I am Spartacus!

Shakespeare's Sister was working the Edwards campaign as a consultant. Now she's not. Here's why.

Come join us.

When communication breakdowns amuse

Funny as hell. My sides hurt. It just gets funnier with time.

And it's true, too.

(Hat tip to John at AMERICAblog)

McCaskill for Missouri

how can you look michael j. fox in the face and tell him you dont want him to have a cure because you want to protect "life"?

i dare any republican, especially talent to look at michael j. fox and tell him that.
Chris from Maine

While I'm not a Republican, I couldn't do it even if I was.

(Hattip Joe in DC via AMERICAblog.)

Mark Morford and "The Cowboy"

Brilliant. Just absolutely brilliant.

A sample:

Cwboy43 (8:38:02 PM): No dont call me "sir!" Delete that! It's Cowboy! U gotta pretend OK? Im just a regular dud. BTW I read one of your old columns about Jesus. Im glad to hear U like him! Drugs are bad tho, U should stop that sorta talk. Could sure use a Valium and a sixer of Coors Light right now tho, U know? Lol! Its all falling apart

WrtrGuy (8:38:07 PM): Oh Jesus

Cwboy43 (8:38:28 PM): Exactly! Praise! BTW I got your IM from the FBI cuz I told 'em to watch you pervert journalists. Gosh they know everything! 'Cept they don't know this: I like U Libruls. U stir me up gud with your crazee music and your tofu and hybrid cars and sex. Isn't it funny how Mark Foley isn't even really alcoholic, we just stuck him in rehab to get the pity response? Suckers

OMFG. It gets better from there.

American Blackout

Watch the trailer. Watch the award winning movie. You can get it on Netflix, or find a screening near you.



(Thanks, Shakes, for the headsup.)

Big hair and blunt words

I'm driving down to Austin in the morning.

From Lawrence Collins, former Richards aide:

"My high school girlfriend ... had a painting made of herself for me. For some reason I had had it my trunk for a long time. It was just one of those things you can't get rid of. Ann kept seeing it because I would pick her up at the airport or take her around town. Well, once, again at the airport, I opened my trunk with her by my side and was about to lift her bag into the trunk and she saw this painting of Jenna. It was huge. A big painting of her smiling face. And it was a bad painting. She picked it up and said, 'Now, this is [expletive]. Take me to Kentucky Fried over by Manor.' I was totally perplexed.

"We got to Kentucky Fried and she asked that I pull around back. When we got there she got out of the car and dumped Jenna in the Dumpster!"

From Molly Ivins:

At a long-ago political do at Scholz Garten in Austin, everybody who was anybody was there meetin' and greetin' at a furious pace. A group of us got the tired feet and went to lean our butts against a table at the back wall of the bar. Perched like birds in a row were Bob Bullock, then state comptroller, moi, Charles Miles, the head of Bullock's personnel department, and Ms. Ann Richards. Bullock, 20 years in Texas politics, knew every sorry, no good sumbitch in the entire state. Some old racist judge from East Texas came up to him, 'Bob, my boy, how are you?"

Bullock said, "Judge, I'd like you to meet my friends: This is Molly Ivins with the Texas Observer."

The judge peered up at me and said, "How yew, little lady?"

Bullock, "And this is Charles Miles, the head of my personnel department." Miles, who is black, stuck out his hand, and the judge got an expression on his face as though he had just stepped into a fresh cowpie. He reached out and touched Charlie's palm with one finger, while turning eagerly to the pretty, blonde, blue-eyed Ann Richards. "And who is this lovely lady?"

Ann beamed and replied, "I am Mrs. Miles."

Ann Richards 1933-2006

I met Governor Richards in 1990 when she was doing a college tour during her campaign against idiot Clayton Williams. She stooped low enough to go around to the different colleges in the state, where Williams was ass enough to think college students wouldn't vote so why waste time on them?

I'd gone to see the speech out of curiosity. I wasn't quite political then. That little flaw changed that nite.

Richards spoke for about an hour. I honestly don't remember the content of her speech, but I remember the feeling. It was like being lifted off the ground with the hope of something new. And she could speak, by god. Then and there I decided I wanted to be a speech writer. (Didn't happen, but whatever.)

After the speech, she stayed around to meet the audience. I had my yard sign with me. When my turn came, she gave me the strongest handshake any human ever has given me. I looked down to look her in the eye...bad idea. She could make anything happen with those eyes. They just kinda held you. Her head came up to my chin, but her hair made us the same height.

I'll miss you, Ann.

Who has left this hole in the ground?

I know I said I wouldn't quote like this again. I was wrong.

From Keith Olbermann, via Crooks and Liars.

Half a lifetime ago, I worked in this now-empty space. And for 40 days after the attacks, I worked here again, trying to make sense of what happened, and was yet to happen, as a reporter.

And all the time, I knew that the very air I breathed contained the remains of thousands of people, including four of my friends, two in the planes and -- as I discovered from those "missing posters" seared still into my soul -- two more in the Towers.

And I knew as well that this was the pyre for hundreds of New York policemen and firemen, of whom my family can claim half a dozen or more as our ancestors.

I belabor this to emphasize that, for me, this was and is and always shall be personal.

And anyone who claims that I and others like me are "soft" or have "forgotten" the lessons of what happened here is at best a grasping, opportunistic, dilettante and at worst, an idiot whether he is a commentator, or a Vice President, or a President.

However, of all the things those of us who were here five years ago could have forecast -- of all the nightmares that unfolded before our eyes and the others that unfolded only in our minds -- none of us could have predicted this.

Five years later this space is still empty.

Five years later there is no memorial to the dead.

Five years later there is no building rising to show with proud defiance that we would not have our America wrung from us by cowards and criminals.

Five years later this country's wound is still open.

Five years later this country's mass grave is still unmarked.

Five years later this is still just a background for a photo-op.

It is beyond shameful.

At the dedication of the Gettysburg Memorial -- barely four months after the last soldier staggered from another Pennsylvania field -- Mr. Lincoln said, "we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract."

Lincoln used those words to immortalize their sacrifice.

Today our leaders could use those same words to rationalize their reprehensible inaction. "We cannot dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow this ground." So we won't.

Instead they bicker and buck pass. They thwart private efforts and jostle to claim credit for initiatives that go nowhere. They spend the money on irrelevant wars, and elaborate self-congratulations, and buying off columnists to write how good a job they're doing instead of doing any job at all.

Five years later, Mr. Bush, we are still fighting the terrorists on these streets. And look carefully, sir, on these 16 empty acres. The terrorists are clearly still winning.

And, in a crime against every victim here and every patriotic sentiment you mouthed but did not enact, you have done nothing about it.

And there is something worse still than this vast gaping hole in this city and in the fabric of our nation. There is its symbolism of the promise unfulfilled, the urgent oath reduced to lazy execution.

The only positive on 9/11 and the days and weeks that so slowly and painfully followed it was the unanimous humanity here and throughout the country. The government, the President in particular, was given every possible measure of support.

Those who did not belong to his party -- tabled that.

Those who doubted the mechanics of his election -- ignored that.

Those who wondered of his qualifications -- forgot that.

History teaches us that nearly unanimous support of a government cannot be taken away from that government by its critics. It can only be squandered by those who use it not to heal a nation's wounds, but to take political advantage.

Terrorists did not come and steal our newly-regained sense of being American first and political fiftieth. Nor did the Democrats. Nor did the media. Nor did the people.

The President -- and those around him -- did that.

They promised bi-partisanship and then showed that, to them, "bi-partisanship" meant that their party would rule and the rest would have to follow or be branded, with ever-escalating hysteria, as morally or intellectually confused, as appeasers, as those who, in the Vice President's words yesterday, "validate the strategy of the terrorists."

They promised protection, and then showed that to them "protection" meant going to war against a despot whose hand they had once shaken, a despot who, we now learn from our own Senate Intelligence Committee, hated al-Qaida as much as we did.

The polite phrase for how so many of us were duped into supporting a war on the false premise that it had 'something to do' with 9/11 is "lying by implication."

The impolite phrase is "impeachable offense."

Not once in now five years has this President ever offered to assume responsibility for the failures that led to this empty space and to this, the current -- and curdled -- version of our beloved country.

Still, there is a last snapping flame from a final candle of respect and fairness: even his most virulent critics have never suggested he alone bears the full brunt of the blame for 9/11.

Half the time, in fact, this President has been so gently treated that he has seemed not even to be the man most responsible for anything in his own administration.

Yet what is happening this very night?

A mini-series, created, influenced -- possibly financed by -- the most radical and cold of domestic political Machiavellis continues to be televised into our homes.

The documented truths of the last fifteen years are replaced by bald-faced lies; the talking points of the current regime parroted; the whole sorry story blurred, by spin, to make the party out of office seem vacillating and impotent, and the party in office, seem like the only option.

How dare you, Mr. President, after taking cynical advantage of the unanimity and love, and transmuting bothinto fraudulent war and needless death, after monstrously transforming it into fear and suspicion and turning that fear into the campaign slogan of three elections? How dare you -- or those around you -- ever "spin" 9/11?

Just as the terrorists have succeeded -- are still succeeding -- as long as there is no memorial and no construction here at Ground Zero.

So, too, have they succeeded, and are still succeeding as long as this government uses 9/11 as a wedge to pit Americans against Americans.

This is an odd point to cite a television program, especially one from March of 1960. But as Disney's continuing sell-out of the truth (and this country) suggests, even television programs can be powerful things.

And long ago, a series called "The Twilight Zone" broadcast a riveting episode entitled "The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street."

In brief: a meteor sparks rumors of an invasion by extra-terrestrials disguised as humans. The electricity goes out. A neighbor pleads for calm. Suddenly his car -- and only his car -- starts. Someone suggests he must be the alien. Then another man's lights go on. As charges and suspicion and panic overtake the street, guns are inevitably produced. An "alien" is shot -- but he turns out to be just another neighbor, returning from having gonefor help. The camera pulls back to a near-by hill, where two extra-terrestrials are seen, finally, manipulating a small device that can jam electricity. The veteran tells his novice that there is no need to actually attack, that you just turn off a few of the human machines and then "they pick the most dangerous enemy they can find, and it is themselves."

And then, in perhaps his finest piece of writing, Rod Serling sums it up with words of remarkable prescience, given where we find ourselves tonight: "The tools of conquest," he said, "do not necessarily come with bombs and explosions and fallout. There are weapons that are simply thoughts, attitudes, prejudices, to be found only in the minds of men.

For the record, he said, "prejudices can kill and suspicion can destroy, and a thoughtless, frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all its own -- for the children, and the children yet unborn."

When those who dissent are told time and time again -- as we will be, if not tonight by the President, then tomorrow by his portable public chorus -- that he is preserving our freedom, but that if we use any of it, we are somehow un-American -- when we are scolded, that if we merely question, we have "forgotten the lessons of 9/11" -- look into this empty space behind me and the bi-partisanship upon which this administration also did not build, and tell me:

Who has left this hole in the ground?

We have not forgotten, Mr. President.

You have.

May this country forgive you.

Yes, may this country forgive you, even though you don't deserve it.