Here's some money, give it back

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

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

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

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

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

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

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'

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

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

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

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

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"

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

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

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

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

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"

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

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

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."