How Soon is Soon?

Oh, Team Tom, tsk! Never announce a web upgrade until right before you do it (see below). Otherwise, it's just embarrassing.

Also, how does Tom DeLay live? Is he employed? Does he really make enough off his speaking engagements, or is he simply living off his legal defense fund?

Quickie: Strangers with Candy

OMGLOL, I know this will be all over blogadelphia* within minutes, but it all has to be experienced to be believed: Tom DeLay's supporters sent out a mailer featuring quotes from Stephen Colbert, and even feature a video of him on their web site... as if he were a real conservative pundit. OMG get it while it's hot.

*Anything... anything but the word blogosphere.

John McCain: Patriotic Accessory Provocateur

OMG, it's been driving me bonkers, that whole thing about how everyone thinks John McCain is a moderate when, like, he's so not. Kids say he's a maverick and I'm all, WTF? But I finally figured it out when I was reviewing the most recent wire photos of the Silver Fox. I kept getting the eerie feeling that something was... different. Look at the above picture from Tuesday. Notice anything missing? Here, look at him earlier today in Iowa stumping for Rep. Jim Nussle:

Don't get it yet? OK, here's another shot. Ask yourself what Jim Nussle has that McCain lacks (other than Christian fundamentalist support):

Still don't get it? OK, it's a thing most Republican politicians rarely leave home without. Bill Frist's got one:

Tom DeLay never makes a public appearance without one:

The President even makes sure his outerwear has one:

That's right! John McCain doesn't wear flag-themed lapel pins! This is HUGE! And that's what's doing it, that's why people look at him on Face the Press, or whatever, and say, "There's something different about that there Republican." But there isn't!

Of course I was tremendously relieved to discover that McCain doesn't totally eschew patriotic accessories. Oh, no, he might be a maverick, but he isn't stupid. Regard:

U.S. Senator John McCain (R-AZ), wearing a bracelet reading 'Support Our Troops,' shakes hands at a booksigning in Lebanon, New Hampshire April 8, 2006. Senator McCain, who is considered a possible Republican presidential candidate, visited the first-in-the-nation primary state of New Hampshire to sign copies of his new book and participate in a town hall style meeting with U.S. congressman Charlie Bass (R-NH). REUTERS/Brian Snyder

He's totally unstoppable.

EDIT: Hello, New Republic readers! Yes, yes... one of you pointed out that Frist and Nussle are wearing their congressional pin thingees. And thus, tragically, the entire oh-so-clever post pretty much collapses like a house of cards, proving that I should stick with what I know best (Condi, natch). But what does it all mean? Are flag pins on their way out? Please advise.

The Best Part of Waking Up is Folgers in Your Cup Hearing about Tom DeLay!

The News Corral

U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay, R-Texas, receives the Spirit of Enterprise Award from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in League City, Texas, Wednesday, Feb. 22, 2006. (AP Photo/Tim Johnson)

I'm a very busy pony right now, so let's just send these stories to the glue factory:

• Are you a hairdresser? It's totally your mom's fault. But you already knew that, right?
• Loud disco music makes ravers even more brain damaged. But you already knew that, too.
• CREW filed a complaint against Rick Santorum with the Senate Ethics Committee. Yeah, I'm sure they'll get right on that.
• Think Progress takes a whack at the ol' Orrin Hatch piñata.
• Fred Kaplan at Slate examines Condi's Iran Strategy and finds, shockingly, ineptness.
  
• NPR attempts to discuss teen slang, and CJR Daily is terribly embarrassed for them.
• Not everybody hates Tom DeLay (see above)!

Lovely Parting Gifts

DeLay's political committee also reported a $2,896 shopping spree at the Amelia Marche Burette gift shop on Amelia Island, Fla., for donor gifts. The shop carries "gourmet cookware, Sabatier cutlery and gadgets for your every need."

"Manson Guilty," Nixon Declares

Remember that headline during the "Helter Skelter" trial? Charlie managed to grab a copy of the LA Times and waved it in the jury's face, nearly causing a mistrial.

That's what I was thinking about when I read this. Is Bush actually trying, unlike Nixon, to throw Tom Delay's trial?

Grave Doubt Cast Over Tom DeLay's Ability to Get an Unfair Trial

Why is Tom laughing? Well, that's him the other day after getting his judge thrown off the trial. Seems he was a *gasp* Democrat. Oh dear! Well, now the DA has gotten the second judge thrown out because he's a Republican!

Where, I ask you, is Ross Perot when you finally need him?

Showtime!

This is what greeted me first thing this morning on Yahoo News:

I don't know about you, but their are some things I just can't process before I've had my first cup of coffee. "Whoah!" I thought, "Tom DeLay is really going through some changes!"

Here's the story link, just in case you think I'm Photoshopping again.

Please, Sir, Can I Have Some More?

What do you do when you're under attack and widely reviled as perhaps the most corrupt congressman in the house? Foster children. Surround yourself with cuddley, starry-eyed foster children. I'm already considering the musical possibilities:

There's a Tom DeLay Joke in Here Somewhere

See the unaltered picture of the swanky robobus by Texas Yankee here.

Junior DeLay-in-Training Gets Bitch-Slapped

God, this is funny: College Republican hot-head thinks he's all that, tries out some Tom DeLay-style strong-arm tactics, gets a royal spanking. Hilarious.

EDIT: I'll try not to use so many hyphenated phrases in future posts. This one just got away from me.

Houston? Iraq? Same Diff

Here's a quickie: Iraq isn't so bad, says Tom DeLay. Why, it's no more dangerous than Houston, really!

Wow, really? There must be a whole bunch more car bombing in Houston than I remember.

Quickie #2: If you want to laugh a lot, check out this breathtaking photo essay detailing President Bush's peculiar compulsion to manhandle bald heads. Photo journalism at it's very best at Juliusblog (via Wonkette).

The Flag Protection Legislation is Very Silly

So... *ahem* yes, the new measure to outlaw monkey business with the American Flag has just sailed through the House. This is very important! Stop laughing! Because, you know, I can hardly go anywhere without seeing people burnin' on Old Glory. For shame!

Please. This is just an excuse for toxic creeps like Tom DeLay to cynically lather himself up with the flag, and a no-win situation for people who think such legislation is silly. Anybody who dares suggest that all this fuss is pure jingoistic shenanigans will be quickly denounced as an America-hating Saddam-cuddler.

Don't think, even for a second, that this is a serious issue.

EDIT: I've been trying to identify the flag immolation shown in the very dramatic photo AFP used to illustrate the article linked above:

I bet that photo wasn't even shot in the US (I've written to them to see). It's probably from Serbia, Iran, Iraq or Korea, recent hotspots of symbolic flag fires (notice how it's cropped to despecify the location). I also checked around the other photo services (Corbis, Getty, etc.), and I wasn't able to find a single photo of an American burning the US flag. That's because it hardly ever happens, you dopes! Keep your eyes open for the next few days, and I bet you'll see a lot of stories about this illustrated with people burning the flag... in other countries, because they won't be able to find any domestic footage.

EDIT 2: Ha, ha! I just saw the local NBC news report on the legislation, and they used some lame footage of college students doing something to a flag, but they weren't burning it. Also, AP managed to dig up this photo of a hippie burning the flag in Portland.

Cinderella Story? Only if You're Lazy and Boring

Something very cute happened last Friday. While fleeing the non-existant threat on Capitol Hill, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi lost her shoe! And it was pink! Later, in the most adorable photo op to hit town since George Clooney was here last, Representative Dave Reichert, the Republican congressman from Washington State, dropped to his knee in a gallant gesture as he returned the errant sling-back, which he had found in the evacuation confusion, to its rightful owner.

Let's see... a handsome gentleman returning a lost shoe to a damsel in distress. I know! Cinderella! It's the first thing that jumps into your mind, isn't it? It was also the first thing that occured to the Associated Press, who said, "It was a Cinderella story, Capitol-Hill-Style." This is in contrast to the Houston Chronicle, also AP subscribers, who claimed that "It was a Cinderella story, Capitol Hill style", boldly eliminating the hyphens. The Seattle Intelligencer called it "A political Cinderella story", while the Contra Costa Times cleverly referred to it as a "Cinderella story". OK, OK... we get it!

Well, I'm no fancy-pants journalist. I come from a background in art history. And let me tell you, if I had handed in a paper in college in which the central motif was a metaphor, and then I failed to substantiate, or even explore, that metaphor, I would have been given an 'F'.

Let's take a closer look at the Cinderella story: Dave Reichert plays Prince Charming. OK, stop. Dave Reichert is pretty worried right now. He's very worried about his connections to a man who appears in no fairy tales: Tom DeLay. This Seattle Times editorial headline says it all: "Stench of DeLay clings to two Washington congressmen". The web site houseofscandal.org describes it in a more strident, shrill manner:

Just how tangled up in Tom DeLay's
House of Scandal is Dave Reichert?

•Dave Reichert has taken $19,901 from Tom DeLay's ARMPAC. No surprise that Reichert voted with Tom DeLay 97% of the time between Jan. 3 2005 and March 31 2005.

Is this the kind of government-for-hire that working families deserve?

•Dave Reichert voted to weaken the ethics rules in a move that many say served only to protect Tom DeLay.

Does the integrity of the House mean so little that Dave Reichert would sacrifice it to defend Tom DeLay?

•When Democrats offered a solution to clean up the House by strengthening ethics rules, Dave Reichert voted to make sure it never even came to an up or down vote.

So, OK... Reichert doesn't really fit the Prince Charming role. And coming to the rescue of Nancy Pelosi in the role of Cinderella? I don't think so! Nancy is more often placed in the role of a kind of 'anti DeLay', both by her supporters and her detractors. More often portrayed by her fans as one of the few brave, outspoken souls in the party, and by her enemies as a vicious, partisan attack dog, a damsel in distress she is not.

So if Reichert isn't a gallant prince coming to the rescue of a damsel in distress who bears more than a little resemblence to the famed Runaway Bride (see picture above), then what's really going on? Simple: Reichert is kneeling in deference to Pelosi, acquiescing. He's saying, in effect, "OK, you've killed the King (this is DeLay's role). Please don't come after me next! I beg you! Here's your shoe back!"

Now, isn't that more entertaining than a fairy tale?

Speaking Of Wacky Pennsylvania Republicans...

Meet Congresswoman Melissa Hart (R-PA). Her hobbies include tougher abortion laws, destroying Social Security, and serving on the House ethics committee, even though she accepted $15,000 in campaign contributions from Tom DeLay's PAC. Here's a fawning story in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette about Hart's placement on the ethics committee which, for some reason, neglects to talk about the contributions she accepted from the person she's supposed to be investigating in an impartial manner. I'm sure they just forgot to mention it.

But what really rocks her world? Distributing gigantic novelty checks! And here, from her web site, are unaltered photos of her doing just that:

Zzzzing, THWACK!

Apparently, the Republicans are negotiating a return to the old Ethics Committee rules. That means that they've come to accept that DeLay is only useful to them now as a sacrificial lamb to their 2006 campaigns.

And here's Tom yesterday (with softer hair and fixed teeth) at the Bush ranch in Texas, almost in tears as he's being welcomed by his dark lord:

I'm sure Tom's thinking, "The President is showing he supports me!" I imagine Bush is really thinking something more like, "Ah, poor thing, let's do something nice for him before we let the wolves have him."

Language Virus In The Blogosphere #2: Stick A Fork In This Metaphor

Recently, I wrote about bloggers overusing the cutesy "not so much" cliché ("Tom DeLay loves his friend Jack Abramoff. Nancy Pelosi? Not so much."), derived from Jon Stewart's The Daily Show. I've noticed another viral phrase which, if anything, is overused even more.

It's the phrase "Stick a fork in it, it's done." What makes this catchphrase especially annoying is that it doesn't make any sense. Consider: This cooking-derived sentence refers to testing baked goods with a fork's tines (or other pointed object); if the fork comes out clean, the cake is done, right? So... if you know something is 'done,' why do you need to stick a fork in it? I'm confused. So, apparently, are the bloggers thoughtlessly attempting to grapple with this metaphor.

Obviously, this is a corrupted version of "Stick a fork in it and see if it's done." Come on, people! We're writers, aren't we?

Examples here, here, here, here, here, here, here (warning: links do not open in a new window. Hey, my hooves get cramped from typing target= "blank" too often), and if you don't believe how widespread this incorrect phrasing is, just jump directly to the Google search here.

Shhh! Be Vewy Vewy Quiet!

Tom DeLay + Leif Garrett = TLA

I mentioned yesterday that Tom DeLay had gotten his hair fluffier and his teeth less gappy, and it's true, as can be seen in this recent photo:

I also mentioned that I'd like to see the ethically-challenged one in "...a shaggier, feathered style, like Leif Garret in the '70s." Well, now, thanks to Pony Pal™ Chuck, we can:

Oh, my! Is it getting hot in here, or what?