If you haven't seen Stephen Colbert's speech at the White House Correspondents' Association dinner, it's worth a taste.

In a showdown of wits with the President, however, the results are in: President Bush and Bush impersonator Steve Bridges stole Saturday's show.

Going against zingers like this,

Real president: "I'm absolutely delighted to be here. As is Laura.
Fake president: "She's hot. Muy caliente."

Colbert had no chance.

ANWR's off the table for the House budget bill, though it still could show in the final bill given our 51 friends in the Senate.

In any case, truckers are pissed. And who could blame them? Clearly the solution here is more oil - AMERICAN oil, and not the stuff we boat off to Japan, neither. It's a case of simple free-market economics. Supply and demand, dummies, supply and demand.

In other news...

Scooter Libby: man of powerful metaphor.

You went into jail in the summer. It is fall now. You will have stories to cover—Iraqi elections and suicide bombers, biological threats and the Iranian nuclear program. Out West, where you vacation, the aspens will already be turning. They turn in clusters, because their roots connect them

Why is this not bigger news?

Having read this several days ago, I was all a'giggle waiting for it to develop into a high profile news story this week, the Rove questioning be damned. It seems no insignificant finding that the leader of the world's foremost superpower skips around the globe assuring other leaders that he makes policy choices based upon conversations with the voices in his head.

I mean, haven't you people seen Real Genius?

Watching the News Hour this past week, I was entertained to see an out-matched proponant of Intelligent Design get smoked in a debate over its inclusion in public school curriculums as an alternative to the theory of evolution. As likely you know, the topic has come into vogue since W’s endorsement of the largely unsupported theory. “Those zany creationists!” I chuckled as I turned off the television. I thought nothing more of it at that point.

Then, while perusing the headlines this morning, I learned the Kansas Board of Education
“has tentatively approved new state science standards that weaken the role evolution plays in teaching about the origin of life." “What the,” thought an exasperated I. It was quickly determined this required some looking into.

...said Ben Nelson (D-Nebraska) under his breath while feigning a cough.
"What say?", asked Swanson.
"That's what we're saying."
***

"This is really good news for every American," [Sen. Harry Reid] told reporters. "Checks and balances have been protected."

Reid said the agreement sent President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and what he called the "radical arm of the Republican base" the "undeniable" message that "abuse of power will not be tolerated."

I tend to save pessimism until after lunch, but this viewer doesn't buy the packaging in which this deal is wrapped. While not wishing for a nucular showdown, in my mind this situation played exactly into the strategy book the GOP has employed for several years: propose something more radical than what you really want, then begrudgingly accept somewhat lesser terms in the spirit of anti-obstructionist bipartisanship that lets us get back to what's really important to the public like the war on terror and social security reform.

Democrats had used threats of filibuster to block 10 of Bush's 218 first-term judicial nominees. The president renominated seven of them this year, including Owen, a Texas Supreme Court justice. Five of those nominations are pending in the Senate.

Democrats had blocked her nomination from coming to a vote four times.

We really showed them, didn't we.

***

Added Swanson, "There's another saying, Senator - don't piss down my back and tell me it's raining."

Bill Moyers is so money.

MSN recently published Experian PLUS credit rating scores by state; it's a veritable canvas awaiting the paints of interpretation.

The cheap version finds one noticing the jello-like layering of colors in a general north-to-south pattern. "The South once again proves why it's at the bottom of our country", a friend quipped with regard to the trend. Preferring a deeper, more robust analysis in justifying my regional biases, I rolled up my sleeves and dug into the numbers.

Them damn Democrats did it again: they're making it easier to raise taxes by changing the parameters of I-601. Governor Gregoire is certain to sign the bill this week.

In this age of no frills politics, where every land-owning white man can pull himself up by his bootstraps with the grit Vishnu gave him, why are those goddamn liberals up to their old tricks? Don't they know I-601 is a citizen-passed law reflecting the universal desire to keep government spending in check? What's wrong with the leadership in this flippin' dippin' state?

Depending on your political bent, it's a reasonable line questions, I suppose, but I suspect it has something to do with the [presumably] unintended consequences the structure of I-601 imposes. I-601, as passed by the citizenry in 1993, places a budgetary growth cap on spending. This cap is determined by a fiscal growth factor derived from the 3-year average of state population growth and IPD-adjusted inflation, each calculated on a two-year lag. The potential trouble with such a system is that it's based on yesterday's news with little to do with what's going on today.

You're not alone.

The Schaivo case has sparked a hot debate in this country: the merit and legitimacy of the federal judiciary. Or more attractively "judicial tyranny" as fringe conservatives, sadly overrepresented in the media, prefer to use. Unfortunately, saintly Tom DeLay and other high-ranking nuts in the Legislature fall into these ranks. Such emotive language being popular amongst the herd, it will be interesting to see how this plays out in the coming months.

Buckle your Amendments, things look to get bumpy.

Admittedly, I at times lack the positivity and half-fulledness required to sustain daily exposure to the news. Every so often I find a need to bury my head in the sand and decompress. Soon I find I’m sleeping more comfortably, I’m laughing more heartily, and I’m on a relative basis more pleasant. This is what it must be like to live in Crawford, Texas, less the jarring accents and foreign red-state eccentricities.

It never lasts. The Schiavo debate finds my ears. ANWR creeps into a phone call. An unknown sender emails me that a presidential commission found the CIA was dead wrong (what?!). The ignorance fades.

Realizing the party’s over, I’ve been back in the news and catching up on what I’ve missed on www.betterdonkey.org these past few weeks with renewed vim, vigor, and vitality. In doing so, I came across this gem of an interview of crotchety old Gore Vidal. It will make you laugh out loud in between your tears.

It reads as though there was a productive community meeting Tuesday night regarding the proposed 520 bridge expansion. Was anyone there?

It is interesting, however, that the current project includes no mention of the light rail project. One would hope the east side would someday be connected to the city’s mass transit system, assuming it comes to fruition [someday]. Given the current bridge has been around since 1960, one would expect the expansion would last at least that long. Given this, one may further think WSDOT would reasonably include possible future light rail lines in its contingency planning.

So which is it do you think?: poor collaboration between agencies or purposeful exclusion?

The new standard of quality media reporting, coined by Fox News and replicated far and wide, is “fair and balanced”. Granted, even mouth breathers see the humor in Fox News, but the extent to which the phrase is kicked around loose and free is nothing short of maddening once you’ve established a sensitivity to it.

My friends, balanced does not fair make. Worse, “balanced” reporting in the hands of an ethically flexible individual legitimizes absolute falsities by providing them equal time and weight as the truth. Take global warming, for instance. The majority of science (including U.S. Executive branch agencies such as NOAA, OSTP, EPA, USGCRP, etc.) agrees as to its occurrence. Why? The evidence is rather conclusive. Despite this, a small minority of dissenting "experts", presumably those who find it either dismissive of their religion or problematic for their business interests, somehow find equal time in the press.

The result: a mixed bag on what the public believes.

Quoting the earlier linked article, “In 1996, the Society of Professional Journalists removed the term "objectivity" from its ethics code. This reflects the fact that many contemporary journalists find the concept to be an unrealistic description of what journalists aspire to, preferring instead words like "fairness," "balance," "accuracy," "comprehensiveness" and "truth." In terms of viewpoints presented, journalists are taught to abide by the norm of balance: identifying the most dominant, widespread positions and then telling "both" sides of the story.”

The result: America increasingly doesn’t know its collective head from its collective ass.

Ugh. It could drive a man to drink. Fortunately for us, dear reader, there a few objective and unbias havens such as this fine, fine site. Porro ago verum.

My first introduction to the term “starve the beast" was in reference to tax-hatin’ Grover Norquist. If unfamiliar, the basic idea is simple: cut taxes and run budget deficits to purposefully increase debt and stretch programs, with the ultimate goal of forcing government to cut services and shrink overall. More diabolically, the macro philosophy amongst pro-privatization nuts is to so burden the government with debt that it has no course but to privatize services presently provided by Big Brother. I’m hoping this is starting to feel familiar to you.

But this blog isn’t about Grover Norquist.

I came across a not-wholly-convincing but nonetheless interesting article which references the Bush treatment of the press as an extension of the starve-the-beast philosophy. The article discusses how the Bush White House is effectively dismantling the effectiveness of the already conservative-leaning mainstream media through limited access, fact manipulation, planted info, rewards and punishments, and other means. The ultimate goal: create Red-state news and Blue-state news – dual realities which diminish the value of the truth, whatever that is.

What to take from this, you ask? Beats me. All I really know is it will be a dark and sad day when I can’t look to the Yakima Herald Republic as my source of objective reporting.

Why isn’t the Jeff Gannon saga in the national media? How close to 1500 dead military men and women are we in Iraq? What are we doing about nukes in North Korea? My friends, these are instructive questions, but we have a far more pressing issue afoot: the Downfall of Social Security. It’s hip. It’s fun. It’s this season’s WMD.

Likely this could be filed below grant’s recent posting, but it’s my first day on the blog and I couldn’t resist my very own byline. Besides, what I now offer merits its own attention: perspective. It’s something sadly, profoundly missing from the daily dialogue.

Anticipating the mainstream press will continue to pelt us with visions of the impending, ruinous situation, I thought I would offer a bit of perspective from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities as ballast for the rolling journey ahead.

The teaser: “The tax cuts and the prescription drug bill were the President’s two principal domestic priorities during his first term. Together, these policies will cost at least five times as much over the next 75 years as the Social Security shortfall (if the tax cuts are made permanent).”

Interesting.

If SocSec is small potatoes compared to the Bush tax plan and other such schemes, from where is this incessant buzz coming? My man Hubert Locke seems to have some thoughts to this end.

It all begs the question: Why is this game so easy to win?