Attempted Murder, Incorporated

Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils.
- Hector Berlioz

Some men are alive simply because it is against the law to kill them.
- Ed Howe

Look after Mr. Bond. See that some harm comes to him.
- Michael Lonsdale in "Moonraker"


[another long and droning dissertation by me, this time on the perils and pitfalls of assassination.]

Another disappointing Ides of March passes us by. Do people even celebrate this anymore?

Not that I'm in any way endorsing or suggesting that President George W. Bush, of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, D.C., 20500, should in any way by any means have some harm come to him. Not only is that wrong...morally...I guess, but it's a federal crime to even threaten the life of the President of the United States punishable by up to five years in prison. Actually I'd be lucky to make it to a comfy stateside federal prison, like, say...Leavenworth...in this day and political climate, they'd probably stuff me into a wooden crate and drop me into Camp X-Ray without a parachute. All kidding aside, assassinating President Bush would be wrong. Even if you could somehow make a moral case for it, it simply wouldn't be a good idea.

Okay. Let's say that Bush is walking down the stairs in the White House with an armload of old jazz records and he can't see his feet and he steps on the slippery carapace of an errant leatherback sea turtle that's somehow found its way into his home, and he slips and goes ass over teakettle down the stairs and breaks his neck. What does that give us? President Richard Cheney. THAT should have sent a icy chill surging through the spinal fluids of all freedom-loving Americans who might be reading this. [yeah, both of them. I need to start posting some porn on this site, maybe that would attract more readers.] Fine, nobody likes Cheney, at least nobody _I_ like. He's the Prince of Darkness, the very archetype of the hunched over, clammy-palmed, reptilian kleptocratic apparatchik who rails against the "fedrul govmint" to the pineys and the hillbillies to grab their votes with both hands while simultaneously abusing governmental authority to line up business deals to wait for him when his tenure expires at 12:00 noon Eastern Standard Time, January 20, 2009. He's a fucking cartoon. He may as well have a twirly waxed mustachio, a black stovepipe hat and cloak, and dollar signs for pupils. But what about further down the line?

Suppose our violent hypothetical rebels take out Bush AND Cheney. Or maybe the cosmic axes just decide to turn against them one fine day. Them that giveth can taketh away. Maybe the same day that Bush steps on that sea turtle, Cheney is shooting up a speedball of smack and chokes on his own vomit. [just go with it.] Who's next on the list?

The Twenty-fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution provides a lengthy and detailed list of the line of presidential succession. It has never been invoked further down than the office of vice-president, although we came close to having a Speaker of the House of Representatives in the White House during Watergate, when Nixon went a month or two with no veep. But say Bush slips and Cheney ODs. That leaves us with President John Dennis Hastert, currently Speaker of the House. You've probably never heard of him. That's because he's a nobody. Most people agree that Hastert is little more than window dressing. Remember that asshole Newt Gingrich? Well, he was toppled in an internal Republican coup, a fact seldom mentioned when Gingrich bellies up to the screen as a pundit on Fox News. He was to be succeeded by Louisiana's Bob Livingston, one of the loudest voices of outrage and disgust over Clinton's infidelities. Shockingly, though, it turns out that Livingston was a big fucking hypocrite, and resigned from the House before news of his many many infidelities was about to be printed by Hustler publisher Larry Flynt. [sidebar: Henry Hyde, the corpulent and heavily-bejowled congressman who chaired the House Judiciary Committee and directly responsible for passing Clinton's two articles of impeachment, was also subsequently exposed as a homewrecker. asshole.] So the Repubs decided they needed a faceless non-entity to put into the Speaker's chair to stay out of trouble when they ran things behind the scenes. Enter Denny Hastert, the Majority Chief Deputy Whip [the highest position appointed by the leadership rather than elected by the party members]. He knew how to take orders. Today the House of Representatives is really run by House Majority Leader Tom DeLay - a former exterminator turned hayseed congressman [can't make this stuff up], a hard-drinking whoremaster once nicknamed "Hot Tub Tommy" who has since found Jesus and blah blah blah, everything you despise about Republicans. So President Hastert might see a White House Chief of Staff DeLay running the executive branch behind the scenes the way he runs the legislative branch today.

But then a block of frozen toilet waste falls out of a passenger jet and smashes President Hastert flat, like a big, fat, green horsefly under a flyswatter. The 25th then turns to...the President pro tempore of the Senate. Who the hell is that? That's the seniormost Senator of the majority party. Currently the President pro tem is Ted Stevens of Alaska. Senator Stevens was born when Calvin Coolidge was president. For those of you who don't know when that was, it was a long, long, long time ago. Women could vote, but, it was still a new thing, men weren't totally sold on it yet. Stevens likes oil companies and they like him. He's been accused many times of trading government contracts for stock tips and insider trading information. In other words, President Stevens would kind of play like a greatest hits medley of the Reagan, Bush, and Bush Presidencies.

But then President Stevens gets mauled by a rampaging sea lion and expires. This is where it starts to get really ugly. Going down the list of succession, we'd be blessed with:

President Condoleezza Rice - Incompetent National Security Advisor who didn't realize that Islamic fundamentalists with hundreds of millions of dollars behind them would want to and could attack America, probably incompetent Secretary of State, board member of the Chevron Corporation who helped guide their policy of using mercenary troops to execute unarmed nonviolent protestors in Nigeria.

President John W. Snow - Bush's brilliant Treasury Secretary who says that deficits are okay, tax cuts are necessary, a weak dollar doesn't mean much, and private accounts are exactly what Social Security needs. Also said that the Iraq War might cost about 10 billion dollars but that's unlikely. [actual cost to date: about $156 billion and counting!] A nitwit and a yes-man.

President Donald Rumsfeld - Dear sweet baby Jesus, no.

President Alberto Gonzales - Our first Hispanic president! Also arguably our most enthusiastically "pro-torture of illegally detained foreign nationals" president. Also got Governor Bush out of jury duty in 1996 so that he wouldn't have to divulge his drunk driving conviction from the '70s. Hey, while we're at it, let's mention that Gonzales was Bush's general counsel as governor, and was responsible for Texas executing more people during that term than any other state. Oh, and he worked for Enron too.

President Gale Norton - Bush's secretary of the interior. Used to be a lobbyist for strip-mining companies, but, don't worry, there's no conflict of interest here. Another kleptocrat.

I'll spare you the rest of the list. It's just sad and depressing.

Our Cabinet really sucks.

So remember, kids: assassinating our highest leaders just devolves executive authority onto the shoulders of their corrupt and incompetant underlings. Better results might be achieved with low-yield bunker-busting tactical nuclear weapons that get everyone all at once. Or you could actually read a fucking newspaper every once in a while and take the time to vote and stop watching the MTV. But I know, politics are boring and stuff. Keep telling yourself that while your parents are driving you down to the induction center. You jerkoffs. Oh, and stay in school.