Iraq "Study Group" Report=="Decent Interval"

Frank Snepp wrote a book so embarrassing to the war criminals responsible for the long withdrawal from Vietnam that he was persecuted to keep his silence as no American before him. When I saw him speak in the 1980s, he explained how every public appearance and every written word by him was subject to preapproval by the CIA censors, and since then the Supreme Court decision that crushed his right to free speech has been an instrument used to scissor away at our protections under the First Amendment by every president since, including Clinton. Power is always trying to constrict your freedoms--Democrats and Republicans alike, although the Repugs are much more determined. You can imagine the glee with which Alberto "Torture Boy" Gonzalez has clutched this decision in his sweaty little hand on his trips to Congress.

Here's a quote from Snepp himself that is going to chill you to the bone:

The final unraveling began two years before with the ceasefire negotiated by White House National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger. It got the last of the American troops out of South Vietnam, but left 140,000 North Vietnamese forces in the south. They wouldn’t get out because we hadn’t beaten them. And now they turned on the Saigon government itself…a government corrupt, inefficient, riddled with Communist spies, possibly as many as fourteen thousand of them according to intelligence estimates. A government about as solid and durable as Swiss cheese.

Substitute "Stephen Hadley" for "Henry Kissinger," "Iraq" for "South Vietnam," "Baghdad" for "Saigon," "sectarian militias" for "North Vietnamese" and "terrorist" for "Communist" and you've got a nice deja vu thing going.

The term "decent interval" specifies the time required by an abandoned ally (or puppet, depending on your view) to stand before collapsing so that the blame for the fiasco can be redirected from the Americans responsible. In Vietnam it was Kissinger and Nixon--Kissinger was terribly worried about his legacy, more than the lives of Americans or Vietnamese. In Iraq...well, you know the cast of characters, and it even includes the ghostly Henry Kissinger who has been advising Bush on how to dodge responsibility. Hank is likely finding Chimpie a very poor student, however. Nixon, for all his criminality, was a brilliant man. Take away the intelligence and what you're left with is...you get the picture. So if it's any consolation, and it won't be to the families of all who've died in this illegal war, Chimpie is going to go down with this war like Ahab went down with Moby Dick, and for the same reason--fanaticism.

You know, we really ought to elect presidents who don't disdain history. I'll let the final word be Snepp's.

The last CIA message from the Embassy declared: Let’s hope we do not repeat history. This is Saigon station signing off.

A Reason for Us to Share

If the global revolution ever comes, 98 to 2 odds are not favorable to a peaceful solution.

What would truly Christian nations do in this season of giving, I wonder? Just asking.

Another America and Yet Maybe One America

Today I joined two friends on a tour of an area of the Southwest that despite its rural nature has more gun stores per square mile than any place in America, or at least it seemed that way. We visited something like eight or nine different emporia, some quite large, others quite cosy. Throw in lunch at a fabulously cheap Mexican restaurant of carnitas so tender you could gum them and still get every molecule of flavor and I'd say we had a grand time. Yes, yes, okay, it's true: my two buddies are real Gun Wackos.

And so am I.

Surprised? Why? Because you don't think left-wingers can be pro-gun?

Here's the difference between lefty Gun Wackos and right-wingnut Gun Wackos--lefty Gun Wackos keep it on the down low. We don't put "Protected by Smith and Wesson" decals on our trucks, or glue "In Emergency, I dial .357" in our kitchen windows. We don't wear combat boots and we don't bray in public about the arsenals in our basements or what bad asses we are. We don't cut the sleeves off our t-shirts and we don't drink that piss that passes for beer in this country and then demonstrate our power by crushing the thin aluminum skin. We don't particularly care for magnums when a Warsaw pact surplus round and breath control can make all the difference.

Not that I would paint all right-wing Gun Wackos with one brush. In fact, shocking as it may seem to read on this blog, a lot of them--in fact all of the people we talked with and dealt with today--were as nice as can be. Many are thoughtful and intelligent, even if we are completely at odds politically. Although Ann Coulter has her picture prominently displayed as the bony pin-up of the onanistic right, and "Hanoi Jane" Fonda's picture is posted in the urinal, and the attitude toward the disaster escalating to total armed apocalypse in Iraq is "complete the mission," and the characterization of liberals is hysterically narrow ("Annoy a liberal--work, succeed, enjoy life")--despite all of that, here we were in polite commerce and jovial conversation with people who might well brag about wanting to blow our brains out if they could read our minds. Politics never came up, as if we could smell each other's antipathies or assumed unanimity of opinion. Anyway, here was common fucking ground, man! Guns!

Let's face it. Guns are cool.

And liberals--who can be very cool--lots of liberals, lots and lots and lots of liberals own and enjoy guns...quietly.

So consider next time that the mousy bespectacled guy in the Prius with the bumper sticker that says "Buck Fush" might well be a well-trained, cool-nerved, mightily armed left-wing Gun Wacko. He's entitled to express his view openly. Let's all be polite. Let's engage in civilized discourse. Let's act like god-damned Americans and use the First Amendment as much as we do the Second Amendment and the other eight articles in the Bill of Rights. All ten are equally important, no matter what Bush, Cheney, or Alberto "Torture Boy" Gonzalez try to do. When they're all long gone--and us too, for that matter--let's hope that those ten amendments all carry the same weight as they were intended to, to both protect the individual and the collective, and to empower them to protect themselves if that dire necessity regrettably presents itself.

Whaddaya say? Can we all agree on that, as Americans? As Gun Wackos Indivisible?

There may be hope yet for this country.

Monday Madness

Here at the homestead, I continued to convalesce, but not being contagious, I did produce a nice batch of pesto since the spouse had scored beaucoup basil leaves over the weekend. The recipe:

2 cups cleaned, dried, fresh basis leaves
3/4 cup pine nuts (or walnuts) and you can add more if you like
4 (or more) cloves of garlic, minced
1 cup fine quality olive oil (don't scrimp on this! Use the good stuff.)
1 cup freshly grated parmesan (or other hard cheese)
1/2 cup parmagiatto (or something else)
pinch of kosher salt
fresh ground pepper

I only have a pint-sized food processor, but it works pretty well with a lot of interventions. You can do it in a blender as well, but if you happened to get a full-size Cuisinart, then you'll have a really easy time.

1. Place the basil, garlic and nuts in the processor and grind away until uniform but coarse distribution of ingredients occurs.
2. Dribble in the olive oil a bit at a time between pulses on the machine.
3. Add the cheeses, a bit at a time between pulses
4. Salt and pepper to taste, but be careful with the salt--too much kills the nutty flavor.

Item number two on the to-do list was to sharpen all the kitchen knives, which is a slow, careful, zen exercise. I've got a nice selection of stones, including two grades of Arkansas stones, that make if possible to do a pretty fair job. My criteria for a finished blade is that it shave the hair off my forearm and also slice a tomato--skin side up--under its own wait, with only a pull or push by my hand.

Yes, I do clean the hair off the blade before attacking the tomatoes.

Alas, my energy now sapped, I've retreated to a rocker-recliner, slipped the lap desk across the arms, picked up the laptop, and resigned myself to a sleepy slothy afternoon of alternately dozing and sampling blogs. I must remind myself that my idyll will likely be interrupted for good by a job offer, so it is paramount that I be as lazy and nonproductive as possible until that time.

I see no gain in contributing to the GDP today. Rather than "Buy nothing day," which occurs normally on Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, I proclaim this to be "Do nothing afternoon." Henceforth, the first Monday in December will officially be "Do nothing this afternoon day."

Gotta nap. Maybe a rant later. I haven't read the news yet.

The Bugs Are Coming to Get Me

I've managed to avoid the flu or even a mild cold for several years, but tonight I can feel the beginnings of some malign seasonal invasion. Unless it's more Polonium 210 poisoning. You know, I was on some British Airways flights through central Europe not that long ago.

The reason I know that this weekend will be spent drinking tea, blowing my nose, sucking down Riccolas, and watching a lot of mind-numbing television is because I have had a sudden drop in my vitriol level. I seem incapable of getting apoplectically angry. I am beginning to even feel sorry for Chimpie.

That's how I know I'm sick.

Really, seeing him raving on television has turned from an experience in fright to one of pity. Can't someone get this dude some help? An intervention, please!

Meanwhile, the spousal unit Rotkohl will defrost some of her custom chicken soup and will command me to eat of it until I get better. It's delicious and quite meaty, so I don't mind, but the trouble with soup is you can't eat it while in the supine position, which is the advantage of Red Vines and Twinkies. Oh, this damned sore throat!

Let me ask you this--if you were the intelligent designer of the universe, couldn't you come up with something better than pain to signal a problem? Oy!

Interviews--What's the Point at My Age?

This is a lost day. I've got an interview at 2:30--yes, for a fucking job--and another tomorrow morning at 9:30am. The interview today is for a part-time techie position, but I'm pretty sure they'll find it suspicious that I want to take a low-level 3/4 time slot, and I can't outright declare that I'm semi-retired. Tomorrow's interview is for a writing gig for technology crap, also part-time. They'll take one look at me and say to themselves, "This old fuck? Who wants to listen to his boring stories?"

Truth be told, I don't really want either of these, and so I ask you all--should I use this opportunity to be totally honest in the interview? You know, like when they ask me about my proudest accomplishment, I tell them about getting my boss fired for masturbating at his desk. Or if they ask about my biggest mistake I could admit that to be when I got caught stealing Polonium 210 from the nuclear lab I was working in. Never did find it, either. And as to why I want to work in their facility, I could explain the benefits of having a warm place to shit and a free high-speed internet connection, not to mention all the office supplies.

I need help here, my friends (and enemies). Let's help Olaf scorch the interview. Give him your very best advice.

Patience, My Ass

I've kept my mouth shut for long enough about the new Congress, hoping that justice would finally be served and the cabal of war criminals in the White House, Pentagon, and State Department would be summarily impeached/indicted, tried, sentenced, and our dark national legacy finally lightened at least a little. But, exactly as we feared, the Democrats are going to continue their campaign of gutless inaction. The only changes you see will be cosmetic or rhetorical, and the same interests continue to control the levers of government. When the Dems assume power in January, they will lightfoot their way around Iraq, civil liberties, the Patriot Act, etc. They won't fix Medicare, and they may well try to sell out Social Security by failing to do the one simple thing that would ensure its liquidity for 100 years or more--remove the cap on FICA from the present $97,500 per year set for 2007.

You may not care about this, but you should...unless you earn more than $97,500 per year. Here's what opponents to eliminating the cap say (from a paper in 2004, hence the lower cap):

Eliminating the payroll tax cap immediately affects the 9.2 million Americans who earn more than $87,900, raising their marginal tax rate — the tax paid on each additional dollar of wage income — by 12.4 percent. As a result, earners in the top income tax bracket (35 percent) would pay more than half of each additional dollar they earn in taxes.

Let me ask you a question--does that bother you? Do those top tax bracket folks face homelessness and starvation?

Moving on to other things that won't change, now that NBC has decided that the civil war in Iraq is actually a civil war in Iraq, it will be interesting to see two things develop. For one, the White House will stretch language to unimaginable distortions to deny the fact. This should launch a dozen dissertations in linguistics, at least. The second will be to watch the Democrats squirm away from actually doing anything to get us the fuck out of being in the middle of 5? 6? 7? factions killing each other. A ghoulish pool to start would be to speculate how many more Americans will die before the Democratic Congress finally acknowledges the idiocy and criminality of starting this war and pulls the troops out of the shooting gallery.

But they won't, because amoral political opportunists on the Dem's side voted to give this stupid monarchy of the Chimp's the authority to go to war, and that includes the Kerrys, Clintons, Edwards, etc. Any of these Democratic politicians who voted to authorize the war should be denied any attempt at the presidency in 2008, and should be constantly reminded of how they are all as morally culpable for this disaster as Bush, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Cheney, and the rest of the criminals.

Meet the new boss--same as the old boss.

Feel fooled again?

Ready for the War on Xmas?

I'm so out of it. If my wife hadn't started talking about the need to dust off our Xmas Stalk (we use an agave stalk as the centerpiece for the annual orgy of consumerism), I wouldn't have realized that we are, as of tomorrow, in the "Holiday Season." Ordinarily, this is something I dread. If it wasn't for the old Ray Conniff Singers recordings still available, I wouldn't make it through until New Year's Day, which is a day of liberation, as far as I am concerned, because I really hate the whole American idea of Xmas. And you can throw in all the other incidental holidays too, like Hannukah, Kwaanza, Festivus, etc. In fact, holidays in general are a bust, because they are now nothing more than anchors for shopping opportunities and also because they force us into celebrations and gift-giving that is neither heartfelt nor healthy.

But actually, that all changed last year, when Bill O'Reilly--yes, that mad ranter over at Fox "News"--raised all of our consciousness about the War on Christmas. At last, I thought, there's a war I can wholeheartedly support! I cleaned my weapons, bought some new ceramic body armor, and was ready to party with whoever was waging that war. As an added bonus, standing in opposition to the "War on Christmas" were the aforementioned creep O'Reilly, plus other rightwing nutfucks like John Gibson and Michelle Malkin. Talk about your convergence of enemies!

The trouble was, I couldn't find any recruiters or the army that was fighting this "War on Christmas." Before I knew it, we were into January, and as far as I could tell, Xmas had come and gone without a shot being fired or a single Santa taken prisoner.

But I'm ready this year, so I'm asking for your help. Where do I sign up to join the "War on Christmas"? Is it an official military organization, or is it still in the guerilla stages? Do I get to wear a beret with a red star on it? What are the chances of victory? Would it really be possible to one day live in a society free from drunken office parties and deadly dull family gatherings? Could I at long last live out of the sight of inflatable candy canes and dancing snowmen?

Just don't take away my Ray Conniff Christmas records. That's real.

Problem Solved!

All it took was a single comment from a terribly desperate reader in France who reminded me of how meaningless my life was. Bingo! I feel so much better now! I really, really want to thank Jimmy the Hyena Nowlan for the therapeutic post, because now I know that however low, pointless, and pathetic my daily life may become, it's never so bad that I have to stalk some schmuck's blog to make myself feel better.

Oh, and Jimmy...how do you know that previous post wasn't a lure that I knew you couldn't resist?

Gotcha!

Really, man, you make it too easy.

Black Dog

I'm not a big fan of confessional blogging. It's very popular, I know, to pour one's heart or personal life out in daily installments, and it's likely a very healing exercise for many people. Yet as extroverted as I appear to be, it's highly likely that no one who reads this who does not know me personally has even the slightest idea who Olaf Rotkohl really is (IF, that is, there is anyone who reads this who does not know me personally).

Thanks to you all who do know me and read this, even if it is as "mercy readers" who fear I'd have no readers without them--bless you.

Anyway, since returning from vacation in Berlin in middle August, and very likely starting somewhat earlier this year, I've been slipping into a dark place, finally reaching a level where I'm so acutely conscious of my condition that the awareness itself is also near-paralyzing. I write about it today as a vanity post--you can stop reading now, because (and this is doubly tragic) so damned much has been written about depression that it's just not interesting, and in a way that's the trouble with most serious health concerns--cancer, heart disease, and diabetes, for example. Unless you're afflicted or a partner of someone afflicted, it's an abstraction at best, or, if you are touched by it, it can be a profound embarrassment. No one likes to admit weakness, even when it's beyond one's control.

If there's one thing I can feel good about, however, it's that I have become pretty good at faking being a happy person, even in the blackest moods. It's probably because I'm too afraid to be rude, or maybe it's fear of giving up some advantage to adversaries, or some other stupid reason, but it's probably not healthy to wait until absolute terror fills every public encounter before seeking some support.

And I should know better--I've been down this road before, and there are treatments that can be highly beneficial. The trouble is, however, that the key fact of depression is that one cannot even imagine ever feeling like living fully again. The universe reshapes itself into a narrowing helix along which one can only spiral down further. Hope is alien. Withdrawal is the only refuge, and it only takes one deeper.

As I write this, I await the deliver of some prescriptions that have helped in the past. Due to my own failures to act in a timely manner, and partially due to an unnecessarily Byzantine health care system in this country, even for those with health insurance, I've been spending the last few weeks crawling along inside the black dog, hanging on by my fingernails not to slide any further down that cone where I sincerely fear I might get wedged and never crawl out again.

I apologize for taking up space to write so personally, but if there is one benefit beyond my own selfish expiation, it is to tell anyone who reads this that there should never be shame or fear in seeking help when you find yourself not just having a bad day or two, but weeks and months of despair and hopelessness and hatred for every time you have to speak with another person. It's not weakness, it is illness, and in most, maybe all cases it is treatable. The devil in the affliction is that it disables even the faintest light of possibility that life can ever be enjoyable again, and that is the tragedy. If I didn't know intellectually that treatment is there and can work very effectively, I'd have given up long, long ago. But even as I don't feel hopeful, I have memory of having had a time in my life when every morning was the beginning of a fascinating day and I could not believe how lucky I was to have the world before me, so beautiful, and so full of possibilities.

If you ever find yourself here, deep inside this black dog, please tell someone. Find help. Talk to your doctor.

It's no way to live, and there are no heroes who continue to dwell here.

And Now It's Come to This...

To my pals who like to check out ol' Olaf now and then and leave comments, I'm afraid I've had to institute a moderation step into the process. Due to perhaps my own intemperate (considering the effect) commenting on another blog, I experienced a mild version of internet harrassment, including having my blog name and link spoofed. Thanks to Ed Ward at Berlin Bites (check it out--excellent writing and also listen for Ed's pieces on culture and music on Fresh Air with Terry Gross), the damage was limited.

What a pain in the ass. But that's the price of freedom of the net.

Anyway, now I'll be checking posted comments to filter a particular individual's ravings. I hate censorship, but that's essentially what it amounts to.

We had a similar problem at our local city council meetings. At one time, anyone could address the council for any purpose with no time limit...until one individual started using it as a personal platform for random ravings and insults to the council members totally unrelated to policy. The consequence was that now all citizens have a three-minute time limit imposed. In the formulation of public policy (aside from asphalt contracts, maybe) most issues are complex enough to require more than three minutes to explain one's position, but thanks to the ranter, we've all had our access constrained. That limit has already been used to try to shut out dissent, and that's the truly terrible result from those who cannot or will not understand how self-control is an essential part of adult discourse.

And that's what's so damned maddening on the internet--99.999999999 percent of all users can be good stewards. Even when involved in truly rabid flame wars, all but a tiny few don't end up trying to sabotage other people's presence in the blogosphere or wherever. But a single individual with no more than an internet hookup, access to a PC, and some malevolent and pretty useless intentions can create a royal crimp in the flow of opinion.

So I'm sorry, but until I can automate filtering the way I'd like to, it's a manual process and you may not see your comments as soon as you've sent them. I'll do my best to frequently check for new comments and get them up.

Again, sorry for the hassle. Don't let it deter you saying whatever you like--I'm only filtering for one jackass.

Another Sign That the Apocalypse Is Near

When theofascist James Dobson starts making nice with Democrats, it's time to start worrying about the coming of the Rapture, so I visited our pals over at Rapture Ready Index which is hovering at 159, a full 14 points above the highest threshold labeled "Fasten Your Seatbelts." Apparently, the recent election results caused the index to jump three points, so I'd expect Jesus to be coming over the horizon any day now to kick off the End Times.

You could almost say, as Chimpie stands down, Jesus will stand up. And that's because, you know, left-wingers are the spawn of Satan. We might as well confess as such, since we're going to be boiling in the hell cauldron for a while before being sent to eternal suffering in the underworld; that is, we "shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb," those sadistic bastards.

Rejecting Bush has put us sinful Americans on the top of God's shit list, at least according to the Tim LeHayes of the world. But this raises a nagging question: Who is the Antichrist?

Name your favorite candidate on the global scene today. Perhaps it is someone as yet unknown to us generally, but to you personally? Maybe the Antichrist is your neighbor, your friend, your mother, brother, or your uncle Buddy.

Let me know.

Veterans Day

It wasn't until I went out to get the mail that I remembered that today is the proper Veterans Day, rather than the holiday day, or the furniture sale day, or the day to earn political points on the backs of young (and not so young) men and women who serve as the apolitical armed force of the United States. I went to the oak filing cabinet to see if I could find my honorable discharge certificate and my DD214. Among those papers were some photographs of a man thirty-five years younger, with jet black hair and not a wrinkle. On my expired military ID it had my weight as fifty pounds lighter than I am now--a skinny wretch back then or a fat fuck today? Hard to say, really, though I'm sure some of the commenters will weigh in with their opinions (the ones who know me, anyway). I'm probably healthier now than then. I smoked a pack a day or more then, drank like a young man can and ought to before he gets serious, and was more belligerent than a stupid stringbean ought to be.

It was not a particularly popular thing to be in the military then, but I still was proud of being there. True, I was exceedingly lucky--Russian language training, crypto school, and Berlin, rather than advanced infantry training, survival school, and Vietnam--so I had it much, much easier than many others whose military experience was the kind of adventure that involves mutilation and death rather than simply strange lands and new ways of viewing the world. Across this nation there are men and women who are similarly going through their old boxes of memories, remembering comrades, or still outrunning nightmares. Their sacrifices were surely greater than mine, and I must remind myself daily to be grateful for the grace that their selflessness has accorded me in my life.

It is a time I also remember my grandfather who served the Army in WWI, my father who served during Korea, my uncles and aunts who fought in Europe and the Pacific in WWII, and how as a child I thrilled to look at their photo albums of them when they were young, and dark-haired, and skinny, and immortal.

There are many, many things worth fighting for--I am no pacifist--and when we choose our battles wisely and reluctantly, we can honor the memory of all those who have passed before. Please remember this day that those who wear the uniform do so because it is essential, and that even in the face or irresponsible leadership, they honor us all with their dedication and sacrifice.

Happy Veterans Day.

Let's Sing This Song All Together!

Priceless.

It's Like, Wow Man

I was on my third Pilsner Urquell in thirty minutes at about 8:00PM last night, but I switched to coffee because I needed to be lucid if what I was seeing was to be believed.

And the rest is history.

Then this morning (or whenever the hell it is now), I flipped on the radio, and Chimpie was addressing the press. Well, fuck me like a methed-up preacher man, Donald Rumsfeld is gone! Hell, I think that the Germans have already typed up indictments of him as a war criminal. Can the rest of the Bush cabal be far behind?

Anyway, what really struck me was the punishing, embarrassing, humiliating gap by which some Senate incumbents got punched. Ricky "Man-on-Dog" Santorum lost by a monstrous eighteen points, and Mike DeWine of Ohio got slapped by twelve points. Given the role Ohio played in the 2004 election, such a turn is enormous, particularly when the secretary of state for Ohio, who controlled that election, got beaten in his gubernatorial bid by twenty-three points! I mean, they punished those mofos, boy!

Of course, this is only the beginning. We still have a long way to go before Cheney, Bush, and the rest are in shackles in the court at the Hague, but this is a very, very good start. When the congressional committees open a few innocent-seeming oversight investigations, I think the whole rotten mess that is this corrupt and incompetent administration is going to explode in a stinking mess that will make the 2008 election a complete and total repudiation of the radical evangelical right, the neocon warmongers, the corporate buttboys, and the bigots.

Am I hoping for revolution? You bet your sweet ass I am. (Yes, I am a turtle--comment if you get the reference.)

Okay, I gotta go digest some more. I'm too exuberant to really think just yet.

Cross Your Fingers, Pray to Your God, Party Like It's the Free World After All

I'm off to my neighbor's to watch the returns and drink myself into insensibility. Well, not immediately. First I'm going to cook up four pounds of Molly Katzen's Szechuan Green Beans (sesame oil, tons of garlic, cayenne, slivered almonds (my touch), kosher salt). Serve hot, cold, or at room temperature. Yummmmmmmmmy!

Then we are going to hope for a reason to drink into insensibility because we're celebrating the destruction of the Repuglickkkan Party. As of this blog entry, I hear from CNN and MSNBC that "corruption" is voters' apparent primary concern. And how do we spell "corruption" class?

R-E-P-U-G-L-I-KKK-A-N

A final thought: Rev. Ted Haggard, Mark Foley, Ricky Santorum, Karl Rove, George W. Bush, two ounces of meth, 1000 mg. of Viagra, and a Motel 6 room with a queen sized bed with Magic Fingers.

Now there's a party for Rush Limbaugh.

Does Evangelical==Terrorist?

Imagine that you have been faithfully tithing to your megachurch, just like the Rev. Dr. Ted Methead has been saying you must. You took in that Christian family that had been persecuted out of their homeland in Beluchistan. Even though your incredibly curvalicious coworker at Roctite Industries has been rubbing up against you in the warehouse and finally offered to have a no-attachment sexual relationship with you because she really digs clean-cut Jesus lovers, you have remained faithful to your wife, even though she has gotten a bit more shrewish since the birth of your eighth child, has refused any physical contact, and refers to you as "The Big Loser" in your Bible meetings on Wednesday nights.

Then one morning you wake up to find that Rev. Dr. Ted Methead is having a hell of a lot more fun than you are. To wit, he's having methed-out gay boner parties with hookers every month. On Sunday he tells you all about purity and faith and the terrible forces beyond that want to tempt you with homosexual urges and poisonous substances. On Monday, he drives to Denver so he can powder his nose with methamphetamine and then play hide-the-salami with a dude for pay. So what do you do?

You pray for his soul. You curse Satan for the temptations he puts before us. You muse about how insidious that the forces of evil are that they could undermine even so righteous a fellow as Rev. Dr. Ted Methead. And on Tuesday I'll bet you still pull the lever for Republicans all across the board. And you know why you do that?

Because your wife is right. You ARE "The Big Loser."

You're a big loser because you hold to a creed that is provably exploitative of dopes like you and oppressive of the women who marry you. You're a big loser because you refuse to face the evidence that is put before you time after time after time that you are being lied to, exploited, and generally played for a fool by the likes of Ted Haggard, George Bush, Dick Cheney, James Dobson, and a host of other criminals who can spot a sucker loser like you at a thousand yards. These real devils have been building careers and entire empires by picking the pockets of losers like you.

You're a big loser, a stupid freak, and a self-willed moron who refuses to use his God-given gift of free thought and critical analysis to reason through those suspicions you've suppressed whenever yet another "Man of God" gets caught with his swollen hypocrisy jammed into someone's bunghole.

But I'll be damned if I'm going to let losers like you drag this country down.

Tuesday is D-Day for America. We are at the apex between salvation and damnation. It means the forces of the true darkness have swept in because we have abdicated our duty to face truth, to honestly see the world as it is, and to bravely engage that world with enlightened and humble action.

In this final day before the mid-term elections, the Republican shit-throwing machine is doing everything in its power to get the big losers out of their malaise at how much they've been lied to and out to the polls one last time because God really is on their side. Really. God is a Republican. And God engineered Ted Haggard's butt-boy-bongo and Jim Foley's attempts to start up some of the same with underage male Congressional pages just to test your faith. And it's not true, as former White House staffer David Kuo wrote, that Karl Rove and company view you as "nuts" and "goofy." And George W. Bush really, really is a Jesus-loving Christian who only executed 152 people in Texas, sacrificed 2800+ American lives, and 50,000+ Iraqi lives because it's exactly what Jesus would have done had he the largest military in the world instead of twelve stupid deciples.

Yes, Jesus wants you to vote Republican because he hates America. And given our recent history, I'm not the least surprised.

Sideshow Politics

John Kerry's bad and bumbled joke and the insane Republican reaction (is McCain really that stupid, or is he really such a Bush asslicker?), Ted Haggard's meth-sniffing, sex-for-pay play, Mark Foley's predilection for teenage boys--why don't I ever write about these things? A friend asked me this today. Yes, it is a conscious decision during an election period because while these episodes are wonderfully salacious, juicy, and reveal the depth and gravity of right-wing hypocrisy, it's still not relevant to the exercise of power in this country. We have one huge problem in this country that must remain our focus, and that is the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld cabal that is still desperately trying to establish a tyranny in this country, and who has no moral code, no admirable ideology, and virtually no competence beyond smearing opponents and intimidating dissenters. In the actual administration of power they are an utter and complete disaster.

A totalitarian mentality mixed with incompetence is what creates the perfect storm of national disaster, and our ship of state is still steadily on course for BOTH Scylla and Charybdis with a monstrous iceberg and a couple of sea dragons to boot.

If Pastor Haggard likes to dust his nostrils and then take one in the booty, well bully for him--he's gotten his just desserts for his hypocrisy as a leader against gays and non-Christians. If Mark Foley is a slimey chickenhawk cruising for buff butts, he too is now paid for his hubris in trying to simultaneously push through child protection laws. And the fact that John Kerry is an egomaniacal dope without the sense to even avoid humor that will always fall flat does not overcome the intentional or intentionally feigned stupidity of those who claim he has insulted the military--that just reveals how desperately thin their basis is for even being appointed to scrape dog shit off our cities' sidewalks.

Eyes on the ball--we face totalitarian, amoral, sociopathic megalomaniacs trying to destroy our country for reasons that defy explanation. Such is the poison of power.

The Good News?

You know that the situation in Iraq has really hit the shitter when the following is the good news coming from the U.S. military:

The chart does note some positive developments. Specifically, it notes that “hostile rhetoric” by political and religious leaders has not increased. It also notes that Iraqi security forces are refusing less often than in the past to take orders from the central government and that there has been a drop-off in mass desertions.

Three and a half years after Chimpie McFlightSuit declared "Mission Accomplished" on the carrier USS Abraham Lincoln and the best news coming out to counter the 100+ dead Americans in October is that religious nuts are toning down their rhetoric? Oh joy! We're on the road to victory now! And lower mass disertion rates among the Iraqis who will allow us to "stand down as they stand up." Boy, I sure feel better. Smells like...catastrophe.

I have to hand it to the Bushits--they managed to stir the pot in Iraq precisely to the point where we can't fix it but can't in good conscience abandon it either. Who pays? Our sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers serving in the military, whose fate lies in the hands of idiots and megalomaniacal madmen. And keep in mind that not one single civilian associated with this disastrous policy has been fired, let alone been shackled, hooded, waterboarded (a "no-brainer" per Cheney) and then dropped into the dock at the Hague for war crimes trials.

Okay, so what to do? Congressman John Murtha made these suggestions last year on November 17:

To immediately redeploy U.S. troops consistent with the safety of U.S. forces.
To create a quick reaction force in the region.
To create an over- the- horizon presence of Marines.
To diplomatically pursue security and stability in Iraq

I'd be delusional to think that "Mission Accomplished" Chimpie and his gang of thugs would do anything like this in the runup to the election, but I predict that if they lose both houses of Congress next Tuesday, they will be carefully positioning themselves to engineer exactly such a plan and then blame the Democrats in 2008 for "losing Iraq." That's like setting your house on fire and then blaming your neighbor for failing to put it out once it's already mostly ashes.

Let's Go for a Swim, Dickie

A "dunk in water" did NOT refer to waterboarding, which in turn, is NOT torture. As a return to Dick Cheney's offer to take me pheasant hunting, I'd like to take him to my favorite water park (Scroll down for pictures). You can do this at home, kids!

Another Possibility: the Genius of the Bush/Cheney Plan

In the previous post, I posited that the Chimperor and his gang had essentially contributed to a worsening of situations across the board, and the commentary got pretty heated. What if there is something both we, the so-called "Bush-haters" and their opposite, "the Bush-crack-lickers" had all gotten wrong?

What if total chaos is the overriding goal of this gang of miscreants? After all, even I wouldn't argue that Bush and company actually tried to fuck up on every single thing they touched. No one wants to be a total incompetent all the time. Or do they?

If you have investment interests in oil, or in armaments suppliers, or in shipping, or in security firms, or in big pharma, then destabilization of currencies, energy supplies, governments, security, travel, and the creation of a more fearful world are going to make you very, very wealthy.

If you own stock in Lockheed-Martin, the Carlyle Group, General Dynamics, and Northrop-Grumman, which is better: a quick, efficient victory, followed by a stable transition to new governance, and then a rapid withdrawal, or a quick, efficient victory followed by a meatgrinder of civil and sectarian strife that bogs down the world's most powerful military machine for a decade or longer?

Cui bono?

Those bastards may have outsmarted all of us on both sides.

More Americans Enter Reality-based World

When only 16% of the nation thinks that the Chimperor's administration is truthful about what happened on 9/11/2001, that's some deep doodoo, to quote the elder Bush. And speaking of Bush 41, he and his cabinet members now must bear the burden of the idiot son, Bush 43, completely fucking up the Middle East and generally weakening the United States in every arena. And they knew it was going to happen, emphasizing again how these mandarins always put their power over the national interest.

"Everyone knew how Rumsfeld acts," another key 41 assistant said. "Everyone knew 43 didn't have an attention span. Everyone knew Condi [Rice] wouldn't be able to stand up to Cheney and Rumsfeld. We told them all of this, and we were told we don't know what we're doing."

That any American still naively believes that politicians act out of conscience is frightening, but that they can be so utterly bamboozled by power-mad fiends with no conscience at all is even more frightening.

We've got to quit acting like children looking for a daddy or a mommy to make our world safe. Democrats, Republicans, independents, all politicians are corrupted by the electoral process, and owe their offices to focused special interests, not to the people who elected them. Politicians respond to the will of the people only when they fear the people. That's how power works.

And yet, despite the debacle we have entered thanks to arrogant power, we do not see people in the streets.

When I was in Leipzig, Germany, earlier this year, I spent some time in the Stasi Museum which documents the abuses of that internal security mechanism against the citizens of the state. The Stasi was perhaps the most efficient and widespread internal security operation in history. In October of 1989, however, the people got fed up. A paving stone in the town square commemorates the event when the people surrounded the secret service headquarters that now houses the museum and began chanting, "Stasi raus!" The Stasi officers barricaded themselves inside the building, genuinely fearing for their lives.

You know the rest of the story. On November 9, the Berlin Wall fell. Less than a year later, the East German regime ceased to exist.

The memorial, that paving stone, is simply the impressions of different pairs of feet. Feet on the street. That's how people take back their power.

Olaf and the White House Agree!!!

My wife is an optimist. She believes that no matter how bad the break between people, deep down somewhere there is an accord of some kind, an issue on which they can agree. And from that agreement, it is possible to build bridges to more common understanding, and ultimately achieve compromise, and maybe someday...harmony.

Well, I don't know about all that, but on one thing apparently the White House crooks have been in the closet when they could have been out front hangin' in solidarity with old Olaf Rotkohl. From MSNBC last night on Keith Olberman's Countdown, we learn something from the former #2 man inside Chimpie's Office of Faith-based Iniatives, David Kuo:

He says some of the nation’s most prominent evangelical leaders were known in the office of presidential political strategist Karl Rove as “the nuts.”

“National Christian leaders received hugs and smiles in person and then were dismissed behind their backs and described as ‘ridiculous,’ ‘out of control,’ and just plain ‘goofy,’” Kuo writes.

And yet the Bushits won something like 95 percent of the evangelical vote, and even more astonishingly, they did it by actually spending $20 million a year LESS than Clinton on the "nuts." How did they pull this off?

The money that was appropriated and disbursed, however, often served a political agenda, Kuo claims, with organizations friendly to the administration often winning grants.

More pointedly, Kuo quotes an unnamed member of the review panel charged with rating grant applications as saying she stopped looking at applications from “those non-Christian groups,” as did many of her colleagues.

Hahahahahahahahaha! Suckers! I told ya so! You and the rest of the 59 million who "reelected" these criminals in 2004 are now being shown that the only thing that matters to the Chimpie and Cheney syndicate is power, and there is no one they won't sell out, lie to, maybe even kill, to get it and keep it.

And to all of those who were conned? Both the White House and I enthusiastically say: Fuck you, fools.

Why Some People Shouldn't Do Drugs

The Hillbilly Heroin Homeboy hits one out the park! Those Democrats--so diabolical that they set up a ten-year sting operation to get Republican Mark Foley to troll for teenage boys.

Of course, there's another Republican theory on the talking points list too--that Mark Foley was in deep cover as a Democratic plant, set to embarrass them at just this moment.

Of course, applying Occam's Razor to this outrage, it would appear to simply be that Mark Foley--REPUBLICAN--is just a creepy old man with no regard for age-of-consent laws or power differentials in working relationships.

Your First Amendment Rights...

...as interpreted by your Vice President's office. You see, he is a dictator, immune from any contradictory comments. Mr. Howardss fuckup was that he didn't say "reprehensible" to Chimpie the Hand Puppet. The Chimperor would have taken it as a compliment, slapped Howards on the back, and said, "We'll repre-insulate those evildoers and killers over there so we won't have to repro-masturbate them over here."

Chimpie Indirectly Admits His War Criminality

Watch Jack Cafferty on yesterday's CNN spot.

Bush knows he's in the shitter if the Congress flips...and if the Dems have the guts to do what's right and ship his--and Cheney's, Rumsfeld's, Wolfowitz's, Rice's, et alia's--ass to the Hague for prosecution.

Death penalty for certain war crimes under the Geneva Convention--I like that, particularly since we still execute people--even retarded ones--in this country, so Chimpie hasn't got a rock to hide under, especially in Texas.

Welcome to Tyranny

Mind you, this comes from the highest law enforcement official in our nation, who also seems to forget that we have three branches of government, one of which--the judiciary--is to ensure that our rights are preserved. But Alberto "Tortureboy" Gonzalez must have been snorting coke with Chimpie that day in law school.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who is defending President Bush's anti-terrorism tactics in multiple court battles, said Friday that federal judges should not substitute their personal views for the president's judgments in wartime.

You see, Tortureboy doesn't believe that judges should participate in judicial processes if it contradicts a mad-as-a-hatter and dumb-as-a-rock president.

"Judges must resist the temptation to supplement those tools based on their own personal views about the wisdom of the policies under review," Gonzales said.

Even judges aren't exempt from little waterboarding.

Welcome to Amerikkka. James Madison was too prescient.

Must-see YouTube!

Oh my goodness, this is funny! Viva iMovie!!!

How Can Anyone Support This Buffoon? A Theory...

I think that anyone left who supports Bush-- and Rasmussen's poll claims that includes 40% of my fellow Americans--must do so now only out of (a) total embarrassment, (b) total separation from the reality-based universe, or (c) a traitorous intent to destroy the United States from within by continuing to enable a combination of ill-educated fuckwads, greedheads, and Christofascists to loot the treasury, convert democratic rule to autocratic theocracy, and descend into a Caligulopoly.

Caligulopoly, you ask? Well, "Caligula" originally meant "little soldier's boot," a nickname the original Caligula acquired as a boy and always hated, sort of like "Shrub" or "Nitwit Son." And while, perhaps, Chimpie's personal habits do not descend to the (actually unprovable) depradations of Caligula, his insistence on the right to torture, invade countries, detain without cause anyone he deems his enemy, and declarations like "I'm the Decider" coupled with the childish tantrums of late (he said he won't allow ANY interrogations of terror suspects if Congress won't give him his way on torture), have pushed him into at least the outer circle of Cal's camp in terms of leadership style and megalomania.

And I should apologize for using a word like "buffoon" for Bush. He's too malevolent to be a mere buffoon. What he is is a fucking disaster.

9/11: How Mass Murder Gets Turned into Media Exhaustion

I really hope that no national holiday gets created for 9/11. Already, before the Madison Avenue juggernaut has really had a chance to fully exploit this day, exhaustion is overpowering me, and perhaps others, because the collective media melded mindset simply cannot approach the subject with anything like an original or critical intent. God help us when five more years pass and we start having ad blitzes like this:

We're exploding prices on our 2011 SUV line!

We're terrorizing high prices!

Osama may still be on the loose, but you can catch our 9/11 end-of-summer sale and beat the terrorism of high prices!

You get the idea.

In addition, of course, the criminal empire that is BushCo. is inventing new levels of ghoulishness by parading the animated corpse of Dick Cheney onto "Meet the Press" and ordering Condi Rice to repeat her mantra, "No one could have imagined [fill in your fuckup here]." In all this masturbation, politicking, and ass-covering, the people who deserve to be able to reflect on their own and actual experiences are having their memories blighted or obliterated by the media onslaught, to wit, "Your experience is meaningless unless it is filtered through OUR lens."

It's the ultimate tyranny--now you can't even experience your own tragedy, unless Auntie Katie or Uncle Bryan read it to you over the teleprompter. Those who died and those who loved them are still under attack by an engine of commerce that knows no limit to avarice and has no inkling of shame or reflection. By turning this event into the carnival of thumbsucking that it has become--just another means to sell toilet bowl cleaner and skin care products--the greed that drives everything ultimately triumphs any pure opportunity for uncovering truth, because it just might cause the traffic in goods and services to stumble for a moment and notice the gaping chasm that our culture is hurrying toward, arms clasped full of worthless shit heads full of simplistic answers.

Chimpie Wants to Remember Anniversaries, eh?

Well, let's cast back 5 years and 1 month to August 6, 2001, to a presidential daily briefing given to El Presidente. What was the title of said briefing?

Bin Laden determined to strike in US

Today's presidential "speech" should have had him laughed off the lectern, but the bootlickers, sycophants, enemies of liberty, and scum of what passes for political and media life in the United States actually broadcast and applauded this idiot.

What fucking country am I living in? It's like a perpetual bad acid trip through a totalitarian nightmare commanded by morons and incompetents.

I'm sorry not to be posting more but it's hard to write when you're running the house screaming, "Shit!!!! Shit!!!! Shit!!!!"

So Jenna and Barbara Are Enlisting When?

Oh boy. El Presidente met with families of those slain on 9/11, in Afghanistan, and Iraq. Am I so cynical to believe this has something to do with disaster in his foreign and domestic policies and his correspondingly plunging ratings (except for the true wackos who could be plunged in boiling oil and claim it refreshing if Dick Cheney told them it was a hot tub)? You bet your sweet ass I am. From way up north in Maine:

One anti-war widow said she used the opportunity to voice her objections to Bush's policies.

"I said it's time to stop the bleeding," said Hildi Halley, whose husband, Army National Guard Capt. Patrick Damon, died June 15 in Afghanistan. "It's time to swallow our pride and find a solution."

She said Bush responding by saying "there was no point in us having a philosophical discussion about the pros and cons of the war."

So if discussion of the war is just reduced to hypotheticals, let's suppose Chimpie's two progeny enlist in the Marine Corps and volunteer for Iraq. He shouldn't object to that since it's all just philosophical jerking off. I'm sure those Marines are countering the premises of IEDs on the roadside with agile rhetorical wizardry.

The progress of Chimpie's philosophy:
--My decision to invade was based on sound evidence of WMD.
--My decision to invade was based on flawed intelligence.
--My decision to invade was the right one, even if there weren't any of those things there
--My decision to invade is not to be challenged except by terrorists and their sympathizers
--Don't blame me for the decision to invade. Who could have forseen this shit?
--The decision to invade was just a philosophical exercise. Next issue? Oh yeah, and I'm really sorry your kid/spouse/parent is dead. They died for a great neocon philosophy.
--Can I go for my bike ride now, Karl?

The Future of Advertising

Love those crazy Berliners! Once again, the city has inspired acts of resistance that could spread like a virus, in fact, ought to spread like a virus. My favorite artistic inspiration:

At 5:37 a.m. on April 2, 2002, the Parisian artist Zevs kidnapped a 10-meter (33-feet) model advertising Lavazza coffee from one of Berlin's main squares, Alexanderplatz. To be sure, the ad slogan "Express yourself!" was asking for trouble. Within a few hours, Zevs had cut the lady from the ad and left a note: "Visual Kidnapping -- Pay now." Zevs then issued a written statement demanding a €500,000 ($638,694) ransom. Just to make it clear he wasn't fooling around, he severed one of the model's fingers and mailed it to the company headquarters in Turin. Before the police could catch him, he escaped to Sweden.

From then on, Zevs toured the art galleries of Europe with a documentary film about his "kidnapping" and the kidnapped model itself, rolled up for convenient transportation. Two years ago, he asked visitors of Berlin's New Society for the Visual Arts (Neue Gesellschaft für Bildende Kunst) to take a vote about whether the model should be "executed." Last year, he finally returned her to the Lavazza company, following a sham ransom payment. Zevs is on a mission.

So if you're getting bored with your summer...

When Credibility Croaks, or, Rather, Gets Croaked

Zogby poll: "Rating down despite foiled terror plot and Lebanon cease fire; Democrats hold generic Congressional lead."

Why? Read my previous post on returning from Europe. Nobody can believe the Bushits anymore when it comes to terror warnings or declarations of making things safer. Terrorism and the "war" thereupon are first and foremost political tools for Team Bush. William Greider, writing for The Nation, has it perfectly articulated.

More to the point, it is equally true that Bush desperately needs the terrorists. They are his last frail hope for political survival. They divert public attention, at least momentarily, from his disastrous war in Iraq and his shameful abuses of the Constitution. The "news" of terror--whether real or fantasized--reduces American politics to its most primitive impulses, the realm of fear-and-smear where George Bush is at his best.

So, once again in the run-up to a national election, we are visited with alarming news. A monstrous plot, red alert, high drama playing on all channels and extreme measures taken to tighten security.

The White House men wear grave faces, but they cannot hide their delight. It's another chance for Bush to protect us from those aliens with funny names, another opportunity to accuse Democrats of aiding and abetting the enemy.

This has worked twice before. It could work again this fall unless gullible Americans snap out of it. Wake up, folks, and recognize how stupid and wimpish you look. I wrote the following two years ago during a similar episode of red alerts: "Bush's ‘war on terrorism' is a political slogan--not a coherent strategy for national defense--and it succeeds brillantly only as politics. For everything else, it is quite illogical."

Then Greider asks the key question.

Where is the famous American skepticism? The loose-jointed ability to laugh at ourselves in anxious moments? Can't people see the campy joke in this docudrama called "Terror in the Sky"?

Now inevitably, some dickhead is going to accuse me of not taking terrorism seriously. Echoing the Donald Rumsfeld mode of Q&A, do I believe terrorism exists? Yes, of course. Do I understand that there are people who think nothing of killing thousands to make a point about their particular superstitious belief in invisible cloud beings and rewards after death? Absolutely. But do I think that the actual, measurable, and preventable acts of terrorism that truly threaten us have been responsibly addressed? In a word, no. Looking at actions versus rhetoric on the issue, I can only conclude that Bush and company care primarily for terrorism as a tool for the acquisition and consolidation of power and any protection of the people a fortunate coincidental occurrence.

After all, how many innocent people have been killed in Iraq? Has that action reduced the threat of terrorism? Are our ports better controlled? Are our borders secure? Where's Osama? Any word on those anthrax attacks four years ago? Are there fewer or more young Muslims ready to embrace the mythical 70+ virgins in martyr's heaven?

Good job, Georgie!

Detecting Bullshit in Berlin

Although I've been back since late Saturday night, it's taken me a while to get my thoughts together on the past week. Since my wife and I had to fly through London's Heathrow Airport from Berlin back to the US, we took acute interest in the alleged terror plot "uncovered" last Thursday. As I write this, our bags are still sitting somewhere in London, among more than 20,000 others, due to cancelled flights, broken screening machines, and the other effects of the alert. By some stroke of luck, we arrived at our ultimate destination in the United States less than two hours behind schedule, and even though our bags remain in limbo, I have to commend the British Airlines employees who worked so hard to keep things working. I'm very impressed with their diligence and calm in a rotten situation--they were universally helpful, understanding, remarkably good-natured, and I'll cheerfully fly British Air on my next trip back to the Old World.

On Thursday night, we came back to our apartment after a lovely dinner in a Mitte restaurant near Oranienburger Tor, and before turning bellies toward the ceiling to aid digestion, I flipped on the TV, hoping to catch another cool German detective show to help my admittedly poor language skills. On a German news channel, there was coverage of a terror plot uncovered and the effect it was having on air traffic through Heathrow. We switched to the BBC, needing to fully understand the implications for our return home, and received a calm and detailed report of what was known about the situation as well as information about what to expect as air travelers--delays, tight restrictions on carry-on baggage (i.e. none), and a rapidly developing situation.

Then over to CNN. The mantra: "Total chaos." This was repeated ad nauseum over shots of frustrated travelers, crowds of people at Heathrow, airplanes on the tarmac, and so on. "Total chaos." We would be flying home on Saturday, so this was not welcome news. "Total chaos."

On Saturday, fortunately, our flight Berlin-London was not one of many that were cancelled due to the situation. As we had learned from BA's website, we could carry only our identification papers, money, keys, and prescription meds--everything else had to be checked, including my little travel guitar which, alas, was not in a hardshell case but only protected by its gigbag, lush though its padding is. "Ah, die arme Guitarre," a young German man said behind me. Yes, the poor guitar indeed. Oh well--it was the risk I took hauling it around. Better to be secure.

But something about the distinct hysteria of CNN compared to coverage of the BBC and the German networks was sticking in my throat. While I was happy to shed myself of all material possessions in the interest of airline safety, there was something fishy here. My wife didn't think so--so many people arrested, such a profound set of restrictions suddenly imposed on air travel, so many flight cancellations, etc., she felt this had to be something imminent and very real. Call me cynical at this point, but when a terrorist "attack" is uncovered following a really shitty week for the Bush administration--ally on war Joe Lieberman defeated in the Democratic primary in Connecticut and much criticism on failing to act early in the Lebanese situation plus Dick Cheney's accusations of al Qaeda sympathies for anti-Lieberman voters--it's become rather natural to consider a political rather than a security motive.

Well, surprise, surprise! From the London Times today, we find this interesting piece.

“This is the busiest airport in the world at the busiest time of year,” said Heathrow’s chief executive officer Tony Douglas. “To suggest we could continue as if nothing had happened is frankly ludicrous.” Except, actually, nothing had. Not at Heathrow, anyway. No suspected terrorists were apprehended at or on the way to the airport, no bomb-making material was found on airport land. It never is. Look at the clear plastic box on display at every security checkpoint. Nail files, scissors, corkscrews, pen knives. No guns or bombs. Shortly to be joined by paperback books, cuddly toys and a litre of Buxton’s finest. But still no bombs.

Today, Britain’s state of alert will be downgraded from “Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God” to “Is it me or is that bloke with the beard sweating a bit?” which means small hand luggage will be allowed, but no liquids. Water bottles being the new shoes — remember Richard Reid, when everyone was under attack from Hush Puppies? — it is absolutely vital that we do not take liquid refreshment on to planes. Trains, fine: because, of course, whoever would think of targeting the rail network in Britain? Not this year, anyway. Well, I’m certainly feeling safer.

Now this doesn't mean that there wasn't a terror plot unfolding. It's just that it hadn't really unfolded so far that the British wanted to spring the trap.

None of the alleged terrorists had made a bomb. None had bought a plane ticket. Many did not even have passports, which given the efficiency of the UK Passport Agency would mean they couldn't be a plane bomber for quite some time.

In the absence of bombs and airline tickets, and in many cases passports, it could be pretty difficult to convince a jury beyond reasonable doubt that individuals intended to go through with suicide bombings, whatever rash stuff they may have bragged in internet chat rooms.

What is more, many of those arrested had been under surveillance for over a year - like thousands of other British Muslims. And not just Muslims. Like me. Nothing from that surveillance had indicated the need for early arrests.

So why did the British pull the trigger when they did? Here's an Australian take on what I wish I was seeing on US network news. Why isn't this making its way into our mainstream media outlets?

BRITISH and American authorities had a significant disagreement over when to move in on suspects in the alleged plot to bring down US-bound airliners, US reports suggest.

A senior British official told NBC News on Saturday that British police were planning to continue surveillance for at least another week as the suspects had not yet bought airline tickets and some did not even have passports.

In contrast to previous reports, the unidentified official told NBC an attack was not imminent, but the US pressured British police to move in. The source did say police believed one British-based suspect was ready to conduct a "dry run". British authorities had wanted to let him continue with part of the plan, but the US baulked, the report said.

Isn't it sad when kneejerk reactions like mine, which are admittedly biased by my disgust with this regime, keep turning out to be true?

Anyway, more on the trip later. Only problem--my notebooks are in London with all the other stuff--not a ballpoint pen, nor a notebook could be carried onboard. Still, kudos to British Airways. Now, if they just deliver that guitar in playable condition...

Off the Grid for a Couple of Weeks

Olaf's off to Berlin on his first vacation in fourteen months, so the postings will likely be very thin for the coming weeks. However, if I find a friendly internet cafe and a little inspiration, perhaps I'll post from abroad. Those damned European keyboards are mapped differently, though, and can really confound these old American fingers, so if my spelling or punctuation goes to hell, please cut me some slack.

I'll be back, my friends, bigger and badder and uglier and madder than ever.

All the best!

Olaf's New Face

My new look. Hope you like it.


The Reign of the Moronic Chimperor has finally gotten to me. Trust me, I feel worse than I look. Time to return to Berlin for a rejuvenatory vacation.

Oh, Barack Obama! Whither Thou Goest?

This is for my friend MB:

I was as excited as anyone to see Mr. Obama elected to the Senate two years ago. Dick Durbin has always been one of the few true Democrats and adding Mr. Obama as the junior senator was something to make every Illinois citizen proud. But something has happened to him since he's arrived in Washington, and it's the same disease that has destroyed the Democrats as an opposition party. Here's an example in today's press.

In a speech last month that drew fire from liberal bloggers and raised eyebrows in Washington, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., warned that far-right conservatives like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson would continue to hold sway unless the Democratic Party competes for the support of evangelical Christians and other churchgoing Americans.

"We make a mistake when we fail to acknowledge the power of faith in the lives of the American people and join a serious debate about how to reconcile faith with our modern, pluralistic democracy," Obama said.

Here's the problem--a modern, pluralistic democracy cannot exist without a strict separation of church and state and there's a damned good reason why: bending public policy to fit the superstitions of people of "faith" rather than reason and experience is destructive. Any examination of history shows that faith-based or faith-influenced government (and that includes ideological "faith" as well--fascism, Stalinism, cults of personality) always, ALWAYS leads to totalitarianism and disaster.

Religion should be free from government intervention and government should be free from religious intervention. Until Obama quits catering to fanatics who believe their mumbo-jumbo should dictate our lives, he's a loser in the Democratic Party. Falwell, Robertson, and Dobson are power-mad charlatans, con men, and anti-democratic fringe fanatics who, were it not the usefulness they provide to the fascist wing of the Republican Party, would be raving on a street corner somewhere in shit-stained smocks. They are not to be catered to, or even acknowledged as contributors to any discussion of how our democracy should operate. They believe that invisible beings speak to them and through them. I call that mental illness, not leadership.

Shame on you, Mr. Obama. Compromising with the likes of Falwell, et. al. does nothing for the progress of democracy; in fact, it inhibits it. We cannot "reconcile" foolish superstition with self-governance based on reason and experience. One if absolute fantasy, and the other is all that saves us from the more malevolent exploiters of such fantasy, like Falwell, Dobson, and Robertson.

So You Still Don't Think It's All About Oil?

Click and learn. If we could just pull that needle out of arm and develop alternate energies, conserve, and be good global citizens, all this shit would be entirely unnecessary.

But then, who is the biggest exporter of arms to the world? Who spends fully half of all worldwide monies on military expenditures? Who selectively attacks and props up equally repugnant regimes in the mideast, including those (Pakistan) who sell nuclear technology abroad? And ultimately, whose "standard of living" is most at risk from its loss of control over the oil-rich regions?

Neocons desire perpetual war, absolute oppression of the people, and plutocratic control...and we're just letting it happen.

Goodbye, America. It was a nice experiment.

What Our Greatest Ally's People Think of the U.S.

Think of this on Independence Day--we are held in lower esteem by our greatest ally than during Vietnam. And as far as the majority of Britons are concerned,

People in Britain view the United States as a vulgar, crime-ridden society obsessed with money and led by an incompetent president whose Iraq policy is failing, according to a newspaper poll.

Sounds about right, I'd say. And I hope Chimpie takes it very, very personally. They hate him, man.

With much of the worst criticism aimed at the US adminstration, the poll showed that 70 percent of Britons like Americans a lot or a little. President George W. Bush fared significantly worse, with just one percent rating him a "great leader" against 77 percent who deemed him a "pretty poor" or "terrible" leader.

And how is it that so many Britons see through this bastard's rhetoric by good ol' Americans continue to be fooled again and again and again.

More than two-thirds who offered an opinion said America is essentially an imperial power seeking world domination. And 81 per cent of those who took a view said President George W Bush hypocritically championed democracy as a cover for the pursuit of American self-interests.

I'd say that the British know a little something about imperial power, wouldn't you?

Oh, the irony! Happy 4th of July!

Where We're Headed if the People Don't Wake Up

That Cheney is the real power in the executive branch may be debatable, but his philosophy is the guiding one, and it in turn is guided by a relatively unknown dude, Cheney's chief of staff David Addington. Read the New Yorker piece and then have a stiff drink. What historical parallel does this follow? As I've written before, the path to dictatorship is often through the legal system, by legitimizing what ought to be outrageous and illegal, like torture, secret prison camps, domestic spying, and an untethered executive. Reading this article was like revisiting the Berlin "Topography of Terror" exhibit that sits atop the old Gestapo headquarters. To wit:

Known as the New Paradigm, this strategy rests on a reading of the Constitution that few legal scholars share—namely, that the President, as Commander-in-Chief, has the authority to disregard virtually all previously known legal boundaries, if national security demands it. Under this framework, statutes prohibiting torture, secret detention, and warrantless surveillance have been set aside.

And what have we gained by allowing this erosion of law and basic humanity?

Yet, almost five years later, this improvised military model, which Addington was instrumental in creating, has achieved very limited results. Not a single terror suspect has been tried before a military commission. Only ten of the more than seven hundred men who have been imprisoned at Guantánamo have been formally charged with any wrongdoing.

A nation of 300 million faces a dreadful future. This is a far more desperate situation than Americans realize, because it's secretive, corrosive, and slow enough not to be felt until it all falls into place, and by then it is far too late to turn back. Ask a Berliner about the years from 1932 onward and you may hear a story shockingly similar to our own as it progresses now.

The most chilling bit of this article is this about Addington's beliefs:

In meetings, he argued that officials in charge of the military commissions should be given maximum flexibility to decide whether to include such evidence. “Torture isn’t important to Addington as a scientific matter, good or bad, or whether it works or not,” the Administration lawyer, who is familiar with these debates, said. “It’s more about his philosophy of Presidential power. He thinks that if the President wants torture he should get torture. He always argued for ‘maximum flexibility.’ ”

"Maximum flexibility"--sounds pretty totalitarian to me. Is that what our brave men and women are dying to protect?

Democratic Towers of Jello

These are the Democratic senators who think a piece of multicolored cloth trumps the First Amendment.

Baucus (D-MT)
Bayh (D-IN)
Dayton (D-MN)
Feinstein (D-CA)
Johnson (D-SD)
Landrieu (D-LA)
Lincoln (D-AR)
Menendez (D-NJ)
Nelson (D-FL)
Nelson (D-NE)
Reid (D-NV)
Salazar (D-CO)
Stabenow (D-MI)

I can understand the Republicans (with three exceptions, amazingly enough) voting to further squelch expressions of political dissent, but for these thirteen Democrats to play to the worst impulses of voters makes me puke. I'll burn some extra flags in their names for emphasis.

Opposition party my crusty ass.

On the Fourth of July

The Fourth of July used to be my favorite holiday--completely secular, celebratory, firecrackers, picnics, parades, and sack races. But now that's it's really nothing more than a jingoistic jerk-off festival for chickenshit chickenhawks, wannabe fascists, and soccer moms who think SUVs are their divine right by God, I think maybe I'll do something different.

Given the great threat to our way of life that the US Senate is now bravely confronting, I'm going to do something that only a true patriot would do.

I'm going to burn the flag, right after I flush a Bible down the toilet. Join me, won't you, in asserting the First Amendment before these assholes flush it down the toilet with their idiotic amendment.

Trust me--it will make you feel a whole lot better.

And as to This Other Piece of Human Excrement...

Oh Jesus. Read Josh Marshall's Talking Points Memo today. Good God.

Your president. Your president. Your president.

Liar, Scum, Enemy of Democracy?

What else can you call Dick Cheney? I am so apoplectic I can't see straight to type, so give me your favorite names for this disgusting piece of dung wrapped in phlegm surrounding by a thick coating of hairballs. "I don't think anybody anticipated the level of violence that we've encountered," this said. What? Has he been in fucking sedation since 2002?

Or is he a liar, scum, and/or enemy of democracy? Hard to say, but I imagine you all have some opinions on the matter.

How to Tell That Chimpie and the Chimpettes Are Desperate

Look, the mainstream media would have you believe that Chimpie is having a good week because:

Chief strategist Karl Rove did not get indicted.

Chimpie had to secretly sneak into the Green Zone in Baghdad wearing 25 lbs of body armor and a helmet

They manage to kill the umpteenth "Number Two Man" in al Qaeda.

Hardly a call for a victory dance, but spin isn't spin unless it's constant and high-speed. Is there really any good news for this gang of incompetent thugs? If it wasn't for the rosy veneer of the corporate-owned media, there would be riots going on over this shit.

Chimpy in Charge and Doin' a Heckuva Job

Do you feel safer now that 2500 GIs are dead? Was their sacrifice to George W. Bush's vision for the world worth the improved security? Oh, wait. It's not just me, apparently who thinks that (a) the "Global War on Terror" is a bullshit cover for creeping fascism, and (b) that if there really was a true war on terror, these incompetent idiots are the last group you'd want running it. Don't take my word for it, because I'm a raving lunatic. However, it's a lot harder to dismiss everyone as a moonbat who believes that the Global War on Terror is thus far a fucking failure.

Foreign Policy, a journal that is hardly some partisan rant fest, did the study of 100 foreign policy wonks from all sides. The good news:

A bipartisan majority (84 percent) of the index’s experts say the United States is not winning the war on terror. Eighty-six percent of the index’s experts see a world today that is growing more dangerous for Americans. Overall, they agree that the U.S. government is falling short in its homeland security efforts. More than 8 in 10 expect an attack on the scale of 9/11 within a decade.

The top threat, in their view, is loose nukes. The most startling thing from this report is that 71 out of 94 CONSERVATIVES disagree with Chimpie that we're winning the war on terror.

Imagine that--old Olaf agrees with 75 percent of conservative wonks. Methinks that if the news media would get off its kneepads and take Dick Cheney's cock out it its mouth long enough to dictate some objective reporting, the entire political climate would undergo seismic change. But, you see, there's an election in November, and if the Congress shifts radically, all those party invitations, golf gaggles, and hooker-serviced poker parties at the Watergate courtesy of the Republican majority are going to end. I mean, who'd fuck a Washington Times or Fox "News" journalist unless it was for money, right? A lot of money.

This Week's Second No-Shit-Sherlock Award!

Surprise! Surprise! The genius of our elected representatives has discovered that Americans want universal health care.

Imagine that: health care as a right in the world's wealthiest country. What are these people? God-damned socialists? What's next? Clean air? Water? A free and independent press? The right to protest outside a "free-speech zone"?

The commies are coming! Be scared! Be very scared! Oh, and don't forget that gays are wanting you to get divorced, burn flags, and marry illegal aliens of the same sex.

Leadership? I like what Ed Abbey said: "Adults don't need leaders."

While the Decider and the Republican Cohort Were "Defending" Marriage...

A nice collection of severed heads was found in Iraq, where we're "winning the war on terror."

Fifty folks were kidnapped by gunmen in central Bagdad, where we're "winning the war on terror."

Six thousand Iraqi citizens have died violently in Bagdad, the center of our continuing success in "winning the war on terror."

The hurricane season has commenced and New Orleans remains vulnerable.

The stock market shudders downward.

The U.S. dollar collapses.

Interest rates have hit a five-year high, squeezing everyone.

We are rather short of vaccine in preparation for the avian flu.

Two more American soldiers killed in our other "winning the war on terror" venue, Afghanistan.

Thanks to "winning the war on terror," gas prices are terrific!

And finally, as of today, the average American's individual share of the national debt has risen to over $28,000!

None of this matters, of course, if gays get the chance to destroy marriage by wanting to participate in it, or if Jesus decides the time has come and returns to earth to kill liberals, Prius drivers, vegetarians, and poor people.

I'm so glad it's Chimpie in Charge. He's the Decider.

And the No-Shit-Sherlock Award Goes To...

That wonderfully prescient and oh-so-competent Secretary of Defense, Donald "I Promise to Totally Fuck Up All Branches of the Military" Rumsfeld. To wit,

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Saturday he is concerned that the war in Iraq could alienate people in Southeast Asia's Muslim nations, where he will travel next week.

The man's a fucking genius, ain't he? I'm so glad he's keeping us all secure, nyuk, nyuk, nyuk.

Not Dead Yet

So sue me. I haven't posted in nearly three weeks and I've got no excuse. Well, except maybe that things are even worse now than three weeks ago, and how much more could I say that hasn't already been said here and elsewhere many times over starting long ago, like when Chimpie got sworn in and decided to go for the world record in bringing down his own nation. I am simply silenced by the continuing horror of Iraq, the accelerating deficit, the economic assault on the shrinking middle class, the demagoguery over immigration, Iran, and gay marriage used for distraction, the absolute willing impotence of mainstream media endlessly servicing the cock of power as if the bubbleheads in network news are going to give birth to the next messiah, etc. etc.

I feel ill even thinking about it, let alone writing about it. But there's one thing that lifted my spirits. Al Gore.

Yes, I know I left the Democratic Party after he blew the 2000 election--yes, it may have been stolen, but should it really have ever been close? A half-wit governer of a dismal state whose only claim to anything has been his family name should never have even made it through the first primary, let alone to a national election, but the incompetence and corruption of both parties enabled it. Now we pay the price.

Anyway, Al Gore may be our answer to FDR is what I'm saying. Maybe he could ride the back of this global warming issue into the limelight and finally demonstrate who he really is, and why we need someone like him in the White House to turn us back from the precipice that we are now speeding toward.

Is it possible, or is the news just so fucking bad that even Al Gore looks like some kind of savior?

If John Kerry starts looking attractive again, shoot me. Then I'll know we're really fucked.

Why ex-KGB Officer Vladimir Putin Is Laughing

Of course, you recall how last week Champion of Democracy and Peace Dick "I Shot the Motherfucker in the Face" Cheney lectured the Russians about using threats against their neighbors in what may have been the gold standard of irony. Well, it just gets better and better.

You see, back during the Cold War, old Olaf was, well, a cold warrior involved in intelligence gathering. There was a joke in fashion about the level of surveillance on the eastern side of the Berlin wall that went like this: What's the Soviet recipe for concrete? One-third sand, one-third cement, and one-third microphones. Post-Cold-War documents released by former Stasi (state security apparatus) in East Germany and other former communist-rule states revealed just how extensive the network of bugs and informers was, and it met even the most paranoid standard for intrusive government snooping.

Now we get this in today's USA Today:

The National Security Agency has been secretly collecting the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans, using data provided by AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth, people with direct knowledge of the arrangement told USA TODAY.

The NSA program reaches into homes and businesses across the nation by amassing information about the calls of ordinary Americans — most of whom aren't suspected of any crime. This program does not involve the NSA listening to or recording conversations. But the spy agency is using the data to analyze calling patterns in an effort to detect terrorist activity, sources said in separate interviews.

I guess we've in essence adopted the Soviet recipe.

Let's not forget, by the way, that when the fact of NSA spying on citizens came out a while ago, King Chimpie said it only occurred when one end of the calls was overseasm, which--surprise! surprise!--turns out to be another bald-faced lie.

Keep in mind that Clinton (and I was no fan of his, either) was impeached for his lie about receiving a little oral gratification from the zaftig Ms. Lewinsky. So how are the Senate and Congressional investigations going into the many, many lies and failures of this administration? Answer: there aren't any. Not only that, not one single liar or incompetent has been fired for the Iraq disaster.

Let me refer you to an opinion far more strident than my own about what should be done at this point. A sample:

George W. Bush lied when he said NSA's spying wasn't a domestic program. It is exactly a domestic spy program and what's more AT&T, BellSouth, and Verizon have been assisting the Bush government in creating what is being described as, "[T]he largest database ever assembled in the world," and the goal is "to create a database of every call ever made" within America's borders.

This is by definition, TYRANNY. Therefore, the Congress of the United States of America -- especially Republicans within the Legislative Branch -- has but one choice: Impeach George Walker Bush IMMEDIATELY.

In a nice homage to the Declaration of Independence, the author of this peace, A. Alexander, shows us what our RESPONSIBILITIES are as citizens...if we truly care about asserting our rights, that is. Otherwise, we can be like the poor folks I witnessed in East Berlin in the 1970s--angry, fearful, impotent, and utterly subservient to their paranoia.

The choice is clear. The time is now. What more will it take? Or will the USA fill up the vacuum of tyranny left by the collapse of the Soviet Union? Putin must be really cracking up--the fall of Communism brings on the fall of the US.

I guess it's pretty funny if you're a Russian.

Flying Monkeys' Jobs Threatened!

If the Wicked Witch of the West had had these, she would have ruled the world.

Are flying monkeys eligible for unemployment compensation? Will our own President Chimpie be eligible once he's impeached and standing in the dock in the Hague for war crimes? I say yes to the former and an emphatic NO! to the latter. The monkeys, at least, are capable of learning a useful skill in their down time.

The Chimpie Legacy

I've been telling friends lately that my belief for Chimpie's presidency is that he will exit the office as an international laughingstock and that even revisionist Republican historians won't be able to resurrect him to any level of respectability. He will be forever viewed as the worst president in history to be sure, but something far worse for someone with such a thin skin, Oedipal problems, and no sense of humor--he will be regarded only as a joke Americans played on themselves which cost them countless lives, money, prestige, and respect. And as bad as that is, and it is very bad, in ten years, in fifty years, in one hundred years, the term President Bush will become Millard Fillmore, Nero, Caligula and Merkin Muffley (of Dr. Strangelove) all rolled into one. He will eternally be the Idiot President.

Go and read Dan Froomkin's column on this. His recap and comments on the press corps reaction to Comedy Central's Stephen Colbert's savage and funny (if you're not Chimpie or his bootlickers) attack at the Correspondent's dinner last Saturday.

Too bad that so many have suffered so much for so long.

The Irony Meter Needle Breaks

In yet another act of either knowing, arrogant hypocrisy or unimaginable cluelessness, Dick "I shot the motherfucker in the face" Cheney has criticized the Russian government for using its oil and gas as "blackmail" against its neighbors.

"No legitimate interest is served when oil and gas become tools of intimidation or blackmail, either by supply manipulation or attempts to monopolize transportation," he said.

As opposed to using tactical nuclear weapons as tools of intimidation or blackmail, oil and gas seem rather benign. Remember, nukes are not "off the table" with regard to Iran, and scorching innocent civilians alive as "collateral damage" is the height of civilized behavior for this administation, so I simply can't understand Cheney's pique at Putin and the Rooskies.

You gotta hand it to him, though--he'll go all the way through his war crimes trial in the Hague as adamant as Zacarias Moussaoui did at his trial, right up to the moment they put the hood over Dick's head and the noose around his tender neck.

The Smell of Victory Sadly Still Sour

When even the news organization with its tongue the furthest up Chimpie's ass says he's at 33 percent in the polls, then you know there is panic in the White House. When Karl Rove is indicted by Patrick Fitzgerald, Chimpie's numbers will slide to below 30 percent, leaving only the most extremely ignorant and delusional theofascists in his corner, and if we're lucky they'll put on their black Nikes, lie back on their bunks, and eat their laced pudding to join the Flying Spaghetti Monster in the promised land.

The trouble is that these motherfuckers are still running the executive branch and both houses of Congress, and if they think they're going down, there is no reason to think that they won't incinerate the planet if it would give them even a ghost of a chance to save their greedy, wrinkled asses. So while I'm selfishly happy to be proven right over and over again at the incredible combination of corruption and incompetence of those in power, they're still in power, god damn it, and until 100 million Americans pour into the streets and surround the White House and the Capitol and demand the bastards out, they're going to hang on grimly for as long as possible to extract every last dime from the people's treasury into their own pockets, no matter who has to die for it.

Make no mistake--these are criminals with no conscience or shame, no different from any other gangsters who have no care for human suffering so long as it is not their own. Whether genetically or by choice sociopathic, they are utterly ruthless, and they will not yield power--it must be taken from them. Let's hope that the law prevails through the agency of Mr. Patrick Fitzgerald. If not, then the smell of victory will be only from the fires of revolution, and that will not be a benefit for the country as a whole, however necessary.

Let's hope for an orderly collapse.

Do You Really Believe in America?

A simple test: which is more important--free speech or respect for religion?

If you answer the former, welcome to the country we were meant to have.

If you chose the latter, then you are a religio-fascist. Congratulations. George Chimpie Bush is your pal, along with Falwell, Robertson, Dobson, and the other theo-Nazis who are evil precisely because they have the intelligence to know better, yet choose to believe that their opinions about creation, divinity, and life and death entitle them to control all of our lives. They are easily the most dangerous people threatening what is left of the freedoms we are pledged in the Constitution.

In the next election, I hope that every candidate who dares drag God into his campaign gets his ass whipped and handed to him or her on a Melmac platter. That shit should be private.

I have spoken.

Understatement of the Decade

From little Scottie McClellan when questioned about the lies over bioweapons trailers:

"The White House is not an intelligence-gathering agency," McClellan said.

Two words: no shit.

What? Chimpie Lied? No Way!

Yes, I know how hard it is to believe that El Presidente might have been a bit late on the uptake of information generated by his own fucking administration, but it happens. Remember this?

On May 29, 2003, 50 days after the fall of Baghdad, President Bush proclaimed a fresh victory for his administration in Iraq: Two small trailers captured by U.S. and Kurdish troops had turned out to be long-sought mobile "biological laboratories." He declared, "We have found the weapons of mass destruction."

There was one little problem, however.

A secret fact-finding mission to Iraq -- not made public until now -- had already concluded that the trailers had nothing to do with biological weapons. Leaders of the Pentagon-sponsored mission transmitted their unanimous findings to Washington in a field report on May 27, 2003, two days before the president's statement.

Is there anything that these bastards won't lie about? Anything? Anything? Please, post your examples of truth telling in the comments section. I'm really at a loss here.

Let Chimpie Show Them

So the Incompetent in Chief is headed to northern Virginia today to try to convince seniors there (a hand-picked crowd, no doubt) that his idiotic Medicare presecription drug plan isn't another bureaucratic disaster designed to siphon public money into private pharmaceutical and insurance corporate pockets.

Here's my humble proposal. Give Chimpie a laptop and tell the motherfucker, "All right, Mr. President. Set up your mom's prescription health plan."

Do this on national TV, no warning to the Chimperor, and let's see how goddamned easy it is for a Harvard MBA (admittedly a gimme for his family's contributions).

Talk about a compelling reality show.