Tuesday, January 31, 2006

Friends, minions, applaudobots! Giblets is humbled by your shameless abasement before him. Bow before his resplendent humility! Bow before it NOOOOW!

The state of the universe is mighty! Freedom is on the march, especially in places like Iraq and Palestine. Their recent elections have proven once again that freedom is a photogenic spectacle involving smiling brown people with ink-stained digits. Kudos, Iraq and Palestine! You are a credit to purple-fingered invasion mascots everywhere! But freedom cannot rest easy because terror is on the rise, especially in places like Iraq and Palestine. Their recent elections have elevated violent right-wing radicals to power who support terrorists and death squads. You're dead to me, Iraq and Palestine! And after all the Iraqis and Palestinians we blew up to set you free! The only solution is to reinvade our own invasion of Iraq to free freedom from itself! Giblets hereby redeclares Operation Reliberationization! There can be no end but redevictory.

There are those of you who have said that Giblets doesn't have a plan for victory. Well Giblets has a plan, and his plan is to tell you that you don't have a plan, because your plan was to point out that Giblets didn't have a plan before Giblets went and implemented his plan - which totally would've worked if Giblets actually had a plan! Being right is not a plan! Being wrong with resolve is a plan!

Behold! To Giblets's right is the family of an unborn embryonic soldier recently killed in Iraq whose stem cells were kidnapped by gay married terrorists to be used in the creation of an animal-human hybrid. One day we will win this war and we will win it for him. And on that day he will rise from the dead and receive a health savings account!

Remember the Maine! Fifty-four-forty or fight! Reduce, reuse, recycle!

Under Giblets's rulership you are safer and more secure than ever before. But enemies are everywhere and they are seconds away from killing you with their laser breath! Giblets can protect you, but first he needs warrantless wiretaps, the line item veto, the mystic hammer of Thor, and none but the comeliest of virgins to be hurled into the fiery maw of the volcano god N'gothu, lest his gorge rise and consume us all!

Witness! To Giblets's left is an American flag which has used its tax cuts to make a bipartisan commission for its starving family of ethanol subsidies. Would you take all that away by letting isolationist courts tax the Jesus fetus? Never! Because history is written in courage, and courage will remember us in the future how we were today: pandering, desperate and barely coherent!

Freedom is on the march! Sunday, Sunday, Sunday! God bless this great nation!

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posted by Giblets at 11:37 PM

After months of petty partisan mudslinging over "individual rights" and "unlimited executive power," Samuel Alito has finally been given his proper place on the nation's highest court. It is the greatest honor a jurist can receive: no longer a creature of flesh and bone, Alito has been reborn as lifelong Justice of the Supreme Court, a pure and ethereal conduit of the Constitution. Even as we speak he is being anointed by his fellow jurisprudents in the Supreme Court Building, where he will bodily ascend into the empyreal Tenth Sphere of the Law to commune with the wraithlike, undead spirits of the Framers to perfectly comprehend the true meaning of the Constitution before passing through the eye of a black hole to become the Star Child.

Alito's ideological opponents shouldn't be disconcerted by his new power and influence, however. As an originalist, Alito has shed his personal legal opinions along with his mortal flesh and will only follow the law as he directly knows it to be. Unlike corrupt activist judges who twist the Constitution to force equal rights on unsuspecting Americans, Justice Alito will represent nothing more than the will and intent of the Founding Fathers, from Alexander Hamilton's longstanding devotion to warrantless strip-searches to Thomas Jefferson's belief in the need for police to fatally shoot unarmed purse-snatchers to James Madison's deeply-held conviction that the executive branch retains the right to break the law. Rest easy, America! Your long, national civil liberties nightmare will soon be over.
posted by the Medium Lobster at 3:56 PM
Wednesday, January 25, 2006

Q. Can the president spy on Americans without a warrant?
A. The president has to spy on Americans without a warrant! We're at war, and the president's gotta defend America, and he's not gonna wait for a permission slip from a judge or a senator or America to do it!
Q. That's just the kinda tough, no-nonsense thinking I like in a de facto dictator! Now some crazy people say the president broke some silly old laws like FISA and the National Security Act and the Fourth Amendment. Are these crazy people crazy?
A. They sure are! Maybe those laws worked back in 1978 back when Leonid Brezhnev was snortin coke with Ayatollah Khomeini and groovin to the hits of the Bee Gees, but in today's dark and dangerous times they just aren't enough.
Q. Things sure have changed since the innocent days of mutually assured destruction! But is it legal for the president to ignore the law?
A. Maybe not according to plain ol stupid ol regular law, but we're at war! You don't go to war with regular laws, which are made outta red tape and bureaucracy and Neville Chamberlain. You go to war with great big strapping War Laws made outta tanks and cold hard steel and the American Fightin Man and WAR, KABOOOOOOM!
Q. How does a War Bill become a War Law?
A. It all begins with the president, who submits a bill to the president. If a majority of both the president and the president approve the bill, then it passes on to the president, who may veto it or sign it into law. And even then the president can override himself with a two-thirds vote.
Q. See it's the checks and balances that make all the difference in our democratic system.
A. It's true.
Q. Can the president spy on me without a warrant?
A. The president would never, ever spy on you, unless you're talking to a terrorist.
Q. That sounds reasonable!
A. Or an associate of a terrorist or a suspected associate of a terrorist or a possible suspected relative of a member of an affiliate of a terrorist or someone with a name that's spelled like a terrorist's or someone who's been mistakenly identified as a terrorist by an NSA algorithm.
Q. That sounds like I should look into switching to smoke signals.
A. Well if you want, the president can stop the illegal wiretapping just for you.
Q. Really? Well thanks, that'd be great!
A. And then the terrorists can come and eat you.
Q. Wait! What?
A. Cause without the wiretaps there's nothin to stop the terrorists from eatin you, yknow. The terrorists and their army of bees.
Q. Oh no! I'm allergic to terrorists AND bees!
A. Oh that's too bad, cause now the president hasta stop the illegal wiretaps and let alllll those terrorist bees eat you.
Q. Quick! Put the wiretaps back, put the wiretaps back!
A. No no, you just said you wanna get eaten. Eaten by terrorist bees.
Q. I change my mind! Please let the president wiretap me, pleeeease.
A. I dunno...
Q. Please, I can change! I DO believe in terror, I DO believe in terror!
A. Oh, alright. But just this once!
Q. It's a Nine-Elevenmas miracle!

Q. Is the president above the law?
A. Nobody's above the law! As commander-in-chief the president just outranks the law.
Q. So the president doesn't break the law. He just appoints new laws to fill vacancies in the office of law, as empowered by Acticle II of the Shmonstitution!
A. In the presidential order of succession the law falls between Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings and Secretary of Veterans Affairs Jim Nicholson.
Q. You can't put the law any higher. It would just slow down the War on Terror with bureaucratic rules and regulations like the Geneva Conventions and the Bill of Rights.
A. If the law outranked the president we'd never get anything done! The president would go toss Osama bin Laden through a plate glass window and the law would call him into his office an go "Dammit president, you're outta control!"
Q. And then the president'd be all "You're outta control, chief! The whole freakin system's outta control!"
A. And then the president would totally turn in his badge and quit the force to fight crime!
Q. Fight crime... with mind-powers.

Q. Can the president eat a baby?
A. If that baby has suspected ties to al Qaeda, then it's the president's duty to eat it - for the sake of national security.
Q. The president doesn't want to eat sweet, delicious babies. He just wants to protect America from the growing threat of a rogue baby insurgency.
A. Exactly. And nobody will have more compassion for that succulent baby barbecue than him.
Q. How many non-terrorist babies would it be acceptible for the president to accidentally eat in the course of enforcing a rigorous terrorist baby-eating program?
A. First of all, the president would never ever eat a baby unless it was reasonably suspected to be affiliated with possible terroresque program activities. Second of all, do we really wanna start tyin the president's hands when he's tryin to protect everybody from jihadist babies? They could be Islamifying our country's drool supply as we speak!
Q. Sir, I demand the immediate establishment of a cabinet-level Department of Baby-Eating!
A. Just til we win the War on Terror, of course!
Q. And with our sophisticated baby-eating technology we should be taking the Terrorstani capital of Fearlamabad any day now!
A. Of course! But the actual occupation could last quite some time, you understand...
Q. Well, yes. But the fight has to be won. These people want to use terror to destroy our freedom.
A. And that's just un-American.

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posted by fafnir at 8:14 PM
Saturday, January 21, 2006

With congressional Republicans mired in the deepening corruption of the Abramoff scandal, George Bush's approval rating floundering in the midst of numerous abuses of executive power, and Iraq lurching towards civil war, a single, inevitable truth has emerged on the political horizon: the Democratic Party is doomed.

Once the proud torchbearer of noble causes like World War I and the Bay of Pigs invasion, the Democratic Party has recently become a nagging voice of doubt, questioning America's burning need to invade nonexistent threats and torture dangerously muslim cab drivers. Now the party's deranged lust for the rule of law has gone too far, as they push for congressional hearings on George Bush's illegal wiretap program. No doubt Harry Reid and his cronies think they might make some petty partisan hay out of the president officially placing himself above the law, but nothing could be further from the truth. Indeed, Bush's extralegal vigilance will only remind voters of the integrity and competence the president has displayed throughout his handling of national security, from his swift dismantling of Saddam's weapons of mass imagination to his candor regarding the legalization of strictly hypothetical torture. Do the likes of John Kerry really want to face down the mastermind behind the Iraq War armed with nothing more than two hundred years' worth of checks and balances?

Perhaps this daunting task would be easier if the president were politically vulnerable. But Democrats must contend with George W. Bush, the Hercules of New Haven, who stands as a Jovian colossus astride a 40% approval rating. Indeed, by cleverly reducing his own domestic support to increasingly tepid levels, the president has reaffirmed himself as a bold unilateralist who needs no allies to charge ahead with powerful ideas like torture and illegal wiretaps. To attack Bush now would only isolate him further - and thus strengthen his reputation as a unique visionary unencumbered by "focus groups," "civil law" or "democracy."

In the meantime, Democrats risk weakening their already tenuous national security credentials by opposing the critical program that stands between America and the hordes of beturbaned, blowtorch-wielding maniacs which threaten to dismantle her suspension bridges overnight. Can the shrill partisan cohort of Howard Dean really retake Congress by embracing the dark legacy of the objectively pro-blowtorch? The Medium Lobster thinks not. The Democrats already hold the disadvantage of largely opposing George Bush on the Iraq War, where the president has cannily lulled terrorists into a false sense of security by allowing the country to deteriorate into an anarchic hellscape ruled by sectarian death squads. Would they also risk attacking his strong spot on illegal wiretapping, where Bush has asserted a right to break the law at will to spy on Americans in an attempt to gather reams of apparently useless information?

There's just one man Americans trust to have the bold, tough vision to save them from the disaster of President Bush's bold, tough vision, and that man is President Bush. Faced with opposition this strong, the Democrats' best strategy for victory is obvious: abject capitulation. By wholeheartedly endorsing George Bush's seizure of permanent emergency war powers and powerful, clear-headed disintegration of Iraq, Democratic candidates may trick voters into believing that they're actually Republicans, thus riding a tidal wave of GOP support to victory. Why not? It has to work this time.
posted by the Medium Lobster at 3:52 PM
Wednesday, January 18, 2006

"Look there, up in the sky!" says the first mate. "'Tis a pie - the mariner's sign a good luck." In fact it's the rare speckled woodbeaked pie, prized by conservationists and gluttons alike. Mad Captain Clusky shoots it. Mad Captain Clusky is no friend to pie. He spends all his waking hours sailing through the bakeries and pastry aisles of the world, harpooning key limes and lemon meringues and chocolate cream alike. Some say a pie stole his leg years ago an it drove him insane with revenge. Some say he sold his soul to the devil-pie and now he must sail the bakeries of the world till the end a time lookin for the one that could set im free. Some say he's just some old crazy guy who harpoons pies. He wears the crusts of his greatest quarries in loops around his neck. They tend to attract flocks of seagulls which he is powerless to fend off.

In a plush office overlooking a smog-shrouded city sits R. Robert Ruthlington III, oppressor of pie. He's spent the last twenty years buildin up an empire of international pie conglomerates an cheap low-wage pie sweatshops just to enjoy the suffering of the world's poorest pies. Once a day R. Robert Ruthlington himself comes to visit his biggest, cruellest, lowest-wage factory to revel in the fruits of his own exploitation. "Dance, pies, dance!" he says. The pies are generally unresponsive. Pie productivity in general is pretty embarrassing and has left the company in dire sttaits. In three years Ruthlington Amalgamated Pie And Tubing will declare bankruptcy and the once-proud Ruthlington family estate will be siezed by creditors and sold to a reclusive former child star as a home for his prize emu, but R. Robert Ruthlington III doesn't care. He'll still be rich - rich with the suffering of innocent pie.

Onion Jim McFillcot is sittin on his park bench thinkin bout pie. "Don't care for them fancy-pants pies," says Onion Jim. "Back in my day all we had was onions! You know where you stand with an onion, yes sir." He takes a deep bite out of a juicy green leek an throws some onion scraps to the pigeons. Some of the pigeons pretend not to notice, some of em start to slowly back away. Later Onion Jim will explain to a depressed lamppost why today's kids are spoiled by penicillin. "Usedta be a man hadda outwit your rheumatic fever an your syphilis - just you, your disease, an some games a chance!" he says. "Where's the challenge now?" Somehow the world has left its Onion Jims behind.

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posted by fafnir at 5:07 PM
Tuesday, January 17, 2006

If there's one thing that bothers Giblets, it's liberals. But if there's two things that bother Giblets, it's liberals and killer bees - they're coming to eat us from below, people! But if there's three things that bother Giblets, it's liberals, killer bees, and the politicization of Martin Luther King Day. Martin Luther King Day is a time to remember Dr. King's ideas and accomplishments, specifically as embodied within a single social movement that ended decades before Giblets was born which could have no possible relevance to anything happening today.

So when Giblets hears people invoke Martin Luther King in the name of crazy left-wing causes like opposition to unchecked government power, it ignites the inferno of his righteous indignation! If Dr. King were alive today he would be the first to demand to be bugged by the NSA for his secret connections to al Qaeda. For how can any of us be "free at last" until we are free from the menace of unmonitored phone lines! Right now millions of Americans could be leaving terrorist voice mail, ordering dangerously jihadist take-out, having unprotected Islamofascist phone sex - all without the motherly protection of their local Pentagon-controlled spy agency. That's just the kind of dark future Martin Luther King wanted us to avoid - and Giblets has the top secret wiretap recordings of him to prove it!

Giblets has a dream too - a dream that all God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, can someday live under the omnipresent and unblinking eye of a permanent surveillance state which records their every move. Giblets may not get there with you - in fact Giblets is pretty sure he won't, since he's white and Republican - but at least we can start with the Arabs. They're deadly and swarming, people! Swarming like the killer bees!

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posted by Giblets at 12:11 PM
Monday, January 16, 2006

The current Iranian nuclear crisis poses a complex dilemma with few palatable solutions. Sanctions may be ineffectual in the face of world demand for Iranian oil; airstrikes could very well lead to an escalation of hostilities and even all-out war. There is but one way to unravel this geopolitical gordian knot: to blow it up in a preventative invasion. Kudos then to the Bush administration, which has cannily poised America for victory by bogging its military down in an unending Iraqi quagmire!

The problem with America's invasion of Iraq was that it used too many troops. Coddled by a 130,000-strong invasion force, Iraqis were never motivated to do any nation-building of their own - and thus became the lazy, well-fed occupation queens we know today: living off the dime of the American taxpayer, churlishly forming death squads and insurgencies with their misdirected work ethic. The Medium Lobster has it on good authority that the average limbless Sunni child in Baghdad makes $46,000 a year on U.S. aid alone and drives two Cadillacs on his way to peddle crack to unemployed welfare Imams.

Compare this to an Iran invasion, where the United States would only manage to provide the ragged stump of a stretched and war-weary military. Unpampered by even the flimsiest pretense of marginally-competent regime change, Iranians will be forced to draw on their bootstrapping, entrepreneurial spirit, overthrowing their government and establishing a representative democracy with guaranteed minority rights through sheer rugged individualism. Indeed, in just a few weeks America could topple Iran, stabilize the region, and still have time to liberate Syria with a lightweight attack force consisting of three paratroopers, a Swiss Army knife and a spare editor from The Weekly Standard. Onward, armchair soldiers!
posted by the Medium Lobster at 8:41 PM
Friday, January 13, 2006

FAFBLOG: Thanks for agreein to do this interview with little ol Fafblog, Judge Alito. And right after all those Congressional hearings, too!
SAMUEL ALITO: Always a pleasure, Fafnir.
FB: Let's get right to it. Does the Constitution protect the right to an abortion?
ALITO: I'm open-minded on abortion, Fafnir. In fact I think it's safe to say that just like every other recent Supreme Court nominee, I've managed to go through a decades-long law career while never actually giving any significant thought to abortion as a legal issue at all.
FB: You even kept up your open-mindedness on abortion rights while voting to restrict abortion rights!
ALITO: I didn't vote to restrict abortion rights, Fafnir. I voted to expand a man's right to co-own and operate his wife's uterus.
FB: You managed to stay open-minded on abortion while you were writing that memo that said "the Constitution does not protect a right to an abortion"!
ALITO: Now, that one shouldn't count - I believe at the time I was bodily possessed by then-Solicitor General Charles Fried.
FB: Now back around then you also wrote a memo saying the Attorney General can't be sued for illegally wiretapping people.
ALITO: I did? Are you sure? Because to be perfectly honest I don't remember a lot of what I did during the Reagan administration. You know how it is when you're serving in the White House, Fafnir - the wild nights, the drunken partying, the granting of absolute power to members of the executive branch... it's hard to keep track.
FB: Oh man, tell me about it! This one time I was hangin out with Dick Cheney an Al Gonzales an they were all hopped up on horse tranquilizers an Cheney's all "let's grant the president the ability to violate civil law during wartime" an Gonzales was like "dude!" an I was all "you guys are crazy!"
ALITO: You know, people are focusing way too much on the triviality of things I've said or done or repeatedly expressed a strident ideological commitment to. I don't let my legal opinions affect my legal decisions - I just follow the law, the Constitution, and the original intent of the Founding Fathers.
FB: So you don't want to strip-search ten-year-old girls without a warrant. James Madison wants to strip-search ten-year-old girls without a warrant!
ALITO: Exactly!
FB: That old pervert! Why'd we let im write the Constitution anyway?
ALITO: Dunno! I guess we're just stuck now.
FB: Now what do you use to check for the Founders' original intent? I know some like to use a federally-funded time machine an some just read from the giant stone tablets George Washington carved into the living rock at Mount Sinai.
ALITO: There are many different techniques and methodologies, Fafnir. For example, Antonin Scalia's approach involves reading the will of the founding fathers through the power of the ouija, while Clarence Thomas scries for original intent within the innards of a sacrificial law clerk. I simply channel the spirits of the Framers through an old-fashioned seance.
FB: So what happens if you summon up the ghosts of the founding fathers and the spectral aura of Thomas Jefferson gets in a fight with the ectoplasmic residue of Alexander Hamilton?
ALITO: In the event of an intra-framer fight, the Chief Justice may settle the matter by invoking the doctrine of eenius meenius.
FB: What if Hamilton's ghost gets shot by the ghost of Aaron Burr?
ALITO: It depends. Was Hamilton's name on Aaron Burr's warrant?
FB: Could you summon up a Revolutionary War figure or two for us right here? I never met a real celebrity before!
ALITO: Well, I don't know... I don't have my incense or my tarot here and... wait, wait... I'm feeling a presence... it's John Adams! And somebody's with him...
FB: Come on, Jefferson! Corpse fight, corpse fight!
ALITO: I'm getting... I'm getting the letter "G"...
FB: Oooh! Is it Granma Fafnir? It's gotta be Granma Fafnir!
ALITO: She has a message for you... a message from the beyond...
FB: Oh Granma Fafnir, I'm sorry I hocked your urn for pogs back in the early nineties! They were just too collectible!
ALITO: ...she says... it's very fuzzy now... she says, "Confiirm Aliiiito... confiiiiiirm Aliiiito!"
FB: *sniff* That's just like her.
ALITO: And she also says the president gets to torture people. Wheeee!
FB: Thanks for joining us, Judge Alito.
ALITO: Oh, I plan to stick around.

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posted by fafnir at 11:13 AM
Sunday, January 8, 2006

"The only thing we have to fear is fear itself," says me.
"And zombies," says Giblets.
"Yes, and zombies," says me. "But we should also fear our fear of zombies."
"Fear of zombies is useful," says Giblets. "It got us way up in this tree out of reach of the zombies."
"Well yeah that's true," says me. "But maybe it prevents us from workin together with the zombies to overcome our differences."
"As long as the zombies adhere to their rigid pro-eating-us agenda no compromise is possible!" says Giblets.
"But Giblets that's what compromise is all about," says me. "Maybe if we compromise on gettin eaten they'll compromise on pork tariffs an the border dispute."
"Zombies will never give up their pork tariffs," says Giblets. "They are as militantly opposed to free trade as they are to polysyllabic speech and personal hygiene!"
"Now that's an uninformed stereotype, Giblets," says me. "There's a lotta hard-workin people in the zombie community who maintain a neat an professional appearance for many days after the brain eatage."
"You just want to trade Giblets's succulent guts for cheap, cheap zombie ham!" says Giblets.
"Aff's nah hroo," says me with a mouthful a ham. "I just wanna better world where man an zombie can live in peace an respect our unique cultures an experiences."
"Giblets's plan was just to get em all to stand in one place so we could squish em with a big rock," says Giblets.
"But maybe if we did that we'd just end up squishin ourselves with a different rock," says me. "The rock of fear."
"No, no I don't think so," says Giblets lookin at the rock. "Giblets is pretty sure this is basalt."
"The basalt of fear, Giblets," says me. "Which is the only kinda basalt we have to fear."
"Crazy talk!" says Giblets. "Basalt is an extrusive igneous rock whereas fear is a clastic sedimentary! It is formed over thousands of years by the gradual process of erosion and deposit."
"Particles of anxiety and paranoia get broken down through chemical an mechanical weathering," says me. "Eventually they settle in river beds of dread, where horrifular pressure condenses them into geological fright."
"Some of the greatest statues in the world have been sculpted from fear," says Giblets, "like the Bigfoot Memorial and Michelangelo's Satan and Evil Mount Rushmore."
"Evil Mount Rushmore was over five thousand feet tall an carved out of a single block of patriotic terror," says me.
"When its giant monster presidents rampaged through New York, the national guard was helpless with inspiration," says Giblets. "Until one little boy defeated them with the power of caring."
"That little boy grew up to be Franklin Roosevelt," says me, "who told us we have nothing to fear but fear itself."
"Fear and Zombie Franklin Roosevelt," says Giblets, "who will eat our brains and detain our japanese-americans."
"He's headin this way!" says me.
"Giblets is totally gonna hit im with this rock," says Giblets.

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posted by fafnir at 7:03 AM
Friday, January 6, 2006

  • It's been a hectic and confusing day as Giblets has been shocked to discover thousands of dollars of Jack Abramoff's money sitting in Giblets's bank account. How did it get there! Was it left by the fickle flight of the Money Fairy? Did it condense as dew from cash-heavy clouds? Did reverse-thieves from the bizarroverse break into Giblets's house and secretly leave a briefcase of fresh bills in the middle of the night? It's a craaaazy mystery! Rest assured Giblets is disposing of the ill-gotten loot as quickly as possible by donating it to worthy causes like The Giblets Fund, UniGibs, and Worldwide Me.

  • In other news, God has apparently smote Ariel Sharon, and it's about damn time! Pat Robertson called in that hit months ago and Yahweh just got around to it yesterday? You're gettin' slow, old man! And whatever happened to those three Supreme Court justices with "heart conditions"? Previous God-targets have included Jacques Cousteau (if man was meant to swim underseas he would have been born with aqualungs!), Jim Henson (for his blasphemous claim of an evolutionary link between Man and Fraggle), Jesus (hippie), and Pat Robertson's prostate (soft on stem cells). Only six and a half billion to go! In the meantime, if you have a problem, and no one else can help, maybe you can hire God. The deity can be reached at his Montana compound using the power of prayer or ads placed in Soldier of Fortune magazine.

  • George Bush pointed out today that if you oppose cutting taxes, it's the same as raising taxes. By the same token, Giblets thinks you should be giving him money right now - and if you aren't, you're stealing money from him. Well, which one is it, world - giving or stealing? Hey! Stop! Thief! POLIIIIICE!
  • posted by Giblets at 2:48 PM
    Thursday, January 5, 2006

    It would be all too easy to join in the feeding frenzy over lobbyist and superfraud extraordinaire Jack Abramoff. All too easy - but hardly right. For the principles Jack Abramoff represents are the very principles that have built up America from the time of its earliest founding, and to turn on corruption now is to betray everything this nation stands for.

    A bribe is nothing more than the handshake of money, and money is nothing more than the badge of an honest day's pay - or an honest day's bribery. A man who bribes is a man who has worked, whereas a man who can't afford to bribe is a man whose sloth has deprived him of the stature that a solid work ethic affords. Indeed, bribery is the natural moral corollary of Protestantism to American democracy: it distinguishes the merit of the productively powerful from the stagnation of the slothfully powerless. A world without political corruption is nearly unthinkable: what would prevent America from falling under the pernicious influence of ordinary citizens? Indeed, free of corruption, the nation's leaders might fall prey to the devious machinations of any indolent wastrel with a vote, and millions of laggard commoners would wield their new, unearned power over a hapless plutocracy.

    No, my friends, we must stand up for the ethical power of bribery: bribery, which empowers the working man by allowing decent, industrious Americans to convert their hard work - and that of their countless wage slaves - into the precious coinage of corruption, which Congress in its wisdom accepts in order to reward the diligently fraudulent over the apathetically honest. At the heart of the bribe are the core values on which this country was founded: a solid work ethic, trust in a higher power, and the belief that anyone, through diligence and perseverance, can one day own their own piece of America, complete with his choice of lawmaker. If we prosecute the leaders Jack Abramoff bribed, we prosecute nothing more - and nothing less - than the American Dream itself.

    Somewhere on some distant, godforsaken shore is a lowly peasant dreaming of a chance someday to travel to America, to walk its fabled streets, to work hard for the day when he too can buy a congressman of his very own and say, "This land is my land, this law is my law, this illegally approved casino belongs to you and me!" Don't crush that lowly peasant's dreams, my friends. America is for sale to everyone.

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    posted by the Medium Lobster at 3:43 PM
    Tuesday, January 3, 2006

    Ah, a brand new year, ripe with possibility and promise - for all save the Medium Lobster, of course. Having ascended to a place beyond time and space, where all of history is laid out like ants on a summer picnic, the Medium Lobster already knows every secret 2006 may hold. Revealing all might shatter the minds of the uninitiated nonpundit, but just a glimpse might do. Come, gaze through the lobsterscope at what the coming days will bring...

  • In the war on terror, the White House counsel's office will determine that Article II of the Constitution grants the president the authority to ignore civil law, command the sea, and transubstantiate bread into tax cuts. Some uncertainty will remain over the president's traditional vulnerability to red and green kryptonite.

  • In the dark realm of the Mainstream Media, the New York Times will irresponsibly reveal the existence of a classified military program which trains interrogators to devour the hearts of suspected terrorists in order to absorb their secret knowledge and fighting strength. Civil libertarians will protest, forever dooming the Democratic Party to permanent minority status.

  • Meanwhile, in the race for the White House, Hillary Clinton will cannily secure her hold on the Democratic presidential nomination by stridently calling for a full Congressional investigation of the United States Postal Service's dangerously saucy stamp designs. Will no one stop the Clinton juggernaut? Only one woman stands a chance: Condoleezza Rice, as prophesied in the Book of Morris. But even her victory would still damn America to the hell of lesbiocracy!

  • In a shameless act of yellow journalism, the Washington Post will irresponsibly reveal the existence of a top secret FBI program to fight terror with the domestic use of alien mind control slugs, which have only been inserted into the brains of Americans with clear ties to al Qaeda. Privacy advocates will protest, forever dooming the Democratic Party to permanent minority status.

  • In Iraq, the outbreak of full-fledged civil war will show just how desperate the dead-enders of the insurgency really are, and that victory is just around the corner. President Bush will call on Congress for an additional $600 billion of purple paint to be tactically sprayed on Iraqis continually throughout the year, dramatically increasing levels of freedom throughout the mideast.

  • Elsewhere, the Los Angeles Times will irresponsibly reveal the existence of a top secret CIA box containing the mystically-sealed essence of all the evil in the world, which when released will only consume the flesh of known enemy combatants. Mortal life will protest, forever dooming the Democratic Party to permanent minority status.

  • The year will close with the triumphant return of Budget Deficit Jesus, summoned at last by a thousand perfect burnt offerings to rapture the faithful to supply-side heaven. Those who failed to believe in the healing power of Reaganomics will be cast from this blissful Eden to a dark abyss where upper-class tax cuts do not grow the economy, but cause weeping and gnashing of teeth.
  • posted by the Medium Lobster at 8:28 PM

    "To the new year!" says me.
    "The new year!" says Giblets. "And the feverish hope that it will be nothing at all like the old year."
    "The old year wasn't so bad," says me. "It came with that neat woodpecker."
    "The old year was made of dust and rust and dyspepsic yak intestines!" says Giblets. "The new year is made of moon men and breakdancing robots and gleaming foil-wrapped cities of tomorrow, each glistening spire shining with the light of a thousand newborn suns!"
    "Yknow it kinda looks a lot like the old year," says me.
    "You talk crazy talk!" says Giblets. "The new year is merely camoflaging itself as an old year in order to lure smaller, weaker years within striking distance."
    "No see, you can tell by its distinctive natural stripes," says me. "Notice the red and yellow horizontal bands along the abdomen followed by its high-level torture scandals."
    "Wait a minute, this isn't a new year at all!" says Giblets. "This is just the same stupid old year wearing a different year costume! Oh Dick Clark, will your treachery never end!"
    "Dick Clark will always be with us, Giblets," says me. "Every year at midnight he bursts into flame and leaves a tiny egg behind from which a new Dick Clark will hatch."
    "Now Giblets has to live through the same stupid year all over again!" says Giblets. "The worst part is pretending to be surprised. 'Oh look, the house is on fire.' 'Oh look, masses of dying poor people.' Spice it up, universe!"
    "There were some good parts back in the old year," says me. "Like that time we didn't get eaten by dinosaurs."
    "That's only cause we got eaten by the sea monster first," says Giblets.
    "But notice there's no dinosaurs in the sea monster," says me.
    "Except for Killzo the killer dinosaur," says Giblets.
    "Yeah but he seems kinda friendly," says me. "He always stays on his side a the sea monster."
    "He says he's gonna try to eat us tonight," says Giblets.
    "Really?" says me. "I thought he hadda clear that with the sea monster."
    "They worked it out," says Giblets.
    "Huh," says me.
    The dinosaur's wavin at us from across the stomach. We wave back.
    "I think we can take im," says me.
    "You think so?" says Giblets.
    "Oh sure," says me. "I can stun im with a fascinatin lecture on subjective idealism an you can zap im with your laser breath!"
    "Anything is possible in the bold heady newness of the new year!" says Giblets.
    "To the new year!" says me.

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    posted by fafnir at 4:26 PM
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