America's Torture Policy During the Reign of the Savage Idiots:
To read Mark Danner's article in the New York Review of Books about America's policy of torture during the Bush administration is to peer over the edge of an abyss that we don't know yet if we've pulled back from. While punk ass, egomaniacal turdmongers like Glenn Beck push the notion that we're heading into apocalypse because the tax rate on the wealthy is going to go marginally higher or because someone said something bad about Israel, the very foundational ideals of America were undermined because George W. Bush and Dick Cheney made us scared of a group of fanatical retards who shit in caves.

Go ahead and read the whole thing, about the Red Cross report on how the United States participated in the torture of bloodthirsty assholes and grubby criminals who, every day they were held nude, cold, filthy, sleepless, stress-positioned, and beaten, had confirmed for them everything that they and their fellows and followers believed about the West. Man, we showed 'em. We showed 'em good.

You might be a cynic on the left who blithely responds that we shouldn't be naive, that the United States has tortured prisoners of war (and others) throughout its modern history. Of course that's true, but it was always done with a wink and with the knowledge that people could be prosecuted. It was not an official and (eventually) openly known and accepted policy of the American government. That little piece of the horror puzzle is new.

You might be a cynic on the right who says that, yeah, we did this, but it ain't nearly as bad as the tortures committed by the regimes of, say, Saddam Hussein or whatever Latin American dictator and/or junta you wanna toss into the dirt heap. Of course that's true, too, but, as the Rude Pundit's said numerous times, do you really wanna judge our nation's morality by comparison to, say, Guatemala's in the 1980s? And it's not to mention how much our tortures seem like the same ones done in China now or in the Soviet Union back in the day. Finally, the other way to look at this is that the bar has been set lower now. The U.S. has no goddamn right to complain if our citizens are treated like this in other countries. Only when it gets worse, only when it gets worse.

And to those who would be idiotic enough to cite the 24 scenario as a reason to torture, you need to at least fuckin' get it right. In that fictional set-up, the criminal/terrorist/soldier knows about something that's going to blow up within, you know, 24 hours. That's the justification for shooting kneecaps or hammering testicles or whatever. What happened to the prisoners in U.S.-sponsored custody (in whatever country they were renditioned to) took place over the course of days, weeks, months. So, even if this unreal situation occurred, at what point does the potential information from torture victims stop being a last-second nefarious plot-halter?

Now, the Rude Pundit's no interrogation expert, but it'd seem, by default, less than a day. So, like, Abu Zabaydah, who was shot three times while being pursued, hospitalized, and treated for his injuries, who was then questioned by the FBI without being tortured, wasn't given "enhanced techniques" until long after he could have halted any imminent attacks. But, you know, that'd be applying logic and reason to a situation where only the animalistically-savage and the emotionally-retarded and the intellectually-bereft are making decisions.

John King's Abdication:
Somewhere in Hell yesterday, Augusto Pinochet watched John King's interview with Dick Cheney on CNN. Whenever the former Vice-President appears, Lucifer makes sure that all the underworld's screens are tuned in. He wouldn't wanna piss off Cheney. "Are you fuckin' kiddin' me?" Pinochet wondered out loud between his screams as the bones of all the people he disappeared were shoved down his dickhole into his urethra. The Chilean dictator turned to femur-wielding demons with Salvador Allende's face and said, "Seriously, to get that kind of hummer from a reporter, I'd've had to have threatened to skin his girlfriend alive." Pinochet instantly regretted what he'd said. One should never give demons an idea.

Cheney may as well have been talking to a John King puppet. More precisely, he may as well have been jacking off with a John King puppet on his hand. Because, apparently, challenges and follow-up questions are to John King what boric acid is to ants. He dare not even step near it.

Here's one exchange where King is allegedly confronting Cheney:
"KING: When you came to office, the unemployment rate in the country was 4.2 percent, when you left it was 7.6 percent. The number of Americans in poverty when you arrived, just under 33 million, over 37 million when you left. The number without health insurance, a little over 41 million when you came, over 45 million approaching 46 million when you left. And you came with a budget surplus of $128 billion and in the final year, the budget deficit was a record $1.3 trillion. So what would you say to someone out there watching this who is saying, why should they listen to you?

"CHENEY: Well, there are all kinds of arguments to be made on that point. But there's something that is more important than the specific numbers you're talking about, and that had to be priority for our administration. Eight months after we arrived, we had 9/11. We had 3,000 Americans killed one morning by al Qaeda terrorists here in the United States. We immediately had to go into the wartime mode. We ended up with two wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Some of that is still very active. We had major problems with respect to things like Katrina, for example. All of these things required us to spend money that we had not originally planned to spend, or weren't originally part of the budget. Stuff happens. And the administration has to be able to respond to that, and we did."

So Dick Cheney just said the economy is in the shitter because of 9/11, seven and a half years ago. And King's follow-up was not "Holy fuck, you are a fucking psycho cock-headed motherfucker, aren't you?" or some variation on that. Nope, it was: "But you're a conservative administration, spending more than $1 trillion." And then Cheney repeated some bullshit about this war, actually comparing it with World War II, which King never challenged with, "Ummm, you chose the war, fuckbag."

John King's approach to Cheney was like a cat in heat's approach to an alley tom. He put up his haunches and let the ex-VP go to town. When Cheney said that Barack Obama was making America less safe by halting waterboarding and closing Gitmo, King said, "I want to give you a chance -- and take as much time as you want -- to prove it." As if Cheney didn't have years to prove it. And then he didn't go after Cheney for not proving it.

It wasn't journalism. If the purpose of journalism is to seek some kind of truth, then King walked away from his role in that mission. He was merely a sounding board, a kennel wall for a savage dog to hear the echo of its own snarls.

Bernard Madoff Is Our Sin:
Genius though he may have been at excoriating human behavior, Mark Twain was a total fucktard when it came to money. Investing in bullshit inventions and taking the worst financial advice available, Twain was a greedy bastard who fell into get-rich-quick schemes and, of course, ended up getting dicked over. He went bankrupt in 1894. Twain went on a worldwide speaking tour to earn the money to pay his creditors, but he knew that he had allowed himself to give in to one of the basest of human cravings. Yeah, he was lied to and conned, but, at the end of the day, it was the lure of easy cash that made him prime the pump again and again. We are all, all fools, he knew, and he accepted that he was one, too.

This is not an attempt to blame Bernard Madoff's victims for the vile man's crimes. Madoff deserves to be ass-raped while getting shit swirlies for the rest of his pathetic life. Madoff's shallow, shameless statement to the court was like a lesson in how to use legal obfuscation to cover up for your family. His apology was less convincing than a high school jock telling a cheerleader he fucked that he has herpes.

And he sounded like every craven petty thief that's ever been caught breaking and entering: "When I began the Ponzi scheme I believed it would end shortly and I would be able to extricate myself and my clients from the scheme." Yeah, Bernie Madoff was fuckin' Jean Valjean at the beginning there, just stealing bread to feed his family. By the end, he was essentially scrambling like a junkie who's trying to use one loan shark to pay off the others: "I wired money between the United States and the United Kingdom to make it appear as though there were actual securities transactions executed on behalf of my investment advisory clients." But, see, he wasn't a total cocksucking bag of scum: "Madoff Securities International Ltd. was principally engaged in proprietary trading and was a legitimate, honestly run and operated business." It's not unlike Jeffrey Dahmer saying that he didn't eat the ears of his victims. When you make Elie Wiesel and his foundation lose all their money, you don't get to mitigate your evil.

The fact that the courtroom floor didn't crack open and stiletto-clawed demons didn't reach up to tear Madoff into gory bits before dragging his shrieking, awful soul to hell is pretty much proof that there is no God.

So, no, this is not to blame Madoff's victims. It's actually to blame all of us. The fascinating thing about last night's Daily Show beatdown of CNBC screamer Jim Cramer by Jon Stewart was not how Stewart knocked out Cramer. That was easy - Cramer walked into the ring and curled up on the floor, waiting for it to be over. It was that Stewart's point wasn't merely that CNBC is often wrong. No, Stewart was asking if CNBC existed to give aid and comfort to corporations or to the individual. In fact, Stewart's point was that we are greedy shits by nature and we need people to temper it, not fan it. And isn't it the job of purported business journalists to find out who's telling the truth and not just get in bed with execs so that they can, as Cramer said of Lehman Brothers' CEO, lie to their faces and expect to be believed? Stewart's anger at Cramer (and, indeed, at all journalism, not just business) is that we need people to do their fucking jobs. Or we get unnecessary wars and financial collapses that could have been predicted.

What Cramer's right about is that CNBC was just giving people what they like: a loud, shiny show that massages your avarice muscle until it's good and supple. And that's exactly what Bernie Madoff was doing, too. His clients believed he was the man, and that motherfucker was willing to do what it took to give 'em what they wanted. The question, though, as ever, is not what we want. It's what we need.

So while everyone's chiming in about all the awful punishments that could and should await Madoff, the Rude Pundit finds himself thinking of the Korean film Sympathy for Lady Vengeance. It's a worthy analogy for how Madoff's victims might want to deal with him. But, without giving away the ending, let's just say that no one gets out of it clean.

Ari Fleischer at Sunrise:
Ari Fleischer awakens in the morning sucking down air like a drowning man surfacing in the middle of the ocean, like he's only got a couple of seconds to breathe until the next wave washes over him, until he's sucked down by the undertow. And then he remembers who he is and what his role is in this world. "Goddamn you, soul," he says to himself, for, whatever you want to call it - soul, conscience, Jiminy Motherfuckin' Cricket - these split seconds when it escapes are always the most tightrope-jostling terrors. He shoves it back down, forgets about the ocean, and rises.

After a piss, he showers and shaves, quickly, so that he doesn't have to stare at his face in the mirror for too long. It's those times that he wishes he still wore glasses because then there was some buffer between himself and his reflection, which always talks back to him, forcing him to remember all the lies he was given to tell with a straight face, lies that he was told to speak as forcefully as gospel, and that he ran away because he couldn't stand seeing himself on television every night, demanding that no one question the lies he himself refused to question. When one lives under the threat of Dick Cheney breaking into your house and cutting your kids' jugulars in front of you, one tends to do what one is told.

Clean and dressed, he grabs a cup of coffee and pads into his office to check his email, get his talking points, read Drudge. He watches a clip of himself looking smilingly impatient on Hardball last night, when he told Chris Matthews, "But after September 11, having been hit once, how could we take a chance that Saddam might not strike again? And that's the threat that has been removed, and I think we're all safer with that threat being removed." He watches the entire segment. Goddamn, he thinks, that was kick-ass.

And then the video messenger pops up. It's Rove. Goddamnit. He just got dressed. "Ari, put on the fuckin' cam," Rove barks. Fleischer pauses, which just makes Rove angrier. "C'mon, you doe-eyed dick, I know you're there." Fleischer puts the cam on and asks Rove what he wants, as if he doesn't already know since Rove is sitting there without pants on. "You know what I want, Ari. Do it. Do the Oval Office trick." Shit, Fleischer thinks. How many times is he gonna have to go through this? Ever since he first did it on command for George W. Bush's amusement, Rove has come at him again and again.

Offering no resistance, Fleischer carefully removes his slacks and folds them over the chair. He turns the computer around so that the cam can get him in the middle of the floor. He drops his underwear and sits bare-ass on the rug. In the corner of his eye, he catches the screen and sees Rove starting to fondle his AAA battery of a penis. With the dexterity of a circus performer, Ari Fleischer pulls his legs behind his head and starts to suck his own cock. Rove moans as the former press secretary deep throats his own joint, jerkily bobbing his head up and down. A few moments of this, accompanied by a bit of anxious anus fingering, and both men groan as they cum together, Rove onto his lap, Fleischer into his mouth. It would surprise almost no one to hear that he's a swallower. The low rumble of Rove's voice comes from the computer's speakers: "That was good, Ari, really good. Talk to you soon." And the video window is gone.

Fleischer gets up, sighs, and wipes himself off with a Kleenex. He debates brushing his teeth as he puts his underwear and pants back on, but instead he swirls his cold coffee around his mouth. He sits back down at his computer, a little proud that he can still get the old legs back there. He uses some Purell on his asshole-fingering hand. And just as he sits back down and gets ready to do some more research, another window pops up. It's Bush. Fleischer rolls his eyes. He wonders why he even bothers putting pants on some mornings.

In Brief: Hey, Science, Glad to Have You Back. It's Been a While:
As the Rude Pundit wrote yesterday, demi-man Charles Krauthammer refused to go to Barack Obama's signing ceremony for his executive order allowing federal funding for embryonic stem cell research because Obama also issued a memorandum on scientific integrity that Krauthammer took as a dis to George W. Bush's habit of taking science out behind a barn, fucking it to tears and then shooting it three times in the back of its skull.

That memorandum is actually quite interesting because it says, in essence, the most patently obvious shit, that science is science and that's how it should be. Obama writes, "Political officials should not suppress or alter scientific or technological findings and conclusions...The selection of scientists and technology professionals for positions in the executive branch should be based on their scientific and technological knowledge, credentials, experience, and integrity."

And, fuck yeah, it's a kick in the nuts of the Bush administration. That's because there's no doubt that W and his band of plunderers regularly distorted, suppressed, or outright lied about scientific studies its own fucking researchers were conducting. Actual research, done as honestly as possible, shows us how the world is, not how we might want it, the very notion of which flew in the face of the deluded pseudo-utopians in the previous administration.

To demonstrate how serious he is about the second thing up there - the selection of people - Obama nominated Shere Abbott as associate director of environment for the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. Abbott is big-time in the field of global sustainability and has worked extensively on climate change. In other words, Obama is walking the walk.

Late Post Today:
The Rude Pundit is getting his package stimulated. Back in a bit with more rudiosity.

Obama, Stem Cells, and Pissy Right-Wingers (Updated):
First off, it's just gotta be pointed out, for no other reason than it's just damned funny, that the name of the rider to various bills that's been used to limit or ban federal funding of embryo creation for stem cell research is the Dickey-Wicker Amendment. And, if you're as goddamn tired and filled with scrips as the Rude Pundit's been the last few days, just saying "Dickey-Wicker" out loud will make you giggle like a Japanese schoolgirl. Dickey-Wicker (c'mon, that's hilarious) has been renewed every year since 1995, although interpreted differently by Presidents Clinton and Bush, but with President Obama's announcement that federal funding can be used on existing embryos, Dickey-Wicker might fall.

Predictably, Obama's executive order created a hategasm on the right. The Family Research Council (motto: "Only Jesus can heal the lepers") says, "His decision will allow government agencies to use federal money to encourage experiments on innocent human life." It's sort of like giving orphans typhoid to see what happens. Well, if the orphans were smaller than the head of a pin. In dealing with the fact that stem cells are drawn from the embryos, FRC President Tony Perkins continues, "Supporters of the decision are quick to point out that Americans won't be financing the death of embryos. Although we may not be funding the killing, we are funding the killers." In other words, it's far, far better that frozen embryos are eventually just incinerated. Where's all those wives of God lining up to get some snowflakes implanted? (By the way, Perkins solution? Dickey-Wicker.)

Sure, sure, you might have some moral qualms, but chances are you are not going as bugfuck insane as others. Like, say, Glenn Beck, a man begging for a cockpunch, who, on his radio show, went the full Nazi. Comparing embryonic stem cell research for cures to diseases to eugenics, Beck blabbered, "In case you don’t know what Eugenics led us to: the Final Solution. A master race! A perfect person." It's not unlike saying that making mudpies will lead to an army of golems overrunning the village. On his Fox "news" show, where he has to pretend to be sane, Beck turned it into an economic decision: "It's taking the funding out of the private sector and making taxpayers pay for it. In this economy, this is what we're spending our money on? Where are his priorities?" And thus you see where Beck's morality really rests.

Finally, past the evangelical flat-earthers and the paranoiacs, you get to the fuckwads, like Charles Krauthammer, a man who could stand to benefit from a few stem cells. He was invited to the signing ceremony, but declined for a few reasons, one of which bespeaks a man whose mouth is so firmly planted on the former president's ass cheeks that even remoras tell him to give it a rest. Also on Fox "news," Krauthammer (translation: "German cock") said that Obama "had a memorandum which he signed in which he talks about restoring the scientific integrity in government decisions, which was is an outrageous attack on Bush. I disagreed with where Bush ended up drawing the line on permissible research, but he gave in August of 2001 the single most morally serious presidential speech on medical ethics ever given." Yes, nuance and seriousness were the hallmarks of the Bush administration. Even though he agrees with Obama for the most part, Krauthammer continued, "So I think it was disrespectful. And in pretending, as Obama did, that there's never a conflict between ethics and science, he was wrong."

Strangely, the Rude Pundit agrees with Charlie Kraut on this last point. It's just that the conflict's been between science and backwards ass ethics and morality. It's been an irrational conflict, not a science-based one. That difference now is a huge leap forward, an evolution, if you will, in America's attitude towards what is possible to explore.

Update: From Holy Taco, "How the Religious Right Sees Stem Cell Research: A Comic Book."

Photos That Make the Rude Pundit Want to Snort Lutefisk:


That flat-faced fuck up there is former Minnesota Senator Norm Coleman (no, seriously, that is a disturbing damn profile - who the fuck hit him with a frying pan?). As the current vote tally of his race against Al Franken stands, Coleman is still behind by 225 votes. This, of course, leaves out the votes of independent candidate Dean Barkley, who received 15% of the vote. Combined with Franken's 42%, the math seems to indicate that 57% of Minnesotans don't want Norm Coleman to be their Senator. Yes, the same could be said of Franken, but Coleman was the one up for reelection. If you haven't convinced half your state that you're worth a shit after you've been in the Senate, then get the fuck out.

But in order to deny another vote for the Democrats in the Senate, Republicans are making sure that Coleman plays this degrading game of challenging the absentee and other ballots in every way shape or form, no matter how ridiculous or hypocritical. Aren't these the people that get their panties in a wad over frivolous lawsuits? And Coleman seems to show no signs that he minds. A wise man would have bailed by now. A decent man would have wanted to keep some dignity. But Norm Coleman is neither.

So call the photo above "Portrait of a Douchebag in Late Winter." Yeah, some things just seem like they're gonna drag on forever.

John McCain Won't Eat Pork:
The whole battle over a bullshit modicum of bullshit "pork barrel" projects is, well, bullshit. What's budgeted in the spending bill now before Congress for what some members consider pork and others consider essential spending in their districts or states is about 5% of the AIG bailout. And there's wee little John McCain, America's angriest leprechaun, jumpin' about and swingin' his crooked shillelagh like someone stole his pot o' gold, puffin' his pipe madly over 9000 "unnecessary and wasteful earmarks." Motherfucker's gotten on Twitter (users' motto: "Sweet Jesus, my life is such an unbearable void that I need to encourage stalkers") to crap out whatever his advisors tell him are the day's "10 Porkiest Projects."

As ever, as ever, one person's pork is another person's meat. And while loads of members of both parties have jumped on the hate-the-piggy wagon, let's just take a look or two at some of these hateful wastes of our money.

McCain cites "$632,000 for the Hungry Horse Project." What's cool about Twitter is that it allows you to say shit completely devoid of context or explanation. See, if you leave it at those few words, you may think, "Well, gee, shouldn't the horse's owners just feed them?" At which point, you would be a fucking idiot. Understandably so, but a fucking idiot no less. 'Cause, using the magic of the Google machine, the Hungry Horse Project is actually a dam, reservoir, and power plant in Montana. It provides hydroelectric power, flood control, and a great outdoor recreation area for the Columbia River basin. A bit above a half million for maintenance doesn't really seem like that much, but, then again, the Rude Pundit doesn't wanna shake his tiny fist at Mammon and Obama.

McCain tweets, "$3,806,000 for a Sun Grant Initiative in SD." That'd be about research at South Dakota State University, which works with schools around the nation to develop biofuels. You might think of this as a long-term investment in energy independence, but, then again, you are a fuckin' liberal tool who just wants to throw money at a problem.

And on and on: "$59,000 for Dismal Swamp and Dismal Swamp Canal in Virginia," which, again, sounds damn funny, except that Dismal Swamp is a national wildlife refuge maintained by the federal government, which means that it sometimes needs money so that it can be, you know, maintained.

McCain is such a baboon about this shit, mocking anything that has to do with science. And anything that has to do with community development. Are there stupid things in the bill? Fuck yeah. But we're talking $7 billion in a $410 billion bill to keep the government running. And if that's all you've got to bitch about, if you won't fuck that guy because he's got a mole on his arm, then you are just a vain bastard who loves to hear himself moan when he jacks off.

John Yoo Is a Piece of Shit: Even if given a free pass from prison and lawsuits, there's still precious few asses that the Rude Pundit would waste his time kicking. 'Cause, see, if you've never been a real fight as a grown up, something that no one tells you is that it fucking hurts, even if you win. Your hands will be fucked up - bloody and cut, and you'll be lucky if you don't break your knuckles. This doesn't even get into what it feels like if your opponent gets in a few good licks, the throbbing in your face, the ache in your gut. And you know all that adrenaline that tightens up every muscle in your body when you get into a car accident and how you feel like whiplashed shit no matter the outcome? Yeah, you'll feel that, too. It sucks. And, unless you're one of those assholes who gets into throwdowns every weekend because you're too fuckin' stupid to use your brain, you would do best to avoid it. But, again, only in theory, in that fantasyland of "get out of jail" free cards, the Rude Pundit would totally beat the living fuck out of legal "scholar" John Yoo. Not just because he was one of the primary bastards who gave the Bush administration irrational cover for its blatantly unconstitutional policies on detention, torture, and denial of rights. But because he's such a wad of fuck, a dullard prick who, as a professor, is actually given positions to directly influence the minds of students. And since the Rude Pundit knows a thing or two about academia, that insults him to the core. In a softball interview with the Orange County Register this week, new OC resident Yoo reveals that he has no self-doubts about his role in undermining the very foundations of the United States. And he's just such a cocksucker about it all. Here's Yoo's attitude towards the legislative branch: "Congress always wants to participate, and it wants to watch what the executive branch is doing and criticize when (Congress) thinks (the executive branch is) getting it wrong. It likes to take responsibility when things go well." It's no wonder that every memo he wrote was not about how to work with Congress, but how to defeat its will like the members were al-Qaeda's accomplices. And on those memos, Yoo ne regrette rien: "These memos I wrote were not for public consumption. They lack a certain polish, I think – would have been better to explain government policy rather than try to give unvarnished, straight-talk legal advice. I certainly would have done that differently, but I don't think I would have made the basic decisions differently." It's sort of like how Torquemada always thought the iron maidens in the dungeon squeaked too loudly, but who has the time to lube the hinges? See, John Yoo is a man with a clear sense of right and wrong: "Your client the president, or your client the justice on the Supreme Court, or your client this senator, needs to know what's legal and not legal. And sometimes, what's legal and not legal is not the same thing as what you can do or what you should do." One would think that logic would dictate that if it's not "legal," then by definition it's something you can't do. Unless, well, you expand the notion of legal to include anything your client wants to do. Like if you're trying to fuck a goat's asshole and it's just too tight to accommodate you. You could take that as a sign that perhaps you shouldn't be fucking the livestock. But if you're John Yoo, you just cut a hole in the side of the goat and start fucking it there. And for John Yoo, there is no such thing as middle ground. Talking about the memos, Yoo said, "We didn't seek out those questions. 9/11 kind of thrust them on us. No matter what you do, there's going to be a lot of people who are upset with your decision. If Bush had done nothing, there would be a lot of people upset with his decision, too." See? You either abandon all the rights and principles of the Constitution or you do nothing. Black or white, motherfuckers, black or white. Gray is for pussies. Fuck this guy. Every time a student walks into his classroom, he or she should take a huge shit on his desk and use his assignments to wipe their asses. To put it another way, would you trust a calculus teacher who can't even tell you what 1+1 equals?

John Yoo and His Merry Band of Traitorous Lawyers:
The Rude Pundit has always looked on the Constitution fondly, like an old lover who occasionally calls to reminisce about all those wonderful steamy evenings in fine hotels in Boston and Philadelphia, that passionate headboard-thumping sex, the mornings in each other's arms, romantic, simple, idealized in memory, yet still viscerally exciting to recall. A Bush administration conservative, though, looked at the Constitution like a one-night stand bar pick-up that they can tell their buddies about later, high-fiving one another over tales of how one degraded that bitch, made her feel like shit as he fucked her in the ass and then said how fat she was, tied her up and pissed on her, and then took cell phone pictures of her when she finally passed out with her arms and legs still roped apart, laughing because, well, she may be a person, but why not use her 'til she's used up?

It's been said here before and, until someone's mea culpa'ed this shit, it's gonna be said again that John Yoo should not be allowed anywhere near law students. In fact, there should be aversion shock therapy on his nutsack so that if he even thinks about teaching constitutional law, he'll feel that sharp, grinding pain in his balls. For reading the memoranda from the Bush Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel written by Yoo, Jay Bybee, and others is not unlike listening to a particularly articulate tweener explain why it's okay to get a tattoo of the Halo Master Chief on his forearm. No matter how rational-sounding it may be, you know that ultimately it's bullshit.

The memos themselves are little doorways into the fact that, until they were repudiated, the executive branch of our government, post 9/11, decided that the Constitution was for suckers and bin Laden's bitches and, like that beaten bar pick-up, just there to use to get its rocks off.

Look at the June 27, 2002 memo. There, in giving Constitutional cover to the idea that the laws of the United States do not apply to the President as long as some vague idea of "war" is occurring, Yoo writes, "The fact that a detainee is an American citizen, thus, does not affect the President's constitutional authority as Commander in Chief to detain him, once it was been determined that he is an enemy combatant." They don't need to have done anything to be so determined, just have been "associated" with whoever has been vaguely defined as the "enemy." Or as Yoo says, "Nothing further need be demonstrated to justify their detention as enemy combatants."

Yoo went through what becomes a near-Joycean word game to say, at bottom, that the President can imprison a citizen without charge for as long as he damn well pleases. That would seem to be in complete opposition to the U.S. criminal code, which reads, "No citizen shall be imprisoned or otherwise detained by the United States except pursuant to an Act of Congress." And you know that when Congress said that George W. Bush can go get 'em some 9/11 terr'ists, they meant that Bush can lock up citizens and deny them habeas corpus rights. Well, at least Yoo says that's what the authorization meant.

Sometimes the memos are nearly breathtaking in their authors' desire to completely undermine what seems to be the straightforward meaning of the articles and amendments of the Constitution. In the April 8, 2002 memo arguing against a congressional act that sought to create rules for detention and military tribunals, Patrick Philbin essentially says that checks and balances are "fucking bullshit." (That's not an exact quote, but it is approximate.)

The Rude Pundit has mentioned the 2002 memos because they were not written in the heat of the desperate flailing about that the Bush administration engaged in after 9/11. These were considered actions by people who truly don't give a sad rat's fuck about what makes America American. The damned soul of Richard Nixon must be repeatedly slapping his enormous forehead, wondering why the hell he didn't think about doing this, shaking his fist and screaming, "Haldeman, goddamn you." Meanwhile, the ghost of James Madison wonders how in the fuck anyone could interpret the damn document to mean that a Commander in Chief is essentially a king. An ever-masturbating Ben Franklin just shakes his head.

This Is Going To Take Some Getting Used To, Part 2 (Budget Edition):
From President Barack Obama's 2010 Budget proposal for the Department of Justice:
"The Budget includes $145 million for the Civil rights Division to strengthen civil
rights enforcement against racial, ethnic, sexual preference, religious and gender discrimination."

George W. Bush's 2008 Budget proposal for Justice? Not only no mention of "sexual preference," but no mention of civil rights. Actually, no mention of "rights" at all.

In Obama's budget for the Department of Health and Human Services:
"The Budget supports State, community-based, and faith-based efforts to reduce teen pregnancy using evidence-based models. The program will fund models that stress the importance of abstinence while providing medically-accurate and age-appropriate
information to youth who have already become sexually active."

Don't you just love that little jab? Like "evidence-based" is just a way to say, "It's time to live in reality, America. Kids will fuck whether you like it or not."

In Obama's budget for the Department of the Interior:
"Climate change poses a threat to America’s fish and wildlife, as natural habitats are modified more rapidly than plants and animals can adjust. Scientific analyses are needed to understand the breadth of these changes...The Budget includes increases of more than $130 million, of which $40 million is shared with the States for wildlife adaptation."

There's the absolute proof that the Obama administration accepts climate change. It's not a question that needs to be studied. It is a reality that needs to be dealt with. The word "climate" is not in Bush's 2008 budget.

This is not to mention: "Additionally, the Budget increases funds by $10 million for North American Wetlands Conservation Act (NAWCA) activities to acquire, restore, or protect wetlands used by migratory waterfowl and other birds. This is the first step in fully funding NAWCA at $75 million by 2012."

In Obama's budget for the Department of Labor:
"For the past eight years, the Department’s labor law enforcement agencies have struggled with growing workloads and shrinking staff. The President’s Budget seeks to reverse this trend...The Budget will: increase funding for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, enabling it to vigorously enforce workplace safety laws and whistleblower protections, and ensure the safety and health of American workers" and more.

Over and over in this budget, in domestic issues, the Obama administration is demonstrating that liberalism deals in reality, in the lived existences of average people, and not in the realm of ideologically-defined social engineering, as conservatives would have it. The climate is changing, "sexual preference" is a protected category, and abstinence-only education has failed. These are simple facts. Denial piled upon denial has brought us here. Now their consitituents need to tell Republicans to help clean up their own fucking mess.

Rush Limbaugh Dined For Your Sins:
Rush Limbaugh has not seen his penis since the 1960s. When he "lost" all that weight so quickly about ten years ago, the flap of stretched stomach flesh still blocked his view. And now that he's gained it all back, there hasn't even been a shadow visible. No, it's been a very, very long time. Memory is a callous mistress. The women that he met, married, and/or fucked all had the same arc of description in the course of the relationship. Early on, when he would say, as foreplay, "Tell me what my cock looks like," they would describe it as "magnificent in its girth" or "so huge it hurts," anything to keep up Limbaugh's confidence so he could maintain an erection because sometimes, no matter how much Viagra you're downing like Tic-Tacs, you can still get the big psychological blood blockage and, alas, damned flaccidity follows. Ask Daryn Kagan. She'll tell you of nights with Limbaugh where her pussy felt like it had been slapped repeatedly with a dried vienna sausage, where the radio host wept that his ham hock arms couldn't reach around his couch pillow gut to yank himself into tumescence, where Kagan comforted him by cooing how very big it was, how it frightened her. Well, she actually had to yell it so he could hear, but it was shouted version of cooing. Soothing, but loud.

Of course, as the relationship turned sour, the women would tell him they lied, that he had a tiny prick, the size of a newborn's thumb. As far as Limbaugh's concerned, lovers only tell the truth while they're loving. Yes, them and Dominican child prostitutes. Yes, it has all left Limbaugh with delusions of grandeur about his dick. He has no direct evidence that he's right about it, only the word of the sycophantic and the paid. But that doesn't stop him from going online, whenever he's shifted his girth from his radio chair to his home computer chair, and claiming that he's got a ginormous johnson. It is the way of rich men who are so morbidly, revoltingly obese that even their wealth can't attract partners. The truth about his cock size is insignificant here. Reality is merely an impediment. The only thing that matters is it's all about Rush Limbaugh's dick.

In his appearance this past Saturday at CPAC (motto: "Pretending this matters since 1973"), Limbaugh was at his most pathetic, attention-whoring in a way that'd make actual whores say, "You don't need to actually show your snatch to get customers." One could go through the speech line by line and demonstrate every contradiction, every historical fucktardery, every just plain wrong idea or "fact," but none of us has that much time (however, see examples in the notes below). We could spend our time talking about what the fuck CNN was thinking in airing the entire speech live.

Instead, let's just say this: Rush Limbaugh (and Sean Hannity and every other conservative bag of shit that's piled up on the curbs of our nation) is fucking thrilled that Barack Obama is President. He is not a politician. He is only beholden to corporations. He is merely an ephemeral presence. He exists only as long as his ratings stay high. And Obama's win is a goddamned gift because he and his legions of taint-licking, deluded, chanting drones can work themselves into some kind of froth about every goddamn thing that Democrats do for the next 2, 4, or 8 years. He just got a new lease on life, motherfuckers, and that's like another legal scrip for oxycontin. Pure fuckin' bliss, man.

If the face the Republicans want for its future is this, this sweaty self-aggrandizer, this fat fuck, this demonstrable embodiment of the seven deadly sins, he who is everything that we should hate about capitalism and, indeed, the indulgences of this nation, Diamond Jim Brady without the class, this proud rube who spouts lies and hatred, then bring it, bitches. Like so many on the right, Limbaugh is using the same goddamn lines he's been using for years. He has no idea what he's up against this time. The vast majority of the nation has moved on from the sad plump man in his tiny room.

Notes:
Contradiction: Limbaugh said that liberals were "afraid of offending" Joseph Stalin, and then he criticized Joe Biden for the then-candidate saying that 7-11 employees were Indian, explaining that if conservatives said something so outrageous, they'd be excoriated. Apparently, aligning the left with a mass murderer is not outrageous.

Historical fucktardery: Limbaugh talked about how the New Deal and the Great Society programs wrecked this country when previously he wondered "How did the United States of America become the world's lone super power, the world's economic engine, the most prosperous opportunity for an advanced lifestyle that humanity has ever known?" (China would probably like to dispute at least two of those notions.) Since that has only happened, truly, since the 1940s, one might like to think that the very things that Limbaugh criticizes didn't exactly hinder the country.

Just plain wrong: Limbaugh said, "We believe that the Preamble of the Constitution contains an inarguable truth, that we are all endowed by our creator with certain inalienable rights -- among them life, liberty, freedom, and the pursuit of happiness." Does this even need to be explained?

Reasons to Go Into the Weekend with a Little Touch of Optimism:
The Rude Pundit will talk next week about Barack Obama's breath of fresh air budget that says, in essence, "Take your bipartisanship and shove it up your ass." He's actually reading some of the huge damn thing. But in the last few days, outside of the whole economic implosion and the constant are-you-fuckin'-serious new statistics and revelations, let us take stock, good liberals, of the direction that things are heading, even if the path seems steeply uphill and perilously rocky, even if sometimes it's two steps up and one step back. And, even as we watch our backs for what we think is the inevitable knife, let us acknowledge a couple of signs that shit's changed.

1. In a move that says if you wanna do some jobs, you gotta get that Bible or Koran out of your ass, the Obama administration is moving to overturn the Bush administration's last minute yahoo-orgasm-inducing "conscience rule" that said health care workers could deny any family planning treatment to patients if it "violated their conscience." So, if, say, a woman is raped in Texas and gets a prescription for a morning after pill, the pharmacist can refuse to fill it. Oh, wait. That's not an "if." It did happen, and the pharmacist was rightfully fired. And the Bush administration, in one last little "fuck you" to reason and empathy, wanted to "protect" such health care workers.

But now the Obama administration, recognizing that women don't actually have rights if individuals can legally deny them because an imaginary sky wizard says so, is putting the rule through a review that will inevitably lead to its overturning.

2. There will be time to criticize the Obama administration's apparent embrace of at least some of the reasoning for the previous administration's stand on rights for terrorism suspects and random detainees (although the Rude Pundit thinks it's more about putting something on the back burner while dealing with every other fucking mess, and, sadly, that's a pot that can simmer for a little bit without burning other shit down). However, in one of the more encouraging moves so far on the issue, the Justice Department is going to actually charge, and bring to trial in a civilian court, the one detainee held in the United States, Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri.

Al-Marri's case is the focus of Jane Mayer's recent New Yorker article, and if Obama had intended to maintain the notion that the President can declare someone an enemy combatant and keep them locked up forever, there would have been no reason to go ahead with actually trying the Qatari man, who has been held for 7 years in a brig in South Carolina. Instead, we're now seeing the beginning of the fulfillment of Obama's pledge to use the American judicial system in the way it was meant to be used.

In other words, the Obama administration, in both of these decisions, is saying that it's time to stop fucking with the Constitution. Whether it's the individual rights of women or the habeas corpus rights of prisoners, the law professor in the President knows that "liberty and justice for all" is an actual pledge.

Why Ann Coulter Is a Cunt (Part 10,725 of a Neverending Series):
Because in her latest "column" (if by "column," you mean, "a collection of words spun from the salty tears of Indian orphans, the shiny blood of dead soldiers, and Sean Hannity's semen"), it isn't that Coulter makes a Slumdog Millionaire reference related to Bobby Jindal. (It's an easy and obvious joke that the Rude Pundit considered for yesterday, but quickly tossed aside as too easy and obvious.) It's not because she calls Nancy Pelosi "mentally retarded." It's not in the way she mocks the media's obsession with Barack Obama's race. No, it's because, in her increasingly crazed and desperate attempt to keep her demihuman cuntbeast readers salivating, she once again decides to beat up on those who are just doing their fuckin' jobs trying to make the world a better place.

Talking about Obama's praise for schoolteachers and their inclusion in the stimulus bill, Coulter squeals snatchishly, "Because nothing says 'economic stimulus' better than saving the jobs of lethargic incompetents who kick off at 2 p.m. every day and get summers off. Actually, that's not fair: Some teachers spend long hours after school having sex with their students." In some hellish dictionary, that line ought to be an example of the definition of "cunt."

As the Rude Pundit's said many a time, arguing with Ann Coulter is useless. It's like attempting to explain morality and ethics to a a child rapist/murderer while he's balls deep in the head of a dead boy. Even if he was paying attention, the action he's taking kind of makes the whole effort a sad waste of time.

Coulter loves to beat up on public schoolteachers. One might ask why pick on people who, with some terrible exceptions, yes, put in roughly ten hours a day between the actual schoolday, preparation, grading, and meetings, putting up with fucktard parents and apathetic kids, often in shitty, underfunded schools while being forced by conservatives to teach to tests that are mandated and that have virtually nothing to do with what and how one actually learns, people who are excoriated by the right for asking for a little job security and fair wages. Yeah, one might ask that. But, really, it's like asking why Coulter likes to use ribbed dildos made of puppy spines in a vain attempt to get some feeling in her calloused clit.

Yeah, Coulter spent a great deal of her book Godless attacking teachers. In fact, she loved what she wrote back in 2006 so very much, that she fucking quotes it extensively in this week's "column." No, one can't plagiarize oneself. But perhaps one ought to honestly present the source of statistic and facts and say they're a couple of years old:

For instance, in this, her February 26, 2009 scribbles, she says, "While 80 percent of the employees of private schools are teachers, only half the employees of public schools are."

In 2006's Godless, page 152, she wrote, "At private schools, 80 percent of the personnel are teachers. By contrast, at public schools, only 50 percent of the personnel are actual teachers." This statistic is from a 2005 New York Sun article, itself quoting a 1999 study. So Coulter is presenting information that's a decade old as new.

She also writes this week that, in fourth grade, "American students outperform most other countries in reading, math and science. Fourth-graders score in the 92nd percentile in science, the 58th percentile in math and the 70th percentile in reading, where they beat 26 of 35 countries, including Germany, France and Italy." This is verbatim, a cut and paste job from page 151 of Godless, not even her most recent goddamn book. And it's drawn from stats from 2000-2003.

Who's her fucking editors? It's one thing to make the same point over and over. It shows you have no other points to make. But to present information that's over 5 years old as new? That's just fucking lying. Then again, why just be a cunt when you can be a lying cunt?

Bobby Jindal Wants the Nation to Be Like Louisiana:
Last night, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal looked for all the world like the winner of the "Most Likely To Be Quickly Raped in Prison" award. That poor bastard would be some neo-Nazi's punk within an hour, and he'd be glad for the protection that accompanies all the sodomizing. What we witnessed was the end of Jindal's presidential ambitions and thus the end of the future of the Republican party. For while Barack Obama was busy at the Capital dancing on Ronald Reagan's grave, Jindal was desperately trying to hand job the Gipper's corpse to life. But those bones are dead, man, so very dead.

Seriously, if you're the governor of a state that has an income tax, a lottery, and a tax on food and clothes and your state is still at or near the bottom on nearly every way in which states are measured (except in those things where being at or near the top sucks balls, like "Most Polluted"), in child health care, overall health of its citizens, education, pollution, and more, you probably ought to realize that you've fucked up and need the federal government. Desperately.

Not only was Jindal seemingly talking about some fantasy speech that the GOP expected Obama to give - at times, Jindal criticized things that Obama had directly addressed, like openness in government, personal responsibility in education, etc.- but he was giving a response that could have been lifted from Peggy Noonan's crate of unused words (it's right next to her shrine to Reagan's diapers). Speaking about government needing to get out of the way of "the American people," Jindal was at his most out-of-touch. You just wanted to stare at his dead, doll-like eyes and say, "Um, who the fuck is gonna get us out of this if it ain't the government? And didn't we kinda try your way for the last 30 years? And didn't it end up fucking us over completely and totally like we were sad old gay man thinking that the hot young dude that just fucked us meant it when he said he just needed to borrow some money for a little while?"

Jindal's analysis of the meaning of Hurricane Katrina seems to be at odds with the fact that Republicans were running the country - the Presidency and the Congress - at the time. Crassly using that tragedy like Bush used 9/11, Jindal squeaked, "We're grateful for the support we've received from across the nation for our ongoing recovery efforts. This spirit got Louisiana through the hurricanes, and this spirit will get our nation through the storms we face today." Where the fuck does Jindal think all that money came from? And, sorry, wasn't it the lack of the federal government's agencies being funded properly that didn't allow them to their jobs, thus leading to the catastrophe? It's almost mind-boggling.

Of course, the most idiotic line of Jindal's speech was his pointing with pride to cutting taxes in Louisiana: "Since I became governor, we cut more than 250 earmarks from our state budget. To create jobs for our citizens, we cut taxes six times, including the largest income tax cut in the history of our state. We passed those tax cuts with bipartisan majorities." One wonders that if all that money wasn't cut, Louisiana might have risen to the mid-40s in state rankings.

While Barack Obama once again elucidated liberal ideas in a way that made them sound new and achievable, while he undercut arguments against his agenda in an incisive way that should have Republicans shitting themselves, Jindal simply said that the future is the past. "Americans can do anything" was the line he returned to, the title of his wee little speech.

He's right. The fact of the matter is that we did something already, back in November. Now we wanna see where it leads. Luckily, Jindal is such a small man in so many ways that he'll be easy to roll right over.

A Brief Word on Tonight's Speech (Updated to Include Bobby Jindal):
The President called on Congress to be comprised of leaders. And for the population to be comprised of active citizens. Yeah, yeah, there was political blah-blah-blah, but, you know what? It worked. And he once again totally fucked up whatever Republicans are gonna respond with.

More tomorrow.

Update: What fucking speech is Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal responding to? Because what he's saying has fuck-all to do with what Obama just said.

Why Glenn Beck Needs to Be Repeatedly Cock-Punched (Apocalypse Edition):
Here's how you know that contemporary conservatism is done as a movement: for the last couple of weeks, Bill O'Reilly, on his Fox "news" show (and chromosonal abnormality), The O'Reilly Factor, hosted Glenn Beck, the host of his new Fox "news" show cleverly named Beck, a word that seemingly requires an "l" in it. In what should have been a summit of media bugfuckery the likes of which haven't been seen since William F. Buckley hosted Margaret Thatcher on Firing Line, an occasion that ended with the two of them madly balling in front of a live audience that applauded each thrust and moan in an episode that's been hidden in a deep pit at Yale since it was first aired, Bill O'Reilly came across as the rational one.

It's sort of like when you're faced with a choice between fucking a syphilitic manwhore or fucking a syphilitic chimp. Basically, you're better off not fucking at all, but, if pressed, you'll probably leave with your nuts still attached if you go with the manwhore. Either way, though, you're getting the syph.

Beck has decided that he's Nostradamus without the charm. He's running around various Fox "news" programs and declaring that revolution is a-comin' if the United States continues on its road to that old chimeric enemy, Socialism. O'Reilly takes the role of the guy who's accepted that the election happened and now needs to deal with it. Beck, on the other hand, has decided that we're in end times, motherfuckers, and it's time to get the muskets ready.

On February 13, O'Reilly spent much of his time just trying to talk Beck off the ledge. On the stimulus bill, he said to Beck, "So, how much longer do you complain about something that's going to happen?" And regarding the reinstatement of the Fairness Doctrine, O'Reilly said, "[T]his is so stupid and it's never going to happen."

However, Beck would have none of it. He was gonna leap, and he wants all those other buffalo and lemmings and other cliff-leaping animals to take the plunge with him: "I'm full -- I'm full-fledged crazy nuts. You know it, and I know it. So here it is. This is what's coming, America. Depression and revolution. That's what's coming." And, that, good people of the USA, is how you get your own Fox show.

Then, last Friday, in the wake of his program on how he thinks we're all just so very fucked, Beck was back with O'Reilly. And, again, the role of "rational" went to O'Reilly, who explained Barack Obama's mortgage proposal to Beck: "[W]hat the Obama administration is trying to do is say, 'Look. We're going to try to stabilize this whole thing, yes, by giving irresponsible people a break. But it's for the greater good.'"

In a line for the ages, Beck retorted, "When did we go into a country where it's all for the greater good? When did we join -- when did we sign up to be part of the Borg? We are a country built up of individuals and individuals that need to have personal responsibility." You got that? You want there to be "greater good," you're a fuckin' pod person, you godforsaken tools. For Beck, we're just a bunch of frontier people trying to keep the Apache from raping our daughters. Has he ever visited a city?

This was followed by a journey into Beck's abyss. Get a friend and read this as a little comedy sketch that ends with Glenn Beck promising Bill O'Reilly's death:
BECK: I'm not -- Bill, I'm not looking for a revolution.

O'REILLY: But you're predicting it.

BECK: Well, wait a minute. Is that a problem? Is it a problem to point out -- wait a minute, is it a problem to point out Bill O'Reilly -- is it a problem. You get no food from me. You come knocking at my bomb shelter? I'm going to say, "Is that Bill O'Reilly? Can't hear you." Listen, here's the thing. It is not a problem to point out...

O'REILLY: I would rather starve, Beck. Than knock on your bomb shelter door asking you for food.

BECK: Oh, you will.

O'REILLY: I'll go down before I do that.

BECK: Listen, here's the thing. You come near it, you will. Anyway, here's the thing. It's -- I don't bring this up, because I want it. I bring it up to warn people...

Oh, sure, one can assume they were just joshing over whether Beck would feed a post-apocalyptic Bill O'Reilly, but Beck wasn't fully. He's just totally fucking unhinged. Here he is on his own show: "Our rights and liberties come to us from God and we lend them to the government. Washington currently seems to have a different spin on that: government is god. But, if you believe in the founders' ideals, it makes sense that God would give us an early warning system. That's your gut — don't dismiss it."

With a smile on his pudgy, sincere face, Glenn Beck is the Pillsbury Doughboy of Doom. Oh, Poppin' Fresh, if you are the future of your ideology, if you appall Bill O'Reilly, no less a doomsayer in other times, then you and your ilk can disappear into your bunkers while the rest of us try to get shit done.

In Brief: No, We Don't Have Him to Kick Around Anymore, But the Foot Can't Help It:


That's the former leader of the free world once again pretending that he's got working class cred, going to Elliot's Hardware Store in Dallas, Texas, where he had been offered a job as a greeter. To demonstrate his vast knowledge of hardware, Bush bought flashlights, batteries, and WD-40.

By the way, apparently Bush's neighbors will need anal probes to enter their street:


The Secret Service will be running the entrance to the neighborhood. Bend over, rich Dallas socialites. You're about to be treated like America.

Michael Steele Ain't Frontin':
In an interview with the Washington Times, Republican National Committee Chair and genial race traitor Michael Steele promised to reinvigorate his party with an "off the hook" re-branding strategy: "We want to convey that the modern-day GOP looks like the conservative party that stands on principles. But we want to apply them to urban-surburban hip-hop settings." So to see where the hip-hop community might stand on the issues, the Rude Pundit turned to the Billboard Top Rap Albums Chart to see where potentially conservative hippers and hoppers might stand.

According to T.I., in his song, "My Life, Your Entertainment,"
"When alone I ask myself, is it worth it? I ain't perfect
Neither is anybody else, but I think my kids deserve
To be with Daddy out in public without all the interruptions."
Steele would do well to tap into this desire of T.I.'s to be able to live his life and raise his children without interference, be it from governmental programs funded by Obama's stimulus or "the paparazzi crowded all around me now," which is not to mention the "Same niggas who was dissin' want a pound." Oh, wait, that might be Steele and the RNC.

Besides, in Porn Star, I. reveals he's more of a libertarian than a cultural conservative:
"We can ride out, back to my house
I wanna see you satisfied inside out
Once I'm in you ain't gonna want me to slide out
You tell your girlfriends they gonna wanna try it out
A lil more of this will loosen you up
What we can't do in the club, we can do in the truck."

And Steele might want to avoid Young Jeezy, whose top-selling album The Recession includes "My President," and this from "Crazy World":
"Light bill, phone bill, plus my granny nerve pills
Feel like I should be takin' 'em, imagine how my nerves feel
I want a new Bentley, my aunty need a kidney
And if I let her pass her children never will forgive me
God damn another trap, I think Bush trying to punish us
Send a little message out to each and every one of us
Real G shit, well that's really unheard of
When you get more time for selling dope than murder."

You get the idea. It's Friday. The Rude Pundit's not gonna browbeat you with the dozens and dozens of lines he could quote here. Instead, let's just say this: Does Michael Steele think his fellow African Americans are idiots? That their memories are so short?

But, hell, Steele certainly knows his work is cut out for him when he says that "we need to uptick our image with everyone, including one-armed midgets." Now that's off the hook...um...dawg.

Shut the Fuck Up and Take the Money:
Really, Republican Governors Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, Mark Sanford of South Carolina, and Sarah Palin of...well, you fuckin' know? Really? You're really thinking about rejecting some of the money coming to your states in the federal stimulus? Well, not really, since the law says your legislatures can take the money without your okay. So you can huff and puff and talk about "strings attached" or what-the-fuck-ever, but in the end, you know that you're gonna shut the fuck up and take the cash, bitches.

Of course, you won't admit why you find your state budgets going down the shitter. Because to do so would mean that Republicans would have to admit that their beloved federalism is a big fuckin' failure, another rank ideological stench emanating from the Reagan era. You put more and more control of projects in the individual states, you pile ungodly debt on top of tax cuts, you toss in a few unfunded mandates (see No Child Left [with a seat for their] Behind), and that piss sound you hear is trickle down, conservatives, except it's the costs that are trickling to the states, not any largesse. Until, you know, right now.

So, sure, Bobby Jindal, you exorcisin' great Republican hope, you go ahead and say you don't want the $308 million in highway construction funds or the half a billion or so in Medicaid money or the over $400 million for education in a state more notable for its official attempts to keep its students stupid (see creationism bills over the years). Which part are you gonna tell Washington to keep? The unemployment benefits? The tax credits?

You're fuckin' adorable. You go ahead and say it all you want. Say how you wouldn't have voted for the bill if you'd still been in Congress. And then, at some point, probably after you give your cute little response to Barack Obama's speech to Congress on Tuesday, with your state's budget shortfall on the fast track to $2 billion and cuts happening everywhere, you know you're gonna have to shut the fuck up and take the money. Same goes for all of the idiot Republicans.

And don't worry. No matter if it helps a little or a lot, no one will expect you to say, "Thanks." At this point, we all know what ungrateful, selfish dicks you are. Like what the quickly crumbling Governor Sanford said this morning. Being against the bill "doesn't preclude taking the money." The thought of that $8 billion not coming to his state? Well, no one's an atheist in a foxhole, right?

Ah, the sweet, plaintive, familiar sigh of Republican hypocrisy. It echoes from the domes of DC to the state houses around the nation.

Cartoons That Make the Rude Pundit Want Rupert Murdoch to Get His Face Chewed Off:


This is from today's New York Post (motto: "All the news that's fit to wipe a hobo's ass with"). Now, you can do the justify dance by saying that the upshot of the "joke" is that the cartoonist was saying that the stimulus bill was written by a marauding chimp. But, really, and c'mon, "stimulus bill" is to President Obama what hate is to the Post. You can't separate them.

So you wanna deny that this is easily read as a racist joke about shooting Obama? (And let's not even get into the other implications about cops and African Americans.)

Note on the truly horrible chimp story: The Rude Pundit has a simple rule of pet ownership: Never keep an animal that you can't kill with your bare hands.

Time to Punish Republicans:
They need to be punished. It's really about the only thing Americans as a whole understand. You try to fuck up someone's shit, you gotta pay.

The Obama administration is, to some extent, misreading the zeitgeist of the election. When many, many people voted for "hope" and "change," what they were voting for was to punish those fuckers who fucked it all up. Americans like to punish. For good or ill, it's one of those things we're particularly skilled at. Take the economic crisis. What David Axelrod understood and what Tim Geithner misread was that the vast majority of Americans don't want the president of Wells Fargo handed a shitload of cash and be told to keep it above the waist. No, they want him set on fire on the steps of the Federal Reserve.

This idea of punishment is not a simple thing. Remember: the election in November was not the revenge. It was a vote to set up the comeuppance. Truly, if it were a different era and we were a different people, the Bush administration would have been hanged in toto sometime in 2006 or 2007. We're not that far removed from that savagery. At the end of the day, there's gotta be consequences for people's actions or there's gonna be chaos.

Which brings us around to the Republicans in the wake of their behavior during the economic stimulus debate and passage. They have violated almost every rule of negotiating in good faith. They smiled in Barack Obama's face and then headed back to the cloakroom to giggle at what clever little liars they were. They decided that the path to relevance was irrelevance. As expected, they threatened to cut out the kidneys of anyone in the caucus who was veering towards voting for the bill, so that, no matter how much good it might do for, say, a hurricane devastated district, they would vote "no." And then some of the fuckers end up praising the thing they voted against because of all the cash money that's going to their constituents.

Which brings us back, in a roundabout way, to torture and other Bush administration crimes and ethical reamings. See, when the Obama administration was sending out signals that it would be willing to forgo serious inquiries into who-authorized-what as it relates to the various -gates from the previous administration, that was an olive branch to Republicans, a way of saying, "You give us some shit we need, we won't spank you for being accomplices to crimes" (by the way, Democrats don't get away clean on this). It was, in terms of the DC circle jerk of power, a pretty fuckin' big concession. Republicans took that olive branch, broke it, shit on it, and flung it back at the White House.

So this is where you get to punishment, which has gotta be far more subversive than a good ol' crops-burning. As more and more comes out about how very fucked things were, especially in the Justice Department, it becomes easier to sell and less divisive to a public that is unified behind President Obama that a full investigation of Bush-era scandals is a must, with the possibility of a few prosecutions (because, let's face it, no matter how much immunity you grant Karl Rove, that cockmonger ain't gonna talk).

Then Republicans will be faced with having to support disgraced criminals and incompetent lackeys or with turning on the leaders they previously supported. Implosion, motherfuckers, careers made and lost on that decision. Now that's how you punish.

And as for the chimera of bipartisanship? What Obama is doing now is redefining it. Fuck the Republicans in Congress. Who needs them when you can say that GOP governors are on your side?

Why Does Conservative Spoogebucket Kevin McCullough Want Barack Obama to Rape Him?:
Oh, the Rude Pundit's had his fun with Kevin McCullough, radio host and columnist (why, his work appears in seemingly ones of newspapers), and a man so pathetically obviously closeted so that his every utterance, every typed word seems like a longing for a hard meat shaft tickling his prostate. Why else would one unironically name one's book Musclehead Revolution? But in his latest "column" (if by "column," you mean, "the vacuous, demi-coherent masturbatory fantasies of a particularly adept howler monkey"), the poor cocksucker-wannabe goes around the bend deeply.

Here's perhaps the greatest couple of sentences ever written by a conservative: "Liberals are long known for light sentences for child molestors, opposition to child rape and child porn laws, and the speedy expediting of 'freedom of speech' protections to pornographers, pedophiles, and male homosexuals who belong to the group NAMBLA. Slightly less well known but easily documented are the sympathies the left has towards lowering the age of consent laws so that it's not really a crime for adults and children to have sex." McCullough does not provide that easy documentation, and the Rude Pundit's 14 year-old male assistant was too "busy" to look it up.

By the way, this would be the same Kevin McCullough who believes that hate crime legislation is a violation of the free speech of gay-bashing preachers.

But the point of McCullough's mad diatribe is not to condemn liberals for imaginary or isolated incidents. Oh, no. He's after a metaphor: comparing "liberals" trying to get the economic stimulus bill passed to the now-banned-by-Amazon video game, Rapelay, another bugfuck insane example of Japanese sexism, where your goal is to rape women.

Now, the Rude Pundit's not going to be a goddamned hypocrite here. As one who uses rape as a metaphor for how conservative fuckbags destroy the country, he is well aware of the potency of such imagery. The problem is not the metaphor, per se. No, it is the creepy way in which McCullough deploys it:
"In the game Rapelay, reviewers have stated that the player must first sexually assault a mother character and her two daughters before being allowed to then 'pick' their next series of victims.

"In the Congress of Washington DC liberals have seen to it that our mothers and daughters will have less money in the home budget working for their protection and welfare...

"In the game, players take what is not theirs and laugh about the outcome.

"In Washington DC, liberals take what is not theirs and laugh at the stupid people that gave it to them."

To which one can only say: Kevin, Miss Thing, listen to the Rude Pundit. Here's how you do a rape metaphor: Reading a Kevin McCullough column is like being dragged into an alley behind a porn store in Tokyo by two guys, one of whom fucks you in the ass while another yanks out one of your eyes so he can skullfuck you, and your dangling eye ends up getting lodged under his balls so you have to stare at his taint while he fucks your head. This also applies to most of the last eight years of American politics.

Instead, McCullough ends with this truly deranged and disturbing last line: "I've tried to be as tasteful as possible in explaining this comparison, and due to the passion of the natural man that was not an easy thing to do!" That exclamation point is not a joke. What the fuck does that whole thing even mean? That he was barely holding back on talking about how hot rape is to him? That he was tempted to go off into a fantasy about being raped by Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and Barack Obama? Using McCullough's powers of deductive reasoning here, the answer is a resounding "yes."

(Tip o' the hat to rude reader Jon N. for the alert on the new K-Mac column.)

The National Review's List of "The Best Conservative Movies of the Last 25 Years" Vs. the National Review's Film Reviews:
So the folks over at the National Review magazine (motto: "The zombie corpse of William F. Buckley will eat your brain") have put together a new list to demonstrate that pop culture relates in some tangential way to conservative "values." And, as it was with their list of the greatest conservative rock songs, it's one more pathetic step down the stairs into the basement of irrelevance. Christ, going to the movies with these fuckers would be like going to a strip club with a serial rapist: out of 25 films, at least 18 are ones you could call "violent," and maybe 3 are what you could call "romantic," none of them sexy (except, of course, for 300). This means that, on average, conservatives would rather masturbate to shit gettin' blowed up real good than to a hot ass.

Mostly, though, it's another sad exercise, another trip into the depressed, depraved state of mind of conservative America, against whom the entire world has turned (there's only one foreign film). Most of the nonsensical list involves twisting the meanings of movies in a way that'd make Chubby Checker go "Whoa, slow the fuck down." And then there's just the giant bunch of "fail" in the thing. For if the best you can come up with for a quarter century of movies is Red Dawn, a movie so jingoistic that it made George S. Patton get out of his grave and slap the fuck out of writer-director John Milius, then your culture is bereft, indeed.

But perhaps the best gauge of how this is a completely worthless exercise in grappling for self-meaning is to go back to the National Review's own archives, where its film critics offered up harsh words about some of the movies on the list:

Groundhog Day: "Yet why should poor Rita be forced to relive this miserable day just to give Phil a chance to evolve from crafty Casanova into selfless swain?...This sexual shell game, these moral tergiversations, attest to the film's queasily exploitative values. In the end, all is contrivance..." John Simon, April 12, 1993.

United 93: "[R]eal art, especially art that takes on events whose wounds are still unhealed, needs to do more than stir up strong emotions in its audience. United 93 buys its power cheaply." Russ Douthat, May 22, 2006.

Team America: World Police: "The movie is not a clear success, being too crude, for one thing. (By 'crude,' I don’t mean dirty, which it is, to a revolting extent. I mean not clever enough.) In truth, the movie, slam-bang and brief as it is, is a little dull." Jay Nordlinger, November 8, 2004.

Forrest Gump: "[T]he movie captures only the random side of [life] fully, and two and a quarter hours of randomness can wear pretty thin. If a millionaire decides to run around for a couple of years, wouldn't he at least have a backpack? I can respect an idiot savant, but not one who doesn't brush his teeth for three years. Even fantasy has to play by some sort of rules, however fanciful...[Technology] can be a lot of things, but is rarely heartwarming. Yet that is what the movie strives to be. It emerges, rather like its hero, idiot-savantish." John Simon, August 29, 1994.

You might think that Groundhog Day is about a selfish asshole learning to not be a selfish asshole, you might think that United 93 is not really about any political agenda, you might think that Team America is a nihilistic take on the worthlessness of ideology, and you might think that Forrest Gump is just a piece of shit, but, then, you wouldn't be a proud writer for the National Review.

They're Losing Their Fucking Minds, Part 4: Jesus Doesn't Need a Stimulus:
The narrow-minded, clannish nature of the Christian right is sometimes just downright adorably hilarious. For their divorce from reality is breathtaking, like watching a toy poodle try to fuck a hippo. Damn, that's some plucky ambition. Damn shame that little poodle just suffocated in a pile of hippo shit.

The Rude Pundit is a member of the Super-Duper Prayer Team of the Family Research Council (motto: "Jesus is watching you masturbate"). He joined it a few years ago under a nom de rude, and every week he receives his prayellatio orders. Yes, it's a list of "things what pissed us off this week" about which we're supposed to drop on our knees, open our mouths, let the Lord in, and spit out our pleas.

This week's Prayer Team Targets include the unholy stimulus package about to finally get out of Congress. Now, you may ask, "Why the fuck does a Super-Duper Prayer Team need to be worried about an economic package involving stimulus spending on infrastructure construction, directed tax cuts, and stop-gap funding for states and municipalities? How does this involve Jesus at all?" Well, then you don't know the Family Research Council, you stupid shit. Because everything - no, really, every motherfucking thing involves Jesus.

Because, apparently, we're on our way to becoming the Soviet Union. "Indeed, the massive 'stimulus' delusion will cost our children dearly. Have we forgotten the Soviet Union?" asks National Prayer Director Rev. Pierre Bynum. And in case we forgot, he reminds us, "There, over time, people lost their incentive to work, create, strive for excellence, save, invest and achieve. The promise of a socialist utopia proved a lie and bankrupted the Soviet nations." You got that? The Soviet Union wasn't about the self-defeating push for world power through oppressive regimes and ruinous wars, cold and hot. No. It was about the loss of the desire to strive for excellence. Why, they just needed Joel Osteen to go over there and light that drive up.

Thusly we are asked to pray, "Father, may this bill be reduced, not expanded, during the reconciliation process. May unseemly provisions be removed and not added. Protect our children and grandchildren." And bible quotes are offered as support for how God/Jesus would actually give a flying rat's fuck about an economic stimulus package. In addition to assloads of Deuteronomy, there's this from Romans 13:8: "Owe no man any thing, but to love one another: for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law." It's really just like they used "word search" on an online bible and hit "owe" or "debt."

Now, in one of those "so crazy it eats its own feces" moments, we're also told to pray that Barack Obama fails in bringing together different religious groups for interfaith dialogue. This relates to Obama's seemingly, from the nutzoid evangelical perspective, praiseworthy desire to put more funding into Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. But, see, because that means funding might go to, you know, "neighborhood" groups and non-Christian "faith-based" ones, well, that won't fuckin' do. So the SDPT must pray (and this is real):

"May God restore America's Christian heritage, the bedrock and fabric of our nation! May efforts to undermine that heritage in favor of multicultural, polytheistic ethics in public life and government fail! May faith-based programs never be used to advance theological and political liberalism. May repentance and revival restore God's blessing to America! In Jesus' Name, Amen!"

You got that? If we're not suckin' Christ's toes while whipping ourselves bloody, we're allowing "multicultural, polytheistic ethics" to encroach on our good American way. So having an office of faith-based programs ain't enough anymore. Now that there's a president in office who isn't just paying lip service to the multiple religious nature of the nation, it's driving them fucking insane.

Oh, one of our bible passages that relates to this prayer? This little number from Psalm 9:17: "The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the nations that forget God."

By the way, the very next verse, Psalm 9:18, says this: "For the needy shall not always be forgotten: the expectation of the poor shall not perish for ever." Guess what's worth praying for is all a question of context.

Photos That Make the Rude Pundit Want to Down a Handful of Roofies with a Long Island Iced Tea:


Those are the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue models on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange yesterday. The market dove another 4 percent on news that Israeli model Bar Refaeli was on the cover. Oh, and that Bank Rescue 2: The Obamanizer was nearly as unfocused and slapdash as Part 1.

Mostly, though, the picture is a merging of great American traditions: tits and money. Yet, somehow, with high quality porn so freely available and money in such short supply, both the models and the traders were diminished before the summit ever occurred.

A Few More Words on Obama's Monday:
One can imagine that Barack Obama didn't want to go to Elkhart, Indiana yesterday. It's not just that Elkhart is one of those mid-America strip mall shitholes that are filthy with paycheck loan sharks and rental furniture shakedown joints. It's not the fact that Elkhart's long been a Ku Klux Klan hotspot. No, the reason Barack Obama didn't want to go to Elkhart is that he didn't think he needed to do the George W. Bush (and Bill Clinton) politics road show. But, as he has learned, Republicans are wads of fuck, Fisher-Price play cars stuck in the "No" gear, refusing to let the grown-ups get to work.

Oh, Obama tried. Don't let anyone tell you that Obama didn't try to get to first base with Republicans. He thought he might be able to sweet talk 'em into taking a little tongue. Hell, he might have even been ambitious enough to think he could get some under-the-bra titty action. But he wasn't even offered a handshake at the end of the date. They told him to go fuck himself, so Obama decided to jack off on their heads.

He went to Elkhart, a place no one should ever have to go, even in flush times, he held a press conference, and he deployed his charm and cool and reminded us again of why, devoid of politics (and, yes, there is mucho shit to criticize him about already), we voted for the man. Seriously, the best Republicans can do is whiny little drama queen Lindsey Graham pissing and moaning that "It started with the attitude, we won, we write the bill"? First of all, to answer his stunning allegation, um, yeah, that's the way it works, Mary. And "the attitude"? Wait, you mean the guy with the mandate is acting like he has a mandate?

So Republicans left Obama with no real choice but to get out there and, on a stage larger than Hannity or Joe the Scar has, pull down their pants and spank their little cheeks red in public. Here's the President's answer to Graham: "What I won't do is return to the failed theories of the last eight years that got us into this fix in the first place, because those theories have been tested and they have failed. And that's part of what the election in November was all about."

It's sad, truly, that Republicans just don't know what they're up against. No one gives a fuck what they have to say. That's the baseline from which the GOP has to start if it wants to rebuild. They have made themselves irrelevant. It's a hellish position to be in, but the demon rape couldn't happen to a nicer group of folks. Most of the country gets it: we're in serious, serious shit here. And they know that right now, the reduction of the solution to "tax cuts" makes about as much sense as thinking you can water the desert with your piss.

And they haven't gotten their mind around what it means to deal with Obama. For the majority of Republicans in Congress, they only have memories of Bill Clinton to compare. It was easier to degrade and pigeonhole Clinton, especially since he didn't win 50% of the vote. But this shit is new. We've got a President who people want to follow, someone they admire.

He's not a joke, and he's not trying to be our buddy. Right now, still, he's a leader, and, unless Republicans get their asses to the table where he's dealing, they're left holding worthless chips from a closed casino.