Just when we thought no one cared about George W. Bush anymore… In what was supposed to be a private speech to donors in Texas Friday, some rebellious attendee secretly taped Bush making interesting comments about Wall Street. The press is having a field day.

"There's no question about it. Wall Street got drunk," Bush said at a private event in Houston on Friday. "It got drunk and now it's got a hangover. The question is, how long will it sober up and not try to do all these fancy financial instruments?"

What's the big deal? All George W. Bush was doing was explaining our economic woes to a group of donors the same way his advisers had to explain it to him! Except they had to speak slowly and repeat themselves a few times.

Marion Jones is begging President G.W. Bush to commute her sentence out of the goodness of his heart. In addition to getting her Olympic medals snatched away for using performance-enhancing drugs, Jones was sentenced to six-months in prison for lying to feds about it and for check fraud. She entered prison in March, and the Justice Department has confirmed that she is among hundreds of felons who request commuted sentences. The department analyzes the requests and makes recommendations to the president. What do you think are her chances of success? I'm going with slim to none. [HP]

• Does obesity contribute to global warming?

• More black women are entering their reproductive years with diabetes.

• A new study on rectal cancer victims adds more evidence that blacks get less treatment and are more likely to die from cancer in the U.S.

• The Bush administration has decided to list polar bears as a "threatened" species without making any moves to improve the environmental factors that are causing the bears to be threatened or attempting to protect them in any way.

• To make matters worse for polar bears, they didn't make the top 10 smartest animals list.

Attendees of the most recent annual Gridiron Club press dinner got quite a surprise when President Bush donned a cowboy hat and a shit-eating grin before breaking into harmony with some other assholes. Literally a swan song, Dubya's tune cracked wise about "Brownie," the man who contributed greatly to the deaths of hundreds and hundreds of poor people, and about how it's wonderful that the prosecutors are finally off Scooter Libby's lying ass. Basically he crooned that he and his friends are total fuck-ups who have ruined the world. Funny, right?

If the song alone doesn't fill you with rage, note that the POTUS performed this ditty in front of many of the most powerful people in journalism today; people whose job it is to inform you when our President is giggling about horrible tragedies behind our backs.

At the end of the performance, Bush received a standing ovation.

• The drugs and guns found on his tour bus weren't his, says Lil Wayne. In other words, he pleaded not guilty to charges. [E!]

• G.W. Bush mistakes Al Sharpton's daughter for his wife. Why were Sharpton and Bush fraternizing to begin with? Oh, Black History Month. [FBNY]

• Whatever happened to just googling and Myspace/Facebook-stalking your dates? [Jossip]

• The mastermind behind the Cheetah Girls, which has netted Disney millions and millions, lives in a cramped studio in Manhattan. Story old as time… [LAT]

• Juvenile…marijuana possession…yawn… [E!]

As a rash of racist incidents and noose-hangings plagued the country late last year, I imagine G.W. Bush and his advisers sat around the Oval Office, twiddling their thumbs, saying, "Eh. Let's wait to address this until around the middle of Black History Month." And that's what they did.

Yesterday, Bush took his anti-noose stance public at a BHM event honoring Civil Rights hero John Lewis.

"The era of rampant lynching is a shameful chapter in American history," Bush said in an event marking African-American history month at the White house.

"The noose is not a symbol of prairie justice, but of gross injustice," the president said. "Displaying one is not a harmless prank, and lynching is not a word to be mentioned in jest. [Take that, Kelly Tilghman! -- Ed]"

Just so he never has to make this sort of speech again, Bush later took a firm stand against swastikas and those who insist on calling all Asian people Chinese. [MSNBC]

Let me get this straight: I am no fan of Condoleezza Rice. At all. But an item in the New York Daily News about a new biography of the Secretary of State has me annoyed on her behalf. An exerpt:

Coit Blacker, a Stanford professor who is one of the secretary of state's closest friends, recalls going into a shop where Rice asked to see earrings. The clerk showed her costume jewelry. Rice asked to see something nicer, prompting the clerk to whisper some sass under her breath.

Blacker remembers Rice tearing the woman to shreds.

"Let's get one thing straight," he recalls her saying. "You are behind the counter because you have to work for minimum wage. I'm on this side asking to see the good jewelry because I make considerably more."

A manager quickly brought Rice better baubles.

Kudos (not) to Blacker, the author of the book, and even Rush & Molloy for not being able to infer some sort of racial subtext from that exchange — it seems obvious to me. Later, there's some stuff about her being flattered when someone bounced a quarter off of her ass at a party, and about George Bush shying away from discussing the gorier aspects of Saddam Hussein's reign "in front of Condi," the U.S. Secretary of State. And there are people out there who actually still support this administration?

[NYDN]