Well, well. It’s certainly been awhile. I’ve missed you.

Truth is, I had nothing to say. Now I do. So here goes.

The one thing that scares Republicans more than anything else in the world is the thought of a Democrat in the White House. The one thing that scares Democrats more than anything else in the world is the thought of a Democrat they don’t support in the White House.

What’s wrong with this picture? Tell me it’s not true. You know damn well it is.

Read the “progressive” blogs where Barack Obama has practically been anointed the second coming or the feminist blogs where anything less than total support of Hillary Clinton is proof of a misogyny worthy of the most regressive society imaginable.

On the former, Obama can do no wrong while Clinton can do nothing right. For the latter, the reverse is true.

Meanwhile, the Straight Talk Express gets the radioheads and my colleagues in the Mainstream Media to do their dirty work for ‘em. Hey, it works — Radiohead goes all Hussein on Obama, McCain “repudiates” the comments, and my colleagues talk about it for the next week. Mission Accomplished. The bullshit is out there, and it stays out there. Dirty work done by surrogates, St. John’s hands are clean.

And before you accuse my colleagues of Republican bias, let me let you in on a little secret. We’re not biased for anybody. We fall for any good trick of manipulation, and the Republicans are masters. Democrats? Not so much. Democrats don’t have the stomach for it, really. They think all they have to do is tell the truth and the day will be won. Wrong. Ya gotta cheat. And, again, the Republicans are masters.

See this picture of Obama in traditional Somali garb, we’ll say, showing the picture — John McCain says its wrong to use it to denigrate Senator Obama. And Senator McCain also says he won’t be using Obama’s middle name, which is Hussein, to denigrate him either.And we’ll do that for hours, days even.

The targeted voters get the picture, excuse the pun, and we helped.

Sounds pretty obvious, of course, and because of that, it’s no wonder some of you think we’re pro-Republican. But again, that’s not it. Wave a shiny object in front of our faces and we’ll salivate and jump all over it.

At this very moment, some Michael Bloomberg flack has floated the idea of the New York mayor being Obama’s VP pick. Never happen, not in a million years. But that isn’t stopping our pundits from drooling all over the idea, wondering how much money Bloomberg could pour into the campaign and how they’d reconcile their very different views on certain issues.

Earlier, it was the Catholic League’s Bill Donohue demanding that John McCain disavow televangelist John Hagee’s endorsement because of Hagee’s anti-Catholic views. Interestingly, Donohue didn’t appear concerned about Hagee’s anti-gay views, go figure.

Donohue is a shiny object. He squeals, and we give him a microphone. Even if he’s dissing John McCain. And besides, it’s only fair after we covered the heck of the Obama-Farrakhan shiny object.

See, it’s just that the Republicans are better at manipulation than the Democrats. And we really are that stupid.

I’m just beginning to wonder if an awful lot of Democrats aren’t that stupid too. The last time they got all huffy over what “liberal” to support for president, we ended up with eight years of George W. Bush. And don’t blame it on the Supreme Court either — honestly, it never should have been that close.

Once upon a time, when The News Writer was but a young and fiercely militant thing, she believed that The Patriarchy was the root of all evil and that only replacing that hideous thing with a Matriarchy could we correct the wrongs of the world and get down to the business of running it right.

That was probably a simplistic way of looking at the world, although, like any really good idea that isn’t quite there yet, it has some merit. Why not, for example, let women run things for a while? It didn’t kill Israel when Golda Meir was there, nor India when Indira Gandhi ran things, and certainly not Britain with Margaret Thatcher. Germany appears to be doing all right with Angela Merkel, as does Chile with Michelle Bachelet.

We may not agree politically with any of them, or only with some of them, but the point is that there’s no reason in the world to not consider a woman as chief executive of a country.

(And no, The News Writer is not about to endorse Hillary Clinton. She’s not endorsing anyone at this stage of the game.)

We’ve got a woman as House Speaker now, and women in charge of House and Senate committees, and they’re doing quite all right as well. But apparently, some aren’t so happy about it. Ever notice the tendency of white, conservative men to spout off about the women in charge in ways they never would about men?

Paul Waldman did, over at TomPaine.com. He noted Barbara Boxer’s response to James Inhofe’s attempt to control her committee last week, when Al Gore was testifying …

After some back and forth between Inhofe and Gore, the new chair of the committee, Barbara Boxer of California, put a hand on Inhofe’s arm and said, “I want to talk to you a minute, please.” After Boxer suggested that Inhofe give Gore the time to answer his questions, Inhofe replied, “Why don’t we do this: at the end, you [Gore] can have as much time as you want to answer all the questions…” Boxer then interrupted: “No, that isn’t the rule. You’re not making the rules. You used to when you did this,” she said, holding up the chair’s gavel. “Elections have consequences. So I make the rules.”

Boxer spoke with a particular kind of authority: not angry, not loud, but unmistakably firm. There was no doubt who was in charge in that room. You could almost see the steam coming out of Inhofe’s ears, not only because he had been deprived of his power, but because he was deprived of it by a woman. She even held up the gavel, the symbol of that power, and practically taunted him with it. Freud couldn’t have scripted it much better.

And then he noted the response of one Michael Savage to that exchange.

The response in some quarters was unsurprising. Michael Savage, whose hateful rants are reportedly heard by 8 million radio listeners every day, hit the roof. Referring repeatedly to “foul-mouthed, foul-tempered women in high places bossing men around,” he opined that the image of a woman giving a man orders would lead to more terrorist attacks (or something like that—it was a little hard to follow).

Whew. Not good to have all those nasty bitches bossing men around, huh? Sheesh, what will the world come to? A nation full of hen-pecked men who can’t do anything without a woman’s OK?

That’s probably not far from the truth of what folks like Savage are thinking. But Savage is, obviously, an extremist. What say some of the more moderate amongst the white, conservative men? Why, they’re not much better.

MSNBC host Tucker Carlson recently described Hillary Clinton as “castrating, overbearing and scary.” Why Carlson looks at the junior senator from New York and immediately fears for the safety of his testicles might be something he and his therapist should explore, but he’s hardly alone—after the election Chris Matthews wondered on the air if Nancy Pelosi was “going to castrate Steny Hoyer.” And Matthews has gone through a series of man-crushes on politicians whom he sees as super-hunky in their masculine ways. First it was George W. Bush, then John McCain and the current object of Matthews’ affections is Rudy Giuliani. “I think he did a great job,” Matthews said about Giuliani’s tenure in New York. “And I think the country wants a boss like that. You know, a little bit of fascism there.”

Or is that they’re all extremists?

Waldman’s really onto something here, though — that the conservatives are looking for a “super hunky” and “masculine” leader, and obviously, women cannot fit that bill. Not only that, but the way to diss your opposition is to portray them as un-”super hunky” and un-”masculine” — e.g., weak and, well, feminine.

Because feminine, y’see, can’t be strong and vibrant. Can’t be well-spoken or wise. That’s reserved for super hunky masculine guys who could run a war (never mind that most of them avoided military service — or combat service — themselves), something a woman just couldn’t do.

Bet me. It’s just not as likely that a woman would drag us unnecessarily into an unwinnable war and then proclaim it’ll be up to the next president to get us out of it.

But The News Writer thinks, and apparently so does Paul Waldman, that the real problem with these conservatives in search of the super hunky is that they’re just extremely threatened at the prospect of a strong woman, and completely insecure in their own masculinity. That would be why they need the image of the super-hunky to make up for their own fears.

One can’t avoid noticing that as a group, conservative media figures are not exactly secure in their masculinity. Forever promoting war when they avoided military service themselves and doubling over to protect their tender parts every time a strong woman appears on their television screens, it’s no wonder they are so impressed by politicians who may not be real men but know how to present a convincing facsimile of manliness.

Much of the audience that tunes in to the corps of overcompensating pretend macho men is just as insecure about their manhood, ready to cast a manly, masculine vote lest anyone raise an eyebrow at their choice for president. That doesn’t mean that Hillary Clinton—or any female presidential candidate, for that matter—can’t win. But if she goes around holding up any long, firm objects, a lot of guys’ heads might just explode.

And that doesn’t even take into consideration the religious conservative types who think women should be seen and not heard outside the house (or maybe not even seen). That’s a topic for another time.

A woman telephoned a radio call-in show the other night. The show was about the so-called “Lost Tomb of Jesus.” This woman, call her Juanita, because that was her name, told the talk show host and his guests that because the Old and New Testaments both spoke to the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, any talk of finding his bones was “a fairy tale.”

“But,” she went on, “it must be a week for fairy tales, because Al Gore just won an Oscar for a movie about one.”

Your News Writer immediately turned off the radio call-in show, unwilling to hear any more such pronouncements. They just make her sad. Sad, and worried, concerned, frightened, even.

Frightened for our future. There are far too many people out there who think like that … that anything that goes against their beliefs is a fairy tale, not to even be considered with the slightest modicum of seriousness. And so global warming can be dismissed with a joke.

It will be the death of us all, that attitude, that adherence to outmoded and outlandish ideas. In our current day, of course, that attitude is aided and abetted by our Dear Leader, the Boy King George who does not believe in global warming, who believes that creationism is a science, who thinks that his higher father guides him in turning the United States into one of the most reviled nations on the planet.

And his millions of followers go blindly behind him, safe in their convictions that they are right and the rest of the world is wrong, wrong wrong.

But alas, they are the wrong ones. And their insistance that the rest of us follow their way is dangerous. It holds back humanity from its true course of continued growth and change. The News Writer imagines that god, the real god, is as dismayed as she is over this, that somewhere there is a creator/creative intelligence/god that is saddened to see what giving humans free will has done to some segments of this world’s vast population.

But then, The News Writer doesn’t really know the feelings of god, whoever he or she really is. It’s even possible that she is wrong and those she thinks are misguided miscreants are actually in the right, that ability to consider that one is wrong being a prime difference between her and them.

Maybe they are right. It just doesn’t seem possible. Only sad. Very, very sad.

Ask any True Believer and they’ll tell you that’s just not possible. Jesus can’t lie anywhere. He was resurrected and rose to heaven. Right?

Maybe. That’s the real beginnings of “faith” — to take the leap of faith necessary to believe that a man, divine or not, could die and then be resurrected, and then rise whole into heaven. It’s the very basis of modern Christianity (at least the version practiced by most modern-day Christians. Gnostics and others have a different view of the resurrection).

Now comes a Hollywood movie maker who says archaeologists have found Jesus’ tomb — and that of his mother, Mary Magdalene <i>and their son</i>. Shocking. True Believers are jumping to condemn what some say about the tomb discovered in a Jerusalem suburb in 1980, far from the Church of the Sepulchre, where legend has it Jesus was entombed before his resurrection.

The documentary about the find, produced by “Titanic’s” James Cameron, says the tomb actually may have contained the bones of Jesus. But that’s just not possible if the resurrection happened. It’s no wonder the True Believers are responding so quickly to this challenge to the very underpinnings of their beliefs.

Now, in reality, there’s likely no way we can ever know for sure if Jesus and his mother and Mary Magdalene and Judah, son of Jesus, at least the ones the ossuaries found in the tomb cite, are the real Jesus et al. Two thousand years have passed, and there are no known decendants to use for DNA testing that might prove or disprove the claim.

Your News Writer will take no side in this debate. She’s just intrigued by the argument and what it means to one of the world’s leading religions.

The True Believers will immediately dismiss this new claim as impossible, no possibility of being true. And they’ll hand out a few reasons it can’t be true — that Jesus’ family was from Galillee and would not have had a tomb in Jerusalem chief among them. That statement in itself can’t be proven or disproven, of course. But it behooves the TBs to dismiss this, otherwise, they must question their entire faith. And we can’t have that, of course.

But what if it were true? What if Jesus was buried in a tomb, where also lies his mother, father, perhaps a brother, Mary Magdalene … and his son? The question of Jesus’ marriage to Mary Magdalene has been around for centuries too, most recently brought into the spotlight by “The DaVinci Code,” and what a row that started! The very idea struck a blow at the Jesus as Divine view.

But it’s not beyond the pale to think that Jesus, a teacher, a rabbi, if you will, could have been married. It’s not mentioned in the Gospels, of course, but then the Gospels that were saved and put into the canon were just a few among many — and only those that backed up the Roman church’s view of the divinity and resurrection of Jesus were kept. The rest — heresies.

Perhaps Jesus was “a man, just a man,” as Mary Magdalene sings in “Jesus Christ Superstar.” Maybe he died, maybe he was crucified, and buried. Maybe there even was a resurrection, just not of the body he wore during his teaching ministry — the disciples, you may recall, didn’t recognize him after the resurrection; something was surely different.

What would happen to Christianity, though, without the “leap of faith” at its very heart? Could Jesus not have still “died for our sins?”

The News Writer brings up these questions, but alas, has no answers. Curiousity, she does have. She also tends to believe that religions are made up of myths, some based in reality, some not at all. Here is the most basic myth of Christianity, challenged by the discovery of a tomb in suburban Jerusalem. What if, Dear Readers? What if it were true?

The Illustrated Daily Scribble is back!

First, congratulations on the coming birth of your first child. May he or she bring you all the happiness you could want and grow to be an upstanding member of the human race.

A birth is a blessing, as you are well aware. And ordinarily, it wouldn’t warrant a lot of media attention. The births of your sister’s children have hardly made a dent in the media cycles of the nation’s news networks and newspapers. Things are a little different, however, where you are concerned.

First, please remember that as the daughter of the vice president, you are, de facto, a public figure. Hence, people will notice. Secondly, however — and here is the point you and your father seem to miss — the very people who put your father in office consider your pregnancy an abberation, and the very idea of your actually having a child a collosal affront to God.

Because of that, questions are bound to be asked by the media. They aren’t meant to pry into your private life, which you’d know if you took the time to listen carefully to the questions. The questions aren’t about your pregnancy. They’re about the silence that follows statements made by your father’s supporters — statements that come as close to condemning you as possible without actually doing so, in some cases, and in others, actually crossing those lines.

And these are some of the people who helped put your father in the West Wing. We wonder, we being the media, how it is that a father can remain silent when his daughter is so hideously portrayed as she is by some of these “Christians.” We wonder why there is a silence. After all, when John Edwards mentioned you during the 2004 debates, it was roundly condemned — and you weren’t even pregnant then, nor did Edwards make a negative comment about you.

But these people, James Dobson among them, have made it their business to make negative comments about you and both your chosen lifestyle, meaning your decision to have a child, and your inherent lesbianism.

So when we ask about it, we’re just wondering how a father can stand by and allow his daughter to be spoken of in such an ill manner. We are wondering what goes through a father’s mind when he hears such vile attitudes expressed. We wonder, too, what you think about it, what you think about what’s said, and perhaps, too, what you think about your father’s silence.

No one, as you said of CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, is trying to get “a rise” out of your father, or you. Unless by “rise” you mean the purely human emotion of love for one’s progeny, or perhaps the desire to protect the child you love from the baseless attacks of the ignorant.

That’s all it is. There’s no evil conspiracy trying to catch your father or you in an uncomfortable position. You’d much prefer that your life and your pregnancy weren’t the subject of public chatter, of course. That goes without saying.

But it’s not the media that’s turned the spotlight your way. We’re merely looking where the Christian fundamentalists have turned it. They’re the ones who’ve made it a big deal, who’ve raised the questions we want to ask to the level of consciousness that practically demands that we ask them.

Oh, of course, we could politely demure and not ask. But then we wouldn’t be doing our jobs, and we would allow those who hate you to maintain their stranglehold on the topic. Do you want that? Do you really want your father to let those comments go while he testily chastises reporters who ask about them?

It’s hard being in the public eye. Ask Ellen Degeneres, or Rosie O’Donnell, or any number of other gay men and lesbians who are in the public eye. Like it or not, you will be looked at as something of a leader. We know you feel comfortable bringing a child into the world, to grow up with two women as parents. You wouldn’t do it otherwise. And if your father weren’t vice president of the United States, if he didn’t have fundamentalists backing him, we really wouldn’t care. You’d be just another lesbian having a child.

But you’re not. Your silence, and that of your father, leave an uncomfortable space between your life and the condemnation of it that comes from the Dobsons of the world. All right, some of us fill that space as best we can. But no one could fill it the way you could, or your father.

He’s already told us he loves you and is proud to have another grandchild coming into the world. That almost speaks to the point. Almost, but not quite. A repudiation of that attitude of hate would fill it completely.

Y’see, every one of those hate-filled words is a blow not just at you, but at thousands of other gay and lesbian parents, few of whom have a father who is in a position to actually do something about it.

Yours is, Mary. And so are you. Please, stop tilting at the windmill media and strike a blow for everyone.

We’re less than an hour away now from the president’s announcement of his new Iraq policy. And surely we can all see through the smoke and mirrors to realize there’s not much new about it … it’s not the same old, same old, exactly … it’s more of the same old, same old.

If sending in the troops doesn’t work, just send in more. If throwing money down a hole doesn’t work, toss some more down there. If having faith in the Iraqi government gets you nowhere, why, then, trust ‘em with more.

Bush isn’t just staying the course, boys and girls, he’s staying it with a vengeance. His promise to consult with members of both parties? Total bullshit, unless, by consult, you mean bringing a few in the day of the speech and telling ‘em what you’re going to say.

And already the Whatever Bush Says boys are out there with the same old ‘you’re either with us or you’re against us” mantra. Bush says, This is How We’ll Win. Anybody who disagrees wants to lose.

But what’s this … the strict party lines are a little, shall we say, ragged. At least six Republican senators, for example, have already voiced their opposition to the idea of boosting troop levels in Iraq. Does that mean that Gordon Smith, Susan Collins, Norm Coleman, George Voinovich, Chuck Hagel and Sam Brownback all want the United States to lose in Iraq? Or do they just have a different idea of what “winning” might actually mean?

And when Bush’s new plan, which he tells us is an Iraqi plan, when it fails … who’s going to take the blame then? Will the administration blame the Iraqis? It was “their” plan, after all. Or maybe it’ll be the nay-sayers fault. They didn’t all come together to back the president, you know. Or maybe it’s the darn media’s fault for not showing the war in a more positive light.

It won’t be the administration’s fault, of that we can be quite certain. The administration, you know, recognized its mistakes and made the necessary changes to win.

That might sound good on paper, but it’s just not true. Bush isn’t making any changes. He’s just tryin’ to put out a fire with gasoline.

The powers that be keep talkin’ about a surge in troops into Baghdad as if just suddenly the numbers there will increase … which is true. But in the interest of truthiness, just what are those troops going to surge into Baghdad for? To stand around? Ah, no. They won’t be standing around.

They’ll be escalating the hostilities. More troops with more guns equals more fighting. An escalation. But we don’t want to say that little word, now do we? Ewww, it sounds bad, and the last thing we want is to sound bad for the Murrikan People. They might, like, I don’t know, oppose it or something.

Too late, Oh Powers that Be. The Murrikans ain’t as stupid as you seem to think they are. They know that a “surge” in troops ain’t the same thing as a tidal surge. They know what it means. More fighting. More blood.

More dead.

Alas, though, that seems to be where this war is now headed, because if there is one thing we can count on the Boy King to do, it’s the Wrong Thing. And what could be more wrong than escalating an already chaotic, barbarous situation?

But Georgie wants to win, y’see, and he doesn’t see how you can possibly win without whuppin’ ass on the battlefield. It’s just that it won’t work. Remember those surges into Falluja? Who’s the daddy in that town now?

No, it won’t work. It’ll just tick people off — tick everybody off, really. Iraqis are already over having U.S. troops all over the place. The insurgents, well, we know what they think. And good old fashioned Murrikans are just gonna see more wasted lives and get more angry about the complete lack of decent leadership shown by this pissant little creature who “won” the presidency by the grace of a friendly Supreme Court.

And all he’s worried about is his legacy.

The News Writer knows what his legacy is going to be — he’ll go down in history as one of the worst presidents in the history of this nation.

And yet, here’s a side note for you: when he dies, he’ll be lauded, just like any other former president and for a moment, we’ll forget how he tried like the devil to turn this place into a one-party state with an empirical leader.

But only for a moment. History will remember, and remember well.

Let’s play “Guess the terrorist.” Here are the clues:

• The terrorist was convicted in April of attempting to obtain a chemical weapon and possession of stolen explosives and was sentenced to 30 years in prison this week.
• The terrorist told undercover FBI agents of his desire to explode a briefcase bomb while Congress was in session, and was found guilty by a jury in about 90 minutes in April.
• The terrorist was convicted of accepting what he thought were ingredients to make Sarin nerve gas and a block of C-4 explosive from undercover agents in October 2004.

If you think the terrorist has a name like Abdul al-Hamdani, you are wrong wrong wrong wrong. And if you think he’s from Yemen or some such country, you are wrong wrong wrong again.

No, Dear Readers. This Terrorist’s name is Demetrius “Van” Crocker of McKenzie, Tenn., and he is a 40-year-old farmhand and father of two. Here’s the rest of the story, from the Jackson (Tennessee) Sun, where it was found in the back pages:

In all, Crocker was convicted on five charges: one count of attempted possession of a chemical weapon, one count of inducing another person to acquire a chemical weapon, one count of possession of stolen explosives, one count of possession of explosive material with intent to harm an individual or damage or destroy a building, and one count of possession of an unregistered destructive device.

During the trial, prosecutors introduced video- and audio-taped conversations that Crocker had with undercover agents, laced with profanity, racial slurs and Crocker’s open hatred of all things to do with the government.

Your News Writer doubts seriously that you’ll hear of this story anywhere but here (unless you read it at Orcinus, where The News Writer picked it up). And why might that be?

Simple, Dear Readers. Because a white, right-wing fanatic doesn’t scare the right people. In fact, the right people might be inclined to demand his release from jail.

As she often does, The News Writer stopped by Billmon’s Whiskey Bar for a drink and some political wisdom, and although he doesn’t even use the word — and may not even be considering it — the Barkeep there spells out why impeachment isn’t a good first option — and how we might could even get there.

The idea is to start at the bottom. Starting too high — i.e. at the White House — gets us nowhere fast.

The Rovians may have been badly weakened by the loss of Congress, but they still control the PR high ground and a solid “unitary executive” majority on the Supreme Court. They can still defend themselves.But the collaborators and co-conspirators on the outside can’t simply defy a congressional subpoena or tell Pat Leahy to go fuck himself. Pretty soon, small fish will be talking about medium-sized fish, and then medium-sized fish will start talking about big fish.

Then will come the criminal referrals to the Justice Department, which will become progressively harder to sit on as the allegations move closer to the administration itself. Demands will be made for special prosecutors, demands which a deeply unpopular lame-duck president could find progressively harder to stonewall. By the time congressional subpoenas start being served on the top guys themselves, it will be much harder to spin the ensuing court battles over executive privilege as matters of principle.

But it’s a fine line to walk, too, between becoming bogged down in investigations and failing to do what the voters here want, which is CHANGE.

That’s why it’s a good idea to start small, at the bottom, and build up the real case against this administration. At the same time, Democrats MUST move forward on several legislative fronts. This must not be an election win that becomes about “get Bush” as tasty as that sounds.

And while we’re at it, stop with the snarking about who was responsible for this win, Howard Dean or Rahm Emmanuel. The News Writer thinks such things take everybody’s efforts (and, James Carville, Dean’s 50-state strategy — i.e. getting Democrats out to vote on the local levels that really matter to them — could not have hurt).