It’s Wednesday, and I don’t have to get up and out this morning. I have a ton of shit to do, but at least I don’t have to go anywhere to do it. Except the dump. But that beats sitting through class any day.

After the Colbert weekend, and then yesterday’s codpiece anniversary, today’s a bit of a letdown. I guess I’ll use it to try and get as much of what I’ve got left to do, done, and I’d better take the dog out today, or I think he’ll explode. If I even glance in the direction of his harness, he damn near wiggles himself to pieces. I need to get back to craigslist, too, since the place I thought I had lined up in DC doesn’t seem to be working out, damnit. I wonder what the monthly rate at the Watergate parking garage is, and if they’d let me use a garden hose to clean up with.

It was three years ago today that our glorious leader and his magnificent codpiece made their daring landing aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln (deftly positioned to avoid showing San Diego Harbor in the background), before declaring the end of “major combat operations” in Iraq and “one victory” in the war on terrorism beneath his “Mission Accomplished” banner.

Over 2,400 US Soldiers have now been killed in Iraq, with April the deadliest month of 2006. An average of 2.6 US soldiers were killed every day last month. There have been some 17,000 soldiers wounded – suffering some of the most devastating combat injuries in US history – from multiple amputations to severe brain trauma, and the nature of the fighting is expected to produce the most severe cases of PTSD we’ve ever seen – all requiring complicated, expensive, long-term treatment in an already overwhelmed VA healthcare system.

Iraqi civilian deaths are officially between 34,000 and 39,000 – and actually somewhere around 200,000 – 300,000. In the name of freedom and democracy, the U.S. has obliterated dozens of entire cities and towns in the cradle of civilization.

According to the US State Department’s annual terrorism report, Iraq has become a safe haven for terrorists and has attracted a “foreign fighter pipeline.” The National Counterterrorism Threat Center reports that terrorist incidents and deaths more than doubled in 2005.

Now, three years later, Bush tells us that it’ll take a new President to bring our troops home. That’s one mission I hope we can accomplish ahead of schedule.

As usual, Press the Meat spends the entire hour giving us gas – but this week they’ve got Secretary of Energy Samuel Bodman (to tell us how shocked – shocked I say – the administration is that the oil companies are making even more obscene profits than usual, and that if they don’t reinvest those profits into alternative fuel research, dubya will be sending them a sternly worded letter), American Petroleum Institute President & CEO Red Cavaney (to tell us that any first-year marketing student can tell you it’s all about supply and demand, and of course retiring Exxon-Mobil CEO Lee Raymond deserves a $400 million retirement package – I mean, the man’s got the worst toupee in the oil industry), CNBC’s Jim “Mad Money” Cramer, Dick “Thanks for having my back on Gitmo, Barack” Durbin, and NBC’s “Global Energy Analyst” Daniel Yergin. If only they could bottle all the hot air on this show today, maybe the price of gas could drop a couple pennies.

Over at Fazed the Nation, Bob “Claudia” Schieffer surrounds himself with women, as he hosts the lizard woman herself, Condaleeza “Lacerta” Rice, plus Sen. Maria Cantwell of Washington, and Lisa “feel free to stick your drill into my refuge” Murkowski, oil company whore and Senator from Alaska.

On “This Weak” with George Snufalufagus, it’s the return of the lizard woman, plus Chuck Schumer, oil industry whore Bennett Johnston, and George Clooney trying to convince somebody that, yes, even if it’s only black people, it still counts as genocide.

On Fux News Sunday, it’s new and improved White House COS Joshua “Michael” Bolten, plus professional liar and new White House lying hypocrite Tony Snow (I wonder if they even bothered to take him off the Fox payroll).

Over on CNN’s “Late Edition” yes, you guessed it, the lizard woman makes yet another appearance, plus Trent Lott (whose hair alone could save a million barrels of oil a day) and Barbara Boxer. Then CNN apparently gets Jon Stewart’s leftovers, as former Mossad director Efraim “Zimbalist” Halevy and former CIA Director James Woolsey (who my IR professor – a former career diplomat – used to say looked like he ate puppies for breakfast) will yuck it up over the old days.

Later, on 60 Minutes, it has to be the show of the year, as Morley Safer interviews Stephen Colbert. Also, Lesley Stahl is lethal and leaking. Oh, wait, it’s actually a site along the Columbia River in Hanford, Washington with 53 million gallons of radioactive waste buried in old underground tanks that have already leaked 1 million gallons into the ground, some of it headed straight for the Columbia River. Apparently this waste is so lethal that just a cupful of it could kill everyone in a crowded restaurant, in minutes. Maybe they can get Colin Powell to hold up a vial of it. Also, Ed Bradley does a story on the Priory of Scion (must be Viacom has a piece of the Da Vinci Code movie). My advice, come for the nuclear waste, but stay for the Colbert.

On the West Wing, we’re down to the final three episodes, and it looks like Santos will choose Arnie Vinick to be his new VP (as predicted right here by sbluefox – I think we need to work out a deal for writing credits). And, of course, on the Sopranos, “Tony is tempted by a real-estate offer; Vito is wowed by an act of heroism; AJ looks to ‘diversify.'” Poor Vito. I hope he can stay in New Hampshire and settle down with that nice antique shop guy.

Enjoy your Sunday, everybody. I got a final to study for.

Well, I’ve been through the new Neil Young album – Living with War – a couple of times now, and I really like it. It’s got that rock-country-feedback kinda sound to it. Very Crazy Horse, I think. It’s up on Rhapsody, and it’s a higher quality than it is on the free streaming site. There are some classic lyrics, too, of course.

Let’s Impeach the President uses dubya’s own words against him, punctuated with a chorus of “flip…flop.”

What if Al-Qaeda had blown up the levees?
Would New Orleans have been safer that way?
Sheltered by our government’s protection?
Or was someone just not home that day?

Looking for a leader is another great song.

Maybe it’s Obama, but he think’s he’s too young.
Maybe it’s Powell, to right what he’s done wrong.
America has a leader, but he’s not in the house.
He’s walking here among us, and we got to seek him out.
[…]
America is beautiful, but it’s got an ugly side.
We’re looking for a leader, with the Great Spirit on his side.”

Shock and Awe:

Back in the days of Shock and Awe
We came to liberate them all
History was a cruel judge of overconfidence,
Back in the days, of Shock and Awe.

Back in the days of Mission Accomplished,
Our chief was landing on the deck.
The sun was setting on a glowing photo op,
back in the days of Mission Accomplished.

Thousands of bodies in the ground
Brought home in boxes to a trumpet’s sound
Noone sees them comin’ home that way
thousands buried in the ground.

There are many others as well, but the last song on the album is an a capella version of the 100-member choir singing “America the Beautiful” that put a lump way down deep in my throat, and brought a tear to my eye. It’s a beautiful rendition, of course, but that’s not what had me misty-eyed.

Listening to it, in the context of this album, and of the world we now live in, it seemed to me to be a requiem – a dirge, for the death of the America that I grew up in. The America that’s been killed by this administration and their enablers and apologists. I know we’ve never exactly lived up to our ideals. We’ve done unspeakable things in countless parts of the world, to be sure. But somehow, there was always at least an idea of what this county was supposed to be, and what it stood for, even if it didn’t always manage to do the right thing.

Where once we were proud of our right to speak our minds, now we think twice about what we say, and around whom we say it. People with a “No Blood for Oil” bumper sticker are banned from seeing their president – their servant – at a public event. We watch as the mother of a fallen soldier is cuffed and roughly hustled out of The People’s House, for the crime of wearing a t-shirt – as if asking “how many more?” is an act of sedition. “News” has become state-sponsored propaganda. American citizens are taken away in darkenss, with no right to an attorney – ever. Others are hauled off to be tortured in a foreign country, or to rot in a dog pen at our gulag in Guantánamo Bay. The president signs a bill outlawing torture with a statement saying the law doesn’t apply to him. He launches a program of warrantless wiretapping of US Citizens, in direct defiance of the Fourth Amendment, and our Congress – the people’s “Representatives” do nothing to stop him; even a meaningless “censure” is deemed too radical.

So, anyway, that’s why hearing America the Beautiful made me kinda sad, because, in spite of all its flaws, I think it was, once, something beautiful. That chapter, sadly, appears to be ending. It all changed back on September 11th, but it wasn’t Al Qaeda or the attacks that did it. Everything changed because we – perhaps not we, here, but the collective “We The People” – allowed it to change. “We” allowed a group of madmen and thieves to twist and pervert the very principles upon which this nation was founded, and if this is allowed to continue, they will have succeeded where Stalin and Goebbels failed.

I only hope “We The People” are finally waking from our collective coma in time to stop these madmen before the damage they do is impossible to repair.

Happy Anniversary! Yes, it was five months ago – November 28th, 2005 – when this blog (and the rest of the site) first went online. I don’t know about you, but it seems like a lot longer than five months to me. And what a five months it’s been. If you recall, at the time it was just beginning to sink in that they really were going to kill Morning Sedition (even after the letters, emails, calls, and petitions). There were just three more weeks of shows to go, with only a couple vague hints at the possiblility of new show. And now look – some 40 Marc Maron Shows are “in the can,” and the promise of syndication – or maybe something better – is in the air with the removal of Danny Goldberg. Granted, AAR seemed go out of their way to dick us around with the Maron show, but, looking back, it all happened rather quickly. A lot more quickly than I’d thought it would, five month ago.

And Scooter Libby resigned in disgrace and under indictment, with Karl Rove hopefully not far behind. Tom DeLay isn’t seeking re-election (and hopefully he’ll be joining his pal Duke Cunningham in prison before too long). Snotty Scotty is out, and the White House finally admits that Fox News is just its farm team by calling up Tony Snow. And Impeachment isn’t just a word for crazy people anymore, as dubya’s “approval” ratings are possibly the worst ever, and the debate isn’t about whether Bush is a terrible president, but whether or not he’s the worst president ever.

Of course, not all the news has been good. Things in Iraq just keep getting worse – for every “purple finger moment,” thousands of Iraqi and American live have been shattered. The Senate is now saying that FEMA – trasformed under Bill Clinton from what had been a crony-filled joke into something resembling an efficient model of a government agency – is now, just five years later, so thoroughly destroyed that “we have concluded that FEMA is in shambles and beyond repair, and that it should be abolished.” And, of course, the Democrats continue to turn down the opportunity to energize progressives by running away from Russ Feingold’s resolution to at least censure Bush for breaking the law, and refusing to filibuster yet another lying, right-wing zealot appointed to the Supreme Court.

But, there is definitely hope for the future – much as we, on this side, have learned never to get our hopes up too much. My hope is that, in another six months and 11 days, we’ll be listening to the Marc Maron Show live, at a time when most of us can actually manage to listen without having to call in sick the next morning. Marc and Jim will hopefully be consoling a weepy Lawton Smalls as we wait in anticipation of the installation of the 110th Congress, as soon- to-be House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers vows real investigations into Iraq, NSA spying, 9/11, and more, in anticipation of drawing up articles of impeachment, which, if they don’t lead to conviction, won’t be the fault of the new Junior Senator from Connecticut, Ned Lamont.

Let’s see what happens.

Oh, and Happy Birthday Kevin! :cake:

So, the move to end net neutrality has made it out of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, though “only” a few Democrts voted for it. It doesn’t makeit a done deal, and supposedly there’s a lot of hope in the Senate, now that this issue is out from under the table and in the open. Let your representatives know you’re watching.

Hey, today’s my mom’s birthday. Happy Birthday, ma!

Big hurdle to get over today, as I turn in my final project in my wireless class, and give a presentation on it. I dunno what’s worse – that, or having to sit through the other seven presentations. But, once this is over, I only have, let’s see, one project one paper, and two finals to go. God, I hate this shit.

So, you think Marc’ll get Spinger’s spot? Poor guy, he’d have to start working the same hours he had for MS. Or maybe Franken is getting ready to go and be a candidate, and Marc can slide into his slot? Or maybe they’re going to ditch Malloy altogether, and slide Marc in there? I’d hate to see Malloy off the air, but the other two I could live without. Time will tell, I reckon.

Still not much time to pay attention to the blog or to the news. Have they impeached Bush and/or Cheney yet? Is Rove finally in jail (or at least indicted). If I live past next week, I’ll have a lot of catching up to do.

Hey, it is Monday, right? I can’t remember anymore. Not much sleep the last few days, and for an old fart like me, that aint easy. I haven’t had much chance to look at the blog, but I did catcha couple of things that I’ll try and address here. First, yeah, there was trackback spam. I got rid of it, and for now have disabled trackbacks (if somebody links to a post or comment, it creates a comment with a link to the orginating page, so you can see what they wrote about it). What else? Um, no no fun for Siggy the last few days, either, and not much fun in his short-term future. I guess it’s good practice for him, as I’ll be gone for the summer before you know it. Cnick, I think you might wanna get to know Linux a little better before you try for the triple boot, but if you don’t mind risking having to restore your computer, go for it. It doesn’t sound all that hard, but having never tried what they’re sayign, I can’t guarantee it’ll work. Worst that can happen is you wipe out your partition and have to redo everything. So, assuming you know how to do that, and want to mess with it, I guess you can give it a go. Too bad bootcamp can’t play nice with LILO. I”d much prefer NTFS to FAT32, too. Nicki, sounds like you’re having javascript troubles.

OK, that’s all I can manage for now. Have a good Monday, y’all. Clippers game tonight at 7:30 PDT.