Well, that and the next version of the Iraq spending bill

Bush has said he will veto the Iraq war funding bill. You know, the one that contains voluntary timetables for withdrawal. He calls the timetables "artificial."

Okay, try this exercise, if you dare: imagine a natural timetable in Iraq. Imagine a situation where the US government and the military leaders all look around Iraq and say, "By jiggy, it looks like our work here is done."

Imagine how long it would take to get to a place like that.

Now, go change your underwear.

43 has also postulated that, by imposing their own timetables, the Democrats are not listening to the leadership on the ground in Iraq.

The new leadership, that is. Not the old leadership. Christ, don't listen to them. The old leadership got shit-canned. I think because they sucked.

Yeah, I know, and that was by BushCo standards, even. That's pretty goddamn sucky, don't you think?

Where was I?

Oh, yeah. So, here's a little bit of wisdom from some of the fabled leadership on the ground in Iraq, Lt. Colonel Paul Yingling:

These debacles are not attributable to individual failures, but rather to a crisis in an entire institution: America's general officer corps. America's generals have failed to prepare our armed forces for war and advise civilian authorities on the application of force to achieve the aims of policy. The argument that follows consists of three elements. First, generals have a responsibility to society to provide policymakers with a correct estimate of strategic probabilities. Second, America's generals in Vietnam and Iraq failed to perform this responsibility. Third, remedying the crisis in American generalship requires the intervention of Congress.

What do you think? Will we listen to this guy on the ground? After all, he is a deputy commander of the 3rd Armoured Cavalry Regiment who's served two tours in Iraq.

What's that you're saying, sir? You have more?

After failing to visualize the conditions of combat in Iraq, America's generals failed to adapt to the demands of counterinsurgency. Counterinsurgency theory prescribes providing continuous security to the population. However, for most of the war American forces in Iraq have been concentrated on large forward-operating bases, isolated from the Iraqi people and focused on capturing or killing insurgents. Counterinsurgency theory requires strengthening the capability of host-nation institutions to provide security and other essential services to the population. America's generals treated efforts to create transition teams to develop local security forces and provincial reconstruction teams to improve essential services as afterthoughts, never providing the quantity or quality of personnel necessary for success.

Wow, sir, I am definitely listening to you. Is there anything we can do?

To reward moral courage in our general officers, Congress must ask hard questions about the means and ways for war as part of its oversight responsibility. Some of the answers will be shocking, which is perhaps why Congress has not asked and the generals have not told. Congress must ask for a candid assessment of the money and manpower required over the next generation to prevail in the Long War. The money required to prevail may place fiscal constraints on popular domestic priorities. The quantity and quality of manpower required may call into question the viability of the all-volunteer military. Congress must re-examine the allocation of existing resources, and demand that procurement priorities reflect the most likely threats we will face. Congress must be equally rigorous in ensuring that the ways of war contribute to conflict termination consistent with the aims of national policy. If our operations produce more enemies than they defeat, no amount of force is sufficient to prevail.

Amazing stuff. I'll bet everyone is listening to this guy.

Or not. Apparently an Army spokesman has already dismissed the Lt. Colonel by stressing that he is expressing his "personal opinions," and that the military is focused on "executing the mission at hand."

That's exactly what I'm afraid of.

The North Hollywood elite

Reading Michael’s awesome Marin County-inspired post over at Non-Threatening Boys Magazine got me thinking about living in California, and how frequently misunderstood we are.

Just like you can't have sensible Republicans without having yee-haw, militia-lovin', confederate flag-wavin', aggressively ignorant white-man-or-bust morons, you also can't seem to have Democrats without breeding the kind of faux-conscious, self-centered, drawstring pants-sporting, caucasian dreadlocks-wearing, dog-massaging dweebs that make places like Marin County and (in SoCal), Topanga Canyon, a very living hell on earth.

When I first moved to LA, the only job I could get was at Starbucks on the Santa Monica promenade. It was awful. One day, after working a full shift, I was dragging a huge bag of leaky, grimy, disgusting garbage the two blocks to our dumpster (thank you, Santa Monica urban planning!) when this hippie chick and her hippie companion pass me on the sidewalk.

She gasps audibly. "Starbucks doesn't recycle???" says she. I stop and look at her. I am beyond tired. I am sweaty. I have so much coffee and grounds on my clothes and in my hair and under my nails that you could wring me out and brew a full pot. "No," I say, and turn back to my task. "That's too bad," she says, her voice dripping with judgement and pity.

I turn to look at her again. "Here," I say, holding the bag of garbage toward her, "feel free."

She and her friend stomped off, of course, and I spent the next couple of weeks waiting to be fired after what I was sure would be a passionate email of serious concern to corporate headquarters.

The firing never came, but that encounter has come to symbolize for me everything that is wrong with that kind of Democrat: they misidentify the enemy, they judge the commitments of others without committing themselves, and they are too frequently oblivious to the hardships of working people.

I live in North Hollywood, in the San Fernando Valley. The people in North Hollywood work hard for the money, sister. The homes here cost too much for what you get. My mortgage is over half my take-home pay, and so is my neighbor’s. My neighbors drive old Toyota Corollas and pickups with recyclables or the tools of their trade stored in the back. When they buy a new car, it’s a P.T. Cruiser or a Scion xB. They come home from work wearing waitress and security guard uniforms. They shop at Ralphs, and the 99 cent store, and Big Lots. They don’t die because some big ole’ crazy record producer played cute with a gun one too many times. They die in armed robberies, or in the parking lot of some dance club on Tujunga.

We’re not the elite. And by the way, we pay too much in taxes, too. But we’re looking for a tide that lifts all boats. All of them. Because that’s who we are. Those are our values, and we’re all just out here in California, living ‘em.

It's not just about Bush and his dream of doing nothing

Last night, the president said that when the next president takes office, he hopes there are fewer troops in Iraq.

I hope so too.

It’s not the first time he’s said that. But what struck me most about that statement is that everyone seems to have accepted that he has given up on bringing our troops home within the next year and a half.

The press certainly seems to have taken the statement that withdrawal is not his problem anymore, as read.

Which is quite a feat, isn’t it? I mean, I wish I could conduct myself at work the same way. Seriously, how cherry would it be if you could get away with shit like this:

“I hope whoever has this job after me figures out how this spreadsheet formula works.”

“I hope whoever has this job after me learns how to stay within this dang budget.”

“I hope whoever has this job next has the perseverance to scan documents into the database for hours on end instead of searching for funny cat videos online.”

“Boss, I hope whoever has this job next doesn’t make fun of you as much as I do.”

and

“I sure hope that whoever has this job after me accomplishes those goals they put in my job description when I was hired.”

What would you hope from your successor, gentle readers?

Truth to power, then & now

Think my previous post was a little too rough on the fourth estate?

Consider this Vietnam-era story by the recently late, great David Halberstam:

On this particular day, the briefing was different, given not by a Major but by a Major General, Dick Stilwell, the smoothest young general in Saigon. It was in a different room and every general and every bird Colonel in the country was there. Picture if you will rather small room, about the size of a classroom, with about 10 or 12 reporters there in the center of the room. And in the back, and outside, some 40 military officers, all of them big time brass. It was clearly an attempt to intimidate us.

General Stilwell tried to take the intimidation a step further. He began by saying that Neil and I had bothered General Harkins and Ambassador Lodge and other VIPs, and we were not to do it again. Period.

And I stood up, my heart beating wildly -- and told him that we were not his corporals or privates, that we worked for The New York Times and UP and AP and Newsweek, not for the Department of Defense.

I said that we knew that 30 American helicopters and perhaps 150 American soldiers had gone into battle, and the American people had a right to know what happened.

And then this story, by the unfortunately still very much employed at the New York Times Elizabeth Bumiller:

I think we were very deferential, because in the East Room press conference, it's live. It's very intense. It's frightening to stand up there. I mean, think about it. You are standing up on prime time live television, asking the president of the United States a question when the country is about to go to war. There was a very serious, somber tone that evening, and I think it made -- and you know, nobody wanted to get into an argument with the president at this very serious time.

I guess if I was as pussified as our press, I'd be afraid of arguing with that dipshit, whiny-ass excuse for a man what's currently sitting in our White House, too.

Except I'm not. And at the risk of causing undue excitement in any agency that might be monitoring this blog (Hey boys. How you doing? Love your tie.) for seditious speech, let me tell you that if I ever met up with that Karl Rove motherfucker at some fancy dinner party, one of us would be wearing his entree home.



(Quotes from Glenn Greenwald's wonderful tribute to Halberstam and condemnation of the Washington press.)

Then how many squares of toilet paper for a Turd Blossom?

Perhaps I wasn’t the only one baffled by the Sheryl Crow toilet paper story that made the blog rounds yesterday. But if experience with BushCo has taught me anything, it’s taught me that if you scratch a silly or demeaning story about a liberal, what you’ll frequently find underneath is a worse story about a Bushie.

Think Valerie Plame, taken to its logical, trivial extreme.

Such is the case with Ms. Crow, who unfairly endured taunts of “all I wanna do is smell like ass” across the internets yesterday. For the record, people, the toilet paper thing was a joke, as was the line of clothing with detachable sleeves for mouth-wiping. Not a good joke, but a joke nevertheless, as anyone who read the blog entry in which it is also suggested that toilet paper can be rinsed and used again, might have guessed.

But the real question is, why was the toilet paper story so inexplicably hot in that Politico, Drudge-y kind of way?

Maybe because Karl Rove behaved himself rather badly in regards to Ms. Crow at the White House Correspondents Association Dinner Saturday night, and it wouldn’t do for that angle to get out before it has first been properly impressed upon us that Sheryl Crow is an idiot.

A silly, leftie, tree-hugging, biofuel bus-riding, ass-smelling idiot.

So Sheryl Crow and Laurie David, who were attending the dinner, approached Karl Rove, a man so vile that even his good friend the president believes that comparing Rove to a bit of fauna that grows out of excrement makes him somehow MORE endearing, and they attempt to engage him on the subject of global warming. Now, I’m entirely willing to believe that David approached him with a level of aggressiveness that would be considered outré in the genteel (read slavering) atmosphere of a dinner hosted by an association that has been so cowed by the present administration that their idea of tough journalism is to answer a big, steaming, shit-covered plate of BushCo lies with a hearty “Thank you sir, may I have another?!” - an association so completely seduced by their access to the criminals in the halls of power that they have come to believe that Rich Little constitutes entertainment.

These are the people who believe that Crow and David’s questioning of Rove was inappropriate, and “so wrong,” and who, in the face of Rove’s assertions that the two were not part of the “American people,” and that he therefore did not have to treat them with civility, blamed the silly, leftie Hollywood bitches that dared to speak to one of their most important sources about an issue that genuinely concerns them.

May I suggest, gentle readers, that that hall full of sold-out media whores are not exactly capable of judging what is, and is not, acceptable behavior in the presence of power? That privileged position is one they have abdicated long ago.

Hang 'em high

You know what?

Fuck everyone who voted for Gonzales, and who now is getting up on their high horses about his performance in the prosecutor scandal.

When Gonzales was Attorney General for the state of Texas, he provided such cursory and biased summaries of death penalty cases to then-governor George W. You-know-who, that Bush granted clemency only once, and sent 152 people to death during his term, which remains a record in modern America.

And in fact, Bush admitted that he didn't always read the memos, appallingly brief as they were, but would have Gonzales verbally summarize his own summaries. The memos amounted to little more than permission for Bush to check the box marked "no."

All of these senators who now are damning Gonzales, and calling for his resignation, they all knew of his willingness to put political expediency above justice before they voted to confirm him. And yet they confirmed him.

So how dare they pretend to be surprised that he would subvert the mere firing of some prosecutors?

Bells On Recommends: Brick

It's a film noir. Set in a high school.

A real film noir, not one of those overhyped faux noirs where everything's all hunky dory at the end.

All the classic noir types are there: the beleaguered gumshoe, the cop with a grudge, the doomed blonde, the society dame with a secret, the flawed kingpin, the junkie just trying to score, the bad girl who knows too much for her own good, and the thug who's in over his head. Except it's all set in the world of high school geeks, jocks, and socials.

And great music. Real movie music, not just a series of indie songs.

It might take a few minutes to get into the slang, but stay with it. It's worth it.

5 dicks, 5 votes

The price of being politically aware is that frequently you are so angry you can see red.

Literally. Everywhere. Reds and their ignorant, bullshit ideas about what women should be, and what life is, and who gets to say what goes on in one's very own womb.

In a not-so-subtle "in your face, fuckers" toward the majority opinion that today upheld, despite 6 lower court rulings to the contrary, a NATIONWIDE ban on an intact D&E abortion procedure erroneously known as a "partial birth abortion," Justice Ginsberg read a summary of her minority opinion FROM THE BENCH:

In keeping with this understanding of the right to reproductive choice, we have consistently required that laws regulating abortion, at any stage of pregnancy and in all cases, safeguard not only a woman’s existence — her life — but her health as well. Faithful to precedent unbroken from 1973 until today, the Court held seven years ago in Stenberg v. Carhart, that a state statue banning the very procedure at issue today — intact D&E — was unconstitutional in part because it lacked a health exception. If substantial medical authority maintains that banning a particular abortion procedure could endanger women’s health, we held, a health exception cannot be omitted by the legislators.

Despite our unambiguous ruling, Congress passed the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act — without an exception for women’s health, a ban that would operate nationwide. After lengthy trials and thorough review of volumes of medical evidence, each of the District Courts to consider the statue found that it was unconstitutional for the same reason: Significant medical authority identified intact D&E as the safest procedure for some women.

In an alarming decision, the Court today reverses the judgments other federal courts have uniformly made. Today’s decision refuses to take Casey and Stenberg seriously. The Court’s opinion tolerates, indeed applauds, federal intervention to ban nationwide a procedure found necessary and proper in certain cases by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. For the first time since Roe, the Court blesses a prohibition with no exception protecting a woman’s health...

...In candor, the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, and the Court’s defense of it, cannot be understood as anything other than an effort to chip away at a right declared again and again by this Court — and with increasing comprehension of its centrality to women’s lives. A decision of the character the Court makes today should not have staying power.

In other words, in as much as the majority has ignored the precedent set in 1992, so should this ruling be discounted as a precedent.

That's legalese for "fuck you, assholes."

Epstein-Barr made me do it!

Well, the results are in, and Republican presidential candidate Tommy Thompson is officially blaming his remarks about Jews being good with money on:
1. fatigue, and
2. a cold

Is it just me?

Or is anybody else out there really fucking sick of Rufus Wainwright?

First of all, after watching that horrible travesty of a Leonard Cohen documentary, I'm Your Man, the only strong feeling I walked away with, besides the fact that it was an amazing opportunity wasted, was "Wow, Rufus Wainwright sure seems like a dick."

Then I heard about his concert of Judy Garland covers, and I thought that although it seemed like a somewhat annoying career move, it was occuring on the east coast, and it was unlikely to affect me any further once I had rolled my eyes and uttered the obligatory "whatever."

But now, every time I hear that super lame, super self-indulgent "Do I Disappoint You?" song off his new album, I just wish I could reach through my speakers and slap that smug little self-satisfied smirk right off his face. It's wretched.

And it sucks, because I love his dad so much. His dad fucking rules. In fact, if you listen to the Loudon Wainwright III live album, So Damn Happy, you can hear me laughing in the audience.

Glengarry, Glen Edge

Famed playwright, author, director, and screenwriter David Mamet has signed a deal to direct a series of commercials for the Ford Motor Company. The commercials are for their new “crossover” vehicle, the Edge.

Bells On has used its industry contacts to obtain scripts for two of the new commercials, currently in production in Canada.

Commercial #1

Fade in on a dingy real estate office conference room. Addressing the tired, beaten-down salesmen is their fast-talking regional manager.

Manager

We're adding a little something to this month's sales contest.

[salesmen react]

As you all know, first prize is a Cadillac El Dorado. Anybody want to see second prize?

[Holds up prize]

Second prize is a set of steak knives. Third prize is you're fired.

Salesman #1

Is there a fourth prize?

Manager

Excuse me, you worthless piece-of-shit excuse for salesman. Did you just fucking say something to me?

Salesman #1

[hesitantly] Is there a fourth prize?

Manager

Yeah, there’s a fourth prize. You wanna know what it is? The fourth prize, you stupid fucks, is a brand new Ford Edge.

Salesman #1

You’re a fucking heartless bastard, you know that?

Manager

That’s funny, that’s exactly what your wife said to me last night when I fucked her in the ass.

The camera pans from the conference room out the window to a brand new midnight blue Ford Edge parked in the lot below. A bum is pissing on it. Fade out.

Commercial #2

Two young men, Danny and Bernie, both players, are driving around downtown Chicago in a brand new silver Ford Edge. The car gleams and catches the sun as they negotiate the urban terrain. As they stop at a red light, they see two beautiful young women standing on the corner.

Danny

Holy shit. You fucking see what I see?

Bernie

What?

Danny

On the corner?

Bernie

Yeah.

Danny

You see that?

Bernie

Yeah.

Danny

Do you see that?

Bernie

Jesus, I said I fucking see it.

Danny

You see that chick’s twat?

Bernie

What?

Danny

What the fuck did you think I was looking at, her fucking handbag or something? Her fucking handbag?

Bernie

I don’t see any twat.

Danny

It’s right there.

Bernie

Where?

Danny

Right fucking there! Between her fucking legs! Where the fuck do you think?

Bernie

Wait. Which one?

Danny

Which one. The one with the skirt so short her fucking twat is hanging out!

Bernie

Pull over. Let’s talk to them.

Danny

You think we can make them?

Bernie

Yeah, why the fuck not?

Danny

In this fucking piece-of-shit car? Forget it. They’d never go for it.

Bernie

I knew I should have borrowed my Grandma’s Subaru.

Danny tosses his cigarette out the window in disgust. Fade out.

But seriously, I love you curly-headed yids.

Republican presidential candidate Tommy Thompson, speaking at the Religious Action Center of Reformed Judaism:

"I'm in the private sector and for the first time in my life I'm earning money. You know that's sort of part of the Jewish tradition and I do not find anything wrong with that."

After discovering that some in the audience took offense at the remark, he attempted an apology:

"I just want to clarify something because I didn't [by] any means want to infer or imply anything about Jews and finances and things," he said.

Unfortunately, he didn't stop there:

"What I was referring to, ladies and gentlemen, is the accomplishments of the Jewish religion. You've been outstanding business people and I compliment you for that."

Ho, boy. So what do you think, readers? Should he blame the rappers?

Funny

After Laser Cats I & II, I was about ready to write off Hader & Samberg. But now this.


(enjoy it before the killjoys in NBC legal get to it)

The art of the conservative apology, or where to point the finger.

You've fucked up. The press is onto you. You're under the gun, and you've got to account for yourself. Do you:

1. Explain that you got some very bad advice. For example, say "I never would have robbed that bank, but I was advised to by the bank ethics committee. Boy, were they wrong!"

2. Blame rappers. As in, "I'm so sorry, boss, for calling you a whore. But I heard a rapper say it, and I assumed, apparently erroneously, that it was also appropriate in this completely different social setting and circumstance. Obviously, I am ignorant of some very basic rules of social interaction. Have I mentioned that those pants make you look fat?"

3. Plead incompetence. No matter how important the task that was fucked up, or how implausible the idea that your underlings would take such risky actions without your approval, no series of events is too large for you to simply deny that you knew anything about it at all.

4. If all else fails, go for the most basic defense there is, the defense that children have instinctively employed since the dawn of man. Put on your best innocent face and say "That lamp? That was broken even before I was born."

Rhymes with orange

When I was in junior high school, the hippie girl who lived next door (the one with the boyfriend who saw a lot of bad shit in 'Nam) gave my mother a copy of a very popular new book called Breakfast of Champions. Mom didn't care for it, but I was all over that shit since I had heard the hippie girl reading it and laughing out loud.

For me, the book was one of those artworks you encounter that seem to speak directly to you and tell you that you are not alone in whatever godforsaken shithole you are currently stuck in. (Marion, Indiana being one of the worst, of course.)

As remains my M.O., I slowly bought up every book he had published previously. They were all in paperback, so I could just afford to buy them by saving up my allowance.

I became obsessed, not only because the author was a cynical son of a bitch, but also because he was from Indiana. Indiana. Someone from Indiana who wrote about shit that wasn't farming, and corn crops, and bolts of gingham, and taking Bobby Sue to the dance.

A couple of years later, in my first year in high school, I had a great English Lit class. The teacher was actually sorta young, and well-spoken, and she knew a lot of the same authors I did, she wasn't just always going on about Beowulf. She made a bulletin board covered in paper, a sort of literary graffiti board, and told us to write bits from our favorite poems and books on it, so that other students could read them.

Well, it was an elective class, and thus full of geeks eager to impress each other, and of course the teacher, with their amazingly mature and hip literary taste. Vonnegut was very popular, and I knew it wouldn't be too long before a quote from one of his works appeared on the board, and then of course every subsequent quote of his would just seem unoriginal and old hat. With my encyclopedic knowledge of the works of Vonnegut, I was determined to write not only the first quote, but the definitive quote, the slightly obscure but still accessible quote, the coolest fucking quote ever.

Only the teacher didn't feel the same way about my contribution. She began the next class by announcing to everyone that she didn't know "who wrote that garbage on the board," but it was "not acceptable." Also that while she would not report the person who wrote it, or even ask to know who it was, that person should know that "he or she should never, ever, write anything that nasty and despicable on the classroom board ever again."

Some of the girls in the class sniggered, and a couple of my friends, suspecting me, watched me from the corners of their eyes. But I just sat there, without protest. I was crushed. Absolutely crushed to my soul. How could she not know, I thought. How could she not recognize the brilliance? We're all almost adults here, I thought. How could great literature be naughty?

What I chose was from one of my favorite short stories, Welcome to the Monkey House, from the collection of the same name. It's a science fiction story about a future society where the government has decided to tackle the planet's devastating overpopulation problem in two ways. The first is to require that all citizens take pills to numb them from the waist down, thus robbing them of sexual pleasure and the desire to procreate. The pills also have the side effect of turning the urine bright blue. The second way is to encourage citizens to visit purple-roofed Federal Ethical Suicide Parlors, conveniently situated next to Howard Johnson restaurants, and to allow one of the virgin parlor hostesses to put an end to their suffering.

Enter the rebel, who tries to take the whole system down by tossing his pills, and seducing all the virgin hostesses away from their parlors of nice, quiet death. He does this partly by writing poems to them, and thus, I give you my awesome English Lit graffiti board Vonnegut quote:

I did not sow, I did not spin,
And thanks to pills I did not sin.
I loved the crowds, the stink, the noise.
And when I peed, I peed turquoise.

I ate beneath a roof of orange;
Swung with progress like a door hinge.
'Neath purple roof I've come today
To piss my azure life away.

Virgin hostess, death's recruiter,
Life is cute, but you are cuter.



- Kurt Vonnegut, Hoosier, November 11, 1922 - April 11, 2007

Happy Birthday, Spooney!

See, I looked through over 6 pages of Google Images search results until I found a picture of a birthday cake with a guitar on it. Because you play guitar.

Get it?

No, I don't know who the guy is. But if I had Photoshop, I would've tried to put a picture of your face over his.

That's how much I love you baby.

Even though, at 4 years younger than me, you are really fucking old.

St. Miles of Kimball

For some reason, I get the Miles Kimball catalogue.

One thing I have noticed, is that no matter how many times you move in your life, there are two groups that will always find you: your alumni association, and Miles Kimball.

I actually enjoy getting the Miles Kimball catalogue, because you know what? They make my life simpler.

For instance, just this a.m., I was wondering how I could escape the tedium of cutting a banana by hand every single morning.

It's like they've looked into my very soul.

See, before, I was using a butter knife. A knife! It was barbaric. And not only that, but think of the time wasted! That's one small fraction of a minute that I'll never get back.

And hey, who, looking back over their lives from their deathbed, ever said that they wished they'd spent more time cutting bananas?

Am I right?

You know what else is not worthy of our 21st century civilization? Not being able to pick up your jigsaw puzzle and take it with you wherever you have to be in your busy life, or clean your feed cap in the dishwasher, or find a visor that clips onto your eyewear and keeps your hairdo intact, or even to eat a nutritious meal on the go.

And I know a lot of people claim that religion, or having kids, or even TiVo has changed their lives, but whenever I hear that, I just have to laugh. Because I know that practicing my putting while taking a shit has TRULY changed my life. It just has. Look, if you knew me before I was able to practice my putting while taking a shit, you'd know that it's changed me. Made me into a better, saner, more peaceful person. And also, it's helped prepare me for whatever lies beyond this life.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go. I'm running a little low on patriotic windsocks.

File under "no shit"

Republicans are more likely to be sexist and racist than Democrats.


(Shakesville via Blog Report)

Do you feel lucky, punk?

Avril Lavigne sucks.

Which is fine, and I'm certainly not the first person to point it out, but now she is sucking on the cover of my fa-vor-ite magazine.

What's up, Lucky? What's the freakin deal? You're a fashion magazine. When women are on your cover, they're wearing fashion. You know, like fashion-y type things. Like articles of clothing that some really bitchy designer somewhere thought about, and drew, and then like, MADE and stuff. Or had tiny little Filipino women make - anyway, the point is - do I really have to spell it out? She's on your cover, see, and she's wearing a WHITE TANK TOP and a BLACK MENSWEAR VEST, SEE? SEE?...THAT'S WHAT SHE ALWAYS WEARS! And I don't need to see her wearing it on the cover of a magazine that purports to be about FASHION. Because there's nothing remotely fashion-related happening at all up there! NOTHING! She's got a SKULL NECKLACE! She's got some lame-ass RED STREAK in her hair, which is STRAIGHT, and PARTED IN THE MIDDLE. I'm sure, if you panned down, she'd be wearing a STUDDED BELT, TIGHT BLACK PANTS, and BLACK CONVERSE HIGHTOPS! So what?? Girls like her have been wearing those SAME EXACT CLOTHES for the last freaking thirty years, is all!! So, while that may merit a mention in National Geographic, or maybe SARTORIAL BORINGNESS MONTHLY, it does not, no way, earn that dweeb the cover of my favorite magazine. Do we understand each other, Lucky? Do we???

I just looked inside, and Avril says her favorite store is Trash and Vaudeville. What a freakin' surprise. Excuse me while I retch.

Jesus died for somebody's sins, but not mine

Here's a goodie for your Easter basket:

Asshat-gone-wild Joe Francis?

In jail.

Have a good weekend! Whatever it is you like to have, have one on me!

H.M.S. BushCo

Maybe Matthew Dowd is not this year’s Cindy Sheehan, but this year’s Dick Morris.

In other words, is he a convert, or just the ultimate opportunist? An honest man grown disillusioned, or the proverbial rat off the sinking ship?

The always fucking spot-on Sidney Blumenthal weighs in:

Bush's loss of the popular majority by 543,895 votes in the 2000 election was a shock to his political advisors and prompted an internal rethinking of his strategy. During the Florida contest and before the Supreme Court delivered the presidency to Bush, Dowd wrote a confidential memo to Rove that analyzed data from the recent vote and argued that there was no significant center in the electorate. "Dowd's analysis destroyed the rationale for Bush to govern as 'a uniter, not a divider,'" wrote Thomas Edsall in his book "Building Red America." Bush's confected campaign persona as a "compassionate conservative" was suddenly discarded. The "architect," as Bush called Rove, had an architect. Bush's brain had an outsourced brain. Rove's and Bush's radical imperatives derived from Dowd's conclusions…

…Dowd is perhaps the most peripheral member of the original Texas inner circle that brought Bush to power…Unlike Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who is Bush's creature pure and simple, Dowd is both creature and creator. His self-involved and tortuous explanation of his disillusionment helps cast light on the banality of his motives in his original defection from Democrat to Bush Republican. However traumatic his private drama, he appears fundamentally the same opportunist, a point subtly driven home by those who know him well.

"I've known him for a while," said President Bush, asked at his press conference on Tuesday about Dowd. Bush stayed on message, reducing Dowd's defection to being overwrought about his son's shipping out to Iraq: "I understand his anguish over war. I understand that this is an emotional issue for Matthew." The Washington Post added: "Dowd, contacted later by e-mail, chose not to engage in a debate. He had said his piece. 'I don't have anything to add,' he wrote."

Dowd can have no riposte to the White House insinuation that he is a troubled person unless he breaks through his own rigidly constructed tale of conversion.

Dowd has said that the only current candidate who appeals to him is Barack Obama, for his “message of unity.” This from the man that authored the abandonment of the “uniter, not a divider” stance, and the gay marriage wedge in the 2004.

But he’s not begging for a job for the next two years. Oh, no. Dowd might leave the political world entirely: “I wouldn’t be surprised if I wasn’t walking around in Africa or South America doing something that was like mission work.”

You know who would be surprised if he was doing that? Me.

Who knew?

Alanis Morrisette has a sense of humor.


(via The Fix)

Bells On Contest!

So this deaf butch lesbian in South Dakota


kills the deaf butch friend of her deaf girlfriend


and then chops up her body and hides it in the woods.

She is caught.

The question is, who will play them in the movie?

Please leave your guess in the comments. Winner will receive no comments from me on their own blog for a week!

I call Queen Latifah & Rosie O'Donnell. And Misha Barton as the girlfriend.

I know that when I'm on the rag, I get a really intense craving for peace

Matthew Dowd was the head of strategy for the campaign to re-elect W in 2004, and the creator of "Kerry the flip-flopper."

Here's what he says now about the Democrat's plan for Iraq that he once ridiculed: "Kerry was right."

Why is he coming forward now, you ask?

“I’m a big believer that in part what we’re called to do — to me, by God; other people call it karma — is to restore balance when things didn’t turn out the way they should have,” Mr. Dowd said. “Just being quiet is not an option when I was so publicly advocating an election.”

Wow, accountability. Too bad it's an affliction that only seems to hit the Bushies after they leave the administration.

Perhaps that is judging too harshly. I imagine that once you grow a conscience, the suggestion that you might need to spend more time with your family comes down pretty quickly. Or, as W might put it, "Don't let them fancy Frency doors hit you on the hinder on the way out. Heh, heh."

So how does BushCo counter such harsh criticism from a former highly placed Bushie?

They give the Sheehan treatment. That is, they insinuate that it might be his time of the month, or something. Yeah, that's it. He's all emotional because his wife left him. Oh, and his son is going to Iraq soon, so yeah, he's a little cranky, if you take our meaning.