The Doctor Endorses

Hunter S. Thompson has some things to say about presidential politics and John Kerry:

Back in June, when John Kerry was beginning to feel like a winner, we had a quick rendezvous on a rain-soaked runway in Aspen, Colorado, where he was scheduled to meet a harem of wealthy campaign contributors. I told him that Bush's vicious goons in the White House are perfectly capable of assassinating Nader and blaming it on him. His staff laughed, but the Secret Service men didn't. Kerry suggested I might make a good running mate, and we reminisced about trying to end the Vietnam War in 1972.

That was the year I first met him, at a riot on that elegant little street in front of the White House. He was yelling into a bullhorn and I was trying to throw a dead rat over a black-spike fence and on to the President's lawn. We were angry and righteous in those days, and there were millions of us. We kicked two chief executives out because they were stupid warmongers. We conquered Lyndon Johnson and we stomped on Richard Nixon - which wise people said was impossible, but so what? It was fun. We were warriors then, and our tribe was strong like a river. That river is still running. All we have to do is get out and vote, while it's still legal, and we will wash those crooked warmongers out of the White House.

Amen. Thanks to Rex Saxi for the link.

Bush Supporters

Still disconnected from reality, alas:

"Jesus! Jesus!" screamed 26-year-old Joe Robles, pointing to his Bush-Cheney sign. "The man stands for God," he said of the president. "We want somebody who stands for Jesus. I always vote my Christian morals." Robles, a student at Ohio State University, told me that Kerry's daughter is a lesbian. I said I thought that was Dick Cheney's daughter, but he shook his head no with confidence.

Robles said that Kerry would make it illegal for preachers to say that marriage should only be between a man and a woman. In California, he informed me gravely, such preaching has been deemed a hate crime, and pastors who indulge in it are fined $25,000, which "goes to lesbians."

Look behind you, Mr. President. These are the people you're leading.

Jawboning Away Your Tax Exemption

We might have fewer worries about putting enough cops and firefighters on the street after collecting taxes on all that property and income controlled by the Catholic Church nationwide once its tax exemption is revoked for remarks like this:

It's unusual, unheard of even, for a Catholic bishop to explicitly endorse a candidate for public office. But in his closing prayer at the convention, Gracida cast the appearance of nonpartisanship aside. He called on the Almighty to help the delegates "achieve the election of George W. Bush as president of this great nation."

Message to Catholic bishops:
You can endorse candidates, or you can be a tax exempt organization. Better pick one before the IRS sees a nice juicy target to help close that budget deficit. And while you're deciding on that, have a look at the just war doctrine your Church was once so keen on.

Draft Notice

There's a lot of heat being generated around the notion that the Democrats are pushing a military draft. Back in January of 2003, Charles Rangel (D-NY) did indeed introduce a bill that would have reinstated the draft. It languished in Congress until the other side of aisle needed to make some fast political hay as the bad news from Iraq became too shrill to paper over at the wrong time in the election cycle. So, for those folks who are trying to scare the crap out of young voters by telling them that Democrats are in favor of the draft because Charles Rangel thought he should make a point about war and the military, we at Boring Diatribe invite them to have a look at the reasoning behind the bill here.

Kafka Goes To Iraq

A kid from New Zealand with more ideals than brains shows up in Iraq and gets taken into custody for, you know, looking foreign. Thanks to him, we get an inside view of even more idiocy in the rollicking barrel of laughs I'm coming to think of as the 51st state:

When Andreas Schafer was released from a prison in Iraq earlier this year, the Iraqi police apologized abjectly for having inconvenienced him for three months. They made sure he knew that if ever he wanted to get back at the arresting officer by, say, slaying the man's brother, it would be all right by them. And he could expect not to be prosecuted for the crime.
....
And even the translator exhibited some staggeringly incompetent interrogation tactics. "He said to me, 'I'm going to write something here in Arabic, and you're going to tell me what it says.'" Schafer replied that he did not speak Arabic. The translator belted out a triumphant "Aha!" and asked how Schafer knew the word was Arabic, rather than Persian or Urdu, both of which use a similar script. "You told me it was Arabic," Schafer said. Later the translator yelled a word in Arabic and looked for traces of comprehension on Schafer's face. Schafer again told him that he did not speak Arabic. One more triumphant gotcha later, he asked again how Schafer knew the shout was Arabic. Schafer pointed out that they were, after all, in Iraq

"They didn't know the languages. They didn't know the culture at all, and you could see it just from the way they presented themselves around Iraqis," Schafer says. The failing most relevant to Schafer was the Americans' failing of imagination. "They cannot imagine that someone would come to a country less pleasant than their own, unless they're invading it or have got a really good job."

And he's from a country that's part of the Coalition of the Willing. Thank heaven he wasn't French.

Knock 'em Dead, Kid

Chelsea Clinton's out on the stump for Kerry. I'm hoping this is just the beginning of a long, excrutiating campaign of cold revenge against Rush Limbaugh for insulting a little girl because she happened to be the president's daughter.

Eyewitness

As much as I fault Michael Moore's work for the obvious tractionless stunts and his tendency to get hung up on issues wide of the mark, I'm glad he's putting some of the money I've dropped on his films to good use.

Al Qaeda Draft

Defective Yeti has the scoop on the rumors.

Blithering Incompetence

377 tons of high explosives missing? Hah! Try 250,000 tons. Has there ever been an American administration more criminally negligent in the prosecution of war than this one? How do these idiots get away with putting our soldiers hipdeep in danger, supplying the mortal foe we help recruit every day with highly effective weaponry? I opposed this misbegotten war from the outset, but if you're going to invade a country on trumped-up falsfied evidence, in the name of all the families you're asking to make sacrifices for your private little dirty war, DEVOTE THE PROPER RESOURCES to secure the war zone.

Out on the stump, Bush's recent remarks conjure an alternative Kerry presidency that would have left these NOW MISSING weapons in the hands of Saddam Hussein's regime, with the possibility that those weapons might have fallen into the hands of Al Qaeda, and then he forgets to mention that HIS ADMINISTRATION CAUSED IT TO HAPPEN. Is there no limit to the cognitive dissonance of Bush supporters? For God's sake, OSAMA BIN LADEN IS STILL RECORDING THREATENING TAPES THREE YEARS AFTER SEPTEMBER 11th, 2001.

On Tuesday, vote for John Kerry, because a soldier might have a little more sympathy for our men and women in the field, giving them what they need to turn around the unremitting catastrophe the Bush administration has created in Iraq. And hey, maybe capture the guy who helped kill 3000 of our fellow citizens.

Step out of the way, kids. It's time for a grown up to clean up your bloody mess.

Blame the Troops

Rudolph Giuliani, whore.

"Flooded With Blood"

You may remember Farnaz Fassihi as the Wall Street journal reporter whose private e-mail sent home from Iraq was circulated on the Internet, giving many a glimpse of a journalist's life in the war zone that Dick Cheney refers to as a "remarkable success". The Columbia Journalism review has published further diary entries by Ms. Fassihi.

Kill Them Until They Are Free

There is no such entity as the Iraqi people. There are only individual Iraqis, with particular lives that end in particular ways. One flower from the ill-smelling bouquet of Iraqi invasion back-justifications offered by George W. Bush was this assertion:

And one thing is for certain; there won't be any more mass graves and torture rooms and rape rooms.

I won't belabor the obvious point that the Abu Ghraib scandal demonstrated that torture rooms weren't the exclusive province of Saddam Hussein. Some Americans, including Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, thought they were a fine idea. Another back-justification, offered in response by some to certain private boring diatribes, has been that more Iraqis are alive today than would be if Saddam Hussein were still controlling the portion of Iraq not governed by the Kurds.

There's no argument against the notion that Saddam Hussein was a oppressive thug whose forces probably accounted for 300,000 murders of Iraqis during his 24 year reign in Iraq. He racked up a shameful, criminal record during his rule, which, I am heartsick to note, the United States is striving to match:

PARIS, Oct. 28 - An estimated 100,000 civilians have died in Iraq as a direct or indirect consequence of the March 2003 United States-led invasion, according to a new study by a research team at the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.

100,000 Iraqis in a year and a half. Our technological and military prowess is enabling us to kill Iraqis at more than 5 TIMES THE RATE that Saddam Hussein managed while he was in power.

There is often an unspoken notion apparent in justifications for the Iraqi invasion that boils down to "to make an omelet, you have to break a few eggs." 100,000 of those eggs aren't getting a better life out of the United States' invasion of Iraq. They're dead. We killed them. Combatants, non-combatants, women, children, indiscriminately victims of our "surgical" air strikes. And whether or not the rest of the surviving populace in Iraq someday gains a better life from this intervention 100,000 Iraqis are dead because our own gang of thugs in Washington D.C. couldn't be bothered to allow solutions that were working to continue to work.

God help us.

Texas Tea

I had an interesting conversation this past weekend with my friend Clarity (not his real name) concerning oil, China, India, industrialization, and energy. By now most everyone knows that oil prices are climbing only in small measure due to political instability in the Middle East (read: Iraq). The real story is that oil is a finite resource, and the means of extracting it are reaching capacity. In fact, there is some speculation in the minority that Saudi Arabia's oil fields may not possess the vast reserves they're purported to have. Be that as it may, the world is rapidly closing in on the maximum capacity of practical oil extraction and refinement while the curve of growing demand from India and China is starting to resemble the profile of a ski-jump. Commodities 101 tells you that price hikes -- permanent, structural price hikes -- in oil are here to stay.

Or are they? Certainly, if the classic path toward industrialization is taken by the world's poorer, more populous nations. But, unlike Western nations, other areas of the globe do not have a heavy investment in the energy infrastructure racing to become obsolete. Cell phones spread rapidly in Africa because a wireless network is easier to deploy than a network of poles and cables. Similarly, what if the United States were to aid poorer nations in creating the next generation of energy infrastructure (hydrogen? wind? solar? geothermal? tidal?), experimenting in laboratories the size of nations to perfect the techniques for a world with no need to burn fossil fuels for energy?

The Bush administration, hamstrung by its short-sighted crony capitalism, can't see past the next quarter's profits for their friends in the oil business, and are running down the clock for America's energy needs. If America attempts to gain control of a considerable portion of the world's oil, the endeavor may help extend the life of the local oil-based economy, but the sequestering of this world resource may force other nations to leapfrog the United States into new, renewable, efficient energy technologies, leaving the United States to scrabble in the oil-soaked dust of a clean future's passage.

The time for a new Manhattan project for energy is now. A world with no overwhelming need for oil is a world where United States foreign policy isn't hijacked into deserts to battle with thugs to install friendlier thugs. The world abounds in unharnessed energy. It's time to figure out how to grab hold of it, and help 2 billion people industrialize on the basis of cleaner, sustainable energy sources before their investment in yesterday's resources becomes a drag on the world economy.

We harnessed a continent. We went to the Moon. We have among us the smartest, most capable, most creative people on Earth. We're Americans. Let's bring a better future to the less fortunate that surround us, and in so doing, secure our own.

Travel Plans

Reductio has speculated in his postings and comments that Rumsfeld and other Bush administration officials might want to watch their backs in foreign nations, since any government has the right to prosecute crimes against humanity. It seems like the first salvo was fired today, in a civil filing in Great Britain:

The action was brought by the so-called Tipton three -- Shafiq Rasul, Asif Iqbal and Rhuhel Ahmed -- and Jamal al-Harith from Manchester, England. All deny links or involvement in terrorism. The lawsuit alleges that the Britons were "repeatedly struck with rifle butts, punched, kicked and slapped. They were short-shackled in painful stress positions for many hours ... causing deep flesh wounds and permanent scarring. Plaintiffs were also threatened with unmuzzled dogs, forced to strip naked, subjected to repeated forced body-cavity searches, intentionally subjected to extremes of heat and cold for the purpose of causing suffering."

The lawsuit claims the mistreatment was "in plain violation" of the U.S. Constitution, federal law and its international treaty obligations. The Britons say the highest levels of the U.S. government are to blame for their torture: "It was the result of deliberate and foreseeable action taken by defendant Rumsfeld and senior officers to flout or evade the U.S. Constitution ... law ... treaty obligations and long established norms of customary international law."

The expected the defense against these charges is sickeningly misguided:

The U.S. government is expected to try to get the case thrown out or to argue that the actions of senior officials are immune from prosecution because the U.S. was "at war" after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Under no circumstances -- repeat, NONE -- is torture legal. None, kids. Zero, zip, nada. That's not my opinion, that's the law:

No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat or war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture.

I know the Bushies have only the faintest idea that the United States HAS a constitution (deigning to notice only when they want to amend it to score political points with the Religious Right) but if they ever get around to reading the document, they might find out that Congress declares war, not the President. And they haven't. The "War on Terror" isn't a war, it's a metaphor, and where that metaphor might play well in Peoria, I suspect foreign courts will take a dim view when lawyers try to claim this duck is an eagle.

Memo to the Bush crowd: Augusto Pinchet cooled his heels in a British jail for months when Spain indicted him for crimes against humanity. The Spanish? Not your friends right now. You might want to reconsider any post-election travel plans to anywhere not ruled by a puppet thug.

The Boss

Jimmy Carter once referred to Bob Dylan as an "authentic American voice", and it's impossible to argue with the assessment. But for us at Boring Diatribe, its always been Bruce Springsteen who's voiced our dreams with his tales of growing up in the working class, and trying to keep a spark of hope alive inside the blackest despair. Here's what he's saying on the Vote For Change tour:

We remain a land of great promise but we need to move America towards the fulfillment of the promises that she has made; economic justice, civil rights, protection of the environment, a living wage, respect for others, and humility in exercising our power at home and around the world. These are not impossible ideals, they are achievable goals with a strong leadership and the will of a vigilant and informed American people. These core issues of America's identity are what's at stake on Nov. 2nd.

I believe that Senator Kerry and Senator Edwards understand these important issues and are prepared to help our country move forward. America is not always right -- that is a fairytale we tell our children. As John Edwards said, struggle and heartbreak will always be with us. America is not always right, but America always should be true and it is in seeking her truths, both the good, and the bad, we find a deeper patriotism, a more authentic experience as citizens, and we find the power that is embedded only in truth to change our world for the better. That is how our soul as a nation and as a people is revealed. And it is what we are fighting for on Nov 2nd.

So, we've got some work to do between now and election day. If you share our concerns find the best way to express yourself, roll up your sleeves and do it.

Remember the country we carry in our hearts is waiting.

We couldn't have said it better, Boss.

Mugging Grandma

Some Republicans have sunk to a new low. Is it it any wonder that people get disgusted with politics when GOP operatives will bilk your grandmother out of more money than she can afford?

Many of the top donors were in their 80s and 90s. The donors wrote checks — sometimes hundreds and, in at least one case, totaling more than $100,000 — to groups with official sounding-names such as "Republican Headquarters 2004," "Republican Elections Committee" and the "National Republican Campaign Fund."

But all of those groups, according to the small print on the letters, were simply projects of the College Republicans, who collected all of the checks.

And little of the money went to election efforts.

Of the money spent by the group this year, nearly 90 percent went to direct-mail vendors and postage expenses, according to records filed with the Internal Revenue Service.

Some of the elderly donors, meanwhile, wound up bouncing checks and emptying their bank accounts.

Some of us here at Boring Diatribe have grandmothers, and some of them have been taken by scumbuckets like this. Have a look at this murderers' row of alumni:

The group has been a starting place for many prominent conservatives, including Bush adviser Karl Rove, anti-tax activist Grover Norquist and former Christian Coalition executive director Ralph Reed.

Apparently someone over at the College Republicans had a twinge of conscience before drowning that inconvenience in the bathtub:

The board debated the fund-raising practices after the family of an elderly Indiana woman with Alzheimer's disease demanded that her donations be returned. The woman's family said it had sent a registered letter asking that she be taken off the mailing list, but the solicitations continued.

Only after a newspaper reported on the story did the College Republicans refund $40,000 to the family, according to Jackie Boyle, one of the woman's nieces.

"I think this is a nationwide scam," Boyle said on hearing of recent complaints. "They're covering the whole country ... they need to be investigated."

Ya think?

They're cheating senile old ladies. If people ask you why you're voting Democrat this time around, tell them, "I don't think John Kerry will mug my grandmother."

Bricks and Bats

I have to admit, that when I heard the news Reductio writes about in his "Jim Crow" post, all I could think about was this quote from that Frenchman, Woody Allen, in his film, Manhattan:

Has anybody read that Nazis are gonna march in New Jersey? Y'know, I read this in the newspaper. We should go down there, get some guys together, y'know, get some bricks and baseball bats and really explain things to them.

There's going to be about 3600 "challengers" (the new term for "hired goons") in Ohio on Tuesday. not that anyone inclined to boringly diatribe would ever encourage illegal activity, but it makes a liberal editor think.

Jim Crow is alive and well in the evil heart of the Republican party

I used to think that the current administration represented the evil fringe of the Republican party, but with the RNC's full court press to criminally disenfranchise voters, I am now convinced that the mainstream party leaders are principally evil.

It is not enough to have the secretary of state in Florida come up with another "felon list" to deny thousands of eligible minority voters the right to vote. It was not even enough to hire con men to portray voter registration drive employees, and instead illegally tear up democrat registrations, to further illegally deny the vote to eligible Americans. Now the RNC has hired thousands of thugs to disrupt voting in minority districts in Ohio with voter challenges.

It is imperative for the future of freedom and democracy that these evil criminals do not succeed. Which is why I exhort all readers of Boring Diatribe to help vote the rascals out, and further I implore the next non-evil administration to prosecute these lawless opponents of freedom and democracy to the fullest extent of the law.

Rights

There's been much talk since the release of the Abu Ghraib photographs about the protections offered by the Geneva Conventions, and who is eligible to enjoy those protections in American custody. This article in the New York Times yesterday explores yet another Bush administration legal opinion that discovers daylight between American prisoners and their rights.

America shouldn't need a convention or a treaty or an agreement to tell us how to treat prisoners. Common decency should dictate that prisoners will have their rights, as alluded to in our Declaration of Independence, and as enumerated in our Constitution, recognized and protected in captivity.

Undoubtedly, there will be carping about how the Constitution protects American citizens, not America's enemies, purported and actual, and perhaps, in legal circles, this conclusion is well justified. But in the words of the great Walt Kelly, through his proxy Pogo, "law and justice ain't always compatible".

The spirit of America's founders breathes most vitally in the idea that rights are not granted, but that they inhere in the individual. Rights can be recognized or violated, but they are not to be trifled with, casually discarded for the needs of the moment. The founders recognized rights during wartime, when the nation struggled to be born, when every act of independence was treason, meriting the bloodiest penalties the English crown could devise.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights. These words rang out across the Earth in a time of peril for a nascent America, and America makes itself smaller and meaner with every incremental step away from the promise she once held out: that there is a place on Earth, and a people, who believe that no one can be justly stripped of his rights, a place where might must bow to right, a state of liberty to which the rest of the world can aspire.

With every prisoner denied the rights recognized and protected by our Constitution, America pounds one more nail into the coffin of those aspirations. I call upon all our citizens to repudiate the men who would take the shining beacon of this country and conceal it beneath a bushel crafted of fear.

Greed Gives, Greed Takes

Those of you follow stories of corporate governance (remember, our title includes the word "boring") may remember a story from 1995 about the destruction by fire of three manufacturing facilities owned by Malden Mills. This might have just been another story of hundreds of people losing their jobs to a terrible accident, if it wasn't for the owner, Aaron M. Feuerstein, who not only declared his intention to rebuild an improved plant, but also to keep all his workers on salary while he did it. The financial strain on the company proved too great, as this snarky story from Fox noted, sending Malden Mills into Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. GE Capital rode to the rescue, investing in Malden Mills and taking control from Mr. Feuerstein. This might have been a story of good intentions at the expense of good business, but now Mr. Freuerstein wants to buy back the company, at a decent return to GE Capital, and the story is turning into one of bad intentions at the cost of good business:

MR. FEUERSTEIN said his offer for the company would keep all of its jobs in Massachusetts and New Hampshire, but Mr. Orlofsky does not appear to have the same commitment. In a letter he wrote in August 2003 to the Export-Import Bank of the United States, he said the current owners would probably move "a substantial part of Malden's operations overseas over the next several years.'' The company has contracted with a plant in Asia to make fleece products.

Everyone, it seems, is puzzled by GE's refusal to sell. Since the company's out of bankruptcy, internal financial details are unavailable, so maybe there's a sound business decision here. Still, given the recent spectacle over at the Sinclair Broadcast Group of a management team striving to make a political point in spite of their business interests, is it possible that GE Capital is doing the same thing?

Thanks to The Secretary for calling our attention to this story in the Sunday NY Times.

The Job

There's been some talk about John Kerry's supposedly lackluster record in the Senate, but here at Boring Diatribe, that's made us more suspicious of lazy journalists than Kerry's record. Salon has an excellent piece today about how John Kerry, as a freshman senator, connected the dots to show how Reagan's contras were financed with money and materials from cocaine traffickers:

The Reagan administration did everything it could to thwart Kerry's investigation, including attempting to discredit witnesses, stonewalling the Senate when it requested evidence and assigning the CIA to monitor Kerry's probe. But it couldn't stop Kerry and his investigators from discovering the explosive truth: that the Contra war was permeated with drug traffickers who gave the Contras money, weapons and equipment in exchange for help in smuggling cocaine into the United States. Even more damningly, Kerry found that U.S. government agencies knew about the Contra-drug connection, but turned a blind eye to the evidence in order to avoid undermining a top Reagan-Bush foreign policy initiative.

Perhaps this isn't quite as damning as selling weapons to a mortal enemy to finance your proxy war but -- oh, wait, the Reagan administration did that too. But I digress.

Some senators use their staffs to explore burning questions such as whether UFOs are connected to the Second Coming, but others, like Henry Waxman and John Kerry, use taxpayer dollars to make sure that the executive branch is doing its job. That's called oversight, and it's the job of Congress, but only some senators feel a need to take this function seriously, and Kerry's one of them.

This isn't the only major investigation to Kerry's credit. If you don't remember the scandal surrounding the Bank of Credit and Commerce International, it's because the bank's dealings were too intricate for most of the aforementioned lazy journalists to follow, but, in essence, John Kerry, again in the face of institutional inertia and resistance, managed to unravel a massive international money-laundering operation whose clients were drug traffickers, terrorists and -- hold on to your hats, kids -- Saddam Hussein, back when he was our thug in Iraq.

Why doesn't Kerry talk about these accomplishments? Maybe because no hero thinks he deserves the title. As far as he's concerned, he was just doing his job.

Second Thoughts

I already voted. Darn it.

Feeling Safer

...while allowing the weapons to roam free. When the United States secured Baghdad, the priorities of the occupying force have become legendary. While looters cleaned out other government offices, museums, shops, and pretty much took hold of anything not bolted down, the Iraqi Oil Ministry was heavily guarded by American troops, sending just the right signal to cynical Arabs certain the US had invaded to seize the second-largest oil reserve on the planet.

Meanwhile, while a whole lot of paperwork was well protected, the occupying force allowed 380 tons of powerful explosives to vanish just after the invasion. Was anyone else wondering where all the explosives used by the insurgency were coming from? I admit, I had assumed that guerilla chemists were cooking up batches of explosives out of consumer products, but a little more attention to the magnitude of the attacks should have clued me in to the idea that they had a better source.

So, here we have, arguably, some real live weapons of, at least, impressive destructive power, at a site monitoredby the IAEA for years -- got that? Years! -- before the invasion , internationally known to be the repository of high-grade explosives, and the bright lights over at the Pentagon and this criminally negligent adminstration fail to secure them as a first priority, post-invasion.

The International Atomic Energy Agency publicly warned about the danger of these explosives before the war, and after the invasion it specifically told United States officials about the need to keep the explosives secured, European diplomats said in interviews last week. Administration officials say they cannot explain why the explosives were not safeguarded, beyond the fact that the occupation force was overwhelmed by the amount of munitions they found throughout the country.

American citizens feel safer with this bungling crew of incompetents? How many Iraqis and coalition soldiers have already been killed with this stuff? How many more will die because this adminstration couldn't be bothered to pay attention to anything other than future oil profits for its corrupting constituency?

Meanwhile Condi Rice -- remember her, National Security Adviser? -- is out on the stump in battleground states peddling the Bush Administration's snake oil. Hey, chaotic Iraq to Ms. Rice: Get your ass back to DC and try doing your job. Or, wait, better idea, resign and let a grown-up take over.

Fetal Mistake

There's an old saying that Republicans will care for you right up until the moment you're born. In typical fashion, the law of unintended consequences is once again slapping around the faith-based Bush administration by taking all their sanctimonious piety about abortion and countering it with cold, hard, inconvenient facts. That's right, folks, the quantity of abortions has gone UP under the Bush Administration, reversing a decade-long trend, which, I hasten to point out, was largely under the aegis of the Godless Clinton administration. An excerpt:

What does this tell us? Economic policy and abortion are not separate issues; they form one moral imperative. Rhetoric is hollow, mere tinkling brass, without health care, health insurance, jobs, child care, and a living wage. Pro-life in deed, not merely in word, means we need policies that provide jobs and health insurance and support for prospective mothers.

Glen Stassen is the Lewis B. Smedes Professor of Christian Ethics at Fuller Theological Seminary, and the co-author of Kingdom Ethics: Following Jesus in Contemporary Context, Christianity Today's Book of the Year in theology or ethics.

Can these neoconservative morons get anything right? They prattle on about security, and family values, and the importance of pro-life beliefs, and every day, the world gets more dangerous, more working families fall into poverty, and they can't even take advantage of a trend they purportedly would like to see continue without helping to reverse it.

Can they touch anything without turning it to lead?

Thanks to The Angler for the link.

Hard Sell

Over on Dohiyi Mir, Ntodd's letting it rip:

If you are still undecided about whom you're voting for at this point, you are a fucking idiot.
If you are a Bush supporter, you are a fucking idiot and clearly hate America.

Look, I know if I'm trying to convince you to vote for Kerry I should be all nice and empathetic and try to find commonality and all that, but I'm fresh out of diplomacy and patience. All the same, I hope my reasonable conservative readers (you know who you are) will join me in giving our country a chance for a fresh start: vote for Kerry, damn it (yup, I graduated first in my class from the "Buy It, Asshole" School of Sales and Marketing).

War Crime

In case Reductio cares to unburden himself of one of his private Boring Diatribes concerning the Bush administration's sponsorship of war crimes, but can't be bothered to link in all the supporting evidence, I offer this Washington Post story. While I've been known to accuse the Bush administration of war crimes in Iraq, this time it's Bush's Justice Department implicitly leveling the accusation.

Gentle Voice

For those of you who tire of relentlessly bitter Boring Diatribes, we at the nerve center of all that is bitterly liberal would like to recommend a gentler voice, friend to the staff at Boring Diatribe and occasional contributor of comments, Rex Saxi, who can also be found on our BlogWatch feature. If you'd like a glimpse of the steel hand of resolve within the velvet glove of pacifism, you need look no farther.

Unconservative Estimate

It's been the thesis of many private Boring Diatribes, both written and verbal over the past two years, that George W. Bush is not a conservative, by any stretch of the definition. Scott McConnell's fine essay on the subject for The American Conservative assembles the case succinctly. A thanks to World on Fire for putting the crack staff of Boring Diatribe on the story.

Bush has behaved like a caricature of what a right-wing president is supposed to be, and his continuation in office will discredit any sort of conservatism for generations. The launching of an invasion against a country that posed no threat to the U.S., the doling out of war profits and concessions to politically favored corporations, the financing of the war by ballooning the deficit to be passed on to the nation’s children, the ceaseless drive to cut taxes for those outside the middle class and working poor: it is as if Bush sought to resurrect every false 1960s-era left-wing cliché about predatory imperialism and turn it into administration policy. Add to this his nation-breaking immigration proposal—Bush has laid out a mad scheme to import immigrants to fill any job where the wage is so low that an American can’t be found to do it—and you have a presidency that combines imperialist Right and open-borders Left in a uniquely noxious cocktail.
...
Bush has accomplished this by giving the U.S. a novel foreign-policy doctrine under which it arrogates to itself the right to invade any country it wants if it feels threatened. It is an American version of the Brezhnev Doctrine, but the latter was at least confined to Eastern Europe. If the analogy seems extreme, what is an appropriate comparison when a country manufactures falsehoods about a foreign government, disseminates them widely, and invades the country on the basis of those falsehoods? It is not an action that any American president has ever taken before. It is not something that “good” countries do. It is the main reason that people all over the world who used to consider the United States a reliable and necessary bulwark of world stability now see us as a menace to their own peace and security.

The Math

Iraq has a population of about 22 million people. Sadr City, often the center of the anti-occupation insurgency, has a population of about 2.3 million people. You do the math. (The second link sneaks in some good news.)

Talk is Cheap. War is Hard.

After the action in Kosovo concluded, American General Shalikashvili had occasion to comment on that intervention. As an exercise for the reader, I recommend substituting "Saddam Hussein" for "Serbia", "Iraq" for "Kosovo", and "Bush" for "Clinton" for a serviceable commentary on the current strategic situation in Iraq. Shalikashvili's sometimes prescient words are also sometimes tragically misguided, as when he estimates the future political thinking on foreign interventions by the United States.

The Clinton administration faced the intervention in Kosovo as a question of whether the United States would intervene and whether we would permit Serbia to retain sovereignty over Kosovo. It failed to ask the more important question of whether the United States and its allies had the military power in place to achieve its political ends, and whether the amount of military power required should be spent in a place like Kosovo. The United States simply assumed, without the meticulous analysis required, that it had the needed power. It did not. Thus, the decade begun in Kuwait ends in the skies over Serbia. No American government will, in the near future at least, simply assume that it has the military power needed to impose its will. This is, obviously, a healthy lesson to learn. There is a vast difference between being the greatest military power in the world and omnipotence. The United States rules the seas and can, wherever it chooses, rule the skies. This is not the same as being able to compel other nations to capitulate on matters of fundamental national importance. It must always be remembered that demographics never favor intervention in Eurasia. American ground forces are always outnumbered whenever they set foot in Eurasia. Sometimes air and naval superiority along with superior technology and training can compensate for this demographic imbalance. Sometimes it cannot. Sometimes it can compensate only after a build-up taking many months, as in Desert Storm. The casual assumption that the general superiority of U.S. military power inevitably translates into quick victory in any specific circumstance is obviously wrong and the point has been finally driven home. We would be very surprised if the Clinton Administration attempted another humanitarian intervention after Kosovo.
Indeed, one of the lessons learned by all future administrations is that interventions should never be casually undertaken until, and unless, the military is given time to plan and implement the intervention, as Bush permitted in Desert Storm. Moreover, since the implementation of an intervention in Eurasia is always costly and time-consuming, what appeared to be a good idea at first glance, might well turn out to be a very bad idea in the long run. Merely wanting to do something does not mean that something can be done. Moral obligations are easy to assume. They are sometimes impossible to carry out. This is a hard lesson to learn. Put differently, talk is cheap.War is hard.

Press Gangs

During the Napoleonic wars, Britain the faced the imminent threat of invasion from a subjugated Europe with only two advantages: the English channel, and the unmatched Royal Navy to defend it. An attack could have come from many quarters, and so the British undertook a naval blockade of Europe, a commitment that required a vast pool of manpower to keep the requisite ships under sail.

Britain granted Royal Navy officers wide lattitude to sweep up the idle, the unemployed, the pettily criminal, and the just plain unlucky to be "pressed" into service aboard British war vessels. The times were desperate and the measures arose to match them. Britain remained free of Napolean's dominance, and it was thanks to a large segment of the British populace serving involuntarily to defend their nation.

It's time to take both candidates to task for idiotically promising that neither of them would impose a draft on the nation. When a million starving North Korean soldiers mass on the border and start eyeing Seoul like a hot meal, that's not the time for the US Government to issue a "pretty please" to the populace to find the soldiers to defend a longtime US ally.

Here at Boring Diatribe, we're not big fans of the draft, but we are devoted disciples of realism. The insurgency in Iraq, now anywhere from 5000 to 20,000 Iraqia strong, is having no trouble keeping 133,000 of our troops occupied, and the conflict could easily absorb another 100,000 American soldiers, the level of commitment senior military officers predicted as a requirement to prevent this Middle Eastern Adventure of the Bush Administration from transforming into the unqualified catastrophe it has become.

Assuming a mobilization of available American troops from other friendly and currently unthreatened nations, coupled with an ill-advised move to eat the Army's seed corn, it might be possible to raise troop deployments in Iraq to a level sufficient to make headway against the rebellion. Until then, the numbers above show us that one Iraqi insurgent can keep anywhere from 5 to 25 American soldiers pinned down in a miserable war whose aims have become as murky as its constantly-shifting justifications.

Meanwhile, the American military can do little to suppress the exploding poppy production in Afghanistan, worth an estimated 2.3 billion dollars to criminals and associated terrorists, Iran is racing to follow North Korea's example to aquire the only known surefire method of staving off an invasion by a superior military, and United States Army is straining to equip and fortify even the troops it already has fielded.

No candidate for president should ever promise to avoid a draft or a hike in taxes. Both promises telegraph to anyone capable of doing math the limits of American commitment to a cause. Don't vote for John Kerry or George Bush because either says he'll keep the military an all-volunteer force. We broke Iraq, and so we bought it, but something else might break without our help, and we'll need the resources to buy that situation as well.

Evil Liars, Delusional, or Monumentally Stupid?

In correspondence with Antonio, I asked this question about the Bush team. Given the disconnect between their statements and reality, I wondered what causes it.

Are they evilly lying to further some end of their own?

Are they mentally diseased, and therefore delusional, unable to distinguish between reality and fantasy?

Or are they monumentally stupid, unable to identify facts and process information?

I don't think they are too stupid to identify facts, though they seem to ignore the facts they don't like, and Antonius has offered support for both of the other theories. In "Doppler Shift" the Bush team indicates that fact based reality is unimportant, and that as an empire they make their own reality. To me this seems to lend support to the Delusional explanation.

But "You Decide" has confirmed my belief in the Evil Liars position. After all, since Bush supporters predominantly believe the fictions, and support Bush as a result, it seems that the Bush election campaign is essentially entirely based on fooling people with repeated lies. This makes sense of course, since anyone (with the possible exception of racists, war profiteers, robber barons, and evil people in general) who understands what Bush has actually done could not knowingly vote for him.

I wonder if this might help explain the correlation (Noted in "The Smart Money") between states with good education systems and opposition to Bush.

Finally, in defense of those Bush supporters who've been hoodwinked by the lies, Antonius needs to cut them some slack. Honest, bright, well meaning people get hoodwinked all the time. That is how confidence men (and unfortunately the current president) make a living. Let's say you work hard for a living, and don't have alot of time to fact check news sources and start a blog. Further, you hear the odd speech by the president or VP in official settings, making statements about the state of affairs, and their statements are supported by the news (and I use the term loosely) programs on Fox. It is not hard to see how one could be hoodwinked into mistakenly voting for the dark side.

Fortunately Antonius is here to spread the light of truth to the masses.

The Bulge

Tom the Dancing Bug uncovers the truth.

Jumping Ship

A writer for the Wall Street Journal and The New Republic joins the reality-based community.

Workin' Hard

Not.
Between visits to his backdrop ranch in Texas, trips to the family home in Maine, and time spent at Camp David, George W. Bush has spent more than 40% of his presidency on vacation. Sure, everyone will say that the POTUS is never really on vacation, but Bush gives a pretty good imitation, sometimes so busy cutting brush on his ranch that he can't be bothered to read the memo entitled "Bin Laden Determined to Attack Within US".

You know, I bet if I spent 40% of my time away from my job, matters at my place of business might go south in a hurry. At least I have the President's example to demonstrate the consequences of ignoring your duties.

It might be hard work bein' the president, but someone else is taking up the slack.

You Decide

Ignorant, or just dumb as a box of hammers? I'm sure Reductio might offer some more choices, like "delusional", "deluded", "conned" or the classic "fooled", but I'm not inclined toward granting the benefit of the doubt to a group of people so badly misinformed that:

72% believe that Iraq had actual WMD
56% percent assume that most experts believe Iraq had actual WMD
57% assume that Charles Duelfer reported to that Iraq had a major WMD program
75% believe that Iraq was providing substantial support to al Qaeda
63% believe that clear evidence of this support has been found.
60% assume that this is also the conclusion of most experts,
55% assume, that this was the conclusion of the 9/11 Commission

Every one of these beliefs is in direct conflict with -- wait, what was it again? -- oh, yeah, REALITY.
Who is this benighted populace? Some lost cargo cult tribe on the fringes of civilization?

Close. They're Bush supporters.

Those of us who look at the deteriorating state of the nation and wonder how in God's Holy Name people can still support President Bush for a second term have our answer: these people don't know what the hell is going on in the world, and are deciding who to vote for on the basis of which candidate was photographed on a mass grave with a bullhorn.

Something like a little less than half the electorate, disconnected from reality, is supporting their champion.

By contrast...is anyone surprised?...the same poll showed that Kerry supporters actually had a reasonable grasp on current events. But what else would you expect from the reality-based community?

Third Party Candidates '04

The ferret blows the lid off one of the presidential tickets the media isn't following.
Thanks to the BoneMan for the link.

Bush's Procrustean Bed

Well, we've had look at who's endorsing Bush (Axis power). Who's walking away?
The Carpetbagger has a good roundup of Republicans for Kerry, and now here's a new one, courtesy of Boring Diatribe friend and confidante, The Angler.
Marlow W. Cook is a former Republican U.S. senator from Kentucky from 1968-1975:

I shall cast my vote for John Kerry come Nov 2.

I have been, and will continue to be, a Republican. But when we as a party send the wrong person to the White House, then it is our responsibility to send him home if our nation suffers as a result of his actions. I fall in the category of good conservative thinkers, like George F. Will, for instance, who wrote: "This administration cannot be trusted to govern if it cannot be counted on to think and having thought, to have second thoughts."

We've seen this theme again and again in the media, and it's an accurate summary of the behavior of George W. Bush and his entire administration: an inability to adapt to changing circumstances.

In July 2001, this administration's primary concern was missile defense:

Today’s most urgent threat stems not from thousands of Soviet missiles, but from a small number of missiles in the hands of rogue states armed with weapons of mass destruction.

Rogue states. Weapons of mass destruction. Sound familiar?

This admnistration has no capability to adjust to changing circumstances, instead attempting to cut off the legs or rack America to fit a straining country onto the single bed they knew how to make when they showed up. I submit that a gang of hidebound thinkers, totally unable to conceive of say, suicide attacks using jet airplanes (that would be, not missiles) are the wrong people to lead a country against the highly flexible, loosely organized, creative enemy we have in Al Qaeda. Just to keep up with attacks that could come at any time from any quarter, one might have to display the ability this administration lacks: the ability to change one's mind. Or, you know, flip-flop.

The legendary Bush resolve has nothing to do with opposing our enemies, but everything to do with circumventing the effort it might entail to have a new thought.

They made the bed, but we have to lie in it. Come November 2nd, it'll be time to change the sheets.

Plausible Deniability

While eating our morning pastries at the editorial table of Boring Diatribe, we've been kicking around the idea of a special feature called Digruntled Employee, Defender of Liberty. In the meantime, Salon has a Sproul & Associates update:

Despite the recent chatter among librarians and some former employees about Sproul's practices, the various threads of the Sproul story weren't pulled together until Eric Russell, a 26-year-old in Las Vegas, came forward last week with his explosive account. Russell, who has acknowledged a beef with the firm over pay, told his local CBS affiliate that supervisors at the company routinely discarded Democratic registration forms. The station, KLAS 8, managed to fish some from the trash, and when it contacted the affected voters they were, understandably, shocked.

Republicans have responded by questioning Russell's motives and his political affiliation. "There's no way to prove what he says either way. He's a disgruntled employee who had access to those forms. There's no way to prove he didn't tear them up," says Brian Scroggins, chairman of the Clark County Republican Party. "I was told he had a prime seat at the Michael Moore event the other day," Scroggins added. According to a report in the Arizona Republic on Friday, Nathan Sproul responded to Russell's allegations by filing a defamation lawsuit against him. "The lawsuit claims that after Russell was fired, he returned to the office holding what appeared to be voter registration forms and told workers he would claim that he saw a supervisor tear up the forms unless he was paid what he wanted," the paper said.

Read the rest of the article here.

Sonny & Antonin

CUT TO: Sonny goes out into the driveway to see the FBI guys. The Mazurka ends.
SONNY:
Eh -- what's this -- Get outta here; it's a private party, go on!
(then, to FBI man in car)
What's is it? Hey, it's my sister's wedding
(then, he spits after being shown a badge. He turns and walks away)
Goddamn FBI don't respect nothing [jazz music begins to play from party]
(then, to photographer)
Eh, come here; come here; come here; come here, come here; come here; come here...
(then smashes camera, which Paulie kicks, and flips cash to him) [music ends]

Judge Antonin Scalia is quite devoted to Coppola's work.

Axis Power

President Bush is racking up the endorsements of like-minded world leaders everywhere.

First, Vladimir Putin, and now, straight from the Axis of Evil, a ringing endorsement from America's old friend and staunch ally, Iran!

Still stunning silence from Kim Jong Il. 43 is waiting, Jong. Where's the love?

Meanwhile, John Kerry has to make do with those boring codgers over in Old Europe.

The Bush Jobs Plan

NTodd's got the scoop:

Sunday, Oct 17, 2004
Guns, When Do We Get Guns?

President Bush declared today, "the best way to avoid the draft is to vote for me."

He then went on to describe his plan to reinforce Second Amendment rights, boost the struggling job market and increase national security. Called the Arms, Retraining, and Modified Safety (ARMS) act, the President's plan calls on Congress to give all US citizens an M-16 to "honor our sacred right to bear arms". The proposed law also includes provisions for one year of employment retraining: citizens would get to "job shadow" US troops in stable locations such as Iraq and Afghanistan and learn many skills required to succeed in today's global economy.

"Read my lips," Mr. Bush said to a madly cheering group of loyal Americans. "There will be no draft during my second term, and there will be ZERO PERCENT unemployment!"

Senator Kerry called the Bush plan a "backdoor draft", but Bush advisor Karl Rove scoffed at the notion, observing that there is no mention of the word 'draft' in any of the proposal's language. "Mr. Kerry just wants to make the draft an issue because it would be wildly unpopular. But this President stands on principle, not the shifting sands of political convenience. He is showing great leadership by telling the people exactly what they want to hear: there will be no draft, but everybody will get a great job and a weapon of their very own."

Undecided voter Eugene Tackleberry admitted that if he thought Bush would institute a draft during his second term, that might dissuade him from voting for the President. "But a plan that gives everybody jobs and guns? I'd vote for that in a heartbeat."

Unmasked Liberal

Around the watercooler at Boring Diatribe's palatial headquarters, sometimes we talk about how great it would be if we could just walk around the street, proudly declaring "Today I wrote a Boring Diatribe," rather than furtively scrawling our thoughts on torn shreds of paper (not plastic) grocery bags and anonymously passing them to the kid we have chained to the laptop in the basement next to the crates of Jolt.

Some liberals aren't so craven, though, and proudly shout their allegiance and names from the rooftops, holding off the Attorney General with nothing more threatening than a nicely turned phrase. Such a one is fellow blogger Becky Maines, who's got a thing or two to say about Osama Bin Forgotten and our pal, the other Dick, old five-o-clock shadow himself, Tricky Richard Nixon.

Have a look. The lady's been nice enough to send folks our way, and likes our taste in interior decorating.

Pilot Fish

Think about your favorite movie scene centered around a confrontation with a bully. Have you noticed how often writers like to include a little bully-in-training as a companion to the side of beef menacing our hero? He's the guy who's always taunting the protagonist from within the sheltering penumbra of his collosal pal. By the time most writers and actors put a scene like that in the can, the audience isn't thinking much about the bully, who's portrayed more as a force of nature than a character. Nope, they're thinking about pounding the bejeesus out of the little pisspot who thinks he's tough so long as he's got the big guy to back him up.

Once upon a time, one of those pilot fish grew up and became the Sinclair Broadcast Group, and they decided to ingratiate themselves with the bully-in-chief by doing their best to make sure no one saw the faces of the people who died while following the bully's orders.

"Mission Accomplished!" declaimed Sinclair, and then, from the shadow of the friendly bully, the company decided it was a good idea to start taunting the hero of our piece by airing a 42-minute attack ad against John Kerry, called "Stolen Honor".

But the audience, once safely on the other side of the screen, was all grown up, and just waiting to unload a whole can of adult whoop-ass on a target-rich environment. So, first came the boycott, then the uncomfortable questions from the stockholding New York State Controller, then the shareholder action, then their Washington Bureau chief protested, in print, the planned airing of the "documentary", so they had to fire him, all while their stock tumbled for two weeks, erasing about $100,000,000 of market value.

Suddenly, it wasn't about John Kerry anymore. It was about... ummm.. the media! Right, that's it. POW's and the media. That worked! At least the audience with money got off their backs and started buying the stock again.

The moral of our tale? When the pilot fish starts mouthing off, take a swing at him. Maybe the bully will get the picture that on November 2nd, you're thinking about cleaning his clock, too.

Let's Roll

Stolen from Salon 

The Smart Money

States Ranked: Smartest to Dumbest

The smartest state in the union for the second consecutive year is Massachusetts.
The dumbest, for the third year in a row, is New Mexico.

These are the findings of the Education State Rankings, a survey by Morgan Quitno Press of hundreds of public school systems in all 50 states. States were graded on a variety of factors based on how they compare to the national average. These included such positive attributes as per-pupil expenditures, public high school graduation rates, average class size, student reading and math proficiency, and pupil-teacher ratios. States received negative points for high drop-out rates and physical violence.

Next to each state, I've placed how the latest polls show them leaning in the presidential election:

1. Massachusetts	Strong Kerry
2. Connecticut	Weak Kerry
3. Vermont	Strong Kerry
4. New Jersey	Strong Kerry
5. Wisconsin	Barely Kerry
6. New York	Strong Kerry
7. Minnesota	Weak Kerry
8. Iowa	Exactly Tied
9. Pennsylvania	Weak Kerry
10. Montana	Stong Bush
11. Maine	Barely Kerry
12. Virginia	Barely Bush
13. Nebraska	Strong Bush
14. New Hampshire	Weak Kerry
15. Kansas	Strong Bush
16. Wyoming	Strong Bush
17. Indiana	Strong Bush
18. Maryland	Strong Kerry
19. North Dakota	Strong Bush
20. Ohio	Barely Bush
21. Colorado	Weak Bush
22. South Dakota	Strong Bush
23. Rhode Island	Strong Kerry
24. Illinois	Strong Kerry
25. North Carolina	Barely Bush
26. Missouri	Barely Bush
27. Delaware	Weak Kerry
28. Utah	Strong Bush
29. Idaho	Strong Bush
30. Washington	Weak Kerry
31. Michigan	Weak Kerry
32. South Carolina	Strong Bush
33. Texas	Strong Bush
34 West Virginia (tie w/Texas)	Weak Bush
35. Oregon	Weak Kerry
36. Arkansas	Weak Bush
37. Kentucky	Strong Bush
38. Georgia	Strong Bush
39. Florida	Barely Kerry
40. Oklahoma	Strong Bush
41. Tennessee	Strong Bush
42. Hawaii	Strong Kerry
43. California	Weak Kerry
44. Alabama	Strong Bush
45. Alaska	Strong Bush
46. Louisiana	Weak Bush
47. Mississippi	Weak Bush
48. Arizona	Weak Bush
49. Nevada	Barely Kerry
50. New Mexico	Barely Bush

Stepping In It

I had intended to write a long post summarizing the current situation involving Sinclair Broadcasting and the "documentary" about John Kerry they're thinking of airing, but it turns out that the New York State Comptroller's office wrote it for me.
I'll have a roundup of relevant links later in the day.

It's Hard Work

The Progress for America Voter Fund has a new, pro-Bush television ad coming out, which tells the story of 16-year-old Ashley Faulkner, who lost her mother on September 11, 2001, and "closed up emotionally".
Bush employed the healing power of a Presidential hug, and, like Jesus, brought tears to the girl's eyes. Or something like that.
Another member of the Boring Diatribe staff, our man Reductio, praised the group for producing an ad that, for a change of pace, didn't employ lies and fear-mongering to get its point across, and I have to agree. Credit where credit's due. On the other hand, I can suggest a change in the voice-over narration:

"On September 11, 2001, Ashley Faulkner's mother was killed by terrorists on President Bush's watch. Even though the president had received detailed briefings on the intentions of terrorists to attack within the US, instead of responding to the warnings, he chose to keep cutting brush on his Texas ranch. Now the president has involved America in a war of choice in Iraq, where more American parents are dying every day. Mr. President, clear your schedule. You have a lot of grieving children to hug."

Thanks to the Good Doctor of snoringyak for the link.

Laundering Drugs

The process seems simple enough. American drug companies sell drugs to Canada. Canadian drug companies sell those drugs back to American citizens at prices far below those available domestically. Coming out against the idea of providing drugs more cheaply to Americans seems -- well, un-American.

And rightly so. If one buys into the idea of an international free-market, it makes sense that Americans should be able to buy prescription drugs where they can be had most inexpensively, assuming similar standards of safety and effectiveness are applied to the imported drugs. All well and good.

I'm not so much against the concept of cheaper drugs for Americans, as I am against the method of achieving the goal. Let's review. Drugs made by American drug companies. Drugs sold to Canada. Drugs sold by Canadians to American citizens cheaper than they can be had in the USA, and the Canadians are still making a profit on the sale. (You didn't think the Canadians were in it for our health, did you?)

In all the debates about whether to legalize the institutional re-importation of drugs from Canada, one question seems to be consistently left out there on the cold, hard Canadian tundra. Why are drugs so much cheaper in Canada?

Look at the process again. We're adding a middleman, but it's still cheaper. What gives? Does capitalism have screw loose? Is that damned Invisible Hand messing with the Established Order?

Not at all. Capitalism's working just fine. You see, when Canada buys drugs, Canada is bargaining with the purchasing power of about 30 million Canadians. Hey, Merck. Wanna sell drugs to this big market? Meet our price, or maybe Glaxo has something that'll work as well, for less. Or maybe we don't buy anything from you this year. How's that gonna look on the old quarterly report?

Canada can do this because it has a single-payer system of health care. Meanwhile, here in America, our population of 285 million people are sliced and diced into so many tiny insurance groups that drug companies are, by comparison, economic behemoths with the power to bargain their prices upward.

Big fish in a small pond. Let's say we turn that pond into an ocean, with 285 million paying customers. Think the prices will still stay high? Or would Canadians start agitating for a piece of our action?

Tell Saudi Arabia We're Going It Alone

Here's my favorite quote from this story about the Bush administration refusing troops from Muslim countries to help out in Iraq:

At one point, the Saudis proposed that Muslim forces be placed under the command of the Iraqi government. That idea won over Allawi, but not the United States. "The Americans wanted ultimate control, and that made it impossible to make this work," said the Iraqi official.

Internationalize the peacekeeping force? Nah.
Recognize Iraqi sovereignty? Nah.

Empires need colonies. That's the new reality these idiots think they can recreate.
Is there someone, anyone in this administration who can get his head out of the 19th century for an hour or two to make some decisions based on something other than blind faith?

The Switch

The Brandenton Herald eloquently crosses over.

When the Herald recommended the election of George W. Bush as president of the United States four years ago, we lauded his record in Texas as a consensus builder and expressed confidence in his ability to unite the country after four years of bitter partisanship. We liked his slogan, "A uniter, not a divider," and criticized opponent Al Gore's role as point man for Democrats' mean-spiritedness.

How poorly we understood George W. Bush in 2000. We could not imagine the possibility that, just four years later, Bush would have done just what we feared of Gore - that the United States would barely be on speaking terms with some of its staunchest allies, and that America would be reviled around the world as a bullying, imperialist superpower. How far we have fallen from the bright fiscal forecast in 2000, with surpluses that offered the promise of debt paydown now replaced with a staggering $500 billion annual deficit and the national debt projected to exceed $9 trillion by 2010.

As for Bush being a uniter, sadly, the nation is more polarized than it has been since the 1960s. Bush's administration is notable for its lack of transparency, its intolerance of dissent, its refusal to admit mistakes. Under Bush's leadership and Republican control, Congress has become a mean-spirited, partisan body where the vice president is praised for cursing an opposition senator on the Senate floor. The "compassionate conservative" president has people at outdoor rallies arrested for hoisting an opposition sign.

Army Refund

We'll be needing that enlistment bonus back. Sorry about the kidney.
At least the situation was remedied by the Department of Defense once ABC News brought it to light. Isolated number of incidents? Let's hope so.

Shell Game

The GOP is trying to relocate polling places in minority-populated sections of Philadelphia. From today's Philadelphia Daily News:

Listervelt Ritter, the Republican leader for the 16th ward in North Philadelphia, said he participated in the effort on four requests because he is tired of polling places controlled by Democrats and the fraud that he claims results. Ritter, an African-American, denied any attempt to suppress minority votes.
"The black neighborhoods are the ones that do the funny stuff," Ritter said. "What are you supposed to do?"

So glad the GOP is keeping their eyes on black neighborhoods, so they don't get all uppity and wantin' to vote. And stuff.

Support the Troops

Once you're done sticking a yellow magnet to your car, have a look at Operation Truth, founded and led by a New York National Guardsman who spent a year with his boots on the ground in Iraq. Want to know how things are going over there? Ask the troops.

Homeland Insecurity - Episode I

I hope this won't have to become a regular feature of Boring Diatribe, but you can see by the title of the post that I'm not optimistic. This is an old story, but it recently caught my attention, and I don't recall a lot of coverage of the experiment in the news:

Customs Fails to Detect Depleted Uranium

Sept. 11, 2002 On July 4, in a train station in Europe, a suitcase containing 15 pounds of depleted uranium, shielded by a steel pipe with a lead lining, began a secret 25-day, seven-country journey. Its destination was the United States.

It was the kind of uranium that — if highly enriched — would, by some estimates, provide about half the material required for a crude nuclear device and more than enough for a so-called dirty bomb — a nightmare scenario for U.S. authorities.

"I would say that the single largest, most urgent threat to Americans today is the threat of nuclear terrorism," said Graham Allison, an expert on nuclear terrorism. Allison is the director of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and a former assistant secretary of defense.


This suitcase's journey was not part of a terrorist plot, but rather part of an ABCNEWS investigation into whether American authorities could, in fact, stop a shipment of radioactive material. The depleted uranium packed in the suitcase was not highly enriched and therefore not dangerous, but similar in many other key respects.
ABC News Investigates

Maybe if the Bush Administration would bother to watch the borders instead of chasing ghostly threats in foreign climes, I'd feel a little safer.

Championing the Single-Payer System

Go Bush!
The Carpetbagger has a good roundup of commentary on Mr. Bush's remarks concerning the costs of Mr. Kerry's health care plan.

Fumbling at the Goal Line

I'm not big on sports metaphors, but Knight-Ridder nails the lack of post-war planning for Iraq.

Shut Up Nietzsche!

"Battle ye not with monsters, lest ye become a monster, and when you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also, into you."

Expect me to return to this theme repeatedly. In the light of our history "battling" with the Soviet Union, I offer Matt Yglesias's take on the Putinization of America.

Doppler Shift

When we look at the night sky, we're not seeing how the universe looks. Because of the vast distances light must travel to reach us, we're seeing the universe as it once was. Ron Suskind seems to have a similar approach to journalism. An excerpt from yesterday's magazine article on President Bush:

In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in Esquire that the White House didn't like about Bush's former communications director, Karen Hughes, I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House's displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn't fully comprehend -- but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency.

The aide said that guys like me were ''in what we call the reality-based community,'' which he defined as people who ''believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.'' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ''That's not the way the world really works anymore,'' he continued. ''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.''

Now, go back and read the first line again. In the summer of 2002. A White House aide expresses a belief in the ability to create realities and that's not news?

Certainly, journalists exercise much more restraint than the public generally gives them credit for in discussions with public figures, and it seems Suskind is justifying his public reticence concerning this gem by allowing that he "didn't fully comprehend" the remark. I understand this was two years ago, and that the full delusional circus of the Bush administration was not yet on display, but how hard is it to "comprehend" a White House aide saying, in effect, "Reality doesn't matter. Power creates whatever reality it desires."

Omnipotent, omniscient power can create whatever reality it desires. I think this aide to Mr. Bush, in this remark, answered the question on a lot of people's lips the past four years:

Who do these guys think they are?

Luther's Legacy

Rex Saxi swiped the thunder of this post with a comment and post on his own blog in response to "A Matter of Faith" by being the first to mention what I thought was not an obvious point about President Bush's evangelical faith. So, rather than rehash Rex's sally on this idea, I'll go slightly deeper with some background:

The Protestant Reformation, triggered by Martin Luther, had at its root an idea of Luther's that has seeped into many, which is not to say all, Protestant sects descending from that pivotal moment in history. Luther believed that humans were so irredeemably (and I use that word in its exact religious sense) vile that no possible action within the scope of a mortal's capabilities could overcome the heavy stain of Original Sin, and a hellbent destiny. From this premise, Luther reasoned that the only way anyone could achieve salvation was through the infinite mercy of God. Following this chain of thought, one is led, I think inevitably, as Luther was led, to the conclusion that "good works", i.e., actions meant to help one's fellows without expectation of compensation, are totally irrelevant to one's status in the hereafter.

Faith, Luther opined, is sufficient to achieve salvation. As Rex points out, Catholicism has a much more complex view of the relationship between faith and works, one that urges believers to act in the world as Jesus would have them act, based upon the behavioral recommendations found in the Gospels, and which led to the liberation theology movement in Central America during the 1980s.

Rex comments that one may examine the current Presidential contest through this lens as a conflict between Catholic and Protestant theology. I find the connection from Martin Luther to President Bush illuminating, given the current administration's manifest disregard for the physical wellbeing of the less fortunate among us, and the reported criterion determining if one receives government funding for one's faith-based initiative: whether one inquires of the poor if they have accepted Jesus Christ as their personal savior.

Because, if you're an evangelical Protestant, that's all that matters.

Staking a Claim to the Presidency

Longtime readers of my private boring diatribes know my inordinate love for most of Joss Whedon's work. There's an event coming up which marries two interests of mine.

A Matter Of Faith

A short post -- schedule's tight this morning, but I want to call everyone's attention to Ron Suskind's article today in the Sunday Times Magazine, complete text here.

I'll comment on this article later, and at length, but one small point: in the contest between faith and facts, facts often have a way of getting the drop on you.

Domino Theory

Way, way, back in 2003, although Paul Wolfowitz, in this interview explicitly rejected the terminology, there was much talk in the policy press about the Bush Administration's domino theory of democracy in the Middle East. Simply stated, in words I like to think Mr. Wolfowitz would agree with, a functioning democracy in the Middle East would, in theory, stand as an example to the region of the benefits of such a system of government, and the local populations of neighboring countries would put pressure on their existing regimes to institute reforms.

Leaving aside the simplistic thinking inherent in this idea, largely discredited after the Vietnam war (southeast Asia did not universally become a group of satellite countries of the USSR or China viz. the Warsaw Pact nations in Europe), has anyone else noticed that the world's largest democracy, India, nearly borders the world's largest Communist (term used loosely, and examination reserved for another time) nation?

India and China don't seem to have a great deal of influence on one another's system of government. Feel free to point out all the racial, cultural, historical and geographical barriers that would hinder such a flow of influence, but I submit that it is only America's tendency to lump large groups of diverse foreign peoples into monolithic mental categories that helps seduce policy makers into imagining that such barriers do not exist between groups and nations with fewer obvious differences.

In the same interview, Mr. Wolfowitz holds up Japan as successful leader-by-example in southeast Asia in the adoption of the "free" markets (this post is rich with future targets for discussion) in a number of southeast Asian countries, a subject close to many a neoconservative's heart, which brings up an interesting point:

If you have Japan as a regional example, you don't need Vietnam as another.
If you have Afghanistan...

The Gitmo Treatment

By now, you're probably familiar with the horrific treatment of prisoners in the Iraqi Abu Ghraib prison, at the hands of American GIs, American "contractors" (mercenaries) and Iraqi personnel. The United States also currently detains hundreds of prisoners at the military base at Guantanamo Bay. The treatment of the prisoners is somewhat at variance with United Nations Convention Against Torture, to which the United States is a signatory:

Article 1

For the purposes of this Convention, torture means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions.
This article is without prejudice to any international instrument or national legislation which does or may contain provisions of wider application.

Article 2

Each State Party shall take effective legislative, administrative, judicial or other measures to prevent acts of torture in any territory under its jurisdiction.
No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat or war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture.
An order from a superior officer or a public authority may not be invoked as a justification of torture.

When will this shameful chapter in American history be closed? Every day prisoners are subjected to such treatment further erodes the standing of America in the world, which has never before depended on her might for respect, but always on her adherence to the highest standard of conduct and her willingness to defend the rights of the downtrodden.

Every moment these criminal detentions continue soils the shining ideals on which this country is founded.

Shut Up, Freud!

Has anyone else noticed that President Bush tends to blurt out statements that some suspect are true, but are diametrically opposed to his party's platform?

He said that, after a debate with Kerry, "I made it very plain. We will not have an all-volunteer army." The crowd fell silent. "WE WILL have an all-volunteer army," Bush said, quickly catching himself. "Let me restate that. We will not have a draft."
The BBC

And, speaking of America's occupation of Iraq:
"The world would be better off if we did leave"
(Thanks to Atrios for the clip.)

Anyone can stumble while speaking publicly, and Mr. Bush has elevated the verbal stumble to an art form. But does anyone else have a sneaking suspicion that Mr. Bush might be having a little trouble keeping the lies straight when he's under stess?

Because That Always Works

An American who has advised the civilian authority in Baghdad said, “The only way we can win is to go unconventional. We’re going to have to play their game. Guerrilla versus guerrilla. Terrorism versus terrorism. We’ve got to scare the Iraqis into submission.”
The New Yorker

*ring* *ring*
Hello? Israel?
Hey, how's that scaring-the-Palestinians-into-submission plan going?
Uh-huh.
Uh-huh.
50 years and counting?
Huh.
...
Well, sounds good!
Thanks!"
*click*

Magic

Anyone who's ever studied sleight-of-hand or stage magic knows that 90% of the magician's job is to direct the attention of the audience away from the mechanics of the illusion. Audiences desiring to be entertained generally play along, and it requires a sharp eye, a skeptical mind, and an iron resistance to instinct to follow the mechanics instead of the misdirection.

Misdirection can depend on any number of methods. Sudden pyrotechnics in a quiet quarter of the stage. Distracting patter. Commotion that draws the eye and attention from the business end of the illusion.

With magic in mind, let's look back to September 2, 2004, at the comment Alan Keyes made about Mary Cheney, the Vice President's publicly lesbian daughter:

NEW YORK - Illinois Republican Senate candidate Alan Keyes has labeled homosexuality "selfish hedonism" and said Vice President Dick Cheney's lesbian daughter is a sinner.

The former talk show host who has made two unsuccessful runs for the White House made the comments Monday night in an interview with Sirius OutQ, a satellite radio station that provides programming aimed at gays and lesbians.

After saying homosexuality is "selfish hedonism," Keyes was asked if that made Mary Cheney "a selfish hedonist."

"Of course she is," Keyes replied. "That goes by definition."

Liz Cheney, Mary's sister, refused to comment Wednesday during an interview on CNN.

"I guess I'm surprised, frankly, that you would even repeat the quote, and I'm not going to dignify it with a comment," she told the interviewer.
Alan Keyes

In contrast to the high-minded reaction on the part of Mary's sister Liz, and the silence from Mary's parents in response to the comments of Mr. Keyes, here's her mother's reaction to Mr. Kerry daring to mention Mary Cheney's sexual preference during the third debate with Mr. Bush:

Lynne Cheney issued her post-debate rebuke to a cheering crowd outside Pittsburgh. "The only thing I can conclude is he is not a good man. I'm speaking as a mom," she said. "What a cheap and tawdry political trick."
Lynne Cheney

You've probably seen the frenzy of media attention that followed these remarks, and other bloggers have reprinted what Mr. Kerry said during the debate, which was, I opine, a mild reference to a widely known fact.

Why the outrage from the Cheney family over a minor issue?
Think about magic, and it'll all become clear.

Voter Registration Fraud

Is there anything more insidious than supplementing an attack on an opponent with an attack on the very systems that make democracy function? If you've cruised the political blogosphere lately, you've undoubtedly come across some chilling accounts of voter registration fraud, largely perpetrated by a single consulting firm in the pay of the Republican National Committee, Sproul & Associates.

Just as no dictator, or, for that matter, no president, ever actually signs a directive stating "begin torturing prisoners now, in violation of international law", it's pretty likely that Nathan Sproul, head of Sproul & Associates (and, by the way, former Arizona State Republican Party Executive Director, former executive of the Christian Coalition) which set up Voter Outreach for America , never wrote a memo to his staff stating "register as many Republicans as you can while posing as a non-partisan group of concerned citizens, and tear up the registrations of all the Democrats who get suckered."

On the other hand, as all students of power in the workplace and public life know, tone comes from the top. Consider the following bouquet of stories from around the nation:

American Libraries
KLAS-TV
Review Journal
CBS News

Likewise, let's remember that he who pays the piper calls the tune.

There is nothing more dangerous to a free people than repugnant thugs who will attack the institutions of democracy in service to naked power. If you'd like to register your displeasure with the Grand Old Party over their sponsorship of this blatant fraud against patriots everywhere, drop them a line, or give them a call:

Republican National Committee
310 First Street, SE
Washington, DC 20003
Phone: 202.863.8500
Fax: 202.863.8820
info@gop.com

I trust that Republicans nationwide are repelled by this sort of behavior on the part of those ostensibly supporting their cause while undermining the very foundations of our republic. Make your voices heard.

Now, I'm not insensitive to the point that perhaps Democratic activists and consultants could have broken election law as well. However, the acts of Sproul & Associates appear widespread and systematic and, dare I say it? unsurprising.

If anyone's got similar dirt on the Democrats, link it in comments and if it checks out, I'll post it.

Inaugural Post

If you're reading this blog, you're probably a member of the snoringyak mailing list, and have endured boring diatribes from this quarter for several years. If so, welcome! The reduction in the diatribe load in your e-mail account should more than compensate you for a quick visit to this blog.

If you're someone else, a more serious welcome. Here on Boring Diatribe, the crew and I will be looking at the common afflictions of American life, combing the news for items of interest, and generally speaking, supporting the aims as stated in our title line.

Sit back. Relax. Freedom's on the march, and we're sounding the charge.