No...this story isn't from The Onion! And I checked the calendar, it's not April 1.

This is actually the lead story from the front page of WorldNetDaily! The far right "news" site that, I guess, expects us to take their views seriously. Or expects their regular readers to do so. Or expects "Christians" to do so. Or something...

What a surprise this group would come out of Texas?! And Texans had such an unblemished reputation up till now!

There's more to the story than what I quoted...Go read it. It's short, and doesn't have too many big words.

Last Thursday THE BRAD BLOG came within a hair of 1,000 UNIQUE Visitors on that one day alone! Not bad for our short, yet storied, history.

UPDATE: And, oh, I forgot... and on that same Thursday a visit with comment, albeit to hawk one of his books --- which looks good by the way --- from one of the journalists that I had quoted from that day. The honor was mine.

Thanks to all the BRAD BLOG readers (who either like it or hate it) for your growing support!

You know things are turning ugly for Republicans when they drop their usually unshakable lock-step support and start turning on each other --- and in the middle of an Election Year none the less! That seems to be happening with ever increasing momentum in Conservative/Republican circles now as Bush's re-elect support plummets to near Jimmy Carter-like numbers.

Last week I blogged about the ultra-con New Republic turning hard against Bush in "With Friends Like These...Who needs Democrats?" Two days later more evidence emerged as stalwart Conservatives George Will and then Richard Rahn in The Washington Times were also turning against Bush as blogged in "The Bottom Continues to Drop".

Now the dominos are tumbling as the outlook from Iraq to the Re-Elect effort is looking bleeker and bleeker.

Today, Conservative Prince of Darkness, Bob Novak reports on the "nearly one out of five Republicans [who] cannot flatly say they support Bush, [which] could spell defeat in a closely contested election.":

But it's not just the commentators and would-be Bush "supporters" now turning on him. Republican Legislators are also getting into the act.

House Republicans are turning on Senate Republicans as seen in this dust-up between House Speaker Dennis Hastert and Senator John McCain reported today by AP:

For his part, Bush himself is turning inward to find someone else to blame for the mess he's in. As reported by AFP, he may be finally realizing how they've been played from Day One by Ahmad Chalabi (the one man they hung their WMD case against Saddam, who assured our gullible Commander-in-Chief that we'd be greeted as liberators with candy and flowers and who they expected would be the next Iraqi President).

Two days ago, they finally wised-up and cut off Chalabi's $340,000 monthly stipend, and last night, apparently, they even invaded his house in an overnight raid in Baghdad:

Intra-Partisan wrangling is not all that uncommon when a President is in full command of his power. During Clinton it was the Liberals versus the Moderates in the Democratic Party for example. But this is an Election Year, when Republicans traditionally close ranks behind their man. They seem now to be doing the very opposite, begging the question; Does George W. Bush have any real friends left?

The mounting evidence would indicate otherwise, as his "friends" are looking more and more every day like rats from a sinking ship of state.

Remember when Dubya promised a $20 Billion aid package to NYC after 9/11? Well, it never got there.

Neither did the promised $90 Million to NYC Firefighters to monitor the long-term health impact of breathing all that shit for months while they cleaned up for us. Dubya was just kiddin', I guess.

The smoke and mirror deceptions from the man hoping he can fool you into believing he's "tough on terror" so that you'll re-up him for four more years continues.

Yesterday NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg testified for 15 minutes to the 9/11 Commission. AP reports...

1010 Wins went into a bit more detail...

Ridge agreed?!!

I guess Bush musta voted for the NYC Homeland Security spending before he voted against it?

While the supposed "Liberal Media" continues to carry the water for the Bush Campaign's "Kerry is a Flip-Flopper" scam, occasionally, if you look really closely, you'll find a reporter, like Jack Newfeld in The Nation who offers the real story. But you gotta look damn hard to find it.

From Harper's Index...

From AP:

And they thought Gay Weddings were bad for the institution of marriage? The story concludes...

Turns out that the U.S. Army Brigadier General overseeing all U.S. Army operations in Iraq and Afghanistan tells us that the U.S. Army's Inspector General who is investigating U.S. Army abuse of prisoners at U.S. Army prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan says that there is no wide-spread pattern of abuse by the U.S. Army!

I'm glad that's all cleared up! Looks like the charges of a cover-up by the U.S. Army and a Pentagon Report on the deaths of prisoners in custody at four different U.S. Army prisons in Iraq and charges of U.S. Army abuse of journalists at a different prison in Iraq and U.S. Army abuse of prisoners in Afghanistan are wholly unfounded. For a while I was worried!

When I set out to look into what was going on at the "Andy Kaufman - Dead or Alive?" 20th Anniversary event after midnight last Sunday, little did I know I'd be sucked into it's vortex. I'd wished I'd brought a camera or a tape-recorder, but hadn't. Fortunately, I found this picture of me behind "Tony Clifton" over on Wally Wingert's website. He's the guy who setup the Andy Kaufman memorabilia in Andy's old apartment which was opened for viewing in "Act 4" of this bizarre and wonderful "event" around 2am or so that night / Monday morning.

Full details on my experience and how I ended up at this "event" here. Pointers to all the BRAD BLOG "Andy Kaufman Dead or Alive?" investigative articles here. Original photo on the web from which the above is taken here (for all those Photoshop cynics!)

UPDATE (4/25/04): The photo above (sans the red circle) is now also on the Official Tony Clifton website in the "Sightings" section. And hence, Brad ignominiously ends up, if only in the most insignificant way possible, as part of the annals of Andy Kaufman / Tony Clifton historical folklore. Sigh.

Having for a couple of weeks inhabited his spirit, if not his body, for an Odd Couple spoof of sorts a few years back (Brad in OddFellas), the news of his passing was all the more sad to me. Good god was he funny. And a genius.

One of his last jokes, caught by Paul B., from the AP obituary:

I'm pretty sure --- not certain --- but I think I spotted Annette Bening in Tony's dream sequence on this week's Sopranos.

The finale episodes begin tonight on BRAVO (9/8p with repeats later) and end tomorrow. If you haven't watched up till now, they are still worth checking into even this late in the game. That is, if you feel you can enjoy witnessing four completely twisted families in the midst of undoubtedly screwing up their children's lives for years to come.

Of the five sets of parent(s)/child(ren) on the show, only one pairing comes close to not being worthy of a call to Child Protective Services.

I'd have to turn away completely, if they hadn't gone ahead and put it on television for me to watch.