Today (Jan. 27) is the birthday of both Mozart and Lewis Carroll. I’m setting my iTunes now to celebrate. (Yes, I could celebrate Alice on iTunes, had I actually uploaded David del Tredici’s In Memory of a Summer’s Day, one of his several pieces based on the Alice books. It opens with sweeping strings and a wind machine, a thrilling effect.)

Have you ever noticed that a person who drives 35 mph in a 45 mph zone will maintain that speed when he hits the 25 mph school zone? From this we are allowed to conclude that such a person is senile or drunk or both.

The rightwing noise machine is in full roar:

• making up Congressional Budget Office reports
• making up Al Qaeda operatives released from Guantanamo (61 is the magic number, pulled from its ass by the Pentagon, and let us not forget the actual releasees are prisoners freed by the Previous Administration because it had completely botched their interrogation/imprisonment)
• stating flatly that terrorists are going to be let go in the middle of our fair country (we need to invest in companies that make rubber bedsheets and Depends, apparently)
• stating flatly that an extension of Medicaid benefits in these troubled times for the victims of the PA’s policies is nothing more than pork spending by Pelosi on contraceptives (because if you’ve lost your job, you should not be having sex!)
• stating flatly that the stimulus package won’t benefit anyone for years and years and years (despite an actual CBO report that says the opposite)
• and in trivial matters, comparing the cost of Bush’s last inauguration minus the cost of security to that of Obama’s plus the cost of security

There’s more, there always is, but it’s too wearisome. I am curious to see whether the public will fall for the terror!+egregious spending!!+people-not-like-you-and-me having sex!!!! smokescreens this time. I work with some who do so only too gladly, and the number of media people who parrot these lies without correction is very disturbing. Still, I have hope.