Monday is the fifth anniversary of IX-XI, and President Bush has apparently
decided to prepare us for our national day of mourning by delivering a
weeklong series of seminars on fear mongering.

Okay, okay, maybe "fear mongering" is a bit much. Perhaps a better phrase
would be "PR campaign of cheap political calculation," or "systematic
exploitative pandering" or "a typical sleazy example from the Karl Rove
electioneering handbook." Or as we have to come know it during the last six
years: "business as usual."

First Dubya played the Nazi card, calling Democratic plans for a phased
withdrawal of our forces from Iraq an appeasement similar to Chamberlain's
treatment of Hitler in '39. I'm surprised he didn't unveil secret footage of
Nancy Pelosi brandishing a rolled-up umbrella.

Then he played the Red Menace card, invoking Lenin and intimating a hammer
and cycle tattoo on Howard Dean's forehead invisible only due to a thickly
slapped on layer of "Dark Egyptian Number 4" makeup.

And if these two jackbooted images don't do the trick, expect to hear him
summon up other more ancient scourges like the Huns and the Mongols and the
Visigoths, in his never-ending quest to keep Americans all aquiver so we run
and hide behind his urban camouflaged pants right up until the clock strikes
8pm PST, November 7, 2006. Screw Hawaii.

Uncharacteristically, Democrats refused to curl up in their customary
flinching fetal position at the sound of the President's big bad rhetoric,
and ratcheted up their criticism of his War policies, calling for the
institutionalized *****-slapping of Donald Rumsfeld in a transparently
futile attempt to get the Secretary of Defense to join 10,000 Intel workers
in next month's unemployment line. Predictable as a papier mache roof in a
Category 3 Hurricane? Yes. But as they say about fire, it take politics to
fight politics.

White House spokesman Tony Snow knee-slapped and guffawed and scoffed at the
Democrats' proposal stating that portraying Rumsfeld as a bogeyman "may make
for good politics but makes for lousy strategy." And one can't immediately
discount that opine, because if anybody has experience with lousy
strategies, it's this White House.

An administration that strategized the best way to stem terrorist activity
was to invade a country that had none. An administration that stragetized
that applying car battery contacts to a prisoner's nipples was not torture
because it wasn't life threatening. An administration that stragetized that
causing the death of over 100,000 non-combatant Iraqis was going to win over
the hearts and minds of their countrymen. An administration that considers
the best strategist to be the one who finds the biggest stick. Do the names
***** Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and John Bolton have any meaning here?

In just one of his series of deep-tissue massages of fear and loathing, Bush
mentioned Osama bin Laden by name 18 times, conveniently neglecting to
mention it was HE who DISBANDED the CIA division devoted to finding the 6'7"
Arabian guy traipsing around the Kyhber Pass, dragging behind him a solar
powered kidney dialysis machine from the islamabad Sharper Image Catalogue.

A long long time ago, in a galaxy far far away, the President spoke to the
country of bin Laden: "He can run, but he can't hide." You know what, it's
been five years. I think they're both hiding -- one behind the billowing
skirts of the other.

Comic, writer, actor, radio talk show host, burden to his family, Will
Durst, after his vacation, doesn't need Dark Egyptian Number 4.

I know we're supposed to hold some special rememberance on the anniversary
of 9/11, but so many of us remember it every day with the sickness of
thought and action that our government spreads.