Magic in a Microwave

Amazing video follows – your jaw will surely unhinge – but you have to suffer some partisan stuff first.

And I quote:

The current Congress has shown no inclination to investigate the Bush administration. Last year The Boston Globe offered an illuminating comparison: when Bill Clinton was president, the House took 140 hours of sworn testimony into whether Mr. Clinton had used the White House Christmas list to identify possible Democratic donors. But in 2004 and 2005, a House committee took only 12 hours of testimony on the abuses at Abu Ghraib.

– Paul Krugman, The New York Times

☞ Striking, no? Yet even so, stuff comes out.

Mark Lefler: ‘With Republicans implying the Mark Foley scandal was a Democratic ‘October Surprise,’ maybe you should just list each month for the last few years stating the Republican scandal ‘de jour.’ With so many happening practically every month, how could there not be at least one in October! Abramoff, Ney, Hastings, ‘Duke’ Cunningham, DeLay . . . try searching ‘Republican scandal’ on the web. It is amazing.’

☞ If you wanted a list, you could start here.

But the real bombshell this week, I thought, was the David Kuo book and attendant publicity. Here was an evangelical Bush appointee noting that of the billions to faith-based programs the President had promised to help the poor, less than 1% was delivered in his first two years in office. And noting that, behind their backs, White House staffers would roll their eyes at evangelicals, calling them ‘nuts.’ Karl Rove wasn’t respecting these folks, he was using them – and to get very unchristian things, like huge tax breaks for the mega-rich and favorable treatment for Big Oil.

Here’s Tucker Carlson on the Chris Matthews Show:

The deep truth is that the elites in the Republican Party have pure contempt for the evangelicals who put their party in power. Everybody in our world has contempt for the evangelicals. And the evangelicals know that, and they’re beginning to learn that their own leaders sort of look askance at them and don’t share their values…It’s pandering to the base in the most cynical way, and the base is beginning to figure it out.

☞ I don’t expect most evangelicals to rush out to elect Democrats – even though on so many issues, it is the Democrats who fit more naturally with their calling. (We need to do a much better job of getting that across.) But I do think some are realizing they’ve been disrespected and used, and that they may stay home.

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Mark Gorman: ‘After voting for Reagan, Bush I (twice) and Dole, I am proud to say that I voted Democratic in the last two presidential elections. To paraphrase Reagan, I didn’t leave the Republican Party, it left me.’

☞ Exactly.

And now, as a small reward for suffering this rant, here is pure magic and a microwave oven. How does he DO this? (Really: if you can figure it out, please let me know. Far more amazing than building Stonehenge.)