Now Everybody's Asking: "Was Bush Wired?"

Seems everybody else is talking about it: just what WAS that square thing under President Bush's suit jacket during the first debate in Miami? A seam wrinkle? A shadow? Or a wireless device from which someone off-stage was feeding him answers to debate questions?

Salon.com posted an article hypothesizing its purpose, then bloggers started buzzing about the photos and the phenom late last week, and the issue is all over the mainstream media by now, including a Saturday shortie in the New York Times and Monday-morning mentions in Technology Review's online newsletter and Online Media News' online newsletter. An entire web site, Is Bush Wired? has been set up to examine the issue (although high traffic to its servers might make it temporarily unavailable at times). Which raises the next question: if it WAS a wireless device, whose voice was prompting the president? And how often does this sort of "prompting" happen? (And what does that say about our leader's ability to think on his feet? With his own brain?)

That's the heavy part of politics today. But who said politics had to be serious business all the time? Those guys at JibJab are back at it again, and while the novelty factor might not be the same, you gotta give 'em credit for creativity. "Good to be in DC" is a satire-heavy equal opportunity animated clip that pokes fun at everything election-related and most things D.C.-related. By comparison, the You Forgot Poland web site, No. 35 among Saturday's burstiest phrases, pokes direct fun at the current resident of 1600 Pennylsvania Avenue. Making it to the fifth spot among Sunday's key phrases is Trey Parker and Matt Stone's (the South Park guys) new movie, "Team America: World Police," a puppet version of the war on terror and apparently a big poke in the eye with a sharp stick for politicians, governments and just about everything held sacred, according to sneak previews.

For Boston baseball fans, the words Red Sox won" are as full of hope and another chance at a World Series are they weighted down by a sense of foreboding and a fear of longstanding curses.

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