Cindy, Beyonce, & Bush: Gotta Dance

With the Inauguration only a weekend of partying away, it’s time for the country to focus on important things, like who will be performing for Barack and Michelle’s first Presidential dance!

And, if you hadn’t guessed it already, it’s Beyoncé. They already know what song, but they’re not saying! It’s a pretty good guess, though, that it’s not “Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It),” especially if you’ve seen Barack dance.

One person who probably won’t be showing off her gams in 2009 is Cindy McCain, who was, reportedly, in talks with the producers of Dancing With The Stars but whose star turn was vetoed by her husband. I mean, we all know how he feels about too much make-up on a woman. Senator Claire McCaskill, though, doesn’t care, she wants to be able to take her damn mascara on the plane so she can touch up and doesn’t understand why she can’t.

Speaking of made-up, President Bush yesterday declared this Sunday “National Sanctity of Human Life Day,” which means no abortion for you, you slut! And the cops are going to stop by to take your birth control, too, since that’s killing potential sanctified lives as well. It’s an all-anal Sunday, courtesy of the President. He got started with the rogering a little early, giving his Farewell Address to the nation last night. I’ll admit that I drank my way through it at a bar with a friend, so we missed most of it but it sure did numb the pain in my ass when he said this as part of the defense of his legacy:

“As the years passed,” Mr. Bush said, “most Americans were able to return to life much as it had been before 9/11. But I never did. Every morning, I received a briefing on the threats to our nation. And I vowed to do everything in my power to keep us safe.”

Um, actually, asshole, plenty of Americans in New York and DC — and elsewhere in this country — didn’t go back to living their lives the same way and MAYBE if you had received morning briefings about the threats to our nation and done something about them before September 11th, none of us would have had to worry about it.

Anyway, he said a bunch of other stuff, but I don’t like reliving that kind of trauma, which is why I drink.

Back to the news of change, Attorney General nominee Eric Holder sat for his confirmation hearing, where Pennsylvania Arlen Specter — who, for craven political reasons, received the backing of the AFL-CIO in 2004 helping propel him to re-election in 2004 over Democratic Congressman Joseph Hoeffel and denying the Democrats one more Senate seat — drew some blood in his repeated questioning of Holder’s integrity and previous stint as a political appointee at the Justice Department. Holder did, however, say that he’s willing to try some of the Gitmo detainees here and that waterboarding is torture, which I should know.

In the mean time, Janet Napolitano’s confirmation hearing on her nomination to head the Department of Homeland Security and Susan Rice’s hearing on her nomination to be U.S. Ambassador to the UN both went swimmingly, because that’s what you get when you nominate awesome qualified women for important jobs. And, in the scheme of things, it seems like Tim Geithner won’t face much different at his hearing despite his little tax scandal — the Republicans will just wait 6 months to use it against him when he does something they don’t like.

While all this was going on, Obama and Joe Biden headed off to meet with the Supreme Court only to be snubbed by Samuel Alito, which, you know, so much for Bush’s intention to take politics out of the Court. Rick Warren is still on his gay apology tour, but that’s probably just to get in on Tuesday’s orgies. Hillary Clinton gave her final Senate speech and seemingly teared up a little but didn’t choke up and then headed off to make history. And Democrats proposed a $825 billion stimulus plan that still probably won’t be enough to get us out of the shit. So, there’s that.