Several excuses are always less convincing than one.
-Aldous Huxley

Pat Robertson is completely insane, and does not speak for any Christian with any spiritual humility.

1. I don’t understand how tornados manage to find mobile home parks, and why they seem so determined to do so. It’s not a joke. What happened in Evansville is heartbreaking.

2. Churchill said A fanatic is one who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject. I might add a fanatic can’t learn at all from results. They keep blowing themselves and others to smithereens, and nothing changes. Why do they keep doing it?

3. Does anyone know how Larry King is relevant? Look at the description of Thursday’s show:

A country singer’s survival story on the relationship she says nearly took her life. And why she’s keeping the baby.

And Friday’s:

Remembering Johnny Cash. His family and best friend,
Kris Kristofferson share fond memories of the man behind the legend.

None of that is news, and I think King belongs on Lifetime during the day, not on CNN in the evening. Maybe it’s just me. But where’s the war coverage? Where’s national politics and foreign policy? Fox news is spending more great gouts of time on the girl missing in Aruba. Enough already. Tragic, yes, but not news anymore. Only MSNBC is doing hard news – Jordan bombings – Oh, well It’s Chris Matthews. Where’s the beef?

And I, too, felt ready to start life all over again. It was as if that great rush of anger had washed me clean, emptied me of hope, and gazing up at the dark sky spangled with its signs and stars, for the first time, the first, I laid my heart open to the benign indifference of the universe. To feel it so like myself, indeed, so brotherly, made me realize that I’d been happy, and that I was happy still. For all to be accomplished, for me to feel less lonely, all that remained to hope was that on the day of my execution there should be a huge crowd of spectators and that they should greet me with howls of execration.

Albert Camus
from The Stranger

So I was having my lunch today, and reading in the November 7 issue of Time about how the Bush presidency has run hard aground. The preceding week, Time said, was the worst of the Bush tenancy. The president is losing confidence in his consiglieri, his polls are in the tank, his policies “crumpled in a ditch,” and his cabal beset by scandal. And then there’s the abortive Miers nomination:

But there was no escaping or disguising what had happened. More than anything else, it was the Miers meltdown that dissolved once and for all the image of a President whom no one defies and whose luck never runs out. The whole debacle, even Bush insiders say, reflects the problem of a leader who doesn’t hear from enough people. “This was entirely avoidable,” says an adviser involved in the process. “After Katrina, after Michael Brown, the issue of cronyism was already on the table and a negative. It was incredible to try this.”

Then there was the Libby indictment and resignation, which would still be well into the A sections of the MSM if not for the Alito nomination. But as the Daily Show points out, if it weren’t more important, it wouldn’t have happened more recently. Time says:

Cheney’s standing has suffered mainly because Libby emerges as such a liability. Fitzgerald threw the book at him not for anything he said to reporters but for what he said to the FBI and the grand jury. The indictments suggest that the aide whose aim was to spin the war might have tried to spin the prosecutor. “Lying was a remarkable act of stupidity on Libby’s part,” says Richard Nixon’s former White House counsel John Dean. “He’s old enough to know better. He watched Watergate and Iran-contra. To try to pull the leg of the grand jury was really quite remarkable.”

I guess I’ll cut to my coups de gras and let you get on with your day. Reading this article really helped my noontime digestion. And if you support, or have ever supported, the public service of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and the rest of these knuckleheads, please note: We told you so. We tried to warn you these guys were no good, rotten to the core, dangerous and manifestly perfidious. I didn’t vote for them, my friends and family didn’t vote for them, and if you did then shame on you. Finally, if you support them and have a Support the Troops sticker plastered somewhere, bite me.

Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
-Ernest Hemingway

Wow, really? I mean, I suffer from a bit of anhedonia, a twinge of transient melancholy, myself from time to time. But the Papa Hemingway’s generalization surprises me. Well, not really. He did kill himself with a shotgun.

Wherefore – or perhaps notwithstanding which – let us with IQs above room temp set forth to dispel this misbegotten misconception. Let us be happy!

And no fair getting stewed on adult beverages or recreational drugs to do it. … Endeavor to Persevere!

Let me know how it goes for you, OK?

Please, do this.  Go to this page.  Scroll down, about two-thirds of the way down the page, and read the poem Blackbird by C.K. Williams.  It’s important.  Thank you.

Oh this is rich. This is just what I needed to cheer me up tonight. I mean, I read the comics in the paper today and got a few chuckles, but nothing like this.

Bush is sending his staff to ethics school.

I can’t wait until Monday. John Stewart is gonna have a field day with this. Maybe he’ll do sort of a montage, mixing in the video from Van Halen’s Hot for Teacher.

T-T-teacher stop that screamin’
Teacher don’t you see?
Don’t wanna be no uptown fool
Maybe I should go to hell
But I am doing well
Teacher needs to see me after school.

Oh man. The Bush Administration: classic American entertainment, with a heaping side order of Kafka.

You gotta check out this post at DailyKos, because the US Government is voting to royally put the screws to poor Americans.  This is not a joke.

Since President Bush gave his speech on the bird flu at the national institutes of health on Tuesday, you’ve been thinking, “Gee, I wish I had more information about this looming PANDEMIC.  I could just kick myself for not writing down that Web site that the president mentioned.”  Well, I got your back, buddy.

http://pandemicflu.gov/

Don’t be chicken, check it out.    

It was cool but not gloomy.  I took Happy, my Pomeranian friend, for a long walk this afternoon.  That was nice.

I’m in a good mood, because I’ve lost 40 pounds in the past couple of months.  A smattering of applause is appropriate, and thank you.  But those of you who know me realize that this is but a fine start to a longer journey.  Which is alright; at least I’m going in the right direction for a change.  I’m doing it through a clinic’s program.  If you would like information, here ‘tis.  Don’t say I never linked you to nuthin’.  

Anyway, I took my good mood into the drug store this afternoon. I just needed a bottle of water, and my gel ink pen is fixin’ to run dry on me.  They have those there, along with darn near everything else.  Including … wait for it … about a ton of Christmas decorations, and miscellaneous Christmas – related junk.

I BS you not, gentle reader.  They have a whole section of the store, near the front, and space around the doors, all infested … perhaps I mean festooned … with ribbons and tinsel, boxes of lights, inflatable Santas and elves wearing tights.

Needless to say, I was nonplussed. Flabbergasted. Off-put! I jumped back and cussed.  How vulgar, how shallow, how cheap, tawdry and callow! I mean, it’s too soon, isn’t it?  Three days after Halloween, for crying out loud. Doesn’t this just belittle the season?  We’ll be sick of Christmas stuff by Thanksgiving!  How can it be special if it goes on for two months?

I thought about saying something, of finding the boss. Grab his sad clip-on tie and then hand him his hat. But I took a deep breath and thought better of that.  

(Are you enjoying the rhymes? … OK, basta.)

I remembered something my Mom said once or twice, that a gentleman ought to be patient and nice.  (Dang, can’t help it.)  She said, “Nobody has the right not to be offended.”

How about that?  I don’t have the right not to be offended.  Well, that’s true.  And neither do you.  See, offense is subjective.  It doesn’t exist in noumena.  It is a reaction to perceptions … it’s strictly phenomenological, a twitch in consciousness.

The people in the store didn’t intend to offend me.  Their intent is to sell me some cheap shit way before I need it.  And this whole idea of getting all riled up over some stupid perceived offense is what drives fanatics to want to kill people for writing bad books.  I’m above that, aren’t I?  Of course.  So I reclaimed my good mood, and lived happily ever after, so far.