BlameBush!

Yes Virginia, There is a Muntadhar al-Zaidi

I crawled out of my flotation tank this morning after a long winter's nap, and I was a little disheartened to not find any holiday gift packages on my doorstep. I guess with Bush's economy in the crapper, people just aren't filled with the Winter Solstice spirit this year. But when I got online and saw the now famous video taken at another Bush Baghdad photo op, it was like the early vernal equinox had come early to the Chomstein household.

"This is a farewell kiss from the Iraqi people, you dog," Iraqi journalist Muntadhar al-Zaidi shouted in Arabic as he tossed a pair of size 10 Buster Browns at the cowering Shrub. "This is for the widows and orphans and all those killed in Iraq so you could steal our oil and give tax cuts to the wealthiest one percent of Americans!"

Being pelted with shoes is considered a grave insult in Islamic cultures, but in the West only women and effeminate men throw their footwear when they're pissed off about something. So al-Zaidi's courageous outburst struck a chord with Progressives here in the states. The RethugniKKKans can have Joe the Plumber (and all his personal records back, too). At last, WE have a regular human being that WE can identify with, someone who puts a voice to our anger and speaks the words we have longed to be spoken, but that no one would hear. Best of all, he hasn't exploded in a crowded market or sawed someone's head off on the internet yet.

So here's to Muntadhar al-Zaidi, Man of the People. There's a Pulitzer Prize and a job waiting for him at CNN if he ever gets out of Bush's torture chamber.

John Edwards: More Human Than Human

Former presidential candidate and son of mill worker, John Edwards, announced last week that he had a "liason" with a member of his campaign staff.   It took great courage for Edwards to admit that he did something "wrong" after he was caught red-handed doing it. He only kept it a secret this long in order to protect his wife and kids from shame and embarrassment. If the sensationalist neocons at the National Enquirer had cared as much about Edwards' family as he does, he'd still be banging Reille Hunter in total secrecy.

But don't worry - although he had a "liason" with Hunter and possibly fathered a grandson of a mill worker, he doesn't love her. That would have been like "cheating" on his wife, and he's not a slimeball, you know.  He's a human being, and human beings make human mistakes. In fact, the more such mistakes John Edwards makes, the more human he is. Bill Clinton, Jesse Jackson, and John Edwards are probably the most human people on Earth right now. 

Compare them to George W. Bush. If the Shrub ever cheated on his wife, he's probably not cheating on her RIGHT now, and that only proves how inhuman he really is.

Dennis Kucinich, Man of the People

Congressman Dennis Kucinich briefly stepped away from his mashed-potato sculpture of Devil's Tower to publicly denounce Bush as "mentally ill" for suggesting that a nuclear-armed Iran could spark World War III. We've known for years that Bush is stupid, but now there's little doubt that he's also one hooker short of a Kennedy Family Reunion.

Certainly no one wants Iran to obtain nuclear weapons. But there's absolutely no reason to believe that even if it did, our two countries couldn't still live together in peace and harmony under Sharia Law. Bush may be too much of a fruitloop to dream such an impossible dream, but I bet Kucinich could make it happen. It's called diplomacy, folks - the same kind of diplomacy he used to free the green-skinned slave women of Orion and end the Argon Wars. It's all right there in Mork's report to Orson if you don't believe me.

Dennis Kucinich. Brilliant, brave, ready and willing to push aside his invisible friends and save this nation from the madness of King George.

Rep. Norm Dicks, Man of the People, too!

It takes a big man to admit he made a mistake. It takes an even bigger man to admit he was fooled by a retarded chimp. Washington State Representative Norm Dicks is such a man. Like Sen. John Kerry and Rep. Jack Murka before him, Dicks has joined a growing list of Democrats who despite being intellectually superior to Republicans, have suddenly realized they were misled by a man who can’t even eat a pretzel without seriously injuring himself.

In the months leading up to Bush’s headlong rush to war, many prominent democrats were mesmerized by bogus intelligence and tricked into supporting the war at a time when it would have been a political kick in the groin not to. Now, as Bush’s poll numbers are plummeting and Americans are increasingly turning against the occupation, Dicks thrusts himself into the media spotlight with his call for a premature withdrawal from Iraq - save for a small handful of “advisors” who will remain behind to insure a Mogadishu-style outcome politically beneficial to all parties involved. In a darker, less enlightened era, Dicks’ sudden reversal would have been called “flip-flopping” or “limp-wristed waffling”. But today, we know it as something else: Courage.

I’m sure we haven’t heard the last of Norm Dicks. As Bush’s numbers continue to slide and we draw closer to the 2006 elections, Dicks will continue to speak out against this pointless and illegal war for oil. And Congressman Norm Dicks will be right there beside them.

Rep. John Murtha, Man of the People

A staunch supporter of the Iraq war for years, Rep. John Murtha's shocking reversal yesterday was the result of years of deep introspection and a growing anger over being lied to by the Bush regime. I would have preferred a call for an unconditional surrender of all U.S. forces currently engaged in any non-UN approved acts of aggression, but the square-jawed congressman's weepy, hand-wringing oratory went above and beyond the sort of hopeless defeatism one would normally expect from a battle-hardened Marine. Indeed, the hawkish, flinty-eyed maverick’s demand for an immediate withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Iraq truly exemplifies the Marine Corps motto, “RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!"

Not suprisingly, Dick “Five Deferments” Cheney wasted no time calling this great American hero an unpatriotic coward. The same ChickenDick who had better things to do than kill babies, burn villages, and rape cattle in the fashion of Jingus Khan has the unmitigated gall to disagree with a towering giant of a man who spent 37 years in our beloved, yet Quran-mishandling military.

For shame!

The opinion of those who wore the uniform is above criticism, as long as it is a liberal opinion and decidedly anti-Bush. Ironguts Murka is no spineless yes-man like Zell Miller, though. He’s not a paid stooge like Tommy Franks, who deserves nothing but ridicule and scorn from those who spent Vietnam ingesting large amounts of LSD and running around the Berkeley campus naked. No, it takes a man of true courage to buck conventional wisdom and risk his career by repeating what progressives and Al Qaeda have been saying since the war began: America cannot win, and should retreat while it still has a chance. John Murfa is such a man, and despite his distinguished military career he deserves our respect.

If he threw a couple of jabs at Israel, he’d probably be up for a Nobel as well.

Deep Throat, Man of the People

As the flag-waving jingoist masses were busily drooling over the murderous troops last weekend, a REAL hero slithered out from the shadows of anonymity into the bright and lucrative glow of stardom. No bones about it, W. Mark Felt is the personification of courage. Any moron can pick up a gun and shoot some poor Iraqi kid in the ass, but it takes real guts to leak government information to the media under an alias, deny it for 30 years, and then blurt out in a fit of senile dementia, "I am Deep Throat! Where are my pants? I like cheese."

The Repugs are, of course, in full spin mode. The unveiling of the legendary Deep Throat draws more scrutiny to the current crook in office, and astute comparisons are already being drawn between Nixon and the Shrub. But instead of accepting the fact that Bush and Nixon are two heads on the same conservative dragon, the repugs are attacking the messenger. They're calling a true American patriot everything from a "rat fink" to a "slutty, trailer park ho'" who concocted the entire story when Nixon spurned his sexual advances. Even Deep Throat's much deserved beatification by the New York Times won't stem the tide of right-wing hate. I wouldn't be surprised if Felt wound up dead in a park of an apparent "suicide", Hunter S. Thompson style. The GOP simply won't forgive the man who brought down their beloved Richard Nixon, ended the Vietnam War, and proved to the whole world that republicans are too damned corrupt to be allowed to govern.

The red state troglodytes can keep worshipping uniformed fascists for all I care, but progressives know that the real American heroes are the whistleblowers - at least, those who blow the whistle on Republicans. And like Richard Clarke, David Brock, Ethel and Julius Rosenburg, and other great whistleblowers before them, the self-righteous tweet of Mr. Felt's mighty whistle will echo through history.

Max Cleland, Man of the People

I apologize for not blogging for a few days. I've been out of town, hangin' with my homey, Mad Max Cleland, down at Six Flags Over Georgia. Let me tell you - one arm or not, the man is a SkeeBall God. After he cleaned the place out of their stuffed animals and dogs-playing-poker tapestries, we dropped into a local greasy spoon to get a bite to eat and talk shop.

"I'll have a denver omelette with some hash browns," Cleland told the waitress. He was wearing a colorful balloon animal hat a friendly clown had made for him by the Tilt O' Wheel. I privately wondered whether it was a giraffe or an ostrich. Perhaps a gazelle, or other form of cervid?

"I'm sorry, Mr. Flynt," the waitress apologized. "But we stopped serving breakfast eight hours ago. We're on the dinner menu now.'

"Zat so?" Cleland drawled. "I can lose three limbs on the field of battle, but I can't have breakfast for dinner. Amazing."

The waitress apologized again, and promised to take it up with the manager.

"You do that," Cleland suggested with a wink. "I'll just sit here and twiddle my THUMB."

I ordered a veggie burger for myself. "With lotsa Heinz ketchup."

"Sir, we don't serve veggie burgers here," the waitress informed me. "Just cheeseburgers and regular hamburgers."

I threw down my menu in a fit of rage. "HOW MANY LIMBS DOES MAX CLELAND HAVE TO LOSE BEFORE I CAN GET A DECENT VEGGIE BURGER IN THIS TOWN? And this coming from people who have not served! UNSCRUPULOUS AND DISGUSTING!!!!"

She glared at me. "How about a nice salad, sir?" she snipped.

"Just bring me a cup of coffee," I snipped back.

She grabbed the menus and huffed off.

While we waited for our meals, the senator and I discussed his long, distinguished military and political careers, from how he lost three limbs in Vietnam, to the way the GOP viciously criticized his brilliant suggestion to allow the labor unions to run the Department of Homeland Security.

"I felt as if George Bush had blown my arm and legs off all over again," a tearful senator told me. He may be a battle-hardened veteran who lost three limbs in Vietnam, but "Mad Max" Cleland has the tender heart of a little girl.

The waitress finally returned with my java, and an omelette with hashbrowns for Sen. Cleland.

"What's that?" the senator growled.

"Your breakfast, sir," the waitress replied.

"Holy CRAP! It's been TWO DAMN HOURS! I could have grown three new limbs in the time it took you to get back here!" One of the legs on his balloon headress popped, as if to punctuate his accusation. "I'm ready for DINNER now! Gimme a chicken salad sandwich."

"You ordered breakfast just 15 minutes ago, and now you want a goddamn chicken salad sandwich?" the waitress asked impatiently.

"Yeah," Cleland replied, "and I want you to hold the butter, hold the lettuce, hold the mayonnaise, and hold the chicken."

The waitress rolled her eyes. "You want me to hold it between my knees, right? Old joke, asshole."

My mouth dropped open.

"How DARE you speak to him that way! How DARE YOU attack this poor man, who lost three limbs on the battlefield of Vietnam! I want to see the manager, RIGHT NOW!"

"Fine, whatever," she shot back with a sneer, and stormed off to the kitchen. Moments later, she emerged with the manager who greeted us at our table.

"Your waitress here was questioning Sen. Cleland's patriotism,"' I told him. "THE Senator Cleland, who lost both arms and three legs on the Vietnam battlefield, mind you."

"I WAS NOT!!" the waitress cried. "I have nothing but the utmost respect for this man's service. But with all due respect, he's a jackass in a silly balloon moose hat."

Ahhhh...it was a moose!

"Oh, so I guess I'm unpatriotic and a LIAR now, too..." Cleland harrumphed, his giant balloon antlers flopping to and fro. "I don't like to dig up old Vietnam ghosts, but..."

"Then I will, senator!" I interjected. "This brave man lost three limbs on the battlefield of Vietnam! I demand an apology, I demand a complimentary dinner, and I demand you fire this hatemongering CHICKENHAWK immediately!"

"We can't fire her," the manager shrugged. "She's union."

Max and I spent the remainder of our dinner in relative silence, speaking only to reflect upon his three amputed limbs, which he lost on the Viertnam battlefield. Afterwards, we bid farewell, and I then waited outside for my ride to the airport, enjoying the sweet scent of Georgia lilacs. I couldn't help but think of the late Ray Charles, and his wonderful rendition of the state song:"...some sweet day, when blossoms fall and all the world's a song, I'll go back to Georgia 'cause that's where I belong.

"Christ," I said aloud. "I'd give Max Cleland's left arm for a goddamn cab."

Rene Gonzalez, American Hero

Much has been said about the death of so-called "hero" Pat Tillman, who gave up a lucrative professional football contract to murder sheep herders in Afghanistan. But no one puts it as eloquently as University of Massacussetts student and future Pulitzer Prize winner, Rene Gonzalez. Gonzalez writes with courage and grit, undaunted by the barrage of hate mail, death threats, and atomic wedgies he's bound to receive for daring to speak his mind. Resolute, insightful, and witty, his searing article for the campus newspaper looks like something I'd write.

In fact, he reminds me alot of myself when I was his age. As a teen, I penned an article for my high school paper - a penetrating critique of America's infatuation with the Jungian Hero Archetype - aptly entitled: "Mike Jankowski is a Big Dumb Jock".

An excerpt:

"Mike Jankowski thinks he's so macho with his macho letterman's jacket and his perfect teeth and all the little cheerleaders following him around like puppies. "Oh Mike, you're so cuuuuute! Oh Mike you're so macho!" But underneath all those muscles he's nothing but a big dumb jock. He thinks he's a real tough guy, a real Mister MACHO - but I bet he wouldn't last 10 seconds against me in a spelling bee. Then we'd see who'd get all the girls, yes siree!"

Like Gonzalez, my essay earned me nothing but jeers from the philistine hordes. For a time, I was the most hated kid in the whole school simply for exercising my first amendment right to free speech. But like toilet paper from the trees in my front yard, the vicious hatred from my classmates soon faded away and thoughts of graduation and college took over. My essay, while lambasted by the ignorant masses, earned me a full scholarship at UC Berkeley. Jankowski, however, turned down a UCLA football scholarship to join the Marines, of all things.

My superior intelligence and godlike talent took me far at Berkeley, and I was quickly chosen as editor-in-chief of the campus literary journal, The Velvet Quill. Do you think I'd get one single "Attaboy" from my ol' home town? Noooooooooo! But Lance Corporal Mike Jankowski gets his pretty-boy face all over the front pages, simply for losing a leg while storming into a Panama Department of Motor Vehicles office and shooting a couple of startled clerks. The whole town was in a tizzy about it, plastering yellow ribbons and American flags all over Vegas. "Mike Jankowski is a hometown hero! Hooray for Mike Jankowski!"

Whoop-dee FREAKING dooooo! Can he write a haiku? For that matter, can he spell "haiku"? I don't think so!

Furious over being snubbed in favor of a man with the intellectual firepower of a pack of Pop Rocks, I fired off an op-ed to the Las Vegas Review-Journal. A critical analysis of the military industrial complex and its corruptive influence on our educational system, I entitled the column "Mike Jankowski is a Big Dumb Jarhead".

An excerpt:

"Well, I always said that Mike Jankowski would lose his head if it weren't attached, but it looks like he's gone and misplaced his leg now, too. I guess the great football superstar won't be scoring any more home runs for the ol' alma, will he? Neener neener neeeeener! Perhaps now Las Vegans will finally realize that carboard "heroes" like Macho Mike Jankowski aren't what makes America great - but rather the artists, the poets, and the elbow-patch intellectuals with bad complexions and retarded social skills. There's nothing "courageous" about mowing down defenseless Panamanians, folks. Heroism, my little Vegas sheeple, doesn't come from wearing a uniform. It comes from sneering at those who do. So take my advice: wake up and see Mike Jankowski for the idiot and the COWARD that he really is!"

I'm not sure what happened after that, as I spent the next few weeks hiding from Mike Jankowski. For a man with one leg, he sure could get around. But it only goes to show how we no longer have Freedom of Speech in this country, and how real heroes like Rene Gonzalez must live in constant fear of being called a "pinhead", or given a chocolate swirlie for their beliefs. I only hope that the right-wing backlash against this fine young man doesn't sour him against America.

btw, a big ol' Nazi salute to Bourgeois Brian for tipping me off to the wonderful Rene Gonzalez photo. Not only is he a brilliant mind, but he's a looker, too! Go get 'im, girls!

Andy Rooney; Man of the People

I must confess that there was a time when I believed Andy Rooney was losing his mind. His 60 Minutes segments over the past couple of years have often been rude, bigoted, and extremely insulting. His infamous "Women are Too Dumb to Live" and "My Queer Doorman" rants were especially offensive. However, he won my heart with his recent attacks on Mel Gibson's religious propaganda film, and his latest column redeems him greatly in my eyes.

As Rooney explains, the troops are not the heroes that the jingoist hordes would have us believe. They are, in fact, victims - victims of Bush's evil War for Oil just like the rest of us. They aren't brave, gung-ho, Rambo-clones storming through the streets of Baghdad to kill the enemy with their bare hands, but rather helpless children who hate Bush and want to come home to mommy. Alot of them are under the misguided belief that they are fighting for something, which means those of us on the progressive left need to work harder to make them realize the exact opposite is true.

Rooney is no stranger to controversy, having cut his journalist teeth writing war commentary for the Stars & Stripes during World War II. Here's an excerpt from his final column:

"Ever wonder what Hitler was thinking when he grew that mustache? It looks like it's only half done. One would think that a fascist dictator with hundreds of barbers at his beck and call could grow a decent mustache. Why is is so hard to get a decent donut in France? Now, that Josef Stalin has a great mustache, and a nice head of hair, too. All our leaders are bald. Ike? Bald. Patton? Bald. Churchill? Bald. Roosevelt? Balding. Ever wonder why American presidents stopped wearing ponytails? Why is that? Millord Fillmore didn't have a ponytail, but he did have a girl's name. Do you think Millord Fillmore's staff called him "Millie" behind his back? Eleanor Roosevelt has a nice head of hair, but a face like a horse. One would think that the wife of the most powerful man in the world could put on a little make-up now and then and make herself look presentable. What is it with Patton and his pearl-handled pistols, anyway? You know what Freud would say about that. Far be it from me to assume what Freud would say, but if I were Freud, I would say it means he's a queer. Queers typically have nice heads of hair. Why is that?"

Rooney spent the remainder of the war in an army hospital being treated for severe, pistol-shaped head wounds. It was there that he penned his famous treatise, "Ever Wonder Why Nurses Have Such Fat Cabooses?". It was shortly afterwards that a young Pvt. Mike Wallace found him crammed into a dumpster behind the hospital, and the rest is history.

Andy Rooney knows full well the price one pays for patriotic dissent. Still, I have no doubt that Right Wing Attack Machine will make his life miserable for the next few weeks. I can see the flood of hate mail now.

I just hope it doesn't give him a cynical outlook on life.

Rosie O'Donnell, Man of the People

Congratz to the lesbian Gandhi, Rosie O'Donnell, who married her longtime Significant Other Domestic Life Partner, Karen Carpenter, in the face of overwhelming opposition from that fascist hatemonger Bush!

"We were both inspired to come here after the sitting president made the vile and hateful comments he made. Sometimes civil disobedience is necessary to insure freedom for all. Isn't that right, babycakes?" Rosie snarled at the press while holding her blushing bride in a loving head-lock.

"Merp!" Carpenter agreed. Carpenter, a former dancer and marketing executive for Nickelodeon, has produced 9 of Rosie's 17 children, impregnating herself with a turkey-baster filled with sperm purchased on eBay. "We just want to be treated like normal people, is that so much to ask?"

Although the two had been cohabitating for six years, it was George Bush's sudden support for a Constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage that forced the couple to tie the knot.

"We should conduct this difficult debate in a manner worthy of our country, without bitterness or anger," Bush spoke to reporters at the White House last Monday. "In all that lies ahead, let us match strong convictions with kindness and goodwill and decency."

For the folks at home, that's secret code for "Let's exterminate the queers". Good ol' Rosie saw right through it.

"I think the actions of the President are, in my opinion, the most vile and hateful words ever spoken by a sitting president," O'Donnell hissed in response to Bush's speech. "I could just rip his head off and shit down his neck!!"

The newlyweds celebrated their nuptials along with thousands of San Franciscans by castrating Bush in effigy, followed with a dildo sword-fight on the steps of City Hall.

This open-minded, tolerant blogger wishes the O'Donnell family all the happiness in the world, and may God protect them from the right-wing Christians who only want to spoil everyone's good time.