Moving on

Begone slump.

Well, Condi Rice is movin' on up. The goofy Texan has officially named her his new Secretary of State, replacing Colin Powell, who resigned yesterday. Ahhh, Condi. Head of the WNBA, Sec. of State .... same diffy, right?

Ladies and gentlemen, hope has left the building.

Powell was known for his disagreements on foreign policy with Veep Cheney and Defense Sec. Rumsfeld. He's a super star for a lot of reasons (he wrote a whole book, for heavens sakes), but we love him most for pushing the administration to increase its commitment to the international fight against AIDS and for promoting the administration's Millennium Fund.

Oh and disarming Libya. That deserves a check in the good column, too.

And with all that work, he must be tired. That's what the Bushies want us to think, anyway.

Aw, heck. He said he was only good for four years anyway, and we're inclined to cut good 'ol Powell loose so that he can retire to Florida and live out his days by the pool. Whew, it's tough bein' president.

Condi's a puppet. She agrees, it seems, with just about everything the Prez. says and does, it seems, just about everything the Prez. says to do. Chant it with me now, "Four more years!"

But there now. Let's not be so negative. It's unbecoming.

Instead, let's search desperately on the bright side and pray our efforts aren't transparent.

Maybe she'll do something about the crisis in Sudan, where tensions between Arabs and Africans has displaced more than a million people and somewhere in the ballpark of 50,000 people have died.

If Sudan were Iraq, we'd SO be there.

The skinny on Sudan: The ruling Arab elite and three African ethnic groups are fighting for scarce natural resources. The elitist folks are doing what their kind does best -- you know, axis of evil kind of stuff -- women raped, villages destroyed, help blocked, food supplies ransacked so that pretty much anyone they don't want to live starves. Keep in mind that things weren't going terribly well for Sudan to begin with. There's been a civil war there for something like 20 years.

In September, Powell called it genocide, a word that should ring a bell when combined with Rwanda and maybe Bill Clinton. Under U.N. law We the People are required to prevent and punish genocide. We've tried to figure out what to do, but up to now have pretty much only threatened to consider sanctions which I imagine is pretty laughable to the likes of rapers and pillagers .

What else? Oh, Condi is the only black woman to ever be Sec. of State. Go Condi, Go Condi, it's your birthday...

She's Marilyn Monroe compared to Madeline Albright. That's bound to work in our favor.

She's single. Smart, somewhat sexy AND available...

She's graduated college at 19, speaks Russian and plays classical piano. Driven!

Will that help her set American foreign policy priorities for a president who has virtually no foreign policy experience and who has rarely traveled outside the United States?

Ah, shux. Who cares really.

Four more years!