It's the Weekend:

And on the weekend the Rude Pundit drinks himself into a constant stupor to make the voices in his head stop. Well, actually, this week, it's just the pathetic whine of Colin Powell, crying into the darkness, the void, that WMDs really, really do exist. Christ, in any decent civilization, he'd've fallen on his sword by now and drunk in the sweet, sweet bliss and nobility of suicide.



Meanwhile, search engines are a funny, funny thing. You type in "Grandma's peaches" and who knows what'll come up at Google. But apparently, if you type, "little tits" into Yahoo, somewhere, way down the list, is the Rude Pundit. The Rude Pundit would like to think about someone with a little tittie fetish, half-tumescent cock out, clicking around, seeking those little titties, clicking on the Rude Pundit, and masturbating even more forcefully while reading this blog.



So, consider this the audience participation section: because people are such sick fucks in general, here's some of the search engine terms that have recently brought up the Rude Pundit in a list of god only knows what else (these are completely real and are listed at Extreme Tracking):

monster cunt

Ann Coulter is a cunt

"Molesting Uncle" comedian

Anderson Cooper nude

fuck Bush

Bush is an asshole

Rumsfeld is an asshole

young boy cock

Jessica Lynch getting ass fucked

Jessica Lynch raped

schoolgirl sodomized

Bill O'Reilly splotchy

fucking turkey pussy & ass

tape fucking corpses ass

live picture of masturbating gay man with nice and huge cock



The sad part is how long this list could go on and on. So, here's the toast for the first chilled vodka shot of the morning - Cheers to every sad little fuck who needs to see a P.O.W. getting raped.

Back Monday.

To the Moon, Condi, To the Moon:

So at 5 a.m., in his quiet apartment, weary from another evening of tossing and turning over images of men in Bush masks sodomizing Saddam Hussein repeatedly even as he screamed over and over that there were no weapons of mass destruction, the Rude Pundit arose and turned on CNN, as is his way. And there, lo and behold, was an announcement of miracles to come: a space mission - and not just any ordinary unmanned rocket or firecracker space shuttle. Oh, no, it was a proposal to come for a space station on the moon, just like in the old show Space 1999, except, you know, not in 1999. And it doesn't stop there, stargazers, for we have a President with grandiose ideas: the moon station will be a place from which humans may leap to, oh, my god, Mars so that we can have first hand experience with all the red dirt there (which is presumably different, much, much different, than the grey dirt on the moon). Oh, what a grand and wonderful time we live in, thought the Rude Pundit as he toddled out in his underwear and robe, coffee cup in hand, to grab his morning New York Times from the stoop, where, lo and behold, there it was again. Why, the Rude Pundit was giddy with joy, remembering his childhood erections at the sight of Neil Armstrong and that flag.



And then the Rude Pundit turned to the Op-Ed section, where he read this in Bob Herbert's column today: "A new report by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities shows that 34 states have made potentially devastating cuts over the past two years in public health insurance programs, including Medicaid and the very successful children's health insurance programs known as CHIPS. More cuts are expected this year." And the potential cost of a moon station and Mars mission by 2015? Why, nearly $1 trillion dollars.



Do we have a group of teenagers with their first credit cards in the White House or what? Like an angry parent seeing the Visa bill that he'll have to pay instead of the teenager, the American people need to say, "What the fuck are you thinking, you stupid cocksuckers?" Not to get into the whole "What else would $1 trillion dollars over 10 years cost?" debate (although, really, and c'mon, $100 billion dollars a year would pretty much set up the entire country with good jobs, health insurance, elite private school education, and free Starbucks in the morning), but what's the game here? Did the President, after spanking Laura while staring at pictures of dead Iraqis in order to get a hard-on, think, seeing Laura's red ass, "I wanna go to the moon. No, wait, first the moon, then Mars. That'd be cool"? Did Karl Rove say, "Let's say we're going to Mars. Then, if that little fucker Dean opposes us, we'll say, 'What, you don't want to go to Mars?'"? Did Donald Rumsfeld say, "Well, Mars is the god of war"? Or did someone say there might be oil there?



Or, how about these possibilities: A space journey has the potential to be the ultimate corporate welfare program (and didn't Republicans used to call this kind of shit "socialism"? Just asking). Oh, all the contracts, all the outsourcing, all the newly-minted pseudo-residents who'll be forced to work for minimum wage no matter what. Christ, the money that will go to Boeing/McDonnell-Douglas. Christ, all the oil that'll be needed for fuel.



Or, maybe, just maybe, this is another way for the Bush administration to avoid the problems of the United States. Fuck, make Bush President of Iraq. Make him Great Grand Poobah of Mars for all we care. But somebody needs to tell these idiots in the administration to stop spending money like ten bucks a blow hookers with unlimited credit at Frederick's.



Christ, the Rude Pundit can't wait until they start saying that the moon station and the Mars trip are for homeland security. Maybe it'll be that from the moon we can launch a missle defense system. Maybe it'll be for better spying. But the connection's coming and you know it is.

Depraved Neocon Madness on the Radio:

The Rude Pundit's head is aching after listening to the open expression of vile depravity on the radio today. The corpulent Richard Perle and the corpse-like David Frum appeared today on the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC, shilling for their new book on the "war" on terror, An End to Evil. (The Rude Pundit includes a link to Amazon not to encourage purchase, but so you can see some of the vicious reviews by readers.) So there you see it, in the title, the goal here is to end "evil." And what's the best way to do that? Through God's love, perhaps? Through international cooperation? Through an attempt to understand the root causes of "evil" or terrorism and address the alienation and poverty that naturally leads to violence and resentment?



Nope, fuck that. Apparently, the best approach, according to Perle and Frum (and their ilk), is to beat the shit out of small nations until they submit to the moral authority of the United States and make every other nation shit itself out of fear of the mighty U.S. military and its moral bombs. See, as Frum expressed on Lehrer's show, we've got to have the guts to call Al-Qaeda, Saddam, and anyone else who fucks with us "evil," and the U.S. has been basically acting like pussies in the world until 9/11, believing in such false idols as the United Nations. Now, like a binge drinker losing his job has all the reason he needs to down a twelve-pack, we have the excuse to wander the world to kick brown, yellow and black ass. (Except, apparently, in Iran, where Perle claims he says that we should support those who are attempting to overthrow the Islamic government there.) And we need to be able to name things "evil." "Evil," as we know, is in the eye of the beholder, or in the eye of the one holding the big ass weapons. And we better be willing to use those. If not, then we may as well just be little wimpy Colin Powells.



None of this is new. But the blatant lies, the smarmy tone, the self-righteousness came through more clearly on Lehrer's program. They forcefully defended the invasion of Iraq against Gen. Wesley Clark's comments on Meet the Press this weekend, saying that Iraq had weapons, funded terrorists, and on and on and all the blather that we increasingly know is lies, lies, and more lies. The most obvious lie from Perle and Frum? The 9/11 propelled us into action in Iraq, that we had no intention of invading Iraq until 9/11. Discussion of invading Iraq had been around from the moment Bush took office, according to Seymour Hersh, among others.



None of this matters to Perle, Frum, and the rest. Like a tribe of cannibals discovering a sleeping group of Boy Scouts, they lick their lips at the prospect of someone disputing things and masturbate to the idea of empire as a form of freedom. They dismiss Bin Laden and his followers as wacko fundamentalists without realizing that they themselves are fundamentalists, too, as is anyone who believes so fervently in his own rightness, that relativism is a sign of weakness. Listening to them talk, you'd think they'd actually had some military experience in the way they dispute Clark's ideas for getting Bin Laden. You'd think that they were god-like in their ability to name "evil" wherever they see it. Sure, Osama Bin Laden is eeevil. Doesn't take a fucking PhD to figure that out. But it's a fine line, a fine line.



Of course, when you're standing over the corpse of your collaterally damaged baby, you're pretty sure where the evil came from: from the fuckers who dropped that bomb. And maybe you'll get some of your buddies to try to take out a few of them even as they assure you that your collaterally killed baby was a sacrifice to the good graces of the American moral authority to kill your baby while the soldiers hunt for evil in every brown face around them.

Do We Have To Wait Until He Kills a Few Million Jews Before We Can Say Bush Is Like Hitler?:

So, like, two out of 1500 of MoveOn.org's commercial contest entries contain images of Hitler. And Ed Gillespie and the Republican National Committee have their panties in a wad about it. Joe Scarborough was his usual smarmy fuckfaced self in mocking MoveOn and the ads (scroll down, past the Steve Irwin baby story, 'cause that's so goddamn important). The Rude Pundit is not going to list all the other conservative dickweeds who reacted in mock anger so they could discredit MoveOn.org and, by extension, George Soros.



Of course, if one doesn't want to be compared to Hitler, maybe one shouldn't act like Hitler. 'Cause, like, you know, killing Jews, while heinous, awful, beyond imagining, and everything else the ADL wants said any time Hitler is brought up, was only part of Hitler's actions. 'Cause, like, you know, if you're gonna pretend a weak, defenseless country is a threat to your homeland and then attack and occupy that country and declare it a great victory, and, shit, if you're gonna have camera crews manipulate and control situations so that your image is perfect, and, just for the hell of it, if you're gonna court the conservative Christians' community and clergy and declare certain lifestyles immoral and declare that God hisself has annointed you, well, then, if the moustache fits . . .



Fascism ain't just about killing Jews. Let's hear from an expert, like, say, Mussolini: "The foundation of Fascism is the conception of the State, its character, its duty, and its aim. Fascism conceives of the State as an absolute, in comparison with which all individuals or groups are relative, only to be conceived of in their relation to the State." And, of course, there's the corporative state, that Mussolini installed in Italy and Hitler followed - government for the wealthy corporate interests. As Trotsky says in Fascism: What It Is and How To Fight It, "It may be said that fascism is the act of placing the petty bourgoisie at the disposal of its most bitter enemies. In this way, big capital ruins the middle classes and then, with the help of hired fascist demagogues, incites the despairing petty bourgeoisie against the worker."



In other words, the deal is this: whenever anyone invokes Hitler, of course it's inflammatory, kind of like comparing Vietnam vet Max Cleland with Osama Bin Laden (or at least showing their pictures together, a la Saxby Chambliss). But instead of even beginning to address how actually fucked-up the Bush/Cheney/Ashcroft/Rumsfeld policy is and how it does serve to strip away democracy, which, horror of horrors, was actually supposed to be about how an open, free society is the best way to assure freedom and that freedoms cannot be doled out like condoms at a whorehouse, we focus on the picture of Hitler with his dirty Sanchez moustache and think, "He killed Jews. Bush doesn't kill Jews. Ergo Bush is not Hitler." And we don't remember that Hitler propped his fake successful economy on the back of an imperial war of self-defense.



You don't want your President compared to Hitler? Then stop acting like the German people of the 1930s.



(And the Rude Pundit has intentionally avoided the obvious Prescott Bush/Hitler story here - let's stay focused, people.)

Okay, So the Rude Pundit's Still on Vacation:

The Rude Pundit is in transit, caught in highways and byways and snow-ways and airways. So nothing today. On Wednesday, regularity will return like in Donald Rumsfeld's colon after eating a bowl of bran flakes sprinkled with the shattered bones of Iraqi children. Until then, remember: Joe Lieberman has a circumcised dick. He wants you to know that. Every time he mentions his Judaism, it's Lieberman's sly, sly way of winking at you and saying, "Remember: my cock is circumcised." When he stands in front of a crowd, he is calling attention to his penis. He wants you to know that his foreskin is gone, that a group of people watched as it was cut off, and that, indeed, his dick is circumcised.

Howard Dean Will Fuck Your Shit Up:

Let's end this fucked-up, awful, violent, dark year and welcome the new one with just a ripple glimmer of hope: Howard Dean does not give a shit what you have to say. Except for his brief whine to Terry McAuliffe about attacks on him from fellow Democrats (an embarassment to all concerned), Dean has simply plowed through all the attacks like a mad farmer in an Alzheimer's-induced Robert Frost poem.



And it's getting hot in here for Dean. From the right, there's Ross Mackenzie and David Limbaugh all up in Dean's face for his anger and "electability;" there's Bob Novak writing about Dean's speaking "gaffes," apparently forgetting that he supports the king of the spoken "gaffe" (better known to the rest of America, the one that thinks Novak's combover looks pathetic, as "fuck-ups"); there's Cal Thomas, whose picture looks like Tennessee Williams dreaming of young Marlon Brando's big cock, talking about Dean's "pandering" by talking about Jesus (as if elections weren't one long panderpalooza); Emmett Tyrrell and Mona Charen, a woman who needs a hard, sweaty fucking if there ever was one, oiling the gears of the conservative "lie" machine, as if saying one's missing (now known to be dead) brother was a close relative in the military when said brother was not is a worse lie than, say, let's go to war because Saddam is trying to get uranium from Niger; there's O'Reilly, saying that Dean is pandering to the "far left," which must be a surprise to Cal Thomas or to all those far lefties who love Jesus; and Sean Hannity, who makes his usual intellectual prowess evident by saying that "Gadhafi wouldn't have taken the action" on his "nuclear weapons program" (which was some pipes strung together with chewing gum and fishing line) had Dean been in office. This is not to mention the Democratic attacks, with Joe Lieberman and John Kerry grasping at straws to keep their sad pipe dream campaigns alive.



But Howard Dean just keeps rolling, rolling in the dough, the popularity, the press. Every word he says is going to be parsed, probed, and pundited upon, but he's gonna say, "Fuck you" to those who would slow down the momentum. And that's the way it ought to be. When Dean said that Saddam's capture, while good, wouldn't make America any safer, everyone decried it, with Lieberman practically staking the rest of his campaign on the line. But, motherfucker, if Dean wasn't right, then no one else was. When Dean said that Osama ought to be tried and that the rule of law oughta be upheld, well, son of a bitch, even those who came out and said he was "wacko" for doing so (like James Carville) had to admit that after two plus years of an administration ruling by fiat, it was nice for someone to acknowledge that we have a justice system.



Nope, as Sidney Blumenthal points out, Howard Dean will fuck your shit up. He will take these attacks and keep going. He's playing the political game, baby, sleeves rolled up, stupid akimbo grin beaming, and he's gonna get more popular doing it. And he ain't no one's fool - he's a moderate who happened to take the correct position on a stupid war. When he says the President is "reckless," he's flaming the fire, flaming the fire. And, unlike Paul Krugman, the Rude Pundit says bring on the attacks. As we've said before, put everything out there now, when no one in the general public is fucking paying attention. Let all things become "old news," as Bush's AWOL allegations were called in the general election, before Rove and his vicious attack bitches clench their jaws around it.



It's 2004. Let's play election.



(To be clear, the Rude Pundit is not endorsing anyone, although it looks an awful lot like he's giving the heavy, sweaty, sticky man-love to Howard Dean. But the Rude Pundit is a fickle bastard. If Wesley Clark or John Kerry wink and offer reach arounds, the Rude Pundit will give them the love below.)

More Rudeness Friday:

The Rude Pundit survived his flight without the expected anal probing, but arrived much later than expected. Relieved, sphincter a little looser, he has decided to take a mulligan at this late hour of the end of the abomination of a year we've just had, and he is going out to drink, a lot. One last 2003 thought: Do you think Osama Bin Laden's plan all along was to drive the United States into a frenzy of military presence, abandonment of Constitutional protections, and a budget devastated by a Bush in office? Do you think he was that calculating, that he knew exactly what the neocons would do, the fear that they would instill in Americans and the West? Who the fuck knows. But we now live our lives as a forced march, spurred by Osama, directed by Bush, enforced by Ashcroft. Fuck 'em all.

Friday: Howard Dean Will Fuck Your Shit Up

Monday: What You Do to the Least of These, Part 3 - the Poor

Go have a fucking New Year's. That's what the Rude Pundit is doing.

And Even the Evil Must Sometimes Act Like They Live in America:

John Ashcroft has recused himself from the Plame name blame investigation. The Rude Pundit is a cynic - he wants to believe this is because something big has been discovered and it has forced Ashcroft to give up any (obvious) control of the investigation. But the Rude Pundit also thinks that the whole investigation is a whitewash and Ashcroft recusing himself is actually a manipulative move to make the whitewash look as if it is a valid conclusion. Although, in the back of his mind, the Rude Pundit dreamily wonders, Could it be Rove is going down? Could it be Rove, who once worked for Ashcroft, who is going to do a perp walk? Oh, to live in such an America once again. Oh, to dream that it was ever thus.

Why Ann Coulter Is Still a Cunt, Part 6:

Because she's so fucking stupid that she doesn't get it when the Onion mocks her. On her shitty, useless website, Coulter is apparently so thrilled to death that she was mentioned in the comedy newspaper that she links to it at the top of the page. The article? One of the Onion's "What Do You Think?" articles, this one on conservative teens. One of the pretend responses is "I don't understand my son. He's always locked in the bathroom with that damned Ann Coulter book." Now, Coulter's link means one of two things, both disturbing: 1)She doesn't get the masturbation reference and thinks that said boy is reading her "book" or 2) That she likes the idea of a teenage boy jacking off to her rants against liberalism. Of course, the joke really is that Coulter presents herself as a fuckable hottie (with an Adam's apple and man hands, but, anyways) in a tight black dress and that teenage boys, thinking anything from underwear ads to old pictures of youthful granny are woody-inspiring, would actually not give a rat's ass about her politics, and, like Bill Maher probably does, would tell her shut the fuck up and let them spew a load of jizz on her flat tits and then wrap her long legs around them twice and let her giant kooz devour their teenage cocks and balls. And then said book, be it Treason or Slander, is simply another crusty, spooge-covered Victoria's Secret catalog, which is about all that Coulter's "thoughts" are worth.

What You Do to the Least of These - Vol. 2 (More of an End of the Year Spectacular):

So here we are, in the darkness at the edge of the new year, and Time magazine goes and makes the American soldier into the Personages of the Year. Yep, they're always there for us, ready to be turned loose on the streets of Your Town, USA, should there be another terrorist incident and martial law is declared and, oh, dream of neocon dreams, the Constitution is suspended, like a class clown with one too many whoopee cushions.



And the military is just great because all those minorities and no-teeth poverty-stricken sunsabitches (and daughters) have somewhere to go to provide them with three square, a salary, benefits like the possibility of a college education (and, with budget cuts to student loans, Pell Grants, etc., the G.I. Bill is becoming one of the only moderately assured places where the poor and disenfranchised can get the money for college).



And, shit and goddamn, yee-haa, let's not forget the violence factor, where you get to carry guns, shoot said guns, kill A-rabs with said guns and the shiver to your nuts that causes. You get to rough up reporters, dodge bullets just like Arnold Schwarzenegger, beat prisoners. Motherfucker, what a rush. Sure, there's the downside of getting killer, injured, mentally fucked-up. But that's a small trade-off for a guaranteed college education, combat pay, and all those great perks.



Of course, that's our ideal military, our fantasy military, our government broadcast military - it doesn't have dick to do with reality, which is a constant stream of the Bush administration fucking over the current and former members of the armed services. Between the cutbacks in iminent danger pay, the slash in pay for wounded soldiers, and on and on, and we have some major (and non-com) dicking going on. Of course, it hardly needs to be pointed out that those who command the military from the White House (minus one Colin Powell) have the combined military experience of the actors in Saving Ryan's Privates.



Now we have word that, with the extension of tours of duty, members of the military, stretched thin, committing suicide, are having retirements postponed and are essentially being held as prisoners of Bush's war. Yep, nothing like extending enlistment periods for the morale of the personages of the year.



The point here is obvious: the Bush administration will trot out soldiers as props for the next election. There will be wounded, one-legged, scarred-face, no-testicled boys in wheelchairs and dress blues pointed to during the State of the Union as proof of the good of those who fight for "us." But the constant mistreatment of soldiers and veterans ought to concern us all. Because if those who fight, whether for noble causes or under orders from a faux commander in chief, can be so readily disposed of on a whim of budget, then what hope is there for the rest of us?

Rush, Soldiers, Christmas, cont'd:

Aloysius points out that the Rude Pundit "should take his head out of" his "ass and smell the coffee" when it comes to Rush Limbaugh. Setting aside the fact that the Rude Pundit drinks so much coffee that if he could indeed shove his brain-filled head up his ass, it more than likely would have a coffee aroma, Aloysius is right to point out that Limbaugh is scrambling like a scorpion running from a weasel to avoid federal money-laundering charges (by using said blackmailing maid), which could really lead Limbaugh to hard time at a resort prison where he can bully mid-level executives who've taken the fall for their corporations. Pleasant a thought as any Limbaugh prison time may be, with or without accompanying buggering, it's so much more fun to think about him in a cell, cold turkey, sweating, shaking, seeing Hillary Clinton out of the corners of his eyes. Of course, as of today, that reality is slightly farther away, as his medical records have been temporarily re-sealed, pending appeal by Limbaugh's lawyers. Prior to that, the future unemployed Limbaugh actually said that Democrats were out to get him, calling it "payback time." So there's a vast left-wing conspiracy who have nothing better to do than get Rush, according to Rush. To repeat from yesterday, it just keeps getting more and more pathetic. Pretty soon, Rush is gonna lock himself in his studio, demanding that all the dittoheads rise up in revolution against the "liberals." Or radios will just start clicking off one by one by one around the country.



Coming on Monday: Part 2 of What You Do to the Least of These: The U.S. Military. Until then, enjoy the work of a real hero who went to Baghdad, unannounced, and walked around the streets, and met with injured soldiers: David Letterman. Letterman has more guts than almost any other presumptive "news" host, except Tucker Carlson.



Go have a fucking Christmas. That's what the Rude Pundit is doing. Back Monday.

Why Rush Limbaugh Should Be Force-Fed His Own Liposuctioned Fat:

It just gets more and more pathetic, doesn't it? Like every other junkie in the history of law enforcement, Rush Limbaugh is flailing about, looking for anyone to blame, except himself. If he was a horse, he'd've been glue and dog food by now. So now Rush, in a desperate attempt to keep his medical records from being used against him (why? Maybe that agonizing, cancer-like back pain he whines about isn't so bad? Or maybe we'll find out that the reason for said back agony is all the fat pulling against his spine for all those years sitting in that goddamned chair?), is now sending out his lawyers to say that his maid was blackmailing him.



The first logical answer to this charge is "So the fuck what?" How does blackmailing a junkie make the junkie any less a junkie? Let's put it this way: say you are a rich scumbag conservative and your maid finds out you love kiddie porn - man, you can't get enough of the kiddie porn in all its forms, print, Internet, videos. Goddamn, watching pre-pubescents fuck is the only thing that keeps you sane in this horrible workaday world. Now, the maid has two options: one is the honorable thing - turn your hypocritical ass over to the police. And the other is blackmail bleed kiddie porn-watching ass dry. Oh, that this were a world where people did the honorable thing. But, at the end of the day, you still pay for kiddie porn. Paying off the maid is part of doing business in the world of things illegal. Shit, paying off the maid is a small price to pay against having your hatemongering shown for the lies and bullshit and opportunism it truly is.



But it truly is a pathetic sight, seeing Limbaugh calling himself a victim, of pain, of maids, of prosecutors, of the media. All we can do is looking forward to hearing Limbaugh broadcasting from prison as he's being raped repeatedly by some three strikes and you're out felon. ("This is Rush - ow! - Limbaugh - oof! - and you're listening - oh, god! - to the - Christ! - Sodomy in Broadcasting - can I at least get a reach-around? Ow! - network.")

What You Do to the Least of These, Part 1 of a Rude Pundit Christmas Spectacular:

The Rude Pundit could not give two shits about organized religion. He believes the only reasons most major faiths exist are to 1) stop the non-marital fucking, and 2) keep poor people in their place. But as a book, the Bible is filled with cool quotes, good advice, and a few interesting parables, sort of like Dostoevsky or Hints from Heloise, but with more fucking and fewer uses for white vinegar. Sure, you can go with your Isaiah 2:4, all about beating your swords into plows and spears into pruning hooks, and, hell, sound advice, if a bit labor-intensive. But because, you know, Jesus is the reason for the season or some such shit, let's go with some words from the Bible's main character, shaggy headed hippie wanderer who pulled a David Blaine in the middle of the desert, and use Matthew 25:40, which, after all that easily ignored shit about feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, and visiting the imprisoned, Jesus says, roughly, "What you do to the least of these, you do to me."



The Rude Pundit sees it like this: the way a society treats its most fucked-up, vile, and/or lowest members says more about said society than any politician, Fox "news" "reporter," or preacher ever could tell us. In other words, show us the compassion, don't just stand there and tell us about it. It's the hardest part about being a liberal, all the goddamned compassion. Fuck, it'd be easier sometimes to say, "Kill 'em all and let God figger it out," but, nope, that is not our way.



Take, for instance, Saddam Hussein, perhaps a King Lear for our age (driven mad with exile, two children killed - it ain't that much of a stretch). There's a gut level reaction here: Let the Iraqi people decide exactly how slowly and painfully he should be murdered. Even the President got into the act, at first being all coy and shit about punishment, but then coming on full steam with that little-seen Diane Sawyer interview. In a nearly articulate statement to Sawyer, Bush said,"I think he ought to receive the ultimate penalty ... for what he has done to his people." (As Mark Crispin Miller has shown, Bush is never so articulate as when he's talking about retribution or violence or some gleeful combination of the two. Ask him about tax policy and he sounds like Boomhauer from King of the Hill. Ask him about killing an Arab and he's as erudite as William Buckley on speed.)



Of course, multilatereralism is such a bitch because you have to deal with all those "civilized" countries who don't believe in the death penalty, like England, Canada, even the fucking Pope. And, of course, we live in the most barbaric country on this planet because we make a pretext to compassion when, really, all we wanna do is fuck some shit up. So O'Reilly mouths off about the U.N. and the Vatican asking for compassion, polls show the same number of Americans who support the death penalty support it for Saddam, etc., etc.



The point here is this: compassion and humanity are two-way streets. Just like the absurdity of not declaring Saddam a prisoner of war, even though he was caught during a presumptive war, so he can be tried as America wants him to be tried and not by some pussy-ass international tribunal like Nuremberg or the Hague. Once such rules of humanity are breeched, this is the kind of shit that comes around. If we don't declare the Guantanamo 600 POWs because we don't want to abide by the Geneva Convention towards them, then what if the Taliban capture our soldiers? That's an obvious comparison.



But how about this: George Bush believes Saddam's head belongs on a pike, paraded through the streets of Baghdad like a bowling trophy in Milwaukee bar. And so once again the lesson for all governments, for all tribes, for all angry peoples will be that the only response the U.S. can tolerate is violence. Compassion is for pussies - for the French, the U.N., for Jesus . . . oh, wait a second there . . . How about this- how about we don't kill Saddam? The Rude Pundit knows Saddam is eeevil. He knows that the gut says to disembowel this douchebag, to get all Hannibal Lecter on him and make him eat part of his brain before killing him. But that's the animal in us all. Maybe, just maybe, we oughta act like human beings every once in a while and let Saddam live in prison for the rest of his sorry ass days. Maybe the way we treat someone who has degraded the species as much as Saddam says something about how we value humanity. Maybe, just maybe, those who would profess to understand Jesus, the Bible, all that shit, oughta act like they really do. It is, after all, Christmas.



The hypocrisy of the righteous knows no bounds. They will kill and call it compassion. They will destroy and call it redemption. More tomorrow, when we bring it home.

Another Weekend, Another Break:

Next week - an abbreviated week because, well, fuck, it's Christmas, you know. But Monday-Wednesday, a brief series: What You Do To the Least of These. Until then, the Rude Pundit is taking a mulligan today and tomorrow.

Bush Gets Bitch Slapped by the Constitution:

Imagine the White House, festooned for the holidays, with American flags draped on every wreath like so many soldiers' caskets, with a Curious George model seated below a painting of Mama Babs, the spycams in the giant Nutcrackers, mock-up of Saddam's head atop the Christmas tree. All the things that make a season filled with joy. And why not? A couple of good spinnable numbers on the economy have come in, the fundraising continues at a pace that would allow the Bush campaign to make a Lord of the Rings-like trilogy about Dick and George, everyone's forgotten about that nastiness about WMDs, Congress is out of session so no embarassing need to actually compromise one's monarchical desires. All in all, it looks like it's gonna be Merry Christmas.



And then those goddamn courts just step in and fuck up the whole thing. Let's see how we can re-phrase the Second Circuit Court of Appeals decision saying that not only was U.S. citizen Jose Padilla actually entitled to a lawyer, but the majority stated that he should be charged or set free in 30 days. To recapitulate, the court said, "Say, bitch, yeah, I'm lookin' at you, Rumsfeld, Bush, Ashcroft, you little punk-ass pussy motherfuckers, see we live in a little sumpin' sumpin' called the United States of America, my bitches, and we got us a little sumpin' sumpin' called the Constitution, and one of the reasons that all those old motherfuckers back in the 1700s fought against the British was to prevent shit like detaining citizens without charges. Now, look, bitch, I know, I know, I know we are in a time of big boo bugaboo terrorism and shit, but, goddamn, if you're gonna fuck up the whole motherfuckin' country because you're so bitch-ass scared, then why not just hand the keys to the terrorists now? At least have the balls to go put your begging hands out to the Congress for the power. Now charge that motherfucker Padilla or set him free, or I'm shoving my foot up your adminstrative ass, and then we'll see who's got the dirty bomb." Or words to that effect.



Of course, the Bush adminstration won't back down. This is going to the Supreme Court. This is going to crisis, and, christ, aren't we are just so weary of all the battles, all the crises? In the end, Jose Padilla and, let's go conservative here, over half of the people being held at Guantanamo are less terrorists than losers and dupes who got caught up in a big ass governmental web.



Oh, how Curious George must have run amok in the White House to be so denied his powerful weapons of pen and paper to sign away the lives of Americans. And Dick rolled his eyes and grimaced that grimace he's so good at grimacing as he put on the yellow hat to chase George down from the Christmas tree so he could listen to Treasure Secretary John "Moneybags" Snow read Olive the Other Reindeer.



All in all, the Vice President thought as he pondered the court's decision and opened a bag of pretzels for the wayward, jabbering President, it could be worse. He could be this guy, whose apparent job is to chase around Barney, the White House dog, and film him delightfully shitting on the carpet, the snow, the American flag.

The Rude Pundit Can't Even Wrap His Head Around This One:

Here's how the case against Iraq is like a rape trial. Let's say there's this woman - call her Jane (no symbolic resonance - it's just easy to spell). Jane is a skanky bitch whore who likes to fuck men and then leave them cold, alone, and flaccid. She loves the cock. Can't get enough of it. She loves cock every which way - in her mouth, ass, kooz, hands. Jesus Christ, if you had a small enough dick, she'd let you fuck her ears. She is total fucking nympho - she doesn't distinguish - she'll fuck fat guys, skinny guys, even guys with chicken pox as long as she gets her fill of cock. Everyone who sees her knows she's heading for HIV or worse some day. However, she gets checked, like clockwork, every few months, so she can go forth and fuck some more. But let's say that one night she's kidnapped and drugged and a train is run on her by about thirty guys who, when she's bleeding, begging, sore, and weeping, keep beating and fucking her. And Jane, slut that she is, takes her tired, semen-stained, broken body to the hospital where she is helped to file charges against her assailants. They are arrested, which is satisfying, but a couple of cock-free months later, Jane discovers that she has HIV. At the trial, the defense attorneys are chomping at the bit to talk about her sexual history, much like Kobe Bryant's lawyers; they wanna show that Jane nothing more than a cock monger who finally fucked herself into oblivion. The judge at the trial allows that evidence, and, when the prosecutors tell the judge that Jane has HIV from the rape, after all the years of fucking, and isn't it just awful that not only was she raped, but she got HIV from the event, the judge says, "What's the difference?"



So it goes with George Bush, whose attitude is like the dickhead college frat party guy who's been told that if he keeps snorting coke and skipping classes he'll fail and then it turns out he passes all his classes. Bush apparently has decided that the spin on the whole issue of weapons of mass destruction is to say, "So what?" In what is perhaps the most public of Bush's blatant moves towards an absolutist presidency, in an interview with Diane Sawyer on ABC, the following exchange took place (the Rude Pundit generally refrains from long posted excerpts, but fuck it):



DIANE SAWYER: But let me try to ask — this could be a long question. ... ... When you take a look back, Vice President Cheney said there is no doubt, Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction, not programs, not intent. There is no doubt he has weapons of mass destruction. Secretary Powell said 100 to 500 tons of chemical weapons and now the inspectors say that there's no evidence of these weapons existing right now. The yellow cake in Niger, in Niger. George Tenet has said that shouldn't have been in your speech. Secretary Powell talked about mobile labs. Again, the intelligence — the inspectors have said they can't confirm this, they can't corroborate.



PRESIDENT BUSH: Yet.



DIANE SAWYER: — an active —



PRESIDENT BUSH: Yet.



DIANE SAWYER: Is it yet?



PRESIDENT BUSH: But what David Kay did discover was they had a weapons program, and had that, that — let me finish for a second. Now it's more extensive than, than missiles. Had that knowledge been examined by the United Nations or had David Kay's report been placed in front of the United Nations, he, he, Saddam Hussein, would have been in material breach of 1441, which meant it was a causis belli. And look, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein was a dangerous person, and there's no doubt we had a body of evidence proving that, and there is no doubt that the president must act, after 9/11, to make America a more secure country.



DIANE SAWYER: Again, I'm just trying to ask, these are supporters, people who believed in the war who have asked the question.



PRESIDENT BUSH: Well, you can keep asking the question and my answer's gonna be the same. Saddam was a danger and the world is better off cause we got rid of him.



DIANE SAWYER: But stated as a hard fact, that there were weapons of mass destruction as opposed to the possibility that he could move to acquire those weapons still —



PRESIDENT BUSH: So what's the difference?



DIANE SAWYER: Well —



PRESIDENT BUSH: The possibility that he could acquire weapons. If he were to acquire weapons, he would be the danger. That's, that's what I'm trying to explain to you. A gathering threat, after 9/11, is a threat that needed to be de — dealt with, and it was done after 12 long years of the world saying the man's a danger. And so we got rid of him and there's no doubt the world is a safer, freer place as a result of Saddam being gone.



DIANE SAWYER: But, but, again, some, some of the critics have said this combined with the failure to establish proof of, of elaborate terrorism contacts, has indicated that there's just not precision, at best, and misleading, at worst.



PRESIDENT BUSH: Yeah. Look — what — what we based our evidence on was a very sound National Intelligence Estimate. ...



DIANE SAWYER: Nothing should have been more precise?



PRESIDENT BUSH: What — I, I — I made my decision based upon enough intelligence to tell me that this country was threatened with Saddam Hussein in power.



DIANE SAWYER: What would it take to convince you he didn't have weapons of mass destruction?



PRESIDENT BUSH: Saddam Hussein was a threat and the fact that he is gone means America is a safer country.



DIANE SAWYER: And if he doesn't have weapons of mass destruction [inaudible] —



PRESIDENT BUSH: Diane, you can keep asking the question. I'm telling you — I made the right decision for America —



DIANE SAWYER: But-



PRESIDENT BUSH: — because Saddam Hussein used weapons of mass destruction, invaded Kuwait. ... But the fact that he is not there is, means America's a more secure country.



We can ramble on here and say the difference is over 400 American lives, thousands of injuries, tens of thousands of dead Iraqis (as Mark Morford points out, between war and sanctions, the United States has killed more people in Iraq in the last few years than Saddam could have ever hoped to in his wettest bondage wet dream). We could point out the devastation to the U.S. economy wrought by this policy, the fact that Osama is still out there, the fact that America is not safer at all, and on and on. Nobody on earth, save for a few people on his payroll, would ever believe that it is not an objective good that Saddam Hussein is not in power.



So why does "What's the difference?" go beyond the pale? Because it is such a public declaration of contempt for any opposing viewpoint. Because "What's the difference" means that nothing the President says matters if the outcome is one that can be spun into higher poll numbers. Because "What's the difference" is the attitude of those who will act on their own behalf without regard for greater good. Because "What's the difference" said on a national interview without any fear of recriminations from the statement means that we can be lied to and those in power can count on our complacency as long as they can make present images of a degraded enemy to us. Because, in the end, "What's the difference" means that the powerful don't understand democracy and don't care because neither do the rest of us.



Who is Jane in this equation? Who is the HIV-infected rape victim? Is it Iraq? Under Saddam or after? Is it the American public? The Constitution, which is suffocating behind glass in Washington and threatens to become another tattered, yellowed vestige of history?

From Mandingo 2: Strom's Story(A Romance of the Old New South):

"Young Strom Thurmond was a tall, thin man who, at 22, had a shiny diploma in horticulture from Clemson, and he was in the prime of his thrusting sexual desires, unsure where to put his constantly hard cock. It was 1924, when propriety kept the pearly gates of white bliss slammed shut like the door of the death chamber in the state prison. Oh, the young white debutante girls at the Edgefield County cotillion kept their pure, hymen-covered twats hidden from prying fingers, tongues, and penises until marriage or at least the promise of one with a large ring. Where was a young man to turn for testicular release? Strom's best buddies, Jed and Jesse, had already been squirting their man juice between the caramel-colored thighs of the servants who worked for their parents. Between them, they had fathered three mulattoes, two quadroons, and one cute little pickaninny octaroon.



"Strom was unable to stand it, every night in his room, the flicker of the new-fangled electrical lamp creating shadows, dark shadows, curvy shadows on his wall. Every night he would hold his engorged meat in his hand and masturbate furiously to the image, dreaming of Carrie Butler, the 16 year-old negress who worked for his parents. Ah, the handkerchiefs hidden under the mattress, sticky with Strom's budding love. Why, all the white men took a fine negress as their fuck toys. It was practically one's right as a young man in South Carolina. Better to take out your animal lusts on the plump, curvaceous ass of the house niggers than on the delicate sensibilities of the white women.



"Strom knew that Carrie was a lusty wench, the way she stared at him while she scrubbed the floors and cleaned the chamber pots. Young, strapping Strom knew that Carrie's stare meant so much more than "Don't step there - I just mopped that spot." That stare meant hunger, thunder, and lightning. It bore a message of sex: I am here for the taking. When I bend over to pick your soiled underwear off the floor, I want you to take me from behind. When I am kneading bread for hours on end, I'm imagining it's your manhood between my palms. My sweat is not the dripping of labor; it is the heat from within me, within my black African heart, drumming for white cock invading my wet cunt.



"Such stare-invitations are not to be taken lightly, even in 1924, even as young Strom was on his way to becoming a farmer and teacher. One night, a humid night when the smell of crushed, wet magnolia was the perfume of pussy, when the crickets in the cotton fields sounded like they might pierce the sky, they gave into their lusts. "Pleasure me, you ebony wench," Strom announced to the young Carrie, shaking with obvious clitoral glee. Strom made barn animal noises as he rammed himself against Carrie's prone figure. Screaming "Call me Tom Jefferson!" as he came, and the promise of "The South will rise again" in response to Carrie asking if he was done. Strom loved watching her unabashed tears of joy as she pulled her skirts down and headed back to the kitchen."



When Carrie announced that she was pregnant with his love child, Strom did what any upstanding white man with an eye for a future in politics would do. He had the child sent out of state and paid her for decades to keep her silent as he did what any upstanding white man would do in the South, in the first half of the 20th century, and worked to keep the nigras in their place. And now we can all wonder what might have happened to young Strom if baby Essie Mae had spoken out in the last eight decades. We can wonder if young Strom would have held onto his place in Congress, propelled by hate, decayed by age, mad with denial, like the South.

Howard Dean Doesn't Give a Shit What You Say:

The Rude Pundit doesn't endorse candidates. He tells you who's a jerk and who's a mensch. As far as the Rude Pundit can remember, Democratic candidate for President Howard Dean has never in his life made a speech or statement that would seem to indicate his deep, abiding man love for Saddam Hussein. As far as the Rude Pundit is aware, Dean has never met and shaken hands with the former dictator, now electroshocked pin cushion. And the Rude Pundit is pretty sure that Dean's father never belonged to an administration that coddled Hussein, even after the chemical weapons attack in 1983. Finally, the Rude Pundit is fairly certain that Dean never said that Iraqi people deserve long-term suffering at the hands of a crazed tyrant and his murdering sons. And if he did, you can be fairly certain that Joe Lieberman or Fox News would have broadcast it loudly.



But Dean is being condemned everywhere for daring to be against the war, and the basic spin is that Dean's candidacy is in trouble now that we got Saddam. It comes from the other viable candidates. It comes from everywhere on the right: from Fred Barnes, among others. And it's not even to mention the batshit insane column by Robert "The Leakkeeper" Novak accusing Dean of everything from witchcraft to child molestation or using molested children's bones to make witchcraft.



What's going on here is natural and unnatural, like Dick Cheney fucking Lynne with his "penis" on the dais at the VP residence. It's part of the natural cycle of the media's oath of fealty to all things Bush. And thank god something happened to continue the kneeling devotion. What's unnatural is that there's very few places to offer correctives to this image of Dean as being rabidly pro-Saddam. The cruel lies told with malice about Gore are likely to continue in a Dean nomination. The Daily Howler site is devoted like a monk to revealing all ways in which Gore was slandered by the press.



Dean's a tough little fucker, though. When he decides on his stand, he won't back down. Even after his "major" foreign policy speech yesterday, even after being attacked by the other Democrats, who are desperate to dent the armor, Dean would not back down. Angry? Fuck, yeah. And the one thing your "pundits" are missing about Dean's anger, which they see as a liability, is that angry people vote. It's what swept in Newt Gingrich and his cronies. It's what swept out Bush I.



Let the Democratic candidates go after each other now. Let them eviscerate each other and chew on each others' guts with a viciousness that makes wolverines seem like delicate, dainty diners. Because in the next round awaits Karl Rove, and he's grinning like a mad surgeon with a scalpel and an unconscious hobo. And any little blemishes that are hidden below the surface, Rove will slice out and reveal, calling a benign mole cancer and laughing as the patient dies from the open wound.



Depressing reading of the day: From U.S. News and World Report, our government in hiding.

Ironic, Huh?

That the day before Wesley Clark testifies against Slobodan Milosevic, thus looking like a President and like a soldier standing up to a tyrant, we capture Saddam? Conspiracy theorists, start your blogs.

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