Olio

• We're leaking, but the good news is it can't possibly be brain fluid: four days after we got 400,000 pages on the Great Cluster Fuck in Iraq, the Times coverage--after thoughtfully including a top-of-the-Sunday-frontpage exposé of how Julian Assange Just Isn't Our Kind (Daniel Ellsberg went to a psychiatrist!)--I'm convinced, by the way, that absent Ben Bradlee and whatever honor remains among thieves, the Times would have hired Sally Quinn away from the Post years ago--the whole thing's down to a box in the corner. So Last Week! I am reminded of what I said in 2002: the main argument against our invading Iraq, or anyone, for that matter, is that this country is too juvenile to handle it. We should have picked up on this when the warfloggers blamed Life for My Lai. Now our newspapers can't handle the news.

Reggie Bush returned his Heisman. On his own. Just saying'.

• On the other hand, "Karzai takes money from Iran" has legs. Or maybe that's just to make up for "Secret donors run US campaigns: Who are we to judge?"

• My memory's going: has there been a national election since 1980 which was about anything?

• GM PAC gives Mitch McConnell $5000. In other news, Mitch McConnell accepts $5000 from GM.

Enjoy the next couple months, motherfuckers, until the Teabaggers take over.

• Somerby:

As we’ve noted, every journalist flies to Finland to examine its high-scoring (middle-class) schools. This furthers a preferred press corps narrative: Our own public schools are a mess!

But please note: No one has ever flown to Finland to explore a second question: How do they provide health care at such a very low cost? Here are the OECD data for the U.S. and Finland:

Total spending on health care, per person, 2007:

United States: $7285

Finland: $2900

How weird! Why does no one fly to Finland to examine this major achievement?

• You gotta get up pretty early in the morning to slip a similarity past a Post staff writer:

Nevertheless, the similarities to Beck's rally are just the sort of thing Stewart himself would satirize on his show if, of course, it weren't his rally and his TV show in the first place.

• No, really: Joe Frontiera and Dan Leidi, columnists, consultants, and concerned clip-art bystanders, "Don't Get Fooled Again: The Baby Boomers' leadership failure".

• Your Moment of Zen:

Admirable is he, who when he
sees lightning, does not say
"Life goes by like a flash."

-Basho