Somewhat At A Loss For Word

Memo to Norm Coleman: YOU'RE A DUMB FUCKING HYPOCRITE.

In fact, "hypocrite", even "dumb fucking hypocrite", doesn't really do Norm Coleman justice. He deserves a whole new term to describe his particular brand of toadying, self-serving hypocrisy. I have a few ideas, but I can't settle on just one.

• Hypoprick
• Forktongued Cockbastard
• Reverse Coproperistaltic Narcissasshole
• Professor of Rectotongular Studies at Suckup University
• Alternately, we could just start calling any weaselly, self-promoting, over-rated, publicity-grabbing, plastic-haired, dental-capped, party-switching lying scumbags "Norm Coleman".

I've mentioned Norm Coleman and his nigh-limitless supply of unmitigated gall in the past, of course. He's the former Democrat St. Paul Mayor that jumped ship to the Republicans and won his Senate seat thanks to an unfortunate plane crash and the subsequent right-wing "reality adjustment action" on Paul Wellstone's memorial service.

When we last heard anything of note from Coleman, he was part of the Republican Neo-Truth Squad at the Democratic National Convention, telling every lapdog reporter who had ten inches to fill that John Kerry was a flip-flopper. You may have sensed a disturbance in the Force around that time, as if millions of voices cried out at once, "Hey, weren't you a Democrat a couple of years ago, fuckoid?" and were suddenly ignored.

Junior Senator Coleman, basically, is the new kid they let into the club 'cause his dad lets him borrow the sportscar on weekends. Desperate for acceptance and approval, Coleman bounded into his new role like a retarded puppy, eager to please his new masters.

"Hey, guys! Man, you know what sucks? Liberals. I used to hang around those guys, and man, do they really suck. I hate them. You're much cooler. Could you pass me the dip? And some PAC money? No? Hey, that Kerry, he's a flip-flopper, isn't he? He flips and flops all the time. Flip. Flop. Hey, can I be on your super-secret committee? No? Man, that Arlen Specter needs to get in line. I peeked at him in the Senate bathroom, and he's got a tiny dick. But I'm not gay! We sure hate those gays, huh, guys? Sorry about not delivering Minnesota for Bush, but it all worked out in the end, right, guys? Guys? Where are you going? Hey, you guys hate the U.N.? I hate it too!"

That's Coleman's latest kick. "Investigating" the UN Oil for Food corruption scandal. He's a regular Sherlock Hound, that one. Today, in one of the most stunning feats of hypocrisy since, well, the last time he opened his cakehole, Coleman called on UN General Secretary Kofi Annan to resign. And here is his logic. It's ACTUAL SPECIAL ANNOTATION QUOTE TIME! What Coleman's been saying is so special that I've developed a unique new annotation system for his quotes. Underlined passages denote outright lies. Bolded passages denote unproven allegations, and bolded, underlined sections denote areas you should be laughing and crying at the same time at Coleman's unwarranted chutzpah.

"The decision to call for Mr. Annan's resignation does not come easily," Coleman wrote. "But I have arrived at this conclusion because the most extensive fraud in the history of the U.N. occurred on his watch. The bottom line is, one man was in charge and if we're going to get to the bottom of this,he's got to step back so that we can have trust and credibility and transparency in sorting out what happened."

"If we're to get to the bottom of this, if there's to be any credibility, the person that was at the helm during the course of this thing cannot be... the guy that we go asking for help and assistance in getting the people we need to talk to... Any private company would have asked for his (Annan's) resignation. But the members of the board, in this case Security Council members China, Russia and France,have all benefited from Saddam being in power."

After Abu Ghraib, after Valerie Plame, after the 9/11 commission report, after the Halliburton scandals, after the Red Cross determining that we're TORTURING people in Gitmo, after a botched invasion and an incompetent occupation and oh, by the way, NO FUCKING WMD's, Norm Coleman, whose nose was mistaken for a polyp during Bush's last physical, can actually dare to use the phrase "ON HIS WATCH" with a straight face?

That he's even able to utter the words "trust", "credibility", and "transparency without his tongue turning into a venomous, hallucinogenic tree frog and his last, bloated moments on Earth being spent ripping off all his clothes and doing a spastic mambo on the Senate floor merely reaffirms my atheism. That he can pretend that the Security Council member his FUCKING FEET ARE TOUCHING RIGHT NOW never benefited from having Saddam in power turns my stomach.

Even assuming the absolute worst possible scenarios in the oil-for-food mess are true, which is an iffy proposition at best since there are six different investigations going on concurrently and lots of different stories flying around, Norm Coleman has a nigh-homeopathic fraction of the moral and ethical authority required to be calling for anyone to step down because of abuses carried out by their underlings. 2008 can't come soon enough, shithead.

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.

Something Giver, Maybe?

Memo to Tim Pawlenty, governor of Minnesota: YOU DUMB, EVIL, FUCK.

On behalf of the European invading force, I'd like to once again apologize to the indiginous peoples of America. We seem to be biologically incapable of not fucking you over every chance we get. Every once in a while, we give you something we think we don't want as a half-assed way of making up for all the shit we've pulled in the past. And then it turns out there's actually MONEY in it, and we take it back, and give you something ELSE we think is worthless to make up for it. You know, there used to be an expression for that, but I just can't remember what it is. In any event, it's a shitty way to act, but at this point, it's practically enshrined as tradition.

Which doesn't excuse Tim Pawlenty for not only trying to do it again, but doing it in such a crass manner that I'm surprised he's not throwing in a truckload of smallpox-laden blankets to sweeten the deal.

See, back in 1989, Minnesota negotiated a deal with tribal leaders that let them run gambling casinos in the state. Since then, the casinos have done pretty well for themselves, because, well, a whole lot of people find flashing lights, buffet tables, and Wayne Newton* much more interesting than statistics and math. They've made quite a bit of money in the past fifteen years, and don't think we haven't noticed.

See, in 1989, the agreement that was reached was that the tribes would keep their money, and not give any of it to the state of Minnesota. Because they're technically sovereign nations, and because technically we've fucked them non-stop for five centuries. Unfortunately, Republicans are a lot like Daffy Duck. You can't leave a big pile of money lying around like that without them going all bug-eyed at it and conniving ways to get some of it for themselves.

Pawlenty, being the conscientious sort, explored all the options available to him before settling on blatant extortion.

Our fine governor has basically demanded that the tribal leaders meet with him to negotiate a better deal for the state. Better to the tune of three hundred and fifty million dollars. Per year. As the Star Tribune helpfully pointed out to put this in perspective, this is roughly half as much money as the state took in this year from every other corporation's income taxes PUT TOGETHER. Pawlenty says that's about 25% of the tribes' casino profits, which, much like the "75% of Al Qaeda" figure, should be taken at face value and not examined in any detail at all, please..

Since this would obviously be a crappy deal to make from the tribes' perspective, Pawenty's going to need a pretty big stick to get them to come to the table to negotiate away their money. So he's threatening to bring in non-tribal casinos from the big casinso companies, under the argument that even though Indian tribes have had exclusive casino rights for the last 15 years, it's not really exclusive, and if they want it to really be exclusive, they'd better pony up the dough.

Even when you ignore the issues of sovereignty and legality, the whole thing stinks to high heaven. Imagine if Pawlenty went to the board of directors of, say, OfficeMax. And he goes to them and he says, "Gimme a whole bunch of money, which I estimate is a quarter of your profits no matter what your numbers actually say. If you don't, I'm going to use my power in the government to open up a whole bunch of Staples stores, capice?"

There'd be a HUGE uproar and scandal. And that's without a long history of our ancestors attempting to wipe out all the paper salesmen in the prairie. But do you think most of the people here are going to stand up for the tribes? Me neither. Even when the state's representatives are blatantly using the kind of threatening language you'd normally find in a bad "Sopranos" episode. Yes, it's ACTUAL QUOTE TIME!

"The issue here is the tribes have a choice. I came away from my [Las Vegas] meeting thinking that the best outcome would be a new arrangement with our tribes. [The state could get] substantially more revenue from a private gaming option, [but] we would have pressure to have more than one casino, although that could be done. We'd also have to establish a gaming commission. But that could be done too." - Dan McElroy, Pawlenty's chief of staff.

Appalling. He might as well have come out and said "I'd hate for anything... bad... to happen to your lovely casino," while one of his henchmen smashed in a slot machine with a baseball bat. If they could get $350 million a year out of a couple of new, non-Indian casinos, and the previous agreements really allow it, then what's stopping him? I'll tell you what. More casinos means less profit per casino. There isn't, despite a certain amount of anecdotal evidence to the contrary, an infinite supply of suckers with money in this state.

So instead, Pawlenty, like so many of his forebears, is going to try to strongarm the natives to get their piece of action they wanted no part of in years past. Thanks for making us all look bad again, fuckhead.

*Here's an interesting behind the scenes moment for you. I planned to just type in Wayne Newton as a prime example of the kind of entertainment they have at casinos, but I decided, in fairness, to visit Grand Casino's Minnesota web site. And right there, listed for Friday, October 22 at their Hinckley casino was... WAYNE NEWTON.

The Wolf Ate The Straw Cabin Republicans

Memo to the Log Cabin Republicans: YOU ARE DUMB.

Haven't you figured it out yet? You will never, EVER be truly welcome. Oh, they'll take your votes. They'll take your money. And then, surprise surprise, they'll stab you in the back, fuck you over, and burn you in effigy to appease the "God Hates Fags" crowd that makes up so much of their base. I don't care how concerned you are about "small government" or tax cuts or your own bank account. Every single one of you is voting for your own oppression. You will not change the party from the inside, because the inside of the party is made up entirely of Falwellians who either hate you outright, or think that the way to power is acting like they hate you.

Don't be heartened by Dick Cheney. I can't believe I even have to type that sentence, but don't be heartened by Dick Cheney. Over the weekend, he grudgingly admitted that gays deserve equal rights, and that he wasn't all that fond of the constitutional amendment idea. Dick Cheney now has the same stated position on gay marriage as John Kerry, which is deeply sad for both of them - sad for Cheney because of the sheer effort required to reach a position that's even borderline moderate, and sad for Kerry because, well, he's agreeing with Cheney. This is why people voted for Nader in 2000, John.

Obviously, something got to Cheney, but I can't figure out what it is. Maybe his gay daughter, Mary, finally tore him a new one at a family dinner. Maybe, in some improbable Ted Geisel Moment, his shrunken, black heart started to beat again, he discovered the real meaning of Christmas, and had a happy song about how homos are people too. Maybe his conscience picked the locks on the secret underground bunker and travelled across the country, like a dog in a Disney movie, to finally reunite with its owner.

Still, you don't need to worry about Cheney ripping up his own personal loyalty oath to Bush. In the same breath as his almost-reasonable statements on gay rights, he essentially said that whatever Dubya wants, Dubya gets, and that's just fine by him. So not only is he betraying his daughter, he's betraying her to support a cause he doesn't actually agree with. What a Dick.

Now a CYNIC might look at Cheney's statement and, rather than hearing a concerned father or a reformed neo-con zealot, the cynic may hear the faint whispering of ulterior motives in the background. The cynic may suspect that Dick Cheney's role as the only high-ranking potential member of P-FLAG* in the administration is being exploited to make a big noise in the news while the Republican platform gets written entirely by the rabid "pro-family" retards.

And lo and behold, the draft platform not only calls for the constitutional ban on gay marriage, but turns the knife another 270 degrees by wanting to also put a stop to civil unions, domestic partnership benefits, and any even remotely marriage-esque thing not firmly established between a penis and a vagina.

The Log Cabin Republicans are, of course, pissed. They should be. They all probably thought the religious right would at least let them have the tax breaks as long as they didn't scare all the Jesus-freaks by using the "M-word". Not in this platform, folks. Not in this administration. Not in the Republican Party. In the GOP, you only get to crawl in bed with, and hug, another man if you're an alleged "maverick" and "independent" who needs to keep sucking on the party teat if he wants to keep his job.

I like to think that this platform will shake them up and make them realize what they've been voting for all these years. On the other hand. they're GAY REPUBLICANS. I don't know if even this latest pro-family supernova can make them see the light through the blinders required to actually be a gay Republican. Maybe the party platform deliberately and systematically depriving them of any possible legal rights to form partnerships will do it, but I wouldn't bet my tiny liberal bank account on it.

The Republican Party, as they are fond to say, is a big tent. It has to be. They need plenty of room to keep all the icky homos in one corner. The corner that leaks. Where all the garbage and bugs are. Where there would be a light, but we need all the lights over here for the dramatic reading of "Left Behind" and to make sure all your campaign donation checks are properly endorsed. Yep, this sure is a great time to be gay and Republican!

* Assuming they'd even have him, which I'd advise against, if they ever asked me

Cirque De So Lame

Q: What's the difference between the Republican National Convention and a circus?

A: At the RNC, the big red noses on all the clowns are real.

Oh, and there will probably be considerably fewer unicycles and clown cars. Unicycles, of course, are an alternative form of transportation that doesn't rely on foreign oil, and clown cars... well, when was the last time you saw a Republican car-pool? But in every other sense, the RNC is shaping up to be a big, messy circus. And not some fruity French circus, either. We know how the Republicans hate the French.

THE PROTESTS: The left will be marching on New York in droves, because that's what the Left does. It marches on stuff. The Right, not so much, because the Right knows that one man with a million dollars can effect more change than a million men with one dollar. Plus, the million dollars don't get grumpy when they're locked in a small cage in blatant violation of the Constitution.

The NYC authorities are taking an interesting, unique approach to the protests, offering tourism discounts to protestors on restaurants, hotels, and local attractions. Need to sooth the painful sting of pepper spray and tear gas? Did the jackboots and truncheons leave unsightly marks and swelling on your skin? Well, fear not, you commie anarchist hippie, here's five percent off a trip to a day-spa! Nothing soothes a passle of violated rights like a couple of cucumber slices, a mud bath, and some aromatherapy.

And in and amongst the leftie protestors, there will, of course, be the Republican "Protest Warriors", who we've dealt withpreviously. You know, I can't help but imagine a brick crashing through the window of a Starbucks, a riot cop in full armor turning around, and a Protest Warrior in a suit pointing at a black-clad college student in a Rage Against The Machine t-shirt with one hand while surreptitiously brushing dust off his throwin' hand. I'm not saying this is their plan, or their tactic. I'm just saying it's the first image that popped into my head.

THE KEYNOTE SPEAKER

When the Democrats needed a keynote speaker, they selected Barack Obama, a (relatively) young, black, passionate, liberal Democratic candiate for the Senate. Taking their cue from the Democrats, the Republicans have selected for their keynote address an old, racist, redneck, reactionary Democratic retiring senator. Well, one out of six ain't bad.

Yes, it's YAD's favorite senatorial target, Zell Pigfucking Miller. In the role of Surrogate Asshole for Miller, who has yet to be quoted on his selection, we have Republican National Committee chairman Ed Gillespie, who took precious time away from his own assholery duties to fill in for Miller this morning.

"Senator Miller's support is indicative of the broad support the Republican Party has earned under President Bush's compassionate conservative leadership as Americans reject the 'out of the mainstream' direction of John Kerry's Democratic Party." - Ed Gillespie

Ed Gillespie's statement is indicative of the broad harm that Botox has had on democracy. Bear with me. Thanks to the neuroparalysis effects of the botulism toxin, someone like Ed Gillespie can sit there and suggest that an unrepentant, racist, Dixiecrat, torture-apologist who only clings to his party affiliation out of tradition is a symbol of Dubya's bipartisan mainstream support, and can do so with a STRAIGHT FACE. In the days before Botox, Gillespie would be smirking by "broad", chortling by "earned", barely able to even pronounce "conservative" amidst the gales of laughter that would have followed "compassionate", and would have actually pissed himself at "mainstream".

The only way Zell Miller couldn't be "mainstream" is with either a time machine or a brain implant. You know it. I know it. Zell Miller would know it if he'd take his dick out of a pig long enough to give it some thought. Ed Gillespie certainly knows it. And every single news anchor who reports on this story and runs Gillespie's quote unchallenged knows it too. But thanks to the wonders of Botox, none of them will ever let it show.

EDITOR'S NOTE: A search party has been formed, and is currently searching nearby ditches and creeks in the hopes of finding the Circus Metaphor alive. However, authorities caution that once a metaphor has been gone for more than eight paragraphs, if it turns up at all, it will likely be as a bloated corpse floating face-down on a lake. We at You Are Dumb Dot Net will stay on top of this story as it develops.

Clang Clang Whoops Too Late

Man, I sure hope Dubya isn't a robot.

Follow me here. You know how, in all the movies and TV and whatnot, when a robot starts to malfunction? It starts making small mistakes, then it makes bigger and bigger ones, then it starts shouting incoherent nonsense, then it sparks, and then it explodes? Usually 'cause Kirk told it that up was down or some other bullshit?

Man, I sure hope Dubya isn't a robot.

'Cause first there was that whole harming America thing, which we touched on last Friday. I mean, even for Bush, that was a pretty significant fuckup, mostly because he didn't pause, he didn't stammer, he didn't appear to say something he didn't mean to, he just appeared to have an obviously badly-written speech prepared.

Then, he started talking about maybe "abolishing the IRS", and replacing income taxes with some regressive, flat-tax, national sales tax delusion, which is the kind of campaign rhetoric that is usually reserved for the LaRouches, the Perots, the Keyeses... you know. Only the completely bat-shit crazy candidates run on a "flat tax". If Dubya were a robot, I'd suspect deterioration of the logic centers.

And then, after that, he started telling people in speeches that we can't raise taxes on the wealthy, because they just find ways to get out of it anyway. Which makes no sense, because if all those ultra-rich people weren't paying any taxes anyway, why were they giving thousands and thousands of dollars to get Bush elected so he could (and did) CUT THEIR TAXES? Fuckers are probably getting refunds on their zero taxes paid and due. Either that, or, again, Dubya is a robot and is quickly spiraling into a feedback loop of sparking and smoke and exploding and shrapnel and carnage everywhere.

Now, all of these things could be explained by Dubya being an idiot, a desperate Republican flagging in the polls, and a complete asshole respectively. So I'm afraid Ockham's Razor slices through the robot theory like a knife through warm bullshit. But if you take Bush's most recent TV ad into account, the robot theory engages some kind of diagnostic self-repair routine and comes roaring back for a second look. Yes, the metaphor is a smidge on the shaky side, but bear with me. Here's the text of the ad, with commentary.

"I'm George W. Bush, and I approve this message."

Now, I know this is required by the new campaign laws, and I support it in principle, but assuming the message is delivered either by a rapidly deteriorating psychotic robot OR a retarded, desperate asshole, the fact that he approves of his own ravings is of little comfort in this cold, cold world.

"My most solemn duty is to lead our nation to protect ourselves."

Fair enough, although really, his job is more to lead some of the people, the trained ones with the guns, to protect the rest of the people, the untrained ones with or without guns. As far as the "protecting myself" part goes, I think I'll try and manage that one on my own, 'cause if someone hits me in the face, odds are, I won't kick the guy four seats over in the groin.

"I can't imagine the great agony of a mom or a dad having to make the decision about which child to pick up first on September the 11th."

Oh, I know, I myself have often wondered.... WHAT THE FUCK?! What dilemma is this? Who faced that agony? The World Trade Center was not a day care facility. It was not some kind of forty-story Montessori school. This makes no sense. All the news stories about this ad, by the way, merely quote this sentence without explaining what the FUCK our "leader" is talking about here. Which means either it's obvious, or they don't understand it either, and don't want to admit it. I know where I'm placing my bet. Which child to pick up first? How about whichever one gets out first? Or whichever one is closest? Or whichever one isn't on the way to the store? What agony, George?

This oughta be the first question in all three presidential debates. The first words out of the moderator's mouth after "Let's begin" need to be "Mr. President, in that ad... the one with the picking up the children and the agony? Do you have any idea what you meant by that? Because we've been trying to puzzle it out for a month or so now, and frankly, we're stumped." Is it too much to ask for a President that, in a scripted, rehearsed, filmed, and edited television appearance, does not spout complete incomprehensible nonsense? Yes, it apparently is.

There's another sentence of bullshit after that, but this is the point at which the Exploding Robot Theory really kicks into high. Those of you with Lexis/Nexis access may want to start keeping an eye out for occurrences of phrases like "DANGER", "ILLOGICAL", "DOES NOT COMPUTE", or "KILL ALL HUMANS" cropping up at campaign stops. Just saying.

Either that, or Bush has hired Halle Berry as his new speechwriter.

Today's Proctological Roundup

It's Monday, and it's time for the Asshole Roundup! Get out your lassos and your cowboy hats... wait. That would make you an asshole. So let's just have the roundup without the trappings. Git along, little dipshits!

We should start with the 6,500,000 assholes, because they'll take a while to round up. That's how many assholes who, assuming an average $8 ticket price, went to see "I, Robot" this weekend. They need to be rounded up for their own good, frankly, because "Well, we saw I, Robot last week; Catwoman can't be that much worse, can it?" is an awfully compelling argument... if you're an asshole.

Of course, when it comes to assholery, you can't get much bigger than Arnie. Arnie made it into the news this weekend because, in a speech in California, he called Democrats opposing his budget plans... "girlie-men". GIRLIE-MEN. He's such an asshole. Not for openly mocking his opposition in a childish way. I think he should do that more often. That's why you Californians elected him, right? So that he could make one-liners like that at press conferences. You apparently wanted a dimwitted, combative, barely-comprehensible thick fuck ruling you like some kind of retarded clown, so obviously the system works.

No, he's an asshole for continuing to fucking appropriate the Hanz and Franz material. Hello? Arnold? You never said "girlie-man". It's a lot like "pump [clap] you up", which you used during the campaign. I know it's difficult for you to understand, but it wasn't you who said these things.

That was someone making fun of you for being a thick fuck retardoclown. Did you accidentally eat some of Reagan's brain? Did you do it on purpose? Stick to stealing from your own repertoire of "snappy" one-liners. You didn't write any of those either, but at least you said them, albeit after flubbing 40 takes and making two interns cry.

Hey! Politics! Today's Obvious Segue Moment brings us to political convention time. That's like Asshole Roundup without any of the actual work. All the assholes just round themselves up. Following some strange, innate herding instinct, all the Democrat assholes are striding across the plains to Boston, and the Republican assholes to New York. Zell Miller's going to New York too, but that's OK. When he gets there, the Republicans will gather around, sniff his butt, and realize he's one of their own.

Still, there is one group I'd like to split off from the herd for special attention: Protest Warriors. Like "Ushers of the Eucharist", calling your group "Protest Warriors" automatically makes you an asshole. No further exposition necessary. It's like driving an H2. You see a "Protest Warrior", you've got an asshole. That's not to say that further exposition won't be FUN, of course.

The Protest Warriors are Republicans. Add another 62% to the asshole quotient. They protest... other protests. They plan to be at the Republican National Convention to protest people who are protesting Republicans. That goes beyond "asshole". That's like some kind of prolapsed rectum, right there. Rectum The Edmund Fitzgerald, even. And while that horrific pun seeps into your skull, I will, because I am a gracious host, provide your brain with the sweet comedy balm that is ACTUAL QUOTE TIME!

"We are the right-wing freedom fighters - we are out there and are just as animated as the protesters can be." - Jason Sager, Protest Warrior. It's actually reassuring to know that if there are "right-wing freedom fighters" in this country, they're a bunch of assholes with signs in New York, and not 400 white guys in Montana with camo pants and assault rifles. America is safer.

"Conservatives by nature are not protesters... they curse at the evening news but that voice is never heard. We are rookies in the protest world, so yes, we are uneducated in how protests work." - Sager again, who is either lying out of his ass or is ignorant on the kind of level that Jessica Simpson only dreams of achieving some day. Either way, I'd love to see him locked in a room with a dozen or so Planned Parenthood employees who could educate him, between repeated boots to the gut, just how much protesting conservatives actually do. Asshole.

At Least He'll Be Able To See The Forest

"I, Robot" scored very well amongst focus groups composed entirely of impotent men, you know. Just sayin'.

Memo to Republicans: STATES' RIGHTS ARE DUMB.

At least they are the way you use them. The whole thing about conservatives is that they're supposed to be for a small federal government, and that any time a decision could be made by local government, it should be. And that's fine. I mean, it's STUPID, but it's fine as an alternative philosophy.

Me, I spent a couple of years working for a small-town newspaper interacting with "local government" on a regular basis, and as bad as big-time politicians are, at least they're motivated by large-scale evil. Local politics is like a cable access reality show where the prize is two pieces of bubble gum and a nickel. You give these people any more responsibility, and it's Lord of the Flies all over again next time the school board meets.

But modern Republicans aren't actually interested in "states' rights". They don't want to just hand issues over to the states willy-nilly. States' rights are for stuff they can't get away with nationally. Unless you're in the South, where "states' rights" just means "We shoulda won that goldang Civil War!".

Any time you hear "give greater control to the states", you're seeing an agenda that wouldn't fly nationally, but will do just fine in red-state militia land. Like abortion restrictions. Or forestry. Ol' Dubya wants to "give the states greater control" over whether to allow logging roads, and therefore LOGGING, in national forests. Currently, thanks to our last President, you can't do it. There's almost 60 million acres of roadless national forest that's supposed to fucking well stay that way. And Bush can't get away with overriding it nationally, so he wants to "let the states decide". Ha ha ha.

Here's one of the dirty little secrets about liberals. As much as we love to hug the trees in a strictly euphemistic sense, we actually don't live NEAR trees in any significant numbers. We live on the coasts and in the big cities where any trees that DO exist were put there by the government, right in the median strip or through that sad little hole in the sidewalk. Out there where most of the real trees are, that's Scary Conservative Land. And gee, I wonder what the scary conservatives in Scary Conservative Land are going to decide to do with their trees? State's rights!

Here in Minnesota, where we've had to clear a big treeless swath through the Twin Cities to make room for all the liberals, our Scary Republican Governor has already gone on the record as saying this plan to cut down more trees is "good for the environment. As the reddening light filters through the summer leaves, I look at the forest floor, and think to myself, "What the fuck am I doing out here? I need a Wi-Fi point! It's ACTUAL QUOTE TIME!

"Minnesotans can be assured that Governor Pawlenty will exercise the judgment necessary to balance forest access with environmental protection." - Pawlenty spokesman Dan Wolter, five seconds before running off-stage to put in a buy order on McCulloch stock.

Of course, just suggest that a state might have the right to decide whether or not gays can marry, and you'll see how far the conservative love of states' rights gets you. Sorry, Massachussetts! At least you're welcome to cut down the last dozen or so of your trees. An Office Max would look good right about there, anyway.

Spastic Topic Monkey Friday

"White Chicks" opens today.

I like to think that I don't have to say anything. After all, last week, people actually chose the vastly superior "Dodgeball" over the latest Tom Hanks / Spielberg piece of manipulative bullshit, "The Terminal". It is as if, perhaps, in some small way, you all are learning.

So, ideally, this would mean that I shouldn't need to say "don't go see 'White Chicks'". In much the same way that I shouldn't need to say "don't stick your genitals in an industrial press". It should be self evident. But since its only competition is a controversial documentary and Yet Another Titanicy English Patienty Flashback Love Story, aka 'The Notebook', odds are many Americans will start looking at the industrial press with a bit of a seductive gleam in the country's collective eye.

I mean, I suppose people could go see "Fahrenheit 9/11", but hell, we can just follow everyone else's lead for the past two weeks and spout off opinion about it without actually seeing it. Saves us eight bucks and two hours, and we'll be just as well informed as anyone else is.

And now, if you don't mind, I'd like to take a brief leave of my senses and come to the defense of Dick Cheney. Dick Cheney told Patrick Leahy to either "go fuck yourself" or "fuck you" or "fuck off" yesterday. This has caused a bit of an uproar, because it was on the Senate floor, and because if there's one name that's synonymous with decorum and integrity, it's DICK CHENEY.

Please. If this is the thing Cheney gets in trouble over, you're all completely bugfuck. I mean, I'll take it, because in politics, if an insane ref decides to fuck over the other team, you don't argue. But I won't be happy about it. As the world-renowned T-shirt says, f-bombs don't kill children. Cheney's been fucking up, and fucking over, all of you for the past three years, so if you're only going to get upset when he actually utters the verb, you fuckin' deserve him.

Politics needs more swearing, more yelling. Not less. You know why? Because the vaunted "level of discourse" is a big lie. Most of these people on opposite sides of the aisle do not like each other, and do not like what each other stand for. Most of the people on both sides of the aisle are there because they like the money and the power. And they know they gotta look good to stay where the money and the power is. So whenever they want to swear or yell or slap Zell Miller upside his fucking HEAD, they instead repress.

Look at Al Gore. Back when he was worried about getting into and staying in power, Gore was Captain Repression. Wound tighter than Ann Coulter's biological clock. Didn't dare say "boo" for fear of pissing off some constituency or another. And look at him now. Yellin' and screamin' and hootin' and hollerin' and smackin' people upside their FUCKING HEADS. I guarantee you, 95% of those of us that voted for Nader in 2000, even the ones (like Humble Author) who did so 'cause theywere safely in a blue state, would have voted for the real Al Gore. Instead, we got some bland robot fucker who kept the tone civil and lost the war.

Repression always comes back to bite you on the ass. Or comes back and asks you to bite a stranger on the ass while it watches. Just ask Jack Ryan. Midwestern, Republican, Illinois Senator Jack Ryan. Married to Jeri "Trek Virgin Masturbatory Fantasy Of Nine" Ryan until about four years ago. Up for re-election. Divorce papers released. Turns out Midwestern Repressed Republican liked taking his Borg Princess out to sex clubs and tried to get her to do things with strangers that'd make Kirk blush all the way down to his cloaca. OOPS. The then Mrs. Ryan refused, but then went on to have sex with Brannon Braga, so it obviously couldn't have been on the grounds of tastefulness and decorum.

So, what have we learned? A little swearing every once in a while is good for the soul, and the re-election campaign. At least, I hope so, because if that's true, this website should propel me into Global Dictator for Life status by 20-fuckety-12.

Want Some Comedy With That?

Memo to the USDA and Texas: YOU ARE DUMB.

It's like some horrible SAT question gone wrong:

Reagan : Ketchup :: Bush : French Fries 

It really is funny the way Dubya is choosing to take up the "Reagan legacy", by basically taking Reagan's evil ideas and then ratcheting up the stupidity to the breaking point. Reagan cut taxes so that there'd be no money for leftist social programs; Bush does the same, but throws in a $200 billion war on top. Reagan surrounded himself with crooks and politicians on the take, Bush surrounds himself with crooks and politicians on the take from the crooked and corrupt companies they "used to" work for. Reagan slowly deteriorated into a drooling vegetable, Bush came roaring out of the gate with the mental capacity of an underfed zucchini.

Which, in a borderline-masterful segue, brings us to the regular kind of vegetables. Reagan tried to get ketchup classified as a vegetable for nutritional purposes in school lunches, and failed. Bush's USDA, two decades later, has gotten ketchup's symbiotic partner, the batter-dipped, deep-fried French Fry, classified as a "fresh vegetable". And in an unlikely triumph of Bush administration subtlety, managed to do it a YEAR AGO, and nobody noticed.

It only came out now, a year later, because someone stood to lose some money off of it. Specifically, Fleming Companies, who makes batter-dipped french fries, and is now bankrupt. The serpentine bankruptcy laws treat companies differently if they sell fresh fruits and vegetables, you see. They owe more money if french fries are fresh, so they took the USDA to court over it. This is apparently what Republicans mean by allowing market forces to self-regulate. As soon as the mass warping of the fabric of reality and the meanings of words impacts someone financially, they will then work to correct things so that "fresh vegetable" and "batter-dipped, deep-fried, frozen hunk of starch" are no longer synonyms.

Except that they sued in Texas. And in Texas, food comes in two classifications: Hacked From The Still Warm Quivering Flesh Of A Cow And / Or Steer, and Fresh Vegetable. So the Texas judge had no problems going along with the french-fry industry's argument that chopping up a potato, dipping the pieces in batter, frying them in oil, and then freezing the result is no different than waxing a cucumber. Yee. Haw.

Representatives from the USDA, dimly aware of an epic public relations clusterfuck, were quick to reassure the American public that the ruling did not apply to nutrition, only to laws involving commerce. That's comforting. They're only behaving in a completey insane way in order to pander to huge food-processing conglomerates! They're not expecting anyone to actually BELIEVE that a batter-dipped french fry is a fresh veggie, they just want to call it one so that their corporate friends can use the loophole to get more money!

In a related story that is not real but instead invented to set up the standard comedy premise of taking the already ludicrous real-life example and extending it to other products, tortilla chips will be considered "corn on the cob" for purposes of interstate commerce, the Wonder corporation will now be receiving subsidies for all the "wheat" it "grows", and employees are now designated as "children" for tax purposes, allowing your company to claim you as a dependent. But don't worry. When it comes to school lunches, tortilla chips, Wonder bread, and human employees will retain their scientifically determined nutritional value. At long last, somebody thought of the children.

No Stupid "Mourning" Puns

Happy National Day of Mourning, everyone! I sure hope I can get to the mall before the Day of Mourning Sales are over.

Oh, wait. National days of mourning are fucking stupid. Never mind.

It's not even necessarily that it's Reagan. I understand there are a lot of people, especially people with money and power, that practically worship our newest corpse-in-chief. That's fine. And for these people, these Reagan conservatives, NOTHING is too good for Reagan. Not processions, not ritual, not getting his smiling face on whatever they can manage.

Well, OK. Stem cell research that might have made his last years less of a living hell, THAT was too good for him, but then them's the price you pay when you cozy up to Jerry Falwell in the 80's to get your job. Oh, sure, Nancy can ask all she wants for the embryonic stem cells, but the fundie monster Ron helped create is running science now. The irony is palpable. I mean, the closest I could come to an analogy is if, say, a whole bunch of our problems right now were caused by a group of nutjobs in some country that Ronnie funded and armed because they were fighting the Soviet Un.... oh. Wait. Shit.

But aside from it being Reagan, why we need an official day of mourning six whole days after Reagan died is beyond me. It's 2004, folks. I'm sorry, but we all live faster now. Even the Amish had heard and mourned and were done with the whole thing by Wednesday noon. Give us some credit. Many of us have high speed Internet access at home, work, or our local libraries.

At this point, we should have had a National Hour-Forty-Five of Mourning. Let's say on Tuesday, 8:15 a.m. to 10:00 a.m., Eastern Standard Time, tape delayed for the Pacific. Mountain time, check your local listings. That would have covered it. It's not as if all those people had to walk past the casket. Please. 80% of those fuckers were doing it just so they could say they did. Of the 20% who had some kind of valid connection to Reagan, at least half of those could have been weeded out by some fair, egalitarian process. Get Katherine Harris on that job, come to think of it.

We have things called cameras. We can even use the hi-def ones. Rent out some theaters. People can walk past the screen of their local Multiplex. Touch the screen, get some nachos, make a morning of it. What do you think, you're gonna be able to smell him in the rotunda or something? If you sense the faint reek of death and decay, odds are it's coming from the sweaty bastard behind you. STAY HOME.

I mean, if I were... someone completely different, I could totally justify walking past the casket. I mean, back in '84, the school band I was in played for a Reagan re-election rally in Rochester, NY. I was in the SAME ARENA as Reagan. We shared a deep personal connection. I helped, in some small way, to get him re-elected*. I could totally get away with going and pay my respects. But I'm not a self-obsessed dickhead with an overactive thyroid**.

Some of you may be asking, at this moment, "Who are YOU to judge how other people grieve?" I say this, because there are now a whole bunch of new people reading the site. I'd like to extend a hale and hearty YAD welcome to the Barony of Nordskogen and all you sick fucks googling your hearts out for every last detail of the Heemeyer Granby Armored Bulldozer Rampage. Anyway, for future reference, judging is kinda what I do around here. At least, whenever I see something DUMB.

* For those wondering, yes, I did throw up, just a little, in my mouth as I typed that.

** The thyroid's the one that makes you all maudlin and melodramatic, right? Whatever.

I Hate Morning In America

Memo to the media: HURRY UP.

Let's just get it over with quickly, since we can't escape it. After all, when Nixon died, all of a sudden he was some kind of great statesman, instead of the drunken racist filthy crook that all those pesky facts pointed to. So now Ronnie has finally kicked it, and I know you're all lining up to jerk off his corpse and display your Photoshopped soft-focus portraits with the waving flag behind them, but move through it as quickly as you can, because I just ate.

In one sense, it was like God thought this weekend was my birthday, because first Creed broke up, and then Reagan died. But if there's one thing Ronald Reagan and an Islamic militant have in common, it's that they were both of more use to me drooling in a house somewhere than actually dead, because death makes them martyrs.

I can't even imagine what kind of cathartic apotheosis must have been happening on Fox News this weekend. Unclean worship of Reagan is one of those freakish arch-conservative points of view that they've managed to mainstream to the point where if you don't love "The Gipper", you're a commie. Just ask CBS.

And that's another thing. Ronald Reagan wasn't the fucking Gipper. George Gipp was the fucking Gipper. How rude is that, anyway, to just up and assume the fucking persona of someone in the real world who you happened to play in a movie? I bet all those Young Republicans out there weeping in their Coors this morning would have a fucking embolism if James Brolin started calling himself the "Great Communicator".

Reagan was the reason my generation shit itself when they ran "The Day After". "The Day After" does not hold up well. It's not actually a particularly good movie. But with Ronnie and his fucking plastic hair running things, there was a palpable sense in the air that at any moment, he could have some kind of communist hallucination, or press the wrong button, and rain nuclear fire down upon us all.

I mean, we were terrified of STEVE FUCKING GUTTENBERG walking around on a soundstage full of the simulated styrofoam rubble of 80's civilization. How the hell can you deify the man most responsible for an entire nation being freaked out by STEVE GUTTENBERG? I mean, as bad as Iran-Contra was, as bad as the October Surprise was, as bad as Reaganomics was, that's the most chilling indictment of the Reagan years right there. We were so fucked up as a country under Reagan that Steve Guttenberg TV-movies were giving children legitimate nightmares.

Bet they don't mention THAT in any of the four thousand retrospectives you're gonna see in the next two months.

Luckily, unlike Reagan, the death of Creed has NO DOWNSIDE WHATSOEVER. So even while Dan Rather waxes poetic over slow-mo footage of that evil retard president (the dead one) smiling, we too can maybe smile, just a little. Because as horrible as the wor

Inhofe.

Memo to James Inhofe: Perhaps, when you are done hating brown people, justifying rape, and condoning the systematic use of torture by American military intelligence, could you please take your Oklahoma redneck panhandle skunk-fellating senatorial fat ass out behind the woodshed, and I know you have a woodshed, and kindly fuck yourself? Thanks.

It's bad enough when the Limbaughs and the Hannities of the world sit on their asses and call torture and rape "frat pranks" *. I expect that bullshit out of them. That's their job. But a standing senator, even a Southern one, when confronted with widespread, gross, filmed human rights abuses by American soldiers, should not be saying shit like:

"I'm probably not the only one up at this table that is more outraged by the outrage than we are by the treatment." No, and that's part of the fucking PROBLEM, you Cro-Magnon racist. Genetic stains like you who think it's just dandy to do whatever you want to whoever you want to further your dubious goals are precisely the reason why acts that should be unthinkable are now policy. Just as soon as I'm done vomiting in my own mouth at the thought of assholes like you running things, it'll be ACTUAL QUOTE TIME!

"The [Red Cross] report says some coalition military intelligence officers estimated 'between 70 percent and 90 percent' of the detainees in Iraq 'had been arrested by mistake. They also attributed the brutality of some arrests to the lack of proper supervision of battle group units.' " - Associated Press.

"These prisoners, you know they're not there for traffic violations. If they're in cellblock 1-A or 1-B, these prisoners, they're murderers, they're terrorists, they're insurgents. Many of them probably have American blood on their hands and here we're so concerned about the treatment of those individuals." - Senator James Inhofe, whose words were admittedly somewhat muffled as they had to be forced through a mouthful of Dubya's feces.

This guy makes Zell Miller look like Fred Rogers. They're in custody, they're brown, and they are, in his own words, PROBABLY guilty of something, so it's OK to do whatever we want to them in order to see if they'll say anything bad about their neighbors. Hooray for America! These are your leaders, people. They run your country. Little Hitlers with cowboy hats just waiting to ram a chemical light up the bunghole of anyone who disagrees with them.

"I would guess that these prisoners wake up every morning thanking Allah that Saddam Hussein is not in charge of these prisons." - Inhofe again, GUESSING WRONG about shit he should already know.

"Dhia al-Shweiri said he too was stripped naked during his stay in the prison and the humiliation was worse than the torture he endured under Saddam Hussein. 'It's OK if they beat me. Beatings don't hurt us, it's just a blow. But no one would want their manhood to be shattered'" - The Associated Press.

Oh, wait! Inhofe said even more to hate! "I am also outraged that we have so many humanitarian do-gooders right now crawling all over these prisons looking for human rights violations, while our troops, our heroes are fighting and dying."

Let me get this absolutely straight, because if there's one thing a Republican Senator from Oklahoma would like you to beleve he prefers, it's "absolutely straight". We are, in the as-specific-as-he-can-manage words of our paint-drinking president, over there fighting to stop the EVIL-DOERS. Those that DO EVIL. And according to Inhofe, our mission to thwart those who do evil is being hampered by hordes of... wait for it... DO-GOODERS. Those who DO GOOD. Yes, if it weren't for all those pesky doers of good, we'd have dealt with those doers of evil once and for all. Got it? Good. I mean, evil. I mean, um, some kind of nebulous moral area between "good" and "evil" that is the only acceptable moral outlook according to boiling anal warts like James Inhofe.

*Yeah, frat pranks do frequently include torture and rape, but I don't think that's what Limbaugh meant.

The Bush Administration

Memo to various and sundry in the Bush Administration: YOU ARE DUMB.

Riddle me this, Batman: When is news... NOT NEWS? And I'm not talking about my usual hatred of the media wasting time and effort on unimportant shit, I'm actually asking a Gorshim-style riddle here. When is news not news?

When it's a government-prepared, ready-for-air video puff piece handed out to local news, complete with fake reporter and fake lead-in for the real anchor.

Apparently, Bush has an entire team of people working tirelessly to come up with new, outrageous shit they haven't gotten away with before. And after their success with "Let's give Cheney's company billions of dollars by bypassing the contract bidding process" and "Look! Over there! Uranium!", they've thought outside the box once again.

Faced with an increasingly uppity press occasionally willing to risk royal disfavour by mumbling "hey, that's not, um, true, you know" once in a great while, the administration figured they'd just eliminate the middleman and create their own fake press to get their own fake news out.

So they sent a happy little video about Medicare reform to local news stations. It's full of happy people talking about how happy they are now that they can finally afford their life-saving drugs since the President singlehandedly fixed Medicare.

The videos have everything. Well, ALMOST everything. They have an actress portraying a fake reporter, Karen Ryan. Hispanic viewers get a different fake person, Alberto Garcia.

They have astonishingly realistic dialogue, such as the following exchange between a customer and pharmacist: CUSTOMER: "It sounds like a good idea." PHARMACIST: "A very good idea."

It even tells the anchor how to introduce the piece: "In December, President Bush signed into law the first-ever prescription drug benefit for people with Medicare. Since then, there have been a lot of questions about how the law will help older Americans and people with disabilities. Reporter Karen Ryan helps sort through the details." Presumably, there's a different script for the Hispanic video, lest people grow wise to the fact that the beautiful Karen Ryan has transmogrified into the hunky Alberto Garcia.

In fact, they only left out one thing. Any kind of indication in the video itself that it's actually political propaganda from Health and Human Services. As a result, someone -might- get in trouble over this. Maybe. Some Democrats are yelling, and someone'll probably look into it, and if you check page 17B six months from now, you may find out how it all turns out.

The amazing thing is that I honestly expected local TV news to have more pride than that. Not more ethics, of course. Just, you know. A certain amount of pride that, no matter what sensationalistic or insipid crap they throw on the air, at least it's THEIR CRAP. Not some Stepford news that Big Brother Bush asked them nicely to run.

I mean, there was a bigger uproar a few years ago when Sony made up a fake movie reviewer to pimp its crappy movies and get quoted on posters. That was a HUGE scandal. I mean, if our movie reviewers aren't real, then who ARE we all stealing our opinions from?

It's just like I said yesterday, when I was discussing this with my pharmacist, Alberto Ryan. "It sounds like a dumb thing," I said, and he replied, nodding sagely, "Si, a very dumb thing."