Meanwhile, Al Gore lays the smackdown on George W. Bush. Oh yeah!

The New York Times is reporting (login: decry/decry) that “the world’s leading authority on running for re-election as president after a war with Iraq said today that he believes President Bush will do just fine in November.” Unfortunately, the elder Bush is also the world’s leading authority on not winning re-election as president after a war.

“‘I feel very confident,’ former President George H. W. Bush told Matt Lauer in an interview on the NBC News program “Today.” ‘And you know what? American elections are decided on the economy. And my problem was the economy was good but I couldn’t get people to understand that. This economy is strong. In my view, it’s going to be stronger in the fall. But even without that, I think the country is looking for a strong leader. They’ve got one, and they’re going to want him to serve more.’”

Only forty-one percent of Americans agree with the forty-first president. The forty-first president is a leading authority on 41% approval ratings, knowledge his son is steadily accumulating. George H.W. Bush appears to have been speaking in some kind of code, since his claims of a strong economy and a strong leader are clearly untrue. Experts at decry.org speculated that this code is called “senility.”

President Bush this afternoon defended Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld against calls for the Secretary’s resignation by claiming that “our nation owes you a debt of gratitude.”

It was unclear whether the President knew whether the Rumsfeld he defended was the same person who led the nation into war without an exit strategy, or ignored, for months, growing concerns over the treatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison, near Baghdad.

Here’s a photo that shows how seriously our President is taking this situation.

But seriously, thank you Donald Rumsfeld. Thank you for ignoring experienced military planners when devising your Back to the Future scheme to invade Iraq. Thank you for contributing to a political climate where Americans are justifying torture. Thank you for helping fool most of the nation into thinking that Iraq is somehow connected to the 9/11 attacks. Thank you for poisoning the political atmosphere in Washington, setting the stage for decades of rancorous partisanship. Thank you for ignoring the need for an exit strategy. Thank you for spreading our military so thin that we cannot respond to real threats to our national security, like the fucking nuclear missiles in North Korea. Thank you for making clear the United States’ position on human rights. Thank you for burying our international credibility in the fertile crescent. Thank you for infuriating the Arab world, and most of rest of the world, too. Thank you for recrafting the United States back into an outdated hegemon, undisciplined and violent, that is a danger to its enemies and allies alike. Thank you for reviving the doctrine of might is right.

After months of weaselry, the Bush administration has decided to allow Condoleeza Rice to testify before the 9-11 Commission.

“This commission has been charged with a crucial task. To prevent future attacks, we must understand the methods of our enemies,” said the President yesterday. “The terrorist threat being examined by the commission is still present, still urgent and still demands our full attention. From the day the panel was created, I have directed executive branch agencies and members of my staff to cooperate with the commission.” Bush did not direct himself or Vice President Dick Cheney to cooperate with the commission. Nor did he direct Condoleeze Rice to do so.

Rice desperately wanted to testify, but was hamstrung by her patriotic desire to uphold a crucial precedent against National Security Advisers testifying before Congress. Americans wary of taking a hasty precedent-setting move will be relieved to know that one of the conditions of Rice’s testimony is that everyone has agreed it won’t be precedent-setting.

That’s right–there are conditions for Rice’s testimony. Among them is an agreement that Bush and Cheney get to testify together, privately. Could Bush possibly look guiltier or less competent? Remember that part of LA Confidential where Ed Exley separates out the three Night Owl suspects and using a combination of intimidation, insinuation, and well-timed PA broadcasts breaks them down? One gets his ass kicked by Bud White. One pisses his pants. Exley coerces another’s testimony by calling him a sissy. There are good reasons why cops isolate suspects before interrogation: so they can’t take cues from one another and so the smart one doesn’t do all the talking.

Bush has good reason to fear similar treatment. Among the highlights of last week’s public testimony was commission head Thomas Kean’s brutal treatment of Colin Powell. Kean’s leather driving gloves, already infamous from his service as governor of New Jersey, saw use last week as he repeatedly slapped Powell in the face in an effort to extract truthful testimony. Powell, his glasses broken and his nose and mouth bloodied, confessed that Bush had “established a clear policy to work with other nations” to combat terrorism but would not give up the names of these still-anonymous co-conspirators.

But most upsetting was the fight between old friends and colleagues George Tenet, the head of the CIA, and Richard Clarke, former counterterrorism chief and author of the recent controversial book Against All Enemies.”

“In your book, you say you are quote against all enemies,” Kean said to Clarke. “Well let’s see if you’re against your friends, too. Bring out Tenet.” Kean forced Clarke and Tenet to fight one another and the men did, tears streaming down their faces even as they mule-kicked each other in the groin. The fight ended when Tenet, momentarily stunned by a vicious bite from Clarke, fell to a blow from Vice Chair Lee Hamilton’s paperweight.

As a third condition, the White House managed to convince the Commission to agree that they would not ask for further testimony from Rice or call any more White House staff members to testify. That’s right, the White House is committed to “cooperate with the commission,” but only if they are absolved of responsibility to cooperate any more than they absolutely have to.

White House spokesperson Scott McClellan described the White House’s unprecedented cooperation thusly: “Again, we’ve already provided access to hundreds of officials, either in briefings or interviews, within the administration, so that they have all the information they need to do the job. The commission itself said that they were very pleased with this arrangement, and they think that this continues to show that we are fully committed to providing them all the information that they need.”

That’s right, commission, you have all the information you need. So when you ask for more information, remember that you don’t need it. Because you have everything you need. And we cooperated fully. That’s right fully.

In a fourth condition, members of the commission agreed to vote for Bush in this November’s election and to add the following questions to their cross examination of future officials:

• How would you describe the President’s commitment to fighting terrorism? Very resolute, extremely resolute, absolutely resolute, or fabulously resolute?
• What is it you love most about the President? His commitment to his faith and family? His connection with the common man? His honesty and devotion to the truth? Or his belief in the sanctity of life?
• Doesn’t Bush totally rock?

After commission members agreed to these conditions, their children were released from custody.

This whole to-do is so fantastically ridiculous. We’ve got a President who refuses to come clean about an event he exploits daily for the purpose of reelection. He loves talking about 9-11 as long as he doesn’t have to do so under oath. What is he hiding? And don’t give me that bullshit about protecting presidental prerogatives, you lying lush.

Memorandum

To: People who work for Bush
From: People who work for Bush

This memorandum (”memo”) is intended for those of you who have not been following the recent flap over former counterrorism chief Richard Clarke’s accusations against the Bush White House. This flap, known as Dickgate (NOT to be repeated outside of the White House), is a mote in the clear blue eye of justice that is this White House and will be tweezed with the precision of the Special Forces team that the President was secretly serving in during the Vietnam war.

Talking Points:

1. Make it clear that Dick Clarke was out of the loop. Now, Condi has scuttled Cheney’s original claim on this, but let’s salvage what we can. He was the head of counterterrorism, but he often daydreamed during meetings and got up to use the bathroom, but then just walked around the halls for a few minutes to kill time. He doodled on his notebooks and chewed gum. He listened to his iPod with one earphone so no one would notice he was rocking out. He passed notes, many of which were confiscated. One of the notes is alleged to have said, “I think the President is doing a great job fighting for freedom, but since I am a heartless Democrat, I think I’ll dishonor the unborn children of the victims of 9-11 by publishing a blatantly partisan book aimed only at dividing, not uniting, this nation. I hate God.” When the President decided to focus resources on Osamma bin Laden, Clarke was out of the room. Because he’s a fat traitor.

2. Clarke is just plain mean-spirited. Look at him. He seems unhappy. He rarely smiles. Unhappy with the President’s approach to terrorism? Try unhappy with his home life. Leave your alcoholism, unsatisfied wife, gay son, loose daughter, and gay dog at home, Dick. This job takes discipline, not Marxism.

3. Clarke perjured himself by making different claims at different times about his support for the President and His policies. Didn’t you see the letter he wrote to the President? It was all, “I wuv you” and all of a sudden now he’s all, “I hate you.” What’s up with that? I mean, how two-faced can you possibly be? How can anyone believe this alcoholic, disloyal, senile old coot? (Of course, don’t actually use the word “perjury,” especially on the Senate floor, where lying is another kind of crime.)

4. Dick Clarke is suddenly a reliable source for insider information on the noblest White House since the 1980s? Last time I checked, Dick Clarke was hosting an antiseptic New Year’s bash in Times Square. That’s in New York City, the same place where teenage ravers have gay sex every night until well after 2:00 am, possibly with pedophile Dick Clarke. Disgusting narcissistic pervert.

5. The President is devoted to fighting terrorism, from the hills of Fajullah to the (former) spires of Baghdad, from the mountains of Karkuk to the valleys of Al-Nasiriyah, and from Mosul to Karbala. That’s a lot of terrorism fighting, and if Dick Clarke doesn’t think it’s enough then he can run for President himself. That is, if the Constitution allows transsexual Jewish foreigners to run for President these days.

6. Clarke is friends with all sorts of Democrats, including known murderer Rand Beers. If his name sounds foreign to you, that’s because it does. No one willing to lower themselves to friendship with traitors is trustworthy enough to betray his government. Traitorous animal beast-man.

7. Clarke says the President is incompetent. The President’s staff says he isn’t. Good people disagree on this issue. Let’s leave it at that. Obese gloryhole blowjob artist.

Trust in the President and everything will work out fine.

So obviously we’re not really back. But I had to put this crap up, from an article on Radiohead in the magazine Urb, by wordsmith Scott Sterling.

“Calling Radiohead “just” a band is like saying Eames just designed chairs. In essence, yes, what Radiohead does can be categorized as “rockist” in structure, but like Eames, they take a seemingly simple form and explode it into so much more than a sum of its parts.”

Help! A gang of commas has escaped from the Grammar Prison! They are marauding with a group of unnecessary quotation marks, cliches, and repetitive phrases!

How can such a pompous piece of writing be so shitty?

In the winter of 1977, I wrote the following haiku sequence:

Upper East Side ponce
Prowling with the bloodied beasts
I’ll open your throat

Bright red and bright white
Have a stroll in Central Park
Do not try to run

Just twenty-five years later, my nemesis was dead. Of all my literary triumphs, outlasting Plimpton is perhaps my greatest. A life of excess finally overwhelmed him. A life of plotting has finally brought its rewards. Rest in peace, old chum.

That’s right. Everywhere I go, whether in the high school parking lot with my souvenir baseball bat, or waiting to wake up on my bathroom floor, every bitches is asking me, “When are you coming back?” And I tell a bitch, “Bitch, I’ll be back when Arnold Schwarzenegger is the governor of California!” Well, that came back and bit me in the ass, so here I am, buoyed by the only soon-to-be servant of the people with a racial slur for a name.

The Decry newsroom has been a morgue lately, deathly quiet and full of dead bodies. But we aim to change all that. The past year has been as eventful as it has been in jail. A lot has happened&#151Bush is still president although we have no money and the money we do have is being funneled back and forth from here to the Middle East in a secret Halliburton pipline; the Cubs are in the playoffs; Decry mortal enemy George Plimpton finally perished (look for obituary later this week!); Rush Limbaugh found a wider audience for his racial slurs and illegal prescription drug use; it’s been revealed that Dick Cheney can actually breathe oil; I gained thirty-nine pounds.

Anyway, we’re back. Look for me on Fresh Air this week with NPR Correspondent Anne Garrels, who is pushing her book Naked in Baghdad. I’ll be plugging my own book, Spying on Anne Garrels Naked in Baghdad.

Neoconservatives suck ass.

• Neoconservatives, afraid that somebody who actually served in the military might pose a threat to the aging armchair generals lashing violently about in the Middle East, have launched an attack on Democratic presidential candidate Wesley Clark for wearing the hat of a Bosnian war criminal.

  It seems like wearing a war criminal’s hat is significantly less important than say, giving him money and weapons or training him in guerilla warfare. And at least they didn’t shake hands.

• One of the right-wing pundits new favorite arguments is that the attacks on US soldiers in Iraq are a positive thing because they happen in Iraq instead of somewhere else. This so-called flypaper theory–which boils down to some pseudo-Calivinist political determinism–
  claims that an attack is inevitably going to happen and that American soliders’ presence in Iraq sucks in the attack (as opposed to precipitating it). In other words, Americans in Iraq are drawing terrorists out of the woodwork where they can be caught (or, as has been happening, kill people); better that than having them lurking about not attacking people.

• J-Lo and Ben broke up. Matt Damon knew it was coming all along. But the new big news is Britney and Madonna’s kiss or the new show Newlyweds, an MTV reality show tracking the marriage of popstress Jessica Simpson and former 98 Degrees singer Nick Someone. This show is top notch. Jessica Simpson is the most adorably inept person you’ve ever seen. She can barely dress herself. And Nick has the patience of a saint, probably because Jessica is hot as the dickens.
• Finally, Bush called recent criticism of the United States’ bungling in Iraq by Ted Kennedy “uncivil.” You know what’s fucking uncivil? Lying to me about the economy. Lying to me about foreign policy. Getting trashed at my party and trying to make out with my sister, that’s what’s uncivil George.

The New York Daily News is reporting that Attorney General John Ashcroft is plugging his new “Victory Act,” which would expand his terrorist fighting powers. That is not to be confused with the Victory Act some Americans are looking for, the one that guarantees us victory in Iraq before the president lands on the aircraft carrier, and victory over the economy. Every time you stop looking for work, you let the economy win.

Nor should we confuse this new legislation with the Liberty Act, which would give Ashcroft the power to secretly jail suspected terrorists; the Homeland Safety and Security Act, which would allow federal agents to take hostage and torture the family members of suspected terrorists; the Honor and Freedom Act, which allows us to bomb and invade other nations without declaring war; the Peace Through Justice Act enabling illegal assassinations and unlimited detentions; or the Truthfulness Act, which makes legitimate the ridiculous attempt to obscure the fiber of legislation with childish nomenclature.