The Los Angeles Times is turning out to be quite a good paper. They're providing me with lots of political fodder for my brain to chew on.

This morning's edition gave me two articles on the same page that I was rather enamored with. The first talked about how Aaron Sorkin, creator of "The West Wing" and "Sports Night," thinks our country (including NBC, his employer) "is pretending that President George W. Bush is competent and brave." Amen, brother! I've been saying this for a while. After all these months, I still honestly can't figure out what Moron has done that deserves the second-highest quarterly approval rating since I don't think he's done very much at all except cover his hide from Enron, send troops to Afghanistan to overrun a vastly inferior fighting force and do a lot of preaching about the evil in the world. I'm so glad that someone of note who has some of the media spotlight shares my views and actually is using it to raise awareness about this issue. As Sorkin said, "That illusion may be what we need right now, but the truth is we're simply pretending to believe that Bush exhibited unspeakable courage at the World Series by throwing out the first pitch at Yankee Stadium or that he, by God, showed those terrorists by going to Salt Lake City and jumbling the first line of the Olympic opening ceremony. The media is waing pom-poms and the entire public is being polite." That last part I'm not so sure about -- I think the public is deluding itself more than we're being polite. I think we want to believe in that illusion to the point where we're fooling ourselves into believing it's real, rather than pretending that we believe it while we're actually snickering at him behind his back. Me, I may not believe in the illusion, but I'm not snickering. Our administration is moving us backwards and getting us into a lot of hot water by declaring ourselves the Worldwide Judge of What's Good and What's Evil. That's not funny at all, that's lunacy and that's the main reason why people all over the world hate America. Rather than spending millions on a Propaganda Office to change the world's perception of us while we continue to do the one thing that reinforces that perception, why not put that money into building us some windfarms while we stop running all over the world policing everyone while a bunch of bureaucrats in Washington spend our tax dollars to buy ads around the world telling them how Nice and Good the United States really is?

And of all the people that I agree with today, I didn't think that Cher would be high on that list, but she is. While she acknowledges that she may not be the bastion of taste and family values, she ripped Ashcroft a new one over this whole issue of him wanting to cover up the naked statues of "Spirit of Justice" and "Majesty of Law." He claims he's "uncomfortable" making speeches in front of half-nude statues. Look, pal, we're all naked under our clothes, and there's a difference between porn and art. Plus, who made you the Magistrate of Decency? Now that I think about it, those may not be earthquakes I'm feeling, they may be the sharp movements of our country going towards the extreme right and the so-called Moral Majority. Who is he to decide what's decent for me? Didn't we battle this whole issue when we addressed book burning and freedom of expression with things like the Mapplethorpe exhibit? If we start with covering up some half-naked statues that have been around for 60-some-odd years, where do we stop? Will we slip into another Prohibition-type era, this time revolving around "public decency"? Dammit, it's my right as an American to buy that "Sports Illustrated" swimsuit edition and it's someone else's right to read trashy romance novels replete with bodice-ripping and wanton sex and it's someone else's right to wear a bikini in public. As Cher said, "If he doesn't want to make speeches in front of them, let him make speeches somewhere else. He's mobile." Amen, sister. So, Little Johnny Ashcroft, if you feel uncomfortable making speeches in front of half-naked statues, tell the camera crews "let's roll" and set up shop down the hall.