some of it.

Peanut man can’t talk - no one could - because of the money.

We have went from banana republic to oil republic; from send in the marines to send in the cia (to killing our own). The end is not in sight.

It was during the time that the Carter administration was pursuing Detente with the Soviets, so that may have flavored the reporting.

When I lived briefly in Illinois, I had a neighbor from south Chicago who implored me to sample his favorite - Pink Champale.

That stuff tasted worse than a Bulgarian shotputter’s muff.

@Jim: Yeah, we all believed in idiots before we converted. I used to believe that Clinton was a perfectly great president. Then I turned 17. If you drank PBR to make up for it, that’s punishment enough…

I have never even talked to Judith Miller, much less on background.

For the record: Since I was raised Presbyterian, the standards for penance are very light, on par with 3.2% beer.

However, listening to me yammer on and on and on is an authentic penance and you can claim it, similar to having to drink that 3.2 swill sold as a product of hops fermentation in the Utah Theocratic Land of Fairy Tales and Sunbeams. Sadistic Smiling Reprobates, allowing beer but requiring a 3.2 alcohol content, it is likely one of the foundational sets of malignant thinking that launched the young Rove on his continuing campaign to turn the Republic into a cross between a Branson Floorshow and a circa 1973 Times Square, without benefit of the peep shows (thus leaving primarily pickpocketry, paranoia and a prevailing thugishness.).

My brother Rastus, an unrepentant Palo Alto Democrat was always better at getting right to the heart of the matter in his agitprop. On the eve of the election day for Tricky and Agnew, Rastus snuck out in the middle of the night and did a little doctoring on the downtown campaign poster. He placed a hangman’s hood on Agnews head and a Pirate Patch on Tricky’s eye along with a hook on his upstretched hand ……and completed the picture by blacking the “w” and the word “than” out of the political statement , leaving the words “No More Ever” to greet the morning commuters. Damned if I have not always regretted not taking a proper photo.

But, fast forward and the bookend to the Tricksters sordid reign is found in all the dysfunctional rats spawned by his sinking ship . The Deesider in Cheef makes Nixon look like Albert Schweitzer and Deadeye Dick makes Agnew look like Red Skelton on Darvon. They did at least learn that a draft is bad for the polls even though they don’t ever look at polls…honest. Polls….? they don’t need no stinken polls.

Patience Tricky Dick and Spiro, pretty soon there will be a couple new clowns plop through the lobby doors to your little motel hell below and you can climb out of the muck and take a few breaths by surmounting their shoulders. We’ve so far survived the political equivalent of a relapse of shingles, the Republic is still ahead…..for now.

Speaking of Pabst Blue Ribbon, Dennis Hopper was quite fond of that particular beer in the movie “Blue Velvet”. I wonder - does anybody here think that nasty brew has some kind of mind-controlling substance that turned poor old Dennis around from a free-wheeling, freedom-loving hippie into a hard-core Bushanista warmonger? And maybe even temporarily turned Jim Bovard into a Ford man?

Inquiring minds must know!

OK, maybe nothing would be sufficient penance for that - but Guinness would be damn close.

Now if it had been Gibbons or Stegmaier, I’d say you’d done your duty and we could move on.