An Open Letter to Jeb and George on How You Can Save This Whole Terri Schiavo Fiasco

Dear Bush Brothers,

I can appreciate Jeb sending in the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to forcibly take Terri Schiavo from her bed, but please read my previous post. In the television age, nothing substitutes for getting your own mug up front and center in that TV lens. Here's how Jeb can win back those 17 percent of hardcore flat-earthers that are now turning on him.

First, alert the press that you will be making a dramatic speech in front of the hospice where Ms. Schiavo resides. Then, in loin cloth and crown of thorns, make your entrance while carrying a massive wooden cross. When you get to the lectern and all the cameras are ready, say to God, "Take me, Lord. Save Terri, and take me!" Then turn to the police guarding the hospice and say, "I am going to reinsert the feeding tube. You will have to shoot me to stop me." Then make them shoot you. If you're lucky, it won't be fatal, and your political career as leader of the soon-to-be-formed Party of God will be assured.

And if you don't survive your wounds, well, you'll be a hell of a mascot. And, of course, your big brother Georgie will benefit enormously. Or, as I wrote yesterday, have Barb do it for you.

George and Jeb: Quaking Little Boys

What I don't get is why Jeb and Georgie haven't called their mommy in to rescue Terri Schiavo. Now that they realize how politically stupid this whole episode has been, and that a majority of Americans, even evangelicals, recognize it, they've disappeared. Jeb cancels a Good Friday appearance, and George . . . well, come on, from his failure to fulfill his service to his country even as an Air National Guard member to his facing only fully vetted and bootlicking crowds at public events, he's proven to be a coward on every level. When he showed up in Jeb's Florida with mommy Barb trying to keep aloft the lead balloon of Social Security privatization and destruction, it seemed that the timing and placement were perfect for her to save her boys.

But I'm getting off topic. Sorry. I think Pat Buchanan is right, you know. I think that Jeb and George should both don crotch-enhancing flight suits and descend from a Blackhawk helicopter into the hospice where Ms. Schiavo lay, shoot a few staff, and then winch her up to the chopper and fly her to the governor's mansion for reinsertion of the feeding tube. That would really, really cement that 17 percent of the electorate that thinks the world was created 6000 years ago and that Georgie is Jesus' own handpicked chief executive.

But if they're too chickenshit to do it themselves, that Barb is one tough cookie. I bet she could do it.

Posting Later; I'm Going Skiing

Fresh snow on the peaks, sun poking through the clouds, I can't sit in an office any longer. Rantings will commence after the lifts close.

If Republicans Want to Save Their True Party...

Not that any Republican will listen to me...but here goes. (I did shake Barry Goldwater's hand once, though. Even in his eighties, the guy had a powerful grip and even made a damned funny joke about 1964).

1. Tell the Falwell/Robertson/Dobson Christian fundie theocrat fascists to start their own party; hell, call it The Party of God, if they like. Have them take Frist, DeLay, Man-on-Dog Santorum, the Bushits, Allan Keyes, and Gary Bauer with them as their divinely appointed leadership.

2. Revisit your principles of limited government, environmental conservation, and civil rights.

3. Reenter the mainstream of politics.

If this doesn't happen, the Republican Party will be in splinters within two years.

One can only hope.

Frank Rich Sums Up Reasons to Be Independent

Some of my in-laws claim I overstate the spinelessness of the Democrats. In 2000, I re-registered as an independent after the Gore crowd shunned their principles to pander rightward and blow what should have been an easy win--cowardice and incompetence are bad things for a party. Still, the Democrats don't seem to have taken enough beatings from the bully right to learn that now is the time to strike full force, when the bully is arm weary and making big mistakes. Anyway, I don't always agree with Frank Rich, but he hits it on the head in the NY Times:

It is a full-scale jihad that our government signed onto last weekend, and what's most scary about it is how little was heard from the political opposition. The Harvard Law School constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe pointed out this week that even Joe McCarthy did not go so far as this Congress and president did in conspiring to "try to undo the processes of a state court." But faced with McCarthyism in God's name, most Democratic leaders went into hiding and stayed silent. Prayers are no more likely to revive their spines than poor Terri Schiavo's brain.

Good grief! Will you fuckers wake up! The Republicans are a disgrace to democracy because of their naked power grab. The Democrats are just as guilty so long as they are complicit in their cowardice to take the rightwingers to the mat and give them what they surely deserve.

Republican Chris Shays Shows the Spineless (I'm talking to Democratic Leaders Who Need a Backbone) How to Talk

I must bow before Rep. Shays for telling it like it is in a way that alleged Democrats like Joseph Lieberman and Hillary Clinton should be hollering from the rooftops. From yesterday's NY Times:

"This Republican Party of Lincoln has become a party of theocracy," Mr. Shays said. "There are going to be repercussions from this vote. There are a number of people who feel that the government is getting involved in their personal lives in a way that scares them."

Now Democratic Leadership Council limpdicks and Democratic National Committee, pay attention. Chris Shays is giving you the gift you have been given for five years from the rightwing nutcases who push theocrats Bush and Frist and DeLay, so don't fuck it up AGAIN. This is a secular nation, founded on the clear principle of separation of the religious from the civic, and these people who now dominate the Republican Party are extremists. Got that? Extremists. Say that over and over and over. Bush, Frist, and DeLay are religious Republican extremists. They taint the party, and are dragging it over the edge to destruction.

Don't agree? Well, look back at the formation of this particular coalition after Goldwater's trouncing in 1964 (imagine what he would be saying about these guys. Oh, if only resurrection was true!) The New Right was formed from a weird coalition of religious nutwads, led in Orange Country by one of the characters (Tim LaHaye) who authors the Left Behind series of Christian snuff literature, whose hatred of government (because it was so secular) linked them to libertarians who shared that hatred. Trouble was, true libertarians don't want religious intrusions into government or our private lives, and many libertarians are agnostic or atheists. However, given the dire political situation at the time for the Repugs, they set aside their differences to concentrate on their similarities, namely, hatred of New Deal style government.

I think that coalition is finally peeling apart, with the libertarian wing starting to realize that these religious types will burn them at the stake too, once they gain total power. That's my theory, at least. So it shouldn't be a surprise that Chris Shays would sound the alarm. What is a surprise is that no major Democratic leader has had the guts to do it first.

...and Throw Georgia and South Carolina in for Good Measure

In Jesustan, your belief trumps science, and your ignorance is rewarded.

"We've got to pick a film that's going to sell in our area. If it's not going to sell, we're not going to take it," said Lisa Buzzelli, director of an IMAX theater in Charleston that is not showing the movie. "Many people here believe in creationism, not evolution."

It will be kind of interesting to have Dark Age societies right on our (future) southern border, sort of like a living history museum.

Join the Campaign for an Independent Jesustan

Well, this whole Terri Schiavo business has really taken the lid off the fetid mess that constitutes fundamentalist-based politics in this country. With a president who really believes himself chosen by God, senators and representatives who are so intimidated by the religious right that they won't challenge their mythology in the name of the Constitution, and nutwads like Judge Roy Moore getting national TV time with Chris Matthews as though he has anything rational to share--all of this reveals a nation tipping back toward the Dark Ages if secularists don't start fighting back. Last night Moore once again said, "Evolution is a theory," completely exposing his stark ignorance about what the fuck a theory (as opposed to a hypothesis) is.

MOORE: Because there‘s no—there‘s no scientific evidence of evolution.

Evolution is a theory and has been recognized so by many. You have always heard of the missing link, haven‘t you?

MATTHEWS: Right.

MOORE: It is still missing.

He's right about the missing link still missing, because THERE IS NO MISSING LINK TO BEGIN WITH. The links are there, proven in scientific studies. Oy! What a putz! He did, fortunately, admit that he would find it acceptable for a heart surgeon to be trained on creationist views of biology, so when he has that first infarction it's going to be really interesting to see how he fares. Send that man a greasy pork sandwich with a side of chili fries and some deep-fried peach pies for dessert.

A great book on this by Sam Harris, The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason, is well worth reading. He pulls no punches.

Anyway, I'd like to start a movement for a free and independent Jesustan, carved out of Texas, with land grants given to all migrants. Then, in a year or two, when they've reinstituted the total law according to their version of the Bible, bringing back slavery, wife killing, baby sacrifice, and so on, the real United States will be justified in invading them (we can plant a few trailers with tanks and alumininum tubes in them to claim as WMDs) and installing a non-religious representative constitutional democracy. Of course, it may require a few years, or decades, of puppet regimes before they "get it."

Or we could just fence it off as a kind of national mental institution.

Now before anyone flips out, I certainly understand and share the desire for transcendence, and even Olaf here meditates and tries to have those moments of connection to the One. However, it's private. That's my objection to these shitheads who presume to rule us on the basis of their private hallucinations. Law in this country is made from long public discourse (or ought to be, I should say) and if the basis on one's argument is a book of questionable origins which cannot be part of the debate and subjected to all examination of any other text, then the argument from God, or the Bible, or the Koran, or Green Eggs and Ham cannot stand.

So there.

Bushit Lies Spew Forth Eternally, Like Mercury from Smokestacks

From John Aravosis' Americablog, a link and excerpt from a WaPo staff writer who catalogues yet another in the long and growing litany of lies that form the relationship between this government and the people.

Here's some mindfucking logic from "EPA scientist William Farland, who is the agency's deputy assistant administrator for science in research and development." Now remember, this guy is one of the administration's science policy wonks.

[Farland] said he had not seen the Harvard analysis and could not comment on its quality. He said the EPA had not quantified the cardiac costs of mercury because "the science is just not strong enough at this point." While mercury could well damage the heart, he said, that harm might be offset by the known cardiac benefits of eating fish.

Now this is very comforting, isn't it? Even as the mercury in your tuna sandwich is killing your nervous system, you needn't worry about any damage to your heart because it "might" be countered by the heart-healthy fish parts.

Is he fucking kidding me? Why not have a dioxin-loaded B-12 shot, or an anthrax-tofu salad? These are the people who are paid to protect the public's health. Incompetent, sinister, ignorant liars.

Any outrage out there? Or should we just shut up and eat our heart-healthy swordfish with the delicious mercury center?

So When She Says She's a Good Girl . . .

Here's what is either a slap in the face to right-wing sex haters, or, since they may be cleverer than we thought, a reason to actually support abstinence education. According to a study of 12,000 teenagers,

The conclusion -- even though they are not engaging in intercourse, many are having oral and even anal sex as a substitute.

And that's not all, cowboys and cowgirls:

Those who pledged to remain virgins were six times more likely to have had oral sex than those who did not take any type of pledge but retained their virginity. They were also careless in using condoms for their first sexual experiences.

So, if you date a virgin, particularly one who has taken a vow of abstinence, you are six times more likely to bet a blowjob.

No odds given on the possibility of ass-fucking, however. Stay tuned.

Should a Bugman Determine If You Should Live or Die?

Tom DeLay occupies an interesting niche in the evolutionary chain. A former bug controller in Texas, he also serves as a the giant flying cockroach of the Republican Party, able to ooze into the most disgusting cracks in the body politic to find nourishment and protection. And so it is that he is now claiming to know the condition and desires of a woman, Terri Schiavo, whom he's never met and whose medical insurance he would surely cut if it could further fatten the wallet of one of his corporate donors. But this is precisely the creepy, dark, smelly place a guy like DeLay would run to when the boot of justice is about to squash his rotten, pus-filled carapace for massive and continuing abuse of campaign finance laws, degrading the power of his office, and the meataxe redistricting of Texas, among other things.

DeLay's desire to regulate what is primarily a family matter, and then a state issue if disputes arrive within a family, as in this case, reveals how far into your life these insincere extremists want to reach if it serves their political purposes--in this case, cover for DeLay who is going down fast. Considering all the suffering that goes on in this country, and particularly the suffering that occurs because neither party has the balls to advocate for national health care (Dennis Kucinich excepted), it is the most cynical and baldfaced grandstanding imaginable for George Bush, Tom DeLay, and Bill Frist to suddently take an acute interest in a brain-damaged woman in Florida, whose life is not being ended willy-nilly, but because of her husband guardian's declaration of her own wishes, adjudicated in his favor after seven years of struggle in the Florida courts.

It's frightening, the extent to which these extremists want to control the inside of a woman's body, whose equipment you play with during sex, and ultimately to have the power to make you suffer as long as they can by denying death, which, by the way, they seem to have no problem dishing out on a wholesale basis so long as you are non-white or non-American.

I have great faith that this hubris on DeLay's part will make his crushing into tobacco-stained roach pulp all the more pleasurable to watch. I do hope it's slow, too, with no one available to pull the plug on his humiliation.

Bushit Culture: Lie, Lie, Lie

Bushit diehards, of course, will rationalize this business of lying to allies or just ignore it altogether. Of course, the Washington Post is too genteel to actually call lying lying; they prefer "misleading." However, what do you call what is described here?

The Bush administration's approach, intended to isolate North Korea, instead left allies increasingly doubtful as they began to learn that the briefings omitted essential details about the transaction, U.S. officials and foreign diplomats said in interviews.

Got that? "Omitted essential details." Do you know what happens to you if you testify under oath in a court of law and "omit essential details"? Of course, the Bushits won't acknowledge their "misleading," but they do recognize the need to do damage control, so top liar in the State Department, Dr. Condi Rice, is on the case.

In an effort to repair the damage, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is traveling through East Asia this weekend trying to get the six-nation talks back on track.

Translation: In order to threaten, cajole, or orchestrate an elaborate cover-up, or, if required, blame it on the Clinton administration Rice will be pulling on her go-go boots and dancing on the conference table as fast as she can.

As to the WaPo report, if you don't already think they're a bunch of bootlickers for the Bushits, note the way they characterize what to you or me would be a pattern of lies:

The new details follow a string of controversies concerning the Bush administration's use of intelligence on weapons of mass destruction.

"String of controversies." Gee, is it controversial that were were no WMDs in Iraq? There's no controversy--it's a fucking fact. Is there a controversy about Iraqi connections to Al Qaeda? Again, outside of Dick Cheney's diseased consciousness, there is no controversy about the absence of such connections. Iraq connection to 9/11? Again, not controversial. Have we been greeted as liberators? Is Iraq now a stable nation? Was the "Mission Accomplished" when Bush made his premature ejaculatory leap from the cockpit of the Viking aircraft on the deck of the USS Lincoln almost two goddamned years ago? Is Iraqi oil revenue paying for reconstruction? Do private accounts fix solvency in Social Security? Do Republicans believe in states' rights and small government? Balanced budgets? Democracy in the Middle East? Is that a string of controversies, or a pattern of cold, calculated gulling of the 59 million suckers who voted for this mafia?

Liars! And the Washington Post aids and abets lies that result in death and destruction. What a sickening state of our nation.

Olaf Rotkohl and the Compatibility Test

This was one of those harmless and irresistable little compatibility tests, found at the Lengli blog that I stumbled on randomly using the next blog button on blogger. This is what it says about yours truly, Olaf Rotkohl:

You are a generally unfuckwitted, liberal, tight as fuck, relatively well adjusted human being!

See how compatible you are with me. Brought to you by Rum and Monkey

Wolfowitz: King of the Incompetents?

And that's saying something, given the failures of Rice, Rumsfeld, and the Bushits in general. A couple of people have told me I'm overstating things to harp on the incompetence of Paul Wolfowitz, but this article in Salon today makes the case better than I ever could imagine. You'll have to watch an ad to get free access if you're not a member, but it's painless and worth it. For those who think I'm hard on Woofie, Michael Lind has this to say:

Even the greatest statesman makes some mistakes. But Wolfowitz is perfectly incompetent. He is the Mozart of ineptitude, the Einstein of incapacity. To be sure, he has his virtues, the foremost of which is consistency. He has been consistently wrong about foreign policy for 30 years.

Got that? He's a perfect incompetent.

The First Amendment Lives!

This is heartening. Regarding a protestor arrested for leaving a designated protest area:

While [U.S. District Judge Larry J.] McKinney said police security concerns were legitimate, especially less than six months after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, police did not offer any substantial reason why protesters had to be "corraled" 500 feet away.

At least one judge understands that "free speech zones" are an insult to the First Amendment and to our founders. Leaders are obligated to face dissenters, or at least see and hear them. Let's hope that this is the first prick in the bubble surrounding the Potemkin village-type events that have cut the Bushits off from the real world. Even 9/11 is no excuse for eviscerating the U.S. Constitution.

Despair and Hope

First, if you're living in the developing world, you're probably shitting your pants over Wolfowitz's nomination for head of the World Bank. On the other hand, given what Woofie's policy influence has done to our military and our economy, his tenure at the WB ought to put a stake through its heart. Since the WB acts primarily as a frontman for U.S. colonial policy to engineer the financial enslavement of developing economies to international debt so that public entities can be raped by US-friendly business (as in attempted takeovers of public water systems, telecom companies, and so on), there are many who might view Wolfowitz as exactly the incompetent it needs.

Still, if you're living in Burkina Faso or Peru, the dark shadow of King Paul is falling over your future. With Iraq as the lead entry on his resume, it doesn't look good for anyone he claims to want to help.

Hostage to Our Ideology and Currency Traders

The trade deficit of a record $665.9 billion for 2004 could be exceeded by another $100 billion this year. That alone is terrifying in its implications for the U.S. economy. But here's the part of the report that really made my blood run cold.

The Bush administration has pressured China to allow the value of its currency to be determined by open markets.

The dollar has fallen significantly over the past three years against the 12-nation euro, the British pound and the Canadian dollar, but that improvement has not shown up in an improving trade deficit because of the currency manipulation in Asia, analysts said.

In other words, our currency is being artificially supported in the Asian currency markets, which in turn keeps our exports priced higher. So? Well, what is scary is that currency traders seem to have us by the short hairs, because they could trigger an even more precipitous fall in the dollar worldwide, and since our appetite for foreign goods is unquenchable, the effects rippling through our markets will be near cataclysmic. Stocks plunge, interest rates rise to lure back those foreign investors, and the prices of goods inflate. The average working American gets screwed again. Better get a third job.

How much power does this give the Chinese? Ironic, isn't it, that we should end up as dangling from a commie thread of financial support?

It's time to start looking at Euro-denominated bond funds, at least for yours truly.

Brutal, Sick, Hysterical, and Satisfying

Having a bad day at work? Try Whack Your Boss. Yes, it's terrible, isn't it? Hahahahahahahahahahahaha!

More Pricks than the White House; More Dicks than Cheney's Office

Yes, I know I am a bad man, but thanks to Gridskipper, I stumbled onto this wonderful museum. Check out the "list of members" as well as the photo gallery.

Sometimes you just gotta laugh and learn, right?

Torture Nation

Doesn't this make me proud to be a veteran? Anyway, so much for the "few bad apples" excuse. This may be the smoking gun that links the acts of torture to the orders for torture.

The inquiry largely concerns a small group of mostly female interrogators who say they were urged by superiors to be "creative" in late 2002 when Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld expressed frustration about the lack of actionable intelligence being gleaned from prisoners at the base. That may have led some interrogators to take liberties, officials said.

That last sentence is a classic. I don't know how they train people now, but when I was in the service, we were made acutely aware of the Geneva Convention and it was essential to understand that there was such a thing as an illegal order. That is not to say that some people would balk at carrying out such commands, but I simply don't buy the argument that all of these guards and interrogators, ranging from Afghanistan to Abu Ghraib to Gitmo, simultaneously and on their own initiative cooked up these abuses that are so particular to the culture. Do you really think that your average G.I. knows enough about Muslim culture to have concocted these specific techniques?

Let's hope this is the first domino falling for Rumsfeld, Bush, et. al., to pay for this shameful episode. The toleration and/or promulgation of torture is a black mark on the hide of everyone who has ever served the nation. Torture is never justified by a civilized people.