Line of the Day

So Gerry wuz over at my place again the other night, drinking Long Island iced teas and smoking cigars like the hardass that he is. We were watching the new George Lopez comedy special on HBO, and G. stepped out of the living room to get more booze. In so doing he missed the best line of the special, and I forgot to mention it to him later, so here it is...Lopez commenting on the shots of Britney Spears sans underwear on the internet:

"Man, I thought it was impossible to make [insert Spanish word for "vagina" here] look bad, but hers looked like sombody took a roast beef and threw it against the wall."

Call the Police, There's a Madman Around

So my mom's about half-loopy these days. She's not batshit crazy, but she certainly can't remember things like she used to. I'm fairly certain that she might not remember my name sometimes, but I see no need to press her on such matters since she's happy to do a crossword puzzle or play Scrabble with me when I visit her in the old folks' home. But clearly there's been some slippage when it comes to reality. Like last time I visited her, my mom introduced me to a woman whom she claimed wuz her half-sister. I just chuckled and said, "No, she isn't." My mother has two sisters, but no half-sisters. Of that I'm quite sure.

Anyway, it's prolly a bit perverse of me, but I find that kind of dementia a little bit humorous. Not so humorous are the crazy people who in some cases run our country or (unbelievably) actually shape our thinking. It's alarming that anything at all that Brush or Dickless Cheney say anymore is taken seriously. Just the other day, in fact, Dickless trotted out another one of his tired cliches about how the Democratic attempts to stop the "surge" would--yep, you guessed it--"validate the al Qaeda strategy." Cheney lives in some bizarro world where everything the Democrats do somehow fulfills al Quaeda's wettest of wet dreams even tho' the Dems have had almost no real power until very recently. Funny how Cheney always thinks it's everyone else who's the asshole when he's clearly the biggest one. No, Dickless, they're not trying to validate the al Qaeda strategy...they're repudiating the Asshole Strategy crafted by you and Asshole Brush and Asshole Rummy.

But ol' Dickless is not above spouting the craziest bullshit and he will always make predictions that will always turn out to be wrong. His string of rosy predictions and assessments of the ever-devolving situation in Iraq is already a matter of public record, but one wonders how much more insane the rhetoric has to get before the media will stop quoting him without guffawing. Just this past Sunday, in fact, you had Tim Russert reading the aforementioned Cheney blurb to Democrat Carol Levin and axing him what he thinks about it. Had I been in Levin's shoes, I would have said, "Gee, Tim, I dunno...it's hard to respond to this question when I'm thinking of your probable follow up question: what do I think of the notion that the moon is made of cheese." I mean, come the fuck on, Russert...if Dickless says that Democrats rape babies, are you gonna have them come on your show and axe them what they think about the quote...or are you going go axe them, "So...when do you think Dick Cheney went off his meds?"

Look, I don't make fun of my mom (at least not to her face), and in any case her nuttiness seems not to do any harm these days...not even to her. But when a politician or pundit has clearly lost his mind or is lying so ridiculously or behaving so treacherously that he might be clinically judged to be a sociopath...don't we have to acknowledge that in our public discourse? If Dickless started sporting a pink tutu and talking to a giant invisible rabbit named Harvey, no one would axe him what his views are on the Middle East. But when he says that it's a good sign of progress in Iraq that the British are starting to pull out...but any pulling out on our part (or any stopping of the surge) would validate the al Quaeda strategy--shouldn't someone sit ol' Dickless down, give him a mild sedative and a glass of water, and calmly ask him if he's ever seen a mental health professional?

The Third Strike

Here's an excerpt from an article written by a dude named Paul Slansky for the Huffigton Post:

Anyone who's read anything I've written about George W. Bush knows that hate isn't a big enough word for my feelings towards him. It's not just that he's an arrogant squanderer with an otherworldly sense of entitlement and a nonexistent sense of responsibility, an ignorant bully whose sadism has been well-documented over the years, and an incompetent failure who has diminished every enterprise he's touched, though each of those is a valid reason in its own right. It's that this arrogance, ignorance and incompetence is destroying my country and threatens to literally destroy me and the people I love. We've already lost the World Trade Center and New Orleans on Bush's watch. In any other civilized nation, just one of those would have been enough to throw him out of office in utter disgrace, yet there he still is, and here we are waiting for the third strike.

If it comes and you aren't annihilated in it, here's who else to blame: Joe Lieberman, Hillary Clinton, John McCain, and every other government official who supports or has supported the diverting of U.S. military efforts from our real enemy to Iraq, including cowards like Colin Powell who knew better from the start but still lied for Bush. Also, Tim Russert, Bob Woodward, David Broder, Judith Miller, and all the other so-called journalists whose craven failure to hold Bush accountable makes them his complicit enablers.

Digging in the Dirt

So, "Dirt" is an interesting new show on F/X, about a tabloid newspaper and all the whack jobs that help produce it. None has more of an acid tongue than "Lucy Spiller," the editor, played by Courtney Cox-Arquette (I knew I had her pegged right as having a real dark side when I wrote that short story about how she kills all the other "Friends"). Anyway, last week they were digging thru some "shit-com" star's trash, and they put some shredded documents back together. One of them wuz a picture of the star standing next to a horse. Cue the Line of the Day from Lucy: "I can see why she shreds. The horse has a tighter ass."

Later in that same episode, a skeeze-fuck executive at the newspaper tells this young hottie reporter he's bangin' that there are only three lies. And the third lie wuz, "I promise not to come in your mouth." To which the hotty replies, "What if I want you to?" Boy, you just cannot get that kinda dialogue on "The Ghost Whisperer," can you? And, on a similar theme having nothing to do with the show "Dirt," we have this offering from a blogger who comments on John McCain's apparent stated preference for a certain brand of mouthwash:

"McCain likes Listerine? Why? Because it kills the taste of Bush, Rove and Cheney's jizz in his mouth?"

Sounds like my kinda blogger.

TXB's Harry Prayer

A Little Touch of Harry in Iraq

Here's hoping that this poof gets his head blown off.
Aw, just kidding. A good maiming will suffice.
Or maybe just a good sodomizing.
Lord, please do NOT bless this defender of freedom.
Let him meet a pissed off Iraqi who

loves him some hairy/Harry man-ass

and knows just the right time to pull out.

If you are going to raise kids then you need to consider leaving this nation after reading something like following:

We were asked to send the next of kin to whom the remains of my nephew, killed on Monday in a horrific explosion downtown, can be handed over…
So we went, his mum, his other aunt and I…
When we got there, we were given his remains. And remains they were. From the waist down was all they could give us. “We identified him by the cell phone in his pants’ pocket. If you want the rest, you will just have to look for yourselves. We don’t know what he looks like.”
Now begins a horror that surpasses anything I could have possibly envisioned .We were led away, and before long a foul stench clogged my nose and I retched. With no more warning we came to a clearing that was probably an inside garden at one time; all round it were patios and rooms with large-pane windows to catch the evening breeze Baghdad is renowned for. But now it had become a slaughterhouse, only instead of cattle, all around were human bodies. On this side; complete bodies; on that side halves; and EVERYWHERE body parts.
We were asked what we were looking for, “upper half” replied my companion, for I was rendered speechless. “Over there”. We looked for our boy’s broken body between tens of other boys’ remains’; with our bare hands sifting them and turning them.
We found him millennia later, took both parts home, and began the mourning ceremony.
Can Hollywood match our reality?? I doubt it.

What About "Fuckhole"?

Here's an article about what word comes to people's minds when they think of Brush.

New Poll Reveals Most Democrats Are Dumbasses

No matter what David Brooks sez, Hillary Clinton is an equivocating weasel and, despite what she said at her press conference the other day, she'll be the first person saluting the Deciderfucker if he launches a preemptive attack on Iran. Yet a recent poll said that Democrats would vote for her 2 to 1 over Obama. Even if Hill eventually does apologize for her Iraq vote...I'll take the guy who saw Bush for what he was, saw Iraq for the debacle it would be, and had the fucking balls to speak out against the war when it wuz not at all popular to do so.

Wow, episode III: The Scribes Write Back

Our little ol' Texas Monthly magazine got a bunch of big-shot scholars together, to discuss what history will say about W.

Wow, episode II: The Revenge of the Rudy

Not that I didn't know any of this, but, Rudy is rude? Noooo.

Wow, episode I: A New Hope

Who'd a thunk it? David Brooks, a GOP-er, has these things to say about Hillary, every Dem's favorite I-won't-vote-for-her candidate.

No Apology Needed

Far be it from me to get in the middle of a liberal purge, but would anybody mind if I pointed out that the calls for Hillary Clinton to apologize for her support of the Iraq war are almost entirely bogus?

I mean, have the people calling for her apology actually read the speeches she delivered before the war? Have they read her remarks during the war resolution debate, when she specifically rejected a pre-emptive, unilateral attack on Saddam? Did they read the passages in which she called for a longer U.N. inspections regime and declared, “I believe international support and legitimacy are crucial”?

If they went back and read what Senator Clinton was saying before the war, they’d be surprised, as I was, by her approach. And they’d learn something, as I did, about what kind of president she would make.

The Iraq war debate began in earnest in September 2002. At that point Clinton was saying in public what Colin Powell was saying in private: emphasizing the need to work through the U.N. and build a broad coalition to enforce inspections.

She delivered her Senate resolution speech on Oct. 10. It was Clintonian in character. On the one hand, she rejected the Bush policy of pre-emptive war. On the other hand, she also rejected the view that the international community “should only resort to force if and when the United Nations Security Council approves it.” Drawing on the lessons of Bosnia, she said sometimes the world had to act, even if the big powers couldn’t agree.

She sought a third way: more U.N. resolutions, more inspections, more diplomacy, with the threat of force reserved as a last resort. She was triangulating, but the Senate resolution offered her a binary choice. She voted yes in order to give Powell bipartisan leverage at the U.N.

This is how she’s always explained that vote, and I confess that until now, I’ve regarded her explanation as a transparent political dodge. Didn’t everyone know this was a war resolution? But now, having investigated her public comments, I think diplomatic leverage really was on her mind. I also know, from a third person, that she was spending a lot of time with Powell and wanted to help.

On Nov. 8, 2002, the Security Council passed a unanimous resolution threatening Saddam with “serious consequences” if he didn’t disarm.

The next crucial period came in March 2003, as the U.S. battled France over the second Security Council resolution. Clinton’s argument at this point was that inspections were working and should be given more time. “It is preferable that we do this in a peaceful manner through coercive inspection,” she said on March 3, but went on, “At some point we have to be willing to uphold the United Nations resolutions.” Then she added, “This is a very delicate balancing act.”

On March 17, Bush gave Saddam 48 hours to disarm or face attack. Clinton tried to be critical of the Bush policy while being deferential to the office of the presidency. She clearly had doubts about Bush’s timing, but she kept emphasizing that from her time in the White House, she knew how unhelpful it was for senators to be popping off in public on foreign policy.

At one press event in New York, she nodded when Charles Rangel said Bush had failed at the U.N. But when reporters asked Clinton to repeat what Rangel had just said, she bit her tongue. On March 17, as U.S. troops mobilized, she issued her strongest statement in support of the effort.

Clinton’s biggest breach with the liberal wing actually opened up later, in the fall of 2003. Most liberals went into full opposition, wanting to see Bush disgraced. Clinton — while an early critic of the troop levels, the postwar plans and all the rest — tried to stay constructive. She wanted to see America and Iraq succeed, even if Bush was not disgraced.

When you look back at Clinton’s thinking, you don’t see a classic war supporter. You see a person who was trying to seek balance between opposing arguments. You also see a person who deferred to the office of the presidency. You see a person who, as president, would be fox to Bush’s hedgehog: who would see problems in their complexities rather than in their essentials; who would elevate procedural concerns over philosophical ones; who would postpone decision points for as long as possible; and who would make distinctions few heed.

Today, the liberal wing of the Democratic Party believes that the world, and Hillary Clinton in particular, owes it an apology. If she apologizes, she’ll forfeit her integrity. She will be apologizing for being herself.

Why TXB Is Not A Congressman

So I saw some Republican congresswoman on the floor of the House, saying why the whole non-binding resolution against the Divider/Decider's "surge" plan is a bad idea. And, y'know, there are rational ways to attack the NBR, like, "Get some balls and propose a binding resolution or shut the fuck up." I could have respected the congresswoman if she's said that. But no...in the worst traditions of, as one MSNBC commentator put it, high school debate club (if the club were run by George Bush Jr.)...this lame actually started a sentence directed at the Democrats (never mind the fact that many of her Republican colleagues will vote for the NBR) with something like, "I think you should declare once and for all whose side you're on. Are you on our side, or..." I think I changed the channel at that point. Or maybe I flew into a rage and trashed my whole house and woke up hours later with all my knives sharpened and a brand spanking new AK-47 sitting on my kitchen table. Either way, one can guess what must have followed that "or": "...or with the terrorists." And first off, you just have to wonder who has the balls to say something like that anymore. And second, you wonder why someone who says this isn't shouted down by every rational person within earshot. Thirdly, you must wonder what I personally would have said to the congresswoman if I were a congressman. Well, wonder no longer. I would have said, "I'm going to kill you now. I'm going to choke you to death and throw your body in the gutter. Anything else you want to say before I do that?"

Line of the Day

On MSNBC, the Imus show. Analyst Craig Crawford noted that, of the main Republican candidates thus far, the Morman is the only one with just one wife!
(Rudy's on his third wife; McCain his second.)

Line of the Day

So, at our last program meeting, we got word that some dude in another dept. is sending students to the Writing Center with an assignment which comes with a sixty-one point grading rubric. A rubric is a grading guideline...something teachers use, and something they might also provide for their students. And here's the conversation that followed:

Dean: "Maybe we should give Tom some advice about his sixty-one point rubric."

TXB: "Okay: don't use a rubric that has sixty-one points."

"Plane...Meet Mountain": The Candidacy (and Idiocy) of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton

When the media knocks on my door--as they inevitably will--to axe me who the TXB-machine supports as the Democratic nominee for Prez in '08, my response shall be, "Anyone but Hillary." Seriously...Joe Biden, Barack Obama, John Edwards, Bill Richardson...heck, even that Vilsap dude. And why? Because, quite simply, Hillary is not a leader. She's like John Kerry: a weathervane (all Gore played the weathervane quite well in his last Presidential bid, too). Weathervanes just go whichever way the wind blows. If the majority of people are for the war, weathervanes are for the war. If the majority of people are against the war, weathervanes are against the war (tho' they'll prolly still be too fearful to actually stop the war). Can someone please explain to me why the Democratic party falls time and time again for the limp-wristed candidate who has to hire a focus group or go on a "listening tour" before she/he can form an opinion on anything?

Media analysts often use the word "calculating" to describe Hillary, which is about as kind of a word as one can use. It implies that Hillary will do or say whatever it takes to win the presidency, which seems true enough to me. She may be privately supportive of gay marriage, but she'll say in public that she's against it. She may rant and rave to Bill or Chelsea that the Brush-Clearer In Chief should be impeached and then shot, but Miss Thing will always assiduously avoid "controversial" (read: "Constitutional") concepts such as impeachment. No, let's have "oversight." When this country finally burns down to its last few embers in hell, let's make sure we got us a committee overseeing all the depravity of the Dumbfuck Decider...not opposing him, mind you, just looking on...keeping an eye on things...taking notes for future generations on how another empire fell. But here's a fucking news flash (read: "history lesson") about the calculating candidate: he or she...DOES NOT FUCKING WIN!!! Not anymore, anyway...whatever people may want after 9/11, they sure seem to want a leader and not a godamn calculator.

The media also describes Hillary as "cold"...which may be accurate...but it sorta implies that all those old fossils on Capitol Hill are whack-crazy-party-monsters. Come on...wax dummy John Boner (sorry, "Boehner") has all the charisma of a Chuck Norris dump. And cold as Hillary may (or may not) be in "real life," I have to believe that she does not want to see this country destroyed...nor does she wish to see another American solidier or Iraqi civilian die for no good reason in Iraq. But whatever warmth she may have in private, the chill comes on when she refuses to do what John Edwards hath finally done. Because, really, if you voted for the war, no matter who you are, the only way you get to have any credibility as a rational or sensitive politician at this point...is if you chant this little mantra over and over again: "I was wrong." Hell, I'll even let you slink away with, "I made a mistake." It's terrible to admit such a thing when you realize that you're admitting that over 3,000 of our soldiers died because of your mistake...BUT IT'S THE FUCKING TRUTH. C'mon, Hillary...be the kind of leader that George Bush has never been and never will be: the kind of leader who can admit she's wrong.

HardLanguageBall with Chris Mathews

So y'all heard where Chris Mathews said the F word on MSNBC. I mean, I'm sure pundits often use it on MSNBC. But, get this: this time, they didn't bleep it in time! What fun!
Here's the audio and video:

Did any of them SEE "Sister Act II"?

The African nation of Guinea-Bissau learned that Whoopi Goldberg's DNA traces her origins to their country, well, here is the headline and the story: West African Nation Lays Claim to Whoopi

Well then, why wait? Let's vote for him now!

Seems Miss America has weighed in (so to speak), and says she likes Obama in '08. That decides it for me.

Chinese Democracy

So Asshole wants to blow trillions more in Iraq. The mind is beyond boggling at this point. I think the U.S. is starting to become analogous to the hobo who is making payments on a Porsche. And even that would make more sense...at least the hobo could drive in style from dumpster to dumpster, and he'd have a place to sleep. Of course, the govt. has been flushing our tax dollaz down the toilet for years, but our Iraq adventure is like emptying whole tanker trucks of lucre into a landfill. And because we are dealing with the Dumbfuck Decider and His Fuckhole Idiot Brigade, you really have to question whether they have axed even one economist or futurist whether the United States can survive such an obscene war debt when it now seems clear that we will never see any of them phat oil profits which obviously were the point of the whole war in the first place! You can't even chant, "No blood for oil" with a straight face anymore. You gotta say something like, "No blood for complete and utter useless bullshit," and that phrase just ain't very catchy.

As others have pointed out before, George the Terrorizer tried to get us all scared a while back, as many politicians do, about how Social Security is gonna go bust in our lifetimes...and yet, if the money we've spent on Iraq had gone towards SS, I believe it's been estimated that SS would have been guaranteed to be solvent for at least another 70 years. And we--FUCKING AMERICANS--at least get something out of Social Security! We get NOTHING from Iraq but more dead soldiers, more debt, and the cherry on top: the scorn of the rest of the world and the undying hatred of a shitload of Muslims. If Bush were to literally flush our money down the toilet, it would prolly be a better investment than his dunghill project in the Middle East. So please join me, all good gibblers, in wishing our POTUS some severe chest pains or an embolism in order to hasten an end to his truly disgusting life and all the evil he has done to us. The skin and cells and molecules that went into creating this shitbird were surely some of the nastiest that the Lord has ever manufactured, and the highest that Georgie-boy can ever aspire to is merely looking like a total joke in the history books. More likely, he will be viewed as one of the 21st century's most destructive dictators (and you might have to find that history in a book written in Chinese, but it will be true nonetheless).

Never Say Never

So, the fallen reverend Haggard (he of the homosexual scandal some time back) claims now to be "completely heterosexual" after treatment. Well, God bless him (or, somebody or some diety bless him). But, really? Completely straight? Can anyone really be completely straight? I mean, that Denzel Washington is not a bad-looking guy...

What up, eh? This is actually Jerry making a post. I thought that this display name would be funny... Dan's life blood spills over because he could not carry on with this cold and empty life (2112 reference.)

Dan Ho Found Dead In His House

So yeah: they found him hanging from a ceiling fan in the basement. Fucking Colts...you killed Dan Ho! Bastards!!! Rest easy, Danny Boy...you can look down upon your beloved Bears from heaven next year, when they will surely be back to the Super Bowl again! And this time they'll do it...in the purple rain, with new quarterback Brett Favre, defeating the most fearsome new team in the NFL.....the Houston Texans!?!?! Of course, then Rick and Melissa will have to hang themselves because Rick, out of his desire to reject the "cool" Texas team (The Cowboys), will have insisted that they become Texans fans. And once again Rick's notions of what is or isn't cool will get people killed.

The dude from "Wings"? For real?

Yes, it's true: Steven Weber is apparently a pretty smart dude. And he ain't playin'. Here's how he lays it on the line with regard to the current politcial regime: "I don't care how much white hair you have on your head, how much schooling you have or how much you pray--in allowing Bush/Cheney do their thing, you are killing this country." Also, it turns out that Mr. Weber may be the best damn thing about Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. From the couple of episodes I've seen, he was friggin' hillarious. Anyway, dude can write, too.

Meatwad sez, "Boston is a bunch of pussies, yo!"

Harsh, Meatwad. Very harsh. But accurate as hell. More frightened little children born of a fantasy war on terror. Think I just became a Yankees fan.

Who's Next? Burt Reynolds?

Whoa, do I smell a conspiracy afoot? First Joel Osteen, faintly, according to some, resembling myself. Then the alternative Dan Ho. Now TXB posts a pic of Ben Stiller. Granted, I never got "Hey, did anyone tell you you look like Ben Stiller?", but, all these pictures of dark-haired dudes who could, just could, be me--well, it gets a guy wondering.
Y'all playin' me, right? And y'all had a hand in JFK's assassination, right? (If I'm gonna go conspiracy, I'm gonna go full out.)