From the New York Times:

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Bush has spared the life of the nation’s Thanksgiving turkey after an election to name the bird which he reports was “neck and neck.'’

Continuing a 57-year White House tradition, the president formally issued the pardon for Blood of Christ and the back-up bird named Beast with Seven Heads, Seven Horns, and Seven Crowns in a Rose Garden ceremony. Evangelical Christians made up 22% of the voting-for-turkey-names electorate. Ending another 57-year White House tradition, the President will in fact slaughter, then eat, both birds. “I prayed on it and I just can’t see any reason to waste this capital I’ve earned,” said Mr. Bush.

The turkeys were raised in West Virginia and will now go to a petting zoo in the Washington suburbs, where Mr. Bush will enjoy a Thanksgiving feast of turkey, mashed potatoes, cute baby goats, and little yellow chicks.

The naming ballot was conducted on the White House Web site, which recorded thousands of entries. The names “Patience'’ and “Fortitude'’ came in second. “Lying Bastard” and “Abu Ghraib” tied for third.

Bush reports it was a nasty campaign, with attack ads from a group called “Barnyard Animals for Truth'’ and what he says was a scurrilous film called “Fahrenheit 375 Degrees at Ten Minutes Per Pound” which falsely claimed that turkeys were foolish creatures with retarded decision-making abilities that did not treat other animals as equals. Barnyard Animals for Truth replied that “all animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others.”

“The objective of securing the safety of Americans from crime and terror has been achieved,” John Ashcroft wrote in a five-page, handwritten letter to Bush.

Now they tell us. Shit, if I had known we were safe from terror, I would have voted for that chicken-shit terrorist-hugging sissy John Kerry.

What you didn’t know was that Bush will be gone within the month, victim of his pals’ ploy to stuff the electronic “ballot” boxes of Florida. Yes, you wonder why Bush seems to have had a 5% boost in “real” votes over the numbers from the exit polling, while people have been screaming for months about these voting machines that leave no paper trail and are produced by a company with conservative ties and a frontman that donated mad scrilla to the CREEP? Hmm . . .

So cheer up, bitches. This scandal will be known as e-Gate, and it will break in the New York Times 10 days from Monday when one of the partisan hackers involved in the scam will come clean and divulge the simple little algorithm he wrote to tack an end-of-pipe “Bush” onto ~5% of all Kerry votes. Bush and Cheney will be forced to resign, a recall election will be held, and Barack Obama will be President 4 years early.

Rejoice!

It will be recalled that, throughout the first year of Decry’s existence, its creators spent most of their time ferociously attempting to alienate their only reader. When jibes, epithets, and vituperations failed to put him off, an emergency editorial meeting was called. It was decided that the only surefire way to make sure that nobody paid any attention to the website was to let it fall into disrepair.

In a Hellerian effort to reserve a small piece of the so-called ‘world-wide’ web for themselves, seth, pnts, and rob lazily sent their website into aestivation.

But even without Decry, life has gone on. Freed from their backbreaking editorial duties, the D-Cryminalz have spent the summer accomplishing one astounding thing after another. Here’s a small sampling.

CEO and Laff Manager seth is now well on his way to becoming a Doctor — of philosophy! This is a very exciting development: Decry’s first and very own doctor. It is already possible to feel the buzz of anticipation around Decry HQ, where rob and pnts believe that in five short years, the newly minted Dr. Seth will be dispensing bucketsfull of PERFECTLY LEGAL prescrption painkillers. “Fuck yeah,” reported rob. “Good-bye drab world, hello ephemeral happiness.” “Hey seth,” hollered pnts, “I’ve got a philosophy for you: drop twenty tabs of Oxycodone on me, stat!” Whereupon rob and pnts erupted into gales of thigh-slapping laughter while a flustered seth tried futilely to explain that as far as he knew, historians weren’t allowed to write prescriptions in North Carolina.

Decry Heiress pnts has also been making ‘avast’ strides. Sources close to Decry intimate that pnts has been developing her ties with Big Piracy. Paparazzi have recently spotted her sailing around the Gulf of Mexico atop a crow’s nest, plundering David “Davey” Jones’s locker and targeting rival ships with her newly developed weapons of mast destruction. Asked whether the Bush administration’s inane war on Iraq had enabled her to develop said weapons undetected, pnts replied simply, “Arrr!”

Most impressive of all, however, has been rob, who spent the summer trying unsuccessfully to kick a truly loathsome chewing tobacco habit. Wow! Look out, ladies: here comes the Big Dipper! Rob also proudly reports that he will soon be moving into new digs — with its own flushable toilet! That’s right: no more midnight, tippy-toe standing, peeing in the sink.

The upshot of this newsbrief is this: Decry has been accomplishing great things without you. Decry has even been accomplishing great things without Decry. But it’s fall again, and we’re bored. So we’re back.

Alleged comic Dennis Miller has thrown his weight behind President Bush in the 2004 presidential election. They make quite a team: Bush can confuse audiences with his clumsy tongue, and Miller with his self-consciously erudite efforts at a brand of comedy called “toilet humor,” wherein “jokes” circle around and around until reaching their inevitable center: shit.

So who thinks this is funny? From the Yahoo News story:

“He had a special barb for one candidate, former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, who has questioned the Iraq war, comparing him to Neville Chamberlain, the British prime minister who followed a policy of appeasement of Nazi Germany in the years before World War II.

“‘He can roll up his sleeves all he wants at public events, but as long as we see that heart tattoo with Neville Chamberlain’s name on his right forearms, he’s never going anywhere,’ Miller said.” Miller did not allude to Bush’s tattoo of a bottle of beer and a coke mirror hiding behind a bush with the legend “AWOL and Lovin’ It.”

I’m in stitches. The only thing funnier than Dennis Miller is the time Caspar Weinberger couldn’t get the money he wanted for defense out of Congress and dissed himself by saying he had “acquired a reputation of being stubborn, uncompromising, immoderate and unpragmatic.” Yaheard?

Eliot Weinberger is some nerd. He wrote a neat article that you can read here. What sucks is that someone can write an article like this—it levies some heavy charges on the Bush administration—and it does not sound hysterical.

Here’s a taste:

Perhaps it cannot be stopped, but the first step toward slowing it down is the recognition that this is an American government unlike any other in this country’s history, and one for whom democracy is an obstacle.

From Bush, via the White House website:

“In the coming weeks and months, I will be working with the Congress to strengthen and improve our Medicare system. For nearly four decades, Medicare has been the binding commitment of a caring society.”

Let’s see … add that to what Paul Krugman says:

“Look at it this way: as the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities points out, this latest tax cut reduces federal revenue as a share of G.D.P. to its lowest level since 1959. That is, federal taxes are now back to what they were in an era when Medicare and Medicaid didn’t exist, and Social Security was still a minor expense. How can we maintain these programs, which have become essential to scores of millions of Americans, at today’s tax rates? We can’t.”

And Bush again:

“By ’strengthen and improve’ I mean ’slaughter and devour.’ And by ‘work with Congress’ I mean strongarm the legislative branch expanding big pharmaceutical companies’ control over much-needed drugs. And by ‘compassionate conservatism’ I mean ‘fuck you, pay me.’ For nearly four decades, Medicare has been the binding commitment of a caring society. Medicare, your time is over. Hasta la vista, baby.”

So it seems that according to a forthcoming article in Vanity Fair, we invaded Iraq in order to pull our troops out of Saudi Arabia, thereby bowing to Osama bin Laden’s demands while ostensibly waging war on him through his proxy, Saddam Hussein. This reinvents doublespeak.

“For bureaucratic reasons we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction, because it was the one reason everyone could agree on.”
—Paul Wolfowitz

And, this just in (from US News) from Colin Powell’s February 1st rehearsal reading of his speech detailing Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction: “I’m not reading this. This is bullshit.” He read it.

I took this interview snippet verbatim from atrios.blogspot.com, one of the best sites on the web. I also took the interview lead-in, because it seemed silly to write my own lead-in. So enjoy.

Start plagiarism:

Ah, finally found it! I’d been hunting for this transcript for awhile. I couldn’t find it because I had misremembered that Congressman Markey, and not RFK, jr., had been the guest on Hannity and Colmes when this particular incident occurred.

Anyway, the setup is that Hannity and Kennedy are talking about drilling in ANWR and oil generally. Hannity starts reading from report which he claims is from the U.S. Geological Survey. From May 17, 2001:

HANNITY: In 1973, the United States imported 36 percent of its oil. Today, it’s almost 60 percent that we’re importing presently.

ANWR production, based on the lower numbers, anywhere between six billion — six-trillion and 19-trillion barrels. ANWR production could percent of this entire refuge, for 30 years.

KENNEDY: Well, that’s not true. That — that’s just a bogus…

HANNITY: U.S. Geo — let me read you…

KENNEDY: That’s a bogus…

HANNITY: The U.S. Geological Survey estimates oil…

KENNEDY: This is a misreport. I guarantee you, Sean. But let me tell you something else.

HANNITY: Excuse me. Well, no, no. No. Wait. Don’t tell me. I’m reading from the U.S. Geological Survey estimates. It could be as much as 16-billion barrels of oil, which would be the largest supply of domestic oil ever discovered.

KENNEDY: Let me see that.

HANNITY: Right there.

KENNEDY: You’re reading from an advertisement by the…

HANNITY: No, I am not.

KENNEDY: … Energy Steward Alliance.

HANNITY: Let me — let me put…

KENNEDY: Wait a minute. This is not honest, Sean.

HANNITY: Get my still ready from the Boston paper.

KENNEDY: Sean, this is not honest.

HANNITY: Get my — get my still ready from the Boston paper.

KENNEDY: This is not honest to say that you’re reading from the Geological Survey.

HANNITY: Excuse me. Excuse me. Can I — let’s — it is — let me quote…

KENNEDY: No. This isn’t — this is from an energy propaganda.

[Kennedy reaches over and takes it out of his hands]

HANNITY: Give me my paper!

(LAUGHTER)

HANNITY: Can I — I’m going to put up from the Boston — hang on a second. Hang on a second. From the — from the Boston paper. Here it is. This is from “The Boston Herald,” your neck of the woods, hardly a right- wing paper.

KENNEDY: “The Boston Herald”?

HANNITY: Environmental…

KENNEDY: Are you kidding me? That’s as right wing as…

HANNITY: Well, you — you want to discourage everyone. This is the U.S.

KENNEDY: Well, this is not the U.S. Geological Survey.

HANNITY: Wait. Excuse me. Wait a minute. I have the survey. I have the — wait a minute.

KENNEDY: Sean…

HANNITY: I’m going to show you the survey.

In order to be more like Europe, which it loves, and less like proud, noble America, which it hates and envies, pinko Canada has started showing cases of SARS and mad cow disease.

It’s sad, isn’t it, when America-haters go to such lengths to hate America? I hear they are also giving us the finger by not being $1 trillion in debt and by participating in blatant weapons-free interaction with other countries. Bastards.