BLOG SALAD™

"WASHINGTON (March 5) - Attorney General John Ashcroft has been hospitalized in an intensive care unit for a severe case of gallstone pancreatitis, his chief spokesman said Friday..."

I guess, with all the gall that guy has, some of it was bound to back up on him.

Scandal-plagued Mexican President Vincente Fox will be spending the weekend with Dubya at his Crawford "ranch."
Gee, two crooks getting together to decide how to rope the Canadians into their NAFTA reindeer games. Or maybe Vincente is just delivering Dubya's cocaine stash so he'll be nice n' sharp for the campaign.

In TV news, Bush is using the tragedy of 9/11 as a backdrop for his first reelection TV ads.
The announcer doesn't mention that not a single 9/11 terrorist has been convicted and Bin Laden is still prancing around, free as a bird.
Bush it trying to persuade us to keep him so he can continue to protect us from terrorists, because we still aren't safe.
If we still aren't safe, why should we keep him?

In the NY Times, Maureen Dowd wrote a brilliant piece where she envisioned ads for Dick Cheney:

Consider the possibilities:

ON THE SCREEN The spot lingers on a shot of the vice president's office door, closed and padlocked.
THE SCRIPT: "Big enough to tell you to butt out. Sensitive enough to know that special interests are truly special."

ON THE SCREEN The spot opens with a tightly focused shot of a headless pheasant, then dissolves into a shot of a big Dick Cheney putting a miniature Antonin Scalia into the pocket of his Elmer Fudd hunting jacket.
THE SCRIPT "Man enough to hunt with all the big dogs."

ON THE SCREEN The spot opens with Mr. Cheney checking his mailbox on Massachusetts Avenue to see whether he's received his annual deferred compensation check for $150,000 from Halliburton.
THE SCRIPT "Big-hearted enough to forgive and forget Halliburton's pesky overcharges in Iraq for oil, and food for American troops."

ON THE SCREEN A picture of Mr. Cheney beaming at his family.
THE SCRIPT "Strong enough to put his base above his daughter and support a constitutional amendment against gay marriage."

ON THE SCREEN A close-up of Mr. Cheney accepting a huge N.R.A. check in his spider hole.
THE SCRIPT "Protective enough to safeguard the firearms industry from liberal potshots."

ON THE SCREEN While the "Pink Panther" music plays, we see a cartoon of the vice president, dressed in an Inspector Clouseau trenchcoat and a false mustache, wandering the desert with a spyglass.
THE SCRIPT "Steely enough to ignore the administration's own intelligence on the absence of W.M.D. and an Al Qaeda connection to Saddam. Farsighted enough to know that one of these decades, the rocks and trash that Iraqis are throwing at American forces will be replaced by flowers and palm fronds."

ON THE SCREEN A doctored photo of John Kerry, his war medals airbrushed out, canoodling with Jane Fonda at an antiwar rally.
THE SCRIPT "After getting four student deferments himself during Vietnam so he could attend to `other priorities,' he's still gritty enough to paint John Kerry as a spineless wimp on Vietnam and Iraq."

ON THE SCREEN A shot of Mr. Cheney driving the Nascar Viagra race car.
THE SCRIPT "Audacious enough to shred the American Constitution, even while he imposes one on Iraq." Instead of speaking at the end to say he approved the message, as Mr. Bush does in his, Mr. Cheney comes on at the end of his spots with a paper bag over his head and says, "It's none of your beeswax who approved this message." Except in one, where a rotund man comes on and says, "I am Ahmad Chalabi, and I approved this message."