Feels like a rather awkward one to write, even painful. Kind of an obituary of a relationship? Not really close enough to call a friendship, though maybe I just don't know what friendship is supposed to mean. Most clearly a former employer, but we also had more than a few drinks in the local bar over the years, and I recall being invited to his palatial house one time. Even one of the few people I saw on both of my trips back to the States...
However, I'm deliberately attempting to protect the identity of the person I'm writing about here. Just a privacy thing for me, but I'd be uncomfortable if someone wrote this sort of post about me by name, so it's intended as a philosophic courtesy... For convenient reference, I'll call him Mr X.
The unique aspect of Mr X that motivates my writing is that he was the only Dubya supporter who I both personally knew and personally had high regard for. Actually, I was quite surprised, almost shocked, to find out that he was supporting Dubya Bush. There aren't many Dubya supporters around here, and the few I knew mostly seemed obviously flawed in ways that made me regard their political leanings as part of a flawed package. (For example, a Dubya-supporting moralist who admitted that his morality justified cheating on his wife, apparently because he felt everyone did. He was on his second or third wife by that time...) I've kept in touch with a number of old friends and acquaintances, and none of them were supporters of Dubya--but this one fellow stood out.
My recollection is already rather fuzzy, but I think I asked him a few years ago about what was going on in the States these years. It was a kind of open-ended query, but I was quite surprised to find that he regarded support of Dubya as a normal thing. At first, I figured it was just a Texas-local business thing, since most of his customers are in the rich or super-rich classes that Dubya describes as his base. I thought he was just playing along to make money. Such a well-educated and intelligent fellow couldn't really be drinking the koolaid, could he? However, he eventually managed to convince me that he meant it.
There was a lapse, and then we started discussing it again. I don't remember all the details of the discussion, but I never felt like he offered a rational defense of his position, and I suppose he felt the same way about my side of it. I remember that he wanted to make some kind of a wager about a prediction on the anti-Saddam war--so I referred him to my long list of predictions, written around 2001, but he evidently wasn't interested. Sadly, those were predictions of harms and damages that Dubya might do or at least be responsible for, and it turns out that all of my worst fears were realized--with compound interest. Worse than that, I missed plenty of other areas of harms I couldn't even imagine--and even though I was painting with a very broad brush there.
A couple of his later email messages finally convinced me there was no point to the discussion. At one point he tried the extremely weak argument of Dubya as the fellow you'd like to have a drink with. Fundamentally a flawed argument if you believe that Dubya is a teetotaller and if your idea of "with" means you aren't drinking alone. He actually approached it sideways, however, citing as his evidence a video of Dubya's self-deprecating humor at the White House Correspondents' Dinner a few years ago. That was the same year that Stephen Colbert did the extremely funny and rather devastating closing presentation that showed the actual limitations of Dubya's sense of humor--when Dubya stalked off in a huff afterwards.
At that point I felt that there wasn't much sense in continuing the discussion, so I blew it off. It's one thing to disagree about what is funny, but I really felt like asking how Mr X felt about Dubya's earlier attempt at humor at the same dinner a few years earlier. I was thinking about the extremely tasteless video about searching for Saddam's missing WMDs. Thousands of Americans and far larger numbers of Iraqis have died for that sick joke--with a running tab of something like $600 billion to date (for the direct and acknowledged costs). Or should I have commented about all the unintended humor of Dubya? Not much basis for discussion there, since I think the options are incompetence, stupidity, or a simple lack of respect for his audiences. Having nothing good to say, I said nothing.
Later he followed it up with some pretty crazy stuff about a gun-related lawsuit resulting from Katrina. My fuzzy recollection is that he was happy some policeman had been successfully sued for trying to disarm potential rioters in the aftermath of the disaster. Church of the Second Amendment, eh? Sorry, but I just don't see the relationship to the well regulated militia" there. Actually, I see the Second Amendment as having a very clear intention--that was completely overturned by the American Civil War. It was written in the context of a recent and successful insurrection, and it was their intention to make sure the federal leadership wouldn't do exactly what President Lincoln did do. The real question of the Second Amendment should be whether or not the Civil War was worth the cost--which we're still paying. At least that's how I interpret the former Southern Democrats who are now the Reagan Republicans with the decisive voting bloc in Texas and several other states of the Confederacy...
He sent a couple more pieces after those, but there didn't seem to be much reason to respond to them, either. Having nothing to say, I said nothing--but I kept thinking about it, and it continued to bother me. Hence this venting.
Conclusion? I guess it's that Dubya was lying (again) when he claimed to be a uniter rather than a divider. Good riddance to bad rubbish, but we'll all be paying for Dubya's miserable failures for a long, long time to come, no matter who takes over to clean up the mess.
Sunday, November 02, 2008
Saturday, November 01, 2008
Comments on the Election of 2008
Secondary Subject: I hope you have hope
That's the great thing about voting. It gives me a hope I can make the world a bit better. It isn't like owning the government, but it's better than nothing, and even if my guy didn't win last time, maybe I can pick a winner this time.
Short version of my story: The neo-GOP of Texas tried to prevent me from voting this year, but Senator Obama's supporters saved my vote. I am grateful and want to share my gratitude.
Introduction to the long version: All things are linked, and pulling out a key thread is hard. What do you already know? Where are the gaps I must bridge? Why are you interested? What bores you? There is no Zen, but this is a Zen tale...
So does voting matter? Perhaps it's a kind of religious thing for me, but I've always regarded voting as a sacred right and a civic duty. I'm big on doing my duty. Often it seems that my vote will have no effect, but I do my duty and I rarely skip an election. I always hope to vote.
The hope of Elizabeth Hanshaw Winn was to prevent me from voting this year. She works in the office of the Secretary of State of Texas and sent me a long and complicated email message that was intended to convince me I could not vote. It fooled me, and it was even good enough to fool a retired lawyer friend, too. Maybe it was just the legal code hidden between the lines? Seemed really complicated to me, but probably it's easy stuff for lawyers. Focus on legality and lawyers agree on the law. From her legalese, I'm pretty sure Elizabeth Hanshaw Winn is a lawyer, too. McCain says he hopes to make budgetary evildoers famous--though he means infamous, but I think Elizabeth Hanshaw Winn deserves to be infamous, too. Have you have been disenfranchised by her? If so, please tell your story, too. But why did Elizabeth Hanshaw Winn try so hard to prevent me from voting? That thread leads to general political motivations, and the specific situation in Texas.
Remember that *ALL* of the politicians say they approve of voting, but I think most of them are lying. Yes, a few of them really love voting and are sincere about democracy, but most politicians see votes as bus tokens that they need to collect, and collecting tokens is just a tactical game. Stealing a bus token is even better--it's like getting two tokens at once. But if you can't collect the token and you can't steal it from your opponent, then the next best thing is to make sure it gets thrown away before your opponent collects it.
So how do most politicians play the game? Mostly by claiming to agree with the voters, even when they don't. But the voters often disagree with each other, so it's logically impossible to agree with all of them. Is it hopeless? Any disagreement with the politician could lose that token. One tactic of some politicians is to agree with both sides of every issue--which is why most politicians are known liars. It's just getting too hard to avoid getting caught, and it's much better to say meaningless gibberish while attacking anything the other guy said. Ergo, Karl Rove tried to perfect the art of politics as lying about your political opponents. (But maybe that mudslinging machine has finally run out of steam?)
That's actually a relatively 'good' side of the political game. An ugly side is the selective disenfranchisement. For example, gerrymandering during redistricting can concentrate the other side's votes so many of those votes are effectively wasted. Details would be too far afield here, but it's worth noting that many Americans don't vote simply because they know that their so-called secret ballots have already been precounted and gerrymandered, and thus rendered meaningless. Another vicious variation is when the neo-GOP targets 'hostile' voter registrations.
Perhaps my case isn't so bad, though I'm sure I was targeted because I was a likely Democratic voter when I mentioned wanting to vote in the Democratic primary. I don't know for certain if Elizabeth Hanshaw Winn is a Republican, but Texas politics is now dominated by the Republicans, so either she's a Republican appointed to her position for that reason or she's working for a Republican. In any case I'm firmly convinced the real motivation of her persuasive but misleading email was to block a probable Democratic voter. Voting while Democratic is almost a crime in Texas now.
These years the Republicans run Texas and control all of the top statewide offices--just as Texas used to be dominated by the Democrats for many decades. It's worth noting that the switch was due to a shift of old Southern Democrats who became new Reagan Republicans. That's a long history going back to the "War between the States" (AKA the American Civil War), but the best short summary was LBJ's statement that the Civil Rights Act was ceding the South to the Republicans for a generation--but I also hope that generation is over... Actually. when the Democrats ran Texas, the real state election was the Democratic primary, and now the real election in Texas is the Republican primary--and therefore, by blocking me from voting in the primary Elizabeth Hanshaw Winn had already succeeded in taking away my vote in Texas (but mostly if I switched to the primary that counts).
However, buried in the fine print in a lower paragraph of her email she actually admitted that I still had a residual right to vote--and that's what the Obama people told me about after the primary was past. They told me what steps to follow, and eventually I was rewarded with a ballot. Now I can hope it will be counted--unless Elizabeth Hanshaw Winn has some new tactic to kill it. Maybe I used the wrong kind of ink?
That's pretty much my story, but I want to close by trying to persuade you that you should vote, too, because there are real differences between the candidates in this race. If you don't choose, someone else will--and I confess I was *VERY* mistaken in 2000 to think it didn't matter much. I'm going to focus on one positive and one negative reason why I think this election matters.
What do you think about the "right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness"? I think the life thing has to come first, or you aren't going to care about anything else. But do you think your right to life should depend on whether or not some insurance company thinks it's profitable to insure you? If you haven't needed medical treatment to save your life, just wait a bit. I think Obama understands this much better than McCain. I think Obama hopes to provide more medical care to help us live, while McCain just hopes to help some insurance companies. America pays more and gets less--because the insurance companies are too greedy in the middle. I think better medical care is a positive hope.
Meanwhile, Sarah Palin hopes to meet Jesus, and soon. She's said she expects to meet Him within her lifetime. According to her church, that means she is hoping for and dreaming of Armageddon--and I *REALLY* don't want her in the White House working to make her dream come true. Self-fulfilling prophecies can be dangerous--hoping for the end of the world is a negative hope.
A summary? Politicians have various motivations. I think most politicians are in it for money, some for the power, and only a small number are really into the idea of public service for its own sake--even though all of them claim to put public service first. These differences cross party lines, but there is a bias. The Republicans have always been the party of business, and proportionately more of them are motivated by the money. That's why they normally treat elections the same way, working out the most cost-effective ways to get the required 51% of the votes. The power-crazed politicians seem roughly evenly split--but it's very clear that McCain has become one of them. However, the true public servants now seem to be disproportionately in the Democratic Party. Of course it's hard to be certain in advance, since they all say the same things... So far Obama has been walking the walk.
I started by hoping to pick a winner this time around. I'm picking Obama. This time is *NOW*. We need some hope for a better future.
That's the great thing about voting. It gives me a hope I can make the world a bit better. It isn't like owning the government, but it's better than nothing, and even if my guy didn't win last time, maybe I can pick a winner this time.
Short version of my story: The neo-GOP of Texas tried to prevent me from voting this year, but Senator Obama's supporters saved my vote. I am grateful and want to share my gratitude.
Introduction to the long version: All things are linked, and pulling out a key thread is hard. What do you already know? Where are the gaps I must bridge? Why are you interested? What bores you? There is no Zen, but this is a Zen tale...
So does voting matter? Perhaps it's a kind of religious thing for me, but I've always regarded voting as a sacred right and a civic duty. I'm big on doing my duty. Often it seems that my vote will have no effect, but I do my duty and I rarely skip an election. I always hope to vote.
The hope of Elizabeth Hanshaw Winn was to prevent me from voting this year. She works in the office of the Secretary of State of Texas and sent me a long and complicated email message that was intended to convince me I could not vote. It fooled me, and it was even good enough to fool a retired lawyer friend, too. Maybe it was just the legal code hidden between the lines? Seemed really complicated to me, but probably it's easy stuff for lawyers. Focus on legality and lawyers agree on the law. From her legalese, I'm pretty sure Elizabeth Hanshaw Winn is a lawyer, too. McCain says he hopes to make budgetary evildoers famous--though he means infamous, but I think Elizabeth Hanshaw Winn deserves to be infamous, too. Have you have been disenfranchised by her? If so, please tell your story, too. But why did Elizabeth Hanshaw Winn try so hard to prevent me from voting? That thread leads to general political motivations, and the specific situation in Texas.
Remember that *ALL* of the politicians say they approve of voting, but I think most of them are lying. Yes, a few of them really love voting and are sincere about democracy, but most politicians see votes as bus tokens that they need to collect, and collecting tokens is just a tactical game. Stealing a bus token is even better--it's like getting two tokens at once. But if you can't collect the token and you can't steal it from your opponent, then the next best thing is to make sure it gets thrown away before your opponent collects it.
So how do most politicians play the game? Mostly by claiming to agree with the voters, even when they don't. But the voters often disagree with each other, so it's logically impossible to agree with all of them. Is it hopeless? Any disagreement with the politician could lose that token. One tactic of some politicians is to agree with both sides of every issue--which is why most politicians are known liars. It's just getting too hard to avoid getting caught, and it's much better to say meaningless gibberish while attacking anything the other guy said. Ergo, Karl Rove tried to perfect the art of politics as lying about your political opponents. (But maybe that mudslinging machine has finally run out of steam?)
That's actually a relatively 'good' side of the political game. An ugly side is the selective disenfranchisement. For example, gerrymandering during redistricting can concentrate the other side's votes so many of those votes are effectively wasted. Details would be too far afield here, but it's worth noting that many Americans don't vote simply because they know that their so-called secret ballots have already been precounted and gerrymandered, and thus rendered meaningless. Another vicious variation is when the neo-GOP targets 'hostile' voter registrations.
Perhaps my case isn't so bad, though I'm sure I was targeted because I was a likely Democratic voter when I mentioned wanting to vote in the Democratic primary. I don't know for certain if Elizabeth Hanshaw Winn is a Republican, but Texas politics is now dominated by the Republicans, so either she's a Republican appointed to her position for that reason or she's working for a Republican. In any case I'm firmly convinced the real motivation of her persuasive but misleading email was to block a probable Democratic voter. Voting while Democratic is almost a crime in Texas now.
These years the Republicans run Texas and control all of the top statewide offices--just as Texas used to be dominated by the Democrats for many decades. It's worth noting that the switch was due to a shift of old Southern Democrats who became new Reagan Republicans. That's a long history going back to the "War between the States" (AKA the American Civil War), but the best short summary was LBJ's statement that the Civil Rights Act was ceding the South to the Republicans for a generation--but I also hope that generation is over... Actually. when the Democrats ran Texas, the real state election was the Democratic primary, and now the real election in Texas is the Republican primary--and therefore, by blocking me from voting in the primary Elizabeth Hanshaw Winn had already succeeded in taking away my vote in Texas (but mostly if I switched to the primary that counts).
However, buried in the fine print in a lower paragraph of her email she actually admitted that I still had a residual right to vote--and that's what the Obama people told me about after the primary was past. They told me what steps to follow, and eventually I was rewarded with a ballot. Now I can hope it will be counted--unless Elizabeth Hanshaw Winn has some new tactic to kill it. Maybe I used the wrong kind of ink?
That's pretty much my story, but I want to close by trying to persuade you that you should vote, too, because there are real differences between the candidates in this race. If you don't choose, someone else will--and I confess I was *VERY* mistaken in 2000 to think it didn't matter much. I'm going to focus on one positive and one negative reason why I think this election matters.
What do you think about the "right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness"? I think the life thing has to come first, or you aren't going to care about anything else. But do you think your right to life should depend on whether or not some insurance company thinks it's profitable to insure you? If you haven't needed medical treatment to save your life, just wait a bit. I think Obama understands this much better than McCain. I think Obama hopes to provide more medical care to help us live, while McCain just hopes to help some insurance companies. America pays more and gets less--because the insurance companies are too greedy in the middle. I think better medical care is a positive hope.
Meanwhile, Sarah Palin hopes to meet Jesus, and soon. She's said she expects to meet Him within her lifetime. According to her church, that means she is hoping for and dreaming of Armageddon--and I *REALLY* don't want her in the White House working to make her dream come true. Self-fulfilling prophecies can be dangerous--hoping for the end of the world is a negative hope.
A summary? Politicians have various motivations. I think most politicians are in it for money, some for the power, and only a small number are really into the idea of public service for its own sake--even though all of them claim to put public service first. These differences cross party lines, but there is a bias. The Republicans have always been the party of business, and proportionately more of them are motivated by the money. That's why they normally treat elections the same way, working out the most cost-effective ways to get the required 51% of the votes. The power-crazed politicians seem roughly evenly split--but it's very clear that McCain has become one of them. However, the true public servants now seem to be disproportionately in the Democratic Party. Of course it's hard to be certain in advance, since they all say the same things... So far Obama has been walking the walk.
I started by hoping to pick a winner this time around. I'm picking Obama. This time is *NOW*. We need some hope for a better future.
Wednesday, July 04, 2007
RIP: Here lies the Rule of Law in America
Just focusing on one MSM story to celebrate this sad 4th of July, the day the rule of law died in America. Here are a few of the obituaries, courtesy the robots over at Google News:
"Leniency for Libby and the '08 presidential race", Christian Science Monitor - 46 minutes ago
"Libby might have sung ...", San Francisco Chronicle
"Bush won’t rule out full pardon for perjurer, Libby", Boston Herald
The Googlebot report 3,108 current stories on the topic. I especially like that last one. You know the ol' rule of law has been one pretty tough hombre, so ol' Dubya wants to keep one more stake ready to pound into its heart, just in case it tries to start moving again.
The Law? "The Law" is for innocent peasants in Afghanistan, not for friends of the resident of the White House. An unfair sentence for a lawyer who perjured himself and got caught? Not like he knew any better, eh? Well, in Guantanamo Bay Dubya has been imprisoning people longer than LIbby's "excessive" 30 months, and sometimes "American justice" a la Dubya discovers they've been sentenced unfairly--except that they were never sentenced in the first place. Clemency? Hell no. We just quietly dump those ones back on the street and expect them to be grateful and to keep their mouths shut. After all, Dubya could always throw them back in the slammer on Cheney's say-so.
Yeah, actually "the law" in America has been dead for quite a while, but there's also some quibbling about the exact timing of the Declaration of Independence, too. However, the anti-symmetry is just too much to ignore. The Founders of our government wanted publicity, they wanted everyone to know that King George had gone too far and they weren't going to put up with it any more. This King George wanted quiet. He wanted to bury the sad news under the celebration of the work of those great Founders. It didn't work as well as Dubya had hoped, but what's one more miserable failure for such a reign of error?
Founders, eh? So now it's the ship of state that founders. Cheney in the role of Captain Bligh? The rule of law isn't just a good idea, it's the law! That's supposed to be an optimistic joke of some twisted sort. I really do think laws are a good idea and the societies with good legal systems have competitive advantages over the others... So where does that leave Dubya's United States? On the wrong end of a short rope.
"Leniency for Libby and the '08 presidential race", Christian Science Monitor - 46 minutes ago
"Libby might have sung ...", San Francisco Chronicle
"Bush won’t rule out full pardon for perjurer, Libby", Boston Herald
The Googlebot report 3,108 current stories on the topic. I especially like that last one. You know the ol' rule of law has been one pretty tough hombre, so ol' Dubya wants to keep one more stake ready to pound into its heart, just in case it tries to start moving again.
The Law? "The Law" is for innocent peasants in Afghanistan, not for friends of the resident of the White House. An unfair sentence for a lawyer who perjured himself and got caught? Not like he knew any better, eh? Well, in Guantanamo Bay Dubya has been imprisoning people longer than LIbby's "excessive" 30 months, and sometimes "American justice" a la Dubya discovers they've been sentenced unfairly--except that they were never sentenced in the first place. Clemency? Hell no. We just quietly dump those ones back on the street and expect them to be grateful and to keep their mouths shut. After all, Dubya could always throw them back in the slammer on Cheney's say-so.
Yeah, actually "the law" in America has been dead for quite a while, but there's also some quibbling about the exact timing of the Declaration of Independence, too. However, the anti-symmetry is just too much to ignore. The Founders of our government wanted publicity, they wanted everyone to know that King George had gone too far and they weren't going to put up with it any more. This King George wanted quiet. He wanted to bury the sad news under the celebration of the work of those great Founders. It didn't work as well as Dubya had hoped, but what's one more miserable failure for such a reign of error?
Founders, eh? So now it's the ship of state that founders. Cheney in the role of Captain Bligh? The rule of law isn't just a good idea, it's the law! That's supposed to be an optimistic joke of some twisted sort. I really do think laws are a good idea and the societies with good legal systems have competitive advantages over the others... So where does that leave Dubya's United States? On the wrong end of a short rope.
Friday, March 09, 2007
Guilty until proven innocent!
A copy of my comments to The Register with regards to an article about the privacy-invading behavior of Microsoft's protect-Microsoft-first approach to 'security':
I better clarify that the basic premise of Microsoft's software is that you are *NOT* authorized to run Microsoft's software unless you can prove you're a legitimate customer. Unless you (with your computer acting as your proxy) can prove you're an innocent and legitimate customer, Microsoft assumes you're a pirate--even though they have a track record of creating miserably buggy software. It's not even limited to the bugginess of their software making false accusations and putting the onus on you to prove your innocence. It's that Microsoft also defines the rules of the game in their shrink-wrap legalese so you can't even be sure you are *NOT* a pirate as Microsoft has defined it.
In addition to making the twisted rules and prosecuting you in advance, Microsoft is also a crooked judge in this situation. It is in Microsoft's interest to claim the piracy problem is large, and to make their 'damage' claims as large as possible. Po' widdle Micwosoft. Don't you just pity them for all the money they've lost to those vicious pirates? Next thing you know, they'll be in the poorhouse, right? Wrong. Much more likely you'll be bankrupt and jailed for copyright violations. Microsoft is working on that one, too.
Right now the secondary point of enforcement (once you've gotten past the primary point and gotten the software to run in the first place) is that they will block you from updates (but I'm sure they're working on stronger alternatives). In other words, they will withdraw their token protection for your vulnerability to their security incompetence. They not only created the disease, but they don't care if it fries your computer. As usual, the #1 concern of Microsoft is to figure out new ways to squeeze money out of people who don't want to do business with them in the first place.
Think about the other side of it. Pretend that Microsoft was actually held liable for all the losses and problems caused by their incompetence in writing software. Pretend that they weren't permanently immune from all liability thanks to their magic shrinkwrap contracts. If Microsoft paid for the damages, I'm sure they would be bankrupt.
<sarcasm> However, it's possible that you've somehow detected that I wouldn't cry too hard at the demise of Microsoft.</sarcasm> Why? Because I like my freedom and I'm tired of Microsoft stomping on it for profit.
Another example of the fish rotting from the head up. BushCo is leading with the policy that anything you can get away with is okay. Microsoft has always lived by that policy, but just more so now. Me? I continue to believe that freedom and democracy confer competitive advantage--and America is losing those advantages. Microsoft is just following BushCo's lead down the drain, and taking the country with them.
Just a second while I warm up my harp... Now for the harping.
"Guilty until proven innocent." That's the 'legal principle' of WGA (Windows Genuine Advantage). Next thing you know, they'll be trying to repeal habeas corpus. Oh. Wait.
I suggest that you try to change the terms of the debate. It's okay to refer to it as WGA for purposes of official identification, but for the sake of reality you should call it "Microsoft's Advantage Program", since the only advantage of this program (both as software and as a policy) is to help Microsoft squeeze the last few drops of blood out of some poor turnips somewhere in Africa or South America.
Me? 90% of my home computing is on Ubuntu Linux now, and about 20% of my work computing. The work-side is gradually increasing, and my current dream is to avoid Vista as completely as possible.
I better clarify that the basic premise of Microsoft's software is that you are *NOT* authorized to run Microsoft's software unless you can prove you're a legitimate customer. Unless you (with your computer acting as your proxy) can prove you're an innocent and legitimate customer, Microsoft assumes you're a pirate--even though they have a track record of creating miserably buggy software. It's not even limited to the bugginess of their software making false accusations and putting the onus on you to prove your innocence. It's that Microsoft also defines the rules of the game in their shrink-wrap legalese so you can't even be sure you are *NOT* a pirate as Microsoft has defined it.
In addition to making the twisted rules and prosecuting you in advance, Microsoft is also a crooked judge in this situation. It is in Microsoft's interest to claim the piracy problem is large, and to make their 'damage' claims as large as possible. Po' widdle Micwosoft. Don't you just pity them for all the money they've lost to those vicious pirates? Next thing you know, they'll be in the poorhouse, right? Wrong. Much more likely you'll be bankrupt and jailed for copyright violations. Microsoft is working on that one, too.
Right now the secondary point of enforcement (once you've gotten past the primary point and gotten the software to run in the first place) is that they will block you from updates (but I'm sure they're working on stronger alternatives). In other words, they will withdraw their token protection for your vulnerability to their security incompetence. They not only created the disease, but they don't care if it fries your computer. As usual, the #1 concern of Microsoft is to figure out new ways to squeeze money out of people who don't want to do business with them in the first place.
Think about the other side of it. Pretend that Microsoft was actually held liable for all the losses and problems caused by their incompetence in writing software. Pretend that they weren't permanently immune from all liability thanks to their magic shrinkwrap contracts. If Microsoft paid for the damages, I'm sure they would be bankrupt.
<sarcasm> However, it's possible that you've somehow detected that I wouldn't cry too hard at the demise of Microsoft.</sarcasm> Why? Because I like my freedom and I'm tired of Microsoft stomping on it for profit.
Another example of the fish rotting from the head up. BushCo is leading with the policy that anything you can get away with is okay. Microsoft has always lived by that policy, but just more so now. Me? I continue to believe that freedom and democracy confer competitive advantage--and America is losing those advantages. Microsoft is just following BushCo's lead down the drain, and taking the country with them.
Saturday, February 24, 2007
Return of the native and new 2008 speculations
Over two years since I've commented here, so I think I should start with a bit of contextualizing and history. This blog actually originated in what has to be described as a "manual blog" I was preparing at http://shanenj.tripod.com/antibush.html as a kind of sporadic ongoing commentary on the political news of the day. That actually started early in 2001 when I'd never heard of the idea of a blog, though I think Blogger probably existed at that time. Great minds think alike? Or maybe I'd heard something about such an idea and just forgotten about my source for the idea? I often wonder... Anyway, I was just doing it by hand, which is a lot of nuisance for the bookkeeping and mechanics and the especially painful archiving of older posts when it got too large. No provision for visitor comments. People could send email comments, but if anyone was reading it, they mostly didn't say anything... At some point I heard about Blogger and I tried to integrate it into my existing methods, which wasn't too easy.
After a few years, there was the disgusting ultimate-mud-slinging election of 2004, and I was pretty much bummed out with the whole thing. I still think the yet-to-be-revealed truth is that Kerry was Karl Rove's hand-picked-in-secret nominee, and that the election was truly determined by the MSM attack on Howard Dean over the bogus issue of "the scream". Dubya has certainly committed a basically uncountable number of worse gaffs--if they only felt like giving him equal treatment, but in Dubya's case they just claim it makes him the guy "you" want to have a beer with--except for the little detail that Dubya doesn't drink bear with anyone in this revised life... Anyway, In 2000 Rove's neo-GOP drummed up support for Dubya as a 'name-brand' candidate who could (but didn't actually) beat Al Gore, and in 2004, the neo-GOP picked Kerry as a Democratic candidate that Dubya could beat--and I'm still not sure about that, given the games they played in that election, mostly with disenfranchising Democratic voters. Another one that may get revealed when the data is finally unraveled...
Anyway, after the election, about the only political part of my website that remained active was the anti-Dubya book review section, which has grown into quite a large file over the years, even though I'm not reading so many politically relevant books now. My general perspective remains pretty much unchanged, which is that America is on the way down... I keep seeing more and more evidence in the most surprising places. I think the big economic disaster will be triggered by a devaluation of the American dollar responding to the balance of trade and deficit spending. So the latest surprising place was in a Japanese history book a few days ago, where I ran across a very interesting graph of the American balance of trade with respect to England in the period before the American Revolution... It all fits together. Like we used to say in the Rice history department, "The only lesson you learn from history is that no one learns any lessons from history."
At this point it looks like America was sort of jostled out of it's nap for the election of 2006, and Dubya Bush's legacy of miserable failure is coming unraveled at every seam. However, I think it's just too little, too late...
Today's proximate cause of commenting was a comment I wrote yesterday for another venue. The topic of that discussion was the probably Democratic nominee for 2008. Slightly polished here...
I'm not so much against Hillary Clinton as a moderate Democratic professional politician as I am against her as a nepotistic family candidate. That's 95% of how we got Dubya in the last place. Dubya Bush should have been laughed out of any serious political race on his own track record of miserable failures and amazing incompetence. Yes, her qualifications are vastly superior to Dubya's, and Bill Clinton deliberately picked her, while Dubya is just a genetic accident of the worst sort. However, the bottom line is that she wouldn't be considered such a strong contender if she wasn't "a Clinton", and I think that family is the kind of criteria you can reasonably use for picking figurehead kings and queens, but that nepotism has no place in what is supposed to be a rational democratically elected representative republican form of government. (Did I include all the proper buzzwords there?)
However, I admit that I would certainly vote for any of the current Democratic candidates, even including Hillary, against any of the Republicans who have declared their intention to run. I kind of hope they manage to nominate that flip-flopper double-speaking McCain, but I fantasize about Cheney as the candidate. Heck, let's dream big. Imagine Rove coming out of the closet and actually pretending to be a real politician and somehow getting the nomination by calling in all his chips. That would be a rout to end all routs. (On the other hand, Dubya should have been routed in 2000 *AND* 2004... You only have to fool 30% of the voters on Election Day these days.)
The way things are looking now, the Republicans are going to be desperately fishing for any candidate on the negative litmus test "Can he beat Al Gore?" Well, that strategy didn't even work in 2000, though the SCOTUS kicked dirt in everyone's faces and shoved Dubya into the White House.
After a few years, there was the disgusting ultimate-mud-slinging election of 2004, and I was pretty much bummed out with the whole thing. I still think the yet-to-be-revealed truth is that Kerry was Karl Rove's hand-picked-in-secret nominee, and that the election was truly determined by the MSM attack on Howard Dean over the bogus issue of "the scream". Dubya has certainly committed a basically uncountable number of worse gaffs--if they only felt like giving him equal treatment, but in Dubya's case they just claim it makes him the guy "you" want to have a beer with--except for the little detail that Dubya doesn't drink bear with anyone in this revised life... Anyway, In 2000 Rove's neo-GOP drummed up support for Dubya as a 'name-brand' candidate who could (but didn't actually) beat Al Gore, and in 2004, the neo-GOP picked Kerry as a Democratic candidate that Dubya could beat--and I'm still not sure about that, given the games they played in that election, mostly with disenfranchising Democratic voters. Another one that may get revealed when the data is finally unraveled...
Anyway, after the election, about the only political part of my website that remained active was the anti-Dubya book review section, which has grown into quite a large file over the years, even though I'm not reading so many politically relevant books now. My general perspective remains pretty much unchanged, which is that America is on the way down... I keep seeing more and more evidence in the most surprising places. I think the big economic disaster will be triggered by a devaluation of the American dollar responding to the balance of trade and deficit spending. So the latest surprising place was in a Japanese history book a few days ago, where I ran across a very interesting graph of the American balance of trade with respect to England in the period before the American Revolution... It all fits together. Like we used to say in the Rice history department, "The only lesson you learn from history is that no one learns any lessons from history."
At this point it looks like America was sort of jostled out of it's nap for the election of 2006, and Dubya Bush's legacy of miserable failure is coming unraveled at every seam. However, I think it's just too little, too late...
Today's proximate cause of commenting was a comment I wrote yesterday for another venue. The topic of that discussion was the probably Democratic nominee for 2008. Slightly polished here...
I'm not so much against Hillary Clinton as a moderate Democratic professional politician as I am against her as a nepotistic family candidate. That's 95% of how we got Dubya in the last place. Dubya Bush should have been laughed out of any serious political race on his own track record of miserable failures and amazing incompetence. Yes, her qualifications are vastly superior to Dubya's, and Bill Clinton deliberately picked her, while Dubya is just a genetic accident of the worst sort. However, the bottom line is that she wouldn't be considered such a strong contender if she wasn't "a Clinton", and I think that family is the kind of criteria you can reasonably use for picking figurehead kings and queens, but that nepotism has no place in what is supposed to be a rational democratically elected representative republican form of government. (Did I include all the proper buzzwords there?)
However, I admit that I would certainly vote for any of the current Democratic candidates, even including Hillary, against any of the Republicans who have declared their intention to run. I kind of hope they manage to nominate that flip-flopper double-speaking McCain, but I fantasize about Cheney as the candidate. Heck, let's dream big. Imagine Rove coming out of the closet and actually pretending to be a real politician and somehow getting the nomination by calling in all his chips. That would be a rout to end all routs. (On the other hand, Dubya should have been routed in 2000 *AND* 2004... You only have to fool 30% of the voters on Election Day these days.)
The way things are looking now, the Republicans are going to be desperately fishing for any candidate on the negative litmus test "Can he beat Al Gore?" Well, that strategy didn't even work in 2000, though the SCOTUS kicked dirt in everyone's faces and shoved Dubya into the White House.
Saturday, November 06, 2004
Michael Moore's error in fighting fire with fire
Putting it in two words: Wrong fire.
Actually, it comes back to my original reaction to Fahrenheit 9/11. When I saw the movie, I felt like asking "Is that all? What's the fuss about?" From the loud screaming and bitter noisy crying of the Bushevik children, I was really expecting a monumental epic.
Michael Moore made no secret that the movie was supposed to be a very negative attack on Dubya's qualifications for and handling of his "job". However, there was nothing extremely negative there. The background facts were old and well known to anyone who has been paying attention. A lot of the footage was just the end bits that regular media sources had snipped out of their broadcasts. Yes, Moore's perspective certainly didn't match the official propaganda very well, but the tone was basically light, even humorous. I certainly dislike Dubya and am receptive to criticism of BushCo, and I certainly would have been sensitized to notice any reasons to hate Dubya on some kind of personal level, but the movie didn't offer them. In conclusion, only a rather ignorant person could have a strong reaction to that movie--but the many strong reactions suggested that there were lots of such Americans...
Contrast it to the anti-Clinton rhetoric and the endless witch hunt. Maybe I was fooled, but they sure had me convinced that their hatred was real, very sincere, and very intense. Contrast it with the anti-Michael-Moore books and movies that were made in "response" to Fahrenheit 9/11. No way I could be mistaken about the palpable hatred there. Compare it with the attack ads from Nixon's revived swift boat vets and you can feel the purity and intensity of their rightwing hatred. Not just limited to politics, by the way. It's the same kind of irrational hatred that fanatically argues that 3,000 innocent American deaths (caused by Saudi terrorists with funding that originally came from BushCo) completely justify 100,000 innocent Iraqi deaths (even though Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11 and posed no significant threat).
In conclusion, Michael Moore obviously recognizes how negative American politics has become, and he wanted to fight that fire with fire, but he didn't have the right fire--the fire of wrongness. A bit of humor is no match for the pure, distilled hatred that drives so many of Dubya's supporters.
Actually, it comes back to my original reaction to Fahrenheit 9/11. When I saw the movie, I felt like asking "Is that all? What's the fuss about?" From the loud screaming and bitter noisy crying of the Bushevik children, I was really expecting a monumental epic.
Michael Moore made no secret that the movie was supposed to be a very negative attack on Dubya's qualifications for and handling of his "job". However, there was nothing extremely negative there. The background facts were old and well known to anyone who has been paying attention. A lot of the footage was just the end bits that regular media sources had snipped out of their broadcasts. Yes, Moore's perspective certainly didn't match the official propaganda very well, but the tone was basically light, even humorous. I certainly dislike Dubya and am receptive to criticism of BushCo, and I certainly would have been sensitized to notice any reasons to hate Dubya on some kind of personal level, but the movie didn't offer them. In conclusion, only a rather ignorant person could have a strong reaction to that movie--but the many strong reactions suggested that there were lots of such Americans...
Contrast it to the anti-Clinton rhetoric and the endless witch hunt. Maybe I was fooled, but they sure had me convinced that their hatred was real, very sincere, and very intense. Contrast it with the anti-Michael-Moore books and movies that were made in "response" to Fahrenheit 9/11. No way I could be mistaken about the palpable hatred there. Compare it with the attack ads from Nixon's revived swift boat vets and you can feel the purity and intensity of their rightwing hatred. Not just limited to politics, by the way. It's the same kind of irrational hatred that fanatically argues that 3,000 innocent American deaths (caused by Saudi terrorists with funding that originally came from BushCo) completely justify 100,000 innocent Iraqi deaths (even though Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11 and posed no significant threat).
In conclusion, Michael Moore obviously recognizes how negative American politics has become, and he wanted to fight that fire with fire, but he didn't have the right fire--the fire of wrongness. A bit of humor is no match for the pure, distilled hatred that drives so many of Dubya's supporters.
Saturday, August 14, 2004
Japanese premier of Fahrenheit 9/11
Well, I finally got to see the movie yesterday, and I have a number of personal impressions to report. These are really just preliminary notes while the event is fresh in my mind.
At 11 a.m. there was a long line extending several hundred meters from the ticket lobby in Ebisu Garden Cinema. My friend had arrived when the ticket window first opened at 9 to validate the pre-purchased tickets. He thought he would be able to waltz through to the front, but there were already a lot of people ahead of him and he had to wait, and his tickets were eventually validated around number 130 for the 12:30 (third) showing. They had changed the schedule to use both of their screens for Fahrenheit 9/11, but the second screen is only about 100 seats. At that time there were a lot of media people taking pictures of the line (and I took some). Some people were also setting up for a little straw vote presidential election for people coming out of the first showing.
When we came back for the showing itself, they let the first 10 validated tickets go in first, then the next 10, etc. We still had plenty of good seats to choose from when we got in, and we got a block pretty near the front. The theatre was soon full, and I could see no empty seats anywhere, so I believe it was sold out. The advertisements were mostly for French movies, so I felt like it's an "arts" theatre.
I had three main impressions of the movie itself:
There didn't seem to any real justification for the R rating. Though there were some gruesome images, they were the kind of thing regular TV news could include and they flashed by quickly enough. I think I'm rather squeamish about these things, but I was able to watch all of it.
There were no material errors of fact. I was listening very closely for ANY mistakes. This was not naive searching, but based on various reported criticisms of the movie, mostly from devout Busheviks who certainly seem to be quite sincere about wanting to find flaws in the movie. Having read their claims, I was listening very closely at those points--and I could not spot anything that supported their criticisms. The closest thing was in the section about the post-9/11 evacuation of the Bin Ladins, where Michael Moore juxtaposed the closed air space very closely--but the movie did not actually say when the Saudis first received their special permissions to get out of the US--and of course the REAL issue there and the REAL focus of the movie was on whether or not the Saudis should have been allowed special treatment in comparison to the other "suspicious" "Arabic" people who were rounded up and interrogated. Around 1/4 of the way into the movie, I actually thought I did hear a one-word mistake that I had never read about, but it was a minor item. Not sure if that's sufficient justification to go again next week when it opens in my local theater. Kind of expensive just to try to catch a one-word glitch. (However, I'm at least going to visit the theater to see how big the "pure" Japanese crowd is.)
Notwithstanding all of the noisy criticisms, it was a very balanced and even moderate documentary. It certainly mentioned a lot of the smoke around BushCo, and even showed a few of the fires, but it stuck quite ploddingly to the facts. It did ask a lot of really rude and pointed questions, but they all seemed to be questions for legitimate public discussion. Especially as regards the questions about the real justification or lack of justification for the Saddam-removal war, these are life-and-death questions that should have been answered much more definitively before anyone died. It's really hard for me to understand what all the violent criticism is about. Well, actually I think I sort of understand some of it, but it's a complicated question of push propaganda. When you ask questions and show the available evidence, some people will leap to conclusions--and in this case most of those conclusions are NOT favorable to Bush.
I did see a LOT of examples where the critics were willfully misinterpreting scenes from the movie. For example, there were a few pre-war scenes of life in Iraq, but nothing suggesting that there was any sort of Iraqi paradise under Saddam. It showed normal human beings living their normal lives--and they just happened to be Iraqi human beings. Michael Moore's obvious goal was to juxtapose those images against what ALWAYS happens in REAL war, which is that some innocent people also die.
After the movie, there was no big reaction from the crowd, though I've heard of reports of standing ovations and such. I should have looked to see what percentage of the audience were foreigners. The Japanese in our group liked the movie, but had no strong reaction to it. There was one pro-Bush American in our group, and he wasn't particularly offended or upset, though he wanted to defend Dubya by diffusing the responsibility, especially for the seven minutes of sitting. (By the way, I'm now sure the movie did say My Pet Goat as the title of the book, which is a known mistake, but obviously irrelevant to the significant question of Dubya's inaction and lack of leadership.) We did stand around talking about the movie for a while afterwards, but it wasn't a big long discussion.
My overall conclusion is that the movie was pretty good, but not really great--but maybe that's just because Michael Moore knows his target audience very well and I'm not in the target. My initial reaction to Dubya was to see him as a kind of sick political joke, not a REAL politician who could possibly wind up in the White House. Michael Moore wants this movie to reach the people who have initial doubts about Bush, but my doubts are WAY past that stage. I can see where someone who had never heard about any of this stuff would be surprised--but to me it seemed that Michael Moore was only showing the tip of the iceberg. For example, he only scratched the surface of the material covered in House of Bush, House of Saud, even though he spent a fair bit of the movie interviewing Craig Unger, the author of that book.
From the amount of crying and screaming from the BushCo side and the sheer number of violent ad-hominem criticisms directed against Michael Moore, I really expected the movie to be MUCH stronger. I think Michael Moore did what he could with the editing of the pre-existing stock film that was available, but that kind of documentary footage is fundamentally limited. The specially produced footage (like the ice cream truck) was not really that compelling or powerful. I think it would be a legitimate candidate for best documentary, but I have trouble seeing how it could win in the best picture category. Also, if it were nominated in the best director category, I don't see how the judges could make fair comparisons, because it would be like comparing apples and oranges.
On the other hand, Michael Moore's criterion for the success of this movie is simple. If it helps remove Dubya from the White House, then he (and I) will be happy. The question of Dubya-removal will soon be resolved, but it may never be absolutely clear what part this movie played in real life.
At 11 a.m. there was a long line extending several hundred meters from the ticket lobby in Ebisu Garden Cinema. My friend had arrived when the ticket window first opened at 9 to validate the pre-purchased tickets. He thought he would be able to waltz through to the front, but there were already a lot of people ahead of him and he had to wait, and his tickets were eventually validated around number 130 for the 12:30 (third) showing. They had changed the schedule to use both of their screens for Fahrenheit 9/11, but the second screen is only about 100 seats. At that time there were a lot of media people taking pictures of the line (and I took some). Some people were also setting up for a little straw vote presidential election for people coming out of the first showing.
When we came back for the showing itself, they let the first 10 validated tickets go in first, then the next 10, etc. We still had plenty of good seats to choose from when we got in, and we got a block pretty near the front. The theatre was soon full, and I could see no empty seats anywhere, so I believe it was sold out. The advertisements were mostly for French movies, so I felt like it's an "arts" theatre.
I had three main impressions of the movie itself:
There didn't seem to any real justification for the R rating. Though there were some gruesome images, they were the kind of thing regular TV news could include and they flashed by quickly enough. I think I'm rather squeamish about these things, but I was able to watch all of it.
There were no material errors of fact. I was listening very closely for ANY mistakes. This was not naive searching, but based on various reported criticisms of the movie, mostly from devout Busheviks who certainly seem to be quite sincere about wanting to find flaws in the movie. Having read their claims, I was listening very closely at those points--and I could not spot anything that supported their criticisms. The closest thing was in the section about the post-9/11 evacuation of the Bin Ladins, where Michael Moore juxtaposed the closed air space very closely--but the movie did not actually say when the Saudis first received their special permissions to get out of the US--and of course the REAL issue there and the REAL focus of the movie was on whether or not the Saudis should have been allowed special treatment in comparison to the other "suspicious" "Arabic" people who were rounded up and interrogated. Around 1/4 of the way into the movie, I actually thought I did hear a one-word mistake that I had never read about, but it was a minor item. Not sure if that's sufficient justification to go again next week when it opens in my local theater. Kind of expensive just to try to catch a one-word glitch. (However, I'm at least going to visit the theater to see how big the "pure" Japanese crowd is.)
Notwithstanding all of the noisy criticisms, it was a very balanced and even moderate documentary. It certainly mentioned a lot of the smoke around BushCo, and even showed a few of the fires, but it stuck quite ploddingly to the facts. It did ask a lot of really rude and pointed questions, but they all seemed to be questions for legitimate public discussion. Especially as regards the questions about the real justification or lack of justification for the Saddam-removal war, these are life-and-death questions that should have been answered much more definitively before anyone died. It's really hard for me to understand what all the violent criticism is about. Well, actually I think I sort of understand some of it, but it's a complicated question of push propaganda. When you ask questions and show the available evidence, some people will leap to conclusions--and in this case most of those conclusions are NOT favorable to Bush.
I did see a LOT of examples where the critics were willfully misinterpreting scenes from the movie. For example, there were a few pre-war scenes of life in Iraq, but nothing suggesting that there was any sort of Iraqi paradise under Saddam. It showed normal human beings living their normal lives--and they just happened to be Iraqi human beings. Michael Moore's obvious goal was to juxtapose those images against what ALWAYS happens in REAL war, which is that some innocent people also die.
After the movie, there was no big reaction from the crowd, though I've heard of reports of standing ovations and such. I should have looked to see what percentage of the audience were foreigners. The Japanese in our group liked the movie, but had no strong reaction to it. There was one pro-Bush American in our group, and he wasn't particularly offended or upset, though he wanted to defend Dubya by diffusing the responsibility, especially for the seven minutes of sitting. (By the way, I'm now sure the movie did say My Pet Goat as the title of the book, which is a known mistake, but obviously irrelevant to the significant question of Dubya's inaction and lack of leadership.) We did stand around talking about the movie for a while afterwards, but it wasn't a big long discussion.
My overall conclusion is that the movie was pretty good, but not really great--but maybe that's just because Michael Moore knows his target audience very well and I'm not in the target. My initial reaction to Dubya was to see him as a kind of sick political joke, not a REAL politician who could possibly wind up in the White House. Michael Moore wants this movie to reach the people who have initial doubts about Bush, but my doubts are WAY past that stage. I can see where someone who had never heard about any of this stuff would be surprised--but to me it seemed that Michael Moore was only showing the tip of the iceberg. For example, he only scratched the surface of the material covered in House of Bush, House of Saud, even though he spent a fair bit of the movie interviewing Craig Unger, the author of that book.
From the amount of crying and screaming from the BushCo side and the sheer number of violent ad-hominem criticisms directed against Michael Moore, I really expected the movie to be MUCH stronger. I think Michael Moore did what he could with the editing of the pre-existing stock film that was available, but that kind of documentary footage is fundamentally limited. The specially produced footage (like the ice cream truck) was not really that compelling or powerful. I think it would be a legitimate candidate for best documentary, but I have trouble seeing how it could win in the best picture category. Also, if it were nominated in the best director category, I don't see how the judges could make fair comparisons, because it would be like comparing apples and oranges.
On the other hand, Michael Moore's criterion for the success of this movie is simple. If it helps remove Dubya from the White House, then he (and I) will be happy. The question of Dubya-removal will soon be resolved, but it may never be absolutely clear what part this movie played in real life.
Friday, May 21, 2004
Dubya is toast on both sides
I'm feeling increasingly optimistic about disposing of Dubya. He really is getting heavy fire from both sides these days, the funny side and the unfunny side.
Of course, the humor-based attack is Michael Moore's primary angle in the Fahrenheit 9/11 movie. Is he just reacting to the BushCo propaganda? Or is he just that politically shrewd? Perhaps both? Of course, it's obvious that Rove has tried to recast Dubya as presidential since 9/11. From the reviews I've seen, it appears the main point of the film is that Dubya is a laughingstock, at least as far as fighting terrorism goes. I'm really looking forward to seeing the film as soon as possible. I'm sure it makes Dubya look stupid, but how stupid? Fire-the-loser stupid?
Don't forget that before 9/11, and especially in the 2000 campaign, Dubya sang a different song. He was supposed to be just a regular guy who just accidentally happened to be the stinking rich son of a president, and who was just lucky to have so many stinking rich friends eager to invest in his campaigns. I think the case for Dubya as a cunning and vicious fool is quite strong, but I keep remembering that a lot of people thought that's some flavor of what they were voting for in 2000. However, they either thought the fool would hire smart assistants (like Rumsfailed?), or they were persuaded by the crazy rightwing propaganda that Gore was some sort of dangerous monster. (Too bad the American presidency is no longer suitable for nice guys like Gore or Jimmy Carter.) Is Dubya the fool he originally pretended to be? The new and improved presidential fool? And what will the voters want in November?
Meanwhile, the anti-humor attack is mostly blowback from Iraq. Now we have a movie aspect there, too, with new films of the prisoner abuse. Honor and integrity? Sure thing, coming right up--as soon as BushCo can find some gaps in the unending streams of lies. Restore America's dignity? Is that anything like the human dignity we took from the Iraqi prisoners? Iraq is almost certainly the biggest and most impressive failure of all of Dubya's miserable failures. There are just so many ways to slice the failure in Iraq... American deaths? Loss of all international influence except for the old gun in your face method? Extreme abuse of power to the point of systematic war crimes? All that money flushed away? (Except that BushCo got kickbacks, so they don't regard that part as wasted.) Building a "new and improved" Al Qaeda? Dead Iraqis? Oh, I keep forgetting. Dead Iraqis don't count. They're just untermenschen.
Actually, I think BushCo's failure in education policy is also a strong contender as the most miserable failure, but it may take decades for that damage to become fully apparent, and even longer to assess it. Every other BushCo policy has failed, too, except maybe the environmental policy. Trick question! BushCo doesn't even have any environmental policy, so those failures have to re-filed in other categories.
You'd think that someone should be held accountable. Punish someone significant like Rumsfailed? Perish the thought. (Saddam doesn't count--the reason he's been punished is only because he quit the team.) It reminds me of some comedian's joke about Dubya admitting that there was a security failure on 9/11 and punishing someone, even if he had to retroactively fire someone from the Truman administration. Guess it depends on what you remember. Most people remember Truman for "The Buck Stops Here", but BushCo only remembers the bit about "Never apologize."
So let's see what the voter's remember in November.
Of course, the humor-based attack is Michael Moore's primary angle in the Fahrenheit 9/11 movie. Is he just reacting to the BushCo propaganda? Or is he just that politically shrewd? Perhaps both? Of course, it's obvious that Rove has tried to recast Dubya as presidential since 9/11. From the reviews I've seen, it appears the main point of the film is that Dubya is a laughingstock, at least as far as fighting terrorism goes. I'm really looking forward to seeing the film as soon as possible. I'm sure it makes Dubya look stupid, but how stupid? Fire-the-loser stupid?
Don't forget that before 9/11, and especially in the 2000 campaign, Dubya sang a different song. He was supposed to be just a regular guy who just accidentally happened to be the stinking rich son of a president, and who was just lucky to have so many stinking rich friends eager to invest in his campaigns. I think the case for Dubya as a cunning and vicious fool is quite strong, but I keep remembering that a lot of people thought that's some flavor of what they were voting for in 2000. However, they either thought the fool would hire smart assistants (like Rumsfailed?), or they were persuaded by the crazy rightwing propaganda that Gore was some sort of dangerous monster. (Too bad the American presidency is no longer suitable for nice guys like Gore or Jimmy Carter.) Is Dubya the fool he originally pretended to be? The new and improved presidential fool? And what will the voters want in November?
Meanwhile, the anti-humor attack is mostly blowback from Iraq. Now we have a movie aspect there, too, with new films of the prisoner abuse. Honor and integrity? Sure thing, coming right up--as soon as BushCo can find some gaps in the unending streams of lies. Restore America's dignity? Is that anything like the human dignity we took from the Iraqi prisoners? Iraq is almost certainly the biggest and most impressive failure of all of Dubya's miserable failures. There are just so many ways to slice the failure in Iraq... American deaths? Loss of all international influence except for the old gun in your face method? Extreme abuse of power to the point of systematic war crimes? All that money flushed away? (Except that BushCo got kickbacks, so they don't regard that part as wasted.) Building a "new and improved" Al Qaeda? Dead Iraqis? Oh, I keep forgetting. Dead Iraqis don't count. They're just untermenschen.
Actually, I think BushCo's failure in education policy is also a strong contender as the most miserable failure, but it may take decades for that damage to become fully apparent, and even longer to assess it. Every other BushCo policy has failed, too, except maybe the environmental policy. Trick question! BushCo doesn't even have any environmental policy, so those failures have to re-filed in other categories.
You'd think that someone should be held accountable. Punish someone significant like Rumsfailed? Perish the thought. (Saddam doesn't count--the reason he's been punished is only because he quit the team.) It reminds me of some comedian's joke about Dubya admitting that there was a security failure on 9/11 and punishing someone, even if he had to retroactively fire someone from the Truman administration. Guess it depends on what you remember. Most people remember Truman for "The Buck Stops Here", but BushCo only remembers the bit about "Never apologize."
So let's see what the voter's remember in November.
Monday, May 03, 2004
The Iraqi Farce continues unabated...
I'm currently increasingly convinced there is no direction in Iraq but out, and the only question is whether it's before or after the election. Before, and it would be a politically fatal admission of his blunderhood, so we can basically rest assured that Dubya will not bring the troops home by Christmas. Doesn't matter how many soldiers and Iraqis do the resting, as in RIP.
The context that got me thinking about this involved considering the Israeli policies towards the Palestinians as models of the American policies in Iraq. However, I think this is only peripherally relevant to the situation in Iraq, and mostly it only serves as another bad example of how to handle such situations. As an American I'd actually prefer to use the American Revolution as the bad example. At least it's a "bad example" from the perspective of King George III. The bottom line is that all such examples show that lots of people are willing to fight very hard when they believe they are fighting for their freedom. Sometimes that's religious freedom, but the exact nature of "freedom" doesn't seem to matter much. Yes, there have been many historical cases when the "freedom fighters" or "terrorists" or "patriots" or "criminals" (depending on who won and who's speaking) do lose in their struggles, but people have a tendency to persist in such struggles, and in the end, I think they usually win--unless they are exterminated as a people. Freedom is a really powerful motivation.
Right now it certainly seems like a large number of Iraqis have decided they are fighting for their political freedom (or national identity). The alternative is remaining in (or returning to) the status of being an American client or puppet state. Other Iraqis apparently believe they are fighting for their religious freedom--and one can scarcely blame them with lunatics like Ann Coulter on BushCo's side. Probably Dubya, too, though he hasn't actually publicly said their leaders should be slaughtered and the masses forcibly converted to Christianity the way Coulter did. I actually doubt that these "freedom fighting" groups are a majority of Iraqis, but there are two funny aspects there.
First, if you took a poll of Americans at the time of the Revolution, I bet that most of them would have said it was a bad or crazy idea. Completely nuts to fight the British supreme-superpower-of-that-day. Actually, it was kind of amazing we did win, and the war would have dragged on if the French navy hadn't helped out at just that moment.
Second, Dubya is not and never has been worried about acting for the majority of Americans--only about dragging or suckering enough of them along. Obviously Dubya's only real interests were in getting into power, and then in using that power to do what he wanted to do anyway. King George II?
Returning to the latest screwups in Iraq, apparently BushCo has changed their minds again on the Falluja mess. We don't actually like THAT general, but we want one of Saddam's OTHER generals to take over the mess. We'll trade that popular general for another general to be named later? Crazy.
My guess on the REAL situation is that BushCo realized this guy was too popular. They actually managed to talk to some Iraqis, and they discovered that they regarded this "solution" as an Iraqi victory. Allowing the Americans to be defeated would be a BIG mistake. If the Americans get "whipped" anywhere in Iraq, the whole country is liable to go nuts, and we can't allow any more of that, can we? So now the Marines have stopped withdrawing and are preparing to counterattack again. Or maybe not. Or maybe...
There have been a number of comments about the significance of the prisoner abuses, but so far not much light has been shed. For now, I still believe those sorts of problems are inevitable in these sorts of situations, but on some reflection, I'm kind of surprised we got our American hands dirty there. I actually thought that handling these sorts of things was part of our secret understandings with the Kurds. Very difficult to speculate when BushCo is so big on secrecy, but if there was such a clause, then the actual problem is probably much larger than revealed so far, since most of it would have been passed along to the Kurds for discreet "handling". (An additional reason to read Dean's new book? Apparently argues that BushCo is even more abusive of power than the Nixon gang. It would be interesting to compare the chronology of abuses in Vietnam.)
Can't remember where to credit this, but it definitely belongs in the humor category. It was supposed to be an analysis of possible political solutions to the mess. Remember Colin Powell? No? Well, anyway, if you could remember him, he's supposed to be involved in that sort of diplomatic stuff. But the hilarious part was saying that a "broader political solution" could have made it possible to use Indian troops to get the numbers needed for the occupation of Iraq. Riiiiiiiight. Anyone else remember that the whole idea of India was to get the Muslims out of there? Not even BushCo could claim that the Iraqis would greet the Indian troops with flowers.
In the tragedy category, I was reading about an entire outfit who got their chain yanked real hard. They'd finished their long hitch in Iraq, turned their heavy equipment over to their replacements, and even shipped their personal effects home. And then they got new orders to stay in Iraq. Shock and awe big time. The shock was the orders, but the awesome part is that Rumsfeld thinks they'll be happy about it. All 'dem soldiers be lil' Colin Powells, right?
The context that got me thinking about this involved considering the Israeli policies towards the Palestinians as models of the American policies in Iraq. However, I think this is only peripherally relevant to the situation in Iraq, and mostly it only serves as another bad example of how to handle such situations. As an American I'd actually prefer to use the American Revolution as the bad example. At least it's a "bad example" from the perspective of King George III. The bottom line is that all such examples show that lots of people are willing to fight very hard when they believe they are fighting for their freedom. Sometimes that's religious freedom, but the exact nature of "freedom" doesn't seem to matter much. Yes, there have been many historical cases when the "freedom fighters" or "terrorists" or "patriots" or "criminals" (depending on who won and who's speaking) do lose in their struggles, but people have a tendency to persist in such struggles, and in the end, I think they usually win--unless they are exterminated as a people. Freedom is a really powerful motivation.
Right now it certainly seems like a large number of Iraqis have decided they are fighting for their political freedom (or national identity). The alternative is remaining in (or returning to) the status of being an American client or puppet state. Other Iraqis apparently believe they are fighting for their religious freedom--and one can scarcely blame them with lunatics like Ann Coulter on BushCo's side. Probably Dubya, too, though he hasn't actually publicly said their leaders should be slaughtered and the masses forcibly converted to Christianity the way Coulter did. I actually doubt that these "freedom fighting" groups are a majority of Iraqis, but there are two funny aspects there.
First, if you took a poll of Americans at the time of the Revolution, I bet that most of them would have said it was a bad or crazy idea. Completely nuts to fight the British supreme-superpower-of-that-day. Actually, it was kind of amazing we did win, and the war would have dragged on if the French navy hadn't helped out at just that moment.
Second, Dubya is not and never has been worried about acting for the majority of Americans--only about dragging or suckering enough of them along. Obviously Dubya's only real interests were in getting into power, and then in using that power to do what he wanted to do anyway. King George II?
Returning to the latest screwups in Iraq, apparently BushCo has changed their minds again on the Falluja mess. We don't actually like THAT general, but we want one of Saddam's OTHER generals to take over the mess. We'll trade that popular general for another general to be named later? Crazy.
My guess on the REAL situation is that BushCo realized this guy was too popular. They actually managed to talk to some Iraqis, and they discovered that they regarded this "solution" as an Iraqi victory. Allowing the Americans to be defeated would be a BIG mistake. If the Americans get "whipped" anywhere in Iraq, the whole country is liable to go nuts, and we can't allow any more of that, can we? So now the Marines have stopped withdrawing and are preparing to counterattack again. Or maybe not. Or maybe...
There have been a number of comments about the significance of the prisoner abuses, but so far not much light has been shed. For now, I still believe those sorts of problems are inevitable in these sorts of situations, but on some reflection, I'm kind of surprised we got our American hands dirty there. I actually thought that handling these sorts of things was part of our secret understandings with the Kurds. Very difficult to speculate when BushCo is so big on secrecy, but if there was such a clause, then the actual problem is probably much larger than revealed so far, since most of it would have been passed along to the Kurds for discreet "handling". (An additional reason to read Dean's new book? Apparently argues that BushCo is even more abusive of power than the Nixon gang. It would be interesting to compare the chronology of abuses in Vietnam.)
Can't remember where to credit this, but it definitely belongs in the humor category. It was supposed to be an analysis of possible political solutions to the mess. Remember Colin Powell? No? Well, anyway, if you could remember him, he's supposed to be involved in that sort of diplomatic stuff. But the hilarious part was saying that a "broader political solution" could have made it possible to use Indian troops to get the numbers needed for the occupation of Iraq. Riiiiiiiight. Anyone else remember that the whole idea of India was to get the Muslims out of there? Not even BushCo could claim that the Iraqis would greet the Indian troops with flowers.
In the tragedy category, I was reading about an entire outfit who got their chain yanked real hard. They'd finished their long hitch in Iraq, turned their heavy equipment over to their replacements, and even shipped their personal effects home. And then they got new orders to stay in Iraq. Shock and awe big time. The shock was the orders, but the awesome part is that Rumsfeld thinks they'll be happy about it. All 'dem soldiers be lil' Colin Powells, right?
Wednesday, April 28, 2004
Bush is toast.
"Elected dictatorship" be damned, there is a reality out there, and there are limits to how far you can stretch it. Go too far from reality, and reality is going to bite back. And hard. Reality is NOT going to just sit there and take it forever. (Just too bad so many relatively innocent people get squished in the process. Heck, even many of the fanatics are sort of innocent. At least they are innocent of any understanding of reality.)
The latest report from Iraq has one of our military spokesman saying we need to make sure that Sadr understands we're not going anywhere. The "we" is the Americans, and the anywhere is apparently out of Iraq.
Wait just a minute here. What is the reality here? Who is invading who? Who exactly belongs where?
I hate to break the news to you, but Sadr is the guy who lives there. He's the one who isn't going anywhere. The Americans are the invaders in Iraq, and even the BushCo claims that the goal is to leave--as soon as they can declare a "suitable victory" and find appropriate puppets to leave in charge of BushCo's latest mess.
Remember this is an ideologically purged army, and this is one of the best spokesman they can come up with. Well, at least it's as purged as they can manage and still keep some boots on the dirt. When they start talking so stupidly... Time for "We have to destroy the village to save it." Anyone remember that witticism? Little place called Vietnam. Remember? (Dubya sure doesn't. He was too busy dodging paper cuts in Alabama.)
Dubya is toast. Roasting slowly on his cross of oil.
The latest report from Iraq has one of our military spokesman saying we need to make sure that Sadr understands we're not going anywhere. The "we" is the Americans, and the anywhere is apparently out of Iraq.
Wait just a minute here. What is the reality here? Who is invading who? Who exactly belongs where?
I hate to break the news to you, but Sadr is the guy who lives there. He's the one who isn't going anywhere. The Americans are the invaders in Iraq, and even the BushCo claims that the goal is to leave--as soon as they can declare a "suitable victory" and find appropriate puppets to leave in charge of BushCo's latest mess.
Remember this is an ideologically purged army, and this is one of the best spokesman they can come up with. Well, at least it's as purged as they can manage and still keep some boots on the dirt. When they start talking so stupidly... Time for "We have to destroy the village to save it." Anyone remember that witticism? Little place called Vietnam. Remember? (Dubya sure doesn't. He was too busy dodging paper cuts in Alabama.)
Dubya is toast. Roasting slowly on his cross of oil.
Monday, February 23, 2004
Call it BushCo's lunatic fringe strategery (sic) and Nader worship. Yeah, it's hard to believe, but Nader announced he's running again. In the American system, it's hard to buy votes directly, but lunatic fringes are the easiest to buy or divert. In terms of election strategy, it works quite well for BushCo. Dubya is perfectly willing to accept the votes of various lunatic fringes, and BushCo has the money to persuade their pet troublemakers NOT to run separately and suck off any of their votes. Meanwhile, the votes you can siphon off from your REAL opponents are just as useful as the votes you capture with lies or bribes.
In the current example, BushCo can covertly encourage fringe candidates like Nader to run on the other (progressive/liberal) side, thereby sucking off the lunatic fringes that might help offset the lunatic fringe votes they've collected for BushCo. I'm not saying that all Nader supporters are lunatics, but that's becoming his strongest base of support. Without him as an escape hole to toss their votes into, some of those fanatics would be willing to accept reality. Don't forget that Dubya's entire claim to legitimacy for his tyrannical redirection of America, his entire "mandate for change", comes down to 500 votes in Florida in 2000, as justified 5-4 by SCOTUS. (Never forget: "Our considerations are limited to the present circumstances." That's where history will file Scalia et al.)
You might want to cite Buchanan as some sort of exception, but he had no significant negative effect on Dubya in 2000, but, in a less-than-amusing twist of fate, purely by accident managed to have a significant negative effect on Gore in the crucial Palm Beach situation. Not the only crucial situation in 2000--but almost all of them broke against Gore.
Principles are important, but when your principles prevent you from seeing reality, you are insane. Gore is NOT equal to Bush. But even if the fanatical Nader worshippers wanted to say both of them were evil, Gore was VERY clearly the lesser of the evils--and one of them was going to live in the White House. Nader is serving NO constructive purpose now. In the three years since seizing power BushCo has already done more harm than all of the good Nader ever accomplished in his entire lifetime. Only insanity can explain Nader's divisive new campaign. It can only have two possible outcomes: it will assist BushCo in clinging to power or it will discredit Nader's beliefs and causes as far as the new Democratic president is concerned. President Nader is NOT a possible outcome.
In the current example, BushCo can covertly encourage fringe candidates like Nader to run on the other (progressive/liberal) side, thereby sucking off the lunatic fringes that might help offset the lunatic fringe votes they've collected for BushCo. I'm not saying that all Nader supporters are lunatics, but that's becoming his strongest base of support. Without him as an escape hole to toss their votes into, some of those fanatics would be willing to accept reality. Don't forget that Dubya's entire claim to legitimacy for his tyrannical redirection of America, his entire "mandate for change", comes down to 500 votes in Florida in 2000, as justified 5-4 by SCOTUS. (Never forget: "Our considerations are limited to the present circumstances." That's where history will file Scalia et al.)
You might want to cite Buchanan as some sort of exception, but he had no significant negative effect on Dubya in 2000, but, in a less-than-amusing twist of fate, purely by accident managed to have a significant negative effect on Gore in the crucial Palm Beach situation. Not the only crucial situation in 2000--but almost all of them broke against Gore.
Principles are important, but when your principles prevent you from seeing reality, you are insane. Gore is NOT equal to Bush. But even if the fanatical Nader worshippers wanted to say both of them were evil, Gore was VERY clearly the lesser of the evils--and one of them was going to live in the White House. Nader is serving NO constructive purpose now. In the three years since seizing power BushCo has already done more harm than all of the good Nader ever accomplished in his entire lifetime. Only insanity can explain Nader's divisive new campaign. It can only have two possible outcomes: it will assist BushCo in clinging to power or it will discredit Nader's beliefs and causes as far as the new Democratic president is concerned. President Nader is NOT a possible outcome.
Saturday, February 07, 2004
I've been thinking about Dubya's famous gaffe on the old saying "Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me." You may recall that Dubya stumbled all over this, and his version wound up something like "Fool me once.... Fool me... You can't get fooled again."
I'm increasingly convinced that this was a deeply Freudian slip and reflects a deep form of insanity. I think Dubya really can't conceive of the idea that he could be fooled or make any sort of mistake. When he tried to imagine it as a part of a speech, he just fell apart. If it was just a minor slip... Well, you'd think he'd have corrected himself by now and they'd be publicizing that version. However, as far as I know, BushCo wants to pretend it never happened, and Dubya doesn't want to stand up and admit that he was ever fooled--not even by 9/11. (Or maybe he expects to be "fooled" again by terrorists, and just couldn't stomach the "shame on me" part?)
None of us is perfect, and all of us make mistakes--but normal folks get held accountable for them. That's never happened to Dubya, though he's caused plenty of big foul-ups. In spite of his "personal responsibility" rhetoric, he's always slid away from his own mistakes, or hid them, or often enough just let "friends" take the rap (as in his current efforts to throw the blame for the Iraq fiasco onto his "friends" at the CIA).
Actually, BushCo is full of really strange people with strange mental processes. Maybe Dubya can't imagine making a mistake, so he can project that to assume the legal system never makes mistakes. That would explain how easy it was for him to set the record for executions when he was governor. No mistakes possible. And don't apologize, either, even if later evidence shows a couple of innocent guys got executed. How about Rumsfeld, who still wants to believe in those mythical WMD? Just too bad his delusions direct the spending of billions of YOUR tax dollars. And guys like Cheney who get pleasure out of killing just for the sake of inflicting pain and death. Sorry, but I just think good people should not enjoy that sort of thing. When actual good people use violence, it should be truly necessary, based on reality, and without the pleasure--and accepting the possibility of error.
Back to Dubya and his "Bushal Infallibility". Maybe it isn't insanity. Maybe it's just a sincere belief that Dubya has that he's so specially chosen and blessed by God that he can't go astray. As long as he says his prayers, God won't let him be fooled. Of course, that's exactly what Bin Ladin thinks. Does that mean 9/11 was a good thing? After all, using this line of "reasoning", someone's god must have approved.
I'm increasingly convinced that this was a deeply Freudian slip and reflects a deep form of insanity. I think Dubya really can't conceive of the idea that he could be fooled or make any sort of mistake. When he tried to imagine it as a part of a speech, he just fell apart. If it was just a minor slip... Well, you'd think he'd have corrected himself by now and they'd be publicizing that version. However, as far as I know, BushCo wants to pretend it never happened, and Dubya doesn't want to stand up and admit that he was ever fooled--not even by 9/11. (Or maybe he expects to be "fooled" again by terrorists, and just couldn't stomach the "shame on me" part?)
None of us is perfect, and all of us make mistakes--but normal folks get held accountable for them. That's never happened to Dubya, though he's caused plenty of big foul-ups. In spite of his "personal responsibility" rhetoric, he's always slid away from his own mistakes, or hid them, or often enough just let "friends" take the rap (as in his current efforts to throw the blame for the Iraq fiasco onto his "friends" at the CIA).
Actually, BushCo is full of really strange people with strange mental processes. Maybe Dubya can't imagine making a mistake, so he can project that to assume the legal system never makes mistakes. That would explain how easy it was for him to set the record for executions when he was governor. No mistakes possible. And don't apologize, either, even if later evidence shows a couple of innocent guys got executed. How about Rumsfeld, who still wants to believe in those mythical WMD? Just too bad his delusions direct the spending of billions of YOUR tax dollars. And guys like Cheney who get pleasure out of killing just for the sake of inflicting pain and death. Sorry, but I just think good people should not enjoy that sort of thing. When actual good people use violence, it should be truly necessary, based on reality, and without the pleasure--and accepting the possibility of error.
Back to Dubya and his "Bushal Infallibility". Maybe it isn't insanity. Maybe it's just a sincere belief that Dubya has that he's so specially chosen and blessed by God that he can't go astray. As long as he says his prayers, God won't let him be fooled. Of course, that's exactly what Bin Ladin thinks. Does that mean 9/11 was a good thing? After all, using this line of "reasoning", someone's god must have approved.
Friday, January 30, 2004
This week's rant is on the real significance of the political attack on the BBC. I'm not claiming that I'm part of the "true majority" (whatever Dubya claims that is today), but this is a big one and apparently very few people are much interested. Actually, to me it looks like it's just another example of exploiting other people's misfortunes for BushCo's political advantage. Remember 9/11?
In this case, the misfortune was relatively small, but BushCo has exploited it big time, with lots of prominent heads already rolling at the BBC. Remember that the BBC is (but soon to be "was") the antithesis of the journalistic black jokes such as FOX news and CBS. Even if this was a real and major mistake (and not just the pure scapegoating for political advantage that it seems to be), the BBC has never been a purely reliable propaganda mouthpiece for the Iraq war, etc.
So... Any speculations on the new direction of the BBC? I'd wager that those British headhunters are all over at FAUX news and CBS right now. CBS gets special mention this week for refusing to broadcast a prize-winning anti-Bush ad during the Superbowl. They said it was "advocacy" to remind people about Dubya's deficit. Truth is no excuse, sir!
However, back in jolly old England, they aren't going to reward the BBC for telling so much of the truth that opposes BushCo, but they sure are going to punish the organization for making a mistake. The hilarious part (in the "best" tradition of really black British humor) is that the underlying truth here, even in this case, was that BushCo WAS lying about the WMD, and that was the main point of the BBC reports. For messing about with that truth, the BBC shall be recast in a new mold, using "journalistic integrity" as the WMD.
Hey, if they administered a "journalistic integrity" test at FAUX news they'd have to fire each and every one of them. At CBS they might be able to retain a couple of the interns and the woman who makes the coffee.
Just to complete the picture, here's a recent example of "real news" from CBS:
"Yes, we believed in Iraq's WMD without any real evidence, but we invaded the country and killed a bunch of people anyway. We just wanted to do this, and lying about WMD was a convenient excuse. Dick Cheney assured us that Haliburton will 'donate' a good chunk of the profits back to us. Only fair considering all the business we are giving them," Condoleezza Rice told CBS on Thursday.
Ha, ha!! Fooled you, didn't I! Oh? You weren't fooled. Okay, so here's the actual story:
"I think that what we have is evidence that there are differences between what we knew going in and what we found on the ground," Condoleezza Rice told CBS on Thursday. [Reuters reports that] CBS simply broadcast this, apparently with a straight face.
It all depends on what "knew" means, right? Remember how much good clean fun the rightwing loonies had with Clinton over the definition of a word? Well, "knew" means you knew something. Past tense of "know", because she's describing a prior state here. If you really and actually know something, it is not false. When you "know" something, you don't find "differences" "on the ground". If BushCo-token spokes-fool Rice could move her lips without lying, she might have said the first version. Of course, in the case of President Clinton, I can't recall anyone dying for the confusion on the word.
Hey, how about defining "honor and integrity"? That should be worth a few thousand more deaths, right?
In this case, the misfortune was relatively small, but BushCo has exploited it big time, with lots of prominent heads already rolling at the BBC. Remember that the BBC is (but soon to be "was") the antithesis of the journalistic black jokes such as FOX news and CBS. Even if this was a real and major mistake (and not just the pure scapegoating for political advantage that it seems to be), the BBC has never been a purely reliable propaganda mouthpiece for the Iraq war, etc.
So... Any speculations on the new direction of the BBC? I'd wager that those British headhunters are all over at FAUX news and CBS right now. CBS gets special mention this week for refusing to broadcast a prize-winning anti-Bush ad during the Superbowl. They said it was "advocacy" to remind people about Dubya's deficit. Truth is no excuse, sir!
However, back in jolly old England, they aren't going to reward the BBC for telling so much of the truth that opposes BushCo, but they sure are going to punish the organization for making a mistake. The hilarious part (in the "best" tradition of really black British humor) is that the underlying truth here, even in this case, was that BushCo WAS lying about the WMD, and that was the main point of the BBC reports. For messing about with that truth, the BBC shall be recast in a new mold, using "journalistic integrity" as the WMD.
Hey, if they administered a "journalistic integrity" test at FAUX news they'd have to fire each and every one of them. At CBS they might be able to retain a couple of the interns and the woman who makes the coffee.
Just to complete the picture, here's a recent example of "real news" from CBS:
"Yes, we believed in Iraq's WMD without any real evidence, but we invaded the country and killed a bunch of people anyway. We just wanted to do this, and lying about WMD was a convenient excuse. Dick Cheney assured us that Haliburton will 'donate' a good chunk of the profits back to us. Only fair considering all the business we are giving them," Condoleezza Rice told CBS on Thursday.
Ha, ha!! Fooled you, didn't I! Oh? You weren't fooled. Okay, so here's the actual story:
"I think that what we have is evidence that there are differences between what we knew going in and what we found on the ground," Condoleezza Rice told CBS on Thursday. [Reuters reports that] CBS simply broadcast this, apparently with a straight face.
It all depends on what "knew" means, right? Remember how much good clean fun the rightwing loonies had with Clinton over the definition of a word? Well, "knew" means you knew something. Past tense of "know", because she's describing a prior state here. If you really and actually know something, it is not false. When you "know" something, you don't find "differences" "on the ground". If BushCo-token spokes-fool Rice could move her lips without lying, she might have said the first version. Of course, in the case of President Clinton, I can't recall anyone dying for the confusion on the word.
Hey, how about defining "honor and integrity"? That should be worth a few thousand more deaths, right?
Tuesday, December 30, 2003
Today's rant is coming from a discussion of the Saddam trial in the newsgroups, where OJ Simpson's murder trial was brought in as an example of strange legal defenses. I basically do regard Saddam's defenses as ridiculous and weaker than OJ's. However, for a "fair" trial, even weak defenses must be considered "fairly". I don't really feel the American court system is "too fair" just because OJ's weak defenses succeeded. My concern there is simply that money should not be the deciding factor. The situation in Iraq is different. The deciding factor in Iraq is force, and right now it's mostly American force. Ergo, right now I think it would be impossible for Saddam to get any semblance of a "fair trial" in Iraq, any more so than an opponent of Saddam could have expected to get a fair trial in Iraq last year. The balance of force has shifted.
There is a bigger problem with a Saddam trial from BushCo's perspective, and that's the reason they wanted him dead rather than captured alive. (On review of the evidence, I'm pretty much convinced that the capture was a mistake, and quite possibly even a violation of orders.) That is the problem that Saddam's defenses, no matter how ridiculous, are very similar to the defenses OTHER "national leaders" would have to use for their actions. To the people who died, it makes little difference if Saddam killed them to cling to power, or if BushCo killed them to remove Saddam from power. They were still innocent victims and in a "fair" world, someone might be held accountable for their deaths.
I'm not a fan of black humor, but someone who was would probably focus on the black aspects. In particular, America probably killed more Iraqis through economic sanctions than we killed in the recent war. The difference was that the rest of the world was willing to agree to those sanctions. Back then, President Clinton was also building up the military, so he effectively weakened Iraq's military and effectively created the military instrument that ultimately destroyed Saddam--and now BushCo is claiming all of the credit and dreams of establishing a new worldwide empire. Not the first dreamers, but like Rocky told Bullwinkle, "That trick never works!"
BushCo is very persistent in ignoring the lessons of history. For example, they also dream of establishing a new age of the Robber Barons, and they've actually made great progress towards their evil goal. They want the peasants (even including those foolish dittoheads) to be controlled ever more reliably (by ever stronger police) with ever growing profits and and ever growing power increasingly concentrated in the hands of BushCo. Sorry, but "ever growing" is not possible in a finite world. Period
From our perspective, the BushCo dream is just wage slavery par excellence, but BushCo will use the power to drive the wages as low as possible--for the few jobs that can't be done cheaper in India. The historical lesson that SHOULD have been learned here is that "Slavery doesn't work." Doesn't matter how you disguise it, it just isn't a competitive economic system. Here, I'll just limit it to two of the more glaring examples, the Confederacy and the Soviet Union. There is strong evidence that the real cause of the Civil War was simply that the Confederacy was bankrupt and determined to default on the Yankee bankers. The Yankee bankers were not willing to accept that, and they therefore insisted on a very bloody war to prevent it. (By the way, some of those Yankee bankers' descendents are still important parts of BushCo.) In the case of the Soviet Union, they didn't call it slavery, but it effectively was a slave system with the people owned by the Communists, and it also went bankrupt. Remember, "Slavery doesn't work." Given the Soviet nuclear arsenal, we are quite fortunate that no one was able to start a war over that bankruptcy. Perhaps we were just lucky that BushCo didn't have their fingers very deep into that pie--no one wanted to loan much money to the Soviets.
There is a bigger problem with a Saddam trial from BushCo's perspective, and that's the reason they wanted him dead rather than captured alive. (On review of the evidence, I'm pretty much convinced that the capture was a mistake, and quite possibly even a violation of orders.) That is the problem that Saddam's defenses, no matter how ridiculous, are very similar to the defenses OTHER "national leaders" would have to use for their actions. To the people who died, it makes little difference if Saddam killed them to cling to power, or if BushCo killed them to remove Saddam from power. They were still innocent victims and in a "fair" world, someone might be held accountable for their deaths.
I'm not a fan of black humor, but someone who was would probably focus on the black aspects. In particular, America probably killed more Iraqis through economic sanctions than we killed in the recent war. The difference was that the rest of the world was willing to agree to those sanctions. Back then, President Clinton was also building up the military, so he effectively weakened Iraq's military and effectively created the military instrument that ultimately destroyed Saddam--and now BushCo is claiming all of the credit and dreams of establishing a new worldwide empire. Not the first dreamers, but like Rocky told Bullwinkle, "That trick never works!"
BushCo is very persistent in ignoring the lessons of history. For example, they also dream of establishing a new age of the Robber Barons, and they've actually made great progress towards their evil goal. They want the peasants (even including those foolish dittoheads) to be controlled ever more reliably (by ever stronger police) with ever growing profits and and ever growing power increasingly concentrated in the hands of BushCo. Sorry, but "ever growing" is not possible in a finite world. Period
From our perspective, the BushCo dream is just wage slavery par excellence, but BushCo will use the power to drive the wages as low as possible--for the few jobs that can't be done cheaper in India. The historical lesson that SHOULD have been learned here is that "Slavery doesn't work." Doesn't matter how you disguise it, it just isn't a competitive economic system. Here, I'll just limit it to two of the more glaring examples, the Confederacy and the Soviet Union. There is strong evidence that the real cause of the Civil War was simply that the Confederacy was bankrupt and determined to default on the Yankee bankers. The Yankee bankers were not willing to accept that, and they therefore insisted on a very bloody war to prevent it. (By the way, some of those Yankee bankers' descendents are still important parts of BushCo.) In the case of the Soviet Union, they didn't call it slavery, but it effectively was a slave system with the people owned by the Communists, and it also went bankrupt. Remember, "Slavery doesn't work." Given the Soviet nuclear arsenal, we are quite fortunate that no one was able to start a war over that bankruptcy. Perhaps we were just lucky that BushCo didn't have their fingers very deep into that pie--no one wanted to loan much money to the Soviets.
Friday, December 26, 2003
This weeks topic is the lies themselves. There are some lies that actually DO get a lot of consideration because they come from people with the power to act on those lies. That's BushCo, right now, but after observing their antics for a couple of years, I've realized that you have to read them like old Pravda back in days of the USSR. In particular, the more loudly and aggressively they are accusing someone else, the more you should suspect they are doing whatever it is that they are accusing the other guy of.
The Saddam case is a rather interesting example. In particular, the main accusation against Saddam was that he had lots of weapons of mass destruction and might use them against America. Even though BushCo has full control over the largest and supposedly best intelligence agencies in the world, they tossed out all the actual evidence and continued to accuse Saddam of stockpiling WMD. However, the simple truth is we know that the US does have large stocks of WMD. If we were right to invade Iraq because of an imaginary threat of WMD, wouldn't it be proper for other nations to invade the US because of our actual WMD? "Look at Saddam's WMD, don't look at our WMD!"
Another important accusation against Saddam was that he had actually used WMD, both against his own people and against other nations. Ever heard of smallpox? Americans used smallpox as a WMD against the American Indians, who are now regarded as part of America's own people. Ever hear of Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Americans used WMD against other people. We insist that these were proper actions and justified by the circumstances at the time, but that's just what Saddam would say. "Look at Saddam's history, don't look at our history!"
Saddam is accused of assassinating his political opponents. Israel is accused of assassinating its political opponents. America has used political assassination in the past and is taking lessons from the Israelis right now. Actually, killing political opponents is popular with LOTS of governments. Everyone who is killing their political opponents of course claims they are really executing criminals and terrorists. The political opponents who are getting killed always claim they are patriots and freedom fighters struggling for the liberation of their people. If George Washington had been captured by King George III, he would have been handled as a traitor and executed after a suitable "fair trail" as King George III defined it. Now that Saddam has been captured by "King George II" (AKA Dubya Bush), why should we expect anything different? "Saddam murdered patriotic freedom fighters, don't look at our killing of patriotic freedom fighters!"
The bottom line is that no one needs laws to protect them from someone who is weaker than they are. We need laws to protect the weak from the strong. That can, at least in theory, raise us above the beasts and their law of the jungle. However, this is an area where BushCo lies really shine. Actually, if you're like most Americans, you probably don't even know about this topic, though it's one of BushCo's highest priorities. It's called tort reform. If you listen to BushCo's lies, it's the greatest thing since sliced bread. The reality is different. The whole grand design is to make it harder for weak (poor) people to use the law against strong (rich) people. Did you really believe that a bunch of lawyers would do anything to reduce the need for lawyers? No, of course not. The REAL idea is only to limit access to the courts for certain kinds of people--the poor peasants like you and me. That way the lawyers can spend more time helping rich companies sue each other, with lovely high fees, the fees get passed down to the customers and taxpayers (remember those peasants), and the lawyers will be very happy. The American legal system already favors rich defendants like OJ Simpson over the paupers who receive all the executions. Right NOW BushCo is using YOUR tax dollars to make the laws even better for BushCo and the lawyers, NOT for you. "Saddam will get a fair trial, don't look at America's unfair legal system!"
You want REAL "legal", you should go look at Marshall's decision in Marbury v. Madison. Talk about the wisdom of Solomon! Damned if he did, and damned if he didn't, but he somehow found a TRUTHFUL way out that actually strengthened the rule of law. But those wise men understood that abuse of power is the great danger.
BushCo loves power, and now that they have it, they are going to USE it. "Laws are for crushing peasants!"
The Saddam case is a rather interesting example. In particular, the main accusation against Saddam was that he had lots of weapons of mass destruction and might use them against America. Even though BushCo has full control over the largest and supposedly best intelligence agencies in the world, they tossed out all the actual evidence and continued to accuse Saddam of stockpiling WMD. However, the simple truth is we know that the US does have large stocks of WMD. If we were right to invade Iraq because of an imaginary threat of WMD, wouldn't it be proper for other nations to invade the US because of our actual WMD? "Look at Saddam's WMD, don't look at our WMD!"
Another important accusation against Saddam was that he had actually used WMD, both against his own people and against other nations. Ever heard of smallpox? Americans used smallpox as a WMD against the American Indians, who are now regarded as part of America's own people. Ever hear of Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Americans used WMD against other people. We insist that these were proper actions and justified by the circumstances at the time, but that's just what Saddam would say. "Look at Saddam's history, don't look at our history!"
Saddam is accused of assassinating his political opponents. Israel is accused of assassinating its political opponents. America has used political assassination in the past and is taking lessons from the Israelis right now. Actually, killing political opponents is popular with LOTS of governments. Everyone who is killing their political opponents of course claims they are really executing criminals and terrorists. The political opponents who are getting killed always claim they are patriots and freedom fighters struggling for the liberation of their people. If George Washington had been captured by King George III, he would have been handled as a traitor and executed after a suitable "fair trail" as King George III defined it. Now that Saddam has been captured by "King George II" (AKA Dubya Bush), why should we expect anything different? "Saddam murdered patriotic freedom fighters, don't look at our killing of patriotic freedom fighters!"
The bottom line is that no one needs laws to protect them from someone who is weaker than they are. We need laws to protect the weak from the strong. That can, at least in theory, raise us above the beasts and their law of the jungle. However, this is an area where BushCo lies really shine. Actually, if you're like most Americans, you probably don't even know about this topic, though it's one of BushCo's highest priorities. It's called tort reform. If you listen to BushCo's lies, it's the greatest thing since sliced bread. The reality is different. The whole grand design is to make it harder for weak (poor) people to use the law against strong (rich) people. Did you really believe that a bunch of lawyers would do anything to reduce the need for lawyers? No, of course not. The REAL idea is only to limit access to the courts for certain kinds of people--the poor peasants like you and me. That way the lawyers can spend more time helping rich companies sue each other, with lovely high fees, the fees get passed down to the customers and taxpayers (remember those peasants), and the lawyers will be very happy. The American legal system already favors rich defendants like OJ Simpson over the paupers who receive all the executions. Right NOW BushCo is using YOUR tax dollars to make the laws even better for BushCo and the lawyers, NOT for you. "Saddam will get a fair trial, don't look at America's unfair legal system!"
You want REAL "legal", you should go look at Marshall's decision in Marbury v. Madison. Talk about the wisdom of Solomon! Damned if he did, and damned if he didn't, but he somehow found a TRUTHFUL way out that actually strengthened the rule of law. But those wise men understood that abuse of power is the great danger.
BushCo loves power, and now that they have it, they are going to USE it. "Laws are for crushing peasants!"
Monday, December 22, 2003
Time for another little rant on Dubya's latest lie--claiming he wants a "fair" trial before killing Saddam. The chance of a "fair" trial on any terms remotely acceptable to BushCo is zilch. No, I'm absolutely NOT defending Saddam as ANY kind of nice guy--though he's certainly no worse than dozens of other recognized "national leaders". However, for each possible crime, Saddam really has rational and legal defenses. Therefore, BushCo cannot permit a fair trial.
So let's pretend anyway, and lets consider the possible charges and the obvious defenses, and it will quickly become clear how flawed and distorted the "legal" situation is. Then we can consider the kangaroo court procedures that will actually be used.
First and quite unfortunately, we have to discard any charges based on violations of Iraqi national laws. Sure, lots of national laws are bad and even immoral--at least people in other countries think so. But Iraqi law is still the Iraqi law, and that's what national sovereignty is all about. At each stage, Saddam was acting in accord with Iraqi law. Even though Saddam was steadily changing that law to increase his own dictatorial powers, he was playing by the "rule of law", and there is no "fair" legal system that permits redefining crimes after the fact. No, we can't even weasel out by citing examples of negative defaults, where certain not precisely specified behaviors are illegal unless they are explicitly permitted, because in Saddam's case he could create a properly legal law to explicitly permit whatever he wanted to do. Even though most of his victims were Iraqis, the Iraqi law was permitting them to be victimized.
So if Iraqi national laws won't work, what about international laws. Actually, on first glance, this seems very promising, because some of Saddam's crimes do fit into categories where there is broad international consensus about right and wrong. There are two major areas here--wars of aggression and human rights violations. On top of that, the International Criminal Court was created to deal with exactly these sorts of situations. Even the United States accepts the ideals and originally agreed to support their pursuit--until Dubya personally decided to cancel America's participation. I guess some folks might think that BushCo could still refer this Saddam problem to that court and leave America out of it, but it won't work once you consider the kinds of charges that would need to be part of that mythical "fair trial".
For wars of aggression, there are two counts against Saddam--Iran and Kuwait. Historically bent people will already suspect there's a problem here, since the international responses were completely different. The war with Iran was internationally ignored, while the second provoked widespread reaction, with an immediate international response and ultimately led to Saddam's fall.
Actually, it's not perfectly accurate to say the war with Iran was "internationally ignored", because BushCo was NOT ignoring it, but rather actively encouraging the carnage and profiting by selling weapons to both sides. This would be a crucial part of Saddam's defense in that fair trial everyone keeps mumbling about. Saddam will say Iraq was truly threatened by Iran, which was (and still is) run by religious fanatics. In those years, Iran's leaders were even more fanatical, and quite eager to encourage their co-religionists in Iraq to rebel, and Saddam will say he was only defending his nation. His BushCo allies assured him of "America's" support, even though Iran was much stronger than Iraq and he was "forced" to use "extraordinary military weapons" for "defensive purposes". That's Bush-speak for the chemical weapons that were supplied by BushCo in the first place. Saddam would use basically the same defense as regards gassing the Kurds, though the defensive claims are weaker there. Unfortunately, those claims of "performing his presidential duty to defend Iraq" are mostly going to come back to questions of "national security" and "intelligence", and that's going to be really hard to convict Saddam for. After all, look at Dubya's defective intelligence reports claiming that Iraqi weapons were a threat. The actual aggressive invasion has since shown that no such "WMD justification" existed, which is certainly awkward, to say the least. Or a war crime, to say the most.
Time to return to Kuwait and consider the opposite international reaction to that Iraqi aggression. This one seems like it ought to be taken as a fine example of international response fully justified by the highest principles. However, if principle was the main concern, there were worse situations elsewhere in the world at the same time. No, the big difference in Kuwait was that America got upset and was willing to lead a strong response. Saddam had gotten out of hand, and something had to be done, though not quite so thoroughly done as to remove Saddam from power. However, the big question here is whether there is any defense that Saddam could put up for that fair trial thing, and it turns out that there probably is. Saddam would probably claim that it was an internal matter, not international aggression--and he would even call the US to testify on that point. The muddy truth was that our ambassador was probably officially lying to Saddam to set him up for the fall, but it's still enough to muddle the issue and drag BushCo farther into the mess. I actually do believe this count of aggressive war against Kuwait really would stick, and even though parts of it are quite embarrassing to BushCo, at least there would be little risk of becoming co-defendants there. The risky part from BushCo's perspective is that Dubya would want the trial to be strictly limited to Kuwait, while Saddam would try to expand the scope.
So if the waters have been muddied for the charges of aggressive war, what about human rights violations. Things like torture and murder of his own citizens. No question but that Saddam was up to his ears in this sort of stuff--but still awkward for that fair trial that keeps dogging us. Hard to guess exactly what tactics sharp lawyers would use, but I can think of several without too much effort. Legal acts within Iraqi law as it existed? Subordinates acting without Saddam's knowledge or approval? Required actions to prevent the kind of anarchy that now prevails in Iraq? Citing comparable or worse examples elsewhere, but which aren't being prosecuted? And last, but most importantly, that the worst crimes were with the knowledge and even encouragement of his former friends and allies, especially that selfsame United States.
The current suggestions of a fair trial in Iraq are just too ridiculous to take seriously. Sort of like the idea of Kenny Boy Lay getting a fair trial in Houston, but worse (assuming anyone ever gets tried for stealing all those billions of dollars). There were no laws on the Iraqi books, and they are just going to make them up on the fly, with the goal of executing Saddam already stated by the supreme "military" commander. Anyone who suggests there might be any merit in any defense offered by Saddam would expect to be arrested and disappeared by the occupying troops. No rational person can pretend that a American-military-sponsored trial in Iraq will be anything but a kangaroo court of victor's justice, even knowing that Saddam is a great criminal deserving the most severe penalties.
All in all, it seems there are a number of conclusions to be offered. The most obvious one is that a fair trial can NOT be one of the REAL priorities, and BushCo would have been much happier if Saddam hadn't been quick enough to manage to surrender. The original idea was clearly to get the grenade in the hole, kill Saddam immediately, and avoid any "legal" problems. They didn't really care if those soldiers got blown up in a boobytrap as long as Saddam died, too. They didn't really want to capture Saddam any more than they wanted to capture his sons--even though their live captures and interrogations might well have saved American lives.
Another conclusion is that we ALL know that many of Saddam's acts were wrong and indefensible, but we're talking about higher standards here--and what makes those higher standards important is because good people can and MUST apply them even to bad people who don't understand them and who violated those standards. Kind of the problem with being good, eh? This is a job for the International Criminal Court. No, still not a perfect solution, but the best we could do in a situation like this. Unfortunately impossible since that would include accepting the possibility that the justification for punishing Saddam is no better than the rationale for punishing Dubya and various other national leaders. Not just morally upstanding and ethical people, but even BushCo supporters should (in theory) be able to understand that situation.
It all comes back to BushCo's legal system, the "Law of the Jungle" and BushCo's golden rule, "He who has the gold makes the rules!"
So let's pretend anyway, and lets consider the possible charges and the obvious defenses, and it will quickly become clear how flawed and distorted the "legal" situation is. Then we can consider the kangaroo court procedures that will actually be used.
First and quite unfortunately, we have to discard any charges based on violations of Iraqi national laws. Sure, lots of national laws are bad and even immoral--at least people in other countries think so. But Iraqi law is still the Iraqi law, and that's what national sovereignty is all about. At each stage, Saddam was acting in accord with Iraqi law. Even though Saddam was steadily changing that law to increase his own dictatorial powers, he was playing by the "rule of law", and there is no "fair" legal system that permits redefining crimes after the fact. No, we can't even weasel out by citing examples of negative defaults, where certain not precisely specified behaviors are illegal unless they are explicitly permitted, because in Saddam's case he could create a properly legal law to explicitly permit whatever he wanted to do. Even though most of his victims were Iraqis, the Iraqi law was permitting them to be victimized.
So if Iraqi national laws won't work, what about international laws. Actually, on first glance, this seems very promising, because some of Saddam's crimes do fit into categories where there is broad international consensus about right and wrong. There are two major areas here--wars of aggression and human rights violations. On top of that, the International Criminal Court was created to deal with exactly these sorts of situations. Even the United States accepts the ideals and originally agreed to support their pursuit--until Dubya personally decided to cancel America's participation. I guess some folks might think that BushCo could still refer this Saddam problem to that court and leave America out of it, but it won't work once you consider the kinds of charges that would need to be part of that mythical "fair trial".
For wars of aggression, there are two counts against Saddam--Iran and Kuwait. Historically bent people will already suspect there's a problem here, since the international responses were completely different. The war with Iran was internationally ignored, while the second provoked widespread reaction, with an immediate international response and ultimately led to Saddam's fall.
Actually, it's not perfectly accurate to say the war with Iran was "internationally ignored", because BushCo was NOT ignoring it, but rather actively encouraging the carnage and profiting by selling weapons to both sides. This would be a crucial part of Saddam's defense in that fair trial everyone keeps mumbling about. Saddam will say Iraq was truly threatened by Iran, which was (and still is) run by religious fanatics. In those years, Iran's leaders were even more fanatical, and quite eager to encourage their co-religionists in Iraq to rebel, and Saddam will say he was only defending his nation. His BushCo allies assured him of "America's" support, even though Iran was much stronger than Iraq and he was "forced" to use "extraordinary military weapons" for "defensive purposes". That's Bush-speak for the chemical weapons that were supplied by BushCo in the first place. Saddam would use basically the same defense as regards gassing the Kurds, though the defensive claims are weaker there. Unfortunately, those claims of "performing his presidential duty to defend Iraq" are mostly going to come back to questions of "national security" and "intelligence", and that's going to be really hard to convict Saddam for. After all, look at Dubya's defective intelligence reports claiming that Iraqi weapons were a threat. The actual aggressive invasion has since shown that no such "WMD justification" existed, which is certainly awkward, to say the least. Or a war crime, to say the most.
Time to return to Kuwait and consider the opposite international reaction to that Iraqi aggression. This one seems like it ought to be taken as a fine example of international response fully justified by the highest principles. However, if principle was the main concern, there were worse situations elsewhere in the world at the same time. No, the big difference in Kuwait was that America got upset and was willing to lead a strong response. Saddam had gotten out of hand, and something had to be done, though not quite so thoroughly done as to remove Saddam from power. However, the big question here is whether there is any defense that Saddam could put up for that fair trial thing, and it turns out that there probably is. Saddam would probably claim that it was an internal matter, not international aggression--and he would even call the US to testify on that point. The muddy truth was that our ambassador was probably officially lying to Saddam to set him up for the fall, but it's still enough to muddle the issue and drag BushCo farther into the mess. I actually do believe this count of aggressive war against Kuwait really would stick, and even though parts of it are quite embarrassing to BushCo, at least there would be little risk of becoming co-defendants there. The risky part from BushCo's perspective is that Dubya would want the trial to be strictly limited to Kuwait, while Saddam would try to expand the scope.
So if the waters have been muddied for the charges of aggressive war, what about human rights violations. Things like torture and murder of his own citizens. No question but that Saddam was up to his ears in this sort of stuff--but still awkward for that fair trial that keeps dogging us. Hard to guess exactly what tactics sharp lawyers would use, but I can think of several without too much effort. Legal acts within Iraqi law as it existed? Subordinates acting without Saddam's knowledge or approval? Required actions to prevent the kind of anarchy that now prevails in Iraq? Citing comparable or worse examples elsewhere, but which aren't being prosecuted? And last, but most importantly, that the worst crimes were with the knowledge and even encouragement of his former friends and allies, especially that selfsame United States.
The current suggestions of a fair trial in Iraq are just too ridiculous to take seriously. Sort of like the idea of Kenny Boy Lay getting a fair trial in Houston, but worse (assuming anyone ever gets tried for stealing all those billions of dollars). There were no laws on the Iraqi books, and they are just going to make them up on the fly, with the goal of executing Saddam already stated by the supreme "military" commander. Anyone who suggests there might be any merit in any defense offered by Saddam would expect to be arrested and disappeared by the occupying troops. No rational person can pretend that a American-military-sponsored trial in Iraq will be anything but a kangaroo court of victor's justice, even knowing that Saddam is a great criminal deserving the most severe penalties.
All in all, it seems there are a number of conclusions to be offered. The most obvious one is that a fair trial can NOT be one of the REAL priorities, and BushCo would have been much happier if Saddam hadn't been quick enough to manage to surrender. The original idea was clearly to get the grenade in the hole, kill Saddam immediately, and avoid any "legal" problems. They didn't really care if those soldiers got blown up in a boobytrap as long as Saddam died, too. They didn't really want to capture Saddam any more than they wanted to capture his sons--even though their live captures and interrogations might well have saved American lives.
Another conclusion is that we ALL know that many of Saddam's acts were wrong and indefensible, but we're talking about higher standards here--and what makes those higher standards important is because good people can and MUST apply them even to bad people who don't understand them and who violated those standards. Kind of the problem with being good, eh? This is a job for the International Criminal Court. No, still not a perfect solution, but the best we could do in a situation like this. Unfortunately impossible since that would include accepting the possibility that the justification for punishing Saddam is no better than the rationale for punishing Dubya and various other national leaders. Not just morally upstanding and ethical people, but even BushCo supporters should (in theory) be able to understand that situation.
It all comes back to BushCo's legal system, the "Law of the Jungle" and BushCo's golden rule, "He who has the gold makes the rules!"
Saturday, November 29, 2003
A few days ago I actually sent a little email message to BushCo. Talk about pissing into the wind. However, I was wondering why there was no reply. Back when the White House belonged to the people they at least acknowledged email with a polite FAQish reply. One could even fantasize about President Clinton reading a few pieces at random, what with him being such an avid reader. Not likely in Dubya's case, since he hates reading the way his dad hates broccoli. The lack of broccoli in Poppy's White House was mostly harmless, though it upset a few farmers. To the contrary, Dubya's willful ignorance kills people.
The following is a new email message:
The following is a new email message:
|
Well, well, well. What a surprise. You mean the technical staff of the White House is not capable of handling email? Could be. Let's consider some possibilities. 1. Projected incompetence from the top is certainly one possibility. Selecting the sysops for their political views rather than technical competence. Nothing wrong at my end. I send LOTS of email without bounce messages. 2. Policy of refusing email from foreign SMTP servers. Remarkable hypocrisy given the handling of foreign absentee votes in the selection of 2000--since those votes were expected to favor Dubya. However, it would make sense if foreign email has become very negative and given BushCo's aversion to bad news--especially ugly truths. 3. Propaganda purpose. Most likely. Most probably a cunning and technically sophisticated strategy to discourage negative communications so the White House can claim the email supports Dubya. Incoming email is automatically analyzed. Favorable email receives warm and kind responses intended to encourage additional messages. Negative email receives rude and mysterious bounce messages. Of course fake bounce messages violate the courtesy that makes the Internet work--but given BushCo's track record for violating domestic laws and international treaties, and even abusing the Constitution when it gets it their way, why would they worry about courtesy? By the way, I'm going to circulate this exchange on the Web. Here is what I finally got in response to my original email: Mail Delivery System wrote: > This is the Postfix program at host mail.asahi-net.or.jp. > > I'm sorry to have to inform you that the message returned > below could not be delivered to one or more destinations. > > For further assistance, please send mail to > > If you do so, please include this problem report. You can > delete your own text from the message returned below. > > The Postfix program > > > server dropped connection > > > wh.eop.gov[198.137.241.41]: server dropped connection Here is the original email: Shannon Jacobs wrote: > Just read about the British reporter asking you the question you > answered "I don't know that they do." You remember, the one about why > so many free people hate and fear you. Well, pretending you actually > want to know the ugly truth, I can easily give you the answers. I'm a > free person and I hate you for the harm you do, and I fear you for > your chronic and perpetual abuse of power. > > There really is a difference between good and bad people. Good people > do not enjoy using force. They use it when it is necessary, but > unlike you, they use it without pleasure. In addition, good people > are not so incredibly greedy, vindictive, selfish, and hypocritical > as you are. Good people are even sincerely sorry when they cause > other people to die, whereas you can't even be bothered to attend any > of the funerals of the American soldiers you've sent to their deaths. > > By the way, you also disgust me for your inability to recognize the > truths about yourself. You also shame me to be taken as some sort of > representative of my nation. > > P.S. All of this goes double for Cheney, except that I don't think he > is any more conniving and cunning than you are. > > P.P.S. Totally pointless email, but it made me feel a tiny bit better. |
Saturday, November 22, 2003
This has to be the lead story for a major spleen rant. "BushCo Pleads Guilty!" Try to imagine a criminal telling the court "The law was wrong, but my act was right." Well, no wonder the Bushies reject all courts (except for the 5-4 SCOTUS). The speaker in this case was Perle, one of the top neo-cons. He's already eaten his foot a couple of times, but Dubya still has him in a very prominent position directly under Rumsfeld, who's also an expert at sticking his foot in his mouth.
Actually, you have to put this in context. Perle couldn't actually say anything as honest as "Waging a war of aggression is a war crime" or even "We're guilty imperialists and we just wanted the oil." Like Dubya, he apparently can't conceive of being in the wrong. He actually said that international law was preventing the US (falsely equated with BushCo) from doing what was "right", so attacking Iraq was okay, even though it violated international law. Every criminal would like to define his crime as right, but that would kind of defeat the purpose of having laws, wouldn't it?
So now look at it in light of the results--which Perle certainly must be aware of. Saddam had no weapons of mass destruction, which was the main justifying claim (AKA "selling point") for the war. International law insisted on concrete evidence, and post-invasion searches have shown there was no evidence to be found. Funny. Looks to me like international law was right.
The main secondary claim was about Al Qaeda and fighting terrorism, but again the awkward truth is that Bin Ladin's monsters had no significant presence in Saddam's secular Iraq, though now they are clearly growing much stronger throughout the region. Lot of awkward truthtellers also said that would happen. (And this reminds me of that convenient treason directed against Valerie Plame, the wife of one of those nasty old truthtellers. Remember that Dubya said that particular "evildoer" whe revealed she was a CIA agent would probably never be found. (But everyone already knows it was Karl Rove.) Treason? As defined by law? BushCo don't need no stinking laws.)
Various other claims and rationales for the invasion have all fallen apart. The unavoidable conclusion is that the "war" with Iraq was unprovoked aggression. Closest comparison in my mind is to a schoolyard bully collecting lunch money.
Big difference from the schoolyard bully is the corpses. Today's extremely conservative estimate is 7,898 Iraqi civilians have died because of BushCo's invasion. Probably more like 10,000, but there's no official number because BushCo is good at propaganda and labels bad (or even awkward) truths as "unpatriotic". Still, we can't avoid saying that just in Iraq, America is already responsible for killing about 3 times as many civilians as Al Qaeda killed on 9/11. Also some large number of conscripted Iraqi soldiers, but who cares? Also some large number of civilians in Afghanistan in the previous war, but who cares? Also a few hundred Americans, and apparently BushCo doesn't even care about them.
Actually, that last bit angers me quite a bit. Hiding the coffins. Bad publicity, you know. Bad publicity be damned, this is wrong. I admit that the timing of my birth was lucky--when I went into the service there was no actual war and not much chance I was going to get killed in combat. Long time ago, but I was 18 or 19 years old. No big reason, but I just felt I should do a hitch to serve my country. JFK jet lag? However, if I had died in the service of my country, I would have thought it appropriate for that fact to be publicly recognized and acknowledged, not hidden and covered up. If our men are dying for a "good cause" in Iraq, then we should be honoring them in public, not hiding them like they're some sort of terrible failures for getting themselves killed.
Don't forget that Perle is another one of those chickenhawks who avoided combat when he had the chance. War is fine with him as long as other people do the dying.
Me, I always felt that war was a bad thing, but sometimes you just had to do it, and you always have to be ready to use force, just in case. However you should never enjoy the fighting or killing. I think that's the real difference between good and evil. When a good person uses force, it is without pleasure, but only because there is really and truly no other option. I think these Bushies LIKE using force. Of course the extreme example is Dubya himself joking about a woman who was being put to death with his "blessing". Like his black trifecta joke? Bad things are good for him, so Dubya isn't going to lose any sleep just because he causes other people to die.
Not sure why, but that reminds me to mention the recent report on the Wellstone crash. I have trouble with conspiracy theories. I believe that conspiracies have to unravel. On the other hand, that report was not very convincing. Pilot error? Only if the pilots were transmuted into chimps and distracted by a banana. I was a lousy pilot, but I could not have allowed my airspeed to drop like that, and I certainly would have responded with corrective action. The stun grenade explanation makes more sense.
Meanwhile, in the latest conquered territory, California, the Governator has announced his solution to the budget problems he rode into office. Borrow LOTS of money. Gee, has anyone told all those bankrupt people yet? When you go broke, all you need to do is borrow more money! What a brilliant solution!
For legal entertainment, we have Ashcroft announcing the arrest of a few Internet scammers. If that's all there are, then the Internet was amazingly law abiding. Of course the more likely truth is that Ashcroft is playing another political game with a few "show trials", quite likely hoping to discredit the Internet. After all, the Web is a place where you can read such TERRIBLE stuff as this blog. At least you can read it for now, but I'm sure Ashcroft has bigger plans than nailing a few scammers.
Rather desperately fishing for a few glimmers of good news. Two do come to mind. One is the requirement for printed ballots in California, though the schedule is so slow it may not matter. These BushCo crooks are much worse than the Teapot Dome gang and Nixon's Plumbers combined, and I'm sure they plan to "conquer" this next election by ANY means necessary. Just like 2000. (Actually, I think the main reason that Teapot Dome finally unraveled was only because the shallow but "popular" front man up and died. That's Dubya's role this time around, but he looks healthy enough, in physical if not in moral terms.)
The other nice bit is Michael Moore's latest book, Dude, Where's My Country? Interesting read, well targeted, and, as a best-seller, reaching a lot of people, to boot. Lots of strong aspects, though the questions in the first chapter are especially poignant. Letting Bin Ladin's family escape was VERY wrong. Family members know a lot about each other, and no matter how innocent, what they knew was important. Remember that 3,000 people had just died and Bin Ladin's family almost surely knew something to help make sure he got properly nailed for it--which STILL hasn't happened. However, it was apparently most important to BushCo to protect the Bin Ladins and their friends--who turn out to be those selfsame Bushes. Plato would not be amused: "But who shall guard those selfsame guardians?"
In closing, someone's new Ductator Dubya-speak words of the day:
Qwagmire: Dubya's latest mess in Iraq.
Sqwander: What Dubya did with the budget surplus.
Actually, you have to put this in context. Perle couldn't actually say anything as honest as "Waging a war of aggression is a war crime" or even "We're guilty imperialists and we just wanted the oil." Like Dubya, he apparently can't conceive of being in the wrong. He actually said that international law was preventing the US (falsely equated with BushCo) from doing what was "right", so attacking Iraq was okay, even though it violated international law. Every criminal would like to define his crime as right, but that would kind of defeat the purpose of having laws, wouldn't it?
So now look at it in light of the results--which Perle certainly must be aware of. Saddam had no weapons of mass destruction, which was the main justifying claim (AKA "selling point") for the war. International law insisted on concrete evidence, and post-invasion searches have shown there was no evidence to be found. Funny. Looks to me like international law was right.
The main secondary claim was about Al Qaeda and fighting terrorism, but again the awkward truth is that Bin Ladin's monsters had no significant presence in Saddam's secular Iraq, though now they are clearly growing much stronger throughout the region. Lot of awkward truthtellers also said that would happen. (And this reminds me of that convenient treason directed against Valerie Plame, the wife of one of those nasty old truthtellers. Remember that Dubya said that particular "evildoer" whe revealed she was a CIA agent would probably never be found. (But everyone already knows it was Karl Rove.) Treason? As defined by law? BushCo don't need no stinking laws.)
Various other claims and rationales for the invasion have all fallen apart. The unavoidable conclusion is that the "war" with Iraq was unprovoked aggression. Closest comparison in my mind is to a schoolyard bully collecting lunch money.
Big difference from the schoolyard bully is the corpses. Today's extremely conservative estimate is 7,898 Iraqi civilians have died because of BushCo's invasion. Probably more like 10,000, but there's no official number because BushCo is good at propaganda and labels bad (or even awkward) truths as "unpatriotic". Still, we can't avoid saying that just in Iraq, America is already responsible for killing about 3 times as many civilians as Al Qaeda killed on 9/11. Also some large number of conscripted Iraqi soldiers, but who cares? Also some large number of civilians in Afghanistan in the previous war, but who cares? Also a few hundred Americans, and apparently BushCo doesn't even care about them.
Actually, that last bit angers me quite a bit. Hiding the coffins. Bad publicity, you know. Bad publicity be damned, this is wrong. I admit that the timing of my birth was lucky--when I went into the service there was no actual war and not much chance I was going to get killed in combat. Long time ago, but I was 18 or 19 years old. No big reason, but I just felt I should do a hitch to serve my country. JFK jet lag? However, if I had died in the service of my country, I would have thought it appropriate for that fact to be publicly recognized and acknowledged, not hidden and covered up. If our men are dying for a "good cause" in Iraq, then we should be honoring them in public, not hiding them like they're some sort of terrible failures for getting themselves killed.
Don't forget that Perle is another one of those chickenhawks who avoided combat when he had the chance. War is fine with him as long as other people do the dying.
Me, I always felt that war was a bad thing, but sometimes you just had to do it, and you always have to be ready to use force, just in case. However you should never enjoy the fighting or killing. I think that's the real difference between good and evil. When a good person uses force, it is without pleasure, but only because there is really and truly no other option. I think these Bushies LIKE using force. Of course the extreme example is Dubya himself joking about a woman who was being put to death with his "blessing". Like his black trifecta joke? Bad things are good for him, so Dubya isn't going to lose any sleep just because he causes other people to die.
Not sure why, but that reminds me to mention the recent report on the Wellstone crash. I have trouble with conspiracy theories. I believe that conspiracies have to unravel. On the other hand, that report was not very convincing. Pilot error? Only if the pilots were transmuted into chimps and distracted by a banana. I was a lousy pilot, but I could not have allowed my airspeed to drop like that, and I certainly would have responded with corrective action. The stun grenade explanation makes more sense.
Meanwhile, in the latest conquered territory, California, the Governator has announced his solution to the budget problems he rode into office. Borrow LOTS of money. Gee, has anyone told all those bankrupt people yet? When you go broke, all you need to do is borrow more money! What a brilliant solution!
For legal entertainment, we have Ashcroft announcing the arrest of a few Internet scammers. If that's all there are, then the Internet was amazingly law abiding. Of course the more likely truth is that Ashcroft is playing another political game with a few "show trials", quite likely hoping to discredit the Internet. After all, the Web is a place where you can read such TERRIBLE stuff as this blog. At least you can read it for now, but I'm sure Ashcroft has bigger plans than nailing a few scammers.
Rather desperately fishing for a few glimmers of good news. Two do come to mind. One is the requirement for printed ballots in California, though the schedule is so slow it may not matter. These BushCo crooks are much worse than the Teapot Dome gang and Nixon's Plumbers combined, and I'm sure they plan to "conquer" this next election by ANY means necessary. Just like 2000. (Actually, I think the main reason that Teapot Dome finally unraveled was only because the shallow but "popular" front man up and died. That's Dubya's role this time around, but he looks healthy enough, in physical if not in moral terms.)
The other nice bit is Michael Moore's latest book, Dude, Where's My Country? Interesting read, well targeted, and, as a best-seller, reaching a lot of people, to boot. Lots of strong aspects, though the questions in the first chapter are especially poignant. Letting Bin Ladin's family escape was VERY wrong. Family members know a lot about each other, and no matter how innocent, what they knew was important. Remember that 3,000 people had just died and Bin Ladin's family almost surely knew something to help make sure he got properly nailed for it--which STILL hasn't happened. However, it was apparently most important to BushCo to protect the Bin Ladins and their friends--who turn out to be those selfsame Bushes. Plato would not be amused: "But who shall guard those selfsame guardians?"
In closing, someone's new Ductator Dubya-speak words of the day:
Qwagmire: Dubya's latest mess in Iraq.
Sqwander: What Dubya did with the budget surplus.
Monday, September 22, 2003
Back in the hypocrisy can't explode heads category, I just read the South Dakota story. Amazingly, the liberal media has apparently been ignoring this one for the most part. Hypocrisy just isn't news anymore. (New strategy is slanting the twisted words. I think it beats scare quotes--this piece one was getting full of them.)
Remember that compassionate conservative stuff? Well, the basic philosophic angle is that government shouldn't help people. People should just be held responsible for their own mistakes. Well, this staunch Dubya supporter Janklow made a big mistake and killed someone a couple of weeks ago. Speeding and running a stop sign. However, now he's doing everything he can to stay out of jail. Just like Janklow has beaten all of his previous speeding raps. Even wants to stay in Congress. Working from jail might be awkward, but his good lawyers will probably beat this rap, too. We can't hold HIM responsible for HIS mistakes! Such a fine flag-wrapped Republican and Bush friend, after all.
In his entry for the quote of the week category, Janklow complains that he understands mortality better than most of us. Yeah, you get a special understanding when you kill someone, and most of us just haven't had that enlightening experience.
No, Janklow's head hasn't exploded, though he's complaining about headaches. If there's anyone in charge up there, he, she, or it sure has a funny sense of humor. However, it doesn't seem likely that Janklow can really threaten Rumsfeld or Dubya for the hypocrisy championship.
The other day Rumsfeld was saying how we can't leave Iraq now just because we're getting a bloody nose. As though any of his own precious blood was at risk? Mostly made me think of a bully who was whipping up on some little weakling, only the weakling took a wild swing and managed to bloody the bully's nose. So now the bully is complaining that the weakling doesn't have enough lunch money to pay for a proper bandage? He wants old UNcle Kofi and friends to come to the rescue? Is that the same UNcle Kofi you've been alternately ignoring and badmouthing?
Sorry, Rummy boy, but the bottom line remains that the nosebleed is not life threatening, and you Bushies were asking for it, to boot. Figuratively speaking, of course, since it's already obvious what chickenhawks you really are. Too bad your OWN blood gets the best protection available (especially greedy Chicken Cheney in his undisclosed locations). The only real risk is that Saddam might crawl back out from under a rock somewhere. Talk about embarrassing. What, at least $75 billion spent so far, and we haven't even gotten Saddam's t-shirt yet? (That's a very official and conservative estimate. Really ought to include the $60-$80 billion from last time around, plus the latest allocation of $75 billion, and who knows how much more in secret funding.)
You don't have to take my word for it. Dubya himself has now waffled the other way and is publicly stating that Iraq never attacked us and had no connection to 9/11 and he can't imagine how the public came to believe such a preposterous thing. Like he hasn't spent the last couple of years trying to paint that picture? Excuse me, but clearly Dubya is still winner and undisputed World Hypocrisy Champion.
Explode his head? Dubya isn't even having the headaches!
To close on a general philosophic note, I really do believe in Occam's Razor, and there's no reason for complicated conspiracy theories to explain most of the greed and stupidity in the world. However, there ARE conspiracies, and sometimes even complicated conspiracies which would obviously prefer to look like something else. In those cases, the simplest explanation that accounts for all of the historical facts actually will be the explanation that includes the conspiracy... And the BIG problem with history is that you can't change it--you can only try to hide it.
Remember that compassionate conservative stuff? Well, the basic philosophic angle is that government shouldn't help people. People should just be held responsible for their own mistakes. Well, this staunch Dubya supporter Janklow made a big mistake and killed someone a couple of weeks ago. Speeding and running a stop sign. However, now he's doing everything he can to stay out of jail. Just like Janklow has beaten all of his previous speeding raps. Even wants to stay in Congress. Working from jail might be awkward, but his good lawyers will probably beat this rap, too. We can't hold HIM responsible for HIS mistakes! Such a fine flag-wrapped Republican and Bush friend, after all.
In his entry for the quote of the week category, Janklow complains that he understands mortality better than most of us. Yeah, you get a special understanding when you kill someone, and most of us just haven't had that enlightening experience.
No, Janklow's head hasn't exploded, though he's complaining about headaches. If there's anyone in charge up there, he, she, or it sure has a funny sense of humor. However, it doesn't seem likely that Janklow can really threaten Rumsfeld or Dubya for the hypocrisy championship.
The other day Rumsfeld was saying how we can't leave Iraq now just because we're getting a bloody nose. As though any of his own precious blood was at risk? Mostly made me think of a bully who was whipping up on some little weakling, only the weakling took a wild swing and managed to bloody the bully's nose. So now the bully is complaining that the weakling doesn't have enough lunch money to pay for a proper bandage? He wants old UNcle Kofi and friends to come to the rescue? Is that the same UNcle Kofi you've been alternately ignoring and badmouthing?
Sorry, Rummy boy, but the bottom line remains that the nosebleed is not life threatening, and you Bushies were asking for it, to boot. Figuratively speaking, of course, since it's already obvious what chickenhawks you really are. Too bad your OWN blood gets the best protection available (especially greedy Chicken Cheney in his undisclosed locations). The only real risk is that Saddam might crawl back out from under a rock somewhere. Talk about embarrassing. What, at least $75 billion spent so far, and we haven't even gotten Saddam's t-shirt yet? (That's a very official and conservative estimate. Really ought to include the $60-$80 billion from last time around, plus the latest allocation of $75 billion, and who knows how much more in secret funding.)
You don't have to take my word for it. Dubya himself has now waffled the other way and is publicly stating that Iraq never attacked us and had no connection to 9/11 and he can't imagine how the public came to believe such a preposterous thing. Like he hasn't spent the last couple of years trying to paint that picture? Excuse me, but clearly Dubya is still winner and undisputed World Hypocrisy Champion.
Explode his head? Dubya isn't even having the headaches!
To close on a general philosophic note, I really do believe in Occam's Razor, and there's no reason for complicated conspiracy theories to explain most of the greed and stupidity in the world. However, there ARE conspiracies, and sometimes even complicated conspiracies which would obviously prefer to look like something else. In those cases, the simplest explanation that accounts for all of the historical facts actually will be the explanation that includes the conspiracy... And the BIG problem with history is that you can't change it--you can only try to hide it.
Friday, September 12, 2003
New Dubya research proves that hypocrisy cannot make your head explode!
At least not Dubya's head, such as it is. Just look at California for the latest evidence. Remember that Dubya is the guy who crawled into the White House as the moral liberator (with the secret "irresponsible" past), and now the Bushies are eagerly endorsing Arnold the Terminator as a "fine" governor for California under the new campaign slogan that he never planned to go into politics. Hypocrisy squared? Cubed? How about hypocrisy^n where n is a really large number?
Not just the endorsements, but the money, too. Obviously the only REAL problem in California is that the Bushies didn't spend enough moola on the election they just lost, and what a "fine" thing that California law has this great loophole for a backdoor into the governor's mansion. What's Arnold's real qualification? Well, at least he's good at following directions. That's why Arnold is a much bigger star than Reagan ever was--but it's also the reason that the Governator would be a sock puppet for scammers who the California voters have already rejected.
It's all about men, you know, and screw the law. Yeah, another area of amazing hypocrisy. The least amusing recent examples there involve the never-ending Palestinian conflict. In our latest episodes, the leader the Palestinians want is the "wrong man", so we (the US and our shadows, the Israelis) need to get rid of him. On the other hand, the blessed "right man" is demanding the laws be changed to give him more powers--not because he has any legal claims to more power, but ultimately only because the Americans will apply more pressure if he doesn't get what he wants. Raw, naked power is the only law!
But isn't that what all the terrorists say?
(Inspired by Krugman's excellent "Exploiting the Atrocity" column. If you missed it, you should seek it out.)
At least not Dubya's head, such as it is. Just look at California for the latest evidence. Remember that Dubya is the guy who crawled into the White House as the moral liberator (with the secret "irresponsible" past), and now the Bushies are eagerly endorsing Arnold the Terminator as a "fine" governor for California under the new campaign slogan that he never planned to go into politics. Hypocrisy squared? Cubed? How about hypocrisy^n where n is a really large number?
Not just the endorsements, but the money, too. Obviously the only REAL problem in California is that the Bushies didn't spend enough moola on the election they just lost, and what a "fine" thing that California law has this great loophole for a backdoor into the governor's mansion. What's Arnold's real qualification? Well, at least he's good at following directions. That's why Arnold is a much bigger star than Reagan ever was--but it's also the reason that the Governator would be a sock puppet for scammers who the California voters have already rejected.
It's all about men, you know, and screw the law. Yeah, another area of amazing hypocrisy. The least amusing recent examples there involve the never-ending Palestinian conflict. In our latest episodes, the leader the Palestinians want is the "wrong man", so we (the US and our shadows, the Israelis) need to get rid of him. On the other hand, the blessed "right man" is demanding the laws be changed to give him more powers--not because he has any legal claims to more power, but ultimately only because the Americans will apply more pressure if he doesn't get what he wants. Raw, naked power is the only law!
But isn't that what all the terrorists say?
(Inspired by Krugman's excellent "Exploiting the Atrocity" column. If you missed it, you should seek it out.)
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- shanen
- As a blogger from before there were blogs, I've concluded what I write is of little interest to the reading public. My current approach is to treat these blogs as notes, with the maturity indicated by the version number. If reader comments show interest, I will probably add some flesh to the skeletons...