Most of the actual jokes are pretty dumb and have been done a million times (Bush = Dumb! Kerry = "Did I mention the Purple Hearts?") but they're light, bipartisan, work for everyone because the humor is not mean spirited, and let's face it - things are funnier if they're sung in a funny voice to a catchy tune.

5.8mb Video Here (http://www.jibjab.com/lowband/default.htm).

:m: Peace.

From the Seattle Post-Intelligencer:

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/dayart/20050120/Cartoon20050120.gif (http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/horsey/viewbydate.asp?id=1145)
And what an American century it's turning out to be! We all know what he meant.
(David Horsey, SeattlePI.com, January 20, 2005)

• • •

As my clock radio clicked on one recent morning, an affected voice from Washington, D.C., was running through benefits, baubles and ball tickets included in a ritzy $150,000 Bush inaugural package offered by the Ritz-Carlton Hotel.

The hotel official carefully justified what seemed like outrageous rental prices charged for fur coats. Fuzzy animal skins lose their cachet at just a single human wearing, and become "used" merchandise.

It was an unintentional, devastating hit on the consumption habits and taste, or lack of same, of America's rich.

Curiously, the radio program that carried it was "Morning Edition" on National Public Radio, endlessly pounded by conservative talk radio for allegedly being "elitist."

SeattlePI.com (http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/connelly/208417_joel19.html)

With that lighthearted observation, columnist Joel Connelly considers the right wing. It's an interesting glimpse into the next four years. For meanwhile, on right-wing radio, the familiar chorus against our local election still dominated the airwaves.

No inauguration discussion. No Iraq discussion. Nothing.

"The anti-tax, anti-government movement should be called for what it is: a scam perpetrated against the middle class, the working class and the poor in the interests of maximum profits for multinational corporations and the very rich," Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Tony Kushner exclaimed a few years back.

Hyperbole knows no ideological boundaries. But the selection and slant these days on America's conservative media make me wonder whether Kushner has it right.

SeattlePI.com (http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/connelly/208417_joel19.html)

Connelly recalls the storm of right-wing conservative when former Democratic politicians took jobs as lobbyists, and wonders about the silence regarding former Rep. Bill Tauzin (R-LA), who as chairmen of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, contributed to a prescription drug bill that "bestowed billions of dollars in benefits on the pharmaceutical industry", and who now begins his job as head of the nation's largest pharmaceutical-industry lobbying group.

"Have you heard this discussed by KVI?" asks Connelly of a local talk-radio station. "Or by Rush Limbaugh?" (I'm curious if Connelly listens to Rush every day to keep up.)

And if not silence, the "knockdown"--discrediting, criticism of the complaint: the argument against Seymour Hersh; the argument against Spc. Thomas Wilson, who embarrassed Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld with a straightforward question; it's the standard routine.

Conservative New York Times columnist William Safire is soon to retire. He's been a devastating revealer/analyst of Democratic misdeeds, but also a stellar defender of individual liberties against assaults from John Ashcroft and the right.

We need more like him. But the voices we increasingly hear are shills in demagogues' clothing.

SeattlePI.com (http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/connelly/208417_joel19.html)

Have the right-wing politicians followed right-wing radio? Is Atwater school of politics, which predates the anti-Clintonian proliferation of scornful conservative airwaves immune from the hellfire-and-damnation radio that has fed much of "middle America" in decades past?

If the politicians continue with the appearance of falling in line with the "public outrage" vented on right-wing radio, we can presume that the next four years will bring more of what we've already seen: incompetence, dishonesty, and belligerence.

On the one hand, I heard some pundit last night make reference to the ninety-seven "exclusive" interviews. (To give credit, the pundit did not make the hand gesture for quote-unquote, but rather vocalized the demarcation appropriately.) To the other, I heard some other pundit remind that second terms of late have been disastrous: Johnson, Nixon, Reagan, Clinton. (This one I can actually provide a reference for: Michael Duffy discussed the issue with Keith on Countdown (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6848741/) last night. So e-mail Duffy if you care to argue any of those.)

What a long, strange trip it ... well, might be.

We are the United States of America. We shall endure.

• • •

I am annoyed about the number 89.

I shall avenge myself by writing nothing in this chapter.

That, too, is wise; for since I am annoyed, I could not write even a reasonably decent lie.

Perdurabo (http://www.drizzle.com/~slmndr/uncle_al/lies/92.html)
____________________

Notes:

Horsey, David. "Man of the People". Seattle Post-Intelligencer, January 20, 2005. See http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/horsey/viewbydate.asp?id=1145

Connelly, Joel. "Voices of the right: Silence or the knockdown". Seattle Post-Intelligencer, January 19, 2005. See http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/connelly/208417_joel19.html

Perdurabo, Fr. "Unprofessional Conduct". The Book of Lies. London: (???), 1913 See http://www.drizzle.com/~slmndr/uncle_al/lies/92.html

See Also -

MSNBC.com. "Countdown with Keith Olbermann". January 19, 2005. See http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6848741/

BTW, anybody bother to talley up how much Klinton's inaugurals cost? Mmmmmmmmm. So what's the big deal?

Get over it. Everybody loses sooner or later, even liberals.

Every bot of the $40 million or so is being donated by Bush's corporate sponsors, which, if you missed it, is kind of the point of that second cartoon.

Clinton's Inaguration Ball was about $33 million, by the way.
The reason most people are upset isn't so much that he is spending that kind of money -most presidents do- they are upset that it seems callous to announce spending that kind of money on a silly frivilous party the same week as pledging less than half of that amount to aid the Tsunami victims.
They would have preferred that he atctually act like the "Good Caring Christian" he claims to be and ask those donators to give half of that money, in private donations, to Tsunami aid work, and scale the party down.
Or, he could have charged the $1,300 per ticket and scaled the party down himself while donating half the money himself.
Even though it might have been called an empty gesture by some, at least it would have been a gesture.

OH!! hell have another beer! get over it!;

http://cagle.slate.msn.com/working/050120/lester.gif

G.