Breaching the Levee of Words:
Let us say you are a woman at a bar. Say it's a nice bar, maybe one of those oh-so-hot places with long couches and low tables, where the multi-flavored martinis cost at least 15 bucks each. And let's say that you are seated on one of those red velvet couches, your Stelle McCartney black dress coming down just alluringly enough to mid-thigh, sippin' a jalapeno/peach cosmo. Let's say, and why not, that seated on the couch is this amazingly ripped guy who is just pressin' your buttons like you're a Blackberry and he's text-messaging his stockbroker. He's just fashion aware enough to appreciate your Manolo Blahnik shoes. He's wordly enough to get you to try a Polish vodka that he says will make your cosmo heat your face and, well, your breasts, and you try it, and, you know, it may be the power of suggestion, but he's right: you feel that warmth caress the undersides of your tits like his hands are already there. This is a man, you think, as you feel yourself warming in your panties. You tease him a bit about his Helmut Lang suit and about what he looks like in other clothes and, of course, without clothes. Oh, he is soft talkin' the sex to you, gently nudging you, making you think you're leadin' the way, and you are soo damn wet that you think you might stain that red velvet right through your dress.

But when he takes you back to your place (after making the safety call to your best friend), he's a complete and utter stumblefuck. From not knowing how to keep you hot through clothing removal - he tends to stare a little too much and a little too creepily - to seemingly unable to comprehend that your anatomy requires more than a few circular licks before plunging in for a quick hydraulic pumping before he screams for his mother and leaps off, ripping off his condom from his little cock, disgusted at his own semen. How shatteringly disappointing. Fucker could talk quite the game, but when he got up to bat, he didn't even swing. You have choices: you could lie about it, relying on your memory of the bar to carry your through to thinking of this as a wondefully romantic evening. Or you could tell that pathetic bastard to put on his pants and hit the streets.

Here's FEMA head, Under-Secretary Michael "Sweet Liposuctioned Arabians" Brown, behaving as if he understands his job during the 2004 National Hurricane Conference in Orlando, Florida: "Last year, those of us living in the Mid-Atlantic experienced the impact of Hurricane Isabel. This was a fierce reminder of the importance of hurricane preparedness and mitigation and the many services provided by the federal, state and local emergency management community.

"Southern and Gulf Coast states are well aware of the need to be ready for hurricane season, and serve as a model of preparedness and risk reduction against these powerful storms...

"During Isabel, we also conducted action planning/reporting with each state in an attempt to better synchronize our increased readiness efforts.

"We opened multiple Staging Areas and Mobilization Centers in anticipation of needs, including pre-positioning of NDMS teams, USAR teams, MERS assets, EPA hazmat teams, and USACE teams.

"We deployed ERTs to every state EOC which was expected to be significantly impacted by the storm.

"We had DHS ICE and US Coast Guard aircraft identified and pre-positioned to provide aviation support.

"Our DHS’ colleagues at IAIP co-located with us to provide better access to critical infrastructure operators.

"We crafted an expedited declaration policy for this storm which was communicated to the states in advance of landfall to ensure they understood how to obtain access to federal resources and to assist with cost recovery for their readiness actions.

"We pre-positioned newly developed "shelter packs", containing equipment/supplies needed to support shelter operations -which weren't requested - previously our equipment/supplies for this mission were not packaged for mission-specific tasks.

"As emergency managers addressing the hazards associated with hurricanes and tropical storms, you understand the importance of federal, state, and local partnerships."

Are you wet yet? Read the whole speech. It sounds as if FEMA and the Department of Homeland Security are ready to sweep in like they're a squad from Krypton to re-erect the tall building they can leap over in a single bound. Apparently, though, unless Brown went on bowed knee and scraped himself over to Michael "No, Really, I Just Look Like Ming the Merciless" Chertoff, nothing was gonna be done, and even then Brown waited until after Katrina to do a goddamn thing, no matter how much was in position to begin with. It's all words, man, just words, holding up against the tide of reality pouring over the banks of the fake words, the meaningless words.

But maybe the much put-upon Brown can take comfort in his own words from the graduation speech he gave last year at the Florida Institute of Technology: "Just as natural disasters occur in our communities, so too do they occur in our personal lives. Very few graduation speakers will say this in their speeches: You should expect to make mistakes. You should expect to fall down. You should even expect to fail at a few things." But that's okay, for, as Brown added, "everything in life is not perfect, so expect to make those mistakes, expect to fall down every now and then, and expect to occasionally fail at something. There will always be someone along the way who is willing to help pick you up." And if it's the President picking you up, so much the better.

There's a tidal surge of bodies, bodies we may not be allowed to see, that's overwhelming all those words, Brown's, Bush's.

It's overwhelming the fake pictures, too. More on that tomorrow.

A God's Eye View of Recent Events:
Oh, sweet Christians, yes, the mighty winds and floods of Katrina are indeed the works of God, but, no, the hurricane and its vengeful aftermath are not God's penance on New Orleans and Biloxi for the sins of sex and gambling. For God is far wiser than that. No, Hurricane Katrina was God's way of wrecking the Republican agenda.

Yes, you might say, and you might be right (this being about God, and, really, we are not meant to know God's ways), God could have been a little more subtle about it. Perhaps Tom DeLay caught fellating an illegal Mexican exterminator. But, no, God's tried subtle before - God's sent a plague of throat-lodging pretzels upon the President, but to no lasting effect. Bush has lived before with the oxygen cut off to his brain. And, in the realm of God stuff, eternity, worldwide floods, the like, a hurricane is not that big a deal. God's a big picture kind of deity.

God is all about opportunities, not punishment. Choices, not condemnation. Jesus could have used all kinds of Christ-y magic to smite some motherfuckers when he was up on that cross, but he chose not to. Job could have said, "Yo, God, fuck you," but he did not. When God allowed 9/11 to happen, it was an opportunity, a glass is half full kind of moment, a chance to unify the people of the world, but, ah, yes, the Devil is always there, always waiting, shape-shifting and telling untruths as if they were the tablets from the Mount, for the Devil is, indeed, the Prince of Lies.

So the chance at a kind of peace was shattered because the Devil is like the finest stripper at the cheapest joint: he knows how to dance so the people will be hypnotized by his tempting sashay and thonged ass, so they will not see the cold, calculating machinations going on in the back of the club. Or they will not care when someone opens the doors and says, "Look, see how they keep the Russian immigrants here enslaved, see how they threaten their families back in Moscow, see how they keep them addicted to drugs so they'll be willing to blow the owner's son to keep those hits coming." When the Devil shakes his pussy in your face, who are you, mere mortal, to deny the Devil a buck in his spangled g-string?

Thus, God's hand was forced to bring out the biggest guns to drive into stark relief the images of God's poorest people, the ones that the rest of us are supposed to care about, the ones who got nary a visit from a presidential candidate last year, the ones who are supposed to disappear like ants into the hill after they've done their work: out of sight, out of mind. God's made this pretty fuckin' simple, God thinks: what you do to the least of these, you know. The last twenty-five years or so have shown that the American government wants God to live in shithole housing with no health insurance, no child care, bare bones job training, no welfare net, facing starvation, violence, and/or imprisonment at every turn. And that's a pretty shitty way to treat God.

So how could a storm like this not give the message that it's time to render unto Caesar what is Caesar's, motherfuckers, and stanch the arterial bleedout of tax dollars to reward the wealthy. Fuck, God must think, how many camels must be sacrificed through the eyes of needles to make a fuckin' point?

The hurricane was God's way of telling the Republicans (and their Democratic enablers) that they have sorely fucked up God's work by undermining the environment at every turn in favor of business concerns so that the wealthy get wealthier, and, well, shit, there's already piles of steamy camel guts to wade through to make a point to them. The hurricane was God's way of telling Republicans that eternal war means no peace and here's a big fuckin' way to re-prioritize. The hurricane was God's way of telling Republicans that they are responsible for all screw-ups now, big and small, and that God is, indeed, watching.

After the hurricane, God was surprised, though. Even God could not foresee how badly the Bush administration would botch its response, even God had to say, "Goddamn, that's some fucked up shit." But God knows that the Devil, ah, the Devil is always around, but the Devil can be defeated.

So if you hear some preacher here or there declaim that God sent Katrina to New Orleans to stop the sinning, simply agree and then ask, "What sins are you talking about?"

(Oh, and God's message to the Democrats is this: It's time to have a spine because God's got your back. And if you fuck with God, well, God can fuck you harder.)

The President of Corpses:
No one told George W. Bush that presidencies are measured in corpses, stacked like cordwood outside the White House. Stretched out in his king-sized bed, Bush begins to think that it all makes sense when you put it in the context of corpses. Nixon wouldn't have been on the road to impeachment and trial if it hadn't been for all the corpses he was responsible for. Clinton survived largely because of the low number of corpses on his watch (a few hundred thousand Tutsis aside). Johnson went down because of the corpses, and FDR kept going because his were noble corpses - ahh, so corpses can be opportunities. Between soldier corpses and Twin Tower corpses and the growing pile of Katrina corpses, Bush can barely see the Washington Monument. But at least the Rose Garden will be fertilized for the foreseeable future.

Now, in bed, he turns to one side and sees the bloated corpse of a black women that had been floating in the water of New Orleans for the last six days. He turns to the other side and sees the corpse of William Rehnquist. After snorting the scent of sewage and toxins off the black woman, in sweet remembrance of times past, he turns to the Chief Justice, rolls him over, and starts fucking him, trying to put the stench and decay of the other corpse out of his head, fucking Rehnquist's cold, stiff ass to thank him for small favors.

"Totally Black" in New Orleans:
Before Katrina, one way that white middle and upper class people in New Orleans used to show that they were hip, cool, and down with the city was to find out where the coolest bars and clubs and the tastiest restaurants were in the black neighborhoods and streets of the Crescent City. White people loved discovering these places (if by "discover," you mean the same thing as "Columbus discovered America") and then bringing their white friends to chow on the soul food at Chez Helene or listen to the funky brass bands at Donna's. When these places showed up in your Fodor's and filled with tourists, the DeSoto-like white people would keep searching for the the Fountain of Authenticity that, of course, only the poorest, blackest places could bring. Chez Helene closes? Move on to Big Shirley's in Treme. Donna's not dark enough to be exotic anymore? Head deep into the Bywater and go to Vaughan's for Kermit Ruffins' Sunday Barbecue and Jazz. Yessirree, nothin' showed how cool you were as a white person than bein' able to come down from Uptown to party where the negroes played.

At Antoine's Restaurant in New Orleans, wealthy white people would have their favorite black waiters who could cater to their every whim, who, for that couple of hours of interchange, made those white people feel as if every joke was hilarious, every story compelling. And the Rude Pundit knew young white people who could sit with musicians in the crappiest little dives and have intense conversations about what makes a jazz improv transcendant. Either way, though, at the end of the day, the white people headed off to one New Orleans, and the blacks headed to or remained in another. Either way, for all but a few whites, those in social services, those who chose to live where the rents were cheapest, the real black New Orleans was a hidden place of poverty, gangs, run-down housing projects, and the evidence of the neglect of a society as surely as the unfortified levees surrounding them. And, like the waters that have filled the streets, it is hidden no more.

So when the head of FEMA, a poor bastard who's way out of his league named Michael Brown, says, "The lawlessness, the crime that is occurring, did surprise us," it's just like saying you didn't know the levees would be breached. Hungry people steal food. Parents will feed their children no matter what the niceties of your laws are. As New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin said in his heartbreaking interview on WWL radio, drug addicts will get their fixes. And, yes, some will be stupid enough to steal TVs, which in a city that won't have electricity for weeks or months, is either the most optimistic or idiotic of gestures. To not anticipate looting and lawlessness is a crime of incompetence, a blindness to the wretched poverty so many in New Orleans attempted to exist under, something real and not just exotic and thrilling for whites to touch on for their entertainment.

And now that the President has been injected with the mad array of chemicals that are needed to jump start his brain like the coughing, oil-leaking lawnmower motor that it is, he declares that "The results [of the relief effort] are not acceptable." And that's great, but they were also unacceptable on Tuesday, when Bush was making one of his worthless piece of shit speeches about how mighty a battle the Iraq War is, just like World War II or some such nonsense. But the Bush adminstration has broken the basic social contract in New Orleans, the one that goes all the way back to Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, the one that says we adhere to laws because you agree to protect us, and thus the city and its citizens have returned to the state of nature, which is to survive, motherfuckers, just survive.

Bush is visiting the affected areas as this is written. You can bet he's gonna hug some negro, maybe two, maybe he'll feed a negro child. It's the way of black people in New Orleans, you know, to always be the props and the set dressing to make the white people feel powerful.

(The title comes from a CNN reporter talking about the lack of light in the city at night.)

The Mr. Bill Hurricane/Levee Breaching Ad:
Here's the clip from mrbill.com of Mr. Bill's deeper knowledge of the levee system than the President of the United States has. (Thanks to the blog Petty Larseny for the link.)

Even Mr. Bill Knew the Levees Wouldn't Hold:
In early 2004, lovable, crushable clay animated figure Mr. Bill from Saturday Night Live starred in an ad to alert people to the problems with the wetlands in Louisiana. On Good Morning, America today, President Bush said, "I don't think anyone could have anticipated the breach of the levees." He was wrong. Mr. Bill already had. Here's a transcript of the stunningly prescient ad, from CNN on May 27, 2004:

MR. BILL: Gee, kids, I'm not sure we can do our show today because it looks like Hurricane Sluggo is headed right for us here in America's wetlands.

WALTER WILLIAMS, MR. BILL CREATOR: That's right, Mr. Bill. And since New Orleans is below sea level, if a hurricane hit us directly, it could push the water over the levees and fill it to the top.

BILL: Well then we'd better leave.

WILLIAMS: Well it's too late to evacuate since all the roads are jammed and under water.

BILL: Then where can we go that's safe?

WILLIAMS: Here this should work.

BILL: Gee, I hope it doesn't get much higher.

WILLIAMS: Well, Red, the alligator, doesn't seem too worried.

BILL: Yes, that's because he can swim. You know I don't do that too well.

WILLIAMS: Well in that case, Red says he'll have one of his buddies come and give you a lift.

BILL: That's OK. Maybe you could mind the water wings or something. Oh, get me out of here! No, wait, no, no, ohhh!

WILLIAMS: Let's act now before it's too late.

By the way, Williams pulled Mr. Bill out of the campaign in June of this year when he believed it was being used as a tool to cover up the misdeeds of Shell Oil.

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

The Hurricane Exit Strategy:
At some point here, some wise, ambitious, and none-too-cynical member of Congress, perhaps Chuck Hagel, perhaps Russ Feingold, needs to say the obvious: Hurricane Katrina offers the ultimate exit strategy from Iraq. What other excuse need there be to pull vast numbers of troops and billions of dollars out of our overseas failure?

The patently absurd waste of billions of dollars will be brought to light by the suffering along the Gulf Coast. A couple of months from now, whenever some worthless, stupid right-wing fuck puppet declares that the U.S. has built schools in Basra, it'll simply be a reminder of how much faster things could have been done in Biloxi if all those funds and all that personnel were readily available.

Instead, a brave politician can step forth and offer a resolution about the magnitude of the disaster being nearly unprecedented in U.S. history and that a nation needs to take care of its own before it secures another country. (If he/she wants, he/she can even say that it's a homeland security measure because, with all the attention being paid to Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana, the country is wide open to attack.)

The exit strategy works on so many levels: it's actually a graceful way to pull out of Iraq. We're not cuttin' and runnin'. We need the troops back home. And even bloated hogfuckers in Congress and the Administration, who wanna keep the government largesse in the pockets of Halliburton and other companies, can get on board. Fuck, get private contractors to take care of various and sundry shit along the way. Move the whole goddamn "rebuilding" operation to the southeast U.S. They need bridges, infrastructure, water, food, shelter.

Sure, some will say that the sponsoring members of Congress are opportunists, that they're kicking the President when the nation is down, but such courage from a politician, such logic in the face of disasters here and abroad, will be hailed by the majority of Americans, inundated with images of suffering, trees down, high-flying rescues, and Superdome holes.

For, yes, and it can be said, right now we are facing a choice in this America, where the Bush administration has looted the Treasury as surely as any desperate parent or disgusting opportunist running through the Walgreen's on Canal Street in New Orleans, leaving the coffers as empty as the diaper shelves and the pharmacies: Iraq or the U.S. South?

And those who say we can do both do not comprehend exactly what has happened down by the Gulf of Mexico. We haven't even begun to see the poisoning done by the toxic gumbo that now covers New Orleans. Besides, we couldn't even do Iraq's reconstruction right. Now we can do both badly or try to do one well.

Probably not, though. For, if there's anything we know about this Republican government, if there's a way to exacerbate a fuck-up into a mighty fuck-up, they'll do it.

Late Post Today:
Back later with a post on Iraq and Katrina. The Rude Pundit has seen the rubble of no less than three of his favorite bars in and around New Orleans and is trying to wrap his mind around such loss.

Thanks to readers for all the links and info on Slidell (even for the obvious shit, like "Check the New Orleans newspaper").

Washed Away:
The best fried shrimp po' boys in the New Orleans area are found at a little place called "Check In, Check Out" in Slidell. The original location is a former gas station/convenience store that made such intensely overstuffed, exquisitely flavorful sandwiches that it was transformed into a grubby diner, although the Rude Pundit's always just picked up his po' boy and returned to wherever he was staying, munching on the sweet and salty shrimp as he drove away.

Referring to the Check In, Check Out in the present tense is a bit overly optimistic today, for Slidell sits across Lake Ponchartrain, northeast of New Orleans, and it was in the path of the eyewall of Hurricane Katrina. Little is known about what's happened to Slidell, a small city of over 30,000 people, because, if Mayor C. Ray Nagin of New Orleans is correct, it is now underwater. Parts of the main bridge that connected Slidell to New Orleans, known as the Twin Span on I-10, are gone. The approaches from the northwest, from Hammond and Covington, are lakes.

For years, the citizens of Slidell argued about the destruction of the wetlands that provided at least some protection from the massive lake. Save Our Wetlands, an environmental organization in Louisiana, even filed lawsuits to prevent development that would destroy the wetlands, specifically citing the protection from hurricane tidal surges as a primary concern. Of course, by 2004, it was far, far too little, far, far too late, and the development that had occurred since the 1960s, with the draining of wetlands for highways and homes, with the bypassing of environmental impact studies before the Army Corps of Engineers permitted the construction of a huge addition to Slidell in the 1970s, had eaten away far too much of that buffer zone. There's no telling if the wetlands, left alone or restored, would have helped Slidell yesterday, but there's a good chance the complete devastation that appears to have occurred might have been mitigated. But greed will always will out. It will always will out. And shortsightedness mixed with greed mixed with a government that feels it must always kneel at the altar of business is a combination that's gonna screw people over again and again.

The St. Tammany Parish forum at WWL-TV is a catalog of frustration, confusion, and horrors-some which will prove to be true, some which are just rumor. A gas station exploded. Homes are under ten feet of water. The entire top floor of the Days Inn is gone, just gone. The water tower has collapsed. Eight feet of water in the hospital. You can't tell, they say, where the lake ends and the town begins. There's waist deep (or deeper) water all the way to Old Spanish Trail, which happens to be where the Check In, Check Out is.

Slidell has never been one of the Rude Pundit's favorite towns - it's got way too much of a generic suburb feeling, and, hell, the French Quarter and Uptown are just thirty minutes away. But he has a lot of memories of it, going all the way back to July 4, 1976, when the family was out in the swimming pool of a Holiday Inn at nightfall and we could see the fireworks celebrating the Bicentennial while floating on our backs. We stayed in Slidell because it was significantly cheaper than staying in New Orleans, and probably for some vaguely racist feeling of the Rude parents that it was safer.

The Rude Pundit never lived there, but he knows a lot of people in that damn town, and he knows they got out. But he's also pretty damn sure that their homes are wrecks or are gone. He's pretty sure that alligators are swimming in the streets of the subdivisions (and that ain't hyperbole - there's a lot of friggin' alligators there), that a plague of snakes has come out of its isolation in the dessicated swamps. But its the water, the omnipresent water, that we would shake our heads about whenever a hurricane came near.

And as the levees break or are topped in New Orleans, bringing god knows what else to the city, there will be time to rake over the coals those responsible for the callous disregard of environmental degradation, those who neglected to understand that "homeland security" means making sure that people in the homeland are secure. For now, gird yer loins. The nightmare's just starting.

If anyone gets any news about Slidell or St. Tammany Parish, e-mail: rudepundit@yahoo.com.

The One Word Death of Democracy in Iraq:
It's strange that an enormous, almost ridiculously micromanaging document like the Iraqi draft constitution ought to come down to its use of a single word. And while one could easily say that the fact that the document begins with a shout-out to the "Sons of Mesopotamia" means women are shat on from the outset and that the line, "No law can be passed that contradicts the undisputed rules of Islam," means that Iraq will become mullahrific, it's a single word, used a couple of times in the entire constitution, that means Iraq is fucked.

It is the word that, if amended to the U.S. Constitution, would make the Christian right go into a weeklong orgy the likes of which Babylon only dreamt of. James Dobson would go down on the withered, dusty snatch of Phyllis Schlafly while Chuck Colson, having a prison flashblack, fucks Dobson in the ass as Ted Haggard, madly jacking off, shoves a butt plug into the heaving, weeping Watergate criminal. Such madness would ensue, with Beverly LaHaye unable to fit enough cocks into her mouth to satisfy her, with Tony Perkins and Cal Thomas sword fighting on top of her lapping tongue. Surrounding it all will be a circle jerk of Pat Robertson, Tom DeLay, and Antonin Scalia, who has his prostate massaged by Clarence Thomas to ensure Lil' Tony gets his full mojo going. Goddamn, Gomorrah was destroyed for less, with the piles of bald eagle guts that the fucking mass will devour raw, with Terri Schiavo's stolen ashes mixed with blood smeared all over them, with virgin female members of Campus Crusades for Christ deflowered by trains of megachurch goers right on top of huge marble Ten Commandments monuments. Such grace, such smells, such screeches. But it'd be a once in a lifetime celebration over one word. A word that is part of the Iraqi constitution to be voted on by the people of that pseudo-nation in the coming weeks.

Article 17, Part 1 reads: "Each person has the right to personal privacy as long as it does not violate the rights of others or general morality." Article 36 says that freedoms of "expressing opinion by all means," "of press, publishing, media, and distribution," and "assembly and peaceful protest" are guaranteed "as long as it does not violate public order and morality." And in that one word, "morality," the hopes of a free and open and democratic Iraq are as dead as the soldiers falling there as this is written.

Let's re-state this: If you engage in personal, private activity that violates "general morality," you do not have the right to engage in it. Sweet Foucaultian nightmare scenarios. Homosexuality, judicious use of pleasure devices, adultery, pre-marital sex, even sexual positions in a married relationship can be banned because it violates what might be considered "general morality." And, since the Constitution says that Islam rules, forget about anal sex, with oral sex and masturbation up for debate. So if you like your husband to fuck you in the ass and you happen to mention it to some of the women at the market and they tell the local authorities, you can pretty much expect a home visit from club-wielding governmental holy thugs.

'Course, if this was just about the fucking, we could get all culturally-relativistic and shit (although, you see, as every fundamentalist of every stripe knows: if you control the fucking, you control the person). The Iraqi Constitution, if approved, would not give you the freedom to express an opinion, in press, in public, in private, if it violates "morality." Thought police, motherfuckers, thought police. This ain't about yelling "Fatwa" in a crowded theatre. It ain't even about supporting terrorism (that's specifically banned in other articles). It's about writing an editorial in the local paper that offends morality, like a call for more women to enter the electoral process. Then get ready for the pungent odor of burning paper, ink, and presses.

This doesn't even address whose morality will be followed: a national moral code? A regional one? A town by village code? Will there be shariah cops, like in Saudi Arabia?

In the end, banning offenses to "morality" means, simply, "we own you." Quite a democratic document there, even if it only succeeds in starting a civil war, plunging the region into chaos. Yep, it's worth a few thousand more lives to make sure morality is enforced, right?

And, loaded as it is, the Rude Pundit keeps thinking about another single word: immoral.

La Habra, California - Just Another Stop In Gitmo America:
So, like, on August 7, when terrorism expert and former Justice Department prosecutor John Loftus, speaking on Fox "News," gave out the exact address of a Southern California home that allegedly was the residence of the leader of the group that committed the London bombings, it should have perhaps occurred to him that he might be wrong. Because otherwise, he'd be a stupid fuck whose credibility would be worthless, even as he spouts happy bullshit like that he "believes that we may be witnessing the death throes of the fundamentalist terror states, and the birth of a renaissance of modernity in the Middle East."

And, of course, potentially evil Middle Easterner Iyad K. Hilal hadn't lived at the La Habra residence for three years. And, of course, it was a middle class white couple with three kids who now lived there. And, in a sign that perhaps Americans are a bit more color-blind than we might think, the family's been harassed, and their home's been vandalized, with the strange word "Terrist" spray-painted on it, which could also mean they're fond of terriers or just like to rip shit up.

Fox hasn't done anything more than offer a one-sentence "d'oh" to the L.A. Times (and Loftus wrote an apology to the family). But nothin' on the air, something that might remove the taint of the violent Other from the Vorick home. While Fox deserves even more scorn and pointing and laughing, let's not let the vigilantes who are attacking the Voricks off the hook. They are pathetic, worthless dungheaps, unable to articulate anything more than "Terrist bad" and rage at the full moon for daring to take away the shadows they cower in, piss bucket opportunists who only need to be told where to bring the mob so, hunched over and grunting, they can lynch and burn, lynch and burn, without the niceties of trial, the delays of due process, and cavort and cackle like crazed jackals over the carrion corpses of the dead. In this way, they are just like the Bush administration.

This is Gitmo America, where guilt need only be implied for us to be willing to allow torture, psychological and otherwise, to be heaped upon the accused. If the military and the government in general can tolerate and advocate the good of "pressure" tactics to squeeze information out of people who may be innocent, then it's a fine way to drive a potential terrorist out of the neighborhood.

And Loftus, so plump with speaking fees, said that he gave out the information based on "the best information we had at the time." Is that the unimpeachable excuse for every massive fuck-up now? You know, "the best information we had at the time" said that blacks were mentally inferior to whites who could be best served by being slaves. "The best information we had at the time" said that Native Americans were subhuman savages who needed to be slaughtered. "The best information we had at the time" told Colin Powell that Iraq had WMDs. If you tell your one-night stand that she can't catch your herpes from sucking you off, and then she does and does get your herpes, you can say you were working on the best information you had at the time. In other words, "the best information we had at the time" is the catch-all bullshit for every time you operate out of willful ignorance, outright lies, and stupidity. It's a cop-out. It's a way of saying that you're wrong now, but, shit, you weren't wrong then, when, really, and, c'mon, if you're wrong, you're fuckin' wrong, no matter when.

Sure, Loftus said he was sorry and that "mistakes happen." But mistakes don't just happen. People make mistakes. Slavering publicity whores make mistakes when they're dry humping the press machine for bigger speaking fees and book contracts. Perhaps they forget that to win a case as a prosecutor, you have to prove something "beyond a reasonable doubt." Ahh, but that's such pre-9/11 thinkin', no?

Oh, and the swarthy Middle-Easterner who used to live there, Iyad Hilal? He's a Garden Grove, CA grocery store owner who has gone into hiding with his family. Hilal says he broke off ties to the Muslim group accused of being a terrorist organization in 1997 when he "didn't agree with certain ideologies that were being put forth" at a London conference. Bakri Mohammed, the cleric who said Hilal was head of the U.S. branch of the group, called the U.S. branch a small group of "reformers."

But Gitmo America has no place for such shadings. It's just rights and wrongs, blacks and whites, might and right.

A Reminder of Gentle Times Past:
The Rude Pundit's feelin' a steamin' wave of exhaustion caressing his temples like a crowbar blow from a skinhead. So today, let's offer a rude blast from the past, another of the oh-so-many reminders that everything old is, indeed, new again.

Here's the 13-year old lyrics to "Winter of the Long Hot Summer" by the Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy, Michael Franti's old band, reminding us that in 1992, under another Bush, it was all so, so obvious what was one day gonna come our way to fuck us up and that, Christ, we've been here before - it's just our willful forgetfulness that brings us here again (except, you know, for Milli Vanilli):

It all seemed so idiotic all the accusations of unpatriotic
The fall we'll always remember, capitulating silence
election November before the winter
of the long hot summer
Somewhere in the desert
we raised the oil pressure
and waited for the weather
to get much better
for the new wind to blow in the storm
We tried to remember the history in the region
the French foreign legion, Imperialism,
Peter O'Toole and hate the Ayatollah
were all we learned in school
Not that we gave Hussein five billion
Not of our new bed partner the Syrian
and of course no mention of the Palestine situation
It was amazing how they steamrolled
They said eighty percent approval
but there was no one that I knew polled
No one had a reason for being in the Gulf
We waited for congress to speak up illegal build up
But no one would wake up
Our representatives were Milli Vanilli's
for corporate Dallas Cowboy Beverly Hillbillies
With perfect timing
the politicians rhyming their sentiments
so nicely oil gold and sand
my sediments precisely....
We regretfully support the lunacy
I'm afraid there is no time for more scrutiny
National unity preserve our community
Teflon© election opportunities
were in profundant abundance

On January second the Bush administration
announced a recession had stricken
the Nation the highest quarterly
earnings in ten years were posted
by Chevron©
Meanwhile a budget was placed in our hands
as the deadline in the sand came to an end
so much for the peace dividend
one billion a day is what we spent
and our grandchildren will pay for it 'til the end
When schools are unfunded
and kids don't get their diplomas
they get used for gun boat diplomacy
disproportionately
black or brown we see
bullet catchers for the slave master

Then the conservatives called up reservists
to active service left families nervous
but more importantly broke nine hundred a month
but the check came late, army red tape you see,
this golden opportunity
We watched the tube and read the newspaper
The propaganda of the gas masked raper
was the proper slander to whip up the hatred

The stage was lit and the lights were all faded
The pilots in night vision goggles Kuwaited and
generals masturbated
'til the fifteenth two days later they invaded
Not a single t.v. station expressed dissension or
hardly made mention to the censorship of information
from our kinder and gentler nation
blinder and mentaler retardation
DISORIENTATION
The pilots said their bombs lit Baghdad
like a Christmas tree
It was the Christian thing to do you see
they didn't mention any casualties
no distinction between the real
and the proxy
only football analogies

We saw the bomb hole
We watched the Super Bowl
We saw the scud missile
We watched Bud© commercials
We saw the yellow ribbons
Saw pilots in prison
We never saw films of the dead...at eleven
Angela Davis addressed the spectators
and shouting above a rumbling generator said
if they insist on bringing us down
then let's shut the whole country down
Marching through the downtown
A hundred thousand became participants
and we heard the drums of millions off in the distance
rushing through the cities
some of them did things that weren't so pretty
most were there for primal scream therapy
news men concentrated
on the negative liked the jingoists more
peaceful protesters ended up
on the cutting room floor
Nintendo© casualties of the ratings war
More bombs dropped than in World War II
on in both Asian invasions, new world order persuasion,
Business as usual
for our nation
Could you imagine a hundred fifty thousand dead,
the city of Stockton
coffins locked in when we clocked in...not to mention
civilians
The loss of life on both sides
pushed the limits of resilience
The scent of blood in our nostrils
fuel of the fossil land of apostle
The blackness that covered the sky was not the only thing
that brought a tear to the eye or
the taste of anger to the tongues
of those too young to remember Vietnam

Is heroin better in a veteran's mind
than the memory of the dying laying in a line
Is it the smell or the shadows heaving and weeping
that keeps the soldier from sleeping
as he sings the orphan's lullaby
When the soldiers put down their bayonets
the strings are chained to the marionettes
Emir of Kuwait gets back in his jet
we replace the dead with new cadets
will we hate those who did the shelling
or will we hate those who weren't willing to do the killing
when the leaders of the bald eagles come home to roost
will we sing a song of praise and indebtedness
for our deliverance from evil
or will we sing a song of sadness
for the dreaded debt this mess delivered us PEOPLE.

The Jolly Rancher:
The Rude Pundit said it a couple of days ago, and he'll continue to say it: This is all just getting embarassing. Around the nation, the majority of Americans now cringe with gut-churning fear and shame whenever they hear George W. Bush speak. Indeed, localities are appealling to the federal government for emergency funds to deal with sewage overflows from all the vomit and diarrhea that an angst-ridden population is puking and shitting when Bush appears on the news. Because when one is filled with undirected rage, impotence, and futility, it's gonna take itself out on one's stomach lining and colon. And it's gonna burn, motherfuckers, oh, how it's gonna burn.

See, when Bush speaks, it's like watching the President of another country talk. "God," we think, in ever-increasing, staggeringly large, impeachment supportable numbers, "what a happy nation that man lives in; god, how we wish we lived there; oh, fuck, he's talkin' about here; oh, fuck me, we're fucked." When Bush talked briefly to reporters yesterday in his Idaho vacation away from his vacation "ranch," it was all jovial shit about how super-duper wonderful Iraq is in its splendiferous shiny new pseudo-Constitution; how, despite every bit of evidence to the contrary, he could say, "The fact that Iraq will have a democratic constitution that honors women's rights, the rights of minorities, is going to be an important change in the broader Middle East." Despite news reports that very day saying how the Sunnis have been excluded from the process, despite the outcry of Iraqi women, it's all great, greater, bestest.

Hey, you know what document guaranteed the rights of minorities and women in Iraq? The fuckin' constitution they had before we invaded, written in 1970. Not to get all Juan Cole here, but, like with disbanding the military, we had to toss everything with the Saddam taint into the demolition dump, thinkin' that it was easier to dig a new foundation in the rock and rubble than to build on what was there. It could have been easy: one just had to maybe be a little better than Saddam Hussein and follow through with the Provisional Constitution's guarantees of free speech, free assembly, and more, including Kurdish autonomy. 'Course, that document was also socialistic, codifying universal health care and education for all. But, shit, it was secular (if Baathist-heavy), a damn step or two better than what we're about to get.

Shit, though, who the fuck cares what we anti-war extremists think anyway. We who think the Iraq War is a mistake along the lines of waking up in your bed, after a bad speedball/acid trip, right next to a decapitated corpse with blood on your lips and a head in your hands and no idea how you got there, are just seeking to "empower terrorists," as Trent Duffy told reporters this week. Perhaps not, but we are sure feeling that dread of the coming horror in our nauseated bellies and smelling the fear emanating from our befouled toilets.

And the happy, daisy-skippin' President? After talkin' to reporters, he "may go for a bike ride," he hadn't made up his mind about fishing, just "kind of hanging loose, as they say." While hangin' the rest of us out to dry.

Info On More Tickets Added For the Rude Pundit Live:
Click on over to the show website for the skinny on the release of more tickets for Friday's performance of The Rude Pundit in The Year of Living Rudely.

Speech, Free and Otherwise:
Ya gotta have principles in this fucked-up world, ya know? Ya gotta be able, at the end of the day, to stand up and say, "This is what I believed and you know what, motherfuckers? I stuck by that shit until the bitter end." The Rude Pundit's got a few principles, here and there, most of them involving essential oils, old Portishead CDs, and glow-in-the-dark condoms, but one towers over all of them: you got to believe in freedom of speech or all else in the detritus-ridden national "dialogue" is worthless. Supporting freedom of speech as a relative absolute can be soul-sapping, like watching the last season of MASH - goddamn, it sucked tanks of noxious gas, but you're gonna stick by it until the bitter end. And it means that you have to support the right of fucktards of all political stripes to make stupid ass statements.

So it means you can't stand there and do a little happy jig when some rank little turd like talk radio jackass Michael Graham gets fired for something he said that doesn't violate any laws or putrid FCC regulations. Graham is known to many on the left as the occasional token conservative on Bill Maher's shows, sniffle-giggling in that vaguely righteous repressed-white-guy way that right wingers use when they deign to make a "point." His book is Redneck Nation, with its bizarro cover of Graham apparently fucking a pick-up truck. Guess that's what rednecks must do now that donkeys are in much smaller supply.

On July 21, Graham said, "Because of the mix of Islamic theology that—rightly or wrongly—is interpreted to promote violence, added to an organizational structure that allows violent radicals to operate openly in Islam’s name with impunity, Islam has, sadly, become a terrorist organization. It pains me to say it. But the good news is it doesn’t have to stay this way, if the vast majority of Muslims who don’t support terror will step forward and re-claim their religion." In essence, Graham is actually being far, far more polite than, say, Michael Savage, who, it seems, wants to eat a screaming Muslim child live on the air, or Congressman Tom "Nuke Mecca" Tancredo or Ann "Convert 'Em With My Magical Cunt of Christian Justice" Coulter. But because Graham said that "Islam has, sadly, become a terrorist organization," and refused to apologize for it, he incurred the wrath of the Council on American Islamic Relations.

Again, Graham is just another Limbaugh/Hannity wannabe, flouting his "redneck" credentials as if saying that a man from the South is conservative is some kind of revelation. He says vile things, and, in the end, he was fired because he upset people with his words. You wanna call the advertisers and get them to bail on the show or the station? Great. You wanna boycott shit? Fine. You wanna put up posters saying that Michael Graham is a wad of fuck and photoshop his face into Satan's? Go right the fuck ahead. And if Graham gets cancelled because he has no listeners and no advertisers, then so be it.

But let us not "applaud," as CAIR did, Graham's firing for his words. It's the same as applauding ABC for firing Bill Maher after 9/11. It'd be the same as taking Marc Maron off Air America for some of the (really funny) shit he says about fundamentalist Christians.

Graham is a martyr now for the right. He's gonna be on O'Reilly's watch-me-lick-my-own-taint show tonight. Because of CAIR's actions, Islam will be bashed far more than if the organization had argued with Graham, put out statements opposing Graham's words, or a thousand other actions. Graham's gonna end up with more exposure, more "fans," more ways to spread whatever the fuck he believes. All because of the failure to believe in freedom of speech.

Sometimes supporting freedom of speech is one fuck of a burden. Ask the ACLU (who, by the way, Graham criticized profusely like a good conservative nutzoid). Ya gotta be willin' to get down and dirty, into the shit and muck, willing to prop up that right for even the most odious fucks around.

But if you support it wholeheartedly, even for those you despise, you can feel free, free, so liberatedly free to say things like: "Fuck you, Pat Robertson, you squinty-eyed shitbag, so full of years of unmitigated hate and bile that it oozes out of you like pus from an untreated herpes sore. And fuck anyone who still buys that said bag of shit is anything even remotely related to Christianity and is gonna defend Robertson no matter what crazed nightmare vision of reality spews from him like vomit from a flu-ridden toddler. Like male dogs who suck their own balls to get little red hard-ons, you 700 Club fans want everyone to see your proud, slimy cocks, but, really, you're just blowin' yourself. Robertson wants the U.S. to assassinate legally-elected Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. Ain't that what we call a 'fatwa' in other contexts? Or should we just call it more bloviation and bullshit from a man who's been buggering Jesus on live television for decades?"

Damn, that free speech feels good.

Caught In the Crossfire of the Iraq Circle Jerk:
So, like, do you think Deborah Johns would be proud if her Marine son William died to create another Iran? Opposed to Cindy Sheehan's now-interrupted vigil outside of Bush's Crawford ranch, Johns is one of the mothers of soldiers embarking on the "You Don't Speak For Me, Cindy" Tour (aka the "Tools Across the U.S.A" tour). The caravan will wind its way across the western U.S., from San Francisco to Crawford, with stops at the Doubletree Hotel in Bakersfield, where the brave right-wing supported caravaners can relax by the palm tree-lined pool, and the Dallas Hyatt Regency, with its multiple restaurants and amazing fitness center. That'll show Joan Baez she shouldn't join Cindy's followers in the ditches of Crawford.

But do you think Natalie Healy, who lost her son in Afghanistan but believes that the conflicts there and in Iraq are related, would be proud to know that Daniel, one of those missing Navy SEALS, died in a "larger" war that ensures the rise of a state that will enshrine the repression of women as part of its constitution? What about all the other anti-Sheehan mothers dug up by the media in a desperate attempt to offer "balance"? Do you think they wonder which conservative perversion of Islam will Iraq take? The Saudi Arabian track, where women can't drive or go much of anywhere without being accompanied by a male? Or what about the Taliban track, where girls can't even be schooled? And what about the veil? How insane will Iraq become to live up to the Islamic ideal that man is head of the household? Is this what you sacrificed your kids for? (And the Rude Pundit is not saying this to "attack" Islam - when wackjob fundamentalists try to impose Christian dogma on a government, he calls bullshit. And let's not even get into Israel.)

It's not that the whole Iraq War isn't an epic disaster the likes of which makes Custer's "Last Stand" seem like a well-planned, well-ordered, by the book military operation. It's not that anyone not suckling at the teat of Bush administration "leaks" and "anonymous sources" didn't know that there was going to be a prolonged conflict, with lots of casualties, and, you know, no fuckin' WMDs. No, no, we know all that shit, along with the inevitable civil war and/or Islamist state as the end result. It's just that it's about to get really, truly, oh-fuck-how-can-he-even-show-his-face-in-public embarrassing for George W. Bush.

Sometimes teenage boys, when not engaged in pimple-poppin' or text-messaging or watchin' Hobofight videos, like to masturbate. No, really. It's a known fact: teenage boys like to jerk off. And sometimes they like to jerk off with their friends. Maybe a group of 'em. All sittin' around the basement, talkin' about hot pieces of ass, thinkin' that each of 'em has their eyes closed as they start to rub their cocks, and if one of 'em looks, he'll be the one called a "gaywad," even though to catch him, someone else had to be lookin'. It's like callin' "Shotgun" when you're about to get in a car. Whoever says it first wins.

Yep, sometimes teenage boys have well-polished circle jerk behavior, ejaculating so the spooge only lands in a Kleenex or a well-used pillow. Seein' who can top the other for moanin' and pretendin' they're fuckin' some girl, refusin' to recognize that if they'd all just admit they're gay they'd have a whole helluva lot more fun, such a fantasy world, man, such a fantasy world. Uh-huh, it's all well and good. Until Mom walks into the basement. Then you're just a bunch of teenage boys caught with your dicks in your hands. Sure, you can try to explain it away, but, really, it's better to put your dick back in your pants and run home.

George W. Bush is the proudest of the serial masturbators. He can't give it up. Here he is, plagiarizing himself, in his why-bother radio address this past Saturday: "In a few weeks, our country will mark the four-year anniversary of the attacks of September the 11th, 2001. On that day, we learned that vast oceans and friendly neighbors no longer protect us from those who wish to harm our people. And since that day, we have taken the fight to the enemy." God, you just wanna avert your eyes and cover your ears so that you don't have to witness the jacking off anymore, the unashamed yanking of that cock until he comes all over Condi's hair. (Plus, you know, could someone please fucking tell Bush that oceans didn't protect us from the British back in the day? Or that Native Americans weren't really all that well protected by oceans, either? Or, really, anyone since, say, the invention of the boat?)

It's only gonna get worse. Now Bush is gonna go on a tour, in roughly the opposite direction of the anti-Cindy caravan, to re-sell his war. He's gonna compare it to World War II. And he's just gonna shame us all, as we watch the cringe-inducing cheering crowds, the panicked flailing of the kid who's trying to explain to his mom why there's so much dry cum on the basement floor.

It's such a sorry state when the circle jerk must abruptly end. But Mom's walked into the room, and she's pissed.

If You Want To Go To the Show...:
There's still seats available for tomorrow night's added performance of The Rude Pundit in The Year of Living Rudely. Go to the show blog for more info.

Cheney: Our Military Is Ragtag and Unorganized:
Whenever the viscous-goo-that-slouches-like-a-man known as Vice President Dick Cheney slimes up to a podium to speak, flowers lose their petals, butterflies drop from the sky, and a pall of doom and darkness is cast throughout the land so that toddlers sense it in their chilled bones and begin to cry, in unison, uncontrollably. Cheney is our misanthropic government's master of dark arts, his purpose to offer visions of a world on fire the likes of which would make Satan himself scratch his balls' black van dyke and mutter, "Those're goddamn fine flames, goddamn fine flames," itching for the end of the miracles of technology that keep Cheney alive so that the Vice President may finally die and rightfully join the devil by his side to assist in rule over the damned.

So it was that Cheney belched and spat puss at the gathered veterans at the National Convention of the Military Order of the Purple Heart. Amid his usual recitation of the myriad horrors that have afflicted the world since, well, he and Bush took office, Cheney offered this heartwarming anecdote about Iraq: "In Iraq, terrorists have slaughtered innocent people in marketplaces, in restaurants, in private homes, at police recruiting stations, in a hospital, and outside a mosque. They have beheaded bound men in front of cameras, and killed UN employees and international aid workers. Earlier this summer, as American soldiers were giving candy to children, a suicide bomber drove into the crowd, killing 18 boys and girls and an American soldier." Yes, Iraqis are serious about teaching their children not to take candy from strangers.

But beyond lessons in childhood safety, Cheney offered a truly bizarre take on the U.S. forces in Iraq. See, despite being the "best-trained, best-equipped" military in the world, the Americans in Iraq are really just the same scruffy lot that fought the American Revolution. Farted Cheney, "The victories in 1776 were few, and the condition of the Army was dreadful. By Christmastime our men were cold, hungry, and exhausted, and many of them didn't even have boots to wear. The volunteers were near the end of their rope, and thousands of enlistments were set to expire on New Year's Day. These men were bound and determined to leave, so the Continental Army was about to evaporate."

See? You get it? It's not that the administration's a bunch of stumblefucks who couldn't wipe their asses with a diagram and feces-finding tissue. It's that the lack of body armor and, oh, say, a plan is exactly what's needed so the troops really suffer for their country. It's a morale builder, not a soul wrecker.

It took a great leader, said Cheney, George Washington himself, to rally the bedraggled soldiers and rouse them to fight another day: "'My brave fellows,' he said, 'you have done all I asked you to do and more than could be reasonably expected; you have worn yourself out with fatigues and hardships; but we know not how to spare you. The present is emphatically the crisis, which is to decide our destiny.' One by one the men stepped forward. They could not let their country or their fellow soldiers down. Inspired by leadership and renewed in their strength, they stayed in the fight -- and America won the war." Get it? Bush is like Washington, right? And the Americans are just fighting the British all over ag...oh, fuck, wait a second.

Ahh, see the little problem here is that, back in the day, the British army was the best-equipped, best-trained military in the Western world. And, you know, the American revolutionaries? Shit, let's just let the Army tell the story: "A force of farmers and townsmen, fresh from their fields and shops, with hardly a semblance of orthodox military organization, had met and fought on equal terms with a professional British Army. On the British this astonishing feat had a sobering effect, for it taught them that American resistance was not to be easily overcome."

And if we're gonna go with this "holy shit, we're the Redcoats in Iraq" scenario, let's go whole hog. Here's how the Revolutionary War was viewed, at least partly, in England: To fight the war, "Britain had first to raise the necessary forces, then transport and sustain them over 3000 miles of ocean, and finally use them effectively to regain control of a vast and sparsely populated territory. Recruiting men for an eighteenth century army was most difficult. The British Government had no power to compel service except in the militia in defense of the homeland, and service in the British Army overseas was immensely unpopular." How did the British make up for the lack of recruits? By outsourcing to the Hessians. Mercenaries, they were called then. Today, they're "security companies" or "Halliburton."

If Dick Cheney is breathing he's lying. Or he's insulting the United States Military once again by comparing them with a bunch of untrained, weakly-armed, barely cohesive bands of citizen-terrorists who were cobbled together to fight against an occupying power. Or he's the most ironic motherfucker in history.

Satan is licking his lips, waiting for Cheney's arrival. For such unmitigated, unapologetic evil is rare. Cheney will make a good viceroy and an even better chew toy for the Devil's hounds to tear into pieces, be healed again, and get ripped to shreds over and over for eternity.

Year of Living Rudely Tickets:
There's still about 20 tickets left for tomorrow night's extra super-special added performance of The Rude Pundit in The Year of Living Rudely at Dixon Place in New York City. Buy online here or try (with cash) at the door.

Added Performance of the Rude Pundit Live in NYC - Saturday, August 20 - Buy Tickets Now:
The New York International Fringe Festival has added a performance of The Rude Pundit in The Year of Living Rudely this Saturday, August 20, at 7 p.m. Tickets can be purchased in advance by going to Ticketweb and typing in "Dixon Place" in the venue search. Or try clicking here.

So far, this is the only additional performance of the sold-out Rude Pundit live show. Only 40 seats available.

Also, some standby seats are available for all other performances (tonight at 7:15, Sunday at 2:15, Wednesday at 5 p.m., Friday the 26th at 10:30 p.m.). Show up fifteen minutes prior to the show if you wanna see if you can get in (and this ain't a fuckin' guarantee, but, hey, it also ain't Wicked).

Come and experience live, rude punditry.