Things maf54 didn’t have time to IM about

Despite the fact that Mark Foley has been active chatting as recently as Tuesday morning, there are other stories in the news. Salon does a nice job of putting together the pieces on the following subjects:

Bill Frist Hearts Taliban – during a stop in Afghanistan Monday, Frist said that there are now so many Taliban in Afghanistan that "you need to bring them into a more transparent type of government. And if that's accomplished, we'll be successful." Nice. I love changing the definition of success to meet the limited progress we've made. It really sets a nice example for an entire generation of underachieving American schoolchildren.

George Allen has lost touch with reality – in a new commercial, the senator blames himself for some recent problems, but complains that "negative personal attacks and baseless allegations have also pulled us away from what you expect and deserve." Right – baseless allegations like the ones confirmed by dozens of independent and unaffiliated sources. Damn, I hate those well-researched and substantiated "baseless allegations".

Rummy keeps Dubya from looking like a fool…well, *more* of a fool – the Interloper has taken a lot of heat for having a certain banner appear behind him while speaking on a Navy aircraft carrier and wearing a flight suit. But things could have been worse:

Bob Woodward told Larry King Monday that the words "mission accomplished" were actually going to be included in Bush's speech on that day in May 2003 -- at least until Donald Rumsfeld intervened and got them out. "Rumsfeld was in Baghdad, and they sent him an advanced copy of the speech," Woodward said. "And he said, 'I almost died because "mission accomplished" was in the speech.' And he said, 'I got it out of the speech but I didn't get the sign down.'"

Gee, if Rummy knew that the mission wasn't exactly accomplished, why would el presidente even go through with the speech? My guess – that flight suit was too tempting not to wear; luckily, Rummy hid Dubya's NASA uniform to keep him from invading Mars.

Bill O'Reilly is still a douchebag – " During Bill O'Reilly's show Tuesday night, Fox News repeatedly ran video clips of Mark Foley over a caption identifying him as a Democrat". I guess when policy fails and politicians can't be trusted, the GOP has fallen back on Plan C – rewriting history.