Snidely Turkey

Over the last few days, the Senate has met over a hotly contested bill and today they passed the measure that identifies us as…

The Bad Guys.

That’s right. We’re the bad guys. We’re foreigners who show up in dark clothes, wickedly giggling, with hoses and wires and no regard for humanity. Remember that guy in Raiders of the Lost Ark? That’s us.

What we’ve done is suspend habeas corpus for the imprisonment of foreigners. That means we can imprison people without any legal justification.

Here’s the deal. Picture yourself living in a different country. It doesn’t have to be Iraq or Afghanistan. Say, Italy. Your name is Bob and you moved there fifteen years ago because you got a little inheritance from your Aunt Winona and you decided to buy a small hotel there after you vacationed and fell in love with the place. It was easier to become a citizen (your Mom’s side of the family has relatives there), so you did. Not that you hate the U.S., but this is your place.

You build up a nice little clientele, and expand with a restaurant. You travel to other countries to buy items for your business. One day, some Turkish merchant ups the price on floor furnishings, and you decide to switch to a competitor. He doesn’t take it well and reports this to his brother, the governor of a small Afghan province. He promptly makes a call to Colonel Guano of the US Army, and then there’s a knock on your door.

You there – Bob. Yes, you. I’m taking you into prison. What? No reason. Just follow me. Got your birth certificate proving you’re a U.S. citizen? No? You’re screwed.

Think it won’t happen? On the same day the Senate passed the bill, this report appeared in the LA Times.

Federal Police Chief Apologizes to Deportee
From Times Wire Reports
September 29, 2006

The head of Canada's federal police force offered an unprecedented public apology to a man who was deported by U.S. agents to Syria after the Mounties mistakenly labeled him an Islamic extremist.

Royal Canadian Mounted Police Commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli admitted that his force had mishandled the case of Maher Arar, whom he described as an innocent man swept up in a search for terrorism suspects in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks.

Arar, a 36-year-old Ottawa software engineer, says he was repeatedly tortured during the year he spent in Syrian jails.

Sorry guy. Hope you didn’t need your testicles for anything.

All You Other Turkeys

God, I hate them.

We’re so much better than they are. We’re normal and they’re weird. We’re right and they’re wrong. We’re decent and they’re disgusting. We smell normal and they smell sour.

Don’t you hate them? Always getting in your way. Always standing around and stuff. Paying with exact change when you’re in a hurry. In the bathroom too long. What are they doing in there? Forgetting what they want to order. How can you go into a McDonald’s and not know what to ORDER?

At least we have the right religion. Well, most of us. Except for a few strange people in Hollywood. And Utah. And parts of upstate New York.

Wait a minute… Those people are them, too, aren’t they? Get them out of here. Tell them to go back where they belong. They don’t belong with US. We don’t want their kind around.

And those people with the wrong attitude about the war. What’s the matter with these people anyway? Don’t they know what’s at stake? They should just find another country and move there.

And those people who don’t think like us. Those people who think they’re smarter than us. Always walking around thinking they’re better. They’re ruining everything.

Dumb people, too! Why can’t they get their act together? They are SCREWING up this country!

Bad drivers. They have to go, too. Seriously. They make me want to SCREAM.

Foreigners. ALL of them. Don’t even send them back. Just put them on a plane to Manitoba.

Finally, when all those other people are gone, we can have some peace. Except you. You have to go, too. EVERYBODY WHO ISN’T ME HAS TO GO. Now.

That’s better. Now there’s just me. I’m the right kind of person. Except for my knees. They’re always giving me trouble. Those bastards have to go. And my back. Always aching.

All I really need is my brain. Problem is, the left side and the right side don’t get along. One of them is going to have to go. I’ve got my money on the right side. That sucker’s ruthless.

101 Turkeys

Cruella Rumsfeld, Cruella Rumsfeld
When he will get you, nobody can tell
The world was such a wholesome place until
Cruella, Cruella Rumsfeld

If your skin is light brown, you’re sent to rendition
You innocent Sunnis, assume the position
He’s turned the Middle East into a hell
Cruella, Cruella Rumsfeld

At first you think that Rumsfeld is the devil
And after time has worn away the shock
You come to understand, you know this is the man
Who couldn’t wait for something like Iraq

The ice in the water, the dogs on the leash
He wants you all locked up and never released
You might as well get settled in your cell
Cruella, Cruella Rumsfeld

Vote for Turkey

By God, the world must become a democracy, or we’re going to shoot every damn one of you. Do you HEAR ME! A DEMOCRACY! We will not PUT UP with this commie terrorist bullarky. If you don’t turn into a democracy, we’re going to SHOOT YOUR MOTHER.

A democracy is SO much better than anything you have out there. Right here in America (okay, the United States of America, don’t split hairs), we have a perfectly functioning democracy. The guy we elected president of the United States is busy making movies while the guy who lost is running the show. Perfect democracy in action.

Meanwhile, in Mexico, we forced those poor bastards to the polls, and they STILL haven’t figured out who won. The GOOD news is that in a few more weeks there will be so many dead drug lords, there won’t be ANYONE left to vote opposition. Unless they let the severed heads vote.

And look how well democracy is turning out for Hamas, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and Hugo Chavez.

So let’s not be like Thailand, where they have a coup every four years. THAT doesn’t work at all. No sir. Not a place where EVERYONE is happy, and the girls run out to give the military soldiers roses for showing up and fixing the country. That’s bad news right there.

Doesn’t it bother ANYONE that the Thai coup was more organized, pleasant, and successful than the LAST TWO U.S. ELECTIONS? I think we should start changing our leaders by cow pie throwing contests. Now THAT makes sense.

Devil Turkey

So Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez called George W. Bush the Devil.

My first thought was that Bush couldn’t really be the Devil. Wouldn’t the Devil get better than a 30% approval rating? Wouldn’t the Devil pick a better baseball team than the Texas Rangers? Wouldn’t the Devil actually make money as a business man? Wouldn’t the Devil do a better job in the Middle East?

NO!

He WOULD NOT!

That’s what the Devil is supposed to do! He’s supposed to screw up the Middle East! Didn’t you see The Omen?

And what about those daughters? Wouldn’t the Devil have hot, drunk daughters?

Then there are his familiars. The Devil keeps weird vermin and twisted animals to assist him in his presence to assist him in his evil plans. How else do you explain Rice, Rumsfeld, and Ashcroft.

The Devil would be able to get out of the army. The Devil would be able to coke up with no repercussions. The Devil would be CONNECTED. The Devil would achieve the highest position on earth with ABSOLUTELY NO QUALIFICATIONS.

Look at the twinkle in his eye! The knowing little grin. The smugness. The big package in the Mission Accomplished flight suit!

He IS the Devil.

Well, I for one feel much better now. I thought there wasn’t a plan.

Plus, I made a deal with the guy. With Washington bureaucracy, I won’t have to pay off.

Turkey Pigeons

What a time it was back then when there were quite a bit fewer states, and each one wielded a great deal of power, and the President was only slightly more powerful than Kofi Annan. Before most of our major conflicts, the President would have to appear hat in hand before congress and ask permission to bomb the living bejesus out of Japan after a sneak attack. There were exceptions. This Union has managed to wage undeclared war before. Just ask the Native Americans.

Today, the President of the United States of America can pretty much wage war whenever he wants, without the approval of anyone except the guys telling him what to do. He can wage war in Southeast Asia (twice). He can wage war in Iraq (twice). He can wage war against drugs (“Drugs Win War on Drugs” – The Onion).

Which brings us to the War on Terror. It’s actually a pretty scary war. You can almost read the headline a couple decades from now – Terror Wins War on Terror – and it won’t be in the Onion. Its main front is in Afghanistan. Some folks think it has a second front in Iraq. Maybe they’re right, but I hope not. The history of success for wars waged on two fronts is not very good.

Problem with the War on Terror is that it legitimized terrorism. There have always been fringe radical nuts in the world. Plenty in this here Union. There used to be more, right before the Oklahoma City bombing. Those groups declined shortly thereafter, primarily because the serious nuts were being ratted out by the semi-soft nuts. Talking about the overthrow of the government was not the same as blowing up babies.

The Union did the proper thing – they took the moral high ground and approached the fringe, saying they respect the right to be a complete loon, but help us out with the loon with the bomb. It worked. Not perfectly – there still are some neo-nuts out there – but enough to scale back potential damage.

What the Union did NOT do was declare war on all the fringe groups. What they did NOT do was declare war on Kansas (where Timothy McVeigh was living) or Republicans (McVeigh’s party). They used McVeigh to discourage other acts of terror.

In the case of Osama Bin Laden, however, the “President” of this Union declared war on all terrorists. Everybody. NOT limited to Osama. NOT limited to Al Qaeda. NOT even limited to Afghanistan, the country providing sanctuary to Al Qaeda.

ALL terrorists.

Which immediately elevated each and every one of them into revolutionary status. We gave them a common enemy. From their perspective, it went from “I hate those guys” to “I’m at war with those guys” to “We’re at war with those guys.”

This “President” unified and galvanized all the fringe groups in a way no one before him could. More than that, he’s giving voice to legitimate world opposition to this country. At the recent Nonaligned Movement summit in Havana, world leaders such as Hugo Chavez, Raul Castro, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and others are speaking out against this Union. In other words, they’re becoming ALIGNED.

The good news is that all these guys USED to be members of the radical fringe right in THEIR countries. Now they’re the establishment. Pretty soon they’ll start to have to watch out for THEIR OWN NUTS. Which gives us time to start a war we can win.

The War on Pigeons.

Turkey Snakes

This from the NY Post about Bill Clinton and the upcoming ABC mini-series about 9/11:

[Bill Clinton] pointedly refuted several fictionalized scenes that he claims insinuate he was too distracted by the Monica Lewinsky sex scandal to care about bin Laden and that a top adviser pulled the plug on CIA operatives who were just moments away from bagging the terror master, according to a letter to ABC boss Bob Iger obtained by The Post.

And this from Govindini Murty in FrontPageMag.com

This is the first Hollywood production I’ve seen that honestly depicts how the Clinton administration repeatedly bungled the capture of Osama Bin Laden.

So ABC wants to blame it all on Monica Lewinsky and conservatives contend that Clinton should be responsible for capturing Osama Bin Laden.

And with all this, let's talk about something I learned in grade school: Glass snakes aren’t real snakes. They are legless lizards.

Do you remember learning that? Science was full of interesting and unusual facts that NEVER MADE SENSE.

Look at the picture. LOOK AT IT! That’s a damn snake, and you know it!

This is from the Wikipedia: “…the fact that they have movable eyelids and external ear openings make it obvious that they are lizards.”

I say the fact that they don’t have LEGS makes them SNAKES! The fact that they have eyelids and earholes make them eyelidded, earholed SNAKES.

We all know a snake when we see one. We all know a turkeyhead when we see one. And we all know what a Mess O'Potamia (thank you Jon Stewart) we're in right now.

Don’t even get me started about Pluto.