gonzography

Mc Same

2008-09-03T22:55:00.000-07:00

This Obama You Speak Of, Can He Run With The Bulls(hit)?

2007-07-19T15:22:00.001-07:00

Trickie Dickie Redux ... Ho, ho, ho, Sparky, these fuckers are so dumb they play naked poker with prostitutes at the Watergate Hotel ... Oh, the humanity! ... Start your engines, Democrats, and don't say anything dumb ... Karl better be studying his E. Howard Hunt tapes before the Feds put him on the Magical Mystery tour and Fitzgerald orders the Grand Jury to paint his fence ... Presidential approval numbers have been setting the Way Back Machine to 1974, right about that time when Colson, facing arrest, had a life-changing brush with Jesus as a close friend tossed him a copy of C.S. Lewis' Mere Christianity ... Take a long look inside, Dubya himself will remove the "H" and "C" keys from every computer in the Big House.

"Steps we're taking will help address the problem of availability, but it's not going to solve it. Americans should be prudent in their use of energy during the course of the next few weeks. Don't buy gas if you don't need it."
- Dubya proposes that Americans don't buy gas at $3-$4/gallon just because he says so, Washington, D.C., September 1, 2005

*** sound of crickets chirping ***
- Americans waiting for a solution, USA, July 19, 2007

"[Dubya] is a humorless stump of a being and has been a career incompetent at anything he has ever touched and will go down in history as having committed more crimes and treasonous behavior in and around the White House than Richard Nixon would have been convicted had he not resigned first ... Trickie Dick was a genetically engineered miscarriage of a preznut and so is Dubya. They both have come to personify what H.L. Mencken once described as 'the art of running the circus from the monkey cage.'"
- Team Gonzography, Mea Culpas at the Sunset of the American Century, December 30, 2004

[speaking of an improvised scene] "Just before the take, he comes back to where we were all waiting and he says, 'Okay guys, this is what I'm gonna do, I'm gonna go bop bop bop ... whooooap, and then we'll all start dancing.' And I was like, 'okay,' and then he was gone, and then it was rolling, and then it was action, and then we were like, in the scene, and he did this thing, and we all, like, did it with him, and it was just... it was...amazing!"
- Lawrence Fishburne, Actor

"One night, he and George Plimpton and I went to Madison Square Garden to see the fights. And, finally, we left the Garden and there were the three of us, him, Plimpton and I on 8th Avenue and 31st Street and all of the sudden we were surrounded by a tight, unbroken ring of young black men, and the three of us looked at each other and thought, 'well...what's this?' And they just stood there staring at us ... and then the leader of them stepped forward, put his belly against his, and said, 'Man, you are the coolest white man in America.' And, I said to him, 'That is the best compliment you will get as long as you live.'"
- James Lipton, Actor/Host of "The Actors Studio"

"Some people got poetry in their blood and some don't. His is so difficult to track. It's hard to figure out whether it's angelic or satanic. But it is certainly poetic."
- Sean Penn, Actor

"Hey fellas, I put my pants on one leg at a time like everybody. But once my pants are on, I make gold records."
- Upon my release from prison.

"I remember that. I was talking to my attorney and I said how great it would be if he had a tail because I have animals and a tail is so expressive. On a cat you can tell everything. You can tell if they're annoyed. You can tell whether they're scared."
- Sizing up the DA, Superior Court Los Angeles County

Better Dumb Than Original

2006-05-09T03:34:00.000-07:00

"Sucker" Carlson
MSNBC TV
30 Rockefeller Plaza
New York, NY

Dearest Tucker:
This is to inform you that I have retraced steps on the offer to take the producer vacancy for your show and wish to have it voided immediately. After watching your network continue on its tedious downward spiral into abject insanity and religious fanaticism over these past few months I've decided that I could not, in good conscience, serve your network or show in any capacity. Nor would I feel a sense of personal security while representing any form of disinformation or thought terrorism inside our own borders.

I refer specifically to your bizarre distrortions in particular, having compared Democratic efforts to keep track of racial data to those practiced by Heinrich Himmler, Nazi Germany's Gestapo head and SS chief, and insisting that grouchy feminists with mustaches controlled the [Democratic] party and that nobody prevented anyone from voting in Florida during the 2000 Presidential campaign. I am neither a grouchy feminist nor an advocate of organized demonstrations, but my sense or personal karma would be entirely rattled by the nightly spectacle of watching a tiny group of right wing fanatics howling at the calumniation machine whose selective amnesia over the facts and public policy which has already caused thousands of Americans to be killed for no good reason. On the day after John Kerry's acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention you also stated that the Senator's plan was to have other "dark skinned foreigners from the Middle East [to] fight our war for us," which has left MSNBC in a position very much resembling the Gestapo's during the Spanish Civil War, serving up the free thinkers and contrarians to the right wing slaughterhouse known as pundit TV.

As a lifelong progressive and fiscal conservative I cannot be dismissed as one of those tinfoil hat conspiracy theorists or an incompetent blue state minority-interest liberal freakshow peacenik. Nor am I totally ignorant of foreign affairs and military policy - nor have I been giving the Democratic party a free pass on their mistakes either, because most of them signed on for the Baghdad revival tour as well. In 1984 and 1985 I spent more time defending our country abroad in many, many late night arguments with elitist Europeans than I did earning a paycheck overseas. But since 2000, I would hate to be over there now, left with a cabal of outraged Euros to explain our delusions about God, Country and Iraqi colonization.

It is indeed a fact that I actively supported Clinton in 1992 and John Kerry in 2004 - but in the case of Dubya's re-election I have been sadly disappointed by my fellow Americans. The categorical failures of the U.S. in the Middle East are not nearly so disturbing as the implications of our actions. Which country of dark-skinned heathens do we bomb next? Will Dubya invade Bangalore once there are no more call center jobs in Little Rock? Does the right wing want to put the entire Muslim world on another set of reservations? Can you seriously defend any Administration who gets its foreign policy advice from Dick Cheney and Condi Rice? Is it a fact, as I have read and heard, that even the staunchest conservatives are worried that the failure to ratify an Iraqi Constitution underscores Rumsfeld's intention to provoke Iran and Syria into another costly war - so that Dubya can crown himself Emperor with a Supreme Court packed with a fresh pair of cronies who regard habius corpus as nothing more than a minor inconvenience?

If this is where we are going as a country, count me out. If these corporate lackeys in the White House really do intend to go into another country to defend us from "smoking guns" and "mushroom clouds" I have no intention of being an American any longer, regardless of the evidence that they might fabricate. Beyond that, I can only wish you a terribly short lifespan on MSNBC TV.

In conclusion, it would be perfectly American to offer a solution - so I can't be labeled a frustrated leftist with no alternative to what I so deleriously oppose. Here it is - in a nutshell. We should get the hell out of Iraq and not apologize for this idiotic conflict to anyone. We really had no business being there in the first place and there are certainly more important things we can do with the US Treasury. We cannot possibly succeed with Democracy Iraqi-style, any more than Hitler could with the Eastern Front. And that money could be spent so much more wisely right here in the good old USA by getting us weaned off of the OPEC nipple stuffed so firmly down our throats.

So, let's fold up the tents. Call it what you must and let's admit it quietly to ourselves that we cannot afford to spill any more dollars or blood. And stop trying to force feed the American public with all this hollow drivel about the need to democratize a region of the planet where Baywatch is considered pornography. Iraq is a destroyed country for another two generations and they are not going to bomb or invade us any time soon. Iran and North Korea, at last check, have the bomb and neither country has gone Dr. Strangelove on Los Angeles or Tel Aviv. And I really don't think that I have to explain why to you any further.

At any rate, those are my simple ideas. You never asked for them - but then again I never asked for yours either on a nightly basis. If Kerry had been elected I believe he would have us on the way out of there by now, while conservatives like you have us knee-deep in the bullshit. So it's a GOP war, and I demand that your political friends and party bogeymen find a way to handle it without my help. The freaks that line the walls of the conservative movement are eating away at our once-proud way of life, much in the way that an unhealthy digestive tract packed with years of human waste needs a good flushing. We cannot claim victory in Iraq without eventually killing us all, and - unless you wake up and start acting like a rational human being instead of the batshit political fiend you play on TV - you and your kind will wake up some day in Gitmo, with a mob of outraged rednecks beating you with rubber hoses for a simple explanation and why you supported a moron with a bullhorn when he said Saddam Hussein had WMD.

Your friends in Christ,
Team Gonzography

Democracy Dies in America, But Few Seem to Really Care

2005-09-20T21:41:00.000-07:00

"We want this city to re-emerge. As I said, I can't imagine America without a vibrant New Orleans. It's just a matter of timing. We're cautious about encouraging people to return at this moment of history."
- Has Dick Cheney already landed there and declared New Orleans a parking lot for Halliburton? Washington, D.C., September 19, 2005

"Listen, I, I, I wanna to thank, uhh, leaders of the -- in the faith, and uhh -- faith-based and community-based community for being here, we've got people who represent thousands of volunteers who are in the midst of helping save lives.
- Not sure if we really need a definition for "community-based community", White House, September 6, 2005

"Here's what I believe. I believe that the great city of New Orleans will rise again and be a greater city of New Orleans. I believe the town where I used to come -- from Houston, Texas, to enjoy myself, occasionally too much -- will be that very same town, that it will be a better place to come to."
- Dubya pledges to make New Orleans a frat boy party town once again, New Orleans, Louisiana, September 2, 2005

"Well, I could be wrong, but I believe - uh - diversity is an old wooden ship that was used during the Civil War era."
- Ron Burgundy, Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy

Hector Straussman, my Paraguayan press agent, called me collect from Washington last night and told me that I was seriously wrong and mistaken about Our Child Preznut. "I know you won't believe this shit," he said, "but Dubya is a very different person than the way they make him out to be on television - and everything you've been saying about him is all wrong. I just figured that you oughta know ... "

I reminded Hector that his grandparents were escaped Nazi's and told him I would call back after the Cowboys-Redskins tilt, which was suddenly getting interesting. I was getting three points, and Dallas had just missed a field goal ... Dubya could have been Jimmy the Greek at that moment: He was dead to me. The whole fallout from the FEMA chinese fire drill was like the sound of a dripping faucet in the darkness, even though ESPN was getting all Jerry Lewis-like with its telethon.

But Hector ignored me, persistent with his line of thought ... He sounded very creepy and eerily drained, like he had spent the entire weekend hardwired with little electrodes attached to his brain beaming only FOX News. He babbled something about Dubya not being what anyone thought he was - that deep within him, beyond the cameras, lurked the shadow of genuine poet-warrior and part-time philosopher laureate.

"He is more intelligent than Ben Franklin," Hector said. "When it's all said and done, he will be bigger than FDR and will stand in history larger than Abraham Lincoln on his best day."

I almost choked on my tongue. "You lying bastard," I shot back. "I knew that your Nazi genes would infect you someday. Are you on the payroll now? Christ, you sound like Armstrong Williams."

"You, of all people, need to know the truth," he said. "I'm just trying to clue you in before the march of history spells doom on your work. And it's really good work ... by the way." ... His cellphone started ringing and I could hear passing cars in the distance, then Hector returned back to the payphone receiver speaking all kinds of twisted mumbo jumbo.

"Buddy, the president - Dubya - has read your work," he was stammering, almost incoherently. "They had me up at the Big House last night, all alone with the man. We drank Wild Turkey in front of the fireplace and ate some of the tastiest chicken fingers I ever had and listened to the his Coldplay collection and Dubya got a little emotional about things in New Orleans, then he went on and told me he was the last great social engineer left in the American political landscape, in the time honored tradition of B.F. Skinner and LBJ's Great Society."

"Never!" I shouted. "And don't ever try drinking with me again. The concept of drinking with somebody who once drank with Dubya is too much to handle. Don't you know it's the two minute warning?"

I sighed heavily. He finally lost his way, just like Christopher Hitchens did after 9/11. But here was Hector Straussman - one of the meanest and deadliest sharks in the publicist game - telling me how he had spent an entire night debating with Dubya about the relationship between the Greek and Roman cultures and how they influenced Alighieri's concept of Hell in Dante's Inferno and how the Romans stole almost their entire civilization from the Greeks except the notion of sin ... smoking Gauloises Blondes cigarettes and shedding tears at times while the preznut kept playing and replaying All Along the Watchtower by Jimi Hendrix on his 60GB iPod, belting out the familiar guitar riffs which felt more like a wall of feedback and distortion careening out of control by way of an alabaster-colored Bose SoundDock.

"Awesome rig," Hector said, "he must have 5,000 illegally downloaded songs on that thing, but Dubya swears it's his personal stash and he never makes CD copies ... The man really appreciates music, especially classic rock-and-roll and heavy metal. He even has Metallica and U2 bootlegs on his backup harddrive, which he got from the bands themselves."

Better get my phone lines swept for bugs, I thought. They finally flipped someone close to me, just like John Gotti felt when he learned that Sammy the Bull reached out for the Federal Witness Protection program; Hector jumped ship and he's landed in their camp.

"You treacherous freak! Don't ever call this number anymore!" I shouted at him. "I'm leaving for Mazatlan tomorrow, uh, for an extended vacation. I don't know where you got my number, but lose it! For the hundredth time, stay away from me!"

"Moron!" he shouted. "You know with these connections I could get you on Air Force One for the next trip to New Orleans? It would be me, you, Dubya and the Neville Brothers. We could survey the damage and discuss the events of the day with the president, eat some gumbo, get a leg up with the locals. We would be on the A-list, partner." ... and then he stated telling me how the preznut - half-crazed on absinthe and curious intentions, with yet another powerful hurricane bearing down on the Gulf Coast - would be arriving in the Crescent City this weekend with no Secret Service protection and a red Lamborghini Diablo Roadster Momo with a 10-pack CD changer and its original Italian license plates.

It was a difficult thing to swallow. Hector was a true professional, at one time - and Dubya's daddy was a former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. This was a curious and uncanny coincidence; and especially unusual, given Hector's strange fixation on Dubya, which made me uncomfortable and extremely suspicious.

"You know why he likes you?" Hector said. "He likes you because you butcher Scripture just like he does. Dubya loves a little Scripture. He can recite The Book of Revelations from top to bottom with no breaks." Right about there, Hector's voice became shallow and seemed more distant than before:

"And he cried mightily with a strong voice, saying, Babylon the great is fallen ... " Hector paused for a long moment, then he continued with a solitary yet ceremonial tone, which disturbed me even further. "And has become the haunt of devils and a lodging for every foul spirit and dirty loathsome fowl. Now heaven, celebrate her downfall, and all you saints, apostles and prophets: God has given judgement for you against her - "

The September 11 allegory, right out of the wingnut playbook. I laughed, more like a discordant caterwaul, but Hector failed to notice it.

"Behind him, dressed in linen of dazzling white", he rambled on, "rode the armies of heaven on white horses. From his mouth came a sharp sword to strike the pagans with; He is the one who will rule them with an iron sceptre and tread out the wine of Almighty God's fierce anger."

"Okay, stop right there," I said. "The idea of Dubya cruising around in a federal disaster zone in the perfect Italian sportscar and paraphrasing the Book of Revelations is too bizarre - even for me."

I was getting sick, and said nothing more. Hector babbled on, drifting from one unhinged story to another, like he was the Dennis Hopper character in Apocalyse Now and Dubya was his personal Colonel Kurtz or a spiritual svengali or America's Dalai Lama of the damned. It defied logic and it made no sense.

None of his ramblings did, for that matter. Dubya was a pansexual Pandora's Box of treachery and freakishness, born deep in the bowels of Nowhereville, Texas. Nobody really liked him and very few people in Washington wanted to be seen in the same picture frame unless it was tossed into a lit fireplace or raging bonfire. There was something disturbing about him, the quiet voices said - a sense of a deadly organic being that was morphing upon itself, like a corpse bloating in the New Orleans sun. It was inconceivable that a petty thief and unhinged frat boy could be leader of the free world and speeding around the bayou at night, squealing like a demented pig about alternative rock and the kings of the East joining the forces of the North and turning against world civilization, burning it to the ground.

Welcome to the Garden of Agony, Sparky, and watch yourself. We may be a smart, free-thinking kind of nation and the boys packing it tight in the White House Press Room are getting antsy ... the New World Order that Dubya's pappy talked about is now ruled by crooked evangelists and tinpot theologians that seem more Trojan Horse than divine inspiration. Did the real Jesus freaks put one of their own in the Big House - twice - only to have God's secret agenda run a naked reverse on the Truth as defined in the eyes of Crazy Pat Robertson and Radical Racist Cleric Jerry Fallwell - King Mullah and Grand Ayatollah to the panoramic and pervasive view of American Taliban, also known as "the red states" on pundit TV, the same region for whom God can't quite seem to cut some slack in this apocalyptic hurricane season of the witch.

There was something very wrong about Hector, deeply deeply wrong, even strange ... Yet Hector appeared to believe in these things about Dubya, just as American Taliban wants us to believe in them.

It was like hearing the $250.00 Neiman-Marcus cookie recipe and the Great Kidney Harvest Caper urban myths, but this time with religious props and bad haircuts and rapturous exaltations.

I slammed down the phone and felt betrayed for a while, watching the Redskins make the spread. Then, I made the journey back to pagan-like bliss - the kind of rational peace that requires neither a preacher nor a shrink - with five hundred more in my pocket and minus one Paraguayan press agent gone batshit and insane.

Stay classy, San Diego.

The End of An Era: Orgy of the Dumb

2005-09-17T23:31:00.000-07:00

Dubya the Liberal and Semi-Merciful ... The Chimperor has gone so far to the Right that he can now be called a French Socialist ... Chimpy takes center stage in the Gulf while Cheney is turning the screws with a Halliburton bullhorn ... They came to Washington to decrease the size of government, and little did the wingnuts and fundies know at the time - the Rethugs meant decrease our emergency services and say goodbye to the safety net ... And by the way, where is Osama Bin Laden and should we now call him Keyser Soze?

"Katrina exposed serious problems in our response capability at all levels of government. And to the extent that the federal government didn't fully do its job right, I take responsibility. I want to know what went right and what went wrong. I want to know how to better cooperate with state and local government."
- If you're searching for any degree of remorse from Dubya, this is about it, White House, September 13, 2005

REPORTER: Did they misinform you when you said that no one anticipated the breach of the levees?
DUBYA: No, what I was referring to is this. When that storm came by, a lot of people said we dodged a bullet. When that storm came through at first, people said, whew. There was a sense of relaxation, and that's what I was referring to. And I, myself, thought we had dodged a bullet. You know why? Because I was listening to people, probably over the airways, say, the bullet has been dodged. And that was what I was referring to. Of course, there were plans in case the levee had been breached. There was a sense of relaxation in the moment, a critical moment. And thank you for giving me a chance to clarify that.
- Like Team Gonzography, you're probably wondering if he would clarify who constituted the "lot of people", or what became of the plans for the levee breach, or perhaps just explain the "sense of relaxation"? New Orleans, Louisiana, September 12, 2005

ROGER "VERBAL" KINT: "And like that he was gone. Underground. Nobody has ever seen him since. He becomes a myth, a spook story that criminals tell their kids at night. 'Rat on your pop, and Keyser Soze will get you.' And no-one ever really believes."
DAVE KUJAN: "Do you believe in him, Verbal?"
ROGER "VERBAL" KINT: "Keaton always said, 'I don't believe in God, but I'm afraid of him.' Well I believe in God, and the only thing that scares me is Keyser Soze."
- "The Usual Suspects" 1995

A man can convince anyone he's somebody else, but never himself.

For a while I was content to return to my quiet life away from all the commentary and outrage, living in a distant place where any sudden sound at night means that something is about to happen. When you hear it you jump up, alarmed - considering all the ruthless alternatives for a moment, what the hell just happened out there.

More times than I care to recall, it is nothing. But there are times ... it's so very hard to keep quiet when the world is sinking into level upon level of shit and swamp water, while most of us sit back with Cable TV beaming the days, hours and minutes until it slips into a comfortable routine. Bodies, national guardsmen, helicopters ... this is no time to relax; and while the message machine tries to drown out the failures of our disaster relief efforts with the most salacious methods of assessing blame - not seen since Donald Segretti used a faked letter on Democratic presidential candidate Edmund Muskie's letterhead, which falsely alleged that U.S. Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson, a fellow Democrat, had an illegitimate child with a 17-year-old and issued a bogus letter containing offensive comments about African Americans.

Segretti called these frathouse pranks ratfucking. Just another terminal whackjob who bypassed the Peace Movement and Love Generation altogether, he was nothing more than a tormented mutation who never developed a human conscience or an atom of regret. Segretti reportedly checked into the Benson Hotel in Portland, Oregon in September 1971 carrying $500,000 in cash with a plan to hire prostitutes to seduce Senator Jackson. A former military prosecutor and civil lawyer, Segretti operated a ruthless campaign of political sabotage against the Democrats in Nixon's 1972 re-election effort. In 1974, he served 4 1/2 months in prison after pleading guilty to three misdemeanor counts of distributing illegal campaign literature. Segretti, never long in the shame department, briefly threw his hat into the ring as a candidate for Superior Court judge in Orange County in 1995, but was forced to withdraw after only a week, stating that the shadow of Watergate hung over the campaign.

The old gang of ratfuckers is scattered in the wind today, blown into many directions and only resurface when the office of Preznut is in the balance. But the old standard still flies in the Big House - or at least in the West Wing where the newest ratfucker on the dance card is Ubermensch Karl Rove, who never missed an opportunity to burn an intelligence estimate or covert agent. Since the salad days of 9/11, when Dubya first discovered the power of bullhorns, his administration has been extremely successful at blowing off its citizens and misleading the country and treating the press like a serial rapist with a multi-colored mohawk haircut. All of his campaigns and all the meaningless rhetoric he used throughout his political existence were based on the simple and tired impression that Dubya was a high plains tough guy who went to Yale and stumbled repeatedly in life until he reached middle age, when he discovered that Laura had a vagina and then he found God, which transformed him into a studied world leader and he fooled roughly 51 percent of the nation that he could fix all of our problems by creating utopia in the Middle East. To question him on the facts and rationale was un-American, because Dubya could spell "noo-klear" and Cheney had control of the little red button.

And the preznut won re-election by terrifying soccer moms and by selling the God-fearing red states on the idea that the war in Iraq and the Homeland Security infrastructure would keep us safe from all the bogeymen around the globe.

How does that vote last November feel now, Sparky?

How could it be possible that these unfortunate Iraqis would bite the Democratic hand that feeds them? Didn't they realize that good old fashioned American Democracy requires a lengthy period of ethnic cleansing - just like we did with our Native Americans - while denying its women the right to vote for about a hundred years?

Believe me, even Ahmad Chalabi took copious notes from our history books.

How is it conceivable that an administration can sit back and watch an entire region (that lined up in lock step and voted for them ten months ago) wilt in the heat and humidity without so much as a drink of water or a bag of ice?

Well, these are the same deviants who transformed their incompetence into WMD, Iraqis greeting our soldiers with flowers, and "fighting them over there so we don't have to fight them here."

How is it possible that a dangerous terrorist who lives in the caves of Afghanistan, while tugging along a portable dialysis kit, can get a hold of four commerical airliners and ram them into buildings? And then get away with it while being elevated to the mythical status of Keyser Soze?

Please, somebody, explain these things to me. Somebody?

Or, as Maureen Dowd recently pointed out in the New York Times Op/Ed section, "when you combine limited gubment with incompetent gubment," as Dubya would pronounce it, "lethal stuff happens." All kinds of lethal shit, Sparky, and we are just beginning to see the light at the end of the idelogical tunnel - although the rest of us have been mortgaged right alongside Our Child Preznut's view of the world as Him versus His tinpot view of Satan.

In all of the dimwitted and tragic calamity, buried deep within the heart and soul of Dubya, runs a poisoned artery feeding a demented brain that despises nitpicky "liberals" and a cultural elite who want to examine the fine print before endorsing his bizarre plan, high-brow East Coast intellectuals who want to ask a few clarfifying questions at the risk of being called "non-patriotic" and those of us who just can't - or won't - jump aboard the co-dependent revival tent that has become America the Megalomaniac in the new millenium. Absent and mindless worker-ant hyper-consumers who jump in line at first sight of another ignorant mob, filled with a hyperbolic sense of self-love played out at a dizzying rate of narcissistic emptiness ... while choking on a hearty gulp of that toxic elixir known as Dubya's "culture of life" and "compassionate conservatism," as long as you reside in a tax bracket worth insulating.

But this time ... the bodies are decaying in plain view of NewsChopper Six - and not tucked neatly away in formations of flag-draped coffins that this Administration has turned into a corner game of three card monty. Now you see them, and now you can't.

"Who is Keyser Soze? He is supposed to be Turkish. Some say his father was German. Nobody believed he was real. Nobody ever saw him or knew anybody that ever worked directly for him, but to hear Kobayashi tell it, anybody could have worked for Soze. You never knew. That was his power. The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist."
- Roger "Verbal" Kint, The Usual Suspects

For reasons that will never be clear to anyone - and certainly not to the people who gladly voted twice for an abject buffoon and all the others who packed into the kiddie cars for Dubya's E-ticket ride to rapture - the national audience at home is operating once again with a few important questions, but the shelf-life for open thought in this age rivals the expiration warning label on a pack of seedless grapes. Average working people, the kind who watched Dubya and Ah-nuld and Rudi and McCain swagger around Madison Garden a year ago like New York City was the Alamo, are beginning to come to an even fresher conclusion on what really happened when we jumped before we looked at the Post 9/11 world. Certainly the comparisons between September 11 and Hurricane Katrina are erroneous - mostly because the latter can be predicted, and always more destructive and devastating - but the Rethugs still march on ratfucking free thinkers and those of us with questions while minimizing their own sheepish reactions in the face of actual forecasts.

But they missed, seriously, on both occassions - ignoring the Preznut's Daily Briefing - Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in US on August 6, 2001 and then again with Hurricane Katrina which wasn't exactly a secret to the American public or Our Child Preznut himself, who was ostensibly warned also in 2001 by a report that landed on the front steps of FEMA.

The parallels to the movie, The Usual Suspects, serve as a prescient allegory to the retarded "how could we have known" explanations that have been served up on a daily basis - from Rove's mouth to the Right Wing talking points on ideology TV. Like Dubya's reign of terror, the movie begins with a terrible explosion which sets of a chain of tragic events. After a waterfront blast, Verbal Kint, a small time con artist who happens to be the sole eyewitness and participant, explains the story leading up to the explosion to a customs agent played by Chazz Palminteri. It begins when five men are rounded up for a line-up, and grilled about a truck hijacking - who are, essentially, the usual suspects for any metropolitan crime. The interrogation goes tolerably well until the influence of the legendary, seemingly omnipotent "Keyser Soze" is mentioned, a criminal bogeyman if there ever was one.

But the story is just that - a piece of fiction offered up by the master criminal himself, and he barely escapes by using his wit and pathological banter in a game of cat and mouse with facts that are more figment of his imagination, just like it went down with the intelligence estimates leading us into Iraq.

Verbal Kint is either Keyser Soze, the master criminal himself, or he created the image of the bogeyman in an elaborate con game designed to keep the rest of us distracted. And to that end, Dubya and his party hacks transformed Osama Bin Laden into his own version of Keyser Soze because either he is the master criminal hellbent on our complete destruction or Dubya's inner sanctum of party pimps and carpetbaggers needed him for an Administration that emptied the US Treasury through its own back doors.

There are not many senior political correspondents in Washington who could handle a scenario like that. Their minds would just refuse to accept the Nixonian potential ... for the same reason they still can't accept the patent and fearful truth that Our Dubya is as incompetent as the tinfoil hat crowd already believes he is - and that his handlers reach for any rationale lying about or make up the excuses as they go along. That clear and that simple.

This is the one vanilla fact, right now, in a story that will become so heinously apparent in the next several weeks that every reporter assigned to it will need both a smart constitutional lawyer and a fearless economist right alongside him when the TV cameras turn on.

There is no question at all - even now, in these last few days of calm before the fallout from both disasters mushroom into a cloud of regret - that this "Dubya incompetence" epic is going to destroy some of the best minds in political punditry before it's done. And that reality will just have to linger there for the time being; I reject any opportunity to explain it further. We have a ton of time to explore the alternatives, Sparky; and hundreds and thousands of hours of congressional testimony will expose the top players and the federal bench should remmand the rest. And Dubya will be left stammering and drooling at the gates when the end finally appears, and not even his family will be waiting for him at the end of that last helicopter ride to average citizenry.

For the rest of us, Hurricane Katrina has finally broken the "post 9/11 world" spell that used to hang over everything and our addiction to terrorism and terrorism alone as the significant menace in our time, just like the Red Menace of the 1950s. The post 9/11 shin-ding is over, my friends, the end of a dark and ignorant era in American Politics, Inc. - and whatever the final body count is from the disaster zone, it will be harder and harder for the WMD propaganda machine to invoke the memory of bull horns and twisted rubble from the World Trade Center and the 3,000 dead. Just like those seedless grapes, they, too, have found their expiration date for political arm twisting and gutter ball exploitation and swollen military budgeting.

Osama Bin Laden still runs free - probably morphing his limp into a fully crisp stampede for the exit, just like Verbal Kint at the end - Iraq is another Beirut in the making and our people and resources are stretched so thin that we couldn't get to the business of saving our people until - roughly ten - days after the tragedy.

Here's what I know, after all is said and done tonight, hoping that another sound doesn't pique my attention. Osama Bin Laden is not Keyser Soze, because Dubya and his Circle of Doom has been explaining the story with concepts that were handpicked and conjured out of nothingness - and his people controlled both the facts and the intelligence all along. Because if either him or his people learned anything from 9/11 it was that we were not prepared for that terrorist attack and it only took four years to discover that we didn't learn a thing from it. Keyser Soze does exist and it's not Osama Bin Laden.

It's Dubya himself, who tried convincing the rest of the world that the devil did exist.

High Gear Scrambling and Death to The Weird

2005-09-06T21:27:00.000-07:00

The Crescent City Sinks like Atlantis ... Wingnuts Run Amok Declaring that God Sent Katrina because of Interior Decorators in the Big Easy ... Oops, Did Someone Really Brief the White House? ... FEMA is More Chinese Fire Drill Than a Helping Hand and Homeland Security is a Mirage ... Fat Timmy Tightens the Vice Grips ... A Retarded Nero Speaks and a Shroud of Insanity has been Lifted, My Friends

"The good news is - and it's hard for some to see it now - that out of this chaos is going to come a fantastic Gulf Coast, like it was before. Out of the rubbles of Trent Lott's house - he's lost his entire house - there's going to be a fantastic house. And I'm looking forward to sitting on the porch."
- Dubya pep talks the residents of the hurricane-ravaged Gulf Coast with a heavy dose of denial tossed in for good measure, Mobile, Alabama, September 2, 2005

"Steps we're taking will help address the problem of availability, but it's not going to solve it. Americans should be prudent in their use of energy during the course of the next few weeks. Don't buy gas if you don't need it."
- Dubya proposes that Americans don't buy gas at $3-$4/gallon just because he says so, Washington, D.C., September 1, 2005

"Today's enemies do not mass armies on borders, or navies on high seas. They blend in with the civilian population. They emerge to strike, and then they retreat back into the shadows. And that's why there are thousands of our fellow citizens running down every single piece of intelligence we can find, doing everything we can to disrupt folks that might be here in America trying to hurt you."
- Kinda like the level of disregard shown the American people by FEMA, Nampa, Idaho, August 24, 2005

There is desperation and exasperation in the air tonight. Not even Wolf Blitzer could handle it. Levees belched toxic waste in the streets of New Orleans and the entire Gulf Coast slipped another mile toward Venezuela. Dubya was struck about the face and neck with the dope stick yet again, the U.S. Government failed to act when it knew that its own people would be massacred by a raging storm, and young children and elderly people died in the heat and humidity without so much as a drink of water.

If Dubya had a personal delivery half as articulate as Crazy Horse, he would have been able to get past this one - instead of being labelled a closet racist while he races around the country looking all perplexed and destined for another $1000.00 chicken dinner fundraiser. But words always seem to confuse Our Child Preznut - and the very homespun diatribes that had once served him well inside red state revival tents and redneck bake-offs with Mable and Bess and Clara now make him seem like he's rolling in a trench filled with shit. Little Big Horn was settled about 130 years ago, but the ferocious warrior - also known as Tashunca-uitco - earned his reputation among the Lakota not only by his skill and daring in battle but also by his fiery determination to preserve his people's traditional way of life. The horrid fallout from this disaster in the Gulf has been building for years before the first gusts ripped into the shoreline, right about that time when Dubya and his party pimps first hijacked the vote count in Florida - and the only difference today, with Cable TV news broadcasting the catastrophe 24-hours a day, is that we finally seem to be on the verge of looking at the scoreboard for once while wondering how much of our traditions have been eroded away like the old Bayou itself.

Crazy Horse made no distinctions when it cames to his people - they could have been Democrats or Republicans for all he knew, not that it mattered much in 1876, or in any other year, when the skies became terminal and the land succumbed to Mother Nature - but it's also very true that Crazy Horse never understood the concept of American Government, Inc. beyond its threat to the people it was built to protect, nor would he have appreciated the vile pleasure of dealing with our current administration; he would have missed the venemous wonder known as Karl Rove, Dubya's prince of bile, and he never would have met little Scottie McClellan, who can turn ignorance into an artform, but he would have had much to discuss with Michael D. Brown, Under Secretary of Homeland Security for Emergency Preparedness and Response, whose only qualification for the post is that he knew a thing or two about Arabian horses.

If the legendary Lakota warrior was alive today, I sense - given his fierce contempt for the U.S. Government and every thing it stood for - he'd have looted a WalMart gun rack himself and taken matters into his own hands. For Crazy Horse it was about survival ... for his people, for his land, for his way of life.

* * *

Today, the Warriors of the Plains have been replaced by the Lunatic Fringe of the Religious Right. Instead of horses and bows and arrows, they have taken to the Internet to file complaints with the FCC or write threatening emails to yours truly, and I have seen my share of these in these past two months. They are almost always from places where the hurricanes first meet the beaches, from the wingnuts and Jesus freaks and closet Nazis - and on some days they all seem eerily connected to Fred Phelps or the Westboro Baptist Church or even Crazy Pat Robertson himself, a dedicated Gulf Coast weather junkie who once warned Orlando that they were "right in the way of some serious hurricanes and I don't think I'd be waving those [Gay Pride] flags in God's face," about 15 years before he called for the head of Hugo Chavez during an August broadcast.

Once awarded with the Christian Broadcaster of the Year by an organization called the National Religious Broadcasters, Crazy Pat and his prime-time berserk commentaries on the hidden agendas of God's natural disasters have been the best thing to hit the Bible Belt since Orson Welles took to the airwaves with War of The Worlds, just one short year before Hitler unleashed the blitzkrieg on Poland. Welles drove people batshit and crazy, to verge of a Jim Jones-like mass suicide, even without access to mescaline or blotter acid or poison Kool Aid.

Robertson is also - according to a malcontent named Scooter, from Jacksonville - a religious visionary of some kind whose evangelical work only rivals the work of Jesus himself. This kind of commentary may be indicative of Robertson's maniacal following in the Florida panhandle, where his rapture-like admonitions about coming hurricanes "with the destructive force of two or three Hiroshimas" has elevated his television network to a spiritual version of the Weather Channel, a true and literal Messenger of God who can quote scripture as fast as he analyzes meterology and low pressure systems. More Jesus freaks have evacuated their trailers and shacks and scurried fast to the hills on the Good Word of the Reverend than ever marched through the Red Sea with Moses.

When you get right down to it, all Pat Robertson ever does is scare people half to death by telling them to escape God's Wrath by making a love offering to his network. But the actual truth is that any ignorant hillbilly with a basic working knowledge of a barometer and enough sense with a teleprompter and his own broadcasting center could do what the crazy Reverend does, and the same panic-striken morons would happily oblige.

A very angry married couple who go by the name of I.M and Fredericka Kaput of Huntsville, Alabama countered - in a very short email response - "You are a heathen bastard who doesn't deserve the right to criticize Pat Robertson with your liberal and elitist and demonic ways. We pray for you."

"Only God can forgive your sins now, if only you ask him seriously," said another message from an email account with the alias aroused@great.length.com, which Team Gonzography traced to the outskirts of Tupelo. "No sin will go unpunished by the Lord, except if you turn your back on Jesus and don't accept him as your personal savior. May the Lord have mercy on your soul."

Then another person named Claude Balls from the Christian Debt Guidance Service of Tampa called me a hyena with the brain of pea soup, then added that I was just jealous of Pat Robertson. "Jump back into that cave where they found you," he wrote. "Your kind, we christian people can do without."

But then again, at last recollection, every one of these states voted for Dubya during the last election cycle. And if Our Child Preznut was God's candidate, as the argument went back then, why has he forsaken them?

This Is Your (Political) Life Dubya

2005-07-03T19:11:00.000-07:00

Freak City Revelations ... Anatomy of a Party Fixer and Rogue Pimp ... What Next for the Good Ole Boys from the Crawford Fun Factory? ... A Rose Garden of Agony Spills Battery Acid on the True Believers ... The Democrats Tighten the Screws ... Treachery Looms in the White House Press Plane ... The Worm Has Turned, My Friend

DUBYA: I appreciate the Secretary of Energy joining me today. He's a good man, he knows a lot about the subject, you'll be pleased to hear. I was teasing him -- he taught at MIT, and -- do you have a PhD?
SECRETARY OF ENERGY BODMAN: Yes.
DUBYA: Yes, a PhD. Now I want you to pay careful attention to this -- he's the PhD, and I'm the C student, but notice who is the advisor and who is the President.
- Well, many of us have been saying things along this line for a long time now ... Lusby, Maryland, June 22, 2005

"Even though I'm a tranquil guy now at this stage of my life, I have nothing but contempt and anger for those who betray the trust by exposing the name of our sources. They are, in my view, the most insidious of traitors."
- George Herbert Walker Bush, 1999

"I want to thank the President and the CEO of Constellation Energy, Mayo Shattuck. That's a pretty cool first name, isn't it, Mayo. Pass the Mayo. His wife, Molly, appreciated that."
- In case you were wondering if Dubya had some towel-snapping frat boy swimming in his moments of petty rapture, let's consider the evidence. Lusby, Maryland, June 22, 2005

Holy Mother of Stammering God, I just took a break from this political psychobabble long enough to cleanse my soul of the constant and terminal angst that ushers the partisan soiree with all the misplaced resplendence of a Gay Pride Festival in Galveston, and then I turned to the cable television talking heads shows ... and there was the face and that voice of Tweety Matthews beating the drums with Howard Dean on Hardball, jolting a Washington glitterati with an alarmingly straight admission of failure on one count of deceiving the American electorate - an elaborate attempt to purposely confound September 11 with Saddam Hussein and the preznut's own guilt and profound involvement with most every aspect of the fraudulence - including stockpiles of WMD, oil that would subsidize the shameful nation-building exercise and hordes of repressed Iraqis waiting for our troops with bouquets of flowers because they so wanted to hand over power to another religious faction, for which Dubya should stand up and take whatever harsh punishment the special prosecutor feels he rightly deserves and then purge himself from our memories once and for all by "explaining everything he knows" and why, on his watch, we are less safe with a terrorist gladiator school in Iraq and the emergence of two nuclear powers in Iran and North Korea.

Two more months of the shake and bake operation in Iraq and this lovely experiment in Middle East Democracy in Action will make Sarajevo seem more July 4th block party than a violent bloodletting of ethnic and biblical proportions. First Dubya gets up in the morning to see that a majority of Americans are ready to toss in the towel, then he jumps up on national TV to say he "thinks about Iraq every day because he understands we have troops in harm's way," as if this master of the obvious could put two and two together in the first place. Which means, clearly, that he better now watch his backside before Rumsfeld or Rove reach for the Gideon Bible like Chuck Colson once did and start taking their press conferences while standing in line at a Jerry Fallwell absolution soup kitchen in Lynchburg, Virginia.

What will Dubya do in the light of these recent developments? Karl Rove, one of the most psychotic and treacherous thugs in the vast wasteland of American politics, has been Dubya's main and insulated lightning rod since the beginning of his fatally co-dependent inner sanctum of the "get in the boat and shut your mouth" deception machine - along with Condi, Andy Card, Cheney, Scooter Libby and Dubya himself - none of whom would think twice about stonewalling the Religious Right or even God himself with "take a message, we might get back to them - and Him - later on the fuzzy details." Not even Dubya, at this lowest point of his presidency, will feel comfortable with the knowledge that a loyal and abject monster like Rove has an office in the White House when rumors persist that he was Matt Cooper's source in the Valerie Plame espionage exposure, which in no other terms constitutes treason - in the non-Ann Coulter sense of the word, of course - not to mention completely unethical and immoral behavior, and a crystallized example of how this administration wields power from Dick Cheney's bunker.

This is every American's responsibility, too, because it speaks volumes to the core values that we have claimed to represent during our last abuse of election powers and influence peddling ... and everything that is needed at this point to illustrate how the neo-cons - and not all rethugs and conservatives - at their core and essential means-to-an-end value system operates is clearly in the spotlight now, brimming with a full gastank of deceit, betrayal and a stubborn willingness to compromise national security for partisan political gain. Their every response to this unfolding story at the edges only adds to their disturbed and illustrative narrative - and in the end, their scrambling and flailing around the facts of the matter will reveal as much about them as about us as a people so willing to aim the barrel of outrage at anything that doesn't seem to fit our stereotypes or support a rational thought process in action, much like the dark days of Watergate when a vast majority of Americans who re-elected Nixon soon discovered that their preznut was a criminal and an oily stain on the very Constitution he took an oath to uphold, capable of almost any indiscretion or conspiracy to hold the reigns of power beneath his clenched fist.

[Before] I could come to any conclusion it occurred to me that my speech or my silence, indeed any action of mine, would be a mere futility. What did it matter what anyone knew or ignored? What did it matter who was manager? One gets sometimes such a flash of insight. The essentials of this affair lay deep under the surface, beyond my reach, and beyond my power of meddling.
- Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

If I had better instincts or a sense of injustice running amok, I would put this stainless steel Apple G5 in the trunk of my 325i and race over to the closest politician's home - either Rohrbacher or Dreier or any politician, for that matter - and toss the airtight case through the large bay window overlooking a wondrous California countryside ... chase the bought-and-paid-for freak out onto his manicured lawn in an extreme act of merciless revenge then spray him liberally with several cans of pepper spray and force him to run naked along the main street wearing a propeller beanie and a brass cowbell while repeatedly jolting him with a Stun Master 775,000 volt stun gun, converting his blood sugar into lactic acid until his bowels and bladder no longer functioned properly and a blossom of bluish black lumps covered his body for the eventual press coverage and News at Six video package.

But maturity and an ability to plan ahead has either caused me to pause before acting on such thoughts or the vile idea of wearing an orange jumpsuit for CNN's coverage of the arraignment has probably delivered me to the point where I could not act out on these youthful impulses - at least for the moment, because that blundering moron in White House should be held accountable for every dollar spent and each soldier sent home without a limb or sealed in a flag-drapped coffin, and these thoughts could plunge a rational person into a deep and contaminated hole of regret and misplaced desires.

So with deep feelings of terminal angst rising to the surface yet again, we should probably examine and declare the two main and important outcomes from this revelaton on Karl Rove: 1> The clear and present necessity of using Rove as way to bring Dubya and Dick Cheney to trial like their old faux-nemesis Saddam Hussein, all wild-eyed and brutish and delusional, in order to have that unclouded vision stamped upon our minds forever and begin the process of understanding our own common reality in a way that the Germans did during the Nuremberg trials ... and then 2> The absolute and fundamental obligation of repairing the bizarre vacuum that needs a complete overhaul in our executive branch ... and how it is used and gets used by the intelligence and military apparatus, and how that unholy alliance is undermining our very freedoms and lack of national security in this new age.

It's nutcracking time in the Big House, Sparky. And let's see if we can get a front row seat for the festivities ... and the bottles of 1800 and Wild Turkey are on me.

Here, Lord knows, is a real barnburner of a scandal waiting to leap out into the next news cycle: betrayal, treachery, gallows humor and an undying suspense of not knowing who is undercutting whom while the creaky deck chairs get re-arranged on the preznut's political ship of fools ... All of which matters even less to the average citizen or registered voters who will soon find themselves all hooked on the daytime drama like "The Price is Right" or "One Life to Live." Before long, even Hollywood screenwriters and super-agents will jump into the act looking for an angle that cuts into the cashflow ... and if the Democrats take their party chairman's position that Dubya "essentially pinned down our troops in Iraq [with] Zarqawi" and other foreign terrorists, before long a myriad of congressional hearings should start chopping down the illusions and delusions sponsored by the Rethug message discipline operation which lands nightly on the doorstep of the partisan political process including our incompetent corporate media funnel as its dependent flashpoint.

The massive complexities of the gathering evidence, and Rove's inability to come clean on his Grand Jury testimony, must have the preznut's attorneys all up in arms and neck-deep in fiction by now - searching for every loophole and a plausible way for Karl Rove to fall on the sword in the event that public opinion cannot by corraled, especially with the vast amount of political capital that will be spent on the upcoming Supreme Court nominations - because the raw drama that is beginning to unfold will offer the stark and simplistic plot line of a "Perry Mason" script - with the Democrats controlling the lights, camera and action, and whose sole interest in watching this debacle develop is the midterm elections and a wide open field for 2008, while the rest of us get to bask in the glow of watching once powerful freaks brought weeping to their knees after taking the perp walk on CNN, FOX and MSNBC - which gets replayed as the "Big Story" on the half hour.

Drop a pig like Karl Rove in a three piece suit, Sparky. And it's still a pig

Armageddon Days Are Here (Again)

2005-06-06T11:57:00.000-07:00

They’re 5 miles high as the crow flies
Leavin’ vapour trails against a blood red sky
Movin’ in from the east toward the west
With balaclava helmets over their heads, yes!

But if you think that Jesus Christ is coming
Honey you’ve got another thing coming
If he ever finds out who’s hijacked his name
He’ll cut out his heart and turn in his grave

Islam is rising
The christians mobilising
The world is on it’s elbows and knees
It’s forgotten the message and worships the creeds

It’s war, she cried, it’s war, she cried, this is war
Drop your possessions, all you simple folk
You will fight them on the beaches in your underclothes
You will thank the good lord for raising the union jack
You’ll watch the ships out of harbour
And the bodies come floating back

If the real jesus christ were to stand up today
He’d be gunned down by the CIA
Oh, the lights that now burn brightest behind stained glass
Will cast the darkest shadows upon the human heart
But God didn’t build himself that throne
God doesn’t live in Israel or Rome
God belong to the Yankee Dollar
God doesn’t plant the bombs for Hezbollah
God doesn’t even go to church
And God won’t send us down to Allah to burn
No, God will remind us what we already know
That the human race is about to reap what it’s sown

The world is on it’s elbows and knees
It’s forgotten the message and worships the creeds
Armageddon days are here again

(matt johnson - the the)

Bang The Gongs Slowly

2005-05-20T18:22:00.000-07:00

Unknown Comic: What do you call a Mexican with a vasectomy?
Chuck Barris: What?
Unknown Comic: A dry Martinez!
* cue audience laugh track *
Unknown Comic: Do you like sex?
Chuck Barris: Yes.
Unknown Comic: Do you like sports?
Chuck Barris: Yes.
Unknown Comic: Then take a fucking hike.
Chuck Barris: You can't say that on television.
* cue audience laugh track and hard cut to commerical break *

"My way of joking is to tell the truth. That's the funniest joke in the world."
- Muhammad Ali

Back in the 1970s, "The Gong Show" was one of those boffo TV extravaganzas that come once in a generation - the type of cranked up audience dedication that sparked as much entertainment as it did outrage, even if the latter represented that famous media truism which states, rather simply, "Bad Publicity is Better Than No Publicity." As was the case with "Reverend Gene Scott" or "Jerry Springer" or "The Morton Downey Jr. Show," either you loved "The Gong Show" or you hated it, but everybody tuned in to watch this stripped down version of "American Idol" and shuffled about like Gene Gene The Dancing Machine in the bank line.

Millions of Americans went out and bought gongs for their homes - so that they could gong their spouses or friends with Smiling Bob-ish glee - and there were gong shows in churches and temples and community centers to raise donations, then even cruise ship social directors and singles getaway destinations jumped into the act. "Gong" became the catch phrase of that decadent period between free sex and recreational drug use - before the Reaganites declared that AIDS came from monkeys and Ed Meese got a hard-on for the end of pornography and Nancy canvassed inner cities with the ultimate "Don't Worry, Be Happy" beat manifesto by proclaiming "Just Say No" to our country's brownish people ... but "gong" really meant "Make That Idiot Stop" or "Get That Crazy Bastard Off The Stage!" Singer Jaye P. Morgan, comedian Arte Johnson (of "Rowan and Martin's Laugh In") and Jamie Farr (of "M*A*S*H*"), plus one or more guests, was each assigned the torture of enduring and judging the ameteur acts that performed on the show and could end the act by striking his/her mallet against an oversized gong, because that person or group was deemed as too hideous to continue.

And now, let us introduce, for your viewing pleasure:
A bearded, demented-looking dentist taunts his hapless patient as he drills her teeth, flipping the drill's switch to the tune of "Stars and Stripes Forever."
A petite homecoming queen, obviously nervous, is duped into singing the National Anthem after she and fellow members of the choir have been introduced as collectively performing "The Star Spangled Banner."
A grossly overweight man tap-dances to music from "Swan Lake"; later his equally obese wife squeezes into a tiny tutu and, after fitting her head in a teacup, spins around while playing "Old Folks at Home" on the mandolin.
An Elvis impersonator sings "Hound Dog," but his voice is a monotone.

Now, 20 years later, the journalistic establishment that speaks for Dubya's erstwhile 52% mandate takes to the airwaves and fishwrap with more lame whackjobs and bizarre yoyos than can be found in either the Halls of Congress or within the Peacetime Army or The Gong Show green room ... and we are left clutching our nuts beyond the mylar glow of a pop-culture effervescence and creeping paranoia not seen since the dog days of 1973, when guys like Sirica, Ruckelshaus, Woodward, Bernstein, Jaworski, Cox and Richardson were skulking around the hellish little byproducts of another debacle in hyperspeed which, of course, became "The Watergate Crisis."

This is a grim thing to draw comparisons to - or even put into words - given the current atmosphere of American Narcissism, Inc. and our renewed collective amnesia that regretfully pervades the press and our politics these days. Not just out there in Washington, but almost everywhere you find waves of average people who are so ass-deep in self-delusion about the balloon payment that is coming due in the form of far more serious and emerging threats aimed directly at our very resources and talents, our way of life and the ability to pay off our debts.

It's the Witching Hour, Sparky, and you better get a program because we're going to need a scorekeeper.

There are huge numbers of people in this country - with columnists and editors and congressmen and strategists at the tip of the opinion iceberg - who stay awake at night for the way they ducked and ran during the salad days of the "Post 9/11 World" and the disgusting blob of revolving horseshit leading to our pseudo-spiritual sojourn into the Iraqi desert, while there were others who turned-the-other-cheek and accepted the facts as they had been dictated to the media funnel ... not because they really believe everything that their Godfilled Government broadcasts, but because once they open their minds to the real and dangerous possibilities there is no turning back - which means that they, too, are going to be sucked right down by the same whirlpool of shame and regret, then will say to themselves along the back pews of their unstable congregation of ignis fatuus, "Well, it really seemed like attacking was the right thing to do, but if we gotta bury a few more heathens out in the sand dunes, so be it."

We are sliding into a very deep hole here, and if I'd written this sort of thing two years ago I would have almost expected to find my email account bombed and the comment mechanism filled with freakish posts on the coming armageddon, and then beaten down into a quivering bloody sushi by the next evening by some of Dick Cheney's hired thugs in a greasy alley behind the Los Angeles Times building - along with a tattered polaroid festival of dead hookers scattered around my feet and a length of rope still clutched tightly in my hand.

But like Bob Dylan once sang, "Then you better start swimming or you'll sink like a stone for the times they are a-changing."

And, man, was he right, Sparky. There is little mystery left in that corpse. But after scanning talk TV news on all three of the main cable networks during the last two days and then watching Newsweek's Howard Fineman perform his best Marcus Welby on Hardball tonight, I have a deep and clear sense that - besides the idea of the stone sinking at last - the times aren't very different from the days of "Chuckie baby! Hey, Chuckie, Chuckie, Chuckie!"

From here on out it will be a nasty story to cover, especially with an electorate driven by insatiable inner rage and a low-rent fascination for high speed and ignorance and seem highly similar to the "good germans" from The Thousand Year Reich and have pledged allegiance to a recalcitrant Prometheus of the dysinformation age. Dubya is the guy who realized that politics and message discipline hadn't come anywhere near its lowest common denominator yet, and that the public's appetite for salaciousness and humiliation had remained relatively crimped.

But beneath all his crazed layers of tinpot ambition and childish bluster, Dubya will eventually become excoriated by the high culture as the ignoramus who destroyed politics and public policy as we once knew it ... and the televised mini-series will be worth watching, because whatever form of harsh judgement and fuzzy reality that finally reveals its ugly head will be another Rethug landmark calamity in the panorama of American History and will serve as a stern warning, for both sides of the aisle, and to all the generations who will inherit this once great nation - or whatever scraps we leave them - that just because the audience at home appears entertained and is buying the products that endorse its taped existence, game shows and politics require a combination of profound mental illness and powerfully tormented minds feeding on uncontrolled guilt and shame to push the envelope.

By the time Dubya gets his last joyride on Air Force One - assuming he can sustain his appetite for prolific humiliation which has never been fully appeased - the fate of his legacy will have retracted to the dimensions of a crushed oil barrel. The long running game show of a presidency will be sent to syndication in Jakarta, and the outcome of his challenge with intelligence and the facts will have a USA Today-like color coded chart in the history books, right alongside the books that stress daddy has a penis and mommy has a vagina, and that Uncle Bruce's "male friend" likes to decorate. Dubya will have his seat next to Nixon and Harding and will be regarded as nothing more than a corrupt and incompetent monkey who got all slap-happy in the Oval Office, and the only reason for mentioning him will be to understand how he ever rose to the office of preznut in the first place. And if the Democrats ever find some balls and start demanding a Special Prosecutor ... the real defendant at this juncture will be the American political system, because if we once came to the brink of impeaching a president elected by the largest margin of victory in the long history of national elections why has the political system become a retractable righteousness roof and used kid gloves on a buffoon?

Unknown Comic: Chuckie baby! Hey, Chuckie, Chuckie, Chuckie!
Chuck Barris: Yes? What do you want?
Unknown Comic: Is my fly open?
Chuck Barris: No, it isn't.
Unknown Comic: Well, it should be. I'm peein'.

Attention K-Mart Shoppers: Pick Up Your Collective Illusions At The Door

2005-05-15T22:13:00.000-07:00

Inside the Rethug Funhouse all the Distortions look Normal ... Water Cooler Talk about Plato's Retreat and Dubya's UN Nominee ... The Bizarre Emergence of a Vague and Scaled Down version of Doom ... Not even Ehrlichman would have Stooped this Low ... The Sharks finally have turned on one other ... Ask Not for Whom the Bell Tolls

"Look, John Cornyn is a good friend, and we look forward to analyzing and working with legislation that will make -- it would hope -- put a free press's mind at ease that you're not being denied information you shouldn't see."
- Close enough for Dubya these days ... Washington, D.C., April 14, 2005

"A good conspiracy is unprovable. I mean, if you can prove it, it means they screwed up somewhere along the line."
- Jerry Fletcher, from Conspiracy Theory, 1997

It has been a fascinating tale, no doubt ... and perhaps the most significant thing about it is that it has made absolutely no sense at all, not even to a delusional person willing to make that giant leap of faith and accept it as God's Humble plan. But you were warned, Sparky, and so were many others. Way down here at the bottom of the neo-conservative barrel, swimming around in the dark and sticky goop like a pack of seagulls in the aftermath of an oil spill, an indifferent American electorate is beginning to sum up the very cost of all the poisonous rhetoric and political malfeasance conducted in the name of the "Old Fashioned American Way" ... but somehow, with Iraq spinning into a reality TV version of Assault on Precinct 13 and the military missing its recruitment targets at the range of 41%, at least a dozen or so right wing legislators (read GOP targeted seats in 2006 and presidential hopefuls for 2008) are stepping back from comment as the Pentagon is considering a new round of job cuts and closure of more than 150 military installations nationwide, for some reason, while talking points pinheads like Norm Coleman make a poorly timed appearance on HBO's "Real Time With Bill Maher" to chatter about the "post 9/11 world" in virtual absentia, saying all the right words but doing nothing about it.

Incredible as it may seem, the dollar signs on the Pentagon's downsizing - or "right-sizing," depending on what version of the creative semantics cookbook you read from - are yet another codephrase like "the DEA in an early morning raid seized a huge shipment of cocaine with an estimated street value of 25 million" ... while the less impressed ask ourselves, "Get a load of that street and what are the property values?" Street Value has almost no bearing in the real world nor does the size of the Pentagon budget, of course, and while the head honchos in the basement actuarian cubbyholes say they are cutting $30b US from the military's budget over the next six years, the certainty of the matter is that many of these program cuts will be planted deeper into the bottom line once Congress steps to the plate and the usual bureaucratic meanderings take hold.

There is a critical notion beyond this points-on-a-curve diatribe, however, that even the rational mind could settle beyond any reasonable doubt. To paraphrase Jerry Fletcher one more time, "Love gives you wings and it can make you fly, but don't even call it love ... call it 'Geronimo' because, when you're in love, you'll jump from the top of the Empire State building screaming 'Geronimo' and you won't care." And neither does half of the American people, in fact; they are wrapped up in a version of love for an America subjugated to themselves, while stuck in the middle of a disturbing co-dependent relationship between who the country truthfully represents and what its creators clearly designed us to be. And we all tend to love for the very wrong reasons, from time to time, which explains the skyrocketing US divorce rate and the level of venom that has decended upon our politics and civil discourse. In the end, "We the people" and our perverse political world are about as misplaced as Jerry Fletcher at all corners of the plausability and righteousness spectra - from which we have become nothing more than a roving cabal of lunchbox blunders filled with lives of half-mad stupidity and malignant ineptitude on most every level of our intellectual and emotional well-being.

What the political wizards and barstool pundits will say about this dilemna is that we got what we rightly deserved - for many reasons, but mainly because we just so happened to surrender our way of life and our ideals to vicious pimps and thugs and thieves when we should have been more closely involved. The End of the American Century is unfortunate, but if the players in power had to do it all over again, they would have done it more quickly.

That is the key point of the matter. It's just a low-rent version of the old Nixon axiom: "When you've got them by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow" - wafting through the rafters of corporations like WalMart shifting its responsibility of providing fundamental benefits to the local taxbase and romancing our organized media with absurd and distracting tales of humanity gone deranged while billions are skimmed off the top and out the backdoors of the US Treasury like the Mafia did with union pension funds and Las Vegas casino counting chambers in the 1970s.

And, Sparky, don't think for a second that this absolves you of responsibility. To a larger degree, we have all bought into the ornery and spiteful gameplan.

This is the essence of what some intelligent minds have called "The Absent Democracy" in practice: neither truly opting out of the political system entirely, nor working within it for real and demonstrative change ... and by always counting on the simple ideals that both the freaks in power are more greedy than smart and that their semi-entrenched constituencies are one step removed from your column if only your candidate could appeal to an otherwise barren world of demiurgic rapture. By the conclusion of the last campaign, I became convinced, despite my inner barometer clanging "the fix is already in and we better watch our flank in Ohio," that the people would rise up and declare enough nation building and let's now begin to define new priorities for a new and challenging time. Not the media, or the special interests or the politicians - but the people would define our shared possibilities, as a common entity who know what's best for themselves, as inscribed in the faded and fragile parchments honoring our establishment and which admonishes us to constantly observe their creation or risk losing it all.

But in November of 2004 we spent too little time for this kind of inspiring talk or priority building. We took the easy way out of the barfight and let someone else throw the punches and take a few lumps along the way. The main punching bag soon became John Kerry - and to a lesser degree, Tom Daschle - but the real loser was the American people who couldn't get past the pseudo-psychic maze of denial and sodomy and religious outrage and drummed up color charts at every juncture which, when looking back at it, seemed more in line with vengeance than politics. Needless to say, the average voter was dragged into the abusive exercise and discovered that the media was there to flail them constantly with gibberish and a steady dose of cruel and convulsive assaults on everything but the direction into which the country was headed. Which is not to say that the strategy wasn't effective, but as a long term mandate to control the national agenda history tells us that it has delivered some truly disastrous results like the "House Un-American Activities Committee" and "The Contract With America," just to name two.

Anyone who thinks that Dubya, now apparently retired in place at The Big House, is telling the truth probably has a very good working relationship with the Tooth Fairy and believes that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. As for the current list of party pimps and spinmeisters, they have cleverly parlayed his quaint little persona into a fascinating and frequently hilarious tale of self-delusion and arrogance and infomercial-style salesmanship. And through the snickers and open-jawed stares from the rest of us, they clearly have executed an ingenious burlesque on lowbrow media distortion in the New Century, of which Karl Rove was clearly the ring leader and Donald Segretti of his time.

The bad movie will eventually end in two short years, right about that time when the clock strikes 2007 and a New Congress begins, and no one will barely notice Dubya looking as polluted and batshit as Howard Hughes at the end. Many of us will assume that this appearance has something to do with liquor or garden variety uppers and downers, but as Karl Rove types out the last of his speeches, which jump around like a starving flea in a dog kennel, the true believers among the preznut's unhinged flock will finally realize that Dubya has been on a destination much crazier than anyone ever imagined. Not only was he the catalyst for "No Child Left Behind," which did exactly that in reverse, he cut the wealthiest people a check several times because he could, beat the drums on a notion of "activist judges" when any good constitutional lawyer will tell you that's exactly what their role is on the country's federal bench, and then spread "democracy" at the barrel of a gun once his people realized that there were no weapons of mass destruction to be found, stored and recycled for the next Dictator du-jour. Too bad Dubya wasn't as entranced with "Catcher in The Rye" as Jerry Fletcher - because then we would have understood why he was so conflicted, and why he has lowered his nation into paranoid episodes so freakish that it makes Richard Lewis seem as calm as Bing Crosby. And who can blame Dubya for thinking that the world is out to get him at last? When not busy with his work killing foreigners for no other reason than their being foreign - while coincidentally sitting on a pile of petroleum - he is destroying the rest of us along with them.

And Texas Toast Is Another Name For Garlic Bread

2005-05-08T23:35:00.000-07:00

The Gravity Geek Boots Land in Crawford ... Andy Card Delivers the Post Mortem to Fat Timmy ... Tommy Franks and the Sack of Shit ... An Opulent Former Nazi is Crowned Panzer Kardinal ... More Discussion of Pressing the "Freak Button"

"If you're a two-working family like a lotta families are here in America, and, uhh -- two people working in your family, and the, the spouse dies early -- before 62, for example -- all of the money that the spouse has put into the system, uhh, is gum -- held there, and then when the other spouse retires, he or she gets to choose the benefits from his or her own work, or the other spouse's benefits, which is ever higher but not both."
- Dubya discusses "two-working families", Prime Time Press Conference interrupted by Paris Hilton, White House, April 28, 2005

"If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever."
- George Orwell

What will Dubya do now? That seems to be the question that has every strategic thinker and corporate pimp in Washington up late at night - from the dark alleys and recesses of the Beltway to the corner chairs of the National Press Club to the dried up cocktail parties in locales such as Arlington and Georgetown. You can only imagine what the discussion is like in the tense and comfortless bunkers of the organized spin operation known as the American Enterprise Institute, where bought-and-paid-for shills like Bill Schneider and Frank Luntz are burning a great deal of midnight oil wondering if the second-teamers amongst the Rovian Fiasco Court have indeed shot their load entirely or whether Dubya should go back for sloppy seconds on his personal e-ticket ride to pinheaded rapture and messianic nationalism.

In the murky world of Rethug politics these days, the idea of a "vision thing" is like rubbing salt into a gaping wound that is now festering beneath the surface of an impatient electorate. Not even Dubya's daddy liked the "vision thing," a codeword from the 1992 campaign that became the dunce cap for a candidate lacking a true political agenda and a clear understanding of what needed to be done after the election. There was so much public discussion of vision with respect to Bush 41 that Clinton did an end-around and beat him with the Herbert Hoover dope stick until he became marked with the Scarlet "L" for Loser - and Dubya apparently never forgave him for it. But our wonderful Child Preznut learned something important from this political lesson too. In his mind, and in the collective estimation of his loyal minions and big contributors, all you have to do is step to the microphone, order up a crisis of the day, and appear somewhat convincing and devoted to Jesus for about 45% of the voting public: The rest of the petty hassle - the liquid six to seven percent of the registered voters who could shift a poll from "go" to "no go" - is left to the talking heads filters and dissection machines on Cable TV and Talk Radio; the very air of American politics is so electrified with manufactured outrage that forty doses of Oprah and Klonopin couldn't tame the shrew.

Millions of dollars and thousands of high-cash jobs depend on what Dubya does next; then what the Democratic and Rethug leadership brings to the knife fight; on how the media machine parses the fallout from the Social Security flamethrower battle and whether the margins are so close for the 2006 midterms that calculating Senators such as Frist, McCain and Lott start scurrying for the escape hatch and make a few proposals of their own, all of which will never reach the floor.

The wiseguy money is moving heavy on the Democrats right now because the momentum has swung - not all the way to the left, but a lot closer to the center. Not just because Dubya can be seen retreating from the pressure of public opinion in the very manner that outraged the Rethugs when Clinton did it - by reading polls and shaping the public policy debate in light of them - but because every elected politician in Washington has been reading the tea leaves from back home and the approval numbers on Congress are shrinking twice as fast as they are on Dubya, neither of which is a positive turn for the majority in power, and why the Rethugs in private are lobbying the preznut to stay clear of the political third rail - not for him but for them and their long term survival.

There's no reason to mention names at this point, but it's probably a good time to point out how things are shaping up under the big circus tent. For the party loyalists and chief policy wonks who have to deal with legislators who threaten to cut and run on paid for votes and hang out the their associates because they want new appropriations and federal funding for their constituencies, here's something else important to consider: For the first time in 56 years neither an incumbent president or vice president will be on the ticket in 2008 and the Rethug field seems wide open, unless Dubya's Number Two holds another of his appointment committees and selects himself as the most qualified crony in the pack.

MR. RUSSERT: Let me show you another poll. That was Quinnipiac. This is Marist College, the Democratic field for 2008. Hillary Clinton's at 40 percent; John Kerry, 18 percent; John Edwards, 16 percent; Joe Biden at 7 percent; General Wesley Clark, 4 percent; Russ Feingold from Wisconsin, 2 percent; the governor of Mexico, Bill Richardson, 1 percent; Virginia Governor Warner, Senator Evan Bayh of Indiana, Tom Vilsack of Iowa all asterisks.

Republican side, Mary Matalin, Rudy Giuliani, former mayor of New York at 27 percent; John McCain at 20 percent; Jeb Bush, the president's brother, governor of Florida, 10 percent; former Speaker Gingrich at 8 percent; Senator Santorum of Pennsylvania at 3 percent; Bill Frist of Tennessee at 3 percent; New York Governor Pataki at 2 percent; Mitt Romney of Massachusetts, 1 percent; Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, 1 percent; Haley Barbour, the governor of Mississippi, 1 percent; Governor Owens of Colorado, Senator George Allen of Virginia and Sam Brownback of Kansas all asterisks.

Happy Mother of God, Sparky! The fat is indeed being hung above the fire already - touching the flames ever so gently for the moment, and without any one major candidate in mind, just yet, but there is no underestimating the harsh taste of blood in politics. Sometime between now and the end of 2005, Dubya will have to bite the hand that's been feeding him since the day he took a meat cleaver to John McCain's shins in South Carolina - essentially calling the Arizona Senator a crackpot with a Negro child and his wife a dope fiend. Even the most sadistic operatives in Washington know that the moment of truth has to happen before the 2006 elections - if not for the selfish reason of setting the stage for 2008, then because of Dubya's real inability to sell the rest of the conservatives and moderates within his own party that the lunatic fringe of the religious right is not scaring the shit out of the country, or why our "Freedom Is On The March in Iraq" soiree is breeding more terrorists now that their elections have been settled and a governing council is in place.

Another great piece of action to take if you like long odds at the betting window, a great purchase at 20-1, is that Dubya will finally crack both mentally and spiritually under all the theocratic posturing and outrage incitement, and he will develop a serious case of Munchausen Syndrome: A psychological disorder characterized by the repeated fabrication or causation of disease symptoms or trauma for the purpose of gaining medical attention or treatment.

This is not as crazy an idea as it may seem at first glance - not even in the framework of my own cruel and punishing opinion of the state of national politics these days. The Chimperor, a semi-professional archetype of Forrest Gump as leader of the quasi-free world on Xanax, has never felt the sense of pressure that is about to be deposited at the White House back door. His whole existence is turning to hell and his wife suddenly gets all the best one-liners from Karen Hughes' twisted imagination, now that Dubya is reduced to a broken and battered shell ... like the abusive husband who violated the terms of a restraining order one too many times and becomes the prison house pleasure unit for a gang of serial rapists.

Domestic abusers don't do very well in the can. To land in general population with the tag of "wife beater" is to violate some kind of savagery litmus test to the career criminal who specializes in armed robbery or assault or even murder. Not even the unlucky stiff who got five to ten on grand theft larceny will sit next to the wife beater during morning chow time, unless he wants a second helping of scrambled eggs by beating his mark with a metal feeding tray.

Now and then you get this same sense about Dubya - that he is not more than just big talk and strength in numbers tough status quo until the hungry sharks arrive for the real bloodletting, the type of people and special interests who can smell weakness beneath his twelve layers of juvenile hubris and know exactly how to push his "wow, a new skateboard!" button. It happened with Iraq, and then again with ANWAR and the Bankruptcy Bill. And for this same reason, my position is and always will be that I highly distrust power and supreme authority, whether those in charge of the Skinner Box keys have earned them by conventional or religious means - or whether it came by distortions, lies, armed conflict or bribes to the shadowy players behind the scenes. Today there are three main evils in the world as far as I can tell: the first is religion, the second is politics and the third is ignorance. And frankly - in America these days - there is no hope of abolishing any one of them. So we're going to have to chip away at these evils slowly, and that's where the battle must be drawn. On one side are those with enough discipline and conviction to see it through, and then those who believe that the freaks at the gates are just playing along the margins with no impact on the forest without the trees - which happens to be the current administration's environmental policy. But it's really either camp now, with no middle ground. All of what I used to know about America, plus all of my experience in Europe and plus all of what I have read or studied about the Third World and global history have convinced me that the "civilized" nations of Planet Earth are about to get their "once-over" from the "under developed" world who are all waiting in line to pounce because of centuries of collective hatred and ignorance about anything that does not look like our Giant System of bullshit, suppression, puppet governments and social order.

In the end it may not even be a real threat - certainly not like what a fundamentalist thinks about an activist judge. But the parallels are disturbing. Because in the last half century, this precious little experiment known as the American Way of Life has been dimmed by reactionaries with a hard on for disturbing progress on the small planet we share. And it should worry you - greatly - and this reality should scare you about what is being left behind to a generation of young people bloated on pails of soda and WalMart-sized buckets of Cheetos, and their brains made more vacant than a dozen Terri Schiavos by the relentless pounding of videogames and cellphone ringtones on the cerebral cortex. Which means by the age of forty most of these children will grow up to be the best addiction society of sociopaths ever created, their medication cabinets glistening with bottles of narcoleptic wonder and their TV sets blaring "product placement" twenty-four-seven. Our eroding democratic experiment may have worked out well for you and me, but they will not be so fortuntate or even lucky.

Then again, the preznut has not yet called your children a crisis.

The Freakiest People on the Planet

2005-04-13T23:33:00.000-07:00

They were such nice guys. God-fearing, patriotic and rich. A real principled bunch of regular Texas folk, generally ... Honky Tonk Payola and Problems with the E-Mail Server ... Constant Cash Flow Problems, Useless Press Releases and a Dim Voice in the Distance

"The American system is the most ingenious system of control in world history. With a country so rich in natural resources, talent and labour power the system can afford to distribute just enough wealth to just enough people to limit discontent to a troublesome minority. It is a country so powerful, so big, so pleasing to so many of its’ citizens that it can afford to give freedom of dissent to the small number who are not pleased. There is no system of control with more openings, apertures, flexibilities, rewards for the chosen. […] There is none that disperses its’ control more complexly through the voting system, the work situation, the church, the family, the school, the mass media – none more successful in mollifying opposition with reforms, isolating people from one another, creating patriotic loyalty."
- Howard Zinn, from A People’s History of the United States, first published 1981

The game itself does indeed get heavy at times. You shouldn't go gallivanting around picking fights or putting the hammer down on your enemies unless you're absolutely free of dander, excrement and bad intentions. No skeletons in the closet, Sparky: no loose hotel room receipts or secret vices or shady deals with a paper trail ... because if your sordid past outweighs your political capital or reputation, not even Jesus H. Christ can save your vote or your soul, and the lobbyists and party pimps will cash you out as firmly in their column come vote time. If you took payoffs from Indian Casinos in the name of party dominance and dissecting the electoral map, the K Street boys with the dark suits, designer sunglasses and silver briefcases will come knocking in the wee hours of the morning to confront you with hardcopies of the emails that you thought were completely destroyed, in which you once referred to your key Native American clients as "monkeys" and "idiots" or the tribal leadership as "Chief Running Scam" and "Keeping Two Books."

When you get caught playing dirtbag, you're screwed. The cost of your vote just hit rock bottom - zilch - and your supporters back home and your interests are worth about as much as Atari or Digital Equipment stock.

Every once in a while a major political player goes up in flames in a way that kindles the concept of spontaneous combustion, just like we're about to witness with The Bugman, and it goes a little like this: On Monday morning, on the first day that the new UN Ambassador nominee goes up on the Hill for filleting and grilling, you - the treacherous and ambitious party insider and House Majority Leader with more than a few skeletons in the backseat of your limo - are working the hallways of the Rayburn Building in good - albeit, a twisted sense of good - faith, basking in all the attention and requests for a moment to speak about a new appropriations measure when you hear a dim voice in the distance calling your name. You battle an urge to ignore it, then glance down the hallway for your office door to see a smiling, crisply attired young operative of about thirty five years, waving at you to join him for a brief but important discussion.

"Nice to see you, Tommie Boy," he says. "My name's Clayton B. Normal. I've been sent here from the White House and we'd sure like you to come out hard on the flank on this Social Security Bill we're working on. You can call me Clay."

You let out this sheepish smile, but remain silent - waiting for Normal to continue with his pitch. There's going to be a price, and you've been down this road before so you want to fish out this hole before calling it a great deal.

But Normal is already lining up a few more staffers with his hand gestures, settling his sideways gaze on a hot little staffer in black pumps who just started working for Congressman Raptures ... then just as suddenly his expression turns hawkish and he starts rambling about how he always wanted to be one of those pilots in Air America that supplied Cambodia and Laos with supplies and armaments, but the politcal bug caught him and he never looked back ... "And well, goddamned Almighty, we are going to really need these last few votes ... "

You flash an impatient grin and scratch at an ear, wanting to get down to the details. But Normal starts shouting down at a Senator, then turns back again and says: "Holy Mother of Christ, Tommie Boy, I'm really sorry to leave you hanging out here like this, but I have to chase him down. That Senator over there is a regular on Meet the Press and he promises to deliver us half an hour on Sunday morning." He lets out an impish grin and extends his hand for the first time: "Perhaps we can chat over dinner about this? I know this little out of the way place that does a fascinatingly devine carpaccio and tuna nicoise. You game?"

"Tonight."

He nods at the only demand you've made thus far, in an almost mocking tone. "I'll phone your office with the details. How's about eight ... tonight?"

"Right."

"Perfect," he replies gleefully. "Say, Tommie Boy, we can take a scramble in my new 645Ci convertible - take in the sights, come to an understanding over a 1996 Bien Nacido and little thing on the side."

Christ! He's got the 6 Series, a rag top, two hundred bucks a bottle ... Normal is big-time and here for the kill.

"We'll meet at the place by seven thirty," he says, clucking his tongue and pointing to nobody in particular. "Sharp."

Later that night in that out of the way place that Normal described, half sick from the warp speed transport in the BMW - now praying that your wife won't call to wish you a merry good night.

"Listen, Tommie Boy." Clayton B. Normal, grinning like a lion with a small animal in its mouth. "It kinda pains me to have to do this to you. After all that you've done for the party and all - "

"It's all a bunch of shit - the fucking press is responding to leaks and hearsay."

"Really? That's too bad. And I just wanted to lock up that dirty little vote of yours, along with a few of your colleagues."

"Dirty? Wait on there a minute, Clay ... This whole thing is crap; we never took anything that wasn't locked down."

"Bullshit! You've got JOD looking into your travel arrangements. Your lobbyist buddies are talking to the opposition already, Tommie Boy. But heck ... if we weren't on the same side, we would have tossed you under the bus long ago."

Anger mixing with the first bottle of Bien Nacido, a dull throb behind the eyes. "Fuck you, Clayton! This ain't about sides or there ain't no I in team horseshit! If you need my vote - or want me to lean on a few guys for theirs - you damn well know how to put it into play. So save the circus tent speech for the focus groups and fundraising tables in Des Moines."

Normal lets out a heavy grin. "Speak to me, Tommie Boy - what would it take for you to deliver your vote and a few others? Become a party chairman, what?"

"You're fucking A-right! You know what kinda shit storm you guys got me into back home, Clay? When I went back there over the holiday, those liberal vandal bastards spraypainted "Pimp" and "Theif" on my driveway. My fucking driveway! And stretched toilet paper from my goddamned trees."

"I know. But you did call those people monkeys."

"What?"

"Look at these, Tommie Boy. Some of the most vile and repugnant messages I've seen come out of the Congressional e-mail system."

"E-mails?"

Normal slides faxed copies across the table.

"Jesus Mother of God!"

"No kidding. That's what I said when I first saw them, Tommie Boy."

"Never! This wasn't me who wrote these! I would never say such a thing about ... Christ, why in God's great name would I ever say such things!"

"That's why these e-mails are disgusting things, Tommie Boy. Never mind the stuff we could allege when you sit down and read between the lines. You're lucky somebody didn't leak them to the press already - or call the IG." Normal starts banging his fist to stress the point that he is about to make. "That's the lead story for the News at Six in Odessa and Peter Jennings. Next thing you know - Stewart and Leno and Letterman start pissing on your grave."

"No!"

"Yes, Tommie Boy - and now you gotta pay for your sins, big fella."

"How so?" A pregnant silence. "Like what are you talking about ... exactly?"

Normal reeling in the big fish now, flashing a cocky grin. "Votes, Hoss. And Gold Member treatment at the Rules Committee when we decide to use it. Get all your boys in line and tellem to 'go fetch' - especially the California Closetboy in charge of rules, he better deliver the goods."

Quiet rage in all the non-verbal expressions, a guzzle from the wineglass after a heavy pour. "You fuckin' monsters! You're telling me that the White House sent you to blackmail its own Majority Leader? A friend of a friend, right?"

"Don't be so dramatic, Tommie Boy. This is called alliance building and shaping the public policy debate."

"In this climate I can't guarantee anything. Not without some budget giveaways. And besides, Clayton, they all want something in return."

Normal motions for the check. "Spare me the grubby details. I think in big concepts and my mind is only good for speeches, columns and white papers. But you should get yourself immersed in a way that instills accountability and measurability in your communications plans. Just have seven votes off this roster of names by the end of business Friday. If they come through when the time comes, we'll be sure to burn those credit card receipts along with these e-mails."

"Gimme a break ... by Friday? I'm leaving this rathole."

Normal shifts to his feet and reaches out for a handshake that is not returned. "Nope, Tommie Boy. I'm leaving - and I think you need to dedicate a little more time to consider the possibilities. Just make sure that your life doesn't take a turn for the worse."

Alas, total castration at the highest point of the curve ... a scene like this could go on for hours, and it gets replayed day after day in the world of organized politics. Rewards and threats are all part of the gameplan, and it becomes easier to orchestrate once the bright shining glare of election season subsides. All the smiling never leads to laughter and an appreciation for the subtle details is better left to the high-stakes strategists and high-visibility spokesmen of their time, who develop messages and tactics to lead opinion during the most intense public debates of the new Congressional session. Theirs is a gig too deadly serious and expensive for the less inclined - and the political leader, just like his master motivator, is not too different from a crackhead interrogating the emptying streets for spare change along with washers and subway tokens substituting for spare change.

The payoff is extremely high in both unhinged worlds, for those who are into the chaotic parade - but anyone who has ever been cornered by an angry yet preoccupied junkie with a vibrant sob story to share will tell you that it's a fear of the unknown that motivates the sudden reach into your pocket for a quick donation to the cause.

Politics - as Tom DeLay knows it - is really no different. There is nothing but extreme highs and terrible lows when dealing in the total involvement of any rapid-response public policy debate - especially when you're keeping score on so many fronts that you begin to feel more like a wiseguy sharking money to degenerate gamblers than you do the House Majority Leader.

As far as we can tell now, there is no point in kidding ourselves about what Tom DeLay and his cronies truly want for America in the New Century. When he glares out the window of his spacious office and sees the greater Washington power structure converging at his feet, he doesn't imagine "legislators" or "honorable public servants," he sees "price tags" and "marks that can be bought" like cheap, toothless hookers in Atlantic City. Little systematic parasites that are all there to serve his every whim and his personal firesale of the American Dream, and he's prepared to drive a wooden stake in the heart of the Great and Very Democracy that put him in the place where he stands today.

PAJAMARAMALAMADINGDONG

2005-04-05T23:07:00.000-07:00

Mistress Michelle Meets Mattel ... Suspended Somewhere Between a Newsroom and a Brothel

"Any good time had while wearing pajamas. Positive, uplifting experience. Can be a party of one or several. Not to be confused with a pajama party, although it would fit in some circumstances."
Example: We stayed up late last night and had a pajamaramalamadingdong of a time blogging about the Nazi impulses surrounding Michelle Mattel's opinions of Arab Americans."

Babiecakes - received your postcard last night and I was immediately left astonished by that alluring scent of Christian Dior and the scribbled Cupid's arrow on its back, pointing to "our beachfront getaway." What getaway? Have you moved back to Koreatown? I guess it's not such an extraordinary concept, considering your vast and wayward history in Los Angeles. Did you already find work down there and do you need me to rough up that crappy editor of yours?

Anyways, don't send any more of your designer wardrobe to my Hermosa Beach compound. Hang onto those things until the contractors are done expanding the deck and the bedroom. The fellas might rifle through your nighties and things, and I'm not much of a garment policeman. As of right now it seems like you can move your things back into the pleasure hut in about ten days or so. The general contractor, a stocky and hirsute 310-pound Chicano surfer dude named Pedro D. Infringement, has been a bit sluggish in pouring the concrete, and the constant hammering has been a huge distraction from completing my book. It's been going badly for about a month now; I'm yelling more and writing even less. The agent has been checking in daily, telling me that the characters are borish and that I should stay clear of your hypnotic seductiveness until I get the plot better aligned. Personally, the criticism has been a little too much to bear - and it's about the last thing I need. "A brilliantly crafted tale of political intrigue and cultural upheaval," he barked into my voice mail this morning, "but it needs ... " And so the tiring beat continues, like we're distant vessels breaking against a raging sea ...

I trust you're having better luck with your blog and media appearances. FOX is a tough line up to crack, it seems, even for a woman of your innate talents. Might I suggest an approach more in line with a hot asian incall escort selling a GFE service for the newsboys in the production silo - which I've heard stands for girl friend experience in the adult entertainment business - so that way you're not obligated to go that far with an undesirable client such as Bill O'Reilly or Sean Hannity or Brit Hume. But caveat emptor, my girl. Once you've travelled down that slippery slope, you would be nothing more than Ann Coulter with a better ratchet set and all that would be left of your destiny would be the occassional semi-nude appearance on HBO's Cathouse or an edition of Girls Gone Wild: The Kinky Blogger Edition or working the casino lobby in Vegas when the Shriners and Bar Association hit town. Then no one would look at your blog and the advertising dollars would dry up, unless you parsed out some space to the online seek-and-screw databases that seem to be the rage on the internet these days - the very services that Jeff "Bulldog" Gannon and Laura "grace919" Ingraham have been found to frequent under assumed names borne from years of cathartic alterego addiction. Even then, I still can't think of a compelling reason why you would subjugate yourself to such a creepy quid pro quo anyways, and these types of things seem to get straightened out rather quickly if you lay down the law on sexual advances. But it's a thought that must occupy your imagination from time to time.

A rumor hit my email the other day - to jump into another subject - that the editorial staff of the Caracas Herald is searching for a new Op-Ed contributor of note. Would you be kind enough to shake the tree on this for me? Clearly my South American Rolodex needs brushing up and I wouldn't even know who to contact. With all your powerful connections in the World Press you could probably snoop something out rather quickly. The fishwrap was something of a ruse, if memory serves me correctly, but it would be right up my alley, or yours, even if they offered a mere pittance in terms of contributor's fees. If you come across anything noteworthy, drop on by the compound with a nice Syrah and two or three jars of Nutella because it could get kinky.

Now for observations from your blog - Do I detect just a change in your hairstyle or did you go under the knife recently? You disappeared there for about three weeks; and the contrast with your old photographs to this new one on your site has got the better part of my imagination all riled up. Not sure why it caught me this way, but you seem to have one of those permanent surprise expressions found on those thirty-something women with more plastic than Mattel who saunter freely along the mean streets of Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills ... and I was wondering how much work you had done. Even my personal assistant, Uma T. Vogue, a nubile young Aryan lass who delivers the morning latte and inspirational backrub, has noticed that the shape of your face is more narrow. God only knows how much plastic surgery and dental bleaching really costs these days and whether you got one of those pro bono semi-celebrity deals; I'd rather examine you with my own two eyes and other sensory exploits too carnal to mention in this space.

As I look back over the first page of this message, the language seems rather dim and non-linear. So I have attached a short article I just finished for the Arizona Republic on the military offering free cosmetic surgery to recruits and active soldiers that "compensates for the tremendous sacrifices they are called upon to make" in the name of God and Country. I have also enclosed some other ideas on sculpting your otherwise provocative appearance, and what some of these procedures mean in layman's terms, even if you have received some of these already - and I hope you at least got number three and number six in anticipation of our next "journalistic" endeavor:

Rhinoplasty - is considered to be one of the most gratifying plastic surgeries to receive, because the patient often will find their entire facial aesthetic modified.

Chin and Cheek Implants - Cheek implants are one of the most popular surgeries in Hollywood, because they make the face appear more youthful and less tired. The cheek implant is placed through an incision just inside the mouth. This creates a partial face lift, which makes the patient look younger.

Breast Augmentation - is one of the most frequently requested surgeries. Implants are inserted behind the breast tissue of each breast or behind the pectoralis major muscle thereby increasing the size of the breast. Silicone implants are made of thick material and filled with either saline or an antibiotic solution during the operation.

Blepharoplasty - is the name of the plastic surgery procedure that corrects aging eyelids. This surgery helps a person look alert and rejuventated. Most patients need an upper and lower procedure. The surgery is often covered by insurance if the upper eye lids droop so much that they obscure vision. The price range for surgery is $3000 to $4000.

Brow Lift - A brow lift is wonderful for treating a tired upper face. It can help eliminate droopy eyebrows, forehead lines, and frown lines that come with age. Sometimes a brown lift is combined with a face lift to help eliminate age.

Liposuction - is the most popular cosmetic surgery in the world. The procedure has evolved to include liposculpture and ultrasonic liposculpture. Ultrasonic liposculpture is a technique in which a metal probe is inserted through an incision in the skin into the depths of the fatty compartments of the body. The probe is moved back and forth in different directions. Next, the fat is removed using the routine liposuction technique. Unfortunately, the use the the ultrasound machine increases the length of the incision because of the size of the probe that is inserted.

As for me, I'm a writer, an enigma, a keen observer, an inspirational conversationalist, a true artist, a thinking man's journalist, a heat-seeking searcher of fun and profit - and, generally speaking, a battle-tested svengali of note who will stand the test of time. If it occurs to you suddenly that I am trying to lay down a slam on your right wing inclinations, don't even go there. Because I'm content to let you be who you really are, even if you got an extreme makeover to jumpstart the career. Politics and personal appearances are important, of course, but I prefer people when you get right down to it.

Anyways, if the article interests or inspires a couple of blog entries, please make sure you credit the source. I'm going to let the newspaper print it as is, but if you have any additional insights that I may have overlooked I'll be sure to quote you fully and not cut-and-paste your explanations into a misleading byline. Also, please send me some of those bikini shots we took in Cozumel so I'll know if you went under the knife for sure.

Until our next distorted and concupiscent rendezvous,
Team Gonzography

The Holy Simp and His Showdown at the Communion Rail

2005-04-03T14:19:00.000-07:00

"For the first time in my own life, I find myself unable to go to Mass. During the most heated bouts of rhetoric coming from the Vatican this summer, I felt tears of grief and anger welling up where once I had been able to contain them. Faith beyond resentment began to seem unreachable ... Perhaps a new pope will change things. But the odds are that hostility will get even worse. I revere those who can keep up the struggle within the channels of the Church. I respect those who have left. But I am somewhere in between now.

There are moments in a spiritual life when the heart simply breaks. Some time in the last year, mine did. I can only pray that in some distant future, some other gay people not yet born will be able to come back to the church, to sing in the choir, and know that the only true scandal in the world is the scandal of God's love for his creation, all of it, all of us, in a church that may one day, finally, become home to us all."
- Pope Andrew the Heretic, Losing a Church, Keeping the Faith, October 2003

"Life is a job. You get $14.50 a day, but after you die, you have to pay for your sins. Stealing a hub cap is around 100 dollars. Masturbation is 35 cents ... it doesn't seem like much, but it adds up. If there's money left when you subtract what you owe from what you've earned, you can go to heaven. If not, you have to go back to work. Sort of like reincarnation - many nuns are Mafia guys working it off."
- Father Guido Sarducci, gossip columnist and rock critic for the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano

Trapped in the never-ending pontification of the religious coverage that became borish - say, after the eleventh hour - and then, just as the nation was forced to watch that frightful self-fulfilling replay of Keith Olbermann interviewing Chris Matthews on MSNBC just because he's Catholic, it became abundantly clear who the next Pope should be.

Pope Andrew the Heretic of Provincetown. And why not?

The main noise in the aftermath of The Pope's passing in the media has been an unlikely and unholy alliance between John Paul II and good old Ronnie Reagan with some maniacal passion they shared in bringing down the Iron Curtain, but nobody in Washington really cares anymore about the Russians - or the Poles, for that matter - despite their sudden and obvious ignorance that World War III is already in the catalyst and countdown stages with the rest of the Islamic world.

Not to jump on anyone else's parade here, but the rational mind could not do anything but agree with Billmon's simple assessment of the Pope and his place in the pantheon of christian victories and its laundry list of charlatans and false prophets and grotesque efforts to subjugate the masses. But so what? John Paul II led the Catholic world for a little less than 27 years, which is longer than almost anyone else in the currently active political sphere of influence except Fidel Castro in Cuba, Moammar Khadafy of Libya and the grandsons of King Abd Al Aziz Al Saud of Saudi Arabia - none of whom would be considered harbors of global democratization and general good will.

Twenty six years is a very long time in the Big Chair or for this century, no matter how you slice it. Dubya has the look of a crazed baboon who traded the taste for ripe bananas for gushy warm hyena blood a long time ago, and he's been wearing the preznut sportscoat for a little more than four years. Gerald Ford only got three years before they snatched him out by the collar, and South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu only held power for ten years because the U.S. military was stubborn enough to replenish an endless supply of body bags.

Let's just agree that political tenure is mighty brief in the passing lane. Brutus did in Julius Caesar after five years at the top of the food chain and Lee Harvey Oswald whacked John F. Kennedy before he even finished three, while that freakish little degenerate Caligula was tossed out like the trash in only four years, his reign even shorter than Jimmy Carter's was at the helm of a modern superpower.

Only Franklin Delano Roosevelt came close to Pope John Paul II in terms of American longevity, and he only lasted that long because the camera shot missed the wheelchair and the world was at the brink of complete disaster. As a people we tend to measure the world in four year cycles, while the rest of the planet cannot resist the urge to calibrate political power in terms of lifetimes and monarchies. And in the curious case of Khadafy, he will probably outlive the next Pope and certainly Dubya, whose regime is apparently more stable and slightly less prosperous than half of the European Union and Central America combined.

He is clearly smarter than Dubya and dumber than the Saudi Royal Family, but Moammar has never lost the absolute genius nor the capacity to wreak destruction and massive retaliation in one fell swoop. Not even the Israelis want to fuck with him, regardless of how many people he's vaporized along the way.

The Colonel might be a ruthless and insane and barbaric plague on the Arab world, as Reagan once regarded him, but even some of our closest allies in the War on Terror still enjoy doing a little business with him, and while the rest of world society marches along on its Papal reunion tour, Khadafy is busy polluting the airwaves with his evening thoughts on Islamic fate and incoherent ramblings on the idea of recognizing the Jewish state.

Which brings us back to His Holy Simp, Andrew Sullivan, who is also prone to polluting the airwaves with his ideas. Many of these range from not knowing if he agrees more with the Rethugs or Democrats to whining about not being welcome in any of the red states because he is openly gay to connecting everything from Abu Ghraib and Terri Schiavo to debating the rate of HIV infection and demanding gay marriage all in the space of one discordant and stammering blog entry. Truth be told: you want to agree with this pinhead right up to the point where he gets too emotionally draining and sermonizing, but he's so damned annoying that even a prolonged view of his written word makes you wish that he could be expatriated to the Vatican City Order of Interior Decorators. And word has it that Brother Andrew from the Jesuit Society of The Conflicted can perform wonders with a roll of velvet, and his concepts with lace curtains are to die for.

For those less-steeped in the strange and bizarre life and times of Andrew Sullivan, his biography reads straight (no pun intended) out of a Catholic high school yearbook. Almost all of his readers are the type of conservatives who could go over the edge at any moment or kill or maim or destroy or burn down your house with your family still in it, or imprison thousands of stray felines in their summer condos while worshipping yellowed photographs of Ray Sharkey and Liberace. They are almost always from Miami or Key West or living a repressive existence in places like Austin, Texas or Santa Fe - and they are all connected to the festival of political schizophrenia that is AndrewSullivan.com, from the fish-headed wingnuts to the deviant Jesus freaks and closet Nazis who wear the uniform only on "special occassions" at Kate O'Beirne's pad.

He is also - according to a young Peruvian houseboy who goes by the name "Zorro" in West Hollywood, California - a hopeful and wannabee disgraced priest of some form or another, who can slide into a long winded evangelical mode reminiscent of Oral Roberts or Billy Graham. This probably accounts for his terribly huge and devoted following in many of the blue states, where his constant doomsday-like warnings of an impending gay persecution has elevated him to virutal sainthood amongst the male Edith Bunkers of this world, a quasi-Messenger of God for the Adam and Steve division of the Christian faith. More homosexual males have abandoned their sublets and variable rate mortgages and began scrambling around like cranked up rats on Andrew's good word than ever ran blindly into the streets screaching their girlish outrage once the Bryman School of Cosmetology lost its authority to issue Pell Grants.

All Andrew really does in the end is scare homosexuals to death and tell them to flee God's wrath. But the serious truth of the matter is that any mildly educated buffoon with a skill for accessorizing and a reasonable vocabulary and a contract with The New York Times could do Andrew Sullivan's gig, and the same vacillating collection of homosexuals - latent or otherwise - will just so happen to be selecting a new Pope in the coming days, the exact Catholic church that was quick to rescue Cardinal Bernard Law of the Boston Archdiocese from hundreds of lawsuits alleging that he allowed pedophile priests to molest children, by appointing him Archpriest of St. Mary Major Basilica in Rome and giving him a vote that should determine John Paul II's successor.

In the end, one man's Holy Calling is another man's ecclesiastical kink in the Year of Our Lord 2005. Somebody - just anybody - at least make Andrew Sullivan our Holy Simp of paternal matrimony, so he'll crawl back under the rock from whence he came.

Just Another Terrorist Organization Gone Terminal on Itself

2005-04-01T17:18:00.000-08:00

jumping the shark
1. when your favorite show starts to flag and go downhill, as when Fonzie jumped the shark on waterskis. We all knew that Happy Days was on its way down then.
2. a semi-popular phrase for "selling out" or turning into shit.
3. the precise moment when you recognize that something is really over although it's momentum carries it on for a few steps.
source: UrbanDictionary.com

There was a strange vibe all over the globe last week. Terri Schiavo finally went off to her maker, the Pope took a turn for the worse in the aftermath of another Easter Parade, The Wall Street Journal and Newsweek's Master of the Obvious Howard Fineman declared Tom DeLay dead on arrival, a real and significant Democratic leadership still hasn't emerged long enough to grow some cajones, the preznut's commission on weapons of mass destruction found that America's spy agencies were "dead wrong" in most of their judgments about Saddam Hussein's WMD capabilities - and just about everywhere else in this shrinking world, including Afghanistan, either Dubya or members of his immediate family were being hunted down like a pack of rabid animals before they could sink their fangs into another uninfected creature or constituency.

Karl Rove and Karen "Man Hands" Hughes, in the mean time, flew back up to the Big House for a series of late night strategy sessions to consider the alternatives along with Dubya, which all seemed to be growing bleaker with each passing morning and evening news cycle. Chimpy from Crawford was still hunkered down in the Oval Office with spent Jim Beam bottles and a few bad intentions and some choice words for his predecessors' paintings, too distressed to venture close to the Briefing Room and cursing the worm that had already started to turn on his presidency from blowing every bit of politcal capital he once had, which he foolishly brandished like a loaded 12-gauge in the salad days of his November re-election, by rolling the dice on a braindead woman in Brother Jeb's home state of the damned, a place filled with steroid-addicted rednecks looking for skull sessions with trailer trash degenerates proud and eager to serve them.

Some have called this outrageous episode a microcosm of our time. That a standing president would gamble everything on the fate of one tug of the feeding tube from deceased speaks volumes about his arrogance and otherwise good fortune. But Dubya had to win this battle with the courts and our Constitution, it was argued amongst the religious fanatics. Even now - after having issued edict after canon followed by dictum through the legal pad and hollow squak box that has become Karl Rove - he still needs his right wing base to articulate a position that clearly stands on the wrong side of his addictive need to control the ebb and flow of our collective morality ... just as he did with WMD, Saddam Hussein and the Saudi Royal Family. It's a deprived sickness worse than black tar heroin. Out of one side of his mouth Dubya will dig deep into all the reasons why we should put Arabs (pronounced Ay-rabs) on a magical mystery tour of Uzbekistan's best and most lethal torture huts - and so what if a few of them die during the funhouse ride - then on the other side of the morality scale, this corrupt and freakish hellhole of an administration spikes yet another few testosterone shots of greed and outrage and revenge ... then settles its gunsights on a perverse cocktail of homophobia, quasi-military fetishes for destruction at any cost and taking that dip into a rank and wretched conservative sewer known as the culture of life.

The rest of the somewhat free world just laughed, but the religious fundamentalists are clearly not amused. They are, after all, the reason why Dubya got the nod on the second go-round - and if the Constitution got in the way, so what? Laws are meant to be broken, and anyone who complained about it was probably a socialist anyway. They could be villified through the cable TV cuisinart once the boys and girls at FOX and MSNBC and CNN secured the White House talking points. And in the meantime there were enough religious maniacs to clutter the airwaves and carpet bomb the secular view on things. For them it was the only Godly thing to do.

Or at least that's how it was justified, for the moment - but in reality, once the message and its intention were stripped down to its bare essence, it was just another moronic white-knuckle form of terrorism that appeared on the nightly news about as terrible as anything normally blamed on Osama Bin Laden or masked insurgents or Chechen rebels invading a school.

Innocent people were beaten down and had their reputations shredded forever. Whole towns were so bitterly divided over it that the terrorists gathered in churches on Sundays after having been energized by their preznut and outlaw Congress, who have distracted the rest of us long enough to write even more checks on the National Treasury like it's their own overdrawn personal bank account.

It has been political arrogance delivered at such a polished level that even party warhorses like John Danforth are no longer biting their tongues. The letter sent to the preznut from the "Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction" has been largely seen as a universal indictment on American interests in Iraq and around the world.

"We conclude that the Intelligence Community was dead wrong in almost all of its pre-war judgments about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. This was a major intelligence failure. Its principal causes were the Intelligence Community's inability to collect good information about Iraq's WMD programs, serious errors in analyzing what information it could gather, and a failure to make clear just how much of its analysis was based on assumptions, rather than good evidence. On a matter of this importance, we simply cannot afford failures of this magnitude."

Not even Ted Koppel could take it anymore. When he gave his closing thought on "Nightline" the other night he delivered the issue into a clear and blinding light - but the nation of fundies and beserk Jesus freaks were still reefed on that Holy Ghost power, dismissing the sanest newsman in the business as nothing less than leftist pinko commie swine.

"What bothers me is when politics and ideology get in the way of logic and consistency."

Indeed. And with that last take, Koppel announced that he was leaving the network at the end of December. And who could blame him? Why go on and play traffic cop to a news media overriden by dehumanizing voices of outrage and trivialization?

Why play along with the game at all?

We are getting into dangerous territory here, because we are still talking about a preznut who treats the entire country like it is his personal joystick to every gutter kink and ephemeral pleasure, after all. Dubya uses the military and our intelligence agencies like bathroom tissue and he pisses all over your future and your kids' future every time he declares "somebody will be left behind" or "we gotta major crisis on our hands" if nothing is done but jiffy-quick ... and he routinely hands over the regulatory keys to the most generous lobbies and most abusive corporate pimps after a single phone call that is always met with a home-spun Mayberry RFD "come on down and tell us how you want it sized, scoped and press released, partner."

Washington is no place for rank amateurs these days. Not even Don King could deal with the venality of it all. Take my word on it, Sparky - I've seen heartless and calculating thieves in my lifetime, and this crowd should be sent to a small and vacant island with no government of any kind and no extradition treaties where all the inhabitants would be found absolutely guilty, if only an impartial jury could be impanelled, and no crime against the state or humanity is regarded as too heinous to obtain acceptance into the club.

High-stakes freaks like David Duke and Manuel Noriega and John Poindexter and "Redrum" Rumsfeld would be sipping pina coladas poolside, along with Gordon Liddy and Oliver North and Tommy Franks, shacking up together as one big delusional and happy family in a single - albeit monstrous - Mandalay Bay-like existence all tucked away forever, with a fully stocked open bar and satellite TV beaming Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous reruns and overflowing platters of tropical fruit and Don Ho yodelling Tiny Bubbles behind the Hawaiian organ and hordes of tanned topless servants lapping the grease and shards of meat from their fat fingers while others comb at the thin hairs on the backs of their necks, insulating them from all the struggles of the outside world.

Meanwhile, the rest of us are going to witness some very strange doings on the TV sets stateside in the next few weeks. It should lead to some fits of very strange behavior on both sides of the aisle while the factions start choosing up sides ... But one thing is for sure: Tom DeLay will be sent off to the Cayman Islands in the dead of night before Ken Lay can roll over on him and the party loyalists are worried that the Bugman may outsmart all of them and make a run for Iceland with their stash of campaign contributions for 2008.

As for what it means to Dubya and his brother Fredo, there is no word yet from above on how all of this should play out - at least not until Dick Cheney can sort out that little problem with the Inspector General way in advance of the inquisition, and when the trail needs sweeping only Number Two knows where the bodies are buried. But these kinds of things always come together in due time.

If He Was a Messiah ... Why All The Insanity Then?

2005-03-27T10:31:00.000-08:00

"We have a court that has essentially stuck its finger in God's eye and said we're going to legislate you out of the schools. We're going to take your commandments from off the courthouse steps in various states. We're not going to let little children read the commandments of God. We're not going to let the Bible be read, no prayer in our schools. We have insulted God at the highest levels of our government. And then we say, 'Why does this happen?' Well, why it's happening is that God Almighty is lifting his protection from us."
- Pat Robertson, explaining on his 700 Club cable TV program why the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, had occurred two days earlier (but oblivious as to why such nations as Sweden and The Netherlands, which are more secular than the U.S. could ever hope to be, are spared such tragedies), quoted from Beth Corbin.

"If Jesus had been killed twenty years ago, Catholic school children would be wearing little electric chairs around their necks instead of crosses."
- Lenny Bruce

Ah, yes! It's all about the values. You just had to know that the unctuous wonder of NBC, Pudgy Timmy, who is also known as the Pillsbury Doughboy of pundit TV, had to see the ratings opportunity for Meet The Press: He couldn't let go of such a wonderful opportunity to rattle the cage under the guise of actually giving a shit. Hell, Sparky, there's nothing like Easter Sunday to make us grab onto those bloody wooden Christ-o-fixation symbols and profess our allegiance like Stuart Smalley drinking mightly from the Jerry Fallwell Kool Aid dispenser.

PUDGY TIMMY: I want to read something that you said to The Washington Post in 2003: "Catholics have no right to impose their views on others. Even if they say homosexual conduct is unfitting for a Catholic, they have no right to impose that on the nation."

If you believe that homosexuality is immoral or that abortion is the taking of a life, or that you believe very strongly that Terri Schiavo should remain on a tube, are you not honor-bound as a political figure to try to, in effect, bring about that result, if it's a firmly held motional belief?

REV. DRINAN (MY KINDA PADRE): Yes and no. Go back to Vatican II. Three thousand bishops agonized over this, and at the end of the day, they said that the church should never seek to impose its views. They should not have any shadow of coercion, renouncing 20 centuries of the church dominating the scene. So I think that it's a different world, and we respect everybody else and there's lots of things that are immoral that should not be illegal.

...

PUDGY TIMMY: There are now more Muslims than Jews in America. Is there an Islamic view of the Schiavo case? Is there a monolithic view?

PROFFESSOR ASLAN: No, just as there isn't a monolithic view amongst Christians and amongst Jews or amongst any religious faith. I think that most Muslims agree that life is a precious commodity, that we must endure life and we must respect it and value it. But I also think that the important thing about this Schiavo case is that it is bringing up, not just a legal issue, but as Father said, it's bringing up this--an important debate about what life truly is. Is it just simply a heartbeat or is it a matter of quality of life? Is it a matter of vitalism?

...

PUDGY TIMMY: You are a Catholic priest, a Jesuit. You are also a member of Congress, and then the pope told you, "Get out of politics." What was it like when you received that order?

REV. DRINAN (THE PADRE GETS IT): Well, it's a little more complicated than that. They changed canon law. I had the permission of Cardinal Cushing to run for Congress, and he was enthusiastic about it. There were three or four Catholic priests in politics in Latin America, and they were contentious, and they were now revising canon law. So all that the pope did was to centralize the decision. A bishop can't do it anymore, the Holy See has to do it. And if you want to see some up-side to it, after I left Congress, I was in Brazil, talking to some priests over there, and one priest said to me, "We wept for you," but that if priests were allowed to enter the Congress all over the world, we would have people who were very conservative, fascists, the brothers of generals becoming elected in Latin America.

PUDGY TIMMY: You don't miss it?

REV. DRINAN: Democrats say they're not happy up there these days.

Watching Pudgy Timmy bob and weave this morning reminded me that it seems we have supplanted the 12-step du jour society for an evangelical one, with organized religion seizing upon our general level of emptiness as individuals trying to find our way in a rapid-fire world with all the cookie cutter answers found in an interpretative account of one man's life while under the thumb of despotic Rome. That, to me, has always been the historical context of the Jesus allegory and it may be that Jesus in his real form was probably a number of characters put to the cross as political prisoners or seen as a threat to the general order of things - sacrificed either at the behest of the Romans who needed some ritualized blood letting (and they were heavy into the need for symbolic sacrifices and punishments) or the Jews with their own political ambitions in mind - with the Legions or the Praetorian Guard running an Abu Ghraib-like interrogation facility of their own in the land of Judea ... and who under Caesar could fault them for making a few mistakes and creating a martyr or two along the way?

Martyrs, like Christ and his apostles, were a very big deal in the ancient world - and they were necessary to fuel the debate between religion and politics and power. The Catholic Encyclopedia takes the exploration of martyrs from there:

Acceptance of the national religion in antiquity was an obligation incumbent on all citizens; failure to worship the gods of the State was equivalent to treason. This universally accepted principle is responsible for the various persecutions suffered by Christians before the reign of Constantine; Christians denied the existence of and therefore refused to worship the gods of the state pantheon. They were in consequence regarded as atheists. It is true, indeed, that the Jews also rejected the gods of Rome, and yet escaped persecution. But the Jews, from the Roman standpoint, had a national religion and a national God, Jehovah, whom they had a full legal right to worship. Even after the destruction of Jerusalem, when the Jews ceased to exist as a nation, Vespasian made no change in their religious status, save that the tribute formerly sent by Jews to the temple at Jerusalem was henceforth to be paid to the Roman exchequer.

Doesn't it always come down to death and taxes and who exactly is passing the plate on Sundays? And there's no reason better to ask for just a little bit more when the anniversary of martyrdom is at hand.

For some time after its establishment, the Christian Church enjoyed the religious privileges of the Jewish nation, but from the nature of the case it is apparent that the chiefs of the Jewish religion would not long permit without protest this state of things. For they abhorred Christ's religion as much as they abhorred its Founder. At what date the Roman authorities had their attention directed to the difference between the Jewish and the Christian religion cannot be determined, but it appears to be fairly well established that laws proscribing Christianity were enacted before the end of the first century. Tertullian is authority for the statement that persecution of the Christians was institutum Neronianum - an institution of Nero - (Ad nat., i, 7).

Of the 249 years from the first persecution under Nero (64) to the year 313, when Constantine established lasting peace, it is calculated that the Christians suffered persecution about 129 years and enjoyed a certain degree of toleration about 120 years. Yet it must be borne in mind that even in the years of comparative tranquillity Christians were at all times at the mercy of every person ill-disposed towards them or their religion in the empire. Whether or not delation of Christians occurred frequently during the era of persecution is not known, but taking into consideration the irrational hatred of the pagan population for Christians, it may safely be surmised that not a few Christians suffered martyrdom through betrayal.

From the age of Constantine even still greater veneration was accorded the martyrs. Pope Damasus (366-84) had a special love for the martyrs, as we learn from the inscriptions, brought to light by de Rossi, composed by him for their tombs in the Roman catacombs. Later on veneration of the martyrs was occasionally exhibited in a rather undesirable form; many of the frescoes in the catacombs have been mutilated to gratify the ambition of the faithful to be buried near the saints (retro sanctos), in whose company they hoped one day to rise from the grave. In the Middle Ages the esteem in which the martyrs were held was equally great; no hardships were too severe to be endured in visiting famous shrines, like those of Rome, where their relics were contained.

So, essentially, the entire psychotic rabble of evangelicals clutching "graven images" and praying for Saint Schiavo's mystical powers is based on nothing more than a suspension of disbelief - a literary tactic mastered by guys like Robert Ludlum and Tom Clancy - which means that the writer throws in a few key historical facts and weaves a mind-blowing narrative with larger than life characters around which the storytelling and dialogue confers status to the plot. Some may call this hypothesis a form of blasphemy - and I readily admit that it is only "best guess" from a number of theological accounts, mind you - and they may even chalk this up to a deviant's acidic rationale, but in reality this Jesus archetype probably lived a dissident's humble existence with a loyal group of followers who were trying to find their own way in a harsh ancient world and he died a violent death for giving people hope or thinking beyond the horizon or mountaintop. Sounds like a version of Martin Luther King with a lesser form of weaponry ... the more I think about it.

But overall Easter is a symbol of rebirth, and in that sense I wholeheartedly join with your reason to celebrate for that reason only - no matter the religious affinity, or whether you believe in the Easter Bunny or not - because the winter of our extreme discontent is finally over and here comes Spring.

Enjoy the silence, hope that many more of us have awakened to the cold reality and don't do something really stupid while on a chocolate buzz.

Ayatollah Dubya Issues a Fatwa and Cable TV News Becomes Al-Jahzeera

2005-03-26T20:50:00.000-08:00

"The dissident does not operate in the realm of genuine power at all. He is not seeking power. He has no desire for office and does not gather votes. He does not attempt to charm the public, he offers nothing and promises nothing. He can offer, if anything, only his own skin -- and he offers it solely because he has no other way of affirming the truth he stands for. His actions simply articulate his dignity as a citizen, regardless of the cost."
- Vaclav Havel

"I would warn Orlando that you're right in the way of some serious hurricanes and I don't think I'd be waving those [Gay Pride] flags in God's face if I were you."
- Pat Robertson, The 700 Club television program, August 6, 1998

The Texas Stranglers - our child preznut, Dubya, and "Bugman" Tom Delay - along with Senator "Doktor Mengele" Frist went off the deep end this week, but nobody seems to know what this all means ... not just yet, anyways. The whole and sordid notion of a "culture of life" was lost, once again, in a staggeringly vast Skinner Box of rabid dumbness and bitterly placed innuendo that apparently represents nothing at all and were put together at the cost of interrupting Sunday afternoon brunch for a host of politcally needy Congressmen who were denied the golden opportunity to wine and dine only Washington's best cash and carry flesh ... never mind that in the rest of the civilized world this weekly endeavor is widely regarded as the world's second oldest profession.

The religious right base, a sleazy collection of defrocked and delusional priests, constitutional attorneys, slimy moralists and crackerjack punishment addicts, have spent the better part of four years roaming about people's bedrooms and hijacking the Rethug party to examine almost everyone for alleged sex crimes and un-Godly thoughts in places like Miami and Columbus and deep into the East Los Angeles barrio.

The calculated quid pro quo was to trade away social freedoms for theocratic jurisdiction, while establishing a pattern of some kind of bond between starving the beast known as the federal budget and erecting a series of smoke screens to tangle the scent - but there was never any firm agreement on anything but the high cost of inserting a feeding tube when the clock on billable hours runs twenty-four hours a day.

There was even more hollow muttering and vicious slander and endless paranoid moaning that arrived via the media pimps, crooked preachers, dirty cops and crud merchants. Freaks with bad teeth and even worse breath and skin conditions were pounding the desks of CNN and MSNBC and FOX and staggered aimlessly into the legions of security guards protecting Terry Schiavo - our pundit patron saint of the Million Dollar Baby gone insane - from receiving a non-court-ordered glass of water or Wheat Thin. There was a sense of ignorance turning into madness followed by anger amongst the medical profession for allowing Bill Frist to take the Hypocratic Oath.

Both The New York Times and The Washington Post jumped knee deep into the issue with front page analysis into the life and times of America's worst and most baffling social lightning rod since John Wayne Bobbitt had his manhood tossed on the side of the road, as the rest of the nation continues on its collision course with doom, despair and duncehood.

The final obituary by the media wonks held hostage by this age of irrational fanaticism will clearly be an expansive roadmap on everything ever transcribed or analyzed within the breadth of the DSM IV - The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders - starting with anxiety conditions, a wide and general level of manic-depressive psychosis and a massive collective dip into every kink, disturbance and perversion since Freud took his first hit of cocaine and dreamt of trains and tunnels and fruits and vegetables contorted into sexual organs. Our last slip into a theocracy of the banal, due sometime in July when the Chinese hold a fire sale on our federal debt and Dubya goes fishing in Lynchburg for a Supreme Court Justice, will be the end of what we once knew as the American Century.

The reaction to our demise will be almost predictable and the rundown to the end will be less intelligent and probably more violent than the French Revolution on Mark McGwire's secret stash of anabolic steroids. There will be widespread looting and tenured professors being led out in the square by the short hairs for a lengthy stoning by evangelical whackjobs - and soon enough even the moderates will start pissing their pants and pushing shopping carts filled with cardboard and copper pipes and empty bottles and cans to convince the extremists that they are more insane than intellectually malleable. John Ashcroft will be yanked out of retirement and appointed a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court - even if nobody drops dead from natural causes or a scheduled plane crash in the Rockies. The hottest rumor of the day features a persistent rumor between the Big House and Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist, who is known to be suffering from an advanced stage of senility or trench foot or cancer of the testicles. Many of our nation's best genetic scientists and most profitable pornographers expect to be rounded up by the Homeland Security Department on the night that Ashcroft packs his church organ and moves up into the high court with all the pomp and circumstance of General MacArthur taking back the Philippines.

So while a new CBS poll shows that 82 percent of the respondents want Dubya and our first Evangelical Congress to stay out of the Saint Schiavo case - and the rest of the world wonders why America seems more enraptured than appreciative of the freedom it chooses to enforce around the globe - Brother Jeb seems more Pontius Pilate than Governor of Florida as Good Friday turns into a good night and the usual suspects start preening their feathers for the fallout once Our Lady of the Worthless Feeding Tube passes away, while Operation Rescue's Randall Terry pulls a Lee Harvey Oswald and starts attacking the County Coroner's meat wagon with a high-powered rifle aimed from the odd vantage point of a church steeple.

There is no absolute concensus about how this will play out for 2006 - and, ultimately, 2008, when all the cards get played once and for all - but the heavy hitters are already taking bets and gathering names for the draw ... and there are operatives working overtime tonight who get paid large because they are smart about politics and elections, and they are not advising anyone of note to place their hard-earned cash on either Doktor Frist or John McCain once the nuts are dropped into the vise for the glare of a media primary excursion that seems more Miss Teen USA through Blood-of-Christ-colored sunglasses than a slash and burn deathmarch toward the GOP's prudish refusal to face facts.

They are not stampeding down to the window to bet on Brother Jeb or Pat Robertson, either, for that matter. But Jeb is kaput already, unless Terry Schiavo sprouts angel wings in Pinellas Park and gives birth to the second coming, and Robertson is just another one of those fanatic high-stakes multi-millionaire televangelists who have descended upon this political age in the name of Jesus H. Christ because a good buck can be made by passing the ignorance plate. But Robertson has some good things working in his favor, and in the world of big-time politics, early victories are key indicators and are often won at the margins, so it seems more a factor of what your opponent isn't than what you stand for, at least during the primary phase ... and once the train leaves the track and the pundits start kissing the pet rock known as the front-runner, the clock cannot be turned back. A lot can change between now and 2008, and three years is a lifetime in politics, but given the current state of theocratic mania brewing where alcohol and ammunition can still be purchased in the same corner store, Robertson looks about as dead-lock as any candidate does in present form. He sounds more like a wealthy uncle than a freakish religious deviant with avarice in his soul. So if Doktor Frist is a fire-breathing speed bump and John McCain remains a stupifying gasbag of biblical proportions, Boss Reverend looks pretty appealing to the prayer tent wingnuts at this moment - or at least like the certifiable theocratic fly in the ointment, until the Rethug powers-that-be can latch onto something less conflicted. Robertston may never make it to the Big House, but truly he feels that God speaks to him and to us through him, and he will not be easy to beat as long as they still can tack up little white crosses on plywood churches.

He is a fortunate man who has not lost the petty urge to ram christianity down our throats, and that counts for a lot in game of politics these days. Dubya has always managed to pull out the great victory with a little help from his thuggish operatives in the field, but he is not really a spiritual fellow, and when all is said and done he will be chased out of Washingon like some mad poison swine gone giddy on greed. The Chimperor will be lucky to get out alive ...

Boss Reverend won't face the same fate. He's a man of God, or so he says, and he has a vast television empire - uncontrolled by the idea of fairness in media or equal time - along with his own reporters who will swear that God speaks to him almost nightly ... even though they are on the payroll. Robertson can pull apart the numbers and polls better than Karl Rove, uses the Good Book as his Karen Hughes, and he knows how to raise campaign finances because he does it on a daily basis, while spouting recommendations ranging from the stoning of UFO enthusiasts because demons can appear as slanty-eyed, funny-looking creatures and blaming Muslims for slavery in the US and calling AIDS the "hammer and gun" of the homosexual movement. "We have enough votes to run the country," he once opened at a Washington for Jesus rally. "And when the people say, 'We've had enough,' we are going to take over."

To the uninformed spectator, this political clash will be an incredible struggle between David Hasselhoff cast as Jesus and Osama Bin Laden in the form of Democratic Party, but in reality, the fate of a once great nation will rest on a blindspot that no one can quite yet see. Robertson will set up shop near his CBN headquarters in Virginia Beach, which will then become known as the "altar of the free world," and even though he will do his due dilligence with the botox shots and facial peels, Boss Reverend will say that Jesus has given him that jaw-droppingly attractive sepia glow because he's running for president and many will ring the call center with a love offering.

"If Christian people work together," Boss Reverend once penned in his self-titled Pat Robertson's Perspective in 1992. "They can succeed during this decade in winning back control of the institutions that have been taken from them over the past 70 years. Expect confrontations that will be not only unpleasant but at times physically bloody ... This decade will not be for the faint of heart, but the resolute. Institutions will be plunged into wrenching change. We will be living through one of the most tumultuous periods of human history."

"When it is over, I am convinced God's people will emerge victorious."

And now back to Joe Scarborough for another breaking story on the Saint Schiavo vigil - "she still isn't dead!" - and perhaps another gratuitous Nazi death camp comparison brought to you by the people of Enzyte, Cialus and Levitra.

Amen.

Existential Terror ... The Rethug Playbook on Amphetimines

2005-03-19T11:52:00.000-08:00

amphetamine noun. A colorless, volatile liquid, C₉H₁₃N, used as a central nervous system stimulant in the treatment of certain conditions, such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, depression, and narcolepsy, and abused illegally as a stimulant.

"I like the idea of people running for office. There's a positive effect when you run for office. Maybe some will run for office and say, vote for me, I look forward to blowing up America. I don't know, I don't know if that will be their platform or not. But it's -- I don't think so. I think people who generally run for office say, vote for me, I'm looking forward to fixing your potholes, or making sure you got bread on the table."
- Dubya brings us his favorite local political issue (potholes) of representative government, Washington, D.C., March 16, 2005

"The only way to look at a politician is down."
- H.L. Mencken

We are still too caught up in the collateral damage now to consider all the ramifications and understand what truly has taken place in these last four frenzied years ... or to consider for a moment that the Real Intendment of what our current corporate oligarchy calls the "The Post 9/11 World" and what historians will forever term as "Shock and Awe Democracy" which will surface not so much from the day-to-day events of Iraqi self-determination and America's new role in shaping geopolitical borders - or even from our own terminal destiny with the unpaid purchase order - but mostly from what the survivors will inevitably accept as what all of this madness really cost us in the end.

Here, to take the Lord's name in vain, is a Jesus Christ-sized mini-series right out of The Sopranos: tragedy, conspiracy, dark and off-the-wall humor, and the unending suspense of never really knowing who was lying or who was running his mouth to the bank of corrupt feds or who was telling the truth all along ... These days it hardly seems to matter much to the vast wasteland of political greenhorns who find themselves ensnared by a 24-hour Orwellian dysinformation campaign - as it is being played out in the duplicitous morass known as "organized media" - like it was another summer rerun of Desperate Housewives or American Idol with tanks, humvees, jets and missles as the teen heartthrobs. Not even hardcore libertarians or your garden variety moderates quite know what to make of this direction we have chosen or have even a remote clue as to whether we have reached the other end of this phase or whether we're trapped in a constant state of bizarre transmutation.

The massive downstream fallout from this exercise, the raw and sometimes petty drama of the daily malfeasance and the deceptively played ignorance from Our Preznut, "Chimpy McFlightsuit," comes together in a multi-tiered plot that appeals to almost every form of curious mind - from the bleeding heart activist and peacenik demonstrator to the tightly packed constituency of Barnaby Jones aficionados and the millions of silent voices whose sole interest in these proceedings is the inevitable spectacle of envisioning once-dominant and self-righteous men brought down to their knees like Jimmy Swaggart whimpering for our forgiveness.

Consider Donald "Redrum" Rumsfeld and Paul "Dopey" Wolfowitz, as examples - a pair of career bureaucrats and close allies of every Rethug chief executive since Gerald Ford - who, if they were Romans back in the ribald days of Tiberius and Claudius, would have purchased only the best gladiators by loaning Caesar the cash at triple the going rate. They are the ideological toxic waste from the Reagan Revolution as it then played out in the penetralia of the Defense Department, who rationalized and supported Saddam's brutal existence in one instance and then both signed the infamous PNAC letter faxed off to Bubba in 1998, by simply stating that "the only acceptable strategy is one that eliminates the possibility that Iraq will be able to use or threaten to use weapons of mass destruction" and advocated for the "[removal of] Saddam Hussein and his regime from power" ... Here were two career insiders with enough camouflage to erase even the faintest heat signature and so much power that they considered it a normal day's work to treat the CIA, the Department of Defense and every federal agency with a diplomatic or intelligence mission statement like brainless minions in their own private agenda ... and who could summon battalions, clandestine forces, covert paymasters or even a few well-placed assets in the so-called liberal media establishment by simply punching the "homeland security" buzzer under their desks.

And suddenly, just at that wonderful moment when the Saddam statues fell, they casually put their initials on some benign memo proposing that the use of torture leading into an election year would fall to the back pages of The Nation or Salon with hardly a bit of outrage or even probing questions during the weekly Pentagon press briefings - and several months later while basking in the adoring glare of Neo-Con power-players at Cafe Milano, both get a call from some administration flunkie that could take the heat if the message got mangled, whom neither of them really knows from the daily cabinet briefings, saying that the press got a hold of some photos showing a group of the detainees being dragged around like anesthetized chihuahuas to a water dish filled with lava rocks ...

It all seems like a bad atavistic dream, at first, like it first did when Dutch got hit with that little scandal called "Iran-Contra," because Ollie North couldn't keep his business "off the farm" - as it was first theorized back then - but when they get back to the White House to see their old buddy Dubya, it seems that something has gone terribly wrong. Both Alberto Gonzales and Dick Cheney are in the Oval Office with the preznut; Dubya welcomes Redrum and Dopey with that waxy smile and chimpish expression when he get his nuts in a vise, but otherwise he says nothing because little Alberto advised him that it was in his best interest to keep quiet. A queer tension hangs in the air like a lead cloud and Redrum is the first to flinch. How will this play out in the press? Wolfowitz starts to shift himself to the couch and motion for a drink but Cheney cuts this off at the pass: "We're working out the details on this, Paul. Scooter will give you the run down later tonight at home ... from a pay phone."

Redrum stares back at the room, realizing that he's just been handed the murder weapon, then he reaches for his swollen leather briefcase and barks out his best subordinate good afternoon. Mother of fucking Christ! What the hell was that all about? During his clipped march back to the Secret Service Escalade, he sees Scooter and Scottie reading an early morning edition of The Washington Post and he angrily shoots off a nice morning to you as they stroll by ... Less than thirty minutes later, Redrum descends upon the Pentagon Situation Room like Count Dracula overcome by a major league bloodlust, along with a carton of Cubans, the Sy Hersh story and the best and the brightest serfs to be found among the recent graduation classes at West Point and Annapolis; some of the lesser known cowboys in the Department are already rounding up their personal effects and trading in their bathroom keys for an extended stint in the Near East Division, which means it will take another Rethug administration before they can trade spit with another hot Air Force captain. Things couldn't be worse for the boys and girls on Redrum's team - and mixing it up with Dick Cheney is like asking a Medellin loan shark for an extension and eating the interest.

That was his last good day in Washington in a harsh nutshell. We will probably never know what he and Dubya talk about these days, nor how they actually communicate, because Alberto and Dubya's Number Two know what happened to Nixon when he made a couple of calls from one of the White House phones that fed into the tape-recording system ... Redrum was not relegated to Fredo status - officially - but when your boss can't be seen in the same room with you for an extended period of time ... let's just say that the Secret Service will duck in the event that shots are fired in your direction and your virtues will be fabricated to such a layer of deception that Congress may actually name a highway in your behalf, albeit posthumously.

Indeed ... and now we have drifted off into some dangerous compound equation. And it's beginning to mushroom into some unmanageable entity, much like our obsessive soiree in Iraq ... But before we zoom off into the panoramic camera shot just above the horizon, it would be unfair not to dig deeper into the mothership of our current discontent further, a reacherous cabal so ruthless it was called the "California Mafia" by its detractors and responded in kind with gnarled fangs, angry threats to just about anyone who opposed them and subpoenaed enough dissidents to the point of begging for a poorhouse deep in the mean streets of Calcutta. Dubya is - in the same instance - the legacy of Ronald Reagan and Lee Atwater, a vile and noxious combination of planned dementia and social carcinogen, armed with the same level of acute psychosis that absolves the master when he blasts the hell out of the enemy to prove that God was still protecting them ... which in the case of Ronald Reagan was manifest during a microphone check before one of his Saturday radio broadcasts: "My fellow Americans. I'm pleased to announce that I've signed legislation outlawing the Soviet Union. We begin bombing in five minutes." Without becoming too obviously unfair with this point, the administration certainly could not send a diplomatic envoy to Al-Qaeda to smooth down the feathers, so to speak, nor could it ask Muslims to question Islamic views of reality without questioning their own religious motives ... because for many untold Americans, it would unleash its own brand of soul-wrenching terror about the very terror we have unleashed.

But at least Rethugs and Democrats can agree on one thing tonight: Dubya is no Ronald Reagan. But ironically, both Dubya and Reagan draped themselves in the shrouds of religious conservatism at home and openly pushed for religious moderates or even liberals abroad - seeing foreign religious conservatives as constituting huge threats to America's interests. Yet even Reagan's unburdened view of the world has now proven very costly in the new century, on many wide and synergistic fronts, his decision to destroy communism at any cost meant that we funded terrorists in Central America and that our hard-earned tax dollars were used by dictatorships worse than even Uday and Qusay and led to the deaths of tens of thousands of people in Nicaragua and El Salvador. Under his watch, Dutch also provided intelligence and supplies to Saddam Hussein and gave Stinger missles and paramilitary training to the same band of Islamic fascists who eventually became the Taliban and now have retreated back to Afghanistan's other disturbing legacy - by doing for the heroin marketplace what the Cali cartel did for cocaine. Dubya, as well, has shown that not considering the complexity of the world is costly on many fronts - placing it in a constant state of existential terror that plagued the late 20th Century and endures even today - because his approach on the threat of global terrorism will only feed the very forces that want to kill us all.

In the end, when considering the tragic and compounding costs, perhaps Dubya, too, shares the same fiscal sense as his master, Ronald Reagan, who once remarked about the government's ability to outspend its means, "I am not worried about the deficit. It is big enough to take care of itself."

Jesus, Lord Almighty, those were the days, eh?

Off With Their Heads and Other Curious Delivery Systems

2005-03-14T22:08:00.001-08:00

"The United States and the U.S. stand together in support of the Iraqi people and the new Iraqi government, which will soon come into action."
- Dubya redefines the present coalition forces in Iraq, Brussels, Belgium, February 22, 2005

"Sometimes, words have consequences you don't intend them to mean. 'Bring 'em on' is the classic example, when I was really trying to rally the troops and make it clear to them that I fully understood, you know, what a great job they were doing. And those words had an unintended consequence. It kind of, some interpreted it to be defiance in the face of danger. That certainly wasn't the case."
- It's kind of hard to draw that conclusion if you revisit the evidence accumulated over years of listening to Dubya, Washington, D.C., January 14, 2005

Friends tell me I watch way too much pundit TV, but they are only half-right. There's a wide disparity between simply "tuning in" for the lastest spin session on CNN or ABC or MSNBC - or the Home Shopping Network, for that matter - and charting a course that actively responds to the public relations slime job being rammed into cyberspace like Play-doh through a fun factory fuzzy pumper. The key distinction, for the vacant and retarded and uninformed, is the moment it takes to stand on the ledge in a moment of total freedom with the adrenaline vibrating through your fingertips and a tragic misstep that leads to a meaningless and terrible death.

The lesson from all of this is that you must be an educated observer, and you have to throw each broadcast over on its side to truly understand who benefits most from the message: If all you learn from the constant disorganized barrage of fractured facts and bloated commentary is the story appears to be truthful, you have been sentenced to a lifetime of confusion and horror beyond human capacity - especially if you have one of those high-end satellite systems beaming seven hundred TV stations, non-stop, in the form of a jagged white hum - from which the deliberate distortions are marked by some hellish metronome bent to hyperspeed. Our world is surrounded by a cool plasma oasis today, whether the medium is TV or HDTV or Internet, and it's getting even harder to pinpoint the distinction. The only difference between Peter Jennings on ABC and Hewged B. Clanked pimping overstock asian pornography by way of some exploited email list that burped out your domain is not so easy to comprehend when all you've done is sit in front of a terminal while the whole world is trying to lift the last bottom dollar from your wallet. These are the sum of all the passive-aggressive activities driven by incessant greed and the petty need to control, and the voices sound so genuine and concerned that it seems like it's coming from your own conscience - as if it were a whisper calling out to you during the transition of one dream and into another - until you can no longer escape the inevitable choking sound in your throat.

This is what happens when technology passes too much information at a dizzying and convergent pace, forcing you to parse out every fifteenth word just to keep up, which is like neglecting to read the fine print before you drove off the lot in that practical used car with the great finance rate that you just had to have - the one with the new coat of paint and bald tires and the pesky leak in the radiator - and many good people get taken on a bad deal every day.

Hell almighty, meandering once again, but not so far from the point I was trying to make - because any mention of "bad deal" can always be traced back to the dubious and painful reality that is Dubya. Our peachy and sociopathic child preznut, The Chimperor of Crawford. He has this deep-seated resentment about serving overseas in an unpopular war ... Clearly, he does, but we'll dig deeper into these matters at another time. But we should not totally release on this point right now, because it has a lot to do with our level of uneasiness about Iraq and the personal ideas we keep to ourselves on the nature of this conflict, even if we were to separate logic from the rationale we were spoonfed all too efficiently, then we breath a collective grunt from having been steamrolled by that coordinated scam called The Hunt for WMD, like it was penned by a drunken Tom Clancy trying to meet a publisher's deadline ... which evolved into a series of terrorist connections to Al-Qaeda and, only then, was fashioned into a pro bono exercise to spread gunship democracy in the repressive Arab world. Facts can become very flexible in this information age: Make a webpage, take donations, produce an infomercial, sign the loyalty oath, enforce message discipline ... pick any focus group tested position ... change a mind and take the ride.

Perhaps there never was a concept of in the public interest when it came to organized media, much in the sense that there never has been any concept of honor in the world of organized crime. It's all been a myth no bigger than the bogeyman living under your bed or rabid alligators running amok in the New York City sewer system. Perhaps the idea of a free and rational media - no matter the channel - bit the dust on the night Walter Cronkite declared, about Vietnam, that it was "increasingly clear to this reporter that the only rational way out then will be to negotiate, not as victors, but as an honorable people who lived up to their pledge to defend democracy, and did the best they could." Today these words echo like a faucet dripping in the darkness as the message machine churns out images of happy and grateful Iraqis blowing kisses into the distance like bodacious sausages in the frying pan at Denny's, while Pentagon crisis managers edit the package late into the next day, so all of it can be offloaded onto the morning drydocks feeding a media factory stripped bare of ethics and personnel and the venerable notion that news should provide a service beyond tacit servitude to the policy-elite.

It used to be that "positive spin" on the evening news was so expensive for an administration to obtain and so maddeningly difficult to manage that no public official except Richard Nixon ever rose up to the "ends justify the means" pathology of Ted Bundy without the psychotropic medication - and it was mostly out of the question to risk a spin operation in the hands of some roving journalist who might not be able to connect the dots in time. There were oversight committees with real teeth and a harsh interpretation of the equal time provision, who are now called socialists by right wing extremists aimed at your checkbooks and tax dollars and online subscriptions to Bill O'Reilly gear - but it's always done in the name of progress or sponsored by groups like The Club for Growth ... which means that somebody else is getting ahead and living fat off the public dole like Matthew Lesko minus the question marks on his suit, while "your child gets left behind" and your job gets "right-sized" and you get taxed in even newer ways because grandma can no longer live on her own because the waiting list at Golden Years Rest Home is longer than the season tickets line at the Meadowlands.

Ah, yes! The new century looks even dimmer than the old one, offering us unchecked opportunities for premeditated abuse and unheralded ways to make a buck. Anybody with a $69.95 per month PHP Server and a MySQL backend along with Zend Performance Suite and enough bogus email accounts to throttle the tsunami-spared half of Indonesia, for instance, can send two or three thousand anonymous emails a day to the prime ministers of Bangladesh and France or NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue that simply say, "REMEMBER OUR ENCOUNTER IN PRAGUE? I LOVE YOU. WHEN CAN WE EMBRACE AGAIN?" Or something more like this, "I AM THE BORDERLINE RETARDED BROTHER THAT MOM NEVER TOLD YOU ABOUT. THE DOCTORS HAVE JUST RELEASED ME INTO THE WORLD SO YOU BETTER CALL BEFORE THE VOICES TELL ME TO KILL AGAIN."

Internet technology has this wonderful capability of leveling the communications playing field, and a lot of fun happens over the wire almost every night on chat rooms with web cameras and enterprising young minds devising new ways to deliver your Vicodin and Cialis and Ambien and Xanax over the wire without prescriptions. It's the same mindset that created P.T. Barnum and Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller. And this same enterprising spirit lives on today from the bowels of occupied Iraq in the shape of some of our military men and women armed with personal video recorders and laptops which can burn personalized combat movies straight to DVD.

Extreme Cinema Verite: BAQUBAH, Iraq - When Pfc. Chase McCollough went home on leave in November, he brought a movie made by fellow soldiers in Iraq. On his first night back at his parents' house in Texas, he showed the video to his fiancee, family and friends.

This is what they saw: a handful of American soldiers filmed through the green haze of night-vision goggles. Radio communication between two soldiers crackles in the background before it's drowned out by a heavy-metal soundtrack.

"Don't need your forgiveness," the song by the band Dope begins as images unfurl: armed soldiers posing in front of Bradley fighting vehicles, two women covered in black abayas walking along a dusty road, a blue-domed mosque, a poster of radical cleric Muqtada Sadr. Then, to the fast, hard beat of the music - "Die, don't need your resistance. Die, don't need your prayers" - charred, decapitated and bloody corpses fill the screen.

"It's like a trophy, something to keep," McCullough, 20, said back at his cramped living quarters at Camp Warhorse near Baqubah. "I was there. I did this."

Imagine the Kevin Dillon character from the movie Platoon, a self-professed redneck with an Alabama-sized sadistic streak, who tells the others in his unit: "I like it here. You get to do what you want. Nobody fucks with you. The only worry you got is dyin', and if that happens you won't know about it anyway. So what the fuck, man?" Now imagine this Bunny character with a palm sized digital camera and a few hardcore metal CDs and a laptop with an Avid editing program, having captured his latest firefight on video. Welcome to Redrum Rumsfeld's all-volunteer army in the 21st century, a treacherous combination of My Lai and Wes Craven, with a little Vlad the Impaler and Headbangers Ball thrown in for extra spice. Any soldier can create action packed snuff movies and send them back home to his buddies via e-mail or by way of a secure edge-server, uncensored by the military, and this practice has become a cottage industry of "photographs and video footage depicting mutilation, death and destruction that soldiers collect and trade like baseball cards." Several websites already sell some of this snuff footage from the war - which in many cases seems more like MTV meets Faces of Death, the Iraqi years.

"It gets the point across," McCullough said. "This isn't some jolly freakin' peacekeeping mission."

In the end, who really needs a big brother when you're already watching and imitating him?

This is Team Gonzography. Signing off. Good night.

Strange Myths and Arguments from A Loser's Den

2005-03-08T19:03:00.000-08:00

"It's an important concept for our fellow citizens to understand: That no one in need will ever be forced to choose a faith-based provider. That's an important concept for people to understand. What that means is if you're the Methodist church and you sponsor an alcohol treatment center, they can't say only Methodists, only Methodists who drink too much can come to our program. 'All Drunks Are Welcome' is what the sign ought to say."
- Dubya's uplifting Tony Robbins moment in Washington, D.C., March 1, 2005

Some stories in the naked city are terribly messy, and this one could take a very long time to tell if I ventured to describe all the sordid particulars and reasons for all the blame and bizarreness and freakishness that surfaced along the journey and rationalized all the blood on the walls. It's a pretty vain time to be American - and it's getting more and more dangerous, but we'll get back to that point later.

The last thing I did before taking that tragic leap of faith that kept me free from an unrelenting depression over the current state of political affairs these days was to tune into Hardball for another menagerie of despair, speculation and provocateurism, alternating between moments of low-grade cosmic precision and a suicidal tendency that reared its ugly head in the forms of Marie Cocco, columnist for The Washington Post, and Tony Blankely of the Moonie Times, another bastion of journalistic mendacity.

Such scandalous bastards! These freakazoids pundits are the same retreads who played the lead role of organized lap dogs for the last biggest deception of an administration, known in the criminally insane wing of the Rethug party as the "Reagan Revolution," a grotesque collection of down-low misfits and cranky ideologues and high-stakes racketeers so befuddled with psychosis and esurience that Baby Doc Duvalier was their Ricardo Montalban and Imelda Marcos became a pin-up gal.

And the nation had fallen for the Gipper's cruel hoax. But so what? Americans love hucksters and carneys and fairy tales, as they say in Hollywood back lots, and we are easily inspired by the sleight of hand in front of a circus tent and the big lie from our desperate politicians constantly in re-election mode, which explains why pinheads like Billy Mays can get rich with mind-numbing infomercials hawking truck loads of Kaboom and OxiClean, while good men are forced to die like dogs in the street ... I am not exactly sure if I should fork over the credit card or pop a cap in my temple from hearing, "Woooooood Driiiiiiiiiies Oooooouuuut," a thousand freaking times a day. Call now and get a "reusable" cleaning bucket as long as you can handle the noise pollution ... or a win a date with Ron Popeil - inventor of " The Pocket Fisherman" and "Inside-the-Shell Egg Scrambler" and "GLH-9 Hair in Can Spray" - with an orange glow coated gopher grabber shoved down your piehole to muffle the shrieks of boredom during an all-expenses paid trip on a deserted island to make ass-children.

Ha, ha, ha, Sparky. How's that one for a funhouse mirror? There is no worse agony in life than to realize that in the course of every thirty seconds no less than a thousand Americans could be inspired to dial Billy Mays' toll free number, which probably gets answered in places like Bangalore and Manila, shifting the American trade deficit another fifty cents each time you grapple with the Gator grip.

Ah, but never mind this fruitless dive into the shadowy realm of infomercials. They are no more appropriate than the nightly post-mortem on the American Century that seems to ooze from the White House like a giant blob of liquified Kobe beef with the Jesus H. Christ five-alarm hot sauce - and, in fact, it may be a harsh reminder that at least 51% of our lost nation hasn't evolved much past the simple cause-and-effect that fire does indeed burn.

So is it any surprise that Dubya, still clutching to the twisted belief that he has this huge and all-encompassing mandate, is officially changing his name to "God's Preznut."

"He has already remarked that God wanted him to be President," a top cabinet official says. "By changing his name to 'God,' he's just making it official." Dubya feels this will solidify his authority, says the aide. "He can't wait to send a bill to Congress and say, 'Pass it. It's God's will.'

"He told me, 'Whenever liberals raise an objection to my plan to privatize Social Security, I'll just point to our currency where it says 'In God We Trust' and say, 'Lookie over here? It says In ME we trust.' And when the moonbats say I must be impeached for lying about the war in Iraq, I'll remind them that the Pledge of Allegiance says that 'Murika is 'one nation, under ME.'"

Dubya also feels changing his name will give him more clout on issues like teaching creationism in schools, faith-based social programs and abortion. The preznut also thinks it will help win the war on terror. "When I say to the radical Muslims, 'This is the voice of God. Surrender!' they'll stop attacking us," he once told a counter-intelligence advisor.

Many Democrats are going ballistic, but admit there isn't anything they can do. Said a top Democratic senator, "We can't come out against God. We'll get killed."

The narrative and its symbolism could go on for hours from here, but what's the point? Which reminds me of an old saying - which states, in effect - that both the pragmatist and the true believer can be right, but not correct, at the same exact point on the curve. The outrage aimed at the Credit Industry lobby vis-a-vis the Bankruptcy Bill and the get-in-line-and-be-counted Rethugs and DLC-don't-rock-the-business-boat wannabees who voted their intentions for 2008, while righteous from an emotional and ideological standpoint, the crystal clear technical matter is this: a Democrat will be standing in the White House in 2008, and the fractures already appearing at the base of the party statue are crackling ... which means a fifty year trend of short term progressive thinking bordered by stretches of right wing domination will endure, at least until the deep thinkers on the left learn how to flip the script.

It goes a little like this, and it has been this way since Julius Caesar first considered that Brutus wanted him dead. Which was a solid gold bond, and he did. John Fitzgerald Kennedy and Brother Bobby and Rasputin and Martin Luther King each had a morbid fascination with the great beyond, and what the great darkness would do to their legacies. But it also recalls that the first order of politics is survival, and that the real leadership of the national Rethug party understands this object lesson with the clean and ruthless efficiency of a diamond-encrusted hacksaw.

Flashback to 1992, when they said, "It's the economy, stupid." And how James Baker III, then svengali to the first Bush decent into the abyss of ruination, took his marching orders and scuttled the re-election campaign before it ever caught steam. Not out of fear for destroying the planet or giving out fat checks to key contributors or waging bloody excursions into the Third World for commodities, but because the economy was so bad that it had to be dumped on Democrats. But Bubba threw them a huge curve ball by rolling dice on the powerful lobbies that put him there, and what should have been destroyed in a short four years took millions - your millions - in special prosecutors and eight years of built-up hate. What fears the Rethug party more than anything else, even today, is the general impression that they are perceived to be more in lock step with Herbert Hoover than Ronald Reagan, and that Dubya's failures could lead to another 20 year domination of populist Democrats who could pack the Supreme Court and build new public infrastructures in the name of Big Government and go to war with new emerging enemies of the state, further distancing the right wing base into a series of walled complexes filled with hate-crazed, bottom-line maniacs and survivalists.

It almost happened - twice - right at those moments in time when Dwight Eisenhower almost decided to run as a Democrat, as did Colin Powell many years later. It was the same thought process that delivered us Wesley Clark, because he brings with him, as it was rationalized in the backrooms of power at the time, a combat-driven economy kept in order by fascist thugs weined on the breast of the military thought process, where places like Texas and Georgia and Alabama and South Carolina produce the best meat for the grinder and just a fortunate few can land in Harvard and Yale to begin their lives as career gubment spooks.

Rewind the tape back to 2000, and once again it was Baker-cubed who pulled the strings in Florida when all the nuts were tossed into the vise, and the court system was left to turn the screws. Kennedy may have been an accident that took only one motorcade to solve, but the Democrats have made short order of themselves ever since; for every single step forward since Camelot - and it could be argued since the dawn of the Korean War - the party of FDR and Truman and Jefferson has taken four steps back either in disgrace or the perception of being out of touch. Al Gore became one symbol, paying for Bubba and the blue dress, and then Kerry became another, but the pattern goes a lot deeper than just that. It reaches into the pathetic boyish wonder known as Jimmy Carter, as panacea to Nixon's vileness and treachery, and LBJ - a tinpot and ignorant precursor to our child preznut Dubya - as a monument to national mourning and the unlearned lessons of Vietnam being played out in Iraq today and, perhaps, Iran and Syria in the future.

This is all part of the gameplan, Sparky, and this, too, shall pass - maybe with all the excruciating pain of a kidney stone, but we will endure. The question is: Can we survive? The Rethugs will end up passing the torch to some passionless senator or another party hack next in line, but they are going to drop the bad debt and the Middle East mess and the misery index on the Democrats to solve and become identified with for the next twenty years. Even Dubya, in all his wretched wonder, knows the bill is coming due, and comng soon. It works in cycles - whether a few DLC wonks want to appeal to the middle or still others want to play "class warfare" as an afternoon sport on MSNBC or Air America - but the truth of it all is pure politics, and James Baker III will be called in again to do the dirty work at the docks so the bad karma and blame can be dropped into the landfill that has become the American electorate. Bill Frist and John McCain and Newt Gingrich and the daily assemblage of right wing punditry will not be amused, but they will get in line and adapt. They will go quietly into the night, if they know what's good for them and their bank accounts.

It was good old Ronald Reagan who once told everyone who was listening that "this generation may be the one that will have to face the end of the world as we know it." Thus far we've made it to 2005 - barely - surrounded by scams and pimps and misinformation and political junkies left swollen from years of personal addiction. The Gipper warned us, and I still have no reason to think that he was lying at the time. Good luck with your debts, keep your powder dry and just survive.

Staying on Theme With Pathetic Ramblings from the Freak Desk

2005-03-06T18:38:00.000-08:00

Even with tax refund season upon us, we've been a little cash strapped here at the Team Gonzography complex on the sandy shores of Hermosa Beach. It's not a plea for paypal referrals; it's just the way things are these days. But to make up for the expenses required to operate this place, we have let some of our creative juices do the talking and recently shipped off several ideas for TV pilots for the coming entertainment cycle, which follows this loosely based "to-do-it" list if we are to have an impact on the Nielsen ratings by September - proposals and contracts with the networks in the spring, casting and pre-production by the start of summer, and an expeditious production cycle leading to the pilot itself. Our crack Hollywood representation - led by the indomitable Malosi Shapiro, the first Samoan/Jewish agent in the entertainment industry - has advised us that the vast majority of these pilots never see the light of day much less a first episode on FOX, but we remain undaunted in this challenge to impress the network executives in charge by aiming our proposals at a new and fractured viewing public at home.

Here, fresh from the shared server holding the treatments and scripts to our pilots, are just a few of the TV series we are pushing for the upcoming season:

The Metal Detector: This reality show reveals the hidden world surrounding America's "unsung heroes in the war on terror" - the security guards who frisk you at airports and make the tough racial profiling decisions and force you to take off your shoes - appears to be the front-runner, but we'll need the guy from COPs or the other narrator from Most Scariest Police Chases to get this one to committee. "As long as the test audiences don't fall asleep, this one is a go!" according to our agent.

Abdullah's Heroes: Positioned as a campy homage to the TV classic Hogan's Heroes, the setting is Camp X-ray at Gitmo, and this sit-com traces the lives and escape attempts of a ragtag pack of Al Qaeda detainees and their dim-witted American captors who seem more occupied with Beyonce posters than guarding them.

With each week comes another botched-but-humorous plot to overtake the prison camp, which is always broken up by the guards - often through pure luck - by a gregarious sergeant from with a severe eating disorder, played by Drew Carey. "We may be able to pursuade Tony Shahloub from the USA series Monk," says Malosi, our representation. "But in the wake of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, Arab-Americans see the plot line in a terribly bad light."

CSI - The Archdiocese: Need I say anymore?

McQueer: Key West's meanest and badest law enforcement official just so happens to be gay, but in a real manly sort of way - at least that's the synopsis we pitched to the network execs. We have serious doubts about finding success with a homosexual storyline of any kind, unless we can get Tony Danza to play the lead role and Jude Law to take on the part of his feisty but organized significant other.

Who Let That One Go?: Another key reality TV show idea from the Team Gonzography think tank, it's all about five average Americans who eat way too much fast food - a spirited cross between Candid Camera and MTV's The Real World. They share a stylish apartment in Beverly Hills and venture out into public places with a harsh case of flatulence, and unsuspecting shoppers and visitors and church goers must guess Who Let That One Go? for tons of cash and prizes before the next commerical break. This one, we believe, has a great deal of traction and a cable deal on Spike TV is imminent.

* * *

No love in their X's and O's: "When Louisiana State professor Leigh Clemons went to NFLShop.com to order a Patriots jersey with the name of one of her former students, [New England] cornerback Randall Gay, she was rejected, according to Rex Wockner, a columnist for 365gay.com, a website for gay-and lesbian-related news and issues.

Clemons was told that the league's official online merchandise center does not print 'naughty words' on jerseys. She had to make a series of phone calls to get 'Gay' on a jersey. Columnist Jim Buzinski of Outsports Magazine, which covers the gay sports community, did further research and found there are 1,159 banned words in the NFLShop filter. Among the acceptable words were 'Hitler,' 'Fag,' 'Terrorist,' and 'Bin Laden.' Buzinski's story got the NFL to revise its filtered list, and now Randall Gay fans can order a jersey with his name on it."

* * *

Fed up with having the wool pulled over your eyes? YOU can tell when your favorite politician is lying through his teeth by using the technique of a top body-language expert!

"Experienced politicians have learned to avoid body language associated with deceit," says Dr. Stephanie Gotwell of Chicago. "They don't, for example, look away when fibbing - instead they stare brazenly into the camera."

Luckily, you can see through even the wiliest politician.

"Just like a poker player, every politician has a tell - a tiny signal he unwittingly gives out whenever he's being deceptive," Dr. Gotwell explains.

"Once a politician has been caught in a single lie, all you have to do is scrutinize a videotape of the speech and find his tell' - so you can't be hoodwinked again."

Here, from the expert, are the tells of some of America's best known political figures:

BILL CLINTON -- The former Prez gestures with his index finger when lying. Most infamously, he did that on national TV when insisting, "I did not have sexual relations with that woman."

GEORGE W. BUSH -- Dubya's tell is a smirk before the fib. Says Dr. Gotwell: "You see the President doing it in his State of the Union address of January 2003, when he warned that Iraq had WMDs, citing as proof that 'The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."
"Of course, the White House already knew that evidence had been forged."

DONALD RUMSFELD-- The crusty Secretary of Defense grimaces as if experiencing hemorrhoidal pain when he's being deceptive. Says Dr. Gotwell: "Rummy can be seen doing this last spring when he vowed publicly that all Iraqis detained by the Coalition would be 'treated subject to the Geneva Conventions."

DICK CHENEY -- The Vice President's lips always twist when he tells a whopper -- most memorably when he stated during the vice presidential debates that he'd never met Sen. John Edwards before that night.

CONDOLEEZZA RICE-- The Secretary of State's dead giveaway is a nervous laugh. Says Dr. Gotwell, "For example, prior to the invasion of Iraq, Condi told CNN that Iraq's aluminum tubes were only really suited for nuclear weapons and warned, 'We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.' But experts had already told her the tubes were for small artillery shells."

* * *

Minister Pushes 'Jesus Condoms' to End Teenage Sex: "A controversial preacher says teenagers will stop having illicit sex no matter how strong the temptation if parents will make sure they never leave home without one of his trademarked 'What Would Jesus Do?' condoms stashed away in their purse or wallet.

'WWJD condoms are a divinely inspired idea and they work like a charm,' says the Rev. Dr. Paul Morehead, whose short-wave radio broadcast from Montgomery, Ala., reaches an estimated 16 million listeners worldwide.

'Don't tell me about hormones. Don't talk to me about unbridled appetites of the flesh.

'When a young man and a young woman give in to Satan, when they strip down like animals in the wild and prepare themselves for a lusty round of heavy petting and full-blown sex, what better reminder for them to buck up than a WWJD condom with the image of our Lord and Savior right there on the package, and then, as a fail safe measure, also on the prophylactic itself?

'I've tested them with my own teenagers and hardly a weekend passes when one of them doesn't come back home with a WWJD condom completely unrolled and dangling unused from his or her fingertips or pushed up under the seat of the car as a badge of honor.

'At the very moment their temptation was strongest, they turned back from sin after seeing the boldly-lettered WWJD logo that signifies, 'Stop! Think! What would Jesus do in this situation?' '

Flabbergasted critics couldn't disagree more.

They say putting Jesus Christ on condoms isn't just tacky, it's a sacrilege -- and they openly wonder if preacher Morehead hasn't lost his mind.

'If you give a child a condom, you're pretty much telling him that sex is O.K. as long as you use protection,' fumes Marcia Kenderly, a born-again Christian with four daughters ranging in age from 13 to 18.

'Rev. Morehead says his own children show him their WWJD condoms as proof that even though they came close to having sex, they didn't.

'But how can he be sure that instead of having sex with the condom, they didn't have sex without it? I'm a married adult and I wouldn't let my husband use one of those things.

'I feel like I'm committing a sin just thinking about it.'

Naysayers aside, Morehead has arranged for a manufacturer to produce 100,000 of the WWJD prophylactics that he plans to sell for $5 a pop over the Internet and through Christian bookstores nationwide.

'All the profits will go to a home I'm building for unwed mothers,' says the preacher. 'A home that wouldn't be needed if those girls had been carrying a WWJD condom.'"

Quien Es Mas Macho ... Jeff Gannon or Rip Taylor?

2005-03-03T20:56:00.000-08:00

Sex. Sex. Sex. On some days you wonder what it all means. And then on some days you actually find out. It's like noticing a gigantic mushroom cloud in your rearview mirror during rush hour traffic, and you're locked into assuming the position for a cruel annihilation that is about to begin. Ka-blam! Total destruction. Nothing more to debate, it's all right there in the fiery gloom.

Some of us live for these moments of supreme clarity, these low-rent and ribald revelations that produce a hot and ruthless moment of total understanding, and on many days I can be found wallowing in the muck with them ... but there are times when I chose to ignore the naked truth. It's not so different than the raw anticipation you feel when inching toward that first decent on a roller coaster, or getting into a violent bar fight. Whoosh! An immediate charge inside your bones, eyes darting and the senses settling on a dull and distant whisper.

Extremism is the sport of deviants and fools. Some of us enjoy the ride, but you really have to want to go there after the first chance at anything.

History is chockfull of these odd and crazed beings. They surface momentarily to remind us that the pathway between man and creature is terribly narrow and then somebody throws a match into the gasoline and the road flare becomes a brushfire, and many times it can't be subdued. The foul scent of terminal perversion overtakes the motives and alibis. It happened to us in the summer of 2004 and it's been reshaped into the Iraqi Governing Council, that "dead can dance" rhumba towards the nuclear problem in Tehran and the administration's crusade to evaporate Social Security in the name of a designer crisis much like WMD. It defined our latest descent into the abyss of corporate dysinformation disguised as fair and free elections. The stretched truth is all part of the public record now; the fix is in.

It's one part Marquis de Sade on a quaalude martini, another part Fight Club, with the rest of us starting to lose our minds, along with a ton of people dying, and suddenly our boyish lad Dubya isn't quite what he was making himself out to be, now, is he? The press nursed him through two rubber-stamped elections, allegations of a cocaine habit the size of Midland, difficulty mixing Jim Beam with a steering wheel and a knocked-up receptionist at best. But Dubya is God's little wonder. His special little creature. You've been warned already, Sparky, and you'll be warned again, while we are forced to watch him bounce around the planet like a wind up toy on speed, just another self-serving testament to high stakes greed. Good old Dubya: Take a real good look at him because he's the archetype for a new American century, perhaps the last in all its gutter ball resplendence. These people who put him there - the freaks from the penthouse office spaces and supremacist think tanks and secret bunkers - it's really no mystery where they come from. We've sharpened the human instinct into a relentless need of marking our time on Earth with every petty desire or base deception or eager addiction, we have manufactured reputations to the size of the Hoover Dam, separated the world by connecting it to endless moments of instant gratification through a cybernetic network of scams and spams, recycled even the dullest and least attractive fads with consolidated house notes that are all coming due, until every living human being becomes an aspiring emperor to his own avidity, and thus becomes his own blueprint for God that the rest of us are forced to wade through daily, just to endure. So, in the end, where else can you go from here? What's left? And while we're hustling from one fabricated plight to the next because we're too overwhelmed with the meaningless details to really notice the build up, who's watching the planet as the air fills with killer particles, the water turns into chunks, and even the fish and vegetables take on the greasy aluminum taste of chemicals? And it's not about to slow down, Sparky. It will disintegrate even faster now, and there's no chance of turning it back ... we'll just keep hedging our bets on the future, or sell a version of what we want the future to look like - flat, filled with fear, religious, insane and paranoid - even when there's no future in the distance. It's Jon Voight and Eric Roberts on that Runaway Train to dawn. And there's now thousands of little Dubyas all giddy and intoxicated about this breakneck race to the future - replacing AD on the Judeo-Christian calendar with AO, for after Osama, because Frank Luntz told them that everything after September 11 was negotiable in "the minds of voters," somewhere in a 4H tent on the outskirts of Terra Haute - trapped in starched white collars or behind the scanner at a convenience store or waiting tables with no purpose or place, but always raised to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires or movie stars or rock and roll icons, while the powers-that-be are getting ready to rape and pillage God's soon to be former-planet and lick their digits clean as they reach for the bloated P/E ratio and a business plan that seems more fist-fuck than pristine. Then you wake up, but just a little too late. You can't buy back the old house note or even shit out the chemical sheen eating away at your intestines - you've been had ... and had hard, Sparky. Your therapist is a serial killer with a "thing" for runaways, your belly is distended from years of ravenous gluttony, your medical doctor is nothing but a dimestore pusher who would rather prescribe than treat, your eyes are bruised shut from the deliberate plastic beating of advertising and over-extended credit, your dick can't get up without ten minutes of porno and half a bottle of Vitamin P, and you're stuck in traffic screaming for somebody - anyone - to show you the light. But guess what? You've rolled the dice one too many times, and gambling is nothing but a tax on stupidity. We're waking up slowly, Sparky. And when enough of us get there - all at once - we're going to discover that we are a very, very pissed off bunch.

But it could be worse. An oxford-wearing, "don't ask don't tell" homosexual with a shaved head could be lobbing softball questions to your preznut in the name of "fairness in media," with a front row seat for this theatre of mass destruction. Not that having a gay man in the White House Press Corp is a problem, but at this rate we might as well contact Howard Stern or Saturday Night Live for a correspondent. Maybe former SNL regular Tim Kazurinsky could re-introduce his line of ice cream delicacies from the Carvel sketch, including "Jingle Buns", "Santa Snowballs", and "Peter, the Yule Log... in vanilla for $4.95, or chocolate for $19.95!"

Babba-booey!

[ resubmitted because of browser cache problems ]

Let the Cheap Freaks Pick Over the Carcass

2005-02-27T20:45:00.000-08:00

Christopher Matthews (a.k.a., Tweety)
MSNBC TV
30 Rockefeller Plaza
New York, N.Y. 10112

Dear Chris:

Thanks for your comments on my Hunter S. Thompson tribute piece about two posts down on the Gonzography blogroll. I've been underground from three weeks of harsh escapist reality, and could have easily done another several more, when the good Dr. Gonzo passed on due to karmic events beyond his control, and thus I was left with the odd bit of luck to discover your most recent and unedited email.

That said, however, I'd be more than honored to write a few words for you. Has your producer finally allowed you to share what you have in mind? My prime turf has been the world of Dubya, with an occassional sale to publications in Buenos Aires and Slovakia; that should give you a hint as to where my thought process is at, although the blogworld is just as fun and entertaining as your book, American: Beyond Our Grandest Notions, appears to be. Overall, I tend to gravitate more towards the path less tread, offbeat types of stories, the kind of journalism that seems to float just beneath the surface for weeks at a time, and anything dealing with a society drenched in hypocrisy, pointless military build-ups, vacant political leaders, and failures of our intelligence apparatus on a biblical scale. I have done some movie and book reviews for some far out rags, but the fly-over state crowd keeps sending me nasty emails from Scarborough Country, saying that I gave them a wrong turn on books like Richard Meltzer's LA is the Capital of Kansas, recalling the worst recommendation to date. The rednecks and fundies didn't seem to enjoy that one in the least.

There are any number of storylines to which I could add commentary for your show.

An expose on the rampant homosexuality surrounding the GOP. Out here in California, being gay is really no big deal at all and you can even find work in retail or a call center that hasn't yet been outsourced. So far today I met several gay people and none of them asked me to marry in the spring. The idea behind this one is to disturb red state idiots into acceptance by tracing Dubya back to his homoerotic days back at Yale with the former Mayor of Knoxville, and how it shaped administration policy on providing Jeff Gannon (who has kicked off his newest online adventure) an unspeakable level of security clearance for the White House Press Corps, along with the appointment of Ken Mehlman as the new chair of the GOP. This doesn't mean that we are "outing" anyone of note here, but the more we juxtapose homosexuality with the party in control, the sooner gay people can marry without the fear of Moral Majority re-education camps. Somehow I don't think your network will jump at this story.

A tragic piece on the state of race relations in "The Sixth Reich," as Hunter once wrote about Las Vegas. I haven't come to a final theme with this storyline just yet; but let's just say that a number of Italians have declared themselves as having a tribe called The Rigatonis and they're moving into formation around the American Freak Kingdom known as The Bellagio.

Some sort of seedy examination on the lack of sex scandals in Washington, in light of Condi Rice's apparent state of androgyny whenever she is surrounded by the troops. All of which is very interesting because you can actually watch her behaving in this terrible way, but you can't control the impulse to kick in the TV screen.

An in-depth study on "the precarious geography of the mainstream media now that progressive thinkers have tuned out the idiot box and have begun to take over the internet where the agenda is being defined in the next century." This leitmotiv was the subject of a much debated progressive idea seminar with all the big names in attendance - along with a few smaller but louder voices - people like the real conservatives who see the real bullshit being spouted from the mouths of neo-con base, moderate democrats with real diversity in their hearts who can reach out and revitalize minority constituencies who have been shown the backdoor every time they vote, and grounded liberal minds who are tired of being labeled as a block of "activists" who would rather fall on the swords of their causes than move the agenda forward. We'll need some guaranteed publicity in order to attract average people to our movement, like your network did for the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth last summer, which clearly made their message relevant and extremely newsworthy, just because of your news organization's constant free advertising of their claims. It wouldn't take long to organize and the cost to MSNBC would be minimal with the exception of my first class airfare, hotel accommodations, some spending cash and an overactive room service bill once I touch down in New York City.

Several of us are considering a trip to Thailand and Indonesia this spring to see how the tsunami relief efforts are going now that nobody is paying much attention. By the time that you receive this email I think many of the players should be set in stone, so just tell me if this story interests MSNBC ... we can cross-charge the expenses for some exclusive coverage now that David Shuster is a persona non grata for the required pre-screening and vaccinations.

That's about all I have to share for now. Your email was a wonderful surprise, of course. I tend to not pay much attention to MSNBC anymore, mainly because of Joe Scarborough and Ron Silver and Pat Buchanan, I suppose, but your occassional story with Seymour Hersh does receive some TiVo time on the voodoo box. As it was with Hunter before he went on to the great beyond all Hemingway-like, the pictures out of Abu Ghraib finally sealed the impression in my mind that The Fourth and Fifth Reich were the CIA and the Pentagon, making Las Vegas its Sixth. Give me a ring on the wireless when you have some time to discuss these and other matters.

Good men must die, but death cannot kill their names.
Team Gonzography

Speaking in Trainwrecks With a Pack of Vidiots

2005-02-26T22:20:00.000-08:00

And you may find yourself living in a shotgun shack
And you may find yourself in another part of the world
And you may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile
And you may find yourself in a beautiful house, with a beautiful wife
And you may ask yourself — Well...How did I get here?
- "Once in a Lifetime", The Talking Heads

Can you imagine if my name had been Mungo Bush?
- Dubya taking shots at a reporter's son's name, while with European journalists at the White House, February 18, 2005

As Somerset Maugham once said, the facts never made a story truer. The delusional and - sometimes - ribald tales of Dubya B. Moron have made for a compelling study into the mind of a 1970s failure turned corporate might-have-been who soon became a fortunate deceiver (while racking up a death toll approaching Idi Amin's), and his is among the most brazen political administrations since ... oh, well ... since Saddam Hussein was found ~~in a spider hole clutching to the hopes of escape from an American unit on patrol~~ in a modest home in a small village, and not in a spider hole as announced by the Tommy Franks wing of the FOXNews junta abroad. At first glance, the story of a brain-dead ferret son of a successful political figure - who in his own words said, "the Oval Office is the kind of place where people stand outside, they're getting ready to come in and tell me what for, and they walk in and get overwhelmed in the atmosphere, and they say, man, you're looking pretty" - will never be regarded as a profoundly thought-provoking or moving political dissertation.

Unless he turns out to be the result of a CIA “mind control experiment” who Daddy traded off for a few greedy years at the top of the food chain, having killed a few enemies of the state in the dark and shadowy world of Cold War espionage during that timeframe when - according to most accounts - he went AWOL from the Air National Guard and reportedly went under the wagon for a couple of strange and recalcitrant years. Even then, at its lowest form, his biography places a harsh and interrogatory light above the American Dream, with America's undying obsession with two of its major forces as its white hot theme: the unbridled power of TV packaging and the government's intelligence apparatus, each of which seems to reach into the dark corners of the other's cottage industry these days, sharing a point in the middle termed, "message convergence".

Dubya has drawn us all into his shady netherworld of half-lies, outright lies, scandal and murder, a world to which he's both addicted and fascinated. He's caught between the Jesus Christ who forgives him and the abject sin he's driven by. And he's torn between the demands of the job of preznut and the light television entertainment he provides on a nightly basis. There isn't a more conflicted man in America, now a prisoner of his own hopeless self-destruction and self-loathing once the long shadows pass midnight in the happy confines of the Big House. His supporters say he has this homespun tell-it-like-it-is vulnerability that gets him into trouble at times, but those of us grounded in reality know the bitter truth. Under that thick veneer of morbid dreadfulness, Dubya still manages to infect them with his own bizarre wavelength of enthusiasm ... which means nothing more than "he was the horse that brought us to the cliff, so we might as well jump off the ledge and join him in the ditch ... because he has been at the helm long enough to realize that it's best for us."

The only flaw in this sense is that Dubya never seems to have aged beyond 25 years, remaining unusually static for a preznut who has been under attack by a terror group, conducted an unpopular war, been torn down by 48% of the people and won a re-election bid by too close a margin to invade anyone else. With such charismatic customers as Redrum Rumsfeld, Condi Rice - and even Allawi, Karzai and Osama Bin Laden in brief cameos - it would have been easy for The Chimperor to take a back seat to the heavy hitters while the complex details could be ironed out between mulligans on the back nine. But Dubya can play his part, too, and he has delivered a breakthrough academy award performance as an undeniably simple and vacant character in the tradition of Chauncey Gardiner from Being There or Forrest Gump where the lovable, benign vidiot extraordinaire grows up amongst the pimps and pushers and fixers and fiends ... then he wakes up to discover that he has become The Preznut of the Red States with all the grace and tone of Jethro Bodine on crank when he told Uncle Jed that he was a "double-knot" spy.

The world of Dubya has become a funny, strange, sad, violent and wonderful daydream, brimming with bold performances by Washington insiders and over-their-head advisors while designed and staged by his political svengali - Karl Rove - with an expansive Speilberg-like cinematic imagination. At the lunatic fringe of the narrative, it might seem like nothing more than a lightweight bedtime story or an over-the-top remake of Smokey and The Bandit with Dr. Phil playing the Jackie Gleason role: A compendium of dumbass sound bytes, spring break girls with more plastic than Mattel and always those bright American colors - greed, fear and gold - but the longer you ride along with the ridiculous vibe the more it seems like an expose on the American soul in all its paranoid, romantic, damaged and delusional wonder.

"Now, if you're a worker who earns 35 dollars a year over your lifetime, and this system were in effect where you could put 4 percent of your payroll taxes in a personal account, and you start at age 20, by the time you retire, your personal account would grow to $250,000. That's compounding rate of interest."
- Dubya, calculating some seriously compounding interest that not even Larry Kudlow could validate! Raleigh, North Carolina, February 10, 2005

In the end - its payoff, if you will - this extraordinary administration is itself a biography of a marginal conman with a sexual identification problem straight out the J. Edgar Hoover School of Overcompensation, haunted deeply by a mad childhood of extreme expectations and petty regrets, who's most likely a nut-job of the highest order. In the stark moonglow, when he's alone, standing before the full length mirror in his skin-tight silk pajamas, Dubya almost wants to admit it: He's careening out of control. Overwhelmed. Wondering when the rumors will finally catch up to him. What remains, though, is something much stranger and extravagant than that: a crazed tale of deception gone terminal, a Horatio Alger tale of bootstrap success thrown a curveball by way of a blind trust fund, a Greek drama on cocaine or methodone.

Dubya's fantasies about being a Jesus Christ's intelligent agent - while butchering the very gospel he repeatedly leans upon, now that Jeff Gannon has retreated to the ... ahem ... bowels of the White House spin operation - are so overblown and ridiculous that they don't even seem pathetic. These vain attempts at justification are just about as linked to reality as the strikingly similar delusions suffered by Pol Pot or Osama Bin Laden; in each case there is some exotic combination of deep-seated mental illness and a powerful, tormented brain feeding on uncontrolled guilt and shame. The good news for the Rethugs has been that Dubya was the guy who realized that game show politics and Jerry Springer-style punditry hadn't arrived at the lowest common denominator in the Year of Our Lord 2004, and that the average American's political thought process hadn't evolved much beyond a vile hunger for salaciousness and rank humiliation, which at that fork in the road became the quest to destroy gay marriage, when a normal heterosexual would probably take some advise from Nancy Reagan and "Just Say No".

But considering that this is a story about Dubya, there's never even a hint of freak-show condescension from the normal media outlets, nor the heavy-handed moralizing that Clinton's indiscretions would have brought to the subject. Not even a whimper of regret, as our Will Rogers of American trash kills off what's left of our national credibility with the same level of dignity and compassion that John Wayne Gacy did for the deceased.

[ edited on March 9, 2005 ]

The King is Dead; Raoul Duke Cashes His Check

2005-02-22T18:56:00.000-08:00

"George W Bush does not speak for me or my son or my mother or my friends or the people I respect in this world. We didn't vote for these cheap, greedy little killers who speak for America today - and we will not vote for them again in 2002. Or 2004. Or ever. Who does vote for these dishonest shitheads?"
- Kingdom of Fear, 2003

"At the same time, I shared a dark suspicion that the life we were leading was a lost cause, that we were all actors, kidding ourselves along on a senseless odyssey. It was the tension between these two poles - a restless idealism on the one hand and a sense of impending doom on the other - that kept me going."
- Paul Kemp, The Rum Diary, 1959

"At one point during the campaign I mentioned Pat Buchanan at McGovern headquarters, for some reason, and Rick Stearns, perhaps the most hardline left-bent ideologue on McGovern's staff, sort of chuckled and said, 'Oh yeah, we're pretty good friends. Pat's the only one of those bastards over there with any principles.' When I mentioned this to another McGovern staffer, he snapped: 'Yeah, maybe so ... like Josef Goebbels had principles.'"
- The Great Shark Hunt, 1975

"We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half-full of cocaine and a whole galaxy of multicolored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers ... Also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of Budweiser, a pint of raw ether, and two dozen amyls ... not that we needed all that for the trip, but once you get locked in a serious drug collection, the tendency is to push it as far as you can ..."
- Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Son-of-a-bitch! But what we want to keep in mind is that "principles" is a very relative term in and about Washington these days - with the diabolical claws of the Neo-Con agenda poised to strike down everything that was once proud and good about being a player in the American Century, at any hot and ruthless instant - so when Dr. Gonzo slipped out the backdoor in an eminently reasonable fashion from within the confines of his rustic home on the outskirts of Woody Creek, Colorado, he must have had an idea just how appropriate a day on which he decided to take his life, resulting in the abject theft of almost every headline on an otherwise non-descript President's Day.

One of the most extraordinary aspects of the Hunter is Gone story has been the way that the mainstream press has handled his passing: Thompson was the black sheep of the family who drank a little too much and drove a little too fast and hung around with a too tough crowd, so the subtext of his death was more a form of resignation than anger, depression or outrage. What had begun at the Kentucky Derby in 1970, as one of the finest essays on the decadent and depraved American experiment, was soon surpassed, by then, into what is the most thoroughly and most horrifically revolutionary pieces of American literature since Henry Miller first hung out with Anais Nin in Paris. It was his signature work, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, a toxic combination of straight reporting and mystical storytelling which has pushed the envelope on outlaw journalism and inspired the counter-culture for more than 30 years. Surely, critics with a long standing grudge or revisionist motives or total misunderstanding have long maintained that his later years were "wasted" and "meaningless," but such is the way for authors who have accomplished so much at a young age - which the Good Doctor did in spades - and in many ways it seemed that he lived his life until it became joyless and still, once the cinders became too many to endure and the golden fire just burned out.

"I would feel real trapped in this life if I didn't know I could commit suicide at any time," he once told Ralph Steadman, his creative collaborator, who was first paired up with Thompson for the Scanlan's Monthly article at the Kentucky Derby, and remained a lifelong friend.

Nobody but his friends believed it, of course. High-powered media types immediately took to the airwaves to consider what had really went wrong with Thompson ... but the rest of us, no longer pimped by the right-wing media machine or the fast-approaching terror of another election cycle without a fair-and-balanced system to count the votes, all too simply shrugged at the news of his departure for the sweet hereafter and moved along to our own personal form of combat against the voices of the doomed and the damned. There was nothing unusual, it then seemed, about Dr. Gonzo finally calling it a lifetime before another law enforcement official banged on his door with a pink slip demanding his surrender to a treatment facility or a court-ordered psychiatric exam. And if the truth was worse than the image that he tried to sustain ... heck ... there would indeed be nothing earth-shattering there either, because Thompson simply knew it was time to go on, perhaps his final way of taking control of things before they got out of control or too messy to contain.

"By any accepted standard, I have had more than nine lives. I counted them up once and there were 13 times I almost and maybe should have died," the Good Doctor once said, and who would have doubted him. Suicide was an act that seemed a fitting, if tragic, end to one enormously singular existence.

His next release after Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas was Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72 - perhaps his crowning achievement, and the one that will be read for generations to come - a vicious and down-low manifesto on the US presidential electoral process in which he wrote that "Nixon represents that dark, venal and incurably violent side of the American character almost every other country in the world has learned to fear and despise". Thompson was right then, as he is now, about our current Child Preznut - as logical and ideological benefactor to the Nixonian style of addition-by-subtraction politics with a touch of Orwellian hyperbole and vile circumlocution - who has already transformed the concepts of security and freedom into fear and ignorance. At this intolerable rate of profound stupidity and separatist language not seen since the build up of live batteries at Fort Sumter, the AARP will be rounded up like a pack of Taliban anarchists and branded with a supporting-gay-marriage scar while the Rove dysinformation robots auto-fax talking points to the FOX News puppets about the choice Americans must make between body armor for the troops and grandma eating cat food stew while waiting in line all Soviet-like for toilet paper.

All of this rages on while the Good Doctor is sitting beyond the horizon sucking limes at the bar between shots of Sauza and dips into his sack of blotter acid, taking it all in for sheer gallow's humor, along with Hemingway and Mencken and Faulkner and Miller, remarking how network news moguls are no longer hungry for stories involving lonely nights of investigation and minimal camera time for the newsgals with bleached teeth and tummy tucks - particularly at a time when almost every American is about to get taken for the final ride to the fiasco that will be Dubya's legacy. Both the networks and the print journalists are wrapped up in the deception now, and the "first teams" often involve former party insiders once the election cycle draws to a close with an almost sociopathic precision, beating the drums on September 11 minus the Homeland Security color chart every time they get painted into a corner now that the truth has become a commodity like talking head spin, campaign finance and message control. Everything that Dubya ever stood for - if we were to venture a guess as what exactly these things are beyond his ideological vassals and corporate cronies and God-is-a-Terrorist-unless-you-share-our-values crowd - is going up in flames right before our eyes. Like Richard Milhous Nixon before him, and the disturbing parallels are really not that extreme when you line up the players, The Chimperor has been largely successful for the same reasons that he will eventually be drawn and quartered in public. He could not keep himself from dividing, pushing, dividing, pulling, dividing, proding - and, eventually, he will push, pull, prod and divide all the wrong people, causing them to come for blood and a White House Girls With Air Force One Gone Wild video romp with the twins. This is the other end of the proclivity-spectrum that overtook me once I realized that Dr. Gonzo won't be rolling over in his grave, only because he spent so much of his time telling it just this way and we have been warned.

The Good Doctor was a lot of things to many different people - making the Nixon Enemies of the State List, among other notable places - and he was also called a hero, a madman, an outlaw, the first blogger, absolutely deranged, a son-of-a-bitch, a degenerate gambler and a hopeless drug addict. He was all of these things and in the mylar atmosphere of American Journalism, Inc., it made him a hero, an icon, a reason to wake up and smell the coffee. My lasting memory of him was an appearance at the Somerville Theater during the Generation of Swine book tour in the late 1980s - and much to the audience's chagrin, he was about 90 minutes late that night, apologizing upon his arrival by offering a lame excuse that he was out looking for an ammunition-slash-liquor store. He spoke wildly about the corrupt Reagan (pronounced "Ray-gun") Revolution, Ed Meese, Daddy Bush and Pat Robertson and he topped off the evening by signing every hardcover copy ... only ... with a familiar quip on the inner sleeve, "Wise Up ... HST." Mine caught fire from a wave of his lighter and he shook it madly to put out the flame while puffing on his trademark Dunhill tucked neatly in a white cigarette holder.

He was the first and last of his kind - because he enjoyed the role of libertarian dissident and living on the edge. Part Jack Kerouac and other parts H.L. Mencken, with the Book of Revelations thrown in for good measure and dramatic effect, he will outlive the Carl Bernstein's and Bob Woodward's of the cloth because he remained true to himself and never wavered, even at the bitter end when the lights went low.

Thompson was the first journalist to clearly note that a story becomes more believable when the reporter takes the time to honestly chronicle his or her own failures, and how those idiosyncrasies become a refracting lens separating what is truth and what is schlock and spin. He changed the face of journalism - whether the right wing forces of doom want to accept it or not, or whether there exists a journalist in America these days who has the cajones to speak freely without a care about the consequences ... and I think not ... giving the next generation of political thinkers and satirists a foundation upon which the truth will be further dissected and revealed for all its utter insanity. After all, freedom is something that dies unless it's used harshly, repeatedly and shamelessly.

"To hell with Fun. I shit on the chest of Fun. Look what it did to Charles Manson. He had too much fun - no doubt about that - so they put him away for life."

Mahalo, Dr. Gonzo. Res Ipsa Loquitur

Dubya Jumps the Shark While The Reign of Terror Begins

2005-02-04T20:47:00.000-08:00

"O liberty! How they have played with you."
- Moderate girondist Mme. Jeanne Roland de la Platiere's last words before her death on the guillotine.

"Domestic carnage, now filled the whole year
With feast-days, old men from the chimney-nook,
The maiden from the busom of her love,
The mother from the cradle of her babe,
The warrior from the field - all perished, all -
Friends, enemies, of all parties, ages, ranks,
Head after head, and never heads enough
For those that bade them fall."
- William Wordsworth

There will never be a quiet part of the world until somebody knocks the patriotism out of the human race ... and it is nearly impossible to become an educated person in a country so distrustful of the independent mind. These were the first thoughts that rang through the preznut's Horticulture Festival Wednesday night, watching Dubya jump the shark during the State of the Union conundrum - and it was a rather powerful thing to witness from the vantage point of a red state hotel lobby. It had a greasy and aberrant pace to the delivery that seemed more NASCAR pile-up at turn two - not unlike most oratory endeavors for the Chimperor - where the squeal of bleached tires and screech of twisted metal fills the air and the crowd at home is all glued to the television screen for signs of carnage and the pit crews bite away at their bottom lips from sheer stupidity.

The hammer came down rather suddenly, just as Dubya was finished basking in the glory of a "spontaneous" moment with a red-haired Iraqi woman who looked more like Elizabeth Edwards with a skin condition. After 15 minutes of rambling around with a list of meaningless drivel, which approached the dull stammering velocity of a borderline retard assembling Nerf ball kits at a Goodwill Industries sweatshop, our child preznut reached back and jumped out swinging ... The whole thing was, of course, televised nationally, from the moment he man-kissed Joe Lieberman back to Tel-Aviv and cited Iran and Syria as "sponsors of terrorism" and wandered along the tone of "democracy can't be bad for the Middle East because it selected me" when the system was thrown a monkey wrench in the forms of baby brother and Kathryn Harris in Florida, until some mere 45 minutes later when Herr Cheney and Kommander Hastert could be seen reaching for shin splints caused by repeated shifting to their feet while Democrats were hissing their way to dreams of a felony bust for Dubya's number two - and, even perhaps, Redrum Rumsfeld - that would result in at least four or five years in a plexiglass cage like the one they used in Silence of the Lambs to keep Hannibal Lecter separated from culinary experiences with human flesh.

It was a scandalous development. Dubya had just received notice from his Rethug politicos that not even the party could withstand another assault on Social Security without sending a good junk of the base to the blue corner, but the Chimperor pushed ahead undaunted so fast that not even the moderates could get him to temper the sound bite. Sitting in the audience was Doktor Bill Frist and Marshall John McCain, two perceived front runners for 2008 - if there could be some at this point, as long as the nation made it to the finish line on Dubya Incorporated - which is a highly dubious proposition at the dawn of 2005, because it is clear that this preznut is going to leave the cupboard bare for the next unfortunate selection to the Big House, assuming that he doesn't declare martial law and dub himself Sultan of Saudi Arabia West.

That was the fallout from Wednesday. Dubya could hardly contain himself for the next crisis of his tenure and ordered the Big House kitchen staff to get him a case of Jim Beam for the cabinet ... and then he called Daddy down in Texas, who warned him about Reagan's second term.

"What problem?" said Dubya, like he had just been jerked by the collar. "Ain't it all wine and roses from here on out?"

"Hell, no," Daddy shot back. "You've got about three weeks on this Social Security idea. Before guys like McCain and Frist and Lugar start running their mouths on the Sunday shows - and begin to leak evidence on all the indictable stuff you thought Cheney washed under the rug."

Dubya went hard and silent, then tossed himself to his knees like a crack addict looking for stray rocks and cried in front of his staff, who by then figured that the Big Guy was running low on his thorazine level.

The fuel tank holding his political capital is now on empty. And even as his weeping and screaming echoed through the hallways that night, while the White House staffers hunkered down for afterhours strategizing - which turned to shouts and accusations and threats and pure bitching by the next morning - the talking heads had already taken to the airwaves, with sardonic takes on the Iraqi-Army Mom choreography and rumors of Social Security reform failure even before the preznut's mobilization effort could gain steam. And after the payola scandal that rocked Armstrong Williams' career - which is sure to implicate others once the political tide finally turns into a whirlpool - there is not even one respected voice who would reach out for a cash settlement in advance, much like what happened before the administration considered that it needed more spin for No Child Left Behind and the Post-911 World garbage that has squeezed an entire generation from all sides.

"Remember a thousand points of light, my boy," his daddy emailed the next morning. "Might as well be a string of redneck beads on dental floss."

Dubya jumped the shark, for sure - jacked up on slick egotism and an overactive megalomaniac cycle that painted him in the corner in which he sits today - and a voice in the darkness with a really precise sense of political destruction is sitting in the weeds, painting the target with a laser beam that could cause utter "catastrophic success" at any moment.

It was the same day that reports of a recent memo, drafted by a senior White House strategist, hit the pages of The Los Angeles Times, in which it is alleged that the Rethugs are hoping to achieve an ambitious political objective: Ravaging the money stream and key voters from the Democratic side and cementing GOP dominance for years after Dubya cuts, ducks and runs for his fancy pansexual dude ranch in Crawford ... err ... on the outskirts of Houston.

One of the clearest examples is an effort to limit jury awards in lawsuits against doctors and businesses. The caps might not only discourage "frivolous" lawsuits, as Bush argues, but also deprive trial lawyers of income from damage awards that they could then give to Democrats.

"If we could succeed in getting some form of tort reform passed — medical malpractice reform or any of part of that — it would go a long ways toward … taking away the muscle, the financial muscle that they have," said Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), who ousted Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle last fall despite a heavy flood of trial lawyer money backing the Democrat.

[ ... ]

Are we doing it because it creates more Republicans? Or are we doing it because it's the right thing to do, and by the way, it also happens to create more Republicans?" asked Grover Norquist, head of Americans for Tax Reform and a frequent advisor to Karl Rove, Bush's chief political advisor. "It's both."

"Every one of the ideas for the most part has merits on its own, so … they're defensible," said Stephen Moore, a conservative activist who plans to raise $10 million this year to advertise on behalf of Bush's Social Security plans. "But I think, altogether, this was devised as a Karl Rove grand plan to cement in place a Republican governing coalition that could last for a generation or more."

So the bizarre story goes, and Dubya's strange collection of associates are devising even newer ways to prosper. The memo in question, authored by Peter Wehner, director of the White House Office of Strategic Initiatives, has been drinking from the same bottle as his master, acting all Robespierre-like by igniting Dubya's Reign of Terror against labor unions, frivolous lawsuits, the legal rights of citizens and the Social Security trust fund, rationalizing a windfall to Wall Street who would be able to further erode worker's rights and get fat on the advantage of personal retirement accounts. Not surprisingly, this balkanization of the current partisan minefield will become a prime example of Gresham's law of political morality: the bad drives out the good as everyone becomes corrupted ... while political life becomes not unlike the Hobbesian war of all against all in "a perpetual and restless desire for power, that ceaseth only in death." And in the end, the Rethugs will have no one to thank but themselves ... once the 51% of the misinformed public that votes for Dubya wakes up to the cold reality that the boos and hisses and special prosecutors that were aimed at William Jefferson Clinton will finally come home to roost on the head of The Chimperor. They will all blame the political "third rail" - which is the Social Security entitlement - but it will be more of an indictment on Dubya than it will the AARP, the ACLU, the DNC or the so-called liberal media.

By the time that the Social Security agenda hits the Senate floor his brain will have folded onto itself, from the constant taste of Jim Beam in his gills, and during the nights leading to his end it will be a White House aide who will be the only living thing that keeps Dubya from getting busted for public urination or violating the DC sealed container laws.

Our child preznut already seems to have no friends - only Condi, who telephones him every morning with fresh news on the crazy Arabs and disloyal Euros in her new role as rubber stamp to the doomed and freakish neo-con legacy.

"Terror is nought but prompt, severe, inflexible justice; it is therefore an emanation of virtue; it is less a particular principle than a consequence of the general principle of democracy applied to the most pressing needs of the fatherland."
- Maximillien Marie Isidore de Robespierre Address, National Convention, 1794

Caligula Dubya Bush: Observations From the Back of the Chariot

2005-01-30T10:35:00.000-08:00

"He never missed a chance of making profits: setting aside a suite of Palace rooms, he decorated them worthily, opened a brothel, stocked it with married women and boys, and then sent his pages around the squares and public places, inviting all men, of whatever age, to come and enjoy themselves. Those who appeared were lent money at interest, and clerks wrote down their names under the heading 'Contributors to the Imperial Revnue'."
- Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus, Ancient Roman Historian and Writer

There are just very few good political movies at the video store - and not many have ever been made to begin with, for that matter - but the memorable ones provide a great evening of speculation during an otherwise long winter of blue state politics.

All the President's Men is among the best of the lot, and so is Bush's Brain. All the King's Men illustrates how the game is really played in the backrooms of power, as does JFK and Citizen Kane on different levels, or Bob Roberts as a modern day treatise on mob psychology and grass roots manipulation. But should you require a cinematic achievement that dives deep into the realm of politics, take a hard look at Caligula - no pun intended - the next time you browse the aisles of Blockbuster or the internet shopping cart at Netflix, which many people regard as the best political movie ever made.

His nickname back then was "Little Boots" - a joke derived from the troops, because he was raised up in their midst while in the dress of a common soldier, much like our current day Dubya - which may speak more to Caligula's addiction to constant vindication, whereupon he became one of the world's most reviled sadists. But Caligula was a great deal more savage than most Roman Emperors: he was also a tale of avarice, failure and decadence that makes Dick Nixon seem like a rank amateur and Uday and Qusay as street corner wiseguys. How else are we to explain the longevity of freakish political operatives like Roger Stone - a guy who looks like a Chinese food deliveryman wearing a wig - and Karl Rove and Roger Ailes. Neither Caligula nor Dubya had much use for prying questions or too many details, because the task of ruling the planet is serious business, and they share even less affection for dissent.

So much for Caligula as emperor; we must now tell of his career as a monster. After he had assumed various surnames (for he was called Pius ["Pious"], Castrorum Filius ["Child of the Camp"], Pater Exercituum ["Father of the Armies"] and Optimus Maximus Caesar ["Greatest and Best of Caesars"]), chancing to overhear some kings, who had come to Rome to pay their respects to him, disputing at dinner about the nobility of their descent, he cried: "Let there be one Lord, one King." And he came near assuming a crown at once and changing the semblance of a principate into the form of a monarchy. But on being reminded that he had risen above the elevation both of princes and kings, he began from that time on to lay claim to divine majesty; for after giving orders that such statues of the gods as were especially famous for their sanctity or their artistic merit, including that of Jupiter of Olympia, should be brought from Greece, in order to remove their heads and put his own in their place, he built out a part of the Palace as far as the Forum, and making the temple of Castor and Pollux its vestibule, he often took his place between the divine brethren, and exhibited himself there to be worshipped by those who presented themselves; and some hailed him as Jupiter Latiaris. He also set up a special temple to his own godhead, with priests and with victims of the choicest kind. In this temple was a life-sized statue of the emperor in gold, which was dressed each day in clothing such as he wore himself. The richest citizens used all their influence to secure the priesthoods of his cult and bid high for the honor. The victims were flamingoes, peacocks, black grouse, guinea-hens and pheasants, offered day by day each after its own kind. At night he used constantly to invite the full and radiant moon to his embraces and his bed, while in the daytime he would talk confidentially with Jupiter Capitolinus, now whispering and then in turn putting his ear to the mouth of the God, now in louder and even angry language; for he was heard to make the threat: "Lift me up, or I'll lift you." But finally won by entreaties, as he reported, and even invited to live with the god, he built a bridge over the temple of the Deified Augustus, and thus joined his Palace to the Capitol. To be nearer yet, he laid the foundations of a new house in the court of the Capitol.

He seldom had anyone put to death except by numerous slight wounds, his constant order, which soon became well-known, being: "Strike so that he may feel that he is dying." When a different man than he had intended had been killed, through a mistake in the names, he said that the victim too had deserved the same fate. He often uttered the familiar line of the tragic poet [Accius, Trag., 203]: --- "Let them hate me, so they but fear me." He often berated all the senators alike, as adherents of Seianus and informers against his mother and brothers, producing the documents which he pretended to have burned, and upholding the cruelty of Tiberius as forced upon him, since he could not but believe so many accusers. He constantly tongue-lashed the equestrian order as devotees of the stage and the arena. Angered at the rabble for applauding a faction which he opposed, he cried: "I wish the Roman people had but a single neck," and when the brigand Tetrinius was demanded, he said that those who asked for him were Tetriniuses also. Once a band of five retiarii in tunics (gladiators that used a net to wrap their adversary and a trident to kill him), matched against the same number of secutores (armed with oblong shields and gladius), yielded without a struggle; but when their death was ordered, one of them caught up his trident and slew all the victors. Caligula bewailed this in a public proclamation as a most cruel murder, and expressed his horror of those who had had the heart to witness it.

In the last analysis it is our conception of death which decides our answers to all the questions life puts to us. And there are lots of ways to practice the art of journalism as a form of ritualistic fratricde against the current neo-con junta stationed in the Big House, and among them is to use harsh words and creative license like a precision bomb to destroy the deserved - who are most assuredly our enemies, for one reason or another, and who more times than not earned the right to be dismembered in public because they are on the wrong side of the argument. And the same goes for the defacto Prime Minister of Iraq, Ayad Allawi, who could body double for Charles Kurault in the Green Zone and is beginning to feel more like Saddam Hussein meets Wilfred Brimley minus the Grapenuts. Spend half an afternoon untangling Allawi's bizzare dossier and you're left with a smarter, more craftier Manuel Noriega who can entertain the media better than Baghdad Bob himself - the former Iraqi Minister of Information - and who has been connected to everything from Saddam himself, to the "WMD in 45 minutes" sales job on the American people, to fraudulent reports of Iraq's purchases of uranium yellowcake from Niger, to the extended assertions by right wing whackjobs and think tanksters that September 11 mastermind Mohammed Atta was supported by Baghdad. Not even the flying chimps in The Wizard of Oz were as hideous as Ayad Allawi, but they both followed orders to the cold and mean-spirited end - and it appears that Dubya is about to crown him golden puppet for his efforts into the sublime.

Indeed this journalistic fratrcide effort is a presumptive notion, and more than a few "professional" journalists will underestimate its effect - calling the voices in the blogworld "vengeful" and "overly personal" and "highly counter-productive" regardless of how often they dip into the pit of outrage or tacit compliance themselves. "It's just a person's opinion," they will admonish, "and the reader is always jerked around if the content does not carry the label of opinion in print."

On some days you get what you rightly deserve in the game of politics - or journalism, for that matter - and in the Autumn of 2004, the blue states certainly got theirs. There are winners and there are losers, the righteous and the damned, the vindicated and the vanquished. In the case of Caligula, wishing to have one of the senators torn to pieces, he induced some of the members to assail him suddenly, on his entrance into the Senate, with the charge of being a public enemy, to stab him with their styluses, and turn him over to the rest to be mangled; and his cruelty was not sated until he saw the man's limbs, members, and bowels dragged through the streets and heaped up before him. Within the political sphere, that is known as the art of controlling the environment, and neither Caligula nor Dubya would apologize for it. In my case, using what clearly might be called "outrage blogism," I've used thinly veiled reporting techniques as a weapon that affect my situation and my little part of the planet, and no apologies will be issued from here either.

That is the enduring legacy of Dubya Incorporated - a constant misinformation and punishment culture that has seeped into the entire American infrastructure and throughout its social and intellectual institutions quicker than the plague, requiring a crisis mentality found in most trauma centers to even endure the deliberate shouting match, and bringing to life the George Orwell concept, from Animal Farm, that "all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others." It is a very grim time to be an American, in any shape or form.

Even if Democracy survives in Iraq without supercharging Islamic Jihad or going insane or being whacked like Lee Harvey Oswald by his own people, Dubya will never be able to get past his rationale for invading in the first place - which appears rather hazy in the sunset of this election cycle, but it had nothing to do with making average Iraqis targets for insurgents by marking their fingers and thumbs purple at polling locations guarded by hoardes of Humvees and American troops barking out "move it and lose it" to anyone with car keys - so he would be better off leaving the self-applause to a minimum, at the very least; but even dumb brutes can learn from past mistakes, and I have long since quit placing any energy into wishing for a terminal disease on the Chimperor, not just because even the best form of vengeance ever paid the house note.

In the mean time, a witch's brew of extreme burden will be building up in Washington. The inexorable march to the State of the Union speech will not be a merry time in the White House, even if the Iraqi election turnout surpasses 50% when the final numbers come in. There will be nothing in the woodshed but rust, decay, filth and subpoenas - that tends to happen in a preznut's second term, no matter the political party in power. Whatever is left of the dysfunctional Dubya clan will be fortunate to make the short hop over to Andrews Air Force Base while they still have a helicopter concession.

When the Iraqi endeavor finally unravels from its corrupt and treacherous core, it will make Iran-Contra look like another child prank to fix a history grade on the high school computer system, and Oliver North will seem like another too-big-for-his-britches soldier who got wiggy on bravado and greedy connections. This egregious "Democracy Transplant" in Iraq will go down in history as the worst thing that happened to the military since the Pentagon stretched its intelligence into a tale of widescale attacks by the North Vietnamese somewhere in the Gulf of Tonkin.

Richard Perle and Douglas Feith and Paul Wolfowitz will be sharing a cell at one of the nicer Federal prisons, and Dubya will retire to the outskirts of Houston once the paint dries on the new digs with his vacant wife and his dog and probably Karen Hughes, who will soon be sucked into the abyss known as the Federal Witness Protection Program and will petition the court with a reliable christian sponsor for her new way of life as a lumberjack.

Just as Caligula learned with the Praetorian Guards and Dubya will soon learn from Iraq ... It ain't over 'til its over, as Yogi once said, and the jihadists and insurgents still know how to drive cars - one way trips across town on a full tank of gas - once the vehicle ban is lifted in Baghdad.

Revenge of the Greed Heads, Film at 11

2005-01-21T21:15:00.000-08:00

Former Congressman Joe Scarborough (a.k.a., The Mayor of Simpleton)
MSNBC TV
30 Rockefeller Plaza
New York, N.Y. 10112

Big Joe,

Things are not going well down here in Palm Springs, dude. I limped into the hotel lobby Friday afternoon after a spine-numbing drive, and later that evening discovered to my horror that the preznut was getting stranger by the moment and all the money men were descending upon Washington with enough greenbacks in hand to bribe the creator. For this reason I am contemplating a life in the foreign service or as a gubment spook - as long as I fall into the right kind of crowd.

Aside from that dilemma, I am "beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men." One, I know it's a direct reference to Jules from Pulp Fiction and I sense that many of us want to "strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who would attempt to poison and destroy my brothers." And two, watching the coronation proceedings over the last couple of days could make a toughened soul sick with disgust. The next time that either Dubya or Larry Kudlow appears on the TV screen I have no responsibility for any damages, because you have been warned. And it won't be a pretty sight, so make sure you keep me away from the new flatscreen you financed for the Super Bowl. I swear it's toast.

Beyond that, you must be out of your freaking mind - on the teetering edge of rabid insanity - to believe that Dubya has a mandate to do anything beyond dry-humping his narco-enriched First Lady, because the rest of the free-thinking world saw this Inauguration as sufficient proof to a personal delusion more than it did as a "true celebration of democracy." So quit being a traitorous jabbering pimp for the administration. There is nothing to be learned or gained by hitching your wagon to the hallucinatory happy train that is Dubya Incorporated. I personally know operatives back East who would grab you by the starched shirt collar and Zenga belt and inject you with enough truth serum that you would be begging to have your nails painted pink and your piehole with fiery red lipstick, then would leave you on the steps of The New York Times with your fly wide open, your hair trimmed into a greased-up mohawk and your ankles tied together with clothesline.

There's just something about [The Chimperor] that divides America into camps of reds and blues, lovers and haters, friends and enemies ... Later in the show, Janeane Garofalo and Larry Kudlow almost came to blows over Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Bush economic plan. Garofalo, whose feelings for me range from seething contempt to outright hatred, spent her hour in Scarborough Country mad as hell ... Besides, I think Janeane's outburst last night had more to do with the fact that George Bush brings out the worst in blue state progressives than anything I said— that, or the fact that Janeane is secretly hot for me and is working through some very complicated emotions right now.

Must-See-TV, indeed. You're more treacherous than a Judas swine. Why don't you phone Mehlman and tell him you want to hang out with Dubya for a few days on the links for some mulligans - his, not yours, of course - while you exchange some bitching rock n' roll stories from your perverted youth and your affinity for wearing flight suits on national TV? But what you really want to do with the preznut is invite him back to some seedy S&M swankhouse on the outskirts of Jacksonville, where only you know the place for sure, until his people beat the skank out of you for its name. But don't worry much. Open bar, fly-over state dialects, crusty work boots and John Deere caps, and come alone ... does it ring a bell?

In some peculiar Midnight-Cowboy-on-halcion sort of way, I thought it would. So for the moment let's let by-gones be just that, because the best part about punditry is the fights - while the rest is merely so - and I think you've finally seen the light on this divisive Dubya slant in your most recent telecasts. But it goes a great deal deeper than that, too. Even your bad back tells you this. Rather than be cowed by Rove and his army of neo-religious thugs, MSNBC had decided to meet them at the clearing in the forest of the sublime, reaching out with both hands and a hearty belly laugh all at once - explaining your sudden appearance on the nightly broadcast schedule, among other things - and after the bloody dust settled on the remains of the truth, just a few weeks after the passenger jets slammed into the World Trade Center, with both the American Dream and its supreme power of possibility having resigned in disgrace, the network to whom you devote countless hours of righteous dominion had become a papier-mache Mr. Potato Head statue of FOX News ... now dangling on the edge of sanity and serving the same masters who sold us Iraq, WMD, Karzai, Chalabi, duct tape, color-coded alert warnings and democracy-laced nation-building at the barrel of a gun.

The blue states will give God the margin of eternity to justify himself - and what can be gained from these last four years of stupidity. As it turned out, however, those facist bastards had to be given so much rope that they will come close to hanging the rest of us along with themselves, before the so-called liberal media finally fills the power vacuum created by "bloggers in pajamas" while Dubya and his fixers were constructing diabolical plans like lifelong internment in Gitmo and secret CIA interrogation salons in Uzbekistan - otherwise known as the clandestine transport of enemy combatants to undisclosed foreign locations under an "unofficial" policy termed Extraordinary Rendition by internal memoranda - and the John Ashcroft "Patriot Act" which has amounted to nothing less than the birth of an Oval Office Gestapo when you get right down to it.

Maybe that explains the "infuriated 48 percent of Americans," as you put it - and why the decision to use a Reaganomics Greed Head like Larry Kudlow to justify the administration's Middle East suaree was an abject disgrace that seemed as if your network was fine with throwing gasoline on a match. It was like having Scott Peterson sit in for Dr. Phil during "Save Your Marriage" week, bracketed by an endless string of golf club commercials. The world has indeed had enough, while the child preznut - a pseudo-educated dimwit who personifies the notion that the smallest seed of faith is better than the largest fruit of happiness - will probably emerge not so much from the day-to-day events of the Iraqi Crisis, or even from its traumatic electoral conclusion, but more from what its survivors will eventually understand as how we failed to achieve a lasting peace, both in the region and here at home.

It's amazing - as a strangely reminiscent consequence - how the History Channel was showing the Fall of Saigon just as your show went of the air last night. If Dubya ever regains the popularity ratings that followed him in the days after September 11, it will not be through any "revisionist red state psychobabble" or by realigning the facts, which Condi Rice tried to do before the Democrats on the Foreign Relations Committee found their collective spine and worked her over like a pack of homicidal New York wiseguys looking for an overdue payment on sharked cash. It will probably be that coming events will force an exhaustive re-evaluation of his deception upon the nation and it will crystallize a heavy awareness of the misfortune cast upon those willing to buy into the delusion in these critical times. And thanks to the propaganda ushered by rethug and AEI refugees on pundit TV, such as yourself, many asleep-at-the-wheel Americans will come to feel like the consumer who had no sooner been swindled into buying a used Ford Pinto that they discovered the entire family had been burned beyond recognition a week later, because nobody warned any of them that a rear-end impact would turn the chassis into molten lava.

Sampai nanti - See you later.

Never Get Off The Boat or Hit the Brakes in the Carpool Lane

2005-01-16T22:44:00.000-08:00

"I don't know if any of you are aware of this, but it's a federal offense to make lascivious remarks on a television network broadcast. The penalty for this disgusting, un-American behavior is one year in prison, or a ten thousand dollar fine. Or both! Anyone making a sick or subversive remark tonight will be arrested immediately. I then will personally escort the offender to federal prison for booking under edict number 364 of the Broadcasting Act of 1963. And it's a long drive to that prison, baby, just you and me. No witnesses."
- Peter Jenks from Confessions of a Dangerous Mind

As January blew into view I went into an involuntary seclusion with my computers and progressive trance CDs, and started to make plans to move to Spain if Dubya reached Inauguration Day. Friends called me paranoid and deranged, but their names do not appear on the U.S. Secret Service blotter of headcases, anarchists, addicts, dope fiends, freaks, terrorists or dedicated political enemies with enough resources to purchase firearms and bizarre personal histories, which often includes more than one documented case of uttering public dissent against a sitting - albeit embattled - President of the United States.

But that was my plan, and it made perfect sense, at the time. It was the last defiant act of an otherwise meaningless election cycle, and in the end that, too, seemed to be an aimless exercise with no sense of possibility or passion. The world has been divided up into easy-to-digest pieces, Sparky. Just like the GOP relief map says.

You don't have to be a serious political junkie to feel a thick and foreboding sense of doom at the prospect of another four years of the Dubya Comes Back from the Dead victory lap in 2005. It feels like a rerun of 1972: Just another vindicated, self-righteous, greed-energized, petty crook, dimwit, radical Rethug president just inches from criminal prosecution, once the people finally sit up and take notice.

Goddamn, I thought. Can't wait to see what happens next. Alas, a sick and twisted Dickie, he fell like a diseased Redwood in the forest, engulfed by his own personality disorder and how he would be remembered ...

Indeed. Easy come, doesn't necessarily mean easy go. And many important operatives still believe that the Rethug braintrust didn't really mind losing to Jimmy Carter anyways. It was good for the soul. The GOP, it was said then, was better off digging new trenches with a new set of strategists while the Watergate furor subsided, and by the time that enough people had their fill of the misery index - initiated by Chicago Economist Robert Barro in the 1970's in response to a phenomenon called stagflation, which implies a deterioration in economic performance by adding the inflation rate to the unemployment rate to the interest rate - even hardcore Teamsters and teachers' unions jumped on the vagarious movement known as the Reagan Revolution. And while it made the GOP the majority party for a generation, it also sparked an outbreak of mass political hysteria from which we have never returned.

That is precisely what Carl Jung, one of the great psychologists of the 20th Century, left as his warning, when he said, "The gigantic catastrophes that threaten us today are not elemental happenings of a physical or biological order, but psychic events. To a quite terrifying degree we are threatened by wars and revolutions which are nothing other than psychic epidemics. At any moment several millions of human beings may be smitten with a new madness, and then we shall have another world war or devastating revolution. Instead of being at the mercy of wild beasts, earthquakes, landslides, and inundations, modern man is battered by the elemental forces of his own psyche."

Termed malignant egophrenic disease, or ME disorder, by Paul Levy in his article, The Madness of George W. Bush: A Reflection of Our Collective Psychosis:

[Dubya] supporters are not merely disinterested in seeing that they are in denial of reality; on the contrary, they actively don’t want to look at this, which is to say they resist self-reflection at all costs. [The Preznut] and his supporters perversely interpret any feedback from the real world which reflects back their unconsciousness as itself evidence that proves the rightness of their viewpoint. All of [his] supporters mutually reinforce each other’s unconscious resistance to such a degree that a collective, interdependent field of impenetrability gets collectively conjured up by them that literally resists consciousness.

There really is no such thing, however, as paranoia in presidential politics. Anything that the administration fears or suspects will often turn out to be true - feeding the disease and the expanse of the enemies' list - and the hardline fix is always at work in the shadows, someplace, and the enemy of shared enemies doesn't always equate to friends of convenience. And for that one reason - the bright, shining truth of it all - the serious political fiend, such as I, will always find the raunchy pursuit of wielding power fun ... only because the fine endeavor of ruling the planet is not for the faint of heart or simple in intellect. One mistake, and it's like stomping on the brakes in the carpool lane. Just close your eyes and wait for the grim reaper. The devil is not always in the details, and the reaction never speaks for itself, especially when your preznut is sick and in dire need of psychiatric review.

Hysterical self-deceivers, and ordinary ones too, have at all times understood the art of misusing everything so as to avoid the demands and duties of life, and above all to shirk the duty of confronting themselves. They pretend to be seekers after God in order not to have to face the truth that they are ordinary egoists.
- Carl Jung

So there has been nothing weird or strange in the feeling - which came to mind once the final November tally came in - that whatever would become the GOP brain trust after Karl Rove in 2004 might indeed go into the tank by 2005, once the reality of Iraq and the collapse of the country's institutions finally kicked into high gear. After all, it looks like a pretty good year for retribution now that the Democrats are picking sides and taking names - and if Dubya has a problem with going down in U.S. history as its most colossal failure, who really cares? He certainly doesn't. Because in his own little delusion he imagines that he is divinely guided; and therefore, his miserable constituency is co-dependently feeding an unconscious narcissistic need by fostering a truly pathological and - ultimately - self-destructive relationship. It has also been an open invitation to participate in what has been the most gigantic political scam since Boss Tweed - a high-stakes, low-rent orgy of greed, organized demogoguery, voter fraud, treachery and double-dealing that would cancel the need for elections in most countries on Planet Earth and leave the military free to choose their own preznut at the barrel of a gun. In places like Argentina, Romania and Mozambique the chance to seize power would have been so completely irresistible had they had a Dubya to call their own.

In any event, the logic is compelling and in the shadows of the military-industrial complex there has to be a small gathering of warlike minds digging deep into that warrior spirit. The last thing any administration needs to consider is that the Army, Navy, Air Force or Marines are plotting your demise before the real war has ended. That really takes the fun out of conducting a rebuilding operation.

It is also what makes 2005 so interesting, at least for steady observers like me. With Dubya stumbling into everything he now touches and the GOP congressional leadership constantly tripping over their bloated tongues, a small and disciplined nonconformist effort could whip up enough outrage and "anti-Dubya-bloodlust" frenzy, preventing anything from getting past the Senate screen doors. And when that begins to happen, the administration will start to unravel at light speed. Not unless Dubya finds some humility - quick - and sprinkles his morning Wheaties with a little less ignorance.

Almost any fool can lead his country to war when his supporters are committed to the same mindless bloodletting, but slowing the bastard down to a diminishing cycle of violence and eventual withdrawal is an entirely different gig. Especially when you've just spent four years banging the drums for revenge - by constantly embedding yourself with the military with Goebbels-like festivities and making endless references to God when you refer to America's "victory" in Iraq, as if God has personally endorsed this wretched murder spree. And the blood lust doesn't stop at the Iraqi border. He has given the CIA authority to assassinate those deemed a threat to U.S. national interests - however vague they might be - treating the world's diplomatic institutions like he was still Governor of Texas, where he mocked the condemned and presided over a record-setting 152 executions, including the 1998 execution of fellow born-again Christian Karla Faye Tucker, a convicted murderer who later led a prison ministry. He has virtually suspended Executive Orders 11905 (Gerald Ford), 12306 (Jimmy Carter), and 12333 (Ronald Reagan) which prohibit the assassination of foreign leaders.

To quote Carl Jung, once again, a limited human being in a position of power who has become as far dissociated from his actions as Dubya “even runs the grave risk of believing he has a Messianic mission, and forces tyrannous doctrines upon his fellow-beings.” He believes that any action he takes is justified in the name of God, as he can rationalize it as being God's will. Unable to reflect beyond the carvernous shadow of narcissism surrounding him, he is convinced of the righteousness of his mission, which he considers a non-negotiable event, like death and taxes and ultimate salvation. In fact, this inability to see anything beyond this pursuit is the best means of making him an instrument of evil.

Welcome to Apocalypse Dubya Redux, Sparky. Any way you slice it - quite literally - Ted Bundy has taken over the White House.

When All Else Fails ... Try the Final Solution, Iraqi Style

2005-01-09T23:13:00.000-08:00

"Beware the leader who bangs the drums of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor, for patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword. It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind. And when the drums of war have reached a fever pitch and the blood boils with hate and the mind has closed, the leader will have no need in seizing the rights of the citizenry. Rather, the citizenry, infused with fear and blinded by patriotism, will offer up all of their rights unto the leader and gladly so. How do I know? For this is what I have done. And I am Caesar."
- Julius Caesar

"If the public knew the truth, the war would end tomorrow. But they don't know and they can't know."
- Former British Prime Minister David Lloyd George, to Manchester Guardian editor C.P. Scott, 1914

Not one person from the White House was arrested or even indicted during the Season of Joy that is the American holiday experience, but it had the feel of an uneasy stand-off and no one commenting on the national political scene thinks it will last very much longer.

The new Congress will be in session soon, and the tide of accusations and outrage is bound to pick up strength. Perhaps a few heads will roll by President's Day. With any luck there will be a few video clips on cable televsion of beaten down senior administration officials being led into courtrooms by panic-striken attorneys carrying boxes of affidavits and projection devices for the pie charts and intelligence photos. The billable hours will reach staggering heights in the Beltway, not likely seen since the days of Ronald Reagan, and the failed despots of our time will be shuffled along the streets of Capitol Hill like heretics being dragged to the the village square during the Spanish Inquisition. Odds in Vegas say it will feel like one of those Serpico police scandals that creep up in places like New York City. Some will flee for places like Nassau and live out their lives as foreigners where the bank secrecy laws only rival the beachfront view, while others commit suicide before surrendering to suddenly dismayed authorities. The reality of the situation is that we do not wash our laundry when the cat is let out of the bag - it just gets dirtier on slow ride down to the abyss.

The new political year is going to be a bumpy ride, so fasten your seatbelts. Even Newt Gingrich - Radical Racist Cleric Jerry Fallwell's Mini Me - has begun to wiggle his jowls again and he is now hinting at a presidential run in 2008. His intentions were picked up by the Associated Press over the weekend, and Newt the Impaler is taking steps with a new version of Mein Kampf - a revisionist attempt at dusting off The Contract with America - known in semi-nonfiction circles as Winning the Future: A 21st Century Contract with America, in which Newt criticizes the preznut's policies on Iraq with a tour of early campaign states, underscoring how the Rethug party is already showing fractures from the Neo-con crusade, specifically amongst its moderate and secular conservative constituencies.

"It never hurts to maximize opportunities. That's the American tradition," Gingrich said. "If I can influence the reporters and political activists in Iowa and New Hampshire, they will influence the candidates."

I wasn't exactly surprised ... or moved. The extended empire is certainly standing on shifting ground at the moment, but not everybody is worried: Allawi's circle of doom and the crowd from Halliburton, among other companies, that keeps shuffling in and out of the Big House at skyrocketing salaries are not very concerned about this shift in tone ... just not yet, anyways.

But the eerie silence surrounding Dubya these days is mostly due to history - three times in the last 36 years the Grand Old Party has served up a preznut who was so dangerously criminal and so publicly despised that each had to be removed from the office for extremely dark reasons. And two of these creeps were elected to second terms by wide majorities, showing just how fragile the power politics business can be in Amerikkka. Nixon rolled up a landslide 1972, and Reagan took 49 states in 1984. The average voter adored them, but they were as twisted as a corkscrew, and even their closest allies jumped ship and finally condemned them as ruined and gutless wonders. Daddy Bush, the only one of the three to miss the mark on Election Day, was an even sadder case entirely. He scratched and clawed his way into the Oval Office by race baiting a largely vague electorate - winning more by default, it seemed, then, over a freakish cartoon named Michael Dukakis who was hated more in his own home state than he was in Alabama and Mississippi combined. Bush 41 was hated too, and he took a merciless beating from William Jefferson Clinton in 1992, rejected by the voters as out of touch and viewed as a wimpish prank who picked a hammer fight with an ant known as Saddam Hussein.

I could be convinced to include Gerald Ford in the mix as number four, but he was really dragged into office - as a last resort - by a criminal preznut with the sole intention of covering up the tracks and keeping Richard Nixon out of the federal prison system. One of Ford's first official acts was to issue the pardon for Tricky Dick, and soon enough karma paid a visit in the names of Squeaky Fromme and then Sarah Jane Moore - both of whom couldn't shoot straight - right about the time that Saigon fell to the North Vietnamese, Patty Hearst was finally captured and Jimmy Hoffa was last seen at the Machus Red Fox restaurant in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan.

There are times in life when you wish your suspicions were incorrect: 1.> that your Mob associates would want to kill you for knowing all the secret arrangements with the union pension fund, 2.> that your significant other was really cheating on you for a very long time, 3.> that your best friend was the deranged serial killer that the cops were searching for all along, 4.> that your business partner didn't really empty your bank account and leave you with the sole option of claiming bankruptcy, and 5.> that your government is being run by a tyrannical circle of Nazis hellbent on destroying your country and unleashing SS-style execution squads.

Number five visited us today in the form of "The Salvador Option," a counter-insurgency method that revisits a still-secret strategy from the Reagan administration’s covert war against the leftist guerrilla insurgency in Central America during the 1980s. Faced with losing the "hearts and minds" of the Savadoran people, the U.S. government both funded and supported "nationalist" forces which ultimately involved the use of "death squads" trained to assassinate rebel leaders and sympathizers in the Central American country. Quite obviously, the insurgency was eventually pacified, and the policy is still considered a wide-scale success in conservative think tanks, even though there was a number of innocent civilians killed and it ultimately led to a crippling investigation into the now infamous Iran-Contra arms-for-hostages rumble that made Oliver North a folk hero in the red states and a fashionable target to conspiracy theorists. Lesser known at the time - and among the current administration officials who dealt with Central America back then - is John Negroponte, who is today the U.S. ambassador to Iraq.

The fact that it is being discussed at all is a measure of just how worried Donald Rumsfeld really is. "What everyone agrees is that we can’t just go on as we are," one senior military officer told Newsweek. "We have to find a way to take the offensive against the insurgents. Right now, we are playing defense. And we are losing." Last November’s operation in Fallujah, most analysts agree, succeeded less in breaking "the back" of the insurgency—as Marine Gen. John Sattler optimistically declared at the time—than in spreading it out.

Also being debated is which agency within the U.S. government—the Defense department or CIA—would take responsibility for such an operation. Rumsfeld’s Pentagon has aggressively sought to build up its own intelligence-gathering and clandestine capability with an operation run by Defense Undersecretary Stephen Cambone. But since the Abu Ghraib interrogations scandal, some military officials are ultra-wary of any operations that could run afoul of the ethics codified in the Uniform Code of Military Justice. That, they argue, is the reason why such covert operations have always been run by the CIA and authorized by a special presidential finding.

Ah, yes, more death squads when you run out of ideas. Until outlawed in mid 1970's, the Central Intelligence Agency was directly involved in assassination attempts against Castro of Cuba and Congolese leader Patrice Lumumba. The CIA had also encouraged plots resulting in the assassination of Dominican Republic President Trujillo, South Vietnamese president Ngo Dinh Diem in 1963 and Chilean Rene Schneider in 1973. The most elaborate clandestine operation was Operation Phoenix - a counter-terror program - conducted during latter part of Vietnam War.

From 1965 to 1968 alone, U.S. and South Vietnamese intelligence services maintained an active list of VietCong cadre marked for assassination and the Phoenix Program for 1969 called for "neutralizing" upwards of 1,800 suspected insurgents a month, with about one third targeted for arrest having been summarily killed. Security committees were established in each of South Vietnam's provincial interrogation centers to determine fate of these Viet Cong suspects, where they were held outside of normal judicial controls. Green Berets and Navy SEALs were among the most common recruits for the Phoenix Program, and Green Beret detachment B-57 provided administrative cover for other intelligence units on the ground. One was Project Cherry, tasked to assassinate Cambodian officials suspected of collaborating with the North Vietnamese and the KGB; another was Project Oak, which was targeted against South Vietnamese suspected collaborators. They were controlled by the Special Assistant for Counterinsurgency and Special Activities, which worked with the CIA outside of General Abrams control in South Vietnam. By 1975, Counterspy Magazine - having published 32 issues from 1973 to 1984 - describes the Phoenix Program as "the most indiscriminate and massive program of political murder since the Nazi death camps of World War Two."

The time has finally arrived, now, to see just how smart - or stupid - Dubya really is, and the colorful palette of directions he could take from here on out are many and suprisingly wide.

If he returns from Crawford after his latest and lengthy stay in his mocked-up dude ranch before Inauguration Day, he would be dumber than a rat on whiskey. If he brings himself to White House and attempts to hide in the Oval Office without firing Donald "Redrum" Rumsfeld before he takes the Oath of Office and claims he has no knowledge of The Salvador Option, he would be stupid. And if he returns with arms flailing and his facial ticks resplendent for a Press Conference with the same kind of madness that he used on the Press after his latest victory in Ohio - declaring that he still has political capital and he intends to use it - he would erode all public support and would be considered insane.

That's about all he has left, and the gameplan is grim. The preznut is staring down at rock and a hard place, and so are the rest of his death-squad aficionados in the Pentagon ... Redrum included. But Dubya is the only one who could leave the circus tent without getting crap on his shoes.

Dick Cheney can't avoid the inevitable, much less run or hide. He will be fortunate to get away with anything, but the future looks like a bit of time in federal prison with an orange jumpsuit doing pushups on some grimy blacktop jailyard every morning with freaks like Douglas Feith, Wolfowitz, Stephen Cambone and the clearly batshit Redrum. They will all be in 22-hour-a-day lockdown together, and they will take down many others before all is said and done. Attorney General-in-waiting Alberto Gonzales and the brain-damaged Condi Rice are already the prime scapegoats, and at least two dozen more people within the administration will be brought down with puzzling convictions ranging from obstruction of justice to outright wire fraud to performing sodomy on plastic G.I. Joe figurines, and will be left to beg for a faith-based charity from which they can do their hours of community service. Even Pat Robertson will take a dunk in the prison lunchroom, despite his desperate pleads to the contrary. They are all greed-sucking beasts, guilty as sin itself.

The "Bush Dynasty" will be seen in the historical record only by a curious footnote - like The Great Society and The War to End All Wars, and the disgusting highway collision with a WalMart tractor trailer awaiting Alberto Gonzales once he is finally released from the pen.

The meat is trimmed and the fat is in the fire, Sparky. One wrong move and the whole thing comes tumbling down.

There is No Such Thing as an Ex-Bimbocon ...

2005-01-08T19:29:00.000-08:00

"I can remember when I was a little boy. My grandmother and I could hold conversations entirely without ever opening our mouths. She called it 'Shining.' And for a long time, I thought it was just the two of us that had the shine to us. Just like you probably thought you was the only one. But there are other folks, though mostly they don't know it, or don't believe it. How long have you been able to do it?... Why don't you want to talk about it?"
- Dick Hallorann, from The Shining

Dearest Michelle,
Aloha ... from the western rim of the blue states. It is pouring cats and dogs, the waves are approaching ten feet ... and the wind delivers huge raindrops down on Ocean Boulevard like a nuclear form of hail, clearing the streets and giving all of the surfers an excuse to hit the local bars and drink away the choicest surf. I normally stay away from the bottle; nevertheless, this age of Dubya is making me reconsider this temporary abstinence. My days are consumed with plotting your righteous escape from the lowlands of Maryland, saving you from the God-forsaken ranks of eternal Bimbocon doom, and our eventual rendezvous with a political destiny rivaling that of Mary Matalin and James Carville - or even Evans and Novak with a little sex appeal.

I can hear the gasps of anticipation as you read this; the sheer fascination of it all as the creative juices start flowing in and out of your journalistic awareness, but settling for that hesitation instinct to remain where you are with a frustrated tilt of your head. And I guess you are trying to understand why I am writing you again after all of these weeks, alternating between responding to your incessant emails and sometimes proof-reading them for proper grammar and your present emotional state, and I can imagine you scanning your inbox feverishly with that delicate recklessness that only the promise of a grand awakening can inject into an otherwise vain imagination.

What in God's name made you say "your connections would get us both outed for being on the take"? Judging by the recent scandal circling around Armstrong Williams and the sudden disappearing act performed on CNN's Crossfire and The Capital Gang, I could probably force the issue by leaning on my numerous connections within American Journalism, Inc., without a hint of trouble or payola from administration boosters. And as for the other bimbocons haunting me for attention, I feel quite sure that I could take an entire harem of pundits safely across the Iraqi countryside, because I am that kind of guy. As a matter of fact, I'd be pretty reliable in taking anyone or anything into the jaws of the beast except a pack of giggling vestial virgins.

Your emails, though - however innocent and full of giggling emoticons - never fail to cheer me up a bit. And, strangely enough, even now when things are going this well, I still find the need for outside approval and affection of some form. It seems the reason for this is tied to the idea that I will remain on the West Coast for a very long time as precursor to reaching my journalistic destiny. It's not that I have specific ideas in mind about how long this stay will last, but I do see the pressing need to stay here until I have reached that perfect moment. The Southern California waterfront is at once a spiritual thing, an initiation to the power of nature, and just a constant stimulant. It offers me a perspective, I sense, that is almost impossible to find anyplace else in the country. I only mention these feelings because you are beginning to sound so discouraged and so alone with that tax problem in Maryland that I simply could not reduce the dormant "protector-advisor-svengali" relationship lying at peace within the breast of my intentions.

And, yes, every once in a while I do smile for a picture. Take a look at the attachment. It was taken for a passport. And that will still give me about three more cycles before I finally catch up to Hemingway.

So now we must visit the most pressing question of yours: what part of you attracts me? Well, Michelle, I don't think that you phrased this query too nicely at all, so I'll attempt to respond in the manner by which I think you meant it. Had I answered this question in the way you wrote it, I think that this relationship would go up in smoke and that would not have been ideal for anyone involved.

Jeez ... not exactly an easy thing to respond to. It would be far easier to answer it the way it came across in your email. But I am a gentleman, and I can overlook your nervousness about changing your lifestyle in such a dramatic way.

I would be less than honest if I did not acknowledge the self-fulfilling need to corral your political passions and the physical attraction we share. And I think this is reason enough; neither you or I would have it any other way. There's a lot more to it, of course, but I've really never thought about it deeply. I only know that you are the only woman I've run across who I could turn into a cultural phenomenon. It's been about six months, by now, and I still haven't been able to get past the earning potential we could have. And I have tried to erase this thought many times. God! Six months already! Does it seem that long to you?

Do you recall, by the way, that at the beginning of November, I was opening my emails with the word "Mishi" and calling you "emotionally stubborn" and "ideologically incompatible"? And by November 3rd, you were giving me that very familiar line that ran something like "About our get together next month. I've got quite a lot of columns to write about this glorious GOP victory and I'm going to be rather busy churning out the words ... It's not you, it's about me." An extremely cliche response. You went on to mention, nonetheless, that you "could definitely be persuaded for a couple of getaway weeks in Cabo or another Baja destination," but that "perhaps January would be a better time to escape from the reality of East Coast life."

I don't exactly remember what was supposed to happen next, or where we left the exchange, but I'm sure it's frustrating to be pulled into one direction only to find a fork in the road.

Are you still as desirable as you once were, by the way? Why don't you send me another picture for comparison? Just remain desirable. It's extremely important that you are desirable when you finally touch down on the West Coast. I'm serious about this requirement.

All this writing has left me in such a fine mood, and if I close my eyes I can almost see us taking over CNN's 4:00 PM timeslot where Crossfire once stood for 22 years. If you were here I'd take you immediately to the bungalow for physical priming. It's a depraved situation, but true, I must admit. I guess I'm going to frustrate myself again with these idle thoughts; Dangit, I just can't get past it.

Grin and bear it, I guess.

And this is not just about you sliding into the definition of a bimbocon. I'd actually break down and have some meaningful conversation with you. But don't take any of that GOP payola - just like Armstrong Williams did. Do it and your fate would be sealed forever, and we could not ascend to the journalistic summit I have planned for us. By the way, are you any good in the kitchen? I am getting a terrible appetite right about now, and I must go make myself another rigatoni quattro formaggi for the afternoon NFL action. I live only on finely prepared Italian food and most of the women I meet can only order from a menu.

This is becoming a very strange response, I agree. I haven't really answered many of your questions, but I've had a great time imagining your reactions. I must say that I am enjoying them. Perhaps you didn't know this, but I have one one smiling picture of you and another where you seem stoic and aloof. I switch them back and forth in hand, depending on what kind of reaction I expect to receive.

As a sidebar to my curiosity - suppossing that you finally make it here before Tax Day - I do intend to make a climb from my current living arrangement and closer towards Pacific Pallisades where the european-style villas are a more fitting destination for my soul. Then, most certainly, I will need a courtesan to address my guilty pleasures. And even in your long-repressed state, there is always the possibility that you could be of service - as long as you bring the iPod with the 40GB memory and plenty of clean sheets. In the end, that is all that I will let my mind consider - and a rather nebulous consideration it has become.

Still, I promise to respond more frequently in the future: our destiny will be anything but routine.

Until that wondrous day, I persist, joyously and libidinously in wait.

Team Gonzography

A Culture of Make-Believe; Time-Warps for the Damned

2005-01-06T19:04:00.000-08:00

"America's one of the finest countries anyone ever stole."
- Bobcat Goldthwaite

Due to events beyond my immediate control, I would have normally refused to discuss the ongoing ratcheting-up of the "Carpet-Bombing Social Security" debate-slash-crisis until another time, but it's all part of the same twisted script - invent a problem and make it catastrophic, then blow it up into pieces in the name of security. On Monday, January 3rd, I got out bed and avoided talk radio and talking heads television shows and conspiracy central blogsites to get down to work on some new ventures and clear the head of all the white noise. Afterwards, I drove for hours in the parking lot that is the Los Angeles freeway system with a handful of clean CDs, locked the doors, turned off the wireless handset, and really got into the groove for the first time in months. It took about two days to detoxify from the filth, but The Angst never lifted - but whenever I recognized the pangs of regret, for having not spent at least thirty straight minutes on something intellectual, I would find my mind retreating back into the need to write the mean, cold-blooded diatribes that I was quite not ready for - until today. At many times, during the battle with traffic and torrential rain, I would think of Karl Rove and his pathetic gnome, known as the preznut by the major news outlets, playing Liar's Poker with our tax dollars and how it was becoming easier to deceive now that the malignant election was out of the way. In any other year, and with any other administration, I could be tempted to embellish my happiness with the Death Mask that has become our government. But not in 2005. Or 2006, 2007 or 2008 for that matter.

At least not until the sullen bewilderment of those final hours before Dubya goes down after the harsh provocations of a special prosecutor with some real teeth - because words are no longer important at this point in the American experiment; all the best speeches and vision things were said a very long time ago, and all the right ideas used to bounce around in public and we discussed them like civil beings trying to define a new common destiny, and we used to actually give a shit about something bigger than Jerry Springer or who was boinking who on Desperate Housewives - something beyond the nightmare of dark-skinned people burying their dead in the sands of South Asia and its unfortunate survivors receiving care packages from U.S. troops.

Even Herr Doktor Bill Frist, Senate Majority Leader and defacto GOP front runner for 2008, has jumped into the act of making the photo-op seem drenched with Dr. Phil-like fake sincerity, which is nothing more than a self-serving videodrome for the stylish commerical that will preceed his intention to run for preznut from an oak podium in Tennessee. Frist is one of those creepy and disturbing prototypes - a quasi-metrosexual with perfect hair and sharp features and a personal biography so squeaky clean that it forces you to imagine all kinds of filth when the cameras are put down. Not because he can't be without vices or rumors or skeletons, but because Frist recites his personal biography with an almost pathological precision - as a world-renowned heart lung surgeon, a multi-engine instrument rated pilot, the author of several books, an avid runner, and the father of perfect children - rather than explain it in the flow of real human conversation. He is like Buckaroo Banzai without the Institute and a great interdimensional breakthrough.

Just before his helicopter lifted off from the Sri Lankan city of Galle, the senator and his aides took snapshots of each other near a pile of tsunami debris, once the refugees were cleared out of the way. "Get some devastation in the back," Frist told a photographer.

Another compassionate conservative putting your tax dollars to work, Sparky. We all know it was worth it now, don't we?

* * *

The one grim truth learned in the aftermath of this election cycle has been the absence of any political discourse: If it was a work of fiction, it would land in the basement of Random House with the rest of the professional skimmers one bad recommendation from a return to the mailroom; and hence, the idea is tossed aside like a Neo-Nazi comic book for being much too stupid and hateful to wade through.

Indeed, we are in serious trouble now. The bad novelists are creeping around Washington, devising grand tales through the maze of suspension-of-disbelief columns by right-wing Op-Ed writers with a palm that needs green, many of them in the form of actual journalists like Armstrong Williams, a petty thief on the take at the tune of $240,000.00 (US), looking to make enough loot to cover the house note in Georgetown. But the rest of us are enjoying this wonderful economic rebound, just like Armstrong the Payee, with 157,000 new jobs in December - until you read the fine print: At the end of December 2000, the number of U.S. jobs was 132,441,000; it now stands at 132,266,000 (via Atrios) - so Dubya is still in the hole about 175,000, which really isn't much, unless you're one of them. Meanwhile, every legislative effort has been exaggerated into a life and death struggle, just for the dramatic effect it has on a barely interested public. It's easy to have faith as long as it goes along with what you already know, the old Tom Wolfe saying goes, but this is getting down to the Culture of Make-Believe - whose entire objective is to keep us all up in arms and highly agitated so that we can be led onward to safety by fraternity pranks, by beating up every living truth with an endless series of exaggerated threats, with words like "Defense" and "Homeland" and "Security" all thrown in for good measure, all of it imaginary.

There are a lot of great minds in this country - editors, writers, congressmen and theorists, among others - who will become vindicated once this grand blackness leaves our temporary and collective being, by simply remaining on the buzzing third rail, also known as speaking truth to the gutter ball provocateurs of this counterfeit age.

There will also be a lot of people who will get sucked down by the vengeful whirlpool of Dubyaville forever - which is easily the better alternative for the rest of us - because many of these zombies will get exposed as either walking hazards, cut-throat freaks or heinous monsters. But there will still be others - most of them are fringe players involved in one aspect of the deception or another, but fortunate or crafty enough to avoid the blade - who will be haunted by a nervous tick for a few hard months, but in a short while will reappear unharmed once the shadows become shadows again. This group, in most every way, is the most dangerous batch of all, even more dangerous than the ones who will spend some time in Club Fed for fraud and conspiracy because these are the good fascists - the good germans among us - the ones who opened the gates to the ideological stormtroopers and let it happen.

The other night I pulled down my copy of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich from the bookshelf and lasted until The Advent of Adoph Hitler when the rage crept in; "When an opponent declares, 'I will not come over to your side,' I calmly say, 'Your child belongs to us already...What are you? You will pass on. Your descendants, however, now stand in the new camp. In a short time they will know nothing else but this new community.'"

But the world today moves even faster and it's even more giddy on hate, and Adolph Hitler is not something to review late at night when you have a terrible conference call in the morning - not even in the land of milk and honey that is Los Angeles, wading knee-deep through streets that are more like gushers where you better have a rope tied about your waist before strutting off to the local 7-Eleven for a fresh cup of lava-temperature coffee and a swarthy clerk with an attitude so frightening that even the cockroaches and shoplifters hide in the corners.

At one point, I had actually tried to be friendly with one of these people near the rampage that is Hollywood amongst the homeless and the street-bound deranged - thinking that many of these guys come from places like Turkey or Syria or Afghanistan or Bangladesh and who have no attachment to anything beyond surviving to the next day, having escaped from a culture that has stood for longer than a thousand years, and where a relative disappearing in the night is not so foreign a concept, even accepted as a way of life. The socio-political experience that can be discovered in an American convenience store these days puts a place called "America" or "The Third Reich" in complete perspective, and how the concepts of freedom and democracy are really an elitist game played by aristocrats who want to trick the rest of us into feeling like we actually have choice in anything. Democrats and Republicans would seem like a collection of queer punks next to the tyrants who ruled the ancient world, never mind the National Socialist movement born in Germany and remains with us today. Take any true-blooded Roman or Greek or Mayan or Aztec or Zulu or Moor and they'd beat down your average redneck with their bare hands in a hot and ruthless second - the master race is often the one that is the most barbaric and comfortable with terror, which Dubya has clearly enlisted with a bizzare constituency of radical clerics and angry misfits gone mad on fear, whether he really wants to admit it, even to himself.

According to most historians, Adolph Hitler jumped the shark about mid-summer in 1942. By the time Stalingrad had arrived on the scene, his Reich was stretched to the breaking point in every way, shape and form: the military, the financial system, German industry, the National Socialist infrastructure and even the people themselves. The party's best and brightest minds - among them the erstwhile Albert Speer, Hitler's personal architect and general think-tank onto himself, which would amount to the American Enterprise Institute in America today - had the strategy and tried to make the pieces all work together while Hitler stomped stark-raving insane through the halls of the Reich Ministry changing his mind on a daily basis, having consulted with astrologers and other devious minds hellbent on total annihilation. Even with direct access to The Fuhrer, Speer later revealed, the worm had already turned by the end of 1942 and the bitter epilogue was approaching in the form of Roosevelt, Stalin and Churchill.

But it took another three years and about four million more dead before Hitler finally realized what men like Speer, among his closest allies and trusted advisors knew all along - that the Reich had been hoisted up on the crutches of its delusional leader while the inner circle worked anxiously twenty-four-seven on meaningless plans built on an eroding base of slave labor and frenetic schemes to unleash super weapons and a new master breed of soldier who could turn the tide in the name of a once glorious Fatherland, neither of which occurred, possessed with the concept of a thousand-year empire.

Not a bit of this terminal craziness really matters now, and as his reward, Albert Speer spent another twenty years of his life locked up in a prison cell at Spandau for nothing less than blind and stupid loyalty, for which he was charged and convicted as a war criminal. Hitler was too mad to consider the concept of international tribunals and crimes against humanity - unless he was conducting them - so right about the time that the Soviets entered the suburbs of Berlin, he escaped the final humiliation by stepping down into the infamous bunker with his faithful bride, Eva Braun, and sucked on a round from a ceremonial Walther machine pistol after killing her as bogus consolation to the end.

At least that's what history says happened. Nobody really knows for sure. There were no pictures or suicide notes and there were only fragments of bone in the charred foxhole where the bodies were found burned beyond recognition - and the one alleged witness to Hitler's final demise was another personal adviser named Martin Bormann, who was rumored to have died alongside his Fuhrer, but also had this curious habit of showing up in places like Argentina and Paraguay and Brazil and Chile many years later, leaving Nazi hunters like Simon Wiesenthal and Serge Klarsfeld with many sleepless nights in South America.

By the end of 1942 Bormann was virtually Hitler's deputy and his closest collaborator, having an uncanny ability to exploit his weaknesses and personal peculiarities in order to increase his own power. Always in attendance on the Fuhrer, taking care of tiresome administrative detail and skilfully steering Hitler into approval of his own plans, Bormann acquired an inside track for displacing dangerous rivals like Goering, Goebbels, Speer and even Himmler, whose access to the Fuhrer was controlled by him. Bormann exploited his position of trust to build a stell curtain against reality, in which Hitler could indulge his fantasies and in which more sensible, conciliatory proposals from other members of the Party were screened from him. Bormann reduced everything to simple, administrative formulae that freed Hitler from the burdens of actual work. He drew up his calendar and decided whom he should see and whom he should not. Hitler rewarded these and other services by the trust he placed in Bormann, whom he once called "my most loyal Party comrade".

Bormann was the Karl Rove of his era, and his perverted relationship with Hitler seems collectively similar to the paranoid-frantic symbiosis of the Dubya-Rove fraternity that surfaced in the aftermath of September 11. We are drifting into some entirely creepy parallels here, and if I worked in this theme before the latest Gulf War dimension I would have expected some right wing bimbocon-in-training about a moment later posting comments about how I should live in France if I didn't like the outcome, and then worked over by some of Rove's dedicated freak-jobs from the bowels of the IRS for speaking - and any day now I have come to expect another "Enemies List" from the desk of Chief of Staff Andy Card, yet another of the gutless greed addicts drinking from the rethug Kool-Aid fountain.

But like Frank Zappa once said, "Government is the Entertainment Division of the military industrial complex." Onward, Christian Soldiers ... One deception, under God, indispensable, with liberty and justice for none ... Lord Almighty. Hittem where it hurts. Lithium is no longer available on credit. Amen.

The Impossibility of Reason and A Meaningless Confession

2005-01-02T19:49:00.000-08:00

"I have all the characteristics of a human being: blood, flesh, skin, hair; but not a single, clear, identifiable emotion, except for greed and disgust. Something horrible is happening inside of me and I don't know why. My nightly bloodlust has overflown into my days. I feel lethal, on the verge of frenzy. I think my mask of sanity is about to slip."
- Patrick Bateman from American Psycho

I have to admit that it was Dubya who got me involved in politics again, and now that he's getting hit from all sides, suddenly it's starting to feel like it has all been worthwhile. He is a freak in the truest sense of the word. As long as Dubya remains in the White House - and he will hide in Crawford more now, and will probably stay completely away once the bitter end draws near - the reality-based community could always find solace in the knowledge that we know where the universal foe slithers, somewhere alongside the ditch of his own mind. There is nowhere else to look, for evil lurks inside the soul of our preznut ready to strike at any moment - like the Patrick Bateman character in American Psycho, played with wonderful sociopathic precision.

"There is an idea of a Dubya; some kind of abstraction," he will tell you in a private moment. "But there is no real me: only an entity, something illusory. And though I can hide my cold gaze, and you can shake my hand and feel flesh gripping yours and maybe you can even sense our lifestyles are probably comparable... I simply am not there."

I have had my own blood feud with Dubya since he entered national politics and disembowled John McCain on the backroads of South Carolina, but I am not worried that I will end up in Hell beside him for it. We have all joined the ride with that vile little bastard, whether we liked it or not, and we will be better people for having survived his time. Dubya has that Nixonian quality of making his enemies seem more honorable than they might be in real life; and therefore, anyone who opposes him shares a strange sense of brotherhood. All of my closest friends and allies share a hyperbolic disgust for the man. My first mate, Dr. Carlos Mongrel, hates him, entire blogs are dedicated to this hate, talk shows are filled with hate on both sides of the political spectrum, and this vicious hatred has brought us all together in a fellowship of the damned.

"My need to engage in homicidal behavior on a massive scale cannot be corrected, but, ah, I have no other way to fulfill my needs."

That will be Dubya's legacy - the constant and undeniable hate in everyday life now choking off the air supply - and if you ever forgot how deep his rage is seeded, he would strike up and kill you just to spite his overbearing mother. Psychopaths are never short in the motivation department, Sparky. That is why God gave us the imagination to create electric chairs.

"You're a fucking ugly bitch. I want to stab you to death, and then play around with your blood."

Dubya likes to remind everyone that he's a Yale creation, and how he lasted there is anyone's guess. Most of his friends never went there - mostly because he had a difficult time fitting in with his classmates, along with a cultural estrangement from a campus torn apart by the Vietnam War - so it's hard to determine what exactly he did there beyond the C-minus work his campaign spin-meisters have spun into an ignorant Mother Goose tale told to children with free samples of black-tar heroin.

Patrick Bateman: He was into that whole Yale thing.
Donald Kimball: Yale thing?
Patrick Bateman: Yeah, Yale thing.
Donald Kimball: What whole Yale thing?
Patrick Bateman: Well, he was probably a closet homosexual who did a lot of cocaine. That whole Yale thing.

Many people have told me that words like freak and scumbag only serve to undermine the cause of open Political Discourse - which has some serious truth to it, but the usual complainers and Dubya apologists overlook the point. Dubya has been a product of the margins and the blind spots of honest political reporting, allowing him to sneak into the Oval Office almost without guilt or association. He appears so homespun to some people that they could vote for him based on a single photograph from the ranch. The tone and style are so American Wasteland, so Will Rogers giddy and high on prozac and xanax, that he has been able to slither through the political minefields and deep investigative analysis which has crippled many national figures on their climb to the summit. You have to get down and dirty with the rats and flies and cockroaches to take in Dubya completely, and the sudden moment of understanding is as revolting as it is excruciating.

Dubya's spirit will be with us until our minds snap or old age claims us - if you're me or the next guy on the street or John Kerry or Oprah Winfrey or Snoop Dogg or Larry King or the Olsen twins or your deranged half-brother the skinhead with a wall covered in Nazi propaganda facing a life long odyssey with hate in front of him. This is not a temporary thing. Your unborn children and the kids they will come to call their friends in the neighborhood will hear the name Dubya, and it will remind them of the ugly, neo-fascist essence that ended the American Century, because nobody from here on out will be left unscathed. Who knew that a pansexual freak from the bowels of West Texas was a megalo-crazed monster with a soul filled with torment and a presumptuous, greedy desire to be Boy King.

Patrick Bateman: Do you know what Ed Gein said about women?
David Van Patten: The maitre 'd at Canal Bar?
Patrick Bateman: No, serial killer, Wisconsin, the '50s.
Craig McDermott: So what did he say?
Patrick Bateman: "When I see a pretty girl walking down the street, I think two things. One part wants me to take her out, talk to her, be real nice and sweet and treat her right."
David Van Patten: And what did the other part think?
Patrick Bateman: "What her head would look like on a stick..."

That is Iraq, in synopsis, for readers with a deliriously short attention span. The total picture is a lot crazier and reads like the bizarre transcript from a kangaroo court. Anyone associated with the decision to invade is human scum, but only Powell was smart enough to waltz away free and clear his name. What's left now is a pack of barbaric, knuckle-dragging thugs with the moral capacity of brain-damaged ferrets on speed. But they will be Dubya's inner sanctum for the next few years, and he will not alter for a moment the rack of delusions that comprise his policy position on the Middle East unless he's caught red-handed on tape taking a bribe from Halliburton or Bechtel or Parsons or any of the Private Military Corporations currently vaporizing the Iraqi homeland into a parking lot for a McDonalds and a Circuit City.

"Hell is the impossibility of reason," the popular Vietnam allegory known as Platoon once admonished. And that's what Iraq now feels like ... Hell. And somewhere out there is the beast and he's hungry today, tonight and tomorrow.

How else are we to explain the administration's plans plans for lifetime detention of suspected terrorists, including hundreds that the U.S. government could not get convicted in an open court. As part of its newest - dare we say: final - solution, the Defense Department, which already holds 500 prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, plans to ask the U.S. Congress for $25 million to build a 200-bed prison to hold detainees. These suspect are unlikely to ever reach a military tribunal for lack of evidence. The new prison, dubbed Camp 6, would allow inmates more comfort and freedom than they have now, and would be designed for prisoners that have no more intelligence to share, which amounts to detainees that no longer respond favorably to "lit cigarettes [being placed] in ear openings" and other various "environmental manipulations." We all know that the administration appreciates the use of "stress positions" where prisoners are chained by hand and foot in the fetal position for 18-24 hours at a time during which most defecate on themselves. Or leaving these prisoners unconscious in small rooms where the temperature can exceed 100 degrees.

Patrick Bateman: Come on, Bryce. There are a lot more important problems than Sri Lanka to worry about.
Timothy Bryce: Like what?
Patrick Bateman: Well, we have to end apartheid for one. And slow down the nuclear arms race, stop terrorism and world hunger. We have to provide food and shelter for the homeless, and oppose racial discrimination and promote civil rights, while also promoting equal rights for women. We have to encourage a return to traditional moral values. Most importantly, we have to promote general social concern and less materialism in young people.

Ah, yes. The young people. Dubya has poisoned them forever. The range of search-and-destroy operations underway in Iraq should eventually fill the nation's V.A. hospitals with enough PTSD cases to make another generation forget all of the mental and emotional wounds suffered in places like Saigon, Da Nang, and the Mekong Delta. Killing and maiming the same people that you're trying to democratize can lead to some long-term flashbacks and hard periods of depression, especially at night when memories of killing a lot of innocent people creep back into view. I wonder if this is what Dubya learned at Yale during the salad days of Nixon's secret plan to end the Vietnam conflict: "Grab them by the balls, and their hearts and minds will follow" was the standing order back then. The Chimperor certainly did not learn from past mistakes, and for that he should be sent to Gitmo - or Camp 6 - until they can pin a charge on him that will stick.

Dubya will be found guilty of many things, to be sure, but he will be remembered most as the classic example of a bonafide carpetbagger and capitalist pimp who spent just enough time in charge to steal your valuables and shit in your bed. But he also has proven that he will reach across the ocean to shit in even more beds, and for that crime he will become known as the most wretched and disgraceful leader of the first half of the 21st Century, and he will bear the scarlett letter "W" for weasel in our history books, only because Dubya won't have a Henry Kissinger to massage the otherwise rough edges of his failed and treacherous Presidency. By degrading and scandalizing the United States as the world's only free superpower, and by fleecing its citizens of billions through the somewhat legal appropriation of U.S Treasury resources, the sheer mention of his name will cause young women to faint and old men to take up pitchforks and lanterns just to rid themselves of the beast's terrifying memory.

"There are no more barriers to cross. All I have in common with the uncontrollable and the insane, the vicious and the evil, all the mayhem I have caused and my utter indifference toward it I have now surpassed. My pain is constant and sharp and I do not hope for a better world for anyone, in fact I want my pain to be inflicted on others. I want no one to escape, but even after admitting this there is no catharsis, my punishment continues to allude me and I gain no deeper knowledge of myself, no new knowledge can be extracted from my telling. This confession has meant nothing."

Fresh Blood on the Tracks of Hopelessness

2005-01-01T13:58:00.000-08:00

There hasn't been a soul in Washington that has called Dubya a braindead rodent yet, at least not in a public setting, but from the quiet corner tables at Cafe Milano - an orgy of aristocrats and insiders with gold American Express cards and diamond-encrusted jewelry, socialites with backless tops and hard-to-detect foreign accents - they whisper much uglier things these days: dope, liar, fiend, village idiot, hopeless hack, ignorant, criminal, white trash, latent homosexual and dumber than Gerald Ford during his worst spill on the golf course.

No one will compare him to Ronald Reagan or Barry Goldwater anymore, or SpongeBob SquarePants, for that matter - and if another presidential election were to be held tomorrow, Dubya would find himself on the next flatbed out of DC and back to Crawford for afternoon highballs with the rest of his degenerate cabal.

Most Americans are still ambivalent about our Child Preznut. A recent CNN/USA Today/Gallup Poll showed him with a 49% job approval rating - a wretched crazy train leading toward a slow-burning political death if you are a student of history - but even his closest advisors are getting worried less than a month after he declared that he had a mandate and intended to expend the political capital granted by his re-election, which since that time has amounted to little more than four weeks in the village stocks getting pelted by rotten fruit and rocks. "He's in for the fight of his political life," said one of his most trusted confidants. "We aren't sure he can withstand another media screw-up about cabinet appointees or relief efforts or the Iraqi conflict. Holy mother of freaking God! We put our dicks on the line to get him back in the White House. It scares the shit out of us to think that all of it could go up in thin air because he hasn't got the good sense to use the vetting process or get the facts before speaking freely in front of the cameras."

"Utter bullshit!" I shot back. "Dubya's never checked the facts, even with his own trust fund. The rest of the world is just catching up with his gameplan."

All of which is true. Everything he has touched since giving his acceptance speech has been a complete disaster - and he owns every one of these failures, in accelerated continuity, from letting Colin Powell walk away to appearing cheap in the face of the worst human disaster since Pompei ... Only God must have the compelling answers at this point: Condi Rice is totally unqualified for the job based on her 9/11 testimony, and Bernie Kerik played the role of perverted policeman so well that he could play the dark and cringe-inducing Harvey Keitel role in The Bad Lieutenant without missing a beat. "Vampires are lucky, they can feed on others. We gotta eat away at ourselves. We gotta eat our legs to get the energy to walk. We gotta come, so we can go. We gotta suck ourselves off. We gotta eat away at ourselves til there's nothing left but appetite. We give, and give and give crazy. Cause a gift that makes sense ain't worth it. Jesus said seventy times seven. No one will ever understand why, why you did it. They'll just forget about you tomorrow, but you gotta do it." After the nasty investigative stories of Mob connections began to take hold, he will be lucky to ever get any closer than a sniffing distance to a legitimate police force; the tabloids will beat him down like a creeping lizard every time he appears near a badge. The Weekly World News will publish undercover photos of him and a naked Judith Regan in his Ground Zero lovepit, right next to the exposé on Osama's secret cache of Midget Suicide Bombers, which the terrorist network is planning to stash in the overhead compartments of commercial airliners.

Data from recent reliable reports indicate Al-Qaeda has been planning "Operation Explosive Elf" for months, but recently stepped up the effort after Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge resigned. "We noticed an increased amount of 'chatter' just after Ridge announced his departure from the department," says our source. "Perhaps they felt we were more vulnerable without the man who makes the call on yellow, orange and red threat levels."

So freaking what? It is terribly hard to feel any sense of forgiveness for the arrogant and terminally heinous demagogues who appear to be so firmly entrenched in Dubya's inner sanctum, offering us petulant freaks like Fat Bernie and the wayward Condi who never met a carpet that didn't fit her knees or backside. Or even Alberto. Yes-siree, little old Alberto Gonzales, the next Attorney General of the United States, who has a growing problem with background checks. He will have little or no legal clout after the dust settles. "No mas" will be recorded on his voice mail. And the Justice Department and the FCC and the FTC and the SEC will piss in his morning coffee because he's got the look of a drunken nerd.

Dubya has already retreated back to the Crawford bunker more and more knowing he's been treated much the same way. He has butchered these last few weeks so badly that once-loyal senators and generals share bizarre "faggot" jokes about his hand gestures and lip expressions over lunch. Even his mother has begun calling him a "pathetic chimp," and his wife is considering a change back to her maiden name to escape the constant ridicule. Close family connections are openly worrying that the twins have become even more enamored with the adult entertainment industry, in concert with their new affinity for charitable causes and creative sexual positions in the back of limousines without tinted windows.

"Ha, ha, hee-haw. Even Robert Kennedy had his sexual indiscretions," says the grotesque Patrick Buchanan. "Perhaps Jenna could be the new Homeland Security chief."

Perhaps. Just never looked at it that way. At least she could get past the background check. And she has no felonies that would creep up from the depths - none that we know of. So what the hell? She could always lie about her age and qualifications. The geared-up simpletons in the White House will believe almost anything, but they expect us to believe even more.

But not this guy, Sparky. The only time I ever believed anything out of Dubya's mouth was when he said it would be better if he didn't have to explain anything to anyone - which he had once said to The Washington Post - and that was enough proof for me. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, the old saying goes - and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron. The wingnuts and fundies will declare, "At least he's our moron." And even then, his own friends are choosing up sides and taking names.

It is among the most harrowing tales to fallout from the 2004 campaign: The same idiots who supported an enfant terrible through a crazy summer of bankrupt political discourse by deceiving and outright lying about a veteran's noble service in an unpopular war are now becoming afraid of each other ... way back in the good old days down in the Texas Governor's mansion they were an extremely tight and efficient team, and they always knew where the enemy lived.

But now the rules have changed. The enemy hides in the dark and many of them were once friends.

Mea Culpas at the Sunset of the American Century

2004-12-30T22:34:00.000-08:00

Welcome to Crawford. It is very much similar to Mexico without the Mexicans, when you come to grips with the comparison; just another pack of wild and corrupt public officials trying to rape the countryside. It is located in one of those land-that-time-forgot states - like Utah and Arkansas and Kentucky - that was originally established by fugitives, outlaws, degenerate gamblers, freakish white supremacists and wretched deviants who couldn't carve out a "civilized" existence in the former colonies because of criminal instincts or acquired diseases such as cholera, syphilis, scarlet fever, smallpox or a deranged sense of faith in the Lord Almighty.

The wild and turbulent plains were not just a place or an ideal of riches beyond the Mississippi River or past the crest of the Rocky Mountains or the grand Indian Wars slaughter in the hopes of cheap land and a never-ending supply of critters to extinguish in the name of American capitalism ... It took four generations of rednecks to realize that they had actually lost The Civil War and that the Confederate flag was highly offensive to some people. We apparently had purchased an enduring national unity at the cost of a federal income tax in 1861 for something like 3% on incomes above $800, and at the cost of $6.2 billion (US) through the issuance of bonds, while Lincoln - a Republican, mind you - was accused of unconstitutional federal taxation of personal incomes, corporate income, and inheritances, in addition to excises on manufactured goods, alcohol, and tobacco and the creation of the Internal Revenue Service in 1863.

It was not much longer, however, before a tidal wave of feeble-minded white trash hacks swarmed into the business of US Government and set up a manner of redistributing wealth that taxed everything from whale oil to whiskey to Winchesters to white slaves and prostitution and gambling and a needy Jesus and a boatload of non-existent gold mines just a stagecoach's passage through cannibalism and frontier debauchery.

A thriving economy rose from the ashes of the Civil War, done in large part through the federalized system - laws such as the Homestead Act of 1862, granting 160 acres of land virtually free to any citizen willing to occupy it for five years; and the National Bank Act of 1863, which created a national banking system and stabilized currency and reduced the confusing state bank note system; along with a host of other legislative efforts such as tariffs to protect Northern industries followed by the transcontinental railroad through federally chartered corporations receiving free public lands and generous loans. And with that, it was only a few days into the sunset for a new American Dream, not very far at all ...

Anyways ... it's a terribly long story, and any petty references to The Big Valley television series will erode this story to meaningless pulp. Now is not the time. Our task is to take a quick look at the heavy political traditions of these forgotten states. Some of our best congressional minds - and many of the worst - have materialized from the backwoods and rolling hills and open prairies and dark waters to become statesmen, principled citizens, senators, governors, supreme court justices and distinguished political leaders. The list ranges from John Marshall Harlan and John Thomas Scopes and Stanley Forman Reed to the immortal William Fulbright of Arkansas and the omnipotent Sam Rayburn of Texas.

These were real - and sometimes fire-breathing - giants of their day. They aspired to public service and fought the good fight, honorably. Voters went to the polls on Election Day to pull the lever for politicians like Fulbright and Rayburn and left the ballot booth stuffed with pride and even had a good word or two for their selection because they represented something larger than self-interest and took a monumental stand when righteousness was on their side. Sure there were party loyalties, and not everyone agreed in lock-step, but there was a majesty within the political process which made them formidable adversaries built on fairness, integrity and candor bringing respect from both sides of the aisle.

The 21st century process doesn't promote these same feelings today, and the hardcore constituency of Dubya and Cheney will never know the magic of Democracy in action - which is a terribly sad phenomenon, because it is a truly wonderful experience to get up early in the morning and march into your local polling place amongst friends and leave feeling proud of your decision at the moment of truth.

I've walked in that territory, Sparky, and the feeling's supreme when your conscience is clear. Even to this day, more than 30 years later, I still have friends in Massachusetts who feel vindicated for choosing Gerorge McGovern in 1972, instead of the terminal crook known as Richard Nixon ... The pathetic freaks who went with the majority that year have been bitch-slapped for eternity, while the only state to go for the challenger shares a sense of perverse glee for not having taken the bait. To them, it was a badge of honor to vote against Richard Nixon - and it will always be an honor to vote for a Democrat just to spite the GOP and everything it stands for. Say what you will about Massachusetts, but it is the birthplace of freedom, after all, and revolution and political discourse and excellent education is in the bloodstream. And that counts for something in my mind - good, bad or indifferent. Any politician who dumps on Massachusetts and what it represents is an imbecile of the highest order with no connection to anything American.

Now look at Dubya. He is a freak and a cheat and a miserable failure, and while not even working at it he has presided over the utter failure of the political process in a new century, having said that he was a compassionate conservative who wants to improve partisan relationships. He is a humorless stump of a being and has been a career incompetent at anything he has ever touched and will go down in history as having committed more crimes and treasonous behavior in and around the White House than Richard Nixon would have been convicted had he not resigned first ... Trickie Dick was a genetically engineered miscarriage of a preznut and so is Dubya. They both have come to personify what H.L. Mencken once described as "the art of running the circus from the monkey cage."

Of course, Dubya needs a lot of help. Even after the South Asian disasters of last week, he still thinks tsunamis are something you ask your attorney to do with Vietnamese immigrants seeking refugee status in America. Ho, ho, ha! A shot of oafish humor across the bow. Dubya wouldn't find amusement in it and neither would Dick Cheney, unless you had a wad of cash that you wanted to donate to the re-election petty cash fund. Both would give you that tough-guy, droopy-eyed stare while watching you drop the check on an aide, and wish you good luck at finding the polls on Election Day.

Stand up and face the music, Sparky. The single reason why most of us were motivated this time around was Dubya, and it was this way since he first used Jeb to spike the vote totals in Florida ... There was no other reason, just as there is no reason to be ashamed for the voting against him. The 48% of the electorate, if you believe 90% of what you see and more than half of what you hear, will find comfort in the notion that only one state (and, yes, the District of Columbia) in 1972 saw Nixon for what he was: a dangerous and borderline sociopath who spent his most of his adult life looking for alibis instead of an honest explanation, while trying to whisk under the rug the most divided and cancerous public display of faith-wrapped greed, under the guise of lame-brain rhetoric that has become the Sunset of the American Century - the tragic and inevitable collapse of an experiment once known as democracy brought down by low-rent preachers, treacherous lobbyists, corporate cronies and exurbian dope fiends with a never-ending prescription of ignorance. Dubya has no more faith in the future of the American Spirit than he does in the future of Prime Minister Allawi and a fractured Iraq, and in his soul he is beginning to wonder how much of this collapse will really be blamed on him, marking his stay in the Big House the worst since the days of Herbert Hoover. It is not strange these days to hear Congress speculate that events on the ground are not going well - either in the United States or Iraq, for that matter - and whether the preznut would be better off toning down his Middle East policy and starving the beast known as the federal budget.

The Democratic political machine has been openly wondering too. It was not some peculiar shift in policy or a matter of finding a national message that has caused the opposition to lay low while the Howard Dean's and Simon Rosenberg's are left sizing up the tatters they are sure to inherit ... Instead, there is an educated guess that the brewing shit-storm and the "blood-moon" in the sky are harbingers of a sickening new year, and whose highly compensated advisers believe it might be the smarter play to give the preznut enough rope and space to hang himself. Which may be the right strategy. Lyndon Johnson had the same idea in 1968, when he ducked the sucker punch that was his Vietnam policy and ran off like a wounded hyena.

Which brings back to mind an earlier point raised during the campaign, Dubya's appeal is time sensitive and highly tenuous. Winning the last election was a narrow escape for him, and he almost fell like his daddy ... so take it under advisement: Your rights as American citizens won't get you anything but a hard beat-down by this Administration. This gang of egregious crooks has no concept of mea culpa, because it feels it owes no explanation and views the idea of a free and open government as a major inconvenience. Martin Bormann would have felt at home with this crowd.

And I guess it was an old attorney friend of mine who once said that Dubya was a volatile mix of Richard Nixon and Rudolf Hess. Then again ... why goddamn it, Sparky. I think it was me who said it first.

Freaks in Toyland and a Transvestite Wails On

2004-12-27T10:07:00.000-08:00

The political game dropped another few rungs in the ladder over the weekend, a gruesome clanging and screeching of raw steel being bent into pretzels - a terribly bad shreiking of metal against concrete that can't quite grip the edges or mesh with other steel beams, much less anything at all, as the Grand Pole of Deviance came crashing down in an oily pile of sludge. That is the one thing that most demogogues cling onto with a death grip as they reach frenetically for the surface, away from the long black pole leading down into the abyss - not like the shiny golden one around which most strippers swing purposefully for dollar tips from lunchtime degenerates.

But this metal shaft is different. It is flat black like a charred piece of metal and greasy from human remains, with deep and frantic scars and an assorted ballet of teeth marks holding on for dear life, leaving the observer with a heavy and nauseous feeling if left to gaze at them for very long. Many irrecoverable souls have fought gravity along this pole and slid off into nothingness, and only a few have ever made it back alive. It's like a drop into social purgatory with a long, dizzying ride off into the blackness.

The end. Instant closure. Where the freaks gather in sweatshop formation, blinded, and the damned moan and shout to no one in particular while enveloped by total darkness. Richard Nixon is down there greeting the contestants. So is Spiro Agnew and Roy Cohn, along with John and Martha Mitchell. Daddy Bush will join them soon enough ... There is also Wally George, Morton Downey Jr., Jim Bakker, Strom Thurmond and Joe McCarthy. And then there is the Hall of Fame wing, the hardcore purveyors of filth on a grand scale: Lee Atwater, Chairman Mao, Herman Goering, Boss Tweed, Lester Maddox, Vlad the Impaler and the Marquis De Sade, along with a sidecar cast of minions and incorporeal beings like Jesse Helms, Herbert Hoover and the unimaginable vileness of Josef Goebbels.

It is an abominable wasteland for the special freaks of nature. They are a discordant chorus of hypocrisy and shame sung at light speed - a freakish Circle of Doom, those singular and festering public figures who come along every once in a while to remind us what decency is not, the grotesque monstrosities of the day who can waddle for so long in the slime that not even a genius like Albert Einstein could explain their being.

There is little hope for the redeemable - never mind the Larry Flynts and Hugh Hefners and Howard Sterns of the world - who will be invoked by these dedicated morons as a reason for their existence, to admonish what they secretly hold as a matter of petty jealousy because they cannot ever be original in anything they do. Being outrageous doesn't translate to audacity with a noble purpose, and it is difficult for the oridinary American to accept that a truly evil person, a ruthless cretin with the sense of a dung beetle and the soul of a rock lizard, is about to be sworn in as preznut for another four years ... And he will deliver another bizarre gang with him, a cruel network of attorneys and shucksters and pimps and fixers who will continue to loot the US Treasury, bend the rules, rewrite the laws in their own image, and pop enough Vivarin and jolt soda to stay awake for days at a time in the hopes of finding another reason to declare war, officially, on some new collection of brown people who don't buy into the American purpose or God's destructive plan.

To The People Of Islam: Just think: If we'd invaded your countries, killed your leaders and converted you to Christianity YOU'D ALL BE OPENING CHRISTMAS PRESENTS RIGHT ABOUT NOW!
Merry Christmas

Happy Giving Tree Festival To All, And To All A Good Night!

There are two Halloweens in America these days - the real one in October and every time Ann Coulter speaks, and a Hallmark moment for the beastly ice princess usually involves razor blades in apples served to inner city kids who could someday sell crack to addicted suburbanites. But the confirmation - with the sordid and grandiose thought process of an enraptured serial rapist at the park on Sunday - waged on from the tangle of stretch marks she calls a mouth, insisting that since the attacks of September 11, "we've won two wars, liberated millions of people from monstrous regimes, presided over one election in Afghanistan and are about to see elections in Iraq and among the Palestinian people. Focusing like a laser beam on the big picture, liberals are upset that, during this period, the Secretary of Defense used an autopen."

Indeed. Coulter deliberately added fuel to the fire, for no other reason to earn more rethug talking points time for being outrageous and loyal. Imagine Leni Riefenstahl without the Wagner soundtrack and a transvestite's flamboyant wardrobe - and with a protruding Adam's Apple in stereo - and you are left with the decrepit moral shell and rack of pestilence that is Ann Coulter on a good day. Spray her with a flat-black can of Rustoleum - the Dom Perignon of spraypaint cans - and the vapor would transform into chunks instantly. Ann Coulter and her ilk have become the classic example of what many reality based political thinkers are calling these days: The Golden Age of Treachery ... It is a terrible conceptual event, a miserable form of reality someplace between Donald "Redrum" Rumsfeld and Alberto "Little Il Duce" Gonzales.

No human being between Calexico, Washington and Wall Street has been accused of more fraud, outright lies and shameful legal proceedings than Redrum and Little Il Duce - but they are like folk heros for a new age of deranged politics: The Faith-based and Fraudulent 21st Century, The Golden Age of Treachery.

Both of these fools would be heavy favorites to win the Dunce of the Week award in any normal news week. They would rank right up there with Dubya, formerly of the Texas Governor Mansion and the rigged election or two, who is a firm enduring candidate for King of the Treacherous just for breathing.

But neither of these scumbags will walk off with the Dunce of the Week hardware this time ... That wondrous honor belongs to Ann Coulter, who waltzed off for the holiday season with one more gutter utterance for the damned, then probably retreated back to the same South Beach transvestite revue for a round of Una Paloma Blanca with the rest of the closeted rethug freaks still clutching their J. Edgar Hoover memoirs.

Until the electorate gets fed up with this cycle of stupidity and punishment, the Freaks in Toyland will rule the roost.

Yuletide Markings on The Beast

2004-12-25T22:20:00.000-08:00

The word "antichrist" appears in just three passages in the Bible (in the New Testament letters known as 1 John and 2 John); it does not appear at all in the Book of Revelation. Nevertheless, the idea of an Antichrist is central to the apocalyptic world view that sees human history as a struggle between God and Satan for the fate of mankind.

According to most Christian prophesies of the End Time, the Antichrist will act as Satan's chief agent on earth during this period. The Antichrist - a sort of evil twin of Jesus in many ways, captured by many High Renaissance painters in cataclysmic tones and serving as a mnemonic to Dante's Inferno - will forge a one-world government through promises of peace. But when Jesus returns, he will expose the Antichrist as an impostor, defeat him in the battle of Armageddon, and reign with the Christian martyrs for a thousand years on earth.

Robert Fuller, in his book Naming the Antichrist, notes that modern apocalypticists believe the Book of Revelation "contains much information about the Antichrist - who will emerge as a 'beast from the sea' to be Satan's ally in a last, desperate assault on Christ and his church." This "parody and mirror opposite of Christ" will be identifiable in a number of ways:

1. Promising peace to those who follow him, he will rise to a position of great power.
2. With the help of his own false prophet, the Antichrist will gain control of the world economy, by forcing each person "to be marked on the right hand or the forehead, so that no one can buy or sell unless he has the mark, that is, the name of the beast or the number of its name . . . six hundred and sixty-six."
3. One of the heads of the beast also "seemed to have a mortal wound, but its mortal wound was healed, and the whole earth followed the beast with wonder."

Myths, hearsay, urban legends and delusions die hard in America the Beautiful. We depend on them for the extra magnitude they offer, the antidote to explaining the entire breadth of anything, only because we have no capacity to look beyond the narrow tunnels of most people's reality. Strange folk heros, freakish public figures and genius-level champions live on in our demented pantheon as living proof to the simple among us, because they need them to soothe the reality that the utter domination of the high-capitalist working model is not seen as the last exit to the ad-infinitum of American life. Look at O.J. Simpson, they admonish; he got away with a double homicide and beat the justice system like it was a poker tournament at The Sands. Or Dick Cheney, the Al Capone of our time. And the preznut - Dubya - who has played the part of vile demon and idiot at the brink of salvation so well, like a defrocked priest in some kind of degenerate tragedy, that even if he wasn't The Beast he couldn't quite turn down the role now because he has been marked Chimperor of the Damned. Some would even call him Amerikkka's Apocalypse Preznut - but these aren't the straight and narrow among his flock of degenerate lobbyist freaks and corporate zealots and frightened security moms, who instead have joined the ride for nothing less than sheer wonder if the anti-christ should ever show his or her face.

Most wingnuts take the question of survival at face value, a pretty sure bet these days, but it's becoming apparently clear as the GOP fills with more angry rednecks and faith worshippers, that there is just not enough good old radical puritanism to push the evangelical agenda further. A saving grace may come from a new fundamentalist cadre called the "Muggletonians," who have been termed "God's Pathetic Answer" of the American Theological Movement and the "inconspicuous freaks" of the Administration. The Muggles are typically young and completely brainwashed believers; they have been busy organizing christian based community centers, free income tax advice fellowships, free home schooling programs and pseudo-political indoctrination clinics designed to motivate support of right-wing candidates. They scour local communities heavily during the holiday season, preying on depressed and wayward citizens down on their luck, and ask for everything from spare change to day-old bread to canned goods to lumber and plumbing supplies. The Muggles' agenda is posted in every church fellowship center - often with a Third World child or shanty town pictured in black-and-white with a red question mark through it - asking for donations of clothing, hammers, screwdrivers, shoes, winter coats and anything else that vagrant fundamentalists could use to erect self-supporting right-wing communes.

The idea and mission statement spring from a pair of 17th century English counter-revolutionary groups, called the Muggletonians and Fifth Monarchists, who shared a number of disturbing parallels with today's morality play in national politics. Muggletonians had a two part history into the seventeenth century. From 1652-58, under the primary leadership of John Reeve (1608-1658), or Reeves, the "Prophet of God" and his cousin Lodowick Muggleton (1609-1698). The second period from 1658-98, under the general leadership of Lodowick Muggleton. According to the Book of Revelations, Chapter XI, in the latter days God would appoint "two witnesses" who will preach to an ungodly world in preparation for the beginning of the final days. Reeve and Muggleton were celebrated as the "two witnesses" according to their followers. The Millennium theme was a powerful biblical message during the Interregnum. The Fifth Monarchy Men or the Fifth Monarchists were a quasi-political religious movement which was prominent from 1649-1661. Based on a strong millennium message, they hoped to reform Parliament and the government for the imminent coming of Christ's' Kingdom on Earth. The movement was prominent throughout the Commonwealth and was organized. The "Fifth Monarchy" or the "Fifth Kingdom" is a biblical reference. The reference is based of the Old Testament (Daniel 2: 44) of a prophesy in a dream by King Nebuchadnezzar. He envisioned five kingdoms in history, and the last, or Fifth Kingdom would usher in a new kingdom on earth. Millenarianism was a popular message of the Interregnum (1649-1660). "The godly being in league with God ..." (1626) wrote Thomas Gataker.

* * *

Political and religious mumbo jumbo is not a purely American invention, unlike rhythm and blues and the zone blitz. But in only 228 years we have raised the bullshit meter to a place where the Richter Scale now could pick up the tremors along the West Coast. Day after day in email we are presented with the utterly meaningless assessment of the Democratic Party's current fact-finding endeavor and election recount efforts and future strategic positioning vis-a-vis the 2004 Presidential Selection operation, hoping that just one nugget of truth would win the soothsayer instant recognition in the Washington power circles responsible for the Semantics and Bullshit Hall of Fame.

The Democrats' action script, all along, was to lay in the weeds and talk like Mighty Mouse on crack - just a great bunch of guys and former beauty queens who got punked by the gutter incompetence of Dubya B. Moron - and then emerge at the midterm elections with a boatload of real-world answers with a progressive slant and three or four rising stars from within the party establishment who could beat down the Rethug gates in 2008.

But now the preznut, often given to delegating his affairs to used-car salesmen from Houston with enough petty cash to feed the DC area's stripper population, had looked the other way while his Defense Secretary and civilian Pentagon authorities ran a War Crimes and Disinformation factory from the basement sector of the White House, and very few Democrats have sat up and taken notice while a general uneasiness and blinding culpability has ushered the holiday season.

The tone feels completely out of place, like Martha Stewart running for Congress or Larry King with his own show on the Food Network. Never mind that Dubya is too dumb and too guilty to duck the charges. In the face of general Democratic pessimism, there has been movement in the Vegas book numbers: the freaks in the numbers game and in the sacred halls of power in places like London, Beijing and Moscow are making serious adjustments in their early approaches to the preznut's failure to secure a January Iraqi election. Fresh events have already changed "the political landscape," as they say in the public opinion research business, and the names on the organization chart are more than rumbling on their pegs.

After all, Donald "Redrum" Rumsfeld cannot be explained away as God's inherent Plan, and he is not a Cuban burgular or even a rogue Marine lieutenant colonel, although his chances of seeing tax day in 2005 are getting very grim ... And all it would take is a quiet ceremony, like LBJ did with McNamara perhaps, with Dubya pinning the Medal of Freedom on his barrel chest and then whisking him off to another World Bank creation where he could never hurt a Humvee or an Iraqi citizen again. Now he's looking at a Sammy "The Bull" Gravano moment, and potentially utter disgrace or a prison term, once Redrum turns on him for federal immunity, and many gray-haired distinguished gentlemen with rodent-like features start pushing administration insiders off the cruise ship.

Perhaps Cheney should bow out first, so Dubya can invoke his own Gerald Ford model to whom he could hand off the duty roster - maybe John McCain or Dick Lugar - but don't overlook the truth, they should both resign due to the utter waste that has been our Iraqi excursion. This one is not going to get any better for Americans wanting a quick resolution to this mess, and Dubya should sneak out the back gate before the Democrats wake up and their new soldiers start smelling blood. In a holiday season filled with images of apocalypse and recollections of the beast, animal sacrifice seems like child's play and the media is starting to sharpen its knives.

Idiots Brought Weeping to Their Knees

2004-12-23T22:29:00.000-08:00

Well ... the preznut broke into another of his gross motor stylings the other day, or at least that's what the opposition says when he busts a blood vessel or starts showing symptoms of Tourette's Syndrome on network television, and while the final conclusion is a bit hazy because of complications arising from an out-of-date drug test, it is safe to assume that his urological functions are normal. If problems arise, Dubya will be whisked off to Crawford for a long period of detoxification and given another chance to pass the annual drug screening test.

It's really not a big deal, and somewhat inevitable. There are a ton of strong narcotics being used in the White House these days leading up to Christmas, as always when a nation is at war and the entire Islamic world knows your preznut has a "Jesus Scare" in his heart, but Dubya will never be tested for these kinds of drugs. Traces of haldol or viagra or high dosage treatments of antibiotics may be revealed in the lab, but there would never be a hint of crystal meth, ecstacy or black tar heroin. The doctors at the Bethesda Naval Clinic would never allow the preznut's urine to be tested that way - and besides, just to keep matter clean there is always a CIA stand-in who could donate the sample for him.

The preznut would only admit to using legal drugs, the ones produced by a multi-billion-dollar industry that has in its glorious past hawked almost anything with a lethal side effect or low grade buzz, everything from Thalidomide in the 1960's because of birth defects like shorter limbs and an extra nose or two and Lotronex in 1997 for causing deadly intestinal conditions and the diabetes drug Rezulin in 2000 because it caused severe liver damage. There are now a series of designer growth hormones on the market today that would make Victor Conte blush with envy - by prescription only - that could beef up Jenna to the size of Andre the Giant in roughly two months, if she suddenly got the urge to join the ranks of Vince McMahon's World Wrestling Entertainment, Inc. Of course, everyone is doing a bit of Smackdown in Iraq this Christmas at Camp Speicher, just north of Saddam Hussein’s hometown of Tikrit, and the WWE would never surrender the prime opportunity of joining Donald "Redrum" Rumsfeld for a little holiday cheer with some reluctant participants of "Operation Oil Ain't Free".

The emotional show featured heart-warming footage of troops telling their personal stories as well as video of the Superstars interacting with the soldiers. WWE visited more than 15 different bases while in Iraq, touching heroic troops who were defending some of the most dangerous outposts in the country. And the troops did see some nice wrestling action as well, led by Undertaker’s rematch with Heidenreich, the unstable monster who has twice cost Taker a shot at the WWE Championship. As usual, Heidenreich was unpredictable, deciding to leave the ring once Undertaker got the upper hand, eventually getting counted out.

All things are possible in the sordid worlds of professional wrestling and high stakes politics if you know the right doctors - or even a few wrong ones too, of course, like the whack-jobs who tested LSD-25 and super-hallucinogens such as BZ on combat troops to see if they could handle shock treatment and the psychological and physiological limitations of interrogation, or the twisted history of unethical quacks who worked over several state prison populations with enough mescaline and acid to make a petty shoplifter become a rabid sex offender, just to see what would happen with the brain chemistry, as it were. The walls of human equilibrium can be mighty narrow given the proper narcotics and intentions, if necessary ... An average sized Iraqi fruit stand vendor could be made to look and perform like Jevon Kearse of the Philadelphia Eagles with the right treatment plan and a crash course on the 4-3 defense.

Not everybody is in favor of these blind leaps of faith into the Iraqi countryside during the holiday season - but there are always the righteous believers in this doomed mission and they will push the limits of good common sense, in the name of the greater good and their governmental careers, and it is hard to keep them from pressing ahead. It would serve the hard pessimist to remember that they all laughed at the Wright Brothers, and for the better part of his adult life Ronald Reagan was regarded as a B-movie dunce with a memory problem who couldn't amount to anything in the world of politics.

It is also worth noting that Rumsfeld touched down about a stone's throw from the WWE to deliver his own holiday greetings amid tight security at an air base in northern Iraq where an insurgent’s attack killed 14 U.S. troops and eight other people earlier this week. Hoping to demonstrate a new level of compassion for the troops’ sacrifices - since tossing aside the rubber stamp he once used to sign his name on the condolence letters sent to military families - Redrum landed in darkness and bolted immediately from his plane to a combat surgical hospital where many of the bombing victims were treated after Tuesday’s lunchtime attack on a mess tent.

“The focus of the trip is to thank the troops and wish them a Merry Christmas,” he said.

Several high-profile rethug chickenhawks have publicly criticized Redrum, prompting the preznut to defend him Monday as a “good human being who cares deeply about the military and deeply about the grief that war causes.” But Dubya is not really concerned with Redrum's longevity these days; he will be long gone from the Big House by the time the real shitstorm hits in Iraq, and the final National Intelligence Estimate on the fallout will be presumably left in the hands of nauseating, lesser known political banshees - like Bill Frist, Rudi Guilliani, or even Pat Robertson if he decides to throw his hat in the ring for another run with the infidels.

But so what? Dubya may even take a couple more whacks at the root right after Christmas. Perhaps a bombing campaign to honor Nixon's "rolling thunder" operation in Cambodia.. The entire length of the Potomac River will bubble like a stream of newly liberated lava when the child preznut takes his next dose of klonopin to control the shakes and tries to offer his simple theological rants back down in the bunkers of the Pentagon, which is now spending about a billion dollars a day to keep the elections on a crash course with widespread Jihad in the month of January.

Even John McCain and Stormin Norman Schwarzkopf are becoming as antsy, and they were there when this ride had training wheels. Asked about his confidence in the secretary’s leadership, McCain recalled fielding a similar question a couple weeks ago. “I said no. My answer is still no. No confidence,” McCain said.

Schwarzkopf, interviewed on MSNBC-TV’s Hardball, criticized Redrum for his reply to a soldier in Kuwait over the lack of armor on many military vehicles used in Iraq. “I was very, very disappointed — no, let me put it stronger — I was angry by the words of the secretary of defense when he laid it all on the Army, as if he, as the secretary of defense, didn’t have anything to do with the Army and the Army was over there doing it themselves, screwing up,” Schwarzkopf said. “In the final analysis, I think we are behind schedule in Iraq ... I don’t think we counted on it turning into jihad.”

If you think the current specter of violence in Iraq is horrific, wait until you see the Sunnis and Shiites and Iranian-sponsored factions do battle for control of the polls on a scale not seen since Beirut in the 1980s. It's even even scaring Tom Friedman of The New York Times, who has as much credibility on this topic as Kurt Waldheim's childhood dedication to Judiasm. "We may lose because of the defiantly wrong way that Donald Rumsfeld has managed this war," an outraged Friedman now states, "and the cynical manner in which Dick Cheney, George Bush and - with some honorable exceptions - the whole Republican right have tolerated it. Many conservatives would rather fail in Iraq than give liberals the satisfaction of seeing Mr. Rumsfeld sacked."

Then again, you could always see the right doctor or tune in for some WWE Smackdown in Iraq. In a land of laughter and forgetting, the pill pusher is king.

Dubya Was Such a Quiet Man, a Chronic Bed-Wetter Who Had a Problem with Pets

2004-12-20T22:57:00.000-08:00

"If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier...just as long as I'm the dictator..."
- Dubya, Washington, DC, Dec 18, 2000

"I'm the commander - see, I don't need to explain - I don't need to explain why I say things. That's the interesting thing about being the President. Maybe somebody needs to explain to me why they say something, but I don't feel like I owe anybody an explanation."
- Dubya, Washington Post, Nov 19, 2002

The headline in tomorrow's New York Times says Dubya acknowledges "mixed success" in his personal hell hole known as Iraq, while clutching the memory of Donald "Redrum" Rumsfeld like a bad magician does with a rubber chicken. They suck eggs together for breakfast nowadays and wander back and forth through the Rose Garden, spitting frequently into the manicured lawn and brooding about the daily news from the front, even though they can't pronounce the names of the cities without phonetic cue cards ... Something about Najuddah and Saddamville outside of Bangladesh; those towel-wearing little buggers who are vaporizing kids with car bombs and shelling temples with RPG's, and now he has the ACLU ratcheting up the odds by a bunch of lefty commies who - in Dubya's own words - want "the justice system [to] affect the flow of capital."

Absolutely, folks ... What in the hell does Dubya expect the ACLU to do when confronted with evidence of prisoner abuse that was signed as an Executive Order by a sitting preznut? Pick a special prosecutor, start torturing the civilians in the Pentagon, put hoods on their heads, cut of an ear for good measure, then soak the bastards with gasoline and threaten to toss the match, like Michael Madson in Reservoir Dogs.

For crying out loud! How much more of this low rent chickenshit are we expected to take from this mindless little cretin? Who really gives a shit if he's got his balls in a vice over this Iraqi mess? If there was any semblance of true justice in America these days, his reeking carcass could be found somewhere at the end of an anchor in the Gulf of Mexico right about now, being torn apart by a Mako shark feeding frenzy.

But America is not so lucky tonight - he is sitting down there in his leather deskchair in the Oval Office, guarded by wild-eyed Secret Service agents and still trying to convince the rest of us that this idea of democracy and freedom in Iraq was a great adventure worth taking while burning every living thing between him and the encircling rounds of puff-ball, sycophant questions by press corps parasites ... and still fascinating the national media with the same homegrown stylings of a pie-faced inbred sowing his cumquat fields on a John Deere, which served him so well in the last weeks of his hijacked election ...

"Last month, Marines across the world broke out their dress blues to celebrate the 229th birthday of the Corps," he said two short weeks ago. "But the men and women of Camp Pendleton's 1st Marine Expeditionary Force marked the occasion a little differently - by fighting the enemies in Iraq."

Well ... hot damn. I might have been tempted to put my overactive mind at ease knowing that the preznut sees the problem in Iraq as not having enough good Marines to sacrifice in the name of God and Country ... but there is a constant suspicion that probably the gang of mean rednecks running the White House has already solved Dubya's problem for him. They are going to indict a few FBI agents for speaking to the ACLU, and then put them all of them on trial for treason.

Dubya already has the playbook on this fiasco. He is not the kind of executive you'd want reporting your earnings-per-share to the SEC, but the gravity of his Iraqi dilemna vis-à-vis the ACLU is so scandalous that even he is beginning to understand the potential danger to his presidency ... and this is the reason, it seems, for the more or less daily idiot-shot comments on cable television, revealing a half-mad and pathetically disturbed mental condition. In this manner Dubya is becoming a mini-carbon copy of Iron Mike Tyson before a big fight when the cameras suddenly capture him in the middle of a pseudo-breakdown - the same kind of two-fisted crazystorm between haldol injections that climaxed with the decision to lunge for Lennox Lewis and shout that he "wants to eat his children" - or the time he figured a way to pour the quicksand on the Abu Ghraib investigation by blaming the Pentagon and Lyndie England with some action photos.

"The methods that the Defense Department has adopted are illegal, immoral, and counterproductive," said ACLU staff attorney Jameel Jaffer. "It is astounding that these methods appear to have been adopted as a matter of policy by the highest levels of government."

A two-page e-mail referencing an Executive Order states that the Chimperor directly authorized interrogation techniques including sleep deprivation, stress positions, the use of military dogs, and "sensory deprivation through the use of hoods, etc." Another e-mail, dated December 2003, describes an incident in which Defense Department interrogators at Guantanamo Bay impersonated FBI agents while using "torture techniques" against a detainee. The e-mail concludes "If this detainee is ever released or his story made public in any way, DOD interrogators will not be held accountable because these torture techniques were done [sic] the ‘FBI’ interrogators. The FBI will [sic] left holding the bag before the public."

Once you get past the duh, we knew it all along part, and actually get down to what does this all mean to his presidency, you realize that we are a nation full of scared little sluts who scream for blood at the first sign of hardship or discomfort, and that the hypocritical nature of everything amerikkkan probably means that this probably won't amount to a hill of shit amongst the 51% who voted for him in the first place (and that percentage is still worthy of debate if you believe the news coming out of Ohio these days). Now it's time to demonize the ACLU on the talking heads shows and next they'll be outlawed or called terrorists, or something even worse. Just imagine a crowd of people screaming for revenge outside a prison wall waiting for the execution of a borderline retard to begin in Huntsville, and you've got the Norman Rockwell postcard for Dubyaville ... shallow, vacant, victimized in only their minds because it's somebody else's fault that they live in a trailer and couldn't go to an Ivy League college, totally strung out on what other people tell them is God, and overcome with economic, sexual and personal oppression because no one bothered to teach them how to "think" and "feel" as opposed to "react with outrage," which they do like a bloodthirsty pack of idiot savants during the hours of Desperate Housewives and Judge Judy.

So ... what we could be looking at here, roughly a month before his final Inauguration for anything, is the potential of a multi-millionare ex-preznut and admitted felon; a congenital crook and sociopathic simp who spent ten years on the public dole and then quit suddenly, just before the cord was pulled on the guillotine ... leaving Dick Cheney at the controls all Al Haig-like for the next ten years, or until the pacemaker finally quits reminding his heart that he was still alive. If Dubya fights this one to the bitter end - as he will promise Daddy he will do "as long as the religious right sees it in its grace to forgive him" - he will risk the lifelong national endowment check and his personal security detail, ensuring that he can be seen in the same camera shot as Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and Dear Old Dad until the funeral procession finally catches up with him.

Most of this annual bonus-baby will arrive, in one shape or another, out of the pockets of American taxpayers. Every single taxpayer, friends. Even Al Gore and John Kerry will kick in a few cents to his retirement slush fund every year. And so will you and I, unless the Democrats rise up and get themselves a special prosecutor and nail the criminally insane filcher to the cross with enough felony counts to strip him not only of the right to vote, like Spiro Agnew, but also cut off his pipeline to the US Treasury - which is not very likely at all given that Cheney knows where all the bodies are buried, and that in itself means he would pull a Gerald Ford and pardon the freak out of sheer guilt by association.

We will hear reports that the soon-to-be ex-preznut gets down on his knees in front of the White House paintings with Condi begging God for strength and insight, and that Dubya frequently bursts into tears for no good reason ... except when the Oval Office runs out of Jim Beam, that he moans and lets out heart-pounding screams of regret every night in his sleep, and The Houston Chronicle will come upon "leaked" psychological evaluations from the Texas Air National Guard indicating that Dubya was "a chronic bed-wetter" and could be found "torturing neighborhood cats" when not hanging around the Officer's Club for free rounds of filth and backwash. And if Dubya still resists the inevitable, his wholesale removal from the office of preznut, the rest of the world will start seeing front-page exclusive photos in The National Enquirer of him alone on the ranch, drooling incoherently on a backyard hammock with alcoholic urine stains on his ranch overalls.

"The time has passed when America will make every other nation's conflict our own, or make every other nation's future our responsibility, or presume to tell the people of other nations how to manage their own affairs."
- Tricky Dick, Second Inaugural Address - Saturday, January 20, 1973

In the mean time, where is Special Prosecutor Leon Jaworski when you need him? It's really starting to feel like Richard Milhous Nixon all over again.

Sanity Checked Out With the Concierge This Morning

2004-12-18T22:12:00.000-08:00

A week-long investigation by our field forces and elements of Zogby International have determined a geomagnetic storm of delirium is gathering on the neo-religious horizon. This phenomenon has also been characterized as religious fundamentalism by the reality based community. Failure to take steps before this madness hits the mainland could inculpate the innocent among us - perhaps leading to the false imprisonment of a few activists, or even some unknowing kids singing the wrong words to Silent Night. During the next few days the world will be overrun, perhaps overwhelmed, by a suck-typhoon of detritus, nonsense, dementia, swill, psychotic apparitions and pseudo-spiritual bullshit of every kind and formula. There will be no relief until the new year is upon us. This problem will be apparent in several perilous forms - and the sane will have to deal with every one of them. Examples are among the following:

1.> The security detail is already paralyzed by wave after wave of GOP morality brochures, libel subpoenas, warning letters of impending doom, elevated levels of save your soul spam, and half-crazy attempts from actual persons or fundamentalists trying to cash in big on this ghastly movement. My team has already executed Plan B by establishing alternative office arrangements, so that the serious business of political opposition cannot be stopped during the holiday season.

2.> Local authorities are expecting major bottlenecks along the beachfront causeways, twenty-four seven, by collections of rabid fundamentalists attempting to drag heavy wooden crosses and other christian paraphernalia into the more public areas for display purposes. To combat this, we have called in private contractors to erect six foot high chain link and cyclone wire at the north face of the area with access validated upon every entry. Motion detectors criss-cross the beach entry portion of the compound and strobe lights with foghorns stand at the ready to alert us if a nighttime operation arrives unexpectedly. Armed guards will be on duty at all times.

3.> Communications technicians have warned us to expect the phone lines to be tied up for hours at a time by offshore christian call centers along with virulent Bible Freaks attempting to dial in with messages like "The Lord's Message for the Day" and "Save Yourself from Satan," and the like. Whenever possible, our custom calling features will intercept many of these attempts. But we do realize that many of our loyal followers will get an all circuits are busy message when trying to reach one of our agents. In the event that our adversaries use the new *38 feature once restricted to law enforcement and private investigators, our new IP-based phone bank can route these kinds of calls to a special queue, upon which they will be answered by voice activated response recordings using the new VXML software bundle that arrived by FedEx yesterday. Doctor Carlos Mongrel, the preeminent authority on deprogramming cult behavior, with a specialty in high tech surveillance from his years in the Air Force Security Agency, has scripted a series of auto-responses for every imaginable fundamentalist angle. In the event that these callers reject the front end defenses, these callers will be given the opportunity to leave their names and numbers on our wave-sampling deck, so Doctor Mongrel can work in depth with these lost souls - personally - between the hours of 3AM to 5AM, when they become sleep-deprived and more psychologically malleable.

These are but the most pressing threats that we will have to come to grips with in the coming days. There will, most certainly, be others - requiring quick reflexes and constant consideration - such as the gutless undermining and ruinous sabotage of our key ground forces. More than likely, some will have passed the character evaluation testing, but no measures are airtight and a few brainless scumbags may have shifted through our security checkpoints and will cave in - capitulating to the beast, as it were - to the dangerous lure of this new christian cult. We have planned for this extreme alternative, and when the organization takes a body blow or two, we will strike back with a series of sweeping countermeasures to seize the hearts and minds of our religious oppressors.

It is a widely held feeling within the walls of Team Gonzography that we are surrounded by a generation of failures, dingbats and parasites hiding within the shroud of secrecy known as the fundamentalist movement, and under no circumstances should these retards be allowed to disrupt our lines of communication or pollute our water supplies or food stuffs ... especially in a season when anyone with enough cash to buy a television station could start broadcasting the Lord's name and purpose in vain. This is not the year to be playing it safe or resisting the urge to insulate oneself from the onslaught - and particularly not in the age of Dubya, when all men are created equal is more of a suggestion than a right for all Americans.

Social prognosticators assume that the pressure will mount in geometric proportions leading up to Christmas Eve, and then become savage on the day itself. In the mean time, our surveillance experts will be monitoring the airwaves for the first sign of a holiday message from The 700 Club or Scarborough Country, which could signal the end of days for the blue states. It is wise to remember that Pat Robertson has already invoked the special stigma attached to "welfare queens driving around in Cadillacs" who really never existed, and the feeling in our compound is that this is the opening salvo of a Christmas invasion.

"There was a time when young teenage girls from poor families, essentially black families, thought that they had a duty to have babies in order to get on the welfare rolls," Robertson said recently. "Because each baby was being paid two or three hundred dollars a month or more, and so they'd help support the family that way."

Team Gonzography cryptologists and its traffic analysis desk will continue to examine this sample of text. And further warnings will be issued, once the fundamentalist forces start massing in the distance. Which they will. We are absolutely confident that our way of life is at stake, if nothing else. What's past is prologue, and what we are facing now is the culmination that's been gathering for the last four years of Dubya ... the very twisted, degenerate, evil, menacing, criminal de-evolution of an entire generation gone batshit over too many failures and a broke-ass state. It will feel like a gigantic Spanish Inquisition rolled up with a little Salem Witch Trial, Conquest of the Aztecs and Rape of Nanking for a little flavor and pure reference. Civilizations have become ancient in the name of vindictive philistines claiming a special relationship to the God du jour.

What we are facing here is nothing less than the meltdown of Western society as we knew it - the utter collapse of another Empire gone insane on its own perpetual illusion - which is more than likely due to its own gluttonous appetite and twisted priorities. This disintegration is already under way. Everything Dubya has ever touched, either in business or politics, is doomed or on its way to being doomed, sooner or later.

But it sure will be sooner if the best alternative that can be mounted is a party of revisionist lunatics who have given up on everything except coexistence and a pathetic revival of every political strategy that landed us in this position in the first place. What a tragedy it is when you consider all the great things that were accomplished in the 1990s - including, among other achievements, a budget surplus, an obedient Pentagon, stability in the world, people at work in a growing economy with higher paying jobs - would somehow lead down to the decaying, filthy and mindless tunnel that is Dubya, Incorporated and his den of corporate cronies.

That is why Team Gonzography is advocating extreme measures during this holiday season and insists that these crapheads must be combated at every turn. There is serious business to deal with in the coming months, and these fuckers must be beaten down now if we want to live for a better day.

Riding out the storm,
Team Gonzography

Memoirs of a Wretched Newsday in America

2004-12-15T23:42:00.000-08:00

If I were a soldier overseas wanting to defend my country, I'd want to ask the Secretary of Defense the same question, and that is, are we getting the best we can get us?
- In his own unique fashion, Dubya empathizes with troops who have been without adequate armor for two years, Washington, D.C., Dec. 9, 2004

Slow news days are a depressing event in the business of mainstream media. These are the days - often reserved for Tuesdays and Wednesdays, and almost always Saturdays - when Anderson Cooper or Wolf Blitzer reports from a college campus in prime time, and Joe Scarborough leads off with a story about military wives refusing to wash their matching sweatsuits - while a couple of well-placed fascists like RNC spokesman Jack Burkman or Senator John Kyl or free-lance freakazoid Pat Buchanan calls them un-American - until their loved ones are no longer vaporizing insurgents in Fallujah and Ramadi.

MSNBC will release an hour long special report featuring grim reminders of "The Power of Morality at the Polls." Racist Radical Cleric Jerry Falwell will suddenly appear to debate the evils of sodomy and gay sex, along with the rise of unwanted pregnancies leading to faux-late-term abortions ... and Peter Jennings can be seen dozing off, by the first commercial break, rambling furiously about cats infected with syphilis and treatments for skin cancer and the extreme flaws found in the administration's position on public transportation.

The early news feeds on the satellite dish had Fidel Castro standing off against Christmas, among his reasons for delaying the latest shipment of Havanas; a Greek bus hostage siege ended peacefully when all 23 passengers were freed and police revealed that the two armed gunmen were angry for being Albanian; and a popular item for holiday shoppers in Japan was reported to be the "lap pillow" - skin-colored polyurethene calves folded under soft thighs - a comfy cushion for napping, reading or watching television. The 9,429 yen ($90) pillow, which comes with one red and one black skirt, went on sale in late November and maker Trane Co Ltd says shipments have reached 3,000 in just a few weeks.

Even Bill O'Reilly was stunned, blubbering uncontrollably on FOX about his December 3rd remark to a caller to "go to Israel" if the caller didn't like Christmas celebrations in public schools. Responding to a letter written to O'Reilly finding great objection with his comments, Jewish Council for Public Affairs (JCPA) executive director Hannah Rosenthal discussed the issue with him on the December 14 broadcast of The Radio Factor with Bill O'Reilly. During their conversation, O'Reilly again falsely claimed that Media Matters for America had taken his comment "out of context" and also continued his attacks on Anti-Defamation League (ADL) president Abraham Foxman.

You picked it up from a website that exists only to smear this program. All right? It's sneaky -- it takes things out of context -- and you were used -- you and your fine organization. And I've raised millions of dollars for Israel, by the way. You oughta check that. But you and your fine organization was [sic] used by this far left, deceitful, disgusting website, which has tried to engender an anti-Jewish bias when none exists. And Foxman was used -- B'nai Brith were used -- they were all used. None of them heard it [O'Reilly's December 3 remark], and all of them jumped to the wrong conclusion.

The decomposing pig that is Bill O'Reilly should have killed it right there ... but a pig in a three piece suit is still a swine, and the rabid attack continued with all the false alarm of an enhanced bimbo losing her halter top at the Playboy Mansion, "You character assassins on the left wing websites. Can you hear me all right? Should I speak up a little for you? Speak slower so you can take my words outta context? You weasel! I mean you guys really are despicable weasels."

* * *

For a slow news cycle that should have been enough, even for a day when "Redrum" Rumsfeld was still not dangling from a cold noose in the West Wing - but as the hours crept along, there was more:

Wednesday was Alan Freed's birthday - the man who invented the concept of "payola" in the music business - and also Ludwig von Beethoven's; Walt Disney was put into suspended animation in a cryogenic tank in 1966; Rob Reiner decided to not take an ugly pass at the Califonia governor's mansion until 2010 [via Kos], at the earliest, or at least until the Gropinator blows a gasket with a female aide; and in New England, Bill Belichick was preparing his team to defend its Super Bowl title with or without Charlie Weis, his offensive coordinator set to take the reigns of the Fighting Irish in South Bend.

So much for the news of the day. Rumsfeld will be lucky to last another month, if he doesn't get fragged by angry Marines in Baghdad or find himself whacked by the Pentagon lifers. The names of Wolfowitz, Feith and Cheney are no small laughing matters in the vaunted chamber of horrors that is Dubya, Incorporated, which hijacked and humiliated the world's largest democracy with a gang of psychotic operatives hellbent on debauchery and destruction from the outskirts of Crawford. And on a lighter note: Zell Miller, also known as Senator Foghorn Leghorn when he's not challenging Chris Matthews to a duel or calling Maureen Dowd "a hussy" - the last vestige of the degenerate Dixiecrat plague - has accepted a job at FOX as a commentator, where he will offer heart warming stories on the state of delusions in the Old South, wrapped in a Confederate flag and sharing tales of down-home segregation.

In the land of Dubyaville, even the ignorant come armed with suitcases of cash.

Democalypse Now and Agents of Doom

2004-12-14T18:20:00.000-08:00

I know my own nation best. That's why I despise it the most. And know and love my own people, too, the swine. I'm a patriot. A dangerous man.
- Edward Abbey

The world is flipping onto its side out here in the West. Against the backdrop of blazing hot questions and blood-red skies the talking heads are finishing with the elegant dissection of Agent Kerik and the hideous aftermath now known as the Democratic Party. Even Brother Wolcott knows "the Democrats are frozen at the steering wheel," sucking the tailpipe of the 18-wheeler that is victorious GOP think-tank, post-election spin - the likes of which would have made a fascist like John Mitchell dance in his grave and gave his wife Martha good enough reason to give up the sauce, had she made it past liver spots and cirrhosis.

But I fear no evil, for the Lord is swimming with the sharks. Yo, though I walk in the shadow of death - or something akin to Redrum Rumsfeld's next briefing from the Pentagon, which many have begun to sense is purgatory for the National Guard - I feel no evil, for the Lord is swimming right through me ...

Lord Jesus, hallelujah. Redrum remains our wild card now that Kerik was tossed out the door like yesterday's dishwater ... or maybe not. Perhaps Alberto Gonzales is the next savior. Who knows? Gonzales is the new lightning rod for the anti-Dubya crowd, but he's as dumb as a bag of rocks. He is something like a college roommate addicted to sex - keeping you awake at night for no other reason than pure voyeurism - just another atavistic creation as Attorney General of the Red States, a vindictive dimwit with an IQ of 72, with a cognizance somewhere between borderline idiot and brain-dead cyclops.

Whereas media coverage of previous administrations focused on one or two of the preznut's indiscretions - Watergate and Monicagate, to name two - Dubya's skeptics have organized their approach into bizarre, little themes that seek to represent the tone of the adminstration; among the most richest veins to examine has been its reliance on secrecy and loyalty. The nomination of longtime Dubya associate and White House legal counsel, Alberto Gonzales, a key designer of the preznut's vacant approach to the world over the last four years, suggests that the next four years will represent a move towards an even more extended sense of opaque wonder - like a heavy green cloud oozing above Pennsylvania Avenue, while the nominations keep getting meaner and dumber, leaving the folks-at-home to tolerate more and more of the gutter irregularities witnessed during the November election.

Gonzales' locking down of information - more or less on par with outgoing Pastor General John Ashcroft's - has been well-documented. A recent Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press report claims he's demonstrated "a penchant for strictly regulating access to government and executive-branch information." Meanwhile, the Project on Government Oversight has noted that Gonzales "played a leading role in attempting to chill whistleblowers who contact Congress with information about corporate fraud and abuse." The patterns go back years: The Houston Chronicle reported that Gonzales was crucial in getting then-Governor Bush excused from jury duty in 1996 - a strategy that allowed the governor to avoid revealing his 1976 drunken driving arrest.

So believe me when I tell you this ... The anal-compulsive freakazoid that is Alberto Gonzales is already known as the weirdest act in DC. I remember Ed Meese in his glorious prime and Little Il Duce Gonzales is going to make Deranged Ed - of the infamous Meese Report on Pornography during the salad days of the Reagan Administration - seem as affable and homespun as Wilfred Brimley with a bowl of Grapenuts. Meese may have been a treacherous slug - a low form of existence that sucked freedom into a cave where it was summarily beaten down and turned into a short stash of abject prostitution - but Gonzales is worse. He is beyond scum or pestilence. He is a Patriot Act plague that festers through the skin until the flesh transforms into chowder.

What Gonzales advocates - and continues to brandish like an instrument of death - is the malevolent and pervasive celebration of Mob-style omerta within the White House. There are rarely direct consequences for crossing the bridge on the administration, so to speak, but there now exists a trickle-down effect amongst its power players - leading to covert energy task force meetings, erosion of the Freedom of Information Act, expanding presidential authority to classify government documents. In the end, if Little Il Duce has his way, Americans will be kept in the dark about whatever their elected officials do in their good name, and also downstream how they ever got elected to begin with.

But that doesn't mean that questions aren't already hovering above Dubya's Attorney General nominee. Michael Isikoff of Newsweek offered on Hardball this week, ”It‘s raising some serious questions about the White House vetting operation, overseen by the White House Counsel‘s office, headed by Alberto Gonzales. I think there‘s a lot of questions to be raised there. One thing that was clear from the stories over the last week is, there was just a wealth of allegations that swirled around Kerik that were uncovered by reporters since he - immediately after he was nominated, yet somehow a lot of these were just simply not addressed in the vetting process. So you‘ve got to wonder, where were the vetters? How tough were the questions asked of Kerik?"

That is the nature of big-money, no-holds barred politics today. Many hear the voice in the distance calling them, but only a few survive the supreme moment of putting their nuts on the line - which appears to be surrounding a few of the new faces in the administration, and our own retarded child preznut these days ... and the witching hour continues, same as it ever was. Degenerate thieves always have ruled the planet with an iron fist and a purpose for knowing. We are just rodents in a Skinner Box searching for cheese.

Checking out of the human race.
Team Gonzography

The Nazi Belch-Tide Reaches Palm Beach

2004-12-11T14:58:00.000-08:00

This has been a terrible week for the Amerikkkan Nation, and next week will be even worse as the beginnings of the first fundamentalist onslaught on Christmas begins. The fair and balanced cadre over at FOX is happily promoting the end of secular holiday displays that don't show the scene of a manger, and by next week the Mel Gibson version should transform it into a bloody sadomasochistic ritual of punditry approaching the final climactic scenes of Rosemary's Baby, not that many among the mainstream media have really noticed, or cared. Led by hosts Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity - two pillars of acute decadence and bottomless debasement, no less - FOX News anchors have clearly gotten the Murdoch memo on reporting stories whose theme is the purported marginalization or persecution of christians during the holiday season.

The weekly review show, Inside the NFL, was barely over when I discovered to my horror that "Easy" Rush Limbaugh began chiming in with his own savage opinions from everything to thug-life in the NBA and Democrats wishing for more US deaths in Iraq. Limbaugh's entire broadcasting career - and in fact his very existence - is a crepuscular magnum opus to the notion that not even rabid schizophrenia or impregnable psychosis could prevent a demented retard from climbing to the top of the dung heap in this bizarre culture we have erected within this tiny, disturbed part of the world in the name of "entitlement" and "victim society" and "free trade." For the entire stretch of his demented life, the bottomless pit of Rush Limbaugh's regret and revisionist logic seems to arrive from a deep and perverted self-awareness that he was born stupid and at precisely the wrong time in American history - visions of ripe plantations, barnyard debauchery at the end of garden tools and a stable of under-age mulatto housegirls to ravage in the name of backwoods white supremacy should have been his moral summit. If "Easy" Rush had been born Hispanic, instead of white trash, he would probably have been a low-rent drug dealer instead of a talk show host, not just because many of his past stomping grounds would never have listened to a Hispanic host back in the 1980s, but simply because running a tiny street-based crowd of dope fiends and twenty-dollar suck and spin princesses would have been enough to fuel his maniacal need to be followed and absolutely adored no matter the demographic, political affiliation or reason ... which almost every talk show host craves - from Jerry Springer all the way down to Montel and Opie and Anthony.

On any given day, both the talk show host and the dope dealer come to the reality that by nightfall the trappings of their calling will force them to do inexplicable things that are better left unsaid, and the shadows are something into which the weak should never stare. The window dressing may be different, but the baseline instinct never changes for an instant. Both the talk show host and the dope dealer are condemned to live on like insane junkies looking for the next fix - sometimes crossing the line for ever-more - hooked on that heteroclite energy of their own unfathomable addictions.

With a heavy sense of regret, only because I find the collected works humorous, it is easy to agree with P.J. O'Rourke, a conservative who writes in The Atlantic that he tunes out "Easy" Rush because there's almost no room for debate: "Arguing, in the sense of attempting to convince others, has gone out of fashion with conservatives." And when I read O'Rourke's piece several months ago I recall feeling angry that a former National Lampoon contributor made the conscious decision to retreat into the dark forays of gothic right-wing hurly-burly, making it okay for a generation of avid readers - of such monumental pieces like How to Drive Fast on Drugs While Getting your Wing-Wang Squeezed and Not Spill Your Drink - to vote Rethug and, specifically, elect Dubya to anything beyond the office of Town Crank.

It's an ugly prospect these days. How could a once-proud nation have changed so much in the last four years, so drastically that it doesn't look familiar anymore? In what feels like the time it takes to speed through a small West Texas town, Dubya has delivered us from a successful and prosperous nation at peace with the world to a savage nation of freaks and degenerates that are broke or suffocating with debt. And why - exactly - did we go halfway across the world to kill Iraqis with smart bombs and napalm and depleted uranium that is creating a generation of Lon Cheney look-alikes?

Indeed, there is something not right going on here, sports fans, and it's beginning to look like Confessions of a Dangerous Mind - plastic, in bad taste, fraudulent, paranoid, filled with down-low schlock, hallucinogenic, duplicitous and littered with cheap prizes for the terminally offensive. Insane asylums are filled with people who think they're Jesus or Satan. Very few have grand delusions of being a talk show host or dealing dope to crazed addicts and fiends.

Deep, Down and Dirty with Low-Rent Fanatics

2004-12-07T19:40:00.000-08:00

Does the essence of reality exist within the jagged white hum of media coverage and political spin, separate, intransigent, foreign, not inclined to gutter fiction? Or could it be an authentic and important concurrence between what reality is and what becomes our perception? Or have we descended into self-fulfilling language that obliges us to use language only in an attempt to obscure and distort reality - to pervert what really happened - because we fear the furious alternative? The media wants us all to be cowards glued to television screens. We can't come to grip with death and sacrifice and what it all means. But we must face all of these possibilities because they have died in our name. And as a free people with informed minds, we must pay attention to all of the grim details - only because it has been done in our name.

It is a very nasty game that these live-wired, mean-spirited fanatics play. Dubya may be the most powerful man on the planet Earth, but the preznut is still petty enough to be sure that nobody else in the world is going to mess up his party, even by accidental means. And anyone who starts to become giddy with a marked-down version of true geo-political influence should get real familiar, right from jump street, with the definite knowledge that he is going to require some very cruel and ruthless players just to stand up in the morning.

The power of the preznut is so huge that it is perhaps best that the average citizen cannot truly understand the sense of biblical grandeur that arrives with the position - so, in retrospect, it is good that Americans couldn't come to gauge Dubya's true mental state during the campaign, which alternated between fits of addictive megalomania and strains of blood-thirsty, sociopathic desire. There were were moments in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania when even his closest friends and advisers were convinced that the preznut was so vertiginous with fury and vitamin-B shots and delusional splendor that he was two Jim Beam's from serendading Laura to Van Morrison's Brown Eyed Girl on Larry King and locking himself down in the bunker with Dick Cheney to make that last prophetic phone call to the career freaks in the Strategic Air Command out in Omaha, vaporizing 200 million souls or throwing the world off its axis and into universal freefall.

Would the analysts and assistant directors in the hallowed halls of CIA-central refuse a direct order from their commander-in-chief? And how long would it have taken George Tenet and Condi Rice to realize that Dubya has finally gone off the deep end of the ocean? The preznut had spent so much time out of Washington, by then, that nobody else in the administration would have noticed until he failed to show up on Fox and CNN and MSNBC for his nightly disinformation statement, and he would have had ample time to goad the Israelis and Pakastanis into settling a couple of disputes with the tip of a high-grade nuke.

An embattled career spook who found himself in the Director's chair of the CIA, at the time, with over 20 years of fanatical service to God and country alike would chop of his own legs and eat them with fried zucchini tatter tots rather than reject the preznut's direct order to send the missles skyward with streams of vapor trails arching to the heavens - even if he thought that Dubya was a raving lunatic.

Yeah, you see Tenet was playing a double game. He was trying to be all things to all people ... So when he realized that all this hype about Iraq seeking Uranium from Niger, was based, was false on its face number one, it couldn’t happen, and number two it was based on a forgery, he succeeded in getting that out of the president’s speech on October the 7th, the key one that antedated the vote for war by three or four days. He succeeded in that, but at the very same time, he permitted it to be put in [the National Intelligence Estimate] ... he permitted sections in there, several paragraphs which repeated this charade, this crazy story that Iraq was getting Uranium. So he was indirectly responsible for that appearing in the president’s state of the union address. Why? Well because the White House simply called from the estimate. What the White House didn’t realize perhaps, is that the estimate had already been prostituted, had already been corrupted. It’s usually possible to take an estimate, which is the most authoritative view of the director of central intelligence and say, well this is the last word. Well it wasn’t Tenet’s last word. His last word was saying to the president, please don’t say that, it’s spurious. And yet the estimate prepared at precisely the same time and given to the president over George Tenet’s signature, said just the opposite.

The key to this long-winded rationale is a concept that anyone who ever changed identities at the behest of their goverment soon forgets: "The marbel entrance at Langley might say 'The Truth Shall Set You Free,' but don't be on the wrong side of the political fence." Once you've been given over to the beast, you're a spook - and spooks don't go into underground caves for their country without having somebody on the other side who won't cut the rope. If Dubya's warped brain had been bent far enough to let him think he could save his own political future by conjuring up a dead-on-balls air-land invasion of Guatemala, he would not have given the Shock-and-Awe decree to some neo-pacifist intelligence official who might have taken the extra step of checking with Colin Powell for conclusive evidence that the preznut had not leveled off into a spell of psychotic ideation.

No intelligence insider with enough sense to know that the forests of Virginia are pockmarked with the forgotten memories of defiant wonders would take that kind of risk with his life or limb. By the time that the word got out to the White House press corps - or to Powell, for that matter - that Dubya had given the order to attack Guatemala, the entire Central American rainforest would be a firestorm; Panama, Honduras and El Salvador would already have surrendered not knowing what to expect next, and the blistering orange skies above the Gulf of Mexico would be streaked to the ends of the Earth with strategic bombers and fighter jet support looking for the final kill shot.

Well ... that's enough rationale, I suppose. George Tenet was sworn in as the Director of Central Intelligence on July 11, 1997, "following a unanimous vote by both the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the full Senate. In this position he headed the Intelligence Community (all foreign intelligence agencies of the United States) and directs the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)." He served as the Deputy Director of Central Intelligence (confirmed July 1995). In December 1996, following the departure of John Mark Deutch as DCI, Tenet served as Acting Director.

Tenet's government career includes having previously served as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Intelligence Programs at the National Security Council (NSC). At the NSC, he "coordinated Presidential Decision Directives on Intelligence Priorities, Security Policy Coordination, US Counterintelligence Effectiveness, and US Policy on Remote Sensing Space Capabilities. He also was responsible for coordinating all interagency activities concerning covert action.

Prior to serving at the NSC, Tenet served on President Bill Clinton's national security transition team, where he coordinated the evaluation of the US Intelligence Community. Tenet also served as Staff Director of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence for over four years under the chairmanship of Senator David Boren. "In this capacity he was responsible for coordinating all of the Committee's oversight and legislative activities including the strengthening of covert action reporting requirements, the creation of a statutory Inspector General at CIA, and the introduction of comprehensive legislation to reorganize US intelligence."

Prior to being appointed Staff Director, Tenet "directed the Committee's oversight of all arms control negotiations between the Soviet Union and the United States, culminating in the preparation of a report to the US Senate on The Ability of US Intelligence to Monitor the Intermediate Nuclear Force Treaty." In August 1985, Tenet came to the Committee as designee to the Vice Chairman, Senator Patrick Leahy following three years on the staff of Senator John Heinz "as both a legislative assistant covering national security and energy issues and as legislative director."

So when the word came down tonight that the former DCI had struck a $4 million book deal with Crown Publishing Group (a division of Random House, Inc.) to write his memoirs, everybody even vaguely connected to the Iraqi business began cleaning out their drawers and recalling names as the CIA is about to be publicly flogged once again at all ends of its franchise domain ... while Tenet begins defending the case for connections between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda, which most of the red states believe, to this day, to be solid gold truth. That appears to be the central point of his long-awaited book, and the talking heads shows are already speculating. Books by former CIA officials have to be cleared by the agency, but Tenet's former spokesman at the CIA, Bill Harlow, said he was "confident that the director will be able to be candid, without running into any difficulties with the clearance process."

The Truth Shall Set You Free. Right.

Family Values from the Mouth of Lunacy

2004-12-05T23:39:00.000-08:00

"A good tree can't produce evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree produce good fruit."
- Matthew 7:18

The market kept gaining ground last week. Even the pig-headed preachers were feeling full of themselves, and there was talk on Kudlow and Cramer about the execution and filleting of wild animals for fun and profit. Gas prices retreated a bit, insurance rates kept soaring, and reports of GOP debauchery and duplicity are coming to the surface in the shadow of its most recent New York Coronation along with some homosexual revelations about the wonderfully androgynous boy-wonder himself, Representative David Dreier.

It was another bad week for the Jesus and values crowd. They had already been smacked down once by Frank Rich in The New York Times by pointing out the hypocrisy of red state viewership rates for racy television programming - and now they were going to get smaked yet again, with new revelations about misleading accounts of Pat Tillman's death in Afghanistan, which now contradicts earlier military press releases found to be deliberately distorted and incomplete.

In a telephone interview with The Washington Post, Senator John McCain (R-AZ) said: "I think it would have been helpful to have at least their suspicions known" before he elevated the former NFL star to the status of sainthood. Even more, he added, "the family deserved some kind of heads-up that there would be questions."

During several weeks of memorials and commemorations that followed Tillman's death, commanders at his 75th Ranger Regiment and their superiors hid the truth about friendly fire from Tillman's brother Kevin, who had fought with Pat in the same platoon, but was not involved in the firing incident and did not know the cause of his brother's death. Commanders also withheld the facts from Tillman's widow, his parents, national politicians and the public, according to records and interviews with sources involved in the case.

Short of manslaughter, the most common charge leveled in fratricide is dereliction of duty, or what the military code calls "culpable inefficiency" in the performance of duty, according to military law specialists. This violation is defined in the Pentagon's official Manual for Courts-Martial as "inefficiency for which there is no reasonable or just excuse."

Whatever the cause of death, McCain said, "you may have at least a subconscious desire here to portray the situation in the best light, which may not have been totally justified."

Needless to say, things are not all wine and roses for the Rethugs. Let's face the facts, and then the hypocrisy: Dubya's campaign, a sleazy collection of preachers, lawyers, moralists and crackerjack punishment whackos, had spent the better part of 2004 criss-crossing the country with tales of alleged Democratic atheism and rumors of hedonists committing criminal sodomy with same-sex partners in places like Tupelo and Salt Lake City. The idea was to establish the opposition as some kind of deviant political party that endorsed such heinous things as burning the Bible, relentless violence and child molesting - but in the end there was no concensus on any of these charges, except the high price of call girls willing to do anything in New York City.

“At a bowling party for [closeted] California Congressman David Dreier… a blonde in a fishnet body stocking hung from the ceiling on a turquoise scarf, twirling and contorting,” an observer noted. “Two nights later, at a honky-tonk salute to Texas Congressman Joe Barton, chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce … a little girl rode an electric bucking bull in an inflatable farm pen, and 20-foot black cowboy boots decorated in purple and gold stood over the room.”

Such contributions pay off in the end: In 1999 Barton pushed a bill to deregulate the entire $220-billion U.S. electrical industry, laying the groundwork and leading to widescale energy piracy leading to the 2001 California energy crisis.

There is only written and spoken evidence at this point, but two reporters thus far have handed over their story to - none other than - Hustler publisher Larry Flynt, charging that the fundamentalist zealots who descended upon New York last August were treacherous mutants worse than Hugh Hefner or the Marquis de Sade, and had spent much of their investigative efforts stalking public urinals and downtown bukkake clinics. Only blabbering and unsubstantiated delusional ramblings could be gathered from the herd of pimps, preachers, crooked security details and flesh merchants.

The final story by the Flynt Publishing people will apparently be an important guide to everything ever documented or photographed in the history of the sex business - tons of pull out color photos, thousands of adulturers and copies of the mailing lists, forums and blogs of every gutter kink, crime, and twisted perversion since Caligula and the Kama Sutra. The new coffee table book, due out in time for the Christmas season, is already guaranteed to peak at number one on Amazon.

"It will rake in more units sold than Kitty Kelly's The Family," said one online sales analyst. "If I was the father of a hot looking little woman when the GOP comes to town, I chain her down in the closet and shave off her hair and break her fingers into a pile of rubble so she couldn't get ten feet from driving into town. The last time one of these conventions came to the city I was a night editor of a major newspaper when Reagan was the king, and it cost me my first wife who was turned into a dirty little freak by conservative sex fiends. She finally found herself a preacher in Oklahoma, and they started their own live sex and sermon shows over the internet."

I know, it's a hard pill to swallow - especially for you folks in the red states. Many of you think the GOP (Good Old Pleasure) convention is all about family values, country music, Jesus in a coal mine, square dancing and near-beer and Tucker Carlson bow ties and glorious renditions of Reaganomics gone supercharged. But it's also the party of hardline capitalism and guns for all and military spending and big oil and repressed sexuality - no matter the flavor - and trips down misogyny lane while driving the Viagra pace car for the Dixieland 500. Take any 10,000 GOP boys and put them in a room with Kinsey and you'll soon find a bucketload of deep-seated anxieties and the most extensive gay-porn collections on the planet. Cut these guys loose amongst their own kind in the wild brush of a big city like New York, and it's like putting a pedophile priest in a schoolyard.

Buy a ticket, take the ride.