JULY 17th, 2004

WHOOPI GOLDBERG: THIS MONTH'S JANET JACKSON

See, the few of you out there who read this shit, you say I should write these things more often. And I like to write them, to get all this out of my system, but at the same time I feel like a broken record. (For you kids, a record is a large black double sided CD used for hip hop scratching, and when it is "broken" or badly scratched it plays the same part over and over. That's what it means, saying the same thing over and over, it's an analogy.) Because it's always the same themes, just the details are different.

I just looked a few columns back, and I was complaining about how ludicrous it is that, with all the blood on the hands of the Bush administration (and let's be honest, it's not just on the hands anymore, these fuckers are dipped head to toe like the dance club vampires at the beginning of BLADE), that the media matrix would really try to convince us that we should set that all aside, get over it, and focus our outrage on JANET JACKSON'S NAKED TITTY and THE NIGHTMARISH HORROR OF TWO MEN WHO LOVE EACH OTHER HOLDING HANDS.

Now here we are a couple months later and this time - sound the alarms! Run for the hills! Battle stations everybody! It's WHOOPI GOLDBERG MADE A PUSSY JOKE and TWO MEN WHO LOVE EACH OTHER ARE STILL HOLDING HANDS AND UNLESS WE CHANGE THE CONSTITUTION TO MAKE THIS ILLEGAL THEY'RE GONNA MAKE IT TO SECOND BASE.

This is amazing, but I saw a show on Fox News called "The Beltway Boys" which is sort of a "jamie kennedy experiment" or "tv's bloopers" type of show where these two old men (or "boyz") try to fake you out and make you think that Bush is doing a good job. And they did one of those deals where they show an arrow pointing up or down to say whose stock is rising and whose is falling. For example, if you are George Bush, you always get an arrow pointing up. If you are John Kerry, I'm just going out on a limb, but I'm guessing they'll probaly pick down. That's how the gag works.

Well for this one, the joke was that Bush gets an arrow pointing up because the Congressional Intelligence Committee report that had just came out had exonerated Bush of all charges that he manipulated the data. Of course, this is not even remotely close to being true. Because as the boyz know, the partisan republicants forced the actual caring americans to compromise and not even investigate that issue until after the election. It was deliberately and openly decided to NOT look into that question at all yet, but if you're a Beltway Boy you're still allowed to pretend that not only was it investigated, but that Bush was proven completely innocent, so innocent that an arrow floating next to a picture of him was pointing up to represent his innocence rising like death tolls and gas prices.

So the next one was Whoopi Goldberg, with an arrow pointing down. If you don't watch the fake news, what's going on is Kerry and Edwards had a fundraiser last week with a bunch of b-list celebrities playing songs and telling jokes. Apparently Whoopi Goldberg came up at some point and made a joke involving that hilarious pun about Bush - as in that goofy dude who lives at the White House - and bush, as in Revenge of the Nerds "we have bush," as in that part on a woman that unfortunately they always shave off in porn these days. (What's up with that, anyway? What way does the arrow point on that, Beltway Boyz?)

So now all the republicants on TV are pretending to be shocked - SHOCKED, I tell you - AWED in fact - at this outrage. Whoopi Goldberg - the worst of the Oscar hosts, the middle square, the jumpin jack flash, Whoopi fuckin Goldberg - she called BUSH a PUBIC AREA.

MY GOD, WHAT HAVE WE COME TO? One of our dearest, most beloved cultural icons, Oscar winner for best supporting actress for the timeless 1991 Patrick Swayze milestone Ghost, has deliberately uncovered the dark secret we have worked so hard to shield from our children's delicate, virgin, MPAA protected eyes. Yes, it is true. Bush is a pun. Bush + Dick = we're fucked. Our leaders are named Bush, Dick and Colin. etc. etc. Soon Howie Mandel will reveal the sexual technique that Condoleeza sort of sounds like, and our children will be, you know, Bush + Dicked. It will all be over. How DARE John Kerry ALLOW Whoopi Goldberg to do this? And he has the NERVE to complain about the war and the ass pyramids and Halliburton and etc.? When all the while WHOOPI is doing THIS? Why, I never!

Now the first obvious flaw in this pathetic attempt at stirring up a fake controversy, is the very premise of there being a down pointing arrow associated with Whoopi Goldberg. So you boyz are telling me that 1. you considered Whoopi Goldberg to have an up pointing arrow, or at least a level, sideways type arrow, before this? and 2. knowing that, I'm supposed to consider you a credible source?

Let me show you boys something. You are probaly too out of touch to know about the imdb so I'm not going to bother pointing you there. But if you understood these fancy computer machines you'd be able to look there and get Whoopi's complete filmography. Let me just show you what she's done in, say, the last fucking decade:

1. Racing Stripes (2005) (filming) (voice) .... Franny
2. Pinocchio 3000 (2004) (completed) (voice) .... Cyberina
   
   
3. Lion King 1½, The (2004) (V) (voice) .... Shenzi
   ... aka Lion King 3: Hakuna Matata (2004) (V) (Europe: English title)
4. Littleburg (2004) (TV) .... Mayor Whoopi
   ... aka Whoopi's Littleburg (2004) (TV) (USA: complete title)
5. "Whoopi" (2003) TV Series .... Mavis Rae
6. Blizzard (2003) (voice) .... Blizzard
7. Good Fences (2003) (TV) .... Mabel Spader
8. Star Trek: Nemesis (2002) (uncredited) .... Guinan
9. It's a Very Merry Muppet Christmas Movie (2002) (TV) .... Daniel's 'Boss'
10. Madeline: My Fair Madeline (2002) (TV) (voice) .... Miss Clavel
11. "Liberty's Kids" (2002) TV Series (voice) .... Deborah Samson
12. Golden Dreams (2001) .... Calafia, the Queen of California (Narrator)
13. Call Me Claus (2001) (TV) .... Lucy Cullins
14. Rat Race (2001) .... Vera Baker
    ... aka Course folle (2001) (Canada: French title)
15. Monkeybone (2001) .... Death
16. Kingdom Come (2001/I) .... Raynelle Slocumb
17. What Makes a Family (2001) (TV) .... Terry Harrison
18. More Dogs Than Bones (2000) .... Cleo
19. Second Chance at Life, A (2000) .... Narrator
20. Adventures of Rocky & Bullwinkle, The (2000) (uncredited) .... Judge Cameo
    ... aka Abenteuer von Rocky und Bullwinkle, Die (2001) (Germany)
    
    
21. Our Friend, Martin (1999) (V) (voice) .... Mrs. Peck
22. Girl, Interrupted (1999) .... Valerie Owens, RN
    ... aka Durchgeknallt (2000) (Germany)
    ... aka Durchgeknallt - Girl, interrupted (2000) (Germany: TV title)
23. Magical Legend of the Leprechauns, The (1999) (TV) .... The Grand Banshee
    ... aka Kampf der Kobolde (2000) (TV) (Germany)
    ... aka Leprechauns (1999) (TV) (USA: short title)
24. "Foxbusters" (1999) TV Series (voice)
25. Jackie's Back! (1999) (TV) .... Nurse Ethyl Washington Rue Owens (Jackie's Sister)
    ... aka Jackie's Back: Portrait of a Diva (1999) (TV) (USA)
26. Deep End of the Ocean, The (1999) .... Candy Bliss
27. Alice in Wonderland (1999) (TV) .... Cheshire Cat
28. "Hollywood Squares" (1998) TV Series .... Center Square (1998-2002)
    ... aka "H²" (2002) (USA: promotional abbreviation)
    ... aka "H2: Hollywood Squares" (2002) (USA: fifth season title)
29. Alegría (1998) .... Baby Clown
30. Very Special Christmas from Washington, D.C., A (1998) (TV) .... Host
31. Rugrats Movie, The (1998) (voice) .... Ranger Margaret
32. Knight in Camelot, A (1998) (TV) .... Dr. Vivien Morgan
33. Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer: The Movie (1998) (V) (voice) .... Stormella, The Evil Ice Queen
34. How Stella Got Her Groove Back (1998) .... Delilah Abraham
35. Bob Hope: The Road to the Top (1998) (TV) .... Narrator
36. Argentino en New York, Un (1998) .... Waitress
    ... aka Argentinian in New York, An (1998) (International: English title)
37. Christmas Carol, A (1997) (voice) .... Spirit of Christmas Present
38. Cinderella (1997) (TV) .... Queen Constantina
    ... aka Rodgers & Hammerstein's Cinderella (1997) (TV) (USA: complete title)
39. Mother Goose: A Rappin' and Rhymin' Special (1997) (TV) (voice) .... Mother Gooseberg
40. Destination Anywhere (1997) (V) .... Cabbie
41. In the Gloaming (1997) (TV) .... Nurse Myrna
42. Ghosts of Mississippi (1996) .... Myrlie Evers
    ... aka Ghosts From the Past (1996)
43. Associate, The (1996) .... Laurel Ayres
44. Bogus (1996) .... Harriet Franklin
45. Bordello of Blood (1996) (uncredited) .... Hospital Patient
    ... aka Tales from the Crypt Presents: Bordello of Blood (1996) (USA: complete title)
46. Eddie (1996) .... Edwina 'Eddie' Franklin
47. "Happily Ever After: Fairy Tales for Every Child" (1995) TV Series (voice) .... Mother Goose
48. Sunshine Boys, The (1995) (TV) (uncredited) .... Nurse
49. Theodore Rex (1995) .... Katie Coltrane
    ... aka T. Rex (1995)
50. Moonlight and Valentino (1995) .... Sylvie Morrow
51. Bonnie Raitt Has Something to Talk About (1995) (TV) .... Host
52. Boys on the Side (1995) .... Jane Deluca
    ... aka Avec ou sans hommes (1995) (France)

So remind me again, WHEN was her arrow not pointing down? If you had to pick a favorite from these, which would it be? Monkeybone, maybe? The one about the farting monkey, and she plays the angel of death? Or maybe Theodore Rex, starring a young Denise Richards and a wacky dinosaur? Don't say Magical Legend of the Leprechauns. That was a TV movie about leprechauns, you're thinking of Leprechaun 4: In Space. She wasn't in that. I bet your favorite is Mother Goose: A Rappin' and Rhymin' Special. That one sounds pretty beltway.

Okay, so I'm sure we all agree that the Beltway Boyz have no credibility once they've pretended this was a serious issue. And that goes for all postjournalists out there in TV, newspaper and internet land. I am officially sending out the VERN CURSE on you fuckers. Every time you start to read or write a story about this pretending like it's an actual issue, you'll go into a deep trance, flashing back to the Vietnam era. And you'll see yourself sitting at a news desk in March of 1968, and instead of reporting on the My Lai massacre you'll be talking about, I don't know, Phyllis Diller or somebody making a joke about Nixon being a Dick. (and that's being kind because let's be honest, Whoopi is no Phyllis at this point in her career.)

Suddenly the sound of the one thousandth american soldier blowing up in Iraq will jolt you awake, still at your newsdesk in 2004. And your kid will be sitting there with a laptop watching a bootleg VCD of Hearts and Minds that he downloaded off of bit torrent and he'll ask you daddy, what were you doing while Our Boys were dying in Vietnam? And you will say, well son, your pop put his ass on the line and he stopped Phyllis Diller from making dick jokes, and thanks to his courageous and patriotic efforts, Ovaltine dropped her from their advertisements in the name of freedom and stopping communism and the red white and the f-ing blue. And I'm proud of it and I'd do it again and american families of the heartland understand that WE are the REAL america, not some fancypants Holl-y-wood entertainers that come in here and push us around and try to force us to live with the ne-groes and to listen to Phyllis Diller and her communist potty mouth.


Okay, end of curse. So that takes care of the postjournalists, but what about the actual source of the cue cards they're reading, the republican election machine? Well it goes without saying I want to put a curse on those rat bastards, but in this case I don't even think it's necessary. If there's one thing funnier than Whoopi's HILARIOUS jokes on Hollywood Squares (and believe me, there is DEFINITELY at least one thing that is funnier) it's seeing these guys so desperate and out of touch that they actually tried this maneuver: demanding the release of the fundraiser video.

We demand accountability! The American people have the right to know what was said at the Whoopi Goldberg concert! And we will not be silenced until Whoopi and Chevy Chase and every last one of these has-beens is silenced instead! We can't boycott her movies because nobody watches her movies, so instead we will force you to release another one straight to video!

Somehow the Bush-Cheney-Halliburton "re" election staff was dumb enough to put that out there without foreseeing the obvious smartass response from Kerry's people: sure, we'll release the fucking Whoopi Goldberg video. We'll let you watch John Cougar Mellencamp until the cows come home. All we ask in exchange is the same thing we've been asking for forever - any of Bush's military records that have not been destroyed, the correspondence between Halliburton and the Defense Department, the documents from the Cheney Energy Task Force, the correspondence between the White House and the pharmaceutical companies that turned into the Medicare Bill, and the remaining documents about the White House's approval of torture methods used in Abu Ghraib and other overseas US prisons.

And I would add that they should also release the data for auditing all our tax money that's been dumped in to Hallib-- er, helping Iraq.

I mean give me a fucking break - the regime that has made Nixon look like a pushover when it comes to releasing documents, the one that has spent its entire time in office trying to stop commissions and then stonewall them and then go to court to prevent the release and then refuse to release them even when the court demands it... now all the sudden they are DEMANDING John Kerry release a fucking JOHN COUGAR MELLENCAMP video?

As the Last Poets said, "THIS IS MADNESS! THIS IS MADNESS! PLEASE STOP ALL THIS MADNESS!"

Or as MC Hammer said at Hammer Time, "STOP!" (something something.)

If you really represent the American people, then try to get them to release POINT BLANK on DVD. Not fucking Mellencamp and Goldberg Live in Concert. God damn it.


And that, my friends, will probaly be the last time I mention Whoopi Goldberg on this web sight for a long fucking time. That's just the way it is.

thanks,

Vern

August 31st, 2004

Well the republicans are in New York now, trying their best to spin half a million protesters outside (and that number is confirmed by a police source, according to the New York Times) into a small, friendly disagreement among intellectuals. Liberals are supposedly apathetic, but here we have the largest protest in the history of political conventions. No big whoop. Rudy Gulianni is trying to say it only proves that Bush is a good leader, because he sticks by his obviously bad decisions even after the public turns against them.

(And even when the public, and the world, was against it before he ever did it. Rudy didn't mention that part but if you remember what happened in the real world then I guess it's implied.)

I gotta be honest, I haven't watched too much footage of this convention with the sound on, because I was planning to eat today. But I've seen a few interesting things. #1, they got this whole fake republican news channel thing. I was watching on C-SPAN and suddenly it turned into the fake news. They showed a long republican infomercial on the screen there in Madison Square Garden, so they had to show it on C-SPAN too, and it took them a minute to figure out to put "RNC Video" on the bottom of the screen. (That's okay, people aren't that dumb.)

This is absolutely mindboggling because you realize that for the Republicans, Fox News is apparently not fake enough. They got a blond woman who looks plastic enough that if you saw her in a movie you'd think it was too exaggerated. She holds a microphone that says "RNC" and goes around and interviews old veterans on aircraft carriers with tough questions about just exactly how super awesome America and freedom are. Then they show heroic montages of Bush making speeches interspersed with shots of helicopters. Because helicopters are awesome.

For some reason they forgot to use the "Mission Accomplished" aircraft carrier clip. I'm not sure why. That was weird.

If any of you ever watched WWF wrestling, you remember how some of the wrestlers had these fake TV shows within wrestling. Hey everybody, it's time for "Piper's Pit," and Roddy Piper has a little talk show set built inside the arena and he interviews people. This is the same kind of thing, it's a fake TV show within a political convention. Roddy Piper was more hardhitting though I thought. He was a good interviewer.

The other interesting thing I noticed, they got delegates wearing band-aids with a picture of a purple heart on it. This is not a reference to Lucky Charms but in fact an attack on John Kerry. The premise is of course that John Kerry is a big puss. Oh boo hoo, I got shrapnel boo hoo, give baby a medal just because he went off to fight a bullshit war and came back with a piece of metal permanently implanted in his leg. Sissy.

I was thinking man, I can't believe the nerve of these people that while blowing smoke up veteran's asses all day long they are wearing a wacky emblem saying that medals are for pussies. But then I saw them interview a gal that was wearing one and she explained that oh no, we love the military and all the troops and veterans. But John Kerry got a purple heart for nothing. In every single other instance, everybody deserved their medals and are brave and love freedom and America forever and the baby eagle. But John Kerry, I don't know how it happened but somehow in this one single isolated incident, it was weird but the system had a freak one-time-only catastrophic breakdown and gave him a medal for a little scratch. But everyone else with a medal except John Kerry, they are the greatest heroes who ever lived and it brings tears to my eyes just to think of them. Hell, even when I DON'T think of them it brings tears to my eyes. BECAUSE I LOVE EVERY SINGLE GOD DAMN SOLDIER except Kerry is a liar/pussy/communist etc. Only him though thanks otherwise USA rules forever go Bush.

The whole Discredited Swift Boat Veterans For Bush campaign is obviously a load of horseshit. Not just because none of their stories hold water, and not just because Bush pretends to have nothing to do with it while all his associates help out and his own wife and father and delegates go on TV defending the campaign.

(And by the way, please don't fall for their trick of changing it into a debate about 527 groups. It has nothing to do with how they file their taxes, it has to do with the ads themselves. We are not against 527 groups, we are against you having your buddies make ads with a bunch of Nixon-era wackos making up phoney stories about what John Kerry did 35 years ago. Stories that many of them contradicted until less than a year ago.)

No, it's not just all that stuff. It's also the fact that WHO CARES IF JOHN KERRY IS A WAR HERO OR NOT? Even if any one of your obviously phoney, completely discredited by witnesses, military documents and your own previous statements fairy tales were true, it sure wouldn't change my mind. What most Americans agree with is not what he did in the war, but what he did after the war. You know Kerry was not my first choice, but one thing I really do like about him is the statement he made to congress when he came back and joined the anti-war veterans groups. A statement about why the war was wrong, the horrible things that it led the soldiers to do and the pathetic way the veterans were treated by the government when they came back.

It is this side of John Kerry that these nuts are going to go after next, and there are two reasons for that:

1) These are the type of people who really believe that the Vietnam War was correct and that if we would've just kept killing a few more years we would've won. And Rambo never would've had to go nuts in that small town OR go back to Vietnam and save the POWs from the Russians or whatever it was. In other words, we are dealing with arguably delusional extremists who the media is willing to interview as if they are reasonable people with good, well thought out points. Their leader, John O'Neill, was actually recruited by the Nixon administration as their pet pro-war Veteran, to debate Kerry on the Dick Cavett show - in other words, his job was to keep the war going. And now we're supposed to take his advice on what we
should do in 2004.

Well, thanks for comin in bud, have a nice day, take a lollipop. We'll call you, don't call us.

According to an article in the New York Times, many of the others were supporters of John Kerry until last year when a biography portrayed some of them as being a little too excited about the Vietnam War, obsessed with body counts and the search and destroy philosophy. One of them was compared to Marlon Brando's character in APOCALYPSE NOW. Is it any surprise that they could be convinced to turn against a fellow veteran whose testimony helped turn public opinion against the war?

2) Any day now a veteran could come back from Iraq and make a very similar statement to Congress, because all of those things are true about this war too. (Well okay, maybe the part about a veteran coming back from Iraq any day now is stretching it, but otherwise it's a good theory.)

And you know what, I am sick and tired of these pot-kettle-black type arguments against Kerry.

Let's pretend Kerry really "only got a scratch." How does that make him worse than Bush, who didn't fight and lost his pilot's license because he couldn't even be bothered to take a health exam?

And yes, I can hold it against Kerry that he voted for the war resolution. But YOU can't because you STARTED THE FUCKING WAR.

And I can criticize Kerry for saying that he voted on the resolution thinking it wouldn't automatically lead to war. But YOU can't criticize him for that because YOU were the one feeding him that line of bullshit. Remember, "there's not a plan on my desk," "war is a last resort," all that other horseshit? Is that ringing a bell at all?

And how about this "flip flopping." If you are a reasonable person, and I hope you are, then you can not possibly believe that Kerry is any more of a "flip flopper" than Bush is.

Bush was against homeland security, then he was for it, then he took credit for it.

Bush was against campaign finance reform, then he gave in and signed it, now he pretends he is the McGruff the Crime Dog of 527 Reform.

Bush was against the 9-11 commission, then he was for it, now he takes credit for it. He was against testifying, then he was willing to "visit" for an hour, then he was willing to go for longer I guess but only if Dick Cheney is there and nobody can keep a record of anything that is said because, in the name of freedom and everything.

Bush was against going to the UN about Iraq, then he was for it, then when it failed he was against it again, now he either did a great job by bringing it to the UN or is such a badass he never brings anything to the UN, depending on the position of the stars.

Bush was gonna find Osama bin Laden "DEAD OR ALIVE," then he said he doesn't even care where he is because he's irrelevant. Who cares about some giant dude with a beard dragging a dialysis machine through the caves of Afghanistan. We got taxes to cut.

Yesterday, in a rare moment of honesty, Bush admitted that you really couldn't "win" a "war on terror" per se. At least not in the traditional military sense. But when democrats jumped on him for that he went back to the whole "MAKE NO MISTAKE, WE WILL WIN AGAINST TERROR, WE WILL PIN TERROR TO THE MAT, WE WILL ATTACH ELECTRODES TO TERROR'S GENITALS AND POSE FOR NOVELTY PHOTOS NEXT TO TERROR" routine.

You hear that? FLIP FLOP!

But that's just what they do. I mean that's the whole M.O. of the Bush Regime. You do whatever crazy psychotic madness you can think of, and you keep doing it for as long as you can get away with it. Then, if the public outcry is large enough (and it's not the Iraq War) you suddenly pull a 180 and pretend to be confused when somebody asks you why you did it. As long as they can get away with Total Information Awareness or The Terror Futures Market or shoveling money into Halliburton or drilling in the Alaskan Wilderness or consolidating all the media, or taking away over time for the biggest paycut in history (yep, they just did that)... whatever it is, they'll do it, until somebody stops them. Then they'll pretend everything's okay for a while and try to do it again later, more quietly.

I guess today the guy from HERCULES GOES BANANAS did a speech. I didn't see it though. I hope it was as good as his monologue in BATMAN AND ROBIN. Or the one about cumming from PUMPING IRON. Is it just me, or does anybody else still not believe that dude actually got elected governor?

I was watching MSNBC a little bit ago and they got into a heated argument about Vietnam. Joe Scarborough said that there were no atrocities committed in Vietnam. Ron Reagan said, basically, what are you talking about dude, are you fucking serious? Scarborough said "Name one soldier that cut off the ear of a Vietnamese citizen!," so Ron Reagan did. Scarborough said, "Are you calling him a babykiller? Are you calling him a babykiller?"

It gave me a disturbing thought. People still get in these kind of arguments about Vietnam. Won't that be great years from now when we get to have those arguments about Iraq too? Great job guys.

One of the themes of the convention seems to be the re-morphing of the Iraq war into "The War on Terror." Anytime they talk about war they try not to say "Iraq," and any time they talk about Iraq they refer to it as "the War on Terror."

Now obviously this has no connection with reality and is an insult to the intelligence of all Americans. (Why do you hate America?) The only thing Iraq has to do with terrorism is that we brought it there. A whole fucking lot of it. I'm sure the Iraqis appreciate that.

But my question is, why would you even want to trick people into thinking Iraq was the war on terror? Because by now even the staunchest republicants have figured out how badly these morons bungled the war. So if that's the war on terror, guys, then sorry, but we're getting our asses kicked.

Shit, I could go all night, but I'll cut it off here.

--Vern

SPECIAL BONUS: This is a column I started to write a week and a half ago but didn't finish. I think there are some good thoughts in there but I don't want to rewrite them to apply to more current events (I was still talking about the week before the Democratic Convention, for crying out loud) so here it is unfinished.

August 21st, 2004

It's a tough call but I think maybe of all the sad things during this dirty election season, the saddest one is seeing John McCain up there swallowing hard and saying he, well, supports Bush, hahem. I wonder if there was ever a private moment when McCain got to ask Bush, just to see the look on his face:

Would you be more likely or less likely to vote for John McCain for president if you knew he had fathered an illegitimate black child?

That's the question that a telephone poll "not" "connected" to the Bush campaign asked people in the South during the 2000 primaries. It's bad enough to make up lies to appeal to racist voters, but the lie also takes advantage of the dark skin tone of McCain's daughter, adopted from Mother Theresa's orphanage in Bangladesh. Just in case that's not personal enough, they also spread rumors about his wife's addiction to prescription drugs and made claims about his military record. Sound familiar?

Whenever I see Bush going through a crowd shaking hands, I always fantasize about being the guy who refuses to shake his hand. I've never seen it happen but it seems like it would have to. I mean it was easy enough to flip off Cheney, and he's the #1 guy. It can't be that hard to leave #2 hanging. Still, it seems like everybody gives in and shakes hands and acts like their his buddy. Even Jesse Jackson, I saw him after the Urban League speech that Bush made to try to make up for not even meeting with the NAACP once during his entire god damned reign of terror. He had been getting some shit for turning down speaking at their convention 3 years in a row. Even fucking Nixon met with these guys. I try to be fair, so at first I figured maybe Bush just didn't know who they were. He mixed them up with NCAA basketball or something. But that wouldn't make a lot of sense because the dude met with NASCAR. He's not above that shit.

Anyway there was Jesse Jackson in the crowd and Bush came up and they shook hands and smiled and who knows what they said to each other. But I was hoping Jesse was able to say something like, "Hey, I never got to thank you for exposing my extra-marital affair in order to shut me up about the racist voter discrimination you used to help steal the election in Florida."

I mean that's what we got here, it's like dealing with the fucking mafia. If you criticize them, they will make up some irrelevant bullshit either from your past or from their imaginations. I don't care if you're a political opponent, an ambassador, a member of their own cabinet. I'm surprised they didn't pull out a smear on the Pope when he opposed the war. If Santa Claus crosses them, they'll put out ads claiming he doesn't really deliver to ALL the houses. And he once delivered presents to an Islamic charity believed to have known a guy whose cousin was connected with a guy who was connected with a connection of the guy who connected al Quaeda's broadband.

By the way, I doubt anybody else was watching C-SPAN at the time but that speech to the Urban League was good entertainment. It was the speech he made before the Democratic Convention, the one Al Sharpton responded to. The basic premise was to ask minorities if the Democratic party has truly served them or if they are being taken for granted. It was kind of clever since these are legitimate questions to be asked by someone who is not a fucking republican. I mean talk about underestimating the intelligence. "Democrats are only taking advantage of you. Come on. Come join the party that threw out your votes in 2000 and then used the equal protection clause to justify it!"

Anyway what made it fun was it was the first time I've seen Bush speak where it wasn't a crowd of carefully selected sycophants. He kept getting smatterings of applause from small portions of the audience. Every once in a while something he'd say would get a decent amount of applause, but then when he made his next pause for applause there would be no response at all. And there were many hilarious reaction shots of people in the audience shaking their heads in disgust, laughing at him, mouthing obscenities, etc. My favorite was when he made a comment about everybody getting out to vote and they showed a woman in the audience smiling, clapping and mouthing, "Now that I can agree with!"

The Democratic convention seemed to go pretty well. I liked the speeches by Barack Obama, Al Sharpton, and even John Kerry's was pretty good. I'm not sure about this whole "be nice, don't be angry" philosophy, though. I mean if it works then I will have to thank them for it, but to me it seems like crazy talk. What kind of an ignorant shut-in would you have to be to NOT be angry at what's going on in this country?

And you know what, yes, there are many good qualities that Kerry has and he should run on those. But I don't get this idea that "Bush bashing" is not legitimate. I mean it's not like I'm the only one who thinks this guy is the worst president we've ever had, who allowed our country to be attacked, destroyed our economy, started two immoral, inept and endless wars, cynically divided the country for his own political purposes, threw away our standing in the world, set back Constitutional and civil rights by decades, and robbed our taxes and the resources of other countries for the benefit of corporations he and his vice president just happen to be connected to. Etc.

I mean, they don't let you use Saddam or Hitler analogies so let's go to the star wars. Did the star wars rebels try not to say anything bad about Darth Vader and the Galactic Empire? Yeah yeah, he blew up Princess Leah's planet, he tried to kill the Ewoks and all that, but we don't want to be negative and sound like a bunch of whiners. We're not fighting because of what Darth Vader has done. We're fighting because of Princess Leah's positive message of hope!

Now I want to take a moment for some unkind words about these idiot stories about singers making some political comment and then everybody boos. For example the most famous one recently is Linda Ronstadt was at some casino in Las Vegas, she dedicated a song to Michael Moore and some drunk gambling addicts with bad taste in music started booing and ran out, tearing down her posters and throwing their drinks on the wall. So the casino owners sent Ronstadt away and said she would never play there again under that ownership (which was the rest of the month, they already sold the casino to a guy who has invited her back). And the way this was covered by the postjournalists it was sort of like, that crazy Linda Ronstadt, what was she thinking.

But no, I'm sorry, that doesn't cut it. I think about all the times I'm put in some uncomfortable position. Like you're at a baseball game in the middle of a bullshit war that you don't agree with, and they sing the National Anthem and everybody around you gets overly involved in it, trying to show that THEY love America more than anybody and ESPECIALLY during these times when America is obviously wrong.

So what do you do? You stand there politely and let them have their fun. Who fucking cares. You don't go throwing your drinks around and demanding your money back because you don't agree with the politics. If you did, and it made it on TV, you would be portrayed as an asshole, wouldn't you? But these people, the TV acts like they have a legitimate complaint. If it was the other way around politically, it would be portrayed as a riot. "They tore posters down! It was total bedlam! We believe there were anarchists from Eugene, Oregon involved!"

Let's say I was at a James Brown concert, and he made some pro-Bush comment. I would probaly boo too. It would be hard not to. But then I'd probaly stay and enjoy the rest of the concert. If it was too upsetting, and I couldn't enjoy the funkiest wifebeater and his republican bullshit after that, then fine, maybe I'd leave. But I wouldn't demand my money back and I sure as shit wouldn't think the Godfather of Soul did anything wrong by "bringing politics into this."

I read an article from the Orange County Register about Don Henley doing a concert and he started to say, "Given what my good friend Linda Ronstadt--" but he was interupted by booing so he said, "Whoops - Orange County. We used to be able to have civil debate in this country. Not anymore." Apparently he followed up with some political satire song by Randy Newman. (yuck.)

The funniest part of the article was the last paragraph:

"He really blindsided everyone," said Joshua Owen of Long Beach, who had taken a group of employees to the concert and was upset by the political content. "There was booing. Some people headed for the exits."

I think this is what really bothers me about it. Not that these are dumb people who listen to horrible music, don't believe in freedom of speech and have bad concert etiquette. What really gets me is that people in this country have allowed our culture to be so thoroughly flushed down the shitter that they now buy the idea of music as a bland pre-packaged corporate product guaranteed to have no personality, conflict, ideas, politics or emotion. Not only do they like music to be that way, but they expect it to be, they demand it to be. And they are treated as reasonable people.

I mean I guess they listen to Don Henley anyway so who am I fooling. But music is not what you think it is, you assholes. Music is a form of expression. Music can make you cry or send you off to a revolution. Music is "We Shall Overcome" and "Fuck the Police" and Songs in the Key of Life. Music gets entire races through slavery and genocide. Music is punk rock and hip hop before they were on TV and the radio. Music is not only allowed to provoke you and make you think and offend you, it's supposed to.

(end transmission)

I DON'T KNOW IF YOU REMEMBER THIS, BUT THEY LET A PLANE HIT THE FUCKING PENTAGON

That's right, it's the third anniversary of their greatest achievement, LETTING A PLANE HIT THE FUCKING PENTAGON, and the Bush Gang is celebrating with another round of terrorizing the American people. My personal flip off partner, Dick Cheney, led the festivities with his now infamous speech which boiled down to "If you vote for Kerry, there will be another 9-11."

Of course, no facts, arguments, realities or common sense can convincingly back up this outrageous death threat. It is obviously appalling and creepy for ANYBODY to claim that only they can keep the American people safe and any other government will lead to disaster. But if there is one group of people who LEAST deserve to make that claim, it would be the one who LET A PLANE HIT THE FUCKING PENTAGON.

So I've already used that phrase 3 times but that's for emphasis. Because nobody seems to remember it. We've gotten so used to the fact that it happened that our brains don't seem to process it anymore. Before 9-11, I don't think any one of us thought it would even be POSSIBLE to crash a plane into the Pentagon. Crashing into the World Trade Center, difficult obviously. But maybe. Crashing into the Pentagon? The headquarters of The Most Powerful Military Force In Human History? The very seat of the overwhelming military that the Republicans spend so much on because they know that it keeps us so god damn safe?

I know I didn't think it was possible then. And I still don't know how it's possible now. Four jets have been hijacked for 2 hours, you'd figure if there was ONE place on the planet where they could get some national defense, it would be THE FUCKING PENTAGON.

I'm hammering on this point because I'm sick of people on both sides - everybody pretty much - accepting this myth about Republicans and Bush being the ones who are strong on defense. Mister, you are NOT strong on defense. We know that for sure now. Let's mention it again. You let a PLANE hit the fucking PENTAGON. Because of some dudes with boxcutters. And then you continued talking about building a missile defense shield, saying that this proved it was more necessary than ever! It doesn't seem possible that anyone would be that dumb, but in this case, it was that guy with the american flag lapel pin. George somebody I think was his name.

I know I know I know. When Republicans say "national defense" they are not talking about actually DEFENDING the NATION. I'm being too literal. Republicans are "strong on defense" because they are good at invading or otherwise fucking with countries overseas. For example, Bush's dad invaded Panama and killed all those people. Excellent work there, excellent work. He had the Gulf War too, a wonderful piece of, uh, defense.

The problem is, Bush is fucking up even by that amoral bastard of a standard his dad set, that if you kill a bunch of people overseas it's okay, just do it fast and get out of there. The 3 Second Rule of invasion. I think we all agree now that Bush has failed that and about 1,003 other tests in his first two wars here.

So Bush can't defend the country, he can't invade other countries, what bizarro definition of defense are you people using, anyway? I can't figure this out. It's like if the TV says the sky is green enough times, the sky will become green.

So the next time your TV tells you that, remind your TV: THEY LET A PLANE HIT THE FUCKING PENTAGON.

(To be fair though, the republicans did one thing to defend us: they let the assault weapons ban expire. So if shit goes down, I guess we can peel the duct tape out of our windows and blow fist sized holes through anybody who walks by. I don't know about you but I feel safer already. I almost feel like I'm taking a bubble bath I'm so relaxed.)

REPUBLICAN CONVENTION WRAPUP

I know I just did a column about this but the couple days of the republican convention after I wrote it really got me going. I mean how can you not say something about Zell Miller?

I'd heard this guy mentioned before, I knew he called himself a democrat but supported Bush and his policies. Of course that's hard to explain but still somehow I assumed he would be a seemingly reasonable person. I did not realize that he is a complete nutcase!

He was the keynote speaker, on before Dick Cheney (to make Cheney look sane, some theorize). What I saw of his speech was all yelling and spitting, fire and brimstone. I don't think he ever used the term "chaps my fanny," but he came close.

After the speech I saw him interviewed on CNN. For once, they actually asked good questions, pointing out obvious inconsistencies in his speech (he criticized democrats for calling our military in Iraq "occupiers," which Bush has done many times; he said Kerry was weak on defense for voting against programs that Cheney also wanted to slash as secretary of defense at the time). He couldn't defend any of his points, but sputtered angrily about "democratic talking points" and kept pulling out folded up papers that he said held more information about John Kerry than the Library of Congress. The anchors became noticeably annoyed by him, almost to the point of eye rolling, until Wolf Blitzer finally asked him, "Bottom line, why do you still call yourself a democrat?" He explained that he was "born a democrat" and when he goes "up to the pearly gates" he's going to tell his mama he's still a democrat. But he doesn't vote for republican policies, he votes for conservative polices, and if democrats would just make conservative proposals he would vote for them.

(???)

It was a hilarious interview but it looks like I really missed out by not watching him on that show Hardball, where he actually told Chris Matthews, "I wish we were in the times when I could challenge you to a duel!"

I know it's not very constructive to sit around and laugh at the crazy guy. But the thing is, we are only now discovering who this guy is. The people who planned the GOP convention, though, I figure they probaly knew the guy. I'm guessing they don't just pick some dude they can't vouch for and take his word for it that he's gonna do a good job. (Though I guess considering their incompetence in everything else they do, it almost seems possible...)

My question is: did they choose a complete nutcase because they were that desperate, or because they have a low enough opinion of their base that they figure they would eat that shit up? The answer is probaly the latter, since sure enough those people were whooping and hollering for every bit of insane nonsense that freako blurted out. It's kind weird... the same party that was so menaced and outraged by Howard Dean going "whoooO!" backstage at a campaign rally is all the sudden comfortable having an escaped mental patient as their key note speaker. I guess they are learning to be more tolerant.

VIETNAM IS BACK

I don't know, hopefully this whole re-arguing the Vietnam War thing has died down. I hope so, because then we can focus on those two other wars that we're actually losing right now. We don't want to wait 35 years to figure out these two. Anyway, during the convention I saw this show hosted by Joe Scarborough and Ron Reagan. They really got into it about Vietnam, and I saw something that really surprised me.

They had a panel that included Pat Buchanan and somebody from a newspaper like the Washington Post or something. And Scarborough managed to get them debating Kerry's anti-war stance when he came back from Vietnam. Pretending that the country is still divided on whether or not Vietnam was a good idea.

After a bunch of trash talking from various panel members, the newspaper guy stood up for Kerry, saying something like You have to remember, when John Kerry came back from Vietnam he had just lost three of his closest friends to this war, a war that was built on a web of lies by politicians and--

And Ron Reagan added, "Like Pat Buchanan." With Pat Buchanan sitting right there.

Buchanan was a good sport and defended himself without seeming upset about it. But it was still an amazing moment. You never expect anybody to point out that kind of thing on TV, so now that they have, I'm hoping somebody will point out the ones I'm always thinking.

You can guess where I'm going with this. When they're talking about Bush's strong national defense on some cable news show, I would like to see someone mention that one thing I talked about before, that incident between the plane and the five sided building. "Yes, the Bush administration has been very strong on defense, other than letting the plane hit the Pentagon, but it is important to note that a plane has NEVER hit the Pentagon in the 3 years since September 11th, 2001. Only 1 plane has hit the Pentagon during their entire term. And there is even a French author who argues that a plane did NOT hit the Pentagon. So at the very most, Bush has only let one plane hit the Pentagon. John Kerry does not have that kind of record to run on."

And since Cheney and some of these guys keep doing this line about "We won't ask Paris for permission to defend America" I would like to see John Kerry say, "I won't ask Paris for permission to defend America, and I won't wait to finish a story about goats either. I will put the book down immediately and will not pose for photos afterwards. I will save that stuff for after defending America."

Finally, in an episode of Crossfire about any topic, I would like to see someone casually mention that co-host Robert Novak outed Valerie Plame or that he did stories based on documents that he knew republicans had stolen from the democrats' private computer files. "Well I agree with you on that Robert. The second amendment guarantees the right to bear arms. And I know in your column you outed a CIA agent to punish her husband for telling the truth about the Bush administration, but keep in mind that the NRA has done more to educate this country about gun safety than anybody--" (etc.)

Come on you TV fuckers, I know how much you idolize Ronald Reagan. Now follow his son's lead. It will be like Ronald Reagan was your dad. Get to work.

THEY DODGE IT, YOU PAY IT

I've seen George Bush use this line 3 times now, so I'm sure he does it on all the campaign stops. But I've yet to see anybody get after him for it.

The routine goes like this:

First he uses the completely made up out of thin air figure of "$3 trillion of new spending" that he says John Kerry plans to do. Then he says, "And he won't tell us where that money is gonna come from. Well, he told us one way. Says he's gonna raise taxes for the rich. But we know how that works, we've heard that rhetoric before. They dodge it, you pay it. Well, we're not gonna let 'im do it, because we're gonna have four more years!" (applause)

Don't applaud that shit, people. You're not that stupid, are you? I didn't think you could fill a crowd with that many stupid people. (And please, no WWE jokes.)

Do you hear what this asshole is saying? John Kerry wants to tax the rich. But the rich just dodge it. It's too hard to make rich people pay taxes! I tried it, I can't do it! I'm a Strong, Decisive Leader so if I can't make my friends and family members pay taxes, then NOBODY can. I gave up, but came up with a new plan of not requiring them to pay taxes! That way, no law is broken, no time is wasted trying to enforce laws.

It's like if he said:

John Kerry says he wants to keep it illegal to shoot puppies. But we know how that works, we've heard that rhetoric before. People still shoot puppies sometimes. Well, we're not gonna let him get away with it. We're legalizing all killing and maiming of puppies. God bless America!

A LITTLE PEP TALK FROM VERN

The TV news have been getting in on the September 11th anniversary too, terrorizing the American people by constantly talking about Bush's "bump" and John Kerry's "stumble" and "John Kerry made this mistake" and "John Kerry needs to do this," and most of all, "such and such poll says this." They figure if they show us enough polls where Bush is leading, we will give up on voting and just stay at home with ten bottles of whiskey and a pillow to cry on.

Well I just want to remind you about a little year called 2000. You remember that November? I know there was a lot of shit that went down that will only make you mad to think about. But I want you to think about this: on election day, NOBODY knew what the fuck was going on.

Every anchor, every correspondent, every self-proclaimed expert - every single one of them was wrong. All of them. All of the predictions were wrong. All of the conventional wisdom was wrong. They would sit there and they would find out more information and they would look into it deeper, and they would give a new assessment based on the latest information... and still they would be wrong. They had no clue what was going on. They literally started talking about omelettes on the air! They went nuts. They had no idea.

Yeah, they THINK they know. But they don't know. Don't be disillusioned. Don't take their predictions too seriously. Just make sure every last one of you motherfuckers is registered to vote right now, and make sure you vote. And make sure your friends vote. And hopefully come November 2nd we'll be doing that Ewok dance and the TV experts will be scratching their talking heads and the Bush Gang will be running for the hills with tears streaming down their faces.

It can happen. Don't lose hope.

thanks

Vern

I don't know about you but I've been enjoying these "debates." It's hard to call them "debates" without quotes because there are so many damn rules they might as well just play dungeons and dragons or something. I thought one of them was gonna get a balk.

(baseball technicality where a pitcher has stepped too far away from the mound and the batter gets to walk to first)

The best was definitely the first one, unofficially titled Kerry Unambiguously Whoops Bush's Bitch Ass Part 1. I was a little nervous before the whole thing because you never know what's gonna happen. Obviously Kerry had a good chance of doing well, and Bush had a very high chance of looking like a complete jackass. We all know the man can't stand there and answer actual unplanned questions. We've seen it many times before, from the campaign 2000 interviews to the Meet the Press interview to even the handful of fake ass scripted "Press Conferences" he's had. Even when the deck is stacked, he loses all his money.

What I'm saying is, the president is a fucking retard. I love America and all that, but the president is a fucking retard. Quit pretending.

Still, that has nothing to do with anything. If Bush went up there wearing his pants backwards and spent the whole time talking about his Yu-Gi-Oh cards, the media could still probaly pass it off as an impressive showing by a strong, decisive leader. He was just showing that he was down with the people. When his dad was president he was so out of touch he hadn't apparently been inside a grocery store in 35 years. This Bush though, this guy is with it, he collects Yu-Gi-Oh cards. Just like the hard working, God fearing, homeland securing NASCAR dads and security moms and juggling uncles and commemorative coin neighbors and all the other embarassingly obvious fictional demographics he represents.

But about two minutes into the "debate," it was clear there was nothing to worry about. This was a hilarious 90 minutes of television. It really seemed like some reality show where they told Bush he was going to be auditioning for an updated MY THREE SONS sitcom, then when he asked to use the bathroom before the pre-interview, they directed him down a hallway that led onto a stage on live television where he had to debate John Kerry.

There were so many amazing moments. The part where he whined that he KNEW Osama bin Laden attacked the US. He almost said, "Duh!" The part where he mixed up Osama and Saddam again. The part where he mumbled something about "seems like a tax gap to me," then got confused by the lack of audience response, paused for a long time and said, "Aaaaaanyway..." That was so weird. And did I imagine it, or did he say that Iraq was a city?

Oh yeah, and all the parts where he kept saying how much "hard work" he does. And the part where he demanded 30 more seconds, then seemed to blink into the camera for the first 5 of them.

And remember when he had to act shocked - just SHOCKED! - at the idea that somebody called Prime Minister Allawi a "puppet"? This was priceless coming day after it had come out that the GOP coached Allawi for his trip to the US and even wrote his damn speech.

And it wasn't just that Bush did so very, very, very, VERY bad. It was also that John Kerry did pretty damn good. Now, I wish he didn't have to pander to everybody with this "hunt down and kill the terrorists" macho bullshit, and I wish he would've said that yes, actually pre-emptive war IS wrong. But what can I expect. Other than that, he was on fire. Staying calm and concise, but tearing into Bush's many failures and corruptions. I liked the way he turned the "flip flop" bullshit around on Bush, and kept emphasizing Bush's ineptitude in (apparently) trying to catch bin Laden. He was almost using judo on the guy, letting him do all the damage to himself. Kerry never once said "wrong war, wrong time" but Bush seemed to say it every other time he talked. I wanted Kerry to say, "I agree with the president, this IS the wrong war," but he didn't even need to do that. And out of the blue Bush starts attacking the international criminal court, which I don't remember Kerry ever discussing in this campaign. Bush is clearly wrong - the court would be the perfect place to bring bin Laden. But I guess since they're never gonna catch him anyway...

Okay, so then there was episode 2, John Edwards vs. Darth Cheney. This wasn't such a blatant asswhipping, but it was good stuff. Cheney sat there, snarled and grumbled and couldn't stop lying. And Edwards kept calling him on it! Edwards made me like him better because he ripped into Cheney more than I expected. How long have we been complaining about Halliburton? It's good to finally see an actual democrat running for office who knows what Halliburton was up to when Cheney was in office - trading with Iran and Syria, bribing officials, lying to investors, etc. And that led to one of the two highlights: after a list of (well documented) Halliburton sins, Cheney smirks that he would love to respond to the charges "but I can't do it in 30 seconds."

The moderator, unamused, said, "Well that's all you have." The implication being, "You're the one that made up these rules, asshole."

Highlight #2 though was a moment I've been praying for, but that I never thought the Lord would deliver me: somebody finally brought up the Mandela thing to Cheney's face. I was fantasizing that the moderator would ask about it. "As an African American woman, I'd like to ask how you justify having voted against a resolution to demand the release of Mandela, who you said was a terrorist."

Instead, Edwards brought it up himself, but completely in context. After Cheney's familiar line of Zell Miller horse shit (Kerry voted against this weapon and this weapon and this weapon), Edwards pointed out that as secretary of defense at the time, Cheney had wanted to cut all the same programs. And as long as we're talking about records, might as well mention that Cheney voted against banning plastic guns, against the Martin Luther King holiday, against freeing Mandela.

Cheney's rebuttal: "I think our records speak for themselves."

Translation: "Oh shit, let's move on to the next question before all that sinks in."

The coverage of these "debates" is so ridiculous you'd almost think this was the same media that bent over naked and presented their ass to the Bush administration in the leadup to the Iraq war, then acted shocked - just SHOCKED! - when Dan Rather accidentally showed a fake document once. (As if the same people who said Colin Powell made a convincing argument at the UN, who said that Bush's State of the Union address filled us with pride and hope, who said the staged tearing down of the Saddam statue was the end of the war, who let Bush get away with Selection 2000 and WMDs and Valerie Plame and Abu Ghraib, who said he looked so majestic and heroic when he wore that Top Gun Halloween costume on the USS Mission Accomplished, who made fancy logos of the Pentagon code names for the military operations, who got dressed up and embedded with the troops and referred to the invasion as "us" and "we," who gave us Judith Miller and that nice well spoken Iraqi gentleman Chalabi and Geraldo Rivera declaring on air that he's gonna bronze Osama bin Laden's severed head... these same assholes suddenly believe in integrity and journalistic standards? Am I hearing this right?)

(I mean COME ON, media. You've been sleeping on the job for years. WHEN exactly did you get so god damned interested in integrity and standards? Why did I not hear about this? Was I out of town? You motherfuckers don't HAVE integrity and you know it. When Wolf Blitzer is in the CNN men's room taking a piss next to fucking treacherous Robert Novak, then he goes to wash his hands, I bet he makes a point of NOT looking in the mirror. I'm sorry to bust your bubble, media, but you don't HAVE integrity. You left your integrity in your other pants and it went through the wash and when it came out it was in such bad shape you just tossed it.)

([mumble mumble] Aaaaaanyway...)

After the debates, the cable news channels spend hours interviewing not objective political analysts, or honest people, but partisan politicians giving "analysis" that would've been the same even if both candidates had sent Native American women to debate in their place as a protest against the loss of fishing rights. What's the point of even showing that bullshit on TV? I agree with the democrats, but I don't want to see them just going up there and saying what they're supposed to say. Even more painful, the republicans who have to go out there and pretend that they actually are so completely high and delusional that they think Bush did a "superb" job. Yeah, real convincing performance there, Rudy Gulianni. Better fucking hope they weren't lying to you about that cabinet position or whatever it is they're promising you.

You know what I also love, this business with the focus groups of "undecided voters." In other words, idiots. Or at best, lifelong republicans still struggling with whether to vote for Kerry or write in Superman. I mean seriously, how could you actually live in this country and not yet be sure who you're gonna vote for?

I mean there's a pretty clear difference here. We're not talking a decision between Coke and Pepsi. We're talking Luke Skywalker or Darth Vader. We're talking The Rolling Stones or Milli Vanilli. Who's it gonna be, man?

So if the very idea of undecided voters isn't ridiculous enough, what they do, they get them in a room holding a button during the debate, and they push it down farther for a positive response and less for negative. And then on the screen they put a little graph showing men and women's responses in real time with the candidates talking. Ooh, I like this sentence so far, positive, positive, a little less positive, I don't like the way he says "the," I'm going negative... no, that was a good twist how he ended that sentence, good pronunciation, I'm going a little more positive now... neutral, neutral, ooh, good word positive... Cheney's doing a good job of hiding his evil, I will give him a positive... ooh, he just sounded like a total asshole there, that's negative.

Does anybody believe that means anything? I think a frog race would be as accurate at predicting the election.

I really wish somebody got to debate Rumsfeld now. That motherfucker has gone completely crazy. You know he would say something completely insane. All these Bush regime assholes are the same inside, but he's the only one who has a hard time keeping it in. He just forgets what's secret and starts blurting shit out. It's great. I would LOVE to see him "debate" Wesley Clark or somebody. By the end he'd announce plans to invade at least two countries and accidentally confess to sabotaging Paul Wellstone's plane.

But we don't get that debate, instead we got #3 coming up Friday night. This is the "town meeting" style "debate" where "real people" in the audience ask "questions" that they write down on the cards and must not deviate from. I mean, there's a lot of potential for good questions. Imagine:

QUESTION: Mr. Bush, in interviews you've said that you don't read newspapers, and I've read that if aides give you a briefing more than a few pages long that you will throw it down on your desk and ask what "the bottom line" is. My question is, did you make an exception for the 9-11 Commission report, and if so, how long did it take you to read it? Also the Patriot Act.

QUESTION: You have many times referred to John Kerry giving France a "veto" over our foreign policy. But don't you kind of wish France did have veto power, so you wouldn't've fucked up so god damn bad with this Iraq mess?