It's Not the Money That Bothers Me Most...

It's all those small brown paper bags it was handed out in. No wonder I had to start carrying my sandwich in my briefcase.

But seriously, what's a mere $12 billion bucks mislaid here or there when we're spending over $2.25 billion a week just to destroy our own country's reputation, economy, and moral authority? All you green eyeshade-types need to pry your fingers loose from your adding machines at look at the positive side of this: Chimpie's taking the money from those lousy poor and elderly. What better way to use it than to spend it blowing shit up and repealing the Bill of Rights?

There. Don't you feel better now?

Not Seventy-two Virgins, and not Eternal Cloud Lounging...

But it wouldn't be bad if heaven turned out like this.

He's Lucky Nobody Punched Him in the Face

This didn't make me laugh because it took over 3000 American lives to reach the middle of America, but Bush ought to be getting a good feel for what "his people" think of him and his incompetent, corrupt regime. Never mind the rest of us. Of a Bush "surprise" visit to a diner in Illinois this week, we have the following:

In Peoria this week, many patrons found their pancakes more interesting. Except for the click of news cameras and the clang of a dish from the kitchen, the quiet was deafening.

“Sorry to interrupt you,” Bush said to a group of women, who were sitting in a booth with their young kids. “How’s the service?” As Bush signed a few autographs and shook hands, a man sitting at the counter lit a cigarette and asked for more coffee. Another woman, eyeing Bush and his entourage, sighed heavily and went back to her paper. She was reading the obituaries. “Sorry to interrupt your breakfast,” a White House aide told her. “No problem,” she huffed, in a not-so-friendly way. “Life goes on, I guess.”

What if the cameras and secret service hadn't been around? Do you think anything has penetrated that thick skull yet? Maybe impeachment isn't so far away after all, if even in Peoria--Peoria!--it's all anyone can do to simply feign politeness.

Toast, toastie, toasted.

Please, Somebody, Save Me from Myself!

I've always had a touch of madness, but none so worrisome as my fetish for certain things French, and the main one among them (gasp!) is the Citroen DS automobile model made in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s. Last summer in Berlin I came face-to-face with a few, and to say that my heart nearly burst for the beauty and absolute unattainability of these gorgeous beasts is an understatement. I did indeed grow faint at one point and had to sit on a kerb simply drinking in the incredible lines of the sheet metal arcing like a haughty Gaelic sneer from bumper to bumper.

Then I saw one on my home streets last week. And now I find that there are some real Citroen nuts not so far away in California, and a whole subculture of Citroen freaks.

What am I to do? Please, please, please help me!

Measuring Madness by the Calendar

This picture was taken by Olaf on Saturday, January 23, 2003, in San Francisco, at the protest against war in Iraq before the invasion. That was now over four years ago.

And how long has it taken the naysayers, Dems and Repubs alike, to even begin to come around to see that we were right? How many dollars wasted? How many lives destroyed? Yet still they hesitate lest their political ambitions be thwarted.

The people must lead, or they will be cast into the cauldron by those who have the arrogance to take their lead from them through ignorance, fear, and suppression of reason.

Immortal Olaf? Well, Probably Not.

Oh, if only this were a fact of the landscape. Think how quickly the regime would shape up if confronted with thousands of these images in every city in the nation. One cannot help but wonder, what is the power of Olaf?

I hope someone sees the self-referential irony in this graffito-neato. Ain't I postmodern?

This Is How the Finger Actually Works

This individual happens to be protesting the ongoing ban on imports from Cuba, chiefly those lovely Cohiba cigars. Note that he holds icons representing the embargo in the frame with his squinty-eyed visage: the cigar burns slowly and deliciously and the ring is held pinched between his fingers asserting the origin and authenticity of the smoke. His right hand forms a proper "finger" in which the knuckles should frame the finger much like the carriage frames the barrel of a cannon. I'm really quite taken with the compositional balance of this photograph. It forms two triangles, yet puts the essential elements all along a single horizontal. The wristwatch pulls the eye across the action of the picture and the perfect head-on angle to a less-than-perfect face gives it a certain almost Gaellic disdain, despite that the model has not a drop of French blood running through him.

Oh, and if the customs people are thinking about pursuing this guy, the cigar was purchased and consumed legally in another country. And every puff was like a big "fuck you" to the Bush-Cheney cabal...or at least it felt that way. Please compare the weak method used by El Presidente (below) compared to the muscular mode of giving the finger employed by our cigar lover.

Ah, the small pleasures are what makes life worth living.

The Man with his Finger on the Button

Hey, American people! Fuck you! Ah'm goin' into Iran.

Veep Cheney may be still controlling the language and the policy of this deranged regime, but Junior still controls the magic finger, and that finger (No. That finger.) is only one secret service agent away from nuking his enemies, among whom a lot of us are now counted by virtue of our failure to worship his divinity. But Cheney's madness is articulate enough to continue to fool the 30 percent out there who still think Georgie is a terrific president. Here's an example:

Obviously, there was flawed intelligence prior to the war ... but we should not let the fact of past problems in that area lead us to ignore the threat we face today and in the future.

This sounds like a good argument, right? Of course, it's completely false reasoning, because NO ONE is suggesting we ignore the threats we face. I believe the rhetoricians call this the "straw man" fallacy. Note also that he's still blaming the intelligence--"there was flawed intelligence"--without acknowledging the filtering role he and his minions played in assuring that no contrary evidence to their predetermined plans to invade Iraq got traction in the White House. And let's not forget the unrelenting incompetence of their performance of the invasion, whether supported or not by intelligenge: no plan for occupation, no plan for establishment of civil authority, and no desire to think about anything except Chimpie in a crotch-enhanced flight suit in his ultimate dress-up fetish moment.

We've now reached the point where polls reveal that 58 percent of Americans just wish that the Bush regime was over. Well, wishing doesn't make it so. The criminality this cabal has committed is sufficient material to impeach, remove from office, indict, try, convict, and imprison them for the rest of their natural lives, after which time they will be handed over to Satan to be roasted and boiled alive throughout all eternity, but that is beyond the court's jurisdiction. I'll settle for impeachment and removal from power. Let the historians take care of the rest, or the court at the Hague.

This Is Your Brain. This Is Your Brain on Freud.

I love the smell of anxiety in the morning! Smells like...victory!

Media Crash

Ha! Big surprise--this administration considers Tim Russert as their boy, which was pretty obvious every time he had one of their number of his NBC-based "Press the Meat" television ass-kissing venue. Under the guise of "hard-hitting" journalist, I can concede Russert asks tough questions. But he falls down in the follow-up nearly every time, as if incapable of anticipating a lie and then challenging effectively. So he has Dick Cheney on, for example, poses what seems a pointed, grilling question, and then, when Cheney out-and-out lies, Russert simply goes on to the next topic rather than saying, "Say what, motherfucker? Don't bullshit me, bald man."

Liberal media, my ass. One of the reasons we're in such a state with regard to Iraq, not to mention just about every other arena, is that the press did not do their job. They should always be challenging the statements of people in power, forcing them to produce the evidence and the reasoning they are using upon it. Instead of being a counterweight to power, they acted as a megaphone for it, and had we not had the alternative media power of the Internet, I shudder to think of how much worse it might have been.

To give the mainstream media their due, it is true that their resources and skills uncover most of the news. They have the means, the money, the expertise, and there are some damned good journalists out there, but the media as a whole has become so beholden to economic interests on the one hand, and the "inside the beltway" press has become so interwoven with the power brokers on the other, that they are now of the same class, with the same interests, and with the same disregard for the general citizenry.

And I wish they would lay off Lindsay Lohan, for chrissakes. Jeez--let the young woman get her shit together. I think she's wonderfully talented. Yes, I do have a weakness for redheads. Is that a crime?

Um, ahem. Sorry. What I mean is that all this obsession for celebrity misdoings just sucks the energy away from stuff that really matters to people's actual lives. Who gives a fuck if two obnoxious media whores like Donald Trump and Rosie O'Donnell are having a bitch-slapping contest? Actually, that piece by Andy Borowitz is pretty damned funny.

The ongoing feud between Rosie O'Donnell and Donald Trump could have deadly consequences for the world if either obtained nuclear weapons, a group of leading nuclear scientists announced today.

The Chicago-based Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, founded in 1945 as a publication by nuclear physicists worried about the possibility of nuclear war, expressed their concern about the Rosie-Trump brouhaha by moving the Doomsday Clock forward to three minutes to midnight.

It's Friday. What can I tell you?

YOU Will Live Blog SoTU!

I'm going to the movies with our neighbor (Children of Men, with movie popcorn for dinner). I sat through Chimpie's "surge" speech on Iraq, and if you expect me to remain even marginally civil, I can't do it again so soon. Have a little mercy, for heaven's sake.

So here's my proposal--you all live blog through the comments function on this post and get me up to date when I get back from the movie.

Otherwise, the next post after this photo will be of MY head exploding.

Not that that would have a deleterious effect on my thinking, of course.

Oh, and if you need a warm-up or a replacement SoTU, watch this. It will make your head explode, it's so goddamned funny. And the Dems response is even funnier.

Two of These Are Not Olaf

Can you figure out who's who? Vote now! You could be the big winner and get to watch the SoTU with one of these dudes!

Feel the Excitement? It's Almost Magic Time!

Oh, I don't know about you, but I'm about ready to pop knowing that Fearless Leader is about to address the nation on the State of the Union. I can't wait to hear the major leaps we've made toward detoxing from last year's declaration of our addiction to oil and our continuing escalation of success in Iraq. I'll be leaping to my feet as we learn about the great plans for universal health care and the rebirth of New Orleans as the major vacation spot in America. We'll learn of our other victories in the War on Drugs, the War on Poverty, War on Terror, and the War on Christmas. It's going to be such a glorious speech--I can just feel it. We'll once again know the true meaning of "compassionate conservatism" from the man who not only is "a uniter, not a divider," but also a "decider" who knows the meaning of "working hard for the American people" and who really knows when to surge, when to declare mission accomplished and when to admit his mistakes and correct his course, always with only our interests first and foremost in his thoughts and prayers.

And I think they're going to catch that Osama guy tonight, or so my sources tell me, because with Saddam dead we don't want to forget why we went into Iraq. Oh, wait...Osama's in Afghanistan or Pakistan, isn't he? Well, close enough.

The truly priceless thing will be to see Nancy Pelosi and Dick Cheney seated side by side in the spirit of true bipartisan love. And while Fearless (for other people's children) Leader runs through his litany of success, we'll get to watch the firm-handed opposition party jump to applaud his every declaration. It's exhilirating to be living in a democracy with such responsiveness to the will of the people.

I'll be popping popcorn and icing down the Pilsner Urquell. Come join me in our national celebration of truth, justice, and the American way!

As If He Wasn't Feeling Low Enough...

Poor, poor Chimpie. Not only does he have to suffer further party defections, the loss of the legislature, and an even more ignominious legacy than even the worst of us could have wished on him, now he has to suffer the greenness of extreme wannabe tyrant envy.

Venezuela's National Assembly has given initial approval to a bill granting President Hugo Chavez the power to rule by decree for 18 months.

And Chavez is a guy who we happily waved goodbye to within twenty-four hours of an unsuccessful coup to topple him, but he's certainly gotten the last laugh. Bush can only dream about ruling like a monarch, but Chavez is going to get to live that dream.

Mr Chavez said he wants to approve "revolutionary laws" to enact sweeping political, economic and social changes.

So did Bush, like shredding the Bill of Rights, waging eternal war, and looting the national treasury for the benefit of Uncle Dick's friends. There was just one little advantage that Chavez has over him.

Mr Chavez began his third term in office last week after a landslide election victory in December.

Even if Chimpie could run for a third term, a 29 percent favorable rating in the polls does not bode well for a Chavez-style victory. And as much as I've badmouthed the Democrats for spinelessness, at least they show up now and then.

Venezuela's political opposition has no representation in the National Assembly since it boycotted elections in 2005.

Yeah, instead of vilifying Chavez and supporting his ouster, it might have been better to buddy up to him and learn his secrets of success. Ah well, Bush has always managed to cultivate failure and defeat, even when the odds were totally in his favor. And there's the difference. Chavez is a winner. Bush is a loser.

And that's no endorsement for Chavez, but I must say he knows how to be a populist and he knows how to play his game. Let's hope he meets our best expectations for the people of Venezuela and the developing nations.

Tony Snow, Master of Rhetoric

Can you guess who's been hitting his notes from Introduction to English Composition?

"What message does Congress intend to give?" asked White House spokesman Tony Snow. "And who does it think the audience is? Is the audience merely the president? Is it the voting American public or, in an age of instant communication, is it also al-Qaida?"

Next, Mr. Snow asked, "And who's the author? What's the purpose?"

Answers: Iraq is a debacle, Chimpie, the American people via the last election, and to inform El Presidente that he is the biggest fuck-up in presidential history.

Oh, and Tony, a bit of advice: as a rhetorical strategy, associating defecting Republican legislators with al-Qaida sympathizers is a loser. It didn't work on the Democrats last year, so I'd like to know who your audience is: Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck? That's about all who you've got besides Laura and Barney. Saying you're either with us or with the enemy is, um, a false dichotomy. You could look it up.

More Mission Accomplished

You have to hand it to this administration--even I could not have predicted that rivers of shit would one day run through Baghdad.

Dr Abdul-Rahman Adil Ali of the Baghdad Health Directorate warned of the dire consequences of a non-operational sewage system.

"As the sewage system has collapsed, all residents are threatened with gastroenteritis, typhoid fever, cholera, diarrhoea and hepatitis. In some of Baghdad's poor neighbourhoods, people drink water which is mixed with sewage," Ali said.

But wait, as they say on the commercial, there's more! Four more Americans were slaughtered for Chimpie's vanity, along with at least another sixty-five Iraqis in Baghdad near a university. But have no fear. Dr. Condoleezza "Pinnacle of Competence" Rice is on the case! Here's part of her remarkable strategy:

In Saudi Arabia, Rice thanked her hosts for their past help in urging national reconciliation in Iraq, but did not press specific new requests for the predominantly Sunni kingdom's help.

After all, Saudi Arabia is Sunni, has lots of oil, and is allegedly our ally in the region (nevermind not a democracy), so why would Rice pressure them to help calm a Sunni vs Shiite bloodbath right next door? I tell you, her strategy is so fucking brilliant, I can't even figure it out. I mean, it's completely counterintuitive, and that's the genius of it. Just like the genius of everything to do with Iraq war.

I sure am glad we have these supersmart people who can interpret for us. Escalation is "augmentation." Failure is "success that hasn't happened yet." Rising violence in Afghanistan is a sign of sure victory. "Stay the course" means change the course, but of course, we never said "stay the course." And naturally, "we do not torture" means...well, if you're declared an enemy combatant, I'd say you'd better learn to hold your breath for a really, really long time.

Foucault, I can understand. The Chimperor administration? They're too damned smart for me.

Do I Get to Say, "I Told You So"?

You might accuse me of picking on Condi Rice for being an incompetent in every government job she's ever held, so let's just stick to recent history--her tenure as Secretary of State. Well, folks, even Robert "I finked out a CIA agent" Novak is reporting that Republicans line up on this issue with Olaf.

Republicans in Congress, who do not want to be quoted, tell me the State Department under Secretary Condoleezza Rice is a mess.

Rice leading the State Department into disaster was easily predictable given her previous tenure as national security advisor ("No one could have predicted...", etc.), but the persistence with which she has been promoted and applauded by the administration, the Republicans, and still by elements in the mainstream media who are terrified of challenging her for reasons that totally escape me, have enabled her to become a one-woman diplomatic wrecking machine. This, according to Novak, is why John "Honduran Death Squad" Negroponte was pressured to give up his intelligence czar job to become Rice's number two at State--he's supposed to bail her out so she can be reassigned to bring failure to some new arena.

I've got a suggestion--make her chair of the Republican National Campaign Committee for 2008.

Final thought--I wonder if Rice's failure at diplomatic duties is one reason that the administration decided on an escalation of military force. There may have been no alternative because she could not get a foot in the door with essential players in the region.

Not to Belabor the Point, But More Clear Evidence of Sociopathy

Now maybe Chimpie is not a sociopath, but actually a psychopath. I dunno--Wikipedia explained it to me thus:

The difference between sociopathy and psychopathy, according to Hare, may "reflect the users views on the origins and determinates of the disorder."Most sociologists, criminologists, and even some psychologists believe the disorder is caused by social conflicts, and thus prefer the term 'sociopath.' Those who believe as Hare does, that a combination of psychological, biological and genetic factors all contribute to the disorder are more likely to use the term 'psychopath'.

In either case, here is Bush's expression of responsibility.

"Where mistakes have been made, the responsibility rests with me," Bush said.

Note the passive construction in "mistakes have been made," and the corresponding avoidance of active responsibility in that it "rests with me." He simply is incapable, essentially physically and mentally incapable, of saying "I have failed." If he did, it would result in something I would love to see just once in my life: exploding head syndrome. I watch people yakking into their cell phones hoping that sooner or later one will detonate, but chances were better when the first Iridium satellite phones came out. That antenna looks like a stick of dynamite. Considering the power requirements for sending a signal skyward, direct to a satellite, eventually I'd expect a few splatter events.

But I digress. Mark Crispin Miller opined in his 2002 book that Bush's malapropisms and seeming paralysis with the English language was actually a manifestation of his sociopathic inability to admit error or blame. But because his name is Bush and not Rotkohl, rather than intervention and counseling, or at least detainment, he gets to express his sociopathy through the instrument of the presidency, and the blood and treasure he wastes on his illness is always someone else's, just like the blame.

War is not a therapeutic remedy. The only question seems to be, is Bush's behavior criminal or insane?

Live Blogging El Presidente's Hail Mary Pass

• What's the realistic sick joke here?
• Note the blue tie--a sop to Democrats?
• Who designed this backdrop? Some dickey-doo on the left edge of the screen looks like part of a hookah. Note the primary red theme in the bookshelves--sets off the dark suit.
• "The consequences of failure are clear." You're right, Chimpie. We see them every day, because failure has been occuring for quite a while now.
• Define "success." He talks as if only Baghdad matters. Is his plan to secure the city and cede the country?
• Oh, Christ--he wants to 'splain things to us.
• 18 Iraqi brigades plus local police patrolling Baghdad. Yes, there is definitely a positive precedent in the past 18 months.
• More than 20,000 Americans to be deployed, of which five brigades will embed with Iraqi units. There's something to look forward to.
  
• Why will this operation succeed? Because the "killers" realized that all they had to do was flow back into cleared areas. Does no one remember Vietnam?
• Ooooooh--a threat. Our commitment is not open-ended. "Now is the time to act." What we've just been fucking off for the last nearly four years?
• "...our television screens filled with death and murder." Hmmmm, why is that, I wonder?
• "...visible improvements to Iraqi neighborhoods." What the fuck was Halliburton, Brown and Root, Bechtel, et al doing all this time? Where's the money, dude?
• Speed the transition? Starting from what time?
• There, he admitted it--Iraq is on its way to becoming a base from which attacks on the U.S can be launched.
• 4000 military personnel for Anbar province. That should be pretty easy. It's only as big as North Carolina--roughly 53,000 square miles--and holds 1.4 million people. So that's, um, one additional GI per 13 sq. miles. That should settle the place down.
  
• Oh goody! Condi Rice is heading for Iraq on Friday. She's so competent...well, except for ignoring the "Bin Laden Determined to Attack U.S." PDB, and admitting to never imagining someone using planes to attack buildings, and failing to show any progress anywhere on the diplomatic front in the Middle East. Yeah, she's perfect.
• The insurgents are without conscience? What about a sociopathic president who cannot say, "I screwed up"?
• Victory won't look like what our fathers experienced? I get it--we redefine victory to resemble Iraq as it is today. Hooray! We won!
• A withdrawal would cause mass deaths on an unimaginable scale? Yeah, the scale so far was expected, right?
• Oh, so now it's the Democrats who are failing to provide a solution. And he praises Lieberman, big surprise. God, how Joe must feel like he mistook an anchor for a life preserver when he tied his wagon to Bush's star. It's fun watching Joe-mentum slow into reverse.
• "...worthy of their sacrifice." How dare this AWOL jerkoff tell us about "sacrifice."
  
• What a fucking worthless 20 minutes. Now for screaming head analysis which will yield exactly zero light--more of my life down the drain. Only Olbermann has anything thoughtful to offer. Matthews makes me puke--I think of how lavishly and shamelessly he used to praise Bush. Some analyst.
• I gotta go throw up.

My Dream for Tomorrow Night

Tomorrow, of course, is when El Bushito will unveil his "surge and accelerate" plan, this being a Rovism for "blame someone else," or a clumsy translation for "decent interval," which was war criminal Kissinger's immortal contribution to egocentric ass-covering.

My dream is that near and far, from the rural open spaces and the urban crush, from the north and south, from the red states and from the blue states, a swelling mass of Americans take to the streets. I think of Yugoslavia in 2000, when the population of Serbs "surged and accelerated" into the streets of Belgrade to demand that another war criminal of the 20th century, Slobodan Milosevic, get out of the presidential palace, and yield to the demonstrated will of the people, who had elected Vojislav Kostunica to replace him. Milosevic was at the point of ordering the army to shoot his countrymen in order to retain power.

"Gotov je!" the thousands shouted in the streets in Serb0-Croatian. "He's finished!"

The army sided with the people. Milosevic was out.

Now we confront an American president with a very recent Gallup poll putting his handling of Iraq at 26 percent. He faces objection to his plan by 30 percent of his own party, and 85 percent of the opposition. He has demonstrated that he will lie, that he cares little for the Constitution, and that he believes himself to possess an imperial right to strip citizens of their rights to privacy, to illegal search and seizure, to even deny their citizenship, and that he believes he has the power to subject them to torture on his orders.

Imagine if, during his speech, there was heard in the background a low and distant hum. Slowly it would begin to increase and gain a rhythm. It would start to thrum against the walls of the White House, and crystal in the dining room would begin to tinkle as though an earthquake was commencing from deep beneath the earth's crust. Soon, even the directional microphones pointed at Bush could not filter out the now-deafening shouts of tens of thousands of people jamming the streets outside.

"He's finished! Get out! You're finished! Get out!"

That is my dream.