Under the Cellar Steps

Just released: Bumper stickers the GOP is considering for 2004:

Bush/Cheney '04: Four More Wars!
Bush/Cheney '04: Assimilate. Resistance is Futile.
Bush/Cheney '04: Apocalypse Now!
BU__SH__!
Bush/Cheney '04: Because the truth just isn't good enough.
Bush/Cheney '04: Compassionate Colonialism
Bush/Cheney '04: Deja-voodoo all over again!
Bush/Cheney '04: Leave no billionaire behind
Bush/Cheney '04: Making the world a better place, one country at a time.
Bush/Cheney '04: Or else.
Bush/Cheney '04: Over a billion Whoppers served.
Bush/Cheney '04: Thanks for not paying attention.
Bush/Cheney '04: The economy's stupid!
Bush/Cheney '04: The last vote you'll ever have to cast.
Bush/Cheney '04: This time, elect us!
Bush/Cheney '04: We're Gooder!
Don't think. Vote Bush!
George W. Bush: A brainwave away from the presidency
George W. Bush: It takes a village idiot
George W. Bush: Leadership without a doubt
George W. Bush: The buck stops Over There
God Save the King!
Let them eat yellowcake! Vote Bush!
Peace & Prosperity Suck -- Big-Time
Vote Bush in '04: "I Has Incumbentory Advantitude"
Vote Bush in '04: "Because every vote counts -- for me!"
Vote Bush in '04: "Because I'm the President, that's why!"
Vote Bush in '04: Because dictatorship is easier
Vote Bush in '04: It's a no-brainer!

Resume: George Walker Bush

Past work experience:

I ran for Congress and lost.

I bought an oil company, but couldn't find any oil in Texas; company went bankrupt shortly after I sold all my stock.

I bought the Texas Rangers baseball team in a sweetheart deal that took land using taxpayer money and bankrupted the Texas State University system's pension program. (Biggest move: traded away Sammy Sosa.)

With my father's help, and nearly the same name, I was elected Governor of Texas.

Accomplishments:

I changed pollution laws for oil and power companies and made Texas the most polluted state in the nation.

I replaced Los Angeles with Houston as the most smog-ridden city in America.

Presided over more executions annually of prisoners than all other states combined performed in the entire 20th Century.

I cut taxes and bankrupted the Texas government in billions in borrowed money.

I became president after losing the popular vote by over 650,000 votes, with the help of my brother Jeb and the invaluable aid of Republican appointees to the Supreme Court.

Accomplishments as president:

I attacked and took over two countries, so far.

I spent the country's surplus and bankrupted the Treasury.

I shattered the record for biggest annual deficit in history.

I set economic record for most private bankruptcies filed in any 12-month period.

I set all-time record for biggest stock market drop in its history.

I am the first president in decades to execute a federal prisoner.

I am the first president in US history to enter office with a criminal record.

In my first year in office set the all-time record for most vacation days taken by any president. After taking the entire month of August 2001 off for vacation, I presided over the worst security failure in U.S. history.

I set the record for most campaign fund-raising trips of any president in US history.

In my first two years in office, over 2,000,000 Americans lost their jobs.

I cut unemployment benefits for more out-of-work Americans than any president in U.S. history.

I set the all-time record for the most mortgage foreclosures in a 12-month period.

I appointed more convicted criminals to administration positions than any president in U.S. history.

I set the record for the lowest number of press conferences of any president since the invention of television.

I signed more laws and executive orders "emending" the Constitutional rights and protections of American citizens than any president in U.S. history.

I presided over the biggest energy crises in U.S. history and refused to intervene when corruption was revealed.

I presided over the highest gasoline prices in U.S. history and refuse to use the national reserves as past presidents have.

I cut healthcare benefits for U.S. military veterans, even those injured in battle. I also cut healthcare benefits for the homeless, and the 'working poor.' (I even suggested the homeless wouldn't be homeless if they'd just get a job -- even though 2.5 million jobs have disappeared.)

I set the all-time record for most people worldwide to simultaneously take to the streets to protest me (15 million people), shattering the record for protest against any person in the history of mankind.

I dissolved more international treaties than any president in U.S. history.

My presidency is the most secretive and unaccountable of any in U.S. history.

Members of my cabinet are the richest of any administration in U.S. history. The 'poorest' multimillionaire, Condoleeza Rice, has a Chevron oil tanker named after her.

I am the first president in US history to have all 50 states near bankruptcy, in terms of their deficits, at the same time.

I presided over the biggest corporate stock market fraud of any market in any country in the history of the world.

I am the first president in history to order a U.S. attack and military occupation of a sovereign nation.

I created the largest government department bureaucracy in the history of the United States.

I set the all-time record for biggest annual budget spending increases, more than any president in history, while at the same time proposing tax cuts.

I gave giant tax breaks to the rich while cutting social services to the aged and poor.

I am the first president in U.S. history to see the United Nations remove our country from the Human Rights Commission.

I am the first president in U.S. history to have the United Nations remove the United States from the International Elections Monitoring Board.

My administration has the least amount of congressional oversight than any in the nation's history.

I withdrew the US from the World Court of Law.

I refused to allow inspectors access to US-held prisoners of war, even though that is required by the Geneva Convention.

I hold the record for most corporate campaign donations.

My biggest lifetime campaign contributor, who is also one of my best friends, presided over one of the largest corporate bankruptcy frauds in world history (Kenneth Lay, former CEO of Enron Corporation).

I spent more money on polls and focus groups than any president in US history.

I am the first president in history to unilaterally attack a sovereign nation against the will of the United Nations and the world community.

I am the first US president in history to have a majority of the people of Europe (71%) view my presidency as the biggest threat to world peace and stability.

I changed US policy to allow convicted criminals to be awarded government contracts.

I set all-time records for the number of administration appointees who violated US law by not selling huge investments in corporations bidding for government contracts.

I failed to get Osama Bin Laden 'dead or alive'.

More American and British troops have been killed and injured since May 1 when I declared "war operations in Iraq are over" than were injured or killed in the actual war phase.

I failed to capture the anthrax killer who tried to murder the leaders of our country at the United States Capitol building. After 18 months I have no leads and zero suspects.

I removed more freedoms and civil liberties from Americans than any other president in U.S. history, more than Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt combined.

In a little over two years I created the most divided country in decades, possibly the most divided the U.S. has ever been since the Civil War.

I entered office with the strongest economy in US history and in less than two years, every economic category plunged.


Records and References:

I have at least one conviction for drunk driving in Maine (Texas driving record has been erased and is not available).

I was AWOL as a pilot from the Air National Guard for 13 months.

Records from my tenure as governor of Texas are in my father's Library, unavailable for public view.

All records of any SEC investigations into my insider trading or bankrupt companies are sealed and unavailable for public view.

All minutes of meetings for any public corporation I served on the board are sealed and unavailable for public view.

Any records or minutes from meetings I (or VP Dick Cheney) attended regarding public energy policy are sealed and unavailable for public review.

For personal references: please speak to my daddy or uncle James Baker (They can be reached at their offices of the Carlyle Group, a corporate company devoted to war profiteering).

This wonderful little blog Bunkosquad has a song to commemorate John Ashcroft's multi-city tour promoting the Patriot Act. Delightful.

Especially when you're the one who gets to interpret them. Katherine Harris - you remember, the former fair and balanced Florida Secretary of State, and the patron saint of cheaters - decided to ban all political literature from an official congressional town hall meeting, and that ban was enforced by local police. Well, all literature except her own. The tortured explanation from Harris' spokesman was that her literature wasn't campaign literature, it was simply materials that explained her position on the issues. He didn't successfully explain how those were different from the materials from the Florida Alliance for Retired Americans, which set out her position on issues of interest to them and which didn't mention any other candidate or potential candidate.

Lying twit. If she had any shame, she'd resign in disgrace. But we already know whether she has any shame, don't we?

Can you imagine? Bush lies about scientific data to support his ideology. Global warming, stem cell research, sex education, drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, agricultural pollution. Doesn't matter what the truth is; the truth is what Big Daddy tells us it is. Even the current White House press liar, Scott McClellan, admits it: "This administration looks at the facts, and reviews the best available science based on what's right for the American people," Mr. McClellan said.

At least Dubya is consistent.

Best line today on the zoo that they call the California recall election:
"If it's Arnold against Arianna, it will be like fighting WWI all over again, with the Austrian-Hungarian Empire battling the Ottoman Empire."

I watched the Tonight Show last night, to see Arnold's announcement. You know, it's been a long time since I watched the Tonight Show, and it will be a much longer time before I watch it again.

Jay's monologue was spectactularly humor-free. It was mean-spirited, though; I'll have to give him that much. Kobe Bryant rape jokes. (Not Kobe-bribing-his-wife jokes. Jokes about the rape itself, using the humor apparently inherent in violent physical traumas.) Accusing the Clintons of having venereal diseases. (Any actual basis for that, Jay? Or is this just the hate-filled ideologue coming out?) It's a good thing that Jay giggled, to let us know when he thought he had told a joke. No one on this side of the TV set was laughing.

The monologue was followed by equally funny comedy sketches: the Kevin Eubanks doll and masturbation jokes; Ross the intern, with flaming homosexual stereotypes and microphone-as-penis jokes. Such timeless, classy stuff.

I cannot imagine Steve Allen, Jack Paar, or Johnny Carson doing any of these things, and I understand why Carson has steered clear of the desecration that Jay and his stable of writers has made of the Tonight Show. I think I'll follow his lead.

And that would be the National Pray for Bill O'Reilly to Die Day, which (alas!) was yesterday.

Wouldn't you really like to get the two of them into a room together? I know I would. Then I'd sneak out the only door, lock it behind me, and brick over all the windows and exits.

The Daily Brew had this comment:
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Faced with the inevitable loss of public support for their dishonestly marketed war of aggression, GOP apologists have begun to sneer the rather obscene question "would you rather have Saddam back?"

I would suggest that a fair answer to this question might include the following:

I would rather have the support and sympathy of the entire free world in our fight against the terrorists who killed three thousand of our citizens on September 11 back.

I would rather have the credibility of the US government with the entire international community back.

I would rather have the admiration and respect of freedom loving people across the globe back.

I would rather have a UN security counsel who unanimously backed the US in our every effort that wasn't an affront to established international law back.

I would rather have the hundreds of billions of dollars the US has sunk into Iraq back, along with the obligation to spend billions more, since Iraqi people across the entire spectrum of their society are protesting our very presence there.

I would rather have the UN weapons inspectors, who were actively crawling through Saddam's underwear drawers before we attacked, back.

I would rather have the no-fly zones, which shut Saddam out of power in both the north and the south of his own country, back.

And if I could get back the lives of over 240 US servicemen, including over 1,000 wounded or injured, and still have Saddam Hussein completely boxed in militarily and economically, just as he was prior to the start of the war, would I?

You are damn right I would.
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