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Archive for January 11th, 2007

Bush Beaten by Drunken Beauty Queen

Posted by scott on January 11th, 2007

Those who discouraged Lucianne Goldberg from paying her son’s tuition at Goucher College, observing that Jonah was too stupid to paper train, let alone to complete an undergraduate degree, were forced to retract at least the first part of their indictment this morning, when Jonah squatted Sumo wrestler-style over the Op-Ed pages and grunted out another steamy pile of ruminations.

AMERICANS ARE torn between two irreconcilable positions on the Iraq war. Some want the war to be a success — variously defined — and some want the war to be over. Conservatives are basically, but not exclusively, in the “success” camp. Liberals (and those further to the left) are basically, but not exclusively, the “over” party. And many people are suffering profound cognitive dissonance by trying to believe these two positions can be held simultaneously.

While Jonah seems to be the one suffering from cognitive dissonance, I have some good news: it’s far from profound.  Even better news, Americans aren’t “torn between two irreconcilable positions on the Iraq war” at all.  In fact, Bush has done a near Rooseveltian job of uniting our once fractured country, since 70% of oppose escalation of troop levels, and only 35% still believe we were right to invade Iraq in the first place.  (Normally, at this point I would suggest that we just call the rest of the column on account of lame, but Jonah has 650 words to go, and 2 teaspoons of Metamucil to process, so all I can say is:  I hope you brought a magazine.)

With last night’s speech, President Bush made it clear that he will settle for nothing less than winning it. He may be deluding himself, and his plan may not work, but he at least has done the nation the courtesy of saying what his position is, despite an antagonistic political establishment and a hostile public.

So Jonah’s position is that we ought to respect Bush because at least he has the courage to lie to our faces.  To me, that smacks less of fortitude and more of sociopathy, but what I find truly amazing about this column is the implication that Bush’s fantasies about Iraq are morally superior to the Democrats’ realistic assessment of this debacle, because in Bush’s dreams we get to win.  Take the title of the piece (ordinarily I don’t hold writers liable for the headlines editors slap onto their work, but this one seems to pretty accurately reflect the contents): 

So one’s ethical standing is determined by the content of one’s -like dreams, no matter how surreal.  Okay, but according to Jonah’s logic, Bush is morally dwarfed by Miss USA, because while they both share a drinking problem, Bush would be satisfied with stability in Iraq, whereas Miss USA wants world peace.

 What is maddening is that the Democratic leadership cannot, or will not, clearly tell the American people whether they are the party of “end it” or “win it.” 

Yes.  Take the sense of the Senate resolution opposing the dispatch of additional troops to Iraq — what the hell is Jonah supposed to make of that?  It’s like these people are speaking in code, or something!  Now, I’m not one to bleg, but I urge everyone to send the labels from their jars of rich, chocolately Ovaltine to NRO, so Jonah can get the secret decoder ring that will allow him to translate Nancy Pelosi’s encrypted press releases.

On the one hand, they tell the president that they want this war “brought to a close.” On the other, they refuse to use their power of the purse to do exactly that, opting instead for a symbolic resolution. It may be the wisest political course for them, but it does a disservice to the nation by making the Iraq debate the equivalent of boxing with fog. 

Yeah, it’s almost like they don’t want to let concern trolls goad them into passing a law that Bush will effortlessly circumvent through simple accounting tricks, but which would allow the Republicans to relentlessly mau mau the Democrats for starving the troops.

Sorry, Jonah.  Your arms too short to box with fog.

Here we have a president forthrightly trying to win a war, and the opposition — which not long ago was in favor of increasing troops, when Bush was against that — won’t say what it wants. This is flatly immoral.

Okay.  This is where Jonah stops being an amusing mediocrity and suddenly becomes creepy and loathsome, morphing before our eyes from Kato Kaelin into O.J. Simpson.  The Democrats’ opposition to the war is “flatly immoral,” because it hasn’t been couched in the exact combination of magic words acceptable to Jonah.  Evidently they need to say “bring our troops home” in Klingonese, or Elvish, or three times in a row while gazing into a mirror.  But what Bush is doing — throwing 21,000 more troops into harms way in the hope that if we give the insurgents enough Americans to shoot, eventually they’ll run out of bullets — is a “forthright” effort to “win a war?”

I’ve long thought that Jonah was as intellectually lazy as the Presidential meal ticket to which he clung with limpet-like tenacity , but even I don’t think he’s that stupid.  Which means he knows that there is no “surge” of troops in the offing.  There’s a trickle of exhausted, overstressed forces that Bush will whizz randomly over Iraq like a drunk signing a snowbank with his own urine.  And these additional lives, as well as the lives of all the other U.S. troops and Iraqi civilians will be pissed away so that Bush can run out the clock, until the the whole issue is so immersed in the sturm und drang of the 2008 elections that nobody even wants him to take action on Iraq anymore.

Bush is “deluding himself” to a degree not seen since the Black Knight in Monty Python and the Holy Grail.  Except the President is not personally getting hacked to pieces – the dismembered knight is simply his employee, so it’s fairly easy for Bush to declare “It’s just a flesh wound!” each time blood geysers from a rudely truncated stump.  As long as there are servicemen and women to take bullets on his behalf, Bush won’t be forced to take his medicine — not even the St. Joseph’s flavored baby aspirin served up our cooing and solicitous press corps.  Call it Black-Knight-by-Proxy Syndrome.

Another Democratic dodge is the incessant demand for a “political solution” in Iraq. “What is absolutely clear to me is there is no military solution to the problems in Iraq, that only political solutions are going to bring about some semblance of peace,” Sen. Barack Obama declared. This is either childishly naive or reprehensibly dishonest.

To concede that four years after our invasion we have nothing to show for it but blood and anarchy, and to suggest that our only hope of salvation lies in reversing course and talking to Syria, Iran, Sunnis, Shi’ites, Kurds and any other interested parties is ”flatly immoral” and “reprehensibly dishonest”?  You know, there came a point where white people were no longer allowed to use the N-word in decent company.  At what point will people like Jonah be forbidden to deploy the language of moral outrage, on pain of being frogmarched out of the dinner party?

Saying we need a political solution is as helpful as saying “give peace a chance.” Peace requires more than such pie-eyed verbiage. In the real world, peace has no chance until the people who want to give death squads another shot have been dispatched from the scene.

The fact that Jonah’s side was funding death squads in Central America during the Reagan Administration only proves his point, since once they were dispatched from the scene, peace did indeed prevail.  It’s clear that Jonah has made a thorough and thoughtful study of the political history of the 1980s.

It reminds me of the liberal obsession in the 1980s with getting inner-city gangs to settle their differences with break-dance competitions. If only Muqtada Sadr would moonwalk to peace!

Okay, he’s made a thorough and thoughtful study of the plot of Breakin’ 2:  Electric Boogaloo!

Last night, Bush finally acknowledged what Americans already knew: The war has not gone well.

So if, after screwing up, and after everybody else has already agreed that you’ve screwed up, you’re the last guy to actually admit that you screwed up, that too is a definition of moral courage.  Damn, we’re gonna need one whole thesaurus just for this entry.

But he also acknowledged what few Democrats are willing to admit: If we leave — i.e. lose — it will be a disaster, a geostrategic calamity for the United States and quite possibly a genocidal one for the Iraqis.

The only rational course:  Continue screwing up!  Otherwise, we might look incompetent.

It’s long since forgotten, but perhaps the chief moral argument against the Iraq war in 2003 was that it would create an enormous humanitarian crisis in the form of refugees spilling over the borders, which in turn would destabilize the region. That didn’t happen.

Right.  If you ignore the 2 million Iraqis who have already fled the country.

Bush declared last night that “victory will not look like the ones our fathers and grandfathers achieved. There will be no surrender ceremony on the deck of a battleship”

To quote Doghouse Riley, “Right. This one’ll be on an aircraft carrier, and it’ll come at the beginning instead of the end.”

Bush came up with the “surge” plan. Will it work? Nobody knows.

But you know a war plan is serious when it has the same probability of success as hitting 33 black in roulette. 

But the one thing the American people know about George W. Bush is that he wants to win the war. What the Democrats believe is anybody’s guess.

Well, maybe you have to guess, Jonah, but for me, the Democrats’ message is coming in loud and clear.  They want me to drink more Ovaltine.

 

Lillies for Lily

Posted by scott on January 11th, 2007

Our apologies for the paucity of posts this past week.  I’ve been dealing with the close of the sale on my grandfather’s house, and I’m pretty sure s.z. has been devoured by her foster pets, who have since broken up into smaller discussion groups tasked with creating action plans to deal with the electric can opener, the latch on the cat flap, and the TiVo.

In the meantime, former Paramount and Universal glamour girl Yvonne De Carlo has died at the age of 84.  She emerged from bit part obscurity by virtue of her strong performances in classic films such as The Ten Commandments, For Whom the Bell Tolls, and Blazing Stewardesses, before achieving immortality in the role of Lily Munster, then finally sinking back into obscurity with a bit part in Satan’s Cheerleaders.  So, in tribute to Yvonne, and because I’ve got a bad headache and really can’t come up with anything original, here’s a bit culled from the Satan: A Career Retrospective chapter of Better Living Through Bad Movies.  Enjoy, and sorry for the deja vu.

Satan’s Cheerleaders (1977)
Directed by: Greydon Clark
Written by: Greydon Clark and Alvin L. Fast

Our movie opens with John Ireland leading a Take Back the Night March in his bathrobe.  Then we cut to the beach, where a group of bikini-clad pom-pom girls from the local high school are performing cheers for the female P.E. teacher.  Horrified by the frank sexuality of the girls’ routine, she urges them to replace the offending choreography with moves stolen from a minstrel show.

Suddenly, the movie delivers a shock: One of the cheerleaders—blonde and bland teen goddess Patti—is spotted sitting alone on the sand, staring out to sea.  Fearing that she’s not feeling fresh, her friends rush to her aid, only to learn that Patti has been “thinking.”

“About what?” they ask, flabbergasted.
“I don’t know,” she replies.

Meanwhile, the high school custodian (Wilfred Brimley Lite) is attending John Ireland’s al fresco pajama party and satanic kegger.  Wilfred pledges his soul to Satan, so those darn kids will finally quit annoying him and stop TPing the chain-link fence around the school.

The next day, Wilfred is pulling toilet paper off the chain-link fence and having second thoughts about that chalice of goat’s blood he drank last night (was it really the right thing to do?)  On the bright side, the Lord of Darkness did apparently come through with a Ronco Rhinestone and Stud Setter, since Wilfred’s highly ornamented janitor’s uniform would likely be dismissed as wretched excess by Liberace.

Realizing he’s failed to give any of the characters a shred of distinguishing personality, director Greydon has the girls change into tight white t-shirts with their names emblazoned on the chest in block letters—exactly like the Mickey Mouse Club, except for the visible nipples.  (And now that you’re picturing Cubby’s highbeams, we should probably point out this movie does contain a shower scene, and you do see breasts.   But since they’re the sort of breasts you usually see only on very young girls, or very old men, it left us feeling kind of queasy.)

While the girls are showering, Wilfred sneaks in and curses their shorts and baby tees.

The cheerleaders pile into the PE teacher’s car and head off to an away game, followed by Wilfred, who has himself been cursed with a leisure suit the color of tomato bisque.  Furiously rubbing his talisman (probably not what you’re thinking) he curses the PE coach’s Country Squire, causing it to come to a safe and complete stop.  Wilfred picks up the stranded pep squad in his camper, and laughs maniacally as he reveals that they are now helpless, and completely in his power!  Then he loses control of the pickup and stalls in a vacant lot.  Fortunately for him, it’s a satanic vacant lot.  As the girls emerge from the truck, Patti is suddenly overcome by an unnatural passion, and exposes her boobs to Albert Finney’s doorknocker from Scrooge.  Then she lies down on a barbecue and has an orgasm, while Wilfred has a heart attack.

Teach and the cheerleaders get in Wilfred’s truck and drive until they see John Carradine, who is dressed in rags and wandering the roadside with a burlap sack, picking up discarded cans, bottles, and cameos in Jerry Warren movies.  Now the filmmakers deliver another big shock, as we learn that John’s not actually in this film.  Apparently, it was some sort of clerical error, or maybe the camera crew just caught him puttering around on his day off.

Teach and the cheerleaders seek out the local sheriff (John Ireland), who goes by the name “B.L. Bubb” (get it?).  The guileless girls don’t yet realize the full significance of this strange name, but they’re pretty sure it means he used to be on “The Dukes of Hazzard.”

While Sheriff John goes to check on their story about a dead satanic custodian near a giant doorknocker, the unspeakably sinister Yvonne De Carlo shows up dressed like Howdy Doody.  When the Sheriff finds Wilfred napping on the barbecue, he beats his oddly spangled disciple to a pulp, then gives him a piggyback ride.  Unsure how to react to this, Wilfred decides to die again.

Back at the Sheriff’s house, the girls sense that Something Is Not Right.  They try thinking, but once again, it makes them feel unfresh.  Then they overhear Sheriff John’s plan to sacrifice a “pure maiden” (yeah, right) and they run away.

Meanwhile, Patti is muttering mumbo-jumbo in the living room and going all satanic on Yvonne’s ass (apparently, flashing her knockers at a knocker has endowed her with the ability to browbeat washed-up contract players).

The girls are recaptured, then promptly escape again, giving us yet another chance to enjoy long scenes of them jiggling over hill and dale.  Gathering a posse of demonic hicks and bumpkins, Sheriff John puts on his pajamas and hunts down the fleeing pep squad.  Yvonne helps by pulling out the Satan Home Game and saying a prayer for her Audi.  (Well, that’s what it sounded like–I suppose she could have been facing a satanic altar and saying “Howdy,” but that would seem to undercut the moment.)

Catching up to the Semi-Naked Prey, Sheriff John dresses them in graduation gowns and brings them to the consecrated barbecue.  But it turns out that Patti is now going steady with Lucifer.  As she shouts some more nonsense, Wilfred rises from the dead again and stabs Sheriff John in the bladder with a trowel.  The demonic “Hee Haw” extras bow down and worship Patti as the Devil’s intern.

Cut to a football game.  The cheerleaders, now sponsored by Satan, are hopping around and shaking their pom-poms, when one of the players is felled by an injury.  But Beelzebub has endowed his Bride with the power to repair groin pulls, and she commands the player to rise, and the team to win!  So, for those of you dreading the coming of the Anti-Christ, you can relax.  The Horned Beast doesn’t have time to engulf the world in darkness, since he’s busy fixing high school football games.

Satan’s Cheerleaders: not just a shocking expose of how football imperils innocent groins, but also a Betty Freidan-inspired call for female empowerment through Satanism and shower scenes.

Our director, Greydon Clark, is also responsible for Angel’s Revenge, another movie about skimpily dressed women who jiggle and giggle their way through a battle with the forces of evil (represented by cast members Arthur Godfrey and Alan Hale, Jr.).  So, we might consider Graydon the John Milton of ‘70s cinema, showing the armies of God battling the legions of Lucifer, with sexy results.  It’s just that his heavenly hosts have Farrah hair and wear skin-tight t-shirts, while his hellish battalions are composed of inept janitors, John Ireland, and Lily Munster.  In fact, the Satan of these films would most likely have the motto “Better to reign in hell than to serve lunch specials at TGI Fridays.”

And speaking of rain, Anton LaVey, founder of The Church of Satan, was a technical advisor on The Devil’s Rain (which is why those melting sherbet scenes seemed so authentic).  However, he was touring with Bread when it came time to film Satan’s Cheerleaders, so the moviemakers had to rely on a copy of The Devil’s Cliff Notes and the instruction manual from a Weber grill for their info about Satanism. And while a cursory knowledge of the occult leads us to believe that real devil worshippers don’t actually wear rhinestone-studded leisure suits (except to the Academy Awards), what about the rest of the film’s demonic theology?  Do Satanists really sacrifice virgins, pray to doorknockers, and impersonate Howdy Doody?

To find out, we interviewed Anton LaVey (via Ouija board, since he’s passed over and is with Satan now).  At least we think it was Anton LaVey we were talking to—it may have been Anton Chekhov, or possibly Lyndon LaRouche. Anyway, it was somebody with a funny name.  Here is a transcript of our interview (send $29 to Dateline if you want a transcript of our séance with Dick Cheney):

Q: Mr. LaVey, when we tried researching Satanism on the Internet, we read that Satanists kidnap children for rituals, and eat at least 3000 babies a year.  Is this true?

A: No, of course not! In fact, the ninth of my “Eleven Satanic Rules of the Earth” is “Do not harm little children.”  Modern Satanists are not like the ones you see in horror movies, always sacrificing goats and terrorizing Mia Farrows.  Besides, babies are too fatty for today’s active Satanist.  After a busy night of reading from the Satanic Bible, ritual magick, and a nice orgy, we usually have something light, like a salad, followed by some baby-flavored Jell-O. Q: Is it also untrue that there’s a massive ritual network, which kidnaps virgins and makes them participate in weird sexual ceremonies—all headed up by the British royal family?

A: Well, that’s true, but it has nothing to do with us!

Q:  Many coaches and players thank God for their sports victories; shouldn’t they be blaming Satan for their losses?

A:  Yes.  Because the stadium, gym, or arena is the real playing field of the ultimate battle of good or evil. Every time one of God’s teams wins a game, the Almighty wins.  However, when these teams lose (due to the evil machinations of the devil), then Satan comes that much closer to ruling over the Earth.  And, while Lucifer doesn’t actually have any teams, since athletes are too pious, humble, and pure to have anything to do with him, Satan does own the league officials, the refs, and, as you saw in the movie, the cheerleaders.  So, it’s pretty balanced. Q:  Wow, we never realized that sporting events were so cosmically important!

Why else would men spend so many Sundays watching them?  I’ll let you in on a little secret: the Battle of Armageddon, the combat that decides the ultimate fate of the planet, will be Super Bowl XXXVI.  Buy your commercial spots now!

What’s Been Going On With Me

Posted by s.z. on January 11th, 2007

Sorry about the lack of posting.  I haven’t been feeling too well, and it made my head hurt to try to read anything online, especially stuff written in wingnutese.  Meanwhile, I think Scott has been busy taking meetings with the Christian-hating, anal sex-loving, mother-sodomizing harlots who run Hollywood and the nursing homes of Southern California. 

But this evening I did prepare a witty, educational, expertly written, detailed post which would have updated you on all the pets, but when I tried to copy it so I could post it, Microsoft Word crashed (I’ve never had THAT particular disaster happen to me before), and I lost it.  I blame Nancy Pelosi, whose talk about increasing taxes on the rich caused Bill Gates to stop improving his products.

But here’s an executive summary of the missing post:

1.  Buster the Foster Dog got adopted.  He reminded a girl of her late, lameted Pomeranian (it must have been a really BIG Pom), and she convinced her family that he was the dog for them, and they took him home, and they all love him.  Happy ending for Buster!

And this is the end of my fostering for the rescue group, at least for now, but I will continue to remind people to get their pets spayed and neutered, because the rescue groups can’t save all the healthy, friendly pets that are being euthanized every day just because there are no homes for them.

2.  The reason I can’t foster anymore is that I rescued Jake, a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel whose elderly owner died, and whom nobody else wanted because he’s a cripple (he was bought at a pet store, which got him from a puppy mill in the midwest, and so it’s no real suprise that he has luxating patellas in his back knees, and now has badly bowed legs.)  He can get around, and isn’t in any pain, but he can only walk a couple of blocks at a time, and can’t climb or jump.  I’m exploring options for him, but right now at least he’s happy.  

3.  Everybody else is fine, including Mirabelle, the shelter cat (although she does hold her back leg funny, so I guess she’s still feeling the results of being thrown out of the car — I guess I’m specializing in differently abled pets these days).  All the pets want to thank everyone for the support, because they are eating like kings these days (assuming that kings eat premium pet food).

4.  Here is a list of people I want to thank, since their financial support has allowed me to achieve my life goal of becoming the neighborhood crazy cat lady:

Robert, Katherine, Linda, David, Jill, Leslie, preznit giv me turkee, D. Sidhe, Edward, Mike, Sue, Robin, Dave, Janice, and the Political Cat.5.  Thanks also to Leslie for the copy of her new book .  It is great!  You should buy a copy!  (More about this later.)

6.  Thanks also to everyone who bought a copy of our book (especially to Frederick, who bought 3 copies), and to everyone who bought stuff at Amazon by using our portal.  God will reward you for your good deeds (even if you are now on a Goverment watch list for them).  

7.  And I am very grateful to YOU, the Wo’C reader, for sticking around, even during the programming outages.

Please come back tomorrow when we can discuss Michael Medved’s column about why eliminating tax breaks for the richest Americans is tantamount to slavery, and Mary Grabar‘s piece about how that “Macaca’ kid forced her to wait tables to pay her way through college, while he got an new blackberry and “grillwork” on his teeth. 

But for now, ponder this Townhall comments on Mary’s column:

Take Back the Government writes: Sunday, January, 07, 2007 2:23 AM
Two can play that game
Conservative college kids who have all the time in the world like these punks should organize protests against these Liberal scumbuckets, too! If the Lobotomous Liberal supports Abortion, they should carry posters of aborted fetuses to remind the idiots at the speech just what they’re voting for and they should shout it out in their face – words like “MURDERER” or “SAVE THE BABY WHALES – KILL THE BABY HUMANS” or “IS THIS WHAT THE DEMS CALL “FAMILY VALUES” or “LIBS WOULD HAVE ABORTED CHRIST IF GIVEN THE CHANCE!” Or, they can show posters of gay marriage and shout “Hey DEMS, what’s next? – Steve and Spot?” or “IS THIS WHAT THE DEMS CALL “FAMILY VALUES???” You have to take the fight tothe Lobotomous Libs; they can not defend their insanity and the word must get out.

Yes, I agree that this is exactly what the conservative college kids should do to show just how crazy the liberals are.

Anyway, see you tomorrow — I am too weak to deal with any more of this kind of thing.