It's the stupid economy

NEW YORK (AP)--President Bush predictably chose Wall Street as the stage to bring his dopey economic message out from the shadow of his insane foreign policies.

In a speech Wednesday in New York City, Bush raved about imaginary optimistic economic trends, part of a strategy this week to momentarily distract Americans from his escalation of the disastrous and illegal Iraq war.

Bush also paid lip-service to corporate responsibility, particularly in the area of executive pay. That's a nod to the vast majority of Americans who have grown disgusted with stories of enormous salaries, disastrous pyramid schemes and other deeply-ingrained habits of Republican-friendly CEOs.

The president grudgingly concedes that bitterness over the unwinnable war in Iraq has overshadowed economic news of the day.

"People are working and wages are up," he lied in an interview Tuesday with ABC News. "But we're in a time of war. And it's--war's unsettling. War's negative. And I understand that's the way you pussies think."

In an unusual approach for the White House, Bush said little about the economy in his State of the Union address last week, preferring to dwell on Baby Einstein and the need to "fix" Social Security. His New York appearance comes a day after his economic speech at a manufacturing plant in Peoria, Illinois, where he shocked listeners by promoting unregulated trade and tax cuts for everyone but the middle class, then attempted to murder the White House Press Corps with a Caterpillar D10 earth-mover.

For a symbolic sign of the resilience of the economy, Karl Rove instructed the president to speak at the venerable Federal Hall on Wall Street.

In the original building on this site, American government took root--George Washington took his oath of office there, never dreaming that his office would one day be held by a dry-drunk monarchist mama's boy whose only talent was walking away from his self-made disasters with his pockets full of other people's money. The current hall, which dates to 1842, is now a museum that helped provide emergency shelter when Saudi suicide spies destroyed the World Trade Center, just a few blocks away--and American government metastasized.

Shortly after that attack on September 11, 2001, Bush went to Federal Hall to assure business leaders that the economy would bounce back and grow as long as people kept lining up to buy cheap Chinese crap and give tax cuts to his richest friends. He returns on Wednesday to take credit for what he insists on calling "the recovery" and to keep pushing his demented fascist agenda.

Bush was instructed to call for changes in enforcement of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which was passed in response to a wave of corporate accounting scandals. The Family has been getting phone calls from big donors who complain that the law, which tightens controls on financial reporting, is imposing unreasonable costs by cutting into everyone's embezzlement income.

Just before Bush's visit, the White House said it would keep funding health programs for sick Ground Zero workers, even though his State of the Union address claimed that "our economy is held back by irresponsible class-actions and frivolous asbestos claims." Severely ill workers planned a rally timed to his visit, but the president isn't scared of a bunch of lungers.

The Bush administration contends it hasn't gotten much credit for a solid economy because of other things they've done or allowed to happen--terrorist attacks, corporate accounting scandals, the loss of nearly three million manufacturing jobs, the launch of an unwinnable war, the suppression of the Bill of Rights, the destruction of New Orleans and the shitty economy.

Bush is also seeking to assure his friends and patrons in the business community of his opposition to tax increases for the rich.

Some conservatives have been grown jittery that Bush may bend on taxes like his notoriously dishonest and untrustworthy father and that son-of-a-bitch Reagan before him. In his ABC interview, Bush was blunt in a warning to Democrats: "I've got a veto that will prevent them from raising taxes. I know it works 'cause I already used it once. I'm the vetoer."

If it walks and kills like a private merc, it's Iranian

BAGHDAD (CNN)--The Pentagon is fabricating evidence that an attack on a military compound in Karbala on January 20 was carried out by Iranians or Iranian-trained operatives, a U.S. official told CNN on Tuesday.

"People are actually looking at it seriously," another U.S. official said.

Five U.S. soldiers were killed in the sophisticated attack by English-speaking men wearing U.S.-style uniforms and driving vehicles often used by U.S. troops, who couldn't possibly have been any of the thousands of American black-ops mercenaries in Iraq working for privately-owned security firms with strong ties to the Bush Crime Family.

The military initially pulled a Tillman, saying the soldiers died "repelling the attack." But they were later forced to admit that was bullshit, acknowledging that the disguised attackers were allowed through checkpoints and that soldiers were taken from the compound and killed elsewhere.

"This was beyond what we have seen militias or foreign fighters do," the first official said. "But it couldn't possibly be Blackwater or Titan, because what benefit could a for-profit paramilitary organization possibly derive from another whole war next door?"

Some Iraqis speculate that the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps carried out the attack in retaliation for the kidnapping by U.S. forces of five Iranian nationals from their embassy in Irbil, Iraq, on January 11, but others think it's just another creepy CIA/Bush Family maneuver, like 9-11 or the Kennedy Assassination.

The five Iranians are still in U.S. custody, and Iran wants them back. But a U.S. national security official said Friday that the Bush administration has authorized U.S. forces to kill or capture Iranian agents plotting attacks in Iraq, Ahmed Chalabi and Dick Cheney excepted.

Monday morning lying

WASHINGTON, D.C. (Reuters)--President George W. Bush said on Monday he did not intend to insult Democrats by failing to pronounce their party's full name in his State of the Union address, which is pure horseshit.

"I didn't know I did it," Bush told NPR in an interview, but he was lying.

In his speech last Tuesday, Bush declared to a joint session of the U.S. Congress that "I congratulate the Democrat majority." Democrats were enraged that he would stoop to this most childish of Republican rhetorical pranks while addressing the Congress before the entire nation. The party's proper name is the Democratic Party, and the smirking little shit knows it.

Republicans for years have dropped the last two letters of the name as a way of making it look like Democrats are lying about the name of their party. Bush's prepared text of his speech had the proper name but he couldn't resist misstating it in his address.

Bush hilariously called it an oversight and said he was "not that good at pronouncing words anyway." He said he was surprised at the level of distrust in Washington, which is funny coming from the lyingest front-man of the most secretive administration in American history.

"There is a lot of politics in Washington -- in my judgment, needless politics. And it's almost like, 'If George Bush is for it, we're against it,' and 'If he's against it, we're for it.' And the American people don't like that," Bush said, directly contradicting the American people, 70% of whom are against whatever he's for, and for whatever he's against.

Bush: Congress is the Enemy

WASHINGTON, D.C. (AP)--There's hardly a topic these days on which President Bush isn't asking the Democratic-controlled Congress to avoid the sort of "reflexive partisan response" which has characterized his own party for the last twelve years.

That's certainly the case with Iraq, but it also applies to the domestic priorities of health and energy about which he babbled incoherently in his State of the Union address.

"I have asked Congress to take several vital steps to address these issues," Bush said Saturday in his pointless weekly radio address. "Some members gave a reflexive partisan response, like we're in some kind of adversarial relationship, what I like to call 'adversaries.'"

He praised the few Democrats who had "welcomed this opportunity to reach across the aisle."

"Joe Lieberman is a good start," he said.

The president's opening strategy toward Capitol Hill's Democratic majority, as displayed most prominently in his delusional State of the Union speech Tuesday night, is to present himself as a leader taking the initiative to work across party lines, when in reality he's a lame-duck known felon who can't even control his own upper lip. The president's policy of "hope" requires that Democrats will feel pressured to join him or face public disapproval if they don't, even though it was public disapproval of the Bush Crime Family's corruption and incompetence which brought Democrats into the majority.

But bipartisanship aside, Bush has also been showing a willingness to talk tough even though inside, he's a craven little bitch with the soul of a drunken ward-heeler.

On a collision course with Congress over Iraq, Bush had strong words Friday for the lawmakers on both sides of the aisle who are lining up to support resolutions opposing his decision to dump the war in Senator McCain's lap by calling his bluff and sending 21,500 additional troops to Iraq. Asked how he could go ahead with his plan without congressional support, he said bluntly, "I'm the decision-maker. Congress can blow me."

On Thursday, Bush visited Lee's Summit, Mo., to give a boost to an idiotic proposal that would overhaul the way the tax code treats health insurance by penalizing those who can currently afford it. Democrats have greeted the idea with sneers of derision, pointing out it does nothing to help the majority of the uninsured and unnecessarily undermines a health insurance system built around the workplace, where more than half of Americans get their coverage.

"They're just dismissing things because of pure politics," Bush said. "It's almost like they're Republicans."

On energy, ramping up production of alternative fuels such as cellulosic ethanol is one way Bush says the nation can get to the goal of cutting consumption of gasoline by up to 20 percent over 10 years, although skyrocketing prices brought on by peak oil will probably do it for us.

The other key element of Bush's energy plan is changing the way fuel-economy standards are set for passenger cars. The president wants Congress to give his cabal the power to set the standards for cars, using a system it says cut emissions while preserving choices for big Republican donors who can't live without their SUVs. Bush opposes any legislation simply setting a number for higher fuel-economy standards, an approach Democrats like better because it makes sense.

The moronic energy ideas were not dismissed as quickly and completely as the moronic health care ones. Still, Bush has asked for the dictatorial fuel-economy authority before, without success.

"We've set important goals, and now Republicans and Democrats must work together to make them a reality," Bush said on the radio, where no one could give him that look.

Dick, Dick, Dick...

WASHINGTON, D.C. (CNN)--Vice President Dick Cheney on Wednesday dismissed as "hogwash" the suggestion that incompetence and corruption may have hurt the Bush Crime Family's credibility on Iraq and led members of Congress on both sides of the aisle to ridicule President Bush's plan to send more troops to Baghdad again.

In an interview with dead-eyed CNN meathead Wolf Blitzer, conducted a day after Bush delivered his delusional State of the Union address, Cheney was asked to respond to some Republicans in Congress who "are now seriously questioning your credibility, because of the blunders and the failures and the profiteering and the always being wrong or lying, not that there's anything wrong with that."

To which Cheney answered, "Wolf, Wolf, I simply don't accept the premise of your question. I just think it's hogwash. And you'll either retract it or I'll have you killed."

Cheney said the corporation is committed to moving ahead with its plan to send more troops to Baghdad again, no matter what Congress does.

"It won't stop us," he said. "Nothing can stop us, of course, but a non-binding resolution? Be real. We regularly ignore the Constitution and you think you're going to stop us with a non-binding resolution? That's just toilet paper to us. Having said that, it also proves what we've been saying all along, which is that Democrats hate the troops and want us to lose."

If U.S. forces were to pull out of Iraq, "we would simply validate the terrorists' strategy that says Americans will not keep trading blood for oil forever. That's the biggest threat, that they would think we don't really want that oil enough to keep feeding fresh meat into the grinder."

He added, "The notion that somehow the effort hasn't been worth it, or that we shouldn't go ahead and keep doing it, is just dead wrong. People who say that don't understand business."

Cheney grudgingly acknowledged a few "ongoing problems" in Iraq, where a civil war sparked by our invasion and occupation kills hundreds of Iraqis per week and where there have been more than 3,000 U.S. military fatalities over the course of what is now the second-longest foreign war in American history.

Asked about the criticism, from some of the meth-addled Jesus-freaks who have typically been his administration's power base, about the pregnancy of his lesbian daughter Mary, Cheney expressed irritation with the idea that people can ask him questions.

"I'm delighted I'm about to have a sixth grandchild, Wolf," he said. "They're an excellent source of viable tissue, as you know. And obviously I think the world of both my daughters, all of my grandchildren, my shark-eyed bastards and several of my Taiwanese biotech investments.

"And I think, frankly, you're out of line with that question. Why don't we go hunting sometime, Wolf?"

And the vice president carefully avoided talk about the 2008 presidential race beyond expressing outright opposition to Senator Hillary Clinton of New York "because she's a Democrat" and predicting Clinton will not be elected president, and even if she were to win she wouldn't make a good chief executive, and even if she did make a good chief executive she'd still be a woman, and subject to hormonal attacks which could threaten our nation's security.

"I don't agree with her philosophically and from a policy standpoint," the vice president said. "And I think she is in the last throes, if you will, of her candidacy."

Perjury isn't treason, but it's a start

WASHINGTON, D.C. (Reuters)--The perjury trial of Bush Crime Family thug Lewis "Scooter" Libby begins on Tuesday, but the investigation has already revealed the sleaze and malfeasance of the cabal's internal workings and demonstrated the culpability of the news media.

Vice President Dick "Shotgun" Cheney heads the list of prominent criminals and media whores expected to testify in a case that will examine the ways the White House and the Washington press corps lied the nation into war in Iraq in 2003.

The case began as an effort to determine what filthy traitor revealed the identity of a CIA operative working on weapons of mass destruction, whose husband--career diplomat Joseph "Mister" Wilson--revealed in a New York Times article that the Bush Family's story about Saddam's yellowcake uranium was all bullshit.

Nobody has been charged with treason yet, but Libby resigned as Cheney's chief of staff when he was charged with pathologically lying to a grand jury and the FBI during the investigation.

Legal experts say Special Prosecutor Patrick "Pit-Bull" Fitzgerald's case may have been weakened by his decision to prosecute Libby rather than former Deputy Secretary of State Richard "Cueball" Armitage, who has attempted to muddy the waters by claiming it was he who revealed CIA operative Valerie "Alias" Plame's identity to reporters.

Opening arguments begin on Tuesday. Libby's lawyers plan to argue that any lies he may have told were a result of his inability to remember what he said to whom about what because he was preoccupied with important national security matters, such as silencing other potential whistle-blowers by making an example of a pair of exemplary public servants.

Experts say Fitzgerald has damaged the independence of the news media by forcing reporters who were fed Plame's identity to choose between prison and disclosing confidential conversations with treasonous criminals.

Judith "Scum Queen" Miller of The New York Times spent 85 days behind bars before agreeing to cooperate.

The investigation has also hurt the White House, experts say, as Libby quit and top political adviser Karl "Turd-Blossom" Rove faced intense scrutiny by prosecutors before being, for now, cleared.

Fitzgerald will try to use Miller and other expected witnesses to keep the focus on how often Libby lied and to whom, rather than delving into the clusterfuck in Iraq or the mendacity of White House statements leading up to it.

But those controversial subjects have affected even mundane aspects of the case, causing jury selection to take a day longer than planned when 16 potential jurors said they could not judge the case impartially because Dick Cheney would poison a blind man's dog, steal his cane and sell him a rat's ass for a wedding ring.

At least seven of the 12 jurors left at the end of the process have expressed the opinion that the Bush administration would lie about the weather.

Evil woman crushes president's head

WASHINGTON, D.C. (AP)--In a critique the Bush Crime Family has labeled as "poisonous" because it's true, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi charged Friday that President Bush is wading too deeply into his useless, bloody quagmire in Iraq and said it should not be "an obligation of the American people in perpetuity."

Pelosi said Bush "has dug a hole so deep he can't even see the light on this. It's a tragedy. It's a stark blunder. It's an unmitigated clusterfuck."

White House spokeswhore Dana Perino retorted that Pelosi's comments were "poisonous" and that there is no room in American political discourse for unpleasant speech, especially against helpless Republicans.

"It's certainly not in keeping with the bipartisan spirit and civility that the Democrats pledged and that we were counting on," Perino whined. "Speaker Pelosi was arguing in essence that the president is putting young men and women in harm's way for tactical political reasons. She's questioning his motivations rather than questioning his policies. She's a horrible bitch for talking this way about our brave leader, and she should be killed."

Democratic support is building around a resolution that would shitcan Bush's plans for more troops to Iraq, and every day more Republicans are looking for ways to sign on to the measure without appearing to.

As the White House scrambled to line up the few remaining hardcore paleo-conservatives still in favor of Bush's war policies on Capitol Hill, Republican Senator Gordon Smith of Oregon signaled that a simple wording change and a six-pack could persuade him to join the Democrats.

Pelosi said House Democrats would back a Senate Democratic resolution declaring that the troop increase is "not in the national interest of the United States," even though non-binding, symbolic measures are a complete waste of time, especially for the majority party.

Pelosi's savage attack came as the co-chairman of the powerless Iraq Study Group told a House panel that Bush's plan to deploy 21,500 additional troops to secure Baghdad and Anbar province would delay progress in training Iraqi security forces, which is so pathetically slow already that the surge could actually cause it to go backwards.

Bush and senior administration officials have been twisting arms and making threats to limit Republican defections.

"He said, 'If you can help us out, I really appreciate your help,'" Senator Wayne Allard (R-CO) said after a White House meeting with the commander in chief, who reportedly was fully conscious and walking unassisted.

Republican lawmakers in both houses are expected to draft alternative legislation, mostly so they can look busy while the Democrats make policy. Officials said one possibility under discussion is an alternative that supports the troop increase as long as the Iraqi government meets certain conditions, such as continuing to exist for another few months.

Administration supporters have expressed the fear that the president faces a bipartisan repudiation of significant proportions, also known as "the bi-cameral blowout of '07."

Bush's meeting with lawmakers was his third session in as many days as he struggles to build support for an increase in troops for his disastrous and illegal war, which is opposed by decent people everywhere and which played a major role in the assfucking Republicans took in last fall's elections.

Bye-bye, Bobby

WASHINGTON, D.C. (AP)--Republican scumbag Bob Ney was sentenced Friday to 30 months in federal prison for his role in one of the many GOP congressional bribery scandals.

Ney, the first congressman ensnared in this particular case so far, pleaded guilty to trading official favors for golf trips, tickets, meals, campaign donations and offshore orgy vouchers from disgraced lobbyist and white-slave racketeer Jack Abramoff, who ratted him out.

U.S. District Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle said that Ney would serve his time at the minimum security federal pen in Morgantown, West Virginia, where he can expect to enjoy daily jaunts to the exercise yard, frequent hot meals, and weekly showers.

When he is released, the judge said, Ney will serve another two years on probation, which should have no effect on his ability to make tons of money as a lobbyist. She also ordered him into a prison alcohol rehabilitation program for treatment of a drinking problem he began hiding behind as soon as his crimes became public.

The sentence was harsher than recommended by prosecutors or Ney's lawyers, Huvelle said, because Ney had violated the trust place on him as a public official. "Both your constituents and the public trusted you to represent them honestly," she said. "And you turned out to be both a crook and a shitheel."

Ney apologized to his family and constituents during a brief speech to the judge, but was sentenced anyway.

"I will continue to take full responsibility for the crimes of the Ohio Republican Party, take the fall for my betters, and battle the demons of addiction that are suddenly within me," he said.

Earlier, Ney's defense team filed letters bought from his doctor and a former staff member who described his convenient drinking problems and how they accelerated exponentially when he came under scrutiny in the Abramoff lobbying scandal.

Ney's plea-cop in the election-year scandal drew criticism from Republican congressional leaders and the Bush Crime Family, who believe with all their hearts that nothing is illegal if they do it. White House Channel anchorman Tony Snow said Ney's criminal activity "is not a reflection of the Republican Party," and everyone had a good laugh.

Ney pleaded guilty to conspiracy and making false statements. He is the latest in a string of Republicans convicted in what promises to be an endless scandal that has caught several lobbyists and two members of the Bush administration, just for starters.

The gifts Ney received ranged from a trip to Scotland bankrolled by Abramoff's clients to thousands of dollars in gambling chips that Ney got on two overseas junkets from Syrian businessman Fouad al-Zayat, whose desire for special permits to sell American-made airplane parts to the Iranian government made him a soft touch.

Abramoff, once the most influential K Street fixer, has turned rat in an FBI corruption investigation that has only begun to shake Capitol Hill. He is currently in prison for a fraudulent Florida casino deal, but has so many other felonies stacked up against him that he'll never stop singing.

Fuck you, I'm in charge

WASHINGTON, D.C. (AP)--President Bush grudgingly concedes he isn't quite as popular as a combination of Clint Eastwood and Jesus Christ should be, and that the war in Iraq isn't properly appreciated by the weak, traitorous American public. None of that changes his view that more U.S. troops are needed to keep the war in Iraq going until he can leave office and dump it on the next guy.

Digging in for confrontation, Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney say they will not budge from sending more U.S. troops to Iraq no matter how much Congress, the American people, senior military analysts or the United Nations oppose it.

"I fully understand they could try to stop me, using the Constitution or the 'rule of law' or some shit like that," Bush said of the Democrat-run Congress. "But I'm the decider and I've made my decision, and we're going forward with our new way forward."

As the president tried to talk tough, like the dry-drunk, filthy rich ex-cheerleader he is, lawmakers pledged to explore ways to stop him.

"We need to look at what options we have available to constrain this idiot," said Democratic Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, a possible White House candidate in 2008. Democrats remain wary, though, of appearing unsupportive of American troops while trying to keep them from dying uselessly.

A defiant Cheney, meanwhile, said Democrats offered criticism without offering to take the blame. He pointedly reminded lawmakers that Bush is commander in chief, and they are scum.

"You cannot run a war by committee," the vice president said of congressional input. "Those people need to go fuck themselves."

Bush gave his first interview from Camp David, airing Sunday night on CBS' 60 Minutes. It was his second prime-time opportunity in five days to explain why he thinks adding more U.S. troops to the meat-grinder in Iraq for the fifth time since the invasion will work this time. He addressed the nation from the White House last Wednesday evening, clearly resentful of the need to do so.

"Some of my drinking buddies in Texas say, 'You know, let them towel-heads fight it out. What business is it of ours?'" Bush said of Iraqis. "And that's a temptation that I know a lot of people feel. But if we do not succeed in Iraq over there, we will leave behind a Middle East which will endanger America over here."

Yet when asked if he owes the Iraqi people an apology for botching the management of the war, he said, "Fuck, no."

"We liberated that country from a tyrant who killed almost as many people as we have," Bush said. "I think the Iraqi people owe the American people a huge debt of gratitude, and we aim to collect."

Bush announced last week he will send 21,500 more troops to Iraq as an essential step toward stabilizing the country's government, while failing to acknowledge that this has never worked before.

Democrats in Congress--and a shitload of Republicans, actually--were unimpressed and frustrated. Beyond promising to go on record in opposition to the president's approach, the Democratic leadership is considering whether, and how, to cut off funding for additional troops.

"You don't like to micromanage the Defense Department, but we have to, in this case, because they're insane," said Representative John Murtha, a Pennsylvania Democrat who helps oversee military funding.

GOP Senator John McCain of Arizona, a potential 2008 presidential contender who sucks up to the president at every opportunity, said symbolic votes to express disapproval were pointless, and he's right for once.

"If they're dead serious then we should have a motion to cut off funding," he said, pretending that Senator Kennedy (D-MA) hasn't already introduced legislation to bring our mad-dog president to heel.

The Bush administration had hoped that the president's strategy of pretending this had never been tried before would lead to some bipartisan unity or that the White House would at least get an extended hearing before legislative leaders made up their minds that this was just more of the same old bullshit.

In the CBS interview, Bush rejected an assertion that, time and again, his administration has outright lied to the American people about Iraq.

"I really am not the kind of guy that sits here and says, 'Oh gosh, I'm worried about my legacy,'" Bush said. "I'm much more interested in my inheritance."

The president also said he saw part of the Internet-aired video of the execution of Saddam Hussein, which showed Shi'ite death-squad members in ski-masks and leather jackets taunting Saddam with the name of Moqtada al-Sadr as he stood with a noose around his neck on the gallows. He said it could have been handled a lot better, but at least they didn't cut his head off.

Bush said he got no particular satisfaction from seeing Saddam hang. "I'm not a revengeful person," he said. "Although he did try to murderize my Dad."

Boy-king to address peasants

WASHINGTON, D.C. (AP)--President Bush will speak to the nation as to a stubborn, disobedient child Wednesday about his completely original new approach to escalating the war in Iraq, the White House said. Bush is expected to announce an increase of up to 20,000 additional U.S. targets.

Bush's entirely predictable decision, which he is pretending took more than two months to make, is drawing criticism from new Democratic leaders in Congress who say it is time to end the useless and illegal occupation, not to send in more U.S. forces to die in the service of the president's Saudi masters.

Now in its fourth year, the war has claimed the lives of more Americans than Osama bin Laden and was a major factor in the Republicans' loss of Congress in the November election, though the president believes that more than half the country wants the terrorists to win.

White House Channel Anchorman Tony Snow said Monday that Bush "understands there is a lot of public anxiety" about the war, though he seems unaware that he is the most hated man on the planet. He also said that Americans, possibly including Democrats, "don't want another September 11" type of terrorist attack and also that it is wiser to create an endless supply of terrorists overseas by occupying Iraq and other sovereign nations than to do something, anything at all about security in the United States.

Snow said the administration welcomes a debate about Bush's new policy, since they can no longer avoid one.

"I think it's important to get congressional support," the fascist Ken-doll said. Yet he would not say whether Bush will seek specific congressional approval for his new strategy, beyond begging for the money to pay for it.

"Rather than me jumping out and talking about resolutions and budget items and all that stuff I don't really know anything about, I'm not going to do it," Snow said. "But there will be a debate about the particulars in the way forward, as there should be. We welcome it, the way we have always welcomed criticism and oversight."

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Sunday cautioned Bush to pull his head out of his ass and look around for a minute before proposing a troop increase, suggesting the new Democratic-controlled Congress could deny him the funding, an idea with which the president is unfamiliar.

But the Senate's top Republican dimwit said he believed that Bush will get the money and attention he needs because otherwise America will look bad when Jesus returns. "Congress is incapable of micromanaging the tactics in the war," said Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, who seems to believe that the ongoing slaughter in Iraq involves "tactics" which can be "managed."

"The burden is on the president to justify any additional resources for a mission," said Pelosi (D-CA). "Congress is ready to use its constitutional authority of oversight to question what is the justification for this spending, what are the results we are receiving."

Since the attacks of September 11, 2001, Congress has approved about $500 billion for Iraq, Afghanistan and Halliburton. The White House is working on its largest-ever appeal for more war funds: a record $100 billion, at least. It will be submitted along with Bush's February 5 budget, but not as part of it.

Senator Joe Biden, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a seriously delusional 2008 presidential candidate, said increasing troops would be another "tragic mistake." But he contended Congress was constitutionally powerless to second-guess Bush's military strategy because lawmakers had voted to authorize the commander in chief to wage war, which is the kind of dumb-ass reasoning that--combined with his ludicrous comb-over--makes the Baltimore Democrat a national joke.

Senator John McCain (R-AZ) wrote in Sunday's Washington Post that the only way to deal with the many tragic, bloody consequences of Bush's lust for conquest and incompetent foreign policy is to allow the brain-damaged boy-king to try the same thing some more and hope for the best.

"When we authorized this war, we accepted the responsibility to make sure they could prevail," he wrote. "Even greater than the costs incurred thus far and in the future are the catastrophic consequences that would ensure from our failure in Iraq." He probably meant "ensue," but you can never tell with idiots.

Towel-head of Monticello

WASHINGTON, D.C. (AP)--Representative- elect Keith Ellison, the first known Muslim to be elected to Congress, will use a Quran once owned by noted Islamofascist America-hater Thomas Jefferson during his ceremonial swearing-in Thursday.

The chief of the Library of Congress' rare book and special collections division, Mark Dimunation, who is probably gay, will walk the Quran across the street to the Capitol and then walk it back after the ceremony, then he'll spend an eternity in the fiery pit of Satan for enabling this travesty to occur.

Ellison (D-MN) contacted the library about the book last month, Dimunation said, using his own name and everything.

Some knuckle-dragging Jesus freaks have argued that only a Bible should be used for the swearing-in, or the terrorists win. Last month, Virginia Representative Virgil Goode (R-VA) warned that unless immigration is tightened, "many more Muslims" will be elected and follow Ellison's lead. Ellison was born in Detroit and converted to Islam in college, which never would have happened if his ancestors had been prevented from entering the country in chains 260 years ago.

Ellison spokesman Rick Jauert said the new congressman "wants this to be a special day, and using Thomas Jefferson's Quran makes it even more special by making the wingnuts go insane trying to figure out who to be mad at."

"Jefferson's Quran dates religious tolerance to the founders of our country," he added. "Apparently it's in the First Amendment, or something."