Can We Get A Bailout...

...For Peter Orszag's wig?
You've seen it, right?

It doesn't even look like a bad hairpiece.
It looks like a really good beret.

Surely, somewhere in that $700 billion stimulus package, there can be $350 bucks set aside for a new rug for the nation's new budget director.

My goodness.

Andy Warhol Called: Your Fifteen Minutes Are Up

Rarely does a political action committee's website, by its very name, unwittingly offer the central argument against its own cause.

But if you're honoring Sarah Palin, and your PAC is called, "Our Country Deserves Better..."

In time, campaign '08 will recede enough to look back nostalgically at it, and perhaps we will even miss the phenomenon that was Sarah Palin.

But you can't miss something that won't go away............

Doubling Down

In this just-begun transition period between #43 and #44, Barack Obama (soon-to-be 44), when pressed about doing this or that prior to his official innauguration, has been fond of saying that this nation "only has one president at a time."

Pity.

For while that little detail may make perfect sense and moreover be technically true, who doesn't feel a twinge of disappointment every time Obama says that?

Bush's approval ratings are trending toward the "too slight to make the needle move" range, the nation's "pessisim" index is the highest ever recorded, and not to put too fine a point on it, but if I were doing the polling, I would ask simply, "Do you feel the country is actually in the crapper, getting buried in the crapper, or is in the process of actually being flushed down the crapper?"

All of which suggests plainly and potently, that if there was ever a time this nation could use two presidents, it's now. Or maybe Bush could simply say to Obama, "Hey, look--I'm basically fried; why don't you move in early, get to work, and I'll be back for your innauguration." Nothing in the constitution prohibits that.

Besides, it's win-win: Obama gets to get started early to everyone's benefit, and Bush, in ceding his office to someone who can use it, gets the first uptick in his approval ratings in years.

Just a little thinking outside the Beltway box.

I'll Go With Leaders of Europe For 20, Please

Big Deal. So John McCain got himself all confused about who he was talking to, and who was the Spanish Prime Minister, and whether he would invite him to the White House, and the interview really was something of a mess.

At one point, the interviewer, clearly perplexed and vexed by McCain's referencing Latin America when she was talking about Spain, after all, said to him, "What about Europe?"
McCain responded, "What about me?"

What about you, indeed John McCain.
"The fundamentals of the economy are strong," he says to begin Wall Street's meltdown week. "I would fire the head of the S.E.C.," he then roars. Only the president can't actually do that.

Funny, how the 17 houses seem entirely irrelevant now.
On the other hand, he has the only running mate in modern times who knows how to field dress a moose.
Cool.
Funny how the 17 houses are the least of his problems now.

Mile-High Hypocrisy

Pity poor Michael Gerson.

As a former professional speech-writer, he felt let down by Barack Obama's nomination acceptance speech in Denver.

"In tone, Obama's big speech was small, partisan, often defensive, and occasionally snide," Gerson writes in his 8/30 Washington Post column.

But then, as a former speech writer for George W. Bush, Gerson ought to know a thing or two about smallness, nevermind a spoken message that was, from the first, rabidly partisan and more than occasionally snide.

84, ooo fervently-cheering Democrats who felt literally a mile high seemed to feel otherwise.

Gerson called the speech "orthodox."
Perhaps it was a wee bit. For a Democrat. Which, Gerson may want to double-check, Obama is.

A man who crafted speeches with George Bush's smirk in mind is let down by the strong, stirring--and yes, partisan--language of the man hellbent on replacing him in the White House and attempting to clean up the sorry mess he will leave behind.

Aw.

Funny, how many on the right, after eight years of partisanship so fierce and unrelenting that some of them talked in terms of permanently "neutering" the opposition, now feel let down that that opposition is being so...partisan.

I would ask Michael Gerson, how does it feel?
But then, that would be snide.

Slacker-in-Chief

Former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina is busy actively stumping for John McCain. At a recent press breakfast (Sponsored by the Christian Science Monitor), she touted McCain's tech credentials. This is particularly odd since McCain has admitted that he does not know how to use a computer.

Tech credentials?

Hey, you can say what you want about John McCain online.
No, really--say whatever you want. Why not? He won't be reading it.

At least Their Hats don't Say "VD"

The story of this now nearly half-over baseball season is the Tampa Bay Rays. As of this writing, they are now a full (and incredible) 2-1/2 games ahead of the defending World Champion Boston Red Sox in the American League Eastern Division.

But even casual fans might notice this season that something seems missing from the Tampa Bay name. There is. And as Dana Carvey might have said as the "Church Lady," it's "SAYT-n!"
Yup, they used to be the Tampa Bay DEVIL Rays. But this season, they lost the Lucifer handle, and swam with the straight and narrow aquatic thing.

And suddenly, having shed the devil, the Rays are in first place. Coincidence? Only to athiests.

The Rays are good; they are young, they have speed, good pitching and a skilled veteran skipper in Joe Maddon. They may challenge right to the end.

But here's my question for the Rays braintrust: why tinker to the point of dropping the "Devil" part of your name out of obvious concern for karma, but leave the same initials on your team's hat? ("TB")

No team has ever won a championship in any sport sporting the initials of a communicable disease. And as Casey himself would have said, "You can look it up."