More Odds and Ends

Here's another no-shit headline: 'Heat, humidity combine to torture East'.

And I thought Congress had banned torture.

Speaking of the weather, Rep. Blunt, the majority whip, says don't expect action on climate change if GOP retains congressional control. Another motivator to run out and vote this November.

President Bush heads to Crawford for his annual vacation, his shortest one since taking office (look, mommy, he's learning!). The shorter stay definitely decreases the chances that an American city will face destruction on his watch.

NORAD finally releases their tapes from 9/11. Conspiracy theorists to have field day.

Three and a half years after embarrassing themselves and America, the GOP Congress quietly changed 'freedom fries' and 'freedom toast' back to their original 'french' names in the congressional cafeteria. Did it really take them that long to realize what morons they were? Even one of the switch's originators, Rep. Walter Jones, long ago realized what a bad idea all of this was.

Pennsylvania GOP props up Green Party candidate for Senate in desperate effort to save Rick Santorum's reelection.

With 5 days to go, Ned Lamont leads Sen. Lieberman in the polls. Think Joe has learned his lesson? Me neither.

In celebrity/Mideast news, Bill Maher says in a blog entry that maybe there's a little Mel Gibson in all of us. While I agree with his point that more world leaders need to step up and openly condemn Hezbollah, I reject the notion that criticism of Israeli tactics constitutes anti-semitism. That's a shield that they have often used to deflect their critics. As I noted earlier this week, most of the world respected the initial reasons/goals for Israel's actions, but have grown concerned/wary about how Israel has been going about all of this. That's not denying Israel's right to defend its borders and citizens; it's questioning whether a continuing 'shock and awe' campaign with mounting civilian deaths is really the way to loosen Hezbollah's grip on the region.

In conclusion, the UN isn't anti-semitic. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, on other hand, certainly is.