10.24.2006

Mouth-breather in Chief

From the Wall St. Journal:

In a CNBC interview with Maria Bartiromo, Bush was asked a question on many of our minds: “I’m curious, have you ever Googled anybody? Do you use Google?”

According to CNBC’s unofficial transcript, he replied: “Occasionally. One of the things I’ve used on the Google is to pull up maps. It’s very interesting to see that. I forgot the name of the program, but you get the satellite and you can — like, I kind of like to look at the ranch on Google, reminds me of where I want to be sometimes. Yeah, I do it some.” He added: “I tend not to email or — not only tend not to email, I don’t email, because of the different record requests that can happen to a president. I don’t want to receive emails because, you know, there’s no telling what somebody’s email may — it would show up as, you know, a part of some kind of a story, and I wouldn’t be able to say, `Well, I didn’t read the email.’ `But I sent it to your address, how can you say you didn’t?’ So, in other words, I’m very cautious about emailing.”

I'm going to take the time to translate this from Bush to English: "I like to look at pictures of my property. I need to maintain plausible deniability." Of course, as any of number of my former students have ably demonstrated, it is entirely possible to claim that you haven't read the email even when you have. You can even claim not to have received the email, as the following dramatization will, um, dramatize:

CIA Director George Tenant: I want to discuss the daily security brief I e-mailed yesterday. George, what do you make of this entry entitled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike Within U.S."?
Bush: It was good.
Tenant: Umm, okay -- the brief was good? What do you feel was good about it?
Bush: I didn't actually read it. I, uh, never got the e-mail.
Tenant: Okay. Didn't we agree that it would be useful to cover some of these briefs in our sessions?
Bush: I've been real busy, so...
Tenant: Okay. I understand -- there are a lot of satellite pictures of the ranch to look at, I know -- but this IS a matter of the nation's security...
Bush: My computer's broken. The printer doesn't work.
Tenant: Okay, but there's at least seven computers within thirty seconds of the Oval Office, and...
Bush: Car trouble.
Tenant: Mr. President, you live and work in the same building.
Bush: My grandmother's real sick, she could go any minute, and so I've really needed to be with my family...

Still, I think the president offers a good suggestion for what we Americans can do with our leisure time and our satellite technology. Here's your assignment: using the Google, find pictures of places that remind you of where you want President Bush to be sometimes.

I'll start. I like to imagine George W. Bush at the Jones Island Milorganite Facility, the great socialist program that turns the waste of our townspeople into fertilizers for farms, gardens, and the occaisonal pipe bomb. Like me, you may enjoy imagining our president and his cronies stuck neck-deep in a great vat of Milwaukee offal....

10.12.2006

Prologue: To Catch a Predator

Dateline NBC returns from a commercial break. We see that Stone Phillips has been speared through his manly chest and that Anne Curry has been nailed to the Dateline desk with weird alien ninja stars. Gasping for breath (because he’s Stone Phillips, but also because he has a spear embedded in his breastplate), Phillips attempts to recap the previous segments of that night’s program.

Stone Philips: Tonight on a special “To Catch a Predator,” our Chris Hanson takes on a brazen mission to actually catch a Predator. Initially, it took the help of the team from Perverted Justice to discover just what sort of predator they were up against.

VIDEO CLIP:
Chris Hanson and the Perverted Justice Team have a fake teenager tied to a chair in the back of the Perverted Justice Wagon. The teenager is smeared with dirt and grime, and her bangs hang over her eyes.
Hanson: Yesterday. What did you see?
Haggard Woman from Perverted Justice: You’re wasting your time.
Hanson: NO MORE GAMES!
Fake Teen: I don’t know what it was. It…
Hanson: Go on.
Teen: It changed colors, like a chameleon. It uses the Internet!
Hanson: You’re saying our pedophile is a lizard? That’s psych-out b.s.!


Philips: (continuing) They would soon learn that the predator they sought was – actually – a Predator.

VIDEO CLIP:
Chris Hanson – shirtless and holding a hunting knife – stands in a jungle clearing.
Hanson: (shouting to the distance) Come ON! Do it! DO IT! Kill me! I’m here! Do it NOW!

Philips: (continuing) With the help of Perverted Justice and a woman who looks and sounds like a twelve-year-old girl, Hanson set up a sting to catch the Predator by booby-trapping a goat carcass slung from a banyan tree in the middle of the jungle. While this tactic got results, they may not be what you’d expect.
Anne Curry: (afraid and whispering) It’s killing us one at a time.
Philips: Like a hunter...
Curry: (passes out from pain and/or fear)
Stone Philips: Here again, Chris Hanson.

10.06.2006

10.04.2006

The Jefferson - Hemmings Text Messages

Recently discovered historical documents show that former President Thomas Jefferson (D- VA) interrupted a vote on the floor of Philadelphia's Constitutional Convention in 1887 to engage in Internet sex with a 14-year-old African American girl under his employ.

Townblog has obtained 52 separate instant message exchanges, which former Virginia fieldhands say were sent by Jefferson, using the screen name $2-Bill to Sally Hemmings and other of his female slaves.

This message was dated June 1887, at approximately 7 p.m., according to the message time stamp.

$2-Bill: I miss you
Hemmings: ya me too
$2-Bill: we are still voting
$2-Bill: you miss me too

$2-Bill:: ok..i better go vote..did you know you would have this effect on me
Hemmings: lol I guessed
Hemmings: ya go vote…I don't want to keep you from doing your job
$2-Bill: can I have a good kiss goodnight
Hemmings: :-*
Hemmings: kiss


The Constitutional Convention voted that evening to abolish primogeniture and establish freedom of religion. Alexander Hamilton suggested that Senators should serve for life, so long as they remained on good behavior. According to another message, Jefferson also invites Miss Hemmings to come to Monticello so they can drink alcohol.

Hemmings: are you going to be on the plantation this weekend?
$2-Bill: I may be now that your coming
$2-Bill: who you coming to visit
Hemmings: haha good stuff
Hemmings: umm no one really
$2-Bill: we will be adjourned by then
Hemmings: oh good
$2-Bill: by the way, we reached compromise today
$2-Bill: and good news
$2-Bill: you count as 35 a person
Hemmings: wha?
$2-Bill: oops – three fifths
Hemmings: I thought u said all men created equal
$2-Bill: shhh…
$2-Bill: we can revisit in 20 years
Hemmings: OMG! Not fair - that’s 1807!
Hemmings: i will be 34 then
$2-Bill: ok
$2-Bill: i will be 64
$2-Bill: and probably be king or whatevs
Hemmings: this is so bs
$2-Bill: if u r nice 2 me
$2-Bill: i can free you upon my death

------

The above is an attempt at satire. Jefferson wasn't actually at the Constitutional Convention, since he was in Paris at the time pretending to be Nick Nolte. Sally Hemmings was never freed.

Memo to the media: please take care to differentiate between homosexuality and pedophilia.

Memo to Fox News: I don't need to tell you this, but you are evil geniuses. I love how you "accidentally" identified a Republican sodden pederast as belonging to the other party. Well done.