Another Republican Culture of Corruption Episode

ABC News reports on yet another corrupt Republican:

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - U.S. Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham, a California Republican, pleaded guilty on Monday to felony conspiracy and tax evasion for taking money from a defense contractor in exchange for help in securing Defense Department contracts.

What a surprise! Not. (Related stories from Google)

Eat, Sleep, Work, Consume, Die

Hey, life now is no different than the early 1850's - ya eat, sleep, work, consume, and die.

Civilization took a definite nose dive when the merchant princes grew ascendant at the expense of the artists and thinkers; when the notion of liberté, égalité, fraternité gave way to "I've got mine; screw you" (an attitude that existed in Voltaire's day, too, you might recall, with unfortunate results for the blue bloods). In the Big Picture, the dead white guys -- Rousseau, Thoreau, Mill -- cared a lot more about your well-being than the live ones like Gates or Jobs or Ellison ever will.

Though for what it's worth, at least Gates Sr has spoken out for the Estate Tax: Dozens of the Wealthy Join to Fight Estate Tax Repeal (more search results).

Out of a Bad Spy Novel

From an Op-Ed column in the Washington Post about the secret American jail in other countries:

Our ideals are the heart and soul of this nation. We are not an ancient nation united by language or blood. Our ideals, rather than ethnicity or even territory, hold us together and make us a nation. When we betray those ideals, we weaken America.

In other words, giving up our ideals to fight the terrorists just hands the victory to them.

Here's a cached copy if the original article expires.

Our Brilliant Prezidunt

I'm astounded how out of touch our brilliant prezidunt is:

I had an interesting opportunity to go see some research and development being done on solar energy. I'm convinced, someday in the relative near future we'll be able to have units on our houses that will be able to power electronics within our houses, and hopefully, with excess energy, be able to feed them back in the system. That's possible. We're not there yet, but it's coming.

This is just embarrassing. Reminds me of his dad being amazed at a supermarket price scanner. A gadfly on the AEZ mailing list comments:

He's just misunderestimating the advancementization of solarifying that stuff to make that other stuff.

The full text of his speech is at http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/10/20051004-1.html (I'm not going to dignify it by a live link).

Bush: One of the Worst Disasters to hit the U.S.

Unfortunately, the reality is not as funny as the photo.

Fanaticans

Shorthand for:

Fanatic Right Wing Republicans

Advantages of another Bush presidency

Guerrilla Girls Broad Band lists some of the advantages of another Bush presidency:

1. Trading the tedium of college for the adventure of the battlefield.
2. Enjoying global warming through the sunroof of your SUV.
   
3. Being assured adoption will be easier with contraception unavailable and abortion illegal.
   
4. Having more public housing options - behind bars.
   
5. Learning to "do-it-yourself" as our alien workforce is deported.
   
6. Being titillated by government agents penetrating your intimate data.
   
7. Basking in the glow of US world dominance in WMDs.
   
8. Not being confused by opposing views in the media.
   
9. Leaving something of significance to your children - the deficit.
   
10. Knowing your passionate gay sex life will not be dulled by the sanctity of marriage.
    
11. Getting a rush as yet another developing country is selected for liberation.
    
12. Not having to suffer through Evolutionary Biology - now we know God the Father created the Universe.

Replace "terrorists" with "my moronic and callous foreign policies"

Dumb Life of Roots quotes Cindy Sheehan's appearance on Larry King:

The thing that struck me when I was watching that vacuous man giving his hollow speech was the fact that he could have always replaced the word "terrorists" with the phrase: "my moronic and callous foreign policies."

For example, when he said that terrorists spread death and destruction on the streets of Baghdad and kill innocent people, he could have just as easily said: "My moronic and callous foreign policies spread death and destruction on the streets of Baghdad and kill innocent people."

When he said that we need to stop terrorists from toppling governments in the region, he could have just as easily said: "We need to stop my moronic and callous foreign policies from toppling governments in the region."

People have characterized the speech-lite in many ways, but if I had to pick a few words to describe it, I would say: "Hypocritical, manipulative, condescending, meaningless drivel."

There ain't no fucking WMD

US Ends Fruitless Iraq Weapons Hunt

White House Says Iraq Weapons Search Over; Evidence That Bush Used in Argument for War Not Found

The search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq has quietly concluded without any evidence of the banned weapons that President Bush cited as justification for going to war, the White House said Wednesday.

Read more of this ABC News article, or other related articles.

This reminds me of a joke I heard in grammar school. A woman is looking for broccoli in a supermarket. Not finding any, she approaches a stockboy and asks him whether he has any broccoli. "Sorry ma'am, we won't have broccoli until next week." Unconvinced, she goes looking for broccoli again, and not find any (no surprise), she approaches the stockboy again. "Like I said last time ma'am, we don't have any broccoli right now and won't have any until next week." Undeterred by what she didn't want to hear, she goes looking for broccoli, and not finding any, approaches the same stockboy a third time to inquire. The stockboy says: "Look ma'am, can you spell 'cat' as in catfish"?

• Woman: Sure, C-A-T.
• Stockboy: And can you spell 'dog', as in dogwood?
• Woman: Of course, D-O-G.
• Stockboy: So, can you spell 'fuck', as in broccoli?
• Woman (perplexed): But there isn't any 'fuck' in broccoli!
• Stockboy: That's what I've been trying to tell you. There ain't no fucking broccoli.

PS: In case anyone has forgotten what the Bushies said about WMD, this Seattle Post Intelligencer article will jostle our memory.