Nine days remaining

... to remind Republicans just what they hath wrought upon the Earth:

Asked by People magazine what moments from the last eight years he revisited most often, W. talked passionately about the pitch he threw out at the World Series in 2001: “I never felt that anxious any other time during my presidency, curiously enough.”

Asked by Fred Barnes and Bill Kristol of The Weekly Standard if he had made progress in some areas for which he hasn’t gotten credit, the president put trying to privatize Social Security at the top of his list. It’s frightening to think where a lot of people would be now if that effort had succeeded.

A complete lack of guilt, much less empathy. That's typically how sociopaths are clinically described. Some think Bush is simply too brain-damaged or retarded or autistic or something-else-impaired to get it. I'm not one of those, however. He's quite obviously not the only one, nor even the worst, for that matter ...

Asked last week by Mark Knoller of CBS Radio in one of his exit interviews to name the “biggest mis-impression” people had about him, Cheney replied with a laugh, “That I’m actually a warm, lovable sort.” He went on to seriously assert that his image as “a private, Darth Vader-type personality” has been “pretty dramatically overdone.”

“I think we made good decisions,” he told Knoller, adding with even grander delusion, “I think we knew what we were doing.”

He protested “the notion that somehow I was pulling strings or making presidential-level decisions. I was not. There was never any question about who was in charge. It was George Bush. And that’s the way we operated. This whole notion that somehow I exceeded my authority here, was usurping his authority, is simply not true. It’s an urban legend, never happened.”

This is the most obvious reason why Cheney should simply be turned over to extra-national authorities for prosecution; so that someone can finally impress upon him the seriousness of his crimes. It's not like a Democratic Congress led by Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid -- or a president hungry for bipartisanship -- is going to concern itself with administering some justice in this area.

On the other hand, Donald Rumsfeld should just be taken out and summarily executed by firing squad:

“My conscience is clear,” Rummy volunteered to Bob Woodward, talking about how he’s interviewing people for his memoir.

Woodward was stunned. “I was as speechless as I was in July 2006 when I interviewed him and he said he was not a military commander, that he could make the case that he was ‘by indirection, two or three steps removed,’ ” Woodward told me afterward.

What about Herr General Rove? He's still working a few "problems":

What was considered a smooth path to confirmation has recently been complicated as signs of hostility toward (Attorney-General-designate Eric) Holder have increased over the past month. Political operative Karl Rove and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), for example, singled out the longtime Washington lawyer as the candidate who would face bruising questions.

And Beto Gonzales? Stupid, malicious, or maliciously stupid? You decide:

"What is it that I did that is so fundamentally wrong, that deserves this kind of response to my service?" he said during an interview Tuesday, offering his most extensive comments since leaving government.

During a lunch meeting two blocks from the White House, where he served under his longtime friend, President George W. Bush, Mr. Gonzales said that "for some reason, I am portrayed as the one who is evil in formulating policies that people disagree with. I consider myself a casualty, one of the many casualties of the war on terror."

Republican Poutrage over Senator Franken

Six years of suck-it for conservatives:

With only a longshot court appeal standing in the way of Democrat Al Franken’s election to the Senate, Republicans are gritting their teeth and bracing for the arrival of a new senator whose every utterance will sound like nails on a chalkboard to them.

While Sen. Norm Coleman (R-Minn.) has filed suit to contest the results of a disputed recount process that turned his narrow lead into a 225-vote deficit, his likely defeat stands to turn Franken, the polarizing former “Saturday Night Live” writer, into the senator who launched a thousand direct mail fundraising appeals.

“I don’t know if we’ve ever had an opponent who is so disliked by Republicans as Al Franken,” said Minnesota Republican Party Chair Ron Carey, who cautioned that Coleman’s election challenge could still turn the results back his way. “It’s one thing to lose to an honorable opponent, but Al Franken is not considered an honorable opponent by Minnesota Republicans.”

And here I was thinking I was just going to feel gratified that a true Minnesota liberal was going to Washington to reclaim Paul Welllstone's desk. To know that the Republicks are this bitter about Senator Stuart Smalley is ... well, pretty freaking schadenfreude.

Domingo Cómico

What do you call a newspaper without a printing press?

Or one that doesn't print a paper at all? Serious question.

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, which first rolled off the presses in 1863 and has been the state's longest-publishing newspaper, is up for sale.

The newspaper's staff was called into a closed meeting today by Publisher Roger Oglesby. Present at the meeting was Hearst Newspaper President Steve Swartz, who told the newsroom that Hearst Corp. is starting a 60-day process to find a buyer. If a buyer is not found, possible options include creating an all-digital operation with a greatly reduced staff, or closing its operations entirely.

In no case will Hearst continue to publish the P-I in printed form, Swartz said.

Regardless, he said, if no buyer is found, the P-I as a newspaper will not publish after the two months is up.

The joint operating agreement that the Post-Intelligencer performs in conjunction with the Seattle Times requires a minimum of thirty days for Hearst to find a buyer before they shut it down. Hearst has previously bought out JOA partners and then sold its own newspaper (The Examiner, the paper that W.R. Hearst parlayed into a empire) in San Francisco, and bought out the competition only to shutter its own property (The Light) in San Antonio.

This is NOT a newspaper company big on sentimentality for its brands.

In the wake of Ike last September, the Beaumont Enterprise gave up trying to publish its own paper:

The Beaumont Enterprise is eliminating its pressroom and mailroom operations and outsourcing its daily printing and packaging to the Houston Chronicle, a sister Hearst newspaper, Publisher John E. Newhouse II announced (September 29).

The move, effective immediately, was necessary because of deteriorating business conditions and the high cost of repairing or replacing the newspaper's 34-year-old press, which has been inoperable since Hurricane Ike, Newhouse said.

Twenty employees were affected by the shutdown of the platemaking, press and mailroom departments. Seventeen were laid off and received severance packages. Three were reassigned to new jobs. ...

The move is part of a newspaper industry trend toward consolidation and outsourcing in response to the high cost of replacing antiquated and worn-out equipment. In The Enterprise's case, that could be more than $30 million for a new printing facility, Newhouse said.

The Houston Chronicle, whose presses can accommodate the additional color preferred by advertisers and readers, has been printing some sections of the Sunday Enterprise since last year and all of the newspaper's weekly products since early this year.

The entire Enterprise has been printed in Houston since the day after Hurricane Ike struck Southeast Texas.

So if a newspaper doesn't print a paper, what is it exactly?

Junior Brown last night at the Mucky Duck

The Texas legend (well, Indiana or maybe Arizona) sawed on his guit-steel and drawled through Long Walk Back to San Antone, Highway Patrol, My Wife Thinks You're Dead and a solid handful of other classics. It might have been the best evening of entertainment for the year 2009 (but I hope it gets better from here on).

Real or not?

Is God real, or is he imaginary? It is one of the most important questions you can ask yourself.

If God is real and if God inspired the Bible, then we should worship God as the Bible demands. We should certainly post the Ten Commandments in our courthouses and shopping centers, put "In God We Trust" on the money and pray in our schools. We should focus our society on God and his infallible Word because our everlasting souls hang in the balance.

On the other hand, if God is imaginary, then religion is a complete illusion. Christianity, Judaism and Islam are pointless. Belief in God is nothing but a silly superstition, and this superstition leads a significant portion of the population to be delusional.

But how can we decide, conclusively, whether God is real or imaginary?

Don't click and read on unless you want your thoughts really, really provoked.