Back From The Holiday

Thankful that my father has made a remarkable rebound from ill health, through modern medication and the attention and care of a fabulous woman - his wife. Enjoyed the trip down to Richmond and back with my brother (appreciating the state troopers hard at work and in force this post-holiday, and picking on other motorists than ourselves), and, after having only now gotten used to his mug, am very sorry to see him off to Massachusetts tomorrow and for good.

And I'm thankful for having had the agreeable break from the daily routine, including hours in front of the computer (instead of, say, reclining on the chaise reading an honest-to-gahd newspaper); just long enough to google Akeem Olajuwon as having been drafted #1 in '84, just before Sam Bowie and then Michael Jordan at Nos. 2 & 3 respectively. I had mistakenly contended Bowie went first and Jordan 2nd, while the man now called Hakeem was taken in another draft altogether. I dunno, maybe I was thinking Ryan Leaf and Peyton Manning.

Like, glad I didn't wager.

Anyway, came back this morning in time to go on duty at noon. Just finished my shift and am now browsing the links. (P.S. My work reminds me of something I am most unrepentantly not thankful for: idiots who lard their voice-mail reception with ever longer cuts of ear-splitting music, as though we reeeeeeeally want to hear a minute-&-1/2 of Dr. Dre thru an ear phone not designed for music and by way of a sporadic satellite signal. Look, I don't even wanna hear Ella that way, okay? And too many people do it. Whatever happened to "Please leave a message... [beeep]"?

Anyway, back to the back to the...

Here's Sidney Blumenthal hitting another home run:

The hallmark of the Dick Cheney administration is its illegitimacy. Its essential method is bypassing established lines of authority; its goal is the concentration of unaccountable presidential power. When it matters, the regular operations of the CIA, Defense Department and State Department have been sidelined.

Richard Nixon is the model, but with modifications. In the Nixon administration, the president was the prime mover, present at the creation of his own options, attentive to detail, and conscious of their consequences. In the Cheney administration, the president is volatile but passive, firm but malleable, presiding but absent. Once his complicity has been arranged, a closely held "cabal" -- as Lawrence Wilkerson, once chief of staff to former Secretary of State Colin Powell, calls it -- wields control.

Let's not overstate it: Dick Cheney is a fiend, a most vile and foul example of its species. Or if you prefer the reality-based terminology: a fucking war criminal! In a poetically just world, his arrest, trial in a world court, conviction and punishment would be meted out summarily and with extreme prejudice.

During the process of which, the world court would give Dubya, for turning state's evidence (the lousy snitch!), the lesser of the two sentences: Life with no chance of parole, and with an unhygenic cellmate nicknamed "The Pecker," a former Ultimate Fighter who'd find himself disqualified from the '07 finals and banned from the circuit for repeatedly applying unnatural and imperically distasteful holds on his opponents.