No More Mr. Nice Guy!

Those poor persecuted Christians...

You can hardly go anywhere in the US without seeing freeway signs, billboards and what not with some Christian message on them. "Follow me - God", "If you think it's hot now, try Hell" and various other gems of Christian wisdom are everywhere. There seems to be a direct correlation between how much media power and saturation coverage Christians have, and how much they rant and whine about being persecuted and their free speech suppressed by those evil all-powerful atheists.

So what would happen if some freethought group were to put up a billboard with a secular message? The same thing as happened when they tried to display a secular message at Christmas, amid all the nativity schlock. The outraged local Christians shut it down, pronto.

In Florida, a restaurateur was furious when a billboard with the message "All religions are fairy tales" went up next to his establishment. He blamed the billboard for a drop in business, which I suppose is possible; fearful Christians would not wish to go anywhere near the sign lest they be struck by lightning or the pox or something. But in the end, it was not Jehovah's mighty wrath but the "city-wide controversy" and flood of angry calls to the billboard company which led to the sign being taken down.

But maybe there was a supernatural aspect after all, though involving Satan rather than the other guy. As the article notes, "The billboard was on Colonial Drive near Old Cheney Highway." Now that's someone you really don't want to piss off!

[Via PZ]

The well-lubricated militia

I'm going to bring this story up from now on every time some gun fetishist tells me that gun nuts are by definition safe, solid, reliable people who would never dream of abusing a firearm, and we should feel totally reassured by the fact that every two-bit redneck in the country is armed to the teeth.

DEEPWATER, Mo. -- Officials are trying to decide whether to file charges against a Missouri man who fatally shot his wife while trying to install a satellite TV system in the bedroom of their home.

Patsy Long, 34, of Deepwater, died after being shot in the chest with a .22-caliber handgun on Saturday. Her husband, Ronald Long, fired the shot from the inside of their home after several unsuccessful efforts to punch a hole through the exterior wall using other means.

Via Jim Downey, who also relates the story of some genius who thought a 12-gauge would be a useful tool for installing a pot-bellied stove in his shack. I think I'm safer among the "unarmed sheep"...

The half-vast Wright-wing conspiracy

I didn't think it was possible for my respect for Shrillary to fall any lower. But now she's getting into bed with with one of the most evil people in the US, Richard Mellon Scaife, the extreme-right gazillionaire who spent billions attacking her and Bill all through the nineties. Presumably he has promised her more billions to Swift-boat Barack Obama to hell and back, and play the race card against him 24-7, so that she wins the Dem nomination and McCain wins the presidency in a landslide.

I am watching this campaign with a mounting feeling of stunned, slack-jawed disbelief. After eight long years of the ghastly nightmare of George Bush Junior, an eternity of incompetence, arrogance, criminality, corruption and treason on an unimaginable scale, you'd think this year's election would be a lead-pipe cinch. It ought to be like those elections in Communist countries, where the winner gets 100% of the vote! Instead we are once again witnessing the Dems destroying each other, snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, and being utterly deaf to the pleas of ordinary people who are crying out for a change and a return to semi-sane leadership.

To hell with Clinton. I guarantee you right now that I am never going to vote for her. I obviously won't support McCain, but I will never as long as I live vote for Clinton or donate a penny to her.

Nuts!

The TV series 24 jumped the shark for me long before it became the wet dream of extreme-right loons who get their rocks off fantasizing about torturing people. I could only take so much stupidity from Kim Bauer, the dumbest blonde in the history of the universe.

On the other hand, I've been following Jericho since it started and it has been getting more interesting all the time. The last few episodes have been downright seditious, with not-so-veiled references to Halliburton, Blackwater, a corrupt politician from Wyoming who's also an executive of an equally corrupt corporation, fake terrorist attacks staged by a government as a pretext to waging war for profit and shredding the Constitution - hmmm! (On the other hand, the good guy who rides in to the rescue is - Texas. Not so realistic after all.)

Tonight was the series finale, and they went all out, with numerous characters declaring that the government that ruled them was corrupt, illegitimate and criminal, and there was no alternative to overthrowing it and bringing on the second American Revolution. Gee, I wonder if the producers are in Camp Guano yet?

I'd love to think that this sort of contribution to the popular culture raises people's awareness of what's going on in real life. And there's no question the show has a lot of devoted fans - it's pretty unprecedented that pressure from fans forces a network to rescind a series cancellation.

On the other hand, remember "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it any more"? What a difference that movie made, huh? The American capitalist machine has an infinite capacity for co-opting anything that might threaten it, offer an alternative to it, or simply get people to think for themselves instead of being mindless, passive consumers. I remember watching a documentary about the Summer of Love, and seeing how its counterculture and iconography were being used to advertise Coca-Cola and the like even before Autumn rolled around. How depressing.

Anyway, this post is dedicated to all those who refuse to be sheeple, and insist on being individuals. To all who refuse to cower in fear. To all who realize that the emperor is naked, and respond: Nuts!

Now, that's my kind of Easter legend...

Apparently, the BBC is in trouble with English fundamentalists for airing an Easter miniseries that portrays Judas and Pontius Pilate in a sympathetic light. A spokesman for some outfit calling itself "Christian Voice" complains about the Beeb's "revisionist slant". That's pretty funny, though a sad commentary on the ignorance of the theocrats who seek absolute power over us all. Does this guy have any idea how many versions of the Easter story there are, how they have changed over the centuries, or how many irreconcilable discrepancies there are between them?

Anyway, here's a review of the same TV program, plus some suggestions for how it should have turned out. I'll drink to that!

Commando revolutionary enters capital to stir up patriotic fervour with hardcore buddies. Whacks moneylenders. Chats up good-time girl. Wins argument with quisling. So far, so good. Then, he gets captured, humiliated, tortured and nailed to a tree. The bankers go back to the temple, the Romans back to government and the quisling's still in charge.

Dramatically, that's all wrong. What they need is a rescue after the humiliation bit. Peter and the SAS apostles swoop in. Then it's no more Mr Nice Guy, a bit less gospel, a bit more Rambo. Finally, Jesus and Mary Magdalene ride a donkey into the desert. She wisecracks: "So, Son of Man, you gonna make a girl wait three days before you rise again?"

Of course, the Hillary Clinton version is a little different...

Freedom for me, but not for thee

Freedom of religion. It's what the United States was founded on. It's meant to protect everyone, from snake-handling fundamentalists to vitriol-spewing atheists like me. Yet the people who talk most about it understand it least.

Here in the Phoenix metro area, there have been a number of incidents where Christian school groups have fallen afoul of school policy for harassing gay and lesbian students. The extreme-right state legislature has felt the pain of these gay-bashers-for-Jeezus, and responded with legislation to give Christianity (especially of the fundagelical flavor) even more special powers and privileges than it already has.

Rather disgustingly in my view, the theocrats are framing the issue as one of "persecution of Christians" by those who are trying to protect the Constitutional rights of minority groups, and the local newspaper (fondly known as the "Arizona Repulsive") is mindlessly regurgitating the dominionist claptrap about helping "religious students fight back against public-school teachers and administrators who recoil at the mention of God in the classroom." Oh please!

I'm constantly amazed that the more powerful the Christian theocrats get, and the more they tighten their stranglehold on every corner of society, the more they rant and whine about being persecuted victims of a vast atheist conspiracy of evil judges and school administrators. Rather tellingly, on the same day that the above-linked article appeared, one of the Repulsive's columnists wrote in the print edition about growing up in a small town of less than 1,000 people, which had six churches. I read somewhere that something like 95% of the US population lives within walking distance of one or more churches.

Let's face it, religion is everywhere. It is ubiquitous. The theocrats can't see it because they are so used to it. Which is something I have to live with - people have the right to believe whatever they want, however bizarre, deluded and even loathsome it may be. But the US Constitution is very clear: there is to be no established, officially sanctioned religion. No church is to have special status or receive special favors or privileges at taxpayer expense. No church may use the coercive power of the state over any other church, or over those who belong to no church.

The Constitution is like the boy with his finger in the dike, trying to hold back a flood of theocracy. And it's driving the theocrats berserk. Seeking control over others, using the power of the state to dictate what others believe, who they worship and who they sleep with, is as instinctive to them as breathing. Whenever their dominionist agenda is thwarted, to even the slightest degree, they start bawling about persecution - and brainwashing their children with their laughable but dangerous persecution complex.

If these demented lunatics had a single functioning neuron between the lot of them, they would realize that (a) freedom of religion and freedom from religion are one and the same, and (b) freedom of religion protects them as well as those they despise as Hell-bound heathens and idolaters, i.e. anyone who comes up with a slightly different figure for how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.

If we declare Christianity the official national religion of the US, as the theocrats are demanding, which sect of Christianity wins? Which version of the Ten Commandments - Catholic or Protestant - should be on display in every public building? There are over 3,000 different sects of Christianity in the US, and they have been at each others' throats throughout history.

The Founding Fathers, being intelligent and educated men (unlike the vast majority of today's politicians), were very familiar with the centuries of blood-soaked religious warfare in Europe, which was not between generic Christians and atheists, but between Catholics and Protestants, or various sects of Protestantism fighting each other to the death. They saw the same divisions growing daily in the early US, threatening to erupt in full-scale violence. So they very wisely took the issue off the table, declaring that everyone could believe as he or she wished but no church could use the power of the state to dominate anyone else. It's been a system that has worked extraordinarily well, allowing religion to flourish and diversify to an astonishing extent, without the ancient hatreds that have shed so much blood in other parts of the world.

The fundamentalist theocrats, temporarily riding high in power due to their political connections, want to sweep all of this away. How incredibly foolish and short-sighted! How do they know that their particular brand of Christianity will always reign supreme? Once they establish the principle of tyranny of the majority, what happens when they are no longer the majority?

That is why state-church separation is such a vitally important principle that it must be regarded as the foundation stone of the United States. Either we all have freedom of (and from) religion or none of us do!

The devil wears pantsuits

That's it, I've had it with Hillary Clinton. The evidence is that her campaign is pushing the Jeremiah Wright story, and that she is aware of it and refuses to stop or condemn the Karl Rove sewer-rat tactics.

It's getting to the point where my respect for Clinton is lower than for John McCain. At least McCain fired a campaign worker who posted a racist video on YouTube. Too bad Clinton doesn't have that minimum level of integrity.

Speaking of angry, crazy ministers...

Don't anyone dare talk to me about Jeremiah Wright. John McCain has gotten into bed with extreme-right preachers who are infinitely worse.

For example, his spiritual advisor Rod Parsley says that the United States was founded with the goal of destroying the false religion of Islam. McCain proudly accepts the endorsement of another preacher who makes Ian Paisley a model of ecumenism. John Hagee says that the Catholic church is the Whore of Babylon, a satanic cult and what not.

Barack Obama has forcefully denounced Wright's comments, but nothing will satisfy the "liberal media", which is still playing the Wright clips in a continuous loop 24 hours a day. Why do stark raving lunatic-right dominionists like Hagee and Parsley get a free pass? These are the guys who would have a hotline direct to a McCain White House. McCain not only refuses to denounce their mouth-foaming bigotry and hatred but literally embraces them, and is never called on it.

Why aren't these radical, fringe extremist, self-confessed theocrats getting even a fraction of the scrutiny devoted to Jeremiah Wright? It's racism, pure and simple.

The stingray has landed

What's up with the leak of Barack Obama's passport file? The number of breaches, their timing, and the tardy and dismissive response of the State Department are all very suspicious. I don't believe in this kind of coincidence.

The rethugs have given notice that they intend to wage the dirtiest and sleaziest campaign ever. Fox Noise is going to be playing Jeremiah Wright clips in a continues loop 24-7 from now until Election Day in November. All the despicable swift-boat scum who dragged the 2004 election into the sewer are crawling out from under their rocks, salivating at the prospect of playing an entire deck of race cards. The "liberal media" will happily play their usual role of concern trolls, asking: "Are the Republicans going too far in using Jeremiah Wright against Obama? Let's look at this clip of Wright. After the break: another clip of Wright." And of course not a word about the filthy John Hagee or the other mouth-foaming agents of intolerance and agents of stark raving insanity whom John McCain is embracing.

The stingray of backwardness and racism has landed in Obama's boat. The naked bigotry, ignorance and hatred of the rethug "base" (or as they say in Arabic, al-Qaeda) is proudly on display for all to see.

This election will be make or break for the United States. Will we continue to hurtle into barbarism, brutality and deranged despotism by in effect giving George Bush Junior a third term? Or will we finally rise above all that is ugly, loathsome and shameful about this country? We can't afford to make the wrong choice.

Swarm against the machine

I forgot to mention that my previous post was part of the Blogswarm against the Iraq War. Head on over there and see what other bloggers have written.

End this bullshit war!

It's been five years since the shock-and-awe bombardment of Baghdad heralded the beginning of the war against Iraq, and almost that long since Captain Codpiece strutted around on the deck of a battleship and declared, "Mission Accomplished" and "major combat operations in Iraq have ended."

Four thousand dead troops, three trillion dollars and countless hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqi civilians later, Junior's pet war grinds on. Oil is $110 a barrel, Iraq is destroyed beyond repair, the US economy is on its deathbed, and the Middle East has never been so unstable.

So how does the Chimp who would be Chief mark the occasion? By showing that he is a blithering dolt who has absolutely no clue about the havoc he has unleashed. Speaking from his cosy bubble, he fatuously claims that the world is a better place because of the war. Even the London Times calls it a bullshit speech. Wait a minute, let me check that. Well, I was close; they say it was a bullish speech. But the Dick-in-Chief was even more disgusting. His response to the fact that the vast majority of people in the US oppose his gravy-train war: "So?" Being a war profiteer means you don't have to care what anyone else thinks.

Meanwhile, back on Planet Earth, opposition to this ghastly quagmire is becoming an unstoppable force. I've been going to peace protests since Day One, and seen with my own eyes how the tide is turning, even in blood-red Bush-worshipping Phoenix. The first year, we were drowned out by counter-protesting neanderthals with bullhorns calling us traitors and scum. Every year since then, there've been more and more supportive honks, smiles, waves and peace signs from passing drivers.

Today, outside John McCain's office, we had the biggest protest ever. There was a terrific feeling of empowerment, and spirits were high, even when the lawn sprinklers came on and drenched some of us. There was a non-stop cacophony of honks from passing traffic. Sports cars, pickup trucks, SUV's, executive sedans, rusty old beaters, even city buses - it was hard to find anyone who wasn't honking and waving. I wonder where all the Junior supporters are? Certainly not serving in Iraq.

When Junior and his corrupt criminal gang of traitors were banging the drum for war against Iraq, those of us who opposed it were told that we were a small fringe, polls showed that the vast majority of people supported the war. Now that the polls show the opposite result, why is it suddenly okay to ignore them? If polls can get us into this war, why can't they get us out?

Anyway, it is up to We The People to end this nightmare war. Hillary won't do it, Reid and Pelosi won't do it, McCain sure as hell won't do it, and Obama can't do it alone. War is over, if you want it! How badly do we want it?

Here are some photos from today's protest in Phoenix. I took them with my cellphone so I apologize for the fuzziness.

Obama's speech

My regard for Barack Obama has gone up several notches following his recent speech. I can't help contrasting his candor, his intellectual honesty and his challenging the hearers to to think like grown-ups about race with Mitt Romney's blatant pandering to the lowest drugs of fundy dominionism with his oxymoronic "freedom requires religion" spiel, an act of profound moral cowardice. Nor do Hillary's increasingly shrill and shrewish attacks on her Democratic colleague benefit from the comparison.

And of course there is simply no comparison between Obama's eloquence and George Bush Junior's blundering incoherence and ignorance. What a nice change it'll be to have a president who can string two words together without tripping over himself while sticking both feet in his mouth!

I'm not saying Obama is necessarily the next JFK, but he has a gift of inspiration that nobody since then has matched. We have got to elect this guy!

Snakes on an Island

A final St. Patrick's Day greetin' to ye:

Bosom buddies

Every Monday, the Arizona Repulsive shows a picture from recent news headlines and invites readers to come up with a caption for it. Then the next Monday, they print what they regard as the best captions. The winners are always incredibly lame and thuddingly unfunny, not surprisingly since they are always far-right, mindlessly regurgitated Bush-worshipping talking points.

Here is last week's photo, and the caption I submitted, which needless to say wasn't printed:

For the day that's in it

Happy St. Pat's Day! In previous years, I've ranted about how Merkins screw up my national holiday and transmogrify it into one gigantic schlockfest. This year I'm determined to be a little more positive.

What does it mean to be Irish, anyway? A cynic might answer that the Irish define themselves negatively; "we're not British." I have to admit there is a lot of truth to this. Irish soccer fans can always be relied on to root for whoever is playing against England.

But I think this reaction is understandable when you realize how much time the British spend claiming credit for everything good that comes out of Ireland, while treating the country as a British backwater, a kind of theme park full of quaint yokels. From Bono to Bob Geldof, Yeats to Seamus Heaney, "My Left Foot" to the Sawdoctors - I've heard ignorant Brits referring to all of them as British. Though it's possible to go from "British" to "Irish" in the twinkling of an eye, like Michelle Smith in the 1996 Olympics. While she was winning medals, the British media were constantly singing the praises of the "golden British girl" who was "doing Britain proud" (even though she was on the Irish team). But the instant the drug rumors started circulating, she became the "disgraced Irish swimmer". It's almost comical, it's so blatant.

Anyway, yes - Ireland is separate from Britain. It is a separate country, and the Irish are a separate people. That in itself is something to be proud of, considering the centuries the Brits spent trying to wipe us out, whether by the sword or starvation, as well as trying to eradicate our culture, language, society, music, beliefs, everything that made us distinctive. St. Patrick's Day is the day we get to tell the Brits, like Steve McQueen in Papillon, "Hey, you bastards, we're still here!"

But there is far more to Irish identity than that. We have one of the oldest and richest cultures in the western world, and it is still dynamic and vibrant today. Many countries spend millions a year keeping the remnants of their folk cultures alive, paying costumed performs to do folk dances in museums and theme parks. Go into any pub or Céilí hall in Ireland, and you'll see people playing the music and taking part in the dances, just for sheer enjoyment. It's not a show for tourists, it's a living, breathing thing.

If you ask me what is at the heart of Irish identity, I would say it is this: small nations matter. Small nations are important, even if they don't go around the world building empires and subduing other nations. Small nations have a right to exist, even if more powerful and aggressive neighbors covet their land. Small nations may have a great deal to contribute to the richness and variety of the world's culture. This is especially true of Ireland, which has been a global powerhouse of creativity in arts and literature, in inverse proportion to its size.

Of course, that doesn't matter to the swillers of green beer and devourers of corned beef and cabbage (barf). But that's okay, we Irish have always been a welcoming people and we are perfectly happy to embrace once-a-year Irish people of any ethnic background, color or creed. The more the merrier. Go ahead and raise hell, and if someone tries to shut you down, tell them: "Hey, you bastards, we're still here!"

McCain-Hillary '08?

What the hell does Hillary Clinton think she's doing? Using Karl Rove dirty tricks and race smears against a fellow Democrat? Saying she'd rather see John McCain in the White House than her colleague, Barack Obama? I'm getting really sick of this shit.

The rest of the world is breathlessly watching this contest, dreading - as are all members of the reality-based community - that the Dems' infinite genius for snatching defeat from the jaws of victory will lead to a third term for George Bush Junior via his maxi-me, John McCain. Just when the rethugs had totally discredited themselves with eight years of absolute power that translated into absolute corruption, absolute incompetence and absolute insanity, now there is a very real prospect that Clinton will tear the Democratic party apart, disillusion a whole generation who would have come out to the polls in record numbers and make them stay home instead, and hand the presidency to McCain on a silver platter.

I can't help wondering if this was her whole idea, once she realized that she was not going to win fair and square, squashing Obama like a bug early in the primary season, like the script by her DLC consultants called for. Is she so desperate to get back in the White House at all costs that she would in effect switch parties? Why else are she and Bill constantly playing not only the race card, but the well-worn rethug fear card? Why is she regurgitating neonazi-con talking points from the rethug playbook about "national security"?

If Clinton wins the nomination, I will support her only because the alternative is unthinkably worse. But I will never forgive her for the damage she's done, and the deep divisions she's sown within the party that will take years to heal. Karl Rove must be laughing himself sick.

Leave Spitney alone!

I know I've been remiss with my blogging and I'm (as usual) the last with this story, but something about the Eliot Spitzer case bugs me. Yes, he was an idiot and a hypocrite for prosecuting people who used prostitutes while he was himself using, ahem, Love Potion Number 9. But the official story about how he was unwittingly snared in an investigation of a prostitution ring just doesn't hold water.

Clearly, the element of payback in this is huge. Spitzer pissed off the Wall Street oligarchy by exposing their insider trading shenanigans. He also pissed off their partners in crime, the George Bush Junior administration. Considering that rethug David "Diapers" Vitter has suffered no adverse consequences for his much kinkier departures from family values, you have to wonder why New York rethugs had articles of impeachment drawn up and ready to go almost before the news broke.

Of course, just being a Democrat is enough to make you a target for Junior's gulag state. Ask Don Siegelman. The regime has politicized the Department of Justice so much in the last few years, it has zero credibility and every prosecution it brings is tainted right out of the starting gate.

The other night at Drinking Liberally, someone was betting that Spitzer would not spend a day in jail. I should have taken him up on it - there's no way the rethugs will let Spitzer skate. Except that I'm the unluckiest man on earth when it comes to any kind of gambling - if I bet money that the sun would rise in the east tomorrow, it would rise in the west just to screw with me.

Anyway, once again I admit that Spitzer was stupid and broke the law, but the rethug jackals who are howling for his blood are committing worse crimes on an infinitely vaster scale every day.

You forgot Poland!

The headline reads: Bush Vows He Will Upgrade Poland's Air Defenses. Really, is that Junior's job? Why is he going to spend billions to upgrade another country's military, while spending trillions to run our own military into the ground in a corrupt quagmire war?

And of course we're spending more trillions to restore basic infrastructure in Iraq after shocking and awing the bejaysus out of it. Except that the money is going straight into Halliburton's Cayman Island bank accounts and the pockets of their hand-picked cronies, and not a penny has gone to help Iraqi civilians.

What a cluster-cheney.

Well, it's about goddam bloody time!

Via PZ comes news that Britain is finally abolishing laws which forbid the victimless crime of blasphemy. Welcome to the twentieth century, old chaps! See you in the twenty-first century a few years from now.

Laws against blasphemy have existed in England and its colonies since the time of Henry VIII, but were intended only to protect the established Church of England. Thus the courts ruled that Salman Rushdies's novel The Satanic Verses was not blasphemous because it offended Islam, not the official state-sanctioned version of Christianity.

There have been a number of high-profile blasphemy prosecutions in Britain over the years, with charges often prosecuted as a criminal matter and containing such flowery language as "casting contumelious reproach or profane ridicule upon God, Jesus Christ, the Holy Ghost, the Holy Scripture... to the extreme displeasure of Almighty God." How did those bewigged judges presume to know the mind of God? Rather more perniciously, blasphemy was often used as an instrument to persecute atheists and rationalists.

The existence of blasphemy laws on the books in the US is an obvious violation of the constitutional ban on government establishment of a religion, but this has not stopped some states from maintaining such laws well into the 1970's. For example, Maryland law used to state:

Art. 72, sec. 189. If any person, by writing or speaking, shall blaspheme or curse God, or shall write or utter any profane words of and concerning our Saviour, Jesus Christ, or of and concerning the Trinity, or any of the persons thereof, he shall, on conviction, be fined not more than one hundred dollars, or imprisoned not more than six months, or both fined and imprisoned as aforesaid, at the discretion of the court.

There was a case in Maryland in 1968 where a policeman was arresting a trucker for being drunk and disorderly. The trucker said, "get your goddam hands off me," and was slapped with an additional charge of blasphemy, landing him with extra fines and jail time. This case finally led to Maryland's law being declared unconstitutional.

Blasphemy laws, by their nature, are always prosecuted arbitrarily and selectively, and used to support whichever superstition the power elite wishes to impose on the public. There is no justification for them in a democratic, secular society. Good goddam riddance!

Remember, blasphemy is a blast for me!

Can you hear me now?

George Bush Junior and his merry band of corrupt criminal traitors are ramping up the fear factor in their campaign to bulldoze through blanket immunity for the telecom companies. Even the odious John Ashcroft is being wheeled out to add to the wall of noise, myths and lies designed to panic the ever-cowardly Dems into once again caving and granting His Irrelevancy aka. 19% Boy everything he wants.

Methinks the monkey doth protest too much. Even the telecoms themselves are not fighting all that hard for immunity, knowing that the White House is ultimately liable anyway. Why would Junior fight this hard on their behalf? Because it's not about immunity for them, it's all about Junior himself. He wants a pre-emptive pardon for his illegal mass wiretapping, and the Dems are poised to meekly give it to him without even showing any curiosity about the extent of his crime wave and violation of the Constitution, or why it began before 9/11.

Why is Junior so obsessed with covering up the truth? It can only be that his illegal "Total Information Awareness" black program was about spying on his political opponents - journalists, Democrats, the few remaining moderate and sane Republicans etc. - on a scale that Nixon could never have imagined. That is the only thing I can think of that would raise a faint whimper of protest out of the Dems.

And what about the millions of White House emails that went missing, presumably destroyed - another blatant violation of the law by Junior, Rove et al? What about the US Attorneys scandal, with its pervasive stench of massive election fraud and racist disenfranchisement, the actual firings being only the tip of the iceberg? What about the treasonous betrayal of Valerie Plame?

I'm coming to realize more and more plainly that all these scandals are actually just different facets of one mega-scandal, which is almost too huge to be comprehended all at once. This country suffered a hostile takeover by a gang of criminals in November 2000. Since then they've been busy destroying our democracy, our justice system, everything that was once great and decent about the US. And they've been enriching themselves on a near-infinite scale, gorging on our tax dollars and on the blood of our children, sacrificed as cannon fodder in their wars of imperialist expansion and adventurism. Wars based on lies and driven by greed, which have cost tens of thousands of lives and trillions of dollars and made the world vastly more unstable.

The most sickening part is that the bastards are getting away with it. They've silenced the media and turned the opposition party into a mewling, pathetic eunuch. All they have to do is install their puppet, John McCain (with considerable help from Hillary Clinton, who is incomprehensibly going all out to frame the next placebo-election in terms of rethug talking points about "national security") and the gravy train is guaranteed to continue rolling. No oversight, no checks or balances, no curb on their total power and greed, let alone the impeachment and imprisonment they deserve a thousand times over.

No immunity for criminal traitors! Hold them accountable!

Dumber Alert

Two Vermont towns have issued arrest warrants for Junior and the Dick-in-Chief. Alas, only symbolic ones. Still, we can dream of the day when evil monsters of their ilk are the subject of amber alerts, and their crimes are proclaimed from flashing freeway signs.

"Be on the lookout for these corrupt criminal traitors! Do not engage in a battle of wits with them, they are unarmed and dangerous! Approach with extreme caution as they may shoot you in the face!"

Huck off

One good result from yesterday is that the Rev. Mike Huckabee is definitely not going to be the rethug nominee, at least not this time. I guess his miracles and loaves and fishes and what not were no match for McCain's millions.

Maybe God is sending the Huckster another sign? "Verily, verily, My Own Party hath forsaken me and become too liberal. Go thou forth and run as a third party candidate, that all the people of faith may vote for thee." Yeah, that's the ticket! If we have to put up with Ralph Nader, why can't they be saddled with an extreme-right vote splitter?

Four more years

The rethug voters have spoken, and they want another term for George Bush Junior. They want more endless wars, more trillions of dollars flowing down the drain and into Halliburton's Cayman Island numbered accounts, more constant drumbeat of fear-mongering and hate-mongering, tax breaks for billionaires and the shaft for everyone else. That's why they've chosen the crazy old coot, John McCain.

If they have their way, four years from now we'll be bogged down in Iran, unable to leave because - I've got news for you - it's al-Qaeda headquarters, the (other) central front in the war on terror, and if we leave, they'll follow us home. Be afraid, be very afraid! McCain has nothing to offer but fear itself!

Better learn the new words to the national anthem:

Oh say, can you pee
In your pants late at night
As you cower in your bed
Trying to hide from Osama

Though we screwed up Iraq
You must still vote us back
For our plan of attack
Is to make you cry "Mama!"

In related news, that tab for the war that was supposed to pay for itself is now over $3 trillion and is a major factor in the current economic slowdown, according to Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz. Heckuva job, Junior!

So if you like the direction the US is heading in - i.e. down the crapper - vote McCain! And make sure Hillary is the Democratic nominee!

It's 3AM. Do you know where your president is?

Hillary continues to use the GOP playbook, slamming Obama for his lack of foreign policy experience. This raises several questions in my mind. Firstly, since when does being a First Lady count towards getting your National Security merit badge? And more importantly, why does Clinton feel compelled to the the rethugs' dirty work for them?

Finally, why wasn't this a criterion when George Bush Junior ran in 2000? He had never been outside the United States at that stage, and probably didn't even have a passport. His only foreign experience was being bailed out by the Bin Laden family after he became the only Texas oilman ever dumb enough to lose money (though George "Martha" Bush Jr. only lost his investors' money, not his own, due to some timely insider trading.)

Wait a minute, I know the answer to the last question! It's because when Junior was installed on the throne by a partisan Supreme Court, he inherited a land enjoying unprecedented peace, stability and prosperity. Today, after almost eight nightmare years of his ghastly misrule, the world is in turmoil and the United States is an international leper and pariah, the most hated nation on earth.

We don't need a president - we need a Hercules to clean up the Augean Stables that Junior and his corrupt criminal traitors have turned the US and the world into. We sure as hell don't need another cranky old warrior who is itching to invade other countries and keep us bogged down in them for a hundred years. The next president will need to plunge into the most intensive diplomatic campaign in human history, restoring relations with every country Junior has destroyed, insulted with his ignorance and arrogance, or mindlessly flipped off in his juvenile frat-boy style. Who's better for that job, Obama or McCain? Who would the world trust? The question answers itself.

Will November bring us light at the end of the tunnel? Hang on, it's going to be a rough ride.

Your liberal media at work

John McCain proudly accepts an endorsement from the white Louis Farrakhan and neither rejects nor denounces it. The media yawns.

Michael Mukasey announces that he will refuse to do his job when there is a prima facie case that the George Bush Junior administration engaged in criminal behavior and brazenly trumpets its intention of covering it up. The media buries the story without comment.

We are ruled by criminals, incompetents and assholes, with more of them waiting in the wings to ensure no break in continuity. I hope those Dems who twisted arms to get Mukasey confirmed, lauding him to the skies as an "independent", are happy.