Consciousness-Lowering Season

2004

It’s important to settle things with the alleged Palestinians in the so-called occupied territories. Israel has been working very hard to defend the West Bank against attacks by its inhabitants. Meanwhile the Palestinians, masquerading as children, have been using Iraqi-bloc rocks to destabilize the only democracy money can buy. And they’ve been doing suicide bombings, which is a war crime. I’m sure things will work out as soon as they stop praying to the wrong God.

Election
Andrew Jackson wasn’t the last guy to show how a defeat in Florida can lead to the Presidency.

Sometimes you have to remove felons, people with names like those felons, people with friends with names like those of felons.

Anyhow, it won’t affect the President’s upcoming landslide re-election. Kerry can’t win. He won’t do what it takes—tossing 10,000 white possible felons off the rolls.

Speaking of Kerry, you won’t see W throwing his medals away. Medal. Meds.  Was it medals or ribbons? There are known ribbons and unknown medals, and less good medals.

Kerry flip-flops. Fights in a war, then opposes it. Traitor to his self.  Then he criticizes W’s mode of near service.

Kerry’s a complicated guy. He wants to repeal certain tax cuts, and keep others – I like a simple guy. W doesn’t do nuance.

W was not elected the first time, of course. He was chosen. Clearly. By Jesus. 100 million Jesus fans can’t be wrong.  1-1/2 billion Mohammed fans could be. Possibly. Probably. But Jesus—first of all, his name is in English. And he was a Christian, and this is a Christianate nation, with all due deference to our citizens of lesser religions. But the real Christians are Protestanters. They built this nation with the Protestant work ethnic.

For those planning ahead: Yes, there will be an October surprise, I can’t tell you where, but it will be red or at least deep orange. The Democrats, of course, are already engaged in pre-emptive sore losing.

Regarding Defense: there’s no war like a holy war. Look at the Crusades – there were many of them. We’re going to put the Jesus back in Jihad. I will still be your commander-in-thief, but I will be focused more on domestic problems, such as women. And surpluses. Clearly  the pie has gotten higher, and we can put more food on your family, but we want to have tax breaks for those who want to contribute to the drug war in Colombia, which is a drug war and not a war. But if the drug dealers are terrorists, that’s different. We will not let terrorists hold this nation hostile.

Why drugs?  It turns out that the Communists were all on drugs.   Marijuana leads to Marxism, as you now  know.  The Colombian guerrillas are selling drugs to raise money to take over America.  Or anyway, South America, to whom we have graciously lent our name. At the going rate. FARQ that.

As Cheney explained, the ability to  criticize is one of the great strengths of our democracy. So you better do it this week. You never know when you’ll lose your abilities.

Song: You take the issues out, you put emotions in, you take yourself out of the loop and you doctor up a spin, you do some mumbo jumbo and you turn your views around, that’s what it’s all about. 

2005

IRAQ-not yet Gate
Is the war over? Well, if we leave, there could be violence there. We haven’t finished training Iraqi troops to secure democracy so that nobody can get at it. Democracy’s like oil that way, you don’t want people getting at it. Some alleged Americans have been disrupting democracy, by, you know, participating in it. You know who you are. We’ll talk. You won’t realize it at the time, but we’ll talk.

International law is very clear about the responsibilities of an occupation force. It has the responsibility for the safety of the citizens. Fortunately, we’re not bound by international law. We’re not international. We are the world.

The framers of the Magna Carta didn’t anticipate these people who aren’t even Christians, trying to come into our Christian courts, endangering our judicial system by participating in it.  They should have thought of that before they decided to be Middle Eastern. Getting in the way of our attempt to bring them democracy. Granted, some of them might be civilians, might be innocent. But a military court can judge that as well as a military band can play music.

Last week we denied we used White phosphorus as an offensive weapon. Turns out we did. But not on civilians. That’s not scheduled for admitting till next week. Let’s get on the same page of the calendar. But in fact there was some torture. We found out about this while we were directing it.

Downing Street-gate
There’s really nothing new in those memos. It’s all been covered up before. At the time, we thought that Saddam might attack us. He did not, goddamn it. So we had to straighten that out. We thought sure he would attack us after we bombed. He did not. This was a clear provocation. It’s a choice between Mr. Bush and Mr. Hussein both calling each other liars. I realize that’s a bit of a tough call.

When a thug comes to power through intimidation, and then acts the same way on the international scene—and I’m not just talking about W here. Don’t forget, Saddam was creating mass graves over there. And that’s our job. Saddam Hussein will be brought to trial for his war crimes. We’ll try to get his accomplices but we don’t always remember our own phone numbers, do we?

You either get it, or you’re gonna get it.

37% support the war.  They’re part of the hep, properly educated, with-it group who know what’s going on, who know how to use swell slang. They understand that the needs of the Republic are best served by the Republican party. The other 63% clearly are part of the axis of not getting it. And let me say, you either get it, or you’re gonna get it.   That’s because 63% of the American people are giving aid and comfort to the enemy by opposing America. These people are led by the liberal press, Amnesty, and other terrorist groups. Criticizing the war helps the enemy. And I don’t mean me.

As W has explained, the war on terrorism is like the war on communism. In both cases, it’s good to have an enemy. Some people say we can’t win this war in Iraq. These people are just fringe dissidents. People like retired military officers. Present military officers. People who don’t know what I’ve told them to know.

Dubya
W still has strong support in some sectors. Soldiers, as we saw in the impromptu scripted video chat op. In fact, we’re thinking of scripting the American people.

Some are saying the soldiers didn’t say what they felt. Of course they did. We told them what they felt and they said it. Scripting an impromptu chat with soldiers is not a war crime. This is not rocket surgery, people.  It took place in Tikrit. The proper pronunciation is TIKrit, but the soldiers can’t all say that, and we take care of our soldiers. While they’re soldiering.

We’re trying to defeat a backward, dark philosophy, put forward by backward, dark people. You don’t want a Muslim fundamentalist government coming in and telling you what you can’t read. You want a Christian fundamentalist one, right?

The rescue of Fallujah was precipitated by the unprovoked killing of four Blackwater mercenaries.  Blackwater hires “patriots.” Some from Chile, trained under Pinochet. Pinochet was a patriot. He defended our country, down there. Not that their country is ours. But su casa es mi casa, pardon my French.

Understand: we originally armed Iraq through a Chilean front company—under dictator Pinochet, our dictator/s.o.b. Rumsfeld went to Baghdad in ’83, for Reagan, to re-establish relations –The Chummy with Rummy show. Of course he did. Why do you think it was called the Republican Guard?

You know, Saddam Hussein used gas on his own people, and on Iran. Of course it’s true we supported him. That’s because at that time, Iran was bad. Now we’re in a situation where Iran is bad again. Ari said “We’ve made clear to Iran that we would oppose any outside interference in Iraq’s road to democracy.”  Our role is, rather, Inside Outerference.

So the CIA established a communications link with Saddam Hussein back when he was our son of a bitch, and we were able to document the use by Saddam of mustard gas against Iranian troops. In fact, we made a list of the locations of the units where this mustardization took place. Granted, we made the list before the attacks. Well, that’s American know-how, or know-when.  But we were not biased. We were even-handed. We were sending arms to Iran too.  It was win-win. Or lose-lose, from the local perspective. If you call that a perspective.

Former Unocal consultant Hamid Karzai is now President of Afghan. I know a lot of you object to the presence of accomplished people in government—the former CEO of Halliburton, for instance. You’d rather have leaders who were—what, investigative reporters? Protest demagogues? Amy Goodman for Supreme Court Justice? Barbara Lee ambassador to UN? Arundhati Roy president of India?

The news we’re getting from Iraq is accurate, trustworthy, thorough, and complete, because the reporters are able to go out for six, maybe seven minutes at a time. Sometimes twice a week.

The coalition forces are in command of the country. That’s the coalition of Sunni and Shiite insurgents. We have had less good moments. But we’re rebuilding Iraq, except for the hospitals, roads, electricity and buildings.

The Iraqi resistance is in its last throes. When they’re done with those throes, they will throw us out.  But we have achieved something fundamental there: fundamentalism.

As to how many casualties there have been among the—what do you call them, Ingratis, no, Iraqis, that’s it—we don’t do body counts. That would be quotas.

Ahmed Chalabi, and the Iraqi National Congress—I can’t take credit for that. Richard Perle found him at the University of Chicago in the 80s. Chalabi, who’s been embedded in England since 1956—well of course he had to flee Iraq. They were going to imprison him. Embezzlement came after embeddlement. Embezzle—well, he is a mathematician after all.  I’m here to tell you those charges are trumped up. It’s not true, but I am here to tell you that.

Iraq was in violation of all kinds of UN Security Council resolutions. We’re not in violation of any. We would be, but we vetoed them.

Bolton the UN? Or Dismantling?
Dub has appointed John Bolton ambassador to the UN. Some questioned the wisdom of appointing someone to the UN who opposes the UN. Well, we can’t leave that post empty; we need someone there to make W look like Gandhi.

School of the Americas? Watch.
It closed on a Friday, opened on a Monday, with a different name. Are they anti-semantic?

40% of its students are from Colombia. But that doesn’t tell you anything. Others are from Guatemala. And let me just say here, genocide gets a bum rap.  Seriously, we had to help the Guatemalan people. Otherwise, they might help themselves.

Liberation theology is really just a failure to excommunicate.

Nicaragua
I ran contras. I had to. We were faced with an infestation of liberation theology, which is nothing more than a failure to excommunicate. The people there were disrupting democracy by participating in it. Colombia

The government has been very effective. Plan Colombia has been in place for six years, and prices for cocaine are now cheaper than ever. Of course that wasn’t the goal, but you have to admit, it is an effect.

We stand for peaceful, eventual, moderate, partial change down there. And we will not settle for more.

Radical change would play into the Soviet-Cuban-Iraqi plan for the region.  We have to help that government defend the country against its people.

“Palestine”
Why are people getting so agitated about gated communities?  The wall is a fence. Except where it’s a wall. It has to be. True, Palestinians have died, which is sad. But Israelis have been killed, which is worse.

The IDF has demolished shops in the West Bank because they were built illegally. No word yet on plans to demolish Jewish settlements.

Some say Palestinians are like Native Americans. They’re not.  First, there’s no casinos there. Second, there’s no such soccer team as the Jerusalem Jihadis.

The Middle East is a mysterious region. It’s not inscrutable—that’s further east. But it is mysterious. So people ask me questions, for example, “How could there be Palestinians? There’s no Palestine!” I decided to look into this. It turns out the Palestinians left some time ago—voluntarily of course—and took Palestine with them. This was back when you were allowed four carry-ons.

Now it seems they want to come back—this is called the Right of Return. It might surprise you to learn that I support this. There’s a precedent: The Israelites left some time ago, came back 2,000 years later, and everything’s been fine. So it’s a good timetable, and it’s available. And while they’re waiting their turn, the Palestinians could prepare. For example, they could work on civilizing themselves. Anyone can tell you they’re not civilized. Just one obvious example: suicide bombings. Why can’t they drop their bombs from airplanes, like civilized people?

We have learned a lot from Gaza, now that we have been able to get a look at it. We have to first of all acknowledge the suffering of Palestinians. They face suffocating poverty, and no one knows why. The recent study undertaken by Israel has been inconclusive, despite the use of many hi-tech study jets and learning tanks. Nevertheless, it is clear we must deplore the extremism of Hamas, which forces Israel to kill civilians. Hamas must renounce its violence, which has caused responses from Israel. Hamas claims to be still responding to something that happened in 1948. Granted, it happened from 1948 to 2010, but it is time to stop living in the past-induced future.

Of course, at the root of it all is the Hamas occupation of Israel. That is to say, Hamas does not recognize Israel’s right to exist (we will save “as a Jewish state” in case they later do recognize the Right. Moveable goal posts are such an important part of any diplomatic tool box.) Now some would say that Israel does not recognize a Palestinian state’s right to exist. But the people who say this are in custody.

Some people will tell you the problem is actually the other occupation—the one by Israel; but that’s so over and done, except for land, sea, and air. And the West Bank, which has nothing to do with Gaza.

Israel used precision-targeted weaponry, which enabled them to hit civilians, their own soldiers, and the UN. They certainly used disproportionate force, resulting in the suffering of alleged children and other possible non-combatants.  On the other hand, Tzipi and Condi met and they had cute names.

The Red Cross said it became a full-blown humanitarian crisis. Israel said there was no shortage of human needs. Well, as I have always said: you’re either with Israel or you’re with the Red Cross. But just to be sure, I’m watching these developments 24/7. Or anyway, I’m watching 24.[1]

One can see that the Meddle East is not simple, and the solutions are not winner-take-all. You have to achieve balance, which is difficult. You have to balance the needs of the West Bank with the needs of the World Bank. And since the countries are so close together, with Israel being right next to Palestine, or over it, or around it, or all of the above and more, they must learn to get along. Perhaps Palestinians can learn to appreciate Israeli foods, like hummus, as Israelis have learned to appreciate Palestinian customs, like having land. Otherwise, the Israelis will be forced to continue their occupation, which is bound to succeed in providing democracy and happiness in the end, as we have seen in Iraq and are about to see in Afghanistan. So I say to Tzipi and Bibi and all the other cute-named leaders: Mazel Tov, in advance.

The Patriot Act
Some say the Patriot act is directed at those of Arab descent. Not true. It’s directed at all dissent.

When your only tool is a hammer,
you better make sure you have lots of nails. 

Now about Patriot Act II, or Patriot Reloaded: if you’re not reading the wrong books, you have nothing to worry about. Anyway, without the Act, you wouldn’t know where the free speech zone is. Was.

5,000 people have been detained under this act, and only one convicted of a crime. Which just goes to show, when your only tool is a hammer, you better make sure you have lots of nails.

300 cities passed resolutions against the Act. This never would have happened if we’d had it before—they wouldn’t have known we had it. But conditions are pretty good in those 300 cells where those terrorist mayors are held.

PBS
Now we have the innovative No Children’s Television Left Behind program.[2]  There’s an added benefit: when those stations go off the air, the channel can be picked up by faith-based programmers, blessedly free of gay tvtubbies. Clifford the big red dog’s a bit light in his Nike’s, you know. Look, you’re either with us or you’re with Bert. Who’s with Ernie.

I’ve just washed my brain and I can’t do a thing with it.

Basically, we’re trying to give you back your $1.20 a year, so you can go out with 4 friends and rent a video. Or invest it in your retirement fund. Some people think $1.20 a year for public tv is well worth it. Jeez. Don’t they know there’s a war on?

If PBS would get with the program and compete freely, the markup of the magicplace would achieve the same results as in the airline industry.

Face it, we live in a demographic society. Do they want freedom from being canceled by offended advertisers? That’s not in the  Constitution. Anyhow, they are a liberal biased organization, with the exception of William Buckley, the McLaughlin group, and McNeill/Lehrer. But Sesame Street—whoa, that’s a liberal bird there.

France
The young grandchildren of immigrants in France are unemployable. We know this; studies show that companies won’t hire them.

Race
People who complain about prisons don’t support affordable housing.

We have a plan for more affordable housing: prisons. But we must make sure when prisoners are released that they get jobs. And of course transportation to those jobs, in Malaysia.

Colin Powell is a symbol of progress. He has addressed the Senate. And it’s hard to appear before an organization that doesn’t admit blacks. But there’s progress: we don’t have literacy tests anymore. We have drug tests. Prison budgets are higher than education budgets, and that makes sense: an educated black person won’t vote Republican, but an imprisoned one won’t vote at all. Raker of Muck Greg Palast reports that the 57,000 people removed from Florida voter rolls included 500 convicted of crimes committed several years in the future.  A sort of pre-emptive strike of criminals from the rolls. Plus 4,000 others with blank conviction dates. But it is not true that that list was withheld from the media. They didn’t ask for it.

People who complain about prisons don’t support affordable housing.

The ethnic cleansing of the voter roll was done by a unit of Arthur Anderson, who did so well for Enron.  In their defense,  those voters were biased anyway. The job was done thoroughly: they carefully removed black alleged possible relatives of future felons with the same name. The Dems can throw some white felons with the same name as possible future allegeds off the rolls too. It’s all good.

Trade
NAFTA is transforming the corn economy, because corn, you see, is rather easily converted into a common Mexican product known locally as maize. The new agreement, which for some reason the farmers don’t agree to, gives these farmers a chance to go into town, and stay there. Maybe you can’t understand that. Let’s make up an example closer to home.  Suppose you went down to the village square—sorry, to downtown—all right, to the mall—and you wanted to hear your favorite fiddler, I mean synthesizer player—all right, your favorite Muzak tune, and they’d replaced it with some weird Turko-Laotian bagpipe player who couldn’t even play in English. How would you feel? You’d feel like your culture had been malled! But luckily we have laws against Turko-Laotian malling. You’re welcome.

Twenty more countries will be eligible for debt cancellation as soon as they open up their markets so we can destroy their industries. They are in urgent need of refarm. They need to privatize so our private eyes can come in and make sure the right companies buy it. As long as you’re willing to devote your economy to the growth of my wealth and not your health, we’ll all be fine. Some of us.NAFTA is a big success: it’s created lots of jobs for Latin Americans, right here in the U.S. Many of them are working two or three jobs, it’s so successful. And they’re sending money back to their families down in the other America. Redistribution of wealth! We’ve vanquished the tyranny of the special interests, like labor and the environment, over profits—we’ve been liberated from that. But in Bolivia, formerly known as Bechtelia, the Indians are revolting. And for what? They don’t just want to nationalize the oil, they want to nationalize the government!The world is like the stock market. In fact, the world is the stock market. Everything else is French.

Coalition Against Central America (CACA)
What did the Coalition Against Saddam Hussein have in common with the Coalition Against Central America? Some would say that CASH is CACA. Those who say this, I have their addresses. So I suspect they’ll make no more addresses.

Remarks on the “Death Squad” “Revelations”
Here in this country we’re lucky to have a wide-open democratic system where the various parties and candidates compete freely, vigorously debating the best way to make it appear that we have a wide-open democratic system in which the various parties and candidates compete freely.

As a result, things occasionally come out.  Now it comes out that the government, in the case of the alleged participation of the Guatemalan military in the putative death squad activities, were economical with the truth.  They withheld information, that is, they disassembled. That’s a postmodern term indicating there isn’t any one particular precise truth, but rather, many perspectives. Well, our perspective was that we had to work with Mr. Alpirez[3], to be a moderating influence on him. Just think how many he could have killed. But we have, or rather they have a democracy down there, and if they get fed up enough with those death squads then they can replace them with other ones, perhaps more modern, or post-modern ones. We can help with that.

I know you’re all gloating about the revelations about Chiquita. But what would youdo? Let’s say you’re running a banana industry, growing bananas, overthrowing governments and so on, and you’re trying to protect your workers against terrorism from, you know, unions. You’re taking them to the NLRB?

Venezuela-Syria-Cuba
We can see that Venezuela is a Cuban pawn: we have satellite photos of Cuban-style health clinics in the barrios. (That’s Spanish for ghetto, which shows how anti-Semitic they are.) They’re giving free medical care to the children, which undercuts the prices for medical care throughout the hemisphere. So in essence they are scab doctors. These scabs are festering and will be dealt with.

Meanwhile, Cuba is now a Venezuelan colony, dominated by their oil imperialism, just as dominated as they were by the Soviet Union. In other words, Venezuela is the new Soviet Union, the evil oil empire. They’ve tried to evade this criticism by saying they’re merely in the axis of pretty bad. Further, Chavez is trying to distribute the oil wealth among the “people.” That’s class war. Venezuela  used to have a free enterprise system. Chavez is destroying that: he wants foreign oil companies to pay money for the oil. It’s like bribery. He calls it “taxes.” His English is not so good.

Chavez is going around  the country reading to the public from Orwell, Dickens, Hugo. Victor Hugo. He says it’s Victor. That’s the key. What the Dickens is he doing?! it’s Orwellian.

Congress is sponsoring radio and TV in Venezuela, to counteract Chavez and his state’s monopoly on the media. They control all the radio stations except 14. But that one that they have is really, really controlled.

Meanwhile they are threatening America with eye exams and cheap oil. Cuba is threatening us with free medical care and weapons of mass dentition. The National Endowment for Democracy, which has operations in 70 countries, is fighting back. We are helping in elections in Nicaragua, Philippines, Belarus, Georgia, Panama, and Haiti. Supporting democracy throughout the world, by supporting the candidates who support democracy, which is us.

Chavez is providing cheap heating oil in the Bronx—obviously buying votes.  He’s a dictator; he’s pulled his soldiers out of SOA—doesn’t want them to have access to all the modern information on whatever it is we teach there.

“I am a soldier,” he says, “and I would not kill a cockroach. I would allow her to go her way, to live.” Now we can’t have soldiers favoring female cockroaches, can we? Not in Our Hemisphere.

The noted constitutional scholar Pat Robertson has been discoursing on the finer points of the proposed disposition of Mr. President Chavez’ case, and his life.  A different point of view was expressed by the scholar Bill O’Reilly, who felt the case of the President of Syria was more important: that he move on, from his life. Some say there’s a danger that if our scholars continue to discourse publicly on this strategy that scholars in other countries may publish papers on such matters as the legality of President Bush’s life.

But we are not really looking to assassinate Mr. Assad[4], we’re just looking for someone to replace him. We do feel his time is up, and so we’re initiating a candidate search. We’re looking for his successor. Actually there are several national leaders in various nations for whom we’re conducting a replacement candidate search. In Syria we’re looking for an Oxford grad, perhaps a businessman. We might look in the want ads—that is, ads for people who are wanted, perhaps for activities connected with business. That’s the talent pool.

And speaking of non-coups, people ask why we are so dead set on changing the regime in Cuba? What threat are they to the U.S.? None, not to the united ones, but to the state of Florida. They are out to dominate the good Cubo-Floridian citizenry.  But Florida will resist, and defend their tradition of free—of elections.

Culture War
There is a revolt in this country against elite liberal terrorist-lovers, a revolt of the regular American people, led by their champion, George Bush. Now I know, George went to Yale, but in his defense, he got C’s.  He likes to ride around on his ranch and fall off things. He’s not that smart, and that’s why regular folks trust him. Regular folks have new leaders. Cheney, from Wyoming. Regular cowboy folk guy from Out West. From out of the west a man came riding—well, a tank.  Now we’ve all heard about Cheney’s heart surgery—yes, he had one put in. He had a blockage—he was differently ethicized or some weird medical thing like that.

Regular people are in revolt against snobs.  Regular people aren’t ashamed to go to Walmart. Meanwhile the elite’s over there trying to keep prayer out of Trader Joe’s. They come into your workplace with their unions, you know, and try to make all the men get married. To each other. Here’s the question: would you rather be forced into an uncivil union that forces men into civil unions, or do you want regime change in Iran? Don’t be a girlie American. USA.

Nukes
The Cold War will be solved by global warming, which in turn will be solved by nuclear winter.

I was talking with some Eskimos the other day, and they were upset because their sidewalks are melting. This is supposed to be our fault, somehow. Look, the world is getting smaller. That’s why we need the mini-nukes. Anyhow, their polar bears apparently can’t walk on water—Jesus Christ. Not to worry: the Cold War will be solved by global warming, which in turn will be solved by nuclear winter.

Now it turns out the Iranian nuclear program was approved by the US presidential chief of staff in the 80s—Mr. Cheney, as it happens. It wasn’t for weapons, it was for saving the Shah, in case of war and an oil shipment cutoff. Well, they don’t have Shah anymore, so there’s no need for nuclear energy, according to US law. If the purpose of their program is to bring back the Shah, we can help with that. But we know their purpose is to have nuclear weapons. We know. We have photos of aluminum tubes.

Supremes
Justice Alito has issued a dissent: a woman should have to tell her husband before having an abortion. But he’s positive, too. About juries. All juries. Well, all white juries. In 1986, he co-authored a Justice Department opinion that employers should be able to fire HIV-positives. That was negative. So, he’s balanced.

Justice Rehnquist was against Brown and for Plessy. A segregationist, he volunteered in Arizona to challenge black voters.  Roberts, on the other hand, believes that the judicial branch should stay out of law enforcement, the Congress should stay out of the way of the President, and the Geneva conventions should stay out of Gitmo.

[1] A TV show promoting torture

[2] A scheme to defund PBS.

[3] Army colonel on the payroll of the other CIA, known for his hobby of terminating other people’s lives.

[4] Bashar Hafez al-Assad assumed power in July 2000.