Thank God for Basketball Season

Vanderbilt 73
Indiana 60

You should also definitely read Armed Liberal's 6 foreign policy points he'd like to see any Democratic candidates endorse:

First, we're not going anywhere in Afghanistan or Iraq until we're done.....

Second, we're too dependent on ME oil. We're going to do something about it, both by pushing conservation, expanding alternative energy, and expanding exploration......

Third, we're going to stop Israel from building new settlements and push them to dismantle existing illegal ones.......

Fourth, we're going to work to expand the ground-fighting capabilities of our military.......

Fifth, we're going to sit with the Arab countries we are supporting and make it clear that they cannot buy internal stability by fomenting hate against Jews and the West and still expect our financial and military support......

Sixth, we're going to develop security mechanisms based on the theory that fine-grained systems that bring information and communications to the existing public safety community, as well as the public at large are better than huge, centralized bureaucratic solutions.

I honestly don't know what the hell #6 is supposed to mean, but the other 5 seem like a good place to a start discussion.

My good buddy Armed Liberal posted a little while back pointing out what I've also said, that announcing our imminent withdrawal from Iraq makes us look weak and that stating we'll stay as long as we need to makes us look strong. He is a good bit more gung ho on the whole enterprise than I am, but I think we see eye to eye on the need to do it whole hog if you're gonna do it at all. Even when we don't agree, it's always good to see AL's clearly thought out and stated writing:

Let me repeat it: "victory can be our only exit strategy."

By taking this position, by making it clear that we will stay as long at it takes, spend the treasure and blood required to break the wave of Islamist rage, in my view we will reduce the amount of actual violence we will ultimately have to impose.

I'm not convinced that we should've invaded Iraq, nor that we should stay there as things get uglier (but I, as yet, haven't seen an alternative that isn't even uglier). I do know that, should we stay, we need to make it perfectly clear that we're there for the long haul. Otherwise, people like Salam Pax would be nuts to openly side with us.

Note to People Who Opposed the Invasion of Iraq

Those who disagree with you are not, by definition, Nazis or fascists. They do not want to round up all the brown skinned people of the world and herd them into concentration camps. Nor, with the exception of real nutjobs like Anne Coulter, do they want to forcibly convert the heathen at the tip of a bayonet. They are simply people who thought Hussein was a threat to the world and wanted to take him out when they had the chance.

Until you can agree to stop accusing anyone who holds different views than you of being a racist who kills babies for oil, don't expect to win any converts and don't expect those of us still on the fence to treat you like anything other than a fucking idiot.

PS: Those of you who don't act this way, please get your compatriots to shut the fuck up. They make you all look bad.

Note to People Who Supported the Invasion of Iraq

Those who disagree with you are not, by definition, supporting terrorism. They are neither supporters of Osama bin Laden nor people who think that we had it coming on Spetember 11th. For the most part, they're people who think that invading Iraq has made it more likely that terrorists will attack us in the future because it has motivated people to become terrorists who wouldn't have otherwise done so.

Those who disagree also aren't big fans of Saddam Hussein. They do not want to give Saddam the keys to the minivan and let him take the kids out for a spin. They don't think he's a great guy. They just didn't want to invade Iraq to get rid of him (Robert Mugabe is a brutal thug, but Bush is never gonna go after the bastard; does that mean he likes Mugabe?).

Also, you should note that protesting the war is not the same as cheering for the enemy to win. The vast majority out there wish all our soldiers were at home safe in their beds; they aren't wishing for them to die at the hands of terrorists.

Until you can agree to stop accusing anyone who holds different views than you of being an Osama-loving Saddam sympathizer, don't expect to win any converts and don't expect those of us still on the fence to treat you like anything other than a fucking idiot.

PS: Those of you who don't act this way, please get your compatriots to shut the fuck up. They make you all look bad.

Adam Felber divines the essential rules for Rovenomics:
Cut its taxes. If it doesn't have taxes to cut, blow it up.

Mo' Blogrollin'

Avedon Carol is all over the healthcare debate currently not getting nearly enough attention (scroll down to Medicine Ball):

Many Americans like to dazzle themselves with the idea that they have really advanced medicine available to them that the rest of the world doesn't get. I'd be interested in seeing some evidence of that, since (a) no examples are usually given and (b) on the rare occasion when they are, they turn out either not to be true or about things that are only available because NIH made them available - that is, they are the product of tax-payer supported programs and not at all owing to the market - and they will be available in Europe a year or two later if not immediately..........

........30 states have malpractice caps, and none of them have cheaper medicine - or cheaper insurance. "Tort reform" is a scam intended to prevent ordinary people from being able to challenge companies that break faith with them. Free-marketeers imagine that we will be able to enforce contracts against big companies just because, oh, big companies are good and honest and moral, I guess.......

.......By the way, I just love the idea that your health insurance is tied to your employer. God forbid you should be in a position to walk out on a job where you are abused, eh? Especially if you're someone with a pre-existing condition. That's what conservatives call "freedom".

That first point is really important. Ridiculously few medical advances have come entirely through the free market. The basic science just costs too damned much and takes too damned long to turn a profit. Private companies are much better at taking government funded research and turning it into a salable commodity. But that's a far cry from doing all the research themselves.

What we have in this country is a system in which our tax money goes to pay for medical research, which only those with health insurance can afford to buy. Those who can't afford healthcare end up subsidizing research benefitiing those who can.

One nit I do have to pick with Avedon is on the value of preventative care. Our health care system would actually turn a profit off giving away free checkups simply because so many people leave their conditions untreated because they lack health insurance. Something like low level diabetes or high blood pressure that might be treated cheaply if caught early enough gets very expensive to treat if you wait until it's life-threatening. We Americans spend a fortune on emergency care for things that could've been easily controlled if caught in time.

Blogrollin'

Oliver Willis on the Democratic Party:

There are some principles that most of the party can agree on: fair taxation, health care availability, equal rights, a preventative (not aggresive) military doctrine, universal access and quality of education, and free but fair markets......For those that choose not to endorse the main planks of the party's reason for being, perhaps it is time for them to choose a new party.

and SKB on gay marriage:

Better yet, the REAL question ought to be, what is it about same sex marriage that poses such a threat to all the hetero soccer moms and NASCAR dads? What is the threat to society? What exactly is it they fear? Some long repressed tingling in their naughty bits? What?

Makes Sense to Me

Iraqi blogger Salam Pax (now added to the blogroll) had a letter to GW Bush published in London's Guardian along with those of a lot of other prominent or not so prominent people (read them all here). His letter is worth reading in its entirety, and expresses better than I could a very real concern: Having gotten America knee deep in Iraq, and having essentially destroyed the only government they've had for 50 years, will Bush finish the job of rebuilding Iraq and reconstituting its civil society? Or will he bail out at the earliest opportunity to help his reelection chances?

I'm telling you; things don't look good so far. The Pentagon has already announced a timetable for drawing down American troop strength, even as things look more unsettled than ever. This really seems to be driven more by the upcoming Presidential election than by reality on the ground.

Regardless of whether it makes military sense or not, they will start pulling out troops early next year. Unfortunately, this makes Iraqi leaders less likely to side with us (as we appear to be turning tail and running) and makes it less likely that the average Iraqi will turn out grateful that we invaded. As I pointed out long ago, the humanitarian case for an invasion was the only one that made sense to me, and it depends entirely on whether or not the Iraqis ended up in better or worse shape than when we invaded.

Kicking Saddam in the crotch then running away is not the way to ensure a peaceful, democratic future for the people of the Middle East. In fact, as the fucker appears to still be on the loose; it isn't inconcievable that Saddam could retake power once we leave. Even many reasonable Iraqis may prefer him to the fundamentalist mullahs who would be the chief alternative.

Well, here's the letter:

Dear George,

I hate to wake you up from that dream you are having, the one in which you are a superhero bringing democracy and freedom to underdeveloped, oppressed countries. But you really need to check things out in one of the countries you have recently bombed to freedom. Georgie, I am kind of worried that things are going a bit bad in Iraq and you don't seem to care that much. You might want it to appear as if things are going well and sign Iraq off as a job well done, but I am afraid this is not the case.

Listen, habibi, it is not over yet. Let me explain this in simple terms. You have spilled a glass full of tomato juice on an already dirty carpet and now you have to clean up the whole room. Not all of the mess is your fault but you volunteered to clean it up. I bet if someone had explained it to you like that you would have been less hasty going on our Rambo-in-Baghdad trip.

To tell you the truth, I am glad that someone is doing the cleaning up, and thank you for getting rid of that scary guy with the hideous moustache that we had for president. But I have to say that the advertisements you were dropping from your B52s before the bombs fell promised a much more efficient and speedy service. We are a bit disappointed. So would you please, pretty please, with sugar on top, get your act together and stop telling people you have Iraq all figured out when you are giving us the trial-and-error approach?

Anyway, I hope this doesn't disturb you too much. Have a nice stay in London, wave hello to the demonstrators, and give my regards to your spin doctors. I bet they are having a hell of a job making you look good.
Regards,
Salam Pax

Request for Enlightenment

If anyone can please let me know why I, as a straight male, should give a damn if two gays want to marry, I'd appreciate it.

Most straight couples are taking longer to get married, many don't bother at all, and most of those who do eventually divorce. It seems that the only people left really excited by the prospect are long term gay couples, all of whom will probably show more respect for the institution than the people who get married over and over again on what is essentially a whim.

I don't want to tell other people what to do with their private parts or who to love, just as I don't want other people telling me the same stuff. If you can convince me that I really should care, more power to you.

Et Tu, Lucy?

Thanksgiving approaches.

If, once again, Lucy van Pelt pulls away the football just as Charley Brown is about to kick it, I may need to have a talk with that girl's parents. This sort of juvenile behavior is inexcusable decade after decade.

God Bless the USA

Full faith and credit shall be given in each state to the public acts, records, and judicial proceedings of every other state. - US Constitution, article IV

I'm wondering what the over-under is on the number of times John Ashcroft's head spun around like that chick from The Exorcist when he found out that gay marriage is fixin' to be the law in Massachusetts.

The beautiful thing here is that the Full Faith and Credit clause of the Constitution leaves the intolerant fuckers no outs. If Ashcroft's gay neighbor from Missouri flies to Boston to get married, he's every bit as married in Missouri as in Massachusetts. They can't opt out, and no busllshit "Defense of Marriage Act" will let them (no act of Congress can override the Constitution). Legal gay marriage in one state essentially means legal gay marriage in every state .

I'm guessing I don't want to know the amount of our money the rightwing nutjobs are prepared to spend on overtime pay for their ideological thought police to find a way out of this. But I'm sure hoping they can't. Fat Tony and the Supreme Court may decide to step in, but there will be thousands of gay marriages on the books before they have a chance. Either they'd have to let those stand, or retroactively annul them. Either course would launch a flood of lawsuits.

The really beautiful things here is that no one gives a fuck. We're apparently too busy watching Queer Eye for the Straight Guy or speculating about how long J-Lo will wait before taking a Zippo to her latest marriage contract to get all worked up over whether or not two guys we don't even know are gonna get hitched. We just don't give a fuck.

God Bless America

I know the wingnuts will be out in force over this, but they'll be alone. We've all got gay friends, coworkers, or relatives. Few of us care what they do on their own time.

I'm happy to see the day where the average guy on the street is far more tolerant than the average politician.

This is still gonna be ugly. There will be lawsuits and more lawsuits. Multiple states will attempt to ignore the aforementioned US Constitution and deny legal rights to married gays. Fortunately, the good guys will win on this one, eventually. If nothing else, it'll come down to the fact that time is on the side of the angels here. My kid's generation really doesn't give a damn what anyone does with their private parts. When they take over, the Orrin Hatches of the world can crawl back into their caves.

Neo-Conservative Fantasists: 0; Reality: 1

An article in the latest New Yorker makes points out how our lack of planning for post-war Iraq has hurt us. We've unnecessarily pissed off Iraqis who may have sided with us; we've wasted the opportunity to immediately begin improving Iraqi lives in small but measurable ways; and we've made ourselves look weak and indecisive. Most of the blame for this can be put to the pointy headed neo-Con hawks who spent the last 2 years selling this war to the American people.

Their best-case scenario was apparently the only one they bothered planning for. The assumption was that all the Iraqis would great us with roses and bottles of Evian, then we'd hand over power to our chosen puppet and fly home on the magic carpet from Alladin while the 700 man Iraqi exile militia and the uninterrupted flow of oil from wells and pipelines miraculously unharmed by years of bombing and economic sanctions would provide for the safety and material well-being of millions of impoverished Iraqis with no history of liberal democracy.

Unfortunately, the monkies flying out of Richard Perle's ass din't do their jobs and this scenario never happened. Instead, we're stuck in a country with effectively no law aside from that enforced by American arms, no money aside from that provided by the American government, and no one to pass power to who is both acceptable to us and to the Iraqis as a whole (Chalabi and the INC ended up about as popular as George Steinbrenner in Fenway Park).

There seem to be two main reasons for our lack of planning:

1) The necessity to sell the War:
If we'd planned realistically for a long-term occupation and reconstruction of Iraq paid for with American money, the hundreds of billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of troops needed would have seriously dampened enthusiasm for the invasion. In fact, a legitimate look at how much it would cost and how long it would take would've killed the War before it took place. The overriding need to sell a war with Iraq forced the neo-cons running the Bush administration to lie about what it would really take.

2) Wishful thinking and lack of real world experience:
There seems to be quite a bit of evidence that the Bushies were deluded by their own propaganda and ideological blindness. If you spend all your time telling each other that the only real foreign policy problem is lack of toughness on the part of previous administrations, and that nation building is for pussies, you'll eventually start to believe it. If you combine this with a complete lack of understanding the way the world works outside your comfy thinktank, you get big trouble. Unfortunately, we got big trouble too.

Mission Accomplished

Well, The Bushistas said that they'd make Iraq free of Weapons of Mass Destruction.

Since it appears that there haven't been any WMDs in Iraq for over a decade, I guess they can mark that one off their list.

As I'd stated before, I have no doubt that Saddam wanted WMDs. I'm guessing he just thought they weren't worth the trouble they'd get him in if caught. This looks like one place in which the Bush Senior/Clinton era containment policy actually seems to have worked. Maybe those guys who have actually held jobs outside neo-conservative think-tanks know what they're doing after all?

Harold Pinter Can Kiss My Ass

The noted British flatulist recently compared the United States to Nazi Germany. Leaving aside the well-known rule of internet argumentation that whoever invokes the Nazis first automatically loses, it's just such an obvious load of horseshit and an insult to those were had to experience Nazi Germany firsthand.

I'm no fan of the Bush administration, but they're no Nazis. They may be short-sighted idiots with little real world experience, but that makes them more like Harold Pinter and his ilk than like Nazis.

Nor, of course, should you compare the hard-working, decent folks in the US military to the murderous thugs who carried Hitler's banner in battle. From what I've seen, the military has gone to great lengths to accomplish it's mission with as little loss of civilian life as possible. They've been put in a bad situation, and are doing the best they can with it.

Why Isn't Rush in Jail Yet?

If I had illegally purchased thousands of prescription narcotics over the course of months or years and gotten caught, I would be in jail now.

If you had illegally purchased thousands of prescription narcotics over the course of months or years and gotten caught, you would be in jail now.

If awell known liberal like Phil Donahue or Al Franken had illegally purchased thousands of prescription narcotics over the course of months or years and gotten caught, Limbaugh would be calling for him to be in jail now.

The Fat One was certainly hot to lock up drug offenders for nonviolent crimes back before he got caught.

So what's the problem?

Lock the fat man up, and do it now. Treat him exactly like every other poor SOB who routinely gets crushed by the War on Some Drugs Used by Some People.

Just as we didn't get out of Vietnam until the rich and comfortable started seeing their own sons face the draft, we won't end this stupid, unwinnable war until the powerful and their families start getting sent to Leavenworth and Attica for nonviolent drug crimes. It's too late to bust GW Bush for all the blow he snorted back in the 70's, but it's not too late to make another hypocritical fatcat into a poster boy for reforming the drug laws.

Have updated the blogroll as best I can. Changed addresses for those who have abandoned blogspot for spiffier digs; removed links to blogs no longer being updated.

If I unjustly removed a link to your blog or otherwise screwed up, please email me and I'll fix it.

I'm Back

Am gonna start fixing links, and get the comments back up and running. Then I'll slowly try to crawl back into the public sphere.

I'd like to come up with some story about an Andean plane crash and the nutrients available from overfed ruggers, or at least one about insatiable Scandanavian nursing students and poor internet connections in Lapland. But, alas, I have no legitimate explanation for my absence.

Paying attention to stuff going horribly wrong in the world was depressing the shit out of me. Writing, having people read what I had to say, and knowing at the end of the day that it probably made no difference depressed me even more. So I spent a few months with my head in the sand hoping everything would all just go away. Unfortunately, it didn't.

Just because I stopped reading the paper didn't keep people from dieing, nor did the people making decisions in Washington get any wiser. Like it as not, things won't change without a bunch of little guys like me on the outside shoving. So I'm coming back to push and stir things up, in whatever way I can. Or at least to call people names and point out when they're full of crap.I'm also hoping that writing my blog again will lessen the impulse to shout at the television whenever some idiot starts spewing bullshit he obviously doesn't understand. God help us all.

What He Said

Roublen Vesseau spelled out in my comments what I've been trying to write:

The reason I'm not gung-ho on war with Iraq is that the Administration refuses to give an estimate on American casualties and on Iraqi casualties. If I got a firm sense from this Administration that they were really going to make an effort to minimize the number of American & Iraqi casualties, and that they expected the number of casualties to be relatively small, I would be for removing Saddam.

Broadly speaking, there are two cases for war with Iraq, the humanitarian case and the national security case. The national security case strikes me as almost wholly unconvincing. The moral case is compelling, but it depends crucially on the likely number of casualties.

1) The best case that can be made for removing Saddam is that it will be good for the Iraqis, most of whom want to see the bastard dead. But a good result depends on not killing a bunch of innocent Iraqis (both civilians and draftees) who never hurt anyone. If a Saddam took charge in the US, I'd love to see someone kick his ass out, but I wouldn't want to see millions of dead Americans in the process (I know, of course, that some dead are inevitable; but also that they can be minimized).

2) One of the biggest problems with backing a war with Iraq is having to trust such a fundamentally dishonest administration with carrying things through. How can we know what to expect when they're so obviously lying to us about almost everything?

3) #1 is why I thought that we should make it stated policy to go after the leadership of the "rogue states" rather than simply killing off their armies of draftees as if poor teenagers were somehow stand-ins for the scumbags themselves. You want to cut down on genocide? Hang Milosevic, the other Serbian leaders, and their counterparts from Rwanda live on CNN. Make it clear that they're not exceptions (yes, I know all the legal/ethical/practical problems with this approach, but it's still far preferable to smart-bombing a few hundred thousand people into graves while their leaders walk).

2)

Work in Progress

For the last week, I've been trying to write a piece on the reasons for going to war with Iraq. This is made difficult by several factors:

1) The reasons the Bush administration has stated for war with Iraq have nothing to do with why they really want war with Iraq

2) The reasons the neo-Cons in the administration want to go to war with Iraq are not the same reasons that the good-ole boys in the administration want to go to war with Iraq.

3) The reasons political animals like Karl Rove want war with Iraq aren't related to the reasons in #1 or #2.

4) The reasons Tony Blair, Joe Lieberman, Colin Powell and other non-neo Con, non-good ole boys have for going to war with Iraq aren't related to #1, #2, or #3.

5) There are some legitimate reasons I can think of for war with Iraq, and they're not related to the reasons in #1, #2, or #3 either (but they may be related to the private thinking of those in #4).

So far, all I've been able to write is nonsensical gibberish that sounds like it came from a tech-writer at Microsoft. If I ever get my product into readable form, you'll see it here.

Frankly, this whole thing would be a lot easier if those dishonest bastards in the White House would just drop #1 altogether and explain why they really think war is a good idea.