Over the past several weeks, I have been (somewhat successfully) shedding pounds and getting in shape. I have cut down my dinners for 6 to dinners for 3, I have reduced my admiration for carbs by moving them down from god-status to best invention ever-status (hat tip to Hitchens and Dawkins), I have stopped answering my pregnant wife’s requests to get her a glass of water from downstairs by asking, “Why don’t we drive?” I have refrained, for the most part, from taking a few daily shots of Wishbone Italian (although we still play quarters on the weekend). I have shifted the location of the ingredients in my best peanut butter sandwiches from bread to the bowl. And finally, in an effort to calm the munchies, I have become determined never to smoke pot again unless there is a really good reason. Good reasons include: Dealing with unpleasant social situations (yes, that’s a bit redundant), watching the Mclaughlin Group, and reacting to the question, “What constitutes a good reason?”

All was going quite well until my wife and sister-in-law took me to Bloomies for a new pair of jeans – my first since I dropped my baggies in the early nineties (they were so baggy that several of my Brooklyn high school students commented on them approvingly). As part of the celebration of the new me, my shopping guides squeezed me into a pair of jeans one size lower than my current comfort zone (and few sizes higher than my spending comfort zone). So here I am, sitting at my keyboard, feeling a roll of lard hanging over my new, tight jeans. I look decent, I am told. But I feel about five times fatter than I did before I started my training regimen.

I’m through fighting it. I am getting back into my four sizes too big Khakis, getting a few sacks of lunch, taking a bong hit and going back to work on the site that I think, in a very self-help, Oprah watching, self-embracing kind of way, celebrates me. All of me.

huskyjew.com

While we lament the Bush administration’s march into the war in Iraq, we too often forget that a pathetically lazy and politicized Congress gave them the power to do so. Many members of Congress never took the administration up on the offer to read intelligence reports.

Too lazy? Perhaps. But somehow these grandstanding idiots have plenty of time to exchange 100 page reports that reflect on the Clemens steroids hearings.

And yes, the findings are purely partisan.

Reprising the partisan nature of last month’s congressional hearing that examined whether the seven-time Cy Young Award winner took performance-enhancing drugs, the leading Republican on the committee that heard testimony from Clemens and McNamee released a report Tuesday questioning some of the Democratic majority’s findings.

The 109-page report “seeks to dispel conclusions that may have resulted from an incomplete consideration of the full record” and contains details Rep. Tom Davis believes could challenge the credibility of McNamee, the personal trainer who testified under oath he injected Clemens with steroids and human growth hormone from 1998-01.

This shit is being released just as we head into an economic disaster (yes, largely due to a lack of oversight by these clowns) and slide into more complications in Iraq.

We have built an election process that is a magnet for bickering imbeciles and, well, here they are. Fuck, it’s endlessly disappointing to follow politics.

And relax, I’m not Obama’s new reverend.

Hillary has a big edge in Pennsylvania.

But Obama just scored Franco Harris.

It’s over.

Frontline is always good. But they have outdone themselves with a remarkably detailed documentary on the incredibly disturbing lead up to, and execution of, what they call Bush’s War.

It really was a perfect storm of bad judgment, malicious intent, a power structure out of balance, a weak Natl Sec Adviser, a marginalized secretary of state, an all-powerful veep, a lazy Congress, and outplayed British PM, a foolishly managed French foreign policy, an ignored military leadership, an Oedipal complex hall of fame President, and a media that focused on Rumsfeld’s funny press conference delivery instead of highlighting the fact that he was wrong, horribly wrong, on just about any point that mattered.

Watch the documentary here.

Even today, the least focused on part of the story is that Osama bin Laden may very well end up dying of old age.

After using his first day in office to inform us that both he and his wife have had multiple affairs, NY’s new governor Paterson is back to let us know he used cocaine and marijuana in his 20s.

I’m not sure if he should be running for public office or reopening Studio 54.

It turns out that your parents were right. Pot is the gateway drug.

The gateway to public office.

All kidding aside, welcome to the new, new politics where those in office admit they fuck, snort and inhale.

And guess what? No one will care.

And those who have instead suggested that they smoked pot but didn’t inhale will be cast into the sea.

There’s been a lot of talk about a certain candidate’s name. But ask yourself this question.

Would he have a better chance of winning if he went by the name folks called him until he got to college?

Would you be more likely to vote for Barry Obama?