Free Republic

Semi-clever, ultra-wealthy Bush supporters suddenly donating piles of money to the Nader campaign in an obvious attempt to steal votes from John Kerry? Pshaw. Ptouey. Child's play. Tip of the iceberg. A mere distraction. We ain't seen nuthin' yet. This is the time of desperation and anxiety. This is the time of hysterical Orange Alerts and imminent al Quada attacks coming from outta nowhere at any minute and violating our children and kicking our puppies and badly denting our Honda Accords. And yes, this is the time of election-year political tactics coming from the increasingly anxious Right that will make...

"BoBo? It's Syndee. You ready, girl? The convention starts in an hour, and the senators are salivating!" "Hi, Syn! Almost ready! Just finishing my makeup. Hey, which outfit you think I should wear tonight? My red, white, and blue glitter spandex halter with the peekaboo panties, or the red vinyl skirt with the Velcro tear-away crotch and the big picture of the M-1 tank on the butt?" "Oooh, I'd go with the tank, Bo. This is the GOP convention, girl! These Republicans love their war, you know? It's all about big phallic missiles and manly howitzers and 'weapons of ass...

Are you there, God? It's me, George W. Come in, Almighty. Do you read me? It's about 8:00 pm and it's just after my last bubble bath of the day and here I am again, kneeling here in the Oval Office all by myself in my most favoritest PJs, the funny ones with the little M-1 tanks and baseball players all over them. I gots some problems, Lord. Look, I've done everything you asked. I've been good. Haven't I? I take the message to the people, don't I? I spout that evangelical born-again crap in pisswater Podunk conservative churches across...

It's somewhere around 1977 and I'm about 10 years old and I'm up past 10 pm watching juicy riveting prime-time "Magnum, P.I." (or whatever), and of course right at that moment I want nothing more from the universe than to stay up another hour and watch even more TV so as to feel, you know, older, and wiser, and somehow cooler. And right about then my mother walks in and says hey kiddo, time for bed, and I plead and whine and protest and say no no no please please please why why why, and she says, slightly exasperated and...

<p>Let's get this straight. Ronnie Reagan allowed AIDS to flourish for years after it was discovered and did next to nothing to stem its virulent, lethal tide, and wouldn't even utter the word until the end of his term, when it was too late. Ronnie Reagan denied the existence of the nation's homeless problem that he largely created, and then blamed the problem on not enough people caring to get out there and get a job as he meanwhile slashed civil services and assistance for the poor.</p>

This is the dream. It involves a shiny cool small premium new car and a big happy beautiful dog sticking his head out the window and a longish solo road trip up the West Coast from San Francisco to the northern tip of Idaho in the middle of the summer. There is music playing. There is a huge sunroof open at all times. There is a small cooler full of ginger beer and spelt pretzels and Odwalla bars and organic turkey sandwiches. There is an in-dash CD multichanger loaded with dirtystupidfun '80s hard rock and badass electronica and Rufus Wainwright...

I am a walking time bomb. Like millions, I live deep deep deep in the digital storm, aswim in the electronic morass, irrevocable and irreversible and never to return to the ways of old because, as everyone knows, once you step foot into the rushing miasma of Net commerce and e-communication, you are imprinted onto the digital Void pretty much forever. The Net, it washes over your life in a tidal wave of logins and passwords and cookies and AutoFill forms and account summaries and credit card numbers and semisecure Web sites, each promising on a stack of ridiculously defective...

When last we left our sneering caped crusaders, Rummy had testified under oath that he didn't really know who ordered what at Abu "Tortures R' Us" Grhraib prison, and George "Wha Happun?" Bush was mumbling into his hand puppet about how he was utterly shocked and aapalled, and was blaming the whole thing on "a coupla bad apples" and gul-dangit, he weren't gunna stan' fer it. And while he still loved Rumsfeld like a drunken frat brother and swore Rummy was doing a "superb job" and stood by him 'til or impeachment they do part, something must be done and...

Just in time for your morning breakfast sausage, it's all-American rape and torture and rampant entirely condoned military sadism. Mmm, patriotism. The pictures are worth a thousand disgusted moans. It's all flag-draped coffins and dog chains and forced masturbation and pistol whippings and miserable bloody hooded Iraqi men -- not terrorists, just men -- with wires attached to their fingers and genitals and made to stand up for hours and days on end until their feet swell and their lungs collapse and their livers fail, and you can hear our stunned death-drunk nation cry: Hey, whatever happened to our nice,...

BMW drivers have more sex. Astonishing, this headline, ripped straight from the pages of an upstart German car magazine for men called, quite Germanically, Men's Car, so you know it must be authoritative and irrefutable and dorky and niche-y and almost entirely pointless. So it must be true. Basically, the survey claims that Bimmer owners claim they get it on more times per week (2.2, to be far too exact) than Audi owners or Porsche owners or Mercedes owners or VW owners and much more than those poor sorry Volvo people, because, well, it's a Volvo, fer Chrissakes, and don't...

I love animals. All animals, especially dogs. And zebras. And snakes. And deer. Dolphins. Birds. The Olsen Twins. Ron Jeremy. Even cats. It's true. Cats are perhaps my least favorite but even so I recognize that they, too, are one of Goddess' little creatures and some are even friendly and funny and adorable and absolutely not always the aloof indifferent uncaring soul-sucking demons they often claw your face off to let you know they so very are. Plus, kittens are just way cute. Cats are good. Cats are OK. So who wants to see one of the happy furballs get...

Thank you for your time, Mr. President. Just a few questions, purely for clarification, so the American people might understand you better. I know you're busy, packing for another vacation or something. This won't take but a few minutes. Here, have a soda. Let's begin: 1) Mr. President, if a train leaves San Francisco at 10 am carrying 1,000 happily gay happily married couples and travels at 85 mph for three hours, while at the very same moment a train departs Crawford, Texas, loaded with 2,000 vaguely miserable Christian fundamentalists and nail-wearing fanatics of "The Passion of the Christ" and...

Can you hear the outcry? Can you feel the snippy puritanical heat? Can you feel John Ashcroft's hot, predatory breath bearing down on your life and your box of vibrators and your adult DVD collection and snatching away your copy of "Weapons of A-- Destruction #2" and smacking you across the face with a Bible, all before skipping off to the dungeon to feed the flying monkeys? Because while 9/11 and the process of gleefully decimating your civil liberties via the USA Patriot Act may have delayed him a few years, Ashcroft & Co. is back on the anti-porn warpath,...

<p>I have been staring with great anticipation out the window of my flat here in the heart of San Francisco, sighing heavily, waiting for the riots and the plagues and the screaming monkeys and the blistering rain of inescapable hellfire. I have my camera all ready and everything.</p>

<p>Everything is interwoven. Jesus tongue kissed Mary Magdalene, a lot. Potent juicy mystical secrets are everywhere, if you know where to look. Organized religion is the worst possible answer.</p> <p>What supposedly sacred truths are available to us are all relative to those who hold the power. Often, just behind the facade of things is a huge hunk of gorgeous convoluted magic you would do well to lick. Meanwhile, the divine feminine is right there, winking, sighing heavily, waiting for you. Like, duh.</p>

<p>Today's question: What do you get when more than 60 of the world's top scientists, 20 Nobel Laureates among them, get together and write one of the most scathing, damning reports in the history of modern science, aimed squarely at BushCo's thoroughly atrocious record of cover-ups and obfuscations and outright lies regarding the health of the planet?</p>

<p>Is your god telling you, like it tells G.W. Bush every night, that your unwanted unprovoked ultraviolent war against a nearly defenseless nation is not only justified and righteous, but is His deepest wish?</p> <p>And does your religion tell you, like it tells so many of the Christian Right, that homosexuals are a dire threat to humankind and should be stopped at all costs before the so-called gay agenda sneaks into the playground and the drinking water and the "Spongebob" scripts and starts covertly converting our blessed innocent hetero children to a life of sin?</p>

<p>Friendly sex shops. Peet's. Dog parks. Stellar restaurants. Superlative tattoo artists. Fabulous weather. Unparalleled natural beauty. Organic foods. Fewer SUVs, more Priuses. Mission burritos. An overwhelming anti-Schwarzenegger sentiment. Sushi. Bush never visits.</p> <p>There are things that make you happy to live in San Francisco, truly grateful, along with plenty of things that make you hyper-aware that you live in the country's most progressive open-minded convoluted messed-up liberal bubble, for both good and ill.</p>

<p>Fear is in. Fear is the new black. Spritz it on your face and neck, walk around the world all quivering and tremulous, waiting to be crushed by some dark massive throbbing wall of evil at any moment.</p> <p>Fear is everywhere. Classrooms, water coolers, truck commercials. Fear is our government's raison d'etre, the calling card of the GOP. It will be the prime motivator in this year's presidential election, as Karl Rove will command that Dubya beat the drum of fear loud and hard and nonstop, smirking all the way.</p>

<p>Kneel down. Put your hands together. Offer thanks right this very moment to whatever deity you desire that that you are not 18 years old and gay and living in the state of Kansas right now.</p> <p>This gratitude, it is a given. This is so much of a given you might not even need to hear why. You just say to yourself, oh my freaking God, I can only imagine.</p>