Today’s headlines

ITEM! Bush has a 19% approval rating. Nineteen. That’s a one and a nine. Richard Nixon, if memory serves, was at 23% percent on the day he resigned. But my favorite statistic is theone about the economy. Just about everyone seems to think it’s not going well. How many people think it’s going great? You’ll never guess: 1%. This is because, of course, the economy is going great for 1% of the country, the same 1% who make more than several million dollars a year and get all the tax breaks.

ITEM! In Guantanamo, a bunch of probably innocent people, after years of incarceration, will be tried and executed, so that Bush can justify their illegal arrest and detention. The money quote: “I said to him that if we come up short and there are some acquittals in our cases, it will at least validate the process,” Davis continued. “At which point, [Haynes’s] eyes got wide and he said, ‘Wait a minute, we can’t have acquittals. If we’ve been holding these guys for so long, how can we explain letting them get off? We can’t have acquittals, we’ve got to have convictions.'”

ITEM! Bush visits a museum in Africa and learns a valuable lesson. This is the man whose supporters are saying that Obama is unelectable because he has no foreign policy experience.

ITEM! Retailers, feeling the pinch of recession, decide to go ahead and simply extort money from innocent people. This is, of course, a great idea. You have lawyers, what are you paying them for? Make them earn their keep by sending them out to shake down customers! As far as I know, Best Buy has not yet resorted to sending armed thugs around to local fruit-stand owners to demand “protection” money, but I sense that is coming.

ITEM! Obama Smear of the DayTM: The National Review notes that, as Obama has mixed-race parents, they must certainly have been Communists. Communists! Note to my conservative brethren (and sistren): Communists have not been considered a national threat since 1953 (and were a big fake threat even then). The median age of a voter who is likely to be swayed by the smear that Obama was raised by Communists is Dead.

ITEM! Professional clown Bill O’Reilly shows his typical class when discussing Michelle Obama. Note that when he uses the term “lynching party” he’s stressing that he doesn’t want one — unless, of course, there is enough evidence to demand one, then he’s all for it. On a personal note, let me just add that I’m about the same age as Michelle Obama, and you know what, for the first time in my adult life, I’m proud of my country too. The first election I voted in was 1980 (my candidate, John Anderson, lost) and over the ensuing 25 years I’ve watched my country get shoved so far to the right that I don’t recognize it any more. This primary season does show an electorate hungry for change, and it’s only in the minds of the lizard-heads on the right that that is a lynchable offense.

ITEM! Telcom immunity! Here’s how it works. You can’t sue the phone company for spying on you unless you can prove they’re spying on you. You can’t prove they’re spying on you because all the evidence of their spying is protected by the federal government. You can’t get the information from the federal government because Bush owns the Supreme Court.