Giving Your Country The Finger

Memo to those who lionize stupidity: YOU ARE DUMB.

But before we begin, let's have a moment of silence, and when I say "silence", I mean "loud peals of derisive laughter", for Bernard Kerik, who would have been in charge of moving from Yellow Alert to Orange Alert and back - until he "discovered" ha'd hired an illegal immigrant to clean his place and watch his kids. And hadn't paid her taxes properly. And if that's the excuse they settled on, the stuff they were digging up must have been REALLY heinous.This is what happens when you run out of hand-picked yes-men and have to outsource.

So anyway, stupidity masquerading as romantic bravery. This is the means by which people excuse ridiculous, stupid behavior because of some element of "spirit" or "romance" or some other bullshit. The enduring appeal of the heartwarming Story is why David Battle will go down in history as a "brave romantic hero" rather than a "nine-fingered fool".

Now I know this is going to make me remove at least 15 of the 74 "Support Our Troops" ribbon magnets I have on the back of my car, but Lance Cpl. Battle, USMC, had, at the very least an Epic Dipshit Moment. Maybe he wasn't lucid. Maybe he was full of painkillers. And maybe he's making the best of a bad decision. Or maybe he's a dumbass. Doesn't matter, because he's not the real problem anyway. The real problem are the people that think he's some kind of paragon.

In mid-November, Battle got his hand mangled in Iraq, where, I mention idly, we haven't found any WMD's because they weren't there. Battle is one of about 10,000 mangled soldiers who rarely get counted, or if they get counted, they get counted as just "wounded", which makes you think he limps a bit when he comes home to his girl. But Battle got his hand all mangled up. So mangled up, that doctors had to cut off his wedding band to save his ring finger.

That's when Battle had his Moment. Faced with the choice of losing his wedding band, and losing his finger, Battle made Frodo's Choice, and the doctors cut off his finger. It's ACTUAL NONADIGITAL QUOTE TIME!

"My wife is the strongest woman I know. She's basically running two people's lives since I've been gone. I don't think I could ever repay her or show her how grateful ... how much I love my wife, my soul mate." - Battle, who, by the way, will inevitably have touching plays on his last name written about him from now on.

That's all very sweet, but if Mrs. Battle is so strong, don't you think she's capable of dealing with the loss of a wedding band? Turns out we don't actually need to answer that question. See, sometime after the finger was removed, the doctors LOST THE RING. Rumors that the ring is currently being used to up-armor a Humvee could not be confirmed at press time.

No finger, because Battle, as an American, has been trained from birth to think of the symbol of a thing as being as important as, if not more important than, the thing itself. It's why flag burning is more heinous than censorship. It's why, despite 10,000 David Battles, the "Mission Accomplished" banner wasn't a crippling blow in November. Symbols are pretty. Things are messy. And no ring either, because I'm guessing Jewelry Management is a low-priority when freedom's on the march.

No finger, no ring. And Battle is some kind of hero. Just ask his high school coach, Daniel Pierce:

"We need to make more David Battles. He is one amazing guy."- No, we really don't need to make more David Battles. We need to make more people that, when forced to choose between a BODY PART and JEWELRY, makes the choice that won't require relearning how to touch type.

And we probably need to stop making soldiers with mangled hands in Iraq, too.

It's been a while since I've mentioned Lisa Wright, hasn't it? But she's STILL DUMB.

Precis for new readers - Lisa Wright is a morning DJ on a Minneapolis 80's radio station. The one I wake up to in the morning. Because Minneapolis Radio sucks, because news and classical don't wake me up, and because hideous beeping noises wake me up with so much excess hate and rage that I'd have to start a second website. LIsa Wright is also an idiot.

This morning, Lisa Wright was discussing Barbara Walters' most fascinating people of 2004. Of which there were ten, but only four were discussed on the radio - Oprah Winfrey, Donald Trump, Paris Hilton, and the super-secret #1 pick. Wright then proceeded to embarass herself more than usual. First, by making fun of Barbara Walters accent slash speech impediment, calling her "Baba Wawa". Which, as a comedy touchstone, is five years too old for an 80's RETRO STATION. Whatever hole she pulled that out of was covered with a thick stone block with warnings of a curse carved into it. I know you can't qualify as a morning DJ without the uncanny ability to fail at every single joke they attempt, but, BABA FUCKING WAWA?

Then she proceeded to make fun of Trump's new fiancee as a golddigger while simultaneously saying she'd do the same thing, proving once again that Lisa Wright is to feminism what strychnine is to cuisine. But then it was time to "reveal" Walters' already-revealed #1 pick, Karl Rove, and Wright was SHOCKED.

"I thought it would be Britney Spears, or Barry Bonds."* Yes, Lisa. How could the guy who masterminded the last two presidential elections be more fascinating than the woman who had "Toxic" written for her? Britney and Barry are both famous this year for one reason - sticking things in 'em that they shouldn't have. And despite Paris Hilton's inclusion on Walters' list, that does NOT in fact make someone "fascinating".

---

It's gotta suck to be Donald Rumsfeld right now. Publicly shamed and embarassed by a grunt at a photo op, and having to put a brave face on it for at least four days until everyone, including the media, forgets who Sgt. Thomas Wilson Is and the government can safely toss him into Gitmo and stick electrodes to his scrotum.

But until that sweet, sweet day comes, again, next Tuesday or Wednesday, Rumsfeld's gotta suck it up and say nice things about how "healthy" it is for the troops to question him about why they're digging through junkyards for scrap-metal armor. He's gotta smile and be nice and talk about improving the problems. He's gotta live with his weak-ass answer about "the Army we have" being replayed ad infinitum, and hope that a whole bunch of people don't make the connection that he's the one responsible for the condition of the Army we have. And whatever he does, he has to make sure he doesn't say anything that sounds like a vaguely ominous threat of reprisals. It's ALPHA QUEBEC TANGO!

"I don't know what the facts are, but somebody is certainly going to sit down with him and find out what he knows that they may not know." - Donald Rumsfeld, today. Oops. Reports that Rumsfeld found Wilson's lack of faith... disturbing were unconfirmed as of press time.

---

At the risk of sounding very 1998, America Online can continue to go fuck itself. Admittedly, they're not the blight on the Internet they were six, seven years ago, back when AOL was the major conduit for stupid fucks making it on to the Internet. Now you can barely exchange a packet over a network without it brushing up against some idiot's e-mailed Flash cartoon about a transvestite Republican penguin.

But running ads claiming to "make the Internet better"? Please. Animated emoticons do not make the Internet better. Taking all the porn out of it does not make the Internet better. Giving people anti-virus software doesn't make the Internet better. You'd think it might, but if it weren't for rampant viruses culling the herd by making their computers spontaneously combust, the net would have 30% more dipshits by weight than we do already. You don't take away a species' only natural predator without horrible environmental results.

On its home page, AOL has a link that people can click on. Clicking on this link runs software that checks the clicker's PC to tell this person if they have AOL installed ON THEIR OWN PC. Anyone who needs to be told this is not going to make the Internet better, no matter how many housewives stand on boardroom tables.

* All Lisa Wright quotes in You Are Dumb are, by necessity, rough approximations, as they are heard in the blurry, pre-morning haze and then written down 60-90 minutes later. The essential spirit is there, though. Those were the names.

The Mona Lisa Is Trying To Tell Me Something

Memo to America: YOU ARE MEDIOCRE.

That's what we really need to face up to. Some of the time we're a beacon of freedom and hope. A lot of the time we're reactionary douchebags. But the vast majority of the time, America, and American culture, is just... mediocre. Safe. We invented Wonder Bread, John Grisham, and Hanson, three crimes for which we still haven't atoned.

I mean, "Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice"? What, exactly, did she do as National Security Advisor, other than go on the Sunday talk shows and testify before the 9/11 commission about the briefings she ignored? MEDIOCRE AT BEST. And that earns her a promotion to Secretary of State? The good news is, her predecessor lowered the job qualifications to "must be willing to lie to the United Nations on command", and "must never be listened to ever", so Condi should do well enough on the job that when she's done, they can name another oil tanker after her.

But if you want a true example of American mediocrity, of that point in the bell curve where the clicking stops and you're about to raise your hands and start screaming, you need look no farther than the news that Ron Howard will be directing Tom Hanks in the fim adaptation of... The DaVinci Code.

The DaVinci Code is, of course, That Book. Every few years, America decides, as a nation, that we're all going to "read" a book. Partly to keep in practice, but mainly just so we can be seen carrying around stuff that proves we can read. "The Firm" was That Book for a while. The Harry Potter books aspired to That Book status for a few years, until they got too big. I seem to recall "The Thorn Birds" being That Book when I was growing up in the 70's. And right now, the book everyone is carrying around and pretending to read is "The DaVinci Code". It's apparently about some guy who discovers that hidden messages are encoded into DaVinci paintings, leading to a Dark Secret that could Change Everything. It's like "National Treasure", only done for people who realize that the "G" in "Gnostic" is silent.

It's not actually necessary to read "That Book". You just need to own a copy or two. You can leave it lying around, on the kitchen table or in your briefcase, with a bookmark somewhere in the first third, and can get away with saying things like "It's pretty good so far", or "I can't wait to see how it turns out", or "I didn't know they kept all those paintings in France", because all the people you'll be discussing the book with haven't actually read it either. They just held it in front of them on the bus so that they could stare at the Crazy Poodle Hair Woman without being noticed.

We don't have to read That Book, because if enough of us just go out and buy That Book, they'll make a MOVIE of it, and we can all go see the movie and know as much about what was in the book as anybody else does, and we can all nod knowingly at each other and say that the book was better, of course, and went into more detail. We ourselves won't go into more detail, because we understand the pact we've made with each other.

Obviously, when adapting one of America's most beloved pieces of unread fiction, great care must be taken, and that's why they brought Ron Howard on board. I will not make the obvious Opie or Richie Cunningham jokes, as the man who brought us "How The Grinch Stole Christmas", "Willow", and "A Beautiful Mind" does not deserve to be remembered for his harmless, dull, white acting past. Putting Ron Howard on "The DaVinci Code" is like putting the french fried onions on top of your green bean casserole. It doesn't make it better, it just makes it more recognizable, more comfortable.

The DaVinci Code's main character is Some Guy, and who better to portray Some Guy than Tom Hanks? Hanks, who can currently be seen as a creepy, plasticine caricature of himself *, is the cream of mushroom soup in the green bean casserole. Warm, processed, and slightly gooey. Ron Howard said of Hanks that "''Tom is an exciting actor to watch thinking," which shows that MASSIVE QUANTITIES OF HAIR aren't the only things that have gone missing from Howard's skull in the past few decades.

Screenwriter Akiva Goldsman is not mediocre. But he can be mathematically expressed AS mediocrity. Goldsman, you see, is the worst screenwriter in the universe. Through, I presume, the dark arts, he managed to win the Oscar for his "A Beautiful Mind" work, making him, technically, also the best screenwriter in the universe. And when you average out those two states, you get mediocrity.

Finally, we have producer Brian Grazer, whose name is attached to so much crap ("Kindergarten Cop", "Sgt. Bilko") and respectable work ("Sports Night", "Arrested Development", "Undercover Brother" that we must judge him by his words. It's BELATED ACTUAL QUOTE TIME!

Speaking of an unnamed, Oscar-winning actress who wanted to play the part of a Parisian cryptologist: ''She could easily do it. 'But I think the audience would be let down a bit. They expect a French girl." From this, we can determine two things. Either Grazer is a complete idiot who doesn't realize the American audience will accept anyone as French as long as they wear a beret, or the actress in question was Halle Berry.

The DaVinci Code: The Movie, coming to theaters in 2005, so that you don't have to finish any of the three copies you own in 2004.

* And there's a CGI version of him in that Polar Express movie, too! I'll be here all week. Try the veal.

The High Road Remains Free Of Traffic

Memo to Andrew Sullivan: ARE YOU LOOKING FOR YOUR HEAD?

I'd always felt a little bit sorry for Andrew Sullivan. As a gay Republican, he can't help bt act in a completely self-destructive, contrary-to-his-own-interests manner, but in recent times, he has come out against George W. Bush. Which proves he, like the Log Cabin Republicans all but the 20% of the gay population who voted for Dubya, are capable of finally recognizing a direct threat to their existence when it jumps up and down in front of them waving big red flags with flares tied to the tops and yells "I HATE YOU I HATE YOU I HATE YOU AND I'M IN CHARGE, FAGGOT"

Sensing this vague, tenuous animosity from the Republicans, Andrew Sullivan voted for Kerry, and for that, I give him credit. But he's still a dick.

Sullivan appeard on "Real Time with Bill Maher" last Friday, a show which had already been marred* by a bizarre exchange with former senator Alan Simpson. Simpson took the peculiar view that political comedians like Maher shouldn't make jokes at the expense of politics, parties, policies, or voters, and defended Wyoming's gay population by reminding Maher that Wyoming is where Matthew Shepard was killed.

Toward the end of the show, Maher had, for the first time on any of his shows, Noam Chomsky as a guest. Noam Chomsky is the Samuel L. Jackson of political argument. You may not agree with him, but you do not fuck with him, because he's better at it than you. This isn't a matter of his opinions, this is a matter of pure skill. Noam Chomsky is to logical argument what Michelangelo was to doodling. So Chomsky came on via satellite for his interview, he and Maher talked for a while, and then he went away. Chomsky was coherent, completely devoid of rhetoric, and name-dropped Zbigniew Burzynski. And the instant his screen went dark, Sullivan pounced.

He started going off on the kind of rant that would make Tucker Carlson say "Dial it down a notch, buddy." He went after Chomsky, who conveniently was no longer able to respond, like Ann Coulter going after a liberal pork chop**. He accused Chomsky of hating America, of loving Saddam Hussein, of a whole bunch of things that Chomsky didn't actually say. He even accused Chomsky of being paid money to speak to people, which as we know was outlawed in 1972.

He accused Chomsky of besmirching freedom and democracy, and supporting oppression and tyranny, and said "I hope he's smart enough to know he's lying". And he completely dismissed the "100,000 civilian casualties in Iraq" study, which shows that Sullivan did not so much come to his senses when he voted for Kerry, but rather executed a classic gravity slingshot maneuver around his senses, spending a brief period of time in orbit around his senses before shooting off into Fuckety Cuckoo Land.

Maher tried to engage him on the topic, but Sullivan could not see or hear him through his righteous berzerker rage. And then, as the credits rolled, Sullivan started... rubbing his ass. I know you find this hard to believe. I missed it entirely the first time I watched the show, because I wasn't paying attention to the credits. But for whatever reason, going apeshit on an elderly professor gave Sullivan a wedgie, or a rash, or something else I don't even want to think about.

Now, normally, I would not automatically make fun of someone for their moment of inadvertent public embarassment. That's why I've taken great, epic pains to demonstrate that Andrew Sullivan is a dick, and thus a completely valid target for the utterly cheap, completely immature, and otherwise uncalled-for bit of graphic kerfluffery I'm about to commit.

Are you looking for your head, Andy?

* Get it? "MARRED"? You wouldn't get this kind of comedy from a "blogger", you know.

** Dress it up all you want, but it's still COMMIE PINK on the inside.

Getting The Most Out Of Old Household Tools

Memo to George W. Bush, the entire Justice Department, Ed Gillespie, and Kimberly Parmer: FUCK YOU IN THE EAR-HOLE WITH A RUSTY AWL.

I know that sounds harsh now, but trust me, I have my reasons. And here these reasons are, in the very words of the potential earholefuckees themselves:

"My opponent has no plan, no vision, just a long list of complaints. But a Monday morning quarterback has never led any team to victory." - George W. Bush. Fuck you in the ear-hole with a rusty awl*. Happening to mention that you've fucked up is not Monday morning quarterbacking. War is not a sport. Three hundred and seventy tons of explosives is not the ball between Bill Buckner's legs. People like John Kerry HAVE to keep pointing out that you've fucked up, because you keep fucking up, and you won't admit it.

Plus, you imbecile, you only "Monday Morning Quarterback" the LOSERS from Sunday. There'd be no second guessing if the people in charge had gotten their first guess right. Perhaps, someday, you will know what a job done properly looks like, so that you will be able to recognize it and distinguish it from everything else you've ever done ever, but until then, just trust me. And try not to hand over any more huge quantities of explosives to our enemies between now and January 20, OK?

"Many Democrats in this country do not recognise their party anymore. Today, I want to speak to every one of them: if you believe that America should lead with strength and purpose and confidence in our ideals, I would be honoured to have your support." - Mr. President, you have two ears. I would explain to you that the reason Democrats don't recognize their own party anymore is because all the Democrats are TRYING TO BE LIKE YOU, but the metaphorical awls keep getting in the way. Plus, you're an idiot.

"This administration has made it clear from the outset that members of al Qaeda and other terrorist groups do not necessarily enjoy the protections of the Geneva Conventions. Al Qaeda members and other foreign terrorists in Iraq illegally would not be entitled to the Geneva Convention protections. That's consistent with our opinion on Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan." - An unnamed senior Justice Department official. Fuck you in the earholes with a rusty awl, the lot of you, and a second bonus awl for your Imperious Leader Ashcroft.

Go back to covering up stone titties and arresting Tommy Chong, why don't you? You want to take prisoners, ship them off to other countries, hide them from the world, and we're supposed to take your word that it's OK 'cause you say they're terrorists? You lost an election to a rotting corpse. You have less credibility than the kind of lying bastard governments the Geneva Convention was designed to thwart. I hope you get the first pink slip handed out on January 21. Maybe you can sell it on eBay as a collectible.

"Look, the Republican candidate will never win the contest for editorial board endorsements. The major dailies across the country tend to skew liberal." - RNC Chairman Ed Gillespie. Fuck you. Guess where. Guess with what. And guess how many rusty awls we're going to have to scrounge up for all the fucks in the media who let you come on their shows and say things like this, which are demonstrably and patently FALSE.

You know how many times the Republican candidate won the contest for editorial board endorsements? Thirteen. You know how many times they've lost? Two, plus, it seems, the current one. You know who won the contest in 2000? BUSH. The statistics only go back to 1940, so while we can set a lower boundary on how big a lying, fuckwit monkeybrain Ed Gillespie is, we cannot set an upper limit. Plus, there's six days to go. That's plenty of time for ol' Ed to rack up his retardo quotient.

"If you actually look at him, and he stands up next to Kerry, you just kind of feel sorry for him. I feel he's more of an underdog, he's had a hard go of it in the last four years." - Kimberly Parmer, of Michigan, quoted in the New York Times about why, despite being an "undecided voter", she may end up voting for Bush. EARHOLES! AWLS! RUSTY! NOW! In fact, I'd like to get a team of surgeons to add approximately FIVE MORE EARS to you at various locations on your body. I'll tell you it's an extreme makeover or something. Because two rusty awls simply doesn't seem like enough earfucking for a sentence this stupid.

You do not support someone for Leader Of The Fucking Free World because you feel sorry for how badly he's doing the job. And frankly, the rest of us would appreciate it if you would not ruin things for the rest of us because of your inexplicable desire to give George W. Bush an electoral pity-fuck. If things go badly on Tuesday, it will be largely on the heads of the Kimberly Parmers of this country. Hooray for the rusty awl of democracy, which fucks us all in the ear-holes sooner or later.

*Metaphorically, of course.

As If It Were Intended For Some Kind Of... Circus

Memo to the Republican Party: I WAS WRONG. I'M SORRY.

I have, in the past, criticized Republicans for their clam of being the party of "inclusion". I've mocked the idea that the GOP is a "big tent", that can hold straights and gays (even while they work to make gays second-class citizens), whites and blacks (even while they embrace racists like Strom Thurmond and Trent Lott), pro-choice and embryo-fetishist (even while they frantically work to impose their religious viewpoint on people of other or no faiths).

But this year, to help Bush gain re-election, the GOP has truly assembled a diverse "coalition of the willing". Homophobes, racists, fiscal conservatives, Pat Buchanan, rednecks, Jesus-freaks, "security moms", chickpea sex-freaks, bow-tied pussies, and the Iranian government.

Yes, in what may prove to be the single funniest endorsement in the history of mankind, Hasan Rowlani, head of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, said that the re-election of George W. Bush was in his country's best interest. For those of you wondering how important the Supreme National Security Council, it's just like our own National Security Council, except it has sausage AND pepperoni on it.

Iran's endorsement is big for many reasons. First, it truly shows the inclusiveness of the GOP. I mean, these guys act like Iran is almost as bad as two guys who want to get married! All during the debates it was "get tough on Iran", "sanctions on Iran", "Iran is a doodyhead". And Iran still loves Dubya! They're like the Log Cabin Republicans of rogue nations.

So why would Iran, member of the Axis of Evil, support Bush? Well, aside from the obvious "takes one corrupt tyrannical regime run by religious extermists to know one" jokes, let's turn to the words of Mr. Rowlani himself. It's ACTUAL ENDORSEMENT TIME!

"We do not desire to see Democrats take over. We haven't seen anything good from Democrats." - Rowlani said. Ann Coulter, upon learning that she has expressed the exact same viewpoint as one of the filthy brown people she wants to eradicate from the face of the earth, suffered a minor stroke due to the cognitive dissonance. The stroke eliminated nearly 85% of her higher mental functions, and almost caused her to cancel her appearance on "Meet The Press" this weekend.

"We should not forget that most sanctions and economic pressures were imposed on Iran during the time of Clinton. And we should not forget that during Bush's era ? despite his hard-line and baseless rhetoric against Iran ? he didn't take, in practical terms, any dangerous action against Iran. - Rowlani again. So the Iranian government, who, frankly, are in a position to know, are quite satisfied with Bush's "all talk, no action" stance on Iran, plus his eradication of one of their least favorite guys, Saddamn Hussein. Welcome to the GOP, Iran!

But why, pray tell, would a Democratic administration be so bad for Iran? Does Iran fear that they would have to recognize gay marriages from Massachussetts? Are they concerned that our welfare cheats will go unpunished? Perhaps they fear that President Kerry's corporate tax hikes would impair Halliburton's ability to do business with them? We turn to Iranian political analyst Mohsen Mofidi for the answer.

"The experience of two wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the responsibility Bush had, will make it a very remote possibility for him to risk attacking a much bigger and more powerful country like Iran. Democrats usually insist on human rights and they will have more excuses to pressure Iran."

Well, there you have it, folks. A stirring endorsement indeed. Dubya is supported by the Iranian government because he ignores human rights (nice to see SOMEONE took the lessons of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay to heart), because he leaves Iran pretty much alone, and because even if he wanted to, he doesn't have the troops to try anything with Iran. Four more years! Four more years! It's a pity there's nobody in the government who can translate that into Farsi for them.

The Bush administration, of course, has refused to accept the endorsement, but that's the great thing about endorsements. They're a one-way street. When you stand for Bush, whether you like it or not, you stand with Ann Coulter. You stand with David Duke. You stand with Trent Lott. You stand with Tucker Carlson. You stand with Alan Keyes. You stand with Toby Keith. You stand with Ann Coulter. You stand with Jerry Falwell. And you stand with the Iranian government. What a great big tent that is. Just a great, big, inclusive, grand old party. I guess I was wrong about them after all.

Ponies Of Mass Destruction

Memo to everyone excited and psyched up by this year's democratic process: HOW DO YOU DO IT?

I can't do it. Fuck knows I've tried. I tried to get excited about the primaries, but Kerry, my least favorite of the eight Dmocrats running*, got picked before my state even got to vote. I tried to get excited every time Al Gore got all lefty and pissed, but all I could do is ask where the FUCK he was four years ago when it would have made a difference?

And every single day, every SINGLE FUCKING DAY, George W. Bush gets away with things that would have gotten Nixon impeached so fast he wouldn't have had a CHANCE to resign. Things that would have gotten Clinton hanged, publicly, from the top of the Washington Monument. And Bush just breezes on by with about the same half of the country behind him he's always had.

It has been said, by Molly Ivins and others, that Bush was "born on third base, and thought he hit a triple". Funny line. True line. But it masks the insidious nature of the Bush organism, which has somehow also developed the ability to convince OTHER PEOPLE that he hit a triple, even if they were there in the stands at Shea Stadium watching him get squeezed out of Barbara.

This WMD thing... fuck fuck fuck fuck FUCK this WMD thing... you've all seen the stories. Huge, epic, WMD report. Years in the making. The weapons inspectors Bush sent in HIMSELF. Finally put out their official report, said they not only found neither jack nor shit, but that even though Saddam had wanted to make more of both jack and shit, he'd have had to wait for everyone to stop checking up on him before he could even start repairing the shit factory. Contradicts everything the administration has ever said, except for the obvious fact that Saddam Hussein really, really, really wished he had a nuclear bomb. And a pony. Of mass destruction.

So now, before we go into Actual Quote Time, I ask you to take a second and listen to a happy song. Maybe some Shonen Knife, or some TMBG, or whatever. Something light and cheerful. Because when you're done, it's ACTUAL QUOTE TIME.

"This was a place where if there was a potential nexus between the terrorists and one hand and access to knowledge and the technology of WMD on the other, it's Iraq." - Dick Cheney, claiming that the WMD report proved the war was justified.

"The Duelfer report also raises important new information about Saddam Hussein's defiance of the world in his intent and capability to develop weapons. The Duelfer report showed that Saddam was systematically gaming the system, using the U.N. oil-for-food program to try to influence countries and companies in an effort to undermine sanctions." - George W. Bush, claiming that the WMD report proved the war was justified.

And these statements are being given a fucking pass by the media, AGAIN. To hell with baseball metaphors. I think I proved yesterday that two thirds of the words in any given baseball metaphor just sit around not doing anything. This is more like a marathon. And the weapons inspectors ran the entire marathon, and John Kerry ran the entire marathon, and just as they got to the finish line, sweating in their tank tops and shorts, Bush steps out from behind a tree, in a suit and tie, and crosses the finish line with them.

And cameras from every major network, and several minor ones, have footage of him stepping out from behind the tree. And he's wearing a SUIT. And everyone takes a long hard look at the footage, and the evidence, and they conclude that the race is a dead heat, and really, there's no way to find out for sure who won. And everyone gets a hug and a cookie. And then Bush knocks the cookie out of Kerry's hand, also on camera, and goes on the campaign trail talking about how Kerry demeaned the sacrifice of the flour and the sugar by throwing the cookie to the cold, hard ground.

And the absolute best thing that can come out of all this is... President Kerry. "The bad news is, you have to eat shit for the next four years. The good news is, it doesn't contain nearly as much mercury as the Bush shit would have." So really, I envy all you people with your signs and your bumper-stickers and your cheering. And I hope, for once, that you'er right, and I'm wrong. But I ain't fuckin' counting on it.

*He was my second least-favorite of the nine people running for the nomination, of course.

And Not A Single Joke About "Hot Air"

Memo to the Iraqi people: SORRY! SEE YA LATER!

I know I've been talking more than even I want to about politics and world events of late, but over the past week, I've noticed something interesting, and what it boils down to is that Iraq is screwed. I mean, yeah, it's bad now, but all signs are currently pointing to the very last rationale for the invasion of Iraq, the liberation of the Iraqi people, is about to get tossed aside to the heap next to WMD's and Terrorist Ties.

In a sure sign of a desperate administration, the Bush camp let loose more balloons than they did during the convention. Trial balloons, that is. Trial balloons are when someone in, or allied with, the administration says something completely fucking ridiculous and then checks the media to see if anyone noticed, and if so, how the press took it.

I'd have phrased that as "how the people took it", but since how the press reacts IS, for all practical intents and purposes, how the people react, if a fucking ridiculous idea doesn't cause a huge outrage in the press, then they know they can get away with a toned down, spun, and nuanced version of the same thing.

You may have noticed everyone in the administration saying different things about Iraq over the next week. Bush says it's getting better. Powell says it's getting worse. Allawi says we could have safe, secure elections today. Powell says we'd like to have safe, secure elections in January. Rumsfeld says the elections may have to be limited.

Despite what many believe, this isn't a fracturing. It isn't even a herald of the much-talked-about-by-wonks-with-bow-ties infighting between the State and Defense departments. They just want to know what kind of elections they can get away with, because the elections in January, much like the handover of sovereignty in June, is an important milestone in the fucking-over of the Iraqi people.

Did you know that the elections in January are for a new INTERIM government? I didn't, and I try to keep up with this shit. The big January elections that have been talked up by this administration for months now won't be forming a new, final Iraqi government. That's another year down the road. But you don't hear that, because once those polls are closed in January (whether it's with a key or a truck bomb), I guarantee you that Dubya (assuming he gets re-elected) will proclaim Iraq a free democracy and get the hell out.

And I put it about 80-20 that Kerry will do the same thing. He'll just have the excuse that he's cleaning up after Bush's mess.

The two most important trial ballons in the past week concerned the pulling out of US troops. Sure, our leader has said we won't leave until the job is done, but that promise depends entirely on the definitions of both "job" and "done". People think it's incompetence that leads to people going into a war without a "clearly defined mission" or an "exit strategy", but politically, it makes perfect sense. Why define those things ahead of time and bind your hands? Better to define "a job well done" at the end, when you have a much better idea of which endgame makes you look good.

The first of these balloons came from Robert Novak, Douchebag of Liberty*. Bob took precious time out from compromising secret agents and lying to discuss what he believes are plans for the Bush administration (pending their re-election, of course), to ditch Iraq as soon as Al-Jazeera has called a winner in the election. If past history has shown us anything, it's that when the Bush administration says "jump", Bob Novak pens 500 words on maximum aerial elevation. IT IS BALLOON!

And this past weekend, Rumsfeld said "Any implication that that place has to be peaceful and perfect before we can reduce coalition and US forces would obviously be, I think, unwise because it has never been peaceful and perfect, and it isn't likely to be." At this point, we're like three balloons away from an Around The World In 80 Days fan convention. Iraq doesn't have to be "peaceful and perfect" for us to pull out, so really, we can pull out whenever we want! Any problems that happen after we give them a democratically elected government in January are the fault of all those swarthy people who just can't get along, you see. We've done our job. Mission accomplished!

Operation Fuck Up Iraq will be a complete success.

*That appelation comes, of course, from The Daily Show. I use it here not to steal their joke, but because I think that permanently associating the phrase "Douchebag of Liberty" with Bob Novak is such a noble goal. It should enter the lexicon along with "Tricky Dick" Nixon, Jim "The Lizard King" Morrison, and Dan Savage's alternate meaning for "santorum", which, if you don't know it, don't Google it up from work. Or while you're eating. But it's still really funny.

Hearts, Minds, And Balls

Memo to Dubya: HA HA HA HA HA.

It is to laugh, really. Remember back when Dick Cheney uttered the immortal words, "I think things have gotten so bad inside Iraq, from the standpoint of the Iraqi people, my belief is we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators." Visions of sugarplum parades danced in the administration's heads. Didn't work out that way, of course, and it seems like every day, as things deteriorate in Iraq and more people die, the whole "greeted as liberators" thing seems more and more absurd.

But as a measure of bungling, as a measure of just how much ol' Dubya has fucked up... well, let's just say it's a good thing Georgie doesn't actually read any news, and instead has people tell him what he "needs" to know. 'Cause otherwise, he might pick up a Sports Illustrated, or check it out online, and learn just how much he sucks.

I mean, how bad at liberating do you have to be before a bunch of guys, directly under the thumb of the brutal and sadistic sonofadictator Uday Hussein before you freed them, tell you to go fuck yourself? That's REALLY bad liberating. That would earn a gold medal in Shitty Liberating, if the '04 games were in the US and we picked it as our demonstration sport. Which we really should, because when it comes to really awful jobs of liberation, the USA has been the global standard-setter for DECADES.

See, the Bush team decided to grab hold of the coattails of one of the more inspiringly-manufactured Olympic success stories, the Iraqi soccer team. Hadn't been in an Olympics since 1988. Tortured by Uday when they underperformed. Now they are free, and winning games, and, if you believe the stump speeches and ads coming from Bush, it's all because Dubya had the strength and the courage to invade Iraq looking for nonexistent WMD and terrorists. If anyone should be thanking Bush for their newfound freedom, it's these Iraqi soccer players. And now, on the global stage, with the world's media watching, they are expressing their gratitude. ACTUAL QUOTE TIME!

"Iraq as a team does not want Mr. Bush to use us for the presidential campaign. He can find another way to advertise himself." - midfielder Salih Sadir.

Well, you know. They're big stars now. Maybe they're just mad at being used without due compensation. Wheaties wouldn't dare put them in commercials without paying them, after all, so why should Bush be able to? Oh, wait, there's another quote coming in.

"How will he meet his god having slaughtered so many men and women? He has committed so many crimes. I want to defend my home. If a stranger invades America and the people resist, does that mean they are terrorists? Everyone [in Fallujah] has been labeled a terrorist. These are all lies. Fallujah people are some of the best people in Iraq." - midfielder Ahmed Manajid.

Ah, um... OK. Well, these guys are midfielders, and as we all know, MIDFIELDERS HATE FREEDOM. They just sit there, in the middle, going back and forth, not strong on offense, not strong on defense... they're flip-floppers, really. Want to have it both ways. Plus, I heard on Rush that Sadir and Manajid are the first and fourth most liberal soccer players on the team. I'm sure the coach is much more reasonable about the whole thing...

"My problems are not with the American people. They are with what America has done in Iraq: destroy everything. The American army has killed so many people in Iraq. What is freedom when I go to the [national] stadium and there are shootings on the road?" - coach Adnan Hamad. Hamad, by the way, is the replacement for coach Bernd Strange, who quit a few months ago because he DIDN'T WANT TO DIE.

So there you have it, Mr. President. The Iraqi soccer team, that symbol of a liberated Iraq that you take credit for in your folksy way, thinks you're a complete and utter ratfucking bastard. Linguists are going to have to coin entirely new terminology to describe just how much you have fucked this up. Kerry should be running ads RIGHT NOW that say "The Iraqi soccer team wouldn't vote for him. Why should you?" Worst. Liberator. EVER.

The Ninety-Four Deadly Sins

Ninety-four.

Memo to every last one of you right-wing pundit motherfuckers, from Limbaugh on down, who got up on Fox News and Crossfire and all those other fucking pundit shows that have formed their own self-contained pundit ecosystem. YOU ARE DUMB.

It was just seven bad apples. That's what we heard over and over from you apologists. Just seven bad apples. That was your talking point, along with "fraternity prank" and claiming everyone who thought this was a big deal was pro-terrorist and anti-soldier. But most of all, we heard "it was just seven".

Of course, it was ninety-four. Hell, it was MORE than ninety-four, because the Army, in its infinite wisdom, counterd your Abu Ghraib Seven as ONE. And your fraternity pranks left 39 people in our custody dead. So keep an eye on the right-wing pundits today. You think all those people who said "just seven" will be retracting? Correcting? Apologizing? No. What you will hear is them echoing, over and over again, two words from the Army report on the Army's abuses. And those two words are not "ninety" and "four", they are "not" and "systemic".

See, the Army investigated the Army, and the Army determined that there were 94 cases of abuse. That's a matter of record. 39 corpses is also a matter of record. It's data. The cases exist, they were counted, they ended up at 94. But the abuse was "not systemic", and "an aberration", according to the subjective part of the report the Army issued on its own practices.

The abuses occurred in 16 different prison facilities. But they weren't systemic. Two thirds of ALL detainees, not just those officially "abused", were held for a month, over 60 times longer than the 12 hour maximum mandated by regulation. But the problems aren't systemic. Prisoners were given food with rat shit in it, but the problems weren't systemic. In Afghanistan, prisoners were living in their own shit, but the problems weren't systemic.

Interrogators regularly used unapproved interrogation techniques. Well, they weren't exactly "unapproved". We said it was OK for the filthy terrorists in Guantanamo Bay, but not OK for the filthy terrorists in Iraq. I can see where that might be confusing. Very confusing. And aberrant. And not systemic at all.

The investigation didn't actually look into some of the most serious charges from the Taguba report that kicked off the whole scandal, like the "ghost detainees". We have those in the US, too. People we capture, and then hide from everyone, especially the Red Cross. That little minor aberration wasn't investigated at all. But the problems weren't systemic.

That's what you'll hear from the pundits. Over and over again. In a desperate attempt to put this whole thing away in a corner, they will seize on those two words and wield them like a jackhammer. And then spend the next half hour discussing the horrible crimes Sandy Berger committed by taking a couple of copies of classified documents home with him.

Which was INCREDIBLY FUCKING STUPID, by the way. On several counts. The right has shown complete willingness to make shit up ouf of whole cloth to smear the left with. You do not then hand them a minor incident that they can blow up into a major breach of national security. A couple of copies in a jacket pocket suddenly became original classified documents, stolen and smuggled out in Sandy Berger's boxer shorts.

And then, when the Justice Department agreed months ago to keep the whole minor investigation quiet and out of the press, the Democrats actually BELIEVED them. That makes Charlie Brown look like a cynical pragmatist during backyard football practice, that does. "Oh, sure. We won't leak this at all. You can trust us. Just ask Valerie Plame".

I mean, if this is how things go down now, imagine how fucked we'd be if there were any systemic problems.

The Fourth Estate: ON THE JOB

Memo to American journalism: YOU ARE DUMB.

We'll kick off with the New York Post, who went to press with the SCOOP OF THE YEAR. Front-page stuff. Exclusive. John Kerry has picked as his running mate... Richard Gephardt!

This scoop comes just hours ahead of the actual announcement of John Edwards as Kerry's running mate, a choice that, unlike Gephardt, saves John Kerry from being the subject of today's column. Gephardt would have been a shit choice for VP. We, as a country, have said "no" to Gephardt on at least three separate occasions. He's like a new stadium in Minnesota. He's only incrementally better than Tom Vilsack, who has an awful lawn-sign name. Edwards, while strictly a "best of a bad crop" choice, was it.

Except, of course, at the New York Post, bastion of accuracy and somber non-sensationalism. The Post is a very successful paper. So successful, in fact, that it can afford to send its best reporters through a dimensional rift to Earth-2, where they can produce such exceptional copy as "Edwards also could have been competitive in the south, and the choice of Gephardt could be a sign that Kerry is 'writing off' that region.", and "Edwards also lacked experience. He is a one-term senator whose lack of seasoning in foreign affairs could have made voters nervous about his ability to assume the presidency during a war or an international crisis. "

Obviously, the Post's reporters were misled by their many, numerous, named sources. The ones they must have had to cut from the article for um... space. Yeah. I just feel bad for the reporter who got this wrong. His career is ruined. He'll never live down that byline.... except, of course, there's NO BYLINE.

So a major piece of news gets printed in a major metropolitan newspaper with a huge circulation, with no byline, no sources, and no attribution, and oh, by the way, it just so happens that everything in it except for Dick Gephardt's biographical information is entirely wrong. The only silver lining to this cloud is that, since it was the New York Post, they won't actually lose any respect over this. That well came up dry years ago.

Luckily, our nation's press, in a bold attempt to atone for its past sins, has finally gotten around to reporting what many of us suspected over a year ago. The defining image of the early days of Gulf War II, the toppling of the statue of Saddam Hussein by jubilant Iraqis? Completely fucking staged by Army psych-ops staff.

Basically, the way it -actually- went down is some Marines got it in their heads to slap an American flag on the statue and pull it over. Psych-Ops (Psych, from the Greek "psychus", meaning "photo", decided that since they couldn't actually find the masses of jubilant Iraqis our leaders promised us were in the country, they'd better round up a couple dozen locals from nearby streets, and pack 'em into the square. Swap out the flag, get them to cheer for the cameras and look like it was THEIR idea to pull down the statue, and those nice Marines were just helping them out.

Shortly after the statue was toppled, there were pictures on the Internet of wide shots of Firdos Square, showing a few dozen people in the square with the Marines, and nobody else for a couple hundred feet. Funny those shots, or any possible questioning of this admittedly very photogenic footage, never got picked up on by our fine embedded press corpse... er, corps.

Even now, with the truth out, the story got buried over the holiday weekend. And the sum total of mea culpa expressed by the LA Times in its tiny story? I'd say it's ACTUAL QUOTE TIME, but by the time I'd finished typing the "Q", I could have said the whole quote, so here it is. "It was a Marine colonel - not joyous Iraqi civilians, as was widely assumed from the TV images - who decided to topple the statue, the Army report said."

See? It's YOUR FAULT, AMERICA. You just ASSUMED, because all these people showed you pictures of happy Iraqi civilians, and told you they were the ones toppling the statue, that it was them who toppled the statue. You suckers, going around assuming things just because they're in THE NEWS. The press did their job. They told you the Army was behind it, fourteen months later, after the Army publically admitted that they were behind it. Not their fault you fell for it. Now shut up and vote for Vice President Gephardt.

IQ 9 - 11

Memo to Kevin Carr: YOU ARE DUMB.

Astute readers may have noticed a fairly minimalist mention of Fahrenheit 9/11 in these hallowed pages. A mention of the release on Spastic Topic Monkey Friday, a brief note about the box office results the following Monday. There are a few reasons for this. First, I haven't seen it yet. And second, the general level of idiocy surrounding the opponents of the movie has been so obvious, and so covered, that there's not a lot of new material to mine.

But then I came across Kevin Carr's review of the movie, and it was as if the word MOCKWORTHY had appeared in forty-foot letters of fire, Helvetica Bold, in front of me. It caught my eye on Google News for the title: "Moore should be ashamed of 'F-9/11". This is what the Cook County News-Herald, right here in deep redneck Minnesota, slapped on it when they picked it up. In a summer that's given us Garfield, with Catwoman and I, Robot on the way, to pick out Moore as the guy who should be ashamed was an interesting move for a reviewer to make, I thought.

But the first sentence clinched it.

"What can I say about 'Fahrenheit 9/11' that you can't already guess?" In a fair world, that would also be the LAST SENTENCE of the review, because the answer is clearly NOT A GODDAMN THING. You've given it one star out of five, you've bothered to ask the question in the first place. Might as well skip the rest of the review and spend the time choosing between one of three very attractive "FUCKWIT" branding irons you'd like us to use on your skull.

Of course, if he'd done that, he'd have deprived us of some astonishing gems of movie reviewing, and singlehandedly prevented the Halley's-Cometesque return of ACTUAL QUOTE TIME.

" The movie opens with a temper tantrum about the 2000 election, where Moore accuses George W. Bush of having his brother and other buddies fix the results by locking out African American voters. However, he commits some pretty major sins of omission. I remember election night 2000 well, and my memory doesn't quite jive with what Moore says."

Well, STOP THE FUCKING PRESSES. Pull the prints! One movie reviewer and wannabe filmmaker from deep motherfucking redstate WYOMING doesn't recall any African-American voters being disenfranchised. In Florida. It therefore MUST NOT HAVE HAPPENED. Sweet merciful fuckmonkeys. How, exactly, does this amateur-hour tiddlywinks reportage slip past even a rural Minnesotan editor? If only we could explain it away as psychosomatic blindness brought on by severe political bias... oh, wait. We can.

It's also incredibly fitting that Captain Wyoming baselessly accuses Moore of racism in the paragraph before that, yet manages, in what may be a Freudian slip, to mistakenly use the word "jive" instead of "jibe" when talking about his memory of black voter disenfranchisement. Editors didn't catch that fuckup either. SHOCK AND HORROR. You're getting paid to write, Carr. That means getting all the fucking words right.

It gets "better". "Case in point, Moore shows footage reportedly shot on March 19, 2003 in Baghdad, right before the American invasion. It shows kids playing, women smiling and families eating together. Apparently Moore didn't have any footage of torture chambers, rape rooms or mass Kurdish graves to throw in as well." What is it with the need for the right to constantly portray Iraq as one giant, wall-to-wall rape and torture festival? And if it's that easy to get ahold of rape room footage, why isn't Bill O'Reilly showing it? Here's a tip for Mr. Carr on the off chance he ever finds himself under the thumb of a third-world dictator. They generally do not allow camera crews into their torture chambers. This is because they have a lot of practice with the whole torture chamber thing. Taking pictures of the torture is a strictly amateur mistake, the kind of screwup only a bunch of clueless pikers would do.

And, of course, there's the traditional swipe at the "French" Cannes festival, the Saddam-loving and Osama-loving Moore... about the only rhetorical talking point Carr failed to hit on his way around the Karl Rove Basepath is calling Michael Moore "fat". Maybe he can work that in when the DVD comes out.

At the risk of going long, just to give you a baseline, I list for your edification the star ratings of some other movies Carr has reviewed this year:

• Walking Tall: ****
• Van Helsing: ***1/2
• The Terminal: ****
• The Punisher: ***1/2
• The Passion: *****
• Home On The Range: ****
• Eurotrip: ****

There you have it. The selected wisdom of Kevin Carr, professional syndicated movie reviewer. If I'd known all it required was a pulse and a flatlined EEG, I'd have faked the latter, wrote a bit of software to churn out boilerplate, and spent the rest of my days playing video games while the cash rolled in. Ah well. At least I get to do this.

Self-Rule Makes The Saints Cry

Memo to the entire Iraq policy team: YOU ARE DUMB.

Seriously, that's the best you could come up with? Turning over the meaningless, hell, borderline FICTIONAL "Iraqi Sovereignty" two days early? That's your big solution? What kind of half-assed, spit-and-baling-wire operation are you people running over there? Oh, right, that one. The same one that's still waiting for the parades and the flowers and the hearts and the minds.

It's not even a strategy, it's like a bad Babylon 5 plot. "If we just turn the country over to the Iraqis two days early, all the insurgents will realize they're Only Fighting Themselves." Somehow I don't picture Paul Bremer with a big bone ridge on the back of his head.

Really, the only way it could have been dumber is if they'd turned sovereignty over on Monday, and didn't TELL ANYONE until Wednesday. That would have made it a Voyager plot. "See! For the past two days, you've been killing record numbers of people in organized, multi-city attacks, but you've actually been under self-rule! You thought you'd been fighting the US, but you were Only Fighting Yourselves!"

Shows you just how much this so-called "sovereignty" is worth, doesn't it? That it can be bandied about and shifted around on the schedule? All they really did was change the way the numbers are counted when the attacks and deaths are reported.

See, the next time something blows up, and if I were in a betting pool, I'd place it around 2pm Central Time today, it won't be "the latest in a lengthy and deadly series of attacks during the U.S. occupation of Iraq." Anything that happens today will be the "first major attack since the US handed over sovereignty to the Iraqi government". The Death Counter resets to zero. What the ceremony REALLY needed to drive the point home was a huge banner saying "MISSION ACCOMPLISHED, AND TWO DAYS EARLY!". I hear they had one planned, but they couldn't get the aircraft carrier over all that sand.

You know what's even better? You know what everyone is expecting the first action of the New We're In Charge Really Iraqi Government is gonna be? Imposing emergency martial law on the country. I'm not sure how the Iraqi people will react to curfews, armed forces marching through the streets, random house searches, being picked up at random by the authorities... probably pretty positively, I'd think. It's tough to tell, though, because there's really no precedent for it.

Still, even after all this, there may be some of you out there thinking that now that Iraq is under self-rule, things will be different. And maybe you'd be right. But let's take a look at just what the "self-ruling" new Iraqi government is not allowed to do, shall we? They have no discretion whatsoever over whether US troops stay or go. That's probably a good idea. When you're ending your occupation in name only, you don't want to accidentally give your puppets the ability to kick you out. That's such an amateur, bonehead mistake I'm almost surprised they didn't make it.

Oh, and also, according to Reuters, the newly installed Iraqi government is "barred from making long-term policy decisions". That's fucking lovely. The good news is, because we turned over power on Monday instead of Wednesday, the definition of "long-term" now changes from "anytime after this Sunday" to "anytime after this Friday".

A -really- paranoid, conspiracy-minded person would suspect that, in the couple of days since the first box-office reports for "Fahrenheit 9/11" started pouring in, they threw this together to have a Happy Story ready to inject into the news cycle so that the top story on Monday wouldn't be "Movie We Tried Desperately To Stop And/Or Discredit Sets Huge Records, So We Didn't Learn A Fucking Thing From Al Franken's Book". But that's crazy talk.

I'm sure it's just that, in the practice sessions, Iraqis were so good at ruling themselves that they simply didn't need the extra two days of workshops.

Nobody Gives A Damn

OK, I really don't get it. I don't. Someone needs to explain this to me, because you think you have a pretty good grasp of how this shit is supposed to work. You're pretty sure that as stupid and bad and retarded and insane as everything is, you've got a reasonable grasp on the upper limit. And then you check the news, and you read this:

"I was requested by the director of central intelligence to take custody of an Iraqi national who was believed to be a high-ranking member of Ansar al-Islam. And we did so. We were asked to not immediately register the individual. And we did that. He has been treated humanely. There's no implication of any problem. He was not at Abu Ghraib. He is not there now. He has never been there to my knowledge." - Donald Rumsfeld.

A bit of context not included in the direct quote. The "registering" in this instance means telling the Red Cross that we have this prisoner of war in our custody, as required by the Geneva Convention and any number of other international laws regarding POW's. And "not immediately" means "we hid him from the Red Cross for SEVEN MONTHS until the news media somehow got the story".

This, by the way, is not quite worthy of causing a brain embolism. That Rumsfeld would directly order the kind of "disappearance" usually attributed to third world dictators is not outside the range of shit I'd suspect he's capable of. Even his apparent feeling that we can just take him at his word because he's American and we don't need to follow those pesky laws because, well, we're American, that, again, is not what I would call a startling revelation.

Hell, the fact that he used Abu Ghraib, implying that Abu Ghraib is the only place anyone is even capable of being mistreated in the entire world, that's not quite enough to start blood fountaining from my ears.

"I'm never disappointed in my secretary of defense. He's doing a fabulous job and America's lucky to have him in the position he's in." - George W. Bush, after discussing the matter with Rumsfeld.

The secretary of defense, caught breaking the law, tells the President he got caught breaking the law, and the President, being a retarded lawn gnome in a suit, stands behind him 100%. The secretary of defense then holds a press conference in which he admits to breaking the law, shrugs it off, and goes about his business.

And yes, this makes me angry, but still, not completely beyond the new record-setting levels of pale we've been conditioned to accept. No, what pushes me over the edge into a fucking seizure is that nobody is going to bat an eye. Already nobody's batting an eye. CNN is all a-jitter over a suspected Al-Qaeda training video. If Google News is to be believed, over an hour after Rumsfeld admitted to outright criminal behavior, this admission has barely made a ripple across the news cycle. And as trite as it is, I can't help but think back to Clinton and his blowjobs and once again wonder, what the fuck? After all, as I watched CNN YESTERDAY AFTERNOON, there was a big news piece about Clinton's blowjobs, and nothing about Rumsfeld. Stupid liberal media.

You know who needs to be paying attention to who? All you Democrats who've had your lips super-glued to John McCain's ass need to watch your bestest buddy. I don't even particularly understand the McCain worship, what with it being largely dependent on putting your hands over your ears and yelling LA LA LA LA LA everytime anyone mentions the "Keating Five" or "savings and loan scandal". But whatever. You all love the McCain so much you want him to be Kerry's Vice-President. He's such a maverick. He's so bipartisan. If his dick were a lever, Archimedes could move the moon.

John McCain was a prisoner of war. John McCain understands the importance of the Geneva Convention. John McCain should understand that the Geneva Convention exists because you can't just take people's word for it when they say they're treating prisoners humanely. Even someone as honest and forthright as Donald Rumsfeld. If John McCain has one tenth of the alleged near-godlike integrity people seem to imbue him with, he cannot sit quietly as Rumsfeld admits publicly to intentionally, willfully, and casually violating the GC. Let's all watch together, shall we? I know where I'm placing MY bets, but I'd still love to be pleasantly suprised.

Hey, Wasn't There Something About Torture?

Memo to all you suckers out there: YOU ARE DUMB.

Seriously. If anyone out there is still in the "it was just seven bad apples performing fraternity pranks" crowd when it comes to U.S.-sanctioned torture, you need to stop staring at what you had for breakfast two hours ago, pull your head out, and join the rest of us in the big wide world of PAYING ATTENTION.

I know it's not easy, what with non-stop footage of people walking slowly past a casket occupying your time 24/7, but bear with me here. Things are still happening outside of Washington DC's necrophilic orgy, and if you've been relying on the "bad apples" theory to help you sleep at night, better stock up on warm milk.

Obviousy, the Bush Administration does not support torture. We know this, because John Ashcroft and Scott McLellan told us so. Scott McLellan, as White House press secretary, must be inherently trustworthy. After all, the job description of "press secretary" is to go out and tell the press what he's been TOLD TO SAY. And if he's been told to say the Bush administration doesn't support torture, and it wasn't true, he'd do what all the other press secretaries do all the time. Tell the truth, blow the whistle, and become famous. Riiiiight.

But John Ashcroft says so too, and if anyone would know about the Bush administration's attitude toward torture, it'd be John Ashcroft. Because Ashcroft is the one the Bush administration asked to look into whether or not it'd be OK TO TORTURE PEOPLE.

Ashcroft's response, by the way, basically boiled down to "If the people actually doing the torturing say they didn't -mean- to torture anyone, they'll probably get away with it". Oh, and he also provided the legal opinion that the President can do whatever the hell he wants as long as he's acting in his role as Commander In Chief, and laws barring torture really don't apply to him.

In case you're still confused, allow me to provide you with a lewd analogy including profanity to possibly clear things up. This is as if a creepy, 37-year-old gym teacher at the local high school were to spend, say, three hours a night on the Internet researching age-of-consent laws for his state, educational ethics, and district policy, and then claiming he is in NO WAY interested in fucking the head of the cheerleading squad.

But hey. Let's all take a big hit of the crack for a second so we can pretend that they're not lying. Which means they're incompetent fucktards, not evil fucktards. Because they went to a bunch of lawyers and asked them to prepare a 50+ page report on whether or not they could get away with something they DIDN'T EVEN WANT TO DO. Can you imagine how many billable hours went into that? Makes Pentagon hammers look like a bargain.

I mean, at least when 800 of our tax dollars are spent on a toilet seat, it's being used for shit containment. I suppose Ashcroft and Bush could wipe their asses with this report, but why bother, when they've got a perfectly good Constitution and flag to tide them over until at least November?

At least the assholes who think it doesn't matter what we do to brown furriners because they're brown furriners are ignorant evil redneck fucks with a firm grasp of reality. They know we're torturing people as policy, they just don't CARE. But the "bad apples" people need to realize that our current administration felt the need to check to see just how much torture they could get away with. And I guess we're all finding out the answer to that together, ain't we.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled non-stop coverage of DUDE IN A BOX.

Bragging Rights and Assholes

Memo to the asshole on Highway 169 North: YOU ARE DUMB.

In fact, let's expand the mandate a bit to any asshole who permanently affixes something to the back of their car without actually thinking about what it says. Like getting a tattoo when you're drunk, it's a bad idea. Case in point. People who spend their money on personalized license plates that say something that was already on the back of their car for free. I've seen a Lexus with the license plate "LEXUS", a four by four with the plate "4 X 4", etc. I can only assume they got hung up on the idea of a personalized license plate, only to discover, to their horror, that there was nothing at all interesting about them, so they panicked.

Similarly, bumper stickers. If you must express a viewpoint using your car's ass as a medium, put some thought into it. Take some care. Try to show us something we haven't seen before. And try to show us something that makes sense.

Which brings us to the asshole on 169. Driving there on Monday afternoon, we saw a bumper sticker that said: "NO ONE CAN KILL AMERICANS AND BRAG ABOUT IT. NO ONE."

Which is an incredibly odd sentiment to put on your car if you take it literally. I mean, no one can play ping-pong with their own spleen, either, but you don't see people with "DOWN WITH SPLEEN-PONG" bumper stickers. If it's so impossible that you have to state not once, but TWICE, that "no one" can do it, then what's there to be concerned about? Obviously, for it to be enough of a problem to warrant a bumper sticker, SOMEONE must be killing Americans and bragging about it.

Maybe he means Dubya? After all, as Governor of Texas, our president presided over 134 executions, including children and the mentally disabled. And in an infamous Talk magazine interview, openly mocked one of them (Karla Faye Tucker). Perhaps he's still incensed at the President's callous attitude toward life and death?

Of course, Americans kill Americans all the time. Maybe he means the perpetrators of the thousands of murders in the US every year. I bet some of them brag. Corporate polluters? The NRA? Those guys at Enron who had the parties and the cheering during the California wildfires? Hm.

That's the problem with unclear bumper stickers. We simply don't know. Oh, of course we could play the ODDS, and assume that since he 's so hung up on Americans being killed and bragged about that it must be non-Americans that are doing the killing and the bragging. Heck, we could even play the odds further, and assume that he means filthy brown Ay-Rabs that are doing the killing and the bragging and must be stopped.

Which brings with it its own set of problems, doesn't it? Because for that to work, for the 169 asshole to be able to take a moral high ground so absolute that it can be printed on vinyl and adhered, permanently, to a steel bumper, then Americans would have to be so noble that none of us would ever even consider bragging about killing foreigners...

Oops.

But this is my point. Ten minutes of sober reflection would have revealed to the 169 asshole that the entire point of his bumper sticker is demolished by the mere existence of Ann Coulter. He'd have reached the conclusion that putting this bumper sticker on his car would make him an asshole, and, ideally, not done it, thus simultaneously saving hundreds of drivers from having to read assholery and depriving me of fodder for the column.

Today's article has been brought to you by yee-haw jingoism and the numbers one, six, and nine.