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.