Author: rakemag

How can you not love ice dancing?

I’m back after a week of visiting a tropical isle where my only form of mental exertion was figuring out how to bash tennis balls back in the general direction of their origin without having to stop sipping on my rum drinks. I couldn’t quite get it right so I retreated to the veranda to spend my time on trashy novels without having to worry about yellow projectiles upsetting my mojito schedule.

So, I missed the two big stories of the week: the Cheney shooting and the Olympic snowboarder who tried a trick as she was headed for the gold medal and fell on her ass. Which is more “dog bites man” I wondered, when I got back yesterday: Cheney not giving a shit about who gets hurt, or a snowboarder being a show off? Didn’t give it too much thought as I concentrated on getting back to a place with a television and renewing my quadrenninal love affair with ice dancing.

But, in the cold light of a Minnesota Monday, I thought of some more similarities between the two non-stories. Other than the disdain they truly deserve, it’s that the press seems to elevated them both, particularly the Cheney story, to the level of say, a Presidential blow job.

It doesn’t take much to distract the press from the boring work of actually doing some work. Bush going on the stump behind his cynical “addicted to foreign oil” crap? Who cares what’s behind that? That would require doing some background stories on what Bush’s energy policy has been to date. Oh, yeah, I forgot that’s secret.

I could come up with some more, but I have to only 50 pages left to find out if Dirk Pitt gets the girl and the treasure. (Sorry, fell asleep on the plane.)

But you get the point: any fortuitous incident that can be covered with a minimum of reportorial expertise and a minimum expectation of the attention span of the audience is just what our press is after today.

What’s next? Somebody’s house burning?

Film at 10.

“If we don’t wiretap, the Quakers will win”

I’m getting more perplexed by the Democrats every day. Although Senator Leahy made logical mince meat out of Alberto (Torquemada) Gonzales yesterday, of course, nothing will come of the inquisition into Bush’s warrantless wiretapping of Americans as long as the Republicans are in power.

Logically, it seems Congress would want to maintain its status as an equal branch of government by clearly declaring that they make the laws and the president has to follow them. The Foreign Intelligence Security Act is pretty clear (and damn lenient) about getting warrants to listen to American conversations. It clearly says that its process is the only legal process for doing so. One can only logically infer from Bush’s breaking this law that he has something to hide–such as exactly who is being listened to.

Yet, Bush and his apologists pretty much have said, “We’re above the law.” And, oh by the way, “Congress, you can go to hell.”

I heard Diane Feinstein (another spineless Democrat) on the radio this morning. She said the matter will probably end up in the Supreme Court. Well, here’s some news for you, Diane. As of last week Bush owns the court too, because you and your 44 colleagues were too damn chicken to stop Alito’s confirmation, even after he said in the hearings that the President was pretty much a dictator, and that was ok with him.

Diane, the correct way to have this out is to have the House impeach Bush for breaking the law. That leads to a trial in the Senate, as I’m sure you must remember from the critical Clinton oral sex auto de fe.

Congress better get its act together on this, or it will find itself even more irrelevant than it already is. And you know if that happens, lobbyists won’t even bother with you any more. They’ll just go straight to the top and you’ll have to pay for your own golf trips.

Klobuchar Pere: “l’etoile c’etait moi”

For those of you who remember afternoon newspapers, you know that one of the best things about the Minneapolis Star was columnist Jim Klobuchar. When it came to homespun humor, he was Garrison Keillor before there was a Prairie Home Companion.

Characteristic, often, of his portraits of typical Minnesotans, was his outrage at how they’d been treated by government, circumstances, or just plain bad luck. He was the first thing I went to in the paper I actually liked.

He’s weighed in again, over at voxverax, (which means true voice in my favorite dead language). There’s nothing startling here. In fact, the Louis XIV reference showed up in a Helen Thomas column on Friday. It’s another Bush bash, but we love it when the old indignation raises its head. Let’s hope his daughter has inherited it enough to start taking some real stands on some critical issues. This “we can do better” pap we’re getting from her is not worthy of her father’s straight forward example.