Be a Drug Warrior. Watch For These Signs of Drug Abuse in Your Home.

Yesterday, in the comments, writer and lawyer Dusty Rhoades (Breaking Cover - buy it!) reminded us that as screwy as the drug laws are, the drug paraphernalia laws are even screwier. For instance, a sandwich bag in the hands of June Cleaver is innocent. The same sandwich bag tucked into the back of Eddie Haskell's sock drawer is a dangerous resealable crime accessory!

And just about anyone can be accused of having drug paraphernalia in their possession. Do you think that hand mirror is just something you use to check for spinach stuck in your teeth?

Au contraire, my little cabbage of vanity. It could also be an item commonly used to injest cocaine and heroin.

A soda can might look innocent to the uninformed mom, but a teenager can turn that Tab into a crack pipe faster than you can say Dick Tracy.

Even the humble apple, in the hands of a corrupt drug fiend, can be turned into a bong. Yes. A bong. These are the kinds of things that keep John Ashcroft awake at night.

The best I can figure is, if you hold an apple and think yummy thoughts, it's just a piece of fruit. But if I hold the apple and think pipe, then it's drug paraphernalia and police can bust my head and toss me into the cooler with the other miscreants.

Which still doesn't answer the question, if an undercover cop buys a bong to use as evidence in court, than why is that illegal?

I don't understand the law.

But as screwed up as the paraphernalia laws are, they're not half as pernicious as drug forfeiture laws. Check out this story.

Forfeiture laws go back to the time of the tall ships, but once the courts OKed them for the drug war, law enforcement saw a way to get valuable cash and prizes without the hassle of actually going to court and proving a crime was committed.




About ten years ago, an older black man was stopped in our local airport because he had a few thousand dollars in his pocket. The man said he was going to New Jersey to buy a car from his brother. The cop said the man was going to New Jersey to buy drugs.




A quick background check revealed that the man had once been arrested for possession of pot. That's all the cop needed. He took the man's money. To get it back, the man then had to go to court and prove that he was innocent. That's right. The state doesn't have to prove he was guilty to keep his cash. He had to prove he was innocent. And how hard is that? This is from the NYT story:

The Mercury News found dozens of cases in which claimants without lawyers had to fill out 14-page questionnaires with nearly 200 questions and were asked to produce documentation for purchases, bank statements, canceled checks and a list of medical and dental expenses dating back five years. Claimants can also be forced to undergo hours of cross-examination from a prosecutor.

So kids, the next time you see a Bible in somebody's house, remember, it could be something totally innocent.
Or someone could be using the pages for rolling big fat Gospel doobies.

If I were you, I'd call the cops, just to be on the safe side. Even if it's your mom's.

What's That Smell?

Dope is back in the news, and I'm not talking about the president.

NORML, the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, has been around since I first learned how to roll one-handed while driving.

Which was wrong, kids. Don't do drugs.

I haven't been keeping up with NORML's progress but by now they've certainly brought some sanity to America's War on Drugs, right? To catch up with their progress, I did some quick work with what John McCain calls The Google and guess what? There are now more people in jail for marijuana offenses than for violent crime.

According to writer Eric Schlosser, in some parts of this great country, you can get a life sentence for a nonviolent marijuana offense while the average sentence a convicted murderer draws is about six years.

And what has our War on Drugs done? The government estimates that we spent roughly $12 billion on enforcing drug laws in 2005, and that doesn't count the $30 billion we spent keeping druggies in jail. So, after spending that much money, and tossing that many people in the clink, surely we're now a Drug-Free America, right?

Not so fast, bong breath.

According to that same federal government, drug use is at an all-time high, no pun intended. In fact, as our dollar declines and America's overall influence is eclipsed by China, we're STILL NUMBER 1! in marijuana and cocaine use. Yay!

Looks like dismal failure all around. Except that the forces of NORML have an excuse for not getting up early.

It's true that today's marijuana laws still make about as much sense as the Salem witch trials, but that won't stop NORML from putting on an ironically titled "Celebration of Freedom" in Washington this fall.

They've reserved Freedom Plaza for Saturday, October 25th and they're hoping to produce "a major art and media event ... that includes a sculpture titled,'America’s Largest Joint,' ... along with a Marijuana-inspired mural."

Dude.

In other toke-related news, Cheech and Chong have put aside their differences for a reunion tour titled "What's That Smell?"

Cheech and Chong haven't performed together since an ounce of decent Jamaican went for 35 bucks and I'm not sure their loyal fans will be able to find their car keys in time for the show.

Cheech has done all right playing TV sidekicks, but poor Tommy did a stretch in the slam for selling bongs on the Internet. Seems that Tommy was targeted by Mary Beth Buchanan, an ambitious, Bush-appointed US Attorney who thought Tommy's bong enterprise was more of a threat than actual terrorists or criminals.

Although Mary Beth is being a little coy about why she spent so much time, energy and tax money to put Tommy behind bars. She's said it was about protecting the children, but she's been quoted in interviews as saying she went after Tommy because he and Cheech made fun of the police in their movies. And we can't have that, can we.

Thanks to Mary Beth, I feel so much safer now that she's found a way to circumvent the First Amendment.

And in keeping with the national news, Mary Beth was also implicated with yesterday's subject du jour, Monica Goodling, in the firing of those nine U.S. attorneys who weren't being good little GOPers. Some of them refused to prosecute phantom Democratic voter fraud. Others were guilty of investigating Republicans in an election year. Horrors.

And so we come full circle, isn't that fun?

With that, I'll leave you with one of the Planet's favorite videos.

And remember, kids, don't do drugs. Drugs are bad.

Although a toke or two might be more than appropriate when watching this.

The job interview from hell.

Imagine you're an accomplished prosecutor with anti-terrorism credentials. You think you could serve your country in the Department of Justice, and because of your unique experience, you get an interview with Monica Goodling.

Goodling is a graduate of Messiah College and got her law degree from Pat Robertson's Regent University. She worked with noted scumbag Tim Griffin in opposition research. For those who don't know what that is, I commend you for having a life. Opposition research is grown people spending their lives finding every little thing about a political opponent that they can then spin in a scuzzy direction.

Goodling, from what I can tell, never tried a case. But Alberto Gonzales put her in charge of hiring US Attorneys. Before we get to the questions she asked during the interviews, remember that it is illegal to hire attorneys based on their politics. Illegal. As in against the law. And Monica is a lawyer. So here are her job interview questions:

Tell us about your political philosophy.

There are different groups of conservatives, by way of example: Social Conservative, Fiscal Conservative, Law & Order Republican.

[W]hat is it about George W. Bush that makes you want to serve him?

Aside from the President, give us an example of someone currently or recently in public service who you admire.

Why are you a Republican?

When asked about her hiring practices by Congress last year, Monica read this statement:

I do acknowledge that I may have gone too far in asking political questions of applicants for career positions, and I may have taken inappropriate political considerations into account on some occasions, and I regret those mistakes.

I don’t believe I intended to commit a crime.

So, that's the kind of law they teach at Regent University? It's OK to commit a crime if you didn't actually mean it?

I don't want to beat up on Monica Goodling. I do think she should be disbarred, at the very least, but really, do we honestly think she isn't a product of this administration?

Monica is just the most visible example of how the Bushies politicized everything, from the DoJ to important positions in Iraq's transition government. This is a culture that says government doesn't work and now watch us prove it.

My friend, Athenae, over at First Draft, wrote a terrific piece on this. In part she said:

Think about the basic, unifying principle of Republicans in government. It's that government sucks. It's that we are paying them to do something that they hate and don't want to do all that well. It's that we're supposed to be angry and disappointed with government, mad at it all the time, appalled by its shortcomings, and if we are, then we need to elect more of them so that they can fuck government's shit up on our behalf. They're not the problem, government is, it's the system. We need to burn it all down.

[snip]

So along comes a candidate who, like John Kerry and John Edwards before him, says government is about fixing shit and making your life less sucktastic, and the system isn't the problem, it's the screwups running it, and remember back before you thought everything had to suck in order to be cool? Wasn't it nice to actually want to do stuff instead of sitting around bitching about how nothing works and involvement is stupid? We can do that again. We can not suck, and go to the moon, and take care of your grandparents, and manage to do it all while smiling. Good Lord, is it any wonder crowds of people follow that around?

(The GOP's) basic tactic ... for staying in power, which is to make the very act of voting repulsive, naive and dumb, defensible only to save you from the utter destruction of a gay welfare marriage...

The piece is worth reading. Monica Goodling is a symptom of a much larger problem, and that is the anarchic impulses of today's modern Republican party.

And the next time you hear the phrase "a nation of laws, not men," think about all the lawyers Goodling hired, not because of their competence, but because of their politics.

Vaginas in the news.

This is the kind of news you miss if you don't read the New York Times. The first ever spa dedicated to the fitness of the vagina has opened in Manhattan. That's right. If your vagina is flabby and listless, this place can get your ladybits back to their former steel-bending glory.

According to the Times article, the spa's signature treatment consists of the client flexing her pelvic muscles around Dr. Lauri Romazi’s fingers to determine muscle tone. Dr. Romazi said that her regimen of vaginal calisthenics "may also lead to more intense orgasms."

And that's something we can all get behind.

But what if you live in a flyover state, or some backward place like Alabama where female orgasms are illegal? Don't worry ladies, because you can use this handy device in the privacy of your own home.



It took me a moment, but I think you use this thing like a thighmaster. Which leads to the question, why don't we ever see Suzanne Somers advertising it on late night TV? I'll bet she could sell a million of them. Why, this could be as big as Ron Popeil's Pocket Fisherman.

So, ladies, don't let your happy taco sit around the house getting fat, lazy and out of shape. Squeeze your way to orgasmic health and happiness.

To quote Dr. Romazi, "If you can vote and you have a vagina, you should do these. It's the dental floss of feminine fitness."

The Wonderful World of Advertising.

Sweet Jesus. And you thought those endless weight loss infomercials were bad.

George Bush is Batman?

Wow, now here's a stretcher. Andrew Klavan, a crime writer and, therefore, a member of our tight little community, seems to have fallen down and struck his head. In some delusionary state, Andy writes in the Wall Street Journal:

"There seems to me no question that the Batman film "The Dark Knight," ... is at some level a paean of praise to the fortitude and moral courage that has been shown by George W. Bush in this time of terror and war. Like W, Batman is vilified and despised for confronting terrorists in the only terms they understand. Like W, Batman sometimes has to push the boundaries of civil rights to deal with an emergency ... and like W, Batman understands that there is no moral equivalence between a free society -- in which people sometimes make the wrong choices -- and a criminal sect bent on destruction..."

Hmm, interesting, in a brain-damaged kind of way. But let me posit another theory, one that is less inclined to make the average person hoot in derision.

I think W is more the villain. Think about it. Bad guys never think they're bad. They're misunderstood. And how many times does Bush tell us what we got to understand?

Bad guys always think they'll be vindicated by history. They're convinced they know more than anyone else. They operate within their own morality, unencumbered by society's rules, like the Constitution. That's for the little guy, not someone big like Bush.

The bad guy feels entitled. When he doesn't get what he wants he lashes out and innocent people get hurt. He's often the son of someone powerful and feels the need to get out from under the old man's shadow.

OK, not Batman. A villain. But which villain?

That's a tough one because most Batman bad guys are smart. Geniuses, even. So, I canvassed our office for an answer and the closest we got was Superman's Bizarro dude who bumbled around and broke things.

That's the question for the weekend. If Bush is a comic book bad guy, which one?

Another reason to be grateful.

Thanks to alert readers of the Comics Curmudgeon, we have this archival cartoon of a young Dick Cheney hunting little Dolly Keane for sport.

Damn, I'm grateful for that.

Gratitude

When I was 7 or 8, I rescued a chipmunk from being brunch for a neighborhood cat. The chipmunk bit me, the ungrateful little bastard. I still have the scar on my thumb.

So today, I want to express my gratitude for the following, in no particular order:

Coffee, fresh peaches, summer, Drive By Truckers, employment, hot showers, Mad Men, the happy fact that the people I enjoy far outnumber those I don't, and Friday.

Happy Friday, folks. Enjoy your weekend.

If I was working McCain's campaign I'd shoot myself.

"I come to Berlin as so many of my countrymen have come before, although tonight I speak to you not as a candidate for president but as a citizen, a proud citizen of the United States and a fellow citizen of the world ...The walls between the countries with the most and those with the least cannot stand. The walls between races and tribes, natives and immigrants, Christian and Muslim and Jew cannot stand."

"I'd love to give a speech in Germany... but I'd much prefer to do it as president than as a candidate," Mr McCain told reporters in Ohio.

Of course. And I'd love to give a speech at the Oscars, but I'd much prefer to do it as winner of best screenplay than as some pie-faced rube gawking at the stars from the curb.

A dream.

It's good to have one, but it's best not to cash that check right away.

The jokes just write themselves.

As Obama gets the rock star treatment in Europe, McCain talks to Channel 10 News in front of the Fudge Haus.

That's right.

The Fudge Haus.

Next to the Sausage Haus.

No, I am not making this up.

Submit your jokes in the comments section where the children won't see them.

"Quite a few people in the world have seen my penis...

...so that's kinda cool."

So says Spencer Elden, the naked swimmer on the cover of Nervana's Nevermind.

"I'm just a normal kid living it up and doing the best I can while I'm here."

According to an interview on NPR, the 1991 photo was an accident. Kirk Weddle, the photographer, was a friend of Spencer's dad.

Weddle called and asked Spencer's father if he wanted to "make 200 bucks and throw your kid in the drink?"

A few months later Spencer was naked in the window of Tower Records.

So, how's Spencer today?

Like most kids his age, he's complaining. He says his friends are "playing Rock Band on Xbox, like, that's not a real band!" and that high school sucks.

"Same people, same teachers ... going to your locker, worrying about stupid girls..." he says.

Sounds pretty normal for a kid who's had his penis on display on Sunset Boulevard.

But then again, who hasn't?

Bush and International Affairs.

For a guy who ran against John Kerry by calling him a flip-flopper, George Bush is, ahem, trying out new positions on several things.

Like the Secretary of State.

But more on that in a minute.

Bush, the man who invented the Middle School School of Diplomacy, the kind that says, "I'm not talking to them, they know what they did," has suddenly sent people to talk to our enemies. And not just any enemies, but the two remaining members in the Axis of Evil, North Korea and Iran.

Holy smoking gun. This is the same guy who just last month said that Obama's willingness to talk to Iran was like Neville Chamberlain sucking up to Hitler.

And Secretary of State Rice is talking directly with the nuclear bad boys in North Korea.

In Iraq, the man who said that setting a time table for withdrawal would send the wrong message, is now talking about a "time horizon" for withdrawal because that's really different than a time table, because they have, like, different words and everything.



As Bush tries desperately to salvage something in the last few months of his presidency, not all Americans are happy. Take John Bolton, for instance, the former Ambassador to the UN and the neo-con with the milk mustache. He claimed all this talking with the enemy was an "intellectual collapse" and a preview of "an Obama administration."

Bolton said this soft-headed change in diplomacy is all Condi Rice's fault "because she's a chick."

And what a chick.

Yes, the story has moved from the tabloids into the mainstream press. Not the American press, of course, but in places like Russia and Italy, the wires are smoking with rumors that George and Condi are sitting in a tree k-i-s-s-i-n-g.

And what about Laura? Months ago it was rumored she'd been sleeping at the Mayfair Hotel instead of in the White House because of W's affair with you know who. Now it's being said that after George leaves office she'll file for divorce, which is better than running over George with her car, I guess.

Is it true? I don't know. But think about it. After leaving DC she's facing a lifetime of retirement with George and his jokes and that annoying little laugh he has, trapped on that goddam sweaty ranch in Crawford.

I always knew she was smarter than that.

It's annoying, sure, but is it art?

There's a new show in New York at the New Museum. You can read about it here. It sounds interesting, but what really caught my eye was this line from Ken Johnson's review:

"Robert Kusmirowski's full-scale reproduction of Theodore Kaczynski's famous cabin is the show's most unfortunate inclusion; the Unabomber's cabin has been exhausted as a motif in American art, if not in Europe."

Wow. Who knew? I'm such a rube I wasn't even aware of a Kaczynski school of American art, let alone that it had been played out. And I love the reviewer's adjective unfortunate. I could hear Johnson sighing over the curator's cluelessness. He probably doesn't even live in Manhattan. The shame.

Today, I want to talk about art. I love art. I buy art when I can afford it, and I go to shows and galleries and museums and some art hits me and some art doesn't.

As Vonnegut said, "So it goes."

One of my favorite painters is Franz Kline. I love the energy of his work but you can't really feel it unless you stand in front of one of his paintings and then the brushstrokes practically leap across the canvas.

I didn't grow up in a family that valued art, at least not art that wasn't something you could point to and say, "Now that, my friend, is a fucking bowl of fruit."


But in my 20's, I was fortunate to hang out with a bunch of painters like my friend Jerry, who introduced me to art, real art, like this early piece of Marcel Duchamp's. It's called Fountain and yes, for the eagle-eyed, that is a urinal. I love this piece for the story, of course. There's always a story with Duchamp.


These friends opened my eyes to 20th century art, and I'm grateful. Because it lets me enjoy things like this:


I love the color guys like Rothko and Morris Louis and Gene Davis, the guy who painted the parking lot at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Frank Rizzo, the former cop and mayor of the city reviewed Davis' work and said, "Stripes? I coulda got my kid to paint stripes."

Everybody's a critic.

Like Jesse Helms, our late and unlamented senator. His head almost exploded over this work. This is Piss Christ, by Andres Serrano, and it's a rather beautiful photo, I think, if you don't know what gives the picture that heavenly glow.

Jesse didn't care much for it.

Jesse didn't like Robert Mapplethorpe, either. His photos, especially his pictures of flowers are really incredible, but Mapplethorpe will most likely be remembered because he gave Jesse the vapors with photos like this.

And this.

Befuddling art isn't confined to paintings and photography, oh no. Modern dance is notorious for leaving audiences slack-jawed.

This is Meredith Monk, a dancer and composer who performed here in Durham a few weeks ago as part of the American Dance Festival. A friend saw the performance and described it as a dancer not really dancing as much as sitting and breathing and making faces every 30 minutes or so.

Um, okay.

Some of my favorite art is sculpture, and if I could, I'd have a yard full of it.

This is Claes Oldenburg. Ever since I saw his giant fan 30 years ago, I've been a sucker for his stuff.

That was also about the time I saw Red Grooms' Ruckus Manhattan. This is larger than life cartoonery. You could walk through this subway car and what I loved most is the floor. It was cantilevered so as you walked, you rocked, just like in a moving subway. Genius.

So that's my thought for the day, kids.

I should have clocked 500 words or so on this novel, but instead I got to talk about art.

Art. God bless all the men and women who put themselves out there trying to make our world more beautiful, more fun, more thoughtful.

Damn, I'd even like to see that reproduction of Ted Kaczynski's cabin. I don't care if it is yesterday's news.

I think I might like it.

Update: I wanted to link to this relevant piece by the Onion and give Bonnie Overton credit for the Meredith Monk report. There. Bonnie, you have now officially made The Planet.

Making up for past slackitude.

I was slow covering Safe and Sound, but I'm on top of this one, Breaking Cover, by my North Carolina homeboy, Dusty Rhoades. This from his announcement:

...'gripping stand-alone thriller (Publisher's Weekly)' and that 'a breath-taking pace, paired with a sure sense of character and place, makes this book another winner. (Laura Lippman).' I mean, C'mon, who's gonna argue with Laura Lippman? Not me, you betcha.

Congratulations, Dusty. Go get 'em.

Read more here.

A letter from abroad.

What follows is a letter in today's New York Times. When I read it, I remembered when a bridge team in international competition held up a hand-written sign saying they did not vote for Bush.

At the time, I said that what they had done was stupid because it only aroused the right wing nut squad, people who believe the president is so much a wuss that the sight of anyone who doesn't support his particular brand of swagger is a direct threat to the security of the USA.

Lee Child took me to task, saying that Americans have to disavow the criminals in the White House when we travel overseas and that this bridge team did a very brave thing, a very proper thing.

He was right, of course, and I was wrong. As I so often am.

So here is a letter from England that I find hopeful for our country, a letter that manages to separate the crimes of this political family from the intentions of the American people. Let us hope that this letter writer speaks for the majority of people in other countries and that we have a chance to heal our rift with the world once we remove this failure from his inherited seat of power.

And that's as close as I ever get to prayer.

With that, here is the letter:

Re “So Popular and So Spineless,” by Thomas L. Friedman (column, July 16): We British agree about the “rancid moral corruption” impeding United Nations measures against President Robert Mugabe and the other leaders of Zimbabwe. But we don’t agree about “a decline in American popularity.”

We know Americans are fundamentally decent. It is the administration we decry. The distinction applies throughout a world that Mr. Friedman sees turning anti-American.

This White House will be remembered not just for the grandstanding, the brazen public falsehoods, the fear-mongering, the trampling of the Constitution, the cynical politicization of justice, the parsing of human rights, the blind quest for untrammeled power, but most vividly for the things its occupants thought and did that they never intended anyone to know about.

Americans, learn the lesson. The rest of us already have. And it’s not Americans whom we blame.

Charles Dawson
Jevington, England, July 16, 2008

Thank you, Mr. Dawson. Thank you.

I need one more person to help me smuggle bootleg liquor.

It's not like he didn't warn me. When my friend (?) Scott invited me to join his mob on Facebook, I figured, what the heck.

So, Facebook lays this never-ending story of criminal advancement in front of an obsessive person. I think we all know what happens after that.

One of the things you have to do to move up the ranks of the criminal underclass is to recruit others. So far, I've lured Flatulent Louie and Big J Daddy into my antisocial enterprise.

But I need more, always more. Join me. Come on. It won't hurt. Just stop by my safe house and join up.

I'll even buy you a gun.

As for the addiction, I can quit any time I want. Honest.

Thank you, Ed.

Our good friend, Ed, sent this along, knowing I would find it endlessly amusing.

I don't usually like garden gnomes.

But Ryan Stevens, Boy Genius, sent this to me.

Terrific for Halloween, sure, but it would also make a kick-ass wedding gift.

"Honey! Look what the Terrenoires gave us! Isn't it great?"

It's impossible to understimate Fox News.

This story comes by way of Media Matters, the web site Bill O'Reilly hates because they play his quotes verbatim so that the world can see for itself just how a big a horse's patoot the guy really is.

And when Bill O'Reilly hates something, that makes me love it all the more.

But as low as Fox can sink (terrorist fist jab, Obama's baby mama) they can still find new depths to the slime they ooze through every day.

Not long ago, the New York Times ran a piece that was mildly critical of Fox News. In response, the geniuses at Fox and Friends ran their satirical riposte using doctored pictures of the reporter and his editor. Media Matters ran the actual pictures with the Fox and Friends' versions.



When Fox News was questioned about the photo manipulation, a spokeswoman shrugged and gave an answer that said in PR-speak, "Hey, it's Fox and Friends, what are you gonna do?"

Fox and Friends is fun to watch in a poke-yourself-in-the-eye kind of way because if you squint, it almost looks like an SNL parody of morning news shows. If you haven't exposed yourself to Fox and Friends, you can only guess at the inanity caffeinated humans can sling at 7:00 a.m. Steve Doocy, one of the Friends, is so bone-deep stupid that he makes Matt Lauer look like Ed By-God Murrow.

In a time when the New Yorker is taking hits for its ill-conceived cover, places like Fox and Friends can skate by with crap like this.

At my age I sometimes think I've seen it all. Then I watch Fox News and find out just how little I know about this brave new journalism.

Happy Monday!

The FISA Compromise.

By now we've all heard how Obama voted on the FISA bill and if you like all of your amendments ungutted, this should make you a little angry.

Senator Dodd, along with Hillary, voted against this travesty.

Here's what Dodd said today:

“With one stroke of his pen, the President has ensured that the truth behind his unprecedented domestic spying regime will never see the light of day. But the fight must go on. I will continue to stand up for the rule of law and the civil liberties of all Americans at every opportunity, and will strongly support efforts to challenge the constitutionality of this decision in the courts. I can only hope that the courts will be able to correct the mistake the Congress and President have made.”

So today I called Obama's headquarters at 866-675-2008 and told them I had some money to donate. They were happy until I told them I had donated it to Chris Dodd. "I think you can guess why," I said.

They did and told me I wasn't alone.

Why not go here and give Dodd some love, too. Help retire his campaign debt. Then call Obama at 866-675-2008 and tell him what you just did. It won't restore the 4th Amendment or our rule of law, but it will make you feel a little better.

But just a little.

Every four years I get suckered back into this abusive relationship and wake up with a hangover, my TV gone, and my pants down around my ankles. I knew it was coming, I just didn't expect it until November.

The GOP brings the funny.

This is just an example of Republican humor. You can read the full story here.

But really, it's just some knucklehead's idea of a joke. Racist, yeah, probably, but not nearly as bigoted as the Latinas for McCain I heard on NPR today. If you didn't hear it, you should. These idiotas radiate stupidity like a hot stove, even as they justify their prejudices with rumor, but they can't possibly do as much damage as one lone hombre and his wife.

I'm talking about Phil Gramm and his mujer, Wendy.

Here's the happy couple with John McCain and the luminous Cindy McCain. For impossibly rich women, they look a little bummed, don't they? Perhaps it's the lack of foie gras in Iowa, I don't know.

Phil is in the news for calling the American people whiners about the economy. Phil thinks the economy is swell. No wonder. He's being paid, big time, by mortgage bankers in Switzerland. And Wendy cleaned up as a board member of Enron after she and her husband, the former senator, created the Enron loophole, the legislation that brought us the Enron meltdown and the current credit crisis.

Gramm is now working as John McCain's senior economics advisor. He hates regulation. You know, like the regulation that could have saved us billions in the Savings & Loan debacle. Seems like every time Phil Gramm and his economic theories swagger into the bar, we get the tab.

That's a big punchline among Republicans. Too bad the joke is on us.

The moral is, I'll take stupid, ill-informed bigotry any day, but these conservative economics are killing me.