The ever eloquent Keith Obermann gives one of his best. And I give it to you, as my Independence Day gift.

Is it wrong that I am not at all saddened by the sudden death of Jerry Falwell, and, in fact, may even be a little bit hopeful that nobody will pick up the reins (or reign) of his evil empire of neo-con religious zealots?

 

Tata, over at Poor Impulse Control, went to a party for bloggers the other night. Said party was hosted by no less a personage (corporage?) than NBC its own self. Wow. I don’t get invites like that. Once there, the doors were locked, and souls were bargained for.

Find out what happened when Tata met the underlords of the dark.

In honor of the many thousands who have died or suffered grievous bodily harm in the four years since this momentous announcement by our Idiot In Chief, let me wish everyone a very happy “Mission Accomplished” Day.

As always, the Rude Pundit is more eloquent on this subject than I can ever be.

I’m sure that it was merely a coinkydink or oversight by the higher powers that this proclamation of arrogance and imperialism was made on National Workers’ Day (May Day).

Feh.

Here in Miami, the sun is shining and the people are in the streets, protesting our government policies regarding immigration. Will this help their cause? No. It will only annoy those of us who will be stuck in our offices at the end of a business day and can’t get home because of the blockaded streets and horn-blasting protesters.

 

My boss, The Skipper, sent this to me yesterday for my blog. He could give the Rude Pundit a run for his money, sometimes.

On Sunday, the Associated Press distributed its comprehensive list of boosh admin types who have had to leave the I-pledge-to-restore-honor-and-dignity-to-Washington administration under a cloud of corruption. Although this list does not include the dozens of Republican members of congress and their staff who are now falling at the rate of one-a-day (see Central Florida boosh buddy Tom Feeney as the very latest example), and although this list does not include those who’s greatest failing was/is sheer incompetence (Heckuva Job Brownie or heckuva plan Rummy or heckuva UN presentation Powell, for example), and although this list doesn’t include those who couldn’t even make it past a pliant Senate (Bernie Kerik, UN Ambassador Bolton, dozens of incompetent prospective federal jurists, for example) to join this benighted administration, and although this list doesn’t include all those U.S. Attorneys fired for one reason or another (all illegal), it is still a useful/enjoyable list:

Bush administration under a cloud

By The Associated Press Sun Apr 22, 1:41 PM ET

A rundown of Bush appointees who left under a cloud or face conflict-of-interest allegations

Scooter Libby, former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, was convicted of perjury and obstruction of justice in a grand jury investigation into the outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame. His trial also implicated top political adviser Karl Rove and Cheney in a campaign to discredit her husband, Iraq war critic and retired ambassador Joe Wilson (news, bio, voting record). Libby, who plans an appeal, is awaiting a June 5 sentencing.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is fighting to hold onto his job in the face of congressional investigations into his role in the firing of eight U.S. attorneys. Two top aides have resigned in the investigation into whether the firings were politically motivated. Emails and other evidence released by the Justice Deparment suggest that Rove played a part in the process. Other e-mails, sent on Republican party accounts, either have disappeared or were erased.

Paul Wolfowitz, president of the World Bank and a former deputy defense secretary, acknowledged he helped arrange a large pay raise for his female companion when she was transferred to the State Department but remained on the bank payroll. The incident intensified calls at the bank for his resignation.

J. Steven Griles, an oil and gas lobbyist who became deputy Interior Secretary J., last month became the highest-ranking Bush administration official convicted in the Jack Abramoff influence-peddling scandal, pleading guilty to obstructing justice by lying to a Senate committee about his relationship with the convicted lobbyist. Abramoff repeatedly sought Griles’ intervention at Interior on behalf of Indian tribal clients.

Former White House aide, David H. Safavian, was convicted last year of lying to government investigators about his ties to Abramoff and faces a 180-month prison sentence.

Roger Stillwell, a former Interior Department official, pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge for not reporting tickets he received from Abramoff.

Sue Ellen Wooldridge, the top Justice Department prosecutor in the environmental division until January, bought a $980,000 beach house in South Carolina with ConocoPhillips lobbyist Donald R. Duncan and oil and gas lobbyist Griles. Soon thereafter, she signed an agreement giving the oil company more time to clean up air pollution at some of its refineries. Congressional Democrats have denounced the arrangement.

Matteo Fontana, a Department of Education official who oversaw the student loan industry, was put on leave last week after disclosure that he owned at least $100,000 worth of stock in a student loan company.

Claude Allen, who had been Bush’s domestic policy adviser, pleaded guilty to theft in making phony returns at discount department stores while working at the White house. He was sentenced to two years of supervised probation and fined $500.

Philip Cooney, a former American Petroleum Institute lobbyist who became chief of staff for the White House Council on Environmental Quality, acknowledged in congressional testimony earlier this year that he changed three government reports to eliminate or downplay links between greenhouse gases and global warming. He left in 2005 to work for Exxon Mobil Corp.

Darleen Druyun, a former Air Force procurement officer, served nine months in prison in 2005 for violating federal conflict-of-interest rules in a deal to lease Boeing refueling tankers for $23 billion, despite Pentagon studies showing the tankers were unnecessary. After making the deal, she quit the government and joined Boeing.

Eric Keroack, Bush’s choice to oversee the federal family planning program, resigned from the post suddenly last month after the Massachusetts Medicaid office launched an investigation into his private practice. He had been medical director of an organization that opposes premarital sex and contraception.

Lurita Doan, head of the General Services Administration, attended a luncheon at the agency earlier this year with other top GSA political appointees at which Scott Jennings, a top Rove aide, gave a PowerPoint demonstration on how to help Republican candidates in 2008. A congressional committee is investigating whether the remarks violated a federal law that restricts executive-branch employees from using their positions for political purposes.

Robert W. Cobb, NASA’s inspector general is under investigation on charges of ignoring safety violations in the space program. An internal administration review said he routinely tipped off department officials to internal investigations and quashed a report related to the Columbia shuttle explosion to avoid embarrassing the agency. He remains on the job. Only Bush can fire him.

Julie MacDonald, who oversees the Fish and Wildlife Service but has no academic background in biology, overrode recommendations of agency scientists about how to protect endangered species and improperly leaked internal information to private groups, the Interior Department inspector general said.

Do we really think that 5 million Rove and Mehlman e-mails went missing because a handful of US Attorneys were fired for blatantly political reasons? Puh-leeze! Those e-mails have been erased off the RNC server, and those e-mails were sent from a non-WH server to begin with because they no doubt detail intimate coordination of the so-called independent 527s (Swift Boats Liars for Truth) by the WH and RNC in 2004, in blatant and massively illegal violation of federal election laws. Under the 527 laws, none of the Swifties should have mentioned word one of their nefarious slimebagging to Rove and Mehlman and their stormtroopers. Wanna bet THAT didn’t happen?

After reading this list, do we think that ANYONE, other than Matt Drudge, Rush Limbaugh, Newt Gingrich, Henry Hyde, John McCain, Bill McCollum (all men of questionable lifestyle and morals themselves), really cares about the unspeakable evil of blue dresses that never quite made it to the dry cleaners?

As often as I am wont to say that I hate the living, I don’t think the answer is locking the doors and shooting everyone else.

And as much as I’m a Yellow Dog strict constitutionalist, and all, I think that the intent of the founders regarding the 2nd amendment had more to do with protection of the citizenry in the face of no standing national army and less about the right to bear arms for the hell of it, or the day the silicon chip inside your head gets switched to overload.

For the POTUS to deliver some mealy-mouthed inanity like he did: “Oh, jeez, everyone should have the right to bear arms, but they should obey the law”* just makes me want to vomit.

You know what? In this day and age, there is no need for the average citizen to own a handgun. Or an assault rifle. Or any other small arms. And if you want to, then join the fucking military and go defend us from the world.

Or how about this? You can own all the guns you want, but you can’t own the ammunition. Or how about the British model, and the guns are locked up in gun clubs and the only time you get to play with your toys is when you are out with other killers hunters shooting at animals. And not like here, where there are hunting farms, where the animals are penned until you get there to kill them. That would be the kind of hunting done by that masterful asswipe, the Vice President of the United States, who shot 400 quail and his hunting companion. There were 500 quail released that day. Oh, I made the numbers up, so sue me, I can’t remember everything I read. But he did go out shooting live skeet, and he did shoot his buddy, so do the numbers really matter?

But no. This is America, land of the freely stupid and bravely stubborn in the face of all logic. How many more? How many more people will be shot for no reason by people with no reasoning but plenty of guns and ammunition? When will the neo-cons and NRA apologists figure out that guns don’t kill people, but people with guns do?

To quote the Rude Pundit, have you ever heard of a drive-by stabbing?

A long, long time ago I dated a man who used to dream about killing his ex-girlfriend. Not in an abstract way, but vivid and explicit dreams about shooting her in the head.** (No, I didn’t date him long after I heard about that, and when he wanted to see me suddenly after a year or so had passed, I would only meet him in a public place.) A therapist told me that we all dream about or can dream about killing people, but that only a person capable of doing it in real life could see it all in that kind of detail. But that was twenty-some years ago, before hyper-real FX in movies, and first-person shooter games on every PC and GameBoy and Wii.

We have not become, as our Moron-in-Chief says, a culture of life, America has become a culture of glorified violence. It is approved by our government when we dance around the definitions of torture re: the Geneva Conventions. It is approved by our government when we out-source our prisons to folks without the same delicacy of nature that America pretends, as a nation, to have.

How many more students will be shot down? How many more innocent folks, putting gas in their cars? How many children caught in the cross fire of gang wars? How many more gallons of blood will paint the hands of the NRA and their spineless puppets in Congress before we decide that maybe, just maybe, in the 21st century, in this place, we all don’t need to have a sidearm strapped on?

I hate the living, but that doesn’t mean I want to kill them.

* Especially since the POTUS and his entire administration seem unable to obey any laws theirownselves. You know, the little ones, like perjury, and destroying evidence, and doctoring evidence, and leading this country into an illegal war, and wiretapping, and illegal search and seizure, and spying on US citizens, and you know, the whole rest of the ten commandments and most of the US constitution.


** That boyfriend? Killed himself. I was never able to find out how, but there were hints… he’d watched Blue Velvet a hundred times, it involved massive amounts of drugs and, yes, a gun.

 

The Miami Herald's headline, the Boosh White House spin, the AP feed all claim that Gerald Ford "healed our nation" or "united our country" after Watergate. To which claims I call bullshit.

Excuse me, but Mr. Ford's legacy is not some sunny, morning in America era of peace and prosperity (that would have been Bill Clinton). No. Gerald Ford's contribution to American history is: he pardoned that rat bastard Richard Milhouse Nixon. Oh. And he launched Chevy Chase's career.

Let's review. Spiro Agnew was forced to resign in disgrace after it was revealed that he took bribes from contractors while he was Governor of Maryland. Took said bribes IN HIS OFFICE. And then, continued to accept them IN HIS OFFICE in the White House while he was the elected Vice President of the United States. Resigned in disgrace. Replaced, not elected, by Gerald Ford.

Then Richard Nixon, ditto. Forced to resign in disgrace after his role in Watergate and the subsequent cover-ups, stonewalling, demonizing, etc. (Karl Rove learned everything he knows about running a government in the Nixon White House.) was revealed.

And then, Gerald Ford pardoned him... PARDONED the rat bastard. And THAT unified a nation? In outrage, maybe. No, it was just the thin edge of the wedge in the virulent partisanship we see in our country/government today. After the slime and crime of the Nixon era, the Republicans managed to somehow claim the high ground and moral authority they so clearly did not and do not deserve.

Another state funeral for Boosh to preside over, and try to look like a worthy successor to the dearly departed. Considering what a failure Ford was, and what a devious, lying sack of shit Ronald Reagan was (Iran/Contra? Hello? Oliver North? AIDS?), one would think that even the asshat Shrub could look Presidential in that company. He fails completely, even by such low standards.

The only bright spot in this is that Betty Ford will be too classy a dame to pull a Nancy and kiss the coffin. Just make sure that Betty doesn't have a thermos and all will be fine. Maybe Chevy will get a couple of minutes in the spotlight, too.

I grew up in a Very Small Town in the south of Florida. My (extended) family was the entire Jewish population of said small town, and had my grandparent's house burned down in about 1956, the entire shtetl would have been eliminated, since we all lived in that same house.

Christmas time would come, and we would decorate our store (AFTER Thanksgiving, thankewverymuch) for same. We would drive down to Miami to the display wholesaler and pick up garlands, and bells and snowflakes and order our supplies of wrapping paper and ribbons. (Actually, this would happen way before Thanksgiving, the ordering and shopping for decorations.)

By Thanksgiving, my GirlCousin and I were making boxes, and curling ribbons, in preparation for the Christmas rush. Boxes. Hundreds and hundreds of shirt boxes and dress boxes and thousands of curled ribbon balls, neatly ordered like green and red checkerboards inside the tops of said boxes. All of them neatly stored under the display counters. The wrapping table would get set up. We would race each other to see who could wrap a box faster, tighter, and with the least number of pieces of tape. I think the record was 3 pieces of tape and under 30 seconds. Everyone in the store answered the phone by saying "Merry Christmas, Stuart Department Store."

My parents would pile my brother and me into the car and we would drive around town to look at the Christmas lights in other people's yards. Nothing says Christmas like a lit-up coconut palm, and don't try to tell me different. One good hard frost and the oranges would sweeten up on the trees, too.

For some reason, however, my whole life, my Christian friends thought that I "had no Christmas" and took it upon themselves to give me one. I have probably decorated as many or more Christmas trees than any Southern Baptist. I would get an invitation to one friend's home and then another. Come for eggnog and decorating the tree! Come for hot cocoa and tree decorating! Come and help us put up the tree! OK. Sure.

The Sistergirlfriendgirl and her family had Tiggywinkle ornaments. Those were the little hedgehogs from Beatrix Potter books. I LOVED the Tiggywinkles. Flash's family had delicate old glass balls from her grandparents. Another friend made popcorn strings. One year when I lived in New York, Bean and her mom decided that decorating the tree wasn't enough Christmas for a nice Jewish girl, and they took me out in a snowstorm to pick their tree out from a lot on Sixth Avenue, and then Bean and I then had to drag the damn monster all the way across the Village to their WestBeth apartment. Brilliant. One of my favorite Christmases, ever.

On Christmas Day, I always made sure that I had an invitation to the most Southern of my Southern friends' homes, because that meant a slice of left-over ham, pan fried and served up with red-eye gravy and grits with enough butter and tobasco sauce to choke the original pig. Or me. Yummmy. Red eye gravy.

Those are great memories. Thank the baby Jesus that nobody had become so brow-beaten into political correctness that I didn't get to have them. I was not, and my parents were not, hell, even my GRANDPARENTS were not offended that I was asked to be part of someone's Christmas celebration. Nobody thought that my friends were trying to convert me. Especially since I returned the favor by teaching them the freakin' dreidle song, and handing out chocolate Chanukkah gelt.

There was no breast-beating and fretting over whether or not we should say Merry Christmas to our customers. Well, in all honesty, probably because we knew for certain that we were the only Jews in town and so a Merry Christmas would not be unwelcome, but also because in those dark days, it was considered polite to express recognition of another's beliefs rather than trying to pretend that we all worship the same nebulous concept of holiness in some non-specific way that could offend nobody and everybody.

I am growing tired of political correctness, can you tell? I think we need a new definition of it. I think that political correctness should be me telling my Christian friends Happy Channukah and them telling me Merry Christmas and we all smile and say "YESH!" Does it matter? The bottom line is that we are wishing each other peace and joy.

Namaste. The god in me recognizes the god in you. We are all one. Merry Christmas to all, unless you prefer Happy Channukah. Or a bountiful Kwaanza. Or whatever.

Namaste.

I was surfing around on the internets just now, and as usual, ended up on Go Fug Yourself, because those girls are a stitch, and I can never get enough of snark about celebutards. They have advertising on GFY, and I don't mind, in fact, now and then I click through to cute clothes or stuff. Today, though, the top ad is from PETA and it's some claptrap about the "horrendous cruelty in the Australian wool industry."

You know what? Fuck 'em. Fuck every one of those PETA assholes. I mean, what? Shearing sheep is cruel? Is it cruel to cut your own hair? Granted, sheep generaly don't go into the whole shearing process voluntarily, but horrendously cruel? Uh, no.
I am so over PETA. I am over people who think it's OK and desirable to ruin a perfectly good fur coat by tossing paint on strangers. Assault is OK? I don't care if it's assault by cream pie or assault with a deadly weapon, assault is assault is assault. Matters of degree don't matter to me.

I am over people who believe that they have the right to dictate how I live, how I dress, how I eat. It's still, although just barely, America, people. That means I have the right to wear a shearling coat and you have the right to be appalled. You do NOT have the right to make it illegal for me to wear it, nor do you have the right to damage it because you don't like it.

If only that were true, there would be a lot of women on the Metrorail with their makeup bags torn from their hands, their capri-pants-with-spike-heels ripped off their bodies and their weaves snatched from their heads. Not to mention the veritable rainfall of cell phones that I would single handedly cause. But I digress.

If I want to eat fois gras, I should be able to plunk down a thick wad of cash at Chef Norman's and dine on a tender morsel of delicately seared fatted goose liver, by G-d and Ben Franklin, I should be able to. Fuck PETA and their isms. Go chew on your own granola, assholes. I'm with Tony Bourdain on this one. There is something fundamentally wrong with people who don't enjoy food.

And yeah, yeah, yeah. I know that it's really bad for me to wear fur, as much as I love the stuff. Maybe that's why I live in Florida, so I can't give in to temptation. Although, in my own defense, the only fur I own is older than me and came to me from my husband's maternal grandmother. It's a lovely black Persian lamb car coat with (on me) 3/4 length sleeves trimmed in black mink. Or maybe black unsheared beaver. Soft. Thick. Furry. Warm. And, hello? economically speaking, a hell of a lot more efficient than a woven cloth coat. It has lasted 60-some years. It is still in pristine condition and doing a good job of keeping me warm. Find me a down vest with those credentials. Oh. Right. Down is probably cruel, too. So if down is bad, and wool (where the animal fucking lives after its resources are harvested, hello?) is bad, and fur is bad, what are we furless humans supposed to wear to keep warm in the winter? Should we crank up the heat on our non-renewable resource gas or oil or coal heaters? Should we use electricity from the same non-renewable, corporate whore-owned sources? Should we just hibernate?

Just believe and live the way you want, and stay the fuck out of my pantry and my closet. And my bedroom. And my womb. And my liquor cabinet. And my face.

And just so you know? Leather is lovely and pleather is just nasty.

Part the first: The Rude Pundit said it best on Wednesday morning when he said: Has anybody in this bed got a cigarette?

To quote the ur-progenitor of all the past six years of madness: It's morning in America.

To quote the American voting public: "Go fuck yourselves, arrogant Republican chicken-hawk constitution rapers."
Part the second: Miz Shoes Reviews: ANTM

We are back in the house with the bitches and the hos, and surprisingly we are still interested despite last week's recap show. To be fair, the high point of the recaps was watching the Queer Eye for the (Nominally) Straight Model Wanna-be. Well, that and the scene of the clinically insane Moooonique playing echo with Melrose. And the scene of the clinically insane Moooonique stomping on Doritos. To which we can only say, what the fuck was wrong with that girl?

Oh, well, we can also say this: How about a Supermodel Season on ANTM, where they bring back all the most delusional and insane B&Hs. A house filled with Camille, and Lisa, Tiffany and her weave, and Jade and Moooonique and Jayla and what's her name who wouldn't cut her hair and just walked out and the blind girl who wasn't blind when she had to leave in the dark of night, and of course Furonda. Can you imagine? And the judges would have to be equally unbalanced: the Divine Miss Dickenson and Naomi Campbell, whose name has finally been uttered by Tyrant. And she didn't hack up a hair ball or anything. Of course, if it was me that she likened to Naomi, I wouldn't have gotten all smiley and thank you. I would have gone back to the house and packed, thinking that next week it would be my head on the block. I'm just saying, that if you remind Tyra of Naomi? That cannot be a good thing.

So, where are we. Oh, yeah, back at the house with the bitches and the hos. Everyone is laying around thinking that there aren't so many of them anymore to get lost in the shuffle of who sucks the worst. There's a little pity party for Brooke, but not much of one. No, the bigger pity party is the one that Anchal is throwing for herself.

Allow me to sum up: Wah, wah, wah. Nobody likes me, everybody hates me, I'm going to go off and make myself feel better by eating a few more pounds of bacon and then stress out over getting fatter not thinner and how come nobody in this house will shut up about my weight already, and why don't they like me? Wah, wah, wah, wah. Repeat ad nauseum.

The lesson this week is how to action model, and they are taught by none other than Gabrielle Reese, who really is the shit. See, this is why I used the title I did on this entry. This year I have liked more of the special guests and been more impressed with the photo shoots than any previous season.*

As expected, Caridee, Melrose, Michelle and Jaeda do well. Anchal sucks and doesn't want to wear a bikini and plays beach volley ball exactly as you would expect a girlygirly to play, which is to say, she all but closes her eyes when the ball comes at her and her dive toward it falls about four feet short of actually connecting with anything ball-like.

The next day, they have to do a shoot (and simultaneously shoot themselves using an infra-red shutter release, and frankly I think that's rather more multi-tasking than any of these girls could possibly handle under any circumstance) with some guy** from NASCAR who is allegedly a hottie and a part time model.

Michelle rocks it, and even climbs up on his car, puncturing the hood with her spike heels. Nicely done, tomboy. Nicely done. She totally commits to the shot. Guess who doesn't? Anchal? Anchal? Michelle wins her first challenge and gets to pick three friends. She picks Amanda, Caridee, and Melrose. MELROSE? Melrose whom everyone despises? What up? The four of them get to go on a free shopping spree at some shop run by? owned by? featuring clothes by? the nameless NASCAR guy. To keep the theme going, they have 30 seconds to run from the starting line into the show room***, grab as much shit as they can carry and get back to the line. Whoever has the most stuff wins, and gets to keep not only her shit, but all the other girls' shit, too. Melrose is the only one paying enough attention to figure out the rules, which means that she wins, much to Michelle's chagrin. And since the whole thing is edited for effect, we have no way of knowing if Melrose was a total dick and didn't share the spoils with the girl who took her to the dance.

The other girls, the girls who are not part of the winner's spree, all bitch and moan and piss and whine about having to be there to see the other girls shop. I may be getting soft, but this season's hamsters still strike me as being the most ungrateful little whiners to date. Jaeda and the hair. Anchal and the nobody likes me. All of them and Melrose is a bitch. Wahwahwah, already. To complain that they have to watch the winners have a good time? Please, girl, just be glad you didn't have to massage Jade.

Next, they have the challenge photo: reaching for product while (in-door) sky-diving. OK, all of you who WOULD have liked to see Mr. Jay toss them out from 20 thousand feet, raise your hands. They all suck. Jay offers up this direction to Melrose: Give it to me, girl; make them all hate you more! Amanda manages to look good, Michelle only sort of. Anchal, despite wanting to in-door skydive all her life, and despite being the only girl to manage a decent angle, still sucks. Ditto Eugenia, et. al.

Panel! The in-person contest is totally lame. Using techniques from improv classes I took 30 years ago in college, the judges pull out an action verb and an adjective for each girl to try to do. Swim frighteningly. Dance aggressively. And so on. Anchal, poor poor Anchal is asked to dance aggressively and needless to say, she fails dramatically. She also runs out of the room. Do you want to guess who gets sent home?

The bottom two are Michelle and Anchal. Michelle is a natural, the judges say, but she just doesn't Want. It. ENOUGH. Like, say, her twin sister. Or Caridee, who the judges are finally beginning to figure out is insane. Or Melrose, who is maybe or maybe not a total bitch, but who, like Lisa, despite being older than dirt and abrasively know-it-all, manages every week to turn out a fierce pic.

So who goes home? Anchal, poor, poor, Anchal, who ran out of the judging panel. Bad move, there, sweetie. Next week they finally travel, and if Tyra isn't geographically dyslexic, it looks like they are going to Spain. Please, oh please, do not make them try to learn flamenco.

* Yeah, yeah, yeah. For a fat girl, she don't sweat so very much.

** What? You think I would watch NASCAR? Puh-leeze people. That's driving in circles. Real racing is Grand Prix racing with, you know, straight aways, hair-pins and wiggly bits.

*** Also known as a Grand Prix start. Ahem.

Born here, although I'm not supposed to call myself a Native American on surveys and census questionaires, which, frankly, I think is sort of a rip. I AM, after all, native to these shores. As such, and since I am not a convicted felon, it is my right (some people, myself included, would say that it is my duty) to cast a vote in every election. And I do. I haven't missed so much as a vote for dog catcher* since I turned 18. I think I had a voter's registration card before I had a driver's license.

So first thing this morning, I went and pounded the shit out of that tacky little electronic device that can't give me a paper reciept. I even voted for a Republican. Not for anything very important, only the Commissioner of Agriculture, and I can't even tell you why, except that I just felt that if there was at least one R in the vote, maybe the (hacked) machine wouldn't eliminate my vote.**

If you live and vote in California, please vote for my old fellow traveler, Larry Cafiero, Green Candidate for Insurance Commissioner.

If you live and vote anywhere, read the Rude Pundit before you go.

If you don't vote, well, first of all, Shame on you. Second of all, shut the fuck up about what you think of our elected government, good or bad, because you pissed away your chance to do something about it. And third of all, when the jack-booted neo-con christian jihadists come to your door to cart you away, remember that you didn't vote. And remember that there were plenty of us out here in the wilderness shrieking warnings like banshees.

* Do people still vote for dog catcher? Is there still the position of dog catcher somewhere out in the fly-overs?

**Come ON, people. I live in South Florida. You don't think there is some serious Republican party-backed shit going down here? Puh-leeze. You have been drinking the Kool-Aid again, haven't you?

The Girl Cousin sent me a link, and I was so smitten with what I saw that I wrote to the site owner and asked if I could embed a copy of one of their movies on this site. She was very gracious about saying yes.

It is with great pleasure that I present to you the work of vidlit.com, and their new featured book, Yiddish with George and Laura.

This just came through the in-box, from a very pissed off boss. Now, granted, he's been on a tear, just in general, for the past couple of weeks* but this is particularly biting.

Pressed repeatedly today on the NIE/Iraq at his WH press briefing, the unabashedly mendacious Tony Snow finally replied (not answered) to a question with this: “Do you think Osama bin Laden is better off today than he was 6 years ago?”

The reporter ignored the outrage and insisted Snowjob answer her question instead.

But Snow’s comment is perhaps the most heinous spinjob proffered yet by this cowardly war mongering gang o’ thugs. And IF this is the new standard by which we must measure political success/failure, then I suggest that rather than asking Osama (gotta find him first, o-mr.-dead-or-alive-commander-in-chief) whether he’s better off today, we instead ask …

Cindy Sheehan … whether her son Casey is better off today than he was 6 years ago?

Valerie Plame and truth-telling Ambassador Joe Wilson whether they are better off today than they were 6 years ago?

The grieving widows/widowers, parents, children and other loved ones of the nearly 3,000 who’ve died in Iraq to preserve & protect the Halliburton lies … whether they’re better off today than they were 6 years ago?

The 140,000 troops currently stationed in Iraq who’ve been lied to from day one about the purpose of their mission, the length of their mission and the resources they’ll have to carry out their mission … whether they’re better off today than they were 6 years ago?

The too-few troops on the ground in Afghanistan facing a resurgent Taliban … whether they’re better off today than they were 6 years ago?

The World Trade Center in New York … whether it’s better off today than it was 6 years ago (especially after a certain do-nothing president did nothing with a 2001 intelligence report warning of an imminent attack involving airplanes)?

The nearly 3000 who died in those towers … whether they’re better off today than they were 6 years ago (especially after a certain do-nothing president did nothing with a 2001 intelligence report warning of an imminent attack involving airplanes)?

The passengers and crew of UAL #93 … whether they’re better off today than they were 6 years ago (especially after a certain do-nothing president did nothing with a 2001 intelligence report warning of an imminent attack involving airplanes)?

The folks on the plane and at the Pentagon … whether they’re better off today than they were 6 years ago (especially after a certain do-nothing president did nothing with a 2001 intelligence report warning of an imminent attack involving airplanes) (Barbara Olsen excepted, of course)?

If this is the Rove-Mehlman-Boehner-Frist Talking Point of the Day, then Democrats must not just laugh it off for the obscene absurdity that it is. They must attack. Just like Bill Clinton would do/did.

* which is also why I'm actually sort of kind of buckling down at the office and doing filing and secretarial shit.

So the POTUS doesn't know what "degrading to human dignity" means. I have a couple of ideas, and I'm sure you do, too. I'd love to be given the chance to show him some of my ideas, up close and personal, if you know what I mean, and I'm sure you do.

Feel free to add your ideas in the comments.
1. being forced to watch the POTUS's speaches on an endless loop

2. having to listen to Paris Hilton defend her singing or having to listen to her sing

3. being forced to watch Eraserhead on an endless loop

4. being forced to watch highlight reels from Project Runway's Santino and Jeffrey-the-Pinheaded-Shmoo pieced together with highlights from America's Next Top Model's own Jade-the-Delusionial

PS: Click on the image below to order your free bumper sticker.

The boss forwarded this to me, from New York City, where he is attending a conference. It is an essay, or a transcript (I'm not sure which) from Keith Olbermann, former sportscaster and only journalist in America today with the cojones to point at The Shrub and say "The emporer is buck nekkid."
"Sept. 11, 2006 | 8:32 p.m. ET

This hole in the ground

Half a lifetime ago, I worked in this now-empty space. And for 40 days after the attacks, I worked here again, trying to make sense of what happened, and was yet to happen, as a reporter.

All the time, I knew that the very air I breathed contained the remains of thousands of people, including four of my friends, two in the planes and -- as I discovered from those "missing posters" seared still into my soul -- two more in the Towers.

And I knew too, that this was the pyre for hundreds of New York policemen and firemen, of whom my family can claim half a dozen or more, as our ancestors.

I belabor this to emphasize that, for me this was, and is, and always shall be, personal.

And anyone who claims that I and others like me are "soft,"or have "forgotten" the lessons of what happened here is at best a grasping, opportunistic, dilettante and at worst, an idiot whether he is a commentator, or a Vice President, or a President.

However, of all the things those of us who were here five years ago could have forecast -- of all the nightmares that unfolded before our eyes, and the others that unfolded only in our minds -- none of us could have predicted this.

Five years later this space is still empty.

Five years later there is no memorial to the dead.

Five years later there is no building rising to show with proud defiance that we would not have our America wrung from us, by cowards and criminals.

Five years later this country's wound is still open.

Five years later this country's mass grave is still unmarked.

Five years later this is still just a background for a photo-op.

It is beyond shameful.

At the dedication of the Gettysburg Memorial -- barely four months after the last soldier staggered from another Pennsylvania field -- Mr. Lincoln said, "we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract."

Lincoln used those words to immortalize their sacrifice.

Today our leaders could use those same words to rationalize their reprehensible inaction. "We cannot dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow this ground." So we won't.

Instead they bicker and buck pass. They thwart private efforts, and jostle to claim credit for initiatives that go nowhere. They spend the money on irrelevant wars, and elaborate self-congratulations, and buying off columnists to write how good a job they're doing instead of doing any job at all.

Five years later, Mr. Bush, we are still fighting the terrorists on these streets. And look carefully, sir, on these 16 empty acres. The terrorists are clearly, still winning.

And, in a crime against every victim here and every patriotic sentiment you mouthed but did not enact, you have done nothing about it.

And there is something worse still than this vast gaping hole in this city, and in the fabric of our nation. There is its symbolism of the promise unfulfilled, the urgent oath, reduced to lazy execution.

The only positive on 9/11 and the days and weeks that so slowly and painfully followed it was the unanimous humanity, here, and throughout the country. The government, the President in particular, was given every possible measure of support.

Those who did not belong to his party -- tabled that.

Those who doubted the mechanics of his election -- ignored that.

Those who wondered of his qualifications -- forgot that.

History teaches us that nearly unanimous support of a government cannot be taken away from that government by its critics. It can only be squandered by those who use it not to heal a nation's wounds, but to take political advantage.

Terrorists did not come and steal our newly-regained sense of being American first, and political, fiftieth. Nor did the Democrats. Nor did the media. Nor did the people.

The President -- and those around him -- did that.

They promised bi-partisanship, and then showed that to them, "bi-partisanship" meant that their party would rule and the rest would have to follow, or be branded, with ever-escalating hysteria, as morally or intellectually confused, as appeasers, as those who, in the Vice President's words yesterday, "validate the strategy of the terrorists."

They promised protection, and then showed that to them "protection" meant going to war against a despot whose hand they had once shaken, a despot who we now learn from our own Senate Intelligence Committee, hated al-Qaida as much as we did.

The polite phrase for how so many of us were duped into supporting a war, on the false premise that it had 'something to do' with 9/11 is "lying by implication."

The impolite phrase is "impeachable offense."

Not once in now five years has this President ever offered to assume responsibility for the failures that led to this empty space, and to this, the current, curdled, version of our beloved country.

Still, there is a last snapping flame from a final candle of respect and fairness: even his most virulent critics have never suggested he alone bears the full brunt of the blame for 9/11.

Half the time, in fact, this President has been so gently treated, that he has seemed not even to be the man most responsible for anything in his own administration.

Yet what is happening this very night?

A mini-series, created, influenced -- possibly financed by -- the most radical and cold of domestic political Machiavellis, continues to be televised into our homes.

The documented truths of the last fifteen years are replaced by bald-faced lies; the talking points of the current regime parroted; the whole sorry story blurred, by spin, to make the party out of office seem vacillating and impotent, and the party in office, seem like the only option.

How dare you, Mr. President, after taking cynical advantage of the unanimity and love, and transmuting it into fraudulent war and needless death, after monstrously transforming it into fear and suspicion and turning that fear into the campaign slogan of three elections? How dare you -- or those around you -- ever "spin" 9/11?

Just as the terrorists have succeeded -- are still succeeding -- as long as there is no memorial and no construction here at Ground Zero.

So, too, have they succeeded, and are still succeeding as long as this government uses 9/11 as a wedge to pit Americans against Americans.

This is an odd point to cite a television program, especially one from March of 1960. But as Disney's continuing sell-out of the truth (and this country) suggests, even television programs can be powerful things.

And long ago, a series called "The Twilight Zone" broadcast a riveting episode entitled "The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street."

In brief: a meteor sparks rumors of an invasion by extra-terrestrials disguised as humans. The electricity goes out. A neighbor pleads for calm. Suddenly his car -- and only his car -- starts. Someone suggests he must be the alien. Then another man's lights go on. As charges and suspicion and panic overtake the street, guns are inevitably produced. An "alien" is shot -- but he turns out to be just another neighbor, returning from going for help. The camera pulls back to a near-by
hill, where two extra-terrestrials are seen manipulating a small device that can jam electricity. The veteran tells his novice that there's no need to actually attack, that you just turn off a few of the human machines and then, "they pick the most dangerous enemy they can find, and it's themselves."

And then, in perhaps his finest piece of writing, Rod Serling sums it up with words of remarkable prescience, given where we find ourselves tonight: "The tools of conquest do not necessarily come with bombs and explosions and fallout. There are weapons that are simply thoughts, attitudes, prejudices, to be found only in the minds of men.

"For the record, prejudices can kill and suspicion can destroy, and a thoughtless, frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all its own -- for the children, and the children yet unborn."

When those who dissent are told time and time again -- as we will be, if not tonight by the President, then tomorrow by his portable public chorus -- that he is preserving our freedom, but that if we use any of it, we are somehow un-American...When we are scolded, that if we merely question, we have "forgotten the lessons of 9/11"... look into this empty space behind me and the bi-partisanship upon which this administration also did not build, and tell me:

Who has left this hole in the ground?

We have not forgotten, Mr. President.

You have.

May this country forgive you."


And then there is this, from The Rude Pundit, who also went to Ground Zero to see the elephant President.

9/11/2006

Reporting From Ground Zero on the Fifth Anniversary of the Last Good Day:

Yesterday, on September 10, when he read that George W. Bush was going to lay a wreath down in the middle of the hole in the ground that was the World Trade Center twin towers, the Rude Pundit decided to head on down to Ground Zero to see his President in person. He expected massive crowds and a crazed media circus, because this was, after all, the President returning to the site of his iconic image, of the moment that cemented the nation on its present disastrous course. He had never seen Bush in the flesh and wanted to look on his actual physical form, get a measure of the man so many of us have spent so much time despising.

When he emerged from the subway through the WTC Path Station, the Rude Pundit was greeted by protesters, also expected. He saw drumming Buddhist monks and their monk-y wannabes drumming along flanked by large black balloons, behind a flag-draped coffin and signs demanding that the soldiers be brought home. Stopping a couple of young women in tight black shirts that read, in Arabic and English, "We will not be silent," the Rude Pundit asked, "Did you wear those intentionally? Because of the guy who couldn't get onto the plane?" They said they were aware of the incident, but, no, they wore the shirts because, indeed, they would not be silent.

The most protesters were from different groups calling for the "truth" about 9/11 to be revealed, the ones who, to varying degrees, believe the events of the day were supported and/or engineered by the U.S. government, the Israeli government, or some combination of them. Someone associated with the conspiracy-theorizing viral video sensation Loose Change gave the Rude Pundit a DVD of the film, which he will watch, as he told the guy, "skeptically." One 9/11 truth seeker was in a screaming fight with what can best be described as one of the "Crazed Old Coots For America," the various old guys decked out in American flag clothes and pro-Bush regalia spoiling for a fight. At least they didn't try to go toe to toe with the Grandmas For Peace, also there, also holding signs. One of the Grandmas said, "I just can't stand what Bush has done to us all, so I came down here to let him know."

Others there wanted freedom for Taiwan or pronounced the end of the world is nigh so it was time to get right with Jesus. One guy walked through the crowd screaming that homosexual soldiers rape Iraqi babies. It was hard to tell what side he was on.

Moving away from the station, looking for a place to watch the President do his wreath-laying solemnity, the Rude Pundit walked along the perimeter fence, looking around at all the security, the Secret Service with their tell-tale earpieces, the snipers on balconies and rooftops. Along the fence, people stared at mounted pictures of the day five years and a little over 12 hours ago. Every so often, there would be someone crying behind sunglasses or looking as if they had just finished or held back tears. Some wore pictures of loved ones on chains or shirts; some carried flyers that were reminiscent of the missing posters from back then. This time the flyers told short stories about the life of the dead person. One group wore name tags that said, "Surviving Family Member." It looked like two familes, one white, one Hispanic. They were being guided by an Asian woman who pointed out where each tower had stood. One of the Hispanic men posted a flyer over a "Post No Bills" sign. It was about his sister.

Walking past the lists of names that wrongly label everyone who died one of the "Heroes of 9/11" (sorry, but you don't get to be a hero just because you died at a certain place at a certain time unless you actually did something heroic), past Fire Station 10 and the soon-to-be open 9/11 Visitor's Center, the Rude Pundit was struck by how, compared to what he expected, very few people were actually there. Certainly not more than a couple of thousand. The President of the United States, the leader of the free world, the man who stood on the ruins and made such poignant promises to us, was going to be back at the ruins and, in as much as such numbers have meaning, on the eve of the fifth anniversary of the attacks. Shouldn't it have been packed? Shouldn't we have all stood shoulder to shoulder to watch? As pornographically as Bush exploits the event and makes Americans into victims, shouldn't more people have wanted to mourn with him? The Rude Pundit's seen more people out here on ordinary summer days.

He looked through the barrier fence down into the footprints of the towers. The long ramp that leads to the center of the pit had been theatrically lined with the flags of, one presumes, all the states and nations that lost people in the attacks. He heard bagpipes and saw honor guard, police and fire officials, and others down there. He thought about how small George Bush was going to seem from this vantage point, as close as one could get to the event without actually being inside. He was just going to be a teeny-tiny man in a great big hole, laying a wreath for America in a temporary reflecting pool.

Then NYPD officers, politely, to be sure, told all of us who stood there wanting to watch our President, some of whom wanted to mourn with him at least distantly, that we had to move out. The area was going to be secured. In fact, most of the perimeter would be secured and no one would be allowed close enough to the fence to see the President. No, the only way to truly see him would be to watch him on television. Where he wouldn't seem so teeny-tiny, so reduced in scale to the epic destruction that surrounded him. And, indeed, when you watch video of the event, with the Bushes, Mike Bloomberg, George Pataki, and Rudy Giuliani lined up and walking down the ramp, they forcibly look out of scale to the vast construction site around them. However, from anyone who could see from above, see the actual context of the event, they were very, very small.

The Rude Pundit walked out of the secure area as they put up barricades. Now, with the fence itself off limits, the crowds thinned out even further. Maybe this was the intention, for George Bush to have a private moment of mourning, except, of course, for all the TV cameras there. After thinking about heading to an Irish pub off Fulton Street where he often hopelessly flirts with the raven-haired Jersey girl behind the bar who can yank a tap like nobody's business, he decided to head home. The train station was closed because the President was going to be near it. So the Rude Pundit walked uptown a bit, past the protesters, past the press vans, past the police, and he hailed a cab.

It was only 9/10, after all. And it looked like it might rain.