Betsy Devine: Funny ha-ha and/or funny peculiar

“Bush Campaign Better Thought Out Than Iraq War”

xxx
yyy

Gadflyer blogger Zoe VanderWolk at the DNCC. The other, less famous (to me) person with her is Jerry Springer.)

I’ve
been following the Democratic National Convention in the Feedster
feedpaper and on the hotel TV. Now that I’m back in Cambridge, I was
lucky enough to have a real DNCC blogger staying with us–Zoe
VanderWolk of Gadflyer. Here is some of the dish from the nosebleed seats that she said I could share with you:

• The
  convention is fascinating and hanging out with other bloggers is lots
  of fun–but many “real” reporters seem half-asleep with been-there, done-that boredom.
• Last night’s big story on CNN News was not
  the Democratic Convention but the release by the Bush team of a brand-new
  anti-Kerry ad. This gave CNN an excuse to play the Bush ad for free as
  part of its “news” reporting.
• Two
  “real” reporters made their way up to the bloggers’ section where, as
  Dave Winer reports, you can’t hear the speeches unless you pay close
  attention. Said one reporter to the other, “This sucks, I can’t hear a
  thing. I’m just going to write that it was a lousy speech.”
• Ann
  Coulter’s rejected article about the “Spawn of Satan” convention is
  getting a lot of laughs there, not least for her description of “the
  corn-fed, no make-up,
  natural fiber, no-bra needing, sandal-wearing, hirsute, somewhat
  fragrant hippie chick pie wagons they call ‘women’ at the Democratic
  National Convention.” Er, Ann, you mean women like Zoe, for instance?

If you haven’t read Zoe’s blistering account of the DNCC bloggers’s
breakfast with Russell Mears, you should. I sure hope she doesn’t blog this morning’s coffee with me in the same vein…

“Back in 2000, a Republican friend of mine warned me that if I voted
for Al Gore and he won, the stock market would tank, we’d lose millions
of jobs, and our military would be totally overstretched. You know
what? I did vote for Al Gore, he did win, and I’ll be damned if all
those things didn’t come true.”

James Carville, Democratic strategist

Thanks to Frank Paynter for this political gem!

In the most recent Gallup survey, 51% of those polled gave George W Bush a negative rating for job approval, with 46% giving a positive rating.

This is Bush’s lowest rating ever, says Gallup.

An unnoticed camera gives new insight into how our President thinks. Do you see the world the Bush way?

Suppose you want to give your glasses a polish. Suppose you are standing in back of a woman who’s busy working.

Great–then you don’t have to acknowledge her existence! Just grab a
handful of her sweater and polish away. Keep talking to the important
people–a category that clearly doesn’t include the woman whose
clothing you have in your hand, so who cares what she thinks?

Thanks to BoingBoing for the link to this unbegoshdarnlievable video.

Don’t you just love the selfless patriotism of Fox News?

That three-headed frog discovered last week? Well, it wasn’t

It was three frogs who were , ahem–well, Ray Girvan links to a bunch of photos of other frogs engaged in similar antics.

Gosh, there goes the liberal media, trying to bust up my family by talking dirty. OK, it’s a blog–but you know what I mean.

Fortunately, we have it on good authority that the Bush administration will once again take steps to make sure that science doesn’t tell us anything we don’t want to hear.

Here, photoshopped for your viewing convenience, is the new explanation–it was a lovely frog wedding. The bride (in a veil of ethernetting) was just sharing a private moment with the groom (top hat 1), when up hopped the best man (top hat 2) and decided to try to cut in.

Nothing to see here, folks, just move along.

I will be sitting out the rest of the primary season, but I look
forward to voting for the Democrat–Kerry or Edwards–in November.

There are things that I like about each, and things I dislike. There
were also things about Dean I didn’t like. And this is how elections
have to work–reasonable people finding the best available compromise
choice.

Throwing your vote away as a glorious gesture of protest because the
perfect candidate isn’t up there? It’s easy to make that sound
glamorous. There will be lots of people trying to make it sound good to
all of us.

If you care about what happens in the next four years, don’t let such people throw away your vote.

The CIA has a new “Iraqi Rewards Program” offering cash to those with useful information.

Check out the list, and then read it again to notice the useful information they don’t want.

What they do want, and will pay for: “Iraqis who are
able and willing to provide detailed information on Iraq’s WMD programs and efforts to hide them. ”

What they don’t want, or at least aren’t willing to pay for:

• Iraqis who are
  able and willing to provide detailed evidence that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction.
• Iraqis who are
  able and willing to provide detailed evidence about people who worked to exaggerate the importance of the Iraqi WMDs

No word on what fraction of rewards for WMD testimony will be paid for by the Committee to Re-Elect George W. Bush.

Dear CIA, Yes! I’ll confess! Iraq had a huge arsenal of weapons of mass destruction including 17 H-bombs. Why can’t you find any? They were, uh, airlifted to North Korea by FedEx.
Please disregard my previous letter saying that the weapons were loaded into a flying saucer by Jane Fonda dressed up as Barbarella. Note that my new story has one more H-bomb than the previous one. Could I have my money in small bills please?