Hammer Mill Days

Got your bearings straight? Well, then, where the hell are we? What's that? The Bering Strait ? How the hell did we... oh, right. You're just repeating the last two words of every sentence that comes out of my mouth. How helpful. Stop it! Yes, friends... that's right. We still haven't found our way back to the Cheney Hammer Mill, which we now presume is no longer under the control of the dreaded space alien Gizmandiar since his ignominious defeat at the pseudo-pods of the equally dreaded (though beloved by us) space alien sFshzenKlyrn . (Long story, actually. If you've missed the last few installments, click that Usual Rubbish link and scroll down a bit.) Anyway, we spent several salty days at sea following our splashdown in the Atlantic (or was it the Pacific... because the Atlantic isn't so terrific, though the Pacific, I hear, is not all it's cracked up to be...) before Marvin (my personal robot assistant) caught sight of land. It was the first we'd...

A mighty tree has fallen in the Republican foreign policy establishment, senatorial division. Indiana Senator Richard Lugar has publicly broken with Bush's Iraq policy, signaling what may be the leading edge of a much broader exodus amongst rank-and-file G.O.P. lawmakers. Many of these senators and congresspeople are watching the polls and worrying about their prospects for fending off anti-war challengers if this Iraq business doesn't roll to a stop before fall of 2008. Others are probably just sick of hearing about dead and grievously wounded constituents. Dubya, for his part, obviously couldn't care less. In some ways, he's strikingly similar to his predecessor in the White House, at least with respect to his disregard for the health of his party. Oh sure, Bush, Rove, and Tom Delay tried to rig Washington into a G.O.P.-only club, but look where they have brought the party after six years. Pretty much the only thing they have a firm grip on now is the Supreme Court, w...