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Tom Tomorrow’s latest “This Modern World” cartoon brings up a crucial point I think is too often ignored in all this: why does this administration have any credibility left? When Bush and his surrogates like the odious Brit Hume on Fox News pat our heads and assure us that they’re not doing anything wrong with all this spying and data mining, no, it’s just to catch the bad guys – why does anyone believe them? Their stories change more often than a killer on “Law & Order.”

And to those fuckheads like Brit Hume who are pushing the “hey, if you didn’t do anything wrong, you don’t have anything to worry about, right?” line of anti-American bullshit – and to those whom it comforts – I feel I need to again reprint some immortal lines from “A Man for All Seasons”:

More: And go he should, if he were the devil himself, until he broke the law.
Roper: So now you’d give the devil benefit of law!
More: Yes. What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get to the devil?
Roper: Yes! I’d cut down every law in England to do that.
More: Oh? And when the last law was down and the devil turned round on you – where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, man’s laws, not God’s, and if you cut them down – and you’re just the man to do it – do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the devil benefit of law – for my own safety’s sake.

29 percent.

Six point drop – in one month.

“I sort of feel bad for Osama bin Laden. All these years hating us for our freedoms – and now he has to find a new reason to hate us.”

-Bill Maher, “Real Time with Bill Maher”

Stephanopoulos: And is it curious to you that given how much control U.S. and coalition forces now have in the country, they haven’t found any weapons of mass destruction?

Rumsfeld: We know where they are. They’re in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat.

-“This Week,” 3/30/03

Let’s face it: Donald Rumsfeld isn’t going anywhere. Bush firing Rumsfeld would be like firing himself – it would be admitting that his entire Iraq “experiment” (tm Dean Esmay), the centerpiece of his presidency, was a colossal mistake. So Rumsfeld stays.

But the quote above has always seemed to me to be a perfect encapsulation of the entire Iraq war, and in fact of the administration as a whole. In the first half of the quote, Rumsfeld “knows where [the WMD] are.” And then seconds later, he proves for anyone who was even half listening that in fact they “know” nothing of the kind. (The “somewhat” is the cherry on top of the sundae.)

The simple fact is, no one who supported the war in Iraq, administration or citizen, much cared whether those pesky WMD existed or not. We needed to kick some Arab ass and this was the easiest target. The bully always picks on the weakest kid. (Is it any wonder that Iran wants to bulk up a little bit before recess?)

Meanwhile, we watch “United 93” so we can refresh the hatred and fear and hopelessness we felt that day. And we step out onto the playground with our dukes held up defiantly, waiting. For something.

Writing about Stephen Colbert’s beyond-brilliant performance Saturday night at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, Scott Rosenberg of Salon wrote:

Just for a moment, Colbert brought a heavily sheltered President Bush face to face with the outrage and revulsion that large swathes of the American public feel for him and what he has done to our country.

Now see, I’m a word person. And when I or someone else use just the exact right word, I get a little chill of pleasure down my spine. That ever happen to you?

Well it happened to me when I read the word “revulsion.” What a fantastic, fantastic word. Don’t you just have the urge to find a way to work that into your regular conversation tomorrow? (Well, probably not. But I do.) It so perfectly characterizes the feeling I get when I consider our President and all he represents. Revulsion.

Of course, for those on the right that’s just my (uncommon) admission of Bush Derangement Syndrome, the whacked-out hatred of Bush that has no basis in reality.

The thing is, it’s all about reality. It’s about where we came from, where we are, and where we are going. It’s about our inability as a society to even agree on what “reality” is. Traitors and patriots staring at each other from each side of the looking glass, snarling and spitting.

It’s about not only not trying to suppress our worst instincts, but reveling in them. It’s about whittling the universe down to six inches in front of our faces – if that. It’s about money and power and privilege and religion. It’s about Dennis Hastert driving a hybrid car a block away from a photo op press conference, then jumping into an Escalade.

We know full well the Emperor has no clothes. And we don’t care.

It’s not really about Bush at all. He’s just a symbol, a pawn in a high-stakes game he only partially understands. But that’s part of the picture, too.

What I feel, all too often, is revulsion. Thanks, Scott Rosenberg, for giving me a word for it.

So Republican crapweasel Sen. Lamar Alexander wants to make a law saying that the U.S. National Anthem can only be sung in English – banning, say, the recent Spanish-language version coming smack-dab in the middle of immigrant protests that have Republicans all around the country looking sideways at their maids.

Too bad the cat’s out of the bag – the anthem was already translated into Spanish. In 1919. Oops. Can’t unring that bell. Stop them before they translate again!

And don’t show Sen. Alexander this – he might have a seizure of some kind.

Just when you think these boobs can’t get any more stupid, venal or irrelevant, they prove you wrong.

Dean Esmay, my favorite HIV-denying crackpot, is miffed that someone didn’t praise the 9/11 movie “United 93” high enough for his taste. He links to a smirking review of the Salon review by someone called “Cranky Insomniac,” who calls Salon “smug and French-sounding.”

No doubt these people were captains of the debate team in high school.

Salon’s Stephanie Zacharek feels pretty much like I do about the movie (which I haven’t seen yet) – no matter how well-made it is, I wonder what the *point* of it is. Why does it exist? Clearly 9/11 is one of the most important historical moments any of us will ever experience, and as such I think it’s more than fair game for dramatizations and discussions of all kinds. I even defended the film to a friend, who also hasn’t seen it, who proclaimed it was “in bad taste” by definition. I disagree.

But unfortunately the project reminds me of “The Passion of the Christ,” Mel Gibson’s tragically wrongheaded version of Christ’s crucifixion. If all we’re shown is two hours of bloody torture, what do we learn about Christ’s death? Similarly, what is the point of immersing us in the terror that those passengers felt?

Of course for Bush cultists, who wrap themselves in the fuzzy blanket of 9/11 on a nightly basis, that *is* the point of this movie. Because if it were up to them, we would all be watching footage of the twin towers exploding 24/7, our eyes propped open Clockwork-Orange-style so we couldn’t look away, ever. No amount of outrage, and the reliving of outrage, is enough for them.

Well I have a message for those people: get the hell out of my mind. How dare you say that what I feel about 9/11 isn’t enough. How dare you presume to tell me how I should interpret that event.

The tragedy of 9/11 is that it changed everything, and changed nothing. And no movie, no pundit, no stupid country song on the radio is going to erase that truth. Ever.

Neal Gabler, who has the distinction of having Bill O’Reilly wanting him canned, had this to say about apparently true rumors that Fox News’ Tony Snow will become the new White House Press Secretary:

“It would be a change in job title, but not description.”

Is anyone else getting just a little sense of deja vu over the Iran war drumbeat? As Jon Stewart has said, it’s only one letter away from Iraq. And the tactics seem identical – hype the threat, compare their leaders to Hitler, and try to pretend to be considering anything other than war while the war plans are being drawn up.

As Kevin Drum has said, this administration doesn’t actually want to talk to Iran. Just as in Iraq, when they didn’t want inspectors because it might remove their rationale for war, they don’t want diplomacy in Iran for the same reason.

I believe the war is already set. The only thing we don’t know is exactly what form it will take.

Well, actually, there’s another thing we don’t know about the War in Iran – who will it be blamed on? The press? Cindy Sheehan? Bill Clinton? (Blaming it on “the gays” is so 2001.) I’ve got one – illegal Mexicans! Brilliant!

And the world rolls on. For now.

Digby says something I’ve been saying for a while now – are there any taboos left?

“You’re so far over the line, you can’t see the line. The line is a dot to you.”
-Joey Tribbiani, “Friends”