Getting better




I've been sick the last couple days with bronchitis and a massive cold that has me feeling like I have concrete setting in my chest. Saw the doctor on Monday, and he gave me some horse-pill sized antibiotics and some free samples of Sudafed. I also snagged a flu shot out of the deal, so all in all a good day. But my recovery has consisted of sleeping on and off through the day, and drinking pint after pint of water.


Jerry Falwell: radical cleric, liar

I posted Monday about Jerry Falwell's apparition, I mean, appearance on Meet the Press Sunday. Today, David Brock, speaking on The Al Franken Show, pointed out that the good reverend lied not once, but twice, during his MTP appearance. Frist, Tim Russert dug deep into the Jerry Falwell idiotic statement archives, and came up with Falwell's post-9/11 statement that gays and pagans were responsible for the terrorist attack on America. Falwell claimed his statement was taken out of context, that he also blamed "The sleeping church." Not true! The original statement, mode on fellow traveller Pat Robertson's 700 Club, was recorded and distributed by People for the American Way. Falwell amended his statement sometime later to include his "sleeping church" addendum.

Lie number two came when Russert pointed out that Massachusetts has the lowest divorce rate in the country, and several southern "red states" are among the highest. Falwell offered that the divorce rate among born again Christians is much lower. Falwell pulled this statistic out of his ass. A recent study by the Barna Group shows that born agains divorce at the same rate as us devil worshipping, twin-tower toppling liberals.

I'm sure Russert will expose Falwell's lies this Sunday.


Update to "moral constitution" story

Last week I wrote about a church and state separation lawsuit in California that smelled kind of fishy. A fifth grade teacher says he is prohibited from teaching the Declaration of Independence because it uses the word "God". This story looks more and more like a set up.

Church-state separation is an important issue in the US, probably all the more so because the country is at war with religious zealots who think the 18th century European Enlightenment is a plot against their religion. And then there's that whole al Qaeda thing, too. So wouldn't it make sense to start a national discussion on the role of religion in public life? But the radical clerics who have taken over our government know they could never win a rational discussion, not as John Locke defines rationalism, anyway. So theocrats like James Dobson concoct phony crises that they can use when they point at liberals and moderates, and say "See, they're at it again! They've gone too far!"
1.12.04 17:13


Canadian Fakin'
3.12.04 04:13


Emotion trumps logic

One key element of Bush's re-election is that his party has been successful at building a narrative that explains The War Against Terror, including the misguided invasion of Iraq. Nevermind the narrative is more full of logical inconsistencies and flat out fallacies than an Ed Wood script. Emotion trumps logic. Appeals to logic constitute only one of the three forms of classical rhetoric (or tools of persuasion). But not everybody studied rhetoric in college, and not everybody voted for Kerry. There's a Venn diagram floating around in that last sentence, and I'll leave it to you to draw it.

Victor Davis Hanson lays out the standard GOP narrative on his website, and it's worth a read, if only to remind ourselves that we as liberals and progressives need to overcome. Hanson thinks Bush will be judge favorably by history, because all wars are nasty and brutish and all great war leaders make mistakes. How convenient.
We have come too far and too many have died to cease or even pause. In the name of the dead Americans, those lost of the Coalition, and the resolute Iraqis who were butchered by both Saddam and then by the Islamic fascists, let the January election proceed as promised. If Bill Clinton could run America with 43 percent of the popular vote in 1992, if Lincoln could conduct a war after receiving 40 percent in 1860, and if the Supreme Court could adjudicate the electoral mess of 2000, so then the Kurds and the Shiites, if need be, can hold elections in Iraq with participation of 70 percent of the people. As for the Muslim clerics, Saddamites, and al Qaedists of the Sunni triangle, rest assured that there will be elections and you shall all end up on the wrong side of history. How absurd it is that the Sunni Triangle is the heart of an insurrection that feeds off either subsidy, appeasement, or the indifference of its citizenry, only then to plead that its own malfeasance should earn special dispensation from others who chose hard work and sacrifice and the chance for democratic law. Let them participate in history or watch it steamroll by from the sidelines — but let them not stop it.
It's a stirring call to action, unaffected by reality, history, or even common sense. But stirring enough to carry Bush to victory. And for Bush to come out on top, Iraq has only to seem better off after the elections. Forget objective measures - only losers bother to keep score. Could anything be worse than Saddam? Even if another brutal theocracy grows in place of Saddam's mass graves, at least Hanson and other purveyors of the long view can point to the dark years of rape rooms and plastic shredders, and the critics will have to shut up.

This is the box that Democrats find themselves in. They are no longer running against Bush, or John Ashcroft, or recession. They are running away from Saddam, and they further they get from the Butcher of Baghdad, the closer they are drawn to Bush.
5.12.04 00:51


Priceless


From Vanity Fair:

80 minute flight from Amman Jordan......$630
15 minute taxi ride from airport...........$5,000
Cost to US taxpayers of one day military occupation....$200 million
An administration that still insists everything is going to plan ... Priceless!


Our best shot

Every blogger's computer keyboard should be programmed to type the words "George W. Bush" and "idiot" in a single keystroke. On my Mac, it could be F5, since I just pressed it and nothing happened. Think of all the time we could save. The latest F5 moment comes in this morning's Tom Friedman column in the NY Times, when we are informed that Congress has slashed the National Science Foundation budget by $105 million, at a time when we need more science and technology, not less.

Friedman returns to one of his favorite themes, that our foreign policy nightmare is attributable to our insatiable thirst for foreign oil. Reduce the petro dollars flowing to countries like Saudi Arabia and Iran, and the bloody despots that run those countries would have to rely on their people, instead of our SUV owners, for their income.
If President Bush is looking for a legacy, I have just the one for him - a national science project that would be our generation's moon shot: a crash science initiative for alternative energy and conservation to make America energy-independent in 10 years. Imagine if every American kid, in every school, were galvanized around such a vision. Ah, you say, nice idea, Friedman, but what does it have to do with your subject - foreign policy?

Everything! You give me an America that is energy-independent and I will give you sharply reduced oil revenues for the worst governments in the world. I will give you political reform from Moscow to Riyadh to Tehran. Yes, deprive these regimes of the huge oil windfalls on which they depend and you will force them to reform by having to tap their people instead of oil wells. These regimes won't change when we tell them they should. They will change only when they tell themselves they must.

When did the Soviet Union collapse? When did reform take off in Iran? When did the Oslo peace process begin? When did economic reform become a hot topic in the Arab world? In the late 1980's and early 1990's. And what was also happening then? Oil prices were collapsing.
Instead, we get idiotic calls for drilling in Alaska, as if the extra 1.4 million barrels a day ANWR might give us have anything to do with the other 11 million barrels a day we import. Besides, the US has been extracting oil from Alaska's north slope for decades, and exporting about seven percent to Asia, because it's more cost effective than shipping it to the US. Exporting oil also helps keep west coast prices high. So much for energy independence.

You got to love those market forces.

F5


Time wounds all heels



Dick Cheney just went up a shoe size, according to a press release issued by the people who sell him his shoes. And why is this important?Josh is on the case. Swollen feet are a symptom of congestive heart failure, and as we all know, Dick has a sick ticker. But how sick? And why do we have to rely on shoe store press releases to find out?


Rhymes with Cupid



Patriotboy is all about Sony Entertainment's request to censor Cupid:
Certainly, there will be those who will argue that a 16th century tapestry depicting frolicking cupids does not qualify as pornography. Pay no attention to them. They underestimate the power of unclothed cupids. They do not understand how the cupids' disproportionately large willies subvert the biblically ordained relationship between a husband and his wife.
On the other hand, Sony, Cupid won't embarrass you with an unexpected wardrobe malfunction. He's already naked!
5.12.04 17:54


And World War II was a hoot
if you watch it on Hogan's Heroes




Radical cleric Jerry Falwell, speaking on Crossfire, said the Iraq War is going well "If you watch it on Fox."

Big of him to admit it.


I think we can rule out intelligent design anyway



George W. Bush today, in response to a question by an al Arabia reporter:
The American people must understand that democracy just doesn't happen overnight. It is a process. It is an evolution. After all, look at our own history. We had great principles enunciated in our Declarations of Independence and our Constitution, yet, we had slavery for a hundred years. It takes a while for democracy to take hold. And this is a major first step in a society which enables people to express their beliefs and their opinions.
Yes, and thank God the British forced us to accept human rights, and secular government, and rule of law. And that whole Magna Carta thing really stuck in our craw, but after they killed about 100,000 of us, we grew to like it, too.

Honestly, if this man were any dumber he would be on life support.
6.12.04 19:18


Blue staters for Bush

Joan Vennochi introduces us to an anonymous, Ivy League educated Bay Stater who voted for (gulp) George W. Bush. They're not all morons:
I'm one of those nameless people in Massachusetts with a full set of teeth and lots of education who voted for Bush and won't tell anyone. Not even my best friend who lives 2,000 miles away. Just last week, she called and asked not once, but twice: `Did you vote for Bush? Tell me the truth.' Tell her the truth? I wasn't going to confess that I had scorned the Native Son, the Vietnam war hero, the Democrat.
Anonymous said she disagrees with Bush on the hot button social issues: gay marriage, stem cell research and privatizing social security. She even sees invading Iraq as a tragic mistake. So why did she vote for the former governor of Texas?
"Long ago, I gave up the idea that presidents actually do anything to make public schools better or healthcare more affordable. For me, this election was all about homeland security and the war in Iraq. Kerry never sold me on how he would do a better job with either one. To this day, I don't understand his positions on the war, or what his plan was to bring home the troops. Kerry didn't understand that I was a long way from seeing terrorism as a `nuisance' and that I needed reassurance that if we were attacked again, he would strike back. I wanted plain speak, and he gave me nuanced rhetoric.

"Not so with Bush. I always felt I knew where he stood, what he believed in, and the direction he wanted to take the country. Even though we didn't see eye-to-eye on most things, I liked the clarity of Bush's convictions and willingness to stand up for them. So, I did the `dirty' deed and voted Bush. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that he'll do a better job in his second term. And for the foreseeable future, I'm keeping my mouth shut that I voted for him."
If Democrats have any hope of being shut out of power for the next 16 generations, our candidates have to be more than just "not George W. Bush". Anonymous basically voted for Bush because he's "not John Kerry." It seems that hatred and disgust have a way of cancellling each other out. And it's not even enough to be right. Anonymous probably agreed with Kerry on more issues that Bush.

Democrats, as I've written before, need their own narrative of world events. It needs to be short, sweet, and to the point. Fitting on a bumper sticker earns extra points.This isn't dumbing down. It's marketing 101. It's communicating. It's coalition building. The Merlot and brie crowd won't get everything they want, and the social conservatives we attract won't be thrilled 24/7 either. But at least everyone will know the score, and not just the libretto.


Teen sex! XXX! We have it right here!

In the red states, that is. Check out this graphic from Kos:



In practical terms, this means Rob Lowe is three times more likely to get lucky in Mississippi than New Hampshire.

My homestate of Wisconsin is ranked number 40, due no doubt to the prevalence of dairy products and league softball. The hedonistic Bay State, Massachusetts, is number 49. I blame it on gay marriage.


Are superheroes supposed to look this gay?

Maybe some things are best left to the pros. Or maybe not.
7.12.04 22:58


George Bush's man date

Sixty million Americans did not vote for him.
8.12.04 23:13


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