Notice

The Nitpicker will be in Japan until February 2nd. Posting will be all but nonexistent.

Aw, baby, don't be like that...

It sounds like Bush's dropping approval ratings are getting to him. He's honoring himself by declaring a day in which we can help "the imperfect and the unwanted."

I tell you where to go


Get over to Zogby right away:

Slightly more than one in three voters (35%) say they would vote to re-elect President Bush regardless of who he runs against, compared to 56% who would not vote to re-elect Bush regardless of who he runs against. (Via Atrios).

Check out the chickens coming home to roost as ably described by Beyond the Wasteland.

I came across an interesting fact while researching the history of North Korea’s nuclear ambitions. The North Koreans manufactured all of their Plutonium between 1987 and 1991, this being, of course, during the Reagan/Bush and Bush I administrations.

Try to fathom that Washington Times columnist Suzanne Fields wrote this:

Joe Lieberman is smart, but a yarmulke is not a ten-gallon hat. He's definitely not cool. (Jews rarely are.)

Ms. Fields must have missed this page. (The Other Roger Ailes -- the man who beat me in the best new blog category of Dwight Meredith's Koufax Awards -- has more here.)

Mad props to The Poor Man, who wrote this open letter to Bush:

And I know we were all supposed to be impressed with you after September 11th, and, yes, you did a good job of playing President. And everyone kind of forgot about all the dumb stuff for a little while, because we thought maybe we might all be dead tomorrow, so we'd better stick together, and if I say something mean about the President and then someone kills him I'll feel pretty bad. And in a lot of ways you were very good, looking very grim and determined looking in a situation that was difficult emotionally, but, let's face it, kind of a no-brainer policy-wise. "Kill the mutherfuckers" was, indeed, the correct response, and it was carried out with some efficacy, but it's not exactly rocket science.

Proof


Look, this is a minor deal, but it cracked me up, so I thought I'd share it. Flipping through the radio stations yesterday, I heard Sean Hannity begin the third hour of his show with a "man on the street" interview. He was preparing, it seemed, to show his listeners just how stupid people are. He said (and I paraphrase) that listeners should remember that the people they were going to talk to would balance out the votes of "educated" listeners like themselves.


So, this girl gets on the line, says she's a college student majoring in child psychology (and that Ritalin is bad), that she voted for "the guy who won" and that she wants to get married to a Christian who wants to have four kids. Hannity praises her up and down for being a good conservative. The problem, though, is that she couldn't name the vice president of the United States! Not even when Hannity practically gave it to her. I pulled over and wrote the following down:

HANNITY: Dick.

GIRL ON THE STREET: What?

HANNITY: Dick.

GIRL ON THE STREET: What?

HANNITY: It's his first name.

GIRL ON THE STREET: Oh. I was wondering.

HANNITY: Dick... Chay...

GIRL ON THE STREET: Um...

HANNITY: Chaaaaayy...

GIRL ON THE STREET: Um...

HANNITY: Chain...

GIRL ON THE STREET: Dick Chain!

HANNITY: E! Cheney!

GIRL ON THE STREET: Oh yeah!

This is probably still an imperfect transcript, but it's damn close. The Nitpicker would like to thank Hannity for reminding his listeners that (even though there are many intelligent conservatives) the conservative "man on the street" has no idea who he or she is even voting for -- much less why.

Your "liberal media" at work


Why is it that when Kathleen Sebelius -- the newly elected Democratic governor of Kansas -- held meetings on how to best trim the state's miserably failing budget, the Associated Press decided to take her to court, even thought they didn't do the same thing when Dick Cheney decided to keep his Energy Task Force information secret? It was tossed out because she wasn't required to meet open meetings regulations because she's not the governor yet.

By the way, I would've been back sooner, but Blogger hates me. Google seems to like me, though. It says: "Nitpicker is forever; Nitpicker is nasty enough; and Nitpicker is one who has quite a firm hold on the real world." It's right, too, when it says that "Nitpicker is proud of you."