Richard Walton, Phillipe + Jorge’s favorite lefty in the bullpen, throws us an article from the August 27 issue of the Nation, Alexander Cockburn’s “Beat the Devil” column, titled, “How the Democrats Blew It in Only Eight Months.” (Cockburn is what P&J call one of our “long-duration personal saviors,” with apologies to the Church of the SubGenius. Nearly three decades ago, his late, lamented “Press Clips” column in the Village Voice was one of the inspirations for the Cool, Cool World.)
 
Cockburn hits the nail on the head when he hammers the Congress-controlling Democrats, who have deservedly seen their institutional approval rating slump into the teens. Why? Because they all shouted out their virtues on the promise of ending this obscene Iraq war, and have done shit about it since taking the reins. The war has escalated on their watch, they have approved military budget increases (although our forces are still under-armed and under-protected), and they have allowed the authorization of warrant-less wiretaps.
 
Cockburn also points out how this lily-livered bunch has been silently bending over to Dubya the Dumb’s demands, while flapping their arms and gums over the disgraced, jumped-up Bush butt-boy and torture enthusiast Alberto “VO5” Gonzales. This has directed attention away from major problems — like an unraveled foreign policy, the abortion that is (still) the Katrina aftermath, and a totally broken health-care system.
 
P&J join Cockburn in his opinion that there is no excuse for this. Who among the Dems (besides Russ Feingold) has the balls to demand an immediate pullout?
 
All they are doing now (besides ignoring the US troop death toll, which is pushing 4000, with no end in sight), is trying to figure out if Georgie Boy may have had a point in comparing Iraq with Vietnam.
 
This claim is so preposterous, delusional, and off the charts of truth and history that it should not have hit the public eye without prompting media suggestions that Boy George is completely insane and a danger in his present office. But, of course, the bulk of the Fourth Estate — except for those with cojones, such as Cockburn — is just as enabling as our all-sizzle-and-no-steak Democratic milquetoasts.
 
Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid? What a joke. Meet the new boss . . .

Playing footsie, GOP-style
One of the great mysteries for P+J is why, whenever there is a Wash¬ington controversy in which a major male political figure is discovered to be engaging in superior behavior in a most un-superior way (for example, in a public men’s room), it’s 90 percent likely that the figure is not just a Republican, but a “family values” kind of Republican.
 
Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised. After all, there is also a boatload of empirical evidence on the non-superior side of how hookers claim to do better business at national GOP conventions than Democratic ones.
 
So Senator Larry Craig, Republican of Idaho, appears to have been the latest swinger. He allegedly tried to signal to a plainclothes police sergeant in an adjoining toilet stall in the Minneapolis airport that he was looking for a bit of company. Court records indicate that Senator Craig pleaded guilty and paid a fine on a lewdness charge.
 
The senator, in a statement issued by his office, complained that the police had “misconstrued” his actions. Those actions, according to the sergeant in the adjoining stall, comprised of “tapping his toes several times and [moving] his foot closer to my foot. I moved my foot up and down slowly. The presence of others did not seem to deter Craig as he moved his right foot so that it touched the side of my left foot which was within my stall area.”
 
While the sergeant said that he recognized this wingtip tango as “a signal used by persons wish¬ing to engage in lewd conduct,” we’re quite certain that Senator Craig will reveal how his footwork was a well-known move used in Pocatello when someone is searching for a fourth for bridge. Either that or he has unusually long legs, and ends up playing footsies with guys in the next stall inadvertently, but on a regular basis.
 
We breathlessly await more cultural enlightenment from Senator Craig, such as the notion that a “friend of Dorothy” is a reference to Dorothy Hamill (i.e., an attraction to ice skating and bowl haircuts). And you can also bet that the senator’s only “tea-bagging” experiences involved oolong, not “Ewwhh, long.”
 
Larry, we hardly knew ye.