Well, Chimpie, you really did it to us all this time. When you decided that even the Texas Air National Guard, shielding you from Vietnam, was too tough, you got Daddy's buddies to bail you out of that. When your oil company failed, your daddy's friends fixed that too. Your daddy's pals got you a cushy inside gig with the Texas Rangers, and when you traded Sammy Sosa, you were taken care of then as well, walking away with a nice payday. Your reward was to become governor of Texas where you learned the joys of executive power through the execution of 152 people, whose death warrants you reliably signed under the guidance of Alberto "Torture Boy" Gonzalez, whom you may nominate for O'Connor's seat on the Supreme Court. When the steaming pile you made of Texas was still below the national radar, you made your bid for the presidency, which your daddy's buddies again salvaged for you. Then came 9/11, which was preventable, then a stupid war on Iraq with no resolution in sight after three years, and now two natural disasters in less than a month which have revealed that as a leader you are worse than useless--you actually figure out how to make things much, much worse, failing to act when you should, and then leaping into action to cut more taxes or slash more programs for the poor or middle-class or arrange a whitewash of your own combination of inaction and action so you can hand out some more Medals of Freedom to the most incompetent of your appointees. We all wish you'd stay the hell away, perhaps with Dick in his bunker at the undisclosed location and wait for the signal to come back aboveground. We'll let you know, I promise.
You can take that guitar with you that you played during Katrina. I'd suggest that you learn to play "Nowhere Man."
No one is going to bail you out this time, you know, and your place in history is assured as the worst chief executive in the history of the nation, perhaps of any nation. So what's your hope? What's your salvation?
You're a born-again Christian. I think you are praying and hoping for the apocalypse. That's the only thing that is going to clean your slate. Of course, if any of your interpretation of the mythology of Christianity is incorrect, you may find yourself slid onto an iron spit and eternally roasted over the fires of the lake of hell while Satan urinates on you as a baste.
It must suck being you. I'm so happy that it is you being you. Suffer, motherfucker. Suffer. Burn, baby, burn.
Friday, September 23, 2005
Thursday, September 22, 2005
Chimpie Goin Down, Part Deux
Cindy Sheehan and other military families are descending on Washington D.C. in preparation for the September 24 demonstration. What power can a woman like Ms. Sheehan really have?
Let me take you back to another invasion, another protracted war gone bad, another empire that no longer exists: 1979, Afghanistan, the Soviet Union. As repressive as the Bushit regime tries to be, and they are to be commended for the effort by any totalitarians out there, the Soviets knew a thing or two about putting down demonstrations and stifling dissent. The leadership did its best to avoid showing coffins returning, discussing war dead, or enabling a discussion of war policy in general. Once committed, they had to stay the course. But there was one group that had nothing left to lose, nothing left to fear from a regime that could and would resort to the most extreme violence to maintain its illusion of control.
The mothers. The mothers of slain soldiers began appearing in the streets of Moscow, of Leningrad, of Minsk, of Krasnodar and Khabarovsk and Rostov. They stood silently, holding up large photographs of their dead sons, or they cried, or they screamed. And as the death toll mounted, they became more numerous, more persistent, more emboldened.
A friend of mine was in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg again) where he was spending a year while working on his graduate degree in the mid-1980s. His Russian was near fluent, and he happened to fall in drinking with a Soviet colonel newly returned from the front in Afghanistan. The drunker they got, the more the colonel ranted about the horrible and pointless carnage in Afghanistan, the unwinnable nature of the war, the way it was tearing the country apart, in spite of all attempts to glorify it, or at least justify it.
Zbigniew Brzezinski called it the Soviet Union's Vietnam. After ten years of war, 15,000 dead Soviet soldiers, and 37,000 wounded, the USSR pulled out in April, 1989, severely weakend economically, politically, and morally. Within three years, the USSR ceased to exist.
But it started with some mothers, some grieving, angry mothers who, when they lost their sons, had lost everything of value that could be taken from them. And when you face people who have nothing left to lose to your stupidity, you're fucked.
Let me take you back to another invasion, another protracted war gone bad, another empire that no longer exists: 1979, Afghanistan, the Soviet Union. As repressive as the Bushit regime tries to be, and they are to be commended for the effort by any totalitarians out there, the Soviets knew a thing or two about putting down demonstrations and stifling dissent. The leadership did its best to avoid showing coffins returning, discussing war dead, or enabling a discussion of war policy in general. Once committed, they had to stay the course. But there was one group that had nothing left to lose, nothing left to fear from a regime that could and would resort to the most extreme violence to maintain its illusion of control.
The mothers. The mothers of slain soldiers began appearing in the streets of Moscow, of Leningrad, of Minsk, of Krasnodar and Khabarovsk and Rostov. They stood silently, holding up large photographs of their dead sons, or they cried, or they screamed. And as the death toll mounted, they became more numerous, more persistent, more emboldened.
A friend of mine was in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg again) where he was spending a year while working on his graduate degree in the mid-1980s. His Russian was near fluent, and he happened to fall in drinking with a Soviet colonel newly returned from the front in Afghanistan. The drunker they got, the more the colonel ranted about the horrible and pointless carnage in Afghanistan, the unwinnable nature of the war, the way it was tearing the country apart, in spite of all attempts to glorify it, or at least justify it.
Zbigniew Brzezinski called it the Soviet Union's Vietnam. After ten years of war, 15,000 dead Soviet soldiers, and 37,000 wounded, the USSR pulled out in April, 1989, severely weakend economically, politically, and morally. Within three years, the USSR ceased to exist.
But it started with some mothers, some grieving, angry mothers who, when they lost their sons, had lost everything of value that could be taken from them. And when you face people who have nothing left to lose to your stupidity, you're fucked.
Wednesday, September 21, 2005
Would You Trust the Chimperor and His Minions to Manage a Worldwide Pandemic?
On PBS last night, I watched "Wide Angle" (following a similar report on ABC two weeks ago) about the potential of a global pandemic even more devastating than the 1918-19 Spanish Flu that killed between 20 and 40 million people. The H5N1 "killer virus" has apparently made the transition from avian-to-human transmission to human-to-human transmission, as evidenced by outbreaks in Southeast Asia, although it still seems to be difficult for the virus to quickly move through a population. Now if you don't believe in evolution, perhaps you'll feel safe, because then the virus has to be exactly as created by God and preserved by Noah on the ark, right? But for the rest of us, the potential of this bug is terrifying.
Here's one reason why: the Spanish Flu had a mortality rate of 2-5 percent. H5N1 so far has killed 54 percent of reported victims.
Here's the next reason why: in keeping with Bush neocon anti-government ideology, the public health system in this country is in a shambles, and I have no reason to believe that the equivalent of Michael Brown and Michael Chertoff at FEMA have not been replicated throughout the National Institutes of Health, Centers for Disease Control, and in the Food and Drug Administration. The evidence is already clear. Tamiflu, manufactured by only one company in the world, Roche in Switzerland, is the only known remedy for this terrible flu. A vaccine is in the works, but the required dosages will not be produced in time to forestall the first wave of a global pandemic. Meanwhile, other nations like the United Kingdom, Germany, France, and Sweden have managed to stockpile sufficient doses of TamiFlu to protect their populations. These countries also have adequate public health policies and staff in place, ready to react if the virus makes its move.
Here in the good old USA, a nation of nearly 300 million, the number of doses of Tamiflu is still inadequate, and the US, once more caught with its pants down, is way down the list for nations in line to receive more of the drug. Once again, the richest (statistically), most powerful (militarily) nation on earth is moving toward third world status with regard to public health matters.
It will be argued that the Bush administration has increased budgets for CDC and other agencies, and this is true; however the increases measure up something like this. The total, TOTAL, budget for strengthening the public health infrastructure in the United States is less than we spend in one month in Iraq. And who is administering those agencies? Another Michael Brown? Perhaps some fundamentalist Christian crony of Chimpie who believes that such a pandemic is God's wrath for believing in evolution? As the virus mutates and spreads across the globe, will Chimpie once again decide that his leisure time, workouts, and cedar cutting on his "ranch" take higher priority than the public welfare? Oh, you can be sure that the connected, the rich, and the Republican elite will all have access to vaccine and Tamiflu. Can an administration play catch-up by throwing money at a pandemic that kills half its victims, if that government was a day late and a dollar short like it was for Katrina?
Not fucking likely. If you think Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath showed a level of corruption, cronyism, and incompetence like no other in our Bush-bought empire, then you might be relieved to know that in the wake of H5N1, Katrina will seem like some benigh urban renewal project.
To be fair, visit the CDC website and learn about the bug from official sources--I'm no expert, to be sure. It may give some comfort.
The good news is that this pandemic is not inevitable. The bad news is that this administration, if it stays true to form, is betting that bad stuff won't happen, just like in Iraq, just like on the national debt, just like on the Gulf Coast as Katrina approached. And if they lose that bet, we are going to witness a disaster on the level of the Black Plague in Europe, where millions upon millions will die, and many millions more will be disabled or require medical care that will not be available. Whole cities will be quarantined. The economy will grind to a stagger, then a halt. No war in history will have killed as many people as who may succumb to this virus.
All for the want of just a few billion dollars in proactive and preventive planning.
Welcome to Bushworld, suckers.
Here's one reason why: the Spanish Flu had a mortality rate of 2-5 percent. H5N1 so far has killed 54 percent of reported victims.
Here's the next reason why: in keeping with Bush neocon anti-government ideology, the public health system in this country is in a shambles, and I have no reason to believe that the equivalent of Michael Brown and Michael Chertoff at FEMA have not been replicated throughout the National Institutes of Health, Centers for Disease Control, and in the Food and Drug Administration. The evidence is already clear. Tamiflu, manufactured by only one company in the world, Roche in Switzerland, is the only known remedy for this terrible flu. A vaccine is in the works, but the required dosages will not be produced in time to forestall the first wave of a global pandemic. Meanwhile, other nations like the United Kingdom, Germany, France, and Sweden have managed to stockpile sufficient doses of TamiFlu to protect their populations. These countries also have adequate public health policies and staff in place, ready to react if the virus makes its move.
Here in the good old USA, a nation of nearly 300 million, the number of doses of Tamiflu is still inadequate, and the US, once more caught with its pants down, is way down the list for nations in line to receive more of the drug. Once again, the richest (statistically), most powerful (militarily) nation on earth is moving toward third world status with regard to public health matters.
It will be argued that the Bush administration has increased budgets for CDC and other agencies, and this is true; however the increases measure up something like this. The total, TOTAL, budget for strengthening the public health infrastructure in the United States is less than we spend in one month in Iraq. And who is administering those agencies? Another Michael Brown? Perhaps some fundamentalist Christian crony of Chimpie who believes that such a pandemic is God's wrath for believing in evolution? As the virus mutates and spreads across the globe, will Chimpie once again decide that his leisure time, workouts, and cedar cutting on his "ranch" take higher priority than the public welfare? Oh, you can be sure that the connected, the rich, and the Republican elite will all have access to vaccine and Tamiflu. Can an administration play catch-up by throwing money at a pandemic that kills half its victims, if that government was a day late and a dollar short like it was for Katrina?
Not fucking likely. If you think Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath showed a level of corruption, cronyism, and incompetence like no other in our Bush-bought empire, then you might be relieved to know that in the wake of H5N1, Katrina will seem like some benigh urban renewal project.
To be fair, visit the CDC website and learn about the bug from official sources--I'm no expert, to be sure. It may give some comfort.
The good news is that this pandemic is not inevitable. The bad news is that this administration, if it stays true to form, is betting that bad stuff won't happen, just like in Iraq, just like on the national debt, just like on the Gulf Coast as Katrina approached. And if they lose that bet, we are going to witness a disaster on the level of the Black Plague in Europe, where millions upon millions will die, and many millions more will be disabled or require medical care that will not be available. Whole cities will be quarantined. The economy will grind to a stagger, then a halt. No war in history will have killed as many people as who may succumb to this virus.
All for the want of just a few billion dollars in proactive and preventive planning.
Welcome to Bushworld, suckers.
Tuesday, September 20, 2005
Evolution? Creationism? Here, My Friends, Is ULTIMATE TRUTH!
I knew it! Those transcendent moments I've been having were not just LSD flashbacks.
Welcome to my new theology. Here's an excerpt from a letter requesting equal time in the classroom for the Flying Spaghetti Monster:
And to quote Kramer, I wanna be a pirate!
Welcome to my new theology. Here's an excerpt from a letter requesting equal time in the classroom for the Flying Spaghetti Monster:
I’m sure you now realize how important it is that your students are taught this alternate theory. It is absolutely imperative that they realize that observable evidence is at the discretion of a Flying Spaghetti Monster. Furthermore, it is disrespectful to teach our beliefs without wearing His chosen outfit, which of course is full pirate regalia. I cannot stress the importance of this enough, and unfortunately cannot describe in detail why this must be done as I fear this letter is already becoming too long. The concise explanation is that He becomes angry if we don’t.And be sure to visit the pictures honoring Our Creator.
You may be interested to know that global warming, earthquakes, hurricanes, and other natural disasters are a direct effect of the shrinking numbers of Pirates since the 1800s. For your interest, I have included a graph of the approximate number of pirates versus the average global temperature over the last 200 years. As you can see, there is a statistically significant inverse relationship between pirates and global temperature.
And to quote Kramer, I wanna be a pirate!
Chimpie Goin' Down
Bush sucks as a president, or as a human being, for that matter, but it's okay to suck as a human being if it's only your own life you're fucking up. And Chimpie did a pretty good job of that until he stopped drinking, which was good news for Laura and the twins and bad news for the rest of humanity. I've known some dry drunks, and they have one characteristic in common: restless energy. That's not a bad thing. Some throw themselves into their work, others into an Amway business (called Quixtar now, I think), others into coaching soccer for their kids. Our misfortune as inhabitants of this planet was that Chimpie's energy was thrown into the acquisition of power, and through the influence of his family and those indebted to them, he became a governer, where he learned the joy of signing death warrants, and, questionably, president of this country.
Now I'm not the sort who says, "I told you so," but all of those folks I know who wanted to be fair, who wanted to give Chimpie a chance, have now apparently come to the realization that a fanatically ignorant and doctrinaire dry drunk, desperately in need of a case of cheap whiskey and the time to finish it off, is bad for the country and the world. Here are the recent CNN poll numbers in that regard:
Bush's handling of Hurricane Katrina's effects: 41% approve, 57% disapprove.
Bush's handling of the Iraq war: 32% approve, 67% disapprove.
Bush's handling of the economy: 35% approve, 63% disapprove.
Bush's overall job approval rating: 40% approve, 58% disapprove.
But here are the figures that makes it more interesting:
51 % do not consider him strong and decisive.
50 % would not call him honest.
56 % say he doesn't care about people like them.
And yet he was "reelected" last November. Some 35% of those polled are apparently so desperate to believe in the Dear Leader concept of the presidency that they would still favor Bush even if he climbed onto the Capitol dome and started throwing feces at tourists while screaming, "I am the Chimperor! Respect me or die!" But all those moderates (another term for them is "wusses") may finally have realized that wishing and having are quite different things, and however much good they tried to see in Bush, he's completely void of it. That's right, the Chimp is pure evil. And when a villain like this has 50 percent of the people saying he is not honest and 58 percent disapproving of everything he has done or will do, then I could almost think that there's hope.
Sadly, for 1905 dead American servicemen and women, that hope is gone, as it is for countless Iraqis and victims of preventable disaster, like the breaching of the levees in New Orleans. If there is one thing that puzzles me about America, it's that we consider giving a single man in a leadership position the benefit of the doubt long after he has demonstrated that he doesn't deserve the saliva it would take to spit on him.
Chimpie goin' down, motherfuckers! Chimpie goin' down!
Now I'm not the sort who says, "I told you so," but all of those folks I know who wanted to be fair, who wanted to give Chimpie a chance, have now apparently come to the realization that a fanatically ignorant and doctrinaire dry drunk, desperately in need of a case of cheap whiskey and the time to finish it off, is bad for the country and the world. Here are the recent CNN poll numbers in that regard:
Bush's handling of Hurricane Katrina's effects: 41% approve, 57% disapprove.
Bush's handling of the Iraq war: 32% approve, 67% disapprove.
Bush's handling of the economy: 35% approve, 63% disapprove.
Bush's overall job approval rating: 40% approve, 58% disapprove.
But here are the figures that makes it more interesting:
51 % do not consider him strong and decisive.
50 % would not call him honest.
56 % say he doesn't care about people like them.
And yet he was "reelected" last November. Some 35% of those polled are apparently so desperate to believe in the Dear Leader concept of the presidency that they would still favor Bush even if he climbed onto the Capitol dome and started throwing feces at tourists while screaming, "I am the Chimperor! Respect me or die!" But all those moderates (another term for them is "wusses") may finally have realized that wishing and having are quite different things, and however much good they tried to see in Bush, he's completely void of it. That's right, the Chimp is pure evil. And when a villain like this has 50 percent of the people saying he is not honest and 58 percent disapproving of everything he has done or will do, then I could almost think that there's hope.
Sadly, for 1905 dead American servicemen and women, that hope is gone, as it is for countless Iraqis and victims of preventable disaster, like the breaching of the levees in New Orleans. If there is one thing that puzzles me about America, it's that we consider giving a single man in a leadership position the benefit of the doubt long after he has demonstrated that he doesn't deserve the saliva it would take to spit on him.
Chimpie goin' down, motherfuckers! Chimpie goin' down!
Monday, September 19, 2005
An Inspiration to All
When El Presidente Chimpie addressed the nation on Thursday night, I couldn't watch because I had a class to teach, but I did get to listen to all the commentary afterward. I don't envy the mouthpieces of kneepad media--honestly, they have a tough job trying to untangle some sense out of the mangled mouthing of scripts that Bush considers speechmaking. After listening to NPR and watching CNN, MSNBC, etc., I actually watched the footage of Chimpie under the temporary lights of Jackson Square (yes, they were turned on for him, then turned off when he left) and could not conjoin the complete breakdown of a "president" with the broad and charitable interpretations of his performance given by the mainstream media. Is LSD making a comeback in the culture?
With his head pulled down into a dreadfully tailored blue shirt, Bush looked like his own caricature. Is his head shrinking, or are his ears actually larger under stress? The whole look of the event was very badly staged--the lighting was stark and the set was coldly empty of any evidence of humanity so that Chimpie appeared even stranger than usual with his head dipping and slashing hand movements, carefully counted to ensure symmetry between left and right.
As I've said many times after watching Bush speak, if it was a prize fight, it would have been stopped in the first three minutes. Bush is the only person I've ever seen who could knock himself out and then kick himself senseless with his presentation of words he clearly does not comprehend. He's really the victim here, in a way, because they shove the poor, ill-equipped bastard out all alone, without even Dick Cheney's hand up his ass, to recite words that even the mainstream media is at pains to decipher into actual policy actions. And you can tell how desperate he is, because he keeps doing what Uncle Karl and Uncle Dick tell him to, and still his polls keep sinking to the point that even the most ardent wingnuts have actually strained to think for a second or two about how useful Chimpie is to them now.
It won't be long, I don't think. By year's end I believe we'll witness a public breakdown by Bush. It may be triggered by a teleprompter failure or by his own fear coming true that his father still thinks of him as a semi-retarded putz, or that his mommy scolded him about dirtying the Bush "legacy," or perhaps Laura will finally say, "Georgie, you're ruining my life!" but Bush is going to have a massive public failure of will, and it is going to be spectacular in the annals of modern media.
Of course, it may also be Master Manipulator Karl Rove's last ditch effort to garner sympathy for the worst president in history.
There is a bright side to seeing Bush on TV, however. Whenever I watch his hostage-tape presentations delivered with the mix of bewilderment and false courage that only a dumb dry drunk can muster, I realize that it really is true that anyone can become anything in this country. Think about it. In your next job interview, consider trying this tack when asked why you are suitable for the position you seek. "Shit, man, George W. Bush is the president of the United States. How could I be less qualified than that?"
Truly, in the history of employment, his ascendancy to the highest post in the land has got to be inspirational to every inept, brain-damaged, corrupt, incompetent schmuck in the nation. It's the highest notch on the post in terms of failed human resource management. And he's still got three years left, barring impeachment, indictment, conviction, and imprisonment.
With his head pulled down into a dreadfully tailored blue shirt, Bush looked like his own caricature. Is his head shrinking, or are his ears actually larger under stress? The whole look of the event was very badly staged--the lighting was stark and the set was coldly empty of any evidence of humanity so that Chimpie appeared even stranger than usual with his head dipping and slashing hand movements, carefully counted to ensure symmetry between left and right.
As I've said many times after watching Bush speak, if it was a prize fight, it would have been stopped in the first three minutes. Bush is the only person I've ever seen who could knock himself out and then kick himself senseless with his presentation of words he clearly does not comprehend. He's really the victim here, in a way, because they shove the poor, ill-equipped bastard out all alone, without even Dick Cheney's hand up his ass, to recite words that even the mainstream media is at pains to decipher into actual policy actions. And you can tell how desperate he is, because he keeps doing what Uncle Karl and Uncle Dick tell him to, and still his polls keep sinking to the point that even the most ardent wingnuts have actually strained to think for a second or two about how useful Chimpie is to them now.
It won't be long, I don't think. By year's end I believe we'll witness a public breakdown by Bush. It may be triggered by a teleprompter failure or by his own fear coming true that his father still thinks of him as a semi-retarded putz, or that his mommy scolded him about dirtying the Bush "legacy," or perhaps Laura will finally say, "Georgie, you're ruining my life!" but Bush is going to have a massive public failure of will, and it is going to be spectacular in the annals of modern media.
Of course, it may also be Master Manipulator Karl Rove's last ditch effort to garner sympathy for the worst president in history.
There is a bright side to seeing Bush on TV, however. Whenever I watch his hostage-tape presentations delivered with the mix of bewilderment and false courage that only a dumb dry drunk can muster, I realize that it really is true that anyone can become anything in this country. Think about it. In your next job interview, consider trying this tack when asked why you are suitable for the position you seek. "Shit, man, George W. Bush is the president of the United States. How could I be less qualified than that?"
Truly, in the history of employment, his ascendancy to the highest post in the land has got to be inspirational to every inept, brain-damaged, corrupt, incompetent schmuck in the nation. It's the highest notch on the post in terms of failed human resource management. And he's still got three years left, barring impeachment, indictment, conviction, and imprisonment.
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