Eat the Fruit of Ignorance

A new museum dedicated to the fable of Creationism opened recently. I know I shouldn’t let it bother me when people are so stupid as to willfully disregard science in favor of a storybook, but I just can't help it. My favorite, and the most telling, line is this:

"I don't care how long it took to make the Grand Canyon," he tells me. "It's not how old it is that matters to me. What matters is being right with God. Darwin's theory has no God. It can't be right. I don't know if this story is truer than Darwin's theory, but I do know it's better."

Makes sense to me. If you like a particular tale better than you like the facts, then ignore the icky, confusing, brain-requiring truth.

In that light, I present to you an incomplete list of must-be-truisms that feel better than reality.

• They hate us for our freedom.
  
• The insurgents are in their last throes.
  
• Ice cream causes weight loss.
  
• Torture works.
  
• The U.S. doesn’t torture people.
  
• Saudi Arabia is our ally.
  
• Size doesn’t matter.
  
• Jesus Christ is protecting me.
  
• George W. Bush cares about me more than he cares about his corporate masters.
  
• If I’m not doing anything illegal, I don’t need my civil liberties.
  
• God hates fags.
  
• No one can tell it’s a toupee.
  
• Owning a gun protects my family.
  
• They would never interfere with voting procedures.
  
• I’m sure it’s not cancer.
  
• 9/11 had nothing to do with our foreign policy.
  
• Anyone with “Reverend” as their title must be an honest, moral human being.
  
• She’s just stuck up.
  
• We have an all-volunteer army.
  
• We're safer now than before 9/11.
  
• Other people are causing global warming, not me.
  
• There’s probably no such thing as global warming anyway.
  
• Bush will never invade Iran after the shitstorm he created in Iraq.
  
• The cab driver knows what he’s doing.

And let us not forget the granddaddy of all lies we tell ourselves; the Big Lie that precipitated the downfall of the American Empire - Bush won fair and square in 2000.

Takes One to Know One

Bush still believes in his BFF Alberto despite (because of?) his class-A fuckup status. He goes on to say:

"And I, frankly, view what's taking place in Washington today as pure political theater. And it is this kind of political theater that has caused the American people to lose confidence in how Washington operates.

"I stand by Al Gonzales, and I would hope that people would be more sober in how they address these important issues. And they ought to get the job done of passing legislation, as opposed to figuring how to be actors on the political theater stage."

Because if anyone can spot and identify political theater, this is the guy.

Shut Up and Sign the Fuckin’ Form

This Comey thing is a real jawdropper, innit. It never ceases to amaze me that every time I get numb to the iron-fisted tyrannical rule of the Bush regime, another story will leak out putting their past transgressions to shame; doing things that would make any brutal despot green with envy.

This time, in case you’re unaware, it’s a tale told by former Deputy Attorney General James Comey. Ashcroft was the AG, but he was in the hospital recovering from serious surgery. Comey was placed temporarily in charge of the Justice Department. Bush was running his secret domestic wiretapping program, and Comey told the White House that the program was illegal and Justice would not sign off on it. So Bush’s Chief of Staff Andy Card and then head White House council, Alberto Gonzales jumped in the Batmobile and raced over to the hospital to try to trick the drugged-up and recuperating-in-the-fucking-intensive-care-unit John Ashcroft into overriding Comey’s decision. Someone tipped Comey off and he hustled over to the hospital basically to protect Ashcroft from being browbeaten into submission by Bush’s henchmen.

The super-freaky part of the story, to me, is that Ashcroft, even through his haze of ether basically told Card and Gonzales to suck his crank and get the hell out of there - Comey is in charge. I mean, you know you got some pretty fucked up shit when Ashcroft is the hero of the story.

Of course, no one is paying much attention to this, in the same way the “liberal” media hasn’t paid much attention to any of the steps towards fascism Bush has taken over the years. But when discussing why we should be paying attention, I like Dahlia Lithwick’s take in Slate yesterday - it’s not so much about the image of Bush dispatching his goons to go and hover over a dying man’s bed as much as it is about Bush’s complete and utter contempt for the constitution and the rule of law.

The psychodrama in Ashcroft's hospital room boils down to a rift between the people at Justice (Ashcroft, Comey, and Goldsmith) who believed even the president can cross a line into lawless behavior and those who simply don't. Glenn Greenwald contends that "the President consciously and deliberately violated the law and committed multiple felonies by eavesdropping on Americans." The Wall Street Journal insists that no law was broken because the surveillance program put the president above the law. Greenwald believes in an immutable legal architecture that binds even the president. The White House contends the president answers to nobody. There is no midpoint between these two arguments. The president is either above the law or he isn't.

As it turns out, almost everyone who espoused the latter view has fled DoJ. The most underreported moment at Comey's hearing this week was not, as the Journal claims, the Comey-Specter colloquy, but Sen. Chuck Schumer's Freudian effort to swear Comey back into office when he was supposed to be administering an oath. As Ben Wittes puts it today, "the bad guys won."

But that's not quite right. The bad guys were winning for a while because they picked the teams, set the rules, sidelined the referees, and turned off all the lights in the stadium. Congress has some work to do. It needs to drill down on what this mystery eavesdropping program was (and which worse mystery eavesdropping program it replaced) and to get to the bottom of the Yoo memos and what else they've authorized. Let's call the Comey testimony the halftime show. With the refs in and the lights finally on, this might just prove to be an interesting game after all.

I wrote about this last month asking how much longer can this go on. That was well before I knew Bush had a team of pipe-hittin’ thugs at the ready to run off and twist arms as necessary. His own imperial guard from the inner sanctum. Furthermore, consider the fact that after John Ashcroft didn’t give Bush the leeway he needed to wipe his ass with our constitution, Bush fucking fired that no-dancin’ religious Bush-freak (Ashcroft) to replace him with someone more obsequious and cocksucking (Gonzales).

Think about that! He had to fire Ashcroft because Ashcroft wasn’t into Bush enough. Is there any wonder why Bush is lovin’ on Gonzales more than ever after Al’s massive brain fart on Capitol Hill? Loyalty literally above all else. Maybe that works in your banana republics and your military juntas, but it’s no way to run a successful democracy, or frankly any nation as large and as complicated as ours. And it shows, don’t it…

God Punishes the Wicked

Call me a monster if you like, but I’m full-on prepared to say good riddance to Jerry Falwell. Salon reminds us why:

In reference to 9/11: "I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America. I point the finger in their face and say 'you helped this happen.'"

"I hope I live to see the day when, as in the early days of our country, we won't have any public schools. The churches will have taken them over again and Christians will be running them."

"AIDS is the wrath of a just God against homosexuals."

“If you're not a born-again Christian, you're a failure as a human being”

“Textbooks are Soviet propaganda”

“The ACLU is to Christians what the American Nazi party is to Jews”

“[homosexuals are] brute beasts...part of a vile and satanic system [that] will be utterly annihilated, and there will be a celebration in heaven.”

Well, we’re celebrating down here today. Too bad we didn’t get to see his face when he discovered either a) there is neither a god nor an afterlife, or b) God exists, and He’s pissed at how unchristian “Reverend” Falwell has been his whole life.

See you in hell, Jerry!

(Find your own favorite Falwell quote here.)

Don’t Forget to Pack a Lunch

Interesting item of note in Wonkette yesterday.

Hey guys, a bunch of breast-feeding women will be breast-feeding on the Cannon Terrace today. It’s a stunt for Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney’s “Breastfeeding Promotion Act,” which would reward employers who provide a breast-feeding area with a suck on the federal teat.

Aside from the fact that I just do not get who gets all bent out of shape by seeing a baby eating and that my completely uneducated opinion is that this act is probably a good thing, I only mention this because Representative Maloney happens to represent my district (big ups to my peeps in Astoria, muthafuckas!!), and because I wanted to brag that I had the pleasure of meeting her at a small luncheon a few weeks ago. She liked the salmon.

And you know for a congresswoman, she’s got a decent rack.

God Bless This Post

Deadspin hits it out of the park when they say the Yankees suck!

OK, OK… That’s not what it says. It says that God Bless America is a totally overly sentimental, terribly-written song and it is fucking annoying as hell that they still play it during the seventh inning stretch at Yankee Stadium.

That said, we kind of can't stand the song "God Bless America." Putting aside the church-vs.-state discussions, [Ed. - personally, I’d prefer not to put that aside] it's just a poorly written and constructed song, sugarly, stupidly sentimental, not Irving Berlin's happiest moment as a songwriter. (He even admitted this late in his life.) All told, "America The Beautiful" is a decidedly superior song. And we really can't stand how Yankee Stadium still plays the song every seventh inning stretch; the pomp reeks of "We Are More Patriotic Than You Are" self-congratulation.

Oh, and also, you're not allowed to leave your seat while the song's on.

This in addition to the Yankees epitomizing exactly what’s wrong with baseball and the fact that they let you smoke at Shea but don’t at Yankee Stadium explains why I prefer the Mets and will never attend another game in the Bronx, even when my beloved Tigers come to town.

Stanley Cup Western Conference Finals

It’s the Detroit Red Wings vs. the Anaheim Ducks. Let’s explore the matchup, shall we?

History

• Detroit: Original Six team, founded in 1926, originally named the Detroit Cougars. They have won 10 Stanley Cups, second in the NHL only to the Montreal Canadiens.
  
• Anaheim: Founded in 1993 as a marketing arm of the Walt Disney Corporation. Originally going to be named The Little Mermaids 2 of Anaheim until that project fell through forcing Michael Eisner to settle on The Mighty Ducks. They have won zero Stanley Cups in their 14 years of existence.

Notable Players and Coaches

• Detroit: Gordie Howe, Sid Abel, Terry Sawchuk, Ted Lindsay, Alex Delvecchio, Mickey Redmond, Nicklas Lidstrom, Dominik Hasek, Steve Yzerman - the longest serving captain of any team in NHL history. Scottie Bowman, the winningest coach in NHL history, won nine Stanley Cups in his famed career as a head coach. He retired after leading Detroit to its three most recent Stanley Cups, but still serves in an advisory capacity to the team.
  
• Anaheim: Kenan Thompson, Joshua Jackson. Emilio Estevez, head coach.

Connections Between the Teams

• Sergei Federov, an all-star center on the Red Wings, decided that he’d had too much winning after claiming his third Stanley Cup, moved to Anaheim and has since become a shell of his former self, never scoring more than 65 points in a season. He now plays defense on the Columbus Blue Jackets.

Team/City Relationship

• Detroit: Nicknamed Hockeytown because of the long history of the Red Wings, the love and knowledge of, and devotion to the game by its residents and fans. Joe Louis Arena has sold out every game since 1996, and when on the road, Red Wings fans often outnumber the home team fans, selling out arenas wherever they go.
  
• Anaheim: A suburb among a maze of suburbs, there being no real city to be found, the Ducks are the sixth most popular team in Los Angeles behind the Lakers, Clippers, Dodgers, Angels, and Kings. There will no doubt be johnny-come-lately celebrity fans in attendance at the Ducks games, but only because the Kobe Bryants Lakers were eliminated from the postseason in embarrassing fashion.

City Landmarks

• Detroit: Archetypal art deco structures such as the Fisher Building, the Penobscot Building, and the Fox Theater meet the future with the Renaissance Center and Comerica Tower. The Joe Louis Memorial. The Spirit of Detroit. Greektown.
  
• Anaheim: Disneyland.

Symbolism

• Detroit: A tradition in Hockeytown is to hurl an octopus onto the ice after a goal or victory. This tradition dates back to the Original Six days when it required only eight victories, represented by the eight legs of the octopus, to win the Stanley Cup. While it is technically against the rules to bring any dead animals into Joe Louis Arena, let alone tossing objects onto the playing surface, arena officials tend to look the other way.
  
• Anaheim: An Emilio Estevez movie. Didn’t we already go over this?

I am not necessarily predicting a Red Wings victory in this series. I am only questioning how any self-respecting hockey fan could be the least bit interested in these Mighty Ducks, and pointing out the absurdity of the legendary Red Wings having to play these clowns.

Let’s Go Wings!

Politics in the Information Age

Hey, look at me! My latest column is the lead over at The Y. Read it. I like this one.

Politics in the Information Age or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Internet

Never Give Peace A Chance

With an expected grandiose flourish (not that grandiose in the grand scheme, mind you), Bush vetoed the "emergency" supplemental war funding bill because it places a date that we're going to get out of that hellhole. Didn't see that coming...

But you know, it got me to thinking. It has become a standard construct to categorize people into one of two categories. For example, you can either be a Beatles person or an Elvis person. A person who listens or a person who waits to talk. PC or Mac. And all of us fit into one or the other. Well, something that's been weighing on me lately is the idea that when confronted with a physical attack, there are two types of people - one who wants to try to talk his way out of it and the person who hopes he possesses a bigger weapon than the attacker.

Frankly, each of these approaches can have its advantage. If a mugger comes at you with a knife, pulling out a gun is probably going to keep your wallet on you better than asking him to reconsider his actions. But maybe not. What if he's got a gun too and has a quicker draw? Or in other situations. What if you catch someone hitting on your girlfriend in a bar? Does it make more sense to whip out your gat or to drop some well-chosen words? What about a loud asshole in a movie theater? The problem with becoming accustomed to going for the kill each time brings to mind that other cliché - when the only tool you have is a hammer, everything begins to look like a nail.

People are people, so differences in opinion on how to approach problems would be fine. Except for the fact that much of our country (and the world) is populated by people with less access to education and as such become defensive around people who are smarter than they are. They liked to pick on the "nerd" in grade school, and that mindset follows them throughout their entire adult lives. This is how we ended up with a halfwit simpleton for president - the people would rather have a beer with Bush than with the insightful scholar who makes them feel like a dum-dum.

This method of securing the White House (Vote for me, I'm as much of an incurious ignoramus as you!) leads to further problems when Bush tries to maintain his political popularity by using tactics that involve stoking the anti-intellectual fire that burns inside his supporters. Thus he takes scientifically untenable positions (there is no global warming, creationism) and beats the drum against the scientists saying, in so many words, "Who you gonna believe, a buncha eggheads, or your pal down the street who likes to clear brush and shoot guns like y'all?"

Which leads us back to our initial hypothesis. There are two types of people - people who want to talk their way out of problems, and those who want to fight. Bush is clearly a fighter. And hell, after 9/11, the Taliban needed to be fought. Everybody concedes by now that Iraq didn't warrant fighting, but that ship has sailed. Now the question is how to deal with it, and still Bush is holding that hammer looking for more things to hit with it, but there is nothing left to nail. Meanwhile, the only way he can attempt to maintain that tiny sliver of credibility among his most ardent supporters is to degrade the "talkers" by calling us "appeasers," "Chamberlains," "surrender-monkeys," etc. Wimps, sissies, losers, nerds!

And therein lies the basis for his little speech yesterday. If you support diplomacy, you're a nerd and a loser. If you'd rather talk than bomb, you're a pussy. If you want to pull out of Iraq instead of fighting to the death, you're a coward. The fact is - we're going to pull out. The "war" is already lost. The question is simply a matter of when we're going to decide to stop letting our brave young men and women be slaughtered by the dozens each week and start letting our words and brains, instead of our fists, do the talking.

Happy Anniversary!

Boy! It hardly seems like four years have passed since we won the war in Iraq. Wow. I mean, time sure flies when democracy is busy spreading across the Middle East.

On the other hand, when I think how long it’s been since I’ve seen the president’s junk,


I realize it has been a long time...

Fox “News” Unable to Differentiate Truth From Fiction

There is a certain form sociopathy in which a person becomes so accustomed to lying that he or she can no longer tell the difference between what's true and what's false.

You’d think that at a major “news” organization, there would be too many people to all be affected. Apparently not. Read about how Fox News spent all morning reporting on a parody.

The backstory: Last week in the town of Lewiston, Maine, a group of Somalian Muslim middle school students were the subject of a cruel prank when their peers placed a ham steak next to them in order to personally offend the students. School officials filed a report because the students considered the act to be a hate/bias crime.

This actual story was then spoofed by a parody site called Associated Content, which made up quotes and details, such as the school’s intention to “create an anti-ham ‘response plan.’”

On Tuesday, Fox & Friends reported these parody quotes and details as actual news. Poking fun at the students, hosts asked whether ham was “a hate crime…or lunch?” and showed screen shots of ham sandwiches, starving Somalians, belching, animal noises, and mock “reenactments” of the incident. Ironically, the hosts assured viewers several times, “We’re not making this up!”

Which makes this a good time to bring up one of my old favorites, when the right-wing nutjob blogger went berserk over an abortion story The Onion wrote that he believed to be real. You gotta love the right wing’s inability to recognize satire and their complete lack of a sense of humor.

Support the Troops, Mr. President

Congress has passed an “emergency” supplemental spending bill for the Iraq war. The word “emergency” is code for “not in the official budget so that I can pretend to be cutting the deficit” but that’s neither here nor there. Anyway, congress has come up with the funds to keep the boys armed and dressed and fed. Whew! Wait, what’s that? Oh, the president is going to veto it because it includes a timeline for withdrawal. Wow. Poor kids over there are going to have to eat bugs, shoot rubber bands at insurgents and use cafeteria trays for body armor. And think of all the camels we’re going to have to steal for transportation once they run out of gas for the Humvees. Great. As if it wasn’t bad enough for them already.

Of course, I’m kidding. The funding doesn’t run out until like July or something. And even if it did - and this is key - the troops wouldn’t stay there fighting with potato guns. They would just come home. Cutting off funding is not abandoning 150,000 kids to wander the desert until they die of thirst. But once again, we’re off-topic. My point on this is - do you remember when Kerry lost an election because he voted against funding the war? Why is it that Bush gets a pass on this? Kerry’s vote was completely symbolic because the vote wasn’t close in the first place. So why can Bush veto the funding with one slash of his pen and it’s perfectly dandy?

Furthermore, ignoring the timeline aspect of this bill, Bush claims that he will not sign a war funding bill with unrelated expenditures (pork) in it. I mean, this is war we’re talking about here! What he meant was he won’t sign a bill with Democratic pork in it. As you can see from this article in the Washington Post every war funding bill has been chock full of unrelated spending, sometimes in the billions of dollars. So you know, same old pants on fire routine.

Patriotism

What makes one a patriot? Is it respecting the “office” of the President? Is it honoring the troops? Is it saluting the flag? Putting a yellow ribbon on your car? Buying a Toby Keith album? Following men in turbans around airports?

I would suggest that patriotism comes from respecting the ideals upon which this country was founded. Honoring or even revering the document our Founding Fathers threw together in an unprecedented moment of wisdom - the Constitution of the United States. And contained in the Constitution is a tacit respect for the rule of law. It is here where I put forward my main thesis - Bush is not a patriot. Not only do Bush and his cronies have no respect for the rule of law, they hold the very ideals of this country in great contempt. You do not become a patriotic American by worshipping Jesus and making lots of money. It is born from a profound respect for what made this country great - freedom of expression and from tyranny, belief in the rule of law, adherence to the ideals of a republican democracy, inherent in which is a system of checks and balances and three equal branches of government. You either believe in those things, or you are, dare I say it, unAmerican. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that unAmerican is necessarily a bad thing. I’m just saying that the things I named are the fundamental principles upon which this country is founded and if you don’t believe in them, you don’t love this country. Love another one, it’s all the same to me.

It really doesn’t need saying at this point because it is now plain for all to see that Bush and his cronies do not respect our Founding Fathers, our Constitution, and last but not least, the people of this great land. But it’s just that this week and the last few weeks, they can’t even pretend to hide their contempt for those things. Today it comes up because Condi Rice says that she’ll be quite happy to answer questions the House of Representatives might have for her in a letter. Kids, for your edification, a letter is one of those things that your grandma sends on your birthday in a paper envelope. You know, with like a stamp on the front and it takes a week to get there? That’s right, Condi thinks that subpoenas are like so totally beneath her:

Rice said she respected the oversight function of the legislative branch, but maintained she had already testified in person and under oath about claims that Iraq had sought uranium from Africa during her confirmation hearing for the job of secretary of state.

"I addressed these questions, almost the same questions, during my confirmation hearing," she said. "This is an issue that has been answered and answered and answered."

I guess I’ll say that to the judge next time I get one of those in the mail. In fact, I’m sitting on a jury duty notice right now. Perhaps I’ll just tell them I’ll send them a letter with my verdict.

The most blatant example, of course, was last week when Alberto Gonzales went before the Senate and lied and lied and lied to them, metaphorically holding his nose from the stench of having to be so close to the loathsome and despicable subhuman creatures who populate the disgusting underbelly of the United States government, also known as the U.S. Senate. The most contemptuous of all of that foul display of thinking and exploring was King George himself who heaped praise on his BFF, saying that he’s more impressed with Gonzales than ever. “How can that be?” you ask. Easy. Bush doesn’t respect book-lernin’, competence, ability to do a job, expertise, wisdom, or even honesty. He made that painfully - and fatally - clear during Hurricane Katrina and countless other tragedies worldwide. No, the only thing that impresses Bush is the ability to cover up his crimes and misdemeanors. Nothing gives Bush a bigger hard-on than the words “I can’t recall” spoken by one of his most trusted insiders.

Bush hates this country. He hates the Founding Fathers. He hates the Constitution. He hates the people you sent to congress to represent you, and most of all, he hates you. He loves his friends, and he loves making his friends money. Period. I’m reminded of a lyric from the brilliant new Nine Inch Nails album, (seriously, go buy it):

I'm sick of hearing ‘bout the haves and have nots
Have some personal accountability.
The biggest problem with the way that we've been doing things is
The more we let you have the less that I'll be keeping for me.

What will come of us now? How much farther can this go?

The Pentagon Is Already Planning a Pre-Emptive Strike

Did you hear the news? They may have found another earthlike planet. Sure, its year is 13 days long, and it's 20 light years away, but hell, it's still pretty cool, right?

How hot the planet gets, Dr. Udry said, depends on how much light the planet reflects, its albedo. Using the Earth and Venus as two extreme examples, he estimated that temperatures on the surface of the planet should be in the range of 0 degrees to 40 degrees centigrade.

“It’s just right in the good range,” Dr. Udry said. “Of course, we don’t know anything about its albedo.”

And you want to know that in advance, trust me. You do not want to drive the 120 trillion miles out there only to find that she just wants to cuddle.

Hizzoner Deserves Some Honors

As I'm sure you know, these pages have been rather merciless when it comes to attacking Michael Bloomberg, and for good reason. But the editors of DoG are not a closed-minded bunch. So I feel it would be irresponsible if I did not laud Bloomberg for his new proposal for a "greener, greater New York."

The one thing about this guy is that when he has an idea, a vision even, he goes for it full bore, unlike this president of ours who always tries to do things on the cheap, and with as little political damage as possible. In this case, Bloomberg has 127 different proposals to make New York more energy efficient and a cleaner, happier place. The best of the bunch is an $8 commuter tax on people who drive into the City. As much as I normally hate him, I love to see a man who has the balls to propose raising taxes in order to fix a problem as opposed to, again, our president who uses Enron bookkeeping to make it seem more palatable when in fact, he's just shuffling the costs to the next administration and/or generation.

He proposes to charge anyone driving south of 86th Street in Manhattan an $8 fee. Lots of people drive, and no one likes paying fees, so this stands to hurt him politically. But as he put it: "The question is not whether we want to pay but how do we want to pay. With an increased asthma rate? With more greenhouse gases? Wasted time? Lost business? And higher prices? Or, do we charge a modest fee to encourage more people to take mass transit?" Sounds like a man with vision, does it not?

Already there are faux-populist politicians trying to bring him and his plan down. Anthony Weiner, former Democratic candidate for Mayor was referring to this as another tax on the poor and middle class. No. You seem like a decent fellow, but this is not a tax on the poor like the cigarette tax or the lottery, which I'm sure you support. This is a tax on rich fucks who can actually afford $3/gallon for gas and absurd Manhattan parking costs. If you can't afford the $8 to go downtown, then you have the pleasure of taking one of the best mass transit systems in the world, like millions of us do every day. You can even drive your car that you love so much to a subway station in Brooklyn or Queens and leave your car there for the day. Don't worry, we'll watch it while you're gone.

As much as it pains me to say - in this one instance, Bloomberg fucking hit it out of the park. And he's the kind of dickhead mayor who just will not give a shit what people say and ram this proposal into law. And for that, I applaud him.

Now about that smoking ban, Adolph...

Dead Men Tell No Tales

Did you know that the victims of the VT massacre were at fault for their own deaths? I didn’t. But thankfully, John Derbyshire of the toilet paper substitute esteemed publication National Review, was on the case to set the record straight:

As NRO's designated chickenhawk, let me be the one to ask: Where was the spirit of self-defense here? Setting aside the ludicrous campus ban on licensed conceals, why didn't anyone rush the guy? It's not like this was Rambo, hosing the place down with automatic weapons. He had two handguns for goodness' sake—one of them reportedly a .22.

At the very least, count the shots and jump him reloading or changing hands. Better yet, just jump him. Handguns aren't very accurate, even at close range. I shoot mine all the time at the range, and I still can't hit squat. I doubt this guy was any better than I am. And even if hit, a .22 needs to find something important to do real damage—your chances aren't bad.

Yes, yes, I know it's easy to say these things: but didn't the heroes of Flight 93 teach us anything? As the cliche goes—and like most cliches. It's true—none of us knows what he'd do in a dire situation like that. I hope, however, that if I thought I was going to die anyway, I'd at least take a run at the guy.

See? This is the kind of bullshit I was dreading reading.

I Read the News Today, Oh Boy

By now I’m sure you’ve heard about the tragic massacre at Virginia Tech yesterday. I thought I might chime in with my thoughts.

As callous and cynical as this sounds, my actual first thought was that the media is going to have another feeding frenzy for us to obsess over and pick apart for a week until the next Anna-Nicole Smith revelation or racist DJ incident happens. Frankly, as much as I wanted to learn about this yesterday, I couldn’t bring myself to turn on the news because the thought of seeing the reporters’ earnest gravitas belied by the delight in their eyes was too soul-crushing for me to bear. I decided to wait for the Times this morning.

Then, of course, I thought about my own time on campus, and how horrible of an experience this must have been for those poor kids, their families and the needless tragedy of it all.

Finally, I started thinking how this was going to play out longer term. I’ve already seen calls from politicians about stricter gun control laws because of this incident. Now, you are not going to find someone who is more in favor of gun control than I am. I think they should be illegal everywhere in all circumstances. An incident like this one perfectly makes that argument - dude gets a gun, starts wasting kids = very bad. But, you know, as with the feeding frenzies, I’ve grown tired of politicians and pundits appropriating tragedy to make their political cases for them. Obviously, if you take a look at my work on Hurricane Katrina, I’m not claiming to be above it. I’m just tired of it. An illegal immigrant kills a person, illegal immigrants are bad. A fat ex-model gets crazy high on drugs, drugs are bad. And so on and so forth. Examples provide excellent illustration when we are trying to make a point as long as we ignore the examples that contradict our desired end. But it’s high time that we as a people start making our cases with words and logic instead of relying on death and destruction to make our points for us.

Yes, we should get rid of guns, but let’s not make this tragedy worse by turning it into Terry Schiavo.

Bought & Souled makes a very important point as well. If we make this about guns instead of this (and all other) disturbed person’s reason for doing this, then we are addressing the symptoms and not the disease. What turns people into killers? Let’s solve that one.

(And also get rid of guns but not because of this; because they have always been dangerous and unnecessary.)

In all seriousness, my thoughts are with the families of the injured and deceased, with the Virginia Tech students, and with all students everywhere. It’s hard out there for a 18-22 year old, you know?

Bienvenue!

The sound of one hand slapping against the other makes a wonderful welcome for the newest addition to the blogosphere and my good friend Ben Peters as he brings us Bought & Souled, an excellent addition to any living room or den. Now stop that insipid clapping and get your ass over there.

I would be remiss if I failed to mention the debt that I owe to Mr. Peters. He may live on that other, quite inferior coast these days, but before he made that tragic mistake, he was the person who formed my interest in politics and honed my critical thinking with long and fascinating discussions over many beers back in the day. I’m certain that there would have been no Delusions of Grandeur had I never met Mr. Benjamin Peters.

So what are you waiting for?

Punk Ass Bitch or Bitch Ass Punk?

Earlier this week, there was another high profile so-called defection from within the Bush administration. I guess he’d had too much damned Kool-Aid, and it just didn’t taste as sweet anymore.

A top strategist for the Texas Democrats who was disappointed by the Bill Clinton years, Mr. Dowd was impressed by the pledge of Mr. Bush, then governor of Texas, to bring a spirit of cooperation to Washington. He switched parties, joined Mr. Bush’s political brain trust and dedicated the next six years to getting him to the Oval Office and keeping him there. In 2004, he was appointed the president’s chief campaign strategist.

Looking back, Mr. Dowd now says his faith in Mr. Bush was misplaced.

In a wide-ranging interview here, Mr. Dowd called for a withdrawal from Iraq and expressed his disappointment in Mr. Bush’s leadership.

Is that the whole story? As Sidney Blumenthal points out in today’s Salon, it is not.

Dowd has much to add to history as an eyewitness. What was Rove's involvement in the independent expenditure negative campaign against Sen. John McCain in the Republican South Carolina primary of 2000? White House chief of staff Andrew Card said in 2002 about the propaganda campaign for the Iraq war, "From a marketing point of view, you don't introduce new products in August." What was the marketing done to hone various rationales for the invasion of Iraq? In the 2004 campaign, exactly how was homosexuality targeted? What were the links between the Bush campaign and the Swift-boating of John Kerry? What polling was performed to determine how to discredit Kerry's war record? After the indictment of Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, Scooter Libby, what polls did Dowd take to inform White House positioning? These are only a few of the questions that Dowd can illuminate with his special knowledge. But so far, his conversion lacks a confession.

The crux of Blumenthal’s column is that this is not just a case of disillusionment and redemption by speaking out against your former master. This is Dowd reading the polls, seeing that being associated with Bush is not as good for business as it used to be and coming out against him in the most tepid way possible. Now he expects to move on with his life, gain riches with his new consulting firm and leave his life with Bush behind - there was nothing more to be squeezed out of that unpopular stone.

Best of luck, Matthew. You helped the King of the Fuck Ups and his minions destroy this country. I hope your little therapy session with the Times keeps the night terrors at bay.

The Lopper!

This picture of Cheney lurking there in the shadows just cracked me up.


If you like, Wonkette has the video in which they dramatically zoom out from a close-up of Vader in the trees and pan directly to the robot he has programmed to tell his lies for him. The symbolism within the camera motion is so hackneyed and on-the-nose, I hear Joel Schumacher is developing a script around it.