Dirt City Paranoia

Here's some money, give it back

2008-05-03T17:17:00.001-04:00

CRAWFORD, TX (AP)--Nominal U.S. President George W. Bush attempted to convince Americans on Saturday that federal checks en route to them as part of a stimulus plan will help spur the ailing economy, even though everyone knows it's all going straight into gas-tanks and credit-card debt.

"These rebates will deliver up to $600 per person, $1,200 per couple, and $300 per child," Bush said in his weekly drunken radio address from Texas.

"This package will help American families help me move even more money from the Treasury to my friends in the oil business," Bush said, then added the usual shit about inspiring businesses to invest and create jobs, which has been proven wrong every quarter of every year since he stole the presidency.

Bush spoke as he began yet another blackout weekend at his phony ranch in Crawford, Texas, and a day after the U.S. Labor Department reported that 20,000 jobs were shed in April, which everyone thinks is good news because they thought it would be even worse. No one bothers to mention anymore how many jobs need to be created every month just to keep up with the number of people entering the work force, partly because it's too depressing and partly because this administration hasn't accomplished it even once in seven years.

At the same time, the national unemployment rate fell to 5 percent from 5.1 percent in March. This means nothing except that about a million people gave up looking for work because there ain't any.

In his pointless, incoherent radio address, Bush tried to ease concerns about the economy he wrecked, which has replaced the disastrous war he started as the top issue among American voters as they get ready to have John McCain forced on them by the media and Diebold in November.

Bush touted the $150 billion "economic stimulus" package that he signed into law after it was passed with bipartisan support in the Democratic-led Congress, which has learned nothing and probably never will.

Scumbag

2008-04-28T06:46:00.002-04:00

CORAL GABLES, FL (AP)--Republican presidential candidate John Sidney McCain III got off his beer heiress sugar mama's private jet on Sunday and called Democratic rival Barack Obama insensitive to poor people and out of touch on economic issues.

The GOP nominee-in-waiting rapped his elitist Negro rival for opposing his idiotic idea to suspend the tax on fuel during the summer, a proposal that McCain believes will particularly help low-income people who have already spent their SUV tax rebates and may need help to get to their summer homes this year.

"I noticed again today that Senator Obama repeated his opposition to giving low-income Americans a tax break, a little bit of relief so they can travel a little further and a little longer, and maybe have a little bit of money left over to enjoy some other things in their pathetic little lives," McCain said. "Obviously Senator Obama does not understand that this would be a nice thing for these low-budget, unwashed Americans, and the special interests should not be dictating this policy."

The Arizona senator and pampered Beltway whore deflected questions about his record on the Bush administration's tax cuts--he initially opposed them but now supports eighty-sixing Social Security and Medicare to make them permanent--by again criticizing Obama.

"Senator Obama wants to raise the capital gains tax, which would have a direct effect on 100 million Americans," McCain said, lying like the lying little bitch he is. "That means he has no understanding of the economy and that he is totally insensitive to the hopes and dreams and ambitions of 100 million Americans whose lives will be destroyed and whose children will be gang-raped by his almost doubling of the capital gains tax."

McCain's deluded rant will be published as fact by the national media, whose owners are eager to have another tax-cutting Republican slut in the White House.

Afghanistan was a success, too

2008-04-27T18:06:00.001-04:00

KABUL (AP)--Officials of the former Afghan government attacked a ceremony sponsored by the current Afghan government and attended by a multi-national group of oil company stooges on Sunday, unleashing automatic weapons fire that sent a bunch of corporate parasites you never heard of fleeing for cover.

Three people were killed and eight were wounded. Unocal executive and nominal Afghan President Hamid Karzai, his goons, and various messengers and bagmen escaped unharmed, the presidential palace said.

Karzai later appeared on television saying several suspects in the attack had been arrested, but he was probably lying.

He said that "the enemy of Afghanistan" tried to disrupt the ceremony but were thwarted by security forces, presumably friends of Afghanistan.

A Taliban spokesman claimed responsibility for the attack, saying it had deployed six militants with suicide vests and guns to target the president, whom they consider a puppet of Western oil companies. Spokesman Zabiullah Mujaheed said three had died, which might be what Karzai meant by "been arrested."

A police official, who requested anonymity because he was not actually a police official, said security forces killed three gunmen who had opened fire from an apartment block not far from the ceremony. Government officials could not immediately confirm that information, because it is unclear who the security forces work for.

Shots rang out just as the national anthem ended at a ceremony to mark the 16th anniversary of Afghanistan's victory over the Soviet invasion, which resulted in a U.S. victory in the decades-long Cold War. Guerrilla groups who contributed to that victory but were not invited to the ceremony include the Taliban and al-Qaeda.

The gunfire appeared to come from some ruined houses a few hundred yards out of camera range, where the people eke out crappy lives the rest of the time. Security forces deployed elsewhere opened fire at the houses, and no one is saying how many innocents were injured.

Karzai was escorted from the scene, surrounded by hired thugs from West Virginia, in one of four black Land Cruisers. A U.S. embassy official said U.S. Ambassador William Wood also escaped unharmed, though his date was "unnerved."

"President Karzai condemns this act and asks for all the people to remain calm," a statement from the presidential palace said, just in time to forestall widespread panic at the rumors Karzai had been injured or embarrassed.

Karzai, who has been Afghanistan's puppet ruler since the Bush Crime Family concluded its business dealings with the Taliban regime in 2001, has been targeted by assassins before and is constantly shadowed by a gang of hired guns.

The attack came despite unprecedented tight security for Sunday's celebrations.

Among those at the ceremony who ducked for cover, then fled were Afghan police and soldiers who were assembled for the pageantry, and who were apparently given the same spectacular training we've made famous in Iraq, the other country we invaded and couldn't secure.

About 100 people were rounded up for questioning, an Afghan intelligence official said. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he fears assassination by unstoppable Taliban insurgents.

Cindy Lou stayed away

2008-04-24T21:54:00.001-04:00

NEW ORLEANS, LA (AP)--Republican presidential candidate and lying suck-up John Sidney McCain III took stock of still-FUBAR areas of New Orleans on Thursday and declared that if the disaster had happened on his watch, he would have immediately crash-landed at the nearest Air Force base.

McCain called the response to Hurricane Katrina "a perfect storm" of mismanagement by federal, state and local governments, then laughed at his little joke and demanded doughnuts.

The Arizona senator walked a few blocks of the previously-submerged Lower 9th Ward, passing abandoned structures with their facades still spray-painted with the markings of rescue workers who went door to door nearly three years ago searching for the bodies. Government-issued trailers still pollute the neighborhood with their toxic formaldehyde off-gassing. McCain said his teenage daughter Bridget had been there with a volunteer youth group a few weeks ago to help in the recovery, but didn't like it much.

"Never again, never again, will a disaster of this nature be handled in the disgraceful way it was handled," McCain declared, a pledge he repeated over and over during the day in a vain attempt to convince the locals that the rich old white guy gives a rat's ass what happens in this hellhole.

McCain is campaigning this week in what he calls "forsaken" areas of the country, where the colored folks is at, and he assured the superstitious natives that their situation was not lost on him.

"I've been going to places that are perhaps very cynical about government," he told students during a town hall at Xavier University. Trying to reach out for the votes of Democrats and independents, he pledged to be a president who would take action to erase that cynicism, by force if necessary.

"As president of the United States, I'm not going to let anybody alone," he said.

McCain was unsparing in his criticism of the Bush administration on Katrina, and said members of Congress other than himself must share the blame for putting money into pork-barrel projects, when those dollars could have been used to fortify the region against disaster. He said his record was clean on that count, with a consistent opposition to wasteful spending if you don't count the war in Iraq, which he refused to characterize as the single most expensive mistake in American history.

Without mentioning Bush directly, McCain said that when Katrina struck, "If I had been president, I would have ordered the plane crashed at the nearest base and I'd have been over here." He repeated that later, saying, "I would've crashed my airplane at the nearest Air Force base and come over personally."

In a conversation with reporters aboard his campaign bus, McCain rejected the notion that he ran any risk of guilt by association with the Bush administration by coming to New Orleans, especially since the people writing the stories are all eating his barbecue and drinking his booze.

Good money after bad

2008-04-10T00:37:00.004-04:00

WASHINGTON, D.C. (WaPo)--The man code-named "Scumfuck" by the Secret Service will probably continue to receive the agency's protection after he leaves office next year, since everyone on the planet hates his stinking guts and more than a few would like to see him suffer and die.

The Secret Service is preparing to provide Actual President Cheney with agents, transportation, advance work and other security-related trappings of imperial power after the Bush Crime Family closes its D.C. office in January, the agency's director, Mark Sullivan, admitted to Congress last week. The expected cost: $4 million.

Although presidents and their spouses are entitled to Secret Service protection long after they depart the White House for Paraguay, federal law authorizes protection for the vice president and his immediate family only during his time in office. Extending Cheney's detail would require a directive from the "president" or a joint resolution of Congress. Guess which it will be.

"We believe that it's a pretty safe bet that with the hundreds of thousands of enemies he's made all over the world with his corporatist maneuverings and his war crimes and profiteering and everything, Vice President Cheney will be afforded Secret Service protection upon his departure," Sullivan told the House Appropriations subcommittee on homeland security last week.

Experts say such precautions make sense if the object is to keep Cheney alive, which they admit is a big if. The Bush Crime Family's foreign terrorism department is creating enemies abroad as fast as ever and constantly threatening us with terrorism at home. Cheney, a principal architect of the Family's military-industrial expansion, is likely to remain a target long after his term.

"The critical factor is we are at war," said William H. Pickle, former Secret Service special agent in charge of the vice presidential division from 1998 to 2001, who admitted he was just making up things to say because he doesn't get to speak to reporters often. "We have an enemy who has sworn to destroy this country, and both the president and the vice president have been in business with them for years. Obviously they're on a lot of lists. It's common sense. The government and this country owe the president and vice president, they owe them that safety." It was unclear whether the last bit referred to the men themselves or generally to anyone holding their offices.

Such measures are not uncommon. "Over the last 40 years, the departing vice president has been afforded protection by our agency," Sullivan told lawmakers. "But nobody else has been hated quite the way Cheney is."

It is unclear whether Cheney could receive protection beyond six months, Secret Service officials said, but another extension would require presidential or congressional action. Another option would be simply to take him into custody to await trial.

The Secret Service agency's origins date to 1865, when it was established as an anti-counterfeiting unit within the Department of the Treasury. It began protecting presidents in 1901 after President William McKinley was shot and killed by anarchist Leon Czolgosz in Buffalo, and no president has been killed by an anarchist since. The agency is now part of the Department of Homeland Security, formed in 2001 of several dozen other agencies to help prevent them from functioning properly after the terrorist attacks of September 11 were nearly prevented.

Until recently, presidents have been entitled to Secret Service protection for the rest of their irrelevant lives. But 1994 legislation imposed new restrictions on presidents elected after 1997, limiting President Bush and his successors to 10 years of protection after leaving office, or however long it takes to convict them.

Chief toady toes the line

2008-04-08T20:13:00.000-04:00

WASHINGTON, D.C. (AP)--The Bush Crime Family tool presiding over the ongoing military-industrial occupation of Iraq called for an open-ended suspension of troop withdrawals this summer, effectively admitting that the Glorious Surge, intended to bring political stability to the region, has failed to accomplish anything except bumping off another thousand American troops.

General David Petraeus, speaking with all the charisma and authority of a high school principal with an inconvenient erection addressing a hostile school board, told a Senate hearing Tuesday that he recommends a 45-day "period of consolidation and evaluation" once the combat forces who have managed to survive their latest fifteen-month deployment complete their pullout in July.

He said the past year's progress is "fragile and reversible," understood to mean "imaginary," and made it very clear that the people he works for have no interest in any troop withdrawals whatsoever beyond July, but will tolerate those withdrawals to prevent widespread mutiny.

"This process will be continuous and ongoing, never-ending and permanent, with recommendations for further reductions made only if conditions ever permit, which I doubt will happen," he said. "This approach does not allow establishment of a set withdrawal timetable like what the Family's enemies advocate. However, it does provide the flexibility those of us on the ground need to preserve the ongoing sectarian bloodshed and chaos our troopers have fought so hard and sacrificed so much to achieve."

The plan gives Petraeus a free hand at a time when the country is burning down around him. It runs counter to Democrats' push for a more rapid reduction in the U.S. military commitment and a faster transfer of responsibility to the Iraqi government, also known as the Iranian government.

Petraeus said his approach is intended to "form a foundation for the gradual establishment of sustainable security in Iraq," which sounds a lot like "Stay the course." He did not say when he thought that goal would be reached, or what makes him think it is possible to reach it.

"Withdrawing too many forces too quickly could jeopardize the imaginary progress of the past year," he added.

Bush, whose family has dealt secretly with the government of Iran for decades, has said he intends to pretend that Petraeus is actually running things, and to act surprised when he makes his recommendation. On Thursday, the president will again make his speech about the occupation, now in its sixth smash year, and his latest decision about troop levels, which will surprise no one.

Under questioning by Senator Carl Levin (D-MI), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Petraeus said he could not predict when troop reductions would be resumed or how many U.S. troops were likely to remain in Iraq by the end of this year, but he was lying. There are currently 160,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, and everyone knows there always will be.

The presumptive Republican presidential nominee, Senator John McCain, attended the hearing as the committee's ranking Bush Family bitch.

"Our goal--my goal--is an Iraq that no longer needs American troops," McCain said. "And I believe we can achieve that goal, perhaps sooner than many imagine or I have previously suggested. But I also believe that to promise a withdrawal of our forces, regardless of the consequences for those struggling Buddhists and Hindus in the region, would constitute a failure of political and moral leadership."

During the exchange with Levin, the packed hearing was briefly interrupted by a protester repeatedly shouting, "Bring them home!" Capitol police removed General Clark from the room.

Lame remains

2008-04-06T19:34:00.000-04:00

PRESCOTT, AZ (AP)--Senator John McCain called Saturday for a presidential campaign that is more like a respectful argument among friends over who should give the hooker carfare than a bitter clash of enemies over who should pay to have her killed, and said he is better equipped than either of his Democratic rivals to make that bitch disappear.

"We have nothing to fear from each other, although I have accepted Secret Service protection," the Arizona senator said, as he wrapped up a weeklong trip designed to broaden his appeal among voters who would rather have had Mitt Romney or Mike Huckabee.

"We are arguing over the means to better secure our freedom, promote the general welfare and defend our ideals," he added, which apparently means invading Iran, lowering taxes on the filthy rich, and sucking up to religious wingnuts.

After a series of stops earlier in the week emphasizing how much more time than his opponents he has spent in prison or on fire, McCain spoke on the steps of the Yavapai County Courthouse. The late Senator Barry Goldwater, father of the modern conservative Republican party, launched his 1964 bid for the White House from the same spot, and similar results are expected this year.

McCain looked out at his largest crowd of the week--many of whom seemed irked to learn that the rumor of free barbecue was unfounded--as he recalled his early lessons in political bipartisanship. He described Goldwater and the late Arizona Representative Mo Udall, a liberal Democrat, as close friends who shared more than dashed presidential ambitions: they apparently car-pooled, as well.

McCain recalled also that shortly after his own election to Congress in 1982, Udall took him under his wing and told him Goldwater couldn't last much longer. "I intend to wage this campaign and to govern this country in a way that they would be proud of me," he said of Goldwater and Udall, two losers who will eventually vanish from America's memory.

And yet, he said, there are important differences to be settled on issues such as energy, the housing crisis, health care, the imaginary War on Terror; not to mention Medicare and other federal spending programs rich guys don't like.

"It is more than appropriate, it is necessary that even in times of crisis, we fight among ourselves for the things we believe in, whether they're true or not," McCain said.

McCain also said that if elected, he would attempt to govern in the same spirit for the first three months, and sharpened that theme in a news conference shortly after his speech.

"I have a record unmatched by either of those assholes, of reaching across the aisle," he said. He added that his record demonstrates "the environment for working together is clearly there, and if you can't see that you're just fucking stupid."

McCain wrapped up the Republican nomination a month ago by being the guy everyone's heard of and no one really knows, except that he sucks up to media types and makes them think he has a sense of humor. His weeklong nostalgia trip marked a new low in his campaign, but only for the moment.

In a series of speeches that recalled his days at the Naval Academy (where his daddy the admiral kept him from flunking out), his time spent as a prisoner of war in Vietnam (where he kept from going insane with elaborate revenge fantasies about what he would do as president) and his post-war military career (when he began to plot his rise to power and ditched his first wife for Cindy-Lou the beer heiress), he repeatedly urged Americans to support a cause bigger than themselves (him).

The speeches barely touched the issues likely to dominate the campaign, including the military-industrial occupation of Iraq, which he supports, and the economy, which he doesn't understand.

That will probably have to change in the coming weeks, aides admit, as McCain is forced to commission a series of domestic proposals on taxes, health care, trade and other topics in which he has absolutely no interest.

Blackwater to keep on rollin'

2008-04-05T00:22:00.001-04:00

WASHINGTON, D.C. (AP)--Amid investigations into fatal shootings of civilians, drunken plane crashes and sleazy tax shenanigans, Blackwater USA's multimillion-dollar contract to create Zones of Death surrounding diplomats in Baghdad has been renewed, the State Department said Friday.

A final decision about whether Eric Prince's private army will continue to terrorize Iraq is pending, the department said. North Carolina-based Blackwater is one of the most successful private hit squads operating, pulling down $1.25 billion in federal business since 2000, according to a House committee estimate that's probably only off by a few skids of C-Notes.

Blackwater provides security for diplomats in Baghdad, where the mammoth fortified U.S. Embassy complex squats like a giant concrete toad. Its goons act as bodyguards and armed drivers, escorting political fixers and government-connected criminals foolish enough to venture outside the Green Zone.

Bleeding hearts of all stripes got their panties in a bunch over an incident last September in which 17 unarmed Iraqi civilians were butchered in a Baghdad square. Blackwater said its guards were protecting diplomats under attack before they opened fire, but they were lying.

An FBI probe began in November. Prosecutors want to know whether Blackwater contractors used excessive force or violated any laws, such as those which might be interpreted as prohibiting the random murder of the people whose country we refuse to leave.

The State Department's top security officer, Greg Starr, told reporters Friday that because the FBI is still constructing the cover-up, there is no justification to pull the contract.

Prosecutors investigating the shootings have questioned more than 30 witnesses in the U.S. and in Iraq, but they have announced no conclusions. One possibility is that individual contractors could be indicted if there's maybe a troublemaker they need to get rid of; another is that the company could be indicted, if Hell freezes over; or the FBI could conclude that there was no crime, like they usually do in situations involving Republicans.

The company is also the target of an unrelated investigation into whether its contractors smuggled weapons into Iraq, a country known for terrible shortages. Lawmakers have called for an investigation into whether Blackwater violated tax laws by classifying employees as independent contractors. The company says the claim is groundless and besides, everyone's doing it.

After the September deaths, U.S. commanders in Iraq complained that they often do not know mercenary goon squads are moving through their areas of responsibility until alerted by smoke and screams.

At the end of October, Defense Secretary Robert Gates met with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and reached a general understanding that greater military control was needed to keep these stories from getting so much media play.

Experience counts on its fingers

2008-04-03T20:02:00.001-04:00

WASHINGTON, D.C. (AFP)--Republican John McCain said Thursday he knows economics better than potential Democratic election foes what's-her-name and the colored fellow, but was unable to explain what he meant.

McCain has been attempting to shore up his credentials in the area as anxiety grows that we could be in a full-blown Hoover-style depression by November, which would torpedo his plan to take over the country and continue beating it with a huge Republican Fist of Doom until he has a crippling stroke and falls over.

"I know economics very well, certainly better than my many enemies would have you believe, so let's clear that up," McCain said in a CNN interview. "Anyway, what do you know about it, you little jerk? Get the fuck off my bus."

The Arizona Senator has been trying to live down a remark in a Boston Globe interview in New Hampshire last year, when he accidentally admitted he doesn't know shit about the economy and can't learn.

On Thursday, he reminded everyone again that he spent the early years of his adult life in the navy, where his daddy was an admiral, and had not had time to devote to the subject because he was heroically enduring torture and captivity in Viet Nam, where he was a high-value prisoner because his daddy was an admiral. He made up for it later by divorcing his wife to marry an heiress and using her money to become a lawmaker in Washington.

"Hey, fuck you, buddy," McCain said. "I have been involved as chairman of the commerce committee, I have been involved as part of the Reagan revolution where we cut taxes on rich people and restrained spending on poor people and embarked on one of the strongest periods of economic growth in the history of this country."

He trailed off into distracted muttering before getting to the part where the trashed economy later had to be repaired by Democrats.

Clinton and Obama have both claimed McCain lacks policies to mitigate a housing slump and the economic pinch being felt in states like Pennsylvania and Ohio, which have lost thousands of manufacturing jobs abroad. They have avoided calling him a supply-side moron, but no one knows why.

On Wednesday, Clinton debuted another stupid fucking ad asking voters who they would prefer in the White House when an economic crisis broke in the middle of the night--her or McCain. There was no third choice.

But McCain's campaign took only hours to hit back, releasing the script of its own "3:00 AM" ad, then bragging it shows true fiscal management skills to do so, since now they don't even have to pay to make the ad.

"It's 3:00 AM..." the ad would have said, copying the opening of the irritating Clinton spots, then veering off and hitting both Democratic candidates where it hurts.

"Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are up smoking crack and raising taxes naked, and they think it's al Qaeda on the phone, demanding health care. More money out of your pocket.

"John McCain has a better plan. Grow jobs, grow our economy--not grow Washington. It's 3:00 AM, time for a president who is ready to bomb Iran."

Bush 3.0

2008-04-03T10:12:00.002-04:00

JACKSONVILLE, FL (Reuters)--Republican presidential candidate John McCain--accused by everyone actually paying attention of seeking to become the next George W. Bush--will say on Thursday that Washington needs to rethink its approach to a host of problems, and the media will pretend that this constitutes the bold vision of a maverick leader.

McCain--as part of a week-long "Service to America" tour that portrays his past as something other than a endless loop of sleazy opportunism and bonehead crimes he got caught committing, and attempts give some idea of how he would govern if elected president in 1960--is to speak on Thursday in Jacksonville.

Without mentioning the Bush Crime Family, he will say in a speech that the United States should prepare, "far better than we have before," to respond quickly to a September 11-style attack by bombing Iran.

The Arizona senator is also expected to say that the U.S. government should be better able to handle a natural calamity, in what sounds like a reference to the botched Republican response to Hurricane Katrina.

According to speech excerpts leaked to his barbecue buddies in the “Straight Talk” press pool, he will say that "when Americans confront a catastrophe, either natural or man-made, their government, across jurisdictions, should be organized and ready to deliver bottled drinking water to dehydrated babies and rescue the aged and infirm trapped in a hospital with no electricity." He is not expected to endorse levee maintenance at this time.

While Democrats say electing McCain would represent a "third Bush term" and “the final stake through the heart of America,” McCain has made it clear that he disagrees with Bush on issues like torture and global warming, though not enough to vote that way.

This speech is not a repudiation of Bush--whose family McCain fears like nothing this side of Hoa Loa Prison--but rather a lengthy description of the horrendous clusterfuck the next president will inherit from him.

"To defend ourselves," he says, in a reference to the largely imaginary threat from Islamic extremists, "we must do everything better and smarter than we did before, but without changing the way we vote."

McCain, who clinched the Republican presidential nomination largely by wooing independent voters who believe what he says instead of what he has said previously, lays out a role for bipartisanship in sharing the blame for Islamic extremism, deficit government spending, our corrupt health care system, U.S. dependence on foreign oil and other issues he will do nothing to address.

"We can leave these difficult problems to our unlucky successors, after they've grown worse, and harder to fix, and that’s one way to do it. Or we can bring all parties to the table, and hammer out principled solutions to the challenges of our time, which I think I might be in favor of if saying it gets me elected," he says.

Old crook seeks helper

2008-04-03T00:18:00.001-04:00

PENSACOLA, FL (AP)--Senator John McCain disclosed Wednesday that he is in the "embryonic stages" of selecting a vice presidential running mate to finish his term for him if by some horrible fluke he becomes president. He hopes to unveil his choice well before the Republican National Convention, to avoid the scorn and ridicule that greeted Dan Quayle's pathetic debut two decades ago.

"It's every name imaginable," he said of his list-in-the-making, about twenty in all. "Some of them might not even be real, I don't know..."

He wisely disclosed none of them and refused even to identify the fixers he has approached to supervise the vetting that will inevitably limit the field to actual people not currently incarcerated.

In expressing his hope that he will be able to find a suitable cypher for the position before the convention opens in September, McCain added, "I'm aware of enhanced importance of this issue because of my age." He is a shambling wreck of a man and, if elected, will be the first president to die in office of old age.

McCain's comments seemed to startle his top aides, who have scripted an elaborate weeklong series of events designed to introduce the doddering old moron to a wider audience of gullible Republican voters, harping endlessly on his military service, since everything else about him is so sleazy and embarrassing.

The day's itinerary included a stop at the Naval Academy in Annapolis, where McCain graduated fourth from the bottom of his class in 1958, when Hillary Clinton was a Girl Scout and Barack Obama was not yet a dream of his father. This was followed by an appearance in Pensacola, Florida, where as a young man he screwed strippers and learned to crash airplanes.

The Arizona senator's remarks on a vice presidential search made it clear that his campaign is eager to avoid talking about his profound ignorance of Mideast politics, or his $4 million violation of the campaign finance laws which bear his name, or his sudden slavish devotion to the economic policies which are bankrupting the country.

"We've done a pretty good job of unifying our party," he told the reporters massaging his feet as his campaign bus pulled away from the football stadium at the Naval Academy, where he had issued a call for citizen involvement in something-or-other and promised everyone a future of some sort. "Now we've got to energize our party," he added, before drifting off.

Aides interjected at one point that polling data shows McCain's level of support among Republicans is on par with the backing President Bush had at the same point in his winning campaigns in 2000 and 2004, which is completely meaningless and the sort of thing aides are supposed to interject with when the candidate is a drooling idiot.

McCain indicated that little or no significant vetting of potential running mates has occurred, so don't fucking push him. "I've just started this process of getting together a list of names and having them rendered in extra-large print," he said, adding it could take months to complete at the rate he works.

Early speculation on a running mate has focused on his former rivals for the nomination, particularly former Arkansas Governor and charismatic Jesus freak Mike Huckabee.

In theory, Huckabee could help increase McCain's appeal among the creationist mouth-breathers and meth-head militants who have been slow to warm to the Arizona senator due to his inability to appear to take them seriously.

"If I had a personal preference I'd like to do it before the convention to avoid some of the mistakes that I've seen made in the past as you get into a time crunch and maybe sometimes don't make the announcement right or maybe they have not examined every single candidate," he said, sounding confused and uncomfortable.

Later, after staring out the window for a very long time, he referred specifically to Quayle's selection, perhaps to quash speculation that Dick Cheney would simply rise from the dead and name himself to the post again.

George H. W. Bush placed Quayle on his ticket in 1988, but delayed the announcement in an attempt to frustrate would-be assassins. Quayle quickly found himself struggling to answer questions about his decision to join the National Guard rather than serve in the active duty military during the Vietnam War. This was back when that was enough to embarrass a potential commander-in-chief.

Bush: Make it an even half-trill, losers

2007-10-22T23:00:00.000-04:00

WASHINGTON, D.C. (AP)--President Bush Monday told Congress to run another $46 billion through his money-laundering operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and said he wants the money approved by Christmas or he'll have his people call them traitors. The fighting in Iraq, in its fifth year, has already cost more than $455 billion of your grandchildren's money.

Democrats, who gained control of Congress by pretending they would oppose the president's disastrous policies, said Bush should not expect lawmakers to rubber-stamp the request just because they always do.

"The colossal cost of this war grows every day in lives lost, dollars spent, and to our reputation around the world," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said, as if this were a new trend. "The choice is between a Democratic plan for responsible redeployment of our troops, hopefully in the next ten years, and the president's plan for a 10-year war in Iraq. We must begin to discuss the possibility of starting to think of a way to begin to end this war."

Announcing his latest demand for bales of hundred-dollar bills, Bush sneered at the nation's disenchantment with the war, which has claimed the lives of more than 3,830 members of the U.S. military, maimed 50,000 more, killed at least 100,00 Iraqi civilians and displaced millions more, resulting in the largest ongoing humanitarian crisis in the world.

"Our men and women on the front lines should not be caught in the middle of partisan disagreements in Washington," the president said. "It is far more important that they remain in the middle of the civil war in Iraq."

With stepped-up military operations resulting in an endless flow of money to the president's friends and relatives in the defense industry, the war is costing about $10 billion a month.

Top House lawmakers have said they do not plan to give Bush the money before Christmas unless he has his media operatives suggest that they are Soft On Terror™, in which case they'll cut the check next month. Bush said failing to approve the money would prove that they hate America and deserve to have their heads cut off and their virgins raped.

"I know some in Congress are against the war and are seeking ways to demonstrate that opposition without seeming rude," Bush said. "I recognize their position and they should make their views heard. But don't fuck with my money."

"Congress should not go home for the holidays while our troops are still waiting for the funds I need to keep them in Iraq forever," he said.

Bush made his war-spending request in the Roosevelt Room after posing for photographs in the Oval Office with carefully-screened leaders of friendly veterans' service organizations, a fallen Marine's carefully-vetted Republican family and Republican military personnel who served in Iraq and Afghanistan.

On Tuesday, Bush is delivering a speech on the various aspects of his defense strategery. His remarks at the National Defense University in Washington are to cover the wars, the Patriot Act, terrorist surveillance and the establishment of dozens of new Supermax prisons for housing his enemies.

Drunken rant not a "declaration"

2007-10-18T19:42:00.000-04:00

WASHINGTON, D.C. (AP)--The Bush Crime Family said Thursday that Junior was simply making "a rhetorical point" when he suggested that if Iran refused to promise never to learn how to make nuclear weapons, it could lead to World War III.

"The president was not making any war plans, and he wasn't making any declarations; he wasn't even thinking about what he was saying," said tiny Bush press tart Dana Perino. "He was just making a point, and the point is that we do not believe--and neither does the international community believe--that Iran should be allowed to pursue nuclear weapons, whether they are or not."

If Iran suddenly acquired nuclear weapons, she said, "that would lead to a very dangerous--a potentially dangerous situation, and potentially lead to a scenario where you have, for instance, World War III. But he was using that as a rhetorical point, just words he could say because the microphones were on and he was confused...not, you know, making a declaration."

The Bush Family and its henchmen accuse Iran of secretly trying to build a nuclear weapon, but they have no evidence and nobody believes them.

Bush, at a news conference on Wednesday, said, "I've told people that if you're interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them from having the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon. Possibly by bombing their universities or infiltrating their internets."

Iran denounced Bush's comment. "This sort of policy is what you'd expect from a dry-drunk cowboy shitheel, and is a barrier for peace," the Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman, Mohammad Ali Hosseini, said in a statement.

Hosseini said Bush is "an asshole" who "talks shit" to divert the American public's attention from White House failures on international and domestic issues, such as everything they touch.

Harpy hates Hil, loves Dick

2007-10-17T20:06:00.000-04:00

WASHINGTON, D.C. (AP)--Neoconservative gila monster Lynne Cheney says she would be uncomfortable with Hillary Rodham Clinton as president--and wishes the Democratic front-runner were more like her own husband, a corporatist war profiteer with the morals of a truckstop meth whore.

"I'm certainly not going to be a supporter of Mrs. Clinton's and I have been troubled by the fact that you can't know what sort of president she would be, particularly with respect to war crimes prosecutions of the previous administration," Cheney, wife of Actual President Dick Cheney, said in an interview with The Associated Press Wednesday.

"It makes me uncomfortable," she said, squirming with an audible scrape. "I kind of like politicians that are more in the Dick Cheney mold, who say what they mean and mean what they say and don't know the difference between right and wrong."

The actual president's wife reflects on her husband's character in her latest book, Blue Skies, No Fences, Dick, a memoir about her youth in Wyoming. In the book, she details life on the Plains and in the Casper high school she and her husband attended.

She describes her first impression of him as "this smart, great-looking guy I sat next to in chemistry class." Now 66, she writes about their first date--he asked her to a formal dance in 1958--and how much her mother liked him. Later, he knocked her up to get out of going to Viet Nam.

"He didn't talk a lot, but it wasn't hard to get him involved in a game of Risk and feel that he was comfortable with it," she writes. "As long as we were in a secure undisclosed location."

She describes the era as a simpler, more confident time, when the Cold War and the burgeoning military-industrial complex were symbols of hope.

"Part of what gave us confidence in the 1950s was we didn't understand the threat that lay ahead," she said, possibly referring to the Civil Rights Act. "Now I think, at least I hope we are, more cognizant of the threats that face us. We need to be aware that there are people out there who want to destroy us and destroy our way of life, and they're called Democrats."

In that vein, she says the Bush administration's legacy will be in its efforts to consolidate their power and undo every human rights advance of the last eight centuries after their terrorists attacked us on September 11, 2001.

"They've done the most important thing that leaders can do, which is keep the country safe and secure," she said with a straight face, her dead reptilian eyes staring a hole in the air.

She says she becomes "impatient" with the Iraqi government her husband's Blofeldian machinations forced on that nation, and often considers urging their replacement. But she says when she looks back at our own history, she can always find a way to justify the mass murder and extremely profitable chaos her husband and his friends have introduced there.

The Battle of Yorktown, the final major battle of the Revolutionary War, was won in 1781, she notes, and it took several years after that for the country to form a constitutional government. She evidently thinks we would've done it much faster if the British Army and all their mercenaries had continued to occupy our colonies and kick in our doors while we fought among ourselves with bombs.

"I think people are like me, you know, they are impatient, they want our troops to come home, we all want that," she said. "But of course if you look at the situation in detail like I do when I review our offshore accounts, you understand that's simply not possible right now."

She says she isn't sure what she and her husband will do if he ever leaves office. They plan to have a house in Virginia near Rummy and keep their home in Wyoming, where her husband hopes to spend his declining years huffing butyl nitrate and shooting caged animals.

Whining prick still in spotlight

2007-10-15T17:08:00.000-04:00

MINNEAPOLIS, MN (AP)--Self-hating, closeted Republican bathroom troll Senator Larry Craig asked the Minnesota Court of Appeals Monday to overrule a county judge who refused to allow him to withdraw his guilty plea in connection with an arrest in an airport bathroom sex sting.

Craig's appeal was filed at the court in St. Paul less than two weeks after Hennepin County Judge Charles Porter refused to overturn the guilty plea, saying it "No backsies, you silly little man."

Craig, a hysterical closet case from Idaho, pled guilty to disorderly conduct in August in an attempt to keep it secret that he was arrested trying to get a cop to have sex with him in a bathroom at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport in June. It didn't work, so now he wants to change the deal, which is all the proof anyone should need that the man is totally Republican.

The four-page filing did not detail the basis for the appeal, which is expected to include the same emphatic denials of homosexuality the Senator has been issuing, unsolicited, for the past twenty-five years.

In an interview on Sunday with KTVB-TV in Boise, Idaho, Craig repeated that he will not resign his post in the Senate and said he has the same right to pursue his legal options as any other straight, completely straight, never-been-gay American.

"It is my right to do what I'm doing," said Craig, whose tireless campaigning against gay rights has struck some as a pathetic overcompensation for his secret quirk. "I am pursuing my constitutional rights," he added, apparently without irony.

Before overturning a ruling, the appeals court must find there's been an "abuse of discretion" by the trial judge--in other words, that some aspect of the ruling (which in this case consisted of allowing Craig to plead guilty to disorderly conduct rather than go through a public trial which would expose the hypocrisy of his political stances and the nature of his bathroom-trolling buggery bent) was decided improperly. Ron Meshbesher, a longtime Minneapolis defense attorney, said earlier this month that the standard for an abuse of discretion is vague but that such a ruling is fairly rare, especially when the defendant got what he wanted out of the court in the first place.

"It's not frequent, let's put it that way," Meshbesher said. "It certainly is a steep hill to climb, no matter how wide your stance."

It would most likely be well into 2008 before the Court of Appeals rules on the case. Craig's Senate term ends at the end of 2008, or whenever Mitch McConnell is able to procure photographs and/or video.

Fuck you, legalize me

2007-10-10T17:06:00.000-04:00

WASHINGTON, D.C. (AP)--President Bush said Wednesday that he will not sign the new bill legalizing some of his secret crimes if it does not grant retroactive immunity to campaign contributors who helped him break the law by spying on their customers without court orders.

A proposed bill unveiled by Democrats on Tuesday does not include such a provision. Bush, appearing relatively sober on the South Lawn as that measure was taken up in two House committees, said the measure is unacceptable because of the suffering it might cause helpless multinational telecommunications corporations.

"Today the House Intelligence and Judiciary committees are considering a proposed bill that, instead of getting my friends and me off the hook, actually makes them liable to prosecution," the president complianed.

Bush wants legislation that extends and strengthens his unaccountable dictatorial power, a temporary version of which passed in August. Democrats want a bill that that makes it a little harder for the Bush Crime Family to spy on their political opponents, a group which includes more people every day.

Under pressure to get out of town in case various GOP operatives weren't kidding about another attack on the capital, Congress hastily passed the horrendous temporary bill then ran home to try and deny to constituents that they've been giving the president everything he wants. Democratic leaders in Congress set the law to expire in six months so they could pretend to be against it after they were for it, and civil liberties groups are saying the changes they've already legislated give the Family more than they initially asked for, and what the fuck, over?

The 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act governs when the government must obtain eavesdropping warrants from a secret intelligence court. Warrants are virtually never denied and may be obtained after the surveillance has begun, but the Family doesn't want a paper trail when they bug their enemies.

Lying to increase the pressure on the Democratic-controlled Congress, Bush said the new act has already been effective, allowing intelligence professionals "to gather critical information that would have been missed without this authority and save America from a tragedy of unimaginable proportions, worse than anything we've done yet."

"Keeping this authority is critical to keeping America safe," he said, all squinty and tough. "America's a nice country. It'd be a shame if something was to happen to it."

Bush detailed criteria that the bill must meet before he would sign it, including the immunity provision for all the millionaires involved and the broad requirement that it "magically ensure that protections intended for Republicans are not extended to terrorists overseas who are plotting to harm us with the weapons we sell them."

"Congress must make a choice," he said. "Will they help us subvert the Constitution by making this law permanent. Or will they force us to write things down, thereby limiting our ability to collect this intelligence and stay a step ahead of the liberals who want to attack us."

Congress prepares to cringe

2007-10-09T11:03:00.000-04:00

WASHINGTON, D.C. (NY Times)--Two months after pretending that they would roll back the shiny new eavesdropping powers they gave the Bush Crime Family, Democrats in Congress appear ready to roll over again in an effort to keep Bill O'Reilly and Glenn Beck from calling them pussies.

Bush Family goons say they are confident the spineless Democrats will give the worst president in history everything he wants, including but not limited to the broadened authority to spy on his political enemies that they secured temporarily in August as Congress rushed home to brag about how tough they are. Some Democratic officials concede that they may have screwed the pooch on this one already.

As the debate begins anew this week, the emerging measures reflect the reality confronting the Democrats, which seems to be that the will of the electorate and the rule of law are meaningless and they have no more power now than they did when they were in the minority.

Although willing to take a chance and stand with the 200 million Americans who oppose the Bush Family on Iraq, they remain nervous that they will be called pussies, faggots, or traitors if they insist on trying to preserve the few remaining shreds of the Fourth Amendment.

A bill to be proposed on Tuesday by cowardly House Democrats would maintain forever the absolute authority for eavesdropping that the fascists secured temporarily in August by threatening to bomb Congress.

Paying lip-service to concerns over civil liberties, the bill would require more active rubber-stamping by the special foreign intelligence court that oversaw this sort of thing in the old days.

A competing proposal in the Senate, still being dictated by lawyers from Texas, will provide retroactive immunity for the crimes committed by the telecommunications utilities that took your money and sold your information.

No one is willing to predict exactly how the Democrats will cave. Some low-level clerks and paid-up members of the Beltway cocktail circuit said the final result will probably be even worse than what happened in August, despite the Democrats’ insistence that they would not support the legislation they supported.

“Many members continue to fear that if they don’t support whatever the president asks for, they’ll be perceived as soft on terrorism,” said William Banks, a professor who specializes in terrorism and national security law at Syracuse University. "But if they do, they'll be perceived as soft on fascism."

The August bill, known as the Protect America Act, was approved in the final hours before Congress fled the capital after veiled threats from the Bush Family of an imminent terrorist attack on Washington. The measure cut the foreign intelligence court out of the loop and broadened the NSA’s ability to obey the president unquestioningly.

NY Times to be declared "terrorist organization"

2007-10-05T16:27:00.000-04:00

WASHINGTON, D.C. (AP)--President Bush defended his administration's methods of kidnapping and torturing terrorism suspects on Friday, saying they are both successful and lawful. He was lying.

Bush, in an emergency spin session from the Oval Office, employed his typical kneejerk denial in response to a report on two secret Justice™ Department memos that authorized torture in 2005, while the Congress was publicly de-authorizing it. "This government does not torture people," the president lied.

The two Justice™ Department legal opinions from 2005 were disclosed in Thursday's editions of The New York Times, whose editorial board is known to hate America and whose publisher longs for the day when Shari'a law will be imposed here.

The secret opinion re-legalizing torture came one day after Alberto Gonzales was confirmed in the Senate as Attorney General, a post for which he was not qualified unless you consider blind devotion to George Bush a useful trait.

The second Justice™ opinion was issued later in 2005, just as Congress was working on what should have been an unnecessary and redundant anti-torture bill. The opinion declared that none of the CIA's interrogation practices would violate provisions in the legislation, The Times said, citing interviews with unnamed current and former officials who are too ashamed to speak publicly.

Though both memos remain in effect, the White House insisted they represented no change from the 2004 policy, whatever that was.

"We stick to U.S. law and international obligations," Bush lied, refusing questions after a brief denial photo-op.

Speaking emphatically, as if explaining to a lightly retarded golf caddy how he wants his margarita prepared, the president noted that "highly trained professionals" conduct any questioning, which was also true throughout the Middle Ages. "And by the way," he said, with a look of petulant complacency, "we have gotten information from these high-value detainees that have helped protect you."

"The American people expect their government to take action to protect them from being slaughtered in their beds by the murderous brown horde of evildoers who hate their freedoms and want them to vote for Democrats," Bush said.

He also claimed that the techniques used in U.S. torture chambers "have been fully disclosed to appropriate members of the United States Congress," including some Republicans who demanded video they could take home with them.

Bush Family press tart Dana Perino said that "the policy of the United States and the practices do not constitute torture," but refused to define what would be considered torture, or off-limits, in interrogations.

"I just fundamentally disagree that that would be a good thing for national security," she said. "I think the American people are stupid enough to believe that there are secret needs that the federal government has, to keep certain information about what we're not doing private...We cannot provide more information about techniques we're not using. It's not appropriate."

But House and Senate Democrats suspect that the president is full of shit, and are demanding to see the memos.

"Why should the public have confidence that anything these cocksuckers do is either legal or in the best interests of the United States?" Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller wrote in a letter to the Justice™ Department.

House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers and Representative Jerrold Nadler promised a congressional inquiry, possibly to include polite questioning, toothless subpoenas, and a tearful plea from Nancy Pelosi that we all just try and get along.

Another Bush Crime Family goon, meanwhile, criticized the leak of such information to the news media and questioned the motivations of those who do so.

"It's troubling," Tony Fratto said Friday. "I've had the awful responsibility to have to work with The New York Times and other Islamofascist propaganda organizations on stories that involve the release of classified information. And I can tell you that every time I've dealt with any of these stories, I have felt that we have chipped away at the safety and security of our Decider."

Fuck them, they are poor

2007-10-03T12:40:00.000-04:00

WASHINGTON, D.C. (AP)--President Bush once again declared his contempt for the working classes Wednesday, dragging his veto crayon across a bipartisan bill that would have dramatically expanded children's health insurance.

It was only the fourth veto of Bush's presidency, and the first directly benefiting his friends in the insurance racket. Some Republicans fear his position could carry steep risks for their party in next year's elections; others realize that the party is already dead, and are desperately trying to distance themselves from the policies they supported until recently.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) decried Bush's veto as "heartless" and burst into tears.

Bush cast his veto behind closed doors without any fanfare or news coverage, signaling that he knows he's an elitist piece of shit but can't help himself.

The State Children's Health Insurance Program is a joint state-federal effort that subsidizes health coverage for over 6 million people, mostly children, from families that earn too much to qualify for Medicaid but not enough to afford lobbyists.

The Democrats who claim to control Congress, with significant support from the Republicans who actually do, passed the legislation to add $35 billion over five years to allow an additional 4 million children into the program. It would be funded by raising the federal cigarette tax to $1 per pack. Unlike wars, health care has to be paid for in advance, even though it has proven significantly cheaper to insure people than to kill them.

The president had promised to veto it, saying the Democratic bill was too humane, took the program too far from its original intent of paying lip-service to the problem, and would encourage people currently at the mercy of profit-driven, private sector health-care to switch to government coverage, which might actually cover something. He wants only a $5 billion increase in funding, so he can say he cares without diverting too many valuable resources from the Carlyle Group.

Bush argued that the congressional plan would be a move toward socialized medicine, which would allow the terrorists to win.

It took Bush until last summer to veto his first bill, when he blocked expanded federal research using embryonic stem cells because life in a Petri dish is far to precious to be wasted in the pursuit of medical advances for actual people. In May, he vetoed a spending bill that would have required troop withdrawals from Iraq because war is far too precious to be abandoned just because it doesn't work and never will. In June, he vetoed another bill to ease restraints on federally funded stem cell research because some people just don't fucking get it.

In the case of the health insurance program, the veto is a bit of a high-stakes gambit for Bush, pitting him against not only the Democrats who have controlled both houses of Congress since January, but also many members of his own party and the vast majority of Americans. But he's the decider, and you're all scum.

Highest-paid death squads in the world

2007-10-02T20:55:00.000-04:00

WASHINGTON, D.C. (AP)--Blackwater chairman Erik Prince vigorously rejected charges Tuesday that mercenaries from his private army acted like a gang of punks with no regard for human life while collecting absurd amounts of money for protecting State Department personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"I believe we acted appropriately at all times," said Prince, a 38-year-old right-wing Christian nutcase and former Navy SEAL with long-standing financial ties to the GOP, testifying before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

His testimony came as the FBI is investigating Blackwater thugs for their role in a September 16 orgy of gunplay that resulted in 11 dead Iraqis who will not be counted as "official" dead Iraqis. This incident and many others, including a shooting by a drunken Blackwater goon after a 2006 Christmas party, led to pointed questions by lawmakers about what the fuck the government is doing, hiring unaccountable private-sector hitmen for work that could be done cheaper and better by U.S. military personnel, like it used to be.

"We're not getting our money's worth when we have so many complaints about innocent people being shot," said Representative Henry Waxman (D-CA), committee chairman, at the conclusion of a nearly six-hour hearing. "And it's unclear whether they're actually being investigated by the State Department, because the president's girlfriend runs that joint and the bitch won't tell us anything."

The committee agreed not to look into the September 16 incident during Tuesday's special hearing about the September 16 incident, after the Justice Department requested that Congress wait until a suitable cover-up can be arranged.

Prince cast his company--which has received billions of dollars in federal contracts as a result of his family's tireless financing of Bush Crime Family political operations--as a scapegoat. He said his staff was comprised of courageous individuals who face the same threats and high-stress environment as U.S. military personnel, but for a lot more money and with no accountability to military justice. He made it sound like a real bummer.

Often leaning back to hear his lawyer tell him his haircut didn't look gay, Prince repeatedly refused to say whether people he fired for random murders were guilty of murder, and said it should be up to the Justice Department to pursue charges against them.

In the case of the Christmas eve shooting, Prince said the company fired and fined the individual, as well as recommending that he seek treatment for his alcohol and anger-management issues.

"But we, as a private organization, can't do any more," he told the House panel. "We can't flog him. We can't incarcerate him. If he was some random Iraqi, we could shoot him in the back of the head and ditch him in the street, and he wouldn't even make the count. What do you want from me? Money?"

The Blackwater chairman said he would be willing to pay for legislation that would guarantee that his employees and other private goon squads working for the State Department are subject to prosecution in U.S. courts if the president would then commute their sentences. The House is expected to consider such a bill on Wednesday, if everyone isn't too busy condemning the free speech our brave soldiers and venal mercenaries are killing and dying to protect.

At the same time, Prince said the government's decision to include the FBI in the investigation of the September 16 incident is proof that oversight and accountability already exists. Everyone laughed.

State Department officials said Tuesday the criminal prosecution of such cases was out of their hands and should be handled by the Justice Department, which would not be allowed to because of national security.

"The president's girlfriend has made clear that she wishes to have a probing, comprehensive unvarnished examination of the overall issue of security contractors working for her in Iraq," said David Satterfield, the smirking Iraq point-man for the State Department. "Which will be much better for us than any kind of investigation of specific events."

Waxman also cited a November 2004 plane crash in Afghanistan--by jacked-up, joyriding Blackwater pilots who didn't know where the fuck they were and crashed into a canyon wall, killing everyone on board--as an example of what he said is the company's cavalier attitude toward its murderous disasters.

Prince acknowledged pilot error led to the crash, but said his company's aviators often fly missions in difficult conditions, such as ignorance or drunkenness. He said the military violated its own rules by loading people and explosives on a booze-cruise canyon run. But Blackwater flew the mission anyway because that's what its government customer wanted, he said, and go fuck yourself.

"There is no FAA in Afghanistan," he said. "What crashes in Afghanistan stays in Afghanistan."

Dems come out flailing

2007-09-06T20:39:00.000-04:00

WASHINGTON, D.C. (Reuters)--Leading Republicans in Congress on Thursday declared that troop withdrawal legislation is treason because the United States has made significant progress turning the corner to stay the course in Iraq, and cut-and-run Democrats should shut the fuck up and make with the money, like always.

"It should be off the table," House Republican leader John Boehner said of Democratic attempts to pass legislation to force President George W. Bush to withdraw some of the 168,000 U.S. troops defending Iraqi oil from Iraqis.

The Republican wide stance followed months of speculation that Democrats would probably do anything to avoid being called pussies on TV. In recent months a small but growing number of Republicans have said it is time to develop a bipartisan strategy to bring troops home, but they're up for re-election next year and no one believes them.

Democrats pointed to a new report that said the Iraqi army was improving to bolster arguments for starting to withdraw U.S. forces, but their puny majority and preponderance of facts is no match for old-school Republican shit-talking.

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky told reporters of "significant progress in Iraq," without saying what kind, and Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said the 4-1/2-year war effort was "finally paying dividends," but would not say to whom.

Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat, is working on a bill to start a withdrawal of troops this year but with no firm date for completing the pullout, no attempt to tie it to funding, and no reason to believe it will work.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada said Democrats would renew their strategy of empty posturing and pathetic dithering over the Iraq war. Surrendering without a fight, he implied that Democrats would avoid insisting on timetables or anything else before screwing up their courage and voting to give the president whatever he wants.

Republicans just laugh at them. "We're at a crossroads, you weaklings. Pour it on. Seize the moment and be like us. Show you have the balls to do what we want, and take withdrawal off the table," said Graham, who posed as a colonel in the U.S. Air Force reserves in Iraq for several days last month, then left because it's hot there.

Next week Congress will hear from U.S. Iraq commander General David Petraeus Maximus and U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker. Both are expected to report significant military progress in Baghdad since the start of the escalation last January, since that's what their scripts say.

Republicans are hoping their phony testimony upstages a more realistic non-partisan assessment delivered to Congress this week by the congressional investigative agency. It said the Iraqi government had failed to meet 11 out of 18 political and military goals, and pretty much sucked at the others, as long as you're asking.

Reid alluded to "things we can do on a bipartisan basis" to get the 60 votes needed in the Senate to avoid procedural roadblocks to legislation, then went back to sleep.

Any legislation urging troop withdrawals without timetables could lose the support of some Democrats running for President.

"If we take away deadlines, benchmarks, timelines, what is the urgency that will move them (the Iraqi government) to act?" asked Senator Hillary Clinton of New York, a leading presidential candidate.

Chicks are too emotional.

Richardson jumps the shark

2007-09-04T18:33:00.000-04:00

OSCEOLA, Iowa (AP)--In a bid to prove that understanding the expediency of sucking up to special interests isn't an exclusively Republican trait, Democratic presidential longshot Bill Richardson said Tuesday that his comment about it being God's will that Iowa votes first was just off-the-cuff pandering for the locals.

Campaigning in south-central Iowa, the New Mexico governor faced questions about his witless and bizarre comment Monday, when he suggested that the U.S. Constitution and the Holy Bible require Iowa to lead the nomination process.

"Iowa, for good reason, for constitutional reasons, for reasons related to the Lord, should be the first caucus and primary," he said Monday. "And I want you to know who was the first candidate to sign a pledge not to campaign anywhere if they got ahead of Iowa. It was Bill Richardson."

The Des Moines Register reported on Richardson's stupid, stupid comments to the Northwest Iowa Labor Council Picnic in Sioux City.

Asked about it Tuesday, Richardson said: "Look, that was an off-the-cuff comment where I was sucking up to the locals so I said Iowa and New Hampshire should be first, because I really want people here to like me. If I don't pull at least third place here, I'm toast."

When pressed further, he said Iowa should launch the primary calendar because "it's a tradition in American politics that has worked," like gay-bashing and terrorism.

"Iowa scrutinizes candidates through a grass-roots state. They are very good at winnowing down candidates," he said. "They don't listen to national polls. Iowa voters are very independent and issue-oriented. And they'll never go for a fat half-breed if I don't kiss their ass a little bit."

During Tuesday's stop in Osceola, Iowa, Richardson said he was troubled by the frequent bickering between leading candidates Hillary Clinton, John Edwards and Barack Obama, all of whom are better public speakers than he is.

"I think it's important to stay positive in this campaign," he told about 100 borderline alcoholics lured to a co-op winery by the promise of free samples. "Isn't Iowa great? God loves you people more than anyone."

Much has been made of the possibility of electing the first female or black president, but Richardson said that he didn't plan to put more emphasis on his Hispanic heritage if he can get attention through the time-honored tradition of obsequious gibberish.

"I don't like to be typecast. I'm very proud to be Hispanic, but if I used my mother's maiden name, like everyone else, it would be so obvious that I'm trying to just do it for votes," he said. "I'm after everybody, not just Hispanics, so I have to be prepared to say anything."

Richardson said he's up against tough competition at many campaign stops in early states, including the Labor Day appearance of Bill and Hillary Clinton.

"I'm campaigning against one formidable Clinton — now I'm facing two formidable Clintons," he said. "If they bring Chelsea out, I'm fucked."

Singing in the boneyard

2007-08-28T19:16:00.000-04:00

NEW YORK, NY (AP)--Draft-dodging Fascist presidential candidate Rudolph Giuliani will talk about how tough he is at the sixth anniversary remembrance of the World Trade Center attack, as he has every year, but some relatives of those who died in the Bush Family false-flag operation said the solemn ceremony is no place for presidential politics.

The former mayor, who became a multi-millionaire cashing in on the disaster that catapulted him to international fame, has participated in every ceremony since the attack, paying much more attention to the threat of terrorism in hindsight than he ever did as mayor. Relatives of some 9/11 victims said this year is different because now he is a declared presidential candidate.

"He's cashing in on 9/11 like it's his own personal tragedy. It's a photo op on a campaign swing for him," said Jimmy Riches, a deputy fire chief whose son was among the 343 firefighters killed when the buildings were imploded in the spectacular finale to the operation.

Sally Regenhard, whose firefighter son was also killed so we could have war in the Mideast, said she was stunned that the city would ask a presidential candidate to speak there, even one basing his entire campaign on the event.

"They should have every other single presidential candidate then, because this is outrageous," Regenhard said, choking back a wave of nausea. "This is going to be seen across the country as a blanket endorsement from us. It's totally inappropriate."

No declared presidential candidate has ever spoken before at the Ground Zero ceremony; indeed, candidates have typically suspended campaigning on September 11 out of basic human decency, which is not known to be a Giuliani attribute.

Giuliani's crooked henchman Tony Carbonetti, a degenerate gambler and second-generation crony, noted that the former mayor lost beloved pawns in the attack, and pretended that his activities that day will not be political.

"If you know Rudy Giuliani, he'd be down there paying his respects whether he was invited or not," Carbonetti said. "This is something that happened to him as a person, as a New Yorker, as a mayor and as an American. To say he's politicizing it--Marone! He would never do anything like that. And I will fucking kill anyone who says he would."

The centerpiece of the annual commemoration is the hours-long reading of the nearly 3,000 victims' names, which pauses for brief readings, musical selections and moments of silence marking the times when the two planes hit and when the pre-planted thermite charges brought the towers down.

Organizers said Giuliani will not be a name reader; he and other elected officials are scheduled to read aloud passages from My Pet Goat.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who will also speak at the ceremony, said Tuesday it was appropriate for Giuliani to attend because he showed up for work on September 11, 2001, and has exploited every anniversary since to keep his name in the news.

Lying little prick to step down

2007-08-27T09:22:00.000-04:00

WASHINGTON, D.C. (Reuters)--Lying little prick Alberto Gonzales has resigned as Attorney General, an official said on Monday, ending a controversial tenure as chief law enforcement officer that blemished the otherwise spotless administration of President George W. Bush.

The official confirmed a Web site report of the resignation by The New York Times, telling Reuters an official announcement would be made later in the day, after the president gets some solid food down.

The 51-year-old Bush butt-monkey was at the center of a political firestorm over the purge of insufficiently partisan federal prosecutors last year, which critics in Congress complained were totally uncool.

Gonzales worked for Bush when he was governor of Texas in the 1990s, covering up his drunk driving convictions and helping him sign execution orders. He served as White House lawyer in Bush's first term as president, declaring torture legal and the Geneva Conventions "quaint," before becoming the first crooked Mexican to serve as attorney general in February 2005.

Current and former administration officials had said the department's integrity had been damaged under Gonzales with controversy over the stacking of the federal courts with GOP operatives, his support for Bush's unconstitutional warrantless domestic spying program and other issues.

Several senators have said they had lost confidence in Gonzales and his ability to head the Justice Department. Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) was quoted on several occasions saying, "Harumph!"

While pretending mistakes were made in the handling of the dismissals, Gonzales denied the firings were politically motivated to influence federal probes involving Democratic or Republican lawmakers, but he was lying.

Bush has defended Gonzales and cited Gonzales' rise as an achievement for "Hispanics," the largest imaginary minority in the United States.

"I haven't seen Congress say he's done anything wrong," Bush said at a recent news conference. "Pussies."

Gonzales drew fire from civil liberties groups for writing in January 2002 that parts of the Geneva Convention were "obsolete" and some provisions were "quaint."

He also was criticized for Bush's warrantless domestic spying program adopted after, or perhaps before, the September 11 attacks. Only in January, in an abrupt reversal, Gonzales said the program finally would be subject to court approval. And then last month, cowardly Democrats in Congress said, "No, that's all right. Don't bother."

Stop or I'll yell stop again

2007-08-22T22:28:00.000-04:00

WASHINGTON, D.C. (AP)--A House committee chairman led the craven hand-wringing Wednesday over the Bush Crime Family's claim that a White House office involved in the illegal purge of millions of e-mails can keep records from the public.

The Justice Department™, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Bushco, introduced this stunning new line of shit in response to a lawsuit brought by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, which seeks to force the White House Office of Administration to say what it knows about the disappearance of an undisclosed number of messages.

The White House has provided few details about the e-mail problem, and they were all lies. It came to light more than a year and a half ago and resurfaced amid the uproar over the replacement of competent U.S. attorneys with dull-eyed Bush Family goons, which so far has resulted in investigations that go nowhere, hearings where no one says "liar," and subpoenas no one enforces.

For Representative Henry Waxman, the fight is just one of many his House Oversight and Government Reform Committee intends to lose to the Bush Family over access to documents. Democrats took control of Congress in January, but you'd never know it.

"The White House obsession with secrecy is absurd," said Waxman (D-CA). "The White House is inventing new legalisms to thwart oversight and public accountability. If only there were some kind of constitutional remedy for dealing with high crimes and misdemeanors in the executive branch."

In response, White House spokesman Scott Stanzel said, "Why is the Oversight and Government Reform Committee so obsessed with oversight and government reform?"

Under the Freedom of Information Act, the White House office in question has processed hundreds of information requests on behalf of the media, advocacy groups and the public over the past decade. The White House Web site lists the office among the "entities subject to" the law.

But on Tuesday, in a bid to kill the suit by CREW, the Justice Department™ contended the office has no substantial authority independent of President Bush and is not subject to the law, which is pretty much what they say about everything.

Lucy Dalglish, executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, said the Family's position is in keeping with its well-known disdain for democracy and the rule of law.

"When they don't want to comply with the law, they just shamelessly argue they are not subject to the law," she said.

In its filing in U.S. District Court, the Justice Department™ admitted that the White House office is required by law to comply with FOIA and has never previously refused, but things are different now, so fuck off.

The department cited an irrelevant court ruling in the 1990s that the National Security Council was not subject to the disclosure law.

Melanie Sloan, executive director of CREW, said the administration's position was "akin to the vice president's declaration that he is not a part of the executive branch. You know--bullshit."

Vice President Dick Cheney has said his office is exempt from sections of a presidential order that executive branch offices provide data on how much material they classify and declassify because his executive branch office is not part of the executive branch and besides, executive privelege.

With backing from the White House, Cheney's office argued that the offices of the president and vice president were exempt from the order because that's not really who they are.

Boned again

2007-07-20T00:32:00.000-04:00

WASHINGTON, D.C. (AP)--A Bush Crime Family-owned judge Thursday dismissed former covert CIA operative Valerie Plame's lawsuit demanding financial redress from the Bush Family goons who leaked her agency identity.

Plame, the wife of former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, had accused Actual President Dick Cheney and others of conspiring to disclose her identity in 2003, which they are on record as having done. Plame said that violated her privacy rights and was illegal retribution for her husband's criticism of the administration.

U.S. District Judge John D. Bates, a whore, dismissed the case on "jurisdictional grounds" and said he would not express an opinion on the constitutional arguments.

Bates dismissed the case against all defendants: Cheney, White House ratfucker Karl Rove, former White House aide I. Lewis "Shitbag" Libby and former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage.

Plame's lawyers said from the beginning the suit would be a difficult case to make in an incipient fascist dictatorship like 21st Century America.

Plame's cover was blown in a syndicated newspaper column in 2003, shortly after Wilson told the truth about the Family's march to war in Iraq.

Armitage and Rove were the sources for that article, and they still have security clearance because it isn't treason if Republicans do it. Nobody was charged with leaking because Libby lied to the FBI and obstructed the investigation, for which he was duly convicted. Bush commuted Libby's prison term before he served any time, to keep him from talking.

"This just dragged on the character assassination that had gone on for years," said Alex Bourelly, one of Libby's lawyers, a whore. "To have the case dismissed is a big relief."

Plame and Wilson pledged to appeal.

"This case is not just about what top government officials did to Valerie and me." Wilson said in a statement. "We brought this suit because we strongly believe that politicizing intelligence ultimately serves only to undermine the security of our nation."

Though Bates said the case raised "important questions relating to the propriety of actions undertaken by our highest government officials," he said there was no legal basis for the suit because he is a whore.

Bates also sided with administration officials who said they were acting within their job duties as henchmen for our demented child-king and his cyborg puppet-master. Plame had argued that what they did was illegal and outside the scope of their government jobs, being treason and all.

"The alleged means by which defendants chose to rebut Mr. Wilson's comments and attack his credibility may have been highly unsavory," Bates wrote, using "alleged" because the more accurate "proven" would have angered his idiot liege-lord.

"But there can be no serious dispute that the act of rebutting public criticism, such as that levied by Mr. Wilson against the Bush administration's handling of prewar foreign intelligence, by outing secret agents to members of the press, is within the scope of defendants' duties as high-level Executive Branch officials," Bates said.

Rove's lawyer, Robert Luskin, a whore, said Rove was pleased to have the case behind him.

"The risk of being liable for personal damages is not something anybody I know takes seriously," Luskin said.

Bates, who spent the 90s hassling President Clinton over the stinking huge pile of nothing that was Whitewater, was given this gig in 2001. He previously distinguished himself as the whore who ruled that Dick Cheney didn't have to say who was on his "Energy Task Force."

The enemy of my friend's enemy is...

2007-07-15T15:49:00.000-04:00

BAGHDAD (LA Times)--Although Bush Crime Family mouthpieces have frequently lashed out at Syria and Iran, accusing it of helping insurgents and militias here, the largest number of foreign fighters and suicide bombers in Iraq come from the Family's employers in Saudi Arabia, according to a senior U.S. military officer and Iraqi lawmakers.

Fighters from Saudi Arabia are thought to have carried out more suicide bombings than those of any other nationality, said the senior U.S. officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he is an intelligent man who loves his children. It is apparently the first time a U.S. official has told the truth about the role played by Saudi nationals in Iraq's Sunni Arab insurgency.

He said 50% of all Saudi fighters in Iraq come here as suicide bombers. In the last six months, such bombings have killed or injured 4,000 Iraqis.

The situation has left the U.S. military in the awkward position of battling an enemy sent by close friends of its Commander-In-Chief.

The problem casts a spotlight on the incestuous business relationships between the nasty old oil-rich bastards who run the Middle East and the nasty old oil-rich bastards who run the U.S.

In the 1980s, the Saudi intelligence service sponsored Sunni Muslim fighters for the U.S.-backed Afghan mujahedin battling Soviet troops in Afghanistan because it was a good way of shipping potential troublemakers out of the country. At the time, Saudi intelligence cultivated another man helping the Afghan fighters, Osama bin Laden, the future leader of Al Qaeda who would one day provide the Bush Family with everything it ever wanted by masterminding the September 11 attacks on New York and the Pentagon. Indeed, Saudi Arabia has long been the primary source of the money and manpower for Al Qaeda: 15 of the 19 hijackers in the September 11 attacks were Saudi. The other four were not from Iraq.

The Saudi government does not dispute that some of its youths are ending up as suicide bombers in Iraq, but says it has done everything it can to stop the bloodshed short of creating some sort of economic infrastructure at home.

"Saudis are actually being misused. Someone is helping them come to Iraq. Someone is helping them inside Iraq. Someone is recruiting them to be suicide bombers. We have no idea who these people are, though it has always been the U.S. State Department in the past. We aren't getting any formal information from the hated Iranian Shi'ite proxy government who are laughably pretending to run Iraq," said General Mansour Turki, spokesman for the Saudi Interior Ministry.

"If we get good feedback from the Iraqi government about Saudis being arrested in Iraq, probably we can help," he said, without specifying whom.

Defenders of Saudi Arabia pointed out that it has sought to appear to seek to control its lengthy border with Iraq and has pretended to fight a bruising domestic war against Al Qaeda since September 11, much as the U.S. has pretended to fight a War on Terror™.

"To suggest they've done nothing to stem the flow of people into Iraq is wrong," said a U.S. intelligence official in Washington, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was lying. "People do get across that border. You can always ask, 'Could more be done?' But what are they supposed to do, try?"

Others contend that Saudi Arabia is allowing fighters sympathetic to Al Qaeda to go to Iraq so they won't create havoc at home by demanding that the House of Saud actually govern rather than simply ruling.

Iraqi Shi'ite lawmaker Sami Askari, an advisor to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, accused Saudi officials of a deliberate policy to sow chaos in Baghdad, and he will never be invited to Crawford.

"The fact of the matter is that Saudi Arabia has strong intelligence resources, and it would be hard to think that they are not aware of what is going on," he said. "Especially with Dick Cheney flying over there to brief them whenever they demand it."

Surge protector

2007-07-13T20:37:00.000-04:00

WASHINGTON, D.C. (AFP)--President George W. Bush on Friday fought to buy time for his ongoing rape of Iraq, as his chief spokesweasel grudgingly admitted that the war-torn country's puppet lawmakers would take an August vacation, just like Bush always does.

"You know, it's 130 degrees in Baghdad in August," White House Channel anchorman Tony Snow said in the air-conditioned pressroom. "My understanding is at this juncture they're going to take August off, but you know, they don't really do much anyway."

"I'm not in a position, at this point, to try to gainsay what the Iraqis are doing," he added, noting that the U.S. Congress will take a similar recess from August 6 to September 4, during which time they will travel to their home offices to catch up on their pro-impeachment mail.

In a fresh blow to Bush's dream of an endless war, two of his Republican party's elder statesman, Senators Richard Lugar and John Warner, urged him to start pulling U.S. troops out of the sectarian clusterfuck we created there by the end of the year.

They released their plan one day after Bush rejected any changes to his endless war plan until two months from now, when the most recent U.S. Iraq commander, General David Petraeus, gives a glowing report on the troop surge strategy or starts looking for another job.

The legislation, which appeared designed to unite those Republicans who hope to be re-elected with Democrats trying to end the war, calls for a new plan to be delivered to Congress by October 16.

The move came one day after the House of Representatives voted to withdraw most U.S. combat troops by April and as Bush held a videoconference with top military aides in Baghdad and Washington to hammer home his point that the war can, and must, continue at least until he leaves office.

"What happens in Iraq matters to the United States of America. A violent, chaotic Iraq is crucial to my financial security," Bush said as he heaped praise on U.S. contractors making hundreds of millions of dollars from failing to provide basic services in the strife-torn country.

While he spoke, the aides around the conference table at the White House, including part-time Defense Secretary Robert Gates and soon-to-be-ex-Joint Chiefs chairman General Peter Pace, sat with dazed expressions from trying to match the president drink-for-drink at lunch.

Bush--who has vowed to veto any legislation mandating what he calls a "hasty troop withdrawal" and everyone else calls "ending this disastrous and illegal occupation"--also underlined that "there's still a lot of money to be made."

The first report, made public Thursday, showed the Iraqi government making "satisfactory" progress on eight of 18 political and security benchmarks set by Congress, and scoring a "piss-poor" or "non-existent" rating on the rest, with barely 60 days before the next assessment is ignored.

"I grant you it's not a lot of time," said White House spokesmodel Dana Perino. "The president is saying, 'Let's give it a little bit more time to work,'" she added, and smugly noted that the Democrats lack the two-thirds majority to override an inevitable Bush veto.

She also emphasized that craven, delusional House Republicans had, with few exceptions, sided with the White House in Thursday's vote--even as increasing numbers of the party's heavyweights in the Senate have broken with Bush's plan upon realizing it's a career-killer.

But there was no mistaking the panicked urgency of Bush's public relations push, as the normally invisible Gates was to hold a news conference, while U.S. Secretary of State and Back-up First Lady Condoleezza Rice took to the airwaves to defend her man's troop increase despite the report.

And the dumb-as-mud president himself summoned a phalanx of conservative chickenhawk pundits for a group handjob at the White House on why his approach deserves more time.

Bush's strategy of indefinitely deploying 30,000 more troops in Iraq is "a work in progress," whined Rice, who appeared on all major U.S. television networks in another desperate attempt to downplay her boyfriend's profound failure as a leader and as a man.

Skeletor has gas

2007-07-12T11:35:00.000-04:00

WASHINGTON, D.C. (Reuters)--U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said on Thursday that his recently improved digestion means the threat to the United States from al Qaeda has not returned to levels ignored by the Bush Crime Family just before the September 11 attacks nearly six years ago.

Chertoff played down media reports inspired by his ongoing flagrant electioneering on behalf of the GOP, that the militant network was now as great a threat to U.S. soil as in the months before the September 11 attacks on Washington and New York, when the president was enjoying a marathon drunken binge on his fake Texas ranch.

"I wouldn't put it at that level," he told ABC's Good Morning America. "I do think we've accomplished an awful lot in dismantling their activities overseas and in building our own defenses, especially considering the president's loyalty to the House of Saud, where most of their funding comes from. But I do think the level of intent on the part of the enemy remains very high, which results in some intestinal discomfort for me, particularly when so many members of this administration are under investigation in high-profile scandals."

The Washington Post reported the militant network has significantly rebuilt itself and established a safe haven in remote tribal areas of western Pakistan, where they are under the protection of a nuclear-armed military dictator who claims to be our ally. It cited a new intelligence report to be misunderstood and lied about by Chertoff and other top officials at a White House meeting later Thursday.

Top intelligence analysts also told Congress on Wednesday that al Qaeda's training activities, funding and communications have increased as the militant network has settled into new bases in remote areas of Pakistan, and that there's not a damn thing to be done about it because our military is mired in the ongoing and endless bloodbath in Iraq, which never attacked us and doesn't seem to appreciate our occupation.

Chertoff told the Chicago Tribune this week that his "gut feeling" was that the United States faced a heightened risk of attack this summer, but that he wouldn't change the federal alert level until his colon goes into spasm.

Then on Thursday he told NBC: "We don't have any specific information about an imminent or near-term attack on the homeland, like we did before 9-11, which no one could've predicted. We're looking at the strategic picture over the next six months to a year, or five or ten years, or fifty. We're evaluating where that is."

He said his concern that the United States could be entering a period of heightened risk was based on greater al Qaeda activity in Pakistan and Africa, an increase in public messages from militant figures including Osama bin Laden's second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahri, and a history of summer attacks. But it may all have been a result of some bad clams.

I fuck the law. Then I jog.

2007-07-09T21:45:00.000-04:00

WASHINGTON, D.C. (Reuters)--The Bush Crime Family on Monday dared Congress to take them to court for refusing to provide information and testimony demanded in an investigation into last years's purge of insufficiently obedient federal prosecutors.

White House counsel Fred Fielding, in a letter to two congressional chairmen, called their demands "unreasonable because it represents a substantial incursion into presidential prerogatives, such as bullying his former employees into keeping their goddamn mouths shut."

Congressional leaders made it clear they were prepared for a court battle unless it can be demonstrated that the federal courts are so hopelessly stacked with Bush Family operatives that it's pointless even to continue pretending we have a government.

"I hope the White House stops this stonewalling and accepts my offer to negotiate a workable solution," said Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat who also hopes his hair will grow back.

Democrats have sought compromise because they fail to understand that a substantial majority of Americans would like to see the president hounded from office and drowned in one of those giant lakes of fermented pigshit they have in Texas. They have gotten so used to being whipped like incontinent mutts by the Bush Crime Family's button men that they don't know how to behave now that they don't actually have to take it anymore.

Bush is relying on a legal doctrine known as executive privilege, which he understands to mean that he is above the law and always will be, and there's nothing anyone can do about it.

White House Channel anchorman Tony Snow brushed off the threat of a possible congressional contempt citation, saying, "Fuck those pussies."

"What we do believe is that we are on perfectly solid legal ground," Snow said, too stupid to realize that Nixon believed the same thing thirty-three years ago.

Congress wants the documents and testimony to determine if the firing of nine or thirteen or twenty-eight of the nation's 93 U.S. attorneys last year was the result of Bush Crime Family efforts to maintain access to federal power forever.

Bush and his longtime buttboy, crooked U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, insist the dismissals of the federal prosecutors were justified but may have been mishandled, meaning they didn't think anyone would dare question them. Gonzales, with Bush's support, has withstood bipartisan calls to go back to Texas and work at Wal-Mart.

The Family has offered to allow current and former lackeys to talk to lawmakers, but only if they can do it somewhere hidden, and there's no record of it, and everyone's allowed to lie. Leahy and others say the offer is unacceptable, which means they'll probably end up accepting it.

Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee and one of the most mealy-mouthed bastards ever to draw breath, said, "I think, candidly, there's a lot of posturing going on both sides."

In his letter, Fielding refused to explain why Bush thinks executive privilege can be applied to absolutely anything he wants, then asserted presidential privilege again to block subpoenaed testimony by two former aides, Sara Taylor and Harriet Miers, who will be the ones looking at jail time while their former boss takes another vacation.

"Contrary to what the White House may believe, it is the Congress and the courts that will decide whether an invocation of executive privilege is valid, not the White House unilaterally," said House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, a Michigan Democrat who won't be riding on any small planes anytime soon, if he knows what's good for him.

There was no immediate indication how much longer Democrats would seek to reach an agreement with the White House before taking the matter up with a U.S. Attorney who can be fired by the president at any time, for any reason.

Clowntown

2007-07-08T21:08:00.000-04:00

WASHINGTON, D.C. (Reuters)--If Patrick Leahy can get his head out of Arlen Specter's ass for a minute, the Senate Judiciary Committee may seek testimony from controversial prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald about the obstruction of justice case against vice presidential aide Lewis "Shitbag" Libby.

Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, the ranking Republican member of the committee, revealed his astounding ignorance and whipped-whore mentality by saying, "I still haven't figured out what that case is all about."

Libby, the one-time top aide to Actual President Dick Cheney, was found guilty in March of obstructing an investigation into who blew the cover of a CIA analyst whose husband dared to expose some of the bullshit leading up to the Iraq war.

Libby was sentenced to 2 1/2 years in prison, but Cheney hand-puppet George W. Bush commuted the sentence in order to keep the cover-up going, because no one learned a damn thing from Watergate.

Senator Charles Schumer, a New York Democrat who clearly loves the terrorists as much as he hates the troops, has called for the Judiciary Committee to seek Fitzgerald's testimony on the matter.

"Reluctant as I am to agree with Senator Schumer, I think he's right," Specter said on CNN's "Late Edition," then took the opportunity to repeat the right-wing lie that no crime occurred.

"Why were they pursuing the matter long after there was no underlying crime on the outing of the CIA agent?" he asked, as if undercover CIA agents are exposed by the executive branch every day and he can't see a problem with it. "Why were they pursuing it after we knew who the leaker was?" Specter continued, pretending that lying to federal investigators to prevent them finding out what happened isn't a felony.

Senator Patrick Leahy, the Vermont Democrat who chairs the Judiciary Committee, exposed himself as a lily-livered shitheel by implying that he needs Specter's blessing to call Fitzgerald.

"If he has no objection to Mr. Fitzgerald coming forward, I think you may very well see Mr. Fitzgerald before the Senate Judiciary Committee," Leahy said on the same CNN program. "It's not up to me, of course. I'm only the chairman. I wouldn't want Dick Cheney to have to tell me to fuck myself."

Fitzgerald's critics point out no one was ever charged with leaking the CIA agent's name and like to pretend that this isn't because the investigation was sabotaged by Libby's proven obstruction. They are scum and they are traitors, but people keep putting them on TV.

Leahy said he saw no point in summoning Libby himself because "his silence has been bought and paid for," then wet himself thinking about the stern looks he might have to endure from Dick Cheney in the near future.

Lest we forget

2007-07-04T01:45:00.000-04:00

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. — And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

No felon left behind

2007-07-02T20:10:00.000-04:00

WASHINGTON, D.C. (AP)--President Bush spared former White House goon I. Lewis "Shitbag" Libby from a 30-month prison term in the CIA leak case Monday, stepping into a criminal case with heavy political overtones on grounds that Dick Cheney told him to.

Bush's move came within hours of a federal appeals panel ruling that Libby could not delay his prison term in the CIA leak case. That meant Libby would have to report to prison just like any other convicted felon, and would be just a shower-room butt-rape away from flapping his gums about who actually runs the administration and what they're doing.

"I respect the jury's verdict," Bush lied in a statement. "But I have been told that the prison sentence given to Mr. Libby is excessive for a loyal Republican. Therefore, I am commuting the portion of Mr. Libby's sentence that required him to spend any time in jail."

Bush left intact a $250,000 fine--which will be paid by actor-turned-senator-turned-lobbyist-turned-actor-turned-presidential candidate Fred Thompson--and two years' probation, which is a few months more than Paris Hilton is serving. Miss Hilton is not known to have burned any CIA assets or lied to any federal grand juries.

Libby was convicted in March of perjury and obstruction of justice for lying to federal agents investigating the 2003 leak of a CIA operative's identity. He was the highest-ranking White House official ordered to prison since the Iran-Contra affair raised the bar for Republican treason.

Reaction was harsh from Democrats.

"As Independence Day nears, we are reminded that one of the principles our forefathers fought for was equal justice under the law. So much for that," Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) said through a spokesman.

Libby's supporters celebrated with cocaine and teenage boy-hookers.

"That's fantastic. It's a great relief," said former Ambassador Richard Carlson, who helped raise millions for Libby's defense fund from the Bush Crime Family's neo-conservative enablers. "Nobody in our club should ever have to go to prison and I'm glad the president had the courage to do this."

A message seeking comment from Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's office was not immediately returned, because some people work for a living.

Bush pretended Cheney's former hatchet man was not getting away with murder.

"The reputation he gained through his years of public service and professional work in the legal community is forever damaged," Bush said. "His wife and young children have also suffered immensely. He will remain on probation even longer than Paris Hilton. The chump-change fines imposed by the judge will remain in effect. The consequences of his felony conviction on his former life as a lawyer, public servant and private citizen will be long-lasting, though not as long as his future career as a lobbyist."

A spokeswoman for Cheney said simply, "The vice president supports the president's decision." "Supports" means "made."

The president's announcement came just in time to ensure Libby will not spend a single night in jail for his treason. He recently lost an appeals court fight that was his only chance to put the sentence on hold, and the U.S. Bureau of Prisons had already designated him inmate No. 28301-016.

Bush's statement made no mention of the term "pardon," and he made clear that he was not willing to wipe away all penalties for Libby while anyone's looking.

The president parroted the Libby Fan Club argument that the punishment did not fit the crime for a "first-time offender with years of exceptional service to my family."

Yet, he added, "Others point out that a jury of citizens weighed all the evidence and listened to all the testimony and found Mr. Libby guilty of perjury and obstructing justice. They argue, correctly, that our entire system of justice relies on people telling the truth. And if a person does not tell the truth, particularly if he serves in government and holds the public trust, he must be held accountable. But not on my watch."

Bush then stripped away the prison time.

Nixon was a piker

2007-06-28T20:39:00.000-04:00

WASHINGTON, D.C. (AP)--President Bush, the most crooked piece of shit ever to hold the office, claimed executive privilege Thursday and rejected demands for White House documents and testimony about the Family's purge of insufficiently partisan U.S. attorneys.

His decision was denounced as "Nixonian stonewalling" by the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, who admitted privately that he meant to say "the most pernicious bullshit I've ever heard of," but was too angry.

Bush rejected subpoenas for documents from Bush Family cheerleaders Harriet Miers and Sara Taylor. The White House made it clear that neither one would testify next month, and that Congress should shut the fuck up and stop bothering them with this "rule of law" crap.

Presidential counsel Fred Fielding said Bush had made a reasonable attempt at a cover-up but the filthy Democratic-led Congress forced the confrontation by issuing subpoenas. "With respect, it is with much regret that we are forced down this unfortunate path which we sought to avoid by asserting that the president is above the law."

The assertion of executive privilege was the latest turn in increasingly hostile standoffs between the administration and the Congress over the illegal and disastrous Iraq war, unlimited executive power, the War on Terror™ and Vice President Dick Cheney's bizarre claim that he is a fourth branch of government, untouchable by the laws of man. A day earlier, the Senate Judiciary Committee delivered subpoenas to the offices of Bush, Cheney, the national security adviser and the Justice Department about the administration's unconstitutional warrantless wiretapping program.

White House Channel anchorman Tony Snow weighed in with a whining rebuke of Congress. He accused Democrats of trying "to make life difficult for the White House. It also may explain why this is the least popular Congress in decades." He refused to speculate whether putting impeachment back on the table would make them more popular, or less.

Congressional committees sought the documents and testimony in their investigations of crooked Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' rape of the Justice Department and the firing of eight or nine or twenty-seven federal attorneys over the winter. Democrats say the firings were part of a scheme to rig elections and stack the courts so none of these bastards will ever go to jail. The White House contends that U.S. attorneys are political appointees who can be hired and fired for almost any reason, including honesty.

In a letter to Leahy and Conyers, Fielding pretended Bush had "attempted to chart a course of cooperation" by releasing more than 8,500 pages of irrelevant documents and sending Gonzales to Capitol Hill to lie to Congress.

The president also had offered to make Miers, Taylor, head ratfucker Karl Rove and their flunkies available to be interviewed by the Judiciary committees in an undisclosed D.C.-area motor lodge, with no writing implements allowed and under no obligation to tell the truth. Leahy and Conyers rejected that proposal, but not before calling back to ask if it was a joke.

The Senate Judiciary Committee's senior Republican, Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, said the House and Senate panels should accept Bush's original offer, and that President Kennedy was killed by a magic bullet.

Fielding explained Bush's position on executive privilege this way: "For the president to perform his unique constitutional duties, which are unlike the duties of any president in history, it is imperative that he receive candid and unfettered advice from the people who explain things to him, free and open discussions, blah blah blah blah blah."

This "bedrock presidential prerogative" exists, in part, to protect the president from being compelled to disclose anything to Congress or anyone else, Fielding argued.

The most famous claim of executive privilege was in 1974, when President Nixon went to the Supreme Court to avoid surrendering his idiotic tape recordings in the Watergate scandal. The court unanimously ordered Nixon to turn over the tapes, and now he's dead.

Watch what you watch

2007-06-26T17:10:00.000-04:00

MIAMI (Reuters)--Osama bin Laden's face and ominous words loomed over the U.S. terrorism trial of former "dirty bomber" suspect Jose Padilla on Tuesday as jurors were shown a 10-year-old videotaped interview from the bonus disc of the al Qaeda leader's Greatest Hits.

Jurors were polite but bored as they watched the CNN interview on a giant screen in a Miami courtroom. Padilla and two co-defendants are on trial for fantasizing about terrorism and being credulous dupes. They are not accused of having any direct connection to bin Laden, but are suspected of having wanted to.

In the 1997 interview--made long before bin Laden launched the September 11 attacks which changed America into a nation of cringing bed-wetters and made him one of the world's most popular terrorists --a machine gun rests at his side as he praises the deaths of U.S. troops originally deployed to Saudi Arabia and Somalia by close friends of his family.

Prosecutors played it as a prelude to airing secretly recorded phone conversations meant to prove that Padilla's co-defendants Adham Amin Hassoun and Kifah Wael Jayyousi are guilty of watching CNN and discussing it afterwards.

Hassoun is heard saying of bin Laden, "May God protect him," a felony under the Patriot Act. Jayyousi seditiously calls the interview "very powerful" and notes with seeming approval that bin Laden condemned the U.S. treatment of the "blind sheikh," Omar Abdel Rahman, who is imprisoned for life in connection with the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and other terrorist acts he stupidly attempted when Bill Clinton was running things.

The bin Laden tape has no direct bearing on the charges in the Miami trial, which do not involve attacks in the United States or on U.S. citizens, or anything else. Prosecutors played the tape and the phone conversations as evidence that Hassoun, a Lebanese-born Palestinian, and Jayyousi, a Jordanian-born U.S. citizen, are impressed by violent right-wing rhetoric.

Defense lawyers vigorously objected, calling the tape inflammatory and irrelevant, and were quietly added to the government's no-fly list.

U.S. District Judge Marcia Cooke told jurors to ignore it when deciding Padilla's fate since there was no evidence he ever saw or discussed the interview--unlike the jurors themselves, who are now under investigation.

Padilla was arrested by the FBI at Chicago's O'Hare airport in 2002, declared an "enemy combatant" by Psychic-In-Chief George W. Bush and unilaterally tortured in a military jail for 2-1/2 years.

The government said then he was plotting to set off a radiological "dirty bomb" in the United States but because there is absolutely no evidence of this, no mention of those allegations was made when he was transferred into the civilian justice system and randomly added to the Miami terrorism case.

Judge Cooke said jurors could consider the videotape as proof that the other two defendants hadn't just imagined it, but reminded them that the charges had nothing to do with September 11.

The defendants are accused of running a support cell that provided money and recruits for Islamist militants in Chechnya, Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan and other nations beginning in the mid-1990s, when it was still cool because everyone was doing it.

The charges allege Hassoun recruited Padilla, an ignorant nincompoop, at a south Florida mosque and sent him to Egypt and Afghanistan to learn Arabic and train with al Qaeda.

All three defendants face life in prison if convicted of something. Their trial, now in the sixth week of testimony, is expected to last through August, but its lack of star power makes it a ratings loser.

Defense lawyers said Padilla went to the Middle East to study Arabic and become an Islamic cleric, but did not have cable while he was there. They said the other two were involved in charities that provided innocent aid to Muslims in conflict zones but did not advocate violence. They seem unaware that 9/11 shifted the burden of proof away from the accuser and ended the American tradition of due process.

Shut up and pray

2007-06-26T01:31:00.000-04:00

WASHINGTON, D.C. (Reuters)--The Bush Family's Supremely Awesome Court ruled on Monday that lowly taxpayers have no right to challenge President George W. Bush's use of taxpayer funds to enrich the religious groups he pays for their support.

By a 5-4 vote, the high court's conservative majority thanked the Bush Crime Family for stacking it that way by ruling that a Wisconsin group called the Freedom From Religion Foundation had no legal right to bring the lawsuit in the first place, and should probably be sent to Gitmo.

The ruling only addressed whether taxpayers--who are the scum of the earth--can bring such challenges, not how badly the program itself violated the U.S. Constitution's requirement on the separation of church and state.

The majority opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito--who was appointed to the high court by President George W. Bush in spite of being woefully underqualified--overturned a previous ruling that allowed the lawsuit to proceed. Bush's other high court appointee, singularly unimpressive Chief Justice John Roberts, also joined the ruling.

In January 2001, soon after seizing power, Bush issued an executive order creating the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives as payback to the Jesus freaks who supported him in spite of his corruption, incompetence and chronic drug abuse.

One of the goals Bush set was to help the paleo-conservative religious wingnuts who stumped for his election to get a Jesus-sized slice of the Clinton surplus while the getting was good.

The lawsuit said the Family violated the Constitution by organizing national and regional conferences at which religious groups received favored treatment over secular groups who might not be trustworthy Republican fronts.

It said that Bush Crime Family soldiers made public appearances and gave speeches throughout the United States intended to promote and advocate funding for the religious groups who support them.

Bush Family lawyers said a 1968 Supreme Court precedent allowed such taxpayer challenges in religion cases only if the program had been funded under a specific congressional appropriation. Bush's program was not financed through such an appropriation, but through a White House slush fund created for the purpose.

"This is a very significant victory that sends a powerful message that atheists and others antagonistic to religion do not get an automatic free pass from the fires of Hell," said Jay Sekulow of the American Center for Law and Justice.

Alito said in the majority ruling that it has long been established that payment of taxes is generally not enough to establish the legal right to challenge a federal government action, and that the way to do it is to start a church, refuse to pay taxes, and give the money you save to the RNC.

"If every federal taxpayer could sue to challenge any government expenditure, the federal courts would cease to function as courts of law and would be cast in the role of general complaint bureaus, which would be an abomination in the eyes of American Jesus and the Republican faithful who invented him," Alito wrote.

The court's four liberals dissented. Souter wrote for the dissenters that the taxpayers in the case had alleged sufficient injury to bring the lawsuit, but probably misunderstood the nature of our theocracy.

Treason

2007-06-21T20:08:00.000-04:00

WASHINGTON, D.C. (AP)--House Democrats on Thursday denounced Actual President Dick Cheney's attempt to shitcan a government office charged with safeguarding national security information, and criticized him for refusing to cooperate with the agency in the years since he started selectively leaking classified national security information for political gain.

Cheney's office--over the objections of the National Archives and in defiance of federal law--has exempted itself from a presidential executive order that seeks to protect national security information generated by the government from being used by traitors and war profiteers to silence their political enemies, according to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

Under the order, executive branch offices are required to give the Information Security Oversight Office annual data on how much material they have classified and declassified, whether the information was given to Judith Miller or not.

Cheney's office provided the information in 2001 and 2002, then stopped when it was time to start leaking classified information to the media in support of the Bush Crime Family's scheme to being anarchy and contractors to Iraq. Henry Waxman, chairman of the committee, said Cheney's office claims it need not comply with the executive order because it is not an "entity within the executive branch," even though they claim "executive privilege" the rest of the time.

"Your decision to except your office from the president's order is problematic because it could place national security secrets at risk," Waxman wrote Thursday, in a letter to Cheney which did not specifically mention previously covert CIA operative Valerie Plame.

Megan McGinn, a spokesbimbo for the vice president, said Cheney's office is above the law, and fuck off.

"We are confident that we are conducting the office properly under the law," she said. "Have we ever lied?"

The Information Security Oversight Office has repeatedly asked crooked Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to resolve the legal dispute over whether the order applies to Cheney's office. So far, the Justice Department has been too busy rigging elections to rule on the issue.

Waxman said J. William Leonard, director of the Information Security Oversight Office, told the panel that after he complained to the Justice Department, Cheney recommended that the executive order be amended to abolish the ISOO, before he gets pissed off and shoots someone in the face.

Waxman said Leonard also told the panel that in 2004, Cheney's office blocked an onsite inspection of his office to make sure classified information was being properly protected, saying they were too busy and to come back in five years.

"To my knowledge, this was the first time in the nearly 30-year history of the Information Security Oversight Office that a request for access to conduct a security inspection was denied by a White House office," Waxman wrote. "I mean, hello? WTF?"

The eight-page letter asks Cheney to respond to a series of questions about where he got the bizarre idea that his office is exempt; what branch of the government he thinks he's in; what steps, if any, his office has ever taken to ensure that national security information is protected; and whether he considers himself answerable to anyone apart from Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah.

I got yer fiscal restraint right here

2007-06-16T12:59:00.000-04:00

CRAWFORD, TX (AP)--President Bush, who has spent the past six and a half years emptying the Treasury into the pockets of his billionaire friends and whose business career was a wasteland of bankruptcies and Saudi bailouts, warned Congress on Saturday that he will use his magic veto power to stop runaway government spending not benefiting Republicans.

"The American people do not want to return to the days of tax-and-spend policies," Bush said in his pointless weekly radio address, oblivious to the vast majority of the American people who have expressed a preference for Democratic tax-and-spend policies over the Republican system of borrow-and-steal.

The House passed a $37 billion budget for the Homeland Security Department on Friday, but Republicans, whose piece of the pie was dramatically shrunk by last November's elections, rallied enough votes to uphold a promised veto from Bush.

The measure--one of several annual spending bills that Congress began to consider this week--exceeds Bush's request for the department by $2.1 billion, or roughly the cost of a week in Iraq.

Democrats on Friday defended the extra money in the homeland security bill, noting it contains money to hire 3,000 additional border agents, improve explosive detection at airports and provides money to double the amount of cargo screened on passenger aircraft. Republicans have long resisted anti-terror measures not directly enriching them.

The administration, hoping to appease whining Republican losers suddenly demanding fiscal restraint, has pledged to keep overall spending to the level in Bush's proposed budget, which pretends the war in Iraq is paying for itself.

House GOP conservatives have pledged to come up with the votes needed to grind the whole process to a stop so they can say Democrats are playing politics with national security.

"I am not alone in my opposition," Bush said, stressing that 147 Republicans in the House have pledged to stand with him. "These 147 members are more than the one-third needed to sustain my veto of any bills that spend too much on things I don't care about."

The president, though, has backed away from his childish threat to veto the bill funding veterans' programs. It exceeds Bush's request by $4 billion, but the president acquiesced when GOP lawmakers made it clear that with troops overseas, they would look like assholes in squaring off with Democrats over spending for veterans.

Bush taped his radio message in Washington on Friday before making a visit to Wichita, Kansas to raise money for the Senate re-election campaign of the disturbingly insane Pat Roberts, then headed to his fake Texas ranch for Father's Day weekend. He'll be joined at the ranch, for what is expected to be a weekend of binge-drinking, by his pill-popping first lady Laura, their unemployed bimbo daughter Jenna, and Family friends.

In his radio broadcast, Bush also railed against earmarks--a common Capitol Hill practice of slipping pet projects into spending bills, which Republicans are having a harder time doing now that they're in the minority.

Confidence shmonfidence

2007-06-11T10:14:00.000-04:00

SOFIA, BULGARIA (AFP)--U.S. President George W. Bush continued to stand by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales on Monday, just hours before the Senate plans a rare but strangely pointless no-confidence debate over the little prick's political purge of federal attorneys.

With the debate looming, Bush--piss-drunk in Bulgaria--defended Gonzales, saying the uproar "reflects what I like to call the political atmosphere" in Washington since the Democrats took control of Congress.

"They can try to have their little votes of no confidence, but it's not going to determine who serves in my fucking government," Bush told reporters in the capital city of Sofia before stumbling onto Air Force One for the trip back to D.C.

Monday's debate comes the week after Dick Cheney's head goon, Lewis "Shitbag" Libby, was sentenced to jail for obstructing a federal investigation into the treasonous exposure for political gain of a covert CIA network, and weeks after Bush's former deputy defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz agreed to resign as president of the World Bank after he got caught using public funds to pay for sex.

The Senate is to act on a motion of no-confidence in Gonzales, who still refuses to resign in spite of a mountain of evidence that he fired at least eight U.S. prosecutors because they refused to help the Republican Party rig elections.

Bush, who thinks lying and evasion constitute cooperation, said Monday: "This process has been drawn out a long time, which says to me it's political. In other words, it's a political process."

"There's no wrongdoing," he declared, as usual. "I'll make the determination if I think he's effective or not, not those who are using an opportunity to make what I like to call a political statement. That means a statement which is political."

Bush has ignored pressure for Gonzales to go, including from inside the shattered remains of the Republican party. The row began in March when evidence from e-mails and testimony from a top former aide linked the little prick to the sackings.

Democrats will bring the motion before the Senate Monday even though it is unlikely to garner the 60 votes needed. The pointless gesture nevertheless follows some real censures of Bush Crime Family operatives.

Wolfowitz was a key architect of the highly profitable 2003 invasion of Iraq, but has been unable to collect his reward as president of the World Bank because somebody bitched about the $90,000 raise he engineered for his girlfriend as soon as he got there.

Last week Libby, a former aide to Actual President Dick Cheney, was sentenced to 30 months in prison for repeatedly lying to the FBI about how Valerie Plame's Iranian WMD investigation was blown open by the Bush Crime Family in a fruitless attempt to intimidate her husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, into keeping quiet about the Family's lies in the lead-up to the Iraq invasion.

Libby learns this week whether Judge Reggie Walton will allow him to remain free while the Family appeals the sentence on the grounds that, as a Republican, Libby is above the law.

On May 23, Monica Goodling, Gonzales's former hatchet lady, admitted to Congress that it might be illegal to hire prosecutors based on their political affiliation, but insisted she only did it to please Jesus.

Several Republican lawmakers have joined majority Democrats in saying that Gonzales is a lying little prick who should go back to Texas.

The Department of Justice has offered dozens of contradictory explanations for the firings, and the attorney general himself angered lawmakers by insisting in testimony that he "can't recall" anyone who ever worked for him or anything they ever did.

Nazi summit '07

2007-06-09T12:54:00.000-04:00

VATICAN CITY (CNN) -- U.S. President George W. Bush claimed to have a humanitarian record around the world at his first audience with Pope Benedict XVI, telling the old Nazi on Saturday about U.S. efforts to battle AIDS in Africa by preaching abstinence in the cradle of life.

Dressed in a black suit and tie, with his sedated wife by his side, Bush greeted Vatican officials with a smirk before stumbling up the red carpeted stairs to meet Benny the Pope for the first time.

Once inside, the president was ushered into a large, ornate room where the pope greeted him with an extended claw and a horrible grimace. The two sat and made small talk at a desk in the open room while a group of photographers snapped pictures of the encounter.

It was Bush's first trip to the Vatican since celebrating the death of anti-war extremist Pope John Paul II in 2005.

The pope asked the president about his drunken binge in Germany and then changed the topic to international aid.

"I've got a very strong AIDS initiative," Bush lied, according to The Associated Press.

The president promised the pope that he would use all the power of an unpopular lame-duck executive to try to get Congress to double the current U.S. commitment for combating AIDS in Africa to $30 billion over the next five years. "Thirty large buys a lot of abstinence," he quipped.

At the G8 summit in Germany leaders of the world's richest countries pledged $60 billion to fight diseases such as AIDS in Africa.

The pope also asked Bush about his meeting in Germany with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has offered to restart the Cold War over U.S. plans to construct some sort of magic missile shield in Europe.

"The dialogue with Putin was also good?" the pope asked, revealing his spectacular ignorance of current events.

Bush, waiting awkwardly for photographers and reporters to be escorted from the room, replied, according to AP: "Umm. I'll tell you in a minute, Benny."

CNN's Ed Henry reported that moving throughout Rome was difficult Saturday because everybody here hates Bush so much that 10,000 cops are barely enough to keep order.

The president had pledged to be in a "listening mode" during talks with Benedict, who reminds him of his grandfather.

"I think Benny will be pleased to know that much of our foreign policy is based on the admonition to whom much is given, much is required," Bush said in a pre-trip interview, according to AP. "I call him Benny," he added.

He promised to "go in open-minded."

"Sometimes I'm not poetic enough to describe what it's like to be in the presence of the Holy Father. It is a moving experience," said Bush, whose grandfather was censured by Congress for his Nazi business interests in 1942.

Traitor skates with 2, may still flip

2007-06-05T20:43:00.000-04:00

WASHINGTON, D.C. (AP)--War profiteer and Secret President Dick Cheney's former chief goon was sentenced to 30 months in prison Tuesday for being a lying little bitch and intentionally obstructing the CIA leak investigation--the probe that showed the Bush Crime Family would not hesitate to commit treason to silence criticism of its illegal war of conquest.

I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby--the highest-ranking White House official sentenced to prison since the Iran-Contra affair established the president’s daddy as the most ruthless international criminal since his daddy helped finance Auschwitz--asked for leniency, but a federal judge said he would not reward someone who hindered the investigation into the exposure of a CIA operative. The operative's husband was the first major political figure to accuse the Bush Crime Family of lying like a roomful of junkies to justify their war in Iraq.

Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald asked for a sentence of up to three years, while Libby had asked for probation, no time in prison, and a multi-million-dollar book deal.

Reaction from the Bush Crime Family was guardedly predictable.

President Bush, embarrassing us in Europe, said through the guy who fetches Laura’s cigarettes that he "felt terrible for the family, which is a group of people you’re related to.” Libby and his wife, Harriet Grant, have two school-age children, who are very proud today.

Cheney said his former top aide had better prevail on appeal, or he might have to shoot someone in the face.

Libby did not apologize for his treason and has maintained his innocence.

He was convicted in March of perjury and obstruction of justice for repeatedly lying to investigators about who ordered him to blow the cover of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame.

Cheney, looking to Libby's appeal, said, "Speaking as friends, we hope that our system will return a final result consistent with what we know of this fine man. The prosecution is in its last throes."

Defense attorneys sought to have the sentence delayed until Libby runs out of money for appeals or Bush issues a pardon on his way out the door, whichever comes first.

Plame and her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, applauded the sentence, and urged Libby to spill everything he knows to U.S. Attorneys and/or John Conyers.

"As Mr. Fitzgerald has said, a cloud remains over the vice president," Wilson said. “An evil, black, shit-smelling cloud of concentrated wrong.”

It was Cheney who ordered Plame's cover blown in June 2003 after her husband began calling bullshit on the Family's prewar intelligence.

The trial also revealed how the Family strategically leaked bogus information and used journalists as their personal hand-puppets to sell their illegal war and defend itself from criticism and legal action, often through the cloak of anonymity in the dead of night.

Rats know when to jump

2007-06-01T10:35:00.000-04:00

WASHINGTON, D.C. (CNN)--The former White House Deputy Director of Election Theft, whose unconstitutional appointment to a U.S. attorney's post helped blow the lid off the Bush Family purge of politically impure federal prosecutors, has resigned, according to a news release.

Tim Griffin, 38, said in a Thursday statement that he is leaving his position as interim, unconfirmed U.S. attorney-for-life for the Eastern District of Arkansas to pursue ratfucking opportunities in the private sector.

"I greatly appreciate the opportunity to serve the Bush Family in the Department of Justice, especially as United States attorney," he said. "I have particularly enjoyed serving in my home state of Arkansas and look forward to remaining here while the government falls."

Griffin's predecessor, Bud Cummins, was one of the eight or nine or twenty-seven attorneys fired last year for not being blindly obedient Republican political operatives, sparking a firestorm of criticism against the Justice Department and spurring a wave of hearings aimed at uncovering who, exactly, ordered the purge.

The Justice Department and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said in their first round of lies under oath that Cummins and other attorneys were fired because they were incompetent, but they later admitted that Cummins was purged to create a space for Griffin as payback for his help with Karl Rove's "vote caging" scheme in 2004. This effort targeted at least 70,000 people, including students, deployed military personnel and homeless people, for removal from voter rolls on the grounds that they may be black. The Bush Crime Family considers Voting While Black a form of election fraud, and has worked tirelessly to put a stop to it.

A congressional investigation into the firings has revealed that the Justice Department's primary concern in a post-9/11 world has been preventing Democrats from obtaining power. E-mails released as part of the probe show that the Bush Family and their goons at Justice conspired for months to get Griffin into the U.S. attorney's office in Little Rock, where it was hoped he would investigate Wal-Mart for its ties to Hillary Clinton, a leading Democratic presidential candidate and enemy of the state.

The e-mails also revealed discussions about whether the Justice Department should exploit an unpopular and unconstitutional provision of the Patriot Act allowing Gonzales to appoint U.S. attorneys without Senate confirmation or term limits.

Griffin was named as an "interim" U.S. attorney in December, without Senate confirmation or term limits.

As the controversy over the attorney firings erupted and subpoenas started to fly, Griffin suddenly announced he would not seek the permanent post.

Griffin was rewarded for his help stealing the 2000 election with an appointment as Senior Investigative Counsel for the House Committee on Government Reform.

Science vs. the Shitheads '07

2007-05-31T11:47:00.000-04:00

WASHINGTON, D.C. (AP)--Congress intends to send President Bush legislation next week to ease crippling restrictions on federally funded embryonic stem cell research, which is of no use whatever to the petroleum industry and will therefore be vetoed.

As was the case when Enlightenment forces tried to accomplish something last year, Bush appears likely to make his veto stick. Several Democratic officials said Wednesday that supporters of the bill appear to lack the two-thirds majority needed to override him, suggesting that over a third of the Congress is still in the thrall of pro-disease Jesus freaks and suburban hillbillies who love their president no matter who it hurts.

Both houses passed legislation on the subject earlier in the year. The final vote is expected Thursday in the House. The president is expected to talk big for a few news cycles about life and God and balancing the rights of blastocysts with those of us who breathe air, then get out the veto crayon.

Public opinion polls show strong support for the research, and it could return as an issue in the 2008 elections. Public opinion polls also show strong support for universal health coverage, public financing of elections, securing America's ports and nuclear installations against terrorism, reducing greenhouse gases and getting the fuck out of Iraq. But public opinion polls don't have a briefcase full of cash for the RNC.

Critics counter that the research is immoral because it involves the destruction of tiny, insensible clumps of cells that might otherwise grow up to serve their angry white god by voting Republican. Bush said it "crossed a moral line that I and many others find troubling," an apparent reference to his advisors' insistence on sucking up to the party's reactionary Christianist base at all costs.

There was no federal money for the work until Bush announced in 2001 that his administration would make it available for the completely inadequate number of stem-cell lines already in existence at that time. Appointed president by abortion foes and other conservatives on the Supreme Court, he said that his decision was designed to balance concerns about "protecting life and improving life." He has never explained how life in a petri dish is the moral equivalent to life in a wheelchair, and no one really expects him to.

He also limited the funds to cell lines derived from surplus embryos at fertility clinics and donated from adults who had given informed consent, in a rebuke to Democrats who favor ripping them out of kidnapped teenagers in the back of some rave club.

You expected what, exactly?

2007-05-30T10:53:00.000-04:00

WASHINGTON, D.C. (Reuters)--President George W. Bush has chosen neoconservative free-trade hack Robert Zoellick to replace neoconservative free-trade hack Paul Wolfowitz as president of the World Bank, a secret American official said on Tuesday.

Bush plans to announce his selection on Wednesday and expects the bank's board to accept it without pointing out that Zoellick is no more qualified than Wolfowitz was, the administration official said. World Bank directors have never blocked a nomination in the past, to their continuing chagrin.

Bush wanted a PNAC figure with a Bush Family résumé to succeed Wolfowitz, despite calls from World Bank member countries and some U.S. lawmakers to throw the process open to a global pool of candidates in order to get someone with some development experience.

The controversy over Wolfowitz's engineering of an enormous pay raise for his personal pump-hog, Shaha Riza, deepened rifts among bank staff already disgruntled by his bogus anti-corruption smokescreen, and prompted sharp criticism from shareholder countries.

Wolfowitz also was controversial because of his role as the primary architect of the Bush Crime Family's 2003 invasion of Iraq while serving as Donald Rumsfeld's homunculus in the Defense Department.

Wolfowitz has blamed the media for the controversy, insisting that no one would know about his crimes if they weren't reported.

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson received what he called "positive reactions" from other countries to the choice of Zoellick, the administration official told reporters. These ranged from "What are you gonna do?" to "It could have been worse, I guess."

Zoellick left his job as Condoleezza Rice's top yes-man last year to spend more time with Wall Street investment bank Goldman Sachs & Co.

He had been considered as a candidate last year to become Treasury Secretary, but that job went to Goldman Sachs CEO Paulson, who had more dirt on the Family.

"He's an outstanding choice," said Bush Family consigliere James Baker. "What he brings to the bank is an ability to get things done regardless of law or decency, an ability to intimidate people and an excellent reputation among free-trade venture capitalists across the world ... something we at BushCo badly need."

Baker acknowledged that Zoellick does not have the extensive development experience one might prefer in a position like this, but said he was a hard-ass Family man who knows how to twist arms and steamroll opposition--crucial at a huge money-laundering organization like the World Bank.

Others were concerned about naming another PNAC buttboy to head the bank and saw this as another missed opportunity.

"The second, high-ranking Bush Crime Family national security hack in a row, I think is a mistake," said Representative Barney Frank, a Massachusetts Democrat who chairs the House Financial Services Committee and consistently exhibits the kind of kneejerk liberal opposition you'd expect from a homo.

Zoellick was one of the 18 chickenhawk war pimps, including Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, who wrote a much-publicized letter to former President Bill Clinton in 1998 advocating removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq. Clinton ignored them and was later impeached for lying about a blowjob.

Zoellick was then chosen as a member of the "Vulcans," a group of senior-level Bush Crime Family figures, mostly from the Old Man's administration, brought together under Rice to tutor the woefully ignorant George W. Bush on foreign policy before his 2000 presidential coup.

The World Bank board said in a statement it was essential the next president have a proven track record of leadership and experience of managing a large, international organization, which you'd think would be obvious.

George swings by the cemetery

2007-05-28T13:48:00.000-04:00

ARLINGTON, VA (AP)--President Bush paid lip-service Monday to America's fighting men and women in another infuriating Memorial Day photo-op at the national burial ground for war heroes.

Speaking under skies the color of a three day-old corpse, Bush called the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan a part of the nation's destiny. He said they follow a rich tradition of similar American sacrifices throughout this country's history. He was lying.

As people across the country marked the day of remembrance with drunken barbeques, another suicide car bomber struck another busy commercial district in central Baghdad, killing at least 21 people and damaging another shrine revered by Sunnis and Shi'ites alike.

Speaking incoherently of the more than 368,000 buried through history at Arlington National Cemetery, Bush said, "Nothing said today will ease your pain. But each of you needs to know my family thanks you and we embrace you and we will never forget the terrible loss you have suffered after we retire to Paraguay."

An America-hating Islamofascistocrat, possibly gay, holding a sign that said "Bring home our troops," stood at the bridge as Bush's motorcade traveled over the Potomac River on its way to the cemetery. There, the president was greeted by slack-jawed yokels waving at his limo.

Troops with rifles fitted with bayonets stood at attention as the motorcade drove through rows of white tombstones, each marked with a tiny American flag manufactured in Pakistan.

Bush laid a wreath of red, white and blue flowers at the Tomb of the Unknowns and stood, his hand covering his heart, during a drum roll and Taps. First Lady Laura Bush stood nearby with relatives of fallen troops, chain-smoking.

In his speech, Bush said the hundreds of millions of dollars his daughters will inherit "came at a great cost to the little people and the bottom line will look good only so long as there are those who are willing to die for it."

The president said that even after four years, many young men and women still inexplicably volunteer for the U.S. armed forces.

"We've heard of 174 Marines recently, almost a quarter of battalion, who asked to have their enlistments extended," Bush said. "Ain't that a hoot? They want to serve their nation."

"Those who serve are not fatalists or cynics," he added. "Or suckers, necessarily. They know that one day this war will end, as all good things do. Our duty is to make sure this war was worth the sacrifice, by continuing the sacrifice."

"This is our country's calling," Bush lied. "It's our country's destiny."

"On this day of memory, we mourn brave citizens who laid their lives down for Barb and Jenna's inheritance," he said. "May we always honor them, may we always embrace them and may we always be faithful to who they were and what they fought for. Me."

At least 3,452 members of the U.S. military have been shipped home in boxes in the dead of night since we invaded Iraq in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count. At least 325 members of the U.S. military have died in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Uzbekistan as a result of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001, according to the Defense Department. Osama bin Laden is still at large.

GOP: Iraq not helping anymore

2007-05-28T12:55:00.000-04:00

WASHINGTON, D.C. (AFP)--A US senator from President George W. Bush's floundering Republican party said Sunday he and other members of Congress expect the number of US troops in Iraq to be reduced after September so they can run for re-election as peacemakers.

Senator Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III (R-AL), a pro-torture redneck ratfucker who sits on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said a progress report due in September by the most recent commander of US troops in Iraq would provide a chance to scale back the 147,000-strong US force in time for the '08 election season.

"By September, when General Petraeus reports that nothing has changed, I think most of the Republicans up for re-election believe that we should be on a move to draw those surge numbers down," Sessions told CBS television's Face the Nation.

The senator's comments were the latest signal from Bush's Republican enablers in Congress that they are looking for a new way to make Iraq work for them after having stood by the president in the past, when he was popular.

The top Republican bagman in the Senate, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, who has used blackmail and extortion to keep his party in line behind the president, admitted Friday that his re-election next year would probably require a major shift on the war.

"I think the handwriting is on the wall that we are going in a different direction in the fall, and I expect the president himself to lead it," McConnell said. Senator McConnell also expects to win the lottery one day, and looks forward to partying naked with the Dixie Chicks.

The New York Times reported on Saturday that Republicans are working on several "concepts" for reducing the number of US combat troops in Iraq by as much as 50 percent in 2008. Republican "concepts" for troop reduction are patriotic and good, and should not be compared to cowardly Democratic "cut-and-run" initiatives, which would allow Osama to come to your house and eat your children.

Referring to the article, Sessions said: "I certainly hope that's what will occur. We cannot sustain this level, in my opinion, in Iraq and Afghanistan much longer and expect to win elections here at home."

Sessions described the president's idiotic strategy to deploy extra troops in Iraq again and again as "a bitter pill" that lawmakers swallowed like tube-steak "because of the violence our occupation inspires in the capital city of Baghdad."

Bush secured another 100 billion dollars for his wars in Iraq and Afghanistan last week after the Democratic majority in Congress threw up their hands and bravely refused to impose a timetable for the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq.

Democrats have vowed to keep up the pressure on the president as long as they can do it without someone calling them hurtful names on Fox News, and Republicans are realizing, with glacial speed, that being on the wrong side of history and the will of the American electorate regarding Iraq will fuck them hard in elections next year.

The Bush Crime Family has described Iraq as a central front in the War On Terror™ and accused Democrats of favoring a "surrender date" by advocating a withdrawal deadline.

The highest-paid gunfighters in the world

2007-05-27T20:03:00.000-04:00

WASHINGTON, D.C. (AFP)--Mercenary killers working for a private firm employed by the US State Department opened fire in Baghdad twice last week, once provoking a standoff with Iraqi forces, The Washington Post reported Sunday.

Citing US and Iraqi officials who refused to go on record because you can't trust anyone in this stinking hellhole, the newspaper said that on Thursday, a gunman working for right-wing Christian private army Blackwater USA shot and killed an Iraqi driver near the interior ministry.

Meanwhile on Wednesday, a Blackwater-protected convoy was ambushed in downtown Baghdad, triggering a furious battle, in which the mercenaries, US and Iraqi troops and AH-64 Apache attack helicopters were firing randomly in a crowded urban area like rival crack gangs with close air support.

Blackwater's mercenary killer division holds well over 100 million dollars worth of State Department contracts in Iraq and is authorized to use deadly force with no fear of local or international accountability.

The hired guns have a murky legal status, the Post said, because traveling hitmen often do.

Matthew Degn, a Baghdad-area spook with a murky legal status of his own, described the ministry as "a powder keg" after the Iraqi driver was gunned down Thursday, with anger at Blackwater predictably spilling over to other Americans working in the building, according to the report.

Degn is quoted as saying he was concerned the incident "could undermine a lot of the cordial relationships we've enforced over the past four years of terror and occupation. There's a lot of pissed-off little sand-niggers up here right now."

The Blackwater guards said the victim drove too close to their convoy and drew fire, the Post said. Which sounds a little better than, "He was in range, so we shot at him."

Too stupid to live

2007-05-27T12:15:00.000-04:00

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP)--Republican presidential candidate and Alzheimer's poster boy John McCain, comparing the disastrous U.S. occupation of Iraq to actual military campaigns like the Normandy invasion, said Saturday the current plan is the only decent option.

The Arizona senator has criticized Democrats for failing to consider the consequences of withdrawing troops, such as admitting to the world that the policies he has supported for four years never had a chance of working.

McCain said in a rambling, incoherent interview with The Associated Press that he is only focused on figuring out how to make the current military plan work after four years of devastating failure. A new course, he said, won't be considered until the end of the year, when Republican congressmen up for re-election start freaking out in public.

"I believe that General Eisenhower didn't have a Plan B at Normandy, and I don't think that General Grant had a Plan B when he decided to take Richmond," said McCain, too stupid to realize that those battles were part of actual wars overseen by actual Commanders-In-Chief who actually died winning them.

He urged the American people to keep giving "Plan A" a chance, noting that the full five brigades that make up the most recent useless escalation have not all arrived in Iraq, largely due to a shortage of battle-ready prosthetic limbs.

Several Republicans have said that they will give the buildup until the end of the summer to work, but McCain said his organic brain damage makes him more patient.

"I have tried to discourage my Republican colleagues from saying that September is some kind of seminal moment," said McCain. "I am aware the American people are frustrated. I share that frustration. I don't think the American people are aware of the consequences of failure. Believe me, failure is something I know about."

While McCain again assailed Democrats for wanting to "retreat and abandon the battlefield," which is what Republicans call it when rational people admit failure and try to do something about it, he acknowledged that he faces political limbo as the war he loves grows increasingly unpopular.

"But if we fail in Iraq, this country's going to have a whole lot more problems than my political ambitions and future," McCain said, apparently unaware that this country has had bigger problems than his political ambitions ever since his political ambitions were sidelined by the Bush Crime Family seven years ago.

Libby judged urged to set the poor boy free

2007-05-26T11:00:00.000-04:00

WASHINGTON, D.C. (AP)--Former White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby is remorseless criminal scum and deserves to spend 2 1/2 to three years in prison for obstructing the CIA leak investigation, Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald said Friday.

Libby, the former chief of staff to Actual President Dick Cheney and an assistant to puppet frontman George W. Bush, is the highest-ranking member of the Bush Crime Family to be convicted since the Iran-Contra affair two decades ago.

In court documents, Fitzgerald rejected a line of pernicious bullshit from Libby's rabid, frothing PNAC supporters who said the leak investigation spun out of control when it began to approach the guilty. Fitzgerald denied the prosecution was politically motivated and said Libby brought his fate upon himself by choosing to be a fascist goon.

U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton, who has a reputation for handing down tough sentences, has broad discretion over Libby's fate. Walton faces two important questions: whether to send Libby to prison and, if so, whether to delay the sentence until his appeals have run out or just lock the prick up now.

Libby's lawyers have not filed their sentencing documents yet but are expected to ask that he receive no jail time because he's a Republican.

Libby was convicted in March of lying to investigators about what he told reporters regarding formerly covert CIA officer Valerie Plame, whose 2003 exposure shattered a vital Mideast WMD investigative network and touched off the leak probe. Plame was identified in a newspaper column in a blatant act of treason intended to punish her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, for telling the truth about the Bush Family's prewar intelligence on Iraq.

"Mr. Libby's prosecution was based not upon politics but upon his own conduct," Fitzgerald said. "He's a goon, a fixer, a PNAC shill."

Libby's pals wrote letters to the court on his behalf, but Walton has not decided whether to release them. Eleven news organizations filed documents Friday urging Walton not to keep them secret because they were filed in an attempt to influence Libby's sentence and should therefore be part of the public record.

Libby's attorneys disagreed, telling Walton that the writers intended their scurrilous words to be kept secret. Releasing the letters, attorneys said, might discourage whores for the military-industrial complex from trying to influence future cases.

Fitzgerald referenced the letters Friday and, even without the direct quotes, it's clear that they were all written by the same chickenhawk war pimps who brought us the Iraq War in the first place.

Libby's PNAC supporters, Fitzgerald said, have tried to "shift blame away from Mr. Libby for his illegal conduct and onto those who investigated and prosecuted Mr. Libby for unexplained 'political' reasons," such as hatred of treason.

Libby's lawyers have said he deserves to be pardoned every bit as much as Casper Weinberger did fifteen years ago, but the Family has been guarded about the issue. Top Democrats have urged Bush not to pardon him on his way out the door, which is expected to have as much effect as a fart in a typhoon.

Democrats yield to Bush's awesome power

2007-05-25T12:40:00.000-04:00

WASHINGTON, D.C. (AFP)--In a move designed to prove they are powerless before the awesome charisma of the most unpopular president in history, the US Congress Thursday approved the Democratic Capitulation Act of 2007, a hundred-billion dollar-plus Iraq war budget that gives the Bush Crime Family everything they wanted.

After a day of pointless debate reflecting sharp divisions over how best to continue the disastrous, illegal war, the House of Representatives voted 280-142 to fund the war through September, and the Senate concurred by 80 votes to 14.

The votes left many anti-war Democrats feeling like they woke up in a Dallas whorehouse with no wallet, acknowledging they lack the power to thwart Bush's iron will despite controlling Congress. Republicans, predictably, rejoiced over having beaten Democratic "surrender dates."

When Bush picks up his crayon and signs the bill, he will end, temporarily at least, any idea that may have been forming in the collective consciousness of the electorate about restoring checks and balances or the usefulness of electing Democrats.

Democrats nevertheless vowed to keep pretending to be interested in ending the occupation, which has dragged on longer than World War Two and killed 3,442 US troops and untold hundreds of thousands of Iraqis.

"The days of blank checks and green lights for his failed policy are over," said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who backed the bill giving Bush the go-ahead to sink another $100 billion into his failed policy.

"Senate Democrats will never give in, never, never, never, never," Reid said, ironically paraphrasing former wartime British prime minister Winston Churchill.

Top Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama both voted no, indicating that they, at least, have some understanding of the manifest will of the American people, unlike Senator Joseph Biden (D-Bank of America), who voted to pass the bill in the mistaken belief that it somehow makes him appear "presidential."

The Bush Crime Family expressed satisfaction at the passage of what it described as a roadmap to record profits for the military-industrial complex.

"Congress is to be congratulated for successfully providing the Carlyle Group with the funding and flexibility we need to sell our country armaments, rather than mandating arbitrary timetables for our profitable military operations," said Alex Conant, a Bush Family spokesweasel.

Several times, raw angst over the war erupted onto the floor of the House, where it died, whimpering, in the corner

Republican leader John Boehner cried like a little bitch as he warned that America needs to take the battle to Al-Qaeda in Iraq, before they bring it here to us almost six years ago.

Democrat John Murtha, a heavyweight opponent of the war, could barely contain his fury as he shouted hoarsely across the chamber, "You want a piece of me, you fuck?" before being forcible sedated and removed to the House Violent Ward.

Thursday's votes came hours after Bush forecast a bloody and difficult few months in Iraq, which is much easier to predict than he made it sound.

"We're going to expect heavy fighting in the weeks and months" to come, Bush told a White House news conference, and everyone wrote it down like it was news.

Democrats had demanded troop withdrawal timetables for months, and included them in the budget vetoed by Bush earlier this month. But they finally bent over for the whore's logic which states that trying to pull our troops out of a pointless meat-grinder means they want the troops to die.

"It is a political reality, it is not what we want to pass," said House Majority leader Steny Hoyer. "Sometimes, if you want respect, you just have to bend over and take it like a man."

The bill requires Bush to report to Congress on Iraq in July and September, but of course he doesn't have to if he doesn't feel like it.

Bush: No one is safe, ever

2007-05-23T10:10:00.000-04:00

WASHINGTON, D.C. (AP)---Seeking to rally support for his endless, useless war, President Bush released intelligence asserting that Osama bin Laden in 2005 ordered the creation of a terrorist unit to go back in time and hit targets outside Iraq, including the United States. Their first big challenge: the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, which were apparently hit by Sunni suicide squads from the future on September 11, 2001.

The information was declassified by the White House on Tuesday so Bush could use it Wednesday to look like a big shot when he gives the commencement address at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy. It expands on a classified bulletin the Homeland Security Department issued in March 2005, titled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in the Past."

The bulletin, which warned that bin Laden had enlisted Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, his senior operative in Iraq, currently dead, to plan potential strikes in the recent history of the United States, was described at the time as terrifying but not comprehensible. It did not prompt the administration to raise its national terror alert level, as there were no imminent elections.

Bush, who is battling Congress over spending for his savage, pointless war in Iraq, will highlight U.S. successes in foiling terrorist plots unless they involve commercial airliners and/or time travel. He plans to use the intelligence to argue that terrorists remain a threat to Americans throughout history, said Frances Fragos Townsend, the White House temporal security adviser.

"We know from the intelligence community that al-Zarqawi welcomed the tasking and claimed he already had some good proposals, as well as access to a time-travel device, possibly through A.Q. Khan," Townsend said.

She said the information was declassified because the intelligence community has tracked all leads from the information, and that the players were all either dead, in U.S. custody, or caught in some kind of loop.

The Bush White House has habitually fabricated and disseminated sensitive intelligence information whenever they need to terrorize a credulous electorate. On a few occasions, the declassified materials were intended to be proof that terrorists see Iraq as a critical staging ground for global operations into the past, and always will have.

Democrats and other critics have accused Bush of selectively declassifying intelligence, including portions of a sensitive National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, to justify the U.S.-led invasion on grounds Saddam Hussein intended to travel through time and join forces with Hitler. That assertion proved false, for now.

Fredo stays, bitches

2007-05-22T01:30:00.001-04:00

CRAWFORD, TX (AP)--President Bush insisted Monday that insane, incompetent Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is still his little brown buddy and denounced Democratic plans for a This Guy Totally Sucks vote as "pure political theater."

"He has done nothing wrong," Bush lied in a sullen, angry defense of his longtime enabler and buttboy during a news conference at his fake Texas ranch.

Despite Bush's comments, support for Gonzales is eroding everywhere but in Crawford. The Senate is prepared to hold a This Guy Totally Sucks vote, possibly by week's end, and five Republican senators have joined many Democrats in calling for Gonzales' resignation and/or exile.

The attorney general is under investigation by Congress for rigging the Justice Department to eliminate all opposition to the Bush Crime Family's Plan For America™.

He is also under fire for charging into John Ashcroft's hospital room in the dead of night, while the old freak was recovering from serious invasive surgery, and demanding that he certify the legality of Bush's plan to spy on his enemies with every piece of communications technology the 21st Century has to offer. This shockingly sleazy episode was detailed last week by former Deputy Attorney General Jim Comey, whose job it was at the time to certify the program, and who refused to do so.

In Washington, the Justice Department released a new batch of random documents linked to the firings, hoping to muddy the waters in anticipation of House testimony Wednesday by Monica Goodling, Gonzales' former hatchet-lady and White House liaison, who is getting ready to squeal like a wild pig with a wolverine on its back.

The Justice Department, in the face of mountains of contradictory evidence, has maintained the ridiculous fiction that the firings targeted underperforming U.S. attorneys. But everyone else who can read knows that they were politically motivated, and e-mails between Goodling and White House goons about how to respond now that they're busted pretty much clinch it.

The president told the Democrats to get back to more pressing matters, like giving him all the money he wants for his endless war. When asked a direct question about whether he intended to keep Gonzales in office through the end of his presidency regardless of what the Senate does, Bush punted.

"I stand by Al Gonzales, and I would hope that people would be more sober in how they address these important issues," Bush said. "And they ought to get the job done of giving me my fucking money, as opposed to figuring out how to be actors on the political theater stage, or possibly in a series of political theater action-oriented comedies featuring a jealous ape."

Gonzales does not necessarily need Congress' support to continue serving the Bush Crime Family. But Bush and Gonzales are under increasing pressure as more Republican lawmakers realize they're going to be fucked in '08 and there's not a goddamn thing Karl Rove is going to do about it.

Democrats pressed ahead with plans to put the Senate on record in expressing their disgust with him.

"The president should understand that while he has confidence in Attorney General Gonzales, everybody else knows he's just a little piece of shit swirling around in the toilet bowl of Bush Family corruption," said Senator Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y), in response to Bush's comments.

Falwell struck dead; God suspected

2007-05-15T18:32:00.000-04:00

LYNCHBURG, VA (AP)--Jerry Falwell, the bugfuck insane evangelical power-broker who used television, tax exemption and the myth of the Moral Majority to bring the Bush Crime Family to power during the Reagan years, was finally killed by his angry, vengeful God on Tuesday, aged 73.

Falwell was discovered without a pulse or a forwarding address in his office at Liberty University and pronounced dead at a hospital an hour later. Dr. Carl Moore, Falwell's physician, said God had been torturing him with a heart condition for some time, and had presumably struck him dead with a heart rhythm abnormality.

Driven insane and into politics by Roe vs. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision establishing that women own their bodies, Falwell founded the Moral Majority in 1979 as a way to undermine constitutional processes without paying any taxes. One of the theocratic cult's greatest triumphs came just a year later, when the brain-damaged Ronald Reagan was chosen to front for the Bush Crime Family in Washington.

Falwell bragged that his army of credulous dupes in the Moral Majority registered millions of religious conservatives and convinced them to vote against their economic self-interest, paving the way for the American Age of Theocratic Fascism.

"I shudder to think where the country would be right now if the religious right had not evolved," he said when he stepped down as Moral Majority president in 1987. "Well, maybe evolved is the wrong word," he added.

Fellow TV evangelist Pat Robertson, himself a raving lunatic and career criminal, declared Falwell "a tower of strength on many of the moral issues which have confronted our nation," but refused to speculate on why God would kill him.

"Dr. Falwell was a man of distinguished accomplishment who devoted his life to serving his faith and country, but then, I guess God knows what He's doing," said Senator John McCain, a GOP presidential contender who will say absolutely anything, even lapsing at times into a gibberish language of pops and clicks. During the 2000 primaries he referred to Falwell and Robertson as "agents of intolerance." McCain has since attempted to distance himself from those comments, because he desperately needs all those morons to vote for him.

Halliburton CEO visits corporate fleet

2007-05-12T11:59:00.000-04:00

ABOARD THE USS JOHN C STENNIS (AFP)--US Stealth President Dick Cheney warned on Friday from the hangar deck of a US aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf that the United States will not let his old business partners in Iran acquire nuclear weapons.

"We'll stand with others to prevent Iran from gaining nuclear weapons and dominating this region," he told thousands of sailors on the nuclear-powered USS John C. Stennis, as it cruised within missile range of Tehran, dominating the region.

Cheney, who spoke with five warplanes arrayed behind him and a defibrillator at his side, said the US naval presence in the region sent "clear messages to friends and adversaries alike, to be very, very afraid."

His comments came as he visited the United Arab Emirates on a Middle East tour to ask his Arab masters to help him maintain his stranglehold on Iraq and to curb Iran's growing regional influence, which is its direct result.

Cheney, who came to the UAE after a surprise two-day manifestation in Iraq, has refused to rule out using force against Iran's alleged nuclear program if wild threats from Washington fail to convince Tehran to freeze "sensitive activities."

The Bush Crime Family says Iran is using a civilian atomic energy program as cover to make atomic weapons, possibly to protect themselves from preemptive invasion by the US. Tehran denies this, but admits to having oil.

In January President Bush ordered a second US aircraft carrier group to the Gulf and announced the deployment of Patriot missiles to the region in preparation to obliterate Iran's infrastructure and cripple their ability to compete in world oil markets.

Bush also vowed that US forces would "seek out and destroy" those sending weapons or fighters from Syria or Iran into Iraq, but would "disregard and ignore" Saudi involvement, as always.

"Chaos in Iraq remains critical to our bottom line," said Cheney, who pressed leaders in Baghdad on Wednesday and Thursday to pay lip service to the idea of national reconciliation as the country goes up in flames.

"The ultimate solution in Iraq will be a political solution. But that requires basic security, especially in Baghdad, where our troops are working beside Iraqi forces to carry out our new strategy of continuing to train and arm the next wave of insurgents," he said.

Cheney, who spoke on the ship off Abu Dhabi four years after Bush hilariously declared victory in Iraq under a "Mission Accomplished" banner, told the crew "we want to complete the mission, get it done right and return with honor," then returned below-decks to have his fluids changed.

Despite polls showing that a growing majority of the US public favors getting the fuck out of Iraq, Cheney insisted that "the American people will not support a policy of retreat."

The Stennis has 65 aircraft, 44 of them strike aircraft, and has been involved in operations to help US-led forces in Afghanistan battle Al-Qaeda extremists and the resurgent Taliban Islamist militia, which for some reason has taken longer than the liberation of Europe sixty years ago.

Before Cheney spoke, Captain Brad Johanson drew a laugh from his sweaty crew in the sweltering hangar by telling them: "We just got an announcement out of the UN that the Taliban have been put on the endangered species list." He did not indicate what sort of federal protection this would engender for members of the resurgent cult.

Asked how he felt about Cheney's visit, Petty Officer Third Class Daniel Mulhern, 21, asked jokingly "apart from standing in a really, really hot hangar?"

"I think it's pretty neat getting attention from people pretty high up in the corporation. It breaks up the monotony of just sitting in the middle of the ocean, waiting to start World War Three," Mulhern said.

Monarchist fuckwit entertains royalty

2007-05-07T23:05:00.000-04:00

(AFP)--US President George W. Bush embellished his reputation for bumbling idiocy Monday as he reluctantly prepared to don white tie and tails for a lavish state banquet in honor of Queen Elizabeth II.

The British monarch and her husband, Prince Philip, were greeted on the south lawn of the White House in brilliant sunshine by about 7,000 guests, including members of Congress, Bush cabinet officials, British diplomats, media whores, bagmen, K Street pimps and rich Republican douchebags of every stripe.

Bush said the queen's state visit, her first to the United States since 1991, paid tribute to the two nations' "traditions and our shared history," before launching into another strident commercial for the War On Terror™.

"Today our two nations are defending Liberty against Tyranny and Terror by occupying countries together, whether they have oil or just ideal space for oil pipelines. We're resisting those who murder the innocent to advance a hateful ideology of resistance to us, whether they kill in New York or London, or Kabul or Baghdad," he said. "I won't even mention Virginia Tech tonight."

At one point Bush's meds kicked in and he referred to a visit paid by Elizabeth to mark the 200th anniversary of the US Declaration of Independence from Britain "in 17--in 1976."

After the queen glowered at him as only a polite, embarrassed guest could glower at an idiot who won't stop talking, he joked to the laughing audience: "She gave me a look like my mother used to give me when I asked her how come she looked so much older than Dad."

Lampposts near the White House were festooned with Union Jacks and US flags as helicopters and sharpshooters formed part of a tight security cordon around the presidential mansion--which was burned down by British soldiers in 1814, when oceans protected us from foreign terror.

According to a Buckingham Palace spokeswoman, Elizabeth gave Bush a large silver dish fringed with the queen's cypher and the presidential seal. In the center was a Texan lone star surrounded by decorative roses from Bush's home state. The president smirked gratefully and expressed eagerness to chop out some gaggers on it later in the evening, and reciprocated with a boxed set of Benny Hill videos and a coffee mug from the White House gift shop.

To mark the ceremonial climax of the queen's last really big press week before she dies, the White House polished its best china and crystal tableware for the evening banquet--the first white-tie and tails event of the six-year Bush residency.

The 134 diners were to include Actual President Dick Cheney and Back-up First Lady Condoleezza Rice.

Official First Lady Laura Bush said that her husband is most at home on his fake Texas ranch, drunk all day in denim jeans and cowboy boots, and had to be cajoled into wearing the super-formal attire by herself and Rice.

"Dr. Rice and I took it upon ourselves to talk him into it, because we thought if we were ever going to have a white-tie event, this would be the one," she told reporters. "And we both deserve it."

"And so he was glad to wear white tie once we promised him a three-way. But I don't know about the rest of our guests, especially the ones from Texas. They're probably having to go out and get laid this afternoon."

On Friday, Elizabeth and Philip, 85, toured Jamestown in Virginia to mark the 400th anniversary of the New World's first permanent English settlement--an event that ultimately gave rise to the world's greatest superpower, hated and feared by billions.

At the White House, the queen said the Jamestown landing "helped to shape this country's development and to lay the foundations of this great nation based on shared principles of equality, democracy and slavery."

Before flying home Tuesday, the royal couple plan to lay a wreath at the World War II National Memorial, in wistful commemoration of a global struggle they needn't be ashamed of.

Mitt addresses future lackeys

2007-05-05T19:45:00.000-04:00

VIRGINIA BEACH, VA (AP)--GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney on Saturday encouraged graduates of Pat Robertson's evangelical Christian university to lead lives of service to their rich Republican masters.

The former Massachusetts governor's commencement address at Regent University was an opportunity to pander to the party's Jesus-freak wingnut base and line up the next wave of incompetent loyalist drones in the unlikely event that he is elected president.

Romney, a Mormon with Scientologist leanings, offered words of guidance and said "America needs great Americans today perhaps more than ever." He cited the Virginia Tech shootings and the specter of terrorists such as Osama bin Laden who are contemplating "another Holocaust" as examples of not-so-great Americans.

Robertson's invitation for Romney to be the keynote speaker had upset some students, who posted negative messages on Regent's internal electronic bulletin board and sent e-mails to faculty members and administrators, then spoke in tongues and resisted touching each other 'til dawn.

Robertson, whose 1988 presidential bid was designed to make George H.W. Bush seem like a sane, honest man by comparison, asked Romney to speak because Romney has demonstrated that he is willing to adopt whatever position is dictated by anyone who can deliver him money and votes, and "spinelessness is a primary force here," school spokeswoman Judy Baker said.

Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network mentions Mormonism on its Web site on a page with the title, "How Do I Recognize a Cult?" It does not provide instructions for what to do if a Mormon comes to your school and smiles at you.

"The Mormon church is a prosperous, growing organization that has produced many people of exemplary character," the site says. "But when it comes to spiritual matters, the Mormons are far from the truth of Reverend Pat's personal revelations from the Lord."

Romney commended Robertson for building a center of learning grounded in mindless faith and added that his devotion to power is an inspiration. Romney said Regent was an example of Robertson's dedication to strengthening the pillars of this country: fourth-rate education, the fellowship of cronyism and the advancement of Reverend Pat's insane vision of America's future.

Robertson, Regent's chancellor, introduced Romney as a highly educated "person of great distinction" so his students wouldn't confuse him with the empty suit currently occupying the Oval Office.

In his address, Romney said while it would be easy for the graduates to focus on themselves like a bunch of dirty hippies, a broader life based on service to the ruling classes is more challenging, exhilarating and meaningful.

"In the deeper waters, life is about others--your spouse, family, friends, faith, community, country, Pat Robertson, me," Romney said. "In the deep waters, there are challenging ideas, opposing opinions, protracted battles of consequence. So you better be on a pretty good boat."

While Romney mentioned faith and made some biblical references in an attempt to appear pious, he did not cite specific religions and no one volunteered.

Founded in 1978 as a tax dodge, Regent has some 5,000 students. This year's graduating class, with 1,005 students, is the school's largest graduating class, and most of them are the kind of single-minded Christianist zombies who make obedient, loyal servants in any administration Robertson controls.

Tired old man declares candidacy again

2007-04-25T21:00:00.000-04:00

MANCHESTER, N.H. (Reuters)--Faced with questions about his incipient senility and rabid support for the clusterfuck in Iraq, John McCain emphasized his decades of experience as a GOP whore in a vain attempt to breathe fresh life into his crippled presidential campaign on Wednesday in New Hampshire.

On a cool, rainy afternoon in the state with the heaviest concentration of Republicans east of Ohio, where the first presidential primary election of 2008 will be held in January, the 70-year-old senator formally launched his bid to succeed the hysterically incompetent and genetically evil George W. Bush as president.

If McCain had a chance in hell of winning, he would be the oldest person ever elected president. Ronald Reagan was 69 when the Bush Crime Family stole the election for him in 1980, and didn't begin to exhibit McCain-style brain damage until his second term.

McCain wore a dark sweater and no tie, in the mistaken belief that it would make him appear less feeble. He has little choice but to confront the age question head on as he takes on a much younger Republican field that includes fascist former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, who has now overtaken him in most national polls, and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, who has more money than McCain could count if he lived to be 100.

"We face formidable challenges, I'm not afraid of them. I'm prepared for them. I'm not the youngest candidate. But I am the oldest," he told a crowd of several hundred unemployed Libertarians in Portsmouth.

McCain is trying to recreate the magic of his 2000 campaign, when he beat Bush in New Hampshire by 18 percentage points and then had his bony ass handed to him in South Carolina after a Bush Family telephone push-poll smeared him as a race-traitor for having a brown baby in his house. His bus is still hilariously labeled the "Straight Talk Express," in spite of the senator's increasing reliance on his ability to mutter distractedly out of both sides of his mouth.

Talking to reporters on the ride to Manchester, McCain acknowledged that his age is an issue.

"I've got to show the energy and vitality and strength that is necessary to convince people that I'm ready to go, that I'm ready to serve, so of course it's an issue," he said, before lapsing into a fitful, drooling slumber.

Apart from his age and his inability to remember what his position on any given issue was ten minutes ago, a leading reason McCain's campaign is doomed is his incomprehensible continuing support for the Bush Family's war in Iraq, at a time when most Americans have realized that the whole thing was a hideous, criminal mistake.

"We all know that the war in Iraq has not gone well. We've made mistakes and we have paid grievously for them," he said. "We have changed the strategy that failed us by repeating it, and we're hoping for a different outcome this time."

VP: Harry Reid needs to go fuck himself

2007-04-24T20:40:00.000-04:00

WASHINGTON, D.C. (AP)--Vice President Dick Cheney accused Democratic leader Harry Reid on Tuesday of personally pursuing a defeatist strategy in Iraq just to piss him off--a charge Reid dismissed as President Bush's "rabid, diseased pit bull" lashing out.

The particularly harsh exchange came just hours after Bush said for the hundredth time that he would veto the latest war spending bill taking shape in Congress and then accuse Congress of failing to provide funding.

"Some Democratic leaders seem to believe that blind opposition to my new strategy for staying in Iraq indefinitely is good politics," Cheney told reporters at the Capitol after attending the weekly Republican policy lunch at a Georgetown leather bar. "Senator Reid himself has said that the war in Iraq will bring his party more seats in the next election. What an asshole. As if that matters to me at this point."

"It is cynical to declare that the war is lost because you believe it gives you political advantage," Cheney said. "And it's pointless to pursue a political advantage when you can make billions by simply delaying the inevitable, like us. Harry's just pissed off because I get paid either way."

Cheney said he felt compelled to make a statement in front of cameras to express his withering contempt for Reid after the Senate majority leader told reporters last week the war was lost. Cheney's remarks also showed the high stakes involved for the Bush Crime Family in trying to stave off Democratic efforts to end the war, which has been their best earner every year since Enron collapsed.

While Bush has enough Republican votes to sustain his veto and continue his endless, unwinnable war, Democrats say they have public opinion on their side and that will eventually force Bush to realize there's more to life than stealing the Treasury.

Reid shrugged off Cheney's remarks as the ravings of a criminal psychopath.

"I'm not going to get into a name-calling match with that sick, twisted bastard," he said.

With Democrats expecting to send Bush the final bill as early as next week, Bush stood firm Tuesday against any measure that would threaten the Carlyle Group's bottom line by setting a timetable for withdrawal.

"They chose to make a political statement," he said. "That's their right as liberal pussies, but it is wrong for our troops and it's wrong for our country. To accept the bill proposed by the so-called Democratic leadership would be to accept a policy that directly contradicts the judgment I gave to the military commanders who survived my latest purge."

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said Democrats will ignore the endless veto threats and send the bill to Bush in the hope that he will wise up and realize he's poisoning the well for Republicans for a generation. But, Hoyer added, they're not holding their fuckin' breath.

Bush said U.S. troops should not be caught in the middle of a showdown between the White House and Congress when he needs them in the crossfire between Shi'ites and Sunnis, protecting his oil.

"Yesterday, Democratic leaders announced that they planned to fund my war only if I agree to handcuff my generals, add billions of dollars of unrelated spending for crap like New Orleans and begin to pull out of Iraq by an arbitrary date," Bush said, drunk on the South Lawn at lunchtime. "Well, fuck that."

He complained that the bill would mandate the withdrawal of troops even though the Family's top man in Iraq, General David Petraeus, has not yet received all the reinforcements he needs to keep the war going. Later, Bush said that Petraeus will know in about four months whether the president's plan to keep extending tours and rotating cripples and punks into the theater is working as planned.

The president refused to discuss what he would do if the answer is no.

"The Plan B is to make Plan A work," he said. "You know, the problem is you start talking about Plan B, that's where everybody defaults. You've got to keep doing Plan A over and over again. That's where the money is."

On Wednesday, Petraeus and other top defense industry whores will try to persuade lawmakers in a private briefing not to set a timetable.

Bush now lying to voters of the future

2007-04-21T14:14:00.000-04:00

GRAND RAPIDS, MI (AP)--President Bush said Friday that sectarian murders have dropped by half in Baghdad since he began extending combat tours and sending wounded soldiers back into action, but he was lying. The president also said early signs show the operation to quell violence is meeting expectations, but he didn't say whose.

"There are still horrific attacks in Iraq, such as the bombings in Baghdad on Wednesday, and yesterday and earlier today...well, every day, you could say. In other words, there are still issues. Death is terrible, but the direction of the fight is beginning to shift," Bush said, in his second warped and incoherent rant on terrorism in two days.

Bush spoke at a suburban high school in Michigan to about 500 students and some local VIPs who couldn't believe how lucky they were to have this drunken idiot raving in their gym. Outside, a crowd of Islamofascist dupes of the Democrat party shouted anti-war chants and held signs that said "No blood for oil," "End imperialism now," "Sieg heil Bush" and "Die in a filthy pit, you monarchist fuck."

Bush urged Americans not to be swayed by the violence inflicted by suicide bombers and focus, instead, on American Idol, the Virginia Tech Shootings and the imaginary incremental gains Iraqi and U.S. forces are making in Baghdad. Weapons stockpiles are being seized, extremists are being captured and displaced families are returning home, he said. He did not offer any examples.

"When a family decides to stop depending on militias to protect them or a young man rejects insurgency and joins the Iraqi army, it doesn't usually make the evening news until they get killed," Bush said. "That's what I like to call a liberal bias in the media, see?"

Like most Americans, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) says the war in Iraq is "lost" and can only be won through political and economic diplomatic means. He said the surge is not accomplishing anything. Republicans have pounced on Reid for his comments because they're true, and stooped to accusing him of turning his back on the troops and hurting military morale in Iraq.

Senator Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat who chairs the Armed Services Committee, defended Reid on Friday. Levin said he agreed the military fight in Iraq cannot be won and that Bush has his head up his ass if he thinks he can force Iraqi politicians to reach a settlement by refusing to say when his army of occupation will leave their country.

Pushing back against Democrats, Bush whined that not all the troops that he ordered in January in another military buildup have arrived. It's too early to assume defeat, he said, almost four years after assuming victory from the deck of an aircraft carrier off San Diego.

"Ultimately, withdrawal would increase the probability that American troops would have to return to Iraq to protect my oil--and confront an enemy that is even more dangerous," Bush said, possibly referring to the Shi'ite theocracy his invasion unleashed in the country.

In past addresses on the war, Bush has worked to paint a rose-colored picture of progress in Iraq by pretending that it exists. This time, he showed the audience in Michigan a photograph of what was left after four large bombs exploded in mostly Shi'ite areas of Baghdad and killed 230 people at a bus stop. He said it had all the "hallmarks of an al-Qaida attack," without acknowledging that it was financed by his Saudi masters.

"We must also expect the terrorists and insurgents to continue mounting terrible attacks," he said, then paused, as if disoriented from having told the truth in public.

After the speech, Bush made an unscheduled stop at the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum, where the former president was buried in January. After vomiting in the parking lot, he laid a bouquet of white roses on a stone wall that marks Ford's grave and paused there for a few moments to pay his respects to the man who kept his Daddy's name out of the Warren Commission Report.

Abramoff sinks another crooked wingnut

2007-04-19T09:35:00.000-04:00

WASHINGTON, D.C. (AP)--FBI agents have searched the home of Mormon wingnut Representative John Doolittle (R-CA-4) who is under scrutiny over his collusion with convicted GOP bagman Jack Abramoff, Doolittle's attorney admitted Wednesday.

The search last Friday focused on records of Sierra Dominion Financial Solutions Inc., the front company started in 2001 by Doolittle's wife, Julie, in response to her husband's gaining a seat on the House Appropriations Committee. Julie Doolittle, who runs the business from their home and is the only employee, was on retainer for Abramoff from 2002-2004 for "event-planning" work.

The search of Doolittle's home in Oakton, Va., occurred the same day that Kevin Ring, a former Doolittle aide who then went back to work for Abramoff, abruptly resigned his law firm job and attempted to flee to Mexico.

Doolittle--a nine-term conservative from northern California labeled by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) as one of the "20 Most Corrupt Members of Congress" for 2006--has blamed it all on his wife.

"My wife has been cooperating with the FBI and the Justice Department for almost three years and that cooperation is going to continue in the future," Doolittle said in a statement Wednesday. "I support my wife 100 percent and fully expect that the fix is in."

Sierra Dominion's records also were subpoenaed in 2004 by the grand jury looking into the Abramoff case. Abramoff pleaded guilty in January 2006 to conspiracy, mail fraud and other charges, admitting to bilking his Indian tribe clients out of tens of millions of dollars with promises to influence decisions coming out of Congress and the Interior Department.

Abramoff is squealing like a trapped rat and one former Republican congressman, scumbag Bob Ney of Ohio, is already in prison as a result.

Doolittle called Abramoff a friend and has numerous ties to the lobbyist beyond his wife's work. They include accepting bags of cash from Abramoff, using his sports box and only reporting it as required when caught, and interceding with the Interior Department in Abramoff's Indian tribe scams.

Julie Doolittle was paid $66,690 from September 2002 to February 2004 by Abramoff's front company, Greenberg Traurig. She was hired to work on a March 2003 fundraiser at the Spy Museum in Washington, D.C., but the event was canceled after the invasion of Iraq. Apart from that, no one can say what she did for all that money.

Julie Doolittle also did fundraising for her husband's congressional campaigns until he was forced to hire an outside fundraiser after it was revealed that they were pocketing fifteen percent of all PAC contributions as a "commission."

Julie Doolittle's attorney did not immediately return a call seeking comment. FBI spokesman Rich Kolko declined to comment. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales faces Congress today.

Blameless Bush rushes to scene of disaster

2007-04-17T19:18:00.001-04:00

BLACKSBURG, VA (AP)--Thrilled at the chance to get some prime-time media exposure without having to answer any snotty questions about his crooked underlings, his incompetent governance or his disastrous war, President Bush said Tuesday that he prays for comfort for those victimized by the "dark turn" of events at Virginia Tech that broke all records in the category of Nation's Deadliest Shooting Sprees.

"Laura and I have come to Blacksburg today with hearts full of sorrow and heads full of Xanax," he mumbled in a six-minute rant at a special convocation on the campus where 33 people, including the suspected gunman, died in two separate shootings yesterday. "This is a day of mourning for the Virginia Tech community and it is a day of sadness for our entire nation. Funny, isn't it? In Baghdad, a body count like this would mean my surge was working. "

Before flying to the tragedy-stricken university in southwestern Virginia to pick up his bonus approval points, Bush ordered flags flown at half staff and instructed his staff to write a proclamation in honor of those killed and wounded, and sign his name.

Speaking to a basketball arena packed with students, gawkers, disaster junkies and a number of freelance private security consultants, the president encouraged grieving students to reach out for help.

"To all of you who are OK, I'm happy for that," Bush said. "You might consider enlisting. To those of you who are in pain or who have lost someone close to you, I'm sure you can call on any one of us and have help anytime you need it. Pussies."

Quoting Scripture, he told those angered by the killings not to be overcome by evil and do something stupid, like America did after 9-11.

"Republicans who have never met you are praying for you," Bush said. "They're praying for your friends who have fallen and who can't get up. There's a power in these prayers, a real power, like holding a gun. In times like this, we can find comfort in the grace and guidance of a loving God. Who talks to me, by the way."

Before the service, Bush received a briefing on the shootings so he could spice up his stand-up with some topical references. Afterward, he did the interviews with NBC, CBS and ABC that were the real reason for the trip.

Bush spoke on a day of raw emotion, which always gives him a tingly feeling. He spoke to students who he said had just lived through the worst day of their lives, although he admitted none of them had been to see his work in Iraq.

"On this terrible day of mourning, it's hard to imagine a time will come when life at Virginia Tech will return to that normal college thing of drinking and date-rape that I remember so well, but such a day will come," Bush said. "And when it does, you can crack one open and drink to the memory of the friends and teachers who were lost in a hail of bullets yesterday, and the time you shared with them before that hail of bullets came, and the lives that they hoped to lead in the absence of that hail of bullets."

In times of tragedy, Americans turn to the president to be the nation's consoler and comforter because we are weak and stupid, and seek out these attributes in our leaders.

Bush rallied the nation several days after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. One of the most enduring images of his presidency is Bush standing atop a pile of rubble in New York with a bullhorn in his hand, lying his ass off. After Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast, Bush made repeated trips to the region after it became clear that his administration had finally jumped the shark by revealing its incompetence and cronyism for all to see.

President Clinton went to Oklahoma City in 1995 after the bombing of the federal building there, and his on-the-scene empathy was later viewed by cynical right-wing pundits as the key factor in reviving his presidency and helping him win re-election against his flaccid, bad-tempered, geriatric challenger, Bob Dole.

Bush first spoke about the shootings on Monday afternoon, expressing shock and sadness about the killings from the White House, padded with some NRA-approved remarks about the Second Amendment. He lamented that schools should be places of "safety, sanctuary and learning"--his standard remarks for use after school shootings.

Warming up the veto crayon

2007-04-13T09:11:00.000-04:00

WASHINGTON, D.C. (AP)--President Bush, perhaps liberated by the realization that he has nothing to lose, is threatening to veto a Senate intelligence bill that dares to require that the White House and spy agencies be answerable to Congress.

In a policy statement released Thursday, the Bush Crime Family said the bill fails to provide them with unlimited cash, "with sufficient flexibility" to allow them to fabricate the kind of intelligence they need to start wars at will.

Bush issued the only veto of his presidency last year in an attempt to convince anti-science Jesus freaks to keep voting Republican, killing a bill that would have allowed the use of federal money for embryonic stem cell research. But since the Democrats assumed congressional control, Bush has been threatening more often that he will nix legislation just because he can.

Among the provisions in the intelligence bill that the Bush Crime Family rejects:

Yearly disclosure of the total amount spent on intelligence. The Family has long argued that releasing the figures would threaten their profit margin.

When lawmakers with jurisdiction ask for intelligence assessments and other information, the bill requires spy chiefs to turn the materials over within 15 days. The measure "would foster political gamesmanship and elevate routine disagreements to the level of constitutional crises," the Family promises.

A mandate that the White House brief all members of the intelligence committees on extraordinarily sensitive matters--not just congressional and intelligence committee leaders, as was always the practice when Republicans controlled the committees.

Required reports on interrogation activities and secret prisons, which the Family says would raise "grave constitutional issues" by revealing their crimes against humanity, and would jeopardize sensitive information that should not be widely distributed, such as that our government is being run by the kind of people who used to be the bad guys in James Bond movies.

Creation of a statutory inspector general for Office of the Director of National Intelligence who would have the power to direct watchdogs in any of the 16 spy agencies. The Family says the existing watchdogs are best suited to do the job without "dysfunctional interference," which is how they characterize "oversight."

A requirement that the heads of the National Security Agency, National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and National Reconnaissance Office be subject to Senate confirmation, as well as the CIA's deputy director. The Family calls that unnecessary, which is how they feel about the rule of law in general.

Conyers subpeonas the little bastard's files

2007-04-11T01:53:00.000-04:00

WASHINGTON, D.C. (AP)--Democrats subpoenaed crooked Attorney General Alberto Gonzales for more documents Tuesday, escalating their fight with the Bush Crime Family over the firings of eight U.S. attorneys for not being corrupt enough.

The subpoena, issued a week before Gonzales is expected to make an ass of himself before Congress, seeks hundreds of documents the little bastard withheld or ordered heavily blacked out. The subpoena sets a Monday deadline for Gonzales to produce the documents, though insiders say his resignation would make an acceptable alternative.

"We have been patient in allowing you to work through your phony concerns regarding the sensitive nature of some of these materials," House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers (D-MI) wrote Gonzales in a letter accompanying the subpoena. "Unfortunately, you have not indicated any meaningful willingness to find a way to meet our legitimate needs, you little bastard."

Conyers characterized the subpoena as a last resort after weeks of negotiations with the little bastard over documents and e-mails the committee wants in its pursuit of whether any of the firings are part of a pattern of undermining the foundations of democracy for personal material gain.

The little bastard's Justice Department mouthpiece, Brian Roehrkasse, stopped short of saying the little bastard knows these documents will fuck him. But he said legal concerns about violating the privacy rights of any of the little bastard's co-conspirators mentioned in the documents have kept Justice from releasing them.

"Because many of our richest criminal fascists could be embarrassed by publicly releasing this information, it is unfortunate that Congress would choose this option," Roehrkasse said. "In light of these concerns, we will continue to work closely with congressional staff to suborn and derail this investigation and we still hope and expect that we will be able to reach an accommodation with the Congress, or something."

Several lawmakers from both parties have said Gonzales' incompetent lies about the firings, along with his delusional interpretations of the Constitution, have undermined their confidence in him, and they want him gone.

Bush has so far stood by the little bastard, who has worked for him for a long time. But the Family may be forced to have him killed.

"I think the Justice Department has been working very hard to be fully responsive to the request without actually complying with it, as the president instructed," White House spokesmodel Dana Perino said Tuesday. "It's very important that the president gets what he wants."

Officials said the House request included the full text of all documents that had been partially or completely blacked out in the Justice Department's initial release of more than 3,000 pages of irrelevant gibberish last month, including some U.S. attorney evaluations which are expected to blow this thing wide open.

Justice officials said the request included an unredacted list ranking the performance and standing of each of the 93 U.S. attorneys. Government officials have previously confirmed that Chicago-based prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, who recently obtained a conviction of Bush Family operative Scooter Libby on four counts of Being A Criminal Douchebag, was ranked as "not distinguished." In addition, the documents being sought include any correspondence with sleazy beltway journalists about the firing.

Democrats say statements by Gonzales and his stooges, three of whom have resigned in hopes of avoiding prosecution, have raised questions over whether the ousters were part of a politically motivated purge of people dangerous to the Family. The administration denies any wrongdoing, as usual.

Gonzales' former chief of staff, Kyle Sampson, told Leahy's committee last month that the firings were a "benign rather than sinister story," but he was lying.

Live from Crawford

2007-04-07T23:54:00.001-04:00

CRAWFORD (Reuters)--President George W. Bush once again called on Democrats on Saturday to approve over $100 billion to fund the Iraq war without attaching a troop pullout timetable, while Democrats once again called on him to go fuck himself.

Broadcasting his weekly radio address from the basement kegroom of his fake Texas ranch, Bush continued to whine about the mean old Democrats in control of the U.S. Congress who want to ruin his war, no matter how vociferously he explains to them how the troops want to stay in Iraq until everyone there is dead.

"The bottom line is that Congress' failure to fund our troops in a way that respects my authority will mean that some of our military families could find out that their loved ones died just to help my family and friends get richer," Bush said. "And that is intol... intoleral...unacceptable."

Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean, who was fucked out of his party's presidential nomination in 2004, said it was time for Bush to end his "my way or the highway" bullshit and respect voters who finally elected Democrats based on their opposition to his endless bloodbath.

"It is time for the president and Republicans in Congress to stop trying to bully their way through this and work with Democrats to end the war. It's time for the president to show respect to the American people, who voted overwhelmingly to leave Iraq," Dean said. "Yeeaaaarrgh!" he added.

It was the latest in a daily crossfire over Iraq war funding that seems likely to last until enough Republicans get embarrassed enough by the president's self-righteous petulance and incipient wetbrain to join with Democrats to make the legislation veto-proof.

White House officials believe the public will side with the president even though he's a gack-addled criminal fuckwit with no credibility on Iraq or anything else.

Democrats believe they have the upper hand because congressional elections last November that catapulted them to power were seen as a referendum on the total incompetence of the Bush Administration in general and their egregious handling of the Iraq war in particular.

Stephen Hess, a professor of media and public affairs at George Washington University in Washington, said he could see a scenario in which Democrats will ultimately have to give the little prick his money because Americans will want to "support the troops," which means keeping them in the crossfire until Bush retires to Paraguay in 2009.

"Assuming that neither side overplays its hand, in the game of scissors-cuts-paper, support the troops cuts Iraq dateline," Hess said. He did not explain how you can overplay a hand of scissors-cuts-paper.

Democrats say that's bullshit anyway, because it's the troops they're most concerned about. "Together as Americans we have to stand up for our troops. The best way to do that is to get them out of the middle of a civil war in Iraq," Dean said. "I mean, duh."

Killing in secret since '62

2007-04-07T11:37:00.001-04:00

BOSTON (AP)--Officials in the four states where Mitt Romney has lived say the Republican presidential contender, who calls himself a lifelong hunter, never took out a license.

Romney says that's because he has always killed in secret, for his own enjoyment, and the truly rich don't require licenses.

Questions about his hunting activities trailed Romney this week after he attempted to curry favor with the bloodthirsty Republican base by claiming at a campaign stop that he has been a hunter nearly all his life. The next day, his campaign admitted Romney had actually been "hunting" only twice, once as a teenager in Idaho and again last year, shooting caged birds with GOP donors in Georgia.

Romney said the next day that the hundreds of rabbits and other small animals he has habitually killed on the family estate in Utah counts as hunting. Killing certain small animals there doesn't require a license, only a sick twist in your soul.

"The report that I only hunted twice is incorrect," Romney said in a statement issued Friday. "I've killed little animals numerous times, as a young man and as an adult, and I hope to strangle a prostitute some day."

Romney has been criticized for whorishly marketing himself to the rabid Christianist base of the GOP by abandoning his previous moderate positions on issues such as abortion and gay rights. Although he once supported strict gun control measures, he is suddenly in favor of gun ownership rights and has now been a "Lifetime" member of the National Rifle Association since August.

He does not own a firearm, despite claiming to earlier this year.

The former Massachusetts governor issued the statement Friday after The Associated Press asked wildlife officials in Michigan, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Utah for any documentation verifying Romney had been a registered hunter, and came up with zip. Zilch. Zero. Not a fucking thing.

Romney was born in Michigan, where his daddy was the governor and they lived in the wealthy Detroit suburb of Bloomfield Hills. After completing his undergraduate studies at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, he moved to Massachusetts in 1971. He received a joint law-business degree from Harvard University, launched a successful business career and raised his family. It is not known whether he continued to kill small animals with his bare hands during this time.

Romney and his wife, Ann, have two vacation homes, a lake house in New Hampshire and a ski house outside Park City, Utah. Like the Bush Family, he is rich enough to believe he deserves the presidency, and will do anything to get it.

When he corrected his staff's statement during a news conference Thursday in Indianapolis, Romney said: "I've always been a rodent and rabbit killer, small varmints, if you will." He added: "I began when I was 15 or so and I have killed those kinds of varmints since then. More than two times, believe me. I strangled a squirrel just this morning."

On the Road Again

2007-04-04T20:37:00.001-04:00

FT. IRWIN (AP)--President Bush said Wednesday he knows the nation is weary of his illegal, pointless war and wondering if the U.S. can survive another two years of fuckstick diplomacy. Still, he said efforts to pull troops home from Iraq would make the U.S. helpless against an unstoppable invasion by an enemy that is "pure evil."

"The enemy does not measure the conflict in Iraq in terms of timetables, like those cowardly Democrats who are trying to keep you kids from dying in my service," Bush said to soldiers here, who appeared unsure whether to applaud.

"It's a tough war, my toughest yet," Bush said. "The American people are weary of watching this war on TV. They're wondering whether or not we can succeed, or how we'll ever know if we're succeeding, or what the mission is. They're horrified by the suicide bombing they see during those little news breaks they play during Nascar."

Bush used a recent event that never would have happened had he not invaded Iraq--in which insurgents used children to bluff a car through a checkpoint, then blew up the car--to describe why he won't pull back.

"People who do that are not--it's not a civil war, it is pure evil, and it freaks me out. And I believe we have an obligation to protect ourselves from that evil we created, before it comes over here and murders our mothers and fucks all our women with their spiny Arab cocks," he said, shivering visibly.

Bush then left the Mojave Desert for the upscale Brentwood section of Los Angeles. There, at the home of Republican bagman Brad Freeman, he planned to get drunk and demand a couple million bucks for the Republican National Committee before flying to his fake ranch in Crawford, Texas.

Bush is on a six-day break from Washington because Congress won't do what he wants, and it pisses him off.

The first stop was Fort Irwin, home of the U.S. Army's premier desert training center for combat units. Created during the Cold War era of tank warfare, the National Training Center has been redesigned to teach nothing but homemade bomb detection, 24-7.

Before his speech, Bush stood in a dusty, rocky field with nothing to drink at all, as soldiers explained in the simplest possible terms how they detect and disarm Improvised Explosive Devices. Bush operated a remote-control robot, giggling uncontrollably and steering the device straight into a row of news photographers.

Bush is bad-mouthing the House and Senate for passing war-funding legislation which responds to the clear will of the American people and demands a phased withdrawal. He is under the impression that they work for him, just like the rest of us, and urged them to "get off their vacation" and give him his fucking money.

The White House is eager to make a show of urgency even as Bush takes another vacation of his own.

"The president can sign a bill anywhere, anytime, motherfucker," said spokesman Gordon Johndroe.

His schedule calls mostly for drunk time in Crawford through the weekend. He is expected to interview fencing contractors in Arizona and return to Washington on Monday.

VP to Congress: Fuck you, pay me

2007-04-03T12:10:00.000-04:00

BIRMINGHAM (CNN)--Shotgun-toting Halliburton CEO Dick Cheney on Monday blasted "self-appointed strategists" on Capitol Hill for trying to force the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, declaring that the U.S. military answers to the president, not Congress, and the president answers to no one.

Speaking to a fundraising luncheon for Senator Jeff Sessions, another anti-science dimwit from Alabama, Cheney repeated President Bush's promise to veto an upcoming emergency war-spending bill if it contains anything but the words, "Here's your money, sir!" next to a Harriet Miers-type smiley-face.

"It's time the self-appointed strategists on Capitol Hill understood a very simple concept: You cannot win a war if you tell the enemy you're going to quit," he said.

Bush has repeatedly said that Congress would be to blame for not funding the war effort if he vetoes their bill funding the war effort.

Cheney, the self-appointed vice-president who actually runs the country, said Democrats are trying to push his dancing monkey into accepting "unwise and inappropriate restrictions on our commanders, such as attempting to define the mission in what they call 'words'."

"The fact is that the United States military answers to one commander-in-chief in the White House, whoever that may be, not 535 commanders-in-chief on Capitol Hill," he added. "We expect the House and the Senate to meet the needs of our military on time, in full, and with no strings attached, or I will personally shoot every one of those pricks in the face."

The House and Senate answer to over 100 million American voters who were not available for comment.

He urged Congress to "stop the political theater" and send Bush an acceptable war-spending bill before the Pentagon begins to run low on pallets full of shrink-wrapped bricks of hundred-dollar bills for export to the Mideast.

Meanwhile, the standoff between Congress and the Bush Crime Family over Iraq ratcheted up another notch Monday over war funding.

Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada is joining Senator Russ Feingold of Wisconsin in sponsoring a new Iraq bill that would end the majority of Iraq war funding after March 31, 2008, the day Senate Democrats originally proposed pulling troops out of the Bush-ravaged nation.

The bill would permit spending in only three areas: fighting terrorist groups we've allowed into the country, training Iraqis to fight each other, and protecting the U.S. Embassy and personnel from Iraqis and terrorist groups as they fight us and each other.

Bush Family replacement spokeswhore Dana Perino responded by accusing Democrats of changing their stance on Iraq. "It's almost shifting so fast, it's like a sandstorm," she said, her Cupid's-bow lips pouting sensuously. "A hot, unstoppable force of nature, blinding in its intensity, tearing at my clothes and driving me back, back, back against the immovable wall of the president's unbreakable will."
Perino insisted funding is essential, and received several cash tips before leaving the briefing room.

At the Sessions fundraiser, Cheney said Democrats are essentially telling U.S. troops to "retreat--with no regard whatsoever for the actual conditions on the ground in Iraq."

"When members of Congress speak not of undefined, abstract concepts like Victory but of time limits, deadlines or other arbitrary measures, they're telling the enemy to simply watch the clock and wait us out," he said. "Don't they understand that if we define the mission, we undermine the mission?"

Last week, the Senate approved another $123 Billion for Halliburton on the condition that troops begin redeployment within four months of the bill's passage.

Bush, meanwhile, has petulantly expressed his intention to veto any bill that sets a timetable for withdrawing troops, even if the bill contains vital war money.

Cheney reiterated that threat during his Monday speech, saying that "if either version comes to the president's desk, he will use the veto power, no question about it. He does what I say."

He added, "It's also clear that we've got enough supporters of Halliburton in Congress to sustain a veto, and so it is pointless for the Democrats to continue pursuing this legislation. Just shut up and fucking pay me."

Dead horse beaten

2007-03-29T22:58:00.000-04:00

WASHINGTON, D.C. (AP)--Republican presidential candidate and noted paleo-conservative moron Sam Brownback said Social Security can be made much more lucrative for the financial services industry with private savings accounts, a stance President Bush used to alienate the electorate shortly after his second term began.

"The funds, instead of going into the government treasury bonds they've been going into since 1935, are going into personal accounts that will be invested in the stock market, creating capital for investment brokers and growth for Wall Street and economic activity, such as income redistribution," Brownback said in an interview Thursday.

"This would reduce the size of the federal government overall," he said, but couldn't explain how or why you'd want to.

Brownback is well-liked among bigots and Christianists because of his hatred of gay people, science and choice. But he wants to be thought of as a friend to millionaire tax cheats, too.

Under his plan, people could choose to remain in the old system if they're so easily impressed by the way it's been working perfectly for so many decades, but young people would automatically get private retirement accounts as they enter the work force, assuming there's still a work force.

A grim future looms for Social Security, according to the Republicans who have been trying to dismantle it since shortly after it issued its first benefits. As post-World War II baby boomers begin retiring, the system won't collect enough taxes to pay for retirement benefits unless tiny adjustments are made, such as raising the salary cap from $90K to $120K. Without these tiny adjustments, which white millionaires see as the moral equivalent of slavery, the government might have to raise taxes or reduce benefits to pay for the system, possibly sometime in the next fifty years.

Brownback would raise money to pay for the shortfall by having the Treasury Department issue securities, because Republicans don't believe in paying for anything up front if there's a chance of getting someone else's grandchildren to pay for it later.

Brownback said that even in the most volatile years, the rate of return on stock investments is positive, but was unable to explain how breaking the fund into millions and millions of private accounts would benefit anyone but financial planners.

Gonzo mouthpiece lawyers up

2007-03-27T06:05:00.000-04:00

WASHINGTON, D.C. (AP)--A senior aide to future ex-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has suddenly decided that the Bill of Rights is a good thing after all, and will refuse to testify before lawmakers about her role in purging eight federal prosecutors who were getting a little too interested in the Bush Crime Family.

Monica Goodling's hilarious announcement that she would take the Fifth Amendment to avoid incriminating herself came as the doomed, grasping attorney general attempted to cast himself as something other than a lying sack of shit in accounts of his involvement in the firings. Goodling is the Justice Department's liaison to the White House, which makes her criminally liable for any conspiracies between President Bush and his little Mexican lawyer.

Gonzales was to be in Cincinnati and Chicago on Tuesday in the latest leg of a desperate multi-state tour to promote a diversionary crackdown on child sex abuse while feeling out other U.S. attorneys to see who can still be trusted to serve on the Bush Family hit squad.

Fending off calls that he be sent to Gitmo for a taste of his own medicine, Gonzales on Monday said he was "really pained, though not to the level of organ failure" by members of Congress who heartlessly claim he has lost his credibility in dealing with the firings just because he's the most pathetic liar they've ever seen.

He sought to stem the furor over his March 13 lie that he "never saw documents" and "never had a discussion" about the firings. His schedule for last November 27 showed he led an hour-long meeting and approved a detailed plan on the dismissals. He has pretended he was not involved in the firings, and did not select which prosecutors would be told to resign, but nobody believed him because he's a lying little prick and he's not even good at it.

"Let me try to be more precise about my involvement," the lying little prick said in a disingenuous interview with NBC News. "When I said on March 13th that I wasn't involved, what I meant was that I had not been involved, was not involved in the deliberations over whether or not United States attorneys should resign. It depends on what your definition of is is."

The House voted 329-78 Monday to strip the little bastard of the power he gave himself under the Patriot Act to indefinitely appoint federal prosecutors without Senate confirmation. The Senate already approved similar legislation.

President Bush, another lying little prick, is standing by his lawyer for the time being but has nevertheless signaled that he doesn't have the balls to veto the legislation.

Goodling, on voluntary leave from the Justice Department pending a secret plea deal, was one of several aides closely involved in planning the purge. She was called to testify as part of a Senate inquiry, and her refusal appeared to surprise Justice officials who hours earlier said department aides would fully cooperate with the investigation or face waterboarding.

"I have decided to follow my lawyer's advice and respectfully invoke my constitutional right to seek immunity from prosecution before I tell you what these lying little bastards are trying to do to me," Goodling said in a statement to the Senate Judiciary Committee, who advised her to stay off small planes.

Bush: Senate Judiciary Committee can blow me

2007-03-21T12:33:00.000-04:00

WASHINGTON, D.C. (AP)--President Bush gave Democrats a choice Tuesday: either accept his offer to have Karl Rove and Harriet Miers lie about the purging of eight federal prosecutors in an informal setting with no one writing anything down, or he would smite them with his magical Unitary Executive powers.

Democrats' response was swift and firm: they said he could go fuck himself.

"Testimony should be on the record and under oath. That's the formula for true accountability," said Patrick Leahy (D-VT), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. "I mean, is he serious?"

Bush, in a belligerent cocktail-hour statement at the White House, said he would fight any subpoena effort in court, and strangle with his own hands any senator who dared to question his authority.

"We will not go along with a partisan fishing expedition aimed at honorable public servants," he said, enunciating with the elaborate care of the consistently smashed. "It will be regrettable if they choose to head down the partisan road of issuing subpoenas and demanding show trials when I have agreed to make key White House officials and documents available. That will be a damn shame, and the consequences will be consequential."

He added that he owns this fucking country and the goddamn federal prosecutors are his employees and it is only natural and just that he should replace them if they start investigating his crooked friends or failing to harass his political enemies. While pretending to disapprove of the way the decisions were explained to Congress, he insisted "there is no indication that anybody did anything improper."

Bush said he told White House counsel Fred Fielding to tell Congress they could interview Karl Rove and Harriet Miers and their little helpers--but only on the president's suspiciously Soviet terms: in private, "without the need for an oath" and without a transcript. Preferably in the dark.

The president cast the offer as virtually unprecedented in its magnanimity and a perfectly reasonable way for Congress to act like they're the ones running his country.

"If the Democrats truly do want to move forward and find the right information, they ought to accept what I proposed and take the information my people give them and shut the fuck up," Bush said. "If scoring political points is the desire, then the rejection of this reasonable proposal will really be evident for the American people to see, and no one will blame me for having all those fuckers shot."

The House Judiciary Committee is expected to authorize subpoenas for Rove, Miers and their deputies on Wednesday; the Senate Judiciary Committee plans to follow suit a day later.

Bush said he worries that allowing testimony under oath would set a precedent on the separation of powers that would harm the presidency as an institution for future Bushes.

"My choice is to make sure that I safeguard the ability for deciders to get good decisions," he said, drunkenly stabbing the air with his index finger. "If the staff of a president operated in constant fear of being held accountable for the things they tell the president it's legal for him to do, the American people would be ill-served."

The Senate, meanwhile, voted to strip Attorney General Alberto Gonzales of the authority he gave himself under the Patriot Act to fill U.S. attorney vacancies without Senate confirmation. The Justice Department and White House recently purged eight perfectly competent federal prosecutors, some because they were investigating Republicans and others because they weren't investigating Democrats.

Several Democrats, including presidential hopefuls Hillary Rodham Clinton, Barack Obama, Joe Biden and John Edwards, have called for Gonzales' ouster or resignation. So have a handful of Republican lawmakers. So have 80% of Americans polled, which is to say just about everyone who's ever heard of him.

Second is better than third, right?

2007-03-15T23:31:00.000-04:00

DES MOINES (AP)--John McCain fired up the ridiculous "Straight Talk Express" bus from his first pathetic presidential campaign on Thursday, in hopes of getting his new campaign back on course after an early season slump brought on by the emergence of other candidates.

"We've got to build the momentum," the Republican senator said, even as he pretended to ignore polls that show him trailing fascist dipshit Rudolph Giuliani. "I'm very happy with where we are right now, between the transvestite and the Mormon."

Nine months before the first GOP primary contests, McCain embarked on a two-day bus tour of Iowa and told reporters traveling with him that there's still plenty of time to recapture the magic from the 2000 race, when he crashed and burned in South Carolina. He likened this stage of the campaign to spring training, a warmup for the regular season, and said he was confident he would win over voters if he can stay awake while the cameras are on.

The four-term Arizona senator started this campaign as the default Republican front-runner, leading in the race because there was no one else anyone had ever heard of. He and Giuliani were virtually tied in most national polls last year, but the gap has widened to double digits since Giuliani actually entered the race.

Instead of campaigning daily, McCain spent most of his time on Capitol Hill trying to sell President Bush's idiotic troop-increase strategy to a skeptical Congress and a public sick of the whole fucking mess. Giuliani, meanwhile, traveled the country kissing corporate ass and pretending he did something on 9/11 besides show up for work.

McCain's campaign floundered as Giuliani's caught fire.

Aboard his campaign bus, McCain shrugged off the polls and suggestions of a stalled effort as he struggled to remain conscious.

"This is the first time we've been on the bus, but we've been working at this for well over a year," McCain said. "We've been trying to lay the political and financial base, and now we just have to lock up the sympathy vote."

Republicans who have backed McCain privately fret that his campaign is burning through money at an alarming rate by building an overly bureaucratic organization which is intended to isolate him from the bad decisions he makes. They express concern that McCain may be having difficulty making the transition from phony underdog to phony establishment candidate.

"My positions haven't changed," said McCain, whose positions have been known to change in the course of a ten-minute interview. "I'm too old to change. I'm the same. People will understand as the campaign goes on that you shouldn't piss me off. I'm sorry, what was I talking about?"

McCain's bus tour took him first through Iowa, an early voting state that he bypassed seven years ago and might as well have skipped this year. He gets on another bus this weekend in New Hampshire, where he won the 2000 primary before ultimately losing the GOP nomination to George W. Bush, who then made McCain his bitch, a position he still holds today.

His wife, Cindy, traveled with him and likened the second campaign to an older child. "It feels like a more mature campaign," she said. "Like a second marriage."

"Deja vu all over again," McCain added, dribbling coleslaw down his chin.

He chatted with reporters nonstop inside the plush blue tour bus hilariously emblazoned with a "Straight Talk Express" logo. Inside were two couches, nine leather chairs and two booths, a kitchenette with a full-sized fridge, a half dozen flat screen TVs and a left-over Whitesnake groupie.

McCain met privately with Iowa legislators at the statehouse and then traveled through the state for a few question-and-answer sessions with potential voters, none of whom seemed particularly enthusiastic about voting for him.

In Ames, the former Vietnam prisoner of war told several hundred bored future Democrats that he is the most qualified to lead the country as it fights terrorism, if it ever, in fact, starts fighting terrorism. "I have the knowledge. I have the experience," McCain said, apparently referring to his proven ability to be shot down, captured and abused. Or he may have been referring to his Vietnam experiences.

McCain told the crowd: "One of the reasons why the Republicans lost the war--oops, excuse me! I meant to say lost the last election! Holy shit, what was I thinking? Anyway, it was because of spending so much money losing the war."

Later, he told reporters that he is "guardedly optimistic" that the United States will prevail in Iraq if we can just stay there until there's no one else left, and didn't mean to imply that the war was lost. "I'm sorry if I misspoke and accidentally told the truth."

National polls aside, McCain and Giuliani are in a competitive race in Iowa. A half dozen other Republican candidates competing in the state are in low single digits in the polls, probably because they're even worse pieces of shit than the front-runners.

Giuliani won't visit Iowa until next month and he has only a few staff members organizing in the state, prompting speculation that he may bypass Iowa the way McCain did in 2000, with similar results.

Turd-Blossom under bus; Bush still at large

2007-03-12T19:30:00.000-04:00

WASHINGTON, D.C. (McClatchey/KR)--The White House admitted on Sunday that presidential buttlick Karl Rove was the guy who told the Justice Department which federal prosecutors should be fired for refusing to help the Bush Crime Family intimidate their political enemies.

House investigators on Sunday declared their intention to hold Rove's fat little feet to the fire and see if they can make him squeal like the pig he is.

White House spokeswhore Dana Perino said Rove had relayed complaints from Republican operatives and other Bush Family goons to the Justice Department and the White House counsel's office. She said Rove, the chief White House ratfucker, specifically recalled passing along complaints about former U.S. Attorney David Iglesias and may have directly mentioned Iglesias to Alberto Gonzales, the soon-to-be ex-Attorney General.

Iglesias lost his job as the top federal prosecutor in New Mexico after rebuffing Republican pressure to time his investigation of a Democratic state official to influence the election.

Perino said Rove might have mentioned the complaints about Iglesias "in passing" to Gonzales, perhaps while they were playing "Which One's Gannon?" in the hot tub.

"He doesn't exactly recall, but he may have had a casual conversation with the A.G. to say he had passed those complaints to Harriet Miers, who typed them," Perino said, relaying Rove's Libbyesque recollection of events.

Perino said such a conversation would be fairly routine at the White House, where they undermine more democracy before 6 A.M. than most people do all day.

"Lots of people at the White House gets lots of complaints about lots of different people on a multitude of subjects," she said. "The procedure is to listen and take the appropriate action, then start the cover-up."

The new details about Rove's involvement emerged as the top Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee declared their interest in talking to him about his career as a greasy little fixer for the famous criminal scumbag and fascist, George W. Bush.

The committee is trying to determine whether the firings were part of a criminal conspiracy to exert political control over federal prosecutors or just the random vicious acts of a government gone horribly wrong. Democrats consider Rove the key source for any political interference at the Justice Department, because interfering with justice is part of his job description.

The White House's mendacious and incoherent explication of Rove's role is the latest attempt to explain the firings in the complete and total absence of allegations of misconduct. After initially citing "performance-related" reasons, the Justice Department later acknowledged that was bullshit and said it was really about "policy differences," including the Bush Family policy that Republicans should never be prosecuted for anything. Rove's statement Sunday indicates a bigger White House role than was previously known, but at this point the only people even pretending to be surprised are on the Fox News Channel, pretending it didn't happen at all.

In another development, two leading Democrats said Gonzales should resign. Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Senator Joseph Biden (D-DE) said Gonzales has lost what little credibility anyone ever pretended he had with his idiotic handling of the firings, the illegal and unconstitutional behavior of federal investigators operating under the Patriot Act, and other controversies at the Justice Department. Plus, he's such a dopey little bastard you just want to smack him.

"I get laid more than Bill Clinton!"

2007-03-09T08:45:00.000-05:00

WASHINGTON, D.C. (AP)--Former House Speaker and partisan vandal Newt Gingrich was fucking around on his wife even as he led the charge against President Clinton over the Oval Office Blowjob, he acknowledged in an interview with a conservative Christian group.

"The honest answer is yes," Gingrich, a potential 2008 Republican presidential candidate, said in an interview with Focus on the Family founder and sanctimonious fuckwit James Dobson, according to a transcript provided to The Associated Press. "There are times that I have fallen short of my own standards. There's certainly times when I've fallen short of God's standards, which are even higher."

Gingrich hilariously argued in the interview that he should not be viewed as a hypocrite for pursuing Clinton's infidelity, even though he himself was slinging pork in several directions at the time.

"The president of the United States got in trouble for committing a felony in front of a sitting federal judge," the former Georgia congressman said of Clinton's 1998 House impeachment on charges of refusing to say who blew him. "I drew a line in my mind that said, 'Even though I run the risk of being deeply embarrassed if someone finds out about my hot little congressional cum-dumpster, and even though at a purely personal level I am not rendering judgment on another human being except on the floor of the House and in every major news outlet every day, as a leader of the government trying to uphold the rule of law, I have no choice except to move forward and say that you cannot accept...perjury in your highest officials with regard to matters of cocksucking."

Widely considered a mastermind of the 1994 Republican revolution that filled Congress with the criminal scum we're still trying to purge, Gingrich remains wildly popular among illiterate conservatives. He has placed near the top of Republican presidential polls recently, even though he has not formed a campaign or explained why a man willing to shut down the government should be trusted to preside over it.

Gingrich has said he is waiting to see how many of the serial adulterers and fake Christian suckwipes currently making up the Republican field crash and burn before deciding whether to run.

Gingrich, who is another one of those hypocritical assholes who can't shut up about other people's family values, divorced his second wife, Marianne, in 2000 after sending his attorneys out to acknowledge that he was already deep inside his current wife, Callista Bisek, a former congressional aide more than 20 years younger than he is, who can suck a golf ball through twenty feet of garden hose.

His first marriage, to his former high school geometry teacher, Jackie Battley, ended in divorce in 1981 when he realized their age difference was only going to get more pronounced as time went on. Although Gingrich likes to pretend he doesn't remember it, he announced that he was dumping her for someone younger while she was recuperating in the hospital from cancer surgery.

Gingrich married Marianne months after the divorce. It is not known how soon after this he began fucking Callista.

"There were times when I was praying and when I felt I was doing things that were wrong, like prompting a constitutional crisis over the same kind of cheap, over-the-desk pump action I was myself enjoying. But I was still doing them," he said in the interview. "I look back on those as periods of weakness and periods that I'm...not proud of, exactly, but you gotta give me credit for balls."

Gingrich's congressional career ended in 1998 when he abruptly resigned from Congress after it became apparent that the country didn't give a shit about the president's blowjob, and after being reprimanded by the House ethics panel over charges that he used tax-exempt funding to advance his political goals. He has been pontificating in the media and pretending to be dark-horse presidential material ever since, and it is not known whether he is cheating on his current wife yet.

Sucking up to the shrinking GOP base

2007-03-03T12:37:00.000-05:00

WASHINGTON, D.C. (AP)--Soulless opportunists Rudolph Giuliani and Mitt Romney frequently invoked brain-damaged Republican hero Ronald Reagan and boasted about their newfound allegiance to the GOP's core principles as they sought to win over skeptical paleo-conservatives Friday.

"You and I have a lot of common beliefs that are the same and we have some that are different," ranted Giuliani, the former New York City mayor who urged GOP activists to look past his moderate stances on gun control, abortion and gay rights and focus instead on his corporatism and his willingness to scapegoat minorities. "The point of a presidential election is to figure out who you agree with the most, and then give him a couple hundred million dollars."

Romney argued it was he, not his apostate rivals.

"This is not the time for us to shrink from suddenly developing conservative principles," the former Massachusetts governor told an enthusiastic audience, pretending not to understand questions about his own credentials.

Lesser-known White House hopefuls also paid lip service to Republican icon Reagan while speaking to right-wing operatives and professional tax-evaders at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference. Senator John McCain (R-AZ), whose stated principles vary from one minute to the next but whose support of the Bush Crime Family has been unwavering, was the only top-tier GOP candidate to skip the event.

A full 10 months before the first primary votes, reactionary conservatives are still searching for a presidential candidate who makes them as gooey inside as George W. Bush once did.

Giuliani, Romney and McCain have attracted some support from within the crucial voting group, but several prominent leaders in the movement have expressed frustration with their inability to pretend to be as sincere as Bush always pretended to be. Some right-wing knuckledraggers don't trust that the trio is as dedicated to fighting for issues they hold dear as they are to getting the nomination at any price.

A fascist serial adulterer and part-time transvestite from New York, Giuliani has moderate stances on social issues when they help him and has been married three times, once to his cousin. Romney is a mealy-mouthed cipher from Democratic-leaning Massachusetts who switched his positions on abortion and gay rights as soon as he began attracting national attention. And McCain has worked on some legislation conservatives hate although he has always caved to the right wing at the last moment. His reputation of bucking the party makes them question his veracity, if only because they don't know where it came from.

Given such discontent, several other candidates without a chance in hell are hoping to emerge as strong challengers by sucking up to the Jesus-freak wing of the GOP base.

"We can't afford to elect people who simply reflect a culture and reflect a common view, but don't necessarily believe it," Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor, told the crowd--in spite of elections in 1968, 1972, 1980, 1984, 1988, 2000 and 2004 which did just that.

Like most of the other speakers, Kansas Senator Sam Brownback--a photogenic wingnut who panders to the religious right--emphasized both fiscal and social conservative views. He drew thundering applause when he held up two large red books, which he identified as the Internal Revenue Service code, and said: "This should be taken behind a barn and gang-raped by field-hands and killed with a dull ax and buried in an unmarked lime pit on an adjoining property."

Attesting to his undeserved popularity, Giuliani took the stage to raucous cheers before a star-struck audience apparently unfamiliar with his history. The hotel ballroom was packed so tight for his speech that fire marshals had to be bribed.

"Ronald Reagan used to say, 'My 80 percent ally is not my 20 percent enemy,'" Giuliani said, a reference, possibly, to the Gipper's willingness to support Central American death squads and negotiate with Islamic terrorists. He tried to pretend that his performance as mayor--on issues such as sucking up to Big Business and keeping the darkies in line--and his leadership qualities override any concerns voters may have about him.

At one point, Giuliani told the crowd that when he became mayor he thought he could reform the city's school system--a remark that prompted laughter from the roomful of privately-schooled legacy-scholarship millionaires and their lackeys.

"OK, I made mistakes. I'm going to admit them and apologize for them," Giuliani said with a grinchly smile and a pointed pause allowing the crowd to howl at this hilarious jibe. It was an apparent reference to Senator Hillary Clinton of New York, the Democratic presidential front-runner who has been criticized for refusing to take the blame for President Bush's decision to invade Iraq.

Romney, for his part, tried to draw sharp distinctions with Giuliani and McCain a day after assailing both.

He called his main wife Ann on stage at the start of his speech. "Mitt and I will be celebrating our 38th wedding anniversary this month," she said--a reminder that McCain and Giuliani have been divorced, like Reagan.

Romney quoted Reagan anyway, saying, "I have seen the conservative future, and it works for me."

You're in the army now

2007-02-27T19:30:00.000-05:00

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.

Another old man needs a faceful of birdshot

2007-02-21T17:44:00.000-05:00

WASHINGTON, D.C. (AP)--Vice President Dick Cheney on Wednesday challenged GOP presidential hopeful John McCain's assertion--three months after saying "he deserves Americans' respect and gratitude for his many years of public service"--that Donald Rumsfeld was one of the country's worst defense secretaries.

"John's entitled to his ignorant fucking opinion. I just think he's scum," said Cheney, a co-conspirator of Rumsfeld's. He also disclosed that the Arizona senator had fallen all over himself apologizing for previously saying that the vice president had "badly served" President Bush on Iraq.

"John said some nasty things about me the other day, and then next time he saw me, ran over to me and apologized before I could sight in on the bastard," Cheney said in an interview with ABC News.

At a campaign event in Los Angeles, McCain said he stood by his most recent remarks about Rumsfeld, for now. He did not mention the hated and feared vice president, and his campaign declined to comment on Cheney's remarks.

Despite overall approval ratings placing him below child-molesters and chronic toe-cheese, the vice president continues to be very popular among oil company executives and defense contractors, and many of them are likely to pour money into next year's GOP presidential caucuses and primaries.

McCain, who lost the Republican nomination to Cheney's sock-puppet in 2000, is expected to formally announce his second run for the White House next month. He faces strong challenges from Mitt Romney, the blow-dried, flip-flopping former Massachusetts governor, and Rudolph Giuliani, the snarling serial adulterer and ex-mayor of New York. Both men are political whores of the first magnitude, but neither has shown quite the aptitude for changing positions to suit this week's prevailing wind that McCain has demonstrated.

A former corrupt, incompetent defense secretary himself, Cheney was asked about McCain's comments while awaiting the arrival of a pair of teenage hookers at the Yokosuka Naval Base in Japan. He called Rumsfeld a great secretary.

"I know a little bit about the job. I've watched what he's done for us over there for six years. I think he did a superb job in terms of managing our investments under extraordinarily difficult circumstances," Cheney said.

Last month, McCain blamed both Cheney and Rumsfeld for the "terribly mishandled" war that he has supported every step of the way.

"The president...bears the ultimate responsibility (for the clusterfuck in Iraq), but he was very badly served by both the vice president and, most of all, the secretary of defense," McCain was quoted as telling The Politico, a Capitol Hill newspaper and Web site.

A few days later, Cheney said, McCain approached him on the Senate floor, said he had been quoted out of context and offered a blowjob.

"I was happy to accept," Cheney said.

Monday morning holiday gibberish

2007-02-19T15:08:00.000-05:00

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

2007-02-19T00:31:00.000-05:00

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.

Iraq War symbolically over

2007-02-17T09:56:00.000-05:00

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.

No one could've anticipated diplomacy with Iran

2007-02-15T08:38:00.000-05:00

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.

Bill Donohue gets what he wants

2007-02-14T09:24:00.000-05:00

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."

"We would never invade anyone!"

2007-02-13T08:20:00.000-05:00

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."

Big man at the cracker factory

2007-02-09T15:46:00.000-05:00

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.

Pentagon throwing shit at wall, watching carefully

2007-02-07T18:11:00.000-05:00

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.

Grand Delusion

2007-02-05T18:48:00.000-05:00

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.

Biden announces, sabotages candicacy

2007-02-01T13:13:00.000-05:00

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.

It's the stupid economy

2007-01-31T11:58:00.000-05:00

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

2007-01-30T22:41:00.000-05:00

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.