Via Kos:

1. Bush took power

2. Bush ignored the threat of terrorism

3. 9-11 occured

4. Bush was indecisive in that kindergarten class

5. Bush then hid out in Nebraska while his staff invented a "threat" to Air Force One to justify his absence

6. Bush went to war against Afghanistan (so far okay)

7. But instead of finishing the job, he let Bin Laden, Omar Mullah, and lots of Taliban and Al Qaeda to escape

8. Why did they get away? Because they diverted intelligence and military assets to fight a non-threat in Iraq

9. And how do we know Iraq was a non-threat? Because they invented evidence to justify the war and lied to Congress and the American people

10. They botched the occupation of Iraq, and close to 700 allied and countless Iraqis have paid the ultimate price, and more continue to do so

11. They botched the occupation of Afghanistan, as the US-backed government controls nothing more than Kabul, and the rest of the country is a haven for terrorists, religious fanatics, opium producers, and regional warlords

12. And now, over two years after 9-11, the administration is finally training all of our intelligence and military resources toward capturing Osama Bin Laden

Breslin:

For days now, the job at Eisenhower Park in Nassau County has been to follow the order from the White House through the Secret Service and down to the park workers:

"The president's feet are not to touch the dirt."

So all yesterday, large crews drawn from all county parks worked to ensure that, as always in his life, George Bush's feet do not touch the ground when he appears in the big park today.

Read the whole thing.

Via Monster:

Why stop at protesting gay marriage? Bring all of God's law unto the heathens and the sodomites. We call upon all Christians to join the crusade against Long John Silver's and Red Lobster. Yea, even Popeye's shall be cleansed. The name of Bubba shall be anathema. We must stop the unbelievers from destroying the sanctity of our restaurants.

Click here.

Taking paragraphs out of context is fun.

Appearing several weeks ago on BBC Radio 4, Mr. Oram said that although the bird did indeed have a history of swearing, she always sounded "parroty" rather than Churchillian. As for the content of Charlie's remarks, Ms. Martin said she had never heard her curse about Hitler, or even about any of the lesser Nazis.

Um.

This is a real treat and I'm honored to bring it to you.

In the first of a series of audio pieces, Salto today brings you an interview with Frank Chu. Pictured to the right, Frank is instantly recognizable to thousands of San Franciscans: he angrily stalks around the Financial District all the time with a sign filled with strange gobbledygook.

Frank has his own webpage (of course), apparently put together by fans. You should probably take a look at it first -- to prepare yourself for what is to come.

Only the first two minutes or so of the interview are intelligible, before perverse radiation from the 130 galaxies interferes with Frank's vocal processing unit and my digital recorder. I can tell you that it's more of the same, though. He doesn't suddenly get lucid.

It's probably better to download the .mp3: right-click and save on the link below.

Salto Interview #1: Frank Chu

THE SECOND HALF OF THE RECORDING IS UNINTELLIGIBLE. Don't drive yourself crazy trying to listen...

Your comments welcome and appreciated; I plan on trying to improve audio quality in the future.

Mark Kleiman:

The more I think about it, the more outrageous President Bush's refusal to talk to the entire 9-11 Commission, or to talk for more than a single hour, seems to me.

Given the President's documented capacity to pack enormous numbers of words into tiny amounts of meaning, he will probably have exhausted sixty minutes by the time he finishes answering the question, "Where did you go and what did you do immediately after hearing the news of the second WTC crash, and for the rest of that day?" which will leave him no time to answer the next question: "Who authorized the evacuation of all bin Laden family members and other prominent Saudi citizens from the United States before the FBI had a chance to interview any of them?"

Still, I understand that this is a partisan reaction, from an inveterate Bush-hater. In my more reasonable moments, I believe in finding win-win solutions to contested issues.

So here's a modest proposal: Since the President obviously has many hours to spend at fund-raising events, let's combine the hearing with a fund-raiser. Sell seats at, say, $1000 per hour per seat, with the proceeds going to the Bush-Cheney campaign, and let the hearing go on for as long as there are at least 100 paying guests in the audience.

Nice work, and let's note now that Kerry himself needs to amp up the rhetoric on this issue, pointing out the vast gulf between Funnypants's rhetoric (9/11 changed everything) and his actions (one hour, max).

Dan Conley has it right, I think. Everything the White House has done lately has failed -- so watch out, 'cause the overt venom is coming.

I'm willing to bet these ads are off the air within two weeks, replaced with sharply critical ads about Kerry. The ads are playing non-stop down here in Florida right now (oh, did I mention that I was here?) I saw six of them while doing an hour of cardio ... now I realize that I'm in Broward County, but every time they came up a different person hissed at the television. I've never seen positive ads create so much ire. So why not go negative? Going positive in this case is just as bad.

There's more, so read it all.

TBogg outsnarks, as always.

Wow. This is the political genius of the Bush campaign? The well-oiled machine? The fearsome monster that chewed up John McCain and Al Gore and spat them out, bedraggled and confused? Ezra Klein said it a while ago: color me unimpressed. Mike Isikoff, via Atrios:

Another less-publicized aspect of the ad flap: the use of paid actors—including two playing firefighters with fire hats and uniforms in what looks like a fire station. "Where the hell did they get those guys?" cracked Harold Schaitberger, president of the International Association of Fire Fighters, which has endorsed John Kerry, when he first saw the ads. (A union spokesman said the shots prompted jokes that the fire hats looked like the plastic hats "from a birthday party.") "There's many reasons not to use real firemen," retorted one Bush media adviser. "Mainly, its cheaper and quicker."

Indictments coming, possibly on multiple fronts. The ship is sinking.

Contribute now, huh? A buck or three?