World o' Crap

Sorry, but this pretty much summarizes the news today, with Scotty McClellan (WH press officer) calling anyone who dares question Mr. Bush as engaging in "gutter" politics - and, btw, courtesy of Atrios (I believe, but I can't get back there right now to verify that), an article in the Dallas Morning News, once a huge Bush backer - which quotes a Lt. Colonel as saying he saw Bush's folks destroy via wastebasket Mr. Bush's unflattering service records.

Note:

Retired National Guard Lt. Col. Bill Burkett said Tuesday that in 1997, then-Gov. Bush's chief of staff, Joe Allbaugh, told the National Guard chief to get the Bush file and make certain "there's not anything there that will embarrass the governor."

Col. Burkett said that a few days later at Camp Mabry in Austin, he saw Mr. Bush's file and documents from it discarded in a trash can. He said he recognized the documents as retirement point summaries and pay forms.

From a Yahoo news article:

But attendance records of the 187th Tactical Reconnaissance Squadron in Alabama do not show that Bush ever was there. "I never saw the man, I never met the man," Kenneth Lott, the squadron's personnel officer at the time, told Newsweek.

There's also news that basically, we're not going to let the 9/11 investigatory panel do their job. Thank you, Mr. President. It's nice to see that you use 9/11 as an excuse for everything but refuse any accountability or proper investigation into how it happened on your watch.

Mr. Bush is also busy trying to make sure not even civil unions are recognized for gays. At this point, however, I'm not sure how many homosexuals - save perhaps for Andrew Sullivan - would like to acknowledge Mr. Bush either. But as Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo points out, how nice of Mr. Bush to interject this controversy flat out now when it can distract from his deep do-do over his military service.

And Kentucky Baptist ministers are having a pentecostal cow because a high school is no longer allowing them free access to students during lunch periods. Why the hell did they have access to the students during lunch in the first place? I'm sure these kids could find the ministers after school hours if they wanted to see them. Can't we even keep up the pretense anymore that school is for education and not for religious and corporate indoctrination? I suppose not.

We're also supposed to be excited that we have Osama's chaffeur at Guantanamo. What are we supposed to learn from him? That Osama liked to be a backseat driver or that Osama got motion sickness on long drives across the desert? Or hey, maybe we'll learn that Osama got big munchie cravings at 3 AM and had to be driven into Kabul for a meal of fried goat testicles.