The Mountain Rumbles. Bush Heads Deeper into the Bunker

David Michael Green wrote a very prescient article back in June of this year, and I am cheered by recent events that bear out his supposition.

Somewhere in America, on the highest perches of a tall mountain, a small rock has begun its descent, bringing others down with it. This rock was loosed by the release of a secret memo far across the Atlantic, but its path has been prepared by years of political deceit, arrogance, and aggression at home and abroad. The avalanche it has precipitated is at this moment gaining mass and velocity at a fast-growing rate. Its ultimate destination is Pennsylvania Avenue, in the American capital, though it remains unclear whether it possesses sufficient energy to carry that far.

While the vast bulk of Americans haven't yet a clue of what lurks on the horizon (because their media persists in not telling them), there is in fact more than a whiff of regime change in the air as a potential Washington Spring of our time gains momentum.

But now the mainstream media has begun its pile-on in the same blind rush that it pursued the Clinton impeachment and the Natalie Holloway missing white woman case in Aruba (which is still covered on all cable news channels more than the DeLay indictments, Frist investigation, or Plame CIA outing). That's bad, bad news for Chimpie. The news media is amoral, actually, and while it may have been licking the boots of the Bushits all these years, it wasn't because of any ideological orientation. No, they're just sycophants, groupies to power, cocksuckers of whoever the current rockstar happens to be. And now Chimpie has been found to be metaphorically OD'd in a hotel room with a dead underaged boy hooker, and the media smells which way the mood of the nation is trending and will dutifully open its collective puss wide enough for that chubby to stroke and blow its wad.

Chimpie's regime is going down, down, down. Down, down, down. All that remains is cyanide and a pistol shot and they join the other historical bunker dwellers in infamy as war criminals, as enemies of freedom, as usurpers of power through the most despicable lies.

If there is a hell, long may they burn.

Why Oh Why Must Patience Be a Virtue?

Your humble correspondent is engaging in some very immature behavior today, because he simply can't contain himself. He has been lying on the floor, kicking his feet and pounding his head and fists and screaming, "I want my indictments NOW!" over and over. Now that the Wall Street Journal has reported that Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald is looking into a little White House cabal called the Iraq Group, it's suddenly like Christmas Eve and you saw Dad back a horse trailer up to the garage during the day, telling you it was just straw for the manger in the nativity display. You thought you heard a tiny whinny out there. Is it your pony? How many hours before Christmas morning comes? Check the weather page...sunrise at 6:59am. Ooooooooh, how am I gonna wait that long?

You get the idea. Here's an excerpt to read while I run around the house a few times screaming "Chimpie Chumpie, Chimpie Chumpie, Chimpie Chumpie, FLUSH!!!"

There are signs that prosecutors now are looking into contacts between administration officials and journalists that took place much earlier than previously thought. Earlier conversations are potentially significant, because that suggests the special prosecutor leading the investigation is exploring whether there was an effort within the administration at an early stage to develop and disseminate confidential information to the press that could undercut former Ambassador Joseph Wilson and his wife, Central Intelligence Agency official Valerie Plame
...
Lawyers familiar with the investigation believe that at least part of the outcome likely hangs on the inner workings of what has been dubbed the White House Iraq Group. Formed in August 2002, the group, which included Messrs. Rove and Libby, worked on setting strategy for selling the war in Iraq to the public in the months leading up to the March 2003 invasion. The group likely would have played a significant role in responding to Mr. Wilson's claims.

Given that the grand jury is set to expire on Oct. 28, it is possible charges in this case could come as early as next week. Former federal prosecutors say it is traditional not to wait for the last minute and run the risk of not having enough jurors to reach a quorum. There are 23 members of a grand jury, and 16 are needed for a quorum before any indictments could be voted on. This grand jury has traditionally met on Wednesdays and Fridays.

Now, what is the White House Iraq Group, you ask? Let's just flip back to a Washington Post piece from more than two years ago by Barton Gellman and Walter Pincus:

The escalation of nuclear rhetoric a year ago, including the introduction of the term "mushroom cloud" into the debate, coincided with the formation of a White House Iraq Group, or WHIG, a task force assigned to "educate the public" about the threat from Hussein, as a participant put it.

"Educate the public." Get it? "Mushroom cloud." Think of media buttplugs Judy Miller and Robert Novak. Educate in this new Orwellian world meant "lie to the public in whatever ways required to get support for an invasion." It was a full-fledged propaganda and smear operation designed to twist the media into compliance and destroy anyone who sought to expose the truth, like Joe Wilson.

Who was in the WHIG? Good question, because when you start talking about conspiracy charges, it becomes central to what Fitzgerald is now investigating.

Systematic coordination began in August, when Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr. formed the White House Iraq Group, or WHIG, to set strategy for each stage of the confrontation with Baghdad. A senior official who participated in its work called it "an internal working group, like many formed for priority issues, to make sure each part of the White House was fulfilling its responsibilities."

In an interview with the New York Times published Sept. 6, Card did not mention the WHIG but hinted at its mission. "From a marketing point of view, you don't introduce new products in August," he said.

The group met weekly in the Situation Room. Among the regular participants were Karl Rove, the president's senior political adviser; communications strategists Karen Hughes, Mary Matalin and James R. Wilkinson; legislative liaison Nicholas E. Calio; and policy advisers led by Rice and her deputy, Stephen J. Hadley, along with I. Lewis Libby, Cheney's chief of staff.

So can I be blamed for hoping that Rove, Hughes, Matalin, Wilkinson, Calio, Condi Rice, Hadley, and Libby might find themselves on the wrong end of an indictment, or at least under subpeona to testify against Cheney and Chimpie themselves? Oh! Oh! Oh!

Please, please, please! I can't wait any longer! Please Mr. Fitzgerald! I'm gonna hold my breath until you indict those damned little piggies.

Here goes... I want my pony now!!!

More Rats Deserting the Good Ship Bushit

When you have someone like Rick "Man-on-Dog" Santorum in your corner, or rather, so far up your ass that he doesn't know where he ends and you begin, you figure that he not only may be politically ambitious, but a true believer too. All the better, you think, because the true believers are so easily duped. Santorum's desire to climb all the way to a run for the presidency was bolstered by the apparent power of the evangelical-Catholic coalition which wants no abortion, no contraception, no homosexual acts, and the permanent installation of women as slavish factories for reproduction, and he saw the coattails of el presidente Chimpie as a way to prove his bona fides to this group.

But Ricky must have needed a breath of fresh air after so many months in Chimpie's colon sucking down methane, so he pulled his head out to inhale oxygen and discovered the Bush maybe wasn't so popular any more with that core group of religious and sexual theofascists that yearn for a return to the dark ages. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette sums it up nicely:

It has been an unquestionably brutal summer for the president -- from waning support for the Iraq war, to the slow and almost certain death of his plan to restructure the Social Security system, to criticism over his handling of Hurricane Katrina, to concern about gas prices and the economy. If those trends continue, a looming question for candidates like Mr. Santorum is to what extent the public's dissatisfaction with the administration will spill over into the midterm elections in 2006.

A sinking Chimpie wouldn't trouble a true believer one bit--look at that core 26 percent who think the country is on the right track--but when you have ambitions that are more secular, like someday running for president, the role of the out-of-power martyred true believer becomes less attractive, even if it is the right thing to do given your previous pronouncements of "principle" regarding allegedly conservative ideas.

Is Santorum, then, really just another opportunistic relativist in Christian clothing, ready to turn Brutus to Chimpie's Caesar?

In an interview with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette several weeks ago, Mr. Santorum said for the first time that the White House had stumbled badly in its handling of the Social Security issue, and compared Mr. Bush's decision to demand a restructuring of the Social Security system immediately after the contentious 2004 election as "taking a 3-iron to a beehive."

Two weeks ago, Mr. Santorum startled some conservatives and tax lobbyists when he said the costs of Hurricane Katrina had made it necessary for Republicans to reconsider whether they should extend some of the president's tax cuts -- such as the lower rate on capital gains and dividends passed in 2003.

"There's a chance we may not extend some of those provisions this year," Santorum told radio host Don Imus, adding that Congress might not do "as much in the way of tax relief as we had originally scheduled or target some of that tax relief to the affected areas."

So Ricky-boy in one fell swoop cuts himself away from the web in which he had been gleefully entwined, the web that held religious wingnuts and libertarians alike in thrall of Bush: tax cuts and gutting Social Security. And yet Santorum is no dummy--he still needs the Chimpie juggernaut to keep him, if not legitimate, at least financially solvent.

If Mr. Santorum does distance himself from White House policies over the next year -- one area where he is certain to retain their help is in fund raising. Just two weeks from now, Vice President Dick Cheney will hold another fundraiser for Mr. Santorum in Shavertown, Pa..

"It's a delicate balancing act," said Carroll J. Doherty, associate director of Pew Research Center for People and the Press. "This president, he's had a rough stretch, but he still commands loyalty from around 80 percent of Republicans, which is not inconsiderable. ... He has enormous assets to bring to the table."

So as hard as I've been on the Democrats for being weak-kneed with regard to what should be their core principles, it's nice to see that opportunity, greed, power hunger, and unprinicpled gutlessness exist on both sides of the spectrum. Third party, anyone?

What Does Chimpie Have in Common with the Blues Brothers?

If you can't answer this, you just have to get out on the Internet more. From The Independent:

...the former Palestinian foreign minister Nabil Shaath says Mr Bush told him and Mahmoud Abbas, former prime minister and now Palestinian President: "I'm driven with a mission from God. God would tell me, 'George, go and fight those terrorists in Afghanistan.' And I did, and then God would tell me, 'George go and end the tyranny in Iraq,' and I did."

"Mission from God." Oh, Jesus! Please, please start drinking again and give up this religious shit!

Bush: Big Suck

One of my favorite putdowns came from a former colleague who hailed from Taiwan. When he was really, really pissed about the performance of a particular piece of equipment or software or company (let's call it Fantexo), he would say, "Fantexo big suck."

Ha ha ha ha ha! Watching Chimpie lie yet again about terrorism in yesterday's speech was almost heart rending...except that I genuinely hate the motherfucker and everything he stands for, so it was really quite delightful. This is a desperate, floundering ass, and he can see the dark, damp, shit-encrusted drain around which he is now circling. The CBS poll released today is unspinnable: 26 percent think the country is headed in the right direction; 69 percent say it is on the wrong track.

Now the question of the week (a new desperate attempt on my own to drum up commentary on this lonely blog): Who the fuck are these 26 percent? Please describe the mindset. All I can figure are people in comas who are asked the question in this way--"If you think the country is on the wrong track, please leap out of bed and do ten jumping jacks. If you think it is on the right track, continue to breathe through your respirator."

The Fear Is Gone

When the Senate votes 90-9 to add provisions to a defense bill that impose limits on the treatment of terrorism suspects, and they do it in spite of Chimpie's threat to veto that bill, it means that not even Republicans are afraid of this White House any more, and that means some big shit about to his the Bush evil empire. Only nine senators voted for torture, in other words, and that means a Chimpie veto will be overriden easily.

The rumor mill is burning up with talk of 22 indictments from Patrick Fitzgerald, and Rove is among the targets. This Senate vote is a watershed moment, when the rats are realizing that the Republican ship with crazy Chimpie at the helm is not going to right itself, but is in fact about to capsize, trapping all those still onboard to a dismal fate. Let's hope that the oil fire that will soon surround this exploding political vessel vaporizes a good number of the rodents swimming madly for cooler waters.

And word to the Democrats--don't pick up any survivors. Sharks gotta eat too.

Fascism in Our Lifetime, in Our Country

You don't think so? Well, imagine the avian flu pandemic is upon us, and the Bushits, consistent with their absolute incompetence in all things, have not built an adequate stockpile of vaccine and/or Tamiflu to combat its spread in the United States. What is the Bush solution? Read this and fear for the republic:

Citing concern that state and local authorities might be unable to contain and deal with such an outbreak, Bush asked Congress to give him the authority to call in the military.

The president has already indicated he wants to give the armed forces the lead responsibility for conducting search-and-rescue operations and sending in supplies after massive natural disasters and terrorist attacks — a notion that could require a change in law and that even some in the Pentagon have reacted to skeptically. The idea raised the startling-to-some image of soldiers cordoning off communities hit by disease.

"The president ought to have all ... assets on the table to be able to deal with something this significant," Bush said during a 55 minute question-and-answer session with reporters in the sun-splashed Rose Garden.

Dr. Irwin Redlener, associate dean of Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health and director of its National Center for Disaster Preparedness, called the president's suggestion an "extraordinarily draconian measure" that would be unnecessary if the nation had built the capability for rapid vaccine production, ensured a large supply of anti-virals like Tamiflu, and not allowed the degradation of the public health system.

"The translation of this is martial law in the United States," Redlener said.

Chimpie and the gang know they are losing it in country at large where now only the most ignorant, deluded, or ideologically blinded support his policies. They find themselves surrounded by and soon faced with indictments right inside the White House, and all that will be left to them is the declaration of disasters justifying extreme measures that can be used to control an increasingly rebellious population.

I do not mean to downplay the public health concerns that an avian flu pandemic would raise, but why is it that this administration cannot find the wherewithal to take reasonable preventive measures, measures that our European and Asian friends seem to realize are far better than dealing with a worldwide pandemic that could kill tens of millions. From the New York Times, we learn of yet another Chimpie regime disaster-in-waiting:

Health officials have warned for years that a virulent bird flu could kill millions of people, but few in Washington have seemed alarmed. After a closed-door briefing last week, however, fear of an outbreak swept official Washington, which was still reeling from the poor response to Hurricane Katrina...Mr. Leavitt [Michael Leavitt, secretary of Health and Human Service] responded: "We need a plan. I'm resolved to make sure we have one and so is the president."

We need a plan? Why the fuck don't we HAVE a god damned plan?

But then you remember that the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld/Rove/Wolfowitz/Perl/et al cabal has no problem with the death of innocents, whether through negligence (9/11) or willful lies (Iraq) or incompetence (Katrina) to secure their power, and you tremble at what horrors we might yet face in their quest for domination.

Fascism in America. It can happen here. It is happening here.

Cockroach Goin' Down

Let me pat myself on the back by referring to my blog post on April 6, 2005, in which I made the case that DeLay had so much shit on other members of government, including some Democrats, that he was only a cell phone call away from having it all posted to major news outlets.

Inside each envelope is damning evidence: of payoffs, bribes, filthy deeds done, smears conducted, perjury committed, and perhaps much, much worse, all of it done and documented about members of the House, the Senate, and people in the White House...Tom "Giant Flying Cockroach" DeLay has his cellphone in his hand at all times, with that young woman's number at the top of the display. His thumb is lightly touching the "Send" button. He will not get flushed down the sewer alone, that much his colleagues know...and fear.

It's going to be a glorious shitfest, a virtual revolution, perhaps. Let the bloodbath begin!

With DeLay now under a second indictment granted by a different grand jury, the speculation is that Jack Abramoff has beat him to the punch. Has Abramoff squealed to save his own ass? Are the dominoes beginning to fall? Will the Giant Flying Cockroach make the call and take everyone else down with him?

I sure hope so.

He Said It, Not Me

From the Lowell Sun in Massachusets:

“The invasion of Iraq I believe will turn out to be the greatest strategic disaster in U.S. history,” said Odom, now a scholar with the Hudson Institute.

Odom is retired Army Lt. General William Odom, veteran of the war in Vietnam who, under then-President Ronald Reagan, served from 1981-85 as the Army's senior intelligence officer in his role as Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence, followed by the directorship of the National Security Agency (NSA), aka "the Puzzle Palace," from 1985 until 1988.

Odom believes our focus should have remained on Afghanistan, Al Qaeda, and Osama bin Laden, and he would like to see our forces redeployed along the Afghan-Pakistan border where the folks who actually perpetrated 9/11 have been hiding FOR FOUR FUCKING YEARS.

If any Bushit, rightwingwad nutcases lurk here, I want to hear from you. First, tell me why the invasion of Iraq was justified. Second, explain to me how it can in any way be called a competent exercise of the use of military and political force in the US interest. Finally, show me how, in any way, we are better off economically, strategically, or in terms of national security as a result of invading Iraq.

Lastly, if you didn't see Andy Rooney on CBS's Sixty Minutes, please go read the transcript here. It's short and to the point, and Rooney, a veteran of WWII, reminds us of the dire warning from outgoing President Dwight D. Eisenhower in January, 1961.

We had a great commander in WWII, Dwight Eisenhower. He became President and on leaving the White House in 1961, he said this: “We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. …"

Well, Ike was right. That's just what’s happened.

That's the reason we have this disaster in Iraq--the defense industry, holding hands with the energy interests, now determines all foreign policy, and the rest of national policy derives from that. We are citizens of an aggressive, imperialistic, and militaristic nation that is spiraling into destruction of its noble institutions, all for the sake of greed and power of a cabal of truly evil people linked around the Bush family, people whose sense of privilege enables them to commit war crimes and violate international law as well as the very best principles of the United States. We are a pariah nation now, lead by madmen who also happen to be amazingly stupid and incapabile of learning from their mistakes and who lack any redeeming qualities whatever.

It is time for them to fall and fall hard, or the future will be far more dangerous, violent, and uncertain. These really are the last days, in a sense, and what will befall all of us we will deserve if we let these few continue to pull the levers of government and industry for solely their own self-interest.

He Digs His Porno

The reason Bush is threatening to veto a defense appropriation bill of $440 billion is because he has no second source for good torture and snuff films. And now that he may be back on the bottle--maybe even coking it up--his appetite should increase significantly. According to the report:

Last summer, Republican Sens. John McCain of Arizona and John Warner of Virginia and others sought legislation banning cruel and degrading treatment of prisoners.

Be careful John and John--this could earn you a berth in Guantanamo...and you'd think McCain would have learned his lesson by now about the ruthlessness of the Bushits.

Questions for Bush Lovers

Doesn't it bother you to exploit a man who is mentally ill, to expect him to perform competently as president?

Now go have some fun. My favorite is the "Choke on a Pretzel" button.

Shorthand for What I Think of the Dems

I wish I had done this. It speaks volumes.

Maybe It's the Friday Blues

With all the shit that's piled up on the Bushit administration, from Iraq to New Orleans, with allies like Jack Abramoff, David Safavian, and Scumbag Tom Delay getting indicted, jailbird Judy Miller finally testifying to the Plame outing grand jury, and Alan Greenspan admitting that the US budget is "out of control," it should be finished, kaput, done, over, with only the indictments to continue, convictions to be made, and prison sentences to be announced. I should be happy to see how hard these motherfuckers are going to hit the ground, and yet I find myself depressed. Where is the piling on? The mainstream press, so needy for news, so carnivorous where missing white women are concerned, seem toothless, which makes sense, I guess, because as much as they seem to be blowing the Republicans in power, it's best that their oral cavities be configured for maximum pleasure.

Is it me, or is something very wrong in the shock levels of this country? How can the American people be willing to quietly accept this totally corrupt and incompetent government thrust upon us? Where are the demonstrations? Where are the riots, for that matter? Why aren't the young people of this nation, those who are going to suffer most for what is being done to this country, out in the streets? Is it the Ritalin they've been taking since grade school? Is it flouridated water? Or are they just totally hopeless? Why the complacency?

Frankly, none of this stuff actually affects me directly, so why should I even care? I don't need an abortion, I'm too old to draft, I don't have any kids who might end up in Iraq, or who need an education, and I'm not black, gay, female, or of any other marginalized group. I am actually a net beneficiary of Chimpie's ridiculous tax cut policies. If the people who are going to get hit hardest by a continuation of this insane administration don't give a fuck and can't be troubled to even write a letter, let alone throw their bodies against the wheels of the machine, why the hell should I worry? I'll be dead long before the biggest, baddest chickens come home to roost on the remains of this "civilization." When America, as a direct result of the Chimpie disaster, sinks to second or even third world status, as the separation of rich and poor grows ever greater, as our social institutions fail from neglect and direct sabotage by right-wing idealogues, I'm on the safe side of the divide. Why should I give a fuck about the rest of you?

Well, that's probably what the hoohahs in your Democratic Party are thinking, and that's why they can't seem to make 10 cents out of the lottery winnings they're getting from the Republicans themselves. The only thing more incompetent and enraging than Republican malfeasance is the behavior of the Democrats. They continue to cower under the shadow of Rove and his minions, begging not to be slapped again, promising to be good little butt-boys, handed the ball on the goal line only to run in the opposite direction.

And that's why I'm depressed.

On the Way Back to the Dark Ages, Something to Smile About

The Giant Flying Cockroach, Tom DeLay, has gotten his six creepy feet stuck in the gooey linoleum of the Roach Motel of prosecutor Ronnie Earle. And now, at long last, the mainstream media is turning the light on when Roachie can no longer scutter and fly into the dank corner behind the basket of potatoes under the sink. How wonderful is this, posted on Yahoo! news:

"What we're trying to avoid is Ronnie Earle having him taken down in handcuffs, and fingerprinted and photographed. That's uncalled for and I don't think that's going to happen," said Dick DeGuerin, DeLay's attorney.

I sincerely hope that before the day is out we'll get to see mugshots of Roachie on the web, like this one, or perhaps, even better, like this.

On another front, perhaps Americans will finally be forced to confront the nasty reality of war in its worst expression, particularly for a country which insists on its mythology of righteousness and rule of law. A judge has ruled that the military cannot withold Abu Ghraib and other photos of torture just because of what they might provoke. I really am amazed that no mainstream media pundit hasn't pointed out that it is not the pictures that are offensive, but the acts that were photographed. Somehow they cannot get past the representation to the thing represented. Didn't any of these numbskulls take basic English composition and rhetoric? Seymour Hersh will be proven right in what he said at an ACLU speech:

Some of the worst things that happened that you don’t know about. OK? Videos. There are women there. Some of you may have read that they were passing letters out, communications out to their men. This is at [Abu Ghraib], which is about 30 miles from Baghdad — 30 kilometers, maybe, just 20 miles, I'm not sure whether it's — anyway. The women were passing messages out saying please come and kill me because of what’s happened. And basically what happened is that those women who were arrested with young boys, children, in cases that have been [video] recorded, the boys were sodomized, with the cameras rolling, and the worst above all of them is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking. That your government has, and they’re in total terror it’s going to come out. It’s impossible to say to yourself, how did we get there, who are we, who are these people that sent us there.

After Katrina, the continuing disaster in Iraq, the indictments of Jack Abramhoff and Roachie DeLay, this is going to further tip public sentiment toward the side of those who know that this administration is a criminal enterprise like no other in our history. They are going to fall, and they are going to be made to pay for all of this. ALL OF IT!

Ship, Rats, Captain and Crew...Oh, Wait, They're All Rats

The Republicans are in a major panic now, as evidenced by the absurd performance art of former FEMA director Michael "Drownie" Brown before the whitewash committee of the House, formed by, yes, the Republicans. In a bravura portrayal of a self-important, terribly wronged, yet obviously incompetent and lying sack o' shit, Brown entered the immortal annals of righteous indignation, alongside Clarence "In Scalia's Anus" Thomas, Ollie North, and, yes, William Jefferson Clinton ("I did not have sex with that woman." Oh, if only he had said, "Yeah, she sucked my cock. I'm the fuckin' president. What's it to ya?").

I can only believe that Drownie was directed to this Richard Burton-like level of acting because there is nothing left to these incompetent, lying, murdering, criminal bastards but air and words. With new indictments in the offing every single day (Frist's insider trading, Plamegate, Jack Abramoff, TRMPAC, and so on and on and on) they should be scared enough, except that prior to the laugh riot of Hurricane Katrina, the American public was so benumbed or just flat stupid to still give them the benefit of the doubt. But now the utter failures in Iraq, domestic facts of existence, and the unbelievable excesses of sleaziness of the right wing have finally penetrated all but the thickest of skulls, inside of which there is so little room for brain tissue that any hope of thought is hopelessly naive to expect.

It does not look good for a Republican future. The trend has gone totally negative for the Repugs as far as Bush and his criminal empire goes. Of the 31 states Chimpie carried, for Christ's sake, he now has negative approval ratings in 19 of them! The 12 holdouts include extremist nutlands like Utah, Idaho, Mississippi, Wyoming and Nebraska, but even places like Idaho are trending south. It's true that Mississippi and Utah are trending back upwards, but population-wise, who gives a fuck about them? If Haley Barbour, governor of Mississippi hadn't been a Bush cocksucker for decades, they'd still be treading water down there. Texas is even trending down on Chimpie faster than Judy Miller on Ahmad Chalabi's chubby.

But wait, as they say in the infomercials, there's more. I predict that we are going to see the pieces of a criminal puzzle come together that will dwarf any corruption seen at the federal level since 1789, encompassing, perhaps, even capital murder. Bush will earn his place in history, all right. He'll be the man who redeemed Warren Harding as perhaps overly maligned when put against this new scale of corruption.

You set the new standard Chimpie-boy! Congratulations!

Buy Chimpie a Drink Day

He needs it. Newsweek reports that El Presidente is not getting his beauty sleep, and that is tragic.

The president didn't look all that relieved or happy, however. His eyes were puffy from lack of sleep (he had been awakened all through the night with bulletins), and he seemed cranky and fidgety. A group of reporters and photographers had been summoned by White House handlers to capture a photo op of the commander in chief at his post. Bush stared at them balefully. He rocked back and forth in his chair, furiously at times, asked no questions and took no notes. It almost seemed as though he resented having to strike a pose for the press.

You have to read the entire article to get to the most disturbing part, which arises in the last two lines of the piece:

Public-opinion polls suggest that faith in Bush's competence is sagging. But there are a lot of storm systems yet to come—and three years is time enough for Bush to show that his leadership means more than staging heroic poses.

Jesus. We now learn that poor Chimpie can't even be bothered to slide into his flight suit and pad out his crotch for America. It's clear that he is in desperate need of a drink...or the rest that a resignation would give him. It's so sad to see someone so over his head that he can't even fake it any more--not that he was ever any good at faking anything, but the kneepad mainstream press operated for so long pretending that he had gravitas that they became gullible to their own bullshit. Such obedient behavior has kept Karl Rove in near-constant orgasm since 9/11.

Anyway, today I want to proclaim September 26 as "Buy Chimpie a Drink Day," and while I do not solicit contributions of any kind, I would like my few readers to at least gather up all those 2-for-1 margarita coupons, airline drink vouchers, and any ads for 10 cent beers in the Crawford or D.C. area and send them to George W. Bush at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. The good news is that Chimpie may indeed have started hitting the bottle again, and given his record, that's something that can only improve his performance, particularly if he can reach the passing-out stage of drunkenness regularly. Hell, maybe he'll even challenge the old man to go "mano a mano" again. Now that the elder Bush is at least 80, perhaps Chimpie can take him, although Junior's cowardice will still only be negated by what comes out of a Jim Beam bottle.

That should, however, give him some solace, because while his presidency goes down in flames as the worst ever in U.S. history, he will be remembered in a new terminology that I shall coin. We can now call the alcoholic poultice for overcoming fear to be forever known as "Bush Courage."

Praying for the Apolcalypse

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.

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.

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.

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:

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.

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 be sure to visit the pictures honoring Our Creator.

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!

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.

God's Hand-Picked President Admits to Base Bodily Functions!

And Condi is the go-to gal for clearing the way for evacuation, so to speak.

Rapture Ready After the Flood

Today, your humble correspondent had to travel to a large southwestern megalopolis, freeways jammed to the max with spotlessly clean SUVs piloted by tiny blonde women talking on cell phones, skin pulled tight by the best cosmetic surgeons in America and leathered by the unrelenting sun of the region. My god, but sprawl is nasty out here.

Anyway, after Hurricane Katrina, the pending Ophelia mess, and 120 some Iraqis blown up by the "last throes" of the insurgency, I realized that I had not checked in with the Rapture Ready people to see how close we were to the Second Coming. As I recall, the last time I checked, some two months ago, it was at 142, just below the critical threshold of "fasten your seatbelts." As a reminder, here's what Rapture Ready Index is all about, from the site:

You could say the Rapture index is a Dow Jones Industrial Average of end time activity, but I think it would be better if you viewed it as prophetic speedometer. The higher the number, the faster we're moving towards the occurrence of pre-tribulation rapture.

Rapture Index of 85 and Below: Slow prophetic activity
Rapture Index of 85 to 110: Moderate prophetic activity
Rapture Index of 110 to 145: Heavy prophetic activity
Rapture Index above 145: Fasten your seat belts

Imagine my shock when I saw it was sittng a full fifteen points above that threshold at a whopping 160! Jesus must be lacing up his sandals already. Another flood, a couple of plagues of locusts and a famine or two and He'll be here, sure as shootin'. Although I realize that 182 is the all-time high for the index, this delta since I last looked really shocked me.

So now I have a little side project for myself, to create a moving average of the index to see if it is trending in a manner that could cause me to consider some serious rethinking of my godless position. I am frequently haunted by Pascal's argument in belief in God (summarized as simply, "It can't hurt.") and although I realize that only a sincere embrace of belief is going to insulate one against the agony of eternal roasting on the spit of Satan's barbecue, if God is at least a little compassionate and not a total Old Testament bastard about retribution, He'll appreciate the gesture and cut a few aeons off of my infinite sentence.

Stay tuned.

Nothing to See Here, Folks. Move Along.

No tinfoil hats here, no, no, no. I am not saying that there is anything funny going on at all. It's all just the normal course of business.

At least two major corporate clients of lobbyist Joe Allbaugh, President Bush's former campaign manager and a former head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, have already been tapped to start recovery work along the battered Gulf Coast.

One is Shaw Group Inc. (Research) and the other is Halliburton Co. (Research) subsidiary Kellogg Brown and Root. Vice President Dick Cheney is a former head of Halliburton.

There is absolutely nothing odd here. Just because the Department of Defense under then-Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney in 1991 underwent massive privatization which primarily benefitted Halliburton after the Cheney-championed Iraq War in 2003, there is absolutely no reason to think that there's a pattern here. Just because Joseph Allbaugh oversaw the essential internal destruction of FEMA during his tenure in the Bush administration, and then became a lobbyist for Halliburton, there is no connection there.

No, no, no. No corruption here. Just business as usual. Business as usual. Business as usual.

Here's Your Fearless Leader at Work During Crisis

Newsweek has published a long investigative piece on the immediate reaction to what happened in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Although just the first few paragraphs are absolutely shocking (well, not to some of us) regarding Bush's dislike of bad news, what I think demonstrates absolute dereliction of duty is this (emphasis mine):

Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco, a motherly but steely figure known by the nickname Queen Bee, knew that she needed help. But she wasn't quite sure what. At about 8 p.m., she spoke to Bush. "Mr. President," she said, "we need your help. We need everything you've got."

Bush, the governor later recalled, was reassuring. But the conversation was all a little vague. Blanco did not specifically ask for a massive intervention by the active-duty military. "She wouldn't know the 82nd Airborne from the Harlem Boys' Choir," said an official in the governor's office, who did not wish to be identified talking about his boss's conversations with the president. There are a number of steps Bush could have taken, short of a full-scale federal takeover, like ordering the military to take over the pitiful and (by now) largely broken emergency communications system throughout the region. But the president, who was in San Diego preparing to give a speech the next day on the war in Iraq, went to bed.

And I hope the Secret Service had his favorite pillow for him to put his little empty head on.

Incompetent? Criminal? Don't forget, as Chimpie himself put it, "We solve problems, because we're problem solvers." Poor people drowning? Chaos? Got to bed. Problem solved.

How these people sleep at night or even live during the day knowing what bastards they are, I do not understand. Is there a psychologist out there who can explain it to me? Isn't it called "malignant narcissism"?

59 million suckers.

Gee, Maybe We Should Adopt Their Emergency Management System Along with Their Health Care System

Gotta love those Canadians.

A Canadian search-and-rescue team reached a flooded New Orleans suburb to help save trapped residents five days before the U.S. military, a Louisiana state senator said on Wednesday.

The Canadians beat both the Army and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the U.S. disaster response department, to St. Bernard Parish east of New Orleans, where flood waters are still 8 feet deep in places...

The stricken parish of 68,000 people was largely ignored by U.S. authorities who scrambled to get aid to New Orleans, a few miles (km) away. Boasso said residents of the outlying parishes had to mount their own rescue and relief efforts when Hurricane Katrina roared ashore on August 29.

Astounding, and quite telling of the degree to which this administration has destroyed FEMA.

"Brownie, you're doing a heckuva job."

Can Someone Please Explain Something to Me?

What in the world does Condoleezza Rice mean? From a Salon piece by Sidney Blumenthal:

A week after the hurricane, Rice mounted the pulpit at a black church in Whistler, Ala. "The Lord Jesus Christ is going to come on time," she preached, "if we just wait."

What idea, in the name of all that is holy and all that is unholy, is she trying to communicate?

And I'm not talking about the tautology itself, which leads to the conclusion that if we wait forever, he'll never come, so in order to make him come, we should simply stop waiting. I'm talking about the Lord Jesus Christ coming on time...to do what?

Oh! The Compassion! The Compassion!

So let's recap. Last week, as Hurricane Katrina hit and then the levees broke in New Orleans, creating the worst natural disaster in American history, we know the following to be true:

Chimpie ate cake and played guitar.

Condoleezza Rice purchased Ferragamo shoes costing more than $3000 pair and had a woman physically tossed from the store when challenged about her priorities.

Donald Rumsfeld took in a baseball game.

Dick Cheney shopped for a mansion along Chesapeake Bay.

Thousands, and perhaps tens of thousands died for want of government assistance in the disaster.

Aren't you glad the Republicans are in charge? I know Osama sure is.

Chimpie's Unreality Tour

The most fucked-up thing you can imagine Bush doing is central to his agenda for hurricane relief: photo-ops with captive firemen. Read it at Daily Kos.

He is the Tiberius for the 21st Century. It's so sick and yet so consistent with this administration's contempt for the citizens of this country.

Chimpie Knew, Chimpie Fiddled, Chimpie Killed

This report from the St. Petersburg Times (Florida) reveals that Bush was well aware that Katrina was going to be devastating. Max Mayfield, director of the National Hurricane Center, was so worried that he did everything he could to raise the alarm.

On Saturday night, Mayfield was so worried about Hurricane Katrina that he called the governors of Louisiana and Mississippi and the mayor of New Orleans. On Sunday, he even talked about the force of Katrina during a video conference call to President Bush at his ranch in Crawford, Texas.

Bush knew, he fucking KNEW! And then he went to California and Arizona to push his goddamned illegal war and eat cake with John "Chimpie's Whore" McCain.

Disgusting. Horrible. Criminal.

Thousands in New York, thousands in Iraq, and now thousands on the Gulf Coast, and Chimpie has to answer for them all.

Impeach! Indict! Convict! Imprison!

When Films Freak Me Out

So I related in the previous post that I just watched Costa-Gavras' Z. In the film, one of the key things that tips a prosecutor off to the "talking points from above" perjury going on during his investigation is when three different people describe someone jumping onto a small truck in the same exact terms: "Lithe and quick like a tiger." And here in Wonkette, what do I read tonight?

Saw your post about Chertoff saying NOLA dodged a bullet...Gen Myers just said the same at the Pentagon briefing, referencing newspaper reports.

"Dodged a bullet," eh? And didn't FEMA directory "Brownie" used the same phrase? As was once written in a spy novel I read somewhere, once is happenstance; twice is coincidence; the third time is enemy action.

It sure has a stink like Rovian orthodoxy, doesn't it?

Is It Time to Lose Hope?

As expected, the Rove spin machine is at redline, doing whatever is necessary to maintain power in the hands of the Chimpie regime, doing it without shame, without care or thought of the damage it may do to the people or to the republic. When a gang of criminals and liars seizes control and discovers that the field of "journalism" is largely neutered by its own timidity, they have no reason to believe that they cannot get away with malfeasance, corruption, incompetence, and cover-ups yet again and again.

They escaped any accountability for 9/11.

They escaped any accountability for the debacle in Iraq and the lies that got us there.

They escaped any accountability for out a CIA agent in time of war (excepting the Hail Mary pass of Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation)

And now they are escaping accountability for a national disaster that occurred nearly FOUR YEARS after the disaster that was supposed to wake us up to how unprepared we were.

I watched the 1968 Costa-Gavras film Z last night and it gave me shivers for in the end, good and right and justice do not triumph because those who opposed the coming of a fascist police state kept playing by the rules, using the courts and hoping for the probing of a free press to keep the truth front and center. But in the face of ruthless, shameless, and unprincipled gangsters who have learned how to play to the stupid, the willfully ignorant, the fanatically religious, and the selfishness of wealthy traitors to democracy, the rules are meaningless, and they fear only force.

If Chimpie and his fucking scumbag cronies get away again, you can kiss this country goodbye. If the people have become so numbed or timid or fooled by Chimpie's lies, then they don't deserve the hope that once survived even a civil war and two world wars. They will have acquiesed to the worst kind of tyranny, imposed not by force but by lies and bluster, lies and bluster embraced as some kind of emblematic American-ness that signals our exceptionalism, but which will prove only exceptional in the scale of the tragedy that will befall this nation.

The shreds of hope grow even more tattered, stretched, and thin.

Finally, the Associated Press Senses Untruth

Good God, it's about fucking time that a major news organization spelled out what we have been saying for years: this is an administration that operates on lies, repeating them endlessly with complete disregard for reality. Here's the money shot:

As New Orleans descended into anarchy, top Bush administration officials congratulated each other for jobs well done and spoke of water, food and troops pouring into the ravaged city. Television pictures told a different story.

"What it reminded me of the other day is 'Baghdad Bob' saying there are no Americans at the airport," said Rich Galen, a Republican consultant in Washington. He was referring to Saddam Hussein's reality-challenged minister of information who denied the existence of U.S. troops in the Iraqi capital.

Got that? A Republican consultant is comparing Chimpie and company to a guy we laughed at during the Iraq invasion, another one of those conscienceless shills who speak the party line up until it bends him over his desk and fucks him in the ass with the bitter truth.

Except there's absolutely nothing to laugh at here, as potentially thousands of lives are put at risk by this back-slapping circle-jerk celebrating imagined success because Chimpie finally was taken off sedation long enough to be told that there was a little problem along the Gulf Coast. You want that beady-eyed motherfucker to come face-to-face with reality? Drop his ass in the fecal soup that surrounds the Superdome, without Secret Service, without his hidden transmitter, just his manly-manliness (notice the way he holds his arms out on TV? He must watch a lot of wrestling) face-to-face with a man caring for five kids or a young mother whose newborn had to be spirited out of intensive care for who-knows-where. When I saw that fucking excuse for a "leader" back in a suit this afternoon, squeezing Homeland Security director Cherthof's dick, I completely lost it.

When, oh when will justice be served?

The Difference Is Black and White

If Chimpie needs your vote (and it also doesn't hurt for you to be white) then being in a disaster area doesn't have to be so bad. You see, last year after hurricanes hit Florida before the 2004 election, even though counties like Miami-Dade weren't badly damaged, the assistance in the form of dollars flowed like, well, water over a levee:

Florida did not sustain catastrophic damage, Gair said, and so did not devise a "blanket eligibility" plan.

FEMA acknowledged that in Miami-Dade County and in other areas of the state, however, the agency took the rare step, given the magnitude of the disaster, of awarding $726 in "expedited" housing assistance to people who asked for it, without immediately sending inspectors to verify damage.

Okay, so $726 may not be enough to buy a vote. However, as they say in those abs exerciser videos, "But wait! There's more!"

Other so-called "standard housing assistance," of up to $25,600, he wrote, is "liberally provided without significant scrutiny of the request made during the initial months; scrutiny increases remarkably and the package is far more stringent after an unspecified time."

Standard operating procedure, you might say. Nothing to get suspicious about. Perfectly normal. Oh yeah?

Even state officials were surprised at how quickly money flowed to Florida.

The day after Hurricane Charley hit the west coast, the state's labor chief, Susan Pareigis, asked for a federal grant for unemployment assistance for storm victims.

Four days later, U.S. Secretary of Labor Elaine L. Chao "was down personally" to award the money, Pareigis wrote in an Aug. 24 e-mail to the governor. "Please express our sincere thank you for such an instantaneous response."

So flash forward to September 2, 2005. No election on the horizon. A city is flooded. And this city has a long history as a liberal bastion. And this city has a large black population. And this city also has a 30% poverty rate.

The situation? Babies are dying from dehydration. Diabetics are going into shock and dying. People are being bused from a crumbling Superdome to Houston only to be waved away to some other location. Armed bands are roaming the streets.

Meanwhile, Condi Rice buys $3000 Ferragamo shoes and has an agitator physically removed from her presense, Vice President Dick Cheney finally comes off his vacation, and El Presidente Chimpie pretends he's mad about the delays in rescue efforts, although he's just come back from his own vacation a couple of days earlier. Homeland Security Director Michael Cherthoff stood alongside Bush and must have had the sudden realization that he was being painted as one of a series of fall guys for Chimpie. And FEMA head Michael Brown, seems to have mastered the notion of negative capability, claiming simultaneously that, "everything that we had pre-positioned and ready to go became overwhelmed immediately after the storm," and yet "people are getting the help they need."

As I write this, I am being bludgeoned with yet another club of Chimpie's extended recitation of syllogisms and dumb-as-dirt observations about the situation like "in order to make sure there's less violence, we need to get food to people."

Welcome to the Third World in your own backyard.

When Fantasy Kills

It's well understood that the regime of Chimpie believes that larding on words like cream cheese frosting on a shitpile will fool most of the dunces who blindly follow them, but there's a point where the hard reality simply will not be covered words that deny it. The Sun-Herald of Biloxi, Mississippi, a town crushed by Kartrina, ran an editorial today. You can read the whole thing at Editor and Publisher. It's heartbreaking, and when you think of Chimpie chirping yesterday how things are moving ahead, it's infuriating. An excerpt:

We are not calling on the nation and the state to make life more comfortable in South Mississippi, we are calling on the nation and the state to make life here possible.

We would bolster our argument with the number of Katrina casualties confirmed thus far, but if there is such a confirmed number, no one is releasing it to the public. This lack of faith in the publics' ability to handle the truth is not sparing anyone's feelings, it is instead fueling terrifying rumors.

While the flow of information is frustratingly difficult, our reporters have yet to find evidence of a coordinated approach to relieve pain and hunger or to secure property and maintain order.

People are hurting and people are being vandalized.

Yet where is the National Guard, why hasn't every able-bodied member of the armed forces in South Mississippi been pressed into service?

On Wednesday reporters listening to horrific stories of death and survival at the Biloxi Junior High School shelter looked north across Irish Hill Road and saw Air Force personnel playing basketball and performing calisthenics.

Playing basketball and performing calisthenics!

When asked why these young men were not being used to help in the recovery effort, our reporters were told that it would be pointless to send military personnel down to the beach to pick up debris.

Litter is the least of our problems. We need the president to back up his declaration of a disaster with a declaration of every man and woman under his command will do whatever is necessary to deal with that disaster.

Given the astounding incompetence of this administration and it's failure to grapple with any unpleasant news that may splash on their political schemes, there seems to be little left but prayer for the poor people of Biloxi, Waveland, New Orleans, and the other afflicted communities.

Please give what you can to the Red Cross or other relief agencies, and also ask the question, why has this happened? This was not a disaster that came out of nowhere, like an earthquake or a meteor. Katrina was tracked for days, and yet we may be looking at thousands and thousands of deaths that were preventable. Why has this happened, and why is it getting worse each day that passes?

Living in an Irony-Free Zone

Chimpie on the stump in San Diego yesterday prattled on about Pearl Harbor, 9/11, the war in Iraq, and the need to keep the oil from falling in to terrorist hands. So WMD, democracy, mushroom clouds, Saddam trying to kill his daddy, and all the other dozen or so reasons used and discarded to justify his war were swept aside yet again. Then he comes up with the quote of the week:

At the naval base, Bush declared, ''We will not rest until victory is America's and our freedom is secure" from Al Qaeda and its forces in Iraq led by Abu Musab alZarqawi.

"We will not rest," Shrub-W says, and he says this while he is still on vacation after five weeks. I know he's not responsible for the words scripted by his ventriliquists, but don't any of them recognize the stupidity of such a declaration? Oy!

And then there's this:

''If Zarqawi and [Osama] bin Laden gain control of Iraq, they would create a new training ground for future terrorist attacks," Bush said. ''They'd seize oil fields to fund their ambitions. They could recruit more terrorists by claiming a historic victory over the United States and our coalition."

So, had we not invaded, would there be a new training ground for future terrorist attacks in Iraq? If we had not invaded, what were the chances that bin Laden would have gained control of Iraqi oil? I'll give Chimpie one thing though: he's finally admitted that it is all about oil and only oil. We can't have them--al Qaeda or the Iraqis, god forbid--having oil to fund their ambitions because we so desperately need the oil to fund our ambitions. And what might those be?

Yesterday as I watched some coverage of the devastation of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama by Hurricane Katrina, and also heard reports of the effects of this event on gasoline prices, what sort of commercials did I see in between all the gloom and doom? Why they were for GMC trucks--Yukons, Suburbans, duallie and club cab pickups.

That's what I mean by life in an irony-free zone. Political leadership and their media butt-buddies somehow get it rubbed out of their psyches as they kneepad their way into the elite levels of power. Perhaps having to give so many blowjobs for access just erases irony. Wonder if I could get some funding for a study?

Okay, I Lied--Some Hurricane Stuff...

...but not without a Chimpie angle, of course. First of all, seeing helicopter footage of the flooding and devastation is pretty sobering. The scale of the destruction is beyond containment through conventional media reporting, to be sure, and the complete lack of eloquence by our mainstream pretty boys and girls manages to trivialize the disaster in a way that is only exceeded by Chimpie's complete cluelessness as to the disaster he's facing.

What the fuck happened? Couldn't they get Bush out of sedation quickly enough? He's off pretending to play the guitar and parroting his lines about Japan's surrender sixty years ago, while questions are being raised as to whether or not New Orleans will ever resurrect itself. I got a taste of what the Chimpie response may be when the Governor of Louisiana, Kathleen Babineaux Blanco, when asked what people could do to calm the situation, said that we should all pray. Yeah, that's going to fish the survivors out, stop the looting, and repair the damage. And she's a Democrat. Good God!

Are there any fucking pragmatists out there in office?

I can hear it now: Chimpie trying his best not to smirk or giggle while he says he's praying hard for all those "good people" down there along the Gulf Coast. "Good people," of course, is Bush-speak for "poor fuckers I couldn't care less about." And maybe that's why the handlers are keeping Chimpie off the subject of the hurricane, because he may just lose it and start guffawing like a crazed baboon at all that suffering. Remember how long it took them to get his medication adjusted so he could address the tsunami last year. And no how, no way could they get him doped to the point that he could face Cindy Sheehan.

Let me ask you: if you were sitting on the peak of the roof of your house down in the Mississippi delta, waiting to be choppered out to ground high enough to keep you dry for the night, would you want Bushco running back to Washington to direct the rescue effort? As far as I can tell, he may be the only person on the planet who could actually make this situation far, far worse. If that's even possible, you know you could count on him to fuck it up even beyond your wildest dreams.

Quite a challenge, but I know Chimpie will try.

No Hurricane Coverage Here

I decided to take the day off from the blog yesterday because judging by the news coverage in the mainstream media markets, the only event was the arrival of Hurricane Katrina. For those who live in its path, it's a terrible thing, particularly for the poor who always seem to bear the greatest loss and suffering in any natural disaster. Of course, that's just the way the ball bounces, and I'm sure there are some theocratic Christo-Fascist idiots somewhere who believe that the poor are merely reaping the wrath of God for sins past. And of course, the condition of the poor has absolutely nothing to do with the distorted, rapacious capitalism that is practiced in this nation and soon coming to a neighborhood near you, no matter where you live.

However, it is hurricane season, and if you choose to live in areas that for millenia have been hammered by extreme tropical weather events, and particularly so in our own recent past, then I'm not quite sure that this is news worthy of special and total coverage by CBS, NBC, ABC, FOX (yes, I'm laughing), PBS, CNBC, MSNBC, and Headline News. So look, I'm not writing today from the eye of the storm with my Gore-Tex all-weather gear flapping dramatically in the driven rain that I'm too stupid to get out of.

Of course, someone like Chimpie loves this sort of occurrence because it gives him coverage from his real problems that the press should be pursuing. While gas surges to $3.00 a gallon (okay by me--I hardly drive anymore), more Americans and Iraqis die for lies, and the fragile matrix of credit and foreign bank indulgences grows increasingly brittle begging a financial collapse, Bush is busy trying to destroy what little remains that still actually works for the peoples' benefit--Social Security. Then he's off to address another hand-selected crowd to explain the insanely complex, expensive and generally useless Medicare prescription drug benefit . . . "explain"? did I write. Sorry. Chimpie can't even explain why he has to take a shit now and then, let alone a plan that not even the insurance industry can sell even as it benefits them at the expense of elders across the country.

Of course, why cover the rape of the financial security coffers yet again when there is a chance to put Lester Holt at the mercy of Katrina. Wow! Look at that! It's raining and blowing in the hurricane. A-fucking-mazing.

Meanwhile, over in Iraq--remember Iraq?--it doesn't look like Chimpie's sanguine view of the "noble cause" is connected to any reality in this universe. "We'll stand down as the Iraqis stand up." Yeah, well, the New York Times notes how well that transition is going.

Simply put, Iraq remains too fragile for any planner to know what shape the country will be in six months or a year from now - whether it will reach compromises and hold together or split apart in a civil war.

And that presents a conundrum for American military planners. With those questions up in the air, they have to fear that any heavy arms distributed now could end up aimed at American forces or feeding a growing civil conflict. And the longer Iraq's army has to wait for sophisticated weapons, the longer American forces are likely to be needed in Iraq as a bulwark against chaos.

Of course, Chimpie will be in San Diego trying to conflate his failed Iraq expedition with World War II in a celebration of the anniversary of the Japanese surrender, not that Bush even understands when, where, or how WWII occurred. He's just looking for political cover.

With any luck, that son of a bitch will find himself like one of the news clones when his hurricane hits this fall as Patrick Fitzgerald unseals his indictments. Maybe we'll get to see him blown into the raging seas right before our very eyes on all networks in real time.

Back to you, Pat.

Chimpie Dreams a Dream

Just go here--it's hysterical...except that a few more rollovers on the Patriot Act, a few compliant judges, and it ain't so funny any more.

Meme Time

I've started seeing the acronym B-FOB and I like the catchiness of it: B-FOB...Blind Followers of Bush. With Bush a clear loser and incompetent to beat the band, now that his numbers are falling and even people like David Brooks are criticizing his failure to face reality, this tag is going to stick to his acolytes and apologists like stink on a monkey's butt. Use it everywhere, pass it along to your friends. Practice saying it with disdain: "Bee-FOB," as in "Oh, you don't have to explain a thing. You're a Bee-FOB. Message received and understood."

Beware the rabid B-FOBs!

President Receives Blowjob!

If Dan Froomkin over at the Washington Post is telling the truth, and I don't hear any squawking that he isn't, maybe this will explain the disgrace to journalism that our mainstream kneepad press has become:

About 50 members of the White House press corps accepted President Bush's invitation last night to come over to his house in Crawford, eat his food, drink his booze, hang around the pool and schmooze with him -- while promising not to tell anyone what he said afterward.

It's something of a Bush tradition, a way of saying thank you to journalists for whom an extended stay in the Crawford area is anything but a vacation.

I'd like to have a list of those fifty journalists so that they can be branded for what they are--whores. If you dine at Bush's table, drink his whiskey, and flex your gluteus maximus at his poolside, then you are no objective reporter; in fact, it's clear that you aren't even trying to be the least bit objective. These whores are as addicted to the access to power as a crackhead is to a bag 'o rock, and just as shameless at degrading themselves as any crack whore would be, except that addiction is a sickness, and these motherfuckers have a choice unimpeded by chemical addiction. They can choose to follow in the tradition of I.F. Stone and take nothing from power so that they need not worry about damaging personal relations and thus report the truth, or they can strap on the kneepads and suck Chimpie's cock all day at the "ranch."

By the way, that ain't ranch dressing dripping down your chin, you bukkake reporters. Froomkin continues with notes after the dinner.

And later, a small handful watched askance as the rest fawned over Bush, following him around in packs every time he moved.

Oh, to get my hands on a tape of that gangbang!

Anyone know the names of these two-bit slutbuckets?

Specks and Spots

First of all, you have to love the Rude Pundit. A friend of mine won't read him. "He's too fucking crazy," he claims. Well, perhaps, but the Rude One is always able to carry the argument or observation to a new angle of understanding, shining light where sometimes we don't like to look, but always where we need to look. Plus, he's so damned funny, like in yesterday's piece, The Jolly Rancher:

The Rude Pundit said it a couple of days ago, and he'll continue to say it: This is all just getting embarassing. Around the nation, the majority of Americans now cringe with gut-churning fear and shame whenever they hear George W. Bush speak. Indeed, localities are appealling to the federal government for emergency funds to deal with sewage overflows from all the vomit and diarrhea that an angst-ridden population is puking and shitting when Bush appears on the news.

In my judgment, Chimpie's speechifying just adds yet another unfunded mandate to communities across the country. What I thought was an irritable bowel syndrome, or perhaps the onset of Crohn's Disease just turns out to be a natural reaction to the sound of the worst president in the history of North America, or even the whole hemisphere. The Rude Pundit's diagnosis of my condition has saved me a lot of anxiety.

Meanwhile, the dipshits over at Human Events Online are getting touchy about the Operation Yellow Elephant campaign, and once again demonstrate a completely void understanding of rhetoric:

The Left assumes that people must be involved in an activity in order to express an opinion about it. If that were the case, not many people could express opinions about anything since they would be limited to their own fields. Only teachers could discuss education policy, only construction workers could discuss growth and zoning policy, only policemen could discuss drug policy, and only social workers could discuss Welfare policy.

Roger Custer, who fashioned this argument, tries, with all the logic of a Creationist (not that he is one) to make equivalence between totally disparate pairings. First of all, the Left hardly assumes that "people must be involved in an activity in order to express an opinion about it," because those on the Left are indeed talking about war without participating in it. So that cuts Custer's argument at its base. But let's go further. Say that Custer is right, and the rule becomes that you can't talk about something unless you are involved in it. Would that limit education discussion only to teachers? Of course not, since students, parents, administrators, potential employers, scholarship funders, and the members of the society whose lives are affected--everybody--in other words, is "involved" in education.

Besides, don't we often hear the argument that if you are really concerned about something, then perhaps you should take direct action to change it? Concerned about education, become a teacher or work on a school board. Worried about drugs in your town, get involved in a citizens group. So doesn't it follow that if you think war is a good thing, you should do something that directly benefits those fighting it beyond flapping your gums? And what could be a more sincere show of support than putting your body on the line?

You see, Custer claims that the Left is trying to shut him up, which is a flat lie. All that he's being asked to do is demonstrate his dedication to his point of view.

Oh, and Mr. Custer, I was a volunteer to our military in time of war--1971. Couldn't you return the favor as a true demonstration of your ferver? I mean, come on. "Fighting the battle of ideas?" Shit, man, that's chickenshit chickenhawk chatter. Imagine the credibility you'd have on those campuses if you shipped over to Iraq and greased a few Arabs. Then you could say, "Yeah, dudes! I was there, blowing those fuckers away left and right, and let me tell you, man...it's righteous!"

Fat fucking chance. Yellow Elephant pants-pissers. Keep talking Custer-boy. You're just proving the point of it always being the poor dying in the rich white man's war forever cheered on by the gutless cowards like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and their fellow wet-ass bitches.

Dead Democrats

Where in the name of all that is holy, unholy and otherwise are the fucking Democrats? When I left the party after the debacle of 2000 (timidity and incompetence are not an attractive package), most people, including my wife, said that I should support the Democrats anyway, because what alternative is there?

Well, I can give the answer now: there apparently IS no alternative...to the Republicans. Jesus, it's Republican Chuck Hagel who is standing up against King Chimpie's insanity on the Iraq war? Where in fuck's name is a prominent, in-office Democrat making as much noise?

This morning on the Diane Rehm show, kneepad journalist substitute host Steve Roberts held a discussion with Democratic strategist Donna Brazile, Ben Brandzel of MoveOn.org, and Matt Bennett of Third Way. At one point Roberts, true to form as lapdog to mainstream D.C. politics, brought up perennial lost Bob Shrum's comments about the party's need to compromise, become mainstream, blah, blah, blah. That fucking strategy has worked marvelously, don't you think? How'd you like President Gore's term, or Supreme Fucking Wimp Loser John Kerry's tenure as president? The Dems have chickened out on playing hard-fucking-ball against the corrupt and shameless Republican fascist juggernaut and they still, after ass-whippings that would have any Poindexter planning murder in the schoolyard, can't seem to say and do what needs to be said. We are in a god damned war for the country against a gang of criminals unsurpassed for their self-interest, venality, vindictiveness, and threat to democratic freedom.

What a joy it would have been if Ben Brandzel had said, "Fuck Bob Shrum and all his traitor motherfucking moneygrubbing asslicking associates! They're the whole fucking problem with the party!" But alas, even MoveOn.org's folks have to show some decorum and not strangle the host at the mention of Shrum's name. Too bad.

So long as the Democratic party politicians squirm under their desks begging not to be fucked too brutally yet again, I've got no use for them. We need a new party with new blood and guts, or else it's over.

I'm going to go cry or puke now; I'm not sure which.

How Low Can the Expectations Go?

Think back, back, back, to a time when a chimp-like creature stuffed the crotch of his flight suit and strutted on the deck of a US aircraft carrier to declare the end of major combat operations in Iraq. Remember that? Oh, so glorious, wasn't it? Yes, and it was played over and over on television screens everywhere, with pundit bootlickers like Peggy Noonan wetting her panties over how "manly" that simian creature looked in uniform.

Yeah, well, how far we've fallen, eh? The New York Times, despite its rah-rah runup to the war, courtesy of the now-jailed Judith Miller, is even recognizing the desperation of the Bushits in the reality of Iraq, so distant from the highpoint of the ape in the flightsuit declaration of "victory."

Americans continue dying in Iraq, but their mission creeps steadily downward. The nonexistent weapons of mass destruction dropped out of the picture long ago. Now the United States seems ready to walk away from its fine words about helping the Iraqis create a beacon of freedom, harmony and democracy for the Middle East. All that remains to be seen is whether the White House has become so desperate for an excuse to declare victory that it will settle for an Iranian-style Shiite theocracy.

Now, in addition to betraying our own citizens, the Bushit team is betraying woman, minorities, and secularists in Iraq.

Mission accomplished!

The Mask Is Off for Good

Despite Pat Robertson's long history of hypocrisy, and setting aside his agreement with goofball Jerry Falwell that gays were responsible for 9/11 or that God should kill some Supreme Court justices, he still manages to collect enough of the deluded, ignorant, illiterate, and corrupt to constitute some sort of coalition of the strange, comprised of folks who screech their Christianity while at the same time behaving in ways that clearly would piss even Jesus H. Christ himself off enough to want to smite them mightily. But he wouldn't, of course, being a real, and the original, Christian figure. So I address this post to you Robertson acolytes in the hope that it will save you and your souls, because now the evidence is irrefutable and undeniable.

Religious broadcaster Pat Robertson has suggested that American agents assassinate Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez to stop his country from becoming "a launching pad for communist infiltration and Muslim extremism."
...
"We have the ability to take him out, and I think the time has come that we exercise that ability," Robertson said Monday on the Christian Broadcast Network's "The 700 Club."

Leaving aside the bizarre pairing of communism and radical Islam, which reveals how completely vapid Robertson's quality of analysis is, there is no longer any reason to give this fuckwad an audience. Pat Robertson is a hypocrite. Pat Robertson is not a Christian. Pat Robertson is dangerous. Pat Robertson needs to assume his rightful place as the raving nutway preacher in Shithole, Virginia, deep in the holler, handling snakes and doing hands-on healing a la Ernest Angeley for the fools who would believe him even if he ate their children in front of them, with a dollop of A1. And it gets better.

"You know, I don't know about this doctrine of assassination, but if he thinks we're trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it," Robertson said. "It's a whole lot cheaper than starting a war ... and I don't think any oil shipments will stop."

And there you have it--shoot a legally elected leader of a neighboring country to seize his oil and save a little dough in the process. So Christian, so very, very Christian. Of course, it's not Christlike in the least, and it will be very interesting to see which Christian leaders rush to defend or condemn Robertson, because silence will not reflect well on the increasingly marginalized place of radical Christianity in this society. Despite all the godfearing that allegedly exists in the US, we're still fundamentally a secular society, and the quickest route to irrelevance for a religion is to fail to distance itself from those who pollute and pervert its most basic teachings.

And consider the likely reaction of South American Catholics, who are feeling the heat from the nutwad evangelical movement in their own lands. Given Robertson's prominence in the evangelical community, I can't believe that our friends to the south are going to take kindly to exhortations to kill their elected leaders so we can prevent disruptions in oil, copper, cocaine, or cheap labor.