2023 marks the 20th anniversary of the BilgeBucket Gazette. Our first issue was on May 19, 2003 and we’ve been shoveling it to the public, just like the corporate media, ever since. We changed our format to a WordPress blog in 2011 so all of our earlier material was archived. We’ve been reposting many of those archived articles, headlines, photo-toons, BilgeBucket Lists and other content over the past twelve years. In honor of our 20th, and because we’re sick of the current state of affairs in the world, we’ll be reposting more items from 2003 through 2009 throughout this year.
Pat Robertson, the uber-evangelical preacher who, together with fellow holy huckster Jerry Falwell, blew hot air into the christian nationalism movement that is threatening to turn our democracy into a theocracy, died last week. We had a very poignant salute to Falwell when he died in 2007 (and repost in 2015) listing all his greatest hates so just visit that page and you’ll be up to date on Robertson’s dubious record. We’ve also had a photo-toon featuring Robertson and his exceptional ability to exaggerate, but then that’s what you should expect from an evangelical con-man. But we found another photo-toon from our November 29, 2007 issue of Robertson endorsing Rudy Giuliani for President in 2008, presumably for his role in helping New York heal after 9/11. We had an article covering that election. But this photo-toon features Robertson with Giuliani dressed in drag ala Rocky Horror Picture Show. In case you’ve forgotten, Giuliani dressed in drag on more than a few occasions including a strange one with megalomaniac man-child Donald Trump. We wonder what ultra-conservative, christian, anti-LGBTQ MAGA Morons and QAnon nutbags would say if they saw this video of Trump motorboating Rudy’s fake boobies.
Ultra-conservative televangelist Pat Robertson endorsed Rudy Giuliani for President in 2008 even though Giuliani had supported abortion and gay rights, two issues which Robertson is vehemently against, and had dressed in drag on several occasions.
2023 marks the 20th anniversary of the BilgeBucket Gazette. Our first issue was on May 19, 2003 and we’ve been shoveling it to the public, just like the corporate media, ever since. We changed our format to a WordPress blog in 2011 so all of our earlier material was archived. We’ve been reposting many of those archived articles, headlines, photo-toons, BilgeBucket Lists and other content over the past twelve years. In honor of our 20th, and because we’re sick of the current state of affairs in the world, we’ll be reposting more items from 2003 through 2009 throughout this year.
Our first post in our retrospective features our first two photo-toons from 2003. If you remember, we had just invaded and taken over Iraq. Saddam Hussein had eluded American forces and was on the run. On the legal front, the Patriot Act had been passed after 9/11 and was threatening all sorts of freedoms in the name of national security. The first toon from our June 19, 2003 issue features former Attorney General from the Bush era, authoritarian bible-thumper and Patriot Act cheerleader John Ashcroft showing off a proud purchase he made on that new website called E-bay. The second from our July 3, 2003 issue features former President and super sleuth George W. Bush boldly stating that he’ll leave no stone unturned in pursuit of Saddam Hussein, at least as long as Iraq’s leader isn’t in the same room. As you can see, our first photo-toons were simple photoshop jobbies with no word bubbles and basic, mildly humorous jabs. We’ve come a long ways since then.
Attorney General and bible thumper extraordinaire John Ashcroft shows off the Vintage 1973 Playboy he won on eBay.
President Bush vows to leave no stone unturned in his quest to find Saddam Hussein.
We’ve noted with alarm over the last twenty years the Republican party’s slide to authoritarian fascism and yes it started during the Bush administration. Remember after 9/11, Press Secretary Ari Fleischer spewed forth these chilling words that all Americans need to “watch what they say, watch what they do”, forgetting about free speech and stepping toward a big brother-esque society. The the Patriot Act was passed as if to provide an exclamation point. Of course, the crowning point of the Dubya and Dick Cheney’s presidency was the clusterf*ck quagmire in Iraq which was shoved down American’s throat with gusto by the corporate media costing us trillions of dollars over the long haul. So yeah — the Republicans have been at this kind of iron-fisted power grab for some time now.
This coming election is startling and the most dangerous of the 21st century. There are 299 out of 569 Republicans running for office who are fully on board with the Big Lie pushed by the twice impeached, classified document stealer TFG. Many of these people are guaranteed to win because of the districts, counties and states where they live. If this happens, then democracy is doomed in these places because these fascists will never allow a non-conservative, non-Republican to ever win an election again. Period. This is why we’ve highlighted the important races of Senator, Governor and Secretary of State here in Arizona, our home state. These QAnon loving loons are drunk with the Trump Kool-Aid and will no doubt push their agenda with an iron fist backed by TFG and his MAGA Moron militias, not to mention his enablers in Congress.
Republicans don’t want to govern, they want to rule with an iron fist.
It’s time to get back to our final review of Arizona GOP whack-a-doodle candidates. We’ve already mentioned fluff-brained gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake and plutocrat butt kisser senatorial candidate Blake Masters. We focus in this post on perhaps the most insidious and dangerous of the Trumphumpers, Mark Finchem, who is running for Secretary of State. In Arizona, the Secretary of State is second in command since there is no Lieutenant Governor. The Secretary of State is also in charge of certifying election results and keeping records of campaign finances. This is why Finchem is dangerous – he is an election denier and has openly stated that he would have overturned the 2020 election in favor of TFG despite there being absolutely no evidence of voter fraud. He’s also stated that if he loses the upcoming election he will not concede, just like Trump.
But first, who is Mark Finchem? The way he dresses and acts, you’d think he’s a native Arizonan. But he was born and Michigan and moved to AZ and adopted the garb and persona of a rough and ready, independent Arizonan. Basically, he’s a poser. But the conservative rubes eat it up which is why he was elected as a state representative for Legislative District 11 which represents about 225,000 Arizonans in Pinal and Pima counties which covers the northwestern parts of the Tucson metropolitan area up to Casa Grande and Maricopa. Finchem’s been married four times, so he’s got TFG beat there. Other Arizona Republicans have called Finchem a “political gadfly” and “one of the dumbest” members of the state legislature.
The bottom line is this, folks: Mark Finchem is a bat shit insane, QAnon, Oath Keeper, fascist nutcase and is an absolute danger to Democracy. If he is elected Secretary of State, he will guarantee that only Republicans will win key offices in upcoming elections which is not only undemocratic but out and out fascism. We Arizonans need to make sure to vote him out this November 8th or we will never have fair elections in this state again and it might start an unfortunate trend that goes nationwide.
Update 9/26/22: Here are a couple more links to stories about Finchem.
Oath Keeper, QAnon whackadoodle and supporter of Trumps Big Lie, Mark Finchem, guarantees that if elected he will ensure fair and balanced elections where no Democrats will ever hold elective office again but is in no way fascist.
So, let’s delve into that warped mind that is Donald Trump. Let’s imagine what it was like on that fateful day back on September 11, 2001, when Golden Man of Truth, Donald Trump, the muscles of his sculptured body rippling, stepped to the forefront upon a piece of wreckage and proclaimed to the weary firefighters, “Follow me, boys”; and then proceeded to save the soul of not only New Yorkers but all Americans. It’s all there folks, in Donald Trump’s imagination.
America’s CEO/Dictator, pathological prevaricator and man with a perpetual case of liarrhea, Donald Trump, recently regaled the masses with the story of how on 9/11, he stepped to the forefront and bravely led the first responders in rescuing many New Yorkers and saving the soul of America.
In honor of ‘the Donald’ leading the other Republican clowns in the early months of Con-a-thon 2016 and Dubya writing a fundraising letter for his brother Jeb, we’d thought we would rewind back to a photo-toon we did in our April 25, 2004 issue; back when Trump was king of reality television with his new hit ‘The Apprentice’ and Dubya was using scare tactics on the American sheeple so he could have four more years of ‘presidentin’. Ahhhh! Fun times!
Members of the Bush Administration are the first contestants of the new reality show, 'Extreme Trump Makeovers'. From left:Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell, President Bush, Donald Rumsfeld.
The fine ‘journalists’ of the Republican Propaganda Network, a.k.a. Fox News have been going into overtime the last couple of years over the attack at an American compound in Benghazi, Libya in 2012, which resulted in four deaths. Of course, because these right wing conservatives are so…eh-hem… ‘unbiased and fair’, they conveniently fail to mention the thirteen Benghazi like incidents which happened under George W. Bush’s watch, which incidentally resulted in 97 deaths. That’s right folks; 13 Benghazis under George W. Bush. And of course, no one mentions Dubya’s biggest security blunder; the 9/11 terrorist attacks on New York, which resulted in 3000 deaths. We don’t usually post graphics from other web sites, but sometimes the graphics just say it all. Here’s a graphic that says what we want to say perfectly.
Republicans continue to whine over the Benghazi attacks while conveniently forgetting the massive security blunders of George W. Bush.
We don’t make fun of neocon personalities like Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly or Ann Coulter very much anymore because frankly it’s just not worth it commenting on piles of dung that are shaped like human beings. But we’ll run a brief retrospective of Ms. Coulter with a couple of our favorite photo-toons from the early aughts. Here’s one from June 19th, 2006 where Annie aimed her rapier wit at those ruthless 9/11 widows.
'Compassionate' conservative author, Ann Coulter, gets a ringing endorsement on her new book, Godless: The Church of Liberalism, in which she comments on the 9/11 widows, "These broads are millionaires, lionized on TV and in articles about them, reveling in their status as celebrities and stalked by grief-arazzis. I've never seen people enjoying their husbands' deaths so much." .
This will be the last installment of our Dick Cheney retrospective because quite frankly we’re sick of him and we want him to go far away, like maybe Iraq. He’d be greeted with flowers there and he’d be downright giddy being around all that precious oil. So here is a photo-toon from our May 9, 2004 issue right after Dick and Dubya testified in a secret, off the record testimony before the 9/11 commission (you know the manure was flying in that meeting). We think this photo-toon succinctly captures the essence of the Bush presidency.
President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney performed their patented bamboozling act before the 9/11 Commission last week.
