Obama Can't Win, But McCain Just Might Lose

For most of his adult life, the fbomber has been in an emotional state that could best be described as “bitter, caustic, life-sapping, despairing cynicism” in regards to matters of politics.

Generally, this stance of expecting the absolute worst foreseeable disaster --- immediately followed by an even more terrible and unforeseeable catastrophe --- has paid off.

Because of this pessimistic mindset, despite all the twists and turns this great nation has made as it determinedly burrows ever deeper into the shit, the fbomber has often been surprised --- but rarely disappointed.

After all, the fbomber believes that no matter how gross and systemic the American people’s flaws may be, they will at least be consistent. No matter what, they will always let him down.

But lately, the fbomber has felt the tiny flutterings of a long-lost and presumed-dead emotion inside the empty, dusty ribcage that once housed his live and beating heart. That emotion? Hope.

This emotion was most recently felt while listening to Barack Obama speaking on National Public Radio. Though congenitally immune from Obamamania*, the fbomber noted that at the very least Obama does not sound like an intolerable prick when he speaks. To the contrary, in fact. He actually sounds smart, thoughtful and even --- dare I say it? --- cool.** It shows how expectations have fallen when someone becomes giddily excited at the prospect of a President who is, at minimum, not a total tool. But there it is.

This fluttering grew into a veritable flapping when the fbomber considered that Obama might actually have a chance to get elected this year. Though the fbomber firmly believes that the Democrats can never win an election, he knows that from time to time the Republicans can lose one. And that this year might be one of those times.


Political Party is Not a Choice
The fbomber believes that political party affiliation is not a product of intellectual choice, or a product of environment, or indoctrination or any other exogenous factor. It is an internally generated expression of the way that people view the world. And that the way people view the world is a result of hard-wired psychological tendencies.

Think about it. Could any of you reading conceivably vote for the other party? According to my theory, about 75% of people reading this could not. That's because you just ARE Liberal/Democratic or Conservative/Republican because of the way your brain works from birth.

The fbomber did not come up with this theory on his own. He read something like it in a book Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think by George Lakoff. Then he perverted and twisted it to fit his own misanthropic mindset, aided in large part by his complete lack of training in psychology, sociology, statistics or anything else, for that matter.

To the fbomber, the division between Republicans and Democrats is a function of where they fall on one specific, particular line of attitude. This line measures how they view their relations between themselves and other people.

At one end, someone sees himself as part of a community, with a strong and complex web of responsibilities to everyone in that community. At the other end of the line, someone sees himself as essentially autonomous, in competition with every other person and with no responsibilities towards them --- unless that person explicitly chooses to take on those responsibilities.

These two mindsets have been described in various ways:
Left vs. Right
Hippy vs. Nazi
Magnanimous vs. Selfish
Community vs. Individual
We vs. Me
Pussy vs. Dick
Share vs. Hoard
Nurturing Family vs. Strict Family
Mommy vs. Daddy

For the purposes of this essay, the fbomber will call this line the Nice vs. Mean line.

Assuming a bell-curve distribution, very few people will fall at the extreme ends of this line. Most will be in the center, with half nicer than average, and half meaner. Because of its let’s-share-the-wealth, lets-help-one-another, let’s-get-along, your-hair-looks-very-nice values, the Democratic party is the natural home of the nicer half.

Conversely, due to its leave-me-alone, this-money-is-mine, fuck-the-world, do-what-I-tell-you, look-how-big-my-gun-is values, the Republican party is the natural home of the meaner half.

At the same time, there is another line measuring intelligence, also split into the smarter-than-average and dumber-than-average halves.

So we can draw up a graph to represent the total electorate.



Republicans naturally make up the Smart & Mean, and Dumb & Mean quarters. And they are locked in there tighter than Mark Foley's eyeballs onto an Abercrombie & Fitch catalog.

The Smart & Mean quadrant ARE the Republican party, the rich, white shareholder and CEO class. The Dumb & Mean quadrant --- the Rednecks, the Evangelicals, the NASCAR fans, the Chickenhawks supporting a war they won't fight --- are equally locked in. They are the Smart & Mean people’s loyal foot-soldiers, held in thrall to the prospect of becoming like the Smart & Mean guys some lucky day if they do enough dirty work to earn that promotion.

Democrats naturally get the Smart & Nice quadrant. The well-educated, the artists, the creatives, the wordy, egghead types. The bourgeouis bohemians. The latte liberals. The Jews. The Volvo drivers. The women. The students. Hollywood.

The Nice & Stupid quadrant? They should be Democrats. But they are not.

Those are the Swing Voters.

How else could you describe the kind of person that looks at Gore vs. Bush, Kerry vs. Bush or Obama vs. McCain and says “I don’t know… I can’t make up my mind… they both seem a lot alike to me”?

These are the people too stupid to realize the difference between a failed cokehead oil executive and a Nobel Prize winner. Or too nice to come out and admit that one of the candidates is a huge asshole and the other is --- at worst --- a medium-sized asshole.

Why Republicans Win, Unless They Lose
In a normal election, the Republicans handily win because they have their half of the electorate and can trick enough Nice & Stupid voters come in at over 50.1% And in normal circumstances, it is easy. For starters, the Smart & Mean people have the most money, plus the rabid shock troops of the Dumb & Mean (aka the Fox News audience) to do it with.

Most of all, the people they are targeting, are --- after all --- Nice & Stupid. Stupid enough to believe that giving the top .001% of the economic elite tax breaks will pump up their Wal-Mart cashier paychecks. Stupid enough to believe that John Kerry is backed by Al Queda. Nice enough to want to stop sweet innocent blastocysts and coma victims from being murdered by those evil, evil doctors.

Here’s the kicker. The Republicans don’t even have to convince the Nice & Stupid crowd to vote Republican. That’s a bonus, but all they really have to do to win is to confuse them enough to keep them from voting at all. That’s what the Swift-Boating and other dirty, last-minute personal attacks are good for. To get the Nice & Stupid crew to throw their hands up and say “Gosh almighty! They’re BOTH awful! Is ‘Idol on?’”

On the other hand, the Democrats can never win an election outright, because the Democrat’s natural, guaranteed constituency is only 25% of the electorate and they have to split their other 25% with the Republicans.


Why This Year is Different
To win, the Democrats have to get all the Nice & Smart voters, hold onto the Nice & Dumb voters and hope that something prevents the Smart & Mean and Dumb & Mean people from voting Republican in maximum numbers.

Well, that could be happening this year.

Assuming the Smart & Nice crowd maxes out support for Obama and the Democrats, three fatigue factors should keep the other three quadrants from turning out in support of McCain and the Republicans.

1. Failure Fatigue.
As pointed out elsewhere, the Republican’s policies have been such an abject failure that even the stupidest person cannot sign up for more of them. This should minimize Republican poaching of the Stupid & Nice quadrant.

2. Gluttony Fatigue
After eight years of unrestrained bingeing, the Smart & Mean quadrant should be well and truly glutted with undeserved riches at this point. Glutted, apparently, to the point of immobility this election.

The tax cuts have given the richest Americans an extra couple hundreds of billions into their already-bulging pockets over the last seven years. An orgy of spending increases and misguided policy choices by the Republican-controlled government has handed the well-connected Smart & Mean crowd --- think defense contractors and energy companies --- yet more trillions of U.S. citizens’ cash.

After all this engorgement, these folks just don’t have the hunger for power that they did back in 1999 and 2000. They are ready to take a bit of a nap to digest their meal, like a boa constrictor just back from a good grazing session at the local pre-school. Consequently, they look to be sitting out this political fight and holing up in Palm Beach, La Jolla and Jackson Hole with their trophy wives and ungrateful children for a couple of years.

And why shouldn’t they kick back? After all, they’ve already done the fun part. They ran into a clean, well-stocked store in 2001 and proceeded to ransack and loot it for the last seven years. Now the shelves are all bare and there are broken dreams all over the floor. It’s time for them to go home and let the suckers who work for minimum wage come in and sweep up, repair the damage, and restock the shelves in preparation for 2012 or 2016’s smash-and-grab raid.

Proof of the Smart & Meanie’s absence this year can be seen in the inept and bumbling McCain campaign. Where are Rove and the other evil ninjas? Where are W’s “Rangers” ponying up $250k apiece for the campaign? Not in McCain’s bus, that’s for sure. The true, stone-cold pimps have made themselves scarce this go-round, putting the B-team in charge, with obvious results.

3. Hatred Fatigue.
Just since 2000, the Dumb & Mean quadrant has engaged in a ferocious and endless campaign of slavering, foaming, raging hatred at a dizzying variety of targets, including, but not limited to:

Bill Clinton
Blow Jobs
Hilary Clinton
International Law
Al Gore
Reality
Gays
Liberals
The French
Habeas Corpus
Islam
Immigrants
Brown-skinned people, generally
Education
Hilary Clinton
The U.N.
Charles Darwin
Federal Judges
Dan Rather
The Geneva Convention
Science
Doctors
Separation of Church and State
John Kerry
The Truth
Hilary Clinton
The U.S. Constitution
American Cities
Hilary Clinton

Though the Dumb & Mean’s capacity for hatred is endless, apparently it is not tireless.

Like a vicious, retarded, pit bull who has been throwing itself frenziedly against the bars of its cage in a prolonged tantrum of pure, senseless rage for weeks, these idiot fuckers appear to be spent at last. They now lay on the floor, panting and covered with their own stinking slobber, stupefied by exhaustion. So they’re neutralized for a while at least.

So to sum it up --- if anything could be called summing it up after 1,700 words --- yeah, despite my pessimistic, humanity-hating, leanings I believe that Obama does actually have a shot. Not a lock, like some people are saying. But a shot.

After all, the fbomber only knows two sure things about politics.

1. Democrats can only win the Presidency after the Republicans royally shit the bed.
2. Republicans always, always, always shit the bed.

---

*I have tried. Really.

** Even the most vitriolic Obama Hater-ade slinger has to acknowledge that the man is fucking unflappable under pressure. He’s calmly, cold-bloodedly, and precisely sprinted a high-wire from Illinois State Rep to Democratic Presidential candidate --- under intense fire from all sides --- without a stumble, misstep or loss of composure. Cucumber doesn’t even touch it. Other side of pillow isn’t even close. Ice is feverish by comparison. Dude is cooler than the lakes of liquid ammonia on Saturn’s moon, Titan. That’s 300 degrees Fahrenheit below zero, sucka.

Goodbye - Finally - To All That

No matter who* is elected this November, the fbomber is gratified to see that some of the worst elements of the Bush-Cheney Era will at long last be left behind, consigned to the same dustbin of history where America’s manufacturing base, international goodwill and military capacity now decompose.

Looking at America’s current economic and military disaster, many might view the last seven years as a complete debacle. But the fbomber --- ever a toilet-half-flushed kind of person --- prefers to find the positive aspects of this period of unfettered Republican rule.

To the fbomber, the years between 2000-2008 are valuable as a sort of social experiment in what happens when conservatives are allowed to exert their influence on this country, with Washington D.C. serving as a cross between a laboratory and the adult-less island in “Lord of the Flies.”

The ensuing disaster appears to have made an impression on even the most dull-witted and complacent members of America’s clueless citizenry. Just as even the stupidest cows eventually learn to avoid touching the electric fence, it looks like America’s cow-people are learning to avoid some specific, telltale signs of the most harmful strand of conservatism.

If the two remaining candidates of Barrack Obama and John McCain are any indicator of the preferences of the majority of voting Americans, both Democrat and Republican, the following elements of Republicanism are --- at least temporarily --- out of favor.

1. Crazy Christianity.
Unlike Bush, who practically billed himself as Yahweh’s running mate, neither John McCain nor Barrack Obama falls into creationist, speaking-in-tongues, praying-out-loud-at-Cracker-Barrel camp. And for that, we can all be grateful to the deity of our choice. Because - in my experience - any time someone is “born again,” the second birthing tends to result in massive brain damage.

Hopefully, this means that God has lost interest in interfering in U.S. political races and will now concentrate on the things He is best at: earthquakes, hurricanes and killing babies with malaria.

2. Corporate Executives Writing Legislation Affecting Their Industry.
In 2001, Cheney secretly invited the heads of America’s biggest oil companies to come set America’s energy policy. A policy that unsurprisingly included lots of subsidies and tax breaks, but little conservation or environmental regulation. Over the next seven years, America consumers paid record prices for gasoline while these oil companies posted record profits and air, water and land pollution increased.

In an equally shocking development, Bush’s decision to place Lindsey Lohan in charge of America’s strategic pharmaceutical-grade cocaine stockpile didn’t turn out well either.

3. A Foreign Policy Based on the Philosophy of the Cobra Kai Karate School.

4. Teetotaling.
George W. Bush has effectively ruined Presidential aspirations for sober people, forever. At this point, I think America might finally realize that if someone is compulsively driven to drink and drug themselves to the brink of death three times a week, they probably have a design flaw too severe to fix by just laying off the sauce. Tough luck there, Robert Downey Jr.

5. Visibly Evil People in the White House.
Unless the malignant spirit inhabiting Dick Cheney’s body can pass from host to host like the demon in “Fallen,” it seems unlikely that we will ever have anyone quite as malevolently destructive in the Executive Branch ever again. Though, again, in the spirit of looking for the positive side of things, I will point out that Cheney’s insatiable thirst for fresh blood has virtually eliminated metropolitan D.C.’s population of stray cats.

6. Incompetence + Arrogance.
Obama may be arrogant, but at least he is able to do things, and even do some of them exceptionally well. McCain is clearly incompetent**, but is at least humble about it, cheerfully admitting that he knows nothing about a confusing little subject called economics as he makes his bid to head up the largest economy in the world.

7. Stubbornness In the Face of Contradictory Facts.
Both Obama and McCain have flip-flopped, backtracked, reversed course and changed their message as events, goals and circumstances warranted. Compared to President One-Track-Mind, this is a Very Good Thing.

8. Republicanism Itself.
In 2001, the Republicans had everything that they could possibly want:
Complete control over the Legislative and Executive Branches.
A healthy economy.
A balanced budget.
A legitimately scary, dark-skinned enemy to whip up fear about.
A gay male hooker in the White House Press Corps.

The ball was finally, indubitably, irrefutably in their court to do with whatever they wanted. And they did, starting wars, ignoring civil rights, mocking international law, reducing taxes, increasing spending, and every other thing on their eight-years-in-the-writing To Do List.

Seven years later, we’re mired in two losing wars, our national honor has been lost, the deficit is enormous, the jobless rate is rising, the dollar is worthless, gasoline and food prices are spiraling upward, and vast portions of our economy are rotting, smoldering carcasses.

The experiment is over. The results are in. Republicans suck. Not just in the relative privacy of airport restrooms either. Every place. In every way. Morally. Ethically. Economically. Fiscally. Administratively. Personally. Militarily. Spiritually. Even physically. Just try to imagine a nude GOP convention, if you ever want to semi-permanently quash your sex drive.

Even the Republicans finally realize how repugnant they are, like a drunkard slowly coming to consciousness and realizing that the bad smell that's been giving him nightmares is coming from his own soiled underwear. That’s why they nominated someone who has --- superficially and sporadically --- butted heads with the Republican Party during his political career.

Again, this is a Very Good Thing. Let’s enjoy this repugnance while it lasts. Which if history is any indicator, should be about three years, maybe seven.

-----

*Of course it’s going to be McCain. Quit kidding yourself. He’s white, and this is a nation that didn’t even like Muhammad Ali until he couldn’t freaking talk anymore.

** Someone much more cynical and disrespectful than the fbomber might say that McCain was by his own admission a horrible student, obviously a substandard pilot, and no great shakes as a Senator. This person might go on to make the argument that McCain’s high water mark of personal achievement was as a captive prisoner in a losing war. But the fbomber would not go that far.

O-Bob-ma?

There's been something catching my eye about the ubiquitous (in certain parts of L.A. at least) posters of Obama.
Something about Obama's faraway gaze, his prominent cheekbones, the tilt of his head.

It all seemed familiar to me, like I had seen something like it before.

I've figured it out now.

I spent the mid-nineties trying to purge my brain of its college education in a runaway teen/aging hippy locus neighborhood called Ocean Beach in San Diego.

If there was one thing that stoned skaters and pathetic former flower children can agree on, it is the genius of Mr. Robert Marley, Reggae Superstar. Consequently, just about every house in the neighborhood had a poster of the musical legend on one of its filthy, smoke-cured walls.

Usually, this one right here:


Compare to the current favorite wall decoration of 2008's starry-eyed dreamers, flipped to match head tilt:


Uncanny, no? But brilliant in a way, too. After all, Bob Marley is a figure who rose to prominence during Obama's youth and has become a lasting inspiration for multiple following generations due to his talent and ideals.

I suppose that John McCain will now have to fight back with a campaign poster that echoes an iconic figure from his formative era.

May I suggest this guy?

Obama elitist? I think not.

Obama recently made the mistake of treating Americans like they are adults, capable of hearing the truth, and said that decades of politicians refusing to address the economic issues affecting postindustrial communities had made the rural Pennsylvanians “bitter.”

Hillary and McCain’s campaigns immediately seized upon this statement to wax indignant about how Obama is “elitist,” “arrogant” and “condescending” to the average Americans. As if either one of those two fakers has come within body-odor-sniffing distance of an average American in the last 36 months without a full phalanx of cameramen on hand to capture the event for CNN.

Now I’m by no means an Obama supporter, but I would at least like to see the guy get criticized for the right things. And being “elitist” about rural Americans isn’t one of them.

I know that because I am myself a true and unrepentant elitist.

This might seem counterintuitive, considering that I don’t work and I live on a filthy boat. But I believe that cements my true elitism credentials.

Any condescending dick can feel superior while staring at the glittering city lights from his penthouse apartment after a hard day of hedge fund managing. But anyone that can simultaneously preserve an unbridled contempt for America’s rural working class while having to use a public shower has truly earned his stuck-up stripes.

Speaking as such an individual, I would never say that I think that rural Pennsylvanians are “bitter.”

First off, I’d say that I never actually bother to think about them at all. And that when I do, it is with a mixture of repugnance, contempt and the kind of fleeting pity that I feel watching a cockroach get flushed down a toilet.

I drove through that state once, and saw these rural areas in question --- a region that I would characterize as Arkansas, plus heavy industry, minus heavy industry.

To my mind, any ambulatory adult who would willingly choose to inhabit such a dreary, interminable, monotonous shit-plain of ticky-tacky houses, shuttered factories and Applebee’s-infested strip malls deserves whatever heaping helping of misery their life hands them. Case closed.

But in my more charitable moments, I find their adherence to a hardscrabble blue-collar ethic long after the blue-collar jobs have been shipped to Asian sweatshops pathetically touching. Kind of like the delusions of Texans who sincerely believe, to the tips of their ostrich-skin boots, that they are real live cowboys while commuting to their job at the Dr. Pepper bottling plant.

If pressed, I would say that I wish that these rural Pennsylvanians would develop the intellectual capacity to stop electing the fascistic plutocrats who chant the voters’ favorite superstition platitudes to them as a soporific to facilitate the plutocrats’ systematic pauperization of the American middle class for corporate profit.

Alternatively, I wish that these individuals would develop the courage to leave the soul-killing patch of sooty, quasi-urbanized slum-rot that their family has festered in a full generation after the economic viability of the region has vanished. Just leave and disperse throughout the nation, like a fart spreading into a room until you can’t smell it anymore.

But if they can’t do either, I simply wish that they would die.

Die as quickly as possible and in a way that highlights the cretinous values that these losers have created for themselves in the absence of intellectual, spiritual, artistic or social attainments.

I wish their sons would break their backs copying moves they watched on backyardwrestling.com. I wish their daughters would catch the AIDS that an abstinence-only sex education never taught them to prevent. I wish the fathers’ hearts would explode from the daily intake of pure hog offal, honeycombed with visible crystals of sodium nitrate, that those voracious garbage-eaters refer to as “Scrapple.”

What’s more, I wish that all these calamities would all happen on the same day.

I wish the mom would have to load her suffering brood into the gargantuan, gas-guzzling SUV that the family’s obesity, bad taste and unreturned loyalty to American auto manufacturers inspired them to buy. And on the way to the hospital --- which, by the way, only practices the strange, backward kind of medicine which a curriculum of Intelligent Design permits --- that family’s stupendous fat-weight would cause the tires, purchased cheaply at the local Wal-Mart, to burst at their Chinese-slave-labor-created seams. And their hideous car would overturn and strew the entire family’s bloated, lifeless corpses across that state’s poorly-maintained highways.

Lastly, I wish that I would happen to be driving my well-designed, reliable imported car through Pennsylvania on this very same day, perhaps shuttling between music festivals and book-reading events in the state’s two habitable urban oases of Philadelphia and Pittsburg.

As I drive past the roadside carnage, I would slow down for an instant to toss the tepid dregs of that day’s third half-caff soy latte on their fat, ugly, pathetic carcasses.

Then I would accelerate briskly, leaving their rotting corpses in my dust like so much blubbery road-kill, an NPR podcast of “Fresh Air” blasting out all four open windows.

---

There? See the difference? That’s what true elitism looks like. I didn't use the word "bitter" once. Give Obama a break.

Spitzer Stupid? No, just horny. There is a difference.

Let the moral tsk-tsking begin.

Oh my god! Some guy wanted to fuck someone besides his wife! And took steps to do just that, to fuck some younger, hotter, sexier woman. How horrible! Clearly this person is not capable of having a position of power or trust. Because God knows, nobody who ever meets their responsibilities and does what they are supposed to do professionally would ever fuck a prostitute.

Only lowlife fuckups would do that.

Oh wait, these prostitutes cost $4,000-plus. That's kind of steep for the average low-life fuckup. So I'm betting that there were some pretty highly accomplished johns calling the Emperor's VIP Club. Furthermore, I'm betting that they were all married.

After all, if a single guy is willing to drop $4k to bust a load, he's going to make it a lot more fun than some sort of scurrying little tryst in the Mayflower Hotel.

My take on this? First, you know that it was a Democrat getting busted because the hooker was female.

Second. This doesn't bother me that much about Eliot. If anything, I feel sorry for him.

I know, and any man who is honest will know what it's like to fuck the same fucking person over and over and over. It's a deadening, depressing, dream-killing, miserable kind of torture. First, sheer repetition takes the thing that you used to love doing and turns it into a fucking chore that you can frankly take or leave after about round, oh, 300 or so.

I mean, honestly, as much as you might love steak, you're going to get sick of it if that's all that you're ever allowed to eat. And let's not forget, to mix bovine metaphors here, that women are like milk to a man's wine... spoiling into chunky curds (typically on the ass and thighs) over the course of time's inexorable march.

Secondly --- and here's the real ironic twist that proves again what a perversely evil genius God is --- the less you actually want to fuck that same, aging person over and over THE MORE FUCKING WORK IT TAKES TO ACTUALLY DO IT.

Yeah, do you think that you're the only one that's bored with the same bits of sweat-soaked genitalia? Think again! So is she! Bored bored bored. Bored pissless! Also, long, long past the point of being impressed by you anymore. You know how she used to think that you were funny and smart and sexy. Well, she's heard all your fucking stories by now, twenty times plus. She's seen you walk around the house looking for the keys IN YOUR GODDAMNED HAND, Mr. Genius. Also washed about a thousand pairs of your underwear with skid marks in the seat that look like they were drawn in with a brown magic marker.

And don't forget that she's squeezed a couple of human beings out of that same vagina, too, acts that not only stretched it well past its optimal penile-rubbing dimensions but also instantaneously moved you from center stage in her set of priorities to somewhere up by the concession stand.

To recap: She's tired, she's sick of you, she's a MOM now. And you're coming at her with that dick of yours? It's all she can do to avoid throwing that hot cup of chamomille tea by the bedstand on your cock to make it go away. So to get in that only marginally desirable pussy you are going to have to beg and cajole and butter her up more than you EVER did when she was young and hot and genuinely fuckable.

How's that for hilarious? Let's really amp the fun up. You, being the wine to her milk, are actually more desirable than ever. Sure, you've lost some physical allure, but have more than compensated by your gravitas, stature, demeanor and other fancy words for MONEY. Yeah, you're rich and powerful and have hot young little gold-diggers and advancement-seekers in short skirts giving you sultry glances all the ding-dong day! Who are a thousand, million times hotter than this mother of your children, the one who is trying to feign sleep to get out of giving you a simple, basic, ordinary missionary-style fuck right now.

And we act surprised, shocked, when some married guy with something on the ball runs screaming and erect into the nearest brothel?

I mean, fuck, when you've got to get that dick into something besides the old, flabby, disinterested, enormous, dry, contemptuous vagina you are married to, hookers are about the safest bet going. Personally, I'm more of a massage parlor man, but that could just be because I don't have 4 grand lying around in my "bust a nut" account.

I mean, what the fuck else is Eliot Spitzer supposed to do? Have an affair? No, he doesn't want to have another relationship. He just wants to get fucking fucked again for once in his life. Also, he doesn't want people to think he's copycatting Giuliani. Fuck an intern? No, everyone knows what that leads to. Get a Real Doll? Those things develop hygiene problems over time and use. Sheep? Get real. He lives in New York, not Wyoming. Show self restraint? Go golfing? Channel that energy into home repair projects. Fuck that. Some of us want to actually LIVE while we are alive.

No. A hooker is the only way to go. Clean. Attachment free. Safe. Or so Eliot thought. He was almost right too.

Turns out he was just a peripheral casualty in the IRS's quest to squeeze their full due out of this prostitution ring. The Feds weren't even after the johns the whole time, just the money.

Poor bastard.

I Heart Flip Floppers

Much has been made lately about candidates' inconstancy of opinions. Ex-candidate Romney, Hilary and McCain have all been lambasted for changing their mind about this or that, accused of not having the courage to stand behind their convictions and even called the dreaded "F" (Flip-Flop) word.

I couldn't be happier.

After 7 years with a president who hasn't changed in mind on ANYTHING, I welcome a wishy-washy, spineless, flapping in the wind, flip-flopper into office.

Convictions are overrated. Look at recent history:

Bill Clinton --- wishy-washy as a sock in a laundromat. Result --- peace, prosperity, budget sanity, love of world.
GW Bush --- resolute, determined, steadfast. Result --- deficits, war, death, hatred from all corners of globe.

I hope the next president can't choose between cheerios and fruit loops without running it past a focus group.

A Final Dem-Fucking?

So Bush had his final State of the Union Address and used it to talk more fear and panic about the economy. Not enough to "expand" the stimulus package like the Democrats say they would like. Because, gosh-darnit, $150 billion pissed away, I mean "rebated" is just exactly the right amount.

But still panicky.

Why all the hubbub? Yeah, it doesn't look particularly good for us right now. But not significantly worse than a month ago, when it was all sunshine and cookies talk from the administration. And this is not a guy who has let reality ever force him to admit anything he didn't want to admit before.

And it's not like he, or anyone who advises him gives a fuck about the people suffering in the economic downturn. The top 1% is doing just fine, thanks, and in fact will use this little downturn to pick up some valuable assets on the cheap.

And he's not running for reelection.

And I think I know what it is. It's those tax cuts. He, or rather his puppetmasters, want those tax cuts to go permanent. Never mind that they've been an economic disaster for everyone but corporations. They're expiring now, and it's his job to stop that.

Screaming about a recession is the easiest way to do it. Nobody thinks it's a good idea to raise taxes during a recession. Even if doing so is necessary to get back into some sort of rational, realistic, balanced-ish budget.

It's like exercise, I guess. Something that is normally good, and necessary, but might need to be skipped when someone is down with the flu or otherwise really sick.

So get ready to hear a lot of squealing and whining about how these tax cuts are about to sunset, and how our economy will be devastated if that happens. And watch our pussy Democratic Congress fall all over themselves to pass legislation to keep them cut for a while longer, maybe even permanently, to avoid having an ad run against them someday saying that they (cue ominous music) "raised taxes during a recession." I've got no doubt that he's capable. This is, after all, not something inconsequential like running the country or delivering services to U.S. taxpayers. This is important. It's helping rich people get and stay richer. Something he, and any Republican, can do in their sleep.

Half a million Iraqi dead, 3,000 U.S. dead. Record Debt.

If Bush can only destroy our ability to ever dig ourselves out of the fiscal hole he's plowed us into, then his legacy will be complete.

More Hatred and Contempt (and economics)

Dadburn those pesky Democrats! Since Preznit Shit-for-Brains caught recession panic and threw away whatever wispy pretendings of fiscal responsibility out of his mumblings (his actions and decisions long ago ceased to contain any) Senator's Reid and Dodd would like to get some tangible national benefits out of the debt-fattening orgy of tax cuts and public spending on the way. So would like to put some infrastructure projects in the mix, the sorts of things that would actually be built here in the USA, employing USA citizens and increase our GDP going forward. Not so fast, say the Republicans.

I find this interesting, and illustrative, in much the same way that falling face first into a pile cat shit interestingly illustrates exactly what what Mr. Whiskers has been eating lately.

The lesson, so far as I get it, is that the Republicans --- addicted as they are to both tax cuts and runaway spending --- have no perceptible problem running our country into greater and greater debt levels, as long as they can state with 100% confidence that no tangible benefit to American citizens is ever produced. Things that go boom, yes. Cash shipments that vanish somewhere in Mesopotamia, sure. Subsidies to companies which pillage our national resources and pollute our environment, hell yeah. Bridges and roads, not so much.

I hate them. I hate them. I hate them more and more every day.

I'm more filled with hate and contempt every day (special economics issue!)

So, apparently as of just last week we are in deep economic shit.

Never mind that every governmental and financial institution nitwit that's been put in front of a camera, microphone or stenographer-slash-journalist the last three years has been assuring us that nope, no looming recession, nothing to worry about with this economy, no sirreebob, just more solid growth for us!

Never mind the facts that ---

A. our investment banks are losing billions because people took out home loans based on income numbers which they pulled from the LOTTO ticket they bought that morning.
B. that foreigners take dollar bills from us and apply them directly to their dirty assholes now, without bothering to stick them in the cash tills because frankly it's not worth the effort these days.
C. that our government spends trillion more than it collects and borrows the difference from a country we periodically lecture and demonize about human rights.
D. That we spend billions of that on weapons and illegal war which in turn result not in further economic growth for our nation but big explosions and increased hatred directed at ourselves.
E. That we as a nation buy way, way more shit from abroad, especially flammable black goo, than other people buy from us. Not least because we (or rather our corporate decisionmakers) have been systematically dismantling our manufacturing plants and shipping them abroad to countries where they won't be bothered with pesky unions, environmental regulations or people who want to earn more than $3 an hour.
F. That we, as individual dipshits, spend more money than we make so we have credit card balances as big or bigger than our savings accounts.

--- these nitwits said, and that message was dutifully passed on to the passive consumers of America.

Only now apparently, we're allowed, no, commanded to start worrying about the economy because it's apparently on a waterslide, greased with melted pigfat, leading straight to a bubbling cauldron of liquified bat guano.

And the only thing that can save us is, according George W. Bush and his dancing monkey Ben Bernanke, tax cuts for businesses, plus $600 cash in hand for everyone to go on out and spend, spend, spend.

But hey! Is giving everyone $600 going to fix A through F? No, it's not. In fact, it's going to make some of those things worse. We'll go further into governmental debt, for one thing, as we both forgo tax income and start handing out those sweet $600 checks.

But who's saying that? Who's calling bullshit on this whole charade? Who's saying "You know what, Georgie? You can keep that $600 bones. Spend it on creating an alternative energy source that would help us avoid both trade deficits and future resource wars, homey. Or enforcing financial regulations that will prevent future greed-and-lie-fuelled market meltdowns. Put it into training people to become employable in the new economy. Buy all our soldiers in Iraq an airline ticket home, business class."

Nobody. Only the fbomber. And who cares what that grumpy fucker says anyway?

President Romney 2009: This is how it happens.

Mit is tenderly nuzzling his nose up the Religious Right's poop-chute, a little bit of foreplay before he buries it to the hilt.

The election is his. Let me be the first to call it.

Forget Obama. Forget Hillary. Our next President is going to be another Republican. A stupid Mormon one with a 80’s-style haircut.

Here’s why.

People are stupid, selfish, mean and fearful .

I almost said “Americans” are stupid, selfish, hateful and fearful, but that’s unfair. American’s aren’t inherently dumber, greedier, meaner and more cowardly than humanity in general. I believe those attributes are pretty evenly distributed through the homo sapiens genetic code, and probably even bound up somehow with adenine, guanine, thyrine and cytosine in the actual strands of our DNA.

We Americans, however, tend to glorify those vices more than most other cultures though. We even confuse them with virtues to a much greater extent than, say, the Swiss. And stupid, selfish, mean and fearful Americans want, ultimately, to vote for John Wayne.

At no time do these despicable qualities become more pandered to than during the election of whichever corporate-owned figurehead will preside over the Executive branch of the federal government.

That’s when these four ugliest strands of humanity’s psyche get plucked like banjo strings, in order to --- just like in the movie “Deliverance” --- provide a soundtrack for a brutal ass-rape. The victims are reason, common sense and a basic understanding of what is in our best interests.

After these decision-making factors have been made to squeal like pigs by the rancid cocks of fear-mongering right-wing corportatist propaganda, Americans give up trying to think about who they really want to see in office.

Instead, out of sheer exhausted panic, they vote against whoever they have been convinced to see as the most repulsive.

And the Republicans can be said to be the master of a three skills: Making money. Trolling for anonymous gay sex in public bathrooms. Making Democrats look repulsive.

That’s not many but it is enough. Every four years they take a decent, intelligent, successful public figure and convince a whisker-thin majority of stupid, greedy, mean and fearful voters that that public figure has some petty, yet stomach-turning character flaw. A tiny weakness in their psyche, yet one so pathetic and shameful that he should be shunned as an embarrassment to the race, not elevated to lead the nation.

Gore is a serial exaggerator. Kerry is a pussified flip-flopper. Clinton is a rapist. Dukkakis fellates Willie Horton. And so on and so on and so on.

By comparison, the Republican is portrayed as John Wayne.

Not the real John Wayne, who was named Marion, wore lifts, and sat out WWII to advance his film career. The John Wayne that was shown on the movie screen. Quiet. Masculine. Tough. Confident. Contemptuous of book learning. Intinctively competent. In other words, the kind of person the stupid, selfish, mean and fearful people would like to see themselves as, if they could ever forget for one second that they are stupid, selfish, mean and fearful .

And it works. Except for when the stupid, selfish, mean and fearful party lost its crazy sub-wing to Ross Perot in ’92 and the Republicans nominated someone too old and crippled to play the John Wayne role in ’96, it fucking works. Every time.

Of the Republican field, who can take on the John Wayne role? The Republicans hoped Fred Thompson could, but he’s proving to be too old and drowsy to pull it off. Same with cranky old coot McCain. Guiliani is plenty selfish, mean and fearful, but not quite stupid enough, as evidenced by his positions on gays, guns and babies.

Romney is not actually stupid, but he is desperate and shameless enough to play that part if he thinks it will get him the votes. Consequently, as soon as the Mormon issue can be assuaged sufficiently (see article) the Republicans --- first the moneyed decision makers, and eventually the stupid, selfish, mean and fearful masses --- will coalesce around him.

Then in the general elections, it’s all over.

Hillary, Obama and John Edwards don’t stand a chance. Remember, the Republicans don’t have to convince any stupid, selfish, mean and fearful people to vote for Romney, only convince them to vote against the Democratic candidate.

A woman, named Clinton to boot. A black guy. A smart, kind, thoughtful, gentle man who believes that the rich should share wealth with the poor.

Half the Republicans’ work will already be done.

Rudy's Ground Zero Lie vs. Al's Invented Internet Myth

I still angrily remember the shameful piling on that Al Gore received regarding a a claim to have "invented the Internet" that he NEVER FUCKING MADE. This completely bogus piece of shit story spun out by GOP Asshole Dick Armey's fax machine and was immediately and eagerly swallowed by print and television reporters without question. As a result, Gore, who was ever nothing if not straight-laced and boringly honest got turned into a foolish serial exaggerator.

By comparison, what consequences has Rudy Giuliani suffered for his videotaped claim in front of a Cincinnati crowd that that he was at ground zero "as often, if not more, than most of the workers"? Yeah, it did make the papers, briefly. And Rudy later backtracked and said that he "misspoke." But it doesn't seem like it's got the legs, or has been purposely woven into a part of a pattern in the way Al Gore's NON-EXISTENT claim did.

But besides being REAL, and Gore's FAKE, there are such huge differences between the two that if Gore's claim turned him into an untrustworthy laughingstock, then Giuliani's should deservedly make him a pariah, to be treated with contempt and derision.

Not only is it blatantly false (later schedule checking showed that Rudy actually spent 29 hours at the Ground Zero site, compared to hundreds by recovery and reconstruction workers. But the intent was mean spirited and contemptuous. Rudy was doing more than trying to burnish his post-911 credentials, which is bad enough. He was also attempting to downplay the legitimate health concerns of the 911 rescue workers, and minimize the shoddy treatment that they have received from both the City of New York and the U.S. Government.

If there's any justice in the world (doubtful) or sense in the Democratic Party brain trust (more doubtful yet) this statement will be wielded like a sharp stake to impale the dark heart of Rudy's Presidential aspirations. In this one statement, Rudy crystallizes all the things that make him such a horrible human and truly frightening Presidential candidate --- he's mean, he's arrogant, he's combative, he's self-delusional, and absolutely and completely full of his own self-serving shit.

Toddler kicked off plane... good.

Just read this story where a woman said she and her toddler son were kicked off a plane after she refused a flight attendant's request to medicate her son to get him to quiet down and stop saying "Bye bye, plane."

I love this story. The last couple of times I have flown, I've had to listen to babies and little kids whining, howling, babbling and crying to the point where I wanted to kick the kid off myself... mid-air.

Then I started thinking... why are these living, breathing noise-makers evenly dispersed throughout the plane, ensuring that the entire passenger load is subject to this auditory assault?

I remember when there were smoking sections on planes, on the premise that people who indulge in noxious, annoying habits should only inflict those habits on one another. Why not apply this same logic to the noxious, annoying habit of allowing your precious bundle of joy to scream and cry at maximum volume for hours at a time?

Simply create a child section of the plane, for any passengers with children under the age of 8 or nine. Put a diaper changing table in the nearest bathroom, juice holders in the fold down trays, Highlight magazines in the magazine pockets, bring tiny liquor bottles full of chocolate milk over once an hour, whatever these children and parents need to get through the flight in comfort.

In the meantime, I, and those other childless travelers can specifically request to be as far away as that den of caterwauling and mewling as humanly possible.

Scooter and Paris

So I've just read the news that President Bush (god, I choke even typing those words together) commuted Scooter Libby's sentence, stripping it of the 30 months of jail time which he had been given by the Federal Judge.

Just as fast as my own ire started rising, I quickly headed to my usual left-wing sites to see what they had to say... it's all pretty much the same. We are pissed. It was worth noting to me that the comment sections, usually full of all sorts of long-winded diatribes and amateur political philosophizing had been reduced to single word exclamations like "Fuck!" "Impeach!" "Cocksuckers!" and the like.

Is there some fancy German word for the sick feeling you get when someone gets away with something they shouldn't? You know the feeling, don't you? Disgust and anger all mixed up at once into a sour taste that twists your stomach and makes your lips purse up.

I felt it when O.J. was acquitted.
I felt it when Paris was (first) let out of jail.
I'm feeling it now.

I think humans have a visceral reaction when they see people who flout the social contract without penalties. For most of us, our lives are spent making compromises, going along to get along, following stupid rules made by stupid people, just so that we can get our paychecks, pay our bills and be left alone to claw whatever little bit of satisfaction we can out of this life.

We do this, for the most part, because we are taught from an early age both verbally and with the harsh electric shocks of reality, that these are the sacrifices we have to make to get along in life. We don't like it, but for the most part we have the thin satisfaction of knowing that everyone else is more or less in the same boat, too.

That's what makes equality before the law such a cherished ideal. It's bad enough that the rich live better lives than us, on a daily basis. It's bad enough that the rich and powerful are able to isolate themselves away from the rest of us behind gated communities and executive privilege, so that they can do what they want without fear of getting caught. It's bad enough that they have resources to hire expensive attorneys to protect them from the consequences of their rule breaking on the few occasions when they do get pinched.

But when we see that their privilege goes beyond even that, that even when they've been caught, tried and convicted that they are able to pull strings which pluck them from accountability, we become enraged.

This commutation was a poke in the eye to a lot of people, not just liberals. It's the sort of thing that is going to enrage anyone with the sneaking suspicion that there are two sets of rules operating in America, one for the obscenely rich along with their minions, and the other for the rest of us.

This is going to be the stupid little thing that sets off the firestorm, I think. This is the small act which crystallizes all the things that have been bugging the shit out of people about this administration all along. Even Republicans are going to be pissed about this one. I think this is the tipping point.

The scandals that fuck the political figures aren't the big, real, complicated fuckups like, say, invading Iraq. That's too amorphous, too hard to get a head around. No, the deadly mistakes are the ones that are simple and personal... lying about a break-in.... getting blown by an intern. Protecting a convicted minion from responsibility falls in that category.

It's pretty clear. THis person was convicted, but simply because the President likes him, he doesn't have to serve time. This is going to stir the shit, and at last it might very well start to boil over.

Bring it on, I say.

weak, weak, weak

So it looks like the Democrats have blinked after all.

I'm disappointed, but certainly not surprised.

You know, just once I'd like to see the Democrats, as a whole, at least try to go down swinging.

Yeah, we've got some brave souls (I'm looking at you Feingold) who are at least out there standing up for what they believe, but their backbone gets lost in all the moral flab and cowardice of the rest of the wishy washy, faux-centrist, compromising gang.

This is a speech I'd like to hear from a Democrat:

"I oppose this war, and am not going to support it for one more minute. I don't care if stopping this war costs me my office. I can always find new work, but America can never recover the blood and treasure that we pour into that quagmire. If I lose my seat, but save more American lives, it will be worth it."

Please.

Jerry Falwell, RIP (P stands for Pain)

So Jerry Falwell, obese ass-clown extraordinaire, kicked the bucket yesterday.

Though I usually refrain from disrespecting the dead, with Jerry it’s pretty near irresistible. After all, he did it first.

Like when he said AIDS victims had received retribution from a just God.

And when he said that the poor souls who perished in the terror and fire of the 9/11 attacks had died because gays and lesbians and abortionists had inspired that attack.

I’m racking my brain for something positive to say about the man, and coming up blank. It’s very possible that he was a good father and husband. And for all I know, an all around great fellow. But I didn’t see that.

All I ever saw was someone trying, whole-heartedly, to take the three most divisive issues going --- sex, religion and politics --- and combine them into an electoral weapon. Then use that weapon to bully the rest of America into living our lives according to his particular sect’s interpretation of morality.

To me that’s just an asshole.

Death comes to us all, so I can’t be particularly happy to hear that it came to him. I’m just disappointed that it was as swift and painless when it did.

If there were truly any justice on this earth, Jerry Falwell would have slowly and painfully wasted away from opportunistic infections. Or jumped in terror from the 100th story of a burning skyscraper.

Not being a believer of any specific set of religious fairy-tales, I can't even console myself with the idea that he's roasting in hell right now. I just hope that at some point, as his heartbeat faded, he truly did watch his life pass before his eyes.

And that what he saw disgusted him as profoundly as it does me.

Another Iraq war casualty: Our ability to help

Listening to Democrats talk about how we've got to "get out of the middle of a civil war" in Iraq has caused some strange feelings for me lately.

As much as I want for the U.S. to extricate itself from that sucking shithole of wasted lives and money, I thought that the willingness to get between people trying to slaughter one another was one of the better things about us liberals.

Modern Republicans prefer to provoke civilian deaths abroad (Nicaragua) or ignore them, (Darfur), depending on their corporation-biased opinion of what best serves American interests.

Democratic presidents, however, have a history of trying to stop those deaths, even if tardily (Bosnia) and ineffectually (Somalia), with the most glaring and shameful exception being our inaction during the Rwandan civil war. All things being equal, Democrats don't like to sit around and watch chaos spread and innocent people die.

Under normal circumstances, a tribal bloodbath between Sunnis and Shiites would be the sort of thing that we'd want to tamp down and defuse. Maybe we'd use some military force, as in Bosnia, maybe we'd try to help prod some diplomatic solutions, as in Northern Ireland. Undoubtedly, we would shovel money at both sides to make it worthwhile to simmer down--- and compared to the current fiscal assfucking our military action is giving us, it would be a bargain.

But these aren't normal circumstances. As worthy an objective it might be to keep the ethnic groups from eachother's throats, we're not the ones that can do it anymore.

We're too tainted. Tainted by the lies we rode into the country on. Tainted by the tortures and murders that we've committed there.

Even if we had the military and financial capacity to do it anymore, nobody in or out of the Iraq would believe in the worthiness of our goal, or try to help. Who can blame them?

After our claims to be in Iraq to find WMDs and establish democracy, turned out to be such utter bullshit, our professions of humanitarian intevention are now likely to be perceived as more of the same.

Consequently, our forces would remain their current position: Welcomed by none, and used and hated by all.

What a mess. Now that we've created a scenario which actually might justify a U.S. presence in Iraq, our direct responsibility for that scenario makes it impossible for us to do anything about it. We're fucked. Though not nearly as fucked as the poor Iraqis who live, work and die in our experiment to see what happens when extremely limited minds receive nearly unlimited power.

Intellectually, I know that the only option for us at this point is to pull out and abandon the Iraqis to a Lebanon-style civil war, and insulate ourselves from the jihadists that conflageration would create.

But fuck, I don't like it. It makes me feel guilty, and ashamed of what America has done, two emotions I wish I had GWB and Dick Cheney's natural immunity from.

A second helping of Gonzales

Looks like you've got some 'splaining to do, Alberto!

From Patrick Leahy's office:

You spent weeks preparing for the April 19th hearing. Yet during your
testimony, in response to questions from Senators on both sides of the
aisle,
you often responded that you could not recall. By some counts
you failed
to answer more than 100 questions, by other counts more than 70,
but the most
conservative count had you failing to provide answers well over
60 times.
As a result, the Committee’s efforts to learn the truth of
why and how
these dismissals took place, and the role you and other
Department and White
House officials had in them, has been hampered.
The
questions asked by Senators should not have been a surprise. You were
alerted in letters to
you well in advance of last Thursday’s hearing.
By letter sent April 4,
you were asked to include in your written
testimony a "full and complete account
of the development of the plan to
replace Untied States Attorneys, and all the
specifics of your role in
connection with that matter." That account was
not included in your
written testimony nor in your answers to questions at the
hearing. You
were also alerted in advance of the hearing, by a letter sent
on April 13,
that you would be asked about information derived from the staff
interviews
of your senior aides. You were, nevertheless, unprepared to
answer
those questions.
We believe the Committee and our
investigation would benefit from you searching and refreshing your
recollection
and your supplementing your testimony by next Friday to provide
the answers to
the questions you could not recall last Thursday.

I've got an idea for the committee. Clearly, open-ended questions are too challenging for the Attorney General. Let's give him a multiple choice exam.

Were those US Attorneys fired for:

A. NO reason at all.

These Attorneys do, after all, serve at the "pleasure of the President" as we've heard about 10,000 times by now. So if Abu and his staff have the time, inclination and chutzpah to fuck around with, fire and defame good attorneys because of the way the wind tickles their balls in the morning, there's nothing illegal about that.

It does speak to their judgement, priorities and human decency though, and the voters should know that's how they roll in the Bush administration.

B. A GOOD reason.

There's nothing illegal about that. We're just curious what it was, though. Humor us.

B. A BAD reason.

Anyone that cares to put the pieces together about competitive districts, witch-hunts for non-existent voter fraud cases, suspicious corruption case manipulations, deleted emails, and secretly inserted Patriot Act provisions for appointing US Attorneys without Congressional Approval is starting to see what these replacements were about. And, again, there's nothing inherently illegal about it.

So just come out and say it, already.

Virginia Tech Shooter:Liberal or Conservative?

Yes, I know that I am a sick, heartless fucker for even thinking this way, but I have been trying to figure out whether the Virginia Tech shooter was a liberal or conservative.

I know it shouldn't really matter. He was mentally ill, that's the main thing. And committed a heinous act that created devastating pain for 33 sets of families, friends and communties.

But still. I want to know. That's just how my brain has become wired over the last dozen years or so. Call it political polarization, call pop psychologizing, say that I am obsessed, but I really don't feel like I can get a grip on how someone's mind functions these days, without knowing where they fall in some basic questions.

Like whether they believe in evolution or creationism. Support or oppose the Iraq war. Are indifferent to or disgusted by homosexuals. Are pro-choice or anti-abortion. Side with corporations or people. Believe in punishing or helping others. Interested in cooperation or domination.

And, yeah, I do judge people --- negatively --- when they disagree with me on these issues. Who doesn't?

Usually, it's pretty easy to pick out the wingers from the moonbats, but Cho Seung-hui is kind of a tough one to label. Here's what I know about him, and where I think it puts him on the Liberal/Conservative spectrum.

Liberal Traits:
A minority
An English Major
Writes plays
Hates Rich Kids

Conservative Traits
Korean
A gun nut
A Religious Fanatic
Hates Debauchery (aka Fun)

All in all, it seems pretty much balanced. So I guess the deciding factor would have to be his actions.

That's an easy one.

A true liberal would have dealt with his hurt and disappointment by banding together with other similarly afflicted victims to whine and petition for recognition and special treatment. Culminating, perhaps, in some sort of march or sing-in in front of the Student Union.

A sullen, uncommunicative, Jesus-obsessed loser who blames all the troubles in the world on another group of people, then remorselessly kills those people as if they were not even human?

That's a conservative.

Let's talk about irresponsibility, Mr. Cheney

I just read this load of garbage that our gravel-voiced, Vice-Mumbler delivered on CBS News' Face the Nation yesterday.

I think it's important they know where we stand. And the fact of the matter is I do believe that the positions that the Democratic leaders have taken and -- to a large extent now are irresponsible. I mean, Harry Reid last fall said -- is after the November elections -- that he would not support an effort to cut off funding for the troops. Then he changed that position to one in which he would support an effort to cut off funding for the troops, place limitations on--on the funding, and now he's to the point where he's saying he's going to support legislation that cuts the whole funding for the troops. He's done a complete 180 from where he was in five months. I think that is irresponsible. I think you cannot make the basic fundamental decisions that have to be made with respect to the nation's security, given everything that's at stake in the war on terror, and what we're doing in Iraq, and with the 140,000 American troops in the field in Iraq and with the 140,000 American troops in the field in Iraq in combat every day, and call that kind of--of rapid changes in position anything other than irresponsible.

For the "R-word" to even come from your blood-stained lips is laughable under any circumstances. You've been the dirty, reeking, radioactive power-source driving an administration which has mechanically worked to divert any and all responsibility from itself for its blunders (9-11, Katrina), crimes (Valerie Plame's outing), corruption (DoJ firings, Iraq Reconstruction) and for those actions which combined all those together in a massive festering ball of corrupt, blundering criminality (Iraq).

To avoid ever taking responsibilty, your administration has let underlings take the blame (poor little Scooter), smeared formerly loyal underlings (Richard Clarke) and systematically hid the evidence (Karl Rove's missing emails) and lied, with a straight face about it all.

So let's drop the charade about who's responsible, okay?

Because in this case, you really don't want to go there.

Let me put it to you in an analogy that you will understand:DUIs.

You and your girlfriend, W, have been drunk driving for six years now, swerving all over the road, through yards and creating quite the trail of death and destruction in your wake. The rest of the country, the ones that actually own the car, have been begging you to stop, to pull over, to sober up or at the very least try to keep the car between the lines. You've refused, so we've decided to stop paying for gas.

So tell me now, Dick. Who's the irresponsible one?

Harry, Nancy, Democrats. Don't blink.

Okay.

We've passed a spending bill with a deadline for troop withdrawls attached to it. Didn't that seem a little bit easy to you?

Especially you, Harry. Why do you think that it was even allowed to go to a vote, instead of getting shut down like all the other substantive bills the Senate Republicans have blocked?

I think we know. Because George W. Bush actually wants to veto it.

He could use the distraction, from the Attorneygate, GSA-gate and whatever other gate's erupt between now and whenever the bill hits his desk. He likes making grand, dramatic stands. He thinks that he can take the high, terrorist-fighting, troop-supporting road on this issue.

Furthermore, he believes that doing so will cost him nothing. He believes, with some historical validity, that Democrats will cave and compromise. That we will settle for some sort of meaningless, non-binding, bullshit little addendum to the spending bill that he can smirk at and ignore.

Let's prove him wrong.

He wants to play chicken. Great. Let's throw the steering wheel out the window while he watches.

Let's announce to the world that this is the only spending bill that he is going to see. And he can either sign it or not. Period.

More to the point, let's stick to it, no matter what.

What's the worst that could happen? Our troops have to come home in April? Great. Something tells me the National Guardsmen on their third deployment aren't going to be too pissed about that. The Republicans will accuse us of cowardice and treason? They already are doing that. The Iraqis will descend into civil war? Ditto. Democrats might suffer some political fallout for taking a firm stand for our principles? It's worth it.

This is our chance, the best one in a long, long, time to break Bush's willful defiance of the facts --- of Iraq, the Constitution, what the American people want, and the new balance of power in Washington.

He's not going to like it. He's going to bluster, and threaten, and cuss, and call us names. Fuck him.

He's been on a six year binge of other people's lives and money.

We can cut him off now.

Let's do it.