Grim And Non-Grim

I've found it pretty grim to witness the right wing slime machine go after Cindy Sheehan. The depth of the hatefulness is terrifying. It makes me understand how every horrible thing in history has happened.

But then I took a walk around the block and cheered up. Here's some stuff that is also non-grim:

1. Colin Whitworth at the Gainesville Report has done something I'd been meaning to do for a while—transcribe the dialogue on the television in the bombed window at the beginning of Brazil. Take a look and learn again why there is no such thing as satire.

INTERVIEWER: Do you think that the government is winning the battle against terrorists?

HELPMANN: Oh yes. Our morale is much higher than theirs, we're fielding all their strokes, running a lot of them out, and pretty consistently knocking them for six. I'd say they're nearly out of the game.

INTERVIEWER: But the bombing campaign is now in its thirteenth year...

HELPMANN: Beginner's luck.

2. Chris Floyd says there's a fancy new version of Empire Burlesque on the way.

Also, check out this about Dennis Hastert:

One of the grubby little secrets of the Great Potomac Grease Pit – otherwise known as the government of the United States – is that the massive amount of bribes given and taken there often has little effect on the final outcome of policy decisions and legislation...

The plain fact is, most politicians take bribes to push policies they already support. With very few exceptions, you are just not going to achieve a place of prominence in national politics unless you are already the kind of person happy to do the bidding of rapacious elites, whatever the cut of your rhetorical jib ("progressive," "moderate," "conservative," etc.). Like Macbeth's spectral dagger, bribery merely marshall'st the politician in the way he was going...

Talk of bribery in high places leads us, of course, to Representative Dennis Hastert of Illinois...

And Mr. Floyd's take on how the US government will avoid embarrassment while putting Saddam on trial is worth reading too.

3. Finally, why not some Ecolanguage from Lee Adam Arnold?