Satire: G.W. Bush Library Museum

This is an excerpt from The George W. Bush Library / A Tribute to Incompetence, by Allen L. Roland --

A highlight of the museum will be the ROOMS OF DECEIT, which include:

1. The Hurricane Katrina Room, which is still under construction.
2. The Alberto Gonzales Room, where you can't remember anything.
3. The Texas Air National Guard Room, where you don't have to even show up.
4. The Walter Reed Hospital Room, where they don't let you in.
5. The Guantanamo Bay Room, where they don't let you out.
6. The Weapons of Mass Destruction Room (which no one has been able to find).
7. The Iraq War Room. After you complete your first tour, they make you go back for a second, third, fourth, and sometimes fifth, tour.
8. The Dick Cheney Room, in the famous undisclosed location, complete with shooting gallery.
9. Plans also include: The K-Street Project Gift Shop -- where you can buy (or just steal) an election.
10. The Airport Men's Room, where you can meet some of your favorite Republican Senators.
11. Last, but not least, there will be an entire floor devoted to a 7/8 scale model of the President's ego.

Of course, there will be an autographed copy of My Pet Goat, which is in a climate-controlled, laser beam protected, heatproof, shatterproof case.

To highlight the President's only positive accomplishments, the museum will have an electron microscope available to help you locate them. Good luck.

Karma for Coulter

Yesterday I came across some news on the web about Ann Coulter, the gangly, six-foot, incendiary-tongued right-wing pundit and author. Seems she has fallen and broken her jaw and must have have it wired shut.

Those of us on the political left can't help but feel that in a sense this is her comeuppance from the universe for her innumerable vitriolic remarks hurled at liberals and many others. Coulter has a new book coming out at the end of December, which needless to say bashes Democrats and President-Elect Obama. She must be champing at the bit, figuratively, at least, to make the rounds promoting her latest. Not to mention the strain of being forced to spend the Thanksgiving holiday all but mute. (Frankly, she doesn't look like she'll care about missing the feasting.) And then her 47th birthday is the eighth of December.

Coulter's statements have often seemed to be nothing less than prosecutable libel or slander, but, possessing a law degree, she wouldn't likely make herself vulnerable to a serious lawsuit. She has earned her fortune, and stays in the heady limelight, through her moonstruck rantings. Coulter is the darling of the right-wingers, saying what they may not dare to. For example:

• God gave us the earth. We have dominion over the plants, the animals, the trees. God said, 'Earth is yours. Take it. Rape it. It's yours.'
• It would be a much better country if women did not vote. That is simply a fact.
• Liberals love America like O.J. loved Nicole.
• I've never seen people enjoying their husbands' deaths so much... how do we know their husbands weren't planning to divorce these harpies? Now that their shelf life is dwindling, they'd better hurry up and appear in Playboy.

This last statement was written about four 9/11 widows.

So all I would say to Ann Coulter is -- I've never seen you so appealing, and silence has never been so golden.

Although I believe she still has the use of her hands, for writing. . .

How Low Can We Go?

The writer H.L. Mencken remarked, "No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people." Showman P.T. Barnum supposedly quipped, "There’s a sucker born every minute."

I use these quotations to voice my opinion of two new products sold online, The Beerbelly, and The WineRack. Maybe I am the last in the nation to hear about them, but today they did come to my attention, and I had to search them out on the internet just because they sounded so, umm, god-awful.

I hate to think that I am possibly helping to advertise them, but here are brief descriptions. The Beerbelly is a "sling" worn over the stomach which has a "bladder" to hold 80 oz. of beer. The sellers claim that when a shirt is over this, the user will merely appear to be a man with a fat, fleshy, beer belly. The beer is sucked through tubing.

The WineRack is similar but for women, so it hides 25 oz. of an alcoholic beverage inside a bra, also giving the wearer a larger bust size in the bargain.

I wonder how many of these will be under Christmas trees this year? Just what the alcoholic and the underage drinker were needing! They are advertised as being great for sneaking beer into concerts, parties, sporting events, and movies. So will paunchy males and busty females now have to submit to searches for beer bladders and tubing? Even worse, I heard about these products on Air America Radio, and a writer was relating how he successfully wore a Beerbelly device to board a plane while researching just how secure our airports really are.

In regard to these fine examples of American ingenuity, I have to wonder -- does Homer Simpson know about these yet?

Vampires for Good Christian Girls

The new vampire movie Twilight is earning big bucks. I might like it, but I'm content to wait till Redbox offers it as a dollar rental. It's said to be romantic and pretty bloodless, and I generally avoid movies that do have blood and violence. Except for the occasional zombie flick. Or vampire flick. . . How can you make a real vampire story without it being bloody, anyway?

Twilight is based on a hugely popular series of novels geared toward teen girls. I understand that the novels are "moral" in that they have no sex scenes. That's fine -- sexuality and soft porn is pushed onto us from every direction these days, and I find it worrisome to consider how it may be affecting children and young teens. It's good that there are current books and movies available without graphic sexual content, so that young people who aren't ready for the subject can steer clear of it, and others will discover that a story can indeed be riveting without it.

But perhaps the author of Twilight is actually peddling abstinence only. In my view Christianity is way too interested in our sex lives, and has convinced legions of devoted followers that sex before marriage is a sin. That's a very personal decision, I feel, and I also believe that it's an unrealistic promise to exact from a young person who is biologically imbued with a burning urge to mate and procreate. Planned Parenthood is around for just this reason.

On Slate.com, one of the women bloggers suggested an interesting analogy. But first let me quote from Wikipedia:

True Love Waits (TLW) is an international Christian group that promotes sexual abstinence outside of marriage for teenagers and college students. . . created in April, 1993. . . In addition, they promote sexual purity, which encompasses not only abstaining from intercourse before marriage, but also abstaining from sexual thoughts, sexual touching, pornography, and actions that are known to lead to sexual arousal.

-- And now the Slate blog post:

THE XX FACTOR: Slate Women Blog About Politics, Etc. . .

True Love Waits (for a Vampire)
Posted Monday, November 24, 2008 10:23 AM By Hanna Rosin

I know none of you are 13-year-old girls, but did any of you see Twilight this weekend? It's a movie about vampire love based on the Harry Potter-for-girls blockbuster series by Stephenie Meyer, a Mormon mom. I loved it, but what struck me most is how much it's an advertisement for the True Love Waits movement. High-schooler Bella Swan falls in love with Edward Cullen, who it turns out is a vampire. He thirsts for her blood, gives her desperate yearning looks. But he controls himself. He is part of a clan of "vegetarian" vampires who have taught themselves to live on animal blood and pass in the human world. In one amazing erotic scene, he shows up in her bedroom and says he will kiss her if she holds really, really still, because if she moves he won't be able to control himself. (By which he means kill her.) They kiss once, and then spend the night talking and snuggling in her room. The problem the True Love Waits movement could never solve is how to get teens to stop after one kiss. This is why the movement failed, except among a small minority of the super committed, who saved even the first kiss until after marriage. The answer, which never seems to have occurred to conservative Christians, is to date a vampire.

A Deluded Republican

This is a piece that can easily be found on the internet. I think it makes its point well.

Day in the Life of Joe Middle-Class Republican

by John Gray of Cincinnati, Ohio, July 2004

Joe gets up at 6 AM to prepare his morning coffee. He fills his pot full of good, clean drinking water because some liberal fought for minimum water quality standards. He takes his daily medication with his first swallow of coffee. His medications are safe to take because some liberal fought to insure their safety and work as advertised.

All but $10.00 of his medications are paid for by his employer's medical plan because some liberal union workers fought their employers for paid medical insurance; now Joe gets it, too. He prepares his morning breakfast, bacon and eggs this day. Joe's bacon is safe to eat because some liberal fought for laws to regulate the meat packing industry. Joe takes his morning shower, reaching for his shampoo; his bottle is properly labeled with every ingredient and the amount of its contents because some liberal fought for his right to know what he was putting on his body and how much it contained. Joe dresses, walks outside and takes a deep breath. The air he breathes is clean because some tree-hugging liberal fought for laws to stop industries from polluting our air. He walks to the subway station for his government subsidized ride to work; it saves him considerable money in parking and transportation fees. You see, some liberal fought for affordable public transportation, which gives everyone the opportunity to be a contributor.

Joe begins his work day; he has a good job with excellent pay, medical benefits, retirement, paid holidays and vacation because some liberal union members fought and died for these working standards. Joe's employer pays these standards because Joe's employer doesn't want his employees to call the union. If Joe is hurt on the job or becomes unemployed, he'll get a worker's compensation or unemployment check, because some liberal didn't think he should lose his home because of his temporary misfortune.

It's noontime; Joe needs to make a bank deposit so he can pay some bills. Joe's deposit is federally insured by the FSLIC [FDIC?] because some liberal wanted to protect Joe's money from unscrupulous bankers who ruined the banking system before the Depression.

Joe has to pay his Fannie Mae-underwritten mortgage and his below-market federal student loan because some stupid liberal decided that Joe and the government would be better off if he was educated and earned more money over his lifetime.

Joe is home from work; he plans to visit his father this evening at his farm home in the country. He gets in his car for the drive to Dad's; his car is among the safest in the world because some liberal fought for car safety standards. He arrives at his boyhood home. He was the third generation to live in the house financed by Farmer's Home Administration because bankers didn't want to make rural loans. The house didn't have electricity until some big government liberal stuck his nose where it didn't belong and demanded rural electrification. (Those rural Republicans would still be sitting in the dark.)

He is happy to see his dad, who is now retired. His dad lives on Social Security and his union pension because some liberal made sure he could take care of himself so Joe wouldn't have to.

After his visit with Dad, he gets back in his car for the ride home. He turns on a radio talk show; the host keeps saying that liberals are bad and conservatives are good. (He doesn't tell Joe that his beloved Republicans have fought against every protection and benefit Joe enjoys throughout his day.) Joe agrees. "We don't need those 'big government' liberals ruining our lives; after all, I'm a self-made man who believes everyone should take care of themselves, just like I have."

Change and Hope!

Dare I say it? It looks like Barack Obama will be our next president! Hurray!!! I have never followed an election this closely in my life, and America desperately needs a leader with the intelligence, the vision, and the compassion which George W. Bush has totally lacked. This brought a smile to my face:

November 4, 2008

McCain aides see 'no path to victory'
Posted: 10:23 PM ET

From CNN Correspondent Dana Bash

(CNN) – Two senior aides to John McCain see "no path to victory," given the night's results so far. The two advisors, who were crunching numbers for the Republican contender, were responding to a question via e-mail from CNN's Dana Bash, who has been covering the McCain campaign. The aides asked not to [be] named because the campaign is not commenting on internal discussions. Three states that went Republican in 2004 have gone for Democrat Barack Obama, according to CNN projections — Iowa, New Mexico and Ohio.