Voices from the ether

Billmon: A friend of mine predicts the day will come when mothers in this country get their children to eat their vegetables (or wash their ears or do their homework or go to bed on time) by warning them that if they don't, the big bad George W. Bush will come and get them. I don't know about that, although I did successfully terrify my kids into submission once by threatening them with the Cheney monster. I'll never make that mistake again: The nightmares kept them up for weeks.

Personally, I think Dubya's fate is to be THE case study in foreign policy failure for the next two generations -- or until another president from Texas blunders into an unwinnable land war in Asia, whichever comes first. A generation of bright, eager Kennedy School grads are going to learn the secret to presidential leadership: Study everything Bush the Younger did, then do the exact opposite.

Bats Right, Throws Left: By now you will have learned that TV Guide™, once the weekly publication with the greatest circulation in the country, nay, the world, will soon cease to publish actual television listings. It will no longer serve as our Guide. They are, as it were, getting rid of the difficult math section. The size will change, too: no longer will our wait in the supermarket checkout line be assuaged by thumbing through the two-to-eight Collector's Editions nestled snug in their racks, hardly bigger than one of those index cards that are bigger than real index cards. In jettisoning the Listings section the magazine will actually become larger, in defiance of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. We live in disturbing times.

driftglass: This was democracy doing what democracy does when the stubby, webbed-toes of theocrats and neocons are not allowed to stomp on the scale. Jean Schmidt ran George Bush’s playbook, page-by-page, against a honorable veteran because she knows the only way cowards like Bush get elected is by slandering good men.