Good Fucking Riddance

When you see a post about Joe Manchin not running for re-election, remember ths.

Joe Manchin’s entire career was built around either being the reason for, or the excuse for, Democrats HAVING power without ever USING that power.

So when you see a post that is, essentially, “good fucking riddance, asshole”, that person values the second thing more than the first thing. Posts about “but.. but.. but… HIS SEAT!” are from people who value the first more than the second.

Good fucking riddance, asshole.

Not One Damn Lick Of Sense

Memo to Bored Lefties With E-Mail: YOU ARE DUMB.

You may have gotten an e-mail or seen a message board posting about "Not One Damn Dime Day". It's been making the rounds of the usual places this week. The idea is that on Inauguration Day, as a protest, people don't spend money on anything for 24 hours. Not food, not gas, not toilet paper, not a single quarter in a single soda vending machine.

As far as I can tell, the idea behind it is that a couple hundred thousand Internet liberals not shopping for 24 hours will send an incredibly powerful message to our Bush-supporting, corporate overlords and, according to the e-mail, try to "shut the retail economy down". There are a number of small problems with this plan, unfortunately. The most significant and glaring flaw, of course, is that it is FUCKING STUPID.

It's not that I'm opposed to protest. It's not that I'm opposed to the taking of action to effect change. I am, however, opposed to a handful of idealistic wankers running around in circles for a day then patting themselves on the back thinking they've won the New York Marathon. Allow me to present you with the official stated objective of Not One Damn Dime Day.

"The object is simple. Remind the people in power that the war in Iraq is immoral and illegal; that they are responsible for starting it and that it is their responsibility to stop it. 'Not One Damn Dime Day' is to remind them, too, that they work for the people of the United States of America, not for the international corporations and K Street lobbyists who represent the corporations and funnel cash into American politics."

There are two possibilities here. First, that this will work, and second, that it will not. For it to work, the idea has to become widespread enough, and participation high enough, that the drop in economic activity is noticed. So let's say this happens, just as a lark. Let's say the idea gets out there to tens of millions of people. Let's say these people are swayed by the charm of the awkward wording. Moved by the passion of the slightly addled rhetoric. Let's say that, in a success beyond the wildest wet dreams of a Seattle anarchist blogger, this campaign reduces all economic activity in the nation by 65% for one day.

Who will notice? Who will be hurt? Remember, this will affect everyone by the same percentage, from the Alcoa CEO who rapes dolphins on his lunch hour to the mom-and-pop hemp store down the block. Remember why, as progressives, we're in favor of PROGRESSIVE tax structures? it's because when you take the same percentage out of the income of a poor person and a rich person, the poor person is hurt more.

Ergo, the radical left has just, in essence, proposed a protest that inflicts a flat tax on the nation for 24 hours. BRILLIANT.

But that's only in the incredibly unlikely scenario in which NODDD would work at all. The numbers just aren't there, people. Nineteen percent of the actual U.S. population voted against Bush. Around 30% if you only count eligible voters. How many of that 30% will even hear about the "boycott"? How many will care? How many will care AND decide to participate? And then be able to?

How much money do they have? What would they have bought that day? Will they just buy it the day before or after? Do corporations even take note of one-day aberrations in sales trends? And even if they do, how, exactly, will that be translated into an anti-war message in their minds? One that they'll pay heed to, and do something about?

What it boils down to is that the left would like to show our rulers just how much power and influence they can wield. And unfortunately, they will. Like a four-year-old hitting his father in the shin with a couch pillow, the shin of authority will remain intact, and the worst that could happen is that a hand-made vase from Berkeley might get knocked off the coffee table. It's stupid.

I understand you feel powerless. I know you want to stick it to The Man. But the world has changed a lot in the past 40 years. The playing field is no longer on the streets, because they've shown they can ignore the streets. Remember what the various Million Blank Marches were supposed to accomplish? Me neither. Folks protested at the Republican National Convention, and were ignored. Folks protesting the inauguration are going to be ignored, too. You know why? Because it's the INAUGURATION. And while you're standing outside in your black hoodie in the cold with your sign and your Hey Hey Ho Ho, the people in power will be inside, spending more money on this party than they're committing to Asian disaster relief, and they will be laughing at you.

The battle is for eyeballs. It's for eardrums. It's for the vaunted "hearts and minds". The right wing has systematically, for three decades, controlled the public image of the left. And anything that reinforces that image, like Not One Damn Dime Day so patently does, just plays right into their hands. And is DUMB.

One Shy Of The Eggroll Requirement

Memo to liberals: YOU'RE DUMB, TOO.

I've been sitting on this for a while, letting it percolate over the last month, but I think it's time to unveil the Top Five Dumb Liberal Fallacies. The five things many liberals believe that lost the 2000 election, lost the 2004 election, and will lose the 2006 and 2008 elections if we don't learn from our fucking mistakes.

FALLACY THE FIRST: There are more of us than there are of them.

You hear this one in a number of forms. This year, it was called Get Out The Vote. The idea was that pretty much all of Them were voting, and all of Us usually don't bother, so if all of Us vote, we'll win! Unfortunately, as it turned out, a whole bunch of them weren't voting either, and they were a lot easier to scare and prod and goad into voting. This fallacy is the root of the Cell Phone Hope and the Youth Vote Hope, and we know where that shit got us, don't we?

It also shows up in the belief that people, even Republican voters, are actually liberals if you sit down with them and ask them about individual issues. There are citable studies to back this one up and everything. But even if it's true, it doesn't really matter, because they're still voting REPUBLICAN. This ties directly into Fallacy The Second.

FALLACY THE SECOND: Elections are decided on the issues.

Please. The left should be prohibited by law from using the word "issues" in any non-periodical sense during an election year. And the year before. And the year after. People don't vote based on the issues. Even the people who say they vote based on the issues are lying to themselves and you. The people that actually do vote based on the issues will take care of themselves, because they'll look stuff up and figure out where they stand and they don't need you to tell them what the issues are. Everyone else is swayed by base emotions, personality, celebrity, tradition, religion, and whim.

Stop wishing for a "substantive discussion of the issues". It'll never happen, it can't happen, and nobody will show it if it did because nobody will watch it if they did. The "issues" are what you do AFTER you get elected.And even those don't matter if you can lie convincingly about what you did or didn't do.

FALLACY THE THIRD: People voting Republican are ignorant.

This is the tricky one. Because a lot of people voting Republican ARE ignorant. So are a lot of people in general. This is why elections aren't decided on the issues. The fallacy lies in the missionary fervor by which the left feels they can EDUCATE the ignorant into voting their way. Michael Moore said "Fifty-one percent of the American people lacked information (in this election) and we want to educate and enlighten them." Noble. Quixotic. IMFUCKINGPOSSIBLE. Or at least too much work for four years.

Educating people is difficult, time-consuming, and frequently futile. We shouldn't be concentrating on enlightening the ignorant. We just need to find a way to get them to pull the other fucking LEVER with a minimum of muss and fuss. We thought in 2004 that if people could just learn the truth, that Bush would be out on his ass. Bush is not out on his ass, and if people couldn't learn the truth about the CHIMP, they're not going to learn the truth about anybody. New approach, people. One that works.

FALLACY THE FOURTH: "The future of America is blue."

I've heard this shit bandied around as part of the left's desperate, post-election grasping at straws. Looking at the exit polls and the demographics and noticing that the young people vote Blue and the old people vote Red and conclude that if we just wait, eventually, all the blue young people will be blue old people and all the red old people will be dead. I have one question for these people: WHERE ARE ALL THE FUCKING HIPPIES? We should be choking on 35 years of accumulated patchouli and love beads by now, and we're not.

People get more conservative as they age. They have more to lose, more to protect, more to be scared of. Just ask Dennis Miller, assuming you can find a way to do that without listening to his answer. That's why the numbers are skewed. These people are blue now, but there's no guarantee they'll be blue by the time everyone terrified of gay marriage dies off. If that's what the left is relying on, we're more hosed than we look, and that's already so hosed you'd need a dozen of those mail-order motorized hosed organizers just to keep track of how hosed we are.

FALLACY THE FIFTH: There is a "middle" to appeal to.

Clinton grabbed a big chunk of the middle. Bush grabbed a big chunk of it back. The middle is gone Let it go. Karl Rove did. Everyone said he was fucked in the head, abandoning the middle to make sure his crazy assholes all voted, but it turns out he was fucked in the head like a FOX.

Kerry and Edwards appeased NOBODY by their half-assed stance on gay marriage, because there was no middle still susceptible to Clintonian half-assing on controversial issues. All they did was convince US they'd turn on Team Selfish Hedonism the instant it became convenient, and convinced THEM they'd turn on Team Missionary Position One Sunday A Month the instant it became convenient.

There are more, of course. But these are the big five for '06 and especially '08. Learn, change, or perish, people.

Blame Is The Cure, Cure Anything

Memo to the Left: PICK A SCAPEGOAT, ALREADY.

I never thought I'd say this, but man, I sure miss Ralph Nader. I remember those bygone days when everything was Nader's fault. Wasn't that great? For nearly four years, Democrats were focused like a laser, and it paid off. Nader got 2.9 million votes in 2000, and only 400,000 in 2004. Why, that's two and a half million votes! If we hadn't spent four years blaming Nader, and yelling at Nader voters, and trying to make sure Nader voters understood that voting for Nader ruins everything, we'd have lost by SIX MILLION instead of three and a half.

The Race for Blame for 2004 seems to be settling down to a horserace - the two frontrunners being Hollywood and Team Selfish Hedonism. Both bring a lot to the scapegoat party. They're small, easily-stereotyped groups. They have a polarizing effect on the population. And neither one caused the loss in 2004. So you can see why it'd be tough for Democrats to decide which ones to blame.

For those who've closely following the campaign of Democratic National Committee chairman Terry McAuliffe, who seemed to be throwing his hat into the blame ring by being completely incompetent and by saying, on November 4, that "This party is stronger than it's ever been," we have an update. McAuliffe is now running a distant 47th, behind "voter fraud conspiracy theories", "sunspots", and Ralph Nader.

Looking at the frontrunners, the Celebrities have won the most important endorsement of the post-election blame campaign - the Republican Party. A close examination of the roughly 3% of Republican talking points that don't include the word "mandate" reveals that the country wasn't really voting FOR George Bush last week, they were voting AGAINST Susan Sarandon.

The right's pushing this one hard, hoping that they can get the left to turn on Sarandon, and Tim Robbins, and Michael Moore. Especially Michael Moore. To hear them tell it, this election proved that Michael Moore is completely irrelevant and wrong and meaningless and a big fatty, and so it's vitally important that nobody in America ever listen to him again. Thankfully, an intelligent and well-informed electorate will see through such petty tricks, and the instant anybody finds one, please notify the authorities so that they can be dealt with.

The biggest problem, for me, with scapegoating Hollywood is that Drew Barrymore would get away scot free. I didn't actively make fun of Drew Barrymore before the election, but man, did I want to. She was doing the talk show circuit because she'd taken a year to learn about politics and make a documentary on learning about politics. And she was so very eager and so very motivated that it was tough to smack her down just because she was also really stupid. She was like a puppy who'd mistaken your scrotum for his favorite squeaky chew-toy. It hurt like hell to put up with her, but you had to begrudgingly respect her enthusiasm in trying to make a difference with the youth of America. But now, we know that it didn't fucking work, so it's open season. But she's not one of the Elite Hollywood Liberals. If you'd like to know who is, just check with your nearest Republican, and they'll be all too willing to hand you a glossy flyer listing them.

I wish I could pin the gay backlash on the Republicans, but this one, sadly, is all ours. The logic seems to be that by fighting for their civil rights, those pesky minorities galvanized the opposition and brought the homophobes to the polls in droves. Of course they were asking for it, Your Honor. Look at the way they were dressed!

Let's all blame Gavin Newsom for marrying gays in San Francisco. After all, given the Kerry/Edwards ticket's unwavering support for gay marriage, this election was obviously a national referendum between the guy that thought gay marriage should be banned in the federal constitution, and the guy who thought gay marriage should be banned in the state constitutions. For fuck's sake, those of us who are strongly for gay marriage had no candidate we could get behind, because Kerry and Edwards kept saying "between a man and a woman" every time a camera was pointed at them.

And second, if the Democratic Party has become so ethically bankrupt that they're willing to ask minority groups to stop fighting for their rights because it's politically inconvenient, then all the scapegoating in the world won't do any good, and we're wasting our time looking for one. And I'd hate to see the Democratic Party start wasting its time on counterproductive activities.

Like A Phoenix From The Asses

Blame and recrimination fall like a black rain upon the land, and guess who's got it by the bucketload? You Are Dumb Dot Net. Sure, yesterday was a day for quiet introspection, but that shit gets old fast. Today is a day for triumph. Because with at least 130 MILLION AMERICANS placing themselves firmly in the ranks of the dumb, evil, selfish, lazy, or all of the above, and with a statistial exit poll analysis showing that at least 60% of Kerry's voters ain't that bright either, YAD has the clearest mandate in political history.

There are dumbasses in the red states, and pigfuckers in the blue states. We put flame decals on our SUV's and think we're clever in the blue states*, and we fill our meatloaf with Cheetos in the red states. This isn't a Republican America. It sure as hell isn't a Democratic America. It's one America, one dumb, dumb, dumb America that cries out, with a single united voice. That cry? "DUUUUURRRRRRRRRRR-HEY?!"

That stirring speech aside, can I take this moment to pour gasoline on the concepts of "uniting" and "healing" and "bridging the partisan divide" and light them on fire? You think if Kerry had won Ohio, the right would be bridging the jack or uniting the shit? They would not. Democrats and Republicans have one thing in common - their idea of "bipartisanship" is "doing what the Republicans want to do". Fuck that. You're the opposition party again. OPPOSE.

Which segues nicely into the memo I'm issuing today, the one you knew was coming: to the Democratic National Committee: YOU ARE DUMB.

Let's play a quick game of free association. Think of five entities or constructs that could have run a more effective campaign against Dubya than the DNC. Go! Got 'em? Here's mine:

1. The host and cast of Dungeon Majesty
2. A dead hamster in a roulette wheel with the numbers replaced by talking points
3. Siegfried and Roy, even in Roy's current medical condition
4. An expensive toaster
5. The Reanimated Corpse of Lawrence Welk

All the DNC had to do was find one guy who could appear to be a viable alternative to the guy who's been ruining things for four years. They fielded a group of nine. Kerry, Edwards, Dean, Clark, Lieberman, Kucinich, Moseley-Braun, Sharpton, Gephardt. You can see the outline of the problem taking shape right there. Six legislators, one governor, one general, and an activist. Gephardt just keeps showing up to these things, Sharpton's got more unwanted baggage than the Denver airport, Moseley-Braun is black and a woman**, if Lieberman weren't Jewish, they'd let him run the Christian Coalition, Kucinich is phonetically reminiscent of Dukakis. That leaves Kerry and Edwards, who couldn't get the fucking job done, Dean, and Clark. And here's where the REAL problem crops up.

The DNC is terrified of letting their candidates be themselves. The DNC also, with the notable exception of Clinton, picks candidates who can't act worth a damn. So they get a rep for being "stiff". And they're stiff because they've been told to act, because the public won't accept them as they are, but they're like Matthew Lillard as Hamlet. Dukakis in a tank. Kerry riding a motorcycle on the Tonight Show. Gore tonguing Tipper to seem spontaneous. People notice the faint waft of bullshit from these stunts, and the root of mistrust begins to grow, ready to be exploited by charges of "serial exaggerator" or "flip-flopper" or "soft on crime". I''ve said this before, but have you SEEN Al Gore this year? Kept away from his handlers and being himself, he's a completely different, much more appealing person. Because he's not trying to act. Clinton deserves a fucking OSCAR. Dubya's the Rain Man of political acting. Barack Obama is either a hell of an actor, or they haven't gotten to him yet.

This is why the DNC has got to be gutted and replaced. They need to come to grips with the simple fact that they are not helping. They're in the way. They're focus-grouping and moderate-baiting the Democrats into oblivion. If they're not replaced, you know what's going to happen in four years, right? These fucks are going to panic, try to return to the glory days of the 90's, and put all their weight behind Hillary. Which will lead to the kind of spanking that'll make 2004 look like the Age of Aquarius. Or the Bolshevik Revolution. As long as they're pulling the strings, we're hosed.

* Actual dumbass suburban mom as seen in the Star Tribune in the last few days, who didn't want to be Just Another SUV, so she put those standard flamey decals on the side. I hate her.

**Of course these shouldn't be flaws, but remember where we live, people.

It Takes More Than Hair

Memo to John Edwards: LUCKY, DUMBASS.

This is the one lesson we all should take from the two debates thus far. When you put a polished, New Democrat politician up against a COKE-ADDLED CHIMPANZEE, the New Democrat comes out looking pretty good.

If you then take another polished, New Democrat politician, and you put HIM up against a fucking power-addled career ratbastard, and guess what? Things go a little differently.

It was true of Bush, and it's true today. If you're not gonna bring your A game, stay the fuck home. Edwards brought his B game. He was reasonably well-prepared, came out swinging, tried to rattle Cheney and hit him where he's vulnerable, and in the end, he lucked into a tie because Cheney fucked up too. If it hadn't been for the incredible, what-was-Dick-thinking, "I'd never met you before tonight" line, Edwards would have gone home with the debate's defining stupid moment trophy.

The moderator asked the candidates to describe how they differed from their opponents without mentioning their bosses' names. It's an honorable question, because veep talking points and stump speeches ALWAYS mention the top of the ticket. And if you're stuck in a stump speech, talking point mindset, you're not actually answering the question. And while these moderators are completely fucking hamstrung in their ability to get all four candidates to actually answer questions, you gotta admire their quixotic attempts anyway.

John Edwards couldn't do it. He couldn't break out of his mold when he needed to. He went straight into stump speech mode, said John Kerry's name, was admonished for it, and then DID IT AGAIN. And this is exactly the kind of reason the Democrats need to get off of their love affair with Clinton clones. Bill Clinton could get away with being Bill Clinton for the sole reason that he was BILL CLINTON. You imitators think you can get by on being centrists with big hair. Clinton could get away with not believing in anything. That's an innate personal ability, not a fucking strategy.

How difficult is it to make Dick Cheney look bad? Not difficult at all, really, if you're not screwed by your desperate ability to be seen as centrist and mainstream. You have a question on AIDS in America dropped in your LAP by the moderator. A real liberal with a fucking PAIR would have placed a huge chunk of the blame where it belongs, on the radical right's pathological obsession with failed "abstinence-only" education, and a supposedly born-again President who's all to willing to go along with it. John Edwards, being a centrist Cloneton, spoke in generalities and went into his Health Care Stump Speech.

How difficult is it to make Dick Cheney look bad when the question is on the gay marriage amendment? His position is astonishingly hypocritical, has done its own share of flip-flopping, and, in case I forgot to mention it, is ASTONISHINGLY HYPOCRITICAL. And Edwards could have nailed him on it, if Edwards weren't a pussy centrist who has to say "marriage is between a man and a woman" forty times for each time he says "ain't it a shame that gay couples can't visit their loved ones in the hospital".

The vice-presidential debate is Exhibit A in why the Democrats need to stop trying to win at the Republicans' game. When I sit down for a relaxing game of Scrabble*, and my opponent says, "OK, I'll play Scrabble, but we're only going to use four consonants and one vowel, and I get to make up my own words", I do not say "That'll be just dandy!" I shove the board up his ass sideways, tie him to his chair, and force him into a deadly round of no-holds-barred Boggle.**

But that's not where John Edwards was last night. He was stuck, sitting there, with his dick in one hand and a five-point "K" in the other, and all he could spell was "Kerry". Twice. Because like the rest of the New Democrats, he was hoist on his own dumbassitude, and the dumbassitude of all that have come before him for the last 20 years. Edwards could have walked out of last night the clear winner if he, and Kerry, were the kind of people the Democrats should be running.

If we lose this thing next month because of it, I'll be really pissed, and if we squeak this one out DESPITE this, and they decide that this shit actually works, I'll be even more pissed. Dumbasses.

*Which is never, but I desperately need this particular Hasbro product for my analogy, so let's pretend for a moment that I've set aside the gripping spectacle of cars ramming each other into walls for the hours necessary to strive for the mighty triple word score.

**Oh, yeah. That day off has recharged the analogy supply BIG-TIME. I speak to power with board games. Back off before I go all Connect Four on your ass.

Jesus, Zell, and Footnotery

It's Labor Day, so all you slackers who only read the column when you're bored at work won't be around to read this anyway. Which means I get to half-ass it* for the holiday.

Memo to America's Retail Establishments: ARE YOU SURE YOU'RE STOCKING ENOUGH "PASSION" DVD'S? I saw enough copies of this over the weekend to build a giant cross out of, although what you'd do with a ten foot cross of "Passion" DVD's is beyond me. This DVD, and the incredible overstocking thereof, raises some fascinating new theological questions that only I am truly qualified to address. Well, me, and the Pope, but today is Jello Day at the Vatican, so El Popemeister is going to be occupied for hours. This leaves it up to me.

Which is more blasphemous? Taking the chance that your store might be OUT of "Passion" when one of the faithful comes to purchase it, or ordering so many copies that Jesus ends up clearanced in a few months? On the one hand, the Bible may very well say at some point ** "Seek, and ye shall find", and if someone seeks out the DVD at Target and they don't find one, God will kill a kitten or something.

On the other hand, once Christmas is over with, and "Passion" is on the $9.99 rack between "Big Daddy" and "Torque", how does that make Jesus look? Not good. And he's supposed to be exalted or something**, not thrown into a wire bin by the bucketload.

And in the "caveat emptor" department, I can't help but notice that "Passion" is available in both widescreen and full-screen. Obviously, from a marketing standpoint, that's an excellent idea, as a good 30% of the target "Passion" audience thinks that the black bars at the top and bottom of the screen were put there by Satan. Another 10% will wonder why the hole in the middle won't fit over their record-player spindle, but that's beside the point.

If someone buys the full-screen version of "Passion", then thanks to the miracle of pan-n-scan, they are eliminating and avoiding approximately 30% of JESUS' SUFFERING AND AGONY. And since Jesus suffered and died for your sins, by picking the Video Format of the Retarded, you are actually re-instating 30% of your lifetime sinning. That may be enough to tip your balance and send you to hell, where all the movies are widescreen, but they're also all by Paul Verhoeven*** and Joel Schumacher.

And nobody wants that. So remember, folks, when it comes time to experience the religious fervor, blood, and non-stop torture of Jesus in your own home, make the right choice. Choose widescreen. After all, WWJALRBAASPFLMGW****?

---

You know, it's strange. I'm not sure how it happened, but after the Republican National Convention last week, there were a whole lot of people looking around on the Internet for why Zell Miller was such a psychotic fucking asshole. Thanks to the magic of search engine technology, they stumbled across this site, which could damn well be a wikipedia***** on the subject of Zell Miller's perfidy.

But I haven't really touched on Zell's RNC performance, or his Hardball and CNN encores, because frankly, thanks to that, the rest of the country has caught up with what we've known for a long time. Zell Miller is a raving, antiquated lunatic whose only real ties to the Democratic Party stem from the days of segregation. And because there's more money and notoriety being a "renegade Democrat" than there is being yet another cranky old Southern conservative racist rightie. And while his performance at the RNC was not surprising in the least, he can still go fuck himself. Plus, The Daily Show was all over that "challenge Chris Matthews to a duel" stuff like bald on Rob Corddry.

* I mean more than usual, of course.

** I think so. While you might think my lack of familiarity with the text of the Bible would limit my qualifications to speak on Christian theological matters, I actually find it quite freeing.

*** And not Robocop, either, so don't get your hopes up, sinners. It's all Showgirls and 8mm. If you only sinned a little, you get Phone Booth.

**** What Would Jesus, As Lovingly Rendered By An Anti-Semitic Psycho Fundie Like Mel Gibson, Watch?

*****A wikipedia is an encyclopedia made up entirely of entries by people on the Internet who think they know shit. They have, as you may guess, plenty of volunteers.******

******Boy, that's a lot of footnotes!

Welcome To Planet Hosed

Memo to Kerry-Edwards 2004: YOU ARE DUMB.

Look. I'm voting for you. We're all voting for you. We all HAVE to vote for you because you're running against an imbecile Jesus-freak with the collective hand of the Evil Bald White Guy Cabal up his ass. And what's worse, Nader, who seemed like an OK guy four years ago, is rapidly becoming a complete nutjob who would sell his own mother to Jerry Falwell just to get on the ballot in Idaho. We are completely and utterly and irrevocably stuck with the big-haired zombie and his boyish ward. We know that. You know that we know that. We know that you know that we know that.

But you don't have to be such fucking PRICKS about it.

First, it was Kerry saying that, even knowing what we know now about Iraq, he'd have still given Dubya his blank check for war. Sure, he was careful about it, because we all know he voted for the authority not because he necessarily believed in it, or because he honestly thought Dubya didn't have his finger hovering and twitching over the "Invade" button. No, he voted for it because it was the politically expedient thing to do. It was gonna pass anyway, so why hand the opposition a weapon to use against you in a futile effort to stop the inevitable?

Of course, it came back to bite him on the ass, but that's the magical world of politics for you. But now, with everything gone to hell, Iraq a mess, soldiers dying by the truckload and their names being buried on A-17 ever since the fake sovereignty got established... even now, he's got to join with Dubya and say going in was the right thing to do even though we all know it fucking well wasn't. And thus, the faces of those of us who support him because the other guy is so incredibly awful get our faces rubbed in it.

And on gay marriage, once again, we have a carefully nuanced, focus-grouped, offending-the-bare-minimum-of-people stance that, frankly, ought to turn the stomach of anyone who's ever held a firm conviction about ANYTHING. Ever. And we sit, and we take it, and we eat it, and it tastes like shit, but we still smile, because the Republican Platform stops just short of calling for a constitutional amendment requiring a goddamn Lexan box around every homosexual in the country so that they can't touch another person of the same gender. And we get our faces rubbed in it.

And now, we have the question of the "war on terror". Remember when Bush declared "war on terror"? Remember how anybody with half a brain and a rudimentary grasp of language immediately mocked the idea of a war on a noun? A battle against an emotional concept? A fight against a tactic? Oh, how we laughed. You can't win a "war on terror". It's like the "war on drugs", only worse! A "war on terror" would be a state of constant warfare, the US intervening using military force wherever and whenever it deemed fit, throwing lives away in foreign lands in a desperate attempt to seem like it was doing something.

Hope you're used to the taste by now, my leftist friends, because the only POSSIBLE tool at my disposal to illustrate the dograping Bizarroworld of the 2004 presidential election is that well-worn screwdriver in the YAD toolbox, ACTUAL QUOTE TIME.

"People say, `Can you win the war on terror?' Of course we can." - George W. Bush, May 2004.

"I don't think you can win it. But I think you can create conditions so that those who use terror as a tool are less acceptable in parts of the world." - George W. Bush, August 2004.

"Absolutely." - John Kerry, asked if the war on terror can be won, August 2004.

"To suggest that the war on terror can't be won is absolutely unacceptable." - Democratic senator Joe Biden, Monday.

"The war on terrorism is absolutely winnable." - John Edwards, Monday night.

"We meet today in a time of war for our country, a war we did not start yet one that we will win." - Dubya, yesterday.

Here's what my well-trained idiot-spotting eye sees. Our President, in an almost unprecedented moment of clarity, admits to something the left wing of the country has been saying for THREE FUCKING YEARS. He is then attacked for this statement by the Democratic candidate, his vice-presidential pick, and a top-ranking senator, who all take the position that the COMPLETE BULLSHIT the administration has been spouting since 9/12/01 is absolutely the right thing. As a result of this attack, the President backtracks from his new, SANE position, back to his old INSANE position, trying to make it seem like he never really meant the sane thing in the first place. Welcome to Planet Hosed.

And the worst part is, come November, we still have to vote for these spineless, opportunistic, packaged, shellacked, animatronic, "New Democrat", centrist fuckwads, because the alternative is a belligerent theocracy that wants to wipe out all the other belligerent theocracies on the planet. At this point, the "I Voted" sticker could be made out of Viagra, dark chocolate, and CRACK and I still wouldn't enjoy the democratic process.

The Great Game Of Political Grabass

Memo to the Democratic Party: YOU ARE DUMB.

Seriously. If you screw this up... fuck, HOW can you screw this up? How difficult can it be to make a case against an incompetent, corrupt, window-sill licking president who's done nothing but walk into walls for the past three years? Yet you seem to be having certain... difficulties. Like picking a Vice President.

See that? Stare hard at that picture, fuckos. See who that is locked in a passionate embrace with the captain of the U.S. Titanic? Yes, it's that independent maverick of integrity, John McCain. You remember McCain. He's the other half of what you called a "dream ticket", a bipartisan Kerry/McCain presidential campaign.

Of course, it was called a "dream ticket" because it was being proposed by people who need to WAKE THE FUCK UP. Maybe this picture will knock your dicks out of your hands long enough for you to realize that if you have to turn to John McCain to make up your dream ticket, you may be thoroughly hosed.

They said it would be so wonderful. Two men bridging the partisan divide, uniting the country in an orgy of peace and harmony. Which is a great theory until you remember that the Constitution wasn't written by those two hacks that churned out all the Dragonlance books. It don't work that way here on Planet Politics.

All the desperate courting of John McCain means is that the Democrats, thanks to 20 years of metaphorical inbreeding via focus groups and polling, have produced a crop of feeble, bland clones. I mean, you thought the Democratic PRIMARIES were bad? At least there you had a token woman, token black, and token right-wing nutjob in there to liven things up.

But the Democratic Veep pool? Overchlorinated. There's no life within five feet of it, anyone that goes into it is instantly bleached, and just looking at it makes you pass out. It's like an entire room full of people auditioning for the role of the "safe one" in the latest boy band. When John Edwards is the life of the party, no wonder you consider knocking on the door of the rival frat house looking for a good time.

But as you can see, the Democrats got spurned and wedgied. McCain's no "independent". He's no "maverick". He's just a guy who's found that it helps his image to spend most of his time at the end of his chain rather than the feet of his master. But anyone who thought he wouldn't heel when called has been living in a dream world.

At this point, the Democrats might as well just pick their vice president because his name sounds good next to "Kerry". Sorry, Gephardt. Nobody's going to care who it is anyway. Just start sticking names of your big-haired middle aged white guys who pretend to be 10 years younger than they are into the phrase "The Kerry-Blank Campaign" and see which one rolls off the tongue best. You'll probably swing as many states that way as Edwards can.

Pity there's not some guy in the House of Representatives named Jim Freebeer. They'd have this thing locked down by August with a Kerry-Freebeer ticket.

Democrats

 Memo to the Democrats: YOU ARE DUMB.

You know why? Because they've been handed the means to win every single funding argument for the next ten years in the court of public opinion, and you just know they won't have the cojones to use it.

Oh, sure, the Dems -seem- to be growing a big pair of Rocky Mountain Donkey Eggs, with Nancy Pelosi calling Bush "incompetent", and all, but that's just the hyena mentality. Dubya's already given himself a bad leg and a wicked case of the mange, so that's why you see the Pelosis of the world closing in.

But seriously. Whenever something Republicans usually bitch about comes up for funding, the Dems now have comebacks of EPIC proportions. Let's say, for example, that the government wants to take some tax money and give it to poor people so they can eat. Republicans hate it when poor people eat, so they start blathering on about bootstraps and personal responsibility and "welfare cheats" abusing the system who in reality make up a tiny fraction of the people receiving the service.

And then, some brave Democrat, possibly possessed by the soul of Paul Wellstone, only having been dead and out of Minnesota for a couple of years, the Wellsoul no longer has any compunctions about being friendly and nice, and says, "Where do you fucks get off trying to tell other people, either the Congress or people on welfare, how to spend money? You're the people who gave $340,000 a month to Ahmed Chalabi so he could lie to you, spy for the Iranians, and plot to overthrow whatever half-assed government you install in Iraq. $340,000 a month for like THREE YEARS. That shit adds up. So get your ass back on the golf course with your cronies and let the grownups do the real work.

It would be GLORIOUS. But it'll never happen. Even if they took out the "fucks" and the "shit", which these days don't get said nearly enough on the Senate floor.

Compared to what those idiots spent on Ahmed Chalabi, midnight basketball seems like a pretty smart investment, if you ask me.

And after about five years, when the Chalabi thing starts losing its bite, and the Republicans are all up in arms because we want to send men to Mars, and they're cranky because there's no evidence as yet that Jesus ever went there, so we should spend that money right here on Earth, once again, the pissed off, dead soul of Paul Wellstone, having been made even more ornery by yet another half-decade being all dead and stuff, takes over the body of someone... I don't know. Someone with some seniority. Not Joe Lieberman. That'd just be fuckin' creepy, even for the pissed off soul of Wellstone. Doesn't matter who, anyway. And the newly possessed senator stands up and says...

"Spend money here on Earth? Let's see, you guys spent some money here on Earth a few years ago, didn't you? You gave it to Halliburton, so that they could go to the most dangerous roads on Earth, pay innocent people to drive back and forth on them, and those trucks were fucking EMPTY. Empty trucks! Your buddies at Halliburton risked innocent drivers' lives needlessly so that they could bilk us for $1,000 a trip. So sit your pasty ass down. We're going to Mars, and I guarantee there won't be any empty spaceships making the run.

Man, what I wouldn't give to see that one day. But I won't. None of us will. And it's a shame, because it sure sounds nice. But Democrats are DUMB.

Mark Dayton

Memo to Mark Dayton: YOU ARE DUMB.

You are a United States Senator. You are one of one hundred people who form the upper house of the federal government's legislative branch. There is a war on. So maybe you have better things to do in your spare time than fuck around trying to get baseball games on TV.

I mean, far be it from me to question a senator's priorities. Wait. Actually, VERY CLOSE be it to me. It's right here, next to the Vanilla Coke. Question a senator's priorities when he's spending time pandering to whiny fantards and business interests over goddamn baseball.

It's bad enough that your local ilk have to run around every single year trying to get the public to pay for shiny new stadiums. After all, if we don't have shiny stadiums, the teams will leave, and then, in the unlikely event that any of them win a national championship, some OTHER city will have to deal with rioting fans setting overturned cars on fire. These are OUR TEAMS, dammit. And if we don't spend tax money on tripling the capacity of luxury skyboxes, our cars will remain vertical and flame-free.

A city without flaming upside down cars simply isn't worth living in, after all. It provides variety. Interest. Flickering light effects. We live in the midwest, for fuck's sake. We can't afford to be any MORE boring, or we'll all fall asleep and crash our cars, flipping them over and setting them on fire. Obviously, stadium opponents would rather spend money on the poor and let OCCUPIED cars burn, instead of spending money on stadiums and letting PARKED cars burn.

Of course, if we do end up with a new baseball stadium, nobody's gonna fucking go and buy tickets. Not if Mark Dayton has his way. Because right now, you can't see the games on TV for free. The team took all the games and is trying to start a fledgling cable network to air them on. Victory Sports Network. Since it's Minnesota, it really should have been called Victory Between Forty And Eighty Percent Of The Time On Average Network, but they couldn't make that work as a logo. Anyway, these are the owners of sports teams, and as such, are completely unsympathetic individuals, so fuck them.

The cable and satellite companies don't want to shell out for it, though. This is because they are huge multinational corporations who do not have the time or the energy to make piddly little deals that only involve a single, non-New-York major metropolitan area. Because they are cable and satellite companies they are, as such, completely unsympathetic individuals, so fuck them too.

In an ideal, free-market world, these two behemoths would fight it out amongst themselves until it worked out or it didn't. But this is America, where the free market only counts if you want to pump mercury into the rivers or don't want people to eat while they're between jobs. The free market can't possibly be used to manage something as vital to the national interest as televised baseball games. Those of you outside Minneapolis may be laughing, but you haven't heard the news coverage. People are DISTRAUGHT that they can't watch the home team play. It's a travesty, a tragedy, and three to four other words that start with TRA and end in Y.

And what bigger voting bloc is there than people with multicolored caps and fucked-up priorities? I can't think of one. And neither can Senator Dayton, who has set up closed-door non-negotiation negotiation sessions (because they are somehow legally barred from negotiating). He's doing this "on behalf of those thousands of Minnesota Twins fans", and because he "want(s) the Twins on television, soon."

Well, good for you. While you're at it, I'd love to see more Angel, Firefly, and Home Movies. You're my senator. I voted for your sorry ass. So get cracking. And while you're at it, get The Swan canceled. Let me know if I need to wear a cap before you listen to me.

Zell Miller