Yum.
Someone should set up a franchise in Knoxville.

Last night on Hardball with Chris Matthews they had on two women at President Bush’s ranch who support the Iraq war–anti-Cindy Sheehans, if you will. One of them was apparently an Iraqi.
I thought it not a little suspicious that an Iraqi woman would just happen to be in Crawford, Texas, for this kind of thing. Then when I heard this, the staged protester alert really went off:

MATTHEWS: Let me ask you this. How many years should the United States stay in Iraq and defend the side that you�re on?
LAMOTTE: I think when…
MATTHEWS: How many years?
LAMOTTE: I think when Iraqi people can be�stand up on their own, at that time.

Hmmm. When the Iraqi people stand up . . . the Americans will stand down. That sounds awfully familiar. Isn’t it a real coincidence that an Iraqi just happened to use Bush’s language?
Surprise! Turns out that the woman apparently isn’t just your random Iraqi off the street.

I think this offers a pretty good insight into the depth and interest level of the typical Fox News Channel viewer:

Van Susteren’s “On the Record” has relentlessly followed the mysterious disappearance of 18-year-old Natalee Holloway of Alabama while on a graduation trip to Aruba in May.
Critics find it an obsession bordering on the bizarre, twisting traditional notions of news judgment and becoming Exhibit A in the media’s fascination with missing people — as long as they happen to be young, white, female and pretty.
. . .
She averaged nearly 2.2 million viewers a night in July, up 58 percent from the same period a year ago, according to Nielsen Media Research. CNN’s Aaron Brown used to put up a tough fight in the time slot; now Van Susteren routinely triples his audience. She narrowly missed 3 million on July 26, her biggest audience this year.
. . .
With war and terrorism in the news, critics wonder how one missing person case can so dominate a news program. Even on the night President Bush nominated John Roberts to the U.S. Supreme Court, ”On the Record” spent far more time on Holloway.
Her name came up 178 times during a computer search of “On the Record” transcripts from the past two months, only seven times for the same period on Keith Olbermann’s “Countdown” on MSNBC. The count was 434 times for Fox’s three prime-time news shows; 50 for CNN’s.

Four hundred thirty-four times? And this count is at least a week old. From what I’ve seen, there hasn’t even been any hard news to report on this case–just a bunch of suspicion and someone finding a missing belt [not even the victim’s]. What can people possibly find interesting that’s worth listening to the bobble heads speculate for hours about this story?
Leave it to Fox News to make a hero out of mother who’s lost a child in Aruba, but a villain out of one who’s lost hers in Iraq.

The less enlightened among us might be lead to believe that President Bush’s refusal to spend 5 minutes listening to Cindy Sheehan is a symptom of indifference. How quickly we forget:

And so, you know, I think about this every day, every single day, and will continue thinking about it, because I understand we’ve got kids in harm’s way. And I worry about their families; and I obviously, any time there’s a death, I grieve.

It may appear to you and I that Mr. Bush is spending his days fishing, biking, and attending fund raisers. What we don’t see is that on the inside, our leader is grieving. He just finds it more compassionate to keep his feelings within, rather than sharing them with mourning relatives camped a mile away.

Tragic:

A highly honored 25-year-old D.C. police officer died yesterday after he apparently drank too much water Tuesday while training to use a bicycle on patrol, police officials said.
Doctors believe that hyponatremia, a sodium imbalance caused by drinking excessive amounts of fluid, most likely caused or contributed to the death of Officer James C. McBride, police officials said. McBride consumed as much as three gallons of water during and after the 12-mile training ride Tuesday morning, police said.

Three gallons? Last week I had a hard time drinking one gallon during and after a 24 mile ride; my stomach started hurting hurting. [I drank half of it after the ride–probably too much at once].
You can drink too much while exercising.