Andy is such a card. If it were not for his lifestyle, George W might have made him his Chief of Staff. Andy will have to be satisfied with his little white house in Provincetown, in the state that voted for McGovern and whose Supreme Judicial Court ruled in favor of same sex marriage. So here we have a conservative residing in a liberal state that protects his rights more than others. Massachusetts has given the U.S. great Presidents. This Fall with THE FALL OF BUSH II Massachusetts will give John Kerry to once again come to the rescue of the nation.

More links! Links = win.

Randy Andy's little diatribe almost put me off food forever, much less a Sullivan-esque breakfast of Wimbledon strawberries with clotted cream. For a fellow who constantly trumpets his short-pants Eton-wannabe education every chance he gets, he certainly seems pissed to the height of piss-tivity with Kerry's daring to be somewhere near on par with himself intellectually. How does a guy rag another guy for being over-intellectual while in the next sentence he gauzily reminisces about his own lovely staging of T. S. Eliot's "The Four Quartets" at dear olde Hah-vahd?

Methinks Mr. Sullivan is simply afraid of the next commander-in-chief actually being able to call him on his own intellectual lapses in lieu of the loving treatment he gets from the present chimp-in-chief; namely shaking Sully's hand one moment in conservative solidarity and then wiping the fag germs off it a moment later with an vodka-soaked hankie.

A knowledge of high culture and a thoughtful mind is indeed not "a qualification for the presidency". But it doesn't hurt. A willful ignorance of the world and the events in it in addition to a absolutist, no grey area-vision and hyper-religious certitude based on fundamentalist beliefs damn sure isn't a qualification either. But it CAN hurt.

Unless of course you're hopelessly wedded to the grunt first, then shoot cowboy-movie images of one's America-lusting British youth.

Can't have it both ways Sully.

Shag and Yusuf have been so elaquent I hesitate to leave this, but I really want to know. How is it that the Right can assert that if Bush punishes America and the English language for four more years, it's a guarantee that 16 "Arabs" with box cutters will not committ another insane act. Does Bush possess some magic powers that I'm not aware of. Was the invasion of Iraq some kind of Right-wing Christian voodoo that expelled the evil spirits of Muslims fanaticism. For someone that bills himself as an intellectual, perhaps Andy, Hannity, Limbaugh, et al could let the rest of us on this perverse logic. They love the sound of their own voices, please expand on this Bush is Almighty premise. It fails logic 101.

Verrr-rrry good point LC! There seems to be some sort of "love affair" with spinning Bush the Minor as some sort of curt, "High Noon" sheriff who's facing down the Al Qaeda gang, all by his lonesome (as all the townspeople have run out on him; France, Germany et. al). The American people are in the thankless, pinafored Grace Kelly role--clutching desperately to his gun belt and loving him madly while keening for his protection. Now this spin worked for awhile after September 11th as we rallied together as a collectively wounded nation...but the hammered continuation of the spin three years post 9-11 renders the role as lame as the actor Lee Majors made it in the atrocious TV-movie High Noon "sequel".

This fetishizing of the anti-intellectual seems in some part to be due to a desire to put a "tough-guy, straight-talkin'" face on what is actually a government being run by über-wonks. Über-wonks who make the Clinton-wonks look like the crew from MTV's "Jackass". The ultimate spin is that a "thinker" isn't what's needed right now. A thinker/long-view type would fuss and fret over what the next move would be should we be attacked again. A horse-blindered absolutist---whoops! I mean straight-talkin' simple man (add joke here) would just "push the button" as it were. Never mind the fact that EVERY Bush policy initiative has been "thunk", "re-thunk", run through countless computer simulations and diagrammed by these in-the-background baby cold-warriors since they got their first "Stratego" game in 4th grade. It's truly a "Revenge of The Nerds" movie brought to life---right down to the co-opting of the biggest and dumbest of the jocks into their ranks and using him as their standard bearer. Ultimately, Bush and his "anti-intellectualism" is simply cover for the right-wing intellectuals who truly run things not far behind the curtain...and have thus far failed miserably. I was struck by a mealy-mouthed comment that the "alternate-universe Willaim Burroughs" Tom Delay made a weeka ago, when he assailed Kerry for a slew of issues and then punctuated it with a slam, saying that "maybe they didn't teach him that at that fancy boarding school he went to.

Last time I looked, Bush's Andover school wasn't exactly East Compton's NWA Technical School either.

It's vomit-inducing spin. All of it. They have a script and he gets to play "The Terminator" (at least until the REAL Terminator gets a change in the constitution so HE can get the role.). Right-wingers have feared well-schooled and thoughtful Democrats as far back as FDR and the near-equally reviled Adlai Stevenson. It's nothing new...it's just far more disingenuous nowadays as even the most cretinous republican can have access to the finest of educations yet still remain proudly...a cretin.

Yusaf,
Did George W actually graduate from Andover-Bendover with a certificate in cheerleading? Wasn't Trent Lott a cheerleader also? Let's hear it for them this Fall during THE FALL OF BUSH II:

Gimme a K,
Gimme an E,
Gimme a double R,
Gimme a Y,
KERRY, KERRY KERRY!

The irony of the p-Resident's "cheerleading" is the fact that male cheerleaders are routinely made fun of for being on the sidelines prancing around like wood-sprites while the players on the team actually do all the dirty work on the field. A rather apt metaphor for the coward-in-chief's position vis-a-vis his little "war on terra™" and his stance during Vietnam. (I wish to God Will Ferrell had tied his Bush impersonation in with his Ritalin-deprived cheerleader bit, but alas...)

I recall GQ magazine doing a rather extensive feature on Bush and Lott's cheerleading as well as Ashcroft's membership in "The Singing Senators" vocal group through the prism of what these war-wimps COULD have been doing during their college years.

How's this for an idea for a reality show? Put a few of these "Escalade Generals" in a bunk and put them six weeks of boot camp and three weeks with their "boots on the ground" and see how it all turns out. The hell with "The Simple Life" and Nicole Richie playing animal husbandry-proctologist, I wanna see Dick Cheney's face go blue and his left arm go numb under the weight of a 35lb. field pack. I wanna see Rummy the Dummy evacuate a gallon of Poland Spring from his bladder as he's forced to do house-to-house guerilla-style checks.

Let R. Lee Ermey host it and you've got a hit!

You guys are on a roll. Things are coming to a head. Anti-Steroid Jesus Freaks Hetrosexuals for Bush are drawing their last battle line.
This is the final screaching sound of a creature in its dying throes. The neoclowns are done as politicans.
Will the Democrats revert to the party of excess of the Tip O'Neil years? Will they idly allow the neocons to retire to lobby work and dance with them in lobby dress?
Or will JFK realize the dream of the first JFK, cut the ties to excess if possible, become the domestice standard bearer of liberty, and approach the blessings of monied success as an obligation to become philanthropy instead of cycling greed that artificially spirals upward to implosion...

Hope he doesn't forget the band of brothers and their ilk once he arrives at destination, and realizes this is a journey not a singular goal to reach.Those of us who voted for him as well...

1. Timely
   
2. Strategery
   
3. Webb wins
   
4. Huh?
   
5. Bunnypants in Bagdad
   
6. Outage
   
7. Filthy Lucre Watch
   
8. Playing the numbers
   
9. My letter to Countdown
   
10. Jefferson's Nigerian Scams