This …

prompts this:

Seems that one person’s smut is another person’s morning latte.

A Christian group based in San Diego found grounds for outrage over the new retro-style logo for Starbucks Coffee.

The Resistance says the new image “has a naked woman on it with her legs spread like a prostitute,” Mark Dice, founder of the group, said in a news release. “Need I say more? It’s extremely poor taste, and the company might as well call themselves Slutbucks.”

Smut?  Slut?  Dice?  That explains it.  We’ve been wondering what ever happened to Dice.

Maybe we should all go back to talking about Art Carney.  As in, chili con Carney.

E.J. Dionne breathlessly writes this in his Friday column:

Rep. Tom Davis of Virginia, who is retiring, confessed to me that if his party “were dog food, they’d take us off the shelf and put us in a landfill.”

Hate to betray the sanctity of a confession — but it’s really not.

Davis has been using that line for a while.

For example, it was in Dionne’s own newspaper, the Washington Post, on March 13:

“The House Republican brand is so bad right now that if it were a dog food, they’d take it off the shelf,” said retiring Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (Va.), who chaired the NRCC for four years earlier this decade.

Oh dear.

We disagree with Jeremiah Wright, who presumably at one point in his life said something like, “Nah, nah, nah … don’t God bless West Virginia, God damn West Virginia.”

No, because of West Virginia we are blessed with assertions like Hillary Clinton’s:

Implying that the party could lose in November if he is the nominee, Clinton told patrons of Tudor’s Biscuit World in Charleston: “I keep telling people, no Democrat has won the White House since 1916 without winning West Virginia.”

So the question is, how long has Hillary been telling this to people, and when she does, do they give her any meds?  Maybe she needs a rubber biscuit.

…. so it seems Barack Obama is becoming more and more a man of the people:

Early yesterday at a diner in Greenwood, Ind., Obama took a seat at the counter, ordered a ham-and-feta-cheese omelet  …

Of course, like most everyday Americans, I typically take my feta with a splash of V-8.

The Washington Post reminds us today:

Gerald Ford bit into a tamale without husking it while campaigning on the Mexican border in 1976, and he extolled its deliciousness before realizing he had consumed the wrapper.

it was a great moment in campaign history … well at least in Jerry Ford history. When Ford died in December 2006, the Houston Chronicle provided this tidy recounting of what happened:

It was called the “Great Tamales Incident” because President Gerald Ford committed a no-no by picking up a plate of tamales during an April 1976 visit to the Alamo and started to bite into one still shuck-wrapped.

Then-Mayor Lila Cockrell, who was at the brief tour of the Alamo, said most people gulped when they saw Ford eating one of the tamales with the husk.

“I think he just picked up the plate because if someone had given him the plate, the tamales would not have had the shucks,” Cockrell said. “The president didn’t know any better. It was obvious he didn’t get a briefing on the eating of tamales.”

Of course, Jimmy Carter beat Ford in 1976.  When asked afterward about lessons learned, Ford replied, “Always shuck your tamales.”

Alas, the embarrassment took place decades before YouTube would have captured and hermetically sealed it forever.  At least we do have this photo:

So sad to hear about the rice shortage.

Of course, it being Passover right now, I’m not directly affected.  Can’t eat it during Passover (unless I’m Sephardic, of course, which I’m not, but I sure do love those folks).
Still, once Passover is over, you bet I’ll be outraged about the rice shortage.  Should I even blame President Bush?

It wouldn’t be without precedent.

Please join me in remembering Bob Schieffer’s question to President Bush in an October 2004 debate with John Kerry:

Mr. President, to you. We’re talking about protecting ourselves from the unexpected, but the flu season is suddenly upon us, flu kills thousands of people every year, suddenly we find ourselves with a severe shortage of flu vaccine. How did that happen?

YES!  HOW … DID … THAT …. HAPPEN?!

Oh, sorry, I joined the outrage there a moment.

Maybe, to solve rice in the White House, we need Rice in the White House?

Via Fishbowl, the Brown Daily Herald:

A female audience member ran on stage last night and threw a green pie at New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, who had just begun a lecture on environmentalism in Salomon 101. The woman had been sitting in the south side of the auditorium’s front row when she pulled the pie out of a Brown Bookstore plastic bag that had been tucked in a red backpack and leapt out of her seat.

No word if the New York Times made the pie available for a Pulitzer Prize and book deal.

Cindy McCain’s taking quite a whipping — as well as a scrambling and a whisking and a blending — today for stealing recipes.

From our promotable friends over at So Good:

Oh man. This is a priceless intersection of politics and food. David Weiner, from Huffington Post, breaks the news that many of the recipes listed on the “Cindy’s Recipes” page on John McCain’s campaign site (and listed under the header “McCain Family Recipes”) are lifted, word-for-word, from the Food Network website.

Maybe she should just stick to hot dogs. After all, what’s easier than a dish with just two ingredients — a hot dog and a bun?

From the Washington Post story on NRCC treasurer Christopher Ward under scrutiny:

“The House Republican brand is so bad right now that if it were a dog food, they’d take it off the shelf,” said retiring Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (Va.), who chaired the NRCC for four years earlier this decade.

Mmmmm…. dog food.

Liberate Cuba! Well, at least, give them all a strong drink.

The Obama camp has a great idea for dealing with Cuba — too bad they wouldn’t implement it.

Aides to Obama, who took the brunt of Bush’s broadsides, reacted sharply to the president’s comments, saying he had been notably ineffective during his term in his goals of bringing democracy to Cuba and halting Iran’s nuclear program — goals that they said Obama shares.

“It’s not as though [Obama] is going to sit down for a rum and coke with Raul Castro and say ‘Cheers,’ ” said Susan Rice, one of Obama’s senior foreign policy advisers.

Aw, too bad he won’t. Have a rum and coke and a smile, we always say about high-stakes diplomacy. We were kinda hoping he’d likewise sit the Israelis down with the Palestinians over a bottle of Manischewitz and say L’Chaim.