BlameBush!

Courageous Cantwell Tackles Big Oil Behemoth

Relief may finally be in sight for working Americans forced to pay through the nose for gasoline. Our spunky Senator, Maria Cantwell, has introduced bold new anti-gouging legislation that will punish oil companies and retailers that charge “unconscionably excessive” prices at the pump. What constitutes “unconscionably excessive” will be determined through litigation, as all good things are (except for Presidential elections).

A GOP-introduced provision to curtail “unconscionably excessive” attorney fees and “unconscionably excessive” class-action lawsuit settlements was scrapped for being “not vague enough”, as well as financially harmful to lawyers who charge fair market prices for a valuable public service. It seems the Repugs aren't as anti-pork as they claim to be. However, a compromise is in the works that would cut through all the legal red tape by simply giving trial lawyers a lifetime of free gasoline, allowing them to fly their private jets back and forth between New York and New Orleans without having to worry about who they’ll have to sue to get a next tank of gas in this dump. In return, every American taxpayer would receive a coupon worth one free download of the amazing RealNetworks player.

So everyone wins – right? Not if those Congressional Republicans can help it. The only laws they're in favor of are ones that will line the pockets of the weasels that put them into power.

No More Blood for Bumper Stickers!

There is no “War on terror”. It’s all a ruse; a cheesy slogan Bush made up to line the pockets of his Big Bumper Sticker buddies. Are John Edwards and I the only ones who have noticed how much the price of bumper stickers has skyrocketed since 9/11? Apparently so, for the sheep-like consumerist hordes keep right on buying them up, as if slapping a patriotic sticker or a yellow ribbon on their SUV’s will somehow assuage their feeling of guilt over the 3,000 fellow Americans they murdered by putting Bush into office. So desperate they are to wash the blood off their hands, they are now sending their own tots overseas to steal Iraq’s bumper stickers.

Perhaps if John Edwards would use his psychic powers to wipe the memory of 9/11 from the minds of the American people as he has erased it from his own, they'd be able focus their limited attention spans on his political campaign or, more importantly, his fantastic hair.

Bush Immigration Reform a Recipe for Genocide

"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Stirring words engraved upon a statue given to us by France (merci, guys!). But our Founding Fathers would be sickened by how far we’ve strayed from those principles.

In a so-called “Immigration Reform Deal” that Republicans insist is “amnesty” for undocumented workers (an obvious ploy to get liberal Democrats like Ted Kennedy and John McCain on board) the huddled masses that traversed scorching desert wastelands, swam turd-infested waters, and dodged racial-profiling border guards might eventually maybe someday be asked to cough up $5000 in fines to enjoy the same citizenship privileges that rich white people automatically get just for being born here.

Yo, Bush! In case you hadn’t noticed, these people are DIRT POOR! You and your Big Oil Buddies may be able to pull that kind of money out of your asses, but 5000 bucks may as well be a million to your average Latino landscaper. When forced to make the tough choice between becoming citizens, feeding their families, or upgrading the hydraulics on their lowriders, what do you think most impoverished immigrants will choose?

Unless this bill includes some sort of provision to provide free lowriders for undocumented workers, then Bush’s “Path to Citizenship” will be nothing more than a Death March to Starvation”.

1 Down, 224,999,999 Christians to Go

That Jerry Falwell deserved to die goes without saying. But as a caring, compassionate progressive, I can’t derive any joy from the man's death. For all the pain and torment Falwell inflicted upon the people of the world, he simply didn’t suffer enough to get my rocks off.

It was Falwell’s so-called “Moral Majority”, after all, that cursed us with Ronald Raygun - a senile fascist who murdered 178 billion AIDS sufferers by putting flowers on Hitler’s grave. It was Falwell’s evangelical ministry that bilked millions of ignorant, naive morons out of their life savings, essentially stealing potential campaign funds directly from the DNC coffers. It was Falwell himself who viciously attacked "Hinky Binky", a purse-swinging children’s TV character created to help flamboyantly gay toddlers come to grips with their sexuality. And whoamong us could forget Falwell’s infamous and incredibly hateful accusation that gays, lesbians, and the ACLU were responsible for the 9/11 attacks, even though Cindy Sheehan had already revealed that it was actually George Bush and the Zionist NeoCon PNAC Jews who caused the unfortunate incident?

But Falwell’s most heinous act, the one for which he deserves to burn in Hell for all eternity, was that he took all that Bible crap seriously - and convinced others to do so as well. His irrational views against sodomy, pre-marital sex, infanticide, and pornography not only soured voters against the Democrat Party platform, but also put a real damper on my Friday nights.

For all his crimes against humanity, Falwell doesn’t deserve an ounce of the respect any proud liberal would pay a copkiller or a Crip who murdered an entire family for kicks. But while I’d just love to drown myself in the same wave of uncontrollable giddiness that swept the progressive blogosphere when Tony Snow’s cancer returned, Falwell’s quiet and painless passing makes me feel somewhat cheated. He was a hatemongering bigot, and there are 225 million fundamentalist Christian wackos out there who share his beliefs. Until they all share his fate, America will never be free of hate.

The Great American Gas Out

I hope you all did your part to stick it to Bush’s Big Oil Buddies today by holding off on filling your tanks until tomorrow, when gas prices will be three cents a gallon higher. That’ll show ‘em! Today’s boycott will be a lesson to all greedy corporations that we will no longer allow them to profit at the expense of the consumer!

But the people paying $3.50 per gallon at the pump aren’t the only victims of corprate greed. Big Oil keeps a dime out of every gallon of gasoline they force us to buy. Compare that to an 18 cents per gallon federal gas tax, plus your state gas tax (34 cents per gallon in WA), plus any local city or county gas taxes, and you’ll come to the realization that the greedy oil companies aren’t only stealing from you, but from our Democrat leaders as well. After all, the ten cents Exxon or Conoco profits on every gallon is ten cents that our benevolent Democrat leaders won’t be able to take from us as punishment for buying gas. Furthermore, the higher gas prices rise, the less likely the American sheeple will vote for gas tax increases, forcing Democrats to raise gas taxes anyway and look like heels for doing so. Thanks to the selfish public’s primitive lust for lower taxes, noble Democrats will be supplanted by idiot Repugs who have absolutely no appreciation for the art of social engineering by way of confiscatory taxation. Without progressives to nurture and guide us as they have throughout history, the human race will essentially be left to wander alone in the wilderness – only they won’t be wandering: they’ll be driving big, smog-belching Hummers with “W” stickers on the windows and a Black man chained to the rear bumper.

In order to end the destructive cycle of corporate greed and save the planet for any children we haven’t got around to aborting, Congress must act now to raise gas taxes to such a degree that the oil companies will be afraid to raise prices at the pump - instead of it happening the other way around. A $9 per gallon federal gas tax would not only put money back into our pockets, but would relieve traffic congestion and the strain on our environment by making it too expensive for anyone other than celebrities, politicians, and newspaper editors to drive a car. It’s a practical and courageous solution, so frankly I’m not surprised a liberal paper came up with it.

Bush's War Turning Troops into Bloodthirsty Killers

A shocking new survey has revealed that 4 out of every 10 babykilling troops are so emotionally disturbed that they would torture a terrorist just to save the life of a brother-in-arms.

Of course, it’s no surprise to any of us that the troops are mentally ill – you can tell that just by the way they vote. However, the results of this study raise the serious question as to whether our babykilling troops are psychologically sound enough to participate in future elections. They are certainly too unstable to be trusted with the so-called “right” to possess firearms. Unless we want a repeat of what happened at Virginia Tech, all active military personnel must be disarmed immediately before they hurt someone.

Yet despite all the gloom and doom, there is a silver lining to the dark cloud of fear this survey evokes. If 40% of our babykilling troops would torture a terrorist to save a fellow soldier, then 60% of them would gladly allow their fellow soldiers to die to insure that no terrorists are harmed. That suggests that human rights groups such as Amnesty International have had a significant effect on how the babykilling troops conduct themselves abroad. We’re still a long way from troops torturing fellow soldiers in order to save the life of a terrorist, but this survey may nonetheless be a sign that a staunchly Republican constituency is finally starting to inch to the left.

We can only hope.

Bush Gives "Retreat" a Bad Name

“So, it has come to this,” I hissed as I crumpled up the announcement that Maharishi Steve’s Annual Yoga Retreat would from now on be officially known as a “Yoga Redeployment”. The whole thing was a sick, twisted joke, and I would have told the Maharishi as much if he had taken his toes out of ears long enough to listen.

The word “retreat” used to invoke pleasant thoughts of relaxing on some tropical shore, or perhaps enjoying a ginseng colonic with friends high in the wooded climes of the misty Cascades. But thanks to a relentless barrage of neo-con propaganda, “retreat” has now taken on a more negative connotation. Even congressional Democrats are afraid to utter the word, preferring instead to use the more palatable ”redeployment” when discussing their Iraq War strategy. Perhaps too eager to make nicey-nice with their Repug inferiors, the well-meaning Dems have failed to take a stand against the right-wing crusade to hijack the English language. Instead of fighting the GOP, they have essentally surrendered - a word the Repugs ironically stole from the benevolent, cheese-eating primates of France.

But it’s not to late for Democrats to take back “retreat” and preserve it for future generations of liberals. A massive marketing campaign must be launched to persuade the voting public not to think of a “retreat” as “fleeing from the battlefield”, but rather “taking a vacation from the war”. If Harry, Nancy, Jack, and all the leading Democrats in congress would make it a point to wear Hawaiian shirts, Bermuda shorts, Panama hats and sunglasses to every Congressional debate on Iraq, it would go a long way towards convincing the American people that with all the mindless bloodshed going on, it wouldn’t hurt everyone to take a little hiatus from reality with their Democrat pals for a while. Ya’ll can go right on fighting Bush’s illegal and immoral war without end, or you can join us liberals for some big, fruity, Appeasement & Capitulation cocktails down on Dhimmi Beach!

Sure, my idea may seem overly theatrical to some, but it’s far better than simply giving up on a word that has come to symbolize the Progressive approach to fighting the War on Terror.

Bush Steals French Elections

I return from my annual Yoga Redeployment to find the world crumbling all around me. The Shrub, it seems, has been as busy as a fascist beaver. California is burning, thanks to his refusal to ratify Kyoto. 10,000 inner-city blacks are dead in Kansas because of his illegal and immoral war in Iraq. Bush’s Fascist Bureau of Ethnic Cleansing is rounding up former Yugoslavian terrorists in New Jersey (what part of the word “former” doesn’t that stupid Chimp understand?), and to top it all off, my beloved France has now fallen under the jackboot of U.S. hegemony.

In the recent French SE-lections, the beautiful and naturally pungent Segolene Royal, who ran on a strongly “I wipe my derriere with the U.S. flag” platform, was soundly defeated by Nicolas Sarkozy, a man who was photographed on numerous occasions NOT wiping his derriere with the U.S. flag. Alarming behavior, indeed. Certainly not what you’d expect from a French leader. If the world looks to Canada for “moral leadership” as Al Gore says, then France is a veritible mecca of progressive thinking. Yet like Canada, France has chosen an ultra-conservative lapdog of the Bush junta to lead them down the path to destruction. This doesn’t bode well for Europe, nor for our own Presidential elections. After all, if a proud. America-hating socialist can’t win in an enlightened nation such as France, then what chance does Hillary have here in the land that time forgot?

Bush Veto Sends Wrong Message to Troops

Bush’s illegal and immoral veto of a bill that would finally end his illegal and immoral war sends a dangerous message to our troops that not only is the war winnable, but that their congressional leaders are a bunch of limp-wristed surrender monkeys as well. Such disrespect for the Legislative Branch of government is par for the Shrub’s fascist course, but in a time of war (even an illegal and immoral one) it is vitally important for the leaders of this country to show a unified front. Bush’s abuse of his illgotten veto powers may raise doubts in the minds of our GI's that Harry and Nancy are actually calling the shots here. Indeed, many who took a solemn oath to defend our Constitution nevertheless remain in Iraq, in total defiance of a Congressional order to retreat with their tails tucked between their legs. To maintain any level of discipline in our armed forces, such mutinous individuals must be made examples of.

The troops wouldn’t listen to Osama. They totally ignored Saddam. Mamood Aboomijinad was just pissing in the wind. So I don’t hold out much hope that they’ll listen to Iron Man Harry Reid’s demands that they remove their infidel backsides from the Muslim holy land. But perhaps the threat of a court martial will put the fear of Democrats into those who continue to defy the wishes of the American People and fight on in Iraq as if the war hasn’t already been lost.