Mystery Bush sign causes stir

While the identities of the sign owners are still unclear, the general manager of the advertising company who owns the billboard space told Minnesota Public Radio it was financed by “a group of small business owners who feel like Washington is against them.”

Obama, Bush, Clinton stand ‘united’ for Haiti

President Barack Obama on Saturday brought together his White House predecessors, Republican George W. Bush and Democrat Bill Clinton, for a joint appeal for victims of Haiti’s devastating earthquake.

“By coming together in this way, these two leaders send an unmistakable message to the people of Haiti and to the people of the world,” Obama said in the Rose Garden.

That’s right, Haiti. Make no mistake: We will send our best and brightest to help you in this terrible time of woe. Also, we will send the person responsible for turning a similar natural disaster into a clusterfuck of historic and epic proportions.

President Bush wonders, “Who is that black fella standing my podium?”

I know things have been looking bleak for the Haitian people, with the total destruction of infrastructure, the lack of food or clean water, the dearth of medical supplies. But you should know that President Bush is on the case, and help is on the way. Unfortunately, it’s on the way to Jamaica. But he’ll get that squared away ASAP.

This isn’t the first time America has mobilized in response to a crisis, so we’re breaking out the playbook and calling the shots that have worked so well in the past. Security forces have been deployed. Water, blankets, and medical supplies are en route. Bankers from Goldman Sachs are parachuting into Port Au Prince to help rebuild the economy, and the golf courses.

President Clinton is spearheading relief efforts by reaching out to his global network of political and financial allies to raises millions of dollars in these critical early hours. Meanwhile, President Bush will be working directly on the ground in Haiti, helping to clear brush and rustle cattle.

Here at home, President Obama has pledged to do everything in his power to make sure Haiti gets what it needs. He has also pledged to stop asking, “What else could possibly go wrong during my first year in office?” I mean, seriously. We don’t want to know.

What’s the funniest thing about this photo? Karzai’s beard? The Alaska pin? Or the fact that Sarah Palin was required to wear that same hat at her job 3 years ago?

Preparing the Battlefield

Secretary of Defense Gates … warned of the consequences if the Bush Administration staged a preëmptive strike on Iran, saying … “We’ll create generations of jihadists, and our grandchildren will be battling our enemies here in America.”

Nonsense. A preemptive strike on Iran would liberate the Iranian people from decades of religious tyranny, and would usher in a golden age of art, literacy, and overwhelming demand for hardcore pornography.

We’re talking about a culture full of men who haven’t seen a female ankle in 6000 years. Forget dropping crates full of pro-democracy leaflets over the countryside. Someone airlift in a few thousand copies of Shaved Beaver and Barely Legal, and the war is won.

You want 72 virgins? Don’t blow yourself up. We’ve got ‘em right here on Earth. In fact, we have the whole trilogy: “72 Virgins”, and “72 More Virgins”, and “Another 72 Virgins, And One Dirty Whore.” (That one’s my favorite.) Turn in your AK-47, and you can have all three.

Believe in Jesus, and we’ll even throw in a year subscription to Ass Happy.

“Too many people believe you have to be either for or against the Iranians,” [said former head of U.S. Central Command, Admiral William Fallon]. “Let’s get serious. Eighty million people live there, and everyone’s an individual. The idea that they’re only one way or another is nonsense.”

Is the man who was in charge of operations in Iraq and Afghanistan seriously suggesting that our enemies be looked at as individuals? What’s next, thinking of them as humans? Maybe we should knit them sweaters, or invite them over to watch the Super Bowl. My daughter needs a date to the prom … I wonder if any Iranians are available.

Let me ask you something, Admiral. When you put down your copy of the New York Times, or The Nation, or whatever liberal propaganda you read with your morning commie — oops, I mean coffee — and you look out the window at your back yard … do you see a “lawn” or “80 million individual blades of grass?”

The way I see it, there are only two ways to mow a lawn. Either you carefully evaluate each blade of grass, only cutting those which are growing more quickly and out of control … or you drop a 500 lb. bomb and reduce the grass to a smoking crater of soil and clay.

You can ask my neighbor which one I prefer. If you can find him under the rubble.

The Democratic leadership’s agreement to commit hundreds of millions of dollars for more secret operations in Iran was remarkable, given the general concerns of officials like Gates, Fallon, and many others.

I don’t think it’s that remarkable. It actually makes perfect sense from a political standpoint.

Here’s a perfect analogy: It’s like when you go out drinking with your buddy and his girlfriend. Your friend gets a few drinks in him, he starts getting rowdy, pissing off the other customers, maybe getting in a few shoving matches, bragging too loudly about the size of his belt buckle, taking a dump in the men’s room sink, etc. You can see his girlfriend is getting a little tired of his antics. What do you do?

If you’re a good friend, you take him home, thrown him in a cold shower, and have him sleep it off.

But you’re not a good friend, are you? No, you’re not. Not really. You pretend to be one, sure. But just under the surface, you’re seething with resentment.

Why does he get to date Suzy? What makes him so special? You saw her first. Just because you didn’t have the balls to go up and say hi to her doesn’t mean she’s fair game to any asshole who comes along.

He should have known you’d eventually get up the nerve to ask her to the prom. You just needed a little time to plan it out, that’s all. You were going to buy her flowers, and write her a song, and –

But noooo … he had to jump right in and ask her before you even know what happened. And next thing you know, they’re dating.

Not just dating. Fucking. In your car. While you’re driving them to Six Flags.

Would it have killed him to put a towel on the seat? Would that have been so hard? Sure, it wasn’t a new car, but the upholstery was noticeably free of semen. That’s one thing it had going for it. There were some scratches on the door, and a dent in the bumper, and sometimes the rearview mirror would fall off while going over a speedbump. What do you expect for $600?

But now, every time you vacuum the back seat, you can’t help but notice the pale, quarter-sized droplets encrusted in the plush velour upholstery. And it brings back memories. Horrible, horrible memories. The moans. The squeals. The smells.

Oh god … the smells.

And yet, you remained friends with him because you knew, someday, you’d find a way to win Suzy back.

You’d have to stay close. You’d have to let them fuck in your bed when they came to visit your dorm in college. You’d have to run out and buy condoms while Suzy kept him aroused with her considerable oral talents. You’d have to hold her hand in the waiting room of the abortion clinic, because he was too busy defending his crown during Dart Night at Don’s House Of Pork.

Now, after seven years of being a third wheel, of being “the gay friend”, of late night condom runs, you can see it in Suzy’s eyes. She’s had enough of his shit. It’s time for you to make your move.

“Bartender,” you say. “Another round of tequila shots for my friend George here.”

“I think he’s had enough,” the bartender says. “You’re his friend. You should cut him off.”

“Just one more,” you say. “Just to see what happens.”

“Okay,” says the bartender. “But if he invades Iran and ends up losing the election for McCain, don’t come crying to me.”

NOTE: In hindsight, this analogy is not quite as perfect as it seemed at the time.

[Said Admiral Fallon], “I decided that I couldn’t resolve the situation in Iraq without the neighborhood. To get this problem in Iraq solved, we had to somehow involve Iran and Syria. I had to work the neighborhood.”

Great plan. Let’s have a barbeque. We’ll invite Iran, and Syria, and hell, even North Korea can come if he brings beer and/or nukes. We’ll cook some steaks, play some badminton, figure out new and interesting ways to kill the Jews. It’ll be a blast (so to speak).

“It’s one thing to engage in selective strikes and assassinations in Waziristan and another in Iran,” [says one Pentagon consultant]. “The White House believes that one size fits all, but … the situation is not nearly as clear in the Iranian case. All the considerations-judicial, strategic, and political-are different in Iran.”

It sounds like this “Pentagon consultant” is having some trouble understanding the situation, so let me break it down in layman’s terms:

They’re bad. We’re good. They do bad things. We kill them for it.

That’s a universal truth that extends beyond borders, beyond these “judicial, strategic, and political” issues that everyone is so bent out of shape over. It doesn’t matter whether we’re in Waziristan, Iran, or Disneyland.

Did John Wayne stop and think about the local laws and ordinances before offing some Injuns? No. He just loaded up his unmanned Predator drone and started firing laser-guided Hellfire missiles into tee-pees.

And when you look around the Wild West today, what do you see? Sand. Plus casinos, and some whorehouses. What don’t you see? Indians.

I think we should bring the Wild West approach to the Middle East. Worry less about international law, and more about killing everyone. After all, dead men tell no tales. And, conveniently, they also convene no war crimes tribunals.

If, by some mistake, we don’t manage to kill everyone, then we take another page out of the Wild West playbook: give them booze, and smallpox.

Clinton draws parallel between her campaign, JFK’s 1960 run

“Now, John Kennedy didn’t have the number of delegates he needed when he went to the convention in 1960,” [Clinton said.] “He had something equally as important — he had West Virginia behind him, because it’s a fact that Democrats don’t get elected president unless West Virginia votes for you …”

An American tradition

This is what I love about Hillary Clinton. She doesn’t get caught up in the stereotypes of West Virginians as the backwards, illiterate, functionally retarded stepchildren of the Democratic party.

She doesn’t pigeonhole them as the ass-raping mountain men from Deliverance, or the one-toothed cretins for whom the phrase “more teeth than brains” was invented.

She sees West Virginians for what they really are: convenient political pawns easily manipulated by blatantly transparent pandering.

Where you see the sick, twisted union between a husband and a wife who are also brother and sister, Hillary sees proud Americans who understand the value of family.

Where you see their freakish, half-limbed children lurching around the yard, gnawing on tree stumps and tossing around a dead squirrel, Hillary sees the free spirit of the next generation.

Where you see a 1977 Ford Pinto up on blocks in front of their mobile home, the doors welded shut to create a makeshift cage for the black woman they keep as a pet, Hillary sees American ingenuity at its finest.

“So I’m here today because I know what’s really going to matter tomorrow,” said Clinton. “It’s the votes of the people of West Virginia and if you will come out and honor me with your vote I will work my heart out for you.

As a matter of fact, West Virginia is SO important to Hillary — and indeed, to this great nation — that she will be integrating some of the state’s most important issues into her campaign’s platform.

• Federally-subsidized Confederate flag tattoos for all children over 8 years old
• Additional appropriations for the federal school lunch program, expanding the menu to include tater tots, possum meat, and chewing tobacco
• Reduced dependence on dirty, polluting foreign oil, and increased dependence on dirty, polluting American coal
• Free Kool-Aid and Slim Jims for life

Clinton criticized the Democratic front-runner on his health care proposal, and his rejection of her proposed “gas tax holiday.”

Hillary knows what the people of West Virginia want. They don’t want some Harvard-educated elitist. They want someone who understands their way of life. Who shares their worldview. Who knows how to shit in the woods, without getting eaten by a bear.

Hillary Clinton is that candidate.

She knows what it’s like to be poor, and to live in a trailer park, and to occasionally cough up a piece of bloody, coal-black lung tissue into a piece of old newspaper.

When she was a girl, she and her grandpappy would drink a half-gallon of 180-proof grain alcohol from a Mason jar, then to go deer hunting from the back of a pickup truck. That’s where she first learned how to shoot a rifle, and how to hold the wheel while ‘Pappy vomited out the driver’s side window.

Memories like that helped shape who Hillary is today: a desperate Presidential candidate grasping for anything that will help her connect with voters who find her untrustworthy, condescending, and amoral.

Did I mention she owns a miner’s helmet?

“My opponent Sen. Obama says, “Oh no, that’s just a gimmick, that’s not going to help people,” said Clinton before again arguing that it will save families $70 on average and more for those with longer commutes as well as truckers.

“70 DOLLARS?! Are you shittin’ me? Paw, didja hear that? That there lady says she’s fixin’ to give us seventy dollars! Do ya know what we could do with that money? Hell, Dwayne could get his lazy eye fixed, and we’d still have enough left over for a case of Schlitz and a bag of Cheetos! Start the tractor — we’re goin’ to Wal-Mart!”

“It is the hard-working, dedicated people of West Virginia who have really made America what it has been, and what it will be again,” [Clinton said.]

… an embarrassment?