After Ann Lewis and Donna Brazile got through slapping around Novak and some blond Republican woman, Novak made a startling claim that John Kerry's position on gay marriage "wasn't going to satisfy the gay lobby". Um, Bob? If the GOP's position on the Democrats is that they're "not gay enough"...the Republican party is in serious trouble. Next week they'll be claiming that John Kerry hates African-Americans. Or latinos. Or smart people.

Hey, you guys over at wso! I know I may have had a somewhat combative relationship with you a few years ago, but you know what? Stop trying to prevent me from hacking into the facebook. I beat you once awhile back. Then you wised up and locked out my access that way. So I devised a more ingenious way. So you wised up a few months ago and killed that. Well, I just hacked it with a third way. Moral: stop trying to prevent people like me from getting to the facebook. I'm not stalking people. I'm not downloading images. But if some punk eph is going to be sharing a cubicle with me, I want to see what they look like. And I'm going to be able to, whether you want me to or not. So stop with the craziness.

The administration is grasping at straws to slow their decline. Hence, a little wingnuttery is starting to creep up. If this is the best they can do, they're in serious trouble.

Did I mention that consumer confidence plummeted this month? I wonder why...the administration's lies are finally starting to be exposed.

Yes. I'm still sinking.

This doesn't include the shoes, which will push me almost back to the bottom of this chart. Yeah, I'm not joking. Must...find...source for funds.

The briefing is still going on. It's fairly good. Not great, but so far no one is getting any turkee. So I'm happy. And the press corps are starting to get ticked off because quite clearly, the President said he'd release his files. And he hasn't. And McClellan can't spin this at all. He's forced to use a painful dodge.

At this point, the White House could do us all a favor and simply end press briefings completely, because almost no information is getting passed along. They just announced a minute ago that they are going to refuse to answer any questions that have to do with the Presidential campaign, despite it being an election year. The reporters were clearly stunned.

Now they just keep trotting out bogus numbers "we'll cut the deficit in half", etc. that are totally bunk. And with that, the briefing is over. I'll post the link to the transcript when it becomes available.

It's times like this that I like to remind people that regardless of who wins the Democratic nomination, he'll easily beat Bush in November. And he'll make a great president. The Press Corps is finally starting to wake up to that fact as well.

update: the graph looks fairly similar to the nation's finances, in retrospect. More on this in a minute...

The White House Press Briefing just started. Head here to see it since C-SPAN is slacking.

We'll see if anyone earns any turkee. Let us hope not.

Thanks to the folks at The American Prospect, I came across this exchange between Lou "I Hate Immigrants" Dobbs and someone from AEI named James Glassman. The full transcript is also worth reading. Normally I don't like Dobbs' attitude, but the bit cited in TAPPED is actually quite good, and I love the fact that he clearly elucidates the false dichotomy Glassman sets up, namely, that you're either "for" free trade or "against" free trade, with no nuances, where "free trade" means whatever Glassman wants it to mean. Let's roll the tape:

Wow. As a free trade backer, I too have grown somewhat disillusioned with many of the wacky ideas people attach to the noble goal of free trade. Tariffs and subsidies are bad. No question about it. But lowering environmental and worker protections to the lowest common denominator is equally bad. We should be encouraging third world countries to come up to our level, not to sink further down. Kudos to Dobbs for calling Glassman on the idiotic "robust economy" argument. And the odd idea that the manufacturing sector is actually "improving" when it has lost more jobs for more months than any other sector.

Lou's best line comes a little later in the transcript when he says "There's no fool here again, OK, no fool watching, no fool here listening." Nice.

So Friday's credibility gap is actually simply a reflection of reality, namely, these poll results showing that people are starting to wake up.

Now wait a minute, I hear you saying, this poll isn't a credibility gap! It's just the results of one...

Not so, I'd contend, because people engage in groupthink all the time. They think the President is truthful because he sounds truthful. (Condi Rice said on the first and last time I'll ever watch the Today show that the President is "plain spoken" and so must be telling the truth, as if simple speech dictates empirical truth...the philosophical implications are astounding!) And so people go along with him. But if people start to question his truthfulness, he should naturally take pains to tell the truth, right? But the administration moves in the opposite direction each time. Did Bush say he'd release all of his military records? Yes. Simple. Has he done so? No. Should he? Sure.

Just look at what Condi was spinning on Larry King. She's officially off the deep end, along with Dicky C, the VPOTUS. And as Krugman points out once one person says "The Emperor has no clothes on" then everyone starts to realize its true. That's what's starting to happen today.

So I snagged some new shoes yesterday, leaving me with a decent amount of liquidity but some serious long term debt issues, especially in light of the fact that I'm probably going to have to break down and purchase a new computer for the first time in eight years. Kind of like the government, eh?

And no, I'm not going to snag some souped up box with a water-cooled peltier block so that I can overclock the latest AMD64 up to an ungodly speed. It's simply too expensive. I will probably break down and snag an lcd instead of crt, but only because someone managed to put together a 21 inch model with sub 16ms response time. If you don't know what that means, ignore it. I just want some box that I can load stuff on, surf the web, write some and maybe, for the first time in a decade, play some computer games. Yes, it's been that long. Scary.

And I forgot to mention in yesterday's credibility gap the most amusing part of Condi Rice's bizarre explanation for Bush protecting Pakistan...as I'm watching her spin mercilessly, I realize that life has really become more like 24! Rogue nuclear weapons and virii (Ricin, anyone?) are floating around, Presidential Pardons are being traded in exchange for protection. All we need is Dick Cheney to have a "heart attack" and the soap opera transition would be complete.

So today's credibility gap comes in two parts. The first is simply an observation I made yesterday while watching our joke of an NSA advisor, Condi "I don't read everything on my desk" Rice explain America's position towards Pakistan's pardon of A.Q. Khan, namely, that we value Pakistan as an ally.

Hmm. Maybe Bush went a little father in his non-proliferation speech? No, I guess not.

Let me be blunt: Khan was personally responsible for selling nuclear secrets to multiple countries we have publically stated are threats to peace. Yes, Musharraf was in a tight spot about pardoning Khan. But we are in no such spot. In fact, the harder we vocalized our opposition to the pardon, the easier Musharraf would be able to counter the protests from the right in Pakistan.

Imagine if Einstein had taken the secrets of the A-bomb and sold them to the Russians...yeah, we all loved Einstein, but we would've thrown him in jail anyway, even if he had apologized. And why does this administration keep bowing to the wishes of non-democracies anyway? A person can be beloved by millions and still threaten world peace. And we should have the guts to say so.

The second item, of course, is that the White House released some dental records in an idiotic attempt to quell the AWOL controversy. Why idiotic? Because they could just release everything as the POTUS said himself on Sunday and end all the speculation.

Just another bit in the credibility gap.

I hate when people point out "hey you cut yourself shaving" as if there was some appropriate response, you know, like "oh, did I?" or "no, that's just ketchup" or even "damn, I'm a hemophiliac...you just saved my life!" Regardless, it's annoying. It's not like the useful lines "you have lipstick on your teeth" or "your fly is unzipped" which can be corrected painlessly. And let's be honest: if you were unaware that you cut yourself shaving, perhaps you need to focus a little harder in the morning. More likely, you swore for a few minutes and then gave up trying to fix the situation. Hypothetically speaking of course.

And my hair looks crazy today. And I need to snag some new shoes. Altogether a bad way to begin.

So the DC government manages to post a record surplus for the 7th year in a row. Good, right? Well, one of the few Republicans on the council thinks it's not good. Why? Well, he thinks taxes are too high and should be cut to reflect the surplus. Doesn't this strike people as odd? Whenever there's a surplus, the GOP says to cut taxes. Whenever there's a deficit, the GOP says to cut taxes. Is it any wonder fiscal conservatives are more at home with Democrats?

As someone who remembers the old DC, this new, financially sound district is a huge boon for business and ordinary citizens. Yeah, maybe liquor taxes are high, but you know what? I feel safer walking on the street, and I can see new houses being build and old ones being renovated everywhere I walk in the city. Though the rest of the country is limping through the jobless recovery, DC is doing quite well, thanks to the prescient financial steps taken by the city CFO. The GOP should sit down, and shut up.

As usual, in today's White House Press Briefing, Scott McClellan implicity slammed the district despite a news report saying that the US is violating its own treaty obligations by keeping DC residents from having representation in Congress.

The AWOL stuff continued to heat up, with no new revelations, but continued stonewalling from the White House. Apparently, despite Bush saying he'd turn over everything, everything doesn't mean "everything" to the White House. It means "a few payroll records" and that's it. Idiots. They're way behind the curve now...

I've got to remember to either set my TiVo to record it or actually watch the Daily Show more often. Moments like this one are too priceless to miss.

So what's the credibility gap for today? Well, wonder no more: it's about Bush going AWOL for his National Guard duty. From the Dallas Morning News (free but registration requireed!) comes this article explaining how Bush's records were destroyed.

The White House released records Tuesday to buttress the president's assertion that he fulfilled his military duty during the Vietnam War, but it faced new questions about whether George W. Bush's file was altered before his 2000 presidential race.

Retired National Guard Lt. Col. Bill Burkett said Tuesday that in 1997, then-Gov. Bush's chief of staff, Joe Allbaugh, told the National Guard chief to get the Bush file and make certain "there's not anything there that will embarrass the governor."

Col. Burkett said that a few days later at Camp Mabry in Austin, he saw Mr. Bush's file and documents from it discarded in a trash can. He said he recognized the documents as retirement point summaries and pay forms.

Bush aides denied any destruction of records in Mr. Bush's personnel file. "The charges are just flat-out not true," said Dan Bartlett, White House communications director.

That's the problem with a credibility gap, namely, that if you cry wolf too often, people will start to doubt you when you issue blanket denials instead of actual evidence. Which brings to mind this key moment from Meet The Press on Sunday:

Russert: The Boston Globe and the Associated Press have gone through some of the records and said there’s no evidence that you reported to duty in Alabama during the summer and fall of 1972.

President Bush: Yeah, they’re — they're just wrong. There may be no evidence, but I did report; otherwise, I wouldn't have been honorably discharged. In other words, you don't just say "I did something" without there being verification. Military doesn't work that way. I got an honorable discharge, and I did show up in Alabama.

The old "there may be no evidence, but I did report" line has to stand out as the second worst line from the interview behind his moment quoting David Kay as saying "In many ways Iraq was more dangerous than we thought" to which I can only reply, huh? Does anyone actually believe we underestimated the threat from Iraq? Anyone? Other than the POTUS? Where is this president coming from? His lies are no so unbelievable it is becoming difficult not to laugh when he opens his mouth.

As I mentioned before, the new operative words for Democrats need to be: Credibility Gap. Why? Well, because Bush clearly has a problem telling the truth. He says one thing and does another. So from now on, I'm going to try to mention the Bush credibility gap at least once a day, along with the requisite link to www.whitehouse.gov to ensure a nice google result. So get out there and point something out each day, and be sure to link the words to the white house. That's where the lies come from, remember.

I don't normally write thank you notes to people, but I have to write one now for this guy at AT&T Wireless who put in the time and got my account credited. He went through several layers of bureacracy, doing everything he could to get the situation resolved and he triumphed. A real professional. It's strange that I've become so accustomed to "the customer is always wrong" that when the opposite emerges, it's a great feeling.

Oh, and based on the cancellation of some fundraisers tomorrow, it looks like Clark will be pulling out tonight or very soon. Did I forget to post the exit polls? I did:

• Tennessee: Kerry 46, Edwards 28, Clark 15, Dean 7
• Virginia: Kerry 48, Edwards 25, Clark 11, Dean 8

Kerry is running away with it. Edwards will stay in, as will Dean. If Sharpton and Kucinich dropped out with Clark (they won't, but should) we'd actually have the perfect three messengers to communicate Dem values to the people: a doctor, a lawyer and a decorated veteran. Bush would lose even more ground through the primaries with that triumvirate bashing him daily.

It's a good thing America loves oil, because it's about to go up in price thanks to OPEC. What happened to all that delicious Iraqi oil?

Scott McClellan is getting his ass kicked. Almost an hour of solid AWOL questions from the White House Press Corps before they even began asking about Valerie Plame and the CIA leaks. Probably the best press briefing I've seen this year. The wheels are coming off and you know what the new Democratic talking points will be?

Credibility Gap

Put simply, there is a huge gap between what this President says, whether it's "I want to find the leakers" or "I served my country" or "Iraq had WMD" and what the reality is. And the people are starting to notice.

I'll put up the transcript as soon as it's done.

C-SPAN just pulled away to cover a Pentagon briefing. Idiots. Isn't this what C-SPAN3 is for? I love C-SPAN, but that's inexcusable.

So, sad to say, the bebop love ran out Monday night. It was a good run, all things considered. A bittersweet end, to be sure, but in case you forgot on this bright blue-skied morning: life is pain. An infinite wave oscillating between minor disappointments and major tragedies. The trick, in the end, is to somehow avoid most of the tragedies and to chalk up the disappointments to unrelated events. A smaller, though similar corollary is: love is pain. Anything you invest time will, given a long enough timeline, come back to haunt you. The trick here, however, is to either grow disillusioned over a slow enough period of time that the change is imperceptible, or to hold onto the pain as some sort of significant event, slowly allowing time to work its magic.

Either way, you've got to know when to fold 'em. And when to run.

And no, my day is going great. I'm about to get some tasty lunch and then watch the sure-to-be-entertaining White House press briefing on C-SPAN 2 at 12:30. The gaggle this morning was crazy so I'm expecting a bunch of on-camera theatrics. Be sure to tune in.

Since I'm still on hold...

Have fun enjoying the administration's wacky employment numbers. They are predicting we'll gain over 470,000 jobs every month this year. When we only gained 200,000 all of last year!

Pass the crack, guys. Because you must be hittin' the pipe hard.

Just for the record, though, it is kind of nice to have a real, live person cut into the musak every few minutes to apologize profusely for making me wait. Whoever the lower-level rep is, she's got the right attitude. We'll see if it's all an elaborate ploy to screw me later.

Did I mention that if my "cancel service" took place 30 days later than it did there would've been no charge? Yeah. Of course, no one pointed out to me over the past 4 years that there was any contract lasting that long...or being renewed, et cetera.

So I switched wireless carriers. I've been with AT&T since 2000. So I was surprised to find a "early termination fee" tacked to my AT&T bill this month. I was expecting my final bill and nothing more. I've now been on the phone for an hour talking to a representative who keeps putting me on hold every five minutes to talk with someone else.

Grr. Not the way I wanted to end my Monday. And the fun isn't over yet. You'd think they'd respect someone who'd been a customer for so long.

That's right, the amusing commercial during the superbowl has its own website. You really have to check out the entire site to believe it. A great way to burn ten minutes of time.

I saw it. I didn't think Bush performed as badly as the GOP stalwarts did. But he came across as particularly clueless. He managed his time well, with Russert not getting in any good shots, but he didn't have any great lines. When he said things like "I'm a war president" it sounded forced. His worst moment came here:

Russert: In light of not finding the weapons of mass destruction, do you believe the war in Iraq is a war of choice or a war of necessity?

President Bush: I think that's an interesting question. Please elaborate on that a little bit. A war of choice or a war of necessity? It's a war of necessity.

You could just see someone behind Russert holding up a cue-card saying "war of NECESSITY!!" Very awkward. Here's the transcript. It's a hoot. But the sad fact is that Bush just isn't good with interviews. And on every single point, Russert made it look as if the country was going in the wrong direction: Iraq = bad; Deficit = bad; Economy = bad; AWOL = bad.

And speaking of AWOL, Calpundit managed to get some really cool news about the mysterious torn document. It appears that Bush actually got transferred to a disciplinary unit for his lack of attendance. They're called ARF for "Air Reserve Forces" and apparently when you don't show up for National Guard duty, you get assigned to ARF rather than thrown in jail for most instances. This is looking very, very bad for Bush. He got assigned to a paper-pushing ARF unit in Denver instead of serving in Vietnam. Not because he objected to the war. Because he was too damn lazy to show up for his physical. When tons of people were dying, this is the worst excuse I've ever heard.

By the way, Firefox came out today. I just downloaded it and I'm firing it up now. Hopefully it'll use a novel thought control system. Oh, wait. I'd have to think in Russian, now wouldn't I?

Regardless, it's a much better nomenclaure than Firebird. The MiG-31 was supposed to be super-fast, and so is Mozilla Firefox! Hopefully they won't change the name again. We'll see.

My computer at the 'werkz is broken. (Hence, no weekend posting.) This happens every six months or so and I have to kick it to get it started again. Unfortunately, this time, it sounds like one of the hard drives is out of alignment. Over the past 8 years, I've been through 4 hard drives and a bunch of blood and sweat. Although it'd be cool to make it an even decade, I may have to break down and purchase a new box. All I need is the cash...