Humanity's theme song

Until we face up, that is.

Who gives a shit (when you're in love)

Kathleen Parker kills it.

When do rules for the common good cross the line?

This woman is fucking genius. And not bad on the eyes, either.

Nice to see a little courage in the national media.

Time for everyone to step up and face the more honest music.

But I've got Jack Johnson to tend to.



I met someone. I know it's not by the book. When you first meet. But I think I'm in love. Until I hear different, at least.

It's a great feeling.

And when you feel that, who gives a shit about anything else, frankly.

Brilliant as all shit, Kathleen.

But I hope you can forgive me.

I got bigger things on the mind, at the moment.

Reaping the harvest of tough seeds

There is far too much I could speak to in this story to do so in one sitting 20 minutes before kids arrive.

Despite resources, players reluctant to seek help

But here's the bottom line:

Whether we have the courage to admit it or not, this is all about the macho attitude in both football and the culture at large and its inability to just face, honestly, that it just doesn't understand well enough the emotional undercurrents of the world that the tough posturing impacts. And many of those consequences are not good, often tragic, and squarely the responsibility of those doing the posturing and bullying and all of the ugly ways that people try to substitute aggression for understanding. And, in doing so, avoid responsibility for the same.

Even in football. And in baseball. And politics. And the economy. And everywhere, really.

It's time to face up. And to give up the bullshit.

After a discussion, yesterday, with a teacher, I'm pretty convinced that I have a relatively strong understanding of this dynamic. And that teachers and counselors and everyone involved are doing their darndest to work miracles to compensate for the failures of a culture, at large, on these issues.

Who's responsible for all of this?

Why don't we ask someone who knows.



Along with the thought process that tough guy posturing has nothing to do with any of this, a lot of folks suffer and die. All in the name of that pride.

Perhaps something more honest.

Translation:

Something that genuinely cares for everyone involved.

For all of our sakes.

Prove them wrong

What real balance in the world sounds like.



Those who say it doesn't exist wouldn't know any different.

Prove them wrong.

With all the love in our hearts.

Invest in geese, kill the hatchet

About time someone looked out for the geese.

Can we save the goose that lays the golden eggs?

The question America needs to ask themselves, today, is are we going to trust guys like Bill who grow businesses for a living?

Or are we going to trust the plethora of politicians, economists, analysts, and the rest who talk a big game, but whose track record - as well as their words, if you have an idea of more sensible economic policies - demonstrate that they do not understand the day-to-day realities of growing a healthy economy?

Ironically, out of their envy and suspicion, many American politicians and plenty of average Americans perpetually kill this particular goose.

The smarter money bets on the goose. Not the hatchet.

Most people bet on the hatchet. And invest themselves in that decision.

With only one logical result: dead goose.

About time we switched up our investments.

Too clever

The logical consequence of postmodern nihilism. And any culture that stops giving a shit about honest discussion and debate.

Suicide Note

Too clever, aren't we?



All, all too clever.

Progress = less freedom (just ask the dead)

Congratulations, everyone. It's finally happened. Freedom, it seems, is finally in retreat.

 Canadian 'Blogfather' faces Iran death penalty

Freedom is dangerous, you see.

Freedom causes poverty. And unemployment. And bad housing loans. And sin. And terrorism. And child rape. And every failure your life has ever known. Not to mention really bad cases of acne. And every other justification these fine gentlemen can glean from you to kill this man.

Thanks, folks.


For finally cleaning up the free market. And all the filth it inspires.

Journalist Ehmad Baghi given 7 year sentence

And the vermin who challenge our unquestionable wisdom.



Courage is showing these men who's boss.

Love your neighbor is for punks.

And none of us are responsible.

Progress is finally upon us.

It really doesn't get any better than this.

Progress (Means Calling Congress Utterly Useless To Their Sullen, Deathly Serious, Freshly Made Up Faces)

Stephen Colbert clowns Congress on their own home court. Is no home safe anymore? What will happen to the children?

John Conyers (D.-Michigan and world class dick) opens the show. By being himself.



Really? Is it possible for Democrats and their sad, red-state bedfellows to make themselves anymore thoroughly mockworthy? As it turns out. Si, si senor. Ariba, ariba.

But wait. Stephen calls Senator Steve King a pitiful cornhusking homo to his face. No I mean it.



Milwaukee's Best was wrong. It just got way better. With potential, one day, for substantially less shitty inebriants.

Texas public education at work

Americans looks more and more like the Taliban the more we hate them. Only slightly fatter.

Texas ed board adopts resolution limiting Islam in textbooks

Texas: Makin' Al Queda look classy since they lost all that weight.

Moving forward

The most solid analysis of the current economic malaise and its causes that I have read to date.

A Nation of Peasants?

It takes courage to look at ourselves and the world honestly. It is courage that most folks, in politics, at least, but really, likely, in the larger world, as well, are avoiding, at this point.

But it is only this kind of courage that is going to get us through.

It takes no courage to see the splinters in our neighbors' eyes. Courage is looking at the beams in our own.

It is time for that kind of courage. For reals, homefries.

For all our sakes. Our own, especially.

And good riddance

R.I.P. Political Establishment

How wrong I was

If the release of Bob Woodward's new tell-all book, Obama's Wars, confirms anything for me, it is that, perhaps my children should consider professions other than elected office, journalism or anything remotely political.

Woodward Lifts Lid on Backbiting

Woodward Book Centers on Dissention, Infighting

And that these people are hardly the folks that any of us should be taking orders from.

And, much more importantly, these are not folks I'd want my kids looking up to. Or any of us, for that matter.

I want my kids to look to the only people they can really count on in life. People who genuinely care about them.

How sad that I once thought that might be found among folks in politics.

How completely clear to me, today, just how wrong I was.

More than any of the rest, I hope they become people who really care.

Because, truth be told, those are the only people I do, or ever will, really trust.

A damned shame

For those of you who blame your freedom for your woes in life.

Ahmadinejad blames capitalism for poverty

You're in good company.

Thanks for selling us all so short, by the way.

And thanks for giving this guy exactly the ammunition he needs to justify his tyrannical rule.

What would we ever do without that kind of wisdom?

The opposite of this guy, I suppose.

What a damned shame that'd be.

What really matters

Jack clowns the rest of us and offers the best commentary on the music industry and what we've done to it I've ever heard.



This dude is literally incapable of making bad music.

You think you're having a good time. And then he gets you thinking. And maybe touches you. And makes you believe that perhaps, maybe music could do some good in the world. For something other than our pocketbooks.

Makes me want to fall in love, in the meantime.

And do good, for real.

Lady Gaga can have her money.

Jack Johnson is what music was made for.

The kind that really matters, that is.

Real progress. Hold the bullshit.

In stark contrast to politics. Left and right.

Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh Happy Making $36,000 A Year Working for Amazon

Real progress. Hold the bullshit.

Not learning the lesson

As an active recycler in a town particularly friendly to recylcing, I must say that if environmentalists could choose one policy that would most undermine environmental commitments, mandatory recycling - like the programs Jeff describes in Brookline and Cleveland - is the one. For any recycler familiar with the recyling habits of most folks, to any thoughtful observer, this should be a non-starter right out of the gates. Unless you're angling for serious backlash, I suppose.

Get excited about recycling? Not me.

I also welcome the debate, Jeff is initiating, here. I recycle because I think it's the right thing to do. But, I have to say, that leftist activism in the last 10 years has made me far more skeptical of the left-wing causes I've supported in the past, not more. Ironic, but true. And the fact that they can't hear that makes me all the more skeptical and prone to give up their causes, is the truth.

But, the truth is, I'm more committed to doing the right thing than just telling leftists to fuck off. So I want to hear what Jeff has to say.

Like so many issues, this is a discussion that deserves a more honest debate and assessment rather than the mindless bullshit that has passes for politics, these days.

Perhaps it's about time we learned some of our lessons.

Excuses make Baby Jesus cry

Truth is, we'll always have excuses for ourselves. For our animus and recrimination. For our fear and desire to overpower. For our greed and our selfishness. For our dishonesty and our cruelty.

One thing we really will always have plenty of is excuses.

And we can always act on those excuses. Or we can take some more honest responsibility in the world. Fundamentally, those are our two most important choices we have.

And the world will now and forever be a consequence of our taking responsibility for the choices we make with this one shot at life's adventures we have or our making excuses for why we cannot.

Me, especially. Says the now and future king of excuses.

That's what the world is, these days. And always. That's a fact.

Whether we want to take responsibility for that fact or not.

But what tomorrow is depends entirely us.

Whether our excuses have anything to say on the matter or not.

But love matters more

Facts, as it turns out, are more stubborn than people. Or their power. Or anything else, for that matter.

But love matters more.

What's the use, really, of stubborn facts, after all, without love enough to do any real good with them?

Not a damn thing. Says the student to his teacher. The man to his wife. The mother to her child. The child in her own heart.

Not a goddamned thing.

Real progress doesn't need permission

The reason I don't trust people in power in any government in any time to get questions of liberty right.

Justice Breyer: First Amendment Probably Doesn't Protect Burning The Koran

Because they get it wrong more often than they get it right.

And then they pass on. And future generations always liberalize. Always. Without exception.

And that is the long established road of progress. No matter Stephen Breyer's or anyone's opinions to the contrary.

Or anyone in power. Or anyone else, for that matter.

No matter how infallible we might otherwise wish we might be.

Outclassing your critics

It never ceases to amaze me how younger generations, for all their often serious and copious faults, so frequently outclass their elders.

Bush Forfeits Heisman

"'It is for these reasons that I have made the difficult decision to forfeit my title as Heisman winner of 2005,' the statement read. 'The persistent media speculation regarding allegations dating back to my years at USC has been both painful and distracting. In no way should the storm around these allegations reflect in any way on the dignity of this award, nor on any other institutions or individuals. Nor should it distract from outstanding performances and hard-earned achievements either in the past, present or future.

'For the rest of my days, I will continue to strive to demonstrate through my actions and words that I was deserving of the confidence placed in me by the Heisman Trophy Trust. I would like to begin in this effort by turning a negative situation into a positive one by working with the Trustees to establish an educational program which will assist student-athletes and their families avoid some of the mistakes that I made. I am determined to view this event as an opportunity to help others and to advance the values and mission of the Heisman Trophy Trust.'"

This is the serious gap between younger and older generations, I'm convinced, right now. A much greater appreciation that mistakes don't make the man. And a focus on moving forward over the ugly, foolish, nasty recrimination that has been so dominant in the media, as of late. And responsible for so much of what is wrong in world, at this point.

For all of their bluster about being grownups, it's a sign of their immaturity, ironically.

And Reggie Bush, here, outclasses them all. Past and all.

A lot of Bush's critics have much to learn from this talented young man, right now. I have serious doubts that they will learn their lessons. But they won't be around, forever, either. And a younger generation, as always, will bring a more forgiving attitude and more real life to this life we live.

And no matter what the news media has to say, Reggie. Fuck 'em. They have their jobs. You have yours. Just keep outclassing them. And let them get things figured out. Or not.

World needs more progress like this young man has to offer. Quite enough of the alternative. Source of the most of the world's fucking up, is the truth.

Nice to know that some people, at least, actually learn their lesson.

If we want hell, then hell's what we'll have

The bottom line for humanity.



"It was you, it was me, we've all got the blood on our hands. We only receive what we demand. And if we want hell, then hell's what we'll have."

Step up, America (and everyone else, too)

All Americans say things with which I disagree. Faisal Abdul Rauf is but one of many of them. Though, generally, I must say, I have much more to praise about this man than disapprove. And, in this matter, he is right. Is the bottom line. There is much for America to learn from this very decent imam.

Ground Zero Mosque Imam: "Had I Known This Would Happen We Would Never Have Done This"

This man is right that the central problem in contemporary politics is not of one group against another. It is not right versus left. Or Christian versus Muslim. Or the West versus the rest.

It is all of us finding the courage. To live our values. To be our best selves. And to stare down the radical impulses among us.

And he is right about the stakes.

Radicals of all stripes - terrorists just being one brutal variation - will only be effectively neutralized when moderates find the strength to tell them to fuck off. And that bullying will not be the way of liberal democratic politics. Which is appropriate since bullying is the opposite of liberal democratic politics. For those who actually care about liberty. Or democracy. Or any of those things we pretend to care about. When we're not pretending to be everything we pretend in our lives.

And for those who genuinely care about people. For real. Of which radicals do not count themselves. And neither should they be counted seriously. In matters of right and wrong, that is. Or anything serious, for that matter.

And all radicals - radicals of the right, and those waging this campaign to move this mosque, in particular and all hateful bullies for purposes of religion or national pride; radicals of the left, and those waging the campaign to stop engaging terrorists and violent fanatics with military force, especially, and all hateful bullies for the purposes of envy and equality or any variation of secular causes; radicals of Islam, terrorists, namely, and all of their cowardly supporters; radicals of Christianity; radicals of Zionism; and radicals of every variation - will only stop dominating contemporary liberal democratic politics and it's infinite illiberal bastardizations when honest people - moderates, we call them - step forward and stop letting these assholes dominate.

And the only way to stop letting radical assholes dominate is to take liberal values seriously. Liberal meaning liberty. Freedom. For the not-such-irredeemable-assholes among us.

And to stop letting radicals bully and manipulate those same not-quite-irredeemable assholes into being much bigger assholes than those still small quiet voices, our more honest consciences, might otherwise suggest.

The assholes, in other words, need to be stared down. Real courage must lead. And cowards follow. And not the other way around.

I am tired of watching bullies and cowards dominate. And the only way for that to change is for rest of us cowards to find the courage to challenge them. And to be bigger than our cowardice might otherwise suggest.

Translation: Step up, America. And everyone else, for that matter. Now is your chance.

If you give a shit about anything that really matters, that is.

Jack says it as well. Perhaps he might help you find the courage. Someone needs to. That's for sure. Perhaps it may just be you.

Bearing strength despite our weakness

How eminently American to have good and decent Muslims show up their fellow non-Muslim Americans in their faith in our core American values.

Translation: Step up, America. You're gettin' schooled.

Building on Faith

With all due respect to the New York Times and Feisal Abdul Rauf, the man heading up the Cordoba House, I am reposting a substantial portion of this enormously thoughtful piece:

"Cordoba House will be built on the two fundamental commandments common to Judaism, Christianity and Islam: to love the Lord our creator with all of our hearts, minds, souls and strength; and to love our neighbors as we love ourselves. We want to foster a culture of worship authentic to each religious tradition, and also a culture of forging personal bonds across religious traditions.

I do not underestimate the challenges that will be involved in bringing our work to completion. (Construction has not even begun yet.) I know there will be interest in our financing, and so we will clearly identify all of our financial backers.

Lost amid the commotion is the good that has come out of the recent discussion. I want to draw attention, specifically, to the open, law-based and tolerant actions that have taken place, and that are particularly striking for Muslims.

President Obama and Mayor Michael Bloomberg both spoke out in support of our project. As I traveled overseas, I saw firsthand how their words and actions made a tremendous impact on the Muslim street and on Muslim leaders. It was striking: a Christian president and a Jewish mayor of New York supporting the rights of Muslims. Their statements sent a powerful message about what America stands for, and will be remembered as a milestone in improving American-Muslim relations.

The wonderful outpouring of support for our right to build this community center from across the social, religious and political spectrum seriously undermines the ability of anti-American radicals to recruit young, impressionable Muslims by falsely claiming that America persecutes Muslims for their faith. These efforts by radicals at distortion endanger our national security and the personal security of Americans worldwide. This is why Americans must not back away from completion of this project. If we do, we cede the discourse and, essentially, our future to radicals on both sides. The paradigm of a clash between the West and the Muslim world will continue, as it has in recent decades at terrible cost. It is a paradigm we must shift.

From those who recognize our rights, from grassroots organizers to heads of state, I sense a global desire to build on this positive momentum and to be part of a global movement to heal relations and bring peace. This is an opportunity we must grasp.

I therefore call upon all Americans to rise to this challenge. Let us commemorate the anniversary of 9/11 by pausing to reflect and meditate and tone down the vitriol and rhetoric that serves only to strengthen the radicals and weaken our friends’ belief in our values.

The very word 'islam' comes from a word cognate to shalom, which means peace in Hebrew. The Koran declares in its 36th chapter, regarded by the Prophet Muhammad as the heart of the Koran, in a verse deemed the heart of this chapter, 'Peace is a word spoken from a merciful Lord.'

How better to commemorate 9/11 than to urge our fellow Muslims, fellow Christians and fellow Jews to follow the fundamental common impulse of our great faith traditions?"

If there is one document to read in this entire debate, this is the one. For the sake of the New York Times advertising department and a thoughtful understanding of what a powerful stand for American values looks like, I highly recommend reading the remarkably engaging original column.

How ironic that America would become so inflamed about something so resolutely American.

But that is the long history of humanity, isn't it? To aggressively take after that which is our best selves. To bear weakness against our strength.

Perhaps knowing that history might offer a path to genuine progress, after all.

Pride and humility, and knowing the difference

And then George goes and buys me flowers.

The environmental movement in retreat

"In the middle of the 20th century, Americans, impressed by the government's mobilization of society for victory in World War II, were, Mead says, 'intoxicated with social and environmental engineering of all kinds." They had, for example, serene confidence that 'urban renewal' would produce 'model cities.' Back then, environmentalism was skepticism.

It was akin to the dissent of Jane Jacobs, author of the 1961 book 'The Death and Life of Great American Cities.' She argued that ambitious social engineers such as New York's Robert Moses were, by their ten-thumbed interventions in complex organisms such as cities, disrupting social ecosystems. The apotheosis of technocratic experts such as McGeorge Bundy and Robert McNamara gave us 'nation-building' in conjunction with a war of attrition -- the crucial metric supposedly was body counts -- in a Southeast Asian peasant society. Over time, Mead says, 'experts lost their mystique':

'An increasingly skeptical public started to notice that 'experts' weren't angels descending immaculately from heaven bearing infallible revelations from God. They were fallible human beings with mortgages to pay and funds to raise. They disagreed with one another and they colluded with their friends and supporters like everyone else.'

And expertise was annoyingly changeable. Experts said margarine was the healthy alternative to butter -- until they said its trans fats made it harmful.

Environmentalism began as Bambi doing battle with Godzillas, such as the Army Corps of Engineers. Then, says Mead, environmentalism became Godzilla, an advocate of 'a big and simple fix for all that ails us: a global carbon cap. One big problem, one big fix.' Mead continues:

'Never mind that the leading green political strategy (to stop global warming by a treaty that gains unanimous consent among 190-plus countries and is then ratified by 67 votes in a Senate that rejected Kyoto 95 to 0) is and always has been so cluelessly unrealistic as to be clinically insane. The experts decree and we rubes are not to think but to honor and obey.'

The essence of progressivism, of which environmentalism has become an appendage, is the faith that all will be well once we have concentrated enough power in Washington and have concentrated enough Washington power in the executive branch and have concentrated enough 'experts' in that branch. Hence the Environmental Protection Agency proposes to do what the elected representatives of the rubes refuse to do in limiting greenhouse gases. Mead says of today's environmental movement:

'It proposes big economic and social interventions and denies that unintended consequences and new information could vitiate the power of its recommendations. It knows what is good for us, and its knowledge is backed up by the awesome power and majesty of the peer review process. The political, cultural, business and scientific establishments stand firmly behind global warming today -- just as they once stood firmly behind Robert Moses, urban renewal and big dams. They tell us it's a sin to question the consensus, the sign of bad moral character to doubt. Bambi, look in the mirror. You will see Godzilla looking back.'

Mead, who says that he is a skeptic about climate policy rather than climate science, says that the environmental movement has 'become the voice of the establishment, of the tenured, of the technocrats.' This is the wrong thing to be in 'Recovery Summer' while the nation wonders about the whereabouts of the robust recovery the experts forecast."

Perhaps it is time to humble our notions of power. And how it can solve all. Perhaps we are not wholly imcomparable with those who have known how to overpower problems of yore. Perhaps the temptation of pride and power is unremitting. Perhaps honest humility is patient effort.

But perhaps we can learn to tell the difference.

Enough is enough

Jeff Jacoby, like George Will, confuses piety, disillusionment, and skepticism with wisdom in his otherwise thoughtfully composed column in today's Boston Globe.

Victims on the road to 'peace'

"But far from opposing a 'peace process’ meant to push Israel into ever-deeper concessions, retreats, and self-endangerment, terrorists — whether affiliated with Hamas or with Fatah — seek to accelerate it. The two Palestinian factions may be at war with each other, but they have always been as one in rejecting Israel’s existence as the sovereign state of the Jewish people. So long as they refuse to budge from that position, Israeli-Palestinian peace is impossible."

It's a tempting and clever interpretation of events. Too clever by half.

There is no hope for peace. If I don't acknowledge what's at stake. What people involved are really pained about. If I can reframe them as whatever I please. To ignore honest concerns.

The Palestinians, you see, by this interpretation, are not peoples angry and embittered about being expelled forcibly by Israelis from their homes and lives when Israel was founded. They are not a people tired and fed up with Israeli occupation and the restrictions and real fears for safety it persistently imposes on their lives. They are not peoples genuinely grieving the loss of lives that have taken place over the course of this long, bloody, foolish history.

The Palestinians, you see, are heartless murderers. All of them. They are systemactically unwilling of humanity, you see. Which justifies all of the rest, you see. And justifies why only military strength can put the thumb firmly on the trigger fingers of those who would otherwise murder innocent Israelis.

It's a tempting interpretation. A clever one. And a thoroughly self-righteous one. That maintains the bloodletting.

One very much similar to the tempting, clever, self-righteous interpretation of Palestinians that Israelis have murdered their way into a Jewish state meant to oppress, occupy, and let the blood of innocent Palestinians who want nothing other than to live their lives in peace.

They are both patently untrue, of course. And involved, sophisticated, and deceptive means of avoiding the responsibility that each party has in the bloodshed and bitterness of the last 100 years in this region.

And people like Jeff Jacoby and George Will make life difficult for those who would unravel that ugly and self-deceptive legacy.

And so they do.

And so would-be statesmen like Benjamin Netanyahu and would-be leaders like Mahmoud Abbas (who has a long journey, to be sure, before he is a responsible leader for the Palestinian peace and a more trustworthy partner for peace) move forward and let the Jeff Jacoby's and George Will's of the world wring their hands and predict failure. Because they were never really committed to a peaceful resolution of this unrelenting human tragedy, in the first place.

And so they weren't. And so they are ignored until they can offer a vision of something other than unflagging war.

Plenty of figures in this tragedy who will die never accepting peace. And so they will. Some of them, those who murder, against their will. And so it goes.

In the meantime, the rest of us have work to do.

There's too many lives at stake to stand around pretending that they can't be saved for good. Because Jeff and George say so.

Let wither the bitter fruits of sanctimony

How refreshing to begin with a more reasonable timeline. And two partners that look to be genuinely committed to peace.

Israelis, Palestinians Agree to Second Round of Talks

"In an early sign of promise, Israeli and Palestinian leaders pledged Thursday in a cordial first round of talks to keep meeting at regular intervals, aiming to nail down a framework for overcoming deep disputes and achieving lasting peace within a year."

The genuine commitment is what will either make or break this and every round.

The bottom line in this process has always been:

Either Palestinians and Israelis want peace and are more committed to ending senseless deaths than leveraging for concessions or not.

Sadly, for all the lives lost, this is the only thing that ever mattered anyway. And the only thing most future Palestinians and Israelis will ever really remember.

How tragic all those who have died in the name of that pride. How sad that so many in the West and the Middle East have contributed to those deaths by supporting the leveraging.

How hopeful that we may, perhaps, finally let wither the bitter fruits of that sanctimony.

Making the peace

"I didn't come here to make an argument. I came here today to make peace. I didn't come here today to play a blame game where even the winners lose. Everybody loses if there's no peace. I came here to achieve a peace that will bring a lasting benefit to us all. I didn't come here to find excuses or to make them. I came here to find solutions."

Netanyahu: "Our Goal Is To Forge A Secure And Durable Peace Between Israelis And Palestinians"

That's what it looks like to be responsible. A peace agreement will happen when all parties make this commitment. It will not happen with any of us, including those making their observations public, dropping that ball.

Make peace. Stop making excuses. And if you can't, be prepared to not be taken seriously until we get there.

That's what leadership looks like in this region.

Ignore the whining. Commit to peace. Fulfill the agreements to establish security for both Palestinians and Israelis. Build a commitment to peace within populations over time.

And ignore the naysayers. Including the ones killing civilians. And capture or kill those folks, in the meantime.

Everything else is political theater.

Thanks for your opinion to the contrary.

Now we have a peace to establish.

So goddamn glad

Watching the reactions in the American press - one of the pettier, more self-centered, self-glorifying groups of people I've ever followed in my life - to President Obama's speech on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, I am so goddamn glad I never went into politics as a profession.

Watching these assholes at work - Rachel Maddow, on the left, Charles Krauthammer, on the right, and all the rest of the assholes I had the misfortune to watch advance their petty, little self-centered agendas - I've definitely come to the conclusion that these dicks do not deserve as much attention or seriousness as they inexplicably get.

I am without doubt, anymore, that these are the last people on earth - outside of terrorists and despots, perhaps - with whom I would ever want to spend any substantial period of time.

The President is not without his flaws. The military efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan have not been without error. Nothing is. That's the reality of life we likely most need to come to terms with, today.

But the last people any of us should be listening to for any serious reflection on anything in America, I think, are the assholes who are constantly sharing their opinions on television for a living. They are a small-minded, self-serving class of people, generally, all too proud of their sad, small-minded little opinions. And it's all I can do to hold my stomach listen to them take themselves so seriously when they've done so little of any real import to warrant such seriousness.

You know who else has figured that out?

This guy.

I think he says it better.



You know why those assholes hate nice guys like Jack?



Because he's got their number.



Whether assholes figure it out or not.

Lovingly running circles around the whole world

You know who's figured out the world like this?



Noone in the national media, that's for sure. Or national politics. Or national anything, really. Certainly not you and me.

Jack is smokin' everyone. And it doesn't even matter if they get it or not.

Unless they want to turn it around, that is.

If you can't show up for the ball, have the sense to keep your fashion advice to yourself

It is a sad day for Americans when Hosni Mubarak shows up the American press in his commitment to peace.

A Peace Plan Within Our Grasp

Another reminder for why journalists are not statesman. And should not be treated as such.