The Onion A.V. Club | Pootie Tang: A Look Back With Director Louis C.K.: "Chris [Rock] asked me if there was a movie in it. Because the first time Pootie was on the show, Pootie's promoting his movie Sine Your Pitty On The Runny Kine, so we always joked that someday that movie should be made. "

Ah, one of my favorite movies - "Pootie Tang" - gets the Onion treatment. Say it wit' me, "Sine Your Pitty On The Runny Kine."

Ralph Nader Does It Again: "If Mr. Nader didn't learn anything from the 2000 election, the voters certainly did. People might have voted for him once under the impression that sending a message was more important than picking the next president. We doubt very much that they will make the same mistake twice."

Amen. To the 2000 Naderites, to whom we owe so much, if you want to send a message, use Western Union, not the bloody ballot box.

Moyers to Leave PBS to Write a Book: "Bill Moyers, the television journalist, author and social commentator, plans to leave his weekly PBS magazine 'Now'' after the elections to write a book about his former boss, President Lyndon B. Johnson, the public broadcasting network said yesterday. "

Saddening. Moyer's "Now" was the best news program no one ever heard of, probably because PBS scheduled its broadcast for freepin' Friday night.

Bush's War Against Nuance (washingtonpost.com): "There is something childlike about the 'Meet the Press' transcript. The repetition. The simplistic thinking. 'Saddam Hussein was a danger to America,' the president said repeatedly. But how? He had no missiles that could reach our shores. He had no nuclear weapons program. He did not play ball with terrorist outfits or, for that matter, they with him. 'The man was a threat,' Bush said. How? How? How?
'He had a weapon,' the president insisted. But he didn't, remember? That was the whole point of David Kay's report. Oh, but Hussein was a madman.
The president does not do nuance -- that we know. But the failure to come up with weapons of mass destruction in Iraq is not a nuance. It is a massive reversal of fact, hot turned into cold, tall into short. Bush's inability or refusal to come to grips with the new facts is not the product of a poor performance or an errant tongue, but of a troubling insistence that his beliefs cannot be wrong. That -- nuance be damned -- makes him look like a dope. "

With barely any politeness, Cohen calls Bush a "dope."

ESPN.com - MLB - A-Rod to get Big Apple introduction Tuesday: "NEW YORK -- Alex Rodriguez is coming back to New York, the city he left when he was 4, and moving onto the biggest stage in town -- Yankee Stadium.
Baseball's highest-paid player, and perhaps its most talented, was finally and officially dealt to the New York Yankees from Texas on Monday after commissioner Bud Selig approved the record-setting swap.

'I'm pretty excited. This is a big, big one,' Yankees owner George Steinbrenner said at the team's minor league complex in Tampa, Fla.
'It ranks with when we signed Reggie,' he said, a reference to slugger Reggie Jackson."

Spring training begins this week, and Steinbrenner has gathered the Gods of Baseball to his Mount Olympus. An astounding deal. I'm an Orioles fan, and expect the O's to perform above 0.500 (at the minimum) this season, but it may be that we'll only busting our behinds to contend with the Red Sox for the wild-card berth.

Op-Ed Columnist: The Health of Nations: "he Economic Report of the President, released last week, has drawn criticism on several fronts. Let me open a new one: the report's discussion of health care, which shows a remarkable indifference to the concerns of ordinary Americans � and suggests a major political opening for the Democrats.
According to a recent Gallup poll, 82 percent of Americans rank health care among their top issues. People are happy with the quality of health care, if they can afford it, but they're afraid that they might not be able to afford it. Unlike other wealthy countries, America doesn't have universal health insurance, and it's all too easy to fall through the cracks in our system. When I saw that the president's economic report devoted a whole chapter to health care, I assumed that it would make some attempt to address these public concerns.
Instead, the report pooh-poohs the problem. Although more than 40 million people lack health insurance, this doesn't matter too much because 'the uninsured are a diverse and perpetually changing group.' This is good news? At any given time about one in seven Americans is uninsured, which is bad enough. Because the uninsured are a 'perpetually changing group,' however, a much larger fraction of the population suffers periodic, terrifying spells of being uninsured, and an even larger fraction lives with the fear of losing insurance if anything goes wrong at work or at home. "

The Economic Report of the President, which came under fire for praising overseas outsourcing, apparently also says "So what?" to the uninsured. Kerry should lift lines from this report extensively for his campaign ads.

An Insolent Puppet Roils Canadian Politics: "An Insolent Puppet Roils Canadian Politics
By CLIFFORD KRAUSS

Published: February 16, 2004


ORONTO, Feb. 15 Conan O'Brien came to Toronto last week, and he nearly started a civil war. Just kidding, sort of.
On a taped segment on Thursday night's 'Late Night With Conan O'Brien' on NBC, the puppet Triumph the Insult Comic Dog visited the Winter Carnival in Quebec City and touched the third rail of Canadian politics by telling the Quebecois they ought to learn English since they live in North America.

'So you're French and Canadian, yes?' Triumph asked a passer-by in a Continental accent. 'You're obnoxious and dull.'
If that were not enough teasing along the delicate cultural divide between Francophone and Anglophone Canadians, the puppet told another: 'I can tell you're French, you know. You have that proud expression, that superior look.'

And of a third, rather plump, man the puppet asked: 'Are you a separatist? Maybe you should try separating yourself from doughnuts first.'"

Many of you may already be aware of my fascination with Triumph, and now he's the cause of an international incident!

Newsday.com - Insurgents Kill 22 In Daylight Raids: "Fallujah, Iraq - In broad daylight, scores of gunmen firing mortars and throwing grenades stormed Iraqi security posts in this city yesterday, freeing prisoners while killing at least 22 people, mostly Iraqi police."

I think I'm losing track: is this the fourth, fifth, or even sixth attack this week? The operational tempo and the efficacy (both tactical and political) of the attacks is impresive. And the daring of going after Abizaid himself should call into question any characterization that Iraq is a reasonably secure place.

Newsday.com - Bush Goal Was Dodging War: "What matters to all our senses is that he is a president who struts around as a war hero, who dodged Vietnam and most of the National Guard drills and who with less shame than anybody we have had maybe ever, sends your kids to a war that he ducked as if he was allowed to do it by birth. "

Jimmy is white-hot and pot-on.

Opinion Earnest Dumas - February 13, 2004: "Give George W. Bush credit. Who would have dreamed that he could get by with a political maneuver so brazen as putting Laurence Silberman in charge of an 'independent' commission to investigate the intelligence failures leading up to the Iraq war? The country should be boiling with outrage but hardly a whimper was heard.

Putting Vice President Dick Cheney or Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in charge of the inquiry would have been too transparent, but even they do not have Silberman's record of protecting the Bushes from scandal and punishing their critics. Whitewater aficionados on both sides will recall Silberman's role in the campaign to destroy Bill Clinton. When the commission's work is done - long after the election - Silberman will see to it that much of the blame for anything requiring blame will be borne by, who else?, Bill Clinton. Silberman's co-chair is former U. S. Sen. Chuck Robb, picked for his reputation as a malleable man who never rocks the boat.

Silberman is a federal judge but he has never let the black robes or the code of judicial conduct stand in the way of getting dirty when he needed to. He has been a political loyalist first and a judge fifth. "

The Silberman connection. Bushies can only play with a marked deck. And the press, with the exception of the Arkansas Times, have not picked up on Silberman's glaring thralldom to the Bushies. Didn't anyone in the press read Brock's "Blinded by the Right," where Brock describes being mentored by Silberman.

Newsday.com - Bloomberg Fails to Ask Why: "In a State of the Union speech, Bush said that Saddam tried to get uranium from the country of Niger and blow us away with a nuclear bomb. Afterward, the Bush people said the speech was essentially right although it had some wrong. It did. This could be put in three letters: Lie.

After that, from Washington there was one long, whining lie about weapons of mass destruction. If this Saddam had them, he would have used them in the first 20 minutes of the fighting. He had none. A man called Blix from the United Nations inspected Iraqi arms, including trucks found one week apart and empty. Nothing. Colin Powell got up at the UN and, reading whatever it was that Bush and his people gave him, he said the trucks were there on one day to carry away biological weapons before the inspectors arrived and that is why we have to bomb Baghdad.

The news reporters of the nation, the Pekingese of the Press, never questioned a single, solitary sentence of his presentation. All agreed it was a great moment for America. In doing so they stained themselves forever as cowards."

Thanks, Jimmy (Breslin), for saying it the Big Apple Way. I loved "Pekingese of the Press."

baltimoresun.com - Working solution: "THE SAME administration that's atwitter over programs to promote responsible fatherhood and healthy marriage among the poor turns a cold shoulder to the neediest working moms and their children.
It apparently hasn't occurred to some lawmakers that improving child care and temporary assistance programs also helps foster the kind of stability that sustains families.
Marriage has many acknowledged benefits, but America won't conquer poverty by marrying off the poor. What will make a difference is equipping any who are ambitious and eligible for help with the tools and resources to advance to gainful employment - one of the goals of successful welfare reform programs.
Yet President Bush's latest budget request adds no new money for family assistance grants or child care. And for going on two years now, Congress has been too bogged down in politics to renew legislation supporting the nation's welfare reforms. After multiple extensions, the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program now is extended in its current form until March 31. "

I love the Baltimore Sun. When you've had a belly-full of right wingnut sanctimony, remind them how their lie actualy works.

The President�s Guard Service: "The payroll records released yesterday document that he performed no guard duties at all for more than half a year in 1972 and raise questions about how he could be credited with at least 14 days of duty during subsequent periods when his superior officers in two units said they had not seen him. "

So, the New York Times editorial page finally gets it!

TOMPAINE.com - FINALLY, THE TRUTH ABOUT BUSH'S MILITARY SERVICE RECORD: "After Bush got his wings in June 1970 until May 1971, he is credited with a total of 46 days of active duty. From May 1971 to May 1972, he logged 22 days of active duty.
Then something happened. From May 1, 1972 until April 30, 1973 -- a period of twelve months -- there are no days shown, though Bush should have logged at least thirty-six days service (a weekend per month in addition to two weeks at camp). "

Got the goods on George W., again. This is one of several coherent and accurate summaries in blogspace of Bush's failure to complete his National Guard service, and is based on material obtained under the Freedom of Information Act (with scanned images, even). This item also explains the provenance of the "torn document" the White House misleading uses to prove Bush completed his service.

So, the New York Times, Washington Post, and NPR have failed to discuss these documents with anything like accuracy or investigative acumen. The proof is right there if you want them, everybody, and you can make your own judgements. And getting these documents didn't cost $80 million like when all the world was a twitter about a land deal (Clinton was exonerated >>twice<<, remember) and a private infidelity.

Lastly, if it's disrespectful to the National Guard to question Bush's "service," than what kind of disrespect does the Guard endure to have this preening coxscomb don a flightsuit when he couldn't be bothered to complete the last 2 years of service he owed the Guard?

Ralph, haven't you done enough damage? Nader's saintly aura is difficult for me to understand, especially with regard to environmental policy. When I worked environmental policy in DC in the late 80s and early 90s, Nader and his organization was practically non-existent on the major issues, like Superfund reauthorization, drinking water standards, and hazardous waste managament. I once contacted Nader's group to invite them to join a coalition, and was told that his group does not work with coalitions. Quite a disappointing attitude in a so-called progressive. Other Nader fiascos over the years have made me increasingly appalled, so it's not that I simply dislike him, or that he's a self-righteous maniac, it's that Nader is dangerous. By the way, don't forget that Nader was greeted with a standing ovation six months after the 2000 election when he appeared before the conservative lobbying coalition known as the Wednesday Group, hosted by Grover Norquist. E-mail Nader at info@naderexplore04.org to tell him to stay out of this year's presidential campaign. Don't worry, you won't be doing anything The Nation hasn't already done. Check out the link below for an enjoyable video, and more information.

Ralph Don't Run

Salon asks how far Bush's AWOL violation will contribute to his demise, but in the meantime here is a nice summary paragraph of the issue.

Salon.com News | Bush's missing year: "The story emerged in 2000 when the Boston Globe's Walter Robinson, after combing through 160 pages of military documents and interviewing Bush's former commanders, reported that Bush's flying career came to an abrupt and unexplained end in the spring of 1972 when he asked for, and was inexplicably granted, a transfer to a paper-pushing Guard unit in Alabama. During this time Bush worked on the Senate campaign of a friend of his father's. With his six-year Guard commitment, Bush was obligated to serve through 1973. But according to his own discharge papers, there is no record that he did any training after May 1972. Indeed, there is no record that Bush performed any Guard service in Alabama at all. In 2000, a group of veterans offered a $3,500 reward for anyone who could confirm Bush's Alabama Guard service. Of the estimated 600 to 700 Guardsmen who were in Bush's unit, not a single person came forward. "

Here's an answer to a question from the 2000 election that always bugged me, "Why didn't the 2000 Boston Globe articles on Bush's AWOL status not get picked up by more media outlets?" Robinson, the reporter who broke the Globe story, says the press felt it had sufficiently vetted Bush, and didn't want to revisit an issue they missed. I can agree with that, especially since the recent reporting in places like the Washington Post has hardly been an improvement in terms of accuracy. But I still wonder why such an obvious headline-maker like Bush being AWOL would get soft-pedaled. Maybe the press needs to hear things like this first from the Washington Times.

Boston Writer on the AWOL Story That First Broke in 2000: "Asked why so few papers followed up on his reporting for the May 23, 2000, Globe story, Walter V. Robinson told E&P, 'When a newspaper has done a thorough scrub on someone and not found anything, then somebody else reports it, they are not exactly eager to follow up. Other news organizations are not inclined to credit their competition, particularly if they have done their own look at the candidate.'"