I call shenanigans

I'm afraid of a lot of things. Fire, deep water, heights, death, my future, being alone in a strange city knowing no one, unwound cassette tapes. The whole gamut. I'm pretty much an expert on fear.

Yet I've never lost a wink of sleep worrying about being killed by a stray terrorist.

And I suspect no one else has, either.

So with all due respect to Glennzilla, who correctly marvels over the marvelous pants-pissing proficiency of our Gruff and Serious foreign policy establishment over the transfer of Guantanamo detainees to prisons in the United States, I don't believe real fear of turr'sts is a motivating factor. Yes, I'm saying Bedwetter Nation is a put-on. An affectation if you will. You see, it's not actually possible for someone to feel genuine fear over terrorism. You have a better chance of suffocating in the frozen food section of the supermarket. People know this instinctively. Assessing real threats is necessary for survival.

No, we exaggerate the fear of terrorism because we need an enemy. A real enemy, a dangerous enemy to give us our own history-defining war. In fact, the stupid jock posturing has been made worse by the fact that there is hardly any real danger. It's little more than a game to the great American Empire, and everyone on the cable chat shows knows it. Give them a real enemy with the power to cause a serious crisis to our survival as a society, and the screaming plump blowhards would get much more somber.

Remember the words of G..K Chesterton.

"It may be said with rough accuracy that there are three stages in the life of a strong people. First, it is a small power, and fights small powers. Then it is a great power, and fights great powers. Then it is a great power, and fights small powers, but pretends that they are great powers, in order to rekindle the ashes of its ancient emotion and vanity. After that, the next step is to become a small power itself."

No, we're not afraid. But we need something to make small powers great.

And, of course, to have a reaosn to hate brown people for being brown.

A nursery rhyme

This bloated Pig masters Wall Street,
This little Pig owns your home;
This war-crazed Pig had your brother killed,
And this greedy Pig shouts "More!"
This Pig in Congress shouts "War, War!"
All day long,
These Pigs we'll send to market--
And will they squeal? You bet!
Down with Capitalism!
Long live the Soviet!

-from the December, 1934 edition of New Pioneer, an American Communist magazine.

Democrats sure are worthless

Democrats in Senate block money to close Guantanamo.

Nice of Harry Reid to finally find those purse-strings.

"We will never allow terrorists to be released into the United States.”

Right, because that's totally been suggested. Interpreted Reid: "We'll never admit that anyone we've apprehended may not be guilty of anything."

Quatable IV

"Danny [Sullivan]'s arm is obviously not working as well as it would be if it weren't broken."

-Bobby Unser during the 1989 Indianapolis 500 broadcast on ABC

Rules of attraction

Ran across a journal a few days ago explaining the maxim that, regardless of what the male writers of situation and romantic comedies may think, people mostly end up partnered with someone on the same strata of physical attractiveness relative to their gender.

While this is essentially true across the board, I've found it to be particularly true among a certain population; evangelical Christians. Yes, the same subset of people most likely to vehemently deny the importance of sexual attraction in their relationships. In fact, that is pretty much the only criteria the potential evangelical mate can work with. The evangelical life is heavily gender-segregated, and men and women are encouraged never to become close friends with each other. Talking too much apparently leads to fucking; carnal lust being the sole relevant human desire and all.

I did occasionally marvel at what evangelical couples ever discussed. Those must have been the closest things to arranged marriages without being called as such in the contemporary world.

Oh my Gawd

Salon introduced a new column last week where an anonymous conservative analyst answers your probing questions. This week he or...well, who are we kidding?...explains why the dumb citizens of other countries don't ditch their nationalized health care system.

It is also true that most of the people who utilize the national healthcare systems -- to get stitches, to have broken bones set, to get regular checkups -- do not require innovative or life-saving techniques and so are probably perfectly happy with the inexpensive care the government can provide, pretty much without issue.

But, as one think tank director here in the United States told me, only a small percentage of Canadians have to deal, on a yearly basis, with the really bad outcomes, like a death caused by or contributed to by long waiting lines for diagnoses or procedures.

"If you have lost a family member because of the waiting lines, you are hopping mad and probably ripe for reform," the director told me. "For the vast majority of Canadians, though, the system has been fine. Until the day it isn't, that is."

Really? Really??? You're going to bat with that? In the United Frakking States of Tens of Millions of Un-to-Underinsured Not to Mention Bankrupted by Medical Bills America?

Hahahahahaha!!!

.......

Hahahahahahahahaha!!!

There are no words.

Get schooled

Let's give the libertarians their paradise.

It's fascinating to watch libertarians trail on about the inefficacy of the public school system as if this were somehow a point in the favor of ditching the system for a private, for-profit model. This is Thomas Frank's "wrecking crew" principle in action; after giving the economic rightists 30 years to run the government, one really shouldn't be surprised that they've proceeded to run the public civics system into the ground.

Indeed, a privatized school system would exacerbate all the problems associated with the present system while solving little and introducing new ones. The current de facto state, "you get the education you can afford," would be even further imprinted. Anything deemed inessential for producing good worker bots for the corporate oligarchy, like expensive liberal arts programs, would be slashed for everyone but the aristocratic class.

Libertarians, I suppose, are the one grouop of people who might legitimately claim that their ideology has never really been tried. Of course, it's proving quite difficult to convince many people in democratic countries to return to monarchism. At least there's always Somalia, or perhaps Estonia, though the latter still has public schools as best as I can tell.;

Works for me

Aaron Datesman has a plan for getting elected to Congress.

I have a simple platform, which I will scream loudly from every conceivable location until I turn red in the face. This will continue until I am elected. My message is this: “America’s military is worn down, and we’re practically defenseless! When I’m elected, I promise to spend $200 billion per year on the Department of Defense! That’s more than Russia and China put together!”

That sure is a lot of money! I think that there is no way this approach could fail. Once elected, I will then ensure my enduring popularity by spending the leftover $500-600 billion we were formerly wasting on “defense” to buy a puppy for every American. Also, guaranteed single-payer health care. And a free college education.

I won't tell if you won't.

Do it do it do it

According to Roger Simon, the Republican National Committee is poised to pass a resolution rebranding the Democratic Party as the "Democrat Socialist Party."

Would that they were. But even though I typically get furious at misuse of meaningful political terms, I'm kinda hoping the Goopers go through with it and use it as much as possible. I'm not convinced that the recent resuscitation of red-baiting is doing anything besides make people aware that socialism exists and Republicans don't like it. And if there's anything that can revitalize your product these days, getting Republican denunciations is it.

War crimes

War crimes are only committed by losers.

Did the Allies commit war crimes during the Second World War? Yes.

Were they as bad as war crimes committed by the Axis powers? Mostly not.

Was any serious attempt made in the post-war trials to account for crimes against humanity committed by both sides? Nope.

War crimes are only committed by countries without the wealth or military might to accuse their enemies of participating in crimes against humanity.

So when lefties are unmoved while liberal humanitarians celebrate war crimes charges brought to the Hague against a tinpot warlord in the third world, this is why.

Star Trek

Against all odds, this may actually be a good picture. I may have to discover a taste for crow. On the other hand, wasn't "angry Romulan with big ship tries to blow up planets" pretty much the plot of the last TNG movie?

Interestingly, a common refrain in many of the positive reviews I've seen so far is how much people are pleased that this isn't a typical "Trek" product. Meaning, usually, that the film eschews the usual high-minded moral and ethical dilemmas for a standard character-driven action movie. And there's nothing particularly wrong with that, except that it's, well, somehow fundamentally not Star Trek without them.

I'm not opposed to a reboot of the franchise; in fact, I think it's been sorely needed for years. But if you're going to make "Star Trek for people who don't like Star Trek"--which is rather insulting in itself to people who do--why not create your own universe with its own characters instead of recycling someone else's?

At least the film is continuing the Trek tradition of shoehorning an unnecessary and poorly-reasoned time-travel subplot. I haven't yet seen a good time-travel episode of Trek, but for some reason space opera writers keep going back to the well as if it's an inexhaustible fountain of plot-enhancing magic. The best film I've seen about time travel was a little low-budget joint called "Primer." It made little sense to me, but a serious treatment of time travel shouldn't be resolved lightly.

One-sentence Seriousness

Glennzilla puts it in a can:

...everything is different, and better, when we do it...

MOAR

Thankfully, we're teaching the Iraqis what it means to be a "nation of laws." We Americans know how terrible it is to have a system where the politically powerful are permitted to break the law and not be held accountable. A country which does things like that can fall into such a state of moral depravity that they would actually allow people to do things like this and get away with it. Who could imagine living in a place like that?

We need to pick up the slack before the guy goes slightly mad.

Bigger is better

It's not surprising given the current economic climate that a cottage industry would develop on the right claiming the New Deal was ineffective at ending the depression, and the country never truly recovered until World War II.

I don't know/care if this is correct. Let's say that it is.

Exactly what do the folks making this argument expect it to prove? That spending to create "make work" government jobs is a poor solution for economic recovery? What do they happened during the war? If anything, this argument seems to show that the initial New Deal programs weren't far-reaching enough.

Perhaps righties believe we're in a kind of video game world where a little pot of wealth bloops onscreen whenever a non-American gets whacked. I can believe that.

Not that I would necessarily endorse a wartime economy even without the war

The air up there

Being four games over .500 on May 10 is making me feel a little....lightheaded.

Regardless of the overall record, though, beating the St. Louisians is always delightful.

I'm baaaaack!

...etc.

This just in

Sources of this blog have texted me reporting that David Souter is close to coming out of retirement to play quarterback for the Minnesota Vikings.

Stay tuned for more breathless non-information!

Does the Supreme Court...

...ever hear cases on anything besides abortion?

Inquiring Serious Journalists want to know!

O RLY?

President Obama at the Summit of the Americas:

You take a country like Venezuela -- I have great differences with Hugo Chavez on matters of economic policy and matters of foreign policy. His rhetoric directed at the United States has been inflammatory. There have been instances in which we've seen Venezuela interfere with some of the -- some of the countries that surround Venezuela in ways that I think are a source of concern.

Dear Mr. President; a source of concern, let me show you it.

(h/t)

In other news, computer is still in the shop, so light posting will continue.

One-party State

So, ZOMG!, Arlen Specter totally transformed into a Democrat which means he now supports Employee Free Choice, right? No? You mean he didn't actually change any of his positions; just changed parties because he's likely to lose the Republican primary next year, and the Democrats have already promised they'll clear the road for him if he switches?

The mainstream pundit class is, of course, ecstatic with the news. Specter is just the kind of Democrat they like; a Republican. He'll continue to support Sensible Economics and unrestrained imperialism abroad, and he's pro-choice and not a complete social reactionary. The biggest threat to having the Democrats in power is the threat of the scary, scary hippies bringing their patchouli reek into the wrong cocktail parties. Fortunately there are heroes like Specter willing to make sacrifices to ensure that, if the public is going to insist on overwhelmingly voting Democratic, at least we'll get the right sort of Democrat.

Elections

Iceland's left-leaning caretaker government that came to power after that country's financial collapse has won a full term.