Keith Olbermann pulls out all the stops on the "rip Dubya a new asshole" pipe organ and delivers a twelve-minute virtuoso performance.  Thanks to drieuxster.

David Halberstam died on April 23 this year, but he left this magnificent excoriation of the Bush Administration behind.

divisadero embedded a preview to possibly the greatest videogame-based movie of all time.

---

Remember Liquid Television?  sanspoof linked to something that reminds me heavily of the best parts from that show.  As far as LTV goes, one short that always stuck with me was "The Running Man" (part 1/part 2); the haunting music in the final minute remained imperfectly in my memory, so that when i first heard Michael Hedges's "Spare Change", i thought it was the music they used in the cartoon (it isn't).  Although there isn't a performance of "Spare Change" on YouTube, there is a huge amount of Michael Hedges content there, and, well, thank god for YouTube, because now i've seen Michael Hedges play.  Unless you know tronpublic, you've probably never seen anyone play guitar the way Hedges plays "Silent Anticipations".

---

Theo Jansen is a kinetic sculptor.  He does amazing stuff.

---

Via warrenelliscom, a levitating, powered lightbulb.  Thank you, Nikola Tesla, wherever you are.

---

"It took my 8-year-old son just a few seconds to shake loose some hidden history from within the official transcript of the [Coalition Provisional Authority]."  Thank you, Microsoft Word.

---

"Just think about your options.  You know Coach isn't going to give you back your scholarship just like that.  If she finds out [that you're pregnant] and if you decide to keep it, that's gone."

President Bush commuted the sentence of former aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby Monday, sparing him from a 2 1/2-year prison term in the CIA leak case. [...] Bush's move came hours after a federal appeals panel ruled Libby could not delay his prison term in the CIA leak case.

"There is no express grant of habeas [corpus] in the Constitution; there is a prohibition against taking it away."

As theweaselking noted, "Using the same logic, of course, there's no right to bear arms, either - just because the constitution says you can't take it away doesn't mean it says you've got it."  Remember the good old days, when there was a Supreme Court vacancy or two and Gonzales's name kept popping up as a candidate?  Why, this fascinating exercise in hairsplitting is just what this country needs!

jwgh linked a Vanity Fair interview of various neoconservatives, who to a man blame Bush and his administration for failing to implement their vision.  The David Frum quote is so money that i must reprint it here in full:

I always believed as a speechwriter that if you could persuade the president to commit himself to certain words, he would feel himself committed to the ideas that underlay those words. And the big shock to me has been that although the president said the words, he just did not absorb the ideas. And that is the root of, maybe, everything.

Frum here clearly states that as a speechwriter, he tries to manipulate the people who read his speeches.  And he's shocked —shocked i tell you— that Bush, a man whose flexibility and adaptability are legendary, was unable to "absorb" his ideas.  And regarding Eliot Cohen's quote:

The best news is that the United States remains a healthy, vibrant, vigorous society. So in a real pinch, we can still pull ourselves together.

Iraq's fucked... but America rules!  Rock on!

In a punishingly inane AP article on CNN.com, this quote stood out in its baffling nonsequiturness:

Bush wrote back to wish Miers a happy 52nd birthday, telling her that he appreciated her friendship and to "never hold back your sage advice." He ended with a postscript: "No more public scatology."

There is nothing in the rest of the article that explains this remark.  It's just... o_O.

Nearly a year ago, i wrote,

And worst of all, our country will continue to suffer under the uncaring eye of the Bush administration and nobody will even notice because, hey, don't you know there's a war going on?

[...]

[It's] plain now, as it was four years ago, that he is a poor leader.

Well, people noticed.  But that hasn't changed the way the Bush administration works, as the terrible story of Michael Brown has given way to even more cronyism.  And that's really the point: nothing has changed.  Every time something horrible has come out of the White House, i've said, "I'm not surprised."  Then why am i still paying attention to what happens?  It's not changing anything, and it's not doing me any favors.

There was a time when i didn't want to shield myself from the news, but that's no longer the case.  It's eating me up, especially when i read about anyone defending the indefensible.  So i've thrown all of my political RSS feeds off my reading filter (well, except for the comics, because those i don't take seriously).  Whatever happens in the world of politics between now and midterm elections, i don't want to know about it.  I don't need to know about it.  Odds are that nothing that happens in the next 13½ months will be any improvement over what's happened in the past almost five years.  I'm tired of being so negative, and i know some of you are tired of it, too.  So fuck it.  Come Nov 8 2006, i'll turn my eyes back to the political landscape, to see if America is any better off.

Until then, well, i can worry about more pertinent things, like why the retarded Department of Justice is cockblocking the acquisition of my employer and thereby causing an unprecedented lack of industry in my department, not to mention a vague sense of dread.

O'Reilly: The truth of the matter is our correspondents at Fox News can't go out for a cup of coffee in Baghdad...

Rice: Bill, that's tough. It's tough. But what — would they have wanted to have gone out for a cup of coffee when Saddam Hussein was in power?

Maybe when they're unable to go shoe shopping, she'll truly become concerned.

Is it just me, or has Bush's smirk-like rictus over the few past years come to resemble Cheney's twisted grimace?

"I want you to keep focused on what you are doing here," [Condoleezza] Rice told the diplomats and troops who gathered in one of Saddam Hussein's former palaces. "This war came to us, not the other way around."

Fuck you, you lying hag.

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Marines said Saturday they "successfully completed Operation Matador," a weeklong hunt for insurgents along the Syrian border that left nine Marines and more than 125 insurgents dead.

Now, maybe it's just me, but this means one of two things (or possibly both):

1. Someone actually named this sortie "Operation Killer".
2. Someone actually named this sortie after a guy who lets the threat repeatedly run past him.

Winning the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people... FOR ME TO POOP ON.

aDe pointed me towards a story on the al-Guardian (attribution dammit: palecur) about Dubya's Web site blocking foreign visitors; aDe confirmed that .au, .uk, and .nl sites were not able to access it. Also, Bob Harris links to a New York Times story regarding this most munificent administration's latest wacky hijink:

A new legal opinion by the Bush administration has concluded for the first time that some non-Iraqi prisoners captured by American forces in Iraq are not entitled to the protections of the Geneva Conventions, administration officials said Monday.

Is Bush Wired?  Hail to the Animatronic Commander-in-Chief!

"To my knowledge, I have not seen any strong, hard evidence that links [Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden]— OH GOD NOT IN THE FACE."

Yeah, i know, it's not news, and OBL is not exactly the same as AQ. Via diepunyhumans.

A big FUCK YOU to my friends at the FCC:

WASHINGTON -- Federal regulators on Wednesday fined CBS a record $550,000 for Janet Jackson's "wardrobe malfunction," which exposed the singer's breast during the Super Bowl halftime show.

They magnanimously decided not to fine the affiliates, only the CBS-owned stations.

---

You can almost hear Jack Valenti snort-laughing:

Sacramento -- Aiding the industry that helped him gain worldwide fame, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed legislation Tuesday aimed at discouraging online piracy by requiring anyone disseminating movies or music on the Internet to disclose their e-mail address.

California file sharers who trade songs or films without providing an e-mail address will be guilty of a misdemeanor, under the first-in-the-nation measure that could make it easier for law enforcement to track down people who illegally download copyrighted material.

That's gonna be really hard to circumvent.  And really easy to enforce!

Schwarzenegger also vetoed a bill that would have mandated sending juvenile parolees who are caught in a nonviolent drug offense to drug treatment rather than back into confinement with the California Youth Authority.

The War on Drugs... it's FAN-tastic!

I'm practicing my love right now, if you know what i mean...

You've all probably heard about Bush's latest sterling verbal fumble.  I mirrored the video of his performance off The Smoking Gun.

"We must never stop thinking about how best to defend our country. We must always be forward-thinking."

"We must move forward, not backward!  Upward, not forward!"

"But the American people know this president speaks with clarity and conviction, and the terrorists know by his actions he means it," McClellan said.

Well, it's clear Dubya doesn't know what he's talking about, even though he's convinced he does.  But Scottie "Doughboy" McClellan really nailed the last bit... Dubya really meant it when he said that bit about finding new ways to harm America and Americans.  Thanks, Scott!  Thanks, George!

First Cheney tells Leahy to go fuck himself.  Now Bush is starting to crack under the pressure, too.

A ponytailed man standing next to us confirmed the event, saying, "I do believe the President of the U.S. just gave you boys the finger."

Via diepunyhumans.

I have no joke here, i just like saying, "This was not the first foray into French by Cheney and his boss."