STATE OF THE UNION TWO: SOME SEEK TRUTH, SOME SEEK OBLIVION, AND SOME SEEK DANA SCULLY

Patricia Relf (Hanavan) sent this alternative by Will Durst for getting through the president's infomercial: A State of the Union Drinking Game. Pat reckons she'll be blotto by paragraph three:

"1. Whenever George W mentions the liberation of the freedom-loving Iraqi people, the last person to grab his throat in a choking motion has to drink four shots of beer.

"2. Whenever George W uses the words: "God," "America" or "jobs," drink a shot of beer.

"3. Whenever George W mispronounces the word "terrorism" the last person to knock on wood drinks two shots of beer."

Myself, I'm going to drink coffee and watch the Minnesota/Colorado hockey game. My first encounter with such things was the "X-Files" drinking game. You had to take a drink every time there was a flashlight scene, more than enough to make you recite Chaucer and start singing the Clancy Brothers. Then I'd start drinking because Gillian Anderson got married and had someone else's baby and to think that I used to run five miles past her high school every day when I was going to Aquinas College and living on Heritage Hill in Grand Rapids... Ah, well it's just as well we never met, as people who date actresses probably get what they deserve, and college guys dating goth high school girls is kind of creepy, and Dana Scully was just a character... well, you can see why the X-Files Drinking Game was not a good idea for someone of my temperment. I was in shape and still had all my hair, but it was Just Sad.

The Truth, as they say, Is Out There, and Mulder, Scully and Diogenes himself will have trouble finding it tonight. I want to listen to the State of the Union speech, I really do, but it has become such a contrivance (from both parties) that you'd find more sincerity watching the Essence Awards.

Here's a nifty picture by Jean Leon Gerome : Diogenes lighting his Truth seeking lantern, while faithful pups attend him at the tub he lived in after losing all his money.


UPDATE: Ana Marie Cox, the original Wonkette, is saving our shaky hold on sanity with a couple more drinking games and in vino veritas live coverage of the president's speech:
"9:18 PM “but some men rage and fight against freedom.” to them i say, welcome to the us department of justice. ...
"9:31 PM America respects Iran, except when we don’t. We expect someday to be the closest of friends, because we’d like to fuck you. ...
"9:34 PM “Based on the authority given to me by Congress and by statute.” Right. When is someone going to point out that the post 9/11 act is like the clown car of presidential authority? All these rights keep pouring out."

Fayard Nicholas, 1914- January 26, 2006

Fayard Nicholas has passed away at the age of 91, the last of the Nicholas Brothers. His brother Harold died in 2000.
They were billed as "The Show Stoppers!" with an exclamation point at the Cotton Club in 1932, and that is not hyperbole but simple fact. If you have never seen them-- the "Jumpin' Jive" routine in "Stormy Weather" is a good place to start-- put it on your list of things to do at least once in your life. You will gasp without finding words to describe your wonder. Their dance is graceful and explosive at the same time, a celebration of the body's... I give up, I can't describe it either. They described it themselves as "classical tap". They were the best that ever was.

ALTERNATE STATE OF THE UNION

If you have no desire to waste time trying to find a shred of truth in Bush's State of the Union speech, Steve Clemons and the Washington Note is sponsoring a conference called "Real State of U.S. Foreign Policy 2006". C-SPAN will broadcast it live Monday on C-SPAN 3, and I presume will be running it on C-SPANs 1 and 2 in days to come.

Wesley Clark will give the keynote, and a lot of people with impressive credentials will try and describe that pesky reality this administration finds so troublesome.

Jefferson delivered his State of the Union to congress in a letter. I assume it contained some hypocrisy but not so much dissembling as Bush employs. The man simply has no truth in him.
[UPDATE: Given a chance to justify himself on "Face the Nation" on January 29, he still insists that the NSA only listens to Al-Qaeda associates (how does he know this?), he ignores the existing law that gives him three days to get a proper warrant after the fact, and finally tells us that he can't explain this without giving away secrets that will help the enemy. Huh? I repeat: the man has no truth in him.]

“(You) believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality. That's not the way the world really works anymore. We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality – judiciously, as you will – we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."
--Unnamed senior adviser to President G.W Bush, summer of 2002, reported by Ron Suskind

See Also: Jekyll & Hyde President , Why They Voted for Hamas ,Meddlin' Kids ,NeoCon Blogging , Someone Please Give Him a Blowjob so We Can Impeach Him , The Worms Turn , Is Edward D. Wood Jr. George Bush's New Speechwriter?, Doublespeak Finalists, Our Troubled Relationship with the Truth

ABRAMOFF FOLLIES, PART THREE: Tell 'em Fred Sent You

The White House has bamboozled the Abramoff prosecution with a ju-jitisu move so greasy it's admirable. This was done not not by firing the investigators, but by promoting the prosecutor in charge of the case to a federal judgeship. Now that's good old fashioned politics!

Thoreau said "read not the times, but the eternities." I say read the Times, the eternities, and Hecht and MacArthur's script for "His Girl Friday", aka "The Front Page":

MAYOR
How much do you make a week?

PINKUS
Huh?

MAYOR
(impatiently) How much do you make a week? What's your salary?

PINKUS
(reluctantly) Forty dollars.

HARTMAN
(into phone) No -- don't out me off.

MAYOR
How would you like to have a job for three hundred and fifty dollars a month. That's almost a hundred dollars a week!

PINKUS
Who? Me?

MAYOR
(exasperated) Who do you think!

Pinkus is a little startled; the Mayor hastens to adopt a
milder manner.

MAYOR
Now, listen. There's a fine opening for a fellow like you in the City Sealer's office.

PINKUS
The what?

MAYOR
The City Sealer's office!

PINKUS
You mean here in the city?

MAYOR
(foaming) Yes, yes!

HARTMAN
(at phone) Well, wait a minute, will you? I'm in conference.

PINKUS
(a very deliberate intellect) No, I couldn't do that.

MAYOR
Why not?

PINKUS
I couldn't work in the city. You see, I've got my family in the country.

MAYOR
(desperate) But you could bring 'em in here! We'll pay all your expenses.

PINKUS
(with vast thought) No, I don't think so.

MAYOR
For heaven's sake, why not?

PINKUS
I got two kids going to school there, and if I changed them from one town to another, they'd lose a grade.

MAYOR
No, they wouldn't -- they'd gain one! And I guarantee that they'll graduate with highest honors!

PINKUS
(lured) Yeah?

HARTMAN
(into phone) Hold your horses -- will you, Olsen? Hurry up, Fred!

MAYOR
Now what do you say?

PINKUS
This puts me in a peculiar hole.

MAYOR
No, it doesn't. (hands him the reprieve) Now, remember: you never delivered this. (rushing him to the door) You got caught in the traffic, or something. (opening door) Now, get out of here and don't let anybody see you.

PINKUS
But how do I know...?

MAYOR
Come in and see me in my office tomorrow. What's your name?

PINKUS
Pinkus.

MAYOR
(taking out his wallet) All right, Mr. Pinkus, all you've got to do is lay low and keep your mouth shut. Here! (he hands him a card) Go to this address. It's a nice, homey little place, and they'll take care of you for the night. Just tell 'em Fred sent you. And here's fifty dollars on account.

He pushes money into Pinkus's hand and pushes him through
the door. Pinkus goes.

HARTMAN
(into phone, desperately) Will you wait, Olsen? I'll tell you in a minute!

The door opens again and Pinkus comes back in.

PINKUS
You forgot to tell me what a City Sealer has to do.

MAYOR
(turning hastily toward Pinkus) I'll explain it tomorrow!

PINKUS
Is it hard?

MAYOR
No! It's easy -- it's very easy!

HARTMAN
(pleadingly, into phone) Just one second --

PINKUS
That's good, because my health ain't what it used to be.

MAYOR
(pushing him out the door) We'll fix that, too. (he closes the door after him)


From The New York Times, Friday 27 January 2006:
"The investigation of Jack Abramoff, the disgraced Republican lobbyist, took a surprising new turn on Thursday when the Justice Department said the chief prosecutor in the inquiry would step down next week because he had been nominated to a federal judgeship by President Bush.

"The prosecutor, Noel L. Hillman, is chief of the department's public integrity division, and the move ends his involvement in an inquiry that has reached into the administration as well as the top ranks of the Republican leadership on Capitol Hill.

".... Mr. Hillman's departure from the Justice Department creates a vacancy at the top of the Abramoff inquiry only three weeks after Mr. Abramoff, once one of the city's most powerful Republican lobbyists and a major fund-raiser for Mr. Bush, announced his guilty plea and agreed to testify against others, possibly including members of Congress.

".... Colleagues at the Justice Department say Mr. Hillman has been involved in day-to-day management of the Abramoff investigation since it began almost two year ago. The inquiry, which initially focused on accusations that Mr. Abramoff defrauded Indian tribes out of tens of millions of dollars in lobbying fees, is being described within the department as the most important federal corruption investigation in a generation...."

See also Demons Delayed, Lifeguard Heads international Think Tank, et alia

JAMES IN IRAQ: UPDATE

A friend of James', a team leader, was killed last week by a suicide bomber.

They're guarding a hydroelectric dam, not much safer than his old job of banging down doors with bolt cutters and a shotgun; the dam is a stationary target, and the advantage of surprise belongs to the attacker.



If you're new to this blog, family friend James Whelan signed up with the Marines after the September 11 attacks and is on his third tour of combat duty in Iraq. He is second from right in the wire photo here. The current (Saturday morning) cost of the war in Iraq is $236,892,800,000 and counting. The cost for a nation that feeds its young to the mother sow Death, all for the sake of a foolish Texan's vanity project, I leave up to you.

See also AP story with James, Bush Broke It, You Bought It, Kipling's Choice, Suspicious Death of Colonel Theodore Westhusing , Scylla and Charybdis in Iraq, Kipling on Blowback, Self-Delusion and Truth, others