Now's the time to plan to take August off. That's what George W. Bush did last year as the unheeded warnings were coming in about a planned massive attack. He spent most of August 2001 at his ranch not paying attention to ominous intelligence reports and not governing and not riding horses, either. August is National Golf Cart Month, commemorating the obliviousness of our vacationing, 1,580-acre ranch-owning, horse-ignorant, golf-cart riding unelected president.

{ 9:54 AM }

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Anthrax intrigue. Nicholas D. Kristof of The New York Times (registration required) reports on the FBI's general lack of interest in solving the anthrax killings and the mystery surrounding the known suspect, whom the FBI has been studiously ignoring: an American with ties to the Department of Defense, CIA, and the American biodefense program, who happens also to use aliases and continues to travel on government assignments to Central Asia. This person gave Cipro to people who visited the "isolated residence" he had access to last fall. But, of course, pursuing such a suspect would overturn the Bush administration's rationalizations about Iraq and the remainder of the "Axis of Evil." As Kristof points out in what may be the understatement of the year, "This is part of a larger pattern."

{ 10:32 AM }

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The problem with (the) French.

From the London Times of July 9 by way of Eric Alterman:

TONY BLAIR’s special relationship with George W. Bush is under considerable strain. Not only do the two disagree on Yassir Arafat’s tenure as leader of the Palestinian Authority, but Blair has started telling disparaging anecdotes about the President. Baroness Williams of Crosby recalled a story told to her by "my good friend Tony Blair" recently in Brighton. Blair, Bush and Jacques Chirac were discussing economics and, in particular, the decline of the French economy. "The problem with the French," Bush confided in Blair, "is that they don’t have a word for entrepreneur."

{ 10:15 AM }

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To celebrate the Cheney/Halliburton lawsuit brought by Judicial Watch, I had a couple of cocktails invented by my wife last night. Quite delicious.

The Sharona

Mix the juices of one-half orange and one lime with an equal amount of Bombay Sapphire gin. Pour over ice.

Potent and delicious. Do not attempt to operate heavy machinery. Please sip -- do not gulp!

{ 10:05 AM }

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Out of the mouths of expatriates. Back in the country to explain the state of our nation, Gore Vidal talks with LA Weekly about why the American experiment is failing. (Media, power, lying... the usual.) It's refreshing to see our Empire of Spin analyzed by someone who still has an attention span without an agenda.

{ 12:38 PM }

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Let them eat steroids. So baseball players want to strike again? We should simply ban drug testing and give them as much money as possible. That way, instead of using athletic ability and training as a benchmark, we can judge professional athletes according to the pharmacological risks they are willing to undertake to make their millions. Eventually, they'll all become evenly-matched hormonally-enhanced cybersuperhumans, the sport will become duller than it already is, audiences will vanish, and large cities will no longer have to subsidize terrorist targets (i.e., stadiums) with public money that could be better used in at least a thousand more productive ways.

{ 12:26 PM }

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Why don't we ship the Enron and Worldcom management to Guantanamo Bay for interrogation? At least they are real criminals, as opposed to many of the hundreds who've been there since last fall.

{ 12:15 PM }

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