The Anti-"No Spin Zone"

With the Republican National Convention more than a month away, I'm already fucking sick of hearing about it. It all started with those god awful annoying ads that were popping up all over the city with former NYC mayor Ed Koch "welcoming" the Republican Party to NYC, as if he actually has the kind of pull in this city to do anything of the sort. Like, mutha fucka, get your pale, Purdue chicken-looking ass back to your geriatric care center. And those commercials? God, they make me cringe! Dude, do me a favor, Mr. Koch. Go grab former Republican NY Senator Al "Tomato" D'mato and relive the "good ol' days" of ruining the city and letting it overflow with crime and despair. But stop polluting ad space with your presence, please.

Then, of course, there's the whole "protest" aspect. In a nutshell, millions of people across the US have a big time grudge against Bush for taking us to war in Iraq for inconsequential reasons, and with the RNC taking place in the largest Liberal stronghold in America, these people would love nothing more than the opportunity to air their opinion. Much to the chagrin of these people, Mayor Bloomberg has imposed strict limits on where and when people can protest, citing safety reasons. So, here we got this huge battle between people dying to turn Central Park into a Bush-hating mudhole, and a Mayor using the Fox News network to spin the whole safety issue into a question of anarchy. ("Those damn liberals, throwing pipe bombs everywhere!")

I say let them protest...the more you piss 'em off, the more you mobilize them...which means even more people clogging the streets of Manhattan. And as for those people who say protesting the war and our President is "un-American?" Fuck you. The protest, as a tactic, is a fundamental core of democracy. Why? Because, the people who protest unite and make a big commotion hoping that they can influence policy makers to change...which means they have belief in the very system you say they want to tear down. By making their voices known, they are expressing their hope that the democratic process works. NOT questioning our President is "un-American." If we took everything he said at face-value, and stood by him 100 percent, we'd have a virtual king, not the President of a citizen-elected government body...

Which brings me to my main topic...why the hell is the President so popular? And why do Conservatives look to him so lovingly? (Thanks to the Village Voice article, "The Church of Bush" for the inspiration) From my experiences, these are the most common reasons cited for why they think Bush is the greatest thing since the right to own a gun.

1) "He is compassionate"

-Right...let's see...he sends people of my generation off to war, says he's all about military assistance, and then cuts their benefits. That's some love there, Mr. Bush. Or that $15 billion he pledged to Africa for AIDS two years ago? What happened to that shit? Only 2% of it has been dispersed, and it's only going to American pharmaceutical companies.

Yeah, he's compassionate...to his fellow corporate cronies at Halliburton and Enron...

Don't get me started on Abu Gharib...

2) "He knows how to make tough decisions and stick with them."


-I don't know about you, but I somehow don't get the impression that Bush loses sleep over the so-called "decisions" he had to make. I think they went something like this: "To make money, or not to make money, that is the question." Shit, Ari Fleisher, the former White House press secretary, lost more sleep than Bush did on trying to think up clever lies and comebacks to an increasingly scrutinizing media. The best thing Bush ever did was surround himself with a shitload of cronies in order to make sure that whenever he had any action to take, he would have a fall guy in case his plans backfired. That's why he has Darth Cheney on board as Veep to deflect criticism away from Bush, and more on himself.


3) "He has integrity"

- "He (Saddam) has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbors."

-Colin Powell, Feb 24, 2001, Cairo


- "Saddam Hussein is a man who has told the world he wouldn't have weapons of mass destruction, and yet he deceived the world. He's got them... We know he's got chemical weapons, probably has biological weapons."

-President Bush, Nov 3, 2002, Sioux Falls Convention Center


-"Saddam Hussein has longstanding, direct and continuing ties to terrorist networks. Senior members of Iraqi intelligence and al Qaeda have met at least eight times since the early 1990s. Iraq has sent bomb-making and document forgery experts to work with al Qaeda. Iraq has also provided al Qaeda with chemical and biological weapons training. And an al Qaeda operative was sent to Iraq several times in the late 1990s for help in acquiring poisons and gases. We also know that Iraq is harboring a terrorist network headed by a senior al Qaeda terrorist planner. This network runs a poison and explosive training camp in northeast Iraq, and many of its leaders are known to be in Baghdad."

-President Bush, Radio address, Feb 8, 2003



- "We'll find them. It's only a matter of time before we do so."

-President Bush, May 3, 2003. (after the war was declared, "over")



- "Information found to date suggests that Iraq's large-scale capability to develop, produce and fill new CW munitions was reduced -- if not entirely destroyed -- during Operation Desert Storm and Desert Fox, 13 years of UN sanctions and UN inspections."

-David Kay, Iraq Survey Group, Sep 10, 2003


-"Those weapons of mass destruction have got to be somewhere ... nope, no weapons over there ... maybe under here?"

-President Bush, Mar 24, 2004, Radio and Television News Correspondents Association dinner. (Being a dork and looking around White House furniture for WMD's)


- "I have to accept we haven't found them and we may never find them. We don't know what has happened to them. They could have been removed. They could have been hidden. They could have been destroyed."

-Prime Minister Tony Blair, July 6, 2004, House of Commons


Not a single fucking trace of WMD. Some fucking integrity.


4) He stands for the good graciousness of God

-Last I checked, we have a separation of Church and State. Conservatives have been getting their jollies off on the fact that Bush was calling for an actual amendment to the Constitution to ban gay unions, which, itself, was a political tactic to disguise the real threat to gays, H.R. 3313, the Marriage Protection Act, which, in effect, makes it impossible for the Supreme Court to overturn the Defense of Marriage Act. (no state must recognize another state's marriage of a same-sex couple.)

Bush has such a hard on to fuck over gays. (pun intended) Never mind that when he was first elected, he appointed Dick Cheney's own daughter, Mary Cheney, as the Director of vice-Presidential Operations, an out of the closet lesbian. Since Bush went on his huge anti-gay campaign, you can't find shit on this chick anywhere. She like dropped off the face of the planet.

It's called, "plausible deniability"

So, yah. Those are the most common reasons people support Bush. And because of those reasons, they don't question him. Notice how they're based on observations of his personality. For that, I have to offer this quote...

"If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary..." -The Federalist Papers

I don't care if you think he's the nicest guy in the world. It's our fucking right to make sure we have checks and balances in this country. Plain and simple.

Want to do your part in this campaign? Vote. That's all anyone can ask for. And for you Bush-Haters, if you want to do your part to get him out of office, check out indyvoter.org to get information to print out to start your own grassroots anti-Bush campaign!

I'll do my part, starting with boycotting any channel that shows Koch's annoying commercials for a day. :-)