Phil Q's Weblog

The Decline and Fall of the Worlds Oldest Teenager

2005-10-26T07:42:00.000-07:00

Everybody knew somehow that Dick Clark’s gig as the Worlds Oldest Teenager would eventually come to an end. After all, there is no provision in popular culture for an 80 year old teenager; after a while even the most vacant among us realize that he’s just an empty husk, a painted-up old man masquerading as a child. In the end all one can do is turn away from the tawdry, sorry spectacle.

Well, George Bush’s reign as the Worlds Oldest Cheerleader seems to be reaching the same sorry conclusion. All but the most vacant among us knew that, similar to Clark, Bush was masquerading as a competent leader. Like Clark, Bush too is now revealed to be what he was all along; an empty husk, a tired old man grasping to the last for what the sentient among us knew all along he never was. As his presidency reaches its well-deserved conclusion, imploding into a worthless pile of shit, here too I expect that eventually we’ll need to turn away from the tired, tawdry spectacle of the 59 year old cheerleader listlessly waving his red white and blue pompoms while covered in his own excrement.

Bush suddenly looks lost and forlorn; the foul bastard seems to have aged 10 yeas in the last month. The colossal pyramid of lies, deceptions and half-truths has finally come crashing down on the band of sissy-hawks at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. The slimy Rove and the chameleon Libby twist slowly in the stinking breeze, unable to help their bosses stem the steady shitrain. The Republican Congress can’t help either, what with the spectacle of that cockroach Delay offering to help the plastizoid stick figure Frist launder the remains of his ill-gotten millions. Former goose-stepping GOPatriots like Santorum and Brownback drag themselves away from their mirrors only long enough to issue the occasional guttural unpleasantry, well aware that the current crisis could drive them even further under their rocks. The Sunday talk shows are left to the sacrificial sheep Kay Bailey Hutchinson and George Allen who can only impotently deliver the thoroughly discredited Administration line through clenched jaws and hope for revenge against the party hacks and snakes that put them up to it. You know that things have gotten bad for Republicans when that bloodthirsty whore Pat Robertson seems like their lone voice of reason. Seated at the right hand of the devil, Richard Nixon looks on with a knowing, bemused gaze; he’s saving a good seat for his friend Cheney.

The sorry pack of charlatan scumbags that make up the GOP Congressional Majority surely must know that their days are numbered. But instead of circling the wagons in a defensive position they remain grimly on the offensive against the same folks who elected them. They know they their legacy is secure; along with Bush they have managed to increase non-defense discretionary spending at a rate exceeding that under LBJ. Unlike LBJ though, ordinary Americans won’t taste any of the spoils. While LBJ diverted your tax dollars to those who needed them, Bush and the GOP have overseen a massive re-distribution of wealth to those who don’t need it. The recent highway bill is but the most recent example, the pork is legendary but the GOP sticks to Tom Delay’s script that they have pared it to the bone. Through their talk radio outlets the GOP sends out another grim message to the compliant masses that they should take their screwing like men. Listeners are puzzled about why they should pay for that bridge to nowhere in Alaska and they can’t figure out why as part of the energy bill the GOP has given Exxon Mobil, who already has $27 billion in cash, another $2.5 billion of their tax dollars. But they are conditioned by 5 years of talk radio, Fox News and by willing self-deception to accept their screwing with stoic compliance. Their reward, they’re told, will come in the afterlife; their earthly rewards are being diverted to the drug companies and Halliburton.

As the GOP Ship of State lurches further to starboard the desperate rats on board continue to flail away at their countrymen. They’ll pay for a capital gains tax cut (which benefits only the top 1% of Americans) by cutting your grandmother’s health insurance. They’ll build Don Young’s bridge, divert billions to Archer Daniels Midland, Halliburton and the large drug companies, passing the costs on to your children and grandchildren. Oh yeah, and don’t forget their claim to be the party of morality!

So the Bush house of cards is collapsing. With it will hopefully come some blessed fiscal relief from the incessant rape that the GOP has bestowed upon their loyal subjects for the last 5 years. Bush and the GOP Congress know that if the people in the heartland grow weary of the talk radio pimps and liars encouraging them to continue to deceive themselves about the motivation of their “leaders” it’s all over. After years of willing self-immolation they’ll be burning for revenge against the pious scumbags who offered them soothing reassurance on social issues while at the same time stealing their wallets. After all, they’ll reason, who gives a shit about stem cells when they can’t pay the mortgage? Will they or their kids and grandkids really care about who is legally allowed to get married when they’re drowning under a colossal sea of debt incurred by Bush and their leaders to reward the wealthy? Who’ll want to argue about intelligent design when we’re all in constant danger from terrorists as a result of Bush’s disastrous Iraq war?

So as the Bushtanic lists even more dangerously, the right wing talkmeisters and sycophantic bloggers rush furiously around rearranging the deck chairs, well aware of the grim reality that their discredited days of encouraging compliant Americans to kick their own asses are numbered. They’re aware that pulling the inflation cords on their personal flotation devices will surely break the permanent bond between their lips and Bush’s ass, but they know that they must either flee the sinking presidency or go down along with it. The most merciful conclusion for the sake of the country would be for the foul craft to sink swiftly to the bottom, leaving a nasty, slimy residue that it will take the rest of us years to clean up. Whether by gravity or by God, would that it were so.

Ode to the Red State Renaissance Man

2005-10-26T07:39:00.000-07:00

A Paean (love poem) to the Red State Renaissance Man

Of the size of his flag he'll regale ya
And his knowledge of sheep genitalia
He's a loyal Bush fan
See, he's plastered his van
Front to back with Bush paraphernalia

Speaks in grunts and words single-syllabic
Rebel flag is his state’s social fabric
That he wears on his back
Racist chic (the new black)
Thinks that Condi is hot (for a black chick)

His lust for Rush Limbaugh is chronic
Though he claims that its only platonic
A confirmed shitto-head
Rush’s pic by his bed
The mere thought of Rush gets him hardon-ic

Drives two rusted old gray Chevy half-tons
Favorite things are cold beers and warm guns
Pile of trash in his yard
He don’t work none too hard
Loves all stem cells (except for the gay ones)

Left school early but might can still cipher
Rebel Yell he considers a cry ‘fer
Some saving of face
By the South’s “master race”
At the Johnny Reb club he’s a lifer

Saw Dukes of Hazzard and went apoplectic
He’s a hillbilly film genre skeptic
Burt’s Boss Hogg he found lazy
And Jess Simpson as Daisy
He found forced, trite, and quite antiseptic

Mention Clinton, his lip starts to quiver
“Hillary” down his spine sends a shiver
Head in ass, he don’t know
‘bout the fiscal death blow
GOP to him’s set to deliver

Haute cuisine 2 big Macs (extra cheese)
Mention Reagan he drops to his knees
Though he’s flat busted broke
Still he loves the rich folk
Though it screws him he’ll do as they please

High culture to him? Wax museum
The next NASCAR event? Bet you’ll see him
Sunburned, drunk, weighs a ton
There’s a million, which one?
He’s the one with the 12 beer per diem

Loves the war long as it ain’t him fightin’
The sad truth is it’s hard to enlighten
One who lacks brains or balls
Hides when his country calls
Loves war talk, but real war tends to frighten

Though morally blind he can see
Fiscal damage done by GOP
Supports them all the more
Hates those gays, loves that war
Sign on scrotum and head: Vacancy

A twice-born evangelical dimwit
Found Christ once, but misplaced him, dagnabbit
Born of shit and whole cloth
Greatest virtue is sloth
Moral and intellectual midget

He is fat-assed, foul-smelling and toothless
Loves his dog, to his kids he is ruthless
Works full time at the dump
Proudly dumb as a stump
Claims his sex scandal rumors are truthless

Says the South will be risin' agin'
Should we fear Southern Man and his kin?
Shoot, they's plumb out of luck
Couldn't start Granny's truck
They'll regroup with some home-distilled gin

They’ll debate whether South Carolina
Is the country’s asshole or vagina
It’s the foremost debate
In the reddest Red State
While Bush exports all their jobs to China

Republican Canibalism: "I'll have the Sissy Hawk"

2005-10-26T07:36:00.000-07:00

What the hell is going on with the “morally superior” Republican conservatives? They have been reduced to cannibalism; the rest of us can only watch, aghast at the feeding frenzy as they rush to eat their own. But whether it’s the Snake or Sissy Hawk they’re eating they’ll still be left with a nasty fiscal hangover to go along with that case of moral indigestion.

Understandably cranky over the 5 year fiscal screwing they have been taking from their “allies” in the White House and GOP congressional majority, the Miers nomination has seemed to unleash years of pent-up frustration; but this time they’re not aiming at those of us whom they view as their moral lessers, they’re aiming at each other!

Well sure, they seem to understand that Bush and his congressional buddies have increased non-defense/security discretionary spending at a rate greater than Lyndon Johnson, but red staters soothe themselves with thoughts of big batches of well-protected stem cells. Sure, they rationalize, Bush and the congressional republicans have replaced the massive program of income re-distribution to those (like themselves) who actually need it with a program of massive re-distribution of wealth to those who don’t need it, but red staters soothe themselves with the knowledge that Bush and the GOP majority despise gays as much as they do. Sure, they rationalize, Bush and the GOP congressional majority want to cut health insurance for the poor and elderly (which benefits 75% of them) to lock in the capital gains tax cut (which benefits only the top 1% of wage earners), but they’ll end the massive epidemic of flag burning in the country, won’t they? Besides, God is on the side of Bush and the GOP, isn’t he? It’s a strange case of moral dwarfism that allows these nice supposedly Christian folks to mortgage their present for so-called moral reasons while passing the very real costs of Bush’s spending binge on to their children and grandchildren. Whether they’ll get their moral reward seems to be up in the air; what’s a virtual lock is that their kids and grandkids will be left holding the bag.

Well, God if is on the side of the GOP, he seems at the very least to have something of a odd sense of humor. They’re quick to note that God saw fit to punish the country for our decadence by taking out New Orleans, ground zero in the front against moral decay. They conveniently forget to note that God swung Katrina over south Alabama and Mississippi, 2 of the most conservative states in the Union. He even destroyed Trent Lott’s house, what’s up with that? If (as their religious leaders tell them) God hates the “gay lifestyle” why the hell doesn’t he take out San Francisco with a well-placed earthquake? If gay marriage is an affront to their God, why doesn’t God send a category 5 hurricane to wipe out Massachusetts? Instead he wiped out one of the most solidly Christian sections of the country! Jesus loves you, this I know; but he has a curious way of showing you so.

And why doesn’t God smite those who are after that pious money-launderer Tom DeLay? And those who are after Karl Rove, who as they well know sitteth at the right hand of their political God GW Bush? And what of those who are after Scooter Libby, who sitteth at the right hand of Bush’s Dick?

The political right is nothing if not compliant. They have dutifully sat on their hands, compliantly absorbing an unprecedented fiscal screwing by their so-called conservative political leaders. “Take your screwing like a man,” they’ve been told by the GOP; “we’ll make it up to you when we have an opportunity to do so on “moral issues.”

But the Miers nomination seems to have triggered a firestorm. Is it because they have been betrayed by their moral leaders over the failure to deliver the moral goods? Or is it that perhaps they have come to realize that the leadership in the White House and GOP Congressional majority is not so moral after all? After all, what sort of curious morality allows Bush and his conservative cabal to offer their supporters limp-wristed reassurance of doing their moral heavy lifting while at the same time lifting their wallets? And weren’t red staters given to believe that, since they elected them on moral issues, that the GOP leadership wouldn’t just be another pack of corrupt liars and scumbags?

So alas, the SS Bushtanic lists alarmingly to starboard, piloted by a leader who increasingly seems to have lost his way. The jackbooted neo-fascists who form the core of the party rush to scuttle the foul craft while conservative moderates impotently wring their hands trying to decide whether to do as they are told and rearrange the deck chairs or whether to rush for the lifeboats while there’s still time. Christ would suggest that women and children be the first to flee, but even he has never had to face a pack of self-righteous self-deceivers who seem to have come all at once to the realization that they have been fiscally screwed by their so-called leaders, and in Christ’s name to boot!

And so the band played on, but despite Bush’s suggestion to play “Happy Days are here Again” the song sounds more like a dirge. Even for those like myself who are grateful that Bush and his intellectually lazy self-deceiving pseudo-moralist supporters are finally getting their well-deserved comeuppance it’s hard to be too happy. After all, it’s my country, my constitution, they’ve been seeking to undermine…and they’re still at it!