* Tom Daschle will see if he’s got what it takes to sink the Obama campaign. [Political Wire]
* Walnuts! campaign too broke to have separate interns for coffee and donuts. [On Call]
* Even testimony from a “natural family planning” advocate gets a director’s cut. [My Left Nutmeg]
* British hostages in Iran subject to the torture of captivity without iPod. [thisislondon]
* University of Florida soon to have a Jeb Bush School For Kids Who Don’t Read Good. [alligator]
* Australian humor mostly lost on Hillary. [PrezVid]
* Google Maps-Darfur genocide mash-up — is there anything it can’t do? [Reuters

* S.V. Dáte talks about Jeb at P&P. “For eight years, Palm Beach Post reporter Dáte covered George W.’s younger brother in the Florida State House. He developed a deep distaste for Jeb Bush’s autocratic and obsessively secret ruling style. Dáte believes that it’s not a matter of if Jeb runs, but when.” Free at 7PM. [P&P]
* An evening of short films called “Stateless Cinema Hails Our Chiefs, Past and Present, This President’s Day” at the Black Cat. Several shorts about George W. Bush and one by the fascinating Paul Chan. $7 at 9PM. [Black Cat]
* Honor yourself and the alienation your human/machine lifestyle has caused with 2001: A Space Odyssey at AFI. $9.50 at 9PM. [AFI]

Tuesday would have marked his sixth State of the Union address — and it might have been his best yet.

The nation is in great shape, President Jeb Bush would have reported: record tax cuts propelling the economy to greater heights; a revolutionary school-vouchers program for the first time granting low-income parents real education choices; and, five years after the capture of Osama bin Laden, the final 20,000 U.S. troops returning home from Iraq.

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Nearly every sighting this week comes from the exact same place, several at the exact same time. Wonkette operatives didn’t even need to use their sharp eyes to spot these old men in a barrel. Apparently, Bistro Bis is the be-seen restaurant du jour. Or maybe it was all along — the closest we come to a power lunch is eating a burrito really fast. But John Kerry, John Bolton, Jon Tester , Jim Lehrer, and Steve Kroft have more discriminating palates. You get all of them, and one Senator too busy working on his abs to respect his elders, by indulging your Mecury-in-retrograde-moon-is-in-the-seventh-house fantasies on the other side of the worm hole.

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* Former US President Gerald Ford is still dead. [WP, NYT]
* Kissinger: Still evil, sycophantic sonuvabitch. [NYT]
* The Democrats who now control congress argued among themselves briefly over whether they should let Republicans help draft legislation, then decided to bind and gag them instead. [WP]
* Boy, we had this great strategy for winning the war in Iraq, and then all this chaos started going down, it sucked. But seriously, it was a great plan. You woulda loved it. [NYT]
* Thousands of Iraqis are fleeing their country, we were gonna let 500 into the U.S. this year. [NYT]
* 3,000 dead in Iraq, and most of America doesn’t know one of those 3,000. [WP]
* The NRA has some crazy new pamphlet warning its members that the the new democrats will steal their guns, even though the new Democrats are pretty damn pro-gun. Also, someone forgot to credit Wonkette. [WP]
* Jeb Bush’s official Florida Gubernatorial portrait features a bible and a Blackberry, Bush family will never, ever, ever go away. Also, he uses emoticons. [NYT]
* Breaking: People aren’t very good at giving up bad habits. Doctors say, “change comes from the heart, not the head.” You should probably stop seeing any doctor who says that. [WP]
* Former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein is still dead. [USAT]

Mary and Heather Cheney with their infant baby girl, Suri.

The Cheney Dynasty has a few problems: Bad hearts and homosexuality are so prevalent that America’s children are in danger of not even having a Cheney to oppress them in the future.

The available evidence strongly suggests a member of the Bush Dynasty provided the sperm for Mary’s “virgin” birth. The Bushes reliably produce children and basically live forever. But which lucky “member” of the Bush Family helped the Cheney bloodline? Take our scientific poll, after the jump.

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America’s weepy great-uncle, George H.W. Bush, had another public meltdown on Monday as he spoke at some “leadership council” deal in Florida. The former president began weeping and moaning while trying to talk about his son. But they were not tears of shame, as Poppy was speaking of Jeb “The Popular One” Bush.

Asked why his wife Barbara never cries and in fact laughs at the plight of disaster victims, Bush 41 said, “I’m the emotional one …. I don’t enjoy breaking up, but when you talk about somebody you love, when you get older, you do it more.”

UPDATE: We’ve found the actual AP photo of the Crying 41, and it’s after the jump.

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Sure, we laugh at Katherine Harris’ strong Christian/Jewish faith, and we laugh at how her god(s) betrayed her, but we’re ready to acknowledge an actual supernatural miracle when it happens. MORE »

Florida TV reporter Steven Cooper will soon be alligator food. MORE »

As we’ve learned from American legends such as Mel Gibson and Mark Foley, everybody in this country is basically one drink away from doing something insane like ranting about the Evil Jews or trying to fuck kids. MORE »

Becaue even the word “closet” is now toxic to Republicans, Jeb Bush is denying he was chased by big mean steelworkers in Pennsylvania and then had to hide in a broom closet where he cried like a little girl. MORE »