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.”

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.

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.

“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?

U.S. private contractors looted Iraqi palaces and ministries, stole military equipment, fenced supplies destined for U.S. troops, and even operated a prostitution ring that may have contributed to the death of fellow contractor. Yet despite its focus on such salacious matters as sex and corruption, the session earned little media attention.

What this article fails to mention is that, despite what the liberal media may think, there are other important things happening in the world besides the war in Iraq.

For example, this week was The Week Miley Cyrus Bared Her Shoulder (TM).

Tween girls everywhere were spontaneously thrown into early puberty by the site of young Miley’s virgin backflesh. We found our playgrounds littered with the shards of shattered innocence, as girls whose interests were previously limited to unicorns, rainbows, and The Jonas Brothers, suddenly began tossing around phrases like “rimjob” and “felching.”

The economy was rocked as sales of Hannah Montana training bras plummeted, accompanied by a matching explosion of interest in Hannah Montana crotchless thongs. Swing sets were traded in for stripper poles. Jenna Jameson joined the cast of High School Musical 3.

The very fabric of childhood innocence was torn asunder. So, forgive us for not noticing a few million dollars in sensitive military hardware being sold for beer money.

The practice of stealing equipment and supplies destined for the U.S. military was so pervasive that KBR employees invented a slang term to describe it: “drug deals.”

Of course, this created problems for the KBR employees who were actually dealing drugs, forcing them to call their drug deals “stealing equipment and supplies destined for the U.S. military.”

Or “treason”, for short.

“KBR employees who were contracted to perform construction duties inside palaces and municipal buildings were looting,” [former KBR employee Linda Warren] said. “Not only were they looting, but they had a system in place to get contraband out of the country so it could be sold on eBay.”

That’s what I love about eBay. It has everything. Vintage pants? Check. Virgin Mary on a piece of toast? Check. 2,000 year old Babylonian antiquities? Check.

Just PayPal the Buy It Now price of $12.99, fill out your shipping info, and two days later FedEx leaves the Dead Sea Scrolls on your doorstep. Easy.

Committee chairman Senator Byron Dorgan of North Dakota has been advocating for the creation of a permanent, bipartisan Wartime Contracting Commission to look into the types of accusations raised this week, but so far, says Piatt, Senate Republicans have blocked the measure.

Here’s the problem with setting up a commission like that: It makes it so much harder to get away with things.

One minute you’re melting down priceless pre-Biblical coins to make gold-plated cowboy spurs, the next minute you’re in front of Congress trying to explain how that fits in with your $150 billion contract to provide logistical troop support.

Who needs that kind of hassle? It goes against all the fundamental rules of war profiteering. If I was Senator Dorgan, I’d keep my eyes closed, my mouth shut, and my hand open. If he can do that, there may just be a pair of gold-plated cowboy spurs with his name on them.

North Korean military engineers are completing an underground runway beneath a mountain that can protect fighter aircraft from attack until they take off at high speed through the mouth of a tunnel.

Next up: Sharks With Frickin’ Laser Beams.

John Cusack trades in his trenchcoat and boombox for a tinfoil hat and words like “disastrous, free-market Utopian enterprise.”

In nine cities across the country, blinking electronic signs displaying a profane, boxy-looking cartoon character caused barely a stir.

But in Boston, the signs — some with protruding wires — sent a wave of panic across the city, prompting officials to shut down highways and bridges and send out bomb squads.

The question many were asking Thursday was: Did Boston overreact?

The suspicious devices found in Boston (top) are virtually indistinguishable from the type of improvised explosive device commonly used in terrorist attacks (bottom).

The question that people should be asking is not “Did Boston overreact?” but “Why is America underreacting?” In a post-9/11 world, anything less than barely contained hysteria is not only irresponsible, it’s downright unpatriotic.

We’re at war, people! This is no time for calm, rational thought. We have a moral obligation to those who have died — and are dying — in the war on terror to be, well, terrorized. Not panicking implies that there is no reason to panic. And if there is no reason to panic, then there is no reason to be in Iraq, firing wildly into the desert in hopes of killing something brown and evil.

Sure, you might not feel threatened by the My Little Pony sticker stuck to the subway bench next to you. And maybe you’re right. Maybe it’s not a paper-thin wafer of Semtex explosives laced with highly concentrated radioactive anthrax. But are you really prepared to take that chance? I’m not.

The fact is, we live in a dangerous world, full of dangerous people and dangerous things. Danger is everywhere. Death lurks around every corner. Each minute we live is a minute closer to violent dismemberment at the hands of a faceless terrorist.

I Scream, You Scream: A bloodthirsty terrorist puts the finishing touches on her latest murderous creation.

You think you know Death. You think you’ll see him coming. But while you’re looking out for a tall guy with a skull face and a black robe, Death is sneaking up behind you disguised as the Hamburglar, or as a Fonzie doll, or as Hillary Clinton.

And while your mortal screams fade to just the sound of your arterial blood splashing to the pavement, I’ll be safe with the real Americans: under the bed in my homemade bomb shelter, clutching a shotgun, a Bible, and a big sign saying, “I Told You So.”

Wake up, America. If we don’t live our lives in the grip of relentless, irrational, unyielding fear, then the terrorists have already won.

Members of a Senate committee that voted against President Bush’s Iraq plan said Thursday they also are wary of pouring more money into rebuilding while the security situation is so dire.

This is a bold, forward-thinking move by the new Democratic Congress. It makes perfect sense: what’s the point of rebuilding the infrastructure to provide basic necessities like electricity and sanitation? Why build schools, or hospitals, or orphanages? They will just give the terrorists more things to blow up.

Sure, the Iraqi people are angry that we invaded their country and ruined their already miserable lives. Are they going to be any less angry if they don’t have to wait in line for 3 days to get a gallon of fuel oil to cook food for their children? Of course not. The Iraqis’ desire to take up arms against Americans has nothing to do with the fact that they feel hopeless and helpless, without even the most basic necessities of life.

Shouldn’t you be in school? That pile of rubble is your school. Oh. Well … Carry on, then.

When a 14-year-old boy makes the choice to blow himself up in a Baghdad cafe, that decision is in no way informed by his perception of Americans as doing nothing but harm to his country and his family.

His decision probably wouldn’t be any different if, instead of kicking down his door, raping his sister, and shooting his father, the Americans had given him, for example, “hope” or “cool, drinkable water.”

Instead of trying to do good, the smartest move is for America to just sit back and let the insurgency reduce the entire country to a smoldering pile of rubble. The sooner they do that, the sooner we can give Halliburton a $200 billion no-bid contract to pave over the entire country and turn it into a parking lot for Disneyland Tehran (coming Spring 2009).

Bush says the troops are needed to provide security for rebuilding efforts. … On Thursday, Republicans and Democrats told a State Department official they are concerned the extra money could fuel corruption[.]

This is an excellent point that needs to be taken seriously. Why send billions of dollars to be lost to corruption in Iraq, when those billions could just as easily be lost to corruption here at home?

Think of the thousands we’d save on postage alone!

“Some of us have become very skeptical of the capacity — our capacity to organize this and the capacity to actually implement it,” said Sen. Joseph Biden, the committee chairman

Senator Biden, as you know, is also the sponsor of the We Concede That We Are Hopelessly Incompetent And, Seriously, Why Even Bother Trying Act of 2007.

I guess I can’t blame him for being skeptical. In retrospect, it was probably a mistake sending a reconstruction team consisting of eight circus clowns, 42 trained monkeys, and a Guatemalan janitor name Jesus.

But honestly, could a few extra billion dollars really buy anything better? The most it would probably get us is a few hundred Halliburton ghost employees and maybe a few dozen imported Kuwaiti ice cubes.