When Donald Rumsfeld was dethroned as King of Iraq, he did not go quietly into the night. Only months ago the Secretary of Defense was brushing aside the media’s nettlesome concerns and predicting a reduction in troop levels. Now his tune has changed. While surrendering his scepter and crown, the erstwhile optimist remonstrated that the war is only getting started and that we are “in for a long, hard slog.” Our clumsy efforts in the Mid-East, he posited, are creating terrorists faster than we can kill them. The highly respected International Institute for Strategic Studies quickly validated Rumsfeld’s newfound realism, noting Washington’s assessment was “over-confident” and that our presence in Iraq has “inflamed radical passions among Muslims and thus increased al Qaedas’s recruiting power.” For all his vindictiveness, Rummy somehow dodged the wretched hand of fate. Condoleezza Rice had barely taken over as Iraqi overlord when the occupation’s worst spate of violence tore through Baghdad. The day after a coordinated rocket attack on the Al Rasheed Hotel killed 18 people, a series of car bombings at the offices of the Red Cross and several Iraqi police stations claimed 35 additional victims.

Unable to protest this regime change over the airwaves, Rush Limbaugh commandeered the rec room at the methadone clinic. His angry-white-guy act barely roused the half-comatose dope fiends folded into the creases of the vinyl sofa; no bloodshot eyes trained on his bulging veins as he decried Rumsfeld’s demotion in favor of a black woman. I’m sure Rush fell mute and slumped away from the community TV when Condi Rice announced on Oprah that her first order of business is dispatching the Queer Eye cast to Baghdad where Paul Bremmer’s hideous combination of dark suits and tan work boots just screams for a makeover. Executives at NBC confirmed an Iraqi episode would begin filming as soon as the Fab Five finish cleaning out Katelyn Faber’s underwear drawer.

Gray Davis is busy cleaning out his closet as well. And though Arnold’s dumbbells remain unpacked, a second recall may be festering given California’s progressive decay. A devastating array of wildfires has consumed 725,000 acres and has reduced 2,600 homes to windrows of ash. To date, the toll is twenty deaths and $2 billion in damages. As parting smoke gives way to flinty sunrise, hazy shadows fall across a landscape of turmoil and ruin. Surrounded by a ring of charred mountains, L.A.’s transit strike pumps an additional half a million commuters onto clogged freeways, transforming a jaunt to the corner store into a weekend project. Fresh from their drive, shoppers are affronted by surly butchers and hostile checkout clerks. The 70,000 grocery workers picketing 850 supermarkets are making cheese doodles harder to find than Osama Bin Laden. And if what your wife makes for dinner is reservations, consider the 33 cases of E. Coli poisoning served up at Pat and Oscar’s restaurants. You should probably stay inside anyhow, given The Center for Disease Control identified California as the next epicenter of the deadly West Nile Virus.

Before you pack up the Volvo station wagon, consider this: While the other sunshine state has lower taxes, it’s not all orange juice and early-bird specials. In a case that has one brain-damaged person helping another, Florida Governor Jeb Bush shoved a feeding tube back down the throat of Terri Schiavo. The 39-year-old Schiavo has been in a persistent vegetative state since 1990 although it is less clear how long the Governor’s brain has been dead. After a decade of legal battles, Mark Schiavo finally won the right to allow his wife to die, although the court was overruled when the legislature hastily passed a law giving the state the right to subvert families’ health care decisions. This is merely the latest example (school prayer, partial-term abortion) of how the Republicans demonstrate their distain for government intervention. While legal experts find the new law unconstitutional, Terri’s parents remain grateful. “She drools on her own,” said her father as he refastened her plastic smock, “ so what’s to stop her from bolting upright and singing “Yankee Doodle Dandy?’” What indeed.