News of the day

Iowa Governor Vilsack formally announces for the presidency today.

Bill Frist throws in the towel, and not a moment too soon.

Little Newt Gingrich is back like a herpes virus with a unique strategy for becoming the leader of the free world. He hopes to hover around and not announce until very late in the game and hope a slot opens up that he can jump into.

He recently gave a talk at the annual Nackey S. Loeb First Amendment award dinner where he... I'm not making this up... advocated "reexamining" the first amendment and banning free speech on the internet and elsewhere when it supposedly aids terrorists, then going on to sharply criticize the McCain-Feingold campaign finance act, which sought to limit the amount of money people can give to political campaigns, because doing so restricted free speech (in the form of big cash). Go figure.

And another golden oldie, Al Gore is back in the news putting my feelings into words perfectly, and in doing so, getting all the chatting class in a lather fretting and freaking out about whether he may run again.

In an interview in GQ, speaking of Bush, Gore said,

To this day, I don’t understand it. And, I think it’s fair to say that he personally does in fact bear a measure of blame for not doing his job at a time when we really needed him to do his job. And now the Woodward book has this episode that has been confirmed by the record that George Tenet, who was much abused by this administration, went over to the White House for the purpose of calling an emergency meeting and warning as clearly as possible about the extremely dangerous situation with Osama bin Laden, and was brushed off!

And I don’t know why—honestly—I mean, I understand how horrible this Congressman Foley situation with the instant messaging is, okay? I understand that. But, why didn’t these kinds of things produce a similar outrage? And you know, I’m even reluctant to talk about it in these terms because it’s so easy for people to hear this or read this as sort of cheap political game-playing. I understand how it could sound that way.

But dammit, whatever happened to the concept of accountability for catastrophic failure? This administration has been by far the most incompetent, inept, and with more moral cowardice, and obsequiousness to their wealthy contributors, and obliviousness to the public interest of any administration in modern history, and probably in the entire history of the country!

Thanks Al. Took the words right out of my mouth.

John Kerry appeared on Larry King (as did Dog the Bounty Hunter in the second half of the show. How's that for a ticket? Maybe Dog would give Kerry some street cred.) and tried to stay relevant. It's truly a shame what the right has done to the guy, both with the swift boating and the recent distortion of his ommission of one word from a lame joke, but the damage is done, and if he were more well liked, he likely could have weathered the storm a bit better. As it is, the guy is all but toast as far as a presidential run is concerned.

Bush continues to babble like someone in dire need of an intervention and got dissed by the puppet president of Iraq who said thanks but no thanks to meeting with Bush in Jordan.

And soon to be senator Jim Webb gave an appropriate amount of respect to Bush as well, refusing to participate in the recieving line to shake the Chimporer's hand and opting not to have his picture taken with Bush.

"I'm not particularly interested in having a picture of me and George W. Bush on my wall," Webb said in an interview yesterday in which he confirmed the exchange between him and Bush. "No offense to the institution of the presidency, and I'm certainly looking forward to working with him and his administration. [But] leaders do some symbolic things to try to convey who they are and what the message is."

Then Webb, one of the few, and maybe the only congressmen with a son or daughter in serving in Iraq, had what could be described as a rather terse exchange with Junior a bit later.

"How's your boy?" Bush asked, referring to Webb's son, a Marine serving in Iraq.

"I'd like to get them out of Iraq, Mr. President," Webb responded, echoing a campaign theme.

"That's not what I asked you," Bush said. "How's your boy?"

"That's between me and my boy, Mr. President," Webb said coldly, ending the conversation on the State Floor of the East Wing of the White House.

It was later reported that Webb told someone afterwards that it was all he could do to keep from popping Bush in the mouth, though how credible that report is is anyone's guess.

And Colin Powell salvages what credibility he has left after being a dupe of Bush/Cheney and announced that as far as he was concerned, Iraq is indeed in a civil war, thus again freaking out those still clinging to the Bush denial of reality. And former Prez Jimmy Carter thinks it's not quite civil just yet.

And the little goof in charge in Iran issued a 5 page letter to you and I, the American public, in which he made some very valid points while engaging in a bit of deft PR.