Big man at the cracker factory

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pentagon throwing shit at wall, watching carefully

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Grand Delusion

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Biden announces, sabotages candicacy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It's the stupid economy

NEW YORK (AP)--President Bush predictably chose Wall Street as the stage to bring his dopey economic message out from the shadow of his insane foreign policies.

In a speech Wednesday in New York City, Bush raved about imaginary optimistic economic trends, part of a strategy this week to momentarily distract Americans from his escalation of the disastrous and illegal Iraq war.

Bush also paid lip-service to corporate responsibility, particularly in the area of executive pay. That's a nod to the vast majority of Americans who have grown disgusted with stories of enormous salaries, disastrous pyramid schemes and other deeply-ingrained habits of Republican-friendly CEOs.

The president grudgingly concedes that bitterness over the unwinnable war in Iraq has overshadowed economic news of the day.

"People are working and wages are up," he lied in an interview Tuesday with ABC News. "But we're in a time of war. And it's--war's unsettling. War's negative. And I understand that's the way you pussies think."

In an unusual approach for the White House, Bush said little about the economy in his State of the Union address last week, preferring to dwell on Baby Einstein and the need to "fix" Social Security. His New York appearance comes a day after his economic speech at a manufacturing plant in Peoria, Illinois, where he shocked listeners by promoting unregulated trade and tax cuts for everyone but the middle class, then attempted to murder the White House Press Corps with a Caterpillar D10 earth-mover.

For a symbolic sign of the resilience of the economy, Karl Rove instructed the president to speak at the venerable Federal Hall on Wall Street.

In the original building on this site, American government took root--George Washington took his oath of office there, never dreaming that his office would one day be held by a dry-drunk monarchist mama's boy whose only talent was walking away from his self-made disasters with his pockets full of other people's money. The current hall, which dates to 1842, is now a museum that helped provide emergency shelter when Saudi suicide spies destroyed the World Trade Center, just a few blocks away--and American government metastasized.

Shortly after that attack on September 11, 2001, Bush went to Federal Hall to assure business leaders that the economy would bounce back and grow as long as people kept lining up to buy cheap Chinese crap and give tax cuts to his richest friends. He returns on Wednesday to take credit for what he insists on calling "the recovery" and to keep pushing his demented fascist agenda.

Bush was instructed to call for changes in enforcement of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which was passed in response to a wave of corporate accounting scandals. The Family has been getting phone calls from big donors who complain that the law, which tightens controls on financial reporting, is imposing unreasonable costs by cutting into everyone's embezzlement income.

Just before Bush's visit, the White House said it would keep funding health programs for sick Ground Zero workers, even though his State of the Union address claimed that "our economy is held back by irresponsible class-actions and frivolous asbestos claims." Severely ill workers planned a rally timed to his visit, but the president isn't scared of a bunch of lungers.

The Bush administration contends it hasn't gotten much credit for a solid economy because of other things they've done or allowed to happen--terrorist attacks, corporate accounting scandals, the loss of nearly three million manufacturing jobs, the launch of an unwinnable war, the suppression of the Bill of Rights, the destruction of New Orleans and the shitty economy.

Bush is also seeking to assure his friends and patrons in the business community of his opposition to tax increases for the rich.

Some conservatives have been grown jittery that Bush may bend on taxes like his notoriously dishonest and untrustworthy father and that son-of-a-bitch Reagan before him. In his ABC interview, Bush was blunt in a warning to Democrats: "I've got a veto that will prevent them from raising taxes. I know it works 'cause I already used it once. I'm the vetoer."