President George W. Bush is going to continue to live in a fantasy of his own choosing right down to his last day in office. That is made perfectly clear in a Washington Post report by Dan Froomkin.

Froomkin takes a look at Bush's ongoing cluelessness from several angles. Perhaps most revealing are the extensive quotations taken from the president's recent talk with workers at a information technology company near St. Louis. Here's just a snippet of the commander-in-chief's hour-long ramble:

I think it's going to be very important, as you pay attention to the presidential race, to try to come up with not only who you agree with, obviously, but whether that person knows how to delegate; knows how to set up a structure so that good information can make it into the Oval Office in a way that enables good decision-making. The temptation, of course, is to walk in the Oval Office and say, oh, man, you're looking beautiful. And the President doesn't need somebody -- because generally he's not looking beautiful. The President needs somebody to walk in and say, here's what I think.

So when you think about good, solid advisors -- at least in my case -- think about somebody like Condoleezza Rice, or Hank Paulson who used to run Goldman Sachs, or Bob Gates. These are strong, capable people. And my job is to make sure that the environment is such that they can walk in and say, Mr. President, here's what I'm thinking, here's my advice. And their job, by the way, once the President makes up his mind, is say, 'Yes, sir, Mr. President.'

Gosh, I wonder why he failed to mention the several folks who got fired for telling him the Iraq adventure would take many more troops and cost many billion dollars more than predicted by the likes of Paul Wolfowitz and Donald Rumsfeld. That seems like sound advice and good information that was dead on arrival in the Oval Office. And speaking of advisors, he failed to mention those who aren't with him anymore, such as Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld. Is he glad he delegated a war to them?

The new gallery of all my primary election cartoons is now open for viewing. Check it out!

Just in time for today's big primary showdown, I'm about to put up a new cartoon gallery featuring all my cartoons from this marathon presidential primary season. This gallery will pick up right where the gallery of pre-primary 'toons left off. Watch for it to appear in the next few hours over on the left side of my main page or click on galleries in the banner up above.

As in the movie, Groundhog's Day, each day of this presidential campaign seems like a repeat of the day before.

Day after day, week after week, primary after primary, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton stay locked in the same relative positions -- he, slightly, but not convincingly, ahead in the delegate count; she, winning primaries, refusing to quit, but not finding a way to jump ahead of him. The same tired issues keep recycling -- especially the vituperative rants of Rev. Jeremiah Wright -- with scant serious discussion of the truly meaningful issues confronting our country and world.

This all started out with a much more hopeful scenario. Remember when both parties filled debate stages with squads of candidates offering voters interesting choices? Remember the excitement about electing the first woman to be president? Remember the even greater excitement about a young, mixed-race candidate who seemed poised to transform our politics, our race relations and our image in the world? All that excitement seems to have dissipated as the campaign has become mired in the muck.

True, we are now down to the three candidates who truly stood out from the crowded pack. Republicans, despite themselves, have ended up with the strongest candidate they could have chosen for the general election. John McCain's heroic story and not-entirely-accurate image as a maverick plays well with the independent voters Republicans will need to attract if they hope to win in a year when voters have soured on the Iraq War, are nervous about the economy and are overwhelmingly ready to be rid of the incumbent Republican president. Yet, McCain's luster dulls every time he displays his conventional political side -- as with his pandering proposal to suspend the federal gas tax for the summer.

If that makes him look like a hack, the same can be said for Clinton who has proposed a similar plan. Hillary has certainly shown resilience and an ability to connect with voters on the lower end of the economic scale in her tireless fight to stay alive in this race, but she is also proving that the thrill of electing a woman president is largely illusion. If she should rise to the highest office in the land, she will likely prove only that a woman can be as compromising and conventional as a man. That doesn't seem all that revolutionary.

Obama was the one who appeared to be the incarnation of true change. With the first African American president, Black Americans might finally let go of the culture of victimhood that has held them back. White Americans might finally start paying attention to the economic gap between the races that has sustained resentment in the black community. National politics might be carried out on common ground, not from two ideological camps. The face and voice representing America in the world would be suddenly different and could renew faith in this nation as a force for good on the planet.

All of that was, perhaps, too much to expect of one man. If Hillary Clinton has accomplished anything, it is that she has whittled Obama down to size. Yes, I think he could be a transformative president, but there is now a very big if attached to that premise -- if he has the skills and toughness to survive in the savage battleground of national and international politics. But, if he can't beat Hillary, bury Rev. Wright and quell the suspicions of the white working class, he may not be ready to take on Iran, Vladimir Putin, global warming, the U.S. Congress and the 24-a-day news machine.

That performance of that last entity is the most dispiriting element of this campaign. As a journalist, I am appalled and disgusted on a daily basis by what I see on the cable news channels. Actual reporting seems to have almost entirely been eliminated as a duty of these so-called newsgathering organizations. "News" now consists of talking heads asking each other to analyze poll numbers or the candidates' latest tiny gaffes. Too many of these babbling egotists are not journalists at all, but partisan veterans of past campaigns and prior administrations. Too many of the alleged journalists are mere television pundits who left whatever reporting credentials they may have had far behind. They are spin doctors for their own careers. When these people talk on for hours about the hot issues of this campaign, they are not gabbing about what's on the minds of average Americans, they are simply caught up in the media echo chamber that has distorted and debilitated this exercise in democracy.

Right now, I'm not feeling much hope that the 2008 campaign can be rescued from spin, triviality and cheap shots or from the clutches of a broadcast media in thrall to ratings, personality and gossip. Jefferson would weep.

Like abortion, guns and prayer in schools, karaoke is a social phenomenon that divides people into armed camps.

On one side, those who hate karaoke are armed with the indisputable argument that it only encourages bad singing and embarrassing, flamboyant behavior. On the other side are the karaoke partisans, armed with the equally compellling retort: "Yeah, but it's fun!"

My lovely bride and I fall dangerously on either side of this great divide. When I first offered up the idea of hosting a multi-generational karaoke party with our daughter, Nole Ann received my proposal with a distinct lack of enthusiasm. Her tactical error was her failure to crush the idea at inception. Thus, by the time she began to register her complaints, the invitations had already gone out.

The day of the party, I began transforming our living room with glittery party decorations, including a miniature disco ball above the fireplace, while Nole Ann talked about heading downtown to get a room for the night -- by herself. I hoped her enthusiasm might rise when our friend Sally came over to have me draw Amy Winehouse tattoos all over her arms, but, as I was imprinting Sally's husband's name above her left breast, Nole Ann had to go lie down. You see, she's a champagne-and-quiet-conversation kind of gal, not a loud-music-and-whiskey woman. And tattoos don't enter into in her definition of fine art -- even if I'm drawing them.

Sally's fake tattoos were a temporary artifice meant to replicate the persona of a contemporary singer known for her fine voice, drug addictions and propensity to cut up her body just to see herself bleed. As a high school teacher, Sally likes to stay as culturally current as her students, which influenced her choice of artist to emulate. In my invitation, I had encouraged invitees show up dressed as a prominent performer. I did this, of course, so that I would have an excuse to dress up myself. I wanted to be Jon Bon Jovi. I had gone out to Display and Costume near Northgate to accessorize myself with an '80s hair band look. I tried on several wigs and found a fantastic honey-blonde thatch that stretched past my shoulders. I liked it so much, I wore it in the car, just to see if people would stare. When I got home, Nole Ann stared, alright -- in something approximating horror. At such moments, when it is clear I am a little weirder than she had bargained for, I remind her it's her own fault for marrying a cartoonist.

Despite her karaoke phobia, Nole Ann resolved to stay stoic through the evening's festivities (although she said if I couldn't find her later in the night, she'd be up in the bedroom with a pillow over her head). I put on my tightest jeans, black muscle shirt, studded wrist band and boots. With the fake hair in place, I wrapped a red bandana around my head and stared at the result: scary, it was so good. Although I was more Axl Rose than Bon Jovi, it was close enough.

Then, it was time for a pre-party run for ice at QFC. I took along a young friend visiting from L.A. who was very authentically dressed as Joan Jett in black leather and silver spikes. We figured everyone would gawk and point and ask for autographs. No such luck. Not a head turned. Seattle's just too full of eccentric characters. We were merely part of the parade. Or maybe it was the Dave Matthews effect. I live only blocks from his house, so maybe people in the neighborhood are just used seeing rock stars in the produce aisle.

To power the party, I rented a karaoke machine from Seattle Karaoke that came equipped with more than 1,000 songs. I plugged that sucker right into my home stereo and TV and was set to go. But, for the party's first couple of hours, nobody stepped up to the microphone. My guests were just standing around in the kitchen, talking and eating and drinking. They were having fun, but I wasn't. I could feel the $175 rental fee wasting away. Desperate to get the music rolling, I dragged several friends into the living room, cranked up Bon Jovi's "Lay Your Hands On Me," and urged them to dance. The opening drum solo shook the floor, I hit the first lyrics on time and pretty much in tune and, from then on, the room was rocking and rolling.

I then learned the bigger challenge in hosting a karaoke party was not getting things started, it was supplying the sudden demand. Song requests piled up. When someone did a ballad, others were clamoring for something they could dance to. If one guy was singing Garth Brooks, somebody else urged anything but Country. The star of the evening was my friend Bob, a former Post-Intelligencer photographer who could earn a living as a lounge lizard. He nails Sinatra and loves an audience (even more than I do, which is saying a lot). By the time he got to the climax of "New York, New York," he had thrown off his jacket, unbuttoned his shirt and was starting on his pants as women shrieked. A young woman named Eleanor came over as Bob basked in the attention and she quietly asked for an old standard. I gave Bob a break, handed her the mike and she broke into lovely song. When Bob and Eleanor teamed up for a duet later, it was karaoke at its best. He was probably the oldest person in the room, she was almost 40 years younger, but they made beautiful music together.

My moment in the spotlight came performing Bon Jovi's "Wanted Dead Or Alive." I've aged into a raspy voice that works pretty well on carefully selected rock anthems. I have also discovered the most important karaoke secret: there are controls on the karaoke machine that give echo to your voice and allow you to drop the key to a singable level -- use them.

At about 1 AM, most folks had gone home and my wife was still awake. She'd actually had a good time. No one made her sing or dress funny and she got to spend time with a lot of good friends. I, of course, got to sing and toss my store-bought hair. We were both happy. If we could find common ground on karaoke, perhaps there is hope for the world. Maybe all the contending factions on our planet should just start singing karaoke together. After working their way through 1,000 songs, they'll be too hoarse to yell at each other and too happy to hold a grudge.

I was just standing on my front porch in the warm sunlight, watching the snow turn to hail.

It has been that kind of week in Seattle. Peter Donnelly, the grand poobah of the Seattle arts community, once said to me that the reality of this city's weather is that there is no weather. By that he meant there are few extremes. Cloudy and 50 degrees is the usual weather report in this town -- no deep snows, no scorching heat, no hurricanes or twisters or droughts.

Well, this April, we've gotten weather. April showers have brought more than May flowers. As the tulips have blossomed, temperatures have dropped toward freezing. There has been such a dumping of snow in the mountains that some ski areas have chosen to stay open indefinitely. Saturday night, I was at a Passover dinner with a couple of women who had been skiing earlier in the day in fresh powder. I went through sunshine, rain and an attack of pelting hail on my 20-minute drive to the gathering. Sitting at the Seder table and hearing about the visitation of 10 plagues on ancient Egypt, I glanced out the window to see if frogs might be falling from the sky. Had amphibians been thumping to the ground, I would have been only mildly surprised.

This orgy of goofy weather followed the one-day, summer-like meteorological orgasm of last weekend and it has gotten a little confusing. A couple of days ago, my wife was parking her Miata in what she took to be a sudden snow flurry. When she got out of the car, she realized the white stuff was not snow, it was blossoms falling from the cherry trees.

Weather has come to Seattle. The frogs can't be far behind.

Are American marriages really as bland and trivial as reading about them makes it seem? And are American men really obsessed with nothing but sports and farting?

MSN ran a little feature a few days ago that made me want to gag. Two of their columnists posted a Husband's Bill of Rights and a Wife's Bill of Rights. Presumably, these are the things that the wives and husbands of this great nation see as essential components of marital harmony. The 10 rights a husband must have are:

• The right to go out with his buddies at least once a month.
• The right to dislike the husbands of his wife's friends.
• The right to have a few things of his own in the house.
• The right not to be scolded by his wife.
• The right to teach his sons how to burp and fart.
• The right to teach his children how to defend themselves.
• The right to copious reading material in the bathroom.
• The right to watch the big game.
• The right to control the remote when he's on the couch.
• The right to be chivalrous.

Does this list annoy me? Let me count the ways. Some of the rights conjure an image of a man on a leash -- scolded and brought to heel for wanting to see his friends, for keeping his own possessions in his own home, for trying to be a gentleman. What kind of shrew is this guy married to? Other rights suggest why the wife may have a few complaints. Does this guy really care so much about watching television, burping, farting and spending long hours in the bathroom that such things are equated with Jeffersonian doctrine?

And what about the wife's rights? Here are her ten:

• The right to dislike her husband's buddies.
• The right to experience PMS in all its glory
• The right to demand he finish a household job.
• The right to hear an honest answer to the question "What's wrong?"
• The right to keep her secrets.
• The right to clean air (meaning: no farting).
• The right to tons of girly bathroom products.
• The right to talk with girlfriends every day.
• The right to flirt.
• The right to foreplay.

Gag me again. A big part of what bothers me about these rights is what is being inferred about men. Apparently, the husband is a crappy lover who is in a constant state of flatulence. Strangely, while the husband is accused of being non-communicative when asked what's wrong, the wife gets to keep her secrets. She also gets to flirt while he, apparently, should be busy finishing household chores.

Ultimately, what I hate about these "rights" is that they portray marriage as a state of entrapment in which niggling little concerns dominate the relationship. Is that really what American marriages are all about? And are men truly such louts? If so, I question the sanity of those gay couples agitating for the right to get married. Why in the world would you want to buy into such a tedious institution -- especially if it means being married to a man?

Saturday, a young woman was stretched out in the grass on the slope of Kite Hill reading a book titled, Tantric Orgasm for Women. She seemed oblivious to the activity around her -- the little kids hopping up the hillside path, the couples lolling together on blankets, the folks in biking gear resting with their bikes at the top of the hill, the frisbees flying, the kites bobbing in the caressing breeze. Whatever hold the book had on her, the glorious day was surely enough to make her body feel more warm and alive.

Somebody finally flipped a switch in Seattle. After weeks of gray skies and unusually chilly days, the sun was suddenly back and the air was warm. Windbreakers and fleece were instantly replaced by shorts and t-shirts and even a bikini or two. I went down to Gas Works Park to wallow in the weather, climb Kite Hill and see my fellow citizens liberated from a winter that has held on too long. It was the kind of day that reminds us locals there's no place finer than Seattle on a sunny day. In the distance to the east and west stretched snow-capped mountains. Between the park and the skyscrapers of downtown, Lake Union sparkled. Sailboats, yachts, ski boats and kyaks cut across the water from every direction. Float planes landed every few minutes, somehow finding a stretch of lake to land on amid the bobbing traffic.

Later in the day, my wife and I drove over to Madison Park and, after a pleasant walk through the neighborhood where we lived in our DINK days (Double Income, No Kids), we had a fine meal outdoors at Sostanza Trattoria. The Italian beer was good and cold and I gulped it down the way you do on a hot summer day.

I realize it's not summer, yet, and I've lived in this town long enough to know the dependably warm weather is still two or three months away. In fact, the gray skies were back on Sunday. Still, Saturday was a reminder of what I call The Amnesia Season, those days of July, August and September when it's easy to forget the long weeks of damp gray. It's those dazzling days that seduce us Seattle folk with the sensual gorgeousness of this city.

It's a little like a tantric orgasm on a metropolitan scale.

Greg Mortenson has a way to beat the terrorists with books instead of bombs.

Mortenson's book, Three Cups of Tea, has become a huge bestseller. It tells the story of how an aborted climb on K2 led him to a remote village in Pakistan where he received help, made friends and vowed to return with the money to build a school for the village children. That pledge turned into a life's work and now Mortenson, through his Bozeman-based Central Asia Institute, has helped build more than 60 schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan over the past 15 years.

Mortenson was in town on Thursday and I heard him speak at a breakfast gathering at Seattle University. A former soldier, mountain climber and all-around regular guy, the best word to describe Mortenson is authentic. In fact, it is his unassuming, uncomplicated demeanor that makes his story all the more compelling. He has accomplished something remarkable, but it is not because he has any more talent or brains or charisma than the rest of us. He simply had the heart and will to follow through on the kind of thing we all feel we should do. How many times have any of us thought, "Gosh, I wish I could just do something to make the world a better place." Well, you can and I can. Most of us just don't get around to it. Mortenson has. As he says, he took two wrong turns on a mountain and ended up in the right place. And I would add that he had the wisdom and compassion to recognize he was in the right place.

Mortenson said the original subtitle of his book in hardcover was something like "One man's mission to fight terrorism and build nations... one school at a time." His publisher insisted on the terrorism reference, even though Mortenson didn't like it. Hardcover sales were modest so, when the paperback came out, Mortenson got the wording changed to "One man's mission to promote peace... once school at a time." Sales went through the roof, once again proving the expert opinions of marketing departments are generally wrong.

Nevertheless, one compelling message of his work is that building schools is, in fact, a vital component in the battle against extremists who seek to ensnare and enslave people with their oppressive medieval doctrines and glorify their god with suicide bombs and terror. The great fallacy of America's War On Terror is the assumption that such a battle can be won with armies alone. The warped philosophy of groups like the Taliban and al-Qaida is their most dangerous weapon and most potent recruiting tool. The best way to counter the ideology of the terrorists is to open minds to better ideas.

Mortenson's mission statement is simple: To promote and provide community-based education and literacy programs, especially for girls, in remote mountain regions of Central Asia. Young people who would otherwise not have any education or who would receive tutelage only in radical madrassas, now have their eyes opened to a better, more humane way of life. Girls who have been barred from education in the past can now grow up to be Islamic mothers who lead their children away from jihad and toward compassion. The fanatics know how powerful such an education can be and what a threat it is to them. Several of Mortenson's school have been attacked and destroyed by the Taliban. But they came too late. The people had been changed and fear did not stop them from rebuilding.

Of course, what Mortenson has achieved in a few remote villages is not enough to transform an entire region. His model needs to be duplicated many times over. If even a fraction of the money that has been squandered in the Iraq quagmire could be turned to building schools, fighting poverty and liberating young woman in the Islamic world, we'd start seeing some real victories in this struggle.

A regular guy from Montana is showing the way.

John Adams could not be elected president in today's USA, especially as he is portrayed by Paul Giamatti.

The historic Adams was portly, pessimistic and consumed with wounded pride and stunted ambition. Adams as recreated by Giamatti in the mini-series now underway on HBO is all of those things and more. Or should I say less? Having read David McCullough's biography, John Adams, from which the script for the seven-part series was distilled, as well as other accounts of the period, it seems to me that Giamatti fails to project much of the powerful intelligence of our second president. Even more crucially for the story, his constant state of petulance and uninterrupted look of discomfort -- as if suffering from bad acid reflux -- undercuts the central relationship of the story, Adams' partnership with his wife Abigail. Friends who read the book were charmed by the love story of John and Abigail. In the film version, Abigail, played by Laura Linney, is the most engaging character in the cast. Giamatti is so much the opposite that it makes it hard to understand why Abigail did not lock the bedroom door and make the morose whiner sleep outside with the pigs.

Robert Bianco's review in USA Today concurs with my opinion:

People have long debated Adams' personality and motives, but it seems to be agreed that he was a man of enormous drive and intellect, with an ego and prickly temper to match. Yet Giamatti is more hang-dog than bantam rooster. His enemies may have seen him as an autocrat, but no one ever accused Adams of being inconsequential or, worse, dimwitted, and that's how he often seems here.

Giamatti played another morose whiner in the movie Sideways. In that film, he was a tedious wine snob with an annoying inability to have fun. Giamatti has transported the wine snob back in time and turned him into a founding father. As a result, I find myself feeling little sympathy for his version of John Adams. I'm in full sympathy with Tom Wilkinson's Benjamin Franklin who is barely able to contain his annoyance with Adams' pettiness and insecurity. Far more appealing is Stephen Dillane's Thomas Jefferson. He's charming, a little shy, a bit devious, overly idealistic but complex and compelling -- the kind of guy who might end up on Mount Rushmore.

Being a complete history nerd and movie fan, I am sticking with the series to the end because there is so much that is truly fabulous about the production. Writing in Variety, Brian Lowry got it right when he said:

Technically, the term "sumptuous" almost doesn't do justice to the production, including loving cinematography by Tak Fujimoto capturing the pre-electric environs and majestic recreations (through visual effects and massive sets) of such historical venues as the French palace at Versailles in all its splendid glory. Shot in the Colonial Williamsburg Historic Area and Hungary for the European locations, the project features 125 speaking roles and revels in small details, including the barbarism of 18th century vaccinations and the spectacle of a Boston crowd brutally tarring and feathering an English bureaucrat...

"John Adams" has the fortitude to signal from the get-go that it, too, has no intention of meeting the rabble halfway but rather must be accepted on its terms, bowing to the project's greatness. There's something refreshing about that ambitious approach in these pandering times, but such is not generally a modern-day formula for success -- either in TV or, for that matter, politics.

It's commendable that HBO is offering such a rich recreation of this country's founding. Too many Americans are ignorant of their own history and this $100 million production offers remedial instruction in an entertaining form. Of course, liberties are taken with the facts, but to a lesser degree than with most historical films. Still, if John Adams was as obnoxious as Giamatti makes him out to be, only in an age without 24-hour news channels, polls, media consultants, spin doctors and an electoral college that (usually) hews closely to the popular vote could the real John Adams have been chosen to succeed the superstar, George Washington.

Or am I wrong? After all, modern Americans did choose gloomy, paranoid Richard Nixon not once but twice.