The following press release arrived in my inbox this afternoon. The especially amusing sentence is highlighted:

Subject: Fashion Show
Date: October 13, 2006 2:36:11 PM EDT
From: deonteunique@____.com

Southern Entertainment and Blaq Pearl Entertainment are currently seeking judges for their pre-party designer and model competition being held at Atlanta Steakhouse Bar and Grill on Saturday November 4th, 2006. The winner will receive a spread in the fashion magazine, CONCISE!

Your expertise in the fashion industry has prompted me to invited you to be a guest judge for our event. There will be approximately 5-10 designers to participate in hopes of becoming Atlanta’s Next Top Model and Fashion Designer!

We welcome you to promote your all other projects in which you seek support. Your prompt reply will be greatly appreciated.

Should you be interested, you’ll receive updated information via email (or phone, just provide you contact number) regarding the call date. Please feel free to contact me via email for additional questions!

Best Regards,
Deon
Show Coordinator
404.207.—-

A quote:

Attention, conspiracy theorists: The biggest conspiracy to steal votes already happened. It’s called redistricting, and it offers Republicans’ only real hope of holding onto the House this fall.

Polls indicate that Democrats are preferred to Republican by a wide-margin in next month’s Congressional election.

But even if many more voters pull levers for Democrats next month than Republicans, Republicans may still end up controlling the House of Representatives.

Bruce Reed, writing for Slate.com, explains why, in an excellent, short article.

My column this week:

Saturday, Oct. 7, was the fifth anniversary of the start of U.S. military operations in Afghanistan.

Dubbed Operation Enduring Freedom, it was the first military campaign of President Bush’s War on Terror™. When he announced the start of Enduring Freedom to the American public, President Bush said that the mission’s objectives were “to disrupt the use of Afghanistan as a terrorist base of operations, and to attack the military capability of the Taliban regime.” In addition, the mission was “designed to clear the way for sustained, comprehensive and relentless operations to drive them out and bring them to justice.”

In other words, the United States invaded to crush the Taliban and al-Qaeda, and bring Osama bin Laden and his henchmen to justice . . .

Read the rest, won’t you, please, uh-huh?

Who is this woman?

And why does she have my name?

I hope her album’s good. If someone’s gonna ruin my to self-Googling experiences, I want it to be someone with talent.

“I’m confident that if this Senate race is decided on issues, ideas and my proven record of performance, you’ll allow me to continue serving you.”

-Senator George “Macacawitz” Allen (R-Va.), in a campaign ad which aired in Virginia last week.

Translation: “If you people would please forgot that I called a brown-skinned Virginia college student a racial slur that means “monkey”, and if you people would forget that I’ve spent most of my political life pandering to white racists, and if you people would forget that I accused a reporter of casting “aspersions” on my religious beliefs when she asked if I have Jewish family members, and if you people would please forget that I’ve frequently called black people “nigger”, but lied about it when asked, I’m confident that you’ll re-elect me.”

If you have any other campaign ads that you’d like me to translate into plain English, e-mail me or post it in a comment here.

“Hastert and Boehner need to get on the same page or Republican troubles will continue to mount.”

From an editorial about the mishandling of the Rep. Mark Foley sex scandal in the October 9, 2006 issue of The Hill.

But I thought getting on a page was the problem.

(Thank you to Pete for the link to the article).

Apparently it’s very difficult to grip married moms and underage boys at the same time.

We’ll be deliberate, yet time is not on our side. I will not wait on events, while dangers gather. I will not stand by, as peril draws closer and closer. The United States of America will not permit the world’s most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world’s most destructive weapons.

-State of the Union Address, President George W. Bush, January 29, 2002. This was the so-called ‘Axis of Evil’ speech.

“Why won’t the Bush administration talk bilaterally and substantively with NK, as the Brits (and eventually the US) did with Libya? Because the Bush administration sees diplomacy as something to be engaged in with another country as a reward for that country’s good behavior. They seem not to see diplomacy as a tool to be used with antagonistic countries or parties, that might bring about an improvement in the behaviour of such entities, and a resolution to the issues that trouble us. Thus we do not talk to Iran, Syria, Hizballah or North Korea. We only talk to our friends — a huge mistake.”

-Donald Gregg, on WashingtonPost.com today. Gregg was a national security adviser to President Carter and V.P. George H.W. Bush.

You will hear many a Bush-apologist blame Clinton for North Korea’s nuclear test. Clinton is not blameless, but Bush’s North Korea policy for the past six years has mostly been to call North Korea and its leader bad names (‘evil’ and ‘pygmy’ come to mind) and to refuse North Korea’s request for direct diplomatic talks. Look where that policy has gotten the world.

Fact: The only glimmers of success the U.S. has had with North Korea in the past 12 years came when Clinton and Bush instructed their diplomats to sit down and talk with their North Korean counterparts. Yet, Bush’s policy to North Korea for the bulk of his presidency has been to shun talks. In Bush World, diplomacy is something you do with your friends.

Clinton could have done better, no doubt. But even judged by Bush’s own standard (reprinted above), the current policy is a colossal failure. The countdown to last weekend’s North Korean nuclear test started on January 29, 2002. It’s not Clinton’s fault that the Bush Administration was too busy bungling Iraq to watch the clock.

“Cook said it upsets him when the mainstream media only reports the negative news in Iraq and focus little attention on the good things Marines are doing, like rebuilding schools and giving toys to children.”

Variations of the above talking point have been repeated ad nauseum by supporters of the Iraq war. The war’s going well, they argue, but that pesky, negative-nelly, unpatriotic liberal mainstream media just won’t report it.

After three years of steady use, however, the “we’re building schools” talking point seems to have fallen out-of-use.

Perhaps it has something to do with this:

Iraqi education system on brink of collapse

Peter Beaumont in Baghdad
Wednesday October 4, 2006
The Guardian

An Iraqi man drops his children to school in Baghdad as guards look on. Photograph: Wathiq Khuzaie/Getty Images

Iraq’s school and university system is in danger of collapse in large areas of the country as pupils and teachers take flight in the face of threats of violence.

Professors and parents have told the Guardian they no longer feel safe to attend their educational institutions. In some schools and colleges, up to half the staff have fled abroad, resigned or applied to go on prolonged vacation, and class sizes have also dropped by up to half in the areas that are the worst affected.

Read the rest.

A University of Maryland poll taken six months after the Iraq invasion demonstrated that Fox News viewers were more ignorant about world affairs than any other category of news consumers, but also had a stronger belief than anyone else in how well informed they were.

Go Rupert, it’s your birthday!