Mikey's Keeping Busy!

The LLama Butchers have the dish on Michael Moore's next film project - Fahrenheit 12/7. And while you're there, check out the Fahrenheit cast party! Who knew that Nancy Pelosi would paint up so nice?

Ruh Oh!

What's the old line about a "woman scorned"? Well Monica is cranky and she has tapes:

"That's not how it was," she said. "This was a mutual relationship, mutual on all levels, right from the way it started and all the way through."

What's more, she claims she can prove it with tapes of messages Clinton left on her telephone answering machine and gifts he gave her, all of which she kept.

"If I was just something he used 'because he could,' why call me?" she said. "Why fake all the emotions and the looks and the tenderness?"

Monica still doesn't get it, but she should definitely release the tapes - we all want to hear the Sinkmeister's smooth technique.

One place where you won't hear the tapes is Bubba's new and improved presidential library web site, although they have everything but the Oval Office sink:

Bill Clinton's presidential center unveiled its new and improved Web site Friday, offering visitors a chance to browse White House archives, look at videos and revisit speeches.
...
The Web site includes 20,000 publicly released documents, with more than 400 categories and 125,000 entries organized by subject, category and key word.

It also houses an extensive collection of audio and video clips, as well as hundreds of photographs from Clinton's eight years in the White House.

Be still, my heart!

"I look forward to devoting a substantial amount of time and energy in building and interacting with this online community as one way to create shared goals, values and responsibilities," Clinton said.

Maybe they have chat rooms?

The site also promised "real time connections" with Clinton through instant messaging, virtual town hall meetings and Q&A sessions.

Woohoo! Careful there, Bubba. "SweetTeen16" may turn out to be a cop in Buffalo, NY and Hillary will be really surly!

And speaking of people who shouldn't be let out without a caretaker

Streisand's Election Version of 'People':

Barbra Streisand sang a special 2004 election version of her hit "People" at a Thursday night fund-raising concert for Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry.

Here are the lyrics:

I'll spare you from the full horror, but here's a sample:

Bush sees a

Lotta Condoleeza

They're dividing the planet's oil

According to Richard "Poil"

Yikes, that needs a lot of help. How about:

There's still nothing new

From the big-nosed shrew

Kiss, kiss, Babs!

"Just like old times with Bill and Al"

Wesley Pruden has some fun with our national reprobates:

Bill Clinton and Al ("I am Gorrrrrrre, hear me rooooaaaarrr") Gore are back, and it's just like old times.

Bill is wistful and a little forgetful, waving an ominous cigar and reminiscing about his women, at least the ones he recalls. Al is just a guy in from the street and off his meds.

Damn! I hate reruns!

I did like one of Big Weird Al's lines though:

Gore also accused the Bush administration of working closely "with a network of 'rapid response' digital Brown Shirts" who try to pressure reporters and editors who criticize the administration, intimidating them with accusations that they are "undermining support for our troops."

Hmm, I wonder if I qualify? My shirt is plaid and I'm slowing up a bit, but cynically undermining our troops in the war with terrorists for petty political gain seems like a pretty bad thing to me, so I'll continue to call 'em like I see 'em. Pop over to Power Line for a trip down memory lane to when Big Weird Al wasn't so pally with Saddam and the terrorists. Why the big change, Al?

Here's a laugh

BBC to challenge Al Jazeera:

The British Broadcasting Corp. (BBC) wants to start a 24-hour BBC Arabic television service that would rival Arabic channel Al Jazeera.

The media outlet is developing a proposal after a request from the British Foreign Commonwealth Office (FCO).

"The FCO asked the BBC World Service to develop a proposition for a BBC Arabic television service of news, information, discussion programs and documentaries," the BBC said in a statement released Thursday.

The new BBC Arabic channel would compete directly with Al Jazeera, the Arabic channel known for playing tapes from terrorist Osama bin Laden.

Must. Control. Gales. Of. Laughter. On the other hand, maybe it's a sneaky Foreign Office plot to undermine Islamofascist propaganda with something even more risible.

Al Jazeera is not worried that the BBC will steal viewers.

"They might be a competition, but I think that Al Jazeera is strong enough to solidify its position. We are very popular in the Arab world — our audience trusts us," said Hussein, a journalist for Al Jazeera who declined to give his full name.

Think again Monkey Boy. Who can do anti-Western, pro-wingnut propaganda better than the BBC? Hey, they taught Al-Jiz the trade:

BBC World Services has attempted an Arabic channel in the past. Funded by Orbit Communications, which was controlled by the Saudi royal family, BBC Arabic Television lasted two years. It was forced to shut down in April 1996 when Orbit backed out over editorial disagreements.

Many of its staff members joined the upstart Al Jazeera station, which began broadcasting in November 1996.

In a rational world there would be missiles homing in on Al-Jiz facilities as I type. Or they would already be craters.

Do Over Alert!

NYT RUSHES OUT REVIEW REDO:

The New York Times, which last Sunday published a scathing front-page review of Bill Clinton's "My Life," has alerted subscribers that another, much kinder and gentler review is coming July 4 in The New York Times Book Review.

Entitled "Confessions of a Policy Wonk" and written by the novelist Larry McMurtry, the prominently placed review calls the book "the richest American presidential autobiography," and says that the former president is a better writer than Reagan, Ford, Nixon or Lyndon Johnson.

Ole Larry didn't mean writer, he meant novelist.

Unlike Michiko Kakutani, the author of the June 20 review, who called Clinton's book "eye-crossingly dull," McMurtry evokes authors from Dreiser to Fitzgerald to Balzac — if not in comparison to Clinton, at least in reference to him.

Baudelaire, Larry Flynt, and Baron Munchausen would be good too.

It is not unusual for the Times to publish two reviews of the same book, or for one review to be positive and the other negative.

What is unusual, however, is for the paper to make a critique available 10 days before it will appear in the paper.

Wouldn't want to rain on Bubba's parade, would they?

Kool-Aid Overdose Alert!

Jeff Jarvis goes to the movies:

Take this scene: Moore shows dead American soldiers in Iraq, many of them, the more blood the better. Then he says we need to replace them and he asks where they'll come from. He takes us to his favorite man-of-the-people populist playground, Flint, MI, and says that we'll find soldiers "in the places that had been destroyed by the economy." He focuses on poor black men as Bush's next victims -- not even acknowledging that virtually every soldier he has just shown -- and ridiculed -- in the film is white. It's all so convenient: anti-war-pro-poor-multi-culti-heartland. The rhetoric is as obvious as the gut on the guy.

But as I leave, I hear an older woman behind me, with a voice as loud at New York traffic, saying to someone who's passing her on the escalator, obviously a stranger: "Don't you sign up, now! Don't you join!" I turn around. She's saying this to a black man, just because he's black: After all, Michael Moore said those people are all conservative cannon fodder, didn't he? The man and the woman with him are polite enough to wait until they're out the door before they laugh and then sadly shake their heads.

Hoo boy.

Indeed.

Who knew?

Tim Graham - Oprah, better than Rather:

I don't think anyone could argue that Oprah Winfrey was tough on Bill Clinton yesterday, but she was tougher than Dan Rather. Or to be more precise, she was more curious than Dan Rather. She asked him about the whole "sleeping on the couch" thing, and he suggested the Lincoln Bedroom and the Queen's Bedroom in the White House were "too formal" for him to enjoy. (?)

As I recall, the Lincoln bedroom was where his Hollywood pals liked to jump up and down on the bed. Yup, too formal, fer sure.

She also pushed for more detail on Clinton's story of day-long counseling sessions after the Monica story broke, which he then claimed weren't really day-long for him, but for three to five hours. When she asked where they were held, he wouldn't say, claiming the counselor wouldn't want to be "outed." That would suggest the sessions were outside the White House, eh? These aren't political questions, and the answers seemed to demand more questions, but Oprah is advancing the personal story of Clinton better than Rather did.

Maybe ole Dan's nose was buried too deeply in Bubba's posterior for him to challenge even the more obvious bloviations.

George Soros has a shortage of Kool-Aid drinkers

But not to worry - he has another source of troops - Felons Paid in Voter Registration Drive:

A Democratic group crucial to John Kerry's presidential campaign has paid felons - some convicted of sex offenses, assault and burglary - to conduct door-to-door voter registration drives in at least three election swing states.

America Coming Together, contending that convicted criminals deserve a second chance in society, employs felons as voter canvassers in major metropolitan areas in Missouri, Florida, Ohio and perhaps in other states among the 17 it is targeting in its drive. Some lived in halfway houses, and at least four returned to prison.

ACT canvassers ask residents which issues are important to them and, if they are not registered, sign them up as voters. They gather telephone numbers and other personal information, such as driver's license numbers or partial Social Security numbers, depending on what a state requires for voter registration.
...
A review of federal campaign finance and state criminal records by The Associated Press revealed that the names and hometowns of dozens of ACT employees in Missouri, Florida and Ohio matched those of people convicted of crimes such as burglary, forgery, drug dealing, assault and sex offenses.

"Hi kids! Is your Mommy home?"

Although it works against the re-election of President Bush, ACT is an independent group not affiliated with Kerry's campaign - federal law forbids such coordination. Yet ACT is stocked with veteran Democratic political operatives, many with past ties to Kerry and his advisers.

Allison Dobson, a spokeswoman with the Kerry campaign, said there is no coordination with ACT, and of the policy: "We're unaware of it and have nothing to do with it."

We believe ya, Allison! And Bluto will be dropping by your house tonight. He just wants to know if you are registered to vote.

Chilling effect alert!

Democrats Try to Destroy Nader:

Anti-choice Democrats don't want the people to have the option of voting for Ralph Nader. So they're trying to toss him from the ballot.

Jano Cabrera, a spokesman for the national party, said Democrats would start in Arizona with a challenge to the validity of thousands of signatures that landed Nader on the ballot.
...
Stu Rothenberg, editor of Rothenberg Political Report, told the Christian Science Monitor: "I think Nader is scaring the bejeebies out of the Democrats. They have nightmares of 2000 all over again."

Nader noted that the attacks against him had "a lot of mischief potential" because "there are very partisan Democrats" in the Arizona secretary of state's office.

"If this becomes a pattern of harassment in other states, we will ask John Kerry to disown and disapprove of these anti-democratic tactics," said Nader, who still hasn't learned that "democratic" is all too often an antonym for "Democratic."

But wait there's more!

Meanwhile, black Democrats in Congress had a nasty row Tuesday with Nader when he rejected their demands that he quit the race.

"Shouts could be heard from inside the meeting in the basement of the U.S. Capitol with more than a dozen Congressional Black Caucus members, including Nader's voice, in what proved to be a rancorous session. One female shouted, 'You can't win,' to which Nader shot back an inaudible response," AP reported today.
...
The hapless Nader, who has colluded with Kerry and boasted that he will help defeat President Bush, shrugged off the shouting match as an "exciting exchange" between two anti-Bush forces.
...
Nader's running mate, Green Party activist Peter Camejo, had condescending words for the black Democrats. He said he was "surprised by their lack of understanding of the growing trend towards independent action. It's a new phenomenon they're confronting."

I should have titled this 'When Wingnuts Fall Out".