Tuesday, February 27, 2007

You're in the army now

WASHINGTON, D.C. (AP)--The White House and 36 Republican scumbags said Tuesday that President Bush and his fascist buttlicks in the Senate will recklessly kill a 9/11 anti-terror bill if Congress sends it to the White House with a provision to let airport screeners unionize.

"As the legislation currently stands, the president's corporate masters would instruct him to veto the bill," said White House spokesbitch Scott Stanzel.

Senate Republicans swiftly backed up the threat with a pledge by more than enough senators to thwart the will of the American people and block any veto override attempt.

"If the final bill contains such a heinous provision, forcing you as a godly warrior to veto it, we pledge to sustain your veto," they wrote to the president. Big-business dickhead Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) planned to offer an amendment to strip the provision from the bill.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said that allowing screeners to unionize would impede the department's quick response to possible threats, such as the sudden appearance of previously unknown airports. Fast redeployment of screeners cannot wait for negotiations, he said.

"Marines don't collectively bargain over whether they're going to wind up, you know, being deployed in Anbar province or in Baghdad," Chertoff irrelevantly told reporters after a briefing with senators. "We can't negotiate over terms and conditions of work that goes to the heart of our ability to move rapidly in order to deal with the threats that are emerging. I mean, can you imagine if the police could unionize? Or firemen? Society would be destroyed."

Chertoff said screeners are as much on the front lines in the war against terror as military troops, except they get to go home after work and nobody's shooting at them and they never consented to be part of a military chain of command and they don't wear uniforms and they can quit if they want.

Casting the provision as a deal-killer is intended to slow the atrophy of Bush's political muscle with the new, Democratic-led Congress on the old battleground of labor rights, which he and his entire class of inbred monarchist millionaire fuckwits oppose with a level of passion they generally reserve for golf, embezzlement, and the Dominican teen sex trade. As a bonus, it could also obstruct talks over how to debate and pass the recommendations of the September 11 Commission long enough to dump the whole problem on the next administration.

For now, most senators are eager to follow the House and pass a bill enacting the commission's recommendations to tighten the nation's security before the Bush Family's Saudi Arabian business contacts figure out how to nuke us.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada and Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky reached a tentative agreement Tuesday to conduct the debate over the next 10 days without the distraction of Iraq, which the president has declared to be none of their goddamn business anyway.

Wednesday, February 21, 2007

Another old man needs a faceful of birdshot

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Monday, February 19, 2007

Monday morning holiday gibberish

MT. VERNON, VA (AP)--President Bush honored the 275th birthday of the nation's first president on Monday by pretending that similarities exist between George Washington's ultimate victory in the American Revolution and the Bush Crime Family's ongoing catastrophic failure in Iraq.

"Today, we're fighting a new war to defend our liberty and our people and our way of life as colonizers of the Middle East," said Bush, standing in front of Washington's home above the Potomac River.

"And as we work to advance the cause of freedom around the world, we remember that the father of our country believed that our revolution had to be fought here because we couldn't afford to fight it over there."

Bush chose the national Presidents Day holiday to defile Mount Vernon for the first time in his presidency. He and pill-addled first lady Laura Bush helped lay a wreath at Washington's tomb, then the president tried out some new material from a platform on the bowling green lawn of the estate.

"I feel right at home here. After all, this is the home of the first George W. I thank President Washington for welcoming us today. He doesn't look a day over 275 years old," Bush said, his nasty, shit-eating smirk forcing strained, awkward laughter from the assembled buttboys and second-stringers.

Washington was born on Feb. 22, 1732.

"On the field of battle, Washington's insurgent forces were challenging occupation by a foreign army, and the ragged Continental Army lost more battles than it won, suffered waves of desertions, and were kept from disaster only through their rugged determination to be free of the hated occupier at any cost. George Washington's calm hand and determination kept the cause of independence and the principles of our Declaration alive, by simply outlasting and bankrupting his foreign oppressors," Bush raved, speaking to several hundred people who couldn't imagine where he was going with this.

Maverick hates women

SPARTANBURG, S.C (AP)--Republican presidential candidate and Bush Family whore John McCain, looking to improve his standing with the Family's Religious Nazi base, said Sunday the court decision that legalized abortion should be overturned, as well as the Nineteenth Amendment.

McCain also vowed that if elected, he would appoint judges who "strictly interpret the Constitution of the United States and do not legislate from the bench or deviate in any way from what I say I think that day."

The landmark 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade gave women the right to claim ownership of their bodies--110 years after the Emancipation Proclamation, another event many Republicans regret. The Supreme Court has narrowly upheld the decision and always will, because otherwise the Bush Crime Family wouldn't be able to manipulate America's more retarded elements into voting against their own economic interests every goddamn time. The presence of an increasing number of more conservative justices on the court suggests that the Bushes anticipate having to lawyer up some time in the coming months.

Religious nazis are a critical voting bloc in the GOP presidential primaries.

McCain's campaign also announced early Sunday that he had been endorsed by former Oklahoma Governor Frank Keating, who had been considering his own bid for the White House in 2000 before the Bushes told him to back off, and former Texas Senator Phil Gramm, who proved less popular than barking madman Bob Dole in 1996.

Keating told the crowd that McCain is the "only candidate who is a true-blue, Ronald Reagan conservative," meaning he's too old for the job and will be an excellent tool for the Bush Family.

McCain (Slogan--"McCain: He's the best we can do.") has strong name recognition and the largest network of supporters in South Carolina. But it's the same state that dealt a crushing blow to his presidential aspirations in 2000, when he was ratfucked with a misleading and racist push-poll carried out by the same political operatives who are now running his campaign.

McCain is trying to suck up to the religious nazis after a recent rebuke from noted Christian psychopath James Dobson, who said he wouldn't back McCain's presidential bid unless he ditched all his moderate views.

Saturday, February 17, 2007

Iraq War symbolically over

WASHINGTON, D.C. (AP)--The Democratic-controlled House of Representatives issued a symbolic rejection of President Bush's decision to dump more troops into his Iraq quagmire on Friday, opening an epic confrontation between Congress and commander in chief over a disastrous and illegal war that has taken the lives of more than 3,100 U.S. troops and left 20,000 more maimed for life.

The vote on the pointless nonbinding measure was 246-182, and within minutes, Democrats said their next move would be to challenge Bush's request for $93 billion in new funds for the Carlyle Group.

Twisting recent comments by Democrats, Bush's Republican goons said repeatedly the measure would lead to attempts to cut off food and ammunition for the troops and leave them to die in the desert with no way to charge their iPods.

"Now it's time to stand up for my friends who did not make it home, and for those who fought and died in Iraq already," said GOP Representative Sam Johnson of Texas, who was a prisoner of war in Vietnam and should know better. "We must not cut funding for our friends in the defense industry. We must stick by them," he added, snapping off a salute as he completed his remarks to yet another kneejerk ovation.

Moving quickly, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) set a test vote for Saturday on an identical measure, and several presidential contenders in both parties were forced to rearrange their weekend campaign schedules to be present and do their fucking job.

The House vote completed a turnabout from the fall of 2002, when the House bowed, 296-133, to Bush's request to authorize military action against Iraqi ruler Saddam Hussein as soon as evidence could be fabricated indicating that he was a threat to the U.S.

U.S.-led troops made quick work of his regime but soon discovered it was the only thing keeping long-suppressed sectarian rivalries from boiling over into full-fledged civil war. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have died in the ensuing war, along with more than 3,100 U.S. troops.

Bush made no comment on the developments in the House, and his spokesman said the president was too drunk to watch the proceedings on television.

Bush has already said passage of the measure will not deter him from proceeding with the deployment of another 21,500 troops, designed primarily to make John McCain stop complaining.

Bush and his flunkies in Congress calculated days ago that the House measure would pass, and increasingly have focused their energy on attacking the next step in the Democrats' attempt to end U.S. participation in the war, which is to stop paying for it.

"The President believes that the Congress should provide the full funding and flexibility the defense industry needs to thrive and prosper," said White House Channel anchorman Tony Snow.

Democrats have indicated they will use Bush's spending request to impose certain standards of readiness, training and rest for the troops, which Republicans say proves how much they hate them.

"This is all part of their plan to eliminate funding for our troops that are in harm's way and just leave them over there with no dinner and no way home. And we stand here as Republicans...committed to making sure our troops in harm's way have all the funds and equipment they need to survive witnessing this civil war in Iraq," said John Boehner of Ohio, pretending to choke back tears.

Thursday, February 15, 2007

No one could've anticipated diplomacy with Iran

WASHINGTON, D.C. (Reuters)--Controversy over a missed U.S. opportunity for sane diplomatic relations with Iran grew on Wednesday as a former aide accused Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice of lying to Congress on the issue.

Flynt Leverett, who worked on the National Security Council when it was headed by Rice, said a proposal vetted by Tehran's most senior leaders was sent to the United States in May 2003 and was akin to the 1972 U.S. opening to China, which helped us to avoid nuclear war with that country.

Speaking at a conference on Capitol Hill, Leverett said he was confident it was seen by Rice and then-Secretary of State Colin Powell but "the administration rejected the overture" as unprofitable for Halliburton and others.

Rice's spokesman denied she lied to Congress and reiterated that she never saw the proposal and anyway, she's just a girl.

Testifying before a U.S. Congress committee last week, Rice said in that strident, whining way she has, "I don't know what Flynt Leverett's talking about."

She faulted him for not spelling out to her, as to a small child with a severe learning disability, "We have a proposal from Iran and we really ought to take it."

On Wednesday, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said: "What she said is she has no recollection of having seen it. She has said that repeatedly, and will keep saying it over and over until people stop asking her about it."

Leverett and others have represented the proposal as a missed opportunity that could have defused tensions with Iran which have grown to the point that the Bush Crime Family has been forced to deny it plans military action against Tehran, even as it plans military action against Tehran.

Leverett said Rice should apologize for calling his competence into question, also that he wouldn't be holding his breath.

He said he had left the National Security Council, which theoretically advises the president on security issues, in March 2003 before the Iranian proposal was received but after it was known that the Bush Family was pursuing a policy of total war in the Mideast. He returned to the CIA where he previously worked, but which was now a clearing house for ginned-up intelligence favoring war, and soon after left government.

Leverett said Powell, in a conversation about the Iranian proposal, told him he "couldn't sell it at the White House." This was evidence it had been discussed there, he said, or at least laughed about over drinks.

The proposal was transmitted in May 2003 by the Swiss ambassador in Tehran, Tim Guldimann, who represented U.S. interests there. Washington has not had diplomatic relations with Iran since two years after the 1979 Islamic revolution, when George H.W. Bush pulled his October Surprise negotiators out in the fuzzy afterglow of the Reagan inauguration.

Wednesday, February 14, 2007

Bill Donohue gets what he wants

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP)--A second blogger working for Democratic presidential candidate and Catholic League whipping-boy John Edwards quit Tuesday under pressure from a single misanthropic blowhard who said her previous online messages were anti-Catholic.

Melissa McEwan wrote on her personal blog, Shakespeare's Sister, that she left the campaign because she was becoming increasingly uncomfortable with the level of attention focused on her and her family by a vicious right-wing demagogue claiming to speak for all Catholics.

McEwan's resignation came just one day after another blogger, Amanda Marcotte of Pandagon, left the Edwards staff for similar reasons.

Both had become a flashpoint for bigoted loudmouth Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, a paranoid fringe group with no religious authority. Last week, Donohue demanded that Edwards fire both bloggers, and Edwards, to his shame, blinked.

Edwards, a former North Carolina senator who for some reason has not yet learned that the proper response to Religious Right hitmen who attack your flank is "Blow me," responded that he considered the bloggers' past writings personally offensive and added that similar content would not be tolerated. But he decided to keep Marcotte and McEwan on staff to give them "a fair shake" and try to avoid the wrath of the millions of progressive voters who wouldn't know Bill Donohue from a stinking, worm-infested hole in the ground.

"We're beginning a great debate about the future of our country, and we can't let it be hijacked," Edwards said in a statement last week, after having let it be hijacked.

Donohue had promised a nationwide scorched-earth smear campaign in newspapers, magazines and Catholic publications in an effort to rid the Edwards campaign of the two bloggers. The Catholic League counts 350,000 members, or about one half of one percent of all U.S. Catholics.

McEwan and Marcotte have stressed that the content and opinions on their personal blogs are in no way a reflection of the Edwards campaign, which you'd think would be obvious.

Donohue is a trash-talking piece of shit who thinks speaking out against the church should be illegal. He is obsessed with anal sex and Hollywood's control by "secular Jews who hate Christianity."

"It's too bad that Edwards didn't make the decision himself to get rid of them," Donohue said Tuesday night. "Why he had to wait for these women to bail on their own doesn't speak well for him. But I'm delighted, and as far as I'm concerned, this closes the issue. I have no vendetta against John Edwards, now that he's crippled himself in the eyes of his supporters."

Tuesday, February 13, 2007

"We would never invade anyone!"

WASHINGTON, D.C. (Reuters)--President George W. Bush is trying to convince the world he has no intention of invading Iran, but the world isn't as stupid as it used to be and just about everyone sees recent U.S. charges that Iran is shipping bombs into Iraq as the same kind of bullshit that led to our disastrous invasion and occupation of that country.

Having ordered two aircraft carrier groups to the Persian Gulf and accused Iranians of providing Iraqi Shi'ite militants with bombs that have killed 170 Americans and countless Sunni insurgents who themselves have killed twenty times that many Americans, Bush and his top aides are denying that a new war is brewing or that they understand why anyone would think that.

Bush himself, of course, prompted the debate in a January 10 speech outlining his re-branded same-old Iraq strategy, by saying, out of nowhere, "Iran is providing material support for attacks on American troops. We will disrupt the attacks on our forces."

The White House sees tensions with Iran over its nuclear ambitions as a separate issue from Tehran's alleged bomb supplies in Iraq, much the same way Saddam Hussein's human rights record was a separate issue from Baghdad's alleged WMD stockpiles.

Bush says he wants the nuclear issue resolved diplomatically, but refuses to speak with anyone in the Iranian government. He has authorized U.S. forces to capture or kill Iranians involved in attacks on Americans or Iraqis inside Iraq, or any Iranians who look like they might be thinking about maybe getting involved in attack-related program activities.

Democrats say they fear a repeat of 2002, when Bush denied there were plans for war against Iraq, and 2003, when Bush made the case for war against Iraq by lying about weapons of mass destruction.

When Bush hears arguments that dare to suggest he might have lied us into the stupidest foreign escapade in the nation's history, he sees a political attack from Democrats who hate America and want their party to claim the White House in 2008, possibly so they can paint it pink.

"I guess my reaction to all this shit about 'he wants to go to war'...first of all I don't understand the tactics. I guess I would say it's political," Bush told C-SPAN on Monday, before passing out.

The Family says some of the war talk is being driven by a news media hungry for the next big story, rather than the cabal's transparent attempts to whip up support for World War Three.

"I think that there have been attempts, with all due respect, in the press, to try to whip this up--'Is the administration going after Iran?"' said White House celebrity spokesweasel Tony Snow. "And I think the Anna Nicole Smith coverage has really suffered as a result."

Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a right-wing neoconservative think tank, said the Iran war debate appeared to be driven by gutless pussy Democrats looking for something to whine about and godly patriots who would like to nuke Tehran.

"It's quite clear from the content that they are trying to stop the flow of money and arms not provided by the Carlyle Group," he said. "If anything, the signals are more about market share than anything else."

The Bush Crime Family is trying to walk a fine line between threatening Iran over its alleged bomb supplies in Iraq, which Tehran denies, and underscoring its alleged diplomacy over Iran's nuclear ambitions, which no one has seen.

On the issue of Iranian bombs in Iraq, U.S. officials are adamant that the evidence is true. "The Iranians are up to their eyeballs in this activity," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said. "It's a slam-dunk."

Friday, February 09, 2007

Big man at the cracker factory

DALLAS (Reuters)--His influence with normal people may be diminished even as his porcine bloat continues unabated, but his self-righteous zeal is undaunted. Christianist political operative Jerry Falwell is on a mission to keep a simple-minded Republican wingnut in the White House and get at least one more reactionary bigot on the Supreme Court.

Despite his years in the trenches of America's manufactured culture wars, Falwell--who founded the Moral Majority political movement in 1979 and helped turn America into a fascist theocracy--said a major victory in his broader crusade to restore the country's religious insanity to pre-Enlightenment levels has so far eluded him.

With abortion still legal, prayer banned in public schools and scarlet women strutting shamelessly through our streets and boardrooms, he sees a long struggle ahead. For now, he is focusing on voter registration drives and rallying the wild-eyed morons who can't see what a grubby little hustler he is to give him money and back his candidates.

"It is a long road back. We are at least one U.S. Supreme Court Justice short of a socially conservative court," Falwell said on the sidelines of an evangelist conference in Dallas. "And that makes Baby Jesus™ cry."

By a long road back Falwell was referring to his youth in the 1930s and 1940s--a period he feels brought out the best in a strong nation that adhered to "old fashioned values," such as misogyny and lynching.

Getting a Supreme Court that would overturn the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion in America would be a major step down that road back to the good old days when white Christian men owned everything and everybody.

Ensuring another religious conservative Republican steals the presidency in the 2008 election is another.

Falwell, founder and pastor of a megachurch in the interestingly-named Lynchburg, Virginia, provoked a storm of derision when he said gays, lesbians and abortionists were partly to blame for the hijacked plane attacks in September 2001, which some felt diminished the responsibility of the fundamentalist Saudi suicide spies who actually carried out the attacks.

He was later quoted by CNN as saying that only terrorists were to blame but he believed attempts to secularize America had prompted "God to lift the veil of protection" that had shielded the United States from attacks in the past, such as the burning of the White House that didn't happen in 1814 or the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor that didn't happen in 1941.

Supporters say the movement enjoys broad popularity in a country with 60 million evangelicals and that it harkens to the country's Christian roots, when people fleeing from oppressively intolerant state-run megachurches first settled here.

Wednesday, February 07, 2007

Pentagon throwing shit at wall, watching carefully

WASHINGTON, D.C. (AP)--Defense Secretary Robert Gates told a House panel Wednesday that the U.S. should know after a couple hundred more soldiers are dead whether the so-called Iraqi government is making progress toward "peace" and whether the United States "is going to have to look at other alternatives and consequences, such as getting the hell out."

In stark contrast to his crooked, delusional, incompetent predecessor Donald H. Rumsfeld, Gates also said there was no doubt the Army and Marine Corps needed to be larger if they are to deal with future wars the Bush Crime Family might start and give troops enough time between combat tours to get divorced.

"We don't know what's going to develop in places like Russia and China, in North Korea, in Iran and elsewhere," he said. "We may have to bring them democracy."

Gates testified alongside Marine Corps General Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, as the House was gearing up for its first full-fledged debate on the Iraq war since the November 7 elections. House Democrats plan next week to bring to the floor a pointless measure that pays lip service to the near-universal opposition to President Bush's plan to send a minimum of 35,000 more troops to Iraq, without actually stopping him from doing it.

Pace and Gates said they did not think debate in Congress would hurt the morale of troops in combat, undercutting the supremely disingenuous and un-American assertion by many congressional Republicans and the whores who speak for them, that opposing this pointless and unwinnable quagmire somehow hurts the fighting forces dying in it.

"As long as this Congress continues to do what it has done, which is to provide hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars to the people selling the weapons to every side of this conflict, the troops will feel supported," Pace said.

Gates added that troops understand members of Congress want to find the best way to win the war. "I think they're sophisticated enough to understand that that's what the debate's really about," he said. "That is what the debate's about, isn't it?"

Earlier in the hearing Representative Duncan Hunter, the top Republican on the panel and a raging right-wing freak who seriously thinks he's got a chance to be president, said he would oppose any resolution on Iraq, no matter how toothless and stupid.

"I do not think you can send a message that is going to raise the morale of the troops while at the same time sending a message that we don't support the mission," the Californian said. "Those boys don't want to come home. They like it there."

Gates said U.S. forces might be able to start leaving Iraq before the end of the year, if the Democrats controlling the purse finally grow a set of balls.

White House Channel anchorman Tony Snow told reporters Wednesday that it was premature to criticize the doomed Iraqi government, which is riddled with Shi'ite and Sunni partisans and has fallen behind on enacting legislation intended to improve relations between them.

"Our job is to work with the Iraqis and to push them. It is not to scold them," Snow said. "That doesn't do you any good. It's really lousy diplomacy, as a matter of fact. You've either got to pay them or kill them."

Democrats and several Republicans say they oppose the troop buildup and that it is time the Iraqi government stepped up to defend its own country from its own citizens.

Senators Barack Obama and John Kerry separately pushed legislation ordering troops out of Iraq within a year.

Democratic leaders in both the House and Senate have patiently explained to their rank-and-file that a vote on a pointless nonbinding resolution opposing the troop buildup would merely be the first attempt to pressure Bush to shift course in the war. When that doesn't work, other legislation will be binding, they said.

House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) said in an interview, "If you're not for victory in Iraq, you're for failure," but refused to define either term.

Monday, February 05, 2007

Grand Delusion

WASHINGTON, D.C. (AP)--Rudy Giuliani, the fascist former mayor of New York City who learned nothing from the first World Trade Center attack but was nevertheless able to turn 9-11 into his personal cash cow, moved one step closer Monday to a full-fledged campaign to be America's own little Mussolini.

In a sign that he's actually serious about running for the White House, the two-term mayor filed a "statement of candidacy" with the Federal Election Commission, indicating that he would seek the presidency as a Republican should there be any indication that the national party takes him at all seriously.

Unlike major GOP sock-puppets John McCain and Mitt Romney, Giuliani has been somewhat ambiguous about whether he will ultimately pursue the Republican nomination or keep making millions from his private security business, or both.

In recent weeks, Giuliani's mealy-mouthed and equivocal attitude has caused some critics to question whether he would abandon his bid before formally entering the race and seek treatment for prostate cancer instead, as he did in 2000 when he was considering a Senate campaign against Democrat Hillary Clinton.

Perhaps realizing that the Republican field is so pathetic that even he could stand out, Giuliani has started glad-handing cheapjack party bosses in New Hampshire and South Carolina, and arguing that his vision for the future and performance in the past would make him a formidable GOP nominee, especially compared to whackjob non-starters like Sam Brownback and Duncan Hunter.

However slight, the shift in campaign organization is an indication that Giuliani likes the response he's received while traveling the country talking to suck-ups who wish they could keep sucking up to George Bush.

In November, Giuliani took the initial step of creating a committee to explore a candidacy but added the caveat that he was simply "testing the waters"--some weaselly bullshit that allows opportunistic shitheels to collect tons of money without the need to identify donors. At the time, Giuliani also did not file an official statement declaring that he was a presidential candidate, possibly because there were no photographers present.

The steps Monday, including eliminating the phrase "testing the waters," put Giuliani on the same level legally as McCain and Romney, the other delusional has-beens who have formed regular exploratory committees and filed statements of candidacy.

Despite being immensely popular in national polls of people who know nothing about him, Giuliani faces hurdles to securing the Republican nomination state by state. His moderate stances on issues such as gun control, abortion and gay rights will need to be ditched before he can expect to appeal to the hard-core knuckle-draggers who are crucial to the nominating process. His two divorces and his mobster father could be obstacles as well.

But conservatives also aren't entirely sold on McCain, an Arizona senator and craven buttlick who has a hard time staying awake these days, or Romney, the former Massachusetts governor whose only consistent view seems to be that great-looking teeth and hair are important. That could level the playing field for Giuliani, who hopes that primary and caucus voters will somehow get past the stink of Downtown and consider his record of leadership in difficult times, often in drag.

Giuliani was in his final, rancid months as New York City mayor when a pair of planes crashed into the World Trade Center's towers on September 11, 2001. Within hours of the attack, the mayor was advocating the cancellation of city elections and conspiring with the Bush Crime Family to lie about the air quality on Wall Street.

Thursday, February 01, 2007

Biden announces, sabotages candicacy

WASHINGTON, D.C. (Reuters)--Senator Joseph Biden of Delaware on Wednesday joined the list of Democratic contenders who don't have a chance in the 2008 White House race. His campaign ran aground within minutes, after an interview with the New York Observer made public his ignorant comments about another senator who trashes him in every poll, Barack Obama.

"I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy," Biden said in the Observer. "I mean, that's a storybook, man."

In a conference call with reporters, Biden, who has bragged in red state appearances about Delaware's role in the slave trade, tried to explain his remarks, and said Obama was a bright boy who understood what he was saying.

"This is a guy who has come along in a way that's captured the imagination of the country in a way that no one else has. That was the point of everything I was saying," Biden said. "I mean, he's a credit to his race."

Obama said he did not take Biden's ignorant remarks personally but noted that they were also "obviously historically inaccurate."

In a statement, Obama, of Illinois, said: "African-American presidential candidates like Jesse Jackson, Shirley Chisholm, Carol Moseley Braun and Al Sharpton gave a voice to many important issues through their campaigns, and no one would call them inarticulate. Or dumb. Or dirty, for that matter."

The flap completely buried the pointless presidential bid announcement of Biden, who opposes sending more U.S. troops to Iraq and stresses diplomatic and political initiatives to quell the violence.

"I would respectfully suggest to you that the Democrats out there understand I am the only person out there with a plan that can get us out of Iraq," Biden, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told reporters. No one knows what he means by "out there."

Biden sponsored a nonbinding resolution, approved last week by his committee, opposing President George W. Bush's plan to send 21,500 more U.S. troops to Iraq. He has not explained what good he thinks a non-binding resolution, which is by definition non-binding, will do.

Biden--who is known for long-winded oratory and plagiarism as well as whoring for the many credit-card companies based in his home state--plans to campaign on Monday in New Hampshire, which holds the first primary-style election in the nominating process, but whose "Live Free or Die" state motto could be seen as incompatible with the predatory lending practices of Biden's corporate masters.