Breakfast with Timmy and Georgie:
The Rude Pundit just finished watching the "interview" with George Bush on Meet the Press. He will not attempt to list all the factual errors and problematic statements (like basing the war decision on "the best intel possible," which is, of course, wrong, since "possible" means more human intelligence, etc.). He will leave that to the myriad bloggers, like Atrios, Calpundit, the Progress Report, and more. Instead, let's just offer a few observations:

You know what the worst kind of rock songs are? The kind where a pampered, rich rock star sings about how rough it is to be on the road every night, performing. Christ, you wanna say, nobody fucking forced you to play a guitar, fuck groupies, and get high every night. So when Bush kept falling back on how hard it is to be the man in the Oval Office, making decisions that affect Americans, all the Rude Pundit kept thinking was, ironically, the lyrics to Bon Jovi's "Wanted Dead or Alive." Stop fucking whining. Shut the fuck up and do the job you campaigned for, destroyed others for, and finally stole.

Didn't you cringe every time Bush said the word "intelligence"?

You could so tell whenever Bush wanted to get on script: "I want to take a step back" from the question; "It's important for people to understand" that I'm not going to answer that question; "If I could" answer a question I've asked in my own head rather than the one you asked me, Tim. (Even at one point posing a question to himself from a fantasy interviewer, Bush said to the voices in his head, "That's a legitimate question.")

Every time Bush made a campaign point, he did that goddamn clenched hand with a thumb on top. Was he offering a fisting to Russert? To the American people?

In reference to his possible AWOL, Bush defended himself by saying: "There may be no evidence but" you gotta believe what I'm telling you. Isn't this the way the whole Iraq mess happened? Isn't that really what Bush was saying about the WMDs? "There may be no evidence, but . . ."

Didn't you cringe when Russert asked Bush for his opinion on the Vietnam War and, with absolutely no sense of irony, the President responded that the problem with Vietnam was that "we had politicians making military decisions"?

Did you notice that anything remotely negative was immediately dismissed as "politics"?

The Republicans are going to run the campaign of rape rooms and gay marriage.

The most frightening things Bush said? A toss-up between his campaign being based on "who can properly use American power to make the world a better place" and "I'm not gonna change."

Oh, what a deliciously useless hour. Nothing said, nothing revealed, nothing more than more of the same, more of the same. Russert did try, a few times admirably, to get Bush off-message, getting a couple of blank stares and that terrified look of trying to find words in his brain where few exist. But it would have been more interesting if Bush had simply said, "You know what, Tim? I'm gonna take a shit. You talk to me through the bathroom door while I take a Texas-sized dump. The American people put me in this office to take this giant shit in the executive washroom of the Oval Office, and I'm gonna do what they want me to do. If they don't like me shitting here, then I look forward to having a debate about my turds. Now excuse me while I go to the throne."

A Quick One Before Le Deluge:
Because actual, real work beckons, the Rude Pundit will be brief today.
So at what point does the Cheney/Scalia hunting trip become enough to make Scalia take recuse himself from deciding on the Cheney Energy Task Force documents? Since we now have the report that Scalia was Cheney's guest on the luxury duck hunt in Louisiana, that they flew together, accompanied by fighter jets, that they were wined and dined by Cheney's oil biz cronies, doesn't this seem a little more toxic to impartiality than the "socializing" that Scalia is using as his defense? The Rude Pundit believes that Scalia won't back off, no matter what, no matter if we get reports that Cheney and Scalia consummated their nascent queer desire under a tarp in the rainy bayou winter, Cheney telling Scalia that he loves Italian sausage, Scalia smacking Cheney's bald head and demanding that he take the "whole salami," Cheney weeping, tenderly, in delight, in fear, in heady anticipation of what would come next, Cheney fucking Scalia, saying, "Here's my task force. How do you find? How say you?" Damn, no wonder the ducks flew away, with all the grunting, flesh-slapping sounds, yells of "Watch the pacemaker," and, finally, inexorably, brief, spermless orgasm. Ain't democracy great?

Sunday: How embarassing was the President on Face the Nation?
Next Week: Welcome to Morass America

Oh, To Be In Boston Once Spring Is Here:
Goddamn, there's gonna be one giant fagapalooza in streets of Beantown come May. There's gonna be pairs of brides, pairs of grooms, more glitter, flowers, and butch haircuts than Boston has seen since the last time Queen toured and Freddy Mercury brought along his trunk of pink wifebeater shirts and butt plugs. Yippee-ki-yay, motherfuckers, the window has been cracked by the Massachusetts Supreme Court, which said yesterday that civil unions are lightweight and that only marriage would do for homosexuals. Fuck, imagine that: a high court saying, "You know that guarantee of equal rights for all? We kinda meant that. No matter what adult you are consensually fucking, you get your rights to get married, get bored with each other, fuck around on the side, and break up viciously, tearing up the friendships, property and children along the way. Welcome to the party, homosexuals!" So, starting May 16, get out your hankies. The aisles are a-gonna be filled with same-sex couples. At least until those who fear the fucking stand in the aisle and block the path to the altar.

Oh, and the fucking scaredy-cats are a-comin' out of the woodwork, putting the smackdown of hate and shame and barely repressed homoerotic desire masking as religious righteousness. Massachusetts is pondering an amendment to its constitution that would say, in effect, "We are so afraid that gay weddings will be so tasteful and/or fun that our Catholic stiff minds would be too envious to function, so we're gonna ban the act right now. Oh, and the ass sex makes us queasy." Said one deeply disturbed Mass. legislator of the proposed amendment, "I can't believe any lawmaker would want to run from this," meaning, "You don't vote for it and we'll make sure all the Irish homies in your district know you love the fags. And you probably suck some cock yourself." Of course, said amendment wouldn't take effect until 2006 at the earliest, unless a proposed delay is imposed, which seems like a long time, but homophobia and gay-bashing is the lust that knows no bounds of time.

In the meanwhile, halfway across the country, the upstanding legislature of Ohio, not knowing what the fuck to do about all the job losses there, decided to make itself more desirable to employers by banning same-sex unions. The White House called the ruling "deeply troubling," which is more than it said about the Plame name game, the lack of WMD, and Bush's inconvenient smirks at the State of the Union.

Oh, but in the Oval Office, even as Karl Rove twisted the vice on Colin Powell's nutsack for saying he doesn't know if he would have supported war if he knew then what he knows now, the re-election campaign staff rubbed their hands together in barely contained glee, slapping each other on the asses over the decision - not in a faggy way, mind you - over the possibility of being able to say that Kerry loves him some gays. Man, how that would gloss over so many things: failing economy, international embarassment, cruel cutbacks in social programs. How they think we could stomach all of that as long as the President doesn't love him some gays.

What, Me? AWOL?:
The Rude Pundit listened a couple of days ago to the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC when Lehrer interviewed Ruben Navarette, Jr. of the Dallas Morning News about the upcoming (now past) primaries (link goes to the audio). Navarette appears regularly on the show to offer "commentary" about voters and what they may be seeking in the next election. When Lehrer brought up the "accusations" made, most recently, by Michael Moore (with his "deserter" reference) and DNC chair Terry McCauliffe that our Commander-in-Chief was AWOL while doing time in the Air National Guard back in the Vietnam War, Navarete said, speaking for people of his generation (20s-30s) who weren't around for the Vietnam War, that the issue was a non-starter. Navarette, who seems to hold moderate-to-right-wing views, said that these voters don't feel that what someone did during the Vietnam era, during a time of great confusion, thirty years ago, has any relevance to their votes in the upcoming election. We don't care, he seems to say, if Bush shirked his duty: "I don't give Bush any strikes for not showing up for duty in Alabama, just like I don't give Kerry any points" for going to war. (For a summary of the AWOL issue, here's a quick version from Josh Marshall.) Beyond the obvious and ignorant overgeneralization in the statements, what Navarette is missing is the fact that so much of this campaign is going to be a chance to look again at Bush, since last time the press was so pre-occupied with destroying Gore. To say that Gen-X-ers won't care is such a startling desire for historical ignorance; campaigns are about character. If someone committed a crime or breaking of contract thirty years ago that others were sent to jail or to war for, then it says something about the man who committed the act.

Because, you know, Bush is soooo willing to take responsibility for everything that goes on in his administration. From blaming Congress for the underestimate on the prescription drug benefit to blaming the intelligence for the decision to go to war to blaming September 11 for the deficit (and not his tax cuts), the Bush White House is about buck-passing, refusal to admit error, and closing ranks. If Bush farted in a closed room, he'd blame someone in the next room for passing gas too close to an air vent. If Bush was caught standing over the nude, still-warm corpse of a dead hooker, pants down, bloody knife in his hand, he'd blame the hooker for slicing her own throat and yanking his panties off while she fell to the ground. Or he'd get George Tenet to take the blame, but not fire him, because, you know, he's a good guy.

And the White House is just outraged, outraged, that the AWOL allegations are being made, again. Scott McClellan said the claims are "baseless and outrageous," when, really, they've got a pretty good basis in reality since no records show Bush was there and Bush's only defense is "I'm pretty sure I was there," which, of course, makes most of us nod and say, "Oh, yeah, there's a few coke-induced black outs I'd like to fill in." And McClellan blames election year politicking. Apparently, memories are short, since this is the same George W. Bush whose 2000 campaign in the South Carolina primary used every ugly allegation short of child molestation against John McCain in order to win. Question whether or not an opponent's wife is addicted to painkillers or whether the opponent has fathered a child out of wedlock? Hey, fair game, according to the Bush rules of engagement. Question if a man who is the Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces used his privileged father in order to leap ahead of others to get a coveted spot in the Air National Guard and then shirked that duty? Outrageous. (And, remember, at least Bill Clinton took a principled stand against the war - he didn't "dodge" the draft.)

What this really comes down to is that the right, whether it's the Bush administration or columnists speaking for Gen-Xers, is scared shitless of John Kerry (or Wesley Clark). They are scared to death to have any moment when Bush would have to stand next to someone who saw combat and see how small, how very small, Bush would seem when talking about "our brave men and women in uniform," because, well, he'd be talking about the man opposite him. (And, yes, Gore did serve, but Gore was Gore, with all the other baggage he chose to carry.) And, Jesus, what a sight that's gonna be. What an amazing squirmfest. What a chance for the weasel to final show his slither.

Boobs Are Poppin' Out All Over:
Man, don't you just hate it when boobs show themselves? Goddamn, you can't sit still for a minute before some boob pops up, rearin' its dark nipple eye towards your children.

Take, for instance, Georgia Superintendent of Schools Kathy "It's My Name, But I Never Suck" Cox, and her concerted efforts to change the vocabulary of science when it comes to the schoolkids of the Peach State. See, here's a boob bursting out, saying that if one eliminates the "buzzword" of "evolution" and replaces it with "biological changes over time," like a breast that goes from being perky and scoop-shaped to saggy and flapjack-shaped later in life, then one will eliminate the "controversy" over the teaching of evolution in the classroom. One can imagine Cox, Republican, denying any motivation beyond what's good for the parents of the kids (who, of course, aren't the ones who will have to go to colleges that presumably will call things by their fucking names), sitting in her office, Confederate flag of Georgia flapping in the background, thinking, "What can I do that won't make us look too stupid?" And, of course, as all boobs will, failing. (Cox isn't alone in her Peachtree boobery: the Republican minority leader of the Georgia House of Representatives, J. Glenn Richardson, is introducing a bill to mandate display of the Ten Commandments in all Georgia county courthouses. Without a hint of irony or self-awareness, commenting on the "role" he believes the Jewish tablets played in the formation of the country, Richardson said, "We should not shy away from it, but should make our history public and teach it," which makes you wonder all kinds of cute things like if J. Glenn - please, Lord, let him be "Joe-Glenn"- wants us to shy away from things like the truth about Christopher Columbus, the real treatment of blacks in, say, Georgia, and on and on.)

Once you allow one boob in public, it's a slippery slope, as they say, to complete anarchy with boobs a-flyin' everywhere we look. In Olympia, Washington, Republican State Senator Alex Deccio called Republican Representative Tom Campbell a "nigger in the woodpile" in a discussion about, what else?, health insurance reforms. Now, the Rude Pundit is not ignorant of history: the phrase has been used often with no "racial" connotations, it has been claimed, although, really, and c'mon, intention is not the issue here. The definition? "A concealed motive or unknown factor affecting a situation in an adverse way," and it was used by Woodrow Wilson, that noted civil rights activist. Oh, by the way, both legislators are really, really white: here's Deccio; and here's the "nigger". Since sometimes boobs need a little support, here's an image of the nigger in the woodpile -- seems it was a phrase used against the Republican Abraham Lincoln when he was running for President. A little extra history lesson? It was also the title of an Irish tune and an early racist American film. Deccio has not resigned and his friends say he is not a "racist." That's the problem with boobs - when you think they're hidden, that's when you can see them all.

Certainly these days we have to trace things back to the alpha boob, the boob that opened the door for all other boobery in contemporary America. Our boob-in-chief, nipple erect with the thrill of war and violence, is doing everything possible to undermine any "independent" investigation by appointing the members himself (something not unakin to telling a mobster on trial to choose his jury). Our boob-in-chief says that Congress, who he lobbied to the point of criminality to get his prescription drug benefit, underestimated the cost (which, truth be told, Democrats said during the debate). The thing about boobs? They have no minds of their own, even if they seem to sometimes, puckering and unpuckering, sending tingles at inconvenient times. Anything a boob does, there's gotta be something else going on. Boobs do not act alone. The history of boobery demonstrates that when a boob is exposed, the exposure means far, far more than the boob itself.

A Quick P.S. on the Real Boob:
When Janet Jackson's breast was revealed to the millions of people watching the Super Bowl, the cry heard 'round the world was "Why couldn't that have been Britney?" As the FCC promises to launch an investigation into Tittygate, no less an authority than Howard Stern, who knows something about the FCC wasting time and money on "standards," said this morning that he couldn't understand how the public could be calling for an investigation of Janet Jackson, CBS, and the piercing/pasty controversy when no one is calling for an investigation of the Scalia/Cheney duck hunting trip. Strippers, retards, and dwarves aside, ya haveta admit, Stern's got a point.

Lastly, All Around the Country, Familes of the Dead and Wounded Wonder Why:
Colin Powell told the Washington Post that he's not sure he would have recommended war if he had known that Iraq did not have stockpiles of weapons. Let the lawsuits begin.

The Average Citizen Ponders, "And I Had To Cut Up My Visa?":
So let's say you're the average 19 year-old male off at college. Part of the deal of being away from home for the first time is Dad wants you to have some security, so he gives you a credit card. You don't know it, but it's got a high limit. And your family has taught you how to be good with your finances - not wasting your money, but spending wisely. Your first year, you were really good. You went off to Big State U with a lot of money you'd saved from working hard for a couple of summers, but you burned through that pretty fast, even though you were only living in the dorm. Hell, though, your parents think, you did need to spread your wings, get that amped up computer, that Xbox, all those hard drives for the MP3s you downloaded, that poster of Anna Kournikova. And you needed to socialize - get out and meet other guys, drinking, even though it's illegal, but, shit, you're young, away at school, who needs to worry?

It's your sophomore year now. And, worse, you've got a girlfriend. So when it's time to get tickets to that Weezer concert ('cause Rivers makes your girl sooo fucking hot), you break out Dad's credit card. Oh, sure, you get a stomach ache the first time you do it, but you figure you've got that job at the campus bookstore that'll pay for it. When you get to Weezer, the girl (let's be cute and call her Conneo) has to have the t-shirt and she'd fuck your brains out for the tour guide, and you're thinkin', well, okay, I suppose, if it means pussy. So you break out the card again. And it hurts a little, but suddenly, after the show, when Conneo says she'd like you to Cuomo rivers all over her tits, you figure it was well worth it.

Now the dam has broken. Man, you become the life of the fuckin' party. For a month. You're buying the fried cheese appetizers at Chili's, you're gettin' cash advances to front the weed and keg money for the party. Shit, it's like you are the First National Bank of Who the Fuck Cares. For a month. Then Dad opens the bill. Party over.

Except you are one smart son of a bitch. You've been wandering campus, pickin' up free t-shirts, mugs, and 2 liter Pepsis because you've been fillin' out credit card applications like so many postcards from oblivion. And those cards are pourin' in. Motherfuckin' three Visas, two Mastercharges, and even a Discover card. You tell yourself you've learned your lessons - that you'll only use them in emergencies. And besides, minimum payments are easy. And, shit, student loans are simply to get. "Fuck, yeah, man. Conneo, we're eatin' steak tonight," you say, and into your new cell phone, you tell your Dad, "Don't worry. I'll be able to pay off that card in the summer."

You get it? You get the fucking analogy here? You understand how if we behaved like the Bush Adminstration and lived on budgets that would drive nails in to the coffin of our debt, we'd've been forced to live on crackers, ketchup, and government beans for the rest of our lives?

Taking the Weekend Off, But Ann Coulter Is Still a Cunt:
The Rude Pundit's brain is overloaded with WMD info, images of Dennis Miller sucking off David Frum, and his vain attempts to get over his break-up with J-Lo. So, before leaving for a weekend where one has to consciously ignore the huge corporate whoredom known as the Super Bowl, let us pause to look at Ann Coulter and her latest attempts to demean the manhood of Democrats: in her latest "column" (and the term is used loosely here because generally a "columnist" doesn't write in feces while shrieking about the spiders attacking her face), Coulter attacks John Kerry as a "gigolo" because he has married wealthy women. To her, this makes Kerry unable to talk reasonably about middle class tax cuts. "Huh?" a rational human being might ask. Irony, of course, is unknown to Coulter, who is essentially a whore of the right wing, and Bush, her man of men ("Oh, that that flight suit-endowed package were penetrating my anus," she must shriek when tearing at her cunt with her viper nails), is a faux tough guy who never knew anything that even approaches want or threat. But, hell, who the fuck cares. Coulter ends with a reference to Balzac, a reference that, by the way, is pretty much an oversimplification, so the Rude Pundit thinks she must have been googling "ball sack," dreaming of getting tea-bagged by Rumsfeld or Cheney, and she accidentally stumbled across a quote she filed away in her little file of madness.

Back Monday.

Dennis Miller Sucks Conservative Cock:
Let's give context here: The Rude Pundit has never been a fan of Dennis Miller. Any "comedian" whose schtick is to make high and low cultural references that need to be annotated like an Oxford professor's worn copy of The Wasteland is trying too hard to be "intellectual." And any "comedian" who laughs at his own jokes more than the audience laughs at them is simply masturbating in front of the audience, pretending that he's fucking a hot model ("Yeah, you like that, bitch, don't you," his smirks and giggles indicate as he grabs his crank and pretends to slap Gabrielle's ass). So, no never, not on Saturday Night Live, not on his HBO show, not during his "rants," not doing stand-up, not in Bordello of Blood. Never. Laughing at Miller makes people think they are smart. They are not. They, and he, are idiots.

And everything ugly about Miller is on display on his CNBC "show." Miller, if you've been paying attention, was a September 11 convert to conservatism. (He's never really been a liberal, with his support of the death penalty and other right wing views.) He's a darling of the right now, born again, if you will, doing Bush fundraisers, being talked about to run against Barbara Boxer for the Senate in California. Mostly, though, what he seems to be doing with his newfound conservatism is sucking cock. Lots of it. Little cocks and big cocks. However many cocks he can get his lips around, he will suck away.

Miller may as well have broken out the kneepads on his first show, with California "governor" Arnold Schwarzenegger (for whom Miller campaigned) because the entire "interview" was one sustained cocksucking, with Arnold grinning as Miller could barely get out all the praise because of all that Austrian cock in his mouth. His interview style is something like, "I think Bush is great. Don't you agree?" or "I think you're great. Don't you agree?" or "I think I'm great. Don't you agree?" while his fingers are shoved up the assholes of John McCain, Rudy Giuliani, and Arnold.

More disturbing was his interview last night with Newsweek's Michael Isikoff to talk about David Kay and the WMD issue. Isikoff, who, among other things, broke the Lewinsky story (the Rude Pundit doesn't acknowledge the existence of vile worm shit Matt Drudge), has a web story about the intelligence and policy failures that led to the Iraq war. Miller would not allow Isikoff even the possibility that Bush and Cheney picked and chose among intelligence. And Isikoff, while not arguing, certainly held his ground that, while the intelligence might have been flawed, it also served as fodder for a decided-upon policy. Miller, not having a cock to suck, didn't really know what to do. So, in the end, he simply dismissed Isikoff without really engaging him or even allowing for doubt. Miller simply fell back on his old saw that he wanted men who would kick some ass and kill people be in office to do the killing when September 11 happened. Simple facts like, well, shit, it was a Democrat who fought and won World War II never even entered into Miller's thought process.

What else, beyond the sucking of cock? The monkey? No, really, the fucking chimp in the studio that makes you wonder "Is this a parody of a talk show?" The panel discussion? Well, it allowed evil, disgusting, Ming the Merciless-looking David Horowitz a chance to spew hate and attempt to look human instead of the verminous weasel he actually is. If nothing else, Naomi Wolf (yep, the one who advised Gore, but also wrote The Beauty Myth and other books) demonstrated that a liberal on such a panel need not scream in order to be heard. Her best lines were simply her comments to Miller and Horowitz of, "You're a smart person. I can't believe you think this." Of course, she also called Miller out by asking him on Monday, "Did you read the newspaper today?" When Miller said he had not, Wolf looked like she had just walked in on Miller fellating himself in the men's room.

And that really points up a major problem with Miller: he is obviously not reading beyond whatever screeds he needs to look at in order to get it up for ranting on the show. Another problem (and, indeed, the problem with many comedians who call themselves "conservative"): Comedy is supposed to be an attack on the powerful. Miller and those like him simply give them aid and comfort by attacking the weakest (see his comment on illegals crossing the border). Political incorrectness is great. But Miller is not even politically incorrect. He's just become another lackey of the powerful, lacking insight, seeking approval and a paycheck.

And he's gonna need that paycheck for all the lip balm he uses to get ready to suck more cock. Once conservatives hear about the great blow jobs Miller gives, they'll be lining up around the block, zippers undone, ready to be serviced.

The End of the Game:
You all remember the kid's game Don't Break the Ice? The one where there's all these little plastic cubes of "ice" in a square that you tap out one at a time, trying not to break the entire sheet of ice, which was supposed to represent a frozen pond where a plastic man (now cute bear) was ice skating? You remember when you'd get towards the end, and there'd be like just one or two cubes left until the whole thing collapsed, with the skater presumably sinking to his frozen doom? God, the inexorable, delicious pain of knowing it was all gonna come tumbling down.

And so we have reached the final cube holding together the thin ice under George W. Bush and the war rational. After David Kay's initial comments on the lack of weapons of mass destruction or even programs, the President, speaking uncomfortable off the cuff in front of the President of Poland, essentially said the political equivalent of "Homina, homina, homina" when asked about Kay's revelations. With that great deer-in-the-headlights look that was oh-so-cute when he was running for president in 2000 but now is just disturbing, Bush held to the line that Iraq was a "grave and gathering threat." He also flailed about, confirming for us that "I believed it then, and I know it is true now." (For more on this bizarre devotion to ideas despite all evidence to the contrary, see archived entries on the Bush adminstration as a cult.")

That line, "grave and gathering" danger or threat, was first used by the Prez in 2002 at the U.N.. Most recently, it was repeated by Scott "I Hold the American People in Complete Contempt" McClellan when asked about the Kay controversy. Indeed, when pressed if "grave and gathering" meant "imminent," McClellan said, they never said "imminent," only "grave and gathering," which if you think about it, is about the same fine line as saying, "I never said the woman whose throat I cut was a 'whore;' I said she was a 'prostitute.'" But McClellan still felt compelled to repeat, several more times, "grave and gathering," and sometimes just "grave" and sometimes just "gathering." And then it was said again by house negro Condi Rice on the Today show this morning. Here, use Google yourself to check out the past uses and the present. We know this pattern with the Bush Administration: create a phrase, use it repeatedly until it's the only one anybody can think of. Except now the line seems foolish and empty, like Estragon with his pants around his ankles at the end of Waiting for Godot (take that, Dennis Miller, you stupid fascist fucker). Much like the "blame the intelligence" line. In the real world, not the fantasy one Bush exists in, the intelligence community said repeatedly that either nothing was definitive or that there were no weapons.

You remember that point in the Clinton "scandal" (and don't we all just feel so fucking foolish now even beginning to imply that what went on in the last administration even approaches the level of "scandal"?) when even people in the center and on the left were saying that perhaps Clinton should just give up, that maybe he did do something wrong and he should walk away, that suicide was the honorable thing? When is the tipping point in the right wing media going to happen this time? That's the final cube in the game, when the call for an independent investigation of the intelligence on WMDs and how it was used and abused begins to reverberate with the right. Already, John McCain has signaled that he wants an independent inquiry. And, despite the sycophantic tone of the majority of his "Talking Points," even Bill O'Reilly says this "failure" of intelligence should be examined. Most of the right wing, though, is moving on to the new mantra, which Kay repeated in front of the Senate Armed Services Committee, that, no matter what, over 500 soldiers died for a good cause. And also the call, not repeated by Kay, for more time, more time, more time to search, search again, please, Christ, let's find something while we search.

The final tapping is happening, though. What Bush I learned on his definitive statements against tax hikes, the American people don't like liars. By brushing off an independent inquiry into the WMD issue and by not allowing the 9/11 commission to continue its work, Bush is on the ice. Let the tapping continue.

Note to Buzzflash Readers:
Scroll down for the David Kay entry: "The War of the Big Cock (and Bull Story)." But feel free to enjoy all the rudeness.

Kerry Continues To Not Fuck It Up:
Wel, son of a bitch, if John Kerry doesn't seem like he's the once and future nominee. After winning New Hampshire, Kerry is heading to warmer climes (with a nod to snow-covered Delaware) to see if his newfound appeal will play with people whose lives don't revolve around casseroles and ice-removal. What does New Hampshire tell us? Not a whole lot, since Clinton came in second there in 1992, with less votes than this year's also-ran, Howard Dean. Lieberman should have quit three years ago, but for some reason he feels the need to take donations away from Kerry, Dean, Edwards, and Clark. But one thing is going on is that a whole lot of Democrats are interested in winning this year - and that means not many are going to jump on the Nader or Kucinich express to marginalization.

The Rude Pundit is going to say something few have the balls to say: Nader voters were right last time to stand by the Green Party candidate to the bitter end. Had Gore become president, the right wing would have continued to be vicious attack bitches, tearing through any chance Gore would have had to govern. It would have been Clinton redux, sans the blow job. You can sit there at your computers in your underwear and sputter, But, but, Patriot Act, environment, taxx cuts, worker regulations, etc. And the Rude Pundit would answer: You're right. And put on some pants. But the real heart of your heart answer is what you know: Gore fucked it up for Gore. And, with Bush in office, wrecking America as we know it like so many Ghidrahs over Tokyo, the left of this country has coalesced in a way that hasn't been seen since the early 1970s. And it's going mainstream, with the success of Michael Moore, Moveon.org (and its megafunding), and the anti-war movement, and the left is starting to scare the right, which is going to make the right get more extreme, which is going to push moderates away. We welcome them with open arms, right? They're so cute, like bisexuals, free to fuck whoever they want.

And the left needs to be careful here not to fuck it up. The Rude Pundit was listening to Jeremy Scahill doing an O'Reilly on Wesley Clark in a report on Democracy Now. Scahill confronted Clark with NATO's bombing of civilians in Yugoslavia and with the use of cluster bombs and depleted uranium. In the form of gotcha journalism (which the Rude Pundit respects), Scahill attempted to catch Clark off-guard after Clark spoke. The thing is, Clark didn't simply allow his people to get him away. Instead, he turned and answered Scahill, refusing to back down, offering regrets, explanations, and other statements leftist journalists aren't used to getting from those they attempt to embarass. Even when Scahill tried to interrupt Clark, Clark interrupted back: "Now wait a minute, you have to let me finish and then I will let you finish." Here's the deal: say what you will about Clark's politics, about the heinous, barbaric weapons used in war that guarantee maximum casualties, but Clark was pretty impressive - he stood his ground and was willing to talk, pretty extensively, to someone who is used to being dismissed as part of the lunatic left. Scahill isn't, and neither is Democracy Now, which is an actual, honest, honorable (if occasionally amateurish) attempt to provide something to balance the airwaves filthy with right-wing rantings. But in that report and another on the wavering positions of the Democratic candidates on the war, Democacy Now seems to have jumped on the Kucinich train. And that way lies madness. (And, yeah, Kucinich got a raw deal from the media, but he still looks like an undertaker. Brrr. Creepy.)

It's pragmatism. We got to dream with Nader. We all made our little statement and it got us here. No regrets. And the Rude Pundit has said all along that anything that can derail a candidacy should be outed now, in the primary process, before the seething, brooding, craven, cretinous evil that is Karl Rove gets in the game. But let's be careful not to act like ravenous hamsters in a filthy cage and eat our own.

Special note: Right now David Kay is speaking to the Senate Armed Services committee. Tomorrow: how the game of Don't Break the Ice has officially ended. Friday: Dennis Miller needs to be castrated.

The War of the Big Cock (and Bull Story):
Can we finally, finally admit what this war was about? Can we finally just admit that all the reasons, humanitarian, WMDs, links to terrorism, whatever, are all bullshit? America went to Iraq for one reason and one reason only: to show the rest of the world that we have the biggest cock. We didn't go to "enforce" U.N. Resolutions (and is there any reason any of us need to remember the number "1441"?). We didn't go to bring democracy to the region (which is plenty obvious from our inability to come up with a way to, say, bring democracy to the region). We went to Iraq because we could - because we could use Iraq to show the U.N., the French, the Russians, the Syrians, whoever you want to include, that we have a really, really big cock. Look at our large cock, we say, standing on the ruins of international cooperation, look at it. Is it not a big cock? Admire the huge American cock. Why, with a cock like this, we can fuck anything we want.

Because, really, and c'mon, is there any other conclusion to be reached since David Kay has made it his job to make the rounds and say, repeatedly, "Nope, no weapons, no evidence of production, nothing." Now, let's follow the bouncing ball of CNN archives on Kay: he supported Bush's statements at the U.N. in 2002 and in the infamous 2003 State of the Union address; in June 2003, while leading the hunt for WMDs, Kay said progress was being made and that "My suspicions are that we'll find [things] in the chemical and biological areas. In fact, I think there may be some surprises coming rather quickly in that area," and he added, "I think it's very likely that we will discover remarkable surprises in this enterprise," and we all waited with bated breath, like a ten year-old alone at Chuck E. Cheese's, for the surprise that never came; in the October 2003 report, Kay said that there was evidence of "biological weapons programs," meaning, one presumes, mold in the back of the 'frig of a scientist - of course, the rest of the report actually said much of what Kay is saying now, as pointed out in Slate today; in December there were reports that Kay was going to leave the fruitless search; and here we are.

A couple of other tidbits: In September on Meet the Press, Vice President Cheney gave up the love for Kay: "We’ve got a very good man now in charge of the operation, David Kay. He used to run UNSCOM, a highly qualified, technically qualified and able individual." Of course, Cheney could have been lying, since this was the same Tim Russert interview where he said that Saddam could have had nukes in a few months to a year (and, just for shits and giggles, Cheney also opined, "the whole notion that somehow there’s nothing to the notion that Saddam Hussein had WMD or had developed WMD, it just strikes me as fallacious"). Condi Rice (that's "Doctor" House Negro to you) said in September on Meet the Press that Kay was "a very well-respected former weapons inspector" and that the President was awaiting his report before jumping to any conclusions about WMDs. Rice was defending leaks about Kay's report, telling everyone to wait and see.

So here we have yet another person who was "convinced" Hussein had WMDs and now has turned the other way, and this is the guy who should know. Is the Administration going to attempt to discredit so qualified an individual as Kay? Of course, Kay is playing it loyal, turning on the intelligence agencies that kept waving their hands desperately trying to call attention to the way intelligence was being used. Kay now says that "I think if anyone was abused by the intelligence it was the president of the United States rather than the other way around." Which says a lot about the intelligence of a President who can be so readily abused by underlings.

But all of this, as we know, is just so much white noise, pretext rather than actual reasons for the war in Iraq. As more and more soldiers die, three more today, can we not be honest with ourselves and say that the war was just an excuse for the neighborhood bully to beat up the littlest kid to show the rest of the kids that the bully can kick ass? Yessiree, we have got a huge, titanic, gargantuan cock, and the balls to go with it. Nothing shows that like beatin' up the weak and defenseless. And if we have to, we'll prove again that we have the biggest cock in the world by shoving it into Syria, into Iran, into North Korea.

Today is primary time in New Hampshire. At what point can the word "trust" become the real issue in the campaign?

Dick Cheney Will Eat Your Brain:
You know what's funny about every time the administration defrosts the corpse of Dick Cheney and allows it to roam the earth? No matter what he says, no matter what he does, no matter how many attempts at smiles, Cheney is the face of the corporate soullessness of America, someone so worshipping at the altar of almighty Capital that he is devoid of morality, ethics, and humanity. And whenever he speaks, even if he's telling the truth, it is filthy with the subtext of profit over all else.

He is first and foremost the most painful, obvious reminder of that model of greed and corporate welfare, Halliburton. Cheney's visibility makes sure we don't forget that Halliburton can deceive the government through price-gouging, graft, and other assorted sins, and still be given a billion dollar contract. Jesus, if this is the way business is done, why doesn't McDonald's start sacrificing orphans to the heinous grin of Mayor McCheese in order to secure military food services contracts? But that'd ruin the fine job Halliburton is doing in feeding the troops in filthy mess halls and unsanitary conditions. Ahh, Halliburton, giving aid and comfort to the axis of evil (according to 60 Minutes), bilking the American people of billions of dollars, and "winning" no-bid contracts. Goddamn, it's good to be a corporation in America, where the veil of "regulation" hangs over the destruction of democracy. Any real government would have investigate these fuckers a long, long time ago. And, yet, here's the French, those pussies, daring to take on Cheney's tenure at Halliburton and charges of corruption and bribery involving Halliburton's subsidiaries and partners. The Rude Pundit isn't sure, but now that we're $7 billion in the hole to Halliburton, didn't this start as a couple of hundred mill, no bid, for putting out oil fires? And we were told that that was it, a couple hundred mill. And wasn't that used as a pre-text to say, "Well, Halliburton's there - we may as well give'em more, more money, more contracts, more incentive to screw America like it's a 10 year-old Mexican hooker who will fuck you but not take off her clothes."

So here's our Vice-President, one of the most corrupt and vile men ever to hold high office in this country. He goes hunting with Antonin Scalia after the Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case that involves Cheney and his energy task force of Corporate Super Friends. Damn, what a fine time that must have been, just Dick and Tony, in the wilds, on the tab of an oil services company (which, c'mon, and fuck, the fact that a judge is being wined, dined, and lodged by an energy company is more than reason for, say, "conflict of interest", no?). But, fear not, the duck hunting sucked, according to Big Tony Scalia: "The duck hunting was lousy. Our host said that in 35 years of duck hunting on this lease, he had never seen so few ducks." Use the Clinton test: imagine if Hillary went to a spa for a makeover with Ruth Bader Ginsburg when the Court was deciding issues related to, say, the Rose Law Firm documents. Imagine the outcry. Imagine the facials. Imagine the mud baths.

And here's our Vice-President, lying like a sumbitch about WMDs: "The jury is still out," he told Juan Williams on NPR. No, we can say, the jury wasn't out when you said that Iraq had nuclear weapons, etc. And then, you know, David Kay, weapons guru, said there are no weapons. Of course, Juan Williams, good house negro that he is, didn't challenge Cheney. Or maybe Cheney would have been forced to eat his brain.

So keep the Cheney corpse pumped with life. Allow it to eat the brains of willing young conservative virgins. Cheney got to get a taste of uncorrupted brain meat at the Conservative Political Action Conference this past weekend. Lying openly that he had worked for the public good, Cheney ate yummy brains, giggling madly as ganglia dangled from his mouth, heading to Europe to eat Italian brains, before coming home to face us all, again, spouting gloom and doom, which is all that the zombified public seems to understand.

Weekend Off - But a Shout Out To the Homeys:
A few letters here:
Lance writes in to spout off about Rush Limbaugh, a spouting that echoes with the sweet symphony of the cornholed prisoner: "Now that Eldrugbo may be indicted on 10 felony counts of Doctor shopping, I wonder if all Americans with non-sloping foreheads will get the exquisite pleasure of knowing that Elslimebo will have his anal canal used as a recreational device by Bubba and the boys at some Federal facility. One can well imagine Elscumbo falling down on his knees and wetting himself in fear and pleading that he, talent on loan from God, should not suffer the same fate that he so sanctimoniously wished on other drug addicted souls. The lesson of this is be careful what you wish for, for others that is."

The ever-astute and far-too-reasonable sounding Stephanie says of the State of the Union (or SOTU, in our acronym obsessed culture), " Junior did not say 'programs and activities related to weapons of mass destruction.' That would have been the CLEAR AND LOGICAL way to phrase the concept. Instead, he said 'weapons of mass destruction-related program activities.' And I bet a lot of people just turned off after the first four words of that phrase. They heard 'weapons of mass destruction' but did not hear '-related program activities. '" Ahh, but remember, language is the enemy - action is the truth. (Shit, that sounds right out of Kung Fu .)

Aloysius comments that the Rude Pundit was in error when he stated that if Bush tried to rope a steer, it'd probably fuck him: "Yo, city boy. A steer can't fuck nobody. A steer's an ex-bull. A gelding. Anyhow, to rope one, Bush would have to get on a horse's back and make it run. Never happen. He's a golf cart cowboy all the way." Boy, the Rude Pundit is so redfaced, he thinks he needs a heapin' plate of mountain oysters to his weary soul. In fact, here's a whole page of testicle recipes for the weekend dining experience.

Along those lines, Steve informs us: "I live just a little south of Austin. Junior's make-believe ranch is a little north of Austin. His handlers told him to buy it back in '98 so's he could look all western an' buff and gipper-esque as that crafted his national image. Thing is, it weren't no ranch. The land, before he bought it, was a pig farm! Now how appropriate is that! And on top of it, a little known fact. Junior is AFRAID of horses. You've never seen him on one and never will. First time Vincente Fox came up to Texas from Mexico for a chat, he suggested a horsy ride across the hill country. Lead balloon city."

Now, the Rude Pundit doesn't know if this is true, Bush's fear of horses, although he has found reference to it elsewhere. There are no pictures to be found of Bush riding a horse. You gotta love the image of Bush cowering in a corner every time the Mr. Ed theme plays or running screaming across the Oval Office like a transvestite out of eye liner when he sees the mounted patrol on the streets in front of the Capitol. If you have a confirmation of some sort, one way or the other, on this whole horse deal, write to "rudepundit@yahoo.com".

Otherwise, this city boy is gonna ride into the concrete-reflected sunset for a comforting evening of vodka shots, easy bar pick-ups, and sweet, drunken sleep.

Yee-Ha - It's a Conservative Rodeo:
Goddamn, it's a grand ol' time in Arlington, Virginia this weekend: the Conservative Political Action Conference is happening at the Marriott, and, holy shit, what a gathering it will be of nutcases, fascists, and people so aching to be fucked that they'll take their sexual frustration out on anyone within smacking distance. Why, continuing with his Gollum-like appearances, Dick Cheney will show up to once again demonstrate that the administration will only speak before gatherings of people who love it, thus avoiding any of that nasty democracy by actually hearing dissent. And with Ann Coulter, Bernard Goldberg, and the ever stench-ridden David Horowitz speaking, the liberal media will surely be treated like the drunk coed on the balcony once again. Put on by the American Conservative Union (fuck them - no link will be given), and co-sponsored by every crazed, eyes-a-spinnin', conspiracy minded hatemongering organization out there, why, the Marriott will barely be able to contain the jizz of the circle jerks of self-loathing white males and brainwashed white women and the few enslaved minorities who will be trotted out to show, look, really, really, J.C. Watts is a black man and he's conservative.

It's one of the more repulsive little gatherings of the year, up there with the Republican Convention, the NRA "I-don't-have-a-cock-but-I-have-a-gun" Fest, and Thanksgiving Dinner at the Bush compound in Kennebunkport. The Intercollegiate Studies Institute, the National Taxpayers' Union, the United Seniors Association, something for everyone involved in the events in Arlington, where fresh-faced conservative girls will be sorely tempted to disavow abstinence when the social conservatives meet the libertarians on the dance floor and white-boy overbite boogying will mix with jerky caffeine-induced undulations. Oh, to be a fly on the wall there.

You think they'll talk about the possible indictment of Rush Limbaugh for 10 felonies related to his unquenchable thirst for prescription pills? You think they'll chant, "Cunt! Cunt!" when Ann Coulter appears and continues to mock the Democrats, including questioning Wesley Clark's record as a general when so many of her conservative limp dicks never did any time in the military? (Don't worry - she'll be choosing some lucky virgin boy to suck dry so she can continue to live in pale-skinned insanity for a few days more.)

Nope. They'll all just sit and giggle at the latest oh-so-clever re-mix of Howard Dean's speech (which, really, and come on, get over it - it's more fun to see an enthusiastic Dean rallying the troops than a cold-as-ice President telling us to elect him or we're all gonna die). They'll make tons of Bill Clinton jokes because they like to pretend he's still available to kick aroud. Oh, and how they'll speculate that Hillary has a master plan to run and how much of a bitch they think she is (the brainwashed women will giggle in mock shock at the word). Then, they'll go back to their rooms, the good consevative men, and, with the TV porn playing quietly in the background, masturbating furtively, hoping that they'll be spanked by Elaine Chao (speaking) or probed by Bill Frist (speaking, too), grabbing their dicks and thinking about the cute blonde in the knee-length skirt, fondling themselves and singing "God Bless America" as they jack-off for God and country.

Conservatives Hate the Fucking:
Now that it seems that the whole idea of a moon station/Mars mission is about as popular as Scott Peterson visiting a lactation support group, Bush has decided that what will really shore up his support is to be angry about the fucking. See, he knows that his "base," all those religious fundamentalist nuts, homophobes, and acne-scarred prayer group members who can't get dates, want to hear about the fucking. They can't stand the fucking. The act of fucking - too sticky, too likely to cry the Lord's name in vain ("Goddamn, those are nice titties" or "Jesus Christ, I just got fucked so hard I thought you were nailing me to a cross" being the obvious examples), too much pleasure on your knees that doesn't involve praying - just makes the right all sick with repressed pleasure and they need to show their repression by trying to stop the fucking.

It's just so obvious. First, there's the $1.5 billion to "promote" marriage. See, this money would be used for making poor people sit in a room and listen to scolds tell them, "Stop the fucking. Unless you're married. Then fuck away. Otherwise, stop the fucking." Oh, sure, they'll say things about love, commitment, taking care of the kids, working out fights without beating the shit out of each other, but mostly the whole $1.5 billion exists to stop the fucking. Somewhere in East St. Louis, a grateful child sits in a school room with a leaky roof, textbooks from 1977, and no toilet paper in the restrooms; that child is so happy the president of the United States is working to stop the fucking.

Of course, that child will get fine training on her own in not fucking. Because Bush mentioned in the State of the Union farce that he wants more abstinence programs: "We will double federal funding for abstinence programs, so schools can teach this fact of life: Abstinence for young people is the only certain way to avoid sexually transmitted diseases," said the wet dream killer-in-chief. And armed with boss t-shirts like these, how can abstinence programs fail? And with federal funding doubled, who cares if abstinence doesn't work? There's money enough for non-sectarian groups selling abstinence at a fine profit margin. And some of the money will go to faith-based groups (or, more accurately, "churches") who can come into schools and say, "Don't have sex 'cause Jesus Loves You and the fucking makes Jesus weep."

And God hates fags, too, apparently. Well, fags in couples. Because even though he backs a "constitutional process" to overcome the fagloving "activist judges" (shorthand for "a judge who did something I didn't like"), as he said in the State of the Union threat, he added, queerly, "We respect individuals" and that God sees that all individuals have worth. Of course, this pissed off some on the right, who want instant concentrations camps and lamps made of fag skin. The batshit insane Family Research Council declared they were "disappointed" with the quite gay-bashing the President engaged in (their president is Tony Perkins, like the guy in Psycho - either way, you wouldn't want them around when you're showering, although he's kind of cute . . .). But what this is really about, of course, is the fucking. Ohio has moved to say they hate the gay fucking. Cocks in male asses and mouths, female mouths filled with clit, fingers god knows where, it's all icky and non-reproductive, and, motherfuckers, we'll write it into the Constitution - forget Alexander Hamilton and James Buchanan - America doesn't want your tired, poor, huddled fags.

So, all that's left is to come up with ways to punish people for the fucking. Denying civil rights for one type of fucking is one way. But what about all those straight people who love the fucking soooo much and haven't paid attention to their faith-based, federally-funded abstinence programs and haven't gotten into the billion-dollar marriage counseling classes? What if, say, they love the fucking but have no access to contraception beyond Saran Wrap because so much money has been spent trying to get them to stop the fucking? What if they get pregnant? Hey, the President and Congress have said: "Kiss our sanctimonious asses, baby-killers." And today, all the sanctimonious asses are out in force as they protest Roe v. Wade on its anniversary. "Oh, man," they say, "just wait until Bush gets re-elected, and, joy of joy, abortion will be criminalized and we'll throw women who fuck in jail or leave them in alleys to bleed to death." They really wanna stop the fucking.

Domestic policy under Bush? Fuck and you get fucked.

"The State of Our Union Is . . . Shut the Fuck Up":
What an odious bit of dried worm spooge is our President. What an idiot, what a maroon. Standin' up there, all decked out in his red tie and shit, lookin' like he'd just fucked Howard Dean's wife, smiling, smiling, barely containing that fucking shit-eating smile, staring out at the crowd, knowing that he could destroy anyone of them with barely a whiff of outrage from the press or the public. Untouchable. All he had to do was say the fuckin' words, say the fuckin' words, as Rove told him over and over, say the fuckin' words and keep your hands on the fuckin' binder.

What was the deal with the binder? Was it so it looked like he studied? Was it a veiled tribute to the lost Spalding Gray, who would perform with an open notebook and glass of water? More likely, Rove gave him the binder so that he would avoid the awkward Bush family hand palsy that afflicts them when they speak. Earlier in the day, Rove was probably using a razor strop to smack the President's ass whenever his hands moved. Rove screamed, "Keep your hands on the fuckin' binder" as he smacked W. repeatedly, "and put that erection away." (Along those lines, the Rude Pundit's favorite photo is this one, where Dick Cheney gives his best stroke-smile of approval as Bush seems as if he's about swallow the whole cock-like microphone of America.)

Essentially, the State of the Union speech was one long bullying session. You were either with the President to fight eeevil or you were just an ineffective pussy lawyer who wants ridiculous things like "rule of law" and "sanity." In fact, it was a particularly annoying kind of bullying, where the bully keeps hitting your arm and saying, "Wanna fight? Wanna fight? Wanna fight?" because the end result of that ploy is that if you swing back, the bully goes running off to tell the teacher that you're a bully.

The speech was the usual: fear and war, America, fear and war. Christ, he must have been barely able to contain his hard-on behind the microphone, smirking ridiculously when he spoke of violence and hate. Looking like he could have been fucking Tom Daschle in the ass in the chamber, saying, "Whee, look at me, I'm fuckin' the minority leader." And just the barest mention that anyone actually suffers during war. No acknowledgement of the dead. No words of comfort. Just ass kicking. From the Patriot Act to the Taliban to the "weapons-of-mass-destruction-related program activities" (which, as we all know, could be designs for a paper airplane because that paper airplane could be used to deliver all that fucking anthrax and botulism and fart gas that Bush talked about last year) to Libya, it was empty, empty, empty.

It's hard to get a rational thought going here. It's hard to organize because rarely has America been presented with such a litany of hate, horror, and homogeneity. Sure, we all expected the Sanctity of Marriage Amendment bullshit (and surely Neil Bush is a fine example of that), but what the fuck was up with the steroids talk? What the fuck?

Fuck it. The President of the United States is an idiot, yes, there's finally no question about it, and, yes, minus 9/11 he'd've been on the trash heap a long, long time ago. This is a man not deserving of our respect, a man who has shat on the office. A man who lied boldly last year and who offered nothing but empty nonsense this time. The Democrats should have risen, en masse, and walked out. And America, including the Rude Pundit, should have tuned out. As everyone watching, everyone involved knew, this was a campaign speech. It had little or nothing to do with speaking to the American people. State of the Union? That would require a recognition that we live in a "union" of states and people.

It was all so depressingly cynical - here's a bone to the poor, a bit of salt pork to the middle class, and a whole fuckload of shit to the conservative, rich white people who line up to run a train on the raw asshole of democracy on a daily basis.

Oh, and where the fuck was Mars?

State of the Union Fun:
Keep a running total of how much Bush promises to spend. Compare it to the deficit. Ask yourself if any of this will ever come into being (see African AIDS funds). Start investing in Euros, 'cause the dollar's gonna go the way of Saddam-scrip.

Kerry Didn't Fuck It Up So Badly:
Before anyone gets too freakin' excited about Iowa caucuses and the choice of the snow-mad, flat landscaped people there, remember: the only definite conclusion that can be drawn is that Dick Gephardt wasted a whole lot of money and gave up his seat in Congress on a pipe dream so distant that even the horizon at the end of the hard, harvested earth of Iowa looks close by comparison. Winning did nothing for Tom Harkin's campaign in 1992, nothing for Bob Dole or Gephardt in 1980, and, shit, George Bush (Sr.) came in third in 1988. So before Kerry and Edwards supporters get too wet with excitement, keep it in perspective. New Hampshire, also filled with snow-mad white people but who at least have hills and trees to look at, awaits, with Wesley Clark hungry for meat and Joe Lieberman waiting to end his campaign.

That said, hell, the Rude Pundit hopes Kerry celebrated by roundly rogering the Mrs., making her cry out, "Anticipation is making me wait" before he brought her to orgasm. Because the Rude Pundit, who, as previously mentioned, is a fickle bastard, has seen a glimmer of hope in Kerry that was lost in the folds of the Senator's morose face. The Vietnam vet factor is huge now. Check out this story of the soldier Kerry rescued in 'Nam. Now picture Kerry and his people hyping this heroism (and this is undiluted heroism - selfless, life-risking, and so goddamn brave that we're all pussies in its presence) against the image of Bush in that goddamn flight suit: here's your choice, America - a man who dodged bullets to save a stranger or a goofy rich pansy in a costume. The arrival of the vets is a huge boost for Kerry (yes, they've been there all along, but they've become more visible as our contemporary war creates a new generation of vets)and a huge slap in the face to the "Commander-in-Chief." See, we have mythologized the Vietnam vet - he's a bad ass who faced down guerillas, he's a little crazy, and he came home to decry a war that he participated in. Few single vets embody all of that, but it's a better mythology to be working with than prissy rich boy who pretends to be a rancher (c'mon - Bush would get fucked by steers he tries to rope).

So maybe a revision: maybe Kerry can't be pigeonholed simply as a New England liberal. Maybe it's gotta be him or Clark. Anyone to make W. look as very, very small as he actually is.

And Edwards? Vice-President in the making. He's the good-looking youngster (weird lip mole aside) who would make Dick Cheney look like the walking corpse he is. And where goes Edwards goes the NASCAR Dads 'cause the NASCAR dads know a real Southerner from a fake one.

And Dean? Goddamnit. Did you see his "concession" speech? The Rude Pundit believes he could take just about anyone in a fight, but Dean looked like he was ready to bite the head off a small child when he was rallying the crowd. And if you think it's unfair for this blog to take that photo out of context, imagine what Fox "news" is going to do with it.

This is a rambling entry. Sure, it trafficks in image and hype, but so does campaigning. Here's the deal: what we learned from Iowa is that Democrats want to win. They want someone to face down the President. They understand that the romance of Dean is nice (as was the Nader romance of 2000), but that winter forces us to re-think our priorities: do we want someone who makes us feel good when they fuck us or do we want someone who will make a comfortable home for our children? And the Democrats of Iowa emerged from their ice-caves to say, "We've had our fun. Now let's be grown-ups living in the real world."

Martin Luther King Would Fuck Bush's Shit Up:
And you know why? Because Bush doesn't know how to respond when presented with ideas of peace. Bush is like every rich frat-boy-redneck-wannabe-cowboy-wannabe-soldier who wouldn't know real ideas or real work or real suffering if he hitched it to his ornamental pick up truck. All he knows is "I gotta kick me some ass" because that's what he had to learn to prevent wedgies in New Haven and noogies from Jeb in Kennebunkport. So, like the slave who knows nothing more than servitude, Bush believes his own bullshit.

That's why Bush wouldn't know what the fuck to do with King. Like the whole counterculture, which has been reduced to used clothing and drugs, MLK has been reduced to "I Have a Dream," a speech that was so fucking radical at the time, in front of an America so ingrained with racial separation, that anyone who was really paying attention knew that King had to be killed before he really led America into racial equality, something that shook to the core any white person in power and any idiot backward ass country (or city) crackers who so feared black men fucking white women that they had to kill the black men in order to prevent the fucking and, to ensure those black cocks wouldn't have one last erection while the lynchings were occurring, they had to castrate the black men. Such was the shivering, pathetic fear of white America when King said he saw a time when black and white children would play together and people would not be judged by the color of their skin. For a society where the color "white" equaled privilege, white people definitely wanted to continue to be judged by the color of their skin.

So while everyone uses MLK day to decry Bush's recess appointment of the odious Charles Pickering to the U.S. Court of Appeals, not 24 hours after the near-riot that accompanied Bush's visit to King's grave in Atlanta, here we'll say that that is too reductionist of King's broad philosophy of peace and racial understanding. Instead, Bush's two biggest insults this week (because the full extent of Bush's insults to King's philosophy would actually require those riots to occur) are the immigrant worker "rights" proposal and the Iraq war. The former because, as a potential method of registering illegals, it creates a race-based second-tier worker status that is equivalent to South Africa's brand of old school apartheid, except with a little indentured servitude mixed in. The proposal to tie these new workers to an employer for three years, renewable, like a library book, will guarantee a disposable work force that will compete quite successfully with the poverty wages of third world countries.

And the Iraq war? Give the Rude Pundit a fucking break. Any reasonably well-trained beagle can see that a war based on lies, with anarchy in Iraq as its inevitable result, and a stripping away of rights for Iraqi women and whatever ethnic group is booted out of power as an added bonus (the smart money's on a Sunni ethnic cleansing starting in August) is a conflict for which King would be tempted to, for a moment, toss non-violence and smack the living shit out of the neocons. Here - read this and make your own decision.

But the main reason King would fuck up Bush's life in a way that'd make it impossible for Bush to continue to govern? See, the President claims that his most influential philosopher is Jesus Christ. Bush tells us that, but it's a lie or ignorance, like so many of this President's statements: just say something is so and it is so. King, though, in very public and very powerful ways, showed what it meant to live a philosophy based in the biblical Christ. And that, friends, is the meaning of today. Bush is a man of hatred in the guise of harsh love, like all fundamentalists. King said that peace is a hard road and honest love of humanity is rough, but it's the only path we can follow if we don't want to take the path to our own destruction.

Tomorrow: Iowa - who won who's going to lose the nomination in the long run?
Wednesday: the State of the Union - any self-respecting member of Congress should stay away. Like a sex partner who lies to you about STDs, stay the fuck away from the liar.

Does the President Want To Fuck Scott Reid in the Ass?:
This just had to be briefly noted: Scott Reid is a strategist for Candian PM Martin. According to Reid, when he met Bush at the summit in Mexico, the "leader" of the free world told Reid, "You got a pretty face." Now, the Rude Pundit has to speculate on what in the fucking world Bush was thinking. Admittedly, Reid is one handsome motherfucker, but is Reid a bit frightened that President Bush invoked the film Deliverance to compliment him? The line there, of course, from the hillbilly rapist to Jon Voight, is "You got a real pretty mouth," but, delivered with a hick accent and glint in his eye, there's really no difference between the sodomizing redneck and the President. Let's just hope Bush doesn't request that Reid squeal like a pig.

While Dick Gephardt Desperately Attempts To Remain Viable . . .:
The Rude Pundit will rest until Monday, when MLK Day will prompt us to think about how fucked it is that Bush visited King's grave. Christ, his presence could defile it more only if he took a shit on King's bones. Which, of course, metaphorically, virtually all of Bush's policies do.

Back Monday.

Democracy and Democrats in the Frozen Wasteland of America:
Look, let's face some harsh, awful, fucked-up facts here: if Howard Dean gets the nomination, the press will attempt to eviscerate him in the same way they lied and exaggerated about, and, indeed, slandered (probably in the legal sense, too) Al Gore. It's a rough thing to deal with. Dean lovers know in the pits of their stomachs that this is true. And, frankly, if we want to get the mobsters in the White House out, we'd better deal with it. 'Cause, like, you see, it's not just the "angry" Dean that's going to get played to the hilt (although it's the way he's going to be characterized the rest of his life). Nope - every tiny, insignificant misstep will be magnified, every association will be loudly criticized, every fart will stink worse than any other fart in the history of farts.

Don't believe it? Shit, even Bill O'Reilly (who still needs to be sodomized with a microphone) noticed it. O'Reilly repeats ABC's "exclusive" that a former trooper to Dean beat his wife (the trooper's, not Judy Dean). Anything, anything at all, to slow a juggernaut that in any kind of real country would push Dean into the Presidency.

So it's gotta be Clark. Dean's gonna be painted as a New England liberal, which he's not, which Gephardt keeps pointing out. Kerry's gonna be painted as a New England liberal, which he kinda is. And, of course, we all know that "liberal" isn't a bad word. But we don't own Fox News, do we? It's gotta be Clark or maybe Edwards. Clark because when he stands next to Bush at a debate and the AWOL Prez tries to make some awkward statement about defense and security, he'll just look like the stupid tool he is next to Clark. This ain't an endorsement. This is an acknowledgement of reality.

In Iowa, frozen, grey, filled with mostly white people who fade into the frozen grey landscape, democracy is waking up. Gang-raped by five Supreme Court justices last time, democracy is starting on its long journey. It's messy, this process we have here. It's vicious, it's mean, and, despite all the protests to the contrary, it's the meanest fucker who wins. Hell, an easier way would be to throw all the candidates in a pit and see who comes out holding the most bitten-off heads. But let's give it a try, give it a spin- like an old lover who's come back after a bitter break-up, let's give democracy one last roll in the hay.

Of Pundits, Candidates, and Men:
So, like, which Democratic candidate does Maureen Dowd want to fuck? 'Cause the New York Times "columnist" has been off on her trademark oh-so-cutesy-but-really-and-come-on-batshit-insane rants against Wesley Clark and Howard Dean in her most recent "columns." On Sunday, she spent her 750-plus word allotment on Wesley Clark's sweaters, believing that she was offering "insight" into how Clark was trying to soften his appeal to women. Today, she picks up the Times bizarro fixation on Howard Dean's wife and how Judy Dean hasn't played nicey-nice and stood by her man, how acting like a legitimate 21st century woman who is not merely an appendage and can't even fake it (like Hillary did for so long) is somehow wrong and twisted.

So that leaves us with the inevitable question: since she's obviously decided against Clark and Dean, and now that Braun has dropped out of the race to throw her support behind Dean, who does Dowd want fucking her? Does she desire the Sharpton cock of race-mythology proportions? Does she like her cock, like her Barney's clothes, at 20% off and wants a Lieber-humpin'? Does she like tiny men with large cocks, cocks so large that they get in their way, like Dennis Kucinich? Does she wanna get fucked in the ass, Deliverance-style, by John Edwards? Maybe it's a class thing. Maybe she wants to get fucked steelworker style by Dick "You Heard My Name" Gephardt? Or, maybe, just maybe, she believes, in her heart of hearts, that his patrician airs will fade away, and John Kerry will treat her like the Vietnamese whore she so obviously desires to be.

Bitch had to work hard to come up with a way to demean Clark. Bitch ain't gonna let up on Dean. Damn, the Rude Pundit sometimes is fooled into thinkin' bitch on our side. But like all bitches, male and female, the bitch is only out for itself.

Tomorrow: Iowa - does anyone remember what democracy looks like?

Deprogramming for Democracy:
Continue to pity Paul O'Neill. Even as he backtracks like a crawdad chased by a mad Cajun, his bravery is making others come forward (albeit anonymously) to confirm his revelations about the lemming-like march to war and dispute the cruel rantings of Donald Rumsfeld. O'Neill may end up being a tragic figure in all of this, one who for a moment revealed light on the dark soul of the Bush Administration, but who was pressed into retraction, hedging, and, soon, to be sure, silence.

But as those who have betrayed cults before (see the January 12 entry) have learned, the price for showing the world that the glorious leader is a fraud is harsh, cruel, and will-breaking. Ask anyone who was put into the Box at Jonestown for dissenting with Jim Jones and the People's Temple. Oh, they will dangle your children over cliffs, threaten to kill your mother, anything to make sure you don't let the rest of the world know the truth: the blind man in the room of deaf people is actually, really, legitimately evil.

So perhaps there's an intervention needed here against the Cult of Bush. Who's its members? Is it just the Administration? Or is that just an inner circle and we are all members by choice or coercion? There's boxes enough at Guantanamo for each of us to either capitulate or be disappeared. Let's not go with the easy answer here: that an election is an intervention, that putting Dean into office will be enough to overcome all the years of waste, hopelessness, and despair. Let's do this thing for real.

It'll have to start with the weakest member still in the full throes of the cult. We'll have to capture Colin Powell, tie him to a chair, and begin. Let's follow all the rules of cult intervention and deprogramming. We'll tell him about his indoctrination- how his will was broken on things he knew were true: Iraq was no threat, it had no weapons. We'll show him how he knew his presentation to the U.N. was, to quote himself, "bullshit." We'll show him how he used to have a spine, how he used to be the next in line to be elected to the White House, how he used to have the respect of the world. We'll have to get him to re-live the repressed memories of his torture at the hands of leather-clad Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz, how they used 15-inch strap-ons to rape him repeatedly, how they forced him to blow them, how they lashed him and made him forget that his name used to begin with "General." Oh, the damage they did, making him believe that his years of military experience were worthless at the altar of neocon and oil industry ideology. God, how he'll cry, how he'll remember the hot cum that he had to swallow- small, dusty amounts from Cheney - larger kosher ejaculate from Wolfowitz. Christ, it makes the Rude Pundit weep to think about the rape and torture that Powell was subjected to while Bush looked on with glee, thinking about his father while fondling himself, thinking, Yeah, look what I'm doin' to your boy, Dad, look what I'm doin' to your boy.

This will take days, weeks maybe, with lots of time spent assuring Powell that he is still worthy of respect (let's not bring up his behavior in Vietnam and Gulf War I), but that the Cult of Bush has denied him that. Let's assure him that if he goes public he will be welcomed with open arms and that there is life after the cult.

The Rude Pundit knows this may get harsh. But the good of the nation, nay, the world depends on it. And after Powell crumbles, sobbing, clinging desperately to his shit covered dress uniform and medals and stars, and after he admits he's been wronged and wants to move on, we'll go for the next one. Who would that be? Who the fuck knows? It may have to be done one citizen at a time. Let the deprogramming begin.

An Addition To the Brief Aside:
One thing that Paul O'Neill has in common with Joseph Wilson, besides the fact that telling the truth about the run-up to war has caused the Hammer of Rove to fall onto them: no one in the adminstration has said that they are wrong. Oh, sure, the two lackeys the Administration put out there to counter O'Neill offered an interpretation of Bush that shows him somewhat more engaged than, say, a sloth in a bamboo forest. But even when another lackey says, "It is laughable to suggest" that the President wanted to go to war with Iraq from day one, that is not a denial. It is, indeed, laughable to suggest that terrorists could hijack four planes on a single day and destroy and kill as much as they did. It's laughable, but that doesn't mean it didn't happen. It is, in fact, even more laughable to suggest that someone like O'Neill, who really had nothing to gain by going public as he did, being realllly fucking rich, did anything for the sake of ego. But such are the laughable allegations from the comedians in the White House.

A Brief Aside With a Nod To Tony Montana - Bush To Former Insiders: "Jou Fuck Wit' Me, I Fuck You Right Back":
The Rude Pundit's pity for former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill began at the end of his interview with 60 Minutes when he rhetorically asked Leslie Stahl, "Why would I be attacked for telling the truth?" Poor bastard, believing he was dealing with honorable men, when, like so many before him, he learned he was dealing with brutal prison guards, the kind that'll fuck you up the ass with a billy-club and say you deserved it. See, what O'Neill doesn't understand that anyone who's ever seen a Mafia film understands is that no one gives a shit if you lie; it's the truth that you need to be whacked for. Ask Joseph Wilson. Ask Scott Ritter. And the hit has been put out, since a single document shown on CBS had the word "Secret" written on it. (Interestingly, that document was the plans for a post-Saddam Iraq - which of course leads to the obvious question of "There was a plan?") That left an opening for the Treasury Department to call for an investigation of what documents O'Neill took. O'Neill claims he had the documents okayed by the Treasury Department's chief counsel, and, in another cutely naive statement, adds, "I'm surprised that [Secretary John Snow] didn't call the chief legal counsel" before announcing a call for investigation. Of course, this is accompanied by the expected backpedaling on some of the harsher comments about Bush being a "blind man" at cabinet meetings, which, if you look into the President's vacant, alcohol-ravaged, coke-faded eyes, you know is true.

Ahh, the former chief of Alcoa couldn't wait to tell all about his nearly 2-year sentence to the Bush White House via the cold, dead embrace of Dick Cheney. And now he must pay and pay dearly. The Bush mob is coming. Why do you think we haven't heard from Karen Hughes? They are going to squash Paul O'Neill with all the disproportionate force of a redwood falling on a banana slug. Honor is worthless. Personal self-respect is garbage. Loyalty is all.

Deprogram? Intervention? Impeachment? You Decide:
So the Rude Pundit has been reading all the recent stories about the as-yet-unfound-and-of-course-the-rest-of-us-know-never-to-be-found weapons of mass destruction, including the scathing Carnegie Endowment for International Peace report; that amazing Washington Post article on how the weapons existed, like the masturbatory fantasies of a zit-covered teenaged boy, as a diagram on a CD; and now the Paul O'Neill revelations, which are not so surprising to everyone paying attention, that Bush was obsessed with Iraq from the beginning of his administration and that O'Neill saw no evidence of WMDs; the wonderful little tidbit from Condi that there's no solid evidence of Iraq moving said weapons to Syria, and of course the facts that David Kay is leaving the search, and we're pulling out the 400 elite searchie people. And then there's the sad, sad sight of Colin Powell, needing prostate surgery probably from all the rumsfeldings he's been getting, standing there, sphincter a little tighter than usual, declaring that the weapons exist and that "the game is still unfolding."

So, like, you remember that cult a few years ago, Heaven's Gate? The one that committed mass suicide, the one where the men cut their nuts off and all of them wore Nikes? Sure, you remember them. We got to see the photos of those Nikes over and over. You remember anything about them? They believed that a UFO was following the Hale-Bopp comet, and that the UFO was a sign of coming changes. In 1997, their proof, a photograph, was shown to be a hoax, and their response? "Irrelevant." The comet alone, see, was enough of a sign. The other fucked-up, eerie thing? The nutso head of the cult gave everyone cute little new names.

Now, let's put two and two together. Here's some info on what makes a cult, from a cult awareness network:
"The group will have an elitist view of itself in relation to others, and a unique cause. They are the only ones who are right - everyone else is wrong. They are the only ones doing God's will - everyone else is in apostasy.

"They will promote their cause actively, and in doing so, abuse personal rights and freedoms.

"They use intimidation or psychological manipulation to keep members loyal to their ranks. This could be in the form of threats of dire calamity sent by God if they leave; certain death at Armageddon; being shunned by their family and friends etc. This is a vital part of the mind control process.

"Members will be expected to give substantial financial support to the group. This could be compulsory tithing (which is checked); signing over all their property on entering the group; coercive methods of instilling guilt on those who have not contributed; selling magazines, flowers or other goods for the group as part of their 'ministry'."

This could go on and on. Criticism is seen as rebellion, loyalty is prided above all else, etc. And the comparisons here are frightening, no? Financial support as taxes. Abuse of freedom in the form of the Patriot Act. It's obvious.

When the President and Colin Powell stand up there, foolish, frightening us with phantom weapons, they are just Jim Jones with a bigger megaphone. And America, with its vacillating alerts, its complicit media, ignorant citizens. We're just living in Jonestown, waiting for the next attack as a sign that we should drink the Kool-Aid.

Tomorrow: Deprogramming for Democracy.

Today on the Rude Pundit:
Is the Bush administration a cult?
To be posted by noon.

It's the Weekend:
And on the weekend the Rude Pundit drinks himself into a constant stupor to make the voices in his head stop. Well, actually, this week, it's just the pathetic whine of Colin Powell, crying into the darkness, the void, that WMDs really, really do exist. Christ, in any decent civilization, he'd've fallen on his sword by now and drunk in the sweet, sweet bliss and nobility of suicide.

Meanwhile, search engines are a funny, funny thing. You type in "Grandma's peaches" and who knows what'll come up at Google. But apparently, if you type, "little tits" into Yahoo, somewhere, way down the list, is the Rude Pundit. The Rude Pundit would like to think about someone with a little tittie fetish, half-tumescent cock out, clicking around, seeking those little titties, clicking on the Rude Pundit, and masturbating even more forcefully while reading this blog.

So, consider this the audience participation section: because people are such sick fucks in general, here's some of the search engine terms that have recently brought up the Rude Pundit in a list of god only knows what else (these are completely real and are listed at Extreme Tracking):
monster cunt
Ann Coulter is a cunt
"Molesting Uncle" comedian
Anderson Cooper nude
fuck Bush
Bush is an asshole
Rumsfeld is an asshole
young boy cock
Jessica Lynch getting ass fucked
Jessica Lynch raped
schoolgirl sodomized
Bill O'Reilly splotchy
fucking turkey pussy & ass
tape fucking corpses ass
live picture of masturbating gay man with nice and huge cock

The sad part is how long this list could go on and on. So, here's the toast for the first chilled vodka shot of the morning - Cheers to every sad little fuck who needs to see a P.O.W. getting raped.
Back Monday.

To the Moon, Condi, To the Moon:
So at 5 a.m., in his quiet apartment, weary from another evening of tossing and turning over images of men in Bush masks sodomizing Saddam Hussein repeatedly even as he screamed over and over that there were no weapons of mass destruction, the Rude Pundit arose and turned on CNN, as is his way. And there, lo and behold, was an announcement of miracles to come: a space mission - and not just any ordinary unmanned rocket or firecracker space shuttle. Oh, no, it was a proposal to come for a space station on the moon, just like in the old show Space 1999, except, you know, not in 1999. And it doesn't stop there, stargazers, for we have a President with grandiose ideas: the moon station will be a place from which humans may leap to, oh, my god, Mars so that we can have first hand experience with all the red dirt there (which is presumably different, much, much different, than the grey dirt on the moon). Oh, what a grand and wonderful time we live in, thought the Rude Pundit as he toddled out in his underwear and robe, coffee cup in hand, to grab his morning New York Times from the stoop, where, lo and behold, there it was again. Why, the Rude Pundit was giddy with joy, remembering his childhood erections at the sight of Neil Armstrong and that flag.

And then the Rude Pundit turned to the Op-Ed section, where he read this in Bob Herbert's column today: "A new report by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities shows that 34 states have made potentially devastating cuts over the past two years in public health insurance programs, including Medicaid and the very successful children's health insurance programs known as CHIPS. More cuts are expected this year." And the potential cost of a moon station and Mars mission by 2015? Why, nearly $1 trillion dollars.

Do we have a group of teenagers with their first credit cards in the White House or what? Like an angry parent seeing the Visa bill that he'll have to pay instead of the teenager, the American people need to say, "What the fuck are you thinking, you stupid cocksuckers?" Not to get into the whole "What else would $1 trillion dollars over 10 years cost?" debate (although, really, and c'mon, $100 billion dollars a year would pretty much set up the entire country with good jobs, health insurance, elite private school education, and free Starbucks in the morning), but what's the game here? Did the President, after spanking Laura while staring at pictures of dead Iraqis in order to get a hard-on, think, seeing Laura's red ass, "I wanna go to the moon. No, wait, first the moon, then Mars. That'd be cool"? Did Karl Rove say, "Let's say we're going to Mars. Then, if that little fucker Dean opposes us, we'll say, 'What, you don't want to go to Mars?'"? Did Donald Rumsfeld say, "Well, Mars is the god of war"? Or did someone say there might be oil there?

Or, how about these possibilities: A space journey has the potential to be the ultimate corporate welfare program (and didn't Republicans used to call this kind of shit "socialism"? Just asking). Oh, all the contracts, all the outsourcing, all the newly-minted pseudo-residents who'll be forced to work for minimum wage no matter what. Christ, the money that will go to Boeing/McDonnell-Douglas. Christ, all the oil that'll be needed for fuel.

Or, maybe, just maybe, this is another way for the Bush administration to avoid the problems of the United States. Fuck, make Bush President of Iraq. Make him Great Grand Poobah of Mars for all we care. But somebody needs to tell these idiots in the administration to stop spending money like ten bucks a blow hookers with unlimited credit at Frederick's.

Christ, the Rude Pundit can't wait until they start saying that the moon station and the Mars trip are for homeland security. Maybe it'll be that from the moon we can launch a missle defense system. Maybe it'll be for better spying. But the connection's coming and you know it is.