Some Thoughts While In Exile

A man shows up in a rural village with an ax over his shoulder and unable to speak. The ax is clean but from the knees down he is covered in blood. His pants are cut off of him and he sits in the town square in his underwear while the local police send an investigator. Now the moral to this story is that in the time the investigator arrives the corruption of the DNA has a better chance of whipping itself out. That in a nutshell is politics in Washington. Every decision made when considering how to cover a story in Washington by a major news outlet is somehow drenched in the same shit that is being brandished by the candidates themselves.

If anyone interested in political change had a clear understanding of the role that syphilis has played in the role of history they would stop the distribution of penicillin in Washington immediately.

Have you ever noticed that the media does not report on the alcoholism and dementia of candidates until they either kill someone or upset the apple cart and send seeds into the skulls of all the wrong people?

A staffer in presidential politics will always have second thoughts but will betray their own agenda, change their own mind about how they feel just to stay with the campaign and find their own resolutions afterward.

In Washington politics in the last century there was common knowledge of the harmful damage tobacco could do but is was overlooked by those deeply invested in the growing of hemp. These are the same people who drank coca cola containing cocaine in cabinet meetings on those long Washington afternoons.

At The Movies With Johnny Robs

Way back about a thousand years ago in terms of news cycles, in other words, on August 1, I wrote a little piece called "Loving the COTUS." The thrust of it was that the much-debated (and only God knows why) "right to privacy," and the dirt-stupid little notion propounded by the hard-core America-hating Republican Party that the Constitution lacks a right of privacy. Like I said all those aeons ago, suggesting there's no right of privacy in the Constitution is like saying there's no right of water in a snowflake.

We had then, and we have now, cause to be concerned about soon-to-be-Chief Justice Johnny Rob's views on the topic. The confirmation hearings have been little or no help. Between pontificating Republicans and terrified Democrats, the most telling thing we know about J.R. is that he likes "Dr. Zhivago," a really long movie based upon the book by Boris Pasternak that eulogizes the end of a brutal royalist regime in Russia. Oddly enough, J.R.'s favorite movie tells us something about him, and about Republicans in general.

Here's a quote from the movie. General Yevgraf Zhivago says "I told myself it was beneath my dignity for arresting a man for pilfering firewood. But nothing ordered by the party is beneath the dignity of any man, and the party was right: one man desperate for a bit of fuel is pathetic; five million people desperate for a bit of fuel will destroy a city."


Thanks for turning the lights on for us there, J.R. You won't give us a straight answer about whether you think a woman has a right to control over her own innards, but that's OK. You've told us plenty, pal.

Read that quote again. "Nothing ordered by the party is beneath the dignity of any man." By God, that's not a quote! That's a plank from the Republican Party Platform!

Need to reassure the religious weirdos that you're still on their side? No matter how degrading, hypocritical or embarassing, by all means, all Congress back into session for Terri Schiavo and talk about the "kutcher of liiiiiffffe." Need to placate the chickenhawks? Even though it's terribly stupid and undignified for a nation that boasts of its love for "peace," start a war with a third world country that costs a hundred million bucks a week and two thousand American mothers' sons. Grover Norquist breathing down your neck about tax cuts? What the hell! Put the kneepads on, do for Grover what Monica did for Bill and take the funding from the budget for shoring up the New Orleans levee system.

"Nothing ordered by the party is beneath the dignity of any man." "Nothing ordered by the party is beneath the dignity of any man." "Nothing ordered by the party is beneath the dignity of any man." It's a littany.
So if the party tells Johhny Robs to put those damned uppity feminazis back in the kitchen where they belong, even if it means that thousands of terrified young women will die trying to roto-rooter their uteruses with a welder's braising rod, we know now that he will do it, for "nothing ordered by the party is beneath the dignity of any man."

And, irony of ironies, when the Republican Party decides to remind Johnny Robs that "nothing ordered by the party is beneath the dignity of any man," the party commissariat will do so in the privacy that women will no longer have. And they'll be able to do it because for three long, heart-rending days, America watched as Johnny Robs dodged every question put to him by the United States Senate; as Johnny Robs exercised his own right to privacy under lights, in front of cameras and kept private the one thing he knows better than any other: "nothing ordered by the party is beneath the dignity of any man."

- Bob Kincaid

We Are Gathered Here Today

Here is the last will and testament of the United States. Democracy has become theology and soon will become obsolete. The disruptions in the system of government will jail those that seek to find their own way in a deepening morass of bureaucracy will be cordoned off and decimated. A generation forced into attrition for the sins of their elders will inherit an environmental disaster that will eventually undo the planet surface.

To the poor, the United States leaves the right to serve and an obligation to die.

To the middle class comes the burden to pay for the burial of the poor, the promise of what the poor leave behind, and the possibility of an early retirement when the air, due to green house gases eventually becomes too thin to breathe.

This is the last will and testament of the United States.



- Chris Mansel

Political Cartoon

Why The Dead Cannot Fill Out The Proper Forms

President Bush said today, “Today, America is confronting another disaster that has caused destruction and loss of life. This time the devastation resulted not from the malice of evil men, but from the fury of water and wind.” There wasn’t a way of getting Bush atop the dome in New Orleans to pose for a picture with the head of FEMA Mr. Brown because Mr. Brown only found out recently that there were people in the dome in trouble. Bush did not get handed a bullhorn to stumble over a blood curdling speech about freedom from storms or, perish the thought, the wrath of God and his storms. On the anniversary of the events of September 11, 2001 Bush used the sympathy tactic of a man who truly does not appear at the scene of hundreds or even thousands of lives on his own country’s soil until cameras are in place, looters are subdued from acquiring food for their families, and the so-called promised relief is just a few miles away.

Not since the gall of Joseph McCarthy has a politician sought to further his legacy with a more shameful act as to hug two African American ladies on camera and to straighten up stiff as a board when his personal photographer is about to snap a picture. After the picture Bush would slump back down and continue consoling the two women until the cameraman was ready fro another photo.

Vice President Dick Cheney got the welcome he deserved by a passerby, a man walking to his house to salvage his few belongings with his wife when the man shouted, “Fuck you Mr. Cheney, fuck you, you asshole.” Coal burning spider veined Cheney made a joke of the man’s distraught words and continued on while the press chuckled along. Who needs embedded status when the press can chuckle along on cue?

Not since the lynching of African Americans in the south has government and law enforcement turned their blind eye and cold shoulder to a dying people of an American city on such a scale. The question is not where does the fault lay, but will anything being done about it? Will it just become a hot topic issue for pundits and future campaigns? Will the receding waters cleanse the sins of the wicked?

As mourners, spectators walk slowly in line of the coffin of Justice Rehnquist a decision was being made not to allow footage of the bodies as they are recovered to be used on the news. Just as the coffins of soldiers returning from Iraq may not be filmed, the dead from the storm Katrina will not be allowed to be filmed either. The coffin of Rehnquist was covered in an American flag; the dead from Katrina are in black body bags tossed in a pile like the dead Americans and Vietnamese from the Vietnam War. The graves registration units of the U.S. Army cannot handle the dead; they are being handled by commercial companies; anything for a no bid contract.


- Chris Mansel

The BLAME GAME

The BLAME GAME comes in a metallic rust free corduroy lined Astroturf bottom box resembling a casket, and to play the BLAME GAME you need twelve or more Democrats who actually witnessed the non-decision of Republican officials and can prove (not to a reasonable doubt since there is no way in the year 2005 you can take a Republican to court) that the non-decision led to the loss of life of over or at least approaching 10,000 or more of the dark skinned non-conservative voting public.
The cover of the BLAME GAME features dark-skinned non-conservative voting looters feeding their children stolen bread and water meant for white-skinned pro-voting conservative voters. The cost of the BLAME GAME is based on the loss of life and the enrichment of the major Insurance companies, and thereby meaning Halliburton.

- Chris Mansel

Play Ball Dick

If it is the worst disaster ever on American soil then what you need to do is go to a baseball game and take it easy. Condi went to broadway and played tennis, and Donald Rumsfeld went to San Diego and took in a game. The citizens that were killed in Hurricane katrina didn't get a seventh inning stretch, nor did they get a private escort to the men's room. They died either in the storm or on the street.

Good For Them

This weekend I have tried to busy myself with work as much as I could possibly stand to get away from my feeling for the victims of Katrina and our governments role in it. I tried to forget for just a little while and I worked in the heat outside doing several things that needed doing and last night I was rewarded with a seizure in a restaurant in which a complete stranger helped my wife and daughter hold me up in my chair so that I would not fall to the floor and hurt myself anymore than I already had. That stranger is the heart of the progressive mentality. My wife told me that he asked if he could help and he did and when it was over he went back to his family and continued eating. He didn’t wait to see from any legislative body if it was ok for him to act, he didn’t walk over to my wife and daughter and explain that help was on the way. He saw a way in which to help and he did so. That spirit is alive in the wake of Katrina and it is being prevented in many ways from being carried out. Like it or not we are now in this country what we have feared most of all, we are a third world nation who has put their trust in a gruesome dictator who would use our national resources and laws to build his own wealth and allow his own citizens to die, strangled with red tape, bound by red tape and raped in a temporary government facility.
Twice now the Bush family has made mention of the fact that the citizens of New Orleans and Mississippi and Alabama were poor anyway and that the relief recovery is good for them. This was no Freudian slip. Of course it is good for them, the Bush family which extends to the far reaches of Saudi Arabia, the haven for the 9/11 terrorists, the breeding ground for our nation al disaster called the 2000 and 2004 elections. Them, those four little words explain quite a lot.

- Chris Mansel

Bush Crossing Canal Street

Wolf In Bigot's Clothing

Read the caption at the top of the screen...the words of Wolf Blitzer. Born in the south it enrages me to hear this kind of garbage coming from a channel you have to pay to view.

Bush's Gettysburg

A stinging piece by our Chief Analyst Bob Kincaid


In June of 1863, during the Confederate invasion of the North, as Lee’s army moved into Pennsylvania, General J.E.B. Stuart took his cavalry on a long gallivant through the countryside, confiscating goods to support the troops. In so doing, he left Lee “blind,” without intelligence as to the movements of the enemy. This blindness led Lee to eventually decide to fight at Gettysburg, where the Union forces had taken the high ground. Lee was infuriated with the disappearance of Stuart, his “eyes.” When Stuart finally returned with some wagons and provisions in tow, Lee is said to have remarked to J.E.B. Stuart “Sir, they are an impediment to me now.”

So, too, in 2005. We are at the sufferance of a leader who has, just like J.E.B. Stuart, left us blind by sending our National Guard off on an aimless, rambling gallivant to Iraq while real problems confront us at home. And Hurricane Katrina is our Gettysburg.

So would it be any surprise if Americans said to Bush what Lee said to Stuart? “Sir, you are an impediment to us now.” Bush took our first line of defense and squandered it in the filthy, stinking, bloody sands of Iraq. And now, in the hour of need, Bush tells us we must stay the course when our children cry from fear and hunger and might be otherwise helped by the National Guard he’s sent a world away. Damn him. Damn him with everything that amounts to damnation. And a little bit more.

Bush will, of course, in his privileged life, in his wealth, never experience the misery of the poor of N’Orleans. And he’d be well advised not to try to convince us that he even remotely understands their suffering. None can but those who suffer with them shoulder to shoulder. I can’t. You can’t. Bush is both intellectually and emotionally unable to. The last pain he felt was when he busted his punkin-head on the coffee table after that heroic battle with the Pretzel o’ Terror. Before that, the worst pain he felt was the crushing agony of the Sunday morning hangover after the Saturday night whiskey binge.

They say Nero fiddled while Rome burned. If Bush had been there, he’d have been selling matches.

- Bob Kincaid