President Bush: Great President, or Greatest President?

In watching interviews with White House Spokesperson Dana Perino, Vice President Cheney, and even Bush himself, you get the sense that not only were the last eight years not a complete and utter failure, but that all those “mistakes” Bush made weren’t really his – he somehow inherited a crumbling economy, according to Bush and his revisionist scribes. In fact, once “history” has its say, Bush’s tenure will be viewed as an unqualified success. All we have to do now is sit back, relax, and wait for the history to kick in.

Pictured: History

(Of course, we have the “now” to deal with: two wars, a crumbling economy, unemployment rising, a huge deficit, worldwide terrorism on the rise, and oh yeah – where’s New Orleans again?)

Church-goers to Dems: don’t bother

The staff at Weekly Review has finally gotten around to getting some of our old videos online for all to enjoy. Most of these are from the live theater version of Weekly Review, performed at Caroline’s on Broadway.

Plenty has been said about whether or not it’s worth it for Democratic candidates to go after the ‘religious’ or ‘values’ voters. Sure, Barack Obama attends church regularly, but his pastor’s KRRRRAZY! And, anyway, isn’t he a Muslim or something? And yeah, Hilary Clinton talks a lot about her walks with Jeezus, and how forgiving her husband for his infidelity was the Christian thing to do. But isn’t it all for naught? After all, most gun-loving, chest-thumping, Bible-reading Christian Americans see the letter “D” after someone’s name and picture a limp-wristed Frenchman who wants to surrender to the nearest terrorist, right?

Well…. yeah. For the most part. It certainly doesn’t help when Chan Chandler, former pastor at the East Waynesville Baptist Church in North Carolina removed the liberal members of his congregation for – wait for it – being liberal. Apparently, church is only for those who are “Christian” in the sense that they see Jeezus as a red-blooded, flag-waving, Republican soldier who spits flames and wields an M-16.

It wasn’t until the IRS decided to investigate Chandler’s shennanigans that he was forced to resign. Before that, he regularly used the pulpit to speak on behalf of God’s messenger, President Bush. Anyway, here’s a quick glimpse into what Chandler’s sermons used to look like before he became unemployed.

Creationism Class

The staff at Weekly Review has finally gotten around to getting some of our old videos online for all to enjoy. Most of these are from the live theater version of Weekly Review, performed at Caroline’s on Broadway.

Creationism is on the rise in our local schools. Again. A book by Larry Booher called “Creation Battles Evolution” has been published in North Carolina, and some think it should be used as a science textbook. Kansas and Pennsylvania school boards are trying to force “Intelligent Design” into school’s curriculum, even though the Supreme Court has been very clear that public schools cannot teach Creationism.

Recently, the National Science Teacher’s Association has called Intelligent Design a “pseudo science”, and remarked that it has no place in the classroom. They also pointed out that they were stunned and disappointed that President Bush (clearly a scholar in his own right) endorses the teaching of Intelligent Design, which brings Biblical Creationism into American science classrooms. It does make one wonder; would the proponents of Intelligent Design (or Creationism or whatever the Religious Right wants to brand it this week) also vociferously fight for Greek Mythology to be taught in science classrooms? What about Buddhism? After all, there are plenty of creation stories out there, so why not bring them all into public schools and label them ‘science’?

We all know that fundamentalist Christians are trying to make sure that kids don’t get sent astray by evil scientists and their ‘theories’ about evolution. So, to make sure the ‘science’ of Creationism (Earth is 6,000 years old; God made everything in six 24-hour long days) gets a fair shake alongside Evolution (Earth is billions of years old; primordial soup formed the first single-cell organisms that became monkeys, then people) we’ve decided to go inside a Pennsylvania classroom to look at a Creationism Class in action.

Tic Toc Top Court

The staff at Weekly Review has finally gotten around to getting some of our old videos online for all to enjoy. Most of these are from the live theater version of Weekly Review, performed at Caroline’s on Broadway.

What does it take in this day and age to get appointed to the Supreme Court? An even-keeled reputation for fair-mindedness? A stellar portfolio of presiding over difficult cases? Charming good looks? An ethnic minority? No! Not if you’re now-Chief Justice John Roberts, who more closely resembles Otto the Inflatable Auto-Pilot from the movie Airplane than he does an actual judge.

Above: which is the real John Roberts? Can you tell?

Anyway, we’re sure that the President’s choice to tap John Roberts for the Chief Justice chair was a long and difficult one involved a dartboard and a half-empty bottle of Yagermeister, so we present to you the three top contenders at the time: Luttig, Roberts and that lovable scamp Alberto Gonzales.

Dubya and the Munitions Factory

The staff at Weekly Review has finally gotten around to getting some of our old videos online for all to enjoy. Most of these are from the live theater version of Weekly Review, performed at Caroline’s on Broadway.

What happens when you mix Charlie and the Chocolate Factory with Dubya and the international fight to secure nuclear weapon capabilities? You get this:

Bush’s Bicycle

The staff at Weekly Review has finally gotten around to getting some of our old videos online for all to enjoy. Most of these are from the live theater version of Weekly Review, performed at Caroline’s on Broadway.

Leader of the Free World. Pioneer in the War on Terror. Man of the People. Bicycle enthusiast. These are but a few ways of describing our President, who spends more time working out and on his bicycle than he does working on national security and catching Osama Bin Laden. Enjoy our spoof of Queen’s “Bicycle Race”.

I can’t believe it’s not torture!

Now that Michael Mukasey has been sworn in as the new Attorney General, the Senate decided to have him over for a chat about whether or not torture is legal. It should’ve been a very straightforward conversation. Is torture illegal? Yes. Is waterboarding torture? Yes. So, therefore, waterboarding is illegal. Very good. Moving on. Has the US subjected detainees to waterboarding? Yes. So, we oughta start an investigation on whoever was behind allowing these illegal practices to take place, right? Not so much.

Just like Nixon said, “When the President does it, it is not illegal.” Well, here we are again. Same circular logic, just new faces. Leaving aside the fact that torture doesn’t produce reliable results from detainees (just look at John McCain – he signed a confession that he was an ‘air pirate’ while being tortured by the Viet Cong), torture… is… ILLEGAL.

Prisoners of War are protected by the Geneva Convention from being tortured by their captors. We prosecuted the Japanese as war criminals when they used waterboarding on captured American soldiers. Yet now, when Bush’s Administration does it, it’s all of a sudden legal.

Well, since it is technically legal according to the Attorney General, why doesn’t everyone get in on the fun? It’s legal, right? So what’s to keep ordinary American citizens from using it as a day-to-day pastime, or just a quicker way to get the answers they need?

It’s with this in mind that the staff at Weekly Review came up with a new product to offer the American people: I Can’t Believe It’s Not Torture!

Use it to find out if your spouse has been cheating on you, get your kids to behave, and finally get that promotion you deserve at work! After all, since it’s not illegal, who’s to say Average Joe can’t dabble in a little waterboarding now and then, eh?

Bush and the blastocysts

Ah, stem-cells. Scientists propose that they may be able to help cure diseases, regrow damaged organs inside a human body, even teach white men how to dance like they know what the hell they’re doing. Alas, our President has vetoed bills that would allow for expanded research into stem-cells, as he will not “use government funds to sanction the destruction of life.”

No word yet on whether the President has come in contact with the irony of the situation, given that billions of dollars have gone to pay for the destruction of American soldier’s lives, as well as the lives of the men, women and children of Iraq who don’t happen to own any WMD’s.

Also no word yet on how private companies that independently research stem-cells are able to get away with ‘the destruction of life’ and not being thrown in jail for Blastocyst murder.

Even though America’s fertility clinics house some 400,000 frozen, unwanted embryos that, if not harvested for their stem-cells, are scheduled to be literally thrown in the trash.

Not to mention the fact that, when a couple that’s having trouble getting pregnant decides to go with in vitro fertilization, dozens if not hundreds of eggs are destroyed in the process.

What we’ve discovered at Weekly Review is that the President, intent on keeping scientific progress down to a bare minimum unborn human life safe from evil scientists that want to experiment on 24-cell ‘people’, has begun hoarding the Blastocysts in his White House bedroom. Apparently, he’ll keep them frozen and out of the reach of stem-cell researchers until he can find a mother for each and every blastocyst out there. We take you now to the White House bedroom, where President Bush is singing a gentle lullaby and putting his little Blastocyst family to bed for the night.