Let's Hear It For the Rainbow Tour:
The Rude Pundit's been reading over the transcript of the discussion of "U.S.-Russian Partnership" between Presidents Bush and Putin last week, and he's decided that Bush is a master of elliptical bullshit. Check this out, and you see if you can discern anything that remotely resembles a concrete idea or fully-developed thought that relates to a question on concerns over Putin's "commitment to democracy" (which, let's face it, is about the same as a pants-down, cock up high school quarterback's commitment to the skirt up, panties down cheerleader straddling him in the back of his parents' Saturn):

"There was no doubt in my mind what his position was on Iraq. He didn't kind of hedge, he didn't try to cloud up the issue. He made it abundantly clear to me that he didn't agree with my decision. And that's an important part of having a trustworthy relationship, a relationship where, when a person tells you something, you know he means what he says, and, 'yes' means yes, and 'no' means no. Sometimes in politics yes means 'maybe,' and no means 'if.' This is the kind of fellow who, when he says, yes, he means, yes, and when he says, no, he means, no."

Just to be clear here, 'cause, you know, we who exist outside of the Beltway, which would be most of us, may not be up on the lingo of realpolitick and some such crap, but for the record, when Putin says, "Yes," he means, "Yes." Damn, it's a good thing Putin's not a flip-flopper, you know. The solipsistic way Bush talks bespeaks a man who simply doesn't care if he says anything as long as he knows what he's saying, which, really, isn't anything in particular.

Of course, throughout Bush's amazing adventure of demonstrating that oceans can't stop him from traveling to Europe, he spoke in definite terms that defined nothing definite except how indefinite his definition of "definite" definitely is. For instance, in his "roundtable" with a pre-screened audience of German "Young Professionals," Bush said, in answer to an approved question about Russia and dependency on oil resources, "For years, there was this sense that we could tolerate tyranny for the sake of energy. And yet, beneath the surface of that policy lurked this hatred and feeling of oppression and frustration and hopelessness, which lent itself to an ideology of hatred that ended up manifesting their hatred on America." Now, without getting into the oh-really-now-who-do-you-think-helped-tolerate-that-policy bullshit of Cheney and all the loverly Bushes, what the fuck do those two sentences mean? No, seriously, and, c'mon, what they fuck does that mean? Who is hating who? And, once again, is Bush saying it is our "job" to rout out tyranny wherever it may hide? Where the fuck is the Justice League of America when you need it?

Bush then brought it on home by saying that everything the U.S. does in its foreign policy is related to 9/11: "Let me say something about September the 11th. I think this will help frame the conversation as we go forward. For some, September the 11th was a passing moment in history. In other words, it was a terrible moment, but it passes. For me, and my government, and many in the United States, it permanently changed our outlook on the world. Those two attitudes caused us, sometimes, to talk past each other, and I plead guilty at times. But as this conversation goes on, I want you to remember that point of view." One assumes that the "two attitudes" are the United States's position that "We don't give a fuck what Europe or anyone else has to say in opposition to us; we're gonna do whatever the fuck we want; we shit on our treaties" and those who have the position of "Why the fuck should we roll over and allow you to make the world into your image?"

Oh, and then Bush said, again, that we're gonna build more nuclear power plants "because I think it is a way for the United States to be less dependent on foreign sources of energy, which is good for our economy, and, frankly, helps us with foreign policy."

Which, strangely enough, is what Russia is helping Iran do by selling Iran nuclear fuel. And, goddamnit for the Bush case for "all options" on Iran, Iran has agreed to let the IAEA monitor the nuclear power plant it's building. Oh, and the EU said it had "no problem" with the sale. Imagine that: Bush must be right about Putin that, even with the budding tyrant Putin is, "yes" means "yes."

Meanwhile, Putin has used the threat of terrorism to firm-up one-party rule in his nation, to wreck the barely free press, to take control in ways that, despite Bush's, Condi's, and, previously, Colin's protestations, Karl Rove could only dream about while whipping a velvet-cuffed Jeff Gannon in the White House basement.

Christ Weary Over Gannon/Guckert:
What is this world coming to when you can't even rely on the most hate-filled, self-righteous, arrogant fucks this side of John Negroponte to come through for you? The Gannon/Guckert story is a low hanging curve ball right to the inside for the Christian right, yet they refuse to swing. Gay prostitute in the middle of the Christian President's White House? C'mon, this is like a black man in the South in the 1920s fucking a white woman in the middle of a Klan meeting because the flames of the burning cross are so romantic. It's like a mohel walking into the middle of Hitler rally and saying, "Who wants a circumcision? I'll give you a good price." It's like an Iraqi walking into Abu Ghraib, dropping his pants, and saying, "I know where the weapons are, and I bet you can't beat it out of me."

Where are all the playa haters? All the motherfuckers who are so anti-gay marriage and anti-homosexuality in general? James Dobson, a man so uptight he has to crowbar his ass cheeks open so he can get rid of some of the shit he's full of, and his Focus on the Family offer fuckin' pamphlets on whether or not "marriage is in trouble," and books on how to "deal" with a gay relative. Concerned Women For America, a group of beaten-down fuck dolls and breeding toys of the fundamentalist patriarchy, can't get enough of the gay-hatin'. Here's an entire fuckin' list of shit that's got their granny panties in a wad, including adoption by gays, transgender golfers, and gay tourism.

And, you know, c'mon, the fuckin' Agape Press, the AP wannabe of fundamentalism, has written not a single word about Gannon or Guckert. Yet they still have plenty of time to rip on The Simpsons and its outing of Marge's sister as emblematic of Hollywood liberalism. 'Cause, see, cartoon dykestry is far, far more important than a real, live, lying assfucker in the White House.

What issue related to homosexuals has gotten the Christian right all hot and bothered? If you guessed gays in the British Navy, you're on the ball - not in a gay way, unless you wanna be. The Family Policy Network and others can't get enough of Agape's coverage of this issue that matters to the hearts of every American Navy veteran who thinks, "Huh, when I fucked that guy in the berth above me while we were on patrol in the Pacific, I wasn't gay. Now when he sucked my dick, yeah, he was a fag."

You gotta think that the hateful, gaybashing, repressed men who weep while they masturbate to images of a buff George Bush in Uncle Sam garb gotta be shaking with rage at not being able to lash out at Gannon/Guckert. You know their cogs and wheels are steamin' up and breakin' down, Looney Tunes-style, trying to come up with ways to justify their silence on the matter. ("Well, the boy does say he's a Christian now, and anyone can forget to take down a nudie picture of themselves from the Internet.") You know that they're gonna be projecting that bile and unquenchable need to condemn onto so, so many other things. You know that, like anyone who ever has had a sweet taste of genuine power, they are going to throw aside their morality and beliefs to cling to it, like a rat surfing home on the debris of a sunken ship.

Why Ann Coulter Is a Cunt, Part 385 (With a Side Note on the Right Wing Disarray Over Gannon/Guckert):
In her latest "column" (if by "column," you mean "the crayon-scratched doodles and scrawls of a conservative meat puppet"), Ann Coulter goes after the bad, bad liberals who demand answers over why the fuck an assfucker for hire with an assumed name was given a neverending series of day press passes to the White House despite having, first, no press background, no job with a press organization, and no discernible experience other than fucking men in the ass for money, and, later, shillling for a right wing news site fronting for GOPUSA.

Ann's in a tizzy, barely able to vomit out the first retch of hate before the second is choking her. Let's do away with this quickly before they become talking points for Scarborough, O'Reilly, and, later, the so-called "mainstream" media. Coulter defends Gannyguck by saying that "Gannon didn't write about gays." Well, no, actually, Gannyguck "wrote" quite a bit about gays, including an article saying that John Kerry might be considered "the first gay president" because of Kerry's support of gay rights. Not to mention the anti-gay marriage articles he compiled from press releases and such.

Coulter says that "liberals expressed shock and dismay that Gannon's real name is 'James Guckert.'" And, since Coulter never met a hyperbole that she wouldn't hump like it was Joe McCarthy's Commie-slammin' microphone and never met a fact that she couldn't manipulate, she compares Gannon getting into the White House under a fake name with this: "How did Gary Hartpence, Billy Blythe and John Kohn (Gary Hart, Bill Clinton and John Kerry) run for president under invented names?" Christ, this is so tedious, like trying to give an unlubricated Coulter head for hours without stabbing yourself on her hip bones.

Here we go: Gary Hart and Bill Clinton legally changed their names, Clinton doing it for his mother's sake after she re-married while he was still very young. John Kerry's grandfather changed his name from Kohn to Kerry to avoid anti-semitism in turn-of-the-century Austria. (The Rude Pundit uses Encarta's website here to demonstrate that even a fucking idiot could get the story straight.) So if Hart, Clinton, and Kerry had to show their driver's licenses, they would show their legal names. Please, don't let the right attempt to conflate this with having a fake name and access to power that so few others are allowed.

The right-wing media, though, doesn't know what the fuck to do with Gannyguck. They're stuck trying to downplay the prostitution angle by saying that it's Gannyguck's "private life." Fox "News" runs an editorial that calls Gannyguck's whoring "sexual peculiarities" and saying that it proves the left's intolerance. That's a fuckin' bizarro way to spin this: that liberals hate gay prostitutes. But over at the generally insane conservative World Net Daily, Joseph Farah is pissed about the White House's degradation of the press through the free admittance of a fake reporter to the press pool. (All this and more is available through your source for all things Gannyguck, AMERICAblog.)

Speaking of batshit insanity, the kind that stretches its spine trying to lick its own taint, rude Australian reader Wal C. wrote to that eminent right wing blog, Powerline, about Gannyguck. After quoting a Rude Pundit post on why Gannyguck matters, Wal C. wrote, "They've turned the White House into a whorehouse, and your incomprehensible defense of Guckert and the sleazy administration who utilized him is almost as despicable as the pathetic, moral-less morons you're defending."

The Powerline people are notoriously thin-skinned, especially considering that they proudly gave themselves the gayest pseudonyms in all of political blogdom: the Hindrocket and the Big Trunk, with handy phallic pictures of a thrusting rocket and an elephant holding his trunk erect. This is not to mention the demonic owl with its legs spread wide (the symbol of the writer known as the "Deacon"), as if saying, "Suck my wise owlish cock, fuckers. Please?"

The Hindrocket (which the Rude Pundit cannot type without giggling) wrote back to Wal C.: "Wal, you are so fucking stupid you don't even qualify as spam. Never try to communicate with us again. You are too dumb to participate in a rational conversation. You are a stupid fucking lefty; that's your problem, not ours. Get lost." It was signed "John H." (Frankly, this seems like Powerline's form letter to liberals, which is a charming notion.)

Yep, combativeness, defensiveness, and lashing out are sure signs that the adherents to an ideology are filled with doubt, self-loathing, and Nixonian paranoia, afraid of a time when their brand of hate doesn't rule the land.

Limbaugh in Afghanistan – A Fantasia (with Apologies to Paul Bowles):
(Note: The Rude Pundit knows that Paul Bowles wrote about North Africa, not Afghanistan.)
Rush Limbaugh knew he shouldn’t have trusted Ahmed, the local jirga member who told him to follow him outside the compound in Kandahar to see the endless poppy fields. Limbaugh wanted to confront his temptations, demonstrate he was a stronger man. Now he’s lost in the ruins of an ancient mosque, alone, hungry, pissed off because he’s due to be live on the radio in a couple of hours, bringing his faithful listeners tales of the good news of the Afghani people. How they admired him, how the soldiers even asked him if he was going to run for office. God, he felt somehow right and at home here, praising the good works of America.

He hears the clatter of distant hoofsteps, across the rocky terrain. Finally, he thinks, some local to help him. They ride up to him, three men with scraggly beards and Chitrali hats. “Can you help me? I’m an American. American. I need to get back to Kandahar Air Base,” he declares as the men on horses circle him slowly, speaking in a dialect that Limbaugh not only can’t understand, but he hasn’t heard yet. They are surveying him. “I’m on the radio. You know the radio?” He makes some futile hand gesture of a microphone in front of his mouth, of holding a mike with his mouth open, pointing at it with his other hand, nodding and winking.

The horse-borne men look at each other and nod. Limbaugh smiles. The power of Excellence in Broadcasting, no doubt. Americans have saved them from the Taliban and now he will receive their thanks. One of them say something to Limbaugh, and as the radio host turns towards that horse, another man clubs Limbaugh in the back of his head. Limbaugh hits the ground with all the grace of an oversized turd being shat out of a constipated elephant.

The Pashtun men pick up the porcine pundit and stuff him into a large bag, carrying him between two horses back into the mountains. When they get back to their village, a small compound really, of men only and a few younger boys, they spill Limbaugh out and leave him to regain consciousness, one of the boys watching over him.

Limbaugh comes out of his haze and bellows, "I’ll call the fuckin’ embassy." The boys run off as Limbaugh continues to yell, "There’s gonna be hell to pay when the Americans hear of this." A couple of the men enter the shack and walk over to him. He thrashes and screams, "We’re gonna bomb you back beyond the stone age, you raghead-" But one of the men has grabbed Limbaugh’s tongue and, with one swift cut of a dagger, cuts off the radio personality’s tongue. Stunned and tasting his own metallic blood, Limbaugh falls back on his thin mattress of rugs and another man tears his sleeve and shoots him up with the purest heroin anyone can get. Limbaugh fades to black.

He comes in and out, occasionally gargling a word or two, occasionally feeling the fever of infection that’s come over him, occasionally feeling the warm sting of the needle. Once he feels an incredible pain between his legs, seeing men above him, but he passes out again. Finally, a ragged, shit-stained Limbaugh staggers out of the shack one day as the sun shines around him. He unzips his pants to take a piss. He reaches in and notices an absence below his tiny penis. He’s been castrated. He screams in outrage.

Quickly, several men rush up to him and wrap tin bands around his arms, his legs, his waist. Limbaugh is confused until he realizes that each band contains several bells and as he moves around he makes a clattering, ringing sound that seems to please the Pashtun men watching him. He forgets about his lost balls for a second and finds this curious. He takes a couple of steps, ringing the bells as he moves, and the men clap and ululate in approval. Limbaugh smiles and nods. Even Pashtun nutcutters recognize talent when they see it.

Limbaugh becomes popular in the villages around Zaranj, a favorite of the women and children, who watch in separate audience, as Limbaugh dances, horribly, for them, ringing his bells. He learns to do handstands and high kicks and twirls. Oh, what a happy clown, the children think. Limbaugh learns how to scare the women by growling and barking. And then, when he performs for the men, they drum and play instruments, and he becomes just another member of the band. If you’re going to be the plaything of the tribe of some warlord, at least the food’s regular (if tasteless) and the audiences appreciative.

Limbaugh doesn’t even mind the fact that every night he’s locked up in a room with no window. He doesn’t even mind the regular sodomizings by the Pashtun men, the ones who hadn’t earned a boy yet. Limbaugh misses his voice, though, and some nights he cries in remembrance of his silver-tipped tongue, his quick wit now inward only. He thinks he’s even forgotten how to write. But then he gets his nightly dose of smack and he’s in bliss until the sun rises again.

One day his keepers bring him to a village on the edge of a poppy field, and there it is: that sea of red flowers, the pin prick bloodlets growing from the earth. Against the setting sun, it looks like a fire that would finally consume him. The last anyone sees of Rush Limbaugh is a silhouetted figure, bells ringing, running into the field of flames, grunting happily, leaping madly.

All the Gay, Gay Grannies:
Now the Rude Pundit knows: Grandma must be in hell. Because, apparently, when Grandma was in her retirement years and a card-carrying member of the AARP, her quilting circles were actually excuses for hot lesbian action. Whenever she went on cruises with the widow next door, AARP discounted cruises, it meant that Grandma and the widow would carefully open their tired hips, slowly, lest a nasty break occur, and reveal their withered flowers of orgasmic paradise to hungry tongues and mouths. Oh, how the sweet rocking of the oceans around Bermuda must have enhanced their moans, their pleasures, to and fro, to and fro, ah, Grandma. And let's not even think about Grandpa and whatever went on at the American Legion Hall on Friday nights. But let's just say perhaps AARP stands for the "Association of Anally-Rogering People."

According to a just fuckin' bizarre ad on the website of conservative mag The American Spectator (motto: We think you're so goddamn stupid that we'll charge 39 bucks for 10 issues), the AARP hates them some soldiers but loves them some queers. No, c'mon, seriously, the ad flatly states, "The Real AARP Agenda," and shows a picture of a soldier with a red "x" over him and a picture of two, presumably marrying, men kissing, with a green check on it. The Rude Pundit looked closely, and he may be wrong, but the kissing man on the right looks pretty much exactly like the soldier on the left. Is the ad saying that AARP advocates "Make Love, Not War"?

But, no, no, you click on the ad and you're brought to the nigh-on magnificent site of USA Next, which has declared war on the AARP for its wacky liberal ways, like, say, supporting President Bush's Medicare prescription drug "reform." Using the re-animated corpse of Art Linklater as its sometimes spokesperson (especially on Fox "News" where Linklater does segments titled "Zombies Say the Darndest Things"), USA Next positions itself as a "conservative" alternative to the AARP.

When its chair, Charles W. Jarvis, appeared on Bill O'Reilly's Fox "News" show, he called the AARP "the world's largest left, liberal lobbying organization." O'Reilly, who's been on the attack on AARP, had opened the segment by stating that the "AARP has taken a sharp turn to the left." In the strange world conservatives currently occupy, according to Jarvis and the USA Next website, one of the markers of the "left turn" of the AARP happened back in 1980s, when the AARP agreed to support a tax on Social Security benefits. Oh, the motherfucking outrage. Says USA Next, "They actually made it possible, first in 1984 and again in 1993, for seniors to be punished for saving during their working years or working in their retirement years." Except, of course, this left turn was supported by Ronald Reagan and a bipartisan commission (chaired by Alan Greenspan) attempting to shore up Social Security and mostly hit the wealthiest earners. Oh, and it was in 1983.

See, USA Next is about to go all Swift Boat on the AARP, using the same advisers as the Swifties. But, you know, and, c'mon, USA Next, which has no age restriction on joining, is really just a front for corporations. According to Public Citizen, the pharmaceutical and energy industries "donated" millions of dollars to USA Next in order for the group to run ads supporting industry positions, conveniently filtered through non-corporate sounding organizations. USA Next is just another perfect synthesis of media, corporations, government, and their filthy money using deception to undermine the honest debate on an issue.

Some other fun stuff on the USA Next website: their list of "Online Resources" contains links to all network news sites, except CBS. But the Drudge Report is there. They link directly to Pfizer. One of their "issues" is to tell the Academy to give the Oscar to The Passion of the Christ. And their senior-related news includes three articles on how the film Super Size Me is a "con" job (seniors, don't be scared out of eating at the one restaurant you all can afford).

Finally, in our look at this weird amalgam of maniacal morality, anti-government ranting, and corporate crotch-sniffing, let's ask this question: what's the connection to the Legal Services Corporation during the 1980s? (The LSC is the governmental agency that provides a modicum of funding for legal assistance for those who can't afford such luxuries. Most of their work is done through grants to states and organizations.) 'Cause USA Next Board Member Jim Wootton was the director of policy, communications and legislative affairs of the LSC in 1986.

Around that time a "Charles W. Jarvis" was its Vice-President, and, according to the November 18, 1985 New York Times, was in that position when the LSC was accused of using harassing audits on LSC grantees who served the poor as a means to enact the Reagan administration's desire to end federal financing of legal services to the poor. And around this time, according to old friend Howard Kurtz in the October 22, 1985 Wasthington Post, the LSC was accused of funneling money to a conservative activist, James McClellan. Is this relevant? Who knows. Fun with Lexis-Nexis, you know. But it points to a lifetime spent trying to dismantle any government support of those in need. And now it's time for Granny to pony up.

Yep, all this and more in the weird world of giving legitimacy to another fringe organization. But strangely on the website, nothing about how the AARP hates soldiers and loves gays. One might accuse USA Next of pulling a bait-and-switch. Or of being, shall we say, fucking liars.

(Update: The ad was taken down from American Sphincter, but it's up here.)

Hunter S. Thompson Is Dead and We're Not Feeling So Good Ourselves:
Some time ago, back in the darkest days of the Reagan era, when the Gipper's drooling dementia was increasingly, embarrassingly apparent, the Rude Pundit had his one and only encounter with Hunter S. Thompson. It was during college, and the Rude Pundit was part of the speakers' committee, inviting people to come to campus to give talks. Each contract with a speaker contained one or two quirky requests, much like the backstage riders of musicians at concerts. Some were pretty cool: Martin Sheen requested a dinner with members of the committee. Hunter S. Thompson requested a case of Wild Turkey waiting for him in his hotel room.

Needless to say, when the Rude Pundit and another student fetched Thompson to fulfill his speakerly duties, Thompson was fucked up and stinking of whiskey. The Rude Pundit asked Thompson about Iran-Contra, and Thompson mumbled, "Worse than Watergate and the fuckers are gonna get away with it." He was right, of course. Soon after, H.W. Bush saw to that with his pardonpalooza. When he hit the stage, Thompson leaned on the lectern and said, "I don't have anything prepared. Just ask me questions." There was a moment of laughter, like this couldn't be true, and then silence while Thompson scanned the crowd. Finally a hand went up and a student stood and asked, "Who's worse, Reagan or Nixon?" And the evening was off and running.

Hunter S. Thompson called out evil and insanity by getting down in the gutter with it and daring it to fuck with him. Sure, sure, all the wannabe hipsters carry Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas in their backpacks (right alongside the one used Bukowoski they could afford and that copy of something by Chomsky that they never read past the first ten pages), but they only read the Thompson book because Johnny Depp made a movie. For Thompson in his purest form, check out Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail, his account of the 1972 presidential campaign that rips the guts out of high-handed political rhetoric and drags it down to the sewer where it belongs. America is a civilization on the brink of doom in that book, and it is frightening and exhilirating to read.

For sheer crazed anger and vindictive hatred, read his 1994 "obituary" of Richard Nixon, a hurricane-force blast of anguish that defined, for the Rude Pundit, just how personal the political actually is. Thompson concludes, "He has poisoned our water forever. Nixon will be remembered as a classic case of a smart man shitting in his own nest. But he also shit in our nests, and that was the crime that history will burn on his memory like a brand. By disgracing and degrading the Presidency of the United States, by fleeing the White House like a diseased cur, Richard Nixon broke the heart of the American Dream." For his destruction of the Reagan-Bush years in a single magazine article, read 1992's "Fear and Loathing in Elko," about a drug-fueled, alcohol-hazed drive through the desert with Clarence Thomas (known as "the Judge" in the piece). No one could call the enemy by its name like Thompson.

We can speculate, and the Rude Pundit's sure that all of Blogsylvania will be ablaze with theories, as to why Thompson took his own life by eating lead from one of his beloved guns. Chances are it's the same old story - depression, disease, drugs, or some combination thereof. But the Rude Pundit would like to find something Greek and noble and tragic here. In an interview before the election, Thompson said of the Bush II administration, "This is the darkest hour that I have seen in my long experience as an American. This is evil." His Rolling Stone article on Bush and Kerry said, directly, that Bush was worse than Nixon, which, for anyone who read Thompson for a long time, was quite a startling belief. So the romantic, fall-upon-one's-sword version of Thompson's suicide is this: all Thompson saw in America was that we were on a never-ending spiral towards madness that even he couldn't envision, that the worst things he could imagine about this country were coming true and more, that the only possible things to do when the monsters are knocking are to stand and fight or cut and run. And he had fought far, far too long already.

As the Rude Pundit said, this is the romantic version, a sucker's dream of honor in dishonorable times. But the harsh inverse of this notion is: if Thompson couldn't take it anymore, what hope is there for the rest of us?

After Thompson finished speaking back in the college days, the Rude Pundit accompanied Thompson back to the hotel, ordered to "make sure he gets inside the door, then run." Hoping desperately that Thompson would want to go out for the night, handing out pills like candy corn, instead the Rude Pundit accompanied the Doctor on a calm walk to the hotel. Thompson had stayed on that stage for a couple of hours answering questions. He asked the Rude Pundit how he thought the "talk" had gone. The Rude Pundit said he thought it was hilarious, maybe even using the word "profound." Thompson smirked, "Yeah, it's amazing what a tired, drunk dopehead can do, huh?"

Or words to that effect.

Briefly Noted: Unleash the Rumsfeld:
Donald Rumsfeld was tired of being chastened, whipped, and beaten. He was used to bitch slappin' the faces of uppity reporters and members of Congress in the halls of the Capitol, screeching, "I am Rumsfeld, and you are shit." He was kept on a short leash for a while, after the whole nightmare over whether or not it was ethically correct to have a machine sign letters telling parents, spouses, and children that their loved one in the armed forces was coming home in a nice, flag-draped casket.

But Rumsfeld had had enough, and this week he appeared before the House Armed Services Committee and the Senate Appropriations Committee to "discuss" the upcoming Pentagon budget(s). In his prepared remarks, Rumsfeld offered these stunning conclusions: "These are historic times. The Cold War has passed into history. The world and key institutions continue to require change.. .Terrorists have brains and use them. . . Our enemies are nimble and media savvy."

Then, when questioned, Rumsfeld, in essence, sneered at the members of the committees, Republicans and Democrats, and spat, "Fuck you, you fuckin' elected fuckwads, I only have to respond to one person, Bush, and he fuckin' begged me to stay on. I ain't tellin' you shit. Now, try to fuck with me." And then, over at the Senate side, he picked up Robert Byrd and started using him as a club to pound the crap out of Patrick Leahy while Ted Stevens screamed and wept and cowered in the corner. Rumsfeld turned to the Alaskan and said, "Don't worry your pussy - I ain't gonna touch ya. But if you head over to the House side, you'll find a pyramid of stacked corpses, all missin' their jugulars."

Ah, how sweet is unmitigated power.

Fanning the Flames of Gannon/Guckert:
The weekend is approaching, and, with it, the potential end of the news life of the Gannon/Guckert debacle. Yes, Left Blogsylvania is trying to keep it alive and demanding answers, but if the story stays confined to LB (with some dribblings to the rest of the media and DC), it's lost. Yesterday, the Rude Pundit proposed a strategy to get the story hotter: co-opt the moralists of the right, primarily the Christian fundamentalist community, through their blogs and websites. Write letters and comments where we disguise ourselves as goodly, godly Republicans who are just oh-so-disgusted to bursting.

Today, the Rude Pundit gives a list of potential recipients of your "moral outrage" over the noted top-for-hire with the cut penis, James Guckert, finding his way into the White House. By the way, if you're uncomfortable pretending over the gay angle, why, then use the prostitute angle for your anger - it's twice the sin for half the price. Rather than just target Fox "News," send e-mails and/or post comments to some of these sites and blogs, where the rumbles of the rabble can reach a maximum density quickly. The idea here is that you, as a mole, a fly in the ointment, a ghost in the machine, will infiltrate and cause others, the real fundies and wingnuts, to respond in kind. These are not links - you'll have to copy-and-paste the addresses so it's not traceable back to, like, this post telling you where to go. And, you know, this is just a starting point:

http://www.hughhewitt.com (requires a strong stomach)
http://www.crosswalk.com/news/weblogs/kmc/ (Kevin McCullough's blog)
http://www.captainsquartersblog.com/mt/ (Captain's Quarters)
http://www.evangelicaloutpost.com/ (Evangelical Outpost)
http://www.beliefnet.com/story/145/story_14545_1.html (Loose Cannon at Beliefnet - requires free registration, but lots of comments here)
http://christdot.org/ (Really kind of self-explanatory)
http://www.blogs4god.com/linker/index.php (a listing of lots of other Christian blogs)

And like any good whore knows, while giving a blow job, don't neglect the balls: Letters to the editors of your local papers are intensely encouraged, as well as posts to their websites. Plus, don't neglect your Focus on the Family and your Moral Majority and others.

Remember: this ain't about Gannyguck. Who the fuck cares about some sell out, self-hating homosexual who shilled for the Bush administration? This is about Negroponte, Rumsfeld, Cheney, and Bush. This is about torture and the dismantling of the New Deal. And, let's face it and embrace it - it's about payback, bitch, and fucking with people who have fucked us over so egregiously.

And remember the other potential payoff: if the Christian Right fails to get up in arms about this, it demonstrates a failure of their leadership and the sweet decaying smell of hypocrisy in their morality.

Thanks to all of you who have written so far. Send your reports and any responses you receive (especially if a letter of yours shows up on O'Reilly or somewhere) to: rudepundit@yahoo.com.

Back later this afternoon with rudeness on Rumsfeld.

Who Do You Have To Blow To Get a White House Press Pass?:
Out here in Left Blogsylvania, you can practically hear the frustrated screams of "Oh, come on" emanating from our basement lairs of justice. As evidence and inference pile up suggesting, implying, and/or demonstrating some kind of link between Jeff Gannon/James Guckert and the White House (at least the White House press office), we're waving our arms at the mainstream media and yelling, "Look, goddamnit, look over here, to the left, to the left." There's been some shaking out in the form of a couple of articles in the Washington Post and New York Times, a sympathetic hearing from Catherine Crier on Court TV, some sarcastic mocking of Gannon from Keith Olbermann (and The Daily Show, which bitch slapped the media's denegration of blogging muckrakers), and editorials from the usual suspects:Sidney Blumenthal, Frank Rich, and Maureen Dowd.

The latter is especially interesting since Dowd reveals that she couldn't originally get a press pass from the Bush White House, despite her previous access: "I was rejected for a White House press pass at the start of the Bush administration, but someone with an alias, a tax evasion problem and Internet pictures where he posed like the 'Barberini Faun' is credentialed to cover a White House that won a second term by mining homophobia and preaching family values?" And now we also know that Gannyguck had his press pass and was called on to ask questions of Ari Fleischer a full month before Talon "News" ever existed.

So, come on, where's the uproar? Let's summarize this as succinctly as possible (as many others have). Warning-do not try to diagram this sentence: a cocksucker for hire with a fake name and no news organization affiliation, whose only journalistic "experience" is a two-day right-wing "Institute," is given a daily press pass to the White House, which denies such passes to established and legitimate journalists, and is called on to ask blatantly pro-Bush questions, who eventually is placed into a fake news front for a conservative website (that apparently hires a high school student as one of its main reporters) and becomes a regular at DC press events, as well as the daily briefing, quizzing Scott McClellan, the President's press secretary who's been seen going to gay bars in Texas but who recently married, receiving a congratulations card from said cocksucker for hire, who eventually gets to ask the anti-gay President a question at one of the anti-gay President's rare news conferences, where reporters from major news organizations go begging, at the same time that the White House the cocksucker so gracelessly praises is paying off other conservative commentators to push its proposals to the public.

Now, does someone wanna tell the Rude Pundit why the fuck John Aravosis and Kos (and his Kossacks) shouldn't be pursuing this story to the ends of the earth? Even if it turns out it's just a giant fuck-up (which, really, and c'mon, we're talking monumental in the realm of fuck-ups), why wouldn't the mainstream press be going at this story - full of gay sex, power, and access - with all the viciousness of Matt Drudge and Michael Isikoff sniffing Monica's panty shields?

So where to go now? Go after Bobby Eberle, GOPUSA, and Talon "News," of course, and look into each of its "reporters" (or "transcribers"). And what's the deal with the name "Talon"? Especially since at virtually the same time Talon "News" was being created, the Pentagon was working on "Talon," a database of "raw" information about "anomalous activities" by U.S. citizens. Or that the Canadian company Talon Books is known for its publication of gay and lesbian writers. This kind of bullshit conspiracy theorizing is ludicrous, but with the outrage factor being limited right now, what's left?

Ahh, excellent question. See, what the left used to be good at in America is subterfuge and subversion. Let's get back to those Abbie Hoffman roots. The Rude Pundit has a plan. It's your weekend homework. Now, we know that Bush is stabbing his Christian constituency in the back in his lack of funding of his faith-based initiatives. The Christian right is sore, with the sweet, soft belly of a hog on a spit. It's time to poke that fucker with a stick. Get the Christian wackjobs upset, and the Gannyguck story flies. You know it. The Rude Pundit knows it.

Here's what we do: we start invading the Christian conservative websites (and right-wingers who hate gays). Try to stay as "mainstream" as possible. Hit the chat rooms and message boards. E-mail like crazy. And pretend to be Christian, conservative, and mad as hell that the President would allow someone like Gannyguck into the sanctified pure whiteness of America's house. Go on Fox's website and do the same. Never, never make it that you hate Bush - make it that you're betrayed. Fuck, if a few cranks from Focus on the Family can get the FCC to criminally raise fines on indecency, then we can use those cranks to our advantage. (The Rude Pundit is not going to list sites to contact because, in case anyone does this, he doesn't want such complaints to be seen as "illegitimate" because of the Rude Pundit's involvement.)

Here's an example (please do not copy exactly - let's make it seem as little like astroturf as possible- and don't seem too smart): "As a Republican and Christian, I'm appalled that the President allowed a known male prostitute into the press room. When I voted for George Bush, I thought I was voting for the family values candidate. Now I find out the President not only allowed Jeff Gannon/ James D. Guckert to join the media in the White House, but he called on him at a press conference. I think George Bush owes us an apology and an explanation."

Oh, what fun it could be if we get away with it. E-mail the Rude Pundit with your postings or e-mails that you sent to your "favorite" conservative writer or organization: rudepundit@yahoo.com.

And remember: our cause is just as we face evil people.

Mainstreaming Torture, Part 1-- Why Bill O'Reilly Ought To Be Sodomized With a Broken Light Bulb:
There is a bizarre sexual fetish that has its own storytelling adherents on the Internet and in print. These people get off on the idea of people swallowing other people. No, no, not Dahmer-esque cannibalism, eating away bit by bit from the body in the fridge. Here, a man, say a patient at a dentist's office, is able to unhinge his jaws, snake-style, to engorge whole the poor female dental assistant whose only crime was to care about tooth decay. Goddamn, how these people spank it or rub it to the tales of people-swallowing. Whenever the Rude Pundit watches Fox "News," he thinks that Rupert Murdoch must have the entire on-air staff masturbate to this kind of porn.

Last night, on his Fox "News" show (if by "show," you mean, "a horrid hour of hell-like suffering at the hands of an attention whore whose ego would make him suck out the eyes of old lady Alzheimer's patients if he thought it would get him another ratings point"), Bill O'Reilly devoted the first segment to criticizing those who write and talk about the allegations and confirmed reports of torture at the hands or desires of the United States. Apparently, see, the media must be liberal if it dares to say that torture is bad because, you know, reporting on torture hurts our soldiers and helps the enemy (most of whom would be, well, Iraqi citizens). No, no, if you think that the real problem is the act of torture, you'd be a "pinhead" in O'Reilly's world.

Spat O'Reilly, "Just the allegations alone hurt this country and shift emphasis from the real villains, terrorists, who routinely murder civilians. Day after day, the left-wing media pound stories about America's mistreating prisoners in Guantanamo, in Iraq, in Afghanistan. Those reports are picked up worldwide and are used to incite anti-American feeling and even to recruit more terrorists." Oh, yeah, O'Reilly offers the caveat that prisoners have been tortured and people have been prosecuted, but, "Any reasonable person knows that, in a vicious struggle, some rules will be broken." O'Reilly continues, "The trouble is the continuing reportage of the torture allegations is putting lives in danger. Hyping the situation to undermine the Bush administration is disgraceful and should be condemned." Then O'Reilly used the opportunity to slam Ted Kennedy before squinting his eyes as if he had just tasted bile.

Then O'Reilly had on two military guys to agree with him. For instance, Col. David Hunt said, "Torture is one tool" in interrogation. Later, he opined, "This is about political will. The fighting - - the war on terror is about political will and commitment, and torture is one small part of how this has to be approached. You can't hide about it." O'Reilly was almost giddy, like a Bangkok pimp at some village girl's school. He derided Kennedy and that undefinable "left wing media" throughout as his guests propped up his big damn head like the house slaves at the plantation home of a drunk master.

Oh, how O'Reilly, who danced, danced, danced with glee as he fed on the corpse of Eason Jordan, the CNN exec who said that U.S. troops kill journalists, did a little boogie after the interview. So happy he was, deploring the effort to find out how much and how regularly America tortures people, and O'Reilly (and millions of his viewers) brings it down to this: we need to define more clearly the rules of torture because, you know, we're gonna capture people and detain them until we've used them up and said fuck due process and during all those months and years we are gonna sexually humiliate them and beat them, so, hey, let's make the rules clear so everyone knows what they can and cannot do. O'Reilly then took a huge shit on his desk and wiped his ass with the Geneva Conventions, screaming, "Fuck your 'international rules.' Your treaties aren't even good toilet paper." And across the nation, O'Reilly's fans cheered at seeing O'Reilly degrade ideas and documents that they do not even want to understand beyond what is filtered through the seething, grunting, spittle-spewing mouth of O'Reilly.

O'Reilly and the right are part of the effort to mainstream torture, to make it seem rational and right to bloodthirsty America, the America that believes that if the "terrorists" are going to behead innocent people, then America has the perfect right to torture and "detain" anyone it sees fit, even if a "few innocent people" get caught in the fishing net (and isn't "detain" just the most polite fucking word? It's like you've been asked to stay a little longer at the cotillion in order to ensure the debutantes are escorted out properly, so you tell your party, "Sorry, I've been detained." Yeah, it's like that, but with more nuts-in-vises and fake menstrual blood smeared on your face- well, except for that one cotillion in Georgia, but that's another story).

If torture becomes just another "tool" in the interrogation box, a regular, regulated thing rather than an horrific abomination, then maybe the Christian right is correct: why bother believing that evolution exists?

Why Gannon/Guckert Matters (Rude Version):
When the Rude Pundit posted the work of Joseph A last week, wherein a reader created a Craigslist personal ad using Jeff Gannon/Jim Guckert's photo with his cock-desiring stare, it was meant to be a joke, a little funny thing to degrade an asshole who so deserved to be degraded, a fuck-you finger raised in the face of the little bitches in the mainstream media who refused to take the story seriously. And some readers were put out - how could the Rude Pundit do something so petty? Are we not lowering ourselves to the level of those we despise? Ahh, but the waves and tides of events and the undying research of Left Blogsylvania have a tendency to bite us all on the ass, do they not? Indeed, the Rude Pundit could not possibly lower himself to the level of the right wing of this country.

See, the Rude Pundit hoped beyond hope that the following would be revealed: apparently Gannon/Guckert was, really, truly a cockmonger of extraordinary appetites. Or, to put it simply, it looks like lil' J. D. Guckert was a gay male prostitute. For $1200, you could spend the weekend with Guckert, who, ya know, has got a nice body although he's got an odd, clumpy penis/balls combination. For $200, you could have an hour. And one imagines that getting access to the President of the United States would make one's price go up. Guckert could now put out an ad wherein you could pay $350 to shove your dick in the mouth that asked Bush a question. For an extra $50, you can slap him around and call him an "enabling little bitch."

'Course, the frosting, if you will, on this cake of cocksucking is the article from Raw Story that White House Press Secretary Scott "Stonewall" McClellan visits gay bars in Texas. So, like, between the potential sodomite McClellan, the outed sodomite and GOP Chair Ken Mehlman, and the whoredom of Guckert, would one be wrong to think that the vicious sexual repression of the conservative movement is actually masking a burgeoning buggering brotherhood?

With this revelation, John Aravosis at AMERICAblog claims that all this matters because of the anti-gay agenda of the Bush administration and the hypocrisy of populating the White House with gay men while pursuing this agenda (and giving the hooker access that few in the press are allowed). Aravosis is right, but that's just the surface of why this matters and why this story should be hammered on until something cracks.

Here's why it matters that the Bush administration allowed an alleged gay male prostitute with no journalistic experience into the White House on a daily basis and even allowed him to ask the President a question at one of Bush's precious little press conference debacles:
Right now, in Egypt, in Pakistan, in Thailand, there's a guy who's done nothing wrong other than be in the wrong place at the wrong time who's hanging on a wall, his wrists bleeding from the metal bracelets, his fingernails torn out from trying to, for fuck's sake, hold himself up to give his torn arm muscles some rest. He's been stripped naked, cold water has been thrown on him, electric prods have been shoved in his nuts. He's been threatened with being fucked in the ass by German shepherds and he's had bottles and broomsticks and metal rods shoved into his asshole. The beatings? Fuck, the beatings are like soft cushions compared to everything else. But he's still getting the shit beaten out of him every day. And he's there, in Egypt, in Pakistan, in Thailand, where eventually he's gonna fuckin' confess to anything, to every goddamn sin they want him to confess to, because the United States sent him there so that he could be stripped, shocked, and sodomized in a hole in the middle of some shithole building, some prison or "interrogation room" where no one will ever give a fuck about such nasty bullshit like "habeas corpus" and fuckin' "rights."

The reason Gannon/Guckert matters is because this administration has mainstreamed evil, has made it a dull hum in the background. Oh, sure, sure, we were appalled, so goddamn outraged when Abu Ghraib happened, but now, even as story after story comes out that we, the American public, elected a government that thinks it's simply part of the post-9/11 game to abuse and torture suspects, we care less and less. And like a rickety old house with termites gnawing at its foundation, we are being undermined and won't know it until the whole thing comes crashing down around us. We are draining away law and ethics through the "extraordinary renditions" of "terror suspects," as well as our own torturing. Like city dwellers who can sleep through sirens, car alarms, and street construction, we just tune it all out. But it'll crash, finally. Then we'll think, oh, shit, should've killed those termites.

You may ask how these things are connected, Guckert and Guantanamo (and elsewhere), other than through the act of sodomy. All of one's lies are entangled, ultimately. Al Capone couldn't be caught on a murder rap. Instead, the government nailed him and destroyed him because of tax evasion. If what finally brings down the Bush administration is the revelation of a secret cabal of homosexuals trying desperately to stay in the closet, then so be it.

But, you know, the Rude Pundit ain't holding his breath.

Arthur Miller, Radical:
Sure, sure, there's lots of shit to talk about today, but let us pay attention to a passing here. The other shit of our daily world of Bush will continue. But some important items will not:

One of the things muted or lost in the encomiums to the playwright Arthur Miller, who died last week, is just how radical a son of a bitch he was. Sure, sure, by the time most of us experienced his work, generally as forced marches through The Crucible or Death of a Salesman in high school or college undergraduate classrooms, with some teacher making us talk about witch trials, Salem and HUAC, and/or read Miller's "Tragedy of the Common Man" essay, we were jaded to such visions of a society that had turned on its own people. (Oh, maybe we cried at the end of the tv-film version of Salesman when John Malkovich wept to Dustin Hoffman.)

But Arthur Miller is one of the last connections to a time in American history when the laborers of this country were part of a movement, with their own muted history, their own vibrant culture. One of Miller's mentors was Clifford Odets, the playwright of the 1930s who dared to directly tie the good of union workers and the underclass to the rise of socialism. Miller's earliest efforts imitated a form of workers' theatre that put forth the simple proposition that the American Dream, that big, unwieldy fucker of "work hard and you'll be rewarded," was a chimera, a phantom, a sucker's illusion of individualism and success put forth by the moneyed people to keep the underclasses in line. Like the lottery today. Or Bush's Social Security plan.

And that's why we pay attention to Miller here. He fought, fuckin' fought old school, for the good of those who were run over by governments, cultures, and moralities. And so, so much of what he wrote still has the ability to kick the ass of anyone inundated with the lies of the right wing and the powerful.

You want your corporate evil masking its hunger for government contracts? Miller was unafraid of calling out the corruption at the heart of postwar America, when, so filled with hubris and stinking of victory, the population was manipulated into abandoning class issues for the bizarre fight against an ideology, Communism. All My Sons' main character, Joe Keller, is a war profiteer who knowingly sold faulty airplane parts to the government. The planes end up falling from the sky, and in an investigation, Keller lies so his partner can take the rap. Keller's defense is that he did it all for his family, so that his family could be secure and not face bankruptcy and shame. Remember: this is just after the Depression, when such anxiety was palpable for the audience.

You want your fucking "war on terror" revealed for the hatred of freedom that it actually is? Look at The Crucible now, beyond the association with McCarthyism. Check out Judge Danforth and ask yourself if John Ashcroft is not the same man. When you read shit like the torture of innocent men in the name of the good of the American soul, think about John Proctor, unwilling to confess to being something he is not. We could do the character analogy game all day. Miller said that America was a country given to delusion, mass hysteria, a screaming naked man running down the floor of the asylum, declaring himself God. Please, someone, put a fuckin' straitjacket on him.

And as for his most devastating work, Death of a Salesman? Goddamn, what a vicious attack on American "values." Forget Willy Loman for a minute. Forget the lies that Willy lived, about the big man he deluded himself into thinking he was. Think for a moment about Biff Loman and how subversive a character he actually is: so filled with illusions about what it means to be privileged in America that he has to keep running and twisting himself in knots to try to outrun the wave of bullshit that threatens to engulf him. Biff is a hippie, Happy is the pathetic establishment, and neither of them is capable of functioning under the weight of American "dreams." When President Bush and the Republicans talk about the "ownership society," what are they doing but suckering everyone into that unfulfillable dream again?

This doesn't even get into the righteous anger of After the Fall and Incident at Vichy, or the sexual confusion of A View From the Bridge. This doesn't even get into his work supporting dissident writers and freedom of speech, like his time with PEN.

Miller was there, man. He walked the walk. He faced down Roy Cohn in Hollywood and HUAC in DC when lesser men crumbled. He traveled to Turkey, Czechoslovakia, and Nigeria to face repressive regimes. He was a radical in the true sense in that he directed his life and talents toward revelation and activism. He saw no other way. Or else we all faced the damnation of silence. He wrote about blacklisting, "The heart of the darkness was the belief that a massive, profoundly organized conspiracy was in place and carried forward mainly by a concealed phalanx of intellectuals, including labor activists, teachers, professionals, sworn to undermine the American government." What is the right's assault on Ward Churchill and academia and the left in general but another version of the same thing, over and over?

Besides, he also fucked Marilyn Monroe. Balls as big as cantaloupes, Miller had.

And there are precious few men or women left who have walked that walk, and there's even fewer who would dare to walk it now.

And Thus the Great Gannon-Fucking Experiment Ends:
Earlier today, the Rude Pundit posted reader Joseph A's fake gay liaison personal ad using Jeff Gannon/Jimmy Guckert's underwear ad-esque photo to lure comments from unsuspecting gay Republicans. It was cruel, it was wrong, and, oh, sweet lord, the Rude Pundit doesn't feel the least bit bad for posting Joseph A's efforts.

But apparently the Craigslist people have standards. And they have taken down the posts that the Rude Pundit linked to. Still, except for the photo, all the text is still available from your Rude Pundit. Thanks to rude reader Cheryl B for the info.

Who Would Fuck Gannon?:
The fine, fine investigative work at AMericablog and Kos continues on the whole Jeff Gannon/James Guckert/who the fuck let this guy have a White House press pass/ hey-wait-a-minute-is-this-self-proclaimed-"Christian"-a-pimp-for-military-"escorts" affair. And today, the Rude Pundit had intended an examination of the prone mainstream media that lets the White House and the Religious Right dictate sexual mores despite their own blatant dishonesty on that account. But, instead, rude reader Joseph A has done something amazingly cruel and amazingly funny and, indeed, it must be noted.

Joseph A took the now famous Jeff Gannon in his underwear picture, with that "come hither and give me yon cock" look, and posted a fake personal ad on Craigslist in Chicago. Under the category Men Seeking Men, with the heading "Looking For Military Men," Joseph A wrote, "Hot Washington DC military guy, 47, 6'1" 195, in Chicago for journalism conference. Looking to host at my downtown hotel. I'm into safe fun and Republican-themed pillow talk with a similar Log Cabin Republican or closeted military guy. Masc guys only; discretion assured." And under that, the Gannon pic.

This is an experiment, Joseph A says. Let's see what kind of responses "Jeff Gannon" might get from gay men who'd sure like to fuck him. Why, here they are under the heading "Chicago Gay Republicans Like 'Military Man'" (One bit of info: in the response post, Joseph A wrote he also had an ad posted in Washington). And, oh, my stars and garters, what a view of Bush lovers who hate bush.

1. "Too bad you are obviously a bullshit pic collector or just some jerk trying to get a rise out of others by making the Republican comments...You are (or whoever the pic is of is) a hot looking man. And I think we could have a lot of fun. (Hot looking, well-built former military guy here.) But seeing as you are posting for hookups in BOTH DC and Chicago on the same day, you aren't serious about a hookup."

2. "hey bud, we look like a match......Jim here.......neg vers top.........cleancut exec, Ivy League guy with MBA........44, 5'11", 180 lbs, clean shaven, buzzed brn, brn eyes, mod hairy, hung 7.5 x 5.5 cut, shaved nuts, german background, neg top.........."

3. "I don't care what you are, military or not, democrat or republican....you are one hell of a hot man! Just wanted you to know!!!"

4. "Hey bud...welcome to town. Sorry about being from a blue state but we'll always take any "right of center" guys we can. I'm pretty far right as well. 6'1'205 great bod, fun to hang with and full-blooded midwesterner. Love political talk and I think I know most of the Hillary jokes but if you've got more, I'm up for it!"

5. "Hey, normally I dont say this but thought I'd drop you a line... I'm 23 years old..good looking and GAY...ya and I'm out too..but i'm a Republican. Sure I think ole' George has made some mistakes..but hes a million times better than Kerry. I'm sick of gay guy saying you have to be democrat just because your gay... I hold a lot of the republican views as a partner in a family biz... Democrats alway bring new laws/taxes into that effect me (my company) in a bad way. So ya, at 23, I'm gay, out, and Republican! LOL...just thought I'd tell you being you get harassed."

6. "how about a handsome italian liberal democrat? .. who was an eagle scout? me: 5'11" 187lbs. muscled/ 44 chest/33w 7.5 thick cock / cut rimming/jo/sucking/top hiv-/ddfree/safe only/ drug free"

7. "I just wanted to say welcome to Chicago from a fellow Republican. I am 30, well, will be 31 in April. Moved here a few years ago from near New Orleans. My step-grandfather used to have coffee with Trent Lott a few times a week and I worked for his campaign."

Now we can boo-hoo for poor James Guckert and the alleged harassment he has "suffered" since he dared (a la Gary Hart) people to find out about him (yeah, he did, on his website, saying he lived in plain sight). But, ya know, the motherfucker put himself out there, asking questions that are destructive toward Democrats, acting as a propagandist for the Bush administration (with or without the administration's complicity), and lying about who he is. And considering the way the soldiers of the right wreck the lives of anyone on the left they see as an enemy, be they a doctor who performs abortions or a Democratic President of the United States, Jeff Gannon/James Guckert is small change in the realm of payback.

A Guckerty Mess: The Rude Pundit would like to join his fellows in Left Blogsylvania who have been ever-so-busy exposing ersatz Talon "News" reporter Jeff Gannon as the Jim Guckert that he is. The Rude Pundit wants to feel the sweet yippee, the jouissance that comes from doing in a conservative cocksucker (in the literal and figurative senses of the word). Surely, surely, Guckert is deserving of contempt, utter, disgusted contempt: a closeted homophobe who "developed" gay porn websites with wondrous, compelling names like militaryescortsm4M.com, URLs that would seem to suggest that Guckert could provide one with a closeted homosexual member of the armed forces to roughly fuck you in the ass. The Rude Pundit wants to dance with delight that it's been revealed that a sycophantic, fawning pseudo-reporter was a clear fake, but was given White House press corps credentials and even got to ask the President a question at a press conference, a question that may as well (and most presciently) have been "Mr. President, may I walk up to the podium, take out your penis, and fellate you here in front of the rest of the reporters so everyone would know who loves you best? No, seriously, can I massage your cock into erection and go down on that hard meat pole like a starved spider monkey on a ripe, sweet banana? 'Cause I will." Yeah, the Rude Pundit wants to jump on that train, what with the access that Gannon/Guckert was given, including the memo that revealed Ambassador Joseph Wilson's wife was an undercover CIA operative (oh, and how gay Guckert was at the thought that he might be subpoenaed), what with the fact that a man with a pseudonym and no discernible journalistic experience beyond his employment by a fake news front website for GOPUSA.com was called on in the daily press briefings with a regularity that would make Brit Hume wonder if he's not givin' the love enough. And the Rude Pundit knows, he fuckin' knows that, along with the "revelations" that the White House is paying off conservative "commentators" to promote its policies, that Gannon is just part and parcel of a conservative propaganda machine that knows no bounds, not here, not overseas. And now that the mainstream media have picked up the story, just barely, the Rude Pundit wants to head into the fray and say, hey, Wolf Blitzer and Howard Kurtz, you ten-cent a blow whores, we only give a shit that Gannon/Guckert's queer because he's enabling an administration that has staked out a reactionary position on gay rights. Self-hating homosexuals are endlessly fascinating, endlessly pathetic, endlessly hoping to be caught so that the lies can end. We know that the sex angle is the only reason that anyone outside of Left Blogsylvania gives a shit. But what's more important here? The fact that there's a good chance that Gannon/Guckert is secretly a chowdereater of absurd appetites who can't get enough of that Army/Navy jizz in his mouth? Or that the Bush administration is so manipulative of the smallest aspects of its message that free press means to them "free to say only what we want them to say"? Of course this is about something bigger: it's about the control of the public through the control of the media and the control of the media through the control of access. And of course we know that if this was the Clinton era, the uproar on the right would be deafening. The Rude Pundit does find it immensely hypocritical that right-wing blogs were fuckin' lionized in the "mainstream" press for "exposing" the Dan Rather/memo fuck-up, but, for some reason, the left wing blogs like Kos, World O'Crap, Atrios, and AmericaBlog are perceived to be on some kind of maniacal witch hunt. Most absurdly, Howard Kurtz uses Glenn Reynolds, the conservative wackjob with the blog "Instapundit," to discredit the Gannon/Guckert embarassment. God, the Rude Pundit wants to have fun with this. He even started this entry with this: "James Guckert, aka 'Jeff Gannon,' former ace reporter for the Talon 'News' Service and fallen member of the White House press corps, awoke this morning and realized his ass was stuck to the sheets of his bed. He knew he should have bathed or at least wiped off the semen better last night, after getting roughly fucked by a train of gay male Marines who ain't askin', ain't tellin', and ain't pullin' out when they come in your bunghole. Guckert closed his eyes in sweet memory of the evening, his first where he didn't have to worry anymore who saw him when he headed into that bar down in Newport News, Virginia, the one with no real name, but it's a place where hot military studs who love to suck cock and get their cocks sucked can dance freely. Guckert had driven by it so many times, all the better to get 'material' for the websites, including MilitaryEscortsM4M.com. " But the Rude Pundit's heart wasn't in it. He wasn't in the mood to stick out his finger and give a Nelson Muntz "Ha-ha." Because, ultimately, it's not about hypocrisy anymore. That's too easy. It's about illness, a sickness that has infected this country through the willful ignorance that has pervaded our cable channels, our airwaves. More on that illness tomorrow (with lots of hot sex talk), but for today let's just offer this: like a good Soviet apparatchik who has fallen into disgrace, Gannon/Guckert's work has been scrubbed from the Talon "News" website and from GOPUSA.com. Soon, when the story dies down, despite the best efforts of Representative Louise Slaughter, Gannon/Guckert will more than likely have been disappeared (or gotten a book contract or pulled a David Brock). But despite the exposure of its most obvious cheerleader, we'll still have a press corps that is, at the minimum, deferential to the whims and words of the White House without any follow-up, without any accountability. With or without Gannon/Guckert, that ain't stopping any time soon. Propaganda is most effectively spread when it's presented under the guise of objectivity.

George Bush Doesn't Know When To Fold 'Em:
Do you think anyone's told President Bush that his Daddy's friends can't bail him out this time if his "business" (that'd be, you know, America) goes belly up? 'Cause, see, and really, that's the pattern of Bush's business life: run a company into the ground and then wait around until someone who wants some of that Bush-name glory comes over with a wad of cash for a buy-out or infusion. Like all wannabe wildcatters, Bush knows that he's gotta be a gamblin' man. The problem is, of course, that real gamblers know, well, when to walk away. Bush is a gambling addict, and he's got the biggest wad of cash in history on loan from the nation. Problem is that the vig on that wad's a motherfucker, and it's gonna come due. And you can bet that it ain't Bush's legs that're gonna be broken.

Here's Bush, man, and he's placed his fuckin' bets - he bet against the spread on Medicare prescription drugs, usin' his beards in Congress to put down the lowball cash. And he might've gotten the campaign issue, but the juice is makin' Bush into a chump. He put the billions on the outlaw line in tax cuts, and that son of a bitch has given nothin' back to the nation that's fronted the money to Bush. And now he's doin' the same with Social Security, wantin' to lay out the billions and trillions on a sucker's bet that the stock market's gonna do some magic mambo and pay off like a double pop on a longshot nag that gets a bottle of Frank's shoved up its ass.

Like every pathetic gambling addict before him, Bush is hittin' the pawnshop as he gets ready to pony up. He's standin' before that gated cashier, pullin' shit out of his bag, sayin', "C'mon, man, how much can you give me? I got a job trainin' program here - motherfuckin' veterans don't need no trainin' if we keep stop-gappin' their asses. Gimme $500 mill for that. I got grants to states for police and firefighters - man, just let everyone carry guns, and who the fuck needs fancy fuckin' cops. How much, man, how much? How about $540 mill for the cops and $215 mill for the firemen? Shee-it, that'd shove a firehose up their asses, huh? Huh? C'mon, man, laugh with me, it's all I got, shee-it. C'mon, I gots to keep my tax cuts permanent, man. Work with me here, bitch. I got . . . I got other cuts here, man, shit, like trainin' for medical personnel, that's gotta get me like a couple hundred mill. And heatin' for old people, what'll you give me for that? Can I get a couple mill for programs to help people with brain injuries? C'mon, c'mon, I'm doin' what I can here, but I need the cash, man, cash motherfuckin' money for that added game, the Iran bet that's comin' up on the board. Lessee, I got a clean water fund. Man, everyone just drinks Poland fuckin' Springs. Gimme $360 mill for that bitch. What's that get me? C'mon, don't ask me where I got this shit. Just gimme the cash money. I'll just borrow the rest from Johnny China across the big ol' Pacific."

An addict'll pawn it all. The future, the present. He'll raid the kids' piggy banks and empty their college funds. 'Cause always, around the next corner, is the big win, the one that'll make 'em into a wise guy. Problem is, 'cause he's an addict, he'll keep goin' double or nothin', double or nothin'. Problem is that we're the suckers Bush keeps stealin' shit some to try to parlay the spot into big money. Problem is: once a gamblin' loser, always a gamblin' loser.

No Free Speech For Ward Churchill, Part 2 (And the Continuing Need to Sodomize Bill O'Reilly With a Microphone):
Yesterday, the Rude Pundit laid out, with breathtaking brevity, the background of the Ward Churchill "uproar" (if by "uproar," you mean "a hate machine against Churchill fueled by the mad rantings and self-hating rage of Bill O'Reilly, who really is the worst kind of cocksucker, the kind who thinks that if he just deep throats the whole cock, he's doing the job, without realizing that licking, lapping, and tickling are part of the game").

O'Reilly continued his jihad against Churchill (gradually expanding his focus to include all of academia - see the cocksucker reference above) last night with the "revelation" that Churchill said, nearly a year ago, in the magazine Satya that "it may be that more 9/11s are necessary" in order to move people beyond complacency about their government. In context, the entire quote says that American leftists are too complacent about ongoing violence overseas and, in Churchill's worldview, which encompasses the world itself, in order to mobilize, something more personal may need to be at stake. It's really not so different, if you think about it, from news reports that emphasized, say, the number of Europeans killed in the tsunami. Yeah, yeah, lots of brown people may die, but, heavens, when white people are involved, we must act.

And, if you think about it, and if O'Reilly thinks about it, which he won't, his mouth so filled with thrusting cock that it affects his brain function, Churchill's seeking of a mobilizing event is not that different, from, say, page 51 of the neocon 2000 manifesto, the Project for the New American Century's "Rebuilding America's Defenses," which says, "the process of transformation [of America's defenses to, essentially, 'projection of influence'], even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor." So the neocons "called for" a new Pearl Harbor so their ideology could be ascendant. But, of course, those who supported this position, like William Kristol and Paul Wolfowitz, among others, haven't been forced out of their jobs and excoriated in the "mainstream" media.

But this is not really about Bill O'Reilly, entirely (last night, O'Reilly bizarrely berated Owen, saying UC is out of control and that Churchill is an embarassment to the entire state). It's about Ward Churchill, and it ain't about what he said. The Rude Pundit is not judging whether or not Churchill was hit-the-nail-on-the-head right or a stupid fucker for using the phrase "little Eichmanns" to describe the financial, defense, and intelligence industry people who were in the Twin Towers on 9/11. It's about Churchill's right to say it, about the right of anyone to say, for instance, that President Bush is a self-flagellating mental dwarf who can only come when jacking off on Laura's tits while Dick Cheney massages his own prostate in the corner.

When the recent study came out saying that more than a third of high school students think that "the First Amendment goes too far," we crossed some kind of line where the actual definition of America is on the line. These students don't understand the meaning of dissent because, really, there's very little means for disseminating dissent (beyond Left Blogsylvania). And when truly radical dissent surfaces, idiot fuckers with big microphones and little minds, like your O'Reillies, your Limbaughs, and your Coulters, do their goddamnedest to punish it and thus demonstrate that to dissent is to be punished, to lose your career if your words offend the power structure.

Words have consequences, of course, of course, and Churchill knows that. He knows the value of provocation and the truth behind uncivil discourse. But Churchill wants action, too. Part of that Satya interview is devoted Churchill's view on what pussies the protesters on the Left have become: "If you conduct your protest activities in a manner which is sanctioned by the state, the state understands that the protest will have no effect on anything. You can gauge the effectiveness—real or potential at least—of any line of activity by the degree of severity of repression visited upon it by the state. It responds harshly to those things it sees as, at least incipiently, destabilizing. So you look where they are visiting repression: that’s exactly what you need to be doing . . . Nonviolent action can be effectual when harnessed in a way that is absolutely unacceptable to the state: if you actually clog the freeways or occupy sites or whatever to disrupt state functioning with the idea of ultimately making it impossible for the state to function at all, and are willing to incur the consequences of that. That’s very different from people standing with little signs, making a statement. Statements don’t do it. If [they] did, we would have transformed society in this country more than a century ago." As the Rude Pundit said yesterday, of course people like Churchill must be silenced.

Words do have consequences, yes, but are Churchill's words more inflammatory than, say, stating that Iraq wants to use weapons to attack the U.S.? Or that Social Security is in a spiraling crisis? Whose words do real and actual harm to the frayed fabric of this democracy?

The University of Colorado Board of Regents, as well as the state of Colorado, are looking at Churchill's works in order to attempt to fire him (he's tenured, so it'll be a fuck of a battle to do so, and for all you stupid fuckers who wanna banish tenure, it's because of fights like this that tenure exists). And what the University and the State will teach its citizens, its children, is that if you don't toe the line, you will be publicly flayed, you insignificant motherfuckers.

And what students all over Colorado, in colleges and high schools, will learn is a variation of what O'Reilly says all the time: "Shut up. You will have freedom of speech when we say you have it." And the saddest part is many, many of those students will agree that that is good, and right, and the way of this new America and its ever more slippery slope to real fascism.

If and/or when that happens, you know who's gonna be out there with a megaphone, gettin' his ass beaten and thrown in jail to protect the freedoms that no one else believes they need? You know the answer to that question, and it ain't Bill O'Reilly.

No Free Speech For Ward Churchill (With a Side Note on the Pressing Need To Sodomize Bill O'Reilly With a Microphone):
Ward Churchill is a badass motherfucker, a fighter for causes in ways that most liberals only dare to believe possible. Indeed, agree or disagree with him, but most of us are pussies in the wake of Churchill's boots. Churchill's Native American activism, including his support for the American Indian Movement and political prisoner Leonard Peltier, merged with his fight against genocides all over the world. He has supported those who debunk Holocaust deniers, and he has called attention to the continuing genocides in Third World countries. He was one of the major figures in revealing the extent of the FBI's COINTELPRO effort to spy on Americans and crush leftist organizations in the 1960s. Of course, at some point, he had to be destroyed.

So Ward Churchill writes this essay on September 11, 2001. Titled "'Some People Push Back': On the Justice of Roosting Chickens," Churchill says that the United States is not an innocent victim of the 9/11 attacks, that long-term policies of the United States led to the inevitability of someone, at some point, trying to do violence against America. (Indeed, one thing that Churchill does that ought to give comfort to right-wingers is that he makes a connection between Iraq and the attacks, but does so by acknowledging the half-million children who died in Iraq as a result of U.S.-led sanctions.)

Essentially, Churchill's essay merely points out the obvious: that America, and, by extension, its citizens, must recognize that this nation is part of the world, and that the world doesn't obey our timetable, laws, or politics. Problem is, of course, that in the essay, Churchill referred to the "technocrats" who worked in the Twin Towers as "little Eichmanns," referencing Hitler's man who created the machine of genocide but did no killing himself. In other words, and uncomfortably, as is Churchill's way, the former chair of the University of Colorado Ethnic Studies Department posed this question, one that has been asked about the German people themselves, "How complicit is a population in the crimes of its government?"

Over three years later, with little controversy surrounding the essay and later book on the subject, and during which Churchill did not back down from his stance, Churchill is asked to speak at various colleges in the Northeast, including Hamilton College in New York. And then good people, left and right, re-discover Churchill's writings, and all of a sudden it's a free-for-all in trying to fuck-up Churchill's life because he called those who work in the machine of capitalism and government, including those in and out of the World Trade Center, "little Eichmanns." Churchill is called "pro-terrorist" by the Governor of Colorado and finds himself under investigation for his writings and speeches at the University of Colorado.

Fox "News" host and a man to whom "civilized discourse" means spitting the bones of small children at his guests, Bill O'Reilly, went on the warpath against Churchill. On the radio, in print, and on his television show, O'Reilly made it his mission to fuck up Churchill's life. He had his viewers, pathetic, deluded fuckers who sit in their shitty little rental units and think the liberals are the ones dicking them over with their "tax and spend" ways, terrorize Hamilton College into cancelling Churchill's appearance, an event which caused O'Reilly to crow like a buzzard finding a sweet cougar corpse. O'Reilly went further, though, pushing that Churchill ought not have his university position and lashing out at the old bugaboo of the "liberal media" when it was suggested that O'Reilly might have made more of this than necessary. (So viciously does O'Reilly want to ruin Churchill that his "poll" at his website asks if Churchill should be fired.)

O'Reilly claimed he was holding Churchill "accountable" for his speech, where he "compared Americans killed on 9/11 to Adolf Eichmann, a Nazi." This would be the same Bill O'Reilly who compared Michael Moore and Al Franken to Josef Goebbels, Hitler's Minister of Propaganda. See, the problem with the Goebbels comparison is that the Minister was creating lies to cover for the men in power in Germany. Goebbels was masterful at making the weakest in the Third Reich into scapegoats for the crimes of the fascists.

There's the background. Return tomorrow for the rudeness on what it means to have some motherfucking freedom of speech in this America. (And never fear - later this week, we're gonna get back to the Social Security nightmare and the budget that fucks over all of us in ways great and small.)

Hispanos del amor de los republicanos:
Man, did you know that Alberto Gonzales is Hispanic? Holy shit, the Republicans hammered that fucker home over and over in the "debate" over Gonzales's nomination. In his nominating speech, Bill Frist twice called Gonzales an "Hispanic-American." Then Craig Thomas of Wyoming said Gonzales will be "our Nation's first Hispanic top law enforcement officer." Arlen Specter went to town, telling the Senate about how much he loves the Hispanics: "When I was elected district attorney of Philadelphia some time ago, in 1965, there was not a single Hispanic lawyer in Philadelphia. At that time, I made an effort of outreach to bring minority representation into the district attorney's office as assistants and could not find a single Hispanic." And then Specter reminded us, "Judge Gonzales, I think, also would be expected to have a broader view on the immigration laws, being Hispanic." And certainly he'll be able to cook up frijoles roja like a motherfucker.

Orrin Hatch was so filled with Hispanic love you thought he might ejaculate jalepeno juice. Did you know that Hatch is the "Chairman of the Republican Senatorial Hispanic Task Force"? Did you know such a thing exists? Did you care? Hatch compared Gonzales's nomination to the other five Hispanics who were made members of various cabinets. In fact, Hatch, despite all his protestations, in essence said to vote for Gonzales because you gotta, gotta, gotta vote for the Hispanic guy: "Look, this is not just any nomination. This is a nomination for the Attorney General of the United States of America. This is the first Hispanic ever nominated for that position, or for any of the big four positions in the Cabinet of any President." Hatch brought it home with the Latino lovin': "We work with Hispanic people all over America who are every bit as devoted to our country as any citizen who has ever been in this country. I personally love Hispanic people." Yeah, Orrin Hatch has the chalupa jones, as he shows when he said, "Frankly, I know my friends in the Hispanic community, and Hispanic people all over America, are watching this debate, and they are sensing something very unfair going on here."

Hatch was followed by John Cornyn of Texas, who essentially said the word "Hispanic" over and over. Alberto Gonzales is not the "caricature" people have made him out to be, Cornyn said, "he is a source of pride and admiration for Hispanic organizations and Hispanics all across this great land of ours." Mel Martinez said, "Judge Gonzales is a role model for the next generation of Hispanic Americans in this country," and, like Tiger Woods in golf and for black people, "There will be Hispanic boys and girls across the country who will now aspire to be lawyers because of Judge Gonzales's example." (Martinez then got all Hispanic-y and talked some smack in Spanish to the Latin King homies in M-Town.)

They all jumped on the train to Ciudad de la Tortura, one after another, Jon Kyl, Kay Bailey Hutchison, the vile Saxby Chambliss, the mad Jim Bunning, and more, over and over, saying that Gonzales will be the first Hispanic Attorney General. Hatch spoke later and may as well have brayed that Democrats want to put pirahnas into the Rio Grande when he said, "What is it about Judge Gonzales that makes some people believe that he is somehow incapable of making the simple distinctions, distinctions made by lawyers every day? Is it prejudice? Is it a belief that a Hispanic American should never be in a position like this--because he will be the first one ever in a position like this?"

And then he threatened those who opposed Gonzales with "I believe every Hispanic in America who is interested in this country and who understands what is going on here is watching this with a great deal of interest," thus outlining the campaign strategy for 2006. Pete Domenici said as much: "What I am concerned about is whether the Democratic Party thinks it is going to help them because I do think it is another opportunity for Hispanics to say, Why should we be Democrats?" The same Democrats who tried, over and over, and so futilely, to make this about the torture, dummies. But, no. Gonzales's race is the trump card over cruelty.

Yep, like Clarence Thomas, that shining beacon of hope for the black community, Alberto Gonzales, who is, indeed, the first Hispanic Attorney General and, in fact, Attorney General to all of us, will glow like a 7-11 burrito being nuked in a cheese-stained microwave, casting a beam on smiling would-be torturing Hispanics everywhere, wondrous Hispanics who toil in the fields of America, trying so hard to justify the ways of the white people who order them to do their bidding.

(Oh, and, by the way, John McCain, you gimpy motherfucker? Don't you ever try to take the moral high ground on anything, ever again. Not only did you stay stone silent on Gonzales, but you sucked it up like a good little butt boy and voted for the torture master.)

(Oh, and, fuck you, Joe Lieberman.)

The State of the Union Is "Suck It, Fuckers":
Let's get one thing straight right here, right now, for every right-wing fuck doll in the media who gets up in arms about how "rude" the Democrats were for shouting "No" when Bush stood up last night and said, "Fuck your Social Security. I piss on your retirement": From the Buffalo News on Bill Clinton's 1995 State of the Union speech: "At one point, Republicans even booed. About 20 of them left before Clinton finished talking." What did the Republicans boo for? Because Clinton dared to say that there were some things that government must do.

Let's get another thing straight: the moment when Safia Taleb al-Suhail embraced Janet Norwood, whose son was killed in action in Iraq, resides in a stomach-churning netherworld between revolting and disturbing. It was revolting for its exploitation of the pain of this mother as a political prop for Bush's speech. Byron Norwood, a Marine Sergeant from good ol' Texas, was killed in the destruction of Fallujah. It was disturbing because the media's perception of the hug was such a product of desired delusion: please, please, please don't let this mother's son have died in vain, please don't let that man on the podium have sold us a bill of goods.

And the Rude Pundit is sick of hearing how "bold" is every fucking thing Bush proposes. If George Bush took a shit in front of the Lincoln Memorial, Orrin Hatch would appear on Fox "News" to declare how bold a shit it was and how mighty a loaf was pinched out and how are the Democrats going to deal with a President who is unafraid to take a dump with a stone Lincoln staring at him. It is not "bold" to target gays for isolation and denigration in the Constitution; it is not "bold" to cut domestic programs that mainly help those in poverty so that massive tax cuts can be made "permanent;" it is not "bold" to say that you want to create a Social Security system that no longer guarantees a retirement benefit for seniors and that cuts benefits to others; it is not "bold" to hinder scientific developments under the veil of "protecting life;" it is not "bold" to declare that that we should make sure that people on death row are actually guilty; it is not "bold" to imply that you will use military force to impose your political will on other nations. If this is what passes for "bold" in this America, then, indeed, cowards should hold their heads high and declare that their pusillanimity is actually "bold" retreat. Or maybe such "bold" people will just ink their fingers purple in solidarity with Iraqi "voters." Or the truly "bold" will dress in purple (like Condi).

But there he was, as ever, smirking, winking before talking about AIDS, looking around at every pause in the 88 applause interruptions (really, the most exercise Dennis Hastert gets all year), and telling all the nation, those who love and those who hate him, telling all the world, "Suck it, fuckers." And it didn't matter if Bush once again invoked weapons of mass destruction and state sponsors of terrorism despite the fact that the last time he did so he was lying. It didn't matter if he was lying about the "crisis" in Social Security. It didn't matter that he contradicted himself over and over within the speech, saying, for instance, "The United States has no right, no desire, and no intention to impose our form of government on anyone else" just before telling Saudi Arabia they better hop on the democracy bandwagon. It didn't matter if he portrayed Iraq and its people as grovellers at the feet of the mighty USA. Because he knows you better suck it, America, and don't neglect his balls while you're down there suckin'.

Bush ended "his" speech with a quote from Franklin Roosevelt's 1937 Inaugural Address, where Roosevelt included the famous words of poet Arthur O'Shaughnessy, "Each age is a dream that is dying, or one that is coming to birth." Of course, the Republicans are desperately trying to co-opt FDR to justify their destruction of his works. But one wonders if Bush has read the entirety of Roosevelt's Second Inaugural. See, because in the rest of it, Roosevelt said, "We of the Republic sensed the truth that democratic government has innate capacity to protect its people against disasters once considered inevitable, to solve problems once considered unsolvable. We would not admit that we could not find a way to master economic epidemics just as, after centuries of fatalistic suffering, we had found a way to master epidemics of disease. We refused to leave the problems of our common welfare to be solved by the winds of chance and the hurricanes of disaster." Huh. Just the thing that the Republicans booed when Clinton invoked such ideas in 1995.

In the rest of the speech, Roosevelt spoke about putting "private autocratic powers" in their place as "subordinate to the public government." And he spoke about the millions of people in desperate poverty and the soul of a nation that needs to help its own: "The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little." Damn, how short a time is history when we look upon such notions as too radical to even be discussed.

By contrast, George W. Bush says, Yeah, lap it up, America. You are playing a sucker's game where the winners have already been promised the prizes.