Goddamn hippies.

According to one Kentucky newspaper, these crafty old bastards are still trying to subvert all that is good and pure in this country.

As columnist Jenean Mcbrearty points out, those silly hippies just don't have the correct answers to questions like these:

Whose life is more important: the 12-year-old Iraqi firing an Uzi or a soldier from Kentucky?

Which is more sacred: a mosque hiding a weapons cache or a plane of tourists?

You tell those dirty, recalcitrant, socialist sodomites, Jenean! You tell 'em! Yeah!

Demonstrations, marches and sign-carrying don't accomplish much these days, but they are a lot more fun and allow the fiction of activist moral superiority to persist.

Woohoo! Yeah! Bitch!

Lefty loonies deny that terrorists have declared war on America, while insisting that we can win the war through negotiation. They seem to believe the terrorists will spare them because they are nice.

Ha, ha! Stupid asshole hippies! That's what you get for sharing your brownies!

It's crucial that we come to terms with war questions because we will have war with Iran and North Korea. It will come down to their children or ours, their soldiers or ours, their countries or ours.

Uh-oh. Really? Shit.

Luckily, no one lives forever. Luckily, there is Generation Jones to take up their slack. America is too great to go down without a fight.

Oh, okay. Whew. Thank Christ we've got the marines. Hoo-ah!

What's your number?

Here we have the moronic story of a well-intentioned House Democrat who doesn't quite realize the game he's playing. Charlie Rangel, a New York Dem, is trying again to get Congress to reinstate the draft. Fucking moron.

But why, Charlie? Why would you want us to do such a thing?

Apparently, Charlie "sees his idea as a way to deter politicians from launching wars."

"There's no question in my mind that this president and this administration would never have invaded Iraq, especially on the flimsy evidence that was presented to the Congress, if indeed we had a draft and members of Congress and the administration thought that their kids from their communities would be placed in harm's way," Rangel said.

Rangel, a veteran of the Korean War who has unsuccessfully sponsored legislation on conscription in the past, has said the all-volunteer military disproportionately puts the burden of war on minorities and lower-income families...

In 2003, Rangel proposed a measure covering people age 18 to 26. It was defeated 402-2 the following year. This year, he offered a plan to mandate military service for men and women between age 18 and 42; it went nowhere in the Republican-led Congress.

I don't think anyone on Capitol Hill is taking Charlie seriously, but just for a second, let's entertain a thought of what would happen if his bill passed and then was somehow signed into law by a deliriously crazy President Shrub. For one thing, the Democrats would lose ground on every other single issue they try to advance, most of the incumbents would be voted out of office, jails would fill to the seams with conscientious objectors, and college kids would rise up against the establishment again. We'd have more Kent State riots! We'd have enormous marches! We'd have social upheaval, a resurgence in communes, and the population of Canada would double within a year!

And then, after all the hullabaloo died down, the draft would again be repealed by a new batch of Congressmen in 2008 after they were voted in on anti-draft platforms.

In short, Charlie, that's a stupid idea. A better one would be for us to elect intelligent leaders who don't want to get involved in stupid wars, and for our Congressmen to not follow stupid leaders like sheep simply because they have a ton of political capital stemming from horrible incidents like when terrorists take over a few 747s and fly them into skyscrapers.

Whatchathink, Charlie? How about we impeach the fucker?

Back to the future

Whew. The elections are over, thank christ, and the Dems have taken back both houses of Congress in a miraculous sweep, but it ain't over. Now we have the 2008 Presidential election to look forward to, and to be honest, I'm not too optimistic. Look at who we've got: Hillary, Barack, Edwards, Biden, Kerry, Gore, Clark, Vilsack, and Bayh. But who's leading the pack?

You guessed it. The woman the right loves to hate: U.S. Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton.

What I'm wondering is can she win? Or is she, like Bush, too much of a polarizing figure? I can't tell. I'd love to see her in the White House, and I think she'd probably be good for the country (better, at least, than shrub), but I'm not sure she can get elected. And if she can't, then the trouble is that we'll have another four years of the GOP in control. True, a Giuliani or a McCain administration would look very different than a Hillary administration, but I'm still not crazy about the idea. And it might be even worse if someone crazier wins the GOP nom.

But what is the alternative? Nominate Barack? By that point, he'll have barely had four years experience in D.C., and a lot of people (myself included) aren't sure that'll be enough for him to draw on in order to be effective and stand on his own two feet.

So what's the deal? What do you guys think? I'm gonna go get a smoothie. Extra strawberries.

Also thanks to Rumsfeld...

Army recruiters are so desperate to fill their quotas that they've resorted to lying to high school kids. ABC caught a batch of them even telling teenagers that the Iraq War was over with.

"Nobody is going over to Iraq anymore?" one student asks a recruiter.

"No, we're bringing people back," he replies.

"We're not at war. War ended a long time ago," another recruiter says.

...

ABC News found one recruiter who even claimed if you didn't like the Army, you could just quit.

"It's called a 'Failure to Adapt' discharge," the recruiter said. "It's an entry-level discharge so it won't affect anything on your record. It'll just be like it never happened."

This is beyond wrong. Somehow, I'm not really surprised that things like this are beginning to pop up, given what's going on in Iraq and how shrub's people have been anally raping servicemen for yeaers now over the war, what with extended tours of duty, recalls to service, and benefit cancellations abounding. At this point, the only way I could see anyone actually wanting to join the service is if they were living in absolute fucking poverty and had no other chance to make their life better. But, of course, the recruiters still have to fill their levies...

Actually, while we're on the topic, I'd like to add that I can understand how that amazingly stupid comment of John Kerry's actually came out of his mouth. It has to do with the well-documented habits of military recruiters focusing on students with underprivileged backgrounds and poor grades. Statistically, they're just more likely to join. I'm not saying Kerry's comment wasn't unbelievably fucking dumb (politically), but I can see where it came from. Thoughts, anyone?

IMPENDING DOOM!

For the GOP, that is. At least in the House. As the New York Times reports, GOP strategists are expecting pretty damn heavy hits, and at this rate, they'll be lucky to keep ahold of the Senate.

Joe Gaylord, who was the political lieutenant to Newt Gingrich when he led the Republican takeover of the House in 1994, said that based on polling he had seen in recent weeks, he expected his party to lose 25 seats to 30 seats on Tuesday. That general assessment was repeatedly echoed in interviews with Republicans close to the White House.

Which means that Capitol Hill is gonna look like this:



Those are Nancy Pelosi's grandkids, just so you know.

Four days to go...

Can you say "Mid-term"? Woohoohoo! It's almost over! There are so many fucking polls, scandals, ads, and updates I can't keep track of all the shite going down. But, just because I love these two tidbits, here's a story about how the Republican National Party has been accepting donations from a porn producer who, among other things, made some gay films with active-duty soldiers that landed a number of them in the brig. And here's a piece about how Bush was rated the second biggest threat to global peace in the world (the first was bin Laden).

Happy voting, and god bless Ted Haggard!

The three stooges

I just love this picture, don't you?