HACKER ALERT: Bush Team Launches Grassroots-Oriented Campaign Website

An amusing new and entertaining site filled with all the traditional lies and obfuscations you've come to know and love and even a couple of new ones, has been launched on the dying landscape of the internet like a cannon shot across the universe. It's called Bush-Cheney 04, a wonderful domain where the sick and the demogogically shifty congeal and prevail.

It's a cold and lonely world out there for neophytes but the guys and gals at Bush-Cheney 04 have put together an astonishing collection of all of the classic distortions of fact, revisionist history and outright lies the Bush Administration has mustered since the call to Invasion 2003 and it has all the earmarks of a classic in the making.

First of all, this is no five and dime presentation. You might begin your stroll at the George Bush Online Store where you can purchase such classics as the Viva Bush t-shirts and g strings. If you ask at the counter, you might be able to find one of the few remaining Fuck Bush t-shirts but don't let Dick Cheney know. He's still upset that copies of the docket of his DWI case in Wyoming haven't been selling better.

One of my favorite sections is the "Weekly Photo" shot which today shows President Bush lending a hand to help dig mass graves for Iraqi civilians. I can't wait for the t-shirts to become available online.

A crazy poll to test the ignorance of voters asks: How many working families are benefiting from President Bush's Jobs and Growth Act? (the punchline is that the multiple choice answers do not provide answers lower than 12 million!!)

(Upon further review, it's quite possible there was some coding problems from the website designers who actually meant to ask, if 12 million is the answer, "How many corporate whores are benefiting from President Bush's Jobs and Growth Act?" or "How many working families are out on the streets begging for money because of President Bush's Jobs and Growth Act?", but its difficult to tell the true motivations behind the poll.

The same can be said for the Quick Vote which asks us Which part of President Bush's compassionate conservative agenda is most important to you?

Is that like a Quick Vote which asks: Which part of your body would you most like to have clamps and electrodes attached to in order to receive your 2004 volts of compassionate conservativism?

The Web site also includes a feature designed specifically for “bloggers.” Supportive bloggers can place a unique news feed box on their Web site that instantly posts news items onto their weblog the moment GeorgeWBush.com is updated. Bloggers who do not support President Bush in loud and officious colors and use words of infatuation and unquestioning support will be tracked down, one by one and placed into the custody of Almighty God's Attorney General, John Ashcroft.

Although not explicitly stated but otherwise heavy-handedly implied, visitors are encouraged to "Keep America Strong" by signing up to be a Bush Team Leader and donate not only your money, but your flesh and blood. If the computer registers your yearly income at over $ 2.5 million, a special pop-up video ad is generated which features a guffawing President slapping his knee with the dismembered limbs of Iraqi children killed by errant American missiles during the "Liberation" of Iraq with the admonition that "Killing Isn't Cheap. Pay Up Or Move To Another Tax Bracket"

Perhaps most touching is the President's personalized message to his website's visitors entitled "A Charge To Keep" which is a compelling and simultaneously haunting manifesto about the ins and outs of the campaign trail, the ying and yang of killing and the thrill of partisan politics.

A Charge to Keep
By President George W. Bush

Thank you for taking the time to visit my campaign website. I appreciate your interest and involvement. Together we are laying the groundwork for an indestructible hegemony that will bloom to fruition next year. Thank you in advance for the emails of love and support that Jesus has told me you will send, the phone calls Jesus has told me you will make, the clearly Christian signs of support you will put in the yards of your Arab neighbors and set fire to, and the other grassroots activities that will support our re-election and help us achieve victory by squashing, muting or killing every last vestige of protest from the terrorist-loving mouths of your cowardly countrymen who opposed this great Leadership.

My campaign is going to take a hopeful and optimistic message to the American people: We want to kill. Yet at the same time, we want profits. I hope you will show your support by taking action in your community. Spy on your neighbors, report suspicious activity, especially any words spoken against the Administration or any refusal to praise Jesus, attend church regularly and steal from the poor to give to the rich.

Vice President Cheney and I are focused on the nation’s top priorities – our nation's upper class have suffered through tremendous struggles and they need our help, we also need to create an even more confusing security apparatus which will pay lip service to fighting terrorism while simultaneously working with a steadfast and dogged determination to rip every last privacy right from the cold, dead hands of the people who do not support us, and of course, we have to teach the editors of our nation's media outlets how to emulate the wonderfully successful Fox News Channel in how to report fiction as fact and vice versa. The War on Terror requires it. We will continue to earn the confidence of the American people or we will send John Ashcroft after them to keep this nation prosperous, strong and secure.

I came to office to make problems, to pass them on to other Presidents and other generations. I came to seize opportunities and not let them slip away. In the last two and a half years, our nation has learned the value of killing and a zest for being lied to, and I am proud of all of you.

On September 11, 2001, terrorists declared war on the United States, and we have taken the fight to the terrorists although they don't seem to realize it yet. Although we haven't captured or killed any of the top terrorists I vowed to capture dead or alive, we have killed many innocent civilians that were getting in the way of Democracy in Iraq and we have captured or killed many low level "terrorists" or people we think are terrorists anyway, and well, we've spent alot of your money so we must be getting somewhere. Just remember, success in this war on terrorism isn't something you're just going to hear about. It will come in many shapes and forms. Just trust me on that one. We're winning. In Iraq, America and the coalition partners your tax dollars bought and paid for, temporarily removed a brutal dictator and replaced him with instability, chaos and anarchy. We are working with the Iraqi people and other nations to wreak as much havoc as possible while bungling as many opportunities as we have available in an enormous and unprecedented failure to build a free, democratic and peaceful Iraq that no longer harbors illegal weapons or supports terrorists.

This administration has proposed and signed into law historic legislation – including constitutional reform which surreptiously takes away the standard privacy rights of most citizens, tax relief for our nation's wealthiest people because they need more money and if you know what's best for you, you'll agree. We have worked to advance our agenda of Pax Americana by applying the worst and most dangerous ideas to the task of helping our fellow citizens in need. We are rallying any and all armies, regardless of cost to ensure that every person, every child and family, and every community can enjoy broadcasts of invasions of sovereign nations and revel in the lies and screaming hypocrisy blaring out at you from every direction.

There is still much work to be done in Washington. We are working to weaken health care for all Americans because frankly, it's just too damned costly and if you believe in Jesus Christ as your savior, you don't need health care anyway because Jesus will take care of you. We will continue to expand economic opportunities for our favorite friends and those who pledge the most money to our reelection campaign, and I will not be satisfied until every American is out looking for work, whether there are any jobs out there or not. This administration is committed to expanding the wealth of its richest and smallest percentile across the globe, for our own security and for the benefit of ourselves alone. We believe that this nation is the home of Jesus Christ and the defender of Jesus Christ, and we will keep this charge of history.

We intend to make good use of every day that we have the opportunity to take advantage of the ignorance of the American people, and hope that through our efforts we will be fortunate enough to continue to serve.

Praise Jesus!

Your President,

George W. Bush

Bush condemns U.N. blast in Iraq

Says U.S. resolve won't waver "yet"

CRAWFORD, Texas -- Declaring that "terrorists are testing our will," an angry President Bush on Tuesday condemned the fatal truck bombing of U.N. headquarters in Baghdad and vowed the attack would not deter U.S.-led efforts to destroy that country by themselves.

"We've done a wonderful job to date of destroying the infrastructure of Iraq, depriving the Iraqi people of power and water, killing innocent women and children and frankly, we don't need any help."

Around America, citizens expressed their confusion over the inconsistencies between the Bush Administration calling the UN "irrelevent" when it refused to rubber stamp the US invasion of Iraq and its current condemnation of the destruction of U.N. headquarters in Baghdad. In a recent CNN poll, more than 70 percent of Americans believed that the UN "is our enemy" and that the UN "supported terrorists and was behind 9/11."

82 percent, say they believe the United States has found clear evidence that the United Nations was working closely with the al-Qaida terrorist organization.

"Hell, I thought we were supposed to be cheering the destruction of those terrorist-loving UN bastards" said a fascinated Gregory Till, as he watched President Bush's speech on Fox News.

Nevertheless, the Bush Administration is not taking the bombing of the UN headquarters lightly.

"The civilized world will not be intimidated," Bush said. "And these killers will not determine the future of Iraq. Only American-sanctioned killers can determine the future of Iraq"

Several unnamed sources in the Administration seem now to believe that a revisionist state seeking to parlay its momentary advantages into a world order in which it runs the show for the rest of the world, might not be the greatest idea after all.

"We'll see whether or not the United Nations will be the United Nations or the League of Nations when it comes to dealing with this man who for 11 years has thumbed his nose at resolution after resolution after resolution after resolution," Bush fondly recalled, repeating earlier remarks he made in October at a White House event for Hispanic leaders. "But if we decide the United Nations is useless and should be destroyed, we will do it ourselves. We don't need the help of Iraqi subversives foolishly clinging to the dying dreams of their despotic history."

The blast killed at least 17 people and wounded dozens, U.N. officials said. The explosion came on the heels of a US invasion of the country, the subsequent slaughter of thousands of innocent civilians and sabotage against oil pipelines in northern Iraq and an attack on a water pipeline in Baghdad that left much of the city without water.

Bush, who cut short a golf game and his prayer meetings in Waco, Texas, and returned to his ranch shortly after the attack, said he had spoken to U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan and offered to finish the job by blowing up the rest of Iraq before they had a chance to recover.

"The terrorists who struck today have again shown their contempt for our ability to destroy Iraq on our own," Bush said. "We have already shown our fear of progress and our hatred of peace. We, not they, are the enemies of the Iraqi people. We, not they, are the enemies of every nation that seeks to help the Iraqi people. So let's get that straight. We don't want any two-bit terrorist act getting in the way of our efforts."

Earlier in the day, Bush had offered an upbeat assessment about progress in Iraq, citing the "significant deconstruction effort" in that country and applauding the shooting of the Reuters cameraman fatally shot by American soldiers in Iraq on Sunday as he filmed outside a prison.

"I'm really pleased that we've eliminated another potential terrorist, another of the last remnants of that evil regime," Bush said.

The U.N. blast came as a seven-member congressional delegation was in Iraq. The lawmakers were not at the U.N. headquarters at the time and were not injured.

The delegation cut short its visit in Iraq by several hours and was due to go to the next stop in Kuwait, congressional and administration aides told CNN.

Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, a member of that delegation, told CNN by phone the terrorist attacks in Iraq "have been getting more professional, perhaps even more professional than our own troops" but, like Bush, she said the U.S. commitment to the country would not waver unless it was politically expedient to do so.

"It doesn't in any way diminish our resolve, but of course if opinion polls shift, we may have to find another rogue nation to focus on to divert attention from the mess we created in Afghanistan and in Iraq," the Texas Republican said.

How I Spent My 2003 Blackout

The folks down in Esquel, who frequently don't have or need any electricity of their own as they ski down the slopes La Hoya in battery-operated miner's helmets slurping pisco sours and chanting revolutionary's songs, have asked me to update them on the big Blackout of 2003. These folks, students mostly, who spend long, cold nights in typical Patagonian student housing drinking hierba mate and learning how to play Led Zeppelin tunes on ukeleles, don't get much news of the outside world these days and rely heavily on Desultory Turgescence's skewed and painful renditions of world events so, para mis amigos abajo, here is the lowdown and school report on How I Spent My 2003 Blackout:

The first thing to know was that I missed Manhattan's 9/11. I got stuck in DC with the crappy, low budget version of 9/11 with one lousy burning Pentagon, super hunk Donald Rumsfeld emerging from the ruins with his shirtsleeves rolled to the elbow like the new great American hero and alot of unsubstantiated rumors, like planes flying into Congress and bombs going off at the State Department which, although they sounded intriguing, never quite materialized as reality and thus kept DC far below NYC on the great terrorist disaster stories totem. I was infinitely jealous of all my friends who got to bond during all the terror, who got all the hoopla and highlights, had the cool Mayor who seized control of the situation and garnered all the sympathies of Americans everywhere, while the stupid capital of America got sloppy seconds for news coverage, once again, Manhattan hogging the spotlight.

So when the lights flickered and went dead, as I emerged from the darkness of the emergency exit stairway and shoved open the emergency doors onto the bright sunlit street, there was a vague sense of anticipatory redemption running through me. Finally, a brush with real chaos, I thought to myself. Traffic, as it always is, was at a standstill on Varick Street. Big deal. No Godzilla versus Mothra battles across the skyline. No shrieking pedestrians, sprinting down empty avenues towards the Hudson River with the wild look of catastrophe written across their panic-stricken eyes. Just the lack of traffic lights, the same endearing horn-squashing assholes who typically populate the traffic tie-ups and slightest slowdowns and alot of people milling around aimlessly like animals in those safari zoo places where they're roped off within 40 acres to roam, get regular meals and have no natural predators but still wander around looking slightly confused and out of place as though they've walked on stage five minutes before their cue and didn't know how to improvise.

When I'd covered the twenty minutes it normally takes to get home, wanting to burst into a song called "It's the WHOLE East Coast!" and spread the good news to everyone around me, the old neighborhood was in a cautiously festive mood. After all, it was just a blackout.

Here's where it got comical: Mayor Buffoonberg told everyone hey kids, it's not terrorism, it's just a blackout. The power failure appears to be an "accident", not terror oriented, he said. What a comfort, I thought, recalling how only two days before, there he stood in all his stumpy anti-smoking bloatedness lying to anyone who would listen that the cops had been "right on top of it" when those kids wandered onto the tarmac of JFK airport for an hour before walking in themselves to the airport police and to seek help in figuring out where the hell they were. On top of it? Christ, those kids practically had to assault those cops to get them to pay attention. So our dear Mayor's credibility is a little apocryphal.

Things became even more ominous when I heard through the grapevine that beloved and heroic President Bush even assured anyone naive enough to pay attention to him when he managed to mumble:

"One thing I can say for certain, this was not a terrorist attack."

That was when I started getting all sweaty, testing the water from the sink every ten minutes for radioactivity and longingly eyeing the duct tape and plastic sheeting at the foot of the windows. (By the way, the Department of Homeland Security's suggestion that we duct tape plastic sheeting over our windows doesn't do us much fucking good when it's 500 degrees outside and we need the windows open to be able to breath!)

But back to the matter of plausible excuses. First of all, he could say for certain, like 10 seconds after we lose power, that it wasn't terrorism. This from the same Idiot Collective that tells us every day that terrorists will attack us again but they just don't know when, where, how or how much. On the other hand, one could view this information with even deeper skepticism. Perhaps the reason the federal government can tell us with "certainty" that it wasn't terorrism is because THEY are the terrorists. Hmmm. Wonderful things to ponder as the room temperature in the apartment increases from a meatlocker-like 55 degrees Fahrenheit to a tropical 85 degrees in a matter of hours.

Inventory and Reflection on Modern Technology

Upon arrival to the slowly broiling apartment, some sort of long-dormant survivalist instincts began to kick in. After a prolonged inventory of the apartment contents for emergency kits, canned foods, potable liquids, flashlights, candles and lighters, I discovered there were no candles that hadn't already been burnt down to a nub, serving as a contemporaneous ashtray, but I did find a tent and mosquito netting that had gone missing somewhere in the depths of the closet several months ago, three lighters, three cans of tuna, two cans of refried beans and a variety of still-cold juices and water.

But all this was just nervous activity to prolong avoidance of the real issue at hand as the disheartingly brutal truth finally began to hit home. There is no internet. There is no television. There is no music. Quite nearly total sensory deprivation. This lead immediately to the acknowledgement that for the first time in many, many months, there was going to be something called Idle Time to deal with. No internet? No tv? No music? What the fuck are you supposed to do to keep yourself from crawling up the walls in what looks like some LSD-induced freak-out, screaming and throwing sheets of classical music around the apartment like a rabid chimpanzee who has seen Space 2001 too many times?

Ah, yes. The bucolic pleasures. Reading. Writing. Sexual release.

Then of course, there was the enticing alternative of figuring out how to survive if the whole city went mad and there was a need to defend oneself. So a new inventory was taken.

First was the typical stuff you could throw out your window at the marauding civilians attempting to attack the fortress and rip it open to grab all the goodies inside. The first thing would be the electrical shit:

a.) Because without power, you realize how utterly useless your television, computer monitor, heavy stereo equipment and assorted electrical appliances are.
b.) Because these assorted electrical appliances are oftentimes heavy and work well as a weight to drop on the heads of and kill rioting peasants below with.

Then I eyed the books. Yes, it's true that without power, the value of books grow exponentially with each day that passes without power. But beyond their practical use as entertainment, books have other uses as well. For example, the heavier tomes, the hardcovers, the encyclopedic volumes, and the dreaded coffee table books can all be used as weapons. When seige is lain upon my castle, can you imagine, for example, the damage that could be done with a hardcover copy of Infinite Jest?? What about I drop all 870 pages of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix on them?

Later, I hit upon some of the more obvious choices for weapons. The cutlery. And beyond that, ALL the silverware for that matter. If people can grind plastic cafeteria spoons into deadly shivs in prison, then certainly my elaborate collection of chopsticks and my plastic utensils, still sealed along with the salt and pepper and the little napkin inside their plastic wrapping from years of getting delivery, are going to come in handy.

The other use for books, especially the paperbacks, is that they are great for indoor trashcan fires. This is more a use in the winter months when the room needs heating than in the summer months when the indoor temperature is already high enough to roast marshmellows in, but fire itself, whatever it is created out of, can always prove to be a useful weapon.

This then brings us to the old lighter and aerosol spray can trick of making huge flames dance out like the St. Elmo's Fire scene when Jules suffers a quasi-nervous breakdown, locks herself inside her apartment in the dead of winter, opens every window and attempts to freeze herself to death and Billy saves the day, busting through her front door, shutting the windows just in time and talking Jules back from the brink with wild tales of electric flashes of light that appear in dark skies out of nowhere and uses the lighter and aerosol spray can to prove his point. This kind of fire-spewing act is sure to repel looters and gawkers.

But things got a little boring when I began measuring bookshelves for handleability. How well does it fit in an enclosed hand? How easy is it to swing like a club? How well does it burn when dipped in lighter fluid and tossed out the window onto the street? I decided that, lacking a transistor radio and a flashlight, I could at least take a peek outside to find out what the other natives were doing by then.

Outside, It's America

I headed for the corner bodega to see what sort of chaos and havoc was being wreaked on the neighborhood. The hardware store on 7th and 2nd Avenue as well as the drugstore at 5th and 2nd, had already produced conga lines of desperate, sweaty and frightened potential customers looking as though they would begin foaming at the mouth once the minimal stock of flashlights, spades and power mowers were officially sold out. The bodega on the southwest corner of 7th and 2nd was dark and filled with more obnoxious people surreptitiously shoving into lines and selfishly trying to buy up everything their greedy little paws could hold with complete disregard for their neighbors. It was then I realized for the thousandth time how the old neighborhood is slowly metastasizing into a haven of non-smoking yuppie nutritionists with cellphones surgically attached to the sides of their heads.

This reminds me: Don't believe all the bullshit you read about New Yorkers being such a placid, loving folk bleeding altruism on every street corner during times of chaos and struggle. They are human, after all. Like everyone else, they shove their way through emergency exits and subway tunnels, pushing pregnant women out of the way as survivalist corporate raiders and Wall Street cannibals grind the rest of humanity beneath their heel like a smoldering cigarette butt. It's true that in a city that seems as nasty and as cut-throat bottom line as does New York, it is surprising that they haven't killed each other off by the following morning after any remotely chaotic incident but is it really this schmaltzy bullshit about being a New Yorker that does it or is it simply being a fellow human being?

One of the things that nauseated me once power was restored and I had access to the evil New York One News channel all over again, was watching these nonchalant, self-congratulatory "sufferers" recite like a jingoistic mantra, the belief that they were New Yorkers so they had to shrug off extreme adversity, as though there was something inherent in the DNA of brushing against unhygienic commuters ten times a week in a smelly, overtaxed underground transportation system. Had to wait 30 hours in crushing rush hour traffic? No problem. Nearly asphixiated in the crush of commuters trampling you in the subway tunnels as they rushed to escape the rats and find fresh air above ground? Simple. Walked home from Manhattan to the far reaches of Rockaway Beach on the bloody, ragged remains of what used to be the soles of your feet? Big deal! "Oh, nothing but kryptonite phases me baby, I'm a New Yorker!"

The funny thing is, instead of the pseudo-refined savages they normally burlesque, during times of chaos, New Yorkers revert to acting like Suburban Americans. They hold BBQs in the street, play music, sing, greet and treat their neighbors like fellow human beings instead of some sort of toxic subterranean human replicants. For awhile, they were almost normal.

We really should have more ruinous emergencies and breakdowns like this if it means that people get to walk down the middle of avenues like cool human beings again. For awhile, as I wandered down Second Avenue towards Houston Street, I hallucinated vast expanses of grasslands where once there was asphalt and honking horns. The surrounding neighborhoods and streets had almost begun to metamorphasize into one brobdingnagian Deadhead village of non-looting catastrophe joyriders. Where normally there were taxis and delivery trucks and teeming masses of traffic, there were now slack-key guitars and Hari Krishna finger cymbals being played, mothers dancing with their babies, meat roasting on impromptu street barbeques, the occasional emergency response vehicle and the slowly slackening stream of Downtown office workers schlepping it back to their apartments on the Upper East Side and Spanish Harlem.

Oddly enough, even though I don't smoke "tobacco" anymore, one of the first things that crossed my mind as I wandered around was that at least all those tortured smokers were finally going to get some relief. After all, with the power out everywhere and the cops and designated enforcement employees or whomever it is writing tickets to enforce Mayor Buffoonberg's criminally inappropriate no-smoking regulations, were going to have more important things on their minds. Maybe the city wouldn't go hellhound mad with looting but you can be sure that in the middle of a power outage and the unairconditioned indoor bars steaming up like saunas, no one was going to worrry about a little second-hand smoke gushing down into their lungs and instantly killing them.

Boredom Zenith, Part Deux

While the block parties blared on, I sat sweltering inside the apartment listlessly thumbing through a pamphlet on alchohol-induced blackouts and waiting for Sigrid to make it back from Roosevelt Island. Having already assessed the chaos of rush hour traffic, I figured there was no way she was going to make it home by car before nightfall. Little did I know that because the electric pumps at gas stations were useless, she couldn't tank up to get across the bedlam of the 59th Street Bridge. While I began developing a mild carpal tunnel syndrome from flicking on my lighter so many times to touch to the rim of the bong's bowl and further, coughing up spasms of high-grade weed and nearly passing out from a lack of oxygen, Sigrid had grabbed her bike with the flat front tire and rode it all the way back to the apartment.

When she arrived, simultaneously gasping for air, sweating, begging for a cold beer and dying of hunger, I had worked myself into such a stupor, I could barely speak. Something like those patients in the Turkish prison in Midnight Express only I wasn't drooling yet. A flicker of recognition passed vaguely into my slowly focusing eyes.

"We should have no dialogue," she murmured. "Just beer and cigarettes and food, in that order."

So we headed back out into the black lung streets of coal mine Manhattan to join in the fun. Out past First Avenue on 5th St. there is a series of bars and clubs that melded together in an outdoor party of suddenly-brazen automotons breaking beer bottles on the pavement, overturning lawn furniture and making weird shrieking noises when tenants above dropped stink bombs down on them to break up the noise and the party. The only thing missing really, were the Mardis Gras beads and the hurricane glasses.

Without flashlights, it was difficult to see our path by the glowing embers of cigarettes. Everywhere you stepped was the sound of crushed glass beneath your feet. We circled the block, coming down Avenue B towards Tompkins Square Park where you could see the trashcan fires burning from a block and a half away. The worst part, the part that almost drove us in prematurely, was not the threat of looting or wilding or the fires or the randomly dropped bottles, but the rats. Especially in Tompkins Square Park where you could almost hear them and their high-pitched squealing on the periphery, waiting to move in and take little nibbles off of everyone's toes. Ironically enough, just that afternoon, Mayor Buffoonberg had planned to unveil and publicize a new get tough, "War on Rats" policy but amid the excitement of the blackout of course, this absurd new effort was lost. He can end smoking and preach his ill-suited morality to all the world in New York City but the rats are another matter altogether. The rats, like the pigeons, will be here long after the last light has been turned on. The rats, it seems, are mirrors of ourselves in New York City; a revelatory psychology of desperate, overpopulated, hungry, looking for action. What we really needed, in this Heideggerian counteraction against the mechanistic tendancies of the modern world, was some fresh rat meat to grill ourselves some burgers with.

To Brooklyn Bridge
Hart Crane

How many dawns, chill from his rippling rest
The seagull's wings shall dip and pivot him,
Shedding white rings of tumult, building high
Over the chained bay waters Liberty--

Then, with inviolate curve, forsake our eyes
As apparitional as sails that cross
Some page of figures to be filed away;
--Till elevators drop us from our day . . .

I think of cinemas, panoramic sleights
With multitudes bent toward some flashing scene
Never disclosed, but hastened to again,
Foretold to other eyes on the same screen;

And Thee, across the harbor, silver-paced
As though the sun took step of thee, yet left
Some motion ever unspent in thy stride,--
Implicitly thy freedom staying thee!

Out of some subway scuttle, cell or loft
A bedlamite speeds to thy parapets,
Tilting there momently, shrill shirt ballooning,
A jest falls from the speechless caravan.

Down Wall, from girder into street noon leaks,
A rip-tooth of the sky's acetylene;
All afternoon the cloud-flown derricks turn . . .
Thy cables breathe the North Atlantic still.

And obscure as that heaven of the Jews,
Thy guerdon . . . Accolade thou dost bestow
Of anonymity time cannot raise:
Vibrant reprieve and pardon thou dost show.

O harp and altar, of the fury fused,
(How could mere toil align thy choiring strings!)
Terrific threshold of the prophet's pledge,
Prayer of pariah, and the lover's cry,--

Again the traffic lights that skim thy swift
Unfractioned idiom, immaculate sigh of stars,
Beading thy path--condense eternity:
And we have seen night lifted in thine arms.

Under thy shadow by the piers I waited;
Only in darkness is thy shadow clear.
The City's fiery parcels all undone,
Already snow submerges an iron year . . .

O Sleepless as the river under thee,
Vaulting the sea, the prairies' dreaming sod,
Unto us lowliest sometime sweep, descend
And of the curveship lend a myth to God.

It didn't do much good for us while we were without power for the internet or television, but here it is, late or not: CNN's Iraqis' top 10 tips for enduring blackout in the heat:

10. Sleep on the roof

Without power -- and hence without air conditioning -- Iraqis have taken to climbing up stairs in the hot nights. Some install metal bed frames on rooftops, while others simply stretch out on thin mattresses. "We sleep on the roof," said Hadia Zeydan Khalaf, 38, wearing a black head-to-toe abaya in the hot sun. "It's cooler there."

9. Sit in the shade

Many Iraqis go outside when the power's off. "We sit in the shade," said George Ruweid, 27, playing cards with friends on the sidewalk. Of the U.S.
blackout, he said: "I hope it lasts for 20 years. Let them feel our suffering."

8. Head for the water

"We go to the river, just like in the old days," said Saleh Moayet, 53. Several people said they had seen American beaches on television, and suggested
they might be a good place to sit out the blackout. "They have so many beautiful beaches," said Hamid Khelil, 44. "They should go where it isn't so hot."

7. Shower frequently

"I take showers all day," said Raed Ali, 33. "Before I go up to the roof to sleep, I take a shower and I'm cooler."

6. Buy blocks of ice

When refrigerators shut down, there's no better way to keep food cool. Mohammed Abdul Zahara, 24, sells about 20 a day from a roadside table. "When it's hot people buy a lot of ice," he said.

5. Check for bitter-enders

"They should go to the power stations and see what the problem is," suggested Ahmed Abdul Hussein, 21. "Maybe there are followers of Saddam Hussein who are sabotaging their power stations. That's what happens here."

4. Get a generator

Abbas Abdul al-Amir, 53, has one of a long row of shops selling generators in Baghdad's Karadah shopping street. When the power goes out, sales go up. "I sell about 30 generators a day," he said. "When the shutdown lasts I can sell even more."

3. Call in the Iraqis

Some suggested the Americans ask the Iraqis how to get the power going again. "Let them take experts from Iraq," said Alaa Hussein, 32, waiting in a long line for gas because there was no electricity for the pumps. "Our experts have a lot of experience in these matters."

2. Use foul language

"When the power goes out, I curse everybody," said Emad Helawi, a 63-year-old accountant. "I curse God. I curse Saddam Hussein. And I curse the Americans."

And No. 1: Take to the streets

The most frequent suggestion among Iraqis for Americans suffering without power was protest. Some said demonstrations can be effective in persuading
authorities to turn on the switch. "We held protests. After that we had fewer blackouts," Ahmed Abdul Hussein said without even a hint of sarcasm. "I'd suggest Americans go out and demonstrate."

BLACKOUT

"Let's wait for the blackout
The lights are too bright
Let's wait for the blackout
Wait for the night"

Goo Goo Dolls -- Wait For The Blackout

Desultory Turgescence Top Fifteen List of Best Things About Being In 2003 NYC Blackout

15. Leaving work early on Thursday because all the computers and the lights went out.
14. Not being trapped in the subway and having to walk through the dark tunnels with rats running all over my feet.
13. Living in Manhattan and not living in Brooklyn or in Queens or anywhere else where you had to schlep across a bridge in the intense heat and humidity of the late afternoon with thousands of other people to get home.
12. Hitting the bodegas before they ran out of batteries, flashlights and cold beer.
11. Not being pregnant and having a blackout baby.
10. Thursday night neighborhood block parties and huge bonfires up the street in Tompkins Square Park.
9. Being able to look up at the sky and actually see stars and constellations not drowned out by the artificial lights of Manhattan.
8. Not having to listen to idiots mindlessly chattering away on their cellphones which were useless during blackout.
7. No "Fair And Balanced" news coverage to avoid since there were no televisions available.
6. Using the old "freezer is defrosting" excuse to wolf down gallons of melting ice cream.
5. Unexpected three day weekend discovered when power was still out Friday morning.
4. Watching people line up at pay phones like obedient automotons to check in with their jobs.
3. Impromptu street barbeques as people attempted to cook meats before they rotted.
2. Meeting/talking to all my neighbors for the first time.
1. Sweet melody of air conditioning unit clicking back on as lights flickered on and massive cheering in the streets as power finally returned at 9:03 PM.

All in all, a good time, a fun experience and one which lasted just about as long as would be pleasant without computer/internet fix and sweltering in heat and humidity without air conditioning trying to make oneself feel better by imaging that people lived like this every day in the 1930s.

*****

But, having read the papers for accounts of what was going on, two notices jumped out at me:

The first one was the speed with which normally incompetent and inaccurate government officials, like the Mayor of New York City and The President of the United States, could reassure everyone that the blackout was not the result of a terrorist attack. Hmmmm. And your basing this unsubstantiated opinion on......? Wishful thinking? 911, 4:11 blackout?

And of course, the wonderfully inept President Bush parroting the lines of one of bureaucrat lackies when he suddenly "discovered":

"I think this is an indication of the fact that we need to modernize the electricity grid ... make the electricity system have the redundancy necessary so that if there is an outage, like there has been throughout our history, that it doesn't affect as many people as it did in the past."

He's a genius. No wonder he's the ruler of the world.

Fortunately, buzzflash is quick to point out that:

In June of 2001, Bush opposed and the congressional GOP voted down legislation to provide $350 million worth of loans to modernize the nation's power grid because of known weaknesses in reliability and capacity. Supporters of the amendment pointed to studies by the Energy Department showing that the grid was in desperate need of upgrades as proof that their legislation sponsored by U.S. Rep. Sam Farr (D-CA) should pass.

Unfortunately, the Bush Administration lobbied against it and the Republicans voted it down three separate times: First, on a straight party line in the U.S. House Appropriations Committee, then on a straight party line the U.S. House Rules Committee, and finally on a party line on the floor of the full House [Roll Call Vote #169, 6/20/01].

As AP reported at the time, the amendment would have amendments that would have doubled the bill's money for energy assistance for the poor to $600 "provided $350 million to support loans to improve the capacity of transmission grids. 'It's pure demagoguery,' House Majority Whip Tom DeLay, R-Texas, said in a brief interview regarding the Democratic amendments. 'If Democrats had an energy policy, they'd have had one in the last eight years. They have no credibility on this issue whatsoever. They are responsible for the energy crunch more than anybody I know.' Spotlighting the high political stakes, House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt, D-Mo., took the unusual step of issuing a written statement about the committee's energy votes. He said President Bush and Republicans are 'committed to helping the Big Energy special interests' and accused them of obstruction." [AP, 6/14/01].

No terrorists here. Just inept government officials.

In any case,

We've Got Power!

Undercover Genius: Fake Terrorists Buy Fake Missiles And Launch Hysterical Media Spin

There's an old expression in the Bush Administration that if you can't find any terrorists to fight the war on terrorism against then make some up. Yesterday, a British arms dealer, Hemant Lakhani, was arrested yesterday in Newark, N.J., on charges that he tried to sell a Russian-made, surface-to-air missile to an American undercover agent posing as an operative for al-Qaida, law enforcement officials said.

The Russians, alerted by the U.S. authorities, supplied the arms trader with a fake missile, built by American and Russian agents to appear to be a real one, which he tried to sell to American agents posing as terrorists. No real terrorists were ever connected to the plot.

The Bush administration has insisted that it is moving aggressively to respond to the threat of terrorism, but it has refused to support legislation now in Congress that would require the government to spend billions of dollars to outfit thousands of passenger planes in the United States with the antimissile technology now used on military planes.

Vice President Dick Cheney reiterated the Bush administration's stance against terrorism on Tuesday, saying the United States is prepared to take aggressive action to protect its citizens, even if they have to use fake terrorists and fake missiles instead of real ones.

"We've come to realize that if we are to protect the American people against FBI agents posing as determined enemies, we cannot always rely on the old strategies that were good enough during the Cold War," the vice president said. "It isn't easy keeping Americans terrified enough to ignore the pathetic disaster of an economy we oversee and to ignore how we slaughter innocent civilians in Iraq to "save" them. In order to keep Americans on the edge, and because frankly, the elevated alert status was getting too costly for the states we've bankrupted, we decided it would be just as effective to make up a story about terrorism so everyone can go back to being scared and ignoring the real issues around them. After all, the real threat to the United States and its people as well as our friends and allies, is the truth," he said.

Cheney, in a rare public sighting outside of his nornally "undisclosed" location, told a crowd of more than 200 supporters that the defining moment for himself, President Bush and the rest of the administration was Sept. 11, 2001. He said it was a day none of them will forget because "it gave us a great basis for making up this ridiculously vague "war on terrorism" that allows us to pretty much do whatever we want in the name of fighting terrorism."

Cheney acknowledged that the administration's strategy in the war on terrorism has been challenged by those who believe the country should not engage in military action unless attacked first. He argued that those who do not agree with the administration's strategy are either terrorists or terrorist supporters and should be either imprisoned or killed, whichever is easier.

"And make no mistake, this president is prepared to give the appearance of protecting us against further attacks even if that means making it all up with fake terrorists and fake missiles," Cheney told the cheering crowd.

In a traditional case of "do as I say, not as I do," federal prosecutors and FBI officials characterized the Lakhani case as an "important" victory in the war against terrorism, stressing that Lakhani had no qualms about dealing with terrorists. Although the United States has routinely sold real weapons of mass destruction to real countries that sponsor terrorism, an individual doing the same thing on the open market to fake terrorists with fake missiles apparently is the wrong thing.

So, to review, for those of you terrified by big headlines and idiot media coverage that plays to it because FEAR sells:

1. The "terrorists" weren't really terrorists, they were federal agents who were "posing" as al Qaeda operatives.

2. These dangerous missiles that were smuggled into the US were actually inert, SA-18s. Duds. Useless missiles.

3. The arrested man was NOT connected to a known terrorist group, but was thought to be more of an arms dealer or smuggler.

4. While the Bush Administration continues to refuse to spend money to outfit airliners with the sort of antimissile technology needed to protect civilian airlines from real terrorist attacks, they ARE willing to spend all the time and effort and resources necessary to conduct an 18-month long "sting" operation that nets a weapons dealer, NO terrorists and NO missiles but does allow the Administration to project the illusion, through the magic of a lapdog media, that they are actually doing something to protect its civilian airliners.

5. In the absence of capturing "real" terrorists who are really plotting acts of terrorism against the United States, the Bush Administration is happy to support creating fake news of fake terrorists in hypothetical situations so it appears they are actually going about their war on terrorism with some degree of competence. This fake news, projected and analysed via the media then becomes big headlines that the average American reads and then thinks: "Ooooooh. Terrorists were going to kill us all. Good thing the Bush Administration is here to protect us!"

Good thing indeed. As U.S. Attorney Christopher Christie summarized, "the terrorists have lost an ally," proving once again that a hollow victory is better than no victory at all.

So stay tuned, at this rate, the FBI will have arrested every fake terrorist in America in no time.

Bush Urges Slaughter of "Terrorist" Trees

"I cut down trees, I skip and jump,
I like to press wild flowers.
I put on women's clothing,
And hang around in bars"

Monty Python: The Lumberjack Song

From Marine One, Bush surveyed the devastation left by wildfires that have scorched more than 100,000 acres around this mountaintop community in the last two summers and shook his head with disgust.

From a mountainside where visitors once beheld dense stands of conifers, President Bush on Monday expressed hope that the scene of wildfire devastation would inspire the nation to adopt his Kill The Trees initiative, otherwise known to the public as the Healthy Ha-Ha Forests Initiative Wink-Wink

"We need to "thin" our forests in America," he said to applause from more than 100 rabid Christians and logging company representatives with chainsaws in their hands. Hearing chants of "USA! USA!" from the forestry officials and lumberjacks, Bush took hold of a bullhorn, climbed to the top of a small pile of burned trees, and put his arm around a forest ranger. While the other members of the crowd gathered around complaining that they couldn't hear the magical President's words, Bush announced:

"I can't talk any louder. I want you all to know that America today -- that America today is on bended knee in prayer for the destruction of all the trees that are burning up and causing alot of unnecessary damage and alot of fire fighting expenses. This nation stands with all the good people of America who hate and despise terrorists and trees as much as I do." There were additional shouts from bystanders and complaints from some of the trees that they still couldn't hear the President, who grabbed the bullhorn again:

"I can hear you. I can hear you. The rest of the world hears you. And the trees that burned these forests down will hear all of us soon!" As the crowd chanted: "U.S.A.! U.S.A.!," Bush continued: "Trees are the work of the devil! Just look at all the forest fires they cause! Americans are tired of having to put out all these fires of evil! Who needs trees! Destroy the evil forests!" he called out with a bullhorn like a male cheerleader.

"Kill them all!" the crowd shouted with vigor, starting up their chainsaws. "Cut down all the evil trees!" the chanted.

Bush said the Healthy Forests Initiative would help prevent destruction by reducing legal obstacles to logging projects in fire-threatened areas

Critics say the initiative will make it too easy for logging companies to cut down trees in national forests and will limit the public's input in forest management decisions. President Bush thinks that's a bunch of poppycock.

"Forest-thinning projects make a significant difference about whether or not wildfires will destroy a lot of property," Bush said. "Jesus told me there aren't any trees in heaven so what do we need them here in America for? We don't have many trees left in Texas and look how good Texas is doing!"

"We saw the devastation, we saw the effects of a fire run wild, not only on hillsides, but also in communities, in burned building, lives turned upside down because of the destruction of fire," Bush said. "Trees, in many ways, because of the destruction they cause, are like terrorists. They could start forest fires so we'd better cut down all the trees to protect America just like we cut down American privacy rights so terrorists can't hurt us and Jesus saves us all."

The Forest Service and Interior Department estimate 190 million acres are at risk for catastrophic fire.

The invited guests, from loggers to new homes builders to public officials to private homeowners, have a stake in preventing forest fires like the "Aspen" conflagration that roamed virtually at will for a month across more than 130 square miles of the Santa Catalina Mountains north of Tucson.

For many years, Bush said, well-meaning federal policymakers actually worked against the health of forests by opposing aggressive removal of small-diameter trees and other forest fuels.

"The decades of neglect, the decades of failed policy have meant that our forest fires are incredibly hot, incredibly catastrophic,"Bush said. "It's going to take alot of chainsaws and alot of killing to solve the problem, and we better get after it now with good, sound forest-killing practice."

He repeatedly referred to the plan as "common sense."

Not only common sense, but THE BIBLE says it's the right thing to do. Deuteronomy 20:19-20 says:

"However, you may cut down trees that you know are not fruit trees and use them to build siege works until the city at war with you falls."

See? These terrorist trees causing forest fires are not fruit trees and we can use the trees that everyone cuts down to fight terrorism.

US Attorney General John Ashcroft agrees. "The Department of Justice has a solemn obligation to ensure that terrorists, pretending to be forests, are prosecuted to the fullest extent of the remaining shreds of the Constitution. Trees should be destroyed as quickly as possible to prevent any possibility of terrorist infilteration or further acts of terrorist forest fires,” Ashcroft wrote in the memo issued July 28. "Further, the trees that have been killed can be used to build a giant tree wall that will keep all the terrorists out of God's America"

As the president flew by helicopter to the mountaintop, 250 environmentalists - among them state Rep. Phil Lopes, D-Tucson, several firefighters and Summerhaven residents - protested at the base of the mountain. They were sprayed with what appeared to be a liquid form of anthrax while President Bush laughed and gave them all the finger.

And two irrelevant Democratic presidential candidates weighed in from the campaign trail, whining and complaining about the plan that left-wing, terrorist-loving liberal critics claim puts too few controls on the logging industry. Senators Joe Lieberman and John Kerry, both of whom will do and say anything if they think it will help their election chances, minced no words.

Calling Bush's plan "an excuse for a timber industry giveaway," Lieberman, of Connecticut, said in a statement, "Unlike our first president, George Bush just can't come clean about his plan to cut down trees."

Kerry, of Massachusetts, said he agrees that thinning must be done near developed areas, but Bush's plan allows logging of federal forests hundreds of miles from communities.

Back on the mountain, the U.S. Forest Service's Larry Humphrey, incident commander for the "Aspen" fire, said, "You've got to thin the entire forest. Jesus told the President it was time to kill the trees. A one-mile buffer is not going to do it."

As Bush greeted well-wishers on the mountain, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said he believes the Senate will surmount two stumbling blocks and pass a bill along the lines of the one approved by the House.

The first question involves the diameter of the trees that can be harvested. Commercial loggers have little interest in clearing small growth unless they also can take large trees.

Legal constraints are the other issue, McCain said.

The Senate is trying to "work out a reasonable process where they (the public) get their day in court but it doesn't turn out to be three or four years in court."

Kerry complained that Bush's claims that environmental concerns delay logging projects are not true.

The president spent about three hours in southern Arizona before flying to Denver for a Republican fund-raiser.

He traveled from Tucson by helicopter to address and mingle with the gathering of Forest Service and law-enforcement personnel, firefighters, American Red Cross workers and property owners in the village of Summerhaven at the 8,000-foot elevation.

BlahBlahBlah

"Violent peace
blah blah blah
buy it right now
blah blah blah
we are the world
we are so huge
blah blah blah
johnny can't read
blah blah blah
I' can't see
blah blah blah
tuna on white
guns all night
blah blah blah"

--Iggy Pop

With a political landscape almost as chaotic as California, the Liberian leader, President Charles G. Taylor has finally stepped down to make way for Moses Blah.

President Blah. How perfect. If only we could give him political asylum to California and let him run for governor. The economy is at least as bad although to date, the rebel forces in California are not as heavily armed.

President Blah was one of the original band of rebels with Taylor who attacked Liberia from Ivory Coast in 1989 and has a reputation as a tough guerilla commander. The new President Blah said he would invite the rebels to his house after taking office and was "100 percent sure" he could bring peace. However, West African officials believe President Blah will lead Liberia for only a short period before warring factions and squabbling politicians agree on a neutral interim leader.

And just so you know him when you see him on the street, according to his CNN profile, Blah drives his own car and likes to dress in either simple safari suits or flowing African robes. As vice-president, he ditched his general's uniform in favour of African robes and drove himself around in a jeep rather than travelling in motorcades

He's had a rough road behind him. At the beginning of June he was under arrest accused of attempting to mount a coup against President Charles Tayor. Now, in just over two months later he is to succeed him. It's as though he entered and just won American Idol. Still, not everyone is convinced:

Sekou Fofana, a senior member of Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy, the group who have made repeated assaults on the capital, was reported to have said that "[They] are the same. If Blah takes over, we will fight back".

This is the kind of madness you expect from rebel leaders. How can they be the same? President Charles G. Taylor Taylor said he was fulfilling an old promise that: ''If I were the problem, which I know you know I'm not, I would step aside ... I would become the sacrificial lamb, I would become the whipping boy that you should live.''

If anything, he could be confused with US President Zachary Taylor, who said on his deathbed that "I have always done my duty. I am ready to die. My only regret is for the friends I leave behind me."

In February 1847, U.S. General Zachary Taylor fought Santa Anna--who was again president--in Mexico, at the Battle of Buena Vista near Saltillo. Both sides claimed victory. Taylor became a national hero in the United States and was elected president the next year.

Taylor launched Liberia's 14 years of near-constant conflict with a 1989-96 insurgency. International aid agencies estimate virtually all of Liberia's roughly 3 million people have been chased from their home by war, at one time or another. He was elected president in 1997 on threats of plunging the country into renewed bloodshed. His ragtag forces, paid by looting, are accused by rights groups and Liberia's people of routine raping, robbing, torture, forced labor and summary killings.

Liberian President Taylor was indicted by U.N.-backed court for war crimes in neighboring Sierra Leone, where he allegedly supported a rebel movement notorious for hacking off the limbs of civilians.

US President Zachary Taylor spent his Fourth of July in 1850 eating cherries and milk at a ceremony at the Washington Monument. He got sick from the heat and died five days later, the second president to die in office.

Accusing the United States of arming Liberia's rebels, Liberian President Taylor said: ''They can call off their dogs now, and we can have peace.''

US President Taylor, in his 1849 inauguration speech, noted:

"In all disputes between conflicting governments it is our interest not less than our duty to remain strictly neutral, while our geographical position, the genius of our institutions and our people, the advancing spirit of civilization, and, above all, the dictates of religion direct us to the cultivation of peaceful and friendly relations with all other powers. It is to be hoped that no international question can now arise which a government confident in its own strength and resolved to protect its own just rights may not settle by wise negotiation; and it eminently becomes a government like our own, founded on the morality and intelligence of its citizens and upheld by their affections, to exhaust every resort of honorable diplomacy before appealing to arms."

Liberian President Samuel Taylor, dropping out of office, indicated that he "must stop fighting now. I do not stop out of fear, I do not stop out of fright. I stop out of love for you my people.''

Lest we forget another important Taylor in American history, Sheriff Andy Taylor, not noted as a man who would stop fighting out of fear or love, once noted that:

"When a man carries a gun all the time, the respect he thinks he's getting might really be fear. So I don't carry a gun because I don't want the people of Mayberry to fear a gun. I'd rather they respect me."

So, critics aside, Liberians should realize:

President Blah is the answer.

President Blah.

If he's lucky, maybe someday he can be the President of the new United States of Whatever.

Sunday At The Movies

British troops in riot gear fought
to restore calm
in the southern Iraqi city of Basra
yesterday as dire shortages
of fuel and power sparked disturbances.

A man arrested for armed robbery
and theft has had charges
against him dropped after
medical experts
concluded that his behaviour could have been altered
by the severe withdrawal symptoms
he was experiencing
from the antidepressant Seroxat.

'I want them to bring our troops home. I am appalled at Bush's policies. He has got us into a terrible mess!"

Susan Schuman is angry. Her GI son is serving in the Iraqi town of Samarra, at the heart of the 'Sunni triangle', where American troops are killed with grim regularity. Breaking the traditional silence of military families during time of war, Schuman knows what she wants - and who she blames for the danger to her son, Justin.

*****

The Clinton Legacy and America demonstrates the genesis of the rabid schism between Democrats and Republicans, Liberals and Neo-Con bobbysoxers.

More consequentially, the New York Times had jumped in with a front-page story implying a sleazy though barely penetrable real-estate partnership between the governor and a fast-talking investor whose building society, founded years later (a fact that the headline obscured), was subject to state regulation.

Whitewater allegations, implications and offshoots cascaded through the respectable news, promoted by Clinton-hating Republicans in Congress and the special prosecutor’s office. No spin-off charge was too petty – “Travelgate”, “Filegate” – to be dubbed an auxiliary case of White House malfeasance.

When the relevant federal agency cleared the Clintons in 1995, major news organisations (including the New York Times) could barely be troubled to notice. It didn’t seem to matter that, after years of grand juries and headlines, no one was ever convicted of any charge stemming from the Clintons’ failed investment in Ozark real estate. As Sidney Blumenthal writes without exaggeration, “never before had a sitting president been so assiduously investigated about a matter that had occurred before his election.”

By the second half of Clinton’s first term from 1992-96, the incoming Republican speaker, Newt Gingrich, was calling Clinton “the enemy of normal Americans” and forcing the government to a standstill. Slash-and-burn criminalisation was all the rage on talk radio and in the bought-and-paid-for right-wing press. Establishment pundits relayed such charges with glee while prettying them up as “the character issue.”

For the scorched-earth right, Bill Clinton was, if not the literal Antichrist, a close approximation: the perjurious, adulterous doper Slick Willie, admitted draft dodger and reputedly serial womaniser who had opposed the Vietnam war, visited Moscow, and married a card-carrying feminist who only belatedly took his name and was the first professional woman to take up First Ladyship in the White House. Clinton was, in their eyes, the 1960s incarnate, and worse: he won elections (five out of seven in Arkansas, including his last four in a row). He promised, now, to baste together the left and centre of the Democratic Party.

The hard right viewed such successes as infringements upon their God-given prerogatives. They did not mourn, they organised. The story of how they succeeded is the shank of recent American political history.

Also of note, the Imprint interview with Michael Walzer on The United States in the World – Just Wars and Just Societies:

It is hard work trying to sustain an oppositionist politics in the US today – especially when part of what I feel I have to oppose is the idiocy of many of my fellow oppositionists: knee-jerk anti-Americanism, old left dogmatism, and the rejection of any fellowship larger than the sect of the politically correct and the morally pure. I live on the left, but quarrel with some of my neighbours, and in the aftermath of 9/11 the quarrels have gotten more intense. But I would resist the idea that I am 'working' on these quarrels. They are just occasionally necessary engagements.

An exerpt of Philosophy in a Time of Terror: Dialogues with Jürgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida.

Habermas remarks:

If the September 11 terror attack is supposed to constitute a caesura in world history, as many think, then it must be able to stand comparison to other events of world historical impact. For that matter, the comparison is not to be drawn with Pearl Harbor but rather with the aftermath of August 1914. The outbreak of World War I signaled the end of a peaceful and, in retrospect, somewhat unsuspecting era, unleashing an age of warfare, totalitarian oppression, mechanistic barbarism and bureaucratic mass murder

Derrida defines:

"A critical reading of Schmitt, for example, would thus prove very useful. On the one hand, so as to follow Schmitt as far as possible in distinguishing classical war (a direct and declared confrontation between two enemy states, according to the long tradition of European law) from "civil war" and "partisan war" (in its modern forms, even though it appears, Schmitt acknowledges, as early as the beginning of the nineteenth century). But, on the other hand, we would also have to recognize, against Schmitt, that the violence that has now been unleashed is not the result of "war" (the expression "war on terrorism" thus being one of the most confused, and we must analyze this confusion and the interests such an abuse of rhetoric actually serve). Bush speaks of "war," but he is in fact incapable of identifying the enemy against whom he declares that he has declared war. It is said over and over that neither the civilian population of Afghanistan nor its armies are the enemies of the United States. Assuming that "bin Laden" is here the sovereign decision-maker, everyone knows that he is not Afghan, that he has been disavowed by his own country (by every "country" and state, in fact, almost without exception), that his training owes much to the United States and that, of course, he is not alone. The states that help him indirectly do not do so as states. No state as such supports him publicly. As for states that "harbor" terrorist networks, it is difficult to identify them as such. The United States and Europe, London and Berlin, are also sanctuaries, places of training or formation and information for all the "terrorists" of the world. No geography, no "territorial" determination, is thus pertinent any longer for locating the seat of these new technologies of transmission or aggression. To say it all too quickly and in passing, to amplify and clarify just a bit what I said earlier about an absolute threat whose origin is anonymous and not related to any state, such "terrorist" attacks already no longer need planes, bombs, or kamikazes: it is enough to infiltrate a strategically important computer system and introduce a virus or some other disruptive element to paralyze the economic, military, and political resources of an entire country or continent. And this can be attempted from just about anywhere on earth, at very little expense and with minimal means. The relationship between earth, terra territory, and terror has changed, and it is necessary to know that this is because of knowledge, that is, because of technoscience. It is technoscience that blurs the distinction between war and terrorism. In this regard, when compared to the possibilities for destruction and chaotic disorder that are in reserve, for the future, in the computerized networks of the world, "September 11" is still part of the archaic theater of violence aimed at striking the imagination. One will be able to do even worse tomorrow, invisibly, in silence, more quickly and without any bloodshed, by attacking the computer and informational networks on which the entire life (social, economic, military, and so on) of a "great nation," of the greatest power on earth, depends. One day it might be said: "September 11"—those were the ("good") old days of the last war. Things were still of the order of the gigantic: visible and enormous! What size, what height! There has been worse since. Nanotechnologies of all sorts are so much more powerful and invisible, uncontrollable, capable of creeping in everywhere. They are the micrological rivals of microbes and bacteria. Yet our unconscious is already aware of this; it already knows it, and that's what's scary."

The Washington Post runs a story delineating the deception of the nuclear threat in the pre-Invasion artillery of White House rhetoric:

"The escalation of nuclear rhetoric a year ago, including the introduction of the term "mushroom cloud" into the debate, coincided with the formation of a White House Iraq Group, or WHIG, a task force assigned to "educate the public" about the threat from Hussein, as a participant put it.

Two senior policymakers, who supported the war, said in unauthorized interviews that the administration greatly overstated Iraq's near-term nuclear potential.

"I never cared about the 'imminent threat,' " said one of the policymakers, with directly relevant responsibilities. "The threat was there in [Hussein's] presence in office. To me, just knowing what it takes to have a nuclear weapons program, he needed a lot of equipment. You can stare at the yellowcake [uranium ore] all you want. You need to convert it to gas and enrich it. That does not constitute an imminent threat, and the people who were saying that, I think, did not fully appreciate the difficulties and effort involved in producing the nuclear material and the physics package."

Not to mention the hallucinations of grandeur of Dick Cheney and his Magic Mushroom Clouds:

"The possibility of a nuclear-armed Iraq loomed large in the Bush administration's efforts to convince the American public of the need for a preemptive strike. Beginning last August, Cheney portrayed Hussein's nuclear ambitions as a "mortal threat" to the United States. In the fall and winter, Rice, then Bush, marshaled the dreaded image of a "mushroom cloud."

California Recall Voter's Guide

"In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went into the neon fruit supermarket, dreaming of your enumerations!" Allen Ginsberg from
A Supermarket In California

With the deadline for getting on the ballot for the race to be Governor of California's set for this Saturday, the candidates are crawling out of the woodwork like woodworms and termites, one absurdist caricature of democracy after another. This might lead one to wonder "Gee, How Can I run for Governor of California too?"

Well, the requirements are simple, as you would expect considering the calibre of human beings who have already announced their candidacy:

1. You must be at least 18 years of age.
2. You must be a U.S. citizen and be registered to vote in California.
3. You must submit 65 nominating signatures from registered voters of your own party.
4. You also must pay a $3,500 filing fee, or submit 10,000 signatures from voters of any party in lieu of the filing fee.
5. You must file by August 9, 2003.

Geez. Fun AND simple. No wonder there are already 123 candidates jumping for the chance to be the leader of the executive branch of California's government, the Commander in Chief of the state's militia, serve as the liaison between California's state government and the federal government, supervise all executive and ministerial officers, and promote California trade with foreign nations.

While 123 candidates are far too many to list individually, here is your guide to some of Desultory Turgescence's favorite candidates:


1. The Terminator: When he heard the news, James Taranto, editor of the Opinion Journal, a sectarian rag drowning in a fetid pool of its own delusional right-wing demagoguery, could barely contain his erection at the thought of Ahnold making it as Governor of California. Taranto wasn't satisfied with gushing like an infatuated schoolgirl about the possibility. He needed to go further, suggesting the Constitution should be amended to allow foreign-born citizens to serve as president so the Terminator can follow Dubya's second term in 2008.

"Just imagine," Taranto slobbered, "President Schwarzenegger standing astride the world stage, towering over the puny likes of Jacques Chirac and Gerhard Schroeder. Those guys would start to long for the good old days of George W. Bush."

Hell, if being James Taranto's personal intimidator or America's house ruffian, is the criteria for being President of the United States, why don't they just name Mr. T the next President? He's just as good an actor as Schwartzenegger and Gary Coleman. He was twice named America's Toughest Bouncer. He was a bodyguard for former three-time heavyweight champion 'Muhammed Ali', and he beat T-cell lymphoma cancer in 2001.

2. Jack Grisham: Frontman for the band TSOL. All you need to know about Jack Grisham as a candidate for political office can be found in the lyrics of his uniquely optimistic perspective on politics:

Abolish Government/Silent Majority

Abolish government
There's nothing to it
Forget about God
He's no innocent
We live by a system
Of perfect goals
People vs. people who are bored and old

Life must rest on the man who represents

Looking for nothing in this
Campus with just friends
President the name
President the label
The highest man on the government table

Hey, how come he's not running for President?

3. Ariana Huffington: Ariana once wrote How To Overthrow The Government. As a reformed Republican, Ariana is the only candidate to have overthrown herself, jumping from Republican idealogue to self-righteous liberal in about the same amount of time it took her former husband, Michael Huffington, to declare himself a homosexual.

4. Lt. Governor Cruz Bustamante: Here's a unique angle: He Makes Everyone Count. He doesn't say how high he wants them to count but he does make them count.

5. Vikramjit S. Bajwa: This is the "no kidding" candidate. Mr. Bajwa is a 42-year-old real estate businessman orginally from Patiala, the historical city of Punjab, no kidding, who immigrated to the United States in 1981. At the top of his list of issues is to get auto insurance for all illegal residents. No kidding. Oh yeah, if you want to give him a call, you can reach him at 1-877-PUNJAB. No kidding. Call him. Ask him if he wants to hang out, write insurance policies for illegal aliens and listen to some Flamin Hot tunes, a mix of Punjabi and the Hindi, original songs with the club classic sounds of RnB, Hip-Hop, Garage and Bhangra.

6. Gary Coleman: Why not a guy who appeared on tv court in front of Judge Mills Lane and was ordered to pay bus driver Tracy Fields $1665 for hospital bills resulting from a fight stemming from an attempt to get an autograph in a Hawthorne, California mall. Gary said he felt threatened by her insistence and punched her in the head. Sounds like he won't have to spend much time at Bush's School of Preemptive Diplomacy. If he doesn't make Governor, maybe he will get nominated as Secretary of Defense security guard.

7. Gallagher: Possibly the most annoying and untalented comedian in the history of America whose "comedy" involves a "real genius" of imagination. Stuff like smashing innocuous fruit products with a sledgehammer. In reality, Gallagher is the poster child for euthanasia.

8. Larry Flynt: This should just about sum up his chances: The People Vs. Larry Flynt.

9. Governor Gray Davis: Who?

10. One person you won't see running for Governor any more is the architect behind getting the ball of chaos rolling in the first place, is car thief cum religious zealot cry baby, Darrell Issa. Issa, a wealthy conservative Republican who spent $1.7 million to fuel the petition drive leading to the recall election, tearfully dropped out of the race after generating no enthusiasm for his own candidacy. With his voice breaking and tears in his eyes, the Lebanese-American millionaire said he thought his best bet was to remain in Congress and work for peace in the Middle East.

"I was elected to work on issues of national importance, and it's my desire ..." he said, starting to cry. "It's my desire, it's my desire .. to see that the recall continues, that Gray Davis is recalled and that California has a brighter day where satanists aren't killing babies in the womb and Jesus is the Lt. Governor"

National Prayer Day For the Death Of Bill O'Reilly

Yes, it's true. Larry Flynt, publisher of Hustler, who announced on Monday that he plans to run for governor of California, saying he believes he can do a better job balancing the state's budget and improving education than "those pinhead bureaucrats in Sacramento," invited everyone to join him in a National Prayer Day for the Death Of Bill O'Reilly.

In what amounts to a secular fatwa, the prayer asked, among other things:

"Dear (God/Allah/Buddah/other entity of your choice), we ask that you afflict Bill O'Reilly with a brain aneurysm that will lead to his slow and painful death. Lord, make those blood vessels bulge out of his head and explode. Make him writhe on the floor in contrition for his cynical attacks. When O'Reilly reaches for the phone to call 911 and accidentally dials 411, Lord, please remind Bill of all the people he has shouted down with no mercy. Oh Lord, as Bill O'Reilly lies on the floor and contemplates his miserable life, make him lose control of his bowels so that the last warm feeling he experiences is his own excrement. Oh Lord, grant us this wish. Your humble servants forever and ever."

According to event spokesman and magazine editorial assistant Sean Carney, an "overjoyed and ebullient" crowd of 50 - 65 people mostly under the age of 30 gathered at Cornerstone Plaza in Los Angeles this afternoon for the "bash bigot O'Reilly ceremony."

"We are not going to dignify it with a response," O'Reilly spokesman Robert Zimmerman told CNSNews.com.

Meanwhile, the Presidential Prayer Team, a fringe group of lunatics and jesus freaks based out of the White House, a unveiled three new books focusing on prayer. These new products are a direct result of the demand of more than 3 million members that rely on the prayer and godly heritage updates each week. The titles of the new books are:

1. "Curious George Prays to Jesus For Weapons of Mass Destruction."
2. "Pray for President Bush to Defeat The Baby Jesus in the War of the Super Powers"
3. "Pray For The Children of Satan To Prevail"

*****

Hiroshima had a little anniversary yesterday. At the Hiroshima's Peace Memorial Park, a minute of silence was observed at 8:15 a.m., the time a U.S. atomic bomb devastated the city on Aug. 6, 1945.

In his peace declaration, the Hiroshima mayor blamed the United States for making the world a more uncertain place through its policy of undermining the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.

"A world without nuclear weapons and war that the victims of the atomic bomb have long sought for is slipping into the shadows of growing black clouds that could turn into mushroom clouds at any moment," Akiba warned.

The Bush Administration is looking into allegations that Mayor Akiba might be a terrorist because who else but a terrorist would dare to criticize the United States in public?

Looks like it's back to Bible Study and Prayer School for you, Mr. Mayor.

Lieberman Warns Party On Ideology

(Hey, Didn't You LOSE The Last Election?)

In a cheap and disgustingly transparent ploy for attention, Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.), one half of the ticket that LOST the 2000 Presidential elections, was out dispensing "how to get elected" advice to the Democratic Party yesterday. He attacked former Vermont governor Howard Dean and several other rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination yesterday, arguing that they have embraced extreme left ideas that threaten to return the party to political exile and should be more earnest in sucking up to the President and the lowlife rednecks and bible freaks who support him.

Stay out of the political wilderness, kids. Stay out of a political Siberia, kids. Steer to the extreme right and we'll all be happy.

"I share the anger of my fellow Democrats with George Bush and the wrong direction he has taken our nation," he whined in a speech at the National Press Club. "But the answer to his outdated, extremist ideology is not to be found in outdated extremes of our own. That path will not solve the challenges of our time and it could well send us Democrats back to the political wilderness for a long time. My opponents in the Democratic Party are a bunch of Marxists and Terrorist-Lovers," he elaborated later.

Like the current unmitigatable wilderness he and "Mr Personality", Al Gore, led America into?

Surprisingly, Lieberman saved his toughest criticism for Dean, the candidate who was just on the cover of every major news publication journal in America and has a growing groundswell of support that leaves Lieberman in the dust. Whereas Dean has a passionate opposition to the Iraq war and has pugnaciously confronted Bush at every turn like a man, Lieberman believes the correct strategy to spew mealy-mouthed nasal-whining criticism that reminds one more of Max Wright, who played Willie Tanner in the repulsively unfunny sitcom ALF, than a presidential candidate.

Lieberman, who was one of Bush's strongest supporters in the run-up to the war in Iraq, and thus, clearly delusional and irrational, has been struggling to find his voice in a year when his centrist ideas and restrained demeanor sound like sycophantic mewling and have appeared out of sync with many Democratic activists. So, it appears he has chosen to take on the voice of Father Know Best who prefers that Democrats line up with their lips puckered when it comes time for elections.

A week ago, another political virtuoso, Senator Evan Bayh (D-Ind.), chairman of the centrist Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), of which Lieberman is a former chairman, warned that the party is in danger of being captured by the "far ideological left" and other DLC leaders warned that a Dean nomination could result in the kind of landslide defeats Democrats suffered in 1972 and 1984.

"Before you know it, the Democratic Party will be filled with Satanists, Communists and Pedophiles!" Mr. Bayh cleverly counseled.

As Lieberman was delivering his broadside against what he saw as the leftward drift of the party, Gephardt was in New York offering substance instead of scared-running rhetoric. He spoke about more elements of an economic plan that would eliminate all of Bush's tax cuts and use much of that money to fund a health care plan designed to provide near universal access to health insurance, including a rise in the minimum wage, accelerated spending from the Highway Trust Fund and a federally guaranteed national development bank to help states through their fiscal problems. Lieberman's whining is aimed to drown out criticism of his "ideological heroes in the Cheney Administration".

Lieberman, in a moment of confusion, was equally unsparing in his criticism of Bush, saying the president "has left our country dangerously unprepared to defend against and defeat the threat of terrorism. And his leadership has clearly driven our great American economy right into the ditch." However, when members of the Administration complained to him, Lieberman withdrew his remarks and noted that like the Administration, he believed that "killing is the answer" as a foreign policy and the "economy can only be helped by more enormous tax breaks for the wealthy."

During the question period yesterday, Lieberman brushed aside repeated inquiries about the state of his campaign. "I feel good about where this campaign is," he said at one point. "I'm in the position I'm most comfortable in, that of a loser" At another he vowed, "I'm not going to stand back and let this party be taken over by Marxists and Trotskyites who would bring us to the political wilderness again."

Of course, last night, during a staged romancing of organized labor and the A.F.L-C.I.O., a very liberal and left wing contingent within the Democratic Party, Lieberman had no such shrill premonitions about the future of the party and kept his mouth shut when it came to bashing his own party for the sake of publicity.

Nothing Going On At Department of Defense

It seems incredible that with the United States military engaged in actions in Afghanistan and Iraq, with U.S. defense spending exceeding the combined total of the next 22 largest military spenders, nothing was going on Monday at the
old Department of Defense.

That's right, if you went on Monday to the the home of the cherubic Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and the monkey-eared Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, looking for some excitement, you'd have been sadly disappointed.

The web site says so. "What's New in DefenseLINK?"

Nothing.

There are "No items for today" on their website. No items? There are also "no public or media events on their schedules"!

What gives?

I thought maybe Rumsfeld might be too busy scratching out some new poetry like Fifty Cent working out his latest profound lyric:

How you gonna take this? Like a Man or a bitch?

You gon’ get it on nigga or you gon’ snitch?

I represent niggas in the hood gettin’ rich

Man, I stack chips and I unload clips

from That Ain't Gangsta

Noooo, The Donald is busy with other things. It seems the boys over at the DOD have got a few other problems other than covering up their own lies and coming up with pyramid schemes on how to profit from terrorism:

For one, there's an outbreak of a mysterious "pneumonia-like illness that has claimed the lives of two American soldiers in Iraq. This is news to hush up quickly. Two U.S. soldiers serving in Iraq have died after their major organs failed. Seven others have reported similarly serious symptoms, although overall about 100 cases have been diagnosed since March 1. Fifteen of the 100 soldiers were ill enough to require ventilator support.

The Army believes Spc. Neusche had been suffering from "pneumonia."

Pneumonia? Good one.

Mark and Cindi Neusche of Montreal, Mo., told the Sunday Telegraph that their son had lapsed into unconsciousness less than an hour after writing a letter to them in his tent. He had begun to complain of a sore throat and difficulty in breathing, and had been making his way to the field dressing station at the camp when he came across a medic, muttered a few words and collapsed at his feet.

Here are some "noninfectious causes" of pneumonia.

In this whacky new environment of gambling on terrorism, here are two simple things you can bet on for sure:

1. If the White House or its US military tells you it "believes" something, like soldiers suddenly collapsing and dying of head colds, you can be sure that it isn't true. Do you think the military would come right out and say, oh, well, it's just a bit of depleted uranium. We'll have it cleaned up in a jiffy?

2. If the White House or its military or its military's officials deny something, you can be sure that it's true.

For example, just yesterday, the Washington Post reported that Secretary of State Colin Powell and his top deputy had given notice they wouldn't serve a second term under President Bush.

Predictably, shortly thereafter, both the White House AND the State Department spokesmen issued a denial. Hmmm. What did you think they'd say? Yeah, Colin Powell has finally figured out what a bunch of megalomaniacal courtesans he's been runnin' with?

Hey, maybe it was all a big misunderstanding. Maybe it was FCC Chairman Michael Powell, not Colin Powell, who is quitting.

Regardless of who can stomach another term of Bush and who can't, al Qaeda maintains that American
cannot protect itself and the CIA found that the voice on the tape is "most likely" that of al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri.

"We haven't identified who actually submitted the tape," Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge said Sunday on CNN's "Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer." "But [coming] from a terrorist, threatening American interests is not really surprising."

Yeah. Ho hum.

Here, we can tune in again to Fifty Cent's timely lyrics for some insight:

"I rock shit ‘cause I stay on that block shit

that 9mm Ruger to your knot shit

see the difference is I’m real and you not, kid

I still stash crack money in my sock, shit

ya’ll niggas wanna pop shit? I pop clips

leave with your blood on my mink in the drop Six"

Let's hear our old Rappin' Rummy answer that one.

All Dean All The Time

I guess somebody made all the right payoffs at all the right stops. Newsweek, Time and The Washington Post. Proxima Estacion?. What's next, your own personalized Howard Dean Liquid Nicotine?

"Howard Dean is liquid nicotine
for voters going through withdrawl
You can put him in your White House,
or we'll put you through the wall!"

Psst! Brave and Heroic President Bush aced his physical:

Bush had a painful and prolonged prostate exam and had several broken blood vessels around his nose burned off. He's a tough bastard. He didn't cry. He didn't squirm. He stood there like a man and said "Burn 'em off, just like I'll burn off resistance to our world hegemony." He had four lesions -- obviously the work of al Qaeda, -- removed from his cheeks and left arm with liquid nitrogen, along with a benign skin tag. He had his internal Dick Cheney brain cleansed and checked for tics and fleas.

Bush is 6 feet tall and weighs 194 pounds, up 5 pounds from a year ago so he could be at "top fighting weight". The medical report said the gain "most likely represents the excess bullshit that he hasn't been able to release during his infrequent press conferences." Bush has 14.5 percent body fat, the same as last year, and his resting heart rate is 10 beats per minute, ironically very similar to that of a comic book Superhero.

The report said Bush runs three hundred miles three times a week, jogs in water once an hour for fifty minutes, and uses an elliptical trainer for six hours a day, seven days a week. He lifts Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfelt around the Oval Office twice weekly and stretches them five times a week, the report said. It also said he smokes an occasional cigar made of poison to "toughen" himself and drinks cans of motor oil while keeping his distance from pretzels. A bullet hole in his calf that kept Bush from running for five seconds during this spring has healed, the doctors concluded. They also concluded he was almost "surrealistically heroic" in both manner and gait and added that his hair still had a "lush texture of he-man, terrorist-killer" to it.

Of course, if you take a look at his medical history you might get a different picture.

Hey, look! Satan Lives!

So does his dog, Captain Forehead.

It's still very difficult to believe no one has stepped forward to claim the $25 Million Lotto.

I know the Vatican has worked itself into a froth over gay marriage, but this Gay S&M stuff where they dress up like cops and prisoners is really something the authorities should be keeping their eye out for.

In effort to raise disabled staff numbers, Condoleeza Rice has announced that she is blind.

Annoyed by the public humiliation, Condoleeza entertains delusions of revenge

Rumors continue to run rampant that ABC has signed up Iraqi's terrible dictator to play in a new sitcom scheduled for the Fall called Three's Company, Saddam's a Crowd.

It was only a few weeks ago that President Cheney announced that his former top PR consultant Mary Matalin has returned to the White House to help shape the administration's communications strategy. From the looks of things, the return has been less than relaxing.

Just one more election to fix and it'll be Four More Wars and same sects marriages and forget about those other dreams at DARPA.

Invitation to the Blues
by Tom Waits

Well she's up against the register
with an apron and a spatula
with yesterday's deliveries,
and the tickets for the bachelors
she's a moving violation
from her conk down to her shoes
but it's just an invitation to the blues

and you feel just like Cagney
looks like Rita Hayworth
at the counter of the Schwab's drug store
you wonder if she might be single
she's a loner likes to mingle
got to be patient and pick up a clue

she says howyougonnalikem
over medium or scrambled
anyway's the only way
be careful not to gamble
on a guy with a suitcase
and a ticket gettin out of here
it's a tired bus station
and an old pair of shoes
but it ain't nothing but an
invitation to the blues

but you can't take your eyes off her
get another cup of java
and it's just the way she pours it for you
joking with the customers
and it's mercy mercy Mr. Percy
there ain't nothin back in Jersey
but a broken-down jalopy of a
man I left behind
and a dream that I was chasin
and a battle with booze
and an open invitation to the blues

but she's had a sugar daddy
and a candy apple Caddy
and a bank account and everything
accustom to the finer things
he probably left her for a socialite
and he didn't love her 'cept at night
and then he's drunk and never
even told her that he cared
so they took the registration
and the car-keys and her shoes
And left her with an invitation
to the blues

'Cause there's a Continental Trailways leaving
local bus tonight, good evening
you can have my seat
I'm stickin round here for a while
get me a room at the Squire
the filling station's hiring
I can eat here every night
what the hell have I got to lose
got a crazy sensation,
go or stay and I've got to choose
and I'll accept your invitation to the blues