An interesting and funny commentary on the roots of our candidates in the '04 election (sadly I misplaced the link to the site where I found this):

"Kerry can be traced back to James I --he of the lolling tongue, who fathered Charles I of the lolling head. Bush is also a Stuart, related to Charles II. That means either way the US electorate will get a descendant of the lot who lost the throne twice --once in bloody civil war, once to an army from an otherwise unheard of dutchy somewhere near Belgium-- who tried to bed drummer boys, who presided over the plague and the great fire of London and who are responsilbe for any number of tedious paintings of men in frilly stuff on horseback with their spaniels."

More on Bush's ancestry (Link)
For those who don't like clicking links, here's the meat of the story:

Phillips is no left-wing demagogue. He's not only a lifelong Republican, he's also the guy who literally wrote the book that became the blueprint for the party's dominance of presidential politics. Phillips served as the chief political strategist for Richard Nixon in 1968, and, in The Emerging Republican Majority, he formulated the "Southern Strategy" that helped hand the White House to the GOP for a generation.

In his new book American Dynasty, Phillips lays out his almost visceral distaste for what he calls "the politics of deceit in the House of Bush," accusing the administration of dishonesty and secrecy that would make Tricky Dick blush. He traces the course of Bush's family over the past 100 years, detailing how they sought influence "in the back corridors" of the oil and defense industries, investment banking and the intelligence establishment. Elites, not elections, put Bush in power. "I'm not talking about ordinary lack of business ethics or financial corruption," says Phillips, who recently registered as an Independent for the first time. "Four generations of building toward dynasty have infused the Bush family's hunger for power and practices of crony capitalism with a moral arrogance and backstage disregard of the democratic and republican traditions of the U.S. government." As a result, he says, "deceit and disinformation have become Bush political hallmarks."

Are these allegations simply political rhetoric, or do they have any basis in reality? We'll find out next time on OdhavBlog -- same blog time, same blog channel.