I swear when he hits the G8, he drinks heavily. From the Telegraph:

The American leader, who has been condemned throughout his presidency for failing to tackle climate change, ended a private meeting with the words: “Goodbye from the world’s biggest polluter.”

He then punched the air while grinning widely, as the rest of those present including Gordon Brown and Nicolas Sarkozy looked on in shock.

Everyone remember Bush’s impromptu shoulder massage of German Chancellor Angela Merkel - at the G8?

The most powerful American is the Ugly American manifest.

Glad to see Kucinich stand up. Sad to see so few others do the same.

The media has waited with baited breath - and a volume of verbiage the world has rarely seen outside of coverage of Paris Hilton and Brittney Spears’ crotches - for Hillary to do her concession bit and for the two to hug and cry together. But they’re not giving that to us - at least, not yet. And either way, it’s OK.

I don’t want this to be a presidency driven solely by sound bytes and carefully crafted media images. I don’t expect two people who’ve fought so hard for their own campaigns (or the myriad thousands who’ve labored for them) to sudden love each other and make nice.

I don’t want Hillary Clinton named VP (and I think any announcement there will come much closer to the convention, if not at the convention itself in late August in Denver) simply because she was “the other candidate.” If there’s a better person for the Obama Democratic ticket, then I want that person considered. We’re not into legacies here, unless it’s the legacy for ALL of America, and not for a relatively privileged few (named Bush or Clinton or Kennedy, et al).

But what we need most of all is for the American people to unite in an understanding that the way ahead is tough regardless of how we go: that we may have to accept a period of increased hardship to try to get this nation - and the world that watches it - back on track. We’re already hurting; we can probably survive a little more.

And unlike the Bush-McCain technique, we need to take care of America’s working and middle classes through good education, job training, health care, and so much more. The Bush-McCain technique is to give and give to the wealthiest, and the rest have to wait til it trickles down the inner leg of the fatcat Republican peeing gold.

Caroline Kennedy has been named to head up a three-person VP search team for Democratic presumptive nominee, Barack Obama.

This differs from George Bush’s 2000 VP search team, headed by Dick Cheney, with only Cheney serving as membership, and - surprise! - decided Dick Cheney would be the best candidate for the job!

But does anyone worry with as much as Cheney is smirking and still acting like cock of the walk that you wonder if HE knows something (like what really went on with September 11th and Iraq, to name but a few) you don’t, which is why he’s not worried about having to leave the WH anytime soon.

When I awoke this morning, I felt different. It took me an hour or two to figure out why: we don’t have to talk about Democratic Primary races anymore because they ended yesterday.

While I found this primary season more interesting than any other in my lifetime, the drama wasn’t so much in what the candidates said or did, and certainly not in the debates (which I find useless when you’ve got 8-10 people vying for questions from a potential 300 million member audience).

No, the big change - the refreshing air - is not just that we’ll be Bush-less (we hope) come January 20th next, but that we went through a primary season where a woman and a black man got all the attention. I never expected to be half way through my life before this happened, so I’ll focus on how wonderful it is now that it’s here.

And it’s not any woman, not any black man. While Obama found privilege, it certainly wasn’t awarded to him by society. He - and his wife, and I think Michelle Obama is great - worked damn hard for all they have.

And while it’s easy to dis Hillary (it seems), she’s been part of a wave of people who came of age in the 60s and 70s who, while making their own way, have contributed MUCH to the overall quality of life in this country and beyond.

So rather than feel just relief at no primary discussion today, I’ve got to appreciate that while the Republicans handed us the same old fat old white man (McCain), the Dems delivered at least some of the change we desperately need.

That the Bushies deliberated lied and “created” al Qaeda where it was not (Iraq) was bad enough; but Time tells us why this lie’s still rolling, still causing enormous problems short- and long-term.

Well, this is the weekend the Rules Committee of the Democratic National Convention meets to hammer out what’s happening with delegates and super delegates, Florida and Michigan primary votes and what to do with them, et al.

Both DNC chair Howard Dean and many other ranking Dems have said they expect the race to be over soon after June 3rd, the date of the last scheduled donkey primary; that a commitment from superDs on who they’ll cast ballots for is wanted soon thereafter.

Yet others are beginning to suggest this is a race that may continue all summer through to the Dem National Convention in Colorado, the first time the convention’s been a real political potboiler since at least 1972. And I’m not sure Dems would be hurt badly by a later decision either: as long as the DNC continues its smart ads that target John McCain rather than a Hillary Clinton or a Barack Obama, I doubt there’s a danger. We’ve seen an exodus AWAY from the Republican and even the uncommitted voters coming into this presidential election cycle; I strongly resist the notion that something will magically drive these candidates back to Mad Dog McCain. You?

You know, I wasn’t inclined to pay much attention to fomer White House spokesman Scott McClellan’s new book about his tenure beginning soon after our dance of death began in Iraq. As McClellan took the job, we heard a lot about how decent a guy Scotty was and that the only explanation for him taking a job like that was loyalty to Bush. Strange how loyalty with a Bush lasts only so long, eh?

But I tell you, the more the right jumps up - from current and former WH bigwigs to semi-dead former righties (like Bob Dole) to Republcans-dressed-as-objective-news-consultants (like William Bennett, Karl Rove, et al) - to denounce the book and McClellan, the more they’re convincing me to buy it.

I mean, why else would the right mount such a campaign over a relatively small disagreement in perspective? It’s not like the American people like Bush anymore. They’re trying to protect their own, which includes a lot of people who want to ride back into another term under the third Bush term known as the first McCain term.

Maybe you should read McClellan’s book, too. Then you can learn more for yourself how Bush was intimately involved in the “outing” of Valerie Plame, then one of the CIA’s major agents on WMD, at a time when Plame was invaluable to our “ending terrorism”. But Bush had to have her “put down” because it was more important to smarm anything attached to Plame’s critical hubby, former Iraq ambassador Joe Wilson, than to stop real WMD in the world.

No, don’t get me wrong: McClellan is no hero for telling us now. If he’d outed Bush at the time, however…. But the book might be worth a read if only to see what other scum surfaces in it.

I don’t know whether you caught it here or elsewhere last week, but we’ve lowered the jackpot someone gets who snitches and leads to the death (wanna bet?) or capture (right, uh huh) of Osama bin Laden. But here in so called “liberal loony” Vermont, we’re fighting a single opposing voice: whether to permit the broadcast of al Jazeera on a cable network here (and al Jazeera does NOT always take the side of Islam, if you have any regular reading experience there) like it’s more heinous than September 11th and what we did to Iraq rolled together.

Now, the Burlington area is considered to be the most liberal part of the state; it’s got a tiny Seattle kind of feel to it, and that it’s a multiple college town doesn’t necessarily make it more conservative.

Really? We can’t listen to the other side occasionally? Sometimes, only by looking at both sides of the supposed truth can you discern the spin, the message, the actual agendae at work.

Has John McCain ever, EVER just admitted he was wrong? I mean, less than twenty plus years after the error, like in fighting Arizona making Martin Luther King Day a holiday.

To choose the Memorial Day weekend to defend his insistence that he’s right in his failure to support the GI Bill truly is unconscionable. But my, oh my, is he ever showing “the Bush support” of our soldiers: giving them the shaft even faster than they shaft the enemy, whoever that is (and I tend to think our biggest fears should lie in the Bushies/McCainies).

Though I was nursing a miserable stomach flu that had me using my DVR to catch spots I missed in rushing to worship the porcelain goddess, I saw rapt through HBO’s “Recount”.

As honest as it was (and I thought it avoided some of the most fiery yet since proven true material), I realized there was probably no production that could completely tap my sick outrage at what happened in the Gore/Bush 2000 election.

Ironically, I was very ill on Election Day 2000 but I’d dragged myself out of bed, completely dazed, because I never felt like my vote was more important. And yet, at the same time, it never, ever permeated my consciousness that Bush could be named president. My partner voted Nader - and I let him have it for his decision - at least in part for how nasty the so-called left got toward Ralph for running, but though I never thought Bush could steal it, I felt the election was just too important to “waste” a vote.

Late in the day, I was very surprised at how well I heard Bush was doing. But it still did not dawn on me that what was about to happen ever could (and yet his stolen re-election in 2004 also surprised me because I could not fathom that we’d let him get away with it twice). After that, we made a concerted decision to turn off the media until 10 or 11 PM ET when at least some real count was in.

It was around 2 AM when Florida was turned from a Gore win, to a too-close-to-call one, and then around to a Bush victory. We were already hearing some stories about the Palm Beach and poorer Floridians having big problems either with nonsense design or broken voting equipment or being challenged as being on a felon list (and some 500-1,000 or more people were kept from voting for every “felon’s name” listed on the stuff that came from ChoicePoint, who has since been awarded much of the control for our terrorist watch lists, etc).

This is how feverish sick I was, both physically and from the news: around 2:30 am, I started telling God that he’d be welcome to “take me” if only he wouldn’t let Bush win (and I’ve been a little pissed at Him/Her ever since).

As outrageous as that night was, what followed was worse. The media kept telling us we were all tired of the fight to get the recount (I only recall the Bushies being tired) because we were eager to focus on the holidays (sheesh!). But the people I spoke with, while they wanted it over, certainly didn’t feel Gore or anyone else should just capitulate to suit the MSM. And some of these folks were Bush voters. Thus, long before 9/11, we’ve been letting the media, probably at the direction of the politicos it supports, tell us what should happen because of what appears to be an INACCURATE read of where the American public is.

So “Recount” could not quite recapture the terrible dawning horror of that first Tuesday in November of 2000. But could anything, especially knowing the great ruination of our country ever since?

And what was your reaction to “Recount”?

You want to see this (Sunday, 9 PM EDT, HBO).

Hopefully, most of us realize that the Memorial Day many will celebrate this long weekend indeed stands in memory of something: soldiers dying for a noble cause as designated by our government.

Sadly, what does this Memorial Day tell us when:

* we see how the veterans’ folks in the Bush Administration would rather spin the number of soldier suicides each month than try to address the real problem
* when cemeteries are booked solid for services for soldiers who have died in Iraq or Afghanistan or by their own hand
* that to fulfill quotas, the Pentagon is accepting those convicted of everything from wife- and parent-beating to felony murder
* that many of our soldiers who DO manage to get the military to declare them as disabled must often wait 6, 8, 12 or MORE months to see their first check, with nothing to live on in the interim
* more and more, soldiers on the battlefields are having to call back home to their banks to try to keep their families from being foreclosed upon - there are supposed to be checkmarks in place to be sure this can’t happen, but few soldiers seem protected

For those of you who have served us, thank you. And my sincere apologies that the Republicans who want so to use you for photo ops for e-election are the same ones who keep trying to block you from getting any of the thanks you are due.

Just in time to make us (appropriately) very worried about November’s presidential vote comes the star-studded HBO docu-comedy-drama “Recount” about the Bush v. Gore 2000 Florida contest. HBO airs it tomorrow (Sunday) at 9 PM EDT.

Just the Laura Dern-as-Katherine-Harris bit looks deliciously worth the watch, IMHO. Might bring a few laughs along with a reminder of the great injustice and tragedy done when Bush was allowed to steal the White House.

Zogby is reporting President George W. Bush has hit an all-time record approval low of any president, including himself: just 23% suggest he’s doing an OK job.

Have you noticed?

Despite how obvious it was that the Pe