indeed. heh.

...since Mr. Bush took office, the left has belatedly rediscovered humor as a political tool...

Political analysis from the New York Times, including this staggering insight:

After Abbie Hoffman and the Yippies disappeared from the scene in the mid-70's, though, lefty politics took a turn for the earnest, the sensitive and the politically correct.

Well, you know, except for the fact that Abbie Hoffman (aka Barry Freed) was on the run from a cocaine conviction after 1973 and that the Yippies never did much of anything after '69 or so, I'd say this is a pretty sharp analysis.

It's a shame we didn't start up something like Saturday Night Live. We could have used it when Nixon and Ford and Reagan were around.

To give credit where credit is due, you can't overestimate the psychological boost to a team from trading Dennis Miller for, well, not having Dennis Miller.

via Tom Tomorrow

yikes

Someone stole The Scream.

and our top domestic stories moving into the Sunday news shows are

Democratic senators on the "No Fly" list, Everybody and his brother condemns the Swift Boat vets, the Convention: Republican mayor, national Republicans shut down city (which is going to lose money), and Man fired for "heckling" the President (from the AP story: Last month, the Charleston City Council apologized to two protesters arrested for wearing anti-Bush T-shirts to the president's July 4 rally. The pair were taken from the event in restraints after revealing T-shirts with Bush's name crossed out on the front and the words "Love America, Hate Bush" on the back. Trespassing charges were ultimately dismissed.").

Good luck staying on message, guys.

I am innocent of this man's blood. Look to it yourselves.

The ever-nimble Weekly Standard scrambles up the hawser while washing their paws

Republicans find themselves supporting a candidate, George W. Bush, with a slender and ambiguous military record against a man whose combat heroism has never (until now) been disputed. Further--and here we'll let slip a thinly disguised secret--Republicans are supporting a candidate that relatively few of them find personally or politically appealing. This is not the choice Republicans are supposed to be faced with. The 1990s were far better. In those days the Democrats did the proper thing, nominating a draft-dodger to run against George H.W. Bush, who was the youngest combat pilot in the Pacific theater in World War II, and then later, in 1996, against Bob Dole, who left a portion of his body on the beach at Anzio.

Republicans have no such luck this time, and so they scramble to reassure themselves that they nevertheless are doing the right thing, voting against a war hero. The simplest way to do this is to convince themselves that the war hero isn't really a war hero. If sufficient doubt about Kerry's record can be raised, we can vote for Bush without remorse. But the calculations are transparently desperate. Reading some of the anti-Kerry attacks over the last several weeks, you might conclude that this is the new conservative position: A veteran who volunteered for combat duty, spent four months under fire in Vietnam, and then exaggerated a bit so he could go home early is the inferior, morally and otherwise, of a man who had his father pull strings so he wouldn't have to go to Vietnam in the first place.

via Uggabugga

solidarity for me, but not for thee

Atrios has some stuff to say to liberal hawks who are upset because he called them out on dismissing - then and now - people who are against the war

As for being angry? Well, yes, I'm angry. No matter what war one imagined was going to be fought, whether it was "Ogged's war" or "Tom's war" or "Jack's war," this was the Bush administration's war. They cynically used it it as a political ploy for election 2002. They went after everyone who opposed it. They still sell "Freedom Fries" in the House cafeteria. Their lies for justifying the war were dissolving in realtime, even as they came up with more. Yes, I am angry that otherwise intelligent people climbed aboard this twisted and nakedly cynical endeavor which was clearly a fraud from start to finish. But, no, I don't question the motives of all who did - just the ones who believe that by being wrong they were proven right.

What he said.

also organic milk tastes better (you know, in my personal legally-protected opinion)

You probably don't want to read about this before breakfast.

Fox doesn't want you to read about it at all.

The FDA doesn't think you need to know if you're consuming it.

Monsanto thinks it should be illegal to tell you you're not.

Friends of Monsanto (who produce RBGH) currently working in Washington:

Linda Fisher, Deputy Director, EPA - ex V.P. Of Monsanto & chief lobbyist

Donald Rumsfeld, Sec. of Defense - ex Pres of Searle Pharmaceuticals, owned by Monsanto

John L. Henshaw, Asst. Sec. of Labor for OSHA - A 20-year veteran of Monsanto

Ann Veneman, Sec. of Agriculture - Bd. of Dir. Calgene Pharmaceuticals, owned by Monsanto

Mitch Daniels, Dir. of the Office of Management and Budget - V.P. Eli Lilly Pharm.

So what's the tie-in between Daniels and Monsanto? Eli Lilly and Monsanto developed the genetically engineered bovine growth hormone. Lilly "owns" the European "franchise." ...

Former Monsanto attorney Clarence Thomas, Supreme Court

Monsanto was also the largest single donor to the campaigns of John Ashcroft, Dept. of Justice [sic]

Other agrichemical/Government hybrids:

David W. Beier, ex-head of Government Affairs, Genentech, Inc., was Gore's chief domestic policy advisor

Michael A. Friedman, M.D, ex acting commissioner of the FDA - Dept. of Health & Human Services, now senior V.P. for clinical affairs at G. D. Searle & Co., a pharmaceutical division of Monsanto.

Michael (Mickey) Kantor, ex Secretary of the Dept. of Commerce, ex Trade Representative of the United States, a member of the OilSpace, Inc. Advisory Board, a partner at Mayer, Brown & Platt law firm, and now - a member of the board of directors of Monsanto. (Advisor Board of OilSpace, Inc.?!?)

Josh King, ex director of production for White House events, now director of global communication in the Washington, D.C. office of Monsanto.

Terry Medley, ex administrator of the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) of the USDA, ex chair and vice-chair of the USDA's Biotechnology Council, ex member of the FDA food advisory committee, and now Director of Regulatory and External Affairs of Dupont Corporation's Agricultural Enterprise.

Margaret Miller, former chemical laboratory supervisor for Monsanto, now Deputy Director of Human Food Safety and Consultative Services, New Animal Drug Evaluation Office, Center for Veterinary Medicine in the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA). *(See note at end of this list)

Michael Phillips, recently with the National Academy of Science Board on Agriculture, now the head of regulatory affairs, for the Biotechnology Industry Organization. (BIO), (See L. Val Giddings above)

William D. Ruckelshaus, ex chief administrator of "our" EPA, now (and for the past 12 years) a member of the board of directors of Monsanto.

Michael Taylor, ex legal advisor to the FDA's Bureau of Medical Devices and Bureau of Foods, later executive assistant to the Commissioner of the FDA, still later a partner at the law firm of King & Spaulding where he supervised a nine-lawyer group whose clients included Monsanto Agricultural Company, still later Deputy Commissioner for Policy at the FDA, and later with the law firm of King & Spaulding, now head of the Washington, D.C. office of Monsanto.*(See note at end of this list)

Lidia Watrud, ex microbial biotechnology researcher at Monsanto in St. Louis, Missouri, now with the EPA's Environmental Effects Laboratory, Western Ecology Division.

Jack Watson, ex chief of staff to the President of the United States, Jimmy Carter, now a staff lawyer with Monsanto in Washington, D.C.

Clayton K. Yeutter, ex Secretary of the USDA, ex U.S. Trade Representative (who led the U.S. team in negotiating the U.S. Canada Free Trade Agreement and helped launch the Uruguay Round of the GATT negotiations), now a member of the board of directors of Mycogen Corporation, whose majority owner is Dow AgroSciences, a wholly owned subsidiary of The Dow Chemical Company.

Larry Zeph, ex biologist in the Office of Prevention, Pesticides, and Toxic Substances, EPA, now Regulatory Science Manager at Pioneer Hi-Bred International.

*(The note) Margaret Miller, Michael Taylor, and Suzanne Sechen (an FDA "primary reviewer for all rbST and other dairy drug production applications") were the subjects of a GAO investigation in 1994 for their role in the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's approval of Posilac, Monsanto's formulation of recombinant bovine growth hormone (rbST or rBGH). The GAO Office found "no conflicting financial interests with respect to the drug's approval" and only "one minor deviation from now superseded FDA regulations". (Quotations are from the 1994 GAO report).

Also organic milk tastes better. Did I mention that? Although of course that's just a subjective opinion from one person who doesn't particularly want to get sued.

oh, yuck.

The Times with some thoughts from thoughtful Republican "poet of loneliness" Vincent Gallo (nws)

I think we're all pleased to hear that despite owning a multi-million dollar co-op in the Village, Mr. Gallo continues to maintain his almost certainly rent-controlled apartment. Way to stand up for the rights of the small businessman in an ownership society, dude.

woops

Miller also expressed regret for failing to include sexless white people in bad bathing suits on its series of cans commemorating beach movies

Miller Brewing Co. has apologized for failing to include black artists on its series of cans commemorating the 50th anniversary of rock 'n' roll. The cans, decorated with Rolling Stone cover shots, feature Elvis Presley, Blondie, Alice Cooper, Bon Jovi, Def Leppard and Willie Nelson.

Let's see: Little Richard - started before Elvis, taught Paul McCartney how to say "woooo." Willie Nelson: Does not actually sing rock, but has great hair.

That works.

and the people of Florida are so happy with the Bush boys right now

Looks as if there may be some trouble for Our Fearless Leader in the Florida senatorial race

If trial lawyers are so bad, why has the Bush administration dispatched one to seek an open U.S. Senate seat in Florida now held by a Democrat?

The answer seems obvious: It hoped no one would notice.

But that would have taken some doing, because the anointed one, Mel Martinez, President Bush's former Housing secretary, is no less than the one-time president of the Florida trial lawyers' association.

And, alas for Karl Rove, a few people have caught on. One of them is a rich Florida Republican who is attempting to buy the Senate seat for himself. The primary is Aug. 31, the Tuesday of the Republican National Convention (see below).

Mr. Money Bags (Doug Gallagher, a 55-year-old Miami software executive who already has dumped almost $6 million of his stash into the race) probably will not win the Republican nomination, but he's having a great time trying, and his campaign is highlighting a delicious bit of presidential-level hypocrisy.

Let's pause here briefly to recall that Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and virtually every other Republican of note hammers away at the supposed villany of trial lawyers (which recently has been aimed more or less at Democratic vice presidential nominee John Edwards, a successful personal injury lawyer before entering politics).

Bush has been claiming recently that it's a line-in-the-sand sort of thing.

"I don't think you can be pro-patient and pro-trial lawyer at the same time," Bush says sometimes in routine campaign speeches. "I think you've got to make your choice, and I've made my choice."

Except, of course, in the Senate race in Florida (or when he nominated Martinez to the HUD job and acclaimed him, for fleeing Cuba at 15 and making good in his new homeland, as "the embodiment of the American dream.")

Gallagher took the president's high-level bad-mouthing of Martinez' profession to heart.

At a debate earlier this month, Gallagher asked Martinez whether he supported Bush's proposal to limit pain-and-suffering damages in lawsuits Ñ but he phrased it in a distinctively and telling Florida way.

"Will you join Mickey Mouse, Shamu, me and even the Lord himself by finally endorsing a $250,000 cap on medical malpratice?" Gallagher demanded.

Well, no, as a matter of fact, Martinez wouldn't, even as he was forced to concede that his former Orlando law firm had handled suits against Walt Disney World, SeaWorld, and the First Baptist Church of Orlando. (Martinez supports a pain-and-suffering cap of no less than $500,000).