President PeeWee sez,

"I mean't to do that!"

The problem with being an All Wise and Infallible Dear Leader who never admits error is that you must therefore have meant every single thing that has happened on your watch, and as the result of your orders, to happen. If you have made no mistakes in Iraq...then Iraq must be unfolding in exactly the way you had always intended that it should.

And when that’s the position from which you and your whole, lying Chickenhawk Army Ant swarm refuse to budge, Reality has a way of making you look like awful buffoons.

(Exactly the same reason, by the way, I have made it my life’s work to track down every prom picture of me in Christendom and destroy them.)

So for Big Time Fun, let’s hop into the WayBack Machine and look at what was happening waaay long ago last year.

You remember last year, right? There was this election? And about half the country was really pissed off and furious not only about how they’d been deceived by the Bush Administration into a war, but that the war (herewith dubbed Dubya Dubya Dubya -- or WWIII -- for the one man who has the distinction of managing to fuck up the Run-up, the Execution and the Aftermath of a war he was so hysterical to wage that he was willing to lie to trick us into it) was also now getting steadily worse.

A Bush two-fer.

The other half of the country, if I remember, had their heads snuggled so far and happily up their asses that the loud truth crashing to the ground all around them sounded like distant whispers swaddled in cotton. The President was Wise and Strong. Liberals were Liars. And the Bush answer to every clusterfuck that made it past the filters and into the headlines was a confident, Peewee Hermanesque, “We meant to do that.”

The Bush Administration – who had been so adamant and categorical and detailed-to-the-point-of-profligacy when it came to telling baldfaced lies in order to get us into Iraq – had suddenly gone completely Cone of Silence and Cloak of Invisibility when it came to sharing with the public (for whom they work ) any scrap of information about how the fuck we were going to get out of Iraq.

The best they could offer was a reassurance that, as the Iraqi Army became capable of defending itself and taking on the insurgents (who were in that post-"Dead Ender" but pre-"Last Throes" phase that so many insurgencies find so awkward), we’d be heading for the door with all deliberate speed.

So Pre-Election – almost one year ago to the day -- let’s see what we were being told about the troop strength of the Iraqi Army by no less than David H. Petraeus, the Army lieutenant general who commanded the Multinational Security Transition Command in Iraq (emphasis added.)

Battling for Iraq
By David H. Petraeus

Sunday, September 26, 2004; Page B07
BAGHDAD -- Helping organize, train and equip nearly a quarter-million of Iraq's security forces is a daunting task. Doing so in the middle of a tough insurgency increases the challenge enormously, making the mission akin to repairing an aircraft while in flight -- and while being shot at. Now, however, 18 months after entering Iraq, I see tangible progress. Iraqi security elements are being rebuilt from the ground up.

...
In recent months, I have observed thousands of Iraqis in training and then watched as they have conducted numerous operations. Although there have been reverses -- not to mention horrific terrorist attacks -- there has been progress in the effort to enable Iraqis to shoulder more of the load for their own security, something they are keen to do.

...
Nonetheless, there are reasons for optimism. Today approximately 164,000 Iraqi police and soldiers (of which about 100,000 are trained and equipped) and an additional 74,000 facility protection forces are performing a wide variety of security missions. Equipment is being delivered. Training is on track and increasing in capacity. Infrastructure is being repaired. Command and control structures and institutions are being reestablished.

Most important, Iraqi security forces are in the fight -- so much so that they are suffering substantial casualties as they take on more and more of the burdens to achieve security in their country. Since Jan. 1 more than 700 Iraqi security force members have been killed, and hundreds of Iraqis seeking to volunteer for the police and military have been killed as well.

Six battalions of the Iraqi regular army and the Iraqi Intervention Force are now conducting operations. Two of these battalions, along with the Iraqi commando battalion, the counterterrorist force, two Iraqi National Guard battalions and thousands of policemen recently contributed to successful operations in Najaf. Their readiness to enter and clear the Imam Ali shrine was undoubtedly a key factor in enabling Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani to persuade members of the Mahdi militia to lay down their arms and leave the shrine.

...
Within the next 60 days, six more regular army and six additional Intervention Force battalions will become operational. Nine more regular army battalions will complete training in January, in time to help with security missions during the Iraqi elections at the end of that month.

Iraqi National Guard battalions have also been active in recent months. Some 40 of the 45 existing battalions -- generally all except those in the Fallujah-Ramadi area -- are conducting operations on a daily basis, most alongside coalition forces, but many independently.

...
Momentum has gathered in recent months. With strong Iraqi leaders out front and with continued coalition -- and now NATO -- support, this trend will continue.

Now lets move the dial just a tick and see what George W. Bush himself swore was the truth on national teevee. During a certain televise debate you may have seen...over a year ago.

LEHRER: New question, Mr. President. Two minutes.
What criteria would you use to determine when to start bringing U.S. troops home from Iraq?

BUSH: Let me first tell you that the best way for Iraq to be safe and secure is for Iraqi citizens to be trained to do the job.

BUSH: And that's what we're doing. We've got 100,000 trained now, 125,000 by the end of this year, 200,000 by the end of next year. That is the best way. We'll never succeed in Iraq if the Iraqi citizens do not want to take matters into their own hands to protect themselves. I believe they want to. Prime Minister Allawi believes they want to.

And so the best indication about when we can bring our troops home -- which I really want to do, but I don't want to do so for the sake of bringing them home; I want to do so because we've achieved an objective -- is to see the Iraqis perform and to see the Iraqis step up and take responsibility.

Well the election has passed into ignoble history, and the budget to pay for world-class smoke and mirrors had to be cut to pay for the Bridge to Nowhere in Alaska, so now that The Day has come, the day all drunks fear and hate -- the day your markers come due and you have to make good on all your wild promises -- what's the news?

Well, since you asked...

U.S. general: Single Iraqi unit is combat ready
New estimate of Iraq military capability calls U.S. pullout plan into question

The Associated Press
Updated: 2:47 p.m. ET Sept. 29, 2005

WASHINGTON - The number of Iraqi battalions capable of combat without U.S. support has dropped from three to one, the top American commander in Iraq told Congress Thursday, prompting Republicans to question whether U.S. troops will be able to withdraw next year.

Gen. George Casey, softening his previous comments that a “fairly substantial” pullout could begin next spring and summer, told lawmakers that troops might begin coming home from Iraq next year depending on conditions during and after the upcoming elections there.

“The next 75 days are going to be critical for what happens,” Casey told the Senate Armed Services Committee.

The Bush administration says training Iraqi security forces to defend their own country is the key to bringing home U.S. troops. But Republicans pressed Casey on whether the United States was backsliding in its efforts to train Iraqis.

In June, the Pentagon told lawmakers that three Iraqi battalions were fully trained, equipped and capable of operating independently. On Thursday, Casey said only one battalion is ready.

“It doesn’t feel like progress,” said Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine.

Despite the drop, Casey hailed significant progress in training Iraqi security forces and noted that U.S. troops are embedded with more Iraqi units in mentoring roles than before. “Have we lost ground? Absolutely not,” Casey said.

...

Ok, someone needs to kick the record player, ‘cause the needle’s stuck.

Either that or we are in stranded in the middle of the Groundhog Day War, where...

...it will always be a few months from now that we’ll begin to see progress.

...the insurgents are always ramping up for a specific, political deadline, but will die down after that.

... sure, to the untutored eye it might look like we are all a bunch of lying, murderous bastards who act as if y’all are too dumb to tell the different a yummy soufflé and a burning cat, but we’re always turning the corner, or right on the very tippy-tippy verge of turning the corner.

...it's always “a period of uncertainly” and too soon to tell if we’re making great progress, despite that fact that the current “period of uncertainty” was last month’s date by which we will definitely be able to judge whether or not we’ve turned that ever-receding-as-in-a-nightmare corner.

It’s like being a fucking Cubs fan...except for all the people getting killed and the nation being bankrupted before our eyes because of the lies and criminal incompetence of George W. Bush.

So as was pathetically obvious in the run-up to this debacle, so is true in the aftermath:

1. The more detailed, concrete and absolutely certain Administration Spokesminions come off, the more you know they are lying their asses off, and...

2. Somehow, some way, the GOP and their fucktard rank-and-file will invent a reason to explain to themselves why this is all Bill Clinton’s fault.


You're doin’ a heckuva job, Bushie!

I am in a World...

...of Shit.


Tom ain’t built for the kind of fight that’s coming his way.

He’s a knife-in-the-back type, grown bloated and self-satisfied with complacent gluttony.

He can win if he can drop a building on you, or offer you cash, or threaten your family, but he’s old and his knees are shot and his addiction to chugging Satanwank has rotted him out from the inside.

He’s about to walk onto the court without a cup and have to fight it out in straight sets with someone he can’t blackmail or bribe. In a milieu where being a Manson-eyed thug with a God Complex the size of Greenland, a razor-slit sneer instead of a mouth and a Death’s Head vibe that makes stone cringe are not advantages.

In the greasy halls of Congress, all of these hellmouth attributes might be very effective, especially when your whole job is keeping sniveling, bowel-less Republicans bottom-dwellers doing what comes naturally to them anyway: gratefully licking spittle from their master’s boots and spitting acid at anyone who points out that they lick spittle from the boots of their masters.

I the courtroom, however, such boundless, defiant depravity doesn’t exactly win friends and influence people...which in a very important way is sorta what any winning-in-court strategy must needs be about.

So I have to wonder if anything like this missive might be being drafted by anyone at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue...

Dear Hammer,

You know you’ve always been my strong right arm, but now our Glorious Revolution is in danger from the Liberal Extremists.

I think you're doin' a heck of a job, Hammer, and I know the charges against you are trumped up – as they always are – but this time that Ronnie Earle fella seems to have gotten the drop on you. Bound to happen one day; a man can’t stay the fastest gun in town forever.

I know you and I both tried hard to serve our country during Vietnam, but as you’ve said, the coloreds took all the Army jobs and din’t leave nothing for Real Americans like you and me.

But this situation we got here ain’t gonna get any better. In fact I hear tell it’s gonna get a whole lot worse, and a lot of our friends who prefer their privacy might find themselves under some lights that ain’t exactly the Light of the Lord, if you know what I mean.

Like I did before I went to Iraq, I talked to the Higher Father, and prayed on this awful hard, and I think this’d be best for everyone.

Now, at last, you can take one for the team and serve our Great Nation and our friends, just like you always wanted to in Vietnam.

I know it’s hard, but the Republican Party can only move forward without DeLay (Karl came up with that one and it’s a hoot, don’tcha think?").

So I need you to take care of this one, last thing. Don’t worry, nothing’ll happen to your family if you do this right; them and the good name of DeLay will be well taken care of. Jimmy Dobson said it’s not even a sin this way; more of a holy martyr’s sacrifice. Cheney says it won’t hurt a bit, and by tonight you’ll be with Our Father in the Sky for ever and ever.

Get it done, Hammer.

Yours in Christ,

Dubya,

Oh my fucking goodness.

Read this and prepare to roar.

God bless the blogosphere if for no other reason than it has hipped me to more cool, knives-out, Holy Shit good writing by people hammering out poetic polemics more efficiently than any other medium I know.

Here’s another one, via dKos.

I almost never post other people’s work in toto, first because of Fair Used reasons (if it’s commercially published and/or copywritten) and, second, because I want good writers to have audiences. I want you to have to go read them in-person to get the whole of it.

Like everyone else’s, my reading time is rationed, but writing is not a Zero Sum Game. Finding a great read over here doesn’t mean a great writer over there loses a deserving set of eyes.

I say let a thousand Hunter Thompsons flourish. Let us be embarrassingly, Pioneer-Contributor rich with brilliance and passion and joy, and we’ll all go home in limousines.

However I’m making an exception in this case.

Writer “Hunter” at dKos has written something fucking wonderful, and I’m posting it all because in this case I have no business editing it in any way, even if I'm well-intentioned.

That does not, however, mean you should stay here. It means you head over to dKos and tell him (or her) so.

Now relax and take a big swallow because this is a Warrior's Drink.

Bush Supporters of the Far Right: Cries from the Lake of Fire
by Hunter

Thu Sep 29th, 2005 at 15:18:21 PDT
At Blogs For Bush, which bills itself as the Whorehouse... er, "White House" of the Blogosphere, the ever effervescent Mark Noonan writes about the DeLay indictment:

As our Sister Toldjah noted earlier, the "indictment" of Tom Delay is entirely bogus - from what I've read, Tom Delay didn't know about the perfectly legal transaction he is accused of conspiring to make. We have now left entirely the field of normal political conflict and entered a twilight world where fantasy is presented as fact and the only standard of conduct is "will it work?". This is not the actions of a political Party engaged in seeking a majority - it is the action of a Party determined to destroy its opponents entirely and sieze all power for itself...it is, in short, the stuff from which civil wars are made...

I really do urge our Democrats to step back from the edge - you are sitting in a lake of gasoline and you are playing with fire. We on our side will only put up with so much before we start to pay back with usury what we have received. If you can't defeat Tom Delay in the electoral field, then you will simply have to accept him as Majority Leader of the United States House of Representatives - and you'd better start accepting political reality before things get really bad.

Mark... may I call you Mark? I feel when someone has shown me the insides of their own rectum, we're pretty much on a first name basis... I have some words for you.

Whitewater. Rush Limbaugh. "Drug Dealer" Bill Clinton. Swift Boats.
Vince Fucking Foster.

Playing with fire, you say? Because the indictments ringing Tom DeLay finally reached up that one, final step from his ring of closest advisers to DeLay himself? Because the SEC has launched a formal investigation into the same behaviors by Bill Frist that put Martha Stewart recently in prison? Because one of the single most visible, highest profile Republican money men has been indicted for fraud, is being investigated for client shakedowns, and has his close business associates being investigated for a mob-connected murder?

What utter cowardice. What pathetic anti-American pedantry. What laughable protestation. The crimes of campaign money laundering, of fraud, of conspiracy, the violation of the laws of the nation, to be answered with stern visions of potential gunfire if Democrats have the audacity to pursue it.

This is the world of the Republican Party, split open like a rotting pumpkin. Crime after crime after crime being investigated, all revolving around the Republican money machine. Every seed connected by the strands of money they share between them. Barely-laundered campaign money passed in the palm of every flabby handshake. Every player in boldface, underlined print in the Rolodex of every other.

And still, this same bottom-tier world of flag-waving supporters still obsessed over an extramarital sex act, but offended to the point of sad, blustering threats at the notion that crimes by gilded and worshipped Republicans are really still crimes.

Your party has set aflame the entire political landscape, and now, once burned, you warn sternly from the branches of a burnt-out tree about "playing with fire". You used the ashes of one of the great liberal cities of America, New York City, as war paint for your own sick, racist dreams. You shudder at a burning flag, yet are willing to snip-and-cut basic tenets of the Constitution as needed or convenient.

And now, you're outraged, not by any of the rest of it, not by anything that has come before, but because a few prominent Republican faces have -- shock of shocks -- been indicted in probes that have spanned years of investigation, and interrogation, and deposition. That, you say, represents the underpinnings of a civil war.

You poor, hollow, blood-painted clowns. Cheering the trials and failures of your country with the same pennants and giant foam hands that you wave at your favorite sports teams. Willing to accept the most outrageous of lies, if they are spoken from your favorite talking heads, and soothe your own notions of America for you, and only for you.

And as for the audacity of Democrats speaking up during this process... the redfaced, flatulent fury with which you declare Republicans off-limits to that which you so gleefully hurl yourself...

Welcome to the world of the politics of personal destruction, you tubthumping, chin-jutting, Bush humping gits. Welcome to the nasty and partisan world that Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin, Hugh Hewitt, Grover Norquist, Newt Gingrich, Tom DeLay, and a legion of insignificant lowest-rung toadies like yourselves nurtured into fruition daily with eager, grubby hands, and now look upon with dull-faced faux horror.

I know you hate me, and anyone else to dares disturb the thin strands of alternate reality in which George W. Bush is an intellectual giant, Saddam really was responsible for 9/11, the economy is getting better by the minute, and we capture the most very important members of al Qaeda on a weekly basis.
But here's some advice. You'd better start hating me more. This is the world you forged and, unfortunately for you, I'm beginning to take a fancy for it. Welcome to the politics of your own party, finally sprouting from the ground on which you planted the seeds and shat upon them.

Step back from the edge? You poor boy, asleep in the back of the car the whole trip, finally waking up and wondering where you're at.

Swift boats. Aluminum tubes. Niger uranium. "Mushroom clouds". Whitewater.
Vince Fucking Foster.

You can't even see the edge from here. You left it behind a hundred miles back.
So don't give me chest-thumping crap about civil wars, if your politicians are indicted. Don't give me visions of a lake of fire, if all those who find you loathsome refuse to suck at your teats of scientific ignorance in the name of religion, racism in the name of freedom, and corruption in the name of the New World Order.

Get used to the world you have created, and the stench your worshipped heroes have unleashed.

The Bowl is out.

Once of these fine days I’m going to figure out how this whole blog financial Golden Goose dealy works and start making mad loot. I’ll blow off my old friends, get an entourage, become insufferable, get a wicked blow habit, start hating the poor.

Become a Bush Pioneer.

It’s not going to be pretty.

However, right this minute, I have exactly enough income from concatenating a series of jobs to keep the roof on Castle Driftglass thatched, the scotch, well, “scotch” and not Bactine and Sterno, and my cat from eyeballing me with that Cassiusian “lean and hungry look” that I fear.

Also my porn is all “Made in America”: costs a little extra, but I say when it comes to hot, lesbian goodness, go FUBU (in the broadest, American sense) for the bootay or do without.

My life right now is solo, aerodynamic and work-heavy, which may be socially debilitating, but it keeps me a few pfennigs above the need to take up full-time residence in the Driftglassmobile.

And nonetheless, the Bowl is out.

Why?

The inimitable Shakespeare’s Sister – friend to this Blog and a gen-u-wine Force For Good – needs your help. She’s looking for cash, and looking for a gig in the Chicago area.

Go visit her here. Say nice things to her because she deserves them. Give if you can. Send her job leads if you can.

Be a pal, y'know?

And in return?

Well let’s just say that a few of you have pointed out that there are occasional misspellings to be found in this blog.

And in the past I have explained that I’m actually a very good editor of other people’s work, and can work my own material over pretty well if I can let it sit and “cool off” for a few days. To let my eye’s readjust to what I am actually seeing versus what I’m sure I just wrote but didn't, but this somewhat stately pace is one to which neither blogging nor being on the run all day and most of the p.m lends itself.

So here I am, stranded in the twilight between run-and-gun Errata and perfect Erato.

But the truth is, that's all bullshit.

The truth is, every spelling error is completely intentional.

All part of a vast, cool plan to slowly reveal the Sekrit of Life on Earth one letter at a time: see, if you take every spelling error on this blog from the beginning (six months ago almost on the button), and rearrange them according to a complex algorithm of publication dates and times, you get an Epic Poem in perfect iambic heptameter describing in detail the Serkit Cool Stuff of the Universe.

And I was just getting to the encrypted specifics of how anyone can get magnificently laid like President’s Day Sale Carpet, and it sure would be a shame if my spelling suddenly “improved” now, wouldn’t it?

Anyway, regular blogging will resume after this: I’m tinkering with something longish and only have a vague idea if it’ll even pan out, but for the next many hours, that’s what I’ll be doing.

So go visit Sis, and do what you can.

And thanks.

I can be a real good guy…

…or I can be one real mean sumbitch.


The Ghost of Agnew's Past visits again to predict Tom DeLay's future.


Them clothes got numbers.
Any man forgets his number...
...spends a night in the box.

We got congressional districts.
Any man fucks with the constitution and Texas’ own law to redraw districts to make a permanent GOP majority ...
...spends a night in the box.

We got a real nice Furrin Policy here.
Any man runs around makin’ up his own Furrin Polcy based on Biblical Literalism...
...spends a night in the box.

We got a Department of Homeland Security.
Anybody trying to use Homeland Security troops to run political errands and extort opponents...
...spends a night in the box.

When a school gets shot up and children die, shut your fucking hole.
Anyone decides to hold a press conference and blame a schoolhouse massacre on sex education and teaching evolution...
...spends a night in the box.

Texas has exactly One campaign finance law. The rest of the time it’s Dodge City.
Anyone break that one law because there is no depth so low that you won’t dive even lower...
...spends a night in the box.

Anyone gets caught with Jack Abramhoff’s dick in his mouth...
...spends a night in the box.

We likes our trag’dy private ‘round here.
Anyone gets all up in some family’s private business...
...spends a night in the box.

Get’s between a man an’ his late wife that he’s tryin’ to see off the way she’da wanted...
...spends a night in the box.

Does it just for politics...
...spends a night in the box.

Makes war on judges who don’t bend a knee to him...
...spends a night in the box.

Generally makes like Satan's Chief of Staff, got the morals of Alphonse Capone, wipes his ass with the constitution and still got nerve enough to call hisself a child of God and beat on other folk about how they should be liven'...

Fuck, you get to LIVE in the box.

You got questions, come to me.

I’m Carr, the Floor Walker.

I keep order here

Any man don’t keep order

Spends a night in the box


(OTOH, DeLay’s already got pretty good Prison-Hair, so he’s got that going for him.)

Republican tries the, "I know you are...

....but what am I." gambit.

Well color me shocked.

On one level, I love these guys.

I love that they really just can't keep their degenerate selves under control for five minutes at a time. That they literally can't help themselves. That they take the "Let's All Pretend We're Not Bigots Until We Can Filtch a Few More Black Votes" memo from Ken Mehlman and just wipe their asses with it in public.

In the last three weeks, the mask that Wingnut Republicans have used to hide their ogrish faces and vacant, blood-drunk grins from the public, has been blown to splinters. First by the body-blows of the slow-motion horror of a war that even a wide swath of middle America now grudgingly acknowledges has been mismanaged with an unbelievable level of who-gives-a-shit-if-soldiers-die murderously casual incompetence.

And middle Americans do not like the idea that they might have to turn their mental tractors around and plow different furrows into their tiny minds.

The had a basic, simpleton, narrative for George Bush that was simple enough to have printed on a Hallmark card and still have plenty of room left over for flags and Jesus.

Nice man. Plainspoken man. God-fearin’ man.

Nothing more complicated than that and, like the idiot notion of Creationism that overlaps with and binds so many of these believers, the simple fact that they are utterly, completely wrong and the truth of the Criminally Failed Bush Administration dickslaps them in the face every single day doesn’t faze them in the slightest.

Nice man. Plainspoken man. God-fearin’ man. But getting kinda nervous about the Iraq thing. Feeling a little uncertain about their solid footing: the A-B-C's of their shithead fairy tale – “George Bush: Hero Patriot.”

Then comes the roundhouse of Katrina – a 500 lb. bomb right into the wheelhouse of their depraved ideology -- and every horrible thing the Liberals ever said turns out to be true. And every terrible thing the Liberals ever said about the fact that the Bush Regime doesn’t give a shit about how horribly they’re screwing this country over – that they only care about controlling the press tightly enough to make sure none of their fucktard followers can get a clear look at the crime scene – turns out to be true.

So at this point, in you’re a Moderate Republican, to avoid the blatantly obvious truth about your Party, you have to have long ago gouged your eyes out with a red-hot teevee remote, stuffed your ears with wax...and are now daily dipping your entire body in latex and marshmallows to avoid accidental contact with truth via bone conduction.

People who decided to ignore the 1,000 Mile High, “Danger Will Robinson” warning signs around the true, core values of Dominionism, Racism and “Fuck Everyone But Me”-ism are having a steadily worse time of it every day.

And just to pound the ten-penny nails in that much harder, these days, more and more wormy loonies that make the GOP such a witchbag of the worst of the worst just won’t shut up and let the cowardly Moderates pretend they don't exist.

So when you read, for the umpteen-thousands time, yet another article like this...

White Lawmaker Likens Black Colleagues, KKK

By MATT GOURAS, Associated Press Writer1 hour, 11 minutes ago
A white Tennessee lawmaker lamenting his exclusion from the state's Black Legislative Caucus claimed Tuesday the group was less accommodating that even the Ku Klux Klan.

"My understanding is that the KKK doesn't even ban members by race," said Rep. Stacey Campfield, adding that the KKK "has less racist bylaws" than the black lawmakers' group.

The freshman Republican from Knoxville was rebuffed earlier this year when he asked for the Black Caucus' bylaws and inquired about joining. There are 18 black state lawmakers in Tennessee.

...
The 37-year-old Campfield defended himself Saturday in a message on his Web journal, or blog, under the heading "I too dream."

...
Experts on race and hate groups said Campfield hit a nerve when he used King's words to take on a black institution. It's the same tactic white separatists often use, said Mark Potok, director of the Intelligence Project at the Southern Poverty Law Center.

"Very typically these days we see white supremacists, hate groups, trying to use the words of King and other civil rights leaders to try to advance their agendas," Potok said.

...is it even necessary to read anymore past “The freshman Republican...” to know everything you need to know about the person and the Party that, yet again and every day, embarrass real Americans, spit on the graves of the Founders of the nation, and recrucifying Christ, every time they open their mouths and show the world what is really in their hearts.

Well at least I didn’t call ‘em chumps.

Or fat-asses.

Or my army of walking organ banks.

Or Liberals.

It seems like a small thing, what we call people.

For example, as long as it's not pejorative, what does it matter if guys can call each other “guy” or “dude” or “pal” for decades because we don’t have the slightest fucking idea what the other guy’s name is and we don’t really want to ask?

Me, I’ve got a weird memory, so while it may take me a few passes to put a name to a face, I can almost always put a face with an occasion, or dredge up a half-remembered conversation from years ago. I remember the chubby man with the old glasses, or the shy brunette who wears kind of drab clothes, but who keeps her nails and rings perfect, but “Bob” or “Jennifer” feel like such poor mnemonic representations of the most vivid particulars of those people that it takes me a few passes to find a place to hang a moniker.

Details, yes, but names, not so much. Nothing personal; it’s just how stuff hooks into my memory.

It is mostly a small thing – what we call other people – but at just the right angle, caught in just the right light, it can be what an old writing teacher of mine used to call “the telling moment” or the “telling detail.” It’s why Elmore Leonard’s writing kicks so much ass, and Raymond Carver even more so. Both have (or, in the case of Carver, had) the gift of revealing everything you need to know about the hamster in the wheel at the heart of the man in dialogue so very carefully constructed that you can’t even see the hand of the author.

And to be clear, this is most definitely not the the case only in fiction. Not by a long-shot.

So for example, when a Republican opens up his trap and talks about “those people” you damned good and well what he’s talking about without having to draw a whole rhetorical map.

And the “they” and “them” of Barbara Bush’s chortling, self-satisfied, “We Are Most Amused” speech about the plight of the mostly black and mostly poor people stranded by Katrina could not have been more revealing of the inner person had her face-plate popped off like Yul Brenner's in “Westworld” and shown her inner cranium alive with little, cross-burning maggots.

So the subject of this post is a small thing (he repeated for the third time), but it was enough to make me make an actual note of it on the way home, and Google it when I finally arrived back at Castle Driftglass because of how oddly it rang in my ear.

A particular word used by George Bush in a particular way – and not a dirty or derisive word -- just at that moment seemed to make the truth of the Bush persona open up a little further, like an origami flower made out of a Jim Beam label.

Here’s the article; see if you can spot the word.

Bush: Ready to tap reserve
President says his administration willing to loan oil to mitigate the shortfalls caused by storms.
September 26, 2005: 12:13 PM EDT
NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - President Bush said Monday his administration is willing to release supplies from the nation's strategic oil reserve to deal with oil shortfalls caused by hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

"It's important for our people to know that we understand the situation and that we're willing to use the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to mitigate any shortfalls in crude oil that could affect our consumers," Bush said in a statement made at the Energy Department in Washington.

The reserve, which is overseen by the Energy Department, is the government's emergency stockpile of crude oil that was created in the aftermath of the 1973-74 oil embargo. After Hurricane Katrina struck in August, the U.S. government agreed to loan 30 million barrels from the reserve.

Bush said Rita missed a lot of refining capacity along the Texas coast but that the effect of two storms in succession would naturally affect supply. Refineries in the Houston area process about a quarter of U.S. fuel stocks.
...

He said the government has suspended certain EPA rules to make it easier to import gasoline and get it to the market, but encouraged Americans conserve energy and cut non-essential travel.
...

Bush is – God help us – temporary steward of a great nation. Leader of the Free World. Commander-in-Chief of the last superpower and heir to the office of Washington, Jefferson, Roosevelt (both of ‘em) and Truman, so here’s my little bit of free advice from me to him.

You are the head of the most powerful nations on Earth, Mr. President, and nations don’t have “our consumers.”

Corporations have consumers.

Nations have citizens. And taxpayers. And founders. And sons. And daughters. And heroes.

The government of the United State is not a for-profit enterprise, and you are not head of Arbusto, CEO of Halliburton or Chairman of the Board of Silverado.

We don’t work for you, Mr. President: You work for us. And I know you will find this fact abhorrent, but the truth is, governments are necessarily set up to do exactly the opposite of what corporations do. Governments, Mr. President, of necessity take more money from those for whom they provide fewer services, and provide greater service to those less able to pay, because even though Oprah pays 5,000 times what I pay in taxes, she doesn’t get to drive 5,000 times faster than me.

Well, maybe in Chicago she does.

Government is not and can never be a place where what you pay in as a “consumer” is directly proportional to the service and attention you receive, so that a cut in what you are charged affects only you. What you pay in as a “citizen”, on the other hand, goes to help those who can least afford to help themselves. Goes for parks for everyone. Schools for everyone. Justice for everyone. Security for everyone.

A consumer makes a purchase – a private exchange of money for a specific thing of value.

A citizen pays a tax – a public sacrifice to support a public system from which they may or may not derive a direct benefit, but which is absolutely necessary because it is that system that promotes our shared values as a people and a culture.

“Fuck Everyone But Me” is a sentiment for the corporate Universe, but it has no place whatsoever in the public square, and is lethally antithetical to the very idea of a common, national good and purpose.

Good government is found in the balancing act of taxation. Take too much, and the wealth-creation that powers to engine dries up and blows away, which is why Communism is and always will be a failure. But tax too little, and you end up letting people die or live in misery who didn’t have to, and to cover up that fundamental crime against humanity, you end up having to invent some variant of an “Us and Them” ideology. That “those people” somehow deserve their fate and it’s somehow a much greater sin to be forced to help them because they are wicked or lazy or genetically inferior.

The Modern Liberal/Progressive movement has by-and-large learned the lesson of former, which is why Commies are a novelty these days – a sideshow act like the Dog-Faced Boy – instead of a threat. Which is why the Progressive Movement is damaged but salvageable.

OTOH, the Modern GOP positively mainlines the grotesque, divisive, “Fuck Everyone But Me” ideology -- dosing themselves with their narcotic dogma harder and harder and with larger-bore needles every year -- which is why the Conservative Movement as it is currently constituted is just fucking evil and beyond redemption.

The Real World requires the paired and complimentary interplay between the Government and the Marketplace, and Consumers are exclusively creatures of the latter.

The marketplace – properly tended and pruned – is a fine thing. It’s very efficient at delivering goods and services to places when a profit can be had, and completely useless at delivering the basics to the indigent, to infirm, the disabled, the abandoned, the elderly, the young and anywhere else the margins are too thin or non-existent.

And in that context, how we think of each other may be a small thing, but it means everything.

Because if in your unguarded heart you think of your fellow Americans as “consumers” and of some of them as “those people”, you will inevitably reach a harsh and brutal set of conclusions about how they should be treated and what your national priorities should be.

But if you believe that your fellow American is a “citizen” just like you, and your fellow man is your brother or your sister to whom you owe a duty, you’ll inevitably reach a set of radically different and drastically more humane conclusions which, if pursued pragmatically and realistically, can form a core of shared values among all of the various breeds of Liberals I know of.

And in the end, as we saw in New Orleans, whether your government thinks of you as its boss or its supplicant -- as a citizen to be abide by and attended to, or a consumer to be waited on only if you can flash enough cash –- can mean the different between life and death.

Sunday Mornin’ Coming Down

Sunday Russert Sunday: The Mostly Timmuh Edition.

On Fox Gnus – Brit Hume really doesn’t “speak” words any more so much as he flaccidly refluxes them painfully back up one bilious syllable at a time. As though conversing in the Tongues of Men is physically painful for him or, at least, very very gassy.

"Who was Preznit during the Johnstown Flood or the SF Earthquake?" Hume chuckles, as if this is some lost bit of arcane Anasazi tribal trivia instead of actual American History.

“No one will remember Bush for Katrina,” the evil Anti-Gumby rumbles.

“The Humans are Weak,” The Humeunculus chortles. “They shall forget who it was that destroyed them! Bwahahah!”

Sorry, oh Humebug, but memory is not formed that way. Instead, one needs to ask, “Who was President during Vietnam? When the Depression came? When the South attacked the North?”

Does anyone not know the answers to those questions?

In the future, Brit, people will instead ask, “Who was President during that awful Iraq Fuckup. You know, the lying drunk who bankrupted the country? Of yeah; it was that dopey Bush asshole! The other Bush. Hey didn’t he fuck up that big hurricane too? Jesus, what sort of lobotomized slunkmeat CHUDS would've given that boil on the ass of Democracy the keys to Air Force One and then let him fly it into a mountain? Repeatedly? And then re-elect him?!”

I believe the answer on that Future History Test Question #17 will be, “Lobotomized slunkmeat CHUDS like Brit Hume.”

So you’ve got that going for you.

Christ Wallace would like to know, if Nancy Pelosi was willing to give up Pork, why did Hastert blow off the idea? Why did DeLay rant on that there would be NO spending cuts.

Kristol: Because they’re the incumbent majority party.

A dash of sneering, White Russian honesty from the Kristol-man.

Meanwhile Hume pipes and whistles like teapot full of boiling bile.

On This Week. --

Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison. Sorry, not interested.

And we move on, because all the effing shows all started at the same moment this morning just to piss me off.


Over on Meet The Press – Ivor van Heerden, about whom I have nothing to say good or bad, because he slipped softly and silently away and then came Aaron Broussard...

...and man am I glad I stayed awake for this.

Russert had a typically Punkin’ Haided fusspot focus on the political pedigree of Mr. Broussard. Timmuh heroically took on the task of hectoring an emotionally-flattened man about what he said during a period of peak emotional stress, while he was weeping.

What a shitbag.

Timmuh set his fat chin and many jaunty jowls firmly North by Northwest and went in for the kill. In hot pursuit of the Terrible Truth behind Aaron Broussard’s previous, exhausted emotional outburst and begging for help.

What did you really mean by that, Mr. Broussard?

What was your real agenda?

Come on Mrs. Lincoln: what the fuck did you really think of the play! Quit ducking and answer me, for I am Punkin’ Haid!!!

Like a wheezy little bulldog racing after his usual Sunday Morning bus-full of assorted George Allens', Mary Matlins' and other political jizzpistols, Timmuh leaped ferociously on the nice man who had previously used the Russert Clown Show to beg for help for his dying city as it literally fell apart around him.

Russert, nipping at the timeline of the death of Mr. Broussard’s boss' mother as if it were the Pentagon Papers, and this was his Final Shot at doing serious journalism instead of ass-shining his Big Sunday Chair, reading other people’s quotes back to them and saying, “Well!?”

Trouble was, this wasn’t a Streetcar Named Santorum trying desperately to trundle away from his own well-document stupidity while en route between a turgid episode of rote talking-point-hammering and a fundraiser.

No this was a fully up-armored, no-fucking-around, Mississippi Delta Troop Carrier. Parked and packed -- not trying to get away from or with anything –- and Timmuh slammed right, smack into it.

And since Aaron Broussard has been busy actually saving lives and trying to salvage his community instead of running his own comments back and forth like Oliver Stone jerking off to the Zapruder Film, Mr. Broussard had never actually seen his own videotape from that fateful Sunday.

And as Timmuh, sandbagging him like he was one of the cheap, political hacks that Russert cultivates and feeds off of -- as if he were waving nekkid pictures in the face of an alderman, shouting “J’accuse!” -- that nice man began to cry again.

Did I mention what a complete shitbag Russert is?

Of course the problem with coming on like on like Joe McCarthy after a fifth of JTS Brown is that Punkin’ Haid obviously never actually expected Aaron Broussard to punch back. So he leaned waaaaay out over his skis just to act like a complete prick.

But after he composed himself, Mr. Broussard popped off the ropes like Ali in the eight round in Zaire.

My rough transcription of just a LITTLE of what he said: (Memory abetted by on that first quote because I just up and took from your favorite videoblogger and mine. Go visit the nice gentlemen at Crooks and Liars for the whole thing):

"

Listen, sir, somebody wants to nitpick a man's tragic loss of a mother because she was abandoned in a nursing home? Are you kidding? What kind of sick mind, what kind of black-hearted people want to nitpick a man's mother's death? They just buried Eva last week. I was there at the wake. Are you kidding me? That wasn't a box of Cheerios they buried last week."

“She was the epitome of abandonment. “

“Are you kidding me?”

“Who are these people? What sort of sick agendas are people running here?”

Timmuh looked like he had just bitten into a sack of razor-sharp nickels expecting it to be a nice slice of rhubarb pie. And yet he kept licking the business end of the same taser: trying to back Broussard into saying that he was only blaming Bush and FEMA and letting local assholes off the hook.

Aaron Broussard was having none of it. He wants everyone who was responsible for this strung up. City, state, federal. The owners of the nursing home. All of them – regardless of party or position – swinging from the trees.

Eloquent as hell, he came down on the Puffy Fatuous One like a Bayou George Galloway and after he disassembled Russert’s straw men he pointed out the fact he had been a little fucking occupied lately, and wondered loudly about the kind of people who were busying themselves trying the play “Chinese Fire and Boat Drill” with the blame for the death of NOLA.

“Are you drinking your coffee?” he asked. “Are you at a place where toilets flush and with running water?”

Wow, wow and wow. Russert’s vast, flabby ass must tip the scale at damned near a metric ton these days, and Broussard deftly handed it to him, whole and in all its flaccid glory.

Wow.

Then came the NYT Op-Ed Page kick line. One cannot help but wonder if this has anything to do with the marketing geniuses at the Times figuring our another way to further alienate their readers, while at the same time making them look just plain stupid.

All I can say is, off camera, reflected off of David Brooks’ glasses, if you look very carefully, you can almost see the Times’ V. P. and Chief Financial Officer -- Liam J. Carlos -- mouthing, “Sell it bitches!””

Dowd whams Bush with a honey smile. Ouchy. Very very Ouchy. If Bush’s nerve-endings and conscience had not already been cauterized by a hollow, boozy, wastrel’s life, what MoDo said would probably have stung like a sonofaBush.

And yikes, Tom Friedman actually correctly identifies the problems. All the blindingly obvious problems, to be sure, but it’s a start. That 9/11 just froze all opposition (he doesn’t mention that this included him). There was massive projection – surely you want your leader to be masterful and decisive so you lard that on the chicken-wire frame of George Bush out of whole cloth (he again conspicuously omits mentioning that he is talking about himself) – and the Bush administration used the opening like gangrene uses a flesh wound.

The press and the opposition became respectful and deferential because rallying around the leader is what one does during a tragedy.

And the Bush Administration pimped out our grief like the soulless fucks we all knew they always were. Our failure was a lack of imagination: that many of us who know better still never dreamed that a President of the United States, whatever his many, many, many failing and corruptions, couldn’t really be this despicable. This contemptible. This low.

That while we were bleeding and broken, we could surely turn our backs on the Republicans – whatever our differences – because surely NO ONE would be vile enough to knife us in the kidneys while we were kneeling by the fresh graves of our loved ones.

How wrong we were: the GOP is just exactly that vile.

Timmuh Asks – But what about the Democrats? Why aren’t they blahblahblah.

Brooks – The haters are winning. The ones who think that the problem with the country is that we don’t hate Bush enough. I don’t know what the Dems stand for on Iraq, on spending...

There are a few good points in there somewhere, but right this minute that doesn't interest me. What interests me is...

Problem One BoBo: You fuckers run the government now, from stem to stern, and you worked really, really hard -- evenings and weekends -- to steal/extort/jimmy/terrorize yourself to the very pinnacle of power you now enjoy. So why is it now that you run the Candy Store – and are looting it at a pace that would make a Visigoth say, “Uh, dude,

maybe

you wanna save something for later?” – whenever you hit a patch of choppy water that you brought entirely on yourselves, one of the first things that comes sniveling out of you pie-holes is, “Well the Democrats...”, “Well the Liberals...”, “Well Clinton...”.

Well President Cuckoobanana-Daiquiri has been running the country into the ground now for half a decade, and you funny little monkeys have owned Congress for longer than that. You have everything you wanted, so why are you such craven little bitches when it comes to stepping up and taking charge?

Oh, yeah, I forgot; you’re Republicans. You don’t want to actually govern a Democracy; you want to rule a theocracy by decree and have the bad message bringers shot as heretics.

Problem Two: Maybe it’s just me getting dotty, but the Dems I remember did not support this war. The Dems I remember were very clear about exactly what they were doing and why. They had no stomach for invading Iraq whatsoever. As loyal but unbelievable gullible and pussified politicians, the Dems I remember wanted to deal Bush every card he asked for when he went to negotiate regarding Iraq. Putting that arrow in Bush’s quiver was supposed to be a show of solidarity; that we were serious people and would tolerate no nonsense.

With the wounds of our nation still fresh, Bush came to us and said that to keep us from dying, he must have a latitude to act that included war, but he would act only if it turned out to be absolutely necessary.

The Dems I remember very reluctantly agreed to give him that range of motion, on the condition that he only act if there were no other alternative, that the threat was imminent, and that Bush had a comprehensive strategy for winning any war, securing any peace and getting the hell out of there as soon as humanly possible.

Not surprisingly, Republicans that talk about, “Well, Democrats supported the war too...” always want to skip over that part. The part where Bush swears on the lives of our children that he will behave in the most cautious, conscientious and gravely responsible manner possible...

...right up until the Dems give him the cars keys.

Then he blows off every expert, flips off the UN, and roars drunk and reckless into downtown Baghdad. Irresponsibly, stupidly, thoughtlessly with not near enough troops to secure the peace that he promised, and with no sign of the exit strategy he promised beyond some opium-addled PNAC fantasies about American Liberators, and cake-walks and being greeted with flowers and kisses.

And now, after Downing Street, it’s evident that he wasn’t just lying about 70 or 80 percent of the pre-war kabuki...but 100%. Bush had this war wired up and ready to go since the day Fat Tony Scalia anointed him President: he was just looking for a bag man.

So now that this is all public knowledge, all the GOP have is the charge that, “Democrats supported the war too.”

Think about that for a minute.

Think about what that statement means in the context of what we now all know?

That the Republicans final “rebuttal” comes down to this: If Dems were stupid and foolish enough to actually take George Bush at his word, and believe for one minute that he wasn’t a traitorous, lying sack of shit, that’s their own damned fault. If they were actually sucker enough to try to put Country ahead of Party, and believe that the Bush Crime Family wouldn’t knife them in the back the first chance they got, well ha ha fucking ha!

Joke’s on you!

Well on this one point, I will agree with the implication of what BoBo and the rest of the Bush War Apologists are saying, even though the don’t have to balls to come right our and move their inferences explicitly into the foreground. And I for one will never mistake a Republican for anything other than a lying traitor ever again, so thanks for the head’s up guys!

Dowd – Some stuff about Hillary, which was well taken (despite what I just said.) MoDo says that Katrina and Iraq are shown on a split screen. Exactly the same problems with exactly same people. Katrina and Iraq showed that these people have ALWAYS been incompetent. Not enough troops committed to solve the problem. No bid contracts to Halliburton. Experts who warned you were blown off. Vital jobs at the top given to inept Bush Loyalists.

Brooks – Sometimes I think that he [Bush] is the Manchurian Candidate. Built specifically to discredit the ideas I believe in.

No BoBo -- Bush is the personification of the ideas you believe in. It's your ideology that sucks ass, and not just the empty suit it came wrapped in.

Dowd - Being a good third or fourth quarter player is NOT good enough for people that don’t have Daddy’s money to bail them out.

Dowd – Bush is running around like a Today Show weatherman. He’s running around looking for a photo-op.

MoDo, damn our differences! I must have you!

Brooks says he doesn’t believe in tax cuts during warfare, but he lays out the tired mantra of cut-n’-grow that the GOP uses to explain why clear-cutting taxes for billionaires who already have more than enough money to pour into any project or business they choose is good.

Friedman calls him out. The Chinese own our balls, and not in a happy fun way. They are fast approaching a trillion-dollar vice grip on our wizened beanbags thanks entirely to George W. Bush and the GOP. And in lieu of an actual plan, Republicans just keep repeating that, “It’ll all be fine.”

Until, of course, the bottom falls out.

That, in the end, will be the legacy of the Bush Administration. Over and over and over again, the Dry-drunk-in-Chief and the GOP say, “Trust us. We know what we’re doing.” with absolutely no record or justification in reality to back that claim up, right up until the car goes off the cliff.

Then, like all abusers and alcoholics do, they admonishes us all not to “look backwards”. Funny how drunks, junkies, wife-beaters and George W. Bush all have that trait in common: they are all violently allergic to looking behind them, and all for exactly the same reasons.

Then Bush jumps behind the wheel of another car, still bedewed with the blood of the victims of their last failure.

Then the Dry-drunk-in-Chief and the GOP again say, “Trust us. We know what we’re doing”...right up until the car goes...

And that’s when I passed out in my Count Chocula.

Serves me right for eating it with the cheap Scotch.

But God Told Me To.

“Stupidity cannot be cured with money, or through education, or by legislation. Stupidity is not a sin, the victim can't help being stupid...”

That’s the start of a quote by Robert Heinlein that came to mind as I read this from the L.A. Times

A Mother's Denial, a Daughter's Death
By Charles Ornstein and Daniel Costello Times Staff WritersSat Sep 24, 7:55 AM ET

Christine Maggiore was in prime form, engaging and articulate, when she explained to a Phoenix radio host in late March why she didn't believe HIV caused AIDS.

The HIV-positive mother of two laid out matter-of-factly why, even while pregnant, she hadn't taken HIV medications, and why she had never tested her children for the virus.

"Our children have excellent records of health," Maggiore said on the Air America program when asked about 7-year-old Charlie and 3-year-old Eliza Jane Scovill. "They've never had respiratory problems, flus, intractable colds, ear infections, nothing. So, our choices, however radical they may seem, are extremely well-founded."

Seven weeks later, Eliza Jane was dead.

The cause, according to a Sept. 15 report by the Los Angeles County coroner, was AIDS-related pneumonia.

These days, given advances in HIV care, it's highly unusual for any young child to die of AIDS. What makes Eliza Jane's death even more striking is that her mother is a high-profile, charismatic leader in a movement that challenges the basic medical understanding and treatment of acquired immune deficiency syndrome.

Even now, Maggiore, a 49-year-old former clothing executive from Van Nuys, stands by the views she has espoused on "The Ricki Lake Show" and ABC's "20/20," and in Newsweek and Mothering magazines. She and her husband, Robin Scovill, said they have concerns about the coroner's findings and are sending the report to an outside reviewer.

"I have been brought to my emotional knees, but not in regard to the science of this topic," said Maggiore, author of an iconoclastic book about AIDS that has sold 50,000 copies. "I am a devastated, broken, grieving mother, but I am not second-guessing or questioning my understanding of the issue."

One doctor involved with Eliza Jane's care told The Times he has been second-guessing himself since the day he learned of the little girl's death.

Dr. Jay Gordon, a Santa Monica pediatrician who had treated Eliza Jane since she was a year old, said he should have demanded that she be tested for human immunodeficiency virus when, 11 days before she died, Maggiore brought her in with an apparent ear infection.

"It's possible that the whole situation could have been changed if one of the doctors involved — one of the three doctors involved — had intervened," said Gordon, who himself acknowledges that HIV causes AIDS. "It's hindsight, Monday-morning quarterbacking, whatever you want to call it. Do I think I'm blameless in this? No, I'm not blameless."

Mainstream AIDS organizations, medical experts and ethicists, long confounded and distressed by this small but outspoken dissident movement, say Eliza Jane's death crystallizes their fears. The dissenters' message, they say, is not just wrong, it's deadly.

"This was a preventable death," said Dr. James Oleske, a New Jersey physician who never examined Eliza Jane but has treated hundreds of HIV-positive children. "I can tell you without any doubt that, at the outset of her illness, if she was appropriately evaluated, she would have been appropriately treated. She would not have died.

"You can't write a more sad and tragic story," Oleske said.

...
"Would I redo anything based on what happened?" she asked rhetorically during an interview this week. "I don't think I would. I think I acted with the best information and the best of intentions with all my heart."
...

Word Is Getting Out
Since Eliza Jane's death, Maggiore and her husband have kept a relatively low profile, her friends said. But word is slowly reaching HIV dissidents around the country.

Though shaken, most of them say they continue to support Maggiore and her contention that HIV is not the cause of AIDS.

For her part, Maggiore said that her daughter's death has taken a toll on her health; she's had trouble eating, sleeping and, this past summer, simply breathing. She's treated her symptoms with Chinese herbs, walked five miles a day and practiced yoga, and is now feeling better, she said.

She went to a sympathetic doctor, she said. "If I had gone to a regular AIDS doctor and told them I was HIV-positive, I have no doubt they would have blamed it on that."

In the weeks after Eliza Jane's death, her parents created a website, http://www.ejlovetour.com , in her memory. Maggiore wrote lovingly of her daughter, wavering between despair at her loss and acceptance that Eliza Jane had simply chosen, as Maggiore put it, to "go home."

She struggled most with the whys.

"Why our child — so appreciated, so held, so carefully nurtured — and not one ignored, abused or abandoned?" she wrote. "How come what we offered was not enough to keep her here when children with far less — impatient distracted parents, a small apartment on a busy street, extended day care, Oscar Mayer Lunchables — will happily stay?"

Why did I lead off with that Heinlein quote?
Because it ends like this.

“...But stupidity is the only universal capital crime; the sentence is death, there is no appeal and execution is carried out automatically and without pity." Robert Heinlein – “Time Enough for Love"

This, in one tragic nutshell, is what is so wrong and incredibly dangerous about True Believers, and why they should never, ever be allowed anywhere near the levers of power.

True Believers look like anybody.

Once nice woman who was with the Heaven’s Gate cult reminded me a whole lot of my Mom. Cheery woman, very sweet, enthusiastic and jokey, giddy that she had found such a nice bunch of young people to keep company with...and looking forward to the arrival of the Mothership like a five-year-old on Christmas Eve waiting for Santa Claus.

Just like my Mom, but with a single, blown chipset -- the one that keeps her from believe fatally crazy gibberish and stepping blissfully off into the grave -- and that woman is dead now, along with 38 others, who committed mass suicide in 1997.

Harlan Ellison, who has spend most of his life fighting this fight, wrote an essay about Heaven's Gate. About the lethal chasm between a rational approach to the Real World and the abyss of superstitious, magical thinking hysteria into which the True Believers all around us try to drag us.

He writes here specifically of the distinction between “science fiction” and “sci-fi”, but lets face it, icky-dumb atavistic hate-religion allied with fake science is more on the march than ever. The news is daily filled with the spectacle of adults throwing litigious tantrums demanding that infantile crap like Creationism be taken seriously and stories of pharmacists refusing to fill the birth control prescription for consenting adults on the basis of their “faith”.

Their faith seems to consist largely in the belief that slavering, pinheads speak for God Almighty because said pinhead are holding a Bible, have excellent hair and a Confederate accent and preach a faith that insists God’s Grace requires that you be born stupid and hateful, you stay stupid and hateful and you die stupid and hateful.

In such a world as this, Harlan’s essay seems more timely than ever.

Here’s a snip.

...
And that is the dichotomy of science fiction, as opposed to the tabloid mentality of UFO abductions, triangular-headed ETs, reinterpreted biblical apocrypha, and just plain bone stick stone gullibility. It is obscurantism and illiteracy, raised to the level of dogma. It requires that you be as ignorant today as you were yesterday, that you be no brighter than the sap who keeps playing three-card monte on a street corner with a hustler who will never cut you a break.

"Sci-fi" is what the Rancho Santa Fe sleepers bought, in that flashy but adolescent shell-game called Waitin' for the UFO. They were philosophical suckers who turned away from the genuine wonders of the real world and all its solvable mysteries, to embrace the sophomore horse-puckey of astrology and government conspiracies and recastings of Jesus as a deep-space navigator. That has nothing to do with the problem-solving and curiosity of science fiction...it has everything to do with the monster fear and dread produced by the dumbness of "sci-fi."

If you wonder why I have such an intractable loathing for Conservative Fundamentalists, this is what it comes down to. The simple fact that they are nothing more than Heaven’s Gate multiplied by a million, and in control of a nation armed with atomic weapons. The fact that, in addition to any number of hateful and bigoted doctrines, these people work for, pray for and deeply believe in the extinction of Life on Earth as a Good and Godly final coda to this wicked world.

They want the whole of humanity dead and the planet reduced to a rubble-strewn funeral pyre because then Jebus will come and take them away to Heaven, and they are as serious as cancer about doing their level best to trigger the end of the world. And for sordid political gains, a certain political party in the country keeps giving these people -- who are adamantly pro-Armageddon -- more and more power and letting them inch closer to control over US Foreign Policy and the nuclear launch codes.

When they succeed, True Believers usually end up dead and/or killing a lot of others: either way, they are Terminalists, believers in Final Answers and Last Chapters, and when the hour reaches Zero and the tumblers in their head all click into place, bad shit is about to come raining down on everyone in the blast radius.

That is the moment when, at a minimum, they’ll drag their kids out to Highway 61 for the Big Goodbye Sacrifice that the God of the True Believer always exacts in exchange for the keys to the Kingdom.

That is the moment you can be damned sure that somebody’s going to die.

Sometimes whole countries or peoples.

Sometimes 913 human beings in the jungles of Guyana.

Sometimes 39, dressed in their dorky purple capes and Nikes, believing that their souls would thumb a ride to Nirvana aboard the UFO they were convinced was trailing along in the wake of the Hale-Bopp comet.

Sometimes it’s just one child.

And that's when they succeed.

When they fail, they never learn. They cannot learn. Since they have abandoned the very concept of reordering their beliefs according to Reality, they have left themselves nowhere else to go but further down the rabbit hole.

They have cut out any self-correcting mechanism they might've once had, because the need for correction implies fault. Which implies doubt. And since True Believers cannot abide doubt in even trace amounts, they are left with:

"I am a devastated, broken, grieving mother, but I am not second-guessing or questioning my understanding of the issue."

They fall deeper into Psychotic Narcissism – which was all their True Belief ever was -- and maunder on about:

"Why our child — so appreciated, so held, so carefully nurtured — and not one ignored, abused or abandoned?" she wrote. "How come what we offered was not enough to keep her here when children with far less — impatient distracted parents, a small apartment on a busy street, extended day care, Oscar Mayer Lunchables — will happily stay?"

Listen to how utterly sick and self-absorbed this unhinged bitch has become. In her deluded theology, children die because they opt to, and children remain alive – even when faced with the unimaginable horrors of “extended day care, Oscar Mayer Lunchables” – only because they decide to “stay”.

When things don’t go according to plan – which is always -- True Believers never question themselves. They blame God or their Victim for somehow, magically, overriding their Perfect Dogma, and end up believing:

“...that Eliza Jane had simply chosen, as Maggiore put it, to "go home."

How fucking insidious.

This woman has fallen so fanatically in love with her own Perfect Dogma that she has destroyed any ability to judge whether or not her Dogma might possibly be in error.

And since her HIV Cult God cannot possibly be wrong...some alternative theory -- no matter how objectively monstrous and evil -- must be true.

It wasn't depraved indifference. It wasn't homicidal negligence. No, her daughter just “chose” to die for mysterious, magical reasons.

To which I can only add that it would be a great good if Ms. Maggiore would seriously consider “choosing” a "trip home" herself in the very near future.

Before her stupid True Belief kills anyone else.

President George W. Perseus

Workin’ the Base.

The tale of our modern Perseus – like the Greek myth -- began in tragedy, and then swaggered to life in an arrogant boast.

After 9/11, this is what we were promised:

“"We're smoking them out. They're running. And now we're going to bring them to justice. I also said we'll use whatever means necessary to achieve that objective -- and that's exactly what we're going to do."
- President George W. Bush, November, 2001

And a year later, the promise was renewed:

“We're going to hunt them down one at a time…it doesn't matter where they hide, as we work with our friends we will find them and bring them to justice.”
- President George W. Bush, November, 2002

Unfortunately the war that history demanded that Bush fight was not the war he desperately wanted to fight, and so the quest became a tricky one: how in the world could a war against a militant, medieval Islamic terrorist state be forged into a tool that would let him wage a preemptive war against an oil-rich, modern, secular Arab dictatorship that was in no way whatsoever involved in the attacks against the United States?

Well of course there would have to be a LOT of lying -- a task for which his Administration was uniquely well-equipped – but there had to be a plan. A strategery. An overarching vision-thing.

Which is when I believe Karl Rove must have dredged up the Myth of Perseus, dropped it into the Ratfuck Blender, and extracted the useful elements.

The parallels are striking.

First, dubious alliances were forged

with strangers working their own agendas.


Then off to Hades, where the nymphs

gave Perseus a Helmet of Invisibility so that his actions might go undetected.


And Hermes added a Sword of the purest Adamant

so Perseus could keep America cut up and divided.

Now according to myth, the original Perseus actually caught and killed the Gorgon, whose gaze was so badass that anyone who looked at her would be turned to stone. This was done by sneaking up on the beast while she slept, and using a mirrored shield on loan from Athena to avoid looking Medusa directly in the eye.

Of course our modern Perseus is both a liar and a coward, and give the utterly blind, prostrate obedience that his base shows him, there was no reason in the world why he ever needed to actually keep his promises to the American people.

Instead, Bush went the myth one better by staying 100% true to the pattern of his entire life -- flaking off and never actually accomplishing the job he promised he would do -- and yet still flashing the head of the Gorgon during every speech to kill every question and smother every hint of dissent.

In this case, the Medusa is far more valuable on the loose than dead and decapitated, and thanks to the miracle of Space Age Technology he can affix the image of the head of the Gorgon...




...to his Shield...



...and appropriate it’s terrible power...

...for his own, bestial purposes.


It worked like a charm.

Literally.

As advertised, the talisman turned an already pussy-whipped Press to Stone Phillips and the already-faltering Opposition to simpering jelly and, for a time, Bush bestrode the globe unmolested, brandishing this ultimate political weapon, annihilating even the slightest whisper of dissent.

His cronies were ecstatic.

The GOP are, after all, a degenerate and perverse lot. Hateful, narrow-minded bigots crowd one wing of the Party, and conscienceless, Mammon-slut, "Fuck Everyone But Me" corporatists pack the other, so they have always needed weird, Rube Goldbergish kinds of contraptions to keep their ghoulish natures hidden from view.

The base – none-to-bright to begin with – nonetheless needs to be kept scared-stupid at all times. Commies worked very well back in the day. Feminists. The ACLU. Queers. And negroes are the evergreen Electoral Cornucopia down in the Slave States; a bottomless ATM machine that always gives up the love as long as you can remember the right, racist-coded PIN number (Hint: s-t-a-t-e-s r-i-g-h-t-s or a-f-f-i-r-m-a-t-i-v-e a-c-t-i-o-n usually does the trick).

But it was always dodgy, and the domino mask of Jovial Reagan keeps slipping off to reveal the face of Sociopath DeLay and Deathgod Dobson.

Now, with Gorgon Shield to hide behind, they could ram through one fucknut crazy item on their Lifetime Wish List after another. From drilling in ANWR to cutting taxes for billionaires during a time of massive, structural national debt, the Magic Shield made it all possible.

Of course, the problem with Magical Fear is that, like the Peruvian Marching Powder that I’m quite sure the President doesn’t do by the ounce off of Condi’s perky ass, once you start needing it to cope with the day-to-day, the more you have to jam up your nose just get back to normal.

The more you depend on keeping people in a state Primal Dread to deliver even mundane, legislative victories, the more massive the doses need to be, and like the good old days of reckless bingeing and then charging the havoc off on Daddy’s AMEX card and Rolodex, Dubya has charged the entire tab for his reckless, failed Presidency on Fear.

Dubya is Terrorism's greatest beneficiary, and he has learned it’s lessons so well that I would argue that he is not a War President at all: that he is, by definition, our first Terrorist President.

A terrorist is one who uses the threat of random violence to stampede people to where they would not ordinarily go. One who governs by manipulating fear or by intimidation.

One who uses terror as a political weapon, for political ends.

One who, say, jacks up the Terrorist Threat Level every time his poll numbers started to tank. One who, oh, I don’t know...deploys his Vice President to warn the populace that if you vote the wrong way, your children might die.

What is that but generating and manipulating a pervasive, raw and mindless fear for partisan gain?

What is that but terrorism?

Unfortunately for our modern Perseus, the well is not bottomless, the line of credit is not endless, and people slowly start to get numb and catch on to the pattern; that this dry-drunk freak screams “9/11” every time he shits his pants in public.

And then came the Storm of the Century, blowing Bicycle-Chief’s Magic Shield right out of his hand and sweeping it into the Gulf of Mexico.

And what did we find squatting behind it, all pasty and maggoty and blinking in the unaccustomed daylight?

Cronies. Hacks. Racists. Incompetents. Whores. Incompetent whores. War profiteers. More racists. Christopaths. Monarchists. Quislings. Spinners.

In other words, the same old Confederated Enemies of the People the GOP has always been, now just grown vastly slower, dumber, fatter and more arrogant from glutting themselves like ticks to the point of bursting on the blood and treasure of the American people during their four-year holiday from scrutiny by the press and the leadership of Democratic Party.

Because Bush literally has no other qualification whatsoever to be President, and because there is nothing left in the Rove Bag of Tricks to cover up what a tawdry, embarrassing and unmitigated disaster this Administration has become, Bush gamely waded out into the filthy waters to retrieve his one-and-only weapon from the ruins of New Orleans. Then he hoisted it up once again – rancid and moldy, with a huge ‘gator bite chomped out of one side -- to tried to get the magic going one more time.

To halt and flash-petrify the tsunami of criticism of his bungling and fatal ineptitude mid-sentence, as it was in the glorious Days of Old when no one dared whisper that the Emperor was Naked.

And Stupid.

And Callous.

And possibly Nuts.

But the Magic cannot last, and Katrina blew the Gorgon Shield to splinters, so when the President limped to the podium in front of the Republican Jewish Coalition and actually had the nerve to say this ...

Wednesday, September 21, 2005
President George W. Bush's remarks to the Republican Jewish Coalition
...
You know, something we -- I've been thinking a lot about how America has responded, and it's clear to me that Americans value human life, and value every person as important. And that stands in stark contrast, by the way, to the terrorists we have to deal with. You see, we look at the destruction caused by Katrina, and our hearts break. They're the kind of people who look at Katrina and wish they had caused it. We're in a war against these people. It's a war on terror. These are evil men who target the suffering. They killed 3,000 people on September the 11th, 2001. And they've continued to kill. See, sometimes we forget about the evil deeds of these people. They've killed in Madrid, and Istanbul, and Baghdad, and Bali, and London, and Sharm el-Sheikh, and Jerusalem, and Tel Aviv. Around the world they continue to kill.

They have a strategy. They want to achieve certain objectives. They want to break our will. They want the United States of America and other freedom-loving nations to retreat from the world. Why? Because they want safe haven. They want to topple government. Just think Taliban in Afghanistan. That's their vision. And we can't let them do that. We have a solemn duty as a United States government to protect the American people from harm.

...
Iraq is the central battlefront in the war on terror.
...

...he didn’t sound confident or tough or strong.

He sounded so deeply detached from Reality that it actually scared me.

As Lawrence O’Donnell said in slightly kinder words, the Leader of the Free World sounded so obviously like a child desperately flailing for his only security blanket that it was chilling to watch.

In no way did our modern Perseus sound even slightly heroic or commanding.

Instead he sounded genuinely insane.


(Incidently, this also happens to be my 300th post. Strictly for my own peculiar reasons, I set myself a target several weeks ago of hitting the 300 mark by the time this blog was six months old, and have now beaten that by five days. So good for me.)

Everything I have ever promised you...

...has been a lie.

What’s the latest?

This from the NYT on the subject of my Administration’s claim that torture was no big deal. Just a few bad apples.

September 24, 2005
3 in 82nd Airborne Say Beating Iraqi Prisoners Was Routine
By ERIC SCHMITT
WASHINGTON, Sept. 23 - Three former members of the Army's 82nd Airborne Division say soldiers in their battalion in Iraq routinely beat and abused prisoners in 2003 and 2004 to help gather intelligence on the insurgency and to amuse themselves.
The new allegations, the first involving members of the elite 82nd Airborne, are contained in a report by Human Rights Watch. The 30-page report does not identify the troops, but one is Capt. Ian Fishback, who has presented some of his allegations in letters this month to top aides of two senior Republicans on the Senate Armed Services Committee, John W. Warner of Virginia, the chairman, and John McCain of Arizona. Captain Fishback approached the Senators' offices only after he tried to report the allegations to his superiors for 17 months, the aides said. The aides also said they found the captain's accusations credible enough to warrant investigation.
...
The abuses reportedly took place between September 2003 and April 2004, before and during the investigations into the notorious misconduct at the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad. Senior Pentagon officials initially sought to characterize the scandal there as the work of a rogue group of military police soldiers on the prison's night shift. Since then, the Army has opened more than 400 inquiries into detainee abuse in Iraq and Afghanistan, and punished 230 enlisted soldiers and officers.
...
In one incident, the Human Rights Watch report states, an off-duty cook broke a detainee's leg with a metal baseball bat. Detainees were also stacked, fully clothed, in human pyramids and forced to hold five-gallon water jugs with arms outstretched or do jumping jacks until they passed out, the report says. "We would give them blows to the head, chest, legs and stomach, and pull them down, kick dirt on them," one sergeant told Human Rights Watch researchers during one of four interviews in July and August. "This happened every day."
...
"They wanted intel," said the sergeant, an infantry fire-team leader who served as a guard when no military police soldiers were available. "As long as no PUC's came up dead, it happened." He added, "We kept it to broken arms and legs."
...
In a Sept. 16 letter to the senators, Captain Fishback, wrote, "Despite my efforts, I have been unable to get clear, consistent answers from my leadership about what constitutes lawful and humane treatment of detainees. I am certain that this confusion contributed to a wide range of abuses including death threats, beatings, broken bones, murder, exposure to elements, extreme forced physical exertion, hostage-taking, stripping, sleep deprivation and degrading treatment."
...

So my fellow Republicans, I wanted to take a few minutes out of my busy day to thank you for your unwavering support.

Without your pig-ignorance and blind faith in everything that drops out of my mouth, I might not have been able to weaken our nation, gut our treasury and piss away our international credibility in five short years.

From cheering on tax cut for billionaires during a time of record debt, to still believing – even two years after I myself was forced to admit I had lied – that Saddam caused 9/11, to tuning our unpleasant Reality and tuning in Rush every single day so we can tell you which slogans to shout and which groups to hate, you have made it possible for me to inflict more long-lasting damaged on the United States – pound for pound – than any enemy we have ever had.

And don’t just think it’s all domestic stuff either: you have also been immeasurably helpful when it comes to flopping my dick out at the International House of Tyrants as well. When Kim Jong Il throws down some brag about his fanatic, propaganda-fed followers who are so completely truth-starved that they believe that the U.S. started the Korean War, I just whip out the Bush Fadayin: my loyal base. I lay a little of the Southern Baptist Convention upside his dorky head, some Creationism, Terry Schiavo and a few other choice cut of dumbass and my, my, my if that doesn’t shut him the fuck up.

After all, he has to force his slaves to remain ignorant. He has to wall them off from the rest of the world and use bayonets, machine guns and razor wire to keep them from the truth.

What a pussy!

I mean, how much cooler is it that my Loyal Thralls actually choose to be dead-mule stupid. That rather that read a book or change the channel, they exercise their right as free Americans to voluntarily dumb themselves down to the point where I can serve them shit as sheetcake year after year and they just keep gobbling it up, licking their plates clean and lining up for more.

I also am deeply thankful for the limitless depths of your hypocrisy: it is the single feature that elevates you all above ordinary numbnuts and into the rarified heights of Cartoonish Superidiocy.

You are, after all, the same Righteous Mob that hunted Bill Clinton for seven long years -- over what turned out to be nothing -- under the banner of demanding Absolute Truth. That a President, regardless of Party, must be rigorously investigated if there is even the slightest whiff of the possibility of wrongdoing, no matter how small.

You were the one who set that standard: That it doesn’t matter how inconvenient or how debilitating it might be, how nakedly partisan the Prosecutor is, how long a fishing expedition he goes on, how many innocent lives are destroyed, how reckless the process becomes, how many millions it might cost...holding a President to account for his actions – no matter how trivial they may be or how many mitigating circumstances might obtain – is the Most Important Thing Ever.

It must be pursued to the ends of the Earth, regardless of the cost and consequences.

Of course, we down at the ranch all knew you didn’t mean a single fucking word of it. That it was all just another, beautiful Big Republican Lie, which is what made it just so extra special nice.

Which is what signaled to Rove that, at last, the GOP was morally bankrupt enough to elect me as President of the United States.

After all, I’ve lied to the American people since back when I was debating that Gore fella. I lie to you every day. I lie to that same Righteous Mob who got so het up over Clinton. I rub their faces in my lies. I rub it in their hair and right up their noses. Their kids die because of my lies. Their future is mortgaged to Chinese Bankers because of my lies.

And that whole Righteous Mob – every last one of them who screamed for Clinton’s blood – don’t bat a fucking eye. They’ll never investigate me. They’ll never indict me. They’ll never subpoena me. They’ll never even ask me any tough questions. Shit, even when it came to looking into 9/11 – which happened on my watch, and about which Condi had been amply warned – they sucked my dick.

The same people that demanded Clinton be put under oath and videotaped for a blowjob and then leaked it to the press...let me “chat” behind closed doors. The worst attack on our country while I was the Commander-in-Chief and I didn’t even have to swear to tell the truth. I got to sit on Cheney’s lap. Nobody took notes, and nobody said a fucking word about it.

For Clinton, they nursed their wounds like The Fisher King and hunted him like a wild boar.

For me...nothing.

Why?

Because covering up my crimes and helping me destroy America is the job you elected them to do, my pretties.

So I’d like to thank you for staying the course through thick and thin except, of course, that unless you’re wealthy, it’s been pretty much “thin” from Day One.

I’d like to thank you for being such incredibly gullible hicks. Seriously, we have a little bet going back at the Ranch that there is literally nothing I can do that’s so fucking in-sane that you pickle-heads won’t squeal "Oh God Yes!" like piglets on their third consecutive orgasm.

Truth be told (which is kind of a rare thing for me), to test that theory, while I was doing this very speech, I wasn’t wearing any pants. It was a hot day, and I was kinda loaded, so I figured, “What the fuck?” and did the whole thing Full Gannon. And just for kicks, like two minutes before I went out, Condi wrote “JESUS LOVES MY POOP HOLE” on my ass in BIG letters with that “Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS” lipstick she slathers on these days.

Just to see what would happen.

Nobody said a word, and they all cheered like the trained seals they’ve been bred to be.

I never really understood how I kept getting away with the reckless, crazy shit I get away with until Turdblossom explained it to me.

“Dubya,” he said, “Republicans say, ‘What lies?’ for the same reason a Mekong Giant Catfish says, ‘What water?’.”

Turns out that when you swim, breathe, eat, fuck and die in a river of shit...you actually get confused and goggle-eyed when someone points out that you stink like the business end of a rabid dog with the trots.

Then you get angry.

Then you elect someone who’ll tell you Jesus loves your shit-crusted ass and hates everyone else, and despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, you really smell like fresh-baked ginger snap cookies.

So thanks again.

Suckers.