Back during the good old days of the Clinton dick-frenzy, Cokie Roberts was heard to say (and I paraphrase from memory, but fairly) that Washington, D.C., after all the dust-ups had settled down, was basically a town full of people devoted to the public good--and given this common purpose, Clinton's sexual escapades just couldn't be tolerated. He just wasn't showing respect for the town and for the people who lived there.

And David Broder said (again, this is a rough but accurate quote) that Clinton "came to the place (the White House) and messed the whole place up, and it's not his place."

Roberts and Broder love Washington and love making that wonderful town tick. And it's the same unselfish and cooperative spirit that, no doubt, makes it possible for CNN to report comprehensively and fairly on the GOP bribery and money-laundering racket--even as CNN pays Tom DeLay's chief of staff to serve as the network's representative and lobbyist at GOP headquarters.

It's amazing how CNN is going out of its way to tell the American people the truth about this scandal--no matter what the consequences for CNN's bottom-line or for the influential friends of CNN executives. The first priority of CNN is obviously the news, and all these confusing back-channels and financial interconnections are really beside the point.

That's is what I love about America. Things can get hairy, but in the end, the system works.

I hereby formally (i.e., casually) propose the first meeting of a twice-monthly AmCop salon.

The purpose would be to meet every two weeks at a bar, drink beer, discuss the various topics discussed on this site, and, while getting progressively drunker, lament that if we only had the time (ha!) and discipline (haha!) to compile such thoughts in a book we'd have an instant six-figure contract from Random House.

I propose that, as the NYC AmCoppers reside primarily in Brooklyn and uptown (if by "uptown" you mean practically Yonkers), we compromise and meet in the village.

I propose the KGB Bar, which is actually the only bar in the Village that I know of where you can get a table, hear other people speak, not see a television, and not be subjected to any Irish theme or motif.

I propose, then, that the first meeting of the AmCop salon be held at the KGB Bar, on either Tuesday, February 7 or Thursday, February 9, at 9pm.

Who's in?

As Dr. Condoleeza Rice told us in 2002, “It will take years to understand the long-term effects of September 11th. But there are certain verities that the tragedy brought home to us in the most vivid way.” Indeed, it is now beyond dispute that the United States of America faces an existential threat – a threat greater than the Civil War, World War II, or the Cold War. Today’s threat, of course, come less from massing armies than from small, shadowy bands of homosexuals. As a result, the Department of Defense has fired, for instance, dozens of Arabic translators. In the words of The Washington Post, the “linguists were rendered useless because of their homosexuality.” How could it be otherwise?

More recently, an even more pernicious development has occurred – if that be possible.  Members of the Army’s 82nd Airborne are being investigated for appearing on a gay pornographic website. Call them the faggs from Fort Bragg. Granted, the 82nd is trained to deploy anywhere in the world within 18 hours, and the most popular Iraq plan, which even boasts bi-partisan support, calls for a quickly deployable force. But the liberal homosexual agenda must be stopped. Even if it kills us.

I didn't watch it or listen to it, but I'm sorry I missed Paula Zahn's brilliant assessment of national opinion:

ZAHN: But security is still going to be a huge issue in this country, and whether you like it or not, you've got a lot of people out there saying, if you're Republican, we're going to keep the country safe, you know, if you vote for a Democrat, that basically you want to be bombed.

Who could disagree?

Anyway, not that anyone gives a shit about our blogroll, but some of the blogs on it I don't even know if they still exist. Please suggest your favorite blogs or other sites in the comments and I'll put them all up in the sidebar piece.

Update from speakingcorpse:

And perhaps you'd consider some of my personal favorites:

You Are Already a Terrorist
Homicide or Suicide?
You Are Under Arrest
From a Brig Off the Coast of South Carolina
Jose Padilla's Diary
John Walker Lindh Was Right
Shit-fucking
Once You've Swallowed It It's Too Late
Eli, Eli Lama Sabachthani
I Can't Stop Breathing
Dick-in-Hole
What is Gay?
From My Asshole to Me
Barack Osama
Toilet v. Swimming Pool

Any other suggestions?

I've recently discovered the work of a great Russian priest and theologian named Aleksandr Men', who was murdered in 1990. He was thoroughly orthodox, brilliant, a huge national success. His parents--like many, many others in Russia in the early 20th century--were Jewish intellectuals who converted to Christianity. He was a priest for his whole adult life. He toiled for decades when the Russian church was controlled by Stalinist hacks. He became a national sensation when he started to talk on television to the whole country in the late '80's, when religion became a public topic again. Anyway, reactionary forces--monarchist/fascist/anti-semitic--quickly chose Men' as the enemy ("Western-influenced," "over-intellectual," "too ecumenical"). He was murdered with an axe in 1990 and no one has ever found out who did it.

Obviously the situation there was and is totally different than in America today. But reading this interview (given 4 days before his death) made me think about what is eventually in store for us. At some point, we are going to have to attack the poison at its roots. The poison is in the toxic television and mega-churches.

People are going to have to go after them--loudly, publicly, powerfully. And they will have to go after them in a way that actually threatens the power-brokers by appealing to the masses. The people in those anti-Christian mega-churches want meaning, and some (some) will respond to a real, positive, counter-evangelical challenge to the authority of the false preachers and snake-oil salesman. That will lead to even more reaction, suspicion of "ecumenical" influences, and a resurgence of hatred against the intellectuals and lay theologians who stand for thinking (a new kind of "anti-semitism," which may well involve some Jews joining forces with the Christo-fascists and attacking other "self-hating" Jews).

My point--perhaps to be a bit grandiose--is that the real enemies of the Christo-fascists are going to be people who appropriate their language, who speak the language of spirit and meaning as it was meant to be spoken, and who condemn U.S. evangelism, in the name of the true Christ, as idolatry. When that happens, when people finally start to call a spade a spade--there will be murderous violence in America. I just don't see how it's avoidable.

Postscript: Just to be clear--the attack on the Christo-fascists by secular and skeptical liberals will never touch them, never reach the people who have been taken in. But when real Christians stand up, as Bonhoeffer had to do in 1933 when the German Lutheran Church accepted the Nazi racial laws, when real Christians stand up and say publicly: "That is no longer the Church of Christ! That is not the Gospel! Come here! Come here and listen to the true Gospel!"--when real Christians make this claim and invitation--and they will have to eventually--the problem will have been faced and named, and the response will be violence.

SusanG has an excellent interview series with Daniel Ellsberg up over at Kos. The whole thing is very worthwhile.

I particularly liked this observation:

[Ellsberg:] I could even conjecture that that's why Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is being so provocative about his nuclear program and Israel. I'm not sure he's totally averse to an attack. It would almost surely strengthen him politically.

Well, it did Bush here, didn't it, with 9/11?

Good point. Instead of saying, My god, how could this man let this happen ... You know, that's a good comparison. The way that the administration reasons about attacks on other countries, 9/11 here should have brought about regime change in the U.S., rather than greater popularity for Bush.

A lil' sumthin' for the next time you hear some idjit tell you that bombing Iran will make the masses rise up and oust their theocratic totalitarian government.

Their data:

ABC News/Washington Post Poll. Jan. 23-26, 2006. N=1,002 adults nationwide. MoE ± 3. Fieldwork by TNS. Trend includes polls conducted independently by ABC News and by The Washington Post. LV = likely voters.

"Do you approve or disapprove of the way George W. Bush is handling his job as president?"

42 Approve


56 Disapprove

Their front-page headline:

Bush Highly Revered in Utah

I was just listening to NPR, and my understanding is that since the president is Republican, and the American People elected him, the American People are therefore Republican, and therefore only Republicans will be interviewed for their commentary and analysis on the SOTU.

Meanwhile, the "Democratic response" will be delivered via text message and printed sometime next week in an Oregon-based webzine loosely affiliated with both the Transgender Studies department at Reed College and Al Qaeda.

Earlier listening to the criminal enterprise NPR's criminal radio program "On the Media"--subject was the history of presidents concealing bad news about their health. John Adams (I think) had a secret rubber jaw, Roosevelt's polio, LBJ's gallbladder scar...and then they get to Bush.

How can the subject of Bush's "health" possibly be broached in this context?

The criminal political scientist guest only acknowledged that the pretzel incident was rather mysterious...but the only interpretation offered (to explain both the pretzel incident AND Bush's wire setup during the 2004 debates) was that he might suffer from the same cardiac arythmia his father has.

Yeah--that's it. A little arhythmia. Nothing concerning alcoholism or any other type of addiction or mental illness even mentioned.

So the erudite guest is asked why, in his opinion, the public hasn't shown more curiosity about the state of Bush's health.

His answer? Because Bush was seen as a "heroic" figure and "not quite human," and so not "susceptible to the same kinds if illnesses that the rest of us are." Oh, and also the public, in the professor's opinion, simply respected Bush's right to privacy. You know--the way, in our day and age, a president's "privacy" is just sort of inherently respected.

Does this criminal idiot even recognize the suicidal irony of what he's saying? How right he is on the "not quite human" part--and how, since 2000, there has been an outright conspiracy to force the media--if they want to keep their jobs--to pretend that the very qualities which make Bush a animate shit-sculpture are in fact what make him "heroic"?