Don't say I never did nuthin' for ya...

(click to enlarge)

*can also be adapted into a drinking game, but it is a Tuesday night

Democracy is great (when people choose correctly)

In an interview, Howard Dean, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, promised that Democrats would do a better job talking about values to religious voters. "We have done it in a secular way, and we don't have to," he said, adding, "I think teaching the Bible as literature is a good thing."

If the Bible is "literature," it's sub-par literature, full of nonsense, contradictions and just plain bad writing. If someone published it today, it would also shoot straight onto one of those "banned books" lists the Christians are so enamored of for all its objectionable content. If it could even get published.

Betty Peters, a Republican on the Alabama school board who opposed the initiative in that state, also dismissed the initiative as "pandering." Democrats, she argued, had adopted a new strategy: "Let's just wrap ourselves in Jesus."

... "And they stole that strategy from us!" Indeed, it's OK when one party assumes divine endorsement, but when two of them do it, apparently Jesus is simply not cool with that, yo. And here I was thinking he loved everyone.

Religious voters are welcome to try and vote in a theocracy if they like–hell, look around, democratic voters are welcome to vote in armed terrorist cadres–but that doesn't mean both major parties have to oblige them.

For shame, Dr. Dean, for shame.

------

As a semi-relevant aside, here's an article from this week's New York Times Magazine–"The Call" by Daniel Bergner–about Christian missionaries in Africa that raises all sorts of delightfully thorny questions: How "Christian" is it to not just be willing to help people without also trying to convert them? Can (and should) one family really destroy a culture to implant its beliefs? If you think God has called you to uproot your life, has he by default called your children to uproot theirs as well?

However the answers plot out, I think it's safe to say some people have shockingly low thresholds for what constitutes signage from above. (In fact, I think God is telling me to go eat some Cheez-Its right now...)

Not his beautiful face!

ABC News anchor (and, when he's not overly made up like a psychotic Ken doll, smoking hot son of a bitch) Bob Woodruff and ABC cameraman Doug Vogt were seriously injured in Iraq earlier today when their vehicle was hit by an explosive device, and are now in stable condition en route to Germany.

Best virtual wishes for comprehensive and speedy recoveries!

And please, Bob, for the love of all that's good and decent, don't leave us with just Elizabeth Vargas on "World News Tonight" for too long. She's a creepy, phony wench who belongs on local news. But we can put up with her when we've also got you to look at.

It must be the bowtie

I tend not to make it a habit of readings things that I know will merely piss me off and add nothing of even nominal use to my intellectual corpus, but sometimes the vile magnetism of those dreamy hunks of token conservativism at the New York Times, David Brooks and John Tierney, are just too much for a mere mortal to resist.

Take this gem from Mr. Brooks, published today, about how Democrats should start focusing more on social policies than economic ones, because the former are what really affect people:

In the current issue of The American Prospect, Garance Franke-Ruta also notes the interplay between values and economic issues. "Traditional values have become aspirational," she writes. "Lower-income individuals simply live in a much more disrupted society, with higher divorce rates, more single moms, more abortions, and more interpersonal and interfamily strife, than do the middle- and upper-middle-class people they want to be like."

With these sentiments, Democrats seem to be moving away from materialistic determinism. In past decades, Democratic political campaigns have been based primarily on appeals to economic interests. But especially in the information age, social values and cultural capital shape a person's economic destiny more than the other way around.

If you are a middle-class woman, you have more to fear from divorce than from outsourcing. If you have a daughter, you're right to worry more about her having a child before marriage than about her being a victim of globalization. This country's prosperity is threatened more by homes where no one reads to children than it is by big pharmaceutical companies.

So (says the rich, white, presumably married and Christian Republican man), less than "perfect" social conditions cause less than prosperous economic ones.

That is such a load of crap, I don't know where to begin. If that were true, I should be a broke, drug-addicted high school dropout on my second or third out-of-wedlock kid by now, and everyone I know from "real families" should be portraits of model humanity.

Sure, some social factors make for more difficult lives–but that's because social conservatives like dear Mr. Brooks here have structured the system so that if you don't conform to their notion of what is correct and ideal, you're at an economic and practical disadvantage.

It's a hell of a lot easier to sit and preach about living according to proper norms and ideals when you don't have to worry about being able to quite literally survive.

What do moralizing social policies that punish people for not being married or having children "out of wedlock" (what era are we living in here?) do to improve individual lives, much less the collective lot?

Believe it or not, conservatives, but many people's lives do not follow idealized scripts. It's not because they're immoral–that's just how life works when you're not privileged at every step of the way and in the position to stick (at least in public) to a code that you deem reasonable to force on everyone else.

Women who actually have the balls to be independent do not have more to fear from divorce than outsourcing. Decent parents would want their daughter to have success and happiness as she defines them for her own life, professional and personal, regardless of whether she's married. And if you're in a position to seriously define "prosperity for all" in terms other than monetary, you should be donating your time and excess funds to people less fortunate, or less "enlightened," than yourself.

---

And holy crap, to anyone who might care, coreweekly, the paper I freelance, just got killed. Which rather sucks. But, they did have me, a heathenistic child of divorce, on staff, so I guess it was only a matter of time.

KINDER VERBOTEN!

It turns out that in good old Deutschland, more than a third of adults are going through life childless, or, as some of us prefer, blissfully unencumbered.

Germany's birth rate has not been a salient political issue since the Nazi era, which one would think might offer half a clue that treating half a citizenry like breeding cows is perhaps not the best way to run a state. But apparently not.

Instead, "the two ruling parties are trying to outdo each other with pro-family measures."

Chancellor Angela Merkel's government -- formed late last year -- recently agreed to give new mothers generous one-year wage replacement subsidies. Plans to eliminate fees for kindergarten are also being floated.

"It's the first time since 1945 that a German government has come out of the closet about population policy," wrote the Berliner Zeitung newspaper. "Family policy is suddenly chic."

Despite state financial support of 150 billion euros ($180 billion) a year for child support programs including monthly subsidies of 154 euros per child, many Germans are reluctant to start families due to a generally frosty attitude to children.

Parents with young children are often made to feel unwelcome in restaurants, employers rarely make arrangements for workers with small children, preschool care in some places is hard to find and fees far exceed costs for university. Many schools also close at noon, making it difficult for working parents.

Well, boo hoo frickin' hoo. Realize, the United States is anomalous among "modern" nations at the moment for having a growing population. Could it be, perhaps, that these contemporaries of ours have had a taste of several decades living in decent states that respect and provide for them regardless of whether they're part of an ideal, "real family?"

Sure, that might and probably does make for a practically unsustainable state in the long term, but if you allow people the freedom to pursue their own interests and their own lifestyles, don't be surprised if they find they fancy it and aren't particularly eager to revert.

And sure it may be ominous for national pride or domestic economics, but few would classify underpopulation as one of the paramount global ills of the moment. Couldn't this trend toward fewer children in some nations be part of some kind of feedback loop or population cycle, that may resolve itself with time? Must the state step in and impose "pro-family" measures at the expense of everyone else?

And it's not just at the expense of citizens–these familial-minded Führers are also wrenching away our hope. You see, as long as places like Germany exist, some of us can take comfort in believing there are nations on this earth to which we could emigrate and still enjoy a high standard of living while escaping that maddening, patronizing cultural obsession with catering to kids, marriage and real families.

If I may descend for a moment into Euro-snobbery, I've been to Germany, and I rather liked it. There's not too much sun, trains are always on time, the food and drink are delightful–and from what I've seen, its public spaces aren't crawling with cajoling children.

(Sure, cigarette smoke permeates most public spaces, but I'd take more carcinogenic fumes over more kids any day, because the fumes only assail one sense at a time. And slowly kill you, I suppose, but 'tis a small price to pay for such sweet if transient earthly joy that comes with a shrinking populace.)

If taken to its extreme, such a state could develop a global community of diverse individuals coalesced around a shared aversion to children. Or, syntaxed more optimistically, on a shared revelry in peace unassailed by wailing babes, motion unobstructed by strollers and scurrying toddlers and aesthetics uncorrupted by the little spawns and the unseemly particulars of their care.

The willing could look back to classical philosophy and choose to pursue their versions of immortality through the intellectual and creative–nurturing Platonic conceptions of the good and just and harmonious and giving birth in beauty to progeny that won't just be more bodies taking up space, misusing and corrupting what the useful ones create.

At the very least, Germany and nations like it have solid infrastructural and societal underpinnings for a new kind quasi-utopian modern state that is not overtly "child-friendly," but merely "child-tolerant."

And though I may be a cruel and heartless bitch, I'm also a pragmatist–I'd drink to that, and how.

Move over, Oprah...

Author's sales jump after Osama mentions book

William Blum's "Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower" was ranked 209,000 on Amazon.com's sales list before bin Laden mentioned it in an audiotape released on Thursday. By Friday, the book was No. 30 on the Amazon.com list.

Bin Laden said al Qaeda group was preparing more attacks in the United States but also told Americans, "It is useful for you to read the book 'The Rogue State.'" ...

... "I was glad. I knew it would help the book's sales and I was not bothered by who it was coming from[," Blum said.]

So, what's next on the list for Osama's Book Club? If I may make a suggestion, I think "Citizen You!" needs to be bumped above No. 568,922.

Well I'll be hog-tied and bamboozled

Bush says he hasn’t seen 'Brokeback Mountain MANHATTAN, Kan. (AP) — Asked his opinion of the movie "Brokeback Mountain," President Bush hemmed and hawed.

"You would love it. You should check it out," a man in the audience told Bush Monday during a question and answer session at Kansas State University.

After some hesitation — and laughter in the audience — Bush said, "I’d be glad to talk about ranching, but I haven’t seen the movie." The audience laughed some more, and Bush, who owns a ranch in Texas, allowed that, "I’ve heard about it."

Never mind the potential for positively filthy puns, nor any charges of latent homophobia/masculine insecurity–unless it’s a skillful plant from his handlers (which could very well be), hoo boy, George W. Bush just took a non-scripted question in public.

Douchebaggery 101

"UCLA students urged to expose 'radical' professors"

I'm sorry, but if in college you're at a point where just because a teacher says something or has you read something it becomes an unquestioned part of your core thoughts and assumptions, you deserve to be "indoctrinated" by whichever point of the political spectrum can get to you first.

I don't know whether this is patronizing, or giving students too much credit. I can't attest to the climate in California's universities, but here, a significant number of students don't even show up to a given lecture, more don't bother to listen and virtually everyone effectively forgets everything that was said half an hour after the relevant exam.

I'm also tired of conservatives calling for mandated "balance" - if you want meaningless, perfunctory, two-equally-valid-opposing-sides- to-everything information, just turn on your television. And nothing externally applied is keeping conservatives out of higher education to add voices instead of trying to silence others. (Except maybe standards of scholarly worth.) There's a decent amount of money there, too - one would think they'd be all over it.

Not seeing the forest, or the trees

I've been withholding comment on this whole James Frey/memoir debacle because I've been having a hell of a time trying to articulate comment, in my head or on a keyboard.

It bothered me the first time I heard about it; it's still bothering me now–but as always, the hard part is figuring out why.

As you may or may not know, I'm wrapping up my last semester of journalism school training to be a reporter/editor/future token female New York Times columnist when Maureen Dowd retires, and I've been working (OK, slave labor interning and freelancing) on various publications and for state government in that capacity for the past few years. At every step, the constant refrain coming from all sections is that accuracy is everything. Your personal integrity depends on it, your career depends on it and the credibility of whomever you work for depends on it. It's certainly not hyperbole to say you basically live in perpetual fear of taking down the wrong name or the wrong detail, of choosing the wrong word or even making the wrong typo, and without even realizing you did so, having falsity put into print. At least you don't kill people when you make lawsuit threat-worthy mistakes, but it pretty much feels like it when you do.

When "journalists" make an error, people snatch up one more piece of evidence to strengthen their conception of us as incompetent at best, malicious liars just a few rungs above used car salesmen at worst–for if we can't even spell someone's last name correctly, how can we be trusted to get anything right?

Yet when "authors" like Mr. Frey make an error, they get the benefit of the doubt, the contention that the details aren't as important as the overarching meanings and even epistemological ruminations on the nuance and fallibility of human experience and memory. (Keep this reaction in mind the next time a prestigious reporter is caught "embellishing" a quote.)

Sure, we're all human beings and we all err. But both journalists and non-fiction authors are supposed to be, to the best of their abilities, conveying their parts of the truth.

When you put an argument into print, if it's worth the distinction, you can't make up the evidence that founds it. Just as journalists can't misrepresent or fabricate information (or their own credentials) to make a more effective news article or column, authors can't write a memoir claiming key aspects of their lives/narratives were influenced by events that never happened. Either way, it's claiming expertise and experiences the writers do not and did not have to support their ideas and bolster their persuasive power.

Imagine if everything I'd written in the third paragraph above was a lie–or, for the Frey defenders out there, imagine if I'd remembered it with less than perfect clarity and given perhaps undue weight to that facet of my life–and in reality, I'm a D-student who works cleaning offices and only picks up a newspaper to keep up with friends and family via the police beats. You wouldn't really give a flip what I had to say on any of this, and you'd probably be more than a little peeved that I wasted your time and consideration, because you'd feel lied to.

Likewise, if in your "memoir" recounting your fall into and and redemption from a life of drugs and crime you say you spent months in jail but actually spent no time there at all (as you must very well know and as would be revealed by a simple public records search), that's a lie. If you did that in a newspaper, even by accident or based on bad information you didn't know was bad, there's a solid chance you would get sued for libel and fired from your publication in an instant, and best of luck to you in finding work in your field again even if everything else you've put to page is correct.

I did not know and could not believe that major publishing houses don't fact-check their non-fiction. I don't buy that the sheer volume of work that funnels through them makes it practically impossible. Last I heard, publishers were a bit better off financially than newspapers, yet somehow daily papers manage to crank out the equivalent of a novel from scratch every day and at least try and enforce a standard of accuracy.

To that end, in the reporting world, you receive constant feedback. If you get something wrong, you hear about it, in terms decidedly less than constructive, until your ears bleed and you just want to shoot yourself out of shame.

But in books, apparently no one bothers to check, and writers like Mr. Frey, who originally trolled his book around as fiction but couldn't hook any takers, seem to be banking on it. (And that, potential future employers, is what happens when you hire English majors to do journalists' jobs.)

Lies on newsprint are unacceptable, but apparently it's OK to lie, about real people and real events, and publish it in a purportedly non-fiction mass medium more people will likely read and view as credible... especially when it's festooned with the venerable seal of Oprah's Book Club, whose patron saint speaks out in your defense to boot, if only to salvage her own credibility by rationalizing yours.

In light of all this, I find it more than a little unnerving that Oprah has taken Elie Wiesel's "Night" as her next book club selection. Is she daring people to try and nitpick the accuracy of a seminal Holocaust testimonial, whose author is still alive? Or is she picking one she knows is effectively immune to such criticism? Either one is disturbing–not to mention disappointing coming from a woman who wields such a disproportionate amount of power over what passes for intellectual discourse in this country.

Arguing over truth and memory plainly leaves us going in circles. The Holocaust and the themes it conjures are among the absolute most difficult subjects to address honestly, meaningfully and affectingly through any of the humanities–but many creative, intelligent people have had the guts to put something down and put something out there that does not attempt the impossible of capturing the definitive, collective truth. Why not give at least one unknown among them some recognition?

I took a class last semester on theatre of the Holocaust, prior to which I had no idea enough material even existed to fill such a class.

If you've already read "Night" like most of my generational cohorts have, or are just looking for a different view of the Holocaust that will hopefully unsettle you and thereby get you thinking new thoughts (or just stick it to Oprah), I have two plays to recommend: "Auschwitz," which is the second part of Peter Barnes' double bill "Laughter!" and Wallace Shawn's "Aunt Dan and Lemon."

(If you know me and want to borrow either, just ask, but you will have to read around my compulsive underlining and occasional margin commentary.)

The unpleasant fact is that the issues surrounding the Holocaust have enduring and immediate relevance. We don't need Ms. Winfrey reaping self-aggrandizing praise for inspiring more apathetic readers to shake their heads, wipe their eyes, marvel at the human spirit and vow a hollow "never again" while people continue to commit atrocities against their fellows, perhaps less grand in scale and systematic brutality but no less unjust, all around them, unexamined and unchallenged.

In other news

"UFO cult offers job to disgraced Korean scientist"
Disgracing himself before his legitimate peers may have been the best career move this fellow could make–who wouldn't want to work for a bunch of rich nutjobs of this persuasion? It would be a veritable paranormal free-for-all, and undoubtedly more fun than working for an actual scientific enterprise bound my conventions of ethics and credibility. Kind of like how writing for "Weekly World News" would rock.

"Study Finds That Marriage Builds Wealth"
What I would like to know is how much grant money this guy got to spend fifteen years amassing data to arrive at this shocking, utterly unexpected conclusion that shakes just about every popular convention American society is built upon. And will they give me some to study whether buying frivolous fashion items truly lifts one's spirits?

And my little anti-militaristic heart leapt this morn when I read this piece in the New York Times: "Purple Heartbreakers" by James Webb. (Or who knows, maybe that was just a parasite getting frisky.)

Military people past and present have good reason to wonder if the current administration truly values their service beyond its immediate effect on its battlefield of choice. The casting of suspicion and doubt about the actions of veterans who have run against President Bush or opposed his policies has been a constant theme of his career. This pattern of denigrating the service of those with whom they disagree risks cheapening the public's appreciation of what it means to serve, and in the long term may hurt the Republicans themselves. ...

... It may be one reason that a preponderance of the Iraq war veterans who thus far have decided to run for office are doing so as Democrats.

A young American now serving in Iraq might rightly wonder whether his or her service will be deliberately misconstrued 20 years from now, in the next rendition of politically motivated spinmeisters who never had the courage to step forward and put their own lives on the line.

Gratuitous eye candy interlude

I thought I would take a momentary pause from criticizing assorted people and things and give some fashion kudos where fashion kudos are due. Do I know how to pick only the most stylish of unattainable celebrities to fixate on, or what? Yeah, that's right. Hot. Bravo, Mr. Brody:


But I have to say, cut your damn hair already. (I'd still chain you to my bathtub, though.)

You'll stay, you'll suffer and you'll like it

The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 today against the Justice Department's challenge to the state of Oregon's assisted suicide law, deeming its law to allow the practice, passed by two voter referendums, constitutional.

Bush's favorite Justice of all Justices, Antonin Scalia, dissented, saying the court's ruling ''is perhaps driven by a feeling that the subject of assisted suicide is none of the federal government's business.''

Or, perhaps it's driven by–get ready for this one, boys, because it might just blow your effing minds... the law. *whoa*

Precedent has established that it's up to states to decide the matter. Just like how if the Justice Department had been ruled in the right, precedent would practically bind other states from adopting similar laws and open any existing ones to being struck down.

The Supreme Court ruled in 1990 that the terminally ill could refuse medical care that would otherwise keep them alive. This current case itself was a challenge to a 1997 ruling in which the justices opined there was no American "right to die" under the Constitution–meaning state bans on assisted suicide were therefore constitutional.

The flip side, affirmed in today's opinion, is that states that choose not to ban assisted suicide are also acting constitutionally, because the Constitution doesn't place the issue under federal jurisdiction.

I don't even have to wait to see Elizabeth Vargas smile her phony local news smile and say "thanks so much" to some commentator for his or her "balanced perspective" to hear it already: that all this ruling will do is provide yet another, state-sponsored means of fostering a culture of disrespect for life; that doctors and family members and finances will pressure the terminally ill into ending their lives; even that people who could have been helped will take the easy, cheap, whatever way out at the first mention of something "terminal."

Oregon's law doesn't allow someone to walk into a hospital and ask for a lethal shot of morphine. Patients have to be ruled incurable by at least two different doctors (specifically, two have to go on record with opinions that the patient has no more than six months to live), and they must be deemed mentally competent to make the decision to end their lives.

Besides, otherwise healthy people don't need any help killing themselves in this country. Tens of thousands do so every year–disturbingly close to twice the number who are killed each year by other people in homicides. But don't tell that to our dear Johnny Boy...

The ruling was a reprimand to former Attorney General John Ashcroft, who in 2001 said that doctor-assisted suicide is not a ''legitimate medical purpose'' and that Oregon physicians would be punished for helping people die under the law.

[In his opinion issued today, Justice] Kennedy said the ''authority claimed by the attorney general is both beyond his expertise and incongruous with the statutory purposes and design.''

Poor Johnny just can't catch a break lately. The case was brought in his stead by Attorney General Roberto Gonzales representing the Justice Department.

And hey, whadya know–who lines up in support of the Bush administration against Oregon's law but the Executive Branch-pawn trifecta of Justices Scalia, Thomas and our new pal Chief Justice Roberts, in his very first dissent to boot.

One would think the Bush administration would be all over this one in support of the Oregon law–they already want us to own our own health care and own our own retirements. Why can't we own our own mortality? It's win-win: those in power get fewer sick people, old people, poor people and other unproductive sloths dragging the great capitalistic machine down; the rest of us don't have to suffer under their "compassionate conservativism" any longer than we have to.

And it would be the perfect opportunity for moralizing conservatives to open up "sanctity of life flourishing facilities" or whatever euphemism they'd come up with for places good, righteous Americans can do to die the slow, wasting, moral way. Jeb Bush may not have missed his chance with the Terri Schiavo debacle to open up "Cussin' Jeb's Vegetable Patch" after all.

And Dubya's Crawford ranch could take on a whole new purpose. Maybe they could even open that up in lieu of the structural joke that will be the George W. Bush Presidential Library. Somehow rows of righteous, pro-life, brain dead, guaranteed Republican votes seems more fitting–and it would be just as quiet and just as whirling with intellectual zephyrs.

Regardless, it's now up to individual states to decide whether to adopt assisted suicide laws - it will be interesting to see if they start coming down on this issue, and how the responses will transpose onto the fabled red-and-blue map of the "culture war." And I don't know if this could become an election issue or a "moral issue" or what-have-you - if anything, it would probably just be taken over by the anti-abortion militants.

Though it is interesting how this broke the same day as California's execution of a blind, deaf, decrepit 76-year-old convict is sparking chatter over how, for some reason, people are having ethical troubles with executing members of an aging death row prison population–troubles they just don't have for younger, healthier ones.

Apparently the party of private ownership and private interests seems to want no one but the government deciding who gets a lethal injection.

Now there's a campaign promise

Next door in the fine state of Minnesota, "Vampire (hopefully no relation to my family, but it wouldn't be terribly shocking) seeks governor's job":

Sharkey also pledged to execute convicted murders and child molesters personally by impaling them on a wooden pole outside the state capitol.

Oh, to cover that campaign. So now Minnesota’s got a vampire running for governor, Michigan’s got Ted Nugent… I think I’m in the wrong state.

Funny you should ask, young patriot...

Asked by a 7-year-old in the audience at the Louisville Convention Center how people could help in the war on terrorism, Bush replied, "One way people can help as we're coming down the pike in the 2006 elections is remember the effect that rhetoric can have on our troops in harm's way and the effect that rhetoric can have in emboldening or weakening an enemy."

All right, Dubya - if you're going to script your questions, fine. It's expected at this point. But can you at least use idiot adults to parrot them to you instead of clueless third-graders?

And besides, forget this a-vote-for-Democrats-is-a-vote-for-terrorists and questioning-the-commander-in-chief-equals-killing-one-of-our- boys spiel. Everyone knows the best way ordinary citizens can help win the "war on terrorism," if they're not going to vote Republican or shut up, is by killing themselves before a terrorist can. Oh, those crazy kids with their questions...

Ridiculous euphemism of the day!

It’s not every day the religious right comes out with a new phrase, so this is exciting: Meet “young earth creationism.”

So, not only is science heathenistic, it supports an old earth. And everyone knows old things are stupid, ugly, decrepit and all-around worthless. Be young and beautiful and sprightly with “young earth creationism!”

This stems from a story on group of parents in Lebec, Calif., who are suing a local public high school for offering an elective course that will “take a close look at evolution as a theory and will discuss the scientific, biological and biblical aspects that suggest why Darwin’s philosophy is not rock solid.”

In their suit, the parents said the syllabus originally listed 24 videos to be shown to students, with 23 "produced or distributed by religious organizations and assume a pro-creationist, anti-evolution stance." They said the syllabus listed two evolution experts who would speak to the class. One was a local parent and scientist who said he had already refused the speaking invitation and was now suing the district; the other was Francis H. C. Crick, the co-discoverer of the structure of DNA, who died in 2004.

Now, I’m not for giving religious nutbags class time in public schools operating on public funds, even if it is elective class time – but if these folks can actually get a dead guy to speak to their class, I’ll have to admit they’ve earned it.

Whatever you say, Mr. President

In discussing Iraqi politics, Mr. Bush directly addressed Sunni Arabs, a minority in the new government, saying, "Compromise and consensus and power-sharing are the only path to national unity and lasting democracy."

And you and your party certainly live that credo, GWB. I really like this administration's communication strategy - it's so simple, yet so delightfully evil: say the exact opposite of what you're doing, and for all practical purposes, you're golden.

Our (stupid) boys and our (stupid) wars

The other day, I came across this article: "Don't trust soldiers under 30" by Ted Rall, Jan. 4, 2006.

My first thought was, yeah right, there's no one over the age of 30 dumb enough to sign up for the military–certainly not enough of them to fill the dwindling ranks they've got now even with restrictions lifted right and left. The military depends on inexperience, ignorance of politics and current affairs, lack of funds and future and simple patriotic bombast to recruit stupid boys hopped up on testosterone, delusions of invincibility and power and, of course, that damnable male ego who still think war is noble, righteous, sexy and just plain cool: Which, I soon realized, actually describes much of the decidedly less than young male population as well.

Though they may lose some of their physical prowess, make some money and project a little less overt, effervescent homicidal rage than their adolescent incarnations (there's a reason just about every despotic, genocidal leader worth the moniker has used teenage boys to carry out the most repugnant of his designs), men never really grow up.

They can't make up their minds, they wantonly wreck things and some of them even get "remember 9/11" tattoos and give in to overactive death drives pulling them to war zones for civilian contract work.

So perhaps this idea isn't so harebrained–all we need to do is make military service the cool new midlife crisis catharsis experience in American culture.

If insecure, trigger-happy old men are the ones making the decisions and sending people to war, instead of trying futilely to change that dynamic and the human nature that spawns it, at least we could have them send their fellow insecure, trigger-happy old men to do the warring instead of casting younger generations into their farce.

This would also be the perfect solution to the looming pension crisis and the coming influx of retiring baby boomers–draft the damn freeloaders into service. If you've got a "support the troops" ribbon or a vestigial Bush/Cheney '04 sticker on your SUV/minivan/penis car, you're first. What with all the automated weapons, covert ops and air power doing everything important, it would be feasible. Maybe they could even get the AARP behind it. Add the NRA, it would be unstoppable.

I can see the ads now: "Why let the youngsters have all the fun of signing up to kill people on the whims of a corrupt, inconsistent and incompetent government? Why wile away your retirement or–ha!–volunteer your time to help people still struggling to get by when you could fight for American values and American freedom? Visit your local armed forces recruiter today, and stop sitting around enjoying things while you could be out destroying things!"

That might come off as crass if we didn't have a president taking part of one day out of his holiday vacation to visit soldiers who have had limbs blown off in Iraq, only to joke about his own bicycling boo-boos as if they were comparable.

This past semester, I took a class on the Vietnam War with one of those rare professors whose final lecture you walk out of thinking, "Damn, so that's why I'm amassing tens of thousands of dollars in debt to listen to these people talk."

It was about how the legacy of the Vietnam Wars, basically all wars, comes down not to body counts and statistics, but to intensely personal cycles between generations, between fathers and sons, of war and trauma and abuse and sorrow and attempted atonement, leading only to more of the same.

No one returns. Every generation has to have its war. He basically apologized for the mess his generation has left for ours. As if we would have done things differently.

Working hard

According to Wonkette, President Bush has hit 365 days of vacation. Over just shy of five years' employment as president. Make of that what you will. *cough* lazysackofbrush-clearing,war-mongering, Englishlanguage-rapingcrap *cough* Ahem.

Oh, Johnny Boy, why must you torment me?

From "Justice deputy resisted parts of spy program" by Eric Lichtblau and James Risen for the New York Times, Jan. 1, 2006:

WASHINGTON, Dec. 31 - A top Justice Department official objected in 2004 to aspects of the National Security Agency's domestic surveillance program and refused to sign on to its continued use amid concerns about its legality and oversight, according to officials with knowledge of the tense internal debate. The concerns appear to have played a part in the temporary suspension of the secret program.

The concerns prompted two of President Bush's most senior aides - Andrew H. Card Jr., his chief of staff, and Alberto R. Gonzales, then White House counsel and now attorney general - to make an emergency visit to a Washington hospital in March 2004 to discuss the program's future and try to win the needed approval from Attorney General John Ashcroft, who was hospitalized for gallbladder surgery, the officials said.

... the White House went to Mr. Ashcroft - who had been in the intensive care unit at George Washington University Hospital with pancreatitis and was housed under unusually tight security - because "they needed him for certification," according to an official briefed on the episode. The official, like others who discussed the issue, spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the classified nature of the program.

... It is unclear whether the White House ultimately persuaded Mr. Ashcroft to give his approval to the program after the meeting or moved ahead without it.

The White House and Mr. Ashcroft, through a spokeswoman, declined to comment Saturday on the hospital meeting. A White House spokeswoman, Jeannie Mamo, said she could not discuss any aspect of the meeting or the internal debate surrounding it, but said: "As the president has stated, the intelligence activities that have been under way to prevent future terrorist attacks have been approved at the highest levels of the Justice Department."

Now, Johnny, I know we've had a troubled past, but this is just sad. I don't know which prospect is more disappointing - that you'd let yourself be railroaded and usurped in your authority like that, or that you didn't want to authorize more frivolous surveillance of innocent Americans who think you're a stupid sack of crap and your administration was and is run by a bunch of fucktards. You really don't care about us at all, do you? Well screw you, Ashcroft. Just screw you!

Random thoughts on randomness

With all the chatter over the court ruling against "intelligent design," here's a unique, refreshingly optimistic article on a variation of the theme: "Why I'm happy I evolved" by Olivia Judson for the New York Times. And here's the best line:

For me, the knowledge that we evolved is a source of solace and hope. I find it a relief that plagues and cancers and wasp larvae that eat caterpillars alive are the result of the impartial - and comprehensible - forces of evolution rather than the caprices of a deity.

I still say human beings are the best evidence against "intelligent design."