[wordup] Hunter S. Thompson on the upcoming election

[Adam Shand]

> War is an option whose time has passed. Peace is the only option for  
> the future. At present we occupy a treacherous no-man's-land between  
> peace and war, a time of growing fear that our military might has  
> expanded beyond our capacity to control it and our political  
> differences widened beyond our ability to bridge them ...
>
> Short of changing human nature, therefore, the only way to achieve a  
> practical, livable peace in a world of competing nations is to take  
> the profit out of war.  --RICHARD M. NIXON, "REAL PEACE" (1983)

Richard Nixon looks like a flaming liberal today, compared to a golem  
like George Bush. Indeed. Where is Richard Nixon now that we finally  
need him?

If Nixon were running for president today, he would be seen as a  
"liberal" candidate, and he would probably win. He was a crook and a  
bungler, but what the hell? Nixon was a barrel of laughs compared to  
this gang of thugs from the Halliburton petroleum organization who are  
running the White House today -- and who will be running it this time  
next year, if we (the once-proud, once-loved and widely respected  
"American people") don't rise up like wounded warriors and whack those  
lying petroleum pimps out of the White House on November 2nd.

[...]

Your neighbor's grandchildren will be fighting this stupid,  
greed-crazed Bush-family "war" against the whole Islamic world for the  
rest of their lives, if John Kerry is not elected to be the new  
President of the United States in November.

The question this year is not whether President Bush is acting more and  
more like the head of a fascist government but if the American people  
want it that way. That is what this election is all about. We are down  
to nut-cutting time, and millions of people are angry. They want a  
Regime Change.

Some people say that George Bush should be run down and sacrificed to  
the Rat gods. But not me. No. I say it would be a lot easier to just  
vote the bastard out of office on November 2nd.

Via: http://www.smallworks.com/archives/00000140.htm
From:  
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/_/id/6562575? 
rnd=1098487135353&has-player=true
 
Fear and Loathing, Campaign 2004
By DR. HUNTER S. THOMPSON

Armageddon came early for George Bush this year, and he was not ready  
for it. His long-awaited showdowns with my man John Kerry turned into a  
series of horrible embarrassments that cracked his nerve and  
demoralized his closest campaign advisers. They knew he would never  
recover, no matter how many votes they could steal for him in Florida,  
where the presidential debates were closely watched and widely  
celebrated by millions of Kerry supporters who suddenly had reason to  
feel like winners.

Kerry came into October as a five-point underdog with almost no chance  
of winning three out of three rigged confrontations with a treacherous  
little freak like George Bush. But the debates are over now, and the  
victor was clearly John Kerry every time. He steamrollered Bush and  
left him for roadkill.

Did you see Bush on TV, trying to debate? Jesus, he talked like a  
donkey with no brains at all. The tide turned early, in Coral Gables,  
when Bush went belly up less than halfway through his first bout with  
Kerry, who hammered poor George into jelly. It was pitiful. . . . I  
almost felt sorry for him, until I heard someone call him "Mister  
President," and then I felt ashamed.

Karl Rove, the president's political wizard, felt even worse. There is  
angst in the heart of Texas today, and panic in the bowels of the White  
House. Rove has a nasty little problem, and its name is George Bush.  
The president failed miserably from the instant he got onstage with  
John Kerry. He looked weak and dumb. Kerry beat him like a gong in  
Coral Gables, then again in St. Louis and Tempe -- and that is Rove's  
problem: His candidate is a weak-minded frat boy who cracks under  
pressure in front of 60 million voters.

That is an unacceptable failure for hardballers like Rove and Dick  
Cheney. On the undercard in Cleveland against John Edwards, Cheney came  
across as the cruel and sinister uberboss of Halliburton. In his only  
honest moment during the entire debate, he vowed, "We have to make  
America the best place in the world to do business."

Bush signed his own death warrant in the opening round, when he finally  
had to speak without his TelePrompTer. It was a Cinderella story  
brought up to date in Florida that night -- except this time the false  
prince turned back into a frog.

Immediately after the first debate ended I called Muhammad Ali at his  
home in Michigan, but whoever answered said the champ was laughing so  
hard that he couldn't come to the phone. "The debate really cracked him  
up," he chuckled. "The champ loves a good ass-whuppin'. He says Bush  
looked so scared to fight, he finally just quit and laid down."

Ali has seen that look before. Almost three months to the day after  
John Fitzgerald Kennedy was murdered in Dallas, the "Louisville Lip" --  
then Cassius Clay -- made a permanent enemy of every "boxing expert" in  
the Western world by beating World Heavyweight Champion Sonny Liston so  
badly that he refused to come out of his corner for the seventh round.

This year's first presidential debate was such a disaster for George  
Bush that his handlers had to be crazy to let him get in the ring with  
John Kerry again. Yet Karl Rove let it happen, and we can only wonder  
why. But there is no doubt that the president has lost his nerve, and  
his career in the White House is finished. NO MAS.

*****

Presidential politics is a vicious business, even for rich white men,  
and anybody who gets into it should be prepared to grapple with the  
meanest of the mean. The White House has never been seized by timid  
warriors. There are no rules, and the roadside is littered with  
wreckage. That is why they call it the passing lane. Just ask any  
candidate who ever ran against George Bush -- Al Gore, Ann Richards,  
John McCain -- all of them ambushed and vanquished by lies and dirty  
tricks. And all of them still whining about it.

That is why George W. Bush is President of the United States, and Al  
Gore is not. Bush simply wanted it more, and he was willing to demolish  
anything that got in his way, including the U.S. Supreme Court. It is  
not by accident that the Bush White House (read: Dick Cheney &  
Halliburton Inc.) controls all three branches of our federal government  
today. They are powerful thugs who would far rather die than lose the  
election in November.

The Republican establishment is haunted by painful memories of what  
happened to Old Man Bush in 1992. He peaked too early, and he had no  
response to "It's the economy, stupid."

Which has always been the case. Every GOP administration since 1952 has  
let the Military-Industrial Complex loot the Treasury and plunge the  
nation into debt on the excuse of a wartime economic emergency. Richard  
Nixon comes quickly to mind, along with Ronald Reagan and his  
ridiculous "trickle-down" theory of U.S. economic policy. If the Rich  
get Richer, the theory goes, before long their pots will overflow and  
somehow "trickle down" to the poor, who would rather eat scraps off the  
Bush family plates than eat nothing at all. Republicans have never  
approved of democracy, and they never will. It goes back to  
preindustrial America, when only white male property owners could vote.

Things haven't changed all that much where George W. Bush comes from.  
Houston is a cruel and crazy town on a filthy river in East Texas with  
no zoning laws and a culture of sex, money and violence. It's a shabby  
sprawling metropolis ruled by brazen women, crooked cops and super-rich  
pansexual cowboys who live by the code of the West -- which can mean  
just about anything you need it to mean, in a pinch.

Houston is also the unnatural home of two out of the last three  
presidents of the United States of America, for good or ill. The other  
one was a handsome, sex-crazed boy from next-door Arkansas, which has  
no laws against oral sex or any other deviant practice not specifically  
forbidden in the New Testament, including anal incest and public  
cunnilingus with farm animals.

Back in 1948, during his first race for the U.S. Senate, Lyndon Johnson  
was running about ten points behind, with only nine days to go. He was  
sunk in despair. He was desperate. And it was just before noon on a  
Monday, they say, when he called his equally depressed campaign manager  
and instructed him to call a press conference for just before lunch on  
a slow news day and accuse his high-riding opponent, a pig farmer, of  
having routine carnal knowledge of his barnyard sows, despite the pleas  
of his wife and children.

His campaign manager was shocked. "We can't say that, Lyndon," he  
supposedly said. "You know it's not true."

"Of course it's not true!" Johnson barked at him. "But let's make the  
bastard deny it!"

Johnson -- a Democrat, like Bill Clinton -- won that election by fewer  
than a hundred votes, and after that he was home free. He went on to  
rule Texas and the U.S. Senate for twenty years and to be the most  
powerful vice president in the history of the United States. Until now.

*****

The genetically vicious nature of presidential campaigns in America is  
too obvious to argue with, but some people call it fun, and I am one of  
them. Election Day -- especially a presidential election -- is always a  
wild and terrifying time for politics junkies, and I am one of those,  
too. We look forward to major election days like sex addicts look  
forward to orgies. We are slaves to it.

Which is not a bad thing, all in all, for the winners. They are not the  
ones who bitch and whine about slavery when the votes are finally  
counted and the losers are forced to get down on their knees. No. The  
slaves who emerge victorious from these drastic public decisions go  
crazy with joy and plunge each other into deep tubs of chilled Cristal  
champagne with naked strangers who want to be close to a winner.

That is how it works in the victory business. You see it every time.  
The Weak will suck up to the Strong, for fear of losing their jobs and  
their money and all the fickle power they wielded only twenty-four  
hours ago. It is like suddenly losing your wife and your home in a  
vagrant poker game, then having to go on the road with whoremongers and  
beg for your dinner in public.

Nobody wants to hire a loser. Right? They stink of doom and defeat.

"What is that horrible smell in the office, Tex? It's making me sick."

"That is the smell of a Loser, Senator. He came in to apply for a job,  
but we tossed him out immediately. Sgt. Sloat took him down to the  
parking lot and taught him a lesson he will never forget."

"Good work, Tex. And how are you coming with my new Enemies List? I  
want them all locked up. They are scum."

"We will punish them brutally. They are terrorist sympathizers, and  
most of them voted against you anyway. I hate those bastards."

"Thank you, Sloat. You are a faithful servant. Come over here and kneel  
down. I want to reward you."

That is the nature of high-risk politics. Veni Vidi Vici, especially  
among Republicans. It's like the ancient Bedouin saying: As the camel  
falls to its knees, more knives are drawn.

*****

Indeed. the numbers are weird today, and so is this dangerous election.  
The time has come to rumble, to inject a bit of fun into politics.  
That's exactly what the debates did. John Kerry looked like a winner,  
and it energized his troops. Voting for Kerry is beginning to look like  
very serious fun for everybody except poor George, who now suddenly  
looks like a loser.

That is fatal in a presidential election.

I look at elections with the cool and dispassionate gaze of a  
professional gambler, especially when I'm betting real money on the  
outcome. Contrary to most conventional wisdom, I see Kerry with five  
points as a recommended risk. Kerry will win this election, if it  
happens, by a bigger margin than Bush finally gouged out of Florida in  
2000. That was about forty-six percent, plus five points for owning the  
U.S. Supreme Court -- which seemed to equal fifty-one percent. Nobody  
really believed that, but George W. Bush moved into the White House  
anyway.

It was the most brutal seizure of power since Hitler burned the German  
Reichstag in 1933 and declared himself the new Boss of Germany. Karl  
Rove is no stranger to Nazi strategy, if only because it worked, for a  
while, and it was sure as hell fun for Hitler. But not for long. He ran  
out of oil, the whole world hated him, and he liked to gobble pure  
crystal biphetamine and stay awake for eight or nine days in a row with  
his maps & his bombers & his dope-addled general staff.

They all loved the whiff. It is the perfect drug for War -- as long as  
you are winning -- and Hitler thought he was King of the Hill forever.  
He had created a new master race, and every one of them worshipped him.  
The new Hitler youth loved to march and sing songs in unison and dance  
naked at night for the generals. They were fanatics.

That was sixty-six years ago, far back in ancient history, and things  
are not much different today. We still love War.

George Bush certainly does. In four short years he has turned our  
country from a prosperous nation at peace into a desperately indebted  
nation at war. But so what? He is the President of the United States,  
and you're not. Love it or leave it.

*****

War is an option whose time has passed. Peace is the only option for  
the future. At present we occupy a treacherous no-man's-land between  
peace and war, a time of growing fear that our military might has  
expanded beyond our capacity to control it and our political  
differences widened beyond our ability to bridge them. . . .

Short of changing human nature, therefore, the only way to achieve a  
practical, livable peace in a world of competing nations is to take the  
profit out of war.
  --RICHARD M. NIXON, "REAL PEACE" (1983)

Richard Nixon looks like a flaming liberal today, compared to a golem  
like George Bush. Indeed. Where is Richard Nixon now that we finally  
need him?

If Nixon were running for president today, he would be seen as a  
"liberal" candidate, and he would probably win. He was a crook and a  
bungler, but what the hell? Nixon was a barrel of laughs compared to  
this gang of thugs from the Halliburton petroleum organization who are  
running the White House today -- and who will be running it this time  
next year, if we (the once-proud, once-loved and widely respected  
"American people") don't rise up like wounded warriors and whack those  
lying petroleum pimps out of the White House on November 2nd.

Nixon hated running for president during football season, but he did it  
anyway. Nixon was a professional politician, and I despised everything  
he stood for -- but if he were running for president this year against  
the evil Bush-Cheney gang, I would happily vote for him.

You bet. Richard Nixon would be my Man. He was a crook and a creep and  
a gin-sot, but on some nights, when he would get hammered and wander  
around in the streets, he was fun to hang out with. He would wear a  
silk sweat suit and pull a stocking down over his face so nobody could  
recognize him. Then we would get in a cab and cruise down to the  
Watergate Hotel, just for laughs.

*****

Even the Fun-hog vote has started to swing for John Kerry, and that is  
a hard bloc to move. Only a fool would try to run for president without  
the enthusiastic support of the Fun-hog vote. It is huge, and always  
available, but they will never be lured into a voting booth unless  
voting carries a promise of Fun.

At least thirty-three percent of all eligible voters in this country  
are confessed Fun-hogs, who will cave into any temptation they stumble  
on. They have always hated George Bush, but until now they had never  
made the connection between hating George Bush and voting for John  
Kerry.

The Fun-hogs are starving for anything they can laugh with, instead of  
at. But George Bush is not funny. Nobody except fellow members of the  
Petroleum Club in Houston will laugh at his silly barnyard jokes unless  
it's for money.

When young Bush was at Yale in the Sixties, he told the same joke over  
and over again for two years, according to some of his classmates. One  
of them still remembers it:

  There was a young man named Green
  Who invented a jack-off machine
  On the twenty-third stroke
  The damn thing broke
  And churned his nuts into cream.

"It was horrible to hear him tell it," said the classmate, who spoke  
only on condition of anonymity. He lifted his shirt and showed me a  
scar on his back put there by young George. "He burned this into my  
flesh with a red-hot poker," he said solemnly, "and I have hated him  
ever since. That jackass was born cruel. He burned me in the back while  
I was blindfolded. This scar will be with me forever."

There is nothing new or secret about that story. It ran on the front  
page of the Yale Daily News and caused a nasty scandal for a few weeks,  
but nobody was ever expelled for it. George did his first cover-up job.  
And he liked it.

*****

I watch three or four frantic network-news bulletins about Iraq every  
day, and it is all just fraudulent Pentagon propaganda, the absolute  
opposite of what it says: u.s. transfers sovereignty to iraqi interim  
"government." Hot damn! Iraq is finally Free, and just in time for the  
election! It is a deliberate cowardly lie. We are no more giving power  
back to the Iraqi people than we are about to stop killing them.

Your neighbor's grandchildren will be fighting this stupid,  
greed-crazed Bush-family "war" against the whole Islamic world for the  
rest of their lives, if John Kerry is not elected to be the new  
President of the United States in November.

The question this year is not whether President Bush is acting more and  
more like the head of a fascist government but if the American people  
want it that way. That is what this election is all about. We are down  
to nut-cutting time, and millions of people are angry. They want a  
Regime Change.

Some people say that George Bush should be run down and sacrificed to  
the Rat gods. But not me. No. I say it would be a lot easier to just  
vote the bastard out of office on November 2nd.

*****

BULLETIN
  KERRY WINS GONZO ENDORSMENT; DR. THOMPSON JOINS DEMOCRAT IN CALLING  
BUSH "THE SYPHILLIS PRESIDENT"
"Four more years of George Bush will be like four more years of  
syphilis," the famed author said yesterday at a hastily called press  
conference near his home in Woody Creek, Colorado. "Only a fool or a  
sucker would vote for a dangerous loser like Bush," Dr. Thompson  
warned. "He hates everything we stand for, and he knows we will vote  
against him in November."

Thompson, long known for the eerie accuracy of his political instincts,  
went on to denounce Ralph Nader as "a worthless Judas Goat with no  
moral compass."

"I endorsed John Kerry a long time ago," he said, "and I will do  
everything in my power, short of roaming the streets with a meat  
hammer, to help him be the next President of the United States."

*****

Which is true. I said all those things, and I will say them again. Of  
course I will vote for John Kerry. I have known him for thirty years as  
a good man with a brave heart -- which is more than even the  
president's friends will tell you about George W. Bush, who is also an  
old acquaintance from the white-knuckle days of yesteryear. He is hated  
all over the world, including large parts of Texas, and he is taking us  
all down with him.

Bush is a natural-born loser with a filthy-rich daddy who pimped his  
son out to rich oil-mongers. He hates music, football and sex, in no  
particular order, and he is no fun at all.

I voted for Ralph Nader in 2000, but I will not make that mistake  
again. The joke is over for Nader. He was funny once, but now he  
belongs to the dead. There is nothing funny about helping George Bush  
win Florida again. Nader is a fool, and so is anybody who votes for him  
in November -- with the obvious exception of professional Republicans  
who have paid big money to turn poor Ralph into a world-famous Judas  
Goat.

Nader has become so desperate and crazed that he's stooped to paying  
homeless people to gather signatures to get him on the ballot. In  
Pennsylvania, the petitions he submitted contained tens of thousands of  
phony signatures, including Fred Flintstone, Mickey Mouse and John  
Kerry. A judge dumped Ralph from the ballot there, saying the forms  
were "rife with forgeries" and calling it "the most deceitful and  
fraudulent exercise ever perpetrated upon this court."

But they will keep his name on the ballot in the long-suffering  
Hurricane State, which is ruled by the President's younger brother,  
Jeb, who also wants to be the next President of the United States. In  
2000, when they sent Jim Baker down to Florida, I knew it was all over.  
The fix was in. In that election, 97,488 people voted for Nader in  
Florida, and Gore lost the state by 537 votes. You don't have to be  
from Texas to understand the moral of that story. It's like being  
out-coached in the Super Bowl. There are no rules in the passing lane.  
Only losers play fair, and all winners have blood on their hands.

*****

Back in June, when John Kerry was beginning to feel like a winner, I  
had a quick little rendezvous with him on a rain-soaked runway in  
Aspen, Colorado, where he was scheduled to meet with a harem of wealthy  
campaign contributors. As we rode to the event, I told him that Bush's  
vicious goons in the White House are perfectly capable of assassinating  
Nader and blaming it on him. His staff laughed, but the Secret Service  
men didn't. Kerry quickly suggested that I might make a good running  
mate, and we reminisced about trying to end the Vietnam War in 1972.

That was the year I first met him, at a riot on that elegant little  
street in front of the White House. He was yelling into a bullhorn and  
I was trying to throw a dead, bleeding rat over a black-spike fence and  
onto the president's lawn.

We were angry and righteous in those days, and there were millions of  
us. We kicked two chief executives out of the White House because they  
were stupid warmongers. We conquered Lyndon Johnson and we stomped on  
Richard Nixon -- which wise people said was impossible, but so what? It  
was fun. We were warriors then, and our tribe was strong like a river.

That river is still running. All we have to do is get out and vote,  
while it's still legal, and we will wash those crooked warmongers out  
of the White House.

Hunter S. Thompson's latest book is "Hey Rube: Blood Sport, the Bush  
Doctrine and the Downward Spiral of Dumbness"

(Posted Oct 20, 2004)