Yes, George W. Bush Really Said That

"See in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda." Last Tuesday when our resident White House mental defective gave a talk in Rochester, NY to promote his Social Security overhaul, he inadvertently spoke the truth, as mental defectives often will. To the fascists in the White House propaganda becomes the truth if it's repeated often enough. Which should come as no surprise. The White House uses two 20th century leaders as mentors and teachers: "If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it." Joseph Goebbels, Adolf Hitler's propagandist "Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it"--Adolf Hitler

Lest We Forget

As of this morning, the total number of American soldiers who have died in the Bush administration's unnecessary war of global aggression in Iraq is 1657. We must never forget who killed these brave men and women: George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Karl Rove, Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, the UK's Tony Blair and a bunch of over-the-hill generals and delusional civilians in the Pentagon who thought playing soldier one more time would be fun.

I Want to Know: Is George W. Bush Gay or Isn't He Gay?

I'm discounting the big kiss he planted on Senator Joe Lieberman (D-CT) the night of his 2005 State of the Union Speech February 2. I'm also discounting the 32 times he's used the word “fabulous”-a coming-out sign in a lesser light-but just not probative, as they say in law circles. I want definitive proof. Does anyone know for absolutely sure that George W. Bush has engaged in gay alliances during the past five years? And what about those allegations that in 1976 Barb and GHW Bush sent their big disappointment-George W. Bush-to “Worthy Creations”, a church group in El Paso,to be de-gayed? It was in 1977 that he suddenly emerged as de-alkied, born-again, straight and married. But the “Worthy Creations” connection has not been verified. And according to a group called “Gay Ivy Leaguers for Truth”-29 Yale classmates of GWB-Bush was bisexual during his time in college. And even though Anthony Berusca says he was a GWB lover, these claims have been unverified. So what about it? Is anyone with unimpeachable knowledge and proof going to come forward? Unfortunately, others have turned up dead who could have verified these allegations. My interest is that it would shut down the far-right religious anti-gay, anti-women, anti-science support for the Bush administration if it's proved that George W. Bush is gay. It would also confirm that the Bush clan is a family of hypocrites. But that's not of major importance. That's been old news since the days of Prescott Bush. The Bush administration deserves to be brought down because it got us into a war by deceit and lies. The Bush administration deserves to be brought down because it uses religion to divide and conquer. The Bush administration deserves to be brought down for protecting the rich and powerful while taking advantage of the poor and disadvantaged. It would be a condemnation of our entire democracy if the Bush administration is brought down because the Chief Weenie is gay. But hey! If that's what does the job, then that's the course we need to take.

It's The Stupidity, Stupid

The United States is being held hostage by 23% of its voters who are the stupidest people on the face of the earth. Twenty-three percent of the voters in the last election voted for George W. Bush because they believed he is a born-again Christian, against abortion, anti-gay, and ignorant. All of which or none of which may be true. George W. Bush will be whatever the GOP needs him to be. It is impossible to know what his religious beliefs (if he has any) may be. What we do know is that he has horrendous mental problems. Other than that, George W. Bush is an empty suit, a vessel willing to be filled, a hollow space. Seventy-seven percent of the people who voted for George W. Bush did so for reasons other than that he is an ignorant, born-again pro-lifer. But the big question is: Why has the entire Republican Party taken up the cause of a minority who are as dumb as a bag of rocks? More to the point, why is it working in favor of the GOP to promote an uninformed, uneducated, and unintelligent agenda when only 23% of the voters are terminally stupid? And why aren't the majority of Republicans who are intelligent and have the ability to understand and think clearly not offended by the direction the party has taken? Answer to question 1: Stupidity is not working in the GOP favor. Answer to question 2: The majority of Republicans are very offended by the GOP leadership. No matter how Tom DeLay and William Frist shake and dance, the majority of Americans do not want the filibuster rules to change in Congress, they want stem cell research to be funded by the federal government, they don't believe Roe v Wade should be overturned, they think the war in Iraq is and always has been a criminal enterprise, they believe soldiers torturing other human beings is immoral, they think the proposed Social Security changes are nonsense and they think Terri Schiavo was braindead and that her husband had the right to pull the plug. The GOP's Agenda for Imbeciles can only be defended by the imbeciles who proposed it and a minority of people who are functionally illiterate. So far, the GOP has been able to use strong-arm tactics, fear, and the cowardice of the MSM to advance its assault on intelligence. But the worm already has turned. You can't keep rich, smart, college-educated, informed and powerful folks down forever.

"Every Life Is a Priceless Gift of Matchless Value"

Quoth George W. Bush, May 24, 2005 George Bush was not referring to the lives of the 1647 American soldiers who have died in his unnecessary war in Iraq. No. The men who have given their lives so that George Bush can prance and preen and pretend he's an alpha male macho-man have no value at all to George W. Bush. The deaths of all these American soldiers are so unimportant to our President that he goes to no military funerals and he won't allow the returning caskets to be viewed by the families of the dead. That would be bad press. The dead, maimed and wounded in Iraq are simply the inevitable cost of war-collateral damage. So don't give them another thought because President Bush certainly does not. They have no value except when they can be used for PR. Well then, what's the life which is a priceless gift of matchless value that the Prez is ranting and raving about and should be spared at all costs? Why, it's an undifferentiated clot of protoplasm, which is a few days old and is called an embryo. By the end of the third week in a human womb, an embryo is roughly the size of this letter “o”. An embryo that is a few days old is a collection of cells too tiny to be seen. A lot of medical terms are being tossed around these days amongst the impassioned folks on both sides of the aisle. But a simple definition of stem cells might be a good idea since the President of the United States has nearly hyperventilated when saying their life is of matchless value. The stem cells that scientists want to study and research are called pluripotent cells. Pluripotent stem cells can give rise to any type of cell in the body except those needed to develop a fetus. A fertilized egg is called totipotent because its potential is total; it can give rise to all the different types of cells in the body. Stem cells that can give rise to a small number of different cell types are called multipotent Pluripotent stem cells are isolated from human embryos that are a few days old. Cells from these embryos can be used to create pluripotent stem cell "lines" -cell cultures that can be grown indefinitely in the laboratory. The embryos, which are at issue in Congress, are embryos that were used in fertility procedures and had been frozen. They no longer are needed and the couples involved in the fertility procedures have Okayed their use for research. After the pluripotent stem cells are extracted, the embryos will be destroyed. The Prez says he will veto the use of federal funds for this type of research because these bits of matter have matchless value. George W. Bush, of course, could never explain to you the fine points of stem cell research. He can't even explain to you his plan for Social Security reform. It isn't so much because his brain is damaged, which of course it is. But the real problem is that George W. Bush is a narcissist and doesn't care about anything except that which affects him personally. Abortion does not affect him personally, and the use of frozen embryos for research does not affect him personally. The only thing that affects GWB personally is his image when he's on-camera talking about these issues. How does the public think he looks when he's acting concerned? How does the public think he sounds when he's trying to be sincere? That's the President's only interest or focus. Can narcissists be cured? No. Will talk therapy help? Maybe, but most narcissists will con their therapists. Will medication help? Yes, but it also takes away the feeling so necessary to narcissists that they are special. The narcissist's motto is “aut nihil aut unique”-be special or don't be at all. The GOP is so arrogant that it has not formed a cogent Plan B for any of its fiascoes. No Plan B for the Iraq debacle. No Plan B for the Social Security disaster. No Plan B for the Schiavo mess. No Plan B for dealing with DeLay. No Plan B for the Abu Ghraib horror. No Plan B for the filibuster defeat. No Plan B for the stem cell research slap in the face. And obviously, there is no Plan B for when George W. Bush slides down the rabbit hole, which is as inevitable as all the other GOP humiliations.

What Does the Senate Compromise Really Mean?

It means Senator John McCain (R-AZ) has all but announced he'll be the next President of the United States. McCain has been steadily campaigning for 2008 since 2000. He fully realizes that the next Republican candidate will have to act like a Democrat while carrying the GOP banner. As the news gets worse and worse for his GOP compadres, McCain needs only to stay in the limelight and emit rays of sensible reasoned judgment for the right and left to flock to his side. Witness yesterday's last-minute compromise in the Senate on the Republican threat to change the filibuster rules. It's McCain who will be given credit for averting the so-called nuclear option. But at some point McCain is going to have to make a clean break from the Republicans currently holding sway in the White House. Moderation and centrism are desirable attributes for any Republican candidate in the current climate of GOP totalitarianism. However, Democrats and many disillusioned Republican voters are not likely to forget that McCain has constantly kissed the ass of the very fascists he needs to dissociate himself from. His all-out campaign to appear to be the one sane man in a lunatic asylum will have been for nothing unless he repudiates the actions of the Bush administration. It's something McCain is going to have to do. And trust me, this man wants to be president so bad he can taste it. Watch him do whatever he's gotta do. Senator Robert Byrd (D-WV) yesterday cautioned Republicans not to feel they have won anything in the filibuster compromise. He said, “Don't forget that the worm turns." Wise old Byrd. But as far as the GOP and its goals for 2008 are concerned, the worm has already turned. Already the power brokers are reinventing the Republican Party. McCain's unmistakable campaign for 2008 is a clear sign. And GOP candidate profiles appearing in the MSM are another. It is a total mystery to me exactly how major articles on Republican political candidates are placed in the MSM. But what is just as plain as white cotton panties is that Michael Sokolove's article on Rick Santorum in the Sunday (May 22) New York Times Magazine was planted by the GOP. The tenor of this article is an example of how GOP candidates will now present themselves: The church-going relatively harmless Mr. Nice Guy. As Sokolove pointed out, “If he (Santorum, R-PA) wins a third Senate term in 2006, he will most likely move up to Republican whip, the No. 2 spot. His influence already exceeds his rank.” Really? I would argue that. I would say that Santorum's radicalism and ignorant religious zealotry already exceed his usefulness to the United States senate. But then, I'm not writing an article for the New York Times to promote a GOP candidate. Michael Sokolove is a Pennsylvania homeboy. He knows Santorum. He knows full well how Santorum's extreme views on religion permeate this senator's politics. And yet what we get in this pro-Santorum promotional profile is a bucolic picture of a churchgoing father and gardener who just happens to be a Republican Senator. The rants against gays, and pro-life harangues are barely touched on. Expect more of this GOP fiction writing as the 2006 and 2008 elections loom on the horizon. The White House may think its jackboot policies are winning the day, but the RNC knows the old dictator days are over. Now the GOP will bully the MSM into running puff pieces on how Republican candidates have seen the light and have turned into humanitarian good guys almost indistinguishable from Democrats. Uh huh! Beware these podpersons. Underneath the makeovers they still want to rule the world…John McCain included.

Laura Bush Mobbed by Protesters in Israel Sunday

The clueless White House assumed that since folks in the US seem to like Laura Bush, the folks in Israel would also follow her down the yellow brick road. Wrong. The Associated Press reported that protesters noisily harassed the first lady. “Secret Service and Israeli police had to physically hold back the crowd as she approached the wall”, the AP said of Laura Bush's Sunday visit to Israel. Jonathan Pollard is an American Jew serving a life sentence in a U.S. prison for spying for Israel. He was a civilian intelligence analyst for the U.S. Navy. As Laura Bush stood at the Western Wall, dozens of protesters shouted, "Free Pollard now,” the AP said. Why would the White House assume the Israelis would welcome Laura Bush? It's not as though the GOP owns the press corps in Israel, or owns Israeli TV, or owns the Knesset the way the GOP takes for granted it owns everyone and everything in the US. Why would the White House make such an error in judgment? Could it be, that in its crazy sociopath delusions of grandeur and power, the White House believes that Israel belongs to the US? Could it be that since the White House reads nothing but its own news reports and sees no television except that which it produces, that the White House actually believes it rules the world? Yes indeedy. That very well could be. And the Laura Bush identity has been so rehearsed and polished that she barely resembles a living human person in any real sense of the words. To the WH, Laura Bush is chattel like Condi Rice or Scott McClellan. After we were treated to the carefully-drawn Laura-Bush-persona which she inhabited to great acclaim at the 2005 White House Correspondents' Association dinner April 30th, we found out she has never watched the “Desperate Housewives” TV show she said she loved sooooooo much. Laura Bush, like Jeb Bush, like Barbara Bush, like GHWB and like GWB, is a wholly-owned possession of the GOP. She does what she is told to do. Which means Laura Bush is as fake a creation as the Prez. Laura Bush is even as phony as her mother-in-law, Barbara Bush. And that is no doubt one of the main reasons Laura Bush was sent to Israel. The White House fondly remembers how popular Barbara Bush was during GHW Bush's presidency. A poll was taken during his second run for Prez and the poll discovered that many people would have happily voted for motherly old Barb rather than George Herbert Walker. Which was a triumph of White House deceit at the time. Barbara Bush was then, and is now, one of the meanest, nastiest, bitch-diva, control-freak, white-haired dragons ever known to set foot in Washington, DC. But she played her role well. And Laura plays her role well. The problem is that the WH thought the Laura Bush they had created and who had sprinkled fairy dust on the American public, would do the same in Israel. But what do we know about Laura? It's nearly impossible to find out anything other than the official sanitized and perfumed versions of Laura Welch Bush. We do know she killed her boyfriend when she was 17. There are at least two versions of the traffic accident. One says that on Nov. 5, 1963, at 8 p.m., Laura Welch was driving east on Farm Road 868 in her hometown of Midland, TX en route to a party. At a dangerous intersection, she allegedly failed to see Mike Douglas, her boyfriend at the time, also 17, heading south on State Road 369. She plowed into the Jeep driven by Douglas, killing him. The other version says she ran a stoplight and rammed into a car driven by “an acquaintance”, Michael Douglas, who was thrown from his Jeep and broke his neck. We can't find out how fast she was driving. And of course the reports say neither she nor her friend Judy Dykes, who was also in her car, was drinking. Laura Welch got a Bachelor's degree in education from Southern Methodist University (Dallas) in 1968, and a Master's degree in library science from the University of Texas at Austin in 1973. She worked as a public school teacher and librarian. As far as the official bio is concerned, time stopped from 1973 until 1977 for Laura Welch. She met George W at a bar-b-q in July of 1977 and married him in September of 1977. Oh, and she worked with Barbara Bush to establish a few state literacy programs. (Oh, to have been a fly on the wall at those lovely in-law interactions.) It surely was a whirlwind engagement. Librarian Laura decided to marry George, the ne'er-do-well, miserable failure, Bush family booby prize, within three months of meeting him. What were the inducements, one wonders? Why did George need to get married so fast? Did it have anything to do with his Yalie cheerleading pal and roommate, Victor Ashe, who now is decidedly and forthrightly out of the closet? You'd have to go to Kitty Kelly's book, “The Family: The Real Story of the Bush Dynasty” to get all the poop on Laura Welch Bush. But Kelly says that Laura was “known as a go-to girl for dime bags of marijuana". The Prez and First Lady may be Laura-the-Librarian and George-the-Born-again to gullible Republicans, but to people who live in the Middle East, they are meddling ignorant immoral foreign infidels and they both have been told to butt out.

Is Ignorant Worse Than Brain-Damaged?

Yesterday, we had a United States Senator and a United States President who seemed to be in a contest to see who could sound more dim-witted. While the smirking, preening President of the United States was prating about stem cell research, an issue he cannot understand and does not care about, a Senator who is even more ignorant and bigoted sounded even more stupid. It's difficult to top the flat-earth mentality of our resident White House Neanderthal who yesterday said on the topic of stem cell research, “to promote science which destroys life in order to save life, is-I'm against that”. But Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA) came close. Santorum pulled his head out of his ass yesterday and divined that equating Democrats with Hitler would not produce the votes in bluer-than-blue Pennsylvania that being flat-out stupid garners in Utah. Santorum issued a statement on Friday saying that on Thursday he “meant no offense”. He clarified his stunningly fatuous remarks by saying, "Referencing Hitler was meant to dramatize the principle of an argument, not to characterize my Democratic colleagues.” It's difficult to make a call on who is more clueless, Senator Santorum or President Bush. Santorum's sin is that he believes every unfounded, ignorant, bigoted, illogical, uninformed thing he says. Bush's sin is that he does not care way or another about anything he says. Bush has no beliefs. He has no principles. Bush is self-absorbed and has no goals higher than whatever it takes to make him feel good at the moment. As of today, George W. Bush has personally killed 1631 American soldiers in Iraq in a war he waged based on lies and his own self-promotion. And he does not give a damn. Bush doesn't care about the “culture of life”. He doesn't care if a woman has abortions or uses contraceptives or if embryos are used for science or thrown away. Yes, George W. Bush is stupid and brain-damaged, but that's not the worst of it. George W. Bush doesn't care about anything except his image and his image of his image. It's almost impossible to say which is worse, a man who cares and is woefully ignorant like Rick Santorum, or a man who doesn't care and is brain-damaged and a pathological liar. But the bottom line is that both these men are running the United States of America. Is that what the majority of Americans want?

Rick Santorum Is Frothing at the Mouth Again

Rave on Senator. Rave on. Every time Santorum (R-PA) decides to speak out for the GOP cause, he becomes a portrait of the Republican lunatic fringe in exquisite detail. In the famous Associated Press interview with Santorum on April 7, 2003, the Senator said, regarding the sodomy laws which were being considered by the Supreme Court, “If the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything.” In November the Supreme Court struck down sodomy laws in states which still had them. Later on in the interview, Santorum ranted about “man on dog sex”, which occasioned the interviewer to say he had not expected to be talking to a United States Senator about “man on dog sex” and that it was “freaking” him out. Santorum is a zealot. He rages against abortion. He and his wife Karen have seven children, including an infant that died in 1996. When the Terri Schiavo case came up, Rick Santorum took every opportunity to get on-camera and to rail about murderers and the godless left. Out of respect for the Schiavo family, Santorum cancelled a public meeting on Social Security. He did not cancel his closed fundraising events, however. Santorum's public outrage is often at odds with his personal life. Although Santorum loudly supports capping lawsuits for pain & suffering at $250,000, in 1999 his wife sued her chiropractor for pain and suffering in the amount of $500,000. She won $350,000. One of Santorum's sponsors is Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart contributes to Santorum's campaigns through the Wal-Mart PAC. It also gives him free trips in the company jet to places like Florida when Santorum needs TV face-time re high-profile right-to-life issues. A new Wal-Mart in Santorum's home city of Penn Hills, PA will put many of Santorum's constituents out of work. But Rick-the-Prick has higher moral matters on his mind. Yesterday, he raised the Senate filibuster fight to a fever pitch when he said, “I mean, imagine, the rule has been in place for 214 years that this is the way we confirm judges. Broken by the other side two years ago, and the audacity of some members to stand up and say, How dare you break this rule. It's the equivalent of Adolf Hitler in 1942, 'I'm in Paris. How date you invade me. How dare you bomb my City?. It's mine.'” Now that is really odd. Oh, not the context, Santorum rants and raves and says things that are nonsensical whenever he opens his mouth. The odd part is that in March when Senator Byrd (D-WV) compared Republican threats to change Senate rules to Hitler jamming legislation through the German Reichstag, Santorum rose up in high dudgeon and declared, "Senator Byrd's inappropriate remarks comparing his Republican colleagues with Nazis are inexcusable." Rave on Senator Santorum, voice of the fanatic far-right fascist faction. The more you talk, the sillier the GOP sounds. Rave on.

Roman Catholic Church Rules Against a Child

A devout little girl with celiac disease who was raised in the Roman Catholic Church has been told in no uncertain terms she can never receive Holy Communion. In the past, Haley Pelly-Waldman's mother has been able to find a priest here and there who would allow her to substitute a rice wafer for the wheat wafer used by the RCC in its rite of Holy Communion. But the Diocese of Trenton ruled once for all this morning that only a low-gluten wheat wafer may be substituted for the preferred wheat wafer. Rice wafers are invalid. This means the RCC has invalidated the little girl's first Holy Communion, which was celebrated with a rice wafer. This also means that through no fault of the child's, she will NEVER be able to receive Holy Communion in the Roman Catholic Church. Since the Vatican bends its rules so far in some cases that the RCC resembles a gold-plated law firm more than a religion, one wonders what this particular inflexibility is all about. When an annulment is requested by a rich and powerful Catholic, the RCC has been known to invalidate marriages that have lasted over 20 years, were consecrated in a Catholic church and produced many children. The RCC provided palatial digs in Rome for Cardinal Law who protected pedophile priests in Boston. And after years of making it a mortal sin to eat meat on Friday, the RCC decided in 1966 it's okay to eat meat on Friday except during Lent. But Haley Pelly-Waldman can't have a special medical dispensation to use a rice wafer instead of a wheat wafer in order to receive Holy Communion. The Last Supper, which was a Seder celebrated by Christ and his disciples before Christ's crucifixion, used unleavened bread and wine. The New Testament says Christ said, “This is my body and my blood…do this in remembrance of me”. That is as much as we know. The Vatican does not possess any secret knowledge. They know for sure only what the rest of us know. And yet, from this sparse knowledge, the RCC has woven a recipe for the making of Eucharistic bread, although they have no idea exactly what the bread Christ broke with his friends was made of. That it was unleavened we do know because Christ was eating a Passover meal. But for sure, it was not a tiny round thin wafer that melted away to nothing on the tongue. The RCC changed the Latin Mass to a Mass in the vernacular in the 1970's. And in 1969 priests who had always stood with their backs to the congregation during the Mass began to face the congregation thus proving they had nothing up their sleeves. The only consistency in the RCC is that it changes rules to suit its whims and says that no rules have been changed. But now, the RCC says that its rules will not allow a little girl to use a rice wafer instead of a wheat wafer in order to receive Holy Communion. If Christ had a grave, he'd be spinning in it like a top.

Three Facts You Can Take To The Bank

1) The White House always lies all the time. Therefore, it's a lie that the White House raised a fuss about the Koran-in-the-toilet article in Newsweek because the incident caused a riot in Afghanistan. The event no doubt happened, but it did not cause the ruckus in Afghanistan. You can count on that. The White House is consistent. It always lies. The other thing you can count on is that the real facts will come out about what caused the uproar in Afghanistan. 2) The President is irrelevant. The President wasn't told about the small-plane crisis last week because he was reportedly riding his mountain bike in a remote area. The real reason is that he is so unimportant in the WH scheme of things they forgot him. The place where George-the-Useless rides his bike is close to the center of action in Washington, DC. The President is only suited up when he's needed for appearances sake; otherwise, he's beside the point. 3) In September the NYT is going to begin charging a fee to read its OP/Ed columnists online and no one will care. Why should we? The definition of a nanosecond will be, the amount of time it takes for bloggers to cut-and-paste the NYT OpEd columns onto free net sites. The NYT says it will be vigilant and will put a stop to it. How?

The White House is Pissed?

I'm having trouble understanding news coming out of Washington, DC these days. Let me once again try to get this straight. The White House is having a fit about a story that ran in Newsweek. The story was about a Koran that supposedly was flushed down a toilet in Afghanistan. The report caused so much angst against Americans that it has caused the deaths of 9 people. The White House demanded that Newsweek retract the story. Finally Newsweek did retract the story because it could not be corroborated. The White House is still dancing up and down in consternation. It's because the reputation of the United States has been soiled and tarnished by this event, the White House says. And the White House is appalled. How could Newsweek have acted on information that could not be corroborated and which resulted in the deaths of 9 people? Shall I just let that sentence hang there while you get a full eyeful of what the White House is in high dudgeon about? Right! THE WHITE HOUSE IS APPALLED AND HORRIFIED BECAUSE AN UNCORROBORATED EVENT WAS ASSUMED TO BE FACT AND IT CAUSED DEATH. These criminals, warmongers and fascists in the White House, who have caused the deaths of 1622 American soldiers and countless thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, because the White House lied and acted on uncorroborated information they knew was false, now have the balls to take Newsweek to task for an honest mistake? Well, unring that bell if you can Herr Rove…the news services are a-twitter with your righteous indignation, not to mention the memory of the White House starting a war of choice by using uncorroborated facts and lies.

The Pope Has Fast-Tracked JPII to Sainthood?

For God's sake, who is the Vatican kidding? Does the Vatican actually believe it can fool God? Since the Roman Catholic Church is trying to convince the world that God takes orders from the Pope, does the Vatican really believe God has been created in the Pope's image? To hear the RCC tell it, God thinks it's okay that John Paul II fast-tracked notorious sinner and Opus Dei leader, Jose Maria Escriva de Balaguer to sainthood. And this is because God understands that payback was due Opus Dei for funneling mega-bucks into Solidarity in Poland. To hear the RCC tell it, God supports the fact that the RCC did not criticize the murder of Jews during WWII, when the RCC should have loudly condemned this genocide from the Sistine Chapel ceiling to the walls of the Curia. But the RCC went only so far as to say “some Catholics” were Nazi supporters. Let's get one thing straight, because it's been fully chronicled in many books and articles, the Vatican ran ratlines out of Italy to allow Nazi criminals to escape. Read it for yourself. I commend to you David G. Guyatt's article for Nexus (August-September 2000), “The Mafia, The CIA, and The Vatican's Intelligence Apparatus”. The unholy alliances include, The Knights of Malta, Opus Dei, the American mob, the Italian mob, the CIA, the Vatican, Propaganda Due (P2), the Freemasons, certain Masonic lodges, Clint Murchison of Texas oil fame, Banco Ambrosiano (chief Roberto Calvi was called God's banker, but when the bank failed he was murdered) and Mafia financier Michele Sindona. Interestingly, Calvi and Sindona were both members of Opus Dei and Propaganda Due. The logo of Opus Dei is an octopus. What the hell do you think the RCC and The Carlyle Group are, if not octopi, insinuating their tentacles into every cranny of life? The history of the complicity and double-dealing that the Vatican has engaged in is ugly, nasty and sinful. The Vatican likes to say that it may not have been Simon Pure in the late centuries of the first millennium, but it has reformed itself and become above reproach since the Reformation of the 15th, 16th, and 17th centuries. To which, one can only answer in the politest terms possible: BULL-FUCKING-SHIT! The RCC is as corrupt and venal as ever it was. And now with Ratzinger as head, it proposes to rule, not the RCC but the world, with an iron fist. Let me ask you, don't you find it odd that Texas oil and the Vatican climbed in bed together during WWII and now Texas oil and the religious right are rumpling the sheets again? David Guyatt quotes “Trading With the Enemy”, a book written in 1983 by Charles Higham. Here's an eye-opener from Higham's book: “What would have happened if millions of Americans and British people, struggling with coupons and lines at the gas stations, had learned that in 1942 Standard Oil of New Jersey managers shipped the enemy's fuel through neutral Switzerland and that the enemy was shipping Allied fuel? Suppose the public had discovered that the Chase Bank in Nazi-occupied Paris after Pearl Harbor was doing millions of dollars' worth of business with the enemy with the full knowledge of the head office in Manhattan? Or that Ford trucks were being built for the German occupation troops in France with authorisation from Dearborn, Michigan? Or that Colonel Sosthenes Behn, the head of the international American telephone conglomerate ITT, flew from New York to Madrid to Berne during the war to help improve Hitler's communications systems and improve the robot bombs that devastated London? Or that ITT built the Focke-Wulfs that dropped bombs on British and American troops? Or that crucial ball-bearings were shipped to Nazi-associated customers in Latin America with the collusion of the Vice-Chairman of the US War Production Board, in partnership with Göring's cousin in Philadelphia, when American forces were desperately short of them? Or that such arrangements were known about in Washington and either sanctioned or deliberately ignored?” So. God thinks the Roman Catholic Church soiling itself with arms deals, murder, Nazi escapes, insensitivity toward the poor, lack of compassion and Canonizing corrupt Vatican flacks is just fine and dandy? No. The RCC thinks that stuff is fine and dandy. The RCC is man-made, man-run and man-ruled. It must be obvious by now that the Roman Catholic Church has nothing whatsoever to do with God.

Ratfuck Diary Is Changing Its Name to Ratbang Diary

Why? you may ask. Because there are prissy twits out there, not to mention mainstream rags, which would never read or reference a blog called Ratfuck. And am I so bigheaded as to think the MSM might reference Ratfuck Diary? Oh you betcha! Why not? Mr. Ratfucker was understandably annoyed about the name change. Mr. Ratfucker sees no reason to bend to prissy twits or the fantasy that the MSM might be reading Ratfuck Diary. Mr. Ratfucker has his principles. Mr. Ratfucker says he wouldn't change his name if he personally got ratfucked by the New York Times' Adam Cohen, John Tierney and David Brooks in a ratbang orgy. And we applaud Mr. Ratfucker, who, from time to time, will let his opinions be known in Ratbang Diary. But the name change is a fait accompli. That's it. It's done.

Dear Tom Friedman: Let Me Get This Straight

Your NYT Op/Ed piece this morning using that dreary brussels sprouts parable of Michael Mandelbaum's is actually saying: No one in the world should be making nuclear weapons except the United States Is that about the size of it? Everyone in the world--North Korea, Iran, and China--should opt out of the bullying game of producing nuclear weapons except the USA. We get to keep on making nuclear weapons because it's our God-given right to be bullies. How about EVERYONE stops making nuclear weapons? Oh…I forgot. That would put the Carlyle Group out of business. That would mean Halliburton's subsidiary in the UK, Brown and Root, would have to stop poisoning the air with radiation fallout from their nuclear weapons plants. So the only sensible global law is that the US gets to proliferate the manufacture of nuclear weapons all over the world because the US is the only country that has the right to defend itself against aggression. Is that the plan, Mr. Friedman? Okay. I think I get it now. According to your plan, the US can aggress against whomever it wants because the US has the right to make nuclear weapons. And, the US has the right to back any regime in the world because the US has nuclear weapons. At the same time the US has outlawed the manufacture of nuclear weapons by all countries except where the Carlyle group has its US-sponsored arms factories. Nice plan, Mr. Friedman. The United States and its fascist leaders will force liberty, democracy and freedom on the world, because if the world doesn't comply with whatever the US calls liberty-democracy-freedom we'll threaten to nuke the shit out of them. And we'll be the only nation in the world to have the actual weaponry to back up the threat. But that's being a despotic, totalitarian, oppressive, terrorist nation, Mr. Friedman. I truly do get it now. Terrorism is okay as long as the United States is the terrorist.

US Soldier Deaths in Iraq: 1606

The number of US soldiers who have died since May 1, 2003 is 1536. That was the day that our fake president, in his fake uniform, in a faked scene aboard USS Lincoln, crowed that his mission had been accomplished.

Well, Don't You Love It!

This morning in the New York Times, Adam Cohen says, “As blogs grow in readers and influence, bloggers should realize that if they want to reform the American media, that is going to have to include reforming themselves.” So we should look to the MSM for guidance on being responsible journalists? Is that what you're saying, Mr. Cohen? Bloggers should kiss the ass of the power-elite and never tell the truth about the fascists in the White House? Bloggers should keep mum about JeffyJim Gannon, the male hooker hired by the White House (who, it's said, had after-hours access to the White House) to act like a journalist and ask scripted questions at press conferences? Bloggers should let Rupert the Goon, Reverend the Moon and Karl the Loon dictate what shall and shall not be reported about the Bush administration? Is that the gist of your pious and tedious little article, Mr. Cohen? Speaking of responsible journalists. Once again, Frank Rich gets to the heart of the trouble with the MSM in his Sunday NYT piece, “Laura Bush's Mission Accomplished”. It's fervently hoped that Adam Cohen reads Frank Rich and that Mr. Priss Cohen will learn why bloggers and The Daily Show's Jon Stewart came on the scene in the first place. It was to tell the truths that the MSM couldn't and wouldn't tell because the MSM has its head so far up the GOP's ass. That's why we're here, you preachy little twit. While the President is running around telling Russia it's wrong to do what the US does (that is, that "no good purpose is served by stirring up fears and exploiting old rivalries" on its borders), and while the Prez continues to claim that our illegal and unnecessary invasion of Iraq was spreading liberty and democracy, little bro Jebby is getting slapped down by his legislature in Florida. Guv Jeb Bush's fight to keep a 13-year-old in Florida from getting an abortion failed, his favorite program, school vouchers, was found unconstitutional and is under review by the Florida Supreme Court. And last Thursday, the State Senate rejected his proposal to scale back the class-size limits that were approved in 2002. Jeb Bush has become political poison and one can only imagine the conversation between brothers: Jeb-the-Fixer: I lied and cheated to make you President and now I'm getting killed because you're an idiot. George-the-Puppet: I lied and cheated to make you Governor and you can't even keep a dead woman alive. As Mr. Ratfucker is fond of saying: An idle mind is worth two in the Bush family.

I Just Got My Red Star Badge of Courage

Have you got yours? Mine is a Mom's Day Gift. It's a silver link bracelet with a red star on one link. Everyone in opposition to the Bush administration's policies needs to sport a red star--a bumper sticker, a T-shirt, a lapel pin…whatever. We really have to stand up and be visible. People need to know who we are. Ever since the Communist red star symbol started to appear on the doors of college professors who vocally opposed White House fascism, it's become increasingly obvious that the bullying, jackbooted, warmongers who favor the Bush model of totalitarian government think they can impose their beliefs on the rest of us by using intimidation, dirty tricks and force if necessary. Now that churches are kicking out members who are Democrats; now that it's been revealed that Pope Ratz (last March when he was head of doctrinal enforcement) ordered Catholic magazine America editor Rev. Thomas J. Reese to resign because he wrote articles critical of the RCC; now that Kansas is fighting for the right to teach that the world was created 6,000 years ago in six days, the sane majority of people in the US need to show a visible sign that we openly oppose a church-run, autocratic, anti-gay, anti-women, pro-war government. Show your red star badge of courage. And shout, rant and rave because it works. You may have noticed that Microsoft's Bill Gates has now decided he is pro-gay again. His recent foray into being anti-gay was starting to negatively affect Microsoft's economics

So How Are Things Going in Iraq?

Both the LATimes and MSNBC have information this morning that $100 mil of the money in The Rapid Reconstruction Response Program (or R3P) in Iraq is missing. The DFI (Development Fund of Iraq) says that officers “cannot properly account for or support $96.6 million in cash and receipts.” MSNBC said, “One American official working on Iraqi reconstruction issues, who is familiar with the allegations, spoke on the condition of anonymity, saying, 'The worse-case scenario is that someone took it home.'” Of course the DFI has pointed out, $100 mil is only a small portion of the multi-billion dollar fund. But the fact remains, no one knows who has spent how much for what or when. And it's a mystery where that $100 mil has gotten to. Cheney has deep pockets what with all those Halliburton contracts in Iraq, maybe the $100 million worked its way into Cheney's retirement fund. As of this morning 1593 Americans have been killed in Iraq. And more soldiers are reporting back that they know the whole enterprise has been about oil Echoing the unsettling truth telling coming out of Iraq from the guys who are in the thick of it, Senator Dan Lungren (R-CA) sent a letter to his constituents defending his vote for drilling in ANWR, saying, “we're in Iraq to obtain oil”. CNN's latest poll says fifty-seven percent of those polled did not believe the war in Iraq was worthwhile. Is it any surprise that the White House is crowing about the third-highest-ranking member of Al Aaeda, Abu Farraj al-Libbi, having been captured in Pakistan? The Bush team badly needs some good news. But the turd in that punchbowl is that Libbi may not be all that important. And more to the point, rumor has it that he was captured a while ago and has been kept on ice awaiting the right moment to make the earthshaking announcement. Sound familiar? Remember Saddam in the hidey-hole? That also has been alleged to be a White House creative re-write of facts. Well, desperate times call for desperate acts. And is the White House desperate, or what?

Whited Sepulchers

One of the reasons the Bible has prevailed and is still quoted--whether one believes in it as the revealed word of God or not--is because the prose of the King James translation is beautiful and poetic. For instance, in Matthew 23-27, Jesus says: “Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead [men's] bones, and of all uncleanness.” The translation of the Bible that I usually seek out is The New Oxford Annotated Bible, but it uses the word “tombs” rather than “sepulchers”, which doesn't have the same portent or rhythm. Hypocrites. Whited sepulchers. My mind jumps to the Bush Brothers living in their white mansions. Florida Governor Jeb Bush has dropped his opposition to the abortion sought by a 13-year-old runaway. This morning, an article by Abby Goodnough in the NYT (“Florida Halts Fight to Bar Girl's Abortion”) has a tagline quote from Governor Bush. He said the Department of Children and Families was right “to make sure that this was reviewed carefully. We are talking about the loss of a life.” This example of life being sacred to the Bush Brothers was not used for political gain like the Florida Schiavo travesty. And the reason is because politically savvy Brother Jeb got wise to the polls that most of the people in the US don't buy the Bush “culture of life” bullshit. The Guv is not one to stand up for principles unless the stand feathers his nest. But life is life, right? If a zygote the size of a grain of rice has the right to the full protection of the US govrernment, then a fully-grown person has the right to protection also, right? Wrong. Florida puts criminals to death. I'm looking for a model of consistency here and I'm not finding it. If the Bush Brothers think life is sacred, how come Florida and Texas have the death penalty? And how come those laws are just fine by the life-is-sacred Bush family? It must be that purity and innocence are the criteria by which life is deemed to be sacred. But if that is so, then only the unborn deserve to live. The rest of us may as well march off to the sea right now like lemmings. And as soon as the unborn are born they are doomed by original sin. So when the unborn become born and remain unbaptized, does their right to life end? Obviously, right to life is God-given only when right-to-lifers say so. And right-to-lifers will only defend the right-to-life if it keeps the red states red. Brother Jeb is the first Guv to publicly decide the “culture of life” issue is political poison. More are sure to follow. After all, what politician in his right mind wants to live with all those bones and uncleanness?

Finally! NYT Outs PBS for its Right-Wing Bias

Yesterday, an article titled “Republican Chairman Exerts Pressure on PBS, Alleging Biases”, written by Stephen Labaton, Lorne Manly and Elizabeth Jensen appeared in the Arts/Television section of the New York Times. The Republican PBS Chairman cited is Kenneth Y. Tomlinson. Tomlinson has foisted his GOP right-wing policies on the American public by using neocon tactics. He's gotten a lot of mileage out of whinging that PBS had been allowed to incline too far to the left and that it needed to become more centrist, more fair, more balanced. Any PBS watcher knows that exactly the opposite is true. Fair and balanced, of course, means that under Tomlinson's guidance PBS has become more conservative, more right-of-center and an undisguised supporter of White House fascism. The NYT article reports that without the knowledge of his board of directors, Tomlinson went so far as to hire spies to track the political leanings of the “Now With Bill Moyers” show. And he promoted the airing of WSJ editor Paul Gigot's far-right-biased broadcasts. Any regular viewer of The Lehrer Report during the last year could see what was going on. Watching Gwen Ifill change from an outspoken reporter of the facts, to a GOP toady was embarrassing. The PBS switch from being a channel renowned for its integrity and focus on education, to becoming a tool for GOP blather and bias has been obvious and undisguised. But at the same time as the GOP has infiltrated the Public Broadcasting network with its cant and prejudice, another trend has also become transparently obvious. No one is watching PBS. PBS has to have a beg-a-thon every month just to keep its head above water. And the money from fund drives pays for salaries and huge monolithic monuments to themselves like the edifice in Philadelphia. The fund drive money is not used to underwrite new programs. The facts are that PBS has been faltering financially for years. And any business that must constantly beg for funds from its users should go belly up. Since PBS is a propaganda machine for White House fascism, there is no reason for thinking-Americans to support it. In fact, there is every reason for thinking-Americans to boycott PBS and to campaign long and loudly for its demise. PBS is an outlet for right wing Propaganda Bull Shit. So let's let it die. God knows, it's easy enough to boycott. There hasn't been anything worth watching since Bill Moyers went off the air.

Runaway-Bride Fracas

So. We can look forward to George W. Bush, Jeb Bush, the Roman Catholic Church, the Republican Party, Bill Frist, Tom Delay and the US Congress to make moral pronouncements about Jennifer Wilbanks running away from her wedding vows, right? The woman had been living with her boyfriend, John Mason. So what about the possibility they were using birth control? How about accusing them of killing babies while living in sin? What about her contempt for the sacred union of man and woman? What about lying to law enforcement officials? We've got a possible felony, here. Not to mention breach of promise, which, if it isn't still on the books in Georgia, surely Mr. DeLay can speak sternly to Georgia Senators Saxby Chambliss and Johnny Isakson and get the law put back on the books. It would be a terrible wasted opportunity if Pope Ratz doesn't weigh in. He could urge our Congress to strongly rebuke Miss Wilbanks for not getting married and not beginning to produce a baby every year. Or, he could get on his higher-than-God righteous soapbox and inveigh against Americans for not being sufficiently forgiving of Miss Wilbanks, which Pope Ratz speaking for God would most piously feel mankind should be. Either way, he can't be wrong. I see no reason why the Bush Brothers--Georgie and Jebby, led by Mama Barbarian Bush--can't ratchet up their harangues against same-sex unions to include sermons about ungodly women who refuse to get married. They could pass a bill in Gongress requiring all unmarried people over the age of 21 to get married in a proper Christian church ceremony before they reach 22, lest they be tempted into homosexual sin. And if Dr. Bill Frist isn't on all the Sunday morning talk shows today telling unmarrieds, particularly Jennifer Wilbanks and John Mason, that they will get warts on their backsides and hair on their palms if they don't get married immediately, then he's missing the chance of the century to disseminate stupid medical advise. And it wouldn't take too much effort for the Schiavo folks to paint out their signs about sparing the life of a dead woman, and making them read: Supreme Court Must Judge Jennifer. What with the Republican Mandate looking like a limp dick, and there being no big ticket non-issues around to keep people from focusing on Iraq, Social Security, ethics and John Bolton, a woman who runs out on her wedding looks like a God-send for the neocon religious right. It's just the kind of important matter of concern for world-class yentas like our Prez, Congress and the Roman Catholic Church to get in a lather over.