"Not to mention that Barack would never know how to split one of those Bloomberg Onions."

Three quick swings. Maya's doing great - thriving, learning small engine repair, saving small spiders whenever her Mom freaks out at their presence. But a comment from yesterday must be preserved. Maya loves the FoodNetwork. LOVES it. Her standard line in the kitchen is "let's watch a cook" just before she gets up on the counter and messes with whatever sort of actual prep I've got underway. I try to then mute the commercials, partly because Maya always says "I want to watch another cook" and partly because I hate capitalism amidst food porn purism. Yet the point of the story was a small window of commercialism that Maya caught and the follow up. A GEICO commercial. Maya's reaction as I turned away from the cutting board - "I didn't know lizards could talk?" My reaction - "well, it's actually a gecko and if you helped Daddy more around the house, they might." This morning, Maya detailed the Volvo.

Worst political story of the day - Mark Penn (that horrendous bag of glop that had been Hillary's top strategist and solitary pollster) has given a must read interview to GQ. Must read if you must read every piece of crap out there trying to justify incredible hulking incompetence. Penn's main point - he wanted to attack Obama before it wasn't cool. Oh, and I think he also said that Katrina and vagina rhymed and should be used in a campaign song. That guy's BRILLIANT!

Turdly, nobody can doubt the import of the Supremes ruling today that Gitmo detainees can appeal via American civilian courts. Chief Justice Roberts has shown just what sort of jib he's got on under his robes (hint: worst lynching costume EVER). And Justice Kennedy continues to delicately parade his transformation (hint: we still have some laws on the books, right?). Fascinating scrum. I'd love to hang out with David Brooks at Applebee's and discuss it all over a working class plate of greens sometime soon.

Hope your own salad bar today is heavy on the bar, light on the salad. Rock on.

When Ayad Allawi's the funniest man in the conversation, we're so totally screwed...

A quickie reference to the NYTimes Op/Ed page today. Which was a fairly sickening distillation of everything our current political reality represents in a single page. Paul Krugman rightly eviscerated Rudy Guiliani - in this case regarding his fear-mongering on, of all viable possibilities, health care options. David Brooks wrote the least funny piece possible regarding the Dems debate earlier this week. And Ayad Allawi (assuredly ghost-written by shameless shill and former Bushie Deputy National Security Adviser Robert Blackwill) railed against elections. In Iraq. Cough. There are thousands of take-aways from this trifecta. Do yourself a favor and search for your own. You owe it to the cocktail parties you'll hopefully attend this weekend.

Hope your own jokes today are eons better than the umpfrickinteenth reference to John Edwards' hair or Joe Biden's verbosity. Rock on.