Free Republic

It's official: Less than one year until history slaps Dubya to the curb. Can you feel the tingle? It's just that kind of feeling, that sense of hesitant, embryonic optimism, the sense that says, oh my God, we as a culture and a smash-mouthed, war-hammered society really are fast approaching something possibly, potentially, heart-achingly new and different and — because it cannot get any worse — just a little bit better. Here is my suggestion: Mark your calendars, set your watch, program a celebratory ringtone well in advance, because the countdown has officially begun. It is now less than one...

Warning: The next generation might just be the biggest pile of idiots in U.S. history I have this ongoing discussion with a longtime reader who also just so happens to be a longtime Oakland high school teacher, a wonderful guy who's seen generations of teens come and generations go and who has a delightful poetic sensibility and quirky outlook on his life and his family and his beloved teaching career. And he often writes to me in response to something I might've written about the youth of today, anything where I comment on the various nefarious factors shaping their minds...

What's it like to be married to the booze-friendly, party-ready Bush twin? A vision - Jenna Bush, President and Laura Bush's daughter, is engaged, the White House announced Thursday. Jenna Bush, 25, is marrying Henry Hager, 28, a former White House aide who used to work with Karl Rove. His father, John Hager, is the chairman of the Virginia Republican Party. (CNN) I got her trained just right. She brings me a steady supply of cold Bud Lights while I chill on the La-Z-Boy watching the Nationals game on the plasma. Here's a funny: After any home run, I'll down...

You have many things for which you can be deeply grateful. Here is one of the biggest: Yep, you've done some horrible things in your life. Embarrassing things. Stupid. Mean. Violent, even. Eaten dirt. Smacked a baby. Kicked a kitten. Stomped some flowers. Stole. Lied. Cheated. Beat up a tree. Spit instead of swallowed. Drank bad wine. Voted Republican. Shared a needle. Promised to call and then didn't. You know, the usual. But maybe some of these things now make you cringe and recoil and slump down a little lower in your chair when you think about them, because, well,...

Behold GodTube.com, the place where sex, humor and warm spiritual inclusiveness go to die The Internets, they're just so chock-full of gul-dang liberals, aren't they? This is, after all, the big conservative lament. It's like you can't hit your Gizmodo or your Fleshbot or your Savage Love without running smack into some well-read, free-thinking pseudo-hipster gleefully expounding on the joys of anal sex or a recent hilarious Jon Stewart/"Daily Show" riff or offering up a link to some dark, brilliant Polish anti-war animation. Horrible! Or maybe it's a hot sex blogger slapping Fox News for being such an obvious bastion...

Late for work? Hello Kitty! Cheat on your taxes? Hello Kitty! Kill some guy? Hello Kitty! Those Thai police, they know what for. Those bad-boy coppers know how to stick it straight to your fragile manly ego and twist that knife until you bleed and scream and whimper like an itty-bitty wide-eyed freckle-faced twinkle-toed girl. Oh yes they do. It's all about the fear, baby. All about the dire threat to the macho self-esteem. See, those cops have figured out what hunky men just like themselves really dread, and it turns out it's not gay sex and it's not peeing...

Who are you to judge? Who are you to say that the more than slightly creepy 39-year-old woman from Arkansas who just gave birth to her 16th child yes that's right 16 kids and try not to cringe in phantom vaginal pain when you say it, who are you to say Michelle Duggar is not more than a little unhinged and sad and lost? And furthermore, who are you to suggest that her equally troubling husband -- whose name is, of course, Jim Bob and he's hankerin' to be a Republican senator and try not to wince in sociopolitical pain...

Then no one would kill anyone, right? Also: Guns are fun. Americans like fun! You know what offers just tremendous amounts of pleasure? Shooting guns. It's true. Shotguns, handguns, rifles, BB guns, squirt guns, you name it. Try it yourself: Just head out to a shooting range and have the gun boys yank you some clay pigeons and blast those things out of the sky and oh my God it's just a ridiculous barefaced thrill, a sense of godlike power, a rush of adrenaline to go along with a hot buzz of precision and concentration and the smell of gunpowder...

It's something in the air. It's something palpable and buzzy and strange and it tastes a little like warm honey but also a little like burned coffee and a whole hell of a lot like something you'd find deep in the belly button of a cloud. Oh my God, it's hope. Do you sense it? Do you feel it? Is it all cheesy and silly and eye-rollingly exhausting to even think about? Well, too bad. Because it's that rarest and most precious of divinely human energies and it seems to come around about this time every year, when spirits are...

Yes, I said it. And I am very sorry. I was totally drunk. At least, I think I was. Forgive me? I would like to apologize, right here and now, to the entire black community. And also, of course, the white community. And the Asian American community and the Jewish community and also the Poles and the Latinos and the Italians and what the hell the Scots and the Welsh and the Germans and the nomadic herdsmen of Kuala Lumpur, too. After all, this is no time for bias. See, I did indeed utter that terrible slur. At least, I...

Either we're hell-bent on self-destruction, or we truly care about the planet. Or, you know, both - They say that when gas prices drop, SUV sales surge. Conversely, they say that when gas prices jump above three bucks a gallon and hover there for a while and everyone is slapped upside the head once again with the painful and obvious reminder that oh yeah we are in the midst of a brutal and losing war over waning petroleum deposits and we are heating up the planet like maniac monkeys and we are really really not paying close enough attention to...

That shirt? Those shoes? Your kids? Hates 'em, and everything else about you, too. Can you feel it? That shirt you're wearing right now? Chances are, Dick Cheney hates it. That car you drive? Thinks it's for whiny un-American pansies. The fact that you've probably eaten tofu and wear designer shoes and have actually had sex while standing up? Pervert heathen traitor to the real America, Dick thinks. He hates that. Some days, Dick has trouble counting all the ways in which he hates you, the world, life. Some days, he hates the fact that there are not enough hours...

More shacking up, more visible body art, less concern for the old ways. Is America dead? America is dead. No really, it is. And it's not just because we've lost habeas corpus, a bedrock protective law and a cornerstone of American freedom, to the rabid, stupid dogs of neoconservative fearmongering. That merely feels like a weird horror movie, the leatherfaced guy with the chain saw hacking off the head of the sexy college girl and laughing maniacally. The pain is simply too horrific and cartoonish to even register. Yet. No, Bush's ambling rape of the Constitution and moral law is...

Reminder: Microsoft's bloated OS is truly terrible in the sack. But a Mac will make you moan It has those beady little eyes. It has that seedy come-hither stare. It has overstretched pleather pants and million-dollar gold caps over stained teeth, through which glides that famously shrill voice that seems at once tempting and full of promise and yet also more than a little whiny, deceptive, ill. "Aww c'mon, baby," Windows pleads, kneeling at the foot of the bed. "This time it'll be different, I promise." It coughs that familiar phlegmy hack, like a busted Dell motherboard scraped over of...

Nation cringes as the worst president ever continues long, painful slog to the end - It is like some sort of virus. It is like some sort of weird and painful rash on your face that makes you embarrassed to walk out the door and so you sit there day after day, waiting for it to go away, slathering on ointment and Bactine and scotch. And yet still it lingers. Some days the pain is so searing and hot you want to cut off your own head with a nail file. Other days it is numb and pain-free and seemingly...

It is not for Republicans. It is not for bow hunters. Also, no cat hoarders. Sign up now! Match.com does not allow cleavage. This much I learned from a female friend who used the enormous online dating service during a brief glitch in her dating career, and for whom I helped prepare the most modest of pix (waist up, cowboy hat, big smile, snug halter top, faintest sliver of shadow between breasts), only to have the photo immediately nixed by the site's apparently pallid and secretly Mormon editors who actively disallow even the slightest hint of flesh or pillow talk...

When all the fanatical Christians disappear, will traffic finally improve? Wait, did I miss it? Did it happen three days ago, on 6-6-06, a.k.a. Tea Time with the Beast, a.k.a. the Great Day of Reckoning, a.k.a. the National Day of Slayer, all the world crashing down in a heap of hissing steam and belching smoke and balmy gusty breezes sometime around noon just after lunch but not before rush hour and hitting right around siesta? I might have been napping. Did the Apocalypse finally hit? Did the deep wish of roughly a half-billion zealous believers come to pass and were...

It's a shockingly eco-friendly plan from the world's most toxic retailer. Did hell just freeze over? Sometimes you just have to let the possibility breathe. Sometimes you just have to allow that something grand and good and healthy might actually be born from the bowels of the dank and ravenous megacorporate world, like flowers from a dung heap, like vodka from old potatoes, even if it comes right alongside the nastiest, most abusive federal environmental policy you will see in your lifetime. Take Wal-Mart, the most famously offensive, town-destroying, junk-purveying, labor-abusing, sweatshop-supporting, American-job-killing, soul-numbing, seizure-inducing, hope-curdling retailer in the known...

Fathers make a profound gesture to support their daughters in their decision to save themselves for marriage, and what do they do in San Francisco? Mock them! Tolerance is alive and well in San Francisco… Read More...

Think sex and drugs destroy America? Try naive chastity. Oh, and "Purity Balls" There are these things. These unholy events called "Purity Balls" and you should probably fall to your knees right this minute and thank a merciful and lubricious and happily polyamorous God that you do not know what they are and that you have access right this minute to vast quantities of wine to deflect their nasty karmic arrows because, you know, oh my God. But hey, free country. Purity Balls. No, not some sort of newfangled spherical chastity device to be inserted using vacuum tubes and pulleys,...