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.

Chimpie: Architect of Peace

Oh Christ. Even National Intelligence Director John "Death Squad" Negroponte (do a Google search on Negroponte and his record in Central America) thinks that Bush has brought us closer to World War IV than anyone could have dreamed.

A civil war in Iraq could lead to a broader conflict in the Middle East, pitting the region's rival Islamic sects against each other...

Chimpie, you're doin' a heckuva job.

What have we done as a nation to deserve this? Was it Vietnam? Anyway, it gets better. Chimpie decided to impart his fathomless wisdom in interviews and speeches today.

President Bush condemned the surge in violence and said Iraqis must make a choice between "a free society or a society dictated ... by evil people who will kill innocents."

Yeah, El Presidente, we all know the feeling. I just never expected to be facing the choice inside the borders of my own damned country.

Later, in an interview with ABC News' "World News Tonight," he said he did not believe the escalation of civil unrest would lead to a general civil war.

No, of course not. Why should he start listening to anyone in touch with reality now?

Chimpie: Torturer in Chief

Every American should read this piece by Fred Branfman, "On Being Good Americans in Time of Torture," because he makes two points that should give every single one of us a bad conscience. (1) Bush, unlike any other leader in modern history, has officially reserved the right to torture people at his discretion, and (2) We have all been witnesses to this declaration, despite his bald-faced lie, "We do not torture." In fact, even as he signed the recent defense bill with John McCain's amendment against torture (which passed 90-9 in the Senate, and which Bush threatened the entire defense bill over), he also signed a statement reserving his right to do whatever he saw fit under the guise of protecting America against terrorism. In other words, Chimpie maintained that he had the power to order torture if he personally deemed it necessary.

So Bush has crowned himself Torturer in Chief, and we all know it. The blood and suffering is on our hands, on every American's hands, if we do not bring this monster to justice.

Here's One Reason I Didn't Make the Military My Career

Unbelievable, but sadly understandable. This explains why we have civilian control over the military, but when you get a bunch of ideologically fascist, lying, incompetents running the civilian side, the military gets it in the neck. Zogby has the numbers:

-- Le Moyne College/Zogby Poll shows just one in five troops want to heed Bush call to stay “as long as they are needed”
-- While 58% say mission is clear, 42% say U.S. role is hazy
-- Plurality believes Iraqi insurgents are mostly homegrown
-- Almost 90% think war is retaliation for Saddam’s role in 9/11, most don’t blame Iraqi public for insurgent attacks
-- Majority of troops oppose use of harsh prisoner interrogation
-- Plurality of troops pleased with their armor and equipment

What the fuck? How is it possible that long after no one except Dick Cheney and Orrin Hatch claim that Iraq was involved in 9/11, that 90% of our GIs think that's why they're there?

That's why I did my hitch in the military and got out. The mixture of propaganda and willful, rationalizing self-delusion makes it a world totally alien to anyone who truly believes in the First Amendment. Of course, once you've got soldiers in the breach, you've got to keep them motivated by any means necessary. The tragedy here is that the fundamental reasons for the war were bogus, the fucking Chimpie administration knew it, and they killed 2300 of our sons, daughters, moms, and dads along with a hell of a lot of innocent Iraqis whose only crime was to be living in the wrong place at the wrong time. And now we're reaping the whirlwind on all fronts.

Impeach Bush, Cheney, then indict them in the International Criminal Court. Ditto for Rumsfeld, Pearle, Wolfowitz, Hadley, Rice, and the rest of the criminal cabal.

And for those in the press who rah-rahed us into this mess, take the honorable way out and resign your positions. Go do something useful for society, like volunteer work in New Orleans or in the worst sections of Washington D.C. See if you can help to develop a generation of journalists who know the difference between truth and running their tongues up the anuses of people in power just because they want to maintain their invitations to the President's Ball.

Cowards and sycophants are what make liars into leaders.

Suddenly, Nobody Loves Chimpie

I want to say "I told you so," and so I'm going to.

Told you so. Bush is, without question (and I've been saying this for 5 fucking years) the absolute most corrupt and incompetent president this nation has ever had, with an administration aligned along those standards. Too bad it took 2200+ American lives in Iraq, thousands more from Katrina, a nation more at risk than ever to terrorism, and an economy headed for the precipice to clue the rest of America in, but better late than never. Here are the latest poll numbers showing that all but the most drug-addled, deluded, or ideologically fascist have stopped loving Supreme Commander Bunnypants:

The latest CBS News poll finds President Bush's approval rating has fallen to an all-time low of 34 percent, while pessimism about the Iraq war has risen to a new high...

In a separate poll, two out of three Americans said they do not think President Bush has responded adequately to the needs of Katrina victims. Only 32 percent approve of the way President Bush is responding to those needs, a drop of 12 points from last September’s poll, taken just two weeks after the storm made landfall.

Mr. Bush's overall job rating has fallen to 34 percent, down from 42 percent last month. Fifty-nine percent disapprove of the job the president is doing.

For the first time in this poll, most Americans say the president does not care much about people like themselves. Fifty-one percent now think he doesn't care, compared to 47 percent last fall.

Just 30 percent approve of how Mr. Bush is handling the Iraq war, another all-time low...

Half of Americans say they disapprove of how he's handling the war on terror, while 43 percent approve.

Here's the real screamer in my book. The very best news for Chimpie is that people are sick of hearing about Cheney's marksmanship.