Blogging For Kicks

I don’t care what Karl Rove says, or how much bravado he throws around, the Republicans are in trouble and they know it. Wanna know how I know this? Easy. The ads they’re putting out and the verbal attacks on their opponents and anyone who supports them are getting really, really ugly. That only happens when they think they might actually lose. True, they are experts at mudslinging, and Rove has made a cottage industry of it, but when their backs are against the wall, they really get down and dirty, and it ain’t pretty at all.

Take Rush’s attack on Michael J. Fox this week, or more correctly, Rush’s continuing attacks on him. The man has Parkinson’s Disease and it’s all he can do to hold himself still at the best of times, so seeing him really getting shaky should be no surprise to anyone. However, when Fox made what everyone concerned saw as a really effective, hearttugging appeal for the Democratic candidate in Missouri based on the fact she supports stem cell research while her Republican opponent doesn’t, Rush went on the attack based on Fox’s shaking while he delivered his appeal.

I was taught as a child that there are just some people you never, ever make fun of, no matter what, and people with physical problems are at the head of that list. It’s just the lowest of the low to make fun of someone for something they can’t help, you know? Not for Rush, apparently. I don’t know why that should be a surprise, since he has been known to attack women and children over the years, among them the wives and children of those he sees as his political opponents. That’s the main reason I have such a disgustingly low opinion of him, as a matter of fact.

This, however, is beneath contempt, even for Dimbulb, and listening to him declaring Mr. Fox was faking his disability actually made my stomach turn. However, when I saw action shots of him gesticulating while speaking the words it only made the whole sorry affair even more repulsive. What the hell is wrong with that man? I just don’t get people who worship him, as many do, and simply can’t get through the day without their fix of Rushisms. That’s just sick.

At the same time, we had the Republican party proudly announcing on their latest attack ad against Harold Ford that they paid for it, which one would think should give them the right to control it’s use, right? Well, according to Ken Mehlman, the chairman of the RNC, that’s not true. When confronted about the ugly, racist attack ad on Mr. Ford, he claimed he had no control over it. How much sense does that make? None. But, there it was, in all it’s tacky, racist “glory”, repeating itself ad nauseum on Tennessee television sets day after day. Even Mr. Ford’s opponent called for it to be taken off the air because it was so raunchy and ugly, but that did no good.

There are other examples of lies, distortions, and flat out ugly attack ads on Democratic candidates in most states these days, but these are the most widely recognized. It’s hard to say what the makers of these commercials were thinking when they made them, but I truly believe it is simply a last ditch effort to sway the vote back to Republicans, since they are losing so badly on every substantive issue. To put it more simply, there is nothing they can say to convince voters they are the best choice this year, so they have to do whatever they can to make their opponents look even worse than they do. Either that or they try to scare people into voting Republican.

Desperation is never an attractive thing in anyone, and certainly not in politics, but while there have been examples of it over the years, this seems by far to be the worst of them all. I only hope voters will see through what they are doing and realize that once the voting’s over they’ll be going right back to doing the same old things they’ve been doing, unless we vote them out. So I say, don’t sit home on election day, hoping the rest of us will get the bums out. Get up, go to the polls, and vote like your life and those of your loved ones depend on it. This time they really do.

It looks like reality has finally risen up and bitten the Doof in Chief in the arse. After more than three years of vowing, swearing, and constantly reiterating that we will stay the course in Iraq, come what may, he’s finally decided that may not work out so well, after all. I almost fell out of my chair yesterday when I heard that he has decided not to use that phrase any more, and to change directions on how to handle the whole thing. Oh, yes, that was after spending the day before swearing he’d never used the term in the first place! Can you believe it?

I wonder what all those people who have been telling us since he was first installed in the White House that he never pays attention to the polls, and will never change directions midstream, are doing now? Do you think they’re hiding out somewhere, trying to come up with some halfway intelligent excuse for his newfound poll-reading ability? Or maybe they’re still working on their half-empty bottle of Valium or some such thing, wondering what went wrong and how they’ll ever live it down.

I don’t know, and I don’t really care. The fact is, George W. Bush has always - ALWAYS - paid attention to the polls, at least the ones that measured the feelings of the groups he needed on his side, and this is just his most recent bout of running to find the perfect spot to impress everyone. He’s seen the writing on the wall, and it told him that yes, despite what his lackeys have been whispering in his ear all this time, things are not going well with his war, and it’s looking like it might even cost him the happy last two years of his presidency that he was expecting. He’ll do and say whatever it takes to try to save that, don’t ya know.

So, now he’s admitting everything isn’t all sweetness and light in Iraq, and his handling of the whole thing left a lot to be desired. He’s ready to see if he can come up with a plan that will work now. Oh, not one that will work in Iraq, that can’t be done at this point, but something that will placate the nation and get enough people to swallow it that they’ll vote Republican and keep his side in power. The trouble is, now that he’s come up with it, we need a translator to tell us exactly what it means.

I can’t even remember the words being used now in place of the newly-extinct “Stay the course”. Something like “We are coming up with a plan to direct us on a path that will let us figure out what to do until we get a real plan”. Yeah, it’s something like that. Is that not the most confusing thing you’ve heard in years? And the real phrase is even less understandable. But, whatever it takes to get the sheep back in the corral….or is that a pen? Whatever, he just needs to make sure the Democrats don’t re-take both houses of Congress on November 7.

Now, I’m not sure if this is the “October Surprise” Rove slyly promised a while back that would turn things in their favor, but if it is, it really is below their usual standards. I have a sick feeling they’ve got something else up their sleeve, ready to pull out when the time is right to get just the right response from the voters, and an even sicker feeling that once again it will probably work just the way they want it to. God help us, this is the best chance we have to curtail this fool’s headlong rush to destroy the country we’ve known and loved since birth, and I really, really hope whatever they pull won’t get them the results they’re hoping for. If there’s a God, please let it be so.

Yes, folks, all you Conservative Christians who have been walking around with those smug looks on your faces, so sure you had the President’s ear and would get what you want any day now, go buy the book called “Tempting Faith”, by David Quo. Now, I know, you’ll all be screeching that it’s a dirty, rotten, Liberal, atheistic tome, full of lies and designed to cast aspersions on God’s own chosen leader for this country, but you couldn’t be further from the truth. Not a strange position for you to be in, true, but still, it’s always good to let someone know when they’re being screwed right and left.

It turns out that Mr. Quo is a Christian, a Republican, and he worked for Mr. Bush, et al, for several years, trying to work Godliness into the President’s agenda. The problem was, W and Pals had no intention of doing anything like that. They wanted it to seem they wanted to do that, but only as a means of getting all those Christians to vote for them against Jesus Christ himself, if need be. Gee, I hope you don’t all feel used or anything. That just wouldn’t be right, would it?

That’s exactly what they were doing, tho. They worked you guys like pros, making you think they were really, truly on your side and were getting ready to hand you everything you ever wanted to have from government, and all the while they were ridiculing you and your leaders behind your backs, laughing all the way to win after win at the polls, thanks to you. They had no intention of ever stopping abortion, or getting the Ten Commandments into the schools or anywhere else, or any of the other things they promised you’d get if you just kept voting the way they wanted you to, and sending them as much money as you could get.

So, how’s it feel? Do you like being played this way? Do you think this is what God had in mind when He “chose” W to be President? But the better question here is, just what God have you been listening to all this time? Hopefully the answer is as plain to you as it has been to the rest of us all along, and that is that you were listening to the God of This World, not Jehovah, Lord of All, and that was your first mistake. Look, the Bible very plainly tells us what to look for in His ministers and prophets, and lying, gossiping, and backstabbing isn’t listed in the job description anywhere. Maybe you’d better get your Bible down off the shelf and actually open it, look up what God says about who we should follow and who we shouldn’t, and get yourselves back on track.

If you need any help, just leave me a note on this blog and I’ll get the Book, chapter, and verse to you as soon as possible. That’s only if you promise to really read them all, study them earnestly, and ask God to give you understanding so you can figure out just what His instructions really are.

Do you remember the movies where someone is, say, walking through the woods, looking for someone, and the person they’re hunting tosses a rock that lands on the other side of the hunter, causing him to look that way while the hunted person sneaks off while they’re not looking? Bush, meet North Korea.

Now, I’m not saying North Korea cooked up the supposed evidence against Saddam and Iraq, because we all know that didn’t happen. No, the resemblance between Bush and Co. and the hunter is purely in the looking-the-wrong-way category. Actually, to be more precise, we are the hunter, and Bush and Co. are the ones that tossed the rock. They got us looking for WMD’s in Iraq so hard that we totally lost track of the fact that there were others out there who were far more likely to have them.

That distraction caused us to completely miss the fact that it was North Korea, not Iraq, that needed taking care of. Well, most of us, anyway. There were those of us who realized Iraq had nothing, but NK was quietly getting the job done under the radar, pretty much. But even when the radar did land on them, for some strange reason Bush and Co decided to completely ignore them and let others handle it, while we continued concentrating over where the rock had landed, where nothing was to be found.

Today we found out the price for our stupidity. North Korea apparently tested a nuclear weapon. Yep, they got at least one of ‘em, and they weren’t afraid to prove it to the world. Why should they be, since they have no oil to be fought over so no one in this administration gives a fig what they do. I know that sounds really jaded, but come on, how else should we look at it? We chased the fox that hadn’t eaten a chicken in years, leaving the fox that continually raided the henhouse to keep doing just what he was doing, without fear of reprisal. He knew we were after that mangy old vegetarian fox, so he was free to do whatever he wanted.

Ok, you say, so what? It was a test, just one bomb, and no one was hurt by it. Yeah, that may be right, but how do we really know? Remember the cameras Clinton negotiated to have put up in their nuclear facilities so we could see what they were doing? Yeah, the ones they covered up once Bush got in office and called them vile names, then mostly ignored them, and we haven’t been able to see a thing since. Just what sense did that make, by the way? None that I can see.

I don’t know, maybe there’s a method to Bush’s madness. Maybe he’ll end up getting North Korea to lay down their arms and join the world in singing and dancing the Happy Dance before long. It could happen, I guess. The thing is, tho, I don’t think it’s very likely at all. I think Kim Jong Ill will just get an even bigger head because of his prowess at putting one over on Big Bad Cowboy Bush and continue to see just how far he can go before a Democrat takes over and actually works to get him back under control, such as it is.

It’s like sleight of hand, when a magician causes you to look one way while he sets up his “trick” the other way, only, as I said, I really don’t think Kim was responsible for the non-attention to his goings on. It was George W. Bush himself, and his buddies, that pulled our gaze away from what NK was doing and put it firmly and directly on what Saddam was supposed to have been doing. And we sure fell for it, didn’t we? Yep, there’s a sucker born every minute, and if this doesn’t prove that to the world, nothing will.

This is just a quick little side note, based on the latest news from the Pervert de Jour. It seems that now Mr. Foley wants to blame his obsession with young boys on the alcohol he claims to imbibe in a little too much. “I truly believe I’m an alcoholic”, he says. Fine, and if he is, it’s always best to admit you have a problem since that’s the first step in overcoming it. However, anyone who claims their bad acts were caused by alcohol is a flat out lying coward, too afraid to own up to what they’ve done and looking for something…anything….to blame it on.

Alcohol never made anyone do anything, period. Kids, I hope you’re paying attention, because this is a lesson you really need to learn if you’re going to grow up and drink your backside off every chance you get, and you know who you are. Alcohol, if you drink enough of it, only loosens your inhibitions, allowing you to do the things you’d really like to do but are afraid to.

For example, women are taught from childhood that having sex with men other than your husband is a sin, and is wrong, so they should never do it or people will think they’re whores. All well and good, and a belief I’ve always strictly adhered to in my own life. However, I have known many women who seem to think as long as they are drunk, they can do whatever they want to and it doesn’t really count. After all, the alcohol made them do it. Bullshit.

I have been drunk a few times, but I never allowed myself to go where I wouldn’t go sober, because - and this is very important, kids - I still knew that doing it was wrong, drunk or not. I’m not a special person, with super human powers, so I know if it works that way for me, it does for everyone else, too. The only think getting drunk does for women is give them the excuse to do what they really want to do, yet give them something to fall back on as an excuse. Now, there have been times when a woman has drunk herself into a stupor and unscrupulous men have taken advantage of that to ” have some fun”, but that just teaches us to never - NEVER - drink without a friend who will make sure we don’t get ourselves in that kind of mess. Use your brains, in other words.

Mr. Foley certainly wasn’t passed out when he made the vulgar remarks to those young guys in his e-mails, so trying to blame his perversion on alcohol just doesn’t wash. He did what he wanted to do, drunk or sober, and that’s the name of that game. So stop trying to find an excuse for being the pervert you are, Mr. Foley, and just own up to it. Just like drinking, admitting your perversion is the first step in curing it, so stop trying to make what you’ve done less of a disgusting display of immorality and just try to be a man by owning it. And anyone out there ready to give him a pass because he was drunk, get a clue. Quickly.