January 31-February 6, 2008
editorial@boulderweekly.com

Bush’s swan song
President Bush on Monday used his final State of the Union address to put as positive as possible a spin on his seven-year-long disastrous presidency and to outline a modest agenda for his remaining year in office.

The address, delivered before a joint session of Congress that featured politicos looking uninmpressed and sitting in silence, seemed aimed more at what presidential advisers called “realistic” goals for the year than trying to tackle major new challenges.

Bush summarized his primary goal for his last year in office as “trying real hard not to fuck anything else up.”

According to one Washington insider, the lack of wild applause and blank looks on the faces of most members of Congress stemmed not from lack of enthusiasm for this program, but out of concern as to whether it actually is realistic, given Bush’s demonstrated record of turning everything he touches to crap.

Some of his most notable accomplishments while president include: speeding the U.S. economy toward recession; watching the housing market plummet to a new nadir; favoring tax cuts for the rich and sleazy schemes that help them get richer at the expense of the poor; destabilizing the Middle East by lying to start a war; enriching cronies with U.S. taxpayer dollars; ignoring global climate change; empowering religious fundamentalists in the United States while bombing them abroad; mispronouncing words that most fourth-graders have mastered; and looking really stupid.

Some 89 percent of Americans were pleased by Bush’s speech, mostly because it’s the last State of the Union address he’ll ever give.

Sticks and stones
What starts with a “C” ends with “T” and has a “U” and an “N” in the middle? It’s our favorite word here in the newsroom when speaking of right-wing groupie Ann Coulter. No, it’s not politically correct to refer to her using that word, but she’s more than earned it. And life isn’t about just being politically correct.

Face it — both left and right take their pot shots, and how you feel about what’s said often depends on which side of the insult you’re on. Which is why it doesn’t make sense for the great folks at ProgressNow.org to get twirked over Jon Caldera’s use of the term “bitch-slap.” Caldera, president of the Golden-based Independence Institute, used the term on the air when discussing the ongoing hostility between U.S. Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama after Obama made a particularly witty comment. Was it fair, he asked Coulter, to say that Hillary “got bitch-slapped tonight”?

ProgressNow.org is a great organization with its heart in the right place. But it errs when it calls on those who support programming at KOA Radio to pull their funding over Caldera’s use of the offensive phrase. ProgressNow has not asked the advertisers of this paper — in which the term has appeared several times — to withdraw their support.

It seems a bit like a double standard when independent, progressive media can get away with using the word, while Caldera, who is hardly the most offensive right-wing ideologue out there, gets, well, bitch-slapped for it.

As for our little riddle, you probably guessed that we think Ann Coulter is nothing more than a big, hairy coconut.

A Dickipedia entry for Bruce
Douglas Edward Bruce (born Aug. 19, 1949) is a representative in the U.S. state of Colorado, a conservative activist and a dick.
Bruce grew up in Hollywood, Calif., where he met and learned from several other dicks. After graduating from college and participating in a failed, short-lived political campaign, Bruce began investing in real estate and purchased several properties in Colorado. Ready to spread his dickishness beyond the state lines of California, Bruce moved to Colorado in 1986. With several properties throughout the southern portion of the state, Bruce was cited on multiple occasions for failure to upkeep his properties and for being a dick.

In 1992, Bruce spearheaded the successful initiation of the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights (TABOR), a bill that mandated voter approval of any tax increases, hamstringing the state budget and harming programs like health care and education. So that other Colorado drivers would be aware of their close proximity to a total dick, Bruce placed a vanity license plate on his vehicle that read “MRTABOR.”

Bruce is now most widely recognized as being the only dick in the 131-year history of the legislature to be officially censured. The censuring came about in January of 2008, after Bruce kicked a newspaper photographer for taking his picture during a prayer. Bruce refused to apologize to the photographer and was a total dick about the incident. During his defensive speech in front of fellow House representatives, Bruce dickishly compared himself to Jimmy Stewart’s character in the film, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Fellow House members were not impressed by his cinematic comparisons and informed Bruce that this is not a 1939 movie and that he is not James Stewart, but rather a pompous dick. The House cast 62 votes for censure, while only one dick voted in favor of Bruce.

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