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.

McCain = Bush

And so it continues. At a McCain speech, the police arrested a 60-year-old librarian for carrying a sign that read "McCain = Bush."

I saw this on Olbermann's show last night but I missed the guy in the pea pod costume in the background.

Thanks to my friend, Eric, I got a chance to look again.

Yes, the story is outrageous, but arresting that guy in the pod costume was just good law enforcement. Sorry, pal, but you've violated the taste statute.

And the line forms to the right.

Yesterday, they lowered Jesse Helms into the dirt and within hours the line of citizens began to form, all wishing to micturate upon Jesse's final resting place.

I'm going to sell tickets and make my fortune.

Who knew the Church of Satan used emoticons?

The Church of Satan left a comment on my earlier post about Durham Democratic party officials being caught in triple-distilled ugliness that some think is linked to the Prince of Darkness, and I don't mean Robert Novak.

Spokesperson for the Church of Satan, Magistra Ygraine Mitchell wrote:

"Finally. A response that gives the devil his due ;)"

I wasn't quite sure how to read this until I went to her blog and saw some of the comments she's collected from my neighbors here in North Carolina.

"You rarely find a satanic conservative This krap is all the result of that great liberal program misnamed the sexual revolution, where as long as it all hangs out, and nobody gets hurt (except the victim), anything between *consenual* (does dog cage come under consensual?) adults (loose definition of the word) is required."

"I had one bad encounter with satanists involving my daughter. It was not good for them. I did instill in them that I could send them out of this world so they could meet the devil (their god) They declined my invitation."

There's nothing like the strut of a macho man talking tough over the Internet, and WTF is that about the sexual revolution? Wow. And these people operate motor vehicles at high speed. Now, that's scary.

So far, in my public life I've received fan mail from Baba Ram Dass and now I get this attaboy from the Church of Satan.

Spiritually speaking, that's gotta put me in very rare company.

The day Pat Robertson accidentally squeezed out the truth.

For readers who live outside the US, Pat Robertson is a TV preacher who ran for president in 1988 and got 6 or 7 votes from the soft-headed.

Although his run for public office was a flop, his Christian network continues to bilk little old ladies out their Social Security checks and if you want to run for president as a Republican, you make the trek down to Virginia Beach, pucker up and plant one on Pat's saggy white butt cheek.

Back in 1984, the night Ronald Reagan was re-elected, I resigned myself to another four years of troglodyte rule the way I usually do on election nights - with a lot of scotch and repeated playing of the Stones' "You Can't Always Get What You Want."

Feeling masochistic, I turned to Robertson's 700 Club, a sort of Christian Tonight Show for what Lee Atwater, famed GOP trickster, affectionately called "the extra-chromosome Republicans." Pat and his Stepin Fetchit sidekick, Ben Kinchlow, were opining about the election results.

Pat reported that "another Christian," Jesse Helms, had been re-elected in North Carolina and with Percy's defeat in Illinois, that put Jesse next in line for the chairmanship of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, a job that Jesse had publicly salivated over for years.

Ben reminded Pat of Helms' promise to the people of North Carolina that if re-elected, he would remain head of the Agriculture Committee which was important to the state. "And Senator Helms is a man of his word," Ben said.

Pat agreed. Senator Helms is a man of his word and would keep his word "unless he can find some way out of it."

And there it was. The Christian right's sense of ethics. You should always keep your word unless you can "find some way out of it."

Oh, and what did Helms do? Did this man of integrity keep his promise to the people of North Carolina and stay at Agriculture? Well, it took him a few years but he did indeed find some way out of it. He took over Foreign Relations where he wrought a particularly ugly brand of reactionary mischief, so far to the right that even some Republicans blanched.

So, as our state flags fly at half-staff today in honor of our departed Senator, I would like readers to remember Jesse the way he really was. A man with the reputation for always keeping his word.

Unless he could find some way out of it.

I'm not a good person.

I have been remiss. I got this from Dusty a while back and it got buried under a stack of other books that have sadly gone unread. I don't know why, but I've fallen far behind in my reading. The days and weeks fly by and a book I picked up in hardcover is now available in paper.

As is Safe and Sound. In fact, Dusty has another book out, Breaking Cover, and if it's as good as Safe and Sound, it's something you should pick up.

S&S has everything a light romantic comedy doesn't - a sociopathic South African, claymores, and, what I'll bet is the first time ever, the use of a firefighting helicopter in the climactic shoot-out. Wow.

I've read all of the Jack Keller books and each is better than the one before, which is as it should be.

So forgive me, Dusty, for not getting to this sooner. I promise I won't be as slack with the new one.

Jesse Helms - 1921-2008

They say you should never speak ill of the dead.

That doesn't leave much to say now that this foe of human rights, enemy of civil rights, father of the smear, friend of the bigot and supporter of tyrants, thugs and murderers has finally let his spirit pass from this earth, much as a noxious gas passes between the overripe buttocks of a beer-sodden truck driver.

And now a word from our sponsor.

I've known that freaky behavior is not the sole province of the GOP, no matter how often Republican leaders are caught with their pants down. But who knew that proof of such exceptional Democratic deviance would raise its horned brow right here at home?

The news is, some low level functionary of the Durham Democratic party is accused of beating a man in a dog cage and raping a woman, all in the interest of serving Satan.

Wow. That makes Mark Foley of the intern scandal look like a Boy Scout leader. OK, maybe that wasn't quite the innocent simile I was looking for.

But back to the Democratic freak show. Police say Joseph Scott Craig, his wife and another woman were all caught up in the Satanic hi-jinx.

The story itself is a treasure of wonderful quotes like this:

"The Durham Democratic Party is a volunteer organization," said Kevin Farmer, chairman of the organization. "I'm not a professional. I'm not equipped to deal with this. I bake bread for a living."

But the most entertaining outrage comes from Satan himself, through his earthly representatives.

"Essentially we're an atheistic religion that uses Satan as a metaphor ... in the Miltonian sense," Magistra Ygraine Mitchell said. You would think that any immoral, illegal or fattening behavior would be embraced by the Prince of Darkness, but you would be wrong. "When people break the law in the name of Satan or the devil, we get very angry." Grrr.

According to the News & Observer, the Satanic church lists 9 things The Beast considers sinful.

1. Stupidity

2. Pretentiousness

3. Solipsism (or the belief that nothing exists outside of your own noggin)

4. Self-deceit (as in, those pants do not make you look fat)

5. Herd conformity (see iPod)

6. Lack of perspective (see #5)

7. Forgetfulness of past orthodoxies (like what wine goes with what flesh)

8. Counterproductive pride (as opposed to productive pride)

9. Lack of aesthetics (see Thomas Kinkade)

Mitchell added that the church does not condone illegal acts. "We police our own and do not indulge in the irresponsible Christian notion of forgiveness."

So take that, sinners. Fuck forgiveness.

I think this story about Democratic ill deeds is the perfect welcome for the 4th. You know, fair play and all that.

So, Happy Brithday America and Happy Independence Day to the Planet's regular readers. Try not to blow off anything you'll want to use again.

We'll see you Monday.

Bad habits.

This blog has been just that, a bad habit.

Others have quit. Take a look at my links over there. Since the last time I cleaned it up, Tribe, Jim Winter and Bryon Quertermous have tossed in the towel. Laura Lippman's taken a hiatus from her Memory Project, and Daniel Hatadi is laying back. The First Offenders are on summer break and Naked Authors are also taking a vacation.

The stalwarts are still posting regularly. Dusty Rhoades and Stephen Blackmoore's LA Noir, for example, have never been more entertaining.

I mention all of this in order to celebrate not the end of a blog, but the beginning. I direct you to Static in the Attic , a new blog started by my friend Scott Holmes. His most recent post is terrific. Here's a sample:

“'I’d like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony.'”

You know you’re picturing that commercial…flower children who haven’t left the sixties, dancing and singing on lush rolling grassy knolls…It was the Kum By Ya of the seventies.

All for a soft drink that police use to get blood stains off of asphalt."

That's great stuff.

This is the circle of life, my friends. Some blogs pass away and others spring up to take their place. Or, to stick with my metaphor of bad habits, some people quit chewing gum while others take that first step toward a raging meth addiction.

Check out Static in the Attic and welcome Scott to the blogosphere.

What? Did you think I was leaving?

Hell, you'll need antibiotics to get rid of me.

Heartbreak on four legs.

I'm ashamed to say that we don't really know our neighbors. We know their names and we say hi, but that's about it. Once, when a landscaper we hired mistakenly pulled up one of their azaleas, they made a big row of it, which is about as close as we've been.

Until last night.

About 10, our neighbor rang our doorbell. Jenny was already asleep, and I was near horizontal on the couch. I opened the door and Connie, in tears, said her dog had just died and she was dazed by grief.

I put on my shoes, grabbed an old sheet and went next door. I had never seen their dog before. Like I said, we weren't very close. But there, lying on their living room floor was a large, beautiful husky/shepherd mix. He looked like he was sleeping.

I knelt next to him and stroked his fur. He was warm. I felt for a pulse in his neck while Jim, Connie's husband, told me that the dog just stood up, started howling and then fell over, just like that.

I slipped the sheet under Hank, I think they said his name was, and made a makeshift litter so Jim and I could carry Hank out to the back deck. I left Hank there by the hot tub, covered in the sheet. I told Jim and Connie how sorry I was and listened again as Jim told me how Hank was fine one minute, and then he wasn't.

When Olen Steinhauer lost his dog, Bogi, he wrote that dogs were just heartbreak waiting to happen, and for Jim and Connie last night, that was achingly true.

I went home and petted Duncan for a long while. When I let him outside before bedtime, I didn't turn on our backyard light. I didn't want Jim and Connie to see him, still alive and happy, going about as if nothing had changed while their Hank lay on the back deck, covered in a neighbor's old sheet.

It would have been cruel.

You don't bring small things into a bar.

It was movie day at the Terrenoire household yesterday, as I was capable of doing little more than lying on the couch after Saturday night's Blues Challenge.

Results on that in a moment.

But back to the movies. We watched Be Kind Rewind, a quirky little comedy that had its moments; Persepolis, an animated story about a young Iranian girl that was very good. I highly recommend it.

Then we just happened upon Harvey, a movie I hadn't seen in decades and it was better than I remembered. Much better.

If you're not familiar with Harvey, it's the story of a pleasant drunk whose best friend is a 6 foot tall invisible rabbit.

Written by Mary Chase, the movie was made in 1950 with Jimmy Stewart as Elwood P. Dowd leading a great cast of character actors you will know, even if you don't know their names. Josephine Hull won an Academy Award for her hilarious performance.

But as much as I enjoyed the acting, I loved the writing. The title of this post is from the movie, as are these:

"I've wrestled with reality for 35 years, Doctor, and I'm happy to state I finally won out over it." - Elwood P. Dowd

"My mother always told me that in this world you must be oh so smart, or oh so pleasant. I recommend pleasant. You can quote me on that." - Elwood P. Dowd

"I've been spending my life among flyspecks... while miracles have been leaning on lampposts at 4th and Fairfax" - Dr. Chumley (Cecil Kellaway)

I was surprised by how much I had forgotten about this movie, and if you haven't seen it, do yourself a favor and rent it. You'll thank me.

How about you? Any movies surprise you lately?

Talk to me.

(As for the Blues Challenge, I took Ed's advice and enjoyed cold beverages, tried to play my best, and expected nothing. No, our band didn't place in the top three, but that was OK. Our good friends Valentino and the Piedmont Sheiks came out on top. Ed is their drummer. More on the competition tomorrow.)

Is the media really in love with Obama?

Constant reader Dread asks if we've noticed that the media has stopped writing stories about Obama and started writing romances instead. I don't mean to pick on Dread, but I don't buy it.

I make no pretense to being objective about this, but every time I hear someone mention the liberal media, I ask them to Google Sue Schmidt, the AP's Nedra Pickler, Fred Hiatt, Rick Kaplan and Judith Miller.

Steno Sue writes for the Post and has never read a White House press release that she didn't pass along with love. Fred Hiatt has turned the Post's Op-Ed page over to right-wing bloviators like Charles Krauthammer. Rick Kaplan turned CNN to the right and then moved on to MSNBC with the truly crazy Michael Weiner Savage. Phil Donahue had already been fired, even though Donahue had the highest ratings on the cable channel.

And we should all remember Judith Miller at the NYT and her pushing the war based on stories fed to her by the administration, Chalabi, and the aptly-named Curveball.

The mainstream media is so frightened by the right that they bend over at the slightest hint that they're leaning left.

I hear consummate Beltway insider Cokie Roberts and political reporter Juan Williams of NPR (and Fox News) and wonder why NPR is considered liberal. I watch NBC and wonder how anyone can say it's liberal when one of it's primary political reporters is Andrea Mitchell who is married to Alan Greenspan, the acolyte of Ayn Rand and the man at least partly responsible for our economic problems, from the national debt to the mortgage meltdown.

I am not ojective, I admit, but these are the stories I've seen this week: Obama went back on his word over campaign financing (flip flop!) and he approved the new FISA compromise. Neither of those stories are positive, the FISA compromise, in particular, is a big disappointment.

I've also heard about the Newsweek poll that puts Obama 12 to 15 points ahead of McCain, and in every story I've read or heard, reporters are quick to point out that this poll is "an outlier" and may not reflect how close the race really is.

I've heard that Obama trails McCain when people are asked about national security, that a McCain advisor said a terrorist attack would benefit McCain's campaign and that Karl Rove thinks Obama is "that guy" at the country club that makes snide remarks about everyone else. Yes, the same Karl Rove who was recently hired to write for Newsweek.

What I haven't seen in the mainstream news is how McCain's top energy advisor, Phil Gramm, was responsible for legislation that unleashed Enron on the US, at a time when Phil Gramm's wife, Wendy, sat on the board of Enron. You'd think if the media really did lean left, this would be major news, but sadly, it is not.

Liberal media? Maybe at one time, like in the 70's, but not today. Today a small handful of corporations own the majority of media outlets. Reporters who want to keep their access to the White House are remarkably uncritical. Columnists who were fired after 9/11 were fired because they criticized Bush. Columnists who have been consistently wrong, especially about the war, have been rewarded. Just look at the records of Tom Friedman and David Brooks, both of the liberal New York Times.

So, I'm not buying it. I know a lot of people believe it, but I think it's convenient bunk. If there's any romance being written by the mainstream, it's a love of money and an infatuation with the trivial.

But you won't read about that in the news, either.

iPods in the News.

This morning, the editor of Rolling Stone said that Obama has great musical taste, which doesn't surprise me. In an interview with RS, Obama admits that he has "pretty eclectic tastes."

What's on his iPod?

The Rolling Stones, Ludacris, Springsteen, Stevie Wonder, and Dylan. He's quoted as saying, "One of my favourites ... is Maggie's Farm. It speaks to me as I listen to some of the political rhetoric." There's also Miles, Coltrane and Charlie Parker. Pretty decent mix, if you ask me.

Curious, I looked up Bush's iPod list and found this partial list:

John Fogerty, Van Morrison, Stevie Ray Vaughan, The Knack, Blackie and the Rodeo Kings, Alan Jackson, George Jones, Kenny Chesney, Eric Clapton, Robert Palmer and Bryan Adams.

Not too unexpected. No Hammell on Trial or Steve Earle.

Cheney's iPod?

The VP rocks out to Hank Williams, some tunes from the 40's and the wails of tortured prisoners. Again, no surprises.

Hillary Clinton's iPod is pretty cool. Her playlist is boomer-centric with the Beatles, the Eagles and Aretha. No Celine Dion.

And John McCain's iPod: Abba.

Mama Mia.

So, what's on your iPod? And would it hurt you if you ran for office?

Bill Kristol, irony-free since 1984.

This is New York Times columnist, William Kristol, a man who became famous by being Irving Kristol's son.

Once a week, Kristol writes a fact-free Op-Ed piece for the Times and yesterday he penned a brightly-polished turd that is right up their with the best of his best work.

He was writing about this MoveOn.org ad:

If you haven't seen it, it shows a young mom with her baby son, Alex. She tells John McCain that if he's serious about staying in Iraq for 100 years, and he's counting on little Alex to feed the cannon, he can look elsewhere.

Sure, like any 30 second ad, you can pull it apart by its loose threads, but the message is still there - war requires mothers to sacrifice their sons and daughters. When asked to make that sacrifice, many mothers, both Democrat and Republican, say they would rather not. It's how moms are.

Bill Kristol thinks Alex's mom is selfish. He quotes an unnamed mom blog commenter, the most reliable source ever, as saying:

“...Someone has to stand between our society and danger. If not my son, then who? If not little Alex then someone else will have to stand and deliver. Someone’s son, somewhere.”

Kristol, wiping away a crocodile tear, writes:

"The MoveOn ad is unapologetic in its selfishness, and barely disguised in its disdain for those who have chosen to serve — and its contempt for those parents who might be proud of sons and daughters who are serving. The ad boldly embraces a vision of a selfish and infantilized America, suggesting that military service and sacrifice are unnecessary and deplorable relics of the past.
And the sole responsibility of others."

Let's leave aside Kristol's overwrought interpretation of this mom having contempt for people who serve. Let's overlook Kristol's conflation of the disaster in Iraq with all wars that depend on the sacrifice of men and women like my brother and sister, my father and his brother, Jenny's father and, the least likely soldier of all, myself.

No, let's look at his last umbrage-laden sentence, that service in MoveOn's view is "...the sole responsibility of others."

For those of you who may have forgotten, Bill Kristol, besides being a crackerjack columnist, was also one of the leading lights behind the Project for the New American Century, or PNAC. PNAC was a collection of brilliant minds, all of them thinking as hard as they could about international things. You might have heard about their most innovative product. It's called the Iraq War.

Hmm, you might say, so Bill Kristol and his friends sent a lot of other people off to war. But surely, when it was their time to serve, Bill Kristol and his friends didn't think of it as "the sole responsibility of others."

So, who, among these brilliant architects of the misadventure in Iraq, served?

Kristol? Wolfowitz? Feith? Cheney? Perle? Bueller? Bueller? Anyone?

No, when Bill Kristol had a chance to take someone else's place in the line, to serve his country as he wants Alex to, Bill Kristol stood with his fellow PNAC patriots and said, "Let somebody else do it."

When I get lectured about "...those who have chosen to serve — and ... parents who might be proud of sons and daughters who are serving" by a man whose closest brush with uniformed service comes when he orders a Big Mac from the back of his limousine, I think this is as useful and full of intellectual integrity as Kristol's paper-thin patriotism.

So to you, Mr. Kristol, this old enlisted man suggests you take your precious respect for the people who serve, roll it up into a tiny, little ball, and stick it firmly up your ass.

You know, where your head usually is.

Another one of my heroes is gone.

Maybe it's my age, maybe it's the season, maybe it's just 7 years of Bush, but I find I no longer have any tolerance for bullshit.

Which makes George Carlin one of my heroes. As you probably know, George died last night, leaving us without his strong voice in this season of unceasing bullshit.

It's nearly impossible to imagine today, but George was arrested several times for his "7 words" bit. The first time in 1972. That's right, the cops hauled his ass to jail for doing comedy. Now that's bullshit.

In honor of George, here's one of my favorite rants against bullshit. Enjoy.

A once in a lifetime opportunity.

I left work yesterday and settled in for my usual 40 minute commute home. Paul Butterfield was blowing a harp solo on the box and traffic was its usual rush hour pack of swift moving automobiles.

About 4 miles from the airport, traffic began to slow. I saw a few police cars blocking an exit and figured there was an accident. As I-40 swept up past the Wade Avenue exit, I saw that the opposite lanes of the Interstate, usually bumper to bumper this time of day, were empty. Not a car in sight. It was like a scene from On The Beach. Spooky.

Our westbound lanes continued on as usual. It was only the eastbound lanes that were abandoned of all commuter life. Then, lights flashing, two motorcycle cops came toward us. They were followed by more cops on bikes. Then an EMT truck. Behind that, a long line of black SUVs.

I got into the left lane, closest to the oncoming motorcade. I let the black SUVs get closer. I knew who was sitting behind one of those darkened windows and I knew I would never have this opportunity again.

As the motorcade pulled opposite, I held up my middle finger. It was only for a moment, but in that brief flash of the single digit, I got to tell George W. Bush, America's petite dauphin, exactly what I thought of the way he's handled his office.

And it felt good. It felt damn good.

When a regular guy, commuting home after a long week at work, gets to flip off the most powerful man in the world, it just reminds me why I fly the flag every 4th of July.

Damn, I love this country.

Have a good weekend.

Winners and Losers.

A few weeks ago, our band agreed to play in the Triangle Blues Society's Blues Challenge, a competition for a slot in Memphis and our local Bull Durham Blues Festival. I was OK with this, and when Tim, our guitar player, expressed discomfort at making music into a compeition, I said that if we go into it with the right attitude, it should be fine. Next weekend, on the 27th, we'll be playing at the Blue Bayou, my favorite bar.

But now I'm having second thoughts.

Our good friend, Ed Mezynski, is the drummer for Valentino and the Piedmont Sheiks, another band in the competition. This morning, Ed gave me this list, guaranteed to make the event go well:

1 Relax and have fun
2 Try to play well
3 Stay within the time parameters
4 Sit down and enjoy the other bands
5 Enjoy a cold beverage
6 Expect nothing
7 Hug the pretty girls (repeat as often as allowed)

I've won stuff and lost stuff and I'm always pretty even-keeled about it either way. Beneath A Panamanian Moon was nominated for a few prizes, and that was great. I didn't win, but according to witnesses, I had a great time. Mostly because I adhered to #5 and #6.

So I'm going to try to follow Ed's list of approved activities and relax. Still something about this just doesn't feel right, but I'm sure I'll get over it.

So, how about you? How do you handle these things?

Talk to me.

Naked breasts and Texas.

If you're a regular reader, you probably recognize certain themes at The Planet. There's the Bullshit in Politics theme. There's the News That Should Be Too Personal to Relate But Isn't theme.

And there's this one, a personal favorite. It's the Conservatives Are Freaks theme.

This time it involves a Texan Republican who came to Washington with a busload of Promise Keepers and was shocked by all the nekkid people he saw in the nation's capital.

Robert Hurt, a rancher, GOP delegate, and father of 14 (he kept his eyes closed the whole time, he says), told the Washington Post, "You don't have nude art on your front porch, so why is it important to have that in the common places of Washington, D.C.?"

Sadly, I don't have a front porch. But if I did, I'd happily have some of these naked pictures on it.

Of course, I'm a liberal, which means I'm already going to hell.

Or, to quote Jim Gaffigan, I'm practically sprinting there.

It's not that Mr. Hurt wants to curtail anybody's freedom. In fact, he said that he respects free speech, as long as you say stuff he agrees with and shows art he likes. Art with clothes on it.

"I believe art affects a country indirectly," Hurt said. "I have been studying the decline of morals in this country. It's sending the wrong message to children that nudity is fine, that nakedness is fine. . . . There are degrees of vulgarity, and it opens up the door for the other stuff."

That other stuff, that's the real problem. Imagine, if you let marble females show their naked lady lumps in public, before you know it, everyone will be walking around brazenly naked under their clothes and then where will we be?

Hurt hasn't been able to get anyone in power to cover up all the naked bosoms, winkies and bottoms in Washington, but he's not one to give up. He said he'll make another trip to DC to videotape the evidence.

That's right. He's going to videotape the evidence, so he can study it in the privacy of his home back in Texas.

When his wife is visting her sister in Amarillo.

Raleigh's resident horse's ass.

There's a local columnist named Rick Martinez who is associated with the conservative American Enterprise Institute and news director of the local radio station that hosts Rush, Hannity and other political commentators who present the entire spectrum of political thought from right to far right.

This morning he proved that he's either dishonest or stupid. I'll let you decide which. He wrote:

"Barack Obama employed another myth that drives Bryce and me nuts -- that U.S. dependence on foreign oil finances terrorism. Baloney. As Bryce put it during an appearance at the American Enterprise Institute, al-Qaida, Hamas, the Taliban and every other Terrorist-R-Us group won't go broke and out of business if we stop importing oil."

It's easy to spot the glowing turd of Martinez's logic. Saying that oil revenues finance terrorism is a no-brainer, right? Even Dick Cheney would agree to that. But saying that drying up oil revenues would eliminate terrorism is an entirely different argument, and one that Obama didn't make. This is what Obama actually did say in Michigan the other day:

"Oil money pays for the bombs going off from Baghdad to Beirut, and the bombast of dictators from Caracas to Tehran. Our nation will not be secure unless we take that leverage away..."

So, is Martinez stupid or dishonest? I could make a cheap joke and say he's both, but I won't. I don't think Martinez is stupid.

But I suspect he thinks we are.

Happy Father's Day!

The Bridge.

We watched this documentary last night. It's deeply disturbing and yet, beautiful. The director, Eric Steel, has done something remarkable here, showing us how people get to a point where jumping off the Golden Gate is a relief from the prison that their lives have become.

Cut with interviews of family and friends and beautiful shots of the Golden Gate and San Francisco bay, are shots of people jumping. Watching someone climb over the rail and over the edge is a shock I can't shake, nor do I want to.

The film, when it was released, caught a lot of flack from critics who saw this as a glorification of suicide or the exploitation of tragedy, but I didn't see it that way. To me, this is a closer look at the victims of mental illness, including the families, and the desperation that drives them to take that last long step into darkness.

This movie will stick with me. I highly recommend it, but be warned, it's tough to watch.