a problem with Limbaugh, what’s dangerous and insidious about him is that people take him seriously, including the mainstream media like Nightline, giving him a credibility he doesn’t deserve.

Yahoo! News item on Bush supporters who want Rice to testify.

As you probably know, Bush seems determined to move heaven and earth to prevent Rice from doing so–under oath, in public. I won’t insult your intelligence by speculating as to why.

ETA: Salon.comNews has a story about the White House’s attempts to explain why…

“In many ways, having a guy like Clarke do this now is the White House’s worst nightmare,” said Norm Ornstein, political analyst at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. Clarke’s charges stole the momentum from the Bush campaign’s effort to put Democratic rival John Kerry on the defensive with ads suggesting he was weak on national security and the economy.”

“Former New Jersey Gov. Thomas Kean, a Republican named by Bush to lead the commission, said, “I think this administration shot itself in the foot by not letting her testify in public.”

La la la la la la la…

“at face value, based on his resume and experience, you would think this guy is credible.”

–White House communications director Dan Bartlett, on Clarke.

Good thing they’re there to explain to us all how resume and experience actually has no bearing whatsoever on credibity, isn’t it?

When people take a nice wholesome thing like selling tits and turn it into something exploitative.