Does that make me crazy? Probably.

Hey, guys, I’m sorry I haven’t been posting. I’ve been a tad sans inspiration lately, and we all know what happens when you write without inspiration. Yes, you end up penning some awful column for some paper of record wherein you compare the Democratic presidential nominee to a character from a Jane Austin novel. And all you manage to prove is A.) you’ve never actually read Pride and Prejudice, and B.), actually, there is no B., I just thought it was really embarrassing that such a famous columnist could write something so stupid.

I’ve been following the post-suicide damnation of scientist Bruce Ivins, and thinking that there was a time when we all were pretty sure that Hatfill was guilty too, and shit, he ended up with a tasty FBI settlement. 5.8 mil sure takes the sting out of being fired from a tedious government laboratory job, eh?

The general thrust of the case against Ivins, beside some pretty unconvincing circumstantial evidence, is that he’s crazy. How is he crazy? Well, mostly he appears to be crazy because he refers to himself as crazy. Like, he wrote emails to friends wherein he described his behavior as compulsive and crazy. So, I was in my house, listening to a story about Ivin’s craziness on the radio as I equipped several new handbags I’d just bought with some pursekits. What are pursekits, you ask? Well, pursekits are little, well, kits that I assemble that contain things that I want every purse to have in them. The contents of my pursekits have varied somewhat over the years, but I have now settled upon five things: a pen, a business card, matches, an individually-wrapped moistened towelette, and of course, a tampon. For years I could not decide whether to use a generic moistened towelette, or a Shout! stain-removing wipe, but I finally decided that the towelette was the more versatile performer. Anyhoo, I generally put my little kits inside that zippered interior pocket that just about every purse has. If a purse does not have an interior zippered pocket, I do also keep a supply of small drawstring bags, they’re little giftie bags, really, like what you can buy at a store that sells gift-wrapping items, although mostly I have gotten mine for free by saving them when someone gives me a gift in one of those little bags, and I put my kit in one of those and then I know when I take my wallet and sunglasses and stuff out of one purse and put them in another, to leave the little kit with the purse where it belongs. It’s a system I’ve developed over many years, and I’m pretty happy with it, except when I run out of one of my kit items, and then the purses on my desk will start to back up, either because they are new and need a kit, or because I used one of the kit items and it needs to be replenished. Now, you would think that the tampon would be the thing that most often needs to be replenished in the kit, but it’s not. It’s actually the pen. People just love to walk off with pens. I used to waitress, so I know. In fact, when I was a waitress I found that the only way to keep a hold of my pens was to never give the customer the cap. That way, they couldn’t just absentmindedly stick it in their pocket, you know? But when a friend of mine is asking for a pen, and I give them one out of my pursekit, I can’t really take the cap off and keep it, can I? That would be rude. Besides, most pens these days are retractable, anyway.

Where was I? Oh, yes. I was about to say that crazy is as crazy does.

And if the standard for proof of craziness is an opinion that one is crazy, well, then the only sane people left will be those too crazy to think they’re crazy.

And don’t point to all the medications that Ivins was supposedly taking for his psychological problems. Half the population of LA is on Ambien. You can get Ambien at any corner bar. In fact, in my neighborhood, it comes with a beer back.

Look, I have no idea whether Ivins is guilty or innocent, but what I’m really wondering is if we took the same standard for evidence from the Ivins case, and applied it to Ron Suskind and the Habbush memo, well, it’d be quite a different kettle of fish, no?

In his new book, Suskind alleges that the infamous Habbush memo, which was initially hyped as the missing link between Saddam Hussein, WMD, and collusion with the al-Qaeda plotters of 9/11, was created by the CIA at the behest of BushCo. The Habbush memo was quickly revealed to be a phony, although who faked it has never exactly been known until now.

Comparison point #1

FBI: Although investigators cannot put Ivins at or near the mailbox they believe was the starting point for many of the anthrax letters, the mailbox, while located in a different state than his residence, was near a storage facility owned by a college sorority that Ivins may or may not have been obsessed with at one time. Wait. Huh?

Suskind: Ayad Allawi was a CIA “asset” who met with the CIA the week before he passed the phony memo to the reporter who published it.

Comparison point #2

FBI: Ivins, although never linked to the anthrax strain personally, did work in a facility where he and about a hundred other people had access to a strain that the government says was identical to at least some of the strains used in the mailings.

Suskind: Habbush, once chief of Saddam’s intelligence service, betrayed his country prior to the Iraqi war in order to give intelligence to the US that indicated that Saddam did not have WMD. Then, when the phony memo, which was supposedly written from Habbush to Saddam, surfaces, and says the exact opposite, BushCo suddenly gives him 5 million dollars and resettles him in Jordan.

Comparison point #3

FBI: After many years of harassment from the FBI, including offering 2.5 million and a sports car to Ivins’s son in exchange for damaging evidence, and showing pictures of dead anthrax victims to Ivins’s daughter while pressuring her for information, Ivins can’t take anymore, and kills himself, while still maintaining his innocence. He is declared crazy and is thus a liar.

Suskind: A Bush administration spokesperson said that you’d have to be crazy to believe that the order to plant the phony memo came from the White House.

Well, that’s all I got for now, readers. I encourage you to check out the links, especially on the Habbush memo story. I know that the government lying to us in order to send more soldiers to their death is kind of old hat, but I’m pretty sure it’s still news.

And now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a great idea for a post wherein I compare the Republican presidential candidate to a character from the old “I Love Lucy” show. See if you can guess which one.