Things that make you go, 'Hmmm.'

Or, more fully: Things that make you go, 'Hmm. Maybe it's time to think about building a bomb shelter in the backyard:

BBC NEWS | Middle East | Iran 'attacks Iraq Kurdish area'

Josh Marshall et al. with more: See It Now (Best quote from Josh: To the president the Democrats should be saying, 'Double or Nothing,' is Not a Foreign Policy.)

Not that GWB needs another reason. No doubt tomorrow he'll be out on the lawn leaning on his little music-stand podium telling us that, 'invading Iraq, or any sovereign country, is just plain wrong. Nations shouldn't invade other nations, so we're keeping all our options on the table, including invasion of Iran.'

It would be hilarious if it were a film David Mamet had written in 29 days. Unfortunately this is real life.

Away team, set your sabers to 'rattle.'

Engage.

--Late Update-- Scuttlebutt about the BBC article on various comment boards is that it's actually the turks who've been bombing the Kurds, and that the Iran story was trumped up by Iraq's new 'American puppet' government to give one more reason for US action against Iran. No way to know for sure, but if the administration does start making alot of noise about this today and tomorrow, the conspiracists might be right.

So it has come to this

It takes a Comedy Central star, a pretend pundit, to speak truth to power, and power doesn't like it.

Colbert Lampoons Bush at Dinner, President Does Not Seem Amused

Bush expects everyone to laugh at his mean spirited jokes to the press, (e.g. He won't hire Dave Gregory, or His cheap shot when introducing Tony Snow to the press corps,) but he sits stone faced, unable to 'take it' when it's Colbert's turn to 'dish it out.' The basest kind of personal hypocrisy, and why should anyone be surprised, really?

Well, we liked it. In fact, we'd have to say Colbert is our favorite right-winger.

--Late Update-- Crooks and Liars, appropriately enough, has made the video available. See It Now

Shoulda Won the Chapionship, Reggie.

By the time anyone wakes up and reads this it won't really be news anymore, but we can now report that Reggie Bush will not be the #1 pick in the NFL draft.

ESPN.com - 2006 NFL Draft Index

Thus ends the only 'excitement' that draft day could have provided.

It's a solid lock, in our lay opinion, that the Texans will regret it next January as they sit at home and watch Reggie in the playoffs. Unless Texans lack the capacity for regret.

Great Grandmas

But isn't war protesting supposed to be the sole domain of stupid hippie kids?

Setting Grandmotherhood Aside, Judge Lets 18 Go in Peace - New York Times

5 Dems with Balls? And one of them a woman?

Damn. We would never have thought that congressional democrats believed in anything enough to get arrested for it. Kudos and the inside track on the '06 Standys go to Lantos, McGovern, Olver (sic?) S.J. Lee and Moran for showing the courage of their arrests, if not convictions, at a protest outside the Sudanese Embassy today.

5 Lawmakers Arrested at Darfur Protest - Yahoo! News

Tuesdays with outrage

We've mentioned in these pages before that it is hard for us to work up the same outrage we used to feel toward the president and the GOP congress, since their outrageous moves are so regular nowadays as to be predictable. We still rarely like anything the president has to say, and almost never anything he actually does, but we've settled into a pattern of low burning ire, and watching Countdown with Keith Olbermann helps us count down the last 1,000 days of the Bush administration while generally keeping our cool.

But just as in basketball, you've gotta watch away from the ball, because that's where the most egregious fouls can happen. Mitch Albom picks up our story from there:

MITCH ALBOM: Hate has no place at a soldier's funeral

Did you read it? If not go and do.

We can't even focus our rage right now enough to comment, so we're going to leave this up and hope it gets a few comments, and then the Standing Eight Standing Army is going to figure out what to do about these idiots. Somehow it's not satisfying to know they'll end up in hell. We need to figure out what to do to make their lives on Earth hell. Please help us with ideas for action. We cannot let these bastards win, and we cannot let them even think that they are winning. Phone Jamming, Calling the IRS on them, Something must be done.

-To be continued, trust us.-

But will it get the mole out of my front yard?

Actually that's probably not the point of this article. Rather, we think the point is that the recent (last 5-7 years,) surge in whale beachings does not indicate that whales are stupid, it rather indicates that we are stupidly, or at least callously interfering in their domain to their detriment, and by 'we,' lest you think we mean the whole human race, we mean the US Navy.

Sonar Called Likely Stranding Cause

(We still love the Navy, mind you, just not as much as we love the planet.)

What if they held a press conference, and nobody came?

Priceless photo of Hastert getting out of the hybrid he rode to a press conference only a few hundred yards from the site, and into a nice big Chevy Earth-Killer, aka Suburban. Perhaps to Denny and his pals, the 'hy' in hybrid stands for 'hy'pocrisy.

See It Now

(Why does 'priceless' mean infinitely valuable, but 'worthless' mean of no value whatsoever? And what would 'costless' mean? And why is it so fun to point out Republican hypocrisy, when it's also so easy?)

Thank God the GOP won't regulate

Sago mine disaster could have been avoided, but it would have required the expenditure of (gasp) money, which would have (gasp) diminished their profit margins.

Mine Survivor Says Air Packs Didn't Work - Yahoo! News

(some fairly graphic detail in this article, but worth the read.)

You're Reporters, We'll Decide

McClellan asked by VadeHai if there is an official White House/AF1 policy that TV's must be tuned to Fox, courtesy of the Atlanta Journal Constitution, by way of HuffPo.

See It Now

Still, it's reassuring to know that the head in the sand attitude is a top down thing, like the disrespecting the troops thing and the ignoring the constitution thing.

Who Reads Political Blogs?

Political Wire: Who Reads Political Blogs?

See how your own personal demographics compare with those of the group you are currently an active member of.

One more reason we invaded the wrong country:

We would never link to a UPI story under normal circumstances, but when this is the lede, you gotta spread the news (italics ours):

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia, April 26 (UPI) -- Saudi Arabia released 500 al-Qaida sympathizers after they underwent religious counseling to bring them back to the moderate path of Islam.

See It Now

While we sympathize with the anti war movement, Standing Eight would, with a gun to it's head, ha ha, align itself more with the anti-wrong-war movement. In fact, had Bush decided to handle Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia instead of Afghanistan and Iraq, there probably wouldn't even be a Standing Eight, since railing against Bush is our stock-in-trade, and we would not rail against doing something about Saudi Arabia.

And what is even considered moderation in Saudi Arabia? "Death to Israel and a very bad case of pneumonia to America!!! God is Great!!!"

Yeah, we feel safer already.

(We don't mean to imply with our little joke about moderation in Saudi Arabia that muslims can't be moderate, we are very pleased to know a few moderate muslims, and even a few liberal ones. It's just that none of them are from Saudi Arabia.)

This Cannot Be Good

For persons who think the Iraqi Civil War is not yet underway, most of whom probably don't read Standing Eight:

Shiite Militias Move Into Oil-Rich Kirkuk, Even as Kurds Dig In

Our own experience of early '03 should teach us that once large groups of military (or paramilitary as the case may be,) personnel deploy to a place , it's hard-to-impossible to get them back without fighting.

Of course, that's all moot if, like Standing Eight, you think the Civil War started when that one mosque went boom a while back.

Two Sports Notes

#1: A prediction W/R/T Barry Bonds chasing the Babe:

Having admitted that he is probably not in the physical shape to catch Hank Aaron, we think the likelihood is high that Mr. B. will hit #715 at some point in the near future, walk off the field, into the clubhouse, and disappear forever a la Tom Seaver, never to be heard from again. We are admittedly romantics, and so this prediction comes from what we'd like to see as much as what we think might happen. It would be in keeping with Bonds' contention that the media has ruined his life and that all he wants is to be let alone.

(Sub note: Hank Aaron had to deal with a lot of overt racism as he was chasing Ruth 30 years ago, which should shame all baseball fans, but we at The Eight are even more ashamed of the covert racism Bonds is facing. Many of the fans are using the steroid scandal as an excuse to "root" for Babe Ruth, but we think that in reality, many of these fans are just fat white guys who like the idea that the babe was a fat white guy like them. There, we said it.)

(Sub Sub note: Baseball legend and John Goodman movies remind us that as Ruth was in the 701-714 range, he was falling apart as a body, and famously did not even round the bases for his last few dingers, letting a pinch runner tag all four for him. This is eerily analogous to the grimace we see as Barry rounds the bases now, and we think both of them deserve our thanks for leaving so much of themselves out there on the field for our enjoyment.)

#2: Regarding Keith Hernandez:

It pains us to say this about one of our all-time favorite first basemen, but Keith Hernandez needs to be fired from his Mets broadcasting job in light of his recent comments: See It Now. Why? Because firing Rush Limbaugh from MNF was the right decision and Keith's untoward comment is the same exact thing. Free speech, which Standing Eight are absolute defenders of, does not enter into the picture for sports broadcasters on the job. He's allowed to be biased toward the Mets, but not against anyone, especially any class of people.

How much do we love John Dean?

More than Nixon did, most likely. Here's Dean's latest spot-on analysis of the state of the presidency:

See It Now

It pains us to see, though, that among the "Active/Negative" presidents Dean groups with Bush is Woody Wilson, the official favorite 20th century president of Standing Eight, though we'd be the first to admit how far from perfect he was.

(NB: Dean actually writes for a site called "findlaw" which is where we'd have linked to if we could "find" it.)

Homeland Security Official Arrested - Yahoo! News

You can bet everyone will be talking about this by late-night talkshow time tomorrow.

Homeland Security Official Arrested - Yahoo! News

(Editor's Note: Sorry, if there's anyone out there who noticed or cares, about the low-volume output of late, we've been having a software or OS related posting problem that only recently got answered, and like all good answers, it only led to more questions. We hope to be up and publishing regularly by tax-day.)

Fitzgerald Knew Identity of Leaker From Start

We'll post this RawStory/Truthout article without comment, for now:

Fitzgerald Knew Identity of Leaker From Start