Saturday, October 30, 2004

Briefly Noted - Osama and Goats:

Ya know, unless this is a prelude to a Monday surprise of capturing him, the effect of the Osama tape oughta be to solidify the opposition to Bush. Since we've been wolf-cried to apathy about terror warnings, no one is going to see it as any more or less of a threat than the white noise of distress we've been forced to endure since 2001. Instead, the vision of the amazingly well-looking Osama simply affirms what Kerry's been saying over and over (and, thank Christ, still yesterday) about who the real enemy should have been all along. Conversely, all the Bush zombies will see the long beard and think that only Bush can save them from the evil he hasn't saved them from all along. Remember, though, that the Bush campaign is filled with conscienceless, soulless savages who will exploit anything and rip apart anyone in their way. So look for fun on the Sunday talk shows.



Still and all, politics aside, when Bin Laden said of Bush, "When they most needed him . . . he thought listening to a child discussing her goat and its ramming" was more important than being presidential, who among us couldn't vaguely think, "Good point, but, dude, look at yourself. You look like a guy who's spent a lot of time ramming goats and contemplating their ramming."

Friday, October 29, 2004

At Long Last, the Coffin Is Nailed Shut:

Last night, on CNN, Aaron Brown acted like a journalist. After Jamie McIntyre's report on the St. Paul TV station's embedded reporter's visit to Al-Qaqaa, a report which showed, definitively, that explosives were under IAEA seal well after the "coalition" invasion, Brown went to work. "They (the Bush administration) had maintained up until that moment that this tape emerged and the secretary says this in the radio interview, the stuff was moved before . . . Is that argument now off the table?" Brown pressed a clearly uncomfortable McIntyre, who reacted like he had crossed through some looking glass into a strange world where he's not required to suck Donald Rumsfeld's fetid cock. McIntyre, giddy at a breath of fresh air, unencumbered by the smell of Dick Cheney's ass, answered, "Well, clearly barring something that would be really unexpected, this would clearly indicate that some amount, a pretty substantial amount based on the pictures, of that was there on April 18th." Brown then had on David Kay, the first administration darling who took the U.N.'s place in trying to find WMDs and came back mightily pissed that he had been sent on a snipe hunt. Kay said, "It was a team of mine that discovered the HMX originally in 1991. That was one of the most well documented explosive sites in all of Iraq. The other 80 or so major ammunition storage points were also well documented." And at the end of the interview, when Brown was wrapping it up, Kay interrupted Brown to add, "[HMX] was used to bring the Pan Am flight down. It's a very dangerous explosive, particularly in the hands of terrorists."



Fox "News," meanwhile, is desperately trying to do the White House's bidding and clamp down on the story. They're claiming, and this is not bullshit, that, sure, the bunkers might have been sealed, but the air shafts were open. So, like, let's say there's about 350 elephants inside 80 different bunkers. Now, of course, you couldn't shove those elephants out whole. You'd have to hack them up bit by bit and carry the various bits of elephant carcasses out by hand. Probably that'd take a while, no? Anyways, Fox is also saying that the KTSP tape only shows a couple of tons, and the Pentagon has a satellite image of a single truck at a bunker that didn't have explosives, and, oh, by the way, did we tell you there's an unconfirmed terrorist tape of someone who looks suspiciously like Karl Rove with a scarf around his head saying, "Booga, booga, booga, America"? And the legions of zombies who watch Fox "News" and believe the insanity that emanates from its mad reporters and self-sodomizing hosts will lap it up like so many delicious brains and gooey intestines, marching mindlessly to the polls, chanting, "Four more years. Brains. Four more years. Brains." (Goddamn, can you imagine what Fox would have done if John Kerry's campaign had doctored the images of an ad, as the Bush campaign did?)



This isn't just about the media, though, and the briefly found and soon disposed of soul at CNN. It's about how the Bush campaign is trying to say this doesn't matter. That it's no big deal. That it's still possible the explosives were moved before the war. In other words, the Bush administration will go to war based on weapons that no one can confirm are there or not, but it will deny that videotape and witnesses are telling the truth about missing explosives. That's like cutting the nuts off your husband because you suspect he's cheating on you, but saying "This isn't what it looks like" when he walks in on you when the lawn guy is balls deep in your face.



What we're getting here is the sound of the coffin closing on this sham of a government "of the people." Let's nail this fucker shut and bury these bastards alive. If you listen to Bush's speeches, it sounds like the last gasps and scratches on the coffin lid of the catatonic before he runs out of air. Even the President's written speeches have become barely coherent and supremely illogical. When he says, as he did yesterday, "A President needs to get all the facts before jumping to politically-motivated conclusions," does Bush mean that after getting all the facts, it's okay to jump to a politically-motivated conclusion? When he says, "I've learned to expect the unexpected because history can deliver sudden horror from a soft autumn sky," does he understand that September 11 is a summer date? Or is he talking about the coming election as the "sudden horror"?



Slam the fuckin' lid and let's throw the dirt on 'em while we still hear 'em scream. The explosives? Hammer that fucking nail. FBI probe of Halliburton? Hammer that fucking nail. Rudy Giuliani blaming the troops? Hammer that fucking nail hard. Keep on hammering those nails and put 'em in the ground. Let's cover the hole, and tamp down the dirt, and then let's walk away as we hear 'em all, Condi, Colin, Don, Dick, John, and George, clawing at each other, trying to dig themselves out of all the earth and shit and worms that they've been buried in. But then let's be done with graves. There's been too, too many. Let's turn our backs and walk away from the graveyard. Let's shut the gate. Enough destruction. We've got some building to do.

Thursday, October 28, 2004

Fiddle On, Motherfuckers, Fiddle On:

If you take a moment and you sniff the air, what you get is the assaultive whiff of desperation coming from the Bush administration and the right wing of this country. The Rude Pundit refuses to make predictions, but there's a palpable sense growing in America that Kerry may actually win this long, lingering nightmare of a campaign. You get it from the shit smell of the dying Bush/Cheney campaign, the faded deodorant and armpit sweat stink from the conservative punditry.



You get it from the sight of Bush flailing about, like a jackrabbit on an electrified metal floor. It's a pathetic thing, as he hops around on the dais at his various events, searching for some spot where's there's comfort, peace, rest. God, you think, throw some water on that motherfucker so he just fries. Here's Bush's bizarro explanation of the failure to consider 760,000 pounds of powerful explosives worthy of securing: "If Senator Kerry had his way, we would still be taking our global test, Saddam Hussein would still be in power, he would control all those weapons and explosives, and could have shared them with our terrorist enemies." Let's see if we can follow the crazed leaps of logic here: because the United States under George W. Bush invaded Iraq, 40 to 60 semi-truckloads of the most dangerous explosives in the world were (more than likely) looted from a site that had previous been sealed and monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency, thus placing the explosives in the hands of (more than likely) terrorist, insurgents, and/or unfriendly countries. However, had a theoretical United States under a theoretical President Kerry not invaded, Saddam mightmaybecouldhave shared the sealed, monitored explosives with terrorists with whom he had no working relationship. At a minimum here, we're talkin' a zero-sum gain, no? But the more likely scenario is this: Bush and the Bushettes fucked up. Big time. And the price for that fuck up is being paid in soldiers' arms, legs, nuts, and guts, blown all over the fuckin' place with car bombs and RPGs. And we're just bidin' our time until the real big time explosions happen. In other words, Bush spends his time talking about what might have been under Kerry instead of what actually happened under his "leadership." Meanwhile, Bush's minions are out there blaming the troops, just like Abu Ghraib, just like so many other things. God, we're all such a bunch of squalid losers when compared to the infallibility of the President and his cabinet. (Strangely, today, Bush made no mention of the missing explosives in his speech in Saginaw.)



The other truly, madly, deeply pathologically cynical thing is Bush's invocation of past Democratic Presidents as a way of trying to lure Democrats to him, like a camouflaged lizard on a branch lures gnats and beetles. With the batshit mad Zell Miller, a man whose eyes can't stop spinning long enough to focus on the objects of his hatred, by his side, Bush said, "The Democratic Party has a great tradition of leading this country with strength and conviction in times of war and crisis. I think of Franklin Roosevelt's commitment to total victory. I think of Harry Truman's clear vision at the beginning of the Cold War. I think of John Kennedy's brave declaration of American ideals. President Kennedy said: 'The rights of man come not from the generosity of the state, but from the hand of God.'" Sure, Bush'd be right if Roosevelt attacked Peru after Pearl Harbor, if Truman had refused to direct talks with the Soviet Union while denegrating the just-established United Nations, and if Kennedy hadn't been attacked by Republicans for his Catholicism or if he hadn't said that if he could not reconcile his conscience with the national interest, "I would resign the office, and I hope any conscientious public servant would do likewise." Bush then invoked Bill Clinton, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, and other Democrats who would rather get fucked by Nixon's decayed femur than vote for Bush.



Meanwhile, Fox "News" is spinning like a weasel on speed with its constant attempts to prop up the Bush adminstration on the missing explosives, even though NBC and reality are closing in on Bush. Paul Bremer was on to say, "We don't know;" Brit Hume keeps on screeching, "We don't know and it's CBS's fault;" and Bill O'Reilly doesn't seem to understand that no one wants to talk to the guy who might jack off while shoving a vibrator up his ass.



As Josh Marshall and others have pointed out, the right wing media is already getting prepared for the post-election story of "blame the liberal media," which would be unnecessary if Bush was seen as a shoo-in. Jonah Goldberg questions the "timing" of the New York Times report on the looted explosives, as if the story should be squelched until after the election so that we can't judge Bush based on his mistakes. Rush Limbaugh is huffing and puffing like a whore on nickel night trying to turn this against Kerry and the U.N. and, of course, the Times and CBS. If they lose, they will be flinging their shit at anything that limps left.



Yes, we can smell the sweat of fear, we can see the spinning dance of death, we can hear the frantic fiddling, we can touch the potential future, and we can taste the acrid flames that are licking at their feet. It's all crumbling. Let's just hope it collapses soon enough.
Late Post Today:

Be back around 1-ish. But respect out to the Boston homies.

Wednesday, October 27, 2004

John Kerry - Superhero:

In the vicious end of days in this campaign, so much gets lost in the caterwauling of the media. Here's something that's happened in the last couple of days: John Kerry has found the last piece of the puzzle, the final cause to push to the end of the battle. If you've listened to Kerry since the dual revelations of the missing 760,000 pounds of high-powered explosives from a known ammo dump and the coming request for an additional $70 billion dollars for Iraq and Afghanistan, Kerry has become the man we've all heard about - the unstoppable crusader for what's right against however powerful the forces of evil may be. Kerry has been tough-guy posturing for most of the campaign, and it's been a ludicrous sight. How many animals must be hunted and killed in order for a Democrat to look strong on defense? As Bradley Whitford said on Bill Maher's show last week, "How many times does a guy have to be shot in the ass running across rice paddies in Vietnam in order to look tougher than the cheerleader from Andover?"



Here's the deal - what's been missing from the entire Kerry campaign is just how tough a motherfucker John Kerry really, actually is, and it's got jackshit to do with hunting geese and killing the Vietcong. Kerry is a superhero, the kind of valiant son of a bitch who doesn't give a rat's ass about his own life in order to make the lives of others better. It's his post-Vietnam life that makes him a superhero. You don't know how much a superhero the man in the cape is by his origins. You know a superhero by his deeds. And if Kerry loses, it'll be because his campaign refused to acknowledge just how kick-ass Kerry has been since his final purple heart (and if Kerry loses, adviser Bob Shrum, who, in essence, said the public was too stupid to understand Kerry's accomplishments, should be strung up by his balls and batted around like a pinata by the Democratic party leadership until he bursts open and showers everyone with his innards).



Yeah, yeah, this is gonna be a down-on-the-knees-Kerry-supportin-hummer of an entry, but the Rude Pundit keeps talking to people who sigh and say, "I guess I'm gonna vote for Bush" because they can't bring themselves to vote for Kerry. They see him as weak. They see him as a flip-flopper. In other words, they see him as the projection of self that Bush has imposed on Kerry. In other words, these voters are too blinded by the glow that emits from the crown on Bush's head to believe that they own the democracy.



Kerry vs. Nixon: When Kerry helped organize the Vietnam Veterans Against the War, he was directly confronting a hegemonic ideology in the country that said the people must blindly follow their leaders. Kerry, villified at the time with incredible viciousness, did not back down from charges of treason and heresy. Check out the end of the book The New Soldier, which Kerry co-wrote and edited in order to talk about what the young men returning from Vietnam had confronted in the name of "freedom" from Communism. The book is, ironically enough, mostly reprinted on an anti-Kerry site. Kerry writes, "We are asking America to turn from false glory, hollow victory, fabricated foreign threats, fear which threatens us as a nation, shallow pride which feeds off fear, and mostly from the promises which have proven so deceiving these past ten years." Change "ten" to "four," and you get the idea. The rest of the essay is stunningly humble, and it is simply a call to be citizens with eyes and ears open, to allow that maybe the powerful are more concerned with keeping power than with admitting error. And it is horribly, frighteningly prescient. What people forget about Kerry's protest days is that he was defending the lives of soldiers and that he was right.



Kerry vs. Reagan: When Kerry faced down the Reagan administration in his dogged pursuit of the Contra-drug connection, he was a freshman Senator taking on one of the most popular Presidents in American history. Instead of backing down from repeated threats to his political career, Kerry had his staff stay on the case like a viper injecting venom into your leg. They would have had to cut off his head in order to get him to stop, and he stayed on it until he revealed that the Reagan administration allowed the Contras to smuggle cocaine into the U.S. in order to fund their CIA-led "war" against the legally-elected Sandinistas in Nicaragua. (And thus helping to cause the crack epidemic.) Kerry was called a conspiracy theorist, said to be interfering with other drug cases, and impugned throughout the media. But the part that rarely got told is that he was right.



Kerry vs. Bush I: When Kerry went after the Bank of Credit and Commerce International, which was involved in laundering the Contra drug money, funneling money from the U.S. to Saddam Hussein (when he was our beloved dictator), and supporting illegal arms trade with terrorists and drug lords (including Afghanistan), it was his first chance to take on the Bush dynasty. When Bush I was in power, the administration and the CIA overlooked the crimes of BCCI, possibly because the bank was intimately involved in the financial dealings of the Bush family. Kerry had already kicked ass on the savings and loan scandals of the 1980s, so why not fuck with George H.W. Bush if 41 was fucking over the good of the country and the world? He brought down BCCI, and he cut off a vital funding source for terrorists. Again, Kerry was bucking the will of Democrats in Congress, as well as a Republican administration, in order to do what he knew was right.



Listen closely and tell anyone you know who is still thinking about voting for Bush: has Bush ever, personally, faced down anyone other than with a chant of "Drink, drink, drink"? Has he ever gone against someone who was really, truly powerful in order to place the good of the people above his own good? No. Heroes do that - they don't care what's in their way - they will face down evil, no matter how powerful. And they don't bother with those who are too weak to fight. It's why the latest news from Iraq fanned the fire: those in charge have screwed us over again, and Kerry's ready to bring the superhero costume out. Call him "the Winter Soldier."



Kerry's done a fuck of a lot more than pull a guy out of a river. And the fact that America doesn't know that says a great deal about how we negotiate our desolate political landscape.

Tuesday, October 26, 2004

Requiem For Rehnquist:

Chief Justice William Rehnquist reclines in his bed, sucking precious air through a hole in his throat. His body had turned against him, his cancerous thryoid actually strangling him; Rehnquist always knew cancer was a killer, but he's surprised to discover it's an active murderer. So he half-sits, half-lays in his bed in Bethesda, wondering if he should retire or return to the bench. There's ghosts around his bed - oh, so many ghosts, all of whom have come to Rehnquist to ask for justice at last, justice at last: the ghosts of blacks from the segragated South, an apartheid Rehnquist so long supported; the ghosts of wrongly convicted prisoners, jailed because of the reduction of rights for the accused; the ghosts of kids who died of cancer from decisions gutting the Clean Water and Clean Air acts. And let's not even get into the ghosts of women, of kids, of doctors due to his abortion rulings.



But the worst ghosts are the ones that haunt him from what may be his most reckless decision in Bush v. Gore, the decision that overturned years of his support of federalism and said that, indeed, a state's constitution was meaningless. Because the burden of Rehnquist, the burden of all Supreme Court justices, is the massive group of unintended consequences from a decision. And who would have thought? No, really, who would have thought it would have come to all these many ghosts, of dead Iraqis, of dead Americans, of starving people, of victims of a culture of cruelty that knows no bounds. Sure, sure, it may be wrong at this point to ascribe a soul to Rehnquist, but let us say that laying on one's potential deathbed in a naval hospital causes one to reflect. And to close one's eye's and listen to the wheezing of one's breath through a tube, trying to block out the staring eyes of the ghosts, their begging voices whispering, "Justice," over and over.



Dick Cheney might visit Rehnquist. They've known each other for many years. Cheney might bring Rehnquist, the widower, a porn magazine, maybe some smokes. It's all haha, funny. And maybe Rehnquist might say to Cheney that he's thinking he might step down, now, before the deluge of the election. If he wants to have anything that resembles a retirement in what may be the months before he dies, he thinks he might step down now. Cheney is not a man to be fucked with. And the idea of a 4-4 Supreme Court is the worst kind of fucking. Cheney might try to cajole Rehnquist, good-natured, a kind of "Hey-Bill-just-hang-in-there-for-a-couple-more-months" shuffle and jive. But Rehnquist can't stand anymore ghosts. They're stacked two, three high. And he knows that now that he inhabits the nexus between life and death, those ghosts will follow him everywhere.



Cheney is a vicious man. He has castrated Nigerian oil executives in front of other Nigerians and in front of British attorneys on a barren patch of land on Bonny Island. He has threatened to have generals buried up to their heads in the sands of the Iraqi wasteland and run over them with a Humvee if those generals dared to ask for more troops. He has wandered over to the CIA with a basket of puppies, and, for each piece of intelligence that didn't support invading Iraq, he's bitten the heads off them, one by one, spitting puppy heads at the cowering spooks.



So when Rehnquist tries to say he's thinking retirement now, too late for an appointment before the election, and with the potential loss of the Senate even if he wins, Cheney snaps. He pulls the tube out of Rehnquist's neck and whips out his cock. Rehnquist, wide-eyed, now wishing he had chosen death over the horror that is about to happen, gasps for air. "Gonna have to fuck your neck-hole, Bill," Cheney says, slapping his cock around, trying to get an erection, thinking about Mary and her partner 69ing, thinking about dismembered Iraqi children, all the things that usually make him hard. Rehnquist shakes his head. But he doesn't have to worry. Cheney can't get an erection. Sure, he makes a half-hearted attempt to fuck Rehnquist's trachea, but he finally gives up and re-inserts the tube.



Rehnquist, breathing now, nods, nods, nods. "Don't worry, Dick, I'll be there for you. Hell, I'll be back this week." Cheney winks at him and tells him to enjoy the porn as he leaves. Rehnquist wheezes a sigh of relief and closes his eyes, trying to block all the ghastliness and misery from his view.

Monday, October 25, 2004

In Any Reasonable Democracy, the Fuckin' Camel's Back Should Be Broken:

Oh, those heady days of early 2003, when the majority of the nation was all a-twitter about Iraq and weapons of mass destruction and terrorists, oh, my. When we were told, Joe McCarthy-style, that there were hundreds, yea, hundreds of sites that needed to be checked for those ol' vials of botulism and those cannisters of nerve gas. God, what a pussy you had to be back then, so, so long ago, to believe that Iraq didn't have them. You may as well have said you squat to pee if you dared to say that United Nations weapons inspections should continue. And the International Atomic Energy Agency? With their suspiciously Arab-sounding leader? Fuck, all they were saying was that Iraq didn't have nuclear weapons, but fuck them, those fuckin' wimps - fuckin' Dick Motherfuckin' Cheney knew better.



Can you imagine back then even suggesting that perhaps it would be important to secure the non-WMD weapons that Iraq had? Like say an IAEA identified site that contained, let's say, just for shits and giggles, you know, 380 tons of high-grade explosives that could be used for, who knows, blowing shit up? Maybe, say, blowing the shit out of our own soldiers with what is, ostensibly, our ammo dump?



So it is that during those first few Old West days of freedom in Iraq, when looting and raping was the rule of the land, that among the things looted (other than, say, nuclear waste and ancient artifacts) was, glory be, 380 tons of explosives. Mostly HMX, High Melting eXplosive, and RDX, Royal Demolition eXplosive (both have a bunch of other names). They're colorful bits of death. And they blow shit up at an alarming rate, over 26,000 feet per second. They create shock waves that shatter everything in its path. Fuckin' Bruce Willis could not run fast enough to get away before he was melted into scrapeable goo on the glowing pavement. But, you see, apparently this kind of stuff was not worthy of the attention of American authorities in the minutes, hours, days, and weeks after the invasion, unlike, say, the oil ministry in Baghdad. Even now, one senior Bush adminstration official said, sure, it could kill you, "but it's not a proliferation risk." Other than, you know, the fact that it could be used for making, well, shit, nuclear weapons - the mystical, magical "dual-use" materials Bush used to stammer about, back in the day.



Of course, this material was already under the supervision of the IAEA and well-known to weapons inspectors. Here's a report from the IAEA from 1995 about the Al-Qaqaa site: "The work [on weapons compenent] was explained to have started as early as 1988, and had used various kinds of explosives, including Baratol, PETN, COM-B, TNT, RDX and HMX." Even in 1994, the IAEA was aware of the HMX at the Al-Qaqaa facility. Al-Qaqaa was the last vestige of the failed attempt by Saddam in the mid-1990s, to build nuclear weapons. Here's the deal, though: they weren't even close and, Yosemite Sam-style, they blew themselves up trying, killing 700 people at the factory in Al-QaQaa. Why, in February 2003, UNMOVIC (the inspectors) checked out the Al-Qaqaa site to make sure the equipment was sealed. It was even reported in the American media, so we're not really talkin' a secret here. Jesus, the British even had it listed as a WMD site in their sexed-up dossier.



They just don't fuckin' get it, at all. So concerned was the administration with finding something, anything, please, Lord, any thing, that would reveal massive quantities of WMDs or al-Qaeda links, that they didn't care - they just didn't care about the rest of it. And they didn't get that they ran the entire friggin' country. The worst part is they knew - they were warned, they had the lists, their own people were telling them. So the only conclusions can be they are complete boobs or they just didn't care. Hence chaos. Hence stolen explosives. Hence dead soldiers and Iraqis. Hence a more dangerous world.



It's an old, old story. Man believes he is more powerful than the gods. Gods bitch slap him back into reality through the revelation of man's horrible deeds. Thus it is with any member of the Bush administration. Oh, sure, we like to ascribe the aspects of tragedy to Colin Powell because he "knew better," but we're talkin' Greek tragedy here, motherfuckers, where brazen assholes get the smackdown when they overreach. As Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and Rice scramble to say they didn't know they fucked their mothers, we're all just sittin' here, a chorus of non-believers, waiting for them to scratch their own eyes out and head into disgrace and exile.

Friday, October 22, 2004

Why Sean Hannity Needs To Be Force-Fisted By Alan Colmes:

The bloated Jesus-lovin' hatemonger's strong, manly jaw must be sore for how long he had Dick Cheney's semi-flaccid cock in his mouth during his "interview" with the Vice-President, asking Satan such valuable questions as, "Do you believe John Kerry on the stump and John Edwards on the stump, when they bring up issues about a private plan of privatized Social Security, suppress the black vote or bring back the draft, do they know in their heart that that's not true?", questions guaranteed to get hard-hitting, informative answers. Satan gleefully repeated that all allegations were "fundamentally untrue," a statement that went unchallenged time and again by Hannity, who was too busy coughing out grey pubes to ask a follow-up.



Then, when he "interviewed" Democratic Senator Mary Landrieu, Hannity tore into her like a rabid beaver on a sapling. When Landrieu, invited on to offer some illusion of "balance" in the whole lie of Fox's "fair and balanced" coverage, attempted to comment on the debate after Hannity asked her about Mary Cheney's well-known clam eating, Hannity cut her off and demanded that she answer him. When introducing Landrieu, Hannity said, "Good to see you, Senator. We always appreciate having you on the program," but after Landrieu called the "interview" an "infomercial" for the Bush/Cheney campaign, Hannity said, "I think you're a lousy senator, okay?" And then he told Landrieu that Kerry's been invited to come on the program. In the corner, the corpse-like Alan Colmes weeped bitterly as he self-flagellated with a bullwhip, smacking himself over and over as penance for his sins while Rupert Murdoch threatened a mother kangaroo's joey with beheading should Colmes actually interrupt and say that maybe, oh, golly, gee, Hannity is wrong. Roger Ailes giggled as he jacked off in the control room.



Instead, though, the segment continued, with Landrieu trying to give an answer as Hannity said, over and over, "Answer the question," as if there was some deep-hidden truth to be gained by hearing what a Senator from Louisiana had to say about Dick Cheney's gay daughter. Somewhere, the gigantic tide of karmic shit that's flowing towards the United States got a little bit bigger.
Ann Coulter's Cream Pie:

Okay, the Rude Pundit can't let this one pass. In straight porn films, as in life, there's only so many ways a man can ejaculate: he can blow his load all over the face, back, or stomach of a woman - what is referred to as "the money shot"; or he can shoot a wad into whatever orifice is in use. Should said semen be ejaculated into a vagina or sphincter, what has been created is known as a "cream pie." It's all highly technical, involving extensive training and use of jargon, to be sure, but hopefully you can follow. We're not talkin' Foucault here. Well, maybe we are. Anyways . . .



So it was that Ann Coulter, conservative columnist (if by "column," you mean "bizarre belches of bitchery"), was attacked in Tucson, Arizona by men wielding cream pies. Coulter, notable for her crazed rantings about Democrats who believe in conspiracies involving "oily Jews," was not hurt in the attack. Said Coulter, "You call that a cream pie? Goddamn, the last time I let the Carlyle Group board run a train on me at the Ritz after a corporate speaking gig, now that was a cream pie" or words to that effect.



And thus, the punchline given, it becomes painfully obvious why the definition was needed.
She's a Grand Old Bush Flag:

So, like, why does the George W. Bush campaign store sell American flags? No, really, right there in the store run by the Spalding Group, but officially sanctioned and licensed by the campaign, there's two kinds of American flags you can buy: "the best nylon flag available" and "weather resistant yard sign." They are simply American flags with no markings on them - just the flag, our flag, presumptively the flag that represents all of us, even those of us who would rather see a flag pole shoved up Dick Cheney's ass than let him sit back in the Vice President's office.



John Kerry's campaign store doesn't sell American flags. Howard Dean's strangely still existing campaign store doesn't sell flags. Neither does the Edwards for President store, nor Wesley Clark's store. Ralph Nader's selling copies of the Declaration of Independence, presumably with his signature added to the bottom, but, you know, it's hard to put that on a yard sign or flag pole. And, besides, who gives a fuck what Ralph Nader's doing?



So, back to the Bush campaign store and its flags. Is this really the message that Bush wants out there: Bush/Cheney - we're selling the American flag. 'Cause, you know, c'mon, it's a bit obvious. What happens if you buy a flag at the Bush campaign store and burn it to protest Bush? It's a Bush flag, right? Bush, in essence, selling you the flag. It is the capitalistic equivalent of the Bush/Cheney signs. The campaign yard sign costs the same as the American flag yard sign. What if one buys a box of gear from the Bush/Cheney store, including the flag, and just burns the whole box?



Or maybe the proper response here is a smidgen of outrage (the Rude Pundit is storing outrage, camel-like, for potential use on November 3). Because the effort here is so fucking calculated: Bush equals flag equals America. To believe otherwise is to not believe in America or the flag. It's a minor thing, sure, but it's Friday, and the little things say so, so very much about the vile nature at the heart of the Bush/Cheney campaign.



When all those members of Congress and legislators of states from sea to shining sea get sand in their vaginas over the desecration of the flag, let's ask them what's a worse corruption of the flag and all it might signify: when one jerk with lighter fluid and matches flames that cloth or when a politician trying to pander for votes lets a company make profit on the flag in his name?

Thursday, October 21, 2004

How To Out-Rove Rove:

If this stupid fucking Theresa Heinz Kerry/Laura Bush story gets any legs, other than those given to it by the morons on Fox "News," there's a simple, devastating way to deal with it. (For those not in the know, Heinz Kerry called Laura Bush "a robotic kooz who couldn't work her way out of a paper bag" or words to that effect. When Heinz Kerry was reminded that Laura Bush was, in fact, a school librarian for ten years, Heinz Kerry apologized, saying that Laura Bush is "a robotic kooz who could work the Dewey Decimal system like a Mexican hooker can work an old gringo's Viagraed cock" or words to that effect. Karen Hughes, top lesbian-looking adviser to the President, was still upset, even though Laura Bush didn't give a shit because, as you know, robots have no feelings. Said Hughes, "Laura was not just a Dewey Decimal-lovin' robotic kooz. She was also a mother to two girls who are growing up to be celebrity spooge buckets. It's hard work" or, you know, words to that effect.)



So if the story gets any legs at all, it's so simple to solve: On the stump and in ads, John Kerry should point out that when his wife made a mistake, she fucking apologized. Isn't that an interesting concept? When you screw-up, you admit your error and apologize for it. Unlike, say, a certain President and his administration, who steadfastly refuse to say they've made any mistakes at all. And then Kerry could follow that with a litany of mistakes and lies. You use Theresa's fuck-up to demonstrate how she has far, far more honor about a mistaken insult than Bush has about a war.



Later today: Fun with Campaign Stores.

Wednesday, October 20, 2004

The Thrum of a Steady Decay:

Yesterday, the Rude Pundit was talking to a group of people, as he does from time to time in his Clark Kent guise, and one was a large, beefy young man with a buzz cut hair-do and camouflage pants. The Rude Pundit asked if he was in the military. "No," the young man answered (let's call him "Rob," for the sake of clarity). "But my brother's a Marine and he's gettin' sent to Fallujah the day after tomorrow."



"What's Fallujah?" asked a stupid person in the group.



The Rude Pundit answered, "Imagine the most fucked-up, violent place on earth. Now bomb the shit out of it." Rob hung in there for a few minutes, tears streaming down his face, until he finally walked away and into the light rain that was falling.



After a moment, the Rude Pundit turned away from the group and headed over to Rob, sitting on a bench, his head down, sobbing. "When did you find out?" he asked Rob.



"Just a couple of days ago." Rob paused for a minute, staring at his big hands, just trying to stop his large frame from shaking from the wracking tears. "I don't know what I'll do if I lose my brother. I don't know what I'll do." Rob talked about how his brother was in an accident at the base a few months ago and nearly died, but he was patched up "with 500 stitches" and was now ready to head to Fallujah with his unit to prepare for the great and grand invasion that we've all been promised after the election. "I don't know what I'd do without my brother. I'm sorry. I don't wanna talk about this anymore."



The Rude Pundit had no words of wisdom, no way to say to Rob how fucked up the world is right now. Rob knew that. Rob didn't give a shit about politics, Kerry, Bush, or Saddam. Rob only knew that his brother was being sent to die for a cause that provided no comfort whatsoever. These were not the cries of someone who was proud of what his brother was doing, someone who believed in the rightness of the mission. It was simply the cry of someone who has learned that he has no control over circumstances, over who says how his brother lives and dies.



Here's a deal: the Rude Pundit will give up a Kerry victory for the Democrats taking back one or both houses of Congress. There's the trade: Kerry for the Senate. Because, in the end, someone's gotta answer for this ongoing crime, this erosion of a generation, this destruction of trust. And the only way that's going to happen is if Bush is still in power, but having to deal with a Democratic majority in at least one house that's unafraid of investigating and telling the truth (that, in itself, is a pipe dream, though). Even a Kerry victory with a Democratic Senate will never get to the real insidious nature of what's been done to this country and to the world. It is the way of America, is it not, to suppress truth for years until it is distant enough to have little effect. But we have been damaged - deeply, with a sense of trauma, and it wasn't 9/11 that did it - we were getting over that horror. Instead, we are all becoming Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome sufferers because of how the Iraq war has stripped away our sense of self-worth. (Those who support the war sound increasingly insane as they scramble to rationalize it. There's only one way to justify a continued American presence: to clean up the fucking mess we've made.)



What if this wasn't an election year? What if bad news wasn't seen through the filter of partisan politics (if that's possible anymore)? Would the lack of WMDs be seen as more than a slap at Bush's re-election chances? Would the deaths and injuries of soldiers in Iraq be viewed as something other than support for Kerry? (Goddamn, how inconvenient it is that people die in a war, huh?) Would the lack of military preparedness despite the President's constant declarations of the opposite have any greater significance? The war has taken on an increasingly Joseph Heller-esque absurdity, as soldiers are ordered to travel on the most dangerous roads without the proper armor or support in order to transport contaminated fuel that is useless and would be rejected when it was received. What the fuck? No, really, and with complete outrage, what the fuck? If this wasn't an election year, would someone be called to account? Because, you know, someone's gotta be held accountable at some point. Someone's gotta explain why we're on the fast track to the second thousandth dead soldier.



The Rude Pundit stood in the rain and had nothing to say to Rob. He placed his hand on Rob's shoulder for a moment and then headed inside to get dry.



Comedy tomorrow. Tragedy today.

Tuesday, October 19, 2004

A Modest Proposal - Rape a Republican For Jesus:

According to the right wing of the political spectrum, we liberals are fucking scum. No, really, we are traitors, extremists, threatening the very fabric of this dainty doily of a nation. Check out the title of Sean Hannity's latest "book": Deliver Us From Evil: Defeating Terrorism, Despotism and Liberalism. There's everything you need to know about how liberals are viewed on the right - the evil equivalent of the depraved motherfuckers who took out the Twin Towers. Hannity writes (if by "write" you mean "composed with a turd pen filled with bloody piss ink"), "The greatest threat to our resolve in the War on Terror is the political liberalism . . . of the Democratic Party." One might think that the greatest threat to "our resolve" is the failure to fight a War on Terror, but, then, that would make you a liberal and, well, we're in a vicious circle then, no? Ah, but we liberals want to weaken intelligence, the military, and families.



Oh, how the right likes to rack up the name-calling of liberals. Ann Coulter, of course, has made a career of screeching like Sybil-in-a-straitjacket about how disgusting and destructive liberals are. Liberals and Democrats (who are synonymous in this equation, despite the fact that many of Nixon's policies were to the left of Kerry's) are inviting another terrorist attack, want the Iraq war to fail, and wouldn't have fought World War II. Oh, and the only way to talk to liberals is with a baseball bat. In other words, "liberals" ought to be rounded up and killed. Rush Limbaugh, Bill "Will Bloviate For Falafel" O'Reilly, Laura "I Can Be As Big a Cunt As Coulter" Ingraham, Mike "I Can Eat This Small Muslim Woman In One Bite" Savage, and more claim that delusional liberals hate America and want to hand over our wives and sisters to the terrorists in order to put them in burqas in the name of cultural relativism and sympathy for the plight of the people who beheaded Nick Berg and others (fuck, we probably watch the beheading videos at "We're-All-Al-Qaeda" parties, according to the conservative punditry).



At first the Rude Pundit thought the Bush campaign's use of the word "liberal" as a way of trying to demean Kerry was sooo retro and would be only vaguely effective. But it's stuck and, once again, liberals have to face the idea of dealing with an electorate who believe that liberals are just communists in Birkenstocks. Said Bush Saturday, "On issue after issue, from Medicare without choices to schools with less accountability to higher taxes, he takes the side of more government. There's a word for that attitude. It is called, liberalism." Said Dick Cheney last week, "Senator Kerry is a tax-and-spend liberal." And, oh, how they get the crowd booing on that word, "liberal."



Goddamn, one might think that, say, liberals want to radically alter the Constitution to prevent freedom of speech, press, and assembly, or that they want to throw people in jails without a fair trial, or that they want to find ways to make torture legitimate, or that they send troops into battle without the proper equipment, or that they want to amend the Constitution to specifically discriminate against a group, or that they . . . well, you get the idea. Essentially, the success of the right is to make "liberal" equal "America hater" and "child killer" and more. If moderates like Kerry and Clinton and others can be labelled "liberal" as a perjorative, well, really, they've left us with no choice.



It's time to start raping Republicans.



No, no - not metaphoric, rhetorical rape. Actual bodily violation. "Rape" in the sense of raping. Penetrating the various orifices and cavities with cocks and dildos (because, you know, we want liberal men and women to be able to participate in the raping). Imagine if Jon Stewart didn't just go on Crossfire to take the hosts to task for their debasing debate. What if, instead, Stewart had actually slammed Tucker Carlson to the table and started raping him? Oh, sure, Paul Begala might have cowered in a corner for a moment, but you can be sure that he would have gotten the drift and then joined in, raping the shit out that bow-tied bastard, Begala in front, Stewart in the back.



Then, oh, how the floodgates would be opened. We'd just start raping left and right, raping Rush Limbaugh on the air as he cries out for his punk ass dittoheads to help, fucking Ann Coulter's corpse ('cause, really, who'd wanna fuck her alive?), shoving a loofah up O'Reilly's ass. And you have to understand: when you rape someone, you have to beat them a good bit. If there's even an inkling of enjoyment from anyone, we'll bitch slap it out them and break out the ten-inch vibrator, which isn't good for anyone's sphincter. Goddamn, how Bob Novak will howl in pain as his hips snap from the raping.



We won't just rape pundits. Where's the fun in that? We'll go after the Congress. We'll rape Rick Santorum so that he has to stay in bed, under the covers, for months, years, having to deal with the shame. We'll rape Susan Collins for not switching parties (Lincoln Chaffee, we'll get to you). We'll rape House Majority Whip Roy Blunt for praising Colin Powell's lies to the U.N. We'll rape Ohio Rep. Deborah Pryce for being such a cheerleader for Bush and the Republicans. Oh, and don't worry, we'll try to pay someone to rape Tom DeLay.



And we'll say, This is what liberals are. We're people who will rape you if you're a Republican. And we'll justify our raping using Jesus. If Bush and conservatives can just make up shit they claim Jesus meant to justify every vicious, cruel thing they do, we can at least say, "Hey, man, love your neighbor as you would yourself. I'd like to be fucked, so I'd better start fuckin' the neighbors." That's right, America, liberals'll be rapin' Republicans in the name of Jesus. Goddamn, that'll fuck people up.



It'll work, too, because it'll change the rhetoric. All the raping will change the definitions. Oh, Jesus, it's gonna take a long time, and oh, so many rapes. But finally, it'll work. When someone like John Kerry is called a "liberal," he can say, with all honesty, "I'm not a liberal. A liberal is someone who rapes Republicans. I have never nor do I intend to rape a Republican; therefore, I'm not a liberal." And, really, unless a group like Raped Republicans for Truth say that they heard this one time that Kerry talked about raping Republicans, who's gonna disagree? When Bush calls Kerry the most "liberal" Senator, most people will realize that that's just wrong - is Bush saying Kerry's raped the most people? If that's true, why haven't we been informed before, like during the primaries?



And it'll change the politics. What's better: supporting equal rights and health care for all or getting raped? C'mon - make a choice. Peace and justice or raping? Pretty starkly clear, huh?



Oh, sure, there will be those who wear their rape bruises as badges of honor, a way to demonstrate that they are really, truly conservatives because, you know, they wouldn't have been raped otherwise. And there may even be some jealousy among Republicans, a kind of "Hey, I'm not right enough to rape?" mentality.



But, in the end, after years of getting ass-fucked by the conservative movement, is it not time to do some raping of our own?

Monday, October 18, 2004

A Fundamental Unfairness:

Oh, how Blogsylvania lit up when Jon Stewart decided to use his Friday appearance on CNN's Crossfire to bitch slap Paul Begala and Tucker Carlson. (Sure, you can read the transcript, but, really, watch the video for the full squeamishness of Tucker Carlson acting as if a guest at his house just shit in his bed.) Much has been made of how Stewart took the hosts and the show to task for demeaning discourse in America, for his remarks on how the show is "theatre" and that perhaps real, honest debate would be necessary. Oh, and how Stewart called Carlson a "dick" on live television. One thing that was obvious was how much Stewart was really begging Begala to take his side. Carlson would attempt to say something and Stewart would then say something insulting (and funny) to the 35 year-old bow-tie wearer and dismissively turn away from him and back to Begala. But the part that has not been commented much upon is the very end of the segment, the end of the show, when Stewart seems to realize that he's failed, that neither of the two men will admit that they can actually aspire to something more noble than a yelling match. And perhaps the pitiful truth is that neither man does aspire to anything more.



But Stewart, who is a ballsy, smart motherfucker, got one major thing right, although he didn't pursue it. When he said that "you're helping the politicians and the corporations," he was getting at the key problem of what passes for contemporary journalism: that most journalists at most (corporate-owned) media outlets work hard to prove the powerful in this country are right and correct when their jobs oughta be to challenge the powerful every step of the way, to be a line of defense against the powerful. That's the muckraking tradition of journalism: how are those who control us harming us? And what can we do to stop them or change something fundamental in the country? The charge that the media is "liberal" is actually a charge that the media, at one time, at least attempted to favor the "average" American over those in power. But now, in the ridiculous notion of balance, the news outlets give most of their coverage to the powerful and the "good" of their actions.



When ABC News's Mark Halperin's memo about candidate accountability and the election received so much coverage about a week ago, it was seen by some as a confimation of "liberal" bias at ABC (and, by extension, the rest of the non-Murdoch, non-Moonie media). But what Halperin was saying was that the lies and distortions coming from the campaigns are not equal and they should not be treated that way: "We have a responsibility to hold both sides accountable to the public interest, but that doesn't mean we reflexively and artificially hold both sides 'equally' accountable when the facts don't warrant that." What a stunning thing to say: that the media should actually hold the liar accountable for his lies. In other words, the right-wing idea of "balance" is actually a right-wing bias. (This point has been made by many, like Eric Alterman.)



Because, see, all things are not equal. For instance, how severely John Kerry was injured in Vietnam is not equivalent to whether or not Bush is hiding the fact that he didn't fulfill his military obligations. For instance, John Kerry's conflicted vote for authorization to go to war is not equivalent to the President taking us to war under false pretenses. It's like saying that squashing a bug is the moral equivalent of slitting the throat of a small child. Yeah, you've got toddler blood on your hands, but look at the other guy - he has bug guts on his shoes. See? You're both killers.



Because, see, sometimes things need to equalized. Sure, sure - if we're gonna examine Kerry's life in his 20s, after the war, we should look at Bush's. But more to the point is Bush's attack on Kerry's tenure in the Senate. This attack has become standard in Bush's stump speech, the record from which Kerry can "run but he can't hide." This has caused the news media to evaluate Kerry's time in the Senate. But the news media behave as if George Bush simply started existing when he sucker-punched his way into the governorship of Texas in 1994, with the occasional nod to his previous business "experience," which consisted mainly of destroying companies or sitting on the sidelines so others could use his name and family connections. If we're going back to see what Kerry was doing in say, 1985, let's do the same with Bush. If Kerry's idea to raise gasoline taxes years ago is fair game, then so is Harken, no?



This list of unfairness could go on and on. When Bush went batshit insane in the debates, screaming, screeching, and beating his hand on the lectern, sure, his anger was mentioned by the punditry. But isn't it this very kind of anger that so concerned the punditry about Howard Dean (oh, whither Howard Dean)? That made them question his mental state and whether he would be fit to be President? That, essentially, drove his campaign into the ground?



For the media, the choice is like fucking two different hookers. Hooker #1 tells you she has herpes and you should use a condom, so you do and the sex is okay, but, hey, you're disease free. Hooker #2 says she's disease free so you fuck her without a condom, and the fucking is fantastic, but later you learn she gave you syphilis. If you're a fair news organization, you think to yourself, "Wow, I guess I shouldn't have trusted her because, after all, she's a whore," and you tell every other john you know to avoid the lying, diseased whore and to just fuck the first hooker. If you're the existing contemporary news media, you go and get your penicillin shot and hope the next time you fuck that hooker, she tells you the truth 'cause you sure love the fucking. You know, you wanna be fair to the hookers.



(By the way, if you haven't, you need to read Ron Suskind's New York Times Magazine piece on Bush and faith. Face the stomach-churning horror of what's coming the next four years if we must endure Bush again.)

Friday, October 15, 2004

Main Course: Why Bill O'Reilly Ought To Be Sodomized With a Falafel:

Awww, sweet motherfuck, let it be true. Let it be true that O'Reilly told producer Andrea Mackris, after she broke up with her boyfriend, to "use your vibrator to blow off steam" and bragged about teaching another woman how to use a vibrator while having phone sex with her. Please, please, oh, God, Jesus, let it be true that he said the "little short brown woman" in a cabana in Bali asked to see O'Reilly's penis. Oh, ah, ohhhh, let it be true that O'Reilly told Mackris and her friend that he would "train" them in order for them to be good little fuck bunnies and then told them stories about fucking Thai hookers and Scandinavian stewardesses. Oh, yeah, smack it, smack it, smack it, let it be true that he threatened Al Franken with revenge through Roger Ailes. Yeah, yeah, that's right, you like that, don't you, don't you, let it be true that he owns a vibrator "shaped like a cock" and that he jacked off while on the phone with Mackris. No, no, not yet, not yet, slow down, shit. Damn. The Rude Pundit knew he'd climax early reading all of O'Reilly's alleged adventures in torturing employees. Anyways . . .



Let it be true that O'Reilly repeatedly reminded Mackris that she owed him a dinner out. Let it be true that he phoned her excitedly after interviewing a pair of porn stars. Let it be true that he offered to go with her to buy a vibrator. Let it be true that O'Reilly told Mackris he wanted to get her down to the Caribbean so he could get her drunk ("intravenously," if necessary) and then he'd get in a shower with her and rub her "big boobs" with a loofah and, as O'Reilly supposedly said, "then I would take the other hand with the falafel thing and I'd put it on your pussy but you'd have to do it really light, just kind of a tease business." Let it be true that O'Reilly said how he'd eat out Mackris and then she'd perform a teasing blow job on him. Let it be true that O'Reilly was fucking himself with a vibrator during this phone call. Let it be true that he told Mackris that she'd have to "suspend" thoughts about O'Reilly being her boss in order for him to fuck her. Let it be true that he told Mackris that she needed to have a sexual fantasy outlet, that it'd be "good for your mental health" before suggesting that "next time" she would come up to his hotel room and "make this happen."



Yeah, yeah, it'd be horrible for Mackris if it's true, but sometimes someone's gotta take one for the team. And you can be a pussy and talk about how horrible it'd be for O'Reilly if it's not true, but, you know, and, really, O'Reilly has helped destroy so many people through his lies, that it couldn't happen to a nicer guy. O'Reilly couldn't get enough of Monica Lewinsky or Chandra Levy, using consensual sexual activity as a means to destroy Democrats. And the asshole is just like Bush - always blaming his problems on someone else. Here's O'Reilly on his radio show about the lawsuit: "We believe that the people behind this lawsuit are on the left. But on the right, too, I mean, I get a lot of lunatic-fringe right people screaming and yelling. And they want to do anything they can to destroy the voice. They want us off the air. They want FOX off the air; they want O'Reilly off the air; and the other commentators they don't like . . . And you can see this in a pattern of behavior where a Hollywood-funded documentaries [sic]; smear books from major publishing houses; elite media picking up this stuff and then running with it in a favorable way. I mean, there's a smear documentary out on FOX . . . there's big money behind this. Big, big money. And it's not an accident that this extortion attempt came three weeks before the election -- four weeks before the election. It's no accident -- this is not a coincidence."



And that's why that smug motherfucker deserves this and why we all get to bask in schadenfreude. Because for O'Reilly it's just a big fuckin' conspiracy against him. So, please, please, God, Allah, Buddha, who the fuckever or no one, let it be true. 'Cause if it's true, then the right will have O'Reilly, vibrator-using falafel fucker, and Rush Limbaugh, batshit insane hillbilly heroin addict.



All we need then is to find the bodies of molested children buried in Sean Hannity's backyard, and we'll have hit the trifecta.
Appetizer: According to Fox "News," Lesbians Are Like "Winos":

So the Rude Pundit flipped on over to Fox "News" this morning, around 7 a.m., to get his morning dose of hate and bile. There, on Fox and Friends, the three hosts gabble-gobbled about John Kerry's mention of Dick Cheney's lesbian daughter during Wednesday's debate (which, we should all be reminded, came in response to a question about whether the candidates thought that homosexuality was a "choice"). Generally, the Rude Pundit zones out into fantasies of fucking ice queen E.D. Hill until her roots turn blonde.



But this morning Hill said that what Kerry said, and his ensuing explanation of "I was trying to say something positive about the way strong families deal with this issue," was like calling someone's child a "wino" and then saying that the family is strong in dealing with a "wino." There you go. All the ugliness that is conservative sexual repression welling up in a single comparison. Lesbians are like winos in this world. Or pedophiles. Or sinners.



Beyond the whole Sanford and Son-esque use of "wino," isn't this what's got real and actual gay people upset? Like, say Andrew Sullivan, noted fellater and conservative, who rightly notes that what's really at work here is the right wing's discomfort with and animosity towards homosexuality. Unlike Hill, who wants to use a perjorative term as an analogy, how about this: what if Bob Schieffer had asked the men about, say, education for children, and Kerry had mentioned how great Cheney's other daughter, presumed fellater Elizabeth, her husband, and their four children are and how much Lynne and Satan loved their grandchildren? Would anyone have given a happy rat's ass about that?



Next Course: O'Reilly.

Thursday, October 14, 2004

Two Debate Quickies:

Here's what the Rude Pundit thinks of when he thinks of Pago-Pago.



And what was with all the man-love for John McCain? First Kerry talks about how he and McCain bring the parties together, then the President gets all sphinctery and says, "John McCain is for me for president." Christ, next thing they'll both be promising how often and how hard they'll be fucking McCain for the good of the nation.
Lesbians and Zombies at Sunrise:

Mary Cheney, Vice President Dick Cheney's daughter, is a lesbian. She munches carpet, she dives into muffs, she's a dyke, whose preferred method of sexual pleasure is, more than likely, having her partner manipulate the Vice President's daughter's clitoris with her tongue. Mary Cheney may like to have her partner wear a stap-on and fuck her from behind. She may enjoy rim jobs, sixty-nines, and finger fucking. But one thing is sure: Mary Cheney does not like cock. In her sexual palate, cock doesn't even register. She does, however, love pussy. She loves to stick her fingers and tongue into pussies. Because she is, as mentioned before, a lesbian. And she is a lesbian, an open one, because that's what she is. So when John Kerry, at last night's "debate," invoked Mary Cheney when answering a question about whether or not homosexuality is a choice, he was stating a fact. Dick Cheney mentioned her in a "town hall" meeting a few weeks ago. No doubt Kerry was trying to score political points by using Mary Cheney to throw doubt into some of the homophobic faithful in the Republican party. Just as it's no doubt that Dick Cheney was trying to humanize his satanic self when he brought up his daughter.



But here comes Lynne Cheney, wife of the devil, using Kerry's line as proof that Kerry "is not a good man." Perhaps Kerry would have gone too far if he had said, "Now I want all of you to picture Mary Cheney, legs tied to bed posts as her butch lover eats her out like a mongrel with a steak. That is not a choice. That is who she is." Oh, how the vindictive cunts on Fox "News" morning show were ballistic over Kerry. But why is it okay for the President to invoke the sad story of an Iraq war widow who spoke to him (as he did in the first debate) and that's not seen as exploitation or beyond the pale, as many on the right believe about Kerry's mention of Mary Cheney? Why can Bush constantly invoke the dead from 9/11? What does Bush have to do? Does he have to do a puppet show with the skulls of American soldiers before he's called to account for his regular shitting upon the memory of the dead and the mourning?



Last night's debate was diffuse and fairly uninteresting for much of the time. The zombie corpse of Bob Schieffer may as well have gotten up and given each man a grandpa Bobby hug for all the real challenges he posed. And, c'mon, what the fuck is the deal with asking no questions about the environment or education but asking them a question about how much they love their wives and daughters? What's more important - Bush rambling on about his love of Jesus or a real discussion about clean air and water? Bob Schieffer was more concerned about getting home in time for his nightly feeding on the brains of the living than he was in eliciting real answers to real questions.



Bush came across last night as deeply, horribly disturbed. A madman who can't control his emotions - he's smiling when Kerry is talking about job loss - and who loses his cool when confronted with facts that oppose him. Christ, the Rude Pundit was waiting for Bush to take off his shoe and start beating the lectern with it. He wouldn't have been surprised if Bush had tossed his own shit at the camera and leapt around like a baboon, screaming, "Look at my proud, red ass." When he was asked about job outsourcing and what he would tell an unemployed worker, Bush said he was going to fix public education, which, you know, really helps the white collar tech guy whose job is now done in India and who is working for Wendy's, hoping that he'll be able to bring home the leftover fries to his kids. When he was asked if he wanted to overturn Roe v. Wade, he said he wouldn't have a litmus test for judges. And then he talked about the backyard barbecue where he met his wife, when he "bopped on over there" to her. Now, do you think Bush was sober at that barbecue when he was boppin'?



Holy fuck, what else does America need to see? Where's the line? For four and a half hours, we've finally, at long last, gotten a look at this man we didn't elect President last time (wasn't it wonderfully uncomfortable when Bush said the nation was divided in 2000 and then quickly blamed the 1990s for it? Hmmm, wonder which party made the 1990s so divided?). We saw the petty tyrant railing and screeching, unable to make a rational point without beating his chest and grabbing his balls. It's over, innit? At some point, isn't the illusion over? Christ alfuckingmighty, the gut fear here is that so many Americans are so blinded by the asbestos dust of the twin towers that they can't see beyond the changed skyline of Manhattan.



For three nights, America had a chance to witness the empty space occupying the Presidency, the black hole that has sucked us dry, the vortex that wants to drag us all down into the darkness. At the end of the debate, Bush invoked an Oval Office painting that directs the viewer to the coming light, but it's just oil and pigment on a canvas. Just then Bush offered America a vision of fake light, a false sunrise, an isolated picture of dawn. He would rather an image than the reality of daylight.
War of the Rude Self:

Must . . . resist . . . urge to write about O'Reilly. So . . . easy . . . so . . . fun. Must . . . write . . . about debate. Come . . . back this afternoon . . . around one-ish . . . and see . . . what wins.

Wednesday, October 13, 2004

What John Kerry Should Say, Part 3 (Rude Version):

If, at tonight's "debate," when Kerry is asked, "How do you answer the charge that you are one of the most 'liberal' members of Congress?", he doesn't answer, "Bob, let me begin by saying that what you are asking is a stupid goddamned question that only has meaning if you've been busy wolfing down chowder from Karl Rove's boner. Holy shit, what the fuck does that mean? No, seriously, ask anyone in the audience if they even understand what it means, 'liberal.' And you know what? Not a motherfuckin' one of them will know or they just know some goddamn lies. 'Cause they've been taught to react to the word like a bull that gets an electric prod shoved in its nuts whenever it wants to wander off in another direction. So fuck your goddamn label. And don't you smirk at me, you Bush bitch, you little corporate whore, so painted red by pharmaceutical companies, with your little slit mini-skirt and no panties, ready for Merck or Exxon/Mobil or Carlyle to negotiate a price for your sweet policy pussy. I'll come over to your fuckin' podium and force feed you a bowl of mercury emissions and we'll watch you twitch and dance, motherfucker, dance as that toxic shit eats away your fuckin' brain man, makin' you seem like more of a retard than ever. And now I'm talkin' to all my bitches in the audience, every motherfuckin' one of you sittin' in your tiny apartments, in your decaying nursing homes, shovelin' discount mac and cheese from Wal-Mart into your faces, listenin' and watchin' this shit, still thinkin' that this insignificant bitch, this dickless wonder, gives a holy happy fuck about you, lemme tell you what a liberal is: a liberal ain't some sandal-wearin' pussy who sobs for the spotted owl while abortin' children, invitin' Osama Bin Laden over to dinner for sensitivity training, and donatin' money to French Faggots Against America. No, motherfuckin' liberals got shot down tryin' to make sure you had an eight-hour work day, motherfuckin' liberals got lynched for sayin' people oughta be equal, motherfuckin' liberals got beaten down tryin' to stop the Vietnam War. And the next day they got up and kept keepin' on. It's this cocksmoker and his buddies who will sell you out in a second, sell your organs and your nuts and your souls, if Halliburton tells 'em to do it. You wanna die? Vote for that hunched over Mama's boy with Daddy issues. 'Cause he'll kill you. He may not do it with a gun, but he'll kill you slowly, with broken promises of education for urban America so that my homeys have no choice but to be gangbangin', with tax cuts that drain the Treasury like so many vampires with so many sweet virgins, with health care policy that amounts to 'Oh, fuck it, just pray and hope Jesus wants 'em in heaven,' with an environmental policy that says clean air and water are decided on by energy companies, oh, and sorry about all the skin cancer and hurricanes, with a 'security policy' that amounts to fuckin' beggin' the Lord for another terrorist attack on chemical plants or ports so that Bush bitch can send John Ashcroft out to remove the Constitution from the archives and jack off on it in front of the Congress, screaming, 'Jesus loves me' as he comes and his cum wipes the ink from all those beautiful amendments, drippin' free speech away, drippin' fair and speedy trials away, goddamn, Ashcroft wants to wipe his dick on the Bill of Rights. You wanna vote for that 'cause you're afraid I'm a 'liberal'? Then, fuck it, enjoy the slow, painful death of America. You keep clingin' to that Republican-fed dream, man, as you're huddled in the darkness and cold 'cause you can't afford the oil to heat your house, even workin' fifteen hours a day at two jobs, as you're eatin' dog food and rationing out your scrips, you keep believing that better days are comin' and goddamn those September 11 terrorists for makin' your life so miserable. Yeah, you and your dying American dream can comfort yourselves that you didn't vote for the liberal," then the debate will be worthless.

Tuesday, October 12, 2004

The Shootin' Fish In a Barrel Trilogy (Concluded):



Trois - Absence Is Presence (Peace Out, Derrida):

This morning, on CNN, the VP for Corporate Relations for Sinclair Broadcasting had this to say in defending the media corporation's decision to run the anti-Kerry documentary Stolen Honor on all of its stations: "[T]he accusations coming from Terry McAuliffe and others, is it because they are some elements of this that may reflect poorly on John Kerry? That it's somehow an in-kind contribution of George Bush? If you use that logic and reasoning, that means every car bomb in Iraq would be an in-kind contribution to John Kerry. Weak job performance ratings that came out last month would have been an in- kind contribution to John Kerry. And that's just nonsense. This is news. I can't change the fact that these people decided to come forward today. The networks had this opportunity over a month ago to speak with these people. They chose to suppress them. They chose to ignore them. They are acting like Holocaust deniers, pretending these men don't exist."



Beyond the bizarre idea that a suicide bomb in Iraq is a John Kerry commercial, yeah, why didn't the media cover the Swift Boat Veterans for "Truth" back in the day? It's a pity that these guys get virtually no coverage from anyone in the two months or so since they've come forward. Yep, must be that liberal media.



And, of course, you know, and why not, that believing John Kerry deserved his medals in Vietnam is somehow equivalent with denying the horrible, screaming deaths of six million Jews. Damn, these motherfuckers know how to maintain credibility, no?



Tomorrow: What Kerry Should Say (Part 3).
The Shootin' Fish in a Barrel Trilogy (Cont'd):



Deux - Why Ann Coulter Is Still a Cunt (Part 87):


Coulter on CNN's Inside Politics this past Sunday, when confronted with polls that showed most Americans thought Kerry won the second debate, which her batshit insane, eye-twirling mind believed Bush had won: "I mean, if we're just going to cite polls, then there's no point in any of us being here and discussing the debate. You can just run the polls and let us stay home."



Coulter, in her September 29 "column," if by "column" you mean a mad screed written by a sexually repressed self-hating woman whose idea of a good fuckin' is to get small-dicked Republicans to dully smack her with their tiny, blunt, flaccid cocks, "Recent polls show Bush ahead of Kerry by 9 points (CBS-NYT), 6 points (Gallup) or 3 points (Zogby). One Pew poll even put Bush ahead of Kerry by 16 points. The average of national polls has Bush 6 points ahead."



Goddamn, she hates flip-floppers.



Ann Coulter is like the hot chick who's been fucked way, way too many times, to the point of being psychotic and abused, but she's too nutzoid to realize that virtually every man just wants to be another abuser, where the last dick she sucked was a dick too far, but all she knows about love is fucking and getting fucked, so she keeps trying to love those who fuck her over. You're at a bar and you see a woman like Coulter and you've got a choice: do you take her to the alley and fuck her like so many men before? Or do you think you might have a little too much self-respect to even let her blow you?
The Shootin' Fish In a Barrel Trilogy:

Some targets are just way, way too easy, like gettin' gonhorrea in Thailand or, to wit, like shooting fish in a barrel. (Numbers in easy to read French.)

Une - Context Is All:

Oh, how the Bush campaign is all a titter-twitter with John Kerry's quote from his New York Times Magazine profile. Kerry said, with extraordinary logic, tact, and, yes, sensitivity, "We have to get back to the place we were, where terrorists are not the focus of our lives, but they're a nuisance. As a former law-enforcement person, I know we're never going to end prostitution. We're never going to end illegal gambling. But we're going to reduce it, organized crime, to a level where it isn't on the rise. It isn't threatening people's lives every day, and fundamentally, it's something that you continue to fight, but it's not threatening the fabric of your life." Of course, the Bush campaign focused in on the single word "nuisance" and pounced like a pack of feral dogs on a wounded child, issuing an ad that mocked Kerry for actually believing that a sledgehammer alone is not the way to win this "war."



So, since taking shit out of context is the way the Bush campaign gets an issue to run on, like "nuisance" and "global test," let's have fun with context. Here's a great ad - all it needs is evil mariachi music:



In the first debate, George W. Bush called terrorists "folks": "We're facing a group of folks who have such hatred in their heart, they'll strike anywhere, with any means."



But in an October 11 speech, Bush called Hispanic officials with him at a campaign rally "folks": "These folks are here to help us inspire the Hispanic vote to come our way."



Terrorists are "folks"? Hispanic officials are "folks"? Is George Bush saying that Hispanics are terrorists?



John Kerry: Consistent on Who the Folks Are.



Wheee. Coming in short order: Trilogy Parts Deux et Trois.

Monday, October 11, 2004

And You Shall Know the Truth . . .:

Pity Charlie Gibson. What did he do to earn the rage of George W. Bush? There he was, moderator of the second presidential "debate", and all he was attempting to do was, well, moderate, going beyond the stilted question-asking automatons that were Jim "Eyes Courtesy of My Taxidermist" Lehrer and Gwen "No Question Too Insipid" Ifill. Instead of merely allowing the candidates to blather on for an additional minute, Gibson tried, desperately at times, to get the two men to answer a direct fuckin' question. Kerry responded to Gibson, engaging him and mostly expanding on the question. However, George W. Bush chose instead to either ignore or bulldoze Gibson. It was the Old West: no tinhorn reporter's gonna ask George W. Bush a follow-up.



Early on, Bush turned on Gibson twice, viciously smacking the TV morning show host to the ground and standing on his large ass, braying like the loudest howler monkey in the desiccated rainforest, "You tell Tony Blair we're going alone," our president at that moment showing he was tough enough to pound the Good Morning, America guy, motherfuckers, now bring him the head of Katie Couric.



Then, most bizarrely, Bush accused Gibson of being gay or, at least, of desiring some cock when, in his ad-lib about not knowing he owned part of a lumber company, he said, point blank to Gibson, "Need some wood?" You could see Gibson shudder in desire, eyes rolling back in the much needed ecstasy "some wood" might impart.



What we saw on Friday night was how much George Bush hates us, all of us, how we are simply impediments to his will to power, his a priori rightness. Goddamn, how Bush seethed. If he thought the idea of being called to account for his actions by a journalist in the first debate was odious, Bush could barely contain his deep contempt for the American public, treating the questions derisively, answering them like the debate was a particularly bad Cape Cod Thanksgiving and he was the meth'd-out uncle being accused of fondling his nephews, screeching,

"Nowhatthefuckareyoutalkingabout-youknowme-Iwouldntdothat-uhuhnotme-mustbesomeoneelse-andfuckyouforaccusingme."



Look at his answer to Rob Fowler, one of the many shitting-themselves timid middle Americans forced to be seen by millions of people while questioning the President, who dared to believe that the Patriot Act might infringe on his civil liberties: "I really don't think your rights are being watered down. As a matter of fact, I wouldn't support it if I thought that" and then he said, most strangely, considering the fucking question had just been asked, "I hope you don't think that." Look at that non-answer: in essence, Bush said, "You are wrong. Shut the fuck up and trust me."



But that was Bush's approach the entire evening, to treat the questioners as children, simply needing reassurance that Daddy knows what he's doing when he raids the college fund to please his gambling addiction: When Nikki Washington asked about why people around the world think America is fucked up, Bush said, "We've got a great country. I love our values . . . People love America." In one of his follow-up responses on preventing terrorist attacks on American soil, Bush said, "I'm worried. I'm worried. I'm worried about our country. And all I can tell you is every day I know that there's people working overtime, doing the very best they can." Time and again, time and again, Bush's answer was "You don't need to worry your poor little heads about it. Now get back to watching The Apprentice in the few minutes a day you have between your three jobs."



This doesn't even get into two of the most bullshit answers. For the vast majoriy of Americans not into the fucked up legal fantasy world of right-to-lifers, it just seemed boggling that Bush dragged out Dred Scott as an example of a Supreme Court case he disagreed with. ("So, like, he's telling us he doesn't support slavery? Bully for him.") And let's not even bother with the psychosis of the mind of a man who can't admit error, even when directly asked to do so. We used to call those people "sociopaths," driven by delusions of self-grandeur. Instead, let's just say it's a pattern of Bush's hate of the average American.



As for Kerry, the list of his should-have-done's is as long as the list for Beckett's Krapp or Ashton Kutcher on his final night before wedding Demi. Kerry should have buried Bush in opening after opening after opening. He should have put Bush away on WMDs (despite admitting that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction, Bush kept saying we had to stop Hussein from spreading WMDs) and on the environment. And if Kerry doesn't have an answer cold on stem cell research, he isn't paying the right handlers. Kerry should have taken Bush apart. And when is Kerry going to debunk the myth of the $87 billion and say that Bush was threatening to veto any version that wasn't exactly what he wanted? When is Kerry going to debunk the myth of the "most liberal" Senator rating, which is for one year, not his entire career (remember: Kerry was to the right of Clinton on Iraq)? (Although Kerry's mocking of "compassionate conservative" ought to become a template rejoinder to "liberal"-baiting). The best one can say is that Kerry was too worried about alienating some mythical voter by beating up poor, poor Bush, so red-faced, so screechy, so lost. But still, Kerry could have ripped Bush a new one over the idiotic repetition of "You can run, but you can't hide" simply by staring at him like he's deranged. No, the Rude Pundit doesn't think Kerry lost, but Kerry could have rubbed Bush's face in his own pile of shit and held up his face so the rest of us could point and laugh.



In many, many ways, these last two debates have been about showing us all the truth about George Bush, his confusion, his anger, like a dyslexic second-grader throwing his pencil across a room 'cause he can't read "Dick and Jane." After the last debate, as nasty as it's gotten, it's gonna get a whole lot nastier, 'cause Karl Rove knows to wait until Kerry can't directly confront Bush to roll out the biggest guns. It's why Kerry needs to treat Bush like Bush treated poor Charlie Gibson.



Rumors are that Gibson visited the only gay fetish club in St. Louis after the debate, Mississippi Mud. There he stood at the bar, sipping a cosmo, trying to look inconspicuous, holding a George Bush mask tightly. Leather queen after feather queen would approach the ABC newsman and ask what he wanted. "I want someone to put on this mask and pretend I'm America," he said sadly, in memory of the President's offer. But fetish lover after fetish lover passed him by, saying they could never fuck anything that hard.

Saturday, October 09, 2004

The Debate In One Very Bad Limerick:



Last night, Bush had a little more fizz.

Iraq's not a mess, so he says.

He said, if he could,

He'd give us some wood,

But he's fucked us enough as it is.



(Tune in Monday for a more thorough "analysis" of the "debate.")

Friday, October 08, 2004

Briefly Noted:

Ann Coulter is still a cunt, and she will remain a cunt. And sometime next week the Rude Pundit will get to how and why she's cunt (again). He knows that he mentioned doing it this week, but there's only three debates. And Ann Coulter will be a cunt long after the debates end.
What Kerry Should Say, Part 2 (Rude Version):

If, at tonight's "town hall debate," when Kerry is asked, "What did you mean in the last debate by 'global test'?", he doesn't answer, "You have got to be motherfucking kidding me, ma'am. That's like asking Martin Luther King if he wipes his ass properly. That's like asking an Iraqi child with his arms blown off by American bombs if he's happy that Saddam's gone. You wanna know what's going on here? You have snorted from the Bush stash. That little bitch hunched on his stool over there has taken two words of mine and thinks he can disembowel me with them. Hey, you stuttering prick, considering your glowing academic career, no fuckin' wonder you're scared shitless of anything that has the word 'test' in it. 'Global motherfucking test' means that you can go anywhere in the goddamn world and talk to any fuckin' person, and you can back your actions up. You can say, 'Hey, look, we were right - motherfucker was gonna bomb the shit out of us.' That means you could walk up to a screaming, bleeding soldier, whose dick was ripped off by a rocket-propelled grenade, and say, 'You know what, man? Sorry about your cock, but you just helped stop the U.S.A. from bein' nuked.' That way, when that soldier is back home, lookin' at the empty space where his dick used to be, he can be proud that he lost his prick savin' the U.S. So that that soldier never has to think, 'Why the fuck was I sent to that motherfuckin' hellhole to lose my cock?' And don't you smirk at me, Bush bitch, or I'll drag you by your balls to the houses of every widow and every mom that's lost a kid and I'll yank down your panties and shove a cattle prod into your sack until you confess, motherfucker, you confess that you knew there were no weapons, that you knew al-Qaeda wasn't there, and that you just rolled the dice and hoped somethin' would turn up, but it's snake eyes, motherfucker, it's snake eyes. And I want you to stand there, pants around your ankles, as the mothers and widows spit on you or punch you or kick your sore nuts. Then I'll drag you around the world so you can grovel on the ground in front of every former ally who said you were wrong and you can bow down, head low, hands outstretched, while they piss and shit on you. And then we'll fly your sore nutted, spat-, pissed-, and shit-upon ass back to the United States and we won't let you clean up, just drag you in front of the television cameras and make you say what every fucking one of us knows: you lied. That, like Jim Jones, you made us believe in shit that was never gonna happen, and we're suckin' on that Kool-Aid, man, we're lappin' it up. Now, tell Karl Rove, who's screaming in your earpiece right now, that I'm gonna fuck his wife in front of him. 'Global test'? Those two words. That's what you're worried about? The world is burning, ma'am, do you fuckin' get that? The goddamned world is burning. And much as the Bush bitch would like you to believe that I'm co-responsible for the world burning, the world is burning on his watch. Your question is born of fear, ma'am. And that lying cockmonger over there has been very, very good at stoking your fears. It's his goal. But the world is burning. The world is burning and that fire's gonna consume us all. It's gonna end up back here in America. And while Bush may be hosing this country, he doesn't have a hydrant big enough to extinguish the flames he's fanned. And besides, why would you trust the arsonist to put out the fires? That's what I meant by 'global test'", then the debate will be worthless.

Thursday, October 07, 2004

The Bush Adminstration and Iraq - Farce and Tragedy:

In the last couple of days, the Bush administration's case for war in Iraq became a well-worn sitcom plot. You know, the daffy asshole who accidentally sets up two dates in one night 'cause he just doesn't want to disappoint the ladies. You know how it goes: the eye-rolling buddy of the asshole reminds said asshole that when he made a date with a non-descript hottie from work that he already had plans with his long-term girlfriend. Rather than do the honorable thing and cancel with the hottie or dump his girlfriend, the asshole thinks he can get away with it by meeting them at restaurants right next door to each other. You know the routine. The asshole runs back and forth between dates, using the bathroom as an excuse or getting a phone call, sometimes humorously confusing whatever the fuck he said to one date or the other. Finally, in the end, though, he is discovered and ends up getting water dumped on his head because, really, he is, after all, an asshole. And we in the audience laugh, god, how we laugh, at the absurdity, at the hubris, at the failure.



That farce is the Bush administration, with its increasingly Orwellian inability to admit failure and its increasing attempts to make "reality" conform to its beliefs. Really, when Cheney can say a weapons report that says there were no fuckin' WMDs after 1991 actually justifies the war, we're not that far from hearing that 2+2=5. Ignorance Is Strength, motherfuckers, Ignorance Is Strength, no?



To cling so tendentiously to lies is to seek to destroy democracy. You have to see democracy as an impediment to your power in order to keep on fostering lies because to believe in democracy is to believe in an electorate and to have faith in them. Otherwise, your job is to turn Ma and Pa Voter into your personal bitches, lapping at your cock and balls as you spout your cock and bull story, making them believe that to seek truth is to enable evil, that to question is to invite misery, that to deserve honesty is to fail a test of trust.



Let's cut to the Iraq War Resolution, shall we? Cleverly passed in the month before the midterm elections in 2002, when questioning the resolution would have been used as fodder against incumbents, it reads, in part, "[T]he efforts of international weapons inspectors, United States intelligence agencies, and Iraqi defectors led to the discovery that Iraq had large stockpiles of chemical weapons and a large scale biological weapons program, and that Iraq had an advanced nuclear weapons development program that was much closer to producing a nuclear weapon than intelligence reporting had previously indicated" and "[M]embers of al-Qaida, an organization bearing responsibility for attacks on the United States, its citizens, and interests, including the attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, are known to be in Iraq." There's the tragedy, here and in Iraq, that so many lies and the resulting deaths are part of the record of the United States in the 21st Century. And we know, Christ, how we know, that this resolution was written based on demonstrable lie after demonstrable lie.



(So, like, can we finally start using the word "lie"? Seriously. At some point, when every goddamn report and analysis points to something that is the polar opposite of what we were told about the "threat" of Iraq, can we finally just fuckin' break down and say, "We were lied to." And can we do it in realms beyond Left Blogsylvania? Like, isn't a lie a factually demonstrable thing? Isn't a lie an objective thing, not a matter of interpretation? If you tell your wife that you're not gay, but you are, in fact, fucking your male workout buddy in the gym shower, you are lying to your wife (and, more than likely, to yourself). If you get caught with your cock in the workout buddy's mouth, your wife wouldn't say that you are "misleading" her by assuring her that you are not gay. It is an objective fact, not open to any other spin. You have told a lie. And if you tell a lie, you are a liar. So, like, can't Peter Jennings begin a report on, say, Dick Cheney at the debate this week by saying, "Here's Joe Bushblower looking at the litany of lies Cheney recited Tuesday night." Or do we have to keep going through the tortured hoop jumping of Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball (which is a name that makes us all wish we were still on the playground in third grade) in their Newsweek report on Cheney's historical revisionism.)