It's just unbelievable that people love this guy.

Details here.

Pappy Bush.

Even the political bloggers are debating the meaning of the latest Harry Potter book.

Check out Kevin Drum and Brad Plumer.

Don't go if you haven't read the book.

It's tasty like candy.

First read this Washington Post article;

then read Josh Marshall;

then read the Amazing Matt Taibbi:

The result of all this was to obscure the basic fact about Rove, which is that he's not a genius at all. He is a pig, and the only thing that distinguishes him is the degree of his brazenness and cruelty. It doesn't take a genius to send out fliers calling your opponent the "fag candidate." It doesn't take a genius to insinuate that your opponent's wife is a drug addict. There's nothing cunning or clever about saying your opponent came home from a war too fucked in the head to govern (particularly when your own candidate was too much of a coward to fight in the same war), or about whispering that that same candidate may have an illegitimate black child. And there's nothing clever about calling the followers of the opposition party traitorous and un-American, and claiming that they all want to coddle and appease the murderers of our brothers, sisters, sons and daughters.

Karl Rove is a character of a type that reappears from time to time throughout history—an unscrupulous power-chaser of the highest order, who rises to the top by demonizing and defaming innocent people. He's an elementary-school bully who proves his chops by throwing rocks at the retarded kid. And he reached a position of public honor thanks to a loophole in our national character that embraces any entrepreneur who dares to do whatever it takes to succeed. Rove is in trouble now, but he would never have had free reign of Washington to begin with if we hadn't so willingly given him his romantic image.

Was it good for you?

...read Keillor too.

Here.

Yes. I have a black cat. But still.

I missed it. Sadly.

THIRD ANNUAL PAUL REUBENS’ DAY COMES TO SAN FRANCISCO
San Francisco, CA -– The "Drunken Redheaded Sluts," in conjunction with the Center for Sex and Culture (CSC) and Midnight Mass with Peaches Christ (www.peacheschrist.com), will once again host Paul Reubens’ Day (PRD), which will be celebrated for the third year in a row this July. PRD is a playful and naughty tribute to the unique work of actor Paul Reubens (Pee-wee Herman), as well as a public spectacle supporting sexual expression. In the tradition of the Cacophony Society, whose costume-focused events include Santarchy and the Urban Iditarod, PRD is a madcap trek through a different neighborhood each year, with stops and impromptu performances in local pubs (Bring I.D.!), toy stores and parks. Participants deck out in Pee-wee related costumes, adopt the voice and mannerisms of the former children's TV star, and delight the public with their impersonations, masse renditions of the "Tequila Dance," and sly adult humor. Hollywood reports that Mr. Reubens is currently working on two new Pee-wee movies, while in Northern California, all aspects of his legacy will be lauded on July 23, 2005, the first Paul Reubens’ Day to boast three Pee-wee events.

Mark? You still out there?

Ack! What's this about?

On Showtime?

Salto loves you!

Count me in:

Scott Weinberg writes: "FilmJerk.com brings us the early scoop on a new collaboration between Jack Black ("School of Rock") and Mike White ("The Good Girl"). The project is called "Nacho Libre," and Mr. Black will play a Mexican priest who moonlights as a wrestler in order to raise some money for the local orphanage.

Mr. White will write the script, and the director is reportedly set to be Jared Hess, he of "Napoleon Dynamite" fame. Production is set to get underway in Mexico some time in September.

[via FOM]

Salto was away for the last ten days but is now back at Salto HQ. Blogging shall resume at its normal irregular pace.

It's a movie.

See it.

Chief Justice William Rehnquist -- is he gonna resign? Has he already resigned? Ooh, a statement to the press:

When asked by one reporter Friday if any speculation about his resignation is true, Rehnquist said: "That's for me to know and you to find out."

Hey Bill? You fuckstain racist? Eat me. Just remember, folks, this is the Rehnquist of old:

In 1962, Republican activist William (then "Bill") Rehnquist was the leader of Operation Eagle Eye, a flying squad of GOP lawyers that swept through polling places in south Phoenix to question the right of minority voters to cast their ballots. As Dave Wagner reported in the Arizona Republic last year, Rehnquist defended keeping African Americans out of stores and restaurants in Phoenix. In 1964, at the Bethune Precinct, (which was 40 percent Hispanic and 90 percent Democratic) Rehnquist and Operation Eagle Eye activists challenged every Black and Mexican voter's ability to read the Constitution of the United States in the English language (then a requirement.)

The result, according to one witness, was "a line a half-block long, four abreast…They wanted people to become frustrated and leave." In his testimony to a US Senate hearing on his appointment to the Supreme Court, Rehnquist denied that he officially challenged anyone's right to vote. Just as today's defenders of Bush, argue that voter error, not bias, disproportionately shrank the counted vote, Rehnquist argued that he broke no rules, he was just following the law.

I'm cheerfully awaiting his death in hopes that the stench will go away.

You have to read this to believe it.

[Eschaton]

Here:

A GP who helped treat casualties following today's bus explosion outside the London headquarters of the British Medical Association has described the scene.

Dr Laurence Buckman, from the BMA's GPs committee, said the front of BMA House in Tavistock Square was splattered with blood and body parts were strewn across the road.

The building was turned into a mini hospital while casualties were moved away from the road and were waiting to be taken to hospital.

Dr Buckman told SocietyGuardian.co.uk that he was on his way to a meeting at the BMA and arrived 10 minutes after the bus exploded outside the building.

He said: "I arrived at the BMA just as the first ambulance arrived. My first impression was about the amount of blood. The whole of the front of the building was covered with blood - quite high up, I suspect that was because the upstairs of the bus had been blown off."

Unbelievably good post on the meaning of the bombings:

Today we've had a reminder of what we face. But let's be clear what we're seeing. In more venues than I'd care to admit I've seen posts and speechifying which say, in so many words: 'For all those who've gone wobbly on Iraq, see, you got complacent! But terrorism is real!'

The real threat we face isn't in Iraq. And being in Iraq isn't diminishing it. The real threat is painfully low-tech but yet highly-lethal acts of terror committed -- in most cases -- in the great metropoles of the West. And I suspect we'll find, as we did in 9/11, that the immediate perpetrators were neither people who were minding their own business before we invaded Iraq nor even people who have their main base in the core countries of the Arab Middle East, but rather recruits from the disaffected and deracinated diaspora of Muslim immigrants in the West -- a tiny fraction out of the millions who are making their homes in our country and in those of Europe.

...

The threat of terrorism is very real, especially in major cities. But with respect to the folks who want to lasso this into a pillar of support for a disastrous policy in Iraq, frankly, we already knew terrorism was real. Most people are sick to death of our bumbling in Iraq because it's distracted us from actually defending ourselves.

The immediate answer to this is to hunt down the people immediately responsible, root out the primarily-non-state terror networks that support, plan and make these attacks possible and start getting about serious homeland defense -- port security, rail security, nuclear power plant security.

On that last count, what we've accomplished in the US over the last few years has been painfully inadequate, largely because of our focus on nation-states that have only a tenuous connection to this threat -- a lot of lies, mumbojumbo, and scurrilous and dark motives by the usual suspects notwithstanding.

Finally, I think we should look very closely at what actually happened today. It took a lot of coordination and it took a lot of lives. But it was extremely low-tech. It didn't take mad scientists or proliferated technology. And in a way that makes it all the harder to prevent.

Beside the threat we face from the bacillus of Islamic terror, President Bush has created a great running wound on the whole country in the form of the mess he's created in Iraq -- a wound bleeding blood, treasure and a scourge of national division which is now impossible to ignore but which we can ill-afford. Even now his cheerleaders are trying to enlist this outrage in the battle to prop up their folly in Iraq. If anything our folly in Iraq has made the immediacy and intensity of this basic threat worse. But let's not be blinded by our outrage at that folly or distracted from thinking concretely, together and resolutely, how we defend our innocents from such religious fanaticism and the violence it spawns.

That is some powerful shit.

British MP George Galloway has been a harsh critic of the War on Terra from the start. See him dismantle America's Worst Senator™ Norm Coleman (R-MN) in a Senate hearing here. It's good stuff.

Galloway on the bombings:

Londoners have paid the price for Iraq and Afghanistan, says George Galloway.

The Respect MP, whose Bethnal Green and Bow constituency includes the site of at least one of the bomb attacks, said the attacks were "despicable".

But he told MPs it was the US-led coalition's actions in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantanamo which had inflamed hatred of the West in the Muslim world.

...

He argued that the bombings had not come out of the "clear blue sky" - the background was the invasion of Afghanistan, Iraq, photographs of abuses by US troops at Abu Ghraib prison and the continuing confinement of people by America at Guantanamo.

Mr Galloway said the West was in danger of making the same mistakes over and over again, continuing with "war and occupation as the principal instrument of our foreign and defence policy".

He added: "And if we do then some people will get through and hurt us as they have hurt us today."

What he's saying doesn't seem all that controversial to me -- but what is the response from Labour?

In response, minister Adam Ingram accused Mr Galloway of "dipping his poisonous tongue in a pool of blood".

The armed forces minister added that Mr Galloway's comments were "disgraceful".

Methinks thou doth protest too much...

They're tough:

This has been an extraordinary 24 hours for London. Yesterday afternoon, the International Olympic Committee awarded London the 2012 Summer Games. I was in Trafalgar Square when the announcement came, and the place went crazy. There was shouting and hugging and dancing. It seemed somehow bizarre. It seemed very ... un-English.

But the reaction to today's attacks feels incredibly English. When I left the quiet area right around the bus bombing and returned to the busy streets of Holborn and Soho, London appeared just as it always is.

The natural state of the English is a kind of gloomy diligence, which is why they do so well in hard times. In 1940, Londoners went dutifully on with their business while the Luftwaffe bombed the hell out of them. Today, most of them are doing the same. I was in Washington for 9/11, and the whole city went into a panic. Offices emptied, stores shut, downtown D.C. became a ghost town. But in London today, everyone still has a cell phone clutched to their ear. The delivery vans are still racing about, seeking shortcuts around all the street closures. The Starbucks is packed.

And when I walked by the Queen's Larder Pub, not half a mile from the Tavistock Square wreckage, at 11 a.m., a half-dozen men were sitting together at a sidewalk table, hoisting their morning pints of ale. Civilization must go on, after all.

...more here.

And then there's this:

What the fuck do you think you're doing?

This is London. We've dealt with your sort before. You don't try and pull this on us.

Do you have any idea how many times our city has been attacked? Whatever you're trying to do, it's not going to work.

All you've done is end some of our lives, and ruin some more. How is that going to help you? You don't get rewarded for this kind of crap.

And if, as your MO indicates, you're an al-Qaeda group, then you're out of your tiny minds.

Because if this is a message to Tony Blair, we've got news for you. We don't much like our government ourselves, or what they do in our name. But, listen very clearly. We'll deal with that ourselves. We're London, and we've got our own way of doing things, and it doesn't involve tossing bombs around where innocent people are going about their lives.

And that's because we're better than you. Everyone is better than you. Our city works. We rather like it. And we're going to go about our lives. We're going to take care of the lives you ruined. And then we're going to work. And we're going down the pub.

So you can pack up your bombs, put them in your arseholes, and get the fuck out of our city.

Tough as nails.

No, this is not about Michael Jackson:

Registered sex offender James Andrew Crawford, 35, was arrested in May in Perris, Calif., after having camped for two weeks in a theater line that was waiting for ''Star Wars: Episode III'' to open. According to a Riverside County deputy sheriff, Crawford was in violation of a state law that requires sex offenders to notify the government if they adopt a new ''domicile'' for more than five days.

Funny and sad on so many different levels.

[via Andy P]