Quotes of the day: So is that what this whole Iraq business has been all about--Tiny Georgie has a toxic accumulation of "stray puppy" issues?

"If we leave before the mission is complete, if we withdraw, the enemy will follow us home."
--President Bush, raising money for Steelers' wide receiver . . . er, Pennsylvania GOP gubernatorial candidate Lynn Swann (missing and unaccounted for: Pennsylvania GOP Sen. Rick Santorum, rumored to be involved in some sort of electoral tussle of his own this year--the subject doesn't seem to have come up)

"'The enemy will follow us home.' And then we'll have to feed it, and love it, and get it all its shots."
--Rachel Maddow, on her Air America Radio show this morning

It does appear that Tiny George's folks did a powerful enough job with the anti-puppy propaganda that the boy is still acting out some childhood psychodrama. The only question now is how deep the bad-puppy indoctrination runs. Would it be better to try to heal the wound, by letting Georgie bring some poor puppy home (which seems kind of hard on the puppy)? Or would it be better to take the hard-line approach and try to satisfy the boy's blood lust--by, say, killing a bunch of puppies? In the name of the famous "culture of life," of course.

Oh, don't get hysterical. We're not going to actually kill any puppies. Certainly not for the likes of that sickie. The idea would be to stage fake puppy executions. It should be remembered that the Clintons weren't the only White House residents with Hollywood friends. Of course where the Clintons tended to know talented people, the Bush crowd's Hollywood admirers seem to be brain-dead hacks who make mind-assaulting propaganda clunkers. But that's perfect for this assignment, no?

All we would need to know then is just how many fake puppy-deaths it would be necessary to stage in Project Puppy-Offing to quell the fires of puppy-rage burning in the ashpit of the Tiny Georgean brain.