SemiConscious Dot Org

Praise be to Dear Leader, for he, far more than the rest of us mere mortals, knows the mind of God. In the boundless wisdom born of one who has power lunches with The Almighty every day, Dear Leader has seen fit to extend the grandmotherly kindness of Compassionate Conservatism to those Americans not previously so blessed.

Namely, children:

The Bush administration, continuing its fight to stop states from expanding the popular Children’s Health Insurance Program, has adopted new standards that would make it much more difficult for New York, California and others to extend coverage to children in middle-income families.

Administration officials outlined the new standards in a letter sent to state health officials on Friday evening, in the middle of a month-long Congressional recess.

In interviews, they said the changes were aimed at returning the Children’s Health Insurance Program to its original focus on low-income children and to make sure the program did not become a substitute for private health coverage.

After learning of the new policy, some state officials said today that it could cripple their efforts to cover more children by imposing standards that could not be met.

Each year, the Department of English at San Jose State University holds the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest. This competition, named after the Victorian author who penned the infamous line “It was a dark and stormy night,” rewards that individual who submits the most cringe-inducing first line for an imaginary novel. This year’s winner, Jim Gleeson of Madison, WI, cranked out the following doozy:

Gerald began—but was interrupted by a piercing whistle which cost him ten percent of his hearing permanently, as it did everyone else in a ten-mile radius of the eruption, not that it mattered much because for them “permanently” meant the next ten minutes or so until buried by searing lava or suffocated by choking ash—to pee.

Runners-up, Dishonorable Mentions, and “winners” in various specialized categories are all available here. (Do not read these literary abortions right after eating. You’ll thank me later.)

Still, I can’t help but think that all of these aspiring hacks are really just fighting for second place. After all, Bill O’Reilly can generate more ghastly prose by accident than any of them can manage on purpose.