Good Bye Yellow Brick Toad

We all know the barn door's been wide open at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue for about five years running now. It all began with that annoying report with the mysterious title, "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S." Perhaps given the immensity of that primary lapse of attention, it is no wonder that no one in Washington has bothered to try and close the barn door since. Indeed, it has only opened wider from that point on, and is now nearly blown clean off its hinges.

So now we are faced with the hilarious potential for ethics training at the White House. Maria Montessori, where art thou? Ah, dead; and Mr. Rogers too...who could possibly undertake this Herculean task of pedagogy? Well, Daily Rev would like to offer a few candidates on this day before election day; and we would welcome any suggestions you may have for the appointment of Professor of Ethics to this truly remedial class at 1600 Penn.

Our first nominee is Marek Zdansky of the Prague Zoo. He has come up with a scheme for a primate version of Survivor, with gorillas competing against one another for the grand prize of 12 melons. What alliance potential, what hidden depths of studied altruism, might Mr. Zdansky tap by applying his methods to the simian crew at 1600 Penn?

Next up is Sri Lankan presidential candidate Victor Hettigoda, who is offering his own variation on the "chicken in every pot" campaign theme, which is now a cow in every yard. If this man can succeed in restoring a nation's economic and cultural life in the wake of the horrible toll that last year's tsunami took on his nation, just imagine what he and his political strategists could accomplish in educating the ethically clueless with a little barnyard wisdom.

From the quaint realm of Old Europe comes our next contestant, Nicolas Sarkozy, who transformed what had been a decades-old simmering tension into open, outright warfare. Minister Sarkozy has proven the old adage that if peace takes a village, then war simply requires an attitude. He would no doubt be welcomed for his blunt-trauma approach to ethics training, once the Bushies got over their Francophobia.

Well, after all, maybe that ethics training money would be better spent on something that can actually be accomplished with this bunch. Maybe Eric Alterman has once again captured the essence of the moment in another of his signature rants:

You know, I’m getting a little tired of wondering, “How will the Bush cheerleaders spin this one?” every time fresh evidence appears that they were deliberately misleading the nation into war, and that this deception is responsible for the deaths of 2000 Americans, the wounding of more than ten thousand more, and the killings of tens of thousands of others, as well as the torture of who knows how many people, and the hatred of America world-wide, as well as the creation of more terrorists, one of whom, eventually, will attack us, and kill more of us, starting the whole thing again, leading to more excuses by Bush cheerleaders for their deliberate deception.

Perhaps ethics training is a horse that's too far out of the barn for this group, after all. Perhaps we should simply be reviewing the evidence (an excellent source is The Progress Report), and then writing our Senators and Congressmen to let them know that the only ethics training this crowd needs is an impeachment hearing—the sooner, the better.