A Dupont Circle policy manufacturer writes

"hey, it's blog etiquette to credit people who provide content...."

The Beagle has a strict policy of scooping up every stray idea and throwing it right in the mix without regard to authorship, so thanks to my stringer who collects news and info along the Balt-Wash corridor for "Monkeys control robots with their minds" and for "scrambled eggs and short sleeves."

Beagle leading the media coverage once again

After the Bugletown Beagle did a piece about how Americans could save a lot of time and energy by just reading the talking points and then flipping the clicker to American Gladiator rather than doing the cycle of hearing every programmed robot spew their talking points, a certain newspaper did a piece about how Scott McClellan was himself working from prepackaged talking points in promoting his book.
So, once again, folks, put down the New York Times, Washington Post, Seattle Times, Cleveland Plain Dealer, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, or New Orleans Times-Picayune-States-Item. Make The Beagle your one comprehensive source of news, information, commentary, kultral notes, and medical advice.
PS. If Scotty's sideburns are "comically long," as Dana Milbank says, what the heck do you call these?

Kultral notes

"People do connect me with Bond because I like scrambled eggs and short-sleeved shirts and some of the things Bond does," Ian Fleming said.

PC or not PC -- is that a question?

Foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, they say. And conserva-saurs are always railing against "political correctness," except when the keffiyah is on the other neck. Michelle Malkin launches into Rachael Ray and Dunkin Donuts for an ad where the rumpy redhead is wearing the headgear made famous by Yassir Arafat as an example of corporate America's unwavering commitment to the dissolution of Israel.
Her column raises some serious questions, such as will John Mac Daddy Cain stop consuming the 40 cups of Dunkin Donuts coffee he chokes down every day? Is Hollywood sending a message in opposition to Jewish settlements on the West Bank through the ubiquitious look of a four-day 5 o'clock shadow?
Malkin asks, "Would they [the anti-American PC police] say the same of fashion designers who marketed modified Klan-style hoods in Burberry plaid as the next big thing?" Hmm. Would the anti-American conserva-saur crowd get their confederate flag knickers in a twist when any one suggests it's anything other than a symbol of pride in southern heritage? What about the political statement that anything in a Burberry plaid makes -- that if it ain't in Adam Smith or Milton Friedman it's just plain communism.

Media machine cranks up

The Beagle always finds it amusing when GOSPers say with distain, "Oh they are just working from talking points."
One can save a lot of time wasted on watching CNN, MSNBC, FauxNews, etc., by just going straight to the talking points, since every defender of the Whitewashed House -- whether they get their power ties at Brooks Brothers, Nordstroms, or Hechts -- has been saying the same thing:

• Scott McClellan was just a junior officer who didn't have any access to the real, important discussions that were going on.
• Scott McClellan has no right to say anything now that he didn't say to George Weiner Butch or Ari Fleischer at the time.
• This isn't the Scott McClellan we knew.

According to a certain newspaper, some of these points were dusted off from things that Scotty said when he was at the podium, towit, "Why, all of a sudden, if he [Richard Clark] had all these grave concerns, did he not raise these sooner?" McClellan said. "He is bringing this up in the heat of a presidential campaign. He has written a book, and he certainly wants to go out there and promote that book."

The unkindest cut of all came from former pal Trent Duffy, who said, "Tomorrow maybe we're going to learn he's rooting for the Oklahoma Sooners."

Seriously, people, what kind of dog would do that?

Invasion of privacy

Google and its offshoots, including gmail and blogspot, are an insidious force, reading over all our shoulders to microtarget sales pitches for things we don't want or need. Here are some of the items that the folks at Google think the Beagle should have or want:

• Beagle Ringtones
  Send Complimentary Ringtones to your cell.
• Pocket Beagles For Sale
  Get Info On Price Of Pocket Beagle Dogs & Puppies.
• Jobs Openings at PETA
  Make a difference for animals. Come work for PETA in Norfolk, VA

The Beagle is not interested, but the Beagle is particularly uninterested in this offer, and cautions the automatic robot readers at GoogleCorp to read a little more slowly and carefully.

How the Republicabbble media operation works

Scott McClellan has caught some heat for claiming that the Butch Administration used propaganda, manipulation, exaggeration, and weapons-grade BS to get media support for the first American pre-emptive war, but CNN offers a more scientific explanation.

Free speech zones

The Beagle looks down its nose on groups like "Recreate 68" in large measure because all the Abbie Hoffmans and Jerry Rubins annoyed the Beagle back in 68 as well, but the Beagle also deplores the notion that cities can blithely designate "free speech zones" as a euphemism for tucked away where they cannot be seen or heard.

Perhaps they want to couch it as a safety measure, that all the free speech types reeking of hippie sweat and patchouli might make some weaker hearted delegates faint dead away.
Above is a realistic depiction of what folks travelling to Minneapolis can expect when the Republicabbilitionstors meet this summer to coronate Daddy Mac Cain.

Dangers of cosmetic surgery

Some of my best friends have sons named Cal, but I would not have chosen that.

From the same opinion-editerrible quoted from previous, only slightly shortened to meet Beagle standards.

"Why should voters vote Republican? They might as well vote for Democrats..." -- Cal Thomas

Ask Dr. Hin?

Q: What is the deal with the whole Bob Barr thing since he was recently nominated on the 117th ballot at the Libertarian convention in Denver?
A: He's Ross Perot without the ears. What do you want to know?
Q: Can a Libertarian candidate get Libertarian support if he's pledged to be a general in the drug war and regulate sexual practices and a whole string of other non-Libertarian tenets?
A: If the Arizona senator can be the standard barrier for the WWJD party, then sure, why not?

A Minnesota reader can't contain her excitement about the upcoming RNC convention

Why I am a democrat part 2

Franklin Delano Roosevelt said in re: the Great Depression, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself."

Butch, Chain-ey and McRaisingcane all agree this is hooey.

They contend it is your patriotic duty to mess your pants. Among the things you should be most afraid of:

• Tennis shoes
• Toothpaste
• Swarthy types
• Strangers
• Democrats and other fellow travellers such as republicabbles and independinks who are insufficiently afraid of swarthy types in pakistani caves armed with weapons of mass dentifrices or possibly oversized nikes

The path to American security they contend is to continue to borrow about 200 billion a year from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates and other middle east nations, and more gobs of cash from our valued trading partner Walmart...I mean China...for up to 100 years. Rough math -- 200 billion dollars times 100 years equals, er, 200 gazillion dollars...maybe more if we cut taxes further. This will keep us strong and free.

Another free suggestion to Republicabligiliadhlekns

Cal Thomas the great religious commentator used to be a spokesperson for the Moral Majority. He came to the attention of the Beagle in the 1980s when -- caught in a boldfaced lie -- he replied, "You have to push people's hot buttons to get them to act anymore." In those days, he explained that boosting ground troops in Europe and building a space-based missile defense system were what Jesus would do.

Now he offers the brilliant suggestion that Republifunks should get back to the principles of Roland Reagan. He quotes the morally questionable Paul McCartney "get back get back get back to where you once belonged," without explicitly acknowledging that the song promotes selling drugs, southern Arizona, and transgenderism, but one can assume in context that those are also Reagan values.

Since everyone wants to evoke the Gipper but no one wants to follow in his footsteps by pitching 20 mule borax for Death Valley Days Theatre, the Beagle offers this suggestion. Have the RNC print up hundreds of cardboard cutouts and then go to all the church bazaars and rummage sales and buy up all the copies of his speeches that are captured on 33 1/3 longplaying record albums and play them at rallies. The actual candidates can stand behind the cutouts and keep their own lack of values and principles well hidden.

What we can look forward to 100 years from now

McChaingang said in Denver, "I will never ever surrender in Iraq."

Question is, if Barr or Nader or someone else decides to do that, to whom do you surrender?

then and now...

Harry S Truman never had to stomp his foot and whine to the media, "I'm the decider...I really am." Truman never harrumphed and said, "You have to understand, I'm a war president." And a million stoopid things Truman didn't do.

He integrated the military, recognized Israel, stopped the tide of Soviet hegemony, helped rebuild Europe, and stood up to Big Business and Big Labor, while Republicans made fun of his shirts.

Geo. the Senior (another big whiner) tried to capture the Truman spirit by riding on a train, which was sad because, like buying tube socks with the red and blue stripes at Penny's up in Hagerstown, it just made him look even more out of touch.

Geo. the Senior tried convince everybody he won the Cold War. But Truman won the Cold War.

Truman recognized that the challenges of Europe (Old Europe as some would say) required economic solutions, not just a military response. With Truman's leadership (over the strenuous objections of the GOSP-controlled Congress) the U.S. invested about 20 times more in economic development than in military aid to Greece and Turkey.

Who benefited most? The U.S. because it helped create markets for American made products.

Speaking of Republican'ts beating on other Republican'ts

"Any Republican who thinks a recovery program consists of going out to J.C. Penny's and buying four pairs of socks should never use a phrase like voodoo economics." -- Pat Buchanan

Why I am a Democrat

During the 1948 election, all the gang on the Thomas Dewey train drank martinis and played bridge, while on the Truman train, the drink was bourbon and the game was poker.

A Republican reader writes...

"I'd forgotten how much hate there is in America."

Of course, the Beagle, with its readership of 12 or 13 nationwide, cannot be considered responsible for widespread political hate, so one can only assume that the shoe being on the other foot, this faithful reader has realized the impact of Limbo, Hannity, the skinny Irish guy with the chip on his shoulder and the obscene phonecalls, Ann C(a certain word)lter, SavageMichael , Dig Cheney, and others too numerous to mention.

For the record, the Beagle loves you and so does this guy...

Also, The Beagle has had its first "unscribe" in the person of a Dupont Circle policy manufacturer.

Put down the New York Times...

or Washington Post or Philadelphia Inquirer or Nashville Tennessean, Montgomery Advertiser, Daily Oklahoman, or whatever you are reading because The Beagle is about to do what excited Beagles do when they get news releases from high powered former media experts from Washington, D.C. (The Beagle cannot recommend putting down the Denver Post because its coverage is so thin.)

The Beagle, standing once again on principle, will not actually use this statement because it includes a formulation The Beagle finds absurd, to wit, "The following statement may be attributed to [high powered Washington, D.C. official who decidedly never said anything like the following...].

Out west, where Beagles are Beagles and speak their minds freely, we would prefer to have such statements couched in more realistic terms, i.e. "The following statement was written in a fury by a harried, overpaid staff person irritated because he or she was in danger of arriving late at a power lunch at which he or she hopes to be offered a better job."

Hmm, why do I think God chose me in these difficult times?

Churchillesque?

We seek confrontation on every front…We will divide Americans into red and blue, and divide nations into those who stand with us or against us. -- Dig Chain-ey

From Lincoln Chafee's "Against the Tide: How a Compliant Congress Empowered a Reckless President."

A reader writes

A reader writes that the GOSP is sclerotic, not scelortic. Another reader writes that it is more ossified than scelortic, although its arguable whether it is merely calcified, while others believe it is only winded from climbing such steep stairs.

Grand Old Scelortic Party

William F. Buckley Jr., dead, Barry Goldwater, dead, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Newt Gingrich, George W. Bush, Karl Rove, dead. John McBush, not a movement conservative by any stretch of the imagination.

George Packer mourns the loss of an energized, anti-commnist and anti-guvment cracker coalition in his recent ou se trouve les neiges d'hier piece in the Yew Norker, in which he shows "how little life is left in the movement that Goldwater began, Nixon brought into power, Ronald Reagan gave mass appeal, Newt Gingrich radicalized, Tom DeLay criminalized, and Bush allowed to break into pieces."

The New Gingrich calls for bold new policy prescriptions like cutting the budget of the Census Bureau, gas tax holiday, and replacing air traffic controllers with GPS (nothing could possibly go wrong with that...) Other conservatives recommend wandering in the desert for 40 years until enough Americans hate hippies again.

Bush supporters liked to say he was the incarnation of Ronald Reagan (and that the war in Iraq is 100 percent exactly the same as World War II), and they are correct to the extend that, according to Sean Wilentz, Reagan presided over a period of corruption and favoritism, encouraging hostility toward government agencies and "a general disregard for oversight safeguards as among the evils of 'big government.'"

Bric a brac

More of Mo and Barry
Mo: One time my Mormon grandfather was in jail for polygamy, and Goldwater's grandfather came up with the money to bail him out of jail.
Barry: My grandfather was the sheriff of Prescott, and he ran him to the border and told him to get the hell out of town.

Scottsdale is looking for a few good men and women: in the restrooms of Nationals Park.

Not even a commentary, just an observation
The Beagle does not believe Hillary meant she should stay in the race in case Obama gets shot, but the Beagle does believe that Mike Huckleberry was trying to get in solid with the boys down at the NRA.

Who is Harry Golden?
a. Mrs. Finkelstein's nephew from down Collins who moved to Staten Island.
b. The developer of Golden Valley Apples.
c. The wag wag who said, "I always knew the first Jewish President would be an Episcopalian."

Th’ Suth’un Stratiggy

Tell em the election is Wednesday.

* * * *

Are peoples gone fergit how librul John McCain is when he's standing next to Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney, and can you believe they were in the running?

Will it be all bygones gone be bygones and shall we gather at the river, Mr. secular Tool of the Devil, John McBush? Sure he’s given it up for the Navy but what’s he ever done for God?

History COrner

Other Arizona losers…

Mo Udall: I get tired of being reminded I lost to Jimmy Carter.

Barry Goldwater: How about getting beat by Lyndon Johnson?

Together we made Arizona the only state where mothers
don't tell their children they can grow up to be president.

 See more of their hilarious antics (reported by Jim
Michaels of States News Service in 1985).

Ask Dr. Hin?

Q: Dr. Hin, I work nights and I can't sleep days.

A: Get a different job.

Q: Dr Hin, which is worse, anaplastic astrocytoma or glioblastoma multiforme?

A: May a just god smite mightily Pat Robertson for praying brain cancer on Ted Kennedy.

May he be frogmarched to jail, beaten and tried, coerced, confessed and convicted, drawn, quartered and with his head on a pike for eternity like a Law and Order marathon.

Q: Amen.

Sample Republicabbilble ad

Let's show the need to be strong in
foreign and domestic policy.

More on William Borah

"The field of inquiry should remain open, and the right of debate must be regarded as a sacred right."

—1917 Sen. William Borah, R-ID

Anti-internationalists who opposed U.S. entry into World War II were mostly led by Republifinks like Charles Lindberg who didn't just want to sip tea with Hitler but lionized him as the great reformer of Germany and the rest of Old Europe. Borah was a Progressive Republican, a species that died when Lowell Weicker left the Senate. The presentday endtimes Fossilized Party doesn't need to study or understand history as long as they got the catchy analogies.

be very afraid

Geo Bush sez: I'll be long gone before some smart feller ever figgers out what happen'd in this here Oval Office. 5/12/08

Hill shines in KY moon

Hillary hooked a biggun in Kentucky and picks up 35 dele-gets with the help of her base vote, rednecks and crackers. At the beginning few predicted that Hillary’s most ardent support would come from gas guzzling, beer guzzling, Confederate flag decal voters, but all them Limbo-dittoes are lining up to put her on the ballot. Who woulda thunk it?

Perhaps it’s a reaction to how badly the Bush gang has betrayed conservative values with borrow and borrow and spend, military adventuring, trampling privacy rights in the universal name of Terror, privileges for the privileged and riches for the rich.

A place in the Sun-ate

The Clintons wanted to carry on the Kennedy tradition. Hillary can do exactly that by being the great liberal lion in the Senate who speaks for those who cannot speak for themselves. She has been that supporter, but if she were unfettered by presidential ambitions she could be the true bulwark of the Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, Carter tradition of responsible government but responsive government.

The Current Occupant and Vice Occupant have stated forcefully and repeatedly that they don’t care what the American people think. And if anyone has even more of a reputation for not listening to anyone it is John McCain.

Kultral notes

For the record, the Beagle thinks that Jeremiah Wright is an American hero, an engaging preacher, a thoughtful spokesperson, and a positive force in the community. If some Christians had read the Bible they would know that the prophet Jeremiah also made some important people decidedly uncomfortable by spreeching the truth in his time.

Ask Dr. Hin?

Q: What is that smell?

A: It is the empty cases of Old Milwaukee commingled among the pizza boxes at a campaign headquarters.

Q. It seems about twice as bad as I’m used to? What is the deal? Shouldn’t they recycle?

A. Two competing camps encourage voters to go Democratic means twice as many active Democratic volunteers, and without ideological divisions, party regulars are confident there will be twice as many Democratic volunteers with recent experience who will unite behind the nominee.

Q. I feel better.

The Beagletown Bugle

random ideas in rough order

Item: Dems and Fems wow the Springs

The biggest cheers at the Colorado democratic party convention were for unity and end the war, both of which the Beagle subscribes to, terminal prepositions notwithstanding. The Hillary people waved during the Obama speechy by AZ Gov. Janet Napolitano. The Obama people waved during the Terry McAullife* speech and Terry signed every sign and credential or loose piece of paper in the whole place.

Basic message every democrat better get off their asses and talk their neighbors and friends.

How many more years in Iraq?

How much bigger than $9 trillion do you want the debt to be?

How long do you want to have a government that invents new court proceedings that exclude rights for anyone labeled terrorist? (They didn’t say that; I threw that in.)

Meanwhile, our guys are for:

Health care

Education

Renewable Energy

Sensible economic policy, balanced budgets, and fair tax structures

The Bush gang thinks they bought everybody in the 2004 election with the little $600 bushbonusbucks, while the real elite had to buy new wheelbarrows get all of their money out of the Treasury.

This year I got three letters telling me it was coming and still no check. If that isn’t graft then I don’t know what tax dollars promoting political causes is.

* Another American hero is Christa Mcauliffe who is an inspiration to teachers who have to work with shit that blows up.

Kultral Notes

Despite what the boosters say, I didn’t see any culture in the Springs, and I didn’t see any gods in the garden, but I did see the government sign signaling the Focus on the Family international headquarters. (That’s as close as I’ve gotten so far.)

Ask Dr. Hin

Q: Dr. Hin, why is your column such a popular feature of the Beagletown Bugle, and have you lost weight? You look fabulous.

A: People have interest in health techniques better like regular and altered medications and exercise.

Q: Which detergent washes out the stench of Republican disgrace best?

A: The market offers numerous and particular varieties.

Editorial

We don’t believe an Australian media mogul should be dictating terms to the American people on the war, irresponsible tax schemes, civil rights and procedures, and morality. We don’t consider The Washington Times, owned by a self-proclaimed divine avoiding tax evasion prosecution, is “America’s Newspaper.” The rest of the media is not much better, barking up any number of wrong trees, and the liberal mainstream media is a pure hoax.

It used to be okay to criticize policies of the government and not be considered un-American (or arrested as was done by Bush’s henchmen in Denver). The Beagle firmly agrees with this tenet of democracy.