Q: Is Paul Wolfowitz going to resign from the World Bank?

A: If so, expect him to do so in the next two hours. Having worked with the Bush administration, Paul Wolfowitz is surely aware that anything announced late on Friday afternoon doesn't count as ever having happened. Meanwhile, European protesters are standing by.

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In other news of W.-related jackassery, check out Wired's interview with Mark Klein, the retired technician who blew the whistle on AT&T for helping the government spy on your emails. Klein calls for Congress to take action, but he isn't optimistic:

"They could hold hearings and subpoena people and give them immunity. Right now there are people who could come forward and say what they know, but they need immunity. That's the bottleneck. I don't see a resolution coming from this Congress. It's a conspiracy against the American people."

Unfortunately, that conspiracy I can't debunk.

Q: From what country could this cartoon have possible emerged?

A: You get three guesses. And they should all be "Germany."


It's "Bush's Best Friends,' by Rainer Hachfeld! Via the always surprisinger, often perplexinger international cartoonists @ Cagle Cartoons.

I find it sort of odd how only the non-U.S. media is properly emphasizing that Paul Wolfowitz is yet another boneheaded Bush appointee, and that perhaps his flagrant abuses of power aren't so unexpected.

But I always found it very odd that hardly anyone in this country complained when Donald Rumsfeld's bloodlusty number two was inexplicably appointed head of an organization that wields billions of dollars in funds for the benefit of developing nations.

It must have been announced on a Friday afternoon or something. At the time, the U.S. media barely seemed to notice the appointment, let alone question its logic (at least, that's how I remember it. I would confirm that, but I'm still too sick to be expected to do anything challenging or responsible).