The Case For Gay Parenting

"Social science on this matter is conclusive: Children need both a
mom and a dad. Study after study has shown that children do best in a home with
a married, biological mother and father." -- Sen. Sam Brownback (R-KS),
Presidential Candidate, "Defining Marriage Down", 7/9/04, National Review Online

"A judge on Wednesday ordered seven young children removed from their home after authorities discovered it was infested with rats and filled with garbage, including stacks of dirty diapers nearly 4 feet high in closets.

"Authorities went to the dilapidated house after Gloria Ramirez called a funeral home seeking a casket for the stillborn, 4-month-old fetus she had delivered in the bathtub with help from her oldest child, a 9-year-old girl. The fetus was found in a baby wipe box in the refrigerator, according to court documents.

"...Anthony Moya, the 40-year-old father of the six younger children, has been charged with seven counts of child endangerment, and the same charges were expected to be filed against Ramirez next week...- 7/19/07(AP) Betsy Blaine, Lubbock, TX"

"And I believe children can receive love from gay couples, but the ideal is -- and studies have shown that the ideal is where a child is raised in a married family with a man and a woman. - George W. Bush"

"Plattsmouth (Nebraska) Police Chief Brian Paulsen said that James Cook, 6, died Monday night while playing a game of hide-and-seek with his 9-year-old sister. The boy crawled into an old microwave and suffocated to death when he couldn't get out, the chief said.

"Cook's family members told Omaha, Neb., TV station KETV that they had piled a pickup truck full of items they planned to take to the dump on Saturday..."

"I supported the federal effort for traditional marriage, defining marriage as a relationship between a man and woman,'' because "one of the major purposes of marriage is the nurturing and development of children. -- Mitt Romney, Republican Presidential Candidate (S.F. Chronicle, Carla Marinucci, 3/17/07''

"(AP) Rochester, Minn. A Mankato, Minn. couple was accused Wednesday of abusing their 4-month-old son, one of two conjoined twins who underwent separation surgery last fall at the Mayo Clinic." -- 3/8/07

Write these down. They'll come in handy when the fur starts to fly in January.

The Mid-Year Pot/Kettle Review

We're always amused and occasionally enraged when we find people who inhabit glass homes lobbing rocks at people who may or may not deserve a head wound. So many instances occurred today that we decided to compile a half-way point review of 2007 for some of the finer examples.

In no particular order:

Elizabeth Hasselbeck on Being A Good Friend - "Truthfully, I think a friend is someone who you have positive communications with, so I don't know if I would define us as friends right now." We offer as an example of positive, friendly communication Hasselbeck's tacit agreement with the assertion that Rosie O'Donnell is a traitorous whore for Al Qaeda. If that ain't friendship, we need a Dionne Warwick intervention. Can someone get ahold of Gladys Knight, Stevie Wonder and Elton John, too?

Fatah on Hamas Being Bad For Palestinians - "There is no dialogue with those murderous terrorists." - Mahmoud Abbas, Palestinian President. Far be it from us to remember that Abbas leads the party of the late Yassir Arafat, that towering figure of peaceful resistance and anti-terrorism. We almost forgot that Abbas, known by his Palestinian Mob nickname "Abu Mazen", took the reigns of the terrorist P.L.O. upon Arafat's death. We submit that the only true gripe Abbas has is that he didn't throw the first punch and that there weren't several hundred Israeli tour buses collaterally damaged in the process. Abbas is also nominated for the Takes One To Know One Lifetime Achievement Award.

George W. Bush on Stem Cell Research - "America is also a nation founded on the principle that all human life is sacred." We can't help but point out that not all human life is sacred to this administration. At the same time, we don't want to be impolite by pointing out the sacred Iraqi elephant in the living room. Or the suffering sacred lives that won't be helped by stem cells. Or the sacred human lives we've left in trailers across the Gulf Coast. Or.... We'll let others put the puzzle pieces together. Bush's mother appeared bug-eyed at her son's decision to veto legislation allowing expanded stem cell research. Upon learning that Graves Disease, which afflicts the 82 year-old, is among those diseases with cure potential from stem cells, Barbara Bush called her boy with a brief message: "Thanks, asshole."

Donald Trump on Rosie O'Donnell - "The ratings for her show were terrible. They basically threw her off the air. ... " We enjoyed seeing Donald's ex, Marla Maples, on a practically unwatchable program earlier in the week. Mostly, we enjoyed it knowing that The Apprentice - Trump's only remaining foray into TV (his Martha Stewart version of the show tanked in less than a season) was already in the dumpster pantheon of shows that didn't last as long as anything Rosie ever touched. We clearly recall running gags on the Ro Show what lasted more seasons than The Apprentice. You'd think Trump would realize that his greatest TV hit was being a punching bag for America's Favorite Lesbian on The View.

Ann Coulter on Civil Discourse - "I was going to have a few comments on the other Democratic presidential candidate, John Edwards, but it turns out that you have to go into rehab if you use the word 'faggot'..." Using the ugly, dyke-y, cunty, emaciated, stringy-haired name calling approach would probably give Ann multiple orgasms. So we won't do that. But you get our drift. We have a firm policy against aiding and abetting Republican orgasms. If we ever learn that Bill Maher is schtupping her - even with marijuana as an excuse - we're cancelling our HBO.

So there you have it... The first five finalists for the 2007 Pot/Kettle Award are in - and we didn't have to blow Simon Cowell (not that there's anything wrong with that), Ryan Seacrest (not that there's anything wrong with that), or David Hasselhoff (there are TOO many things wrong with that) to get here. Here's a toast and crossed fingers for an equally enjoyable second-half of the year.

You Need To Go Home Now

Because we don't have enough people who have an appropriate response to shame, today brings word that Colin Powell would like us to hear his opinion on the next President Of The United States.

We still haven't found all the pieces of our jaw from when we dropped it over his activities with the current one. It's going to be a long, long time before we consider Gen. Powell to be a reliable advisor in the voting booth. In an attempt to be tantalizing and seem relevant, years after his cellular-level integrity meltdown on the floor of the United Nations, The Guy Who Knew Saddam Back When says he isn't entirely sure he'd support a Republican for president.

That puts him in the shocking company of about 65% of the country. This man has not only lost his moral compass, he's lost all sense of irony, any remnant of history, and the inborn instinct we all have that tells us to just shut up and go home.

Gen. Powell lied to the world, either by his own will or by his own failure to verify the words coming out of his mouth. He didn't do it in the bathroom under his breath with the water running. He did it into a microphone on the floor of the United Nations. He did it in furtherance of a perverted plan to bring open-ended war to a country about which George Bush was willing to say anything to get the key to the Bomb Box. Many of us have misspoken in our day. Many of us have realized down life's winding road that something we decided previously was erroneous. Hardly any of us have blood on our hands to this degree as a direct result of our dereliction of duty. From those to whom much is given, much is required. Somebody important said that once. Want a big job? Take the big consequences.

The consequences of being colossally wrong - if not a degenerate liar - when your star is on the rise and you are in all likelihood the heir-apparent to the throne of all 50 states - is that we no longer take your word on anything. Colin Powell could tell us that oil and water don't mix and we would doubt his intentions, let alone his facts. The truly grating part of this media assault today, however, is Powell's overtures to my party - the one that sat on its hands while Bush, Inc. wreaked havoc on the planet.

We have paid dearly on the Left for not speaking up in the months prior to war. We were afraid of being right again - like during the Vietnam years. Being right, however, did not work to our political gain during Vietnam. Being wrong this time hasn't gone so hot, either. We don't learn lessons quickly on the Left. We get bogged down in seeing all sides of issues and would require a 12-point diversified caucus to decide to leave a sinking lifeboat - with appropriate membership weighting in favor of those least able to represent themselves and who, by virtue of history's cruelty, may no longer be around to be in the lifeboat. It's our Big Flaw. It comes with Grand Intentions, like most big flaws do. What we need is a spine, not a General.

So thanks, Gen. Powell. We hear you loud and clear. The dance is coming and you have no date. May we suggest that you vacation in Albania this year? We understand they're huge Bush fans over there - and we don't even care enough to ask why. They can have him. You're sure to be a huge hit there yourself. Take Alma. She's probably ready to get away.

Remember... she told you not to get involved in this stuff in the first place. Sometimes Mama knows best.

It's Your Ovaries, Stupid

Barrel collusion, refining costs, hurricanes most inopportune, demand in China, SUV-mania, higher speed limits, Venezuela's thumb on the scale, our general lack of charisma throughout the Middle East...how many reasons do you need for today's gasoline prices? Just two, if you think about it. But most people won't. Think about it, that is.

What we have here is a heterosexual entitlement problem. Not just any heterosexual, either, but a middle-to-upper class heterosexual privilege problem that promises to turn Ohio into the Atlantic's newest ocean side hot-spot in the next lifetime or so. Po' Straight Folk (PSF's) aren't in on this gig, so we get to throw this gauntlet down in what we fully intend to be the first major salvo in unabashed class warfare.

It takes my family of one approximately 1,000 gallons or less of water per month to perform all the household duties.. My sibling's family of four in the same town uses roughly 4,000 gallons. This is easy math. I love my niece and nephew as though they were my own....niece and nephew...which they are. But they are expensive little buggers. When their parents drive an hour each way in the over sized vehicle to watch them flail at over sized balls with over sized bats to over sized applause for their undersized results, their cost goes up. Children should be born with a Times Square-style ticker between their shoulder blades so we can keep track just how much each human costs to keep alive annually. When they croak - as we tend to do - we can rapidly gather all the data and decide whether we are headed in the right - or wrong - direction when it comes to managing the viability of the Only Planet That Will Sustain Us.

Al Gore calls this sort of awareness "Knowing One's Carbon Footprint". I think he'd get more press if he called it "The Real Cost of Pussy". I have clear memories of gasping in horror at the draconian Chinese limit of one kid per household. Should you lose count, we have an unfortunate, but highly reliable back-up Abacus. Even these third-world, isolated, communist, freedom squelching tyrants had a plan to deal with the cost and effect of living on this Big Blue Ball. They weren't thinking of holes in the Ozone Layer or melting glacial ice caps or erasing Australia from the World Map. They just saw widespread hunger and an unacceptable lack of toilet paper peeking around the corner.

Meanwhile, Fox News, Every Republican (don't lie -you know that is no generalization), Talk Radio, and paid shills from Reagan to Bush to Bush mocked the concerns as Junk Science and turned our attention to the horror of abortion and forced child abandonment and away from the reality that our resources are finite. They fiddled. The arctic burned - melted, really, The antarctic cracked. Oceans rose, temps inflated - everything junk scientists said they would. But, in the spirit of Republican Logic, we were introduced to the very first of the Bush Doctrines: Just Because Something Turns Out To Be True Doesn't Make It True.

We repeated that thought because Shawn Hannity told us to. We opened up to more improbable Bush doctrines - at the risk of permanently suspending disbelief. "Gay Marriage is a threat to The Family." Whose family? None we can name. We walked around the cul-de-sac - prime heterosexual nesting ground just casually wondering: If you could marry someone of the same gender tomorrow, which one of you would dump the other first? We got appropriate belly laughs from people who had already voted GW once and weren't even considering an alternative when given a second shot. We started developing some heterosexual theories of our own.

We spent a day at the largest university in the state a couple years back. We stopped average-looking people and the highly intelligent alike (Asians or white people with long hair and a doob stuck over their ear): If I hypothesized that lighting my clothes on fire would cause my clothes to burn, and then they did, in fact burn, would that make me right? Or wrong? I was amazed at the consistency of the responses I got. Even these sweet, fresh-faced, chain-smoking children were qualifying their answers with, "Depends...are you a Republican or a Democrat?" When I pointed to the Democrat tattoo on my forehead, they said, "OH. That would make you wrong."

So when I'm right, I'm wrong because I'm a Democrat? "You got it! " They lit up like they had broken the code on the final strand of the human genome. But wait. I had to know. Can I assume that if I were a Republican, I would be right under identical circumstances? "YES! YES! YES!," they shouted as they danced with Baptist modesty. And why would that be, I wondered? "Because you would be on the Lord's side!"

Let me get this straight, I said. 2+2=4.
"Not necessarily," the tall one said.
When is it not four?
"If you're a Democrat. Or if you have a purple heart."
What's a purple heart got to do with it?
"Absolutely nothing. But did you see what we got away with in '04?"
But those were bald faced lies. Isn't one of the Big Ten No No's
"Thou Shalt Not Lie"?
"That only applies to Democrats," I was informed. "Lying to keep
the Lord in power is never a sin."

I had to admit, this shit was starting to make a little too much sense. I had to pull out the ace from my hole. "If each child born marches us that much faster toward the inevitable destruction of our entire existence, which has the greater sway: The several billion lives already here or the sanctity of the one that is still breathing amniotic fluid?"

I heard jack-booted footsteps coming up the stairs of the tenement we had squatted in for our session. Somehow I knew I had crossed that line that revealed me as immediately expendable. Not even John Walsh would take note of my sudden disappearance. I high-tailed it for the Gay Pride Parade where I bathed myself in the filth of reason turned upside down in the most logical of ways. A paradox that made sense on a genetic level. Bring me a garter, some spritz, and a dab of body butter. I had to wash off the heterosexuality before it started to fester like some bacterially-resistant strain of e-coli.

And bartender... don't be coy about that martini.

Worry About This

Comes news today that a new ABC/Ipsos poll finds 75% of us think the country is headed in the wrong direction. They fault the president, his war, his gas prices and his breath, in order of importance. We contend this is not newsworthy information.

The troubling part of this poll is that 1 in 4 of us think things are GREAT! We want names. And addresses. And someone to put these people out of our misery. At the very least, 75% of us should be able to acknowledge that damn near everything sucks nowadays. Accordingly, at least 75% of us should be able to identify the source of our discontent. And be able to spell his name.

As a white male, we are particularly troubled that 1 out of 3 white men think this is an incredible way to live. "Heading in the right direction" is how they answered the question about the nation's trajectory. We understand now why women and minorities hold the white male in such contempt. We are almost compelled to confront the next two fellow white guys we meet and demand to know which of them is the idiot. Statistically, one of them is probably among the deluded third of our demographic.

There is no reasonable course of action that pertains to the slob in the White House. Time, 18 months, give or take a few days, will take care of him. Then the historians can pick his bones clean, grind them into dust and eliminate the last vestiges of his plague on our house. The market will not correct record profiteering by the oil and gas industry. Only regulation and corruption investigations will purge us of this perversion of capitalism. This war will pass.

What will not pass is the presence among us of those who cannot see with their eyes wide open in broad daylight. If this scandalous, lying, barbaric incompetence is a sign that we are heading in the right direction, no amount of education or cajoling will help them. They are lost.

Hopelessly, dreadfully, dangerously, incurably lost.

We will always endure some level of misfeasance among our leaders. We will always see prices go upward and not downward. We will always be tempted to resolve, perpetuate, renew, or commence conflict in the world with the sword and not the word. Seventy-five percent of us will know when enough is enough. One in four will never get it. For them, up is down. Right is wrong. Fair is foul. Balance is tipped to one side. They corrupt our society, our name, our will, our future, our hope and our place among the peoples of the earth. And they vote. All of them. No one is more militantly wrong than they are. No one is more actively, willfully ignorant. No one is more perverse.

It is too unfortunate that wisdom has fallen into cliche when we say that for evil to triumph, good people simply need do nothing. When we, the 75%, tire of being dragged behind the vehicle by the 25% who have the keys, we will experience change. Until then, the face of this great nation will be that of the twisted, the ignorant and the perverse.

I'm ready to drive, for a change.

Nature Is A Mother....

Now comes word that an arctic seal lost its way and ended up in Florida. Where it died. We get that. We've been to Ft. Lauderdale, which is up to its nipples in lost creatures awaiting death - however far away it may be. It happens. It's one thing to make the choice to head to fairer climes - witness the multiplied hundreds of Florida synagogues full of Bronx-accented worshippers. It's quite another to have Mother Nature escort you down a path you didn't choose.

We've been glued to the news where our fair state has become ground zero in the debate over draining domestic resources to fuel the occupation of a country that refuses to be a country. It's not just Greensburg, Kansas. The Missouri River divides the livable side (Kansas) from the unfortunate side (Missouri). Folks who live on one side wouldn't live on the other if you paid them. We'll cross the line to buy liquor on Sunday or gamble in their casinos. They'll return the favor to watch Nascar or visit the embarrassingly large Furniture Store That Should Have Been Ikea.

The Mighty Mo (the river, potty brain) is treating us to its annual ritual of failing to color within its lines. As the snows from Iowa, Nebraska and the other tundra states to our north make their way downriver, joined by Spring rains, last year's drought becomes irrelevant. The river and its tributaries take their toll on farms, homes, bridges and roads in numbers that far exceed tornado damage annually. Floods simply don't make for great TV unless you have a hurricane to open the show.

Five levees have broken along the Missouri River in the last 48 hours. I don't know how many broke around the Gulf Coast during Hurricane Katrina. I do know that if your house is affected by a levee's breach, it doesn't much matter how many other levees did their job. Thousands of people are fleeing their homes today. That bears repeating.

Today, thousands of Kansans and Missourians are fleeing their homes...most of them 5 hours or more from where Greensburg used to stand.

Water, that essence of life, leaves the most amazingly grotesque destruction when it runs amok. Today, Our Only President will be in the neighborhood to look at a town that became rubble. He has no plans to visit the thousands of displaced people who are running from a river.

He won't be helping. He'll just be looking. He'll have the opportunity to apologize to our Governor, who is helping. A cursory glance at the right-wing pundits and bloggers finds them vilifying Governor Sebelius for being an incompetent bitch, essentially, and mangling the clean-up effort in Greensburg while staring down the barrel of floods that just fall short of the 1993 disaster. Let's put this in terms a Conservative might understand.

Assume you have 3 million sinners you'd like to execute. You own 300,000 guns and plenty of ammo, but you loaned 299,999 of them to Washington to help in the Iraqi Occupation. Correction: You didn't loan them. They were taken from you in the name of patriotism, God, and all that is right. It will now take you a very long time to kill 3 million sinners...certainly much longer than it might have taken if you had all 300,000 assault rifles that you cherish like your velvet Jesus painting in the NRA commemorative frame. It's not that you can't get them killed...eventually...it's that it would be a lot quicker with all the guns in hand. Then you could get back to taking your social cues from Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh. Got it?

Now....think of sinners as houses that have crumbled like toothpicks and imagine the guns are backloaders, dumptrucks, and flatbeds. And instead of murder, it's clean-up. Got it? We aren't politicizing a tornado. We just want our trucks back...temporarily....so the 2-square-mile town can be cleaned up in a week, and not endure our own Katrina-paced cleanup. Oh...and so do all the other governors in all the other states.

We weren't caught off guard by a tornado. Nature's a bitch and twisters come with living in the land of Oz. Floods happen. We would prefer to not impose on your international disaster of a war by asking you to move the remains of the bank from the town's only intersection...but if you're finished with the queen, can we have our trucks back now?

Asshole.

Too Many Hours Of Darkness

While not as dire as the situation in our home state's town of Greensburg, our own modem-imposed blackout came at a classically inopportune time. The Queen met The Boob, Governor Sebelius (KS) clashed with The Boob... Boob, Boob, Boob. Leave it to fate to interfere when Boob material is overflowing like the Mighty Missouri River.

Without drawing inappropriate comparisons to Hurricane Katrina (mainly because our affected citizens were largely literate and white), it is worth noting that The Boob's War in Iraq has robbed our own National Guard of the resources they would normally use to help clean up the mess tornadoes tend to leave. The Boob was quick to point out that we have everything we need by way of personnel ("Heckuva job, Brownie!"), but personnel isn't the issue. We have lots of people - National Guard and otherwise. The issue is equipment.

Today, the White House suggested we simply call another state for dump trucks and stop inferring that The Boob's War has negatively impacted response time. Oh...and Kansans will someday be living in Fema Trailers that never made it out of Arkansas to Louisiana. These are the same trailers Katrina survivors long ago gave up on seeing in their own backyards. Irony runs thick in this administration. We ain't much for social protocol here in the flatlands....but we notice if you smile when you lie your ass off. And these folks are smilin' a bit much for our liking.

Greensburg is a few hours from here. We got the rain, they got the twisters. But we also got the message that George W. Bush didn't learn a goddamn thing about disaster response - either from the one Mother Nature visited upon the Gulf Coast, nor from the one he created in the Middle East. Suffice it to say that the next time a natural disaster takes a Kansas town from the map, we'll not be knocking on any federal doors. Insult the Governor's integrity all you like, but would you mind moving what used to be a few hundred houses out of the street first? Oh...and erect the telephone poles, turn on the electricity, and get the water going second.

Nobody pretends that Greensburg, KS matters to anyone who didn't live in Greensburg, KS. Most Kansans didn't know there was a Greensburg or, if there was one, just where it was. This Kansan had to MapQuest it, to be perfectly frank. If our government can't get the lights back on in its own backyard, though, how the hell do we expect that they can fix anything a couple of oceans away? And why would we bother to fix the latter before we fix the former?

I can't name a country that would clutch its pearls in horror if Gee Dub were to pull out a couple hundred flatbed trucks and the attendant personnel for a couple months to sweep Greensburg, KS clean and prepare for the rebuilding. That the same didn't happen when Katrina hit is a shonda. A national disgrace.

Our couple of off-line days brought a handful of things into fine focus. It doesn't mean we enjoyed it in the least. Nobody likes having the lights turned out on their connection to the world. I didn't. The folks on the Gulf Coast didn't. Greensburg, Kansas doesn't. A few hours of darkness happens from time-to-time.

But The Boob has brought far too many hours of darkness to these situations.

Too many hours of darkness, indeed.

If Only It Were True!!!

This tidbit arrived in our Letters To The Editor (read: email inbox) today:

"Many will recall that on July 8, 1947, witnesses claimed that an Unidentified Flying Object with five aliens aboard crashed onto a sheep and cattle ranch just outside Roswell, New Mexico. This is a well-known incident that many say has long been covered up by the U.S. Air Force and the federal government. However, what you may NOT know is that in the month of March, 1948, exactly nine months after that historic day, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfield, Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, Condolezza Rice, and Dan Quayle were all born. See what happens when aliens breed with sheep?"

Being of Pentecostal upbringing, we were naturally inclined to assume this conspiracy was true - much like the Anti-Christ's message in the Procter & Gamble logo. And that Marilyn did not commit suicide. And the black helicopters one. At a bare minimum, we giggled at the coincidence and concurred with the conclusion.

But alas, our crack research staff, which would skip their mother's funeral to de-bunk a funny story, had to go and let all of the air out of this one by looking up the aforementioned's dates of birth. Assholes.

George W. Bush was born on July 6, 1946, before the alien landing, but still a day that will live in infamy. However, exactly 9 months before he emerged from Barbara's fetid womb, on October 6, 1945, General Dwight D. Eisenhower was welcomed into Berlin aboard Hitler's very own train. Coincidence? We think not.

Richard (Ohmigodwhata) "Dick" Cheney was born January 30, 1941, again, before the alien landing. However, at the time of his conception, on April 30, 1940, Brooklyn Dodger Ted Carleton threw a no-hitter against the Cincinnati Reds. The Cincinnati Reds were later owned by a vile woman named Marge Schottenheimer who ate poodles for fun. Coincidence? We think not.

Donald (Rummy) Rumsfeld was born July 9, 1932 in Chicago, before the aliens were born. However, 9 months earlier, on Sept. 27, 1931, the beloved Chicago Bears had been shut out 7-0 by their arch rival Green Bay Packers in the universally reviled state of Wisconsin. Consumed by bitterness and disappointment, Rumsfeld's parents conceived a prodigy whose spit would dissolve concrete.

Bill O'Reilly was born on Sept. 10, 1949. However, on December 10, 1948, exactly 9 months prior, the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 19 of which says, "Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression..." They clearly had no idea that on this very day in New York City, William and Angela O'Reilly were in flagrante delicto humping their hearts out to create the child who would one day be Bill O'Reilly. We firmly believe, had they known, not only would the U.N. have left out that article, but that authorities would have shot William and Angela O'Reilly on the spot in a clearly accidental incident.

Condoleezza Rice was born November 14, 1954, about the time the aliens had entered 2nd grade in Roswell. However, nine months earlier, on February 14, 1954 - you guessed it - Valentine's Day. Also, then-Senator John F. Kennedy appeared on Meet The Press. That same year saw the first network news broadcast - in color. The only mildly humorous thing that leaps to mind has to do with colored Democrats, who are unanimously opposed to Condie Rice and her hair. So we respectfully take a pass on this one.

Rush Limbaugh, a name we had intended never to type, was born on a cold, cold day: January 12, 1951, again, well after the alien landing in Roswell. However, some nine months earlier, on April 12, 1950, Eleanor Roosevelt wrote in her diary (we swear on all that we hold holy this is not fiction): "If there is one thing that enrages anyone who has an interest in young people, it is that it should be possible for teen-age youngsters to obtain narcotics and become addicts. If it is possible to clamp down hard on every narcotic peddler, it must be done—and done right away." You can look it up. We were shocked at the coincidence. But then our Prayer-A-Day calendar reminded us that there are no coincidences. So there you have it. At conception, he was cursed to at least addiction by Eleanor Roosevelt's private precursor to Just Say No.

Dan "Spelling Bee" Quayle, was born February 4, 1947, a mere 6 months after the alien landing. Assuming that alien offspring may mature faster in utero, we are completely willing to believe that former Vice-President Quayle is, indeed, the offspring of Extra-terrestrials and sheep. However, nine months prior to his unfortunate birth, on May 4, 1946, President Harry S. Truman misspelled the word "Nuremberg" in a letter written to Mr. Willis Smith, President of the U.S. Bar Association, thanking him for his trip to "Nurmberg" concerning the trying of Nazi War Criminals. (We did not make that one up, either.)

Our conclusion? The truth is almost always stranger and more frightening than fiction. But we will be trying to get our Research Staff laid so that they don't waste another day debunking simple jokes we receive in the office.

Foreign Policy: The Lost Puppy Approach

"We want to defeat them there, so we don't have to face them here...If we retreat -- were to retreat from Iraq, what's interesting and different about this war is that the enemy would follow us here. " - Pres. Geo. W. Bush, April 10, 2007 to a Fairfax, Va. American Legion post.

We would like to assure Our Only President that the flaws in his reasoning are understandable, but disappointingly untrue, nonetheless. When this line began falling upon our constantly pricked-up ears 5 years ago, we thought something sounded slightly amiss. Before we issued an official policy statement, however, we decided to do some research of our own.

First, we went to a Kansas City drinking and dancing establishment, inserted ourselves into the mix of writhing, sweating, heaving chests and chatted up several of the locals. Upon leaving, we asked an objective bystander (a homeless man who will do anything for a cigarette and the ice from your drink) to count how many of the locals followed us home. We regret to inform you that despite leaving our address on countless tables and walls, no one followed us home.

Strike One for the President's Theory.

Next, we attended an Earth Day celebration where domesticated animals roamed freely amongst women with arm pit hair and men who had eschewed deodorant in 1963. We had filled our pockets with Liva Snacks to increase our - and the President's - chances of being successful. Again, no luck. No dogs followed us home. But "Prairie Princess" calls once a week to see if we're available for a vanilla chai and a nude fire circle come the next full moon.

Strike Two for the President's Theory.

We allowed for the notion that perhaps this only works when there is an ocean involved. So, being on a limited corporate travel budget, we hopped from Houston to Ft. Lauderdale. We stood on the beaches of Ft. Lauderdale expecting legions of Houstonians to come swimming ashore at any minute. Again, sundown came and aside from sand in our shoes, nothing came home with us.

Strike Three for the President's Theory...and now we're convinced.

We don't get a lot of muslims in Kansas, so finding an actual citizen of the Axis of Evil was difficult. Thanks to the Internet, however, we did connect with a Koran-wielding Cake Decorator on a popular hook-up site. Ali Koresh Raflahegi assured us that Rand McNally revealed the whereabouts of The New World to most of Asia shortly after Christopher Columbus returned from schtupping deliciously dark-skinned natives on our friendly shores. "We don't need to follow your troops home to find you," Ali noted. "We have MapQuest."

Well, color us embarrassed. We're sending an urgent cable to Our Only President post-haste to inform him of these developments. It is our hope that he will cease his suggestion that terrorists don't know the way to San Jose unless they have someone to follow.

In fact, we hope he stops speaking altogether.

(Our thanks to the Science and Research Staff of "So My Therapist Says" for their many contributions to this report.)

Vermont Impeaches Bush....Or Something

Vermont Senate Calls for Bush Impeachment
Lawmakers Also Call for Impeachment of Cheney
By ROSS SNEYD
AP
MONTPELIER, Vt. (April 20) -
Vermont senators voted Friday to call for the impeachment of President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney , saying their actions have raised "serious questions of constitutionality."

In related developments, Georgia disbanded the New York Yankees, saying they have "serious questions" about the nature of the relationship between Alex Rodriguez and Derek Jeter.

Maryland disbanded the Rocky Mountains, with their state legislature voting 24-7 that the range was "a royal pain in the ass, impassable for 10 out of 12 months".

And Arkansas disbanded Texas...just for spite.

No word from either Bush or Cheney as to whether they pissed themselves upon hearing of the Vermont vote. But Wolf Blitzer reportedly suffered priapism when considering how much air time this could fill.

Condie To The Rescue/What's With The Hair?

Bereft for weeks of anything to say about the John (Don) Imus "Nappy Headed Ho's" brouhaha, Our Only President Bush suddenly remembered that he knew a Person Of Color who could offer comment on behalf of the administration:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, the highest-ranking black woman in government history, said the racist, sexist comments that got radio shock jock Don Imus fired were "disgusting."

We here at SMTS couldn't agree more and congratulate the Administration for remembering Dr. Rice's presence, not to mention her race. We would gently suggest, with all due respect, that someone look under that ever-present 1966 "That Girl" Marlo Thomas flip for a healthy portion of the 5,000,000 missing White House Emails.

Nobody wears a 40 year-old hairstyle without having an ulterior motive. $20 says Karl Rove put her up to it. Apparently in the course of Staying The Course, the emails, most coarse, went off course, of course.

We believe a summary apology is due the nation in general and Hillary Rodham Clinton, in particular. After all, these are the same people who had projectile diarrhea for years over a few missing billing files from her pre-First Lady years. Those files turned up on the coffee table - like they do. But not FIVE MILLION of them.

We're betting Bill and Melinda Gates laughed themselves into foreplay at the very notion that 5 Million emails could simply disappear. We also believe they are probably permanently banned from the White House on the off chance that they know the point-and-click method of retrieving the irretrievable. Further, no 6th grade prodigies will be allowed past the Rose Garden for the same reasons.

The folks over at Apple have been issued dinner invitations, in contrast. White House Spokeswoman Dana Perino giggled behind her hand when questioned about the Apple invites before recovering and responding that "Nobody here uses a Mac. I just wanted to meet the guy in their Mac/PC commercials."

We still say, "The hair. Check under the hair."

Hey, D.A.-for-now Mike Nifong, Durham, N.C. prosecuting attorney in the Duke LaCrosse rape-case-turned-apology-fest is probably shopping his resume. I bet HE could find 5 million emails in no time! And even if he couldn't, he could charge an entire athletic team with their theft - just on principle!

Never ignore the obvious option.

Takes One To Make One

This man is an asshole:

Shiite Cleric Calls for Attacks on U.S. Soldiers
Deaths of Ten More American Troops Announced
By STEVEN R. HURST
AP
BAGHDAD (April 8) - The powerful Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr ordered his militiamen on Sunday to redouble their battle to oust American forces and argued that Iraq 's army and police should join him in defeating "your archenemy." The U.S. military announced the weekend deaths of 10 American soldiers, including six killed on Sunday.

Monsieur al-Sadr may well have been an asshole from birth. He was likely the kid who tromped on your grandma's peonies just as they bloomed or who put gum in your hair or who kicked your ass once a week after school. He, like most assholes, probably has a lengthy list of very plausible explanations for his seemingly maniacal persona.

We also know, however, that not every creep of a kid grows up to be a world-class inciter of violence. Sure, you get your Hitlers, Mussolinis and Reagans who grow up to sanction wholesale slaughter. But developing a reliable profile on these assholes is tough. By the time their tendency toward anusdom is fully matured, it's generally too late to do anything about it - absent lethal force or Alzheimer's.

Nature or nurture? Like we'll ever know. The more the Human Genome Project tells us about the wondrous possibilities in our DNA, the more I think we're going to end up knowing where it all comes from. I also fear we'll not be able to do a thing about it. It reminds me of the tiny snag in a cashmere sweater that once pulled becomes a $450 scar across your chest. Identifying the problem is SUCH a long way from knowing how to fix it.

Of this one thing I am sure: Assholes Multiply. Drop one into a population pool and in no time at all, you will have three. Like Sea Monkeys...only less mysterious and far more annoying. To bring things to a finer point: Nobody had ever heard of this asshole until the last few years. Unremarkably, the key event immediately preceding his emergence on the world stage was an encounter with another world class asshole, thus proving my hypothesis.

So while I cringe at the news reports that I am now the "arch enemy" of an unattractive man I've never met, I will rest assured that I know how this happened. Typically, it takes me 72 hours to earn the label of "arch enemy" (I know this because I was told as much). In this case, we owe this latest asshole to one we know all too well:

It's no longer even a matter of serious debate as to whether this asshole should have our citizens where the other asshole can reach them with your average pistol. The turbaned asshole would surely have erupted into murderous rage owing to his upbringing, a dead-end job, a relationship gone wrong, or an unfortunately undersized penis. He didn't need our help. But hey...as long as we're willing to be on the wrong end of target practice, the guy will delay his own foray into therapy because we're a convenient excuse for his anger.

As to our own asshole, we have the blessed assurance that he'll be a bad memory in about 18 months. Then we get a new asshole, I'm sure. Jaded? Lord, no! Who wouldn't like a new asshole? They wear out, wear thin, can itch, bleed or even prolapse ( I saw that in a video once and swore off anal sex for a full day). A new asshole is a new beginning, a chance to start over, use better lube, make more responsible toilet tissue choices.

So while our current asshole may be multiplying like a hermaphrodite rabbit in the Land of Sand and Burkas, take cheer! Your new asshole is in the mail. We can only hope that the old one hasn't doomed the new one to a legacy of cleaning up after his ass.

But that's just the sort of thing a true asshole would do.