Tony Snow, former Fox and White House talking head, has now spent more than enough time with his family and will join CNN's political team.  Some readers at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution proclaim he will bring a much-needed je ne sais quoi to the ultra-leftist network that offers a home to notorious moonbats Lou Dobbs and Glenn Beck.

They don't use the French, of course; French is only for elitist liberals who like puff pastry and read too much.  Unless they're not voting for Obama, in which case they drink beer and don't read good at all.  But it doesn't matter because everybody knows that only the idiot French and John Kerry speak French.

Anyway, some people say this is good, and some people say it's more of the same, and at least one suggests that Spongebob would also make an excellent addition to "the best political team on television."   Personally, I find that last a bit extreme.  Patrick is clearly the better choice. 

The Bush White House doesn't believe ordinary Americans are entitled to much, if any, privacy: they flag library books for government inquiry into those who read them, they tap wires without warrants, they reserve the right to read our mail and pruriently wonder at what goes on in our bedrooms.  And none of this even comes close to touching the ongoing outrage of suspending habeas corpus and actively promoting torture.

The pattern has become such that one wonders what, if anything, this White House would hold as off-limits.

In terms of off-limits to their own insatiable hunger for absolute power, the answer is obviously "nothing."  Yet the AP reports that, while average citizens are entitled to exceedingly little personal space free from unreasonable search, seizure and subjugation, the White House does believe something sacrosanct - the Secret Service White House visitor logs.   The American people, it seems, are not entitled to know who sees our president, on company-time, in the building which we have generously provided.  Apparently such knowledge would grossly impair the president's ability to "gather advice."  Evidently, public knowledge of the President's visitors would be so damaging to the President that he could no longer have the kinds of visitors he likes to have without people getting all nosy and up-in-his-business and snotty about having stupid things like "rights."

Meh.  Stupid people, wanting to know things like who has direct, personal access to the leader of our country.  Don't they know that's not important?  Not really.  Not as important as anything really important - like muppets.  Or pop-tarts.

"You have a real choice in this election. Either Democrat would be better than John McCain," [Senator Barack] Obama said to cheers from a rowdy crowd in central Pennsylvania. Then he said: "And all three of us would be better than George Bush."  AP, via Google

No.  McCain would not be better than George Bush.  McCain would, perhaps, be even worse - precisely because he's managed to cock up a veneer of credibility that Bush couldn't even dream of at this point, let alone manufacture.  This thin coat of synthetic authenticity would allow McCain to further solidify the authoritarian leanings of the neo-con cabal and to play Al Capone to Bush's John Torrio, a surface Robin Hood with all of the emotional depth of Tony Soprano, doing whatever needs to be done to protect the rackets.

Perhaps What Obama Really Meant^TM was that Senator McCain would be better than Bush at hoodwinking most Americans while actually giving them the finger in a code only the faithful could understand.  That much is likely true, if that is indeed What Obama Really Meant^TM.

I would very much like to claim shock and and incredulity over the New York Times article exposing the links between network military "analysts," the government, and the military-industrial complex.  Really, I would.  I would like to think my government above such things as trading lucrative access for favorable press, and cutting those who offer even the mildest of criticism out of the loop.  I would like to think our corporate news media at least aspired to pretend to hold to the tradition of Murrow and Woodward and those others who risked everything to tell us the truth, instead of those who risk nothing to pander to an increasingly stultified audience.

I would like to believe our news isn't pre-packaged, Americanized for American tastes, freeze-dried crap vomited up on cue by an army of willing slaves, eagerly lining up to thank this administration on behalf of the deluded population and requesting if we might, pretty please, have another.

I'd like that very much.  But then, I'd also like world peace.  So now, as Mom suggested, I shall spit in one hand and wish in the other, and see which one fills up first.