Patient Americans

I'm sure you've read by now the crackpot from the Philadelphia Daily News who actually suggested that America needs another 9/11 to bring us together. And that's so obviously whack that I'm not even going to add anything to it. But one thing I wanted to point out was this insult of American "impatience" that I read about too often.

Here it is:
Most Americans today believe Iraq was a mistake. Why? Not because Americans are “anti-war.”

Americans have turned their backs because the war has dragged on too long and we don’t have the patience for a long slog. We’ve been in Iraq for four years, but to some it seems like a century…. Americans are impatient. We like fast food and fast war…. America likes wars shorter than the World Series.

Huh? Is there any country in history that really likes endless wars that waste a lot of money? Hell, England has a constitutional monarchy largely because they had too many kings who fought expensive wars that nobody wanted. And there was more than one occasion that the English got upset at kings for fighting against enemies who really were a direct threat to the survival of England. And times when their armies would just melt away against dire threats, having tired of being away from their farms too long; even though invading forces were approaching.

And Iraq isn't anything like that. Even war supporters are down to arguing that us leaving Iraq only serves as a "moral" victory for Al Qaeda, and there are plenty of arguments suggesting that this is complete baloney. The truth is that Iraq really wasn't all that important to most people. Sure, they might support a short-term engagement with few deaths and little costs. You know, the cakewalk they were promised. But the longer, deadlier, and costlier this gets, the less people will support it. It's not that Americans are impatient. It's that they're not fools.

And so it is throughout history. No country has supported endless, expensive wars without purpose. Even the Spartans would have thrown in the towel on this one. Conquering nations want their military victories to be wipe-outs. They don't want long slogs. They want for their guys to sweep in, conquer, and get the goods. Sure, they'll support a war of survival if they need to. But wars of choice better be quick, or the people aren't going to be pleased. The key to being successful militarily isn't just knowing how to win the battle. The key is knowing which ones not to fight. And this is a battle that people just don't want to fight anymore and shouldn't have been asked to support in the first place.

No Sacrifice

And it's obvious that the Bushies have always known this. Not only do they refuse to use the draft to create the army they need, they wouldn't even go so far as to ask the citizenry to make any sacrifices at all. Because they know that we just wouldn't have it. Not because we're impatient or selfish, but because we just wouldn't like this war as much if we were asked to do more about it. It was supposed to be like a spectator sport. When you go see the Yankees play, nobody asks you to make any special sacrifices. You pay for your ticket, you buy your damn hotdog, and you wait to be entertained. And that's exactly what the Bushies had in mind with this war.

And I'm sure that would all be different, were they to believe that people would really support this war. It wasn't that the Bushies were fools who didn't know that war took sacrifice. It was that they knew this war wasn't worth a sacrifice. So they wanted to use the smallest fighting force possible, for the cheapest amount the generals would let them get away with. I bet they would have gone with a platoon of Girl Scouts with pea-shooters and a credit card, had they been allowed to. Not because they were freaks who didn't know how wars were really fought and thought they could out-plan the "overly cautious" generals (though I suspect there was some of that); but because they knew people wouldn't support an expensive war with a huge army.

And they were right. And now we've sacrificed too much and people are getting damn pissed about it. I'm sure all the war supporters are privately pissing in their pants by now. Even Iron Balls Cheney himself is probably wearing the triple-ply Depends these days. This just isn't how it was supposed to go. Sure, they put on a brave face in public. But all that's just a show. They don't like how the war's going any better than we do. When Bush declared Mission Accomplished, he meant it. That's when the war was supposed to end. That's how long they wanted this to be. Just a few months, then they'd be bringing the boys back home.

By August 2007, we were supposed to be wrapping up our invasion on Iran or Syria, while they prepared for a clean sweep in the 2008 elections; not still trying to close the deal on Iraq. And if they could just make this war disappear and be done with it, they would. But they know this is their legacy, and they'll never hear the end of it if they can't wrap it up appropriately. They're not really waiting for victory. They're just trying to prevent a defeat from being hung around their necks.

And that's only the case because this war isn't that important to us. Were the Iraqi hordes swarming our beaches, I'd fight to the death to keep them out. I'm sure all of you would do the same. But fighting a war to save Bush's ass? I don't think so. Again, this isn't because Americans are different than other people and are impatient and weak. It's that we're just like everyone else and don't like our government doing dumb things. And the only reason people supported this war in the first place was because they were lied to about how dumb it really was.

Anonymous Dem v. The Suit

Not only do I not have any idea who I think will be our next president, I have no idea who I want to be president; except that it must be a Democrat. For someone who follows national politics closely, is that weird? But it's not that I dislike any of them. It's just that I know that they'll all do about the same job of cleaning up Bush's mess. And they'll all be attacked viciously every step of the way. But I see no significant difference between them, and that's a good thing.

But as I've said before, I'm fairly convinced that Mitt's going to be the Republican nominee. He's the only one that fits the suit. I'm not sure why any of the others are even trying. I found it odd that anyone tried to compete against Bush in 2000, and he didn't fit the suit at all. But Mitt's the guy they're going to lose with...I think. It'll be tough for any Republican, after what Bush did. But Mitt sure does fit the suit well.

Presidential Island Hopping

Damn, I was hoping to get this finished Thursday morning, but I got busy and so now you'll probably read this a day late.

Hey, I just found something that President Bush is really good for: Waking me the fuck up. I don't know if you've noticed, but I've been posting all my stuff really, really late at night (ie, the next morning). And that means I've also been waking up pretty late too. And I've been wanting to change that, particularly now that school will be starting soon and I'll have to get my lazy kids out the door every morning. But when you don't go to bed until five in the morning, it's kind of hard to get back out of bed before eleven. Even with my alarm clock, I'll usually feel so crappy after only five hours sleep that I turn it off and go right back to sleep.

Well I just found a good way of getting up in the morning: Listening to our idiot president give a press conference; as I did this morning when my NPR station which normally plays music at that time of day had Bush on instead. There's nothing like having your head explode to help get you out of bed in the morning. It works better than coffee.

And let me just say: Wow. What an idiot. I can't remember the last time I actually heard him speak for an extended period of time, but...wow. What an idiot. The transcripts really don't do him justice. I'm not sure how anyone could ever have listened to him without thinking the same thing, but I guess that just goes to show the human capacity for fooling oneself into believing that the crap they're eating is really caviar. People can believe anything, if they want to badly enough. I learned that from Karl Rove.

Like a Child on Acid

And frankly, I don't know which part disturbs me more: When he spends all his time floating around, with no clue as to where he's going or even what his next sentence might possibly be, or when he finally does find a point of reference that is familiar to him and begins to repeat that point over and over again. Imagine someone lost at sea, and whenever they spot a piece of land they recognize, begin to circle it over and over again, happy to see any kind of land at all. Or perhaps the better equivalent is to a half-witted child who happens to make one funny joke, and then won't stop repeating it for the rest of the day. And when you don't laugh, he assumes you just didn't get it and repeats it a few more times.

And the pattern was clear. Every question was a bad question. Every question was based on a reality that Bush was simply unable to recognize. Or at least that's how it was with the three questions I endured before I finally turned off my radio alarm and bounded out of bed, more awake than I had any right to feel. And so he'd impatiently wait until the reporter finished the question, and then start on his quest to figure out how to turn the question asked into the question he wanted to have been asked. And he even failed at that, so that you never really were quite sure what question he was even wanting to answer; though you were certain he didn't answer the one given.

And it was painful to listen to him during these parts, because it was so obvious that he was lost. He'd just start rambling about something, clearly having no idea where he was going with it. And then he'd finally get to a part that he'd recognize, and he'd start sounding more confident. And then he'd start repeating that part, as if he was speaking to children who just weren't able to "get it" unless you said the same phrase five or six more times.

And even then, that wasn't good enough. He'd keep talking. And before you knew it, he was back into the weeds again, clearly out of his element and again searching for familiar turf to talk about. And he'd generally find himself back again, confidently repeating that comfortable part over and over before arbitrarily signaling that his answer was over and that he was ready for another round.

And again, that's the weird thing about Bush. For as much as his supporters talk about him being brave and resolute, he sure doesn't sound brave or resolute when he talks. He sounds like a little kid who was daydreaming when the teacher asked him a question and now he's stalling while he mentally backtracks and prays he can recall what the actual question was. But that really is the case. Except that it's not just that he's daydreaming. That's where he's at all of the time.

People refer to it as a "bubble" but I'm sure it goes deeper than that. I'm sure he's just batshit crazy; so deep into his fantasy world that he doesn't even have a clue he's there and can't figure out why the reality people talk to him about has so little relationship to the one he's living in. Sure, the faces and names are all the same, but somehow all these other people have an entirely different perspective on who those faces really are and what those names really mean. Like your crazy Aunt Millie who calls you Fred whenever she sees you and keeps asking about the dog you never had.

The Emperor Has No Accountability

At this point, I had a long section on a question he was asked about accountability, but I've now read several A-list bloggers already going over that question, so I'll just delete that part. But you can watch the clip yourself at TPM.

There, I deleted it. But my main emphasis wasn't on how dumb the answer was, but on how dumb the question was. What was the point? The reporter could have asked me the same question, and I could have said exactly what Bush said, but more succinctly. Did the reporter really think Bush would screw-up and start talking about how Cheney told him they couldn't screw-over poor Scooter, and how Gonzalez is the only guy he can trust for the job because he knew the Dems won't give him a comparable lackey? Or that he'd even admit that Al did something to be held accountable for?

Sure, Bush isn't a bright guy, but he knows how to stay in his own reality. So what was the point of the question? Bush was clearly somewhat embarrassed by it, as it had sort of an Emperor Has No Clothes quality about it. You know, because it shot right past the polite fiction the Bushies hold on all these subjects and went straight to the heart of the matter. Hell, it's the kind of stuff that real people talk about. So there was no way Bush could answer the question, so it shouldn't have been asked. Could this reporter really be in such a bubble that he thinks Bush might have actually shot from the hip on that one? Or was he merely setting up the president because he wanted his question to be quoted by all the A-list bloggers?

Tony Snow for President

On a final note, I'd just like to point out that it would probably be easier to program a computer to give intelligent responses to these questions than to try it with Bush. Seriously. All the program would need to do is to pick out a few key phrases from the question, toss out a few empty sentences to rephrase the question, and then go ahead with the answer already written on that subject. That's all Bush ever does, and he every real question asked. The computer could only be an improvement.

But is the point of these Bush press conferences? He never gives real responses. He never says anything of any importance in them. And if he did, his handlers would promptly issue retractions for anything that might have interested anyone. And seeing as how those handlers have a better grasp on this stuff than Bush anyway, those retractions would really be the correct answers.

Who cares what that buffoon says anymore? He's not calling the shots and never was. They feed him the information. They give him the limited options; one of which is set-up to be clearly superior to the others (ie, the shiny and brave one). He wouldn't even know the right questions to ask assuming he wanted to ask them. So what's the point? I have no doubt that the country would be better off if they just handed the job to Tony Snow, President Bush is nothing more than the Public Spokesman for the Whitehouse, and he isn't even good at that. We'd be better off with someone who can at least speak.


P.S. Oh damn, I just realized that they already found their Tony Snow to be the next president, and he's called Mitt Romney. From what I understand, they use his shoulders to land fighter jets on when the weather is rough. All Hail Mitt!

Listening to Rush Every Day

From an article about a 55-year-old unemployed man who has lived in a car in back of his wife's house for the past seven years:
Graham acknowledged that he watches TV, listens to music and sometimes sleeps in his blue, 1989 Buick Century. The car is parked on a concrete slab, mostly covered by a large, blue tarp that is secured with bricks and cinder blocks.

An extension cord from the house to the car provides power for a 13-inch TV, an oscillating fan and a radio.

"I get better reception there than I do in there," he said, pointing at the house. "I listen to Rush (Limbaugh) every day, just about."

I'd suggest that I may have debated this guy online on a few occasions, but I sort of doubt he has a computer. Perhaps he was at the library at the time. His neighbors supsect he uses the lawn as a toilet. Yep, sounds like your typical dittohead to me, though they usually only do that kind of thing in their neighbor's lawn and aren't quite so literal about it.

No Apologies

I'm playing electric guitar right now in your face and I won't apologize. What are you going to do about it? It's really loud.

Supply-Joke Economics

For the life of me, I can't fathom why anyone takes supply-siders seriously. Because their "theory" has no basis in reality. Now don't get me wrong, I have absolutely no doubt that a high tax rate can stifle an economy. For example, a 99% flat tax would probably be a bad idea. And I consider a 70% tax rate to be far too high and a bad idea. I mean, why should I bother risking $100,000 of my cash, when the best after-tax profit I could reasonably expect might be as high as 6% annually (that's a 20% profit, less 70% tax bill), and I could lose the whole thing. It's safer to just put it in a mattress and wait for tax rates to go down. When you only get to keep 30% of your profit, there's little point in making one.

But the main point of Supply-Side and the Laffer Curve is that there is an optimal tax rate. And that if taxes are too high or too low, you won't have optimal tax revenues. And I agree with that completely. And I can't see anyone disagreeing. Believing this doesn't make you a supply-sider. It makes you a non-moron.

If you care to disagree with me, I guess I'll debate the point with you. But be prepared to be schooled, as you can't possibly win this one. If you agree that a 99.9% tax rate would stifle our economy, then I already win the debate.

Einstein's Beetle Clock

So the real difference isn't whether tax rates can be too high, but what the rates should be. And we have no good idea on that. I'd easily say that 80% is too high and 15% is too low, but after that, we're getting into hazy territory. Especially as I doubt that the optimal rate is some fine-tuned narrow number. In fact, I'm sure there is a wide range of where tax rates could be without doing serious harm to tax revenues.

Rather than supply-side being some overriding theory of economics, it's more like a minor rule which only applies if you do really extreme things to the tax rate; like by making it 90% (which it has been in the past). And it also applies if the rate is too low; which I'm sure many supply-siders would be glad to see. But treating this as an everyday economic consideration is comparable to using Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity to readjust your car clock while driving at highway speed. Sure, the theory does apply, but only at speeds that you're unlikely to reach in your old Beetle.

And whatever the optimal rate is, I seriously doubt that minor fine-tuning to tax rates will have any significant effect on our economy. Like moving capital gains from 20% to 28%. It's quite doubtful that the 8% difference is going to dent our economy to such an extent that we'd lose more revenues than we gained from the rate increase. And I showed that to be the case in my last post. We raised the rate, the economy continued to grow, and revenues went up. Just like we always see. It's not supply-side that wants these tax cuts. It's greed.

Spending the Beast

And even the underlying principle of supply-side is entirely absurd. If "Tax & Spend Liberals" really just wanted more tax money so they could spend more of it, and lower tax rates truly did generate more revenue...then wouldn't the T&S Liberals want the lower rates? Of course they would! Conversely, if "Starve the Beast" conservatives truly wanted to starve the government of funds, wouldn't they wholeheartedly agree to adopt high tax rates, at least for a short enough period to starve off government revenues? Sure. The rich would surely have enough funds to tide them over until the drought was over, and then they'd have the smaller government they so desired.

But no. The people who want more tax revenues support higher tax rates, and the people who want lower tax revenues support lower tax rates. Just as you'd expect to see if lower tax rates generated lower tax revenues. Duh.

How conservatives get away with suggesting that lower tax rates generate more revenue while simultanously insisting that they're against government spending and want less revenue I'll never know. I guess it's because when liberals encounter proponents of this lamebrained theory they're either too dumbstruck to say anything or they relish in the details of the debate, rather than bashing the overall absurdity of the thing.

But that's what needs to be done. To laugh at these people. We just can't take them seriously. Why should we? They don't take themselves seriously. This is just yet another of their little games they like to play, to pretend that they really want higher tax revenues; when all they really want is a lower tax bill. And so they'll recite a few cherrypicked numbers that they haven't even looked at themselves and pat themselves on the back for having scored a few points.

And they'll never listen to your explanations and will insist that you're the cherrypicker. And even if you somehow get them to look at the real numbers, they'll find some reason or another to ignore them. And so why bother. Just laugh. It's all they deserve. They're not actually thinking about what they're saying, so why should we?

Smartest Boy in a Dumb, Dumb Class

Carpetbagger watched the GOP debate that I couldn't have endured, and writes this of Giuliani:
Giuliani fared well overall, just so long as facts have no meaning (he denied his own recent comments from a Charlie Rose interview on Pakistan, he exaggerated his NYC adoption numbers, and he exaggerated his role in protecting New York’s bridges). At one point, Giuliani insisted, “The last time we raised the capital gains tax, and you can go back and check it, from 20 to 28 percent, we lost $45 billion.” So, folks went back and checked it — Giuliani’s claim was completely wrong. For voters for whom facts have no meaning, he’s the ideal candidate.

And so I clicked through to read about Rudy's bogus claim, and was astounded to read this bizarro interpretation of Rudy's performance by Slate's John Dickerson:
Giuliani has a smartest-boy-in-the-class aspect not too different from the one that Republicans used to pound Al Gore. He loves to show off his smarts, dropping facts, boasting about reading the hundreds of pages in the immigration bill, and insisting that he'd not only read a book on taxation but had underlined it.

Did Dickerson watch the same debate as Carpetbagger? I suppose he did. The only difference is that Carpetbagger was rating Rudy's performance based on reality, while Dickerson was rating it based upon how things would appear to an unwitting viewer. One apparently like Dickerson himself. And yet, why did he even bother to fact check Rudy at all?

Dickerson went on to say:
But in an otherwise politically effective defense of tax cuts Sunday, he appears to have botched his facts. He claimed that when the capital gains rate was increased to 28 percent from 20 percent, revenues decreased by $45 billion. If he's talking about the 1986 increase, they didn't. Giuliani boasted, "You go back and check it," but his campaign couldn't find the supporting data. An aide says he may have misspoke, meaning instead to have said revenues decreased 44 percent. That's closer to the truth but still distorts the case by cherry-picking the data.

But why does Dickerson stop there? I clicked through to his numbers, and see that 44% still was far from the truth. The real number was 36.3%, a difference of over $4 billion from what Rudy's campaign correction was, and $25.8 billion off from Rudy's original claim. In fact, Rudy's "go back and check it" fact suggested that capital gains tax revenues dropped from $52.9 billion to $7.9 billion in one year; a complete absurdity. The actual drop was only $19.2 billion, not $45 billion. And this is the guy Dickerson would have us believe looks like the "smartest boy in the class"?

Rudy's Just Wrong

And even Rudy's basic point is entirely wrong: higher Capital Gains tax rates don't seem to have a detrimental effect on tax revenues. Sure, Capital Gains Revenue did drop $19.2 billion from 1986 to 1987, when the tax rate went up. But that's because Capital Gains were super-high in 1986, having gone up $155.7 billion from 1985. And that's most likely because tax accountants knew that the rate was going up in 1987 (along with many other significant tax changes), so they wanted to cash-in their gains during the more favorable period. And that looks to be the case because the pre-1986 Capital Gains were comparable to post-1986 Capital Gains.

So Rudy's bogus number relied entirely on a single freak occurrence. As proof of that, I'll note that Capital Gains averaged $145 billion in the three years before 1986, compared with $155 billion after 1986. And the 1986 Capital Gains were over $327 billion. So unless we're to believe that there was something magical about the 20% Capital Gains tax rate in 1986 that didn't apply to the prior years, I'd say Rudy's point is entirely wrong.

Even more so, Capital Gains tax revenue averaged $22.2 billion for the three years before 1986, and averaged $35.9 billion for the three years after 1986. Overall, the three years after 1986 brought in over $41.2 billion more in tax revenue than the three years preceding 1986. That would entirely refute Rudy's point. Tax revenues went up due to the higher tax rates, just as you'd expect to see.

But it wasn't just 1986. Looking over the 50-year tax chart Dickerson linked to, there doesn't seem to be any real relationship between the Capital Gains tax rate and Capital Gains. While there is fluctuation, it follows the general economic flows; which don't seem to be based on the tax rate. And while there is a relation between tax rates and tax revenue, it's the one you'd expect to find. The higher the tax rate, the more revenue you get. No duh. It doesn't appear that people are willing to forgo making large amounts of money in order to avoid tax payments. And that would again be a "duh" moment.

Missing the Picture

And let's face it, Giuliani did not wade through all these charts, crunch the numbers, and make some sort of error in arithmetic. He was given a list of factoids to repeat during the debate and just happened to repeat a bad one. Does this make him less presidential because he repeated a bad factoid? Had he not flubbed that one factoid, would Dickerson have anointed him Chief Smart Guy? Why? Because he could memorize a few facts? Is that really the standard we should be going by?

But that's the thing, politicians aren't supposed to be the experts. They're supposed to be Big Picture guys who hire the right experts. And whether or not Rudy flubbed this factoid, he's clearly got the wrong experts. The factual slip-up isn't the problem. The problem was that he was trying to make it in the first place. It wasn't the fact he flubbed. He's got the wrong Big Picture. And whether or not he sounds like he knows what he's talking about, it's pretty obvious that he never really will.

Moreover, was there any nominee on that stage who wouldn't have gladly used that factoid, had they believed they wouldn't be fact-checked on it? Iraq and the "War on Terror" are pretty touchy subjects for Republican politicians to be truthful about. But supply-side economics? What was once derided as "Voodoo Economics" by Bush Sr. is now considered gospel by the Republican base. You'd be better off questioning Jesus' resurrection than to question supply-side economics with many of these people.

Dittoing Carpetbagger

So what should Dickerson have done? I mean, most of the folks watching that debate weren't likely to learn how wrong Rudy was. So in a sense, Dickerson was just reporting what most people would have taken from that debate: That Mr. Fact Check Giuliani really knows his stuff. And Dickerson did fact-check one item of Rudy's. Isn't that enough?

And the answer is simple: He should have written what Carpetbagger wrote. If a candidate is tossing out bogus facts, it should be an objective reporter's duty to report that the candidate was being bogus. And if Dickerson was being subjective, he had even more a duty to this. Instead, he left the impression that Rudy is quite knowledgeable, but got one fact wrong. Perhaps he doesn't know any better and really thinks Rudy nailed it. But if that's the case, then he shouldn't be writing at all. There are too many knowledgeable writers out there for us to bother with the unknowledgeable ones. It's guys like Dickerson that allow candidates like Giuliani get away with what they do. Democracy deserves better.

And that should be the real report. Not that Rudy is the smartest boy in a dumb class, but that Rudy doesn't know what he's talking about and has no problem faking it. And if I were Rudy's opponent, that's exactly what I'd nail him for. And no, "cherry-picking" is not the word I'd use to describe Rudy's deceit. I'd nail him for being a phony using the horror of 9/11 for his personal benefit. That's the way it works. He's counting on phony factoids and 9/11 to support his candidacy, so you've got to cut his legs right out from under him. And the best part about it, it's the truth. And that seems to be Rudy's biggest weakness.

I Am SOOOO Serious. No Really, I Am. I Swear.

If anyone stated their intention to blow-up the Vatican if the US won't leave Iraq, isn't that a terrorist threat that would justify tough actions on our part? The kind of thing that gets you "disappeared" into Eastern European CIA prisons that don't exist? Yet isn't that the exact equivalent to what whackjob Tom Tancredo is doing, when he says we need to explicitly state our willingness to blow-up Mecca if Muslims attack us? Civilians are just not considered valid targets, even if your own citizens have been attacked. And the use of threats against civilians to scare them is the very essence of terrorism.

But as I said in the last post, I think this is just more tough-guy posturing and not a real policy. Maybe Tancredo is as insane as he suggests he is, but I don't think so. I believe that a President Tancredo (god forbid!) would not actually nuke Mecca, were Muslim terrorists to attack us. I think he's just trying to send a message, similar to keeping the Nuke Pakistan option "on the table". As TPM noted in that link, a Tancredo advisor defended his statement saying it "shows that we mean business."

And that's one of the weird things about the rightwing foreign policy these days: It's ALL about sending messages. But it's not really about doing things or having real solutions. It's all about showmanship, marketing, and acting tough. Even our invasion of Iraq is expressed in terms of sending messages. Whether it was sending a message that America will unilaterally attack anyone we want, or sending a message that we won't back down from Al Qaeda; it's all about the message, not the actions themselves. Because leaving Iraq sends the wrong message, they won't even consider it an option and will attack anyone who does.

And it's not just foreign policy. This is exactly how they got into power and all they seem good at: Bullshitting other people into giving them the power they don't really have. But what they fail to grasp is that while domestic politics are largely perception-based (until it's time to pay the bills), foreign policy is not. No longer is it about fooling the rubes with sleight-of-hand and fake news. It's about BS-ing world leaders, most of whom only retain power due to their own intellect and cunning abilities. Even wackos like Kim Jong-Il will be surrounded by cunning people who understand how the world works. That's how they stay alive and in power. This is all just a game for people like Cheney and Rove. But when you work for a dictatorial madman, your life is on the line with every piece of advice you give. So you better be good at it.

And so their eternal bullshit and messaging just doesn't cut it in the real world. But they still fail to grasp this. Somehow, with Iraq still not going as they had fantasized it would, they still believe that messaging is enough. It's all about propaganda and acting tough, and they continue to insist that liberals are causing us to lose in Iraq because we send the wrong message. It's like reality doesn't exist for these people. It's all about perceptions. It's all about the message.

The Wrong Words

And I note this same thing from a Lieberman interview:
JL: I worry that whoever gets the Democratic nomination will have a hard time scampering back to assure people that they're prepared to take on the Islamist extremists and [any] other nation that threatens our security.
WS: Turning to another thing --
JL: They don't use that. You'll have to check it. But they don't use the term "Islamist extremism" or "Islamist terrorism" in the debates.

And so in Lieberman's world, the Dems are going to have a hard time assuring people we can handle terrorism, simply because they fail to use a specific phrase in their debates. It doesn't matter if they have good policies. All that matters is that they use the correct phrases. It's all about words for these people. And if Dems aren't willing to use those phrases, they're harming our policies and aren't serious. Somehow, they fail to grasp that they're the ones harming our policy, by making dumb threats they won't follow-up on and relying too heavily on phrases, rather than actions.

And of course, words won't stop terrorism. Nor are they intended to. Conservatives use these phrases as code-words to beat Democrats with. As Lieberman made clear, Dems will be attacked for not using the phrase "Islamist terrorism". But if they use that phrase, then they've already lost half the battle for defeating these nimrods and their dangerous policies. And that's the whole point. But while phrases like "Islamist terrorism" probably test well with American focus groups, it only makes Muslims distrust us more and can only make terrorism worse. Al Qaeda isn't afraid of American threats against Muslims. They're counting on them.

And in this case, I don't know which is worse: That we're scaring other countries into being more hostile towards us, or that they'll take us as empty blowhards who can't follow-up on our tough talk. And most likely, they'll do both. They'll feel threatened by us and not take our threats seriously. There's nothing worse than being known as a bad bluffer, and with Bush having exposed the limits of our military might, we're giving other countries every reason to defy us. And that's just bad policy.

Taking the Serious Person Award Off the Table

How is it that the adult and serious “Foreign Policy Community” seems so entirely silly? I’m thinking right now of the phrase “On the table”, as in when Obama did or did not suggest that nuking Pakistan was “on the table”. And this whole debate is silly, as it revolves entirely around the meaning of that phrase. Specifically the Foreign Policy experts take that phrase as meaning whether you would consider an action as any possibility. And that if you say that something is "off the table" that means you wouldn't consider it under any circumstance.

But that's not what that phrase means, and that's an entirely dumb interpretation. An interpretation that has been purposefully dumbed-down by the war-hawks, as a way of cowing non-war-hawks into also agreeing that these seriously dumb ideas are "on the table". And I suspect that this is the main problem with the "Foreign Policy Community", whoever they are. Because that community is unofficially chaired by war-hawks, and anti-war people are automatically excluded. So to be considered "serious" on foreign policy by these people, you either have to support war or admit that you'd be willing to support war under almost any circumstance. And that's kind of a loaded deck to use as a starting position of foreign policy. In essence, our foreign policy has been hijacked by the war-hawks.

But here's a good definition of what that phrase really means:
1. if a plan or offer is on the table, it has been officially suggested and is now being discussed or thought about. The offer on the table is an 8% increase on last year's wages. At 6 p.m. on Thursday 29 April, a new deal was put on the table.
2. if a plan is on the table, no one is dealing with it at present but it has not been completely forgotten. The committee agreed to leave the option to build a stadium in the city on the table.

See what I mean? If something is "on the table" it doesn't just mean that it's a possible option. It means that it's an official option that is being considered. And so if something is "off the table" that just means that it's not being discussed. But that doesn't mean that you're completely ruling it out or announcing that you won't use it. It just means that you're not talking about it.

And we all know what this means. If you're watching a movie and a character sets his gun on the table, he's making a statement to the other people at the table. Sure, he had the gun on him the whole time. But when he sets his gun on the table, he's clearly making a threat. It's not as threatening as him pointing it at the people he's sitting with, but it's not too far from that. You put your gun on the table to send a signal. And that's exactly how it works in foreign policy too. Everyone knows we have nukes. It's not really a secret. But saying they're "on the table" is clearly an explicit threat. And nobody likes to be threatened.

And the Award Goes To...Idiots

But what makes the Foreign Policy Community so silly isn't just that they misinterpret this phrase so entirely, but that they make such a big deal over phrases like this. For them, you are immediately considered "unserious" and a menace to our foreign policy if you don't use this specific phrase against any enemy they deem a threat. Who cares what your actual policy is. They insist that you say that everything is "on the table". So the fact that they have the phrase wrong is just the icing on their phrase-based idiocy.

But as I said, this isn't all of them being idiots. The more hawkish ones want this confusion. This isn't a mistake on their part. They really do want our nuclear threat to be expressed explicitly. They are making threats. And they want the world to feel threatened by us. And so they've used their position of power to force the rest of the Foreign Policy "experts" to adopt their usage, even though they don't mean it the way that hardliners do.

And so the idiots are the less hawkish members who adopt the framework of the hawks, but only as a means of aiding their resume. So that they can burnish their credentials with the prized "Serious Person" label that the Foreign Policy community only hands out to those willing to adopt their framework. I'm thinking of Hillary Clinton and that type. The ones who now regret their actions regarding our war in Iraq, but who are setting themselves up to make the same mistakes over and over again, if only to retain their title as Serious Person.

And that plays exactly into the hands of the hardliner hawks and seriously completely undermines a non-war-based foreign policy. I seriously doubt that Hillary truly thinks nuking Pakistan is a real option right now, but that won't stop her from using a phrase which tells Pakistan that she's considering it. Sure, she's using the hardliner's misinterpretation of that phrase, but it would seem that Pakistan is still using the original meaning and will react accordingly.

And so here we have Clinton, and apparently Obama, fighting each other over whether we should make explicit threats against an ally. And all because the hardliners altered the meaning of one phrase. And these are the people we call "serious". Great.

Fear-Mongering

It would be seriously detrimental to you if I went into any details (and trust me, I have more details than even I want to know), but it's extremely crucial that you give me your house keys, car keys, and important banking information. I've said too much already. Just leave all of this at your doorstep tonight and stay in a hotel until you hear otherwise. Trust me. I'd like to tell you more, but you'll be glad I didn't. And for god's sake, don't turn around!

Bush's One Trillion Dollar Plan

Guest Post by Doctor Snedley, Personal Assistant to Doctor Biobrain

Jesus, you just can't please liberals. On that fateful and holy day of September 11, when Muslims worldwide demonstrated that our borders and oceans provided us no protection from their horde invasion, thus giving liberals their big chance to toss up their hands in mass surrender, exactly one trillion dollars in damage was inflicted upon us. This left our resolute leader George W. Bush with only one option: Revenge, equal and opposite to that which was inflicted upon us.

And what could be more opposite from our enemies causing us one trillion dollars in damage, than for us to spend one trillion of our own money attacking people who hadn't attacked us? That seems pretty straight forward and is perfectly in line with what President Bush had explicitly stated as his underlying super-secret message that only us loyal Americans could decipher and not reveal until it became convenient to do so. That's obvious.

And so that's what we did. As Tony Snow tried to explain to the insulting dunderheads who refuse to accept reality:
Asked today about a new Congressional Budget Office report that puts the price tag of the war on Iraq at more than $1 trillion, White House Press Secretary Tony Snow said: “Well, if you take a look at what happened on September 11th, 2001, it’s estimated that the aftershocks of that could have cost up to $1 trillion.”

Well, duh! The logic of this is perfectly obvious to anyone who remains unblinded by irrational Bush Hatred. But libs just aren't big on the obvious and are now attempting to obfusicate the matter by pretending as if this one trillion dollar war is somehow a mistake. As if we hadn't started this war with the explicit plan to spend one trillion dollars and force Muslims out of their sleeper cells to kill thousands of our troops. I mean, how else would things have turned out this way, if Bush hadn't planned it as such? Do they think we're just making this shit up as we go along? As if...

And it worked perfectly. Thanks to Bush's plan, there are now millions more Muslims who have been lured out into the open to make explicit their undying hatred of us; thus giving us the justification we needed to invade. And had we followed Lord Michael Moore's plans, we'd still be naively unaware of this hatred and our enemies would still pretend to like us. Just think about that. Bush didn't create Muslim hatred for America. He just made them more willing to do something about it. And for that, we all owe him a big debt of gratitude.

Damned If You Do

And as I said, you just can't please these people. Because for as much as they rant about the expense of this war, they also rant about how Republicans spend our money domestically. Damned if you do, damned if you don't. They don't want us spending this money to establish democracy in a place that lacks the infrastructure for democracy, and they don't like us giving it away to our political and financial benefactors. What's a man to do?

I mean, where do they think this one trillion would have gone, had we not poured it into Iraq? We could have given a long overdue taxcut to the unfortunate individuals forced to pay the majority of our tax bill, but they would have complained about tax "give-aways" to the rich. Or we could have earmarked it to the super-secret defense contractors that buy us our homes, yachts, and hookers, but they would have complained about that. Or we could have just given it outright to the free-market heroes sponsoring our political campaigns at a rate of $1 for each $100 they receive, but they would have complained about that.

In fact, they would complain about where we put any of this trillion dollars, short of just giving it to poor blacks and illegal immigrants. So they would have used it for the same purpose we do: Buying votes. Damn hypocrites!

Supporting the Troops

And let's not forget about where a big part of that money went: The troops. That's right. A lot of our military guys got a big ol' payraise thanks to being in a warzone, and that's not to mention all the free meals and enhanced medical care we provided to them. And how about all the Reservists and National Guardsmen receiving a veritable mint thanks to Bush's awesome plan. By sending them to war, we not only gave them a purpose in life, we gave them cash. And I don't hear no one complaining about that from my accepted news sources.

And so that's what this is really all about. The hypocrite libs just don't like the idea that we're giving away all this money to the brave men and women protecting our borders. The idea that even a cent of this money isn't being funneled directly to illegal immigrants and welfare queens must drive them wild. Much better to give money to ol' Jose Gringo than to the people putting their lives on the line to protect our nation. Disgusting!

So I say Bully to Bush, for devising such a brilliant plan and for not kowtowing to the liberals demands that we funnel our hard earned money into Mexico. Those terrorists caused one trillion dollars of damage to us, and I'm sleeping easier knowing that Bush helped burn through another one trillion to avenge their evil deeds. Hell, let's just throw another trillion into the mix. That'd be just another trillion we'd be keeping out of the hands of those Tax & Spend liberals. Let them use their own money to buy votes. We've got a few minarets to blow-up. Yee-haw!

Incentivizing Wellness

Wow. I just read at Carpetbagger’s that Giuliani has come up with a great idea to solve our healthcare problem: Provide incentives for people to not get sick. That’s right. He nailed the problem on the head with this one.

I quote:
Currently, he said, “there is no incentive to wellness.”

Of course! Because under the current system, people don’t care if they get sick at all. They stand out in the cold rain, eat rotten chicken, and be born with a predisposition for cancer and other inherited diseases. And why? Because they know that Big Daddy Insurance will take care of everything and make them all better.

But if we sweetened the pot a little bit, like say by giving people a $15,000 tax break for their own healthcare, why, people would finally have some reason for not getting diabetes and heart disease. Heck, it might be enough that I decide to stop being morbidly obese! And to think, I was just about to have my doorways widened.

The details on how this tax break provides any incentive is still a bit sketchy, as people wouldn’t be keeping any of this money for themselves. And if it were really possible to just decide to stay healthy, people would simply not buy any insurance at all. Why pay $15k for health insurance for a meager tax savings, when you could save the whole amount? That’s what the uninsured already do, which is why they’re uninsured. So it sounds as if this would really just be a small subsidy for people who were already paying for their own insurance, while doing nothing for those who couldn’t afford it in the first place.

But whatever. The devil is always in the details, and I hate the devil. All I care about is that someone is finally making it advantageous to stay healthy, and I like it. I think I’ll avoid getting that leprosy after all.

Yawn.

Yawning. I don't get it. Why do we do it? Who knows? The idea that it helps get oxygen to your brain makes sense, because it does seem to wake me up. But I often yawn when I don't want to be more awake, so that's kind of annoying. I'm not the early to bed kind of guy anyway, and don't need for something to come along and wake me up just as I'm finally getting tired.

But looking at the Yahoo mainpage, I saw this story teaser for an ABC News video:
New research challenges the common theory that yawns are triggered by a need to replenish oxygen.

And what is this new theory? Brain air conditioning. This yawn expert of theirs maintains that we yawn when our brains overheat and need to cool down. He went on to suggest that, far from being an insult showing boredom, yawning actually shows that the person is so interested in what you're saying that they need to cool down. It's my guess that this theory was first suggested to him by one of his lab assistants who kept "overheating" every time this guy spoke.

And while I'm willing to acknowledge that this theory is possible, I have some real problems with it. Most of all, why do we yawn when we're tired and inactive, and not when we're active and hot? You'd expect to see joggers doing it all the time, if heat was the issue. Or during the middle of the day, when you're really busy. But no. It only seems to happen when you're really bored or tired, and would seem to be a way to make you more active, not less so. Like your brain is shutting down and needs a breath of fresh air to awaken it. And that would fit in with the traditional explanation of yawns. At no point in the story did they explain this obvious contradiction, or even suggest that it was a mystery.

And does yawning happen in overheated brains and do yawns cool them off? I have no idea. But based upon the feeble research they showed in the video, this researcher doesn't know either. When I first saw the story, I expected to see fancy MRI scans or thermal imaging or something. Instead, the research involved people watching videos of yawning people while holding hot or cold things to their heads. And he found that people holding hot things yawned and people holding cold things did not. And while that is scientific, I was kind of hoping for something a little more. You know, like showing hot brains being cooled off by yawns and cold brains not wanting to yawn.

But no matter, ABC News is convinced. After the segment, their witty news people sat around discussing the issue as if it's now settled fact. Finally, yawns are solved. Have these people no idea of how science works, that they'd allow one dude who calls himself a yawn expert to dictate the answer based upon one test? I don't know if that yawn expert considers the issue absolutely closed, but those news people sure did. Is it really any wonder these people were so easily convinced of the need to allow the Bushies to do whatever the hell they wanted? All these people care about is finding the answers. They could care less if the answers make any sense.

And wow, I forgot what I was missing with television news. They started the segment with a pointless voice-over while showing funny movie clips of people yawning. Because I had no fricking idea what a yawning person looked like. But that's not why they showed it. They knew that my attention span was much too short to watch such a hard hitting news story like this without at least a half-dozen funny clips to keep my attention. And The Simpsons, they yawn too. How important. I can't believe all the time I waste reading news at Talking Points and Carpetbagger, without getting even one funny voice-over movie montage. No wonder all my political opinions are so unserious. Not enough hilarity.

No New Toilets!

While I certainly agree that flush toilets are a huge waste of water and think we need to rethink the idea, I have some issues with this article on better toilet alternatives.

Regarding composting toilets, which use no water and would require us to cart our own crap out:
The technologies remain relatively unpopular because people in developed countries are programmed—and their houses and cities are built—to flush it all away. "Perhaps sometime in the future," said Quitzau, "people in Western cities could accept the idea of using human urine and feces as resources instead of as wastes."

Until then, the unsanitary stigma will haunt some of the modern replacements for water-flushing toilets. Quitzau says composting toilets are unfavorable because, although much improved technologically, they still remind people of ancient, unappetizing waterless technologies, such as the earth closet or outhouses.

And no, the problem isn't that I'm a toilet water snob (in fact, I happen to find all toilets to be unappetizing). The problem is that I don't like the idea of having to store crap in my house or having to cart it out the door and take it somewhere. This isn't about some imaginary"unsanitary stigma". This is about the very real issue of having crap in my house. And I've got two poopy teens and a little booter living with me and have noticed in them a distinct penchant for avoiding chores. So I've got a pretty good idea of who Mr. Crap Carrier would be. It'd be me. Daddy Crap Carrier. "Sorry kids. I'd like to play, but I've got to take out your crap." Thanks, but no thanks.

The article really makes it seem like this is just some silly superstition that got us to start flushing our crap into sewers. But it isn't. We have plumbing because we needed plumbing. We live in cities and cities have too many people for us all to be storing our crap up. And while I suppose this isn't quite so urgent for country folk, I don't think they like the idea of carting their crap around either. This isn't an issue of snobbery or stigma or anything. This is about convenience and not wanting to deal with stinky crap. I have no problem using a new kind of toilet, just as long as I don't have to do anything with the crap afterwards. (And no, squat toilets are not acceptable either.)

Oh, and what is this about:
While drinking-water shortages plague millions in such places as India and in some African nations, Westerners continue to oppose alternatives to the flushing toilet.

Am I missing something? Do we export drinking water in mass quantities? If not, then how is this relevant? Even if we switch to better toilets, the Indians still can't have our water. We'd just use it for longer showers, greener lawns, and more lavish waterparks. But if they want our precious tap water, they can buy Aquafina like everyone else.

And no, once we switch over to their beloved waterless technologies, the article never mentions where my cats would get their drinking water from. How typical. Everything works perfectly well, until you remember the cats.

Master Debater

I can find a way of making all your arguments sound wrong, silly, and stupid. That means that you're wrong, silly, and stupid. Sorry, you'll have to do better next time.

To the Extreme

As we all know and expect, Republicans constantly attack liberals for having extremist positions. But why is it they only seem to be able to do so by focusing on unknown liberals who are unrepresentative of most liberals (eg, Ward Churchill), or by inventing absurd positions that bare no relation to our actual position? You'd think if we were such oddball extremists it would be easy to find mainstream liberal views that people actually have.

I mentioned the other day Condi Rice's reference of liberals who think terrorism didn't start until after Bush invaded Iraq, and now we go to Carpetbagger with this quote from Giuliani:

“I’m for victory,” Giuliani said. Democrats, he added, are “living in a world where they refuse to admit the existence of Islamic terrorism.”

Huh? What liberal denies the existence of Islamic terrorism? As Carpetbagger says, our argument has always been that Bush was doing a bad job fighting terrorism. Specifically, that we thought the Iraq War was not only a distraction from the fighting terrorism, but that it was making things worse. And just as our Vietnamese opponents didn't follow us home to attack us after we left their country, the Iraqi's won't follow us home either. They just want us out of their country and these aren't the people who were attacking us before we invaded.

Now, this is a debatable point, I suppose. They could argue that this war is different and that these people will follow us home. I have no idea why they'd wait until we left, as an attack on us in America would be far more effective than attacking us in Iraq, and that having our soldiers in Iraq is not preventing that. In fact, I think we're an easier target with the troops in Iraq, particularly when we consider the extra money we're tossing away there that could go towards securing the homeland. And if Al Qaeda wants to attack us, I don't see why they'd wait until after we left Iraq.


But regardless, in no case are we ignoring this threat. You can disagree with our plans for dealing with the threat, but you can't pretend we don't have one. Yet that's exactly what Rudy's doing. And he's doing it because that's what the GOP base wants to hear. But that's not what they need to hear. In fact, it only pushes them deeper into crazytown. And the more they hear this claptrap, the further from reality they become.

That's why it's so difficult for us to talk to conservatives. They have absolutely no idea what we're talking about and their basic assumptions are completely whack. And how can they win arguments if they don't even understand what we're talking about? And so these people continue to push further to the right while imagining that everyone else is shifting left...except they've been told that it's only the "extremists" who disagree with them. But that's no real difference. They think anyone's an extremist who doesn't agree with them. They're just not willing to admit to how big a group that really is.

So they have to doubt the polls and scratch their heads and invent more and more extreme excuses for why people aren't agreeing with them. Media bias. It's the internets. Whatever. They know who the extremists are, and it's the people their leaders say they are. And the guy who gets to be their next leader is the guy who will tell them the most extreme lies about us. That's been working for their current leader, who now polls consistently around 30% approval. Maybe the new guy can push it all the way down to 20%. After all, there's nothing more extreme about your enemy than having a lot more of them.

Why Doesn't Anyone Tell Me These Things?

Wow. I just read a post over at Hullabaloo and apparently war is hell. I had no idea.

Too bad for us that democracy's such a lousy idea that we can only force it on people by gunpoint. Oh wait, no. It was the terrorist groups who use America's aggressive foreign policy as a recruiting tool that we needed to blast to kingdom come. Or whatever. I like to watch things blow up. If only my mysterious knee injury hadn't prevented me from joining...

Blood for Ghraib

Hey folks. Been busy lately so I haven't had much time to write, but just wanted to remind everyone about how much I truly hate Bush, America, and everything good and holy. Additionally, I hope the troops all die, our media continues to fool Americans, and that our partisan-based obstructionism finally begins to prevail. And don't forget about my cowardly obedience to my Islamofascist masters. Sure, liberals traditionally oppose theocracies, but that's just due to self-loathing of our white Christian heritage. And yes, I have been reading rightwing blogs today.

Oh, and here's my Quote of the Day:
The Iraq War was a godsend for the American left, something they'd have had to invent if it hadn't happened on its own.

That's right. It happened on its own. And oh, what a godsend! After all, we don't really care about human suffering. We just like to make America look bad. I guess that would make Bush the ultimate godsend.

Damn. I just read the source material, and got another good quote:
I recall watching the smoke from the towers late in the day, exhausted from stress and emotions I could scarcely identify, and thinking, "They'll never be able to defile this."

Yes. On 9/11, a conservative was concerned that mass destruction and death might be defiled; and now believes that we did defile it. This brings up the obvious question: What planet are these people from and how do we send them back?


P.S. I still hate baseball, mothers, and apple pie; though my hatred of democracy has waned somewhat since I discovered that Bush really wasn't so crazy about it either. Dictatorships sure sound a heck of a lot better, until you realize that he might be the dictator. I can't wait for the Islmofascists to take over.

Hey!

I just learned what habeas corpus means. I'm smart.

Why Bush Invented Terrorism and the Ideology of Hate

Has anyone ever suggested that terrorism didn't exist before Bush took office or that certain radical Muslim groups didn't hate us? Of course not. I've even spoken with a few truly wacko liberals in my time, and I have no doubt that even they would agree that radical Muslim terrorism existed before Bush came along. For anyone to even suggest that anyone believes such a thing should be considered an utter insult to the intelligence of anyone forced to listen to such drivel.

So how is it that the Bushies continue to argue against such absurd strawmen? It was mindnumblingly dumb the first time they said it, and it hasn't gotten any more intelligent with age. Hell, I somehow imagined that the Bushies had dropped it. But lo and behold, I made the mistake of flipping to my local NPR station yesterday, forgetting that they don't play music at that time of day, and caught the tail end of an interview with Condi Rice making that very stupid argument.

She wasn't even sly about it. She came right out and stated that, despite what Mr. Liberal Strawman argues on a daily basis, terrorism existed before Bush and these people have always hated us. And that meant that Bush isn't to blame for all the anti-American terrorism that his actions created. And what did the interviewer do after Condi said that? What else: she thanked Condi for coming and wrapped up the interview. Or maybe it was a dude interviewer, I can't remember. I was too busy trying to pick the pieces of my brain off the windshield and seats.

And is it at all possible that the interviewer didn't know what a pile of crap Condi had just laid on his/her listeners? I honestly don't know. But even if they did, they very well couldn't correct Condi about it. Why, she'd never come on the show again. It's one thing to make a minor factual error or have an honest disagreement about something. But there's a point of imbecilic obtuseness that one reaches after which it simply isn't polite to talk about it. Like when some homeless guy tells you about the invisible mouse cars flying on your head while pissing himself. And you can't do anything but nod, smile, and look for the nearest exit. This kind of thing happens all the time. It's just not supposed to happen when talking to the Secretary of State.

Neo-Cons Say the Damnedest Things

And really, isn't this one of the key ways that the neo-cons have succeeded as well as they have? They say the most damnedest things possible and just blow everyone's mind. Their material is so completely screwball and they say it so confidently that the listener begins to question their own sanity. After all, how could such sane looking people be so entirely wrong? But they are. They're entirely wrong. And the human intelligence just has trouble dealing with that and decides to split the difference.

And for all the tough talk liberals give about the media being fools for buying into the neo-con arguments, don't you believe it. Cheney didn't get where he is by fooling idiots. He's a tough cookie, and if you faced him in a boardroom discussion, you'd probably get your ass handed to you. For as crazy and wrong as he is, there's unlikely to be anyone who would think you won the debate. The best you could hope for is a draw, and you should thank your lucky stars for that. Same goes for Condi. You'd start off feeling confident, but when facing people who don't give a damn about the truth and have a penchant for taking arguments which are entirely unpredictable and mindnumbing; you'd be left entirely speechless and frustrated. That's how they do it.

But it goes beyond that. People have a weakness for being polite to people they like. And being polite means not crapping on someone's parade when they disagree with you or say something stupid. Even in the blog world, you're likely to slam some dude much harder in his comment section than in the personal email exchange that follows. And it's even harder in person. And that's why Condi was allowed to repeat such tripe in a national interview. Not that the interviewer necessarily believed Condi's idiocy, but simply that it would be too rude to even ask her about it. The nicest thing they could do is to end the interview, and that's exactly what happened.

And really, isn't that what my complaint is? If Condi had a better argument, she'd have made it. I don't expect her to admit defeat right there on NPR, so I guess she had to repeat that lame argument. But it was for no effect whatsoever. She convinced no one with her argument; nor did she offend anyone she hadn't offended long ago. So my real complaint is simply that NPR didn't embarrass her by asking her to explain what she was talking about. Does she really believe that terrorism can't be made worse by our actions? That's entirely idiotic. And she'd have just stalled for time while insisting that her point was entirely sensible. And then it would look like they were harassing her.

But again, I understand why they couldn't do that to her, so I guess I don't know what my complaint really is. I guess I'm just showing off how I know everything and just wanted to mention that these fools are still making these foolish arguments. But I guess you probably knew that too. Sorry for wasting your time.

Closed Thread

This thread is for members only. Non-members will not be permitted to view this discussion.


Update:
Member Only Hint: I'm not Mitt Romney.

Late Update:
Two non-members have already had their non-member access to this blog cancelled. Please don't make it a third.

Biobrain Not Biobrain

I've got another confession. And this one's a biggie: I'm not Doctor Biobrain. The person you know and love as Doctor Biobrain is an actor I hired to play me on my blog. His real name is Fredrique Stomplebum, an old vaudevillian I used as a facade to give my blog more legitimacy. I even have a picture of Fredrique Stomplebum portraying Doctor Biobrain, though I'm not at liberty to display this picture as it would hamper his ability to find gainful employment on vaudeville. The picture shows Mr. Stomplebum at my keyboard, typing my blog posts, while wearing a silly hat. The hat that you, my loyal readers, have been imagining me wearing all these years. In short, I'm a total fraud.

But it goes further than that. Mr. Stomplebum has also been writing my blog posts. That's right, all of them. And he's not even Doctor Biobrain when he does so. When he writes these posts, he does so as Pernicious Pete, a somewhat angry liberal who takes vengeance on the world by writing analytical "Big Picture" posts with a mildly biting satirical flair, along with somewhat shorter absurdist material intended as filler. Truth be told, I've never written anything on this blog. Even this post was entirely conceived by Mr. Stomplebum while I sat on my couch across town eating Doritos and watching Sanford & Son. It's the episode where Lamont preaches at Fred for being rude to his bald Latino friend. And let me tell, I'm enjoying myself much more than if I were at some stupid keyboard typing some idiotic confession I could care less about.

But the deception deepens. You see, there is no Mr. Stomplebum. Stomplebum was merely a literary device I created in an attempt to expand my marketing potential. I know this sounds crazy, now that my blog has become such a cornerstone of the absurdist liberal blogosphere in the greater south-central Austin area, but in the early days of this blog, I had trouble attracting readers. Nobody seemed interested in reading yet another liberal blogger rewriting Digby's material. So I secretly created Mr. Stomplebum to anonmously write as Pernicious Pete as a way of giving a certain je ne sais quoi that was apparently lacking from all the other unknown Digby thiefs. And because nobody knew about any of this, I could continue to pretend to write as Doctor Biobrain while all the real credit went to my imaginary braintrust which continued to act as the public face for Doctor Biobrain that no one ever saw.

And this, of course, leads me to my final confession: I'm Doctor Biobrain. I really am a CPA with his own home-based bookkeeping firm in Austin Texas, and I really am married and have a few kids which I rarely ever write about. And I and I alone am personally responsible for all of the writing you see here at this blog. So all the deception and sham you never knew anything about was nothing but a deceptive sham. And I'm truly ashamed of the whole thing. I wanted to tell you much sooner, but decided it was best to continue with the charade, lest people begin to suspect I'm weird for having created multiple levels of anonymous personalities. And I was probably right.

And so to sum up: Doctor Biobrain is a non-existent actor writing as a fictitious entity as a means of fooling no one into not realizing that they weren't reading the real Doctor Biobrain, which is exactly what everyone thought they were seeing in the first place and really were. Is that clear?

Oh, and in other breaking news: I'm really not the leader of the potentially phony Iraqi front of the non-Iraqi Iraqi resistance not lead by someone who may have been killed, captured, or invented; depending on the particular needs of any given government which has or hasn't the picture and/or DNA of the person in question who might never have existed, depending on whether or not you believe the supposed word of someone who may have been tortured...or not. And for those confused, read this.

Confession Time

I schtup Chilean Sea Bass while rubbing falafels on my tuckus. I can't help it. It's my one weakness. Well, that and writing absurdist blog posts mocking political gossip mongers. But in any case, this makes me as bad a person as anyone alive.

And in case you were wondering: Yes, these are all consenting Sea Bass; though I generally have to sedate the falafels first. Don't knock it until you try it.

Simply the Best

As it turns out, I really am the best blogger in the world. Go figure. I thought it was just hyperbole.

Serving Justice

I just read of yet another case of a guy who’s about to be executed who is probably innocent. And the thing that always gets me about these cases is that the police and prosecutors really don’t seem to give a damn that they might be letting a guilty guy get away with a crime. They all firmly believe that bad guys should be punished for their crimes, but when it comes down to it, all they really seem to care about is that they got someone for the crime. And now that they’ve got someone, they’ll be damned to let him go.

Here’s one of the villains in this article:
Georgia officials insist that Davis' failed 2004 federal court hearing is proof he has had his opportunity in court with the new evidence. "They've had a chance to challenge the conviction," said David Lock, chief assistant district attorney in Chatham County, where Savannah is located.

And if you read the article, you’d know that he’s most certainly lying. Because the reason the federal court dismissed his case was because of a law pushed by Newt Gingrich in the 90’s which denied federal courts the ability to hear these cases. It wasn’t that they heard the new evidence and dismissed it. It was because the law forbid them from even considering it.

And this guy most certainly knows that, but doesn’t give a damn. And sure, I’d prefer that he be concerned over the fact that he might be aiding in the murder of an innocent man. But you’d think he’d at least be angered that they might not have caught the guilty guy; who is possibly still on the loose and dangerous. But no. He’s got his guy, and that’s all he cares about.

Filling a Hole

But it’s not just this guy. It seems that once police and prosecutors decide that they’ve got the right guy, they refuse to look at anything that might exonerate that person. And that includes fighting requests to have DNA evidence examined on old convictions. They just don’t want to hear it. It’s like watching Perry Mason and the prosecutor refuses to drop the case after the guilty person confessed. I’m sure Perry kept a gun in his briefcase for just such an occurrence. And yes, that’d be my favorite episode.

But again, even if they don’t care about hurting innocent people, they should at least consider the fact that they’re allowing guilty people to roam free. But I guess these people don’t work like that. Fighting crime is like filling holes. Fill the hole with someone who sorta fits, and move on to the next hole. And if the square peg doesn’t fit into the round hole, just keep hitting.

And I can understand that. When people’s lives are in your hands, it’s probably easier to not consider them as real people. It’s just another job. And it’s got to hurt to truly contemplate that you might be ruining the lives of hundreds of people; so it’s just better to pretend that it’s not happening.

Oddly enough, after I wrote this, I happened to read Wikipedia on Henry Lee Lucas, the Texas “serial killer” who once confessed to over 3,000 murders, many of which he couldn’t possibly have committed. Apparently, after they forced him to confess to crimes he might have committed, police started using Lucas as a clearinghouse for all their cold cases, as a way of getting them off the books. At least two bright police officers actually got him to confess to invented crimes as a means of testing him. Yet his handlers refused to consider that he was lying, or that their role in coercing him to confess may have been a bit problematic.

Eventually, the Lucas thing became such an embarrassment that he became the only guy that then-Governor Bush saved from the death penalty. Hell, that’s almost as big of an honor as getting 3,000 murders attributed to him. I wonder if he got a framed copy of Bush’s commutation letter.

The Job

But this was just an extreme example of what we keep seeing again and again. Our law enforcers really aren’t that concerned with enforcing the law. Sure, they’d like to get the right guy. And they sure want to believe they got the right guy. But when it comes down to it, they just want somebody. And anyone convenient will do. And once they’ve gone through all the time and trouble of catching someone, by god, they want that someone to stay caught.

Criminal defense attorneys often take a lot of flak for defending obviously guilty people, but that’s their job. They’re hired to give someone a good defense, and for as much as that’s a rotten thing, that’s just how our system works. Everyone deserves a good defense; even the scumbags.

But prosecutors do the same damn thing, and most people don’t seem to mind. Just as a defense attorney’s job is to defend their client, a prosecutor’s job is to prosecute that client. But at a certain level, the prosecutor also needs to back away from the case and really decide if he’s got the right guy, and I don’t think they do that enough. They get caught into the trap of wanting to win a case because they want to win, and aren’t really thinking of the consequences.

As with too many of us, our jobs become some sort of abstract thing that is achieved for its own merits. Waiters who think their job is to be tipped and teachers who think their job is to enforce rules and be obeyed. As an accountant, I do that same thing. Amounts of money that I personally would find thrilling to have and devastating to lose have no real meaning to me when I’m punching away at these numbers. But it is real money and this stuff has real consequence, and I have to make an effort to remember that. My job isn’t some abstract thing involving numbers. This is real stuff that affects real people.

And with prosecutors and police, it’s all the more real. This shouldn’t be about closing files and filling holes. This should be about separating the good guys from the bad. And sure, they’ll never get everything right. But they’ve got to try. And it doesn’t end once they decide to prosecute, or even when they get that conviction. They’re never really off the hook.

And I can certainly understand why they wouldn’t want to think about that. But that doesn’t let them off the hook. Their job isn’t prosecuting people and closing cases. Their job is to serve justice. And when they close a case by locking up the wrong guy, they’ve committed two offenses against justice: Injuring an innocent man and allowing a dangerous one to roam free. It might help them sleep better at night, but it only endangers the rest of us.

Why Bush Sucks

Carpetbagger has a post on Bush’s response to a good question on Bush’s use of blaming “al Qaeda” for the attacks in Iraq.

As Bush said:
Al Qaeda in Iraq has sworn allegiance to Osama bin Laden. And the guys who had perpetuated the attacks on America — obviously, the guys on the airplane are dead, and the commanders, many of those are either dead or in captivity, like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. But the people in Iraq, al Qaeda in Iraq, has sworn allegiance to Osama bin Laden. And we need to take al Qaeda in Iraq seriously, just like we need to take al Qaeda anywhere in the world seriously.

To which Carpetbagger says “Bush has to know how misleading this is.”

But the thing is, I’m not so sure he does. Because I know a few people like Bush, and they really do believe absolutely insane crap that they should have no business believing. Things that are provably false, which have been explained to them repeatedly, yet they continue to believe it.

Even passively, they take these insane falsehoods as proven fact. Not because someone tricked them into believing it, but because they want to believe it. In fact, they need to believe it, in order for their lives to make sense. They’ll even misinterpret what they’re told and insist that what they heard is what you said. And even if you’re able to convince them they’re wrong, their brains will quickly lapse back into believing what they wanted to believe in the first place.

For example, nobody wants to believe that they’re a bad person (excepting, perhaps, Dick Cheney). But they also don’t like doing the things that are required of good people. So instead, they rationalize that the bad things they’re doing aren’t bad. It’s ok to allow poor people to starve and suffer and die early deaths, because they somehow deserve it. Because what you have is what you deserve to have. And that’s also why people who were born wealthy will convince themselves that they were “self-made” and earned it all; even as their inherited fortunes solely dwindle away due to their incompetence.

And the basic problem is that they really don’t have that sense of truth that the rest of us have. It’s not a character defect or poor parenting. It’s just how their brains work. Not that this is necessarily unique to them. We’re all familiar with the tricks our brains play to make sense of things that don’t make sense. Optical illusions and whatnot, which work when our brains connect things that aren’t really connected.

But of course, the real problem is that they believe crap in the first place and refuse to rethink any of that crap. They’re selfish people who can’t think about people who aren’t on their team. And you’re only on “their” team as long as your interests coincide with theirs. But because they can’t see themselves as being bad people, their brains continue to rationalize these things by demonizing anyone on the other team. Sure, they don’t want other people to suffer, but dammit if those people didn’t do something to deserve it. And it doesn’t matter what that something is. They’ll believe whatever they need to.

And I’m convinced that Bush is like that. He believes what he wants to believe, which is whatever he needs to believe to keep going. In this case, he needs to believe that staying in Iraq is the best thing to do, and he’ll believe and say anything to make that happen. I had more to write, but it’s 3:30 in the morning. I really need to start writing earlier.

The One True Liberal

This isn't anything new, but I just wanted to reaffirm the fact that no liberal can accurately consider themselves to be true liberals unless they openly state their continued allegiance to me and send me money. That isn't to say that these false liberals aren't capable of aiding the liberal cause, but only that they represent no true liberal ideal and are just wasting their time. And if you've got a problem with that, tough shit. You're the bozo screwing around while the true liberals are working our best to please our liberal god, Karl Marx. So get with the program and stop being such a putz, or you can just burn in Capitalist Hell!

If the Pope can do it, why can't I?

Alcohol 4 Jesus

Why doesn't anyone tell me about this stuff? The Supreme Court ruled against the Bong Hits 4 Jesus dude??? What the hell? That's entirely ridiculous, and I say that as someone named "Doctor Biobrain". I knew the wingnuts on the Supreme Court had no standards, but...my god, this is insane. Thanks a fucking lot, Washington Punditry. Roberts and Alito are great guys. This is awesome. We've got complete freaks in charge of the highest court in the land and there's nothing we can do about it.

The first time I heard of this case, I put it in the no-brainer category. I couldn't even believe it had gone to trial, let alone all the way to the Supreme Court. I'm a bit torn on the whole free speech in schools thing, mostly believing that kids have it, though I can understand the opposing side. But on a public street for a non-school event? That's just retarded. So retarded, in fact, that I'm now stuck to resorting to excessive exclamation points !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!.

And we're stuck with these freaks for how long? Until they die? Who was the ad wizard who came up with that one? And jesus christ I hope the remaining leftists on the court are taking their multivitamins and wheat bran. Sure, it's unlikely that the Senate Dems would allow another fruitcake through, but I'd rather not take any chances.

Oh, and I hope nobody will mind me giving a big FUCK YOU to Ralph "Dipshit" Nader for doing more than any single individual to bring this about. Even Bush and Rove needed a team of marketing zombies to perform their job, and it was entirely understandable why they did what they did. But Nader? He was supposedly on our team. Hell, I even voted for him, knowing that my Texas vote wouldn't cost Gore anything. But Nader didn't give a damn about my vote. He just wanted to screw the Democrats. And now we're all screwed.

Consistent Messages

And talking about idiots, I read this quote from the school district's superintendent:

"My concern is that [the court's ruling] could compromise our ability to send a consistent message against the use of illegal drugs."

Huh? Schools are now expecting the students to send messages that are consistent with the school's message? What universe is this person from? I could understand if this was a school employee with the bong hit message. But a student? And what exactly has been the school's stance on bong hits and Jesus? It's been awhile since I was in high school, but I don't remember the subject ever coming up. But perhaps that's just me showing my age.

I did like Justice Stevens argument on this:

Admittedly, some high school students (including those who use drugs) are dumb. Most students, however, do not shed their brains at the schoolhouse gate, and most students know dumb advocacy when they see it. The notion that the message on this banner would actually persuade either the average student or even the dumbest one to change his or her behavior is most implausible

Indeed. But perhaps the wingnuts on the Supreme Court have a little more insight into how influential dumb advocacy can be.

And just to show that it wasn't for vain, I'll repost the banner here:



And can there be any doubt that this banner encouraged far, far more pot smoking because it became a famous court case? Though I suppose it was all done by people who were going to smoke some anyway. But isn't that always the case?

Tomorrow

Everything's getting better tomorrow, I swear. And if it doesn't, there's always tomorrow.

Another Carnival Victory!

What can I say, Biobrain did it again. That’s right. Yet another big carnival win, this time for the appropriately named Carnival of Truth. Yes, I am the best.

The War on the Fourth

Well, it’s Fourth of July again, and what can I say. I’m sorry. I have yet again let you down in our eternal quest to end the Fourth of July forever. For as important as killing Christmas is in our goal to banish goodness from the world, obliterating this abominable date from our calendar is clearly the bigger fish. The Fourth of July stands for freedom and liberty and for the independence of mankind. Yet there will still be apple pies eaten today and fireworks fired. It’s enough to make me vomit.

And so I take today’s continued celebration of this day to be a giant wake-up call. I didn’t do enough. Sure, my series of 364-Day calendars have been big sellers in some liberal enclaves, as have my America-bashing history textbooks. But there’s only so many ways to describe Washington and Jefferson as Homosexual Islamocommies before you begin to wonder if it’s really getting through.

So that’s why I’ve decided to take this to the next level: Boycotts. I’m making a list of all the stores which sell Fourth of July paraphernalia in order to stage boycotts of them come next Fourth of July. List in hand, I’ll be sending letters in early June to each of these vendors, warning them to not sell anything even remotely connected with the Fourth of July on that dreaded date. That includes fireworks, hamburger meat, watermelons, beer, and of course, apples for apple pies. By the time I’m done, there won’t be a store open on the XXX of July.

But I need your help. I need each and every member of my loyal readership to immediately start searching out these offenders. Look in every nook and cranny of the world of merchandising. Leave no store unturned. I want names, addresses, and phone numbers. And don’t take their word for it. Insist on seeing all their merchandise. And don’t be afraid to raise your voice. Vague threats are a good way of letting people know you’re serious.

And the best part of all: At the end of the day we’re staging a huge firework burning. That’s right. I’m gathering together all the fireworks I can find, tossing them in a big pile, covering them with gasoline, and lighting those suckers up. That’ll show the little SOB’s.


HAPPY XXX of JULY EVERYONE!!!

Mea Culpa Time

Ok. It happened. I was wrong about something. Something big. That’s right. I got my Scooter Libby pardon prediction entirely wrong. Here it is: No pardon for Libby. That’s right, I misunderestimated Bush yet again. As I said in March, “with everything else falling apart for the Bushies right now, they won’t possibly risk a pardon.” Oops.

Needless to say, I had the arithmetic completely backwards on that one. Because with Bush’s poll numbers so low, they figured they can’t go down any more. And prison is so unseemly. So the Bushies did an old-school lobbying push on the DC Establishment and hit all the right notes. And with their buddies in line, they figured they had nothing to lose by getting rid of the prison time.

But of course, all this was yet another rationalization from Uncle Dick. And if Cheney needed the decision to go the other way, he would have convinced them of that too. Funny how that works out. The facts always seem to align themselves with whatever Cheney needs to have happen. I guess some people are just lucky that way.

But unfortunately for Dick, he’s had to rely on the “We Can’t Go Any Lower” rationalization too many times. Because that’s all he’s got. He can’t argue from a position of strength, because he doesn’t have any. So he’s now down to telling Bush about the future Americans who will recognize his greatness, because there are so few alive able to do so with a straight face.

Losing the Base

But even worse: The Can’t Go Any Lower argument is entirely false. Bush can always go down further. Believe it or not, even Republicans have their breaking points, and this is just going to be another heap of straw dropping on that poor elephant’s back. I’m not at all suggesting that Bush will drop below the 20’s just because of this, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see the lower poll outliers become even more constant from this.

Sure, the Bushies will be claiming this as yet another sweeping victory for their team. And hell, they might even believe it this time. But this isn’t going away and is yet another indefensible act no one wants to defend. And the last people wanting to defend them are Bush’s already beleaguered allies in Congress. While Bush’s political retirement is inevitable, many of his defenders would prefer to not tie themselves so closely to Bush’s fate. While it’s quite unlikely that Bush will be forced to uncommute Libby’s sentence, he has made himself even more radioactive from his actions.

If nothing else, just read this sample of fiery rhetoric issued from various mainstream Dems. The Bushies have given even right-leaning Dems like Hillary a leftie-rousing club to beat Republicans with. For as much as habeas corpus and Iraq are dangerzones to any “serious” presidential candidate, this Libby thing can be a lot of fun; even for a moderate.

Oh, and as a side note: At this point, there is no one who wants to support Bush. People support Bush because they have to support Bush. Even Bush wouldn’t support Bush, if he wasn’t Bush. Who would? No one. I am quite confident that if people were to objectively answer if they would support a president like Bush, his approval would be no higher than zero percent. And possibly lower.

Fingers do the Thinking

And just to be sure, I actually started doubting my prediction while I was writing the last paragraph of that post. As I wrote: These guys are like the mob and protect their own. Stay loyal and they’ll take care of you. And if you don’t stay loyal…they’ll take care of you. With these guys, loyalty isn’t a choice; but it sure does pay.

Now I’ve got a confession for you people: I often don’t think this stuff out before I write it. I usually will read a news story or blog post, think an opening line or two, and just start typing away as fast as possible. I usually have no idea what I’m going to write until I write it and often learn new stuff as I type. That’s how I do my thing. I let my mind wander and it goes wherever it wants. Some people call it luck, but I call it genius.

And so when I wrote that last paragraph, I began to wonder how that wouldn’t mean that they’d pardon him. But I was so proud of my contrarian prediction, I decided to stick with it. It just sounded right, even if it didn’t quite mesh in my head. And now I know that my fingers were smarter than my brain and I should have just gone with the direction they were pushing in; though this does not mean that I’ll soon be Doctor Biofinger. That just sounds gross.

And in any case, the rest of the prediction was obviously spot-on. Whether or not Libby served jailtime, he was going to be taken care of. And it’s just a matter of time until he’s the elder statesmen called in to save George P. Bush’s butt from that “misguided” invasion of France. And all the DC Establishment will shout a hardy hurray that a grown-up such as Scooter has come to fix everything.


Oh, and I was also totally wrong about Digby being a dude. Oops.