Turns out that making a dry drunk leader of the free world wasn't as funny as I had originally hoped. As it happens, the brain damage chronic drinkers are prone to suffer might just disqualify someone from the presidency.
We learned that all too well on Thursday when President Bush adderessed the Israeli Knesset and spoke out in defiance of two hundred years of political tradition, personal decency and common sense. It was a speech that was contrary not just to world history, but the history of his own useless administration.
For most of America's history, its statesmen have abided by the dictum that "politics ends at the water's edge." Political campaigns were not to be waged overseas, and certainly not by sitting presidents. Nixon did not go to China and declare that the Democrats would destroy the world and Ronald Reagan would never have dreamed of doing that. I suspect that the current president's father would rather have resigned his office rather than break that proud tradition.
President Bush didn't do that on Thursday. Instead he broke with even his own disjointed version of history. It was a speech that stood out for it's ignorance, arrogance and short-sightedness. When one considers the incredible damage to America's future foreign policy, it becomes almost mindblowing.
We believe that religious liberty is fundamental to a civilized society. So we condemn anti-Semitism in all forms -- whether by those who openly question Israel's right to exist, or by others who quietly excuse them.
We know this because the president of the United States rountinely condems Saudi Arabia and Egypt for making after-school specials based on The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. In Egypt's case that's of particular importance as they receive about $2 billion in American foreign aid each and every year. A more cynical blogger might argue that the American government is actually subsidizing anti-Semitism. Luckily, I'm not at all cynical.
We believe that targeting innocent lives to achieve political objectives is always and everywhere wrong. So we stand together against terror and extremism, and we will never let down our guard or lose our resolve.
Unless that terror eminates from Kurdish Iraq. That's different.
And that is why the founding charter of Hamas calls for the "elimination" of Israel. And that is why the followers of Hezbollah chant "Death to Israel, Death to America!" That is why Osama bin Laden teaches that "the killing of Jews and Americans is one of the biggest duties." And that is why the President of Iran dreams of returning the Middle East to the Middle Ages and calls for Israel to be wiped off the map.
There are good and decent people who cannot fathom the darkness in these men and try to explain away their words. It's natural, but it is deadly wrong. As witnesses to evil in the past, we carry a solemn responsibility to take these words seriously. Jews and Americans have seen the consequences of disregarding the words of leaders who espouse hatred. And that is a mistake the world must not repeat in the 21st century.
Here's where the president's intrepretation of history gets interesting.
Firstly, the founding charter of Hamas indeed calls for the elimination of Israel. The first problem is that Hamas hasn't referenced that charter in public for years. Second, both Fatah and the Israeli government knew that Hamas would win election in 2005 and begged the Bush administration to support a postponement of that election, which the president ignored.
The administration then attempted a half-hearted coup against a democratically elected Hamas, which directly led to the forcible takeover of Gaza and further endangered Israeli civilians. President Bush didn't point that out.
If I were a Jew, I would be outraged by Bush's contention that "Jews and Americans have seen the consequences of disregarding the words of leaders who espouse hatred." From that, one can only assume that the president is referring to Holocaust. While it's true that Americans saw the consequences, only Jews suffered them. The Allies were well aware where the death camps were and what their function was. And they did nothing at all to stop it. Despite having uncontested control of the air by 1943, the Allies wouldn't even destroy the rail links to the camps as a gesture to the victims of places like Auschwitz.
While the Germans perpetrated the Holocaust, each and every Allied government was complicit in it because we did nothing. We may not have been able to stop it, but we didn't even attempt to slow it down. And the Allies had air superiority for almost all of the period that the Final Solution was carried out.
Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along. We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: "Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler, all this might have been avoided." We have an obligation to call this what it is -- the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history.
That might be the most incredible distorition of the facts to come from a president who has excelled at doing just that.
When Nazi tanks crossed into Poland, the United States was practising a policy of strict neutraily. As a matter of fact, the United States Congress passed, and President Roosevelt signed, no fewer than four Neutrality Acts during Hitler's first four years in power. In fact, the Neutrality Act of 1939 passed two months after Hitler invaded Poland.
When the Nuremberg Laws of 1935 were passed, the United States was neutral. Even after Kristallnacht, the United States remained neutral. The Anschluss and invasion of Poland did nothing to change American neutrality, in fact, they strengthed it. Were it not for Hitler's ill-advised declaration of war against the United States after Pearl Harbor, it's an open question as to whether America would have fought in Europe at all.
Neville Chamberlain may have been wrong to negotiate with Hitler, but the United States ignored the threat entirely until the war came to its shores. How fucking dare any American politician claim moral superiority to Chamberlain given that history? Most Americans believe to this day that the Second World War began 26 months later than it actually did.
All of the Western powers are complicit in the Holocaust. We knew it was happening and we did nothing to stop it. Worse, we refused to accept refugees from it and sent them back to the ovens of Poland. Millions of Jews were murdered and we bear that guilt along with Germany because we didn't even try to stop it. It just so happens that the United States bears a special burden because as a neutral, it refused to call Nazi aggression what it was.
But let's look at Bush's position on negotiating with "terrorists and radicals." Since Hamas doesn't have tanks or heavy artillery, one can only assuming that he's speaking of actual states, specifically Iran.
Not only did President Bush's hero, Ronald Reagan, negotiate with the terrorist state of Iran, he sold them weapons. Furthermore, he sold them weapons as a ploy to release American hostages held by Iranian sponsored terrorists. When questioned about it, President Reagan not only lied, he backdated Presidential intelligences findings authorizing the sales, which is clearly an impeachable offense.
Worse still, President Bush himself has negotiated with terrorists, specifically, Muammar al-Gaddafi of Lybia. Gaddafi was directly responsible for the terrorist attack on Pan Am 103 that killed 270 people, including 180 Americans. Bush negotiated with Gaddafi to stop his joke of a nuclear program, most only of the components of which hadn't even been taken out of their shipping crates.
Gaddafi was a major financier of Black September and Carlos the Jackal. He was the prime state sponsor of the PLO during the 1970s and 80s. In 1986, Gaddafi ordered the bombing of a Berlin disco frequented by US servicemen, killing two and wounding another 50. President Reagan responded to this by calling Gaddafi "the mad dog of the Middle East" and bombing his house.
To this very day, Colonel Gaddafi has not renounced terrorism or accepted the right of Isreal to exist. Yet, Bush still lifted American sanctions against Lybia.
That's who President Bush is willing to negotiate with. And let's not forget that his administration was instrumental in electing Hamas in the Palestinean Territories and giving Hezbollah legitimacy in Lebanon, both of which border on Isreal and are an existential threat to Isreali democracy.
America stands with you in breaking up terrorist networks and denying the extremists sanctuary. America stands with you in firmly opposing Iran's nuclear weapons ambitions. Permitting the world's leading sponsor of terror to possess the world's deadliest weapons would be an unforgivable betrayal for future generations. For the sake of peace, the world must not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon.
Mr. Bush has cited several remarks by the Iranian leadership calling for the destruction of Israel. What he doesn't tell you is that every single Arab country has said the same or worse. In fact, each and every one of those countries have attacked Israel one time or another, and most of them don't recognize Israel's right to exist to this day.
Not only was Iran the second country in the world to recognize Israel, it has never declared war on her. In fact, you would have to go back over 300 years to find an instance of Iran invading anybody. Indeed, the American missles sold to Iran by the Reagan admisistration were routed through Israel. How many countries have the United States aggressively attacked in its history? I happen to live in one of them.
Does Iran have a nuclear weapons program? Yes, they almost certainly do. But one should consider Iran's stragetic position. Iran is in the immediate vicinity of a nuclear Israel, Russia, China, Pakistan and India. Oh, and the United States government that has been screaming for regime change in Iran for the last thirty years now has about 200,000 troops on no fewer than two of Iran's borders.
Can you imagine what the United States would do if it were surrounded by so many aggressive nuclear powers? Saddam Hussein was thought to have WMD that no serious person thought that he could deliver to the American homeland, but that was enough to warrant an invasion. If you don't think of the Iranians as guys in turbans with religious beliefs almost nutty enough to qualify them for a Republican congressional seat, you quickly come to the conclusion that Iran isn't crazy to have a nuclear program, they'd be crazy if they didn't.
How many democratically elected American governments has Iran overthrown? America has overthrown at least one freely elected government in Iran. The United States has nothing to fear from Iran, but Iran has everything to fear from the United States and they have very good historical reasons for them to do so.
That's not to suggest that I'm in favor of Iran having nuclear weapons, but it should be taken as meaning that I'm not against it either. The Bush administration, in its enthusiasm of pre-emtive war, has even given Iran a plausible excuse to attack the Israeli reactor at Dimona.
You know what could kill the Iranian nuclear program tomorrow? A guarantee that the United States won't invade Iran. That's all. I believe that the Iranians would even recognize Israel if it received an American security guarantee. It would cost the United States nothing and go further than anything else in reaching a Middle East peace agreement. Besides, the US extended the same guarantee to Cuba. What did that cost?
Neither Iran or Saudi Arabia recognizes Isreal. But Saudi Arabia has attacked Israel and Iran hasn't. Furthermore, there was no Iranian involvement in 9/11 and there were 15 Saudis on those planes and there were financial transactions that flowed in and out of the Kingdom both before and after the attacks.
The worst thing about President Bush's remarks is that they were aimed at American politicians - almost certainly Barack Obama - from foreign soil.
Not only is that a break with 200 years of American political tradition, it is incredibly damaging to American foreign policy.
Let's assume for a moment that Obama wins the presidency in November. Bush would have already tied his hands in foreign policy and created an ingrained distrust toward the new president with one of Israel's closest allies. No president in American history has ever done that before, and that is just another reason that George W. Bush is a cheap fucking punk.
There would have been all manner of hell to be paid if Bill Clinton did a world wide tour saying that Republican policies would kill everyone just before an American election. Now, I hate President Clinton just as much as I hate President Bush, but there has to be some measure of fairness here. If nothing else, Clinton wouldn't have made those remarks during wartime, like his successor did.
If Bush can't sustain his shithead policies through an election, it seems that he'll damned do it in foreign relations.
I agree with most Republicas that Barack Obama is hopelessly niave regarding foreign policy. But I can't escapre the conclusion that Bush is, too, and he's actually been president for almost eight years. And the worst president since James Buchanan has done much more damage to his country and its relations with the rest of the world than even that closeted cocksucker and his cabinet of traitors ever could have hoped to.
Easy Listening Recommendation of the Day: There is a War By: Leonard Cohen From: New Skin for the Old Ceremony
CALIFORNIA TAKES THE PLUNGE, BIBLE BEATERS BREATHLESS
With a divorce rate that has been over 50% for over thirty years, I have a very difficult time seeing what the imperative to "protect marriage" is. If marriage needs to be "defended" from anybody, people like Newt Gingrich and Rudy Giuliani - who are each on their third one - seem like the people it needs defending from.
Truth be told, I don't think that married people should have any inherent rights or benefits granted by the goddamned government. Anyone who thinks that marriage and the family need to be encouraged is a fucking idiot. I would argue that anyone who gets married and starts shitting out kids because of a tax break is the last person who should do either.
Get married or don't. I don't give a shit, and I can't think of a reason why anyone else, particularly the huge bureaucratic machine of government, would either. People are way too involved with other people's families. Worse still, is this conservative penchant for being busybodies in the name of small government. Jesus, how can any rational adult advocate the government defining the family when that same government was not long ago headed by a guy who couldn't define what the meaning of the word "is" is.
There's only one reason that I'm for gay marriage: I can't think of a reason to be against it without feeling like an idiot. Don't get me wrong, I'd love to be against it. The anti-gay marriage jokes practically write themselves and it's very difficult to be funny supporting it. Unfortunately, I'm allergic to stupidity.
In a perfect world, the government wouldn't have a goddamned thing to do with marriage and people would mind their own business. In that world, conservatives would understand that arguing that the government can't deliver the mail, yet has a duty to sanctify and protect the family unit only serves to make them look foolish.
Conservatives, especially those of the silly social variety, base their opposition to homosexuality on biblical principles. Jesus, they tell us, wouldn't like all of this faggotry bounding about. Why, if Jesus saw, say, David Guest, He'd kick him square in the nuts. As we all know, He ain't down with that.
There's a small problem with that reasoning. The New Testament doesn't actually address homosexery. It does advocate the subjugation of women and the submission of slaves though.
Wives, submit to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord. 19 Husbands, love your wives and do not be harsh with them. 20 Children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord. 21 Fathers, do not embitter your children, or they will become discouraged. 22 Slaves, obey your earthly masters in everything; and do it, not only when their eye is on you and to win their favor, but with sincerity of heart and reverence for the Lord. 23 Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men, 24 since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving. 25 Anyone who does wrong will be repaid for his wrong, and there is no favoritism. (4.1)Masters, provide your slaves with what is right and fair, because you know that you also have a Master in heaven.
- Colossians 3
Wow, it turns out that modern society isn't based on biblical principles after all. Either that or Ike Turner is at God's right hand and Abraham Lincoln is burning in Hades as I write this. Amazingly, some folks are awfully selective about which biblical principles they advocate.
Having said that, same-sexery is mentioned quite a bit in the Old Testament, which is notable for its extremely pissy God. Not only is gay sex punishable by death, so is eating shell fish. Christ, the Book of Deuteronomy actually lays out the case for taking your wife to the gates of the city and stoning her to death should she backtalk you. Want to live by biblical principles? Let's start by banning Red Lobster and making spousal abuse fashionable again.
Furthermore, Christian conservatives believe that issues like gay marriage, or pretty much anything else should be decided by their elected representatives and not the courts. That ignores the fact that the concept of democracy is completely foreign to the Bible and the courts aren't. As I remember it, Jesus himself had an unfortunate encounter with the judiciary.
I find it incredibly odd that those most staunchly against same sex marriage are the same people who advocate monogamy the loudest. But the denial of marriage rights serves only to encourage homosexual promiscuity, which is the thing they seem to fear the most. As much as the Onward Christian Soldiers crowd wishes to the contrary, gay people aren't going anywhere. Wouldn't you prefer them behind a white picket fence as opposed to in a leather bar?
I've long maintained that adult life isn't all that different than its second grade counterpart in that we've never really grown out of pointing at one another and yelling "homo!" really loud. And nowhere is that more apparent than in American presidential politics.
I've had this argument before and I'm sure that I'll have it again. I'll always maintain that the 2004 election was won by the GOP on the backs of gay people. 11 states had gay marriage initiatives on their ballots that year and all of them carried.
The only state that passed a gay marriage amendment that went for John Kerry was Michigan, and that was much closer than it otherwise would have been. President Bush carried Ohio, which also had a ballot initiative, by about 100,000 votes. People vote against their economic interests all the time, but they rarely vote against their silly cultural interests. Does anyone really believe that 100,000 people voted to ban gay marriage and to elect Kerry at the same time?
Even though the president has absolutely nothing to do with marriage or constitutional amendments, Bush called for one banning gay marriage at about the time that Kerry became the Democratic nominee. This is what political professionals call "framing the issue." By making Kerry oppose the amendment, the GOP made him the candidate of homo nuptials. That Kerry's position on gay marriage was even more patently fucking ridiculous than Bush's was left unsaid.
And wouldn't you know it, just as another election is coming up, gay marriage becomes an issue again, this time in California. On Thursday the California Supreme Court ruled that the same-sex marriage ban, Proposition 22, violated the state's constitution.
With California, where 1 in 10 Americans live, recognizing gay marriage, the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act - which was always unconstitutional - is essentially useless. Furthermore, just as the California ban violated the equal protection clause of the state constitution, it won't be long before the remaining state laws violate the Fourteenth Amendment.
If you look at marriage as a civil service provided by the government, the argument becomes clearer. If you see a civil marriage as being no different than education, you can't escape the conclusion that outright bans or "civil unions" are in violation of constitutional guarantees.
In 1954, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled in Brown v. Board of Education that "separate yet equal" schools for African American children were in breach of the equal protection clause. How then can the states plausibly maintain a separate yet equal civil union regime for homosexuals. That was struck down on a racial basis in the 1967 Loving v. Virgina decision.
While it is true that the word "marriage" is not to be found in the Constitution, neither is "education." What Brown corrected was the application of a government service to a specific minority. And very few people would today assert that Brown was wrongly decided. Not even a strict constructionist would argue that because education is not a specifically designated right, Brown is an example of an activist judiciary.
Conservative commentators and bloggers have charged that this is another example of the judiciary "creating law." It is not. The Fourteenth Amendment never refers to race, gender or sexual orientation, merely "the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States." This is not the creation of new law at all.
Furthermore, the California ruling, like the one before it in Massachusetts, does not compel religious institutions to perform marriage ceremonies for homosexuals, as that would violate their free exercise rights under the First Amendment. The rulings are exclusive to government recognition of civil marriages. The Catholic Church, for example, refuses to recognize divorce and no one suggests that that is unconstitutional. This is not an example of the courts controlling religion. It is the courts forcing the state government to comply with its own constitution.
Of course, California is a peculiar place in that they allow for the incredibly dumb and counter-productive practice of direct democracy. Proposition 22, we will be reminded, was passed with 61.4% of the vote less than eight years ago. That means less than nothing in so far as if the will of the majority were paramount, there would be no need for constitutional protects at all. Those individual protections are a specific check on the power of the majority. If, for example, the people of California voted for the internment of Muslims after 9/11, it would still be unconstitutional even if 100% of the voters approved it.
But this will be a major factor in this year's elections, just as the Massachusetts decision was in 2004. Republicans, losing as they are seats in Illinois, Louisiana and Mississippi, will argue that this is another case of an activist judiciary, despite the fact that the case was decided solely on the merits of California constitution, not the federal one.
It also puts John McCain in a peculiar position. In 2006, he opposed the incredibly wrongheaded Federal Marriage Amendment, but supported and campaigned for a similiar measure in Arizona. McCain rightly believed that marriage is an issue for the individual states to decide.
The problem for McCain is that the state of California has decided and Governor Schwarzenegger has declared that he will not support a constitutional amendment to moot In re Marriage Cases. McCain cannot very well be supportive of the decision lest he antagonize the retarded right wing of his party, but he can't condemn it without undermining his support for state's rights.
Of course, the GOP will return to it's cudgel of "activist judges." It's worked for them before and it is one of the very few selling points it has left. That that argument undermines the third branch of government and the rule of law itself doesn't matter, nor does the fact that the current child president of the United States arguably owes his tenures of office to an "activist judiciary."
Not that any of that matters. Gay marriage is too far along to realistically stop now. Between California, Massachusetts, the "full faith and credit clause," and a distinct lack of support for a marriage amendment in the country and the states, the cause of same-sex marriage is unstoppable.
Gay marriage is now legal in California, Massachusetts, Belgium, Canada, the Netherlands, South Africa and Spain. Foreign marriages are legally recognized in Aruba, Israel, New Mexico, New York and Rhode Island.
And you know what? Life hasn't ended in any of those places. It won't end anywhere else either.
Easy Listening Recommendation of the Day: Honeymoon Blues By: Robert Johnson From: The Complete Recordings
In the six years since President Bush declared that major combat operations in Iraq had concluded in front of a giant "Mission Accomplished" banner that his administration paid for, then lied about, 4,000 American servicemen and women have lost their lives. For the first time that I'm aware of, over 95% of the causalities were suffered after a war was declared over. That's pretty impressive when you think about it.
It used to be that war demanded shared sacrifice. The soldiers went to fight and die and the civilian population gave up the luxuries of peacetime. Gasoline and sometimes food was rationed, wage and price controls were almost always imposed, and taxes were raised across the board to pay for the war, which is always an expensive exercise.
President George W. Bush knows this because, as his book reading competition with Karl Rove indicates, he is a serious student of history and military affairs. That's why in the days after the attacks of September 11, 2001, he darkly asked the American people to make the ultimate sacrifice. He wanted you to go shopping. "Buy yourself something shiny," he seemed to say. "And for Christ's sake, don't pay attention. This is a job for Big Government."
And nobody really did pay attention. As everybody was obsessed with whether President Bush could actually spend more money and antagonize homosexuals more than even John Kerry, both Afghanistan and Iraq started sliding irretrievably into chaos.
Of course, dark and desperately dumb threats were made - and not just by the terrorist vermin who murdered 3,000 innocent people for no reason at all. The government began darkly intoning that if the unprecedented power accumulated by President Bush and Vice President Cheney were in any way minimized - even if only to reign the executive branch back within its constitutional limits - everybody would die violent and terrible deaths. To question the psychotically tyrannical USA Patriot Act was to invite the beheading of those you love most.
And the only way these apocalyptic visions could be held at bay was to get yourself something pretty, like a Segway. After all, this is wartime and no one wants to be seen contradicting their commander-in-chief.
Perhaps no one sacrifices during a time of foreign conflict as does the president of the United States. For example, bankrupting an entire country is hard work and doesn't pay all that well. George W. Bush knows those better than most. He also knows that he could receive endless riches if he returned to the private sector and bankrupted companies one at a time, like he did before he entered government service. But President Bush is a patriot and he knows that his country needs him. Three trillion dollars doesn't just pointlessly spend itself and 60 years of American foreign policy has to be destroyed in a particularly reckless way.
US President George W Bush has revealed that he quit playing golf in 2003 out of respect for the families of US soldiers killed in the conflict in Iraq, now in its sixth year.
"I think playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal," he said in an interview for Yahoo and Politico magazine.
"I don't want some mum whose son may have recently died to see the commander-in-chief playing golf. I feel I owe it to the families to be in solidarity as best as I can with them."
Of course, he could have been in solidarity by reversing a criminallynegligent policy of trying to occupy a country of full of crazy people who hate one another with a dangerously small military force, but that would be crazy talk. Besides, Rumsfeld wouldn't let him.
On the other hand, giving up golf gives him more time to express his quiet dignity and solidarity with the fallen through the power of dance.
Y'know, maybe I was wrong. Maybe - just maybe - George Walker Bush is everything that a president should be. Or he thinks it's Lent.
Easy Listening Recommendation of the Day:Dancing DaysBy: Led Zeppelin From:Houses of the Holy
Like most folks, I tend to have positive feelings about justice. It just seems so ... fair. Somebody does something particularly stupid, they are called to account, a high-priced hack of a lawyer blames the police, and everybody's happy. It's the kind of a system that makes North America the envy of the world and allows Robert Blake the time he needs to start dating again.
I should also point out that I'm not a particularly big fan of rape unless, of course, it is a part of the rich fantasy lives of the women in my life. Then it can be rather fetching. Otherwise, not so much. Rape is considered highly impolite and the authorities tend to frown on it.
Maybe even more troubling than rape is false accusations of same. If nothing else, your average rape at least involves dinner and perhaps a movie. One almost never gets a lovely steak and a viewing of "What Happens in Vegas" when one is falsely accused of rape. It is a bothersome, troubling experience that involves a great deal of time before the courts, expensive lawyers and, not infrequently, getting sodomized in jail. If you can avoid a situation like that, I suggest that you do.
Worse than the false accusation itself is the fact that there are few if any legal repercussions for making one. This despite the fact that a false accusation necessarily involves committing a number of crimes, including filing a false police report and perjury. Those things are usually not encouraged by the justice system. However, charges are almost never brought against someone who levels a false accusation.
Upon acquittal for what I believe to be one of society's most heinous crimes, I'm of the firm belief that one of two things should happen; either the defendant should be allowed to publicly impugn his accuser's integrity, or he should be allowed to actually rape her. After all, justice should work both ways.
Things didn't work out that way for Gilbert Oldfield of Farmington, New Mexico. It turned out that justice fucked him twice.
A 51-year-old man acquitted of rape charges was sentenced Tuesday to serve a month in jail for contempt of court after calling his accuser a liar after the rape case verdict was read.
Gilbert Oldfield, of Farmington, was accused of picking up a 21-year-old woman at a gas station in his mobile home, and driving her to the Bubble City truck stop, allegedly to rape her.
Rape is bad, but raping someone in a mobile home at a truck stop is worse because it proves that you're white trash, and white trash is highly unpopular in prison. This is a lot different than a misunderstanding between two sets of genitals after, say, a fine lobster dinner and a romantic comedy.
Mr. Oldfield took exception to being associated with low-rent behavior and used the occasion of his acquittal to express his displeasure with the entire sordid affair.
Following the three-day trial that ended April 25, Oldfield was found not guilty of the crime by a jury, but while leaving the state district court room he called the alleged victim a "lying bitch."
That sounds reasonable to me. Accusing someone of rape is a pretty bitchy thing to do, and if there was no force-fucking, the person levelling the charge is indeed a liar. In fairness, I can only fault Mr. Olffield for the mildness of his observation. Perhaps my extensive vocabulary gives me an unfair advantage, but I'd be screaming things like "atavistic cunt" and throwing chairs about the courtroom were I to find myself in similar circumstances.
Seriously, a gas station, mobile home and a truck stop? I'm a far classier man than that.
However, if you're found not guilty of something so tacky and terrible as a truck stop rape, you would do well not to be before Judge Sandra Price. She really has no sense of how justice works.
In the normal course of events, an acquittal ordinarily means that you get to say "good day" and go about your business of trying to convince your family and friends that you're not in fact a sleazy fucking rapist. Judge Price has what can only be described as a unique interpretation of what "not guilty" means and sent our pal Gilbert to the hoosegow for a month.
District Judge Sandra Price said the 30-day jail sentence was the most she's ever given on a contempt charge.
"I thought the behavior, given it was in the courtroom in front of everyone, was pretty egregious," she said. "I was very offended by what he did."
You know, Your Honor, I'm pretty sure that ol' Gil found the whole "three day rape trial" pretty egregious, too. I'll bet he was offended as well. I'd venture a guess that he was even outraged.
After Oldfield's statement was heard by the court bailiff, Price filed an order for the man to appear at a Tuesday hearing to explain his behavior.
"Part of his defense was, Court was over, you had sent us on our way,'" the judge said. "My perception is it doesn't end until someone is out of the courtroom, and out of the parking lot."
May I be the first to suggest that the judge is a fucking moron. In the ordinary course of events, the court's jurisdiction in a matter ends when the one in the robe says "case dismissed." Apparently, I was wrong. An acquittal isn't enough anymore. Now you have to be home in your jammies before Judge Price will get off of your fucking dick. Fuck her.
On that happy note, I'm glad that I have no plans to go to New Mexico because she might find me in contempt, too. And I'm too pretty for jail.
Easy Listening Recommendation of the Day: And Justice For All By: MetallicaFrom: And Justice For All
One of the iron laws of modern life is that when you fuck everything up beyond redemption, it's time to visit Larry King. Larry's such a sycophant that after an hour of his kissing your ass, his retard audience will worship you forever. And if you take phone in questions and don't treat Bob from fucking Omaha like the half-wit that he is, you'll probably get a parade out of it. It seems that pretty much anybody can be a King for a Day.
It doesn't matter who you are or what shitty things you've done in life, if you agree to do Larry King Live, the host will brown nose you right into the fucking afterlife.
I think that Ted Bundy'sgreat mistake was not taking advantage of Larry's hospitality. I can guarantee you that Larry would introduce Bundy as "the famous ladies man," and begin his questions with "You're so handsome. Why the rape and murder? Were they asking for it?" And it would only go downhill from there. Remember, Larry's the same guy who once said "I would bump God if OJ Simpson was available."
Being a media whore par excellence, Larry shares his opinions on anything, despite his total lack of qualifications or knowledge on the subject. Christ, if he spent a weekend judging the Kentucky State Circle Jerk Finals, he would have written about it in his USA Today column for a month. For a guy who hasn't had a solid bowel movement since 1986, he sure is busy.
That's why I wasn't surprised when the former Mr. Zeiger repeatedly turned up in Carol Felsenthal's new book "Clinton in Exile: A President Out of the White House." The book is a portrait of one president's return to popular esteem from self-imposed disgrace. It is a classic tale which tells us more about the short memories and incredibly misinformed judgements of the public than anything else.
"Clinton in Exile" is a good book to read if you're stuck in an airport or are one of those mere mortals who actually tires of masturbation. It's a quickie book and hardly a scholarly tome, as the presence of Larry fucking King amply demonstrates. If you want to read a great book of the form, I can't recommend "Exile: The Unquiet Oblivion of Richard Nixon" by Robert Sam Anson enough. It's out of print, but it isn't that hard to find and richly rewarding.
Mrs. Felsenthal's book ends with a quote so shocking that I couldn't decide whether to laugh out loud or shit myself to death. That quote naturally comes from Larry King. "I think people regard him as a guy with a weakness who happens to be a tremendous person, who if he didn't have this weakness would be up there with Jefferson and Washington and Lincoln." (page 311. Emphasis added.)
That might be the most stellar example of overstatement I've ever read.
George Washington won his country's independence on the battlefield and ensured an orderly, peaceful transition of power previously unknown to man. Thomas Jefferson doubled his territory without firing a shot. And Abraham Lincoln preserved the union from chaos and ended the rancid institution of slavery in North America.
What precisely did William Jefferson Clinton do? Sure, I know he looks good when compared to his immediate successor, but that's hardly what gets you on Mount Rushmore. Autistic children look like competent administrators when compared with the current President Bush.
Bill Clinton is a lot like Jack Kennedy - people love them without being able to tell you what they actually did. In Kennedy's case, they point to the Cuban Missile Crisis without realizing that it wouldn't have happened in the first place without the Bay of Pigs. The serious tax cuts and the civil rights bills were carried out and strengthened by President Johnson, which most people forget. That leaves the Test Ban Treaty as JFK's only real presidential accomplishment.
Oh, and he caught a bullet with his skull, which is about on par with Clinton's use of Monica Lewinsky as a cock catcher's mitt and his impeachment for same.
Despite being in office over three times as long as Kennedy was, Clinton has a similar paucity of accomplishment. His modern supporters point to the economy of the 1990s, but history never records economics unless a depression occurs. Do you know anything about the economy under Jefferson? How about Lincoln? If the economy were a barometer for historical achievement, Calvin Coolidge would be remembered as the greatest president of them all.
So what exactly did President Clinton do other than get reelected and interrupt a perfectly good blowjob so he could jerk off into a bathroom sink?
NAFTA: The North American Free Trade Agreement was certainly important and Clinton should be credited for passing it against the wishes of his own party. Christ, if Hillary is to be believed (which she isn't), he passed NAFTA against the objectives of his own wife.
Every time an election rolls around, the majority of Democratic candidates piss and moan about NAFTA, which only proves that Democrats are idiots. Most manufacturing jobs in swing states aren't going to Canada and Mexico, they're going to China and India, which aren't a party to NAFTA.
Plus, I always get disturbed when the majority of Democrats agree with a lunatic like Pat Buchanan about anything.
Welfare Reform: Another nice idea that was only implemented for political expediency. If you want a president of another party to sign a bill that you know he otherwise wouldn't, pass it during an election campaign. Clinton hated the welfare reform bill and still spits on the ground whenever he talks about it (which isn't often.) But he signed it because Bill Clinton is an unprincipled whore.
It is also worth noting that people who love President Clinton hated the welfare reform act.
The Northern Ireland Peace Accords: The English could never stop the fighting in Belfast, but the English can't clean their own teeth properly either. Even though no American president ever took Northern Ireland seriously - and they all allowed American citizens to be the prime funders of the terrorist Irish Republican Army - Clinton should get credit for the agreement, which has astonishingly held.
This accomplishment should be mitigated by the fact that our penchant for drunken havoc is one of the very few things that makes the Irish interesting. The peace treaty also freed up Bono's time to allow him to be annoying about several other issues.
Other than that, there isn't much. Sure, there's a completely unconstitutional assault weapons ban that Bush was prepared to extend and midnight basketball and school uniform initiatives that never had any hope of passage.
And that's pretty much it. At best, Clinton was just like one of the presidents between Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt, he accomplished a few things, but very little of consequence and would be completely forgotten in 50 years were it not for his impeachment. President William Jefferson Clinton is the picture of mediocrity and didn't even have the skill to get blown properly let alone be an inspirational leader.
Granted, he's not George W. Bush, but Ronald McDonald isn't John Wayne Gacy. That hardly qualifies one to have his picture on the currency. If Bush is the yardstick by which the presidency is judged, I fully expect the United States to be colonized by Cuba in the next three weeks. Pointing out the Clinton was a better president than Bush is like saying that Andrew wasn't half the hurricane Katrina was.
Having interviewed every president since McKinley, Larry King should know better. But Larry is a sycophantic half-wit in ways that make the Memphis Mafia look like the picture of quiet dignity.
Easy Listening Recommendation of the Day: My Little Problem By: The Replacements From: All Shook Down
A STRANGE & SAVAGE LOOK INSIDE THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF CLINTON
As the Soviet Red Army stormed across Poland toward the German border in the spring of 1945, Adolf Hitler called Albert Speer to the fuhrerbunker beneath his ruined Chancellery. Hitler ordered Speer to commence a "scorched earth" operation that would ruin Germany's remaining industry and civil infastructure, thereby complicating any Allied occupation. If Hitler could not keep Germany, Hitler reasoned, Germany would not be worth having.
Despite being far more of a monster than he would ever admit in public, Speer knew that the scorched earth policy would do nothing to forestall that fall of the Third Reich and serve only to cause further needless suffering among the German people. In perhaps the only courageous act of his life, Speer defied Hitler and ignored his twisted and useless order.
Adolf Hitler spent his final weeks unaware of Speer's treachery and spent his remaining days ruminating darkly that he was surrounded by "incompetence and disloyalty," a line so perfect that I've been using it in my own professional life for years now. On April 30, Hitler committed suicide in his bunker and a week later, peace returned to Europe. And we all lived happily ever after.
There is no Albert Speer in the inner circle of Hillary Rodham Clinton. There is no one who would dare suggest that there is a greater good unattached to her own future. If the Democratic Party cannot be hers, they think, better that the Democratic Party be destroyed.
There's something about the House of Clinton that inspires the same brain-damaged loyalty that Hitler inspired. When President Clinton was being impeached for High Crimes and Misdemeanors, many of the same monsters who surround Hillary declared him "one of the great presidents in American history" despite the wealth of evidence to the contrary and basic common sense.
The same cultish devotion extends to Senator Clinton and it is even more baseless. To argue that Hillary Clinton would be an excellent president or has any presidential experience at all is to argue that only Juanita Jordan was capable of leading the Chicago Bulls to the playoffs after Michael retired.
Even though her dreams lie in ruins now, still smouldering from the destruction wrought in North Carolina and Indiana, her minions continue plotting their final scorched earth plan of attack from their very own bunkers in Washington and New York City. The Democratic Party, which elected Bill Clinton nine times and Hillary twice, must now be crushed in the cause of her own dashed hopes of restoration.
Hillary can count on her dwarfish lackeys in ways that Hitler could never count on Speer. To judge by the Sunday morning talk shows today, Terry McAuliffe and his demented deputies are preparing to tear the house down on top of themselves and leave it as monument to their own shattered dreams and everything that's truly ugly and wrong about the human spirit. They will finish what the Reichstag fire of 1938 began.
If you support John McCain as I do, you see the cancer of the Clintons destroying the body politic of the Democratic Party as nothing less than a beautiful thing. There will come a day when poems and songs are written about it and school children will learn of the glorious days in which we live. "A place called Hope" is being rapidly evolved into an ideaology of death, and decay assumes the scent of roses in spring as the good ship Clinton sinks, taking everything they ever proclaimed to love to the ocean floor with it.
In their nightmarish vision of governance, a season in hell for the party and one nation under McCain is far better than even one day of an Obama administration. Any world without at least one Clinton at its center is a world better off destroyed. Even today they refuse to admit that their bridge to the 21st century intersected perfectly with George W. Bush's road to nowhere.
All that is left to Hillary now is the professional collection of mutants that she calls a staff and a bedraggled army of "hardworking, Americans, white Americans" determined that Barack Obama's message of hope is drowned just as surely as the offspring of Andrea Yates and this is the only thing left that gives them joy.
I resisted comparing Clinton '08 to the final days of the Third Reich for months if only because it seemed unfair to the Nazis, who, while desperately wrong and unspeakably evil, at least fought for something they truly believed in. Instead, they campaigned on a platform of slightly more statist Bushisms and find themselves wrapped in a cocoon of their own KKK rhetoric and no other option than to destroy everything around them.
Why are they embracing a racist strategy? Because they're getting the same level of support from African Americans that President Bush did in 2004. Better for them the final fortification of elderly Aryan Volk, the same people who defended Berlin during the last days of the war.
The Democratic Party has always been a choice between cancer and polio, and the Clintons are to the party what the Sex Pistols were to music, a brief burst of nhilistic fury. And now they are choosing the "no future" option.
During those last deperate days in the bunker, Hitler is said to have admitted knowing that war as lost at Stalingrad. But he fought on and millions died needlessly to feed his messianic and craven hubris. The same can be said of Bill and Hillary Clinton. Any adult with a passing familiarity with basic math knew this race was over at the end of February when Barack Obama won 18 primaries and caucuses in a row. The Clintons are political professionals. They knew it was over then, too.
In this case, the Hitler analogy is apt. And this video might be the single most hilarious thing I've seen in a quarter century of following politics.
There aren't very many 53-year-old stroke victims that I'd like to have incredibly dirty sex with, but I have to admit that Cindy McCain is right at the top of that list.
Back when the presidential primaries were something other than a fatalistic freak show for mutants like me, there was a great deal of attention given to Jeri Thompson. While Mrs. Thompson is endowed with might very well be the most formidible jugs on earth, I still prefer Cindy.
The reasons for this are many for they are legion. First, John McCain isn't a congenital loser like Jeri's husband. Second; although Fred was only the race for about a month, he managed go through something like three campaign managers. This was reportedly due to Mrs. Thompson being a world-class pain in the ass. Third, Cindy doesn't look as beaten up in the face at 53 as Jeri does at 41. Fourth and finally, Cindy McCain is worth somewhere in the neighborhood of $100 million.
Mrs. McCain is also a woman of some character. During the 2000 South Carolina Republican primary, a group of mouthbreathing vermin surrogates of the Bush campaign politicized her past addiction to prescription drugs and levelled viciously unspeakable and racist slurs against her adopted daughter, Bridget. That she didn't exploit her endless financial resources to have the then-governor of Texas assassinated speaks very well of her indeed.
Furthermore, you have to admire someone who has come back from a near-fatal stroke just four years ago to the degree that you wouldn't know that she'd been ill at all without being told. That takes a phenominal amount of hard work and incredible personal courage. Regardless of partisan interest, I think we can all join together in saluting Cindy McCain for that. She might be just as tough as her husband, which is no small feat.
Also, she's hot and worth $100 million dollars. I did mention that, didn't I?
As much I appreciate attractive women with great cans and mondo bank, I also appreciate that they can pose a political problem for their office-seeking spouses. Anyone who doubts that should ask John Kerry how much Theresa, Queen of Mars, "helped" in back in 2004.
But there's a significant difference between Cindy McCain and Theresa Heinz Kerry. Whereas Theresa refused to shut the fuck up about literally swimming in ketchup profits, Cindy has kept her "fuck you money" close to her beautiful, beautiful chest. She's actually been pretty shy about the fact that she could single-handedly buy and sell any four members of the Bush family.
Unfortunately, the overwhelming majority of voters are lacking in "fuck you money." And they tend to be awfully nosey when it comes to people who have an abundance of same.
And that's where tax returns come in. Americans in particular have something that comes awfully close to a fetish when it comes to poking through the finances of their ruling class. If you're a candidate who doesn't disclose your tax returns, you very quickly find yourself shit upon from a great height.
Dwight David Eisenhower very nearly decided not to run for president at all because he had no desire to tell the public what he had been paid for his memoir, Crusade in Europe. Of the modern presidents, only Lyndon Johnson's financial dealings have risen to the level of possible serious criminal conduct, that arising from his wife's purchase of radio and television stations as he manipulated the FCC from the senate majority leader's office to make those stations profitible beyond reason. If today's disclosure standards were in place then, LBJ would have gone to prison instead of the White House.
Financial disclosure has become little more than a voyueristic exercise that makes asshole voters feel better for absolutely no reason at all. Furthermore, it accomplishes absolutely nothing. To my knowledge, there has never been a corruption prosecution arising from disclosure requirements but there is no paucity of corruption. Disclosure requirements are one of the things that keeps smart people out of politics and it should be abolished immediately.
Of course, that'll never happen. We love humiliating those who govern us too much for that to ever happen.
Cindy McCain says she will never make her tax returns public even if her husband wins the White House and she becomes the first lady.
"You know, my husband and I have been married 28 years and we have filed separate tax returns for 28 years. This is a privacy issue. My husband is the candidate," Cindy McCain, wife of Republican presidential nominee-in-waiting John McCain, said in an interview aired on NBC's "Today" on Thursday.
Asked if she would release her tax returns if she was first lady, Cindy McCain said: "No."
Mrs. McCain is in a unique position to refuse disclosure. You almost never see political spouses who file seperately from the candidate, so it almost never becomes an issue.
If you want to know what Senator McCain made last year, he'll be pleased as punch to accomodate you. He reported $405,409 in income for 2007 and paid $84,460 in federal income taxes. If you'd like to know what Cindy made, she'll very politely insist that you go fuck yourself.
Cindy's wealth is primarily inherited, so there's very little chance of a conflict of interest. And even if there was one that involved her husband, it almost certainly wouldn't come out in financial disclosure. As a member of Congress, Randy "Duke" Cunningham filed disclosure, too. According to that, Duke was as pure as the driven snow. Except that he wasn't.
Oh, and there's the small matter that Cindy McCain isn't running for a goddamned thing. In a perfect world, Mrs. McCain would hit whoever asks her about financial disclosure in the face with a vodka bottle.
Of course, things aren't going to work out that way. She's going to release her tax returns eventually. The only question is when and whether she makes it easy or hard. But make no mistake, she will end up doing it.
The Democrats have already started their clarion calls for "openness."
Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean said Cindy McCain's refusal to release her tax returns gives the appearance of a double standard on the part of her husband.
"What is John McCain trying to hide?" Dean said in a statement. "Throughout this campaign, he has acted like his own calls for openness and accountability apply to everyone but himself. Now he thinks he can bring that same double standard to the White House."
This is patent horseshit and Howard Dean is either lying or too stupid to know the difference. You'll notice that one of his candidates, Hillary Rodham Clinton, categorically refuses to release the donor list to her husband's presidential library until after she's sworn in as president.
Now, some very real questions have been raised about the donors to the Clinton Library. Denise Rich, as you might remember, was reported to have made a $450,000 donation at the same time that President Clinton was considering a pardon for her ex- husband, the fugitive and traitor, Marc Rich. The Clinton Library (as opposed to his charitable foundation, which the Clintons keep playing bait and switch with) received any number of donations from people with business before the Clinton administration.
Howard Dean, like liberal fuckheads everywhere, is trying to have it both ways. Cindy McCain is a private citizen who has never held public office. Hillary Clinton is a sitting US Senator and the wife of a former president. If there's a public interest in disclosure, any reasonable person would argue that there's a far more compelling argument for disclosure from the Clinton Library.
Furthermore, under the Presidential Libraries Act, the William J. Clinton Presidential Library is owned and operated by the National Archives and Records Administration. The federal government is now a party to any and all funds that are or were raised by the former president and that makes the case for disclosure all the more compelling.
Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are sponsoring legislation that would compel disclosure of all donations to presidential libraries - just in time to complicate fundraising for the George Walker Bush Presidential Library. But she refuses to disclose the Clinton Library's donors before the election and Howard Dean doesn't see that as something worth mentioning.
But they'll beat the shit out of Cindy McCain endlessly and continue to keep as much of the Clintons dealings with a federally governed property as secret as they possibly can without committing a felony. The hypocrisy is fucking stunning.
Unfortunately, that's a complicated argument to make and doesn't quite fit in a 30 second ad or a bumper sticker very well - certainly not as well as "What's Cindy Hiding?" It's not fair and it's certainly not right, but it is what it is. This isn't a fight that the McCains are going to win.
Hillary got her ass kicked at Democratic debates for months over her refusal to release her tax returns before she won the nomination. Buckling to pressure, she relented and we all learned just how much lucre Bill pulled in over the last seven years. The same thing is going to happen to Cindy McCain and the McCain campaign has to know that. They can't afford to take a hit like that for months on end.
Sadly, Mrs. McCain has little other option over the long run but to cave. But I wish she didn't have to and hopefully someday someone will actually stick to an adamant refusal and tell people to mind their own fucking business once and for all.
Easy Listening Recommendation of the Day: It's the Money That Matters By: Randy Newman From:Land of Dreams
NOTES ON TRUE LOVE LOST & WHY EVERYBODY IN CANADA IS AN ASSHOLE BUT ME
Most Canadians are pretty fucking stupid, so their dreams are limited to playing professional hockey, being a shithead like Don Cherry, or owning a Tim Hortons franchise. Canadians are a simple people with simple dreams, and I'm frankly shocked that we're a G8 country. If we didn't corner the export market in space arms, oil and comic actors, we'd be worse off than Uganda. We worship Wayne Gretzky as a god and engaged in five months of nationwide cannibalism when "The Beachcombers" was cancelled.
Canada is the kind of country where the strong are eaten and only the weak survive. Were it not for the intrinsic beauty of our reproductive organs, we would have died off as a nation long ago.
If there's anything worse than Canada, it's Quebec. Besides being "the French fact in North America", it is also a cauldron of corruption. La Belle Province is seemingly controlled by biker gangs who have childish names like "Rock Machine" and no motorcycles. This is preferable to popular democracy, which has only been able to produce life-long losers like Jean Charest. If Canadians were truly serious about making the world a better place, we'd wall off Quebec, plow their fields with salt, and drown the fuckers with their beloved Pepsi cola.
The only worthwhile things to emerge from Quebec is Leonard Cohen and Mitsou. But MaximeBernier wants to join that esteemed company and make it a holy trinity.
Bernier is Canada's Minister of Foreign Affairs, and a notably ineffective one. This is particularly shocking in so far as Canada hasn't had a foreign policy that inspires anything other than laughter for 70 years and pretty much everything the Canadian government does springs exclusively from the fevered dreams of Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
You would think that such a job would be difficult to fuck up, but Monsieur Bernier is doing yeoman's work of it. In his short time in office, he has publicly called for the president of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai to fire the governor of Kandahar province, Asadullah Khalid, for the type of corruption that makes him suitable only for the Liberal Party of Canada.
Since I'm not foolish enough to believe that Afghan democracy is going to accomplish anything but sadness, I'm not necessarily against calling for the removal of a corrupt bureaucrat who cannot effectively govern a place where Canadian soldiers have a nasty habit of getting dead in large numbers. What I don't support is making that demand in public because doing so never accomplishes anything productive and only serves to make us look like arrogant occupiers.
Having established that MaximeBernier might be retarded, it would be unseemly not to point out my admiration for his skill with the ladies.
For his swearing in by my super-hot governor general as minister of foreign affairs, Bernier was accompanied by a comely fuckslut who had her beautiful jugs hanging out in a way that still makes my balls boil whenever I think about it. It was an impressive display of tits and ass and one that has earned the minister my undying respect.
As it happens, the fuckslut in question, Julie Couillard, has quite the history to accessorize her formidable ta-tas.
Tongues first wagged over Foreign Affairs Minister MaximeBernier's striking companion at last summer's cabinet swearing-in, and Parliament Hill is buzzing anew with revelations she was once married to an outlaw biker and lived with another gangster murdered during a bloody turf war in the 1990s.
The divorced Bernier, 45, first began dating former model and aspiring actress Julie Couillard, 38, during the summer of 2007, and the pair caused a minor furor with her revealing attire at last August's cabinet ceremony. According to newspaper reports, officials in the Prime Minister's Office admonished Bernier over her choice of outfit.
I can only assume that Harper's discomfort with MademoiselleCouillard's sexy, sexy outfit is an outgrowth of his inbred priggishness and inability to truly satisfy a woman. But pretty much everybody in Canada knows that about the prime minister. But the part about her biker history has certainly raised some eyebrows.
According to documents, trial transcripts and newspaper archives, Couillard was romantically involved with two men with strong ties to the Hells Angels biker gang, La Presse reports.
In 1995, Quebec's elite anti-biker squad stormed the house Couillard shared with her then-boyfriend Gilles Giguère, a well-known underworld figure, in a pre-dawn raid.
Couillard was questioned in connection with a murder and extortion plot allegedly involving Giguère, a Hells Angels lawyer, and a Montreal loan shark named Robert "Bob" Savard, key lieutenant to jailed Hells Angels kingpin Maurice "Mom" Boucher.
After a long interrogation, she was released, later filing a complaint to the provincial police commission. She talked of her ordeal in a 1996 interview with Allô Police, a now-defunct Montreal crime tabloid.
Couillard lived with Giguère for three years beginning in 1993, until he decided to become a police informer after being arrested with a cache of machine guns and 20 kilograms of marijuana.
But Giguère was gunned down in April of 1996, before his trial could begin. Police discovered his body in a ditch east of Montreal.
The next year, Couillard began dating StéphaneSirois, another gangland figure who would later become her husband.
Sirois was a member of the Rockers, a Hells Angels puppet club that biker experts say was responsible for taking over drug territories in and around Montreal and eliminating the Hells Angels' competitors.
Sirois later admitted to being a member of a Rockers "baseball team" – who intimidated rivals with baseball bats and smashed up bars that refused to allow the gang to deal drugs – and testified against more than a dozen of his former associates in a 2002 mega-trial.
During that testimony, Sirois contended Boucher had presented an ultimatum: he had to choose Couillard or his gang. He chose the former, but after their 1999 divorce, Sirois became a police informant, and returned to the gang as a mole.
To my knowledge, a biker slut has never gotten into the pants of a federal cabinet minister before, and this frankly speaks well of Quebec. It's nice to see that they still have a criminal element that isn't involved in the Liberal Party's endless kickback schemes.
I'll admit that I have no small reservoir of affection for whores from Quebec. Before the fall of the Berlin Wall, Toronto's strippers were almost all French Canadian and were only put out of work because their Eastern European sisters are infinitely filthier.
I also spent a weekend with a girl from Montreal several years ago and learned that if you have a finger or two in their asses while you eat them out, they tend to be screamers when they come. And they do tend to come a lot. Not having had a screamer before or since, I cherish the memory. As swinish as Quebec's general population is, their women are a precious resource and should be exploited without mercy once the Great Day of Reckoning comes.
While I applaud Bernier's romantic choices without hesitation, Ottawa's churlish political and journalistic establishments are displaying what they are best known for, jealousy and stupidity.
In Ottawa, Liberal Leader Stephane Dion said he had no independent confirmation of the allegations, but what he had heard caused him concern. "Certainly, Mr. Bernier needs to explain because we want to know if there were any matter of national security involved," he told reporters.
This is further evidence that Stephane Dion should shut the fuck up. Bernier is minister of foreign affairs, he's not justice minister or running the Treasury Board. What's the worst thing he can do, give Saskatchewan to the Arizona chapter of the Bandidos? And would that really be so terrible?
Christ, does Dion even like girls? It sure doesn't look like it. And that goes double for Gilles Duceppe. Unless and until either one of those sexless dwarves can demonstrate that they can handle the slutty sphincter of a trained biker whore, they should put their fucking kid gloves back on and leave the important stuff to MaximeBernier and me. It's easy to think that you can handle a woman experienced in pulling a train of hardened, hairy criminals, but the reality is very different. Don't ask how I know that, just know that I do.
We're also learning that, besides being the greatest fuck in the world who isn't my bride-to-be, Julie seems like the kind of girl who can get a self-important cesspool like Ottawa to lighten the fuck up, if only a little.
The cabinet minister’s girlfriend always stood out in the genteel diplomatic crowd that inhabits the foreign affairs building.
Whether smoking cigarettes in an ambassador’s limousine or striding into meetings snapping bubble gum and clad in leather boots and tight jeans, Julie Couillard raised eyebrows.
The prime minister is being surprisingly cool about the whole spectacle. I always figured that if Harper were ever presented with a perfectly shaved pussy, he'd physically recoil and immediately declare martial law.
"I hear that one of my cabinet ministers has an ex-girlfriend," Mr. Harper told reporters at a hastily called scrum Thursday.
"It's none of my business, none of Mr. Duceppe's business, none of Mr. Dion's business," he said, referring to the leaders of the Liberal and Bloc Quebecois parties.
"Mr. Dion and Mr. Duceppe are quite a group of gossipy old busy-bodies," the Prime Minister added.
Harper should have concluded his remarks on the matter by asking if Dion and Duceppe are also "worthless cocksuckers", but the man is the prime minister of Canada, and apparently some things actually are beneath him. Who knew?
Of course, none of this is stopping the Liberals and the Bloc from looking extraordinarily silly and sad.
At one point, Tory MPs booed so loudly during a question by Liberal House Leader Ralph Goodale that the Speaker had to intervene. Peter Milliken ruled such queries were in order.
"This is not about Madame Couillard. This is about national security," said Mr. Goodale.
"This is a fundamental issue of democracy and if the government is not prepared to let the people of Canada have their say and ask decent legitimate questions, then this government stands exposed as government that is denying fundamental democracy."
Fucking a girl who fucked a bunch of bikers is a "fundamental issue of democracy?" Really? Jesus Christ, it's getting to the point that Canadian democracy is so fragile that a gang bang might just plunge us all into the darkness of fascism.
Furthermore, Goodale is the wrong person to lead this charge. The Liberals need a recognized expert on sluttishness. By the way, where isBelinda Stronach, anyway? She'd be good at this as she could ask questions like "Mr. Speaker, did the minister ejaculate in Madame Couillard's ass? Because a man will do anything, including jeopardize the national security, for a woman who lets him do that."
Only a true dumper daredevil like Belinda knows what the stakes really are in a situation like this. Belinda knows it, Peter MacKay knows it, I know it, and now you know it, too.
Of course, the jackals in the Fourth Estate are giddy over the prospect of talking about tits and ass while pretending that it's really about something other than tits and ass. The sexual frustration of the Toronto Star's James Travers in particular is almost palpable.
It's as easy to make too much of MaximeBernier's latest twirl in the spotlight as it is to miss the point. Who he dates is mostly important because it muddies the message he was trusted to deliver.
What "message" is Bernier's cock supposed to be delivering, Jim? "I Break for Nuns?"
Bernier's success in annoying separatists is measured by reports that Bloc mischief-making was central to the resurrection of the Julie Couillard story reporters previously explored and found wanting. While ticking off the Bloc delights patriots as well as Conservatives hoping Quebec will help push the party from minority to majority, it's slim compensation for the wreckage trailing the minister mandarins half-jokingly call "Mad Max."
High in the damage report is the Conservative law-and-order image. As unfair as it is to a woman with no criminal record, politicians in particular are judged by the company they keep and it's hard to find worse company than bikers.
I disagree. Politicians are seen in the company of journalists all the time. Most surveys show that reporters rank somewhere around the level of child molesters in the public's esteem and well below blogger scumbags like me. Something tells me that I've had filthy, nasty sex with more of my readers than James Travers has with his. Accordingly, I'm much more important than he is. Giving up the nappy dugout is much more of a personal commitment to a writer than, say, paying seventy five cents on the way to work. Just sayin'.
Worse still, the Star's own chronically wrong editorial page forcefully disagrees with its star pundit.
All of the above goes double for Stephen Maher of the Nova Scotia Chronicle Herald. Maher is seemingly incapable of making a point and writes for a newspaper that probably has fewer readers than I have, which is fucking pathetic. Almost nobody is reading me at this point.
There are a few points here to remember when considering the importance of Monsieur Bernier's past-tense bumping of uglies with Madam Couillard
MaximeBernier doesn't take a dump without a note from Stephen Harper explicitly allowing it and dictating the size and girth of the turd.
No one has managed to explain how a former fucktoy of the Quebec Hells Angels constitutes a national security threat. Has Sonny Barger allied himself with al-Qaeda without telling anyone?
Bernier is sadly no longer fucking Julie, therefore any "threat" has receded.
Stephane Dion, Gilles Duceppe, James Travers and Stephen Maher are all singularly incapable of satisfying a woman and probably aren't interested in learning. You could send all four of them to the fucking Learning Annex and none of them would be able to find the clitoris with a flashlight afterward.
This is the best scandal that can be dug up on the Tories? Really?
Have you seen her tits? Canada has no real national security policy to speak of and Mme. Couillard has fantabulousfunbags. If I absolutely have to worry about something, I'd prefer to worry about something that I know for a fact exists.
I've said a lot of incredibly sexist things in this little essay and all of them happen to be true. But I'm also telling you something that the Liberals, Bloc Quebecois and the goddamned liberal media isn't - that this story isn't about national security and never was. It's a story about slutty pussy written under the pretext of national security.
If this was a serious story, the media would have been on top of it (so to be speak) when the Bloc started pimping it out months ago. And they did check it out, but decided that it just wasn't as important as the fact that Dion was going to be a coward about forcing an election for the sixth month in a row.
But Parliament is about to go out of session for the summer and, since neither Harper or Dion is going to do anything remotely interesting, pussy is as good a topic for the press gallery to write about as any.
I can't prove this, but I have a sneaking suspicion that I'm being read by a few Canadian journalists. If that's true, I'd like to take this opportunity to tell them that they're fundamentally dishonest. When I write a story a story about cunt, at least I tell my readers (and usually in the headline) "Hey, look at this story about cunt!"
However, if you don't know the difference between biker cunt and national security and can't explain how one impacts the other, chances are you don't understand either. Julie Couillard isn't Ellen Rometsch, you dumb bastards. At best, she's a girl who spent a decade being passed around at keggers and traded for particularly good crystal meth.
It's adorable that assholes like Ralph Goodale and James Travers think that a former Hell's Angels cum dumpster is a threat to "fundamental democracy" when the all of the available evidence indicates that they themselves - and the proud and profoundly ignorant voters and readers who support them - are a much more serious threat.
The public likes being stupid and the political and journalistic classes of North American society are more than happy to keep them that way. If they can do that while writing about a girl with big tits and a well-worn cooter, all the better.
