peanut.jpg[Halloween candy is nummy.  Here's The Peanut checking out her vast candy haul from yesterday.  In case you are wondering, she was Belle, and enjoyed trick or treating immensely.]

A few tricks and treats for today:

-- I will be on Thom Hartmann's Show today at 2:30 pm ET. 

-- Note to Rummy:  No amount of pithy PR sloganeering and thumb on the pressitude can make a crappy policy smell like roses, nor can it make your myraid failures of leadership look stellar.  It's called accountability.  Try it.  (And I don't even know what to say about a person who uses Donald Rumsfeld as his polestar of manliness.  Yeesh.)

-- Condi?  Still sucking at her job.  (And Digby pens a mash note to Karen Hughes.  And I do mean mash...)

-- As Mark Kleiman notes, the Republicans on the SJC are demanding that Democrats stop playing politics with the DOJ.  No, I'm not kidding.

-- Just when you thought things couldn't get any weirder...  (H/T to Noah at Wired.)

-- I'll take a stab at an answer for Duncan:  remember the "malaise" of the Carter years?  Sure, some of it was manufactured media hype, but there was a palpable sense that we were on a losing streak for a while there between gas rationing and Iranian hostages and so forth.  The Bush Years make that look like a momentary blip, and people know it.  We are going to be cleaning up after King George for several generations -- because any and everything he has touched has gone badly in the end, either due to poor planning, no planning, utter lack of comprehension...or denial of the truth.  And the worst part of it?  We still have over a year to endure it.  If that isn't enough, Dick Cheney is still pulling strings.  And the public knows that, too.   People want to be able to make a difference, turn things around, get us back on the right track...you name the cliche.  But how?  Honestly, with this crowd in the White House...how?  Now there is a question worth discussing for a while, eh?

-- Plus, as Susie says, it's going to be along, cold winter for folks in limited incomes.  Brrrrrr, indeed.

-- Ethics, schmethics.  Blackwater gets a new boss.  (H/T Steve-AR.)

-- Oliver Willis notes that Gen. Petraeus and Ahmed Chalabi are pals.  Excellent choice.  Just excellent.

-- Oh that Dick Cheney.  What a laugh riot: (H/T Froomkin)

“Dick Cheney gets people talking, though,” Mr. Roth said. “People wonder if he’s going to shoot something. Or someone.”...

The ambulance that accompanied the vice president’s motorcade when he left the gun club for a nearby airport was carrying no passengers — an encouraging sign....

Nothing like a canned hunt with your game flushed out for you in a deliberately overstocked environment to make you feel like a real man. My dad, who has been a hunter his whole life, calls it cheating and pathetic.  It isn't the shot that is important, it's the ability to track and find your own game, to ensure that you aren't taking more than you need to feed your family, and that you are a steward of the land from whence it came.  Three strikes on that one, Dick.  (Although good job on the Halloween costume.  And your little dogs, too...  [H/T twolf1])

-- Strike three, and TBogg says you are outta here.