The Rake Magazine

And now for the good news you're paying for...

The Pentagon is letting a bid for $20 million to hire a public relations firm to help it improve the coverage of our performance in the Iraq War.

For some reason, they don't seem to like what the independent press has been saying about what's going on there.

I could tell them how to get some better press for free. Admit your mistake and get out of Iraq. But that would involve telling the truth and nobody could charge so much for that.

Never mind Osama, here's Neville

When I was in eighth grade, there was a question on my American History final exam that read, "Who was the person most responsible for starting World War II?" The answer the teacher was looking for was, of course, Adolf Hitler. I wrote Neville Chamberlain.

If Don Rumsfeld had been grading it instead of Mr. Peters, I'd have got it right.

In Salt Lake City yesterday, Rumsfeld called all of us who oppose the war in Iraq, in effect, "Chamberlains".

If that's right, I guess Rummy must think of himself as Winston Churchill, who did, after all, have it completely right about Hitler while Chamberlain was acquiesing while Germany took over Czechoslovakia in 1938.

Of course, when Churchill did come to power, he didn't advocate starting a war with, say, Equador, to name one country which had nothing to do with attacking Czechoslovakia or Poland.

Franklin Roosevelt, on December 8, 1941, didn't call for a declaration of war against Mexico after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor.

It's as if Rummy got the same question I did: "Who was the person most responsible for starting the current war?" and he got it totally wrong, too.

I came to America so I could be free to read whatever I wanted

Remember Elian Gonzalez?

I remember him mostly for how crazy they are in Miami about the whole Cuba thing...and how any politician who hopes to make it in Florida better keep that in mind.

Today on NPR, there's a story about the Miami-Dade School Board and their attempt to ban a book called Vamos a Cuba, (Let's go to Cuba) which is aimed at second graders and somehow neglects to mention to all the second grade students of international relations just how brutal the Castro regime is.

I think the book should be edited before it is put back on the Miami grade school library shelves. I want the book to contain plenty of examples of just how terrible Castro is, including the fact that he probably bans some books that don't mirror his politics.

That will teach those Miami kids.

Show me the money

Imagine the inner conflict.

You've spent the last few months trying to convince Minnesota voters that you aren't the Bush administration's lap dog, despite voting with them 97 percent of the time.

You are, despite the overwhelming evidence of the past few years that lying to the voters is a great strategy, still lagging 20 points in the polls to Amy Klobuchar.

You know, if I'm going to get the lies about my record of being Bush's boy to the maximum number of people, I'm going to need more money.

You decide to cancel your scheduled speech at the University to stand next to Bush when he comes to town to raise money today.

You realize, you'll have to stand with the guy you are trying to tell the people you don't always stand with.

You say to yourself, just another day in the life of a politician.

W, you're a much better lover than Hadassah

"If we just pick up like Ned Lamont wants us to do, get out by a date certain, it will be taken as a tremendous victory by the same people who wanted to blow up these planes in this plot hatched in England," Mr. Lieberman said at a campaign event in Waterbury, Conn.

This via the NY Times this morning, from a stump speech made yesterday by Joe "Swift Boat" Lieberman yesterday.

Just remember: those of you who think that the Iraq war was wrong may as well carry those bottles of explosive shampoo on the plane yourselves, because you are helping the terrorists. All you majority of Americans who hate America, don't forget to vote for Democrats, because, well, isn't it clear by now? They hate America, too.

Does anyone else find it strange that those who claim the terrorists hate us because of our freedom get so upset when we exercise some of that freedom to turn out one of the idiots who got us into this mess?