Strength and wisdom are not opposing values

* Boo to the business world: Publishing company that owns rights to Woody Guthrie's songs upset at the JibJab Kerry/Bush parady. excerpt:

"The Richmond Organization [which owns the rights] believes that the Jibjab creation threatens to corrupt Guthrie's classic -- an icon of Americana -- by tying it to a political joke; upon hearing the music people would think about the yucks, not Guthrie's unifying message. The publisher wants Jibjab to stop distribution of the flash movie. Of course the creators behind Jibjab don't agree."

* Political haiku by David Simon, from Love Song for W: An Appreciation in Haiku. [via Jesus' General]

His pick for Defense?
It's Nixon's lawyer, Rumsfeld--
Man of probity

And then there's Ashcroft.
Where did they come up with this
New Cotton Mather?

* Richard Cohen on Bush's 9/11 farce. excerpt:

"So dire is the situation that even Congress is threatening action. It will actually hold hearings in August and then, if the past is prologue, do nothing more. Very often this is the very best thing Congress can do for a grateful nation, but not in this case. Some serious work needs to be done -- more serious than campaigning or taking a vacation or, as is happening here, downing the canapes so kindly supplied by lobbyists. In fact, there is something a bit wacky about the Democratic Party taking a week to mount a meaningless Mardi Gras when the terrorism clock supposedly ticks closer to midnight.

"Still, it is the president who runs the government. Now he suddenly discovers he is expected to do something about national security. He cannot be serious -- and rest assured he is not. The many months of inactivity in this area offer eloquent testimony to Bush's firm belief that little needs to be fixed. In the same way he could not answer earlier this year what mistakes he had made as president, he cannot even say what mistakes his government made that might have led to Sept. 11 and the debacle in Iraq.

"Now we are engaged in a great farce. Outside my hotel room, a good piece of the nation's political talent is engaged in a purposeless convention to nominate a man who has already been nominated. And down in Crawford, the White House staff is dutifully feeding the press accounts of Bush's newfound concern about what ails the intelligence community and even -- imagine! -- that Bush took the Sept. 11 commission's report with him."