Condoleeza Rice's Husband

"As I was telling my husb— ... as I was telling President Bush.”
--Condoleeza Rice

Talk about being married to a job!? Somehow this tidbit escaped me when it happened last April, but I think it says a lot about the relationship between Rice and President Bush. I'm not sure what it says exactly, but I don't want to know.

"Bush's Barberini Faun"

Four years ago, it was hard to understand why Maureen Dowd of the New York Times would be denied a White House press pass. It's no surprise in hindsight, knowing now what we didn't know then about the Bush administration's attitude towards journalists. Dowd writes in her latest column ("Bush's Barberini Faun") about the Jeff Gannon scandal.

In an era when security concerns are paramount, what kind of Secret Service background check did James Guckert get so he could saunter into the West Wing every day under an assumed name while he was doing full-frontal advertising for stud services for $1,200 a weekend? He used a driver's license that said James Guckert to get into the White House, then, once inside, switched to his alter ego, asking questions as Jeff Gannon.

Mr. McClellan shrugged this off to Editor & Publisher magazine, oddly noting, "People use aliases all the time in life, from journalists to actors."

I know the F.B.I. computers don't work, but this is ridiculous. After getting gobsmacked by the louche sagas of Mr. Guckert and Bernard Kerik, the White House vetters should consider adding someone with some blogging experience.

Does the Bush team love everything military so much that even a military-stud Web site is a recommendation?

Or maybe Gannon/Guckert's willingness to shill free for the White House, even on gay issues, was endearing. One of his stories mocked John Kerry's "pro-homosexual platform" with the headline "Kerry Could Become First Gay President."

With the Bushies, if you're their friend, anything goes. If you're their critic, nothing goes. They're waging a jihad against journalists - buying them off so they'll promote administration programs, trying to put them in jail for doing their jobs and replacing them with ringers.

March Right In

"Condoleezza Rice has warned Iran to stop its nuclear program. They say stop the nuclear program or face the next step. ... And the next step being fabrication of evidence and then we march right in."

-- David Letterman

Still Crazy After All These Years

"In 1978, a young fellow ran for Congress in Texas.  His name was George Bush. And he said then that unless you privatize Social Security it will be busted in 10 years.  He thought it then, and he thinks it now.  This whole concept is to scare young people into believing that their benefits are not going to be there."

-- Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-NY), NBC NEWS' MEET THE PRESS, Feb. 13, 2005

Abu Ghraib's Romper Room

"In the middle of what's happening in Iraq, for most Americans what happened at Abu Ghraib might as well be Romper Room."

-- Rush Limbaugh, San Jose, CA, Feb 8, 2005

The funny thing about Limbaugh's quote is not that he is so crass and inhumane as to suggest that the rape, torture and murder of Iraqis by American soldiers and intelligence personnel amounts to fun and games. It's that he managed to completely distort a fairly obscure AP news story, "Navy Seal says Iraqi who died at Abu Ghraib was roughed up in CIA's 'romper room.'"

Arthur Miller: 1915-2005
"Attention, attention must be finally paid to such a person."

In a career that spanned more than half a century, Arthur Miller wrote 25 plays -- many almost as highly regarded as "Salesman'' -- as well as screenplays, essays, stories, novels and an autobiography, "Timebends." He received every major award in his field, including three Tony Awards, the Pulitzer Prize, an Emmy Award and a John F. Kennedy Award for Lifetime Achievement in 1984. By the end of his life, he had achieved the iconic stature of one whose name lends dignity to the award given.

He also devoted himself tirelessly to human rights causes, becoming, in the eyes of many, the moral conscience of the nation for standing up against McCarthyism and the House Un-American Activities Committee. He confounded many who had applauded his stand by continuing to work with actors and others, notably the director Elia Kazan, who had famously cooperated with the committee by naming names. He was, he explained, opposed to blacklisting of all kinds.

As the first international president of the professional writers association PEN, he championed the freedom of dissident writers in Soviet-bloc countries and throughout the world. He campaigned for progressive causes and against all forms of censorship throughout his life and was outspoken in his criticisms of the U.S. invasion of Iraq and of what he considered the Bush administration's abridgements of civil liberties.

Economics Outweighs Human Life in Christmas Tsunami

Of all the tragic stories that came out of the Christmas Tsunami crisis, the one that horrifies me the most is the news that countless lives might have been saved, had it not been for cynical decisionmaking at the highest levels in certain Asian government.

At the time the Thai experts reportedly concluded they would threaten the nation’s economic health by alerting the public, the tsunami was still more than an hour away from hitting Thailand’s coast. It appears that most of the fatalities there could have been averted had the victims merely been told to walk about a mile inland, which they could have done, leisurely, in 45 minutes or less."

Thanks to James for pointing out that the above story had moved. James managed to find the above quote and an even more damaging assessment of this story in Keith Olbermann's blog.