The State of Our Onion is Strong

I. Scary

I don't know if you heard about this, but the day after George W. Bush's most recent State of the Union address, he spoke to a group of supporters in Nashville. While there, he was heard to ask, "Wouldn't it be cool to give a State of the Union speech wearing a Porter Waggoner suit?"

Ahem. My rebuttal... No! No, you Smirking Marionette, it would not be "cool!" Even now, several months later, I still get dark spots around the edges of my vision whenever I think about it, because my brain is diverting power away from basic systems in a supreme effort to come up with something --anything!-- just a little bit more uncool than that. So far, I haven't...

Oh. Oh, wait. Yeah, I think maybe I've got it: If you and your entire administration were to tell a bunch of baldfaced lies to --oh, I don't know-- justify sending thousands of citizens to die in desert fatigues in the unwarranted (there's that word again) invasion and occupation of a foreign sovereignty... That would be pretty uncool, you pandering little putz.

So thank you, King George II. I can feel my feet again.

II. Scarier

During the same public appearance, The Smirking Marionette also stated that in addition to being the nation's commander-in-chief, he also considered himself its educator-in-chief.

I'd like to repeat that: George W. Bush, educator-in-chief.

Now, don't get me wrong. It doesn't bother me that he says "Nu-Q-Ler" instead of "nuclear." Really, it doesn't. Plenty of people do that. Heck, I've probably done it myself after four or five sour mashes. No, what bothers me is that I can't be sure he doesn't think Nu-Q-Ler was Condoleezza Rice's sorority in college. Or, possibly, an obscure southwestern dish involving mesquite and a jackalope. But what really bothers me are things like this: (a) He unleashed upon the English language words like "sublimina-bubble" during his 2000 Presidential campaign; (b) He got elected anyway.

And even he is smart enough to recognize how [coitated]-up that is. Why do you think he smirks so much? I'll tell you why. I have seen that smirk before. It's the very same look my little brother used to get on his face when we were kids and he was getting away with something he knew he wasn't supposed to, right under our parents' noses.

III. Scariest

That faint, almost sublimina-bubble (hey, when in Rome) ticking sound that you keep telling yourself you only think you hear is very, very real. It is the sound of a clock, buried deep in a Wyoming bunker, counting down the minutes until This Blinkin' Administration gets the 22nd Amendment repealed. Now before you go cracking the spine on that mint condition, pocket-sized, booklet-form edition of The Constitution that you have buried in a cardboard box somewhere, let me save you the trouble: The 22nd Amendment is the one pertaining to Presidential term limits. If the Republicans retain control of Congress, y'see, they will repeal the 22nd Amendment so Georgie can run again, under the pretext of an ongoing War on Terror and the fact that the Democrats still don't have anybody, anyway. Then The Blinkin' Administration will throw a big party at the White House. Dick "Chancellor Palpatine" Cheney will pull his face into that pained grimace of a ravenous carnivore expression that he thinks looks like a smile, clap The Smirking Marionette on the shoulder and present him with a congratulatory pallet of pretzels.

Actually, it probably won't go down like that. Too much red tape. This is the gang, after all, that couldn't be bothered with the formality of taking their surveilance plan to a rubber-stamp committee like the FISA court. No, based on their track record, it is more in keeping with This Blinkin' Administration's style to simply ignore the 22nd Amendment altogether, and shoot anybody who tries to take office.

IV. The State of Our Onion is Strong

The city of Chicago derives its name from the French fur traders who first settled the site. They spelled it "Chicagoua," because of a requirement, under French law, mandating the use of more letters than necessary in every word.* The fur traders, in turn, got the name from a phrase that the Potawatomi used to describe the place. Loosely translated, they called it "the place that is strong with the stench of wild onions."**

*I made this one up.
**This one is actually true.
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P.S... Bud "Don't Do What's Right, Just Do What's Gimicky" Selig must go.