Stopping the World of Studley McMuffin...

Is there a single psychologist or phychiatrist in this country -- in any country -- who would be willing to put his or her credibility on the line and say that George W. Bush is not a bloodthirsty lunatic, a liar and a fool?

I thought not.

I am finding it more and more difficult to hear what he is saying. Each time Bush opens his mouth, he seems to be attempting to channel a loon, but unfortunately, its weird cries are all but drowned out by the maniacal barking of a hyena. That would be fine if he were out in the Texas boonies with the rest of the loons and hyenas rather than illegally occupying the chair reserved for our elected head of state -- arguably the most powerful man in the world.

How long are we going to allow this war criminal to keep killing innocent men, women and children while wiping his brow and complaining how much work -- hard work -- it is? How long, America? Until they're all dead under the weight of our liberation?

In his Saturday radio address, Bush boasted that he and his puppet Iraqi Prime Minister Jaafari not only "discussed" their strong partnership but reveled in the dramatic progress all his hard work in Iraq has made over the past year. A mouse in the corner might confide that Bush told Jaafari, "Do as I say or die, punk." A mouse might say that the progress of which Bush is so proud was nothing more than his chortling over his success at ravaging a nation and its people in order to turn over all its resources to Dick Cheney's Halliburton and a few other lucky US corporate contractors.

Do you listen to him, America? Do you hear him? Do you believe him when he says that the blood of your children, mingled with the blood of Iraqi children, is but a "grim reminder that the enemies of freedom in Iraq are ruthless killers with no regard for human life"? Well, I believe him. Was ever there a more grim reminder of a ruthless killer with no regard for human life than his smirking self?

Tuesday, Bush says, is the first anniversary of the "moment" Iraqis reclaimed their free and sovereign nation. Hoo-boy. If we are to believe him -- in a single instant -- Iraqi people were free, and they had the purple fingers to prove it. Just another "mission accomplished" moment, eh, Scoob? How many more of these bloody photo-op moments are we going to take -- can we take -- in the name of all that is decent? How many, before we finally grab rails, sacks of feathers, and buckets of tar and take off in a dead run for Pennsylvania Avenue?

Just wondering...

Bush says he will give a major speech Tuesday evening on what he calls his "two-track strategy for victory." He will tell us yet once again about his important mission and his firm resolve to perform fantastical, historical, hysterical feats.

Will Bush be The President, addressing such a vital matter while surrounded by the somber trappings of the oval office? Doubtful, because the last time Bush tried that, he became so diminished he disappeared beneath the desk. Karl Rove had to drag in a ladder just so Bush could climb back up in the chair.

Will Bush be the Commander-in-Chief, speaking to us from the dignified podium of Congress? Yeah, like that's going to happen, given the gloomy, increasingly pissed-off mood of Congress. You never know when the "moos" will turn to Boos...

Or will Bush once again be the courageous and fearless Studly McMuffin, all decked out in a flight jacket, giving yet another campaign speech from a raised platform before a hand-picked military audience with orders to screech "Hoo-AHHHH!" each time Bush stops to take a breath, or when tasered by Karl Rove and Donald Rumsfeld from off-camera -- whichever comes first?

I just report. You decide.

Bush will say the "military track" of his strategy is to defeat the terrorists. He will tell us once again that democracy is on the march and is "taking root" everywhere. Soon, it will cover all of Iraq, sweeping across that nation like Johnson Grass across the west Texas plains.

His "political track," he says, is "to continue helping Iraqis build the institutions of a stable democracy." What the hell does that mean? How can Iraqis build anything? Bush has taken their oil, their money, their businesses, their jobs, their water and electricity and their humanity from them. He has kicked down their doors and dragged their men off to prison while imposing curfews on the women, children and elderly who remain.

He will tell us his mission is difficult, and we can "expect more tough fighting in the weeks and months ahead." But, as always, he is resolved and confident. His will remains unbroken -- unbreakable. Even as grieving parents in Iraq and the United States bury the body parts of their children, they can be proud of Bush for working so hard to defy, and defeat, evil throughout the world and replace it with the freedoms of corporate democracy.

Oh, America, how long will we sit and listen to the jangled loon-and-hyena cacophony gushing out of this destructive administration -- the robotic cheers erupting from a condemned military?

We have work to do. Stopping the world of Studley McMuffin and kicking off the "ruthless killers with no regard for human life" who are in control of us will be work. Hard, hard work.

But we must be up and about our country's business, no matter how hard it is. Our country's business is life; therefore, we have no choice. The alternative is not -- nor should it be -- an option on our table.

Can You Hear Me NOW, El Rushbo?

Limbaugh is his name. Drug addiction is his game. He calls himself "El Rushbo." Says any news he doesn't talk about, we don't need to hear. He says his talent is "on loan from God." Maybe that's where he got all those pills he's not talking about -- especially after his former housekeeper, Wilma Cline, and her husband, David, backed out of the deal and blew the whistle on him after years of selling him what they admitted were "large quantities" of prescription drugs they bought on the streets.

It's difficult to muster any sympathy for Limbaugh, who has for years relentlessly condemned others for succumbing to drug addiction. He has brayed for years that anybody foolish and weak enough to be an addict ought to go straight to jail. One strike and yer out. He has even less compassion for the homeless. "I can solve the homeless problem in New York City," he once chortled. "Just move all the homeless over one block where I don't have to see them on my way to work. Easy solution -- they're all alcoholics and drug addicts anyway...human flotsom..."

It's been almost two years since Palm Beach (Fla) prosecutors seized Limbaugh's records from four different doctors, and he and his attorney, Roy Black, kicked and screamed all the way to the Florida Supreme Court to keep them secret. They lost last week. Now, although it's been ruled that prosecutors properly seized the records, Black is insisting that he be allowed to go through them and decide which ones are relevant to the investigation...

Black said some of the medical information could be embarrassing to Limbaugh. Well, ye-aah. I can see where it would be embarrassing for El Rushbo to get caught red-handed breaking the law, illegally shopping for doctors willing to write prescriptions for enough OxyContin to make him go deaf -- not to mention the Hydrocodone, Xanax and morphine they rounded up for him...that's even worse than people finding out he refused to serve his country because he had a boil on his ass...

It doesn't matter how the conservatives and Dittoheads spin it, this is a criminal investigation concerning a man (sic) involved in massive criminal activity. If justice is served, this nation will lance one of the most festering boils on its own ass, and the world will be much better for it. If justice is served, Limbaugh's goin' down.

Can you hear me? Can you hear me now, El Rushbo?

A MATTER OF EDUCATION...

Jim VandeHei of the Washington Post tells us that George Bush, who had hoped to spend the summer ramming Social Security firecrackers down our throats, is being forced by his plummeting poll numbers to take a second look at shoring up the lies about how peachy keen everything is in Iraq. Not that Bush ever looks at poll numbers, or spends any time worrying about what the street rabble thinks -- but with elections coming up, some Frights (Friends on the Right) are beginning to nervously gnaw their fingernails...

One of the more reasonable ones is South Carolina's Senator Lindsey Graham, who laments that the war is lasting much longer and isn't nearly as much whizbang fun as Bush promised. Graham says more people are dying than originally thought, and the insurgency against the illegal occupation isn't following Bush's democracy-and-freedom-spreading plan.

Although Graham didn't say how many dead "people" were acceptable to him at the outset of this war we were lied into, or whether they are our people or their people, he did suggest if Bush has either a victory plan or an exit plan, maybe he should share them with the rest of us.

White House communications director Dan Bartlett, whom VandeHei promotes to a Bush "senior adviser," is quick to proclaim that Bush thinks being commander-in-chief is really really neat and really hard work, but this won't stop him from "continuing to educate" the American people about the conduct of war and our strategy for victory. Maybe Graham should sign up for the course. Our upcoming education will consist of blanket media coverage of Bush meeting with Iraqi's puppet Prime Minister Ibrahim Jafari at the White House for the first time ever, and Bartlett announced with eyes as wide as a runaway bride that Bush will dedicate "several" speeches to the war in the upcoming days, one a major address on the first anniversary of Iraq's sovereignty.

I can hardly wait for next week's class. I can see it now -- we got 'em on the run...smokin' them buggers out...bringin' 'em to justice. That's our strategery (sic), Bush will say, and Bush is never wrong and he never backs down and God Bless 'Merica. Then, surrounded by frantically waving flags and thunderous applause -- as is his wont, Bush will wink, smirk, break patriotic wind and moon-walk out of the room. Class dismissed.
Of course, VandeHei won't be there, but he did admit, or at least didn't deny, that Bush's "new approach" will be the same happy-face rhetoric of the great progress being made in Iraq. In other words, just more lies. Neither Bush nor the shadowy warmongering chickenhawks who surround his throne whispering, "kill...kill..." in his ear have any intention of making changes to the policy -- whatever that policy is -- nor will they address a timeframe for bringing home US men and women who are being needlessly slaughtered at an increasingly alarming pace. Bush is adamant that the wicked evildoers will merely wait until the "day after" the occupiers leave and then there really will be a war.

Besides, if you stop and think about it, our troops are coming home -- 1,722 of them have returned during Bush's war -- 57 of them just in the last 19 days -- and they never have to go anywhere again. Tens of thousands of seriously wounded, horribly maimed or those infected with disease are back too. Just because we aren't allowed to see them doesn't mean they're not there. Does it? I mean, really. If, like Bush says, he 'preciates these heroes, 'preciates the ultimate sacrifice they made for the homeland; if his thoughts and prayers go out to them, and if he "tears up" whenever he thinks about them -- then why is he hiding them from us? Why are there no bands, no adoring crowds, no solemn ceremonies honoring our fallen men and women when they are sneaked back home to Dover Air Force Base, Del., under cover of darkness?

If we can come to grips with whose fault it is that Bush is getting away with such hypocrisy, we're halfway home. Look in the mirror. Think about it.

According to VandeHi, numerous lawmakers -- some of them even Republican -- are accusing Bush of "not offering honest assessments about the strength of the insurgency and the slow pace of training battle-ready Iraqi forces." They say he is being "less than forthcoming," and may have inadvertently "deceived" or "misled" some people when educating them in why war was unavoidable. Hey Jim -- the word is "liar." Say it. Bush lied and is still lying. Say it. Americans died and are still dying. Liar! Bush is a liar! Say it! No? Well, just pretend that Bush is Bill Clinton or Al Gore, and then you can bray it. Day after day after mind-deadening day.

If Bush succeeds in educating the public on how to succeed in genocide without even trying, then we must concede that he is either stark raving mad or is the most destructive pathological liar in the world today.

I take that back. Bush isn't even in the same league with his vice president, Dick Cheney, when it comes to defiant, "go fuck yourself," bald-faced lying. Rather than soaring, incomprehensible warnings or upbeat killing-for-God promises, Cheney issues chilling, deadly threats that cause many of us to hold our heads in our hands, rock back and forth, and sob uncontrollably. Cheney's fangs are embedded in the throats of this nation and its subservient media, and his perverse thirst appears to be insatiable.

For Cheney, the jury is still out on Saddam's WMD -- we just haven't found them yet, but they're there. When Cheney says that terrorists continue to plot against America, that they're coming after us, vaulting our fences, crawling through our windows, and that "this president" will never rest until he has utterly destroyed them, it does not occur to us to ask for proof. In November 2004, when Cheney threatened further attacks that would make 9-11 pale in comparison if we voted for John Kerry, we cringed in abject terrified belief.

Cheney says the danger will never go away, further threats are gathering to "inflict catastrophic harm on us," and any illusion we might have of security is "irresponsible in the extreme." When Bush stammered recently on Fox News that he might be entertaining the idea of closing the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba, which Amnesty International called the "gulag of our times," both Cheney and defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld jumped up and slapped him upside the head. Yo, Bubba! Rumsfeld all but barked, You ask ME first before you go running off at the mouth! Rumsfeld then declared that the camp held nothing but "determined killers," evil non-human excrement who continued their plotting against us even as they were chained to cold, cement floors, naked and tearing their hair out in agony.

Cheney backed up Rumsfeld's comment, snarling that people hate Gitmo just because they "hate U.S. policies." He added ominiously that the torture camp "is an essential part of our strategy. My own personal view," he said, "is that those who are most urgently advocating that we shut down Guantanamo probably don't agree with our policies anyway." Cheney then handed Halliburton a $30 million contract to build a new prison and a wall at Guantanamo by July 2006, part of a larger $500 million contract to extend through 2010, and slithered out of the room.

Are Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, et al, liars? Of course. But like VandeHei said, our education in how to succeed in genocide without even trying will continue next week, because maintaining control through paralyzing scare tactics is their only -- their one and only -- option on the table. They are completely without shame; completely without answers, and they don't care. And, if we don't like it, we have two choices. We can start humping our own legs or bend over and let them do it.

Because, one way or another, if we continue to allow Bush to educate us, we're gonna get fucked. Completely.

BUCKETS OF BLOOD

Pennsylvania Republican Rep. Curt Weldon says this whole bloody bucket of Iraqi waste might have been avoided if folks had just listened to him before the September 11 attacks. "Sheesh!" Weldon all but said, "I tried to tell 'em. I tried to tell everybody -- even the CIA -- but nobody would listen to me."

That seems strange, especially since Weldon is vice chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee and chairman of the House Armed Services Committee’s Subcommittee on Tactical Air and Land Forces. Of course, Weldon didn't come right out and say that the curve balls Ahmed Chalabi pitched wildly from the WMD bullpen -- intel balls that veered up stovepipes, crashed through Bush administration windows -- were what stampeded the entire mangy gang off to Iraq, but he says they got their geography messed up. Weldon knows this because "Ali," his very own secret intelligence source, told him so. "Ali" told Weldon lots of secrets before the war, and "Ali" was very clear that Iran, not Iraq -- not al Qaeda -- is the Mother of all Evildoers.

But they wouldn't listen. So Weldon decided to take matters into his own hands with his upcoming book -- “Countdown to Terror: The Top-Secret Information That Could Prevent the Next Terrorist Attack on America . . . and How the CIA Has Ignored It and Nobody Would Listen to Me so I was Forced to Write This Damn Book.”

But, wouldn't you know, just when Weldon is poised to reap praise and big bucks for his shocking 256-page revelation, which Regnery Publishing will release June 13, he looks around and the whole rowdy bunch is clambering up on the stage with him -- George Bush, Dick Cheney, Condi Rice, Richard Perle and the entire right-wing pundit pack -- all armed with shiny new buckets and all breathlessly warning that Iran, not Iraq, is the nexus of Islamic terrorism after all; that Iran, not Iraq, is bristling with nuclear weapons and plans to attack America before sunset!

By June 13, Weldon and "Ali" will be so, like, yesterday's news. Some days it just don't pay to be a Bush entrepreneur...

Shooting From the Hip...

In the upcoming June 2005 issue of Rolling Stone, Senate minority leader Harry Reid rips Republicans and George Bush a "new one." Quietly. Pleasantly. Honestly. After reading the Eric Bates piece, you'll know why they call Reid, "The Gunslinger."

Rolling Stone editorial lead-in pretty much covers what Reid has been up to since being selected Democratic leader -- "In his first five months as minority leader, Sen. Harry Reid has come out swinging. The soft-spoken Nevadan has called George Bush a "loser," Clarence Thomas an "embarrassment" and Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan a "political hack." He has held the Democrats together to oppose Bush's plan to privatize Social Security. And he stood up to Majority Leader Bill Frist and other radical Republicans who tried to deploy the "nuclear option" to overturn the Senate tradition of judicial filibusters. In the end, the Republicans blinked first, as seven moderates abandoned Frist to cut a deal with the Democrats on May 23rd. The following day, beneath the portrait of Mark Twain that hangs in his office in the Capitol building, Reid sat down to talk with ROLLING STONE.


Is the deal real? Republicans are saying they will still go nuclear if you filibuster.

They're saying that to cover themselves. The nuclear option is history. Listen: The Republicans who signed that agreement, we should put up a statue to them someplace. That was a brave thing they did.

Why couldn't you and Frist agree on a deal yourselves to avert a showdown?

He couldn't do a deal. He's being driven by these right-wing zealots.

What did you learn about Frist during your negotiations?

I like him, but he hasn't been in government very long. He's a doctor, and doctors have a little different outlook on life. Being a senator is about the art of compromise. That's what the filibuster is all about -- it forces compromise. And if anyone feels that compromising is unethical, or immoral, then they should get in some other business -- because that's what we do.

What differences do you see in Bush now that he's in his second term?

This first five months of the second term, he and his folks have become even more pushy than they were in the first four years.

[...snip...]

What kinds of gains will Democrats make in 2006?

Well, history's on our side. Presidents who have been in Bush's situation have lost from one to thirteen senators. We are going to be competitive in races in Pennsylvania, Montana, Ohio, Rhode Island and Missouri.

[...snip...]

You've called Bush a loser.

And a liar.

You apologized for the loser comment.

But never for the liar, have I?

Just Another Day in the Hood...

Hey Karl -- what's cooking?

Oh, hey there, Karen. I'm just rounding up the Friday "dump" to the media to get the Sunday morning heat off this crazy bunch...

But it's only Monday!

I know, but I was just thinkin' . . . we've got the Downing Street Memo proving that Bush and Blair are traitors. I thought that sucker was dead, but now ol' Scary Kerry says he's gonna throw it up against the Senate wall next week . . . we've got the Amnesty Report that proves everybody on this side of the street -- from Bush and Cheney to Condi and Alberto to that sorry-ass Rumsfeld -- are war criminals . . . we've got new evidence that Bolton personally flew to Sweden to get a guy fired and that he shared top secret information with Israel . . .

What to do...what do to...what to do...???

I know! Get Woodward up here! [1] We need something BIG! We can always depend on Woodward to either prop up Bush or cover up for Bush when we need him. Tell him to work up a story for Vanity Fair on that 91-year-old FBI guy -- you know, the one who was convicted and headed to prison for crimes during Watergate -- the one that senile old Reagan pardoned? Mark Felt -- Yeah -- that's the one!

Yep, Karen -- we've still got it! We are so damn good! Everybody wins on this one! Felt's family gets a book and movie deal and lotsa bucks. Vanity Fair sells boo-coo copies of the magazine, and makes lotsa bucks. The Washington Post gets to hit the streets and talk shows long before the Vanity Fair article comes out, which will sell more papers and make lotsa bucks. Woodward and Bernstein, who've already made millions on this deal, can rake in lotsa bucks with more books.

And nobody -- not even Bernstein -- will ever know that Deep Throat was just a ficticious character that Woodward made up because even anonymous sources had to have a name back then...

And, come Sunday, it'll be just another day in the Hood...[2]


[1] Bob Woodward was seen leaving the side entrance of the White House last week.

[2] I'm not saying this actually happened -- but if it DID, it would happen exactly this way...

WHO WILL SAVE THE CHILDREN?

By Sheila Samples

"All conservatives are such from personal defects. They have been effeminated by position or nature, born halt and blind, through luxury of their parents, and can only, like invalids, act on the defensive."~~Ralph Waldo Emerson

As if we needed yet one more shudderingly repulsive account of a Republican who is virulently anti-gay by day and an abusive pedophile by night...

But there Jim West is -- still squatting in the mayor's office, still holding all of Spokane, Washington, hostage despite unanimous calls for his resignation from citizens, business leaders, the Chamber of Commerce and, at long last, from even his own City Council.

A defiant West maintains that he is being persecuted by those who accuse him of molestation and by Spokane's newspaper, which broke the story on May 5 after a lengthy and in-depth investigation. West denies allegations that he sexually molested two boys in the 1970's when he was a sheriff's deputy and Boy Scout Leader, but admitted that others would probably "pile on" because of his power and importance.

The boys -- men now -- also accuse a close friend of West's of abuse. David Hahn, who was a deputy sheriff and co-scoutmaster with West, committed suicide in 1981 during a sheriff's department internal investigation of molestation. Those files, which Spokane's sheriff said at first were "shredded," then "lost," have now been "found" and turned over to investigators.

Although West readily admits using City computers to hook up with young men and boys on gay websites, he told Matt Lauer on NBC's "The Today Show" on May 31 that he has done nothing illegal by offering jobs and prizes to those he met there. However, Ryan M. Oelrich, a 24-year-old who is openly gay and heads a gay youth organization in Spokane, thinks otherwise. Oelrich was appointed by West to the city's Human Rights Commission in April 2004, but says he didn't know at the time that West was "Cobra82nd" or "RightBi-Guy" with whom he chatted on Gay.com.

While on the commission, Oelrich said he rebuffed a series of sexually explicit online advances from West. He said West "offered me $300 cash if I'd swim naked with him in my swimming pool." Oelrich said he considered West's offer "totally inappropriate," and he resigned from the commission. He says he knows of five or six other young gay men in the city who received "inappropriate sexual advances" from West, and that two of them were offered City Hall jobs.

Is West gay or anti-gay? In 1986, when he was in the state legislature, West and 14 other Republicans sponsored a bill that would have barred gay men and lesbians from working in schools or day-care centers as well as in some state agencies. West is so adamantly opposed to teens having sex that, in 1990, he proposed such hi-jinks be criminalized. He told Lauer that he voted the way those in his district told him to vote, and that his own feelings or how he conducted his private life were not involved.

Like so many of his peers, West can't seem to decide who, or what, he is. At first, he claimed he's being destroyed because he's gay. Then, he decided he isn't gay after all, but admits to being merely "bisexual." Finally, West concluded that this whole ball of wax is descending on him because -- he's a conservative.

Like he explained to Lauer, "You know, I'm a conservative, you know. I'm not a closet liberal pretending to be a conservative. I'm a conservative. And what's wrong with somebody who has what's called an alternative lifestyle or an alternative sexual orientation being a conservative? Can a gay or bisexual person be conservative? Can a black person be conservative? Can a Hispanic person be conservative? I think they can."

The problem with West and far too many other Republicans is not that they're gay, nor even that they're conservative. The problem is they're perverted; twisted, corrupt. The problem is they're stalking our children, mostly from lower-income, often one-parent families -- street children who can be intimidated, controlled and tossed aside, their lives damaged beyond repair. The most reprehensible of them prey on their own children, whose terrible pain-wracked silence is almost always ensured.

They're everywhere. Pompous, dead-eyed, and devilishly self-righteous, they appear to be obsessed with that which they most abhor -- pornography and sexual aberration. Being neither a psychologist nor a Republican, I can only guess that the guilt resulting from these poor creatures fighting to repress normal sexual urges is what drives them into deviancy -- is what makes them so insanely religious.

And that religion gives them cover. When West had the audacity to show up at a Leadership Prayer Breakfast last week despite allegations of child molestation and abuse of his office, the Spokesman Review reported that he "was immediately showered with handshakes, hugs and words of encouragement.

"I love our mayor, and I know God's working on him," said Stephy Nobles-Beans, assistant pastor of the Church of Berachah. "We've all sinned. Who are we to try and hold him accountable? Who are we to ask him to publicly apologize? Only God can do that."

Yeah? Well, maybe so, Brother Beans, but -- God forbid -- if West sodomizes your child, or a child in your congregation, in the next two-and-a-half years he's determined to hang onto his office, I suspect it's possible you'd wish you had held him accountable.

What child is more important than any other? Their names, Brother Beans, even if you don't care, are Robert Galliher and Michael Grant -- two kids abused by your mayor who paid them for their "services" with small packets of marijuana -- two kids whose lives were changed forever, destroyed forever, because of Jim West's perverted lust.

As I write this, a petition to recall West has been certified by the Spokane County Prosecuting Attorney's Office. However, by the time that process wends its way through the court and after appeals, if any, are filed and considered, West could well have served his remaining tenure. Even if West resigns, his grotesque crimes must not be glossed over. West must be held accountable. They ALL must be held accountable.

Or who will save the children?