HR 5286: Spilling the Seed of Democracy Onto Our Nation’s Youth

Republican Representative Mark Foley was caught up in a possibly innocent -- if creepy -- scandal earlier.

Foley sent a series of messages in which he asked the former page how old he was, what he'd like for his birthday and "what stuff" he liked "to do."

Foley, of course, denied that there was anything untoward, that that’s just how he always is with all the pages, and railed against this despicable partisan smear. Even if the page in question did use the word “sick” to describe the emails like 16 times. Whatever. Moving on, ABC News calls the Foley people with an update - we have some IMs to ask you about. Foley’s response?

He resigned.

While the e-mail messages were vague enough that Foley might have explained them away successfully, ABC News says it has obtained instant-messaging text he sent to other underage male pages in which the congressman "made repeated references to sexual organs and acts." ABC says Foley's resignation came shortly after it questioned him about the IM content.

So, um, is it still a big partisan smear campaign? No?

The Republican co-chair of the Congressional Missing and Exploited Children's Caucus is a pedophile. You don’t gots to be no bloodhound to smell the hypocrisy today.

Today, We Are All Republicans

It occurred to me today that it’s quite possible that everything Bush has ever said is completely true, or at least contains a logical thread.

Exhibit A: Bush claims that the terrorists hate us for our freedom, (not for our policies of propping up brutal dictators in exchange for cheap oil and for the dereliction of our duty to broker peace between Israel and Palistine).

Exhibit B: Bush eliminates habeas corpus. Without cause or explanation, Bush can name anyone in the world an enemy combatant and send him to a secret prison with neither rights nor voice nor access to attorney nor the right to answer or even to know the charges that are being brought against him. Oh yeah, and Bush can legally beat the living shit out of him too.

Therefore, we have no freedom.

Therefore, the terrorists don’t hate us.

Whew! I’m glad that’s all over. Well played, W. I smell a peace prize!

Well played on the part of the cowardly Democrats, by the way, to step aside and twiddle their fucking thumbs and do nothing while Bush strips every last provision from the Constitution. For a minute there, I thought they might actually stand up for something they believe in. Fuck them. Fuck all of them. Fuck Washington. I’m done.

How can anyone win on a pro-torture agenda for Christ’s sake?! Where am I? What is going on?? If the Democrats were pro-torture, with the GOP against, every campaign commercial would be some guy with his fingernails being torn off with the creepy voice asking if the next to go would be you. Pictures of concentration camp victims and piles of burning naked bodies. What the fuck? Grow a pair, Democrats. Call them on their brutality! Call them the vicious heartless bastards they are. And if you lose, at least you lost with your principles, instead of just losing your principles, which is what has happened.

Sorry for the rambling; it just builds up sometimes and you gotta let it out.

A Cheap Metaphor in One Act

Fourteen Year-Old Girl: Dad?

Dad: Yes, honey?

FYOG: Can I go to an all-weekend party/sleepover at the captain of the football team’s house while his parents are out of town?

Dad: Abolutely NOT!!

FYOG: Dad! You’re so square! Well, can I go to the senior prom and after-party with the captain of the football team?

Dad: Well, I guess that’s ok. Have fun, sweetie!

-- scene --

Now, substitute “all-weekend sleepover party” with “detain and torture whomever the president chooses without oversight or legal protection for the prisoner.” And substitute “senior prom and after-party” with “detain and torture whomever the president chooses without oversight or legal protection for the prisoner.” And there you have the “compromise” that has been reached by the so-called maverick Republicans who “stood up to” the president.

But virtually no attention has been paid to this radical and wildly unjust provision, because as bad as the McCain-Graham-Warner proposal is, the president's was slightly worse. And by masquerading as the principled opponents to a handful of the most extreme provisions in the president's proposals, these "dissident Republican senators" were depicted as the moderates in the debate, as the reasonable, serious thinkers who would carefully balance the need for strong antiterrorist measures with the need to safeguard our basic liberties.

We should have seen this coming a mile away. I think it’s really gotten to the point that there is honest to God, not a single person in political office with any sense of decency or even a soul.

Senator McCain, who -- despite the fact that I have never bought into his whole straight-shooting shtick, which always seemed as manufactured as the president’s brush-clearing cowboy boots -- was tortured for five years in a POW camp, and yet is giving the president carte blanche to be just as bad as those horrible Vietnamese who crammed bamboo under his fingernails. This is the United States of America, people. We are handing to the president the right to imprison without legal council or to be told the charges against you, to spy on, and to torture anyone in the world – including yourself. I don’t care how scared you are that you might get blown up tomorrow, which you won’t, and you never will, how can you feel comfortable giving the president, legally, the power of a brutal dictator? What has he done to show us he has any sense of responsibility to the truth or to accuracy or to being decent? What has he done to demonstrate that he can have this amount of power and use it with wisdom?

And then think about how people are being beaten, threatened, stripped down, raped, mauled, and yes – murdered in your name. And when does it stop? How long do we have to stay down this road until it’s not just so-called terrorists who are imprisoned? How long until it’s political prisoners being tortured and sent away without charges? The administration has already long been calling people who disagree with him traitors and terrorist sympathizers. How big of a step is it from terrorist sympathizer to terrorist? One word. That’s all it takes. And all of a sudden, The Daily Show is mysteriously pre-empted with Blue Collar Comedy Tour and for some reason Comedy Central doesn’t explain why.

Git R Dun!

The Wrath of the Monarch

Bush finally figured out how to run the country with literally no oversight. The congress is vapid and cowering, the judiciary is full of Bush sycophants, the only thing left for Bush to worry about were those pesky good-for-nothing voters.

Problem solved!

Diebold is a company headed by crooks and Bush cronies. They also make the electronic voting machines, and guess what? They don't work for shit. Princeton University (a.k.a. - liberal elite training camp) conducted an independent study on the machines and found

a computer virus can be implanted on an electronic voting machine that, in turn, could result in votes flipped for opposing candidates. According to the study, a vote for George Washington could be easily converted to a vote for Benedict Arnold, and neither the voter, nor the election officials administering the election, would ever know what happened. The virus could also be written to spread from one machine to the next and the malfeasance would likely never be discovered...

Oh yeah. Or as one insider put it:

"If Diebold had set out to build a system as insecure as they possibly could, this would be it."

But don't worry, hard-working American voter. We have nothing to fear. As Diebold explains:

"[Our critics are] throwing out a 'what if' that's premised on a basis of an evil, nefarious person breaking the law," Bear told Newsweek after the March Emery County study. "For there to be a problem here," he further explained to the New York Times, "you're basically assuming a premise where you have some evil and nefarious election officials who would sneak in and introduce a piece of software … I don't believe these evil elections people exist."

Whew! For a minute there I was worried that our electoral process could easily be hijacked by a 13 year old home-schooled Jesus freak with a PC. But it turns out no one like that really exists. I sure am happy that there is no one in America who would do anything dirty, underhanded, or illegal in order to win an election at all costs.

I love the warm fuzzy feeling of believing what people tell me without having to think too much.

Find Me Some Coloreds to Stand With

Racially challenged senator and Bush clone George Allen held a rally recently. His website posted some photos. You may notice in the URL that the rally had a name – The Ethnic Rally.

How cute. In one of the pictures, you can almost make out a thought balloon that says, “See? I’m completely comfortable being around negroes and celestials!” Think about it - he was at The Ethnic Rally all day and didn't lynch a single person. I smell the Oval Office!

(P.S. - Thanks, Josh!)

Try to Remember the Kind of September

It’s the fifth anniversary of 9/11/01. I mention it in case you left a cave just this moment, and the first media you come across is DoG. Otherwise, as long as you have eyes and ears, you’ve read/heard/seen about a billion things about it. As an aside – if we only had eight fingers instead of ten, we’d have been doing this last year.

That’s not to say I’m cynical about 9/11. I was here in NYC, living downtown as a matter of fact. I woke up that day to the burning towers, and watched them collapse from the roof of my building. I smelled that god-forsaken stench of burning plastic and rubber for weeks afterwards. I’m not above remembrance and reflection. What I don’t care for is the callous manipulation by the media and by our politicians to win viewers and/or votes. In any case, I found it interesting that al Qaeda is as sentimental as we are and has as many fingers.

A lengthy video statement from Ayman al-Zawahiri, issued on the eve of the fifth anniversary of al Qaeda's attacks on the United States, calls on Muslims to step up their resistance to the United States and warns that "new events" are on the way.

Hey, I’m just glad we’re in their thoughts today. He goes on to say,

"Your leaders are hiding from you the true extent of the disaster," the fugitive deputy to al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden says in the video, which appeared on Islamist Web sites late Sunday. "And the days are pregnant and giving birth to new events, with Allah's permission and guidance."

”And the placenta of our plans shall rain down from above like blood from the prophets. We will cut through your defenses like an episiotomy from the scalpel of Allah, Himself.”

Yuck. Anyway, al-Zawahiri can go fuck himself. I think you’ve done enough to take down the United States thank you very much. Bush will take us down the rest of the way all by himself. America, fuck yeah!

Seriously – don’t get too down today. Things are all fucked up in the world, and too many people died five years ago today. But the curse of the survivor is to have to pick yourself up and move on with the living. You don’t have to drown yourself in your memories in order to never forget.

He Learned to Tie His Shoes All by Himself Too

Clay Aiken is not only a member of the President’s Committee for People with Intellectual Disabilities, he’s also a client.

Think of the Children!

Ah, the Detroit Lions. To call them a hapless bunch of lovable losers is to put a positive spin on it. Another way to describe them would be an embarrassingly awful abortion of a mismanaged franchise. And that would be a less positive -- but still positive -- spin.

The latest news doesn’t involve Matt Millen or any of his “Most Terrible Decision Made Since the Last Time Matt Millen Made a Decision.” This time it’s about some assistant coach.

...a Dearborn police ticket describes the coach as "driving on public street without any clothes on. (NUDE)."
...

Court records say the nudity incident happened Aug. 24 about 11:15 p.m., the night before the Lions flew to the West Coast for an exhibition game against the Oakland Raiders. Police stopped Cullen in his car, which was traveling eastbound on Michigan near Lapham Street. The ticket does not provide any other information about why Cullen allegedly was nude. The Lions said alcohol was involved.

A week later, Dearborn police again arrested Cullen, this time Sept. 1 about 11:48 p.m., the night after the Lions lost their final exhibition to Buffalo at Ford Field. Court records show Cullen had a blood alcohol content of .12 after police stopped his 2006 Ford Explorer as it traveled west on Michigan near Tenny.

Drunk driving. For shame, Cullen! I can’t…

Wait a minute, what was that first part? He was nude, and all the police have got is that alcohol was involved? Damn! Lieutenant Columbo, how do you do it?

Seriously, how fucked up do you have to be, and what’s going through your head when you get behind the wheel and say, “You know, driving just isn’t giving me any pleasure. I believe I will strip down completely nude and drive home!” Did he take all his clothes off in a parking lot and then get in the car? Or did he take them off piece by piece when he was stopped at red lights? Did he keep his shoes on like streakers do? Have you ever tried driving in your bare feet? It’s weird. Did he wear his seatbelt? It seems to me that “Little Cullen” might be in some sort of peril with that hard, sharp-edged fabric hanging around down there. Or maybe he used the belt to keep it strapped in, like a mini-fighter pilot.

Seriously, I want to know - what’s the guy doing driving around naked?? Remember – DoG is here to ask the important questions, when the others leave you wanting more.