AddieStan

Zoom, Zoom! "He's gonna be at Daytona ," said my car-crazy dad with a smirk, speaking of the president of the United States. "Wonder if he's gonna show up in a crash helmet and a jumpsuit with, you know, all those things--" "Logos?" "Yeah--stuck all over it," he laughed, sticking imaginary trademarks on his arms and chest. "Oh, you mean like Enron ? WorldCom ?" "You got it!" he said. " Global Crossing ?" Oops, I forgot that that one belongs a bit more to the other team .

Bollocks! Say what you will about George W. Bush, but the guy's got real...nerve. Nerve enough to turn up today at a Louisiana Army base , where he addressed members of the National Guard to thank them for their service in Iraq. The thanking is all well and good, but what about his administration's attempt to strip the Iraq-based troops of their combat pay allowance on the contention that "major combat operations" had concluded? Tell that to the young and wounded who arrive daily at Walter Reade Army Medical Center. And while you're at it, don't forget to let them know of the administration's plans to scale back health care benefits and shut down V.A. medical facilities for veterans. The Bush team has tried to spin the questions over the president's National Guard tour as an attack on the Guard . (Talk about brazen!) To find their most callous detractors, Guardsmen and -women need look no further than the Oval Office.

Fun while it lasted Up until last week, the presidential nomination contest had been nothing short of a blast to watch, full of vim, vigor and an air of serendipity. But now as the outcome becomes more predictable, I've begun to relapse into my native journalistic cynicism. While Dean was alive, shocks of electricity were felt by anyone within viewing range of the phenomenon, not only for the candidate's obvious quirks, but for the fact that Dean's means of financing really did hold the promise of minimizing the influence of the corporate lobbies. I mean, this really was people power! Conventional wisdom now holds that the Dean people mistook their process for the message, but that was no mistake. They simply didn't package their message well enough. Then Kerry and Edwards took that message (without the substance yielded by real-people financing) and tied it up much more neatly and handily than the Dean folks ever tried to do, and the r...