First of all, I don't know if you all have heard about Barack Obama and the mark he's going to leave on the political scene. He's running for the open Illinois Senate seat against Jack Ryan, a rich asshole that was once married to that Ryan actress from the terrible show 'Boston Public', and he has recently had a guy following Barack 24/7 videotaping his every word very aggressively. I've seen a lot of national pieces (The New Yorker, the cover of a magazine I saw in the airport but now forget) on Obama, and this guy is going to hit the national stage at some point soon. I swear, he gets supporters into a complete lather, because he's smart, charismatic and politically adept. I really really like this guy.

I thought this was funny, the bit about what exactly caused Chalabis' fall from grace: the fact that he told Iran that the U.S. had broken their codes and were intercepting their transmissions. Thanks, Ahmad! This guy has been a useless tool since day one, but the neocons all loved him. Thanks for the faulty intelligence, we all hope you've enjoyed the $340,000 a month we've been giving you, to the tune of about $33 million. Ah yes, my tax dollars hard at work. I know it's a calculated campaign to discredit this guy and get rid of him, but hell, I'll take it. But I was saying, my favorite part about the story is this:

"According to US officials, it was six weeks ago when Chalabi told the Baghdad station chief of Iran's Ministry of Intelligence and Security that Washington was reading the Iranian intellgence service' communications traffic."

The U.S. intercepted a cable saying that "Chalabi...told him a drunk American had told him the US had broken the Iranian code. "

Awesome! Thanks, Drunky Crow! Nice work, jerkstore. Then again, bourbon can be enticing.

Last but not least, the Dems won the race for the open South Dakota Senate seat, after Bill Janklow sped through a stop sign and killed a guy, was convicted of manslaughter, and resigned. The fucked up part is that the tally was basically 132,000 for the Dem candidate, 129,000 for the GOP candidate. That's a differnce of 3,000 in state with a population of 765,000. Hopefully there's a awful lot of people in South Dakota under the voting age, because that's pretty depressing voter participation.

I've had two people I know say that they're not sure about Kerry. Then they admit that they aren't really sure what the hell is going on and that opinion is just based on general news. What the fuck people, are you twelve? Read a fucking paper once in a while. Pay attention.

Diatribe officially over.

I end with one of my favorite sections from a great book H gave me. It's basically little sections complied together into a great minimalist work. I read this one on the train yesterday:

********* 360 **********

"There's a trick to this part of the vacuuming" I tell Hollis.

"Which is?" he asks, sighing and seeming low on patience.

"O.K., you don't ever go back there behind the couch. The cat has stuff stored back there."

He's looking at me.

I say "It's her house, too".

"You could train her. You could teach her to pick up her goddamn toys and put them where they belong."

"But I have," I say. "She did. They are. That is."

*****************

Love the italics....

Also, Curb Yr Enthusiasm saved this guy from jail time. Hilarious