Blog Box

May 6, 2005
Compiled by Delilah Boyd, A Scrivener's Lament

Impugn BushCo's Impunity!

Not exactly a memorable battle cry, is it? I have to admit that it feels a bit creepy to type the word "impunity" without the preposition "with" coming before it. But that's exactly the point: our side is always stuck in Logos Gear while the other side races along in Pathos Overdrive. (During the first BushCo administration, many of us scrawled "Subvert The Dominant Paradigm" with, er, impunity, because no one knew what it meant. We thought we were oh-so-clever, didn't we?)

Seriously, folks! How much longer will our country allow its elected (by hook and/or crook) officials, prominent religious and/or social issues leaders, and our national media to lie, inveigle, and obfuscate with impunity?

Even without a snappy catch phrase, bloggers are determined to fight fire with fire, relentlessly impugning BushCo's impunity - sometimes with a "liberal" dose of laughter. Craig's Booknotes offers an interesting take on Pat Robertson's "Meet The Press" assertion that the US judicial system in the USA is more dangerous than Bin Laden's terrorist attacks.

Bloodless Coup dissects the Florida judge who actually expected an expectant 13-year-old to carry a baby to term and turn it over to Florida's DCF (who, by the way, couldn't keep the expectant mother from escaping their facilities five times). Bloodless Coup also comments on George W.'s Texas Two-Step Through The Tulips Blue Bonnets, hand-in-hand with the Saudi Prince (while the Saudi king was home, selfishly clinging to life), in a post called, "Saudis, Texans - Can You Tell the Difference?":

Ugh. There are days when I am disgusted by close to everything relating to the Saudi government and how the Bush administration deals with them. Those are the days that end in "d-a-y."

Freedom Is Slavery warns against believing happy-face news stories concerning BushCo's FWOT (Failed War On Terror). Reacting to the Washington Post story, "Domestic Terrorist Threats Declining, Officials Say," Freedom Is Slavery writes:

But they never actually lived up to the hype in the first place ... This is really kind of meaningless. First of all, no rational person should believe anything out of the Bush misadministration that makes them look good, especially right now when Bush is struggling politically.

Of course, no rational person believes Bush, except those who look the other way while FOX Bush & Friends say and do outrageous things with impunity.

As for George W. "struggling politically," Hughes For America skewers George W.'s "I wish I could simply wave a magic wand and lower gas prices tomorrow" crap by citing Dennis Kucinich's brilliant, thoughtful energy initiative.

Meanwhile, Shakespeare's Sister ponders:

Bush's approval rating has fallen to 47%, down from his 2005 high on Feb. 4 of 54%.The only question I have is what have the dingdongs who voted for him come to learn in the past four months that wasn't already apparent to anyone with a working brain?

Fundie Patrol

On the fascist fundie front, Deep Something's post, "This Is What Hate Looks Like," takes on the Son Of Dobson:

Ryan Dobson, son of Focus on the Family founder James Dobson is a on a roll these days. "Christian Rap" artist, author, evangelical heart-throb and all around hip dude, the younger Dobson is quite the renaissance man. In fact, Dobson has written a new book, just in time to take full advantage of pre-Rapture shopping season. "Be Intolerant" is the title of this soon to be classic primer on hate and it is clearly aimed at the rather vacuous minds of hip, young, evangelical dudes and chicks everywhere. The book's thesis attempts to make the spiritual case for intolerance as a spiritual precept.

...

Ryan Dobson is but a symptom of the malignancy that underlies the new tone of belligerence from the religious right. The idea that gays, Muslims and women who won't shave their legs for Jesus can be bullied with impunity by Christians (and should be) is a pathetic testament to our colossal backslide on civil rights in general over the past several years.

...

When it's all said and done, however, I have to confess that there are just a couple of things I haven't quite figured out about Ryan Dobson, like the reason for his bitter hatred of gay people? I also can't help but wonder why this 30-ish, good looking young man with such a flair for fashion lives alone, happily single in a county that just happens to be home to one of the highest concentrations of gay men in the country?

Lady Penelope, at Catch, has this (and more) to say about George W.'s special friend, Pastor Ted:

What? Pastor Ted, are you high? Those Iraqi war planes you thought were flying over Indiana - they may be what you call visions, but the rest of us call them flashbacks.

And Roger Ailes (the good one) calls his post about Girlfriend Strangler/Family Values And Lover, U.S. Rep. Don Sherwood, "Another Victim of Gay Marriage."

Humor Time

Cleverly Named Blog reports, "Chalabi Wins Big." Cleverly Named Blog then cleverly notes:

Ahmed Chalabi, the guy that the Bush Administration alternatively celebrated or blamed, will now head the Oil Ministry. In other news, Mr. Fox has been put in charge of the Iraqi henhouse. No word if any children will be given supervisory control over the Iraqi candy store.

On Scrivener's Lament (my blog), I serve up George W. Panophobia's acute case of nephophobia (fear of clouds) with a heaping portion of Tom DeLay's Cuban Cigar caper.

On an even lighter note, The Blue Republic posts a seriously funny fan letter to Guckert/Gannon, then offers a "reply" from the ManDate, himself. Jurassic Pork (be patient while the site is being updated) has a new caption gallery and plans to start a regular capping game soon. I can't wait!

100 Monkeys Typing reviews Laura Bush's lame stand up routine: "Which is worse, the mental imagery we're exposed to or the horribly recycled joke?" DUer ruggerson, recently returned from a trip down the River Styx to Freeperland, entertains us with Freeper posts, such as, "Our President will go down in history as The Horse Masturbator, thanks to his mouthy wife." Be sure to scroll down for some extremely witty DU replies to ruggerson's thread.

The People's Republic of Seabrook comments on the second anniversary of George W.'s flightsuit: "Now here's a clusterf**k worth celebrating, eh?" Teenage Enthusiast points out Evan Bayh's resemblance to SNL's Will Forte and links to one of Quizilla's hilarious online quizzes, "What kind of elitist are you?" And Tin Foil Hat Pundit pokes fun at the knitted-afghan-draped "Runaway Bride" in a post titled, "Cable News Executives Lament Early End To 'Runaway Bride' Story." By the way, congrats to Tin Foil Hat Pundit for being invited to join the prestigious Satire Awards site!

Speaking of ass-warts seriously funny blog posts, BS News has the scoop on the Manson-eyed bride to be's real motive for greyhounding it out of Duluth, GA. So much for the corporate media constantly impugning the integrity of the wide-eyed wonder's fiancé - although I'm still not convinced he and his fundie pastor weren't somehow at least part of the problem. But that's just my personal experience with (and distinct distrust of) megalochurches.

Getting The Real News

For coverage of significant milestones and serious issues (because we all know how bad TV News Hairdos and White House Stenographers are at connecting those pesky little dots), more and more of us are turning to blogs. News Dissector Danny Schechter asks us to pause and reflect on the anniversary of Kent State, TBogg combines images of military coffins with W.H. Auden's "Funeral Blues," and master dot-connector Wampum traces Lawrence A. Franklin's clandestine activities directly back to Feith and the gang:

The criminal complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Virginia charges that on June 26, 2003 Franklin provided classified military information on Iraq to two individuals.

Feith, "the dumbest [expletive] guy on the planet" (Tommy Frank's opinion) had Franklin invent the sinister twist to Iran's uranium commercial fuel enrichment centrifuge story, making it wicked dangerous to adult American journalists, who don't lose a wink of sleep over the technically equivalant (but not Franklo-Feith'd) United States Enrichment Corporation's American Centrifuge project in Piketown Ohio.

His other accomplishments have been to transform the support for the Northern Alliance by Iran (and the US) during the Afghan War, and the arrests of Al Quida cadres (over five hundred, some quite high-level) by Iran into Iran's obstruction of the War on Terror, the transformation of the 4,000 MEK cultists bagged at Camp Ashraf into a "popular resistance organization" (credits shared with Swift Boater Corsi), and turning the Iranian efforts to calm Iraq, which cost Khalil Naimi, the first secretary of the Iranian Embassy his life, and to some benefit to Iran, but not at a cost of hundreds of car-bombed political, para-military and civilian Iraqi casualties plus a sprinkling of American dead and wounded each week, into ... Iranian infiltration and destabilization.

Feith, however, like everyone else atop the BushCo food chain, will skate while Franklin takes the rap. Why? Feith lies with impunity.

Impunity. It's what's for dinner. It's also our country's standard "news" fare for breakfast, lunch, and between-meal snacks. Any time we turn on cable "news" these days, Hairdos with Cheshire Cat smiles do nothing more than read the teleprompter versions of editor-approved newswire stories and follow up with "fillers" until they can locate Dr. Phil, Dr. Joyce "Pay No Attention To My Phyllis Diller Facelift" Brothers, some random BushCo-endorsed retired Army general, a loathsome religious whack job, or a current BushCo spokesmodelperson to tell us how we should react to the "news."

I read recently that there are currently over 81 million blogs online, 8 million of which have attracted enough attention to spook print and TV news moguls (That would be you, Rupert!). One has to wonder why that would be. Duh. Obviously, millions of citizens are so fed up with the Fear Of Fear Itself/Runaway Bride status quo that they've opened their virtual windows and shouted in virtual voices, "I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!"

Speaking of Hell, those of us who expect (yea, verily, demand!) accountability from elected officials, prominent religious/social issues leaders, and our national media under the thumb of George W. Impunity must look, for all the world, like those often-cited Hell Dwellers who want ice water: just because we want it doesn't mean we're gonna get it.

Until we put an end to the BushCo impunity streak once and for all, wanting a glass of ice water will be the least of our worries. If you don't have one, start a blog today (it's free and relatively painless). "Bite me, BushCo!" would make a fine blog title, and it's certainly one hell of a memorable battle cry.

Know a hot blog that needs some coverage? Send your recommendations to Delilah.

Visit the Blog Box Archive