Sunday, December 31, 2006

A fine man who followed instructions well

WASHINGTON, D.C. (AP)--The Capitol opened its doors to ordinary peasants wishing to pay last respects to Nixon-era Republican sock-puppet Gerald R. Ford after various unindicted criminals praised the 38th president as a healer and a rock who arrived just in time to prevent what might have been a deeply embarrassing investigation into his predecessor's disgraced presidency.

Hundreds of people, many with Reagan's Corpse '04 tour jackets, filed into the Capitol Rotunda late Saturday to view Ford's closed, flag-draped casket. They remembered a leader without pretensions or a highly developed sense of balance who managed to convince the electorate that Nixon had been some kind of anomaly and that nothing like that could ever happen again, paving the way for a generation of smiling Republican dimwits like Ronald W. Reagan and George W. Bush.

Ford will lie in state for two more days before his funeral service at the Washington National Cathedral on Tuesday and interment the next day in a hillside tomb near his presidential museum in Grand Rapids, the city he served in Congress for a quarter-century.

President Bush and his wife, Laura, on a tequila and Xanax binge in Texas, planned to view the casket upon their return to Washington on Monday. Bush will deliver a eulogy full of strident and inappropriate platitudes about freedom and public service at the cathedral service.

Ford's decision to pardon Nixon--in exchange for the opportunity to be president without a single American outside Michigan having voted for him, ever--was dealt with squarely in his funeral services by Dick Cheney, the current vice president who was Ford's chief of staff, and whose crimes make Nixon's look puny in comparison.

"It was this man, Gerald R. Ford, who led our republic safely though a crisis that could have turned to catastrophe," said Cheney, speaking in the Rotunda where Ford's body rested. "Gerald Ford was almost alone in understanding that there can be no healing without pardon, and no liberty without genocide in East Timor."

Said outgoing House Speaker Dennis Hastert: "In 1974 America didn't need a philosopher-king or a warrior-prince. We needed a healer, we needed a rock, we needed honesty and candor and courage, we needed someone with a proven track record in the area of stopping investigations before they pointed at the real power. We needed Gerald Ford, whose work on the Warren Commission was an inspiration to us all."

The ceremony was interrupted when William Broomfield, 84, a former Michigan congressman who served with Ford in Congress, collapsed. He was laid out on the floor of the Rotunda and attended to by Senator Bill Frist, at times a licensed physician, before being taken out in a wheelchair. Frist later indicated Broomfield was OK, and not in a permanently vegetative state at all.

Saturday, December 30, 2006

Dead men tell no tales

CRAWFORD, Texas (AP)--President Bush called Saddam Hussein's execution another milestone on Iraq's road to enforced democracy, but admitted that nothing can stop the bloodshed and political discord splitting the country into a swirling stew of sectarian violence.

Bush, who has spent weeks pretending to develop a new U.S. policy in Iraq, warned of more challenges ahead for American troops.

"Many difficult choices and further sacrifices from other people lie ahead," he said in a statement released Friday night from the safety of his fake Texas ranch. "Yet the safety and security of the Saudi royal family require that we not relent in ensuring that Iraq's young democracy continues to progress toward all-out civil war."

Bush said Hussein received "the kind of justice he denied the victims of his brutal regime." He said the trial, which ended with Saddam being sentenced to death, was a testament to the Iraqi people's resolve to move beyond decades of oppression and create a society governed by the rule of law, like in Texas.

"Fair trials were unimaginable under Saddam Hussein's tyrannical rule," Bush said, slurring noticeably.

Saddam's hanging comes at the end of a difficult year for Iraqis and for U.S. troops, he said. Bush's war has killed more Americans than Osama bin Laden, and December is going down as the deadliest month for American troops since November.

"Bringing Saddam Hussein to justice will not end the violence in Iraq, but it is an important milestone on Iraq's course to becoming a democracy that can govern, sustain, and defend itself, and be an ally in the war on terror," he said. "Stand up, stand down, way forward, rinse, repeat."

Bush was passed out drunk when Saddam was executed for the killings of 148 Shiite Muslims from an Iraqi town where assassins tried to kill him in 1982. On Monday, Iraq's highest court rejected Saddam's appeal of the sentence and ordered him put to death before he could rat out Rumsfeld and the president's father.

At 6:15 p.m. CST, National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley briefed a barely-conscious Bush on the procedures for the execution, and told him it would take place in the next few hours. Hadley had been in touch with U.S. Ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, who had been in contact with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who receives his instructions in a plain brown envelope from the Carlyle Group.

"The president concluded his day knowing that the final phase of keeping Saddam Hussein from testifying was under way," deputy White House press weasel Scott Stanzel said.

American sentiment about the illegal and useless war has changed dramatically since the spring of 2003 when an Iraqi public relations firm working for the Bush Crime Family toppled a 40-foot statue of the dictator and a disheveled Saddam, in U.S. custody an embarrassing number of months later, was seen on television being examined by a doctor who probed his mouth with a tongue depressor and tried to guess his age.

Then, Saddam's capture boosted Bush's political stature, following months of senseless deaths and a fruitless search for non-existent WMD, which had irrevocably damaged U.S. prestige and given the lie to claims of "progress" in Iraq.

Now, the civil war--and a U.S. death toll eclipsing that of 9/11--has sent Bush's approval ratings to Nixon levels. Seventy-one percent disapprove of his mismanagement of the war; almost two-thirds doubt that a stable, democratic government will ever be established in Iraq; and a large percentage of the population considers the president more evil than Saddam, Bin Laden, Ahmadinijad or Satan, according to early December AP-Ipsos polling.

As Saddam's execution drew near, his lawyers lost an appeal in U.S. court to try to stave it off.

In Iraq, U.S. forces were, as always, ready for any escalation of violence, Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said hours before Saddam was hanged.

Closer to home, the FBI and the Homeland Security Department warned Americans to be vigilant about the possibility of a terror attack while continuing to shop for year-end blowout deals. The advisory sent to local law enforcement did not cite a specific threat, but they never do.

Sunday, December 24, 2006

Who Would Jesus Be?


Jesus was the king of some old stateless desert nation
Came to work in sandals like an adolescent bum
Jesus has been used to do some mass annihilation
Jesus sells the president to people who are dumb

Jesus organized his time to organize your crime
Anyway, he meant well and he put on a good show
Jesus chilled with prostitutes and never spent a dime
Jesus cured the lepers like a Swedish HMO

If Jesus was the light
Then Western thought must be the prism
If Jesus lived today
They’d lock him up for terrorism

Jesus rendered unto Caesar things that most folks wouldn’t
Fish and bread is all you need to be a decent host
Jesus spent some time in Hell; no reason why you shouldn’t
Jesus is his father and he’s also his own ghost

Bones and beads and wine and wafers, everyone’s a winner
Confucian admonitions form a new philosophy
Deplore the sin all night but don’t forget to love the sinner
Jesus turned the other cheek, they nailed him to a tree

Jesus promised everyone
That they could go to heaven
If Jesus lived today
He’d have an AK-47

Tuesday, December 19, 2006

Fitz should just go fuck himself already

WASHINGTON, D.C. (AP)--Vice President Dick Cheney will be called to testify in the CIA leak case on behalf of his closest henchman, defense attorneys said Tuesday, ending months of speculation over when Cheney's next opportunity to publicly sneer at the rule of law would present itself.

"We're calling the vice president," attorney Ted Wells said in court. Wells represents defendant I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, a sneaky little scumbag charged with perjury and obstruction who may be dangerously close to ratting out his shotgun-wielding former master.

Sitting presidents, including Clinton and Ford, have testified in criminal cases, but presidential historians said they knew of no vice president who has done so, and can't imagine one less likely to cooperate.

William Jeffress, another of Libby's attorneys, would not say whether Cheney is under a subpoena to testify. Issuing a court order to a sitting vice president could raise separation-of-powers concerns, but Jeffress said it was not an issue because everyone knows this ain't going anywhere.

"We don't expect him to resist," Jeffress said. "We expect him to refuse."

Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, who said last week he did not expect the White House to challenge his witnesses, said Tuesday that this is because he did not plan to call Cheney.

Wells immediately said he would.

"That settles that," Fitzgerald said, fighting the urge to smile broadly in anticipation of having one of America's deadliest criminals under oath by silently telling himself that it will never happen.

Neither Jeffress nor Wells would say whether they expect Cheney to testify in the courtroom like a common criminal or offer videotaped testimony to avoid infringing on the separation of powers and possibly fucking up under cross-examination.

"We've cooperated fully in this matter whenever we've been forced to and will continue to do so in fairness to the parties involved," said Lea Anne McBride, a spokeswhore for the vice president. "As we've stated previously, we're not going to comment further on a legal proceeding unless it helps us."

Libby is accused of lying to investigators in order to obstruct a federal investigation into the treason committed when CIA operative Valerie Plame, a specialist in WMD programs, had her identity leaked to reporters just when her husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, was calling 'bullshit' on the Bush Crime Family's prewar intelligence on Iraq.

Libby says he was focused on more important issues--including terrorism, nuclear proliferation and Judith Miller's clitoris--and didn't remember his conversations regarding Plame, but everyone knows he's lying.

Cheney could help get him off by making a video affidavit pretending Libby has ever been anything more than his personal hitman and lying about the many other larger, more important issues Libby was responsible for. During cross-examination, Fitzgerald would likely press Cheney to acknowledge that Plame was a key concern for him, and thus would have been important to Libby, but he'll never get the chance because testifying under oath is not something international supercriminals do.

The Decider will decide when he decides

WASHINGTON, D.C. (Reuters)--President Bush is considering a short-term increase of U.S. troop strength in Iraq, his celebrity spokesman said on Tuesday as he denied reports of a rift between the hysterical White House sycophants pushing the option and the experienced Pentagon chiefs resisting it.

A temporary increase in troop strength--cited as a possibility in the report of the high-powered yet strangely powerless Iraq Study Group--was "something that's being explored" as Bush considers options on Iraq, White House Channel anchorman Tony Snow told reporters.

But asked about a Washington Post report that White House officials, who create their own reality, are at odds with the Pentagon's Joint Chiefs of Staff, who are forced to deal in facts and hard numbers, Snow said, "I think people are trying to create a fight between the president and the Joint Chiefs where one does not exist yet."

"The president has not made a decision on the way forward, and he has asked military commanders to consider a range of options while he stalls for time," he said.

The Post reported that the Bush Crime Family is aggressively promoting a "surge" of 15,000 to 30,000 troops, over the unanimous disagreement of the leaders of the different U.S. military branches.

But Snow said Bush was not at odds with the Joint Chiefs. "I'm saying, tonally, it's wrong. You're trying to make it sound like they can't agree when really they're just saying different sort of opposing things."

"The president hasn't shown his hand here. He is asking people questions," Snow said. "And listening really hard."

Bush has said repeatedly that troop levels will be guided by what commanders on the ground want, but everyone knows how dangerous it can be to rely on the words of "experts."

Although Bush was considering the "surge option," as he likes to call it, he is too stupid to see the political life preserver thrown to him in the form of other recommendations of the Iraq Study Group, including talks with Iran and Syria, and he has said he rejects options that would "lead to defeat," like knowing when you're losing.

Bush delayed unveiling a new strategy on Iraq until early next year, partly because he wanted to give Defense Secretary Robert Gates a chance to visit the country and see what the fuck is going on there and partly because he doesn't like to think about stressful things at Christmas.

He has been under increasing pressure to change course in Iraq, where the carnage he unleashed with his illegal war of conquest shows no sign of abating. Democrats took control of Congress from Bush's Republican Party in November elections largely by calling for a new direction in the war, such as out.

Supporters of sending more troops to Iraq, such as rabid moron Senator John McCain, said the Pentagon's own bleak assessment on Monday of a 22 percent rise in violence over the past three months meant that a short-term influx of U.S. forces was needed, especially if we're going to keep pretending it was right to invade in the first place.

But critics said the rising violence showed instead that U.S. efforts to secure Baghdad were not working, and who are we securing it for, anyway?

Monday, December 18, 2006

Nukular proliferation opportunity! Call 1-800-CARLYLE

WASHINGTON, D.C. (AP)--In a craven attempt to knock Iraq off the front page for a cycle or two, President Bush on Monday signed a civilian nuclear deal with India, allowing fuel and know-how to be shipped to the world's largest democracy even though it has not submitted to full international inspections or embraced his white Christian god.

"The bill will help keep America safe by paving the way for India to join the global effort to stop the spread of nukular weapons by allowing our corporations to ship direct instead of through the black market in Pakistan, where things are often stolen by the enemies of our illegal atomic puppet dictator there," Bush said, seemingly unaware that he was speaking out loud.

The bill carves out another special Bush Crime Family exemption in U.S. law to allow civilian nuclear trade with India in exchange for some kind of paper trail indicating some kind of safeguards and inspections at its 14 civilian nuclear plants. Eight military plants would remain off-limits, providing profit for a layer of in-country middlemen.

"This is an important achievement for the whole world. After 30 years outside the system, India will now operate its civilian nukular energy program under internationally accepted guidelines and the world is going to be safer as a result," Bush said in a bill-signing ceremony at the White House. "And their military can do whatever they want, so there's yer no-bids."

Critics complain that the measure undermines efforts to curb the spread of nuclear weapons and technology and could spark a nuclear arms race in Asia, and endlessly piss and moan because India still refuses to sign the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, and bitch, bitch, bitch all fucking day long because the deal undermines efforts to prevent states like Iran and North Korea from acquiring nuclear weapons.

The Bush Family argued it was a good deal because it would provide international oversight for part of a program that has been secret since India entered the nuclear age in 1974, while keeping the really profitable part secret. The deal also could be a boon for American companies that have been illegally selling reactors and material to India and can't possibly launder this much money too much longer.

"India's economy has more than doubled its size since 1991 and it is one of the fastest-growing markets for American exports," Bush said. "This will legalize some of them."

Friday, December 15, 2006

Don't forget my Medal of Freedom, Junior

WASHINGTON, D.C. (AP)--Architect of the staggeringly incompetent but obscenely profitable war in Iraq, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld was praised lavishly for his service to the Bush Crime Family Friday as he called on Americans to spend more heavily on defense.

President Bush called Rumsfeld "one of the Carlyle Group's most skilled, energetic and dedicated sales managers."

"We've been through war together," the president said, as if he'd ever in his life had anything under his fingernails beside cocaine. "We have engineered some of the most challenging moments in our nation's history."

"This man knows how to create a black hole of untraceable briefcases and he did," the president said. "And the Family is better off for it."

Departing after six years in office, Rumsfeld said he felt "a sense of urgency about the real challenges ahead" in a time of terrorism, unstable dictators and threats of nuclear proliferation. "There's serious money to be made, by golly."

The attacks of September 11, 2001, awakened the world to the existence of a global extremist movement whose adherents believe it is their calling to kill Americans and other free people, Rumsfeld said, but refused to name names without his lawyer present.

"Today, it should be clear that not only is weakness provocative, but the perception of weakness on our part can be provocative as well," the secretary said, rolling his eyes at the president.

Bush made no mention of the often-harsh criticism of Rumsfeld--that he was arrogant, that he was criminally incompetent, ignored the advice of critics, made many mistakes in his execution of the Iraq war, that he authorized the use of white phosphorus and torture, that he got rich selling Saddam the very weapons they later accused him of having in order to justify invading the 2nd largest proven oil reserve in the world--because he doesn't like to discuss Family business with outsiders.

"Every decision Don Rumsfeld made over the past six years, he always put the troops first, and the troops knew it," Bush lied.

The official cover story is that Rumsfeld was a casualty of growing opposition to the disastrous, illegal war he helped the Family launch, manifested in the Democrats' takeover of Congress. Bush announced Rumsfeld's departure the day after Republicans were bitch-slapped in the November elections, and two days after receiving a memo suggesting it might be time to back off a little from the Family's cash cow.

"I've never worked harder for a boss and I've never learned more from one, either," said Vice President Dick Cheney, who began his career in politics as an intern for Rumsfeld in 1969, and never looked back.

Cheney praised Rumsfeld as a man with "near perfect recall. He has the way of asking you the one question you are not prepared for, and then answering it. And apparently he does not sleep, but draws energy in the form of an ectoplasmic goo directly from the souls of those around him."

General Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and major beard for the military-industrial complex, said the 2.4 million members of the U.S. military joined in saluting "this incredible American, for his leadership and service to our industry," but declined to speculate on the actual form such a salute would take.

"He's a man of enormous commitment to defense spending," Pace said. "He pushed us hard to use up resources. The only person he pushed harder was himself, and his bank account reflects this."

A life-long corporate shill, the 74-year-old Rumsfeld is the oldest defense secretary in U.S. history and the only person to have held the position twice. He was the youngest defense secretary when he began his first stint in 1975 under the brain-damaged Republican puppet of that time, President Gerald Ford.

When Robert Gates is sworn in as defense secretary on Monday, Rumsfeld will leave office just 10 days short of becoming the longest-serving ever, a distinction held by Vietnam-era tool of the military-industrial complex Robert S. McNamara, who left under the cloud of another pre-emptive war of choice gone horribly awry. They are tied for Most Reviled.

Tuesday, December 12, 2006

Bush: Shut up and I'll tell you later

WASHINGTON, D.C. (AP)--President Bush, about to wrap up an intense effort to appear engaged in searching for a way to stop the festival of carnage he created in Iraq, now seems likely to put off lying to the nation about how much things are going to change until next month, instead of during the end-of-the-year ratings sweeps before Christmas, a senior White House official said Tuesday.

The possible new timing is not a reflection of a last-minute shift by the White House, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he doesn't want his Christmas bonus to be a pink slip. Instead, the official said the president already knows the direction he is likely to continue taking his Iraq strategy and has directed his team of yes-men to address the many practical ramifications, such as his singular ignorance of military tactics and regional diplomacy.

That work is complicated and will never be finished, the official said. He dismissed any suggestions that this reflects trouble arriving at decisions or making them work by explaining that the president truly doesn't give a shit.

The announcement out of the White House came after Bush conferred via videoconference with senior military commanders in Iraq, outgoing Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and his replacement Robert Gates; the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Peter Pace; and General John Abizaid, the top U.S. commander in the Middle East. Participating from Iraq was General George Casey, the chief U.S. commander in Iraq. Earlier Bush and Gates had breakfast, and then they took a little nap.

Later in the day, the president met in the Oval Office with Iraq's Sunni vice president, Tariq al-Hashemi, certainly not to plan a coup against Nouri al-Maliki.

Al-Hashemi said only that he planned to tell Bush of his "dismay" over the Shiite-led Iraqi government's handling of security.

"Slow and inadequate action is a problem that we have been facing with this government since it was formed," al-Hashemi said Monday in an interview with Baghdad TV. "Also death squads."

On Monday, Bush went to the State Department for a 90-minute photo-op with advisers there, then lorded it over a handful of experts on Iraq policy who had never been in the Oval Office before. And on Wednesday, Bush will meet with senior defense officials at the Pentagon, soon to be entirely under the CIA's control. Dana Perino, a Bush spokesweasel, said that would conclude the president's pretending-to-listen tour on Iraq.

"I think it's fair to say that over the next few days, after he finishes these last few meetings, that that's when these things start to finalize and crystalize into a strategy," she said. "Then the hard deciding starts."

Two retired Army generals who met with Bush on Monday said the president was very animated for someone so obviously drunk, asking many questions intended to suggest that he was open to change.

"I found him very engaged. I think he's looking for some answers, for some people to blame, and the impression I had was that some loyal retainers were about to get canned," said retired Gen. Wayne Downing in an interview on Tuesday with NBC's "Today" show. "I think you're going to see some new-sounding things come out of that twisted, smirking mouth."

Retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey said the president pretended to be "very sober-minded" and also pretended to listen "intently to different views."

The president, however, has not changed his arrogant public tone about the stakes involved in the war, the importance of declaring victory or his incoherent definition of success--sounding much as he did in the weeks before the November elections, when his strident denials of reality sent voters to the opposition party in droves.

While a bipartisan commission last week described the situation in Iraq as "grave and deteriorating," Bush spoke in positive, not to say simplistic or moronic, terms. He said his goal was to succeed in Iraq. "And success is a country that governs the way I tell it to, defends itself from my enemies, that pretends to be a free society, that helps me pretend there's a war on terror, and puts money in my pocket."

The president said his aim was to coordinate advice from his diplomatic and military advisers "so that when I do speak to the American people, they will think that I've listened to all aspects of government. See, that way I get what I want, which is them to shut the fuck up."

The administration has rejected calls for U.S. troop withdrawals until Iraq can govern and defend itself, even though it governed and defended itself for decades before we got there.

In an apparent reference to Syria and Iran, Bush said Iraq's neighbors have a responsibility "to help this young Iraqi democracy survive." The bipartisan commission, headed by longtime Bush Crime Family enablers James A. Baker III and Lee Hamilton, urged that the United States engage Syria and Iran but Bush thinks diplomacy is for pussies.

Thursday, December 07, 2006

Explaining the obvious to the obtuse

WASHINGTON, D.C. (AP)--For potential 2008 presidential candidates, the Iraq Study Group's report presents an opportunity to whip the president like a rug-soiling mutt over his criminal policies, even if they don't buy into or even understand all of the panel's recommendations.

As they promoted their findings Thursday at a congressional hearing, the group's members heard bipartisan praise for their effort, as anyone with half a brain could have predicted. But everyone running or considering running for president carefully avoided an all-out embrace of its more than six dozen recommendations, wisely leaving it to President Bush to fuck it up on his own.

The group--led by James A. Baker III, the trial lawyer who put Bush in office and protected the Saudi royal family from liability after 9-11, and former Representative Lee Hamilton, who helped keep the Bush Crime Family out of the Iran-Contra scandal--presented a downbeat assessment of the war, urged stepped up diplomacy and called for ways to pull back most U.S. combat troops by early 2008, when the next presidential election season will be heating up. No one at the hearings bothered to mention how painfully obvious all this should've been to anyone with even a rudimentary grasp of global politics.

Among White House hopefuls, the sharpest break with the report's recommendations came from Senator John McCain (R-AZ), who began criticizing Bush's war strategy the instant his approval numbers went south and has called for boosting U.S. troop strength in Iraq, three years too late. On Thursday, he once again positioned himself as a "maverick" by taking issue with the report's conclusion that the military was not equipped to handle a substantial and sustained increase in troops in Iraq, even though the Pentagon has been saying so for months.

"There's only one thing worse than an overstressed Army and Marine Corps, and that's a defeated Army and Marine Corps," McCain, a former Vietnam prisoner of war and current blithering idiot, told Baker and Hamilton during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing. "We saw that in 1973. And I believe that this is a recipe that will lead to, sooner or later, our defeat in Iraq." He didn't say what might constitute victory in Iraq, but neither has the president.

The hearing featured another potential presidential front-runner, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, (D-NY) who summed up the Democratic strategy of emphasizing that the burden of altering policies and strategies in Iraq rests with Bush since he's, you know, the Commander-in-Chief.

"We've now heard from the Iraq Study Group, but we need the White House to become the Iraq results group," Clinton said during the hearing. "That is very frustrating for some of us. We don't understand the misjudgments and missteps that have been taken in the last years, including, sometimes, our own votes."

In an interview with The Associated Press, Senator Sam Brownback (R-KS), a gibbering wingnut who is also exploring a presidential bid, said Iraq needs to reach a point of "political equilibrium," even if that means partitioning the country along its ethnic groupings--a proposal that the Iraq Study Group did not endorse, since everyone else over the age of twelve knows that it wouldn't work. "You may end up having to have a Kurdish, a Sunni, a Shiite area, and Baghdad being a federal capital where they divide up the oil revenues fairly and democratically. Hopefully you can maintain it in one country," Brownback said, echoing the president's frequently-stated belief that hope is a policy.

Democratic Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack, who has announced his presidential campaign, said: "The good news is that the report is good, serious work with some sensible ideas. The bad news is that it is not a strategy. Only the president can make strategy, and he's an idiot."

Senator Chuck Hagel, a Nebraska Republican whose political career is thought to be a direct result of the number of electronic voting machines he owns, said the report "is an acknowledgment that there will be no military solution in Iraq." He called for the Bush administration "to forge a bipartisan consensus around a new way forward in Iraq," now that they have no choice.

Most Democrats heeded the advice of strategists who encouraged them to keep the war focus on Bush, where it belongs, and not turn the Iraq Study Group report into a blueprint of their own strategy for Iraq, since it can only hurt them.

Democrats rightly despise McCain and believe his call for more troops is intended to absolve him from blame if the United States remains mired in Iraq in 2008.

McCain this week said with a reasonably straight face that his stance was not motivated by politics.

Thursday, November 30, 2006

Specter: They're not gonna tell you shit

WASHINGTON, D.C. (Reuters)--The Bush Crime Family will likely refuse to allow the incoming Democratic majority in Congress--also known as "Congress" or "the government"--to learn the filthy details of its illegal domestic spying program and immoral torture policy, a Republican senator said on Thursday.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, who has limply criticized the Bush Family's secrecy about national security issues whenever it would get his name on TV without actually changing anything, said he would welcome the detailed congressional oversight of the National Security Agency's warrantless eavesdropping that the Constitution requires, but that at his age it would be dangerous for him to hold his breath.

"It would be nice," said Specter, whose committee was blocked by the Family this year from conducting a full review of the illegal and unconstitutional program, despite an outcry among some lawmakers that presidents who refuse to answer to Congress are actually called "dictators."

"We have to really get into the details as to what the program is, as to exactly how many Democrats they are tapping, what they're finding out about their political enemies," he told an American Bar Association conference on national security, who paid for his lunch.

But he said he had "grave reservations" about the ability of Congress to get the information from the Family, whose utter contempt for democracy and the Constitution is legendary.

The eavesdropping program--which was exposed by Islamofascist liberal defeatocrats who hate America and work for The New York Times nearly a year ago--allows the NSA to eavesdrop on the phone calls and e-mails of anyone they want, without pesky, useless warrants providing a paper trail which could have serious repercussions for the Family later.

Specter and other critics say the program has violated U.S. laws, including the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, which requires warrants for all intelligence surveillance, and they're right.

The Bush Crime Family contends the program is legal, narrowly focused on suspected terrorists and authorized by President George W. Bush's imaginary constitutional powers as commander-in-chief, but they're lying.

When his Republican party was in control of Congress, Specter did some half-hearted grandstanding in the form of a feeble legislative bid to have the illegal program reviewed by a secret federal court, but he stopped when the president told him to, surprising no one.

Now, after victory in the November 7 election, Democrats will take control next year and are vowing to press the Bush Family for greater cooperation on domestic spying as well as the CIA's frequent and often random kidnapping and torture sprees.

"Only then can we conduct thorough oversight of these programs and determine how insanely criminal they are," Senator John Rockefeller, incoming Democratic chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in a recent statement.

But Specter said such oversight may not succeed.

"I look forward to what will happen next year on that subject. I have grave reservations as to how successful we will be here, since they usually just say, you know, go fuck yourself," he said.

The Pennsylvania Republican said the White House was also unlikely to divulge details about its treatment of detainees to the Democratic-controlled Senate intelligence and armed services panels, despite concerns among lawmakers that U.S. interrogations still violate torture protections.

"We still haven't resolved the issue of torture," Specter said. "The new leadership on armed services will be pushing a lot harder for answers than we did. What they will get remains to be seen. I would expect the president will resist giving information, since anything he says can be used against him at the Hague."

Tuesday, November 28, 2006

Just a few bad apples

RIGA, Latvia (AP)--President Bush said Tuesday, with a straight face and almost no slurring, that an al-Qaida plot to stoke cycles of sectarian revenge in Iraq is to blame for escalating bloodshed, refusing to acknowledge that the country descended into civil war shortly after his re-election.

"There's a lot of sectarian violence taking place--fomented, in my opinion, because of the attacks by al-Qaida causing people to seek reprisal," Bush said at a news conference during a stop in Estonia.

He arrived later at the NATO summit in neighboring Latvia, where discussion will focus on the battle against insurgents in Afghanistan, a country the U.S. invaded after an attack by al-Qaida caused us to seek reprisal.

Bush, who travels to Jordan later in the week for a summit with Iraqi Prime Minister and powerless laughing-stock Nouri al-Maliki, said the latest surge of violence in Iraq does not represent a new era. "We've been in this phase for a while," he said. "I forget what it's called."

Iraq is reeling from the deadliest week of sectarian fighting since the criminal U.S. invasion in March 2003.

Bush, dating the current spike in violence to the February bombing of a sacred Shiite shrine in Samarra that triggered reprisal attacks between Shiites and Sunnis and raised fears that the media would begin saying "civil war," said he will ask al-Maliki to explain his plan for quelling the violence, then explain to him why he's wrong.

"The Maliki government is going to have to deal with that violence we created and we want to help them do so, like we've been helping them all along," he said. "It's in our interest that we succeed. In other words, we have an interest in success."

Jordan's King Abdullah, who is hosting al-Maliki's meeting with Bush because Baghdad is too noisy, has warned that the new year could dawn with three civil wars in the Mideast--with one in Iraq added to those in Lebanon and between the Palestinians and Israelis--forming a "trifecta" of "sectarian violence."

But Bush, obstinately refusing to utter the words "civil war" no matter what the rest of the world says, tied the three conflicts together in a different way: he said recent strife in Lebanon and the heated up Israeli-Palestinian dispute are, like Iraq, the result of extremists trying to resist the political processes being forced on them by American oil companies.

"When you see a young democracy beginning to emerge in the Middle East, the extremists try to defeat its emergence," Bush said. "Extremists attack because they can't stand the thought of a democracy thousands of miles away controlling their resources. And the same thing is happening in Iraq."

Directly seeking help with Iraq from Iran and Syria is expected to be among the recommendations of the "bipartisan" panel on Iraq made up of the same crew of oil-rich spooks who helped create this problem decades ago.

Iran, the top U.S. rival in the region, has reached out to Iraq and Syria in recent days--an attempt viewed by observers with a flair for the stunningly obvious as a bid to assert its role as a powerbroker in Iraq.

But Bush expressed reluctance to talk with the two nations his administration regards as pariah states working to destabilize the Middle East even more than he has. He added that the U.S. will only deal with Iran when they have completely taken over the government of Iraq, sometime next month.

Tuesday, November 21, 2006

Crazy old man argues with towel-heads

ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates (AP)--Former President, Cold War profiteer, and Kennedy assassination figure George H.W. Bush took on Arab critics of his son Tuesday during a testy and incoherent exchange at a leadership conference in the capital of this U.S. "ally."

"My son is an honest man," Bush told members of the audience who harshly criticized the current U.S. leader's disastrously inept foreign policy.

The oil-rich Persian Gulf used to be safe territory for this evil old man who bribed Arab leaders to form a coalition to drive Saddam Hussein's troops from Kuwait in 1991 after he, himself, gave permission for the invasion in 1990. But gratitude for the elder Bush's recent absence from the region was overshadowed at the conference by hostility toward his idiot son, whose illegal invasion of Iraq and kneejerk support for the worst elements in Israel's government are deeply unpopular in the region.

"We do not respect your idiot son. We do not respect what he's doing all over the world," a woman in the audience bluntly told Bush after his meandering, self-absorbed speech.

Bush, an 82 year-old pillhead, appeared stunned and disoriented as others in the audience whooped and whistled in approval.

A college student told a flabbergasted Bush that it is no secret that U.S. wars are aimed at opening markets for American companies and said everyone knows that globalization was contrived for America's benefit at the expense of the rest of the world. Bush, who doesn't think anyone knows anything, was having none of it.

"I think that's weird and it's nuts," Bush said. "To suggest that everything we do is because we're hungry for money, I think that's crazy. You're crazy! I mean, just because all these, these disasters and insurrections and, and...tragic miscarriages of diplomacy and abuses of force happen to benefit a small number of my friends and relatives, to think that that suggests there's some kind of conspiracy, well, that's just kooky, my friend. That's just whack, as the grandkids say. We don't do the conspiracy thing; never have. Never have. I don't know what you're talking about, you crazy little heathen, you ignorant fruitcake, you...I think you need to go back to school."

The hostile comments came during a question-and-answer session after Bush finished his standard bullshit folksy address on leadership by telling the audience how deeply hurt he feels when his presidential idiot son is criticized by people with no money.

"This son is not going to back away," Bush said, his voice quivering, tears of rage trickling down his wasted, evil face. "He's not going to change his view because some poll says he's stupid or some poll says he needs to be impeached, or some heartfelt comments from the lady who feels deeply in her heart about something and happens to run the House of Representatives. You can't be president of the United States and conduct yourself if you're going to cut and run whenever some scam blows up in your face. This is going to work out in Iraq. I understand the anxiety. It's not easy, but we're making a lot of money."

Bush also told the audience they were pussies compared to the protesters he faced in Germany in the 1980s, when he blackmailed that country's government into deploying U.S. nuclear missiles on its soil.

He told the audience--including dozens of women in black robes and head scarves who never took their eyes off him or smiled--that he was extremely proud of his sons, President George W. Bush and Florida Governor Jeb Bush, but not so much of Neil or Marvin.

He said the happiest day of his life was election day in 1998 when George and Jeb were elected to the governorships of Texas and Florida and he knew that one of them would put the White House back under his control before too long; but he also described the pain he feels when his sons are attacked by the all-pervasive, soul-sucking liberal media behemoth which threatens to consume America and the world.

"I can't begin to tell you the pride I feel in my two sons," Bush said. "When your son's under attack, it hurts. You're determined to be at his side and help him make us money and keep our records sealed any way you possibly can."

One audience member asked the former president what advice he gives his son on Iraq, and whether he understands it.

Bush said the presence of terror-friendly Islamofascist reporters--possibly from CNN--in the audience prevented him from revealing his advice, or how often he has to explain it. He also declined to comment on his expectations for the findings of the Iraq Study Group, a subsidiary cabal of old spooks looking to salvage the Carlyle Group's bottom line led by Bush Crime Family consigliere and former Secretary of State James A. Baker III, Iran-Contra whitewash expert Lee Hamilton, and Defense Secretary-designate Robert Gates. The group is expected to issue its report soon, and the public will have unfettered access to the unredacted portions of it.

"I have strong opinions on a lot of these things. But the reason I can't voice them is, if I did what you ask me to do--tell you what advice I give my son--then I would have to kill you," Bush said.

Bush said he'd spoken with Baker recently--the two are neighbors in Houston, and have made untold millions of dollars together in various international covert actions--but preferred reminiscing about old times to discussing what America ought to do in Iraq.

"In the early 1960s, Jim Baker and I were the men's doubles champions in tennis in the city of Houston," Bush said with a grin. "We got so much country-club pussy, we had to go into politics."

Bush said he was surprised by the audience's criticism of his idiot son, and didn't want to hear any more of it.

"He is working hard for peace. It takes a lot of guts to get up and tell a father about his son in those terms when I just told you the thing that matters in my heart is my family," he said. "How come everybody wants to come to the United States if the United States is so bad? And what makes you think I can't have you killed?"

Monday, November 20, 2006

"Bush's brain" undeterred by failure, reality

WASHINGTON, D.C. (NY Times)--Karl Rove, the Bush Crime Family's head ratfucker, is coming off the most humiliating election defeat of his career to face an impossible task: saving the president’s fascist agenda with a Congress not only controlled by fanatical Bush-hating Defeatomacrats, but also filled with Republican members furious with the way he and his drunken dream date ran the same goddamn campaign as always, and lost.

Bush Family flacks say the president has every intention of keeping Mr. Rove on through the rest of his term, just like Dick and what's-his-name. And Mr. Rove’s associates say he intends to stay, with the goal of at least salvaging Mr. Bush’s legacy or, if not, insulating himself from prosecution.

But serious questions remain about how much influence Ol' Turd-Blossom can wield and how high a profile he can assume in Washington as a loser, after six years of brutal partisan attacks on the same Democrats in line to control Congress for the remainder of Mr. Bush’s crooked, obscene presidency.

Things have only gone from bad to worse since the election. Democrats are taking Mr. Rove’s continued influence at the White House--as well as some of its recent moves, like re-nominating previously rejected paleo-conservative wingnuts to the federal bench --as a sign that Mr. Bush’s conciliatory pledges of bipartisanship will prove to be bullshit.

“Karl’s role has not been to serve as a bridge over troubled waters; he has tried to stir the waters as often as possible,” said Senator Richard J. Durbin, the Illinois Democrat who once compared the Bush cabal to the Third Reich, and who will be the second-most powerful person in the Senate next year. “Maybe he got religion on November 7, but we’ll see. Oh, who am I kidding? Those freaks don't change.”

Republicans on Capitol Hill said rage and loathing ran deep over Mr. Bush’s decision to fire criminally incompetent Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld one day after the election instead of weeks before, when (the more delusional among them say) it might have kept the Senate in their party’s hands and limited Democratic gains in the House. Mr. Rove was among those at the White House who had argued that to announce they were throwing Rumsfeld under the bus before Election Day would have been tantamount to acknowledging the universally-held view that the war in Iraq is a hopeless clusterfuck.

“There is lingering resentment on that,” Representative Jeff Flake, Republican of Arizona, said of the timing of the announcement. Asked if he expected the White House to take as much of a lead in setting the Congressional agenda as it had in the past, Mr. Flake responded flatly, “You're kidding, right?”

More broadly, many Republicans say they blame Mr. Rove for being too blinded by love to see that the president was hurting their campaigns, as Bush and Cheney continued telling the same old lies on the stump.

“I would say that brilliant as he is, he was not right,” said Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, who counts himself among those who believe that Mr. Rumsfeld’s resignation could have helped the party maintain control of the Senate; also in the existence of Magic Bullets. “I think Rove misread the anger of the American people about Iraq. Either that or Cheney told him to shut the fuck up.”

Mr. Specter said the White House should be prepared to step back and concede some power to Congressional leaders, as is required by the Constitution.

The White House seems aware of the apparently limited influence in Congress of Mr. Rove, the goon most closely identified with Mr. Bush. Joshua B. Bolten, the White House chief of staff, was dispatched to the Hill this week to hold meetings with members who might impeach his boss, suggesting that he is likely to play a more prominent role in covering things up.

But Dan Bartlett, the White House counselor, said in an interview this week that Mr. Rove’s main job was not emissary to Congress. “That’s not the position he played in the past,” Mr. Bartlett said. "What are you talking about? His job is to make the president appear not to be gay."

Administration officials said Mr. Rove’s main role has always been within the presidential colon itself. Mr. Rove has derived his real power from his long and complicated tenure up Mr. Bush's ass, where a wide array of political and policy ideas originate.

Mr. Rove’s policy oversight duties were taken away after he helped fuck up the first two years of Mr. Bush’s second term, and he was directed to focus more closely on the midterm elections, where he was expected to do some real damage, but to the Democrats. Since the outcome, Mr. Bush has given no indication that Mr. Rove’s role will change further, except that he has to eat with the help. He couldn't resist a dig at his old friend recently, telling reporters Mr. Rove was beating him in a book-reading contest because “I obviously was working harder in the campaign than he was, the prick. Plus, I have to sound everything out.”

Officials said afterward that the comment was typical of Mr. Bush’s rough teasing of his fat little friend.

And Mr. Bartlett said Mr. Rove would continue to play a central role in Mr. Bush’s final two years. “He’s going to be an integral player because his value to the president and the White House goes far beyond his political skill set,” Mr. Bartlett said. “He has an enormous amount of responsibility to help strategize in our efforts to help get things covered up.”

White House officials say some of the ire against Mr. Rove in particular and the White House in general will pass, but would not elaborate.

Mr. Rove has told his associates the party still has a good-size Congressional minority that will assert its influence over the next two years, mostly by speaking in tongues and refusing to believe that most of the country thinks they're dangerously insane.

And some in that minority expressed a disturbing, dull-eyed confidence. “We’ve sort of gone through the grieving process,” said Senator John Cornyn (R-TX), a co-conspirator of Mr. Rove’s. “Now we’re in the process of coming up with a way to get revenge against America.”

Sunday, November 12, 2006

Poppy Bush sends A-Team to rescue Junior

WASHINGTON, D.C. (AP)--Responding to an election that could lead to a record number of prison terms for Bush Family goons if the Democrats play the game right, a White House mouthpiece said Sunday that President Bush would welcome new ideas about the unpopular war in Iraq as long as they come from Carlyle Group board members, but that the administration will oppose a Democratic timetable for bringing U.S. troops home until such time as it is forced on them by the new congress.

"We clearly need a fresh approach," conceded Josh Bolten, Bush's chief of staff, his head covered in bruises and vivid red welts.

The president's cabana boy said that Little George and Big Dick are willing to talk about anything, but added: "I don't think we're going to be receptive to the notion that there's a fixed timetable at which we automatically pull out, because that could be a true disaster for the Iraqi people, unlike what's going on there now."

As the drunken president and his meth-addled national security team planned to meet Monday with the Iran-Contra wing of the Bush Crime Family, Democrats said voters have demanded a bold change in course which could be accomplished by impeachment or a wave of assassinations, or some combination of the two.

Democrats won control of the House and the Senate in Tuesday's elections, reshaping Bush's final two years in office into a hellish fight for freedom possibly resulting in exile to Paraguay.

The "bipartisan" Iraq panel--led by Bush Family consigliere James A. Baker III and former "Democratic" Representative Lee Hamilton of Indiana, who prepared a whitewash of the Iran-Contra affair which allowed many guilty men to escape hanging--is expected to move into Endgame before January, and has already pushed Bush Family capo Robert Gates into the top spot at the Pentagon. Members of the group are scheduled to have a joint conference Monday at the White House with Bush, Cheney and military aggression adviser Stephen Hadley.

"All of these things are pushing toward one thing, and that is victory in Iraq," White House fantasist Dan Bartlett said. "And if there are good suggestions coming from either the Baker-Hamilton commission or elsewhere--Henry Kissinger, John Negroponte, Curveball--we want to listen to them."

That willingness to listen reflects the new political reality, which is that the Bush Crime Family has about six weeks to get their Big Scam into some kind of foolproof payout mode before the new congress convenes and puts the brakes on the whole big clusterfuck.

Before the election, the Bush Crime Family accused Democrats of treason, flatly declaring that a Democratic triumph on Election Day would amount to a victory for terrorists, who nevertheless seem to have been having plenty of victories under Republican rule.

Yet a majority of voters--almost six in 10--know that the war in Iraq is a trillion-dollar boondoggle orchestrated by shark-eyed liars and multinational oil pimps, and they voted for Democrats in record numbers, according to exit polls. A solid majority of voters said the U.S. should withdraw some or all of its troops from Iraq, like, yesterday. A slightly smaller percentage claimed to have had sex with one or both of the president's daughters, and 7% of all voters claimed not to know the name of their own state.

Democrats have their own challenge: to unify behind a strategy for Iraq or risk being splintered into ineffective factions, like Iraq.

Asked about a proposal to pull U.S. troops out of Iraq by June, Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean called such a timetable optimistic and said that's "not the way government projects work."

"We need to get out of Iraq," Dean said. "The question is how we can do that. I'm thinking, through Kuwait?"

Bolten said Little George would consider the idea of U.S. talks with Syria and Iran if Poppy's friend Mr. Baker told him to.

The administration, Bolten said, "has always been ready to make a course adjustment" in Iraq. "Stay the course was the Democrat plan," he added, and rushed from the room.

"Nobody can be happier with the situation in Iraq right now than the defense contractors working for the Carlyle Group. Everybody's been working hard, but what we've been doing has begun to attract attention, as this election clearly shows," Bolten said. "So it's time to put fresh eyes on the problem, maybe even let the Democrats build up the Treasury for us, for a little while. The president's father has always been interested in tactical adjustments, and Jim Baker has been in charge of that department for, like, twenty-five years. But the ultimate goal remains the same, which is billions of dollars in the hands of the people we play golf with."

Thursday, November 09, 2006

Later, loser 2

WASHINGTON, D.C. (AP)--Republican National Committee all-time whipping boy Ken Mehlman, whose party lost both chambers of Congress in the midterm elections and failed to take a single democratic position anywhere in the country, will cut and run when his two-year term ends in January, GOP officials said Thursday.

The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because Mehlman has a history of embarrassing public scenes, especially when he knows he fucked up.

Democrats won control of the House and Senate on Tuesday by capitalizing on voter frustration with the criminal practices of President Bush and his family and friends, their illegal war of conquest in Iraq and the scandal-scarred Congress which has allowed a multigenerational family crime syndicate to carve a huge section out of the heart of this once-great republic. Democrats also took a majority of governors' posts and gained a decisive edge in state legislatures, and all this despite their pledge to surrender to Osama as soon as they can find him.

During his tenure, Mehlman, 40, traveled extensively on the taxpayer's dime to promote the Republican agenda as if it was the Delivered Word of American Jesus. When he became chairman in January 2005, he said he hoped to tighten the GOP's grip on power in Washington and less than two years later, he has failed utterly.

"Nothing is permanent in politics," he said then, and he wasn't kidding. "The goal is how do you--both in the short term and the long term--do things to make it sustainable?"

Mehlman also said then that he hoped to expand the GOP base and help Bush enact his agenda, all of which proves he's just a hysterical horse's ass who doesn't know dick from donuts when it comes to gauging America's tolerance for fascist bullshit.

Last year, Mehlman told NAACP members that the Republican Party was wrong for ignoring the black vote for decades and said he hoped the groups could restore their historic bond without his having to talk about Hurricane Katrina or Choicepoint.

"Some Republicans gave up on winning the African-American vote, looking the other way or trying to benefit politically from racial polarization," Mehlman said at the NAACP convention. "I come here as Republican chairman to tell you I think we've pretty much worn that one out."

A protege of Bush Family ratfucker Karl Rove, Mehlman became RNC chairman after managing Bush's re-election campaign in 2004, when the president won re-election and Republicans expanded their majorities in the House and the Senate by exploiting Red State retards' fear of being forced by an activist judge to gay-marry a terrorist.

Before that campaign, he served as White House political director under Rove. In 2000, he served as national field director for Bush's first presidential campaign, charged with coordinating the efforts of GOP leaders in every state to steal the election any way they could.

Mr. Mehlman is a bachelor.

Wednesday, November 08, 2006

Later, loser

WASHINGTON, D.C. (CNN)--President Bush announced Wednesday that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is stepping down from his post so he can spend more time senselessly invading his family.

"The timing is suddenly right for new leadership at the Pentagon," a visibly frightened Bush said at the White House Wednesday afternoon. "See, last week the timing was wrong."

Rumsfeld has been universally vilified for creating a war profiteer's paradise in Iraq, and exit polls taken during Tuesday's midterm election showed livid voter anger--57 percent--with the Iraq war.

"I recognize that many Americans voted last night to register their displeasure with the lack of progress being made" in Iraq, Bush said, shaking and sputtering like the spoiled little bitch he is.

Bush said he had "a series of thoughtful conversations" with Rumsfeld about the defense secretary's resignation, then did what Jim Baker told him.

Former CIA chief and shady Iran/Contra figure Robert Gates will be nominated to take over as defense secretary, Bush said Wednesday.

Gates is now president of Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas, and has been a made member of the Bush Crime Family for decades.

Rumsfeld, 74, has served as defense secretary since January 20, 2001, the day history ended. He also served as defense secretary under President Ford from 1975 to 1977, after which he went into business selling weaponized chemical agents to Saddam Hussein, who has been sentenced to hang for his part in the conspiracy.

"Don Rumsfeld has been a superb leader during a time of change, and I am grateful to have him to blame," Bush said Wednesday. "Yet he also appreciates the value of moving someplace with no extradition treaties."

With the change, Bush pledged to stand by the people of Iraq whether they want him to or not.

"Do not be fearful, my little brown friends," Bush said in reference to Iraqis. "As you take the difficult steps toward catastrophic success, America's going to stand with you, watching your oil. We know you want a better way of life, and now is the time to seize it from each other."

Bush also expressed support for U.S. military personnel.

"Don't be doubtful. America will always support you, probably in FEMA camps," the president said. "Our nation is blessed to have men and women who volunteer to serve and are willing to risk their own lives for the safety of our oil services professionals."

Monday, November 06, 2006

Dems fight; GOP desperate

WASHINGTON, D.C. (AP)—On the eve of midterm elections, Democrats criticized Republicans as failed stewards of a fetid and stinking status quo, while President Bush campaigned well past cocktail hour in a desperate, last-ditch drive to preserve GOP control in Congress so he can stay out of prison.

"They can't run anything right," said former President Clinton, taunting Republicans about the miserable, useless war in Iraq, the horrific aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and the many scandals involving buggery, narcotics, and briefcases full of cash that have complicated GOP efforts to be seen as anything more that the pack of perverted sociopaths they are.

Bush campaigned on Monday from Florida to Arkansas and Texas, carefully avoiding places where people read. But the day brought one more grim reminder of his piss-poor standing in the polls when Republican gubernatorial candidate Charlie Crist blew off the presidential rally in Pensacola to make a speech hundreds of miles away, where he was in no danger of being photographed next to Furious George.

Bush made no mention of the humiliating snub in public, but his flunkies expressed his feeble, drunken rage for him. "Let's see how many people that little faggot gets to show up in Palm Beach on 24 hours notice," said Karl Rove, the White House's top ratfucker.

Some late polls intended to keep power in the hands of the people who give Big Media its tax breaks have suggested momentum was swinging the Republicans' way. Ken Mehlman, the party chairman, told his yesmen and buttboys that the surveys summoned memories of 1998, when the GOP lost seats but held power, and were able to continue harassing President Clinton over a blowjob which resulted in the deaths of thousands of U.S. servicemen and destabilized the Middle East for all time.

"The Democrats want to raise taxes when you're born, when you're working, when you retire and when you die," Bush said in Florida as his audience of redneck peckerwoods and swamp-bred paleo-Christians laughed appreciatively, never suspecting that the joke is on them.

Campaigning in Missouri, Democratic senatorial candidate Claire McCaskill said the president was just lying again. She was in a supermarket meeting voters when one shopper asked her whether she wanted to raise taxes.

"That's a load of shit," she replied. "We're going to cut taxes for the middle class."

She added that previous tax cuts "that just help rich closet cocksuckers like the president should be retargeted to the middle class."

As he has repeatedly and with dwindling coherence done, the president attacked Democrats for having a position on his bungled war in Iraq.

"Oh, they've got some ideas. Some of them say, 'get out right now.' Some of them say, 'get out at a fixed date,' even though the job hasn't been done. One of them said, 'let's move our troops to an island some 5,000 away.'" He seemed at a loss to provide names, but continued ranting for several more minutes.

Clinton, the last legally-elected president, called bullshit on that noise from a stage in Rochester, N.Y.

"On this 'stay the course in Iraq' deal, they say we're the cut-and-run crowd," he said. "These people don't look like cut and run to me," he said, gesturing at Eric Massa, a House candidate and Navy veteran, and former Sen. Max Cleland, who left both legs and an arm in Vietnam and could still kick Bush's ass with his remaining arm tied behind him.

Wednesday, November 01, 2006

Donny and Dick are my best buds, dude

WASHINGTON, D.C. (AP)--President Bush said Wednesday he wants Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney to remain with him until the end of his presidency, if it ever ends, and then join him on the board of the Carlyle Group, extending a lifetime job guarantee to two of the most-vilified members of this or any administration.

"Both those men are doing fantastic jobs making sure my family will be rich for at least another century and I strongly support them," Bush said in an interview with The Associated Press and others.

The president spoke in the Oval Office, in a wing chair in front of a table with roses jammed into the top of a sawed-off human skull. Six days before midterm elections and three sheets to the wind, he refused to answer political questions beyond saying he was confident that Republicans would defy the will of the voters and keep control of Congress in the iron fist of the Bush Crime Family. "I understand the pundits have got the race over. But I don't believe it's over until everybody's votes are counted on our computers," Bush said.

He refused to say whether he could work effectively with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi or Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid if Democrats won either the House or Senate, or both, claiming he hadn't really heard of either of those people until just recently.

Bush did take the opportunity to duck the real issues facing America by whipping expired horse John Kerry--who is not on any ballot this fall and who has held no real power since 2002--over his inability to tell a fucking joke properly. Kerry has said he was making a joke critical of Bush, not the troops, but it came out wrong because he's still the second-most pathetic public speaker on the national stage today.

"It didn't sound like a joke to me," the president said. "Tell it to me again?"

Democrats and Republicans alike have called for Rumsfeld's resignation, arguing he has mishandled the war in Iraq where more than 2,800 members of the U.S. military and possibly hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians have died since the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003 accomplished nothing but to propel the country into a Civil War which threatens to boil over and consume the entire Middle East in the event the November 7 elections go wrong for the Bush Family. Cheney has faced sharp criticism for his hardline views, which include the doctrine of trading poor people for oil and keeping the change. In recent polling, most people said they were both as bad as the president, and that all three of them would look better in Gitmo Orange.

Bush said he valued Cheney's advice and judgment, and followed his instructions to the best of his ability.

"The good thing about Vice President Cheney's advice is, you don't read about it in the newspaper after he gives it," the president said. "Or I don't, anyway." While Cheney was re-elected with Bush for four years, there has been recurring speculation that he might step down, perhaps for health reasons or because of an indictment. As a practical matter, Bush could ask the vice president to leave anytime he wanted to flop around by himself like a wounded seal for two more years or until he's impeached.

Bush credited Rumsfeld with engineering endless, unwinnable, immensely profitable wars in Iraq and Afghanistan while overhauling the military. "I'm pleased with the progress we're making toward total privatization," the president said. He replied in the affirmative when asked if he wanted Rumsfeld and Cheney to stay with him until the end, nodding his head and twisting his mouth into a fishlike smirk and saying, "The very end," over and over again.

Responding to Bush, Senator Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) said, "With all due respect, the president couldn't find his ass with both hands and a map. We need a change in the Iraq strategy, but with Rumsfeld running the show for defense contractors, we'll never get it."

The president also expressed confidence in Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, despite having been told to go fuck himself last week.

"I appreciate he's making hard decisions that he thinks are necessary to keep his country united and moving forward like it is now," Bush said. "He's a hard decider, like me. I didn't find many differences of opinion when I talked to him but then, no one ever disagrees with me to my face."

Bush, briefly animated but raving, said "there's no question that October was a tough month. We lost 103 soldiers. It was a tough month because we were on the offense, the enemy was on the offense--the enemy was trying to affect us, see? And it was a tough month because of Ramadan. Fuckin' Ramadan....Our troops and Iraqi troops killed or captured over 1,500 people during this period of time. I don't know how many people everybody else killed or captured."

Bush refused to comment on Cheney's assertion that a "dunk in water" of terrorist suspects was a "no-brainer" if it would save American lives. "We don't discuss the techniques we use," Bush said. "Video like that can really come back on you later, at the Hague."

Bush says he understands the anxieties of some Republicans who have tried to distance themselves from his Iraq policy by pretending that it has somehow changed. "People will run the race they need to run," he said. Bush said Democrats "don't have a plan for victory," and seemed irked by the suggestion that he should have one.

Tuesday, October 31, 2006

Kerry: Fuck you if you can't take a joke I told wrong

WASHINGTON, D.C. (Reuters)--Democratic U.S. Senator John Kerry drew election-year fire from President Bush and other hysterical Republican whores on Tuesday for saying college students could "get stuck in Iraq" if they do not study hard.

But Kerry, who caved in without a whimper to the Bush Crime Family's theft of the 2004 presidential election, refused to apologize and said his remark was a "botched joke" aimed at the president, much like his 2004 campaign.

With the Iraq war a dominant issue in the November 7 elections despite the president's insistence that sodomy and Jesus are the most pressing concerns of the day, Kerry's incompetently delivered poke at Bush provided much-needed Noise Machine fuel to the Republicans, who are struggling desperately to maintain control of the U.S. Congress so that most of them can stay out of prison.

Kerry's office said later that the Massachusetts Democrat had stupidly misread his prepared remarks which said, "Do you know where you end up if you don't study, if you aren't smart, if you're intellectually lazy? You end up getting us stuck in a war in Iraq. Just ask President Bush." The president is famous, of course, for not studying, not being smart, being intellectually lazy and getting us stuck in a war in Iraq. He also once strangled a hooker in a Fort Worth motor lodge, but Kerry had a hard time working that one into the joke.

Kerry, who was criticized for letting Bush Family operatives beat on him like a red-headed stepchild during his pointless White House campaign, angrily accused Republicans who have never been in war or appeared on The Daily Show of making unfounded attacks, and challenged them to a joke-off.

"The people who owe our troops an apology are George W. Bush and Dick Cheney who misled America into war," said the Massachusetts Democrat. "And neither one of them can tell a joke for shit, either."

While campaigning in California, Kerry told a college crowd on Monday: "You know, education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq." No one laughed, but of course the idiot told it wrong.

Bush quickly seized on the opportunity to create a controversy, releasing a demand that Kerry apologize and start over. He will repeat the call at a redneck campaign event in Georgia tonight.

"The men and women who serve in our all-volunteer Armed Forces are plenty smart and are serving because I told them Saddam was behind 9/11--and Senator Kerry owes them an apology," he plans to say, according to prepared remarks whose pre-event release obviates the need for him to make them, but whatever.

Kerry, combative at a news conference in Seattle, insisted: "My statement yesterday--and those pricks in the White House know this full well--was a botched joke about the president and the president's people, not about the troops."

Kerry served in the Navy in the Vietnam War, receiving two Purple Hearts and a Bronze Star. Bush was a member of the rich kids' Champagne Unit of the Texas Air National Guard during that war, training stateside part-time on obsolete planes and devoting most of his energy to cocaine and strippers. Cheney avoided Vietnam with five student deferments, and when those ran out he knocked up his horrid shrike of a wife, which kept him out until he was able to develop a heart condition.

If the Bush Family misconstrued Kerry's comments, apparently so did others, including Senator John McCain, an Arizona Republican and fellow Vietnam vet who has had an amicable relationship with Kerry, but who is not known for being the sharpest knife in the drawer.

McCain said Kerry "owes an apology to the many thousands of Americans serving in Iraq, who answered their country's call because they are patriots and not because of any deficiencies in their education, just in their ability to tell when someone's lying to them."

Other Bush Family lackeys and conservative talk-radio shills made similar calls, as both parties continued to pretend that next week's elections might be decided by voters rather than Diebold.

White House Channel anchorman Tony Snow called the comments "an absolute insult, worse than the Holocaust," to which Kerry responded: "I'm not going to be lectured by a stuffed-suit White House mouthpiece standing behind a podium or that doughy piece of shit, Rush Limbaugh."

"If anyone thinks a veteran would criticize the more than 140,000 heroes serving in Iraq--and not the president who got us stuck there--they're crazy," he added. "Although, looking at the tape, I can't really blame them. Okay, I fucked the joke up."

Friday, October 20, 2006

I can have you killed

WASHINGTON, D.C. (AP)--President Bush acknowledged Friday that "it sucks" in Iraq and said he would consult with American generals to see if a change in tactics is necessary to combat the escalating violence, just as soon as a Democratic congress forces him to.

Seventy-four American troops have died in Iraq in October, likely to become the deadliest month for the U.S. forces guarding the Bush Crime Family's oil in nearly two years.

"One of the reasons you're seeing more casualties is the enemy is killing more of our troops, along with Iraqis," Bush said in a brief but incoherent interview with The Associated Press.

He said he planned photo-ops within the next few days with General John Abizaid, the top U.S. commander in the Middle East, and General George Casey, who leads the Multinational Forces in Iraq, and maybe they'd have pizza.

"We are constantly and randomly adjusting our tactics so we can achieve the objectives, which are chaos and unaccountability, and right now, it's tough for me to give a shit," the president said. "It's tough on the families who've lost a loved one. It's tough for our citizens who look at it on TV. It's hard on the Iraqis. They've lost a lot of life. But things are tough all over, Jack. Look what I had for a mother."

He declined to say, though, whether he thought a change in tactics was necessary, just that it would be a cold day in hell before we actually saw one.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, at a Pentagon news conference, said the government of Iraq is going to have to take over its country's security "sooner rather than later," but nobody knows what that means anymore.

He said the biggest mistake would be to not continue turning regions of the country over to some of the Iraqis who live there, even if it means that the U.S. has to go back and retake control because the Iraqis who live there are overwhelmed by the other Iraqis who live there. He did not elaborate, except to assure reporters that there were indeed facts unknown that they didn't know they didn't know.

The president has often said that Bush Family goals in Iraq remain the same, no matter what lies he might be telling at the moment: to have a country that can sustain itself on untold billions of dollars of your money, govern itself with the government we give them and help in the war on terror by letting us fight it there, where all his oil is.

"It's important for the country and the security of this country that the enemy and the enemy of this country be defeated in Iraq," he said. At the same time, Bush said the Iraqis had to step up their efforts to quell the violence we brought them.

"There's a criminal element that is taking advantage of the situation in Baghdad and Iraq, and the Iraqi government is going to have to deal firmly with them," he said, but did not mention Halliburton or Blackwater by name.

The White House said that while Bush might change tactics in Iraq, he would not change his overall strategy of sacrificing dozens of American lives per month indefinitely, despite growing opposition and a rapidly-accelerating Republican shit-hemorrhage over what will happen when his policy costs the GOP control of the House or the Senate--or both.

"He's not somebody who gets jumpy at polls," White House Channel anchorman Tony Snow said.

"The president is not going to alter his approach based on what all these pussies say, but instead on the business of trying and moving toward having an Iraq that can sustain, govern and defend itself while funneling trillions of dollars to the Family," Snow continued. "It's so fucking simple and you're all so fucking stupid."

With the war in its fourth year and the U.S. death toll above the number of Americans killed on 9/11, Bush faces intense political pressure to change what critics say is a catastrophically inept Iraq policy. An independent commission--led by Bush Family consigliere and former secretary of State James A. Baker III, and Bush Family fixer and one-time Democrat, ex-Representative Lee Hamilton of Indiana--is exploring options for a new Iraq strategy, possibly "Stay the Course 2.0."

On another contentious foreign policy issue, Bush said he would not comment on a report that North Korea had apologized for conducting a nuclear test until he had a chance to have a pitcher of margaritas in bed with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who is currently in Beijing, where she plans to play "Alexander's Ragtime Band" on the piano for Chinese officials to celebrate the nuclear handoff.

The mass-circulation Chosun Ilbo reported that North Korean leader Kim Jong Il had told the Chinese that "he is really sorry about the nuclear test and he still wants to be friends." The North Korean leader also raised the possibility the country would return to arms talks, especially if the alternative is the flaming shithammer of a dozen Chinese warheads going off above Pyongyang.

Bush said Rice would report back to him later Friday, and he could barely wait. "I will then react," he said, but would not say how much.

Later, at a fundraiser in Washington for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, he railed against Democrats who have the balls to criticize his war in Iraq.

Calling the Democrats the party of "cut and run," Bush said: "The voters out there need to ask the question, `Which political party will support the brave men and women who wear our uniform when they do their job of protecting America? Which political party is willing to give our professionals the tools necessary to protect the American people? Which political party has a strategy for victory in this war on terror?' And then they need to shut the fuck up and vote for us anyway."

Monday, October 16, 2006

It's man-on-dog-eat-dog in Pennsylvania

ROSYLN, PA (LA Times)--Keith Hollenberg, a member of the evangelical Assemblies of God church who is quick to attest that he would rather die than suck a cock, is worried that one of his fundamentalist stick-figure political heroes is about to lose his bid for reelection.

So when he saw Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA) at a car show here, Hollenberg volunteered to help in what has become an urgent project for right-wing reactionary turds in Pennsylvania and around the country: keeping Santorum in the Senate.

"I'm a big fan of yours," Hollenberg gushed. "I would never suck a cock."

Santorum, a lying douchebag and outspoken advocate of gay-bashing, forced maternity and other kneejerk paleo-conservative causes, is considered this year's most-endangered senator.

It is a four-alarm grease-fire for the American Taliban, who are bringing useless water buckets from all corners of the political world. Across Pennsylvania, pastors are preparing to stuff voter guides of questionable legality into their Sunday bulletins. In Washington, D.C., Paul Weyrich, a conservative demagogue, hosted a conference call to give a pep talk to depressed Republicans in Pennsylvania.

"I think it's important for straight white men across the country to recognize how important it is not only to pay attention but to get engaged in this race up to their fucking elbows, whatever way they can," said Colin Hanna, head of Let Freedom Ring, a jingoistic right-wing cult based in Pennsylvania. "If Rick Santorum were to lose, it would mean we all have to get gay-married and have abortions for dinner."

Santorum is not just a major enabler of the cynical symbiosis between the Republican Party and Christian conservatives. He is also one of the Bush Crime Family's most mendacious flacks in Congress and a member of the Senate GOP leadership bent on destroying the Constitution. And he is the apotheosis of a younger generation of privileged Republican shitheels--led by former House Speaker and serial adulterer Newt Gingrich--that transformed the party in the 1990s into a more monolithic, fascist political force.

If 2006 turns into the electoral bloodbath that many analysts are now predicting, a loss by Santorum would be just another signifier of the end of that Republican revolution.

For most of the year, polls have found Santorum trailing his Democratic opponent, state Treasurer Bob Casey Jr., by double-digit margins. The senator's backers were hoping that a spirited televised debate last week would open a new chapter of voter education about Casey's liabilities that could work to Santorum's advantage, but the Senator went apeshit and began raving incoherently in spite of the moderator's insistence that his time was up, and the general consensus among Beltway pundits was that he "just looked like an asshole."

Among Santorum's political problems: he is running in a nearly Diebold-free state that went for Democratic Senator and eleventh-hour weakling John F. Kerry in the 2004 presidential election. Here in Philadelphia's suburbs, considered crucial to the election's outcome, even fellow Republicans are not as deeply disturbed as he is. At a recent GOP meeting in Upper Darby, Santorum sounded not a bit like a champion of social conservatism, instead circulating a flier, "Delivering for Upper Darby," that detailed the federal money he had secured for local sewer repair, garage construction and other pork.

Even if Santorum gives social issues short shrift on the campaign trail, right-wing whackjobs understand what is at stake. They stand to lose a powerful mouthpiece for their medieval agenda. Some worry that Santorum's defeat would also be a decapitation strike to the influence of religious wingnuts within the GOP.

"You would then start to see party apparatchiks say things like, 'We're not sure we want to support a candidate whose conservatism is as scary and ignorant as Senator Santorum's,' and they will begin casting about for someone a sane person might vote for," Hanna said.

At age 48, with a priggish aspect that makes him appear to have some kind of pointy object in his ass, Santorum does not look the part of a man who could be circling the bowl on his way down the political toilet. Walking in a parade one rainy Saturday outside Philadelphia, Santorum jogs robustly from one side of the street to the other to greet spectators, many of whom avoid his glance, embarrassed. Tie-less, in chinos and a "Terry Schiavo died for YOU" T-shirt, he wears the demented smile of a man who is nowhere near ready to accept reality. Even when people boo him from curbside, he boldly reaches into the crowd to shake his finger like an angry nun.

Many more factors are working against Santorum now than in his 2000 campaign: most notably, his nose deep in the colon of a criminally insane president whose approval ratings are not much higher than Mark Foley's. Unlike other vulnerable Republicans who have attempted to distance themselves from the Bush Crime Family, Santorum continues to embrace Der Monkey's failures in Iraq, his crooked and universally unpopular plan to privatize Social Security, even his hopelessly incompetent secretary of Defense, Donald H. Rumsfeld.

Santorum is not just a victim of political circumstance. Even his admirers say he routinely says things that make it clear he is completely insane, and not very bright.

In 2002, he blamed Boston "liberalism" for the Roman Catholic Church's eternal and interminable sex abuse scandal. In a 2003 interview, he linked gay consensual sex with bigamy, polygamy, incest, adultery and dogfucking. In a 2005 book, he found fault with two-income families and women who leave the house with their hair uncovered. The ensuing controversies have so engulfed Santorum's image that his campaign website has a long feature, "Myth vs. Fact," to counter what people "hear around the water cooler" about Santorum, which answers such pressing questions as "What is the water cooler?"

Saturday, October 14, 2006

One down, 231 to go

WASHINGTON, D.C. (Reuters)--Republican scumbag Bob Ney of Ohio pleaded guilty on Friday in the Jack Abramoff political corruption investigation, becoming the first lawmaker convicted in the election-year scandal that is eating the ass out of the GOP.

Representative Ney admitted he had illegally accepted trips, meals, drinks, hookers, drugs, plumbing supplies, sex toys, tickets to concerts and sporting events, shiny glass beads, animal pelts and other items worth tens of thousands of dollars in return for exploiting the trust of his constituents by whoring his office on behalf of crooked über-lobbyist Abramoff and his clients.

Ney, who abandoned his re-election race in August when it became clear he would be going to prison, said he was chagrined to have been caught and will resign from Congress when he gets around to it.

But with the election less than a month away and Democrats increasingly optimistic about winning control of Congress, the Bush Crime Family and House Republican leaders urged Ney to step down immediately so the rest of them can limit their exposure to what will undoubtedly be a blizzard of subpeonas.

House Speaker Dennis Hastert of Illinois and other Republican House leaders said they will move to expel Ney when Congress resumes its legislative work in November, if Ney has not yet resigned and Hastert has not yet been indicted for his crooked real estate scams or forced to resign in the Mastergate cover-up.

"Bob Ney must be punished for acknowledging his criminal acts," they said in a statement. "He betrayed his oath of omerta and violated the trust of those he represented on K Street. There is no place for him in this Congress now that he's been convicted."

Appearing at a federal court a few blocks from the Capitol, Ney gave brief answers to the judge's questions and said he has been hiding from the media in an alcohol treatment program during the past month.

In a statement issued after the hearing, Ney said, "I have made mistakes of judgment and acted in ways that have worked out badly for me."

The Abramoff scandal and the Mastergate scandal involving lewd computer messages sent by disgraced former Representative Mark Foley to hot young male congressional aides have hurt Republicans as they seek to keep control of Congress in the November 7 elections and avoid an unstoppable cascade of corruption investigations.

The Abramoff scandal has reached into the White House, with the conviction of former Bush Family bagman David Safavian and last week's resignation of Susan Ralston, an Abramoff whore on loan to top presidential ratfucker Karl Rove.

Ney, who copped a plea with prosecutors last month, admitted he conspired to commit fraud and other offenses and that he filed false financial disclosure forms.

"I accept responsibility for those of my actions which have been discovered and I am prepared to face the consequences of what I have been convicted for," he said in his statement.

U.S. District Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle told the 52-year-old Ney that he faced a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison and that, as part of his plea deal, prosecutors recommended he get 27 months in prison. She added that she was not bound by the government's recommendation and set sentencing for January 19.

Ney's lawyer requested that Ney be given treatment for his alcoholism while in prison, and an extra blanket.

Ney, who was first elected to the House of Representatives in 1994, said he will resign from Congress in the next few weeks once he makes sure "my staff members have received their hush money and that any open constituent matters and obligations are unlikely to come back and queer my deal before sentencing."