Random Shots: Now It Can Be Told

Against the Current, No. 107, November/December 2003

R.F. Kampfer

NOT ONLY ARE there no Weapons of Mass Destruction, there is no Saddam Hussein. He died of a stroke in 1993. The Baath Party concealed his death in order to preserve their power. His public appearances were staged, first by surgically altered doubles, then by computer-generated images created by the folks who gave us Yoda and Gollum. The doubles were killed, just before the fall of Baghdad, to maintain the secret. No wonder Dubya can’t find him.

Bush is the kind of gambler who, when he loses a hand, doubles his bet on the next one. Shmucks like him keep Las Vegas in business.

Bush supporters tend to pray a lot. That’s because it would take a miracle to clear up the mess he’s made. Actually, the way things are going for Bush, he has to be watching for locusts on the horizon any day now.

Defenders of Bush’s Top Gun charade claim that nobody complained when Cher did her Salome routine aboard an aircraft carrier. (Not true.) Well, in the case of Cher it was obvious that she wasn’t hiding, or padding, anything.

If the Iraqis ever get to vote for a choice of collaborators picked by Bremer, Kampfer predicts a large majority for “none of the above.”

Plenty of Dopes

WE USED TO refer to the Democratic field of candidates as The Three Stooges or the Seven Dwarves. Now it’s approaching The Dirty Dozen.

One group of the wealthy who did not benefit from the tax cuts are those who started out poor and got rich through their own efforts, like top-ranking athletes and actors. They get to pay the top rates.

The latest device for screwing the poor is the “rent-to-buy” wheel and tire shop. Bad enough getting ripped off on luxuries.

During the 2001 British census, 390,000 people gave their religious affiliation as Jedi Knight. Do they get a holiday to celebrate the destruction of the Death Star?

In these troubled times, one can only fall back on the response of Cheech and Chong to any crisis: “We’ve got plenty of dope, so it’s all right.”

The one issue that unites the vast majority of the population is hatred of telemarketers.

One would think that NASA, by now, would have figured out how to fly the space-shuttles safely. It’s not like it’s rocket science.

Of Weapons

A NOTICE ON the bulletin board of a local high school announced a meeting of students interested in RPGs. Kampfer was greatly relieved to learn that this stood for Role-Playing Games.

Bush might as well reinstate the draft now, since there’s no way he’s going to get elected.

AK-47 rifles are one of the few things that Iraq has in surplus. So naturally Washington wants to buy several thousand more from Jordan, to equip the new Iraqi army.

Bringing Turkish troops into Iraq will only alienate the Kurds, the only consistent ally that Bush has in Iraq. (On the other hand, opposition to sending Turkish troops to Iraq might be the issue to unify all the disparate religious, political and ethnic factions in Iraq — and the Turkish people, too.)

With all the debate about same-sex marriage, it’s important to remember what the essential nature of the institution is: an arrangement for the transfer of property from one generation to the next.

The cast of “Coupling” all look to be around 30 years old, but the extent of their preoccupation with sex indicates either an abnormally prolonged adolescence or a premature mid-life crisis.

 One of the high points of the recent Labor Notes convention was a speech by Bill Fletcher of the TransAfrica forum, who spoke as if he were addressing the troops from atop an armored train. It made you want to pound the floor with your rifle butt.

ATC 107, November-December 2003