Because We Won't Have Him to Kick Around Much Longer, Part 3 (Middle East Blood Edition):
This has gotten ridiculous. With the new conflagration in Gaza, the Bush presidency has now become a parody of a failure. It's like watching Herbert Hoover walk in public with shit-stained pants around his ankles, like seeing Richard Nixon fuck Checkers' corpse, like hearing Warren G. Harding in the mad throes of advanced syphilis screeching at the walls of the White House. Peace of some sort in the Middle East has been one of those presidential yardsticks since at least Jimmy Carter, and the measure of our current Leader of the Free World, this demi-man, this Bush rests somewhere between blithe neglect and outright hostility to anything that stinks of "peace."

The White House's official reaction to the end of a six-month truce between Hamas and Israel was, in essence, to show a middle finger to the Palestinians and say, "See this? Sit on this fucker and rotate, bitches." Or, as Condoleezza Rice put it, "The United States strongly condemns the repeated rocket and mortar attacks against Israel and holds Hamas responsible for breaking the cease-fire and for the renewal of violence in Gaza." Which would be great if Hamas had broken the cease-fire. At best, that's up for debate, although most evidence points to Israel being the first dicks in the cock fight. And, to demonstrate that you can't spell "diplomacy" without a dip, some damn spokestooge for Bush said of Hamas, "These people are nothing but thugs."

Does anyone fuckin' even remember the ludicrous "road map" to an end to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict? Yeah, it was just great to provide a map. Some wheels and an engine would have been better. (And not the engines in the warplanes the U.S. sells to Israel.)

Meanwhile, over there, the ambulances in Gaza are having difficulty transporting the dead and wounded because of the constant barrage of Israeli attacks. Before the attacks, because of its opposition to the Hamas-led government, Israel decided to blockade the Gaza Strip. Writes Johann Hari, "According to Oxfam, only 137 trucks of food were allowed into Gaza this November - to feed 1.5 million people. The UN says poverty has reached an 'unprecedented level.' When I was last in besieged Gaza, I saw hospitals turning away the sick because their machinery and medicine was running out. I met hungry children stumbling around the streets, scavenging for food." So Hamas launched some rockets. A stupid move, but if you're watching your kids dig through garbage to eat, you might just throw rocks at the people making it happen.

And, as ever, Israel's reaction is to drop a fuckin' avalanche of boulders on the sick, starving rock throwers. Of course, demonstrations took place against Israel all over the Arab world, including in lucky, liberated Iraq. Over there, it's all redemptive blood and death, which is a cycle that can only ensure its continuation.

Meanwhile, over here, this is another not-so-abstract example of just how fucked we've become as a nation, how impotent, how unimportant. We've only got three weeks left of this madness, of being led by these criminally arrogant and incompetent bastards. What the fuck else could happen? What the fuck else can? At this point, all bets are off on whether or not the nation can survive until January 20. Shit, we should just go around expecting another terrorist attack, a plague ravaging a city, a goddamned black hole swallowing the entire planet. It wouldn't even be surprising.