From (I believe) Monday's program, an amazing five-minute clip in which Stewart demonstrates Cheney telling simple, straightforward, outright lies.

Go here and click on the "link."

Dawkins writes:

Do you think you can help save the environment by reducing the greenhouse gas emissions of your car?! If you think so, then you are a stupid fuck!

Hah ha ha ha!!

The EPA (that stands for Environmental Protection Agency) is spending $1 million in taxpayer dollars to run television advertisements that mock the efforts of consumers to improve the emissions of their cars.

speakingcorpse writes:

All of the negative Clinton biography reviews, and especially the spat-out bile of Michiko Kakutani, have reminded us of the poisonous psychic dynamic at work in the mainstream media's coverage of our last President. Perhaps it's hard to grasp or articulate clearly, but the sickness has something to do with unacknowledged loneliness and grief, image-worship, violent masturbation, projection of guilt, and sacrificial expiation in the form of hateful blind denunciations of the last competent President we're ever likely to have. Apparently, Bill Keller and the Times gang realized that the stench from the psychic rot was a bit too pungent in Kakutani's demented, meaningless denunciation of Clinton's book. Now they've gotten a wonderfully written and effusively laudatory review from a real human--the great author Larry McMurtry. It was supposed to be published two weeks from now (in the Sunday Book Review, as opposed to the daily arts section, already soiled by Kakutani). But the Times has (unprecedentedly) rushed the new review into print, and announced to all their colleagues (at the Poynter Forum) that the review is online. Well, I'm grateful for McMurtry's review, which really makes me want to read Clinton's book. But it won't undo the obvious: Kakutani and the rest of the whores want to be raped by Clinton, and they hate him because they know he's too good to do such a thing.

Dawkins writes:

Dear Hitler,

In the latest video ("The Coalition of the Wild-eyed") posted on your campaign website, you have taken clips of Adolph Hitler's oratory and spliced them into a montage of sound bites from Al Gore, Howard Dean, Michael Moore, Dick Gephardt, and John Kerry, to make the point that the anger these public figures display toward your policies render them equivalent to Hitler.

(Apparently, you have used the Hitler clips originally compiled in an amateur political video entered into a MoveOn.org contest that suggested that you are Hitler.)

To set the record straight:

Like the MoveOn.org member's video suggested, you -- not Gore, Dean, Moore, Gephardt, or Kerry -- are Hitler.

You, like Hitler (who burned down the Reichstag), allowed the World Trade Center to be destroyed to sow terror and shore up your illegitimate office.

You, like Hitler, have consolidated your political "base" by appealing to the basest racism, bigotry, and xenophobia of your nation's citizens.

You, like Hitler, have invented foreign enemies, invaded sovereign nations, and stirred nationalistic zeal to a frenzy to distract the nation's attention from your wanton destruction of the underprivileged classes of society.

In due time, you, like Hitler, will be forcibly deposed from power, and in the waning moments of your reign, hiding in your bunker, foaming from your mouth, with scrapes and bruises across your face, you will shoot yourself in the head (with Saddam's pistol) to avoid answering for your crimes.

Then, you will join Hitler -- not only in video image and sound, but bodily, spiritually -- in hell, where your burning corpse will burn Hitler's corpse, and vice versa, for all of eternity.

Thank you again for your new video, "The Coalition of the Wild-eyed." Best of luck with your campaign.


Also:

Subj: Re: Kerry's Coalition of the Wild-eyed
Date: 6/25/04
To: BushCheney04@GeorgeWBush.com

Dear Mr. Mehlman,

Of course I'm going to support President Bush in the fall, but I'm afraid this campaign video has gone too far. I find it tasteless to compare one's opponents -- even Al Gore or John Kerry -- to Hitler.

In the future, please take the time to consider alternatives to using Hitler imagery in your campaign videos.

Thank you.

M. Dawkins

Regarding the video "The Coalition of the Wild-Eyed" currently posted at the Bush campaign website, Stand Up and Holla! writes:

I like that they use the doctored video of Michael Moore (remember that mini-scandal, how CNN upped the audio when there were boos during his Oscar speech, and had to apologize? This ad uses THAT footage!!!). This is fucking insanity...I felt sick when the nice music comes on at the end. Completely nauseous.

It's honestly like the kind of thing you would stumble across on TV in the middle of the night on some cable access born-again Christian channel. It's so scary... from the shitty production values (look at the editing during the Nazi scenes, where they are superimposing the quotes about how God told him to strike at Al-Qaida (over a picture of Hitler), as well as the brutally choppy audio), to the surreal "words" below the monitor where the movie plays, which are mysteriously labeled "latest headlines" ("President Applauds Those Who Stand for Freedom," "President Touts Compassion Agenda for Brighter Future").

I feel like this came from another planet.

Dawkins adds:

What makes it so bizarre and confusing and addled is that I think the Hitler images were taken from that controversial MoveOn.org contest entry in which an amateur FinalCut jockey made a video with Bush side by side with Hitler.

But it makes it all the weirder that the Bush video uses THOSE Hitler clips to make the point that Al Gore et al are Hitler, when they could have just gotten some fresh Hitler clips. Unless they're trying to make the circuitous point that Gore et al are Hitler because some MoveOn.org member (who, by implication, Gore supports?) made a video suggesting that Bush is Hitler.

Blicero adds:

It's like a freaking Mr. Show skit. I ain't afraid a no rolley-coaster!

speakingcorpse writes:

Upon hearing that Cheney told Sen. Patrick Leahy on the Senate floor to fuck himself, I can only say that Cheney, that fucking demented murderer, should himself be fucked, because he has fucked America, and Iraq, with his fucked-up fanaticism and his fucked-up desire to fuck the world with his shriveled non-fucking dick, with which he should to try to fuck his corpse of a wife in their shared coffin, which is where they fucking belong.


I wouldn't wipe my ass with Dick Cheney.

Dawkins writes:

The headlines on AOL's Welcome page [yesterday]:

Among screamers about Mary-Kate Olsen's eating disorder and the Rev. Moon's "coronation," one finds the provocative question:

Clinton Ignore Terror Threats?

Glad to see AOL's doing Marc Racicot's work for him!

Blicero adds: I was at that McSweeney's fundraiser last night, and had the exquisite pleasure of seeing David Byrne read the Moon "coronation" article onstage as a preface to his acoustic set.

I can sense that, despite the fact that these people are torturing me--for whatever reasons, ill-advised as they may be--torture in itself is not a part of their soul, their being. Although their actions may constitute torture, their souls, and their respective beings (i.e., what Heidegger may have called dasein) are completely torture-free. You know what I'm getting at? It's hard to explain. But in a way, it makes the torture that much less torture-y.

speakingcorpse writes:

Does it matter that 48 Nobel laureates have signed a letter supporting John Kerry and denouncing the Bush admninistration's plan to save the lives of frozen embryos (perhaps for eventual elevation to the office of "Embryo-in-Chief," changed from "Commander-in-Chief" in honor of salvaged abortion George W. Bush)? Does the opinion of leading scientists matter to the Bush campaign? No, because, according to campaign spokesperson/plumber Steven Schmidt, these 48 Nobel laureates aren't just scientists, but political "partisans."

Americans who might be inclined to listen to the opinions of 48 Nobel laureates on the stem-cell issue, Schmidt argues, should recognize that their scientific expertise has been discredited by the fact that many of them opposed...the Iraq "war"! The fact that they opposed the "war" means that these Nobel laureates are not motivated by their hopes for scientific progress, but by base political calculations. Furthermore, Schmidt argues, their opposition to the "war" shows exactly how partisanship clouds their objective vision. Clearly, the Iraq intervention was supported by reasoned, even scientific, research and argumentation. And scientifically speaking, the "war" has been shown to be a real and unimpeachable success. The fact that these Nobel laureates have opposed the "war" means that they are closing their eyes to the scientific evidence, which clearly proves that the "war" has been a victory in the larger terror struggle. In their scientific failure, the laureates are much like liberal reporters, who have ignored reality in much of their reporting concerning the supposed pervasiveness of death and mayhem in Iraq.

From Dawkins:

The "abstract" discussions about stretching the bounds of the law on torture and interrogation were never made available to "soldiers in the field, nor to the president," Mr. Gonzales said.

Whew!

Runner up:

Mr. Rumsfeld's April 16, 2003, memo authorizing the limited use of more aggressive interrogation techniques at Guantánamo Bay was stamped "Declassify On: 2 April 2013."

Bush:

"The values of this country are such that torture is not a part of our soul and our being."

Nietzsche:

"We [Americans] certainly do not regard ourselves as a particularly cruel and hardhearted people, still less as a particularly frivolous one, living only for the day; but one has only to look at our former codes of punishments to understand what effort it costs on this earth to breed a 'nation of thinkers' (which is to say, the nation in [the world] in which one still finds today the maximum of trust, seriousness, lack of taste, and matter-of-factness--and with these qualities one has the right to breed every kind of [American] mandarin). These [Americans] have employed fearful means to acquire a memory, so as to master their basic [slave]-instinct and its brutal coarseness. Consider the old [American] punishments; for example, stoning...breaking on the wheel...piercing with stakes, tearing apart or trampling by horses ("quartering"), boiling of the criminal in oil or wine...the popular flaying alive ("cutting straps"), cutting flesh from the chest, and also the practice of smearing the wrongdoer with honey and leaving him in the blazing sun for the flies. With the aid of such images and procedures one finally remembers five or six 'I will not's,' in regard to which one had given one's promise so as to participate in the advantages of society--and it was indeed with the aid of this kind of memory that one at last came 'to reason'! Ah, reason, seriousness, mastery over the affects, the whole somber thing called reflection, all these prerogatives and showpieces of man: how dearly they have been bought! how much blood and cruelty lie at the bottom of all 'good things'!"

and

Bush (by implication):

"I am living. I continue to live."

Nietzsche:

"For some, life turns out badly: a poisonous worm eats its way to their heart. Let them see to it that their dying turns out that much better. Some never become sweet; they rot already in the summer. It is cowardice that keeps them on their branch."

This isn't Ryan the scandalized, disgraced former Republican governor of Illinois; this is Ryan the newly scandalized, newly disgraced Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate from Illinois:

In New York, Ryan's former wife described a club "with cages, whips and other apparatus hanging from the ceiling." She said she refused when Ryan asked her to perform a sexual act while others watched.

Ryan denied the accusations and said he felt bad for their son, now 9, that she would falsely accuse him.

"I did arrange romantic getaways for us, but that did not include the type of activity she described," Ryan said in court papers. "We did go to one avant-garde nightclub in Paris which was more than either one of us felt comfortable with. We left and vowed never to return."

Can you hear the fatalism, the absinthe-drenched ghost of Poe, the grim, ecstatic yearning, the hot spark of amour fou, in Ryan's vow "never to return"?

Un flaneur de Paris, notre Ryan...it's like all he did was duck out for a little exquisite corpse, or perhaps intending merely to walk through himself, meeting robbers, ghosts, giants, old men, young men, wives, widows, brothers-in-love, but always meeting himself--and the next thing you know he's being attacked by a bunch of square-as-can-be Democrats.

No doubt Ryan's wishing que Je est un autre right about now!!

"So far, it's really been a top-down issue," said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.), a strong opponent of gay marriage who has used his chairmanship of a Judiciary subcommittee on the Constitution to hold three hearings on the proposed Federal Marriage Amendment.

Though he is convinced that gay marriage is going to be a "huge" issue, Cornyn said, "what it's going to take is some more bottom-up concern about whether people are losing control of their lives."

Cornyn, yearning for some "bottom-up concern."

Dawkins writes:

You can tell their campaign is continuing to unravel just by "recognizing" the frayed and confused rhetoric and logic of this campaign email:

"President Bush declared the month of June as Great Outdoors Month, a time to recognize our nation's abundant resources and land."

A time to "recognize" "land"? He "declared" this? When?

"President Bush has worked hard to help protect these resources and has a record of historic achievement and a positive vision for the future of sportsmen."

What is his "record of historic achievement"? More perplexing: what constitutes a "positive vision" for the "future of sportsmen"?

And is the "future of sportsmen" currently endangered?

"The true strength of our Nation lies in the hearts and souls of our citizens..."

Okay, I'll buy that, but then the rejoinder to that clause:

"...and I urge all Americans not only to visit our parks and recreation areas, but also to volunteer their time and talents to help maintain the beauty of our environment."

One simply does not follow logically from the other.

By the way, does any resonable person think that if they showed up a national park ready to "volunteer their time and talents," there'd be:

a. anyone around to help them put their "talents" to use
b. anyone around who'd actually let them but those talents to use
c. anything they can do to help in any event, i.e., how is some individual at a national park supposed to use their "talents" to roll back three years of pro-pollution, pro-oil company environmental rape and pillage?

"Good stewardship of the environment is not just a personal responsibility, it is a public value..."

Sorry, this stands in stark opposition to what Dick Cheney has already said about conservation, and we don't buy this new line here.

"Americans can take pride in the remarkable progress we continue to make in conserving our environment and natural resources."

Does not compute.

"President George W. Bush"

Huh???

And then the jarring segue into the campaign-speak:

We have a hard fight in the days ahead and the President needs your help to grow a strong base of support and enlist thousands to join our campaign. You can help communicate President Bush's positive message by encouraging others to become Bush Volunteers, writing a letter to your local newspaper, and by forwarding this e-mail to five friends interested in getting involved. For more information on how you can help support President Bush's efforts, visit www.GeorgeWBush.com today!

"Encouraging others... writing a letter... forwarding this email..." But what happened to volunteering at the local garbage dump?