As far as I can tell, the following proclamation is legit:

The Congress, by Public Law 85-529, as amended, has designated May 1 of each year as “Loyalty Day.” This Loyalty Day, and throughout the year, I ask all Americans to join me in reaffirming our allegiance to our Nation.

 

NOW, THEREFORE, I, GEORGE W. BUSH, President of the United States of America, do hereby proclaim May 1, 2007, as Loyalty Day. I call upon the people of the United States to participate in this national observance and to display the flag of the United States on Loyalty Day as a symbol of pride in our Nation.

Is it just me, or is there something seriously creepy about this? Doesn’t a holiday to “reaffirm our allegiance to our Nation” actually conflict with the spirit of the most American of all American holidays, the Fourth of July (a.k.a. Independence Day, when we celebrate a bunch of guys who were willing to reject allegiance to their Nation — the British Empire — when it became necessary)?

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I don’t know if this is widely known outside the Zion Curtain, but the Dark Lord himself, Vice President Dick Cheney, has been invited to give this year’s commencement address at Brigham Young University in a few weeks. BYU (or “The Y,” as it’s more commonly known in these parts) is, of course, the most conservative college in Utah, possible even in the country. It’s so conservative that male students aren’t even allowed to wear beards.

(True story: I actually applied to the Y back in my pre-bearded days. I was conditionally accepted pending a letter of recommendation from my spiritual leader. Smart-ass that I am, I was tempted to forge a letter in fractured English and sign it, “Yoda, Jedi-Master of Dagobah,” but ultimately I decided it wasn’t worth the trouble, and anyway I didn’t want to go to a school that would forbid me from dressing like Sonny Crockett. [I was very big into Miami Vice at the time, and had this thing about muscle shirts, not shaving for four days at a stretch, and going sockless, all big no-nos at the Y.])
As conservative as the school is, however, there are protests planned to coincide with Darth Cheney’s visit. But I don’t think it’s necessary to dwell on the fact that even BYU students think the man is nasty and hateful. I think we should instead concentrate on the really important matters:

…the question remains whether Cheney will get an honorary degree. And, if so, what would it be? International diplomacy? Public Relations? Energy Policy? Environmental Science?

Enquiring minds want to know!

President Bush’s strategy for Iraq, 2006: Stay the course.

President Bush’s strategy for Iraq, 2007: Stay the course. Only with more troops.

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So the Butcher of Baghdad is dead. I’m sure there are people toasting his execution all over the world right now. A certain occupant of the White House is probably planning a party, and maybe his dad is, too. Maybe they’re even entitled to one. I, however… I’m not sure how I feel about it.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not shedding any tears for the bastard. He deserved his ignominious and unmourned death. But so do a lot of other penny-ante dictators around the world whose sole purpose seems to be finding new depths of depravity and cruelty to visit on their people. And therein lies my deep ambivalence about Saddam Hussein’s execution. It isn’t that I don’t believe he was a bad guy. I simply have never understood what made him so uniquely bad as to justify all the energy America has expended on him over the past fifteen years.

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My Internet wanderings this morning somehow carried me past the official site of Will Rogers. Best known for saying he never met a man he didn’t like, Rogers was a beloved humorist, commentator, and media personality of the 1920s and ’30s. Here is one of his observations, which I think I’m going to adopt as a motto:

“I belong to no organized party. I am a Democrat.”

And here’s a bonus Rogers quote, which has a somewhat darker edge in light of current circumstances:

“If we ever pass out as a great nation we ought to put on our tombstone, ‘America died from a delusion that she has moral leadership.'”

The amazing thing, of course, is that these remarks (while admittedly taken out of context) still have relevance some 60 years after Rogers first said them…

Here’s an idea that jumped out at me from my morning-commute reading matter:

The Right doesn’t like to acknowledge that the power and authority of a government can be a good thing, up to a point, in the hands of a genius. The Left doesn’t like to acknowledge that geniuses are few and far between.

–David Gelernter, 1939: The Lost World of the Fair

Looks like the President has a ready-made excuse for his next diplomatic blunder:

A renowned black magic practitioner performed a voodoo ritual Thursday to jinx President George W. Bush and his entourage while he was on a brief visit to Indonesia.

 

Ki Gendeng Pamungkas slit the throat of a goat, a small snake and stabbed a black crow in the chest, stirred their blood with spice and broccoli before drank the “potion” and smeared some on his face.

 

“I don’t hate Americans, but I don’t like Bush,” said Pamungkas, who believed the ritual would succeed as, “the devil is with me today.”

The question that comes to my mind is, does the inclusion of broccoli in the potion have anything to do with George Bush Sr.’s well-known aversion to that vegetable, or is this just a coincidence? Is broccoli the Bush family’s version of kryptonite?

Inquiring minds want to know!

Wow, what an afternoon! My previous entry has generated a number of comments that I’d like to respond to, but I haven’t yet been able to settle down long enough to compose anything worth reading; I’ve just learned one of my co-workers is in the hospital after wiping out on his longboard last night (he was skating in downtown Salt Lake when a car cut him off; he evaded, but crashed into a concrete planter box at about 30 mph); and, as everyone’s no doubt heard by now, Rumsfeld is hitting the showers. I’m still processing that one — I expected some changes in the wake of the Democratic victory, but I didn’t expect anything so major to happen so soon. Frankly, I’m a little overwhelmed.

I think I’m going to spend the rest of this afternoon and evening unplugged from politics. In the meantime, I’ll leave you with the following thought, courtesy of Mark Evanier:

Someone on Fox News just said that everyone should try and find something to be happy about today. I think I’ll be happy that I wasn’t around Dick Cheney last night when he was armed and getting the news.