Things on TV got crazy this week, right from the onset. Ed Meese and the name of his legacy were thrown around by the talking heads on TV like sock puppets when the 24 hour networks needed something to compare against the most recent Alberto Gonzales fiasco. It was like watching the history books of the next generation be written except that some geek was holding the pen. Tragic.

El Presidente continued his familiar scurry for reason in an ocean of madness, trying to affirm what a fantastic job the Justice Department is doing by managing US Attorneys based on crony-ism. It reeked of Michael Brown and Harriet Meyers and he knew it but what else could he do? The man doesn’t have a leg to stand on.

Later, things got ugly when Karl Rove was implicated in the Valerie Plame affair for the first time (officially) and Condi Rice found herself on the receiving end of the taunts and ugly faces of the President of Egypt (who is, in fact, not a bad looking guy). He threw her out of his country for trying to meddle in their affairs, which is, in retrospect, a very American thing, isn’t it?

People are starting to see that for the GOP, there will be no resurrection; the cavalry is not coming. In fact, the cavalry is heading out to Syria where Nanci Pelosi, self made Colonel of the voice of the people, decided to bypass the joke that the administration has been trying to pass off as a foreign policy. It was little more than a photo op, except that it was a statement to the the GOP and at least, people, at least someone heard it. The Bush machine was PISSED but now they have no muscle to flex.

It’s a strange time: Al Gore is showing his face in Congress for the first time since the democratic disaster of 2000, shouting words of global warming and denying rumors of a run for the presidency. Nobody believes him and most are begging him to squash Hillary Clinton before she fucks over the Democrats’ best hopes of actually winning a decent election in a decade.

Meanwhile, Michael Bolton went on the Daily Show to make an ape of himself and embarrassed anyone right of Joe Lieberman. He tried to argue about the basics of democratic theory with one of the major intellects of our time. Admittedly, watching him argue about Abraham Lincoln with Jon Stewart was like attempting to shoot down an F-22 with a potato gun. The man was a sitting contradiction whenever he spoke. I guess the best that could be said of Bolton is that at least he was cognizant enough to turn red whenever he said something ridiculous, which was often. This is more than can be said for the rest of the faces in his party, thought that might be because his face is such a contrast to his white mustache. In any case, we can speculate that he only knows he’s saying something ridiculous because the studio audience pointed and laughed whenever his mustache moved. Jon Stuart managed to present a respectable discussion table but all Bolton did was give him pieces of nonsense while his mustache did strange things on TV. At times it seemed as if he was trying his damnedest to make sense but instead uttered nothing and was laughed off the set while Jon giggled like a giddy child sitting at the teacher’s desk.

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Did we never outgrow this madness? Were not these same jerks and idiots running the place in the 80′s when the slime got really filthy? Did we not learn single thing from the failure of the Regan Revolution and the creepy little hands of Ollie North and Ed Meese? Did we really vote in the same people who should’ve been sent to jail in 1987?

My god.

It’s just as well, though. The day is strange enough, and now at least it makes sense why…

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Kurt Vonnegut died today. Everyone within arm’s reach of a blog has been writing “so it goes.” Appropriate for the masses that loved his work, I guess.

But there’s a somber mood about it, something that reeks of sadness, and if this is the case, it’s NOT appropriate. Kurt Jr. loved life and all its farting around but he also despised the confinement. Typical of a writer, true, and not unexpected. But we’re talking about a man who’s best reason for not committing suicide wasn’t that he botched it the first time he tried it, but that it wouldn’t be setting a good example for his kids. Kind words, as far as that goes.

We’re talking about a man who wanted to sue the tobacco companies because they write on their boxes that their product kills and yet, 90 cigarettes a day for 30 years, and he was still here. What a sham.

Though in defense of the tobacco companies, it’s not like we can’t expect survival from a man whose mother committed suicide just before he lived through the apparently senseless bombing of Dresden inside of a meat locker only to escape in his own writings with the help of Tralfamadorians. Oh, and sleeping pills and alcohol too. Seriously; the man was like an Olympic torch. Ultimately it took a bad fall and brain injuries to shake loose the mortal coil.

He used to say that Hemingway’s suicide really put a period at the end of his life but that old age was going to be more of a semi-colon. Oh well — an ellipsis will have to do, old man…

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… ahh hell – so it goes.