Goober-natorial
Now Playing: "Everybody One Shoe" by Billy Squier
The Governor's race in California is going to be way more interesting than Kobe Bryant's goddamned show trial. I am hereby putting out a call to my friends in Orange County (you know who you are!) to send me a Schwarzenegger bumper sticker and/or button. A poster or placard for my walls would just be too much to hope for, I know, but even a pamphlet would do. It's going to be very interesting.

Of course, there are too many poor immigrants and their sympathizers in California to think that even the Terminator could move that huge nation-state towards the GOP. But the influence that a Governor Schwarzenegger could wield in the Presidential election come November 2004 would be considerable. Get him out there campaigning for Bush and it's gonna confuse some of the swing voters into thinking that our President isn't such a bastard after all.

Heh, heh. This is going to be sweet.

Free for All
Gary Coleman's running for Governor of California? Gimme a break. This recall election is going to be the biggest can of laughter in a long while. My money's on Arnold, though. Californios may like fung shui in their own houses, but aren't above po-mo kitsch in the statehouse.

Let Freedom Mushroom
Today is the 58th anniversary of our nuclear bombing of Hiroshima. Let that be a reminder to the fascists and terrorists of the world: what you start, Uncle Sam will finish.

Enough with This Post-Mortem on Kobe Bryant, Already!
Mood:  irritated
Don't pay any attention to these self-important pricks on the TV who say that Kobe is washed up and that he is endorsement poison. He's the best basketball player of his generation and almost certainly innocent of the crime with which he has been charged. These stupid sports analysts are going on and on about how he's ruined his career, but just relax!

As I said before, Kobe's a dumbass for cheating on his wife (not the least reason for which is because she is nine kinds o' fines), but his biggest mistake (apparently) was picking the wrong starfucker to share his essence with. This girl who's accusing Kobe of rape is very obviously a blow-up doll on the make and I wouldn't trust her for what she's doing, which is trying to generate enough of a scandal to make a name for herself. Ironically, of course, the major media won't give out her name for now, but they'll probably get around to it by the time she does her Playboy photo shoot next year.

You know what's weird? After seeing that DA and some of the locals on the TV, I wouldn't be a bit surprised if Kobe's attorneys do play the race card ---with me applauding it the entire way. I don't know why, but I caught a strong whiff of Wonderbread up in that mug ---with the crust cut off. Y'know whu'm sayin'?

Shoot to Kill, Please
Mood:  energetic
We don't need an encore of Hermann Goerring at the Nuremberg Trials, so when we catch up to Saddam later this week, we need to make sure to shoot him dead. Give us a Boston Corbett or a Jack Ruby to spare us months and years of Saddam justifying himself and inciting the fascists of the Arab world. Let his old age be a time to nurture sandfly larvae.

If he lives, the towelheads and cheese-eaters will guarantee he lives forever and in comfort. They will resist us to the last if we make any effort to put him to death. This is because they are civilized. The Old Europeans are so grown up now that they regard us as barbaric for our capital punishment. And the autocratic and fascist Arab world will not let us execute the Butcher of Baghdad because they are fearful of reprisals in their own streets. Just as with Osama, Saddam can make a place for himself in the marketplace of disaffected Arab affection and be found on T-shirts, rearview mirror deodorizers, and bootleg audio tapes.

Don't let it happen, men. Snuff him out in his hole. Go to the stockade, if you have to, but do murder him. History will forgive and bless you. And we will have taken a giant leap in making Iraq a friend to the United States.

A Reply from a Good Friend in California on the Recall of Her Governor
Mood:  special
"What do I think of the recall? In one way, I think it's a shame, a shame that we didn't know what he had done when we reelected him in the last election...that would save us the supposedly 30 million it's going to cost to recall him. I just think that he sucks as a governor, but I don't like the alternative. Most people here think that Arnold Schwarzenegger will get elected, if he runs. I hope that doesn't happen because, I really don't see what qualifies him to be Governor, except that he is an actor and sleeps with a Kennedy, which should cancel out him running on the Republican ticket at any time. Also, according to my copy of the Constitution, he can only run for an office as high as U.S. Senator (assuming that he has lived in the US for 14 years, which I think he has). I just don't think that a person who can never run for President should be Governor...I have NO idea WHY I feel this way, I just do.... I don't know, it just makes me think that the only reason he'll win is because of Terminator 3. I mean, are people in California THAT stupid? Ok, yes they are! They would vote for someone just because they were familiar. Personally, I'm probably gonna vote for Darryl Issa if he runs. Ok, that's my extremely NON analytical rant on that..."

Reflecting on the War
Perhaps the most legitimate counter-argument to Bush's war against Saddam's regime is the insistence on the potentially greater threat posed by that hydroencephalitic turd who rules North Korea. After all, his nuclear bomb-building is so obvious that it earned him a huge bribery package from the Clinton Administration in the mid-1990s. Many thoughtful opponents of the President have said that North Korea is the bigger problem, specifically because of the nuke. There we are with what amounts to 37,000 hostages and a bunch of allies within nuclear striking distance of a very obviously deranged dictator. You bet your ass that's a problem, but what are you (and I say this to the President's thoughtful opponents) going to do about it? Okay, so you got it all ranked and prioritized like a shopping trip, but do you have any solutions to the North Korean problem?

Bribe 'em. Make sure they get all the fuel oil and and food they need so long as they don't continue with their nuclear program. Well, that didn't work, did it? Clinton and Carter and the other foreign policy wanks (wonks?) got nothing but lies from Kim. He took the bribe and kept on developing his warheads and delivery systems.

Negotiate with them. But, to what end? They've already thrown down every gauntlet, breastplate, shinguard, and codpiece they own. They are nakedly daring us to fuck with them, although Bill Richardson says not to worry; that it's just their way of negotiating. Well, that's a lot of crap ---and we don't have to take it.

Bomb them. Use the nuke. Well, I don't see any situation where that would happen, but the further away you push that awful thought, the more likely it is to come true. North Korea is on its knees economically and culturally. Everything has been subsumed into the military power-cult of Kim Jong-Il. Is it really so hard to imagine him going out in a blaze of glory? He is the State and the State is him in even more ways than that could be said of Saddam.

Kim is mentally ill and believes that he deserves to be respected enough to have unilateral "talks" with Washington. Bush has refused that until just this moment. In a month or so, I guess, we will have multilateral talks with both Koreas, China, Japan, and Russia, but we have finally relented and will also have informal unilateral talks with the North during the larger conference.

But do observe the idiocy and hypocrisy of the President's critics on this score. They will criticize him for caving in when he said he wouldn't, but of what else would the Left approve except talking and negotiating and caving in? Get it? They themselves believe that these are the ways to peace and, yet, will make as much hay as they can if this Republican President takes that path. What lousy hypocrites. These people never had any plan at all for North Korea, except to scream out loud that it was more dangerous than Saddam's Iraq. But were they ever going to approve of a pre-emptive conventional or nuclear strike there? Of course not! It was always enough to just undermine this President.

And now for the kicker, gentlemen: Bush and his people did oversell the nuclear threat in Iraq ---not just because it was a plausible argument, if not a probable one--- but because it put the option of dealing with Iraq first on an equal basis with North Korea. You said they were both threats, but now your argument as to which was the greater is moot. Did you suppose that dealing with a nuclearized nation would have been the preferable starting point? Did we go into Fascist Italy first ---or Nazi Germany? There is a logic to these things that has to be considered before jumping up and down and accusing this President and his Administration of crimes against the peace of the world.

Getting the Disdain Out
Mood:  sharp
I'm half-way paying attention to this weekly PBS news program about religion and I can't explain how little use I have for any of that crap. The Episcopalians are all in a dither about whether they should give this gay bishop-trainee his wings and I'm saying, "Who gives a shit?" Or, how about this Franciscan mick who's going to be running the show in Boston now? What a bunch of criminals and confidence men. I wouldn't wipe my nose on the Pope's prettiest Sunday dress.

Are you ready for some football?

Yeah, yeah: hellhounds on my trail...

About That Dead Link
There's no reason I know of for that "very cool link" to not work (see yesterday's blog), but it will at least take you to the site's error page from which you can (and should, because it's a lot of fun) locate the anagram-generator. Give it a shot.

And if you're a clever lad, write and tell me why my link doesn't work. I can't figure it out.

Well...
Okay, on second thought, I'd say Oprah Winfrey is the most visible and powerful black woman in America. But if you're talking about one of the principal players on the stage of international diplomacy ---and someone who has the trust and respect of the President--- then Dr. Rice is the bigger deal.

A Winning Strategy
I see that Slate.com and other liberal media outlets have turned their sights on to Dr. Condoleezza Rice, our President's National Security Adviser, to see how much blame they can stick her with for the horrible, soul-negating, society-destroying non-lie about Saddam's uranium purchases that the President mentioned in his State of the Union address last January. Good stuff, dickheads.

First, you have made utter glue of the dead horse you've been beating on for the past several weeks. Even Bill Clinton has told you people to shut up and find another topic, but you seem determined to have the world think that your approval of Bush's war in Iraq either rose or fell by the fact of Saddam's nuclear weapons program. That's all bullshit. You wouldn't have approved of the war if God had manifested himself as tattoos on your foreheads, urging you to liberate the Iraqi people. There's a lot of petty little Woodsteins out there, convinced that these "sixteen words" have spelled the doom of the Bush Presidency. Got him on the ropes, do you? That's great.

Now, though, you want to attack the most visible and powerful black woman in the country over some question of whether the President should have referenced British intelligence on Saddam's uranium deals in Niger? Sure. Pursue that. Make Dr. Rice grovel over something that she and her boss and everyone they know has already described as a mistake and a simple overreach. Keep hammering away at her. Nobody will have any idea what the fuck you're thinking of ---and, in the bargain, you may even alienate those segments of the black population which regard her as a role model and a person to respect.

It's a winning strategy, baby! Dean in '04!!!

A Very Cool Link
This website is the coolest thing since sliced bread. Just type in a name or whatever, hit enter, and watch the anagrams come thick and fast.

The Maw of the Law
A friend of mine writes to complain of a new racist law he read about that's been passed by the Israeli parliament. Apparently, the perfidious Israeli Jews are tired of Palestinian Arabs from the [occupied territories] abusing the laws which grant them residency rights in Israel by marrying Israeli Arabs. Seems there's a lot of them doing it and that it's starting to show. Israel says they can marry all they want, but that they must either leave Israel proper (can't quite call it "unoccupied," can we?) or begin their married lives apart.

It sounds racist, I guess, but Israel is only trying to restrict the number of ways these fine, upstanding terrorist-trainees can use the laws of its own society against itself. Sound familiar? My friend suggests that it all sounds like certain laws passed in the 1930s. He may be referring to the Nuremberg Laws of Nazi Germany which didn't allow Juden from fouling the Aryan stock, but he could just as easily have pointed to the unenforced laws on the books of America's legal system today which allow pregnant Mexican women to run across the bridges and spillways in El Paso and hatch an American on the doorstep of the nearest hospital: Viva el nuevo Americano y la madre!

I will tire of this world when no one wants to see my passport anymore. I think of borders and boundaries as things to be protected and respected. Of course, clever people have never thought of America as an actual nation with a complicated history and certain cultural peculiarities, but as an "idea" ---some sort of neverland where we can all bleed into one (and get checks from the Big G on our way). Well, that may happen yet, grasshopper. But you gotta take it from [me] first.

If It Were All Conceded As Lies
Let's pretend that the President of the United States, the Prime Minister of Great Britain, and all their intelligence and military men (as well as those of the partners in the "willing coalition") concocted the whole thing about Saddam having weapons of mass destruction. Just made it up out of whole cloth. A simple-minded pretext, easily and soon to be exposed for what it was. Even if it were all conceded as lies, how can the results of our [warmongering] be considered as anything but positive? We have liberated two massively oppressed peoples in Afghanistan and Iraq and given them at least a chance to participate in normal and peaceful societies. Soon, this example will lead the Iranians to overthrow (or at least reform) their own government. In doing all of this, the flow of money into the coffers of terror groups in and around Israel will begin to slow. The eternally disaffected youth of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Syria will begin to notice the advantages of a free society enjoyed by their Arab brothers and will demand these things of their own government. In the end, a whole swath of South and Western Asia and the Middle East itself may experience a rebirth of freedom and economic opportunity.

The young men and women of the United States armed forces who are dying in those countries are the fathers and mothers of global liberty. They are the makers of America's legacy to human civilization ---and I am proud of each of them. Let no one say they died in vain.

And let no one doubt the wisdom of the political and personal sacrifices men such as Bush and Blair are making. They are laying a foundation for a safer world ---and all they are getting in return is the cynical and paranoiac denunciations of hypocritical isolationists.

Why the BBC Is a Big Front for the Commies
Mood:  sad
I strongly encourage you to read Dennis Boyles' account of listening to the BBC World Service on the day Baghdad fell. It's astonishing to what depths the anti-war crowd will descend in trying to discredit the liberation of Iraq.

It's also a real disappointment for a traveler like me, who once very much enjoyed the comfort and reassurance of listening to the World Service on my little short wave radio in darkened hotel rooms throughout Europe.

When did multiculturalism become anti-white and anti-Christian? You'd think the Anglo-Saxon world hadn't done anything for the betterment of humanity.

Piss on apologizers.

Nervous Laughter
Mood:  surprised
Now Playing: "Oh, Shit!" by The O'Shits
The Policy Analysis Market, which was basically an online futures market for predicting global calamities like revolutions and assassinations, has been exposed and shut down by some very angry U.S. Senators on both sides of the aisle. This was conceived as an alternative source of intelligence for the goings-on in parts of the world where U.S. intelligence may not be fully in the know. But, when such a project is run by an "under-reported" office in the Pentagon called the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and headed up by Admiral John Poindexter (of Iran-Contra fame), it is almost guaranteed to take on more water than intelligence and be sunk in its moorings.

I mean, Jesus Christ! Did Rumsfeld lose a bet with a Berkeley professor and have to draw up the worst possible, most paranoia-inducing, po-mo, super-Machiavellian nightmare of an agency to give the anti-war crowd some fresh meat? Sometimes, you just can't write shit this crazy.

It's almost like a Presidential election decided by the electoral votes in a state where the brother of one of the candidates is the governor!

Ha, ha.

Suckers.

But, DARPA? No, that one's true. Looks great on paper (unless the paper is newsprint).

Editorial Note
If I notice a typo I've made, I will go back and fix it, but leave the word in boldface. No extra emphasis, except to note that I fixed something.

A Friendly Disagreement
I've received an exceptionally thoughtful commentary from a correspondent named Chris which I will respond to in my favorite mode: the newsgroup dialogue. Below is the entirety of his essay, interspersed with my remarks in italics.

If, as former White House counsel John Dean explained a few weeks ago in an interview, there is "no chance" the Republican house would impeach Bush for lying to the American people, the nation has transcended mere blind partisan politics and entered a time of living fiction.

I assume the lies for which you think the President ought to be impeached involve his State of the Union address' reference to British intelligence's belief that Saddam was trying to buy uranium from Niger. How that has come to be characterized as a lie is a mystery to me. It remains the belief of British intelligence. And it is entirely consistent with Saddam's past habits. No lie and no crime. Thus, you have no impeachable offense.

This is the same Republican Party whose members badgered and hounded President Clinton until he was caught in a lie.

The Republicans caused Bill Clinton to lie. That's silly. He lied and encouraged others to lie to cover up his mistakes.

His prosecutors, the legions of right-wing radio listeners, organizations dedicated to unearthing damaging material on Clinton's past, showed a disgust for immorality in the White House.

And his partisan defenders showed none. This is especially true of feminist organizations that looked the other way because of Clinton's liberal bona fides. Talk about cynicism!

But when Clinton's impeachment came, the vast majority of Americans refused to march on Washington demanding his removal from office. In fact a few went so far to march in his support.

That's true. People were too happy being employed and making money in the markets. Otherwise, they would have had the time to be offended.

Americans, both for and against President Clinton, knew in their hearts, if not minds, that the question he was asked should have never been asked because it involved his personal life; not his public life.

On this, you are absolutely wrong. Clinton pursued a sexual relationship with a woman in his employ and did so on the job (i.e., in the workplace). You know very well that had he been a CEO or a college president or a commanding officer who was getting blowjobs from a student or an underling that he would have been accused of any number of crimes or policy violations and been terminated. That is incontrovertible. And that is only a part of what he did to undermine the dignity and to abuse the authority of his office.

Now, the situation has reversed. We have an unelected president who lies to the American people and the world, sacrifices innocent American and Iraqi lives to create a distraction from his disastrous ineptitude at home. This president can't poke his head out in public without an angry crowd forming.

It is disappointing to have to continually correct the Bush-hating Left on the facts of the 2000 election. George W. Bush neither stole nor bought the Presidency. He won the office because he won more electoral votes than Al Gore. It was because of the gross incompetence of officials in Democratically-controlled counties in Florida and an accident of numbers that the election results in that state had to be resolved in the courts.

As for the purpose of fighting this war against Arab fascism, if you think it has been concocted to distract the American people from the President's so-called ineptitude, then you must also believe that he is somehow responsible for the recession. How is that possible?

Still, the Republicans are willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. The Republicans I know, the little rank and file footsoldiers who spent the late 1990s jeering at President Clinton, can't defend Bush themselves.

Whatever the party label, I defend Bush as a plain-spoken, no-nonsense guy who's doing a great job defending our country.

Something about American commonsense knows a high crime from a misdemeanor.

Yes, but both are explicitly impeachable, right?

No group, except possibly for American soldiers and Iraqi civilians, can feel as betrayed as Bush's reluctant pre-war WMD believers.

That's almost shameful! You believe that our soldiers and the Iraqi people feel betrayed because the treasonous pricks in the liberal media have told you to believe that. The truth is that our fighting men are proud to have done what they have, regardless of their complaints and moments of despair. They are the begetters of a new society for the Iraqi people and their achievement will only continue to grow in the estimation of the world.

They shouted that anyone who stood against the war was a yellow, cowardly Quisling. They said any argument against the war represented pin-headed, politically-correct handwringing.

That may be a little extreme, but I won't disagree.

Now, of course, even if WMD were found it would be hard to prove they were of an imminent threat to US troops. So we continue to ask where are the WMDs?

The circumstantial evidence of their existence is extensive and attested to by people at every place along the ideological spectrum. Even the UN said that there were chemical and biological weapons there, only they were too cowardly and corrupt to stand up to Saddam.

Where is justification for this elective war?
Yet, there is still no call for his impeachment.

This is just absurd. President Bush is laying the foundation for a whole new world. Your anger at him is irrational. You don't appreciate what he must endure to build the Pax Americana.

If nothing else, we need no more proof that the witchhunt to bring down President Clinton had nothing to with moral outrage and everything to do with undermining the legitimacy of an elected president.

Clinton was a corrupt and opportunistic liar. Ultimately, he was impeached because of his many faults of character. I supported every bit of it.

Rightwing radicals who feel so sure about themselves they can seek to bring down an elected US president are an unsettling group.

What does being elected have to do with anything? As much of a fan as I am of Richard Nixon (a legitimately elected President), I believe he would have deserved his impeachment had he stood there to take it. Instead, he had the character to resign and spare the public even more exposure to his corruptions.

They feel like "the consent of the governed" means an expensive PR effort and spin job to deflect criticism.

That's just empty cynicism.

They have a religious conviction in their own arrogance and supremacy.

That's just bigotry. Are Democrats uniformly secular?

They have no ideal other than the consolidation of power.

That's just paranoia.

But what of their political strategy that depends so heavily on lies? What personal friend of yours would forgive such constant lies? What business partner? Most Americans parents don't tolerate lies from their children. Why makes excuses for it from a Bush?

I just can't agree with your characterizations. Obviously, in times of war, the public is not entitled to know every little thing at every point along the way. That's not realistic. You're mistaking secretiveness for lying.

The lies, if tolerated by the American people, or the Republicans in Congress say a lot about our country today. For the people, you could say we live in a fact-free culture of images, of sensation. (Think of the images of Bush's aircraft landing versus the realities it masked).

Absolutely not. This war is being followed by thoughtful people who know their facts and who understand what sacrifices will have to be made to make the peace. You're getting some sort of cartoon stuck in your head and taking that for the reality of the situation. That may be ideologically satisfying, but it isn't the truth.

One where lies, assertions, spin and advertising language go unchallenged. For the Republicans in Congress, it says party loyalty means more than truth, more than justice, more than integrity. In fact, integrity for them is measured by uncritical loyalty.

I, too, would be suspicious of unquestioning and uncritical loyalty. But I don't have to be suspicious because the President is routinely and constructively criticized and challenged by the people closest to him. Do you think Powell and Rumsfeld are in lockstep with each other? Do you think Bush the Elder agrees with the worldview of a man like Paul Wolfowitz? Please! There is active dissent all around the President for him to draw on in making the best possible decisions. No yes-men in sight.

In this way they are more akin to a street gang or crime family than a political party. Of course, in a healthy society both street gangs and crime families are considered a public problem to be rehabilitated or prosecuted.

I thought they were considered excellent material for a whole film genre.

Texas' Democratic State Senators Are Assholes
Mood:  party time!
I hear that a bunch of Democratic state senators have absconded across the Texas-New Mexico state line to prevent a quorum. Why have they done this? So that they can deny the majority of Texans their right to be proportionately represented by Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives. These jerk-offs are a lot of cowards who don't want to stand up and take their lumps. And, so, they are forcing the Governor into calling yet another special session and wasting more money the state doesn't have to handle the business that they, as a party, refused to let be handled during the regular legislative session.

Don't forget: the Legislature is the branch of government responsible for drawing up the district boundaries for the state's representatives in Congress ---and not some Federal judge. The Republicans are in the majority now and it is only right that they have the prerogative here. Running off to another state to break a quorum is a bunch of chickenshit, and I very much hope that the voters remember that the next time we go to the polls.

At this point, I guess the only thing we can do is to call the Albuquerque Police Department and warn them to keep an eye on Gonzalo Barrientos. If he gets ahold of some firewater, he's liable to get lit up and go smash his car into a cactus.

Chasing Parked Cars
Liberals and Democrats are opposed to racial profiling and domestic spying conducted by our intelligence and police agencies. Come to think of it, so are a lot of libertarians and militiamen. And so they all jump up and down and scream about how we are losing our rights to the Patriot Acts. But how are we supposed to keep tabs on potential troublemakers in this country if we can't investigate the kinds of people who are most likely to make that trouble? There are a lot of people who want to charge the Bush Administration with malfeasance and all sorts of treachery and who demand to know why our "intelligence" was so poor that we "allowed" the events of 11 September 2001 to happen. But they don't want the government to keep those tabs and to harrass the supposedly innocent. These same people say they don't trust the government and that they don't want any more Nixons or J. Edgar Hoovers keeping any lists. They make it harder and harder for the intelligence community to cultivate the kinds of bonds with the kinds of characters who would know if something bad were about to happen. These agencies have had their human intelligence funding cut and the regulations circumscribing their behavior drawn ever tighter. But, still, the complainers wonder why our intelligence is so lousy.

No need to wonder. Just look in the mirror.