Let us pray.
Not for having a leader who is infallible, incorruptible and occasionally incoherent: Let us pray, instead, for salvation from the ten assclowns below who would see fit to bring about the Rapture. Let us pray, my children, for all of us who have to live in a country in which the corrupt are feted while Iraqi war veterans and their families are ignored, victimized and even vilified. Let us pray, my liberal flock, for our future in a nation in which the Philistine neocons insist on stacking the deck against us by denying us the press credentials that we give them.
Yes, brothers and sisters, let us pray for our nation and immortal souls while we testify to the exploits of the following: Dr. Nicholas Bartha (4) for his ingenious solution for divorce settlements and urban renewal; Senator Arlen Specter (7) for grandfathering a certain pesky little law for Dear Leader; Stephen Bradbury (3) for telling us that George Bush is "never wrong" and The Dept. of Homeland Security (1) gets top dishonors for determining that the Hoosier state is rife with terrorist targets.
So let us pray, pray loudly, my children, for the End of Crazy Days as we count down the top ten assclowns of the apocalypse and much,
much more. Hallelujah!
10) The Christian Science Monitor
"Is it hot in here or is it me?"
Why is it that neocons and their accomplices have to resort to using standup comedians and science fiction authors in order to debate against global warming? If global warming is such a fallacy, then why can't they find, you know, actual climate experts who can counter with data of their own? Gee, it wouldn't be because truth is on the side of liberals and tree huggers for a change, could it?
I'm old enough to remember a Saturday Night Live episode from the 70's in which Rodney Dangerfield was brought in as an expert to explain how huge an irradiated President Jimmy Carter got. It had just that perfect dash of absurdity that assured us that nothing like that would ever happen in real life.
Fast forward to 2006: Standup comedians now assure us from the pages of the Christian Science Monitor, that global warming is a non-issue. Praise the Lord! Of course, if I want to read the latest about global warming, I eagerly go to the Monitor, which published landmarks articles on the subject such as, "Do Trees Share the Blame for Global Warming?" and this contradictory report from 2004 entitled, "An Arctic Alert on global Warming."
Maybe, like Pat Robertson, the good folks at the conflicted CSM think that they can just pray bad weather away.
9) The U.S. Capitol Historical Society
Let it not be said that we don't honor our heroes.
Oh, you don't think I meant the heroes of the Iraq war, did you? No, I'm talking about Tom DeLay-class heroes like Duke Cunningham for waging his own personal war against poverty.
The U.S. Capitol Historical Society must be doing a retrospective of Republican corruption's role in greasing the tracks of self-enrichment because they saw fit to honor Randall "Duke" Cunningham, the 2.4 Million Dollar Man. As The Hill wryly noted, "The disgraced ex-legislator, of course, can't make the July 19 event or any other social gathering in the near future because he's serving a prison term of eight-plus years for a bribery scandal you may have heard about."
Speaking of Tom DeLay, it may not surprise the more jaded of you to know that, in keeping with celebrating GOP corruption, Tom DeLay, who'd more than once called Cunningham a hero, will also be among the 31 honorees. I'm surprised that they're not holding the event at Signatures, Jack Abramoff's restaurant, just to rub it in a little more.
The Hill has the last word on this: "Don't even think about crashing this party. Admission to the reception is by invitation only. Bring your own shackles."
8) Jason Mattera
Albanian pimp/Idea Warrior Jason Mattera says, No press credentials for you!
Early in this feature's history, I'd profiled Jason Mattera, a college neocon who fancies himself to liberal bias as Simon Wiesenthal was to Nazis. Well, Press Nazi Jason, who once puled that conservatives were getting short shrift, is now quite prepared to do the same thing to liberals and their journalists.
Think Progress informed us that Young America's Foundation is hosting the National Conservative Student Conference. That's fine and dandy. What isn't is that Mattera, who as the YAF's media dept. spokesman, saw fit to deny liberal college journalist Julie Siegel press credentials for the event (for which he said she'd have to pay $375 to attend as a civilian). But Mattera couldn't stop at just that. He had to get snarky with her and write, "My advice for you is to watch it on C-SPAN. If you have a problem with that decision, you can complain to the Foundation's media department spokesman. Oh wait...that's...me. :) (smiley emoticon his)"
Later he left absolutely no doubt whatsoever as to his partisan bigotry when he made a similar assertion to CampusProgress.org's editor Ben Adler by saying that The Nation would also have the door slammed in its face.
Here's the upshot: This year and last year, Mattera was given press credentials to attend the liberal Campus Progress student conference. So, bottom line, Mattera and those of his odious, hypocritical ilk have no problem doing recon on liberal conferences but heaven help any liberal journalist who may want to do the same thing during their conferences.
And if this David Horowitz wannabe ever got his press credentials denied, well, we'd be hearing outraged squealing like this as we did in 2003.
Now, let me set the record straight for any neocon trolls reading this: I don't hate oleaginous, preppy worms like Jason Mattera for being conservative (though their arguments and ideologies these days are, at best, suspect). Everyone's entitled to their political beliefs, the operative words being everyone is entitled to their political beliefs. What I and other liberals have a problem with is Mattera's Simon Wiesenthal-esque hunting out of liberal bias on our nation's campuses and deliberately stacking the deck against them. What I also have a problem with is Mattera doing it with a sneer and a cruel smile as if being liberal is on a par with being a child molester.
Jonestown refugees like Mattera have no more interest in a free and fruitful exchange of ideas than Karl Rove has in exposing the people who'd outed Valerie Plame (an example of "real" journalism by a "real member of the press"). And if the only way to show these people that we will not be used as fun fodder and doormats again is to start denying them press credentials, then so be it.
7) Senator Arlen Specter
"You have here a recognition by the president that he does not have a blank check," said Arlen Specter after submitting a bill that, essentially, gives George Bush a retroactive blank check. "Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said the administration supports Specter's bill." Yeah, I'm sure it does, since it grandfathered just about every slimy, illegal, underhanded, paranoid Big Brother trick in George Bush's haversack.
Plus, the bill could codify not only another Watergate but, as John Dean famously said, something "worse than Watergate." Basically, the provisions of the bill include an expansion of FISA powers that would essentially make it a clone of the extra-FISA "program" that Bush had set up in the shadows of Ft. Meade.
Still think that Arlen Specter is the last thing standing between America and a dictatorship, Mr. Cafferty?
One condition of the bill is that George Bush "will" (not "must") submit the terrorist surveillance program to the FISA courts, since he's "committed" to doing that, like he was committed to it from 2002 until now. And even if, by some miracle, Bush sees something that would actually curtail his imperial ambitions, well, that's why God created signing statements.
"The bow on the amnesty bill was my idea, actually..."
6) Rep. Steve King
.oO Should I sue for name-recognition infringement? There can only be one Stephen King scaring the shit out of America. Oo.
This clown must've had some fascinating school science projects back in Iowa.
Imagine watching QVC or an infomercial if it was produced by Beelzebub. Last Tuesday on the floor of the House of Representatives, Congressman Steve King (R-Berlin) created with cardboard boxes an electrified fence of his design that would discourage Mexicans, America's only illegal immigrants, from crossing the border. I don't know what this gruesome quasi-diorama's most attractive feature was for King: The fact that it could be disassembled (In Bushese: That it lies to us) or that the proposed razor wire atop the wall is electrified. But fear not, for compassionate conservatism saved the day when King reassured the House Speaker that the current wouldn't be a lethal charge (except to anyone with a heart condition) and triumphantly finished with, "We do that with livestock all the time."
Why can't we build a wall like that to keep Republicans off Capitol Hill? George Romero did it all the time with zombies.
5) Lame Duck Senator Joe Lieberman
"U" "Uuuuu..." "S." "Sssss.." "(sigh) H." "Aaaaaych..."
During his debate with Ned Lamont on, appropriately, Bush's birthday, Traitor Joe Lieberman uttered some pearls, including this Koolaid fart straight out of Jonestown: "The situation in Iraq is a lot better than it was a year ago."
Well, Joe, this is how well the war is going in Iraq. Here's something that ought to shore up support for your sagging campaign:
The bodies are arriving at the mortuary in Baghdad in such large numbers that the orderlies have run out of places to store them properly...
One woman, Um Hussein, recognised her son - only to be told that overcrowding meant his body had already been taken to Najaf for burial at the cemetery there.
Her remaining three sons were given the plot number so they that could make the journey to dig up the corpse to transfer him to the family's burial plot in the suburbs of Baghdad.
Oliver Poole, the columnist, ended his story with this dead-on assessment: "Though it is the suicide bombings with their mass casualties that gain the most attention it is these individual cases of shootings that are now the primary cause of loss of life in this conflict."
Bottoms up, Joe.
4) Dr. Nicholas Bartha
Is it just me or does Fox "News" seem like a huge drain in which every right wing nut case and/or suicide bomber eventually gets trapped?
Just before deliberately blowing up both himself and the apartment building that his wife was about to sell as per their divorce settlement, Dr. Nicholas Bartha wrote a long, disjointed letter to, you guessed it, Faux News. And Fox, in turn, did what it does best, which is in giving rabid, homicidal assclowns like Bartha their fifteen minutes.
It starts off like a cross between the beginning of X-Men and The Diary of Anne Frank. It was World War Two and the Nazis were killing off Hungarians. He lived in a cavern. Then there was gold mining, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Radio Free Europe, Voice of America... Still with him? Neither am I.
Stay with Bartha, though, it gets better. Toward the end of his 7,419-word autobiographical book report/diary/medical chart, he finally gets around to talking about Hanoi Jane (yes, he actually calls her by her Vietnam-era moniker), Al Franken and his Air America (from which I picked this up. Major, major tip o' the tinfoil hat to Eric Hananoki), George Soros and slinging mud at Cindy Sheehan. With shifting focus and a creative use of pronouns he writes, as he's about to put the match to the gas pipe, that Cindy "disrespects his son's decision to go two times to fight in Iraq where he died trying to save another fighter. You are exploiting him and destroying his values. She is an opportunist trying to be famous on the back of her son."
This is probably the most telling quote from what I fear is all-too-typical of the Bush administration's supporters:
It was to late when I realized this country is not based on majority rule. The argument of diversity and minority rule is a Trojan horse to install a communist society based on income redistribution and creation of rights to fever groups of people against others. It is ridiculous to ask the president to select a Supreme Court candidate with the input of the loosing party. The people, who elected him, would not like it at all. I hope the present Supreme Court candidate who is Harvard educated (very politically correct institution) will make his decisions based on the constitution.
Now, I'm not sure who this new "Supreme Court candidate" is but knowing right wingers as well as I do, I think, just in case, we'd better start looking for Justice John Paul Stevens.
And shame, shame, shame on Faux News for capitalizing on this bad news for ratings. It's the completely insane right wing nutcase doctors who don't blow up buildings with themselves inside that you never read about.
3) Stephen Bradbury
Those Bradburys have a way with speculative fiction, don't they?
During the Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearings of William Haynes, Stephen Bradbury, top banana at the JD's Office of Illegal Counsel, released this astonishing Koolaid burp in Sen. Patrick Leahy's face:
"The President is always right."
Uh huh. And here are some other things about which President Stengel has been absolutely infallible:
"You never know what your history is going to be like until long after you're gone." --George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., May 5, 2006
"I was not pleased that Hamas has refused to announce its desire to destroy Israel." --George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., May 4, 2006
"No question that the enemy has tried to spread sectarian violence. They use violence as a tool to do that." --George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., March 22, 2006
"It's a heck of a place to bring your family." --George W. Bush, on New Orleans, New Orleans, La., Jan. 12, 2006
"I think we are welcomed. But it was not a peaceful welcome." --George W. Bush, defending Vice President Dick Cheney's pre-war assertion that the United States would be welcomed in Iraq as liberators, NBC Nightly News interview, Dec. 12, 2005
"Those who enter the country illegally violate the law." --George W. Bush, Tucson, Ariz., Nov. 28, 2005
"Wow! Brazil is big." --George W. Bush, after being shown a map of Brazil by Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Brasilia, Brazil, Nov. 6, 2005
"So please give cash money to organizations that are directly involved in helping save lives -- save the life who had been affected by Hurricane Katrina." --George W. Bush, Washington D.C., Sept. 6, 2005 (I guess that one life would be Trent Lott's.)
"It's totally wiped out. ... It's devastating, it's got to be doubly devastating on the ground." --George W. Bush, turning to his aides while surveying Hurricane Katrina flood damage from Air Force One, Aug. 31, 2005
"The best place for the facts to be done is by somebody who's spending time investigating it." --George W. Bush, on the probe into how CIA agent Valerie Plame's identity was leaked, Washington D.C., July 18, 2005
"You see, not only did the attacks help accelerate a recession, the attacks reminded us that we are at war." --George W. Bush, on the Sept. 11 attacks, Washington, D.C., June 8, 2005 (And the August 6th PDB didn't?)
"It's in our country's interests to find those who would do harm to us and get them out of harm's way." --George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., April 28, 2005 (Like Osama bin Laden, for instance.)
"But Iraq has -- have got people there that are willing to kill, and they're hard-nosed killers. And we will work with the Iraqis to secure their future." --George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., April 28, 2005
John Hinderaker, thou art vindicated.
The next day, Bradbury claimed that he was merely being facetious when he said that Bush was never wrong.
Which was very efficacious, if true, because we all had a good laugh over that, too.
More Bushisms can be found here.
2) The United States Senate
After this, the day after the India train bombing that killed almost 200 people, I don't want to hear any more shit from Republicans and their flying monkeys about how liberals don't want to defend America from terrorists.
Despite what Dick Cheney said back in 2004 about us strengthening port security, the Republican-dominated Congress saw fit last month to cut funding for it months after the House defeated the Sabo amendment. Suddenly-fiscally responsible Republicans said the cost to secure our ports was "too expensive" at the same time they gave Bush his 1.7 billion for a missile defense system that still doesn't work.
Now, let's examine what our fiscally-responsible government does see fit to spend money to protect...
1) The Dept. of Homeland Security
The One Percent Doctrine apparently applies to tourist traps, as well.
According to Homeland Security, Indiana ranks #1 in terrorist targets.
When is someone finally going to lynch Bill Keller for allowing this terror-aiding data to be published in the NY Times? Why, he's just provided a blue print for al Qaeda to destroy national morale by flying planes into... well, the plains of the Hoosier State, which boasts of 8591 likely targets (over 2900 more than New York State)?
Among the proposed targets in the 46-page report (in .pdf format) are swine producers of more than 30,000 swine, which may perhaps explain why Washington, DC, our nation's Capitol and the place where pork barrel legislation goes to thrive, only has 416 targets: there are only 535 members of Congress. <hr>
Let's ask President George W. Bush what he plans on doing about Israel's militarism in Lebanon:
See you in the funny pages!