Comedy = Near Tragedy + Time / 24-Hour News Cycle

"This is the second aviation bomb threat this week. The in-flight movie on my return trip was Mission Impossible III."

"Paul Greengrass and Oliver Stone are teaming up for a new Hollywood thriller based on actual events. It's called Shakes On A Plane."

"Rush Limbaugh was once again detained at the Palm Beach Airport for carrying contraband on his return flight from the Dominican Republic. In his defense, Rush claimed, 'That's not hair gel.'"

The staff of The Jimmy Kimmel Show can contact me at the address to the right.

Team Connecticut

Joementum is now Joe Dirt Nap:

"Tomorrow is a brand new day and tomorrow we launch a new campaign to unite the people of Connecticut - Team Connecticut - Democrats, Republicans and Independents so we can go forward together to solve our most serious problems together. That is what this campaign will be about.

"And let me say to the people outside of Connecticut, if you are disappointed with the ugly tone of our politics, if you are fed up with the nasty partisanship in Washington, then I ask for your help, too. You can go to my Web site, joe2006.com - when it is unhacked - to send me your ideas about how we can build this new politics of unity and purpose. Come to Connecticut to help, and don't hesitate to send a campaign contribution."

Joe Lieberman (NPR-Conn.) just launched his Team Connecticut website, and already it's been hacked!

I hear Katherine Harris has a bunch of former campaign staffers looking for jobs, Joe.

The Wedding Singer

Marty Peretz is thinking of starting his own blog. He hasn't learned the software (or, as he calls it, "how to post a Plank"), so he's been having Frank Foer and the boys type up his late-night rants for him. Marty's thinking of calling it "The Spine."

See the title above for my alternative suggestion.

Thank You, Guest Bloggers

I want to thank all of the guest bloggers for keeping hope alive during my vacation. Personal thanks will follow.

I've been on a lo-news diet for the past couple of weeks and, even worse, haven't read a blog (or been on the 'net) in weeks. (For those curious about my trip, here's a hint:

"In August 2001, a University of Tennessee law professor named Glenn H. Reynolds, the author of the popular, libertarian-leaning blog InstaPundit, and pro-gun activist Dave Kopel wrote an article for National Review Online complaining that the upcoming conference was stacked with anti-gun people....

"In continuing online debates over gun issues, Reynolds and Kopel have refused to identify the anonymous source. However, Tim Lambert, a computer scientist in Australia who maintains an anti-Lott blog, has said on his blog that Levitt told him he was nearly certain that Lott was the source.")

By the way, if you tried to e-mail me at my fastmail address, my account got filled up by July 28. I apologize for any inconvenience.

Do you believe in Iraqi "WMD"? Did Saddam Hussein's government have weapons of mass destruction in 2003?

Half of America apparently still thinks so, a new poll finds, and experts see a raft of reasons why: a drumbeat of voices from talk radio to die-hard bloggers to the Oval Office, a surprise headline here or there, a rallying around a partisan flag, and a growing need for people, in their own minds, to justify the war in Iraq.

People tend to become "independent of reality" in these circumstances, says opinion analyst Steven Kull.

The reality in this case is that after a 16-month, $900-million-plus investigation, the U.S. weapons hunters known as the Iraq Survey Group declared that Iraq had dismantled its chemical, biological and nuclear arms programs in 1991 under U.N. oversight. That finding in 2004 reaffirmed the work of U.N. inspectors who in 2002-03 found no trace of banned arsenals in Iraq.

Despite this, a Harris Poll released July 21 found that a full 50 percent of U.S. respondents - up from 36 percent last year - said they believe Iraq did have the forbidden arms when U.S. troops invaded in March 2003, an attack whose stated purpose was elimination of supposed WMD. Other polls also have found an enduring American faith in the WMD story. [emphasis mine]

"I'm not having sex for a year. ... I'll kiss, but nothing else," says Hilton, who told the magazine she has had sex with only two men during her lifetime.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska - In a sudden blow to the nation's oil supply, half the production on Alaska's North Slope was being shut down Sunday after BP Exploration Alaska, Inc. discovered severe corrosion in a Prudhoe Bay oil transit line...

Once the field is shut down, in a process expected to take days, BP said oil production will be reduced by 400,000 barrels a day. That's close to 8 percent of U.S. oil production as of May 2006 or about 2.6 percent of U.S. supply including imports, according to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration...

A 400,000-barrel per day reduction in output would have a major impact on oil prices, said Tetsu Emori, chief commodities strategist at Mitsui Bussan Futures in Tokyo.

"Oil prices could increase by as much as $10 per barrel given the current environment," Emori said. "But we can't really say for sure how big an effect this is going to have until we have more exact figures about how much production is going to be reduced."

Approximately 26 laws and regulations may have been violated by this Administration's misconduct.

Our Constitution established a tri-partite system of government, with the notion that each branch of government would act as a check on the other two. Unfortunately, for the last six years, the Republicans in Congress have largely viewed themselves as defenders of the Bush Administration, instead of a vital check on overreaching by the Executive Branch. By doing so, I believe they have acted to the detriment of our Constitutional form of government.

At least 163 Palestinians and one Israeli soldier have died in the offensive, according to an AFP count, and much of the densely packed territory's infrastructure has been destroyed, including its one power plant. The UN said that according to its figures, 175 Palestinians have been killed, including approximately 40 children and eight women. More than 620 Palestinians have been wounded, the statement said.

On the Israeli side, the UN said that one soldier has been killed and 25 wounded, including 11 from homemade rockets fired from Gaza. "All parties to the conflict are obliged to protect civilians during hostilities," the UN statement said.

Palestinian officials said Israeli forces arrested the speaker of the Palestinian parliament at his house early Sunday. The director of the speaker's office and security officers said about 20 Israeli army vehicles surrounded the house of parliament speaker Abdel Aziz Duaik, a member of Hamas, and took him into custody.

Mr. Ryan, too, said he enjoyed being single. He stood talking in his kitchen on a Saturday when he had no plans other than a solo bike ride. It was a slow weekend day - his birthday, in fact - and though the phone never rang, he was free for dinner.

Reuters [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
Powerline was all over it, too.

George Conway has a good roundup .

Posted at 11:22 AM

ANCHORAGE, Alaska - Four-time Iditarod champion Susan Butcher, who in 1986 became the race's second female winner and brought increased national attention to its grueling competition, has died. She was 51.

Butcher died Saturday in a Seattle hospital of a reoccurrence of leukemia after a recent stem-cell transplant, her doctor said.

Charles Johnson Does It Again [John Podhoretz] At Little Green Footballs, definitive evidence that a Reuters photographer is using photoshop to make the Israeli strikes on Beirut look vastly worse than they are in fact. (Warning: There's a highly upsetting photo in the string of pictures here of a toddler killed in the Qana bombing.) LGF's Charles Johnson was, you'll recall, the guy who typed the Rathergate memo into Microsoft Word and discovered it could not possibly have been typed on a 1972 typewriter. Posted at 7:01 AM