Pulp Hitchens. Watching Jon Stewart make hamburger out of Christopher Hitchens was a beautiful sight to behold last night. Transcript by Wonkette:

Stewart: The people who say we shouldn't fight in Iraq aren't saying it's our fault. . . That is the conflation that is the most disturbing. . .

Hitch: Don't you hear people saying. . .

Stewart: You hear people saying a lot of stupid [bleep]. . . But there are reasonable disagreements in this country about the way this war has been conducted, that has nothing to do with people believing we should cut and run from the terrorists, or we should show weakness in the face of terrorism, or that we believe that we have in some way brought this upon ourselves. . .

Hitch: [Sputter]

Stewart: They believe that this war is being conducted without transparency, without credibility, and without competence...

Hitch: I'm sorry, sunshine... I just watched you ridicule the president for saying he wouldn't give. . .

Stewart: No, you misunderstood why. . . . That's not why I ridiculed the president. He refuses to answer questions from adults as though we were adults and falls back upon platitudes and phrases and talking points that does a disservice to the goals that he himself shares with the very people needs to convince.

[Audience erupts in applause]

Hitch: You want me to believe you're really secretly on the side of the Bush administration. . .

Stewart: I secretly need to believe he's on my side. He's too important and powerful a man not to be.

Hitch: [Sputter, return to talking about his latest book.]

Stewart's verbal momentum was like a runaway train or, from intellectual midget Hitchens' point of view, a steamroller. I have to admit that, like Stewart's audience, I also spontaneously applauded the "He refuses to answer questions from adults" line — an extemporaneous avalanche of truth that demonstrated why Stewart is the most important person on television.

{ 10:30 AM }

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Why Tom and not Cindy? Yesterday while on his Idaho vacation from his Texas vacation, Bush met with grieving father Tom Titus.

Only a week ago: ""I want him to know who I am," stated Titus, "I want him to see a picture of my son [Brandon who was killed in Iraq in 2004]. . . this young man here lost his life, and for what? I'm trying to get it across to President Bush; give us something solid that we can look forward to. Give us some faith that he didn't die in vain."

Did you get anything solid, Tom?

{ 11:48 AM }

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Thou shalt not shill. The unholy marriage between the Republican Party and their cheerleader Christian televangelist-wannabe-assassins will backfire mightily. If there is a God, that is.

Otherwise we are in Phase 666 or thereabouts of the Final Descent into American fascism, sort of an anti-Rapture, in which we and the rest of the world (at least the oil-producing regions) are plunged into a global hell of our own making.

{ 9:58 AM }

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Fat and stupid. This new obesity report that ranks states by relative fatness looked familiar, so I decided to put it up against the 2004 presidential election results.

Eighteen of the top twenty fattest states are red states... [scroll down a bunch of screens — my html skills are sucking]

			% Votes cast
Obesity*	State		Bush	Kerry
1	Mississippi	RED	59.6	39.6
2	Alabama	RED	62.5	36.8
3	West Virginia	RED	56.0	43.3
4	Louisiana	RED	56.7	42.2
5	Tennessee	RED	56.8	42.5
6	Michigan	BLUE	47.6	51.1
6 (tie)	(tie) Texas	RED	61.2	38.3
6 (tie)	(tie) Kentucky	RED	59.9	39.7
9	Indiana	RED	60.1	39.2
10	South Carolina	RED	59.9	38.4
11	Arkansas	RED	54.3	44.5
12	Georgia	RED	58.1	41.4
13	Ohio	RED	51.0	48.5
14	Oklahoma	RED	65.6	34.4
15	Pennsylvania	BLUE	48.6	50.8
16	North Carolina	RED	56.1	43.6
16 (tie)	(tie) Missouri	RED	53.4	46.1
16 (tie)	(tie) North Dakota	RED	62.9	35.5
19	Alaska	RED	61.8	35.0
20	Iowa	RED	50.1	49.2
20 (tie)	(tie) Nebraska	RED	66.1	32.6
22	Kansas	RED	62.2	36.5
22 (tie)	(tie) Illinois	BLUE	44.6	54.8
22 (tie)	(tie) Virginia	RED	54.0	45.3
25	Minnesota	BLUE	47.6	51.1
26	South Dakota	RED	59.9	34.8
27	Delaware	BLUE	45.8	53.3
28	Wisconsin	BLUE	49.4	49.8
29	Washington	BLUE	45.8	52.7
29 (tie)	(tie) Maryland	BLUE	43.3	55.7
31	California	BLUE	44.3	54.6
32	Maine	BLUE	44.6	53.4
32 (tie)	(tie) Nevada	RED	50.5	47.9
34	New York	BLUE	40.5	57.8
35	DC	BLUE	9.3	89.5
36	Oregon	BLUE	47.6	51.5
37	Idaho	RED	68.5	30.4
38	Florida	RED	52.1	47.1
39	New Mexico	RED	50.0	48.9
40	New Jersey	BLUE	46.5	52.7
40 (tie)	(tie) Arizona	RED	54.9	44.5
42	Wyoming	RED	69.0	29.1
43	New Hampshire	BLUE	49.0	50.3
44	Utah	RED	71.1	26.4
45	Montana	RED	59.1	38.6
45 (tie)	(tie) Vermont	BLUE	38.9	59.1
47	Connecticut	BLUE	44.0	54.3
48	Rhose Island	BLUE	38.9	59.5
49	Massachusetts	BLUE	37.0	62.1
50	Colorado	RED	52.0	46.8
(N/A)	(N/A) (Hawaii)	BLUE	45.3	54.0

I'm no statistician, but this looks like a correlation. To be fair, the thinnest state (Colorado) is a red state, but in general I think we can safely say that fat goes with stupid.

{ 1:51 PM }

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Double plus vacation. "Who else but President AWOL would take a vacation from his vacation?" asks Billmon. We can only imagine what sorts of Presidential Daily Briefings he's ignoring this August.

{ 10:24 AM }

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Long time slot, short pier.

Limbaugh is terrified. And he has reason to be.

Understand this about Limbaugh. He doesn’t believe half the junk he spouts. I’ve met him, and had pleasant enough conversations with him, twice - at the 1980 World Series when he was still a mid-level baseball flunky with a funny name, and once in the mid ‘90s at ESPN when he was just beginning his campaign to get a toehold there. He is a quiet, almost colorless man who, if he could be guaranteed similar success in sportscasting, would sell out the sheep who follow his every word - and would do it before close of business today.

But with that ESPN bid having gone up in flames just under two years ago, and sports forever closed off to him, he’s gotten into what the novelist Robert Graves called a “Golden Predicament” - overwhelming success in a field he really had no intention of pursuing - and he has to keep churning this stuff out every day. And when you’re just free associating to kill time and keep the ditto-heads happy, you sometimes drive right off the end of the pier.

Observations by Keith Olbermann.

{ 5:18 PM }

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