Screw President, man. I want to be the king of Swaziland!

Twenty-thousand bare-breasted dancers? Damn, that puts the Hot Body Club to shame, and then some.

I was reading through the Daily Mirror today, which is good for a few laughs, and I came across this story. It is about a new book that is coming out, authored by Kitty Kelley, in which she details George Bushs alleged white powder fetish.

Apparently the book is obsessed with the old, boring claims that Bush used to be a coke head, which we all remember from the last election cycle. These claims couldnt interest me less, nor do I think there is much validity to the more outlandish claims, such as the one about Bush snorting lines at Camp David when his father was prez. Apparently Kelly was paid a four million dollar advance for the book

I really dont care whether or not Bush participated in the drug culture of the late sixties; we are going to be hard pressed to find a baby boomer presidential candidate who didnt experiment, as weve learned with Clinton, Gore and now, yes, Bush. It boggles my mind that people still get into a tizzy about allegations of drug use by presidential candidates, especially when the allegations involve drug use that took place 25 years prior. For all I care, Bush could have spent much of 1970 face down in a mountain of cocaine, like Tony Montana in Scarface (in fact, this would impress me greatly). As for the allegations that Bush snorted coke at Camp David dont believe it. Remember those allegations concerning Clinton running drugs from a backwater Arkansas airport when he was Governor? They were equally dubious.

And just in case you are one of the dozens of people who believe that the Daily Mirror is stringent about checking its facts and getting the whole story, I give you this quote at the bottom of the story, contained within a mini paragraph, attributed to a pre-surgery Bill Clinton (I’m not quite sure why this is at the bottom of the page, actually):

“This sure isn’t how we planned to spend Labor Day weekend but we’re doing our best to enjoy it.”

The problem is, this appeared on the Bill Clinton Blog which is an obvious hoax. If youve read any of it, and you have a reasonable amount of critical reading skills, this is self evident. I mean, theres one posting where Clinton writes about going to a gay club with Kevin Spacey before hightailing it to a hetero club, where the women were all over him, clawing, pushing and kissing him, fighting for his attention before a cat fight broke out, at which point one woman fought off her assailants with lip stick. Funny? Yes. True? Um, what do you think?

Good job, Daily Mirror. Keep reaching for that journalistic rainbow!

I just deleted over a dozen pieces of annoying comment garbage, and those responsible have had their nice little IP addresses banned from the site. A couple of URLs will go into the blacklist, I’m sure. Let this be a lesson, if you want to be a comment spammer, at least do it from a dynamic IP, dipshit.

In Tim’s last post, he mentions not getting the job at the Collegiate Network, which gave me the idea of checking out the CN’s website to find out who bested our dear loveable Tim (who would have been great for the job, by the way).

While checking out their blog, which is updated even less frequently than our own, I ran across the posting “An End to Modesty”, in which new CN staffer Joseph Pylman discusses a decision at Cornell two years ago to distribute vibrators to women who wanted them, and a current controversy at Wesleyan University over the Cunt Club, an organization that celebrates the female reproductive system (you can’t celebrate it enough, really).

Although I disagree with some of the arguments Pylman uses (i.e. The End to Modesty, as if these young women are using their vibrators in public), I think he has a point about the current state of feminism on campus, which is obsessed with dirty words and openly discussing personal matters that most people could do without hearing. If the Cunt Club existed at our University, we would make merciless fun of them; I have no doubt of that.

Pylman links to an article from the FrontPage.com which discusses the controversy in greater detail, including this tidbit, proving that the UO is not alone in harboring whackos:

[S}ome people in the university community were offended by the notion that having a vagina automatically means that you are a woman. To combat that crazy notion, Wesleyan added a trans-gendered monologue to The Vagina Monologues (TVM). In the words of the plays director, TVM is supposed to be about vaginas not only women and those two are not necessarily the same thing.”

Riiiight. Vagina does not necessarily equal woman. Paging Toby Hill-Meyer …

That’s right, I hate the Pope. Well, it might be more accurate to say that I hate the Papacy. Now that I’m not trying to get a job at the CN anymore, I can say these sorts of things. Why? Well, besides official stances against birthcontrol, priests marrying, women in the clergy, and homosexuality in general? Well, there’s also the Church’s cover-up of child molestation, and now he’s busy railing against gay marriage in Candada. I have never been nor will I ever be a papist, but wasting energy on things that are completely unimportant was a lot of what drove me from Christianity in the first place.

And, for the record: Yes, I know all about Bush RE: Gay Marriage and I think he’s totally wrong on it, and you can read comments on the previous post and a couple of posts down from that to get my take on why I’m supporting the guy for reelection. I’d really like to talk about something else besides the Presidential race.

This is somewhat in response to Tim’s post here, and somewhat in response to his long-ago call for a defense of a Kerry vote, one of which I’ll be casting. (Don’t even think of trying to talk me out of it.) . . .

Tim, you too, like Sullivan, are a self-professed one-issue candidate. Obviously — put down that finger — it’s a much more pressing issue. Yet, as we all acknowledge, this here War On Terrible Stuff/Iraq Occupation is going to be with us for many years to come. I hope you’re looking forward to being a one-issue voter for at least three, maybe four more presidential elections.

Personally, I can’t do that. And honestly, even on that issue, I don’t see the strength of the arguments for staying with Bush. You folks consider him strong on terrorism, despite the fact that he underfought our most important campaign and went into the optional one with too few troops and no plan.

Although semi-successful in Afghanistan (there is no more Taliban, sort of), he went in with one hand tied behind his back, apparently feeling that the full force of American military power should not be used on the organizations that brought about 9/11. No. Better save something to shock and awe Saddam Hussein. As a result, Osama may well have slipped away from a not-so-tight noose at Tora Bora.

Okay, so we went to Iraq. Say whatever you will about whether it’s a good idea; Bush has handled it abysmally from day one. It has been arrogantly and foolishly underplanned, underallocated, and riddled with scandal.

Yet there we are, and we are there to stay. Kerry would not change that. On the ground, in Iraq, any difference between how Bush is running things and how Kerry might run things would be slight, if measurable. Kerry might even improve the situation — at least Iraqis don’t (yet) associate him with prison torture. Going a step further, any appreciable effect of our great Iraq experiment in the Middle East as a whole, and on terrorism in particular, will be very slow to come. Let me step back and see if I have it right:

1. Iraq becomes beacon of democracy
2. Middle East despots pressured to reform
3. Reform germinates and spreads among despotic regimes
4. Middle East emerges from dark ages
5. Islamist terrorism dwindles and dies

It’s a long chain of dominoes, folks. Something that can only come about on the order of decades — just look at step one. Do you honestly believe, when it’s all said and done, that the choice of who is president from 2005-2009 will have made any discernible difference?

Presidents inherit projects like this and carry them on. But these kinds of undertakings have their own momentum; who you have in the driver’s seat is not going to really matter in the long run. In 1961, JFK said we oughtta go to the moon. Eight years later, with the man long dead, we finally did. In 1968, Nixon said he’d get us out of Vietnam. Seven years later, and a year after he had resigned from his second term, we finally did.

Kerry isn’t saying a word about leaving Iraq, and he won’t. So seriously, don’t throw your vote away because you believe it will make a difference on this one issue. Or are you voting for Bush because he wants us to go to Mars?

There were so many terrific speeches at the GOP National Convention, from Jenna and Barbara Bushs hilarious send-up of the outmoded set-up, punch line comedy rule, to Zell Millers rousing call to arms, but my favorite speech was Arnold Schwarzeneggers, in which he once again used his girly men phrase to paint the Dems as, well, homos.

I like what Schwarzenegger is doing with political rhetoric, which is usually so staid and stately. And by using a line from an old Saturday Night Live sketch that made fun of his 80s-era persona, co-opting it, and using it to define the political persona that hes created for himself, he has constructed a political/cultural metanarrative wherein he is referencing a reference once used to mock him. But if thats too highbrow for you, you have the sight of Schwarzenegger standing behind a podium, impugning the opposition for being total fags on the issues.

Just for the hell of it, heres my list of political figures and the phrases you can use to describe them using the new rhetoric. Its a failsafe rhetorical device.

Dems.
John Kerry: Capn Colon Cleanser
John Edwards: Kerrys Fairy
Al Gore: Not So Locked Box

Repubs.
Bush: The Gay Hitler
Cheney: Super Fagasaurous
Karl Rove: The Rectal Rover
Mary Cheney: Dyke Um, moving on

Here are his thoughts on Bush’s speech. I don’t even care enough to rip into him on this, because I’ve been sick of the guy for the better part of a year. Allah Pundit has perhaps the best response to Sullivan, quoted verbatim below:

And lo and behold, the sage of Provincetown has weighed in with a surprise rave review. But hold on: The overall message was “Orwellian”; the convention “xenophobic”; and, after close, careful deliberation and an eminently fair-minded assessment of what he’s seen the past four days (he did say he loved the speech, didn’t he?), he’s decided that he can’t support George W. Bush for re-election . . . because of gay marriage. Knock Allah over with a supernatural fucking feather.

I will say that I think Sullivan has dropped support for Bush on more than just the gay marriage thing, and I can certainly understand his trepidation as he is, in fact, gay and would like to be married at some point. However, his analysis of the Kerry Democrats as the “party of fiscal conservatives” is silly at best and monsterously delusional at worst. Maybe Sullivan’s focus on one issue that, quite frankly, most people don’t care about (and again, yes, I know exactly why he does and I agree with him on the issue of gay marriage generally) has blinded him to the rest of the race as a whole.

I’m celebrating my return to the sedentary, Internet-dependent lifestyle by plowing through all the excellent Reason coverage of the RNC. As with their stuff from Boston earlier this year, it’s mostly golden. Headline refers to this.

Apologies for my latest lengthy absence; I was enjoying another great British summer. Back in the US now, where the weather is arguably even worse. Semi-regular posting to resume at some point.

Hey everyone, I finally got the website updated! Woo! The new issue is a whopping 15 MB, so be prepared for a long download for those of your without broadband (and even some of you who have DSL). I’ll see if I can get into the office tomorrow to whittle down the size of the PDF.

UPDATE: Okay, the issue is now a nice 2.5 or so MB and the pages that didn’t work in Acrobat should work now (Acrobat seems to be a very finicky program).