Drill Baby Drill!

Think 'Drill Baby Drill' has been set aside for the nonce while a bazillion barrels of toxic crude poisons the gulf? Think again. Think it's wise to re-examine the permits issued by a government agency that's been run the Oil producers for aver a decade now that we know they've been rubber stamping every request without bothering to asses the danger? Think again and remember our new national anthem: Drill Baby Drill.

Agree with the dittoheads that Obama is the problem? That if he had or hadn't done some nebulous thing we'll think of if we have to, that we wouldn't have had this mess? Of course you do even though his attempt to make sure we wouldn't have another blowout before we've stopped this one has been shot down by courts to the tune of Drill Baby Drill. It's a victory!

Yes, the real disaster is Barack Obama and we'll all smile and nod approval and even giggle when our friends tell us 2012 will be "the end of an error." 2012 - we can get back to calling people traitors for criticizing the government. We can restore the cap on BP's liability and teach those lazy unemployed people to eat tar balls and shut up.

Maybe we can take advantage of the new corporate personhood by electing Exxon as president; replace congress with the Shell Oil board of directors or even make Sarah Palin Chief Justice if we can count on her not cutting and running halfway through. The possibilities are endless.

It's not true

Nothing is true, all things are permitted
- Hassan i Sabah -

No, I didn't watch the State of the Union Address Wednesday and I haven't read the transcript and I don't care what it says because it doesn't matter. As Justice Alito said, "It's not true." Nothing is true, at least nothing that the opposition, the enemy says and we're all the opposition and we're all the enemy, listening only to ourselves and the prophets who repeat what we want to hear. We're all the majority of course; silent or otherwise and if we're also the persecuted minority, vide supra. The other guy is always Guy Fawkes, plotting to destroy order, even though order itself is the enemy and war is the goal and peace is for the weak.

As the persecuted minority, anything we do is permitted; anything even if it means selling our country to global robber barons and promoting 'every man for himself' anarchy and if we fall down, if chaos comes, we will just deny it and chant the doctrine of less government or more government or whatever it is, because nothing is true and all things are justified.

No, frankly my dear reader, I don't give a damn. I was foolish to hope that the dogs of the fallen regime wouldn't bring down the next one and that the cancer it planted in the court wouldn't aid them in setting the stage for our next Republican president, our first wholly owned president and a subsidiary of Exxon or Humana, or KBR or Halliburton or the People's Bank of China. It's a small world after all and there are a lot of hungry giants.

Yes, they failed to privatize Social Security, they only partially succeeded in privatizing the military, but the goal of privatizing The Legislative and Executive branches is about to follow the privatizing of the Court. Behold the United States of America, inc - or GmbH or SA or Ltd or whatever floats the global boat. But it's not true, as the judge said. You never really wanted reform, did you? No, it never happened and this isn't happening and it's all going to be all right -- just look at the light.

It's my party and I'll lie if I want to

They're taking the girl from the streets of London to Ascot and passing her off as a debutante. A few weeks of diction lessons, some new clothes and they can pull it off, but for Chrissakes, don't let her say more than two words to anyone! No cameras, no audio, no reporters to observe what fork she uses, what diphthongs she distorts -- and be careful to introduce her to the Duke and the Dauphin so she won't mistake them for the Prime Minister.

Yes, you've seen the Broadway show, the movie, but no, this isn't a bet between two upper class gentlemen over brandy and cigars at the Reform Club. It's a bunch of thugs, goons, warmongers, Jesocrats, robber barons and Mafiosi trying to pass off the most unsuitable major candidate in American history as a statesman by pretending she's having substantive conversations with important people.

Palin's crew locked out AP and CNN from her introduction to Mohmmad Karzai today before they could catch her picking her nose on camera or asking the President of Afghanistan how things are in Australia. She will go through the same farce with other leaders tomorrow and her supporters and other damned fools will look shocked if we mention the absolutely unprecedented ( at least in America ) attempt to usher a candidate into office with no questions asked.

No, it's not a couple of tweedy old professors playing condescending games with the proles, it's the outfit; the wise guys taking over the country of the gleefully oppressed.

Cross posted from The Swash Zone

Derangement

They're still pitching the "derangement syndrome" defense and I have to ask myself whether in the vast, seething sea of stupid, there remains anyone deranged enough to buy it. I'm afraid of the answer.

John Fund launched into Bill Maher on Friday night, claiming that questions as to the superiority of Sarah Palin's intelligence and the comprehensiveness of her knowledge were part of a "Palin derangement syndrome." It's a gambit that should cause a two year old to kick the slats out of his playpen in laughter, but I still receive comments here and elsewhere indicating that my frustration at the corruption, incompetence and criminal intent of the Republican administration is explained by my derangement and not by the things and deeds to which I object. If you don't like crime, you must be deranged and in proportion to the degree to which it angers you. Tell it to the judge.

Indeed the mendacious Michelle Malkin began to peddle the idea a week ago: that the immediate reaction to an unknown candidate with the most questionable qualifications of any in my memory, indicates not the need to know the facts so essential to the democratic process, but derangement. Of course the degree of scrutiny one encounters when applying for a job at Dairy Queen far exceeds anything Mrs. Palin has yet seen, but it's derangement or just plain nastiness as Fund implies, to enquire into the background and qualifications of a received candidate. That's just deranged and we are simply to accept whom and what we are offered by the GOP God.

The crude speciosity is offensive enough without remembering the kind of campaigns that laugh at the man who had his arm and legs blown off for being a malingerer, a decorated veteran for being a coward, a man who tried to bring back POWS a collaborator and worse, but face it, the Republicans, for all their posing as rational and responsible, are making no attempt to be factual and have run completely wild in their irresponsible accusations. They're not even attempting to argue like conservatives. It's been a long time since they represented small government, restrained spending, balanced budgets or even conservation.

This election is about pushing failed and doomed dogmas, both religious and secular. It's about Evangelical Fundamentalism, about economic fundamentalism and it's about imperialism. It's about using the snobbery and bigotry of the ignorant to promote an oligarchy of the powerful. Regardless of the childish games and silly names, that's all it's about, and treating them as rational people of sound mind and good intentions is the most deranged thing we can possibly do. Reasoned debate only works for reasonable and intelligent people. It's no defense against bibles, bigotry and bullshit. It's time to get angry -- very angry at people who try to impugn your patriotism and shout you down like Brown shirts in some Munich beer hall. This may be our last chance.

Poor little Palin

The Republicans have so far been successful with several of their propaganda gambits. and it seems to show in the polls. The foremost of these relies on the decades-old myth of the Liberal Press. Although the press has all but ignored Palin's "misstatements" and has continued to put her inexperience in good light and has stayed away from discussing her extremist religious views, any suggestion that the "liberal press" is picking on her finds instant acceptance. I saw it myself during a luncheon yesterday; hearing people complaining about how dad it was that "people" were harping on her daughter's plight - an idea they got all gift-wrapped in red paper from the media, of course.

There's a germ of truth there, but it had largely blown over already, and to say Sarah Palin is a victim of malicious press seems as woefully far from the truth as her assertion that the Pledge of Allegiance in it's 1954 edition was "good enough for the Founding Fathers." None the less, they have managed to draw attention away from the legitimate and serious concerns by stressing a non-issue about her daughter and dressing her up as a victim. It works.

The results of a Rasmussen poll were released today, showing that half of US voters "think reporters are trying to hurt Sarah Palin with their news coverage." Of those, 24% say it will influence them to vote for the McCain/Palin ticket. We have to remember that half the country has an IQ in the two digit range and the few that actually do read respectable news sources don't remember what they read by the following day, if they had the reading comprehension to understand it in the first place. They will remember what Wolf and Sean and all the other twinkle-toed cheerleaders tell them they remember.

Obama, on the other hand, has suffered from the other edge of that rusty sword. By inventing the "Fact" that his supporters think he's a victim of racism, his status as a candidate who can transcend racialist nonsense is diminished.

I'm sure however, that we can expect the press and the media whores in general to keep telling us what a good mother she is, how she represents what's good in America, how charismatic and fresh and exciting she is as a "game changing" choice and a bold move by the wise Saint John McCain -- even while we believe they aren't saying it. Rasmussen itself mentioned "her highly successful debut" last night and how people were likely to agree about her superior experience.

"Obviously un-intimidated by either the savage onslaught to which the left-leaning media had subjected her, or the incredible challenge she faced — and oozing with confidence — she strode defiantly to the podium and proved she was everything and even more than John McCain told us."

says Michael Reagan, who tells us she is the reincarnation of his father. What savage assault? Why, the one they set up, stuffed with straw so they could make the dogs bark and the idiots howl. It works.

How can there be any hope for sanity, much less for democracy when we're in a world where every fact immediately generates an equal and opposite anti-fact which usually is more fun to believe?

Tough guys don't think

I don't know who the readership of the Army Times is. I don't know if the people who post comments there are military personnel or not. I do know that if they represent any significant fraction of the Armed services, Obama isn't going to get many of their votes. Reading comments on an article introducing Barak Obama, I have to conclude that I'm looking at the least informed, most bigoted, prejudiced, stupid and absolutely rabid Americans at large in the world. Despite John McCain's disgraceful attitude toward military benefits and pay and despite his enthusiasm for continued occupation of Iraq and the opening of new fronts with the old arguments, he seems the choice of the men with shaved heads.

Obama is a communist, muslim insurgent pacifist appeaser coward, you see and he represents, amongst other things, the no longer existent USSR. Actually any accusation, any idiotic epithet seems appropriate without concern for things and events or contradictions having anything to do with the real world. His wife is a traitor, he's a terrorist and worst of all, he's never worn a uniform. McCain has, and that makes all the difference.

Am I imagining it, or has our military in effect seceeded from mainstream American culture? Radical hairstyles that once would bring severe repremand are de rigeur. Contempt for civilians seems almost worthy of third world armies and war -- any war -- is a worthy war. I hope I'm being truly misled by what I read, but even among the many retired military officers I associate with here, I'm hearing a contempt for democracy in principle and for the indecisiveness and weakness of civilians. What I'm seeing is the search for another Commander Guy who has never had a doubt about anything the US has done or a scruple about anything we might do in the future: another strutting drum major, another prancing cheerleader who knows nothing about economics, history world affairs, international politics - but looks good in a flight suit. Five years in jail trumps five years at Harvard and hot rod Johnnie doesn't have a wife who ever had a doubt about American exceptionalism whether it be about Slavery, wounded knee, Jim Crow, the trail of tears, the Chinese exclusion act, Joe McCarthy, Father Caughlin, the internment of American citizens of Japanese ancestry, Kent State, the Gulf of Tonkin hoax, the WMD hoax, the Niger Uranium hoax or abu Ghraib. We're number one.

Of coure it's not hard to be paranoid these days or to feel that these are dangerous times, but I see very little danger from "terrorists" and none from invading armies. I see and smell danger from creeping nationalism, Xenophobia, militarism, Christianism and all the massive polarizations tearing us all apart. Read it yourself. See if the comments about Obama reflect anything but the howling of beasts.

I'm not sure Obama ever refused to say the Pledge of Allegiance or whether Richard Nixon wore a lapel pin to bed at night. I dont care either. I wouldn't give a flying damn if Obama were a Muslim or his grandparents were "typical white people." I'm not sure if I've been proud of a damned thing this country has done in my lifetime other than liberating Western Europe, defeating the Empire of Japan or landing on the moon and those were a long time ago. I'm not sure how many people really think like these people, but I am sure of one thing -- if it's their country come next year, it's not my country any more. They can have it.

Shameless

If anyone entertained notions that the the constant exposure of Republican transgressions and failures would in any way weaken support for them or their champions or would generate contrition in their ranks, they've long since been converted to militant cynics or émigrés to some more rational realm. If anyone thought Rush Limbaugh or Ann Coulter could be embarrassed by their overt support for a criminal empire or being seen to attack fundamental American values and institutions or even American heroes, they should by now be treasuring their right to keep and bear arms and burying the valuables in the back yard.

Did you really think that billionaire balloon-butt blowhard, who avoided service because of an infected asshole would feel shame for insulting troops who through experiencing war know a bit more about it than he? Of course not, his response is to insult them further. Hell no, he isn't going to call that wounded soldier a phony to his face, he's going to sit on his pus-oozing ass and insult him again and the network that airs him will continue to support him and we will continue to pay to have his slime shipped overseas to our troops and we will pay to have our Congressional whores praise him for his patriotism.

Even Orwell with a toothache couldn't have invented such a scenario nor envisioned the hellacious harpy who hangs around Limbaugh like a bad smell. Who in all of history ever imagined that Ann Coulter could argue against allowing Women to vote? Sure, it's as hyperbolic as anything she writes or says to promote yet another one of her insanely fascist screeds, but her consistent insistence that she and her familiars are brilliant thinkers and the rest of the world from Einstein to Jesus Christ are a bunch of liberal weeny faggots, seems real enough to earn her a straight jacket if not an appointment to a high level security job in Burma.

Coulter, when she's not busily licking the puss off Limbaugh's anal sores, likes to compare Democrats and in fact anyone not promoting wars of aggression for the sake of war and aggression, to women -- or in her kinder moments to homosexuals. It's women looking for handouts, you see who elect Democrats says she:

"If we took away women's right to vote, we'd never have to worry about another Democrat [sic] president. It's kind of a pipe dream, it's a personal fantasy of mine, but I don't think it's going to happen. And it is a good way of making the point that women are voting so stupidly, at least single women."

Of course it wasn't women who elected two felons to office by a landslide in 1972, it was Republicans; Republicans who love war, profit from war, hate freedom and profit from suppressing it. Perhaps women are after all, a bit more opposed to syphoning off incomprehensibly huge sums to benefit companies like Blackwater and Halliburton with relationships to the administration so close it's almost sexual. Perhaps women are a bit more opposed to killing children by the tens and hundreds of thousands to promote a more friendly business atmosphere in some other country, but only a bit. The simpering sisters for safety and security did their part to put the shiftless shitweasel who used his father's presidency to sell worthless Enron stock, sell energy deals to the Taliban and get interest free loans and handouts for his failed businesses from the bin Laden family, into office.

Have no doubt, we don't have a say in what happens any more and by "we" I mean the private citizens. Smiling Christian-face fascists like Mark Mays, CEO of Clear Channel who broadcast Limbaugh over our airwaves through 1200 outlets is as supportive of Mr. Butt-boils as he can be because he supports the truth and it doesn't matter how many letters he gets from whomever sends them - the gravy train will roll on. it's not our truth, not our country, not our radio spectrum, it's his. It's not our country. It belongs to clean cut Jesus jabberers like Erik Prince who has made billions from Iraq who thinks he's doing the Lord's work by soldiering for a fortune - our fortune, although if you ask him to tell us how much he's ripping us off for, he'll all but tell you to Fuck off because it's "private" which means that our money is his private property. The Lord works in mysterious ways, after all, and the Lord has granted Blackwater immunity from all law as effectively as ever the Devil did. So go ahead and get the FBI to investigate. They'll have Blackwater mercenaries standing guard for the Lord just in case the law or the secular government gets in the way. You can't trust the military or the cops any more - some of them are women and Democrats, I hear.

Cross posted to The Impolitic

Fear and loathing at breakfast

"This is the horror of American politics today -- not that Richard Nixon and his fixers have been crippled, convicted, indicted, disgraced and even jailed -- but that the only alternatives are not much better; the same dim collection of burned-out hacks who have been fouling our lives with their gibberish for the last twenty years."

I often wish Hunter S. Thompson were still around. Anything I've tried to write about what has happened to the country we both mourned has owed something to him. I've recently begun to read and re-read his voluminous work and Fear and loathing in the Bunker, which appeared in the New York Times on New Year's day 1974 was this morning's breakfast.

Our feelings about Nixon's villainy, his dishonesty, his ambition to rule can easily be transferred to George W. Bush, whose coven includes many of the accessories to Nixon's crimes and in a way, looking at what we're enduring now with only small traces of the reaction that forced Tricky Dick out of office, produces more of those signature emotions than all the fear and loathing of the early 1970's.

On that New Year's day, Thompson was taking some pleasure at the discomfiture of " the main villain of my political consciousness for as long as I can remember." He correctly predicted the coming resignation, but speculated on what tactics President Nixon might chose to remain in power, including:

"A long-term treaty with Russia, arranged by Henry Kissinger, securing Moscow's support of an American invasion, seizure and terminal occupation of all oil-producing countries in the Middle East. . . and give the Federal Government unlimited Emergency powers."

Of course we don't worry too much about Russia any more and don't need their support for the other part of the plan which was a nuclear strike on China. Yes we have some different pawns on the chessboard. China is more threatening for making plastic toys now, but we have Iran and its "terrorists."

Nixon did of course resign, but Nixon's entourage re-entered the mainstream and Pat Buchanan and Don Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney and all the Neo-cons and ex cons and Nixonians who populate the Republican Party are carrying on the legacy aided by a much more scientific and powerful ability to manipulate opinion and create false scenarios.

Pat Buchanan compared the Nixon debacle to the tale of Sisyphus. "we rolled the rock all the way up the mountain . . . and it rolled right back down on us." Pat has certainly found other rocks to roll and Bush has rolled that same rock nearly all the way up a new hill and rolled it over us in the process. The fear that he will succeed where Nixon failed and the loathing I feel thinking about how we have done nothing to prevent it and much to promote it must be emotions I shared with the late Mr. Thompson who of course finally succumbed in that second year of Bush's war on Democracy and ended his life.

"Despite all the savage excesses committed by the people he chose to run the country, no real opposition or realistic alternative to Richard nixon's cheap and mean-hearted view of the American Dream has ever developed."

Yet there was optimism in 1974:

" It has been a failure of such monumental proportions that political apathy is no longer considered fashionable, or even safe, among millions of people who only two years ago thought that anybody who disagreed openly with "the Government" was either paranoid or subversive."

It didn't last.

" Political candidates, in 1974 at least, are going to have to deal with angry, disillusioned electorate that is not likely to settle for flag-waving and pompous bullshit."

Perhaps he underestimated the memory of our born-yesterday, dumbed down, entertainment oriented and gullible fellow Americans and the power of our eternal enemy.

I don't think I'm the suicide type, but I understand the Sisyphean horror, the frustration, the hopelessness that comes from loving the country this should have been; that we hoped it was; that we thought we could make it.

But wait, there's more.

And Bush wants it. He still doesn't think he has enough power to do what he will about looking and listening and snooping and spying on anyone, anywhere, anytime. He wants more. He wants those who broke the law before he emasculated the Constitution protected from prosecution and of course as of July 23rd he's made new laws all by himself allowing him to seize the assets of anyone getting in the way - not that he will let anyone see the details. On May 9th he gave himself dictatorial powers and he wants more.

And the witch hunt begins. Since nothing he did in violation of the 4th amendment can now be considered illegal, it seems the administration now feels able to punish whoever exposed his massive and still mostly secret intelligence gathering, spying and data mining directed against US citizens without court approval. According to the August 13th edition of Newsweek, a secret warrant has been used to seize the computers and files of Thomas M. Tamm, who previously worked in the Justice Department's Office of Intelligence Policy and Review (OIPR)—the supersecret unit that oversees surveillance of terrorist and espionage targets.

Stalin would applaud and now Bush has nearly Stalinesque powers to punish someone who tried to expose the criminal administration in its criminal activities. Such things are not unprecedented, but they are unprecedented in America - and Bush wants more. The man who said he didn't trust government but trusted the people now wants more secrecy, more power and more ability to punish those untrustworthy advocates of a government constrained by law and responsible to the elected representatives of the American people and to an independent judiciary.

It's hard to believe that a lame-duck president would press for such power and such protection from any checks and balances the law provides if he did not intent to stay in power beyond the November 2008 elections. I'm no longer embarrassed to say that I think he doesn't intend to leave and that I think his ambitions are dictatorial. I would however, be embarrassed to say that I'm a citizen of a country that allowed this to happen; a country that snickered about Liberals, obsessed about celebrities, numbed their brains with pop culture, sucked up lies and propaganda like Flavor-Aid in the hot Guyana jungle and allowed it to happen.

I am the law, and the law is secret.

I wrote the other day about Bush's directive giving himself nearly unlimited dictatorial powers following an "emergency" but now it seems that my horror was not at all excessive because there is a section of that directive the administration deems too secret for anyone to see: even if you are a US Congressman on the Homeland Security Committee with the power and duty to see it.

"Maybe the people who think there's a conspiracy out there are right,'' said Congressman Peter DeFazio . D-Oregon after his request to examine the classified sections of the May 9th Presidential Directive.

Imagine a President writing law under an authority he grants himself. Imagine that the law gives him unlimited power when he decides and for as long as he decides and imagine that the lawmaking branch of government is forbidden to see it. No, don't imagine it, it's true.

Will these last two months be seen by future historians as the turning point; the cliff American Democracy fell over, the beginning of an American Dictatorship? Who can call this conjecture irresponsible in light of a President's declaration by fiat that he has the power to be an absolute ruler when he decides it's necessary, that he can destroy anyone who gets in the way and now that we can't even have an elected representative inspect the documents?

Now what is the difference between a president with unlimited power that may not be challenged and may not even be examined and a dictator?

Is it 1984 yet?

The character of the man with the sandwich boards saying "the end is neigh" used to appear regularly in cartoons and sometimes on the streets of New York. I used to laugh along with most people and because the end has always proved to be a little further off than proposed, but also because the end always seems nigh. There is an end to everything, however and the end of Freedom in the United States seems visible to the point where I'm about to join the club. The End is Neigh.

This week, President George W. Bush signed another one of those amazing executive orders that in former years would have had Americans loading up their flintlocks, grabbing coonskin caps and taking to the hills. Bush now asserts his right to confiscate the property of anyone who interferes with his war. The definition of 'interfere' seems hazy enough to fit far too many circumstances and of course the ultimate definition lies not with the courts or the Congress, but with George.

Of course, just in case Congress starts to act as though they had some of the powers they are assigned by the Constitution, George W. Bush is ready for them. The Washington Post tells us today that Bush's thugs now assert that the Justice Department will never be allowed to pursue contempt charges initiated by Congress against White House officials once the president has invoked executive privilege. Along with his order of May 9th: the "National Security Presidential Directive/NSPD 51" and "Homeland Security Presidential Directive/HSPD-20," Bush has virtually unlimited emergency powers, immune to any powers of the legislative and judicial branches among which is the ability to define "emergency." How much longer will any of us be able to write critically of Bush, to read anything unauthorized? Is it 1984 yet?

Paul Craig Roberts is a conservative with credentials: Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration, associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He's calling for impeachment and impeachment now. Like me, he's concerned that the stage has been set for a staged attack or provocation that would allow a drastically escalated war and the invocation of emergency powers. It's hard for me to see why these outrageous executive orders, coupled with the relentless "chatter" about threats and gut feelings of threats aren't the top stories of the day and I fear that by the time they do hit the headlines, Bush's Thousand Year Reich will be in full swing.

AND NOW THIS!

I read at a New York Times blog that Defense Undersecretary Eric Edelman has written a letter to Senator Hillary Clinton asserting that: “Premature and public discussion of the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq reinforces enemy propaganda that the United States will abandon its allies in Iraq, much as we are perceived to have done in Vietnam, Lebanon and Somalia,” Clinton, of course is a US Senator and asking the Defense Department to come up with a plan to withdraw troops wouldn't be seen by a sane administration as anything but a request for a plan and not aiding and abetting an "Enemy." But of course this is not. Of course the Defense Undersecretary is expressing an opinion, but as of this week, that opinion has teeth - big ones.



Impeachment now.

The name of the beast

Turn up your iPods America. Get out the skateboards, turn on the ball game, tune in to Rush and pop open another Budweiser. Watch American Idol, download some ring tones and text your buds. We're almost there; we're almost stupid enough, angry enough and confused enough for the fascism we've wanted for over 75 years to take effect. Sure, the rich get richer and the smart eventually get smarter, but dumbass America never learns.

Some questions on a new Newsweek poll are frightening. Somehow, the disinformation machine has 41% of Americans believing Saddam Hussein was involved in planning, financing or carrying out the September 11th Attack on New York. Somehow a majority don't know that the attackers came from Saudi Arabia.

That 59% know Nancy Pelosi is Speaker of the House but 81% can't tell you who the Chief Justice is, indicates to me that whatever news they are getting is from the right wing rabble-rousers hell bent on making Nancy Pelosi the next Jane Fonda. The 20% who think that Saddam's non-existent nukes were found; the 15% who think Osama has been caught or weren't quite sure are less surprising. That no doubt represents the irreducible fraction of irredeemable idiots and is roughly equal to the percentage identifying themselves as Republicans.

So when I read about how Cheney has since his election, felt that he was a special branch of government designed to be above the law and not answerable to the people or their representatives, I'm not surprised. A man who answers "fuck yourself" to a senator who has a right to ask the question of who Cheney actually works for; a man who burns records when he bothers to keep them, who ignores subpoenas and makes money from a war he helped promote with falsified data and the suppression of facts, is just the sort of big league tyrant stupid, hysterical and ignorant populaces turn to. A man who has restructured the Executive branch by fiat and in defiance of the law would once have caused a revolution, but today one hardly hears of support for impeachment or even censure.

Yes, his popularity ratings are abysmal and yet the man who could stop him in his tracks is silent and supportive - and we elected him. I'm afraid that given the chance we'd do it again and I'm worried that we won't even have the chance come 2008.

Lil' Bush

Comedy Central's Lil' Bush isn't funny, or at least that's the news from the bunker states like Utah. Utah, of course isn't known as the mother of a thousand comics, nor is any place known for religiosity and Republican politics also known for thriving comedy clubs. The mocking of heretics, homosexuals, Democratic candidates and minorities seems to fill the niche.

But I didn't come to bury Donick Cary's new cartoon series but to praise it. It may in fact be "mean-spirited, ugly, amateurish, vulgar and unwatchable" but when it takes aim at Bush, there's something refreshing in seeing the characters we suspect of being the inner children of the little club that's ruined the world biting the heads off of birds (Lil' Cheney,) or trying to get Lil' Bush to smooch (Lil' Condy.)

Wednesday's episode, wherein the Lil' Republican rascals run off to Baghdad to find a present for Daddy Bush in the form of some "good news" reveals that there is no good news for anyone but Halliburton and after a bit of slaughter they can only find a maimed little boy they nickname "lamey" to bring back to Washington in a box. Dad Bush doesn't know what to make of the present and is relieved to toss him, crutches and all in the garbage after moronic Lil' Jeb accidentally breaks his neck.

Yes, as many reviews point out, it takes "liberties with the truth" but that's what satire is about and perhaps treating the House of Bush in this trenchant fashion makes it more revealing of inner ugliness than the House of Usher with its hidden, Gothic horrors. It's the use of sarcastic humor, albeit cruel, mean and ugly, that allows us to deal with the dimwitted Decider, the greedy, inhuman prince of darkness Cheney and their familiars. Perhaps as with any Medusa, you can't really look at such a hideous visage directly.

The picaresque first episode uses a competition to get the first kiss of youth as the grail the Weeble-like characters seek while destroying lives to get it. I think actually, that it's far more kind to show them thus: as childish, self involved innocents with undeveloped consciences, than to show them as they really are: childish, self involved sociopaths with undeveloped consciences, up to their knees in blood in their quest for power, glory and riches.

Cross-posted at The Reaction

Burn baby, burn

The references to the Reichstag fire began while the ruins of the World Trade Center were still smoking and it was just the worst thing in the world to doubt George Bush's integrity or the "fact" that it was all about Iraq and not about Saudi Arabia's support for international terrorism Against American interests based in Afghanistan and in the United States itself. I have been making sarcastic comments about Bush's ambition ever since and about the chance that he would take matters into his own hands and precipitate some calamity which would justify the suspension of elections and the granting of special emergency powers.


George was able to get himself re-elected with only a few suspicions regarding election tampering and didn't need anything as dramatic as Adolph Hitler's contrived terrorist attack to arrogate unprecedented power, but that was then. If the constitution he reviles is to be obeyed, he may not run again and yet, he sees himself as a messiah and the constitution as an impediment. Will he be content to go quietly and await the judgment of history? My suggestion of another national calamity may remain a thing of cynical speculation, but what do we make of the National Security and Homeland Security Presidential Directive?


Signed two weeks ago with little public fanfare and apparently without Congressional oversight, this document deals with scenarios wherein the President's power becomes dictatorial, unassailable and perhaps permanent. Yes, I am aware of using hyperbole when talking about his megalomaniacal and uncompromising desire to be the world's "commander guy" But the history of his administration is beginning to make the most cynical of us seem prophetic. The mechanism seems to be in place for the transmogrification of the wimpy little ex-cheerleader, ne'er do well of the Bush litter into King George, der Führer George, president for life George, Big Brother George. All that stands between these horrors and reality is the willingness of the man himself to light a fuse. All that stands between the liberty we have enjoyed for over 200 years and an unaccountable dictatorship is the conscience of George W. Bush.

Can we afford to wait for 2008?