Mount St. Helens erupts. US Forest Service site is down.

…can sometimes be the funniest.

—NSFW if the f word could get you in trouble.—

The Bush administration has a long history of partnering with only the finest in Iraqi leadership. From Rumsfeld’s handshake with Saddam Hussein to giving inner sanctum to secrets-seller Ahmed Chalabi to promoting the credibility-lacking Iyad Allawi, you have to be proud of their record.

—-

Now that I’m thinking about it in the light of day, I think W’s going to get a bounce from the debate. John Kerry came across very much like Lyle Laney in Marge vs. the Monorail (Yes, I was watching season 4 DVDs after the debate):

JK – Well, there’s nothing on earth like a genuine, honest, mult-nation summit.
Pundits – Summit!
JK – What’d I say?
Pundits – (softly) Summit! Summit! Summit! Summit!
George Will – I hear the French have something to hide…
JK – That’s nuts, I’ll have them by MY side…
Bob Novak – Is there a chance your will could bend?
JK – Not on your life my hindu friend….

etc, so on, and so forth. Not slick like Clinton, but slick in a square way.

But I still can’t say anything about W. Too much with the “Mixed Messages” and “Hard Work”. Maybe it just shows that his greatest strength lies in assembling coherent teams, whereas Kerry has shown he’s much better at mastering things all by himself.

I’m not feeling particularly inspired or vicious – like Cyn mentioned, the Debate pretty much left me ashamed that those were the finest two people America could offer. So I’m cleaning out my list of random topics:

——

Favorite column recently – PJ O’Rourke on “Why Americans Hate Foreign Policy”:

“Please, no nation-building,” said Major Tom. “We’re the Army. We kill people and break things. They didn’t teach nation-building in infantry school.”

Or in journalism school, either. The night before I left to cover the Iraq war, I got drunk with another friend, who works in TV news. We were talking about how – as an approach to national security – invading Iraq was… different.

I’d moved my family from Washington to New Hampshire. My friend was considering getting his family out of New York. “Don’t you hope,” my friend said, “that all this has been thought through by someone who is smarter than we are?”

It is, however, a universal tenet of democracy that no one is.

Quixote, that is –

Another reason to fear e-voting – it’s yet another reason elections of the future will be fought in court, not at the ballot box.

And in a post-recount world, the campaigns themselves will be devoting more attention than ever to making sure votes for their candidates count. On Tuesday, the Kerry-Edwards 2004 campaign announced it would begin raising funds for a potential recount situation, pointing out that the Bush campaign spent $14 million during the Florida recount in 2000 while the Gore campaign spent just $3.2 million.

“Our campaign is already considering our options should John Kerry or George Bush pursue a recount like the famous Florida ballot dispute of 2000,” wrote Kerry campaign manager Mary Beth Cahill in a press release.

Republicans will also have attorneys waiting to challenge voting results should problems be reported. “Attorneys are always present in any election these days,” said Mary Tucker Fletcher, spokeswoman for the Republican Party of Florida.

Sancho, your ripost?