Well here we are friends. Right on the edge of the cliff looking down. Pretty sure we can jump all the way to the other side, but not COMPLETELY sure. Very soon we could be having a celebration like the "ewok" aliens used to have at the end of the movie RETURN OF THE JEDI before the footage was mysteriously lost under suspicious circumstances. On the other hand we might find ourselves throwing flaming garbage cans, rolling SUVs or, you know, rolling up in a ball in the corner sucking our thumbs. We, as a nation, might have to start drinking again. We might have to fly our asses to Washington to protest the inauguration. Eggs would be in such high demand that protesters would have to start bussing in thousands of free range chickens to pump out enough eggs to catapult at the presidential limo from behind the protest barricade 200 miles away. Hopefully it won't come to that. No, it won't come to that. We're gonna do it.

We've come a long fucking way to get to this day. We have journeyed courageously while the economy trickled down from the sky, dripping all around us but somehow never hitting anybody. We have seen the wonders of the world, from the abandoned caves of Afghanistan to the naked butt pyramids of Abu Ghraib. From Enron Field to Halliburtonland. From the plane hitting the fucking Pentagon to Governor Bush getting his ass whooped in all three debates even while wearing a fucking earpiece. And they tell us somehow the race is still close!

(Yeah, I said it. The fucker was wearing an earpiece. And he should be ashamed of himself not coming up with a better story than "poorly tailored shirt." Okay, so I've never had a shirt tailored in my life, but I think I got a pretty good idea what is and isn't possible in the tailoring of shirts. For example, I think it is NOT possible for a tailor to accidentally sew a large rectangular box into the back of a shirt. If there in fact IS a tailor that bad somewhere in this world, you would think he would not rise to the level of presidential debate shirt tailor. Okay, so these people are completely inept at pretty much everything they've ever tried to do. So maybe they'd promote somebody like that. And yeah they'd probaly hire some oil executive to be the tailor and he wouldn't know what the fuck he was doing. But still man, how do you EVEN sew a large rectangular box into the back of a shirt? Even if you're trying? I don't care who you are, that is some BAD god damn tailoring. And if you get that kind of poor service from your tailor, what you do is, YOU DON'T GO ON LIVE INTERNATIONAL TELEVISION AND DEBATE WHILE WEARING IT. I'm supposed to believe this asshole only has one shirt? And even after the first debate, he wore it to the other debates too? Doesn't it get uncomfortable being up there in the hot lights, trying to answer difficult questions, wearing the most poorly and freakishly tailored shirt in the history of tailoring? And did this preposterously bad tailor at least get a talking to for accidentally reinventing the shape of the human shirt? Or does the lack of accountability we've seen with Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, everybody, etc. extend all the way down to the White House tailor? What sort of bizarre lump would you have to sew into that shirt to get fired? I mean really, this brings up so many questions. I could go on all night.)

Remember the Y2K scare? We were all worried that some assholes had fucked up programming computers, forgot to put an extra digit somewhere and now our whole society was gonna go Mad Max on us. When the clock struck midnight nothing happened, but I think we really got our Y2K problem later in the year. We thought what we needed was one more digit, what we really needed was one less corrupt Supreme Court judge.

I remember getting my check for two hundred something bucks with a note from the government saying how we got this great tax cut and why don't you spend it on a DVD player or something. Here ya go kid, go buy yerself some ice cream. And I remember thinking yeah, when the country has gone to shit I'll be happy and I'll say hey, at least I got that two hundred something bucks that one time. So I don't care that my health insurance costs more and does less and my friends got laid off and there are baboons running loose eating children and the city can't afford enough tranquilizer darts to shoot them all so they're training wolves to hunt them. I was wrong about the baboons and wolves but otherwise I was actually underestimating. I had no idea how bad it was gonna get. I couldn't have imagined.

Well who knows what the fuck is gonna happen, so what I'm gonna do here I'm gonna make some guesses and if at least one of them turns out to be right, I am allowed to brag.

1. I think John Kerry is gonna win. The polls have it close, but those are polls of "likely voters." That means people that have voted in the last couple elections. It doesn't include the people who haven't voted in years, or haven't voted ever before. People who turned 18 since the last election or have always been too apathetic to vote or who didn't believe in voting because they are disillusioned with the corporate one and a half party system. Think about how many people fall into these categories but have signed up this year SOLELY for the honor and pleasure of throwing that rat fucker out in the cold. There are a LOT of these people.

2. Yeah, obviously, the republicans are gonna cheat. They're already cheating. But they can't shred 'em as fast as we can sign 'em up. Unless the fix is in with the computerized voting, hopefully we can take 'em.

3. I think shit is gonna get ugly though. The media is preparing for a long drawn out process, so we won't get that same shock and confusion that leads to goofy late night fun where the anchors all lose it and start yelling out weird shit about omelettes. What we will get though is people going ape shit at the polls. I think the republicants really will go through with their plan of "challenging" voters who may or may not have forgotten to include an apartment number or a zip code on their registration form, holding things up in heavily democratic districts to make the lines long and force people to go back to work without voting.

I think this is gonna backfire on the assholes though. The blatant racial targeting will not go over well. I think some of the republicant thugs will find that their service earns them more than the $100 the GOP is providing. They will also be provided with free knuckle sandwiches. I am saying there will be scuffles and even riots at polling places. It will be a notorious moment in American history. But it will also be sort of cool.

3.5 Maybe you think I'm being too optimistic here. You remember how fucked up 2000 was and how the bastards got away with it. I know, I know, these guys get away with everything. But what I'm saying is, this isn't 2000. In 2000 we were comfortable and apathetic. After 8 years of Clinton, only the most hardcore liberals were fully paying attention. We didn't like Gore and we wanted Ralph allowed in the debates. I remember some assholes saying that if Bush won, it would re-energize the lefties. Well it wasn't worth it, but it was true. In 2000 we didn't have moveon.org or True Majority or Air America or Buzzflash or "the blogosphere" (I hate that fucking word). Michael Moore didn't have hundreds of cameras to Rodney King the polling places with. We didn't know who the fuck Greg Palast was, now we're waiting to see what else he'll be able to dig up. It's gonna be hard to stop them, but we're ready.

(Have you noticed how democrats are worried about people who are supposed to be allowed to vote not being allowed to vote, republicants are worried about people who aren't supposed to be allowed to vote being allowed to vote? Could there ever be a better illustration of what's wrong with these assholes? We want to protect people's rights, they want to make sure people don't get more rights than absolutely necessary.)

4. BLADE 3 will be nominated for best picture

5. Or at least be awesome

6. The lights actually WILL go out at midnight and we will wish we had those water bottles you were supposed to have for Y2K

7. Some asshole on TV, possibly on a cable news network of some kind, will say something really fucking stupid.

8. When Bush loses, they will go live to the republican headquarters for his concession speech. After a long, awkward pause, it will become clear that Bush actually isn't there. The camera crews will eventually find their way to a restricted hallway where Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, Bush Sr. and some guy from NASCAR (in full uniform and helmet) will be standing outside a locked door, trying to coax Bush into coming out. "Come on buddy, we know it's tough." Eventually they'll figure out that Bush actually climbed out the window and took off. For years republicans will speculate on Bush's whereabouts, imagining a poetic life of mystery and adventure. Rumors will surface on the internet and talk radio that he actually went to Afghanistan to personally fight terrorism and teach women how to read. Within six years he will turn up bloated and dead after a poorly planned fishing trip just off his private resort island near Costa Rica. His body will be sporting a soul patch. New generations of republicans will be taught of a fictional George Bush who spoke in English and accomplished things for our nation. He will be honored, Tupac-style, on airbrushed t-shirts sold at gun shows and in the gift shop at the George Walker Bush Presidential Library. The library will not contain any books, but they do rent Playstation games for pretty cheap, and they have a decent selection.

I don't know guys. There's so much I wanted to write about before this election. Like this thing where Bush and his people spend weeks on an argument entirely based on PRETENDING to misunderstand something Kerry said ("global test," etc.) They can't come up with anything legitimate so they PRETEND that they are too fucking stupid to understand simple concepts and then spend hours of air time criticizing an argument that nobody ever made, ever. Also I wanted to talk about that big blob of mayo or something that Bush had on his mouth during the third debate. That was funny. And I had a story I wanted to tell about a run-in I had with Naderites, but I don't really see the point in that now. Instead I will just share with you one thing. A few months ago I read Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72. I was surprised how relevant it was to this year's election. It's a great book, I highly recommend it although it starts to get boring when it drifts off into verbatim transcripts of discussions with political strategists.

Anyway, there's a passage I found in there that applies to those few out there still not convinced they should vote for Kerry. Read this here:

    There may not be much difference between Democrats and Republicans; I have made that argument myself--with considerable venom, as I recall--over the past ten months. . . . But only a blind geek or a waterhead could miss the difference between McGovern and Richard Nixon. Granted, they are both white men; and both are politicians--but the similarity ends right there, and from that point on the difference is so vast that anybody who can't see it deserves whatever happens to them if Nixon gets re-elected due to apathy, stupidity and laziness on the part of potential McGovern voters.

November 5th, 2004

ANGRY DISPATCH FROM THE UPPER LEFT CORNER

Somewhere in the blue-colored upper left corner of the map, under a horrible black cloud, we find Vern, chewing on his fist.

Well, shit.

Let me start by saying to the rest of the world, IT WASN'T ME, MAN. I had nothing to do with this. I can't justify this but please don't think this is all of us. It's nobody I know, none of my friends, none of my family. It's nobody that writes to me. Whoever these people are who are rewarding that type of behavior, who saw 4 years of horror and corruption and said, yeah, give me more of that... I seen some of them on TV but that's it.

You know, I was really hoping to travel to other countries some day in my lifetime without having to look over my shoulder thinking, is that guy looking at my head? Does that guy want to cut off my head?  And now these people go and make it look like America approves of Bush. It's like when you're sitting at a bar (not me, I don't drink anymore) and you're making small talk with the guy next to you, somebody you never met before. And you're having a good conversation, then all the sudden the guy throws in some joke about jews or koreans or something, maybe uses the N word, talking real loud. And everybody thinks this guy's your buddy, so you get real uncomfortable and try to either end the conversation or talk loudly about how great it is to meet the guy for the very first time ever. That's what these Americans are doing. Guilting us by association. Thanks alot, assholes.

I'm sorry, other countries. I know you don't like living under the all seeing eye of the naked butt pyramid. And neither do I. This is a dark fucking week. My first instinct was to pick up and move to New Zealand. Maybe there is a hobbit hole available on that property Peter Jackson owns. But then I cooled down I realized no, I'm staying. They're the ones who should move. They're the ones who don't believe in the Constitution. They're the ones with the offshore tax shelters too. Wait for them to move to some island resort somewhere. This is my land.

I'm sorry about all the optimistic predictions in the last column. Getting everybody's hopes up. At least the one about BLADE 3 being awesome could conceivably come true. If I didn't jinx it.

You know what it feels like? It feels like they came up with some new science to miraculously revive JFK. But then they just shot him in the head again. They tossed him in a shallow grave somewhere along highway 99, took a piss on it, maybe marked it with a crushed Taco Bell cup. Then they laughed at us and snorted, "God bless America" with that shiteating ratfucker grin that Bush has been known and despised for since he was in college.

On Wednesday, America tore out my heart and stuck a plunger up its ass. It stuck me with a catheter, sucked out my soul in painful slo-motion, then sexually humiliated it and posed for novelty photos with it. Locked it up for 4 years without charges or access to hope.

I wasn't faking it. I really believed it. I thought we were gonna be able to have the Ewok celebration, with the dancing and drumming on helmets and shooting off fireworks. Ding dong, the witch is dead, etc. But they special edded this one up. Now the Ewoks mount their log and rock offensive, but they are no match for the machines. The stormtroopers just crush them, massacre them, burn their villages and sell their babies into slavery. Luke is paid off, moves in with Darth Vader and the rebels are all executed. The end.

Right now I have about as much faith in the system as those 14 year olds with the giant pants and the evil clown makeup. I never been so disillusioned in my life. I think of all those people we begged to come out and vote for the first time. We said their vote would count, that they would make a difference. We all got together and still they crushed us and spit on our graves.

Now that I've had a couple days to mourn and punch things, I'm still asking myself the big question: WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED? The consensus, especially with those heads I see talking on the TV, seems to be that the republicans secretly signed up about ten billion religious fundamentalists who had never voted before. They Rocked the Church Vote. We Liberal Elite over here in the parts of the country where there is water, we just lost touch and didn't realize that the Real Americans cared about these Moral Values we're hearing about. Everybody's feeling like, "Wow, I had no idea this was so popular" the same way I did when they came out with a sequel to BAD BOYS. I forgot they even had a part 1, suddenly part 2 is a big deal.

I don't know man, this whole thing smells like a dead fish to me. I mean that story is kind of believable. It was a classic Karl Rove sinister masterstroke to get I Hate Fags initiatives on the ballot in 11 states. A little of that good ol' KKK spirit to get the base excited. (Okay, so not all of these people are bigots. They don't hate fags. They don't mind what adults do in the privacy of their own homes, as long as they don't do it in loving, monogamous relationships.)

But really, are there really that many more gay hating wackos out there that didn't vote last time? We're talking about a president who has had below 50% approval ratings for months. Polls show that the majority of Americans now think the Iraq invasion was a mistake and that we are losing the war. 55% think our country is going in "the wrong direction." Bush clearly lost all 3 debates and seemed to get increasingly confused and irritable as the campaign went on. He even yelled at the moderator in debate #2 and had goo on one side of his mouth for #3. Nothing has been going well at all. Iraq has been getting worse and worse (there will be a major bloodbath in Fallujah any day now, now that everybody's voted), the economy and job levels are terrible, Cheney's company is under investigation by the FBI, Osama bin Laden just showed up on TV to remind us that Bush let him go. (No comment from the forgotten anthrax terrorist.) Kerry was pulling ahead in pretty much all of the polls for the week before the election. And even on election day he was winning all of the swing states in the exit polls.

But then suddenly, WHAM, nope, they tell us actually Bush won.

Next thing you know, Tucker Carlson is complaining about these exit polls, why do we believe these exit polls, clearly they are wrong.

And then Robert "I betrayed my country and I'm still on CNN" Novak starts saying how everybody has been saying Bush is so unpopular, but this isn't true, because the computer says Bush won. So actually he is popular. Actually, we do approve of him, we are going in the right direction, Iraq is not a holy fucked up hellhole, Osama bin Laden did not get away, the economy is not in the shitter, the whole world does not despise our fucking guts because our leaders are assholes.

Jeff Greenfield, the senior political adviser or something for CNN, was amazed because he had always been taught that if there was more than a 1% margin in the popular vote, then the electoral vote could not be close. But he was gonna throw that one out because here on the magic computer map he could see that it was wrong for the first time ever. It turns out that mathematic impossibilities are possible in Bush's America.

What they're telling us is, the Great Unverifiable Computer never lies, so reality must be lying. Everything we thought was true is not true, because the screen has been touched.

I don't know man. It's hard to be trusting after these last 4 years. It's hard to just take it on faith that the most corrupt president of all time's corrupt brother who helped rig the last election just decided to sit it out this time. It's hard to trust that when the guy from Diebold promised to "deliver" Ohio's electoral votes to Bush, he didn't mean it that way. I mean maybe we could feel halfway confident about it if they weren't continuing to install these touchscreen voting machines without receipts. Elections are pretty important and you can't really run them on the honor system. And you kinda gotta figure that anybody trying to STOP the addition of a paper trail (Jeb Bush, etc.) is up to something, don't you? Nah, he's probaly on the level - despite all appearances, recent history, common sense, etc.

Yes, what I'm saying is, I don't believe the election was legit. I got no information on this, I just got my gut. And my gut tells me this wasn't a "re"-election, it was a re-"election". I'm saying that alot of those unexpected votes that magically appeared from the sky were actually Kerry votes when they went into the computer and Bush votes when they came out. I think this probaly happened with the scanning software in Ohio and I'm fucking positive it happened with the touchscreens in Florida. (Pure speculation, but try to convince me otherwise. You can't.)

Maybe I'm just in denial. It wouldn't be the first time that all the experts were wrong about everything. (Isn't that what I always tell you to expect?) But I just have a hard time believing the guy could lose the popular vote in 2000, get installed by the Supreme Court, then fuck up, damage and divide the country as bad as he did, and the next time actually WIN the popular and electoral votes. The worst president of all time, and that gets him MORE votes. As if everybody was voting ironically.

To be honest, I just don't want to believe that my country is THAT FUCKING STUPID. It's either "our democracy is lost" or "51% of us are fucking morons." As a proud American I'm going with option number 1.

It doesn't even matter if I'm right or if I'm just being paranoid. Either way, we know for sure that we cannot TRUST in our democracy. Not with this current system. And that's not acceptable. So what we MUST do, and I think this should be the very first goal of liberals in this new era of darkness, is get rid of these fucking machines. I don't know how we're gonna extricate the cancer of voting machines made by corporations connected to the leadership. But at the very least we gotta make it harder for them to cheat. They MUST be machines that print a paper ballot that you can look at to verify and then turn in. And that is your ballot, not an invisible series of 1s and 0s. And we gotta do manual recounts of Ohio to prove if the machines are right or not. So we know what to fix in the next election or so people like me can accept the results as trustworthy.

I don't think I got any Bush lovers reading this, but they oughta agree with me. If I'm right, then republicans will rule the country until they kill us all, so you might not ever have to worry about it. But if it happens that somebody you don't like wins you will have it in the back of your mind. "Did I vote for who the screen told me I voted for?" And nobody should have to deal with that bullshit. Your vote is not like Jesus, where you know it's there because you have faith. Your vote is just a vote. So it should be written down on paper. You don't want to lose it.

Let's fix this. Let's make it verifiable. If we don't, we don't have democracy.

(Somebody sent me this link, a much more educated and cool-headed look at the issue than mine. And blackbox voting is starting an investigation - hopefully they'll get to the bottom of this.)

But let's move on for now, and let's assume I'm just being paranoid. That the guy really won. That brings up the question again: what in shit's name would this fucker have to do to lose these people's support? I think I said before that he could go on TV and murder your grandmother and if you were a republican you'd be able to explain it away as "steady leadership." The comedian David Cross said Bush could go on TV and "eat a jewish baby." A friend of mine said to turn them against him, Bush would have to actually go on TV and personally perform an abortion. But even that I think they could get past. "Well, I disagree with his stance on personally performing abortions live on TV, but he seems like such a straight shooter. I want to have a beer with him*. I just don't trust Kerry, he's a flip flopper."

[*Why do these people always say they'd want to have a beer with Bush? You don't give beer to an ex-alcoholic. That's not cool, man. Plus, imagine how crazy he'd be if he started drinking again! I don't want to see that shit.]

They say these people are concerned about "Moral Values" because they want to put an asterisk on the Constitution to stop gay people from having equal marriage rights. Isn't it ironic that while we are supposedly bringing freedom to people oppressed by Islamic fundamentalists, we are pushing our own retarded caveman religious oppression on our own people. Don't you think the Taliban would agree with those gay marriage bans? I'm proud of some of the things we're doing up here in indigo blue Washington State. Our two top senators are still women and it's not for sure yet but it looks like we might end up having a woman governor too. See that, Midwest? That's how you piss off terrorists. They don't want to see that. I wonder, if Hillary Clinton really did become president, who would be more offended? Republicans, or Islamic fundamentalists? It's hard to say. Doesn't that bother you? Stop trying to be Taliban lite.

But the thing is, these people don't really care about Moral Values, no matter what they said on the exit polls. [And by the way, if the exit polls were wrong about John Kerry winning, then why are they right about everybody loves Moral Values? Ha! I caught you in a contradiction, media! I gotchya!] They're so against gays and abortion because of Jesus, but they don't mind massacring people in Iraq, or sexually torturing them. I think they are thinking of a different Jesus because the dude from the Bible was into turning the other cheek. In fact he was into helping the poor and the sick, that was his whole thing. I don't remember any verse where he told poor people to stop whining because they could get a job if they were just willing to work harder. The dude was NOT a republican.

Forget Jesus's values, these people don't even care about their own values. They say they are for small government and fiscal responsibility, but they vote for Bush! They say they are worried about their security, but they vote for the guy who let planes hit the Pentagon and started a war on unrelated Muslims to inflame the entire world against us. It doesn't matter what he says or does. It is completely irrelevant. They're just voting for him because they're voting for him. It has nothing to do with having reasons or existing in the world of reality. They're just doing it. They're for Bush. Why? There is no why. There is only Bush.

So we could sit here all night and bet on what the guy could get away with. I bet he could go on TV and brag that he enjoys lying and exploiting all Americans. He could say that he didn't do anything to stop September 11th but enjoyed taking advantage of it, that the Iraq war was all a lie and poorly planned and that he doesn't really feel like doing anything to change the situation. Then he could scroll a list of all undercover CIA agents on the screen, call everyone who voted for him a gullible white trash dipshit, pull down his pants and start masturbating, then actually nail the resurrected Jesus to a cross while laughing and performing a mass gay marriage of everyone watching.

Sure, some republicans might be upset and disillusioned that evening, but the next morning once they'd heard the GOP spin on it they would fall right back into line. They'd start calling in to talk shows to condemn all these partisan democrats and extremist liberals who are desperate enough to criticize the president's brave and patriotic display of honesty, sexuality and religious capital punishment.

I don't get it. I don't understand these people. And I'm not the only one. Everybody I know is looking at that map thinking, shit, we're only on the coasts and the lakes? What is it about water, it keeps people sane? If we build some canals through the middle would people start wising up? Or maybe it's not just water, maybe you have to be hit by a plane on 9-11. New York, Washington DC, even Pennsylvania went to Kerry by pretty big margins. Hmmm.

But I mean, that map looks real lonely, us blue states over on the sides. You've probaly seen that map that shows the blue states connected with Canada as "The United States of Canada," and the red states are "Jesusland."

But remember, it's not that simple. Most of the red states were very close. If Ohio and New Mexico and Iowa were so close, for example, we can't just look at the color coded map and think "oh shit, those are all Bushies there." In those red states there are large numbers of people who are more scared to look at that map than we are. If Bush supporters really are the majority, it's only by a couple percent. It is NOT a "mandate" as Bush is already pretending, with the help of shills on the TV and USA Today. It's barely fucking getting by. A guy who once had an 80% approval rating wins with 1% over half. Not including the undervotes. We might be outnumbered, but we're not outgunned.

(well, literally we are. Not figuratively.)

On the second I woke up feeling real nervous, kind of nauseous, like when I was a kid and I had to make a speech in class. But I loosened up and started to feel optimistic like you saw in my last column. I went to bed knowing it was grim but thinking we wouldn't know until 11 days when they counted the Ohio votes.

On the third I woke up and it was sunny and beautiful, like it was on the 11th of September in 2001. And I'm afraid the day's events will have a similar catastrophic affect on this country.

So here we are trying to accept it. It's official. He's staying in the White House, at least for a while. Nixon got re-elected too, and Bush will definitely have to live down a minimum of 12 major scandals way worse and more blatant than Watergate. But he's good at this shit. So it looks like we have that thing we've been fearing for so long: a George W. Bush who doesn't have to worry about re-election. Gulp.

So now Bush says he wants to heal America's wounds. By rubbing salt into them. Here we are still dazed and confused, and he comes out with that smirk on his face, says he wants to reach out and unite the country - no seriously guys - quit laughing - no, come on though, no I'm serious though guys, for real this time though. We just gotta all come together and have unity and what not.

Well, this isn't gonna sound real nice, but all I can say to that is FUCK YOU. No. I don't think so. You had four years to bring us together, you spent it lying to us and calling us traitors and trashing our economy, world standing, culture, ideals and values. When we came together to tell you what we wanted from you, you said you couldn't listen because we were just a "focus group."  When we tried to protest your speeches, you locked us behind a barrier where we couldn't be seen or heard. When we tried to just watch your speeches, you had us thrown out or arrested, or forced us to sign loyalty oaths.

You don't "bring people together" by telling them "sign this or you're a traitor" or "vote for this or you're ruined" or "pass this or blood will be on your hands." I mean maybe you didn't know that. But you that's not how you do it.

Now Bush is looking comfortable again, like when he started the Iraq war (when he told Pat Robertson there would be no casualties!). He's so comfortable he actually did a press conference yesterday. When one reporter asked if reaching out for unity meant finding consensus candidates for judges and putting democrats in his cabinet, his answer was basically no. He will work with "people who share my goals," i.e. his cabinet and Osama bin Laden. Another reporter asks if he thinks world opinion of us is negative because of the Iraq war and if so what he plans to do to fix that. And his answer was basically, fuck them, they hate freedom. So I'm thinking, you know, maybe this guy actually isn't serious about reaching out, healing, etc.? It would be weird but maybe he was feeding us a line of bullshit? Hard to imagine.

If you're serious about this Bush, you really want to bring us together - fine. Then we got a few demands:

1. You're gonna have to dump the Patriot Act, bud. This is not negotiable. Remember that oath you made to uphold the constitution? You blew it, bud. We'll let it go this one time if you dump that shit.

2. You got one week to charge all of the prisoners at all of your offshore prisons. If you don't charge them you have to let them go. So if there are any of them who are actually dangerous, you better get to fucking work.

3. Just tell us who outed Valerie Plame. We're not stupid. We know you know. Just tell us.

4. Please transfer John Ashcroft to an Arby's or Footlocker somewhere. He can be assistant manager or something but under probation. If he says some weird racist or sexist shit to anybody he's gone.

5. This one you gotta save for last. I want you to get Dick, Rummy, Condaleeza, Colin and Wolfie, and go turn yourselves in at the International Criminal Court. You can bring Henry Kissinger too if you want. It'll be cool, like a field trip. It'll be fine. If you're innocent you got nothing to hide, right? We have to give up a little bit of liberty to be safe in this post 9-11 world of freedom and democracy. So wear comfortable shoes.

There's a whole lot of other crap but in the spirit of consensus and compromise I'm just gonna give you those 5. Thanks Bush.

So we jumped off the cliff and we didn't make it to the other side. And it's gonna be a hard fucking climb back up to the top. So, no time for fucking around. Let's start climbin.

oh god oh god why,

but let's do this though,

MARTIN LUTHER KING DAY

I woke up this morning and it was Martin Luther King Day here in the United States, so I put on "Happy Birthday" by Stevie Wonder. It's that song off of Hotter Than July where he sings about giving King a holiday, back when the Trent Lotts and Dick Cheneys of the world were still preventing it from happening.

"Because it should never be
Just because some cannot see
The dream as clear as he
That they should make it become an illusion

And we all know everything
That he stood for time will bring
For in peace our hearts will sing
Thanks to Martin Luther King"

Listening to the song was a good idea, but the bad idea was I'd been watching CNN Headline News. I shoulda turned it off but I just put it on mute. So I'm hearing Stevie singing:

"Why has there never been a holiday
Where peace is celebrated all throughout the world?"

But I'm watching reports about car bombings in Iraq and what's gonna happen to Iraqis if they try to vote in the, uh, election, and how they've been doing these secret missions in Iran to find out where to bomb when they invade there next. (Side thought: how is it really possible that these maniacs are even more dangerous than we thought, that they are actually so fucking deluded they really believe they can start another fucking war at this point and live to tell the tale?)

Well clearly that was a bad way to start out my Martin Luther King Day, turning on the news. It got me thinking all negative. I looked up at the giant American flag they fly on the Space Needle for national holidays, and I thought how can they do this to him? They turn him into a holiday and now he doesn't mean anything. He's a day the mail doesn't come and the bank doesn't open. If you're rich you get the day off, you get to go buy shoes and hamburgers from the people in the jobs where you don't get the day off. You think that's the dream he had?

And I bet alot of people, they watch this war on TV and they don't even see a connection to Martin Luther King. They think oh yeah, that's that black guy that marched for equality. I'm totally for that. I'm glad they got that all straightened out.

Alot of people, maybe they know he stood for non-violence. But only in the context of protesting for equal rights. Yeah, he was the good one because he didn't want to put a foot up the man's ass. He just stood there and got sprayed with the firehose until he convinced us. No white people were harmed so it all worked out well.

These people don't know what he said about Vietnam, they don't know he wasn't just about black people and white people, they probaly don't even know he was helping with a garbage worker strike when he was assassinated. What does worker's rights have to do with the dream? No, it's only about sharing drinking fountains. We took care of that a long time ago. Good show everybody.

They don't think of what he was saying in a modern context, just like they don't do it with Jesus. Yeah, Jesus and Martin said to turn the other cheek, but that was a long time. 9-11 changed everything, including Jesus.

Great guy though, Jesus. But he was living in a September 10th world.

They gave him a holiday, they might as well have named a fucking Nike shoe after him. Give him a video game. They turned him into a meaningless three word phrase like I LOVE YOU or GOD BLESS AMERICA or SUPPORT THE TROOPS or I PLEDGE ALLEGIANCE or KEEP IT REAL or WHERE'S THE BEEF. You say it so many times in so many wrong ways, suddenly it doesn't mean anything. You don't even think about it as a concept, it's just a phrase that rolls off the tongue easy.

God damn it, it's true. Most people don't even think of the dream as something we still need to accomplish. They think of it as a famous speech that was made back in the sixties when TV was black and white and things were bad. They don't think it's a goal, they think it's a chapter in their history book.

Stevie sang:

"It should be a great event
And the whole day should be spent
In full remembrance
Of those who lived and died for the oneness of all people."

But how many people really truly thought about Dr. King or equal rights or pacifism or humanism at any time during the day? I mean if you work at some retail place or restaraunt, you probaly had to work. Maybe there's some businesses somewhere that closed so their employees could get the holiday off like they're supposed to. And if that's so then I bet there were people with the day off, they drove up and figured out the place was closed and thought, god damn it, why are they closed? Where the fuck am I gonna get my sandwich now? God damn it, ruining my day off.

I mean, you know that happened somewhere. It had to.

That's what I was thinking anyway, thinking these negative thoughts. Am I Linus in the pumpkin patch, complaining about insincerity? Charlie Brown worrying that Christmas has lost its meaning and become too commercial? Am I about to get fed up and become the Grinch who stole Martin Luther King Day?

Well the more I thought about it, the more I thought no. I mean yeah, people are idiots, people don't like substance and ideas and meaning, they take things for granted and they don't look beyond the surface and they don't understand history and they ruin it for the rest of us. But that doesn't mean we can't still have a good Martin Luther King Day. We can have the Martin Luther King Day spirit.

Don't look at it like they compromised and commodified Dr. King by making him an official American holiday. Look at it like this. In his day, Dr. King was not the establishment. He was the anti-establishment. He was a rebel, in the minority, fighting for things that most of the country didn't understand, that they were afraid of. He was smeared, he was hated, he was tracked by the FBI, he was assassinated.

That was then. Now, it's only the biggest fuckin nutbag kooks that have a problem with Dr. King. Now everybody knows he was right. He is an American hero and he has a national holiday and the American flag flies on that holiday, because Martin Luther King, Jr. is America now. No matter what the past has to say about it and no matter what Bush has to not understand about it. The problems have not all been solved but we have evolved enough as a society to know that he is not the enemy, he is what America is all about, he is who we aspire to be.

Martin Luther King Day shows how things really can change in this country. Now it's hard to even believe there was a time when the holiday was controversial. To hear that the vice president voted against the holiday is kind of shocking. Even that insane bastard with the atomic heart, you would think, would've understood. And that wasn't that long ago. And he knows not to ever talk about it now.

You see what I'm saying? At the time, Dr. King knew he was right. But the system didn't know he was right, and most white people didn't know he was right, and the media said he was wrong. That was then. Now it's different.

Let's extend that to what's going on today. Right now, we have a government and a media and a culture trying to make excuses for this fucked up war we're in. We know we're right about this. We know it. Not just this war, but this whole Bush Regime approach to life, to the world. We know this is not the way to run our country, through fear and propaganda and murder and cruelty. Right now, not everyone agrees with us. They buy the line that 9-11 changed everything, including Jesus. They got the bumpersticker. But some day they'll understand, that's what Martin Luther King Day shows us. They'll come around. They'll just have to find something else to be wrong about.

There's another Stevie Wonder song I like called "Big Brother." The whole song is great but the last part gives me chills every time, when he sings:

"You've killed all our leaders,
I don't even have to do nothin' to you,
You'll cause your own country to fall."

Now hopefully these assholes won't cause our country to fall, but I've been getting a feeling lately, and I've been hearing this in some e-mails I've gotten from people too, that this whole fucking machine of death and corruption and insanity is eventually gonna hafta pop some bolts and start falling apart. Maybe I'm being naive but it seems to me that it is scientifically impossible for the Bush administration to go too many more steps without exploding and collapsing and disintegrating spectacularly.

That is not to say we're gonna just sit here and wait for it to happen. That's not what Dr. King would want and that's not what Stevie would want. But there is reason to hope, even after the events of November 2nd. (11-2 - Never forget.)

We are little but we are strong. Remember the Ewoks, man. Remember the fucking Ewoks. We're gonna overcome this one.

Happy Martin Luther King Day,