Wow.

Just stumbled across the 6 pm EST top of the hour news break on Fox News.  Amazing.  Bizarro world stuff.

Not a single word about the Scooter Libby fingering "his superiors" [Cheney]. 

Not a single word about Brownie making clear that the White House lied their asses off. 

Not a single word about the CIA’s head Middle East guy saying Bush cherry-picked intel to start a war.

These are all top stories on any legit news site you want to look at.  Period.  Not arguable.

In other news, not a single word about Abramoff meeting Bush a dozen times, or the trade deficit hitting an all-time high, or that the world is the warmest it has been in 1200 years.

Nope.  Not one word.  Instead:

Lead story: Jill Carroll.  Message: The world is dangerous.  You are powerless and blameless.

Second lead: Bird Flu.  Message: The world is dangerous.  You are powerless and blameless.

Third story: Big car crash on Mexican border.  (Wow.  Pretty
desperate.)  Message: The world is dangerous.  And you are powerless and blameless.

And… that was it.  The biggest news on this day, according to Fox.

It’s hardly, um, news, that Fox is awful and biased and bad for your brain.  But this was amazing, even to me.

PS: Actually, there was a crawl along the bottom throughout, which included three other stories:

1) Bush job approval low, despite increased consumer confidence.  Message: Bush deserves more credit.

2) Big fires in Orange County.  Message: The world is dangerous.  You are powerless and blameless.

3) World record pumpkin pie.  Message: Mmm.  Pie.

D’oh!

What’s the biggest clue that the "new" Bin Laden tape might not be so new?
Seems to think he’s dealing with a president capable of assessing threats
979   50.5%
It’s on Betamax
641   33.1%
Background religious fanatics still doing the Macarena
259   13.4%
Refers to Halle Berry as a "serious actress"
58   3%

Now that author James Frey has been flogged in the public square for dishonesty, where will he wind up next?

New poll at left.

And yes, I realize these have been Polls Of The Month for a while.  I hope you’ll forgive me when the book comes out this fall.  It’s pretty decent.  I’m excited as heck about it, actually.

But the third draft is on deadline.  Back to the word mill…

So, Team Chimpy wants to see everything you and I have been searching for in Google?

Fine.

This is the Fourth Amendment in the Bill of Rights:

I’ve typed that into a Google search box, bookmarked the resulting URL, and made it my browser’s home page.

So now, anytime I open a new window, I leave the government a little
reminder of how someone feels about this whole new era of rigged
elections, warrantless searches, torture, detention without trial, and
smearing of critics as traitors.

All this really does right now is make me feel better.  But if millions of people decide to make this link a constant habit, we’d make our point right in the data itself.

Just a thought.

{mosimage width=400}

Not a pudu, but competitively adorable. In Port Macquarie, there’s an animal hospital that cares for koalas which have been hit by cars, attacked by dogs, caught in wildfires, or otherwise made to suffer for being a nearly-motionless puffball with questionable motor skills.
Sweet retired ladies with a lot of patience spend their days helping the little guys back to health, providing them with medications and dressings for their wounds and even feeding them by hand. I could have watched this for days.

You shouldn’t drive for a while after seeing this, because you’ll be groggy from the cuteness.

And with it being mating season and all, bringing horny little koalas down from the trees to scramble around the neighborhood looking for partners… inattentive driving would just create a vicious circle.

PS — none of the koalas I met actually hate Qantas. I asked.

From last night’s "Fox Sports World Report" (I know, it’s Fox, but it’s
also the only place a cricket fan in North America can see a minute or
two of highlights):

Picture a jocular sports anchor named Carlos sitting next to his
reporting partner Michelle, who is normally dressed in the standard boxy jackets one
expects from newsreaders, but on this occasion is wearing a slinky
black shoulder-baring outfit which is vastly sexier than anything
you’ve ever seen at a news desk.

Carlos, to his credit, manages not to say anything about Michelle’s eye-popping fashion choice.

And then Carlos tosses Michelle the intro to the India/Pakistan cricket test, giving the locale an unfortunate prominence:

Carlos: "… with the latest highlights from Lahore."

Michelle: [tiny but noticeable pause] "Thanks, Carlos…"

I’m certain Carlos never realized how he phrased it, and Michelle
managed the impending-train-wreck moment so smoothly she can plausibly deny she even
noticed.  So this is the last you’ll hear of it, I’m sure.  Didn’t
happen.  From here on, let’s assume I only imagined that two-frame look
of "well, that could have been phrased better" in her eyes.

Still, it was one of the most graceful saves of a deliciously unexpected moment I’ve ever seen.  If Michelle ever reads this, nicely done.

Incidentally, if you’ve screwed anything up today, take some comfort in what
happened in that test: the Indian openers batted for roughly six solid
hours without making a mistake, eventually nearing a 50-year old record
for runs scored to open an innings.  And then, with only one more good
whack needed to break the record… whoops.  Oh well.

Happens to all of us.