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Ed Naha
May 22, 2009 - Smirking Chimp
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Admittedly, I've been out of the loop recently, with my town nearly burning down for the fourth time in less than two years and having to evacuate my family for the second time in six months. The threat of all that immolation stuff distracted me from important stories like the great Obama mustard debate and the mystery of why Dick Cheney is allowed to speak in public about anything but the topic he knows best - shooting elderly lawyers in the face.
So, I've been playing catch-up with life in the world outside. The first story to jump out at me concerned a joint in a California bordertown where the image of the Virgin Mary was found on a half-cleaned grill. Both the local priest and a group of masked Mexican wrestlers declared it legit, although the web site "Virgin Mary Again" examined the photo and declared that the shape looked more like a butt plug.
This, in turn, led me to various Republican zealots whose quasi-religious ramblings are rapidly transforming the GOP Big Tent into something resembling a two-bit revival meeting wherein inbred believers writhe on the floor and speak in tongues. The big difference between the two groups is that, occasionally, the inbred believers make sense.
In my absence, some of the GOP highlights have included recently baptized serial philanderer Newt Gingrich declaring himself an uber-Catholic and condemning Obama as being "anti-church," (not) Joe the (not) Plumber explaining the term "queer" to the populace, the RNC holding a special meeting to consider re-christening the Democratic Party "The Democrat Socialist Party" and a blond beauty queen with two store-bought silicone sisters strapped to her chest declaring gay marriage unnatural.
Phew! Even by Republican standards, that's great stuff!
Let's tackle the GOP new faces first. Miss California, Carrie Prefab, er, Prejean claimed that she didn't win the Miss USA title because she stated that marriage should be "between a man and a woman" during the think-tank portion of the pageant. She later stated "I felt as though Satan was trying to tempt me in asking me this question...And I knew right here that it wasn't about winning. It was about being true to my convictions."
So. She didn't win. She then hooked up with a local gay bashing Church and dove headfirst into the muck known as the National Organization for Marriage, creators of the much-lampooned "Gathering Storm" ad wherein galloping gays destroy everyone's lives, from doctors to teachers.
Whilst portraying herself as the bestest Christian martyr since Barbie of Arc, word leaked out (Rimshot!) that at Carrie's behest, pageant organizers paid for a beatific boob job in order to boost her, uh, self-esteem. A bevy of semi-nude photos of her then popped up featuring Carrie popping out of various pieces of apparel. The ingenue blamed it all on secular liberals and a photographer who snapped photos when the wind blew her blouses open or off or something. Devil winds! Anyhow, she almost lost her title but didn't so now she can settle down and wait for the Virgin Mary to appear on her grill.
While on the subject of gay abandon, (not) Joe the (not) Plumber was interviewed by "Christianity Today" and lent his intellect to the topic. "People don't understand the dictionary--it's called queer. Queer means strange and unusual. It's not like a slur, like you would call a white person a honky or something like that. You know, God is pretty explicit in what we're supposed to do--what man and woman are for. Now, at the same time, we're supposed to love everybody and accept people, and preach against the sins. I've had some friends that are actually homosexual. And, I mean, they know where I stand, and they know that I wouldn't have them anywhere near my children. But at the same time, they're people, and they're going to do their thing."
"Tool Time" redefined on so many levels.
Switching to God's own "natural" boinking method, Republican abstinence Queen Bristol Palin revealed to "People" magazine, "Girls need to imagine and picture their life with a screaming newborn baby and then think before they have sex... If girls realized the consequences of sex, nobody would be having sex. Trust me. Nobody."
Or, SOMEbody could acknowledge the 21st Century, take a sex education class and, perhaps, look up the word "condom."
A group of "new faces" of the Republican Party also ran aground, launching "The National Council For A New America," a GOP attempt at rebranding itself. The first thing the group of newbies did was to declare that they weren't rebranding themselves. Such fresh faces as John McCain, Jeb Bush, Haley Barbour, Bobby Jindal, John Boehner, Eric Can'tor, Mitch McConnell, Lamar Alexander and Jon Kyl declared that their forum would be "forward looking and relevant."
While this was going on, Republican House members released a "Last White House On the Left" video splicing together shots of Obama shaking hands with Hugo Chavez, al-Qaeda training videos and the Pentagon burning on 9/11 and asking "After 100 days, do you feel safer?"
Anyhow, the Republicans met at a pizza parlor and, looking forward, announced, via newbie Mitt Romney that "We are the party of the revolutionaries. They (the Dems) are the party of the monarchists."
Tally ho! Into the future we go! Off with their heads!
In a sense, Mittens was right. These Republicans are pretty revolutionary!
North Carolina Rep. Virginia Foxx, for instance, dismissed the notion of hate crimes, declaring that the 1998 murder of Matthew Shepard was due to a botched robbery and not gay bashing. The gay bashing claim was part of "a hoax that continues to be used as an excuse for passing these bills."
Louisiana Rep. Steve Scalise warned the House Energy and Commerce Committee that a proposed climate bill would lead to the formation of a "Global Warming Gestapo."
Can't wait for those goose-stepping Grizzlies.
Minnesota's Michelle Bachman (the "dramatic chipmunk" emulator) somehow equated Obama's fiscal policy with a "Penthouse Magazine" physical policy. "During the last 100 days we have seen an orgy. It would make any local smorgasbord embarrassed. The government spent its wad by April 26th."
I'm not sure what she meant but I am not going near a salad bar with this woman.
Republicans are also presenting their own health plan (again) in the near future, calling it "The Patients' Choice Act" because "The Windfall for Insurance Companies Act" sounds too backwards. They dismiss the Democratic plan because it would be run "with the compassion of the IRS, the efficiency of the Post Office and the incompetence of Katrina." Bush who?
Arkansas state senator Kim Hendren proved himself not only a forward thinker but also a quick study by referring to Democratic Senator Charles Schumer as "that Jew."
He later retracted his diss. "I shouldn't have gotten into this Jewish business because it distracts from the issue."
The issue was: do Jews have cloven feet for real?
Senator Jeff Sessions, Alabama's retro-racial ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, came up with a very creative reason for not closing down Gitmo. "They (the prisoners) wouldn't be treated any better in the United States, and they wouldn't have the tropical breezes blowing through."
And those tropical breezes combined with water-boarding spells F-U-N in the sun.
(Sessions, by the by, is the Republican pit-bull of choice to mangle any Obama choice for Supreme Court Justice deemed too "empathetic." As we all know, folks like Jesus, Gandhi and Mother Theresa would have benefited from a leaner, meaner Scalia streak.)
Oklahoma's senator Jim Inhofe figured that the Gitmo detainees have it pretty damned good and wouldn't even want to leave, saying that they have better health care than most Americans. He singled out their rectums, stating "Anyone, any detainee, over 55 has an opportunity to have a colonoscopy.
"Now, none of them take 'em up on it, because once they explain what it is, none of them want to do it. But nonetheless, it's an opportunity they have."
Most detainees have also taken a pass on having a German Shepherd shoved up their butt, as well.
"The Philadelphia Inquirer," in a move to play down their non-existent "liberal" label, hired torture maven John Yoo as a monthly columnist. It's understandable. With newspaper revenues down and both Himmler and Goering dead, it's hard to find a distinctive voice to help boost circulation or, at least, the heart rate.
Senator Lindsey Graham nearly tore a jowl muscle at the thought of Obama delving into BushCo.'s torture trove. He said that there were no laws broken although Bush's team "saw the law as a nicety we could not afford." Graham is a lawyer, too.
In Florida, a license plate featuring the image of a crucified Jesus is ready to roll, or rise. Governor Charlie Crist doesn't see that as a breach of the separation of church and state. "If (people) don't want one they don't have to buy one."
A videotape from Afghanistan just surfaced showing Lieutenant-Colonel Gary Hensley, the chief of US military chaplains thereabouts, telling his troops "We hunt people for Jesus. We do. We hunt them down. Get the hound of heaven after them, so we get them into the kingdom. That's what we do. That's our business."
Hensley's weapons of choice were Bibles translated into Pashto and Dari. Jesus license plates were obviously unavailable. Besides, they tend to get stigmata after the first roadside bombing.
Nouveau Catholic Newt Gingrich, when not hurling insults at the current administration, has revealed that he's going to film a documentary on Pope John Paul II's 1979 trip to Poland. And he said that without giggling. One of the reasons he cited for his conversion to Catholicism was "Part of me is inherently medieval. I resonate to Gothic churches and the sense of the cross in a way that is really pre-modern."
Tens of thousands of former Irish Catholic school students would get the medieval reference.
Probably the most acrobatic personage on the "new" Republican scene is RNC head (and quite often, ass) Michael Steele, who has been doing a tap-dancing high-wire act that would put the Flying Wallendas to shame.
At an emergency meeting of the RNC, as if there were any other kind, he declared, "The era of apologizing for Republican mistakes of the past is now officially over. It is done."
So, now, they can all apologize for the mistakes of the present and the future?
In an article for "Politico," he also stated, "The Republican Party will be forward-looking. It is time to stop looking backward. Republicans have spent ample time re-examining the past."
Unfortunately for Steele, at the same time he was saying this, Republicans were trying to terrify Americans about the closing of Gitmo, claiming that the Obama ninnies would house these salivating, musky terrorists stateside...probably in your kid's school or under your bed.
Revving up the monster machine was none other than Dick Cheney and his lovely daughter, Liz - a woman I'm beginning to suspect is actually Dick in drag. I mean, have we seen them together lately?
When it looked as if Obama was going to release some more U.S. torture photos, Liz took to the airwaves, accusing Obama of encouraging terrorists. She also took umbrage to the idea that her father should just can it on the torture topic and go home and dissect frogs. Why doesn't anyone tell Al Gore to just shut up and go home, she opined? Um, maybe because Gore is talking about the fate of the world and your Pops is talking about the fate of his political ass?
With Dick Cheney embarking on a Magical Misery Tour, defending torture, connecting Saddam and bin Laden and saying that BushCo. did it all to keep America safe, it's clear that he's lost the last of his few marbles. The American MSM has apparently found its sack empty as well; actually covering Cheney when he ruminates on the whole world being against America on things like Iran. "Everybody's in a giant conspiracy to achieve a different objective than the one we want to achieve."
He then accused the Iranians of stealing his strawberries.
Clearly missing being an armchair warrior, Cheney has now declared war on the Obama administration, coughing up hilarious hairballs in a "major speech" before the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank that cancelled their long-awaited "What Went Right In Salem" barbecue into order to allow Cheney to regurgitate every smarmy remark he's offered since 2006.
Republicans, of course, are urging Cheney to keep on ratcheting up the fear factor, seeking a return to the good old days where even QUESTIONING America's use of torture helped the enemy and Democrats were perceived as wusses.
Even if it's not working on a national scale (Recent polls showed the GOP to be losing members across the board but for conservative Christians and those voters over 65. Another poll showed that regular church-goers are more apt to endorse torture, with over six out of ten evangelicals saying it's "okie-dokee."), the Republican's "oh boo-tiful and specious sighs" are having an effect on Democrats, whose spines seem to be on loan from Jell-O.
The Democrats' solid stance reminds me of an old joke in "The National Lampoon" describing a Judy Garland doll. Wind it up and it pisses down its leg.
The Democrats, bowing to the will of convulsing conservatives worried about terrorists taking over our country once they escape from our super-max jails, voted against funding the closure of Gitmo. (Then, Obama denounced the revamped politics of irrational fear and several of the Democratic slugs strapped on their backbones again, vowing to work with the president on his goals in the future. Right.)
Oh, yeah, Democrats also rolled over and allowed a provision to be placed in the friggin' credit card bill allowing folks to carry loaded guns into National Parks and Wildlife Refuges. I don't know about you but I'll feel a lot safer now knowing that my fear of rampaging bears will be superceded by the fear of some drunken, gun-toting asshole stalking a ranger whut did him wrong.
Praise the Lord and charge the flack jackets.
You know this country is in a unique spot when the only person making sense on the national scene is former Minnesota Governor/Navy Seal/pro-wrestler Jesse "The Body" Ventura who has been storming across the small screen this week slamming both BushCo. and any pro-torture twink who dares to try to diss him. The guy is cheesed-off at the current way Bush ("the worst president in my lifetime") is being rebranded as a man of heroic stature and "enhanced interrogation" techniques are being recast as necessary, legal evils.
"Water-boarding is torture," he declared this week. "It's drowning. It gives you the complete sensation that you are drowning. It is no good because you - I'll put it to you this way, you give me a water-board, Dick Cheney and one hour, and I'll have him confessing to the Sharon Tate murders."
How far we've come. Headlines featuring torture, anti-gay rhetoric, Cheney, Bush, Gitmo, Gingrich and Romney.
Our Lady of Butt Plugs pray for us.
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