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There are a lot of things wrong with President Putin's "sovereign democracy" project: vote fraud, a rubber-stamp Duma that is essentially a one-party body, bla bla bla. But nothing is more vexing than the fact that Putin's mangling of Russia's fragile democracy makes Bush and Cheney look almost heroic, like a pair of pinkish Nelson Mandelas by comparison.
The only reason those two don't come off as the slippery fascists they are is their incompetence. Putin knows how to crush his democracy smoothly, without causing too much fuss or damage. But Bush and Cheney are the Keystone Cops of the democracy-crushing club, a running buddy duo slipping on banana peels at every Abu Ghraib, Gaza Strip, or Guantanamo Bay they try to impose upon the world, leaving nothing but chaos and ruin in their wake.
The chaos they created has had the unintended effect of allowing a few last remnants of democracy to survive in parts of America. Putin would have known how to kill of American democracy in a humane fashion, with the population's acquiescence: 60 percent of America is solidly fascist and anti-democratic, and 83 million Americans believe that the End Days is right around the corner, so it's not like anyone outside of coastal California and New England would miss their democratic rights.
None of this makes Putin any better. They're all part of the same global elite running a similar anti-democratic, anti-masses playbook, it's just that Putin is like Bill Walsh, and Bush is like my Pop Warner football coach, who forfeited our playoff game because he forgot to order a bus in time.
All that aside, there is one area of Russia's sovereign democracy that we believe compares favorably to American democracy. An area that, head-to-head, puts America to complete shame.
I'm talking about the Dyevs of the New Russian Duma. That's right. This Duma's list includes girls who flash their tits for Playboy and Maxim magazine. And boy what appetizing mammaries they have! Russia's Duma babes have the kinds of breasts that OJ would kill to keep, not the sorts of shriveled-pastry-bag tits that you'd find on a Rep. Jane Harmon or a Rep. Jean Schmidt--creatures whose very names cause impotence.
Interestingly, some Russian media outlets, like Vokrugnovosti.ru, reported that it was on Putin's own directive that the Duma was stacked with some Playboy babes. Whatever you say about Putin, he does have a good eye.
Contrast the way the women in the new Duma look to the Congresswomen on Capitol Hill, and it's like going from Lothlorien to Mordor. It's not that America's Congresswomen are ugly. Most Americans are ugly, and it takes an ugly person to chew his or her way into politics. What's so striking about the Women of the American Congress is how fucking freaky they look: not of this world, this time, this point in evolution, no matter what side of the aisle they're on. Rep. Shelley Berkeley and Rep. Marcy Kaptur look like vice principals from the 1940s, with the same hairdo and taste in clothing that the slit-necked counselor in Beetlejuice had. "House of Horrors" (as opposed to the Duma's House of Whore-rs) is an apt description. I thought that women with that 1940s look died out in the 90s, that Reagan was the last of their kind.
When US Congresswomen aren't looking like hungry pissed-off ghouls, then you have women like defense-industry-tool Rep. Jane Harmon, whose years in the California sun playing golf with her sponsors have turned her face into a wrinkle-for-wrinkle replica of my scrotum. The underside of my scrotum, to be exact. After I've dropped 50mg of extended release Adderall.
Another elitist is the goggle-eyed Republican Mary Bono Mack, who has this "so that's what happens to the sorority chair when she gets old" look. Mary's the late Sonny Bono's wife, one of four Congresswomen who owe their jobs to their husbands' untimely deaths (or in Sonny's case, slapstick deaths), meaning in this House of Horrors, it's literally the zombie-wife who takes a lethal bite of flesh from her husband's neck who advances. Only nowadays Mary's a Bono-Mack, owing to her power-marriage to Rep. Connie Mack IV, who is distinguished not only as the son of Rep. Connie Mack III (son of Connie Mack II), but also because if you take one look at IV's hilarious Guy Smiley portrait, you understand why he's the odds-on favorite to be the next anti-gay Republican who finds himself at the center of a Cambodian-boys/Crisco-oil/GHB scandal.
Then there's the scariest ghoul of them all, Rep. Jean Schmidt, the notorious Ohio Republican who called former Marine John Murtha a coward, whose shriveled evil-witch features are so exaggerated as to be fake, like something from a bad straight-to-video horror flick.
There it is: in two heavily degraded democracies, the choice is this: American democracy, which has a few rights left which no one exercises, and a collection of the most physically repulsive bipeds in the Western Hemisphere; or Russian democracy, which has no real rights, and is run like an open business, but at least offers some eye candy.
Duma deputy Alina Kabaeva (left) poses for Maxim; Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky (right) looks like an aging Soviet transvestite who's hoping one day to make the cover of The Daughters of the Revolution newsletter.
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Duma deputy Svetlana Zhurova (left) strips off her shirt for Russia; US Congresswoman Shelley Berkeley (right) stiffens her Reagan-era hairstyle for that PTA board member look, a real hit in her Ohio district.
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Duma deputy Natalia Karpova (left) goes topless for her countrymen; Jean Schmidt (right) goes bloodless.
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Duma deputy Svetlana Khorkina (left) flashes her perfect palm-warmer mammaries for Playboy; withered Congresswoman Jane Harmon (right) smiles thinking about her next corporate golf game.
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