Guckert/Gannon - The Gift that Keeps on Givin'.The Raw Story tells us that newly released FOIA documents pertaining to Mr. GannonGuckert's repeated forays at the White House show what can only be described as bizarre patterns of visitation for a reporter... or even for a "reporter".
Now, let's keep everything in persepective here.. A hired administration hack, with practically nil in the realm of actual, professional, journalistic qualifications--- working under a false name, and who also happened to be a male escort, yet somehow managed to breeze past the most rigorous secret service on the planet...was apparently skulking around unaccounted for at the white house for, in at least one case, almost six hours... In addition to coming early or staying late, GuckertGannon was also in the WH on days with no press conferences scheduled. On several days, he apparently neglected to check in, or out, of the White House
at all.
Certainly we are not implying anything untoward, but we have to wonder... just what sort of
jobs required him to
blow in and out of the White House in such a bizarre, unaccountable fashion?
Reps. Conyers and Slaughter have written Scott McClellan asking for more answers about G/G's unprecedented levels of unmonitored access... asking, among other things,
"at what point is a 'hard pass' required?"Beavis, if you have to ask, you'll never know. Huh. Huh. Huhhuhhuhuhuh..
In other news, last night I had a dream about Dick Cheney-- and he was wearing a blue dress. I wonder what it means...
Chicagoans Line Up To Worship Giant Concrete Vagina
Okay, now.. We on the left, us loony, loveable losers who are so horribly out of touch with the American People that we keep surprising the fuck out of GOP politicians when they find out how many people agree with us.. well, particularly since the last blowout of an election (kaff) we have been hectored about how we need to show more respect for the ultra-religious members of our society, and in particular, we should under no circumstances- none whatsoever!- make fun of them. 
But.
Really.
Come.
On.
I mean, have these people never heard of rorschach inkblots? Much less water damage?
And if you can see the Virgin Mary in there, can't you at least be open to the possibility that, all aesthetic considerations being equal, what it REALLY looks like is a cross between Aria Giovanni's poon--- and the radiator grille of an Edsel?
Don't believe me?
Let's have another look.
Well, at least someone put the event in proper, somber, holy perspective- when they spraypainted "Go Cubs" on the wall next to this deal...
Sorry, mac, but there are some miracles even the Virgin Mary herself can't accomplish.
I like this CNN headline: "Some See Virgin Mary in Underpass Stain"... I swear, I had to read that one four or five times to convince myself that it didn't say "Underpants Stain"
..Imagine the headlines on THAT one: BVM found in BM.. in BVDs!
But this woman's quote, reported worldwide (aren't you so glad there isn't REAL news to report on?!) just summed it up beautifully:
"This is the first time I've felt something so deep in my heart. There's something in the air. Her energy is here," Raven Leroux said. "It's a combination of incredible sadness that human beings have forgotten how to love God, then this joy by realising that these stories are real," the 57-year-old said.
Yes, sadly, human beings have forgotten how to love God. Which is why he dutifully provides salt trucks to wear away concrete underpasses, upon which he displays the um-yeah-well-I-might-be-able-to-see-it-as-that countenance of the Virgin Mary. Wouldn't one hope that a loving, caring "God" might have better shit to do with his energy? Like, oh, stopping the genocide in the Sudan-- instead of doing graffiti on the Kennedy Expressway?
If this experience could possibly be good for anything, the only thing I would hope -and admittedly, it's a thin hope- that some people might get out of it would be a consideration of the role their own brains play in molding their perceptions. Surely when we were all small children, unless we were those slow kids who ate paste, we lay on our backs and looked at clouds, imagining them to be dragons, or castles, or (in the case of your humble blogger) Watergate Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox. We retain that ability as adults, but we are so wedded to the notion that our personal artistic interpretations of things ARE 'reality' that we forget, we neglect, the principal role our brains play in filtering down, modifying, and interpreting the often chaotic, fractal jumble of sensory input that constitutes "real" reality. We project outward our interpretations onto things, and since we're human, one of the things we most commonly turn random visual stimuli into are other human faces. This is why the lunar surface, which really doesn't look much like a face at all, becomes the "man in the moon". But our brains are even more complex than that, and we have layers of culture and semantics on top of our basic human neurology--- this is why when Christian people see a pattern on toast that could remotely resemble a human face, it's not just any human face- it's Jesus, or the Vigin Mary, depending on things like what could be a preponderance of facial hair.
Certainly, people seem to find surprisingly Catholic iconography in strange places; and also surprisingly, their piety doesn't seem to prevent them from cashing in relatively large sums of money for things like burnt waffles.
This Florida woman recieved $28,000 for this piece of toast containing the "Virgin Mary"...
Well, shit, call me crazy but that Virgin Mary looks awfully sultry, and really resembles to me nothing so much as Marlena Dietrich, or Marilyn Monroe. Maybe Deborah Harry.
Catch me if I'm wrong, but nowhere in the Vatican, as far as I know, is the BVM portrayed with such pouty, succulent lips.
Okay, now... THIS guy. I'm no subgenius, but I can tell you right there that that is J.R. "Bob" Dobbs.
I mean, come on- Jesus Christ, What A Pipe!
I look at this one, and all I can see is a puff of smoke coming up from the grassy knoll---
as the President's motorcade passes.
Of course, the media's obsession with this ridiculous overpass deal is undoubtedly related to the Pope-o-Rama hoopla going down now, where some people are apparently genuinely excited that the replacement for the old, stodgy, conservative, anti-gay, anti-birth control leader of the Catholic Church is another old, stodgy, anti-gay, anti-birth control guy. Except that Cardinal Ratzinger apparently doesn't have the same tact that Karol Wojtyla possessed on these issues- and while his numerous outlandish statements on the subject of gays, priest child abuse, and Judaism, among other things, should have brought him to your humble blogger's irascible attention sooner, really when they started going on about "Ratzinger" a couple weeks ago I thought they were talking about Dustin Hoffman's character in Midnight Cowboy...
So, yes, we have a new Pope, now, and isn't it exciting...
Just know that as far as this blogger is concerned, Popes and Virgins and Freeway abutments are all well and good-- particularly if they make you happy..
but please try to remember that they are projections of YOUR mind, to do with..or ignore-- as you wish.
Long overdue update from your much-remiss blogger..
Whew. What a month. As many of you know, we here at the Impeach Dubya blog just returned from our whirlwind celebrity blog tour, greeted by screaming fans and young, nubile impeach dubya groupies at every stop. And what a wonderful time to be touring this great land of ours. Of course, we had to spend several days down in Florida, keeping an eye on that rightwing circus known as
Schiavo-palooza-- Always nice to see
the people who claim to be concerned about the "sanctity of life" out there, putting their money where there mouths are.. at least, while their mouths aren't busy making
death threats against people like Michael Schiavo and
Judge Greer.
Really, this Christian Fundamentalist fascination with death threats against the people who disagree with them always takes me by surprise. Certainly, the people who made the
death threats against the lawyers fighting Chief Justice "Ramblin' Roy" Moore down in Alabama a couple years ago had to win some kind of blind irony award.. The mind boggles as to.. well, what do you suppose
that phone call was like?
"listen heyar you sekoooolahr humanist noo york lawyer... we're gonna keep that biiig rock in the courthouse that sayuhs 'thou shalt not kill', see, and aint nuthun' you gonna do about it.. Or.... Or.... Or... someone shalt kill you"Talk about eating the menu and reading the meal.
Right. See, but, intimidation of the Judiciary, on all kinds of levels, is the new project of the conservative loonbags who are goose-stepping all over our constitution. It's no accident and it's no surprise, really. The main thing (the last thing, really) standing in the way of their total transformation of American society into a theocratic corporate disneyland is, of course, an independent judiciary doing what the Constitution mandates them to do, namely, interpreting the laws and making sure they gel with the Constitutional rights of the citizenry. Many of my liberal brethen were shocked this week when
Senator John Conryn of Texas actually made some noises that sounded like justifications of violence against judges, or even weird veiled threats.
Now, some of you may remember John Conryn- he was the individual who compared gay people to turtle fuckers. What kind of wackjob imagination does this guy have? I mean, Rick Santorum with his "man on dog" comments- hey, at least that's physically, logistically possible.. But how the flimmin' flarb does someone fuck a turtle?
Maybe your dick is that small, John, but mine isn't.
But the problem with the separation of powers, and an independent judiciary, is that sometimes they make decisions the right wing doesn't like... and you see the kind of dangerous, irresponsible temper tantrum throwing which marked the entire Schiavo debacle, at least until the pollsters informed the "principle driven" GOP that, um, the American people don't
like the idea of the federal government muscling into their hospice bedrooms and telling them how and when they can die. Shit, that called for some damage control! What to do? Why, comission a new poll, of course! Some Ralph Reed nitwit finally got the idea this week to call up Zogby and have him float a
drastically reworded, disingenuous, bullshit poll (note the judicious use of the term "disabled") to soothe the religious right and reassure them that, yes, the American People really are 350 million people who wear black buckets on their heads, churn their own butter, and fuck solely for the purpose of marital procreation...
Anyway, if Zogby was so fucking infallible, John Kerry would be President.
But it's certainly no accident that judges are now public enemy #1 in the eyes of the Republican Party, and it doesn't matter one whit that many of them, like Judge Greer, are Conservative Republicans
themselves... And don't bother trying to mention the realities of the Schiavo case, the fact that the medical consensus unanimously agreed (Bill Frist's absurd fucking television diagnosis--- "she could get better any day now"--- notwithstanding) that Terri Schiavo was not conscious, not aware, not alive by any stretch of the definition... and courts have decided that, in Florida, the spouse is the individual who has the right to make the call to remove life support. Note that precedent doesn't say "the courts have decided that the spouse has the right to make the call--
unless the call happens to piss off the pro-life community"... but that is essentially what DeLay and co. wanted. Actually, they passed a law specific ONLY to one Terri Schiavo, which, to my 10th Grade Civics Class understanding of the United States Constitution, is a major no-no. Sort of like saying "Bob Smith can run red lights whenever he feels like it", or "Batman doesn't have to pay for shoes"..
No matter how you slice it, the Terri Schiavo case was a tragedy- you'll get no argument from me, there. But I believe the tragedy happened 15 years ago, and the grief of this family was not helped by the right wing circus (complete, as Leonard Pitts points out, with
jugglers) engendered by the crowds of agenda-driven kooks seeking to use this poor, braindead woman as a springboard towards further implementation of their crazy Theocratic agenda.
Oh, yeah, then the Pope died. As many of you may know, I'm not exactly a Catholic. I will say one thing for the man, he was like the energizer bunny... He kept going, and going, and going, and I often asked myself why the church had to be so sadistic as to keep dragging out this poor, feeble old man who most obviously would prefer to be back in bed at the Vatican watching Iron Chef. But the papacy is, apparently, like what we've heard about the CIA, or the mob- the only way out of the gig is through the cemetery gates...
I could blather on and on about how damaging the pope's opposition to all forms of birth control has been, but I find it far more upsetting that
would-be popes behind the pharmacy counter all over this great land seem to be issuing, with greater and greater frequency, their own little "Papal Bulls" on the issue, refusing to fill birth control prescriptions- in some cases, lecturing women about religion or sex, in others actually holding the prescription hostage... Rape victims have been denied emergency contraception in several cases, in others young women have been literally interrogated as to their marital status or sexual behavior as a condition of getting their prescriptions filled.
Now, I've been accused of exaggeration or overreaction countless times in the past several years, after asserting that abortion was only one front in the religious right's jihad on people's control of their own bodies. Many good Americans just can't believe- and rightly so- that the same folks who claim to express concern about the unborn would really want to limit access to birth control methods that can and do prevent the very same unwanted pregnancies that end in surgical abortion. You would think that safe, effective birth control would be the area where both sides in the abortion debate could agree- yes, if all pregnancies were planned and wanted, abortion would cease to be the same kind of issue that it is.
You would think, of course, but you would be wrong. Because the agenda of the religious right isn't about "saving" anyone. It's about telling people to stop fucking, take a cold shower, and use all that pent up energy in church, or at the gun range or something. It's also about the state, and the church, controlling every aspect of our most intimate life choices, from birth to death- that's what the Terri Schiavo thing was really all about. And what they are ramping up for next is a concerted war on birth control, particularly the pill. Just watch.
Link To Petition on Pharmacy Prescription Access
