Give Peace Wreath a Chance

Some defensive right-wing homeowners’ association overlords board members in Denver declared a wreath shaped like a peace symbol to be a crime against Christmas and imposed a $25/day fine on its displayers last week.

Well, peace won -- this time -- and the board members resigned. Inside sources tell us the allegedly Christian board members were handed a bible and were shocked to discover that when Christmas was first invented, it wasn’t to feed the engine of soul-sucking mass consumerism, but in fact to celebrate the birth of a noted hippy peace activist.

They may have capitulated in this instance but on their way home from their final board meeting, they drew the line at a ghastly tune on the radio in which herald angels declare peace on earth and a merciful God reconciles with sinners. “Not while I’m around, He’s not!” and immediately proceeded to the nearest Christian book store to buy the hottest video game in red state America so they could “waste some heathens.”

Reverse Missionaries

Through Wonkette, I came across this hilarious story about a poor Polish exchange student who came to North Carolina for a year, only to find out that his host family was drunk on the Jesus. They forced him to go to church at 6 in the morning, forbade him coffee, declared that the devil lived in his heart because he liked wine (didn’t Jesus like wine?), and so on.

Oh, and they were just using him to help them open a church in Krakow in the first place. How Christlike. God, I love examples of the hypocrisy and cruelty of Christians. It’s like crucifying fish in a barrel.

Well, if Anyone Deserves to be Called a "Minority Whip..."

...I guess it's Trent Lott. Apparently he's not racist anymore, so he's got that going for him.

Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME):
We understand what happened. There’s no point going over. It’s in the past now, you know, and he has expressed, you know, his deep regret, as he should.

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ):
I think most people think he paid a pretty heavy price for the mistake that he made. We all believe in redemption, thank God.

Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NE):
Everyone has an opportunity to rehabilitate themselves if they want to do it, and I admire Trent Lott for coming back and offering himself. The conference spoke, and we go forward.

Well, I'm glad that's settled. Maybe they should get whoever got Trent to suddenly stop being a racist to go to work on Ted Haggard. He'll start getting his massages from naked ladies instead of male prostitutes in no time.

I Think You Might be Missing the Point...

Hey, guess who finally visited Vietnam? He was about 38 years too late, but who's counting, right? So what lessons did The President, who bravely fought to keep Charlie out of Houston (at least when he felt like it) take away from his experience? Uh...

President Bush said Friday the United States' unsuccessful war in Vietnam three decades ago offered lessons for the American-led struggle in
Iraq. "We'll succeed unless we quit," Bush said shortly after arriving in this one-time war capital.

First of all, did he just call Nixon a quitter? Dag, yo. Second, so... 10 years and 57,000 U.S. soldiers killed wasn't enough, apparently, to succeed in Vietnam. We'd have won if only that cut-and-run liberal pussy Richard Nixon hadn't called the whole thing off. Well, that's good enough for me! My confidence in Bush's "plan" for victory in Iraq has never been higher!

Bush said that "the world that we live in today is one where they want things to happen immediately and it's hard work in Iraq."

Bush said he assured Howard that "we will get the job done" and will stand with the embattled government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

"We'll succeed unless we quit," Bush said. "The Maliki government is going to make it unless the coalition leaves before they have a chance to make it."

If only we'd had a leader with Bush's steely resolve back during the Vietnam war, thing would have turned out differently... somehow! Probably more dead people. And we would have shown those goddam commies who's... oh wait, that already happened anyway. Hell, we'd probably all live in mansions and it would rain donuts every morning. The point is, we just weren't patient enough.

Of course, following Bush's "don't-you-dare-call-it-stay-the-course" gambit, we'd still be in Vietnam, and Bush would presumably still be AWOL from the Texas Air Nation Guard, with his face buried in a pile of blow. Therefore, we wouldn't have Bush as President during the Vietnam war, which means we wouldn't still be staying the course in Viet-- brrrrrrrrzzzzzzzzzzzp brrrrrrraaaakkkkkkkkkkkkkkk logic overload zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzttttt error does not comp-- KABOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!!!!!

Terrible Twos

We missed it again! We here at DoG HQ would like to belatedly wish ourselves a very happy second birthday.

Back after Bush stole the White House for the second time, who could possibly have imagined that we’d be able to maintain the consistent level of low-quality writing mixed with childlike attention to detail and obsessive need for vulgarity for two whole years? Add a splash of plagiarism, a pinch of righteous indignation, fill to the rim with your favorite brand of whiskey, shake vigorously, and pour -- careful to strain out the nuance and insight -- et voila! Enjoy your delicious Delusions of Grandeur cocktail on the rocks or straight up. Either way, it’s sure to give you a throbbing headache in the morning.

Thanks for reading, everyone! You might prefer to keep silent, but we know you’re out there. And we love you all... (Not in that way! Seriously - hands off, Plano, Texas.)

All Part of This Fair and Balanced Breakfast

OJ is a murderer and an asshole. Duh. But now he's got a new confessional and a TV special brought to you by the bringers of other winners like Sluts on an Island and the paranoia-induced War on the Most Popular Holiday in the History of Humanity.

Well look, America - this attention-starved criminal doesn't make a dime if you don't buy the book and if you don't watch the show. You showed me that my faith in you is well placed after the 2006 elections. Don't let me down.

By the way, it's worth noting that not only is this show on Fox, but the book is published by a nice young lady who used to have her own show on FoxNews, and her publishing house is a subsidiary of News Corp - also known as Fox. If you're looking for an attack on down home "American Values" you need look no further than that.

Shake ‘em Up, Shake ‘em Up, Shake ‘em Up, Shake ‘em...

How great was yesterday? We awake to find the Democrats have taken the House, the Senate, the majority of governorships, Rummy’s out and Bush is runnin’ scared like a little bitch. I even saw CNN correct someone when they used the term “dissemble” to describe how Bush was for Rumsfeld before he was against him. “You know, I think we could even call that a lie, don’t you think?”

Boy, Democrats take congress and now they’re finally allowed to call Bush a liar? What a bunch of cowards.

Anyway… There’s this one thing about Bush’s little press conference yesterday that bothers me. Don’t get me wrong, I’m practically drowning in schadenfreude over here. But yesterday in trying to explain why he lied about Rummy, Bush said, “I didn't want to inject a major decision about this war in the final days of a campaign.” I know, I know, he says stupid things all the time, but holy shit, that’s a whopper! He didn’t want to inject a major decision into a campaign? How about insisting that the Saddam Hussein kangaroo court release its prix fixe verdict on Sunday before election day. How about all the false terror alerts in 2004? I mean, give me a break. He meant to say, “I didn’t want to release something that might hurt Republicans during the campaign.”

The irony is, that’s the one thing that actually might have helped – if he could admit he was wrong about something. Anything.

Oh well… Sucks to your ass-mar!

Yo Campaign Manager So Fat…

Check out this wicked burn on Rove by his own BFF:

Another reporter asked the president about a book-reading contest he's having with Karl Rove. "I'm losing," he said. "Obviously, I was working harder on the campaign than he was."

Awww, SNAP!

Although come to think of it… Did he burn himself?

Getting Better All the Time

Rumsfeld resigns, effective immediately.

AP: Tester wins Montana.

Come on, Virginia!!


UPDATE: Something occurred to me. Doesn’t Rumsfeld quitting his job like two seconds after the Democrats take the House look a little fishy to you? Like the way that speed-freak gay homophobe preacher went down -- I’m completely innocent of the charges!!! I have this voice mail. I quit!

It’s like that.

Bush: “I have complete faith in Rumsfeld and he will stay with me for the remainder of my term in office”

Prez aide: “The Democrats took the House and now they have subpoena power.”

Bush: “Shit! Rummy, pack your bags and get on the first boat the hell out of here! Do not look at me on your way out.”
...

Bush: “I will fucking cut the eyes out of your head with this butter knife! Get out of my office!”

Or something like that…

I Stand Corrected

Wow! What a beautiful morning. The Democrats take the House, and it’s down to Montana and Virginia in the Senate.

I guess Karl Rove’s GOTV/voter suppression plan wasn’t quite good enough.

Now, think about this – we held every seat we needed to, and we also took Ohio, Rhode Island, Missouri, and Pennsylvania (go fuck a dog, Santorum!). And the best part is when the recounting starts in VA and MT, the Democrats are slightly ahead in the polls. It may not sound like much but I’d rather be ahead, hoping to hold than to be behind and hoping for a miracle.

The Ingenuity of the American People

Can we solve the hunger crisis? Fresh, clean water for all? Social Security? War? Crime? Drugs? We could if half the effort went into those issues as goes into cheating to win elections. Damn, no stone will go unturned.

Northern California radio stations got something extra Monday with the monthly emergency alert system test transmitted by fellow station KFBK and at least one of them was none too happy about it.

The test, complete with raspy alarm and tone, didn't end with the familiar words, "This concludes the test of the Emergency Alert System..."

Instead, it segued into a political advertisement by former state Sen. Dick Mountjoy, who is running for the U.S. Senate against Democratic incumbent Dianne Feinstein, and another spot for a mortgage company.
…

As a result, KFBK's regular programming -- in this case, the ads -- took over the airwaves at radio stations in 17 Northern California counties, and perhaps even the audio of some television stations.
…

Edward Martinet, general manager at non-profit community station KDVS in Davis, said he was skeptical of the explanation.

"It would have to be some amazingly egregious negligence to not notice it for two minutes," he said.

And as Salon goes on to point out:

KFBK, owned by Clear Channel Communications, is the station that gave birth to Rush Limbaugh's radio show.

I’m sure it’s just a coincidence.

Happy Holidays!

Here we are - election day. Yippee!! Today is the day we all go to the polls and hope that our vote is one of the percentage that actually gets counted. Or in some cases, from the looks of it, we go to the polls, wait an hour in the rain and go home pissed off that after 200 years, we can’t find a fucking way to reliably count the votes.

This bothers me. I don’t know how you feel, but this doesn’t seem like democracy to me. The Republicans are pulling every trick in the book to suppress the vote and nobody cares. It’s par for the course in a democracy, right?

No!

It is not the point of democracy to allow the system to devolve into a battle of who cheats better. It’s supposed to be a polling of the people in order to choose their new leaders. We shouldn’t have to place our “faith” in the words of a voting machine manufacturer that the booth works, or to assume that the Republican and Democratic parties would not cheat and change the votes because well, that would be like something Saddam Hussein would do. These people are paid to win; nothing short of victory will suffice. We shouldn’t have to “trust” these people and institutions. We should have absolute scientific proof of the accuracy of the count, whatever the count happens to be. Anything less than that is not democracy. Without democracy, we have nothing. Without a real vote, our leaders cannot be held accountable for their actions. Hey, maybe that worked for Augustus Caesar and Louis XIV, but how’d it go with Nero and Napoleon? Not so much.

No matter what happens tonight -- and Spaghetti Monster-willing enough of you Democrats will go to the polls to overcome the eight ball of gerrymandering and voting fraud the Republicans have put us behind -- I won’t honestly trust the vote. Our politicians have to wake up and fix this their very next day in office. Voting machines that accurately count the votes and can be verified. More voting machines in all districts, not just in the rich ones. Accountability in advertising and immediate shutdown of illegal election tampering operations. Most importantly, we need public financing of elections to get the corruption out of government. Oh, and also I need a rocket ship to the moon, and Natalie Portman to stop by my place tonight after she votes.

So what do you think? Do we live in the United States of America or a South American junta? Maybe we find out tonight…

Happy voting!

Let’s Get It On

Ladies, it’s time to loosen up and let your freak flag fly. Australian researchers have shown that if you whore yourself around town, you’ll have babies with like super strength or something. I paraphrase…

Scientists at the Australian National University said they had proven for the first time that frequent sex with multiple partners increased the survival rate of offspring in an animal species.

The team's reproductive revelation comes after two years spent probing the sex life of the brown antechinus, a small mouse-sized carnivorous marsupial found in forests in southeastern Australia, which is related to the Tasmanian Devil.

So there you have it, girls. Break out Tuesday’s slutstume, find yourself a human male and get to it. I mean, you don’t want to have puny little weakling babies, do you?

Despite the advantages to the species from free love, males usually died after a short and intense single mating season due to exhaustion and aggressive encounters with other males.

Oh… Uh… Ladies? Hold on a sec. Let’s be reasonable here. The game is on, for crying out loud!

Sometimes a Penis Is Just a Penis

Nathanial Frank busts out the old Psych 101 textbook for some thoughtful analysis:

What are we to make of a reigning conservative regime that lists the following inglorious claims to fame: Strom Thurmond, a notoriously racist senator who turned out to have a black lover; a Republican indictment of President Clinton's sexual license headed up by a team of philanderers; a Congress full of divorces passing an anti-gay law known as the "Defense of Marriage Act"? In the pundit corner, we recently saw three giants of conservative moralizing unmasked as incapable of restraining their own vices: William Bennett turned out to be addicted to gambling, Rush Limbaugh to drugs. Meanwhile, Ralph Reed, the hand-picked youthful leader of the religious right, was quietly helping the corrupt lobbyist, Jack Abramoff, enable everything that religious conservatives oppose: casinos on Indian reservations and compelled abortions and sex slavery in the Northern Mariana Islands, an American territory. And this is not even to mention the Catholic Church's strident indictment of sexual freedom as it shuffled its own cadre of child-molesting priests from parish to parish.
…

For answers to the puzzles that seem to infest the conservative worldview, we might dust off our old Freud texts. From the father of psychoanalysis, we learn the concept of "reaction formation" which describes how we react to our own unacceptable impulses. Reaction formation is a classic "defense mechanism"-an unconscious behavior designed to ward off uncomfortable feelings. Sometimes we react to our discomfort with ourselves in harmless ways, such as when a man cheats on his wife and brings her flowers to ease his guilt. Other times, the reactions can be punitive-we judge and condemn others who exhibit the very impulses that we, ourselves, cannot control. This is frequently the case when dealing with lust or greed. "Sooner or later," writes Michael Warner, a Professor of English at Rutgers and a leading theorist of sexuality and politics, "we all lose control over our sex life. As a result, we try to control someone else's sex life."

Bush has a word or two about terrorists and Islamic fascists, doesn’t he? What are you covering up, Mr. President?!

Er… Nevermind. There’s not enough time in the world.

What? No Reach Around?

Don’t you love the poetic justice of an evil motherfucker brought down by the very thing that makes him evil? Maybe you have spent your life judging others’ vices, when it turns out you spend weekends at a time gambling away millions. Or perhaps you enjoy talking about the sanctity of marriage, but then run off with your 23 year old mistress leaving your cancer-stricken wife to fend for herself, alone in the hospital. Maybe you run a presidential campaign based on compassion and preside over the most sadistic administration in American history.

Or maybe, just maybe, you are a messianic figure with tens of thousands of zealous vassals in the movement to wipe those dirty faggots off the face of the earth and it turns out that you’ve been taking it up the ass on a regular basis for some time now.

Ted Haggard, seen to your right demonstrating how he likes to receive his creamy white prize, is an evangelical leader who just happens to be the cowboy-boot wearin’, brush clearin’, manly sort of religonut who gets the president’s ear. So much so that they had a weekly conference call to coordinate their attack on people’s civil rights. I’m guessing Bush won’t be taking those calls no more.

Michael Forest Jones, 49, of Denver alleges he had sex on a monthly basis with Haggard over three years. Jones claimed Haggard used the name "Art," admitted he was married and used meth before the two had sex.
...

Late Thursday, The Associated Press reported that the acting senior pastor at New Life, Ross Parsley, told KKTV-TV of Colorado Springs that Haggard admitted some of the accusations were true, but Parsley didn't elaborate.

The timing of the disclosure has stirred controversy, coming days before Colorado voters will decide on two measures related to gay rights and marriage. Haggard is a chief supporter of Amendment 43, which would define marriage as only between a man and a woman, and he has taken no position on Referendum I, which would grant domestic- partnership rights to same-sex couples.

Haggard is unquestionably a national figure. Since founding New Life Church in his basement in the 1980s, the son of an Indiana veterinarian has ascended the ranks of evangelical leaders, taking part in White House conference calls, counseling foreign leaders and being named by Time magazine as one of the nation's 25 most influential evangelicals.
...

They met at least once a month at Jones' Denver apartment, and Haggard paid cash, Jones said. "He was very nice and very soft-spoken," Jones said. "We never talked about anything heavy-duty."

Jones alleged Haggard snorted a small amount of methamphetamine that he brought with him at least a dozen times to enhance the sexual pleasure.

Oh well. Just leave your career on the nightstand and sneak back home to your beard and kids…

What a minute, maybe he’s not a hypocrite at all! Maybe he just has a problem with alcohol! Stay tuned...

Is That a Rise in Your Poll or Are You Just Happy to See Me?

I’m sure it’s too soon to measure the Kerry never met an election he couldn’t blow effect, and we all know how it’s really gonna turn out. Nevertheless, I shall continue to raise my hopes ever higher -- all the more reason to drink myself stupid Tuesday and call in sick Wednesday.

50-49 lead in the Senate, with Missouri too close to call. Missouri, eh? Damn! I hate the fucking Cardinals, but now I’m pinning my hopes on those Eckstein loving assholes? Hmmn… I’m opposed to your Cardinals supporting policy; but I’m in favor of your Budweiser drinking policy! Let’s go with that.

And now they’re saying a 48 seat lead in the house. Polls go up and down, but hey, I’d rather have them say we have a lead than have them say we’re behind.

If You’re Scoring at Home

Look at that over there… No, not there. There! Yeah, that. New polls are in, and by the judgment of the good people at electoral-vote.com, the senate is tied at 50-50, and in the house the Dems had a nice surge since yesterday and now lead by 44 seats. I’m writing it down so we can track it over the next seven days. Yeah, I’m exactly that lame.

It should be noted, however, that these polls fail to take into account the security-free electronic voting booths; vote burning, shredding, tossing, or hiding by the GOP; voter disenfranchisement, intimidation, or ID card requirements; and John Kerry failing to keep his fucking trap shut.

In other words, they’re meaningless.