Frank Rich points out what a fucking joke the program’s swan song was:

NEW YORK One day after Tucker Carlson, the co-host of CNN’s “Crossfire,” made his farewell appearance and two days after the network’s new president made the admirable announcement that he would soon kill the program altogether, a television news miracle occurred: even as it staggered through its last steps to the network guillotine, “Crossfire” came up with the worst show in its 23-year history. This was a half-hour of television so egregious that it makes Jon Stewart’s famous pre-election rant seem, if anything, too kind. This time “Crossfire” was not just “hurting America,” as Stewart put it, by turning news into a nonsensical gong show. It was unwittingly, or perhaps wittingly, complicit in the cover-up of a scandal.

There’s more.

Slacktivist is, as always, more polite than the Heathen, but that’s no surprise. The president lies; that’s also no surprise. He lied about Iraq, and he’s lying now about Social Security now, which even the SSA itself says will be fine until at least 2042 (more on this here). Fred says:

George W. Bush lied. And George W. Bush doesn’t care that he lied. And he doesn’t care that you know he lied because he knows that more people will believe his lies than not, which was what yesterday’s forum on Social Security was all about.

Fred also points us to a decidedly more Heathenesque quote, from Kevin Drum, who is angry at both the President and our lapdog press:

What should a responsible press do when faced with a president who baldly lies over and over about stuff like this in a blatant attempt to scare the hell out of people? Somebody needs to figure it out, because people like George Bush have no incentive to stop lying if the press lets them get away with it.

Word.

(* With apologies to Fishbone.)

Twofer from the wires:

• Gonzales’ nomination concerns ex-officers (retired generals and admirals are very worried about his apparent contempt for the Geneva Convention); and
• Gonzales torture memo controvery builds (the White House won’t release copies of his memos written in crafting the torture policy).

Atrios gives us a rundown of the planned inaugural ceremony:

The inaugural ceremony will include performances by the U.S. Naval Academy Glee Club, the U.S. Marine Band and mezzo sopranos Denyce Graves and Susan Graham. Guy Hovis, a vocalist from Tupelo, Miss., who performed on the Lawrence Welk show, will sing, “Let the Eagles Soar,” a song written by Attorney General John Ashcroft. (Emph. added.) MSNBC

When we told Rob about this, he said, and we quote:

G A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A

Bush and his corporate cronies are so bent on selling Federal timber on the cheap that they’re once again ignoring established science, even to the point of threatening Forestry Service scientists who refuse to go along.

This is the administration you picked, America. It’s a shame we’ve all got to live with it.

Remember back when James Watt told Congress that conservation didn’t make any sense, since Jesus was coming back soon? It turns out that those dispensationalist goons are still lurking around, and have nontrivial influence with the current administration.

PBS journalist and general voice of sanity Bill Moyers was honored recently by the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School, who presented him with its fourth annual Global Environment Citizen Award. Moyers had this to say on receiving the award about the insanity of the Administrations’ environmental policies.