You know, I bet if you got a few belts into Sen. Conrad Burns (R-Mont.) -- it kind of shows -- he would be pretty likely to call my people, at least those on the paternal side of the family, guineas.

Okay, maybe he would say something like, "EYE-talians," a charming little term I heard a thousand times during my formative and thereafter extended years in Upstate New York and Central Virginia, but it's pretty much the same thing.

[Post-publication addendum: Hey, I just threw Burns's opponent, Democrat Jon Tester, who is running an outstanding campaign, a (very) few bucks. You could do the same, right?]

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The U.S. Senate today approved a measure that in polite, non-shrill, circles is being discussed as one that "govern[s] the interrogation and trials of terror suspects, establishing far-reaching new rules in the definition of who may be held and how they should be treated."

The vote was a shameful and shocking 65 to 34.

Here is a list of the Democrats who voted with the Constitution haters and shredders of the majority party:

Tom Carper (Del.)
Tim Johnson (S.D.)
Mary Landrieu (La.)
Frank Lautenberg (N.J.)
Joe Lieberman (Conn.)
Robert Menendez (N.J.)
Bill Nelson (Fla.)
Ben Nelson (Neb.)
Mark Pryor (Ark.)
Jay Rockefeller (W.Va.)
Ken Salazar (Colo.)
Debbie Stabenow (Mich.)

And below are those "moderate," "maverick," "independent," and "thoughtful" Republicans who hung tight with President Stalinist when the very definition of what this country stands for stood in the balance:

Susan Collins (Maine)
Lindsey Graham (S.C.)
Chuck Hagel (Neb.)
John McCain (Ariz.)
Arlen Specter (Pa.)
John Warner (Va.)

And not voting -- Too busy? Doing what? -- Sen. Olympia Snowe, Republican of Maine.

Never forget this. Write the names down, or bookmark this page. Write a letter, make a phone call. This is unforgivable.

[Post-publication addendum I (September 29): On a lighter note, would there were such a thing, see also a relevant haiku from my friend Mad Kane.]

[Post-publication addendum II (September 29): Note on the sidebar that Sen. Menendez has been crossed off the list of "critical races" to which I attempt to draw readers' attention and financial support. Perhaps he can redeem himself. In the meantime, and unless and until then, there are consequences, and there must be, minor as they seem, but we all, each of us, must take a stand, and so I did.]

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There are few things I like more than watching a slow train wreck playing itself out in the public eye. Two have caught my attention lately, one on the West Coast, that being sometime actress Tara Reid, whose name I never would have heard nor recognized had it not been for GFY, and the other, Reid's East Coast counterpart, the Republican candidate for New York State Attorney General, Jeanine Pirro.

Frankly, I couldn't care less about either woman, nor their future prospects, and the direct similarities between the two -- aside from the whole disaster-in-the-making thing -- are few. It's just fascinating to sit back and watch.

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Paraphrasing Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.):

How do you ask someone to be the last one to die for a mistake?

Worse, how do you ask someone to be the last one to die for a lie?

Worst, how do you ask someone to serve and to die and merely to be regarded as a comma?

And, most heinously of all, how do you ask someone to serve and to die and to be considered one of thousands of deaths needed to insert a comma into this president's legacy of obstinance, dishonesty, and shame?

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Take a minute or two to check out two political advertisements of the type you won't see or hear on TV or the radio this fall, probably because the Democratic Party establishment fears they might prove too provocative, too "shrill," for which we might exchange the word effective.

The first is in text form and was written by Eric Alterman and posted at the new location of his blog, Altercation, and you can read it here.

The second, in video form, I caught at Orcinus, though it is circulating elsewhere in the blogosphere. It's outstanding.

What I would like to see is some sharp Photoshop expert pull together a montage in which the faces of the more than 2,600 Americans killed in Iraq are superimposed over the images of commas. That would be something to see.

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This has been a long time coming, but I have to say today that I've about had it with Andrew Cassel, who writes a column creatively entitled "The Economy" for the Philadelphia Inquirer's business section.

This is a guy who in the four or five years I've been reading -- and been consistently amazed by -- his work, has never met a piece of negative, disturbing, or troublesome bit of economic data he couldn't try to explain away by relying on the type of dogma discredited supply-siders, monetarists, and doctrinaire "free-marketeers" (There's no contradiction in Cassel's mind -- Hey, whatever's handy.) were slamming down the throats of gullible freshmen and first-year MBA students circa 1982.

Today, in "The Housing Bubble has Popped, But Most Need Not Worry," Cassel concedes "the Great Housing Boom of the early 21st century is over." (His capitalization, not mine.)

Sounds dire, right?

No, not to any reader trained to expect the best possible spin of data from Cassel. Granted, he goes for the big "sure, I'm a realist" stance, albeit briefly, by offering readers: "How big a deal is this? It's huge, of course, if it's your family facing higher mortgage payments or the chance of foreclosure."

As for the rest of you, or us, not facing a possible bankruptcy, he offers a quintessential Casselism: "[K]eep it in context."

In other words, Nothing to see here.

Cassel goes on, and on, in his inimitable and uneviable style, with largely unconvincing talk of how the U.S. economy is huge and housing is not that big a deal, even though it's well-documented by larger minds that the Greenspan-Bernanke Fed has been happy to sit back and watch and rely on upon "growth" generated by Americans, who while they're not exactly merely taking in each other's laundry, are instead just selling each other their houses.

Ultimately, this leads to the punch line, which in any Cassel column comes in the purportedly pithy final sentence, which here reads, "This economy is big enough, and dynamic enough, to take a lot of bad news in stride."

Gee, Andy, we've never heard that kind of reassurance before, have we?

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I know the feeling, even if I'm not sure Rupert Everett is being entirely honest here:

Unfortunately, I am single. But I'm too exhausted for anything else and being gay is a young man's game. Now no one wants me. Being gay and being a woman has one big thing in common, which is that we both become invisible after the age of 42. Who wants a gay 50-year-old? No one, let me tell you. I could set myself on fire in a gay bar, and people would just light their cigarettes from me. I don't want to be carried out of a club wearing a tie-dye T-shirt and a cap on the wrong way round when I'm 70, but I would like to settle down a bit. Maybe with a partner.

I often think he might be right, and given we're "roughly" the same age -- actually, I'm significantly younger, relatively speaking, as he is now 47 -- I also like to think Rupert and I are competing on something like the same level.

But then, I'm more of a pessimist than he apparently is.

And I'm much better looking.

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Gee whiz, what's with Rep. Christopher Shays (R-Conn.), the marginal and embattled, to say the least, Republican facing a very serious challenge from Rittenhouse-endorsed (to say nothing of more important types weighing in on this critical race) Democrat Diane Farrell?

Sycophant Shays today was quoted in The Hill, and I'm cleaning up his foul language: "[It’s] [Rittenhouse deletes Shays's expletive]. She has never said anything is wrong with them."

Desperate times, desperate talk.

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What do you do when a newspaper columnist you respect greatly, say John Grogan of the Philadelphia Inquirer (author of Marley & Me: Life and Love With the World's Worst Dog), devotes an essay to waxing nostalgic about The Who and then fast-forwards 31 years to write about sharing a concert experience with his three essentially pre-teen children?

Best to just look the other way.

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The more perceptive of the longtime readers of this blog may have noticed that at The Rittenhouse Review, people don't "die." Instead, except in rare cases when a larger point is to be made, they "pass away," "expire," or "decease," or, in some cases, when a comment might be expected, are just ignored.

So it's interesting, or not, to state here that Orianna Fallaci is dead.

Make of this notice what you will.

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I. There's a special place in hell for anyone who abuses a bulldog. (Warning: Disturbing photo and talk of puppies that didn't make it.) I think the punishment in the deepest layer of bulldog hell is perpetual ambient temperatures above, I don't know, 70 degrees! Fahrenheit. But there are still many worse penalties in store for offenders.

II. My bulldog, Mildred, this week finished off the hedgehog, last seen here. This stuffed little fellow, when new, offered three challenges: a nose and two eyes. The second eye, her final test, was chewed off a few nights ago. I'll post a photograph of the damage soon.

In case you're wondering, Mildred has had at this hedgehog with my full approval. I wouldn't want you to think that she's devouring stuffed animals at will. That's not her style. I give these guys to her to play with, all the while knowing that many dog owners and self-styled dog experts advise against allowing animals to chew on toys with plastic parts the dog can chew off because, Oh my God! The animal could choke! It's never happened, and nine years into the experience, I've picked enough eyes and noses off the floor and from between my sheets to know it never will. So have fun, you big girl.

III. Those of you who live alone, by which I mean alone with a pet, and who, like me, tend to get a little riled up when watching, listening to, or reading the news, will appreciate my latest promise to myself: Stop shouting about politics in front of the dog. It only gets her upset, you don't sleep so well on those nights yourself, and she is as sure as you are that these guys are criminally insane.

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While perusing No More Mister Nice Blog, I was reminded that the late Ann Richards's keynote address to the 1988 Democratic National Convention -- or at least a certain part of it -- made Mrs. George H. W. (Barbara) Bush "physically ill," which is aged WASP-speak for vomiting.

A bit of an overreaction on her part, though the same might be said of me, as I had the exact same feeling last year when I learned this:

Former first lady Barbara Bush donated an undisclosed amount of money to the Bush-Clinton Katrina Fund with specific instructions that the money be spent with an educational software company owned by her son Neil.

So perhaps we're even.

Besides, it rhymes with "witch," doesn't it?

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I am dreading tomorrow, Monday, September 11, 2006, the fifth anniversary of "9/11."

Already this evening, Sunday, September 10, 2006, I have turned off the radio, which at my place is almost always tuned to the local all-news station, because I just can't listen to it -- the false anticipation, crazed as it so often seems to be, of an orgy of self-immolated "don't-we-hurt-so-badly" lunacy -- anymore. I similarly would have shut down the television, but fortunately, I don't subscribe to cable TV and I pull in almost nothing over the air, so that's not even in the, um, picture.

Five years ago tomorrow, and for a couple of days after, when I learned what I had lost on that awful day, I could not speak. I was rendered mute, in the strictest sense of the term, for three days. I could not speak, in the sense that I could not force words past my lips. To the extent possible, I plan to mark this anniversary in like fashion. Sometimes silence is the most rewarding form of contemplation.

I lived in Manhattan "On 9/11," and amid all the insanity and confusion, I remember one of my sisters, a psychologist, that day and thereafter calling and e-mailing me repeatedly, almost incessantly, begging me to pick up the phone and answer, to provide her with for just a few words of reassurance. I didn't, I couldn't, pick up the phone, let alone call her, much as I knew my inability to do so was hurting her, and by extension, others, badly, and I doubt she knew that as time passed the bad news, for me, just kept coming, not one death, but two, then three, then four.

I tire now of those who want me, and us, to remember where we where then. I'm sorry, but it doesn't matter where I was then, and the same holds for the vast majority of us. Look, if you weren't in the World Trade Center -- trying to get the hell out -- or in the Pentagon or on one of the planes that crashed, or were one of the first/second/third responders to those sites, or you lost your spouse/partner/parent/child there, really, what difference does it make where we were? You lost, I lost, they lost. Most important: They -- the They, they -- lost. They are dead.

Soon I will go to sleep, but I know that I'll pray and cry as much tonight and tomorrow as I did five years ago, when I learned my friends Joe, Ann, David, and Danny were viciously murdered, on what should have been an ordinarily beautiful fall Tuesday, just going about their business. I know that some, the deranged ideologues of the Bush Regime, would have us think that we're all of a sudden about to forget them, that in our alleged "complacency" we're content to ignore legitimate threats to the nation we love. I promise you, all of you, my friends, passed so tragically, that this is not true. We will, in time, do better by you.

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Better news from the U.S. Open than that below: Martina Navratilova, just short, or maybe shy, of her 50th birthday for crying out loud, and her, um, partner, Bob Bryan, yesterday won the mixed doubles title, defeating Kveta Peschke and Martin Damm (Nope, I never heard of 'em either.), 6-2, 6-3.

The New York Times reports this is Navratilova's 345th career tournament victory and 59th grand slam title, and very likely to be her last since she has promised, we are to believe, that this year's U.S. Open was her final appearance on the regular pro tour.

Sadly, the Times also reports Arthur Ashe Stadium was "half empty" during the match. I wish I had been there to see her valedictory, if nothing else to help fill the crowd. I remember, back when I first started playing and watching (mostly watching) tennis, the -- and there's no other word for this -- fat Martina (she was an admitted McDonald's junkie then, post-defection from Czechoslovakia) of the mid-1970s, struggling to find her way alone as she was alternatively exploited and encouraged by friends, both real and imagined. She pulled through, though, and then some.

Over time, after pushing aside, or at least outlasting, the athletically inferior Chris Evert and others, and moving past the commonly accepted notion of "prime," that is, as she aged, she won fewer titles but won enough matches still to matter and remain at the edges of the limelight, and then kept things going with a second career in the underappreciated world of professional doubles, an entirely different game as those who have played will attest. I appreciated that and my admiration and respect increased, even accelerated, in turn.

You know you're getting older when a hero bows out, especially as gracefully as the supreme athlete Navratilova has done, and you think to yourself, they don't make them like that anymore and you know they never will.

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Maria Sharapova, after winning the U.S. Open Tennis Championship:

I'm thrilled that I got to experience another Grand Slam win. It's like the cherry on the cake. But there are a lot more cherries that I'm going to put on that cake.

Right. And life is like a bowl of icing.

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Alessandra Stanley, one of the most corrected New York Times reporters currently on staff, reaches a new low with her review, I guess we're to call it, of ABC's factually challenged miniseries, "The Path to 9/11," published today as "Laying Blame and Passing the Buck, Dramatized."

Ms. Stanley offers this appalling observation:

In 2001 President Bush and his newly appointed aides had ample warning, including a briefing paper titled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.," and they failed to take it seriously enough, but their missteps are not equal. It’s like focusing blame for a school shooting at the beginning of the school year on the student’s new home room teacher; the adults who watched the boy torment classmates and poison small animals knew better.

What are we to make of this? That the Bush administration was allowed some time, a learning curve if you will, in order to get up to speed on the threats posed by international terrorism, a subject that President Bill Clinton and his adviser Richard Clarke made amply clear to their successors? And how much time for the obviously intellectually deficient president and his inept national security adviser, who has since failed her way up to the State Department?

One might argue that Ms. Stanley redeemed herself a bit with this observation:

The Sept. 11 commission concluded that the sex scandal distracted the Clinton administration from the terrorist threat. But in hindsight, surely the right-wing groups who drove for impeachment must look back at their partisan obsession with shame, like widows sickened by the memory of spats about dirty dishes and gambling debts.

But that assumes the right wing is willing to own up to or apologize for anything. Don't count on it.

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I thought this can't be true, but it must be, because I saw it in USA Today: "Americans eat an average of 159 fast-food meals a person each year[.]"

Good Lord, people! There are only 365 days in a year!

Then I thought, I wonder how they're defining "fast-food meal."

The cited study was published in the latest issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine, but there's not much to go on over there.

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Hooray, it's a three-day weekend, with just my third day off all this year from work -- tomorrow -- now in sight. I should be happy. But I'm not. Because last night, and again this morning, I noticed Mildred hobbling and limping, and I'm not sure what it means.

We knew when we got Mildred, back when there was a "we," and took her to the vet for the post-purchase look-over, that her back right knee already was in bad shape. The patella-something-or-other, whatever he called it, was so serious, the vet said, that it constituted a birth defect, one common in bulldog puppies and one that would allow us, the buyers, in good faith and with justification, to return the puppy (that would be Mildred, already named, maybe our first mistake) to the breeder.

We chose not to do so.

I have not regretted that decision even once.

And while I've seen this limping in the past, and have blamed it, possibly correctly, on her sleeping too long on the wrong side or at the wrong angle, and watched her get over it, this latest flare-up scares me. Maybe her advanced age, now nine years, has me concerned.

And of course, it's the weekend, a long weekend, and so nobody's open except the emergency rooms at Penn, and while I'm sure the care there is the best, I'm not sure we can handle that right now.

Besides, tomorrow everything could be fine; maybe the kneecap will slip back into place. Or maybe not, and so then I'll keep carrying 60 pounds of bulldog up and down two flights of stairs to go outside. I'm happy to do so, and if you knew Mildred like I know Mildred, you would too.

[Post-publication addendum (September 4): Things are much better today. Mildred and I had a nice little walk outside late this morning and she traveled farther than I would have expected, with no "sit-downs" along the way (there were two of those on Saturday's walk). She didn't want to go outside this evening, which is fairly normal and she is managing well maneuvering around the apartment. Hopefully it was just a scare.]

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It's true. For those of you who somehow failed to notice during the past decade or so, Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) really is that bad. Just awful. And he apparently proved it again today when he appeared on Meet the Press with his Democratic opponent, Bob Casey.

I didn't catch their appearance, in part due to my longstanding aversion to Tim Russert (and besides, I don't have cable and the TV pulls in nothing over the air), but I have heard and read bits and pieces of the show on the radio and on the web. (It's available here, so hopefully I will get to it soon.)

It was this remark from Santorum that caught my attention: "[H]ow do we cure Iraq, focus on Iran? [sic]" Note, and this is important, the transcript stupidly and inexplicably puts a question mark at the end of that statement, but when you hear Santorum say the words, there's no doubt he has not framed it as a question. He is saying that if you want to fix what's wrong in Iraq, you need to look to Iran. And so it's really, "How do we cure Iraq? Focus on Iran."

And then there's this, which is even nuttier: "I don't know if it's a question of more troops or less troops, I think the focus should not be Iraq, it should be Iran."

Santorum threw in some of his stupidity about Iraq's supposed possession of weapons of mass destruction, which Casey rightly called "this crazy theory."

Good Lord, Santorum is not only drinking the Kool-Aid, he's swimming in it. It's oozing out of his pores.

And yet, with all that and so much more (and less), I still know too many people here -- Democrats, liberal Democrats even, they say -- who with their narrow (and I mean that), misguided, single-issue focus (yes, we're talking about abortion), won't lift a finger to help Casey nor do they plan to pull the lever on his behalf come November. Call me confused. And more than a little scared.

(Donate to Casey's campaign here.)

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Mildred is of the age (nine, but don't tell anyone) at which she sometimes will only deign to go outside -- for, well, you know -- once a day, and she actually pulls it off, by which I mean she makes the regimen work as far as my floors are concerned. (No pee on the carpet, okay? Get it now?)

And that's fine with me, because if I only have to take her out on one walk, as opposed to two or, God forbid, three, a day, I’m cool with that.

What I'm trying to figure out is why Mildred thinks she deserves a couple of snack treats in reward for not going outside in the evening.

Needless to say, she who would be indulged, is indulged.

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