I suppose I should be used to it by now, but I’m not.

When it comes to policy matters, the mainstream media will sit on its thumbs indefinitely, taking a position that purports to be objective but is in fact a form of cowardly post-modernism–that there is no true and false, no right and wrong, but that there are simply two sides to every story.

But when a juicy personal scandal comes along–one that is tangential or irrelevant to policy, then the press extends its claws.

I speak, of course, about Bush’s history in the “champagne unit” of the Texas Air National Guard, his, uh, undocumented presence for duty, and the newfound interest in it.

It’s a bit of a mystery to me why this wasn’t an issue in 2000, or before for that matter. It’s been known, and it’s been covered intermittently since then, with some interesting angles. Something–I don’t know what–poked the press in the side and whetted their interest in this. Which is fine in and of itself: as a bellicose president, Bush of all people should be held up for close scrutiny when it comes to his own military service. But there have been so many issues of more immediate concern during the past four years that went underreported that the renewed interest in investigative journalism comes across as tawdry.

So said Jon LeibowitzStewart of the White House press corp’s recent conversion from stenographers to journalists, with regard to the President’s murky National Guard service record.

My mother, not known for her tinfoil millinery, mentioned to me that someone official had predicted that the U.S. would nab Osama bin Laden within the year.

She speculates that if this is being publicly predicted, then the government already has him in the bag and is waiting to unveil him at the moment when it will do GW’s poll results the most good (say, November). On the one hand, I don’t put anything past the current administration. On the other, I pointed out to her that a number of people speculated that the U.S. military captured Saddam long before it was made public. This apparently was not the case, but what’s interesting is the number of stories (mostly outside the USA) indicating that the Kurds caught him and then handed him off.

So who knows what the hell is going on. The source of the ObL prediction is a Lt Colonel. I have no idea how I should read that. What to make of the fact that it’s not a senior officer or senior administration official? Clearly senior administration officials are quite happy to stick their feet in their mouths to score political points. So I wouldn’t put it past them to leak this if it were true. Then again, intentionally leaking it via a Lt. Col. would be smart, as it keeps the higher-ups out of the mess, makes it easier to bury the story, and may give it more credibility because the leaker is close to the action. Then again, this may just be an officer being cocky. The military may have some useful intel on him, but his mouth is writing checks that his troops may not be able to cash. Certainly, this is the most plausible scenario. Or perhaps this is an officer being sloppy. ObL really is in the bag, and this guy can’t keep a secret.

You just can’t tell with these guys.

I had dinner last night with some friends, Drew and Farooq, and rather than watch George II deliver a pack of lies, platitudes, and empty promises, I insisted that we talk.

Inevitably, talk turned to politics. Now, neither of these guys has any love for our current Dear Leader, but I was surprised at their antipathy towards Dean, which was not so much because of any of Dean’s policies, or even his personal style, but what the mainstream media has told us his style is: angry.

This surprised me on a couple of levels. Both of these guys are much smarter than me, and generally very well-informed. But in this case, they were making a judgment A) based not on platforms and policy, but on personality, and B) based not so much on the person’s actual personality as the conventional-wisdom story of that person’s personality.

Now, I’ve been impressed by Dean–I haven’t decided for certain that I’ll vote for him, but it is looking that way. So I have my own biases. But when Farooq showed us how Dean is depicted on the Drudge Report, of all sources, to back up his point, I was a bit appalled.

Aside from cracking that Dean’s too unstable to be the man with his finger on the button, both of them seemed to believe strongly that we need a safe bet candidate like Kerry to have any hopes of defeating Bush in November. I’ve been thinking about this, and I don’t agree.

I suspect that if the election is anything but a blowout (which is very unlikely), it will be rigged. All it will take is a discreet call to Wally O’Dell and some voting machines “patched” in some close races.

Which is why we would need to gamble on a blowout. A safe candidate like Kerry might edge Bush in a fair fight, but without a blowout, and–in a rigged election–certain to lose. A riskier candidate like Dean might have a greater chance of losing a fair vote. In an election, though, where the opposition can rig the outcome a little but not a lot, we need someone who has some chance at beating the spread.

This tinfoil-hat logic isn’t the reason I’m tending towards Dean, but it is something I’m tossing around.

The measures that the Bush administration wanted to put in place to ensure his safety on his visit to the UK are almost beyond belief: closing the London underground, immunity for snipers who accidentally kill protesters, and the use of battlefield weaponry against protesters. Contrast this with GW’s eye-roll-inducing declaration that he is looking forward to visiting a country where people have the right to protest.

Or maybe not: he has cancelled a planned address to the two houses of the UK’s Parliament, no doubt wanting to avoid a repeat of his embarrassing heckling when he addressed Australia’s.

For passing the broadcast flag.

This gives the Hollywood regulatory oversight over not only digital television, but anything that can play a digital video file, including computers, some cellphones, etc (here’s an interesting wrinkle).

Hair-metal rock. Leg warmers. Tiered miniskirts. Mullets. And of course, a cretinous, right-wing president. The 80s? Yes, but apparently there are nefarious forces at work in the world today that want to make sure that those who are too young to remember (or appreciate the horrors of) the first go-round will get a chance to do so now. I’ve been seeing all this stuff around.

I remember during the 80s, an article in Esquire dubbed the 80s “the Re Decade” (in contrast to the 70s, which was “the Me Decade”), the point being that the 80s was recycling pop-culture from previous eras, especially the 50s. So we’re re-recycling now, which is fitting, since we’re re-redistricting.

Break out your headbands and fold your lapels up.

What are we doing in Iraq again? Stopping the imminent threat posed by Saddam’s WMD’s? Nope. Stopping his WMD programs? Nope, that’s not it either. Liberating the oppressed Iraqi people? Yeah, that must be it. No, wait:

In a sign of frustration, he offered an unorthodox military solution: “If we have to, we just mow the whole place down, see what happens. You’re dealing with insane suicide bombers who are killing our people, and we need to be very aggressive in taking them out.”

I suppose this is that “we had to destroy the village in order to save it” logic.