Cliff's Corner

Another of our weekly rants from my friend Cliff (no relation to Flicka)...

The Week That Was 12/30/05

Another week. More preposterousness to report.

This week has been a bit slow. Like a decision by a president to think "real hard" about an August 6th, 2001 warning of an imminent attack by terrorists kinda slow. Largely this is because our great national legislative bodies are in recess, which means Republicans have returned to their home districts to give reach-arounds to corporate chieftains while talking deregulation at their gold-plated circle jerks.

Yet, in a display more sickening than watching Denny Hastert remove his girdle while singing "I Want a Man With a Slow Hand," Hastert’s Heroes in the Republican House cut funding for Medicaid, Medicare and Student Loans while passing another $100 billion in tax cuts, including capital gains and dividend cuts. That’ll teach those damn overtaxed CEOs to stop exporting jobs to 14 year-old girls in Bangalore. (Jobs which they perform dutifully on nights off from Neil Bush.)

Look at how disgraced former TYCO CEO Dennis Kozlowski used his "tax relief" (Frank Luntz just had to go change his pants) for example. For when not pondering how to improve our existence on this planet or personally erecting orphanages, he was still always thinking about how his Bush booty could help the less fortunate. Except for that time he threw that chaste and refined $2 million birthday party for his wife on Sardinia, replete with an ice sculpture of Michelangelo's David that sprinkled vodka out of its arctic penis right into your crystal glass! (I'm not making this up.) Now that’s corporate ingenuity!! And a good use of worker pensions to boot!

So cheer the swelling of corporate funds due to the four more tax cuts for the wealthy just passed by this Republican Congress, before they packed their bags and fluffers for their long corporate jet rides home. Although, in fairness, it could be worse. We could need that money for a war in Iraq (the "War In Error"), to balance an out-of-control budget and rebuild a city on the Gulf. At least we don’t have those petty problems. Yet, if your grandmother had to be tossed from her nursing home in Detroit because Medicare no longer covers the experience, or you encounter Hoovervilles for Tots being set up in aisle six of your local Wal-Mart, at least we now know it was for a good cause.

Speaking of good causes, what could be better than showing our bipartisan inclinations by supporting John McCain’s future ambitions to be President. I mean, c’mon, he’s a moderate, right? He’s gotta be -- the press loves the guy (note: some of us might have even been dumb enough to give him a small campaign contribution in 2000). But just maybe the mainstream media started to cover the Real McCain this week, with two newspapers pointing out what would be obvious if the press wasn’t normally enveloping him in more salivary excretion than a naked picture of Jeff Gannon at a Ken Mehlman cocktail party. McCain is actually Ralph Reed, with the obvious difference being that McCain’s reached puberty.

McCain is anti-choice, pro-assault weapon, anti-gay, pro-Medicaid cuts, anti-separation of church and state and pro-more troops in Iraq. Apparently, opposing the use of Barry Manilow and testicle electrodes as cruel and inhuman punishment while also thinking a 14 year-old wearing a Hamas arm band shouldn’t have access to a modified Uzi at a gun show qualifies one as a "moderate Republican" these days. I guess compared to the intellectually mummified miscreants running his party, he does almost seem sane.

Additionally, and how do we put this gently... McCain is a liar.

I guess we didn’t know that when he called himself a "straight talker" in 2000 he meant straight out of his rectum. McCain met with Jerry Falwell recently - you know, the guy McCain called an agent of extremism in 2000, who now seems more giddy about a McCain run for President than John Gibson after nailing himself to a cross to watch The Passion of the Christ. Wonder what promises were made there, Johnny? Dominionism?

Finally, in the most inane of the McCain Chronicles, he said this past week that students, yes students, should decide whether they should be taught intelligent design as part of their science curriculum. Well I have an idea. Let’s give those same students Apache Helicopters and Molotov cocktails and let them decide if they want to play a more intense version of Grand Theft Auto? How about we let ‘em decide if they want to cook up crystal meth in Home Ec.? The Pam Anderson/Tommy Lee honeymoon DVD for homeroom, anyone?

And last but not least, when speaking of inanity, we have Mr. Mission Accomplished, Bush the Bulge (now Peggy Noonan has to change), our humble president. To explain his propensity for listening into our phone conversations with those strange and exotic people called fur’ners (I know, some of them even use chopsticks - have they no God?), Bush now claims that his snooping is "designed to monitor calls from very bad people to very bad people who have a history of blowing up commuter trains, weddings, and churches." Or in other words, Bush’s base. Yet, It still somehow doesn’t explain why he couldn’t get wiretaps approved by FISA Courts (courts created specifically for counterintelligence) 72 hours after commencing his peeping Tom (DeLay) act, like every other president, for those known blower-uppers of commuter trains. At least you stuck it to some of those bastards, Mr. President, by cutting their damn Medicaid funding.