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.

Are You Rapture Ready?

With Iran going nuclear and Chimpie calling Seymour Hersh's claim of war planning "wild speculation" but not wrong, I thought it was high time to check out the Rapture Ready Index to see how soon all the Christians would be leaving us to our flaying, boiling, and general suffering at the hands of the winged demons. For those of you unfamiliar with the RRI, here's the basic breakdown, from the good folks at Rapture Ready:

The Rapture Index has two functions: one is to factor together a number of related end time components into a cohesive indicator, and the other is to standardize those components to eliminate the wide variance that currently exists with prophecy reporting.

The Rapture Index is by no means meant to predict the rapture, however, the index is designed to measure the type of activity that could act as a precursor to the rapture.

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

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

Today that index stands at a grab-your-scrotum 156. And for those of you who expect to be whisked away from this future bubbling cauldron of pain that the earth will become, RR provides a nice real estate guide to how you'll be living in Jesus' neighborhood. If I were going to heaven, I'd really want something like that Struggling Believer Mansion or the Wood, Hay, and Stubble Mansion--no need to hire help to maintain the facility, two minutes a week to vacuum, and low energy costs, particularly judging by the tropical setting of the latter model.

The Discussion We Aren't Having About Immigration

Here's the crux of the argument: America--corporate America and the American consumers themselves--depends on cheap, exploitable labor. At the same time, the racist elements of the the country require rhetoric that claims to want to protect our borders. So what are the corporate lackeys in the Democratic and Republican parties to do to have it both ways? Well, you're seeing it.

Look, securing national borders is not rocket science. While we may have an official policy regarding immigration and technical classify some people as "illegal" immigrants, the fact is that our borders are porous specifically because there are high-level decisions in the federal government to keep them porous because without a large illegal, cheap, exploitable, unquantifiable pool of labor to suppress wages, our economy would be unsustainable in its present form.

Do you want to pay $5.00/lb for tomatoes? Then don't bitch about migrant laborers. You want to be able to get a hotel room for under $100/night. Don't bitch about migrant laborers. You like getting that 99 cent special at McDonald's? Don't bitch about migrant laborers.

Democrats and Republicans alike have underfunded the Border Patrol, the Customs Service, and the Immigration and Naturalization Service in conscious service to maintaining a surplus supply of labor to keep the wheels of the American economy turning. The whole stinking mess is balanced on the backs of all those poor, hard-working people who will risk anything just to get a lousy job doing stoop labor in the fields or scrubbing toilets in office buildings or hauling away trash from construction sites for new stucco fucko McMansions in the suburbs of Phoenix and Albuquerque or slicing up steer carcassess in slaughterhouses in Storm Lake, Iowa.

Two things are required, both morally and practically to fix this "problem." One, pay a fair livable wage to EVERY worker in the United States. Second, accept the real cost of things. We all turn a blind eye to the misery that supports our lifestyle and persecute the poorest among us when things go a little sour.

We are a miserably hypocritical society, and when I hear these fat white bastards crying about the threat from south of the border even as then jerk off to pay-per-view porno in their immigrant-cleaned hotel suite on their immigrant-laundered sheets, I want to strip them of their birth certificates and send them to a border slum in Sonora, Mexico, for a few years to learn some lessons in fundamental economics.

Veneral Disease in the White House

I don't know how else to diagnose a Leaky Bush and a Leaky Dick. That drip, drip, drip is a sure sign of gonorrhea, along with this burning sensation the nation has in its collective urinary tract. Often characterized in men by a "white, yellow, or green pus from the penis with pain," this diagnosis explains a great deal about the emanations from the mouths of Dick and Bush as well as little Scottie McClellan's pus-packed proclamations last week before the ever-prostrate White House press corps.

More later. Sorry for the long outage--I've been living in a state of despair and shock that the people haven't risen up and gotten into the streets over this shit. Over immigration, sure, but over the hijacking of the government as a whole? No fury. I don't get it.

The Torture Test

Despite the claims by El Chimperor that "We do not torture," people at the Pentagon, perhaps conscious of the war crimes implications of the work they've been doing at Gitmo and Abu Ghraib and elsewhere through proxies via "extraordinary rendition," have decided to make official that evidence derived through torture cannot be used in military tribunals.

There's just one little problem--it still hasn't been determined what torture is. And I, naturally, have a suggestion as to how to come to the definition of torture.

Let's take Rush Limbaugh, for example, who has said that what happened at Abu Ghraib was no more than fraternity pranks. We will install him in a five-star hotel, feed him all the mutton and tongue sandwiches he wants, and let ex-girlfriend Daryn Kagan, a CNN "reporter" in to service him as required. (Yes, I don't want to think of it either.) Pay him a million dollars too. And give him a little OxyContin now and then.

Here's the test: if, during an interrogation by the military, the question comes up, "Are we torturing this guy?" Limbaugh is taken into the basement area especially equipped for this exercise (scrubbable tile, floor drain, steam hose, and a surgeon's tray with various implements). Let's say that the interrogator at Gitmo wants to punch the detainee a little. Okay, so smash Limbaugh in his fat puss. "Hey, Rush, is this torture?" If he says no, then beat up the detainee.

Chain Limbaugh to the floor in a stress position for twenty-four hours, naked, in a room lowered to 45 degrees Fahrenheit until he shits himself. "Hey Rush, is this torture?" If he says no, then lock that sucker detainee in Gitmo down.

Hook Rush up to some electrical wires on his fingers, or his balls, or one in his mouth and one up the rectum. Turn on the juice. "Hey Rush, is this torture?" If he says no, then crank that generator up and fry those motherfuckers at Abu Ghraib. Pull out Rush's fingernails, let the attack dogs on his ass, rape him with a nightstick. "Hey Rush, is this torture?"

Of course, in that last case he might say, "Please don't stop!" You run that risk.

I think that this is a great system, because we have an individual who thinks that (a) torture IS justified in these cases and who (b) doesn't believe that real torture actually occurs. And we shouldn't limit it to Rush. There are plenty of candidates: Rumsfeld, Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter, Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, Alberto Gonzalez, and even Chimpie himself, just in case someone dies from the "fraternity pranks." Anything one of these torture-lovers can stand is a reasonable treatment for a detainee. Simple, effective, cheap (no lawyers needed), I think that both conservatives and liberals could get behind this idea.

Please tell your friends.

What More Is There to Say?

Chimpie holds a press conference. Chimpie lies. Dick "I haven't shot anyone in the face for three weeks" Cheney gives an interview. Cheney lies. The war drags on. Wealth shifts more and more to the wealthy. The environments declines. Chimpie lies. Cheney lies. The Constitution has more text crossed out. The aftermath of Hurricane Katrina remains unaddressed by those paid and entrusted to deal with it. American coffins continue to slide into Dover AFB, unphotographed and unreported. Chimpie lies. Cheney lies.

Still 33 percent of Americans polled still will themselves to believe and to celebrate this corrupt and incompetent regime. Twice that number now have stopped giving any more benefit of doubt or good intentions.

What more can be written? What more can be said? The "opposition" Democratic party wets itself in the corner wondering if it's okay now to disagree with El Presidente. They are no different than the Republicans, cowards and enablers all, deserving nothing but contempt and gobs of phlegmy spit in their faces.

Without a voice, people have only one course of action remaining. There is a mass of anger broiling in this country, none of it finding expression and alliance within our alleged free press. Frustration builds. Patience thins. Elections are suspect. Hope is drained from the people. Those in power now have only power to wield, absent the consent of the governed. The Declaration of Independence addresses this condition.

I fear it is going to be a very hot summer.

If Justice Exists...

...this will be in our future.

The Cowardice of Punditocracy

I had the displeasure to endure yet another interview with Frances Fukayama on NPR this morning because he, along with David Brooks of the New York Times, Byron York of the National Review, and other chickenshit chickenhawk lickspittles can no longer escape the disasters that they have been cheerleading for years. Their cowardice knows no bounds. Listening to them or reading them scrambling to fog their past declarations about the invincibility and intelligence of George W. Bush and his hand-picked criminal cabal, one can only think of collaborators of an occupying power suddenly stripping off their armbands, growing beards, and dressing down before escaping to friendlier zones. The true believers, of course, at least do the honorable thing and put a bullet into their own skulls, but these are the most cowardly of cowards, who align themselves with power, inflate and falsify their virtues, and could never proclaim loudly enough how tasty Chimpie's anus was.

Editor and Publisher reveals the brown stain beneath the brown shirt of David Brooks, the one he so quickly has shucked off now that his love object is sliding around the mouth of the historical sewer. Read it. It would be funny if the suffering he and his ilk have enabled wasn't so terrible and going to plague us for so many years even after Bush's stink is cleared out of the White House.

Space and Time, Somewhere...

Yes, I've been remiss in blogging lately, partly due to several unhealthy obsessions, one or two of which I'll confess, but also because I'm standing in front of the radio with mouth open in a silent scream as things go from bad to unimaginably bad with the country. Finally, I reached Chimp exhaustion, turned everything off, and focused on regaining a healthy sense of outrage.

In the meantime, I strongly encourage visiting Dependable Renegade, which always makes me laugh. Water Tiger is one witty, sharp-tongued woman, wrapping truth in a delicious sauce of irony and satire.

Here's some unsolicited advice. Never, ever start getting G.A.S. aka Guitar Acquisition Syndrome, and then have a guitar made by Bill Collings in Austin pass through your hands. Rather than blogging, I've been staring at guitar porn, and not just Collings, but also Bourgeois out of Maine, and a few Martins, and maybe a de Jonge or two. Still, I maintained control, didn't spend any money, but of course am now determined to land a first-class instrument one way or another.

Now if only I could actually play worth a damn. But that's not what GAS is all about.

The other obsession is that of vocational choices, which you'd think would be a good thing to have, but which actually is torment until suddenly all choices are gone. Now that I'm rendered back to a rather more predictable, but not absolute, notion of what I'll be doing for a few more months, I have turned those energies into fantasies of moving to Berlin again. Aside from the obvious reasons like impending martial law, national bankruptcy, and theofascist hegemony in the institutions of government, we face a more pressing crisis right in our own homespace. In our part of the country, moisture has been scarce for a record period of time and come summer it's going to be at flashpoint. So, while Chimpie is burning the Constitution, torching the economy, and hot-footing US allies with his petulant ignorance and incompetence, the forces of nature or God are going to punish this corner of the land by turning it all into ash if some idiot so much as tosses a cigarette out his car window. Frankly, we're terrified. We may find ourselves cut off from the very nature we are blessed to have surround us because the National Forests will be closed, and so all that will be left to us is hanging around coffee shops bitching about the state of things and getting on each others' nerves.

So maybe your truly should at least take a month or two and immerse himself back in the once-divided city on some pretense, like a language immersion program, or maybe just some time in a sanatarium.

Anyway, my apologies for the long gap.

And to my friend in Nebraska, Howdy-hi! I'll be visiting the library tomorrow.

Over and out.

Chimpie: Spreading the Love

Most hated man on earth? You decide.

About 5,000 personnel including snipers, commandos and U.S. marines using helicopters, bomb detectors and electronic jammers will protect President George W. Bush during his visit to India this week, officials said on Monday.

Wherever he goes, it's a war zone.

A day before U.S. President George W. Bush arrives here, Delhi's Maurya Sheraton Hotel is all decked up and ready to play host... The hotel, which now resembles a fortress, has an all-time high security cover and is also witnessing an intensive beautification drive that has ensured trimmed bushes and white sheets stretched across the green area opposite the premium luxury hotel.

While the visiting American team has booked all 600 rooms in the hotel, the authorities here claim that they aren't making any special arrangements or changes in menu for the visiting President.

Meanwhile, other hospitality industry experts prepared their welcome for the Chimperor.

"We emphatically oppose the forthcoming visit... President Bush is the topmost official of U.S. imperialism, leading enemy of the sovereignty of nations and the peoples of the world today. He is the leader of the imperialist quest at neo-colonial world domination. He is certainly not welcome in India... " the Committee consisting of the Left, the Samajwadi Party, the Janata Dal (Secular) and the Indian Justice Party said in a joint statement.

I'd recommend staying quietly in his room. Order the chicken vindaloo. It's excellent.