The immigration bill has just blasted out of the water the last of the Bush support. Go the Corner or any other bastion of right-wing thought... these people are mad, baby. Heh. Heh heh.

Look, we lefties have a hard job today. If we look into our heart of hearts, we don't feel grief for his death. That's just the truth of it. He peddled intolerance and hatred, cloaking in a cross. He blamed Americans for 9-11. He blamed gays for Katrina (but God left the French Quarter alone, Jerry!). He was callus in that face of AIDS. To the right, it's standing on principal. To the left, it lacks compassion.

I'm thinking of his death as a turning point in this country. The right-wing Moral Majority he claimed to speak for has gone in a different direction from him: look at Rick Warren. I don't agree with him, but he's damn different from Falwell and he has a message so much closer to Jesus. Falwell represented the old, Warren represents the new. The new, even if we don't agree with it, is sooo much better than the old. It has compassion, it speaks of poverty, it lives in the now. There's room for agreement. Room for working together on certain issues like poverty.

Falwell represented a certain portion of the country and they are there, in great numbers, but they are not a majority. (I'm speaking to you, Joe Scarborough.) He didn't even represent a majority in the conservative movement. (More like 30-45%, I'd say.) He was powerful, but he was marginalized, too... and MSM has to take a breath from their extreme eulogy to say so.

Powerful and marginalized... people, right and left, just didn't buy into the words that were coming out of his mouth anymore.

But now, it is war. It is business. And Chicago can go suck an egg. Which apparently, they are doing.

These routs won't continue. Chicago will win at least one. But it is pretty, pretty while it lasts. And Chicago won't win. Cry all you want, Windy City. Bulls blogs are in a real bad mood tonight, but you had to EXPECT this. This is the Pistons, my Sheed, Rip, Chauncey, C-Webb and the Palace Prince... they don't just roll over and play Shaq.

2) Thank God those cranky old grandfathers, the Miami Heat, are out.

3) Bulls v Pistons. HA! All those Bulls punks saying that the Bulls are going to sweep everyone. HA! These are still the Baby Bulls. And they're going to get spanked by my Pistons. It may take seven games, I'm not delusional. But the Bulls got it handed to them yesterday and that does not bode well for them.

4) Spurs V Suns. Good series. Good teams. Hard to know who to root for, but I'm going Suns. Nobody can predict this one, but I think Suns may have an advantage. No doubt in my mind this is going to seven.

5) Kobe. Just shut up. Being the "greatest" means making it beyond the first round of the playoffs.

6) TMac and Yao: sorry, guys. I really wanted TMac to get out of the first round, unlike my glee that Kobe has gone fishin'.

7) Is it just me or is The Jet getting kind of annoyed with Sir Charles recently?

By the way, this has been the best playoffs in a long time. Great games. Dallas and Miami out, so there's drama.

On Virginia Tech: I don't think you can prevent this. Really, I don't. I'm not really hot-blooded on this issue of gun control. I'm fine with you owning a gun because you have a constitutional right to do so. And I'm not into stripping away constitutional rights WITHOUT amending the constitution. So there you have it.
But we talk so much about laws and not culture. Let's delve into the culture. I'm not really so fond of the blue/red paradigm; I think its a gross over simplification. However, there is a culture out there that really, really loves guns. It's pretty abscent in NYC and nonexistant in England, but I see it in Michigan and we're supposedly a "blue state".
So you have the right to bare arms, why is that so fetishized? Why does the pseudo-Western libertarian "defend thyself" mindset thrive in America? (Look to John Derbyshire for the most disgusting use of this: blaming the victims of Virginia Tech because they didn't defend themselves.) I'm not judging it, or maybe I am, but I don't want to live in a country where everyone is armed. And that's not because I have utopian view of humankind; it's because I have LESS of one. I've been in situations in my life where there's a chance that if people had been armed, people would be dead. I don't trust human beings and I don't divide them into "good" people and "bad" people. Everyone can be "bad." Anyone could slip down the slope.
My brother is right in his post about guns, but it doesn't address some pro-gun people's fetish. A gun is a holy instrument. A gun is about manhood, pride, protecting oneself. That's a cultural thing, not a thing that can be addressed by a law. Being on the other side of the culture, I can't understand it for the life of me. And I wish that, instead of gun owners trying to convince me otherwise, they would respect the fact that I don't want a gun, I have no desire for one and that's okay.
Having lived in a place where guns were banned, I remember that all my fellow British classmates, conservative or liberal, first critique of the "yanks" was our guns. People actually believe that if you stepped of the plane in LaGuardia, you'd be shot. (Granted, this was about five months after Columbine.) But they weren't pointing to any laws. They were pointing to our culture. They were pointing to the caracture of the "trigger happy American."
Some people's hobby is knitting and some people's hobby is collecting guns. Fine. And if its important to you, fine. But at some point this culture war between those who want to take away everyone's gun and those who want everyone to be armed reached an impasse. I'll leave you alone if you stop pushing your gun in my face, okay?

It's the same thoughts you have about Karl Rove. Logically, he was just lucky. He BARELY won in 2000, did a wee bit better in 2004... and people were scared shitless in '02 and '04 because of 9-11. 9-11 was the butter on his bread. Without that, would Bush have ever won reelection? No. So Karl Rove: really not that brilliant. But maybe he's lulling me into thinking that... to suprise me with Re-Animated Reagan/Re-Animated Goldwater '08.

You don't know with these peeps whether they are evil, incompetent or both. Nixon was evil. I don't know of a president in modern history more incompetent than George W. Bush... maybe Hoover? (And that's not even modern history.)

BTW, don't watch Karl Rove rap. It'll make you vomit in your mouth.

Much internet hubaloo has gone on over your dismissal of the attorney-gate. I didn't make it all the way though the show the first time around... I had to venture over to the more bipartisan and fair musings of one George Will. But having watched it again, I am perturbed.

Mostly, I am upset at one Norah O'Donnell. (Or Noran, as she is referred in smarter quarters.) Look, lady, I'm sure you talk to a lot of people in DC. I'm sure all of you go to cocktail parties and weenie roasts and tailgates and whatever the hell else you people do.

But you don't speak for us. Nobody elected you, but beyond that, we never trusted you, either. Just because you don't care about it doesn't mean the ENTIRE rest of the country doesn't care about it. You're not there to CARE. It's an issue and you are supposed to report on it in some fashion or another. But I don't give a hoot about what all of you preening peacocks care about, okay?

You all drooled in the 90s over Congressmen shooting pumpkins and Christmas card lists and stained dresses. Because you didn't like Bill Clinton. He just wasn't your type of guy. You didn't care for him. But you like Bush, or at least, you feel he's more... cocktail party amendable. I don't know what you see in him. It's like the friend with the boyfriend that beats her and sleeps with the cocktail waitress. We see that you're being used, but you keep staring at the bulge in his flight suit.

To recap: Don't tell us what to care about. You have been derelict in your duties for years. Every new Bush escapade that comes to light the Washington MSM treats either as a complete suprise, a complete affront or a complete insult to their dignity. Put the pieces together. Stop sipping on your cocktail and nibbling at the weenie.

And if you can't do that, in the words of the glorious Henry Rollins concerning Ann Coulter, then just shut the fuck up.

Sincerely,
Angry Viewer #5252

The Dems are doing something about Iraq. They are trying. Give them credit, lefties.

By the way, this MSNBC person is moron. But everyone but KO is there.

You put an extra amount of police officers in any city and crime will go down. That doesn't mean a unity government. That doesn't mean the middle class is returning. Sadr has not been captured. And these police officers aren't permenant.

I just don't think it's a simple answer of work or not work. The death toll going down is good, great news. But there was a chemical weapon attack over the weekend. That's new, not an IED.

I fully admit to calling George W. Bush a "motherfucker" everyday between brushing the tops and bottoms of my teeth, but I don't do so on CNN. I do so on this blog, not read by many.

And, not a month after the right threw a shitfit over anonymous posters at HuffPo saying they wished Dick Cheney dead, the anonymous rightie posters are out today saying they wished KSM had succeeded in killing Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter. Howie Kurtz, you gonna write about this?

Poor right wing. Poor MSM. They're going down hard and they don't know what to do anymore. They're like Donnie being told by Walter to shut the fuck up.

To be fair, even K-Lo isn't buying that one. But to even hint that the Stevens seat (and I'm sadly assuming it would be Stevens) would got to Gonzales... with what Senate? Please tell me what senate would confirm Alberto for SCOTUS. Try to find one on this planet, if you could.

Not going well for the Bushies, huh? Well, after Travelgate, Foster, Whitewater, the hair cut, etc... I'm going to sleep well at night. Maybe the lesson of the Clinton years is to spread your bruhahas out through-out the years, instead of all in one burst.

Andrea Mitchell, on Harderballs sans Tweety, said that the public supports a pardon for Scooter Libby. Well, CNN polled aforementioned "public" and only 19% supported a pardon. Question: Did she poll the other "ps" in our putrid capital, like pols, pundits and parasites?

Andrea Mitchell is MSM like yesterday's Cobb Salad. The blue cheese is rather stinky. My mixed feelings on Davey Brooks continue, but at least he said that he doesn't support a pardon and that Libby was probably guilty AND that Libby was a nice guy. All of these MSM Washingtonians blathering about how Libby gave twelve kidneys to orphans and carried Mother Theresa across hot coals to rub aloe on lepers... that does not change the goddamn motherfucking FACT that he was found guilty by a jury of eleven of his peers.

Wanna increase public confidence in the media? Don't do what Andrea Mitchell did. Don't go on the air with no numbers and say that the public wants Libby pardoned, when the public does NOT want Libby pardoned.

Don't whine about what a nice guy he is. We know. We don't care. "Nice guy" is not a defense of perjury. "Nice guy" doesn't get you a pardon.

Next time you say these things, Beltwayheads, say this, too: We've put many an innocent man to death in this country. We've exonerated people (see Innocence Project) through DNA evidence after. So, if you want to gripe about injustice in the judicial system, maybe you should start there. Because nobody's giving Scooter a lethal injection anytime soon.

He's an idea man. I don't doubt Gingrich is very, very intelligent. But can anyone honestly see Newt as president?

(BTW, if you think Rudy has family problems... forget the affair with Newt. He left his first wife when she was ill with cancer, in the hospital.)