“It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into”

Jonathan Swift
___________________________________________________
"The Democrats have moved to the right, and the right has moved into a mental hospital." - Bill Maher
___________________________________________________
"The city is crowded my friends are away and I'm on my own
It's too hot to handle so I gotta get up and go

It's a cruel ... cruel summer"

Thursday, January 31, 2008

it must have seemed like a slam dunk

What is so fascinating about sitting around watching a bunch of pituitary cases stuff a ball through a hoop? ~Woody Allen, Annie Hall



(CANYON, TEXAS) At my first alma mater, which I attended as a freshman and sophomore and where I learned to think, retired bishops and faculty members are making one last stand to stop the Bush library from being built there.

But it will probably be built anyway, just a couple of blocks from the street my roommate and I used to block off with stolen orange pylons so we could sell parking spaces during basketball games at Moody Coliseum.

Meanwhile, my second alma mater-- West Texas A&M-- recently received word that Barack Obama was interested in making an appearance on campus.

I don't have a link here, just a very reliable source that the university refused Senator Obama because his appearance conflicted with a campus event.

A basketball game, in fact.

As we learned back in 1987, basketball fans aren't so hard to redirect. Surely their game could have been put off for an hour or a day or so to give the university community the chance to hear a Presidential candidate.

spacedark

Wednesday, January 30, 2008

Apparently...

...Saint Thornberry writes for the Globe-Republican. Or does the Globe-Republican write for Saint Thornberry? I can't tell anymore.

Tuesday, January 29, 2008

overheard in Amarillo


  • "How can you accidentally sleep with someone?"
  • "I'd vote for anyone but Hillary. I just know that Bill would be running things because he wears the pants in that family."
  • (To a canvasser volunteering for a candidate for sheriff) "Is he under indictment?"
spacedark

Monday, January 28, 2008

Sunday, January 27, 2008

The South Rises Again

UPDATE: I lied . . . 530k people voted in the SC primary in the final count, not 480k. whoa!
-PS



(Home movie I took of John Edwards, local high school, Jan 19th)


I could not sleep last night. Most of you know I live in South Carolina, and yesterday I took my 3 year old with me to vote. I pushed the ivotronic button for Edwards while a pollworker read her a book about kittens at the elementary school down the road.

If the rumor that Obama would make John the Attorney General is true, then all is fine and groovy, but no matter. I am damn proud of us here.

Why? Did anyone think that South Cakalaka would be the state to launch the first black man into the white house? The state where Bob Jones university and it's segregated dating rule was IN FORCE when Dumbass Dubya was there in 2000? Me frikkin' neither.

Hell, 480k people voted in the Saturday PRIMARY, and I did not know there was even that many democrats ALIVE here. I felt like I was watching history on my teevee.

It is great here. It's affordable. The smoky mountains are 30 mins from my house, and the beaches are 4 hours drive. But for a political junky who writes on the internets and it's tubes . . . very cool.

How many Presidential candidates came to Amarillo in the 28 years I lived there? Zippo. No chance to hear them, and the AGR would endorse Asmodeus as long as there was an 'R' after his name. Why would a democrat bother?

But I got to see and hear Hillary. And Edwards. Unfortunately Obama came to town when I was on a trip to Baltimore, but even John McCain came to Pete's, a hamburger joint 2 miles from here. Did not go to that one. I had to clean out the litter box.

But I got to listen. and ask a question. I asked Hillary how she would show leadership when we are still rolling over for Bush in the senate. She said something about not having a majority yet, and Mara Liasson glared at me. Edwards took just two questions, and left.

Watch Obama's victory speech last night.



Around 11 P.M. I put down a terrific book on the bond yield curve and stared up . . . just when did I get so damn cynical? I was a Deaniac, and my own damn party destroyed him.

At what point did I turn from Obama's message of change and reaching out across the aisle because I thought that once he got to DC he would be eaten alive.

The rethugs would be laughing all the way to the bank, and if they can shut down his admin quick enough, they can sit around in smoke-filled restaurants over the remains of a 32oz bone-in ribeye, sip a fonseca, and smile. I can almost HEAR them "See a ni. . . I mean black feller . . . I mean African American just can't hack it at the top."

Maybe I was wrong. Maybe . . . I am CHANGING . . .

Maybe I should hope again.

-Prodigal Son

Friday, January 25, 2008

it was one of those weeks


When both the Panhandle Truth Squad (first) and the Amarillo Independent (next) refer to Ciudad Yellow as a "red-light district," you know that something somewhere has gone quite wrong. And indeed, even as the City Commissioners whipped out their Bibles stolen from some hotel somewhere and swore by the Gideons that absolutely no way were the red light cameras being installed to augment the city coffers, citizens driving innocently around the city began to notice that the timing on all the lights had somehow, someway gone horribly wrong. Serial lights that could have until recently been cruised through without stopping were suddenly flashing bright red in drivers' faces. Within the space of a few days, the streets turned into The Fastest and the Furiousest: Texas Driftwood as SUVs and Ford F-Bazillion pick-em-up trucks manned by somewhat attentive drivers careened through every red light in town. Meanwhile, the Amarillo Globe-Republican Newsroom Ghost, confronted in a dive bar on Tenth Street with figures showing that both rear-end and angle collisions had increased tenfold, opined drunkenly that it was a small price to pay to avoid higher city taxes.

Meanwhile, city coughers began taking preliminary steps toward a second attempt at a city smoking ordinance. The Ghost, having noticed a group of preteen skaters sitting at the bar taking shots of tequila shook his ectoplasmic fist. "You kids shouldn't be around any artillery!" he shouted. He was booted out of the bar by a seven-foot tall lesbian bartender, who had decided that a Newsroom Ghost who didn't know the difference between "ordinance" and "ordnance" was no longer worth dealing with.

On Tenth Street, already renamed Paseo de la Muerte, an irate group of parents were marching, carrying signs. Mostly saying, "Hooray for our kind," but some of the signs also demanded that their children have a Labor Day holiday next school year. The parents were becoming unruly, and the entire Police Department (the ones who were not already engaged arresting candidates for Potter County Sheriff) had been dispatched to chase down a stolen hot-air balloon that was floating over the city. The School Board, looking down on the scene from the Amarillo Club and realizing that things had someway, somewhich gone horribly wrong, decided that they could compromise. They were unwilling to declare "Hooray!" for A.I.S.D. parents, but they felt they could give them back their Labor Day. Even if it was a holiday for Communists.

It was one of those weeks.

spacedark

Thursday, January 24, 2008

the futility of hope


It's coming from wingnut 'zines and John Kerry alike, this word that the Clinton campaign is actively swiftboating Barack Obama.

Rumor has it the Clinton campaign is promoting the notion that Barack Obama is Muslim. (Texas Liberal-- as ever, the voice of reason-- reminds us that Obama should just say SFW-if-I-were to this rumor. He hasn't)

I'd love to consider the souse on this one. I'd love to, in fact, close my eyes, cover my ears and scream la-la-lala-freaking-la.

The Clinton campaign claims to have dismissed volunteers who were forwarding e-mails propagating the notion. It seems as if the Clinton campaign is dismissing a lot of operatives. There are also recordings of push-polls (mp3) in Nevada that stressed Obama's middle name, Hussein. I'd like to believe the Clinton camp wouldn't stoop so low, but are we to believe that Rudy Freaking Giuliani or Fred Freaking Thompson or Mike Freaking Huckabee commissioned these polls?

(Why are people so afraid of Senator Obama's middle name when the middle name of all of the Republicans is "Freaking"? Except Mitt Romney, that is. His middle name is "Mitt".)

Clinton had become my second choice after Obama supporters started demanding that we Edwards supporters get in line and tap the touchscreen for their guy.

But this is far, far worse.

If this is what it looks like, and at this point sorrytosay I'd bet on it, I don't overstate to say that Clinton's campaign is engaging in Karl Rovian politics. This is every bit as bad as sending out mailers in South Carolina (conservatives in 2000 apparently didn't use e-mail) that claimed John McCain had fathered a black baby.

I don't want to say what I have to say now, and, yes, I know the freaking stakes.

I want like hell to vote for the Democratic candidate, whichever one it may be.

But there may be no Democrat in the race. If Clinton walks like a Republican and quacks like a Republican...

If this is what it looks like, I will never vote for Hillary Clinton. Even in the general.



spacedark

Wednesday, January 23, 2008

Bush Edges Clinton in liar contest

"Yeah but Clinton's lie was about sex and that makes it way worse"
Quote by Amarillo Blogger with the last name of Texan (not sure which one, they're basically the same guy even though one of them thinks he not the same guy)

935 false statements on 532 separate occasions... But who's counting?

haloscan

Haloscan is acting up again. As the state of New Mexico might say "Comments May Exist" under all of the posts below but you have to click and re-click the comment button until they show up.

spacedark

Bush! The Movie!


Oliver Stone is making a movie about Chimpy McCokespoon. Teeeeerrrrific!.

New Rule: You cannot make a life and times movie about a US President until he/she is planted in the ground. Also, you cannot name an aircraft carrier or federal building after them until after he/she has croaked. High schools are fine.

H/T to truthdig for the catch.

-Prodigal Son

Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Tuesday Briefs: Baloney and Spumoni

War on Global Warming Warning: If the Amarillo Globe-News isn’t sermonizing about Intelligent Design and creating doubt about evolutionary theory (it’s a guess, you know) they’re telling chilling stories about fake warnings about global warming and the vast left-wing conspiracy against the American economy. Dennis Palmitier has yukked it up with “Gore-bs-zoic” and Van Camp has put in his two cents because Al is a damned Democrat. If you read the AGN all scientists are arrogant idiots (rocket scientists do medical research). Only in Amarillo could a retired ink-jockey and a scat spotter be considered experts on climate change and everything else in the world.

The latest installment of carbon-emitting manure comes hot off the pile from
Larry Wyble, who in his utterly blinkered, fallacious and provincial way gets things wrong. The problem is he and others are getting their information from bunk-rich sources like “CO2 Science” and “Friends of Science” which are fronts for ExxonMobil and other oil companies.

For real science that refutes the misinformed claptrap the AGN is churning out via Palmitier and Wyble please turn to
NewScientist Environment.

Marie Fisher gives Mr. Wyble a rebuttal today, but of course facts are irrelevant in the Amarillo Globe-News.

Separation H: D*ve H*nry, God bless his soul, was never able to find “separation of church and state” in the Constitution when it came to Ten Commandment monuments at the courthouse, so he never had any problem with the Ten Commandments on public property.

He wasn’t able to find “separation of church and state” when it came to nativity scenes, so he had no problem with a crèche on public property.

He wasn’t able to find “separation of church and state” when it came to prayer in schools, so he had no problem with government sponsored prayer in public schools.

But let Arabic language and culture be taught in a public school and suddenly D*ve H*nry has discovered the separation of church and state.

Well maybe that should only be, as H*nry says, “
mosque and state.” After all, D*ve hasn’t done gone seen the light and figured out the First Amendment. It still means freedom of his religion, not anybody else’s, especially them terrorist rag-headed sympathizer types.

And we’ve been done gone over this afore, how teachin’ Arabic don’t make a school a madrassa or a mosque, but that don’t make a lick a difference to these cowpat kickin’ jackasses round here. And H*nry wonders how a racist bigot like himself got on the Council on American-Islamic Relations’ e-mail list. I guess, Saffia, being the cretin he is, H*nry will keep on a wonderin’.

Sex in the Country: The following
headline accompanied a column by Candy Gibbs of CareNet Pregnancy Centers (why is it always Candy or Tiffany or Charity?) in rebuttal to Claudia Stravato of Planned Parenthood:

“Safe sex alone doesn't solve crisis
If more readers (and parents of particular columnists) of the Amarillo Globe-News had practiced safe sex alone we wouldn’t have these problems.

Amarillo Globe-Republican Ghostly VoiceTM says I'm a bad parent

...and probably many of you, too:

Voters need to keep in mind that this latest smoking ban is aimed primarily at restaurants and bars, not day cares and public schools.

Such establishments, especially bars, are no place for children - smoking or not.
I see that the Ghostly VoiceTM refers "especially" to bars, and at least I don't make a practice of taking Spacedark, Jr. to Cassidy's. But the Ghost is clearly referring to all establishments included in the proposed ban-- including restaurants.

And I've taken Spacedark, Jr. with me to restaurants since he was a baby.

In fact, we're involved with a group from my church that meets at Leal's-- a restaurant, mind you!-- regularly on Friday nights-- and brings about a dozen kids along with them.

Horrors! I even know people from the same church that bring their children along with them to eat in restaurants immediately after the Sunday sermon.

They must not have been listening too good, huh, Ghost?

Call Child Protective Services on every parent in the freaking city, Ghost. Go ahead, I dare you.


spacedark

Panic!



The fed just lowered interest rates 75 basis points. Happy days are here again, and it's time to run out and refi, so that you can get in early on whatever the repub hacks over at the reserve believe is the next big speculative trend . . . Beanie babies?!

Me? I'm buying all the gas, liquor, and ammunition I can get! Armageddon never looked so profitable to this ol' dog . . . or am I crazy like a fox . . .

-Prodigal Son

Monday, January 21, 2008

the further we go / and older we grow / the more we know / the less we show

Dr. Rausch at West Texas A&M, who has been kind enough to comment here on more than one occasion, writes an interesting overview of the presidential primary process in this morning's Amarillo Globe-Republican.

My level of hatred and resentment toward the primary process has risen in direct proportion to my level of political involvement. It reached a zenith last election when I traveled to Ioway to canvass and saw the caucus system firsthand. A number of the people I spoke to had less idea how the caucuses worked than I did. Obviously, few of them intended to show up to a time-intensive process that required them to stand up in front of their neighbors and state their preference. Add to that the endless potential for monkeywrenching by non-viable candidates and you have a system that can only be described as bullshit.

And yet the media continues to insist on coronating a nominee the instant the Iowayns leave the schools and churches and abandoned filling stations in which they caucus and go back to their cornfields.

Granted, they're often wrong, but in the last two elections grass roots partisans who aren't Iowayns or New Hampshiristas have faced the specter of party leaders demanding that they show unity by shutting up and voting for whom they're told. Last time, supporters of everyone but Kerry were informed that we must vote for Kerry in the primary if we wanted him to be strong enough to beat Bush. We saw how well that worked out, but this time around Obama supporters are ordering those who prefer Edwards to ignore their consciences and vote for Obama, based on some subjective fantasy that Obama is closer to Edwards than Clinton.

Rausch evokes the older system in which party leaders, along with the nominating conventions, basically chose the nominees. He wonders if we could find a way "to make the old processes new again."

I know the arguments against a single-day national primary, but poor folks already can't run for President and the nominees already ignore large blocks of people. A single-day national primary seems to me like the least bad possibility, but if that's impossible, maybe we should go back to party leaders choosing our candidates with no pretense and no apology.

It would be exactly like what we have now, just more honest.

spacedark

Sunday, January 20, 2008

red-light district

"[T]hese cameras aren't designed to intimidate anyone...The cameras...indeed, just might deter some chucklehead from rushing through a red light - and into the path of traffic."

John Kanelips

Forgive me for nitpicking, but isn't Kanelips contradicting himself here? The cameras have to "intimidate" to "deter," right?

spacedark

Saturday, January 19, 2008

War on Public Education: The Martial Plan

In the new War on Public Education, kudos to Joy Allen Holland for having suffered an hour with Less Simpson in her classroom and then having the temerity to say

“we need to marshal, meaning "to usher or lead," our efforts, not martial, meaning "be warlike."
Kudos also to the Amarillo Globe-News for publishing Holland’s letter and not “accidentally” cropping off the last line.

Subtract kudos from the newspaper copyeditor who gave Holland’s letter the self-laudatory headline

“Bravo to those seeking to improve attainment”
This now brings Holland to plus 2 kudos and the Amarillo Globe-News to only minus 237,824 kudos.

Friday, January 18, 2008

too small a barrel, too big a fish, too powerful a gun


As everyone knows, Shurf Shumate is running for re-election as Shurf of Potter County despite being indicted on three counts of official misconduct.

Panhandle Truth Squad was recently asked why we haven't had more to say about this.

That's easy: we see nothing unusual in a Republican primary in which two of the six candidates are under indictment. In fact, we're glad we live in the God-fearing Panhandle of Texas, where Republicans are relatively well-behaved and law-abiding. Only a third of the Republicans running are headed for jail? What did we do to warrant (pun intended) such a squeaky-clean group of Republicans?

spacedark

Sunday, January 13, 2008

Education in the Panhandle is

As outlined in a report by Panhandle Twenty/20 a quarter of adults in the Panhandle do not have a high school diploma and 20% of residents in Amarillo do not possess one. Less than 18% of adults have a bachelor’s degree or higher. As worrisome as this is, the educational level is predicted to get worse unless action is taken now.

When the report was released early last year there was a spate of letters in the Amarillo Globe-News disparaging higher education and extolling the merits of simple hard work. The general attitude seemed to be that all that was really required to be happy was to slop hogs, sell truck parts, drink beer and write grammatically incorrect letters to the editor denouncing liberal intellectuals and their sinister schooling plans.

Now the Amarillo Globe-News has announced “
Celebrate Education,” a year-long project involving 19 other civic organizations, to bring attention to the issues raised by Panhandle Twenty/20’s report and to explore potential solutions to improving education in the region.

What is so positive about this development is that it is an apparent about-face for the Amarillo Globe-News. In the past the newspaper has been at the forefront of celebrating cretinism, providing an open forum for every idiot and moron and giving free reign to the ignoramus Van Camp and the imbecile D*ve H*nry. By providing papers to schools and publishing work at odds with generally established facts and reality, the AGN has been considered one of the greater contributors to the stupidification of Amarillo and the Panhandle.

We can only be thankful the Amarillo Globe-News has chosen a new course and is leading a different way forward. The editors recognize our students are not doing well and that their education is in crisis:


This has to change, and the time has come for the Panhandle to martial its energy toward that end.”
Yes, it is time for – oh crap. That should be “marshal its energy” you stupid morons! Gad! With the Amarillo Globe-News at the helm education in the Panhandle is doomed.

Wednesday, January 09, 2008

Polk St. Jazz



Polk St. Jazz opens a season of cool jazz this Friday, January 11, 2008 at 3306 W. 6th Street from 7 to 10 PM.

For a nominal cover charge of $5 wine and beer and nibbling comestibles will be served.

For PTS fans come enjoy the music and celebrate the purge of VVC from the AGN with CV and the PTS VVC WMD S&M QED ESQ TEAM.

See you there!

you have to admit, it's a bit out of character

Can a GhostTM be possessed?

spacedark

the show goes on

Frankly, I'm glad that it's going all the way to February 5, and perhaps beyond. I still have little confidence that our votes from Texas will matter, but I wasn't quite so bugged as I expected to be last night as I watched Edwards (who, finally, somewhat belatedly, became my choice two days ago) say what losing candidates who aren't dropping out always say after New Hampshire-- that 99% of the people haven't voted. Four years ago, the same words were said, allegedly too loudly-- but Dean had to scream to be heard over a crowd of pundits already forming their narrative that the primary season was over. That didn't just hurt Dean, it hurt all of us who were ordered in the coming days to fall in line and get behind Kerry if we wanted to beat Bush.

Four years ago this morning, some Kerry staffer somewhere had already coined the imbecilic phrase, "Dated Dean, married Kerry," and was trying to figure out how to troll those newfangled blog thingies.

This time, however, the pundits, the pollsters, even the campaigns, were blindsided by vox populi and the race will go on.

Democracy is dead, they said. Long live democracy.

spacedark

Tuesday, January 08, 2008

Tuesday Briefs: Ejection and Dejection

Bomb away: Even if you were hiding in a cave in Pakistan your wi-fi connection and internet search engine has informed you, hard as it was to believe, that Virgil Van Camp’s interminably long squawk at the Amarillo Globe-News has finally come to an end. If you’ve been reading the New York Times you won’t know about Virgil but you will know about what’s going on in Pakistan.

Yes, Amarillo’s best known and most beloved ignoramus, bigot, jingoist, war monger has been bumped off his perch. The letters of appreciation are pouring in:
“I can't think of a time I didn't agree” writes one ditto-head. "He reminded me of a long-lost era when life was much less complicated" says another misty-eyed reader. Oh how conservatives long for the Dark Ages or the “man against beast and we all lived in caves” good old days.

Don’t expect any letters to be published that are critical about his racism, intolerance or hypocrisy, just soppy tributes to his
unique opinions and courage, strange compliments when so many folks around these here parts share his views and the AGN has worked diligently to cover his white, flabby, carbuncled ass (or so say his shower mates at the Downtown Athletic Club).

What is truly astonishing is that even when Van Camp wrote in his area of “expertise” – civil aviation – he got things wrong. Whether due to his “small talent,” senility, or the possibility that Amarillo’s crack aged aviator put his flight hours in at the kiddy aeroplane down at the supermarket, the stock boy isn’t talking. Even more stupefying, after all the years writing about flying and being such a sure cockpiteer and thinking himself a great writer, is that he should end his literary career with a simile about riding horses: “Now it's time to hang up my spurs.”

Spurs? No ball-tipped three-point landing? No folding your ink-stained wings? No closing the hangar door on your dull quill? Spurs!? Is it because all this time you’ve been buzzing around on one of them dang irritating horse-flies you buggering (or so say his shower mates at the Downtown Athletic Club) old coot?

Ejection seat: As of today it seems Sagan has escaped the ax-man, but not
William Seewald, who bid his fond farewell last week. It just wouldn’t be fair to chuck out a right-wing extremist and hang on to someone slightly left of center. Seewald was just too intelligent, cogent, and open-minded to be matched against Van Camp, so it’s surprising he even lasted this long.

While Van Camp made his exit a backward-looking, self-centered nostalgic retirement, Seewald by contrast looked at the present and future of our country. He also acknowledged that his exit is making way for change. Since Van Camp and Seewald never cost Less anything but ad space, columns on the virtues of panty hose, laser surgery and sales at Dillard’s will get Kanelis’ immediate attention.

Doubtless we will see no letters shedding tears over Seewald’s departure. As the AGN praises diversity through its elimination, expect a wider variety of opinions from conservative patriots insisting we maintain and uplift our Freedom Form and Stay Free to the max.

Rip chord: D*ve H*nry’s
argument against evolution by thinking it absurd that Tyrannosaurus Rex turned into a bird was just about the most bird-brained thing he’s said in a while. Of course, considering D*ve H*nry’s existence makes a very poor argument for Intelligent Design.

A number of us here at PTS appear to have readied responses to H*nry’s idiocy (more on the entire controversy later) but in the most shocking development of all the AGN actually published a letter in rebuttal.


Now, it is extremely rare when the AGN publishes a
letter daring to show that H*nry is wrong (read “utterly daft”). What Dr. Hurd evidently does not know, writing from Dana Point, California, is that scientific facts are quite irrelevant in the Amarillo Globe-News.

According to the Kanelis Fairness Doctrine, intelligent people must present reasoned, fact-based arguments. Conservatives may respond with anything from groundless ideological talking points to ad hominem attacks. Scientists and intellectuals living in Amarillo long ago discovered that offering facts is like walking into a Skinner Box. Instead of a cogent rebuttal they receive a rude shock from the local troglodytes. And Kanelis wonders why, with his completely impartial Fairness Doctrine, local Ph.D.’s decline his invitation to weigh in on various issues.


Never fear. Kanelis will make sure the creationists get their say. There will be a severe Bible thumping and Dr. Hurd will learn his lesson. As for D*ve H*nry, though his evolution from sportswriter to top imbecilic editor defies commonsense, he remains the second most successful dinosaur of all at the AGN.

Monday, January 07, 2008

he wants me / but only part of the time / he wants me / if he can keep me in line

Amarillo Globe-Republican Ghost sez:

The only good Democrat is a Democrat who keeps his trap shut about being a Democrat.

spacedark

Friday, January 04, 2008

the secret history of van camp’s retirement: part one in a series




(Amarillo) In a scandal that has gotten him dubbed a “political Martha Stewart,” Virgil Van Camp was able, as long as two weeks ago, to acquire insider knowledge of the 2008 presidential race, the Panhandle Truth Squad has learned. Late in December of 2007, Van Camp shirked his Christian obligation to celebrate Christmas and traveled to Iowa to unearth secrets about the upcoming caucus. Due to his preternaturally youthful appearance and unparalleled skill as a wordsmith, Van Camp was able to pose as “Virgil Van Vamp,” an up-and-coming gay collegian attending the famed Writer’s Workshop in Iowa City. In this guise, Mr.Van Camp gained the confidence of all thirty Iowans who drove the turnout to record-shattering levels at the 2008 caucuses.

Although Van Camp’s research skills were as formidable as you would expect from the man who once elbowed Tom Wolfe and whispered “Hey, get this—the “Me Decade”! Good, eh?,” into the white-suited journalist’s ear, the tantalizing nuggets he uncovered were never to be written about in the beloved and indelibly etched Opinion pages of the legendary Amarillo Globe-Republican.

For the unfortunate Mr. Van Camp was to uncover a secret in Iowa that would suck away his very will to live. By the time he got to Cedar Rapids, Van Camp realized that Hillary Clinton would not be winning the Iowa caucuses and in the increasingly desperate Democratic party of the two-thousand-oughties, her failure to win would severely jeopardize her chances of Building a Bridge to the 1990s in the general election. And what reason would Van Camp have to exist, what indeed would be the raison d'être of the entire squalling Opinion pages of the Globe-Republican without the Clintons as a foil? If “Billary” (another original Van Camp coinage) were to finally ride off into his/her last sunset, the entire operation—right down to the conspiracy-theorizing Vince Foster letter-writing junkies—might as well close up shop.

Van Camp was found sobbing in a cornfield. The Midwesterner who found him there was drunk on that strange combination of Power and Apathy that is unique to Iowa in January of years divisible by four. “Look,” that grandiose and indifferent, corn-fed and oft-flown over Heartlander yelped, “I done made a Texan cry.”

The middle-American “crouched” on his “haunches”. He looked Virgil in the eyes. “I am a no-nonsense straight-shooter,” he announced, quoting from materials in his multi-media promotional package. “I am the very Salt of the very Earth! I am an upright and honest straight arrow and I will tell you how to vote! Come with me to the café.” He pronounced the final word with the accent on the first syllable and the shortest of a’s.

Van Camp looked at his Big Chief tablet in which he took all of his notes and wrote all of his columns. The first page contained his notes from his interview with the Ames accountant, Beancounter Lewis. “You remember that bit from 2004 about how ‘all Democrats in later, bigger states should vote for John Kerry in their primaries to show ‘em that we’re unified behind beating Bush’?” Beancounter had cackled. “Ha, ha! That was mine! Mine, mine, mine!”

Van Camp tore the page from the tablet, and began constructing his resignation letter to Kanelis.

spacedark

Part two in the series will tell the untold story of Kanelis’ and Dudley’s attempt to incite Van Camp to stay by promising to shoot Seewald.

Wednesday, January 02, 2008

Bush Sees New Threat

Dippy gives a press conference regarding the latest threat to 'Murika.

Brain-Eating Zombies . . .



Happy New Year!

-Prodigal Son

Tuesday, January 01, 2008

The Week After The War On Christmas


Twas the week after the War On Christmas
And all through the house,
Not a secular decoration could be found
Not even Mickey Mouse © ® TM.

The Tree of Wisdom
Dismantled and wrapped,
Had been returned to the attic
For a year long nap.

The Nativity scenes
Were boxed and put away,
But for filthy, godless liberals like us
They're just for show anyway.

But fear not, enemy of Christmas,
The battle hasn't gone astray,
For the week after the War on Christmas
Happens to be New Year's Day.

The war rages on
With frivolity and drink,
And conservatives don't partake of that
(Or so they would have us all think).

Yes, it's 2008
And if it's anything like 2007,
Iraq will still suck,
The fundies won't rapture to heaven.

Despite the unpleasant surprises
The new year may bring,
You can take comfort
In knowing one simple thing:

Time will pass quickly,
It goes faster every year,
And before you know it
The next War on Christmas will be here!