Science vs. the Shitheads '07

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?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(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

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.