The Scallion

Disclaimer: this online political & social satire webzine is not suitable for the decerebrate (translation: our illustrious bonehead, his benighted administration, neo-ultraconservative Republicans, rabid Catholics, sheep, or their sympathizers) or for readers under age 18. As satirists, we take no responsibility if what we say is dangerously close to the truth. If you're under 18, stop reading this NOW & go turn yourself in to your Mommy for a well-deserved spanking, you no-good little whelp.

Wednesday, April 30, 2003

“If You Don't Love Bush, Move” Cuts Both Ways

We of The Scallion have been hearing the following variations on a theme with increasing frequency lately: “If you don't worship George W. Bush as a saint—if you don't blindly agree with the direction America is taking—then move.” The same if-you-don't-like-it-move sentiment has been a rallying cry against everyone from dyed-in-the-wool liberals to non-ideological anti-war protesters to do-nothing Democrats to moderate Republicans—even to conservative Republicans who fail in the slightest iota to toe the slavish party line.

So, we of The Scallion ask, “Where were these if-you-don't-like-it-move folks while Bill Clinton was in office—if 'America, right or wrong' is the way of the land, then why in the name of everything holy didn't they move away from America when they had the chance? It stands to reason that they'd have been serving the nation—or, at least, raising its I.Q. But, no, these fist-shakers claim to be fighting for what they believe in.

Too bad they're so eager to deny the same privilege to the rest of us.

Bush Denounces Use of Depleted Uranium in Iraq War

April 30, 2003. Today, George W. Bush officially denounced the use of depleted uranium, or DU, in anti-tank shells and other weapons the United States widely used against Iraqis during the recent hostile take-over.

One of the hardest substances known to man, DU is used to harden the tips of armor-piercing munitions, which in turn helps those munitions penetrate armor and materials that are impenetrable to ordinary materials. DU-tipped munitions are fired both by aircraft and tanks. Prior to this war, the United States used DU in the 1991 Gulf war, the Balkans, and Afghanistan. One significant difference between Gulf War I and Gulf War II is population: much of Gulf I was fought in sparsely-populated desert regions, while Gulf II was fought in and around heavily-populated Baghdad.

According to many sources, America's use of depleted uranium weapons, which are dangerously radioactive, poses grave health affects for those exposed. DU is a toxic heavy metal. It explodes on impact, leaving dust and smoke that disperse on the wind, stick to a variety of surfaces, and leech into the soil and ground water. This easily spread contaminant can easily be unwittingly inhaled or ingested. Studies have shown that DU causes cancer, DNA damage, cell death, neurological disorders, and also reproductive problems. There is a controversy over whether DU causes birth defects. These afflictions affect U.S. soldiers as well as military and civilian populations in countries where DU-treated munitions are unleashed.

Having had the evidence of DU's deleterious effects repeatedly briefed, read, tutored, explained, diagrammed, and finally shrugged and given up in disgust to him by health watch lobbyists posing incognito as the Billy Graham Family Singers, Mr. Bush stood up and formally denounced the United States's use of DU: “Our hearts and minds go with our brave, our loyal troops. They deserve the very best. So, I say, 'No more depleted yoo-rain-e-yum!'

“From now on, we only give 'em the full-strength variety! Waa-HOO!”

Tuesday, April 29, 2003

War on Iraq Solves Everything

April 28, 2003. Experts across the country agree that the United States’ recent invasion of and war on Iraq “solves everything.”

Speaking with the press today was Fred “Freakin’” Dumkopf of the New Republican Think Tank, a for-as-much-borderline-illegal-profit-as-humanly-or-inhumanly-possible enterprise slated with managing and growing the Bush family’s most darling project, “Money for the Wealthy,” which boasts the touchingly popular neocon rallying-cry mottos: “Give ‘til it hurts, or we’ll hurt you ‘til you give” and “Fork over all your money, you evil God-forsaken poverty-stricken deadbeat lowlife scum … then, perhaps, in our magnanimous graciousness, we might suffer you to live as long as you still continue to serve our avaricious purposes without your ungrateful whining.”

“Well, first of all, we must give credit where credit is due to America’s best-ever President. When the country overwhelmingly voted George Walker Bush into office fairly and squarely in the 2000 elections against his feeble, evilly corrupt Democratic opponent, whose name escapes me—but I think it rhymed with ‘bore’—America embraced a new era. Yes, a new era of inseparably intertwined church and state; ravaged natural resources; lost jobs for the working classes; lost benefits for America’s poorest citizens; monetary rape of the nation’s undeserving elderly and veterans; disenfranchisement for Blacks, who everybody knows are too stupid to vote properly—Republican—anyway; elimination of many civil liberties where the Constitution was just plain wrong; enforced conformity in thought, word, mind, and deed in lockstep with the President or suffer dire consequences; and a host of other wonderful, enlightened programs designed to enrich society’s wealthiest 1%. Who says the President isn’t a compassionate bleeding-heart liberal? If this administration’s policies aren’t tantamount to redistribution of wealth, then I don’t know what is. But I digress. The point is that America’s greatest President has single-handedly put an end to the divisive peace and ruinous prosperity that were corrupting, degrading, and destroying this great nation of ours as it mourned and languished under the iron fist of that highly educated, intelligent, and seductively personable Great Satan, Bill Clinton. We must never forget that this evil, depraved little tall good-looking man lied to the American people about blow jobs and things of little consequence to the welfare of our great republic. It serves him right that he lacked the saintly, self-righteous Republican classiness to come clean about his personal vices and, instead, lie to the American people about substantial matters of grave importance regarding the nation’s welfare, security, and, indeed, future existence—as his successor has so brilliantly and repeatedly done and will continue to do.

“So, already, the Patron Saint of Crawford, the Savior, Son of Poppy, has rescued the country from the good times that plagued it. He has saved the wretched masses from having the money, education, and freedoms to live in reasonable comfort, too closely approximating the privileged lives of America’s wealthiest. Solely for America’s benefit, he has tenderly, lovingly squandered the nation’s cash reserves—a legacy from the boom economy of the Clinton years—which could have been used to pay off the national debt or bail out Social Security. He has repeatedly cut taxes on America’s wealthiest and has vowed not to stop until the middle class is eradicated, thus gifting the nation with the only two necessary and correct classes: the obscenely rich and those who serve them. He has capitalized on the nation’s current single-party political system by bullying what was left of the Democratic Party into deliciously complete, abject, do-nothing, say-nothing submission. He has perfected corporate conglomeration and monopolization under deregulation, thus squashing the bete noir of free and fair competition at home and abroad. In his foresight and wisdom, he has marshaled the nation into a glorious new epoch of riotously deep deficit spending unrivalled even by Saint Ronald “the Gipper” Reagan. And, now, the President has solved all the rest of America’s problems with his first titillating little war-war.

“No longer will America be besieged with foreign allies. No longer will our great nation be beset by the support of friendly, indulgent governments around the world. To prove his heroism, our most perfect President has garnered the ill-will and protests of millions at home and abroad, flippantly dismissing them as a “focus group.” No longer will Americans have to suffer from safety and security at home and abroad. Yes, all Americans can now enjoy being targets of spitting, epithets, and terrorism wherever they dare go—and this used to be a rare, heady privilege reserved only for Bush administration and other Republican politicians. In this brave new era of American bullying and chip-on-shoulder militarism, our nation’s most colossally fine leader has rescued the government from even the last vestiges of accountability to anyone at home or abroad.

“More importantly, the war on Iraq has truly solved the problem of Arab and worldwide anti-Americanism at its fundamental root causes. Virtually overnight, with one sweep of its mighty arm, America has eliminated the decades of deep-rooted Arab hatred of America caused by decades of American meddling and interference in Middle Eastern affairs, coupled with unconditional support of Israel, by establishing an unflinchingly liberal, goodwill environment of hatred and fear. Why bother to address these camel-riding sand monkeys’ needs for social equality, empowerment, and modernization when it’s so much more fun to bully and bomb them into loving us and calling us “uncle”? I mean, the Bush administration and its supporters don’t even remotely support democracy, equality, or empowerment at home, so why for gosh sakes pretend to do so abroad?

“First, we invaded and bombed Afghanistan into near oblivion without any regard for the Geneva Convention or international opinion or law: civilians are still suffering over there, and less power to them. This is exactly the bomb-‘em-and-leave-‘em precedent we crucially needed to establish prior to invading Iraq. Nevermind that al Qaeda is mostly Saudi. Nevermind that we still haven’t found our best friend and ally, Osama bin Laden, to execute him for playing into our hands by providing a ready excuse for the invasion of Iraq—an invasion that the Project for a New America planned long before the Great George Bush’s shining presidency was much more than a twinkle in our eyes. Of course, we must continue to hunt down bin Laden—not only is it great fun and great sport, but we also must eventually silence him and prevent him from reaching the vast, stupidly gullible American public with the truth behind the whole affair and his fictitious-at-best alliance with our other great friend and ally, Saddam Hussein.

“And, confidentially, just in case anyone was wondering, we could easily have removed Saddam from power by financing, arming, and staging a coup, just like we used to do in the good old CIA cloak-and-dagger days of St. Gipper, if regime change had been our only objective. But everybody knows that regime change wouldn’t have been enough to guarantee American direction of the production and sale of Iraqi oil, the dismantling of OPEC, the establishment of a U.S. and Israel-friendly puppet government in Iraq, and so on. Only an invasion could do all that. And it certainly had nothing to do with liberating anyone from anything—after all, our government finances, trains, and arms dictators and despots in all the fine arts of political oppression, cruelty, and torture. Only we call it ‘Western Studies’ these days. But I digress. The point is that, by smashing Iraq like a bug, we have succeeded in frightening the fudge out of Syria, North Korea, Egypt, Iran, and any other takers who wanted a piece of us—those commies and towelheads are all sucking up to us as fast as they can—eight ways from Sunday!—because they don’t know whose sorry ass we’ll bomb next! Of course, they’ll find out when the first bombs come whistling overhead. They can’t beat us unless they all band together to gang up on us, and they know it. And, slowly but surely, we’ll go after each of them in turn, declaring each guilty of harboring Osama or Saddam and calling each a ‘grave threat to America’s security, nay, existence.’ This is how we’ll continue to terrify the American people into unquestioning acceptance of our long overdue foreign policy of invade-and-bomb diplomacy. But, perhaps, that’s more than I should have said publicly … you won’t print that last part, will you? Gracious, I sure hope not!

“But let me get back to the point. Now that the war on Iraq has ably solved America’s last remaining problems, we as a nation have finally risen from our dark age of freedom and plenty into a new enlightened age, striving to isolate the superior American island from petty consorting with lesser, foreign savages. Under the aegis of the fundamentalist Christian right that holds all Americans in thrall, we continue to strive to divest the vulgar, common public of an undeserved largess of wealth, rights, freedoms, equalities, and privileges established by our founding forefathers. As we succeed in the great enterprise of prostituting the nation’s wealth and resources for the vainglorious gratification of the richest minority of Americans, let us hope that, some day soon, we follow up on bounteous goodness and rightness conferred through Election 2000 by, in 2004, electing George W. Bush, consummate President and amazingly superior human being, to the position of rightful Emperor and Grand Poohbah of the United States of America. Wouldn’t that be a great day for America!”

Bush Administration Firming up Next Foreign Policy Actions

April 23, 2003. From the Oval Office, Mr. Bush reminisced about his war on Iraq and began to make plans for where to take the nation's foreign policy from here. “This has been so much fun,” he sighed, “Boy, I'm just not ready for it all to be over. Now that we've fixed Saddam's little red wagon, I just don't know what to do. He should never 'of tried to kill my Poppy or hoard all that oil or buy the nuc-u-ler or bio-illogical or chimerical dubya-em-oh-dee we been selling him fro all these years,” Bush scowled. As he spoke, an aide helped him rearrange the toy tanks and soldiers that have littered the Oval Office—which Mr. Bush had turned into a makeshift wargame room months ago—for new scenarios.

As he considered a panoply of new foreign policies he could undertake, Mr. Bush's countenance brightened. “I know!” he beamed, “We can take over Egypt next.” “You mean Syria, sir,” the aide whispered. “Syria, Egypt, whatever. All I know is that we've got 'em shakin' in their boots, that's what. And I say strike while the iron's hot. But, then again, we really ought to invade those communists in Viet Nam.” “North Korea, sir.” “Duh, that's what I said. Geez. Anyway, we ought to invade North Cambodia for disrespecting our global authority. But our biggest enemy is France. Those snotty French bastards really need to be taught a lesson—they need to be shown what a democracy really is: an authoritarian, totalitarian Christian fundamentalist government what can invade people's homes and privacy and tell them exactly how to have sex and when and with whom and how many babies to have and keep them uppity females in their rightful place serving men and being spat upon by their male masters. Now that's a real man's democracy. But I'm not sure Rummy and Dickie-Boy will let me have that much fun so soon after sucker punching Saddam in the nuts. Maybe I oughtta get Poppy to talk 'em into it ...”

Bush paused, almost thoughtful. He resumed, “Maybe Iraq isn't enough oil for Rummy and Dickie-Boy. Maybe they want to overthrow Cesar Chavez.” “You mean Hugo Chavez, sir,” the aide sighed, “Cesar Chavez founded the American Farm Workers. He was a civil and social activist trying to protect migrant workers. He died ten years ago.” “An activist, huh? Well, we all know how bad them evil activists are, surrounding the White House in their pink clothes and their black clothes and their signs and puppets and flags and coffins and banners. We should definitely overthrow that bad ol' Cesar Chavez and then we can take Argentina's oil.” “Venezuela, sir.” “What-ever. What is your problem today anyway that you're being so uppity? I'll bet you skipped out on voluntary mandatory morning prayers. Go into the other room and say 'em now or consider yourself kicked to the curb, mister.”

With that, the aide left, and the press conference ended.