After watching LSU deliver a beat-down on the once-invincible Oklahoma Sooners to win a piece of the national title (go SEC!), moseyed over to my homey Peter's house to watch the Wes Clark appearance on "Meet the Press" he'd TiVo'd that morning. Clark kicked ass, as he seems to be doing in more and more interviews lately, even when Tim Russert tried to nail him with stupid-ass questions like this one:
MR. RUSSERT: General, you also said something else. And this is how the Baton Rouge Advocate captured it: "Clark said the president `didn't do his duty' to protect American from attack on September 11, 2001. `I think the record's going to show he could have done a lot more to have prevented 9/11 than he did.'" What else could George Bush possibly have done, and why didn't anyone else in Congress or in the military suggest things that could have protected us on 9/11?
Wait a second..."What else could George Bush possibly have done?" Tim, if you don't know the answer to that question, it's because of the nap you and your colleagues have been taking on the job ever since 9/11.
The Bush Kool-Aid drinkers of the right wing have tried to state point-blank that disasters like 9/11 were the fault of intelligence lapses, if not sheer laziness, during the Clinton administration. But as this excerpt from Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them (courtesy The Poor Man) shows, the Clinton administration in fact had cooked up a comprehensive plan to deal with the alarming threat from al-Qaeda in the last few weeks and months before Bush took office. They handed it over to Bush with the faith that Bush would act on it — faith that was quickly shattered:
[Outgoing National Security Advisor Sandy Berger] told Dr. [Condoleezza] Rice, "I believe that the Bush administration will spend more time on terrorism in general, and on al Qaeda specifically, than any other subject. '' ...
After Berger left, Rice stayed around to listen to counterterrorism bulldog Richard Clarke, who laid out the whole anti-al Qaeda plan. Rice was so impressed with Clarke that she immediately asked him to stay on as head of counterterrorism. In early February, Clarke repeated the briefing for Vice President Dick Cheney. But, according to Time, there was some question about how seriously the Bush team took Clarke's warnings. Outgoing Clinton officials felt that "the Bush team thought the Clintonites had become obsessed with terrorism."
The passage goes on to describe how Bush, Cheney, and even warhawks like Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz responded to numerous terrorism-focused briefings and committee reports by doing absolutely squat. Clarke tried to re-introduce a revised and updated version of his terrorism plan to deputies of the Bush administration's security principals on April 30, 2001, but they didn't even get around to looking at it and approving it until the middle of July. Then they passed it on to the principals themselves — Cheney, Rice, and Rumsfeld among them — who wanted to schedule a meeting for August, but they couldn't. Why? Everyone was out of town vacationing — you'll recall that George W. Bush has more or less designated August as "ranch month" — which of course is so much more important than protecting the U.S. homeland. Clarke and George Tenet — the two holdovers from the Clinton administration — were frantically trying to convince the administration that a major attack might be in the cards, and by mid-July Tenet had even convinced Condoleezza Rice that such an attack was imminent. But the administration did nothing, and in fact even turned down several requests for more counterterrorism funding.
One of the refusals actually was issued on September 10, 2001.
So you see, Mr. Russert, when you incredulously ask Gen. Clark "What else could George Bush possibly have done," as if Bush was some tireless hero who moved heaven and earth to protect America and yet still could only watch helplessly as two jumbo jets were augered into the World Trade Center, you don't succeed in making Clark look like a heartless creep — you only prove your own ignorance, laziness, or both. Maybe Bush didn't know 19 Arabs were about to hijack two Boeing 767s and Boeing 757s and attempt to crash them into major American landmarks in Washington and New York, but he knew something was very likely going to happen, something that steps needed to be taken to prevent. Or would've known, had he (or anyone else) been paying attention. But they weren't.
But according to Tim Russert and his colleagues in the so-called "liberal media," that isn't the real story here. The real story is that un-American bastards like Wes Clark have actually had the gonads to call our Dear President on it. Our Dear President, who just risked his own life the lives of thousands of American soldiers to protect America from al-Qaeda Iraq and its stockpiles of WMDs nuclear-weapons program they were sort of thinking about maybe starting at some indefinite point in the future! Wes Clark, have you no decency?!?
Actually, yes, he's got quite a bit of decency. More than Russert has, at any rate. And as someone who got a journalism degree partly because of this silly idealistic notion that journalists expose, you know, the truth, it makes me sick to my stomach.
# Once again back is the incredible Doug at 9:19 AM
Sunday, January 04, 2004
Ann Coulter is a Lousy Writer and She Isn't Even That Hot: 22d in a series
Happy New Year, traitors, and welcome to a brand-new year of Ann Coulter is a Lousy Writer and She Isn't Even That Hot, where we expose right-wing hypocrisy in 30 minutes or less or it's free. This week's is a doozy, and probably not the way Ann really wanted to close out her 2003. See, conservatives always paint liberals as whiners, people who make a big petulant stink and claim "racism" or "sexism" or whatever else they can anytime something doesn't go their way -- but as as we've already pointed out, conservative whiners put liberals to shame, and there's no more obvious proof of that than this week's dose of Coulter. Every time a right-winger wants to do something perfectly reasonable like put a two-and-a-half-ton Ten Commandments monument in their state judicial building or pass a law dictating what consenting adults can do in the privacy of their own bedrooms, the court system steps in and puts a stop to it. And in Ann Coulter's world, this just isn't faiiiir!
Which is weird, because our definition of "fairness" always involved stuff like making sure all religious beliefs are respected equally, with none being raised higher in the government's eyes than another, or not arbitrarily sticking one's nose in what is quite clearly none of their business. But Ann doesn't see it this way, and she's pissed that her side is losing. But rather than take a hard, objective look at why the right wing has repeatedly failed in jamming its square-peg agenda into the round hole of American law, she does what any football team does when they just can't believe a group of guys as big and as talented as they are lost to an inferior squad: They blame the refs. Thus it becomes a commie-pinko judiciary who's really to blame for "creating a universal ban on God" -- which, like this week's column title, "Place Your Right Hand On The Quran And Repeat After Me," is something that's never actually happened:
The American Civil Liberties Union began its onslaught against Alabama Judge Roy Moore in 1995, when an ACLU lawyer, depressed that he was not chosen to play Mrs. Claus in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade that year, wrote a letter to all the state judges in Alabama protesting their practice of having a prayer in the courtroom every few weeks. (Obviously you can't have prayer in court: It might distract all the people holding their hand over a Bible and swearing before God almighty to tell the truth.)
Well, we hoped we'd never have to say it here, but Ann's got us in a corner. We have to admit there is a weird irony in the fact that prayer isn't allowed but witnesses still swear on a Bible. We can only hope that non-Christians who don't want to swear on a Bible are not forced to do so; no telling whether such folks were coerced into joining in with the courtroom prayers, or if they merely kept their mouths shut because they didn't want to make a scene (which, we can tell you, here in Alabama would not have gone over well at all).
Everything had been going just fine in Alabama – no defendant had ever complained about the practice – but upon receiving a testy letter from the ACLU, all the other Alabama judges immediately ceased and desisted from the foul practice of allowing prayer in court. Judge Moore did not.
For resisting the ACLU's bullying, Moore became High Value Target No. 1. Soon the ACLU and its ilk were filing lawsuits and anonymous ethics complaints against Moore. The ACLU along with the Southern Poverty Law Center sued Moore for having a Ten Commandments plaque in his courtroom. (Poverty had been nearly eliminated in the South until a poor person happened to gaze upon Moore's Ten Commandments – and then it was back to square one.)
Ann, the problem with non sequiturs like this one is that they cut both ways. OK, so having the Ten Commandments in the courtroom didn't make things substantially worse in Alabama. But did they make things substantially better? Did the ongoing poverty problem in Alabama improve as a result of Moore's display? For that matter, did the plaque result in any fewer murders, thefts, or other crimes?
An affirmative action, Carter-appointed judge (oh sorry, I forgot – we're only allowed to say that about Clarence Thomas) found that the Ten Commandments plaque violated the First Amendment.
We're as confused as you are -- does Ann really think Jimmy Carter appointed Clarence Thomas? Or was her fact-checker distracted that afternoon? Does she have a fact-checker?
Apparently, in a little-noticed development, Judge Moore had become "Congress," his Ten Commandments plaque was a "law," and the plaque established a national religion. The Taliban had better legal justification to blow up centuries-old Buddha statues in Afghanistan.
You know, if anyone else had written that last sentence, Ann would've yanked it out of context and used it to brand them as an al-Qaeda-loving traitor before the ink had even dried.
The then-governor of Alabama, "Fob" James, responded to the inane ruling by saying he'd send in the Alabama National Guard if anyone tried to take down Moore's Ten Commandments.
Oh, sure, upholding the non-establishment clause of the Constitution is "inane," but vowing to sic the National Guard on anyone who tries to remove the Commandments is a perfectly rational, reasonable way of dealing with the situation.
That's all it took. The Alabama Supreme Court backed off from a confrontation with the governor by dismissing the ACLU's suit on technical grounds.
Both Moore and James were soon re-elected in landslides, Moore to chief justice. Liberals reacted to the overwhelming popularity of the state officials who resisted the ACLU by accusing them of stirring up the Ten Commandments dispute as a publicity stunt. The president of the Alabama ACLU said "the whole thing is political," and that Moore and James were using it as an election issue. The ACLU sues, and for not surrendering immediately, state officials are media whores.
We try to avoid concocting hypothetical situations here -- that's one of Ann's strategies, usually because she can't come up with any real situations that support her views -- but close your eyes for a second and imagine a somewhat reversed situation. A Muslim judge in Manhattan -- one with a history of liberal-leaning rulings -- has a plaque of the Koran in his courtroom. The Christian Coalition begins exerting enormous pressure for him to take it down; even members of the New York judiciary, city council, etc., quietly ask him to remove it just to keep from making any waves. But the judge refuses (after all, if Moore can have the Ten Commandments, why should he have to deny his own faith?). Now imagine the column Coulter would inevitably write about this situation. "Media whore" would be the least of her accusations.
But that's not really the point. The actual point -- and it's clear enough for everyone in Alabama to see, assuming they've remained rational enough to keep from standing on the steps of the state Supreme Court building and screaming "Get your hands off our God, God-haters!" -- is that Roy Moore is, indeed, as big a media whore as they come. Sorry, Ann, but take it from an actual Alabamian -- that's what he is. It's only a matter of time before Moore declares he's running for some sort of public office, and we're guessing it's senator, because the Mobile Register already has taken a poll indicating that Moore would defeat Richard Shelby if he was to run. Think Moore would've clinched that poll without the benefit of the controversy he'd ignited over the silly-ass monument he snuck into the Supreme Court building under cover of darkness two years ago?
Thus, according to Time magazine, Judge Moore has been on a "crusade" since – in Time's own words – "he defended his right to display" the Ten Commandments. It "should have surprised no one" the magazine continued, when Moore installed the Ten Commandments monument in the courthouse lobby and "forced a showdown by refusing to remove it."
In other words, Moore defended himself from one ACLU lawsuit and then – as if that weren't enough! – he did not instantly surrender when the ACLU filed a second lawsuit. That guy sure knows how to get publicity.
It's easy for Coulter to portray Moore as the innocent, mild-mannered, passive judge who was simply the victim of all this, because she hasn't gotten around to the Ten Commandments monument yet -- and barely pays it passing mention when she finally does.
Indeed, Moore maintained his disagreement with the ACLU's interpretation of the Constitution as creating a universal ban on God right up until he was out of a job.
Beg pardon? The ACLU wants a "universal ban on God"? What an imagination you have, Ann! The ACLU has never sued anyone for displaying religious icons or documents in their homes or offices, and had Moore kept his Ten Commandments plaque or monument in his private chambers, nobody would've been able to touch him. But because he's one of those what-good-is-Christianity-if-you-can't-force-it-on-others types who insists on making the rest of us look bad, he had to go putting it where it would be seen by as many people -- and cause as much controversy -- as possible. Ergo, media whore. (Oops, we may have just called him a name! Anja, we apologize!)
A lot of conservatives said Moore was wrong to refuse to comply with the court's idiotic ruling. The conservative argument for enforcing manifestly absurd court rulings is that the only other option is anarchy.
But we are already living in anarchy. It's a one-sided, "Alice in Wonderland" anarchy in which liberals always win and conservatives always lose – and then cheerfully enforce their own defeats. Oh, you see an abortion clause in there? OK, I don't see it, but we'll enforce it. Sodomy, too, you say? OK, it's legal. Gay marriage? Just give us a minute to change the law. No prayer in schools? It's out. Go-go dancing is speech, but protest at abortion clinics isn't? Okey-dokey. No Ten Commandments in the courthouse? Somebody get the number of a monument removal service.
You can almost hear the nasal, preadolescent whine from here: "You always win! And it's no fayyyyerrrr!" She practically says it outright a couple paragraphs down.
What passes for "constitutional law" can be fairly summarized as: Heads we win, tails you lose. The only limit on liberal insanity in this country is how many issues liberals can get before a court.
Apparently the only thing standing between a government of laws and total anarchy is the fact that conservatives are good losers. If we don't give liberals everything they want, when they want it, anarchy will result. We must obey manifestly absurd court rulings, so that liberals obey court rulings when they lose.
Yeah, that's why conservatives are "good losers." Not because liberals might be, you know, constitutionally correct or something when they say judges don't have the right to impose their religious beliefs on every single person who comes into their courtroom. What Ann almost seems to be saying here is "OK, we'll let you win," but she might as well be saying that Oakland "let" Tampa Bay win last year's Super Bowl. There's letting someone win, Ann, and then there's winning fair and square.
When ranting on subjects like liberalism's influence on college campuses, Ann likes to trot out the phrase "marketplace of ideas" -- to wit, when people are given complete, unbiased exposure to a full range of opinions and/or political leanings, they will choose which ones they like. And in Ann's world, the most popular ones, since they are able to garner approval from the widest range of people, are best; sort of an ideological capitalist Darwinism, if you will. Well, Ann, under that survival-of-the-fittest line of thinking, the right wing's consistent inability to convince courts of the correctness of their theocratic, homophobic, reactionary views might be an indication that there's actually something to this whole liberal thing, but Ann of course doesn't see it that way.
Point one: They almost never lose.
Whine, whine, whine. What do you want us to say? "Sorry for being right"?
Point two: They already refuse to accept laws they don't like. They do it all the time – race discrimination bans, bilingual education bans, marijuana bans. They refuse to accept the Electoral College when their candidate wins the popular vote, and they refuse to accept sexual harassment laws when their president is the accused. If you don't let them win every game, they walk off with the football.
Christ, this is getting pathetic. "You always win! It's no fair!" When did we ignore bans on bilingual education? And if you want to chide us for "refusing to accept marijuana bans," shouldn't you also lay into George W. Bush and Dick Cheney for "refusing to accept" bans on driving while intoxicated? Just for the record, Ann, we'll be happy to accept the Electoral College when we're confident that the voting wasn't tampered with and everyone who was eligible to vote had equal access to the polls. But you guys didn't seem to think that was important, and -- irony of ironies! -- needed a Supreme Court ruling to rig things your way. (And for the past three years, we liberals have been obeying a "manifestly absurd court ruling," so when are we gonna get credit for that?) And we're also perfectly willing to "accept sexual harrassment laws" when the president is accused, we just don't think they rise to the level of an impeachable offense.
I'm not sure what horror is supposed to befall the nation if the liberals started ignoring the law more than they already do, but apparently it would be even worse than a country in which the Ten Commandments have been stripped from every public space, prayer in schools is outlawed, sodomy is a constitutional right, and more than 1 million unborn children are aborted every year.
The Ten Commandments can be displayed in a public space as long as other religions aren't kept from displaying their own monuments. Any student is welcome to pray quietly to themselves anywhere, anytime they want to, as long as it doesn't interfere with the education of their classmates. And sodomy is a "constitutional right" only because the Supreme Court took the pernicious, meddling opinion that the government shouldn't have the right to dictate what goes on in the bedrooms of consenting adults. See, when Ann rants about how the country is being completely wiped clean of religion (and Christianity in particular), what she's really upset at is that people like her are being stripped of their ability to throw their righteously indignant weight around and impose their specific brand of Christianity as the law of the land. And it's just not fayyyy-yerrrr!
The handwriting's on the wall, and it's not our fault Ann Coulter can't see it: Maybe the reason her side's agenda is failing in the courts is because it runs counter to the Constitution and the very ideals of freedom and democracy upon which this country was founded. Oh, sure, Ann may try to spin this as the judicial system infringing upon Roy Moore's so-called "freedom" to display the Ten Commandments in a public place and foist his religious views on anyone who comes into his courtroom, but one man's "freedom" is another man's sneaking suspicion that if he's not Christian, he won't get a fair shake from the judge before whom he's about to stand. Oh, sure, none of that would be an issue if people like Moore would be satisfied with merely worshipping God in private and keeping the Ten Commandments in their hearts (as opposed to their courtroom walls), but that just wouldn't garner enough media hysteria, would it? So thanks, Ann, thanks ever so much for buying into Roy Moore's martyrdom act hook, line, and sinker. Now, in addition to saying that you're a fascist, a homophobe, and a witheringly bad writer (and not even that hot), we at Ann Coulter is a Lousy Writer and She Isn't Even That Hot can say you're also completely dense and have the gullibility of a five-year-old! Hope you're as pleased as we are about the start Ann Coulter is a Lousy Writer and She Isn't Even That Hot has gotten off to in 2004...see you later on this week!
# Once again back is the incredible Doug at 12:50 PM
Saturday, January 03, 2004
Hate mail (well, strong-dislike mail) No. 3: Ladies and gentlemen, we have a point!
Not even three full days into the new year, and what did we find in our in-box this morning but our first hate-mail of 2004...but unlike the last couple, this one actually has a valid point to make:
To Whom it May Concern~
Being that I am personally a proud Conservative, Army Brat, and Roman Catholic I will not being to tell you how you are wrong on many of your views. But I do have a word of advice. When your presenting your veiws you may find it better to not resort to such low and vulgar vocabulary, such as when you call our PRESIDENT and Ann Coulter "Douches"....... Come on.....thats just a stupid insult to being with! But few Educated people will take a website like yours seriously if you use such foul and low language.
Just a thought....
Anja Stick
We used Blogger's search function to track down the instance in which we had used the word "douche," and there was one: In an October 17 post proclaiming to the world that we'd been linked by Mary over at Naked Furniture, we described Mary thusly: "She goes to Notre Dame (sic 'em, Catholics!), skews toward the liberal side, and thinks both George W. Bush and Ann Coulter are complete douches." So technically, Anja, we didn't technically call either Bush or Coulter a "douche." (Although we did say that we shared Mary's sentiment, so maybe indirectly we did call them that. Oh, semantics.)
Nevertheless, we do care what Anja has to say. This site isn't meant to just preach to the liberal choir; in explaining very clearly, and with factual basis, why we think Bush's presidential antics are destructive and dishonest, rather than merely finding a thousand different ways to say "Bush is a dick," we hope that maybe, just maybe, we can pick up some more conservative converts along the way. But we're shooting ourselves in the foot if all we do is a bunch of name-calling, and Anja's comments prove that.
In truth, as hard as this is to believe, we make every effort to refrain from abject name-calling on this site. No, really! But are we failing to practice what we preach? I decided to go back to the Blogger search window, type in a few of my most treasured insults, and see if I'd actually been bandying them about more than I realized. After finding the one instance of the word "douche" -- which, I'm sorry, Anja, I really think that's a hilarious thing to call someone, so sue me -- I hunted down the following:
"asshole": Used in direct reference to the Rev. Fred Phelps, all three of the Husseins, and hypothetical people who complain about their placement in the blogroll (so far nobody has); also used in indirect reference to George W. Bush ("...if he's using [this UN speech] as an opportunity to be an asshole").
"assface": The guy who broke into my car three days before Christmas.
"ass clowns": Used as a general description of certain unnamed people at Fox News.
"ass monkey":Bill O'Reilly. A blustering, egomaniacal ass monkey, to be exact!
"idiot": OK, Stanley did once refer to George W. Bush as "Idiot-in-Chief." And I did use the word in reference to Bush once too, but only conditionally: "If he thinks these European countries will want to give us a hand with [Iraq debt restructuring] when we've summarily denied them [reconstruction contracts], he's an idiot." Also used to describe Judge Roy Moore and Lt. Gen. William Boykin, and I absolutely stand by those.
So really, when you get right down to it, this site doesn't call George W. Bush all that many names. Pretty few, in fact, especially when you consider that this site's entire purpose is to expose his dishonesty and general incompetence. No, no, Anja, no apologies necessary; our vindication is enough. But before we go, let's take a closer look at that last insult, "idiot," for a moment. Here's Ann Coulter decrying the way liberals supposedly wield that word against conservatives to no end:
"After years of defending Clinton, liberals love the piquant irony of calling Bush a liar. For 50 years liberals have called Republicans idiots, fascists, anti-Semites, racists, crooks, shredders of the Constitution and masterminds of Salvadoran death squads. "
Wow, Ann, we had no idea we were doing that. We feel just terrible about it. But wait! No sooner has she whined about being called an idiot than she turns right around and tries to use it back:
"With a great deal of charity – and suspension of disbelief – I was willing to concede that many liberals were merely fatuous idiots."
So you see, Anja, we'll take our lumps for descending into name-calling when we're guilty of it. But if you want to be truly "fair and balanced," make sure you save some of your tsk-tsking for conservative hypocrites like Coulter.
Who is, we maintain, a complete douche.
# Once again back is the incredible Doug at 6:24 PM
Wednesday, December 31, 2003
Last post of 2003: A modest proposal
Got an e-mail from my friend Mark in Atlanta a couple days ago. It included the following:
I was thinking about politics and such, and I'm concerned about the winnability of the election for the Democrats. I mean, attacks on Bush are all well and good, but I don't think it appeals to enough of the electorate to win the presidency with. It would be better, perhaps, to draw a line between September 10th and September 11th Americans. There's nothing wrong with either, I don't think, but the real philosophical issue dividing the nation is over whether we have something to fear, and how that affects our rights. Personally, I like to consider myself a September 10th American. But the September 11th Americans tend to fall in the Republican camp.
Later on.
I like Mark's line of thinking here. We have, post-9/11 in this country, two groups of people: Those who approve of the thigs Bush has done in the wake of that tragedy, and those who do not. Obviously, you know where this site falls on that one. But believe it or not, we understand the thought process of the other side: They're afraid -- and Bush has tapped into that.
Think about it. How could anyone support the pre-emptive, unprovoked invasion of a country that had nothing to do with 9/11? Because Bush made people think we had to be afraid of Iraq. How could anyone support the outrageous restrictions on our constitutional rights contained in the USA PATRIOT Act? Because Bush (and Ashcroft) scared us into thinking they were necessary for our security. How could anyone feel comfortable with the way the Bush administration has tried to censor or impugn the patriotism of anyone who criticizes them? Because they're too afraid to speak out against their Dear Leader in a time of war.
I can remember a time when life wasn't like this. When the World Trade Center was bombed back in 1993, it didn't suddenly turn us into this frightened, reactionary nation. Even when we went to war in Iraq the first time back in 1991, we didn't do it because we were afraid of what we thought Iraq might do; we went to war because we could not abide the injustice of what Iraq had done. And we went into the Middle East, settled the score, won that war in a walk, and came home.
I love my country very much. I'm proud of the things we've accomplished and the way the world at least used to admire us as the planet's greatest example of free democracy. And I'm angry at the way Bush has weakened my country. See, when people talk about what a strong leader Bush is, they don't realize that he's only made himself look strong by comparison by making the rest of us, this country, look weak. If we're scared and intimidated, of course he's going to look strong compared to us. But how did we let ourselves get into that position to begin with.
I'm not saying we have nothing to fear in this bizarre post-9/11 world. But we have two choices: Face our fears, or let them control us. Bush and the Republican Party haven't faced our fears -- in case you haven't noticed, we haven't devoted substantial resources to fighting Osama bin Laden in a long, long time -- they've allowed us all to be controlled by them. PATRIOT acts, mysterious, unexplained "orange alerts," pre-emptive wars: This is not how a strong country, confident in its righteousness and the will of its people, acts. If you have to make big shows of force, then clearly you weren't confident enough that people would believe in your forcefulness on their own.
America wasn't like this before George W. Bush used September 11 to turn us into this scared, erratic nation. But we don't have to be like this forever. I'm going way, way deep on my motivational depth chart and taking a page from Ronald Reagan's playbook: Remember how the Gipper said he wanted to make it "morning in America" again? Well, I want to make it September 10 in America.
Don't take this the wrong way. I don't want airport security guards to go slack and start letting people carry box cutters onto airplanes again, and I don't want us to start looking the other way as al-Qaeda sleeper cells build dirty bombs in their apartments. But neither do I want this country to be ruled by fear. We're better than that. We don't need to restrict our foreign policy to sheer intimidation, and we don't need to curtail the very freedoms that made this country the greatest on earth -- we can find better solutions to our problems than that. But we need a president brave enough to try them. We need a president who will stand up to terror and say, "We will fight you, but in that fight you will not be permitted to force us to cater to our worst instincts. We will be vigilant, we will be strong, but we will not be afraid. The principles America was founded on sustained it for more than 200 years before the World Trade Center fell, and I trust those same principles to sustain it now. We're going to turn our backs on fear and return to those principles, and we're going to make it September 10 in America again."
Instead of a president who cynically makes decisions based on how easily he can scare the public into trusting them, I want a president who exudes a strength and confidence that can be reflected in the people. Instead of an administration that operates in such secrecy that a confused, uninformed public has no choice but to live in a vague state of worry, I want an administration that trusts the American public enough to be open and honest with what it knows. Instead of a country that tries to cure its own fear by projecting that fear onto other nations and bullying them, I want a country that's confident enough in America's goodness and rightness that it can deal with other countries using friendship and negotiation rather than taunts and threats.
If we haven't bought too completely into the idea of a world where George W. Bush and George W. Bush alone isn't too afraid to know what to do, we can have a president, an administration, a country like that. And we can make it September 10 in America again.
Let's do that in 2004, people.
Happy New Year...holler at you again soon.
# Once again back is the incredible Doug at 4:35 PM
Chris, why do you hate America? We've had two, count 'em, two New Year's celebrations since 9/11, both of which went off more or less without a hitch. Do you still have such little faith in what New York Mayor Richard Bloomberg calls "the world's greatest police force"?
When can we expect Bush supporters to lay into this traitor for making those comments? I mean, if this isn't undermining America's resolve and giving aid and comfort to terrorists, what is?
If nobody's going to slam Shays, does that mean he's right? And does that mean we finally need to admit that when Howard Dean said the capture of Saddam Hussein hadn't made America safer, he may not have been completely nuts?
(On an unrelated topic, please welcome new blogroll passenger Nitpicker, and make him feel at home.)
# Once again back is the incredible Doug at 7:37 AM
Tuesday, December 30, 2003
Why is George W. Bush looking longingly at Homer Simpson?
Because he likes ogling Homer's exquisitely manly physique? No, you filthy sodomite, our president is as pure as the driven snow and would never be turned on by such a thing! If George looks a little envious as he gazes upon Homer's rippling body, it's probably because of a recent poll indicating that more British people would trust Homer than Dubya if given the choice of skydiving with either of the two. (Twenty percent said they'd want to go with Homer; only 8 percent chose Bush.)
We'll readily concede that Limey pollsters evidently have a whole freakin' lot of free time on their hands these days. But still...damn. Homer, you'll recall, is the man who once lit a Q-tip on fire so he could see better inside his head; as far as we can remember, however, he has never choked on a pretzel.
# Once again back is the incredible Doug at 4:07 PM
Ann Coulter is a Lousy Writer and She Isn't Even That Hot: 21st in a series
Yup, this is the big number 21 for Ann Coulter is a Lousy Writer and She Isn't Even That Hot, which is finally of legal drinking age. If you've followed this feature from the start, you've probably gathered two things about Ann Coulter: She's a lousy writer, and she isn't that hot. It's too bad that title is already kind of long and unwieldy, because we'd like to point out one other integral part of Ann's existence — she's a raging hypocrite. (Sure, we could add that onto the title if we really wanted to, but we're worried that the floodgates would open and pretty soon you'd be reading Ann Coulter is a Lousy Writer and a Hypocrite and She Isn't Even That Hot and Plus, She Has an Adam's Apple. And you don't really want that, do you?
But anyway, back to the whole hypocrite thing. Ann loves to do stuff like fume about the way Democrats make fun of Republicans for their physical appearances — and then point out a half-dozen or so Democrats she thinks are ugly. Or chastise the left for resorting to name-calling in political discussions — and then calling them names so immature your average third-grader would snicker at them. Ann's hypocrisy-o-matic was churning at full bore last week; she started out criticizing the way liberals in "blue states" (urban, heavily industrialized states on either coast) have this really snotty contempt for people in the "red states" (more rural, conservative states in the southern and central parts of the U.S.), but in making those criticisms of the blue states, her attitude takes on the very snobbishness and contempt she aims to decry. You'd think that a decent editor would gently tap her on the shoulder and ask for some mild revisions when Ann commits the very same offenses she just got finished condemning, but after reading "When Blue States Attack," you may wonder if an editor ever came within ten miles of this column:
Uttering the standard liberal cliche a few years ago, Richard Reeves described "representatives of the new South" as "Republicans of old puritan definition, righteous folk afraid that someone, somewhere, is having fun." (I'll skip the context of Reeves' insight, except to note that apparently aging liberals view sodomy with a chubby intern in the back office as "having fun.")
Well, Clinton was probably having fun, wasn't he? You know Ann's argument has to be getting off on the wrong foot when she can't even wait past the first paragraph to whip out another jab at a president who, at the time this column was written, had not been president for 1,069 days (and counting). Do note, however, that Ann at least admitted she had chosen to "skip the context" of Reeves' column. She's still taking quotes out of context and twisting their meanings past the breaking point, but at least she's admitting it now, which for Ann is quite a step.
Like all beliefs universally held by liberals, Reeves' aphorism is the precise opposite of the truth.
Oh, Ann, let's trim the fat off those fancy ten-dollar words and cut this sentence down to what you're really trying to say: Everything liberals believe is a lie. But hey, thanks for not making sweeping generalizations or anything like that.
It's the blue states that are constantly sending lawyers to the red states to bother everyone. Americans in the red states look at a place like New York City – where, this year, the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade featured a gay transvestite as Mrs. Claus – and say, Well, I guess some people like it, but it's not for me.
Boy, that's rich. Evidently Ann missed the Supreme Court decision earlier this very year in which an anti-sodomy law in Texas — that's a red state if ever there was one, kids — was struck down because the Court just could not figure out why a government has any business regulating what consenting adults do in their bedrooms. Going so far as to pass laws against stuff like that sort of goes beyond simply shrugging and saying "it's not for me," don'tcha think?
Meanwhile, liberals in New York and Washington are consumed with what people are doing in Alabama and Nebraska. Nadine Strossen and Barry Lynn cannot sleep at night knowing that someone, somewhere, is gazing upon something that could be construed as a religious symbol.
As crazy as this sounds, Ann, some liberals in Alabama and Nebraska are even concerned with what people are doing in Alabama and Nebraska. This Alabama liberal, for instance, had to watch as millions of his tax dollars went down the pooper just so that Roy Moore could mount a pointless crusade to have his two-and-a-half-ton Ten Commandments monument displayed in the middle of the state judicial building instead of in his private office where it belonged — and then break the law by refusing to obey the court order for its removal. The chief justice of the state supreme court! Breaking the laws he's supposed to uphold! But yeah, you're right, we liberal Alabamians should probably just butt out.
It's never Jerry Falwell flying to Manhattan to review high-school graduation speeches, or James Dobson making sure New York City schools give as much time to God as to Mother Earth, or Pat Robertson demanding a creche next to the schools' Kwanzaa displays. (Is it just me, or is Kwanzaa becoming way too commercialized?)
You're right, Ann, Falwell and Dobson and Robertson never do any of those things. They don't have to: They have access to entire television and radio networks through which they can exhort their willing followers to do all that dirty work for 'em.
But when four schools in southern Ohio have displays of the Ten Commandments, sirens go off in Nadine Strossen's Upper West Side apartment. It will surprise no one to learn that the American Civil Liberties Union promptly sued and the schools are now Ten Commandments-free. (At least students in the Ten Commandments schools, as opposed to schools in New York, Washington and Los Angeles, might reasonably be expected to know how to count up to 10.)
In case you just haven't gotten your fill of Ms. Coulter's Homestyle Deep-Dish Irony™ yet, here's another helping: Coulter decries the effete anti-"red state" snobbery allegedly practiced by blue-state liberals, and then proceeds to slag off blue-state urban centers as filthy cesspools where the kids can't even count. If Manhattan is such a lost cause, Ann, why do you still live there?
From the Chelsea section of Manhattan, the gay, Bronx-born Puerto Rican executive director of the ACLU, Anthony Romero, tossed and turned all night thinking about the Ten Commandments display on the Elkhart, Ind., municipal building, which had been there, without incident, since 1958. The ACLU sued and the monument was hauled off.
Aren't any of Ann's fans concerned that in addition to being a caustic reverse-geographic snob, she's also a vicious homophobe and a racist? Or maybe you can explain to us why she felt it was necessary to point out the fact that Romero is gay and Puerto Rican.
In Ohio, Richland County Common Pleas Judge James DeWeese had a framed poster of the Ten Commandments in his courtroom. The ACLU sued and the Ten Commandments came down. Compare that to the late New York judge Elliott Wilk, who famously displayed a portrait of communist revolutionary Che Guevara on his office wall. (Che, Castro, Hussein – evidently the only bearded revolutionary these people don't like is Jesus Christ.) And yet, no one from Ohio ever sued Wilk.
In between Ann's fatuous claims that liberals love Fidel Castro and Saddam Hussein — the first time she's tried to advance that asinine accusation since, well, the last hundred thousand times — we hope you found the two critical phrases in this paragraph: "in his courtroom" and "on his office wall." See, how you decorate your own office is your own business. But a courtroom, where justice is administered on behalf of the people, belongs to the people, be they Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Baha'i, Scientologist, or Jedi knight. And as such, judges don't have the right to impose their own religious beliefs on any Tom, Dick or Harry who finds himself standing before the bench. Is Ann really so dense she doesn't understand the subtle difference here? Oh, that's right, she thinks "nuance" is for sissies.
The ACLU got word of a Ten Commandments monument in a public park in Plattsmouth, Neb. (pop. 7,000), and immediately swooped in to demand that the offensive symbol be removed. Not being from New York, Plattsmouth didn't want to litigate. Soon cranes were in the park ripping out a monument that had sat there, not bothering anyone, for 40 years.
ACLU busybodies sued Johnson County, Iowa, demanding that it remove a Ten Commandments monument that had been in a public courtyard a since 1964. Within a year, the 2,500-pound granite monument was gone.
Mail-order minister Barry Lynn's Americans United for Separation of Church and State – a group curiously devoid of both Americans and churchgoers – sued little Chester County, Pa., demanding that it remove a Ten Commandments plaque that has hung on the courthouse wall since 1920.
"The Upper West Side and Malibu United" also sued the city of Everett, Wash., demanding the removal of a Ten Commandments monument in front of the police station. AU legal director Ayesha Khan explained they had nothing like that back in Pakistan and look how well things turned out there.
Sure, this sounds like the work of naughty Satanist liberals out to wipe any mention of religion off the face of the earth. But did it ever occur to Ann that if religious monuments like those are allowed to stand, the communities in question leave themselves open to demands by any random group of nutcases that a monument of their own be allowed to go up beside the Christian ones?
In an earlier column on a similar topic, Ann bemoaned the case of the Columbine High School students who painted individual tiles as a way of mourning the shooting rampage back in the spring of 1999. Tiles that certain students had decorated with religious themes were ordered by a court to be taken down, and Ann, not surprisingly, railed against this — while conveniently failing to mention that had they been left up, other tiles featuring pentagrams and the slogan "God is Hate" would've had to remain as well. Also, in Laramie, Wyoming, earlier this year, legendary homophobe and asshole extraordinaire Fred Phelps demanded that he be allowed to erect a monument in the city park commemorating the day that murdered college student Matthew Shepard "entered hell." Phelps said that if the city could keep a monument to the Ten Commandments on the park's grounds, it had to display his as well. Lovely!
Of course, this could all be solved if people would stop trying to use public property as canvases upon which to display their righteousness and instead leave the Ten Commandments-recognizing to their homes — and their hearts. Why is that such a hard pill to swallow?
(Perhaps in addition to the usual processing requirements for new immigrants, there should be a form that says: Welcome to America! You will no longer have to live in a mud hut, earn 32 cents a year, and have members of your family periodically dragged off and shot. However, you may, on occasion, have to see people praying.)
Nothin' wrong with that. Just as long as they're not being forced to join in.
The alleged legal basis for removing all of these Ten Commandments monuments is the establishment clause of the First Amendment. That clause provides: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion." The vigilant observer will note instantly that none of the monuments cases involves Congress, a law or an establishment of religion.
They do involve a legislative body, a direct action taken by said legislative body, and an endorsement of religion.
Monuments are not "laws," the Plattsmouth, Neb., public park is not "Congress," and the Ten Commandments are not a religion. To the contrary, all three major religions believe in Moses and the Ten Commandments.
Wow, Ann actually lowered herself to acknowledging Islam as a "major religion" (even if she didn't mention it by name) and admitting that they do, in fact, adhere to the Ten Commandments. Wow, maybe she got a little bit of the Christmas spirit after all!
Liberals might as well say the establishment clause prohibits Republicans from breathing, as that it prohibits a Ten Commandments display. But over the past few years, courts have ordered the removal of dozens and dozens of Ten Commandments displays.
How a local judge acknowledging a higher power with a symbol used by all three major religions is the same as Congress establishing a national religion remains a legal mystery – like, how the University of Michigan can use one admissions standard for blacks and another for whites and yet it's not race discrimination.
Blah blah blah, again with the "admissions standard" whining. What Ann calls an "admissions standard" is in actuality a points system that adds a certain number of points for being a minority — just as it adds a certain number of points for a prospective student being a legacy or the offspring of a major donor. But has she ever railed against any of that?
How about a truce? The intolerant religious fanatics in the red states will continue not complaining about high taxes, secular education and gay-rights parades in the blue states, and the proponents of tolerance in the blue states will stop bothering everyone in the red states.
At the risk of sounding rude...ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME? The "intolerant religious fanatics in the red states" do nothing but complain about high taxes, secular education and gay-rights parades! And that's where Ann's righteous indignation about ACLU "meddling" in individual communities' actions really flies off the rails. The only reason Christian right-wingers don't make nuisances of themselves filing lawsuits in far-flung cities and states is because that's not their strategy; their M.O. is to impose their narrow beliefs on an entire country by supporting constitutional amendments for stuff like school prayer and bans on gay marriage. So far it hasn't worked (praise the Lord), but that doesn't mean they're not still trying it.
If you don't like the concept of certain people meddling in the affairs of others, go ahead and diss the ACLU all you want. But in the interest of fairness, save some invective for the radical right-wingers who want the government to stick its nose into your bedroom (and your uterus, should you have one) and who seem to insist that it's the government's responsibility, as opposed to that of the citizens, to promote religion far and wide. And whatever you do, don't buy into Ann's fairytale of the "red-state" conservatives placidly, contentedly sitting back and not allowing themselves to be concerned with anything that goes on in any other part of the country. We know what you're thinking: Has Ann Coulter actually described something that has no basis whatsoever in actual fact? As hard as it is to believe, yes, she has! If that shocks you, don't miss the next installment of Ann Coulter is a Lousy Writer and She Isn't Even That Hot, 'cause she's sure to do it again! Peace out, and here's to a brighter, happier, regime-changed 2004!
# Once again back is the incredible Doug at 1:12 PM
Monday, December 29, 2003
Brain Dump Part Trois: What GWBWYPGN Did on Its Christmas Vacation edition
We heard the anguished cries, the clamor for new posts, the...OK, we can't back that up. In the end, we estimate that exactly four people noticed GWBWYPGN took a 10-day hiatus over the Christmas holiday, and of those four, maybe two gave a rat's ass (and we're probably related by blood to both of them). Nevertheless, the blog is back, and it's ready for some action. Maybe not quite as much action as before, at least for a while, since a certain blogger's laptop was helpfully removed from his car in Atlanta last week (more on that later). But as long as Bush sucks — and yes, Virginia, he still does — we'll be here to call him on it.
OK. First of all: It's time to come clean on whom we're supporting for president. A lot of anti-Bush blogs have already done this; we chose not to for a while, because we were afraid that if we endorsed Candidate A, the supporters of Candidates B, C, D, and E might stop coming here. But after a lovely weekend in Columbia, South Carolina, spent getting signatures on a certain candidate's petition to be added to the Democratic primary ballot, there's no point in being coy or beating around the bush. So here it is.
This blog [heart]s Wesley Clark.
Here's the deal: A lot of the candidates — actually, all the candidates — are angry at Bush. Which is good, the guy's a lousy president even on his best day. But the problem is, anger ain't enough. If any of the Dems are fortunate enough to boot Bush out of the White House in November, he/she's going to be presented with tons of problems, including (but not exclusive to) an ongoing occupation in Iraq, a massive national debt, rampant unemployment, and former allies around the world who now wouldn't pee on us if we were on fire. And if the new Democratic president still doesn't have anything except Angry At Bush to solve these problems, we're going to be in a heap of trouble.
Wes Clark, Gorblessim, has more than anger. He's got the military experience to handle the Iraq occupation better than any of the neocons currently screwing it up; he's got a plan to turn the deficit around and take us back to the surpluses that rat-bastard Clinton cursed us with; he's got a job-creating plan that will stop encouraging American corporations to ship jobs overseas; and his experience as supreme allied commander of NATO will enable him to mend fences with the countries Bush has pissed off like it was his job.
Yes, the first priority here is getting Bush out of office. But you'll remember that a candidate running on nothing but I'm Not That Guy is what got us into this mess to begin with. Remember 1999 and 2000? Bush had no plan, no vision, no record of substance that anyone could point to. The only plank in his platform was I'm Not Clinton, and millions of people were dumb enough to fall for it. If the candidate we nominate in 2004 has nothing but I'm Not Bush in his arsenal, we're no better than those people are. Wes Clark has way more than that, plus he's got arguably the broadest appeal of any of the candidates running and hence the best chance at beating Bush. And he's our man.
That said: Just because we've come out of the closet doesn't mean this is going to become an all-Clark-all-the-time blog, nor does it mean we're going to start laying into the other Democratic candidates (unless they do something monumentally stupid and detrimental to the chances of the Democratic Party as a whole). We really want people to continue wasting their valuable time at this site no matter whom they support, be it Clark, Dean, Kerry, Kucinich, Sharpton or anyone else — so in the interest of fairness, as a gesture of good faith, we're adding links to all of the Democratic candidates' campaign sites over on the right side of this page. If you haven't checked out any of them yet, do it. The election is closer than people think, and it isn't getting any further away. Funny how that whole linear time thing works.
Sooo...anyway. What else. To the Virginia Cavaliers, congrats on winning the Continental Tire Bowl; to Wes Clark, thanks for signing the book; to Al Franken, I devoured "Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them" in the span of a few hours on Christmas Day, and if someone doesn't give you a Pulitzer for it, you should go to a trophy store and just have one made for yourself; and to Howard Dean, if Osama bin Laden has already taken responsibility for 9/11, you don't have to get your boxers in a twist over "pronouncing a sentence before guilt is found." (OK, we're sorry about that...but do refer to the "unless they do something monumentally stupid" clause in previous paragraph.)
Oh, and to the "alternative shopper" who busted out the window of my Jetta a week ago and made off with my laptop computer AND my best Georgia hat: Nice one, assface! The fuck is your problem? Didn't think I needed that stuff? Or is shattering only ONE window your idea of "peace on Earth and goodwill toward men"? Son! Of! A! Bitch!
But OK, funny story. The Atlanta police officer who came to take my report was writing down the description of my car, and as he was doing so he noticed the "I don't have to like Bush to love America" sticker on the bumper. He asked me (jokingly) if maybe the guy who boosted my stuff was a Bush supporter and I said who knows, wouldn't put it past 'em. And the cop says, "Well, then I guess I better hide my car too, 'cause I don't like Bush either." Brownie points for the APD.
Last item: You might've thought even Ann Coulter would use the Christmas holiday to look a little deeper into her soul and vow to devote more of her energies to making the world a better, more compassionate place...but you'd be wrong, you bleeding-heart goody-twoshoes pantywaist hippie, you. Her Coulterness did release a column last week, on Christmas Day no less, which means Ann Coulter is a Lousy Writer and She Isn't Even That Hot will have to grind its rusty gears into motion once again (probably tomorrow). Keep your eyes peeled...and your bullshit detectors on "stun."
# Once again back is the incredible Doug at 8:45 AM
Thursday, December 25, 2003
Frequently Lodged Accusations: The George W. Bush, Will You Please Go Now?! FAQ
1. Who are you and why should anyone give a rat’s ass what you have to say? My name is Doug Gillett; I was born in Roanoke, Virginia, but grew up in Georgia and graduated from the University of Georgia (w00t!) in 1999. I currently live in Birmingham, Alabama, and work in the publications department at one of the universities in town, which does not sanction or in any way associate itself with the views expressed on this blog.
As for why anyone should give a rat’s ass what I have to say, hell, I don’t know. Nobody put a gun to your head and made your ass come here.
2. How did you get started blogging? Back in the fall of 2002, right after I moved to Birmingham, my friend Larry said he was starting a blog and asked me if I wanted to participate. I’d never blogged before, but I’m kind of opinionated and love spouting off to anyone and everyone who’ll listen, so I said sure. We did that for a while, blogging about just whatever popped into our heads, and round about the middle of 2003 I realized that a lot of the stuff I was putting up on there was pretty political (and pretty anti-Bush). I didn’t want to just unilaterally turn our blog into a political site, so I "went solo" and started my own blog that I could devote specifically to politics.
It was called "Flowers for Dubya," and it was basically a blog diary for George W. Bush to take down as he underwent a brain operation and got progressively smarter and smarter (as in Flowers for Algernon). The point was that as he got smarter and smarter, he realized how horrible his policies were and how dishonest some of the people in his administration were; that worked for a couple of months or so, and then I realized that the conceit had played itself out and just wasn’t funny anymore (if in fact it ever had been). So I ditched that and started GWBWYPGN?! as a straight-up mostly non-ironic critique of Bush and his administration. Which seems to be working better.
3. Where does the name "George W. Bush, Will You Please Go Now?!" come from? The book Marvin K. Mooney, Will You Please Go Now! by Dr. Seuss, who will always be one of my favorite writers ever.
4. Why do you hate George W. Bush so much? Sigh. I don’t hate George W. Bush. But I don’t agree with his policies and I don’t think he or his administration can be trusted. That’s what this blog is about.
5. But not everything on here is specifically about George W. Bush. No, there’s stuff here about his administration, Republicans in general, the Christian right, Ann Coulter, etc., but it all sort of basically revolves around how conservatives (George W. Bush being the most prominent) are screwing up the country.
6. Now that you mention her name — what the hell’s up with that Ann Coulter is a Lousy Writer and She Isn’t Even That Hot feature? Why did you single her out specifically for ridicule? Because she’s a lousy writer, and she isn’t even that hot. I won’t hold her non-hotness against her personally (though I just don’t understand why so many right-wingers act so smug about having this supposedly hot blonde on their side when she isn’t even that hot), but I will hold her personally responsible for being a terrible writer. The kinds of arguments she makes can be picked apart by most folks with a junior-high-level education, and yet so many right-wingers think she’s God’s gift to political commentary, in spite of the fact that every one of her arguments basically boils down to "Liberals are traitors." She’s a lowest-common-denominator writer no many how many books she sells, and she deserves to get taken apart week after week. Dissecting her columns was something I decided I wanted to do on this site the minute I started blogging.
7. Why is her name always hyperlinked to a kids’ site about the Adam’s apple? Heh. My lame little attempt at a Google-bomb. But come on, the woman is mannish.
8. What’s the most popular post you’ve ever put on this site? It’s hard to tell, because visitors to this site are only tracked by what day or time they’re visiting; there’s really no good way to tell exactly which post they’re looking at. The most number of hits I’ve ever gotten in a single day was February 13, 2004, which I’m pretty sure was in response to Project F$#! You, Ann Coulter; I’d put that up in response to a particularly dishonest and egregious column Coulter had written smearing former Sen. Max Cleland, and a lot of other bloggers linked to that one, for which I was very appreciative (and very flattered). But maybe the most popular post ever, which random people still link to and visit from time to time, is "Oval Office Space" from March 26, 2004.
9. Yeah, I remember that one. It was long. Again, nobody put a gun to your head . . .
10. You can be kind of an asshole sometimes, you know that? Damn right. I didn’t start this blog to be nice, I did it because I was angry and I wanted people to open their eyes to the bad policy and dishonesty coming out of this administration. Sometimes I get my point across with a straightforward essay-type post; other times I tell jokes or make fun of people. But I do make an effort to keep people entertained.
11. Do you really expect Bush fans to change their minds after reading the blog? Would I like it? Of course. Do I expect it? Not really. I like to think that I’ve made people think, maybe ask a few more questions than they otherwise would have, but so many of the Bush fans out there are so blindly, unquestioningly faithful to Dear Leader that I can’t count on converting too many of them. But hey, even one or two would be nice.
12. Do you do any work with the Kerry campaign? Funny you should ask — as a matter of fact right now I’m the communications chair for Alabama for Kerry.
13. Do they know you’re doing this? Yeah, but this blog is not an official part of our campaign efforts, and it is not endorsed by John Kerry or his campaign.
14. Wow, if even they won’t endorse you, you must really suck. Hey, now who’s being the asshole?
15. Sorry. But seriously, this blog is pretty simple — aside from the occasional photo and the stuff like comments or site tracking that you can get pretty much anywhere, there aren’t a lot of interesting features, it’s just pretty much plain text. Well, aside from hyperlinking and making stuff bold or italicized, I pretty much don’t know jack squat about designing Web sites or writing code. But this pretty well serves my purposes. And if I got into anything substantially more complex or involved than this, I’d probably get to the point where I was doing it 24 hours a day.
16. How many hours a day do you mess with this blog? Ummm . . . let’s say "more than I probably should," and leave it at that.
18. Those are all liberal blogs, pretty much, aren’t they? Yeah. But I also visit some right-wing blogs on a fairly regular basis, just for the sheer train-wreck fascination of it all — Adam Yoshida is one that’s borderline insane, but I also read Andrew Sullivan, who can be pretty thoughtful and perceptive when he’s not cooing like a schoolgirl over how macho and heroic Dubya is. In the middle are sites like Moxie, which can be intelligent from time to time, and Freedom of Thought, which rarely is, but I read it anyway (again, just for curiosity’s sake). I used to go to The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler, but that one’s so brainless it’s hard to read it even just for the sake of ridicule.
19. So how do I get linked? If you want to get linked in a post, it’s pretty much a crapshoot — I just link to whatever I’ve run across that day that’s particularly noteworthy or outrageous. Same thing kind of goes for the blogroll (I just put sites on there that I’ve run across and think are particularly good), though if you let me know that you’ve already linked me and you ask really nicely, that’s a good way to get on the blogroll too.
21. Sike! I don’t really want you to link me. I’m just planning on sending you some hate mail, you traitorous Commie scum. Yay! I love hate mail. Rest assured that if you send me hate mail, I will post it on the site so everyone can read it.
22. Oh. Well, maybe I’ll just put a snide remark in one of the comments threads. You’re welcome to do that too. I’ve never deleted a comment or banned a commenter, and I don’t plan to. If you have an opinion you want to post on one of the threads, put it up there and have at it along with all the other commenters. Some of them may like you; some of them may not.
23. Hey, did you know there are conservatives posting in the comments threads? Yup. They’re welcome just like everyone else. Some of them are even friends and/or relatives of mine.
24. So let me ask you this: What are you going to do if George W. Bush gets re-elected in 2004? I guess I’ll be blogging here for another four years, then.
25. What about if he loses and John Kerry gets elected? Then I’m going to kick back, change the name of the blog to "Mission Accomplished" and devote the entire thing to Georgia football, pop culture and pictures of Elisha Cuthbert Keira Knightley. No, seriously, I’m sure the right wing will be completely unable to take the fact that the voters of the United States sent their beloved Georgie home, and like any typical 4-year-old who throws a tantrum when he doesn’t get his way, they’ll be spending every waking minute to try and bring down John Kerry just like they did (unsuccessfully) with Bill Clinton — so I’ll probably keep the blog going just to counter all that.
26. Speaking of Elisha Cuthbert Keira Knightley . . . why do you keep mentioning her? Because we're dating, remember? Duh!
27. Liar. OK, not really. I just put that up there to make fun of the fact that Bush always says he supports stuff like a patients’ bill of rights or more equipment for the troops even though he’s never actually done anything in favor of those things, so by that rationale, I’m dating this actress even though I’ve never actually met her before in my life.
28. But in the back of your mind you’re kind of secretly hoping that somehow she’ll stumble across this site, and it’ll turn out she’s this hard-core bleeding-heart liberal and she’s so impressed with the blog that she’ll shoot you an e-mail telling you how awesome you are, right? Ummm . . . why, no. That's, uh, absurd. Don't be silly. Let's, um, move on to the next question . . .
29. You’re pathetic. By the way, whatever happened to Elisha Cuthbert? We drifted apart. There’s really nothing else I can say about that.
30. What’s with the quotes that always appear at the top of the page, right below the title? Those are from "The Simpsons." I don’t know why, I just like that show a lot. (In the interest of full disclosure, that concept is actually stolen from Sadly, No!, which puts up a different quote from "Seinfeld," also a historically awesome show, every week or so.)
31. What kind of car do you drive, what’s your favorite music group, what was your major in college, what’s your favorite color, did you get to see Georgia’s historic 41-14 thrashing of Tennessee in person in 2003, do you have any pets, what’s your favorite board game, and do you really think Jenna Bush is hot? A 2000 Jetta, the Pet Shop Boys, print journalism, blue, hell yes, a Brittany spaniel named Penny, Scrabble, and, sadly, yes.
32. The Pet Shop Boys? You’re not gay, are you? Not last I checked, no.
33. I thought they stopped putting out records, like, years ago. No, they’ve been releasing records consistently ever since "West End Girls" in 1985. In fact, they just released a greatest-hits collection that has two brand-new songs.
34. That’s kind of messed up that you know all that. Well, you’re entitled to your opinion.
35. I MUST SOLICIT YOUR CONFIDENCE IN THIS TRANSACTION. THIS IS VIRTURE OF IT’S NATURE AS BEING UTTERLY CONFIDENTIAL AND TOP SECRET. WE ARE TOP OFFICIALS OF THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT OF NIGERIA CONTRACT REVIEW PANEL WHO ARE INTERESTED IN IMPORTATION OF GOODS INTO OUR COUNTRY… OK, I think we’re done here.
Further questions can be submitted, if you're really that desperate for something to do, to georgemustgo(at)hotmail.com.
Edited 6/22/04 to account for new pseudo-relationship with Keira Knightley and other extraneous bullshit.
# Once again back is the incredible Doug at 12:01 AM
Friday, December 19, 2003
Ann Coulter is a Lousy Writer and She Isn't Even That Hot: China anniv. edition
This is the 20th edition of Ann Coulter is a Lousy Writer and She Isn't Even That Hot, and we were hoping it'd be special — but the capture of Saddam Hussein upset quite a few people's weekly routines, Ann Coulter's included. See, Ann's last few screeds (about how the Supreme Court hates America, Howard Dean hates America, the "zoom-zoom" kid from the Mazda commercials hates America) have clocked in at a pretty consistent 1,400 words or so apiece, and no doubt she had another one under construction right around the time Saddam was being dragged out of his spider hole. But that momentous occasion threw a curveball right into her plans, so she scrapped whatever idea she was working on at the time (Dora the Explorer hates America, perhaps?) and rush-jobbed a column on Saddam that wastes less than half the usual number of words.
Now, less of Ann Coulter's hysteric bleating is something you'll never find us complaining about. But that said, if you're thinking that maybe, somehow, some way, she might have a quality-not-quantity thing going here, well...not so much. Ann doesn't even bother to trot out any half-baked statistics or misleadingly selective historical information to back up her wingnut opinions this week, she just starts right in with the insults and personal attacks. And once again, a halfway amusing title — in this case, "It's Like Christmas in December!" — goes for naught:
Say, has anyone asked Dick Gephardt if this falls under "miserable failure"?
Obviously we'll have to wait for all the politics to play out, but at this stage it's hard to say which was worse for Howard Dean: the capture of Saddam Hussein or Al Gore's endorsement. Until Sunday, Gov. Mean's big applause line in speeches has been to sneer about the Bush administration's failure to catch Saddam Hussein. It seems the governor is better at prescribing bitter pills than at swallowing them.
He's had plenty of applause lines other than that one — and will continue to, at least until George W. Bush finds Osama bin Laden or magically pulls two million new American jobs out of a hat.
In a speech to the Pacific Council the day after Saddam was captured, Dean nearly choked on the words, "The capture of Saddam is a good thing," and then quickly added, "but the capture of Saddam has not made America safer." (Possible headline: "Dean Says Saddam's Capture Good Thing, Just Not Really Good Thing.") If George W. Bush announced that a cure for cancer had been discovered, Democrats would complain about unemployed laboratory rats.
Well, has the capture made America safer, Ann? For someone who claims to be so ferocious and fearless, she's gotten awfully good at sidestepping any question she can't come up with an answer for.
On Fox News Sunday, Sen. John F. Kerry, D-Mass., said of Saddam's capture: "This is a great opportunity for this president to get it right for the long term. And I hope he will be magnanimous, reach out to the U.N., to allies who've stood away from us."
It's as if he were reading my mind! After listening to all the bellyaching from European leftists for the past eight months, I think I speak for all Americans when I say I've been on tenterhooks waiting for the right opportunity to grovel to the French. And now we have it – a major win is the perfect opportunity! That Kerry has an uncanny sense for what the average American is thinking.
Another Coulter strategy: If a Democrat's quote doesn't offer enough for her to immediately attack, she'll just make up something easier. Did you see the word "grovel" anywhere in Kerry's statement? Sounds like all he was doing was calling on Bush to be a gracious winner, which doesn't sound the least bit offensive to us. Then again, "gracious" is a word we can't remember ever having seen within ten miles of Ann Coulter.
Actually, he lost me with that one. Maybe it's a good opportunity for the French and the United Nations to reach out to us, but by what logic is this an opportunity for us to reach out to them? As I understand it, the situation is: We caught Saddam. So the obvious next move is ...
(a) Put him on trial.
(b) Get information from him.
(c) Torture him.
(d) Turn him over to the Iraqis.
(e) Appeal to the French.
How does Ann know Kerry doesn't want to put Saddam on trial or get information from him? Dammit, she just knows, OK! So stop asking stupid questions!
What was interesting about Kerry's suggestion was that it was the exact same suggestion liberals were making when they claimed the war was going badly. The day before Saddam's capture, the New York Times editorialized: "The way to deal with all that is going wrong in Iraq remains as clear as it was on the day that Mr. Bush declared an end to major combat operations. ... Instead of driving away France, Germany, Russia and Canada with financial sanctions, the president should be creating the room for compromise ..." Damn that Bush. He squandered the good will of a bunch of people who hate our guts.
Implicit in statements like these is the idea that the U.S. doesn't friggin' need anyone else's help — but that idea was contradicted by Bush's very own actions. If we don't need anyone else's help, if we can take 'em or leave 'em, what was James Baker doing hopping from European capital to European capital beseeching them to forgive some of Iraq's outstanding debt? Is Ann suggesting we should be able to treat those countries like crap AND expect them to forgive debts that we now owe? Gosh, her next-door neighbors must love her to death.
Apparently, this is what liberals mean by "a plan":
Military setback: Appeal to the French.
Military victory: Appeal to the French.
Saddam captured: Appeal to the French.
Osama captured: Appeal to the French.
Osama catches Saddam: Appeal to the French.
Notice the repeated use of the word "French." "Gee, everyone knows the French are effete cowards...maybe if I just say it enough times, everyone will think Democrats are French! Yeah!"
In 24 months, Bush has perceptibly degraded terrorist operations throughout the world.
If by "perceptibly degraded" you mean "attracted a whole bunch of them to Iraq," well, yeah, sure. But what good does that do us?
The rebuilding in Iraq is going better than could possibly be expected.
We can think of 500 or so military families who might beg to differ with that statement. But, eh, they're getting nice fancy military funerals and all the sympathy casseroles they can eat. Why should Ann feel anything for them?
Liberals don't care. They just want to turn everything over to the French. (And, apparently, the recent capture of Saddam presents us with a golden opportunity to do so!) The Birchers were right about these people. They believe in world government more than they believe in the United States.
Challenge for all you Ann Coulter is a Lousy Writer and She Isn't Even That Hot readers...and, hell, for all you Ann Coulter fans as well, if you've somehow blundered your way onto this page: Find one statement since May 1 in which a Democrat called for some aspect, any aspect, of the war or the occupation to be turned over to the French. Just one! If you can find an authentically documentable quote, you'll win a prize from GWBWYPGN. Otherwise, put a cork in it.
One strongly suspects that the White House sat on the story of Saddam's arrest for a day so the Times could put out its regular Sunday bad news: "A Baghdad Neighborhood, Once Hopeful, Now Reels As Iraq's Turmoil Persists," "Saboteurs, Looters and Old Equipment Work Against Efforts to Restart Iraqi Oil Fields," "It's Going to Be a Bloody Christmas," "Dean Strives for a Nuanced Approach to Foreign Policy." The New York Times hasn't looked this foolish ... well, I guess since the day before.
Ask yourself this: Is Iraq still in a great amount of turmoil? Are saboteurs and looters still working against U.S. rebuilding efforts in the oil fields? Are people still getting killed? If they are, then it doesn't matter that Saddam got arrested, the headlines are still true, aren't they? We've said it before and we're going to say it again — this is what conservatives mean when they say they want "fair and balanced" media: Don't ever print anything that could even remotely put a Republican in a less-than-favorable light, anywhere, ever.
Liberals should perk up. It's not all bad news. True, Saddam Hussein has been captured. But Norman Mineta is still at large.
Now seems as good a time as any to remind Ann that it was her hero and savior George W. Bush who appointed that Mineta guy she hates so much. When she whips herself into this kind of 28-Days-Later frothing rage, she tends to forget such things.
Didja notice how Ann waited until the very end of her column to make the implication that Hussein's capture will make Iraq a better, safer place? Why would she wait until the very end when that's clearly the most important result of all this? Because to Ann, it's not the most important result. Sure, Hussein being captured is a blow to the resistance, a sign to Iraqis that democracy is just around the corner, but most importantly, it's a golden opportunity to bash liberals! How ironic that right-wingers like Coulter have gotten so upset at the way liberals are allegedly trying to demean and pooh-pooh the import of Hussein's capture; the fact that they've used this event to do nothing but bludgeon Howard Dean pretty much demeans it more than any Democrat could. Yet another strange, ironic fact of life that's evidently escaped Ann Coulter, but it hasn't escaped Ann Coulter is a Lousy Writer and She Isn't Even That Hot! Tune in next week when Ann's whining returns to its usual length, unless its Christmas Eve release date inspires Ann to look deep within her soul and become a more caring, generous person...aw, who the hell are we kidding?
# Once again back is the incredible Doug at 8:40 AM
Thursday, December 18, 2003
Suck it, Ashcroft...and suck it again!
The Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals speaketh: The government can't hold Jose Padilla as an enemy combatant. Padilla, you may recall, got collared in May as an alleged material witness for 9/11; ever since then he's been taking up space in a naval brig in South Carolina, unable to communicate with anyone, legal representation included. And the government has yet to bring any actual charges against him.
So basically the Court of Appeals is telling John Ashcroft to shit or get off the suspect, and it's about time somebody did. But ask yourself, how low have we sunk as a country when we're actually surprised that a court has ruled you can't hold someone indefinitely without actually charging him with something?
At least we can revel in the fact that this wasn't the only spanking Ashcroft received this week. The Federal Election Commission has fined him for accepting more than 100 large in illegal campaign contributions in 2000...and yet another honest, moral, upstanding member of Bush's honest, moral, upstanding administration turns out to be a sleaze.
This is an outrage, especially coming from an attorney general, who's supposed to be the legal voice of the entire nation and as such should be held to a higher standard. We need a full investigation, pronto! I want a special prosecutor appointed, and I want a list of 10 names on my desk by five o'clock today! Oh, wait, the Republicans control Congress. Yeah, scratch that last order. How about just a turkey on whole wheat with Swiss, light on the mayo, and we'll call it a day. Sigh.
# Once again back is the incredible Doug at 10:55 AM
Wednesday, December 17, 2003
Andrew Sullivan: Battered-spouse-syndrome poster child of the blogosphere
In bopping around the blog world to see what everyone's been saying about the capture of Saddam Hussein, GWBWYPGN scouted some conservative hot spots like The Corner at NRO and some right-leaning newspapers — this is something we normally don't make a habit of doing for a variety of reasons, but anyway. One blogger/pundit we took a look at, Andrew Sullivan, is someone we see referenced quite often in other blogs; we've not commented on him directly, nor even bothered to pay that much attention to what he says, since so much of it is just your typical rote Bush cheerleading. But today we paid a visit to Sully's "Daily Dish" and felt compelled to comment.
Sullivan, to the best we can discern, is British by birth but has adopted the U.S. as his new home country. He's also a gay man, and a conservative. If you're thinking that a gay Republican is an awful lot like, oh, a Catholic student at Bob Jones University, well, join the club. But there's a deeper — and more pathetic — tinge to Sullivan's conservative rah-rah. Originally we were going to compare him to the high-school geek who desperately tries to be friends with the jocks and cheerleaders even though they do nothing but belittle and disparage him, but we're going deeper, kids. To illustrate our point, here's a bit from today's commentary on Bush's stance toward a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage:
Most of the gay groups have gone ballistic over president Bush's Clintonian statements last night on the Federal Marriage Amendment. I guess I should be clear. I don't believe basic issues of civil rights should be resolved by Clinton-like, almost-impenetrable phrases designed to appease all parties. But I am relieved that the president has essentially refused to endorse the religious right's current effort to amend the Constitution.
Ummm..."essentially refused," Andrew? Here's the Bush quote you cited earlier in your own blog:
"If necessary, I will support a constitutional amendment which would honor marriage between a man and a woman, codify that. The position of this administration is that whatever legal arrangements people want to make, they're allowed to make, so long as it's embraced by the state or at the state level."
Does that sound like "essentially refusing" to you? Bush just said that he would support a Constitutional amendment declaring that marriage is only between a man and a woman. Yet Sullivan goes through a whole paragraph of rationalizations explaining how that's not really what Bush meant, and in the end his statement was just "Clintonian" around-the-bush-beating so that he wouldn't have to come right out and say he doesn't want what the Christian right wants. And while such Clinton-like obfuscation was not OK when Clinton was doing it, Sullivan is actually quite relieved to see it from Bush.
This isn't just a case of the nerd trying to be friends with the jocks. Listen to what Sullivan is really saying here: You're making a big deal out of nothing. He didn't mean it like that. Some people just don't understand him like I do. Sometimes he just gets like that when he's angry. It's my fault, I shouldn't have been nagging him...
In ideological terms, Andrew Sullivan is a battered spouse. The politicians with whom he has elected to align himself treat him like crap, try to deny him some very basic human rights, cozy up to the extremists who preach hate from their pulpits, columns, and TV shows. But he keeps going back. He can't bring himself to leave them. If you keep up with Sullivan's blog, you find that he disagrees with the Republicans on gay rights (obviously), he's realized that Bush's alleged fiscal conservatism is a big fat load of baloney, and he admits that certain members of his chosen party have been driven by out-and-out racism for most of their lives. If he disagrees with them on so much, why does he stay? Because George W. Bush fights terrorists. That's the only thing that Sullivan actually likes about the current GOP that we can see. And that only pushes the metaphor further: He beats me, but it's for my own good. And after all, he protects me from that awful Saddam Hussein guy who lives down the street. I just wouldn't know what to do with myself if George wasn't here. I'd be helpless on my own. And that's why I love him.
We realize that there's probably nothing in here that hasn't been said many times over by dozens of other bloggers. But a lot of people in the liberal blogosphere deride Sullivan as a hack writer, a turncoat to the cause, or worse, and we're not convinced he's any of those things. The only thing Andrew Sullivan is, in our minds, is a profoundly, heartbreakingly pathetic figure. If he were a character in a novel or a film, he'd bring us to tears. We don't hate him; we feel immeasurably sorry for him. Whether that's better or worse is up to you to decide.
Andrew, we realize you'll probably never stumble upon this, but just in case you do: Stop. Just stop what you're doing right now. Don't you realize you can do better than merely being an apologist for a cabal of selfish, homophobic warmongers? That's not all you want, is it? We've had gay (and straight) friends who were in abusive, unhealthy relationships before, and we're giving you the same advice we gave them. Get out. You don't need him.
If you don't, of course, then there's nothing we can do.
# Once again back is the incredible Doug at 2:36 PM
Brain Dump 2: Electric Boogaloo
Funniest post-Saddam-capture image not involving Saddam: This one.
Funniest post-Saddam-capture blog post:This one, from Jim Treacher. If there was a Blog Oscar given out for Best Zinger, the line "I haven't seen Bill O'Reilly this giddy since Kristallnacht" would win it (and all the other nominees would likely come from this same post, too).
Most obvious post-Saddam-capture statement: "But that [Saddam's fate] will be decided not by the president of the United States, but by the citizens of Iraq in one form or another," spoken by George W. Bush. No shit, George. See, here's the thing: Saddam may be a horrible person, but the fact remains he never actually attacked the United States. Not in the first Gulf War, not on 9/11, and not in this latest war, either. And as such, we really don't have much right to prosecute him. The best thing we as an occupying power can do right now is hand him over to the Iraqis — the people he actually attacked and persecuted for the better part of two decades — and let them do with him what they will; if we try to commandeer his prosecution like some sort of overbearing Little League parent ("Oh, here, Iraq, let us help you with that, you really want to hand him over to us and let us lethally inject him, don't you?"), we're playing right into the hands of the radical Muslims worldwide who don't think for one hot minute that we're actually going to let Iraq out from under our collective thumb and become a free, independent country.
Biggest post-Saddam-capture buzzkill: From the same story linked directly above. Now that we've captured Saddam, we can start the process of handing over control of the country to Iraqis and bringing our troops home, right. Oh noooo, as George Costanza would say, the card says Moops! The chairman of the joint chiefs of staff says the soldiers will be in Iraq a minimum of two more years. Two more years! Yes, men in uniform, you get to spend 24 more months deciding which is the lesser of two evils — getting blown up or being subjected to Robin Williams? You're welcome!
Lamest post-Saddam-capture attempt at Vast Liberal Media Conspiracymongering:Kathryn Lopez at NRO. On Bush's recent interview with Diane Sawyer: "I love how the president shows just enough respectful amusement at Diane Sawyer's earnestness in trying to trip him up." See, this is what the right wing means when they talk about the "liberal media": They actually dare to ask conservatives hard questions! Those sonsabitches! If Sawyer was trying to trip up, say, Dean or Clark, then it's Sic 'em, D! But asking George W. Bush anything more probing than What's Your Favorite Color? Outrage! After all, this man is the war hero* who captured Saddam Hussein with his bare hands!
# Once again back is the incredible Doug at 8:39 AM
Tuesday, December 16, 2003
Brain Dump: Gotcha Saddam Edition
Aside from our initial reaction, we haven't posted much on the Saddam capture here, mainly because we were still trying to figure out what to make of it all, and what to say. Well, we now have our first cut-and-dried judgment to make on the whole situation: It's making pretty much everyone act like f***ing toolbags.
By not even bothering to hide their dismay at this important development, a lot of people on the liberal side of the aisle are making the rest of us look like idiots. On the Dean for America blog, "Carrie B" whines, "I can't believe this. I'm crying here. I feel that we now don't have a chance in this election." To which "gg" responds, "I am feeling pretty upset as well. I think our chances are dropping fast." Way to go, guys. Because what's really important is not the fact that we captured an asshole dictator we've been hunting for months, but how it will affect your boy Dean. Really, good show all around.
Then we've got yahoos like Jim McDermott making us look even more stupid by questioning the timing of the capture. Look, if the Bushies were really trying to fit this to an exact timetable, don't you think they would've waited until lots closer to the election? I mean, they're certainly taking their sweet-ass time tracking down Osama bin Laden, and haven't caught all that much flak for it (yet). If it's taken 27 months (and counting) to find bin Laden, what's another 11 to get Saddam? Think, McDermott, think before you make the rest of us look like conspiracy-mongering dorkwads. Better to close your mouth and be thought a fool... etc. etc. etc.
So anyway, those are the first two things that have pissed me off. The third thing that's pissed me off is the fact that I just reread the paragraph on the Dean bloggers and I sound like one of those smug ass jockeys at The Corner on National Review Online. So now it's time for me to lay into them, too.
The Cornerheads, Freepers and the like have been chastising people like "Carrie B" — and rightfully so — for only seeing this in terms of how it will hurt the Democrats. But the right-wingers have demonstrated themselves to be just as shallow: Barely hours had passed after Saddam's capture before they had completely stopped seeing the event as a good thing for the Iraqi people and started seeing it as a good thing for Bush. Because that's who's really important here. Sure, another stepping stone on the road to democracy for the beleaguered Iraqi people, blah blah blah, borrrr-ring! The sooner we get done blathering about those dumb Iraqis, the sooner we can start gushing about how this automatically means four more years for George! Yeah! Party!
Moreover, the tut-tutting done by the Corner folks at people like "Carrie B" was about as disingenuous as it gets, because Jonah Goldberg and Rod Dreher didn't want "Carrie B" to be happy about Saddam's arrest. Just as "Carrie B" didn't want Saddam to get arrested because it would hurt Dean's election prospects, the neocons didn't want the liberals and Deanies to express joy at the news because it would deprive them of the opportunity to say, "Well, look, these traitorous schmucks are sad that we nabbed Saddam." (Or, in language Nedra Pickler would understand: When Dreher bitches about how he can't find any liberal bloggers celebrating the fall of Saddam, he fails to mention that he doesn't want to find any, because then he wouldn't have anything to bitch about.)
Which means, of course, that the very first thing liberals should've done — from the presidential candidates right on down to us humble bloggers — was express our happiness that Saddam was finally hunted down, and congratulate the 4th ID on a job well done. If you look at the majority of the leftie blogs out there — and even at Howard Dean's own statement — you'll see that this is precisely what we did. (Not that we'll ever get credit for it from hacks like Dreher, of course, but people like that see what they want to see, and what serves their own purposes.) Basically, we needed to dare the Bush drones and warhawks to accuse us of not being happy about Saddam's capture; we needed to call their bluff. And most of us did, but a few ill-thought-out comments by a few Dean fans and we're finding ourselves, in a lot of ways, right back on the defensive.
In the end, as momentous an occasion as this is in the short term, it doesn't really change things for either the liberals or the Bush worshippers. Bush's approval ratings have enjoyed the customary spike thanks to Hussein's capture, but even that has been surprisingly small — he's just captured the man who was supposedly an imminent threat to the safety of every man, woman and child in the U.S., and still barely half the people in the country approve of the job he's doing? And over the next few weeks and months, as memory of the arrest fades and the Bush administration is once again left devoid of things to distract the American public from what a lousy job Bush is doing, we'll see that rating drop off at a steady 2-3 percent each month, just like it always does.
So quit getting your culottes in a bunch, Deanheads, and wipe those smug grins off your faces, Bushies. Yes, we're proud that our troops captured Saddam. And if nothing else, maybe the collar will be a sign to the Iraqi people that we're serious as a heart attack about giving them better lives than what they had before (assuming that is Bush's actual sincere goal, as opposed to merely protecting a bunch of oil fields), and that we won't let anything or anybody stand between us and that goal. But there are two important things this development hasn't accomplished: It hasn't made the United States homeland any safer from terrorism, and it hasn't suddenly turned George W. Bush into a good president. He still stinks. And we're still going to kick his ass in '04.
# Once again back is the incredible Doug at 11:10 AM
Monday, December 15, 2003
GWBWYPGN observes Talk Like Nedra Pickler Day
If you're not a regular reader of Atrios, hang your head heavy with shame. You probably don't know, then, that today has been declared Talk Like Nedra Pickler Day in "honor" of the AP reporter we suspect is actually a mole planted by the Extreme Right Wing Cryptofascism Bureau of Fox News.
Oops, but that wasn't phrased like Nedra Pickler would phrase it. Dammit! How about we try this, then:
When people like Rush Limbaugh hold up Nedra Pickler as an example of sterling reporting for supposedly "pointing out errors, mistakes and lies" made by Democrats, they fail to mention that what she is pointing out is generally none of the three.
OK, so that was a good start. Here's another...
When NRO's Rod Dreher snarkily wonders why none of the liberal bloggers are happy about Saddam's capture, he fails to mention that his own colleagues are spending more energy using the capture to taunt Howard Dean and the Democrats than they are being happy about the event itself.
One more and we're done:
When conservatives chide liberals for only thinking about how Saddam's capture will negatively affect their political fortunes, they fail to mention that all they've been thinking of is how good it is for Bush.
# Once again back is the incredible Doug at 3:03 PM
Signed, sealed, delivered, you're dumb: 12 miscapitalizations, 4 mispunctuations, 2 misspellings, 1 grammatical error, and a partridge in a pear tree
Sunday afternoon, our continuing pleas for more hate mail were answered: A gentleman/gentlelady going by the handle loarx32@aol.com sent us the following carefully worded, thought-provoking message.
you are whats wrong w/ this country,your continuious sniffling of world peace and george bush is the problem. if this great country of OURS pains you so much then go to another of your so called peace loving countries.
if your ( peaceful ) country attacks the USA you will get your butt handed to you. thank GOD for this great man george w. bush and not some liberal pussy like gore, clinton or liberman.
Well, first of all, we had no idea we were reaching the grammar-school demographic so well, so this was kind of a big deal for us. But how dare you accuse us of "sniffling world peace," sir/madam! I'll have you know I only sniffled world peace once, it was in the '70s, and I didn't try it again! And your insinuation to the contrary is fightin' words, pal!
Seriously, thanks to loarx32 for this informed and intelligent bit of debate, and we hereby challenge his/her fellow conservatives to step up to the plate and contribute as well — but only if your insights are as trenchant as loarx32's. Wouldn't want to give you guys a bad name by printing the random rantings of a complete idiot, no sir!
# Once again back is the incredible Doug at 8:14 AM
Sunday, December 14, 2003
Before you even start...
One thing conservatives like Ann Coulter love to whine about is how liberals supposedly don't get jazzed up enough about American successes in the war on terror. The Democratic Party didn't send out a press release proclaiming how it was the greatest thing ever when Uday and Qusay Hussein got whacked, and that means they're on the side of the terrorists! So in light of today's capture of Saddam Hussein, we're going to declare our elation before the epithet "Islamofascist" has a chance to escape Coulter's Adam's apple.
Clearly, the capture of Saddam Hussein is a great event. Let's hope it sends a message to the Baathist holdouts in Iraq that our guys don't give up when they're on the hunt, and once the U.S. military is involved, even the most supposedly invincible, ominpotent dictator is just another homeless schmuck with a ZZ Top beard cowering in a cave. Big ups to the 4th Infantry for collaring him -- y'all done good. And this bleeding-heart liberal would like to tell you thanks.
That said...let's keep a couple things in mind here.
> It was the 4th Infantry, not George W. Bush, who captured Saddam. Remember that in case Bush dons another borrowed military uniform to take credit for all of this.
> We thought killing Uday and Qusay would bring the Iraqi resistance to its knees...and it didn't. Any of you guys in the Bush administration thinking about slipping the Navy another "Mission Accomplished" banner to put up on an aircraft carrier? You go right ahead and do that, but the rest of us would do well to avoid any delusions that it's going to be smooth sailing from here on out in Iraq just because Saddam is in our custody. Any Bush statements to the contrary are to be treated with extreme skepticism.
> With his beard removed, Saddam looks kind of like my dad right when he first gets up in the morning and hasn't showered yet. And I don't like it. Not one little bit. Um, OK, focus.
> Some remnant of the old Baathist hierarchy is going to step in to take Saddam's place. So now we gotta find out who that is and get him, too. GWBWYPGN wishes our soldiers luck in this endeavor -- keep kickin' ass, guys.
Buzzkill over; we now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.
Edited to add: Not 12 hours after our soldiers blagged Saddam, we have our first George-Bush-gets-the-credit-sighting. Location: the Green Bay-San Diego game (stop laughing, I was only watching it because it came on right after the conclusion of yet another egg-laying by the Redskins). Green Bay won 38-21, with Brett Favre tossing four TDs. As they were wrapping up, the play-by-play guy said, "A big day for Green Bay, and a big day for the state of Wisconsin." And the color guy felt compelled to add: "And a big day for George W. Bush." Not "a big day for the Iraqi people"; not "a big day for our men in uniform"; not even "a big day for America." A big day for George W. Bush. Try not to have a heart attack when I tell you this commentator was in Fox's employ. Fox: We cheerlead. You heave.
# Once again back is the incredible Doug at 2:30 PM
Saturday, December 13, 2003
George W. Bush: Shaolin Master of Stuff We Already Know
In other news, Bush also implored Americans to get their oil changed every 5,000 miles, and said they should treat others the way they would like to be treated.
I mean, come on! Of course Halliburton should pay back all that money. Why are we even surprised that Bush is making this statement? Answer: Because he's actually addressing a controversy his administration caused. This is newsworthy because the American public somehow didn't let Bush sweep this thing completely under the rug.
Think about it: Bush fails to show up for his air national guard duty in Alabama during Vietnam, nobody says squat. Bush sends a bunch of no-bid contracts to Cheney's homies at Halliburton, nobody says squat. Someone in the Bush administration leaks Valerie Plame to Robert Novak, and Bush shrugs and says he doesn't know if the leaker will ever be found, and nobody says squat. Now Bush has been forced to tacitly admit that some of his administration's pals are sleazier than the bouncer at a north Florida strip club, and that they might owe the government some money...holy crap, he actually wasn't able to weasel his way out of something! That's what makes this story so surprising. Hey, it's progress!
But do you think this experience with Halliburton will make George reconsider his position that reconstruction contracts should only go to those countries that pitched in on the invasion? Oh, bless your heart, you innocent little lamb. Sure, getting financially screwed by our own companies really blows, but as long as it means we're still pissing off the French, it's just a cross we'll have to bear!
# Once again back is the incredible Doug at 8:42 AM
Friday, December 12, 2003
Ann Coulter is a Lousy Writer and She Isn't Even That Hot: Nineteenth in a series
Ann Coulter is a Lousy Writer and She Isn't Even That Hot has seen Her Coulterness call Democrats dishonest, traitorous, Islamofascist, communist, and just about every adjective you can think of. Having evidently exhausted this seemingly endless supply of terms, however, she's throttling back this week and settling for merely stupid. This is a condemnation she brings down upon a surprising portion of the American voting public, but buddy, she'll have you know she has plenty of supporting evidence to back up her hypothesis. First of all, it's obvious voters are stupid because they vote for Democrats! Secondly, they're stupid because they don't vote for Republicans!
It's a weird world Ann lives in, isn't it? When the country throws its support behind George W. Bush, it's because they care about national security and know a strong leader when they see one. But when someone like Clinton or Gore wins the popular vote in an election — and it's happened three times in a row — it's because those same people are idiots who are only looking for handouts from the government! This column is full of such contradictory, obtuse and misleading assumptions about the country's voting habits, but of course you wouldn't expect anything less from the Coultinator. Get your ticket punched and hop aboard this week's craven rant, titled "Vegan Computer Geeks for Dean," but don't bother hoping your journey will take you to a place that makes sense:
The cover story in this week's New York Times magazine described Howard Dean's hardcore support as consisting primarily of impotent nosepickers hoping to make some friends and unsuccessful auditioners for Gap commercials. That is to say, the followers (as opposed to leaders) of tomorrow.
Here's the story, in case you're wondering whether the phrase "impotent nosepickers" appears anywhere in it. The answer: Not so much. Ann Coulter, who whines incessantly about how liberals do nothing but call names and make personal attacks, came up with that little gem all by her lonesome.
Their passion for Dean was aptly summarized by 24-year-old Lauren Popper – the "official representative" at a Dean campaign office one particular night. Though she "broke into tears several times while trying to explain" the allure of the Dean campaign, Popper managed to convey that she was first attracted to Dean based on his policy of having a state social worker visit every new mother in Vermont (not to be confused with the Arkansas policy from the 1980s in which the governor would visit every woman who was hoping to become pregnant).
Ann, your obsession with Bill Clinton is growing increasingly tiresome. Either ask him out already, or shut up about it. Please. This is getting embarrassing.
Not that I'm trying to privatize anything here, but in my home state of Connecticut, a new mother is traditionally visited by her own mother.
Popper added that Dean's becoming president was "a side effect" of the Dean campaign. Cold comfort to the candidate, I imagine. Rather, she said: "This campaign is about allowing people to come together and tell their life stories."
With quotes like that, it's not going to be easy to tone down the Republicans' overconfidence in the coming presidential campaign. But lately I've noticed that a lot of Democrats are comparing inevitable nominee Howard Dean to George McGovern and wearily predicting a landslide for Bush. That's not the fighting spirit we expect from the party that will go to the smallest town in North Dakota to remove the Ten Commandments!
In case you're wondering whether Democrats actually went to "the smallest town in North Dakota to remove the Ten Commandments," again, not so much.
Whenever liberals all start singing from the same hymnal, they are up to no good. (Or since we're talking about American liberals here, maybe I should say, "when they all start reading from the same Quran.")
Ah, yes, the refrain from Ann's own hymnal: All Liberals Are Islamic Terrorists. Not to be confused with All Muslims Are Islamic Terrorists, but props to her for nailing both points in the same paragraph. That took some real intelligence.
I believe the game plan is this: The Democrats will spend the next 11 months ruefully admitting that it's going to be a 50-state landslide for Bush. Republicans will engage in their normal partisan cheerleading, and everyone will seem to be agreed that Bush is going to win a 50-state landslide. Then, if the final tally is anything short of that – if it's a 40-state landslide for Bush – the New York Times will be able to crow about Bush's poor showing and run headlines like: "Americans Still Deeply Divided on War."
Yes, Ann, you've figured out precisely what we want to do. We'd rather "win" a Pyrrhic victory, settling merely for Bush not winning all 50 states, than just get this silver-spoon draft-dodger out of the White House once and for all. We fully expect this last paragraph to show up in the "365 Stupidest Things Ever Said" calendar in the next couple of years.
This is precisely what happened in the 1998 midterm elections. That year, Republicans made history by winning a majority in both Houses of Congress for the third straight time. Just four years earlier, millions of Americans who had never voted Republican in their entire lives did it for the first time. In 1998, they did it a third time. Though Republicans lost five seats in the House, they held their majority. The Democrats half-century stranglehold on the House was over.
The Los Angeles Times headline the next day was typical: "Democrats Exult in Victories as GOP Takes Stock of Losses; Elections: Republicans Retain Control of Congress, But Their Leadership There Is Weakened. Defeats Undercut Impeachment Drive and Reopen Party Divisions."
Well, Ann, considering that the party in the White House almost always loses seats in the off-year elections, and they were doubly hampered by the impending impeachment trial of that nasty President Clinton whom you so confidently state that everyone knows is a lying scumbag, we'd say the fact that the Republicans lost seats to Clinton's party is pretty fricking embarrassing, wouldn't you? Then again, if her Dick Tracy Revisionist History Decoder Ring can turn Tailgunner Joe McCarthy into a hero of democracy, she can probably spin pretty much anything her way as long as she's got enough willingness to thoroughly delude herself.
I suppose it's possible the Democrats' predictions of catastrophe and ruin in the upcoming presidential election are genuine. It is beyond dispute that Howard Dean is a more appalling candidate than George McGovern ever was.
We're at the point now where we giggle like schoolgirls every time Ann Coulter says something is "beyond dispute." Isn't Ann the one who's always bitching and moaning about how Democrats are the ones who want to silence debate and keep opposing viewpoints from being aired? Yet at least once or twice in every column, Ann can be counted on to opine that "everybody knows" this or that, or that said opinion is "beyond dispute." Basically this is her way of saying "I'm taking this for granted because my entire point (to the extent that I have one) rests on it, so don't you dare disagree with me, hippie scum." Such open-mindedness! Such dedication to furthering the cause of informed debate!
McGovern was an authentic war hero in World War II. Howard Dean showed up at the Army recruiting office with a note from his doctor and a fake limp to get out of serving in Vietnam – before repairing to Aspen for several months of skiing. In Dean's defense, I suppose that, technically speaking, "spinelessness" would be considered a debilitating back condition. (According to the New York Times, this is the same as taking off in jets that fly at the speed of sound while training to be a fighter pilot in the Texas Air National Guard.)
So is being a war hero a good thing or isn't it? Pinning down Ann's answer on this is like trying to figure out the BCS. She thinks McGovern was a commie-loving traitor, but can at least admit he's an "authentic war hero"; so it figures she'd like Wes Clark, right? No, he's just "Howard Dean with scarier flashbacks." So if all Vietnam means is "scary flashbacks," then there's absolutely no use for Gen. William Boykin, right? No, he's a heroic defender of Christianity! Dean dodged the draft, which makes him "spineless"; so what about George W. Bush, who didn't show up a single day for his Alabama National Guard duty back in the '70s? Apparently, flying in obsolete jets that were never going to see a day of actual combat makes him Top Gun! And so on and so on.
That last excuse is the most galling of all. Bush logged all of 36 days of active duty in a term with the Texas Air National Guard that was supposed to last six years; meanwhile, not one person in the country has been able to step forward and vouch that George W. Bush actually spent a single day in '72 serving with the air guard in Alabama. But because Bush, previous to that desertion, got just enough flight time in an obsolete aircraft that the Texas air guard took his picture standing next to one, all of a sudden he's a war hero! Make no mistake, folks — Ann and her right-wing buddies may lay into Democrats for every single sin they commit, but all those sins are forgiven as long as you're a Republican. Hell, you can even get rewarded for 'em!
Moreover, the North Vietnamese were savage beasts, but they never attacked America on its own soil. It's a little different to be anti-war now.
And Iraq attacked America on its own soil...when was that again? That nasty liberal New York Times probably didn't even bother to cover it.
But we live in a different country. Apparently, some Americans think choosing the leader of the free world should be a process of people coming together to tell their life stories. (At least that's a step up from the Democrats' 1996 presidential campaign, which, if I remember correctly, was about people telling their stories to grand juries.)
And yet Clinton still won! Boy, how embarrassed are you?
In case Al Gore hasn't called you personally at home in the last 10 minutes to remind you: In the last election, this country gave a slight plurality of the popular vote to Al Gore. A plurality voted for Bill Clinton – twice.
Yes, Ann, but the fact remains, Al Gore got more votes than George W. Bush. Not exactly grounds for a mandate, hmm? Hello? Ann? Are you there? Ann...
But here's another example of an Ann Coulter double standard: When liberals point out that earlier fact about the 2000 election, conservatives smugly reply, "So what, that's the way the electoral college works — deal with it." But the fact that Clinton rocked the electoral vote in two different elections? Means nothing! He only got a plurality of the vote, his hillbilly ass shouldn't even be within a hundred yards of the White House! We're surprised Ann's brain hasn't rent itself in two with all these contradictory thoughts and philosophies constantly at loggerheads with each other.
In the middle of a titanic struggle with a Soviet totalitarianism, this country elected Jimmy Carter president. If that's not enough to keep you up at night, here's one more: Hillary Clinton's "disapproval" rating has yet to reach 100 percent.
Forget landslides: It's a wonder that Republicans ever win any elections at all.
Weirdly enough, we agree with you on this one, Ann.
Consider that approximately 100 million people vote in presidential elections. The total population eligible to vote – including the infirm, the insane, the incapacitated and the bored – is only 180 million strong. And 20 million Americans work for the government. Or at least appear on government payrolls. It gets a little complicated when you're trying to define "work" in the context of a government employee.
Indeed, more Americans work for federal, state or local government than work in any form of manufacturing. We crossed that Rubicon about 10 years ago.
If you're pissed off about the growth of the federal workforce, Ann, send your complaints to the Republican Party. Of the 369,000 federal positions added between 1962 and 2001, 84 percent were added by Republicans — and that doesn't even take into account the massive new bureaucracies George W. has added since taking office.
Admittedly, mixed in with employees in public welfare and housing and community development, there is one lone category of federal employee that tends to vote Republican: the military. That's why George Bush recently flew halfway around the globe to serve them turkey.
Well, at least one conservative is willing to fess up to the real reason Bush went over there: It wasn't to thank the troops, it was because the military votes Republican and Bush wants to make sure they still will. But if the military is such a solidly Republican voting bloc, why'd Bush feel the need to do this? Could it be because he knows many military families are pissed at him for the way he's used and abused the troops practically ever since 9/11, and he's hoping to get back in their good books any way he can?
But according to the 2002 census, there are more civilian employees working for the post office than for national defense or international relations of any kind (829,587 to 680,645). The entire military, both civilian and armed forces, employs fewer than 2 million people.
Meanwhile, there are about 10 million government teachers or other education bureaucrats. (For a profession that is so overworked, undercompensated and undervalued, there sure are a lot of them.)
Then there are the 22 million Americans on food stamps. And of course there are the 39 million greedy geezers collecting Social Security. The greatest generation rewarded itself with a pretty big meal.
Some might consider that last one an inflammatory statement. We don't know quite what to make of it ourselves, so we'll just say Ann doesn't seem to be showing a lot of gratitude to the folks who rid the world of the Third Reich. Then again, transport yourself back to the '30s and try to imagine where Ann Coulter would be standing on the issue of getting involved in World War II. Doesn't take much to picture her siding with the Lindberghs and Father Coughlins who wanted the U.S. to enter the war on the German side, does it?
Still millions more Americans poach off your salary through literally incalculable government largesse, such as government contracts, corporate welfare, and all the bureaucratic quagmires for which there is no exit strategy, like the earned-income tax credit, disability payments and workman's comp.
Yeah, screw those punks who get injured on the job through no fault of their own and still think they still have a responsibility to somehow put food on their family's table. Those commie sons of bitches! (By the way, Ann, we thought this was going to be a screed against Howard Dean — are you going to get back to that, or are we sticking with this tangent? Let us know when you've made up your mind...)
It's interesting how difficult it is to locate information about the number of people living off the taxpayer. The government knows how many Alaskan natives have at least a bachelor's degree and live in a two-bedroom home, but it's impossible to track down precisely how many voters get checks from the government.
If you want that information, Ann, why not call your hero Bush? After all, he's the one who sent out all those $300 and $600 checks in 2001. Oh, but that wasn't a government handout, that was a "stimulus package."
At a minimum, there must be at least 60 million Americans who draw salaries, in whole or in part, from the government. This is based on the assumption that – except for members of the Supreme Court – there is probably very little overlap between government workers and Social Security recipients. Any overlap is surely more than made up for by the various other government payees.
Parse this paragraph out very carefully: After "assuming" that government workers and Social Security recipients don't overlap, and evidently counting government contracts and corporate welfare as "salaries," Ann adds up a bunch of rougher-than-rough estimates for which she offers no attribution and concludes that "there must be" at least 60 million people drawing salaries off the government. Forgive us, but this sounds like Coulterspeak for "I don't have any clue how many people are getting money from the government or how much, so I'm just going to come up with a number big enough to piss people off."
And we just keep getting more and more of them. Even when the private sector is suffering through recessions, job reductions, cutbacks, plant closings, unemployment – the taxpayer is still hiring!
Yeah, and who's responsible for that? Republicans control the executive branch and both houses of Congress, for crying out freakin' loud! When is the right wing going to bite the bullet and admit that George W. Bush and his allegedly "small-government" neocons in Washington have grown the federal government more than Clinton or Gore ever dreamed? (And if they're so ticked off that the private sector is suffering through all those problems, why are they trying to insinuate it's the Democrats' fault when the Dems aren't even the ones in charge?)
Hey, someone's got to process those extended unemployment benefits Ted Kennedy keeps demanding.
Oh, now we get it: It's not really the Republicans who are responsible for the explosion in government spending, it's Ted Kennedy! All by his lonesome, evidently! Boy, he must have some influence up there in D.C. if he can bend the White House and both chambers of Congress to his whim! Better start being nice to him and quit making all those alcoholic jokes, Ann, it sounds like Ted is one powerful dude!
Fortunately, there are some Americans who vote against their base self-interest for the good of the nation. God help us if the Democratic Party ever wavers on its three major planks: abortion, gay marriage and banning the Boy Scouts. (Perhaps they could save a step by figuring out how to automatically abort all future Boy Scouts.)
Now there's a rhetorical leap for you — if abortion and gay marriage are the "major planks" of the Democratic Party, how come it's Republicans wetting themselves with righteous indignation over them and turning them into major campaign issues? The Christian Coalition has done more foaming at the mouth over gay marriage than any Democrat. (And by the way, Ann, can you tell us which bill the Democrats proposed that would've banned the Boy Scouts? Hmm? Anything? Anything at all?...)
Consequently, the Parasite Party starts with a guaranteed 40 percent of the vote. They could run a muskrat for president, they could run a stalk of asparagus, they could run an insane person – in fact that appears to be their plan for next year – and the Democrats would get 40 percent of the vote.
Which is in no way equivalent to lockstep conservatives around the country voting for George W. Bush for no other reason than because he never got a blowjob from an intern. Got it, thanks. (By the way, hope you noticed just now that the woman who wrote a book titled Slander has implied that Howard Dean was insane. If you're scoring at home, that's slander!)
The Democratic Party pays people to vote for big government and then claims wide popularity for its heinous policy prescriptions. Phrased differently: "Americans Still Deeply Divided on War."
OK, so we've finally gotten around to what this column is about: Voters Are Stupid. I mean, that's the only reason they'd vote for this yahoo Howard Dean, right? And that's the only reason they'd vote for these schmuck Democrats when all the Republican candidates are so obviously superior in every way, right? Right?...
Boy, for someone who assails the Democrats for being so highbrow and elitist, Ann sure doesn't have many compunctions about wantonly insulting the majority of the American electorate. Not only are we stupid, we're also greedy and unprincipled, what with all these Democrats "paying" people to vote for big government. (Funny, we'd say sending out sweet little $300/$600 checks comes closer to "paying" for votes than anything the Democrats have done recently, but far be it from us to cast aspersions on our Dear President's motives.) So when is Ann going to get around to mentioning that Republicans have ballooned non-defense-related federal spending by more than 12 percent since Bush took office? Evidently it's going to have to wait for some other column, and some other episode of Ann Coulter is a Lousy Writer and She Isn't Even That Hot, because she sure isn't going to bother to mention it here! Oh well...such is life. If she ever does get around to it, we'll keep you informed! See you next week!
# Once again back is the incredible Doug at 9:14 AM
Thursday, December 11, 2003
'Tis better to give than to receive, bitch!
Christmas is right around the corner, and nobody's more infused with the holiday spirit than the Bush administration. And Bush is spreading the Christmas message far and wide: It's better to give than to receive, and don't you frigging forget it.
So all you wussy-ass European countries who wanted to receive — i.e. have a chance to bid on some of those sweet Iraqi reconstruction contracts that Halliburton and Bechtel found in their stockings — sorry, you get nothing! That's not what Christmas is about! George W. Bush says you should get on board with the giving — i.e. restructuring that $120 billion in Iraqi debt that is now the responsibility of the United States. It's Christmas and that means being generous to your fellow man — so cough it up!
And just to put the finest possible point on Bush's arrogance, there's this statement:
"If these countries want to participate in helping the world become more secure, by enabling Iraq to emerge as a free and peaceful country, one way to contribute is through debt restructuring."
But see, here's the thing: Restructuring that debt doesn't have squat to do with "helping the world become more secure." It's not as if France and Germany would be paying money to equip more troops or build security facilities or even hunt down terrorists in Iraq; all they'd be doing is telling Iraq, and by extension the U.S., that we don't have to pay X amount that we did before. Debt restructuring, then, is all about giving the United States a free pass, and has sod-all to do with world security. Unless Bush means that by having some of that debt taken off our backs, the U.S. will have more money freed up to go buy Joint Strike Fighters the Pentagon doesn't even want, in which case the world might be in some ways more secure. Though the parts of the world with high concentrations of Lockheed Martin employees would be considerably more secure than others.
As for the reconstruction contracts, look, we can admit there's some logic to Bush's to-the-victor-go-the-spoils philosophy with that, but at the same time, we're right now trying to get other countries to pitch in on the grunt work of turning Iraq into a respectable free nation. If he thinks these European countries will want to give us a hand with the hard work when we've summarily denied them a taste of the sweet stuff, he's an idiot. And George, don't try to couch this in terms of "what the U.S. taxpayers expect." I bet if you asked the average American person how he/she thinks the rebuilding juice should be distributed, he/she would tell you he/she doesn't give a damn which country's getting it, as long as the U.S. is getting the best price (remember, we're still running a $376 billion deficit this year, kids). If Halliburton is the only company that's getting to bid on a job, how do we know they're not just jacking the price up as high as they can get away with? (Though do you honestly think Bush and Cheney give a rip if they are?)
Poor James Baker, being sent out on this fool's errand to inform European countries that while they will be barred from participating in rebuilding contracts, we are permitting them to restructure as much Iraqi debt as possible. Merry Christmas, Françoise...now gimme!
# Once again back is the incredible Doug at 12:49 PM
Monday, December 08, 2003
New heights (or depths) of patheticness
That oh-so-heartwarming Thanksgiving Day visit Bush paid to the troops in Iraq just keeps looking sillier and sillier. We already informed you about how the turkey Bush is holding up in that ubiquitous picture from the event was dummied-up and not even intended for the soldiers to eat; now we hear that the soldiers who ate Thanksgiving dinner with the Shrubster were screened and handpicked for the event.
Don't believe us, Bush drones? Here's an article from the Stars and Stripes its ownself. The kicker is that the soldiers were screened and pre-selected "for security reasons." What, because some of 'em had guns? You're confident enough in a guy's patriotism and love of country that you'll send him around the world to get shot at, but he's not good enough to break bread with the prez?
Maybe the administration was afraid somebody in the crowd would actually take a look at Bush's record on military and veterans' issues — or where Bush was when he was supposed to be serving in the National Guard during Vietnam — and take a swing at him. Well, that certainly would've ruined a perfectly good photo op, we have to admit.
# Once again back is the incredible Doug at 3:54 PM
