The other night Alan Colmes had on his show a guest who advocated two things: (1) Clean up Air Pollution and (2) Stop Eating.

The reason we should stop eating is because once the air pollution is gone, all the nutrients and nourishments we will get will come from the air we breathe.

So Alan Colmes’s guest was a man who advocated humans to… eat air?

Perhaps I should congratulate the talk show host. If you consider a typical political talk show (and political news coverage in general) as mired in the stifling air of the Washington Beltway…

A review: Neal Horsley. Fred Phelps. The Nazi Libertarian Green Party. The head of some White Supremist Group. A blogger and head of The Radical Communist Party of some sort. An “Eat Clean Air” Advocate.

(I may as well add every neo-conservative right-wing guest Fox News chooses to legitimize… ie: Swift Boat Veterans…)

One full year after publication, and the genius behind Mallard Fillmore discovers (or, as the strips suggest, the fans of said strip discover) a parody in the Jon Stewart America book.

The script to the strip found in the book , as Mallard the Duck wanders a landscape of Capitol Hill, prefixed with something about how a waterfoul is at the cutting edge of modern day political humour:

Panel 1: Liberals want to tie the hands of industry with more environmental regulation.

Panel 2: Why must we punish our most productive citizens with an income tax?

Panel 3: Oops! I forgot to tell a joke!

The Doonsebury “strip” was prefixed with a “Noted for its exceptionally dry humor”, and has 4 panels showing the White House, with a leaf blowing through on the third panel.

Ross Perot asked Stockdale to be nominated as Vice-President on the ticket in March 1992 telling him that he would be placeholder until Perot found a running mate. Stockdale thought that his name would be removed from the ballot when Perot temporarily withdrew from the race.

Perot eventually re-entered the race in the fall of 1992 with Stockdale still in place as the vice-presidential nominee for the Reform Party. Stockdale was not informed that he would be participating in the vice-presidential debate until a week before the event and he had no formal preparation for the debate unlike Al Gore and Dan Quayle. This lack of preparation was highlighted in the Vice-Presidential debate when Stockdale’s opening comments were “Who am I? Why am I here?” Later in the debate, Stockdale asked the moderator to repeat a question because he didn’t have his hearing aid turned on and his performance in the debate was widely criticized.

In a subsequent interview with Jim Lehrer, Stockdale explained that the statements were intended as an introduction of him and his record to the television audience:

“It was terribly frustrating because I remember I started with, ‘Who am I? Why am I here?’ and I never got back to that because there was never an opportunity for me to explain my life to people. It was so different from Quayle and Gore. The four years in solitary confinement in Vietnam, 7½ years in prisons, drop the first bomb that started the … American bombing raid in the North Vietnam. We blew the oil storage tanks of then off the map. And I never – I couldn’t approach — I don’t say it just to brag, but, I mean, my sensitivities are completely different. ”
Perot ran again for President in 1996 but Stockdale had returned to the Republican Party. He supported fellow former POW John McCain in his bid for the 2000 Republican nomination.
………….

Now I know (Stockdale’s name has) become a buzzword in this culture for doddering old man, but let’s look at the record, folks. The guy was the first guy in and the last guy out of Vietnam, a war that many Americans, including our present President, did not want to dirty their hands with.

Somewhere out there Paddy Chayefsky must be laughing his ass off.

— Dennis Miller.

Downtown I see the window displays of Abercrombie and Fitch. A bunch of instant-well worn jeans for your expensive pursual. (Ripped holes were popular in the late 1980s / early 1990s… ala “Thrasher”. Faded and worn in the early to mid 1990s — ala “Grunge”. Anti-fashion as Fashion, and priced fashionably to boot.)

The window displays show their brand identities to “Abercombie and Fitch” models. Particularly striking is this image of a handsome young man… the kind of young Aryan guy that we shall strive for and that everyone will look like as soon as our White Aryan bloodlines are purified.

The thing about this particular model is that he isn’t modelling anything. It’s a photograph of him from his chest up, and he’s not wearing a shirt. What at the store are you supposed to buy because of this guy? I’ll assume that somewhere in the catalouge you will see him wearing something that someone may want to buy, but right now all we have is… the striking White Aryan Brotherhood.

Is my viscarel distaste for Abercombie and Fitch misplaced? I don’t know. Perhaps. But my allies make me squemish here.
Or maybe they don’t.

Should I listen (very occasionally) to Michael Savage for even the perverse entertainment value that he provides? He’s on the edge of political thought in this country, but… you do know these people exist.

“When did the War on Terror Become Bogged down into a War of Liberation in Iraq? We need to march right on through the Sunni Triangle, and onto Iran and Saudi Arabia!”

Conflates away from his rhetoric in March of 2003 and frequently beyond. Saddam Hussein — Brutal Dictator — “We have come not to occupy, but to liberate” (as the old Proclamation from Britain in the 1910s went)…

“Bring the American Muslim Leaders Before a Senate committee and make them sweat a little!”

He did attack Brit Hume’s comments about the investment opportunities to be made from the terrorist attacks, though. But his sentiments about the supposed “Irrelevancies” of African poverty and Global Warming pretty much mirror the whole of Fox News.

Joe Scarborough’s editorial is pretty hilarious.

And rock stars replace grim Cassandras like Bush and Churchill as the prophets of pop culture.

Bush and Churchill? Don’t make me laugh.

I’m not entirely sure how many shows Joe Scarborough devoted to the Michael Jackson Trial, but I do know he devoted show after show after show after show to Terri Schiavo.

These links were pasted here when I accidentally deleted a long post yesterday. They would be relevant to further discussion of what I have said here.

“This bill is just another step down the road to Armageddon. It is time to stand up for the moral principles that made our country great.” — (Oregon State) Sen. Jeff Kruse, R-Roseburg, regarding a Same-Sex Civil Union Bill.

Well then. That’s the talking point??