The (Lowell, MA) Sun is a venerable daily broadsheet serving the city of Lowell, northwest of Boston; its presses started running in 1878. Jack Kerouac once wrote for the paper as a sportswriter. But today, the most entertaining commentary published in its pages is in a regular feature called “Back Talk.”

Back Talk is created from messages recorded on an anonymous call-in line or submitted anonymously through the Internet. Anecdotally, the contributors are generally cranky senior citizens from Lowell and nearby towns who have had it UP TO HERE with the shenanigans they see going on around the city.

ROTI has been monitoring “Back Talk” for some time now, collecting the entries that best encapsulate the amusing material found therein. Enjoy this treasury of complaints about welfare recipients, the Red Sox, President Obama, local elected officials, inconsiderate neighbors, and other topics that enrage elderly citizens of Lowell.

NOT A DUMPSTER: I have a mattress and a TV in front of my house on Canada Street. Someone else decided to put out a bunch of shelves, too. How dare you. I’ll get your plate next time.

FOWL MOOD: Why do these large chain markets that do rotisserie chickens make them look sick? They’re always grayish.

RETIRING PITCHER: Tim Wakefield was so popular with the Sox, they named a city after him: Timbuktu.

PRIVACY POINT: Remind people to cover their bathroom windows because there are several families on Gilmore Street witnessing your use of your bathroom. We’d like it to stop.

SEEING IT ALL: The presidential candidates want to show they look like the rest of us. They showed us the blue jeans, now show us the tattoo and flip-flops.

NOT CUTTING IT: I was just wondering — could the Gillette Co. send a bunch of razor blades down to the Red Sox in Fort Myers?

Ugh, shave that DISGRACE on your face!

LOW-BALLING VARITEK: The Red Sox can do a little more with Jason Varitek; couldn’t they have offered him something else? It’s insulting, especially to be a person like him.

PALIN BY COMPARISION: Last time gas prices got this high, Sarah Palin said we should drill. Yet, this past week, Obama says we should check the air pressure in our tires. Something tells me Palin is looking smarter on this one.

CONFUSION IN CHIEF: Every day there is more bad news with this president. He’s either enforcing contraception, apologizing, not allowing the pipeline to go through, allowing abortions. I wake up and wonder what he will do today. Let’s elect Romney and get this over with.

WELFARE ISN’T FAIR: I am so tired of paying high taxes on everything. People on welfare are the ones that make out good, they don’t have to worry about anything.

CRIME WITHOUT TIME: Why is there always a double standard for women? If I was a woman, I’d steal all sorts of things. You’ll never go to prison.

SHARP DEPARTURE: What happened to the youth today? Back in the day if there was an argument, you’d settle it using your fists. Now every­one uses a knife!

TV DRAMA: Why is Comcast taking off SoapNet and replacing it with another Disney channel? Can’t you leave us something to watch at night?

GUTTER POLITICS: It’s a sad day in Chelmsford politics when people who put out a sign to support their candi­date get their house toilet­papered. It has now stooped to a new low.

EMPTY WHITE HOUSE: I am very sad to say that I no longer have a president. I cannot believe where he sticks his nose.

Image by The Looking Spoon

TRIAL AND ERROR: I hope we find out who the female juror was on the Mattapan trial; what a moron.

SPRING CLEANUP: I hope the people of Groton come together to pick up the dis­gusting trash on Route 119. It’s starting to get out of con­trol. — Dunstable

BROAD BRUSH: What is the media’s goal with this Zimmerman case — to prove he is a racist? Big deal. It doesn’t mean every other white person is.

CRUISER OR A CAB?: It’s 7 a.m. on a Sunday. A police cruiser pulls up in front of housing on Market Street and picks up a woman, her child and a baby carriage. Since when are we a taxicab? Does the city have to pay for that, too?

INAPPROPRIATE: The Hunger Games is completely inappropriate for young children. The idea of children hunting and killing other children for entertainment is frightening.

YOUNG SLACKERS: Someone should tell these young boys to pull their pants up and be polite, hold the door for other folks behind you.

WRONG APPROACH: Shame on the Buddhists; it was wrong the way they’ve been approaching this whole ordeal.

HUNGER PANGS: I saw The Hunger Games over the weekend. I have never seen such a horrible, terrible movie in my life.

WALKING TARGET: Any parent who lets their kids go out with a hoodie is asking for an “X” to be placed on their kid.

Marked for death, AM I RIGHT?!

SLIME DECISION: Is Market Basket going to stop using the pink slime in their hamburg? Many people would like an answer.

TV NONSENSE: Are you paying attention to all of these TV commercials? None of them make sense. What is the logic?

IMAGE CONSCIOUS: The wrong image of the mayor was shown on March 27. No elected official should be seen in the paper smoking a cigar in front of shelves stocked with alcohol.

FRAUD SQUAD: EBT cards are out of control. I see people with them and they drive BMWs and Mercedes! They need to get stricter!

SHIFTING GROUND: The governor really needs to think and do this stand your ground law. People can come into your house with guns to kill and rape you, but yet you can’t defend yourself?

HAD ENOUGH: I get kids on the doorstep all the time for their “causes.” These teachers are so greedy they should be ashamed!

Special thanks goes out to the Sun staffers who have to weed through the Back Talk submissions on a daily basis. I can’t even imagine what DOESN’T make the cut — and I have it from a good source that Lowell teens love to call this hotline and leave prank call messages. The Sun paper’s hard work and dedication rewards us daily with the delight that is Back Talk.

For more, much more, check out the Back Talk home page.

GIF Fever is growing! Folks, I have been out there on the frontiers of the cyber realms and I can tell you that this trend is continuing to heat up. A near-archaic image file format has been transformed into the most inspiring thing on the Internet.

You know what that calls for. This Month in GIF!

As always, I am joined by the esteemed C. Dave, ROTI’s guru of GIFdom.

And away we go!

Who Shot Ya?

No Drooling, Hotdog Lovers! (via)

Lance Reddick has seen some crazy shit in his day.

An Introduction to Heartbreak

Toot That Thang!

Edie feels a douchechill…

V.I.C.I. 2.0

Park Security by Miyamoto

Doghump IV: The Tiger’s Paw

Hops like Shaq? YES!

Private Pyle’s Donut of Humiliation

Watership Down 2: Sin City

Psycho Spreader

The REAL Wild West: Palm Springs, 1974

This Revolving Door Has Had Enough of Your Bullshit!

No subtext…simply a nutshot.

It Ain’t No Fun (If Disciples Can’t Have None)

Swag 101: Watch and Learn

I hereby authorize the order to bring This Month in GIF to a close (for now).

If you find any great GIFs in the next month and feel compelled to share, hit us up in the comments.

Sources include Mocksession.com, The Chive, From Me To You, Weird Animated GIF, Suicide Blonde, and SenorGIF.

If you’re the kind of person who enjoys the thrashing of crazed conspiracists (for example, Charlie Sheen, 9/11 conspiritard) then you’ve surely heard of Dr. Orly Taitz, queen bee of the birther movement:

There’s a term some use for people like Taitz, and she doesn’t like it. It’s “birther”—or, if you want to be really mean, “birfer.” (The controversy was born on the Internet, so naturally the Internet gave it a goofy name.) While rumors about Obama’s background and citizenship simmered throughout the 2008 presidential campaign, after Election Day, those rumors coalesced into a near-religion for a group of true believers. To Taitz and the unknown number of people who agree with her, Barack Obama isn’t president and probably wasn’t even born in the U.S. Taitz, a Laguna Niguel dentist with a law degree from an online academy, has been awarded a few creative variations on the birther term: “The Queen Bee of Birferstan” is probably the best.

“That’s demeaning,” Taitz says. “I don’t call anybody names.”

This isn’t quite true. She calls Obama a “usurper” and an “arrogant jerk from Africa and Indonesia.” She called a judge an “idiot.” And she calls anyone who stands in her way an “Obama thug.” Taitz has built a sizable following on her blog; in the comments for each post at orlytaitzesq.com, you can read a few more names for people whom Taitz doesn’t like: “traitors,” “Muslims,” “terrorists.”

As anyone who’s followed the birther controversy knows, the major bone of contention is the supposed lack of an American birth certificate for President Obama.

For example, something like this:

In the world of O Rly? Taitz, this is nothing but a “short form” fraud, despite the fact that the Republican governor of Hawaii, among many others, has declared it 100% legitimate.

If only we had some other way to authenticate the birth of Baby Bams in Hawaii about 50 years ago…like, I don’t know, birth announcements in Hawaiian newspapers, preserved on microfilm in libraries for decades?

I believe Jon Stewart said it best when he described the nefarious scheme perpetrated by socialist agents against the USA…it’s the old Kenyan birth-announcement scam.

The oldest trick in the book!

Here is how it goes. You want to destroy America from the inside, but you can‘t, because you‘re a foreigner. So, first, you got to find yourself a good old American willing to reproduce with you.

Then, you have that child on foreign soil, while simultaneously placing the birth announcement for that child in one of our fringe states‘ local newspapers…… your Hawaiis, your Alaskas, your Pennsylvanias.  You heard me.

And then…Hold on.

You wait… until this baby is a middle-aged man.

Now the trap is set. You just sit back and let that child go out and win the election for president of the United States.

Taitz isn’t satisfied by any of this evidence, nor deterred by ridicule, and she’s been on a national crusade to overturn Obama’s election via frivolous lawsuit after frivolous lawsuit.

Her favorite tactic is to find military personnel assigned to serve overseas, and to persuade them to contest their assignments on the grounds that Obama is not the legitimate POTUS.

This vessel of birther madness recently ran aground in the court of Judge Clay D. Land of the US District Court for the Middle District of Georgia.

Judge Land promptly got out the torches and burned the S.S. TAITZ to the waterline.

Now, Judge Land is no liberal squish. He’s a judicially conservative George W. Bush appointee, operating deep in red-state land. He didn’t eviscerate Taitz’ argument because he loves Obama; he ripped it apart because it’s complete and utter crap.

What makes Judge Land’s opinion so entertaining is that he did not merely reject Orly Taitz’ line of reasoning.

He tore it to shreds, openly mocked Taitz, and then warned her that if she ever brought that weak sauce in his presence again, there would be hell to pay!

Counsel has filed numerous lawsuits in various parts of the country seeking a judicial determination as to the President’s legitimacy to hold the office of President. The present action is the second such action filed in this Court in which counsel pursues her “birther claim.” Her modus operandi is to use military officers as parties and have them allege that they should not be required to follow deployment orders because President Obama is not constitutionally qualified to be President. Although counsel has managed to fuel this “birther movement” with her litigation and press conferences, she does not appear to have prevailed on a single claim…

To press her “birther agenda,” Plaintiff’s counsel has filed the present action on behalf of Captain Rhodes. Captain Rhodes entered the Army in March of 2005 and presently serves as a medical doctor. The American taxpayers paid for her third and fourth years of medical school and financially supported her during her subsequent medical internship and residency program. In exchange for this valuable free medical education, Captain Rhodes agreed to serve two years in active service in the Army.  She began that term of active service in July of 2008 and had no concerns about fulfilling her military obligation until she received orders notifying her that she would be deployed to Iraq in September of 2009.

Captain Rhodes does not seek a discharge from the Army; nor does she wish to be relieved entirely from her two year active  service obligation. She has not previously made any official complaints regarding any orders or assignments that she has received, including orders that have been issued since President Obama became Commander in Chief. But she does not want to go to Iraq (or to any other destination where she may be in harm’s way, for that matter). Her “conscientious objections” to serving under the current Commander in Chief apparently can be accommodated as long as she is permitted to remain on American soil.

[...]

Using the Mindes factors as an analytical framework, the Court finds that it is not authorized to interfere with Plaintiff’s deployment orders. First, Plaintiff’s challenge to her deployment order is frivolous. She has presented no credible evidence and has made no reliable factual allegations to support her unsubstantiated, conclusory allegations and conjecture that President Obama is ineligible to serve as President of the United States. Instead, she uses her Complaint as a platform for spouting political rhetoric, such as her claims that the President is “an illegal usurper, an unlawful pretender, [and] an unqualified imposter.”

She continues with bare, conclusory allegations that the President is “an alien, possibly even an unnaturalized or even an unadmitted illegal alien…without so much as lawful residency in the United States.” Then, implying that the President is either a wandering nomad or a prolific identity fraud crook, she alleges that the President “might have used as many as 149 addresses and 39 social security numbers prior to assuming the office of President.”

Acknowledging the existence of a document that shows the President was born in Hawaii, Plaintiff alleges that the document “cannot be verified as genuine, and should be presumed fraudulent.” In further support of her claim, Plaintiff relies upon “the general opinion in the rest of the world” that “Barack Hussein Obama has, in essence, slipped through the guardrails to become President.”

Moreover, as though the “general opinion in the rest of the world” were not enough, Plaintiff alleges in her Complaint that according to an “AOL poll 85% of Americans believe that Obama was not vetted, needs to be vetted and his vital records need to be produced.”

Finally, in a remarkable shifting of the traditional legal burden of proof, Plaintiff unashamedly alleges that Defendant has the burden to prove his “natural born” status.  Thus, Plaintiff’s counsel, who champions herself as a defender of liberty and freedom, seeks to use the power of the judiciary to compel a citizen, albeit the President of the United States, to “prove his innocence” to “charges” that are based upon conjecture and speculation.

Any middle school civics student would readily recognize the irony of abandoning fundamental principles upon which our Country was founded in order to purportedly “protect and preserve” those very principles…

Unlike in Alice in Wonderland, simply saying something is so does not make it so.

[...]

After conducting a hearing on Plaintiff’s motion, the Court finds that Plaintiff’s claims are frivolous. Accordingly, her application for a temporary restraining order  is denied, and her Complaint is dismissed in its entirety.

Furthermore, Plaintiff’s counsel is hereby notified that the filing of any future actions in this Court, which are similarly frivolous, shall subject counsel to sanctions.

The funniest twist came when Capt. Connie Rhodes wrote a letter to Judge Land saying, essentially “I don’t even know this crazy Taitz, she doesn’t work for me!”

I do not wish for Ms. Taitz to file any future motions or represent me in any way in this court. It is my plan to file a complaint with the California State Bar due to her reprehensible and unprofessional actions.

Now, once again, it’s always important to keep in mind that these insane conspira-trolls do not represent serious members of the American political left or right.

They’re simply loons to whom much attention shouldn’t be paid, unless it’s to mercilessly mock their stupidity.

I think this came across most clearly in this discussion on the conservative blog RedState, which described Judge Land as an “American hero” for so brutally trashing Taitz’ BS.

Some idiot birther piped up in the comment section, and the website’s regulars tore him to shreds…

red_dawn posted:

We really don’t know, do we.

Why did he spend so much money fighting it?

Why doesn’t he just show the cert (real one, not the fake) once and for all?

And what about his college transcripts?

He’s sneaky and is hiding something.

Kenya? Indonesian? Pakistani? Muslim?

I don’t know. But he does.

And he’s not telling. Why not?

Is he really American?

naraht posted:

Complete conspiracy theory.

Once it got to the point where the Birthers were indicating that Hawaii *Republican Governor Laura Lingle had to be in on the conspiracy because she wouldn’t allow the “real” birth certificate to be shown, I completely walked away.

Besides, the best comment I’ve heard about the Birthers is “Success doesn’t get you President McCain, it gets you President Biden or even President Pelosi”.

I’m not really sure who the Birthers want to work down to in the order of Succession: It goes Biden, Pelosi, Byrd, Hillary, Geithner, Gates, Holder…

red_dawn posted:

Biden is not legitimate either because he got elected with the fraudulent Obama. All his appointees are also fraudulent so the election would revert to the person with the next most votes, McCain.

If he has any class about it, he’ll defer it to Palin and we can start cleaning out the stalls.

Neil Stevens posted:

Try reading the Constitution.

Now you’re just looking ignorant.

red_dawn posted:

Well, I guess I don’t know what would happen exactly. But wouldn’t the SCOTUS be able to declare Biden and all Obama’s appointees as frauds?

Maybe we should wait till after we retake the House so Pelosi doesn’t get elevated even farther above where she would be in any correctly run society.

Neil Stevens posted:

No, really, read the Constitution.

Come back when you’ve done so, and be prepared to tell us where it says the election of the Vice President is connected to the election of the President. Also, read the Constitutional provisions for succession, and related portions of the US Code.

You’re just embarrassing yourself here.

nickinvirginia posted:

This dude just keeps coming back for more abuse. Maybe President Obama was born on Mars and his real parents are intergalactic space people, who sent their son here on a secret mission to destroy America, by fluoride-ing the water. Quick, build your tinfoil ship, so that you and your tin-foiled hat buddies can sail away to a safe place where “they” can’t get you!

mbecker908 posted:

nickinvirginia you’ll just have to trust me…

We haven’t EVEN BEGUN to heap abuse on this pinhead.

Intelligent Americans can disagree on the wisdom of Obama’s policies, strategies and ideology. That’s politics, bitch!

Hopefully, though, those of us who still have a modicum of brain cells left can all agree that the dude is actually a natural-born citizen and the rightful President.

If not, I’m sure Orly Taitz has a lawsuit ready to go on your behalf…just steer clear of Judge Land if you don’t want to get a jurisprudential castration.

After Chris, Jonathan Horn, and I learned about the president’s $700-billion-bailout proposal and drafted the remarks announcing it to a stunned nation, Ed said the president wanted to see us in the Oval Office. The president looked relaxed and was sitting behind the Resolute desk. He felt he’d made the major decision that everyone had been asking for. That always seemed to relax him. He liked being decisive. Excuse me, boldly decisive. The president seemed to be thinking of his memoirs. “This might go in as a big decision,” he mused.

“Definitely, Mr. President,” someone else observed. “This is a large decision.”

The president asked his secretary, Karen, to bring him the Rose Garden remarks he’d just delivered that day, September 19, announcing his action plan. He got slightly exasperated when she was delayed in printing them out. When he finally got them, he put his half-glasses on and looked at them. “See, this was fine today,” he said. “But we got to make this understandable for the average cat.” He proposed an outline for another speech that talked about the situation our economy was in, how we’d gotten here, and how the administration’s plan was a solution.

“This is the last bullet we have,” the president said at one point, referring to the bailout. “If this doesn’t work…” He shook his head, and his voice trailed off. That wasn’t good enough for me. If this doesn’t work, then what? We’re done? America is over? I looked around at everyone else. What does that mean?

Just when you thought the flood of GWB Administration tell-alls had slowed to a trickle, one last gem comes rolling down the drainpipe.

It’s the work of Matt Latimer, who came to the White House as an ambitious young movement conservative, only to suffer severe disillusionment as he watched the Bush posse fumble helplessly with an economy sliding into ruin.

He’s written a piece called “Me Talk Presidential Some Day” for GQ, and it is bonafide.

The first inkling that Latimer is about to lower the boom on GWB comes when he describes how his dream job turned into a surreal sideshow:

In 2007 I finally made it to the Bush White House as a presidential speechwriter. But it was not at all what I envisioned. It was less like Aaron Sorkin’s The West Wing and more like The Office.

After watching Karl Rove’s bizarre farewell to White House staffers and hearing the president dismiss the conservative movement I believed in (“I know it sounds arrogant to say,” he told me, “but I redefined the Republican Party”), I thought I could muddle through till the end.

Washington might not have been the city I had dreamed of, but I figured things couldn’t get much worse.

The job mostly consisted of penning “legacy speeches,” touting the accomplishments of the administration in its final days. They’d plan to boast about how “the fundamentals of the economy are strong,” but after a while it became patently obvious that it wasn’t the case.

Pretty soon, Latimer found himself in a full-on crisis situation, as the White House tried to lead the country out of a disaster that it had helped precipitate with its happy-go-lucky economic message.

It didn’t help things that the GOP presidential nominee, John McCain, was trying to thread the needle between sticking close to the President to fire up the base and distancing himself from the President to attract moderate voters.

And then there was his brilliant idea to “suspend the campaign” when the economic poo really hit the fan. That did NOT go over well at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave:

Ed and the president decided to give a prime-time address to the nation, and Vice President Cheney was sent to the Hill to argue for our bill (a bill he may or may not have believed in) and was apparently hammered by House Republicans. There were reports that only four Republicans out of nearly 200 supported the plan. From what I was starting to glean about the whole scatterbrained operation, four seemed like too many. Hours before the president was to speak to the country, Senator John McCain’s presidential campaign informed Josh Bolten that McCain was going to phone the president and urge him to call off the address and instead hold an emergency economic summit in Washington. If the president did speak that night, the McCain campaign didn’t want him to outline any specific proposal.

Of course, this threw the proverbial monkey wrench into our plans—and at the eleventh hour. I overheard the president call McCain’s plan “a stunt.” Dana Perino said the negotiations were nearly over, and suddenly he was going to swoop in and muck things up?

The president’s political adviser, Barry Jackson, was blunt, calling McCain a “stupid prick.”

[...]

When the president came into the Family Theater to rehearse the speech in front of a teleprompter, he didn’t like the idea of just talking about principles. It sounded like the administration was backing away from its own plan (which it was).

“We can’t even defend our own proposal?” the president asked. “Why did we propose it, then?” This was not bold decision making. There were about a dozen people gathered in the theater to watch him rehearse, and all of us remained silent as the president looked at us for an answer.

The president walked over to sip some water from one of the bottles on the table near his lectern. “This speech is weak,” he said. He looked at me and Chris. “Frankly, I’m surprised, to be honest with you.”

There was more silence.

“Too late to cancel the speech?” the president asked into the air. He was joking…I think. Finally, Ed (who hadn’t exactly rushed to jump into the line of fire) explained that we had to make this change to the address because the proposal the president liked might not end up being the one he had to agree to.

“Then why the hell did I support it if I didn’t believe it would pass?” he snapped. There was yet another uncomfortable silence.

The most brutal part of the tale comes when Bush realizes that his conception of the bailout plan is totally wrong, and it’s not the sweet deal for America that he’d tried to believe it was.

Try explaining THAT to the average cat.

Finally, the president directed us to try to put elements of his proposal back into the text. He wanted to explain what he was seeking and to defend it. He especially wanted Americans to know that his plan would likely see a return on the taxpayers’ investment. Under his proposal, he said, the federal government would buy troubled mortgages on the cheap and then resell them at a higher price when the market for them stabilized.

“We’re buying low and selling high,” he kept saying.

The problem was that his proposal didn’t work like that. One of the president’s staff members anxiously pulled a few of us aside. “The president is misunderstanding this proposal,” he warned. “He has the wrong idea in his head.” As it turned out, the plan wasn’t to buy low and sell high. In some cases, in fact, Secretary Paulson wanted to pay more than the securities were likely worth in order to put more money into the markets as soon as possible. This was not how the president’s proposal had been advertised to the public or the Congress. It wasn’t that the president didn’t understand what his administration wanted to do. It was that the treasury secretary didn’t seem to know, changed his mind, had misled the president, or some combination of the three.

[...]

After finally getting the speech draft turned around and sent back to the teleprompter technicians, we trudged back to the Family Theater, where the president rehearsed. In the theater, the president was clearly confused about how the government would buy these securities. He repeated his belief that the government was going to “buy low and sell high,” and he still didn’t understand why we hadn’t put that into the speech like he’d asked us to. When it was explained to him that his concept of the bailout proposal wasn’t correct, the president was momentarily speechless. He threw up his hands in frustration.

“Why did I sign on to this proposal if I don’t understand what it does?” he asked.

The president was clearly frustrated with what was going on, but there was little he could do at this late hour. He went up to take a nap, saying he was beat. He looked it. I’d never seen him more exhausted. His hair was out of place and shaggy. His face looked drained and pale. Even more distressing, he was wearing Crocs. As I looked at him I thought to myself, how many more crises can one guy take?

Probably the juiciest delights from Wareham’s account pertain to GWB’s takes on the 2008 presidential candidates. They were universally negative.

After all, GWB felt that he had personally transformed conservatism, and how could any of those chumps fill his shoes?

John McCain, the temperamental media darling, had spent most of the past eight years running against the Republican Party and the president—Republicans on Capitol Hill and at the White House hated him. Choosing John McCain as our standard-bearer would be the height of self-delusion. It would be like putting Camilla Parker Bowles in charge of the Princess Diana Foundation.

As it turned out, I was the one who was deluded. The people I worked with in the White House were the most loyal of the Bush loyalists. Dana Perino was so sensitive to criticism of Bush that she once said she couldn’t watch the Democratic convention because it would be “too mean” to the president. Yet I watched them embrace McCain enthusiastically—backing a guy who’d worked so hard to undermine them. It was a cynical bargain.

The president, like me, didn’t seem to be in love with any of the available options. He always believed Hillary Clinton would be the Democratic nominee. “Wait till her fat keister is sitting at this desk,” he once said (except he didn’t say “keister”).

He didn’t think much of Barack Obama. After one of Obama’s blistering speeches against the administration, the president had a very human reaction: He was ticked off. He came in one day to rehearse a speech, fuming. “This is a dangerous world,” he said for no apparent reason, “and this cat isn’t remotely qualified to handle it. This guy has no clue, I promise you.”

He wound himself up even more. “You think I wasn’t qualified?” he said to no one in particular. “I was qualified.”

[...]

Bush seemed to feel considerable unease with the choice of McCain as well. I think he liked Romney best. (The rumor was that so did Karl Rove.) My guess was the president hadn’t so easily forgotten the endless slights he’d suffered, but there was little he could do. To him, McCain’s defeat would be a repudiation of the Bush administration, so McCain had to win. The president, who had quite a good political mind, was clearly not impressed with the McCain operation.

I was once in the Oval Office when the president was told a campaign event in Phoenix he was to attend with McCain suddenly had to be closed to the press. The president didn’t understand why when the whole purpose of holding the event had been to show Bush and McCain together so the press would stop asking why the two wouldn’t be seen together. If the event was closed to the press, the whole thing didn’t make sense.

“If he doesn’t want me to go, fine,” the president said. “I’ve got better things to do.”

Eventually, someone informed the president that the reason the event was closed was that McCain was having trouble getting a crowd. Bush was incredulous—and to the point. “He can’t get 500 people to show up for an event in his hometown?” he asked. No one said anything, and we went on to another topic. But the president couldn’t let the matter drop. “He couldn’t get 500 people? I could get that many people to turn out in Crawford.” He shook his head. “This is a five-spiral crash, boys.”

We tried to move on to something else. But the president wouldn’t let go. He was stuck on the Phoenix event. At one point, he looked off into space and said to no one in particular, “What is this—a cruel hoax?”

Chris and I were tickled by that comment. For weeks, we would look for ways to use it. “They are out of Diet Pepsis at the mess. What is this, a cruel hoax?” I went to dinner with a friend. “They don’t have cheeseburgers?” I said, looking at the menu. “What is this, a cruel hoax?”

Bush’s take on Palin was equally amusing. We’re so used to thinking of the former POTUS as a dunce, so it’s always great when a moment of pure clarity pokes through.

Even the normally levelheaded Raul Yanes, the president’s staff secretary, was overtaken by Palin mania. He’d been slightly annoyed with me for not jumping on the McCain bandwagon and for saying aloud that I thought McCain would lose. Now, of course, I had to be enthusiastic about the ticket. “You still think we’re going to lose?” he asked me laughingly.

“Yep,” I replied.

Raul looked incredulous. “Well, you obviously don’t believe in facts!”

I was about to be engulfed by a tidal wave of Palin euphoria when someone—someone I didn’t expect—planted my feet back on the ground. After Palin’s selection was announced, the same people who demanded I acknowledge the brilliance of McCain’s choice expected the president to join them in their high-fiving tizzy. It was clear, though, that the president, ever the skilled politician, had concerns about the choice of Palin, which he called “interesting.” That was the equivalent of calling a fireworks display “satisfactory.”

“I’m trying to remember if I’ve met her before. I’m sure I must have.” His eyes twinkled, then he asked, “What is she, the governor of Guam?”

Everyone in the room seemed to look at him in horror, their mouths agape. When Ed told him that conservatives were greeting the choice enthusiastically, he replied, “Look, I’m a team player, I’m on board.” He thought about it for a minute. “She’s interesting,” he said again. “You know, just wait a few days until the bloom is off the rose.”

Then he made a very smart assessment.

“This woman is being put into a position she is not even remotely prepared for,” he said. “She hasn’t spent one day on the national level. Neither has her family. Let’s wait and see how she looks five days out.”

Thank you, Matt Latimer, for giving us this glimpse of Dubya’s last days, and showing him at his best and his worst. History owes you a debt of gratitude.

To read the full article – including a tasty gem about how a top economic advisor was best known for deploying whoopie cushions around the West Wing – click here.

Carlos Erwin Esteves, a/k/a Charlie Sheen, is a well-known whack job and degenerate.

This is a guy who bombed out of Santa Monica High School, accidentally shot Kelly Preston in the arm, and one time became a born-again Christian before relapsing into a life of pill popping, porno and drug abuse.

And then there’s the whores! This dude paid for the services of legendary Spitzer hoe Ashley Alexandra Dupre, among hundreds of other skanks, shelling out thousands to Heidi Fleiss and her fellow pimps.

Ex-wife Denise Richards got a restraining order against him after she alleged that Sheen posted a picture of his erect penis on his online profile.

So naturally, he was chosen by Obama for a very special one-on-one interview to discuss the events of September 11th.

The only catch was, this interview only took place in the delusional mind of Chuck Sheen.

See, Charlie Sheen is a “truther” – one of those lefty loons who thinks the government was either behind 9/11, or knew it was coming and let it happen, in order to take away civil liberties and create a pretext for war.

Some of us might call that putting the cart before the horse…the bad stuff that happened after 9/11 shouldn’t be confused with the pretext for the terrorist attack, especially given the ample background evidence that suggests it was an al-Qaeda plot led by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Mohammed Atta…

Goddamn it, Sheen has has ENOUGH of the lies!! He’s gonna expose what REALLY happened on that fateful day…through lots of wild conjecture!

Anyway, let’s take a look at his pretend interview with Obama, which he posted to the website of his lunatic friend and fellow conspiracy theorist Alex Jones:

CS – Sir, in the very near future we will be experiencing our first 9/11 anniversary with you as Commander in Chief.

PBO – Yes. A very solemn day for our Nation. A day of reflection and yet a day of historical consciousness as well.

CS – Very much so sir, very much so indeed…. Now; In researching your position regarding the events of 9/11 and the subsequent investigation that followed, am I correct to understand that you fully support and endorse the findings of the commission report otherwise known as the ‘official story’?

PBO – Do I have any reason not to? Given that most of us are presumably in touch with similar evidence.

CS – I really wish that were the case, sir. Are you aware, Mr. President, of the recent stunning revelations that sixty percent of the 9/11 commissioners have publicly stated that the government agreed not to tell the truth about 9/11 and that the Pentagon was engaged in deliberate deception about their response to the attack?

PBO – I am aware of certain “in fighting” during the course of their very thorough and tireless investigative process.

CS – Mr. President, it’s hard to label this type of friction as “in fighting” or make the irresponsible leap to “thorough,” when the evidence I insist you examine regarding 6 of the 10 members are statements of fact.

(At this point one of Obama’s senior aides approaches the President and whispers into his ear. Obama glances quickly at his watch and nods as the aide resumes his post at the doorway, directly behind me.)

PBO – No disrespect Mr. Sheen, but I have to ask; what is it that you seem to be implying with the initial direction of this discussion?

CS – I am not implying anything Mr. President. I am here to present the facts and see what you plan to do with them.

PBO – Let me guess; your ‘facts,’ allegedly supporting these claims are in the folders you brought with you?

CS – Good guess Mr. President.

(I hand the first folder of documents to the President)

CS – Again sir, these are not my opinions or assumptions, this is all a matter of public record, reported through mainstream media, painstakingly fact checked and verified.

I think we all know what was REALLY in that folder…a lovingly assembled collection of erotic services ads cut out from the back of LA WEEKLY.

CS – Mr. President, we cannot move forward with a bottomless warren of unanswered questions surrounding that day and its aftermath.

PBO – I read the official report. Every word every page. Perhaps you should do the same.

CS – I have sir, and so have thousands of family members of the victims, and guess what; they have the same questions I do and probably a lot more. I didn’t lose a loved one on that horrific day Mr. President and neither did you. But since then I, along with millions of other Americans lost something we held true and dear for most of our lives in this great country of ours; we lost our hope.

PBO – And I’d like to believe that I am here to restore that hope. To restore confidence in your leaders, in the system that the voting public chose through a peaceful transfer of power.

(An odd moment of silence between us. Precious time ticking away).

[...]

CS – Does it bother you Mr. President that it only took FIVE HOURS for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld after the initial attack to recommend and endorse a full scale offensive against Iraq?

PBO – I am not aware of any such purported claim.

CS – I have the proof Mr. President, along with scores of documents and facts I’d like you to take a look at. Here.

(I hand him another file – much thicker than the first)

PBO – I see you came prepared Charlie.

CS – No other way to show up Mr. President. When in doubt over prepare I always say.

PBO – Now you sound like the First Lady.

CS – That’s quite a compliment sir.

OK, first of all, he said “bottomless warren.” Huh huh…bottomless warren.

Secondly, the fictional exchanges of small talk between Sheen and Obama are priceless. In this fantasy world he’s created for himself, Sheen has Obama saying that he TIVOs “Two and a Half Men” on Air Force One. Above, “Obama” approvingly compares Sheen to Michelle.

Put down the crack pipe, Sheen!

The best part might be when Sheen just totally goes nuts and starts blurting out one bullet point after another in support of his outlandish conspiracy theories.

But first, he builds up to it with this overwrought, dramatic passage:

CS – Interesting angle sir. Nevertheless, Vice President Cheney didn’t stop there. In early 2008, Pulitzer prize winning journalist Seymour Hersh and MSNBC, both reported that Cheney had proposed to the Pentagon an outrageous plan to have the U.S. Navy create fake Iranian patrol boats, to be manned by Navy Seals, who would then stage an attack on US destroyers in the Strait of Hormuz. This event was to be blamed on Iran and used as a pretext for war. Does any of this information worry you Mr. President? Should we just ignore it, until these realities can be dismissed years from now by our children, as ancient history as well?

PBO – Of course this information worries me, yet it’s not nearly as worrisome as you sitting here today suspiciously implying that 9/11 was somehow allowed to happen or even orchestrated from the inside.

CS – Mr. President I am not suspiciously implying anything. I am merely exposing the documents and asking the questions that nobody in power will even look at or acknowledge. And as I stated earlier, I voted for you, I believed in your message of hope and change. Mr. President I have come to you specifically hoping for a change. A change in the perception that our government has not yet made itself open and accountable to the people. These are your words Mr. President not mine. The lives of thousands were brutally cut short and those left behind to suffer their infinite pain are with me today Mr. President. They are with me in spirit and flesh, and the message we carry will not be silenced anymore by media fueled mantras insisting how they are supposed to feel. Deciding for them, for 8 long years, what can be thought, what can be said, what can be asked.

PBO – And I appreciate your passion, I appreciate your conviction. In spite of your concerns, in spite of what your data might or might not reveal, what you and the families must understand and accept is that we are doing everything we can to protect you.

CS – Mr. President , I realize were very short on time, so please allow me to run down a list of bullet points that might illuminate some reasons why we don’t embrace the warm hug of Federal protection.

PBO – We’ve come this far. Fire away.

CS – Please keep in mind Mr. President everything I’m about to say is documented as fact and part of the public record. The information you are holding in your hands chronicles and verifies each and every point.

I love that even in the fantasy world concocted by Sheen, Obama is still obviously exasperated by his crazy sauce. Sheen thinks he’s 9/11 Messiah, but even in his wildest dreams, Obama thinks he’s a fricking loon.

Sheen rattles off twenty reasons that he obviously considers big-time eyebrow-raisers.

Unfortunately, they’re an amalgam of conjecture and repetition…

#13 and #18 are the same: “cell phones didn’t work on planes until technology was developed in 2004!” Actually, that’s bogus. Cell phones don’t work WELL on planes, but they have always worked, especially when the plane is flying low.

#7 and #12 address that old chestnut, WTC Building 7, which truthers claim was destroyed in a controlled demolition as part of an evil plot. Sheen claims as evidence the ASTOUNDING assertion that news reporters announced the building’s collapse shortly before it happened!

There’s NO way they could have jumped the gun on an imminent collapse, as fire ravaged the entire building, after the much larger towers fell. It HAS to be a big conspiracy that involves everyone from Dick Cheney to random reporters for the BBC. They’re all in on it!!

#17: “Top Pentagon officials cancelled their scheduled flights for September 11th on September 10th. San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown, following a security warning, cancelled a flight into New York that was scheduled for the morning of 9/11.”

I’m sure this was the only day that government officials canceled flights! PROOF POSITIVE! And that Willie Brown tidbit is MIGHTY suspicious. I’m sure when the government decided to let thousands of our citizens perish, they said to themselves, “Let them all die so our wicked oil war can proceed. But Willie Brown must be spared! Who will lead our nation in sartorial eloquence if he is sacrificed???”

I won’t bore you with debunking the others…some of which don’t even require debunking because they prove nothing.

This is the best you got, Chuck Sheen?!

Now for the thrilling conclusion, where a cowardly Obama runs from the room rather than face the klieg light of TRUTH and JUSTICE that Sheen wields.

Eat your heart out, Glenn Beck!

PBO – Well Charlie I can’t say this hasn’t been interesting. As I said earlier you’ve showed up today focused and organized.  Regardless how I feel about the material you’ve presented, I must commend your dedication and zeal. However, our time here is up.

(the President rises from his chair , I do the same).

CS – Mr. President! One more second!

(The President starts towards the door – I follow him quickly step for step).

CS – Mr. President, I implore you based on the evidence you now possess, to use your Executive Power. Prove to us all Sir, that you do, in fact, care. Create a truly comprehensive and open Congressional investigation of 9/11 and its aftermath. The families deserve the truth, the American people and the rest of the free world deserve the truth. Mr. President -

(He pauses. We shake hands).

CS – Make sure you’re on the right side of history.

(The President breaks the handshake).

PBO – I am on the right side of history. Thank you Charlie, my staff and I will be in touch.

(I watch as he strides gracefully out of the room, the truth I provided him held firmly by his side; in the hand of providence.)

Talk about yer flair for the dramatic!

Charlie Sheen says that people try to discredit his truth-spreading by bringing up his misdeeds from 20 years ago, and attacking the messenger, not the message.

The sad fact is that even today, in September 2009, Charlie Sheen is acting like a GD loon and this “interview” proves it.

I wholeheartedly agree with MIT engineering expert Thomas Eagar, who said “These people (in the 9/11 truth movement) use the ‘reverse scientific method.’ They determine what happened, throw out all the data that doesn’t fit their conclusion, and then hail their findings as the only possible conclusion.”

Yo 9/11 Truthers: I know that horrifying events or circumstances that make us feel powerless and afraid are the nectar that lures the honeybees of conspiracy theory. But you guys need to wrap your mind around the fact that the al-Qaeda dudes were responsible for this.

Whatever BS went down afterwards doesn’t constitute proof that it was all a secret plot or scheme. There’s no overwhelming scientific or documentary case to support your whacko claims, so give it a rest already. Maybe you can waste your time investigating Obama’s birth certificate for the next few years?

Then again, a highly scientific and no doubt peer reviewed online poll says 82 percent of Americans agree with Sheen.

Holy crap, case closed!

Next month, the guy known as the “Guide of the First of September Great Revolution of the Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya” will be making his first-ever appearance on U.S. soil.

The world’s third-longest-serving national leader has come a long way since the 1980s, when the Americans bombed the bejesus out of his abode.

That’s right, folks, Muammar al-Gaddafi is about to make his first diplomatic trip to American shores.

ROTI previously reported on Gaddafi’s penchant to bring a gigantic tent with him where ever he goes.

However, I recently learned that Gaddafi’s traveling circus has a security service that is exceptional and unique:

The conventional treatment for a visiting head of state is five-star accommodation and a fleet of limousines.

This one brought his own tent and camel.

Security might consist of some hefty male bodygaurds and strategically-placed marksmen.

This VIP brought 30 blue-uniformed females, all supposedly virgins.

Don’t be deceived: The Libyan leader’s female guards are trained to kill.

Few of the orthodoxies of a state visit remained unchallenged as Colonel Muammar Gaddafi breezed into Paris in his Bedouin robes yesterday.

His 400-strong entourage arrived on no fewer than five planes before heading to the Hotel de Marigny, where the Libyan leader will pitch his heated tent in the grounds.

He was said to be bringing a Saharan camel with him in order to “greet visitors in the true desert tradition”.

How hilarious is this picture of Sarkozy? Have you noticed that he is always around when world leaders are up to sketchy business? First he joined Obama in peeping some Brazilian booty, now he’s hanging out with Gaddafi and his killer virgin posse.

Next thing you know, Gaddafi takes his killer virgins tour to the USA.

Coincidence?? I think not.

“Did you see those killer virgins, bro?!
I was so freaking stoked when they came to visit!”

Any conversation about shady world leaders has to include Italy’s lecherous Silvio Berlusconi, and here is a delightful Daily Mail report on Gaddafi’s visit to Rome:

Rome has had its fair share of triumphant parades by bizarre tyrants in its long history.

And the ageing Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s arrival on Monday ranked alongside any grotesque ceremony staged by Caligula or Nero.

It is easy to see why Italy’s Left-wing opposition denounced the dictator’s reception by Italian premier Silvio Berlusconi as a ‘rock star welcome’.

Gaddafi’s arrived in Rome with a 300-strong retinue on three Airbuses. As ever, he brought with him a giant Bedouin tent, which was erected in a park in the centre of the city and where he was to stay and conduct business.

There was no immediate sign of the camel he took on a visit to Paris in 2007 when he pitched his tent in the grounds of a five-star hotel.

With gelled and carefully dyed hair, the Colonel was made up to look like a cross between Michael Jackson and the deranged music mogul murderer Phil Spector.

Pinned to his chest was a large photograph of a Libyan resistance leader being hanged by Italian colonialists in 1931.

Although with his peaked cap, red flashes, gold braid epaulettes and an array of military decorations that resembled a Dulux colour chart, he turned out in a uniform that Italy’s last tyrant, fascist leader Benito Mussolini, would have killed for.

But it was the gun-toting female bodyguards in their khaki uniforms and red berets in the 67-year old dictator’s entourage, girls who wear Kalashnikovs like Gucci fashion accessories, who stole the show.

Gaddafi is one of the maddest dictators on Earth and he doesn’t like being upstaged – unless it’s by this 40-strong troupe of well-equipped, all-virgin minders.

The Rome visit provoked this amusing coverage of the killer virgins by News of the World:

The dictator, who calls himself a pioneer of ‘Islamic socialism’, doesn’t let his female security detail hide their charms under a burqa.

The all female bodyguards, along with their khaki uniforms and red berets, wear lipstick, jewellery, and even high heels – but are trained in armed combat.

All 40 guards are virgins, and he insists they remain so.

Gaddafi’s girls have become an internet sensation with websites dedicated to them.

Not that Gaddafi is likely to mind the furore – he once famously passed wind the whole way through an interview with John Simpson.

Bizarrely, Gaddafi claims they are a symbol of his belief in female emancipation. “Women should be trained for combat, so that they do not become easy prey for their enemies,” he is reported to have said.

When I was growing up in the 80s, Gaddafi was one of the ultimate bad guys. Reagan was always trying to kill him and he was usually sponsoring some kind of vile terrorist mess.

After September 11th, he got pretty freaked out by the GWOT and all of a sudden changed his ways, I guess.

Next thing you know, Gaddafi has transformed from wicked enemy of freedom into one of the world’s most wacky leaders, seemingly harmless and awesomely entertaining.

Many are protesting Gaddafi’s U.S. visit, outraged at his past support for terrorist killers and trying to deny him landing spots for his Bedouin tent.

An Orthodox rabbi who lives next to the Libyan estate said he plans to gather local residents at his home Sunday for a protest against the possible Gaddafi visit.

“Gaddafi has shown his true colors,” Shmuley Boteach said. “He has welcomed al-Megrahi as an icon, when this is a cowardly mass murderer.”

Haters…please give it a rest.

I think Shmuley Boteach is just jealous that HE doesn’t have virgin bodyguards with which to impress powerful world leaders…

Florida Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the most senior Republican woman in the House of Representatives, hung up on both President-Elect Obama and future Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel in separate incidents yesterday.

And not because they offended her with their pinko liberal ways; because she was all, “you can’t fool me, prank calling Florida talk radio hosts!!! President Obama, my ass!”

According to CNN, the Congresswoman “convinced she was being prank-called by a Barack Obama sound-alike – hung up on the actual president-elect Wednesday.

[Rep. Ros-Lehtinen] was told by an aide that Obama wanted to speak with her. According to a statement released by her office, the Republican congresswoman cut off the caller, telling him she thought “this is a joke from one of the South Florida radio stations known for these pranks.” She then hung up.

Obama’s future White House chief of staff, Rahm Emmanuel – a fellow congressman – then called her to let her know she’d actually been speaking with the future commander-in-chief. Ros-Lehtinen, convinced the call was another hoax, hung up on him, too.“

At which point an irate Emanuel undoubtedly plunged a steak knife into his desk, bellowing “Dead! Dead! Dead!!!!!!”

The best part of the story is when the President-Elect had one of Ros-Lehtinen’s congressional colleagues call her to say, “Obama ain’t playin’.”

While Rep. Howard Berman is the chairman of the powerful Foreign Affairs committee, of which Ros-Lehtinen is the ranking minority member, he’s still a relatively unknown figure that radio goof-offs wouldn’t think to impersonate.

Not good enough for the least gullible woman in the world, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen!!!

She demanded to know the top-secret pinky-swear Congress password!

The CNN report continues, “an aide told Ros-Lehtinen she had an urgent call from Chairman Howard Berman, chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee. Still suspicious, Ros-Lehtinen urged the California Democrat to recount a story only both of them would know. Berman passed the test — and told her she had, in fact, hung up on President-elect Obama.“

Obama thought all this was hilarious, and they finally got down to business.

Although we doubt many of you know much about Ros-Lehtinen – we sure didn’t – it seems that if Obama intends to reach across the aisle on issues of foreign policy and immigration, the most prominent Cuban-American congresswoman is a good place to start.

Of course, she didn’t burnish her image any by issuing a poorly-spelt press release about her skeptical ways, in which she referred to her would-be callers as “Barak Obama” and “Rahm Emmanuel.”

(To be fair, CNN spelled Emanuel’s last name wrong too! See above.)

He’s the Israeli conservative leader who was briefly Prime Minister in the 90s, and has been keeping up the opposition to the centrist Kadima party for quite some time.

Anyway, he’s running to take over the country again, and change course from the cede-territory-to-the-Palestinians crowd who have been in control so far this decade.

Wait a minute, did somebody say “change”?

On the left: Obama. On the right: Benja-Bama.

Yup, he completely copied Obama’s campaign website.

The NYTIMES reports:

Mr. Netanyahu is positioning himself as the candidate of new ideas both for Israel itself and for peace with the Palestinians.

The ideas revolve around economic opportunities, aides say, cutting red tape to improve the Palestinian economy; building peace from the ground up, not the top down; and improving life in Israel with a bold domestic agenda involving improved education, economic growth and personal security against increased crime.

The aides are convinced that negotiations with Palestinian leaders will lead nowhere and that the best steps Israel can take, as it waits for Palestinian attitudes to change, involve building the Palestinian economy. Ms. Livni has vowed to continue the talks with the Palestinians, which she is helping to lead.

Mr. Netanyahu’s aides add that just as the Obama campaign linked Mr. McCain to President Bush, they plan to label Ms. Livni as a continuation of the status quo and Mr. Netanyahu as the candidate of change.

“Yes he can,” one aide said, with a touch of self-parody. “He believes he is the guy who can do it.”

Our trusty tipster C. Dave sent us this link via ANDREW SULLIVAN, who says that “The Obama web campaign will be copied and copied and copied again. Because its structure is exactly where media and campaigning are headed.”

Nothing wrong with that, of course. But lifting the whole web design is a little weak…

That’s not change. That’s more of the same!!

Via ROMANESKO, we learned this morning about a delightful column by the MURFREESBORO (Tennessee) POST’s columnist Stephen Lewis.

It’s tough to know where to begin with this one. How about here:

Even so, history has been made as the first black president has been elected. I still don’t get it though. If Obama has a black father and white mother isn’t he every bit as much white as he is black? Was his father blacker than his mother was white? Didn’t Michael Jackson and Paul McCartney sing about this over 20 years ago? “Ebony and Ivory, lives together in perfect harmony.” My hope is that eventually both races will be able to celebrate in his accomplishments.

First of all, you idiot, that horribly cheesy song does NOT assert that racism is over and that we all now live in racial harmony. It makes the “point” that black and white keys peacefully coexist on a piano keyboard and asks “Why don’t we?” do the same.

Well, apparently we don’t live together in perfect harmony like ebony and ivory because of people like this asshole, Stephen Lewis, who apparently still lives in the 1970s, with his opinions on racial issues thoroughly intact from that era.

Secondly, it was Stevie Wonder. Not Michael Jackson. I guess to Stephen Lewis, all black entertainers look alike…

Breaking news from Stephen Lewis: This guy isn’t REALLY black.

For generations, white bigots defined a person with even 1/8th black ancestry as black. Ever heard of an octaroon? In fact, some views held that ONE DROP of African blood made a person fit to be enslaved.

Thankfully, we live in more enlightened times – but backward douchebags like Stephen Lewis have decided to flip the script, and belittle the historical election of a non-white president by suddenly finding it super noteworthy that Obama’s mother is white.

Oh, it gets so much worse. Dr. Rishi K. Saxena was a Democratic candidate for Congress in Middle Tennessee. He’s a doctor who has lived in the state for 15 years; he has a thriving practice and two kids who have grown up as native Tennesseeans.

On Tuesday, Dr. Saxena got thoroughly thumped by the incumbent, Rep. Donna Rowland, who carried 65% of the vote. Somehow, this isn’t enough for A #1 asscaptain Stephen Lewis.

What about this fellow who ran for state representative, Dr. Rishi Saxena? I’m not sure where he’s from but I’m pretty sure it’s not Rutherford County. From what I read about him he has some very good ideas. My advice to him would be to work on perfecting his southern accent. I’m not talking about southern Bangladesh either. And if he can’t sound southern, he could at least throw in a few y’alls and a couple fixin’ to’s every once in a while.

Yeah, Macaca, welcome to Murfreesboro and the REAL America!!!!

Stephen “The Worst Journalist in Murfreesboro, and Possibly The World” Lewis was unsatisfied that Dr. Saxena merely lost, so he takes the opportunity to kick him when he’s down by questioning his legitimacy to represent Tennessee. Stay classy, Stephen Lewis.

For his final act, this jerkoff decides to deliver a SUPER relevant song parody that’s gonna get to the heart of the matter with satire. What’s an appropriate theme song for Barack Obama’s 21st century presidency? Stephen Lewis dug through his five-page dossier on “All Things Black” and came out with “The Jeffersons”. Of course! A TV theme song from a 30 year old show. Why didn’t we think of this ourselves??

I’m so confident in his success that I wrote a song about it and would like to present it to all Post readers as my “Ode to President Obama.” I do apologize to those of you who are under 30 years of age since you probably won’t “get it.” However, if you will tune into TV Land you can catch the opening of The Jeffersons and it may make more sense to you. And remember, if this offends you, your man got elected. So really you have the last laugh.

(Sung by Obama to the theme song of “The Jeffersons”):

“Well we’re movin’ on up,
To Washington, D.C.
To a deee-luxe pimp pad,
Painted whiiiite.
Yeah we’re movin’ on up,
To the White House.
I’ll be jetting with P. Diddy cross the sky.

McCain can’t score on the east coast,
Palin was just a cute, cheap thrill.
Took a whole lot of campaign promises,
To take over Capitol Hill.
Now we’re livin’ in the White House
Chewin’ on the government fat.
As long as we here
It’s tax, tax, tax!
Ripping off the rich fat cats!

Well we’re movin’ on up
To the big time.
To a dee-luxe sweet crib
That’s just too fly.
Moooovin’ on up
To D.C.
I finally showed McCain I’m the guy!”

Thank you! I’m here all week. Try the veal.

The real point of this posting is not that you should get all outraged over this, demand this guy’s resignation or bandy this about as proof that racism is real.

The point is, this guy is living in the past, he’s not talented, not funny and he’s used a valuable opportunity to speak to the public to air a bunch of bigoted comments. Ultimately, he’s just embarrassing himself.

Commenter “JC1″ skewered Lewis quite skillfully:This column offends me as a journalist. Too many people in our profession are so insulated, so consumed with what amuses them and their cohorts in their newsrooms, that they fail to remember that they are writing for real people. This column is self-serving journalism at its worst – it serves no purpose other than to give one ignorant racist a forum for his childish, shameful humor. No reader is better off for having read this column, no point has been made, no purpose has been served at all. This is worthless journalism, another nail in the coffin of our profession. How can you expect the public to trust any of us if one of us is passing this type of opinion piece off as legitimate journalism?

Stephen Lewis, we officially invite you to go fuck yourself.

—-

UPDATE (3 PM): According to commenters on the original article posted on the Murfreesboro Post’s site, Stephen Lewis the jackass columnist MAY be the same Stephen Lewis who presides over the Rock Springs Elementary School in nearby La Vergne. Commenter “Fitzcomm” states, “I am sure. I called Rutherford County Schools.”

Principal Lewis has not yet returned an email seeking comment.

(P.S. Ignore exit polls.)

Looking for some insight into the mind of the late-breaking voter?

We randomly found this blog post on Word Press in which an undecided voter from North Carolina finally makes up her mind.

This here’s Ginger, and she’s finally decided on Bob Barr.

Read on to find out why. This is so much more enjoyable when read aloud. The word “mellifluous” comes to mind.

I’m a North Carolina white woman, born to parents that both grew up in Southern baptist homes, in what used to be a small town, so I’m (naturally) a registered Republican. All of us are, y’all. The only time I EVER voted for a Democrat was when Jimmy Carter was runnin’ and that was because he was so Baptist and so southern, plus he reminded my Grandma Gladys of her Papa Green, so how could I not? It turned out to be a big mistake, with all those long gas lines and all, so I’ve been stickin’ with the straight Republican ticket ever since.

I have to hang my head when I admit that I voted for George W. I am sorry and I hope y’all will accept my heartfelt apologies. But, here’s the thing. I don’t think George, Jr. is really a Republican. Naw, really. I think he’s fakin’ it. I think he’s a closet liberal, who’s helped out his rich oil buddies by startin’ wars. I even think he might have sold his soul to the World Bankers, and those One World Government Illuminati types that just want to make enough money to be able to live in fancy caves underground, when the rest of us go up in the mushroom clouds.

So now I don’t feel like I can trust the Republicans anymore. I miss Ronnie Reagan. I wish he was still around to tell me one of his grandfatherly stories about how little Suzie in the third grade in Indiana needs new shoes and how my vote could help her get some cute pink and white Nikes. Without his help, I can’t seem to find my way anymore.

I wanted to be able to get behind one of the mainstream canidates.

John McCain is supposed to be conservative, but I got a feelin’ that he’s only pretendin’ to be, so all the conservative Christians will vote for him. I’m grateful that he went to war and fought for us and all. All that military experience will come in handy. His wife sure is a looker with all that perfectly coifed blonde hair. I was excited when he chose Sarah Palin, instead of some old-timey senator like Obama got. Sarah seems so down-homey and apple pie-ish, that it’s real hard not to just love her to death. But when McCain debated Obama, he looked real scary, y’all. He kept repeatin’ the same thing over and over, like some kind of scratched up little ol’ 45 record. I practically got the vapors from watchin’ it.

I absolutely loved some of Obama’s speeches. That stuff he said about his Grandma reduced me to tears. He’s so eloquent, and young, and handsome. His wife, Michelle, is cute as a button, too, with her fist-bumpin’ and all that jazz. I love that he is neither black, nor white, and yet he is both. I understand why so many people support him. But I was disappointed when he chose Biden. Biden is so old and outta touch, and so ingrained in the system that Obama says he wants to change. I wanted him to choose Hilary. Also, the whole Acorn business scares me. So does that Jeremiah preacher-man. All that hollerin’ from the pulpit got on my Baptist nerves. Now, I’m smart enough to realize he’s prolly not a Muslim, but his reputation as the most liberal senator, plus the fact that he voted “present” instead of actually standing up for anything goes against my upbringing, I reckon.

Then they both lost me over that big bailout deal. I mean, come on already! If either one of the two of them had stood up to George Bush and The Fed and just said NO to giving HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS of DOLLARS WE DON’T EVEN HAVE to the banks, then that canidate would have had my vote, right then and there, y’all. When McCain annouced that he was suspendin’ his campaign and runnin’ back to Washington, my heart was all a-twitter. I thought he was going to act all Reaganish and stand up to them-there big bankers. I thought, “Here’s his big chance to show the world how a REAL Republican is supposed to act and show everyone that he’s not going to stand for another four years of George Bush’s nonsence.”

I still can’t believe that both candidates, Obama the eloquent Liberal, and McCain the war hero Quasi-Conservative, voted exactly the same on gettin’ us even further into debt. McCain should have been against it on the general principle of wanting smaller government, and a balanced budget, like every Republcan in the history of the world has ever talked about. And Obama should have said, “Whoa, wait just a cotton pickin’ minute, if we’re gonna borrow this kind of money, let’s bail out the homeowners and throw in some programs to help out the poor folks, y’all.”

So I voted for Bob Barr. He’s the Libertarian that’s runnin’. He was flatly against the bail out, and he’s all about cuttin’ taxes, reducin’ government spending and restorin’ our civil liberties lost during the Bush administration.The media ignores him, so almost nobody has even heard of him. I’m fully aware of the fact that he’s not going to win. I know my vote won’t count for much. But I did it because I feel we need another choice. I figure if enough people vote for these Libertarians, then maybe the media will sit up and take notice some day.

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Plus, he’s from Georgia, y’all. A girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do.

Now everyone do like Ginger – make up your minds and go vote.