Fun With Words and Numbers - Conventions Edition:

Before the political parties' conventions fade from our memories like the fever dream of a tequila binge, let's take a moment to get all "Harper's Index" funky on the speeches that were delivered at each convention. Engaging in intense scientific scrutiny, involving multifarious uses of the "Find" function on Internet Explorer, the Rude Pundit has tabulated the results of a survey of the multiple occurrences of various "buzzwords" in the political rhetoric of the speakers at each convention. First, the results, followed by the conclusions:



(Numbers are taken from the texts of the 18 speeches listed at the Democratic National Convention (DNC) website and 20 of the speeches listed at the Republican National Convention (RNC) website)



Number of times the date "September 11" (or "9/11") was mentioned:

DNC: 11 (including 3 times in reference to the "9/11 Commission")

RNC: 43 (with no mention of the 9/11 Commission)



Number of times the words "towers" or "trade center" were mentioned:

DNC: 2

RNC: 12



Number of times the words "ruins" or "rubble" were mentioned:

DNC: 0

RNC: 3



Number of times the name "Saddam" was mentioned:

DNC: 1

RNC: 43



Number of times "Iraq" or "Iraqis" were mentioned:

DNC: 28

RNC: 52



Number of times "Afghanistan" was mentioned:

DNC: 3

RNC: 30



Number of times the words "terror," "terrorist," or "terrorism" were mentioned:

DNC: 41

RNC: 100



Number of times the word "war" was mentioned (not counting titles of "World War" or "Civil War" or "Vietnam War"):

DNC: 54

RNC: 80



Number of times the words "compassion" or "compassionate" were mentioned:

DNC: 5

RNC: 19



Number of times the words "Communist" or "communism" were mentioned:

DNC: 3

RNC: 9



Number of times Winston Churchill was mentioned:

DNC: 0

RNC: 2



Number of times Franklin Roosevelt was mentioned:

DNC: 4

RNC: 9



Number of times the Democrats used the name "Bush" in reference to the President:

4



Number of times the Republicans used the name "Kerry" in reference to the Democratic nominee:

60



Conclusion: Republicans suck the cock of compassion only as long as it suits their terror-mongering, 9/11-loving, Kerry-hating asses.

God Hates Bush:

Maybe the crisis in the Sudan was the final straw for God.



God, as we know, works in mysterious ways. He gives us opportunities, tests, if you will, to see what kind of people we are. And George Bush's failure to offer the Sudanese anything more than lip service support for a U.N. that he had significantly weakened was it. The end. God no longer trusts George Bush to be His servant on Earth. How does the Rude Pundit know this? Ahh, it is obvious, for who else but God would arrange for events so huge and cataclysmic as to render instantly irrelevant to the news cycle Bush's acceptance "speech" on Thursday at the Republican convention.



If God believed anything Bush said was relevant to the lives of Americans or, indeed, the world, He could have used His Mighty Super God Breath to blow Hurricane Frances north and out to sea. But God did not. He merely allowed Frances to creep further and further towards Florida, forcing the evacuation of millions of voters in a swing state before they could listen to Bush speak. (Allowing Frances to move along on its straight path is also God's smack at Jeb Bush, who said of Hurricane Charley, "God doesn't follow the linear projections of computer models . . . This is God's way of telling us that he's almighty and we're mortal." Yeah, God wants to show just how motherfuckin' almighty he can be.)



If God had wanted the morning news programs to open this morning with coverage of Bush's speech, He could have sent an army of angels to Russia in order to whisper to the children not to run from their captors and thus precipitate a storming of the school in which they were held. And thus cause "Breaking News" to be the top of the morning broadcasts, not the President's speech. God is powerful. God is great. God could have held off the raid until the middle of the news cycle. But God did not. Because God realized that the words of George Bush are meaningless, empty utterances, the bleatings of so many sacrifical lambs.



God is not like we mere mortals here in America. God offered Bush one of those mythic opportunities on September 11, 2001, a chance to stop the violence being taken in His name. But Bush cloaked himself in God's word and defied God's will, and God does not take kindly when someone completely fucks up the test. And God doesn't like it when you can't be trusted.



God knows, God knows that Bush's words were utterly without validity. Bush has promised so, so much, he has exploited so, so many, and he has delivered on so, so little. So when Bush says, "Tonight we set a new goal: 7 million more affordable homes in the next 10 years" or when he says, "We must, and we will, confront threats to America before it is too late," God says we should not pay any attention at all to the fallen man in the center of the Garden. Why, says the Lord, should anyone listen to a single word he has to say about the future when he has fucked the present up so badly. Instead, God reminds us, through His great and horrible works, that there are things that dwarf this small man, this Bush, that make his speech look like the stilted, stumbling reading of a particularly inattentive schoolchild. God says, "There are storms and shootings. This man does not matter."



If God had wanted us to care, if He had wanted us to focus, He would have cleared the skies, He would have softened Chechen hearts, He would have halted the violence in Iraq. He would have given us larger jobs numbers. Back on August 3-4, 2000, God made sure no news was big enough to push Bush out of the spotlight. What? A large fire in Idaho? The fight between the RIAA and Napster? These are piddling events.



No, God may have wanted us to pay attention in 2000, but the Lord's clarion call is clear: ignore George Bush. God hates George W. Bush. There can be no plainer truth than that. He, too, shall pass.



P.S. Thanks to Pissed Off Patricia at BlondeSense for the heads up on the Jeb Bush quote.

The Last Vestiges of Decency:

The Rude Pundit would like to imagine the last days of Dick Cheney, in horrible, awful pain, seizing up every once in a while from the stilted beating of his twisting heart. There's Cheney, sweaty-faced, lying in his hospital bed, hoping for the sweet kiss of death to end this goddamn feeling of being knifed over and over and over. But even more than the physical pain, there's the fever visions, the constant parade of corpses that haunt him, from Iraq, from Panama, from Somalia, from Palestine, from America. Cheney can't breathe for the stench of the charred flesh, the open wounds, the rot and decay. And worst of all is the knowledge that this is what he has wrought, this Dick, this Cheney. The hate he has fomented in the name of profit, the war, the violence, returned to him thousands of times over in the staring eyes of all the corpses in that room. He just wants to die, get it over with, move on to his just reward or darkness, either of which would be preferrable to this constant nightmare, this pain, this hell that passes for life. And when he finally is slipping his mortal coil, when the monitor flatlines, the Rude Pundit wants to be there, with the defibrillator paddles, to electrocute his heart back to beating, over and over, so that Cheney has to go on living with the visions and the stink and the agony.



Last night was Karl Rove's wet dream. One could imagine Bush's top "advisor," who looks disturbingly like Peter Lorre's child killer in M. Yeah, man, there was Rove, on Fox "News" last night, smirkin' like he was jackin' off below the camera's view.



What a load of hate last night was. What a load of lies. Zell Miller, the Jed Clampett of anger, screeched like a backwoods rapist fucking Ned Beatty in his condemnation of John Kerry and his own party. But Miller, who should be dismissed as the hollow scarecrow of a man he is, couldn't bring himself down, ranting like a crazed homeless guy beggin' fer nickels on the streets of Statesboro with Chris Matthews on MSNBC. It was all just a warm-up for Cheney.



If you've ever read "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" by the Puritan preacher Jonathan Edwards, you probably had a ringing fundamentalist voice in your head speaking the words. But the thing about Edwards is that he actually spoke very calmly about the fires of Hell burning you to a crisp. It's even more frightening when the preacher sounds rational and reasonable. That's what Cheney offered last night: a vision of doom and violence masked with the rotting face of rationality, like these things are self-evident. Standing on the stage, smirking like he was drinking the blood of an oil-stained Iraqi child, Cheney basked in the glow of the crowd, choreographed to chant "Flip-flop" when John Kerry's record was attacked. Cheney, the calm Grand Poobah of cynical exploitation of government, one of the great liars ever to hold high office, stood and hated with Zen-like stillness. And the crowd went wild, booing and hooting. The demonstrable proof of a world where God either doesn't exist or stays out of human efforts is that the center of Madison Square Garden didn't open up and Dick Cheney was not sucked down into screaming hell.



Fuck it. The Rude Pundit is tired of this bullshit and bile in his throat. We should have rioted on Sunday. We should have broke through the barricades and set shit on fire. Because the awful true face of the Republican party was revealed last night. And it's time to release the hounds.



Tonight, on his Bridge to Babylon set, Bush will speak. We've had the bad cop. Get ready for the good cop.

Dick Cheney, Meet Bernard DeVoto:

What do you think Dick Cheney's other favorite Bernard DeVoto quote is? In his speech at the Republican Convention last night, Cheney quoted Devoto, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and scholar, when Cheney said, "Bernard DeVoto once wrote that when America was created, the stars must have danced in the sky." Of course, DeVoto was an intensely committed conservationist who once opined that the National Parks should be closed to all people, with the Army posted around them, until the government was willing to fully fund their preservation, so maybe he would have been a bit displeased with the Bush/Cheney desire to drill for oil in the Alaska wildlife reserve.



But, still, really, and all, do you think Cheney, who raved about the Patriot Act last night, would agree with DeVoto when he wrote, in his 1949 essay "Due Notice To the FBI," a response to the House Un-American Activities Committee, "I like a country where it's nobody's damned business what magazines anyone reads, what he thinks, whom he has cocktails with. I like a country where we do not have to stuff the chimney against listening ears and where what we say does not go into the FBI files along with a note from S-17 that I may have another wife in California. I like a country where no college-trained flatfeet collect memoranda about us and ask judicial protection for them, a country where when someone makes statements about us to officials he can be held to account. We had that kind of country only a little while ago and I'm for getting it back."



Or do you think Cheney, with the Christian faithful cheering him on as he spoke at his pulpit-like podium, would appreciate this 1937 DeVoto quote: "I was brought up in a religion which taught me that man was imperfect but might expect God's mercy–but I was surrounded by a revealed religion founded by a prophet of God, composed of people on their way to perfection, and possessed of an everlasting gospel. I early acquired a notion that all gospels were false and all my experience since then has confirmed it . . . I distrust absolutes. Rather, I long ago passed from distrust of them to opposition. And with them let me include prophecy, simplification, generalization, abstract logic, and especially the habit of mind which consults theory first and experience only afterward." Do you think Cheney would honor a man who insists on independent thought and the ability to learn from experience (better known in Republican dogma as a "flip-flop")? Do you think the conventioneers, who seem to be able to make no distinction between the past and the present, would love the poetry of DeVoto that Cheney invoked and hate the writer? Let's hand them out copies of Mark Twain's Letters From the Earth, a vicious attack on religion that was edited together by Bernard DeVoto. Yeah, give all the delegates a copy and see what they think.



(More on Cheney and Zell Miller coming soon.)

The Terminator Vs. the Bushwomen:

There's some great leather bars in Chelsea, the Meatpacking District, and other areas of New York City. There's really festive ones, off the radar, where ripped queens in chaps, muscle shirts, biker gear, what have you, cruise each other for a night of fond fisting and sling sex. The next time Arnold Scwarzenegger uses the term "girlie men" in a speech or in answer to a question, his Teutonic, jack-booted ass needs to be dragged to an alley behind a leather bar where these "girlie men" can fuck him hard and make him scream, "I'm da girl, I'm da girl" in between forced blow jobs and anal reamings and then leave him, jizz covered, sore-assed, pants around his ankles, to prop himself up and smoke a cigar, never thinking of that tubular tobacco in the same way as he sucks on the tip with the hole in it.



Christ, what a load of crap that fake demi-man exploded onto the crowd of slavering white people at Madison Square Garden last night. When he proudly announced his life as an average American immigrant story, maybe somewhere a Guatemalan maid who works on a cash basis in an Atlanta mansion was mopping up the kitchen and could hear the harshly accented California governor from the TV in the entertainment room. Maybe a little radio played Herr Governor's words out into the fields of Mexican maquiladoras picking corn in Indiana. Maybe a group of Haitian workers could listen through the din of the steam in the laundries of Brooklyn. Maybe from sea to shining sea all the non-white immigrants could hear Schwarzenegger's words and for a moment believe the bright, glittering lie that supporting Republicans is the only way to success. Then their bosses would order them back to work or be put out on the street. Man, the desperate exploitative steps a rich fascist will take to protect his tax cuts.



Meanwhile, the Bush Twins, Jenna and Barbara, demonstrated for the world to see that they are destined for coked out oblivion, being fuck puppets for celebrity boys who wanna tell their posses they had presidential pussy, and deep, long-term therapy to deal with the scars of being so complicit in their own whoredom. When Jenna said that it was time for "payback" for being "embarassed" by their parents, God, didn't you hope against hope that some synapse would flare up in her brain and she'd say, "Holy fucking shit, there was the night Daddy came home, blasted out of his mind on Peruvian blow and tequila and chased me around wearing nothing but a cowboy hat and boots and a raging hard-on, screaming, 'Daddy loves you, Daddy loves you, you got a lovin' Daddy,' and Mom had to pull out a rifle and tell him to put his pants on or she was gonna call Grandma and then Daddy collapsed by the pool, pissing himself and screaming, 'Mama's gonna beat me somethin' fierce' before he vomited down his chest and all over the Spanish tile and when he started bleeding out of his nose, Mom called Grandpa, who sent over his private ambulance, the one on-call for just this emergency, to take Daddy to the hospital to pump him with adrenaline so he didn't go into a coma and embarass everyone. Again."



Yeah, it was quite a night, Laura talking about war, about how Lincoln and Roosevelt didn't want to go to war, but knew they had to, conveniently leaving out whether or not Truman or Kennedy or Johnson or Nixon or Reagan or Daddy Bush went to war because they had to.



Gird your loins, gang. Cheney's on tonight. Conveniently, a cold front is moving through NYC, so when Cheney speaks, the air will chill at the sound of his voice.

Oh, Thank Heaven For September 11:

Let us say, and why not, that in the year 2000, the Supreme Court of the United States, in all its infinite wisdom, installed a six-foot high steaming pile of shit as President of this country. Oh, sure, some might say that a six-foot high steaming pile of shit is unqualified to be President, but the Supreme Court said so and Al Gore walked away, saying, "For the good of the nation, I will not challenge the right of a six-foot high steaming pile of shit to take office." In the first few months of the six-foot high steaming pile of shit's tenure, things in the nation would have gone down the toilet, much as they actually did, since, you know, a six-foot high steaming pile of shit is not noted for its decision-making abilities. Then September 11, 2001 happened, and at that moment of deep shock and hurt and violence (remember: we originally thought there might be as many as 10,000 people dead), in the confusion and anger, a six-foot high steaming pile of shit could have been propped on top of the ruins of the World Trade Center on September 14 and the nation would have rallied around that six-foot high steaming pile of shit because we needed something to comfort us. A six-foot high steaming pile of shit would have been what was available, and, thus, a six-foot high steaming pile of shit would have been our hero.



Goddamn, the Republicans must be thrilled that 9/11 happened, because what the fuck else would they have to talk about? Yesterday, the Republican Convention was all war, all the time, with Rudy Giuliani, whose post-mayoral speaker fees went through the roof because 3000 people died on 9/11, mentioned September 11 no less than 10 times in his speech. John McCain consigned (at least) hundreds of more Americans to screaming, horrible death and injury in Iraq with his strange, mad rantings about how we have to demonstrate we love freedom by killing those who don't. (This is not to mention the pressure valve release moment of McCain dissing Michael Moore, which allowed the crowd to boo, hiss, and scream at Moore, as well as begin a bizarre chant of "Four Moore years." It was one of the only times during the day that we saw the true face of Republican hate.)



Since George Bush's "leadership" after September 11 is what's being touted as his great strength, let us remember not only the infamous seven-minute slow burn of "Oh, fuck, I'm gonna shit myself in front of schoolchildren" in Florida, but let us remember that the President was on the run, hopping around the country like a jackrabbit on acid, thinking it sees wolves everywhere. The "leadership" of Bush ain't about standing on the rubble three days later. It's about a man who chose to run away. At least a six-foot high steaming pile of shit would have stayed put. And in the days after we finally found out that we still had a President? Why, we know, we know now that he and his administration immediately set about trying to bomb Iraq, no matter what. Yeah, man, that's leadership. Take advantage when everyone's distracted. Sweep up later.



What the Republicans promise America on their first night is terror and fear, terror and fear. The problem with the Democrats and their nauseatingly repetitive invocation of Kerry's 'Nam experience is that the Dems were trusting the public to make the connection: Oh, yeah, Kerry served, Bush didn't. Instead, the connection needs to be made explicit, otherwise the whole emphasis on 'Nam is useless: when push came to shove, who ran? Who kept on running scared every chance he had to show he was tough?



September 11, 2001 is just a tool. One doesn't need to wrap oneself in the flag anymore. One just needs to coat oneself in the ashes of the towers, ashes filled with burnt flesh and bone. Bush is attempting to make a great tragedy into his greatest asset: just think, if it hadn't been for 9/11, we'd have never known what a "great" leader our President is. Thank Jesus we've had that opportunity.

Sunday Nowhere Near the Park Without George:

So the Rude Pundit marched. Along with, depending on your news source, 500,000 others, 200,000 others, or 120,000 others. Either way, it was a hot motherfucker of a day, and if the march had been on the West Side Highway, where there's even less shade than the precious little on 7th Avenue, there would have surely been riots. Either way, there were too many vendors in the streets, from the obvious non-believers trying to score a buck to the desperately cash-free groups like the Revolutionary Workers Party and whatever variation on Socialists happens to be hawking buttons and bumper stickers. Either way, everyone was exploiting the massive crowd to the fullest extent allowed by socialists engaged in a capitalist enterprise. Either way, it was still disconcerting to see vanloads of cops ride through Union Square, many of them carrying rifles, all of them with billy clubs. Either way, it was either a great day or completely worthless (the protest is already off the front page of MSNBC's website) or some combination of the two, with the protesters just reminding themselves how much they give a shit. Either way, the Rude Pundit did not get laid at the end of the day - he won't say getting fucked was his first purpose in marching, but he will not say it was his last.



Yes, it was fun, with the great street theatre of Billionaires for Bush (who are getting lots of media time without the media understanding how radical they are, sort of like Dave Chappelle, where everyone thinks it's so cute and funny and thus de-fangs them) and the best counterprotest group, Communists for Kerry, running through the crowd dressed as Che Guevara and Trotsky (the Rude Pundit thinks they're a bunch of misguided tools who are doomed to Swift Boat Vet like bouts of self-recrimination, but, c'mon, it's funnier than Dennis Miller). And, yeah, the costumes were fun, with the dancing penis (who doesn't love a dancing penis? Oh, sorry, "Dick" for those not getting the Cheney joke), the giant dragon, the Code Pink ladies. The most transgressive may have been the group of women and male cross dressers who were decked out in fifties garb, chanting pro-choice slogans, one of whom was outfitted as a waitress holding a bent coathanger as she yelled. However none of these women would agree to leave the march in order to have a quick suck and fuck on a side street with the Rude Pundit. He thinks he could have gotten one of the cross-dressers, who was giving the Rude Pundit the winky eye, but men sweat so much in that kind of sun.



Along with the pro-choicers, there were those whose tangential issues just made one want to shout, "Focus, people, focus." "Free Mumia" is a fine (if a bit outdated) sentiment. Sure, maybe Aristide oughta be allowed back in Haiti. But, you know, we're kinda marchin' for a pretty big purpose, no? Oh, and sure, there were the sad, small group of Greens, promising us that our grandkids would thank us if we voted for . . . who? And the previously mentioned Revolutionary Workers Party, who threw Bush, Kerry, and Nader into the same trashbin of leadership. And, oh, the stacks of paper thrown at us, pamphlets and newspapers and guides, so much of it useless and badly written, so much of it trampled. The Rude Pundit tried to convince a young woman hawking The Militant that he would love to buy her a beer after the march and they could express their outrage at the capitalist imperialists, who wouldn't allow a Socialist candidate to debate Bush and Kerry, by roughly balling in an alley with a full view of the Stock Exchange, but such was her laser focus on getting subscriptions that she did not have time for such discourse.



So the march went on. And on. And on. Maybe a half a million people. Some with signs listing the others who wanted to be there but couldn't. Many with cell phones, calling friends and relatives to say, "Hey, watch C-SPAN, I'm passin' by cameras. You see me wavin'? You see me? You Tivo it? Cool." Many, many others who were watching on the sidelines who, for one reason or another, were inspired to grab some bit of corrugated cardboard to scrawl a "Fuck Bush" sign and join in the march. Many, many more of us who talked about how the real work was still to be done, up until and especially on Election Day. Many, many of us spoke to each other, in between chants and songs (if the Rude Pundit is forced to say, "Hey, Ho, George Bush has got to go" one more time, he will go batshit insane), about how this was all about the energy of the moment, about how things had gotten so bad so quickly in so many ways, that we could actually focus in on one man, one election. Had Bill Clinton ever inspired this energy against him in the streets?



Oh, how pissed Fox "News" must have been that there were no riots, relatively few arrests. Oh, how the cameras of the RNC must have been focused crazily all over the place looking for something they could use in ads. But, shockingly, horrifyingly for Fox, for the GOP, most, most of the maybe half a million were a spectrum of America. They're gonna have their party, they're gonna go up in the polls, but at some point, one way or another they're gonna have to deal with that maybe half a million.

Hey, Take Your Miscalculation and Shove It Up Your Lying Ass:

Here's why George Bush is such a pussy, a prison punk, a bitch: In what must be the least interesting interview ever done in the New York Times, Bush admits he made a "miscalculation of what the conditions would be" in Iraq. Now, see, usually a "miscalculation" is something like this: "Dear, you forgot to carry the one when you were balancing the checkbook. Looks like we'll have to tighten our belts this month" or "Gee, bud, she didn't say she was your girlfriend, but I guess it was hard for her to talk with my cock in her mouth." See that? Those are miscalculations. You might bounce a check or get bounced on the pavement, but your "miscalculations" don't end up in hundreds of Americans being blown up and shot. Bush may as well have said, "Ooops. My bad."



Bush's miscalculations used to just cause companies to go belly up. Once one has killed a few corporations, one needs to move on to other kinds of killing, no? Of course, the word "miscalculation" assumes that there were some "calculations" going on. And of course there were, but they had nothing to do with Iraq or the Iraqis. They only had to do with the election.



When pressed to "analyze" and "think" about other "mistakes" made in the occupation of Iraq, Bush demonstrated his usual erudition in saying that he would leave it to "historians" to analyze that. Ahh, now that was calculated because it allows Bush to say, "Not my fault. It's all up for interpretation." And with the very real possibility of taking on Iran as the 52nd state of the U.S., one might imagine that reflecting on "errors" in Iraq might be worthwhile. But then again, you're not President of the United States.



Isn't it wonderful to have an administration that's such a mass of contradictions. Like opposing declaring that global warming is occurring because of industrial emissions, yet having the administration put out a report saying that humans are causing global warming. Or opposing campaign finance reform until the middle of an election when, suddenly, you want to radically alter the finance laws you, ya know, opposed to ban ads from political action groups. One supposes that that indicates complexity, not confusion. Depth, not refusal to acknowledge reality. Leadership, not political convenience.



Goddamn, it must be nice to never have to actually be right about anything and to still have legions of believers. It's so pathetic. It's like watching all the doomsday cult leaders at the end of the last millenium, screaming and screaming about the end of the world, fucking all of their hot male and female followers because it doesn't matter who gets fucked anymore when the world is ending. And then watching the sad, sorry ass sight of all of those believers, so soundly fucked, when the world doesn't end. What do you do if you're one of them? Do you make the horrifying leap to, "Oh, shit, I just got conned and fucked? I'm outta here"? Or do you take the easy route and keep on following dear leader as he promises you more doomsdays to come?



Sweet Jesus, we can't wait for the GOP Convention.

Swift Boat Vets -- Sooo Five Minutes Ago:

'Scuse us, but are we done here? Are we finished? Can we move this thing along? It was a nice distraction, a little turn off the main highway and all, but, really, and c'mon, isn't it time we got back on the map?



Let's see where we stand here:

Benjamin Ginsberg, who sports a head so shiny that small planets revolve around it, an attorney for Bush, resigned from the campaign because he was also "advising" the Swift Boat Vets for "Truth." On CNN this morning, Ginsberg brought it home, using every chance he had to say how fucking wonderful George Bush and "his" agenda are, taking the President's cock out of his mouth only to praise the "decorated veterans" who he represents.



John O'Neill, one of the authors of Unfit to Command, the bestseller devoted to the monomaniacal rantings of the Swift Boat vets, claimed he was never in Cambodia and that Kerry had to be lying because the border couldn't be crossed by the river, was caught on tape telling Richard Nixon, "I was in Cambodia." And, in what surely must be one of the great "hominah, homninah" moments, Alan Colmes, on Fox "News," revealing a heretofore unseen spine, drilled O'Neill with his own words, with O'Neill trying to deny he had said what, well, he had said.



And then there's the bizarre, seemingly self-destructive behavior of the Swift Boat Vets. There's the Oregon prosecutor, Alfred French, who may have committed ethics violations for signing an affidavit stating that he witnessed events involving Kerry that he had, in fact, only heard about. There's Larry Thurlow, the Swift Boat Vet who, in essence, says his own Bronze Star must be based on a lie because it's the same report that says the boats came under fire.



All that and not a single contemporaneous document that proves anything but the official reports on Kerry's service record. Why are we wasting time here?



It's simple. It's the Republican modus operandi. Find some nutcase or nutcases screaming on the corner. Clean 'em up and make 'em presentable. Give 'em a ton of money and exposure (it helps if your movement owns a well-financed "publishing" house that's one notch above a vanity press). And let your attack nutzoids in the media do the rest. It's the same reason that Paula Jones received any notice whatsoever. It's the same reason that anyone even thought twice that Vince Foster might have been murdered. If the Rude Pundit had the money, he could finance a book and tour for someone like Robin Lowman, who, it has been claimed, was forced to have an illegal abortion by George W. Bush in 1971. See? Isn't this game fun? Doesn't it help us progress as a society? Doncha love talkin' about the issues?



The Swift Boat Vets are a group of sad, deluded old men, deserving of pity as surely as they are deserving of contempt. Instead of getting the help they so critically need, they have been exploited by the supporters of the President (and, now, the President himself). Their madness has become mainstream; their mass hysteria allowed to spread. Can we call it done now? Can the Vets go back to simmering in their paneled dens, calling each other in the desperate dark of night, whispering in whiskey hushes about how they and only they know the truth?

For Protesting the GOP Convention:

As New York City girds its loins for the protests at the Republican Convention (Motto: "Look, we found some black people to show you"), with thousands of cops, Secret Service and others readying for violence, the reasons to protest multiply, even as many on the left are saying that protesting plays right into the hands of the Republicans, who claim they will attempt to portray any civil disobedience as connected to the Democratic Party. In fact, these reasons have little to do with what will be protested. To wit:



Protest because they don't want us to protest. The FBI is questioning potential protesters under the wonderful, warm blanket excuse of seeking information on "plots" to disrupt the convention, which, you know, and c'mon, means "protests." As John Ashcroft prepares to shove the Patriot Act up the assholes of every leftist he can, with the preacher-like promise of protecting the public from "terror," we can be assured that "terror" has now become equated with "dissent," just like, so long ago, anyone who protested the Vietnam War was a "pinko" and a "Commie." Add to this reports that the NYPD "is sending young, scruffy-looking officers to infiltrate protest groups" at the convention. Add to this New York City's discriminatory efforts to prevent any kind of demonstration on the Great Lawn in Central Park because the fucking grass might get bent. Everything is being done by those in power to try to squelch protest. Don't let the fuckers win.



Protest because it'll piss off the right-wing media, who are already condemning the protests. Last night, on Fox "News", Bill O'Reilly had New York Democrat Jerrold Nadler on to talk about Nadler's opposition to the FBI's interviews of "radicals." O'Reilly was dismissive of the protests, with video playing that showed violent WTO demonstrations and riots, and O'Reilly said that the protesters are "guys wanting to hurt people," adding a caveat of "potential" violence. Also on Fox, Michelle "I Could Not Look More Like a Cartoon Gook If I Tried" Malkin said, "We know that a lot of these anti-war groups and anti-Bush groups are tied to guerrilla movements, guerrilla tactics."



Protest because it'll show the country how much hatred George Bush has engendered. Here's Bill "I Couldn't Look More Like Elmer Fudd If I Tried" Schneider on CNN: "The conventional wisdom is that if Americans see disruptions at the convention, they'll get furious at the protesters and that may lead them to vote for President Bush. I don't think so, because I remember the 1968 convention with Hubert Humphrey and the Democrats, where there were disruptions. The voters certainly condemned the protesters, but at the same time they looked at Hubert Humphrey and the Democrats and said if we reelect the Democrats, we're asking for four more years of trouble. I think that disruptions and protests at the Republican convention could lead to the same conclusion. It would reinforce President Bush's image as a divider and Americans would begin to ask wouldn't it be very risky to reelect him for four years?"



Protest to show 'em all that all the fear and intimidation and hate has not worked. Goddamn, how the Bush administration has tried to scare us into staying in our houses, shutting up, and watching Fox "News" like good little demi-citizens. Goddamn, how they've waved the threat of terrorism in our faces, like fundamentalist preachers wave the threat of hell and damnation. Goddamn, how they've tried to suppress our voices, our bodies, our libidoes, our hearts. Fuck 'em. Show 'em that you are a goddamn member of a goddamn democracy and somehow, you are going to be heard.



And as for those who would commit violence, here's what the plan oughta be: have people assigned to gather others to surround and stop anyone who might bring out the bricks and bats. Get dozens of other demonstrators to disarm them, calm them, bring them into the rest of the crowd. Or eject 'em.



The Rude Pundit has been invited to no less than three different protests in NYC. Let's open it up: someone convince the Rude Pundit why he should avoid them.

Against Protesting the GOP Convention:

The Rude Pundit is not opposed to protesting. He has marched too many times to count - he marched for divestment in South Africa during the days of apartheid; he marched with Sister Helen Prejean, pre-Dead Man Walking, against the death penalty; he has chanted at rallies calling for an end to racism after the L.A. riots; he was featured on local news holding a "No Blood For Oil" sign at a Persian Gulf War protest back in the day; he has stood with pro-choice protesters, making sure family planning clinics stayed open against a tide of Randall Terry's Operation Rescue nutcases; he once yelled, pithily, "You're stupid" right into the face of Dan Quayle; and he's marched against this Iraq War. Not that the Rude Pundit gives a shit whether you believe him or not, but he's got the cred to say this: he believes protesting the GOP convention is useless at best, and, at worst, dangerous to the cause of getting rid of George Bush.



The Republicans are salivating at the prospect of all the giant puppets, idiotically dressed attention-needers, and the lefty thugs beggin' for a fight. The vast, vast majority of the tens of thousands of demonstrators will be the "average" people, silenced by four years of Bush's hegemonic control of political discourse, people who want, for chrissake, to finally show that they deserve to be heard. Goddamn, it's a beautiful thing, a giant protest, when the tides of people keep flowing as a unified whole, when everyone you meet has the same beliefs as you, when there is an instant bond. Sure, it can be goddamned hot (or cold), your feet get sore, and your voice gets hoarse, and the speakers can get repetitious, but ultimately you are there to say that you have a voice that counts, that you are part of the democracy. Fuckin A, man, it's so fuckin' beautiful.



And all it takes is one fucked up group of anarchists with a giant papier-mache George Bush with a giant papier-mache cock fucking a giant papier-mache Statue of Liberty in her giant papier-mache ass to fuck up the whole vibe. Oh, sure, it's lots of fun when you're out there and the street theatre group comes out to perform its latest play, Cheney Wants To Shock Your Dick, complete with rubber masks and a guy in the Abu Ghraib hood and rags (although, c'mon, you roll your eyes at how literal and didactic the whole production is). But then some asshole decides to burn Donald Rumsfeld in effigy or something. And you know what makes the news: not you and your kids, out there, saying they're afraid they're gonna be drafted; not your neighbor, out there because he can't find a job that has health insurance; nope, none of that. What makes the news is the papier-mache fuck puppet, the burning Rumsfeld, the Cheney mask.



Oh, how the Republicans want there to be violence, how they want the Starbuckseses near Madison Square Garden to have their windows broken, how they want flags to be incinerated in the steets. You know, you know in your heart of hearts, dear hippie-wannabes (sorry, that time's over, gang), that groups have been infiltrated or entire groups created, just so someone can light the spark that makes the explosion. And if you haven't made your Lyndie England bondage costume, complete with a prisoner on a leash, that some COINTELPRO-type has decided to do it. Or some Fox "News" exec who needs good images. And then, how deliciously will the GOP tie Kerry, who was a protester, as we all know, to these protests. See the Democrats? Do you wanna be with the fuck puppets and the flag burners or do you wanna be with the nice guys? they'd be saying.



If the Rude Pundit was some kind of magician, he'd halt all the marches and protests in New York. He's take all the money that's being spent on travel, on legal challenges to the obvious discriminatory actions of the city of New York, on the organizing of the protests, and he'd put out TV ads and flyers that say something like, "Silence=Contempt". Yep, he'd start a campaign of silence. Of ignoring the hate spewing from the Garden. Ignore the bullies. Of denying them the chance to portray us as a bunch of lunatics who would dare protest a "sitting President." Make the press coverage about how all these groups are protesting with their absence. Have petitions signed by thousands and thousands of people stating that they are expressing their opposition to the GOP by refusing to acknowledge their presence. Yes, some will try to spin the lack of protest as a sign of support. But the message can be controlled. And empty streets filled with hundreds of cops is a pretty frightening little image, no? Also, it's a way of telling Mayor Bloomberg to go fuck himself with his protester discount buttons.



When the convention is over, stage the largest, loudest goddamn protest march ever fuckin' seen.



The Rude Pundit has been invited to no less than three different protests in NYC. Let's open it up: someone convince the Rude Pundit why he should attend.

Next Stop Is Vietnam (And a Brief Note About Why Bob Dole Oughta Be Sodomized With an Ink Pen):

The Rude Pundit has said that the true goal of the Swift Boat Vets for Truth has nothing to do with Kerry's war record; it's actually about the psyche of the vets themselves, suppressing the horrible knowledge that their government betrayed them as surely as a lover you catch fucking the houseboy. And, therefore, what they really want to attack is John Kerry, the "wild-eyed" hippie activist, and not Kerry, the soldier. Check out their new ad, titled "Sellout.".



In "Sellout," Kerry's testimony about war crimes in Vietnam before the Senate Armed Services Committee in 1971 is quoted out of context. Where Kerry is talking about testimony already given about atrocities, "Sellout" gives only the part of the quote that makes it seem as if Kerry is speaking these things for the first time. (Kerry didn't only say, "They had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads," but had attributed the stories to "honorably discharged" vets who had testified at previous hearings.) But that fact's been argued about over and over.



The ad also features other vets, today, saying things like, "It hurt me . . . He betrayed us in the past . . . It demoralized us." They make reference to torture in 'Cong prison camps. But they do not in any way refute what Kerry testified. And this time, in this ad, they do not say Kerry is lying. And that's because the facts are that atrocities occurred - all of the things Kerry spoke out about - and are part of the history of the Vietnam war. So what galls these Swift Boat Vets and others about Kerry's testimony? It's that he told the truth, that he was a whistleblower, that he told those in power, "Here's this fucked-up, awful, disgusting piece of shit war you are forcing us to fight and here's the fucked-up, awful, disgusting things we've been doing in your name."



Put it this way: let's suppose that Joseph Darby, the soldier who blew the whistle on the torture at Abu Ghraib (and now hiding from death threats), decided to run for office. Let's say that a group called "Iraq Prison Guards for Truth" ran an ad with all kinds of sinister music, with former Abu Ghraib guards saying shit like "Joseph Darby betrayed us." The Rude Pundit would hope beyond hope that the majority of people would decide the "Iraq Prison Guards for Truth" was a bunch of batshit insane, crazed monkeys who should be locked up for the public good.



What the Swift Boat Vets are saying is that John Kerry was supposed to shut up, that Kerry and the hundreds of vets who testified the truth about what was going on in 'Nam had no right to out the horrors that many (good pundit caveat: not all) soldiers perpetrated. And why did Kerry speak out? Because he wanted the motherfucking useless goddamned war to end. He wanted to save lives from being wasted in a war that ripped America apart. But, like every whistleblower before and after, like every cop who ever turned in cops on the take, like every FBI agent who said that the FBI was negligent on 9/11, Kerry was treated like a pariah by those who feared what he had to say.



So, in total, Kerry stands accused by the Swift Boat Vets and their toadies in the media of not being injured too badly, of not being heroic enough, and of telling the truth to the American public. God, what a pussy Kerry must be. (Can you imagine how vast the conspiracy must be to cover up for Kerry since every goddamn extant record supports him?)



Side note: Oh, how we were all suckered by Bob Dole, thinking he was just that delightful old guy who is so fuckin' funny on The Daily Show and alluding to jackin' off to Britney Spears in Pepsi ads. But we forget, oh, how we forget, what a vicious, belittling, egomanical gimp he is. All shaky and shit, quivering hand clinging to that goddamn pen for sweet life, Dole says Kerry should "apologize" for whistleblowing and that Kerry only had "superficial wounds" which got him the Purple Hearts. Alright, motherfuckers who support Dole on this, are you ready to open it all up? Take back every Purple Heart ever given to less-than-gimp-creating wounds? Next time we see lovable Bob Dole making us think about his withered cock getting all half-stiff from a double dose of Viagra so he can lamely fuck Libby in her "Red Cross," let's remember that he really gets it up, high and hard, when he's spreading the hate.

George Bush, You Just Got Served:

Aww, yeah. It’s on now, motherfuckers, it's on now. Deciding that it was time to treat the Bush campaign like he treated whores in Saigon, John Kerry went to town on the President and the Swift Boat Vets for "Truth" in a speech yesterday to the International Association of Fire Fighters. In so many words, Kerry said, in essence, "Bitch, you talk smack about me, I'm gonna fuck you in the ass until you bleed. You wanna fuck with me? Don't send your attack poodles out - come at me like a man so I can turn you into the little bitch you are, you fuckin' deserter." Of course, nothing else Kerry said in that speech was reported, including promises to make up for the cuts in funding for new equipment that Bush has inflicted on fire fighters.



This has been a heady week for those who believe that Bush should be locked into his compound in Crawford for the rest of his life, forced to play cowboy until he actually develops a callous or two on his hands or until he learns to ride a friggin' bike. There's the Washington Post article that said one of the Swift Boat Vets is contradicting his official records from the war when he says there was no enemy fire on the day Kerry saved a fellow soldier. There's the New York Times article today that pretty much takes apart the whole group and its motives. And there's the delicious other tidbits, like the fact that the Iraqi soccer team, doing so well at the Olympics, is angry at being used as a tool by the Bush campaign, like the retiring GOP House Intelligence Committee Vice Chairman calling the Iraq war a "mess" that wasn't justified. Whee, what fun, what fun.



Of course, this morning, Fox "News" spent an hour on the Swift Boat Vets' ad, interviewing their leader, John O'Neill, about Kerry's criticism and the Times article, and asking him such fair and balanced questions as, "What's the truth?" Because, you know, the way to get at the truth is simple: you just ask the person being accused of lying what the truth is. During the "interview," the ad itself played repeatedly on the screen - one guesses to avoid being disturbed by the strange, evil grin and too-squinty eyes of blonde E.D. "Murdoch's Spoogebag #15" Hill. However, what was fascinating about the interview was the spin being given: that Kerry said the ads should be taken off the air (Kerry has not said that). And the question of the origins of the group - whether it was a Republican creation or not. What Kerry said was that the group was "funded" by Republicans, and even O'Neill admitted that they would not have been able to get their message out without that influx of cash. In other words, Bob Perry found a fringe group he thought would damage Kerry and help Bush and gave them oodles of money because otherwise they'd have been ignored. Fox's spin, however, was that Kerry accused the group of being created by Republicans.



But Kerry watched Dukakis get fucked by Lee Atwater and the Bushes, and he ain't gonna pretend he ain't bein' attacked. He watched Gore ignore all the lies being spouted about him and watched the media roll over and let its balls be licked by the Republicans. Kerry ain't gonna play that game. Ain’t gonna be no punk ass smile and wave and brush-off from Kerry – motherfucker is actin’ like the country’s at stake. And he ain’t gonna pretend that politics makes everything fair – he knows that he’s gotta answer the message, and he's gotta answer it by showin' he's got the biggest balls.



Karl Rove must be havin' a seance to get advice from the dessicated corpse of Lee Atwater on a break from its regular pitchfork sodomizings and shit-eating in hell. And what a pussy Bush is being, as Josh Marshall points out, not even letting his press Robocop answer a direct question about the ads. (By the way, scroll down for Josh learning a little from the Rude Pundit, talking about the "bitch slap" theory of political rhetoric.)



Man, it's gonna be a vicious, drunken bar fight to the finish, ain't it? Let's hope the electorate doesn't get hit in the eye by shards of glass from the broken bottles.

Why Bill O'Reilly Ought To Be Sodomized With a Microphone (Part 72):

Bill O'Reilly, Fox "News" commentator and fuck fantasy of every beaten housewife in America, is obsessed with his confrontation with New York Times columnist and Princeton economist Paul Krugman on CNBC over a week ago. O'Reilly has been playing clips of the interview, showing him presumably beating up on Krugman, and roaring like a lion over the body of a gazelle. God, it's so pathetic because what's going on here is good old class warfare: "Look, folks," O'Reilly is saying, "you fantasy working class that I believe I represent, look at your hero open a six-pack of whoop-ass up on the tweedy Ivy-Leaguer from the New York Times." Last night, substitute host John Gibson played it again (with part two to air tonight).



The biggest problem here, and the thing that makes O'Reilly so sad that if he were a dog, we'd be makin' that long drive to the pound with him, is that Krugman kicked O'Reilly's fuckin' loudmouthed ass and then pissed on him while O'Reilly was lying on the ground, flailing like a 1950s gang member with a cut jugular, even in the excerpts O'Reilly plays on his show. It takes a genuinely tyrannical evil to dupe people into thinking your failures are victories.



But don't take O'Reilly's or the Rude Pundit's word for it. Read the entire one-hour show from CNBC's transcripts. Sure, you may have heard excerpts on Al Franken's Air America radio show. But only the full hour does the obnoxiousness any kind of justice. Click over to it here. (This entry used to contain the full transcript, but it was cluttering things up.)

Voyage of the Damned:

As CNN's Aaron "These Spectacles Make Me Look Real Smart" Brown, in one of his faux insightful commentaries, intoned last night, "We can't seem to escape Vietnam." Brown and, later, Jeff Greenfield were discussing Moveon.org's ad calling on the Bush campaign to condemn the Swift Boat Vets for Truth's ad about John Kerry. At the beginning of Moveon.org's ad, an announcer gives a thumbnail version of Bush's missing service in the Texas Air National Guard, and it also includes the words of John McCain, that all-purpose hawk who is used for propaganda purposes like so many prisoners of the Hanoi Hilton, calling on Bush to condemn the Swift Boat ad. McCain also called on Kerry to condemn the Moveon.org ad, which Kerry did.



First off, it needs to be said that Moveon.org's ad sucks. Its copy sucks. Its production sucks. Its methods suck. Its rhetoric sucks. Its just a great huge sack of suck. If you wanna make an ad attacking Bush's Vietnam "service," then make that ad. Bush's war "record" is fair game. If you wanna make an ad exploiting poor, gimpy John McCain one more time to say that the President should condemn the Swift Boat Vets (piece of shit) ad, then make that one. This current one is just potshots and confusing bullshit, and it's final call, of "George Bush: Take the ad off the air," smacks of censorship. Would Moveon.org listen if John Kerry (or John McCain) told them to take their ad off the air? In fact, has John Kerry said that the Swift Boat Vets ad should be censored? And it gives the Swift Boat Vets far more credit than they deserve.



But let's get back to the issue at hand: why Vietnam? Well, the unspoken anxiety beneath all of this is the gut-wrenching, bowel-clenching fear and knowledge that, once more, we're into the breach with Iraq. That same horror is rising, a lot faster this time because of the "lessons" of Vietnam, that we are fighting for no good reason, and it's the nature of Americans to cling to their leaders like the starved children Ignorance and Want at the feet of the Ghost of Christmas Present. The violence against protesters during 'Nam was, in large measure, out of fear that they were right, that the government had lied and that thousands of soldiers died for that lie. In order to believe that, one had to overturn everything one had been taught about the innate goodness of America. Fuck, it's just easier to ignore it and spit on the protesters and say they deserve Kent State. Just like it's easier to beat up a homosexual than admit that you yourself are a fag.



We have to keep fighting over Vietnam because it's a way of projecting our fears about Iraq away from our current selves. Vietnam was a fucked-up, shitty goddamned war, a useless, murderous, maniacal policy pursuit that accomplished nothing but death, destruction, and dissent. People who volunteered to fight were suckered by the lies of the Johnson and Nixon administrations, that we were fighting some ultimate evil there before it made its way to our shores. The soldiers there committed atrocities, slaughtered innocents, and, yeah, all you John Fuckin' Waynes, shot people in the back. It was that kind of war, like every other kind of war, a degradation to humanity. The Swift Boat Vets have to condemn John Kerry because, in the end, he resisted that existential nausea of doing nothing when there is so much you can do. The Swift Boat Vets and the cowards in the Bush administration, many of whom supported the Vietnam war without firing a goddamn shot, have to cling to the myth that there was some good in fighting Vietnam because they have to cling to the myth that there's some good in fighting in Iraq. They have to believe it's good because America says it's good. Kerry embodies our national ambivalence about Vietnam and, indeed, about Iraq.



We are damned, yes we are, we are the condemned, because we forget the past, because we demand that the past be re-written, because if we don't fight the past, we have to justify our existence in the here and now. What horror that would be.



(And let's be clear here, Fox "News" fuckfaces who want to propagate the myth that John Kerry only served for 4 months in 'Nam: if Kerry was in the shit, facing down fire for one fucking day, it was one day longer than your man.)



(Oh, and let's be doubly clear: there's a vast world of difference between people who dodged the draft because they opposed the war - that's called principle; supporting the war but refusing to fight when you could? That's called being a little bitch.)

And Then, As If To Prove the Rude Pundit Correct . . .:

So yesterday, after an entry in which the Rude Pundit talked about how shamelessly the Bush Administration merges the campaign with policy, how clear the script is, how cheerily it sees no distinction between serving the "public" and serving themselves, like a dog that figures out people will look away when it licks its own anus, President Bush made a major policy announcement on the redeployment of troops from Europe and Asia. But he did it in the context of what seems to be a campaign speech to the cranky old fuckers of the VFW (motto: "We were soldiers once, bitches; now change our Depends"). Bush went through the usual litany of lies and spin connecting Iraq and September 11 without actually connecting them and stated flatly that "America and the world are safer because Saddam Hussein sits in a prison cell" without actually offering any evidence to support that assertion (and, really, and c'mon, we could use something to show us we're safer - one goddamn thing, motherfuckers). Then, just before announcing that over the next 10 years Bush wants to bring home 60-70 thousand troops, Bush mocked John Kerry's vote on the supplemental funding request that Bush himself threatened to veto: "When pressed, he explained his vote -- 'I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it.' (Laughter.) He went on to say he was proud of the vote, and the whole thing is a 'complicated' matter. There's nothing complicated about supporting our troops in combat."



On Inside Politics, CNN's Dana Bash said, "This is a major policy announcement from the sitting commander-in-chief. But this event was paid for not by the White House or the taxpayers but the president's reelection campaign. And it came at the end of a very intensely political speech by the president." (This was followed by Bill Schneider stating that there was a good chance the troops would be re-deployed to Iraq.) The administration's defense of its announcement is that this was something that was in the works for "years." Yet, seriously, if you make a policy announcement in the middle of a campaign speech, how can you be surprised when some might think you were playing politics with the troops? It'd be like if you went to a whorehouse, made yourself the meat in a hooker sandwich, and then had a drink on the way out. Sure, you could say you were at the whorehouse to grab a shot of whiskey, but ultimately you went there to do some fucking.



Again, the Rude Pundit will say: the White House website should not contain a speech on the "compassionate conservative" agenda Bush made to the Knights of Columbus. "Compassionate conservatism" is a crude political phrase; it is not the official policy of the government. (Oh, and by the fuckin' way, the speech, which received very little coverage, is pretty fuckin' scary, what with its constant discussion about the interaction between "God" and humanity: "The Almighty God is good at changing hearts . . . Human life is a creation of God" and the like. God, too busy looking on, appalled and sickened, at Najaf, had no comment.) And the speech should not be mentioned on the same page as the President's signing of a treaty. Link to the shit if you want, but don't give Bush's mindless campaign blathers the same weight as policy.



It ain't that fuckin' complicated. The White House website, and, indeed, the White House should not simply be an arm of a presidential campaign. The Rude Pundit is not an idiot: he knows that all Presidents campaign through the office. But the business of the people of America is not the campaign of the president. Check out John Kerry's Senate website. Nothing about his campaign or campaign stops. Kerry understands that the office and the man are two separate entities. Bush, frighteningly, wants us to believe otherwise.



P.S. At a Traverse City, Michigan rally, the crowd said "Booo" (with three o's) at the exact same point as they did in Sioux City and Panama City, according to the White House transcript of Bush's speech there.

Of Monkey Balls and Blow Jobs:

Listen: Dick Cheney sucks monkey balls in that he takes monkeys, places their balls in his mouth, and sucks and sucks them. If you go to a zoo and see monkeys with no hair on their balls, it’s because Dick Cheney sucked it all off. Here's Cheney, sucking monkey balls in front of an Elko, Nevada crowd that had given stool samples to make sure they didn't eat any Democratic foods, like sushi and quiche: "Senator Kerry has also said that if he were in charge he would fight a 'more sensitive' war on terror. (Laughter.) America has been in too many wars for any of our wishes, but not a one of them was ever won by being 'sensitive.' (Applause.) . . . Those who threaten us and kill innocents around the world do not need to be treated more sensitively. They need to be destroyed. (Applause.)" And then Cheney took out a monkey and said, "Now, watch me suck these balls hairless. Doncha love the way I suck monkey balls?"



Before we deal with the whole "sensitive" issue (which has been dealt with extensively by Atrios, Media Matters, and the Center for American Progress), let us look a bit more closely at the "remarks" page on the White House website, which is paid for by our tax dollars, Republican, Democratic, Nutzoids-for-Jeebus, all of us. First of all, is it necessary to mention every place that the crowd applauded and laughed? And is it necessary to mention the crowd chanting, "Four more years"? More interestingly, according to the Elko Daily Free Press, the rally was scheduled to start at 2:30. According to the White House, Cheney started speaking at 2:31. In his remarks, Cheney mentions that Lynne introduced him. So the chances of Cheney actually starting at that time are minimal. Is this picking nits, like so many monkeys with no hair on their balls? Yeah, it is, but it's also this: the transcript makes it so much more clear that the "applause," "laughter," and chants are part of the script. It's the crowd equivalent of Bush's "Ask President Bush" sessions, as described by Elisabeth "I-Can't-Suck-Enough-Dubya-Cock" Bumiller in the New York Times.



And since we're streaming the consciousness on this Monday, Bumiller describes the questions as not all being "softballs": "There have been a number of times when audience members asked substantive questions, like the woman in Florida with a brother on his way to Iraq who wanted to know if Mr. Bush had a plan for the American mission there." Seriously, and, c'mon, a substantive questions is not "Will you tell us what your campaign platform is?" That's a Miss America pageant question. A substantive question is "Why are Americans dying to prevent the majority population of Iraq from creating the kind of government it wants?" But, then again, Bumiller's "White House Blow Jobs" are amazing for their complete lack of substance beyond Bumiller saying, "Look at what a great blow job I give. Watch me blow the President some more. Notice the care with which I lick the tip of his cock. God, Mr. President, doncha love my cocksucking?"



The questions here are so, so many: Why, for instance, does a transcript of the President's Panama City rally have people "Booo" at the same point in the speech as a crowd in Sioux City? They're not even trying to hide it, that the "Booo" (spelled with three o's in both transcripts) was planned.



Why does the White House website give the script of the speech of every campaign appearance? The implications are that the remarks in front of a rally in Sioux City carry the executive weight of, say, the nomination of Porter Goss to be CIA chief. Kind of a frightening prospect, no?



Maybe that's the point, innit? That with George W. Bush we've reached a point where every decision is the equivalent of a campaign promise, calculated, scripted, focus-grouped, a leader who, on the nation's website, is unafraid to say that there is no agenda, no direction, except re-election.

The Air Quality Ain't the Only Thing That Sucks in New Jersey:

Sure, sure, there's lots of significant things about New Jersey Governor James McGreevey's announcement yesterday that essentially said, "Oh, sweet Christ, I have a good thirty-five years of cock-sucking to make up for. Fuck all of you, I'm headin' to Fire Island." Yeah, yeah, it was shocking when McGreevey announced he was gay and, by the way, resigning. Yeah, yeah, McGreevey wouldn't have done it if a sexual harassment lawsuit wasn't pending. Yeah, yeah, there's the whole thrilling story of liaisons in Israel, stuff that would make a great first movie for the new Logo network. And yeah, yeah, it's a great/pathetic day for the gay community in America - great for what he said, pathetic for the circumstances under which he said it.



Imagine a different story: that this wasn't about possible harassment and unethical hiring and misappropriation of state money, that it was just that McGreevey stepped up to the mike and said, "Man, I love cock. I love cock so goddamn much. I love it in my face and my ass. I couldn't be happier if right now I had a cock in each hand while some leather queen slapped my face with his cock. But my deep desire for cock in no way changes my ability to govern. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have an appointment for a rimming, a reaming, and a Rotary dinner." But, sadly, no. It was actually just a twist on the usual.



What's significant about McGreevey's announcement was the last part, that he resigned. Here was a state leader, a politician, actually acknowledging wrong and taking responsibility for his actions. The most honorable thing a leader can do sometimes is fall on his/her own sword. Compare McGreevey's action, of taking responsibility and following through on it, to President Bush last night on CNN. Larry "Vampires Need Young Poontang" King was asking Bush about the war not going "perfect":

KING: Does the buck, though, stop with you?



G. BUSH: Absolutely.



KING: President Kennedy was told the Bay of Pigs would go smoothly and then he took the rap. He said...



G. BUSH: I'm taking the rap, too, of course.



KING: So the buck does stop...



G. BUSH: Absolutely. That's what elections are about.



In other words, the buck stops with the voters - the leader is not responsible, the voters are. It's like McGreevey saying, "Society forced me into the closet and forced me to have an extramarital affair." Part of that is true. The other part, not so true. Bush is, in essence, saying that he has the biggest dick and dares you to knock that stick off his shoulder.



Lastly about McGreevey doing the honorable thing: by coming out, he has opened up a shitstorm in his life. There is no way he would be able to govern effectively. Imagine if Bill Clinton had done that. Sure, sure, Clinton was fighting people who turned the smallest lie into the hugest crime just because it was under oath, but in the end Clinton got fucked by Monica and in the end he did lie and in the end the battle with Congress was as much about ego as it was Constitutional issues. And, in the end, there's a chance that Clinton's big blow job allowed Osama Bin Laden to live and thrive another day.



True men of honor know when the state is more important than the cock.

Giggin' John Kerry:

A few weeks ago, the Rude Pundit offered John Kerry advice on how to handle the question of how he would have voted on the Iraq resolution ifheknewthenwhatheknowsnow. Unfortunately, Kerry gave the worst possible answer, an answer so bad that, even if it's true, sounds so blatantly political, that he voted for a resolution that gave Bush "the right authority to have" so Bush could go to war on his whim. Standing at the Grand Canyon, Kerry then "challenged" Bush on a few real, substantive issues dealing with the war, but the damage was done. The right wing media had all it needed to start screaming that Kerry would have gone to war, so he agrees with Bush, blah, blah, blah. Kerry apologists were stuck in the bent over positions of either trying to re-focus the question or trying to explain/re-state that Kerry meant he would have voted "yes" for the resolution to give a President the power but he would not have gone to war, which was a fucked-up way to answer, since he was playing Senator and President. Yes, like a good frog gigger, the Bush campaign shined the flashlight in Kerry's eyes and Kerry froze while Bush speared him with the gig. Now there's nothin' left to do but laugh like little boys at how the frog dances on the gig.



The story's already out there, no matter what Kerry actually said, he "agrees it was the right decision to go into Iraq." Bush is smiling at this like a group of mongoloids discovering it's pudding day at the home. It takes focus away from the fucked-up economic news. And it allows that smug fucker to say things like, "After months of questioning my motives and my credibility, Senator Kerry agrees with me that, even though we have not found the stockpile of weapons we all believe were there, knowing everything we know today, he would have voted to go into Iraq and remove Saddam Hussein from power." The spin, baby, is like the hammer thwack to the back of the frog's head to stop that pathetic fucker from squirming. (And goddamn Bush a little extra for the anti-intellectualism of saying that Kerry has found "a new nuance" - once again deriding the act of engaged thinking.)



Fuck and motherfuck, there was such an easy answer to the President, one that would have forced Bush to crawfish his way out of the whole question. Again, it's so simple that it's sublime. Follow the President's logic. He's making all kinds of idiotic "what-if" assumptions. (Really, and c'mon, the whole question is like asking, "Would you have fucked that hot-ass dude from the bar if you knew he had herpes?" The circumstances were different then: you were drunk, it was close to last call, and, diseased or not, the guy was cut.) So Kerry was asked what he would have done ifheknewthenwhatheknowsnow, that Saddam had no WMDs, no al-Qaeda ties. But here's the deal: if the President wants you to time travel with your current knowledge, take it all, in its totality. It ain't only a "what-if" on Saddam - it's a "what-if" on Bush, too. If you knew then that at this point, August 2004, that there were no WMDs, no al-Qaeda ties, and that it would cost over a hundred billion dollars and that the Pentagon had no plan for dealing with significant indigenous resistance and that the White House condoned the torture of prisoners and that we'd be looking at breaking the 1000 mark on American soldier deaths, then of course you would not have voted to give Bush the power to, in your own words, fuck things up so badly. And if you put it that way, who could disagree with you?



It's a simple, straightforward, vivid answer that takes the question and turns it back on the idiots asking it. It makes the question about trusting Bush as a leader. It makes the voters have to deal with the reality of the war instead of the fantasy of what might have been.

Race Traitors:

You know how you can instantly tell that running Alan Keyes against Barack Obama for the Senate in Illinois is nothing more than a cynical ploy to siphon a couple of black votes away from the juggernaut that is Obama (other than the obvious "he's from fucking Maryland")? Check out Keyes' alleged website. These days, any campaign worth its weight in gold-covered shit can quickly throw up a grand, link-filled site in a couple of hours. Keyes' site, as of now, days after his announcement, is the Internet equivalent of the old Cabrini-Green. But the Illinois Republican Party done found themselves a lawn jockey, a porter, a pimp, and a house negro, all rolled up in one batshit insane package. Keyes will throw a few bombs, but Obama is too smart to step close to the explosion. And, fuck, the debates will be interesting as Keyes shucks and jives for his conservative massas, showin' them that he be a good nigga, and smilin' that shine smile as he spouts the same hate the Republicans spout, only with a minstrel face.



But that's the way it is with blacks on the right. Sometimes, though, all the kowtowing to the man destroys them. Did you see the zombie of Condoleeza Rice on the Sunday talk shows? Zombie Condi was a depressing sight on Meet the Press, her hands clenched, her jaw tight, her face a barely moving mask of beyond-the-grave lifelessness as Dr. "Jesus-Christ-I-Was-the-Provost-of-Stanford" Rice spouted the administration's talking points over and over: "Saddam bad," "Bush comfort children, not scared," and "terrorists coming." Only once did the sad, self-aware visage of human Condi attempt to rear itself when the increasingly tomato-shaped-headed Russert asked Zombie Condi if she would stay on if Bush was re-elected. With a quaver in her voice, and a glint of hope in her eye, she said, "Tim, I'm trying to get through the next few weeks. I think we'll cross those bridges when we come to them," which really means, "No fuckin' way. It's gonna take the rest of my life to get over the post-traumatic stress of all the sodomizings I've been subject to." Such is the state of mind of those who are forced to lie for the sins of the masters.



Like Zombie Condi, every once in a while Colin Powell, the Mr. Bojangles of foreign affairs, demonstrates that he still possesses a soul. When he declared that he would not attend (meaning: speak at) the Republican Convention of Doom in New York City this month, it was the slightest bit of payback for being forced to go out and tap dance in front of the U.N. so long ago. Powell's excuse may as well have been, "My dog up and died. He up and died" for all the truth there was to his statements that a secretary should not attend such events. It ain't stoppin' Secretary of Education Rod Paige, the most loyal of the house negros, from speaking in primetime.



Sure, if you wanna be all diplomatic and PC and shit, you could blab on that "Isn't it great that we've come so far on race in this country that black Americans can be loyal Republicans? Isn't it demeaning and cynical to suggest that these African Americans only do this in order to maintain some kind of semblance of power in a system that is geared against them?" Yeah, and back in the plantation days, the massas loved it when some slave from the fields would tell massa about a planned escape or revolt by other slaves. Oh, how massa lavished extra salt pork and beans on that turncoat slave; oh, how massa beat down the ones who would turn against massa.