There is a growing realization among some legislators that the Bush Administration, in recent years, has conflated what is an intelligence operation and what is a military one in order to avoid fully informing Congress about what it is doing.
  —Seymour Hersh in the New Yorker

• Santa Claus doesn’t exist.
• The refrigerator light goes out when you shut the door.
• Use of a brand-name hygiene product does not turn the women around you into ravenous beasts.
• Mystical creatures are not involved in the production of factory cookies.
• Four out of five dentists are paid to agree, while the fifth is holding out for more money.
• Your favorite plush characters all have hands up their asses.
• Dancing with earbuds makes you look like a dork to those surrounding you.
• Saying somebody’s name three times in front of a mirror does not initiate a supernatural event.
• Attacking a country without provocation tends to rally the populace around their criminal leadership, allowing it to aggrandize power, silence dissent, spy on its citizenry, and engage in rogue military adventures.
• This will, in fact, hurt a bit.

Preparing the Battlefield [New Yorker]

Bobby Jindal seems to be taking the week off, sparing us the trouble of multiple hyperlinked adjectives. We now understand the wisdom of choosing something simple like “short-fingered vulgarian” and sticking with it.

Meet the Press: Screw politics, enjoy some smokin’ hot tennis players instead.

Face the Nation: So, how’s that thing with Katie Couric working out? Oh.

This Week: Joe Lieberman (I-Droopy) takes his La Bomba Tour to George’s place.

Late Edition: The Inside CNN Tour includes a special stop at the Turner Store, where DVDs of Barbarella are likely not available.

Fox News Sunday: The winner of this week’s All-Star Douchebag edition will be decided by who leaves the most cum stains after the Jesse Helms tribute.

Guests and topics subject to change. Who wants to work a holiday weekend, anyway?

MTP, FTN, This Week, Late Edition, Jesse’s Ghoul

Hunter S. Thompson may have got there first, but Meredith Smith went out in style last night: Kissing the sky as his ashes were launched in a fireworks shell.

Smith, who died in February, ran his Indiana community’s fireworks show for forty years, sometimes funding it out of his own pocket. His widow fired the final shell, which exploded in a white burst after the regular spectacular finale.

Commemorative tees called the blast “The Last Shot”.

Of course, this being America, the half-teaspoon of cremains had to be cleared with the local health authorities:

“There doesn’t appear to be anything in our codes that relates to this issue, and in talking to our water-quality people, if this is something a family wishes to do, we don’t see how it would create a public health issue,” said John Althardt of the Health and Hospital Corp. of Marion County.

That settled, we look forward to a new wave of creative commemoration. For starters, we would be honored to sprinkle a half-teaspoon of Jesse Helms’ ashes in our cat’s litterbox.

Pyrotechnician’s ashes to be launched in a fireworks shell [IndyStar]

June 25, 1745

My dear Friend,

I know of no Medicine fit to diminish the violent natural Inclinations you mention; and if I did, I think I should not communicate it to you. Marriage is the proper Remedy. It is the most natural State of Man, and therefore the State in which you are most likely to find solid Happiness. Your Reasons against entering into it at present, appear to me not well-founded. The circumstantial Advantages you have in View by postponing it, are not only uncertain, but they are small in comparison with that of the Thing itself, the being married and settled. It is the Man and Woman united that make the compleat human Being. Separate, she wants his Force of Body and Strength of Reason; he, her Softness, Sensibility and acute Discernment. Together they are more likely to succeed in the World. A single Man has not nearly the Value he would have in that State of Union. He is an incomplete Animal. He resembles the odd Half of a Pair of Scissars. If you get a prudent healthy Wife, your Industry in your Profession, with her good Economy, will be a Fortune sufficient.

But if you will not take this Counsel, and persist in thinking a Commerce with the Sex inevitable, then I repeat my former Advice, that in all your Amours you should prefer old Women to young ones. You call this a Paradox, and demand my Reasons. They are these:

1. Because as they have more Knowledge of the World and their Minds are better stor’d with Observations, their Conversation is more improving and more lastingly agreable.

2. Because when Women cease to be handsome, they study to be good. To maintain their Influence over Men, they supply the Diminution of Beauty by an Augmentation of Utility. They learn to do a 1000 Services small and great, and are the most tender and useful of all Friends when you are sick. Thus they continue amiable. And hence there is hardly such a thing to be found as an old Woman who is not a good Woman.

3. Because there is no hazard of Children, which irregularly produc’d may be attended with much Inconvenience.

4. Because thro’ more Experience, they are more prudent and discreet in conducting an Intrigue to prevent Suspicion. The Commerce with them is therefore safer with regard to your Reputation. And with regard to theirs, if the Affair should happen to be known, considerate People might be rather inclin’d to excuse an old Woman who would kindly take care of a young Man, form his Manners by her good Counsels, and prevent his ruining his Health and Fortune among mercenary Prostitutes.

5. Because in every Animal that walks upright, the Deficiency of the Fluids that fill the Muscles appears first in the highest Part: The Face first grows lank and wrinkled; then the Neck; then the Breast and Arms; the lower Parts continuing to the last as plump as ever: So that covering all above with a Basket, and regarding only what is below the Girdle, it is impossible of two Women to know an old from a young one. And as in the dark all Cats are grey, the Pleasure of corporal Enjoyment with an old Woman is at least equal, and frequently superior, every Knack being by Practice capable of Improvement.

6. Because the Sin is less. The debauching a Virgin may be her Ruin, and make her for Life unhappy.

7. Because the Compunction is less. The having made a young Girl miserable may give you frequent bitter Reflections; none of which can attend the making an old Woman happy.

8thly and Lastly. They are so grateful!!

Thus much for my Paradox. But still I advise you to marry directly; being sincerely Your affectionate Friend.

Advice to a Young Man on the Choice of a Mistress [1745]

One was celebrated by generations of Americans. The other was a clown.

Former Republican N.C. Sen. Jesse Helms dies at 86 [AP]

Larry Harmon, 83; Actor Made Bozo the Clown a Household Name [WaPo]

John Adams on Thomas Jefferson:
“[He has] a mind, soured, yet seeking for popularity, and eaten to a honeycomb with ambition, yet weak, confused, uninformed, and ignorant.”

Thomas Jefferson on John Adams:
“[He is] distrustful, obstinate, excessively vain, and takes no counsel from anyone.”

Alexander Hamilton on Thomas Jefferson:
“A man of profound ambition and violent passions… the intriguing incendiary, the aspiring turbulent competitor… prone to projects which are incompatible with the principles of stable and systematic government.”

John Adams on Alexander Hamilton:
“[Consider] the profligacy of his life; his fornications, adulteries and his incests.”

Alexander Hamilton on John Adams:
“disgusting egotism… distempered jealousy… ungovernable indiscretion… vanity without bounds.”

Thomas Jefferson on Alexander Hamilton:
“I will not suffer my retirement to be clouded by the slanders of a man whose history, from the moment at which history can stoop to notice him, is a tissue of machinations against the liberty of the country which not only has received and given him bread, but heaped its honors on his head.”

John Adams on Benjamin Franklin:
“His whole life has been one continued insult to good manners and to decency… From five complete years of experience of Dr. Franklin… I can have no dependence on his word… I wish with all my soul he was out of public service.”

Benjamin Franklin on bloggers:
“I think all the heretics I have known have been virtuous men.”

Brotherly Love among the Founding Fathers [American Heritage]

Blah blah blah Geezer chooses new campaign chief blah blah blah — what’s this?

[Steve] Schmidt is a veteran of President Bush’s 2004 re-election campaign and he worked closely with Karl Rove…

Mr. Schmidt’s elevation is the latest sign of increasing influence of veterans of Mr. Rove’s campaign efforts in the McCain operation… Greg Jenkins, another veteran of Mr. Rove’s operation, has joined the McCain communications operation. Mr. Jenkins is a former Fox News producer…

Normally we ignore inside baseball as even more boring than real baseball, but what with the recent talk of sellouts, we thought it instructive to show how real men cash in. These are the folks who perfected push-polling against McCain, who ran the black-baby line against him, who insinuated he was a mentally unstable Manchurian Candidate after his POW years. And now they’re running his show.

We can’t deny the smears: McCain is indeed suffering from Stockholm Syndrome. But his captors aren’t the Viet Cong.

McCain Orders Shake-Up of His Campaign [NYT]

John McCain 2000: The Swiftboaters’ First Mission [HuffPo, 2006]