Your Defense Dollars at Work....Selling Cocaine

More shit for Ronald Dumsfeld to answer for: the FBI recently rounded up a passel of military recruiters in Arizona who were not only helping potential enlistees cheat on aptitude tests but they were also sprinkling nose candy around their localities. The ugly truth here.

Random Thoughts

With the Iraq war going about as well as a French defensive maneuver, there were some wiseasses who remarked that it would be better just to put deposed dictator Saddam Hussein back into power. That ain't gonna happen, but here is the next best thing, I guess. It will be interesting to see how this one blows up in Turbo's face.

And while that bit of less than satisfying news is out, here is an indication that John "The Escalator" McCain is going to risk losing Afghanistan, where the actual 9/11 terrorists hid out, so that he can send 30,000 more troops to get bogged down in Operation Qwagmire. Osama Bin Laden must think that McCain is Bush's comedy writer or something because I'm sure he had a good chuckle over that one.

Not that funny, though, is that Bush, in what should probably be called Operation Save My Legacy, may decide to join McCain in suggesting more troops be dropped into Iraq. Talk about sociopathically selfish.

However, the rats are really deserting him as his poll numbers make mole-like and dig deeper holes.

The irony for me is that incoming Speaker of the House Nancy, "I need a visit from the clue patrol at committee nomination time" Pelosi is going to create a new intelligence oversight committee. Hmmm....Bush? Intelligence? Talk about no there there. Is it grounds for impeachment if they find no intelligence at Camp Clusterfuck? Or is it just for seeing that the non-existent intelligence is deployed where it can least hurt the republic?

Surely another sign of deficient intelligence is that we are now going to help motherfucking commie China with its nuclear reactor program. Chris Cox has his fingerprints on this somewhere. He has been the biggest Chinese collaborator since we tried to prop up the heinous Chang "Peanut" Kai-shek after WWII. The last super computer sale to that country was under Cox' auspices.

In Japan, being in the Jieitai, or Self Defence Force, is imbued with the coolness level that is associated in the U.S. with losers who spend their time playing Dungeons and Dragons. But now that the education system is about to get more outwardly patriotic, it will be interesting to see if that changes. It is hard to believe, though, that Japan will create a military establishment large enough to project any power because it is better economically to allow the U.S. to do it for them. That is not to mention that both China and the Koreas will shit their collective pants and thereby heighten diplomatic tensions in Asia.

Call the Tim Johnson situation "a stroke of ghoulishness."

Show of hands time: did any of you care about how long it took the state of Florida to dispatch a death row inmate this past week? Me neither.

And may Castro be in agony as he makes his way to that eternal farm.

Not scheduled for a trip to the boneyard but maybe just to get boned is Judith Regan, jet setting slut (well, maybe not, but one gets that impression from her appearances on Howard Stern's show) and O.J. Simpson ("murderers are the new black and he's even black," she must have thought) stenographer. She was told to take a hike by Rupert Murdoch, the Chinese Polituburo piss boy, and his Harper Collins outfit for, get this, embarrassing the company that pinched off the rightwing propaganda mill Faux Nooz. Maybe the Chinese didn't like her.

Your hydrochloric herald has about as much use for a record executive as he would a collection of Wayne Newton's best bowel movements, but an exception to that is Atlantic Records honcho Ahmet Ertegun, who passed away at 83 after, now check this out, falling off the stage at a Rolling Stones show. Yes, it was only rock and roll but he liked it.

Ford Readying One Last Pratfall

It really is sad that Peter Boyle died recently. Anyone who remembers his performance in the hilarious Young Frankenstein would realize that he would have been perfect to play another stiff, Gerald Ford, who stumbled into the presidency and never ceased tripping up until Jimmy Carter elbowed him out in 1976. Now it appears that Ford is about to be sent packing again, this time in an expensive wooden box amid way too much fanfare.

Yeah, "Mayaguez Gerry" gave us lots of laughs, whether it was lining balls into the backs of the heads of golf partners or deciding that the answer for the inflation problem was printing up buttons that urged, "whip inflation now," he was one of a kind. The sad thing is that Prez Turbo makes him look like freakin' George Washington. But I digress.

Longtime has been Chevy Chase, a pompous ass who had one of the worst talk shows of all time (maybe only Magic Johnson's was more pitiful), has Ford to thank for his career, such as it was. Too bad they can't throw Chase into the same casket with Gerry so that you could see off two no talents for the price of one.

How Do I Hate the State of Washington? Let Me Count the Ways

The people of Washington like to position themselves as cosmopolitan sophisticates who are yet rugged enough for the great outdoors. That is patent bullshit. Once you get outside of Seattle (San Francisco for Dummies), the rest of the state is one big Riverside County, a bunch of rednecks who are in the habit of giving aid and comfort to rightwing wackos. Think of it as Arkansas without the accent.

Thursday, there was a relatively gusty windstorm with shortlived severe rainfall. No big deal for those of us from California, who have seen this before. That also rarely impacts the power grid in the Golden State. The longest power failure I have ever experienced was during the Northridge quake, which was in the 7.0 range, when we didn't have electricity for all of about three hours.

Unfortunately, Washington's infrastructure is rather fragile, as this report will show. So not only did the power go out twice for extended periods, but my cable and broadband connections disappeared for a day and a half. Thank you Comcast, you fucking assholes.

This isn't the first time that we have experienced this stuff when the wind gets up around 40mph, something that happens in California with the infamous brushfire aiding Santa Anas. Thank the deity of your choice that we don't have hurricanes or tornadoes here. We would be left with something resembling what Iraqis are now dealing with.

Which has spurred me to enumerate why if you are contemplating moving to this joke of a state you should think twice:

1). The women are absolute beasts. Maybe because I grew up around hot surfer babes in southern California I am spoiled, but shit, I haven't seen this much white trash in my life. Half of them look like they are addicted to meth and yet are still fat. WTF? Plus most of them sport ugly tattooes. Sorry, but I like women who don't look like longshoremen.

And if that weren't enough, single motherhood is a plague here, as every girl over the age of 20 has already popped one out and is either on food stamps or WICK until the lazy cunt can sucker some poor soul into knocking her up again so he can have the pleasure of financing her lifestyle. Washington chicks are nasty. Stay away from them. Date foreign women instead.

2). This state hates men. Anyone who gets married here is an outright fool. The system is so rigged for an easy payday for any lazy ass bitch that wants one. For example, let's say you start dating a single mother. There is actually a law in Washington that says that if you have been with her more than six months a judge can rule that her kid has bonded with you and badda bing badda boom, you are on the hook for child support even though you are not the biological father. The Washington bar is chock a block with feminazi judges and their pussywhipped male sympathizers. Every male has a bullseye painted on his back here.

3). In addition to the weakness of the power grid and lack of resiliency in the product supplied by the broadband providers, you can pretty much hear the roads chewing up your tires as you drive over them they are in such bad shape. Which provokes me to observe....

4). The road system was designed by George W. Bush. Okay, Bush would have trouble finding the ends of a straight line, but you would not believe how asymmetrical the roads are. You're tooling down the road and you miss your offramp, so you think, "no big deal, I'll just hit the next ramp and then get back on the freeway toward my destination." Much too logical. You might have to go miles and struggle to figure out where the signs are attempting to point you to because of where they just seemingly stick them up with no mind that real motorists need to use them. For tourists, Washington is hell to navigate. Sincerely, the folks who assembled the road system were sucking down doses of microdot while they were in the planning stages.

In addition, when you are driving down a road and don't make the turn when you need to you might not be able to do a u-turn to head back for several miles. It is unbelievable. You have to see it to believe it, but bring blood pressure medicine with you. And tourists, just go somewhere else. There isn't that much to see here anyway. And if you don't get to those sites early enough there will be no place to park. It's a fucking nightmare.

5). You think radio is generally bad pretty much everywhere (it is), but radio in Washington is flat unlistenable. The one saving grace is a sports station that is semi-decent, which makes it well ahead of sports talk in L.A., which is is an absolute joke.

6). Drunken driving and meth use rates you would not believe. This has made Tacoma, for example, one of the highest crime cities in the entire west. Plus we seem to have more serial killers per capita than anywhere else.

7). High food prices.

8). The freeway speed limit is 60mph and the highest street limit is 40mph. Yep, you guessed it, that is designed to drive up the rate of ticketed speeding violations. The Washington state patrol isn't so much about public safety as it is preoccupied shaking down the public.

9). The music that made the state famous most recently was grunge, but it perhaps should have been dubbed "dinge," because the entire state seems enveloped in a shroud of it. The state motto should be, "everything moldier than everything else."

10). Idiot governors. Gary Locke, a Chinese-American Democrat, actually thought, and I quote, that farming out some of the state's welfare bureaucracy to India, no, not Indiana, but the land of the Taj Mahal, "was a good bargain for taxpayers."

Then when he left, we got man hating psycho bitch Christine Gregoire to front for the Democrats, which made me seriously contemplate voting Republican for the first time in my life. Until the GOP, bless their black hearts, put airheaded dickface Dino Rossi. So I voted for the psycho bitch because at least she kind of has a brain. Instead, I refused to vote for another conniving misandryst (that is to men what misogyny is to women), Deborah Senn, for state Attorney General. I left my ballot blank in that race because Rob McKenna was just another GOP ubertwat. Voters didn't like Senn, either, and so McKenna, who is a douchebag, is now making the state's law enforcement decisions.

11). There are no jobs here. Well, at least if you want to make a real living. Your basic choices are the government, Boeing, fast food or retail. That is it. The logging industry is about dead and you have to be connected to get a job at the ports.

12). If you want to be invasively interrogated by customs coming back from overseas, fly into Sea-Tac, which has the surliest agents I have ever run across and they ask questions that are none of their fucking business. If you remember recent reports about how foreign tourists don't feel welcome in the U.S. well, Sea-Tac is one reason why.

That is exacerbated by the high rate of baggage theft (piece of advice: don't ever fly Alaska) and the fact that the airport itself is an architectural monstrosity.

13). Next to NYC, the rudest place I have ever been is Washington. In L.A., people might not like you but at least they can fake being nice. At least when they don't ignore you or choose to whip out a pistol and plug you. But in Washington, it seems like everybody here is looking for some kind of confrontation. It could be that they are angry about being forced to spend all their lives here or they're agitated because they haven't had their daily meth or crack yet. This whole state needs anger management courses.

Now you may be asking why don't I move. I would. But going back to California is more expensive than I can handle. Housing is still relatively reasonable (provided that you want to live at least an hour away from Seattle) and I own my house free and clear thanks to California housing prices compared to here.

So those of you still in California, stay put or you will be sorry. Washington is a shithole. The tv show Frazier ostensibly took place in Seattle but it was shot in L.A. Think about why that may be. A lot of California's problems can be cleared up by dealing honestly and decisively with the illegal immigration issue. Washington is beyond hope.

Sunday Morning Bringdown

You may have noted that I blasted the recent U.S.-Indian nuclear deal because of the contradictory diplomatic signals it sends to our ally on the war on terrorism, Pakistan (where Osama is probably hiding out at the moment Howard Hughes-like). Secretary of State Tokenette Rice (or "Clueless Condi"), gushed about the pact as only she can. You may observe that the terms of the agreement weren't disclosed in this article. However, this piece asserts that it has been criticized as a threat to non-proliferation efforts. No shit Sherlock!

While India has been a democracy, it has often been on the brink of political chaos and there is a good deal of infighting between ethnic and religious groups. That isn't exactly a great security environment in which to help them with their nuke program.

A hardy "fuck you!" to Henry Hyde, who was the main culprit in making this come to pass and to the idiot Democrats who went along with it.

As if that werent' bad enough, the fuckin' morons in Louisiana voted William Jefferson back into office in a runoff election. What the bejesus does it take there to get voters attention? A hundred grand in the icebox ain't bizarre enough for y'all?

There was some grousing in the comments section of Americablog that the Republicans might have mobilized to return Jefferson to Washington in order to embarrass the incoming Democrat majority. I wouldn't put it past those motherfuckers (look at Lieberman's being permitted to darken the Senate for another term as an example), but it is also indicative of the crisis of morality in America's black communities. Maxine Waters, Marion Barry, and now Jefferson. I hope you enjoy all the negative attention black caucus!

I also want to know what the fuck the Clinton Administration was thinking when they bugged Princess Diana. Unless her main squeeze, the weedy Dodi Fayed, was associated with terrorism, this isn't exactly the greatest diplomatic thing a nation can do to an ally.

Yet, the reaction to this was curiously muted in the London Times, once one of the finest newspapers in the world but which has since become another in a line of Rupert Murdoch fishwraps. This report doesn't mention the U.S. spying at all and a columnist tells Britain to "get over it" in relation to Diana's death.

One wonders if Murdoch was playing up to PM Tony Blair by not having the country's newspaper of record make a stink about the bugging. It becomes weirder when you consider that the news of the bugging was on the NY Post's site, another Murdoch echo chamber, and London Times rival the Observer wrote about it.

However, the British-based Reuters News Service also skipped mentioning the bugging. In fact, it only offered a cursory bit about the drunken state of her driver and in a not very prominent way. The BBC, the government tv outlet, also omitted anything about the wiretapping. Make of that what you will.

As a side note, British pols are being urged to drop the phrase, "war on terror" because it makes people in the Muslim world angry. Boo fucking hoo. What pc bullshit that is.

Not every pc, though, is that Neil Bush and the Carlyle Group are very friendly with a sheik who is being accused by the U.S. of being a trader in child slaves. Not that anyone should be suprised.

On another "with friends like these" tip, is this. Try not to laugh too loudly.

On the other hand, the Saudis are now saying that the Middle East is about to explode into regional warfare at least partially thanks to Bush's incompetent handling Iraq. Call him The Firestarter. The next time you dumbasses decide to vote for one of your own take a look at the situation in the Middle East and how Boy George screwed it up even more than it already was. If you still pull the lever for a retard please blow your brains out afterward and get yourself out of the gene pool, okay? This is a guy who confuses the words "vision" and "delusion."

Remember back in Vietnam when the NLF (the bad guys) were basically able to amble into Saigon and buy weapons off of street corners and mosey back into the battlefield with them? Deja vu!

Meanwhile, Bush's economic magic is absolutely delighting travelers who take foreign vacations. Well, maybe not.

Adding to that is the Cambodianization of Central Africa.

I have stopped buying CD's. It has been three years now since my last purchase. Aside from the prices just being too damned high, the fact that they are now often loaded with code that prevents them from being played on my laptop or pc really hocked me off. This was before the Rootkit controversy, which further strengthened my resolve to forego buying recorded music. I now just listen to Live 365, which is an internet radio site with thousands of individual stations, tons of which are better than anything that terrestrial radio can offer, or utilize my already extant collection. But now it appears the record industry might finally be getting a clue regarding this matter. It's about fucking time.

Now for the idiotic lawsuit of the day award. How ghoulish is THAT? Their claim is not only specious, it is insulting to those who died. Now they are attempting to capitalize on the incident. What rat bastards.

If you're a sexual predator, Washington state's health care system is your paradise, as this pathetic reports informs us.

Hey, you think the Japanese are feeling pretty good about that report having to do with condoms produced to international size standards being too big for Indian pricks? The Japanese have a huge inferiority complex when it comes to the U.S., one of them centering on penis size. This, in fact, was parodied in an episode of South Park. So while India has some pretty damned fabulous food, it isn't a place you want to go if you're a woman or a gay male seeking a good bit of stuffing.

But you Americans celebrating your relative weenie wealth need to know this, too: many Japanese women complain that the members of U.S. males are often too funyafunya (soft and floppy) to be enjoyed internally, a contrast to their native land's gents, who may stick out a little less but do so with more firmness.

Now for a Musical Interlude

Check this out if you hate the war and Bush.

Random Thoughts

First, to dispel a rumor, Christmas is not engaging in a ballistic mistle toe buildup to answer the war on it.

Now for a plug: go to the Minor Ripper blog and scroll down to see how the U.S. military is making friends and influencing people among Iraqi motorists. It's a little reminiscent of what happened in South Korea a couple of years back when an American tank crushed a schoolgirl, setting off an absolutely vicious firestorm of controversy there. The average Korean does not want anybody's army there except its own, but recognizes that they are, for the time being, in a relationship of convenience with the U.S. to combat the North Korean Communist threat.

Time to get the wallets open and go after pantomime Republican moderate Susan Collins. Representative Tom Allen has thrown down the gauntlet for Democrats and we need to ensure that he helps cushion our majority in that chamber.

So anybody see the story of a student who was suspended for faking putting some candy up his nose? Yes, you read that correctly. Again, it proves that the administrators are the most useless individuals on any school campus. But it gets even more bizarre from there.

Now Bush thinks that he is dictator of the world. He is so divorced from reality that it doesn't even want alimony. It is just glad to get away from him. And he is more isolated right now than a Taco Bell burrito in the break room of the Center for Disease Control.

Anti-white bigot Spike Lee is now going to make a movie about the Rodney King riots. No word if Representative Maxine Waters, another bigot, and former city councilman Mark "my people won't riot" Thomas will have a part in it. Waters still calls it "an insurrection" and not an orgy of death and destruction where gangs of blacks, much like the Ku Klux Klan in an earlier time, went after Korean-American merchants in downtowm L.A. No doubt, Lee will whitewash the blatantly racist behavior by blacks and blame it all on whitey. God, he's disgusting.

To you assholes out there who are buying Hewlett-Packard computers, why? They are shit. And here is another reason you should bypass them.

Now it's time for our math corner, but put those calculators away, it isn't that type of math. Here is the problem: Pakistan is our ally in the war on terror. They have been in conflict with neighboring India for decades and the issue has often threatened to go nuclear. So what does the Bush Administration do? Of course! Send more nuclear technology to India! Boy, he just knows how to strike the right diplomatic chords, doesn't he? Not to mention that security in India is about as firm as Bob Dole's cock.

Hillary Clinton is definitely running for president. How do you know? Because she is getting involved in bullshit video game content issues in order to play up to the religious gapejaws out there. So let's see: we got a war we're about to lose at great cost to the economy and military preparedness not to mention those who were killed and wounded there, problems with funding the schools and government corruption and Hillary is preoccupied with video games for fuck's sake! She might want to see this article, too, which suggests that her taking part in this could leave people cold.

Look, there shouldn't be any ratings at all for tv, movies, music or video games. You can read the fucking reviews and determine whether you should go see or buy the item in question. We don't need a bunch of out of touch old ladies from motherfucking Iowa telling us what we should be able to consume. It is none of their business.

This is all part of the GOP war on adults, be it getting Howard Stern off the air, attempting to limit the availability of porno or now video games. Just shut the fuck up and mind your own business you twats! We shouldn't have to live in a world where seven year olds are the artistic arbiters.

Really, I would like to see the Democrats target Waters, the Saddam of South Central, for defeat because she is, let's face it, just a blackfaced Strom Thurmond with a tits and a pussy. But I doubt that Howard Dean would have the stones for it.

Now back to more conventional bigotry: while the usual GOP hatemongers are decrying Mary Cheney deciding to have a baby, The Advocate is worried about what the kid will face gorwing up since its grandpa is a big enabler for anti-gay mountebanks.

While reading this article, keep in mind that Taylor's dad and devil with a priestly collar on Pat Robertson are each other's BFF. Again, religion about power and wealth, not spirituality.

Now for a bit of fun, see how a British general is getting his clock cleaned in the media for trying to go from Bush/Blair poodle to crusader.

And how much you wanna bet that the anti-semites in the religious right are going off on a decision by conservative Jews to recognize gay rabbis? And I had to post a link to a Time Magazine article on the subject just for the headline, which is a howler.

Blogger Mark Byron had this observation about the move by the Jewish organization: "I've got the New Yawk Jewish mom sound bite-"I'd have hoped he'd have married a nice Jewish girl, but at least he's marrying a Jew." You might also want to check out Steve Gimbel's reaction as well at Philospher's Playground.

For a more thoughtful view on the conflicts within Judaism about the issue, see Pillage Idiot.

Meanwhile, on the roads of Washington state....

And somebody call Dr. Phil and have him try to get major league baseball owners from shopping like drunken sailors on shore leave. They just gave nobody Mariners pitcher Gil Meche a five year, $55 million deal and he has a career ERA of 4.65! Julio Lugo, a pretty good but hardly superstar shortstop, is now taking in something like $9 million. All the owners are Republicans and are thus genetically incapable of sticking to a budget. Now do you understand why we have the swollen budget deficits we do? Mamma mia!

And a Child Shall Lead Them....Into the Valley of Death

When Floyd R. Turbo Bush was appointed by the Supreme Court to be President, the tv punditocracy crowed that, finally, the grownups were back at the White House after what they saw as the youthful excesses and lack of respect for the office by former President Bill Clinton and his staff. Indeed, "Quisling Chris" Matthews used those very words to describe the incoming administration.

Another NBC newscarney, Tim Russert, went to a White House party flashing a "Bush for President" pin he had under one of his lapels to Republican bigwigs. The rumor on the hill was that Matthews was angling for the press secretary's job and one has no doubt that so was Russert.

And that is before you get to the pro-government Faux Nooz, which was a virtual informercial outlet for Boy George specifically and the GOP in general.

Well, we are about to wrap up 2006 and it is apparent that I was right about Turbo when I remarked back in 2001 that there was something awfully childish about him. That culminated Thursday in the Iraq Study Group report that was not only a repudiation of Bush's handling of the war, but it tacitly undercut all the talking heads who had basically flacked for what will go down as by far the lowest collection of creeps, knaves and boobs to ever be handed the reigns of power to the greatest country in world history.

Ultimately, what is at the heart of this is Turbo boy, the neo-Romanov retard. What all the professional political blabbers and conservative camp followers backed wasn't an adult man, but an arrested adolescent, and with catastrophic consequences at that.

During his presidential campaign, H. Ross Perot spoke of "the crazy aunt in the basement," which was the ballooning budget deficit that was threatening American economic stability and yet nobody was seriously attempting to get a handle on it.

The Bush family's equivalent to that was Turbo. He apparently had some learning difficulties as a child and they weren't helped that much by his boorish, drunken battleaxe of a mother. So he was never much of a student and not particularly athletic, either, a contrast to his father, who played first base at Yale after serving in WWII, and his brother, Jeb, who was considered to be the most intellectually gifted of the Scanner and Battleaxe offspring (which resultd in Binghampton Press and Sun Bulletin writer David Rossie to remark, "being the brightest Bush boy is a little like being the most talented oboe player in Logan, Ohio.") and who got involved in banking after he took a degree in Latin American Studies. Jeb also registered for the draft, but wasn't called up.

By contrast, Turbo, an indifferent student, could only be a cheerleader and had to depend on daddy not only for his slot at Yale, but to save his ass from going to Vietnam by arranging a phony baloney position in the Texas Air National Guard during years which were mostly fuled by large amounts of alcohol and cocaine. When he attempted to get involved in the oil business his father's business buddies, which included members of the Saudi royal family, were there to bail him out when the ventures failed.

The same proved true in how Turbo became a millionaire, as Bush crony Tom Hicks brought him on board to help run the Texas Rangers, after which he sold his interest in the ballclub for a handsome amount.

While this perhaps improved his economic position, it was still evident that he still felt that he would forever be consigned to the kid's table at Thanksgiving dinner. A run for office that predated his involvement with the Rangers saw him get spanked.

He subsequently met his now wife, Laura, who basically became his surrogate mother, converting him to religion (kind of like how Jeb had gone from being a Protestant to a Catholic at the urging of his Mexican spouse) and getting him to, as the story would have it, forego the booze.

Nonetheless, even after making all that cash with Texas, Bush continued to surround himself with his daddy's buddies, even when he was named President of the United States. This should have set off all kinds of alarm bells for two reasons: one, these guys were all a bunch of thieves; two, it exhibited how Bush has trouble standing on his own two feet. In other words, he was now in Washington D.C. but had never truly moved away from home.

Unfortunately, when you go from running a parochial state such as Texas to a boisterous democracy of 300 million, it was soon evident that Bush was over his head. Lobbyists wrote most of the Congressional legislation for the GOP and all Bush had to do was rubber stamp it. But when it came to having to deal with the hardcore nitty gritty of issues when meeting with his advisers, he retreated into a fantasy world. The No Child Left Behind Act was the most insidious of the Bush fairy tales, federalizing the education system (not entirely a bad thing in itself as there needs to be some kind of national uniformity therein, but when you don't fund it the whole thing creates havoc) while not lending school systems the financial help they need to make it have a chance of working.

He continued to insist that he was a "uniter, not a divider," even as the GOP setup the most vicious propaganda apparatus in American history, and remained on vacation at his Crawford haberdashery (all hats, no cattle) while New Orleans was being destroyed by Republican neglect. The firestorm of criticism that engendered put Turbo back into photo op mode, as he was apparently convinced that they can salve over any resentment, something he has repeated in his trips to Iraq even as he presided, Nero-like, over the distaster that evolved into. Adivsers, not wanting to lose their cushy political perks, increasingly resorted to telling Turbo wanted to hear, a situation resembling that of the Joe Stalin administration.

And it is the folly of Iraq that will go down as Bush's biggest fiasco. Again, he called on his dad's buddies, Colin Powell and Ronald Dumbsfeld, to try to one up Scanner's successful campaign (though we lost the peace in that deal) to expel Saddam Hussien out of Kuwait.

Bush then engaged in one of the most laughable if it weren't so tragic photo ops in U.S. history when he threw that "Mission Accomplished" wingding dressed in a flightsuit, leading some of his critics to dub him, "commander codpiece."

The rationale for the second Iraq War was deeply flawed, attacking it in the name of the war on terrorists who had aided the 9/11 incidents, who were based in Afghanistan. Jon Stewart of the Daily Show later compared this to erecting a dam in Arkansas to deal with the flooding from Katrina, another sign of Turbo's childlike delusional tendencies.

It degnerated from there, as the administration, totally ignorant of Iraqi culture and history, ended up enabling sectarian warfare that escalated into full on civil war. 3,000 American and untold hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilian dead later, Scanner's friend James Baker, headed up a commission that excoriated Turbo's handling of the conflict and urged that the U.S. negotiate with two members of what Turbo had cartoonishly slammed as "the axis of evil," Iran and Syria.

Faced with his glum development, Bush once more crawled back into his fantasy world, where "we are winning the war in Iraq."

Inevitably, Bush has now set up the conditions for one of the great massacres since the Rwandan Genocide or the war in the Balkans. His dad isn't going to be able to help him out of that. That will be his legacy. All because he was coddled by Scanner and then tried to live up to what dad did.

This will also be the legacy of those who spurred Bush on, be it Rich Lowry, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Bill Frist, Karl Rove, Russert, Matthews, David Brooks, Bob Novak, Joe Lieberman, Jerry Falwell, James Dobson, you name 'em, you know who they are. Treat them as if they were Nazi collaborators who created the atmosphere that raised this little man to the most powerful position on earth and got us a humiliating defeat that is also a defeat for civilization and progress.

Americablog Verbal Plays of the Day

Culled from Americablog:

Yo quiero . . . STOMACH PUMP. (That Taco Bell Chihuahua)

Hey, look on the bright side of things. Gay marriage has been kept out of Iraq! Mission Accomplished. (Lostw)

Why do the Alps HATE AMERICA??? (PattyP)

The Alps have a WELL-KNOWN liberal bias. We should have known they were up to no good when they allowed those liberal troublemakers, the Von Trapp family, to safely escape Austria.
(Pope Buck I)

Clearly, if the Alps are not with us, then they are against us. (Jump to the Left)

Bouquets of eidelweiss and boxes of chocolate await their liberators! (Ellie)

[On a story about a woman finding a bat in a Christmas tree]: Proof that nature is evil and hates America - Wildlife joins the War on Christmas! (PattyP)

when do they start blaming Clinton for the alps? (evangenita)

I am now convinced that Snow has something to do with the Alp coverup. (Jump to the Left)

I've done a fair bit of mountin' in my time. Lately, I've become a bit of a slope-poke.
(evangenital)

Here's my campaign: "Support gay marriage. Because no good Christian watches lesbian porn with unmarried actresses." (SkippyFlipjack)

The chimp is known for his own radioactive element - balonium 69. at least 30% of the u.s. population has been exposed, with lethal results expected. (evangenital)

Personally, instead of watching [Bush] drag his ass on the lawn, I would rather see him plant his ass on the grass and spin in circles like some dogs with worms do... It would be the most entertaining thing the sick wankstain would ever do! And poppy could be on hand to cry while Pickles pops valiums and swills vodka. (rikc)

Come on now, where would a twinkie be without partially hydrogenated vegetable oil?
(Nosybear). In Mark Foley's bedroom? Ooh, did I just write that? (Mr. Acid). Might be a sore twinky, though...(Nosybear). Did foley use vegetable oil to loosen up those twinkies?
(evangenital).

As far as weight gain goes, the LARD helps those who help themselves. (evangenita)

Wanna bet they find Al Qaeda on Mars? (John Aravosis)

Random Thoughts

Hedge fund head's political connections insulating him from a subpoena in another case of Bush Administration corruption.

Amid rising deficits, an Iraq civil war, global warming, financially struggling schools and unresolved immigration issues, the Turbo will divert attention and monster amounts of money by taking us to the Moon. Look, I have always been a proponent of space exploration, but this is the wrong thing to do at this time.

To add to the fun, out of date computing technology is hampering the space shuttle Discovery.

And if that wasn't enough nonsense for you, the Pentagon is looking the other way when it comes to drug trafficking in Afghanistan.

And how do you like the idea of Rick Santorum as our next U.S. Ambassador? Nooooooooooooooooo!

How about the Bush Administration peering into your email inbox?

Well, here we go again. The bakamono (idiots) that be at JASRAC, the body that oversees music publishing in Japan, has sent another complaint to You Tube about copyrighted material fans are posting on that venerable website even though it provides a forum for wide exposure of JPop, JRock, etc, that the record companies in the Land of the Rising Sun wouldn't ordinarily have access to. They also want a message posted in Japanese that the fans, who are only trying to show off what they think is cool to interested parties, may be prosecuted for doing this. Yeah, that will win you favor among the young. Hey assholes, you fucks have no credibility with teens and young adults at all. They are much more willing to hear what their peers think about something than the bullshit asserted by your advertising departments. Just shut the fuck up and let fans do your work for you. I mean, as soon as you are hired by a major company do they fit you with blinders right at the outset? It appears so.

On a little more visionary note, you have this in Britain.

In a less sanitary development, Taco Bell's "run for the border" has become "head for the bathroom."

Others, though, head for the drug store to get high on cough medicine. Ugh! The first I heard that you could get a buzz off of cold remedies was more than 20 years ago, when a young coworker was doing it. But c'mon, cough medicine? Do they realize how lame and dorky THAT looks? Give me a break.

Also lame as hell is Vicente Padilla being given more than $11 million a year after not doing all that much during his career while Ted Lilly, who got into a fist fight with his skipper last season with Toronto when he was pulled after getting drilled by the opposition, is lining up a four year, $10 million per contract. What the fuck is THAT? Geez, mommas late your boys grow up to be journeyman pitchers.

On another athletics note, after getting beat by UCLA and having their national title hopes dashed last weekend, USC got creamed at College Bowl and then went to UCLA to enhance its rather suspect academic quality.

Financial and racial follies at the liberal L.A. City Council. Bernard Parks, the incompetent former police chief, is now a councilman? God help them all.

But then again, the California's Gropenfuhrer is going to do everything for his party that Bush did for Iraq, rip it asunder and create internecine warfare.

Those of you tired of airport screening lines might want to look at this.....

As the line of abusive Catholic priests lengthens.

And in L.A., Archbishop Roger "Phony" Mahoney is waxing Dick Cheney with regard to settlement of abuse claims.

California Democratic Assemblyman Merv "the scurv" Dymally has always been a little shady and, well, there he goes again.

OC Catholic High School a Pedophiliac Haven---and the School Covered it Up

Unfreaking believable, but it is the Catholic Church we're talking about, so this may not suprise anybody.

It is Time for Religion to be OVER!

Your carbolic commentator has always broken down religion thus:

Religion: codified superstition.
Church: the marketing outlet for said superstition.
Pastor/Priest: The local chief public relations flack for that superstition.
Bishop: the district manager for the superstition's marketing outlets.
The Bible, Dianetics, the Koran, the Torah, etc: the line of bullshit that all camp followers are expected to internalize no matter how nonsensical it is. Indeed, they often read like a kind of ecclesiastical People magazine, luridly informing the gapejawed who begat whom, how many, who smote whom, who "knew (i.e.m fucked)" whom, and who, at the end of the day, emerges as the World's Sexiest Man of Eternity (Jesus, Mohammed, L. Ron Hubbard, Buddha, Yahweh, Your Name Here).

This diatribe was inspired by the contretemps of one incoming Congress critter named Keith Ellison, who was said to have desired to be sworn in while putting his lefthand on the Koran. This drew an immediate rebuke from wingnuts hither and yon, especially the pompous twat Dennis Prager, who burbles his bullshit on sieg heil on your dial KRLA in Los Angeles.

The only trouble, as we all now know, is that there is no supposedly holy book used during the swearing in ceremony for new lawmakers in Washington D.C., lending this the aura of another one in a long line GOP works of fiction.

Moreover, USA Today reader mlock0431 noted, Prager's preoccupation with having everybody be sworn in Bible-handed may not exactly be blessed by their fairy tale Lord:

Matthew 5:33-37

33: Again, ye have heard that it hath been said by them of old time, Thou shalt not forswear thyself, but shalt perform unto the Lord thine oaths:

34: But I say unto you, Swear not at all; neither by heaven; for it is God's throne:

35: Nor by the earth; for it is his footstool: neither by Jerusalem; for it is the city of the great King.

36: Neither shalt thou swear by thy head, because thou canst not make one hair white or black.

37: But let your communication be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay: for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil.

Prager reportedly has a divinity degree, so he knew about this passage. So he was more than willing to climb the soapbox and spout off heretical ideas. Respecting tradition, I'm sure that Prager has now called the Vatican and asked for an Inquisition on himself and is thinking about what outfit looks best while being burned at the stake.

Okay, maybe not. Christian Republicans aren't interested in the truth, only power.

Christians are also interested in completely perverting history, as this incident in Kenya shows.

The biggest hobgoblin of hosanna hut bureaucrats is sex. Making men and women feel afraid and ashamed of their sexuality is a 2,000 year old tradition and the GOP has touted abstinence lectures mainly by adopting the Republican go to tactic, fear. Tales of horrible STDs and pregnancy has only served to undermine the credibility among the young vis a vis the subject. Indeed, a recent study showed that teens and young adults are more sexually active then ever but their pregnancy rate is declining thanks to the frequent employment of birth control. This highlights the fact that the abstinence approach is unproductive and should be substituted with discussing the subject openly and honestly in instructing them how to manage their sex drives.

Now don't get me wrong. I don't advocate teenagers having sex. In fact, given their relatively poor impulse control and lack of emotional development it really isn't a good idea for that to happen until adulthood. But since I lost my virginity as a teenager (to an older woman) I feel hypocritical saying that. My parents had given me the full lecture about sex just before I entered junior high and also provided materials written by medical professionals about it so that I knew what I was getting into. That this doesn't happen everywhere, though, is both a tragedy and indicative of how counterproductive religion can be.

And that is before you even get to the sexual proclivities of the hosanna hut managers, who have proven to be much more salacious and perverted than leftwing liberals such as myself. Clearly, receiving large doses of biblical cant has no effect on stemming one's sex drive. Pat Robertson screwed his wife before they got married and knocked her up, as did GOP hero Ronald Reagan during much more ostensibly conservative times. So when any of these rightwing assholes gets on a rant about sex it is no wonder that a lot of eye rolling ensues. Especially if it is coming out of the mouth of a serial matrimonialist such as Clinton impeachment boy Henry Hyde or gay men such as David Dreier.

This is reinforced by television, where, because the FCC feels it must cater to religious nuts there is little honest portrayal of sex, which only confuses teens and adults further.

Consequently, this dissemination of obvious bullshit has turned off teens to religion, a positive good.

But this spreading phenomenon elicited a rebuke from the producers of South Park, who created an incredibly leaden episode that people can make a religion out of anything, even science, and went as far as to propound that the most absurd extension of that is warfare over competing visions of the field.

That humans are competitive, avaricious and often delusional is not a exactly news. But in making one of the characters, Kyle, the preachy conscience of the often rollicking and razor sharp series, it is starting to fall into the same kind of sanctimonious trap that has informed the usual religious spokesmen. In that way, South Park has jumped the shark and is actually getting boring. But every artist eventually runs out of good ideas and their take on the religion vs. science issue may have been a loud warning bell of that. So in a screwy way, religion has claimed another victim there.

The program portrays Jesus as little more than a talented schmuck. At the end of the day, though, what religion is predicated on is control. Back in the olden days, rulers needed a line of bullshit to keep the masses in line as the answer to the question, "who made you king?" "God." Well God and a collection of mercenaries anyway.

Look, Christianity wouldn't even be around if the Emperor Constantine hadn't hallucinated and been talked into being a dupe for those salesmen who flog the Christ brand name. That was during a time when the king determined what the faith of the land was going to be and when Connie became a Christian so did everybody else, dissenters being locked up, tortured and killed. In that way, Christianity is like Prez Turbo. It won't listen to reason and instead chooses to live in a fantasy world while its first impulse is to dispatch naysayers to some gulag.

When Henry the VIII decided to disembark from the Catholic Church's love train (no divorce allowed and buttfucking little boys), the church demanded that Spain and France go to war for Henry's bald challenge to its authority. Not that I want to make a hero of the syphilitic eight ball, but you get the point that religion is all about what most mass organizations are about: money and power (and 12 year old nookie, I guess).

It has also helped idiots escaped responsibility through the "Satan possessed me" for their drug addiction, criminal lifestyle, corruption and lying. These are all intentional acts and there is no little man whispering in our ears to do these things. They are due to the evil that resides in man and not to the cajoling of a red skinned demon prodding you with a pitchfork.

A lot of the religious conflicts in the English church essentially revolved around what kind of entertainment you wanted or didn't want (you call them masses and ceremonies). with your hectoring These conflicts lead to the English Civil War and the ascension of Oliver Cromwell, who Britons had enough of after a little over a decade. Yet, the punters then filled the pews anyway since, well let's face it, there weren't a whole lot of entertainment options available for your average peasant and it was a good place to pick up chicks. In fact, I'm sure that the hottest thing one could do during that time was to celebrate your like of a man or woman by sneaking into the church after closing time to sing your praises of the cosmic big daddy while entangled with each other on the altar, a pew or a storage room. So sinful, but soooooooo delicious.

That may explain why Jimmy Swaggart is able to maintain a semblance of a career much as how the public tends to forgive egregious transgressions by Hollywood stars and pop singers. Mind you, at this point, Swaggart has gone from being on the Playboy level of semi-respectable televangelists to the kind of crowd that reads the biblical equivalent of Swank, but he is still able to divest dumbasses of their hard earned cash. If he screws up again you will see him handling snakes.

The same goes for Paul Crouch, the top (no pun intended) hemorrhoid at Trinity Broadcasting, American's Wal-Mart of electronic rolling of the holy, and a close friend of former U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft. His acolytes not only forgave him building the most gaudy and decadent tribute to white trash predilections ever, foisting Jeff Fenholt, a former member of the cast of Jesus Christ Superstar who spun his few minutes auditioning for Black Sabbath into a non-existent full blown tour with them (Tony Iommi, Sabbath's lead guitarist, declined to sue due to it not being financially worth it; the Fenholts lived in the down at the mouth Riverside County burg of Upland) on them and basically being con artists, but also ignored a claim by a former aide that the kind of girlish Crouch was plowing his back 4o. That sucked because the Bible calls for stoning homosexuals and seeing Crouch, who bears a slight resemblance to Ted Turner, get that treatment would have been ironically cool.

Here is what gets me, though: Crouch preaches so-called "prosperity gospel" and yet there is the biblical passage that intoned, "and again, I say to you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God." So next time you see video footage on Faux Nooz of bigtime Dick and crew exiting a local hosanna hut, know that there go the damned. But yet, so many seemed to want to follow them into hell.

This is all wish fulfillment on a level befitting a Star Trek chess game, as there is no heaven or hell but the mere becoming of worm food. So the idea on the part of the gapejaws that the rich who played dirty to become so will get their just desserts in the end is horseshit. Moreover, you take the Christianity brand name off of this and the Newt Gingriches out there are calling that class warfare which doesn't play well among voters. Yes, the Republicans hate Jesus.

Really, all of Jesus' supposed enthusiasts are doing nothing more than engaging in "buffet Christianity," loading up on the ideas that are to their taste and leaving the less appealing ones either for others or to rot.

The reason for this is that Christianity is predicated on fear of death. We all want to be immortal, but alas, it is not so. To salve this, Christian cult leaders came up with the concept of everlasting life alongside big daddy's righthand in paradise, an idea as easily laughable as someone getting to have at 70 virgins if they blow themselves up in an Israeli shopping mall but one that people go for as a coping mechanism. So they shape their religion to comport with their world view. On one hand, that is ultimately democratic, each man being his own pope. On the other, it tends to rob religion of what it sets out to do, set hard ethical and customary boundaries. In other words, all Christians are moral relativists and that undermines its rationale for being.

All of this, when taken together, undermines the need for religion. Those of you out there who would ask, "if there is no fear of God then wouldn't society tumble into anarchy?" Uh, no. Both Korea and Japan have about 10% of the crime rate that America does and yet they are non-religious countries (in Korea, it is about one-third Christians, but that plays almost no role in why there is little crime). Less than 1% of Japanese are Christians and showing outward displays of religiosity is considered socially gauche. It all has to do with child rearing and cultural norms. You parents have to do the job and not use the threat of some third party punishing your offspring for you. Relying on religion makes you look weak and ineffectual and the fairy tale nature of it undermines your credibility.

So be big boys and girls. Start getting real with your outlook and stop hoping that some mythical entity will make things turn out okay for you.

Random Thoughts

It's called collateral damage and that phrase is a big favorite at Camp Clusterfuck (the Bush White House). In this case, you have two pieces of such victimization, an innocent civilian and taxpayers on the hook to pay off the judgement he won in the ensuing lawsuit.

Also innocent is the Associated Press, which objected to rightwing naysayers who assert that the incident in which some Baghdad Muslim worshippers were burned alive by insurgents. Now here is why I can't figure this out: the GOP may be disturbed about all the reports of in your face attacks by the terrorists in Iraq, but this incident only displays the utter depravity of the religious fanatics who are perpetrating these acts and should be useful propaganda for the American side. But noooo! Not in Republican-ville.

The Bush administration, similar to Joe Stalin during the Soviet era, just cannot tolerate ANY insinuation that things are going other than peachy keen. This is how divorced from reality they are. Bush would like to be staging Kim Jong-il style precision dancing in the Green Zone, but they can't deal with all the party crashers.

Ratcheting up the criticism of Bush is none other than the Republican asswipes at Time Magazine, who accuse him of creating a catastrophe in Iraq. Even asswipes are right occasionally.

And while we're on the subject of asshats, Brent Bozell says that generals in Iraq don't think it's civil war. Uh, Media Matters indicated that Bozell may want to take another look at the facts.

Following up on my rant about Ford the other day, they just laid off 38,000 workers, albeit with severance packages (which no doubt take together wouldn't match the total compensation of the members of the company's board and other executives).

And while we're on the subject of crappy car companies, rapper and self-styled pimp Calvin Broadus (aka Snoop Dog) has been busted again. If you remember, Broadus starred in a commercial for Chrysler with former chairman Lee Iacocca. Again, it was an exhibition of corporate America's inattention to morality, as Broadus was (is?) a gang member and had once been tried for taking part in a drive by murder. When I saw that commercial, I half-expected O.J. Simpson to show up at some point. So you will never see me in a Chrysler. They are shitty cars anyway.

This is becoming a week of no-shows. First, Fidel Castro takes a rain check on his own birthday party. Let's hope he never sees another one.

Senate leader Bill Frist, he of the Psychic Friends Diagnosis Network, has shelved his presidential ambitions. Like he had a chance.

Then Iraqi leader Nuri Al-Miliki stood Prez Turbo up Wednesday in their scheduled meeting.

NY Governor George Pataki, the space between whose ears is some of the most untouched real estate in the country, was in Iraq and didn't like the looks of what is going on there. Can we please knock it off with these vanity sightseeing junkets to Iraq at taxpayer expense? What the fuck is Pataki doing there anyway? Pols like him just get in the way over there. I'm sure the security detail he had guarding him had better things to do.

But apparently bored, his imperial Turboness banned sales of IPods and other "luxury items" to North Korea as a juvenile way to get Kim's goat. The only trouble with that is Kim can get them from Japan and China rather easily.

Also, is Bush going to do anything about those Fiats his buddy, the Rev. Sun-myung Moon, has made in North Korea at a plant Moon owns there (with the help of slave labor, I'm guessing)? Apparently not so much. But that is the Bush administration, one empty gesture after another.

A division of Halliburton will pay the U.S. more than $8 million for engaging in fraudulent charges under a government contract. Nobody is going to jail for this, however. How did THAT happen? (Dick Cheney). If I set up a three card monte table in front of my house and bilk my neighbors out of a couple of hundred bucks I likely end up in the slammer. But not the officials of KBR. Lesson: if you gotta pull a bunko scheme, make the government your victim.

The rightwing straitjacket that Republicans currently wrap themselves in is hurting them, says E.J. Dionne.

But what is hurting democracy is stuff like you see in Texas.

The Seattle Times has this series on immigration.

Maliki Reaches Security Agreement----With Iran; Heckuva Job There George!

Holy Moly! Read it and flinch. Thanks to Musedebussy at Americablog for highlighting this disturbing piece.

Conservative Correctness Rears Its Ugly Head in Calling Iraq a Civil War

Has anyone been scratching their heads over why the media has been so tentative about labeling the Iraq conflict a civil war? They shouldn't and there is a lesson in it.

The media is so full of cowards now that even stating what should be obvious to an eight year old is fraught with fears that the mighty rightwing Wurlitzer will bury them in an avalanche of criticism. So many of these media companies are seeded with Republicans in their executive ranks that reporters and headline writers are running scared that their necks are on the chopping block if the conservative echo chamber reverberates with the sound of grumbling.

Shit, look at Joe Thugborough accusing Danny DeVito of engaging in, and I quote, "political hate speech." First, it was on The View, who nobody above a room temperature I.Q. gives a tinker's cuss about. Thugborough also had some paint fall off of his macho facade by admitting that he cares about anything emanating from that yenta-fest.

Keep that in mind then you read today's headline about how a rightwinger is making a serious bid to buy the NY Times.

Republicans believe, much how the black community does, that it should be entitled to immunity from scrutiny from non-members of the populace by virtue of who they are because they each fraudulently claim that they have been victims of unfair portrayals in the media.

The actual truth is that in inner city America as well as in corporate boardrooms, criminality tends to be coddled and even, in certain circles, thought of as cool and they scream like stuck pigs when the police and prosecutors show up to interdict that and the media appears to capture it for its viewers, listeners and subscribers.

The media has, in fact, been way too timid in forthrightly dealing with both groups because they don't want to be accused of being racists on the one hand and being liberal stooges on the other.

Consequently, the time is more ripe than ever for the emergence of an American Hitler or Mussolini because the watchdog that is supposed to help prevent that from happening is either bought off by the problem party (NBC by GE, Sinclair, Disney, Fox, Clear Channel, etc) or have been scared into toeing the line (CBS, which is owned by Viacom). CNN is such a bore that it is hard to take seriously and it, too, has begun listing rightward.

So idiots like David Gregory, Chris Matthews, Tim Russert, Katie Couric, Charlie Gibson, John Gibson and Brit Hume aren't just cowards, they, in a very real way, end up being collaborators and should be reviled as such.

By the way, Thugborough, Barbara Walters is a horse's ass. She's about as venerable as a can of sardines.

Bush's Cut and Run Iraq Die-in for 2008

It is apparent that President Floyd R., Turbo Bush has absolutely no idea of how to successfully conclude the Iraq War or to get our troops home without igniting what will assuredly be an obscene level of retaliatory bloodshed.

But the GOP doesn't feel there is any reason for them to worry about any of that. Why? That is a no brainer.

The Greedy Old Party already got off fairly cheaply in the past midterm elections with their mishandling of the war. Considering the longterm impact of this thing, which ranges from exacerbating already enormous budget deficits that potentially provide a crucial strategic asset to our enemies in China and Saudi Arabia, to pulverizing American prestige abroad while also strengthening that of terrorist groups and their supporters in Iran and Syria, they have proven incapable of managing any sort of crisis, be it domestic or military.

But what they do realize is that people tend to put more stock in their most recent memory of something. Since Iraq has become military quicksand for the neocons, it really doesn't behoove them to try to solve this thing. Instead, the gambit is to put the Democrats in a position to where they will either have to come up with a concrete plan for the administration, who will then take credit for it if it succeeds, or will say, "see, we told you they can't lead" if it fails.

What the GOP is actually hoping for isn't an actual concrete scheme from the Democrats, but for them to repeat what they did with Vietnam, cut off funding for it. Turbo can then say that Congress tied his hands since they wouldn't provide the money for the war on terrorism and, as the pictures come in of continued bloodshed and maybe even the Iranians marching on Baghdad, the public will recall those images when they go to the polls in the upcoming general election.

In other words, the Republicans are basically staging a die-in for American soldiers for electoral advantage. That Bush doesn't want to be overshadowed by James Baker and anything he might come up with is a dead giveaway because Bush is still attempting to look presidential (hah!) and in control even as Iraq gets further and further out of his grasp as time passes. So even if Baker devises the most brilliant strategy since the landing at Inchon, Bush won't hear it because it didn't come from him or his inner circle.

What the Democrats need to do is to call Bush on this. Tell him that they aren't going to hold his hand and that if all he can do is keep soldiers stationed overseas to use their sacrifice as an electoral tool he and Cheney should resign so that new President Nancy Pelosi will have all the tools available to help resolve this thing as coherently as possible.

Insist that Bush read the Constitution and know that he is the commander in chief. If he can't do his job then, like what happens in any battlefield situation when the general in charge isn't up to the task, he has to be relieved of duty. Furthermore, challenge Bush to finally do what is right for the country and not right for just him or his cronies with Halliburton and the party. Tell the country that Bush had the House of Saud bail him out of one of his bankrupt oil companies and now it is time for "Bhandar Bush (i.e., Saudi prince and Bush intimate Prince Bhandar) to step up to the plate for the U.S. or fuck off back home and take his BFF Bush with him.

That will cause the GOP to run McCain out there, but you just start calling him "John McNamara" and accuse him of wanting to escalate the war. Done, goodbye, get lost.

Yes, the GOP, which has stonewalled on revealing who was in those energy meetings with Cheney is now stonewalling peace as a hail mary for 2008. Let's hope that Pelosi, et al, don't fall for it.

Dispatches From Camp Clusterfuck

Mr. 250 Pounds of Wrong, Newt Gingrich, wants to help terrorists win by abrogating free speech.

Gingrich also equates Bush with George Washington in calling for continuing involvement in the Iraq fiasco. How many lobotomies does one have to have to buy THAT one? Washington's relatives ought to be incensed!

Republican Representative Tom Tancretin has called Cuban-American dominated Miami "a third world country" in an interview with World Wackmaster Daily. No word on what flavor shoe polish he was tasting when he uttered that one.

No matter what U.S. does, bloody civil war in Iraq inevitable.

Washington Post seems to admit it is a mouthpiece for Bush's phony baloney Iraqi government....

Even as Michael Froomkin calls Bush's upcoming meeting with Jordan "a charade", Bush, who once condemned "old Europe" as out of touch, now begs for military support from them.

CNN's Michael Ware gets up close and personal with Bush's Baghdad clusterfuck.

Iraq Study Group a study in a whole lotta nothing.

Republicans do soft shoe to stay out of a War Crimes Tribunal docket.

A geographic look at U.S. military options in Iraq. It's got lots of pictures, so maybe even prez Turbo can understand it.

Al Qaeda power expanded under Bush bumbling.

But does he understand his poll numbers tanked again?"

Two words you never thought you would hear associated with our dumbass in chief: "library" and "think tank."

Brother Neil, though, got himself some money earmarked for schools.

Is Bigtime about to bail after a career trying to restore the imperial presidency?

Will there be blowback for the punditocracy for cheerleading the Iraq mess?

American Muslims show the stupidity of religion.

For women yak yak yak is their heroin while for men it is all about pussy and science says so.

Aussie wheat outfit bribed Saddam with $224 milion and duped Norm Coleman (R-MN) out of investigation.

Republican congressman Curt Weldon threatened a foreign aid cutoff to Moldova after friend's distillery venture in Russia went south. Can you say, "extortion?"

Diplomatic wizardry from Rush Limbaugh.

Minimum wage increase helps job creation.

U.S. economy supposedly growing, but some facts undercut that.

Creationism idiocy invades Britain from America.

Democratic wipeout of GOP in Washington state could mean smoother sailing for agenda.

A new day, another Republican lie.

New Jersey Republicans try to have it both ways on gay marriage issue; wait until you get a load of THIS!

Maxine Waters, shut the fuck up!

Slight recline better for back than sitting up straight.

Feds Bust Country Singer for Illegal Bear Killing. Somebody send him hunting with Cheney!

Random Thoughts

Anyone ever wonder what Scanner Bush would look like in an orange jumpsuit? We should have been able to get an eyeful of that during the Iran-Contra affair, when Bush clearly perjured himself in denying that he had anything to do with the scheme.

Now he and his buddies at the Carlyle Group may be investigated for insider trading after acquiring Taiwanese chip packaging firm ASE. Moreover, the purchase appears to be part of a quid pro quo to evade Taiwan's laws having to do with investing in the mainland Chinese market. China is an enemy of the United States. Yes, a Bush helping American enemies, a tradition for over 70 years.

According to media reports, the hellspawn of Turbo Bush, Barbara and Jenna (kind of like Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie, except without the "class"), have been asked to leave Argentina due to security issues. One Latin American tabloid had the twins cavorting starkers in the hallway of their hotel, but the hotel staff denied it.

What enquiring minds REALLY want to know is: do they swallow and do they prefer doggy style over missionary? Kind of hard to imagine their mom sticking Turbo's cock in her mouth (that is Condi's job, according to some of the more salacious Washington D.C. rumors), but the daughters sound like they could have a taste for tube steak.

But pulling out early to prevent having more boys aborted in Iraq are the Brits, Poles and Italians. The U.S. is being increasingly isolated and with Iraqi officials looking to bring Iran into the diplomatic mix in order to try to shut this insurgency down, the extent of Bush's debacle and America's tragedy seems to get bigger with every passing day.

Unfortunately, if Jordan's King Abdullah is correct, it will be civil wars for everybody during the coming year. It's too bad that Turbo has had to learn on the job that diplomacy does count. And it is even more distressing the size of his unilateralist mess is becoming.

Mitt's dick side exposed in gay flip flop.

Knives come out for GOP leaders as party takes a digger in Hawaii.

Pat Buchanan, America's most noted crank, actually thinks Vlad Putin had nothing to do with the poisoning death of Alexander Litvinenko. Somebody prescribe him some Lithium, okay? Sheesh! Look Pat, what Putin has to gain from this is silencing critics in Russian emigre communities abroad. He has already completely cowed the domestic media. Moreover, there is increasing speculation that Putin has engaged in false flag operations that resulted in the deaths of dozens of innocent civilians so that he could setup Chechen rebels to be crushed (not that I have any sympathy for the Chechen side, who are a bunch of morons, for the most part).

It appears that men may finally have a pill on the way that will allow them to engage in pregnancy risk-free poking. Of course, this has the hosanna hut denizens up in arms, who argue that it will cause more STD's since there will be less condom use. What they forget is all the unmarried and even married couples who will use it so as not to cause an unwanted knocking up. So in the end, all these voyeuristic rollers of the holy smoke are attempting to do is stick their noses into people's private business. Again, religion is never having to mind your own business.

But paying for the screwing they have been giving consumers for decades is Ford, whose debt notes were downgraded by Standard and Poor. Ford has always sucked, the lowlights being the Edsel and those exploding Pintos. It is too bad that their ill fortune has resulted in the layoffs of tens of thousands of workers over the years, but the fact is that anyone with a brain should have seen this coming. Like GM, this company has been run into the ground by incompetent management. But will those execs pay the price for that? No. Mr. and Mrs. Lineworker will. So if this company disappears, and it probably will in my lifetime, nobody will miss it from a qualitative standpoint.

Also being ankled for poor product is television. Young people are abandoning the idiot box more and more in favor of internet video content. Your sulfuric soothsayer has had his tube in the upright and off position almost the entire Thanksgiving holiday period, the only things interrupting that silence being the USC-Notre Dame tilt (being a California native it is ingrained into my genetic code to watch it) as well as an episode of a cartoon called Metalocalypse, which is a hilarious series about a dimwitted but mindblowingly popular fictional death metal band. Instead, I often hang out at You Tube and watch music and people's personal videos.

Back in the land of white trash, Canadian bimbo Pam Anderson and her yingyang husband, Detroit's Kid Rock, are splitting. Never saw THAT coming, did you? While I have no respect for any rapper except for Wycliffe Jean (and that is only because he is a megatalented musician and not just the usual gangbanging dumbass), Kid Rock has had an engaging dorkiness and obviously loves music even if you wouldn't want him as a neighbor.

Don't crumple up that piece of notepaper just yet. It could be the hot new data storage medium and I ain't talking books here. You gotta check this out.

Finally, to the Iraq Study Group, thanks for a whole lot of nothing.

Sunday Reading

Perverting history to create war hysteria.

Where's the exit strategy GOP? Nations are waiting.

Dead Kennedy's sang a better tune than G.W. Bush is now.

Nutty conspiracy theories dog U.S. war effort in Iraq.

Oil companies hindering Indian economic growth.

In today's comedy segment, we have Iran's wackjob leader offering to "help" U.S., but only after it withdraws from Iraq.

GOP playmate Augusto Pinochet claims victimhood. No word on what families of those he killed think.

Electorate found Democrats better on pocketbook issues than Republicans.

Civil rights demagogues readying rhetoric after drunks ram two cars and get shot.

Senator Feinstein to scrutinize voting machines.

The Republicans' family planning farce.

Is Bush Administration using Ethiopia to wage war in Somalia?

Associated Press finds evidence of oil companies manipulating supply to drive up prices.

Republicans avert your eyes, it's the week's science news summary.

God exterminated sinful marine life to remake oceans anew. Just kidding.

Why the U.S. Needs to Stay the Hell Out of the Lebanon Issue

Remember how I said that because of their congenital incompetence that nobody should ever try to pick up after the French? Well, here is another patch of the world the bastards have screwed up all to hell coming back to haunt us.

Holy Shit! Russians Go to Church to Recruit British and American Spies

Once again, these citadels of the superstitious bite civilization in the ass.

And it isn't like MI6, Britain's version of the CIA, probably isn't compromised now like it has repeatedly been over the last 100 years.

Bush Administration Sabotaged Terror Investigation

Crikey, is Bush Homer Simpson or what?

Random Thoughts

Meet the new defense chief, same as the old boss.

L.A. Times calls it a civil war in Iraq.

A couple who fled to Canada in the wake of Bush winning a second term decides to stay put even with conservative tool (in both senses of the word) Stephen Harper becoming prime minister there and the Democrats taking Congress.

Here we go: the two idiots who were heckling Michael Richards now want a payday for the former Seinfeld star's tirade that was directed at them. And who is representing these two loudmouths? None other than judicial heldentwat Gloria Allred.

These hecklers are a couple of pussies. Look, Richards' career is over. Just because somebody calls you names doesn't mean they actually hurt you to the point that you suffered some kind of loss. If you can now claim monetary awards just for name calling, lawyers would be crawling all over elementary and junior high schools looking for students who want to sue their classmates after playground spats. So shut the fuck up and disappear, okay you fucking whiners?

Lawyers have also found a new way to manipulate jurors, so expect to see more histrionics from them in a courtroom near you.

Meanwhile, states will tell the Supreme Court that they want Turbo Bush and Congress to take action on global warming.

Republicans in Indiana are resisting a Democratic call to eliminate that state's six percent sales tax on gasoline. Why? So they can cut property taxes instead, which mostly benefits, as you would expect, apartment owners (who won't slash rents) and the wealthy with big ass land holdings. Moreover, just what the impact of the GOP plan will be on police services and schools hasn't been disclosed, but it won't be positive. That's the Republicans for you, always willing to sacrifice public safety and education for the sake of greed.

I have two uncles who are truckers. They are both owner-operators, one a long haul and the other a shorter haul (pretty much the south only) and they are getting killed on these high gas prices, the ones that the Indiana state government benefits from thanks to the continuing gouging by Big Oil. Of course, ultimately when transportation costs go up so do consumer prices. But again, the GOP doesn't care.

The Carlyle Group, an investment firm that is headed up by Scanner Bush and some of his cronies, has plans to buy one of the world's biggest microchip packaging firms. Hmmm..... Read about it here.

Rwanda has broken off relations with France amid allegations that the froggies are attempting to destabilize the African nation's government. Nice job Rwanda! French leaders should be brought up on war crimes charges for helping to stoke the genocide there, but there is no plan to do that, unfortunately.

French soccer fans also have some self-reflection to do following a match with an Israeli squad, as they showed that anti-semitism is still alive and well there.

It appears that cranky Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez is going to cruise to an easy victory in the upcoming elections in that country, but it could have an interesting side effect since Chavez may forbid Venezuelan players to go to the major leagues. Several MLB clubs have academies there. MLB thus brings millions of dollars to what is still a poor nation. Venezuelan baseball fans are reportedly not amused.

Comedians, though, are having a good time shredding the Bush Administration for the appointment of religious wacko Dr. Eric Keroack to oversee family planning policy, but average women are not because the GOP cannot mind its own business.

Also not right in the head is L.A.'s birdbrained Democrat mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who says it's okay to inconvenience people attempting to go to and from work and to help generate more pollution in one of America's smoggiest cities for Hollywood's sake. Sorry, but I think it is the job of industry to stay out of the way of average people as much as possible. This country doesn't exist for the benefit of corporate America, but for the country's inhabitants. It's too bad that Villaraigosa hasn't learned that simple fact. Call him a Hollywood whore.

Is the campaign to recognize gay marriages setting gay rights back? Read this and make up your own mind.

In what might be the oddest headline of the day, though, a teachers pension fund in Ontario, Canada has bought interest in, get this, four shipping container terminals. You read that right.

Voters to Romney on Gay Marriage Ban: Suck it!

Mitt Romney says this is about voters' wishes being respected, which is the same argument made by southern segregationists back in the 1950's. But the folks in heavily Catholic Massachusetts are having none of this nonsense, according to this report.

Democrats Messy But Effective, Republican Base is Bigots Says George Mason University Study

It's not to say that Democrats are perfect, but we get the job done anyway, according to this study by the conservative leaning George Mason University.

More Republican Idiocy

The perpetual surveillance state.

Republican cartoon characters declare war on actual cartoons.

Gunplay in National Parks to be Senator George Allen's uh, parting shot.

Massive corruption, U.S. tactical missteps leading to Taliban resurgence.

Bush sided with foreign wheat growers over those in America's heartland.

Bush, GOP Congress tells working folk to go to hell.

Incompetent Bush BFF Vicente Fox helping gangsters take over Mexican border towns.

Bush Team 100 member Robert Bass' protege's company indicted by South Korea for Stock Manipulation, embezzlement, other charges.

Money leads to rightwing cave on Vietnam trade.

Teacher turns public school classroom into hosanna hut and then lies about it: