More Rudeness Friday:
The Rude Pundit survived his flight without the expected anal probing, but arrived much later than expected. Relieved, sphincter a little looser, he has decided to take a mulligan at this late hour of the end of the abomination of a year we've just had, and he is going out to drink, a lot. One last 2003 thought: Do you think Osama Bin Laden's plan all along was to drive the United States into a frenzy of military presence, abandonment of Constitutional protections, and a budget devastated by a Bush in office? Do you think he was that calculating, that he knew exactly what the neocons would do, the fear that they would instill in Americans and the West? Who the fuck knows. But we now live our lives as a forced march, spurred by Osama, directed by Bush, enforced by Ashcroft. Fuck 'em all.
Friday: Howard Dean Will Fuck Your Shit Up
Monday: What You Do to the Least of These, Part 3 - the Poor
Go have a fucking New Year's. That's what the Rude Pundit is doing.

And Even the Evil Must Sometimes Act Like They Live in America:
John Ashcroft has recused himself from the Plame name blame investigation. The Rude Pundit is a cynic - he wants to believe this is because something big has been discovered and it has forced Ashcroft to give up any (obvious) control of the investigation. But the Rude Pundit also thinks that the whole investigation is a whitewash and Ashcroft recusing himself is actually a manipulative move to make the whitewash look as if it is a valid conclusion. Although, in the back of his mind, the Rude Pundit dreamily wonders, Could it be Rove is going down? Could it be Rove, who once worked for Ashcroft, who is going to do a perp walk? Oh, to live in such an America once again. Oh, to dream that it was ever thus.

Why Ann Coulter Is Still a Cunt, Part 6:
Because she's so fucking stupid that she doesn't get it when the Onion mocks her. On her shitty, useless website, Coulter is apparently so thrilled to death that she was mentioned in the comedy newspaper that she links to it at the top of the page. The article? One of the Onion's "What Do You Think?" articles, this one on conservative teens. One of the pretend responses is "I don't understand my son. He's always locked in the bathroom with that damned Ann Coulter book." Now, Coulter's link means one of two things, both disturbing: 1)She doesn't get the masturbation reference and thinks that said boy is reading her "book" or 2) That she likes the idea of a teenage boy jacking off to her rants against liberalism. Of course, the joke really is that Coulter presents herself as a fuckable hottie (with an Adam's apple and man hands, but, anyways) in a tight black dress and that teenage boys, thinking anything from underwear ads to old pictures of youthful granny are woody-inspiring, would actually not give a rat's ass about her politics, and, like Bill Maher probably does, would tell her shut the fuck up and let them spew a load of jizz on her flat tits and then wrap her long legs around them twice and let her giant kooz devour their teenage cocks and balls. And then said book, be it Treason or Slander, is simply another crusty, spooge-covered Victoria's Secret catalog, which is about all that Coulter's "thoughts" are worth.

What You Do to the Least of These - Vol. 2 (More of an End of the Year Spectacular):
So here we are, in the darkness at the edge of the new year, and Time magazine goes and makes the American soldier into the Personages of the Year. Yep, they're always there for us, ready to be turned loose on the streets of Your Town, USA, should there be another terrorist incident and martial law is declared and, oh, dream of neocon dreams, the Constitution is suspended, like a class clown with one too many whoopee cushions.

And the military is just great because all those minorities and no-teeth poverty-stricken sunsabitches (and daughters) have somewhere to go to provide them with three square, a salary, benefits like the possibility of a college education (and, with budget cuts to student loans, Pell Grants, etc., the G.I. Bill is becoming one of the only moderately assured places where the poor and disenfranchised can get the money for college).

And, shit and goddamn, yee-haa, let's not forget the violence factor, where you get to carry guns, shoot said guns, kill A-rabs with said guns and the shiver to your nuts that causes. You get to rough up reporters, dodge bullets just like Arnold Schwarzenegger, beat prisoners. Motherfucker, what a rush. Sure, there's the downside of getting killer, injured, mentally fucked-up. But that's a small trade-off for a guaranteed college education, combat pay, and all those great perks.

Of course, that's our ideal military, our fantasy military, our government broadcast military - it doesn't have dick to do with reality, which is a constant stream of the Bush administration fucking over the current and former members of the armed services. Between the cutbacks in iminent danger pay, the slash in pay for wounded soldiers, and on and on, and we have some major (and non-com) dicking going on. Of course, it hardly needs to be pointed out that those who command the military from the White House (minus one Colin Powell) have the combined military experience of the actors in Saving Ryan's Privates.

Now we have word that, with the extension of tours of duty, members of the military, stretched thin, committing suicide, are having retirements postponed and are essentially being held as prisoners of Bush's war. Yep, nothing like extending enlistment periods for the morale of the personages of the year.

The point here is obvious: the Bush administration will trot out soldiers as props for the next election. There will be wounded, one-legged, scarred-face, no-testicled boys in wheelchairs and dress blues pointed to during the State of the Union as proof of the good of those who fight for "us." But the constant mistreatment of soldiers and veterans ought to concern us all. Because if those who fight, whether for noble causes or under orders from a faux commander in chief, can be so readily disposed of on a whim of budget, then what hope is there for the rest of us?

Rush, Soldiers, Christmas, cont'd:
Aloysius points out that the Rude Pundit "should take his head out of" his "ass and smell the coffee" when it comes to Rush Limbaugh. Setting aside the fact that the Rude Pundit drinks so much coffee that if he could indeed shove his brain-filled head up his ass, it more than likely would have a coffee aroma, Aloysius is right to point out that Limbaugh is scrambling like a scorpion running from a weasel to avoid federal money-laundering charges (by using said blackmailing maid), which could really lead Limbaugh to hard time at a resort prison where he can bully mid-level executives who've taken the fall for their corporations. Pleasant a thought as any Limbaugh prison time may be, with or without accompanying buggering, it's so much more fun to think about him in a cell, cold turkey, sweating, shaking, seeing Hillary Clinton out of the corners of his eyes. Of course, as of today, that reality is slightly farther away, as his medical records have been temporarily re-sealed, pending appeal by Limbaugh's lawyers. Prior to that, the future unemployed Limbaugh actually said that Democrats were out to get him, calling it "payback time." So there's a vast left-wing conspiracy who have nothing better to do than get Rush, according to Rush. To repeat from yesterday, it just keeps getting more and more pathetic. Pretty soon, Rush is gonna lock himself in his studio, demanding that all the dittoheads rise up in revolution against the "liberals." Or radios will just start clicking off one by one by one around the country.

Coming on Monday: Part 2 of What You Do to the Least of These: The U.S. Military. Until then, enjoy the work of a real hero who went to Baghdad, unannounced, and walked around the streets, and met with injured soldiers: David Letterman. Letterman has more guts than almost any other presumptive "news" host, except Tucker Carlson.

Go have a fucking Christmas. That's what the Rude Pundit is doing. Back Monday.

Why Rush Limbaugh Should Be Force-Fed His Own Liposuctioned Fat:
It just gets more and more pathetic, doesn't it? Like every other junkie in the history of law enforcement, Rush Limbaugh is flailing about, looking for anyone to blame, except himself. If he was a horse, he'd've been glue and dog food by now. So now Rush, in a desperate attempt to keep his medical records from being used against him (why? Maybe that agonizing, cancer-like back pain he whines about isn't so bad? Or maybe we'll find out that the reason for said back agony is all the fat pulling against his spine for all those years sitting in that goddamned chair?), is now sending out his lawyers to say that his maid was blackmailing him.

The first logical answer to this charge is "So the fuck what?" How does blackmailing a junkie make the junkie any less a junkie? Let's put it this way: say you are a rich scumbag conservative and your maid finds out you love kiddie porn - man, you can't get enough of the kiddie porn in all its forms, print, Internet, videos. Goddamn, watching pre-pubescents fuck is the only thing that keeps you sane in this horrible workaday world. Now, the maid has two options: one is the honorable thing - turn your hypocritical ass over to the police. And the other is blackmail bleed kiddie porn-watching ass dry. Oh, that this were a world where people did the honorable thing. But, at the end of the day, you still pay for kiddie porn. Paying off the maid is part of doing business in the world of things illegal. Shit, paying off the maid is a small price to pay against having your hatemongering shown for the lies and bullshit and opportunism it truly is.

But it truly is a pathetic sight, seeing Limbaugh calling himself a victim, of pain, of maids, of prosecutors, of the media. All we can do is looking forward to hearing Limbaugh broadcasting from prison as he's being raped repeatedly by some three strikes and you're out felon. ("This is Rush - ow! - Limbaugh - oof! - and you're listening - oh, god! - to the - Christ! - Sodomy in Broadcasting - can I at least get a reach-around? Ow! - network.")

What You Do to the Least of These, Part 1 of a Rude Pundit Christmas Spectacular:
The Rude Pundit could not give two shits about organized religion. He believes the only reasons most major faiths exist are to 1) stop the non-marital fucking, and 2) keep poor people in their place. But as a book, the Bible is filled with cool quotes, good advice, and a few interesting parables, sort of like Dostoevsky or Hints from Heloise, but with more fucking and fewer uses for white vinegar. Sure, you can go with your Isaiah 2:4, all about beating your swords into plows and spears into pruning hooks, and, hell, sound advice, if a bit labor-intensive. But because, you know, Jesus is the reason for the season or some such shit, let's go with some words from the Bible's main character, shaggy headed hippie wanderer who pulled a David Blaine in the middle of the desert, and use Matthew 25:40, which, after all that easily ignored shit about feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, and visiting the imprisoned, Jesus says, roughly, "What you do to the least of these, you do to me."

The Rude Pundit sees it like this: the way a society treats its most fucked-up, vile, and/or lowest members says more about said society than any politician, Fox "news" "reporter," or preacher ever could tell us. In other words, show us the compassion, don't just stand there and tell us about it. It's the hardest part about being a liberal, all the goddamned compassion. Fuck, it'd be easier sometimes to say, "Kill 'em all and let God figger it out," but, nope, that is not our way.

Take, for instance, Saddam Hussein, perhaps a King Lear for our age (driven mad with exile, two children killed - it ain't that much of a stretch). There's a gut level reaction here: Let the Iraqi people decide exactly how slowly and painfully he should be murdered. Even the President got into the act, at first being all coy and shit about punishment, but then coming on full steam with that little-seen Diane Sawyer interview. In a nearly articulate statement to Sawyer, Bush said,"I think he ought to receive the ultimate penalty ... for what he has done to his people." (As Mark Crispin Miller has shown, Bush is never so articulate as when he's talking about retribution or violence or some gleeful combination of the two. Ask him about tax policy and he sounds like Boomhauer from King of the Hill. Ask him about killing an Arab and he's as erudite as William Buckley on speed.)

Of course, multilatereralism is such a bitch because you have to deal with all those "civilized" countries who don't believe in the death penalty, like England, Canada, even the fucking Pope. And, of course, we live in the most barbaric country on this planet because we make a pretext to compassion when, really, all we wanna do is fuck some shit up. So O'Reilly mouths off about the U.N. and the Vatican asking for compassion, polls show the same number of Americans who support the death penalty support it for Saddam, etc., etc.

The point here is this: compassion and humanity are two-way streets. Just like the absurdity of not declaring Saddam a prisoner of war, even though he was caught during a presumptive war, so he can be tried as America wants him to be tried and not by some pussy-ass international tribunal like Nuremberg or the Hague. Once such rules of humanity are breeched, this is the kind of shit that comes around. If we don't declare the Guantanamo 600 POWs because we don't want to abide by the Geneva Convention towards them, then what if the Taliban capture our soldiers? That's an obvious comparison.

But how about this: George Bush believes Saddam's head belongs on a pike, paraded through the streets of Baghdad like a bowling trophy in Milwaukee bar. And so once again the lesson for all governments, for all tribes, for all angry peoples will be that the only response the U.S. can tolerate is violence. Compassion is for pussies - for the French, the U.N., for Jesus . . . oh, wait a second there . . . How about this- how about we don't kill Saddam? The Rude Pundit knows Saddam is eeevil. He knows that the gut says to disembowel this douchebag, to get all Hannibal Lecter on him and make him eat part of his brain before killing him. But that's the animal in us all. Maybe, just maybe, we oughta act like human beings every once in a while and let Saddam live in prison for the rest of his sorry ass days. Maybe the way we treat someone who has degraded the species as much as Saddam says something about how we value humanity. Maybe, just maybe, those who would profess to understand Jesus, the Bible, all that shit, oughta act like they really do. It is, after all, Christmas.

The hypocrisy of the righteous knows no bounds. They will kill and call it compassion. They will destroy and call it redemption. More tomorrow, when we bring it home.

Another Weekend, Another Break:
Next week - an abbreviated week because, well, fuck, it's Christmas, you know. But Monday-Wednesday, a brief series: What You Do To the Least of These. Until then, the Rude Pundit is taking a mulligan today and tomorrow.

Bush Gets Bitch Slapped by the Constitution:
Imagine the White House, festooned for the holidays, with American flags draped on every wreath like so many soldiers' caskets, with a Curious George model seated below a painting of Mama Babs, the spycams in the giant Nutcrackers, mock-up of Saddam's head atop the Christmas tree. All the things that make a season filled with joy. And why not? A couple of good spinnable numbers on the economy have come in, the fundraising continues at a pace that would allow the Bush campaign to make a Lord of the Rings-like trilogy about Dick and George, everyone's forgotten about that nastiness about WMDs, Congress is out of session so no embarassing need to actually compromise one's monarchical desires. All in all, it looks like it's gonna be Merry Christmas.

And then those goddamn courts just step in and fuck up the whole thing. Let's see how we can re-phrase the Second Circuit Court of Appeals decision saying that not only was U.S. citizen Jose Padilla actually entitled to a lawyer, but the majority stated that he should be charged or set free in 30 days. To recapitulate, the court said, "Say, bitch, yeah, I'm lookin' at you, Rumsfeld, Bush, Ashcroft, you little punk-ass pussy motherfuckers, see we live in a little sumpin' sumpin' called the United States of America, my bitches, and we got us a little sumpin' sumpin' called the Constitution, and one of the reasons that all those old motherfuckers back in the 1700s fought against the British was to prevent shit like detaining citizens without charges. Now, look, bitch, I know, I know, I know we are in a time of big boo bugaboo terrorism and shit, but, goddamn, if you're gonna fuck up the whole motherfuckin' country because you're so bitch-ass scared, then why not just hand the keys to the terrorists now? At least have the balls to go put your begging hands out to the Congress for the power. Now charge that motherfucker Padilla or set him free, or I'm shoving my foot up your adminstrative ass, and then we'll see who's got the dirty bomb." Or words to that effect.

Of course, the Bush adminstration won't back down. This is going to the Supreme Court. This is going to crisis, and, christ, aren't we are just so weary of all the battles, all the crises? In the end, Jose Padilla and, let's go conservative here, over half of the people being held at Guantanamo are less terrorists than losers and dupes who got caught up in a big ass governmental web.

Oh, how Curious George must have run amok in the White House to be so denied his powerful weapons of pen and paper to sign away the lives of Americans. And Dick rolled his eyes and grimaced that grimace he's so good at grimacing as he put on the yellow hat to chase George down from the Christmas tree so he could listen to Treasure Secretary John "Moneybags" Snow read Olive the Other Reindeer.

All in all, the Vice President thought as he pondered the court's decision and opened a bag of pretzels for the wayward, jabbering President, it could be worse. He could be this guy, whose apparent job is to chase around Barney, the White House dog, and film him delightfully shitting on the carpet, the snow, the American flag.

The Rude Pundit Can't Even Wrap His Head Around This One:
Here's how the case against Iraq is like a rape trial. Let's say there's this woman - call her Jane (no symbolic resonance - it's just easy to spell). Jane is a skanky bitch whore who likes to fuck men and then leave them cold, alone, and flaccid. She loves the cock. Can't get enough of it. She loves cock every which way - in her mouth, ass, kooz, hands. Jesus Christ, if you had a small enough dick, she'd let you fuck her ears. She is total fucking nympho - she doesn't distinguish - she'll fuck fat guys, skinny guys, even guys with chicken pox as long as she gets her fill of cock. Everyone who sees her knows she's heading for HIV or worse some day. However, she gets checked, like clockwork, every few months, so she can go forth and fuck some more. But let's say that one night she's kidnapped and drugged and a train is run on her by about thirty guys who, when she's bleeding, begging, sore, and weeping, keep beating and fucking her. And Jane, slut that she is, takes her tired, semen-stained, broken body to the hospital where she is helped to file charges against her assailants. They are arrested, which is satisfying, but a couple of cock-free months later, Jane discovers that she has HIV. At the trial, the defense attorneys are chomping at the bit to talk about her sexual history, much like Kobe Bryant's lawyers; they wanna show that Jane nothing more than a cock monger who finally fucked herself into oblivion. The judge at the trial allows that evidence, and, when the prosecutors tell the judge that Jane has HIV from the rape, after all the years of fucking, and isn't it just awful that not only was she raped, but she got HIV from the event, the judge says, "What's the difference?"

So it goes with George Bush, whose attitude is like the dickhead college frat party guy who's been told that if he keeps snorting coke and skipping classes he'll fail and then it turns out he passes all his classes. Bush apparently has decided that the spin on the whole issue of weapons of mass destruction is to say, "So what?" In what is perhaps the most public of Bush's blatant moves towards an absolutist presidency, in an interview with Diane Sawyer on ABC, the following exchange took place (the Rude Pundit generally refrains from long posted excerpts, but fuck it):

DIANE SAWYER: But let me try to ask — this could be a long question. ... ... When you take a look back, Vice President Cheney said there is no doubt, Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction, not programs, not intent. There is no doubt he has weapons of mass destruction. Secretary Powell said 100 to 500 tons of chemical weapons and now the inspectors say that there's no evidence of these weapons existing right now. The yellow cake in Niger, in Niger. George Tenet has said that shouldn't have been in your speech. Secretary Powell talked about mobile labs. Again, the intelligence — the inspectors have said they can't confirm this, they can't corroborate.

PRESIDENT BUSH: Yet.

DIANE SAWYER: — an active —

PRESIDENT BUSH: Yet.

DIANE SAWYER: Is it yet?

PRESIDENT BUSH: But what David Kay did discover was they had a weapons program, and had that, that — let me finish for a second. Now it's more extensive than, than missiles. Had that knowledge been examined by the United Nations or had David Kay's report been placed in front of the United Nations, he, he, Saddam Hussein, would have been in material breach of 1441, which meant it was a causis belli. And look, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein was a dangerous person, and there's no doubt we had a body of evidence proving that, and there is no doubt that the president must act, after 9/11, to make America a more secure country.

DIANE SAWYER: Again, I'm just trying to ask, these are supporters, people who believed in the war who have asked the question.

PRESIDENT BUSH: Well, you can keep asking the question and my answer's gonna be the same. Saddam was a danger and the world is better off cause we got rid of him.

DIANE SAWYER: But stated as a hard fact, that there were weapons of mass destruction as opposed to the possibility that he could move to acquire those weapons still —

PRESIDENT BUSH: So what's the difference?

DIANE SAWYER: Well —

PRESIDENT BUSH: The possibility that he could acquire weapons. If he were to acquire weapons, he would be the danger. That's, that's what I'm trying to explain to you. A gathering threat, after 9/11, is a threat that needed to be de — dealt with, and it was done after 12 long years of the world saying the man's a danger. And so we got rid of him and there's no doubt the world is a safer, freer place as a result of Saddam being gone.

DIANE SAWYER: But, but, again, some, some of the critics have said this combined with the failure to establish proof of, of elaborate terrorism contacts, has indicated that there's just not precision, at best, and misleading, at worst.

PRESIDENT BUSH: Yeah. Look — what — what we based our evidence on was a very sound National Intelligence Estimate. ...

DIANE SAWYER: Nothing should have been more precise?

PRESIDENT BUSH: What — I, I — I made my decision based upon enough intelligence to tell me that this country was threatened with Saddam Hussein in power.

DIANE SAWYER: What would it take to convince you he didn't have weapons of mass destruction?

PRESIDENT BUSH: Saddam Hussein was a threat and the fact that he is gone means America is a safer country.

DIANE SAWYER: And if he doesn't have weapons of mass destruction [inaudible] —

PRESIDENT BUSH: Diane, you can keep asking the question. I'm telling you — I made the right decision for America —

DIANE SAWYER: But-

PRESIDENT BUSH: — because Saddam Hussein used weapons of mass destruction, invaded Kuwait. ... But the fact that he is not there is, means America's a more secure country.

We can ramble on here and say the difference is over 400 American lives, thousands of injuries, tens of thousands of dead Iraqis (as Mark Morford points out, between war and sanctions, the United States has killed more people in Iraq in the last few years than Saddam could have ever hoped to in his wettest bondage wet dream). We could point out the devastation to the U.S. economy wrought by this policy, the fact that Osama is still out there, the fact that America is not safer at all, and on and on. Nobody on earth, save for a few people on his payroll, would ever believe that it is not an objective good that Saddam Hussein is not in power.

So why does "What's the difference?" go beyond the pale? Because it is such a public declaration of contempt for any opposing viewpoint. Because "What's the difference" means that nothing the President says matters if the outcome is one that can be spun into higher poll numbers. Because "What's the difference" is the attitude of those who will act on their own behalf without regard for greater good. Because "What's the difference" said on a national interview without any fear of recriminations from the statement means that we can be lied to and those in power can count on our complacency as long as they can make present images of a degraded enemy to us. Because, in the end, "What's the difference" means that the powerful don't understand democracy and don't care because neither do the rest of us.

Who is Jane in this equation? Who is the HIV-infected rape victim? Is it Iraq? Under Saddam or after? Is it the American public? The Constitution, which is suffocating behind glass in Washington and threatens to become another tattered, yellowed vestige of history?

From Mandingo 2: Strom's Story(A Romance of the Old New South):
"Young Strom Thurmond was a tall, thin man who, at 22, had a shiny diploma in horticulture from Clemson, and he was in the prime of his thrusting sexual desires, unsure where to put his constantly hard cock. It was 1924, when propriety kept the pearly gates of white bliss slammed shut like the door of the death chamber in the state prison. Oh, the young white debutante girls at the Edgefield County cotillion kept their pure, hymen-covered twats hidden from prying fingers, tongues, and penises until marriage or at least the promise of one with a large ring. Where was a young man to turn for testicular release? Strom's best buddies, Jed and Jesse, had already been squirting their man juice between the caramel-colored thighs of the servants who worked for their parents. Between them, they had fathered three mulattoes, two quadroons, and one cute little pickaninny octaroon.

"Strom was unable to stand it, every night in his room, the flicker of the new-fangled electrical lamp creating shadows, dark shadows, curvy shadows on his wall. Every night he would hold his engorged meat in his hand and masturbate furiously to the image, dreaming of Carrie Butler, the 16 year-old negress who worked for his parents. Ah, the handkerchiefs hidden under the mattress, sticky with Strom's budding love. Why, all the white men took a fine negress as their fuck toys. It was practically one's right as a young man in South Carolina. Better to take out your animal lusts on the plump, curvaceous ass of the house niggers than on the delicate sensibilities of the white women.

"Strom knew that Carrie was a lusty wench, the way she stared at him while she scrubbed the floors and cleaned the chamber pots. Young, strapping Strom knew that Carrie's stare meant so much more than "Don't step there - I just mopped that spot." That stare meant hunger, thunder, and lightning. It bore a message of sex: I am here for the taking. When I bend over to pick your soiled underwear off the floor, I want you to take me from behind. When I am kneading bread for hours on end, I'm imagining it's your manhood between my palms. My sweat is not the dripping of labor; it is the heat from within me, within my black African heart, drumming for white cock invading my wet cunt.

"Such stare-invitations are not to be taken lightly, even in 1924, even as young Strom was on his way to becoming a farmer and teacher. One night, a humid night when the smell of crushed, wet magnolia was the perfume of pussy, when the crickets in the cotton fields sounded like they might pierce the sky, they gave into their lusts. "Pleasure me, you ebony wench," Strom announced to the young Carrie, shaking with obvious clitoral glee. Strom made barn animal noises as he rammed himself against Carrie's prone figure. Screaming "Call me Tom Jefferson!" as he came, and the promise of "The South will rise again" in response to Carrie asking if he was done. Strom loved watching her unabashed tears of joy as she pulled her skirts down and headed back to the kitchen."

When Carrie announced that she was pregnant with his love child, Strom did what any upstanding white man with an eye for a future in politics would do. He had the child sent out of state and paid her for decades to keep her silent as he did what any upstanding white man would do in the South, in the first half of the 20th century, and worked to keep the nigras in their place. And now we can all wonder what might have happened to young Strom if baby Essie Mae had spoken out in the last eight decades. We can wonder if young Strom would have held onto his place in Congress, propelled by hate, decayed by age, mad with denial, like the South.

Howard Dean Doesn't Give a Shit What You Say:
The Rude Pundit doesn't endorse candidates. He tells you who's a jerk and who's a mensch. As far as the Rude Pundit can remember, Democratic candidate for President Howard Dean has never in his life made a speech or statement that would seem to indicate his deep, abiding man love for Saddam Hussein. As far as the Rude Pundit is aware, Dean has never met and shaken hands with the former dictator, now electroshocked pin cushion. And the Rude Pundit is pretty sure that Dean's father never belonged to an administration that coddled Hussein, even after the chemical weapons attack in 1983. Finally, the Rude Pundit is fairly certain that Dean never said that Iraqi people deserve long-term suffering at the hands of a crazed tyrant and his murdering sons. And if he did, you can be fairly certain that Joe Lieberman or Fox News would have broadcast it loudly.

But Dean is being condemned everywhere for daring to be against the war, and the basic spin is that Dean's candidacy is in trouble now that we got Saddam. It comes from the other viable candidates. It comes from everywhere on the right: from Fred Barnes, among others. And it's not even to mention the batshit insane column by Robert "The Leakkeeper" Novak accusing Dean of everything from witchcraft to child molestation or using molested children's bones to make witchcraft.

What's going on here is natural and unnatural, like Dick Cheney fucking Lynne with his "penis" on the dais at the VP residence. It's part of the natural cycle of the media's oath of fealty to all things Bush. And thank god something happened to continue the kneeling devotion. What's unnatural is that there's very few places to offer correctives to this image of Dean as being rabidly pro-Saddam. The cruel lies told with malice about Gore are likely to continue in a Dean nomination. The Daily Howler site is devoted like a monk to revealing all ways in which Gore was slandered by the press.

Dean's a tough little fucker, though. When he decides on his stand, he won't back down. Even after his "major" foreign policy speech yesterday, even after being attacked by the other Democrats, who are desperate to dent the armor, Dean would not back down. Angry? Fuck, yeah. And the one thing your "pundits" are missing about Dean's anger, which they see as a liability, is that angry people vote. It's what swept in Newt Gingrich and his cronies. It's what swept out Bush I.

Let the Democratic candidates go after each other now. Let them eviscerate each other and chew on each others' guts with a viciousness that makes wolverines seem like delicate, dainty diners. Because in the next round awaits Karl Rove, and he's grinning like a mad surgeon with a scalpel and an unconscious hobo. And any little blemishes that are hidden below the surface, Rove will slice out and reveal, calling a benign mole cancer and laughing as the patient dies from the open wound.

Depressing reading of the day: From U.S. News and World Report, our government in hiding.

Ironic, Huh?
That the day before Wesley Clark testifies against Slobodan Milosevic, thus looking like a President and like a soldier standing up to a tyrant, we capture Saddam? Conspiracy theorists, start your blogs.

Hit Me Baby One More Time:
Goddamn, the Rude Pundit can't get enough of the Saddam video. He can't go five minutes without seeing Hussein's hairy face, looking like the old bum in Amores Perros. He loves seeing the lice and chigger check of Hussein's hair. He feels a bit of loss if he misses one rerun of the tooth check and DNA swabbing. Jesus Christ, if they do an anal probe to see if Saddam has the weapons of mass destruction hidden up his ass, the Rude Pundit wants to see it. He wants it all.

He wants to see how barbaric we can all truly be, now that it appears the American mass media are Iraqi-by-proxy in their mad desire for torture and the death penalty. He wants to see Saddam getting the cattle prod to his nuts and Uday and Qusay's reconstructed heads being used as puppets to question him. He wants Fox News to have a poll on what can be inflicted. He wants a reality show where Saddam is kept alive to the whims of the American public, who suffered for so long under Saddam's reign. Every night, Americans can vote, by phone, online, shouting out of the window, on what they'd like done to Saddam tonight. There can be a contest for the person who comes up with the best, most painful torture that keeps him alive. The prize? Maybe an ear or a finger that you can mount on your wall and act like you confronted the Butcher of Baghdad yourself. "Hey, Sean, tonight I'd like to see Saddam forced to eat his own pickled cock and balls."

Yee-ha! And, man, the Rude Pundit fuckin' loves all the footage of the hole in the ground where Saddam was "hiding" before he was captured. He wants to see that hole some more. He loves watching every reporter on every fucking news channel get into that hole, and, if they can't, to get into a replica live on the air in the studio (as on MSNBC this afternoon). It's a great hole, a glory hole.

Yep, America. We got 'em. The one that did dick to us. The one that is right now just a projection of all our desires to capture Bin Laden. As astute reader Stephanie pointed out, for a while, right after the capture, every photo of Saddam, it seemed, was accompanied by a photo of Bin Laden. And, of course, the question of whether we'll capture Bin Laden seems to come up constantly. "Sadaam/Osama. Osama/Sadaam, Sadaam/Osama, Osama/Sadaam, Sadaam/Osama, Osama/Sadaam... is it any wonder people believed that Sadaam was behind 9/11? And is it any wonder that this isn't going to change? They may as well have put up photos of the towers burning," Stephanie said.

But, shit, and whoopee, we got 'em. And as Atrios points out, Leslie Stahl on CBS was practically begging Donald Rumsfeld to feed her torture fetish. Asked ace reporter Stahl, "Let's say he's not forthcoming. Would we deprive him of sleep? Would we make it very cold where he is, or very hot?"

Oh, man, only if we all get to watch it live. So we can dine to it. Jack off to it like a lover. Over and over and over and over . . .

Well, Yippee-Ki-Yay, Motherfuckers:
In the houses of every viable Democratic candidate, a cry of "Goddamnit" went up into the rafters this morning. And then a quick, ashamed recapitulation of that thought, something like, "But, of course, it's great that we captured Saddam Hussein. He was eeevil." And in the White House, George Bush masturbated furiously at the thought of swaggering into the State of the Union address in January, Hussein's head in a bag, ready to hoist it high in the air and scream in triumph before the gathered members of Congress. "Fuck with me? Fuck with my Dad? See what you get, bitch?" he'll yell as he swings the head into Hillary Clinton's lap. And Hillary, good hedging hawk that she is, will toss the head aloft where it can be batted around like a beach ball at a Jimmy Buffet concert.

So, in case you're not a sentient being on this earth, we did indeed capture Saddam Hussein alive. And, you know, shit, of course it's great when vicious, murdering tyrants get captured. Some of us way over here on the left wanted Chile's Pinochet captured years before he was. We'd still like to see Uzbekistan's torturing thugs brought into custody. Oh, but, wait, that's right. They were and are allies. The capture of Saddam has more in common with Bush I's Panamanian adventure to hunt down Manuel Noriega. Both are cases of the United States cleaning up its own feces after it took a shit on the floor of international human rights in favor of opportunism and profit and expediency. And we killed a hell of a lot of civilians to do it.

And Saddam is captured. And the United States is not one scintilla safer than it was last week, before the raid. Not one act of terrorism will be halted because of this. Any battle that was going to "take place on our soil" will still take place here. Attacks on American soldiers in Iraq will continue, as the President indicated in his "lower your expectations" speech on Sunday. In terms of anything other than militaristic pride, the capture and trial of Saddam means nothing to America.

You know what's going to happen. Stocks will rally in an orgy of celebration. The media will declare the White House chances dead for all the Democratic candidates, with special piling on of Howard Dean. And Saddam in all this? Like a character in a Paul Bowles story, Saddam will be stripped and castrated; tongue cut out, he will be forced to wear bells on his shredded garments so that he may ring his bells and dance whenever Bush pushes him out to dance. In the election, fuck the economy, fuck the war on terror, fuck the environment, just watch Saddam dance. And America will smile at the sight of Saddam dancing for them. We will be filled with national pride that we got the monster.

But questions oughta linger, like the uncomfortable thought of Saddam saying he punk'd the U.S. on the whole weapons of mass destruction thing. Or the idea that now that Saddam is gone, and the attacks continue unabated, who are we gonna blame? Or have we set Iraq on the fast track to a "democratically" elected Islamic fundamentalist government?

Or maybe just this: now that, ding, dong, the witch is dead (or captured), when can we bring the troops home?

Walking Away for the Weekend - But Ann Coulter Is Still a Cunt:
The Rude Pundit needs to purge for the weekend. The latest Halliburton thing drove him over the edge. He needs to wipe away from his brain all the images of massacred children, a pregnant Andrew Card, and George Bush's tiny little limp dick in order to function as a human being in America. So he'll return on Monday.

Until then, enjoy the mad rantings of chief cunt Ann Coulter calling Howard Dean "an insane person," and relish the delicious irony of someone as objectively nutzoid as Coulter deigning to label anyone else crazy. The Rude Pundit thinks he'll buy the Ann Coulter action figure so he can jack off on its face as it says, "Liberals hate America, they hate flag-wavers, they hate abortion opponents, they hate all religions except Islam, post 9/11. Even Islamic terrorists don't hate America like Liberals do." The Rude Pundit will smack its plastic ass and tell it, "Yeah, but you like that, don't you, bitch?"

Don't Worry - We're Not Going To Pretend To Care:
We here in the hinterlands of the "democratic" populace of the country won't notice a goddamn thing. We are blind to all things but those we are commanded by our TVs to see. We are shopping, drinking, shitting, reality show watching zombies. So don't make us pay attention to anything that might break through our deep, heartfelt apathy.

Like the decision by the Iraqi Health Ministry to stop counting civilian casualties in that country, a move that, no matter how loud the denials by the Coalition Provisional Authority, had to have the CPA imprimatur in order to take place. Remember who runs every fuckin' thing in Iraq? No governmental agent takes a piss without our okay. So that's it. It won't matter if we kill 100,000 civilians in our demented attempt to transform Iraq into a great experiment in a nation run by corporations. Fuck, it won't matter if Halliburton kills a couple of thou to maintain its contracts. We won't know. Oh, sure, whiny villagers will always assert that this toddler or that teenager was gunned down, but, c'mon, prove it. Or, even better, prove America wrong.

Like the "battle" of Samarra, where the United States allegedly killed 54 guerilla fighters. Except that's just what we claimed. Except no one could find the bodies. Except the only casualties in hospitals were civilians. What the hell happened? Does the military now clean up after itself? And if there was a body clean-up crew, was it a subsidiary of Halliburton? And how much did they overcharge the U.S. to dispose of the bullet-riddled bodies of the "guerillas"? The Rude Pundit digresses. The military said it was 54 and for most Americans that was good enough. Because thank god we're fighting an enemy that doesn't look white. Otherwise, we might give a rat's ass about their fate.

Like the Arab-American waiter who was prevented from working a function that our President attended in Baltimore. Like the 170,000 or so people from Muslim and Arab countries who were forced to register with the government, none of whom has been charged as a terrorist. Like whoever the hell is being held in Guantanamo. Like the Human Rights Watch report that says American cluster bombs have killed over 1000 civilians, although, fuck, we won't know about that anymore.

Remember: America doesn't care. Apathy is the foundation of the right-wing agenda. Apathy of the majority of the population. The blinders of religion for another big segment. And the warm, warm light of rage for the rest of us. So when the President treats our "allies" with contempt and bullying, we can sit in front of our flickering TV light, watch our newsbreaks, and then wonder if we'll be able to see Paris Hilton fuck her ex-boyfriend again on the Internet. And around the water cooler, we won't talk about how our country is a viscous miasma of hate and pettiness. We'll talk about Paris's tits. Those sweet little rich white tits at whose nipple suckles the conscience of a lost nation.

America: God, We're Such Assholes:
So here we are. America. Goddamn, motherfucking America, man. Soviets are gone. China's a thorn, but mostly complacent in search of the dollar or euro. So we're all that's left. America. The Big Kahuna. Nobody can fuck with us. And how do we handle being the world's only superpower. Through friendship, negotiation, reaching out, and kindness? Nope. We decided that we're going to be total dicks.

How else do you explain the decision by the Department of Defense to punish Russia, France, Germany, and (maybe) Canada for not supporting the war by not allowing contractors in those countries to take part in the orgy of corporate spending known as "rebuilding" Iraq? You gotta be a total insecure dick to do that, not the gorilla in the chimp cage of international relations. And, of course, as every policy decision by the Bush Administration has created lately, an outcry from different quarters of the political world is telling us how pissed off everyone is at this move. Of course, the countries involved are mightily hacked off. Even conservatives find the move "heavy-handed" and "stupid." And this closed door policy comes at a time when the folksy but evil James Baker is heading off to Europe to see if these same countries, these same fucking countries, will forgive the debts of Iraq. This isn't a foreign policy. It's a bunch of shit made up on the fly. As Josh Marshall points out, they have no idea what they're doing.

Said conservatives at The Weekly Standard revealed some cute blind optimism when they said that they "suspect" that Bush would overrule the Pentagon. But, vile as Bill Kristol and Bob Kegan are, they didn't realize that the President is a total smirking cock. See, he pronounced today that he stands by the decision, and, unlike that deviant fuck Paul Wolfowitz, who tried to finesse and lie about this whole thing by saying some babbling bullshit about "national security" concerns as to why the Big Four were excluded, Bush didn't even try to hide his contempt, saying, "It's very simple: Our people risked their lives; friendly coalition folks risked their lives. And, therefore, the contracting is going to reflect that. And that's what the U.S. taxpayers expect," with nary a poll of U.S. taxpayers in sight. See, that's the way assholes work, whether on the street or in the White House. An asshole says he's gonna do it his way and if you don't wanna do it his way, you go fuck yourself. And if you're a real asshole, and someone threatens you, you usually say something like, "Bring it on." Or, in this case, when asked about international trade law being violated by this move, Bush responded, "International law? I better call my lawyer."

When did we become such a nation of assholes? Led by the kind of frat boy asshole failure braggart jerk-off whose ass we always wanted to kick or see kicked out in the playground or behind the bar? Instead, we allow, without so much as a whimper, our "elected" leaders to represent us by behaving like bullies. Our foreign policy is all about pimp-slapping other countries. "France, bitch, you best bring in the benjamins," we say, slamming France against a wall and holding it by its neck as we slap its face back and forth. "That's right, bitch. You best listen to me. Now, get out there and get on your knees and work those froggy lips."

Bush is the asshole guy who shows up at the club in his Ferrari, decked out in the Armani, so much bling weighing down his neck, packing heat. So why does an asshole male drive a hot sports car or wear expensive clothes or carry a gun? It's because he knows that inside his pants is a tiny little dick and he's gonna lash out at the world 'cause he so hates himself for his little dick.

Reminder:
Today - Hear the Rude Pundit speak the rudeness on Radio Left at 5 p.m. EST.
And come back this afternoon for today's post: America - God, We're Such Assholes.

America: Fuck With Us and We'll Kill Your Kids:
Oh, the suffering of children - so sweet, so innocent. Always the moral barometer of a nation's actions. We got the naked Vietnamese girl, screaming, having torn her napalm-burnt clothes off her because, well, shit, napalm fucking hurts. Three year-old John-John saluting his dad's coffin as it passed him by. Starving children in whatever country is starving this week. Children, man. Always bearing the burdens of the moral failings of we grown-ups. We beat 'em, starve 'em, burn 'em, put 'em in closets for months on end. How a badly person or a nation treats its own or other kids says a lot about how fucked up that person or nation is. And all indications right now are that America's pretty fucked up.

So what the hell is going on in Afganistan? It's not bad enough that the U.S. military, realizing that, holy shit, there really is still a war going on in Afghanistan, bombed some shithole village in a misguided effort to find a "terrorist" who had long left and in the effort, offed 9 playing kids. But then, just to show that if you fuck-up once, you may as well fuck-up twice, in a wonderful "oops, I did it again" moment, we just killed another six kids, sleeping ones this time, in another shithole village. Now, the Rude Pundit may be really, really off base here, but don't we, America, the Godzilla in the Tokyo of global realpolitick, brag about our military prowess? That we have satellite and laser guided missles that can pinpoint the stinking rectum of an enemy soldier and shove that warhead up that rectum with all the precision of an elephant fucking an ant? Isn't that our hype? And as Andrew Card declares that our intelligence failures leading up to the war are a "moot point," doesn't the wholesale murder of fifteen kids seem to also point to an intelligence breakdown of increasingly distressing proportions? There's fifteen kids that'll never go to school, never get to fall in love, never get to be cool.

Or, and here's the deal, maybe the military and the government don't fucking care. We're America, goddamnit. With us or against us, motherfuckers. You don't support our war? Fuck you, then; your country doesn't get to dine on the buffet of the corpse of Iraq. (More on this tomorrow.) Sure, we apologize for the deaths - sort of like a big "D'oh" in the face of grieving parents and others. But, really, and, c'mon, we don't care. On CNN this morning, the United States' killing of six kids was a story discussed after Michael Jackson, after the latest missing hot college girl.

Well, maybe there has been an improvement, though. Used to be the government just covered up this kind of devastation in hopes that no one would find out. Like My Lai in Vietnam. But, as the bare blip on the radar of the Toledo Blade's recent series on another massacre in that war, we've just stopped caring.
(Tip of the blog to Rude Two for help with today's entry.)

Buzzflash Clickers:
Scroll down for the Andrew Card entry. But enjoy all the rudeness.

Special Rude Pundit Announcement:
Hear the Rude Pundit speak. On Thursday, December 11 at 5 p.m. Eastern, the Rude Pundit will appear on the internet radio program Conversations at Radio Left. He will be spreading the rudeness for a full hour. (And, yeah, the Rude Pundit is aware that chances are the audience is about, oh, let's be optimistic here, twenty, but any chance to make the world a ruder place is a well worth taking.)

Sham Turkey, Sham Policies:
Of course the turkey was a fake. Unless they imported Martha fucking Stewart over to Iraq (and who knows what Karl Rove would do for a photo op), there was no way they were going to get such turkey perfection in a military base in the middle of a war. Or at least there's no reason they should. But fake turkeys look better than steam plates, right? And therein lies the reality of the Bush administrations "policies."

Take, and why not, the Medicare "reform" act. Here's Bush signing the bill into law, surrounded by the usual group of white guys in dark suits, as well as prop old people who must have been promised more gruel and an extra change of bedsheets that night by the nursing home staff in order to stand there and act like the changes to Medicare will actually do them any good. Seniors mostly think it's bullshit, and unless someone wants to tell Grandpa that he's wrong and needs to be taken care of and shut the fuck up, Grandpa, or we won't change your soiled diapers, then maybe Congress oughta pay attention to more than just the leadership of the AARP. And, since no one was given a chance to read the bill before it was passed, nice little things keep popping up, like the fact that seniors can't get private insurance to cover their share of prescriptions should they opt for the government's "program." But that's okay - because Bush could actually say with a straight face that this bill, which was designed behind closed doors by rich Republicans and lobbyists from the drug industry, "happened because of grassroots work. A lot of our fellow citizens took it upon themselves to agitate for change, to lobby on behalf of what's right." Man, sometimes the bullshit is so thick you can't see the turkey for the platter. Even conservatives, real conservatives, the evil fuckers who want to shrink government to nothing, hate this bill because of how much it costs.

But now Bush can ride everywhere and declare he kept his promise on prescription drugs. It's like hoisting a fake turkey for the cameras. All that matters is the image and the illusion. Who gives a shit that the soldiers actually ate rations from a bunch of tin steam plates? Who cares that Medicare is reformed in name only? Compassion is a coat, like a fighter pilot uniform, that you can put on for the cameras and take off when it matters.

Because Sometimes Bad Things Do Happen To Assholes:
Rep. "Speedy" Bill Janklow, Republican from South Dakota, was found guilty of manslaughter a little while ago. Janklow, a former governor and one of the tree killers who co-sponsored the "Healthy Forests" initiative that's guaranteed to raise tons of timber money for the Bush campaign, will probably avoid jail time for his little car accident that killed a person and that he blamed on his diabetes, but, still, it's fun to think about his 240 pound ass bent over a prison bunk while his cell mate fucks him from behind, saying, "How do you like that insulin injection?"

John Kerry - Calling a Fuck-up a Fuck-up:
So there's John Kerry, being interviewed by Rolling Stone magazine, and the interview covers the basic subjects: Iraq, Afghanistan, Schwarzenegger. Then Will Dana asks about Howard Dean's anti-war stance, and, in response, Kerry says he expected Dean to be "against everything," but that he didn't "expect George Bush to fuck it up as badly as he did". And the interview goes on. Of course, the White House has to come out on the talk shows, saying that Kerry should apologize. Attack dog Andrew Card said that the remark was "beneath John Kerry," forgetting that Time magazine had previously reported that President Bush said, "Fuck Saddam" in reference to Hussein last year. Which then begs the question of what Kerry should apologize for? For the word or the sentiment?

Because, really, and even if you supported this whole debacle in Iraq, George Bush has pretty much fucked it up. More soldiers dying? That's a fuck-up. Increased attacks expected? That'd be a fuck-up. Housing crisis? Fuck-up. Creation of Israel-like blockaded towns? Yup, you guessed it - fuck-up. It's all fucked up. By any objective measure, it's fucked-up. By any kind of goals-related outcome, unless one is the increasingly frantically bipolar Donald Rumsfeld or the increasingly demonstratively embodiment of evil that is Dick Cheney, one has to see that, well, shit, George Bush fucked it up. Badly. Give props to our homey, John Kerry, for speaking it like it is. (And, frankly, it's a far less cynical play to the youth vote than, say, Howard Dean's declaration that Wyclef Jean is his favorite musician.)

But Card actually said something far more sinister than any declaration of high-falutin' propriety at vulgar language. The White House Chief of Staff, in a move that would make Soviet-era revisionists proud, declared that lingering questions about faulty intelligence are a "moot point." In other words, hey, America, you're fucked and we think you're too fucking stupid to care why. Let's put it this way: say that Andrew Card was a whore (an actual one - the kind that gets fucked in the ass for money and will suck a dick for . . . oh, wait, okay, he already does that. Anyways) and that somewhere along the long hard slog of a whore-road, he gets knocked up (he's a female whore). And Whore Andy wants to keep the baby because she needs something to giver her life meaning. Now, someone, somewhere is going to pay for it. But Whore Andy can't remember which john might have done it - there's been too many. She can easily eliminate all the hand jobs, blow jobs, and most of the anal. But that still leaves a good number. Whore Andy can declare that it's a "moot point" who fucked her because, you know, someone, somewhere is going to pay for the baby. And, really, who gives a shit who that is? The money could come from he government, from an old boyfriend, or from some johns she rolls after knocking them out or slicing their throats.

A moot point? What Andrew Card means is: "Okay, okay, we fucked up." It's as much a confession as you're gonna find these days. Only the guilty want the truth squashed and silenced. "A moot point" is a worse obscenity than anything that comes out of John Kerry's mouth.

So if anyone criticizes Kerry for his language, if the O'Reillys, Hannities, and Scarboroughs wanna make an issue out of it, Kerry should just say, "Go fuck yourselves."

Only 18 Shopping Days Left, But Only One More Day For This:
What could be a better gift than Ann Coulter's "book" that she "wrote" with her own "brain"? Why, that's an easy one. Autographed Treason. That's right. The fine art of cuntistry emblazoned with the shaky script of Ann Coulter, where you can see in her loops and dots all the rage, hate, and Joe McCarthy-fucking desire. Ya better act fast, though. Today is the last day to get it delivered by Christmas. And then you can burn it. Something I'm sure Ann Coulter would find ironically gratifying.

Special Rude Pundit Announcement:
Hear the Rude Pundit speak. On Thursday, December 11 at 5 p.m. Eastern, the Rude Pundit will appear on the internet radio program Conversations at Radio Left. He will be spreading the rudeness for a full hour. (And, yeah, the Rude Pundit is aware that chances are the audience is about, oh, let's be optimistic here, twenty, but any chance to make the world a ruder place is a well worth taking.)

Why Rush Limbaugh Should Be Force-Fed His Own Liposuctioned Fat:
Okay, the Rude Pundit has said it before, and it bears saying again: what happens to celebrities has little or nothing to do with the day-to-day lives of Americans. It doesn't matter to the general public if Michael Jackson is forcing cancer-ridden children to anally rape Bubbles the Chimp on the back of giraffe. And Paris Hilton's "pain" is not ours. It doesn't fucking matter.

Unless it does. Unless the dirty deeds of the rich and famous reveal something larger. Like, say, Rush Limbaugh's drug addiction. While Limbaugh thrashes and burns on the air like Captain Queeg on the witness stand, the noose is tightening around his fleshy, fat-depleted neck. His doctors' offices are being raided for records showing that Limbaugh "doctor-shopped," that is, got prescriptions from multiple doctors to feed his voracious appetite for hillbilly heroin. And Limbaugh has his lawyer, Roy Black, out making the rounds of the talk shows, defending the thousands and thousands of illegal pills Limbaugh ingested, saying that the prosecutors are looking to "publicly embarass" Limbaugh. "Why is Rush Limbaugh the only person treated like this in America?" said Black , apparently unaware that the answer to that question is: "Because he's rich and white - otherwise his ass would already be behind bars for possession with intent."

Ultimately, though, the Rush Limbaugh case, for all the delightful things we can say about that fat fuck finally getting his comeuppance, demonstrates something about the right in this country. So many who would proclaim righteousness and rightness are rotten at their core. They are diseased. They are the syphilitic whores of political discourse - you pick one up because she looks good, but, fuck, the diseases you get after the fucking.

Rush will flail about until he can flail no more, when he's finally, completely, shat-upon dead as a voice. But, like capturing the local drug lord, nothing will stop until you stop the demand.

Break-Ups Are Always Messy:
Here's the Rude Pundit's take on the vicious turn Congress has taken: Let's posit a gay male couple at the end of their relationship. We'll call them Ron and Dave. Ron and Dave have been a fairly successful couple, they've lasted more years than many. It's been rocky. But mostly they've functioned well together. They've developed a big group of friends who like to hang with them because Ron and Dave, for all they're faults, like the occasional screaming fight in front of the neighbors, throw the most awesome parties where everyone gets drunk, the condoms are free, and even the occasional straight guy who wanders in enjoys an evening of experimenting with cock. All in all a really nice set-up. But one day Ron turns into an asshole, and not the good kind, the welcoming kind that needs a little KY in order to be useful. A real jerk. Ron decides he wants to be a top and only a top. No more fucking for Dave, only getting fucked. And if Dave even asks for a blow job, Ron has said he's going to walk out the door. But Ron still gives Dave the occasional hand job for release - it shuts Dave up, makes him think there's still love, and gets him to bend over one more time for Ron. Dave isn't dumb. He thinks this will pass, that Ron will one day welcome him back fully with open arms and mouth and all will be well. But Ron isn't on that path. It's sad, really, to watch Ron and Dave, think their friends, it's really sad to watch Dave, who used to be so full of life. Ron pushes Dave even further, introducing leather cuffs, nipple clamps, and large dildos to their sex life. Then Ron finally says he can't take the sight of Dave, get your fucking shit out of my cool Chelsea apartment, and go fuck yourself. Dave is devastated. What's more, Ron has decided to make this into a war: he's telling all the friends that it's Dave's fault for the break up. That Dave has a little dick, that Dave wouldn't let Ron shove the whole nine-inch vibrator into his ass. In fact, if you still want to go to cool parties, you better abandon Dave and just hang with Ron. So there's Dave, alone, waiting for a cheap apartment to open up, with the few friends who decided to stand by him while the rest have decided that their own hedonistic joy is more important than anything having to do with loyalty or what's right. They stick with Ron, who has the great apartment, who has the best parties. Who, by Ron's report, has the bigger dick.

Now let's get a little of that fat fuck Dr. Phil on Dave. Maybe even a little of that vile cunt Dr. Laura. You wanna tell Dave there's two paths, and they're not mutually exclusive: forget about it, move on, find someone else, new friends, better friends, a new lover, one who cares, understands. Or go after Ron, even if it means setting fire to the apartment, that in the ashes everyone will realize what an asshole Ron is and leave his fucking ass in the soot and dirt and watch him wallow about for something to fuck.

Okay, long goddamn metaphor, but the Rude Pundit thinks it's apt. The Democrats are on the verge of congressional irrelevance, and, for the most part, they don't realize that they have become their own enablers. They think the old rules still apply, and, well, they're wrong. The Medicare "reform" legislation is, of course, Exhibit A. Not only did the Republicans break all deals with Democrats, not only did they refuse to allow anyone besides lackeys and lobbyists to help craft the bill, not only did they hold the vote open for three hours in the House of Representatives, not only did Tom Daschle fail to filibuster the bill, but the Republicans went after their own with a horrifying viciousness, like little fucking wolverines tearing the flesh off a wounded rabbit, like drunken frat boys with a roofies-induced unconscious sorority sister, like, well, like, you know, Republicans.

As "reported" by Robert Novak in his "column," Republican Rep. Nick Smith of Michigan, who had voted against the "legislation," was intimidated, bribed, and basically ripped apart with Torquemada-like effectiveness by the Republican leadership. Since the retiring anachronism (a member of Congress with principles) couldn't be personally bought, the Repubs told him they'd get $100,000 in soft money to his son's campaign for Congress. Or DeLay would squash Smith's son like the bugs the Hammer used to exterminate before he discovered that hate had electable legs. In fact, the bribe was so blatant you'd think someone would investigate, but, in another of many recent examples that prove the press is not in any way, shape or form "liberal," the story's been mostly ignored.

And, like a high school girl who has just been told that her nail color makes her look fat, the President, in his early morning arm twisting session while the Medicare vote was occurring, hung up in a huff on Florida Republican Rep. Tom Feeney, who, in an attempt to actually behave like a conservative, opposed the bill because of its cost. Cringe-inducing, no? The idea that the allegedly most powerful man in the free world, the man who may have the power to jail any of us at a whim, is so petty, so pathetic, that he can't handle a single dissenter.

But enough. Here's the one solution: since open bribery in the form of soft money is the order of the day in Washington, it's time to tap into some of that Hollywood, George Soros, or Bill Gates funds and offer whatever it takes to get Olympia Snowe and Lincoln Chaffee in the Senate to switch parties. Promise them anything - promise to fucking whack their opponents. But get them to switch or go independent. Goddamn, those snowbound lobster eaters in Maine won't care. And Nebraska has enough people crazed by wide open spaces and wheat pollen to go along with it. But show the thugs that are running the joint that we can be just as dirty as them.

So my solution for Dave? Everyone moves on. Everyone takes it like a grown-up and shrugs his or her shoulders and moves on. Fuck that. Burn the apartment, even if you have to burn some of your shit along with Ron's. But watch it burn and laugh because Ron won't know what hit him.

A Few More Words From the Clambering Masses:
The Rude Pundit finds it very interesting how desperately people in America want a voice. Much like the Rude Pundit himself, Americans want someone, anyone, to listen to them. You wanna know why there's such anger in this country? Because everyone is beginning to understand that they've be punk'd. That the lies have gotten so blatant that Americans are looking up from their televisions and saying, "Whoa, just a fuckin' second here. If there's such a great goddamn recovery going on in this country, where's my job? Oh, that's right, it's in the 'service' industry, which means I can temp as a janitor and my wife can temp as a Motel 6 maid." They're looking around at their kids and sayin', "You mean every fuckin' penny of this war is going to be paid for by my kids? Every fuckin' penny of this lameass prescription drug benefit that's going to the drug makers is gonna be taken out of the college funding for my kids? Christ, who's gonna keep me in Depends when I'm old and shitting myself like Paul Wolfowitz when he was in the Baghdad hotel that was bombed?"

There's a lot of people out there (and unlike that piece of fox shit Bill O'Reilly, who constantly talks about how he understands "the folks" in this country, the Rude Pundit actually lives outside of a TV or radio studio) who are realizing that no one of any power hears them. They realize they have no access to those in power. They have been sold a bill of goods on war, democracy, and morality by people whose ethical standards are as extreme as John Gotti in his enemy-whacking prime.

People are lookin' around and trying to make someone listen, like C.A.G., who wrote to the Rude Pundit:
"I turned 46 today and I haven't been this angry in my life...I have two sons, a loving husband of 26 years, a small business of 15 years....life has been good....until now.....one son is 15 and is extremely interested/fearful/angry with the WAR! What does the future hold for him? What does a parent do when the entire family is opposed to this fiasco and everything is at stake.....Draft dodger? How's that fit? Want that title for life...okay...conscientious objector.....better? I am beside myself with anger and the fact that these choices are a real issue in our lives....this administration has to go.....can one half of the US really be as STUPID as I fear they are? I beg the Democratic candidates to ask themselves...is this war worth your childrens lives...honestly...is it? If that question can loom in the forefront of their consciousness then perhaps they will fight with the passion they need to defeat this dishonest bunch of opportunists....imagine sending your loved one off to fight a war for the Cheney/Bush portfolio....we've lost too many loved ones already..."

Or like Lance, who said that any Democrat who calls Bush "President" should have to "dine on conservaskank Ann Coulter's edible underpants."

The Rude Pundit says to keep talking, keep the anger growing, foster it like the begining flames of a fire. When it begins to scorch, when things begin to be consumed by the fire, then the real voice of the people will be heard.

Oh, and to JBS, who has the sad, sad position of living in Tom DeLay's district (does the Hammer keep a houseboat there so he never has to filthy his feet with the dirt of Sugarland, TX?), no, the Rude Pundit is not Helen Thomas, although Helen Thomas is a megababe in her eighties and the Rude Pundit would gladly remove her diaper to have a nooner with her while Walter Cronkite masturbated in the corner of the room.

Tomorrow: The Rude Pundit's easy solution to the rage in Congress, and it doesn't involve shitcanning the whole idea of representative democracy and starting from scratch.

The Rabble Speaks - More Advice to Democrats:
The Rude Pundit opened up the floor to additional suggestions for ways the Democrats can act as if they have the balls to win an election. Herewith, for good or ill, are some of the best from the many responses:

A commercial idea from GD (which, unfortunately, does not stand for "Goddamn"):
This ad assumes there will be a major photo op of the signing of the medicare bill with Bush, Delay, Frist, et al...
Ad starts with a blank black background with some ominous symphony music playing, then the following words come up in bold white letters:
"Democratcs have said for years that Republicans would sell-out their mothers for a few dollars in tax breaks."
"Now, we have proof..."
CUT TO VIDEO OF MEDICARE SIGNING CEREMONY.
Cut back to black background.
"Vote Democrat and Save Your Mothers from a life of elderly poverty."

In a more conventional vein, Myk offers more commercial subjects and scripts:
"A variation [on the Bush/aircraft carrier commercial from RP 11/25] that would work would include how much taxpayer money for the war ended up in the pockets of his campaign contributors.
Or the even simpler one:
George Bush likes to dress up like a pilot now....
But when he was in the Air National Guard, he deserted and didn't bother to finish his service.
And this is the guy who questions OTHER people's patriotism?
AND
Play clip of his speech where he mentions sacrifice.
"We sacrifice our tax dollars" (show clip of someone writing a check)
"We sacrifice our sons and daughters" (clip of soldiers dragging a fallen comrade out of battle)
"We even sacrifice the respect of our allies around the world." (clips of largest demonstrations in history all over the world)
"What does George Bush ask his rich friends to sacrifice?"(clip of him selling repeal of inheritance tax)
"He cut their taxes." (clip of Cheney laughing)
"He gave them no bid contracts in Iraq worth billions of tax dollars."
"Maybe he thinks sacrifice is only for people who have to work for living."

[The Rude Pundit thinks the image of a laughing Dick Cheney would frighten the children into voting Democrat for life.]

Encouraging rudeness from Brendan S. as "he" writes,
"I have always been fond of the unfounded accusation. The same way the republicans threw any sexual harassment suit at Clinton, so should the left throw ANYTHING at the Republicans. We could enlist Larry Flynt (he helped out last time, by outing a number of unfaithful husbands in the senate and house). Even if it has to be planted: Arlen Specter or Orrin Hatch should have child porn planted on their computers; child prostitutes from thailand should be paid off to destroy their names. A photo of Dennis Hastert or Tom Delay with his dick in a 16 year old boy's ass."

No real advice, but the Rude Pundit giggled like a school girl getting her first finger fucking at Steve L.'s rant:
"I cannot believe how incredibly sorry and scummy the Republicans are. I mean rock-hard sorry scum. Dehydrated-rock-hard sorry scum. Scum so sorry that it goes way beyond the sorry scum we know into a whole different dimension of sorry scum. They are trans-sorry, scum. Meta-sorry scum. Sorry scum collapsed on itself so far that even the neutrons have collapsed. Sorry scum gotten so dense that no intellect and decency can escape. Singularity sorry scum. Blazing hot mid-day sun on Mercury sorry scum. They emit more sorry scum in one second than our entire galaxy emits in a year. Quasar sorry scum. They are disgustingly sorry scum-sucking trolls. Nothing in our universe can really be this sorry. Perhaps this is some primordial fragment from the original big bang of sorry scum. Some pure essence of a sorry scum so uncontaminated by anything else as to be beyond the laws of physics that we know. They are the epiphany of sorry scum to me. Fuck the sorry scum Republicans!"

More amazing advice from the blog-reading public tomorrow. And keep the commercial ideas coming. Someone's gotta drag democracy back into this country. It sure as shit ain't gonna be the O'Reillys or Limbaughs or Coulters of the world. It may as well be your Rude Pundit.

And Then There Was the Day We Beheld the Turkey:
By now we've all seen the pictures of our Fearless Leader holding the big fucking platter of Thankgiving delight in the middle of the troops in Baghdad. Goddamn, that was a beautiful fucking bird, a beautiful fucking platter - all arranged with grapes and vegetables and motherfucking garnish, for chrissake. Man, you'd think we didn't have tens of thousands of American soldiers in the middle of a desert, wondering which one of them is going to be shot, blown up, or knifed. You'd think, what with the big grin, the tears (yes, tears) of our President that everything is so hunky-fucking-dory that we don't have to worry our pretty little heads here at home. The President's got big shoulders, big arms to carry that big fucking American-looking platter - he can bear all our pain.

Except, of course, it's never that easy. Apparently, despite the best lies available from house negro Condi Rice, when it was first suggested by Andrew Card to Bush that he go to Baghdad, his reaction was something not unakin to, "Whatchoo talkin' 'bout, Andy?" At least that's the spin - that he had security concerns. Let's instead put it this way: our pussy president, who obviously has many people shopping the Army-Navy store for clothes in his size, is told in no uncertain terms by Karl Rove, "Look, you little worm-man, we're not losing the next fucking election. We already blew the aircraft carrier photo op. Get your skinny drunk ass on the plane so we can get pics of you giving the love to the real soldiers." The President, quivering with fear, having shit himself twice at the idea of actually going somewhere where the people who have contact with him have not given him money, has Andrew Card yank off his boxers where he's dropped a load on the Presidential seal, makes Condi wipe his ass, puts on a fresh pair, and agrees to go, lip shaking, on the verge of tears, tears that Rove tells him to hold the fuck in until he's in front of the military men so he can look like a man's man, letting a tear out that the press can jump on for proof Bush has a soul.

And let's be clear here: Bush no more "visited Iraq" than the prisoners at Guantanamo are vacationing in Cuba. He went from bubble to bubble to bubble. Christ, did they even let him touch the ground?

Goddamn, that was a great fucking platter of food. Goddamn, it was so perfect you'd expect the corpse of Norman Rockwell to walk in and rip Bush's hands off so that he may never touch such American perfection again.

Tomorrow: some of your help-the-Democrats responses from this past weekend. Yep, some of them have been deemed worthy to publish by the Rude Pundit.

Eat a Turkey For Jesus, Contribute Advice To the Democrats:
The Rude Pundit is taking the weekend off. He craves the triptophan. He wants to sleep gently in a triptophan-induced coma and wake up in a world where there's no Rumsfelding, no Bush, no nothing, but sweet, sweet opiates like triptophan. And, well, Vicodin. Back on Monday. Meanwhile, read below to try to help the wayward children of the Democratic party.

Advice To the Democrats From the Rude Pundit:

If you’re in a street fight and you are playing by the Marquis of Queensbury rules, you shouldn’t be surprised if your opponent kicks you in the nuts and then beats the shit out of you while you’re down on the ground, punching you in the throat, gouging your eyes, smacking you with everything that he can get his hands on, really just all the shit that goes on when you’re in a fight. In short, if you’re gonna bother fighting, fight to win, to be the one who walks away. The guy on the ground is only fit to be pissed and spit on by the gathered crowd.

See, Republicans understand this. They know that you don’t bring a knife to a gun fight. They understood this when they went after Bill Clinton. They threw everything they possibly could at him, ignoring problems like, say, terrorism, in their blood lust to not only destroy Clinton's presidency, not only to bring virtually every cabinet office to a grinding halt, but to change the discourse about Clinton: he's the guy who got an Oval Office hummer, not the guy who, for good or ill, led the country into years of prosperity and job growth, and myriad other accomplishments. You've got to remember that for every James Carville on the Democrats' side, the Republicans have ten Lee Atwaters or Karl Roves.

And now the Republicans are continuing these vicious alley fight tactics. Witness the House of Representatives vote on Medicare "reform." The Democrats believed that the Republicans would abide by tradition, like the Queensbury rule that says, "The rounds [are] to be of three minutes duration and one minute time between rounds," and that the majority would give the traditional 17 minutes or so for a vote. Nope. Instead, the evil Tom DeLay, the corpulent Dennis Hastert, and others conspired to leave the voting open until the Republicans had enough votes to win, twisting arms, threatening wives, sending goons out to place guns at the heads of the baby daughters of Republican reps who would not toe the party line. The Democrats were incensed. How dare the rules be so stretched? How dare tradition be set aside? But that's the wrong thinking. That's the kind of thinking that gets you shanked in the ribs. And that's what's happened, as the Senate passed the Medicare "reform" bill today. There you go. Now the President can campaign on a lame ass prescription drug benefit, bringing out the still breathing corpses of elderly people who got extra thorazine to parade in front of the cameras. Bill Frist may as well have been standing over the curled-into-a-fetal-position still warm corpse of Tom Daschle, wiping his shiv on his pants and cackling madly as he disappered into the White House.

The advice to Democrats is this: the rules are that there are no rules. When you have a President and opposition party that is willing to destroy people like Max Cleland, willing to question your patriotism because you think the war in Iraq is a bad idea, willing to degrade you and lie about you and use proxies to do their dirty work, you are not dealing with an opponent who will give a rat's ass if you say that he is breaking the rules. You have an opponent who will say that your opposition to Medicare "reform" means you want to dump seniors in an alley and watch them slowly die, who says that your opposition to the energy bill, loaded with pork for energy corporations, will lead to a long, cold, dark winter, who says that your opposition to the war means that you want Saddam Hussein to come to this country and rape your children while you sit with a ball gag and beaten and bruised face to watch the maiming and slaughter of them. They will stop at nothing to demonize you, Democrats, and they will smile at you and call you friend even as they slice off your nuts.

It's time to not question all the hate against Republicans that's going around. Embrace that anger. Channel it into a real opposition. Republicans will suckle at the teat of Richard Mellon Scaife-funded foundations until they are engorged to bursting with filthy fascist lucre, but they bleat like castrated lambs when George Soros donates money to MoveOn.org. You'll want to talk about the economy and they'll say you want gay marriage so who cares what your economic policies are. So you can't win. Instead, degrade them. Make them seem like the corporate lackeys and hate mongers that they are.

You want a commercial? Here it is, free of charge, from the Rude Pundit: Circus-like music plays as we see scenes of George W. Bush landing on that aircraft carrier. Then a graphic: "Number of WMDs found in Iraq: 0." Show W. in front of the "Mission Accomplished" Banner. Graphic: "Number of Americans killed in Iraq since George W. Bush landed here: X" (with X=to whatever the number is). Show W. on the deck of the ship, in his flight suit, looking all goofy and shit. Graphic: "Cost of playing soldier: Priceless." Then whoever for President. Run the ad so many times that no matter what, when the electorate sees Bush, all it thinks about is him in that goddamn flight suit, with circus music behind him.

So to all viable candidates, Dean, Clark, Gephardt, Edwards, Kerry: fuck the Republicans up. Badly. And if anyone tells you to play nice, to abide by the rules of conflict, you kick them in the nuts and tell them to go fuck themselves. You have the backing of many, like Paul Krugman here.

And, because so much is at stake, the Rude Pundit is opening this up. If you have any other rude advice for Democrats, send it to rudepundit@yahoo.com. The rudest and best will be posted. If you're all lame, he won't post anything but himself.

Why Ann Coulter Is Still a Cunt, Part 6:
Because at the end of her recent "column" (and that would be assuming a lot, since an editorial column is, right or wrong, usually a well-reasoned, rational attempt at some kind of point of view, not simply the mad rantings of someone who, by all rights, should be getting sodomized regularly by the underpaid orderlies at a mental ward) Coulter calls for violence against the Democrats. Yep, that's right kids. This is after a long, fart-filled shit of a column where she reduces every Democratic candidate for President to his or her grotesque caricature, including a section we'll just call "Fun With Jews."

In this part, Coulter cites the ways that several candidates assert Jewish street cred: "There's Joe Lieberman: Always Jewish. Wesley Clark: Found Out His Father Was Jewish in College. John Kerry: Jewish Since He Began Presidential Fund-Raising. Howard Dean: Married to a Jew. Al Sharpton: Circumcised." Now, leaving out the obvious question of why skinny white Ann Coulter is thinking about the shape of Al Sharpton's black cock, one has to ask if she (or any conservative columnist, for that matter) would ever make a list of Republicans and cite how they scramble to out-Christian each other to the point where you think they wanna take the nails out of Jesus and lick his wounds. One might want to ask that, but, then again, one would have to be dealing with a sane person, not a woman who is so batshit out of her mind and full of said batshit that she lumps Israel-loving Lieberman in with those who want "to disguise the fact that the Democrats would allow the state of Israel to perish as Palestinian suicide bombers slaughter Jewish women and children." 'Cause, you know, you always want Ann Coulter on your side to give your movement credibility.

Which brings us to the last line that this odious whore writes: "If the Democrats start extolling you – get a gun." The assumption here, of course, is that it's okay to kill Democrats (which is just logical in Coulterworld, since Treason was the title of her last "book," and it's a crime punishable by death in America). So, like, if someone, say, like, drags Coulter by her blonde roots out into an alley and puts three bullets in the back of her skull, that'd be just jim-fucking-dandy and hunky-goddamn-dory by the parameters she has set. And while blood soaks her designer clothes, the gunperson can just look at Coulter and say, "Oh, I'm sorry, was that whole killing thing a joke?"

Brief Sequel to the Dancing Monkey:
The Rude Pundit is taking the weekend off. He once again needs to purge his mind of images of George Bush throwing his own shit at the Queen, Orrin Hatch ejaculating on Patrick Leahy, Leni Riefenstahl in hell, and lynch mobs. He will return on Monday once his anger at the Republicans in the House over the end run passage of the Medicare bill dies down to something akin to a simmering rage. For now, enjoy one last story about Mr. Monkey President dancing his way merrily through England.

Dance, Mister Monkey President, Dance:
There he was, our fearless leader, George W. Bush, visiting England, the first official state visit by an American president since, like Woodrow Wilson. Yep, there he was, all decked out in tails, standing next to the Queen, looking like nothing so much as a monkey next to the hurdy-gurdy man. And there he was again, giving a speech on the "war" on terror and foreign policy, saying such funny monkey things, like "The people have given us the duty to defend them, and that duty sometimes requires the violent restraint of violent men." Then he repeated his tossing of his own shit at the rest of Europe by saying that the U.N. was "choosing its own irrelevance" by not following him in his charming little dance for political peanuts in Iraq. Of course, monkeys always go too far. They end up jacking off in public or drinking their own pee. So when Bush declared that European countries "should withdraw all favor and support from any Palestinian ruler who fails his people and betrays his cause, " he was sadly, predictably, met with silence, crickets, nothing.

Then, of course, you put a monkey at a press conference, and he's gonna do something to embarass you, like Bush did when standing next to Tony Blair, the President stated that he was willing to send more troops into Iraq if necessary. In a wonderful "D'oh" moment, the White House was forced to correct the impression that more troops might be sent by saying that no more troops would be sent. Oh, funny monkeys and the funny things they do when you let them off the little leash. Like Bush visiting the families of the British war dead when he hasn't visited any American families of war dead. Like demonstrating to the British public just what a little bitch Tony Blair is by not giving any quarter on the British citizens being held at Guantanamo. Do you think he understood a word of what he was talking about, Bush? Or was it like the mad jabbers of a tiny monkey, screeching in your ear?

Of course, all of this is mighty tough talk from a man who was kept in a hermetically-sealed bubble, without a sense of noblesse oblige towards any of the protests, including the one yesterday involving over 100,000 people. Nope. The President is a turn tail and run pussy, as his AWOL status showed so long ago. As the vast numbers of security around him that prevented him from every having to dirty his view with protesters showed. A bubble of ignorance, arrogance, denial.

Goddamn, the ghost of Republican colonizer Teddy Roosevelt must want to shove a large stick up Bush's ass. At least Roosevelt had the balls to fight for his raping of the world. Jesus, even former president, now book end, Ronald Reagan, had the guts to go out in public after he had been fucking shot. Not our Bush, though. Anything to keep him in the dark. Anything to assure us he continues to lead us and Great Britain into the darkness of the 21st century. No self-respecting zoo should have such a pathetic species of vermin-ridden monkey on display.