President Bush said Friday that he has a "basically nonexistent" relationship with the NAACP's leadership and he refused for the consecutive fourth year to speak to the group's national convention.

Bush's assessment of his relationship with the nation's largest civil rights organization was a sharp reversal from his rhetoric during his last campaign. Then he spoke to the group's convention as part of an effort to show he was a different kind of Republican and said that "there is much we can do together to advance racial harmony and economic opportunity."
---
The NAACP said Bush is the first president since Warren G. Harding not to meet with the group while in office.

As a member of the Kos team aptly notes:

Let's first be clear that the Bush campaign isn't simply not going to the NAACP convention, they're deliberately and publicly snubbing the NAACP, and this snub was planned well in advance.  The White House and the Bush campaign would have known probably a year ago that the NAACP would be in Philadelphia this weekend, and they would have planned the PA bus trip months ago.  Not only did they decide not to go to the convention, they deliberately planned on being in PA at almost the exact time of the convention to draw more attention to the fact that Bush would not appear before the NAACP.

 

Oh, and I wonder which black activist-group leaders called Jeb Bush which unforgiveable names, because down in Florida they're still purging black people off the voter rolls while attempting to keep the Latinos on.

Nobody believes anybody, everyone is in the know. Lies are told only to convey to someone that one has no need either of him or of his good opinion. The lie, once a means of communication, has today become one of the techniques of insolence enabling the individual to spread around him the glacial atmosphere in whose shelter he can thrive.
--Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia

The idea that the Senate has taken a hard look to find out where the intelligence-gathering services went short is good and positive. We thought there was going to be stockpiles of weapons. I thought so; the Congress thought so; the U.N. thought so. I'll tell you what we do know. Saddam Hussein had the capacity to make weapons.
--George W. Bush, July 9, 2004



The very people who burst with proofs of exuberant vitality could easily be taken for prepared corpses, from whom the news of their not-quite-successful decease has been withheld for reasons of population policy. Underlying the prevalent health is death. All the movements of health resemble the reflex-movements of beings whose hearts have stopped beating.
--Adorno (Ibid.)

UPDATE: For some related ideas, see my post from last fall, Bush: I Am Shit.

From the intersection of Ventura and Laurel Canyon Boulevards, Los Angeles, July 9, 2004.

All photographs courtesy of Stand Up and Holla!

Dawkins writes:

The records that would have exonerated George W. Bush of the charge that he illegally fled the Texas Air National Guard to enter rehab for alcoholism and cocaine abuse have been "inadvertently destroyed, according to the Pentagon."

The destroyed records cover three months of a period in 1972 and 1973 when Mr. Bush's claims of service in Alabama are in question.
...
The lost payroll records stored in Denver might have answered some questions about whether he fulfilled his legal commitment, critics who have written about the subject said in interviews.

"Those are records we've all been interested in," said James Moore, author of a recent book, "Bush's War for Re-election," which takes a critical view of Mr. Bush's service record. "I think it's curious that the microfiche could resolve what days Mr. Bush worked and what days he was paid, and suddenly that is gone."

So we can only continue to assume, given this absence of exculpatory evidence, that Bush did indeed flee the Texas Air National Guard to enter rehab for alcoholism and cocaine abuse.

It certainly is too bad those records have been destroyed.

Dear Nicholas Kristof,

Your recent column is about as funny as a four-year-old contracting cancer of the eye. Apparently, you think fascism is funny. You don't give a shit. You've "succeeded"--your reputation is established, your career complete. You can write columns on the level of a seventh-grader writing "satire" for the middle school newspaper. You could even die. Nothing matters to you anymore. "Matter" is a pretense. Make no mistake: publishing photographs of starving Sudanese or accounts of your heroic maneuvers in Southeast Asian whore-markets won't absolve you of your essential mediocrity, foolishness, and worthlessness. You should quit. A "conservative" or right-wing columnist would be preferable to you. You suck, and aren't funny. You really do want Bush to be elected. Electoral politics titillates you. Having "the bad guy" in office titillates you. It's all pageantry--you might as well write about runway fashions (although that would almost certainly be over your head) or reality television shows. You're a talentless narcissistic fuck. Your overripe ego keeps you hanging on by a thread: but all around, for you, is oblivion. Drop now.

Eat shit,

Blicero

Former Australia PMs Tell U.S. to 'Butt Out'

Top U.S. officials, including President Bush and Secretary of State Colin Powell, have been pressuring Australia's opposition Labor party to drop a promise to withdraw Australian troops from Iraq if it won polls tipped for October.
---
"The intervention, not only of Richard Armitage but his bosses, in our political scene, I think, are quite unforgivable," Fraser, who was prime minister between 1975 and 1983, told Australian television late on Thursday.

"He's (Armitage) doing it for a very specific purpose -- to try and achieve a specific outcome that the United States wants. If it had been in older times, American officials would have been told to butt out."

Despite the U.S. pressure and a warning by Bush that pulling troops out of Iraq early could damage bilateral ties, Labor leader Mark Latham has refused to back down.

Latham, who once called Bush "dangerous and incompetent" over his decision to go to war in Iraq, said Australian voters would have their say on the matter at the election.

NBC: 11 points

NBC News Poll conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates International. July 6, 2004.

43 Bush/Cheney

54 Kerry/Edwards

CBS: 5 points

CBS News Poll. July 6, 2004.

44 Bush/Cheney

49 Kerry/Edwards

Zogby: 2 points

Zogby America Poll. July 6-7, 2004.

46 Bush/Cheney

48 Kerry/Edwards

Bin Laden Is Said to Be Organizing for a U.S. Attack

Mr. Ridge said reliable information pointed to an attack in which terrorists would try to "disrupt our democratic process," suggesting an attack designed to disrupt the national political conventions or the elections in November. He added that extra protective measures would be in place at the conventions, even though there was no specific indication that they were targets.

Hello, speakingcorpse here, now posting for the first time from my own computer. You will see that the tag below says "posted by speakingcorpse."

Anyway: Kerry's attempt to redefine American "values" so as to include the idea of equal opportunity is going to work. The only reason the Repugs have had a stranglehold on "values" in the eyes of media whores is that the Dems have failed to challenge the implicit deadly equation of "values" with white supremacy and displaced, repressed fantasies of mass anal rape.

While these are, of course, crucial points in the complex constellation of American "values," they are inextricably and dialectically bound up with other, better ideas--the most important of which is the recently neglected idea of equal opportunity. Kerry's redefinition of what exactly are American "values" can be accomplished without strain, or even argument, because American "values" are so nebulous and self-contradictory. But the redefinition will for this reason be all the more effective: people will not even realize that it has occurred, though they will respond to what Kerry is saying nonetheless.

The selection of Edwards signals a commitment to this strategy, and so the Repugs are very scared. Thus, according to this article, they are saying that Kerry is now "re-inventing" himself. This article also explains how the Repugs are attempting to reclaim the "value" terrain as their own: by suggesting that Kerry is on the side of Scott Peterson. Bush has a new ad explaining that Kerry is against a new law making those who commit federal crimes against women and harm fetuses in the process guilty of an additional crime (harming not just the woman but the unborn child). The law is called, poignantly, the "Laci Peterson Law," and we are told in the ad that "John Kerry oppposes the Laci Peterson Law."

This is clearly going to hurt the Repugs. However many millions of Americans are following the case, it can only be a minority that does so without any awareness of the fact that watching reports about the case on TV is a self-degrading, even self-mutilating, activity. The viewers may enjoy the coverage, but they cannot not be aware of the sickness that the whole phenomenon manifests. They will not take kindly to a Presidential candidate who suggests that being on the right side of the Peterson case is a bedrock American "value," thereby reminding them of their own ongoing corpsification.

My own opinion, of course, is that Scott Peterson, like Gary Condit, is a great American who is possessed of infinitely more dignity than the media figures who have reported on, and caused, his predicament. I would vote for him for President in a heartbeat.


This is not just about his current fight in the courtroom; it is about a whole lifetime of struggle--fighting everyday for what he believes in, trying to make this country better, always heeding the call to serve.

Daschle agrees to sign a pledge disallowing out-of-state TV ads in SD during this campaign. Thune won't sign, though he did in 2002 (when, presumably, fewer attack ads were being run on his behalf).

Sign Daschle's petition; try to embarrass Thune.

From AMERICAblog:

I just heard from a senior inside-the-beltway source that the Republicans are planning to gaybait at their upcoming convention in NYC. According to my source, the Republicans have already rented mobile TV vans which they plan to use to film gays and lesbians protesting the Republican convention. The Republicans are hoping that some of the gay protesters will be dressed outlandishly in drag, etc. The on-site media vans will then film the protesters and beam the video to key election states like Missouri via various "Christian" TV networks. I was also told that the most outlandish protesters just might "coincidentally" be given the best access nearest the convention site, expressly so the media will see them.

Since the Repugs are planning a "liberal" presentation at their convention anyway, why not just broadcast extant footage of Giuliani in drag, or shacking up with the gay housemates who boarded him for a while after he got kicked out by his wife for having committing adultery inside his own house?

Why not just beam footage of Arnold Schwarzenegger? Doesn't his basic physical personage constitute "drag"? When John McCain powders his skull, is that "drag"?

Hello, speakingcorpse posting again.

Michael Moore's movie is still doing spectacularly well: since opening at number one two weekends ago, making 24 million dollars, the film has made an additional 37 million. Two midwestern theater chains have refused to show the movie, claiming that it aids terrorists. (Right now I can't find the links to the stories that I read about the theater-chains and the box-office tally, so you'll have to trust that AmCop is reporting truthfully.)

Anyway, in response to the film's success, the GOP is sponsoring a new movie. Sources tell AmCop that the film's screenings will very innovatively engage audience members directly. At each screening, the audience will stare at a giant screen that is in fact a mirror that reflects images of the audience itself. During each screening, snipers ranged around the theater will shoot audience members one by one. Thus, each audience member will get to enjoy his own personal climax--the image of himself on screen, bleeding to death.

Hi friends, speakingcorpse here, one of the three animals (2 cats, and me) currently infesting the apartment of Blicero.

In case you were all doing other things yesterday, I'm making sure to inform you that the cable news coverage of Kerry's selection of John Edwards as his running mate was nothing other than a televised funeral--a funeral in which there were no survivors, in which the dead could "speak" (in a limited sense), in which the dead in fact "spoke" obsequies over their own mouldering corpses. A funeral for the undead.

The liturgy was provided by the Republican National Committee, which, as soon as Kerry announced his choice, blast-faxed and e-mailed a series of talking points to the cable news stations, points which included the following: Edwards is a millionaire trial lawyer, Edwards has no experience, Kerry really wanted McCain, etc. These various talking points would have remained only talking points, and not taken on a morbid ceremonial function, if they had been broadcast as the reaction of Republicans to the news of the day, the selection of Edwards. But it was not Republican operatives who made these points, it was the news anchors themselves. In fact, the news of the day, by early evening, was not the nomination, but the GOP response.

Never mind the fact that this is good news for Democrats; I think it makes the Repugs even more repugnant in the eyes of many voters. What is remarkable is the fact that the anchor-corpses immediately "spoke" the GOP talking points as if they were "speaking" their own words. Clearly, the anchor-corpses cannot speak their own words--cannot, in fact, speak. They are dead--or, at best, undead. The closest they can come to living speech is turning their death-mask "faces" into holes through which poisons are emitted. In this way, the GOP talking points are fused with their own dead souls, and the corpses can simulate life for the duration of their television programs. Of course, such tricks cannot undo the fact of death. The speech simulation is really only a testament to the corpses' own mouldering putrefaction. It is the announcement of a death, the death of the one who purports to speak.

See, for example, the transcript of the CNN program "Paula Zahn Now" (the title of the show seems to insist on the presence of Zahn, thereby revealing the anxiety of the producers concerning the fact that she is not present, that she is in fact no where, that she is not). The program was hosted yesterday not by Zahn, but by Judy Woodruff (who, as AmCop readers know, is a skeleton that has been sprayed with wax and then repeatedly irradiated, giving the wax a firmness and a preternatural death-glow). Below is the very beginning of the program:

JUDY WOODRUFF, HOST, "JUDY WOODRUFF'S INSIDE POLITICS" (voice-over): Tonight, Republicans target John Edwards.

SEN. JOHN KERRY (D-MA), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Senator John Edwards from North Carolina.

WOODRUFF: A freshman senator...

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: John Edwards is someone who had only four years experience in the United States Senate.

WOODRUFF: With a liberal record.

SEN. JOHN EDWARDS (D-NC), VICE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: President Bush has fallen short of that goal.

WOODRUFF: No international credentials...

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No foreign policy experience.

WOODRUFF: And he's not John McCain.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Not a bad choice for his second pick.

WOODRUFF: The case for and against vice presidential candidate John Edwards.

I can't bear to actually respond to the charges that Woodruff herself levels against Edwards. And it's not necessary anyway, as he is obviously a good choice. Let us just acknowledge, in grief and terror, the ritual that Woodruff has performed upon herself in this segment.


The smile you see is a smile frozen onto a corpse; it was
traced on my dying body by my soul as it abandoned the human world.

When asked how Edwards stacked up against Vice President Dick Cheney, Bush said, "Dick Cheney can be president," an apparent swipe at the 51-year-old Democrat's political experience.

The president then quickly asked for the next question from reporters.

"Next," he spat. What a snide little shit. What a little angry baby brat. Who in their right mind could vote for this "man" without a genuine desire to either a) kill oneself or b) actually eat shit?

Not to mention that it's impossible for this cringing, cowardly little turd-gnome to emit any "words" at all without the words turning against him in a joke at his expense. (In this case, he states the obvious: insofar as someone in this government is fulfilling a president-function, Dick Cheney is in fact that "someone.")

E.J. Dionne hits all the right points in this nice little celebration of Kerry's choice yesterday.

What a complete and utter asshole!

This ongoing story just boggles my mind. Someone please correct me if I'm mistaken, but this seems to be the sequence:

1. 9-11 Commission says there's no link between Saddam and Al Qaeda.

2. Cheney insists there is a link, and that he knows because he has access to special information the commission doesn't.

3. The Commission says, "OK, if you know something we don't, please let us see the info."

4. Cheney gives them nothing but a sneer.

5. The Commission issues a statement saying, "OK, well, I guess he doesn't have any special information, then. We must be right that there was no connection."

6. And now, this: "A spokesman for Mr. Cheney, Kevin Kellems, said on Tuesday that the White House welcomed the statement, calling it proof that the White House had fully cooperated in providing the panel all available intelligence relevant to its work."

So they "welcome" a statement which says nothing but that since Cheney refuses to turn over information he insinuates he has, that information must not exist?

Am I going insane? Who ever heard of such infantile bullshit? This is the Vice President? This is how he deals with the bipartisan commission investigating the 9-11 terrorist attacks on our country??

From Dan Balz's "Analysis" at MSNBC:

[Bush campaign operative Vin] Weber predicted that the course of Edwards's vice presidential candidacy will encompass the overall presidential campaign. "If voters go to the polls believing that America is at war, with terrorism and at war in Iraq, I believe they're going to reelect President Bush," he said. "If they go to the polls thinking about other things, it's going to be very close."

I have an idea for how the Bush campaign can force "voters" to "believe that America is at war" when they go to the polls. Vin Weber can simply go to a crowded polling place with an explosive belt strapped around his abdomen, and detonate himself. The resulting carnage will ensure that voters won't be "thinking about other things."

Democrats also noted that Bush had no more experience in national security and foreign policy when he ran four years ago, although the world has changed dramatically since as a result of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

There is no indication, grammatical or otherwise, that some unnamed Democrat or Democrats (or even Dan Balz himself) is opining that "the world has changed dramatically since as a result of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001." It's just a fact. A fact that can be put on the other side of an "although." Good for America that the inexperienced Bush became president when he did, before the world had changed dramatically. Otherwise who knows what would have occurred.

Q: What do you get when

a) You take a skull.
b) Using a putty knife, you plaster cake makeup onto that skull to make it appear as though it has a "face."
c) You put a wig on the skull.
d) You install a tiny wooden "clapper" between the jaws, capable of producing sounds when wind blows in through the jaw-area and out the front of the skull.
e) You place this "talking" skull in front of a camera and broadcast its image on national television.
f) The skull appears to be "saying" things about current political issues and developments (such as, today, Kerry's announcement of John Edwards as his running mate)?

A: You get "NBC News Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent" Andrea Mitchell.

His "Top Ten Complaints from George W. Bush about 'Fahrenheit 9/11'":


10. That actor who played the President was totally unconvincing

9. It oversimplified the way I stole the election

8. Too many of them fancy college-boy words

7. If Michael Moore had waited a few months, he could have included the part where I get him deported

6. Didn't have one of them hilarious monkeys who smoke cigarettes and gives people the finger

5. Of all Michael Moore's accusations, only 97% are true

4. Not sure - - I passed out after a piece of popcorn lodged in my windpipe

3. Where the hell was Spider-man?

2. Couldn't hear most of the movie over Cheney's foul mouth

1. I thought this was supposed to be about dodgeball

Investigators Believe Addicted Doc May Have Mistaken Rictus-Like Sneer (Common Effect of Rigor Mortis) for Facial 'Expression.'

Story.

The telecast of this year's July 4 festivities at the Washington Mall has been nothing short of spectacular. It has to have been the most Republican of all July 4th celebrations, featuring as it did:

--The host/MC, a demented, pill-popping, wife-beating washed-up has-been in a red tie and blue blazer;

--Clay Aiken, who, during his rendition of Lee Greenwood's "God Bless the U.S.A," began bleeding from the eyes, ears, and nether orifices; the pool of blood gathering around him on the stage began, obviously, to attract corpse-eating zombies from the audience; but when they began to swarm Aiken, the fresh-faced young singer, realizing that he'd been overtaken by a Spirit to which he was unworthy, saved himself and the audience by jamming a lit sparkler into his eye-socket, thereby shunting himself directly unto "the bosom of Abraham" and concluding the segment;

--The sassy-talkin' black woman who explained the wonderful legacy of Ray Charles to what appeared (on TV) to be an audience made up exclusively of suntanned young blond-haired future-kidnapping-victims, shaking their stick-flags and mugging for the cameras; following which a Ray Charles song was performed by (I believe) Vince Gill, or some other fat untalented soulless redneck;

--The upcoming finale, in which I understand a contingent of Iowa farmhands dressed as members of the Congressional Black Caucus will march onstage bearing Ronald Reagan's corpse on a bier; whereby, in a miracle-event based on Jesus' multiplication of the loaves and fishes, the partially-decomposed National Treasure will be used to feed all one million spectators, in lieu of BBQ (since BBQ grills, deemed a security risk, are not allowed), while David Brooks rides a rocket up into the mists above the Washington Monument and explodes into a corona of shimmering gold mustard gas--an event which his personal physicians assure us he can perform over and over again without harm to his physical "person."

Update: They just played Dixie for the second time--yes, the second time--during the fireworks display. This is not a joke.

I'm now waiting for the New American Flag--a computer-generated amalgam of the Confederate Stars & Bars, the crest of the Saudi Royal Family, the True Cross, and the CitiBank logo--to be unfurled down the side of the Capitol.

Has anyone written anything about tastelessness as a kind of evil?