Why Rush Limbaugh Ought to Be Force-Fed His Own Liposuctioned Fat, Part 89: "Phony Soldiers" in Context Edition:
One secret you don't hear about Rush Limbaugh is that the chair he sits on in his studio has actually merged with his ass, that the fat of his buttocks and upper thighs draped over the sides of the seat like fleshy globs of melted marshmallow, in essence swallowing the chair. Now, conveniently, wherever he goes, he can sit. Yeah, it's rough on his back, but, in the long run, it's less walking and standing, so the joints in his worn out legs get a break. That chair is the longest, most successful relationship he's ever had.

A man has to have mighty big things shoved up his ass in order to call any soldier who served time in Iraq "phony" because he or she wants the war to end. But Rush Limbaugh is the right man with the right ass at the right time. We know how this is gonna go: It was taken out of context, it's a smear. He'll do the O'Reilly dance. Limbaugh's gonna say that he didn't believe a caller, Mike in Chicago, was the military man he claimed to be. And he really meant people who fraudulently claimed they were soldiers, like, as he mentions, the strange story of Jesse Macbeth.

But here's the thing: read the context and the entire transcript. "Mike" is trying to get Limbaugh to say when the war can end. He says he used to be military and he's a Republican, to which Limbaugh responds, "And I, by the way, used to walk on the moon." When the next caller, who sports wood for the war, says that he's been in the military for 14 years, Limbaugh says, "Thank you, sir." Yep, Rush has amazing radiographic psychic powers to know which people on the other end of the phone are telling the truth about their lives.

But Mike in Chicago doesn't live up to Rush's paradigm - and here's the nutzoid right's warning to Republicans: Rush tells Mike in Chicago, "You can't possibly be a Republican" and that "I don't know a single Republican or conservative, Mike, who wants to pull out of Iraq in defeat." That's how you know now if you're a real Republican, according to Rush: you gotta want to kill more American soldiers and Iraqis. Oh, and apparently there's a qualitative difference between Chuck Hagel's withdrawal desire and Harry Reid's.

Then, because bugfuck insane just isn't far enough for Rush, he says, "[A]ll of these anti-war Democrats are getting even more hell-bent on pulling out of there, which means that success on the part of you and your colleagues over there is a great threat to them." Get it? Democrats want the troops to fail in whatever the hell the troops are doing. They, actually, want more troops to die because that'll mean they lost.

Phony soldiers, phony Republicans, traitorous Democrats. It's funny, really, in a Duke Cunningham gets raped in prison kind of way, to watch the implosion of the bloviating right. Between Limbaugh's degradation of soldiers who aren't bloodthirsty enough for him and O'Reilly's discovery that black pimps don't beat their ho's at restaurants, we're witnessing the desperate gasping for air of a movement that was degraded from the start, but has now become about as valid as a serial rapist giving fashion tips to high school girls.

Family Research Council: Universal Health Care Makes Jesus Weep:
A couple of years ago, on a lark and for a larf, the Rude Pundit signed up to be part of the Family Research Council's Super Duper Prayer Team. Under a nom de rude, he receives weekly updates from FRC President Tony "People Actually Put Me On TV" Perkins about what bullshit from the secular progressives needs to be goddamned by the prayturbation of we proud SDPT members. The format of each section is this: what the issue is (like, say, no fucking on the TV), what to pray for (that, say, God stops the fucking on the TV), and a reference to some seemingly random Bible verse that can be tortured into seeming relevant (let's say "Proverbs 16:28").

This week, the SDPT is implored twice to pray against any expansion of government health care. We gots to get our knees dirty pleasurin' God 'cause Hillary Clinton released a health plan. Says Perkins, "It's economically overly optimistic, and its $110 billion annual cost estimate relies upon the repeal of the 2001 Bush tax cuts." And if Jesus stands for anything, it's making sure that Richard Mellon Scaife can keep giving his precious dog bowls of polar bear kibble to eat. Even if that means some assholes who are inconsiderately covetous of their organs have to go without pre-emergency room visits to the doctor.

And how are we supposed to pray against Clinton's plan? Perkins gives us an easy one: "May the American people continue to reject socialistic universal health care plans, just as they did in 1994." Oh, the same thing goes for the renewal of the SCHIP because "[t]he Program provides benefits to children of middle income families and makes coverage for unborn children optional to the states." And the Super Duper Prayer Team, with our mighty clasped hands and supernaturally knit brows, has got to pray that those greedy lower middle class children whose parents lost their health benefits pay full price for the luxury of their asthma medicine.

The money shots of this call to prayer are the Bible verses we're given to provide back-up. Remember, the FRC wants us to live the way they think the Bible says we should. So if the FRC's gonna do things like oppose health care for children or, as Perkins tells us, keep the war going (and expand it to Iran and Syria), as in "May the Lord guide and constrain our President and Congress to do His will in our international and military affairs," it better damn well make sure Jesus has its back.

So, in reference to health care, we're told to look at John 10:10, which says, "The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly." And the Rude Pundit cometh that he might not have balls of blue, but that's beside the point. The chapter's the story of the Shepherd and the Flock, where Jesus talks about how thieves break in to steal sheep, while the shepherd goes in through the gate. Then, because the Jews listening are too literal to understand him, Jesus says he's the gate, and then he says he's the shepherd, which doesn't really help matters. Either way, though, apparently what this verse means is that Jesus thinks it's better for little children to die in the street than Tony Perkins loses his capital gains tax cut.

It's so easy and fun to speak for Jesus. 'Cause he's not here to say, "Ummm, I don't think I meant any of the shit you're saying I meant." It's like all those grotesque statues of bleeding Jesus on the cross are just puppets where Perkins and James Dobson and Pat Robertson can just shove their hands up their Savior's sore ass to manipulate his mouth, use the conveniently placed nails to move the arms. That's it: bunraku Christ.

Bush at the U.N.: The Old Hustler's Lost His Moves:
Look over there at the bar. You see that old guy, the one with just a bit of botox in his cheeks, the one wearing a t-shirt two sizes too small to hold in his gut and stop his man-boobs from bouncing under his Zegna button down and DKNY jacket. Let's call him Clyde. Yeah, check Clyde out, chatting up that woman. She's about twenty-five, and you can see her looking around here, wondering if this is the best that this trendy little place has to offer. Watch. Give her about two minutes before she has to use the little girl's room. Wait for it. 3, 2, 1. Oh, poor fuckin' Clyde. Now he's gotta pay for another drink for another woman.

It's always sad when the long-term cocksmith gets old and is still trying to conjure some of the magic. Guys like Clyde, see, they had a good run. Go back to the 1980s, 1990s, hell, even the early part of this decade, and places like this were just a pussy smorgasbord for Clyde. He'd walk in, check out the scene, and think, "I'd like a piece of that and a piece of that and, if I'm still hungry, maybe a slice of that for dessert," and chances are that he would leave satisfied. God, when Clyde looks back at his life, he can think that he was one of those guys, the stud, thrusting his cock into some of the best 'tang this town has to offer.

But there's a law of diminishing returns when the walking dick doesn't settle down, or at least change the scene. The pickings have become slimmer for Clyde. Now, Clyde's gotta settle. It's less a buffet and more of a hot dog stand for him. The pathetic decline has been something. Once he could take the hottest Sex and the City-watching babe here and convince her to get her Samantha on in the men's room after a little coke and a lot of cosmos. Now that show's off the air, and Clyde can't hide the wrinkles in his neck and hands, and he's left with the late night pickings, the emotional wrecks, the puking-themselves drunks, the closet meth users, the women so filled with self-loathing that they look at Clyde and think, "What the hell?" Clyde goes with it. He's lowered his expectations. He's gotta recognize that the women aren't grabbing at his johnson as soon as he walks in a room. Everyone knows his tricks - they haven't changed since the mid-1990s - and, frankly, Clyde just seems kind of sad. He's eating the leftovers, and he's gotta pretend that keeps him satisfied.

When George Bush went in front of the United Nations yesterday, the cockiest man Vicente Fox ever met barely mentioned Iraq. In the entire speech, one paragraph was dedicated to "The people of Lebanon and Afghanistan and Iraq." In fact, both mentions of Iraq were confined to being part of that trio. In other words, in the fifth year of a war that was started with the ostensible goal of enforcing United Nations sanctions, Bush talked more about Zimbabwe than Iraq. And, of course, Myanmar/Burma. And Iran, against whom the drumbeats for war are being banged out like a Neil Peart solo, rated only a single mention, in a list of "brutal regimes": "Belarus, North Korea, Syria, and Iran."

Last year, Bush gave long shout-outs to the people of Iraq and Iran. In 2005, he was all about the terrorists. Now, terrorism was also barely mentioned, but it was the same words, same tune: "terrorists and extremists who kill the innocent with the aim of imposing their hateful vision on humanity."

But you read the speech and you think, "Fuckin' Burma?" Sure, sure, the United States oughta be encouraging bald uprisings in Myanmar against the ridiculously repressive regime there, but beyond continuing a Clinton-era executive order regarding the country's financial relationship with Myanmar, what the fuck has Bush done for the Burmese people?

So you can read the address as the pathetic last bleated whines of an irrelevant, despised administration in front of the international body that Bush holds in contempt and that feels nothing but contempt for the man. Or perhaps it's something else. A diversion, if you will.

See, Clyde keeps a bottle of roofies in his pocket. You never know when a man might become too desperate. You never know what he'll do when that hottie at the bar is looking the other way.

Ten Other Things That Surprise Bill O'Reilly About Black People:
Thus spake O'Reilly: "I couldn't get over the fact that there was no difference between Sylvia's restaurant and any other restaurant in New York City. I mean, it was exactly the same, even though it's run by blacks, primarily black patronship. It was the same, and that's really what this society's all about now here in the U.S.A. There's no difference." So, in honor of Bill O'Reilly's approval that black people act like white people:

1. Black women also don't like when their bosses call in the middle of the night to tell them how nice it'd be to rub their big boobs with a falafel.

2. When you berate them on national radio or television, black men also get upset.

3. Black mothers also don't like it when their children are killed in useless wars.

4. When you throw your whiskey glass at the black help at the Hamptons, they cry in pain just like the Hispanics.

5. Black crackheads in Harlem will knife you for the change in your pockets just like the white crackheads on the Upper East Side.

6. Black people also died on 9/11 and are susceptible to the inflammatory rumblings of a rabid blowhard.

7. While you're beating black whores to death in your uncontrollable priapic rage before fucking their corpses, they also plead for their lives.

8. And the blood they bleed is red, too.

9. When they're enjoying fried chicken and ribs with a side of watermelon, black people are known to use napkins.

10. Black people don't need to say "motherfucker" to know who is one.

(By the way, the Rude Pundit's been to a lot of restaurants in the skeeviest neighborhoods in black, white, yellow, and brown sections of town and, unless someone spoke it in another language, no one's ever said, "Motherfucker, I want more iced tea." Iced tea generally doesn't evoke such passion, unless you're Joe Pesci in about 1992.)

Rudy Giuliani Knows More Than You:
The Rude Pundit was diligently reading the Washington Post article on how Rudy Giuliani has puffed up his alleged terrorist fightin' "experience" like a sage grouse cock looking to get laid. Or, in the real world, how he lies. It's a good read, something like what we call "reporting."

And then the Rude Pundit came across this line that Giuliani said in an appearance in Las Vegas: "I investigated Yasser Arafat before anybody knew who he really was." He was referring to the 1985 Achille Lauro hijacking and Arafat's role in it. The Rude Pundit, who remembered hearing about Arafat for most of his life, thought that it had to be a misquote, so he searched it out and confirmed it with another source. My, the Rude Pundit thought, what a curious assertion to make.

Giuliani has said that, as U.S. Attorney, he "led" the investigation into the PLO leader's connection to the ship's hijacking and the murder of a passenger; Giuliani's belief in his role is quickly disposed of in the article. But look at that line quoted above. And think about what that says about Giuliani.

He's claiming that somehow he had some kind of amazing knowledge, superpower smarts that would allow him to go after some unknown shady figure that the rest of us living our lives of blissful ignorance wouldn't have been able to comprehend because we didn't know who the hell Arafat was in 1985. Now look at this Time magazine cover from November 11, 1974:


That could also be covers from December 13, 1968 or March 27, 1978, which also had big damn pictures of Arafat on them. And that's just Time. Let's not talk about the couple of thousand of New York Times articles and countless TV news reports. Man, it must have been hard to figure out who this Arafat fellow was in 1985.

That's Giuliani, fluffing himself like a self-fellater on a homemade porn tape. Whether he's saying that he spent as much time at the World Trade Center site as first responders after 9/11 or miraculously transforming into nutzoid gun owners' bestest buddy after years of hawking the good of gun control, Giuliani is going to make himself out to be the baddest ass in Deadwood. It's the kind of serial exaggerating you do if you have nothing to run on. Imagine if Al Gore had said...oh, fuck it, never mind.

By the way, the best reason Giuliani can offer that he can "fight" terrorism is that he watched people jump out of a burning building that had been attacked before in the city that he led, as the Post article says, and now for him it's "personal." No wonder the Bush administration loves this jerk-off: he believes his own miserable failure makes him the best qualified person on the campaign trail.

You Opened Yer Wallets and You Gave the Cold, Hard Love:
Yeah, that was good. You need a cigarette?

The Rude Pundit's fundraiser has been a sheet-burning success. In less than five days, nearly a hundred and fifty people, from as far away as Singapore, from as close as down the road, donated in amounts big and small to blow past the Rude Pundit's goal. And for that, he thanks you (but don't get all smart-ass about it).

So since you ate your meat, there will be pudding. In the first week of October, just in time for the release of her new book, the Rude Pundit will YouTube his anti-Ann Coulter video from his performance in Calgary at the One Yellow Rabbit theatre. It's all new, never-blogged rudeness. Then, shortly after, he'll start the podcasting, to be available from yer iTunes and elsewhere.

If you wanna donate now, hey, that's cool. Click on the side there.

To continue with the food imagery here, it's gravy - a better microphone, a bottle of Ciroc to keep on ice, the ability to pay off a few debts to the Vietnamese mob, that kind of stuff.

Pictures That Make the Rude Pundit Want to Break Out the Good Whiskey, Just For Just a Sip or Two:


The protest in Jena, Louisiana yesterday was as close to the real deal as we're gonna get these days: a peaceful march and rally that were focused and intense, built around an example of unfairness in the justice system of a single place as representative of wider injustice. Goddamn, how it must have pissed off so many white people (and relieved a whole lot more) that the thing was as calm as it was.

Jena is in what could politely be considered the taint of Louisiana, the vaguely hilly netherworld between the asshole of Alexandria and the ballsack of Monroe. It is, more or less, the kind of place that the phrase "backwards ass country fucks" was invented for. Where the Jena Wal-Mart is the gathering place and major employer. Where white people drive around with Confederate flags and rifles on the back windows of their pick-ups. Where there really can still be a fuckin' tree on high school property that has the unspoken designation of "whites only," something you know goddamn well the teachers and administration just looked the other way on for years. Oh, how the Rude Pundit knows these towns well.

The whole saga of the town and the Jena Six is a sad, sordid tale of barely repressed racism coming to the surface, of white teenagers doing something stupid because they thought they'd get away with it (probably because their parents got away with it), of black teenagers doing something stupid in return, of the justice system doing something really stupid in charging Mychal Bell as an adult when there were enough real adults who who beat up Justin Barker, who would single-handedly do something stupid when he brought a gun to school. And let's not even get started with the school, which had abetted the racism on its campus. That's not to mention whatever idiot thought that setting Jena High on fire was a good idea.

The protest yesterday was a chance to put some tinder under the dying flame that was thought to have been started by the post-Katrina treatment of blacks in Louisiana. It was a way to bring focus to the disparity of treatment of blacks and whites in the judicial system in America (Bell's lawyer didn't call a single witness in his trial and it was an all-white jury; fuck, it was like 1952 there). And whatever you may think of Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson, ya gotta love the success in putting the issue into the national dialogue, at least for a little while, and for, you know, scaring the shit out of a bunch of crackers. (And, please, no one fuckin' write to the Rude Pundit about how he's being racist by calling out the rednecks. They're his people - he can smack 'em around if he wants to.)

By the way, the poor tree was cut down. That tree didn't do anything to anyone. And cutting it down doesn't change a thing.

By the way, just west of Jena is a small outcrop of the town with its own name, Webb Quarters. It is named after the slave quarters that existed on a plantation. It's a shitty area, and it's the place where the black community of Jena still lives. The more things change...

Break Out Yer Wallets and Give Some Cold, Hard Love, Day 4:
Yes, we're almost at that moment, that fantastically tense few seconds when you know you wanna come so badly but you check with the lover under you to see if he or she is ready yet, 'cause you just think it'd be amazing to orgasm together. Just hanging there, teetering, the inexorable tautness in your gut, the connection, the feel of the fucking, filling your body.

In just over three days, rude readers from places like Copenhagen, Denmark and Cleveland, Ohio, from students to doctors, have been donating money to the cause of widespread rudity. Just a bit more and we'll go over the top for this year's fundraiser, a day early, too. Damn, that's sweet. A few more clicks below or on the side, and we'll call this fucker done and break out the hand towel.

Live Vodka-Blogging the President's New Conference:
Oh, sure, the Rude Pundit was all ready to wax profanely on the fucktardery in the Senate yesterday, but then President Bush had to go and call a press conference to discuss health care, which is a little like John Wayne Gacy giving a seminar on proper party clown technique. So, the vodka came out of the freezer, the special morning bottle from the Ukraine, and the CNN was turned on just in time.

10:45 a.m.: Bush walks in. Looks like he just took a bloody shit.

10:46: He's talking about SCHIP funding to provide health insurance to lower income kids, says that Congress needs to work with him to pass his proposed $5 billion raise in SCHIP, but that fuckin' Congress wants to come up with its own plan. Don't they get it? Bipartisanship is a one way street, motherfuckers.

10:48: Not to be a dick about money here, but $83,000 a year for that mythical family of four ain't that much up here in the great Northeast. You may be able to live like a pig in slops in towns like West Anal Rape, Texas, but not so much here.

10:48: He slams Democrats for "encouraging people to drop private coverage in favor of government plans." One presumes that's supposed to be scary.

10:49: Irony must be on holiday at the White House for Bush attacks Democrats for wanting to score "political points" on the SCHIP funding while trying to score political points by making his attack.

10:50: He says that the "fundamentals of our nation's economy are strong", but there's "Unsettling times in the housing market." That's like saying that the sudden appearance of a scab on your cock is "a bit disconcerting."

10:52: What-the-fuck moment #1: "I got a B in Econ 101; I got an A in keeping taxes low." What the fuck? In his Econ 101 class, the Rude Pundit learned that sometimes ya gotta raise taxes for the good of the economy. But, then, he got an A.

10:54: On Iran - goddamn, we've lowered the bar on why we're kinda, sorta thinking of going to war. Bush says that we're not gonna allow someone to have the means to make a bomb. Not a bomb. Just the means to make one. What-the-fuck moment #2: "We're worried that the Iranians can't realize their dreams." What the fuck? How many people in America give a happy monkey fuck about the dreams of Iranians?

10:55: Fuck, the cable just went out. Somehow the static and white noise are comforting.

10:57: It's back. And he's talking about security before reconciliation in Iraq. No, no, the egg comes before the chicken, motherfucker. No egg, no chicken.

10:58: He wants Iraq to pass laws, which is hard to argue with. As is "People are sick and tired of murder and violence." It's apparently Saddam Hussein's fault that there's no unity in Iraq. What-the-fuck moment #3: "Saddam Hussein killed all the Mandelas." So without a Mandela-like figure, there will be no unity in Iraq? Or, perhaps more to the point, talk to Steve Biko about it.

11:01: Helen Thomas looks good in pink. Helen, call the Rude Pundit. Let's have another nooner at the Omni. It's no good. Helen never calls.

11:02: Bush says he's gonna reach out to the African American community, although the image of his bony white hand reaching out from a white house probably is not going to put many in that community at ease. And then to prove how open he is to reaching out, he ignores black reporter Suzanne Malveaux's follow-up question.

11:04: Somehow a question about the Federal Reserve's half point interest rate cut is twisted into an attack on Congress raising taxes.

11:05: He won't comment about Jena, Louisiana because it's an ongoing trial. Damn, that's a good out.

11:06: Asked about books and comments criticizing him, Bush says his feelings aren't hurt. One would assume one would have to feel in order for said feelings to be hurt. And then he talks about tax cuts again. And then Social Security "reform." Still answering the criticism question.

11:09: Has David Gregory done something different with his hair? David, call the Rude Pundit. He's got the velvet-lined handcuffs ready for you. David, you know, always calls.

11:10: What the fuck is he talking about now? Schwabbing Dubai? What? How the fuck does a question about Dubai parties buying the NASDAQ become about making Iraq "democratic"?

11:11: Boo-yah - first time 9/11 is invoked. "Nineteen kids" flew planes into buildings. Well, at least they're not "folks."

11:13: As a way to make sure kids try really hard in school, he relates how he told Condi that she's the PhD, "I'm the C student, look who's president." Stupid is good.

11:14: He says that Iraq is important to that United States' security because al-Qaeda says if we leave they will take it over. And thus we see that our war policy is set by al-Qaeda.

11:15: Wait, what? He wants to blow extremists? Well, that's a change in policy.

11:16: Huzzah - 9/11 mentioned by name.

11:19: He's asked about the MoveOn.org Petraeus ad. Oh, it's time for the money shot. Jack it, George: "I thought the ad was disgusting...Most Democrats are more afraid of irritating a left wing group than they are" of attacking the military. Look in his eyes - he just spooged all over himself to get to end the conference on that note. He hurries off to wipe himself.

There ya go. More war, no insurance for uninsured lower middle class kids, half a bottle of vodka gone. Ahh, yes, it's morning in America.

Break Out Yer Wallets and Give Some Cold, Hard Love, Day 3:
Aw, hell, yeah. We're just into the third day of the Rude Pundit's Almost Fourth Anniversary Fundraiser to spread the rudeness into the multimedia-verse of YouTubery and podcasturbation. And because so many rude readers have opened their pockets, their purses, and their piggy banks, we're already three-quarters of the way to the goal for the week. This ain't tantric slow-balling, man. It's full-on speed train.

Join the nearly 100 people who have donated everything from a buck to several c-notes. Click below or on the side and we'll wrap this fucker up early:

The UF Tasering and the Right to Be an Asshole:
A few observations from watching three different videos of the tasering of Andrew Meyer at the University of Florida:
1. Meyer asks two reasonable questions and one tin-foil hat one. The campus cops grab him as he is passionately, but not crazily, finishing his third question.

2. The cops are rough with Meyer from the moment they touch him. And at least part of the crowd cheers the cops.

3. The speaker, John Kerry, an actual, you know, Senator, says he wants to answer Meyer's questions.

4. Meyer at one point says he'll leave if they let him up. He keeps asking, "What did I do?" No one will tell him. Perhaps one doesn't need to actually "do" anything. Once just needs to seem as if one is doing something deemed wrong. It's the simulacrum of crime, not a real one.

5. When Meyer pulls away from the cops, they tackle him and about a half dozen lay on top of him.

6. The cops discuss whether or not to taser Meyer. As Meyer begs not to be tasered, one cop says, frighteningly calmly, "Taze him." And they do.

7. At that point, you can hear people screaming for the cops to stop. And you can hear some students laughing, like they're watching Cops or Jackass or some YouTube face-plant video.

8. As he's led away, after being tasered with 10,000 volts, Meyer's worried if the cops are going to kill him.

9. The police tell Meyer he is being arrested for inciting a riot. When Meyer was speaking, it seemed the only other people standing were mostly the cops behind him. Perhaps the riot is the indignation of some students at the tasering.

10. "Don't taze me, bro" is kind of a touching throwback to hippie days when Vietnam War protesters would try to get the cops on their side. It never worked then.

To be sure, Andrew Meyer is an asshole. You get that from his writings. And if being an asshole is all that it takes for some to think you deserve a shot of electricity, well, let's march over to Fox "news" and let the voltage flow. No, no matter how many incidents of assholery are in Meyer's life, this doesn't fly. A prostitute can be raped, you know?

Yes, he did jump to the front of the line to demand to ask Kerry a question, but Meyer was tasered because he wouldn't knuckle under to the authority of the cops. He wasn't a threat, he wasn't violent, he was trying to comply (although you try doing anything rational when you're on the ground with half a dozen cops on top of you, yelling at you and an auditorium of people yelling about, some laughing at, what's being done to you), and he still got tasered.

Our country is so devoid of actual dissent and activism, so filled with citizens cowed by cops and security of all sorts treating us like criminals, that stepping out of line in the smallest way or slightly breaking decorum now seems to deserve a smackdown. Acquiescence is not only expected. It will be enforced. And so many of us are willing to participate in the enforcement, rolling our eyes and laughing at those who would dare misbehave.

Here's a story the Rude Pundit's told before that seems apropos: The Rude Pundit was at the microphone at his university back in the day. There had been a debate about free speech between former Attorney General Edwin Meese and columnist Nat Hentoff. It was one of those speaker's bureau dog and pony shows that tours college campuses: let's get two people who disagree to disagree and see the sparks fly. Hentoff had, of course, taken Meese apart in the formal debate. And then the floor was open for Q&A. Every time Meese was critically questioned, he fell back on talking points and giving props to Reagan, never really addressing the issues. When it was his turn, the Rude Pundit asked Meese about Reagan/Bush I era policies and the Rodney King beating in Los Angeles. Meese didn't answer the question. So the Rude Pundit said, "You didn't answer my question." Meese danced again and the Rude Pundit insisted, "No, that's not what I'm asking," and he repeated himself.

Now, should the Rude Pundit have backed off at that moment, figuring that the fat bastard on stage wasn't gonna give a real answer? Perhaps. But the Rude Pundit was tired, even then, of politicians not giving a straight goddamn answer. So he had decided he was gonna get Meese to respond. The Rude Pundit thought, "I'm a citizen; he's a former public servant. Serve me, motherfucker."

Instead, though, the moderator walked over to take the microphone away, security started heading towards him, and a confrontation seemed imminent. The Rude Pundit even wondered if he should fight or flee, tensing up for being grabbed. Luckily, campus cops didn't have Tasers back then. Luckily, Hentoff, an old hand at these kinds of things, intervened and answered for Meese. Out of his deep respect and admiration for the Village Voice writer, the Rude Pundit sat back down.

Break Out Yer Wallets and Give Some Cold, Hard Love, Day 2:
In the first day or so of the Rude Pundit's fundraiser to expand the rude empire, nearly half of the goal of two grand was given in donations small and not-so-small, from sea to shining sea, from dozens and dozens of people from Washington, D.C. to Washington state, and even a couple of proud Canucks. Here's a rude salute to them all.

For the rest, don't stop now just cause that heady Day 1 rush is over. Yeah, the excitement of the first head-banging, body-slamming fuck of the evening is done, but we still got the rest of the night to fall into a sweet pumping rhythm so we can keep the lovin' flowin'.

Click below or on the side. You'll feel like you're touching yourself in nice ways.

The Mukasey Consensus? No, He's a Motherfucker, Too:
If you're a motherfucker, what you do is fuck mothers. When you're presented with a choice to fuck a mother or go down on a sister, you will always do some motherfucking. It's because you're a motherfucker. No one's gonna deter you from fucking mothers constantly. You'll fuck a mother anywhere: in her bedroom, at the movies, in church, in an alley behind your grandmother's apartment (for you are not a grandmotherfucker. Although you could be tempted...). It's because you're a motherfucker. It's all anyone expects you to be. Sure, sure, people can tell you perhaps it's time to stop fucking mothers, to try fucking someone else for a while. But that's not who you are. It's not like all of a sudden you're gonna stop fucking mothers. Maybe, once everyone realizes how much you fuck mothers, you need to do some kind of secret fucking of mothers. Instead of just announcing to the world that you're gonna fuck this mother, you just do it on the down-low so everyone thinks you've stopped fucking mothers. That way, if no one asks and if no one checks things out, you can safely fuck a mother.

When George W. Bush announced the nomination of former judge Michael B. Mukasey (whose name is uncomfortably close to "mucusy") to be Attorney General, you heard a sigh of relief that finally Bush wasn't gonna go the usual route of choosing a motherfucker, like Theodore Olson, and was instead going to build consensus. Look, some on the left said, he ain't bad: in the Jose Padilla case, he said that the poor bastard could meet with his lawyer (even if he also decided that Bush could hold a citizen arrested in the United States as an enemy combatant). In other words, hey, it could be worse. In other words, we could have been shivved in the jugular; instead, we'll get cut in the gut so we bleed slower.

So what's the game with Mukasey, the seemingly innocuous respected judge who is beloved by Charles Schumer and deemed acceptable for at least consideration to be AG by Democrats? Someone who is gratifyingly driving conservatives nutzoid? There's a lot of traps to fall into here, that Bush understands he's a lame duck, that he's decided to work with Democrats. But that's not the way these fuckers work. If you start believing that, you will end up hog-tied with a golf club in your ass facing the business end of a .38. And your mother will be fucked.

Ultimately, the Bush administration, especially Dick Cheney and his minions, doesn't give a bloody monkey shit about social issues or the goals of the religious right. Nominating John Roberts and Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court was not about that - it just so happens that they were also social issue savages. All the White House cares about is the expansion of executive power. Bottom fuckin' line. And on that count, despite letting Padilla talk to a lawyer to challenge his enemy combatant status (and that's it), Mukasey fucks mothers with the best of 'em.

In a December 2, 1985 op-ed for the New York Times, cited in a Washington Post article today, Mukasey argued for an expansion of legal powers and tactics of then U.S. Attorney Rudy Giuliani in the crusade against organized crime. In language that could be lifted out of one of Bush's speeches on al-Qaeda today, Mukasey wrote of the Mafia, "It is not the creation of novelists or journalists. It has exacted a toll in misery that would shame the Inquisition and a toll in treasure that would embarrass the Pentagon." He supported Giuliani's intimidation of defense attorneys by issuing subpoenas to them (thus allowing their offices to be searched and compelling them to testify against their own clients).

And, in a statement that would warm the cold, dead heart of John Yoo, Mukasey wrote, "The presumption of innocence is a rule of evidence - a basic one, to be sure, but a rule of evidence nonetheless, which applies during a trial, not beforehand." In other words, according to Mukasey, only when you walk into the courtroom for your trial are you presumed to be innocent. Otherwise, all of us walking around free today are more or less presumptively criminals. Let the searches without warrants begin.

And he was Roy Cohn's lawyer at the end of that evil bastard's life. If one defended the mother of all motherfuckers, well, one fucks mothers even by proximity.

(But the unknown here is what's up with the Giuliani connection being forged by the Bush administration? Mukasey is bestest buddies with Giuliani. The Rude Pundit needs to ponder this part.)

Break Out Yer Wallets and Give Some Cold, Hard Love:
The Rude Pundit's tryin' to raise two grand this week so he can do all kinds of shiny new fun stuff with the rudeness as he gets ready to start his fifth year of mad bloggery. So far, he's felt the moist tickle of love from all over the U.S. and Canada. Let's keep this party rollin'. Click below or on the side to PayPal it:

Unsolicited Advice from a Friend: An Open Letter To MoveOn.Org:
Dearest MoveOn and/or Eli,

Here's a couple of things that need to be said up front: Rudy Giuliani is the kind of narcissist who masturbates to pictures of himself in drag, thinking that if he was a woman, he'd give head better than any of the other transvestites at the Halloween Parade. John McCain is a deranged misanthrope, so damaged by battles military and political that all he has left is to lash out at the ghosts he thinks are constantly assaulting him.

That they, Fox "news" tools, and anyone else spent time lashing out at your recent ad in the New York Times bespeaks their own fears of obsolescence or their whorish desires to make headlines in any way possible. That goes, in this case, for Joe Biden, John Kerry, and a few other Democrats so afraid of their own shadows that they'll bite at any ray of sunshine.

And, frankly, the Rude Pundit was wondering when someone was gonna use the obvious "Petraeus/Betray Us" rhyme, a couplet just aching to happen. He figured it'd be some blog or other. But there it was, big as all get out, with a big goddamn picture of the "ass-kissing little chickenshit." With ad copy that was, essentially, a Paul Krugman editorial, and, hell, we all read him anyways. (You guys really need some better ad writers.) The first thing the Rude Pundit thought when he saw it was, "Aw, fuck, this is not gonna go well," even if he agreed with its sentiments.

Here's the deal, MoveOn. You're big time. You're the mainstream, no matter what assholes like Glen Beck or Howie Kurtz or Bill O'Reilly wanna say. And, yes, shitty as that is, that means you gotta play like you're part of the big show. See, this citizen-driven lefty movement that you started, one that rose along with and because of Left Blogsylvania, can keep extending its successes and learning from its failures.

When you've gotten as big as you are and as influential, you don't have to modify your message or your goals. That'd be a big fuckin' betrayal. But you gotta modify your rhetoric. You wear the suit now, whether you like it or not. In order for a movement to spread beyond the faithful, the leaders of that movement need to find a language that doesn't alienate, but doesn't punk out. It's a fucked-up kind of balance to maintain, but if you find it, ah, if...

Obviously, the Rude Pundit doesn't believe in the Bob Shrum/DLC school of cautious political rhetoric, where you try real hard not to piss off the other side 'cause they might hit back. The language of inclusion, though, need not be the language of capitulation. Let's put this in historical perspective: You're Tom Hayden. Let the Rude Pundit and others be Abbie Hoffman. Out here in the blogworld, we can say shit like "Petraeus/Betray Us" because, well, shit, that's what we do. Let us be the dirty fuckin' hippies.

We need you to be mainstream, MoveOn. We need you to be the grown-up. The mainstream media is distracted by shiny objects. Don't actually try to dangle a sparkly charm in front of them.

The Rude Pundit loves ya, MoveOn, really. He's been to a couple of your benefits. And he's behind you, even when you stumble (and, to give some credit, Hillary Clinton fuckin' nailed it when it came to dealing with the ad and Giuliani's stupid attack on her). And, Eli, if you ever want a kick-ass subversive ad, you know who to call, even as you read this and tell yourself that the Rude Pundit can go fuck himself.

Fourth Rude Anniversary Comin': Break Out Yer Wallets and Give Some Cold, Hard Love:
We're comin' up here on four years of rudeness, which is like a century in human time. And because the Rude Pundit knows that sometimes you gotta do things to keep the relationship fresh, he's got some plans. No, not clitoris clamps or Barack Obama masks. Media-type stuff.

He ain't gonna record a friggin' vlog because, well, it's hard not to look like a complete jerk-off if you do that. He will, however, be posting a juicy anti-Ann Coulter clip on YouTube from his show The Road to Rude at the beginning of October, just in time for the release of the beast's latest "book." And he's gonna do some podcastin', a once a week kind of deal, like Ira Glass meets Rob Zombie and they do some meth together.

There's a few other things up the Rude Pundit's sleeve. But if he tells you he's bringing home a sailor for a threesome, well, where's the surprise?

So the Rude Pundit needs to upgrade. He needs to give up this loyal old iBook and get hisself a fancy ass Macbook, some software, and a microphone. And so, as is his once-a-year wont, the Rude Pundit's askin' for donations to extend the reach of the rudeness. Big or small. It'll make you feel all fuzzy inside when you hear the Rude Pundit's voice caressin' ya and you can think, "That bastard's on my speakers 'cause I gave him money."

Let's just call this bad boy a fundraiser. Let's do it for the week or so. Let's call the goal $2,000. Click on that PayPal donation button, below or on the side, and click it hard enough to make the baby Jesus cry.

President to the Nation: "Let Me Keep Trying to Get You Off": Let us say, and why not, that you're a straight guy or a lesbian. You're in bed with the woman you're in a long-term relationship with and you're going down on her, pearl diving like your village in Japan depends on it. And you're trying so goddamn hard to get her to come, but you've tried all your tricks. You've been through alphabets in fuckin' Cyrillic. You've been eating her out for a good two hours, more, and, frankly, you're just bored and pissy and more than a little thirsty. Occasionally you look up at her face, and she's long past being into this, really more indulging you than anything else. Sure, sure, at the beginning she was totally hot and juicy, pinching her nipples, moaning, shifting her legs, fucking your tongue. Yeah, you thought you had her there about five minutes in, but, no, something distracted her - a cell phone ring, a staring cat - and it was back to square one. You don't know what else to do. You've exercised her clit so much it could probably lift a small suitcase. You've probed deeply, stretching to hit that g-spot; you've used your fingers next to your tongue, hoping volume would succeed where manipulation hasn't. But, at least in the last half-hour or so, nothing. Nada. Occasionally she asks you if you want to stop. You say, of course, no, you don't, you really want her to have the orgasm you had right at the start, your jaw pain be damned. She keeps allowing you, well past what's reasonable, but, you know, her labia's getting raw, her hips a little tired, her mind wandering to what she's gonna wear to work tomorrow. At some point, she's gonna tell you to stop, but until then, you're not lover enough to admit failure and say you'll try again another day. If she'll even let you. Last night, when President Bush spoke, he had the sad demeanor of the failing carpet muncher. Sure, he tried the hot talk at the beginning, with the pathetic whine of "In the life of all free nations, there come moments that decide the direction of a country and reveal the character of its people. We are now at such a moment." For the rest of the speech, a useless exercise if there ever was one, Bush said nothing new, made empty promises of troop withdrawals contingent on the revolting business-speak sounding "Return on Success" (get it? Like getting a return on an investment), and Petraeus'ed us to unconsciousness. There's the question, no? If she falls asleep, do you keep lapping away? By the way, the dead Guardsman the President mentioned, Brandon Stout? The report of his death was changed to say he was killed by an IED instead of the more frightening EFP, or "explosively formed projectile," as first indicated by the Pentagon. See, according to the Pentagon, letting people know that different tactics end up in American deaths would give a boost to the enemy. An EFP creates a molten metal disk that essentially slices through armor "like butter." He died working with the Iraqi police in Baghdad, a force that that Congress was just told should be disbanded.

The Terri Schiavo War in Iraq:
What is it with right wingers and their inability to just let dead causes die? For the way Iraq war supporters cling to this shameful debacle resembles nothing so much as their refusal to let Terri Schiavo finally expire back in 2005. The Petraeus/Crocker hearings were merely justification to keep the feeding tube in the oughta-be corpse. Bush's speech tonight is just more bullshit rhetoric to prop up the body.

It all just reaks of the putrescent smell of that disgraceful "debate" over the body of Terri Schiavo. The constant promise that miracles are possible, that they were just around the corner, even though Schiavo had been in the same state for years. The self-righteousness of those who wanted her hooked up to machines, consequences be damned, because doing so was in and of itself a good. The strange, sad idiocy of the few citizens who were chanting for Schiavo's right to "life," no matter if that life was merely an inexorable decline into complete breakdown. Those who wanted to let Schiavo die? Tarred as people who hate life. Christ, Bill O'Reilly may as well be telling us that Iraq is smiling at the balloon. Joe Lieberman barely even needs to write a new script.

Like so many of us were saying back in that stupid March of 2005, let it go. The fight is over. No matter how many drugs or operations or prayers you use, it's done. Walk away. If Schiavo's body was gonna heal, it'd have to be on its own, for there was nothing left to do. Who knows. Maybe Iraq will do better once it's taken off life support. But, even if you believed the initial invasion was right and good, you gotta understand: the dead need to decompose. Maybe flowers will bloom in the rot. Maybe it'll just be dirt.

Shortly after Schiavo died, on Meet the Press, John McCain, who was one of the 97 senators too cowardly to show up to actually vote on the Schiavo bill, spoke with a great deal of regret over the whole Schiavo matter, demonstrating how lessons can be learned: "Maybe we didn't use our brains as well as we should have...I think we ought to get this issue behind us and move forward. It's an American tragedy and I hope that the next time we're presented with one of these situations we'll perhaps approach it in a more measured and reasoned fashion." He could have been talking about...well, other things, too.

Of course, in the same interview, McCain said, "I do believe that there are some signs, which can be viewed as hopeful...There is a better training and equipping program of the Iraqi military. We've got one of our best generals, General Petraeus, doing that." Like with Terri Schiavo, in Iraq, "hope" is just another word for "blindness."

Osama Spins His Eyes Again:
Let's get this clear up front: Osama bin Laden ain't a threat to you or me. He wasn't much to begin with - he got lucky a couple of times, like lightning does - and he will never be again. He is a bullshit pissant with good PR, an ersatz pedant who knows how to manipulate brains fucked up by decades of poverty, war, and religious fanaticism. By the way, who fuckin' dyed his beard? Looks like Groucho Marx got stranded on a desert island.

And, however much you wanna hype the threat, al-Qaeda is just a bunch of random backwards ass goatfuckers with weapons who get together in the cave and talk about how cool it'd be to blow up shit. Just get those fuckers some plasma screens and bootleg copies of Halo 3, along with regular blow jobs, and there'd be fuckin' peace. Besides, what exactly is "al-Qaeda"? It's really just a convenient term to not sound racist or anti-Muslim, the "inner city" of global politics. When some group of stooges hangs out in a shithole in Indonesia or Miami or Iraq, they call themselves "al-Qaeda" to sound badass. It's like when a half dozen pissed-off white kids in Omaha put on gang colors and call themselves the "Greek Town Bloods."

You know how you know someone is full of shit? They keep threatening you. The guy at the bar who says he's gonna kick your ass ain't shit compared to the quiet guy who just punches you in the face. If al-Qaeda could do anything, they'd do it. Otherwise it's all just bluster and bullshit. "Convert to Islam and we'll stop the war"? That's just playing to the suckers who listen to this sick rich fuck as if he's gonna lead them to the land of milk and virgins with figs in their cooters. It's sort of like the way Republicans keep making promises to fundamentalist Christians to make sure they got the holy votes. The rubes always turn to those who say what they wanna hear, no matter where those rubes happen to be. And before you turn up your nose at the idiots sitting in a toilet-less mountain village in Pakistan, remember that many of our fellow Americans are happy fuckin' rubes, too, reacting in a Pavlovian way to any suggestion that terror's about to rear its bearded head.

So when the White House calls bin Laden "impotent," or some Republican jack-off talks about how much Osama doesn't matter, sure, we'll give 'em that.

But here's the fuckin' deal on this September 12, six years later: Osama's a goddamn criminal. The head of a mob of killers as much as Pablo Escobar or Tony Soprano. And he should be treated as such, hunted down and imprisoned. The fact that he hasn't been captured is as big a disgrace to this country as the Iraq war. It's the kind of dishonor that'd force men with any sort of dignity to resign. Fuck, with the Bush administration's constant refrain that the past must be ignored and not investigated and that we have to concentrate on the present because the future is just a hypoethtical, it almost seems as if the statute of limitations has passed on mass murder.

9/11 Is Tired of Your Tears:
9/11 is weary. 9/11 woke up tired this morning, staring at the clouds and rain, wishing she could just go back to bed. But 9/11 knows she doesn't get a break. Sure, sure, the other dates told her that after a while she would fade into memory, half-forgotten except for ceremonies that would drag her out of the house, but the reassurances of 12/7, 11/22, and 4/19 have proven to be wrong. It would be one thing to just have to get up on her namesake anniversary. But, no, 9/11 has to be out all the time, the favorite whore of politicians and pundits.

9/11 doesn't know who's gonna call on her. Every day, it seems, yes, that someone else rings her up and tells her to meet them at a speech or after an appearance. She knows the routine. She knows her job. 9/11 dresses in her mourning duds, the ones that look like she's paying respects to the dead, but with enough of a slit up the leg to let whoever her suitor is that night know that she is always available for them.

She's got her regulars, Giuliani and Bush and Cheney. They're the ones who like her on top, humping away, so they can stare at her used beauty, the Twin Towers of her breasts, the Pentagon of her mouth, the field in Pennsylvania above her pussy, and, god, how Giuliani squeezes her nipples, says his cock is a passenger jet before he plunges it into her. How Cheney can't get off unless he burns her with cigarettes. How Bush cries with gratitude whenever she's grinding away. "Without you, I'm nothing," he weeps. She knows that, but she always wishes she were elsewhere.

The worst is the campaign season. How she has to show up at the Republican debates to fellate each candidate. How she has to be under the desks at Fox hand-jobbing the O'Reillies and Hannities, fingering the Coulters and Malkins. How Joe Lieberman has done things to her so disgusting she wants to burn them out of her mind. She wanted to be a high-price escort, but she knows that, even though everyone thinks she's so good at what she does and says how much they respect her, she's no different than a Lower East Side Suicide Girl-wannabe trick.

9/11 wants just to be loved. She wants someone to take care of her and tell her she doesn't have to do this anymore. She doesn't wanna be the American alpha and omega. She just wants flowers, a nice ritual or two, and then a simple thoughtful note every now and then.

But, no. That's not 9/11's lot in this world. She's resigned to this life of abuse, her legs spread, her mouth open, ready to go to the next call. She doesn't exist in and of herself, only as an accessory. She has become the roughly nailed hot lover, the one anyone can point to and say, "See that piece of ass? I fucked her. And then I turned her over and fucked her again."

And, sadly, 9/11 believes that's all she'll ever be.

What the Petraeus/Crocker Testimony Will Mean (Brunch Version):
Bleary-eyed in Boerum Hill, Brooklyn, the Rude Pundit brunched with his friend Conrad yesterday morning. He had crashed at Conrad's for a couple of hours after a good pot and cheap beer party that ended some time that morning. Conrad was complaining, as Conrad does, often, about his live-in lover, Preston. Preston had opted out of brunch at the Mexican joint, so Conrad felt free to talk.

But it's always the same story with Conrad. One day he's on the phone talking about how he's had it with Preston, that he's throwing that fucker out on the gentrified streets with just the clothes on his back. The next day he'll say that he's giving Preston another chances, that Preston is making all kinds of promises, and Conrad just can't say no when Preston looks at him that way. The Rude Pundit just shakes his head, wondering how often this is gonna happen. How many times is Preston gonna demand that Conrad, the wealthier of the two, take care of him while he does whatever he wants, going out without Conrad, fucking around (although Conrad denies Preston does this), making a wreck of their condo and demanding that Conrad clean it up, making Conrad feel like shit if he tries to redecorate a room, say, without Preston's input.

The strange thing is that the sex ended sometime late last year. Sure, sure, while they were fucking, it was good. Conrad was a gleeful bottom, and he was happy to take it in the ass, the face, whatever Preston wanted. As Conrad described, nothing make him jizz harder than Preston telling him to get on his knees. So even if Preston, who's always been an asshole, treated Conrad like shit, at least Conrad got his rocks off regularly. But then Conrad decided he was tired of being a catcher, that he wanted to step on the mound for a while. Preston was absolutely adamant about their established positions, so, ambitions aside, Conrad stayed bent over until, his desire to do the fucking instead of getting fucked rising, they reached a kind of stalemate, a sword fight that ends in a draw, if you will. Sure, they could just jack off on each other, but that's fun only for so long.

The Rude Pundit's advice to Conrad was always the same: Ditch Preston. Toss that cocksucking (or, to be more precise, cocksucked) wad of fuck out. Have some goddamn self-respect.

Conrad, though, has always got an excuse as to why he lets himself be dicked over in a non-fun way. Yesterday, over tortillas and green chile-filled eggs, Conrad said how Preston's gonna ask him for a just a few more months to prove his love (a request he's made every few months). The Rude Pundit asked what was different now. "Little things," Conrad said. "Like he's putting the Times in the recycling bin, he's wiping the toilet seat, you know, stuff like that." The Rude Pundit just stared at his friend. "This is his last chance," Conrad fumbled with his words. "If he screws it up this time, that's it. It's over." He sucked down some mojito and said, "I mean it." Essentially, it was the same conversation the Rude Pundit and Conrad had had back in May. Back then, Preston was asking to move more of his stuff into Conrad's place, and, even though everyone of his friends wanted Conrad to tell Preston to take what he had there and move out, Conrad allowed it.

What the Rude Pundit wanted to do at that moment was to get up, toss a twenty on the table, tell Conrad to call when he grows a pair, and walk off. Or he wanted to drag Conrad out of his chair and smack him a couple of times, saying, "This is what you do to Preston." But good friends are few in this world. And sometimes you gotta sit there with that head-shaking disgust making you nauseous. Because you don't know what's harder: to help the friends you have or find new ones. The Rude Pundit shoved his brunch plate away.

Conrad said, "You don't approve. You're upset." The Rude Pundit said he was disappointed, that he had hopes for Conrad being independent. "Don't worry," Conrad said. "I know what I'm doing." The Rude Pundit did not believe him for a second.

Bush at APEC, OPEC, Whatever:
So while the Rude Pundit was trawling the cable news websites, filled with such fascinating factoids like that Hulk Hogan's son was given warnings for speeding (it's true), creating a masturbation fantasy about joining the mile-high club with the Hooters girl who wore a skirt deemed too short for the prigs at Southwest Airlines (Motto: "It's like the cheap seats on a train crossing Bangladesh, except with less goats"), the Rude Pundit came across the latest manly man quote from our fearless leader. Talking to the Deputy Prime Minister of Australia, upon arrival at the APEC summit, President Bush said, apparently in reference to how things went in Iraq, "We're kicking ass.

Just how eye-rollingly embarrassing can this President get? If you thought the answer was "pretty fucking," you be off by an adjective degree or two. Indeed, knowing that George W. Bush is our nation's leader is not unlike knowing that Jeffrey Dahmer's your brother: yeah, it stinks for you to have had a brother like Jeffrey; no, you never sucked the eyeballs out of a boy-corpse and then fucked the socket; and, really, it's better not to think about it whenever you can put out of your mind what you could have done to prevent all the death and depravity wrought by him. Ultimately, though, you just gotta shake your head and wish it would go away.

For, indeed, in speaking to an audience of business leaders at the Sydney Opera House, Bush may as well have shit himself and smirked while saying, "I pooped mah drawers." Not only did he call the APEC summit "OPEC," but he thanked the "Austrian troops" in Iraq, apparently longing for a time when someone like him might have been defended by the Austrian military. Then, as AP reports, "Then, speech done, Bush confidently headed out -- the wrong way. He strode away from the lectern on a path that would have sent him over a steep drop. Howard and others redirected the president to center stage, where there were steps leading down to the floor of the theater."

Shaking your head yet? Howzabout this little detail: "The event had inauspicious beginnings. Bush started 10 minutes late, so that APEC workers could hustle people out of the theater's balcony seating to fill the many empty portions of the main orchestra section below -- which is most visible on camera." Yep, the business people of Australia couldn't give a holy wallaby fuck about what Bush had to say.

Then there was the surprise bitch slapping by South Korea's Roh Moo-Hyun, who, at a press meet, confronted Bush over why the United States has not formally ended the Korean War, an act that Roh believes would make negotiating with North Korea a helluva lot easier. Bush, fumbling like a schnauzer with a hard-on trying to fuck a water buffalo, spat out something about North Korea needing to get rid of its nuclear program, which, as you know, was the cause of the Korean War. What must have driven Bush nuttier was when Roh pushed him for more information, saying, "If you could be a little bit clearer," to which, back in America, Congressman Henry Waxman said, "Good luck, Roh-man."

Another meeting with leaders of other countries, another rank humiliation, with Bush oblivious or just apathetic to how much he's walking around with piss stains on his pants, except now others are pointing out the wet marks to him. Bush, though, doesn't give a fuck. Why should he when his own nation doesn't seem to?

YouTube Fun With Fred:
Then there's Fred Thompson telling his 1994 Senatorial campaign opponent, Jim Cooper, to "Shut up...just shut up" during a debate.

And, for real larfs, here's two of his campaign ads from 1994. One, with Thompson chopping wood while wearing flannel, looks like some kind of Simpsons-esque parody of a campaign commercial (and, sight unseen, it was exactly what the Rude Pundit described in his previous post). The other one has Thompson-with-hair looking like some kind of bastard child of Joe Cocker and a female humanish Muppet.

Make Room For Fred Thompson's Saggy Jowls:
In a move more inexplicable and crazily egomaniacal than Rudy Giuliani running for President, Watergate stooge, lobbyist for hire, intensely mediocre actor, and even more intensely mediocre former Senator Fred Thompson has tossed his hat into the Republican ring. Thompson's qualifications seem to be jowls and a hot wife who adores plastic surgery. Oh, and in In the Line of Fire, he was a prick to Clint Eastwood.

But, in case Thompson's looking for lines to use in his ads, which no doubt will have all kinds of patriotic music and use of his sonorous Foghorn-Leghorn-on-Tylox voice and talk about how gen-you-ine Thompson is because he's a millionaire from Tennessee as opposed to being a millionaire from, you know, New York or Arkansas, here's a few quotes from a review of one of his epic performances:

"Beautiful, big, strong, majestic...truly an absolutely amazing animal. See how he whinnies furiously and rears up in rage, the whipping of his ebon tail and the trashing of his hooves, the flaring of his nostrils and the glare of his eyes. When he gallops, just listen to the mighty beating of his hooves, you may even feel his hot breath at the back of your neck. Absolutely gorgeous! When this ruthless monster rears his handsome head, you’d better run for cover, coz he’s the boss of his very own gang of fearsome stallions, each one of them professional racers, bred to compete" - from a review of Racing Stripes, where Thompson was the voice of the evil horse Sir Trenton

Our Crying, Paranoid, Ghost-Seeing President:
No, no, no. Oh, fuck no. The Rude Pundit doesn't wanna know - doesn't fuckin' care that George W. Bush cries like a beaten bitch puppy nearly every day, as Robert Draper writes in his book Dead Certain (unpublished subtitle: "Alas, America, We Are So Very Fucked"). Bush told Draper, "Self-pity is the worst thing that can happen to a presidency. This is a job where you can have a lot of self-pity. I have got God's shoulder to cry on, and I cry a lot. I do a lot of crying in this job. I will bet I have shed more tears than you can count as president." There's your picture: the Leader of the Free World sitting in the Oval Office weeping. Goddamn, that's some inspirational shit.

As Paul Begala said on CNN's Situation Room yesterday, "[F]orgive me if I don't join in his pity party. The tears he shed are nothing compared to the tears of the moms and the dads and the wives of -- of the men and women who have been killed in combat because of this god-awful war that I believe and most Americans believe that he lied us into. It's a really unseemly thing for him to be whining about how hard he's got it."

It's such a manipulative, bullshit thing for Bush to say, too. Like a white guy who says, "Nigger" and then talks about how he's got black friends. How are we supposed to react, huh? "Oh, shit, he's not so bad 'cause he cries? How can anyone hate a grown man who admits that he weeps on the invisible shoulder of a magical sky wizard?" Not that he'd give a happy monkey fuck how we react, 'cause, see, Bush says repeatedly to Draper, he doesn't listen to polls: "I understand you can't let polls tell you what to think."

Now, check out this next quote and decontextualize it for just a sec - think about some random guy at a neighborhood bar telling you this: "When I'm out in the public...I fully understand that the enemy watches me, the Iraqis are watching me, the troops watch me, and the people watch me." However much of it may be true, although the Rude Pundit doesn't really know many "people" and even less soldiers who give a fuck what the President is doing day to day, that's some kind of demented cocktail of massive ego and shit-yourself paranoia the President is sucking back.

In the same interview, Bush tries to offer insight into his decision-making process: "I know it's difficult. I do know—y'know, how do you decide, how do you learn to decide things? When you make up your mind, and you stick by it." Reading what Bush has to say about things when he's trying to be profound is not unlike watching a severely mentally disabled man with a raging hard-on run around his uncle's barn trying to fuck whatever animals will stand still long enough for him to thrust a few times. The goat won't stay still? Then move on to the donkey. Donkey's wiggling around? Head over to the cow or the chickens. It ain't pretty, and everything's just gonna end up covered in drool and semen.

Much has been made of Bush's malignant political pronouncements in the book, like "I'm playing for October-November" when it comes to the Iraq War, so that the candidates for President will realize they're gonna inherit the war. But surely we've always known that everything Bush does is just for cynical self-preservation and powermongering. Hell, at this point, it seems like he's just "playing" to get as high a speaker's fee as he possibly can once he's out of office.

Just from the excerpts and reviews, there's enough repugnant shit in the book to fill Dick Cheney's man-sized safe, including that the reason Bush was so disengaged during his video strategy conference after Hurricane Katrina is that he had been mountain biking and swimming so hard in Crawford the day before, he was too "gassed" to ask questions. That means that the day before a massive hurricane hit the United States, the President was getting in his cardio to the point where he couldn't function the next day. Comforting, no?

From the excerpts the Rude Pundit's read so far, here's an interesting couple of tidbits: Bush tells Draper that he hasn't had a drink in twenty years. But Draper also relates a story that Bush told a friend: after exercising in the White House gym in 1992, when his father was President, Bush was near the Lincoln Bedroom and "he saw ghosts - coming out of the wall." This was a man in his mid-forties. Who says he wasn't drinking at the time.

But, then again, hasn't his whole life been about phantom images, of others, of himself.

Advice to Democrats: You Wanna End the War? Destroy David Vitter First:
As we gear up for the post-summer BINO (Battle In Name Only) over the "supplemental appropriations" for the war in Iraq, it seems like Democrats, in the name of compromise (read: "ass-reaming"), are going to roll over on it with some kind of deal with "antiwar Republicans" that says, more or less, "Boy, Mr. President, sir, we really, really want troops to come home. Could you do that, pretty please?" Once again, with a large majority of the nation wanting the goddamn war over, we gotta ask, "Why the hell not just end it?" If Congress passes an appropriations bill with timelines and shit and Bush vetoes it, well, then there's no funding. If the Republicans wanna filibuster it, well, then there's no funding. It's the girly-named "Power o' the Purse" (which, seriously, sounds more like a Lindsay Lohan movie), and the nation's behind the presumptive antiwar position.

The Rude Pundit believes, to the bottom of his nutsack, that Joe Lieberman is the reason that Senate Democrats don't just play chicken with the President on the war, on torture, on anything related to Lieberman's idea of homeland security. The viciously pro-war "Independent Democrat" has faded into the background in the past few months, but you can fuckin' bet the ranch that he has Harry Reid's balls in a vice.

It's a simple equation - follow the bouncing ball of dishonor and deceit: Lieberman wants this war, wants it like a hard cock wants to do some fucking. If Democrats actually do something to stop the war, Lieberman will call foul, make a big goddamn show of embarrassing the Democrats, and jump ship to the Republicans. Then ya got a 50-50 Senate, with Tim Johnson back, and, factoring in the hulking, heavy-breathing presence of Dick Cheney as a presumptive tiebreaker, ya got split committees, probably with Republicans as chairs, as in early 2001. The ability to set the agenda is gone. The investigations are gone. All up in smoke in the fire started by a little man with a grudge. (No, the Rude Pundit ain't with the "Fuck Lieberman" crowd because...well, shit, he just said why.)

So Senate Democrats have gotta get rid of the Lieberman factor. With one more Democratic Senator, Lieberman will no longer control which way the wind blows until 2009.

And that's where David Vitter comes back into the equation. The oughta-be-disgraced, whoremongering Republican Senator from Louisiana has been embraced back into the Republican fold, as if he's a big goddamn hero for having kept his crimes hidden until after the statute of limitations had run out on him being arrested for soliciting hookers. Of course it's the basest sexual hypocrisy that Republicans went after Larry Craig because the Idaho Senator's case involved gay fucking and because Idaho's got a Republican governor and Louisiana's got a Democrat.

But here's the deal on Vitter: Republicans only have to stand by him until the end of the year. Louisiana elects a new governor this year, in 2007, with an open primary in October and a general election, if needed, in November. And you can sure as shit bet a Republican's gonna win post-Katrina and Rita, probably Bobby Jindal. So, in as much as the Rude Pundit does the prognosticatin', Vitter's gone in January, so that no Republican running for President has to deal with questions of Republican sexual hypocrisy (at least as relates to current scandals). And, barring any other surprises, the same Lieberman-centric Senate until 2009.

So here's the deal: Democrats have to go Rove on Vitter. They have only a few months to get him out of there, so it's time to bring out the political demons in a savage way that pussies like Bob Shrum have nightmares about. Get the prostitutes out in front of the cameras, talking to Larry King about how Vitter likes to shit himself in diapers and then get spanked while getting wiped by big-titted sluts. Get front groups to make ads about what a sleazy motherfucker Vitter is. Get outraged Senators talking to the pumpkinhead of Tim Russert about how it's just impossible to work with a man like Vitter. Take different angles: Barbara Boxer can talk about his exploitation of women, Mark Pryor or Ken Salazar can talk about how Vitter demeans the Senate by his presence and how can they be expected to hold their vomit in while working with a man like that.

Chase that motherfucker out of town and do it for a good cause: to end the war. You get rid of Vitter, you save American lives. Surely Democrats can wallow in the mud for a little while for such a noble end.

(By the way, the Rude Pundit doesn't give a fuck who Vitter and Craig want to fuck or where they want to fuck them and he thinks it's bullshit that we spend time and money on such shit, but because they cared so much about who we fuck and where we fuck them, well, then fuck Vitter and Craig.)