BlameBush!

Free Gasoline for Everyone!

Since the day Bush was sElected, rising gas prices resulting from his ties to Big Oil have been a heavy financial burden on working families. With the cost of fuel now breaking the $3 per gallon mark, even lazy white Republicans are feeling the pinch.

Meanwhile, rich fatcat CEOs wallow in their piles of ill-gotten cash like pigs at the capitalist trough. Indeed, every dime of profit a corporation makes is stolen from a poor person somewhere. It is only through a corrupt federal government beholden to Big Business that profits are tolerated at all.

At Seattle Hemp Products, we’ve evolved past the 20th Century make-a-buck mindset. I’m proud to say that we’ve been operating in the red for three years now. In fact, our 2005 annual report boasted that the company is “teetering precariously on the edge of bankruptcy”, thanks mostly to all the hard work we’ve done insuring that our monthly profits never exceed the wages of our lowest paid employee. Most recently, that person was our little Ukrainian janitor, Yuri. Yuri was a sweet guy and it’s a shame he didn’t survive the first round of layoffs. Another innocent victim of Bush’s failed economy.

Thankfully, politicians are finally taking steps to punish greedy corporations that profit at the expense of the consumer. In California, wise Democrat leaders are proposing heavy fines on the petroleum companies should their obscene earnings rise any higher. With their costs shooting through the roof, Big Oil would then be forced to lower prices at the pumps. If they took it once step further and confiscated all of Big Oil’s profits, logic dictates that gas prices would then drop to mere pennies a gallon (plus state and local taxes). Only a Democrat could think up such a brilliant idea. But it’s not rocket science folks. It’s simple economics.

The same principle can be applied to almost any business, from the health care industry to real estate. When it comes right down to it, all we really need is some government entity deciding which businesses are making too much money, and how to punish them for it. It worked for Seattle Hemp Products and it will work for Big Oil, if our peeResident would only listen to reason.

If the electricity is back on when I go to work Monday, I’ll send Bush a nice little email.

Another Right-Wing Snow Job

Paul Wolfowitz. Ari Fliescher. Gail Norton, Andy Card. Bush’s once faithful entourage of brownshirts is deserting him like Nazi rats from a sinking U-boat. Last week, Scott McClellan resigned in disgrace as well, leaving the position of White House Press Secretary up for grabs.

It’s an important job; one that requires a deep appreciation how vital a room full of screeching, hysterical journalists is to our democracy. As the person charged with carefully listening to the press and then informing the President of their wishes and needs, a White House Press Secretary must be more than a partisan mouthpiece for the Shrub, and possess the clarity of mind to see through Bush’s web of lies unbound by the restrictive shackles of reality.

Folks, the job has Helen Thomas’ name written all over it.

But instead of the Great Dane of the White House Press Corps, Bush gave us Tony Snow, a Faux News propagandist and right-wing hate radio jock who conceals his deep hatred for all living things with a frustrating veneer of good-natured optimism. The appointment amounts to little more than a slap in Thomas' face. After 175 years of hounding American presidents like a bad case of genital warts, she gets passed over in favor of a fascist TV toady who’ll monopolize all the attention at her morning press briefings.

I doubt he'll even observe the tradition of giving Helen the last word. Heck, he’ll probably interrupt her speeches to take phone calls from his listeners.

Danke Schoen, Dumbya!

An email I received from the homophobes at CafePress not only confirms that Freedom of Speech no longer exists in this country, but also perfectly illustrates my point about how impossible Bush has made it for gay parents to express themselves through their children.

It seems CafePress' team of shysters had a problem with my "That's not Wayne Newton!" baby t-shirt and removed it from my storefront, "pending legal review" - much in the same way that innocent women and children are being held at Gitmo "pending a trial". They claimed there were "trademark issues" concerning the unsanctioned use of Wayne Newton's name to sell products, as if the King of Las Vegas actually worries about such things.

Indeed, a quick Google Image search reveals the truth. Newton has been meeting with the troops, encouraging them, lifting their spirits, giving them hope. He's obviously no Democrat. Goddess only knows how long he and CafePress have been cooking up their little plot to silence me.

Well, Lawrence F. Chomstein won't go down without a fight. As you may have noticed, I've been keeping the prices in the Fair Trade Gift Shop artifically low; partly because greedy consumers weren't ready to pay $175 for a t-shirt and my workers were suffering for it, but mostly because I was sick of all the snotty email from CafePress about my prices being too high. But no more Mr. Nice Guy. To show those fascist bastards the error of their ways, I've raised the prices in the FTGS so high that I'm virtually guaranteed to not make any sales. Unless 40 of my readers go in together on a bib, CafePress' days of making vast profits off of my creative genius will come to an end.

That'll teach 'em.

Two Mommies Means Twice the Hugs!

WASHINGTON -- Thousands of children braved chilly rain Monday to take part in the annual Easter Egg Roll on the White House lawn.

About 100 gay and lesbian couples wearing rainbow-colored leis said they wanted to give their children an opportunity to have fun while making a political statement that they should be welcome at such an event. ''We just wanted to come out to be visible and present and to let people see we are families, too,'' said Alisa Surkis, 42, of Brooklyn, N.Y., as 3-year-old-daughter Ella clamored for her partner, Colleen Gillespie, to take her over to see the Easter Bunny.

When I read those wonderful words last weekend, I was struck by how thoughtful and open-minded gay families are compared to heterocentric ones. By using their own children as weapons in the war against the Christian Right, same-sex couples make the world a better place for all of us. Hetero couples, on the other hand, procreate for purely selfish reasons and their offspring serve no political purpose whatsoever.

If only all the babies of the world had gay mommies and daddies. But mother nature is a cold-hearted bitch, and out of pure spite she made it a cinch for heterosexuals to reproduce and practically impossible for same-sex couples to do so. Spermatoza doesn’t grow on trees, you know. You have to put an ad in the paper, or catch David Crosby during one of his infrequent lucid spells. It's even more difficult for male-male couples to conceive a living, breathing political statement of their own.

That’s why I’ve decided to give something back to the gay community for all the hardship they suffer. Introducing a new addition to Liberal Larry’s Fair Trade Gift Shop, the Gaybeez® line of clothing for the children of gay couples. By plastering messages of gay pride all over their toddlers, gay parents can now get twice the political juice from one kid.

Enjoy!

A Weekend of Terror

Watching the TV news last weekend, it was hard not to be sickened by all the acts of sadistic cruelty performed in the name of a supposedly peaceful religion. Even more so when one realizes that these Abu-Ghraibesque atrocities were being committed right here on American soil, against our own children, and within the once-sacred confines of the People’s House.

While the nation watched helplessly Sunday, hundreds of innocent toddlers were herded like cattle into an enclosed area and forced to collect brightly painted chicken embryos in a bizarre ritual to appease Bush’s angry consumerist Man-God.

Senseless? Yes. Barbaric? Rooty patootie. But forget for a moment the inhuman conditions that thousands of chickens are forced to endure at egg farms across the country. Put aside your gut-wrenching horror over the millions of unborn baby chickens who are never given a chance at life, hard-boiled inside their colorful shells by a peeResident who wouldn’t fund embryonic stem cell research to save Christopher Reeve’s life. With it’s emphasis on competition and the hoarding of natural resources, the traditional White House Easter Egg Hunt is less a homophobic neo-Nazi rally than an exercise in capitalist greed.

Isn’t it about time that we as a society abandon this primitive ritual in favor of a more community-oriented and earth-friendly alternative? I have the fondest memories of my mother’s annual Fungus Hunts. Every fall, the familiar sounds of Jefferson Airplane floating out of Mother’s van would be the signal for all the children of the neighborhood to go forth into the woods and gather mushrooms. No chickens were harmed. No children were emotionally scarred by an authoritarian male Easter Bunny. Instead, Mother would provide the kids with positive reinforcement by paying them a penny for every mushroom they collected, and a dollar if they stumbled upon one of the many plastic baggies of herbal glaucoma medication she stashed about the yard. The grand total was held in trust until the end of the day, when she would award it not to the child who found the most mushrooms, but to the one she deemed most needy. Although my bad back prevented me from joining in on the fun, the extra cash in my pocket went a long way towards lifting my spirits. At least, until I got the stuffing kicked out of me by the fascist neo-con larvae that were unappreciative of Mother’s valuable lesson about sharing with others.

And isn’t that what Easter is really all about? Sharing? Or is it Christmas? Whatever. Judging by the selfish, consumerist Götterdämmerung at the White House yesterday, it’s a lesson that so-called Christians seem to have forgotten.

Jeff Skilling's Lame Excuse

Due to circumstances beyond my control, I’ve been unable to do much blogging lately. But despite my self-imposed exile, I managed to poke my head out from beneath the sink long enough to catch the latest news on the trial of Enron consigliatore Jeff Skilling. Indicted on 157 counts of fraud, conspiracy to commit fraud, and various other crimes against humanity that flourish in a capitalist system such as ours, Skilling is facing some serious hard time at a minimum-security country club of his choosing. He’s a Republican, and by nature thicker than a whale omelette, but one would think he could come up with a better excuse for breaking the laws of this country than “I pick your fruit”. I understand that this is “a nation of immigrants”, but Skilling only made himself look like an idiot by shouting it whenever the prosecution backed him into a corner. When he wrapped himself in the Mexican flag and demanded equal rights for his “opressed Chicano brothers and sisters”, it was all I could do to keep from throwing an SOS pad at the TV screen.

I don’t care how tight they are with Bush, Skilling and Kenny-Boy Lay, they are not above the law, nor can they simply ignore any laws that inconvenience them. At least, not until they learn how to use a leaf blower. Unless they trim some shrubs or rat one out, they are as guilty as hell and must be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

New Bush Bomb to Target Subterranean Weddings, Baby Milk Factories

Planning on getting hitched in the sewers of Tehran this spring? You might want to reconsider. The Bush Junta is testing a new weapon in the Nevada desert designed specifically to ruin your special day. No longer content with killing innocent civilians on the ground, the Shrub is building a new 700 megaton firecracker that will penetrate through solid rock to ruin any weddings or same-sex unions held beneath the earth’s surface.

The effect this will have on the economies of Middle Eastern nations will be devastating. With Muslim fathers afraid to marry off their daughters, a larger dowry will be required to ease their fears. The value of goats will skyrocket. The entire Middle Eastern goat milk industry will collapse – an industry that Bush’s Big Goat Milk buddies certainly wouldn’t miss, either.

Pentagon spooks claim that the new bomb will actually be used to destroy underground weapons depots and nuclear facilities – namely Iran’s. But with the UN issuing Iran a stern request to please cease and desist their nuclear program, there is little doubt that the terrified Iranians are already dismantling those very same facilities even as you read this. No, Bush’s deadly new toy has a far more sinister intent. Under the guise of protecting America from attack, Bush aims to rid the Middle East of every last drop of goat milk. Hopefully, peace activists and democrat leaders like Sen. Harry Reid will insure that he doesn’t succeed at either one.

Bush Stole One Hour of My Sleep, Life

As I sat in my boss’ office this morning, desperately trying to hold my eyelids up while the old fascist tore into me, I couldn’t shake the feeling that Bush was somehow responsible. Unbeknownst to me, Daylight-Savings Time had passed in the dead of night and under the cover of darkness. As a result, I was TWO, rather than the typical ONE hour late. There was no way I could explain it away this time as Bush intentionally scheduling trains, school buses, and naked samurai-sword guys to obstruct my morning commute, either. The boss wanted the truth and I was too tired to come up with a believable substitute.

Ahhh! Thus turns the right-wing worm!

Daylight-Savings Time, or DST, was first implemented by Southern plantation owners to keep slaves in the fields an extra hour. During World War II, Hitler used DST as an effective weapon against Allied troops, who would helplessly nod off in the midst of battle. In recent months, congressional Republicans (and a few unscrupulous Democrats) have lobbied for beginning DST two-weeks earlier, arguing that an extra hour of daylight would jumpstart the lousy economy while reducing electricity consumption. If so, then why not move the clocks ahead twelve hours so Americans could enjoy 24 full hours of daytime?

The answer is a closely guarded secret. However, I have it on good authority that while the Shrub can steer hurricanes into large populations of African-Americans, he can't control the speed of the earth’s rotation. Not yet, anyway. This whole DST thing is simply a scam to deprive Americans of one hour of sleep so they’ll be tired and listless at the polls come November.

Well, we don’t have to take this standing up! Since it’s easier to get teenagers to ditch school for our causes than it is to get adults to vote for them, I call on all socially-minded high school students across the country to turn of their alarm clocks and SLEEP IN until Bush gives us back the one hour he’s stolen from our restful night’s sleep, not to mention our lives. Of course, their courageous protest will probably result in the school year being extended, but what they don’t know won’t hurt them.

In fact, it’s what makes them such fantastic liberals.