Mad Kane’s Political Madness

While Bush and Cheney are busily threatening World War 3 over of Iran’s potential future nuclear threat, their great nuke-possessing Pakistan pal President Gen. Pervez Musharraf has declared “emergency rule.”  Are you feeling safer yet?

A pair of haiku to commemorate the occasion.

Musharraf  declares
Martial law in Pakistan.
Bush lets freedom ring.

Emergency rule.
Constitution suspension.
Dick Cheney’s wet dream.

Update: Are Bush/Cheney speechwriters working for Musharraf?

Just after midnight, General Musharraf appeared on state-run television. In a 45-minute speech, he said he had declared the emergency to limit terrorist attacks and “preserve the democratic transition that I initiated eight years back.”
…

He accused the country’s Supreme Court of releasing 61 men who he said were under investigation for terrorist activities. “Judicial activism,” he said, had demoralized the security forces, hurt the fight against terrorism and slowed the spread of democracy. “Obstacles are being created in the way of democratic process,” he said, “I think for vested, personal interests, against the interest of the country.”

Update 2: For more satire on the same topic, visit Don Davis’s Musharraf Suspends Constitution: Bush Gets ‘Pervez Envy.’

Technorati Tags: Pakistan, President Gen. Pervez Musharraf, Emergency Rule, Nukes, BlogFriday, Martial Law, Nuclear Threat

George Bush has been sounding extra whiney lately.  The poor guy!  Those abusive Dems have been torturing him, giving him a mere 98% of what he asks for.

Here’s Bush letting off steam about the possibly-in-trouble Michael Mukasey nomination for Attorney General:

“Judge Mukasey is not being treated fairly,” the president said, after taking the extraordinary step of inviting a group of reporters into the Oval Office to vent his feelings. Sitting behind his desk and leaning back in his chair, Mr. Bush said he was concerned that some people may have “lost sight of the fact that we’re at war.”

And that brings me to my latest limerick:

Ode To Our Petulant Prez
By Madeleine Begun Kane

“Dems are mean to Mukasey, who’s great,”
Bitches Dub, sounding rather irate.
“Don’t they know we’re at war?
Dems are making me sore!
They must do what I want.  No debate!”

Technorati Tags: President Bush, Michael Mukasey Humor, Attorney General Hearings, Torture Satire, Mukasey Limerick

So Karen Hughes has resigned from her job to “promote America’s values and confront ideological support for terrorism around the world.” Hmmm.  Could she have been involuntarily slated for an assignment in Iraq? Probably not, but it’s an amusing fantasy. In any event, it’s haiku time:

Heckofa Job, Karen!
By Madeleine Begun Kane

Karen Hughes resigned
From her boost-our-image job.
Mission accomplished?

(You can find more of my Karen Hughes humor here and here.)

Technorati Tags: Karen Hughes Humor, U.S. Image Problems, American Values, U.S. Dept of State

Did you know that Rudy Giuliani is a poet?  Me neither.  So I was really surprised to unearth the poetry of Rudy Giuliani. Here are six poems I found in the Rudy Reader:

Police the skies.
Cede to lawful authority.
The era of fear.

America needs to be defended.
This is not the product of accident.
This is a business.
This is the product of design.

Freedom is about authority.
I hate to toot my own horn,
But that’s what I’m good at.

Chinese people always skinny, never fat.
Who knows why those things happen?

You have less of a chance of being murdered,
Mugged, beaten or robbed here,
Than just about any place in any large city in Texas.
Thank God George Bush is our President.
Let’s now make this kind of a permanent condition.

Yes, I’m running.
Relax and deal with it.

(Editor’s Note Regarding Rudy’s “Found Poetry”:  All the above words came out of Rudy Giuliani’s mouth, although not necessarily in the order presented. For more info about “found poetry” check out this post.)

Technorati Tags: Rudy Giuliani Verse, Found Poetry, Political Humor

Condi Rice’s testimony this past week, in which she belligerently defended the State Department’s work in Iraq, was her first appearance before a Democratically-controlled House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. True to form, she blamed everything but the Bush’s many administration failures for the problems in Iraq:

Rice stated that the overthrow of Saddam Hussein and the liberation of Iraq were worth the money and sacrifice of life. She blamed the current chaos in Iraq on the previous regime, stating the stabilizing Iraq “has been harder than we thought because we didn’t realize how broken the country was under Saddam Hussein.” 

Regarding problems with contractor oversight, Rice also shirked blame, repeatedly using a fifty-dollar word that few people even know:

In response to charges that private security firms were not held accountable for their aggressive behavior, Rice dodged responsibility by repeatedly referring to a “lacuna” or a gap in the law that prevented the contractors from being prosecuted.

Condi has inspired me to write some more-serious-than-usual verse:

Pondering Condi
By Madeleine  Begun Kane

Rice shrugs off blame
For wartime’s toll.
Poor oversight?
Rice claims a hole—
A legal “lacuna”
Impedes control
Of contractor actions
On Iraq patrol.
Must fill that lacuna—
She touts that goal.
But who will fill
The lacuna in her soul?

On a lighter note, you might enjoy the Condi song parody I wrote way back when.

Technorati Tags: Condi Rice, Rice Testimony, State Department Failures, Condoleezza Rice

For some reason, blithe Dana Perino’s blasé response to a question about Bush’s $2 trillion Iraq war reminded me of two things:

1. Bush’s false claims to have inherited a recession from Bill Clinton; and

2. Bush’s vow to “solve problems, not pass them on to future presidents and future generations.”

And that brings me to my latest haiku:

The White House isn’t
Concerned about the war’s cost.
Isn’t that special?

The defendants in Valerie Plame Wilson’s lawsuit against the CIA for censoring her book, Fair Game, had better hope she never gets to trial.  I say that because I’ve heard her interviewed several times, and that woman will make one hell of a witness.

Moreover, asserting national security, in order to censor material that’s already in the public domain, sure sounds like revenge censorship to me.

And that brings me to my latest haiku:

Plame’s book censored by
Bush blackguards, who black out truths
Already revealed.

(You can find my Traitorgate song parody about Valerie Plame’s outing here.)

Technorati Tags: Valerie Plame Wilson, Outing CIA Agent, Fair Game, Plame Censorship, Plame Lawsuit

I watch George Bush in disbelief.
His lies have caused such strife and grief.
Please tell me why that man is still chief.

(You can find more disbelief here.)

Technorati Tags: President Bush, Disbelief

I’ve recently discovered the huge community of blogger-poets, many of whom make creative use of poetry prompts. Basically, inspirational poetry prompts are posted at a regular time and place, giving whoever chooses to use them a jumping off point for … whatever.

The prompt can be just about anything — a word or three or five, a photo, or even another poem.  And it’s often fascinating to see where any given prompt takes twenty, thirty or even several dozen individual poets.

I tend to post the fruit of those prompts on my non-political humor blog. But my latest haiku, inspired by the prompt “closeness” is way too political to land anywhere but here.  (Needless to say, my fellow poets took their verse in a rather less cynical direction.) 

“It’s too close to call,”
When said of elections, means
“Close enough to steal.”

(If you’re interested in poetry prompts, here are some blogs that regularly post them: Blog Friday; Haiku: One Deep Breath; Inspire Me Thursday; Little Nibbler; Miss Rumphius Effect; Poefusion; Poetic Asides; Sunday Scribblings; Totally Optional Prompts; and Weekend Wordsmith.)

UPDATE: I’m now posting limerick and haiku prompts on a weekly basis on my other blog.

Technorati Tags: Closeness, Close Elections, Poem Prompts, Poetry Prompts

I live in New York City, so I’m pretty familiar with the pros and cons of Rudy Giuliani. And yes, there are pros.  What pros?  Well, Rudy does love opera.

And as ornery, self-centered, and first amendment-hating as Rudy was during his New York City Mayor years, he never struck me as being insane. Yet his current outsized hawkishness does seem … well … crazy. So I can’t help wondering whether Rudy’s crazed warmongering is real or a ruse.  (Not that I want to find out, of course.)

Pondering Rudy (Limerick)
By Madeleine Begun Kane

Rudy acts like a war-loving crank.
Is his hawkishness feigned, else he’ll tank
As Republicans see
That he doesn’t agree
With most of the GOP plank?

Technorati Tags: Rudy Giuliani Humor, GOP Hawks, New York City Mayors

We can now add anti-Semitism to the list of Ann Coulter’s charming qualities.

Ode To Ann (ti-Semite) Coulter
By Madeleine Begun Kane

In Ann’s perfect world
There would be no Jews—
Just “perfected Christians.”
Is it malice or booze?

In Mad’s perfect world
There would be no views
Of Ann Coulter’s ravings
On the TV news.

(Note: I know I promised I’d never utter Ann Coulter’s name again, but I couldn’t help myself.)

Technorati Tags: Ann Coulter, Anti-Semitism, TV News, Perfected Christians, Media Humor

At long last, the real reason George W. Bush vetoed SCHIP:

SCHIP HAIKU
By Madeleine Begun Kane

Bush vetoed S-CHIP
Cuz he had a better plan:
No Child Left Alive.

(You can find more of my health humor here.) 

Update:
Ayn Clouter seasons
Her blog with parody poems,
Inspiring laughter.

Why did I post a haiku about Ayn Clouter?  Because she responded to my SCHIP haiku with some haiku of her own.

Technorati Tags: SCHIP Humor, Children’s Health Insurance Plan

How amusing! Karl Rove wants to be remembered for something more than just being the “Brain” of the worst President in U.S. history:

But even the cog does not want to be identified solely by his ties to the president. He knows he will go down in history as Bush’s “architect,” but he thinks he can expand his identity beyond just that. “It’s not like my life from here forward is going to be defined by it,” he said. “I have a chance to create something else. I’m not just going to be typecast as, ‘Oh, that’s the Bush guy.’”

Is Karl Rove’s Loyalty Roving? (Limerick)
By Madeleine Begun Kane

Rove’s rep is atrocious, of course.
Being known just for Bush is a source
Of embarrassment, true.
Is he starting to rue
It and suffer from seller’s remorse?

The answer to my “seller’s remorse” question is “probably not.” My guess is Rove’s huge ego will never let him admit to himself that he bet on (and sold) the wrong horse.

=========

And now some links, for your reading (and viewing) pleasure:
* The Torture Advice Column, By ‘Devil’s Advocate’
* Carnival Of Satire
* Carnival of the Liberals
* Carnival of the Insanities
* Carnival of Political Punditry
* Carnival of Principled Government

Technorati Tags: Karl Rove, President Bush

Avedon Carol is furious and so am I.  What are we mad about? Avedon’s must-read “Spitting Nails” sums it up much better than I could:

I gotta tell ya, I was pretty much speechless when I came home last night and discovered that 22 Democrats who didn’t have time to fight long and hard for our Constitutional rights, or to impose strong oversight and timelines on funding bills (or simply refuse to pass them), or even for our troops in the field to get reasonable breaks, were nevertheless willing to sign on to the GOP resolution to condemn MoveOn.org for telling the truth about David Petreaus. …

The New York Times isn’t impressed by the Dems either,
lambasting Democrats in this excellent editorial:

If you were one of the Americans waiting for Congress, under Democratic control, to show leadership on the war in Iraq, the message from the Senate is clear: “Nevermind.” The same goes for those waiting for lawmakers to fix the damage done to civil liberties by six years of President Bush and a rubber-stamp Republican Congress.

The Democrats don’t have, or can’t summon, the political strength to make sure Congress does what it is supposed to do: debate profound issues like these and take a stand. …

(Though something tells me the New York Times isn’t quite angry enough to print this ad.) 

And now it’s time for a limerick:

Democrats Make Elephants Of Themselves
By Madeleine Begun Kane

I keep waiting for Dems to unite
And fin’ly put up a good fight.
But they kowtow to Bush
And kiss GOP tush
Cuz, alas, they’re Republican-lite.

=========

Some links, for your reading and viewing pleasure:
* The Stranger’s angry too, and Digby explains why only Republicans are allowed to employ plays on words.
* Emmy Awards Show clips and quotables, courtesy of About.com’s Political Humor.
* The always funny Don Davis on Your Top Ten Headlines In Larry Craig’s Return To The Senate.
* My good pal skippy isn’t impressed with Bush’s “poetic metaphors.”
* Steve Bates, my favorite doggerelist, penned a thoughtful post about the much maligned MoveOn ad and free speech.
* Cartoonist Mr. Fish on John Kerry’s lame reaction to the tasering incident. (via OneGoodMove)
* Carnival Of Satire
* Blog Carnival of Observations On Life 

Technorati Tags: Democrats Symbol, Republicans Symbol, Elephant And Donkey, Dems Humor, Republican Lite

I don’t mean to cast aspersions on short people.  (I’m only five foot zero myself.)  But I have a totally unsubstantiated theory, and here it is: Republican politicians are, on average, shorter than Democratic politicians.  (Can you think of a better explanation for the over-compensating machismo and braggadocio that run rampant throughout the Republican party?)

Case in point: Rudy “Bald Ego” Giuliani, who out-did himself Wednesday during his European tour: 

LONDON - Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani bragged about his international celebrity Wednesday on a trans-Atlantic campaign trip in which he schmoozed with conservative idol Margaret Thatcher.

“I’m probably one of the four or five best known Americans in the world,” Giuliani told a small group of reporters at a posh London hotel as onlookers gathered in the lobby to gawk at actor Dustin Hoffman who was on a separate visit.

And that leads me to my latest haiku:

The Rudy Complex
By Madeleine Begun Kane

Giuliani brags
About how famous he is.
Like Napoleon?

So who’s ready to fund my “Are Republicans Shorter Than Democrats” study?  Nobody?  How about my “Are Republicans Balder Than Democrats” study?  

Technorati Tags: GOP Braggart, Mayor Rudy Guiliani, Overcompensation, Republican Humor, Height, Macho Politicians

Poor little innocent Alan Greenspan is shocked, SHOCKED, I TELL YOU, by the Bush administration’s budget deficits and loss of fiscal discipline. What a shame that the brilliant Greenspan was never in a position to do something it about it and maybe even prevent it.

Oh … wait. Never mind!

So are you planning to run out and buy Greenspan’s self-serving, history-rewriting The Age of Turbulence? There’s really no need to, because I’ve summed up the former Federal Reserve Chairman’s new book in a single haiku:

Curb Your Age Of Turbulence Enthusiasm
By Madeleine Begun Kane

Panning fiscal acts
He once endorsed, Greenspan feigns
Bystander status.

Technorati Tags: Alan Greenspan, Federal Reserve Chairman, Political Memoirs, Fiscal Discipline, Bush Administration, The Age Of Turbulence, Budget Deficits, Self-serving Memoir, Innocent Bystander, U.S. Budget Humor

I had to laugh when I heard about Brit Hume’s exclusive Fox interview with General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker “about the state of the Iraq war and their testimony to Congress.” What’s the matter — wasn’t Hannity available?

Petraeus and Crocker Face Hume Humiliation (Limerick)
By Madeleine Begun Kane

Gen. Petraeus and Crocker on Fox
(Not exactly the school of hard knocks)
Where they weave and they spin
And avow “We must win,”
While Brit Hume bows and kisses their socks.

And now a quick haiku about the purported Iraq violence reduction:

Reducing violence
In Iraq is quite easy:
Redefine violence.

(You can find more of my Petraeus humor here and my previous Brit Hume humor here.)

=========

And now some links, for your reading (and viewing) pleasure:
* ‘Old Navy” Stores Looted, After Hiring Rumsfeld as CEO
* About.com’s Political Humor on Bush’s Gaffes
* Hit it: morrrrrre…than the greatest polls the worrrrrld has known…
* Digby’s Overplaying Their Hand
* Exclusive! — The Patraeus testimony In advance! (Dick Polman)
* Larry Johnson on Dave Petraeus and Iraq Kabuki
* The Very Polite Matt Bai On Giuliani
* Blog Carnival of Observations On Life
* Sunday Funnies
* Carnival of Principled Government

Technorati Tags: General David Petraeus, Ambassador Ryan Crocker, Brit Hume Humor, Fox News Satire, Hannity, Iraq War, Iraq Surge, Iraq War Violence, Petraeus Congressional Testimony

Is  the American Mustache Institute (AMI) for real? When I first read about it, I figured it must surely be fictitious.  Either that  … or John Bolton’s new employer. But the AMI, a sort of mustache anti-defamation league, apparently does exist, with this as its stated goal:

To battle negative stereotyping that has accompanied the mustache since those glory years of the 1970s - the peak of mustache acceptance - fighting to create a climate of acceptance, understanding, flavor saving, and upper lip warmth for all mustached Americans alike.

I think the American Mustache Institute deserves a limerick don’t you?

Ode to Mustached Men, The Forgotten Minority
By Madeleine Begun Kane

Ending prejudice—that’s the group’s aim.
“Don’t be bigots!” its members exclaim.
What’s the bias they face?
Not their age, faith or race—
Anti-mustache behavior’s to blame.

And now it’s time for yet another poll:

Technorati Tags: Mustache, Moustache, Mustached, Moustachioed, Facial Hair Humor, Shaving, Discrimination, Bias, Prejudice, AMI, American Moustache Institute, John Bolton, Anti-defamation, U.S. Constitution

I just couldn’t resist writing some limericks about the hypocritical, gay-bashing Senator Larry Craig:

A Trio Of Limericks For Idaho Senator Larry Craig
By Madeleine Begun Kane

Craig confessed to a crime in the loo
He proclaims that he never would do,
Cuz he’s straight as can be:
He was just there to pee,
And perversions he’d always eschew.

When Larry was under arrest,
He was stressed, which is why he confessed.
All his actions are pure
And he’s really demure
And not gay … except when undressed.

Larry Craig says he has a wide stance
In the john when he zips down his pants:
He’s an innocent man.
His arrest in the can
Was an error, cuz Craig ain’t no nance.

Technorati Tags: Idaho Senator, Larry Craig, Wide Stance, Anti-Gay Politicians, Anti-Gay Legislation

Poor Alberto Gonzales!  During those countless (and fruitless) Congressional hearings, Gonzales had but one job — protect George Bush.  And so he lied, obfuscated, feigned amnesia, and did everything he could to muddy the truth.  Consequently, this George Bush line, made during the Gonzales resignation announcement, made me laugh out loud:

It’s sad that we live in a time when a talented and honorable person like Al Gonzales is impeded from doing good work because his good name was dragged through the mud for political reasons. 

Of course, the obvious question is “What good name?” But putting that aside,  Bush fails to mention the provenance of all that mud. This haiku should explain it:

Dub’s dirty secrets
Created the “mud” Bush claims
Gonzales dragged through.

(You can find more of my Alberto Gonzales humor and poems here.)

Technorati Tags: Alberto Gonzales, Resignation, Al Gonzales Good Name, Congressional Hearings, Gonzales Verse, Gonzales Poetry, Gonzales Haiku, Gonzales Lies, Gonzales Amnesia