“Diversion alway works!” shouted Karl. “Chins up! I’m — we’re — not dead yet!”

Writes Slate in “Foam Home,” its summary of today’s major newspaper stories: “Everybody leads with NASA grounding all shuttle flights until it figures out how to keep foam from falling off the external fuel tank during liftoff,” Sigh. (Wanna bet that the night before the launch, Karl’s dirty tricks squad shimmied up the shuttle with a screwdriver?)


Parker gives us this photo and the VIDEO link to Jay Leno’s replay of actual footage of Bush giving the press the finger.


Bushism of the Day: “‘The best place for the facts to be done is by somebody who’s spending time investigating it.’—Expressing hope the probe into how CIA agent Valerie Plame’s identity was leaked will yield answers, Wash. D.C., July 18, 2005” (Slate + WH video — the Bushism is at 10:23)


Meanwhile, my very own Congressman, Norm Dicks, is getting the crap beat out of him by furious Democrats. David Sirota wants Dicks’ hide!

Per usual, I’m conflicted. Dicks is leading the fight for federal funding to get Puget Sound, a gigantic cesspool, cleaned up. And he got federal funding for removal of the Elwha Dam to restore a magnificent river and salmon runs. But …

Below the fold, more sighs, laments, anger at the 15 Dems who voted for CAFTA, and an excellent summary of the midnight, GOP-tweaked CAFTA vote:

CAFTA Passes by 1 Vote in Midnight Session
In a midnight vote Congress narrowly approved the Central American Free Trade Agreement or CAFTA. The final vote was 217 to 215. But last night’s vote came with a major twist. When official voting had ended at 11:17 pm, as the 15 minute voting period had expired, legislators had actually voted to defeat CAFTA 180-175. But Republican leaders took the unusual move of holding the vote open for another 47 minutes, furiously rounding up holdouts in their own party until they had secured just enough to ensure approval. To win, the White House and GOP congressional leaders had to overcome resistance from dozens of Republican members who opposed CAFTA because of issues ranging from the threat to the U.S. sugar industry to more general worries about the impact of global trade on U.S. jobs. President Bush made a rare visit to Capitol Hill yesterday to lobby Republican dissenters. Only 15 of the 202 House Democrats backed the measure, while 27 Republicans voted against CAFTA.


Walter Jones, (R – North Carolina): “CAFTA is not going to help the people of Central America, and it certainly won’t help those American workers who will lose their jobs…If CAFTA becomes the law of the land, this country is setting itself up to become a second-rate manufacturing country.”


The House vote was effectively the last hurdle facing CAFTA. The Senate has already approved the agreement.


Democracy Now!


P.S. Clueless ones, get with it! Everybody knows “war on terror” is soooo L7. It’s “the global struggle against violent extremism.”


Update [2005-7-28 11:45:34 by susanhu]: David Sirota talks about the talking-to he got from Democrats for “telling it like it is.”