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The Five Stages of Grieving for George Bush's Re-Election (Cont'd):

Left Blogsylvania is in disarray today. Some are saying that we should quickly move beyond anger. Others are saying we shouldn't Monday morning quarterback (to use one of many terms Bush beat to death and made forever vile) the election or John Kerry. But, unless we're like Bush on Iraq, we need to reflect, viciously, on our errors not so we "fight the last campaign," but so we fight the next one without regret for our actions. We're going through a grieving process right now. Some are stuck in early stages, denial and anger. Some are saying to get over it. Instead, listen to the Rude Pundit. We're gonna get through the grief, but, indeed, we need to grieve, for what was and for what will be. The Rude Pundit says that everything you're feeling and raging to express is good, right, and helpful. Today we grieve some more. Tomorrow, we burn anew. Stay tuned, motherfuckers.



Back at 1:00 today with Stages 3 and 4: Bargaining and Depression.

The Five Stages of Grieving For George Bush's Re-Election

Stage 1: Denial:

Yeah, yeah, we know, we know, we know, we fucking know - Ohio was, in theory, still up in the air. We know that Kerry could have eked out a victory there if there were enough absentee and provisional ballots, and, frankly, every vote should be counted. And, yeah, yeah, we know, we know, we know, Christ, how we know that we'll never know if there was rampant fraud through the use of touch screen voting and voter roll purges and other irregularities throughout the country. But without a whistleblower, anyone who accuses Bush of winning because of fraud is going to be marked as an insane conspiracy theorist. And, besides, back in 2000, we were pushing so hard for Florida to go to Gore because, well, Gore won the popular vote and there was demonstrable voter fraud. But, you know, we're talking 3.5 million votes in Bush's favor. We're talking gains for Republicans in the Congress. We're talking 11 ballot measures that ban gay marriage. Which means even if there's a miracle of miracles and Kerry had "won," we've still lost. Which means we must move on to Stage 2: Anger.



A Nation of Savages:

We are a nation of savages. That is what we decided last night. We belong to the "most advanced" society in the history of the world, and we decided that we would rather be barbarians, hunched over fire pits, ripping meat off the bones of our enemies, raping our women, howling out at the gods for peace in the afterlife.



Oh, how when this glorious nation began, we believed we knew who the savages were, the Indians, worshipping their mad array of deities, slaughtering each other in wars over hunting grounds, enslaving each other, living in caves and teepees, creating communal existences where each member of a tribe had his or her place and his or her job to contribute to the life of the group. God, how we hated them. How we entered their villages and tried to convert them to the single God. How we massacred them regularly when they would not give up their centuries-old existence in favor of the obvious good and rightness of the European way. Sure, sure, they tried to strike back, but that made our bloodlust even stronger. We white people showed them what savagery was, and it made their bows, arrows, axes, and (later) rifles seem like so many sticks tossed against a brick edifice. King George III loved his gifts of scalps, cut off the Indians skulls by loyal white subjects of Britain.



When the majority of the country voted for Bush yesterday, what they were saying, in Alabama, in Wyoming, in Indiana, is that they want blood for blood, and it doesn't matter where that blood comes from. The economy didn't fucking matter, health care didn't fucking matter, certainly peace didn't fucking matter, the Supreme Court didn't fucking matter. None of it. And the rest of the world can go fuck itself. It came down to who was the most bloodthirsty candidate, and George Bush transformed himself into a man who would shit on Saddam's cut open abdomen and eat his balls, and no Massachusetts peacenik faggot lover was gonna defeat that in our deluded American mindset.



As we learn from the religious right every day, a well-told lie trumps the truth every time. And that's what those motherfuckers in the Bush campaign did, day after goddamned day - they trumpeted lies as if they were the truth. The caressed lies like they're lovers, like you could make 'em hard and make 'em cum all over the eager faces of the public. They revised history and expected everyone to fall in line in complete ignorance of the facts. Dick Cheney could have been caught on video eating the still-beating heart of an Iraqi child that he just raped with a gas pump nozzle, and they'd be able to make a majority believe that Cheney was a victim of the liberal media and that to bring up Dick Cheney's child-raping, heart-eating ways is "beyond the pale." Christ, how the yahoos in Kentucky would lap that shit up. It confirms what they want to believe, that somehow they are cozy-buddies with those in power, when really, Bush and the Bushettes are laughing at them, toasting with single malt scotch that they tricked the savages once again by appealing to their savage nature with the Iraq war. Yeah, man, bleed the Iraqis, set them against each other, shoot 'em all down. They're the savages, not us, motherfuckers, not us. We'll keep bringin' them the good graces of America, and, goddamnit, those fuckers'll accept it or we'll slaughter 'em in the name of bringing civilization to the savages, when really, in the end, we are blinded to anything but the crude reduction of power to the kick of an assault weapon in our hands, the acrid smell of burnt gun powder, and the sweet, subhuman screams of the savages we kill. And in the background, the bleating of the prone media, getting fucked over and over, and screeching to be fucked again, cheering on the killing 'cause that's what motherfucking America has come down to: kill or be killed. If yer not doin' the killin', then yer just waitin' to die. In God We Trust.



Fuck it. The Rude Pundit is disgusted. No insight today. That'll come later. Let's wallow for a day or two. Let's give the final words of anger to John Dos Passos who, in 1937 in The Big Money, wrote, "America our nation has been beaten by strangers who have turned our language inside out who have taken the clean words our fathers spoke and made them slimy and foul



"their hired men sit on the judge’s bench they sit back with their feet on the tables under the dome of the State House they are ignorant of our beliefs they have the dollars the guns the armed forces the powerplants . . .



"all right we are two nations America our nation has been beaten by strangers who have bought the laws and fenced off the meadows and cut down the woods for pulp and turned our pleasant cities into slums and sweated the wealth out of our people and when they want to they hire the executioner to throw the switch . . .



"we stand defeated America".



What's important is that, at the end of the passage, which is about the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti, the disenfranchised still stand, no matter what.



Tomorrow: Bargaining and Depression

Friday: Acceptance

The Miracle of the Machines - An Election Day Story:

So the Rude Pundit was walking to his local precinct this morning to cast his ballot. He had his voter registration card. He had his driver's license. He had gone to mypollingplace.com and made doubly sure of where he was supposed to vote. There he had discovered that he would be using one of those new-fangled touchscreen machines he'd heard so much about. This one was the AVC Advantage from the good people at Sequoia Voting Systems. These are surely days of miracle and wonder, the Rude Pundit thought as he walked up to the school where he was to vote. He had a smile on his face - it felt like foreplay in the delicate moments just before penetration and, soon, orgasm.



When the Rude Pundit entered the gym area of the school, he saw several dozen people there, young, old, tight-assed, hippie. Democracy, he thought, who'd've thought? There were three tables, one for each area of the precinct. Each table and therefore each precinct area was assigned a single miracle machine. When the Rude Pundit approached one of the tables at random, since no signs were available to say which one was his, he was pleased that he hit it right. This was indeed where he was supposed to vote, said the old, old, so horribly old but kind woman with a stutter. But the stutter, it turned out, was not a speech impediment. The poor woman was nervous, so very nervous, because the machine for this table was not working. Period. They hadn't even been able to get it to start at all. It was over an hour, and, he was assured, a new machine was on the way. "Just come back later, if you can," said the nearly shaking woman. The Rude Pundit explained he couldn't come back later. "Then we have emergency ballots you can fill out," she said, reluctantly, as if somehow to vote this way was less meaningful than with the miracle technology. The Rude Pundit asked for the ballot, signed his name in the voting roll book, and headed over to a side table to vote for John Kerry and others.



He watched as others approached the table, with varying degrees of disbelief and outrage. Some accepted the provisional ballot. Some wanted to wait. The Rude Pundit tried to engage these coffee-needing voters, saying that it was okay to vote with paper. That, really, it was a way to assure a paper trail for their vote. Some were insistent on using the new-fangled voting machine. "For years we've used the same old machines," said one of the little old, old, so horribly old women volunteers, "and never had a problem. This year we change machines, and see what happens." The Rude Pundit fondly remembered the old machines, with their gears and clicks and levers, the giant one to close the curtain and the little ones to cast the votes. God, how tactile. How engaged those machines seemed. Ah, well, progress must march forward, thought the Rude Pundit as he inked in his little circles thoroughly and darkly.



Then one of the little old, old, so horribly old women commented to a waiting, nervous voter that the paper ballots would be taken back to the courthouse and "won't be counted until tomorrow." Whether or not this was true, several people got upset at the notion that somehow their votes meant less than those being cast in the working miracle machines on either side of our broken booth. We could not use those machines. They were for other areas of the precinct. The Rude Pundit attempted to offer comfort to the stricken. Your vote will be counted, he assured a couple of people. It's better to vote now than to worry about coming back later. A few were disgusted and left. Some looked at the Rude Pundit as if he was trying to influence their vote. He did not advocate for a candidate, simply for the right to vote, but, indeed, to insist upon voting must seem like advocacy these days.



Two or three took paper ballots. A few more sat down to wait for the promised new machine (which was supposed to be delivered already). The Rude Pundit put his ballot in the envelope, licked the sweet glue, and sealed it shut. He asked where he should deposit the ballot. One of the old, old, so horribly old women pointed to the former-voting-machine-now-statue. There, on the side of the modern miracle, connected to the machine, was a box that read, "Emergency Ballots." The Rude Pundit placed his ballot in the slot and walked out, thinking about the miraculous age in which he lived, and how we are all blessed to exist in a time where all the technology in the world serves us to make our lives easier.



Check out the Verified Voting website to see how many incidents of voting difficulties have been reported. There's already been over 2600 around the country since midnight.



And let's open this up: good or bad, send in your story of voting today. The best stories will be posted in the next couple of days. If you communed with the people to vote easily or were roughly fucked over by a poll watcher, write it up and send it to rudepundit@yahoo.com.

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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."

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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?

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.)