Hey all.. Happy New Year! Thanks for hanging with me over my off-and-on again blogging this year. It's been five and half years since I started blogging over on Blogspot...something close to 3500 posts authored with tender loving care and a jaundiced eye by yours truly.

So off we go to make fun of, be rude to and generally be as annoying as possible to the 22-percenters and True Believers for this election year and all it's follies and their foibles.

Be safe out there tonight, and see ya next year... My New Years wish? Every soldier, sailor, airman and Marine comes home safely before the political conventions this year, and gets the welcome home they deserve and the unconditional support of our Nation.

Peace,

Jo

This is funny... what's in store for Preznit Drunk at the Wheel over the next twelve months of his temper-tantrum based dictatorship presidency.

Bush's year begins with a nine-day trip to the Middle East, a hands-on peacemaking venture that could shape his legacy - a word that Bush and his senior aides don't use.

So I'll just go with Putz.

Heh. Indeed.

Buoyed by the still unsettled field, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg is growing increasingly enchanted with the idea of an independent presidential bid, and his aides are aggressively laying the groundwork for him to run.
...
Former Senator David L. Boren of Oklahoma, who organized the session with former Senator Sam Nunn, a Democrat of Georgia, suggested in an interview that if the prospective major party nominees failed within two months to formally embrace bipartisanship and address the fundamental challenges facing the nation, "I would be among those who would urge Mr. Bloomberg to very seriously consider running for president as an independent."

But, as the infomercials say, Wait! There's More!!

Bloomberg aides have studied the process for starting independent campaigns, which formally begins March 5, when third-party candidates can begin circulating nominating petitions in Texas. If Democrats and Republicans have settled on their presumptive nominees at that point, Mr. Bloomberg will have to decide whether he believes those candidates are vulnerable to a challenge from a pragmatic, progressive centrist, which is how he would promote himself.

A truly funny thing would be a Bloomberg candidacy if Giulani is the republican presumptive nominee... I could see it in a debate..."excuse ME, Mr. Giuliani, but these receipts are from the Loft Board, and these pictures are of potholes filled with the ashes from Ground Zero". I'd pay money to see that...

Oh, teh stupid! It burns! In this day and age of virtually instant access to facts (and even this website) you'd think that the Chinese government which, remarkably owns the factories that build a goodly bit of the telco equipment (and end-user computers) that "power" the inter-tubes would understand the idea... information is not readily containable. But, they are after all totalitarians in every sense of the word, including being able to grasp ideas that don't fit their preconceived notions of reality (sort of like Beloved Leader, but I'm not calling him a Totalitarian).

Anyhow...

About 200 Tsinghua University journalism students filled a classroom one recent Friday evening for a two-hour lecture on the political history of Tibet.

The mountainous territory has always been an inalienable part of China, they were told, and the Dalai Lama is a sly traitor hiding behind his Buddhist religion to promote secession. The lecture, a rendition of China's standard government line, put some students to sleep, but most listened patiently.
...
...Journalism students at Tsinghua are taught not only about Watergate and the rise of the Internet, but also about the restricted role reporters are expected to play under a Marxist government such as China's.

In China, that role traditionally has been to support the government by spreading propaganda and suppressing news that contradicts policy or puts officials in a bad light. ...

Judy Miller could give her first lecture on how to co-opt a US Army unit to make your boyfriend happy and maybe she could also discuss how better cocktail weenies make better presidential candidates. She might even be able to get Ceci Connelly to come be a guest lecturer. Now there's some great journalasmismum.

And afterwards, everyone can retire to their bungalow to get a massage from Jeff Gannon, compliments of the ol' Bulldog himself.

Gak.

1. Happy New Year
   
2. One word
   
3. Rudy v Bloomie?
   
4. Does Judy Miller get a visiting Professor gig?