drink up with me now and forget all about the pressure of days


Dick Cheney's limo is hit with a lone snowball as he heads up Pennsylvania Avenue.

* Very good Maureen Dowd. excerpt:

"Just look at Condoleezza Rice.

"She's clearly a well-educated, intelligent woman, versed in Brahms and the Bolsheviks, who has just been rewarded for her loyalty with the most plum assignment in the second Bush cabinet.

"Yet her math skills are woefully inadequate.

"She can't do simple equations. She doesn't even know that X times zero equals zero. If you multiply 1,370 dead soldiers times zero weapons of mass destruction, that equals zero achievement for Ms. Rice, who helped the president and vice president bamboozle the country into war.

"Was Condi out doing figure eights at the ice skating rink when she should have been home learning her figures? She couldn't have spent much time studying classic word problems: If two trains leave Chicago at noon, one going south at 20 miles an hour and one going north at 30 miles an hour, how far will each have gotten by midnight?

"Otherwise, she might have realized that if two cars leave the Baghdad airport at noon on the main highway into the capital of Iraq, neither one is going to get there with any living passengers. Our 22 months at war have not added up to that one major highway's being secured.

"It's lucky for Ms. Rice that she's serving with men who are just as lame at numbers as she is. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz couldn't be bothered to tally correctly the number of dead soldiers when he testified before Congress. And his boss, Donald Rumsfeld, didn't realize that using an autopen signature on more than 1,000 letters to the relatives of fallen troops added up to zero solace.
...
"Condi may not know Einstein's theory of relativity, but she has a fine grasp of Cheney's theory of moral relativity. Because they're the good guys, they can do anything: dissembling to get into war; flattening Iraqi cities to save them; replacing the Geneva Conventions with unconventional ways of making prisoners talk. The only equation the Bushies know is this one: Might = Right.

"It is puzzling that if you add X (no exit strategy) to Y (Why are we there?) you get W²: George Bush's second inauguration.

"At Condi's hearing, she justified the Bush administration's misadventures by saying history would prove it right. 'I know enough about history to stand back and to recognize that you judge decisions not at the moment, but in how it all adds up,' she told a skeptical Senator Biden.

"Problem is, she's calculating, but she can't add. For now, Sam Cooke is right about the Bushies. They don't know much about history.

* Fun column: Don't Let Those Reefers Misguide You, by Nathaniel Page. [via drug war rant] excerpt:

"Weed, doobie, hay: we’ve all heard the names kicked around by wasted marijuana addicts in the back alleys and dumps of America. Recently, this evil drug struck again, taking a life even from the Law and Society Program of our prestigious university. Our deluded peer, in his THC-induced stupor, has gone as far as to produce a hallucinatory column about marijuana’s benefits (“Dude, Herb is Totally Chill,” Daily Nexus, Jan. 13). Quite clearly written while high from its rambling, incoherent character, the column desperately attempts to express the feeling of euphoria the writer was experiencing while 'riding the bus' after a bong hit, a feeling that is followed shortly by a crash and a powerful craving for another, bigger hit. But don’t be deceived by his demented ideology or the rationalizations of NORML, an association of strung-out drug-addicted fanatics who can barely care for themselves. The truth is that marijuana has been proven to kill children.

"Mr. Hamme even has the balls to suggest within his disjointed tirade that students pay for the production of marijuana cigarettes on campus, which is an atrocity. Before long, UCSB will be a pit of sex, drugs and alcohol, and our fine reputation as a center of higher learning will be sullied by the smell of wacky tobacco smoke wafting out of the chancellor’s office. Mr. Hamme, go back to your painted school bus. People like you are wiping out kids faster than convicted sex offender Victor Sciortino and threaten to disrupt the traditional social balance of Isla Vista."
...
"Have you ever seen the specter of a marijuana addict? It is one of a sickly skin-and-bones fiend, with oily yellow skin and a raspy voice from the constant smoking, herpes in every orifice, teeth or limbs missing, and always in a desperate search for a bowl. The only way we can save ourselves from marijuana and the resulting crack and methamphetamine epidemics is to find these wicked addicts, lock them up, and throw away the keys, even if it takes the whole army and navy. Penalties for possession should be as harsh as in Arabaghistan, where I’ve heard you can lose a hand or a wife. Similarly, all the dealers, with their millions of filthy dollars, should be castrated and sent back to the savage jungles of Colombia, where they would no doubt kill themselves by binging on cocaine. No state penitentiary could be harsh enough for a child-killing, marijuana-peddling vampire. Don’t believe the wild myths, dreamed up by raging pot ideologues, that marijuana can cure the sick. A weakened patient lacking the built-up tolerance of an addict would certainly die instantly if forced by the doctor to take ganja. Clearly the whole movement is a ruse created by addicts stricken with cancer and other disorders after too many years of drug abuse who just want to take advantage of the system at our expense. They should be held accountable, kicked out of the hospital and moved to a high security prison for posing a threat to society."