Among other comic horrors, the FMA has subjected us to the indignities of headlines such as "Will the gay marriage debate reignite the culture wars?"

As if, politically, we had anything but "culture" wars. It is no accident that political acrimony has grown as the actual political distance between the political parties has diminished.

But that sounds too much like a Naderish point. The next election, as Hersh said in his talk at the ACLU, is no doubt the most important since 1860. And as Burningbird has argued, if Kerry did nothing but take long naps during his presidency, he would be better than Bush.

Political analysts have been baffled by Bush's inability to put the most basic thought into words. He was never eloquent, but, back in Texas, he could at least hold his own. (He sounded so much more presidential as a Governor than he ever has as a president.) The reason seems clear enough: the governorship of Texas is almost a ceremonial office. He didn't really need to do anything.

As president, Bush's awkwardness has always seemed like an acknowledgement that he's far out of his depth. It's only through something like a collective mass hysteria that people have convinced themselves that he seems "commanding." A collective fiction that we have embraced out of fear, one that has baffled the rest of the world.

They said that far more horrific stories were going to come out of Abu Ghraib. Here it is

At the start of the transcript here, you can see how Hersh was struggling over what he should say:

"Debating about it, ummm ... Some of the worst things that happened you don't know about, okay? Videos, um, there are women there. Some of you may have read that they were passing letters out, communications out to their men. This is at Abu Ghraib ... The women were passing messages out saying 'Please come and kill me, because of what's happened' and basically what happened is that those women who were arrested with young boys, children in cases that have been recorded. The boys were sodomized with the cameras rolling. And the worst above all of that is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking that your government has. They are in total terror. It's going to come out."

See the post about this on edcone.com here.

Sadly, No offers a smaller, downloadable version of Hersh's talk.   

If you haven't seen the memos from Fox News that Wonkette reprinted, read them now. They are astounding in their candor about Fox's right-wing political bias. (I'm really looking forward to seeing Outfoxed this weekend at one of the house parties organized by MoveOn.org. It has backyard vision with an LCD projector! BBQ! Booze!)

Join Eschaton in sending a message to Slim Fast. (They canned Whoopi Goldberg for her comments about Shrub.) Contact Slim Fast electronically here.

Via Logos, information about updates at Feedster. I agree that it's become a great search engine (mainly for blogs, of course.)

Feedster update

Feedster is my favorite feed searchengine. After a first year of continuous improvements Feedster has now done a major update. It has many features. I can understand why Scott Johnson is...

Hot Wonkette on John on John Action!

John on John Action: Looking at the Overnights Edition

You don't even have to try to make it sound dirty:

Bastille Day is over already.

And we missed all the Republican anti-parties.

Matthew reminds us of some of the forgotten bloody verses of La Marseillaise.

As an undergrad I spent a year in Paris (yeah, yeah, didn't everyone). I'll never forget the night I was sitting outside my apartment -- in the middle of Paris -- when some drunken American sorority girls stumbled by and said, "Frenchy frenchy frenchy French frog, eating frenchy frenchy french fries?" (Well, ok, I was in fact eating French fries.)

They are probably Congressional members now.

Well, there is always this.