Leaving soon from a theater of war far from you: Taliband of Brothers, the story of a rag-tag group of religious fundamentalists with a bond so strong it held up for nearly a month of war before it deteriorated into mass defections, surrenders and hotfooted retreat.

Then again driving those people into the hills is sort of playing to their strength, isn't it?

Speaking of hills, it is deer hunting season in the hills of upstate New York where there's so much shooting that there is some hope that the deer have learned to return fire.

barrycrimmins.com is located so far in the upstate New York countryside that we order takeout food from L.L. Bean.

Today's proposal: all nuclear waste production facilities a/k/a "nuclear power plants" should be closed and recycled into postal hubs thereby reducing the likelihood of terrorist attack on a nuke while using the ready supply of radioactivity to flummox would-be anthrax spreaders.

Glad to see Kaiser Ashcroft has his priorities in order and realizes that the greatest threat to our way of life is still those damned hippies who intentionally got cancer or glaucoma just so they can use medical marijuana.

So we are supposed to resume our way of life but no Americans can tour the White House this Christmas because it's still a target. Just so long as your consistent. Jr.!

Hopefully they'll let us see photos of the White House Tree-Darkening Ceremony.

The resulting lack of scrutiny from the White House tour ban will give them a chance to move Dick Cheney's hospital bed right into the Oval Office.

With this renewed talk of the White House being a target, it's clear that all Bush wants for Christmas is for someone to actually buy his alibi about why he ended up in a game room in Omaha at the most crucial moment in recent American history.

Al Gore is joining a financial services company, which seems odd since he already represented one of the largest: the Democratic Leadership Council.

Even with the apparent military success in Afghanistan it still might be wise to scale down Court-appointed President Bush's wildly ambitious goal of the USA ridding the world of terrorism. Perhaps try a minor miracle first, like maybe learn how to count votes in Florida.

Or, failing that, perform nonlethal knee surgery in Minnesota.

Kaiser Ashcroft is considering taking a commission in the Army just in case he needs to put together a junta to depose any soft-on-terrorism military tribunal jurists.

"FOX News -- Fair and Balanced" is its slogan. Oh yeah and Rush Limbaugh is self effacing and generous of spirit.

Geraldo Rivera has quit CNBC to join FOX News as a war correspondent. Maybe he'll finally find Al Capone's missing fortune in one of those Afghan caves.

Osama bin Laden's life isn't worth a plugged $25,000,000 bill.

What a surprise KGB Putin and Spook Bush Jr found common ground.

But not even Putin could find common space with Bush's inane missile defense boondoggle.

Philip Morris plans to change its name to the Altria Group. When asked if it bothered the corporation that "Altria" sounds a bit like "Al Queda" a corporate spokesperson said,"What have the killed, a few thousand people? Get serious! Any association with those pikers improves our image."

An Al Queada spokesman said "Admittedly we suck but unless Philip Morris changes its mind we will have no choice but to slap them with a defamation of character suit."

It was nice of Court-appointed President Bush to assign his wife Laura to finally articulate some grievances with the Taliban over women's rights thereby protecting her husband from making any statements that could come back to haunt him with his core constituency.