Plenty of fish in the Holy See, but they all suck

VATICAN CITY (AP) – Pope Benedict XVI said Friday that a lack of true love was behind an increase in failed marriages and a decrease in birth rates in much of the developed world.

Well, now that's helpful, a lack of true love–maybe the pope should go into matchmaking. The Vatican could organize snappy little singles gatherings, like "It's Just Eucharist" or confessional speed-dating–they could even rent out the pope-mobile for romantic yet perfectly chaste–God can easily see–dinner cruises around Rome.

Benedict told members of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences that children nowadays also aren't as valued as they once were, in part because of the economic, social and cultural changes in the globalized world.

"Often, instead of feeling loved and cherished (children) appear to be merely tolerated," he said.

And so it should be. Because children are gross. But I suppose if you merely tolerate your own, that's different from merely tolerating other people's hellions. But it's still teaching them independence and building character and some healthy Christian humility.

The pontiff said the increase in life expectancy and decline in birth rates were "linked to a disturbing deficit of faith, hope and indeed love."

Yes, people are living longer and enjoying their lives more–they really should knock that off and get back to being religious.

Political illiteracy is bilingual

In a show of solidarity with Mexican immigrants intending to convey that they're embracing American culture, some misguided souls have apparently gone and recorded the U.S. National Anthem in Spanish, according to the Associated Press.

One again, dear protesters, has a single one of you ever heard of PR? You know, that whole idea about crafting your message to make it most appealing to the people you're trying to influence or win favor with?

Do you not even pause to think, hey, if you take the National Anthem and sing it in Spanish, that might just offend the Americans you most need to persuade–you know, the same militantly patriotic xenophobes whose irrational fears you need to allay before you can make any popular political headway?

And as it would be downright un-American of our fearless leader not to offer comment:

President Bush said Friday that the anthem ought to be sung in English.

"I think people who want to be a citizen of this country ought to learn English and they ought to learn to sing the national anthem in English," he said at a Rose Garden question-and-answer session.

So apparently when you're a citizen, you have to learn English; but when you're the president, it's still optinal. This is the land of the free, after all.

Matters of life and death (like, OMG!)

As if anyone needed another reason to stay far from MySpace and its driveling kin, now its members can apparently be subject to tacky virtual memorials if they die sudden and so-called untimely deaths and their profiles live on.

Some are suggesting this could foreshadow the future of mourning in a wired world, giving grieving families and friends a space in which to connect and keep the dear departed's memory alive–in some rather creepy ways:

The Walkers correctly guessed the password to their daughter's page, and used it to alert her friends to details of her memorial service. They also used it to access photographs and stories about their daughter they had missed out on.

"It's a little weird to say as a parent, but the site has been a source for us to get to know her better," Mr. Walker said. "We didn't understand the breadth and scope of the network she had built as an individual, and we got to see that through MySpace. It helped us to understand the impact she's had on other people."

Yeah, way to get to know your child better–because what parent wouldn't feel cheated not seeing that, in online life, their precious angel was a drunken whore with woefully poor English skills and bad taste in just about everything? But of course, whoever has the most "friends," even after they're dead, is still just a little bit better than everyone else.

It will be interesting to see what sorts of privacy issues come out of matters like these, and how they're resolved. For instance, what should an Internet company do when family members of someone who died want access to the deceased's private e-mail account? Why do people even think they have a right to access things after a person's death that they would never dream of asking for in life, or want things they know will probably only upset them and make them feel misled?

I know I once made a half glib, half solemn pact with my mother that, whichever of us dies first, the other will destroy her computer and have her e-mail accounts deleted without nosing around in either, lest any well-wishing meddlers get a chance to use our private communications and creations against our wishes or memories.

(Also, if I ever die in some dramatic fashion or in some freak accident that gets covered on the local news, I want someone who knows me to walk up to the reporter and, when he or she asks what I was like and how I'm going to be missed and whatnot, just say you're glad I'm gone because I was really kind of a bitch. Just FYI.)

But I suppose, at least Facebooking from beyond the grave isn't making anyone any money.

In all this uproar over the Harvard student who allegedly plagiarized parts of her "chick-lit" novel, I've been left wondering two things: How is it right that people get $500,000 contracts to write such crap in the first place, and how do you even spot and prove plagiarism within the genre? I mean, how many original ways can there possibly be to describe slobbering after loser emo boys and manufacturing existential angst to liven up a materially perfect, princess life?

The great thing about the Internet is that bad and inconsequential writing doesn't take up physical space or get legitimated by tangible, third-party publishing and compensation.

The horrifying thing about the Internet is that all that bad and inconsequential writing is going to be what makes up this era's primary-source history, and guide how we as digital denizens end up being remembered.

More fun with presidential photo captions

President Bush holds a puppy on a visit to a volunteer camp in Biloxi, Miss., Thursday, demonstrating that though the secretary of state is now declaring diplomacy dead and calling for sure-to-be-ignored-all-around U.N. action on Iran; Bush is threatening to veto the latest must-pass war and hurricane relief funding bill to make an empty and belated show of fiscal conservativism against frivolous pork like $15 million "seafood promotion strategies;" and NYTimes.com just posted a story allegorically headlined "House Republicans Postpone Ethics Debate" (edit: which they've since changed just to spite me)–all is still right with the world. "Nothing looks quite so bad next to this cute little bugger, now does it?" the president said. "Now vote GOP in November, or the doggie dies! Heh. Just kiddin'." (Photo: Reuters, Kevin Lamarque)

Everyone gets a cookie, even the corpses

In a bit of PR I'm sure United Airlines is loving, to the delight of patriotic and voyeuristic Americans across the land, Universal's "United 93" opens this weekend. The movie is meant to portray, using actors intended to impersonate the real people on board, what occurred on the hijacked airliner bound for the White House that passengers crashed into a Pennsylvania field on Sept. 11, 2001.

It also appears to be a tasteless, culturally bereft piece of trash that takes the "everyone is special and everyone gets a gold star for merely existing" mentality to what is perhaps its logical limit.

You see, the Sept. 11 families are apparently upset that the film might not recognize each and every passenger as a coequal "hero."

There was concern that bravery aboard United Airlines Flight 93 not be made into a kind of Olympic sport, where some passengers received a gold medal for gallantry while others had to settle for silver or bronze. ...

Not everyone could charge the cockpit along the narrow aisle of a 757 jetliner, family members concede. But they believe strongly that everyone did what he could in the face of horrific fear and certain death – consoling, encouraging, planning, praying.

In this widely held view, everyone should be considered equal in a collective act of bold resistance. Yet some family members expressed disappointment with the breadth of television movies made previously about Flight 93, feeling that the lives of some lesser-known passengers and crew members were diminished or ignored.

Good god, now we're worried about injuring self-esteem post-mortem? Isn't it enough any more that when you're the victim of a routine, everyday accident, you're just a victim; but when you're the victim of a terrorist attack, you're automatically a hero, inspiring to all?

Or is the problem that one family's loss just doesn't seem quite as bad as another's if their loved one isn't shown personally punching a terrorist in the throat on screen? Is one passenger's life worth fundamentally less than another's if he doesn't get to shout a star-spangled catch phrase that sounds like "Walker: Texas Ranger" dialogue?

Never mind the challenges of dramatizing actual events and actual people when there is no reliable measure of validity and innumerable complicating political and emotional factors–the problem here is not just in the portrayals, but that this movie has been made in the first place.

Now, I'm all for the creative capitalist credo of make and sell whatever crap you like if you can find people who will buy it, but at this point, what can a film like this contribute? We all know Sept. 11 was tragic and terrifying, and anyone with a soul can imagine just how tragic and terrifying it must have been. How can reducing it to Lifetime movie sap and cheap action flick thrills benefit anyone?

What purpose does this movie serve but to lull viewers into fitting Sept. 11 into a comfortable little niche in the righteous national mythology and pushing the issues that spawned it and will continue to spawn more atrocities like it further into the background?

But of course, as there are no gay cowboys or gay penguins involved here, nobody in this country cares to raise an ethical stink over charging admission to a stylized Hollywood depiction of a real and recent tragedy. Instead, we've got Ebert and Roeper giving it two thumbs up.

Thanks, but I'll save my aviation-themed ticket dollars for "Snakes on a Plane," which, though also pointless and worthless, at least looks to be funny.

Fun with presidential photo captions, whee!

Miss Beazley, first lady Laura Bush's Scottish Terrier, hightails in abject terror Monday from President Bush, arriving on the South Lawn of the White House with his poetically elongated shadow of abysmal approval ratings, representing a veritable sinkhole of political capital that threatens to swallow whole any living being unfortunate enough to cross paths with its dark malevolence. (Photo: AP, Charles Dharapak)

Dear Merry Sunshine

I've always wanted to have a gallows humor advice column in which my answer to absolutely every question eventually comes down to the one true, universally guaranteed solution: just kill yourself.

Take this actual letter in Friday's "Dear Abby"–see how much more fun it could be if Abby didn't really give a crap about offending people?

DEAR ABBY: My husband, "Ron," and I are at odds over parenting our 7-year-old son, "Brett." My husband is very domestic. He cooks like a world-class chef and does more housework than any man I know of.

I have read Dr. James Dobson's books on family. He clearly states that a father should be the manly role model for the son, to prevent the son from being homosexual. I'm concerned that Brett will learn feminine ways from my husband and turn out to be gay. How can I convince Ron that he needs to teach Brett the more manly things in life? -- WORRIED MOM IN FLORIDA

DEAR WORRIED MOM: Well, you are certainly right to be worried, because watching his father prepare food and rid his living space of filth will undoubtedly cause your son to want to have sex with men, that's only logical. Come to think of it, your husband is probably a closet gay, too.

But seriously, reading and accepting anything by Dr. Dobson was your first mistake, and now you want to act on it? Christ, woman, get a clue. You see, Dr. Dobson is one of the alpha-males of the species known commonly as "fundamentalist nut-jobs." You know, the folks who tout the virtue of Victorian morality and think the greatest problems facing the world today (which they have been personally called by a God with rather skewed priorities to combat) are homosexuality and non-traditional families.

To solve your problem, you could just stop reading paternalizing drivel and try to calm the hell down and be thankful your husband even puts up with you or your vile spawn–who thanks to you is probably already doomed by the genetic dice to be an idiot, which is far worse than being gay or effeminate–much less does anything for you besides. But you'll probably fail at that, because you are dumb.

Put quite simply, the world doesn't need any more men growing up to be like Dr. Dobson, nor any more vapid women who listen to men who grow up to be like Dr. Dobson.

You should just kill yourself. In fact, you are so profoundly, hopelessly, irredeemably stupid that before you kill yourself, you should secure someone to resurrect you like they did for the sixth season of "Buffy" so you can kill yourself twice. Good luck!

I hate to say I told you so...

Well, not really. But while the recent spate of immigration protests hasn't managed to push any coherent policy much closer to reality, the demonstrations are seemingly succeeding in one regard: freaking out and mobilizing the opposition.

"The size and magnitude of the demonstrations had some kind of backfire effect," said John McLaughlin, a Republican pollster who said he was working for 26 House members and seven senators seeking re-election. "The Republicans that are tough on immigration are doing well right now."

Immigration protestors are also debating whether to stage another walkout of work and school to demonstrate immigrants' economic and social power.

Cardinal Roger Mahony of Los Angeles issued a statement opposing the boycott, saying, "Personally, I believe that we can make May 1 a win-win day here in Southern California: go to work, go to school and then join thousands of us at a major rally afterwards."

Well, now there you go–stick it to the system, but only after regular business hours.

This is quite the catch-22 for our disgruntled friends: Stage a protest by walking out of your jobs, you could just get fired like a bunch of you did the last time, inconvenience and piss off a bunch of bystanders who possess no ability to affect your desired change and present yourselves to everyone else as a big, ranting pack of illegal ingrates making irrational demands and waving foreign flags to make your status as outsiders as salient as possible so more people will write off your message or decide to actively oppose it. Stage a protest after work, you probably won't get fired, but you'll still do all those other things, plus make yourselves look spineless and insincere for not willing to risk making a consequential statement.

Like it or not, protest, like just about every form of political action, is rarely as simple and direct as the chanting points it must necessarily be reduced to.

Take this op-ed piece by Paul Kane in Thursday's New York Times, arguing that to work out a peaceful solution to the issue of a nuclear-armed Iran, the United States should reinstante a military draft of the nation's young people–of both sexes–with no deferments or exemptions. This, he argues, would send a strong message to the world that America is serious about preventing Iran from building up a nuclear arsenal, and would finally force Americans to make some sacrifices in the "war on terror." Oh yes, and Bush has "little political capital at home to lose at this stage," so now is the perfect time for him to terrify the rest of the world with another show of reckless cowboy military might, thereby taming Iran into peaceful pre-emptive disarmament.

Unfortunately, there are just a few small problems with that logic. Namely, there is no way in hell an exemption-free draft would ever get passed in this country to fight some ethereal "war on terror" on another questionable front. Any lawmaker who even talked about it would not merely commit political suicide, but probably earn himself a political Darwin Award to boot. And if by some miracle such a thing came to pass and the privileged were drafted into uniform, President Bush would stage a teary public confession of every minor misstep he has ever made, renounce Christianity and stop talking like a phony Texas dolt before that army would never see combat.

If any serious policy discussion about reinvigorating the selective service started up, the protest that would blast from every constituency in this country would only serve to make the nation appear less united and less committed to stopping Iran by any means necessary. While protesting against military action by opposing a draft, demonstrations would once again backfire by revealing U.S. threats as toothless and giving Iran incentive to shut down any remaining channels for productive diplomacy and escalate, leaving the military options as the only ones remaining on the proverbial table. It would also drive presidential and Congressional approval down to subterranean depths, making Bush even more desperate to salvage his precious legacy and lawmakers more desperate to secure their re-elections by making another dramatic show of strategic and catastrophic air-power force against this oh-so-convenient new threat.

Suck though it may, to get anything accomplished in contemporary national politics, you can't just shout your righteous cries to the wind and ignore all else to avoid contamination–you need to pay attention to the other side's positions and players and interests if you are to have any hope of figuring out who you should be targeting with your complaints and how to appeal to them successfully.

However fresh or visionary your ideas, they can't bring about any change when you ignore the political reality in which they must necessarily be embedded–not any positive change, at any rate.

And just as an aside, should I be on the Pulitzer Prize committee or what? Congratulations to The New York Times’ Nicholas Kristof on winning this year’s award for commentary. (And better luck next year to the ever insightful, inspiring and true humanitarian that is David Brooks.)

At least the spokes-weasels are articulate

Now that Karl Rove is slinking out of the policy sphere (never mind what he was doing there in the first place) to concentrate on working his dark magic on the midterm elections, and now that Scott McClellan has stepped down as presidential spokesman and obfuscator extraordinaire, does this mean the Bushisms are going to start flowing unfettered once again?

Take a look at this gem taken from a downright snappy little New York Times article on the president's "defense of the defense secretary" that has become a public ritual these days in response to calls by several retired generals for Donald Rumsfeld to resign:

"I'm the decider, and I decide what's best," Mr. Bush said in the Rose Garden. "And what's best is for Don Rumsfeld to remain as the secretary of defense."

Well, now if that ain't the most rock solid rationale for judgment ever put forth by an elected official, I don't know what is.

Can't you just see W. arguing with some staffer (hypothetically of course, as his circle is practically engineered to be free from even the smallest germ of potential dissent), stomping his feet on his happy little sunburst rug in the Oval Office and sputtering, "Why? I'll tell you why, son - because I'm The Decider! And y'all better respect it!"

Indeed, that's almost as professional as some of the reasons Bush and other officials are hinting at being behind McClellan's resignation:

More recently, Mr. McClellan was yelled at, during a briefing, by an NBC correspondent, David Gregory, who was frustrated by how little information was being made available after Vice President Dick Cheney shot a hunting partner. Mr. Gregory later apologized to Mr. McClellan.

"I don't know whether or not the press corps realizes this, but his is a challenging assignment dealing with you all on a regular basis," Mr. Bush said today.

Oh, well, gee, sorry about that – what could reporters be thinking, exercising that silly constitutional right to a free press and attempting to inform the public about what its stonewalled leaders are doing in this supposed democracy?

Obviously if in the process they're causing your poor little press secretary even the slightest angst, he shouldn't just suck it up and grow a pair – the reporters should just leave you to govern from your insulated, non-reality-based monarchy and tell the people whatever you want, if you want.

We certainly can't have anyone's feelings being hurt over something so inconsequential as upholding basic principles of democratic accountability.

Stuff a Peep in it, already

I realize this country is supposedly 80 percent Christian and all, but since when does it all but shut down for Easter? Pretty much everything in this city (save for the pancake place, Walgreens and the fabulous World Market–go there to thank it, and buy Holly some new dishes and a $300 leather chair while you're at it) was closed this afternoon.

And then, foolishly thinking I was going to enjoy some precious quiet and catch up on reading, I was driven out of my apartment and back into the rain because the only person still in my building was the stereotypical Asian violin virtuoso next door who plays incessantly.

So, I'm sitting in a bookstore coffee shop, one of the only havens for losers and infidels open for business today, when what happens, but some evangelical religious kook comes up and interrupts to try and "have a conversation" with me.

Ooh, your savior rose from the dead today - whoopidy do! Never mind that yet another of his holidays has been usurped by a commercial character bearing shiny things and candy–I'm sure now Jesus has an extra cookie waiting for you in the afterlife for choosing to observe the occasion by harassing strangers just trying to enjoy their lattes and percolate their impiety in peace.

Who says heathens can't enjoy religious holidays?

To reiterate to the nation that they're here, they're queer, and they shall not be deprived of the god-given American right to watch their kids push chicken embryos across the White House lawn with silverware, according to reports, hundreds of gay and lesbian parents are lining up to snag tickets to Saturday's annual White House Easter Egg Roll.

While any attempt to stick it to social conservatives with visible displays of "immoral" pride is inherently good in itself, this event in particular seriously needs to get with the times.

The egg roll has been a Washington tradition since the mid-19th century. Children use spoons to push colored eggs through the grass in a race. Past events have included petting zoos and White House staff members in bunny costumes.

The president sometimes makes a brief appearance, and the first lady often reads a story. The White House has not announced plans for this year.

Well, lucky for everyone, I have a few suggestions if plans are still undetermined:

• Come marvel as the miracles of life and modern medical technology intertwine as fluffy little baby chicks are born, tested for avian flu by Centers for Disease Control technicians and destroyed if necessary right before your eyes in the Pandemic Preparedness Chick Hatchery/Bio-hazard Incinerator.

• To get an up-close look at how military and intelligence officials are interrogating enemy combatants to keep you and your children safe, don't miss it as Attorney General Roberto Gonzales demonstrates the latest techniques on a giant sugar-egg facsimile of a military prison camp full of butter lamb insurgents.

• Get a professional photo to cherish for generations of your child sitting on the Easter Bunny's lap. (The pedophile PR guy from Homeland Security won't be in the suit, we swear.)

• Hone your trap shooting skills with Vice President Cheney as you take aim not at quail or clay pigeons, but at stale marshmallow Peeps fired from a grenade launcher.

• Go on an "Easter Egg Hunt" in the FBI and CIA archives, computer systems and spy satellite interfaces for evidence of Iranian nuclear technology or anything that would support the pre-Iraq war intelligence–you could win a special edition Cadbury Dirty Bomb Crunch Egg!

• Come join Republican Congressional leaders in egging Russ Feingold's car!

• Search through a huge pile of colorful jellybeans with leaders from President Bush's faith-based initiatives for candies that look like religious icons to auction off for additional funds on eBay–or just let illegal but faithful foreign labor to do it for you.

• Gather 'round First Lady Laura Bush for a dramatic reading of a slim but powerful volume that is not only the funniest thing ever but is also long overdue to become a holiday classic, "The Book of Bunny Suicides."

• And finally, cheer on your favorite White House news correspondents who are fed up with spin in the First Annual Lob a Canned Ham at Scott McClellan Press Conference and Jamboree!

The Internet is officially out of insipid quiz ideas

This was a waste even of my procrastination time. But how cool is that to be deemed kindred erythrocyte-spirits with both a malicious dictator and a trashy pop tart? Pretty effin' awesome indeed. Oh, I am so overworked and starved for amusement.

Your Inner Blood Type is Type A

You seem cool and collected, though a bit shy. You are highly driven and a perfectionist, but that's a side you keep to yourself. Creative and artistic, you are a very unique person who doesn't quite fit in. People accept you more than you realize, seeing you as trustworthy and loyal. You are most compatible with: A and AB Famous Type A's: Britney Spears and Hilter

What's Your Inner Blood Type?

Keeping the ship of fools afloat

His fellow Democrats are reportedly upset with famed left-of-the-left Sen. (and children's book author) Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., for daring to attempt a compromise with Senate Republicans on an immigration bill because they fear the end product will not have provisions as strong as they would like supporting guest worker programs and paths to legal citizenship.

Now, I know I experienced quite the shock to my cognitive order a couple weeks ago when I realized President Bush was the one making the most sense on the immigration issue. He was the one calling for a plan that would provide illegal immigrants already in the United States with conditions they can meet to remain as guest workers and eventually attain legal citizenship, while upping border security and enforcement to keep more immigrants from entering illegally.

Partisans on both sides have serious problems with their most polarized favored approaches. Deporting 11 million people or building a Great Wall(/Electric Fence) of Mexico are both asinine ideas, as is granting illegal immigrants automatic citizenship out of some namby-pamby sense of essential equality and based on blatantly flawed analogies.

I do not understand why so many on the left are getting so upset over treating illegal (oh, I'm sorry, "undocumented") immigration as a crime–it is ILLEGAL immigration. Illegal immigrants do not have political or legal rights in this country, no matter how vocally or in how great a number they rally as if they do. There are legal routes to immigration and citizenship, and those who choose to sneak over the border instead, grand theories of global economic determinism aside, have only themselves to blame for feeling like they have to live "in hiding."

A sovereign nation is well within its rights to deport foreign citizens living illegally within its borders-it's not racism or xenophobia, it's basic nationalistic politics (which one could argue aren't any more morally praiseworthy, but at least they're democratically institutionalized and legitimate). But no one is seriously arguing for something so heavy-handed, and lawmakers (when they're not on vacation, of course) are instead attempting a productive and mutually beneficial compromise. And isn't that precisely what we always complain they chronically fail to do?

Let the Republicans "weaken" the Democratic provisions all they want: Anything they do will only alienate eligible Hispanic voters–who cast 6 percent of all votes in the 2004 presidential election, according to the Pew Hispanic Center, with 40 percent of that going to Bush–and a nice slice of business interests, which can only help the Democrats come November.

And at least something decent might get accomplished in the meantime. Seriously, you know the partisan Congressional sniping has rendered itself wholly unproductive when Dubya is the voice of reason in a domestic policy debate.

Hell, indulging him this one might even distract him from launching more foreign policy disasters to salvage his waterlogged approval numbers.

You can’t hug your children with nuclear arms, but can you still trout-slap your leaders?

I should be shaving some work off the rather pressing heap I've got at the moment, but in perhaps the most persuasive case for procrastination to come along in recent memory, if Dubya could feasibly start dropping nukes on Iran any day now, I don't want to have wasted any of my final, pre-World War III hours as a non-radioactive, tumorous mass of glow-in-the-dark pulp (OK, I arguably already glow in the dark, but still) working on work that was not absolutely imperative.

It started this weekend with this report by Seymour Hersh in The New Yorker (which is required reading for everyone reading this, and it will be on the final exam) detailing the plans the Bush administration is apparently crafting for taking military action against Iran should that be necessary to keep it from gaining nuclear competence.

Though Bush is now trying to write the whole issue off as "wild speculation" (for Hersh is truly one to wantonly toss out baseless accusations with no testimony or documents to back them up–just look at the piss-poor job he did getting it right with Abu Ghraib and the military cover-ups of atrocities in Vietnam) and reassert his commitment to diplomacy with Iran while also claiming it cannot be allowed to develop nuclear weapons, so therefore military action is still "on the table," this is utterly terrifying.

With Iraq, this cast of characters has already proven itself borderline delusional, if not downright psychotic. And even though new calls for cabinet member resignation seem to be popping up every other day (Defense Secretary Rumsfeld now has a third retired general calling for his letter), it's still precisely the same company of fools running the show, for whom admitting to and learning from mistakes is the utmost sign of weakness and basically amounts to fellating the ubiquitous and nefarious "tehr-rists."

So, yes, let's entertain dropping bunker-busting nukes to take out Iran's capabilities–and if we do that, it naturally and obviously follows that the Iranian people will be inspired to rise up and overthrow their government to save us the trouble. You know, just like the Iraqis welcomed us as liberators, but this time they'll thank us with democratic revolution instead of flowers and IEDs.

And the current U.S. political climate makes this all the more unnervingly plausible. (By the way, April 19 is spoken for in the unofficial Freak Typography Commencement of Bombing, Skyrocketing of Presidential Approval and Maintaining of Unaccountable GOP Monarchy through 2008 Pool: that's the anniversary of such spectacular disasters as the Oklahoma City bombing, the fiery end to the siege on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco and the start of my parents' marriage.) As Paul Kruguman noted today in his New York Times column:

And it's not just Mr. Bush's legacy that's at risk. Current polls suggest that the Democrats could take one or both houses of Congress this November, acquiring the ability to launch investigations backed by subpoena power. This could blow the lid off multiple Bush administration scandals. Political analysts openly suggest that an attack on Iran offers Mr. Bush a way to head off this danger, that an appropriately timed military strike could change the domestic political dynamics.

I swear, if the world ends in nuclear holocaust before I get to wear each and every pair of my new spring shoes, I hope at least some cockroaches survive to, whilst gorging on Twinkies, go make lewd feeler-gestures at the White House.

The new (and oddly fitting) face of creationism

Remember "Cy," the creepy yet mesmerizing cyclopean kitten in the news a few months back that lived a mere day with its rare and dramatic disorder?

Well, as if fate and the genetic lottery weren't cruel enough to this feeble feline in life, her mortal remains have been bought up by a group of creationists to exhibit as an agenda-advancing curiosity in their museum and traveling freak show.

In a move that has to be some kind of logical desecration, the "Lost World Museum" purchased Cy’s earthly container for an undisclosed sum to support the notion that "positive" mutations don’t exist; therefore evolution is wrong; therefore creationism is correct.

Genesis, they purport, is a more believable explanation for mutants like Cy than random genetics, what with the "6,000 years of degradation and sin" backing it up and tainting God's pristine gene pool. (Never mind why a just and rational God would create creatures with the potential to suffer horrible malformations that lead to miserable lives and rapid deaths but not the potential to enjoy beneficial variation in the first place, or why worshiping such a God would bring comfort or logical coherence to life.)

Still, in true American spirit, what better way to spread the good word than by charging thrill-seekers to come gawk at grotesque corpses in jars? They're also selling "informational postcards" for a mere $5 (plus $2 shipping) featuring two never-before-published photos of Cy while she was alive, which they advise you to pre-order immediately for yourself, plus your friends and family – as if fundamentalist Christianity doesn't already command ample material for giving children nightmares.

And a swift ruler-whacking to you, Associated Press, for using the phrase "theory of creationism" in your lead – there is no such thing, because scientific theories are by definition testable and falsifiable.

But whatever name it goes by, I think we need some kind of legislation protecting against ideological necrophilia by religious fanatics. As tempted as I am to write my representatives with that suggestion, that might land me a spot on some master list I would prefer to avoid.

Watch out, Grandma

A 26-year-old Palestinian man undergoing mental health care has been charged with making a rather unusual (if you're not a Sharkey, that is) and purportedly joking threat against President Bush, for which he faces up five years in federal prison if convicted, according to an Associated Press report.

Federal grand jurors indicted Arafat Nijmeh on March 23 on two felony counts of "knowingly and willfully" threatening to harm Bush - first by telling two workers at his treatment center that he wanted to castrate Bush, then a day later to Secret Service agents notified by the center.

Though the piece quoted a law professor as calling this "national security gone berserk" in reacting so strongly to what was almost certainly less than serious and could very well have been "delirious rantings of a mental patient," the Secret Service is apparently bored or misguided enough not to care.

So, while you're cursing those fascists running the public library, Grandma, you might want to be mindful of your company.

No more dancing around the polls

It might not be a bad idea to start preparing for another "terrorist attack," given that the latest AP/Ispos poll has clocked our CIA leak-authorizing commander in chief's approval rating at a lowest-ever 36 percent, and approval of the Republican-led Congress at 30 percent with respondents stating 49 to 33 percent that Democrats should control Congress over Republicans.

"These numbers are scary. We've lost every advantage we've ever had," GOP pollster Tony Fabrizio said. "The good news is Democrats don't have much of a plan. The bad news is they may not need one."

Don't quotes like that just warm the cockles of your cardiac apparatus? When they're not even spouting lines about moving into "opportunity zones" for recapturing public praise stronger than ever before, even the cynics have to wonder whether something just might be going on here. Even national security, the most sacred cow of electoral opinion, is up for slaughter:

On an issue the GOP has dominated for decades, Republicans are now locked in a tie with Democrats–41 percent each–on the question of which party people trust to protect the country. Democrats made their biggest national security gains among young men, according to the AP-Ipsos poll, which had a 3 percentage point margin of error.

The public gives Democrats a slight edge on what party would best handle Iraq, a reversal from Election Day 2004.

Hell, at this point, many people would probably trust someone like Ralph Nader or Ross Perot to better handle Iraq, as the current authorities may as well be, to borrow a phrase from one of the greatest television shows ever, chimpanzees with revolvers.

Yet even with the opinion climate remaining stable or chilling further, Democrats will surely still find innovative means of screwing things up come November, 2006 or 2008.

They also run a serious danger of falling into the same trap they did in 2004–running "electable" candidates who inspire no passion in voters eager for change on the rationale that anything at all is preferable to the incumbent malarkey.

Particularly if they try and act on a strategy of remaining utterly unincendiary (read: do nothing and say nothing of substance) to try and give disillusioned Republicans no reason to get out the polls on election day, they just might end up giving their likely supporters no reason to do so either.

So, Democrats, as election season approaches, step up and demand some productive change. You'll make all displeased Americans proud if you stop ignoring the elephant in the room and start acting like asses.

Invasion of the pod-casters

Wednesday's announcement that Katie Couric is leaving NBC's "Today Show" to anchor the "CBS Evening News," far from being a celebratory development for journalism, women or news consumers, merely seems to signal that perhaps the dreaded feel-good, happy-talk news has at last completely infected the medium from bottom to top.

It's not a huge secret that print journalists don't have, shall we say, exceedingly effervescent esteem for many of their supposed counterparts in broadcast. And people like Katie Couric, chipper and fresh from the morning shows, represent the worst of the lot–they appear not as journalists, but as celebrity personalities out to grab viewers and ratings while drawing extravagant salaries, and if someone happens to turn away informed, swell, but that's not the point.

What was great about the evening news back in the day was that anchors and producers didn't feel the need to reduce every story to a sappy lead, talk to viewers like friends or children or juxtapose the profoundly important and the utterly trite to keep viewers' attention while thereby rendering the aggregate phony and pointless.

In short, it wasn't local news. You just couldn't picture Peter Jennings delivering a serious story on the Iraq war one moment, then going, "And those wounded soldiers in Walter Reed will probably be wishing they still had those limbs to cheer on the racers in this year's Wiener Dog Nationals!" without changing tone or emphasis and delivering superfluous smiles through it all.

And that was how it should be, with the evening news as a place to turn for well-delivered and relatively bullshit-free information on at least mildly consequential things going on in the nation and the world–not morning show-style blather on fad diets, parenting tips and dressing to camouflage one's (hypothetical for some of us, of course) figure flaws.

It's not about wanting to get your evening news from a "daddy figure" with the all-important gravitas, as Maureen Dowd mentioned in her Wednesday column–it's about wanting to get your meaningful information from a source that appears to take it seriously.

It's also about how when women come in (case in point: Elizabeth Vargas), the content and delivery always seem to suffer to play to their supposed "strengths" and "areas of interest."

Not that it's a function of gender–I don't watch morning news, but I'm sure there are just as many male "anchors" who are complete tools I wouldn't trust to deliver my pizza much less my information.

Also, not all female broadcast reporters inspire such visceral scorn–some, like Kate Snow or Martha Raddatz, still perform their jobs like professionals, not like coddled little girls trying to redefine the profession at the expense of quality work for the sake of misguided feminism.

For women in fields dominated by men, doing the job well sometimes means doing the job according to norms and standards set by their male predecessors whose work defined the field. It is not oppressive to hold women to the same standards and ideals for performance, and any woman who argues that position is probably mediocre or worse.

A male social worker who performs his job with empathy or a male designer with a refined eye for beauty is not caving and performing his job like a girl–he's performing his job like a good social worker or designer.

Likewise, it is not "sexist" to prefer anchors with pleasant voices who can keep their cutesy comments to themselves and refrain from smiling like condescending mother hens at official sources and viewers alike.

I suppose it all comes down to this: Whatever your gender, if you suck, just be quiet, go away and stop polluting the national news media. At the very least, just stop the hair-frosting, smile-bleaching and deep-tissue tanning already–you don't match yourselves.

Talk about intercepting suspicious packages...

As if the Department of Homeland Security didn't have enough of a credibility problem stemming from its substantive work, it's apparently also got pedophiles handling its public relations.

One of the department's deputy press secretaries, aged 55, was arrested Tuesday for trying to "seduce" someone he thought was a 14-year-old girl but was actually an undercover Florida sheriff's deputy through explicit conversations and "transmission of harmful material" over the Internet, according to a story I just read off the AP Wire.

In artful exercise of discretion that should make us all sleep easier knowing sharp fellows like this one are hard at work protecting our homeland, he supposedly used his work computer, gave the "girl" his government-issued phone numbers, included photos of himself in his office with Homeland Security identification visible and straight-out revealed his name and position.

But I suppose, it's no high-level secret that being a credentialed federal bureaucrat–particularly a smarmy PR lackey–is a potent aphrodisiac for nubile teenage girls who just can't resist unimaginative neckties and shiny security passes.

Seriously, boys, develop a little work ethic: If you're going to be a criminal, at least try and think like one–it might even help you perform your actual jobs with greater, perhaps even serviceable finesse.

And perhaps it's just a byproduct of spending the past 5 or 6 hours in a windstorm of smalltown election results (18 of 24 Wisconsin communities voted yes to "bring the troops home" referendums at last count, by the way), but I can hear the Letterman jokes already: "Yes, little girl, I need you–your country needs you–to help defuse a weapon of mass destruction... in my pants!"

Indeed, I suppose there are worse things to peddle than PR. (Though, granted, not by much.)

The lullaby of the Beltway

In just about the least surprising verdict ever, a federal jury Monday set the stage for the execution of Zacarias Moussaoui, the fabled "twentieth hijacker" in FBI custody at the time of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, by ruling him directly responsible for at least one death.

The story line goes that Moussaoui withheld information from investigators that could, at least in theory, have thwarted the entire plot. As reported by the (world-jarringly Web redesigned) New York Times:

The Justice Department argued that even though he did not take part in the attacks, he deserved to die because at the time of his arrest he willfully concealed detailed knowledge of Al Qaeda's plans to use suicide hijackers to fly planes into buildings.

His lies, a prosecutor told the jury, "made him just as guilty as if he were at the controls of one of those planes."

Funny, you don't tend to see that rationale in other wrongful death cases, in which those who conceal or manipulate information are charged as mere accessories, or for obstructing justice–not as murderers.

But because the Sept. 11 families have already been paid their millions in compensation for the government failures and all the actual perpetrators are off enjoying their 72 martyrs' virgins (or, for the "House"-Frauen und Herren, their martyrs' stacks of scrumptious Macadamia nut pancakes), Moussaoui's got to go down for it all–yes, the jury's verdict suggests they believe he's responsible for each one of the nearly 3,000 deaths–and become a martyr himself.

Now, obviously I wasn't on that jury and I didn't hear the evidence–but when it's reported that high-ranking FBI officials testified that, even if Moussaoui had told them everything he knew, their agency would likely either not have listened, believed him, put the pieces together or acted on the information to halt the attacks, one has to wonder just what conception of "justice" is being served by this bit of legal theatre.

And we all know how the final act is going to play: The perfunctory parade of Sept. 11 families will file through to tearfully or forcefully insist allowing Moussaoui to live would be tantamount to killing their loved ones all over again, as if those loved one's lives are somehow worth less if someone doesn't officially die for taking them, preferably with the survivors getting to watch.

Moussaoui probably is every bit the sociopathic sack of scum he appears and probably would have killed if given the chance–but when the incompetent government behind the intelligence and security screw-ups that failed to stop the Sept. 11 attacks can barely hold together his trial but for the defendant's own self-aggrandizing and stereotypical crazy A-rab outbursts, perhaps all this attention, passion and effort could be better directed toward something that might produce actual reform or substantive change (I think that little report from that little Sept. 11 Commission might have a few ideas scripted for getting belatedly started, but I could be mistaken).

Delivering Moussaoui a lethal injection will not stop crimes and security failures like Sept. 11 from happening again.

It will only momentarily indulge that oh-so-patriotic American fetish for vengeance, as apparently displacing it onto Iraqi civilians and indefinite military detainees just isn't doing it for us anymore.