Well, well, well.  Let’s see what he does under light-to-moderate pressure.  White House Press Conference — with a guy who can actually respond in English!  With commentary from YOU!

1956 (ET): The story so far?  Cloture in the Senate today, biggish vote tomorrow, conference committee speed round thereafter.  Or something like that.

2000: Barack Obama has won the toss, and will receive.

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So sorry, A-Fraud.  No all-time home run record for you.

[Certain people have questioned whether steroids are really, truly evil.  All I know is this: Alex Rodriguez is a New York Yankee.  This shall suffice for me.]

five yards, please.

I was going for a picture of a cheerleader to put in here, and it struck me: have I ever seen a Steeler cheerleader?  Visit to the official website, Yahoo image search engine?  Nothing.

I’m sold.  On account of the lack of cheerleaders, the pick is Pittsburgh to beat the spread.  It’s a 10,000 STAR LOCK.

Liveish commentary follows.  Your contributions will be (a) inevitably better than mine, and (b) therefore welcome.

1755 (ET): One deep, trauma-inducing emotion, expressed off-hand earlier today: five-hour pregame shows which are half-filled with self-promotional free advertising for your corporate master (Universal, News Corp., Disney, Viacom) MAKES BABY JESUS CRY.  For Pete’s sake — keep it to two hours and talk about football only or GTFO.

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And so as the drama (?) plays out tomorrow up in Ottawa (will the new Liberal leader spike the Coalition?  will he?  will he?), let us take a step back and realize why Canada is so beloved among the nations of the world.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the non-embedded video of Rex Murphy’s impassioned defense defence of Tim Horton’s and attack on meddling municipal politicians and Starbucks — a portion of which is lovingly reproduced here:

We Canadians hold this truth to be self-evident: that the Boston Creme donut is the acme of human civilization as we know it, and that the only experience better than an early coffee and a Boston Creme is an early coffee and two Boston Cremes.  Isn’t mathematics wonderful?

Oh, Canada! We stand on guard…. for…. thee!

I think I know what’s on the minds of many of you.  There needs to be a purging of something deep inside you.  Not something bothering you about the political world, but something deeper.  The banal things that surround you.

Perhaps the Billy Joel etc. thread set this off, but I cannot fucking stand how fake people are totally running the world.  Pre-packaged crap dressed up as The Next Big Thing, corporate speak, routine, routine, routine — all to cover for loneliness, for inadequacy, for imperfection, for being a total fuck-up.  The money that is made, the women that are scored, the big money, fabulous prizes, power and control.

But that’s me.  If your fist could smash something, friends, what would it be?  Nothing profound like war or hate, you know.  The simpler things — the creepy guy on the bus, the ad in the window of the bank, the girl chatting away on the cell phone while walking into traffic. 

What’s that one nagging, annoying itch that you want to scratch with a tactical nuclear missile?  Dear friends: what’s pissing you off today?

There have been many storied tactical defenses in history, to which a new member will be added this week.  Let us review them.

The Nuremburg Defense. Best summarized by the now-cliched “I was only following orders.”  Level of success: Not so good.  After this was first used, stock in Amalgamated Rope & Trap Door Co. (NYSE: CYA) hit a two-year high.

The Twinkie Defense. Did you know that eating junk food renders you helpless against the urge to engage in multiple political assassinations?  It’s true!  Level of success: Suprisingly high.

The Idiot Defense. The crown jewel of commercial magnates whose companies go toes-up — “I have no clue” as a managerial style.  Level of success: low.  One guy in the last few years — Richard Scrushy of HealthSouth, apparently got off.  Everybody else didn’t.

The Nadjorf-Sicilian Defense.  Popularlized and mastered by Bobby Fischer.  Level of success: High, in Fischer’s hands.  But, of course, Fischer went spectacularly mad.  So: use with caution, and do not combine with anti-Semitism.

The Best Defense.  In short: a good offense.  Level of success: Unreliable.  Presumes an actual defense that is worth a damn.

The Chewbacca Defense. Look at the monkey!  Level of success: despite counterintuitive underpinnings, the best strategy EVER.

So: where does the Blagojevich Defense — “they don’t have anything on me, they just want to RAISE YOUR TAXES” — rank among these giants of theory?

Nobody seriously expected the President to own up to everything on his way out the door.  And that certainly did not happen.  But as we have come to understand, the man never fails to amaze.

The last address — which actually was rehashed during the weekly radio address on Saturday, so call it the next-to-last address — offered nothing memorable or earth-shattering, except for one final demonstration of a lack of self-awareness, of total cognitive dissonance:

America must maintain our moral clarity. I’ve often spoken to you about good and evil, and this has made some uncomfortable. But good and evil are present in this world, and between the two of them there can be no compromise. Murdering the innocent to advance an ideology is wrong every time, everywhere. Freeing people from oppression and despair is eternally right. This nation must continue to speak out for justice and truth. We must always be willing to act in their defense — and to advance the cause of peace.

It is beyond clear.  The man, to the last, had no interest in winning hearts and minds, but sought only to preach to the faithful — a rather lonely crowd at the moment.  Really: moral clarity, in an age of euphemisms for torture and imprisonment of the unconvicted and uncharged.  Speaking of advancing the cause of peace, while in the sixth year of an unnecessary war.

That’s enough.  The Bush Adminstration has precisely 24 hours remaining.  Let us be done with it.

Open thread, y’all.  Send him off in style.