Tickets On Sale Today:
Look, this ain't like gettin' Coldplay or Spamalot tix, because, well, they're a helluva lot more expensive and there's only a couple hundred seats to the seven performances of The Rude Pundit in The Year of Living Rudely at the New York International Fringe Festival.

But you can go here, scroll down, click away, spend fifteen bucks (plus Ticketweb's service fee), and enjoy an hour or so of live rude punditry.

Bush Worship:
How strange it must be to worship a man like he is a god. Even in the ancient times, emperors were seen to be one step below the level of deities. The gods themselves were crazed, flawed beings, backstabbing, fighting, raping, murdering bitches and bastards who would just as soon destroy humans as grant them favors. Basically, they were projections of ourselves, but with superpowers. And we worshipped because we wanted to keep those vicious fuckers on our side. Perfection, you know, came later, much later, with the fairy tale version of Jesus (not the doubting, occasionally pissy Christ of the Bible), because rather than risk wrath on earth, one is told to strive for such perfection so you can get into Jesus's front door. And now there's another perfection, the one true leader, George W. Bush.

Yesterday, the incredibly faggy-named Hindrocket at the even faggier-named blog Powerline (the Rude Pundit seems to remember dancing away many a wanton night at a gay disco named Powerline back in the day, but that could be long dormant coke residue talking) described President Bush this way: "It must be very strange to be President Bush. A man of extraordinary vision and brilliance approaching to genius, he can't get anyone to notice. He is like a great painter or musician who is ahead of his time, and who unveils one masterpiece after another to a reception that, when not bored, is hostile." And what is Bush's latest "Impression:Sunrise," his Rite of Spring? Oh, some damn emission reduction accord that is, claims the Hindrocket, oodles better than the Kyoto Treaty in reducing greenhouse gases and which, by the way, won't "make any difference to the earth's climate, which will be determined, as always, by variations in the energy emitted by the sun." That, of course, begs the question that if nothing we do can stop the horrible sun from changing the climate, why bother negotiating any such pacts? Such crazed circular logic only reveals the self-evident, and that would be the brilliance of George W. Bush, which needs no explaining.

'Cause, you see, truth would require going beyond the sheer magnitude of Bush's genius, which would mean you'd have to kindly ask the President to remove his thrusting, visionary hindrocket from your asshole (or wait until he's done), get up off the Presidential seal rug in the Oval Office, stumble out, pants around your ankles, Commander-in-Chief semen dripping out of your sphincter, and read something other than the White House's talking points. Which would lead you to see that the Asia-Pacific accord is "largely symbolic" with "no emissions targets or timetables" and that every other nation involved is a Kyoto signatory, which this agreement does nothing to change. In other words, perhaps this masterpiece of foreign diplomacy on the environment doesn't even rise to the level of "what's the least we can do."

It's pathetic, the routine Bush worship of the vast majority of the right. If Allah was worshipped with such fervent praise by prostrate pilgrims at Mecca, he'd say, "Aw, c'mon, guys, you're embarassin' me."

Yes, indeed, it must be strange to be President Bush. Certainly there are days when he's told about shit like Powerline or other conservative lickers of W's balls ('cause he ain't readin' it, to be sure), and he just giggles that nasal, nervous little giggle of the poker player who just sure bluffed everyone at the table and won the pot.

And it must be strange to be the Hindrocket, waking every morning, wondering what would George do, and flogging himself to be sure he is scoured and worthy of his President.

Correction: Australia, which signed onto the bullshit Asia-Pacific accord, is just as punk ass about global warming as the United States, and it is not a Kyoto signatory. Thanks to astute Canadian Chris for the info.

Advice to Democrats Regarding Secrets and Political Messages:
In New York City, part of the big summertime fun of the post-7/7 and 7/21 London bombings is the institution of random bag searches throughout the steamy subway system. That means if the cops pick you on the right day, they could busily pick through your backpack filled with anal beads, love oils, and Jenna Jameson's vibrating latex pussy with cock clutching kung-fu grip. That means that if you've taken the train from JFK, having had your personal belongings rifled through at customs at the airport, they can also be fondled at the 14th Street A line stop. Surely, we are told, such is a small price to pay to assure that we are not bombed into a fine paste that becomes a tasty treat for the rats and the sewer crocs. Because, truly, if we have nothing to hide, why mind the searches?

And now that the Patriot Act is being re-authorized in one form or another, with its demands that the FBI be allowed no judicial oversight when they go trawling through your library records to see how many times you've checked out The Anarchist Cookbook, 101 Best Chick Pea Recipes, and The Idiot's Guide To the Koran. Or to enter your home to look for suspiciously large quantities of kitty litter, which they know you've purchased because you used your A&P Bonus Savings card to get that motherfucking discount. For certainly, if you have no intentions other than making yummy falafel snacks or provide a comfy, clean place for your countless cats to crap, we're assured, then why should the searches matter? We should be willing to give up our rights to privacy if it stops a single terrorist act. And, indeed, if we oppose such searches, we must have something to hide.

This is the warped logic of our discussions of civil liberties: if you are a good, lawful person, then you shouldn't mind having yourself probed, spied on, and frisked. Principles like the Fourth Amendment are merely covers for the guilty.

So let's turn this shit around and use it against the Bush administration. Hang on - this is gonna be a bullet train speedin' to the heart of the political spin machine. Here's the deal:
Poll numbers show that a majority of Americans see Bush, Cheney, et al as liars and cover-up artists. This is bad news for an administration that tells its citizens they must forcibly open up their private lives to government scrutiny, an administration that gives the constant message that secrecy is primary to its operations. In every aspect of governance, the executive branch has asserted a right to keep things hidden, from Congress, the Judiciary, and the People. And that's where the Democrats can turn around the Patriot Act and more on the adminstration and on the Republican party.

Here's the campaign, in all its glorious simplicity: "What are you trying to hide?"

Notice the beauty of the message there - the implication that something is being hidden, that something sinister is going on, the way it puts the onus of proof on the ones doing the hiding. And it works in a scoundrel's menu of current situations:

On treatment of "detainees" in the war on the struggle on terror of extremists in the whole entire big damn Earth: Dick Cheney and Justice Department have gone nigh on nutzoid at the prospect of an amendment to a Senate defense bill that says, simply, the Army field manual applies to interrogations and, oh, by they way, don't fuckin' torture people. Now that the whole defense bill has been shit-canned by Bill Frist over this, it is the time to ask Cheney and the administration: "Oh, you don't want any rules or oversight? What are you trying to hide?"

On John Roberts's documents while in the Solicitor General's office: The Democrats' call for the release of more of Roberts's records than the dribble the Bush adminstration has pissed out has been met with Bolton-confirmation-like stonewalling and derision from Republicans, like John Cornyn, who said, "They don't have anything on him now, but they're still digging and hoping." The proper response on this from Democrats oughta sound like a throwdown for a streetfight: "So, like, if there's nothing to get on Roberts, why not release the documents? What are you trying to hide?"

The "What are you trying to hide" message is so clear. Look at how it's worked on the Plame inquiry, how much doubt it's sowed in the administration, doubt that can easily be spread to other issues. Yes, it's a double edged sword because it seems to accept things like the Patriot Act. But it can also be subversive to the spread of secrecy and the invasion of privacy. In an ideal America, government should be open to the sunshine and air, and citizens' lives should be private. But the Bush administration has reversed this foundational principle.

So let's at least put things on an even keel, no? You want us all to be open books? Then swing open the doors, unlock the file cabinets, and let some light into those dark corners from which the Bush administration governs.

Update on The Year of Living Rudely Live Show:
Click on over for info on buying tickets and on an upcoming rude CD.

The Ghost of Big Bill Haywood:
Big Bill Haywood was a giant of a man, and he could be a son of a bitch when he got drunk, but there was no one else who was gonna stand tall with you, club in hand, ready to face down the armed Pinkertons when the owners wanted to shut out the strikers at the mines, the mills, the factories. Yeah, back in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Big Bill Haywood was the inferno burning in the heart of the labor movement, and that motherfucker could speak with a rage that would have exhausted ten men. He was blind in one eye, a big Cyclops, but that frozen pupil would stare down judges and cops, and he was beloved by workers from sea to shinin' sea in that America, back when the nation was ready to explode from the mad momentum of workers' rights.

When Haywood, who had been a miner at the age of nine, became the head of the Industrial Workers of the World, the Wobblies flourished. Sure, they never had more than 150,000 members at one time, but they had 3 million total, before the Wilson admininstration destroyed the Wobblies. And many of those went on to join the AFL, ILGWU, and other unions. Haywood knew that to face down the capitalists, you had to have a union of every industrial worker. One Big Union, they called it, the "O.B.U."

Here's Haywood on union organizing: "So, on this great force of the working class I believe we can agree that we should unite into one great organization--big enough to take in the children that are now working; big enough to take in the black man; the white man; big enough to take in all nationalities--an organization that will be strong enough to obliterate state boundaries, to obliterate national boundaries, and one that will become the great industrial force of the working class of the world."

Yes, Haywood believed in the need to vote, but he saw the political process as corrupt: "You must not be content to come to the ballot box on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November, the ballot box erected by the capitalist class, guarded by capitalist henchmen, and deposit your ballot to be counted by black-handed thugs, and say, 'That is political action.'"

See, Haywood fuckin' knew that the key to gettin' power back to the workers was to organize, organize, organize. He was beaten, imprisoned, and jumped bail to escape a savage American government that wanted to stop him. He was romanticized by the leftist intellectuals of the era, including Jack Reed, invited to salons and galas because of the real workers he represented. But he never bought into it. He never let that go to his head. He knew that his voice, his one-eye, his balls, and his guts belonged to the men and women laborers, whether black or white, immigrant or native. Yeah, he could be a son of a bitch, but he never forgot where he came from, and he never stopped trying to topple the powerful until he was chased out of this country.

Here's Clarence Darrow, a raiser of hell himself, defending Haywood and the Western Federation of Miners back in 1907 against charges of a conspiracy to assassinate the governor of Idaho: "I am here to say that in a great cause these labor organizations, despised and weak and outlawed as they generally are, have stood for the poor, they have stood for the weak, they have stood for every human law that was ever placed upon the statute books. They stood for human life, they stood for the father who was bound down by his task, they stood for the wife, threatened to be taken from the home to work by his side, and they have stood for the little child who was also taken to work in their places--that the rich could grow richer still, and they have fought for the right of the little one, to give him a little of life, a little comfort while he is young."

Forgiving the sexist middle there, they're words that the AFL-CIO and its dissidents should repeat, endlessly, as they work out the future of a movement that needs, desperately, to get back to its past.

Pre-9/11 Mindset Before 9/11:
So, like, who else besides former CIA agent Larry Johnson had a pre-9/11 mindset prior to 9/11? Johnson, former State Department official, former CIA agent, gave the Democrats' response to the George Bush's Saturday Address That No One Actually Gives a Happy Lemur Fuck About Other Than a Savagely Vibrating Michelle Malkin, and he said, "We deserve people who work in the White House who are committed to protecting classified information, telling the truth to the American people, and living by example the idea that a country at war with Islamic extremists cannot focus its efforts on attacking other American citizens who simply tried to tell the truth."

So now, because he simply believes that outing covert agents is wrong, Larry Johnson must be destroyed, taken apart by Karl Rove's Sodomizin' Stormtroopers, who have been working so hard lately that they've worn down three sets of of their signature ten-inch black strap-on dildos. Johnson was viciously critical of the Clinton adminstration, at one point commenting on Bill O'Reilly's Fox "News" show on January 31, 2001, about Janet Reno's Justice Department: "There were over 23 Arabs that were held in U.S. jails on secret evidence never presented to their lawyers. One gentleman was held for three years, never had a chance to face the charges. We go after other countries on this issue as an abuse of human rights. This gentleman was finally released, no charges brought. It would be one thing if it was one instance. But it happened in 23 cases." So outraged was O'Reilly at the idea of detaining Arabs on secret evidence that he called Reno "incompetent" and "a boob."

Indeed, despite Gary Schmitt's fine showing of that line of Johnson's from a July 2001 New York Times editorial where Johnson said that Americans had little to "little to fear" from terrorism and that Osama Bin Laden was "more of a symptom than a problem," here's Johnson on May 31, 2001 in the Times, commenting about al-Qaeda, "it's really a loose amalgam of people with a shared ideology, but a very limited direction," which sounds like sleeper cells and groups "connected with" al-Qaeda that we hear about every day.

And here he is earlier on CNN on January 3, 2001, making a fuck of a lot more sense than every chattering monkey ready to line up for missle defense: "Proactive security is we need to get away from this nonsense of predicting what the threat is. Even some of the language that was being used in the reports is it's the highest threat ever. We do not know what the threat is actually. We cannot read the mind of the bad guy. We do not have the intelligence access to really know what they're thinking or planning. If we did, we would prevent it...Instead of worrying about what the threat is, let's simply put in place defensive security measures that work." Of course, that pre-9/11 mindset crept in when Johnson noted, "We do it every day for airlines, particularly domestically in the United States, to prevent them from hijacking. It's proactive security instead of waiting to predict what the threat is."

But pre-9/11-ism was quite prevalent pre-9/11. Bill O'Reilly, on March 2, 2001, suffering from what the right might call a post-Clinton mindset, was quite squeamish about giving the President unlimited power to kill foreign leaders under the Terrorist Elimination Act of 2001. Said O'Reilly to Representative Bob Barr (who would undergo another kind of change of heart post-9/11), "See, I'm worried about that kind of power being put in the hands of even the president, because as I've said, we've seen some pretty dubious things go on in that Oval Office...I would vote against this bill, Congressman, if I were in Congress." So Bill O'Reilly wanted to tie the hands of the President.

Pre-9/11 (and post, to be sure) the right was desperately trying to ram missle defense down the throats of retching America. Tony Snow fairly scoffed at the idea of opposing missle defense, saying on July 13, 2001, to Paul Wolfowitz, "There's another argument critics make, which is that if you start doing an assessment of threat, and they say that this has been done at the Pentagon, you start looking down the list, people right now are more worried about terrorist acts, you know, bombs in suitcases and the like, than they are about a ballistic missile threat, and that therefore we ought to be allocating more money to the terrorist problem and maybe slow down the development of missile defense." Wolfowitz offered a conciliatory "let's-spend-money-on-both" answer, but, to be sure, Wolfie wanted him a big ol' laser condom in space.

The answer to the first question is, of course, every fucking person who was alive before 9/11 had a pre-9/11 mindset then. It's why Bush felt so liberatingly free to ignore the PDB about Bin Laden threatening to strike inside the U.S. And you know what? Even if Larry Johnson said that Osama Bin Laden was really just a fluffy bunny who needed to be snuggled and have his beard lightly caressed by waitresses at Hooter's, he was a CIA agent, and he's got a right to be pissed. Everyone in intelligence gets shit wrong sometimes, right? Hell, Gary Schmitt would know. He's just PNAC's chief stooge, the shepherd of a failed flock desperately trying to get those goddamn sheep back in the pen.

A Big Ol' "Why?":
So let us say, and why not, that you've been tellin' everyone that you're gonna ask Margarita, your girlfriend, to marry you. You told Pablo, Raphael, Miguel, all the cholos down the block that you got a ring and you're gonna ask her for her hand. Word gets back to Margarita, except not in the way you want it. She comes up to you and says that Rico, her stepbrother's cousin who happens to be a jeweler, says you don't have a ring, that you been makin' that shit up, that your cheap ass couldn't afford no diamond.

Now there's a couple of ways of solvin' this problem: one is to talk about what a punk ass Mexican that Rico is. How Rico ain't no jeweler, just some department store asshole who pretends he knows shit. And, baby, who are you gonna believe? That little bitch Rico or me?

Of course, Margarita ain't stupid, yo. She knows that you wouldn't have to talk shit about Rico if you did one thing: show her the ring. Prove it. That's all: put up or shut up.

So, like, has this question been asked by the media and of the media: if Joseph Wilson was just outright wrong, why didn't the Bush administration just prove that Iraq was trying to buy yellowcake uranium from Niger? Put up or shut up.

Right wingers everywhere are mischaracterizing Wilson's findings, saying, for instance, that they "bolstered" British allegations on the uranium: says the monkeyfuck insane Ann Coulter, "His conclusion is contradicted by the extensive findings of the British government." Or they say that Wilson just was a lazy hack who didn't find out anything.

Why did Karl Rove and Scooter Libby bother trying to "help" reporters not work on stories about Wilson's findings? Why try to discredit Wilson if you can prove he's wrong? Why not just show the British findings? Damn, if that answer ain't about as obvious as a herpes sore on a hooker's lip, you deserve all the diseases you get.

You don't produce that ring, Margarita's gonna leave you right there on the sidewalk where you belong, you lyin' bastard. And you'll deserve it. Especially if Rico comes along and kicks your ass but good.

Karl Rove Deals With His Impotence:
Karl Rove's leather slave is worried about his master. Down in the basement of the White House, chained across an empty keg of Ulysses Grant's favorite ale, Karl Rove's leather slave sees Rove in the corner, coked out of his mind on a special kind of blow from Uruguay cut with the powdered bones of Sunni children, and Rove's nose is bleeding as he weeps and thrashes about, unable to get a hard-on to save his life, searching for his shining steel strap-on, the one he calls "Steely Ann," tossing aside Chester Arthur's hand-crank mutton chop trimmer and Ike's collection of Philippine shrunken heads, raging at the beams about his seething need to show his leather slave he means business.

Karl Rove's leather slave would like to offer Rove some whispered words of sympathy and comfort, but it's hard to talk, you know, with a ball gag leather-strapped into your mouth. And, of course, with his hands cuffed to the cement floor, he can't even gesture over to John Tyler's cabinet, a gift from Texas slave-owners, ironically enough. But no, no, instead, he must just watch Rove destroy the basement of America's house.

Karl Rove's leather slave is sore, since Rove has beaten his ass to welts and blood streaks. It was a terrible whipping, brought on when Rove tried to desperately fuck his leather slave with a half-tumescent cock flopping uselessly around. Karl Rove's leather slave felt pity for Rove as he screamed, perhaps at his dick, perhaps just to the air, "It should be enough, goddamnit, it should be enough." And then, in a rare moment of calm, Rove took the blindfold off his leather slave and said, "These fuckers think they've got it all figured out, but I'm a fuckin' god at this shit. See, if I wanted to just blow the place up, we could have nominated Edith Jones or Janice Rogers Brown or, what's-her-name, Senora Judgey McTaco or whatever, hard core bitches who'd've made those fuckin' Democrats set the place on fire and immolate themselves in the process. But I want the slow burn. It's gonna be a long, hot August, diggin' into every toilet Roberts has ever taken a dump, and then in September, it'll all explode when those fucks Biden and Leahy try to get classified docs on Johnny G." He giggled madly, and Karl Rove's leather slave tried to make his eyes look at Rove as if his master had finally lost control. "Right when that mick bastard's puttin' out his worthless report."

Then, unfortunately, Rove caught a look at the front of yesterday's Washington Post, and it made Rove look down at his pantsless lower half and his cock, shrinking, shrinking away. With a twitch and a sneer, Rove looked right into his leather slave's face and said, "Now I'm gonna whip you till you bleed and then I'm gonna fuck you with Steely Ann." After snorting the snow off his leather slave's ass, Rove was as good as his word.

Now, Fox "News" has been turned up to full volume. The Secret Service, who have heard terrible noises and screams and motors and suction coming from the basement, knock on the door to make sure all is well. Rove screams back for them to go wipe the President's ass and leave him alone. Rove tries to jack off at Sean Hannity's face on the screen, yankin' his limp cock and squeezing his shaved balls for all he's worth, but he can't even manage a dribble.

Finally, he opens Tyler's cabinet and there, in all its glowing glory, is Steely Ann. He puts the belt around his waist and heads over to his leather slave, prancing around as if he's got the biggest dick in the capitol. "What do you think?" he asks, rhetorically, for sure, as his leather slave cannot answer. "Should I fuck you without any K-Y? Or should I grant your asshole a pardon?" Nah, Rove thinks. Better to fuck him hard and painful so that he remembers it for a long, long time.

Fuck-Up:
The Rude Pundit admits his errors: he was wrong in his allegation earlier this week that Supreme Court nominee John Roberts is the John Roberts mentioned in Lawrence Walsh's Iran-Contra report. Ronald Reagan was apparently fond of people named "John Roberts," and had a couple of 'em around. However, in another Reagan-era scandal, there are notes related to "John G. Roberts" and the investigation into Michael Deaver. The Rude Pundit regrets any distress he may have caused either John Roberts or, indeed, John Robertses everywhere. However, he'd still fuck Judge Roberts 'cause he's sooo fuckin' perfect.

Luvin' John Roberts:
Man, oh, man, after reading the lengthy profile of him in today's New York Times, the Rude Pundit just wants to fuck Supreme Court nominee John Roberts because, holy motherfuck and sweet heaven on earth, how could you not wanna fuck the shit out of someone who is so goddamned straight and upstanding and craps strict constitutionalism and leaps tall buildings in a single bound and fights for truth, justice and the American way. C'mon, straight or gay, ya gotta wanna fuck Superman, right? And, until alien men of steel appear in the farm towns of the USA, all we've got is Roberts, father, son, lawyer, Catholic, husband, and, oh, god, the Rude Pundit gets hard thinkin' about someone sooooo good tellin' him who he can marry and what he's allowed to say and, slap us some more, Johnny, where he can legally place his penis, which oughta be in Roberts' Harvard-educated mouth.

'Cause, you see, we are such shit compared to John Roberts, are we not? We who might be called "partisan" or we who don't sublimate our beliefs. C'mon, gang, get on board the Roberts railroad and ride that fucker right into Sandra Day O'Connor's seat. Look at the article - it's like the e-Harmony profile from hell: devout Catholic from a Bethlehem Steel plant manager father, uber-geek in elementary and high school, "scrappy" football player, part of the Gipper's administration, super-duper lawyer guy, and so, so much more. Why, Todd Pardum, et al can't help but make him seem just dreammmmmy if you're a tight-assed right winger who's never partied a day in your life. Or just the guy whose eminent domain the Rude Pundit wants to force his purchase power into. Oh, such sweet profit.

Oh, but there's more: Roberts played uber-lesbian Peppermint Patty in the school play, he apparently looks good in athletic shorts, beloved by the Christian right, so much so that James Dobson himself bestowed blessings upon Big John.

Hey, what's wrong with us sour-puss left wingers? Why can't we all celebrate the shining fuckin' glory that is John Roberts? Why worry that his wife was on the board of Feminists for Life (apparently the anti-choice choice of hot chicks)? C'mon, since when have the beliefs of someone's wife mattered to anyone in politics or the media? Why worry that he's seen as someone who will back big business concerns time and again over any government restrictions? Why worry that he advised the Bush campaign on halting the Democrats from winning the White House back in 2000? It's not like he'll be any position to decide any cases on who's Pres-... oh, wait, never mind that one.

Yep, since we should all apparently shut the fuck up about Roberts and just bask in the solar glow of his innate magnificence, the Rude Pundit will entertain fantasies of taking this perfect specimen of Republican manhood in his Circuit Court office and fucking him backwards and forwards because, in the end, that's what he's gonna do to us.

(Oh, and perk up, lefties. Ann Coulter's on our side on this one. 'Course, in her own cuntish, monkeyfuck insane way. See, Coulter thinks Roberts is gonna turn out to be a liberal, that he's kinda wimpy. Ann likes her men rough, the kind of conservatives that would beat her, fuck her in the ass, wipe their dicks with her hair, piss on her, and tell her it's better than she deserves. Real men, you know.)

Coulter's Plagiarism - Links To the Heavy Lifting:
The good John Byrne at Raw Story and Ron Brynaert at Why Are We Back In Iraq do the hardcore research that elaborates and expands on the Rude Pundit's initial reporting of Ann Coulter's apparent plagiarism. Check out the ass kicking.

And, despite Brynaert's discomfort with the title of the original posting, Ann Coulter remains a cunt.

John Roberts, the Stealth Motherfucker:
The Rude Pundit predicted it - he knew that President Bush would nominate a motherfucker for the Supreme Court, but that was easy because, well, Bush always picks motherfuckers. The kinda discomfiting thing about John G. Roberts, formerly know as Ken Starr's ball washer and poor fuckin' schmo who couldn't get comfirmed for a circuit court at the end of Bush I's term, is how quietly creepy a motherfucker Roberts is. Like Jeffrey Dahmer before him, Roberts looks like a normal, if a bit out there, guy. But, oh, once you open the refrigerator, who knows what horrors will be found.

You can look around and find all the shit about Roberts' opinions and decisions, including his briefs and arguments on abortion, the environments, and civil rights. For surely, siding with Operation Rescue alone qualifies Roberts as a motherfucker, arguing to the Supreme Court that those who block family planning clinics are asserting First Amendment rights and "are perfectly non-discriminatory in their opposition to abortion. They are opposed to abortion, not women." Which, if you follow the logic, could allow you to block access to anal itch cream and say that you're not opposed to entire buttocks, just assholes.

And, as Slate points out, Roberts is ready to allow the Bush administration to lock you up, throw away the key, and fuck your mother if it wants to under the blanket powers of the almighty President granted to him during wartime. Hail the fuckin' king, man.

But somethin's up with this motherfucker, John Roberts. Somethin' don't smell right. Fucker's been befouling the waters for years, under Reagan, Daddy Bush, on the Circuit Court, as a corporate lawyer. Somethin' stinks.

First, there's the problem with secrecy and granting of presidential power. There's the decision discussed above in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld. And somewhere out there is a memo that Roberts wrote, mentioned in a June 5, 1986 Washington Post article, supporting Nixon's claim of executive privilege over his presidential papers, a claim supported by the Reagan Justice Department with an eye to keeping the Gipper's papers secret.

Which begs the question of Roberts' involvement in Iran-Contra and other Reagan era scandals. Between a mention in Lawrence Walsh's report and notes related to Roberts and the investigation into influence peddler Michael Deaver in the Reagan archive at the University of Texas, there's somethin' queer here. It all could be just tiny bits and pieces, detritus of a dead era. But, hey, anything to slow down the Roberts love fest.

When Bush said he was going to announce his nominee in prime time on TV so that today's news cycle might shift away from Karl Rove, what wonders should we have expected? That he'd nominate a half-Mexican, half-Asian one-legged blind female midget who farts Bach perfectly? Instead, glory be, he presented America with another Harvard-educated white guy, one more privileged D.C. lawyer who was Daddy's boy once, and a motherfucker. Someone who you can bet was given a list of issues by Rove and asked point blank how he'd rule. Did we really expect anything more?

Pop Culture Has Its Way With Karl Rove (or The Revenge of Jack Ryan):
One of the things that has failed liberals at every step of the way on stories as seemingly cut and dried as, say, Dick Cheney's relationship with Halliburton is that we've been on the wrong side of the simple vs. complex storyline. See, in order to understand how diabolical the Cheney/Halliburton nexus is, one has to immerse oneself into laws and rules regarding the finances of government officials, the various schemes created for assuring Halliburton would become bloated like dead hippo corpse, and more. Shit, it's just easier to ignore it.

But this time we're finally on the easy-to-understand, anger-inducing side: Karl Rove outed a CIA agent for petty vengeance against her husband. That's all the narrative that's necessary. To counter that, the opposing side needs to entangle itself in legalistic arguments and semantical stunts, the kinds of arguments that always seem to be what liberals are making. Look at the stunning recitation of alleged history, law, and "media bias," all wadded into a huge ball of semen-stained Kleenex for your disposal by Andrew McCarthy (not the one who made a corpse seem alive in Weekend at Bernie's, but, as a writer for the National Review, achieves the same effect). Watch any of your loyal right-wing pundits act like they know the minutiae of rules and legalities. It's positively, breathtakingly, as they would have once said, "Clintonesque."

On Fox "News" last night, Sean Hannity interviewed Michael Isikoff about the Rove/Plame affair, and Isikoff scoffed as Hannity sputtered and tried to claim the story was evidence of "media bias" and that the "law" on revealing covert agents wasn't broken. Isikoff simply told Hannity to take a step back from the ledge and wait until Patrick Fitzgerald's done. Hannity, never a man to be told he looks like a drooling, idiot ape, refused, calling the whole story a media-manufactured "food fight."

What's happening here, with polls showing that very few Americans believe the Bush administration on the whole issue, is the American public, having been fed years of propagandistic books, films, and television shows, since the Cold War, about how magnificent the CIA is in protecting our freedom (despite, you know, having often done quite the opposite), feels as if it's looking out for Jack Ryan. You know Jack Ryan, Tom Clancy's CIA agent, played by AlecBaldwinHarrisonFordBenAffleck in the movies. By this point in a Clancy novel or film, Jack Ryan (or someone) would have grabbed the tweedy, bespectacled, fat, balding asshole politico, who thought a CIA agent's identity was just more political capital to be spent when expedient, and beaten the shit out of him, leaving him bleeding, glasses broken, pissing himself on the floor of the Oval Office. Hell, where do you wanna go with this? Jason Bourne? Sydney Bristow? Bill Cosby on I Spy? George Smiley? James fuckin' Bond? All of the spy glorification in pop culture has made it a cardinal rule: you don't blow someone's cover.

The Rove story has legs because the corporate media that lionizes spies over and over as a way of justifying secret operations against Americans, as well as bullshit like the Contras and more, has taught the public to love them some CIA agents. In a Clancy novel, we know who the villains are: they are just as likely to be the bureaucrats in DC as they are the arms dealers. And both should be dealt with as criminals.

So all Democrats really have to do is stand back and let these fuckers twist in the wind. When we hear Rove told Matt Cooper, "I've said too much already," we know that that's the line of scoundrels and weasels trying to cover their own asses. When we hear the President lower the ethical standards bar by which one can work for the White House all the way to the floor, we know that he's covering for his friend. It's all SOP for those who, it seems more and more each day, are SOL.

The Supreme Court: Who Would Jesus Choose?:
At his brief press conference today with Prime Minister Singh of India (for whom it was everything he could do to refrain from showing his Apu imitation), President George W. Bush declared that the Consitution was a-okay with him when it comes to nominating a justice to the Supreme Court. Said Bush, acting as if he paid attention in Civics class, "I, of course, am the person that picks the nominee, and they get to decide whether or not the nominee gets confirmed. That's the way it has worked in the past. That's the way it's going to work in this administration." Which, if you think about it, is about as obvious as saying, "I'm gonna squeeze this here weasel really hard until it stops breathing and its bones break. Then that'll be one dead weasel." 'Cause, see, if it didn't work that way, one would have a super-weasel on one's hands and, well, shit, Bush already has Karl Rove.

This weekend, the new wires were all a-twitter with Bush's Saturday Radio Address That No One Listens To Except A Furiously Masturbating Ken Mehlman, where Bush described his ideal Supreme Court nominee, "My nominee will be a fair-minded individual who represents the mainstream of American law and American values. The nominee will meet the highest standards of intellect, character, and ability, and will pledge to faithfully interpret the Constitution and laws of our country."

AP said something like, "Bush Gives Hints" on a nominee. Well, no, not really. Bush stated the obvious. If Bush had said, "My nominee will be a batshit insane, crazy in love with Jesus toelicker who'll do my every bidding and allow us to sic savage dogs on naked vaguely brownish people, overturn Roe v. Wade and force women to have babies from frozen embryos so they don't have to ever enjoy the fucking, and kowtow to every orgiastic, profit-making whim of corporate America. I don't give a happy monkey fuck if the motherfucker's black, white, man, woman, or beagle. As long as judgey knows how to play ball, lie at the hearings, shred documents, and never fucked a living intern, judgey'll be okey-fuckin-dokey by me, 'cause, see, I are the President, and whatever I believe is mainstream, git it? And as far as high standards of intellect? Shee-it, if the bitch can string a sentence together, bitch is playin' in the right ballpark" then we'd've had a hint or two.

Of course, the Christian right is obsessed, like a two year-old boy discovering he's got a dick, with the nomination, 'cause, you know, Churchy wanna get paid. The Rude Pundit is a member of the Family Research Council's Super-Duper Prayer Team, and we've received our marchin' orders from Tony "No, Really, I've Never Stabbed Anyone...In a Shower" Perkins, which means they come straight from Jeeeesus. Announcing Justice Sunday II, Perkins also asked us to pray for the Congress because "confirming judges who meet God's requirements (Exodus 18:21-22) remains our chief concern."

In the Bible passage that's referenced in our prayer target, Moses's father-in-law exhorts Moses to find judges who not only "fear God," but they should be "men of Truth" who hate "covetousness." Now, the Rude Pundit's not makin' any bets on who the nominee is gonna be, but considering Bush's track record, "hating covetousness" ain't gonna be very high on the list of qualifications.

Five Reasons Why Karl Rove Must Be Destroyed (Conclusion)
Reason #2: Because We Never Got To Destroy That Other Fucker, Lee Atwater
Sure, sure, when Lee Atwater, George Bush, Sr.’s political adviser and Karl Rove’s guru, discovered Jesus and Catholicism after he found out he had inoperable brain cancer, he became sorely sorry to everyone he had destroyed, defiled, and dicked over in his long career. But that vicious motherfucker didn’t suffer long enough for treating the body politick like a passed out crack whore that he could fuck as much as he wanted, in whatever hole he pleased, and not have to pay a dime.

From Willie Horton and his own eye-stinging hatred of Michael Dukakis, whom he called a "Commie pinko" (which was retro even in 1988, but Atwater loved branding Democrats as "communist") and about whom he spread rumors about Dukakis’s mental health and the mental health of his wife, to his dispersing of information about the distant pasts of candidates to trying to intimidate people on his side to attempting to smear Democratic House Speaker Tom Foley through implications of homosexuality, Lee Atwater was breathtaking in his beyond-Machiavellian tactics (and this is not to mention his work in the Reagan and Nixon administrations). Here’s Juan Williams, back in the New Year’s Eve, 1989 Washington Post, on Atwater: "Atwater stands out …because of his unabashed glee at using politics as soap opera under the rubric of news programming. His triumph was in joining politics and culture to open just the right closet of American anxieties over race, sex, violence and liberals to turn a boring candidate who was down by 17 percentage points into a runaway winner. Willie Horton wasn't Atwater's only achievement. He also broke ground by boldly taking crass cynicism about American voters to a new level by literally putting Bush in a flag factory for the TV cameras to record him swathed in red, white and blue. And he did not laugh out loud when they followed the scent like trained dogs."

Goddamn, how bad we wanted to wreck that wad of fuck. How much we regretted our failure.

Had we destroyed Atwater through, perhaps, an investigation of his consulting firm’s relationship with a man who looted Medicare funds, we wouldn’t be discussing Karl Rove, who took the lessons of Atwater’s savagery and interwove policy manipulation into it. See, whereas Atwater’s primary (though not exclusive) influence was in campaign mode, Rove has merged the tactics of brutally dishonest campaigning with the work of the executive branch and made them the modus operandi for the White House. (This is not to mention the relationship between Atwater and young George, Jr., who was Atwater's "minder" back in 1988 and learned a bit about manipulation and duplicity from Atwater.)

You know what? If Karl Rove is ever put into a cell, the Rude Pundit doesn’t want it to be with some three-strikes-and-yer-out, beefed-up Texas drug mule who needs some flabby cheeks to call his own. No, the Rude Pundit wants the slime-covered skeleton of Lee Atwater thrown in there with Rove. He wants Rove to have to stare, endlessly, into those empty cavities where eyes once were, smelling the fecund dirt scent, the foul and everlasting odor of rot and decay. Just to let him know that he, too, shall pass.

Reason #1: Destroying Karl Rove Will Destroy George W. Bush
The reason Rove must be destroyed - which means he needs to be sent up for something more than perjury because simply that would allow him to be a paid consultant for the rest of his life - is that a destroyed Rove would be a maelstrom in the White House. If you remove the center from a system, a system must collapse. And so would end the Bush presidency, for Bush without Rove is like a dalmatian without an owner - so stupid from overbreeding that if it ain't got someone to tell it what to do, it'll just sit in a corner and shit itself endlessly, licking its own anus out of fear and itch.

Five Reasons Why Karl Rove Must Be Destroyed (Cont'd):
Is it just the Rude Pundit or is there some kind of savage undercurrent of payback going on now in the media coverage of Turdgate (in honor, of course, of the President's nickname for Karl Rove, the oh-so-endearing-in-an-ass-fucking-kind-of way "Turd Blossom")? Because while for four years the press would break its spine to spin a story in Bush's favor, now, with treason possibly in the offing, the mainstream media is filled with headlines like "Bush Does Not Offer the Reacharound of Love To Rove" and stories layered with lines like "You remember when Bush said he'd get rid of anyone involved in the Plame leak? He sure acts like he doesn't." Or, to be a bit more accurate, AP's Ron Fournier called the Republican National Committee "virtually a political arm of the White House."

Ahh, sweet Karl, payback's a bitch. And no one deserves it more. Which means, of course, that with NBC's David Gregory and ABC's Terry Moran discovering that they do, indeed, have spines that allow them to walk upright, is laying waste to the GOP talking points on Rove, leading us to...

Reason #3(b): Destroying Karl Rove Will Destroy So Many Others On the Road To the Destruction of Karl Rove
Ken Mehlman, GOP chair, allegedly deeply closeted sucker of wanton cock, has appeared on random shows, givin' the uvula-ticklin' man-love to Rove. Speaking with Wolf "Maybe I'll Be Allowed To Evolve, Too" Blitzer on CNN, Mehlman was in full distraction mode, like if you're at a leather bar and the pecs above that one hot package in the corner are diverting you from talking to your boyfriend who convinced you to come here in the first place and c'mon, Ken, you know about this shit, right?

In fact, what was most pathetic (read: fuckin' hilarious) about Mehlman's sorrowful visage, forced out front, perhaps, by a Rovean threat to out him, is that he never answered a single question that Blitzer asked him. Said Mehlman, "I'm not going to comment on the specifics of this investigation. What I'm here to talk about is, unfortunately, a political smear that's occurred, and the political smear is people, John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, Howard Dean and others..." And so instead, Mehlman smeared Joseph Wilson, who apparently was just begging to go spend eight days wandering the golden streets of Niger in order to get regular sex from his desk jockey wife(y), as well as discredit one small claim of the Bush administration in the run-up to war 'cause, you know, Wilson supported John Kerry.

It's unfortunate for Mehlman, for all of Rove's wandering apologists in the Congress and in the media, that trying to make this story about Wilson (and for the media, the Wilson smear is old news - they did that back in 2003) in essence discredits George Bush, Sr., who relied on Wilson to deal with Saddam Hussein back in 1992. And it's a shame, really, that Wilson actually did say he believed that Iraq had biological and chemical WMDs and that force might be necessary back in 2002, even after he had made his Niger trip in February of that year.

Here's Wilson on CNN's Late Edition on December 1, 2002, months after he knew that Iraq wasn't trying to get yummy yellowcake, sounding for all the world like a true believer: "The problem really is going to be whether he can launch chemical and biological weapons against U.S. troops or, even more significantly...if they can drag Israel into a broader war, either through the use of weapons of mass destruction or through Scud attacks that Israel then feels it has to retaliate to. But I think nonetheless, our armed forces are far superior."

And it's too bad that Bush and Cheney didn't hear Wilson, who also warned about the possible outcomes of an invasion: "[T]he political consequences of putting 250,000 troops into Baghdad to pacify, occupy and rebuild the nation of Iraq, in addition to the $200 billion that they're talking about today to prosecute that part of it, really exceeds by a factor of, you know, tens of whatever it might cost...

"[T]he bigger problem is, once having gotten in there, how do we get out? And what are the repercussions across the Islamic world of having the Americans occupy an Arab country? And the Islamic world goes from Indonesia to Mauritania." What an American-hating fucker Wilson is.

Yup, the destruction of Karl Rove is a beatiful thing to watch. Because of the deep thrill of seeing so many others flail about like fools and jackasses in a parade of idiocy. Sure, the Rude Pundit knows, Rove could slip away like a slug into a thorny rose bush. But maybe, just maybe...oh, to hope.

The Alias Addendum:
Some on the right are now claiming that Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, was not an undercover agent nor an "operative," as Bob Novak first called her. That she was a desk jockey analyst. Although can one not be a desk jockey who needs to keep cover because of all the secrets that she knows? Isn't that the idea of a cover identity?

For Alias fans, the ABC show about CIA agents doing all kinds of cool shit against villains and each other, one need only think of wee little Marshall Flinkman, the tech nerd, who rarely ever leaves the office, but is as deeply undercover as any of the agents in the field. Would you want Marshall to be outed? Would you want Marshall to be open to intimidation, violence, or bribes?

Five Reasons Why Karl Rove Must Be Destroyed (Continued):
You know what's really fuckin' funny? Watchin' the Bush administration try to ride this one out. Fuckin' hoping and praying that the uproar over Karl Rove's outing of a CIA operative will just pass them by like so many other storms. But here's the deal (and the White House and the Republicans know this): it's just startin'. Remember that the investigation hasn't closed. Matt Cooper is just gettin' around to testifyin' (testify, brother, testify for God and country) before Patrick Fitzgerald's grand jury. Which leads us to--

Reason #3(a): Destroying Karl Rove Will Destroy So Many Others On the Road To the Destruction of Karl Rove
You can smell the shit scent of nervous, sweaty armpits wafting across the Potomac, infecting the Shenandoah before dispersing across the whole of America. Press secretary Scott "Fuck You, Ari" McClellan, confronting real, actual reporters Monday and yesterday, had the look of a man who is tasting so much of his own bile that his liver lining was about to be shat out.

Much has been made, on Air America, all over Left Blogsylvania, and even, shockingly, in the mainstream media, of McClellan's constant refrain of "this is part of an ongoing investigation." Which is funny and all, but the true desperation of this pathetic little demi-man, who for so long looked like a mad Rumplestiltskin, cavorting madly in the forest, is evident in a couple of other telling lines from the press briefings. Gazing out at the pissed off press corps, who had McClellan dead to rights on his lies, Scottie fell back on the prop that every cornered rat has used, from cheap street whores to corrupt cops to cheating boyfriends - the "c'mon, guys, you know me" defense: "Dana, you all -- you and everybody in this room, or most people in this room, I should say, know me very well and they know the type of person that I am. And I'm confident in our relationship that we have." It's like saying, "C'mon, Charlie, you know me. You know I wouldn't fuck your lady. Goddamn, how can you think that about me, you asshole."

But apparently, the reporters decided that they, indeed, knew the type of person he was - the type who would spit in their faces and say it's lemonade. So yesterday, Scottie fell back on the more political strategy of "America trusts us, you fuckers": Again answering questions with the "ongoing investigation" chorus, McClellan added, "I think the American people can understand and appreciate that." To which the reporter replied, "Well, we'll see."

Yesterday, on his Air America show, Al Franken predicted that Scott McClellan would be gone before Rove, and, truly, if it happened, wouldn't we all just think that a weasel so full of his own puissance has imploded, leaving nothing but defecation and debris.

(Later today: How destroying Karl Rove will destroy Ken Mehlman. Also, check out Reason #5 and Reason #4.)

Update: Okay, fuck it. Mehlman tomorrow.

Five Reasons Why Karl Rove Needs To Be Destroyed:
Reason #4: Because Karl Rove Is Hiding Behind His Lawyer
In prison, even men who seemed so strong and tough outside the joint can be turned into bitches, willingly allowing themselves to be fucked in return for protection from wandering sodomizers and killers who have shivs with your name on them. But if you become a prison bitch in order to survive, it perhaps reveals something about you, that deep inside you always were that bottom, that punk, a pussy-in-waiting. Yeah, yer quite the thug until your ass is on the line.

And so it is that Karl Rove now hides behind his attorney when it comes to what Rove revealed to Matt Cooper, parsing words worse than Clinton ever did. As it stands now, Rove's defense against treason rests on the notion, put forth by his lawyer, that Rove never gave Matt Cooper the actual name "Valerie Plame," that he just told Cooper that Joseph Wilson's wife was a CIA agent working on weapons of mass destruction.

So, like, if at Gitmo, the "interrogators" are beating the living shit out of some poor fuckin' Yemeni and all they get out of him is that Habib's neighbor, whose name he doesn't know, works for al-Qaeda, Habib's neighbor is shit out of luck, no? Who gives a fuck about a name? Or, more to the point, if the Rude Pundit says that Sally's boyfriend is a hot piece of ass, well, do names really matter at that point? You know who Sally's boyfriend is. You know his telephone number.

So Robert Luskin's defense of Rove is truly bizarre, as if there's some existential notion of identity being attached only to names, that without a name, Valerie Plame could not, in fact, be identified. Or, to go more absurdist, that sans name, Valerie Plame doesn't even exist. Kinda makes the definitions of "sexual relations" and "is" seem rather quaint.

(Coming up: the remaining three reasons. For Reason #5, go to the previous post.)

Five Reasons Why Karl Rove Must Be Destroyed:
(As Clark Kent duties will make bloggery sporadic today, this entry will be done in magical small parts that, taken together, will become a magnificent, mythical being. In other words, here's the first segment. Come back later for the rest.)

It is time to destroy Karl Rove - that fat fuck must bear the burden of his sins against this nation as surely as a tail-chasing, abusive cocksman must die alone, diseased, and despised. Rove must be dragged out in public and his pants must be yanked down so we can all laugh at the tiny dick and bean-like balls of this so-called fearsome presence. In the old days, they used to draw and quarter fuckers like Rove, who would, for personal vendetta and political expediency, sell out the good of the nation. But, fuck, horses are a burden these days, so let's tie Rove's limbs to four news vans, each driven by a member of the so-long cowed Washington press corps, and let 'er rip. Metaphorically, of course. Of course.

Reason #5: Karl Rove Looks Like Famous Child Murderers
Karl Rove looks like a cross between Peter Lorre's kiddie killer in Fritz Lang's film M and famous smilin' on the outside, batshit insane on the inside serial killer/clown John Wayne Gacy.

Coming up later today: How Karl Rove is like a prison bitch and how George Bush is like a dalmatian.

Announcing Dates, Times, and Venue for The Rude Pundit In The Year of Living Rudely:
Not here. Over on The Year of Living Rudely blog.

Would You Let the "Worst of the Worst" Terrorists Free?:
They can't even lie well, these fuckers in the Republican Party and the Bush administration and the right in general. And the Rude Pundit ain't gonna get caught up in bullshit legalistic arguments over what a lie is. You say something you know ain't the truth, then you have lied. Period. You didn't "mislead" or "not tell the whole truth." You lied, you fucker, and you should have to pay, with your credibility, your career, and/or your ass in jail. To wit, regarding captives at the U.S. gulag/prison/detention center/diet regulation facility/resort at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba:

On June 15, 2005, Republican Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama declared to John "My Dyed Mane Is, Indeed, Welded To My Skull" Gibson on on The Big Story, "These [detainee-tourists] don't even qualify as normal prisoners of war because they're unlawful combatants. They're the kind of people that operate outside of law. They don't wear uniforms. They attack civilian -- civilians and innocent personnel, not just military targets, and they are really the worst of the worst."

On June 19, 2005, Republican Representative Curt Weldon of Pennsylvania told Wolf "My White Stubble Renders Me Lupine" Blitzer on CNN, "To be honest, I'd rather keep them at Guantanamo than here. These are bad people, bad actors." (Make your own Fantastic Four joke here.)

On June 26, 2005, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld appeared on Meet the Press to declare to Tim Russert, "The people, for example, in Guantanamo Bay, are Osama bin Laden's bodyguards. They're suicide bombers. They're terrorists. They're murderers and these are bad people. These are not good people." He would later confirm (or repeat) this assessment to Chris "Every Day My Daddy Threatens To Kick My Disgraced Ass" Wallace on Fox "News" Sunday, saying, "The fact of the matter is these are bad people, these are suicide bombers, these are murderers. This is the 20th hijacker from 9/11 down there. These are people who are out to kill people."

Moving up the magical ladder of the administration, on June 13, 2005, Vice President Dick Cheney informed the Dick-mad Sean Hannity, "The important thing here to understand is that the people that are at Guantanamo are bad people. I mean, these are terrorists for the most part. These are people that were captured in the battlefield of Afghanistan or rounded up as part of the Al Qaeda network. We've already screened the detainees there and released a number, sent them back to their home countries. But what's left is hard core."

Earlier, on June 9, 2005, President George Bush told Neil Cavuto on a very special Your World that the Gitmo detainees are "terrorists, swept up off the battlefield in a place like Afghanistan, for example."

And what has happened to some of the "worst of the worst," these fuckin' "terrorists" and "bad people" who are so goddamn "hard core"? Why, of course, we're lettin' a few of them go. Decided last week. Four of 'em. Out of Gitmo, sent to wherever. With more releases to follow. What'll be left? The really, really worst of the worstest ever seen in the worst realms of Worstdom?

These bastards lie when everyone knows they're lying, even when every observable reality demonstrates they're lying. If Donald Rumsfeld was caught on tape in a D.C. alley, balls deep in the face of an underage Afghani prostitute, her veil wrapped around his cock like the flag of that "nation," he'd say that he was interrogating an enemy combatant in the only language she understood, that she wanted it rough, and, by the way, Sean Hannity, you believe me, don't you? And, Peggy Noonan, won't ya write about how great America is that it allows me to treat terrorists this way?

Tony Blair In Purgatory:
Forget for a moment that Sarasota, Florida is about 860 miles from Washington, DC, roughly twice the distance that Gleneagles, Scotland is from London. Forget for a moment that after the attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001, President Bush continued to read to schoolchildren until he was taken on a multi-state flight around the United States, while Tony Blair yesterday rushed back to London to assure his nation before rushing back to Scotland to assure that the work of the G-8 Summit would be accomplished. Forget that Bush's first words to America on 9/11 were to thank the school children, declare it a tragedy, and offer a moment of prayer, while Tony Blair, before leaving for London, spoke to the UK about terrorism, resolve and the world. Forget that Bush's speech to the nation that fucked-up day was given by a man looking like a deer in headlights, including a reassurance that capitalism was fine and a Bible quote, while last night in England, Blair gave a speech that's been described as Churchill-like in its rallying call and was also compassionate towards Muslims.

Forget all that. And think about Tony Blair for just one moment: dicked over time and again by George Bush and the United States on every world issue except for the war in Iraq. Think about the Prime Minister, coming back to London from that fine resort in Scotland, ready to hear about and talk about carnage. And let us think that, for a moment, he may have wondered if he's been played for a sucker by the neocon right and the White House. As the death toll rises, perhaps a thoughtful man, which we here in the U.S. with our thoughtless leaders often hope Blair is (in the same way we thought Colin Powell was an honest man), couldn't be blamed for second-guessing himself. Oh, no, he can't show it. But perhaps, in his sickened heart of hearts, as the police try to dig out the shattered corpses from the tunnels, Blair knows, fucking knows he's walked down the garden path with the very man who would put a bullet in the back of his skull if such an act would benefit the powerful in the United States, that he's tossed his chips onto a table filled with cheaters. Sure, he tried to bluff with sexed up documents and lies of his own, but he had no idea who he was dealing with.

In the end, Blair knows that once you've tossed in your ante, there's no gettin' out until the pot is played.

Judith Miller In Jail:
Today, when jailed New York Times reporter Judith Miller, kept snug in Alexandria, Virginia next to Zacarias Moussaoui, heard about the terrorist bombings in London, one might hope that a tinge of regret passed through her. Perhaps she shouldn't have spent as much time being head cheerleader for the powerful in D.C., gobbling up fabricated info on the phantom Iraqi WMDs as hungrily as an old porn star sucking young cock for all she's worth so that the industry will still pay for her bad plastic surgery and AIDS tests. And, oh, how they treated her like their willing dog as she was unquestioningly listening to her masters' voices, feeling the Chalabi leash yank, the Rumsfeld scratch behind her ears, on all fours, ready to fetch them their slippers at the arch of an eyebrow. Good girl, Judy, good girl.

One would think at such moments as this that Judith Miller would bow her head, hoping that her enabling stenography wasn't even a tincture of the reason that those who planted the bombs today were able to plan and carry out this new horror. Maybe Judith Miller doesn't feel so much like Rosa Parks or Daniel Ellsberg today, as her newspaper would like us to think. Perhaps she feels like the useful fool, screaming on the street corners that the end is coming from the sky when, indeed, it is coming from streets themselves.

Nah. Self-righteous whore probably just thinks she's a martyr to the good fight.

Lettin' the Rove Express Head Off the Tracks On Its Own:
The Rude Pundit's not jumpin' on the "Oh-Please-Oh-Fuckin'-Please-Let-Karl-Rove-Burn" train. The President's porcine political advisor, at the very least, "made contact" with soon-to-be-imprisoned Time magazine reporter Matt Cooper regarding the outing CIA operative Valerie Plame, wife of former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, as revenge for Wilson calling "bullshit" on the Bush administration's allegation that Iraq tried to get uranium from Niger. No, no, the Rude Pundit will tamp down his Pavlovian erection of joy at hearing that Karl Rove is even momentarily in trouble.

He will not offer vivid fantasy descriptions of Rove being dragged in handcuffs out of the White House, snorting like a harpooned whale dragging a frigate behind it. He will not take pleasure in the potentially deeply gratifying feeling of schadenfreude that accompanies such hideously hard and enormously well-deserved falls. The Rude Pundit won't do it. He won't allow himself to get caught up in imagining Karl Rove in prison, after his first kitchen utensil sodomizing, screaming like the yapping bitch he's about to become that he'll give up the President in order to be allowed cushy country club confinement, and then, oh, what glorious chaos.

And why won't the Rude Pundit participate in the bone-shaking jouissance of praying to God, Jesus, Allah, or whoever or no one that it truly, really is Rove that gave up Plame's name? Because the Rude Pundit's been there before with the Republicans teetering on the brink of damnation, only to see them pulled back from the lapping flames time and again. To be sure, this could mean just the administration of George W. Bush, which, in a real democracy, would have crumbled into heaps of ashes a hundred times already. How our hearts were shattered after the 9/11 Commission Report, the Gannon/Guckert affair, and more.

Instead, though, the Rude Pundit hearkens back to his greatest heartbreak, the Iran-Contra scandal of the end of the Reagan era, when Reagan's dementia made it just pathetic to watch him and unlikely that the Congress would, through impeachment, beat up on an old man heading towards the oblivion of being an Alzheimer's-ridden throw pillow. So we all thought it might be possible to take down George Bush, Sr., except the motherfucker went and pardoned everyone that might've given him up for a softer bunk at the federal pen.

Yep, Cap Weinberger, Elliott Abrams, Clair George and other liars and criminals were given the bestest Christmas gift ever on December 24, 1992 when Bush covered his ass by pardoning all six "for their conduct related to the Iran-Contra affair." Now, what do you think the chances are that Junior wouldn't do the same thing in a heartbeat for Rove or anyone else that might give him up?

Of course, Rove has gone all silent on this matter, which is kind of nice, since he had been making the talk show rounds, forcing his rotundly evil face onto TV screens.

But, frankly, if special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald really wants to get the truth out of Rove, well, there's probably no better method than the Gitmo/Abu Ghraib treatment, certainly approved by Rove himself. Strip that fucker's clothes off, tie him to the floor, make him shit himself, slap his balls, threaten his family, deny him legal representation and due process, hang him by his wrists, and tell him that you're gettin' the dogs ready to fuck him. Or send him to Uzbekistan and have them "question" him. Motherfucker'll claim he crucified Jesus after those bastards get done with him.

Update: Hokay, so Matt Cooper folded like he was two cards short from a straight, and now, ding-dong, Judith Miller's gone to jail.

Stupid Questions to Judicial Nominees: Good for Geese and Ganders:
So on one of the chatalot Sunday shows, Democrat Senator Charles Schumer declared that the Democrats on the Judiciary Committee would actually question a nominee to the Supreme Court on his or her views on, well, shit, legal issues. Said Schumer, "All questions are legitimate. What is your view on Roe v. Wade? What is your view on gay marriage? They are going to try to get away with the idea that we're not going to know their views. But that's not going to work this time."

To this Republican Orrin "Behold My Mormon Scowl of Repressed Libido" Hatch said, "Any member of the committee can ask whatever they want, no matter how stupid," adding that nominees had been pressed to give their views on potential judicial matters, "but never to the degree" Schumer hinted at. Later, on some other who-gives-a-shit talker, Republican baboon Jeff Sessions pronounced such questions on specific matters "highly objectionable," saying, "You cannot ask a judge to prejudge a specific matter."

Well, as usual, they'd've both done well to look at the recent history of hearings on nominees to the Supreme Court. Here's Orrin Hatch questioning Ruth Bader Ginsburg back in July 1993 about the death penalty: "But do you agree with all the current sitting members of the Court that it is constitutional? Is it within the Constitution?" Indeed, Hatch had berated Ginsberg endlessly trying to get her to pop her Constitutional cherry on offing criminals.

Ask a stupid question and, well, fuck, guess you get a stupid answer: Ginsburg responded that one must never ask a judge how she may vote on a case that might come before her. Hatch barked back, "But that's not what I asked you. I asked you is it in the Constitution?" which is precisely what she'd have to judge if she became a Supreme Court justice. Indeed, when Ginsburg continued to refuse to be drawn into a discussion of whether or not capital punishment is "cruel and unusual," Hatch was exasperated and demanded, "I think you ought to tell us where you really come down." In other words, a Republican Senator, in the minority, demanded to know how Ginsburg would judge capital punishment cases.

When Republican Senator William Cohen asked Ginsburg about discrimination based on sexual orientation, she again declined to answer because it was a possible case that she may have to decide. Ginsburg was more than willing to talk about decisions she had written, as in her frank discussion of abortion rights and women's rights in general. Cohen also pressed Stephen Breyer in 1994, when Breyer was a nominee, asking him directly for the future justice's personal opinion on the death penalty. (Oh, for the days when the Republicans only had a hard-on for killing the guilty.)

So, like, as ever, Republicans are hiding behind reportage and discussion devoid of any semblance of historical context. Or, to put it simply, they're just gonna lie and say whatever the fuck they want to get their way.

Out here in Left Blogsylvania, since Sandra Day O'Connor announced her retirement last Friday, there's been sooo much talk about whether the "Gang of 14" deal will hold, what the strategy will be wherein Bush will fuck us over one more time, will the nominee be batfuck-Ann-Coulter insane or just plain ol' nutzoid, and filibuster, filibuster, filibuster. The Rude Pundit declines to get involved until the inevitable motherfucker is nominated (because, you know, Bush always nominates motherfuckers).

Except to say this: it's time for so-called moderate Republicans to put the fuck up or shut the fuck up. When some odious, torture-supportin', rights abandonin', abortion-overturnin' piece of shit is the nominee, don't fuckin' hope and pray that Democrats will take the bullet for your pusillanimity in standing up to the White House. In other words, if you rely on the Democratic filibuster to shield you from expressing your disgust with the Bush administration, then you deserve your upcoming wacko-conservative primary challenger that the lunatic right will put up against you.

By the way, the Rude Pundit won't be joining in the encomiums to Sandra Day O'Connor's Supreme Court tenure. Sure, sure, sure, she happened to be an available conservative woman who happened to be a judge when Ronald Reagan was trying to shore up some street cred with half of America. But that's circumstance. Sure, sure, she was a swing vote in favor of abortion rights and affirmative action.

And she was also the swing vote on Bush v. Gore, which led us to this moment in history, with war in Iraq, the steady dismantling of rights that O'Connor supported, and the final rightward shift of the court itself. Fuck her. That one decision undoes all the others.

It's the Fourth - Let's Blow Some Shit Up:
As always on Independence Day, the Rude Pundit awoke this morning with this Kurt Vonnegut quote from Cat's Cradle in his head: "Perhaps, when we remember wars, we should take off our clothes and paint ourselves blue and go on all fours all day long and grunt like pigs. That would surely be more appropriate than noble oratory and shows of flags and well-oiled guns." And, by the way, the Rude Pundit thinks himself a patriot to an unrealized and perhaps, really, impossible dream of America, but "America" just the same.

But, apparently, he's not all up in everyone's face enough about his patriotism. According to a poll over at Fox "News," Republicans love America a fuck of a lot more than non-Republicans. 'Cause, see, while 52% of us "are more proud" to be Americans this happy Fourth O' July, 63% of Republicans are feelin' the pride bulge in their pants, compared to a pathetic, traitorous 44% of Democrats. (Independents, never able to figure out if they should shit or get off the pot, are at an expected 50%.) As for the converse, feelin' "less proud"? 14% of Dems, 2% of Repubs.

Go read the rest of this bullshit poll, which reveals such magical stats as 93% of Americans would rather live here than any other country and 94% practice the Golden Rule at least "most of the time." Head out into your streets and town squares and river banks. Swell with nationalistic fervor as you gaze upon your U.S.-lovin' neighbors who would do unto others what they would have done unto them. Cry a tear of joy as you hear the tributes to the troops, hearing the words of the President about freedom here and elsewhere. Watch the gorgeous fireworks, all perfectly choreographed to Toby Keith, Lee Greenwood, and the Boston Pops, the breathtaking, bursting flowers and rocket trails, the mock explosions of beautiful, unending war.

(Thanks to Deanna Swift over at the Swift Report for the heads up on the poll.)

(By the way, the full context of that Vonnegut quote is really stunning and prescient:
"We are gathered here, friends," he said, "to honor lo Hoon-year Mora-toorz tut Zamoo-cratz-ya, children dead, all dead, all murdered in war. It is customary on days like this to call such lost children men. I am unable to call them men for this simple reason: that in the same war in which lo Hoon-year Mora-toorz tut Zamoo-cratz-ya died, my own son died.

"My soul insists that I mourn not a man but a child.

"I do not say that children at war do not die like men, if they have to die. To their everlasting honor and our everlasting shame, they do die like men, thus making possible the manly jubilation of patriotic holidays.

"But they are murdered children all the same.

"And I propose to you that if we are to pay our sincere respects to the hundred lost children of San Lorenzo, that we might best spend the day despising what killed them; which is to say, the stupidity and viciousness of all mankind.

"Perhaps, when we remember wars, we should take off our clothes and paint ourselves blue and go on all fours all day long and grunt like pigs. That would surely be more appropriate than noble oratory and shows of flags and well-oiled guns.

"I do not mean to be ungrateful for the fine, martial show we are about to see – and a thrilling show it really will be…"

He looked each of us in the eye, and then he commented very softly, throwing it away, "And hooray I say for thrilling shows."

We had to strain our ears to hear what Minton said next.

"But if today is really in honor of a hundred children murdered in war," he said, "is today a day for a thrilling show?

"The answer is yes, on one condition: that we, the celebrants are working consciously and tirelessly to reduce the stupidity and viciousness of ourselves and all mankind." )

Why Ann Coulter Is a Cunt, Part 1856 - The Plagiarism Edition:
Sometimes beating up on Ann Coulter is about as easy as making a nervous little dog piss itself. One tiny "boo" in the right direction and that bitch is swimming in her own fluids. For surely, in her latest "column" (if by "column," you mean, "a stomach-churning, cringe-inducing, bowel-releasing journey into the dark, dank, garbage-stinking recesses of a deranged demi-brain"), Coulter sets herself upon a Tower of Babble teetering so badly that a flea flick would send her screaming, such sweet screaming, plunging onto the rocky ground below.

Coulter uses the recent, narrow (and wimpy and confusing) Supreme Court decision, that displays of the Ten Commandments outside of a larger historical context are overtly religious and are forbidden in courthouses, and attempts to say something about what taxpayers have "paid" for, going into a mad, ranting litany of examples, all of which combined cost your average taxpayer less than a nickel.

What's fun, so incredibly fuckin' fun about this kind of Coulter "logic" is how many different ways you can take it down. Over at Pandagon, Amanda goes to town with the sarcasm. Another approach would be to point out how some of the things she cites as outrageous opinion making are actually true. Check out her statements that she says are quotes from exhibits at the Smithsonian. Or one could make the case that nearly all of her examples are over a fuckin' decade old, at least.

But instead, how about this: Ann Coulter appears to have plagiarized a section of her column by not citing the December 1993 edition of The Flummery Digest. In this edition, the digest is devoted to calling out what it says is "offensive" art that receives public funding. One of its sections in December 1993 lists a bunch of NEA grant recipients, which, on first glance and, hell, even on second, look like Coulter lifted without attribution from this site or from what is apparently Alice Goldfarb Marquis' Heritage Foundation work Art Lessons (perhaps the work became her book of the same title in 1995), which Flummery actually cites as its source (click on the cross in the lower left hand corner of the NEA entry to see the citation).

Here's a couple of examples:
From Ann Coulter, talking about what taxpayers have funded: "A photo of a newborn infant with its mouth open titled to suggest the infant was available for oral sex."
From The Flummery Digest: "The title of a photo of a newborn infant with its mouth open suggested that the infant was available for oral sex."

From Ann Coulter: "A photo of a woman breastfeeding an infant, titled 'Jesus Sucks.'"
From The Flummery Digest: "One otherwise tame photograph of a woman breastfeeding an infant was titled 'Jesus Sucks.'"

From Ann Coulter: "A show titled 'DEGENERATE WITH A CAPITAL D' featuring a display of the remains of the artist's own aborted baby."
From The Flummery Digest: "'Degenerate with a Capital D'...included 'Alchemy Cabinet' by Shawn Eichman, featuring the remains of the artist's own aborted baby."

From Ann Coulter: "Performance of giant bloody tampons, satanic bunnies, three-foot feces and vibrators."
From The Flummery Digest: "[T]he performance art of Johanna Went...relies upon props such as giant body tampons, satanic bunnies, three-foot turds, and dildos." (Hey, Coulter's got a mainstream audience.)

Is this plagiarism? Coincidence? A work by the "American Life League" describes Eichman's work as "her own dismembered second-trimester aborted baby next to the obligatory twisted wire coat hanger," so, you know, there's other ways to state it. Minor shit? Perhaps, but, remember, as Coulter told us we should believe about Bill Clinton (in her first "book"), seemingly minor transgressions point to larger patterns of deception.

Like the Rude Pundit said, like makin' a chihuahua piss, like stealin' candy from a baby, like settin' a passed-out hobo on fire, it's just way too easy to take Coulter apart. But, my, oh, my, what fun bloodsport it is.

Addendum (With an Emphasis on the "Dum"): The Flummery Digest was an online journal that sought to document the "extremes" of political correctness in America. It is now defunct.

Note: We are sooo fucked.