I think I was one of five Republicans troubled by President Bush’s landing on the Lincoln back in 2003, but this story positively creeps me out.

Is there any conceivable reason for a Russian head of state to be on a bomber which is firing test missiles? I mean, any reason that isn’t very, very worrisome?

The Smoking Gun has a wild picture up. An inmate in Florida hired what he thought was a contract killer to off his wife. It was actually a police sting. They staged photos of his wife’s “execution.”

Wasn’t this an SVU episode?

Responding to Dean Barnett’s piece on lefty-blogs’ new litmus test, lefty blogger Bob Brigham contributes this bit of perfection. First, Brigham quotes Barnett’s piece as saying:

In the aftermath of a shocking election night, one that was widely described by left-wing bloggers as “colossal” and “tidal,” Bill Schneider bestowed his “Play of the Week” award on Brigham and his peers. The only downside from the Democrat party’s perspective is the inconvenient fact that Hackett lost.

Brigham then responds:

No, we won. It was a 70-30 district, we beat the spread by a healthy margin. Democrats need to stop judging success on Election Day, we need to judge success every day.

Get that? Politics now has a handicap, like golf or bowling. Stop judging success by how many votes you get! Start judging it by, uh, other stuff! (Preferably non-falsifiable stuff, please.)

I’d make more fun of this, but I’m a Philadelphia sports fan and I understand this psychosis all too well. In my heart I know that the Sixers shellacked the Lakers in the 2001 Finals, even if they didn’t–technically–“win” the “championship.”

Oh just click this link already. Nothing I can tell you about the story could possibly make it sound more interesting, could it?

Fine, I’ll give you a tidbit from Brian Moore’s excellent piece:

Tyson told a correspondent for Britain’s Zoo magazine that he’d chatted with “a gentleman called Jimmy who’s involved with Jenna Jameson. They (sic) said they were interested in getting me involved in the adult film industry.” . . .

Tyson’s sexual appetite is gargantuan–he’s like King Henry VIII at a Shoney’s – so working in porn would be a sort of reverse busman’s holiday for him.

A further indication that Hollywood may not be as in love with terrorism as some would suggest: we now have word that Paul Greengrass is going to direct a film based on Flight 93.

This seems, to me, an incredibly seductive, but risky project. While I hope that Greengrass does well with this picture, the event itself is so big and frought with dramatic tension that it’s difficult to imagine a movie which, at this point, could do it justice.

If I were a filmmaker looking to do a 9/11 movie, I might examine this amazing story from USA Today about how the FAA landed 4,500 planes in 4 hours on September 11.

It’s not nearly as sexy as Flight 93–in many ways it’s a story about the dog who didn’t bark. But it’s a relatively unknown corner of 9/11, it’s packed with its own, very real, tension, and it would allow you to come at an event which is not yet wholly digested at an off-angle.

(Mind you, all of these factors would also argue for the Oliver Stone project about the rescue at Ground Zero–if you had, say David Lynch directing, instead of Stone.)

You know you want it: The latest Snakes on a Plane update.

Repeat after me: The Daily Kos is Democratic, but Democrats are not the Daily Kos. The Bull Moose has a courageous post on Israel and Cindy Sheehan which, I suspect, represents the broad mainstream of Democratic sentiment. Not that you would ever know it from reading the left-wing blogs or watching the media coverage.

No, the only time you ever see proof that the majority of Democrats are more like the Moose than the Kos is when you look at election results.

Much to my disappointment, the upcoming Rolling Stones album A Bigger Bang does include the track “Sweet Neo Con.” And despite earlier reports that it wasn’t specifically targeted towards Bush, the Austrian newspaper Die Presse makes clear that it’s hard to miss the message:

You call yourself a Christian / I call you a hypocrite / You call yourself a patriot / I think you’re full of shit… / It’s liberty for all / democracy’s our style / unless you are against us / then it’s prison without a trial.

But who knows, maybe the rest of the album is nice.