So let me get this straight: The White House asked a private vendor to create that "Mission Accomplished" banner and deliver it to the aircraft carrier. But they had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that the members of the USS Abraham Lincoln hung it. It was all the Navy's fault. Well, sure, any idiot can see that.

And the fact that the White House had the banner made in no way connects the White House to the fact that the president stood in front of it for his beyond-tacky photo op. Sure.

This latest "explanation" from the White House confirms how stupid the administration thinks the American public is. And so far, the American public has proven them right.

Suddenly, everyone is talking about drug addiction. Oops...make that prescription pain medication addiction. Like there's a difference.

Oh, I've heard all the arguments: Rush Limbaugh didn't steal from anyone to pay for his habit (actually, we don't know if this is true, but we'll assume it is); he began using drugs because of physical pain; he was using prescription drugs, not street drugs.

Well, for many years, I treated drug addicts, so I know a thing or two about this subject, and the desperate arguments being screamed by ditto-heads are ridiculous.

First, Limbaugh may not have taken the grocery money so he could meet his dealer, but he had a dealer. Okay, so it was his housekeeper. Do ditto-heads think she was manufacturing OxyContin in her kitchen? She was buying it on the street, from real dealers, who engage in such activities as maiming and murder. And they work for drug kingpins who engage in murder, blackmail, prostitution, and child endangerment.

They were street drugs, no doubt about it. Illegal drugs. This is how it generally goes down: Someone gets a prescription for a pain medication. After some time passes, he notices that the drug not only eases his physical pain, but also dulls his emotional pain. Soon--sometimes consciously, sometimes not--he's taking the drug even when he isn't experiencing physical pain.

Next comes addiction. The user visits many different doctors and gets many prescriptions. When that trick ceases to work, he forges prescriptions and steals drugs from friends' medicine cabinets. When those tactics become inadequate, he turns to a dealer, just like heroin and crack addicts.

This explanation is not an attempt to detract sympathy from Limbaugh's condition, but to clarify that he is indeed a drug addict, just like all the other drug addicts.

He is also a world-class hypocrite.

Human Rights Watch estimates there were 94 questionable deaths of Iraqi civilians in the 5-month period between May and September 30. These are not civilians killed by U.S. troops, but those who died under other post-war-related circumstances involving the presence of American military personnel.

According to the U.S. government, five of these deaths prompted investigations, and of those, only one is still pending. It may very well be that all 94 deaths resulted from actions that could not be helped (although Human RIghts Watch, from its own investigations, believes otherwise), but it is unfortunate that more are not being investigated.

But even that reality pales next to this one: The U.S. military does not keep statistics of civilian casualties. What an unfortunate little oversight.

So now we know why they call him "Rush."

One would expect the dittoheads to spin Limbaugh's drug addiction into a sob story, which they have, but it is the news media who is pitiful. They can't even get the words "drug addiction" to form on their lips. He is "addicted to prescription pain medication," they keep telling us.

First of all, addiction to pain medication brings about exactly the same results as addiction to any other opioid. Beyond that, however, it wasn't the prescription medication that made him deaf, got him zonked out of his mind, and turned him into a criminal. It was the thousands of illegal "prescription" pain pills he bought that did that.

But the talking heads don't want to mention that. Courtney Love OD'd, and that's because she suffers from "drug addiction," but Limbaugh is "seeking treatment for "prescription pain medication."

That old liberal media strikes again.

Think Amerika is a really progressive place? Then you haven't been to Kansas lately. Matthew Limon, a bisexual adolescent, is appealing a 17-year prison sentence. His crime? He had consensual oral sex with another teenager when he was a student at a school for the developmentally disabled.

The state of Kansas supports the sentence, which is part of an archaic code of justice. Kansas has a "Romeo and Juliet" law which provides relatively lenient sentences to heterosexual adolescents who have sexual activity. That alone is outrageous, but the attorney for the state is arguing that a lesser punishment will encourage the heterosexual teenagers to marry!

No, I didn't make it up. Kansas is really that twisted.

There's also some good (sort of) news. Remember the teenager in Philadelphia who killed himself because two police offers threatened to tell his family he was gay? A court has ordered a settlement of $100,000 for the family of the boy. It isn't much comfort, but at least it's a message.

And in Arkansas, some school officials told a teenage boy's parents that the boy was gay without getting his permission. They also made him read from the Bible, and punished him for talking about his sexual orientation.

Civil rights of any kind don't mean much in Amerika these days. And these were kids and not heterosexual, to boot. But I'm sure the people in Kansas and Arkansas feel a lot safer, knowing that their law enforcement officers and school administrators are busy saving them from adolescent boys who are attracted to other boys. You can't have enough of that Homeland Security.

Much has been made of Maryland First Lady Kendel Ehrlich's statement that "if I had an opportunity to shoot Britney Spears, I think I would," yet nothing has been made of the truly offensive thing she said immediately after the unfortunate Britney remark:

"I hate to say that, but you know, like I said, I'm raising a boy... and I think, 'Oh my goodness, what would I do if I had a daughter who is seeing these images and having peer pressure?' "

Well, good for Ehrlich. Her son can look at stimulating sexual images all he wants and be subjected to massive peer pressure, and she doesn't have to worry about it. After all, young girls have sex and get pregnant all by themselves.

The notion that girls must be protected and preached to, and boys can just go on being boys is not only a direct sabotage of any hope of teaching responsible sexuality--it is also the guiding concept behind all sexism. For an influential woman to promote the double standard in 21st Century America is frightening and disgusting.

"There's nothing good about drug use. We know it. It destroys individuals. It destroys families. Drug use destroys societies. Drug use, some might say, is destroying this country. And we have laws against selling drugs, pushing drugs, using drugs, importing drugs. And the laws are good because we know what happens to people in societies and neighborhoods which become consumed by them. And so if people are violating the law by doing drugs, they ought to be accused and they ought to be convicted and they ought to be sent up."
Rush Limbaugh

Ditto!

It is barely mid-morning, and the jokes are coming hard and fast.

The president is on TV, giving a speech to a gathering of the National Guard, and saying that small businesses are the key to America's economy, so we must support them. Would that include, I wonder, putting them in a position which forces them into closure and bankruptcy, as this administration has done?

Joke of the Day: On the handling of Iraq: "I acted because I was not about to leave the security of the American people in the hands of a madman."

But wait--there's more! The FBI has bugged Philadelphia mayor John Street's office, just prior to the mayoral election. The FBI maintains that the bugging is, of course, in no way related to the upcoming election.

Yesterday morning, federal agents raided a small financial firm run by two of the mayor's supporters, including one of Philadelphia's most prominent Muslim leaders. According the FBI, the firm got a no-bid city contract to collect delinquent taxes.

So here is a big fat obvious question: Are there FBI bugs in Dick Cheney's office?! Because what Halliburton and its subsidiaries--plus several other companies--obtained in Iraq are no-bid (and in some cases, unnecessary) contracts for billions of dollars. Where, oh where, are the little listening devices in the bunker, or wherever the hell Cheney lives?

I was glad when I heard that anchorwoman Soledad O'Brien was joining the staff at the yahoo yuk-fest commonly known as CNN. I thought she would definitely class the place up with her insight and wit. But she appears to have drunk from the same water fountain as Paula Zahn, who was also smart and articulate before she joined the CNN ranks.

This morning, when a guest on her show made the logical remark that candidate Schwarzenegger may be facing the consequences of an investigation of potentially criminal activity, O'Brien rolled her eyes and looked incredulous.

"Criminal?!" she said with a definite oh, please expression on her shocked face.

Someone needs to explain to Harvard-educated O'Brien that in America, sexual assault and battery are crimes.

Someone needs to explain it to a good portion of the state of California, for that matter.

It is obvious at this point (actually, it has been obvious for a long time) that Arnold Schwarzenegger is not only a misogynist, but also a person who commits sex crimes. It is also obvious that that is okay with a lot of people in California, okay with the Republican "family values" Party, and okay with the likes of Chris Matthews and his talking head android counterparts.

It should also be obvious that it is also okay with Schwarzenegger's wife, Maria Shriver. Just how complicit Shriver is, however, becomes apparent when we look at a revolting piece of internalized gender-hating, revealed by the NBC journalist during an interview she did with Karen Pomer, a rape survivor and a leading advocate for rape survivors in California.

Pomer was interviewed by Shriver for the program,
Dateline. When the interview was over, Shriver said, matter-of-factly to Pomer "If I had been raped, my husband would leave me because, after all, I would be damaged goods."

According to Pomer, a stunned silence went over the room after Shriver made this revelation. We know, of course, that a woman who lives with a sexual abuser is not a woman with much self-respect, but it is still chilling to hear this story, and to know that there are still women in America who believe such utter, evil nonsense.

Greg Palast, in his October 3 column, reminds us that Arnold Schwarzenegger has yet to deny that in May of 2001, he attended a meeting with Kenneth Lay and Michael Milken at the Peninsula Hotel in Los Angeles.

Enron memoranda point to the meeting as a conspiracy to destroy a Davis-Bustamante plan that would have forced Enron to pay back the $9 billion in illicit profits they bilked from the state of California. It is no coincidence that Schwarzenegger emerged as the chief Republican candidate for governor of a state that the Republican party is desperate to dominate.

As for Republican "values"--they apparently don't include a prohibition against the sexual assault of women. But that isn't just a Republican issue; it is part of the tremendous American backlash against the women's movement. Schwarzenegger's behavior--which has been documented for decades--is criminal. It is only a pity that his victims have felt too intimidated by the Hollywood culture--and the American culture--to report it to the police.

And it is both sad and frightening to see so many people in California seek messianic assistance from the very group who has made it a goal to destroy California.