He’s back, and he’s fantastic. To hell with the rest; give me Frank Rich anytime.

Bush of a Thousand Days
By FRANK RICH
Published: April 30, 2006

LIKE the hand that suddenly pops out of the grave at the end of “Carrie,” the past keeps coming back to haunt the Bush White House. Last week was no exception. No sooner did the Great Decider introduce the Fox News showman anointed to repackage the same old bad decisions than the spotlight shifted back to Patrick Fitzgerald’s grand jury room, where Karl Rove testified for a fifth time. Nightfall brought the release of an NBC News-Wall Street Journal poll with its record-low numbers for a lame-duck president with a thousand days to go and no way out.

The demons that keep rising up from the past to grab Mr. Bush are the fictional W.M.D. he wielded to take us into Iraq. They stalk him as relentlessly as Banquo’s ghost did Macbeth. From that original sin, all else flows. Mr. Rove wouldn’t be in jeopardy if the White House hadn’t hatched a clumsy plot to cover up its fictions. Mr. Bush’s poll numbers wouldn’t be in the toilet if American blood was not being spilled daily because of his fictions. By recruiting a practiced Fox News performer to better spin this history, the White House reveals that it has learned nothing. Made-for-TV propaganda propelled the Bush presidency into its quagmire in the first place. At this late date only the truth, the whole and nothing but, can set it free.

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According to my closest blog buddy, Hosting Matters was hit today by yet another hack attack, which explains why I’m having so much trouble posting and commenting. Let’s pray for a better tomorrow.

In Chinese, over here – CDT is looking for translators so everyone can watch it.

Update: I tried to watch it myself, but it was very choppy and kept stalling on me. Maybe you’ll have better luck.

A contributed post….

Economics, Ideology and the Politics of Discourse
Jerome F. Keating, Ph.D.

“Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty—power is ever stealing from the many to the few. The manna of popular liberty must be gathered each day or it is rotten. . . Only by unintermitted Agitation can people be kept sufficiently awake to principle and not to let liberty be smothered in material prosperity.�

“Never look therefore for an age when people can be quiet and safe. At such times Despotism, like a shrouding mist, steals over the mirror of Freedom. . . Republics exist only on the tenure of being constantly agitated.�

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…and the hysteria it fomented among a group of angry young people is the subject of some intense discussions up in the Duck Pond, here and here and here. Very interesting.

The Peking Duck and hundreds of other blogs were down for the past 12 hours or so after Hosting Matters got hit with a huge denial of service attack that appears to have been generated from computers in Saudi Arabia. Anyway, it looks like we’re back, but not completely stable yet (it took me several minutes to get to this page). There goes the site traffic.

Thanks for hanging in there with me, and I hope things get back to normal soon.

Say Uncle, Rummy
By MAUREEN DOWD
Published: April 29, 2006

Even some State Department officials thought it was like watching a cranky, eccentric uncle with an efficient, energetic niece.

Rummy was ordered to go to Iraq by the president, but he clearly has no stomach for nation-building, or letting Condi run the show. He seemed under the weather after a rough overnight ride on a C-17 transport plane from Washington into Baghdad. And Condi’s aides were rolling their eyes at the less than respectful way the DefSec treated the SecState as she tried to be enthusiastic, in her cheerful automaton way, about what she considers the latest last chance for Iraq.

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Continuing his efforts to create a new world order with China at the helm, Hu Jintao is saying all the right things to his friends in Africa.

China wants a “strategic partnership” with Africa, President Hu Jintao said on Thursday, seeking to add a new political dimension to a blossoming economic romance. In a speech to Nigerian lawmakers, Hu underlined China’s respect for African “independence and sovereignty,” which analysts said was a deliberate contrast with the United States’ interventionist diplomacy under George W. Bush.

“I would like to propose … (to) strengthen political mutual trust,” Hu, dressed in a business suit and tie, told a packed assembly in the Nigerian capital. “Let us seize the opportunity and … endeavor to forge a new type of strategic partnership between China and Africa.”

Hu made the address during a two-day state visit to Africa’s top oil producer and most populous nation, the latest stop on a world tour that includes the United States, Saudi Arabia, Morocco and Kenya. Analysts said Hu’s offer of an alternative to the United States’ prescriptive foreign policy and “War on Terror” would be welcomed by African leaders.

“China is saying it wants to build a new world order based on consensus and tolerance, not the clash of civilizations,” said former foreign minister Bola Akinyemi. “It is bound to resonate in Africa, where we have 900 years of coexistence between Christianity, Islam and traditional religions.”

Score another one for Mr. Bush. His inane “War on Terror” is chasing other countries away from us and into China’s arms. And certainly give Mr. Hu a star; he has set his foreign policy goals and is achieving them, even as the US stumbles, caught up in the mess of a hysterical pseudo-war on terror that’s made us radioactive to all. And amid the fallout, Hu is stepping in and filling the gap, a case study in shrewd opportunism.

The best government money can buy.

The Crony Fairy
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: April 28, 2006

The U.S. government is being stalked by an invisible bandit, the Crony Fairy, who visits key agencies by dead of night, snatches away qualified people and replaces them with unqualified political appointees. There’s no way to catch or stop the Crony Fairy, so our only hope is to change the agencies’ names. That way she might get confused, and leave our government able to function.

That, at least, is how I interpret the report on responses to Hurricane Katrina that was just released by the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs.

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Yikes. (Story is already two days old, but it hasn’t been told enough. Unbelievable.).

UPDATE: Can someone please tell me how you are being sent to this site? For the second day in a row this post is getting hundreds of hits per hour from an unknown site, and I’m very curious where you are coming from. Please leave a comment and let me know – thanks.