Ms. Coulter Issues a Correction

In an article extolling the virtues of gay prostitutes in the White House press corps, syndicated columnist Ann Coulter compared Jeff (James) Gannon (Guckert) to “that old Arab, Helen Thomas” (a phrase later changed to “that dyspeptic, old Helen Thomas” in the version distributed by United Press Syndicate). Ms. Thomas, a reporter for more than 60 years, is of Lebanese descent.

What she meant to say was “that sand nigger, Helen Thomas.”

Ms. Coulter regrets the error.

Ms. Coulter would like to correct other errors that were inadvertently introduced into her February 23 column. For example, in paragraphs 5, 6, and 7, the words “Maureen Dowd” appear. The corrected text should read “that boozy slut.”

In the penultimate paragraph, Ms. Coulter used the phrase “…proving our gays are more macho than their straights.” By “our gays,” she meant in no way to include Ken Mehlman, Scott McClellan, or Karl Rove. She did, however, mean to include Mary Cheney, Maya Marcel-Keyes, and Karen Hughes.

Wherever the word “liberals” is used, readers are encouraged to substitute the terms “wimps,” “traitors,” or “candy-assed faggots.”

Finally, though the phrase did not appear in her February 23 column, Ms. Coulter would like to amend the now-famous “Goebbels with tits” moniker bestowed upon her by blogger The Buffalo Beast. The appropriately modified version should read “Goebbels with a really expensive, kick-ass boob job.”

Ms. Coulter regrets the errors.

Granny is a Commie

It seems that the American Association of Retired Persons are nothing more than a bunch of flaming liberal freethinkers who want to take away our guns and promote a pro-gay agenda. Who knew?

That's the yarn being spun by USA Next, an ersatz “grass roots” conservative organization started by a direct-mail millionaire and run by the same cast of wacky characters who brought us Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.

The AARP has had the audacity to oppose Bush’s plan to dismantle Social Security. So the Swifties—er, USA Next--exhumed 93-year old Art Linkletter and made him national chairman, then planted him on Fox News to give them 70- and 80-year-old whipper snappers a right ass-whuppin’.

Still, the liberal/codger theory would explain a lot. The seniors in my neck of the woods are always dropping Ex (Lax) and going to all-night raves (right after their naps). During the early bird special at the local buffet they invariably order the fish plate. Effin’ vegetarians. Kerry voters for sure.

The most amazing thing about all of this is that Art Linkletter isn’t dead yet. If anyone has earned the right to be dead, it’s Art Linkletter. On the other hand, he clearly looks dead. Perhaps the Swifties dug him up and pumped him full of viagra to keep him, umm, upright. (‘Ya know, corpses say the darnedest things.’)

Me, I believe it’s a deliberate distraction. A red flag to keep your mind off the gay hooker in the White House press room, W’s private revelations of ‘youthful indiscretion’ (that’s Republican for ‘snorting coke til your eyeballs bleed’), the ongoing rape of the environment and, oh yeah, all those body bags coming home from Iraq.

R.I.P. HST

Hunter Thompson is dead, a victim of apparently self-inflicted gunshot wounds.

At least he didn’t OD, crash a small plane into the side of a mountain, or die choking on his (or possibly someone else’s) vomit. That’s the usual end for a rock-n-roll star. Thompson took the Hemingway route.

If life were a silly Hollywood movie and I had the chance to be another writer, at least for a little while, Thompson was probably the one I’d have picked. (The other top candidates: Chandler, Borges, Thurber.) I once wrote a final essay for a college journalism course entirely in the style of Thompson. It was one of the few things I wrote in college that was any good at all.

Before Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas made him a brandname and then a cartoon character (metaphorically and literally), Thompson was a damned fine writer. Hells Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga ranks with Homage to Catalonia as one of the finest pieces of first-person journalism ever committed to paper. (Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail could also have been great, if anyone had bothered to edit it.)

The magazine pieces Thompson wrote between Hells Angels and Fear and Loathing were brilliant – sharp, wildly funny, cutting straight to the bone through hypocrisy and greed. Nobody had his pacing, his gift for the surreal image. (“Lucy, while we argued, was lying on the patio, doing a charcoal sketch of Barbra Streisand. From memory this time. It was a full-faced rendering, with teeth like baseballs and eyes like jellied fire.”)

His words had heft and velocity. They flew across the page, one sentence rolling into the next.

After that, well, every Thompson story became a story about Thompson. Thompson getting high, Thompson getting higher, Thompson finding any possible excuse to avoid writing about the topic he’d been assigned, Thompson driving his editor insane. No other writer got more mileage out of writing about his inability to write.

I had two Near-Thompson experiences in my life.

The first occurred when I went to see him speak at Zellerbach Hall in Berkeley in the mid-80s. “See” him speak is an apt phrase; it was almost physically impossible to hear him speak. Thompson’s vocal style has been well described as a “barking mumble” – a manic, drug-addled Thurston Howell with a cigarette holder clenched in his teeth.

It was a pitiful performance, largely because a) Thompson was fucked up beyond normal human tolerance, and b) the moderator was a sycophantic college student who asked unbearably stupid questions, and c) the audience, all of whom wanted to become part of the Thompson legend and kept approaching the stage to offer him dope, booze, and, in one case, a cannister of ether.

Thompson did not refuse. I imagine that might make a decent epitaph for him: I Never Said No.

My second experience happened on the phone. I was an assistant editor at a magazine in San Francisco, and I came up with the brilliant idea of asking Thompson his opinion about computers (knowing that he had a fascination with typewriters, the faster the better). At the time, Thompson was writing a column for the San Francisco Examiner, so I called his editor there and asked how to get in touch with him.

The editor paused. “You want to speak to Hunter?” he seemed a little incredulous. I got the impression that perhaps he’d never spoken to Hunter himself. “Well, OK, you can try. Here’s the number of the bar where you’ll find him. Good luck.”

I dialed the number, something in the 303 area code. The bartender answered. In the background I could hear Thompson – not what he was saying, just the rise and fall of the barking mumble. He was apparently holding forth on some topic at high volume. I asked, extremely timidly, if Mr. Thompson was there and could he come to the phone. I heard the bartender say something in the general direction of the bar. And then….click. Silence. I tried again. This time I couldn’t get an entire sentence out before he hung up on me.

Though I was not there, the scene is burned into my brain. I can see Thompson at the bar, Hawaiian shirt, dark glasses, a smoky amber liquid in a glass. I can see him raise his hand and give a quick thumbs down, in the manner of a Roman emperor consigning a prisoner to his death. And then the bartender re-hooks the phone.

(When I returned from lunch later that day there was a note on my chair. It was left by one of my colleagues who’d overheard the whole debacle. “Hunter Thompson called,” the note said. “He doesn’t want to speak to you.”)

Hunter Thompson just hung up for the last time.

This Just In...

Talon News Hires New White House Correspondent

Associated Press
18 February 2005

Washington, DC -- After an exhaustive nationwide-search, Talon News announced that it has found a replacement for disgraced former White House Bureau Chief Jeff Gannon.

In a news conference held just outside the West Wing press room, Dr. Robert R. Eberle, editor in chief of Talon News, introduced his site's newest reporter: SpongeBob SquarePants.

"He's yellow, absorbent, and lives in a pineapple under the sea," said Eberle. "He's everything we could hope for in a White House correspondent."

Mr. Pants, who described himself as 8" square (cut), said he saw no difficulty making the transition from cartoon character to political reporter. "Cooking up yummy crabby patties or cooking up yummy questions for the White House--what's the diff?" he shrugged.

White House press secretary Scott McClellan welcomed SpongeBob to the press corps, saying he was glad to have a reporter who would soak in information and release it to the public unchanged.

Eberle said Talon was anxious to find a candidate with an unblemished past. Though admitting to having engaged in nautical nonsense, Mr. Pants denied allegations he was connected to the Web site, HotEchinoderms.com. He declined to answer questions regarding his personal life, though he was later seen leaving the White House with close personal friend, Patrick Starfish.

Eberle added the news site continues to "stand 100 percent behind Jeff Gannon, we're just standing a little further away," he explained. "We don't want to give anyone the wrong idea."

Mr. Pants said he'd hadn't decided what fake name he would use when questioning White House officials. "I was thinking 'Dan Rather' has a nice ring to it," he said.

Thalidomide Babies For Bush

Sometime today, the House is going to pass the "Class Action Fairness Act of 2005." A better title would probably be the "Giving a Big Gift Back to Our Generous Corporate Donors Act of 2005." The bill will take decisions about corporate malfeasance and negligence out of the hands of juries and put them into the hands of Federal judges, some two-thirds of which have been appointed by Republican presidents.

This in the Bushellian dialect is known as "Tort Reform." Here's a clue: Whenever you see the word "reform" in a piece of legislation, you know that somebody is lining their pockets, and that somebody probably isn't you.

This bill was opposed by the AARP, the American Cancer Society, Public Citizen, and 11 state attorneys general. Fuckin' terrorists, the lot of them.

So the fine people who brought us Agent Orange, Asbestos, the Dalkon Shield, tobacco, and Viox can now sleep a little easier at night. In most cases, the companies producing these products knew of the health risks but decided to bury that information and continue selling them. How do we know? Because eventually they got sued by consumers. In some cases, as with the Dalkon Shield, it was punitive damages from such suits that caused companies to recall their products--precisely the kind of damages Federal courts are likely to limit.

Is the current system perfect? Hardly. It makes for a lot of fat lawyers. (Personally, I like my lawyers skinny and mean.) But if the goal were reducing the amount of money attorneys take home, it would be easy to do that and still hold corporations responsible.

Here's my modest proposal (not that anyone's asked). Let's cap attorneys fees for large settlements (say over $10 million) at 20%. Let's also remove the legal shield that protects corporate officers from their customers, so CEOs would become personally liable for their decisions. So when we sue the fascist who decided to place Joe Camel billboards next to elementary schools so he can recruit a new generation of smokers, he loses his houses, his cars, his yacht, his extensive stock holdings, his country club membership. What the hell, let's take his mistress too.

Maybe that might make Corporate America think twice before making decisions that kill people, just so they can stuff more money in their pockets.

Just my humble opinion, of course.



.

Ain't Nuthin But a Ho

Just when you thought things in the Bush Epoch couldn't get more surreal, they do. It seems an administration that turned so-called journalists into whores has turned a whore into a journalist.

Jeff Gannon (real name: James D. Guckert), former "White House correspondent" for the GOP-friendly Talon News site, not only registered Web sites for gay male escorts, he was their main attraction.

Blogger John Aravosis at AmericaBlog.org has uncovered a number of Web sites advertising Gannon/Guckert's services, complete with explicit photos and detailed descriptions of his (ahem) physical talents, the services he's willing to perform, and his rates ($200 an hour, $1200 overnight). Though the naughty bits have been blocked out, it's not for the squeamish. I now know more about Gannon/Guckert than I ever cared to. It will take years for those images to evaporate.

One of G/G's own sites was live for at least a month after he launched his career as Designated White House Press Corp Suckass. Another site where he put his personal profile is still live as I type this. (G/G apparently goes by the nickname "Bulldog" and plays up his image as a former Marine.) Bulldog was a travelin' ho, and liked to serve clients in the DC area.

Suddenly it becomes a lot clearer how a 45-year-old male prostitute with no journalism experience could land a job that takes him inside the West Wing. Here's the scenario I see.

A deeply closeted conservative power broker engages G/G's services as a "trainer/bodyguard/personal escort" for a night of good clean family values. During pillow talk G/G fesses up that he's not as young as he used to be (though he's shaved 10+ years off his real age on the Web sites) and that he's thinking about a career change. The Republican honcho, impressed by G/G's ability to probe deeply and repeatedly into issues of national interest, says 'let me put you in touch with a friend of mine, he needs people for his Web site.' The connection is made, and in a few short weeks Bulldog is inside the press room asking his suckass questions.

Let's say this honcho has particularly close ties to the White House, and he wants to do something nice for his butt buddy. So to let him score points with his bosses at Talon News, he throws Bulldog a bone -- the Valerie Plame story that eventually got leaked by Robert Novak. G/G has at various times claimed and then denied seeing memos describing Plame as a CIA operative, and admits to being questioned about it by the FBI.

Is there any other plausible scenario?

So far, nearly everything G/G has said publicly has turned out to be untrue. Now he's no longer talking to the press. So somebody needs to answer some questions.

Talon News is a volunteer organization. G/G claims he's been living off his savings. Yeah, right. So either he's still turning tricks or he's getting money under the table. I'm betting on the latter. So the question becomes, who's paying him?

We know that Bush press conferences are heavily scripted, and that press secretaries tell W whom to call on. So, did Scott McClellan tell Bush to call on G/G? And did they know what question he was likely to ask beforehand?

Despite G/G's and Scott McClelland's public statements that there's nothing odd about journalists using fake names, no one can recall a single instance where this has happened in the White House Press Corp. McClelland says he only learned of G/G's multiple identities recently, though he also says that Bulldog had to provide his real name and social security number to gain access to daily briefings. So who knew who G/G really was, and when did they know it?

FYI, word inside the Beltway is now that the gay escort angle has surfaced, the Demos don't want to touch this one. (Democrats: The Brave, the Few.) Maybe they have their own gay prostitute problems to cover up. So don't look to Capitol Hill for answers.

More Proof That The Country Has Been Taken Over by Right-Wing Zombie Flesh Eaters

So I sent a rather less-than-subtle email to the Department of Education's Web site, protesting the threats made by head educational viper Margaret Spellings to PBS over the "Buster visits the maple syrup lesbos" episode. Here's the text of my message:

Customer - 01/29/2005 10:03 PM
when did the DOE become a fascist organization?

I'm writing in response to Margaret Spelling's threats to PBS regarding the episode of "Postcards from Buster" in which he visits a same-sex couple. I am appalled (but not surprised) at Ms. Spellings' behavior. Imagine a scenario where Buster visits an interracial couple. Would that be too controversial for you? How about a couple where both parents are disabled? Where, exactly, do you draw the line? Gay people pay taxes. They attend schools. They have as much right to marry and have lives as you do. As a parent of two small children, I plan to teach them that tolerance is a family value, and that gay people have the same rights as non-Gay people. Clearly Ms. Spellings does not agree. Shame on you.

Here's the response I got back from DOE drone Matt Schneer:

02/14/2005 12:29 PM Thank you for taking the time to contact us regarding Secretary Spellings’ concerns with the Department of Education’s cooperative agreement with the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) and the Postcards from Buster episode, “Sugartime!”

Secretary Spellings stands by the concerns she shared with PBS President Pat Mitchell. The cooperative agreement the Department of Education has with PBS is to support programs that are designed to prepare preschool and elementary-age children for school. A principal focus of the law that authorizes funding for the Ready-To-Learn program, is to facilitate student academic achievement.

Again, thank you for taking the time to contact the Department. We appreciate your comments.

Sincerely,

U.S. Department of Education

Apparently the Department felt so strongly about this stance that they sent it to me seven times in three separate messages. It appears somebody at the DOE needs to brush up on his or her computer skills as well as basic arithmetic. Maybe they were one of those kids who got left behind.

Call on me, Scott -- Call on me!

Another day, another fake conservative journalist gets outed. This time it's a blogger who goes by the name Jeff Gannon but whose real name is James Dale Guckert, and whose sole purpose in life has been to regurgitate White House press releases for a GOP-friendly Web site and be called on by the White House to ask suckass questions in times of press stress.

A week after the Boston Globe first reported Gannon/Guckert's false creds, pressure from bloggers forced Gannon to resign, but not until after they'd uncovered a fair amount of dirt about the guy, including a string of gay porno sites he apparently owned. The New York Times also reported that Gannon/Guckert was leaked memos exposing Valerie Plame as a CIA operative. Pretty impressive access for a fake journalist/pornapreneur using a phony name.

What does this mean? That there's an opening for a White House reporter at Talon News. Naturally I couldn't pass up this opportunity. So here's a copy of the application I just sent to Talon News this morning.

TO: Dr. Robert R. Eberle, Editor in Chief, Talon News
CC: Scott McClellan, White House Press Secretary
RE: Job Application

Dear Bob:

With the resignation of Jeff Gannon (aka James Dale Guckert) of Talon News, I understand there is now an opening for Designated White House Press Corps Suckass (DWHPCS). I’d like to apply for the job. Not only do I have far more actual journalism experience than Mr. Gannon/Guckert, but I can ask mewling, sycophantic questions with the best of them.

Here are some of the questions I’d ask, if I had the job:

• Which twin is truly America’s sweetheart, Jenna or Barbara?
  
  
• Should people who opposed the Iraq’s relentless march toward freedom and democracy be declared terrorists and sent to Guantanamo Bay, or should they simply be shot on sight?
  
  
• Condi Rice always looks fabulous. What does she use to style her hair?
  
  
• Many people in this country who hate freedom and side with terrorists have had the audacity to criticize President Bush’s plan to rescue Social Security. Where do these people think they get the right to talk like that?
  
  
• Is it pronounced “Collin” (as in Collin Ferrell) Powell or “Colon” (as in the lower intestine) Powell?
  
  
• How does the President maintain his cool and easy-going ways when dealing with Democrats who are completely out of touch with reality and hate everything this country is about?
  
  
• Is Donald Rumsfield the greatest Secretary of Defense in our nation’s history, or merely in the top three?
  
  
• Finally, would Vice President Cheney be available for any modeling assignments for my Web site, BulgingVPstud.com?

I hope you’ll call on me to be the next DWHPCS. I already have a fake name picked out—JJ Goebbels. I think it has a nice, manly ring, don’t you?

I look forward to your response.

The Emperor of Vulgarity

Here's how the Aussies look at Bush, courtesy of the Sydney, Australia Morning Herald. This one is simply too good and too true to pass by. Thanks to Robert L. for sending it my way.

The Emperor of Vulgarity
By Mike Carlton
January 22, 2005

George Bush's second inaugural extravaganza was every bit as repugnant as I had expected, a vulgar orgy of triumphalism probably unmatched since Napoleon crowned himself emperor of the French in Notre Dame in 1804.

The little Corsican corporal had a few decent victories to his escutcheon. Lodi, Marengo, that sort of thing. Not so this strutting Texan mountebank, with his chimpanzee smirk and his born-again banalities delivered in that constipated syntax that sounds the way cold cheeseburgers look, and his grinning plastic wife, and his scheming junta of neo-con spivs, shamans, flatterers and armchair warmongers, and his sinuous evasions and his brazen lies, and his sleight of hand theft from the American poor, and his rape of the environment, and his lethal conviction that the world must submit to his Pax Americana or be bombed into charcoal.

Difficult to know what was more repellent: the estimated $US40 million cost of this jamboree (most of it stumped up by Republican fat-cats buying future presidential favours), or the sheer crassness of its excess when American boys are dying in the quagmire of Bush's very own Iraq war.

Other wartime presidents sought restraint. Abraham Lincoln's second inaugural address in 1865 - "with malice toward none, with charity for all" - is the shortest ever. And he had pretty much won the Civil War by that time.

In 1944, Franklin Delano Roosevelt opened his fourth-term speech with the "wish that the form of this inauguration be simple and its words brief". He spoke for a couple of eloquent minutes, then went off to a light lunch, his wartime victory almost complete as well.

But restraint is not a Dubya word. Learning nothing, the dumbest and nastiest president since the scandalous Warren Harding died in 1923, Bush is now intent on expanding the Iraq war to neighbouring Iran.

Condoleezza Rice did admit to the US Senate this week that there had been some "not so good" decisions. But the more I see of her gleaming teeth and her fibreglass helmet of hair and her perky confidence, the more I am convinced that back in the '60s she used to be Cindy Birdsong, up there beside Diana Ross as one of the Supremes of Motown fame. I don't think it's a good idea to let her make a comeback as Secretary of State.

The war in Iran is under way already, if we believe Seymour Hersh, the distinguished investigative writer for The New Yorker magazine.
Hersh reported this week that clandestine US special forces have been on the ground there, targeting nuclear facilities to be bombed whenever Bush feels the time is ripe.

"The immediate goals of the attacks would be to destroy, or at least temporarily derail, Iran's ability to go nuclear," he wrote, quoting reliable intelligence sources.

"But there are other, equally purposeful, motives at work. The government consultant told me that the hawks in the Pentagon, in private discussions, have been urging a limited attack on Iran because they believe it could lead to a toppling of the religious leadership."

Naturally, Pentagon flacks rushed out to deny all. But then they did that when Hersh broke the story of the My Lai massacre in Vietnam in 1968, and again when he revealed the torture of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib. A tussle for the truth between Hersh and the Pentagon is no contest.

Lieutenant General William G. (Jerry) Boykin, whose name also rings a bell, is a born-again Christian evangelical, a three-star bigot who, in his spare time, stumps the country in full uniform, preaching that America's enemy is Satan, Allah is a false idol, and that George Bush has been ordained by the Lord to rout evil.

"He's in the White House because God put him there for a time such as this," Jerry told a prayer meetin' in Oregon just a while back. Be very afraid.

While We're Rewriting History In Iraq...

... let us pause to reflect on a similar election four decades ago in Viet Nam. A couple of people forwarded me this, which was originally posted on Daily Kos and then picked up and expanded on the Empire Notes blog.

As my favorite vulcanologist Mike O. points out, this election occurred a year before the Tet Offensive and six years before "peace with honor." So we're a long way from being out of the woods in Iraq.

U.S. Encouraged by Vietnam Vote : Officials Cite 83% Turnout Despite Vietcong Terror

by Peter Grose, Special to the New York Times (9/4/1967: p. 2)

WASHINGTON, Sept. 3-- United States officials were surprised and heartened today at the size of turnout in South Vietnam's presidential election despite a Vietcong terrorist campaign to disrupt the voting.

According to reports from Saigon, 83 per cent of the 5.85 million registered voters cast their ballots yesterday. Many of them risked reprisals threatened by the Vietcong.

The size of the popular vote and the inability of the Vietcong to destroy the election machinery were the two salient facts in a preliminary assessment of the nation election based on the incomplete returns reaching here.

Pending more detailed reports, neither the State Department nor the White House would comment on the balloting or the victory of the military candidates, Lieut. Gen. Nguyen Van Thieu, who was running for president, and Premier Nguyen Cao Ky, the candidate for vice president.

A successful election has long been seen as the keystone in President Johnson's policy of encouraging the growth of constitutional processes in South Vietnam. The election was the culmination of a constitutional development that began in January, 1966, to which President Johnson gave his personal commitment when he met Premier Ky and General Thieu, the chief of state, in Honolulu in February.

The purpose of the voting was to give legitimacy to the Saigon Government, which has been founded only on coups and power plays since November, 1963, when President Ngo Dinh Diem was overthrown by a military junta.

Few members of that junta are still around, most having been ousted or exiled in subsequent shifts of power.

Significance Not Diminished

The fact that the backing of the electorate has gone to the generals who have been ruling South Vietnam for the last two years does not, in the Administration's view, diminish the significance of the constitutional step that has been taken.

The hope here is that the new government will be able to maneuver with a confidence and legitimacy long lacking in South Vietnamese politics. That hope could have been dashed either by a small turnout, indicating widespread scorn or a lack of interest in constitutional development, or by the Vietcong's disruption of the balloting.

American officials had hoped for an 80 per cent turnout. That was the figure in the election in September for the Constituent Assembly. Seventy-eight per cent of the registered voters went to the polls in elections for local officials last spring.

Before the results of the presidential election started to come in, the American officials warned that the turnout might be less than 80 per cent because the polling place would be open for two or three hours less than in the election a year ago. The turnout of 83 per cent was a welcome surprise. The turnout in the 1964 United States Presidential election was 62 per cent.

Captured documents and interrogations indicated in the last week a serious concern among Vietcong leaders that a major effort would be required to render the election meaningless. This effort has not succeeded, judging from the reports from Saigon.

The Bush Dream Team

As our Fearless Leader shuffles his cabinet, weeding out the face cards and dealing out jokers, it’s an appropriate time to look at the kind of team GWB would truly want to assemble, if the laws of time and space were suspended. Here they are, in no particular order:

Department of Justice: Torquemada. No one expected the Spanish Inquisition, and nobody knew how to wring confessions out of detainees like the T-man. Still, Gonzales is not a bad second choice.

Department of Education: Dan Quayle. Because America's kids need to think more creatively when it comes to spelling. And isn’t it about time Latin America learned to speak Latin? I bet he’s even read My Pet Goat.

Department of Energy: Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan. Why mess with the middle man? Let’s go directly to the source.

Secretary of the Treasury: Charles Ponzi. Developer of the scam that bears his name, Ponzi excelled at taking money from the bottom of the pyramid and bringing it to the top – the perfect choice to reform our tax system.

Department of Homeland Security: J. Edgar Hoover. Now there’s a man who knew how to color coordinate. Forget red, yellow, and orange alerts – think ruby, fuschia, and vermillion. No one’s ever been able to fill the original G-man’s pumps.

Secretary of State: Oprah. She’s rich, she’s highly influential, and she’s giving away cars! True, Oprah has never completely ignored the warning signs that lead to the most devastating attack in our nation’s history, but give her time.

Department of Defense: Donald Rumsfield—there is no better choice. (Remember: You go to war with the Defense secretary you have, not the one you wish you had.) Rummy doesn’t need to bolt on scrap metal to protect himself; he’s got the Washington press corps for that.