Man about Murfreesboro

Rozzy has been pretending to be a robot lately. She holds her arms straight out in front of her and moves them up and down as she speaks in a robotic monotone.

Dollie and I have both remarked that Rozzy the Robot is way more polite than Rozzy the princess, Rozzy the ballerina or Rozzy the supermodel.

I've been producing a podcast for a client. I played a little of it for Dollie the other evening without telling her what it was. As the voiceover kicks in over the intro music, Dollie said "Gay much?"

The NY Daily News has a story about a high school cell phone ban. It seems that if you have a cell phone and it gets discovered by a teacher, the cell phone is confiscated. The student cannot get the phone back until a after the parent-teacher conferences six weeks from now.

Naturally, the students are sqwaking. The parents are upset as well, I'm sure. At Dollie's school there is a similar rule, but it works like this: if you get caught with a cell phone, it gets confiscated and you don't get it back until a parent comes down to the school and gets it for you.

That seems like a good compromise to me. For one thing, it ensures that the parent understands there is a problem, for another, by inconveniencing the parent, you stand a better chance of the students not texting each other in class.

When I was in school, we didn't have cell phones, so I have no frame of reference as to what kind of problem it can be. Dollie assures me that, if left unchecked, texting in class can get out of hand very quickly.

I don't watch "Da Ali G Show," so my first encounter with Sasha Baron Cohen was in "Talladega Nights" where he played a gay French racecar driver. He was funny. Now I read where another of his characters, Borat -- a journalist from Kazakhstan, will be the cental character of a film to be released in the U.S.

I bring it up because the film may just cause an international incident. See, the government of Kazakhstan is coming to the U.S. to meet with President Bush to discuss Sasha Baron Cohen. The Kazakhstani government is worried that the Borat film may tarnish their country's image.

They may be right. My knowledge of Kazakhstan is limited to where it is on the globe and the fact that it may have more oil bubbling under it than Saudi Arabia.

And suddenly it all becomes clear. Why else would Bush meet with a foreign government to discuss a British comedian? There's a buck to be made for his oil tycoon buddies. I just wish I could be there while Bush tries to pronounce the name of Kazakhstani President Nursultan Nazarbayev.

Will scenes from the film be shown? What happens if Bush laughs? It's going to be hard enough for him to pretend he cares, but do do it with a straight face? Man, I wish I could be there.

Republicans continue to try and scare us into voting for them. Rick Santorum says that the terrorists are more dangerous than Hitler, the Soviet nukes, the Viet Cong, Chairman Mao or any other crisis our nation has faced in the 20th century. I'm reminded of Simpson's news anchor Kent Brockman who, while investigating a summer camp where the conditions were so bad the kids rebelled and took over, said something like:

"Ladies and gentlement, I've been to Vietnam, Bosnia and downtown Beruit and I can say without hyperbole that this is a thousand times worse than all of them put together."

They want us to be scared enough to vote for them, but not so scared that we'd change anything in our lives. Think about it, what sacrifice (aside from certain civil liberties) has Bush asked the country to make? Has he asked us to conserve fuel? limit our spending? Establish a neighborhood watch? No. His only request of us to be afraid enough to keep the Republicans in power.

Think about this: Bush hasn't seen fit to mention Osama bin Laden at all since the last election. Even before the election all he said was that bin Laden was marginalized and Bush doesn't think about him much anymore.

But now, a few weeks before midterms, it's all Osama all the time. Oooooooo Osaaaaammmaaa's gonna getchoooooooo. Osssaaaaaamaaaaaa's goooonnaaaa getchoooooooo.

And everyone is falling in lockstep: Cheney, Rummy, Rice, Rove, Santorum -- they're all singing from the same hymnal: Ooooooossssaaaaaamaaaaa's gonnaaaaaa geeeethchooooo unleeeees you vooooooote Repuuuuuuuublicaaaaaan. Weeeeeee'lllll keeeeeep yoooooou saaaaaaaafe.

But will they? Michael Chertof, Homeland Security secretary, says that American's have to understand that we can't spend too much money on security because that's what Osama wants. Inspecting every container that comes into our ports for radioactive material is "more safety than we can afford."

And here we go again. The Senate declassified part of a report on Iran's nuclear program so, in the words of Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.), chairman of the House intelligence committee, "to help increase the American public's understanding of Iran as a threat." However, the International Atomic Engergy Agency says the report contained some "erroneous, misleading and unsubstantiated statements."

Hands up, who remembers the last time a classified report was partially declassifed so as to both educated us as to a threat and lie to us about the level of the threat? It was called the Iraq Intelligence Assessment and it was the basis upon which many media outlets beat the drums of war.

Heh. A football club, Stanbridge United in Essex has had their uniform shirts banned because they carry the slogan "The Referee's a Wanker."

John Mattes, a Fox News reporter in San Diego was doing a story on a local businessman, Assad “Sam” Suleiman, and his wife who are accused of stealing identities and forging documents for land deals. While Mattes was interviewing someone on camera, the guy rolls up and starts wailing on him. The cameraman caught the whole thing on tape.

Now you might ask why the cameraman didn't drop the camera and help out, but that would have been the exact wrong thing to do, because the pair have pleaded not guilty to assault. Had the cameraman not caught it on tape (and it is a viscious attack) it would have been a he said/he said case.

Look, I like George Clooney. Sure, he starred in what can arguably be called the worst Batman film ever, but he's funny, a good liberal and he detests O'Reilly with the white-hot passion of a thousand suns. Even so, having him address the United Nations Security Council with Eli Wiesel is ridiculous.

I don't watch "Survivor" but I'm aware of the current controversy involving the decision to group contestants by race. On the surface, it seems like a bad idea, but my friend Tracey, who is an avid fan of the show, explained something to me that changed my mind.

She said that sometimes during the show, someone will vote someone else off based on race. Or if not actually based on race, then there is a racial component to the decision to vote someone off. By grouping these early teams by race, you completely remove that aspect from these early votes. From a sociological standpoint, that makes sense.

A new study shows that when communities lift "blue laws" -- which allow sale of non-essential items on Sunday (usually beer and cigarettes, but it can also include appliances, furniture and other items you might find at the mall) -- church attendance decreases and alcohol use increases, especially among church goers.

Perhaps the single most common refrain from the White House and the president's allies is that there have been no terrorist attacks on U.S. soil since Sept. 11, 2001. That's incorrect — about a month after 9/11, someone sent weaponized anthrax to two Democratic senators and several news outlets. Five Americans were killed and 17 more suffered serious illnesses.

My son has become obsessed with YouTube.com. I came home from work yesterday and he, Rozzy and Dollie were huddled around the computer looking at videos of kittens fighting.

"Papa!" Max said. "I want you to shoot a video of me doing the Robot that ends with me self destructing and put it on You Tube."

Max then proceeded to demonstrate "The Robot" for me and ended flat on his back twitching and making explosion noises.

"It will be about as entertaining as anything else on there," Dollie said. So, look for that soon.

Chafee pulled out a win in Rhode Island, so the Republicans dodged a bullet there. A Laffer win would have cost them a senate seat. Whitehouse, the Democratic candidate, may still take it, but it's going to be clooooose.

Part 2 of "The Path to 9/11" aired on Monday. I didn't watch it, but those who did say it contained fictionalized scenes as well. These seem to boost the Bush administration. Take, for example, this scene in which Condi Rice is meeting with Richard Clarke and George Tenet.

Rice says: Morning, gentlemen. As a result of the August 6 Presidential Daily Briefing, the president is tired of swatting flies. He believes Al Qaeda is a real threat, and he wants to consider real action. He specifically asked about the armed Predator. Where are we with that?

Here's the thing. The 9/11 Commission Report says it didn't happen. In fact, Rice's testimony was that the 9/6/01 PDB, titled "Bin Laden Determined To Attack in US" was a historical document and didn't raise any red flags in the administration. In fact, according to Ron Suskind's The One Percent Doctrine, he reported that the "analytical arm of CIA was in kind of a panic mode" during that month and CIA officials "flew to Crawford [Texas] to personally brief the President -- to intrude on his vacation with face-to-face alerts." At the end of one such briefing, Bush reportedly responded to the CIA briefer, "All right ... You've covered your ass, now."

The 9/11 Commission Report also shows that when Bush said he was "tired of swatting flies," he was not referring to the PDB, but to U.S. support for the Northern Alliance and the Uzbeks in Afghanistan the previous March.

Media Matters has a detailed account of these and other distortions in the film. It is obvious to me now that ABC was not doing this inadvertantly. There was an agenda in place, otherwise, how do you account for these distortions only making Clinton officials look bad and Bush officials look good. We know they're all false, so outside of a political agenda, what explanation can there be?

"I listen to my Democratic friends and I wonder if they're more interested in protecting the terrorists than protecting the American people," House Majority Leader John Boehner, an Ohio Republican, told reporters.

Do you, John? Really? Do you think crap like this is raising the level of political discourse? I can play that game, too. I listen to my Republican friends and I wonder if they're more interested in preserving corporate welfare and tax cuts for the rich than protecting our ports and borders.

Tony Snow still insists there was a relationship between al-Zarqawi and Iraq. This despite the Senate report that states:

Saddam Hussein attempted, unsuccessfully, to locate and capture al-Zarqawi and…the regime did not have a relationship with, harbor, or turn a blind eye toward Zarqawi.

Snow says that the fact that Zaqawi was in Iraq proves that there was a relationship. That's ridiculous. Mohammed Atta was in the United States before he flew a plane into the World Trade Center. Did the Bush administration have a relationship with him?

Sen. George Allen (R-Macacca) is still apologizing for his comments. He's also apologizing for embracing symbols that, to him didn't mean anything, but to others evidently meant a lot. I suppose he means the confederate flag he hung at his home and the noose he hung from a tree outside his office? Yeah, hard to miss the symbolism there.

What's really quite amusing about all this is that Allen isn't even a Southerner. He was born and raised in Califorina before he moved to Virginia and started wearing cowboy boots. Talk about going native.

If you're a "Colbert Report" fan. You'll love this site.

I didn't listen to the President's speech last night. I read it today and am apalled. The fifth anniversary of the terrorist attacks should have been an occasion for Bush to put aside petty politics and offer America a message of unity and hope. He had an opportunity to remind us all of the unity we felt five years ago when we were all behind him and united in purpose -- to bring those who did this to justice.

But Bush's speech was yet another in this seemingly never ending series of political pablum. And even on this sacred day, he looks at the American people and cannot stop himself from lying. He claims we're safer, when the 9/11 Commission says we're not. He makes up yet another reason for the war in Iraq that doesn't hold up to even the most superficial scrutiny:

“I’m often asked why we’re in Iraq when Saddam Hussein was not responsible for the 9/11 attacks,” he said. "The answer is that the regime of Saddam Hussein was a clear threat."

To whom, Mr. President? Your generals say that your father's policies of containment were working. Our established no-fly zones left Hussein without control of 65 percent of his territory. He had no navy or air force. His army was no threat to anyone. The UN said he had no WMDs, as did your own inspectors. He had no ties to al Queda and as a secular Arab state, had no ties to Islamic fundamentalists of any stripe.

The White House promised that this would not be a political speech and while it didn't specifically critics of the war terrorist "abettors" like Cheney did just that morning, Bush couldn't resist pulling out the pitchfork and jabbing it at a straw man:

"Whatever mistakes have been made in Iraq," Bush said, "the worst mistake would be to think that if we pulled out, the terrorists would leave us alone."

While that was dangerously close to admitting that Iraq was a mistake, Bush didn't accept any responsibility for it. And while there are critics out there who advocate pulling out of Iraq, none of them have stated that doing so would end the terrorist threat. So much for this speech not being political.

Polls show that most Americans do not believe the war in Iraq has anything to do with the war on terror. Pulling out of Iraq will not make us safter, but invading Iraq in the first place didn't either. By setting up a straw man, Bush refuses to take any responsibility for the mistakes of his administration or admit that the crisis in Iraq is one that he put on the table before us, not al Queda and not Hussein.

The week, the number of soldiers killed in Iraq surpassed the number of Americans killed during the 9/11 attacks. We have now been in Iraq longer than we were in Europe during WWII.

Think about that.

Keith Olbermann is the man. His commentary from Ground Zero yesterday was devastating in it's bite:

Terrorists did not come and steal our newly-regained sense of being American first, and political, fiftieth. Nor did the Democrats. Nor did the media. Nor did the people.

The President -- and those around him -- did that.

They promised bi-partisanship, and then showed that to them, "bi-partisanship" meant that their party would rule and the rest would have to follow, or be branded, with ever-escalating hysteria, as morally or intellectually confused, as appeasers, as those who, in the Vice President's words yesterday, "validate the strategy of the terrorists."

They promised protection, and then showed that to them "protection" meant going to war against a despot whose hand they had once shaken, a despot who we now learn from our own Senate Intelligence Committee, hated al-Qaida as much as we did.

The polite phrase for how so many of us were duped into supporting a war, on the false premise that it had 'something to do' with 9/11 is "lying by implication."

The impolite phrase is "impeachable offense."

[. . . ]

When those who dissent are told time and time again -- as we will be, if not tonight by the President, then tomorrow by his portable public chorus -- that he is preserving our freedom, but that if we use any of it, we are somehow un-American...When we are scolded, that if we merely question, we have "forgotten the lessons of 9/11"... look into this empty space behind me and the bi-partisanship upon which this administration also did not build, and tell me:

Who has left this hole in the ground?

We have not forgotten, Mr. President.

You have.

May this country forgive you.

Richard Clark, who comes off rather well in the ABC/Disney fictionalized version of 9/11, has some choice words for the network.

Today is Dollie's birthday. As is tradition in our house, the weekend nearest one's birthday is the one in which the celebrant sets the agenda. In other words, this weekend was the one in which Dollie made us all bend to her will.

This included dinner at a Thai restaurant, a trip to Nashville for the Home Decortating and Remodeling Show, window shopping for a spa and watching a lengthy costume drama set during the Crimean War on TV.

The home show was actually kind of fun. There were 650 vendor booths all trying to get us interested in siding or double-pane windows. We registered for a few prizes, picked up some brochures related to our upcoming rennovation (more on that later) and the kids got a bunch of free candy.

Among the more interesting swag available were rubby cockroaches given out by Cook's Pest Control. Very life-like. When Max took one, Rozzy insisted on getting one as well. The booth monkey gave her two. This upset Max a bit who has felt lately that Rozzy has been getting the better end of most every opportuntity to come along (more on that later). The booth monkey told Max to help himself and Max tried to grab a huge handful. We stopped him. No good can come from Max having dozens of rubber cockroaches.

Like I said, Max feels like he's been getting the short end of the stick lately and the home show hammered the point home for him. When we got there, a local radio station had set up a booth where you could spin the wheel and get prizes. Max spun the wheel and got some Post-It notes. Rozzy spun the wheel and got a free radio.

Max got a rubber cockroach from a booth, Rozzy got two. Max found a penny in the parking lot, Rozzy found a nickel. It was a theme all weekend long. By the end, it got to be pretty funny in that papa-laughing-at-the-misfortunes-of-others kind of way.

The Senate Intelligence Committee released part of their report on Friday (remember kids, if you want to bury some news, release it on Friday afternoon). It confirmed, finally, that there was no relationship between Hussein and al Queda. That did not stop Dick Cheney from still claiming there was a link during his Sunday interview on "Meet the Press." Russert called him on it and his response was "I haven't had the chance to read the Senate report yet."

Let me break it down for you, Mr. Vice President. The report says that the CIA knew months ago that there was no link. You and the president continued to make that claim (the president as late as August -- a full 11 months after the CIA confirmed there was none).

But Cheney doesn't want to let it go. He told Russert that, even knowing that there were no WMDs in Iraq, he would still have done the exact same thing because Hussein had links to al Queda.

AAAARRRGHH! I wanted Russert to grab him in a headlock and knuckle his skull, yelling "Hello! McFly! There was no link!"

Then Condoleeza Rice went on Fox News yesterday and made the very same claim. They must think we're stupid.

Good news! I found a local source for the one product I couldn't find outside of Wal-Mart. Now I no longer have to ever step foot in there again! In case you're interested, and there's no reason why you should be, the product in question was shaving oil. I do a lot more shaving these days and using an oil underneath the shaving gel helps keep me from cutting myself. Wal-Mart was the only store that carried it. Then I spotted a bottle at Eckerd. So, good-bye Wal-Mart.

Dollie and I are talking about doing some rennovation work on the house. Specifically, we want to add a shower to the downstairs bath, replace the sliding glass doors with French Doors, pour a concrete slab outside our bedroom door and put in a hot tub. We'd also like to rennovate the deck on the back of the house. We're still in the daydream stages of this, but I'm pushing to make it happen.

We went to a local pool/spa place on Saturday and took a look around. People with more money than sense can get into some real trouble at these places. There were spas there topping $20,000. There was an 8-person model that included a 32-inch flat screen TV that popped up out of the side. There were models that had LED lights, water fountains, water falls and nozzles that spray mist in the air. It was, and I mean this in the nicest possible way, ridiculous.

Remember when Bush ran on the platform of returning honest and integrity to the White House? What about those early statements from Ari Fleischer that said Bush was going to raise the level of discourse in Washington? With a tough mid-term election coming up, all that is going out the window. The Republican party is gearing up to spend $45 million on negative TV ads in congressional races around the country.

That should certainly provide for a nice clean campaign based on the issues, right?

ABC ran the first part of their 9/11 series last night. I didn't watch it and I don't know of anyone who did. In the cold light of Monday morning, we find that many of the statements ABC made to quell the rising voice of criticism over their deeply flawed account of the tragedy was bravo sierra.

ABC is jerking us around. I haven't seen the overnights, so I don't know how the series did up against the NFL opening weekend and the premiers of the FOX Sunday night lineup. I'm betting not too well.

Tonight, President Bush will give another in a series of scary terror speeches. ABC will sandwich it in the middle of part 2 of the series.

Tony Snow trotted out a straw man to beat up on this week. Notice how there are not specifics in the quote:

"There have been some in the Democratic Party who have argued against the Patriot Act, against the terror surveillance program, against Guantanamo. In other words, there are some people who say that we shouldn't fight the war, we should not detain -- we shouldn't apprehend al Qaeda, we shouldn't detain al Qaeda, we shouldn't question al Qaeda, and we shouldn't listen to al Qaeda. In other words, they're all for winning the war on terror, but they're all against -- they're against providing the tools for winning that war."

Pathetic. My first question after hearing that would be "Who? Who is saying we shouldn't fight the war? Who is saying we should apprehend and detain al Qaeda? If this is an actual statement of fact, then give me a name so I can ask that person myself what he or she means. Otherwise, this is just another political statement in an election year."

There are provisions in the Patriot Act which go against the Constitutional traditions of America. Holding people without due process at Guantanamo goes against our Constitution and flies in the face of our system of justice. We should not have faught the war in Iraq because it had nothing to do with the war on terror. We should aprehend al Qaeda. We should listen in on their phone calls. But there are legal means of doing it and as the Republicans were so fond of saying during the last administration, we are a nation of laws.

"The secretary of defense continued to push on us that everything we write in our plan has to be the idea that we are going to go in, we're going to take out the regime, and then we're going to leave," Scheid said. "We won't stay."

Scheid said the planners continued to try "to write what was called Phase 4," or the piece of the plan that included post-invasion operations like security, stability and reconstruction.

Even if the troops didn't stay, "at least we have to plan for it," Scheid said.

"I remember the secretary of defense saying that he would fire the next person that said that," Scheid said. "We would not do planning for Phase 4 operations, which would require all those additional troops that people talk about today.

"He said we will not do that because the American public will not back us if they think we are going over there for a long war."

Read, if you dare, the GOP's attempt at humor. American Weakly is a web site produced by the Republicans that features ficticious stories from the future in which Democrats have taken back control of the Congress.

A judge has ruled that Bob Corker must testify about his questionable land deal in October. This, on top of recent polls that show him neck-and-neck with Harold Ford Jr., may mean a bad month for Bob.

Last year, Halliburton executives in Iraq got to watch the Superbowl on a big-screen TV. Halliburton also flew in giant tubs of tacos, chicken wings and cheese sticks for the executive's party. Then, they charged the whole thing to the American taxpayer.

So what's the problem with ABC producing a docudrama about an historic event in which they use composite scenes, conflate events, time compression and in some cases, just make stuff up? Some people take it seriously.

In the movie, Mohammad Atta attempts to board an American Airlines flight at Boston's Logan Airport. When he checks in at the ticket counter, the AA employee calls a supervisor who shrugs and says "let him through." She asks if they should at least search him and the supervisor says no, just hold his bags until he boards the plane. The implication here is that AA had Atta and instead of following the rules, they let him go, allowing him to kill thousands of Americans.

But according to the 9/11 Commission Report, the flag on Atta's ticket didn't happen at Loga Airport. It happened at the Portland, Maine airport where Atta boarded a United Airlines Express flight to Logan Airport. This wasn't buried somewhere in the depths of the 9/11 Report. It is on page one.

Also, the rules at the time did not call for the searching of passengers, but to simply hold their bags until they board the plane. So, while the film implies that AA could have stopped Atta if they'd followed the rules, they got the airport and airline wrong, not to mention that the United Airlines Express supervisor did indeed follow procedure. It is in the details that things like this happen:

Mr. _________,

I think it is important for you to know that ABC had factual errors in
its dramatization, and we are looking at possible legal actions as a
result. According to the 9-11 Commission report, it was not American
Airlines, nor was it even the right airport that was depicted. In
reality, it was another airline, flying out of Maine. Please know this
was a tragic incident in our company's history and we hope you will be
sympathetic to our employees and our airline on this day especially.
Again, we are outraged by this situation, and we alerted ABC about its
gross error. It is very unfortunate.

Roger

Roger Frizzell
Vice President, Corporate Communications & Advertising
American Airlines

My mother sent Rozzy a birthday card with some cash inside. When I got home from work yesterday, Rozzy met me at the top of the stairs to tell me that "Mommy said I could buy something with my birthday money at Target!"

So, we loaded up the truck and headed to the princess aisle at Target. Rozzy was not sure what she wanted, but she was certain that whatever it was would be amongst the "princess stuff."

We slowly rolled up and down the princess aisle. I pointed to and proferred various pink products, but Rozzy was determined to pick out her present personally. Twenty bucks goes a long way on the princess aisle.

We actually moved back and forth between the "princess stuff" and the "Polly Pocket stuff." Rozzy really wanted the new Polly Pocket Limo-Scene -- a car which mysteriously changes Polly's clothes as it moves her from the driver's seat to the rear of the vehicle. However, that, combined with the Barbie make-up kit busted her budget. So, she chose the smaller Polly Pocket Fashion Cruiser -- a much smaller vehicle with a "secret boutique" in the back.

Regardless of which Polly Pocket item you buy, you can be assured of one thing -- it will contain 5,000 tiny little pieces that will get lost somewhere between untwisting the 37 wires that hold the doll in the box and handing them over to your daughter. Tiny rubber clothes, tiny shoes, mirrors, compacts, purses, hats, sunglasses -- all scattered to the four winds. The only saving grace is that they are soft, so they will neighther hurt me when I step on them later or injure the cat as they pass through his digestive tract.

Speaking of "House," Dollie and I have been watching the first season of "A Bit of Fry and Laurie" the BBC series that Hugh Laurie starred in back in the late '80s and early '90s. There are some really funny bits to it that are absurd enough not to come across as dated. However, there are some rather British-centric jokes that I didn't understand. It is a two-person Monty Python with the silliness dialed back by a third. Very enjoyable. It's just been made availalbe on Netflix.

While in Huntsville over the weekend, Dollie and I went to the North Alabama State Fair. It was a sad, little carnival. Small, not particularly entertaining and full of ugly, ugly people. What is it about fairs that bring out the toothless and obese?

Aside from the usual rigged games and creeky rides, they had very little by way of entertainment. A band was playing to a crowd of about ten people. Some guy was performing a snake show. There was a petting zoo that, for some reason, contained chickens and that was about it.

The Tennessee State Fair is this weekend and Dolls, who's birthday weekend is coming up and therefore sets the agenda, she's all faired out, so we will be attending the 23rd Annual Nashville Home Decorating and Remodelling Show. Irlene Mandrell is supposed to be there. She was the one Mandrell sister they wouldn't let sing on TV. Now Barbara and Louise have theatres in Branson and Irlene is appearing at home shows.

British PM Tony Blair says he will resign within a year. This is an effort to stop his critics from forcing him out. I don't understand how the British parlimentary system works, but I enjoy watching Prime Minister's question time.

Bush is losing Southern women in a recent AP-Ipsos poll. The gender gap, which collapsed in the South in the last election cycle has opened up again.

In his speech yesterday, Bush attempted to put a face on the terror we're all supposed to fear by announcing that 14 terror prisoners, located in secret CIA prisons around the world, will be transferred to Gitmo to await trial. Aside from trying to distract us from the disaster in Iraq by parading actual terrorism suspects in front of us, Bush seemed to say "look, we're going to obey the law now."

That's certainly how it was spun. Bush wants Congress to pass legislation allowing him to use military tribunals to try these murderers. Bush even reiterated that America doesn't torture and that he's never authorized torture.

Here's what the spin should have been: Bush admits that there is a network of CIA prisons. Having lost the battle in the courts, Bush is forced to give these suspects something resembling a trial. The Bush administration redefined torture and set the bar so high, that we can do anything short of death or organ failure and not call it torture.

Where is that story? Bush says we don't torture. But we waterboard, we put people in stress positions, strip them naked and make them lie on the floors of that were extremely cold or hot. We threatened the children of Khalid Shiek Mohamed to get him to talk. But he still has all his organs, so it wasn't torture.

Speaking of playing fast and loose with the facts, Sen. Pat Roberts, who has been promising to release Phase II of his committee's report comparing the Bush Administration's public statements to actual intelligence reports during the lead-up to the Iraq invasion, has decided to delay the report until after the November elections. What a shock. You'll recall that, before the 2004 elections, Roberts decided the report should be released in two phases, the first, which dealt with intelligence failures at the CIA was released prior to the election and the second, which dealt with the administration's cherrypicking of intelligence to sell the war, would be delayed until after the election.

After the 2004 elections, which Bush called his "accountability moment" Roberts declared that there was now no need for Phase II.

Last year, Sen. Harry Reid took the Senate into closed session to demand a status report on Phase II and to get the ball rolling. Roberts promised to move on Phase II. Now he's dragging his feet again. He plans on releasing just two small sub-parts of Phase II before the election with no indication when the rest will be complete.

What more proof of ABC/Disney's bias with this 9/11 "docudrama?" Why is it, do you suppose that Rush Limbaugh and a host of conservative bloggers and journalists got advance copies of the film, but President Clinton and Madeline Albright (who are both portrayed in the film) could not? They both requested copies, but were refused.

The film depicts Cllinton as being too distracted by the Lewinsky scandal to be concerned about bin Laden. It depicts Albright has having warned Pakistan about a cruise missile strike intended to kill bin Laden. The warning led to bin Laden escaping.

But the facts are Clinton was briefed daily on bin Laden's whereabouts. He was focused on bin Laden and even warned Bush when they met that he needs to pay particular attention to bin Laden. But Bush blew him off. The 9/11 commission report says that Pakistan did receive a warning about the cruise missile, but it came from a member of the Joint Chiefs, not Albright. The Pentagon felt they needed to assure Pakistan that the missile didn't come from India.

The only good news about all this is that the NFL season kicks off on NBC against both nights of this piece of crap film. So, I doubt too many will see it.

The following movie is a dramatization that is drawn from a variety of sources including the 9/11 Commission Report and other published materials, and from personal interviews. The movie is not a documentary. For dramatic and narrative purposes, the movie contains fictionalized scenes, composite and representative characters and dialogue, as well as time compression.

Now I'm seeing reports that an FBI agent who was acting as a consultant on the film quit halfway through because he believe they were making stuff up.

I wrote WKRN, my local ABC affiliate and asked them not to run it. I emailed Scholastic and asked them to correct the errors in the educational materials they are distributing to schools as part of this series.

[late update: Scholastic has pulled the student resource sheets for The Path to 9/11 and replaced them with information targeting three areas: media literacy, which will address the differences between a docudrama and a documentary; background on 9/11, which will cover the causes of unrest that lead to attacks on the U.S. and allies; and geography and culture, which will cover the long history of conflict in the Middle East. Congratulations, Scholastic on doing the right thing.]

My brother Dan is back to blogging. In his first post, he brags that he voted for Corker in the Republican primary. That may not be something worth braggin about seeing as how Corker is afraid to debate his Democratic opponent Harold Ford, Jr. on "Meet the Press." Now what politician, seeking statewide office, would not jump at the chance to go on television and face his opponent? Especially on "Meet the Press." Tim Russert is notoriously easy on Republicans.

Incidently, my wife went to see Ford when he came to Murfreesboro a few weeks ago. She said he was charismatic, said all the right things and is campaigning across the state in a truck that runs on biodiesel produced in Tennessee. She also said that the ladies in the crowd were fighting to get up next to him for a photo.

Spent the long weekend in Huntsville with Dollie's folks. We took the kids to see the U.S. Space & Rocket Center, which is about the only thing to do in Huntsville. Sure, there's the botanical gardens, but Rozzy is afraid of butterflies. There's the hands-on science center, but there's nothing there for adults to enjoy and any trip to these kind of places always ends in someone throwing a fit when it's time to leave. The art museum requires the kids to be quiet.

Soooo, we hit the rocket park. Now, if you went to school anywhere near Huntsville (and Shelbyville, Tenn. is close enough) then you've been to the Rocket Center. It hasn't changed much, other than a larger emphasis on Space Camp and a severe neglect of their web site.

There really is no reason for it to change, though. We're not doing all that much with rocketry now days and the Space Shuttle program is struggling with 1986 technology.

Many of the same exhibits that were there when I first toured the place as a 5th grader (and later when I went back to see the pieces of Skylab they had on display) are still there. Rozzy was most interested in the various methods in which astronauts went to the potty. Max kept wondering if the missle systems they had on display were used to shoot aliens.

The weekend was nice enough. Dollie and I checked into a hotel, while the kids stayed with the grandparents. On the last day, we met for breakfast before going to the mall for what Dollie calls "retail therapy." We were trying to figure out a schedule where we could hook back up with the grandparents to see an art exhibit on the Alabama A&M campus.

GF wanted a ball-park time. Dollie wanted to play it loose and just call them on their cell phones when we were ready to head over.

Oy. The grandparents both have cell phones, but neither of them actually turn them on. They also don't know either each other's or their own cell phone numbers. I found this confounding, so I asked Fran about it.

"I find it amusing that you both have cell phones, but you can't call each other because neight of you leave them on," I said.

"Well, Steve will turn his on if he is expecting me to call," she said. "I just have one for roadside emergencies."

"But if it is an emergency, then Steve won't be expecting the call and you won't be able to call him," I said.

"Well, we're not used to living with all this technology," she said. "We're old. Give us a break."

I mean, why even have a cell phone if you're not going to turn it on? Dollie suggested that it may be that they don't want to be bothered with calls, but they don't give out their number to anyone and in fact, don't know their own cell phone numbers, so that's not really a problem.

A compromise ensued. We would strive to be at the campus by 3 p.m. and Steve would turn on his cell phone so we could call in case we were going to be early or late. This required Steve to go to the van, fetch his cell phone and call Dollie from it so she would have his cell phone number.

We finished our shopping and were ready to head over to the campus at about 2 p.m. Dollie called Steve. He'd turned his cell phone off. Oy.

Granny Franny let us in to see the gallery exhibit of costume pieces made by my friend Lori. They were interesting and colorful. She obviously has talent and a good eye for design and whimsy. She named the exhibit "All the World's a Stage." But the graphic designer on staff thought that was cliche and told Fran he "just couldn't do it." So he took it upon himself to rename the exhibit for the flyer. This resulted in the flyer not actually matching the exhibit. When Fran told me about that, I got a little angry. As a graphic designer, he really shouldn't have gotten a vote. I work with plenty of professionals and they would never think of pulling that kind of crap.

I suppose that's why this guy is an academic and not a practicing professional. If he pulled that crap with a paying client, he'd be out on his tuchus. Not that I have anything against academics. It's just that they're a breed apart from people in the commercial world.

During the Clinton impeachment, one chorus that kept ringing around the right was "what do we tell the children?" "How do we explain this evil, evil man to our children?"

My response was always "children don't need to be watching the political shows until they're old enough to vote." But that's a narrow view.

"Papa, there's a man running for president and he said that there are people who drive taxis during the day and kill people at night." This obviously had Max worried, though I doubt he's ever ridden in a taxi and he's in bed by 8 most nights.

"That was Conrad Burns, Max. He's not running for president. He's a Republican running for senate in Montana. He's an idiot. Don't listen to him."

More macaca fun. During the macaca speech, Sen. George Allen (R-Virginia) said that his opponent Jim Webb was in Hollywood raising money from the movie moguls there. He said his opponent.'s values were more in tune with Hollywood than Virginia.

Max is at that stage most little boys go through where every single moment must be filled with activity. If there isn't something going on in front of him, his imagination fills in the gaps. That's normally fine, but more often than not, his brain fills in those gaps with violence: battles between monsters, cartoon characters, Pokemon, characters from books or just stuff he makes up.

We'll be walking through Kroger and I'll hear him making battle noises under his breath as he leaps around the store, throwing punches and kicks. "Woosh, roar, boom!"

"Max, stop fighting imaginary battles and behave," I'll say. He might even stop for a little while, then he's at it again.

I was reminded of this when I read an excerpt from a new book about Bush. It's called How Bush Rules: Chronicles of a Radical Regime, by Sidney Blumenthal. Now Blumenthal is a former Clinton aid, so you must consider his frame of reference when he writes about Bush. But the described incident is completely believable, to me anyway.

Bush and Rove are taking a tour of the Clinton Presidential Library which sits on the banks of the Arkansas River. Rove is completely engaged and asking lots of questions. He understands that, at some point, he's going to have to deal with a George W. Bush Presidential Library.

Bush, however, is distracted and bored. Looking out the window at the river, with boats full of Secret Service agents, their guide remarked that usually you'd see bass fishermen out there.

Tony Snow got into it with the press corps yesterday over the idea that the Republican strategy in Iraq is "stay the course."

"Iraq is the central front in this war on terror. If we leave the streets of Baghdad before the job is done, we will have to face the terrorists in our own cities. We will stay the course."

In fact, Think Progress has a long list of Bush administration officials who have played the "stay the course" card including Tony Snow himself.

If you're a critic of this war in Iraq, the administration is doing it's best to paint you with a broad brush. Cheney questions your patriotism. Rumsfeld says your a Chamberlain-style nazi-appeaser. Bush says you don't have the will to stand up to this new form of fascism. Now Condoleeza Rice is upping the rhetorical bar.

"I'm sure there are people who thought it was a mistake to fight the Civil War to its end and to insist that the emancipation of slaves would hold," Rice tells Essence. "I know there were people who said, 'Why don't we get out of this now, take a peace with the South, but leave the South with slaves?"

Chris Mathews is an idiot. He thinks the midterm elections will be a referendom on Nancy Pelosi as House Speaker. Hands up, who out there can even pick Pelosi out of a lineup? Come January, she'll be the first female Speaker of the House. Bank on it.

ABC is catching some flak on their intention to run a "docudrama" about 9/11 on Sept. 10 and 11. It's called "The Path to 9/11" and from what I've read, it places the blame for the al Queda attacks on the Clinton Administration. Editor & Publisher magazine reviewed the film and said it is riddled with inaccuracies. ABC/Disney is sending copies of it to school teachers and posting it on iTunes and ABC.com without commercials.

At least two officials portrayed in the film, Richard Clark and Samuel Berger, both White House security advisors, have said that key segments of the film are completely fictional. Members of the 9-11 Commission have also cried foul. One of the writers said the film was "reasonably accurate." I'm sorry, but we're talking about the worst attack on American soil in more than a generation. "reasonably accurate" just doesn't cut it.

If you'll recall, when CBS was planning on running a docudrama about the Reagan White House, Republicans rallied and got the thing shut down. I doubt that will happen this time, mostly because ABC didn't preview the film as widely. In fact, they only showed it to right-wing bloggers and media outlets.

The whole point of the film seems to be to blame the Clinton Administration while praising the Bush Administration. But if you read the 9-11 Commission's report (even if it's just the comic book version). You'll see that the Clinton administration was focused on bin Laden and al Queda. It was the Bush administration that completely ignored the terrorist threat before 9/11.

The thing ABC and Disney need to remember is that if the Dems take back the House in nine weeks, the chairmanships of all those committees change hands. Making enemies now isn't going to be good for business later.

"Well, thank you. Did you get the message I left on your answering machine on your birthday?"

"Oh me. I turned 60. I'm an old man. At least I remember when I thought 60 was old."

"Well, I wanted to call and wish you a happy birthday and let you know I'm proud of you."

I record these moments because they are special to me. It's been a while since I felt like I could tell dad I was proud of him. But he made a decision several months back to go into rehab and get sober. It didn't require an intervention or some terrible accident. He just decided one morning that he needed to go. That takes courage I didn't know he had. But I was thankful he had it.

You know how you can tell Lieberman losing the Connecticutt Democratic Primary is a good thing for Democrats? Because Rick Santorum (R-wingnut) calls it a "tragedy."

Let's hear it for Rocky Anderson, mayor of Salt Lake City. He gave a barn-burner of a speech the day before Bush came to town.

A patriot does not tell people who are intensely concerned about their country to just sit down and be quiet; to refrain from speaking out in the name of politeness or for the sake of being a good host; to show slavish, blind obedience and deference to a dishonest, war-mongering, human-rights-violating president.

That is not a patriot. Rather, that person is a sycophant. That person is a member of a frightening culture of obedience - a culture where falling in line with authority is more important than choosing what is right, even if it is not easy, safe, or popular. And, I suspect, that person is afraid - afraid we are right, afraid of the truth (even to the point of denying it), afraid he or she has put in with an oppressive, inhumane, regime that does not respect the laws and traditions of our country, and that history will rank as the worst presidency our nation has ever had to endure.

That's creepy, yet oddly fascinating. A Chinese artist is exhibiting some works which consist of skeletons and anatomical renderings of cartoon characters.

The next primary to keep an eye on is the Rhode Island Republican on Sept. 12. Sen. Lincoln Chafee is the incumbent and he is what the Republicans refer to as a RINO (Republican in name only). The reason is that he is a reliable vote for progressive causes. He is a pro-choice, against the death penalty (even for Osama bin Laden) and in favor of gay marriage. He voted against the Iraq war and against the Bush tax cuts. He is, in other words, my kind of Republican. And he must be defeated in the primary.

Rhode Island is as blue a state as you're ever going to find and Chafee is the only Republican who could possibly get elected there. His opponent in the primary is Steve Laffey, a conservative who is the polar opposite of Chafee -- a loud, proud Bush supporter. We want Laffey to win the primary because he cannot win the general election.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee knows this and have been throwing a lot of money behind Chafee, including attack ads against Laffey. It's like bizarro world out there. If Chafee wins the primary, he'll win the election. So Democrats are working for the conservative Republican and the Republican party is pushing the liberal Republican.

A poll released yesterday shows Laffey with a 51-34 lead among likely voters, but Chafee has been pushing for Democrats to reregister as independents so they can vote in the Republican primary for him. There's no way of predicting how many have done it and what effect that will have.

If Chafee loses the primary, then Laffey will certainly lose the general election. That will give the Dems another seat in the senate, which will most likely throw control to the Dems (who need six seats).

The fires are out of control in Montana! Declare an emergency and call up the National Guard.

The Macaca fallout just keeps on falling. I bet Sen. George Allan really wishes he'd kept his stupid mouth shut, now.

Speaking of falling, according to Ramussen, the number of people calling themselves Republican has fallen to a 32-month low.

Woo Hoo! Democrats are going to come out swinging. They are working on getting a no-confidence vote on Rummy to the floor of the House before the election.