I am puzzled.

Can someone explain to me why Arnold Schwarzenegger is taken seriously, and Gary Coleman is a joke? Both are mutants, and neither one has any kind of real experience in public policy.

Really, Mission Accomplished

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | 'Bring us home': GIs flood US with war-weary emails: Through emails and chatrooms a picture is emerging of day-to-day gripes, coupled with ferocious criticism of the way the war has been handled. They paint a vivid picture of US army life that is a world away from the sanitised official version.

In a message posted on a website last week, one soldier was brutally frank. 'Somewhere down the line, we became an occupation force in [Iraqi] eyes. We don't feel like heroes any more,' said Private Isaac Kindblade of the 671st Engineer Company.

Kindblade said morale was poor, and he attacked the leadership back home. 'The rules of engagement are crippling. We are outnumbered. We are exhausted. We are in over our heads. The President says, 'Bring 'em on.' The generals say we don't need more troops. Well, they're not over here,' he wrote.

Mission accomplished.

From The Independent

The abd al-Kerim family didn't have a chance. American soldiers opened fire on their car with no warning and at close quarters. They killed the father and three of the children, one of them only eight years old. Now only the mother, Anwar, and a 13-year-old daughter are alive to tell how the bullets tore through the windscreen and how they screamed for the Americans to stop.

"We never did anything to the Americans and they just killed us," the heavily pregnant Ms abd al-Kerim said. "We were calling out to them 'Stop, stop, we are a family', but they kept on shooting."

The story of how Adel abd al-Kerim and three of his children were killed emerged yesterday, exactly 100 days after President George Bush declared the war in Iraq was over. In Washington yesterday, Mr Bush declared in a radio address: "Life is returning to normal for the Iraqi people ... All Americans can be proud of what our military and provisional authorities have achieved in Iraq."

Arnold -- the perfect politician.

His only policy statement was that he would "clean house in Sacramento." What does that mean? Nothing. It sounds tough, but has no teeth. It is, however, designed to appeal to the disaffected, the disengaged, the disgruntled and the angry.

Life just gets weirder.

Arnold is running for governor. And he announced it on the tonight show.
Now read those two sentences again.
We live in the crazy years.

The Bob Hope Backlash has begun.

The adoration of Bob Hope has puzzled me. At 36 I'm not a kid (I am, however, immature for my age) -- and Bob Hope, as far as I can tell, has neither been funny or relevant for my entire life. I was listening to an hour-long tribute on NPR earlier this week, and there wasn't one thing he said that made me smile. Not to mention the fact that he was a nasty SOB -- he would fold his writer's checks into paper airplanes, thus forcing the poor bastards to grovel at his feet for their money.

I thought I was alone, but evidently I'm not. Christopher Hitchens (I know, I know) asks the question Did Bob Hope ever say anything funny? And the Village Voice asks the same thing.