Slow Roasting Pork

The fat man is singing. He is dancing in the streets at a party in a nice neighborhood on the outskirts of Chicago. He is wearing the pancake makeup and costume of a clown, making balloon animals for children. He is the envy of many and he is a successful man, a Christian man whose family values and membership in respectful organizations like the Jaycees made him a role model to those unsuspecting of his dark side and hidden impulses.

Police investigating a series of disappearances of young men eventually came to suspect John Wayne Gacy and by the time that 29 bodies were dug up on his property his name was guaranteed to live in infamy for not only his sadistic cruelty and homosexual deviance in torturing and murdering 33 male victims who had been lured into the web of the evil sexual predator but for his banality.

I personally find it humorous for some bizarre reason that I am unable to explain that John Wayne Gacy’s suburban Illinois home where the corpses were excavated is not far from the stomping grounds of one John Dennis Hastert, another singing and dancing Chicago area fat man who today finds his acre of ass entrapped in a very ugly, burgeoning scandal that is turning into a media circus involving the cover-up of the conduct of a Republican Congressman and sexual predator for the sake of political expediency.

Despite his steadfast refusal to resign his post as Speaker of the House over the failure to adequately address warnings that Mark Foley was possibly just a little bit more than “overly friendly” John Dennis Hastert is running out of room to maneuver. His much ballyhooed at the time American Values Agenda has ignited in his chubby fingers like a prank bag of flaming dogshit and with each passing day more of those who had been previously duped and hornswoggled by GOP snake oil salesmen are beginning to slowly come to the realization that the only family with ‘values‘ along the lines of those of the Republicans is the Manson Family. It is hard to suppress guffaws of sardonic laughter when reading the following statement from Jabba the Hastert that was issued only a few short months ago:

“The American Values Agenda will defend America’s founding principles. Through this agenda, we will work to protect the faith of our people, the sanctity of life and freedoms outlined by our founding fathers. Radical courts have attempted to gut our religious freedom and redefine the value system on which America was built. We hope to restore some of those basic values through passing this legislative agenda and renewing our country’s commitment to faith, freedom and life.”That was back at the end of June when Republicans were getting their swagger back and braying their trademark nationalist outrage at ‘America haters’ who did not support the flag burning amendment that is normally rolled out just in time for the Fouth of July but a few months is an eternity in the game of politics where glory is fleeting and infamy long lasting.

Just like his master Tom DeLay did when he was going down, the porcine Hastert took the low road of a career scoundrel and in the true spirit of the culture of victimization that is the authoritarian hard right he blamed his own failings on somebody else. Pity the poor right-wingers, they are always the victims. If it’s not women, homosexuals, trial lawyers, Commies, judges, the ACLU it is the liberals fault and ABC too for not succumbing to bribery and pressure and going ahead with the Foley story. When a skunk is cornered it sprays in every direction seeking to contaminate the air so it can escape, the longtime Rovian strategy is to muddy the waters in order to confuse and distract and to smear and slime and hurl accusations at phantoms so the fat slob took to the airwaves on the pill popper’s show to get the message out to the angry army and circumvent the goddamned, fucking liberal media:

“We have a story to tell, and the Democrats have — in my view have — put this thing forward to try to block us from telling the story. They’re trying to put us on defense.”


Slobbered Hastert as blamed the great liberal conspiracy that has served as rocket fuel for the rise of authoritarian right-wing fascism. His multiple chins quivered like ripples of pink gelatin fraught with indignity as he spat out his invective and vitriolic words like carefully aimed daggers.

To borrow ultra-right wing lunatic David Horowitz’ revisionist reworking of the Clausewitz quote that “war is nothing but a continuation of politics by other means”, to apply to raw partisanship I must agree that today politics IS war. It is also deliciously ironic that the “story to tell” otherwise known as 9/11 and the accompanying fear mongering and slander that goes along with it that Hastert and his ilk are being undone by that one thing that it is even more precious to Americans than their cringing need for protection – their insatiable obsession with sex. It is the ultimate in schadenfreude that the party that not long ago shut the country down over a blowjob is now seeing their best laid plans disintegrate in a sea of prurient smut.

According to a recent Reuters story, the Bush administration’s political machinations have been stalled albeit temporarily by the same lurid sexual tabloidism that they have successfully traficked in for so long.And of course our national strong daddy figure himself George W. Bush came out to say that he is “standing by Hastert” along with all of the usual suspects who are now closing ranks and expressing satisfaction with an insincere apology. It is worth remembering that the same crowd once wanted to all but march Bill Clinton to the guillotine for a consensual affair with a member of the opposite sex who was of legal age at the time.

Of course this should surprise nobody at all who has any ablilty to engage in critical thinking; it would only be shocking if he would jettison a reprobate or an incompetent of significant power and any such action would be the first for a man adrift in a sea of immorality with a busted compass and a stuck rudder. Bush has an affinity for dishonorable men for he himself is among the most dishonorable of them all and like a crime boss bestowing a kiss on the cheek of one of f an underling so has he rallied to the defense of John Dennis Hastert.

John Dennis Hastert’s rote statements of pandering to ‘the base’ (Al Qaeda also means ‘the base’)under a vaguely defined umbrella of Rorschachian ‘values’ that are primarily manifested in partisan loyalty. Buzz words and scapegoats have now become so expansive so as to include not only defenses of the standard rank fixers, charlatans, thieves, shake down artists, false prophets, babbling asses, Bush sycophants and outright sleaze mongers but are now also is inclusive to degenerate sexual predators whose lusting after young males is so pathological that according to sources including ABC Foley once had to leave during a floor vote to go and run a batch over an impromptu session of cyber sex.

But Republicans as they have been so good at reminding us are the ‘values’ people and those who stand on that wall to defend society from the pitchfork bearing hordes of liberals run amok who hate us for our way of life. According to Vote Smart Hastert received a 100 percent rating from the Family Research Council in 2005 for his stance on family and childrens issues. FRC must have known something because they only saw fit to bestow upon Foley, and I kid you not with this number that is slang for inverted simultaneous oral sex a rating of 69!

The involvement of the House Ethics Committee is nothing more than window dressing, the committee is neutered and will be more interested in presenting the façade of a legitimate investigation when in essence it is only damage control and trying to run out the clock for desperate Republicans. Any findings by the committee should be treated with as much credibility as an internal audit undertaken by employees of the Corleone family into allegations of potential criminal activity within the Genco Olive Oil Company. Oh and then there is the FBI investigation, which I am sure will be performed with all the due diligence that longtime Bush toady Alberto Gonzalez can muster will leave no stone unturned in this latest egregious example of the corrupting influence of unfettered power.

John Wayne Gacy was such a malevolent monster, so irredeemably evil and unremorseful for his many sins that his last words before he was executed were reportedly “You can kiss my ass”. After his body was pumped full of a sufficient quantity of toxic chemicals to ensure that he had departed from this mortal coil his brain was removed to be studied by forensic pathologists for abnormalities that may have caused his inhuman tendencies and propensity for cruelty. Regarding his victims he sneeringly remarked that:

“They were just a bunch of worthless little queers and punks”.I would not be one bit surprised to hear the same words about Democrats and critics spew forth from the pie holes of Bush, Rove, Hastert, Gingrich, O’Reilly, Coulter, Cheney, Frist, Dobson or any one of hundreds of other members of the American Fascist Party, so intense is their disdain and contempt for the very concept of a constitutional republic and the democracy that Americans until only a scant half decade ago took for granted as their birthright.

Perhaps when John Dennis Hastert and all of his vile Republican cohorts die the same thing should be done with their brains so that we may one day understand what drives these monsters so as to be best able to prevent it for the sake of future generations.

George Felix Allen: Chickenhawk Down

A terrible month for dude ranch cowboy George Felix Allen just got worse after he was smacked around by Democratic opponent (and decorated combat veteran) James Webb on Sunday’s ‘Meet the Press’ debate with Tim Russert. GFA was rode hard and put up wet continuing his ugly fall from grace in the aftermath of being called out and held up for public ridicule over his recent racist comments that referred to a non-Caucasian Webb campaign volunteer as a “macaca” which is a French slur right up there with the more well known South African ‘kaffer’ which both are invoked to trash those of a dark complexion in a similar manner to that most dreaded third rail of American political language that is the ‘N-Word’. One which a man such as George Felix Allen has likely often heard when keeping company with the same sort of folk who dig a tough talkin’ Ronald Reagan impersonator who happens to have a fondness for Confederate flags (despite not actually being from the south) and who once kept a noose in his office.

George Felix Allen showed up in his customary dime store cowboy costume of shit-kickin’ boots but minus the ten-gallon hat and was generally mocked by Webb who has used his status as a real life veteran who truly knows what it’s like to actually have have boots on the ground often. Webb has been great at contrasting real military service to the contrived standard chickenhawk talking points of the same Republican neocons who are all too anxious to send the children of others off to be blown to bloody bits in ill conceived wars while ensuring that their own brood get no closer to the front lines than watching ‘Saving Private Ryan’ on big screened plasma televisions in their gated community McMansions.

Webb has been cleaning George Felix Allen’s clock lately mainly because he is authentic. This is a trait which has sadly become an endangered species in the post 9/11 wasteland of what used to be America where the term ‘hero’ has been tainted and essentially rendered irrelevant due to its constant invocation and overuse by right-wing Republican propagandists seeking to claim that they have a monopoly on patriotism. They have been very good at using ‘heror’ to frame their fraudulence in a manner that is readily accepted by a populace far too accustomed to the fantasy of television, movies and video games which are all that they sadly have come to accept as our nation’s history despite the ratings and agenda driven revisionism that thoroughly permeates the medium.

The Meet The Press debate was excellent in that it allowed Webb to connect with several great shots that effectively defused Allen’s Republican talking points. My personal favorite was this exchange as chronicled in a Washington Post article:

Allen also lashed out at Webb, accusing him of failing to support the first Iraq war. “Heck, the French were even in favor of military action in 1991,” Allen said.

Webb responded aggressively, often returning to his experience as a Marine in Vietnam. Using a line from his son, Webb said, “George Allen didn’t fight in Vietnam. Even the French fought in Vietnam.”


Talk about having your face rubbed in Freedom Toast!

And in the ultimate shot across the bow the Webb campaign used footage of the hallowed ‘Gipper’ himself for a commercial praising the service of the man who was once Secretary of the Navy under Reagan. This naturally sent Allen campaign honcho Dick Wadhams into a frenzy and the GOP dipped into their smear war chest to dredge up a 27 year old article from Webb on women in combat as well as his writings that referred to the Naval Academy as: “a horny woman’s dream” and the dirt-digging will only continue in the run up to November 7th as the one party Republican fascist government pulls out all stops to keep the investigations at bay and the Bush crime family and their loyalists firmly in control. You can count on it that Rove will be sending his covert operatives to Virginia in the next month in order to slime Webb but he as a fighter will hopefully prove to be a wily and formidable opponent to business as usual.

As James Webb himself has so succinctly put it regarding the latest poseur saddling up ala American icon John Wayne for the Republican image makers who continue to go to the well in order to find the next Ronald Reagan who could sell ice to Eskimos as surely as he could sell the rugged western archetype to the rubes and suckers weaned on so much fantasy:

“There are no cowboys in Virginia.”

There only dude ranch desperados and I might add an increasing number of veterans who are running nationally as Democrats who all too well understand the cynicism of Allen and the elitist ideologues who see our brave military as only grist to feed into the mill of whatever war of convenience that they have chosen to use in order facilitate their perpetual hold on political power while they tell the silent majority to go straight to Hell. Back during our last divisive, corrupt quagmire of a war that was Vietnam an Arkansas Senator named J. William Fulbright came up with a term to describe those who blatantly disregard the will of the people. He called it “The Arrogance of Power” and never has it been as pervasive and as cancerous to the institutions of democracy as it is today.

George Felix Allen and every one of the Republican incumbents (as well as a good amount of the entrenched DLC Vichy who seek to appease the fascists to maintain their personal positions) are afflicted by this arrogance and it is well past the time to just back up the truck and start hauling off the garbage. Let November 7th be a day that Americans can always remember with pride as the day that we demanded that the whole pack of rat bastards finally be held accountable and began the much needed housecleaning that is necessary to return honesty and integrity to government.