All You Need To Know About the Iraq War in a Single Moment in Nature:
Some things are just self-explanatory: "About 10,000 Juneau residents briefly lost power after a bald eagle lugging a deer head crashed into transmission lines."

(Tip o' the rude hat to the blog Potpourri for $500.)

Why Bill O'Reilly Ought To Be Sodomized With a Microphone (Vermont Boycott Edition):
From Bill O'Reilly's Fox "news" program last night, in his "Talking Points" segment (aka "Watch, fuckers, as I lick my own taint"):

"One of the big problems in Vermont is that the media is dishonest. Newspapers in Brattleboro, Bennington, Rutland all said I called for a boycott of Vermont. Those papers know that's not true because I've stated again and again I'm not in favor of a boycott. But they print the lie anyway."

From the January 16, 2006 edition of the same program, when O'Reilly was in full froth over the Vermont judge who didn't give a vicious enough sentence to a child molester for O'Reilly's liking:

"Our billoreilly.com poll question asks if Judge Cashman is not removed from criminal cases, will you boycott Vermont? If Judge Cashman is not removed from criminal cases, will you boycott Vermont? Unfortunately, that's what it might take -- action by the rest of the country to wake the state up."

From later that same night, whilst intoning letters from viewers regarding said Vermont controversy:

"Ellen Murphy, New Fairfield, Connecticut: 'Cashman's ruling was not the fault of the folks in Vermont. The boycott you call for, O'Reilly, would hurt them.'"

O'Reilly responded, "I did not call for a boycott, madam. I put the poll question on a web site so people can decide for themselves."

From the January 23, 2006 of the ongoing saga:

"In Vermont itself, the liberal media has rallied to the defense of the judge. Yesterday the Montpelier newspaper lied outright to its readers, saying I'm leading a boycott of Vermont. That, of course, is false. We have a boycott question on billoreilly.com. That's it."

One year later, well, just a couple of weeks ago, on January 15, 2007, here's what O'Reilly told his audience: "'Talking Points' is considering boycotting Vermont. But if that happens, thousands of good people will get hurt because the state depends on tourism."

He followed this up by questioning a former state senator in this way: "Ms. Wilton, I am considering asking people to boycott the state of Vermont. Not go there, not buy their products. I don't want to do it. You just heard those - you know, every - well not everybody, but people that we spoke to in Vermont -- in southern Vermont, they all knew about this case. They all were horrified. But the fact remains the legislature voted down Jessica's Law. The media continues to cover up for this stuff in Vermont. And the situation is out of control. So boycott or no?"

And then there's this from January 17, 2007: "Well, today, the corrupt Vermont media sprung into action. Again, The Times Argus newspaper said, 'Another year, another national condemnation of Vermont by right-wing cable talk show host Bill O'Reilly...O'Reilly...called for a national boycott of Vermont.' Well, that's a lie. I have not called for a boycott of Vermont, but I am calling for a boycott of The Times Argus, a dishonest enterprise."

Man, Bill O'Reilly would have been awesome as the instigator of a lynch mob back in the day in the South. Standing in a bar, with all the drunk rednecks around him, talking about that black guy who was arrested for whistling at a white woman, you could just see O'Reilly, fingers on his suspenders like he's Stephen Fuckin' Douglas, declaiming, "How many of you boys think we oughta just bust down the door of that jail and drag that nigger out and hang 'im from the big ol' elm tree in the town square? Do you think that'd be a lesson to all the other niggers? Now, now, Jesse, Clyde, calm down, I'm just sayin' that it's somethin' we might wanna consider. What do you men think about lynchin' that nigger who insulted the womanhood of one of our town darlings?" And then, once that mob went charging out of the bar, half of them getting the tar and rope ready, half of them heading down to the county lock-up, O'Reilly could just watch from the window, knowing that he never really said that the man should be lynched. But he'll definitely sit back and enjoy the smell of burnt flesh.

A Poem For Dick Cheney In Honor of His Birthday:
Since today is the vice-decider's big day, the Rude Pundit has put together this little poem, taken from Cheney's interview with Newsweek this week. Oh, and interspersed with excerpts from the press conference about the death of Barbaro.

I'm the Vice President and They're Not

It is an existential conflict.
It is, in fact, about the future
Of civilization on large parts of the globe
It's very important that we recognize
It's a long-term conflict,
And we have to be
Engaged.
There might have been a time
When we could retreat behind our oceans
Feel safe and secure and not worry.
That day passed on 9/11.

This happened very quickly in the last
Couple of days and probably the thing that
Pushed us over the top ... last night
For the first time ever,
He really struggled with what he was doing.
He did not feel comfortable enough to lie down.
He was not comfortable standing up.
We had him in and out
Of the sling several times trying to get him down
And up.

And now, when we face the very real prospect
That attacks can be mounted against the United
States from various parts of the globe,
including Europe and where the possibility exists
That the terrorists could next time have
Far deadlier weapons than anything they have used
To date, this is a very serious problem. And the United
States cannot afford not to prevail.

I really did not think it appropriate to
Continue with the treatment because
The probable outcome was just so poor
And he would have to go through an unmanageable
Amount of discomfort.
He developed fairly severe laminitis
In both front feet. It left him with not
A good leg to stand on, and that was just
Not going to work out in the long run.

A decision by the United
States to withdraw from Iraq
I think would have a direct negative
Impact on the efforts of all of those other folks.

I would probably not make the same mistakes.
I am sure I made mistakes.
Everyone makes mistakes.
There are things that you could have done
Slightly better.

I think there's no question
But that the struggle has gone on longer
Than we anticipated.

This type of situation is like a deck of cards.
Sometimes if things are that tenuous,
If one thing starts to go
You have a lot of other parts that start to go on you
As well.

The comments I made
Were based
On the best
Information we had.

Who Gives a Fuck What the "Enemy" Feels?:
Has anyone come up with a compelling, legitimate reason as to why terrorists, insurgents, and vaguely-defined enemies should dictate how the United States acts and reacts in the Iraq War? 'Cause, like, now that the word "embolden" has become such a big goddamn part of the talking point vocabulary of war hawks and Lieber-men, it sure seems like we're all supposed to worry what the "enemy" will feel if we don't act the way they think we should act. Among those engaging in Iraqi Surge III: The Anti-Emboldening are President Bush (in the State of the Union), Defense Secretary Robert Gates, and the aforementioned Man of Lieber, who told Chris Wallace on Fox "news" that a non-binding Senate Resolution slapping the President with a wet noodle over the escalation of the war would "encourage the enemy."

The Bush administration has effectively reduced America's status to that of the emotional turmoil of a pathetic middle-aged man trying to keep his Latino boy toy lover happy: "Oh, fuck, Juanito, don't act like that, I'll buy you the plasma screen TV you want; oh, c'mon, baby, don't sulk, I'll be the bottom, see? See my asshole? All for you. Oh, please, I'll give up my retirement fund so you can get that sex change." Goddamn, you see such a man and you wanna do him a favor by running over him with your car and then backing up to make sure you finished the job. You know that his last words will be an exultant "Thanks" with his final breath. Because pathetic middle-ager hasn't learned, in all his sad, meaningless life, that if you worry so much about what some piece of ass is thinking, you have given up your self, man, and you're on the long road of delusion.

Should it be the policy of the U.S. to check with the enemy to make sure they're cool with what we're doing? 'Cause, while the Rude Pundit ain't one of your Heritage/AEI-approved "experts" in geopolitical paradigms, it sure seems like if you're so worried that you're gonna give the enemy a reacharound with your exercise of your so-called democratic institutions, you probably oughta be more worried about your own country than about the happy, dancing enemy.

The Rude Pundit's trying to get his head around this argument, as he has every time the notion is mentioned that actions by America that aren't just "make 'em bleed more" strategies make Osama bin Laden sleep better. Because, like, as Joe Biden and Sam Brownback (for fuck's sake) pointed out this weekend, what the fuck does "emboldened" look like if it doesn't look like what's going on now in Iraq?

For Such Tribute Ought To Be Noted:
Himself at the blog Only In America has posted a Rude Pundit quiz. No, really.

It's a little bit o' fun and a whole lot o' creepy. Like having sex with your first grade teacher when you're in your twenties.

Fucked New Orleans (This Series Will Never End):
Here's what it's like to look at one day's edition of the New Orleans Times-Picayune:

Take a look at today's stories:
This is the state of the firehouses in the city, post-Katrina: "[F]irefighters and the head of their union say New Orleans Fire Department houses are understaffed, uninhabitable messes with mice infestations, sewage backups, exposed wiring and more."

This is the state of hiring new schoolteachers: "Despite their initial goal to hire only certified teachers, just 67 percent of those teaching in 18 Recovery District schools have earned state certification, a statistic district officials concede speaks to a larger crisis in securing enough qualified teachers."

This is what an editorial said about housing in the region: "If FEMA had cut off housing assistance for hurricane victims at the end of February, as planned, many people would have faced a tough predicament: few homeowners have received Road Home grants, rental units are scarce and even people with the means to rebuild are scrambling to get contractors." The deadline has been extended to August 31.

The Saints lost on Sunday, one game shy of the Super Bowl. On Tuesday, President Bush gave New Orleans - or Katrina relief in general - zero words in his State of the Union address. Many places far, far away were more important to the state of the United States than New Orleans. Apparently, even the woman who makes videos of puppet dragons dancing for babies is more important than New Orleans.

New Orleans is fucked, yes, we must sigh and admit it to ourselves, like people with cancer must tell themselves that their bodies have turned on them. Like Republicans need to admit that the Bush presidency is a failure that will end up wrecking their party. It is going to be fucked for years to come, more than likely forever.

The Rude Pundit wonders what would have happened if it had been San Francisco that had been smited a year and a half ago. Or some other comparably-sized city. If it had been a state with a Republican governor (especially one up for re-election). All those possibilities that might have un-fucked New Orleans. Instead, the ash heap of public consciousness awaits it, except for moments of feeling good when, say, Brad and Angelina buy a house there. It's like tossing coins in the paper coffee cup of that homeless guy you see every day. You feel great about yourself as you move on with your morning. But he still is out there in the cold, just wanting enough for a bottle or a vial so he can forget, too.

Dick Cheney: A Creepy Metaphor Machine:
Oh, what metaphors abound for Dick Cheney's interview with Wolf "Behold the Resplendent Glory of My Silvery Stubble" Blitzer on CNN's Situation Room yesterday. Yes, the slithering tentacles of evil that manipulate the willing puppet body of the Vice President hunched him into a seat to answer questions without spewing viscous black oil from his dessicated entrails or unhinging his jaw to swallow whole the CNN host to slowly digest later in the quiet of his rotting corpse-filled underworld sanctuary. With a nice single malt and cigar.

For instance, we could compare Cheney's initial appearance and reactions to the surfacing of that frilled shark in Japan this week. Other than behind its heaving gills (for, indeed, it was dying, nay, rotting from within), the fishy beast, which has been around since prehistoric times, has no real color, existing in the netherest of nether regions in the deep ocean. Shifting eel-like in his seat, Cheney rasped to Blitzer, "The fact of the matter is, we can do more than one thing at a time and we have. We've been very successful with going after al Qaeda. They're still out there, they're still a formidable force. But they're not nearly as formidable as they once were, in terms of numbers and so forth...We have successfully defended the country for over five years against any further attack. They've tried, we know, repeatedly -- the president talked about it last night in his speech." The shark, as we know, died soon after it was captured. Cheney, though, kept going in the interview, so let's try another metaphor. Another shark metaphor.

In Australia, diver Eric Nerhus was being eaten head first by a great white shark. Imagine that for a moment - your head, shoulders, upper torso being swallowed as the shark tries to engorge the rest of you, the blinking dark and light of the mouth opening and closing, trying to saw you in bits, or at least in half for easier consumption. Yes, you know if you're diving off the coast of Australia, you're gonna get in the water with sharks. Nerhus used his only free arm (for the other one was in the shark) and jabbed the eye of the great white, which, sharks notoriously being pussies about their eyes, opened its mouth, giving him time to swim away.

So it was that Blitzer, in Cheney's office, tried to confront the Vice President, repeatedly. Attempting to pin down Cheney on the administration's role in destabilizing Iraq and plunging the region into its inevitable conflagration, Blitzer asked, "How much responsibility do you have, though -- you and the administration -- for this potential scenario?" Trying to hold Dick Cheney, though, is like trying to hold down a slug. Blitzer, wanting to avoid being swallowed whole, said that Saddam Hussein had been contained. Cheney, chewing hard, gurgled, "He was not being contained. He was not being contained, Wolf. Wolf, the entire sanctions regime had been undermined by Saddam Hussein," before dismissing Blitzer with "You can go back and argue the whole thing all over again, Wolf, but what we did in Iraq in taking down Saddam Hussein was exactly the right thing to do." Blitzer fought like a son of a bitch, eventually extricating himself and getting out of the water, because, as those who swim with man-eating fish beasts know, the shark always comes back to where the blood is. Or it just swims off, knowing it'll eat again soon.

Cheney stuck a shiv into Blitzer, repeatedly, if we think about the bearded one as our proto-citizen questioning the powerful. He questioned Blitzer's objectivity, he said that if Americans "don't have the stomach for the fight. That's the biggest threat," he dismissed half of America by saying that the reason Hillary Clinton wouldn't be a good President is "Because she's a Democrat," he told Congress it can go fuck itself, and, when Blitzer attempted to engage Cheney on the wackoid religious right's reaction to his muff-diver daughter's pregnancy, he became the outraged father, saying, "You're out of line with that question." By that point, though, any attempt to appear human, beyond his fleshy form, was long past worthless.

It was a disturbing twenty-minutes, filled with an unending stream of revulsion and disgust, not unlike catching your roommate masturbating to pornographic images of severe burn victims. And, at the end, we learned that Dick Cheney's contempt for Congress, the American people, and the Constitution is boundless, like the roots of depravity that tie him to the earth and feed his barely beating "heart."

Note: The Rude Pundit is thinking about another metaphor. See, in the film Pan's Labyrinth, there's a being that's called (in the credits) the Pale Man. (Suppose this oughta say "Spoiler Alert," although if you've seen a damn preview, you've seen the dude.) Bald with saggy skin, blind except for eyes that rest on a plate in front of him, the Pale Man sits still and silent at the head of a table that holds a sumptuous banquet. Our adolescent heroine, Ofelia, has been warned not to eat anything. She looks up at paintings in the large chamber and sees that the Pale Man is portrayed as skewering and eating children, as clear a warning as anything can be. Ofelia is too tempted though, and she downs two grapes. This awakens the Pale Man, who inserts the eyes into his hands and he rises, dragging his thin legs and limping towards Ofelia, who doesn't notice the Pale Man coming towards her. Who is Ofelia? Blitzer? All of us? Either way, a pissed-off Cheney thinking someone's taking his shit is not to be fucked with.

Note II: Any time she wants, the Rude Pundit will throw down with Maureen Dowd over who comes up with the coolest pop culture references to describe the political landscape. C'mon, MoDo, let's boogie.

The State of the Union Is "Why Should I Fuckin' Care?":
Imagine, if you will, and, indeed, why not, that last night, before the gathered members of Congress and invited guests and on television before the nation - nay, the world - a six-foot tall steaming pile of shit ascended to the podium and, a six-foot tall steaming pile of shit being the President of the United States, delivered the constitutionally-mandated report on the State of the Union. And let us imagine that this six-foot tall steaming pile of shit addressed a room with nearly half of its seats filled with smaller steaming piles of shit (and maybe a coprophagist or two). Yes, most of the humans and demi-humans gathered across the stinking aisle from the piles of shit would hold their noses for the good of the nation, piles of shit and all.

Now imagine within his speech, the six-foot tall stinking pile of shit, who is, after all, the President, told everyone that it was time to stop smelling like shit. That everyone is tired of the shit odor that's been coming out of the Congress for the last five years or so. The Democrats might smell their pits or pants, but surely one couldn't help but notice that the stench of shit was emanating from those who used to have more piles of shit as part of their manure pile. Odd, though, indeed, that a six-foot tall pile of shit would tell other piles of shit to stop stinking.

The six-foot tall stinking pile of shit could continue that it's important to cut down on methane fumes. That the nation had become too dependent on methane fumes and that it's time to seek other ways of producing gassiness. Again, the Democrats might have thought, sure, they burp and fart, but, gazing again over the brownish, greenish, bluish (depending on the meds) shit piles on the other side of the chamber, surely one couldn't help but think that fresh shit perhaps produces a bit more.

Maybe the six-foot tall stinking pile of shit would implore the nation to work together, that we should ignore the fact that half the chamber is filled with shit, that only by working, hand in turd, could America be great. Perhaps, though, most people watching would think that they recently voted to scrape some of the shit off their shoes, that they wanted the people to take back over from the pieces of shit that had led them down the toilet.

And onward and downward President Bush's speech went, with all the enthusiasm of a man asked to dangle his balls over a bear trap. Talking about Iraq as a lover or hunting buddy, Bush said, "[I]t would not be like us to leave our promises unkept, our friends abandoned." See, most everyone who supported the war originally (fools though they were) thought they were just having a summer fling, not getting married. Bush was unrelenting, though, in his whining like a little bitch about wanting to play with his soldier boy toys: "Our country is pursuing a new strategy in Iraq, and I ask you to give it a chance to work." Oh, and in case you thought anything was on the short term, Bush assured us that the war, however big you wanna define it, is "a generational struggle that will continue long after you and I have turned our duties over to others."

So Bush's biggest promise in the speech was 20 more years, at least, of unending war? Who wants to sign up?

Goddamn, it was pathetic, seeing a man who everyone except the most deluded and sad in that chamber knows they cannot take at his word, a man who will lie and tell you his lies are truth, a man who, if he doesn't get his way legally, will simply assert that he is allowed to make the law conform to him. Why listen? Why bother? He certainly didn't fuckin' care enough to even behave like he gives a rat's ass about the majority: after giving Nancy Pelosi a little clitoral tickle, he congratulated the "Democrat majority," using the Republican pejorative adjective for the party. Yeah, what we got to hear were the barely coherent ramblings of a defeated cellar snake, curling in the dank corner, daring anyone to approach so it could strike out with its last breaths.

If it had been a six-foot tall steaming pile of shit in the Capital last night, at least we could have hosed down the podium after it was done, washing the remnants in the clogged sewers of our nation's center of power. (Hell, a six-foot tall steaming pile of shit might have at least mentioned Katrina recovery efforts.)

In Brief: The Pathetic Bleatings of a Dead Ideology (Or Why Frank Gaffney Remains a Wad of Fuck):
Really, the saddest thing the Rude Pundit's read lately from the right might just be Frank Gaffney's column this week on WhatPresidentBushShouldSayInHisStateOfTheUnionSpeech. You might know Gaffney as that vaguely familiar bald, spitty bearded guy sometimes yelling on your CNNMSNBCFox. He was an Assistant Secretary of something or other under Reagan, and he makes money by telling everyone that the world is gonna end.

Gaffney sees President Bush as facing powerful enemies who want to derail the Great and Mighty War in Iraq. So Gaffney says that Bush must use "the occasion to speak unvarnished truth to power," that he must "use it as a national 'trip to the woodshed,' an opportunity – a perhaps as a practical matter, his last on such a stage – to call to account the small-minded politicians who are telling the American people what they want to hear about the war we are in, rather than the unpleasant facts. In the process, they are putting the Nation on a course that invites the greatest possible peril. They must be held, as the President himself put it last week, 'responsible' for advancing courses of action doomed to fail in Iraq and far beyond."

See, Gaffney believes, like Bush, that we're in a global war and that we must fight as if we are. He wants Bush to say, "There will be far more blood on our hands if we try to wash them of this affair, either by simply 'redeploying' to someplace where we hope we might yet be welcome, or by surrendering Iraq to the Iranians via so-called 'regional negotiations.' Worse yet, such further bloodshed will not be confined to Iraq. Our collapse in that distant place will greatly add to our own future peril from enemies abroad and at home determined not only to defeat us over there, but here, as well."

Gaffney is a neocon's neocon, clinging to the last bits of flotsam in the wreckage of a sunken ship as others have simply given up and let the sharks have their way. He is the kind of warmonger who will not be satisfied until the dead can be stacked like cord wood to warm the fires for his cold toes. And he will slobber away, deifying those, like him, who won't be satisfied until the nation is shattered into bits by the madness he has created, who will cling to his mad notions like a rabid pit bull to his favorite squeaky toy, threatening to rip apart anyone who dares try to take it away.

It's sad, really, in a kind of "oh-Barbaro's-got-a-broken-leg" way. But, hey, look for Gaffney on your CNNMSNBCFox spouting off about how strong and resolved Bush was, how he dared his powerful enemies (who, c'mon, have just had power for a month now) to knock that stick off his shoulder, how mighty Caesar is, how we are not worthy to touch Caesar's robes.

Everything Is Broken, Part 1:
Oh, yeah, President Bush and the remaining mongers of war in Washington are getting their surge in Iraq. Except, you know, it's against us. Twenty-five Americans dead on Saturday, two on Sunday. A trifecta of bombings today, with Iraqi deaths from them approaching a c-note. And insane wads of fuck keep trying to justify their own existence in the world, like Bill "A Surge of Troops Gives Me a Surge in My Pants" Kristol over on Fox "news" yesterday, who said of Democrats opposed to the escalation,"It’s so irresponsible that they can’t be quiet for six or nine months and say the president has made a decision, we’re not going to change that decision, we’re not going to cut off funds and insist on the troops coming back, so let’s give it a chance to work. You really wonder, do they want it to work or not?"

In other words, it sucks when your well-trained little bitch decides it's time to nibble at the leather leash that's dug into her neck. Juan Williams (who has been looking for some time as if he's about ready to go bugfuck insane on Fox "news" Sunday's roundtable discussion, and it's been fun trying to figure out the moment when he'll actually rip off Britt Hume's head and beat Kristol to death with it before trying to shove Hume's blood-spewing corpse up Mort Kondracke's ass. A gore-covered Mara Liasson will run, shrieking, back to the gentle arms of NPR.) took the other neocon trying to live up to his father's reputation over his knee and spanked, "There’s something going on here you might pay attention to as opposed to just the politics of, if you don’t support this president, you don’t really want us to win."

And the urge to change the story is just darling: like whether Obama's pecs, Clinton's tits, or Richardson's man-boobs are hotter; like the bizarro way that Bush used his Saturday address to preview his State of the Union-fresh proposal on health care "reform," which seems to be to punish you for actually having health insurance. Here's some advice for Bush on that: Dude, seriously, unless you wanna actually cover everyone, shut the fuck up. It's just such embarrassingly transparent pandering that it's beneath you (which means it's lower than a mole's dick).

We are living in a time of grotesque disproportion, a time when everything must be measured relative to the one overwhelming thing that, for lack of a better word, occupies our national conscience. And because Iraq has forced us to view everything through its lens, we may only care about other things through shoving that out of the way for a moment or two, but we know it's there. Whatever else Bush talks about tomorrow night in his grand and glorious speech on the nation, it will hang around him like Hussein's noose. It ain't goin' away. It has shattered us. And everything is broken.

(Tip of the rude hat to Neil for the Kristol bit.)

Oh, Irony, Thy Name Is "Bush":
Just a quickie here before the Rude Pundit leaves the clean air, clean water, clean streets, Cuban cigars, polite homeless people, and the ersatz Margaret Trudeau of Calgary:

Do you think the White House even gives a shit that it's beyond ironic and somewhere down the short road to demented to declare Sunday "National Sanctity of Human Life Day," that yearly tradition that celebrates fetuses in all their gooey glory? Do you think that they even recognize that, if you unilaterally start a war and refuse to end that war even as you cause death, destruction, and misery of amazing proportions to pregnant and non-enfetused women, you don't get to say that you declare a day that is "a reminder that we must value human life in all forms, not just those considered healthy, wanted, or convenient"? That if you advocate torture and degradation of non-enwombed humans you simply should have the self-respect and self-awareness not to proclaim, "Together, we can work toward a day when the dignity and humanity of every person is respected"?

Nah. Instead, the fools and tools of the religious right will cream themselves madly, like Michael W. Smith just called out the name of their town in a concert, at the idea that Bush is tossin' a little love their way.

Shhhh...Don't Wake the Canuck:
The Rude Pundit will be posting late today because he's pretty sure he's gonna have to order room service (or at least some Gatorade) for the young Margaret Trudeau lookalike sleeping in his hotel bed here in Calgary. Apparently, Canadians have this fuck position called the Caribou, something involving two horns and a ridiculously wet nose. Suffice to say, you have to experience it to fully understand it. Ay?

Why Glenn Beck Needs To Be Repeatedly Cock-Punched:
Conservative pundits come in various shades and stripe of the styles of serial killers. For instance, Bill O'Reilly is like Charles Manson, rabid, frothing, dancing with entrails and commanding his cultish minions to destroy on his order, with his Squeaky Fromme, Michelle Malkin, ready to carry on his mission. Or Ann Coulter is like Aileen Wuornos, using her sexuality to lure in viewers and readers before gunning them down. Glenn Beck, radio talk show guy and host of his CNN Headline News (or "CNN, Jr.") program, is really more of your John Wayne Gacy-type, because, like that child-killing clown, he smiles and laughs as he loathes and hates and spits and desires death and destruction to satisfy what he believes are his perfectly rational motives. In other words, the scariest insane people are the ones who could walk among us and even act like our friends before they gut us.

There's myriad reasons to despise Beck. He's a ratings whore of insatiable appetities, like a buck-a-blow tranny hooker who gives freebies because she just loves the taste of man chowder. When he was a DJ in Florida, doing things like the "Schlub Club," where listeners could call into his show and pretend to believe outrageous things, Beck has always had the air of fraud and loser, trying so goddamn hard to out-nutzoid others on the right of the radio dial. He made a big fuckin' deal about changing his mind on the Terri Schiavo death watch, from not really giving a shit to "thinking" about it and embracing the "save this lifeless fleshbag" movement, even broadcasting from "near" Schiavo's hospital. He tried to associate loser Jose Padilla, the dirty bomber who wasn't, with the Oklahoma City federal building bombing because Padilla, to Beck's warped mind, looked like the drawing of the alleged third suspect in that crime. How one goes from being a Latino associated with white supremacist militias to being an al-Qaeda bomber was a logical leap that Beck was unwilling to explain.

Mostly, though, it's just Beck in general that is deserving of repeated cock punchings. On his show yesterday, after the general insanity of his rants against those who believe global warming is real, after asking the bizarre question of "[D]o you have any idea what the name of the CIA director is right now?", which Beck believes no one can answer (Michael Hayden) because "there hasn`t been a terrorist attack in about five years," and more nonsense, Beck went into some weirdo "what-the-fuck-is-he-saying" tear about the "Girls Gone Wild" videos and commercials. From what the Rude Pundit could gather, Beck doesn't like them, but, he said, as he smiled and spun his eyes, "I don't want you to make these films, but you have a right to make these films. I don't want you to air those commercials, but you have a right to do it. You know what? This is the debate we should be having in this country."

Beck had on some tool from the Tennessee State Senate who wants to ban the commercials from broadcast, with Beck looking like he got into the nitrous oxide as he spouted shit about "introducing shame" back into American society and then, when he discovered the guest was a Democrat, said, "I'm sorry. I thought you were Republican. Now I understand why you want government to get involved. I apologize. I couldn't understand you. Now I do." Yep, the guy who wanted the government to keep feeding Terri Schiavo can't understand why some tight-assed conservative would want to get rid of the blurry-titted ads.

Of course, during the entire segment, the screen was split. In between smaller images of Beck saying, "The college girls on South Padre Island, do you ever think they're somebody's daughter?" and tight-ass saying that it's obscenity, there was a larger image of video clips of girls going wild.

And, thus, his man whoring done for the day, Glenn Beck could go to sleep, sticky, dreaming of being the meat in a Joseph Smith and Brigham Young sandwich, still smiling, confident that no one will dig under his house.

Still in Canada: The Rude Pundit's new show, The Road to Rude, has conquered the fine city of Calgary, with full houses of audiences getting their rude on. Although he has yet to sample the wondrous Canadian women, he has had steak. And it was good. He will return to the warmer, yet somehow chillier, climes of the United States tomorrow.

Why Rush Limbaugh Ought To Be Force-Fed His Own Liposuctioned Fat (Obama Edition):
Rush Limbaugh, a man who loves to spread barbecue sauce all over his oxycontin-shriveled, Viagra'd-semi-hard cock and balls and tell Dominican hookers to treat his meat like a "shredded pork sandwich," attacked Illinois Senator Barack Obama yesterday for two reasons. One is pure and utter let's-send-the-short-bus nonsense: that Obama is "speaking in clichés" when he says things, as he did in his announcement of an exploratory committee on running for President, like, "Politics has become so bitter and partisan, so gummed up by money and influence." Rush Limbaugh deriding someone for speaking in cliches is not unlike a child molester accusing a child kidnapper of not molesting enough.

But then, in his typical, mindboggling, fuck-how-am-I-gonna-fill-three-hours-today way, Limbaugh makes a huge deal about Obama's support of the Chicago Bears in the playoffs. Here's his rant in full since it'll be off his transcript page any minute now:

"One more thing about Barack Obama here. He says the New Orleans football season is all but over. I don't know if he realizes how insensitive his comment here, that the Saints are going nowhere in the playoffs against his Chicago Bears really is. This is a man who wants to be president. He's no longer an alderman, a state senator, or a United States senator from Illinois. He's a citizen of the world, and as such, you have to understand in his position what the United States Saints mean! They're not just the New Orleans Saints. As Gregg Easterbrook calls them, they are 'the United States Saints,' and they are playing not for championships, they are not playing for personal reward, they are playing to save and rebuild a city, not only infrastructurally, but in terms of the self-esteem.

"For Barack Obama, a -- well, he's a half minority, to come out there and not identify with and bond with the suffering victims still scattered all over the fruited plain as a result of the unfair attack by Hurricane Katrina, orchestrated by Bush, Cheney, Halliburton and FEMA; for him to callously just disbarred the Saints, knowing full well what they represent to the Democrat Party because of their ties to New Orleans and Katrina, shows an unsophisticated lack of understanding of just what his responsibility is as a Democrat presidential candidate. He said it. 'New Orleans football is all but over.' He said it. '"The Bears are going to the Super Bowl," a gleeful Obama told reporters Monday outside a church in suburban Chicago. He said, "I'm happy for New Orleans and I think it's a wonderful story for their city, but this fairy tale ends when they come to Chicago."'

"A-ha! It's a fairy tale as far as he's concerned. That means it's not even real. The Saints are not real; what they're playing for is not real! I am stunned. If Barack were really Barack Obama, do you know what Barack Obama would have done? You people think I'm kidding out there. Barack Obama would have come out for the Saints. I know you think it's just a football playoff game and he's gotta show favoritism because his home team is the Chicago Bears and so forth, but he's seeking the leadership of the free world, and Katrina and the Saints and New Orleans are a Democrat cause. But more than that, identifying with suffering and misery, starvation, thirst-ation, death, that's what the Democratic Party is all about! For him to just basically say to you people in New Orleans and your football people (raspberry) and to gleefully predict your demise, shows a parochialism on the part of this man that is somewhat curious to me, given the lofty heights and the wide horizons that he seeks.

"A true liberal Democrat here, an understanding liberal Democrat, even though he's from Illinois, would pick the Saints while saying great things about the Bears, while hoping it's their turn next time, say, 'It's really hard to pick a team here,' but he 'understands how the country can come together, with the Saints winning the Super Bowl, and pulling New Orleans out of the muck and showing what can happen when people hang together and work together and put aside their differences. They can come together and win the Super Bowl -- out of the ruins of Hurricane Katrina.'"

Oh, sweet fuckin' mercies, where to start here. Howzabout this: a) It's fuckin' sports. Obama's support of, say, you know, actual policies and money to help New Orleans and the Gulf Coast is a bit more important than rooting for one team of rich guys over another team of rich guys. b) Even if New Orleans wins the Super Bowl, that ain't gonna get the levees built stronger, houses rebuilt, crime reduced, or any other goddamn thing that might actually bring New Orleans "out of the ruins of Hurricane Katrina." c) You're allowed to root for your home team. d) It's more than a little racist to suggest that because Obama is a "half-minority" that he should root for the team that one group of black people is rooting for over a team that, you know, another group of black people is rooting for. e) Rush Limbaugh talking about what a "true liberal Democrat" is not unlike a hyena telling a gazelle where to lay down for a nap.

George Bush Has No Soul:
When you watch the absolutely bone-chilling 60 Minutes interview with President George Bush, there is only one conclusion you can come to: the man has no soul. No, it's not that he sold his soul to the devil (the children of the wealthy can laugh when Beelzebub shows up at their doorways). It's that he was actually lives without a soul, without anything that would denote his humanity more than flesh. Things like that happen sometimes in this crazy universe. Probably it was the result of dry, desperate sperm from H.W. heaving and wheezing its way up Bar's desert-like fallopian tubes to her shrunken, bitter egg. Or, if he was born with it, it more than likely said, "Oh, fuck, I'm so outta here" after a toddler W. killed his first baby bird.

For what person that actually feels things for human beings can say some of the shit Bush tried to con Scott Pelley with. Things like, "Our economy's good and people are, you know, helping their neighbors. And so I'm not saying that the danger the country felt after September 11th has slipped." You see that? It's a cuddle, then a slap. (It's not to mention the stupid factor of people "helping their neighbors," like the United States is one happy goddamned block in Mayberry.) Things like the much-quoted, "I think the Iraqi people owe the American people a huge debt of gratitude, and I believe most Iraqis express that," which makes one wonder if he still thinks this is like the liberation of Paris, 'cause the Rude Pundit's pretty fuckin' sure that the French women would not have been throwin' their perfumed pussies at American troops if the Nazi collaborators were blowin' shit up every day. Things like, "Everybody was wrong on weapons of mass destruction," a lie that Bush used to answer a question on whether or not the administration lied. Things like, in response to Pelley's question about whether or not Iranians supplying the insurgency is an act of war, "I'm not a lawyer. So act of war is kind of a . . . I'm not exactly sure how you define that," when he had earlier spent part of the interview madly emphasizing his Commander-in-Chief/decider status when it comes to anything to do with the war. Toss in his insistence that we should only worry about the now "rather than debating the past," and you've got insight into a man without a soul to worry his little heart.

Most disturbing was Bush's constant refrain that everything is now up to the Iraqi people and their corrupt, vengeful, string-wrestling puppet government that can't even hang a man right. What is it with conservatives that they seem to believe that it only takes a short time for people whose lives they have fucked up to improve their lot. It's like the conservative attitude towards civil rights and affirmative action: sorry, black people, that we bought and sold you, broke up your families, suppressed you, lynched you, and generally made you just above dogs but just below mules in our nation for so long - but, hey, you're equal now because we say you are. If you bomb the living fuck out of a country, wreck its infrastructure and its government, and allow forces of destruction to be unleashed almost without check, then maybe you shouldn't be surprised if it takes a little while for that country to get back on its feet. Or to figure out where its feet are.

Unless you don't have a soul. Then you can just smarmily smirk your way through everyone else's pain and misery, without a worry about conscience or consequences or damnation for you or anyone else.

In Calgary:
And they won't stop saying "Ay?" at the end of every goddamn sentence. Here to perform the new show, The Road to Rude, at the High Performance Rodeo. More later on why George Bush has no soul.

Why Martin Luther King Would Fuck Bush's Shit Up (2007 Edition):
Because of this, from the New York Times, December 2, 1965, on the House Un-American Activities Committee: "If they continue to investigate the civil rights movement, it can mobilize the kind of opposition to the committee which can well mean the end of it."

And because of this, from a March 1967 interview with that paper, on the Vietnam War: "First, I feel this war is playing havoc with our domestic destinies. As long as the war in Vietnam goes on, the more difficult it will be to implement the programs that will deal with the economic and social programs that Negro people confront in our country and poor people generally.

"So in a real sense, the Great Society has been shot down on the battlefields of Vietnam...

"There is another reason why I feel compelled at this time to take a stand against the war and that is that the constant escalation of the war in Vietnam can lead to a grand war with China and to a kind of full world war that could mean the annihilation of the human race...

"We are the greatest military power and we don't need to prove our military power. I think we are superbly well-placed, equipped to take the initiative in this and create the atmosphere for negotiations by ceasing bombings and some of the other things we are doing. Now if our nation insists on escalating the war and if we don't see any changes, it may be necessary to engage in civil disobedience to further arouse the conscience of the nation and make it clear we feel this is hurting our country.

"And I might say this is another basic reason why I am involved and concerned. It is because I love America. I am not engaged in a hate America campaign. I would hope that the people of this country standing up against the war are standing up against it because they love America and because they want to see our great nation really stand up as the moral example of the world.

"The fact is we have alienated ourselves from so much of the world and have become morally and politically isolated as the result of our involvement in the war in Vietnam."

Martin Luther King would fuck Bush's shit up because he reverses Bush's notion of what the moral equation is in war. Morality avoiding war. Morality is ending war. Moral authority can never be gained by the gun or the bomb or the electric shock. And because he knew that truly loving your nation means being able to say it is wrong.

Joe Lieberman Is a Little Bitch (Brief Version):
Annoying as it is, it's not surprising that Senator Joseph Lieberman is supporting the President's escalation of the Iraq war with all the breathless enthusiasm of a Kansas drag queen on her first visit to Fire Island. We knew that going in: Lieberman wants to kill more Americans because of his do or die support for...well, we're not supposed to say why because it offends delicate sensibilities, but, shhh, let's just whisper that the reason rhymes with "Jizzreal." Still and all, on Iraq, it's simply the same old sigh of "oh, look, Lieberman's blowin' the President while gettin' a reacharound from McCain."

Back in April 2006, Lieberman was all about the outrage and investigatory power of his minority position on the Homeland Security committee, issuing his mighty report of governmental fucktardery in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. And Lieberman acted like a big tough Democrat for a moment in accusing the White House of stonewalling on documents, of silencing witnesses, and of general suppression of information that might, you know, demonstrate how incompetent these incompetent boobs really are.

Now Lieberman's in the proverbial fuckin' catbird seat, chair of the committee, with a whole bunch of slavering Democrats and liberated Republicans ready to throw down with the administration, with subpoena power behind him, and what does he do? He acts like a little bitch. Says Newsweek, "Lieberman has decided not to pursue the material, according to Leslie Phillips, the senator’s chief committee spokeswoman. 'The senator now intends to focus his attention on the future security of the American people and other matters and does not expect to revisit the White House’s role in Katrina,' she told Newsweek. "

That's right: the Katrina disaster doesn't even rise to the level of "other matters." Much has been made about how much power Lieberman wields as a potential jumper from one party to the next. But much more needs to be made of his little bitch tendencies - the way he pisses himself whenever he can actually confront the bigger dogs, and not just act tough when he's yipping behind the fence.

A Few Randomly Rude Thoughts About Last Night's Big Speechification:
Just a thing or five about the President's little address to the nation. It doesn't really bear much analysis as a "plan" because it ain't gonna work, it's about the eight-thousandth new strategy that's not really new, and it's just gonna mean that American citizens pay, once again, in blood for the hideous incompetence of our man in Washington. "Come on along, motherfuckers," Bush may as well have said. "The road to the terrible abyss is paved with shit and bone." So, instead, let's have us some fun:

1. Let us say, and why not, that you're an alien, from outer space, and you just came down to Earth in your incredible invisible flying saucer. You're looking for a leader to follow, and you get to see two things: Saddam Hussein on the scaffold and George W. Bush speaking last night. Remember: you are an alien - you have no idea who these human beings are, no idea about gassed Kurds and blown-up Iraqis and Americans. Nobody's crimes or successes or failures even figure into the equation. Just two moments in the lives of two men. (And don't fuckin' say that you can't think that way - if you've gotten this far, you've already gone along with imagining you're a little green man or some such shit.)

There was Hussein, noose around his neck, smiling at his taunting executioners, asking them if they were even men. There was Bush, staring with those dead snake eyes into the camera, speaking in a robotically measured voice, asking Americans to accept more dead and mutilated soldiers for his vision of a way-off future when happy, free Arabs teach the world to sing in perfect harmony.

That's your choice, dear Martian, sweet Venusian, tender tentacle-bellied slobber blob from Andromeda. Who is a leader?

2. The fuckin' funniest moment of the whole goddamned thing was this little section: "Many [in Congress] are concerned that the Iraqis are becoming too dependent on the United States, and therefore, our policy should focus on protecting Iraq's borders and hunting down al Qaeda. Their solution is to scale back America's efforts in Baghdad -- or announce the phased withdrawal of our combat forces. We carefully considered these proposals. And we concluded that to step back now would force a collapse of the Iraqi government, tear the country apart, and result in mass killings on an unimaginable scale."

Now, exactly how carefully does one have to consider a proposal before one concludes that it would "result in mass killings on an unimaginable scale"? That seems like one of those self-evident things, like being told, "We'd like to drop a shitload of bombs on this city." You wouldn't have to think real long and hard to conclude, "Oh, that might blow shit up and slaughter a buncha people."

In other words, Bush gave all alternatives the careful consideration that one might give a toilet before pissing in it.

3. The most bone-rattling moment of the whole thing needs to be watched to be understood. When Bush described the reaction of "radicals" to the election of 2005, he said, "And they responded with outrageous acts of murder aimed at innocent Iraqis. They blew up one of the holiest shrines in Shia Islam -- the Golden Mosque of Samarra." And he sounded like Stephen Hawking without the emotion. It wasn't just that he was remote and detached. It was that he gave it all the emphasis that a late night waitress at a diner might give describing a cheeseburger.

4. Don't believe anyone who says that Bush admitted mistakes. Bush said the word "mistake," but his big fuckin' confession was "Where mistakes have been made, the responsibility rests with me." That ain't an admission. That's actually part of the job description of being "Commander-in-Chief." The couple of strategic reasons "past efforts to secure Baghdad failed" he gave were termed in the vague "there were" sense. See, there's a qualitative difference in the balls of a person who says, as Bush did, "There were not enough Iraqi and American troops to secure neighborhoods that had been cleared of terrorists and insurgents" and the person who says, "I didn't send enough American troops..." One person is trying to throw up a smoke screen. The other person is living up to the idea that the mistake "rests with me."

5. For real fun, watch the White House's video of the speech. In the version that was broadcast, Bush was seen in full face, looking at you like a scared, dirty, nauseous fourth-grade boy being told to read in front of the class the note he was passing to his buddy, a note that contains the phrase "teacher's titties." In the White House's version, the image is from an angle, and between the strangely lightless room to Bush's left and the black bars framing the video, it just looks like the man is being swallowed by darkness.

Lindsey Graham: War Escalation Is About Bush's "Legacy":
So this is gonna be the spin: by escalating the war in Iraq, George W. Bush is finally asserting the "chief" part of "Commander-in-Chief" and taking his war back from the incompetent generals who fucked up the whole thing. That's essentially what the Washington Post says today. Senator Lindsey Graham, a man whose dubious sexuality fills the word "surge" with more repressed electricity than the battery of a jet fighter plane, remorsefully took the President's penis out of his mouth long enough to talk: "'It seems clear to me that the president has taken more positive control of this strategy,' said Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), one of those pushing for more troops. 'He understands that the safety of the nation and his legacy is all on the line here.'"

How are those two things even remotely equal in significance? No, really, in what realms of cynical political gamesmanship can one even compare the "safety of the nation" with the "legacy" of a man? It's like saying, "He understands the severity of the Holocaust and how it hurts when you stub your toe." It ain't comparing apples and oranges. It's comparing apples and dust. Do Republicans actually realize that this is not about their Q rating - it's about blood and ripped and burned flesh? The horrible answer is that yes, they probably do, and they just don't care.

The Rude Pundit doesn't want his goddamn President to give a fuck about his legacy. He doesn't want anyone who supports him to give a fuck about his legacy. According to their Bible and their god, both of which they are so anxious to invoke, vanity, or "pride," is a fucking sin, and before it goeth the fall, motherfuckers.

We're about to send at least 20,000 men and women over for what will be second, third tours of duty. And these ain't active duty military - we're gonna sweep the states of their weekend warriors, some leaving their jobs and families for a second time, and fuck them and their kids over again. The Rude Pundit met an Army Reservist last week whose sunken eyes and jittery manner was almost completely opposite of who he was before he was deployed to Iraq. He talks to people all the time who are scared shitless that they're gonna be called up. "Where's the goddamned emergency?" one of them asked. "This bullshit ain't about any emergency, so what happens when another Katrina comes?"

Bush's legacy is Saddam Hussein's smirk just before the trap door opened. And the dead tyrant's "gaping neck wound" looked like a laugh.

(Note: the Rude Pundit is his secret bunker to rehearse his new show, The Road to Rude, to debut on Tuesday at the High Performance Rodeo in Calgary. So posts will be a bit briefer, unless they're not.)

Just Fucking Read the Link:
The Rude Pundit doesn't usually do the "hey-here's-something-really-good" linky thing. But Gary Kamiya's Salon piece comparing Bush and the war in Iraq to Jacobean revenge plays is one of the best damn pieces he's read in these frantic days leading up to tomorrow's announcement of upping the RPG fodder in Iraq. So click through the ad and read it.

(Note: Thomas Middleton's Revenger's Tragedy, cited by Kamiya, is one of the most fucked-up, intense, insane plays every written.)

America: Aren't We Embarrassed Yet?:
No, seriously, this couldn't get any more embarrassing if Muqtada al-Sadr forced George W. Bush to stand on a table, surrounded by ululating militia men, and strip to "Give Peace a Chance," Bush weeping silent tears as he has to pull off his t-shirt and panties, with Muqtada demanding, to the cheering Shia, that the President bend over and spread his ass cheeks and then stand back up and dance, nude, that cyclist's body shaking to the music, his balls slapping his upper thighs, maybe a transition to something peppy, like "I Will Survive." Oh, how the cell phones would be a-recordin' then.

Tomorrow night, when the Commander-in-Chief reveals his great and mighty, brand spankin' new, shiny plan o' war, with its splendiferous promises of killing more troops (aka "sacrifice"), Bush may as well just show up and burp, fart, smirk, and wave. And scratch his ass as he walks off. Because that's how much of a difference it'll make, except, you know, to the lives of the additional troops. 20,000 is a real big number. Higher than he can count, no doubt.

And now that hideous, depraved fucker Saddam Hussein has been turned into a martyr, his final smile of "I won, George" the last living image of him, damn, Osama bin Laden's gotta be thinkin' about turnin' himself in, wondering how bad America (however much it wants to protest that it was the Iraqis who decided when Saddam would swing) will fuck up his trial and execution, making suicide bombers pop like birds on an ungrounded wire around the world.

Conservatives like to talk about the concept of "shame," when they themselves are shameless. George Bush has turned this superpower into a gigantic laughing stock. And the laughs just keep on coming.

Note: Travel day. Rehearsing new show. Plane awaits. More later. Maybe.

Why Michelle Malkin Ought to Be Caged Like a Rabid Shih-Tzu (Corrections Edition):
Let us say, and why not, that you are friends with a married guy. Call him "Elroy." And let us say that someone in your office, call him "Jamie," tells you that Elroy's wife is fucking around on Elroy. Jamie's actually seen Elroy's wife (and, what the hell, let's give her a name - "Connie") actually blowing some other man in the front seat of her car in the parking garage at his apartment building. Jamie's detailed: he can give you descriptions of the man, of Connie, of how Connie moaned while taking long draws on said cock. Now, let's say you're really close friends with Elroy. So close that you call him on the phone, tell him you wanna meet for lunch; the next day, at some place you know Connie won't go, you drop the bomb on him: Connie's playing mouth music with the skin flute of some other guy.

Now, of course, Elroy's not stupid. He's gonna ask you what evidence you have, although, truth be told, things haven't been great for Connie and Elroy lately. In fact, they haven't really been fucking like they used to. And oral action? Forget about it. You tell Elroy about Jamie, and Elroy says he wants to talk to Jamie himself. He accuses you of listening to a liar. He says it can't possibly be true. Fuck it, you say, call Jamie. Problem is, timing being shit, Jamie's gone on vacation. This sets Elroy off. He says you want to undermine his marriage. He tells you that you've always hated Connie, been jealous of their relationship. All of that may be true, you say, but that doesn't mean that Connie ain't fucking another guy.

After lunch, Elroy becomes obsessed with Jamie. He wonders if Jamie's even real. He can't find the name on the apartment building's mailboxes. He calls your office operator who doesn't have the name at hand. See? Elroy tells others, Connie can't be cheating because he can't find Jamie. His other friends try to help him with this mythical "Jamie," all to no avail. And then Jamie comes back from vacation. And Elroy calls you up to say fine, you weren't lying about Jamie. But he still doesn't believe that Connie is fucking around.

Now, of course, Jamie's presence doesn't make the story true. And, really, Elroy's kind of stuck. Because if he was actually secure about his relationship with Connie, he wouldn't have given a shit about Jamie, and you and he would have had a good laugh at the idea. But all he did was chase after the source, not the real story.

Michelle Malkin and most of Right Blogsylvania went nutzoid at the idea that Captain Jamil Hussein, a source for an AP story about Iraqi Shia pouring gasoline on mosque-departing Sunnis and setting them on fire, was fake. To prove Hussein was not real was to prove that the story was fake. To do that was to discredit all of the AP and its reporting that the war in Iraq is a fucking nightmare. Malkin went further than the rest of the let's-kill-more-Americans-for-our-deranged-visions bloggers, in her most recent "column" (if by "column," you mean, "horrible Invasion of the Body Snatchers-like pointing and screeching"). She compares several right wing manufactured media "scandals," referring to "the Associated Press' Jamil Hussein-gate" as one "that will go down in mainstream history as yet another case of textbook media malpractice." Problem is, of course, that Jamil Hussein exists.

Now Malkin has issued a tiny correction beneath a correction for another much-hyped bullshit story, over whether or not John Kerry was dining alone in Iraq (he wasn't): "As I noted on the 4th, the AP reported that the Ministry of Interior in Iraq has now said a Captain Jamil Hussein does work in the al Khadra police station. I regret the error. But no blogger should apologize for raising legitimate questions about AP's transparency, its reliance on local foreign stringers of dubious origins, and information that sources such as Hussein have provided the AP. I will continue to pursue some of the unresolved issues related to this." Let's just get this straight: the United States went to war based in many ways on its reliance on people of "dubious" motives (anyone need a "Curveball"?). But that's okay. AP puts two sentences in a bigger story about civil war/ethnic cleansing and all of a sudden it's Inquisition time - get out the anal reamer.

The Rude Pundit's not saying whether or not the Sunni burnings occurred. He has no reason to believe they didn't. But the right's obsession with pursuing whether or not a source is real has come back to bite them on the ass. The mainstream media bought into the idea that because Dan Rather's story on Bush's Vietnam-era non-exploits had some forged documents involved that there was no story. Right Blogsylvania got the story, the real story, killed by attacking a source. It's classic lawyer bullshit. If the victim's a hooker, did a rape occur? If the witness is a junkie, did he see a murder?

And now, for Michelle Malkin and the Malkinettes, they have discredited themselves by not pursuing what may be a real story in their war-tainted brains. Although whether or not six Sunnis were set on fire seems to be a minor point in all the shit that's confirmed by multiple and official sources (tortured, tossed bodies; endless kidnappings). Like the entire right-wing attack on the "liberal" media ignores whether or not the "liberal" stories are true.

What this is really about, as Eric Boehlert and others have pointed out, is the gut-twisting denial these jerkholes have contorted themselves into. Even as other conservatives fall in with the vast majority of the nation in saying, "Enough," for Malkin and Right Blogsylvania, the war in Iraq is their raison d'etre. It's their cocktail, their lubricant, their red meat. If they admit its failure, even if they know it's true, then they will have to admit that they wasted their lives (and the lives of untold thousands) on a cause lost from the beginning.

In other words, there's a fuckin' correction that can never be made.

Bush to Europe: You're Just Adorable With Your Belief in International Cooperation:
It doesn't bear saying anymore. In fact, the comment that "George W. Bush is not a serious man" is about as self-evident as saying "Chocolate is yummy" or "A bad blow job is still hotter than a good hand job." But just like you have to have a Dove bar or a hummer that's more licking than sucking to reconfirm what you know, so must we sometimes look at the words of the man in order not to stare blankly at his incompetence, not to revel in his madness and stupidity, not to weep at his cruelty, but just to understand how very much he just doesn't care.

Bush, our goddamned President, was standing at the lectern at the brief press meet welcoming German Chancellor Angela Merkel to the White House yesterday. A reporter said to Bush, "The debate always is how can European powers influence a superpower like the United States? Whether Germany objected Iraq or Tony Blair got along in Iraq, they had not much influence, the pessimists say. Can you give us one example where you changed your mind after talking to a European leader?" It was one of those moments, like asking the man to name a mistake he made, where you got the impression of not simply a deer frozen in the headlights, but of a really retarded buck charging head-on at the glowing eyes speeding towards him.

He answered, "I have come to realize that -- I don't know if I'd call this 'change of mind,' but one thing that my European friends have taught me is that the United Nations is an important body in order to be able to convince parliaments of hard work that needs to be done. For example, getting resolutions on Iraq at the United Nations is important for a country like Denmark or Holland, in order for them to go to their parliaments and say, we have U.N. approval.

"As you probably are aware, I've really never felt like the United States needs to get United Nations approval to make decisions necessary for our security. But I have come to realize that other countries do rely upon the United Nations and I respect that a lot. So there's an area, for example, where I have been taught a lesson by my allies and friends."

You got that? Essentially, the President of the United States patted the wee Europeans on their widdle heads, in front of the Chancellor of motherfucking Germany, and said isn't it cute that they seek Mama's smiles. What Bush learned ain't that the U.N. is important, but that it's important to Europe. It's like saying to a lover that you know it's important to him that he wears a condom, but you're gonna fuck away without one.

Not enough for you to show that Bush doesn't give a fuck about anything other than himself? Merkel then answered, in a complex way, a question about the success rate of the Quartet. She finished her answer with this telling line: "I must say I am a strong believer in this multilateral effort in these international fora, because it shows clearly where the red line is to those who do not wish for democracy. And this is what we need to do, time and again make it clear to them where the limits are, where the red lines are."

Bush, not only desperately needing to get in the last word, but revoltingly undermining the Chancellor's seriousness, added, "No back rubs."

Oh, how they laughed.

In Brief: Democrats Burn the Republicans' Bed:
Goddamn, it was so easy to predict: the first reaction of Republicans losing their power in Congress is to whine like the oldest, mangiest bitches in the pound, hoping that if they cry loud enough, they'll avoid the long walk to the metal table in the other room. As Democrats take over today, they've said that the Republicans can go fuck themselves. Break out the needles.

The fact that Republicans even think the victim act will work is laughable, in a "Christ, that's sad, let's shoot Old Yeller way." They don't realize that people love it when the bully gets beaten up. When an abused wife shoots the shit-faced, pummeling husband in the back of the head. When the convicted serial rapist is turned into the gang-banger's punk in prison. Sure, sure, we can bemoan the system that creates the circumstances where such violence can occur. But even in our most bleeding hearts, it's hard to feel anything but satisfied. Because for every life directly damaged by the actions of thuggish wads of fuck, there's reverberations to many, many people. Ask the family of any woman who's been raped. The parents of any kid who gets slugged every day at school. So even if you've promised non-violence as a way of life, well, at the end of the day there's a difference between pacifism and passivism.

So, really, and, c'mon, the proper response, as many have said, to the NRCC's pussy wails of disenfranchisement is to stare at them like the pathetic peep show masturbators they are. They seriously think saying, "Democrats promised to share their toys" is going to have traction as a counter argument to the election results, even when the entire country knows that Republicans kept the playground locked to Democrats for all these years. This is a Karl Rove ploy, the weak wimper of a cancer-ridden corrupt old man, trying to turn the Democrats on themselves, hoist them on their promise of better bipartisanship.

You can smell his sausage-like finger grease all over George Bush's sad editorial in the Wall Street Journal. "What Congress Can Do For America," it was titled. And the simple answer, the one demanded by all Americans whose paychecks don't rely on desperately trying to make Bush into a "leader," is "Fucking stop you."

Pat Robertson Says God Wants a Whole Bunch of Us To Die:
It always depends on which book he has his Bible opened to while he masturbates. For if Pat Robertson has pulled down his pants and silk underwear, grabbed his demi-tumescent penis and begun yanking, diligently, mechanically to, say, the Song of Solomon, well, chances are when he cums, dribbling a drop or two of his lazy semen onto the stiff pages of his Good Book, God'll tell him something wondrous, like that George Bush will be re-elected. If he's jackin' it to tales of doomed Sodom, wildly smacking his meat at the thought of rows of naked Arabs fucking each other's brown asses in defiance of the Lord, chances are God's gonna whisper in his ear about how homosexuals are destroying this fair nation of ours.

A couple of nights ago, Robertson celebrated the new year by opening his sticky Bible to the less worn New Testament and yanking his meat to the Gospel of John, the crucifixion scene, his mind a miasma of images from the words of the ancients and the film of the Gibson, Christ's pain and screaming giving him something not unakin to a full erection, his cock like a spitting camel at the end. And God spoke to him, and God told him a horrible thing, but something that, to his mind, was just an inevitability, like the nailing of the Son of God.

As he told the viewers of his 700 Club infomercial, leaving out the part about choking his chicken in a kind of mock animal sacrifice, God told Pat Robertson that disaster awaits the United States at the end of this shiny new year in the form of a terrorist attack on a major city that will involve "mass killing." God wasn't really definite about what exactly would happen, 'cause, you know, why bother? But that didn't stop Robertson, hands flaking dead skin and dried spooge, from interpreting: "I'm not necessarily saying it's going to be nuclear...The Lord didn't say nuclear. But I do believe it will be something like that."

Now, the Rude Pundit isn't sure, but his experience in watching the 700 Club involved a whole lot of prayers to this "God" fella about interceding in the earthly affairs of everything from Presidential elections to old women in Alabama with rickets. So apparently, this "God" can sort of work his sky wizard magic trickery and change things for people. If he's sayin' there's gonna be a mass killing to Pat Robertson, shouldn't he be following that up with, "But don't worry, Pat. I've got your back." And, like, you know, use his God-dy mojo to stop it. Unless, of course, as is his tricky wont, he wants lots of Americans to die. So very complicated trying to figure out the ways of invisible sky wizards.

But that hasn't stopped the media from breathlessly reporting on Pat Robertson's conversation with God, as if we should all give a holy ratfuck about it, as if the delusions of a single man are real. Front page of the Fox "News" website. CNN, too. Giving his mindless ejaculations prominence and relevance as, like every pride-filled child, Pat Robertson points to his boner and smiles.

Nutzoid Right-Wing Warmonger Says, "Okay, Let's Cut and Run":
Alan Caruba is a crazed hack PR man for nutzoid conservatives. He has helped foster the language and promotion of the pro-human extinction right, the ones who are global warming deniers. He writes a column for that mouthpiece of feces tossing crazies, Human Events. He also has a blog that is a repository for his columns and other "thoughts" (if by "thoughts," you mean, "post-ejaculation dribbles from the tiny flaccid cock of a stooge who's wasted away his short, meaningless life"). And he mongered war in Iraq (and Iran) with an intensity that would make Genghis Khan say, "Whoa, there, buddy."

Yet in his most recent Human Events chunk-blow, "Time to Leave," Caruba writes, "I wonder how many more of our soldiers will die in Iraq while President George W. Bush tries to find a way to leave as events in that nation and the Middle East conspire against him. There is no good way. There is only leaving."

Alas, sweet warrior. It was almost one year ago that Caruba wrote of Howard Dean's comment that "The idea that we're going to win this war is an idea that unfortunately is just plain wrong" was worthy of consideration as sedition. After giving the law on sedition and quoting noted legal scholar Ken Mehlman, Caruba hocked up this loogie of logic: "It is unlikely that Howard Dean will be indicted for sedition. It is unlikely that those who oppose military recruiters in schools and on the campuses of our nation's universities and colleges will be indicted for sedition. I suggest, however, based on my reading of the law, that these are, in fact, willful acts of sedition at a time when our military is tasked with the defense of Iraq as it transitions from a dictatorship to a democracy."

It's awfully goddamned nice that Caruba now feels free to join the ranks of the cut-and-run left (hey, why not re-brand that the "leave-and-live left"?), with statements like, "If we could recover from the devastating homeland attack of September 11, 2001, we can do so by swiftly, but deliberately departing Iraq" or "It is the needless sacrifice of young men and women in uniform for the notion that America cannot recover from leaving." Hey, welcome back to the real world, motherfucker. It's far better than writing, as he did in 2004, "The war against Iraq is just a down payment on a secure future."

But, you know, fuck him and everyone else who now so bravely declares that the war is lost or that it's time to leave or that Bush is nuts. Because it's not just that so many of us were right 3000 American lives ago - it's that all those conservative tools dared call us traitors and fools for being right.

Meet the New Year - Same as the Old Year?:
And so the Rude Pundit brought in the new year in a ramshackle bar in Red State America, dancing rollicking rhythm and blues to the band, led by the old black musicians, but supported by the young white ones, drinking beer and checkin' out the women in spaghetti strap t-shirts and tight jeans, wanting to break a bottle over the head of a misplaced noodle dancing guy in the crowd who tried to sing over the gruff voice of the old man at the piano, embracing friends when the clock passed midnight, the band not stopping to even acknowledge the moment, one year blending seamlessly into the next to a wicked sexualized "Tutti-Frutti," brought back to its juke joint origins about gettin' some "good booty."

The Rude Parents just attended the funeral of the son of a close friend, a soldier cut in two by an RPG outside Baghdad. He was on his third tour of duty. He had married a year before, between tours. The funeral home was packed, they said. People talked about how he loved the children in Iraq, giving them candy and befriending them. In another city, in Blue State America, just a day before, the Rude Pundit passed by an Italian grocery that was closed because, as the sign on the door indicated, "Our son was killed in action in Afghanistan on 12/25/06. We do not know when we will open again." Today, the Rude Pundit will attend a party with an Iraq war vet who vehemently supports the President.

We begin 2007 cautiously optimistic because of the Democratic majority in Congress, but with unending lies guiding our journey into the dark heart of desert darkness, the Rude Pundit wonders if we are merely hoping for bandages when we need transplants for our American organs.

Red state, blue state; by the time it's said and done we may all have purple hearts.