Al-Queda Made Me Write This

That's right. As I type this, an Al-Queda representative (I call him "Moe") is sitting over me, his turban drenched with sweat, an AK-47 aimed at my head. He is forcing me to type liberal heresy into my blog post.

I also would like to point out that he fucking frog-marched me to the polls, followed me in, and with a knife to my throat forced me to vote for Democrats. Straight goddamn ticket.

There. Are you fucking happy, "Stephen Foley?" Does my confession fucking satisfy you? I'm Al-Queda's BITCH.

Apparently our enemies, the people who wish to kill us, got the Congress they wanted!

For those who believe that our enemy doesn’t take any interest in our elections or that they don’t care what the outcome is, should take heed to the statements coming from the mouths of these fanatical murderers and ask yourself. How long do we wait until we start taking these people at their word?

Actually, Foley, you and the rest of your whiny-ass crybaby conservatives can prop your jaw open and swallow my big fat one. Go. To. Fucking. Hell. I voted the candidate who best represented my interests, bitches! Your opinion regarding what's best for me and the over-fucking whelming majority of Americans does not count, for the simple reason that it is the minority opinion. Your corporate looter overlords failed to convince us that we should sell our self-interest out to Republicans for another two years.

Newsflash: Your ideas suck. Your party lied. They lost the public's trust.

GET. THE. HELL. OVER. IT.

If I have to hear one more time how I'm "serving Al-Queda" I'm gonna crack someone across the fucking nose.

Rush Limbaugh: Asshat

If you've missed it, there's an ad, or series of ads, that Michael J. Fox has taped for Democratic candidates.

In case you've missed it, Michael J. Fox suffers from Parkinson's disease.

And in case you've been in a cave for almost twenty years, Rush Limbaugh is a major fucking asshat. His response to these heartbreaking appeals by a man clearly in the throes of an awful affliction is "he's a big faker." Or, "he's off his meds."

Limbaugh should know. A man with a completely fake career, created by stitching a long series of phony statements together, and aired almost completely in front of fake audiences or with fake call-in guests, would probably be able to spot a slapdash come-on from a thousand miles away. Everything Limbaugh does is fake.

But Fox, and Parkinson's, are alas real. Within hours of Limbaugh's latest gasbag proclamation he'd been contacted by a large number of people who made it pointedly clear that Fox's bobbing and weaving out of control are almost certainly symptoms, not of the disease itself, but of the treatment which is almost as distracting and upsetting as the disease it cures, visually.

But this isn't the point. The point is, Limbaugh insists now, that Fox is taking advantage of his illness to shill for Democrats. He's using his sickness against Republicans.

Well, of course, he's using it against Republicans who refuse to allow the research that could cure the disease. What the blistered fuck do you think he ought to use, Rush? His Jedi Mind Tricks?

God fucking forbid that someone should have a personal interest in the outcome of an election. This is where the whole "bias" thing becomes a steaming pile of blasted shit. You're "biased" if you fail to bob your head in sycophantic agreement with every thing Rush says. Having opinions is bad. Having opinions that go against the desires of the right wing is bad. It's biased. Having a mind of your own means you're a moonbat. It's crazy.

There is no way I can plumb the depths of my revulsion for Rush Limbaugh. The man is pure human filth. He's not worthy to be wiped off my shoe.

It's finally happening

Does anyone remember the bathroom scene from Poltergeist? One of the paranormal "researchers" stops for a quick self-grooming moment in the haunted Suburban McMansion and starts picking at a blemish on his face. With some (at the time) frighteningly realistic makeup effecs, the casual face-picker starts actually tearing chunks of blubbery, bloody flesh right off the bone, apparently unable to quit and unable to call for help. The shredding continues as long as Spielberg can hold it up (which is a long time in my 24-year-old memories of the film) until suddenly, with a filmic flash, the illusion snaps to, and the researcher is left quivering in fear and disgust.

This is what is happening with the Neo-con movement right now. They're starting to tear their own face off and have realized, horror-stricken, that they can't stop and they can't call for help. All of us out here who might step in, just for a bit, to say: "Hey, neo-cons (and Joe Lieberman), it's OK to be wrong once in awhile" are instead standing here remembering how eighteen or twenty months ago we were "Saddam Lovers" and "Objectively Pro-Terror" and a bunch of other bullshit that was not only offensively slanderous but murderously wrong.

Unlike the scene from Poltergeist, however, I find this facial self-mutilation to be almost laughable. Almost funny. If it weren't my country that lay in fiscal ruination I would be laughing. But instead I'm just jazzing on the schauenfreude. It's good to be right, especially when those in the wrong are so goddamn wrong.

What are we preserving?

Got into a shouting match over on plastic.com about this news item.

To sum up for those not willing to follow links, the news item was in response to some comments of the Justice Department (now a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Executive Branch), to the effect that:

Justice Department official suggested that in certain circumstances, the president might have the power to order the killing of terrorist suspects inside the United States.

Notice the specific phrasing. "Terrorist suspects." Not "tried and convicted of the crime of terrorism." Not "caught in the act of terrorism." Just "suspects."

On top of the wiretapping, extraordinary rendition, and Guantanamo detention, there now exists the possibility that masked ninjas may appear in your bedroom and just bump you off, on the government's order.

I was perusing the thread when I came across an assertion by the the increasingly fervent bush-humping gerrymander that the President had the authority to use military force. Specifically he said you're asserting that unless an enemy masses troops along the border, the President has no authorization to use military force within US borders?. He was responding to someone else, but I jumped on this immediately. As it turns out, the job of declaring war (which would be when we decide to use military force) falls to Congress, not the President.

Gerrymander replied with some dodge to a provision that Habeus Corpus may be suspended if public safety requires it - which set me off even more.

I put together a comment I'd seen elsewhere in the thread where Gerrymander asserted that the President's selection criteria of whom to kill were (apparently by right of his alone) invisible to the rest of us. That's in this scintillating gem of a comment.

Every time someone brings up civil liberties, one of these assholes flips a picture of the World Trade Center out as if there need be no other answer. I finally completely lost my happy thoughts over this when I realized that qualitatively there is no difference between a world in which there is a remote chance that I could be killed by a terrorist just because I was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and a world in which I can be spied on, detained without apparent cause or recourse, and finally ordered specifically to be killed by a shadowy government official answerable to no one.

We used to pride ourselves in being U.S. citizens, and one of the reasons that we did so was offered up as a contrast to the imagined experience of a typical citizen of the Soviet Union -- who lived in fear of speaking his mind, was likely being watched by shadowy, unaccountable Thought Police, and could even be imprisoned and sent to Siberia or killed for his crimes against the State -- with no chance of appeal or recourse, let alone redress of grievances.

We held this model up as the way to live because it was best, because it represented the supremacy of both human liberty and dignity. We felt we could count on the mechanisms of our Constitution to safeguard us from tyrrany.

I don't ever recall a right to be secure from random acts of violence being enumerated in the Constitution, nor has there been any historic expectation thereof. Yet this is precisely the right that is held up in supreme arrogance by the defenders of the Administration whenever their increasingly intrusive and unconstitutional activities are questioned. My final response to gerrymander was that my Civil Rights were not his to bargain away out of fear that he might be the victim of a terrorist attack. I have written this blog entry to go further: if we are going to give up our liberties in order to safeguard our soft little pink asses, we should be thinking about what our liberties protect. Because I don't feel any safer knowing that I now run the risk of being mis-identified as an enemy of the state, spied on, detained without cause or recourse, or possibly murdered in my sleep by the order of an authoritarian thug. Not one fucking bit.

Charlie Brown to Lucy: AUUUGHHH!

Of course, I wasn't kicking no football today, but coming home to read that the Alito Fillibuster had failed as badly as it did was as disappointing as having my football jerked away at the last second. By the way, here's a big FUCK YOU to the following:

Daniel Akaka, Senator from Hawaii.
Daniel Inouye, Senator from Hawaii.
Max Baucus, Senator from Montana.
Jeff Bingaman, Senator from New Mexico.
Robert Byrd, Senator from West Virginia.
Jay Rockefeller, Senator from West Virginia.
Maria Cantwell, Senator from Washington.
Tom Carper, Senator from Delaware.
Kent Conrad, Senator from North Dakota.
Byron Dorgan, Senator from North Dakota.
Tim Johnson, Senator from South Dakota.
Herb Kohl, Senator from Wisconsin.
Mary Landrieu, Senator from Louisiana.
Joe Lieberman, Senator from Antenora, Cocytus.
Blanche Lincon, Senator from Arkansas.
Mark Pryor, Senator from Arkansas.
Bill Nelson, Senator from Florida.
Ben Nelson, Senator from Nebraska.

I am struck by how many of you are holding one of two Democratic Senate seats in your state and still cannot muster the cojones to stand up for us.

I do not have any Democratic representatives in the circle of Hell I'm currently trapped in. But I can tell you even here, in a Red state where almost everything fell to Bush-Worship last year, it would have been just fine with people for you worthless shits to stand up to something for a change. That's all we're asking. STAND THE FUCK UP. Be counted for what you are.

I'm too disappointed and disgusted to write anything else right now. FUCK what a major letdown. Missing by one vote would have been great. If you stupid shits had just ABSTAINED from voting on cloture you would have had nothing to lose.

Gouty Old Prick

That's Dick Cheney to you. As I contemplated the consonance of those syllables, it occurred to me to wonder what a physical wreck was doing one heartbeat away from the helm of Our Great Country. And after I thought about that, I wondered: what about both of them? What about the untreated alcoholic wit that is the heartbeat at the helm? What is going on here?

I'm not making myself clear: I have this image in my mind of Gouty, Heart-Diseased Cheney who has apparently spent his life in the pursuit of physical self-indulgence. Gout and Heart Disease go together with wealth and indulgence. You hear about them with plump, overfed wastrels who have pissed away their youth indulging in wine and good food, and sampling the physical pleasures that life has to offer. Then there's Bush, who arguably has done less with his life than most people get around to. Handed a company on a silver platter; wrecked same company. Handed a baseball team; wrecked. Handed a governorship; wrecked. Handed a Presidency; wrecked.

I have such a dim view of the doings of the useless. Inherited wealth and the baby-fat sourpusses who have inherited it with zero expectation from their fuckoff parents does not impress me. So it's no surprise that the most useless fuckoff to be President since I don't know when is a 3rd or 4th generation inheritor of unearned wealth. It's also no surprise that his puppeteer is clearly the product of a lazy and self-indulgent life of privledge. What's a surprise is that the American people can't spot this.

Imagine if you will looking up to the head of your exercise class, for example, and seeing a 300-pound tub of lard up there trying to tell you how to get in shape. Do you think you'd take him seriously? I'm not a fat-hater, but I do think if you're going to lead you have to know what you're doing.

Life in America is work. We all know that. We work to make a better life because we have that frontier pioneer spirit. We are meritorious. Meritocrats. So when I look up to the Presidential Podium and I see two soft, pink, flabby fuckwads flanking a stuttering imbecile who never had to actually struggle to achieve anything in his life, I wonder how these people can possibly lead us if they've no idea what things like work and sacrifice are. And when it's clear that the Gouty Old Prick is in this business largely to make himself comfortable and indulged, what are we to make of it when we as Americans are asked to give up more, have less for ourselves, and give up what we've struggled for. Just so these fat fucks can have someone stoop and bow and scrape at the imperious snap of their flabby fingers?

This nation was built on the vehement rejection of the whole idea of royalty. So what are these royal nutsacks doing running the show? I don't understand.

Froth Pist

Well, I have been using Google's blog link to create entries. Google Guys, if you're out there, you need to fix the formatting in that little bitty box. The two entries below this had to be corrected for serious formatting issues.

Anyway I'm having a grand old time back in my persona as Slippy The Toad. I tried, oh so hard, to give it up, but I just canna' do it! Today I got to read some horse-malarkey about the Joel Stein editorial in the LA times, and though I've made my statement on Plastic regarding this, I'm here to do it again:

Stein apparently was moved to state that he "didn't support the troops." Radicalstate.org and a bajillion other right-wing blowhards jumped on that to immediately expand the tiny li'l circle encompassing Joel Stein to include the other 57,999,999 other liberal-minded voters who didn't vote for Bush, wagging their Big Conservative Finger of Shame at us.

I've a different finger to wag back atcha, biatches! It's in the middle position of my hand. I Am Not Joel Stein. Do Not Ascribe His Positions To Me. Go Back To Humping Your Mom.

In addition to which, I was moved to question what support actually meant. Does support mean providing with adequate body armor? Does it mean not cutting healthcare funding? Does it mean having a coherent plan for success? Does it mean lying your ass off about the hopped-up crisis that got us into this mess in the first place? There are so many different shades of meaning to support. Confusing lack of support with indifference or hostility toward the leadership that got us into this catastrophe in the first place is disingenious and it's bullshit. Come back when you've got a concrete set of premises to argue about.

The wisdom of Joel Stein that gets us into this discussion in the first place, if you would like to read it.