Whiskey Bar on Clarke.

“We cannot find evidence that this conversation between Mr. Clarke and the president ever occurred.”

I know from my dental hygienist (long story) that there are many powerful Republicans who are not happy with Bush, and I have long been wondering whether they would crawl out of the woodwork before the election. Some are, apparently. While Clarke does not sound like a guy I would like to hang out with, he sounds credible on this issue, and the White House denials don’t.

And, since I was talking about it earlier, here’s Orcinus on the Madrid bombings, making more sense than I did.

[both links via peggy]

Last night I asked someone in the United States whether Bush was electable, as having failed on every issue he is now depending on the pseudo-issue of being tough on terrorism. On the one hand, he is in a nice position on it – if there are terrorist attacks in the United States, everyone rallies behind their President in times of trouble. And if there are no attacks, Look! No attacks! Success! On the other hand, though, he must prove sell the impression that he will be more successful in that fight than another candidate.

This morning, I voiced the hope to someone else that if that issue ever fails him, his candidacy will crumble collapse like a house of cards. (It was very early in the morning, and a better metaphor did not occur to me.)

And also this morning, a man named Dick Clarke who has been around forever (but has more realistic hair than the other Dick Clark that came to mind) was all over the news. All over Blogdex, anyway. And the Republican/Bushite attacks on him are all about character, not content, and spurious. And Rumsfeld is, as of this moment, top story on CNN doing his “twin cobra hands of death” thing and saying, even if they had caught Bin Laden before 9/11, it wouldn’t have changed anything, which is first of all backpedaling and second of all has little to do with anything.

So, will this change anything? Or are voters really, really fucking stupid?

Also, about the terrorist attack in Spain allegedly affecting the outcome of the elections there, has it been reported in the American media that support for Spain’s involvement in the Iraq “war” hovered around 10% the whole time, and that the conservative government lied about the Madrid attacks, blaming it on the Basques when they knew otherwise because they feared it would get them voted out of office if it came out, and when it finally did come out prior to the election, the fact that they had lied got them voted out? Because people were already mad at them for lying about a tanker catastrophe earlier? Or was it totally spun as giving in to the terrorists? Who were not Iraqis?

Where’d RileyDog go?

Writing down a date just now, today’s, I look at my watch and notice it’s three days slow.

And when I come to the year, I’m thinking, “1989? No, later than that… 1994? Something with a 4…”.

For obvious reasons, I would never ever p*st anything ab*ut w*rk here, because it w*uld require the use of t** many 4st3r15k5.

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