The (Used to Be) Weekly Dammit, #20

Where does the time go? Wherever it went, I didn't see The Dammit there. So let's see if I remember how to do this:

Dammit #1:
There is no The Weekly Dammit #18. Well, technically there is, but I never actually published it. It exists only as a draft. It was FABULOUS but now hopelessly out of date.

Dammit #2:
Apparently the Bush administration played a round of "Is Your IT director Smarter Than a Fifth Grader" and lost. Assuming the overwriting of back up disks containing two years worth of email and other information was unintentional. Yeah, yeah. That's it. Unintentional.

Dammit #3:
I hired a life coach to help me work through the "do I want to finish my book and keep freelancing or get a regular job" thing. I really like her but she keeps giving me homework. Which I keep forgetting until the night before. I never wanted to go back to high school and here I am paying someone for that same vaguely panicky feeling . . .

Dammit #4:
That whole Iranian Revolutionary Guard thing in the gulf may actually have been a hoax. And the Pentagon says it didn't say it was actually the Iranians saying "I am coming to you . . .You will be exploded in minutes." It does, however, still appear that it was the IRGC's boats. Seriously--does this shit ever end?

Beecause Every Monday Needs a Good Laugh

Washingtonpost.com's Dan Froomkin pulls together some of the more amusing? maddening? mind-boggling? quotes from W in advance of his Middle East tour:

"I can predict that the historians will say that George W. Bush recognized the threats of the 21st century, clearly defined them, and had great faith in the capacity of liberty to transform hopelessness to hope, and laid the foundation for peace by making some awfully difficult decisions," Bush told Yonit Levi of Israel's Channel 2 News. Bush held several interviews with Middle Eastern journalists last week in anticipation of his trip to the region, which starts tomorrow.

"When he needed to be tough, he acted strong, and when he needed to have vision he understood the power of freedom to be transformative," Bush said of himself to Nahum Barnea and Shimon Shiffer of the Israeli newspaper Yediot Ahronot.

As for the people of the Middle East, Bush told Hisham Bourar of al-Hurra Television: "I would hope that they would say President Bush respects my religion and has great love for the human -- human being, and believes in human dignity."

The Bush record, the president told Nadia Bilbassy-Charters of al-Arabiya Television, is one of liberation -- "liberation, by the way, not only from dictatorship, but from disease around the world, like HIV/AIDS or malaria."

On a personal basis, Bush told Bilbassy-Charters that he hopes that people would know "that he hurts when he sees poverty and hopelessness" and "that he's a realistic guy."

Check out the blog post for more!

Waiting for the Punchline

There was a letter to the editor in Monday's Mercury News that I had to read twice. Then once again with my glasses on, just in case. Then I put it aside to read again, just to make sure I read it correctly the first three times. I'll let you decide:

The whiny liberal crowd will not credit our great commander in chief, even though he is the first man of his word our nation has ever had. He said he was a uniter not a divider, and sure enough he has united about three out of every four of us. He said he was going to restore honor and decency to the White House, and we enjoy worldwide renown for our efforts to find peace, albeit through war. He is open and candid about even the smallest perceived misstep, articulate and persuasive to all who will listen carefully. We are truly blessed and will miss him terribly after next year.
--Ed Von Ruden, San Jose, CA

So:
1) Is grampa smoking crack?
2) Does BushworldTM actually exist?
3) Has this person ever read anything about US history?
4) Does anyone else agree with what this guy is saying?
5) Was this a seriously bad joke by someone desperate to see his name in print?
6) Did I (please, oh please) misread it?