Shocking news this morning. Are you sitting down? Good. ‘Cuz it turns out Dubya’s 2004 campaign manager and former RNC chairman Ken Mehlman is gay. Yes, I know it’s hard to believe, but it’s true.

Mehlman arrived at this conclusion about his identity fairly recently, he said in an interview.

All that sex with dudes shoula been your first clue, buddy.

“It’s taken me 43 years to get comfortable with this part of my life…. The process has been something that’s made me…happier and better”

And gayer, too, apparently.

This has got to be quite a blow (so to speak) to Republicans. Not the gay part, of course, but the hypocrisy, which is so unusual for them. 🙄

Hopefully Lindsay Graham, Karl Rove, Wide Stance Craig, and Mitch McConnell will now come out with statements condemning Kenny Boy for his clandestine behavior, but praising his courage for coming out. Larry Craig might even offer to make room for Ken under his big tent.

Former Japanese Democratic Party Leader Ichiro Ozawa called Americans ‘simple-minded’ yesterday. All I have to say to that is, “well, duh.”

“I like Americans, but they are somewhat monocellular,” the former Democratic Party leader said. “When I talk with Americans, I often wonder why they are so simple-minded.”

Me too, Ichiro-san. But it’s part of our charm.

We’re like that affable but really stupid dog that wags his tail and drools all over everything, then craps on the floor. You try and get pissed at us, but then you look in our big goofy eyes and you just can’t stay mad. At least until we elect a George Bush and contract the equivalent of rabies and get all aggressive and invasiony and shit.

Then you realize we’re too goddamn big to have put down, and you start getting nervous.

Today is a big day here in these parts. It’s the opening day of the New York State Fair, which signals the beginning of the unofficial end of summer (the end of course coming on the final day of the Fair, which is Labor Day). As always (now that I’m old), the start of the Fair has taken me by surprise. Where has the summer gone?

Features include the world famous butter sculpture, which this year has the “green technology” theme of “Dairyville 2020” (which is funny since the display case is a big refrigerated room that’s got to be at least as old as I am, and probably uses about eleventy-million KWh a day.

On one side is a dairy farm with 14 cows, a barn and an anarerobic digester. On the other side of the sculpture is Dairyville, which is powered by electrical lines carrying power made from the cow manure.The exhibit shows how the manure from these cows can be used to generate electricity using the digester, how composted manure can be used as natural fertilizer and, of course, how these cows produce nearly 50 gallons of milk a day.

Wow, butter and manure. It doesn’t get any better than that!

After the fair, students from the State University College of Environmental Science and Forestry in Syracuse will convert the butter into biofuel to fuel the college’s buses.

Well good for them. Beats making 2.3 million pieces of toast.

Also, it’s also a big night for geezers (and geezers at heart), as tonight’s act at the grandstand is Aerosmith.

I won’t be attending this year’s Fair, because out of the blue a few months ago, the State Fair Director decided to fire all the union trades people (electricians, plumbers, steamfitters, etc) that traditionally work the Fair and get the grounds ready each year, and then hired a bunch of scabs for a lot less money.

To be honest, I probably wouldn’t have gone anyway. I haven’t actually gone since 1998, I think, when I manned the voter registrstion booth for my union, and got my picture taken shaking hands with former NYS Comptroller H. Carl McCall (had he won the election for Governor, NY would be in much better shape right now) at a luncheon for union activist types. He made me look very, very short.

The rides on the midway are too expensive (as are the beers), I’ve already seen plenty of horses and cows, and, all due respect to Melina, chickens don’t really do much for me. Oh, there’s a lot of other stuff, but it mostly amounts to people trying to sell you shit (I could use a free cleaning of my glasses with the miracle anti-fog juice, I guess), and shit I’ve seen before.

Oh well, looks like I’m running late here. Have a good Thursday.