Katrina Plus Four Months, Part 5 - In Conclusion:
On New Year's weekend in New Orleans, Mid-City is dead. The ride down Carrollton in the center of the Crescent City is like going through an Old West ghost town - you half expect tumbleweeds and coyotes roaming the boarded up buildings and gray, dingy neighborhoods. Frankly, the city looks in many ways as it did in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when it was truly a sleazy Old South place, before the 1984 World's Fair, which, while it failed in so many ways, got the town gussied up and ready for guests. Of course, the sleazy streets, so often smelling of crushed magnolia, beer, and rainwater, were teeming with people then. Now, it is the Big Empty.

Other than the neighborhoods across the river, like Algiers and the Westbank, which got through Katrina relatively unscathed, all that really remains of New Orleans is a touristy mini-crescent north of the Mississippi River, encompassing the French Quarter, the Central Business District, and parts of the Garden District and Uptown. The resurrection of New Orleans seems as if it's calculated to create a Disneyfied version of itself, where only the parts that matter to outsiders are developed, those that can be made into simulacra of the real thing.

The latest news is the attempt to stop the bulldozers from razing over a hundred houses in the Lower Ninth Ward. It's noble and understandable, especially with rumors floating around the neighborhood that Donald Trump is interested in buying the land of the Lower Ninth; especially since, as the Rude Brother pointed out, the whiter areas of Lakeview and Gentilly, where other levees broke, while generally screwed, have had the debris picked up off the streets; especially since the partial list of homes targeted for demolition includes a large chunk of the 70117 zip code, the Lower Ninth.

Yes, it is a noble effort, but the neighborhood's a loss, as many people from there realize. More effort needs to be put into what happens next, not on tearing down what's already gone. Make sure the Lower Ninth gets affordable housing, a real economic base, and more. Recreating what's been washed away is defeat, a desperate clinging to a past that Katrina wiped away. Goddamn, the Lower Ninth might have been a place of families and community and churches, but it was a poverty-stricken, forgotten corner that only surfaced in the collective consciousness of the city when there was violence. If the effort is made to keep the greedy sons of bitches away from the land there, something truly amazing can arise. But that starts with bulldozers.

The Rude Pundit left New Orleans feeling much the same about the entire area, or feeling worse - that it's time to abandon New Orleans because if next hurricane season strikes it again, it's done. For the will and energy needed to put this metropolitan area back together are too much for the state, too much for a Washington, DC too concerned with wars and corruption to look back to 2005's ravages. It's too much to ask for responsible environmental policy, and too much to ask for real attention to poverty, and too much to ask for an end to tax cuts so it can all be realistically funded, and too much to ask for a state that was started, in essence, by a pirate, Jean Lafitte, to give up its corrupt ways. It ain't gonna happen. The people here know it. It's a dulling, bludgeoning kind of knowledge, that they've been abandoned. And this crosses party lines for blame. Hell, in Louisiana, Kathleen Blanco's political career is over - she is seen as weak and ineffective. George Bush is mostly despised around here, for he is seen as a liar and opportunist whose promise of billions of dollars of aid will not be fulfilled.

There's no climax here. No solutions. Just the New Orleans night, a darkness encroaching on the last bits of light.

Katrina Plus Four Months, Part 4 - Essay In Black (and White):
There's a good chance there haven't been this many white people in the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans since the last time the NOPD busted up a crack house. On this day, four months after the levee broke during Hurricane Katrina and sent a train roar of water heaving through the streets, the Ninth is crawling with white people in this neighborhood that fits Wolf Blitzer's definition of "so poor and so black." The white people crawl along in luxury cars to gawk at the destroyed community, nestled between very white Chalmette and, just on the other side of the Industrial Canal, the Bywater, a mixed race community in New Orleans that gives way to the more gentrified Faubourg that gives way to the French Quarter.

Some white people get out of their cars to walk the shattered, muddy streets. Some take photos, most personal tokens, but some of them obviously for professional purposes. One young white man posed an older black man on a small stool, asking him to put his hands on his knees and lean forward. The young white man wanted to take a picture of the older black man in front of the black man's collapsed house, dotted with his dirt-caked possessions. The Rude Pundit hated that young white man. The Rude Pundit wanted to kick his ass when he made the older black man re-pose. And then the Rude Brother reminded the Rude Pundit that they themselves were walking around, taking pictures, and, really, and, c'mon, were they that many steps removed from the photographer. The Rude Brother, a better angel, surely, if there is such a thing, said, "Isn't it better that people are coming to see this?" This, meaning, of course, everything around him.

To enter the streets near the levee in the Lower Ninth Ward is to witness the magnitude of the force of the floods. And it is to understand why the black people of the neighborhood believe they were abandoned. To put this in context: the Rude Pundit visited the site of the fallen Twin Towers four months after 9/11. That was comprehensible horror - it was horror, to be sure, but it was concentrated, and we could grapple with that and understand it. We could see it all in a single wide-angle picture. Not the Lower Ninth Ward. Because one stationary camera would diminish the extent of the vast wasteland the neighborhood has become, and the fact that virtually nothing has been done in the months since Katrina.


Herbert Gettridge was sitting on the porch of his stucco home, one of the few that remained standing without massive damage. Gettridge sat there as two other men were pulling out all of his belongings and tossing them into a pile. "I've been in this house for fifty years," he said, "raised nine children here. People know the Gettridges in the Lower Ninth." Yeah, he wants everyone to know, the Lower Ninth Ward was poor and crime-ridden, but it was also a community of families and now the crime and families are gone, only leaving the poverty. He had re-built the house once before, after Hurricane Betsy in 1965: "I pulled out the old sheetrock by myself and put in all the new. I'll do it again." Of course, Gettridge is 82 years old now. "I just came back here from Madison, Wisconsin. FEMA sent us to seven different places, all over." He finally ended up with a daughter in Madison, with his wife, "been with the same woman since I was sixteen." His wife's sick, he said. "She wasn't doing too well before the storm and now she's feelin' worse." She remains in Madison.

The Gettridges had evacuated early, but so many others stayed behind or just couldn't leave. The attic of the house next door had a neat square hole cut in it. Gettridge's neighbor had stayed behind. "I told him he was a fool. Was in that attic for four or five days before the helicopter came and cut him out, half dead, no food or water." Another man across the street "lost his mind" because he stayed during the flood.

Gettridge's house was surrounded by the rubble and ruin of other houses. Most of the homes were knocked off their foundations by the rush and churn of the water from the Industrial Canal. Many were simply crushed - nothing but wood, insulation, roofing. A few were roofs on the ground with no house there. Cars were trapped underneath homes. Houses were split open, like walnuts, cracked to reveal what was within, the belongings spilling out. And it has essentially looked this way since the flood came. "Four months, and they haven't even moved the damn barge," Gettridge said.


Oh, yeah, the barge. There's a barge in the middle of the street next to the levee. Some believe the giant barge actually came unmoored in the storm and broke the levee. Some Lower Ninth members say that they had complained about the barge before Katrina hit, that it was knocking against the levee earlier, and because it was Lower Ninth citizens, with no power at all, no one cared. But the barge is there, a huge rusting hulk. The barge, when it came through the levee, smeared the houses right near it, like a gargantuan knife smoothing butter on a slice of toast. The water and barge shoved other houses together into a jammed up pile. One of Gettridge's sons has a house in that pile. If the levee had held, yes, the neighborhood would still have been flooded, but it would have been more like Chalmette or Slidell, with houses turned into shells. Terrible enough, but not this.

Walking near the barge, a large black man, about 30 years old, stepped out of a pick-up truck and just started talking to the Rude Pundit and his brother. "I've been in Oakland for the last three months. I just came back here today with my family. First time since I left on September 7." He hadn't been able to get out before the storm and he and his family rode it out before being taken to the I-10 overpass by someone with a small boat. "We were lucky because we had food and water up there. But it was horrible, man, horrible." He talked about shitting and pissing in front of other people, about old people dying around him. "I got two kids with me, six and ten, and they wanna know what's gonna happen. I wanna cry, but I can't cry, 'cause if they see their father cry, then they're gonna know everything ain't gonna be alright." He shook his head at the barge and walked away.

Back at Herbert Gettridge's house, the Rude Pundit wished him luck, took his picture, and, overcome with white liberal guilt, handed him twenty bucks. "God bless you," Gettridge said. "If I was still drinking, this would buy me two cases of beer." Gettridge said he'd given up drinking three or four years ago. If he was still drinking, he'd have had an awfully long way to go to get a brew.

Katrina Plus Four Months, Part 3 - Chalmette:
If you ask him, JB will admit that he was a goddamned idiot. A lucky goddamned idiot, but an idiot just the same. See, JB decided to stay behind when Hurricane Katrina struck the town of Chalmette, just across the parish line from New Orleans, in St. Bernard parish. JB had himself a hurricane party, alone, gettin' drunk and thinkin' everything was gonna be just fine, as it had been with every other hurricane. "Then, I was standin' there in my underwear, holdin' a beer, and I noticed that the carpet was changin' color," he said, as his powers of perception told him that the flood after the storm was overtaking his small house close to Rocky and Carlos's seafood restaurant.

JB made a fateful decision at that moment, one that would make him put down the beer, one that would make him put on pants. He exited his house into the complete and utter darkness and water up to his waist. Imagine that for a moment here: there is no light, no glow of street lamps, no moon. Imagine being turned, in essence, nearly blind and then imagine being tossed into a river. JB got to his truck, which had one payment left on it. He tried the ignition. It turned over once and was dead.

The water rising, JB grabbed an ice chest that was floating by and he spent the next several hours in the water, "sometimes swimming, sometimes just lettin' the current take me along," the surging waters getting so deep that his feet couldn't reach the ground. Truth be told, JB, who's got a bum leg, nearly drowned many times over the course of that night, but he's a pig-headed son of a bitch, and the same stubborn attitude that made him stay in his home when so many other fled allowed him to continually recover and float on. Finally, he passed by a house that had a boat tied to the second floor window. The people there came out and rescued JB, bringing him back to their place. "But I was so tired, I just fell asleep in the boat. They put blankets on me and let me stay there."

The next day, the floods had receded enough so that JB could make his way to a crowded middle school serving as a shelter. Then began a bizarre odyssey through the "completely unprepared" so-called "emergency" system: to get food, JB headed out to the parish courthouse where, he said, "judges and politicians were havin' a big barbecue while handin' out peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to all of us." He was taken to a warehouse, jammed with people, poorly-lit with only a few large box fans to keep the rescued cool in the ungodly Louisiana heat. He was there for four days, "and I saw every kind of behavior - fights, people shootin' up drugs." There were few people of authority to control things. People were shitting and pissing everywhere, bargaining for food, buying drugs with food.

He was eventually removed to Algiers, across the river, and finally to the airport, where, for a few more days he was warehoused. "They gave us one MRE and one bottle of water for every two people." The last part of his Louisiana journey was a fourteen-hour wait in a long line on the hot tarmac, without food or water, to be flown away to San Antonio, where he was taken in by a Baptist church until, a couple of weeks later, his family was able to bring him back to Lafayette, Louisiana. The church, which was housing a number of Katrina survivors, didn't want JB to go because "I had such a positive attitude, I guess they thought it had an effect on everyone else." But JB's with family now, out of Chalmette, which, to all intents and purposes, doesn't really exist.

The Rude Pundit saw one working traffic light in all of St. Bernard Parish last week. There's checkpoints at every entrance to the parish, with police enforcing a dusk to dawn curfew since there's little or no power. The streets of Chalmette, of the whole parish, are ghostly still, with much the same ruin as the neighborhoods of Slidell. Except here there is no line where the destruction ends. It is all endless, endless. Outside of one faded old home is Statue of Liberty lawn ornament, surrounded by debris. Another home is pushed into the middle of the street. And more, more trashed spaces.

Signs are posted all over the town - because, really, it's the only way to advertise right now - signs that offer the services of "House Gutters" and "We Tow Flooded Cars." The only visibly open businesses were liquor stores and some trailer operations, like "Shorty's Po-Boys," essentially a food truck, with a long line of customers wanting to get something other than Red Cross rations.

Which were readily available on the main street, Judge Perez Drive. You see the death of a town on its empty main roads. For on Judge Perez, each and every business you pass is closed and/or gutted. Some of the parking lots of shopping centers were fenced off, creating large camps of FEMA trailers, with seemingly self-maintained checkpoints at the entrances. These would be crowded, traffic-filled roads, and packed parking lots ordinarily. Chalmette's not a sleepy burg, but a bustling suburb. But now, now, four months after Katrina, it is a town of ghosts, living and dead.


And it's still not the worst.

Tomorrow: the devastated Lower Ninth Ward.

Katrina Plus Four Months, Part 2 - Riding Through Slidell:
So the old Check In/Check Out didn't make it. The Rude Pundit had used the promise of a po' boy from that old gas station turned beacon of fried seafood sandwich-dom as an enticement to get the Rude Brother to go along on a trip to the New Orleans area. Surely, the Rude Pundit thought, having heard about how so much of Slidell was fine, the Check In/Check Out would have made it. But, like so much else you've heard about recoveries, it's all relative. It's like saying that if we discover microbes on Mars, we've discovered aliens. Well, yeah, technically, but, c'mon, we were promised little green men.

Slidell is a divided city - an obvious line where the floods from Lake Ponchartrain ended extends across a large swath of the town. On one side, there's a kind of normalcy, as if no gigantic storms had passed right over the North Shore. On the other, there's a continuing degradation of the buildings of the town as you ride from I-12 down to the boarded up businesses of Front Street and finally to the absolute destruction of the area approaching the Highway 11 bridge across the lake. At the Starbucks on the corner of Ponchartrain, people wait for FEMA officials to talk to them about flood insurance, for insurance agents to talk to them about other kinds.

The Rude Pundit headed into the neighborhoods where the homes were of people he knew who no longer lived there. During the ride to Slidell, the Rude Pundit had passed at least a dozen trucks towing FEMA trailers, and in this subdivision, many of them were parked on lawns outside of houses, some with Christmas decorations on them. And when the Rude Pundit says, "Houses," he means it in the sense of structure, for every house - every house - was gutted to the studs and foundation. The dirt in front of the homes, which used to be covered by "lawns," held either the enormous piles of debris, the ruined furniture, decorations, possessions, sheetrock, carpeting, that used to fill the houses; or all the detritus of the carried away debris, life reduced to bits of trash, a broken CD, the pages of a book. The Rude Brother noticed a page in the dirt outside of the house of some of the Rude Pundit's friends: it was titled "The Mystery of Atlantis."

This was much the same in subdivision after subdivision, with shopping centers and churches still merely wrecked shells with piles of garbage outside them. Some churches held services in tents, some in smaller spaces. In the wealthier area of Eden Isles, a similar destruction had occurred, although most of the homes had second stories, which were able to be occupied. Outside of one gutted home, a perfectly clean infinity pool was in working order, complete with a waterfall, ready for a dip. And then the Rude brothers headed out to Highway 11 and quickly realized that those with gutted homes were the lucky ones.

For Highway 11 was just a couple of miles of destruction - crushed buildings, small apartment complexes wrecked, boats on the side of the road. One large trailer had one of those disturbing inflatable elongated demi-humans dancing in the breeze outside it. It was an open business: Jack's Discount Cigarettes.

And as wrenching as this was, when you turn left just before the Highway 11 bridge, you understand, finally, in all its stunning simplicity, what happened here. You see empty piles, those vertical logs, row after row of them on the lake. And if you didn't know what it meant, you'd pass them by, ascribing them to historical ruin. But those piles held fishing camps and houses that are simply gone. The sign remains for Vera's restaurant, which used to extend out to the lake and serve up awesomely crunchy and tender fried catfish. Across the road are boats pushed hundreds of yards ashore, piles of broken woods, a shambles. Nothing to look at, so the Rude Pundit headed back to the bridge and on to St. Bernard Parish, feeling the aching mundanity of seeing ruin after ruin.



Tomorrow: St. Bernard Parish and the Lower Ninth Ward.

Katrina Plus Four Months, Part 1:
The Rude Pundit went to different areas of metro New Orleans this past week, prior to the New Year. What he saw is a vibrant, alive, breathing city transformed into a necropolis. Tomorrow he'll tell stories, of what he saw, of people he spoke to. Today, just some pictures of the area four months after Hurricane Katrina. Take a look. You can ask yourself then if nation-building should begin at home.

Slidell, Louisiana, about 20 miles outside of New Orleans, on the north shore of Lake Ponchartrain:





A couple of photos from the Lower Ninth Ward in New Orleans, where everything looks like the week after the water receded:




Tomorrow and the rest of the week: Stories, photos, interviews from New Orleans.

A Few Quick Words From the Readers Before We Bid This Year Farewell (Haiku Version):
The Rude Pundit offered his 2005 re-cap in haiku form. The rude readers have responded with their own three line poems of (more or less) five, seven, and five syllables. Here's a few of the best:

From Dave:
Commander-in-chief
Leading safely from afar
Clean hands, dirty soul

From Thomas:
Smug reality
Check those facts again Rummy
Gin might help today

From Hugh:
Randy Cunningham
Took a million bucks in bribes
What a fucking whore

From Chaz:
Lies, lies, and more lies
Like a sandpaper dildo
In hand of Limbaugh

From Jason:
Condoleezza Rice
Touring the globe in hopes of
Fooling them again

From M. Douglas:
Endless privilege
of skull and bones alumni
rape sweet liberty

From Iris:
Mommy, rub my back,
Condi, tell me I'm great,
Laura, get me a drink

From Lloyd:
Imperial smirk
dismisses lost lives and limbs,
gulf cities, honor.

From Tracy:
My anus is raw
Five long years of ass fucking
Life of a sex slave

'Nuff said. Bye, 2005. May you rot in hell, old man.

More End of the Year Haiku:
Yesterday, the Rude Pundit started turning Japanese by reviewing the year through the magic of haiku. Today, the desecration of this ancient form of poetry continues (but, then again, how much was 2005 a desecration of so many other things? Why should haiku get a free pass?).

Naked
Katrina wrecked lives,
Pickled New Orleans, blew clothes
Off the emperor

A Good Meal
Brownie finished his
Dinner while bloated blacks bobbed
Like large fishing lures

If Then
We won’t think again
About Pakistan until
Spring thaws the corpses

Scenes From a Ditch
Cindy Sheehan asked
For truth and some compassion
From a mute fence post

A Judiciary Comparison
Roberts, Alito.
The only difference is
Who’ll fuck us harder

2005 For the Reality-Based Community
A dry, spiked dildo
Roughly, savagely jammed in
An anxious anus

And here's a couple of haiku for George Bush sent in from rude readers (feel free to play along and submit your own):

From Stuart:
he lied and he spied
high crimes and misdemeanors
impeach the bastard

From Todd:
Strumming cool guitar
Black people die in city
Heck of a year Chimp

End of the Year Haiku, Part 1:
Everyone is overflowing with words about how awful, fucked up, godforsaken, and criminal this horrid year has been for so, so many people, except, of course, for the inevitable silver-lining finders and the deluded conservatives ranting, "heyyoufuckinliberalsitwasnotasbadasyousayitwas." The Rude Pundit prefers the sublime brevity of the haiku. So today and tomorrow, let's remember 2005 in simple lines of five, seven, and five syllables:

Prison Family Values
Scooter's worth two cigs;
Karl Rove will go for a pack.
Cheney? A carton.

Regarding Terri
Schiavo was like dead.
Congress should be placed in a
Vegetative state.

A Difficult Question
What is worse torture?
A Scott McClellan press meet
Or waterboarding?

Iraq
A ballot box is
Not big enough to hold all
The bloody bodies.

Later today: Bush haiku
Tomorrow: disaster haiku
Monday: the Rude Pundit from New Orleans (in essay form)

One More From the Pre-Bloggy Vault:
If you wanna know the full story on what the Rude Pundit's doing this week, check out Monday's and Tuesday's posts. Suffice to say, he's here on a journey to Red State America, headin' to the New Orleans, and, before doin' the whole "oh-look-at-that-year-that-was-savagely-taken-from-us" review thing tomorrow and Friday, the Rude Pundit's tossin' out some well-aged material from his early 1990s radio program, The Rich Flemball Show, a parody of everyone's favorite bloated bloviator.

Commercials read by Rich Flemball were a big part of the show, with Rich constantly hawking his "books" for his slavering fans. In one more demonstration of how little political discourse (or, indeed, rudeness) has changed in the last decade, here's one ad from 1993 that encompassed most of the Rich Flemball oeuvre:

It's time for a literature update.

That's right, folks. The moment you've all been waiting for has arrived. In your stores right now. Everywhere. From the Wal-Marts in Massachusetts to the 7-11s in the rural areas of Oregon. A fine area of the country, backwoods Oregon. I remember a beautiful day with Tom Metzger and me lock and loading our AK-47's and shooting at deer. All around this country people are lining up at stores to get my new book, See, I Told You I'd Eat It. That's right. A whole new 250 pages or so of new political commentary from me.

I know you loved my first book, The Weight I Ought To Be. And I sure loved bringing you my book of photographs, Pork, featuring nude photos of famous conservatives posed with pork products. Like one of my favorites, Norman Schwartzkopf, in an army barracks, wearing only his cap and his stars, saluting twelve of his top officers who are holding plates teeming with barbecued sausage. And I also showed my tender, giving side with The Rich Flemball Gourmet: A Cookbook for the Wealthy. Like one of my favorite recipes, just perfect for the holiday season, Ross Perot's Brain Stuffing: there's not much there, but it's mostly nuts. And advice for those kitchen disasters: screw it, let's pretend Hillary made it.

Now, in stores in time for Christmas, is my latest and greatest, See, I Told You I'd Eat It. If I may be so bold, it is the single best volume of political essays on this country since William F. Buckley's Clenched Teeth Versus the Epitome. Of course the left wing dominant media culture will try to tell you it's a worthless book. That's because they're running scared. They're exposed in the book for the blatant pack of liars they are. They are afraid of the truth. And the truth is that this book is wonderful and insightful. It contains the most in-depth analysis of the failed Clinton presidency, even though I wrote the book when the administration was barely in office three months. Don't worry. I'm right. It's printed on freshly killed trees with the blood of spotted owls just to drive the environmentalist wackos crazy. It's already number one on the New York Times best seller list. People have already begun shooting their neighbors to reserve it at the library.

This is hot stuff. Take, for instance, my chapter on crime in this country. I quote the Reverend Jesse Jackson saying, "The government has a responsibility to provide people with hope, hope in their schools, hope in their communities, hope in their homes. Only through hope will the minority community be able to achieve its greatest potential." And then he went on and on to talk about personal responsibility. But, as I show in the book, the Reverend Jesse Jackson's axiom fails completely. Simply change the word "hope" with "souped up white Cadillac" and you'll see what I mean: "The government has a responsibility to provide people with souped up white Cadillacs, souped up white Cadillacs in their schools, souped up white Cadillacs in their communities, souped up white Cadillacs in their homes. Only through souped up white Cadillacs will the minority community be able to achieve its greatest potential." (Laughs) So, you see what a fraud the Reverend Jesse Jackson is. Over 200 pages of that kind of deep political thinking, enough fodder to send any liberal running for his Bill of Rights.

Hey, also, look forward to my Rich Flemball Calendar, coming soon to bookstores. A whole year of my metaphors for the issues of the day, like, "The feminists are like precious delicate flowers who try to conquer the weeds in the garden. They may call attention to themselves, but eventually the weeds will win." What else needs to be said?

The entire Rich Flemball library should be at the top of your bookcase. It's all you need to know.
And that's our literature update.

(Brief P.S.: Photos from Pork were a running gag on the show, with a new one every month, including "Jeanne Kirkpatrick straddling a globe wearing a crown made of chorizo sausage made in Nicaragua. Margaret Thatcher, wearing only high-heels, looks on approvingly" and many more.)

More Clinton-Era Rudeness:
Hope everyone enjoyed last night's final Monday Night Football featuring Frank "Stewardess Fucker" Gifford and the grotesquely reanimated skull of Howard Cosell. Oh, what a party.

Yesterday, the Rude Pundit decided he was taking a few days of downtime to relax a couple of the folds of his brain, so he'd do something a little different in lieu of, say, a post that said something along the lines, "Donald Rumsfeld is a crazed, lying piece of worm vomit who'll say anything to make him look like more than the vile murdering horror masking as something vaguely human that he is." No, instead the Rude Pundit is offering prime rudeness from the 1990s, when he produced a parody radio program called The Rich Flemball Show, based on, well, fuck, you know.

The program would open with the first part of "My City Was Gone" by the Pretenders, and Rich saying things like, "A man who can't be stopped, not by five tranquilizer darts, not even by an elephant gun" or "A Godly man, who believes in Christian values, yet has Jewish friends and Muslim friends, and keeps two South American pagan pygmies in his penthouse for his own private use." Then, as with the real man himself, Rich would launch into some self-righteous monologue. Yesterday's post was all about Bill Clinton's threat to invade Haiti to depose a dictator. Today, in the name of history repeating itself and the more things change..., here's some pre-bloggy rudeness from 1994 - Rich Flemball's take on "feminazis":

It's time for a feminazi update.

A new book called Who Stole Feminism by Christina Hoff Sommers has hit the stands and, boy, I'll tell you, it just rakes the NOW Gang over the coals. The book researches the statistics feminists have touted for years as demonstrations of the bias in society. For instance, feminazis proudly proclaim that 150,000 women die annually from anorexia. Well, folks, the truth is that less than one hundred actually die. That's it! That's nothing, a drop in the bucket. There are 150,000 cases of anorexia a year. So what? Hey, like I always say, fat chicks don't get dates. Sommers shows this and many other false statistics.

And what a book like this does is cast into doubt the entire business of statistics for the feminist movement, a corrupt movement if there ever was one. For instance, we hear all the time about the thousands of spousal abuse cases. But how many of these are real? Could it not be that a husband gives a love tap, like he does to his buddies at the bowling alley, but when he does it to his wife, she may be at a tender time of the month, and she just goes ballistic, calls the cops, shoots her husband and then declares she's been abused for years. And then everyone rushes to her side, saying we never knew, gee, he threw his bowling ball awful hard, gosh, we really, really believe you. Yet no one questions the woman. How hard was she being hit? Was she just not taking it like a man?

And spousal abuse isn't the only area where women are using trumped-up statistics to prove their point. Look at rape. Feminists declare that "a huge percentage of rapes go unreported." Now why is that? Well, a feminazi will say that this male-dominated society will call the alleged victim into question. And why shouldn't we? Why shouldn't we? If a woman doesn't report a rape, well, maybe it's because she enjoyed it. Now, I know I'm going to get into trouble for that, but statistics are statistics, and they can be interpreted any which way. Maybe she enjoyed it.

Who among us has not had the rape fantasy? Who among us has not dreamt of the night that a swarthy stranger, dressed in black leather and red rhinstone chaps and cowboy hat, appears at our bedroom window, and says, "Be quiet, and this won't hurt a bit," and when he undresses, he reveals a washboard torso and is so well-endowed that he has bruises on his thighs from . . . well, anyway, who hasn't dreamt of that man? Who hasn't felt a deep quiver within when thinking about that man who says to call him, "Roderigo, the Latin Love Hombre"? Who hasn't thought of Roderigo and felt his butt cheeks shake in earthy delights anticipated? Who? WHO? WELL, well... (breathes heavily) Oh, Roderigo, when will you visit me again? When, you beautiful gaucho with your lariat of love? . . . oh, excuse me.

So statistics, yeah, statistics. They lie and the feminazis, boy they use 'em a lot.

And -- uh, that's our feminazi update. We'll take a break.--- Lumbago, get in here quick! (moans as he fades out)

Blast From the Past - Rudeness From 1994:
As the Rude Pundit is in Red State America visiting with the Rude Family, he's decided to do something a little different for the next couple of days. To wit:

Back in the early 1990s, the Rude Pundit, in his pre-bloggy life, ran a weekly radio broadcast in Tennessee called Radio Free Theatre. A mixture of politics, plays, and interviews, it was free-form, fuckin' fun, and a cult favorite for fans of the station (shout-out to the Knox Vegas homeez). Once a month, the Rude Pundit would feature a take-off on everyone's favorite porcine bloviator called The Rich Flemball Show. The premise was this: Rich Flemball would read monologues, written by the Rude Pundit, and then take calls, occasionally abusing and threatening to rape his board operator, Lumbago. Some of the calls were set-ups and some were real people obviously projecting their deep hatred for the real ball of phlegm, Rush Limbaugh, onto our Flemball.

So for a few days here, the Rude Pundit is going to post a couple of these monologues. "Why?" you may ask, and perhaps you should. Well, shit, the Rude Pundit could use a little time to re-boot from the steady drumbeat of Iraqi death and Bush administration corruption. And also to remember just how long the conservative right has been vile and depraved. And as a service to the young people reading ('cause, really, it's all about the children): don't listen to those fuckers who have given up and say that you get more conservative when you get older. Bullshit. You gotta keep stokin' that fire. It won't die as long as you're payin' attention.

First up is a little thing from when General Raoul Cedras took over Haiti in a military coup back in 1991. Bill Clinton decided that the U.S. military oughta be involved in restoring the country to its democratically-elected government. Clinton's reasoning was a secure Haiti was important to American security, and, of course, because it was Clinton, the right wing angrily denounced the action. Oh, how innocent we were then...

Here's what Rich Flemball had to say about it (and it helps if you can force yourself to think about Limbaugh's voice when that fat fuck was really fat):

It's time for a Haiti update.

That's right folks. We're only a few short days from the date General Raoul Cedras agreed to give up power and allow President Jean-Bertrand Artistide back in power in Haiti. So far the only US military deaths have been attributed to suicide. As listeners to this show may realize, I have definite problems with this so-called peacekeeping mission to Haiti, which is really an invasion and occupation by the United Nations. Now, you do-gooders might whine and complain, "But, Rich, is it not our responsibility to support democracy and overcome tryranny wherever it happens? Why do the conservatives, who were so gung-ho for other military actions against dictators under George Bush, now decry supporting this President when he takes a stand for the freedoms of people living in this hemisphere?" Well, boo-hoo-hoo.

The differences here are obvious. In the good old days, we were fighting communism because . . . well . . . because they were communists -- yeah -- and we didn't like communists. Hell, we still don't like communists. No, sir. Except when they send us lots of money, like China. But, yeah, communists are anti-American, and will destroy the American way of life, except, you know, for China, which makes our big companies a bundle of money. Which is good for America. Yeah, that's right. Chinese communism is good for America, but communism anywhere else is bad, it's wrong. Unless we can make money. Other than that -- no, we don't like communists. Because . . . they are . . .uh . . . communists.

Lumbago, what the hell am I talking about? (Pause) Oh, yeah, Haiti.

I'll tell you why we shouldn't be in Haiti. Because of all that voodoo down there. It's just crawling with Satan-loving doll-piercing darkies who don't care one whit for what Uncle Sam might be doing for them. You know those two suicides? Voodoo. Pure and simple. Do you doubt me? I have seen voodoo rituals for myself, and I have re-enacted them in my luxurious condo in the Dominican Republic, right next door to Haiti.

I had a party once with Dan Quayle, Jeanne Kirkpatrick, Pat Robertson, and Mary Matalin, and Quayle, he made a joke about all the Indians in the next country. And all of us just laughed. And he gave that great dopey look he gets when he's kidding around and said, "You mean this isn't India?" And we all laughed more and more. And he just snickered and said, "Well, I can never tell the difference between anyone whose skin isn't white." Which, when you think about it, makes him color blind, and isn't that how we want our politicians.

And Jeanne Kirkpatrick said, "Rich, have you ever seen a voodoo ritual?"

And I said, "Of course I have, Jeanne."

Then Mary Matalin dared me to re-create it right there and then. So I asked them all, "Are you willing to go into the dark side of your souls," and Pat Robertson actually smiled and agreed.

So the first thing we did was -- well, we all got pantsless. Lemme demonstrate. Here we go. Me, Dan, Pat, Mary and Jean. (Sound of Flemball as he takes off his pants.) There. I'm pantsless.

And we all danced around the fire. Well, I didn't want to start a fire, so I just lit up the barbecue pit. And we went out onto the patio and danced pantsless around the light of the coal, yelling, "Boolah-boolah-boolah," which isn't exactly what the real worshippers say, but, hell, it all sounds like "Boolah-boolah-boolah" to me. And we beat on pots and pans to make the ungodly rhythms of the Devil. Hey, Lumbago, beat on something for me. (Lumbago starts a beat) So then it was time for the chicken sacrifce, but I didn't have a live chicken, so I just took some chicken pieces out of the refrigerator and we rubbed them all over ourselves, yelling, "Boolah-boolah-boolah" to each other. "Boolah-boolah-boolah, Dan" "Boolah-boolah-boolah, Reverend Pat."

And to make it more authentic, we needed chicken blood, but we didn't have anything but barbecue sauce so we all got bowls of barbecue sauce and dipped the chicken parts in and rubbed them all over each other, getting all sticky and sweaty, yelling, "Boolah-boolah-boolah" under the tropical night sky. And it may not have been real voodoo, but when we finally grilled that chicken, it tasted better than any grilled chicked we had ever had.

It was something magical, as if pagan gods had said "We bless the barbecue of Flemball." You should see what Mary Matalin can do with a chicken leg. And when we all laid down on the lawn, naked, sticky, with chicken bones all around us, Reverend Pat said a soft prayer to be forgiven for dwelling in evil ways just before he licked the sauce off Jeanne Kirkpatrick.

We never spoke again about that evening.

So I know the temptations and power of voodoo first hand. It should not be messed with. There are powers beyond our control, even beyond the control of me, Rich Flemball.

President Clinton, bring our boys home.

And that's our Haiti update. We'll be right back.

Loose Ends (and Not David Brooks's, Post-Raping):
The Rude Pundit is gettin' ready to head into the wilds of Red State America for the next coupla weeks. In fact, one of his stops on his sojourn will be the New Orleans area, where he'll visit old friends and their washed-away homes and businesses. So the Rude Pundit will report on New Orleans, as well as a follow-up to his post on Slidell.

Prior to that, there'll still be daily posts, including a few surprise blasts from the distant past (way before this blog existed). More on that on Monday.

Then, of course, a new year, Alito-palooza (and its non-stop fun with fetuses), as well as the possibility of a reign of doom for the Bush administration as Iraq inevitably and horribly falls apart and the spying hearings take off, destined for cover-up city. (A quick "by the way" on the domestic surveillance thing: something is either legal or illegal, however Johnny Yoo wants to fudge it. It doesn't matter if every fuckin' member of Congress secretly said, "Okey-dokey" when briefed on the NSA's program; it doesn't matter if Bill Clinton did it and got away with it - although, you know, he didn't do it. If it's illegal, and you get caught, well, shit, if you can't do the time, don't do the crime.)

About The Year of Living Rudely CD:
If you've gotten your copy of The Year of Living Rudely CD, click on back to the CDBaby page for the disc and post a review. God'll love you for it. If you don't, the baby Jesus will cry. You don't want that little bastard to cry, do you?

If you haven't bought it, what the fuck are you waiting for? Hey, Christmas may be nearly here, but Hanukkah is just gettin' its mojo goin'. What Jew wouldn't want to hear George W. Bush fuck a squirrel monkey? Or hear Dick Cheney read a Christmas story to Iraqi children? It's a mitzvah.

And that's not to mention the oh-so-coyly buried bonus at the end of the CD, after the reading of the credits.

More on the Citizen's Contract:
In a fascinating, hilarious, and bizarre way, the Rude Pundit's Loyal Citizen's Contract With the American Government has taken on a little life o' its own. Over at The Stashman, Stash has taken it upon his bloggy self to work up a PDF version of it, makin' it look all official and shit, suitable for printing and use as wrapping paper for a copy of the abovementioned CD.

Rude Interview Available Online:
The Rude Pundit did an interview with the Good Show on KTCU in the Dallas/Fort Worth area this past Sunday. The entire show is available in MP3 form. The Rude Pundit is on during the first hour.

That oughta be it - tied in a big fuckin' box with a big fuckin' bow and giant fuckin' card that says, "Peace on Earth, you know?" Back Monday from Red State America.

Rape David Brooks To Save America:
Let us say, and why not, that you're David Brooks, New York Times conservative columnist and desperate apologist for the Bush administration. Let us say, and, indeed, why not, that President Bush and Vice President Cheney decided that the only way to prevent another terrorist attack was to have you raped. So Bush and Cheney went to Alberto Gonzales, who consulted John Yoo, who said, "If the Commander-in-Chief, in a time of war, having been given authorization by the Congress to do what it takes to win the war on terror, decides he needs have David Brooks raped as a tactic to win that war, then the President has the inherent power to so order the raping."

Thus, having been approved by his AG, whose initials are, conveniently for the President, "AG," Bush orders that you be raped by the NSA. Now, you, David Brooks, cannot be informed that such an order has taken place. And while members of Congress have been briefed on the matter, with a couple lodging concerns about the legality of raping David Brooks, the rape has been ordered. So, one day, without warning, some men in black grab you, drag you into a van, gag you, pull down your Armani slacks and boxers, and fuck your asshole raw while driving around New York City until, their duty being done, they dump you in front of the Times building. Let's say, and why not, that this begins to happen repeatedly, these kidnappings and rapes, that you, David Brooks, are gangbanged, force fisted, and turned into a jizz bucket.

Let's say you learn that a secret order, approved by the President and re-authorized every 45 days, claims that raping you is necessary for national security, that it has stopped terrorist attacks, although it's a secret how and why and what and where, that your constant, boggling, sore-inducing rapes have got those terrorists on the run. Indeed, once it's leaked to the press that an executive order calls for you, David Brooks, to be raped repeatedly, the President stands before the world and says not only has he signed off on the rapes, but that he will continue to do so in the future for raping David Brooks makes Americans safer. And, the President adds, he can assure the public that he is safeguarding David Brooks's civil liberties while ordering his ongoing raping.

Now, if you were you being raped, and not David Brooks, you may want to know why your unending string of rapes are necessary. You may want to know if it's possible that terrorist attacks could be averted without raping you. You may wonder if other possible approaches were pursued besides your rape. You might say that it's at the very least legally sketchy for a President to circumvent the law by secretly ordering your rape. You might question the motives of those doing the raping, especially since, despite assurances to the contrary, it turns out that your rapes have been "inadvertently" videotaped and watched by members of the NSA. You may think, "Why must my asshole suffer for the nation? Why must I be made to swallow so much spy cum? Why, oh, sweet Jesus, is there no other way than raping me?" But that'd be if you were you, and not David Brooks.

For if you were David Brooks, you'd accept your rapings as a necessary part of the war on terror. You'd simply nod, gladly being raped repeatedly, wondering when you can be raped again for the good of America, keeping your asshole lubricated so that you can be more easily raped when the President deems it necessary. You'd trust the Bush administration and the NSA to rape you safely, making sure you get no diseases or excessive anal tearing. And, if you were David Brooks, you'd use your bully pulpit, your space in the New York Times, the newspaper of record, to praise your raping and question the motives of those who think raping you is a bad idea, that you believe the President when he says that raping you is the only way to get the job done.

Which is essentially what David Brooks did today in his holy-fuck-he's-insane column, where he asks you to play President Bush and face the decisions he faced after 9/11, as well as the "effect on your psychology" of continued briefings of terrorist threats (one assumes, Brooks is asking "you" to go slightly bugfuck paranoid, which is always a good way to make policy). After a long-ass scenario of options "you" as President have, Brooks says that "you" decide to shortcut around the FISA court to spy on Americans. And, Brooks concludes, because the NSA's domestic surveillance program has been revealed, we should "Face the fact that the odds of an attack on America just went up." Man, Donald Rumsfeld couldn't have put it more crazily.

But that's David Brooks - proudly bending over for the good of the White House.

(If you don't have Times Select or access to Lexis-Nexis, don't worry: the one preview line says everything relevant in the column.)

Bad Days For Churchy:
Yesterday was a bad day for Churchy. Churchy been havin' a good run, 'cause Churchy's had it together for so long, fightin' fer that "under God" in that Pledge, fightin' against them acty-vist judgies, threatenin' to boycott Target stores over "Happy Holidays" despite the fact that Target lets its Churchy-lovin' pharmy-cysts send whores lookin' fer day-after pills off to the drug stores of Gomorrah. Yeah, man, Churchy and Churchy's own chosen one, the Presy-dent of United States, have been havin' theyselves some fun on our dime. And maybe Churchy's Cadillac of Christ's Love is just hittin' a few bumps in that highway to sal-fuckin'-vation, man, that long road to rapture and the lovin' open arms o' Jesus waitin' to caress the sin out o' Churchy's sore body. But Churchy's havin' a bad day or two, poor Churchy.

Churchy fought, so hard, to get that Intelligent Design rammed through to the science curriculum of public schools of little ol' Dover, PA (new motto: "Please, everyone, leave us alone"). But one of them acty-vist judgies wouldn't hear nothin' 'bout no intelligent design. Said judgie, "Both Defendants and many of the leading proponents of ID make a bedrock assumption which is utterly false. Their presupposition is that evolutionary theory is antithetical to a belief in the existence of a supreme being and to religion in general. Repeatedly in this trial, Plaintiffs’ scientific experts testified that the theory of evolution represents good science, is overwhelmingly accepted by the scientific community, and that it in no way conflicts with, nor does it deny, the existence of a divine creator."

Judgie went on, "Those who disagree with our holding will likely mark it as the product of an activist judge. If so, they will have erred as this is manifestly not an activist Court. Rather, this case came to us as the result of the activism of an ill-informed faction on a school board, aided by a national public interest law firm eager to find a constitutional test case on ID, who in combination drove the Board to adopt an imprudent and ultimately unconstitutional policy. The breathtaking inanity of the Board’s decision is evident when considered against the factual backdrop which has now been fully revealed through this trial. The students, parents, and teachers of the Dover Area School District deserved better than to be dragged into this legal maelstrom, with its resulting utter waste of monetary and personal resources."

Or, in other words, "Hey, Churchy, shove yer pandas up yer lyin' asses, and stop wastin' everyone's time with yer Churchy bullshit. Yeah, you heard it, Churchy, quit fuckin' around with the tax dollars so maybe we can buy some new textbooks, ones that have a big goddamn monkey fuckin' the shit out of the ass of a white-bearded, robed old man. But, don't worry, Churchy: that old man can take care of hisself. He don't need Churchy tryin' to get his back."

And then, today, Churchy had to watch on the TV the sight of Elton John gettin' all civilly united to his boyfriend of a dozen years in England today. Yeah, all over the UK, queers are unitin' up: Irish cocksmokers, Scottish muffdivers, Welsh leather queens, and British lipstick femmes are all hookin' up with their significant others 'cause, see, it's legal there now. Oh, British Churchy is in an uproar, havin' a tizzy, but that sad thing about the UK is that no one gives a high holy rat fuck about Churchy there. Instead, over here, everyone's watchin' the TV, the CNN, the MSNBC, even the Fox "News," seein' the sight of a pair of gay men happy and gettin' all these rights. God, Churchy must think, how the sight must infect the eyes, must shame the soul, must make the children cry. 'Cause Churchy don't want anyone to be happy unless they're thinkin' about Churchy.

Man, this must be causin' some of those night sweats fer Churchy, bringin' up memories of all the times it's been stymied on its agenda in the past, the Massachusetts legislature, the Edwards v. Aguillard decision, all that shit that seemed so long ago, before Churchy proclaimed that the United States is owned by Churchy, motherfuckers, now bow down and pray 'cause Churchy says ya got to, got to, got to, kneel down to Churchy.

The Rude Pundit wants to rejoice, man, wants to dance a little happy jig over Churchy's prone body, wants to say, "Yo, Churchy, things keep goin' like this, and you can say 'Merry Fuckin' Suck-Christ's-Dickmas' as much as you want." But the Rude Pundit can't. 'Cause, see, he's looked into Churchy's spinnin' eyeballs, he's seen the insanity that dwells inside Churchy, heard them talk about they'll just come up with a new strategy, a new way to hate, and he knows that Churchy may be down, but Churchy's a resilient motherfucker. It may take a day, perhaps three, but Churchy will rise again.

About the Citizen's Contract:
Yesterday, the Rude Pundit proposed a Loyal Citizen's Contract With the American Government. Several rude readers have asked to send it around to non-readers. The Rude Pundit says to let the contract fly outside of Left Blogsylvania. Send it freely. And you didn't need "permission" in the first place.

The Loyal Citizen's Contract With the American Government:
Considering the responses of Bill Kristol, the Wall Street Journal, and others to President Bush’s affirmation of warrantless domestic spying by the NSA, perhaps it’s time to separate the wheat from the chaff in this America. The Rude Pundit believes a new "contract" of sorts is needed between the government and the American people. Howzabout this:

"I (the undersigned) believe President George W. Bush when he says that the United States of America is fighting a 'new kind of enemy' that requires 'new thinking' about how to wage war. Therefore, as a loyal citizen of President Bush’s United States, my signature below indicates my agreement to the following:

"1. I believe wholeheartedly in the Patriot Act as initially passed by Congress in 2001, as well as the provisions of the Domestic Security Enhancement Act. Therefore, I grant the FBI access to:

"a. my library records, so it may determine if I am reading material that might designate me an enemy of the nation;

"b. my financial records, including credit reports, so it may determine if I am contributing monetarily to any governmentally proscribed activities or organizations;

"c. my medical records, so it may determine if my prescriptions, injuries, or other conditions are indicative of terrorist activity on my part;

"d. any and all other personal records including, but not limited to, my store purchases, my school records, my web browsing history, and anything else determined as a 'tangible thing' necessary to engage in a secret investigation of me.

"I agree that I do not need to be notified if my records have come under scrutiny by the FBI, and, furthermore, I agree that no warrant is needed for the FBI to engage in this examination of my personal records. Additionally, I agree that the FBI should be allowed to monitor any groups it believes may be linked to what it determines to be terrorist activity.

"2. I believe that the President of the United States has the power to mitigate or set aside any and all laws passed by the Congress and that he has such power granted to him by his status as Commander-in-Chief in the Constitution as well as the 2001 Authorization of Military Force, passed by the Congress, which states that the President can use 'all necessary and appropriate force' in prosecution of the war. Therefore, I grant the United States government the following powers:

"a. that the National Security Agency, under the direction of the President, may tap my phone lines and intercept my e-mail without warrant or FISA oversight;

"b. that the President may hold me or other detainees without access to the legal system for a period of time determined by the President or his agents;

"c. that the President may authorize physical force against me or other individual detainees in order to gain intelligence and that he may define whether such physical force may be called 'torture':

"d. that the President may set aside any and all laws he sees as hindering the gathering of intelligence and prevention of terrorist acts for a period as time determined by the President, including, but not limited to, rights to political protest.

"I agree that the Judicial and Legislative branches should be allowed no oversight of these activities, and that such oversight merely emboldens the terrorists. I also agree that virtually all of these activities may be conducted in complete secrecy and that revelation of these activities amounts to treasonous behavior on the part of those who reveal these activities to the press and the citizenry.

"3. Finally, this document is my statement that I believe the President of the United States and the entire executive branch, as well as all departments and agencies involved, as well as all of their personnel, will treat these powers I have granted them with utmost respect. I believe that these powers will not be abused, nor will any of the information I have given them permission to examine be misinterpreted. However, should such abuse or misinterpretation occur, I agree that such actions are mere errors and no one should be subject to investigation, arrest, or employment action as a result.

"My consent freely given,
"(Your signature)"

C'mon, Michelle Malkin, Byron York, John Hinderaker, and all the rest of you good Bush lovers. Sign on up. Send it in to the White House. Let 'em know that you have nothing to hide. Or nothing you don't care about sharing.

Live Vodka Shot Bloggin' of the President's Press Conference:
Back in the day, the Rude Pundit used to muse that Bill Clinton would have held a press conference in 1997 or so where he said, "Yeah, I fucked her. And then I turned her over and I fucked her again. And then I called my old friend, Vernon Jordan, and I said, 'Vern, I got the finest piece of intern ass bobbin' on my crank right now.' And then Vernon came over and he fucked her. Then we both fucked her at the same time, high-fivin' each other over her back. And I said, 'You know, Vern, you're gonna have to give her a job when we're all done.' Then we had a big ol' laugh as we sprayed jizz all over her pretty blue dress. Good times. Good times." At least then, you know, we could have just had it out, threw down for our culture war, and clogged the Potomac with the dead, instead of the aching, eternal investigations that degraded us all.

So, hey, man, props to George W. Bush for steppin' out on Saturday to say, "Fuck you. I spied. I'm gonna keep spyin' on ya. And you can't stop me." And now we have the post-Sunday Iraq lookee-here-at-my-big-honest-face talk end o' the year press conference.

The Rude Pundit broke out the morning vodka, turned on his CNN, put his trusty laptop on his lap, took a bracin' shot, and wrote along to the President's halting screeches of agony:

10:32 - Here he comes, walkin' like he just finished a really awesome shit where he wiped his ass with the Constit- Wait - is that powder on the corner of his nose? No - probably toothpaste. Or reflections from the Rude Pundit's Christmas tree of doom.

10:33 - He's just twitchin', wincin', suckin' his teeth. Why does he not have any control of his face? It's like watching one of those rubber monster faces you put over your fingers in the hands of a spastic three-year old.

10:34 - We're two minutes in and he's mentioned 9/11 twice.

10:35 - If the terrorists declared war and we declared war, then when we capture them, aren't they prisoners of war?

10:36 - Talking about the domestic surveillance program outside of any legal precedent, Bush says, "This program is reviewed (by me to make sure I'm working inside whatever horribly tortured definition of "legal" Alberto Gonzales has raped out of the Constitution today) every 45 days." (Parenthetical added)

10:37 - 9/11 mentions #3 and #4.

Man, he talks about the Patriot Act like someone took his wubbie away. He's coming unhinged quickly, early, here, saying, "We cannot afford a single day without the Patriot Act."

10:38 - 9/11 mentions #5 and #6.

10:42 - He's going bonkers about Alito, demanding an up or down vote. So he has use for the Congress when they break out the rubber stamp.

10:44 - Asked about the leak of the domestic spying program, Bush goes nutzoid, paranoid, like "terr'ists" is under the podium, ready to smack his nutsack at a moment's notice. Says, "The fact that we're discussing this program is hurting the country." However, "If I were you I'd be asking me these questions," but revealing the program? "It's a shameful act."

10:45 - He mixed up Saddam and Osama, and, hey, 9/11 mention #7.

10:46 - Bush says his legal authority to spy is from the Constitution and authorization of force against Congress. He keeps talkin' that he took an oath to protect the citizens of the country. But that ain't true. He took an oath to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States." People come and go, motherfucker, but the nation remains.

10:48 - He totally lost control of his limbs when dissing the Senate (after not getting a laugh on the difficulty of dealing with legislative bodies in reference to Iraq). "Is this thing on?" would have been less embarassing.

10:49 - He's going insane trying to justify the Iraq war using the election. Okay, getting bored. Vodka not kickin' in. Gonna try to remember the lyrics to Christmas songs for a-wassailin' later. "Away in a manger, no crib for a bed, the little Lord Jesus lay down his sweet head...falalala lala la laaaa."

10:53 - Why is he licking the inside of his mouth? Did this become a Jane Goodall special?

10:54 - Bush says, "An open debate about law would tell the enemy this is what we're doing." Cool. So terrorism prevents open debate. Good thing they're not winning. And, in another great "fuck you" on recording domestic phone calls, Bush says, "We will monitor those calls if we need to."

10:55 - What the fuck's wrong with his jaw? Is it really horrible TMJ or what the fuck ever? Or is it demon coke?

11:00ish - Bush praises the process in Iraq by breaking out that vicious sense of irony he's so well-known for, saying, "Democracies don't go to war; democracies are peaceful countries."

11:02 - Talking to Iraqi ex-pats who visited him in the Oval Office after voting, and who demanded the head of Saddam Hussein instead of a trial, Bush says that he told them that it's important to follow the rule of law, that the legal process is what distinguishes Iraq now from tyranny. Man, can this motherfucker lay down the sarcasm or what?

11:05 - Bush says that "NASA" is monitoring the surveillance program.

11:07 - Let's see if I can remember the words to "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen" - "God rest ye merry gentlemen, let nothing pass this way, remember Christ our savior was born on Christmas day...falalala lala la laaa.

11:09 - In as brave a statement as Bush is likely to make today, he says, "We shouldn't accept nuclear weapons."

11:10 - Ooh, ooh, let's try "Good King Wenceslas" -- "Good King Wensceslas ... falalala lala la laaa." Fuck King Wenceslas.

11:11 - Reporter Peter just pissed off the President by saying that Bush was asserting "unchecked power." Bush nearly jumps over the podium at him, saying, "I disagree with your...it's not unchecked power." He won't let Peter talk; ooh, he's mad now. Bush says that his oath of office is a check, which is not unlike saying that a marriage vow prevents all adultery. And he says that he briefs Congress all the time. As if tellin' 'em what's up is equal to a check on power.

11:12 - Reporter John just tried to give Bush good head by asking him about goals for the new year. It's a softball, man, but Bush just got thrown off his game by Peter. Finally, he gets around to his laundry list and learns to enjoy the slobbity bobbity from John. Until John asks him about the possibility of troops comin' home, then the hummer is over. Bush says, "Nice try. End of your try." What a pissy lil' man our Bush is.

11:17 - Why does he keep thumping the podium? If you can't make a point without banging shit, then why make it at all? Either that or get old school and use a shoe.

11:19 - He's freaking out about the Patriot Act not passing. He's throwing a hissy fit. Someone drag out Bar so he can suckle his mommy's saggy teat.

11:23 - Motherfucker knows how to milk a laugh. But when asked about what plots have been disrupted by domestic surveillance, he won't tell. Says it's secret. Says it'll help the terr'ists. So let's get this straight: the spying's secret. The results are secret. We could have secret places where we bury people alive, but if Bush says it'd hurt the war, we'll never know about it. Fine, fine nation we've become.

11:24 - Boo-yah - 9/11 mention #8 - with crazy ass phone hand gesture.

11:25 - Bush says he hopes we can "feel my passion" about the Patriot Act. Yeah, that Patriot Act is a helluva lay, it'll please ya, tease ya, and make you beg for more. Who wouldn't feel the passion?

11:26 - Could someone ask him why there were no non-domestic-based terrorist attacks on the U.S. until 1993? And none again until 2001? Were we just lucky? Or were the current laws, like, workin'?

11:30ish - And we're done. And only half a bottle gone.

Bush constantly repeated "I understand" or "I fully understand," which is his way of saying, "I don't give a fuck what you have to say." But, shit, at least the year is over for him.

The Rude Pundit On the Radio Again (in Texas):
This time on "The Good Show" on Fort Worth's KTCU-FM, 88.7 on yer dials at 10:45 p.m. EST (9:45 in DFW) tonight, after the Bush Iraq fluffjob. It's available over the Internet at the KTCU website. In addition to talkin' about havin' a Merry Christmas, the hosts'll be playin' an edited version of a cut from The Year of Living Rudely, which oughta be fun for other reasons. Especially since this is Texas Christian University's radio station.

Listen in to enjoy live rudeness.

Shorter Bush Saturday Address:
Here's Bush's vicious radio talk today, where he mentioned 9/11 about nine times, in haiku form:

L'etat c'est moi, 'kay?
Once you accept that, you fucks,
We'll all get along.

Do We Have To Wait Until Bush Purges 20 Million of Us Before We Can Say He's Like Stalin?:
Sometimes, man, it's easy to understand why people just go on with their lives if they're in countries led by a dictator. 'Cause, see, ya got different types of dictators: ya got yer blatantly greedy, "fuck everyone's poverty and hunger as long as my fat belly is full and my big ass is on a gold pillow"-type, like yer House of Saud; ya got yer crazy, seein' shit, killin' everyone in sight, paranoid dictators, like yer Stalins, yer Kim Jong-Ils; ya got yer "as long as you don't fuck with me, we're cool" dictators, like yer Saddam Husseins; and, the most insidious kind, the dictators who pretend they're not dictators, that everything they do is good and right for the majority of the people in the nation, and, really, where do ya wanna start? Mao? No category is hard and fast, for qualities of one kind certainly bleed into the others (and, hey, this ain't a fuckin' textbook here). Besides, every dictator has his or her brutal fetishes, like rape rooms, testicle torture, or scalp-collectin', that inflict themselves on the occasional innocent. But, for the majority of a population, in the majority of dictatorships, it's just easier to live your life and hope that you never run over the dictator's son's pet goat or some such shit.

'Cause, like, if you're a citizen in a dictatorship, you can belong to one of a few categories: inner circle, by connection, family, or ethnicity, where the bounty of the dictator is shared with you as long as you keep said dictator happy; enemy group, by politics, ethnicity, or region, in which case you will be fucked with, beaten, and your daughter raped in front of you on a regular basis until you're disappeared, imprisoned, or cleansed; or average person-in-the-street, the men and women who each day walk past the posters of Glorious Leader, listen to the Leader's speeches, work their jobs, fuck their spouses and/or lovers, raise their kids, watch their TVs, and feel a little exhausted and cranky all the time without wanting to admit why. Think of life in a Soviet bloc country back in the day. And average person-in-the-street has to make a decision: to seek to rebel, overthrow that dictator, and try to make a change in the nation (thus turning into a purgeable enemy of the state, you know), or take the safe, easy way out and live that average person life. And who could blame you?

In America, we pretend, god, how we pretend, that we're not drifting precipitously into dictatorship, despite a government that clearly behaves as if it has the powers of such tyranny. How else do you explain the Bush administration's blatant violation of criminal law in the President's authorization of spying by the NSA on perhaps thousands of American citizens, a story the "liberal" New York Times sat on for a year at the behest of the White House? Combined with the revelation of the Pentagon database of "potential threats" to the nation that includes war protesters, and you've got some good ol' Soviet-style paranoia going on. If the government feels it has to monitor and/or control the speech and gatherings of its citizens, well, shit, may as well break out the ball vices, put up the posters of Bush standing on top of the corpses of traitors, and call it totalitarianism.

But the occasional good work is a nice distraction from the excesses of a dictatorship. It's what makes it easier for that average citizen to sit back and be an object, acted upon, instead of a subject with that awful agency that forces one to act. Stalin knew that if he built a mighty dam, many people in the nation would overlook the death and misery he had wrought as his press praised him endlessly for his vision in making that mighty dam. So it is that the White House announced the request for an additional $1.5 billion to help reconstruct the levees in New Orleans (which takes care of an effect, but not the disease of environmental degradation).

And anyone who thinks that Bush actually "gave in" to John McCain on the torture amenement is either an idiot or an idolater (and, really, it's hard to tell one from the other these days). We know, from funding for African AIDS programs to the use of poor people and the military as props, that Bush doesn't give a shit what he agrees to, what oaths he vows, what promises he makes: he's gonna do what he wants. Alberto Gonzales has already figured out a way around the McCain amendment, to be sure. And we'll find out about that in another couple of years. The agreement, like the promise to fund the levees, is hocus-pocus, sleight of hand, so you can't see the real fakery of the magic. It's like Stalin promising defectors that nothing would happen if they returned back home. Oh, what glorious bloodletting occurred because of that lie. Oh, how nice and peaceful that lie sounded.

The failure of most Democrats to capitalize on these makes it seem like when Joe Biden or Hillary Clinton show up on some Sunday talk show, it's only because the powers-that-be allow them to speak. It's why when something happens like Russ Feingold getting some nutzoid, paranoid right wing Senators to go along with him on a possible filibuster of the Patriot Act, it is an extraordinary act of courage, when it should only be common sense.

But dictatorships, even demi-dictatorships masked as democracies, don't operate under such convenient notions like "common sense" or "laws." And while the ghost of Hitler, which always haunts these kinds of writings, hasn't been dragged out yet here, let's end by saying this: for the dictatorship, there is only the will to power, and whatever manipulations and machinations it takes, that power will be maintained and the dictator will get whatever the dictator wants.

(By the way, the Rude Pundit is not naive enough to think that spying on Americans hasn't occurred in the past, but, shit, at least COINTELPRO was part of the FBI.)

Bush Took Responsibility For Jackshit:
In talking about his latest round of oh-shit-my-approval-ratings-are-dangling-lower-than-Bob-Novak's-dropped-nutsack speeches, the mainstream media has focused on the idea that George Bush "took responsibility" for something or other. The ABC headline is "Bush Takes Blame For Iraq Invasion, Intel." The Reuters headline says, "Bush takes blame for Iraq war on bad intelligence." All over the news, you could see or hear about Bush's amazing, magnanimous gesture of responsibility, as if he stood before the crowds and said, "Hey, I fucked up. Sorry about all the death and destruction because of my fuck up." But, of course, he did nothing of the kind.

Here's what Bush said: "[I]t is true that much of the intelligence turned out to be wrong. As President, I'm responsible for the decision to go into Iraq -- and I'm also responsible for fixing what went wrong by reforming our intelligence capabilities." At least it's good to know that Bush remembers that he's the one who had to say the words "Invade Iraq" before it would happen. Fuck him. Bush did not take one bit of responsibility for the bad intelligence. It's like saying, "I'm responsible for the decision to break that lamp, and I'm responsible for getting the Elmer's to put it back together," but you know what? You didn't say you broke the fuckin' lamp.

Oh, and, by the way, the newspapers and news nets need to break out the Thesaurus, 'cause Bush sure as shit didn't mean "blame" when he said "responsibility." "Blame" implies error. There was no hint of making an error in anything he spoke. In fact, Bush never mentioned "error," "mistake," "wrong," or "blame" in any reference to himself or his administration. And he certainly did not even attempt to take responsibility for the "faulty" intelligence; all he said was, "All my bitches at the U.N. thought the shit was real, too, yo."

Indeed, the only time he'll say something is wrong is when it's no longer up for argument. In his interview yesterday with Fox "News" anchor Brit "Behold My Permanent Scowl of Sonorous Objectivity" Hume, Bush was asked about admitted bribe-taker, former Representative and now contestant for "Ugliest Jailhouse Bottom in the California Penal System" Duke Cunningham, and the President said, "I feel Duke Cunningham was wrong and should be punished for what he did. And I think anybody who does what he did should be punished, Republican or Democrat." To which one can only thank fucking God that the President of the United States is so in touch with reality that he believes a confessed felon is "wrong" and "should be punished." (After which Bush offered support to Tom DeLay, who has more or less admitted laundering money.)

The pattern in the last week, in all his appearances, in all his interviews has been this: to present the image of someone who looks like he's approximating contrition. Like going to confession and saying what your friends did so you can be blessed by their absolution, Bush kept saying, again and again, pretty much nothing about his culpability, except in some vague way that, well, shit, since he's sittin' in the chair at the Oval Office, one assumes he must have something to do with what goes on around him. An example of this would be in his interview with NBC's Brian Williams, when he said, "[T]o the extent that the federal government was ineffective, I'm responsible." Again, it's nice to know he realizes that he's the head of the federal government and it can't not be his responsibility.

See, language to the Bush administration is merely the lubricant on the dildo they wish to shove up the ass of the citizenry. They read the polls - they know that ass is achin', just achin' fer some sweet lovin', somethin' hard they can feel all the way from the prostate to the uvula. And the White House sure ain't prepared to go all the way with the tender honesty of cock-in-ass humpin', but it'll bring out the ten-inch strap-on to pleasure that pucker and maybe shut up the people for a while. They can't shove it in raw - the pain and tearing would make the citizenry balk, so they gotta lube that tube, man, they gotta make it seem like it's somethin' real, not just a substitute dick, not just fakery that does the trick.

(For a similar take on Bush's empty words, see the Moderate Voice.)