Okay. Political stories and rants are officially back “on the table.”
Last night on 60 Minutes, former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill described George W. Bush as “a blind man in a roomful of deaf people” during Cabinet meetings, and revealed that within days of his inauguration, Mr. Bush planned to use U.S. troops to invade Iraq.
Of course, this means that, three years after he was sworn in, when Mr. Bush told us that Iraq was “a grave and gathering danger” (either because of those non-existent WMDs, or the equally non-existent ties to terrorists) he was doing nothing more than trying to fool We, The People, into going along with his inauguration-day plans to have his war on Iraq.
That information should enrage all Americans. The fact is, the Bush administration played us for suckers. In the aftermath of 9/11, when he could have actually been “a uniter, not a divider,” George W. Bush took our grief, outrage, and fear and exploited it.
And now, as the lies for war unravel, George W. Bush — the “compassionate conservative” — shows us where his priorities truly lie.
It took 74 days for the Bush Administration to begin an investigation into the leaking of Valerie Plame’s identity to Robert Novak. It’s very clear that the purpose of the leak was to intimidate former Ambassador Joe Wilson, and send a warning to anyone else who would dare speak the truth about the Bush Administration’s lies.
For those readers who aren’t familiar with her, Valerie Plame’s extremely undercover work for the CIA focused on tracking down weapons of mass destruction, and ensuring that they didn’t find their way into the hands of terrorists.
Gosh, that sure sounds familiar . . . isn’t tracking down weapons of mass destruction, and ensuring that they don’t find their way into the hands of terrorists the reason over 500 American soldiers and countless Iraqi civillians have lost their lives in the last 10 months? (They’ve changed the reason for invading Iraq so many times, I’ve lost track. If it’s a different reason today, if we’re back to “liberating the Iraqi people,” or “He took a shot at my daddy,” just wait. I’m sure they’ll return to “WMDs and Terrorists!” soon enough.)
See, whoever blew Ms. Plame’s cover actually increased the danger to Americans from terrorists with WMDs. Thank god we have that color-coded alert system to keep us distracted safe! Good thing we all know to watch out for dangerous people reading The Old Farmer’s Almanac, and six year-old girls boarding airplanes!
But here’s the thing that just boggles me, and actually moved me to write tonight: The Bush administration waited 74 days before they started an investigation into who blew Ms. Plame’s cover, putting her, all her assets, and all of us at risk.
Seventy-four days. When National Security is at stake.
How many days did it take for the Bush administration to call for an investigation into Paul O’Neill?
One. One day after he was on 60 Minutes. One day is all it took for what can be called a punitive investigation, at best, when all that’s really at stake is the rapidly vanishing ability of the Bush White house to lie to us and get away with it.
So the question sweeping the nation is: Does Mr. Bush care more about protecting Americans from terrorism and ensuring our safety, or protecting himself from criticism, and ensuring his reelection?
Well, I think that’s asked and answered, and I’m counting down to November.
(We’re still having some upgrade issues. Hopefully, comments will return by the end of the week)
UPDATE: Until comments are up and running again, I thought I would share some e-mails that I’ve read regarding this post:

I forgot to mention this earlier: I think that the newest Strongbad e-mail is the funniest since Dragon, or maybe Monster Truck.

Back in the old days, when ASCII Pr0n was teh hot, and the only way to use a graphic browser was to go to the computer lab at a college and look at weather maps with NCSA Mosaic, I had a script in my .cshrc that would run fortune, and pipe the output to my .plan and .sig files. Okay, it’s not writing cron jobs to ncftpget the latest mozilla nightly, untar it, compile it, and launch the browser to Fark so it’s the first thing I see in the morning, (not that there’s anything wrong with that) but it was enough to impress my friends in 1991.
I think the last time I used fortune was over five years ago, but I just discovered this:

[wil@marvin wil]$ /usr/games/fortune -m Wheaton
(cookie)
%
"I figured there was this holocaust, right, and the only ones left alive were Donna Reed, Ozzie and Harriet, and the Cleavers."
-- Wil Wheaton explains why everyone in "Star Trek: The Next Generation" is so nice
%

Dude. I’m in a Unix fortune. Seriously. \m/
(Thanks to Joe, who e-mailed this information to me, causing Yet Another Epic Geekout&#153 that my wife doesn’t understand.)
More geeky stuff and an honest-to-goodness weblog entry coming up later on . . . but now I’m going to go spend the next several hours in the kitchen making soup . . . from scratch . . . for tonight’s dinner.

I have kept political stories “off the table” for several months . . . but today I read an article at K5 called What Good Is The Bill of Rights?
Read on, but be warned: this is a seriously long-winded political rant.

The show last night was incredible! Even though Keith, Adam and I haven’t done a show together in over a year, I think, we fell right into the same rhythm we had together when we were doing shows every single week, and we gave up some serious funny. Afterwards, a few audience regulars told me they thought it was our funniest show ever.
Two things about the show: Tracy Smith is insanely hilarious. You should all go to ComedyCentral.Com and vote for her, so you can see her on Stand-Up: Showdown.
The band last night, Orange County’s own Handsome Devil, is teh rock. They are super nice guys, and they’re about to break out HUGE in the pop-punk world. If you’re in LA or OC, and you like the loud music, check them out.
The Big Time Guest™ was Henry Winkler. Last night was the first time I actually met Henry Winkler, but it wasn’t the first “encounter” I had with him. That happened in 1980, when I was 8 years old . . .

When I was a kid, I always looked forward to auditions that were actually “on the lot,” (rather than in some office building in The Valley) because I thought all studio lots were just like The Universal Studios Tour: movie stars roaming freely, thousands of extras dressed in exciting costumes, and sets so real we’d swear we were in The Old West, or on a space ship.
Of course, the reality of an audition on an actual studio lot never met the build-up I gave it in my young mind. The only lot that was anything like The Universal Studios Tour was, of course, Universal Studios, and even when we I got to go there they kept us non-paying actors away from the good stuff, like BattleStar Galactica and the übercool back lot. See, the sad truth is, unless you’re actually working there (and often when you are), studios are quite boring. They’re really just big office complexes, the über cool backlots are usually filled with unused equipment, and those throngs of movie stars are usually in their dressing rooms, safely hidden away from the unwashed masses.
As a matter of fact, during all the years I went on auditions, I only remember ever seeing one real “star,” and that was Henry Winkler.
I was on an audition at Paramount with my mom. It was late in the afternoon, and we were walking down one of the streets on the West side of the lot, by the television sound stages. My brown Wrangler courduroy pants zip-zip-zipped rapidy as I walked. I’d done well on the audition, and I was happy.
“How did your reading go?” My Mom asked me.
As I talked, I looked around, and hoped to catch a glimpse of the cast of Diff’rent Strokes, which was my favorite show at the time. “Good,” I said. “It was really funny. There was this man who said –”
The zip-zip-zip of my pants stopped, and I stared up at a second floor office window.
“What is is, Willow?” My mom said.
“Mom . . . look. It’s Fonzie.” I said.
My mom followed my gaze upward, and said, “You’re right! You should wave to him!”
I nervously held up my hand and waved at him. He looked right at me, and waved back. Without even thinking, I closed my waving hand into a fist, and held up one thumb.
“Aaayyyyyyy,” I thought.
The Fonz smiled, turned to face the window, and held out both of his thumbs in the world-famous Fonzarelli “Aaaayyy” move, waved again, and walked back into the office, out of my view.
“Mom!” I said, “did you see that?!”
“I sure did, Willow. That was very cool.”

Henry Winkler didn’t have to give me the thumbs up. He didn’t even have to wave to me. He could have just walked away from the window, or pulled a WFS.
But he didn’t. He was kind, and gracious, and gave me a story that I’ve been telling for 23 years.
Last night, before the show, I told Henry that story. Before he could say anything, Adam Chester told him a similar story. It turns out that Henry Winkler is one of the nicest people in the world, and he’s waaaayyy cooler than Fonzie.