A Patrick Kennedy-Inspired Right Wing Orgy:
Oh, sweet orgasmic blessings of the news cycle goddesses, oh, goddamn, fuck, a Kennedy in a car accident? In DC? Where drugs and/or alcohol might be involved? Where the cops say that Kennedy was actin' funny? And perhaps he was treated differently than others who were in the same situation? And it's Ted Kennedy's son, Patrick, who is a member of Congress? Sweet Jesus, for the fine members of the right wing punditry, it's like Christmas, Easter, and Ronald Reagan's Birthday all rolled into one big package of crazy.
Upon hearing about the incident, Michelle Malkin broke the window on the box for the emergency vibrator in her house, the one that she keeps locked up for use only on special occasions like this, like a long-sequestered bottle of Dom Perignon in the back of the fridge. It's the triple-XL one, the one made of unbreakable fiberglass, studded with the bones of Sudanese children, whose femurs are extra firm but pliable after their brief years of starvation, like veal cows in reverse. Grabbin' its pull cord with all her might and crankin' that bad boy up, Malkin practically fell over herself to roughly insert it into her pulsating vagina before stammeringly typing away links to documents and suppositions. She denied herself the earth-shaking orgasm until she finished her updates, but it felt so good, all that heaving self-fucking, that she had to do it again this morning.
All over the right wing media, a great shudder of relief and release went up. Jesus Christ, between bribes with hookers, plunging poll numbers, and Donald Rumsfeld's public bitch slapping by Ray McGovern (and other protesters), it seemed as if there was nothing for conservatives to do but write defense, and everyone knows that while a good D is essential to having a shot in the big game, it's the offense that gets the crowd the big O. Goddamn, if only Patrick Kennedy had had a lover in the car who was hurt or killed, the sewers of Georgetown would have been overflowing with rivers of conservative cum.
Matt Drudge tickled his prostate joyfully as he one-handedly spewed out another of his barely-un-plagiarized demi-stories. The Hindrocket slapped his peter repeatedly with his Blackberry, desperately trying to be relevant to the discourse. Over at the National Review's Corner (motto: "We Don't Read the News So You Don't Have To, Either"), the never-ending circle jerk got briefly giddy over Kennedy. Goddamn, how badly they want, need, crave this to become the big story.
Except that the news cycle is fickle, and while, yes, the CNNMSNBCFox briefly had Ambien-wacked out Patrick Kennedy at the top of the broadcast, the story's been lapped by things that actually seem relevant, like the pathetic jobs figures, the conservative rats leaving the USS Bush as it sinks into the muck and mire, and the possibility of peace in Darfur. This is not to mention that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the man President Bush talked about constantly as one of the most evilestest men in the known and unknown universe, a guy who would sodomize Ming the Merciless while having Attila the Hun lick his balls, doesn't even seem to know how to work a gun.
Maybe it's too hopeful to say that the mainstream media knows a Condit-like distraction when it sees it now. Because there's always the next missing white woman or David Blaine emerging from his bubble (or dying. Whatever). And certainly Greta Van Susterenenenenen will talk about Kennedy's accident for weeks, with Fox "News" and Malkin and others floggin' the story that Kennedy got "preferential treatment," never recognizing the hypocrisy in decrying whatever way Kennedy was treated while ignoring the way in which admitted drug addict Rush Limbaugh was handled like a delicate flower whose bloom would forever be slightly less glorious if he was treated like every other sad junkie.
Still, Michelle Malkin's pussy is, at least for the time being, satiated in its mad cunty desire for larger fuck toys and more horsepower. And it's the weekend, time enough for sore conservative koozes and cocks to heal to get ready to jack it again come Monday.
Thursday, May 04, 2006
The Real Post-Moussaoui-Sentencing Smackdown:
After the announcement of yesterday's verdict of life in prison for Zacarias Moussaoui, the Pete Best of al-Qaeda, we got to hear from 9/11 victims' families. The fact that Moussaoui had about as much to do with 9/11 as a polar bear has to do with rising gas prices didn't seem to matter to prosecutors, who were determined that Moussaoui, being Muslim, crazy, brownish and bearded, would be the nutzoid canvas onto which the bloodlust of revenge fantasies would be painted. So, yeah, sure, this is the "first 9/11-related case" brought to trial only because they called it the "first 9/11-related case."
Over on the CNNMSNBCFox, we heard from the family members who wanted to rip open Moussaoui with their bare hands and squeeze his squishy viscera while laughing at his screams. And we also heard from those less bloodthirsty family members who actually believe that Moussaoui, the Gummo Marx of jihadis, is just a loser who likes to shout stupid shit like, "America, you lost; I won," as he did after the verdict was read, or "God curse America," as he did today at his formal sentencing. This is Moussaoui, the barroom braggart, the asshole who makes up stories about all the gooks he offed in 'Nam when, in reality, his happy ass stayed in Mama's living room because of his flat feet. You kinda wanna kick him in the nuts, but mostly you just feel sorry for him.
One of those family members was the cute-as-a-kitten Carie Lemack, a founder of Familes of September 11, who lost her mother, Judy Larocque, on that day. The quote of hers that's made the rounds of the news is her smackdown of Moussaoui: "He's going to be in jail for the rest of his life, which is exactly what this man deserves. He's an al Qaeda wannabe. And he does not deserve any credit for 9/11, because he was not part of that. And I am so glad the jury recognized that and realized that he just wanted to kill Americans, but he wasn't even skilled enough to be able to do that." Or the shorter quote: "[T]his man was an al Qaeda wannabe who could never have put together the 9/11 attacks."
Of course, Lemack gave great soundbite there. And it's perfect - it fits our national master narrative: young white girl stands up to mean dark person. However, Lemack also said a great many other things in her same statement, things she's been saying for the last four years:
"This country needs to understand the real risks that we are facing. We can't even get our Congress people and our president to lock up nuclear material, even though terrorists, including Osama bin Laden, have said he wants to kill four million Americans. This country can't screen all of the cargo on the planes that we fly on, that I flew on here today to be here.
"We have to look at the real problems in this country. If we're going to blame Zacarias Moussaoui, he's not the real problem. The real problem are the terrorists who do want to kill us, like Osama bin Laden, who is still not captured."
Moussaoui was a tool, a useless idiot, and a deranged, deluded bit of flea spittle on the sore-ridden ass of a mangy dog, and his "trial" degraded all of us: remember, all this time, testimony, and torment wasn't about establishing any kind of guilt - it was simply to determine whether he would spend the rest of his life in a concrete box where he'll be alone for 23 hours a day or be killed. Would that the money spent on this sham of a show trial had been spent on some of things that Carie Lemack and other 9/11 families and victims are asking for.
Note: The Rude Pundit will be guest-posting over at Jesus' General later today. And the good JC Christian allows comments. Just sayin'...
Update: The Rude Pundit's "Christ Weary of the National Day o' Prayer" is up at Jesus' General. Hang out for a while and enjoy other guests of the General's, like Michael Berube, the Sadly, No gang, Attaturk, and more.
After the announcement of yesterday's verdict of life in prison for Zacarias Moussaoui, the Pete Best of al-Qaeda, we got to hear from 9/11 victims' families. The fact that Moussaoui had about as much to do with 9/11 as a polar bear has to do with rising gas prices didn't seem to matter to prosecutors, who were determined that Moussaoui, being Muslim, crazy, brownish and bearded, would be the nutzoid canvas onto which the bloodlust of revenge fantasies would be painted. So, yeah, sure, this is the "first 9/11-related case" brought to trial only because they called it the "first 9/11-related case."
Over on the CNNMSNBCFox, we heard from the family members who wanted to rip open Moussaoui with their bare hands and squeeze his squishy viscera while laughing at his screams. And we also heard from those less bloodthirsty family members who actually believe that Moussaoui, the Gummo Marx of jihadis, is just a loser who likes to shout stupid shit like, "America, you lost; I won," as he did after the verdict was read, or "God curse America," as he did today at his formal sentencing. This is Moussaoui, the barroom braggart, the asshole who makes up stories about all the gooks he offed in 'Nam when, in reality, his happy ass stayed in Mama's living room because of his flat feet. You kinda wanna kick him in the nuts, but mostly you just feel sorry for him.
One of those family members was the cute-as-a-kitten Carie Lemack, a founder of Familes of September 11, who lost her mother, Judy Larocque, on that day. The quote of hers that's made the rounds of the news is her smackdown of Moussaoui: "He's going to be in jail for the rest of his life, which is exactly what this man deserves. He's an al Qaeda wannabe. And he does not deserve any credit for 9/11, because he was not part of that. And I am so glad the jury recognized that and realized that he just wanted to kill Americans, but he wasn't even skilled enough to be able to do that." Or the shorter quote: "[T]his man was an al Qaeda wannabe who could never have put together the 9/11 attacks."
Of course, Lemack gave great soundbite there. And it's perfect - it fits our national master narrative: young white girl stands up to mean dark person. However, Lemack also said a great many other things in her same statement, things she's been saying for the last four years:
"This country needs to understand the real risks that we are facing. We can't even get our Congress people and our president to lock up nuclear material, even though terrorists, including Osama bin Laden, have said he wants to kill four million Americans. This country can't screen all of the cargo on the planes that we fly on, that I flew on here today to be here.
"We have to look at the real problems in this country. If we're going to blame Zacarias Moussaoui, he's not the real problem. The real problem are the terrorists who do want to kill us, like Osama bin Laden, who is still not captured."
Moussaoui was a tool, a useless idiot, and a deranged, deluded bit of flea spittle on the sore-ridden ass of a mangy dog, and his "trial" degraded all of us: remember, all this time, testimony, and torment wasn't about establishing any kind of guilt - it was simply to determine whether he would spend the rest of his life in a concrete box where he'll be alone for 23 hours a day or be killed. Would that the money spent on this sham of a show trial had been spent on some of things that Carie Lemack and other 9/11 families and victims are asking for.
Note: The Rude Pundit will be guest-posting over at Jesus' General later today. And the good JC Christian allows comments. Just sayin'...
Update: The Rude Pundit's "Christ Weary of the National Day o' Prayer" is up at Jesus' General. Hang out for a while and enjoy other guests of the General's, like Michael Berube, the Sadly, No gang, Attaturk, and more.
Wednesday, May 03, 2006
A Hundred Bucks Well-Spent:
Goddamnit, the Rude Pundit's disappointed that the GOP is abandoning its plans to drop each and every one of us fine American households a C-note. The Rude Pundit had hisself some plans for that hundy, had hisself an idea or two of how to use those federal gas tax "relief" bucks to do some good or at least have hisself a little fun.
See, the Rude Pundit was gonna get hisself some friends together, like a couple thousand of 'em, to pool our Benjamins, and, now, the Rude Pundit's no Paul Krugman wonky economist, but that appears to add up to a couple hundred thousand big ones. He figgers that much cash money oughta be enough to buy time with some of our fine public servants, like maybe Senators Rick Santorum or Kay Bailey Hutchison or Conrad Burns, or maybe House members Joe Barton or Denny Hastert or Richie Pombo, all of whom line up like Datsuns at a Mobil station back in 1977 to get Texas tea-bagged by that oil lucre.
Yeah, we'll have a party, a reception, fuck, we'll make it an awards banquet, call us a PAC like "American Citizens for Oil Consumption Knowledge" or some such shit. Say we're gonna give out trophies for mighty Republicans who stand up for the rights of Americans to gorge themselves on as much gas as God and Jesus can let us suck out of the compliant earth. We'll promise 'em all checks, man, big fuckin' checks fer showin' up, that soft money, that campaign cash.
It'll be a grand time. We'll serve chicken, lots of goddamn chicken, 'cause everyone likes chicken at their banquet, with rice fuckin' pilaf and goddamn green beans. It'll be proper-like, with bow-tie-wearin' Latinos and Negroes pickin' up the dishes with the half-eaten chicken and the almond slivers shoved aside, re-fillin' the water glasses, offerin' coffee and cookies. At the end, we'll tell the Congress members it's time to present the guests of honor.
Except they won't be invited to the dais to speak, oh, no. We'll put on music, loud old timey Texas-soundin' music, Bob Wills or Sons of the Pioneers, and we'll tell 'em, "Now, it's time to dance, motherfuckers. You want your money? You fuckin' dance." And slowly, unsteadily at first, they'll start to dance, because it's Pavlovian for them to dance when the people with the cash tell 'em to dance. They will dance like monkeys at the circus, man.
Goddamn, how we'll whoop and cheer as we watch Denny Hastert wheeze and undulate around, Kay Bailey Hutchison shakin' her groove thang. We'll throw Benjamins at them and tell 'em to scamper around on their hands and knees, screamin', "Yeah, you like it, bitches, you like that gas money." Haster may teeter on the brink of a heart attack the whole time, but he'll scramble around and beat down Connie Burns to get that last hundy.
Then it'll be tank-fillin' time, where we see which member of Congress can have the most C-notes shoved up his or her ass. Get Richard Pambo to bend over so that Rick Santorum can see what delicious fate awaits him, and we'll all count as hundreds are shoved into Pombo's ass. After forty or fifty, we'll ask him if he can take more, and he may be in pain, but he's a good member of the GOP delegation. "Shove more," he'll cry out, smiling at the idea that for every few hundred shoved into his bowels, he'll be able to buy just that much more time in the House to represent our "cause."
We'll do 'em all, one by one, shoving Benjamins into their hemhorroidal, colonoscopated rectums, and when we're done, we'll take out a gas pump handle and use the nozzle to pack it all in. We'll ask 'em if it's worth it, if the pain is worth the money, if they'd rather have no pain and no money, the freedom to walk upright and proudly, but, like every sore-ridden crack whore who fucks one more john, they'll say, "Yes, yes, it's worth it. Shove it in." We'll ask Joe Barton if he'll hold hearings on the shoving of gas rebates into the anuses of members of Congress, and of course he'll hold hearings, with no one under oath, with nothing done at the end but a report issued, with nothing but more members lined up with their ass cheeks spread for their chicken, their rice pilaf, their hundreds and thousands of dollars.
It'll fail, our effort, yes, for irony is not in favor in D.C. But we'd have had more fun with our hundreds than two tanks of gas would have given us.
Oh, and as we're leaving the hotel conference room, with the prone, stuffed-assed Republicans still on the floor, we'll release a bunch of horny male caribou into the place. Then we'll finally have some Arctic wildlife drilling.
Goddamnit, the Rude Pundit's disappointed that the GOP is abandoning its plans to drop each and every one of us fine American households a C-note. The Rude Pundit had hisself some plans for that hundy, had hisself an idea or two of how to use those federal gas tax "relief" bucks to do some good or at least have hisself a little fun.
See, the Rude Pundit was gonna get hisself some friends together, like a couple thousand of 'em, to pool our Benjamins, and, now, the Rude Pundit's no Paul Krugman wonky economist, but that appears to add up to a couple hundred thousand big ones. He figgers that much cash money oughta be enough to buy time with some of our fine public servants, like maybe Senators Rick Santorum or Kay Bailey Hutchison or Conrad Burns, or maybe House members Joe Barton or Denny Hastert or Richie Pombo, all of whom line up like Datsuns at a Mobil station back in 1977 to get Texas tea-bagged by that oil lucre.
Yeah, we'll have a party, a reception, fuck, we'll make it an awards banquet, call us a PAC like "American Citizens for Oil Consumption Knowledge" or some such shit. Say we're gonna give out trophies for mighty Republicans who stand up for the rights of Americans to gorge themselves on as much gas as God and Jesus can let us suck out of the compliant earth. We'll promise 'em all checks, man, big fuckin' checks fer showin' up, that soft money, that campaign cash.
It'll be a grand time. We'll serve chicken, lots of goddamn chicken, 'cause everyone likes chicken at their banquet, with rice fuckin' pilaf and goddamn green beans. It'll be proper-like, with bow-tie-wearin' Latinos and Negroes pickin' up the dishes with the half-eaten chicken and the almond slivers shoved aside, re-fillin' the water glasses, offerin' coffee and cookies. At the end, we'll tell the Congress members it's time to present the guests of honor.
Except they won't be invited to the dais to speak, oh, no. We'll put on music, loud old timey Texas-soundin' music, Bob Wills or Sons of the Pioneers, and we'll tell 'em, "Now, it's time to dance, motherfuckers. You want your money? You fuckin' dance." And slowly, unsteadily at first, they'll start to dance, because it's Pavlovian for them to dance when the people with the cash tell 'em to dance. They will dance like monkeys at the circus, man.
Goddamn, how we'll whoop and cheer as we watch Denny Hastert wheeze and undulate around, Kay Bailey Hutchison shakin' her groove thang. We'll throw Benjamins at them and tell 'em to scamper around on their hands and knees, screamin', "Yeah, you like it, bitches, you like that gas money." Haster may teeter on the brink of a heart attack the whole time, but he'll scramble around and beat down Connie Burns to get that last hundy.
Then it'll be tank-fillin' time, where we see which member of Congress can have the most C-notes shoved up his or her ass. Get Richard Pambo to bend over so that Rick Santorum can see what delicious fate awaits him, and we'll all count as hundreds are shoved into Pombo's ass. After forty or fifty, we'll ask him if he can take more, and he may be in pain, but he's a good member of the GOP delegation. "Shove more," he'll cry out, smiling at the idea that for every few hundred shoved into his bowels, he'll be able to buy just that much more time in the House to represent our "cause."
We'll do 'em all, one by one, shoving Benjamins into their hemhorroidal, colonoscopated rectums, and when we're done, we'll take out a gas pump handle and use the nozzle to pack it all in. We'll ask 'em if it's worth it, if the pain is worth the money, if they'd rather have no pain and no money, the freedom to walk upright and proudly, but, like every sore-ridden crack whore who fucks one more john, they'll say, "Yes, yes, it's worth it. Shove it in." We'll ask Joe Barton if he'll hold hearings on the shoving of gas rebates into the anuses of members of Congress, and of course he'll hold hearings, with no one under oath, with nothing done at the end but a report issued, with nothing but more members lined up with their ass cheeks spread for their chicken, their rice pilaf, their hundreds and thousands of dollars.
It'll fail, our effort, yes, for irony is not in favor in D.C. But we'd have had more fun with our hundreds than two tanks of gas would have given us.
Oh, and as we're leaving the hotel conference room, with the prone, stuffed-assed Republicans still on the floor, we'll release a bunch of horny male caribou into the place. Then we'll finally have some Arctic wildlife drilling.
Tuesday, May 02, 2006
Among the Immigrants:
In Union Square, in Manhattan, over at the immigrant rights protest, the Rude Pundit kept getting smacked in the face with the American flag. Walking among the tens of thousands of gathered immigrants, sympathizers, media, and gawkers, no matter where the Rude Pundit turned, someone was shoving the stars and stripes in his face. And if he wasn't getting slapped with Ol' Glory, he was getting poked by small sticks that held the flags. The American flag was ubiquitous, tied to other flags of other nations, placed on cardboard tubes with those flags, waved with fervor whenever anyone started a chant of "Si, se puede." Nobody was going to accuse these protests of being anti-American. It was the most pro-American rally the Rude Pundit's seen since the Republican convention. The American flag was selling for five bucks a pop from the dozens of vendors there. You could get flags of other countries, sure, for the same price. Each flag had a little tag on it that read, "Made in China."
People with their flags climbed onto the statue of a horse-riding George Washington at the bottom of Union Square. The statue commemorates Evacuation Day on November 25, 1783, when George Washington rode triumphantly back into New York City as the last British troops evacuated the city they had held for seven years and great swaths of Manhattan had been wrecked by the occupation. The population dropped forty percent after the British left. It would take the influx of European immigrants, assisted by laws like the Naturalization Act of 1790, which said that anyone - well, any "free white person"- who lives in the U.S. for two years may apply to become a citizen, to really make the population explode. Ah, sweet nation-building.
Yesterday, non-white persons ascended the statue and adorned it with flags from Puerto Rico and Ecuador. Then one swarthy protester braved the bronze to plant an anti-imperialism Che Guevara sign in Washington's stirrup. Yes, Che Guevara was everywhere, on signs and shirts, the de-fanged fashion icon presumed to still be a threat to the Yanquis, one presumes. There he was again, under George Washington's foot.
And, yes, there were those Michelle Malkin-ready signs, the kind that show up on her blog as a way of discrediting an entire movement. Unlike Malkin and her ilk-in, people who prefer to exist with their heads so far up their asses that they can lick their own uvulas, the Rude Pundit actually went up to the young Latino with the crudely written "Let's Kill Bush" poster and asked him why he decided to go with that sentiment. What he got in response was not a crazy, "fuck you, gringo" attitude. Instead, the teenager said, "Bush sends people to die, so, you know, an eye for an eye." Hey, what the hell - it's biblical, right? The Rude Pundit wished him luck with the cops and headed in the opposite direction in case batons started pummeling, only to get slapped in the face with an American flag.
But, shit, besides the constant beat down by the star-spangled banner, there was much excitement in the air as cameramen from different news organizations implored people to start chanting so they could get some good b-roll for the evening broadcast, there was the gigantic sign that had a picture of Lou Dobbs, CNN's waspish face for legitimizing racism, with a Nazi symbol on his head, and there were thankfully few puppets. Among the vastly Hispanic crowd there were also signs of other people, flags of other countries, including one small group from Pakistan who held a sign that said, "Islam is about love."
In the end, the speeches couldn't be heard, the atmosphere more day-off party than protest. Does the Rude Pundit sound bored? Perhaps there's not enough heartwarming stories here of families, with their small children waving American flags and that kind of shit that makes us all feel good about being nice and liberal and warm and fuzzy and a little less guilty for being (if you are) white. Fuck that. Go somewhere else for that.
Between Saturday's March for Peace and yesterday's protests, the Rude Pundit has realized that the greatest problem with protest in America is that it's too fuckin' nice. It's all well-regulated and permitted and placed so that it inconveniences as few people as possible. This is protest against the powerful that is sanctioned by the powerful and, indeed, is that truly protest at all?
A real protest shuts shit down, fucks up the day, goes on so that the powerful have to listen or take a strong stand against the protesters. A real protest doesn't stay on the sanctioned path - it veers off and tries to get those who aren't part of the crowd to join in. Back thirty-six years ago, with its anniversary on Thursday, on May 4, 1970, protesters got shot and killed at Kent State for not listening to those who would tell them how to speak freely in this allegedly free society. The Rude Pundit knows someone who was there who said to him, "It was the hardest thing in the world to get up the next day and march. But you had to. Otherwise they had won."
If those in power can merely condescendingly look at hundreds of thousands of marching people and say, as the President and so many do, "Isn't it great that people in a free country get to express themselves," then that protest is a failure. In other words, get that fucking flag out of the Rude Pundit's face.
In Union Square, in Manhattan, over at the immigrant rights protest, the Rude Pundit kept getting smacked in the face with the American flag. Walking among the tens of thousands of gathered immigrants, sympathizers, media, and gawkers, no matter where the Rude Pundit turned, someone was shoving the stars and stripes in his face. And if he wasn't getting slapped with Ol' Glory, he was getting poked by small sticks that held the flags. The American flag was ubiquitous, tied to other flags of other nations, placed on cardboard tubes with those flags, waved with fervor whenever anyone started a chant of "Si, se puede." Nobody was going to accuse these protests of being anti-American. It was the most pro-American rally the Rude Pundit's seen since the Republican convention. The American flag was selling for five bucks a pop from the dozens of vendors there. You could get flags of other countries, sure, for the same price. Each flag had a little tag on it that read, "Made in China."
People with their flags climbed onto the statue of a horse-riding George Washington at the bottom of Union Square. The statue commemorates Evacuation Day on November 25, 1783, when George Washington rode triumphantly back into New York City as the last British troops evacuated the city they had held for seven years and great swaths of Manhattan had been wrecked by the occupation. The population dropped forty percent after the British left. It would take the influx of European immigrants, assisted by laws like the Naturalization Act of 1790, which said that anyone - well, any "free white person"- who lives in the U.S. for two years may apply to become a citizen, to really make the population explode. Ah, sweet nation-building.
Yesterday, non-white persons ascended the statue and adorned it with flags from Puerto Rico and Ecuador. Then one swarthy protester braved the bronze to plant an anti-imperialism Che Guevara sign in Washington's stirrup. Yes, Che Guevara was everywhere, on signs and shirts, the de-fanged fashion icon presumed to still be a threat to the Yanquis, one presumes. There he was again, under George Washington's foot.
And, yes, there were those Michelle Malkin-ready signs, the kind that show up on her blog as a way of discrediting an entire movement. Unlike Malkin and her ilk-in, people who prefer to exist with their heads so far up their asses that they can lick their own uvulas, the Rude Pundit actually went up to the young Latino with the crudely written "Let's Kill Bush" poster and asked him why he decided to go with that sentiment. What he got in response was not a crazy, "fuck you, gringo" attitude. Instead, the teenager said, "Bush sends people to die, so, you know, an eye for an eye." Hey, what the hell - it's biblical, right? The Rude Pundit wished him luck with the cops and headed in the opposite direction in case batons started pummeling, only to get slapped in the face with an American flag.
But, shit, besides the constant beat down by the star-spangled banner, there was much excitement in the air as cameramen from different news organizations implored people to start chanting so they could get some good b-roll for the evening broadcast, there was the gigantic sign that had a picture of Lou Dobbs, CNN's waspish face for legitimizing racism, with a Nazi symbol on his head, and there were thankfully few puppets. Among the vastly Hispanic crowd there were also signs of other people, flags of other countries, including one small group from Pakistan who held a sign that said, "Islam is about love."
In the end, the speeches couldn't be heard, the atmosphere more day-off party than protest. Does the Rude Pundit sound bored? Perhaps there's not enough heartwarming stories here of families, with their small children waving American flags and that kind of shit that makes us all feel good about being nice and liberal and warm and fuzzy and a little less guilty for being (if you are) white. Fuck that. Go somewhere else for that.
Between Saturday's March for Peace and yesterday's protests, the Rude Pundit has realized that the greatest problem with protest in America is that it's too fuckin' nice. It's all well-regulated and permitted and placed so that it inconveniences as few people as possible. This is protest against the powerful that is sanctioned by the powerful and, indeed, is that truly protest at all?
A real protest shuts shit down, fucks up the day, goes on so that the powerful have to listen or take a strong stand against the protesters. A real protest doesn't stay on the sanctioned path - it veers off and tries to get those who aren't part of the crowd to join in. Back thirty-six years ago, with its anniversary on Thursday, on May 4, 1970, protesters got shot and killed at Kent State for not listening to those who would tell them how to speak freely in this allegedly free society. The Rude Pundit knows someone who was there who said to him, "It was the hardest thing in the world to get up the next day and march. But you had to. Otherwise they had won."
If those in power can merely condescendingly look at hundreds of thousands of marching people and say, as the President and so many do, "Isn't it great that people in a free country get to express themselves," then that protest is a failure. In other words, get that fucking flag out of the Rude Pundit's face.
Monday, May 01, 2006
Rights of Spring: Notes From a Quickly Forgotten March:
It's easy to be cynical about Saturday's March for Peace in New York City, quickly trampled in media memory by the Clooney-rific Darfur rally in DC on Sunday and today's "Muffy, Where's the Lawn Boy?" immigrant rights protests. But the Rude Pundit went out in the frighteningly gorgeous weather on Saturday, joining three hot female singers and an out and proud lesbian friend who strangely, disturbingly, and perhaps ironically, doesn't like the word "juice." It's easy to be cynical for we had such a grand time, hiking with 300,000 people down the narrow canyons of lower Broadway, that the Rude Pundit commented to Hot Singer Addie, "Man, isn't it great that soldiers are dying in Iraq so that we could have so much fun?" When we jumped out of the march to grab a bite at that well-known liberal chain, McDonald's, the Rude Pundit said we should start a chant of "No justice, no peace / Big Macs are good to eat."
As the "Juice"-Hating Lesbian, who also has a problem with the word "smoothie," noted, the march seemed much less angry than the protests in August 2004, when we all marched against the RNC Convention. The Rude Pundit said he felt it was more "festive," which, he discovered, was the last of the three words the "Juice"-Hating Lesbian hated. But, indeed, it was, if for no other reason than the preponderance of puppets and musicians. Everywhere you goddamn looked there was a goddamn puppet, some cool - like the dragon-like spine representing the backbone the Democratic Party needs to get - but most just strange and shrugworthy. The music, including the marching band called the Rude Mechanicals, was jazzy and, well, shit, fun and, yeah, festive. The Rude Pundit walked along talking politics, as well as the inviting comfort of Gap underwear with Hot Singer Andi.
It's so damn easy to be cynical, especially when Hot Singer Kiara said she didn't know who Donald Rumsfeld was, which caused the Rude Pundit to slap her in her head with a Communist newspaper that had been handed to him. Or over the fringe groups, which always show up at these things, tricking idiots into getting information about Lyndon LaRouche or signing up for spam and listservs that'll get you involved in idiot discussions about one idiotic conspiracy theory or another. Or the end of the march. Fuck, the end of the march.
After marching for a couple of hours, fortified with Quarter Pounders, we got to Foley Square, ready for some big ass rallying and . . . nothing. Fucking nothing. A bunch of tables handing out more information that people with stacks o' flyers had been giving us all through the march. No speakers, no rally, just the chance to wander around the "Festival of Peace and Justice," which had all the charm of college club day on the quad. When the twee folkie guy started strumming his guitar and whining into a shitty mike and amp on the green, the Rude Pundit wanted beer so he could beat the skinny bastard down with the bottle. It was a huge, stupid mistake to bring a crowd together only to tell its members, "Okay, you're on your own." As a WCBS reporter commented, without irony, "It's very peaceful here today."
So, yeah, shit, it'd be easy to be cynical about the day of the quickly forgotten peace march. Except for a couple of things.
Except for the 60-year old man handing out buttons that read, "Impeach Bush." His daughter said that he'd bought 20,000 buttons to give out for free at the march. When the Rude Pundit tried to hand the man five bucks for the cost of his effort, the man declined. His daughter said, "He just wants to do this. He doesn't want any money."
Except for Hot Singer Kiara, who at one point in the march said that she was learning so much on this, her first march, now, in her mid-20s, who said she represented so many young women she knows who simply separate themselves from politics, who said that most women would have simply nodded and not asked who Donald Rumsfeld was, who said she wanted to take what she was learning, and what she had recently learned (like about the evil of Fox "News"), and turn other young women, especially, onto the need for activism. She was taking it all in, all the different causes people were marching against, whether it was the war, the Katrina response, or the general fucktardedness of the nation at this point in our history, and, holy shit, the streets are filled with people.
Except for the old man the Rude Pundit met on the steps of the subway, carrying a sign, hobbling painfully down, alone. He wore a pin that read, "Veterans Against the Iraq War." The Rude Pundit asked him if it was worth it, the day, the march, the pain he was obviously suffering. He looked at the Rude Pundit and said yes, it was: "I was just happy to know I wasn't alone. I was happy to find out that other people feel the things I'm feeling and think the things I'm thinking."
"No, " the Rude Pundit said. "You're actually part of the majority."
Note: Here's the web pages of the hot female singers. Go for the hotness. Stay for the songs:
Addie Brownlee
Andi Rae Healy
Kiara Duran
It's easy to be cynical about Saturday's March for Peace in New York City, quickly trampled in media memory by the Clooney-rific Darfur rally in DC on Sunday and today's "Muffy, Where's the Lawn Boy?" immigrant rights protests. But the Rude Pundit went out in the frighteningly gorgeous weather on Saturday, joining three hot female singers and an out and proud lesbian friend who strangely, disturbingly, and perhaps ironically, doesn't like the word "juice." It's easy to be cynical for we had such a grand time, hiking with 300,000 people down the narrow canyons of lower Broadway, that the Rude Pundit commented to Hot Singer Addie, "Man, isn't it great that soldiers are dying in Iraq so that we could have so much fun?" When we jumped out of the march to grab a bite at that well-known liberal chain, McDonald's, the Rude Pundit said we should start a chant of "No justice, no peace / Big Macs are good to eat."
As the "Juice"-Hating Lesbian, who also has a problem with the word "smoothie," noted, the march seemed much less angry than the protests in August 2004, when we all marched against the RNC Convention. The Rude Pundit said he felt it was more "festive," which, he discovered, was the last of the three words the "Juice"-Hating Lesbian hated. But, indeed, it was, if for no other reason than the preponderance of puppets and musicians. Everywhere you goddamn looked there was a goddamn puppet, some cool - like the dragon-like spine representing the backbone the Democratic Party needs to get - but most just strange and shrugworthy. The music, including the marching band called the Rude Mechanicals, was jazzy and, well, shit, fun and, yeah, festive. The Rude Pundit walked along talking politics, as well as the inviting comfort of Gap underwear with Hot Singer Andi.
It's so damn easy to be cynical, especially when Hot Singer Kiara said she didn't know who Donald Rumsfeld was, which caused the Rude Pundit to slap her in her head with a Communist newspaper that had been handed to him. Or over the fringe groups, which always show up at these things, tricking idiots into getting information about Lyndon LaRouche or signing up for spam and listservs that'll get you involved in idiot discussions about one idiotic conspiracy theory or another. Or the end of the march. Fuck, the end of the march.
After marching for a couple of hours, fortified with Quarter Pounders, we got to Foley Square, ready for some big ass rallying and . . . nothing. Fucking nothing. A bunch of tables handing out more information that people with stacks o' flyers had been giving us all through the march. No speakers, no rally, just the chance to wander around the "Festival of Peace and Justice," which had all the charm of college club day on the quad. When the twee folkie guy started strumming his guitar and whining into a shitty mike and amp on the green, the Rude Pundit wanted beer so he could beat the skinny bastard down with the bottle. It was a huge, stupid mistake to bring a crowd together only to tell its members, "Okay, you're on your own." As a WCBS reporter commented, without irony, "It's very peaceful here today."
So, yeah, shit, it'd be easy to be cynical about the day of the quickly forgotten peace march. Except for a couple of things.
Except for the 60-year old man handing out buttons that read, "Impeach Bush." His daughter said that he'd bought 20,000 buttons to give out for free at the march. When the Rude Pundit tried to hand the man five bucks for the cost of his effort, the man declined. His daughter said, "He just wants to do this. He doesn't want any money."
Except for Hot Singer Kiara, who at one point in the march said that she was learning so much on this, her first march, now, in her mid-20s, who said she represented so many young women she knows who simply separate themselves from politics, who said that most women would have simply nodded and not asked who Donald Rumsfeld was, who said she wanted to take what she was learning, and what she had recently learned (like about the evil of Fox "News"), and turn other young women, especially, onto the need for activism. She was taking it all in, all the different causes people were marching against, whether it was the war, the Katrina response, or the general fucktardedness of the nation at this point in our history, and, holy shit, the streets are filled with people.
Except for the old man the Rude Pundit met on the steps of the subway, carrying a sign, hobbling painfully down, alone. He wore a pin that read, "Veterans Against the Iraq War." The Rude Pundit asked him if it was worth it, the day, the march, the pain he was obviously suffering. He looked at the Rude Pundit and said yes, it was: "I was just happy to know I wasn't alone. I was happy to find out that other people feel the things I'm feeling and think the things I'm thinking."
"No, " the Rude Pundit said. "You're actually part of the majority."
Note: Here's the web pages of the hot female singers. Go for the hotness. Stay for the songs:
Addie Brownlee
Andi Rae Healy
Kiara Duran
Links To Bruce Springsteen's Performance At New Orleans Jazzfest:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, Colbert was awesome. For another kind of catharsis, check out these excerpts from Bruce Springsteen's performance at the New Orleans Jazzfest:
MSN Video of Springsteen performing "How Can a Poor Man Stand Such Times and Live," dedicated to "President Bystander." (You need Explorer to view.)
Crappy YouTube videos:
"My City of Ruins" - hang in there until the camera is panned across the crowd.
"When the Saints Go Marchin' In" - just a single verse.
Enjoy. More non-Bruce stuff soon.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, Colbert was awesome. For another kind of catharsis, check out these excerpts from Bruce Springsteen's performance at the New Orleans Jazzfest:
MSN Video of Springsteen performing "How Can a Poor Man Stand Such Times and Live," dedicated to "President Bystander." (You need Explorer to view.)
Crappy YouTube videos:
"My City of Ruins" - hang in there until the camera is panned across the crowd.
"When the Saints Go Marchin' In" - just a single verse.
Enjoy. More non-Bruce stuff soon.
Friday, April 28, 2006
And On Friday, the Rude Pundit Came:
Rush Limbaugh was arrested (as part of a settlement with prosecutors). Now for a cigarette.
Rush Limbaugh was arrested (as part of a settlement with prosecutors). Now for a cigarette.
Fucked New Orleans:
New Orleans is fucked, yes, it is true, and it needs to be said again and again. New Orleans is fucked because rabid right wing Republicans run the federal government, and all the rabid right wing knows is destruction and denial. Social Security, massive housing programs, Medicare, man on the goddamn moon, all done or initiated under Democrats. Interstate highway system, under Ike, no miserable attack dog conservative. And look at the one attempt at something constructive by the Bush administration, the fucked Medicare prescription drug program. Yeah, New Orleans is fucked for the White House and its lackeys in Congress simply have no idea how to accomplish anything that doesn't involve blowing shit up, tearing shit down, or telling people to sit down and shut up.
New Orleans is fucked, yeah, you know it, because its sewers are fucked. Big damn Katrina ripped up those old sewage collection pipes, 5000 miles of 'em, and took down treatment plants. And since Americans generally enjoy the privilege of shitting in toilets that flush, you can't rebuild a community if there's no place for its shit to go. It's gonna cost another billion or so to make sure that New Orleanians aren't just dumpin' raw or semi-raw sewage into the mighty Mississippi River. And any money from, say, utilities is flowing in the same direction because, well, no toilets means no people means no one paying the water bill.
New Orleans is fucked, in ways large and small, because the judicial system is in shambles. There's seven public defenders where there used to be 42. There's no money 'cause the money came from parking tickets and there's no money comin' from that 'cause, well, no people means no cars means less tickets, and the city's legal office that used to represent the poor or 85% of New Orleans defendants "is barely standing. It hasn't received a nickel from traffic court since before Katrina."
New Orleans is fucked, so very fucked, because it "has lost 77 percent of its primary-care doctors, 70 percent of its dentists, and 89 percent of its psychiatrists." So in a city filled with crazy sick people with rotting teeth before Katrina, now there's hardly anyone available should you wish to be sane, safe and shiny-toothed. And if you get shot? Damn, man, you better hope you know basic surgery. (Let's not even get into the nightmare of New Orleans in the summer, with the late spring mosquito explosion and the insane heat.)
No matter where you look, the signs are there about how fucked New Orleans really, truly is. For the levees will not be ready for this hurricane season. And even if they are supposedly back to strength, fuck the Army Corps of Engineers: the earth itself might just make sure the levees fail, with a geologic fault, assisted by oil drilling and wetlands loss, upping the chances of more catastrophe. Oh, and three of the drainage pumps, the ones that get rid of flood waters, caught fire after a little rainstorm. They may be up and running by June.
In New Orleans yesterday, his arm around a prop black woman, President Bush declared, "I told the Governor and the Mayor earlier on that we would work to have these levees pre-Katrina -- better than pre-Katrina by June 1st," barely even blinking because lies come to him as naturally as drool on the chins of babies. Over in Slidell, a FEMA trailer blew up because of a leaky propane line, killing one person and destroying the rest of their belongings. It's the second trailer explosion in the area.
New Orleans is fucked because, a few days ago, Secretary of Housing Alphonso Jackson declared, "Only the best residents should return" to the public housing projects of the city, like "[t]hose who paid rent on time, those who held a job and those who worked." So if you were, say, unemployed or were late with the rent, that means for Alphonso Jackson that you are not one of the "best" and you shouldn't get to live in government housing, which was established for, among others, people who didn't have jobs or were unable to pay the rent. And the fine, fine New Orleans projects, crime-ridden, underbuilt, underpoliced shitholes, have residents begging to get back to their decimated homes because some home is better than none.
In New Orleans the President said, "We've got a strategy to help the good folks down here rebuild. Part of it has to do with funding; part of it has to do with housing; and a lot of it has to do with encouraging volunteers from around the United States," which is code for saying, "You're on your own, motherfuckers." Jazz Fest is gonna be a blast this year.
(The most pathetic thing is that this is only scratching the surface. Georgia10 at DailyKos has more.)
New Orleans is fucked, yes, it is true, and it needs to be said again and again. New Orleans is fucked because rabid right wing Republicans run the federal government, and all the rabid right wing knows is destruction and denial. Social Security, massive housing programs, Medicare, man on the goddamn moon, all done or initiated under Democrats. Interstate highway system, under Ike, no miserable attack dog conservative. And look at the one attempt at something constructive by the Bush administration, the fucked Medicare prescription drug program. Yeah, New Orleans is fucked for the White House and its lackeys in Congress simply have no idea how to accomplish anything that doesn't involve blowing shit up, tearing shit down, or telling people to sit down and shut up.
New Orleans is fucked, yeah, you know it, because its sewers are fucked. Big damn Katrina ripped up those old sewage collection pipes, 5000 miles of 'em, and took down treatment plants. And since Americans generally enjoy the privilege of shitting in toilets that flush, you can't rebuild a community if there's no place for its shit to go. It's gonna cost another billion or so to make sure that New Orleanians aren't just dumpin' raw or semi-raw sewage into the mighty Mississippi River. And any money from, say, utilities is flowing in the same direction because, well, no toilets means no people means no one paying the water bill.
New Orleans is fucked, in ways large and small, because the judicial system is in shambles. There's seven public defenders where there used to be 42. There's no money 'cause the money came from parking tickets and there's no money comin' from that 'cause, well, no people means no cars means less tickets, and the city's legal office that used to represent the poor or 85% of New Orleans defendants "is barely standing. It hasn't received a nickel from traffic court since before Katrina."
New Orleans is fucked, so very fucked, because it "has lost 77 percent of its primary-care doctors, 70 percent of its dentists, and 89 percent of its psychiatrists." So in a city filled with crazy sick people with rotting teeth before Katrina, now there's hardly anyone available should you wish to be sane, safe and shiny-toothed. And if you get shot? Damn, man, you better hope you know basic surgery. (Let's not even get into the nightmare of New Orleans in the summer, with the late spring mosquito explosion and the insane heat.)
No matter where you look, the signs are there about how fucked New Orleans really, truly is. For the levees will not be ready for this hurricane season. And even if they are supposedly back to strength, fuck the Army Corps of Engineers: the earth itself might just make sure the levees fail, with a geologic fault, assisted by oil drilling and wetlands loss, upping the chances of more catastrophe. Oh, and three of the drainage pumps, the ones that get rid of flood waters, caught fire after a little rainstorm. They may be up and running by June.
In New Orleans yesterday, his arm around a prop black woman, President Bush declared, "I told the Governor and the Mayor earlier on that we would work to have these levees pre-Katrina -- better than pre-Katrina by June 1st," barely even blinking because lies come to him as naturally as drool on the chins of babies. Over in Slidell, a FEMA trailer blew up because of a leaky propane line, killing one person and destroying the rest of their belongings. It's the second trailer explosion in the area.
New Orleans is fucked because, a few days ago, Secretary of Housing Alphonso Jackson declared, "Only the best residents should return" to the public housing projects of the city, like "[t]hose who paid rent on time, those who held a job and those who worked." So if you were, say, unemployed or were late with the rent, that means for Alphonso Jackson that you are not one of the "best" and you shouldn't get to live in government housing, which was established for, among others, people who didn't have jobs or were unable to pay the rent. And the fine, fine New Orleans projects, crime-ridden, underbuilt, underpoliced shitholes, have residents begging to get back to their decimated homes because some home is better than none.
In New Orleans the President said, "We've got a strategy to help the good folks down here rebuild. Part of it has to do with funding; part of it has to do with housing; and a lot of it has to do with encouraging volunteers from around the United States," which is code for saying, "You're on your own, motherfuckers." Jazz Fest is gonna be a blast this year.
(The most pathetic thing is that this is only scratching the surface. Georgia10 at DailyKos has more.)
Thursday, April 27, 2006
Elmo Doesn't Like It When Daddy Screams In His Sleep:
The Rude Pundit is not criticizing the Sesame Workshop, the producers of, you know, Sesame Street, and Wal-Mart, demonic force of capitalistic evil, for creating a bilingual DVD to help kids cope with parents who are deployed in the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts. No, no, not at all. The DVD, in production now, will be targeted at children under five, and it will feature Elmo, the red furry monster with the high-pitched whine who refers to himself in the third person, and Elmo's father, who looks like Elmo filtered through an El Greco painting. The Rude Pundit's not sure about the plot of Talk, Listen, Connect: Helping Families Cope with Military Deployment, but certainly it would be dishonest if it wasn't about Elmo's father (or possibly his mother) being sent overseas to fight in a war.
No, no, the Rude Pundit believes it's a fine thing for puppets or cartoons to teach children about the reality of war, like Smurfs getting the blue living fuck bombed out of their teeny town. And, certainly, the Muppets have a track record of tackling heavy issues, from being HIV-positive to interracial relationships to the innate difficulties of being green. So, yeah, Elmo may be the proper figure to handle such a weighty issue.
'Cause, you know, it'll be great when Elmodaddy comes home from his twice-stop-loss-extended tour of duty after suffering a concussive head injury. How charming it'll be when Elmo runs up to his injured father on those creepy Muppet legs and his father doesn't recognize him; how we'll all smile a knowing smile when Elmo says, "Elmo loves his daddy," and his father looks around for this Elmo the little red monster kid on his lap is speaking of. How poignant it'll be when Elmodaddy asks where Elmo is and Elmo says, "Elmo is right in front of you" and Elmodaddy asks where, getting addled, confused, thinking he's going blind, flashing back to rapid gunfire around him, and Elmo says, "Elmo wants to take his daddy home," which, of course, freaks the shit out of Elmodaddy, who thinks he's about to be dragged away by strangers for who knows what kind of tortures committed by "El-mo," which sounds like a haji name anyways. It'll be like "Who's On First," except with scars and shrapnel.
Then how cute it'll be when Elmodaddy discovers he's got no job he can possibly do, being so fucked up from his injuries, and so he starts to drink, which doesn't help the nightmares, the way he's gotta get up every night to walk the perimeter inside his own home, and the fact that he can't fuck Elmomommy anymore, and Elmo disappears ever more into his fantasy land of psychic goldfish, smiling computers, and strange bow-tied men and women who mime their misunderstanding of basic language outside his window.
Of course, that all might be wishful thinking. The whole thing could end with Elmodaddy being ripped to cloth and stuffing shreds by an IED because his government couldn't afford to equip him with the armor he needed to protect his red fuzzy ass. Then we can watch as Elmo radicalizes, marches, and chants, "One, two, three, four, Elmo doesn't want your fucking war." And, hey, he'll still be teaching the children how to count.
The Rude Pundit is not criticizing the Sesame Workshop, the producers of, you know, Sesame Street, and Wal-Mart, demonic force of capitalistic evil, for creating a bilingual DVD to help kids cope with parents who are deployed in the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts. No, no, not at all. The DVD, in production now, will be targeted at children under five, and it will feature Elmo, the red furry monster with the high-pitched whine who refers to himself in the third person, and Elmo's father, who looks like Elmo filtered through an El Greco painting. The Rude Pundit's not sure about the plot of Talk, Listen, Connect: Helping Families Cope with Military Deployment, but certainly it would be dishonest if it wasn't about Elmo's father (or possibly his mother) being sent overseas to fight in a war.
No, no, the Rude Pundit believes it's a fine thing for puppets or cartoons to teach children about the reality of war, like Smurfs getting the blue living fuck bombed out of their teeny town. And, certainly, the Muppets have a track record of tackling heavy issues, from being HIV-positive to interracial relationships to the innate difficulties of being green. So, yeah, Elmo may be the proper figure to handle such a weighty issue.
'Cause, you know, it'll be great when Elmodaddy comes home from his twice-stop-loss-extended tour of duty after suffering a concussive head injury. How charming it'll be when Elmo runs up to his injured father on those creepy Muppet legs and his father doesn't recognize him; how we'll all smile a knowing smile when Elmo says, "Elmo loves his daddy," and his father looks around for this Elmo the little red monster kid on his lap is speaking of. How poignant it'll be when Elmodaddy asks where Elmo is and Elmo says, "Elmo is right in front of you" and Elmodaddy asks where, getting addled, confused, thinking he's going blind, flashing back to rapid gunfire around him, and Elmo says, "Elmo wants to take his daddy home," which, of course, freaks the shit out of Elmodaddy, who thinks he's about to be dragged away by strangers for who knows what kind of tortures committed by "El-mo," which sounds like a haji name anyways. It'll be like "Who's On First," except with scars and shrapnel.
Then how cute it'll be when Elmodaddy discovers he's got no job he can possibly do, being so fucked up from his injuries, and so he starts to drink, which doesn't help the nightmares, the way he's gotta get up every night to walk the perimeter inside his own home, and the fact that he can't fuck Elmomommy anymore, and Elmo disappears ever more into his fantasy land of psychic goldfish, smiling computers, and strange bow-tied men and women who mime their misunderstanding of basic language outside his window.
Of course, that all might be wishful thinking. The whole thing could end with Elmodaddy being ripped to cloth and stuffing shreds by an IED because his government couldn't afford to equip him with the armor he needed to protect his red fuzzy ass. Then we can watch as Elmo radicalizes, marches, and chants, "One, two, three, four, Elmo doesn't want your fucking war." And, hey, he'll still be teaching the children how to count.
Wednesday, April 26, 2006
A Mash Note For Tony Snow:
Oh, Tony Snow, you disarmingly smiley sucker of cock, yes, you wrote this week about how all over the media you have been told who you are, what you do, and where you can stick this spiky dildo the Rude Pundit keeps on hand for chatty little tools like you. Oh, sweet Tony, how you write about "venom" and "insult" in contemporary media, as if asking for everyone to be nice to you as you ascend to the position of lead scornmonger of the sneering Bush administration. But, seriously, Tony, now that you have to shift your head from Rupert Mudoch's rotting crotch to George W. Bush's, come up for a breath while you have a chance, for, indeed, the President likes to be blown right after he's done biking for the day. So you won't be long for fresh air in this life.
Of course you'll fit right in with the cretinous pseudo-utopians at the White House, you who so recently opined about the resurrection of Christ at Easter, "It is too preposterous, too outrageous, too incredible not to be true, and not to be the key to a much larger truth." Goddamn right, and it's that kind of fine, fine syllogistic thinking that'll keep us battling WMD chimeras and nuclear phantoms until we're tossing abstinence-only-trained virgins into pits of fire to appease unseen, unknown gods.
And, Tony, you know that if those girls aren't virgins just what to do should they get pregnant. Writing about how cool it was that South Dakota completely outlawed abortion, you said it was awesome that the state had rejected "the popular rape-and-incest exception." Explaining this seemingly cruel, vicious, and punitive action, you justified, "If one argues that a woman would suffer trauma by bringing such babies to term, what would prevent other women from citing trauma as an equally cogent reason for their abortions? Trauma introduces an obligation to pay special heed to the victims of rape or incest." And we wouldn't wanna do that. Bitch gets raped by Daddy, bitch is becomin' mom and grandma at once, right, Tony? (Yes, you do offer the humane hand-out of "counseling," which is not unlike offering a mint to someone who got run over by a car.)
Motherfucker, you are hardcore. The Rude Pundit bets that in the locker room at Fox "News," when you creep in to listen to Hume, Hannity, and O'Reilly talk about how nutzoid right wing they're gonna be that day, you figure out how to go even nuttier. You're like the craziest hooker at the whorehouse, the one who knows she's not the prettiest, not the tightest pussy, but she wants to be the most popular whore there so she decides she's the one who'll do any fuckin' kind of fucking that people ask. Someone wants the snowball, hot Karl, dirty Sanchez, felching mudslide, golden showers, and/or pukey Jack, you are the go-to girl. You may go back to your room every morning covered in cum, shit, piss, blood, and/or Crisco, but no other piece of ass is gonna out-fuck you.
In one fuckin' column, you called removing the feeding tube from a comatose girl "capital punishment," used a fraudulent researcher as a way of discrediting embryonic stem cell research, and paid tribute to the "March for Life" in D.C. Shit, man, toss in your great big Christmas "Tony loves the Jesusbaby" column, and, dude, the base just got itself a little hors d'oeuvre to keep its tummy quiet until the midterms.
And the worst part of it all, Tony, is that when you were at Fox "News," you got paid by your pimps for the quality of your rim jobs. Now, the Rude Pundit's helping to pay your fuckin' salary, as is every tax-shoveling American. Yup, we're paying you to abuse the press, lie to us, and pretend you have the interests of more than one man at heart. Just like back at the old job.
Oh, Tony Snow, you disarmingly smiley sucker of cock, yes, you wrote this week about how all over the media you have been told who you are, what you do, and where you can stick this spiky dildo the Rude Pundit keeps on hand for chatty little tools like you. Oh, sweet Tony, how you write about "venom" and "insult" in contemporary media, as if asking for everyone to be nice to you as you ascend to the position of lead scornmonger of the sneering Bush administration. But, seriously, Tony, now that you have to shift your head from Rupert Mudoch's rotting crotch to George W. Bush's, come up for a breath while you have a chance, for, indeed, the President likes to be blown right after he's done biking for the day. So you won't be long for fresh air in this life.
Of course you'll fit right in with the cretinous pseudo-utopians at the White House, you who so recently opined about the resurrection of Christ at Easter, "It is too preposterous, too outrageous, too incredible not to be true, and not to be the key to a much larger truth." Goddamn right, and it's that kind of fine, fine syllogistic thinking that'll keep us battling WMD chimeras and nuclear phantoms until we're tossing abstinence-only-trained virgins into pits of fire to appease unseen, unknown gods.
And, Tony, you know that if those girls aren't virgins just what to do should they get pregnant. Writing about how cool it was that South Dakota completely outlawed abortion, you said it was awesome that the state had rejected "the popular rape-and-incest exception." Explaining this seemingly cruel, vicious, and punitive action, you justified, "If one argues that a woman would suffer trauma by bringing such babies to term, what would prevent other women from citing trauma as an equally cogent reason for their abortions? Trauma introduces an obligation to pay special heed to the victims of rape or incest." And we wouldn't wanna do that. Bitch gets raped by Daddy, bitch is becomin' mom and grandma at once, right, Tony? (Yes, you do offer the humane hand-out of "counseling," which is not unlike offering a mint to someone who got run over by a car.)
Motherfucker, you are hardcore. The Rude Pundit bets that in the locker room at Fox "News," when you creep in to listen to Hume, Hannity, and O'Reilly talk about how nutzoid right wing they're gonna be that day, you figure out how to go even nuttier. You're like the craziest hooker at the whorehouse, the one who knows she's not the prettiest, not the tightest pussy, but she wants to be the most popular whore there so she decides she's the one who'll do any fuckin' kind of fucking that people ask. Someone wants the snowball, hot Karl, dirty Sanchez, felching mudslide, golden showers, and/or pukey Jack, you are the go-to girl. You may go back to your room every morning covered in cum, shit, piss, blood, and/or Crisco, but no other piece of ass is gonna out-fuck you.
In one fuckin' column, you called removing the feeding tube from a comatose girl "capital punishment," used a fraudulent researcher as a way of discrediting embryonic stem cell research, and paid tribute to the "March for Life" in D.C. Shit, man, toss in your great big Christmas "Tony loves the Jesusbaby" column, and, dude, the base just got itself a little hors d'oeuvre to keep its tummy quiet until the midterms.
And the worst part of it all, Tony, is that when you were at Fox "News," you got paid by your pimps for the quality of your rim jobs. Now, the Rude Pundit's helping to pay your fuckin' salary, as is every tax-shoveling American. Yup, we're paying you to abuse the press, lie to us, and pretend you have the interests of more than one man at heart. Just like back at the old job.
Tuesday, April 25, 2006
Re-Re-Re-Re-Justifying the Iraq War:
Yesterday was one of those mind-boggling, stomach-churning, oh-shit-he's-really-our-leader days. In what was billed as a speech on "Comprehensive Immigration Reform," Bush spent half his time re-re-re-re-justifying the invasion of Iraq. Here he is, our goddamned President, having an acid flashback to 2002, talking about why we're at war: "[H]ere's the danger of having an enemy with a safe haven in Iraq, Iraq has got wealth. Iraq has -- had weapons of mass destruction and has the knowledge as to how to produce weapons of mass destruction. And the confluence of a terrorist network with weapons of mass destruction is the biggest threat the United States of America faces. They have said it's just a matter of time."
Who the fuck is the "they" there? Intelligence analysts? His cabinet? Or are "they" the terrorists themselves? 'Cause, like, that'd mean that a bunch of sexually repressed crazed religious fundamentalists are setting our foreign policy and dictating massive spending and loss of life on the part of the United States and...oh, fuck, the irony just made the Rude Pundit's nuts retreat into his body cavity in fear.
After having his WMD Tourette's moment, Bush put it out there about who's really runnin' the White House: "I based a lot of my foreign policy decisions on some things that I think are true. One, I believe there's an Almighty, and secondly, I believe one of the great gifts of the Almighty is the desire in everybody's soul, regardless of what you look like or where you live, to be free." Ergo, Jeeezus sez free the peoples so the peoples must be freed and Bush, with the big ol' earthly army, he's gots to do the freein' that Jeeezus (under the guise of his code name, "The Almighty") wants him to be doin'. C'mon, motherfuckers, does the man have to get the Rascals to spell it out for you? "Ask me my opinion, my opinion will be/ Nat'ral situation for a man to be free."
So here's where we are: a religious belief is the basis for Bush to wage war on Islamic radicals. Or, in other words, and here's the sphincter-reducing horror of it all: when Bush speaks to his base about the war, he simply confirms everything that forever-on-the-lam(b) Osama bin Laden said in his little "Nyah-nyah" to the West the other day.
But the President, he's a student of history, you know. Iraq needs itself some time, 'cause it's like the United States back in its beginnings. Spaketh Bush, "My Secretary of State's relatives were enslaved in the United States even though we had a Constitution that said all were -- that believed in the dignity, or at least proclaimed to believe in the dignity of all." Get it? Condi's black. Dunno what that has to do with forming a working government in Iraq, but, yup, Condi's black. Bush did not note that that same Constitution proclaimed that Condoleezza Rice's "relatives" were only worth 3/5 of a white person. The implication, of course, is that a nation, a people, indeed, individuals, recognize error and failings, taking steps to right what was wrong.
And Bush was given another opportunity to acknowledge mistakes when an audience member tossed him the softball question, "Now that you are President, and you've had a chance to go through the experience and you're in your second term, candidly, if you had it to do over, would there be anything that you'd do differently?"
Watching the President stumble through an answer to this was a little like watching a blind man left alone in the middle of an empty warehouse, seeing him move around like he's about to trip over something until he reaches the sweet safety of the constant wall he can lean against. First he threatened that he would still run for office. Then he fumbled around, saying, "I have enjoyed this experience in a way that's hard for me to describe to you. Listen, there have been some rough moments. But it is an incredible honor to serve our country." And then, aw, fuck, thank Christ, he found the wall, and turned the whole question into whether or not he'd've sent troops to Iraq, going on for-fucking-ever on how it was "the hardest decision" and how he tried to solve it "diplomatically," but, yeah, sure, there were some errors in "tactics," but, oh, sorry, he's getting into "minutia," which is just code for "I'm not answering your fuckin' quesion."
And then he went into monkeyfuck crazy land: "The fundamental question on the Iraq theater, though, is did we put enough troops in there in the first place. That's the debate in Washington. I'm sure you've heard about it. Let me just tell you what happened. I called Tommy Franks in with Don Rumsfeld and said, Tommy, if we're going in, you design the plan and you got what you need. I said -- I remember the era when politicians were trying to run wars, people trying to fine-tune this or fine-tune that. One the lessons of Vietnam, it seemed like to me -- still does -- is that people tried to make decisions on behalf of the military, which I think is a terrible precedent to make if you're the Commander-in-Chief. By the way, you can't run a war, you can't make decisions based upon polls and focus groups, either."
Really, and, c'mon, what else do you need to know?
Yesterday was one of those mind-boggling, stomach-churning, oh-shit-he's-really-our-leader days. In what was billed as a speech on "Comprehensive Immigration Reform," Bush spent half his time re-re-re-re-justifying the invasion of Iraq. Here he is, our goddamned President, having an acid flashback to 2002, talking about why we're at war: "[H]ere's the danger of having an enemy with a safe haven in Iraq, Iraq has got wealth. Iraq has -- had weapons of mass destruction and has the knowledge as to how to produce weapons of mass destruction. And the confluence of a terrorist network with weapons of mass destruction is the biggest threat the United States of America faces. They have said it's just a matter of time."
Who the fuck is the "they" there? Intelligence analysts? His cabinet? Or are "they" the terrorists themselves? 'Cause, like, that'd mean that a bunch of sexually repressed crazed religious fundamentalists are setting our foreign policy and dictating massive spending and loss of life on the part of the United States and...oh, fuck, the irony just made the Rude Pundit's nuts retreat into his body cavity in fear.
After having his WMD Tourette's moment, Bush put it out there about who's really runnin' the White House: "I based a lot of my foreign policy decisions on some things that I think are true. One, I believe there's an Almighty, and secondly, I believe one of the great gifts of the Almighty is the desire in everybody's soul, regardless of what you look like or where you live, to be free." Ergo, Jeeezus sez free the peoples so the peoples must be freed and Bush, with the big ol' earthly army, he's gots to do the freein' that Jeeezus (under the guise of his code name, "The Almighty") wants him to be doin'. C'mon, motherfuckers, does the man have to get the Rascals to spell it out for you? "Ask me my opinion, my opinion will be/ Nat'ral situation for a man to be free."
So here's where we are: a religious belief is the basis for Bush to wage war on Islamic radicals. Or, in other words, and here's the sphincter-reducing horror of it all: when Bush speaks to his base about the war, he simply confirms everything that forever-on-the-lam(b) Osama bin Laden said in his little "Nyah-nyah" to the West the other day.
But the President, he's a student of history, you know. Iraq needs itself some time, 'cause it's like the United States back in its beginnings. Spaketh Bush, "My Secretary of State's relatives were enslaved in the United States even though we had a Constitution that said all were -- that believed in the dignity, or at least proclaimed to believe in the dignity of all." Get it? Condi's black. Dunno what that has to do with forming a working government in Iraq, but, yup, Condi's black. Bush did not note that that same Constitution proclaimed that Condoleezza Rice's "relatives" were only worth 3/5 of a white person. The implication, of course, is that a nation, a people, indeed, individuals, recognize error and failings, taking steps to right what was wrong.
And Bush was given another opportunity to acknowledge mistakes when an audience member tossed him the softball question, "Now that you are President, and you've had a chance to go through the experience and you're in your second term, candidly, if you had it to do over, would there be anything that you'd do differently?"
Watching the President stumble through an answer to this was a little like watching a blind man left alone in the middle of an empty warehouse, seeing him move around like he's about to trip over something until he reaches the sweet safety of the constant wall he can lean against. First he threatened that he would still run for office. Then he fumbled around, saying, "I have enjoyed this experience in a way that's hard for me to describe to you. Listen, there have been some rough moments. But it is an incredible honor to serve our country." And then, aw, fuck, thank Christ, he found the wall, and turned the whole question into whether or not he'd've sent troops to Iraq, going on for-fucking-ever on how it was "the hardest decision" and how he tried to solve it "diplomatically," but, yeah, sure, there were some errors in "tactics," but, oh, sorry, he's getting into "minutia," which is just code for "I'm not answering your fuckin' quesion."
And then he went into monkeyfuck crazy land: "The fundamental question on the Iraq theater, though, is did we put enough troops in there in the first place. That's the debate in Washington. I'm sure you've heard about it. Let me just tell you what happened. I called Tommy Franks in with Don Rumsfeld and said, Tommy, if we're going in, you design the plan and you got what you need. I said -- I remember the era when politicians were trying to run wars, people trying to fine-tune this or fine-tune that. One the lessons of Vietnam, it seemed like to me -- still does -- is that people tried to make decisions on behalf of the military, which I think is a terrible precedent to make if you're the Commander-in-Chief. By the way, you can't run a war, you can't make decisions based upon polls and focus groups, either."
Really, and, c'mon, what else do you need to know?
Monday, April 24, 2006
When the President Visited the Ex-President:
It took some convincing, but Gerald Ford was able to pry President Bush away from the Secret Service detail for some private time. Betty entertained the agents with mai tais and a wobbly rendition of her famous fan dance, something she used to do for the swine flu suffering soldiers at Fort Dix. Of course, back then, in the mid-1970s, the whole thing would end with a nude, drunk Betty Ford with her face down in the lap of a corporal or a Soviet diplomat, with someone having to pry her clenched jaw off the erect cock of the poor, screaming, horrified man. Thank god that the press was suffering from the beginning of its post-Watergate malaise, or someone might have written about the time that Betty Ford almost de-dicked the Yugoslav ambassador.
The President visited the ex-President at Ford's modest home in Rancho Mirage, California, on the edge of a golf course this past weekend. Gerald Ford is not long for this world, so it was, indeed, a possible last chance to gain some wisdom from the elder Oval Office dweller. It was a fairly super-secret part of Bush's schedule, like an unannounced trip to Iraq, but the two spoke at length. After shooing away the Secret Service, Ford gestured for Bush to follow him. Bush smirked. He knew what was coming - he'd spent enough time with old men on golf courses to know that Ford was gonna show him some old trophies or a special club, maybe even a ball autographed by Sam Snead.
Ford locked the wooden door and rifled around in the bottom of his largest desk drawer. "Here it is," he said. "Help me with this." Bush reached in and grabbed a box made of gun metal. "Goddamn hands," Ford spat at his shaking fingers. "Open it." Slowly, cautiously, a little paranoid, but still thinking this was all a senile fucker's simple game, Bush opened the creaky-hinged, half-rusted box. Bush recoiled. The stink hit him first, the musty, old leather-like smell. Then he realized what he was looking at - body parts - scalps, fingers, balls. Some in baggies, some just sitting there.
"What the fuck--" Bush muttered as he tried to back away. The old center for Michigan grabbed the President's hand in one of those senior death grips and pulled him forward.
"Not so fast, Georgie. You walk away now, and I'll put in my last memoirs about all the times your Dad had to have the CIA disappear hookers and coke dealers you wouldn't pay." Bush relaxed, straightened his tie, and glared at the old man, remembering his father's fond talk about being able to easily manipulate Ford. "Half the bastards in your administration committed their first evil in my name-Cheney, Rumsfeld. You think they learned their shit in a vacuum? We faced the fuckin' Khmer Rouge, motherfuckers who make Saddam Hussein look like the dime-a-goddamn-dozen tinpot dictator he was. We faced the Soviet fuckin' Union, with its thousands of nukes pointing right at us, so organized and filled with hate for America that it makes al-Qaeda look like back stall of the shithouse group it actually is. And you think you have bad ass motherfuckers around? I had Kissinger. Cocksucker used to eat East Timorese babies for breakfast and Chilean mothers for midnight snacks. So a little goddamn respect, you little shit."
Bush tried to suppress his anger and his desire to shove the 92-year old out of his way, which made him twitch his jaw and sneer before smirking again. "What's that shit in the box?" he asked, relaxing, realizing the best thing he could do was just pause and wait for Ford to be done.
"The past, the present, and the future," Ford said. He shakily reached into the box and pulled out a scalp, shriveled with hair clinging to it. "Taken from a Japanese POW in the Philippines. I was there, in the thick of it, taking on fire. Got half a dozen of these babies. Wore them on my belt. Used to scare the shit out of the Japs. The past. Every goddamn thing you are not." He put it back in the box and pulled out fingers. "From a Marine trying to help other Americans get the fuck out of Saigon at the tail end of Operation Frequent Wind. He lost these on a 'copter blade just airlifting contractors and civilians back to the Midway. He gave them to me as a gift, said it was a way to remember to never again do this to our troops. It's what you face now, Georgie. Your present. Whether you like it or not. History's like that big goddamned hurricane - you can't do a thing to stop it. Wanna touch them?" Bush didn't answer. "Didn't thinks so." Ford put the fingers back. He pulled out a plastic baggy. "And these? Nixon's balls. I told him I wanted them after he died in exchange for his pardon. A real man would've faced the music and gone to jail. Not Dick, though. Craven and selfish to the end." He waved the baggy at Bush. "Your future. Someone's gonna own your balls someday, son." He laughed as he put the baggy back in the box. "Put it away," Ford ordered the younger President, gesturing at the box.
As he did so, Bush mumbled, "And you're showin' me this why?"
Ford sighed, "'Cause I'm Jacob Fucking Marley, you idiot. Here's my chains. Stupid loyalty to lost causes is a weakness. As is loyalty to lost people. It's too late for me. It's why I backed Rumsfeld the other day. Force of habit. But there's still time--" The Secret Service knocked on the door. Time to go.
Bush smirked. "Been nice, Jerry. A real trip down memory lane. I'll tell Dad you send your love. Now, be a good guy, and let's go say hello to the reporters."
Outside, Bush and Ford stood next to each other. The older man said, "We solved all the problems, didn't we?"
Bush flinched and hastily added, "That's right, you sure did."
After the motorcade left, Ford headed back into the house, the maid cleaning up the feathers that fell off Betty's much-used fans. He took out his speech on foreign policy, where he talked about the end of a useless war, about the growing dependence of the United States on foreign oil, on the need to allow intelligence services to work unencumbered by too much oversight. In his shaking hands, in his dwindling eyesight, all Gerald Ford could think was "Damned to repeat."
(Fucked Blogger: Blogger's been down. Now it's up. Enjoy the merriment.)
It took some convincing, but Gerald Ford was able to pry President Bush away from the Secret Service detail for some private time. Betty entertained the agents with mai tais and a wobbly rendition of her famous fan dance, something she used to do for the swine flu suffering soldiers at Fort Dix. Of course, back then, in the mid-1970s, the whole thing would end with a nude, drunk Betty Ford with her face down in the lap of a corporal or a Soviet diplomat, with someone having to pry her clenched jaw off the erect cock of the poor, screaming, horrified man. Thank god that the press was suffering from the beginning of its post-Watergate malaise, or someone might have written about the time that Betty Ford almost de-dicked the Yugoslav ambassador.
The President visited the ex-President at Ford's modest home in Rancho Mirage, California, on the edge of a golf course this past weekend. Gerald Ford is not long for this world, so it was, indeed, a possible last chance to gain some wisdom from the elder Oval Office dweller. It was a fairly super-secret part of Bush's schedule, like an unannounced trip to Iraq, but the two spoke at length. After shooing away the Secret Service, Ford gestured for Bush to follow him. Bush smirked. He knew what was coming - he'd spent enough time with old men on golf courses to know that Ford was gonna show him some old trophies or a special club, maybe even a ball autographed by Sam Snead.
Ford locked the wooden door and rifled around in the bottom of his largest desk drawer. "Here it is," he said. "Help me with this." Bush reached in and grabbed a box made of gun metal. "Goddamn hands," Ford spat at his shaking fingers. "Open it." Slowly, cautiously, a little paranoid, but still thinking this was all a senile fucker's simple game, Bush opened the creaky-hinged, half-rusted box. Bush recoiled. The stink hit him first, the musty, old leather-like smell. Then he realized what he was looking at - body parts - scalps, fingers, balls. Some in baggies, some just sitting there.
"What the fuck--" Bush muttered as he tried to back away. The old center for Michigan grabbed the President's hand in one of those senior death grips and pulled him forward.
"Not so fast, Georgie. You walk away now, and I'll put in my last memoirs about all the times your Dad had to have the CIA disappear hookers and coke dealers you wouldn't pay." Bush relaxed, straightened his tie, and glared at the old man, remembering his father's fond talk about being able to easily manipulate Ford. "Half the bastards in your administration committed their first evil in my name-Cheney, Rumsfeld. You think they learned their shit in a vacuum? We faced the fuckin' Khmer Rouge, motherfuckers who make Saddam Hussein look like the dime-a-goddamn-dozen tinpot dictator he was. We faced the Soviet fuckin' Union, with its thousands of nukes pointing right at us, so organized and filled with hate for America that it makes al-Qaeda look like back stall of the shithouse group it actually is. And you think you have bad ass motherfuckers around? I had Kissinger. Cocksucker used to eat East Timorese babies for breakfast and Chilean mothers for midnight snacks. So a little goddamn respect, you little shit."
Bush tried to suppress his anger and his desire to shove the 92-year old out of his way, which made him twitch his jaw and sneer before smirking again. "What's that shit in the box?" he asked, relaxing, realizing the best thing he could do was just pause and wait for Ford to be done.
"The past, the present, and the future," Ford said. He shakily reached into the box and pulled out a scalp, shriveled with hair clinging to it. "Taken from a Japanese POW in the Philippines. I was there, in the thick of it, taking on fire. Got half a dozen of these babies. Wore them on my belt. Used to scare the shit out of the Japs. The past. Every goddamn thing you are not." He put it back in the box and pulled out fingers. "From a Marine trying to help other Americans get the fuck out of Saigon at the tail end of Operation Frequent Wind. He lost these on a 'copter blade just airlifting contractors and civilians back to the Midway. He gave them to me as a gift, said it was a way to remember to never again do this to our troops. It's what you face now, Georgie. Your present. Whether you like it or not. History's like that big goddamned hurricane - you can't do a thing to stop it. Wanna touch them?" Bush didn't answer. "Didn't thinks so." Ford put the fingers back. He pulled out a plastic baggy. "And these? Nixon's balls. I told him I wanted them after he died in exchange for his pardon. A real man would've faced the music and gone to jail. Not Dick, though. Craven and selfish to the end." He waved the baggy at Bush. "Your future. Someone's gonna own your balls someday, son." He laughed as he put the baggy back in the box. "Put it away," Ford ordered the younger President, gesturing at the box.
As he did so, Bush mumbled, "And you're showin' me this why?"
Ford sighed, "'Cause I'm Jacob Fucking Marley, you idiot. Here's my chains. Stupid loyalty to lost causes is a weakness. As is loyalty to lost people. It's too late for me. It's why I backed Rumsfeld the other day. Force of habit. But there's still time--" The Secret Service knocked on the door. Time to go.
Bush smirked. "Been nice, Jerry. A real trip down memory lane. I'll tell Dad you send your love. Now, be a good guy, and let's go say hello to the reporters."
Outside, Bush and Ford stood next to each other. The older man said, "We solved all the problems, didn't we?"
Bush flinched and hastily added, "That's right, you sure did."
After the motorcade left, Ford headed back into the house, the maid cleaning up the feathers that fell off Betty's much-used fans. He took out his speech on foreign policy, where he talked about the end of a useless war, about the growing dependence of the United States on foreign oil, on the need to allow intelligence services to work unencumbered by too much oversight. In his shaking hands, in his dwindling eyesight, all Gerald Ford could think was "Damned to repeat."
(Fucked Blogger: Blogger's been down. Now it's up. Enjoy the merriment.)
Friday, April 21, 2006
Hu Are You (A Haiku in Honor of President Bush's Apology to the Chinese President Because a Chinese Woman Yelled in Protest at the Chinese President During His Arrival Ceremony at the White House):
If only one could
Drag Helen Thomas out by
Her heels and hair, eh?
Note: The Rude Pundit's on the road. Back to full-length rudeness on Monday.
Note Two: Yeah, yeah, haiku's Japanese. It's also short. Wanna make something of it?
If only one could
Drag Helen Thomas out by
Her heels and hair, eh?
Note: The Rude Pundit's on the road. Back to full-length rudeness on Monday.
Note Two: Yeah, yeah, haiku's Japanese. It's also short. Wanna make something of it?
Thursday, April 20, 2006
A Brief Lecture On the Function of Press Releases (With a Side Note On the Need To Cage Michelle Malkin Like a Rabid Shih-Tzu):
Here's a quick and easy lesson regarding press releases: the "Contact" information is actually for the reporter or writer receiving the release. It is not a part of the information you want generally published or announced. The implication is "If you need more info or find this interesting enough to write a longer article, you can get in touch with someone here, at this phone number or this e-mail address." It's a kind of trust between the person sending the release and the person receiving it.
Whenever the Rude Pundit has sent out a press release, he makes sure that the contact phone number ain't a home or cell or that the e-mail address ain't a personal one. Why? Because, inevitably, some stupid fuck at a newspaper will think that it's part of the release itself and print the contact information. And then, even if you're announcing a knitting circle fer kittens, you will get phone calls from some loudmouth wad of fuck who wants to know what business you have knittin' fer kittens or what you're knittin' and will it hurt kittens.
So, yeah, the UC-Santa Cruz students who put out a press release for their Students Against War protest against military recruiters on their campus have learned their lesson. And that lesson is that vile, savage cunt-beasts who disagree with your politics will gleefully destroy your personal life to demonstrate the petty power they hold over the pathetic trolls who read said cunt-beasts' columns and who masturbate furiously when one cunt-beast or another appears on Fox "News" (motto: "Cunt-Beasts have a home at Fox").
And while the Rude Pundit does not encourage the publicizing of the personal info of political writers, well, fuck, what's good fer the goose is good fer the gander, ya know? If big bad bloggress Michelle Malkin, who really needs to be caged like a rabid shih-tzu, wants to play with people's lives away from the protests and the SAW meetings, then she shouldn't expect to be treated any better. Do unto others and all that shit is what the Christians say. Or so the Rude Pundit hears.
(Note: The Rude Pundit is out on the highways and byways of Uhmerka and will have shorter posts. Back to full rude force on Monday.)
Here's a quick and easy lesson regarding press releases: the "Contact" information is actually for the reporter or writer receiving the release. It is not a part of the information you want generally published or announced. The implication is "If you need more info or find this interesting enough to write a longer article, you can get in touch with someone here, at this phone number or this e-mail address." It's a kind of trust between the person sending the release and the person receiving it.
Whenever the Rude Pundit has sent out a press release, he makes sure that the contact phone number ain't a home or cell or that the e-mail address ain't a personal one. Why? Because, inevitably, some stupid fuck at a newspaper will think that it's part of the release itself and print the contact information. And then, even if you're announcing a knitting circle fer kittens, you will get phone calls from some loudmouth wad of fuck who wants to know what business you have knittin' fer kittens or what you're knittin' and will it hurt kittens.
So, yeah, the UC-Santa Cruz students who put out a press release for their Students Against War protest against military recruiters on their campus have learned their lesson. And that lesson is that vile, savage cunt-beasts who disagree with your politics will gleefully destroy your personal life to demonstrate the petty power they hold over the pathetic trolls who read said cunt-beasts' columns and who masturbate furiously when one cunt-beast or another appears on Fox "News" (motto: "Cunt-Beasts have a home at Fox").
And while the Rude Pundit does not encourage the publicizing of the personal info of political writers, well, fuck, what's good fer the goose is good fer the gander, ya know? If big bad bloggress Michelle Malkin, who really needs to be caged like a rabid shih-tzu, wants to play with people's lives away from the protests and the SAW meetings, then she shouldn't expect to be treated any better. Do unto others and all that shit is what the Christians say. Or so the Rude Pundit hears.
(Note: The Rude Pundit is out on the highways and byways of Uhmerka and will have shorter posts. Back to full rude force on Monday.)
Wednesday, April 19, 2006
Mainlining Those Nukes:
Ask any shaky, scabby, snotty addict shitting himself in the corner of a filthy room strewn with cigarette butts and bloody Kleenex and he'll give you the same answer: Marijuana wasn't the gateway, you asshole. It was the legal shit, the sweet esophagal burn of alcohol that led him down this path. 'Cause it was the alcohol that led to the pot, and once you make your first illegal connection, once you're a buyer and not just a party toker, it's not that far a leap to ask what else the dealer's got or to get curious about what the next high is like. Yep, the worst, the path to full-on fiendom, is to get that jones for bigger and better highs. Yeah, ganja's great, but what about 'shrooms? 'Shrooms are nice, but what about ecstasy? Cool shit, man, but how about coke? Aw, fuck, coke's sick, motherfucker, but howzabout some heroin? And the next thing you know, you're cravin' speedballs and you are so, so very fucked.
Yesterday President Bush answered a Nedra Pickler-tickler of a question about "the possibility of a nuclear strike" on Iran, with a not-quite-reassuring "All options are on the table," and you just knew that Bush was hearing the siren call of the bigger and harder high. Yeah, man, blowin' shit up in Afghanistan was fun, but Bush needed more, motherfucker. So a big-ass (but not big-ass enough) invasion of Iraq was awesome, a rush, but that buzz is old news. What the Bush administration is cravin' is the big high: nukin' some shit. You can see it the eyes of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld. The jones, the curiosity, the chance to leave one big motherfuckin' footprint on history.
And we who have entered that room with that dopester, hopin' for that next good rush, we know he's a hopeless case, we know that it's the short slide to doom. We can only hope that stupid fucker ODs before he hurts someone else.
Note: Before there's any goddamn e-mail about it, the Rude Pundit is not saying that everyone who drinks or lights up is on the fast path to crack whore.
Another note: The Rude Pundit is on the road; shorter posts for the next coupla days.
Ask any shaky, scabby, snotty addict shitting himself in the corner of a filthy room strewn with cigarette butts and bloody Kleenex and he'll give you the same answer: Marijuana wasn't the gateway, you asshole. It was the legal shit, the sweet esophagal burn of alcohol that led him down this path. 'Cause it was the alcohol that led to the pot, and once you make your first illegal connection, once you're a buyer and not just a party toker, it's not that far a leap to ask what else the dealer's got or to get curious about what the next high is like. Yep, the worst, the path to full-on fiendom, is to get that jones for bigger and better highs. Yeah, ganja's great, but what about 'shrooms? 'Shrooms are nice, but what about ecstasy? Cool shit, man, but how about coke? Aw, fuck, coke's sick, motherfucker, but howzabout some heroin? And the next thing you know, you're cravin' speedballs and you are so, so very fucked.
Yesterday President Bush answered a Nedra Pickler-tickler of a question about "the possibility of a nuclear strike" on Iran, with a not-quite-reassuring "All options are on the table," and you just knew that Bush was hearing the siren call of the bigger and harder high. Yeah, man, blowin' shit up in Afghanistan was fun, but Bush needed more, motherfucker. So a big-ass (but not big-ass enough) invasion of Iraq was awesome, a rush, but that buzz is old news. What the Bush administration is cravin' is the big high: nukin' some shit. You can see it the eyes of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld. The jones, the curiosity, the chance to leave one big motherfuckin' footprint on history.
And we who have entered that room with that dopester, hopin' for that next good rush, we know he's a hopeless case, we know that it's the short slide to doom. We can only hope that stupid fucker ODs before he hurts someone else.
Note: Before there's any goddamn e-mail about it, the Rude Pundit is not saying that everyone who drinks or lights up is on the fast path to crack whore.
Another note: The Rude Pundit is on the road; shorter posts for the next coupla days.
Tuesday, April 18, 2006
Three Signs That Your Superpower Is Becoming a Cheap Rip-Off of the Soviet Union:
1. Members of the party in power pledge allegiance to their party's own symbol. At a GOP dinner in San Diego, the fine Republican attendees stood like good meerkats and began to say the Pledge of Allegiance until some observant Pavlovian diner noticed that there was no, you know, American flag to pledge to. "Pledge to the elephant," shouted one quick-thinking GOPer, and all the pledgers, including weepy Rep. Darrell Issa, turned to say the pledge to a starred and striped elephant banner.
2. Children sing songs in praise of the government, no matter how incompetent and dangerous they've been to those children. At the gay-infused White House Easter egg hunt, a group of "Katrina Kids" sang a song about how major great President Bush, Congress, and FEMA have been in helping them. It's a little like a National Guard member thanking Bush for sending him to Iraq 'cause it gets him out of the house. Except creepier. The song was sung to the tune of that song of blind optimism by Cy Coleman, "Hey, Look Me Over," which has the prescient line, "I figure whenever you’re down and out, the only way is up." Truer words, motherfuckers, truer words.
3. The government creates guidelines telling adults what they can and can't do with their bodies. The Department of Health and Human Services' Administration for Children and Families has defined "abstinence" for abstinence-only programs seeking federal grants. That definition says abstinence ain't just a bullshit lie that conservatives tell teenagers. Nope, see, now the only time you can fuck is in a man-woman marriage. Otherwise, no fucking, of any sort: no single sex, no gay sex, no Scalia-approved orgies, no under the desk blow jobs, no on top of the desk anal, no muff-diving, no rim jobs, no hand jobs, no backward daisy chain monkey in the middles with a butterfly twist. No sexual stimulation between two people unless one's a guy, one's a gal, and they're miserably united in connubial bliss.
Hey, all we need is morning bread lines, absurd government secrecy, spying on citizens, a foreign policy of militarily imposing our ideology on others, and soaring fuel prices...oh, shit. Scratch that. All we need is morning bread lines, and then welcome to the Politburo's America.
1. Members of the party in power pledge allegiance to their party's own symbol. At a GOP dinner in San Diego, the fine Republican attendees stood like good meerkats and began to say the Pledge of Allegiance until some observant Pavlovian diner noticed that there was no, you know, American flag to pledge to. "Pledge to the elephant," shouted one quick-thinking GOPer, and all the pledgers, including weepy Rep. Darrell Issa, turned to say the pledge to a starred and striped elephant banner.
2. Children sing songs in praise of the government, no matter how incompetent and dangerous they've been to those children. At the gay-infused White House Easter egg hunt, a group of "Katrina Kids" sang a song about how major great President Bush, Congress, and FEMA have been in helping them. It's a little like a National Guard member thanking Bush for sending him to Iraq 'cause it gets him out of the house. Except creepier. The song was sung to the tune of that song of blind optimism by Cy Coleman, "Hey, Look Me Over," which has the prescient line, "I figure whenever you’re down and out, the only way is up." Truer words, motherfuckers, truer words.
3. The government creates guidelines telling adults what they can and can't do with their bodies. The Department of Health and Human Services' Administration for Children and Families has defined "abstinence" for abstinence-only programs seeking federal grants. That definition says abstinence ain't just a bullshit lie that conservatives tell teenagers. Nope, see, now the only time you can fuck is in a man-woman marriage. Otherwise, no fucking, of any sort: no single sex, no gay sex, no Scalia-approved orgies, no under the desk blow jobs, no on top of the desk anal, no muff-diving, no rim jobs, no hand jobs, no backward daisy chain monkey in the middles with a butterfly twist. No sexual stimulation between two people unless one's a guy, one's a gal, and they're miserably united in connubial bliss.
Hey, all we need is morning bread lines, absurd government secrecy, spying on citizens, a foreign policy of militarily imposing our ideology on others, and soaring fuel prices...oh, shit. Scratch that. All we need is morning bread lines, and then welcome to the Politburo's America.
Monday, April 17, 2006
Joe Klein Hearts Newt Gingrich. A Lot:
Really, and c'mon, was it necessary for Time magazine writer Joe Klein to get down on his knees and gratifyingly suck Newt Gingrich's cock? For in his latest column (if by "column," you mean, "pitiful cries for attention from a self-hating moderate begging for continued relevance"), Klein gives such an enthusiastic hummer to the disgraced former Speaker of the House (and, please, gang, let's never forget that that round turd with the white mop top was run out of DC) that one wonders if he did it all in one breath, the sign of the well-practiced fellater. Gurgled Klein as he deep-throated the entirety of the Gingrich johnson, "It's almost always a joy listening to Gingrich when he's on a tear. And he's almost always on a tear of some sort." Klein is explaining his title, "Why Newt Is So Much Fun To Watch (While He's Balls Deep in My Face)."
Was it necessary for Klein to go even further, to lick the waxy folds of Newt Gingrich's balls clean with all the joy of a big-titted, coked-out groupie girl offering to let each ZZ Top roadie jack off on her if she can have ten minutes alone with Billy? Because the image one gets is of Newt Gingrich, pants around his ankles, fists on his waist like a cheap Superman rip-off, gazing at an American flag in the distance as Joe Klein tongue bathes the balls of the man who was so brave, he dumped his cancer-ridden wife while she was in the hospital. Lapped Klein, "We might even create a new federal position to accommodate him, sort of like party ideologist in the old Soviet Union, except that the U.S. job would be the opposite of what it was in the U.S.S.R. Instead of imposing orthodoxy, the party idea-ologist—ideology is so un-American—would propose unorthodoxy." Parse that motherfucker if you dare.
Joe Klein has taken long swallows of Gingrich's man-goo in the past. Back in 1995 in Newsweek, writing then, as now, about Gingrich possibly running for President, Klein gulped, "'Newt Gingrich has been acting more like the president of the United States than the president himself,' Lamar Alexander said before Oklahoma City. And it was true. Gingrich's prime-time speech at the end of the hundred days...seemed far more convincing than anything Clinton had done since the election." Ahh, that's the Klein we know and love, so full of loathing for Bill Clinton, like the good, soothing "liberal" who lets the Republicans sleep at night because he wants them to like him so fucking much. 'Cause, you know, a liberal can't be credible unless he or she attacks the left and demonstrates they love them some conservatives, too.
Like Klein in the April 25, 1994 Newsweek, when he wrote a line that could come straight out of his column this week: "He barrels through our national life with grand exuberance and flying elbows. He's a brilliant player, energetic and innovative." Yes, when a man loves a man, it's a beautiful thing. Klein has criticized Gingrich, too, but it's got the petty air of a man who has just spent the morning picking dried Newt semen out of his beard, waiting mournfully for a phone call that never rings.
So, yeah, Joe Klein can't help himself. He can't get enough of Newt Gingrich's cock. Klein dreams about it, leaning back at his desk in deep contemplation of the feel, the contour, the delicious moments he spends licking it clean when Newt makes a mouth deposit. "Newt may be carrying too much baggage to be President, but wouldn't it be fun—and a boon for our democracy—to have him onstage in the coming debate?" Klein writes, deludedly, madly, monomaniacally focused, his mind so full of man-love that he can't recognize that what he's really asking is if the convicted child molester would like to come back to work at the day care.
Really, and c'mon, was it necessary for Time magazine writer Joe Klein to get down on his knees and gratifyingly suck Newt Gingrich's cock? For in his latest column (if by "column," you mean, "pitiful cries for attention from a self-hating moderate begging for continued relevance"), Klein gives such an enthusiastic hummer to the disgraced former Speaker of the House (and, please, gang, let's never forget that that round turd with the white mop top was run out of DC) that one wonders if he did it all in one breath, the sign of the well-practiced fellater. Gurgled Klein as he deep-throated the entirety of the Gingrich johnson, "It's almost always a joy listening to Gingrich when he's on a tear. And he's almost always on a tear of some sort." Klein is explaining his title, "Why Newt Is So Much Fun To Watch (While He's Balls Deep in My Face)."
Was it necessary for Klein to go even further, to lick the waxy folds of Newt Gingrich's balls clean with all the joy of a big-titted, coked-out groupie girl offering to let each ZZ Top roadie jack off on her if she can have ten minutes alone with Billy? Because the image one gets is of Newt Gingrich, pants around his ankles, fists on his waist like a cheap Superman rip-off, gazing at an American flag in the distance as Joe Klein tongue bathes the balls of the man who was so brave, he dumped his cancer-ridden wife while she was in the hospital. Lapped Klein, "We might even create a new federal position to accommodate him, sort of like party ideologist in the old Soviet Union, except that the U.S. job would be the opposite of what it was in the U.S.S.R. Instead of imposing orthodoxy, the party idea-ologist—ideology is so un-American—would propose unorthodoxy." Parse that motherfucker if you dare.
Joe Klein has taken long swallows of Gingrich's man-goo in the past. Back in 1995 in Newsweek, writing then, as now, about Gingrich possibly running for President, Klein gulped, "'Newt Gingrich has been acting more like the president of the United States than the president himself,' Lamar Alexander said before Oklahoma City. And it was true. Gingrich's prime-time speech at the end of the hundred days...seemed far more convincing than anything Clinton had done since the election." Ahh, that's the Klein we know and love, so full of loathing for Bill Clinton, like the good, soothing "liberal" who lets the Republicans sleep at night because he wants them to like him so fucking much. 'Cause, you know, a liberal can't be credible unless he or she attacks the left and demonstrates they love them some conservatives, too.
Like Klein in the April 25, 1994 Newsweek, when he wrote a line that could come straight out of his column this week: "He barrels through our national life with grand exuberance and flying elbows. He's a brilliant player, energetic and innovative." Yes, when a man loves a man, it's a beautiful thing. Klein has criticized Gingrich, too, but it's got the petty air of a man who has just spent the morning picking dried Newt semen out of his beard, waiting mournfully for a phone call that never rings.
So, yeah, Joe Klein can't help himself. He can't get enough of Newt Gingrich's cock. Klein dreams about it, leaning back at his desk in deep contemplation of the feel, the contour, the delicious moments he spends licking it clean when Newt makes a mouth deposit. "Newt may be carrying too much baggage to be President, but wouldn't it be fun—and a boon for our democracy—to have him onstage in the coming debate?" Klein writes, deludedly, madly, monomaniacally focused, his mind so full of man-love that he can't recognize that what he's really asking is if the convicted child molester would like to come back to work at the day care.
Saturday, April 15, 2006
Maryscott O'Connor, My Left Wing, and the Rude Pundit in the Washington Post Today:
The front page article, by David Finkel, is focused on My Left Wing founder (and Kossack) Maryscott O'Connor, about whom the Rude Pundit has long held dear a dream of a crazed weekend in a hotel suite in Santa Fe, with mezcal, peyote, and a live trio of tribal drummers. Finkel seeks to define "the Angry Left" through O'Connor, who will no doubt come across as crazy and bitchy to the cowering posers on the right. Finkel came up with the phrase his little ol' self, and while he occasionally seems as if he wants to pigeonhole O'Connor (and, by implication, the entire left), Maryscott's passion, commitment, and humanity come through. Which means Finkel was not out to demonize her. (Although let's not get into the photo editor.)
Along the way, the Rude Pundit gets quoted. Which is strange, since the Rude Pundit is full of love bones for everyone.
(Oh, by the way, long as we're tossin' out the linky love, check out Dark Syde's broadside against fundamentalism over on O'Connor's old digs, Daily Kos. It'll fill you with Easter bunny fuzziness.)
The front page article, by David Finkel, is focused on My Left Wing founder (and Kossack) Maryscott O'Connor, about whom the Rude Pundit has long held dear a dream of a crazed weekend in a hotel suite in Santa Fe, with mezcal, peyote, and a live trio of tribal drummers. Finkel seeks to define "the Angry Left" through O'Connor, who will no doubt come across as crazy and bitchy to the cowering posers on the right. Finkel came up with the phrase his little ol' self, and while he occasionally seems as if he wants to pigeonhole O'Connor (and, by implication, the entire left), Maryscott's passion, commitment, and humanity come through. Which means Finkel was not out to demonize her. (Although let's not get into the photo editor.)
Along the way, the Rude Pundit gets quoted. Which is strange, since the Rude Pundit is full of love bones for everyone.
(Oh, by the way, long as we're tossin' out the linky love, check out Dark Syde's broadside against fundamentalism over on O'Connor's old digs, Daily Kos. It'll fill you with Easter bunny fuzziness.)
Friday, April 14, 2006
Mercy for the Moussaoui Jurors:
Let's say, and why not, that you are a juror in the Zacharias Moussaoui penalty trial. You have been placed in a locked room with a couple of dozen people. And while in that locked room, you are forced to listen, for hours and hours, to recordings from victims of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. You're forced to hear the sounds of airline pilots of United Flight 93 gurgling through their slit throats. You're forced to listen to dozens of cell phone calls from people about to die or in the process of dying, including the nightmarish final screams of people in the World Trade Center as the buildings collapsed. You have to look at photos of charred Pentagon corpses, human jerky, and pictures of the exploded water balloon bodies of people who leapt from 90 stories high. You are forced to listen to a parade of testimony from people talking about trying to save others, including tales of heroic rescuers who couldn't hold onto victims because the burned skin kept sliding off in their hands. You hear stories from people who survived, from the families of those who died, about children wanting their parents or uncles. It goes on, day after day, images and descriptions of people leaping, people scrambling, people dying. You, though, are locked in the room. You can't get up and leave. You can't turn the page, click over to the comics, change the channel. And all of it is being paraded in front of you so you can decide whether or not the bugfuck insane egomaniac in the defendant's chair should be executed.
In essence, the prosecution's approach has been to take out a crowbar and beat the jurors bloody and unconscious until they can do nothing but drool and piss their acquiescence to the revenge that the government wants to enact on Moussaoui. The whole ridiculous, overemotional exercise of the prosecution has even been criticized by William F. Buckley. In his most recent column in his ongoing series "Clenched Patrician Anuses Can't Be Pried Open Even With Silver Spoons," Buckley barely moves his thin lips to say, "Thought renders unintelligible what the prosecution is up to in describing the luridities of 9/11 on Flight 93. The only explanation for what they are doing is that they are covert agents for the movie United 93, which is simultaneously going out from Hollywood."
As Buckley says (and, really, it makes the Rude Pundit want to head off for a morning vodka and ecstasy binge that'll end up with him face down in the gutter after being blown and rolled by some hooker or other by noon to say he agrees even partially with Buckley), Moussaoui's been found guilty. What's following is merely blood sport for the sake of blood sport, a real-world rendition of films like Wolf Creek and The Devil's Rejects, where the idea is to see how far the blood and gore and screams can push the audience. Except there the audience decides to go. The Moussaoui jury is trapped in a house of horrors that serves no purpose except to horrify them, to raise their bloodlust, to make them want to enact ancient tortures of tearing Moussaoui limb from limb with their bare hands for having even tangentially been a part of the nightmare they have been forced to experience again and again.
The Rude Pundit has no pity for Zacharias Moussaoui, who should be locked up in the basement of Bedlam in a straitjacket and rubber room where he can shit himself and mutter endlessly about Allah wantin' him to go all jihad on Western asses. He is merely the latest in an eons-long line of deluded wannabe religious martyrs, from every goddamn faith. To execute Moussaoui would be something akin to lashing a masochistic thief - sure, it might make you feel better, make you feel like you're doin' something for the greater good, but, really, you're just givin' him exactly what he wants. That's not to mention the whole "barbarism" factor of capital punishment, but we're not allowed to discuss that anymore, are we.
No, fuck Moussaoui. The Rude Pundit wonders at what point does the jury in the Zacharias Moussaoui trial get to stop being tortured? If this was being done to prisoners at Gitmo, we'd be up in arms. 'Cause the trial's gonna end, soon, and they're gonna leave that locked room, and then we have a dozen or so people who have to go on with their lives hearing the echoes of those cries, those screams, closing their eyes and seeing those corpses. And for what good? In the end, none. Just another stage in our ongoing fetishization of 9/11, our American mourning that we're never allowed to move on from.
Let's say, and why not, that you are a juror in the Zacharias Moussaoui penalty trial. You have been placed in a locked room with a couple of dozen people. And while in that locked room, you are forced to listen, for hours and hours, to recordings from victims of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. You're forced to hear the sounds of airline pilots of United Flight 93 gurgling through their slit throats. You're forced to listen to dozens of cell phone calls from people about to die or in the process of dying, including the nightmarish final screams of people in the World Trade Center as the buildings collapsed. You have to look at photos of charred Pentagon corpses, human jerky, and pictures of the exploded water balloon bodies of people who leapt from 90 stories high. You are forced to listen to a parade of testimony from people talking about trying to save others, including tales of heroic rescuers who couldn't hold onto victims because the burned skin kept sliding off in their hands. You hear stories from people who survived, from the families of those who died, about children wanting their parents or uncles. It goes on, day after day, images and descriptions of people leaping, people scrambling, people dying. You, though, are locked in the room. You can't get up and leave. You can't turn the page, click over to the comics, change the channel. And all of it is being paraded in front of you so you can decide whether or not the bugfuck insane egomaniac in the defendant's chair should be executed.
In essence, the prosecution's approach has been to take out a crowbar and beat the jurors bloody and unconscious until they can do nothing but drool and piss their acquiescence to the revenge that the government wants to enact on Moussaoui. The whole ridiculous, overemotional exercise of the prosecution has even been criticized by William F. Buckley. In his most recent column in his ongoing series "Clenched Patrician Anuses Can't Be Pried Open Even With Silver Spoons," Buckley barely moves his thin lips to say, "Thought renders unintelligible what the prosecution is up to in describing the luridities of 9/11 on Flight 93. The only explanation for what they are doing is that they are covert agents for the movie United 93, which is simultaneously going out from Hollywood."
As Buckley says (and, really, it makes the Rude Pundit want to head off for a morning vodka and ecstasy binge that'll end up with him face down in the gutter after being blown and rolled by some hooker or other by noon to say he agrees even partially with Buckley), Moussaoui's been found guilty. What's following is merely blood sport for the sake of blood sport, a real-world rendition of films like Wolf Creek and The Devil's Rejects, where the idea is to see how far the blood and gore and screams can push the audience. Except there the audience decides to go. The Moussaoui jury is trapped in a house of horrors that serves no purpose except to horrify them, to raise their bloodlust, to make them want to enact ancient tortures of tearing Moussaoui limb from limb with their bare hands for having even tangentially been a part of the nightmare they have been forced to experience again and again.
The Rude Pundit has no pity for Zacharias Moussaoui, who should be locked up in the basement of Bedlam in a straitjacket and rubber room where he can shit himself and mutter endlessly about Allah wantin' him to go all jihad on Western asses. He is merely the latest in an eons-long line of deluded wannabe religious martyrs, from every goddamn faith. To execute Moussaoui would be something akin to lashing a masochistic thief - sure, it might make you feel better, make you feel like you're doin' something for the greater good, but, really, you're just givin' him exactly what he wants. That's not to mention the whole "barbarism" factor of capital punishment, but we're not allowed to discuss that anymore, are we.
No, fuck Moussaoui. The Rude Pundit wonders at what point does the jury in the Zacharias Moussaoui trial get to stop being tortured? If this was being done to prisoners at Gitmo, we'd be up in arms. 'Cause the trial's gonna end, soon, and they're gonna leave that locked room, and then we have a dozen or so people who have to go on with their lives hearing the echoes of those cries, those screams, closing their eyes and seeing those corpses. And for what good? In the end, none. Just another stage in our ongoing fetishization of 9/11, our American mourning that we're never allowed to move on from.
Thursday, April 13, 2006
Bush Adminstration Says, "Screw Science and Wiccan Soldiers":
Sometimes one's daily life in George W. Bush's America makes you feel like Sonny Corleone at the right tollbooth at the wrong damn time. You pick up yer morning newspaper or turn on yer NPR and it's like a troop of mobsters just appear out of nowhere and start strafing your sorry ass with machine gun fire, feeling the quick burn and drive of the bullets burrowing into your flesh and meat, the number of 'em coming at you so fast that the force of the bullets actually keeps your dead body upright, turning you into a scarlet Swiss cheese puppet, dancin' that macabre ballet until you finally just collapse into yourself and bleed out. And, like a good Sisyphus, like a damned Prometheus, the next day you gotta do it again.
But then there's also the times you dig around a little bit, like readin' Fark Politics or Think Progress, and on top of the daily hit job, while you're sittin' and waitin' for yer blood to pool in the gravel around you, it's like out of nowhere a dwarf walks up to you and starts kickin' you in the nuts. He's not a particularly strong dwarf, but he's kickin' hard enough to really hurt your balls, which sucks, since you're already full of lead, pissin' yourself, hopin' for the sweet kiss of death. You're not even strong enough to swat the creepy little fucker away. All you can think is, "C'mon, do you gotta kick me in the nuts while I'm already down?" But this is a moot question, for this is the era of the George W. Bush, and, down or not, your balls are fair game for dwarf-punting.
For instance, this week Secretary of Energy Samuel "I Could Not Look More Like an Avaricious CEO If I Tried" Bodman shitcanned the Secretary of Energy Advisory Board. The SEAB is an "independent" body set up in one form in 1978 and in its current form in 1990 "to provide advice, information, and recommendations to the Secretary of Energy on the Department's basic and applied research activities, economic and national security policy, educational issues, laboratory management, and activities and operations of the Department of Energy as the Secretary may direct." Its members "include two Nobel Laureates, a Pulitzer Prize winner, and senior representatives from academia, business, public and environmental groups, labor, and federal/state government." And, as such, is completely useless to the Bush Administration.
In fact, according to a brief mention in the New York Times, the board and its independent research and advice are unneeded since the President laid out an agenda in his State of the Union. Sighed Bodman's spokesperson, the Secretary "believes that we have a strong agenda moving forward with the American Competitiveness and Advanced Energy Initiatives put forth by the White House." 'Cause, you know, with 3 buck a gallon gas just around the corner and no real movement towards anything like an energy policy that doesn't involve getting fucked by the oil conglomerates who don't even offer Americans the good graces of a reacharound, who needs some tweedy board offering "reports" on "science" and "technology"?
Another scrotum bludgeoning is courtesy of the Department of Veteran's Affairs, which, in case you didn't know, has a list of approved religious markers for headstones for dead soldiers for its cemeteries and memorials. Christian, Muslim, Serbian Orthodox, Tenrikyo, you die for your country, and the symbol of your faith can be displayed for all eternity on your grave. Fuck, if you're an atheist, they got a symbol for that - looks like a nuclear atom, but, what the hell, you know. Except if you're a Wiccan.
Yep, if you're a nature-worshippin' pagan, motherfucker, doesn't matter if you left half your internal organs festering on the hillsides of Afghanistan. Your star in a circle ain't welcome on your memorial. So when Wiccan soldier Patrick Stewart of Nevada died when his Chinook helicopter was shot down by an RPG, his family wanted to emblazon his plaque on the memorial wall for Nevada vets with the Wiccan pentacle. Turns out, though, for Veterans Affairs, freedom of religion means the agency decides how you're free to worship. They were told, "Nope. Not on the approved list. Go fuck a tree."
Sure, sure, this'll all be solved soon when the right forms go through the right offices and the right stamps are placed on the right documents, but, still, and all, is this censorship really something the government oughta be involved in at any level?
No, no, it's not as big a deal as Scooter or the bio-labs or Iran or Italy or immigration or hundreds of other searing bullets that fly at us every day. But it's another kick in the nuts. A reminder of the ludicrous times in which we live, the slide into absurdity we are descending.
Correction: Yesterday, the Rude Pundit described Durham, NC as "mostly black." This is not correct. The Rude Pundit should have said "mostly non-white." Durham's only 44% black. according to the 2000 census. It is 48% white. Poin o' the day award to rude reader Alice fer the heads up.
Sometimes one's daily life in George W. Bush's America makes you feel like Sonny Corleone at the right tollbooth at the wrong damn time. You pick up yer morning newspaper or turn on yer NPR and it's like a troop of mobsters just appear out of nowhere and start strafing your sorry ass with machine gun fire, feeling the quick burn and drive of the bullets burrowing into your flesh and meat, the number of 'em coming at you so fast that the force of the bullets actually keeps your dead body upright, turning you into a scarlet Swiss cheese puppet, dancin' that macabre ballet until you finally just collapse into yourself and bleed out. And, like a good Sisyphus, like a damned Prometheus, the next day you gotta do it again.
But then there's also the times you dig around a little bit, like readin' Fark Politics or Think Progress, and on top of the daily hit job, while you're sittin' and waitin' for yer blood to pool in the gravel around you, it's like out of nowhere a dwarf walks up to you and starts kickin' you in the nuts. He's not a particularly strong dwarf, but he's kickin' hard enough to really hurt your balls, which sucks, since you're already full of lead, pissin' yourself, hopin' for the sweet kiss of death. You're not even strong enough to swat the creepy little fucker away. All you can think is, "C'mon, do you gotta kick me in the nuts while I'm already down?" But this is a moot question, for this is the era of the George W. Bush, and, down or not, your balls are fair game for dwarf-punting.
For instance, this week Secretary of Energy Samuel "I Could Not Look More Like an Avaricious CEO If I Tried" Bodman shitcanned the Secretary of Energy Advisory Board. The SEAB is an "independent" body set up in one form in 1978 and in its current form in 1990 "to provide advice, information, and recommendations to the Secretary of Energy on the Department's basic and applied research activities, economic and national security policy, educational issues, laboratory management, and activities and operations of the Department of Energy as the Secretary may direct." Its members "include two Nobel Laureates, a Pulitzer Prize winner, and senior representatives from academia, business, public and environmental groups, labor, and federal/state government." And, as such, is completely useless to the Bush Administration.
In fact, according to a brief mention in the New York Times, the board and its independent research and advice are unneeded since the President laid out an agenda in his State of the Union. Sighed Bodman's spokesperson, the Secretary "believes that we have a strong agenda moving forward with the American Competitiveness and Advanced Energy Initiatives put forth by the White House." 'Cause, you know, with 3 buck a gallon gas just around the corner and no real movement towards anything like an energy policy that doesn't involve getting fucked by the oil conglomerates who don't even offer Americans the good graces of a reacharound, who needs some tweedy board offering "reports" on "science" and "technology"?
Another scrotum bludgeoning is courtesy of the Department of Veteran's Affairs, which, in case you didn't know, has a list of approved religious markers for headstones for dead soldiers for its cemeteries and memorials. Christian, Muslim, Serbian Orthodox, Tenrikyo, you die for your country, and the symbol of your faith can be displayed for all eternity on your grave. Fuck, if you're an atheist, they got a symbol for that - looks like a nuclear atom, but, what the hell, you know. Except if you're a Wiccan.
Yep, if you're a nature-worshippin' pagan, motherfucker, doesn't matter if you left half your internal organs festering on the hillsides of Afghanistan. Your star in a circle ain't welcome on your memorial. So when Wiccan soldier Patrick Stewart of Nevada died when his Chinook helicopter was shot down by an RPG, his family wanted to emblazon his plaque on the memorial wall for Nevada vets with the Wiccan pentacle. Turns out, though, for Veterans Affairs, freedom of religion means the agency decides how you're free to worship. They were told, "Nope. Not on the approved list. Go fuck a tree."
Sure, sure, this'll all be solved soon when the right forms go through the right offices and the right stamps are placed on the right documents, but, still, and all, is this censorship really something the government oughta be involved in at any level?
No, no, it's not as big a deal as Scooter or the bio-labs or Iran or Italy or immigration or hundreds of other searing bullets that fly at us every day. But it's another kick in the nuts. A reminder of the ludicrous times in which we live, the slide into absurdity we are descending.
Correction: Yesterday, the Rude Pundit described Durham, NC as "mostly black." This is not correct. The Rude Pundit should have said "mostly non-white." Durham's only 44% black. according to the 2000 census. It is 48% white. Poin o' the day award to rude reader Alice fer the heads up.
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