Redemption

As a longtime proponent of capital punishment, I find myself a tad conflicted these days, not that that's a new feeling. The execution of Stanley Williams this week was a grim reminder of that conflict.

If there is a subject about which one is to be conflicted, pro or con, I can think of worse ones than this. And the recent exonerations of death row inmates have certainly mitigated my feelings about the most permanent of sentences, in procedure anyway, if not in principle. Regardless, even when faced with an undeniable monster like, say, John Wayne Gacy, I see no upside to the traditional sanctimonious moralizing, almost gleeful in its eagerness to get on with it. I simply never saw the point in warehousing a piece of shit like John Wayne Gacy. I do not see why taxpayers should subsidize creepy clown paintings and masturbatory correspondence with the legion of ghouls that wrote to him.

But whatever Stanley Williams was, he was not John Wayne Gacy. I do not buy into the boutique Nobel Peace Prize nominations (indeed, I'm sure some yahoo nominates George W. Bush every year, too) for Williams. It's nice that he made the effort to do books and speaking engagements to alert the kids about the dangers of gangs. I submit that people do not join gangs for the fun and excitement of it; I assume that they have merely run out of viable alternatives in a largely indifferent, job-free environment. And Williams did himself no favors by refusing to provide vital inside information in helping law enforcement break the gangs. (Not that it would have done as much good as The Man thinks it would have; the very nature of the organization of these enterprises, as with insurgent/terrorist cells, makes the effect not unlike that of hitting mercury with a hammer.)

People who are honest about their support for the death penalty will readily acknowledge that there is a large component of revenge inherent in the meting of punishment. This is not necessarily such an awful thing, except one gets the feeling that the people who crow the loudest for revenge are the least psychologically equipped to handle it when it's actually carried out. Case in point: the wife of one of Williams' victims had publicly proclaimed her willingness to accept that Williams had made an honest effort to change the course of his life, that while he knew he could not repay the debt he had incurred, he would do the best he could and hope for God's grace when his time came. Fair enough, though I find it passing curious that in the age of letting (no, encouraging) the families of victims natter and rant throughout the penalty phase, that this particular opinion didn't seem to count as much. The stepmother of this same victim, however, took the exact opposite tack, and insisted that only Williams' death could set everything aright.

The key here is that the wife had already made her peace long ago, and whether Williams' sentence had gotten commuted or not, she would have dealt with things. The stepmother, on the other hand, had invested herself quite heavily into the demise of Williams, and thus not only could not be sated any other way, but would be apt to find herself somewhat emotionally bereft once getting what she wished for so fervently.

The thing about being a death penalty proponent is to understand that, whatever its revenge-based motives, it is something that must be undertaken with a bit of sang-froid. Emotional hotheadedness does no one any good; this is an undertaking of serious, solemn gravity. There are human imperfections, and inexplicably some people in law enforcement have proven to be so craven as to either fudge lab results or use high-profile cases as political stepping stones. There should be serious accountability for those things as well.

What the execution of Stanley Williams really has me thinking about, though, is how little we think about what purpose we want our prisons to serve. Especially in California, which has an enormous (and growing) prison system. We have given up on even the pretense of rehabilitation; we have decided that they're all animals and simply must be warehoused. The problem with that is that eventually their time is done and they get unleashed on the public once again, now stupider and meaner (which may describe the public as well, now that I think of it).

Being a godless amoral hedonistic sybarite, I sometimes find myself wondering if Christians believe more in the God of spiteful retribution, or the Jesus who always offered the possibility of redemption and forgiveness. Obviously it varies from person to person, maybe even day to day and situation to situation, but in the aggregate, people seem to be content with the smiting, and then going through the rituals and totems of affirming their godliness to one another, if not themselves.

One perfect case is none other than former Texas governor George W. Bush, who once famously mocked Karla Faye Tucker shortly before her execution, much to the horror of none other than Tucker Carlson, who was probably wearing his bow tie and nothing else when interviewing the brilliant, charismatic governor. Whatever one's sentiments about an eye for an eye or whatnot, that is simply unchristian behavior, pure and simple. It's despicable. But it's a fine glimpse into the mind of an unreconstructed troglodyte.

I think Arnold Schwarzenegger missed a real opportunity, by passing up the commutation of Williams' sentence. Politically, it is seen as the astute move to make. But the GOP's fortunes are on the wane, W's dead-cat bounce of last week notwithstanding, and the California GOP is so desperate they're trying to draft Mel Gibson. Arnold could have followed the instincts of his "Austrian brain", shown the ability to be reflective, and given the finger to a party that is looking for a way to kick him to the curb anyway. The problem is that he still he thinks he can be president. He (and the rest of us) would be better off if he just made another crappy movie, this time about him being president.

One thing death penalty opponents bring up as rationale is that it's wrong to allow the state so much power over life and death. I think it is strange to insist on shutting this particular door so long after the horse had fled the barn. The state and federal governments already exert impossible amounts of influence, direct and indirect, on our lives and the quality thereof. Percentage point diddlers make the difference between living in a house and living in a cardboard box for a lot of people, every time they fuck with the interest rates to "fight inflation". Congress fucks the middle class every time it throws another tax cut to a useless, unproductive sack of shit like Paris Hilton. This isn't all that much different, not in terms of the irresponsible exercise of raw power.

Another DP opponent trope I want to hit before closing this out, just as food for thought, is this -- it is often said that a life sentence is just as effective a way to protect the public. Sounds reasonable, except it's not the guarantee they think it is. The very next inmate scheduled to be executed at San Quentin next month, Clarence Ray Allen, debunks exactly that notion.

Allen, who ran a security company in Fresno, was linked by prosecutors to a series of armed robberies in the Central Valley. He was sentenced to life in prison for ordering the murder in 1974 of his son's girlfriend. From behind bars at Folsom Prison, prosecutors said, he masterminded the murders in 1980 of three witnesses from his previous trial and conspired to kill four other witnesses.

A parolee, Billy Ray Hamilton, was convicted and sentenced to death for carrying out the three murders with a sawed-off shotgun.

The tone of the article actually revolves around the fact that Allen is 76 years old, blind, diabetic, and mostly invalid, and near death anyway. I couldn't possibly care less, nor do I care about his attorneys' assertion that Allen had a heart attack because the prison guards refused to give him his medication. I don't get off on it, like some, but I don't fucking care, either. Three more innocent people died after this cocksucker got his life sentence.

I do not have a one-size-fits-all answer here; I merely suggest that it's a more complex subject than either side wishes to acknowledge. For every Stanley Williams that reaches for redemption, there's a Clarence Ray Allen, a Richard Ramirez, a Richard Allen Davis. If you've ever directly known someone who's been viciously and senselessly murdered, you know it's not so cut-and-dried.

Myth America

Recently I got a chain e-mail, from an acquaintance whom I haven't seen in some twenty years. (Because it was our class reunion this year, I have heard from quite a few people I hadn't seen for twenty years. It's actually a nice surprise -- counter to the usual lurid portrayals of the perils of high school cliquery and such, I genuinely liked the people I went to school with.)

This e-mail, claiming in the header to be a "cool chain", started off innocuously enough. A tale of a nameless delayed flight, a grouchy passenger mulling over the mundanities of his life being held up by a mysterious problem, et voilà! It turns out that the plane has been held in dry-dock lo these countless minutes to allow Marines returning home from Iraq to board. Huzzahs all around.

So now the passenger in the e-mail ruminates on his own selfishness, and their sacrifices. Keep in mind that this is all in roughly 328-point Comic Sans font, and the e-mail is festooned with requisite hyper-patriotic photos of rhinestone-studded flags and steroided eagles and such, practically every paragraph. Still, I thought, it may not be exactly my æsthetic preference, but I can certainly agree with the sentiment, apocryphal or not. I respect and appreciate the efforts of the troops, and I want them to come back home safe, as soon as possible. Unlike the patrioticer-than-thou crowd, I just automatically assume that we're all on the same side of that particular subject, whatever our other disagreements.

So then the end of this thing finally appears. First, a photo of a toddler praying. Then an illustration of two dutiful toddlers praying, on the background of a flag, framed by the words "One Nation Under God". Then a third image, this time of an eagle carrying a flag in its talons, high above the earth -- but of course only the US is visible on the earth below. Above the eagle is a bright, presumably celestial, light. (I tried experimenting with Picasa to get the images to upload; needless to say it didn't work out.)

Then one last breathless burst of text:

Pass it on to everyone and pray.
Something good will happen to you tonight at 9:11 PM.
This is not a joke
Someone will either call you or will talk to you online and say that they love you.
Do not break this chain. Send this to as many people as you can in the next
15 minutes.
>>> GO

There are several levels of willful delusion in those few sentences, punctuated by the braying certitude that one normally finds in an obstinate second-grader. First is the basic principle of the chain letter. Chain letters are a very efficient way to find the suckers in any given crowd. It's amazing that even morons are still willing to be involved with even supposedly benign chain letters.

And this is certainly not a benign chain letter, though it pretends to be. It casts its "with Bush or with the terrists" fog over the whole proceedings, both with the shamelessly manipulative narrative of the story, and the various pseudo-patriotic gewgaws dotting the virtual landscape amidst the mawkish prose.

The real calling card of this travesty, obviously, lies in the "something good will happen to you at 9:11 PM" bit. It is of no use to try to parse this craziness from the viewpoint of mere rationality. There is a dizzy, irresponsible conflation of common lies in this little beauty of a sentence. The obvious one is the fraudulent association of 9/11 with Iraq, but the deeper lie surrounds that associative cow chip, as if to shield it from the bitter truth. Yes, pass this bullshit story on to your hapless friends, mach schnell, and someone will call or e-mail to tell you they love you at the precise moment of 9:11 tonight. What could any of these elements have to do with each other? Why would an acknowledgement of the sacrifice of service personnel result in a phone call from a loved one? What the fuck is wrong with these people?

This chain mail, and the countless others like it, are a warped synthesis of misplaced exceptionalism, misguided faith, and sheer misinformation and lack of common sense. I don't care that it was meant to be a "nice" thing; it is not a "nice" thing at all. It's a mishmash of jingoistic impulse, irrational religiosity, and the pervasive subtext that, once again, Jeebus likes us more than the other 95% of the humans His father created in His own image.

Of course, we're not meant to deconstruct these stupid things, or even critically think about them, for that matter. We're just supposed to automatically, reflexively genuflect to the approved signs and symbols -- eagles, flags, yellow ribbons, doe-eyed apple-cheeked younguns, etc. It's all part of the nationalist myth-making.

But you know who else had so much emotionally invested in all the trappings and symbols, without worrying about the, uh, substance and factuality all that much? Fascists. Stalinists. Modern students of fascism and Stalinism, like Kim Jong-Il and Saddam Hussein. We snicker at all the silly murals of the Great Uncle, watching mercilessly, tirelessly over the multitudes of Pyongyang or Baghdad, while we fret that perhaps our cheap Chinese-made magnetic ribbon is not positioned just so on the ol' Grocery Schooner.

Investing in mythos first requires a dedicated break from rationality, a persistent cognitive dissonance.

(to be cont'd)

Bark At The Moon

From the incredible-yet-true file: Neil Bush, the one Bush brother who may actually be even more useless than W, is travelling around Asia with frequent Bush benefactor (and megalomanical distributor of thick envelopes) Sun Myung Moon. You'll never guess why:

John Gorenfeld at Alternet reports that the president's kid brother Neil has been traveling through Asia in the company of the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, self-proclaimed messiah and sole proprietor of the loyal Republican Washington Times, promoting (ready for this?) a $200 billion "Peace King Tunnel"--51 underwater miles joining Alaska to Russia, perhaps to enable brother George to look more closely into the soul of Vladimir Putin.

Huh? A $200 billion tunnel to connect an uninhabitable part of Alaska with an uninhabitable part of Russia? Please. Either Moon is even crazier than previously thought, or this is the most retarded money-laundering scheme ever.

The Alternet article has more.

"Those who stray from the heavenly way," the owner of the flagship Republican newspaper the Washington Times admonished an audience in Taipei on Friday, "will be punished."

This "heavenly way," the Rev. Sun Myung Moon explained, demands a 51-mile underwater highway spanning Alaska and Russia. Sitting in the front row: Neil Bush, the brother of the president of the United States.

Rev. Sun Myung Moon, the South Korean giant of the religious right who owns the Washington Times, is on a 100-city speaking tour to promote his $200 billion "Peace King Tunnel" dream. As he describes it, the tunnel would be both a monument to his magnificence, and a totem to his prophecy of a unified Planet Earth. In this vision, the United Nations would be reinvented as an instrument of God's plan, and democracy and sexual freedom would crumble in the face of this faith-based glory.

The name Peace King Tunnel would allude to the title of authority to which Moon, 86, lays claim, and to which U.S. congressmen paid respect on Capitol Hill in last year's controversial "Crown of Peace" coronation ritual.

Yeah, because the much more accurate name of "Crazy Motherfucker Who Needs To Do The World A Favor And Die Already Tunnel" just didn't have that same ring to it.

Moon is not a "peace king", and too bad those asshole congressmen who played a part in his creepy little coronation ritual -- in a federal building no less -- have not been kicked to the curb already. Funny how the liberal mainstream media just never manages to cover this stuff, as preoccupied with religious issues as they purport to be.

Message to Paula Zahn: if you ever get tired of covering the Weepin' Statue O' Sackamenna, or the worshipful coverage of the ginormous minaret in my pants, you may want to check into this one. A brother of the leader (heh) of the free world is playing footman to a lunatic who is going around shilling his lunatic idea. I fail to see how this is not news. I don't know how many times I saw footage of W's four-hour stay in Mongolia, drinking fermented mare's milk and riding his Big Wheel around the dirt road. Surely this other thing merits some attention from our journamalistic betters, no?

Finally, Jeff Wells of Rigorous Intuition brings the deep politics smackdown to this whole sordid mess:

Neil, we know, is following Poppy's lead: Moon led his father across South America in the mid-90s, stuffing a hundred grand in his pocket for his trouble, which naturally was no trouble at all for either man.

Also along for the latest ride is Washington Times President Joo Dong Moon, and that should remind us of the part the Moonie paper played in breaking, and then stifling, the Craig Spence White House call boy scandal that was linked to the office of Vice President Bush on this notorious front page. As I wrote last February, "did the Times initially play this story as big as it did in order to win influence? In other words, Look - we got the goods - what you gonna do about it? The Times said it had the names of Spence's clients, and that they included politicians, as well as military, media and business figures. Blackmail, it's called in impolite circles. This could explain why the scandal was made to go away virtually overnight, the names undisclosed. Because, they did something about it."

Given Neil's publicized appetites, it doesn't take a great leap of imagination, or even a particularly sordid imagination, to wonder what might remain hidden by a friendly publisher with his own intelligence apparatus and Asian power base. That is, assuming the Bush boy gives something in return.

The Moon junket isn't Neil's first unlikely foray into the politics of religion. He works Capitol Hill as a lobbyist for Scientology, and still needing clarity is the story that he co-founded a mysterious Swiss-based ecumenical foundation with the future Pope Benedict XVI in 1999. As I noted back in April Neil Bush is hardly regarded for his attention to religious causes, nor Ratzinger to ecumenism. (Also from the April post: "Curiously, the foundation is listed by Dun & Bradstreet as a 'management trust for purposes other than education, religion, charity or research,' though an official claims the designation must be a mistranslation.")

There are several links in that excerpt, all well worth checking out, as is Jeff's blog itself. The main point here is the intersection between money, access to power, and the ability to stay under the radar of the intrepid news gatherin' folk. How Moon keeps on getting away with it -- a $200 billion tunnel under the Bering Strait commemorated to himself! -- is a complete fucking mystery to me.

Or not.

Fossil Fuel For Thought

The Great Darwinian Conspiracy continues apace.

A perfectly preserved fossil of a feathered creature that lived 150 million years ago has provided further evidence to show that modern birds originate from dinosaurs.

The fossil is a complete skeleton of an Archaeopteryx and shows that it had features common to birds and a group of meat-eating dinosaurs called theropods.

Scientists said the feet of the fossilised Archaeopteryx were anatomically almost identical to those of theropod dinosaurs, which pointed to a common ancestry for both groups.

Archaeopteryx had many bird-like features, such as feathered wings and a wishbone, but it also had distinctly reptilian traits, including jaws with teeth, a bony tail and claws on its fingers.

Lies, damned lies! How dare you besmirch legitimate theoscientific inquiry with your schmevolution? Bastards.

Several fossils excavated in China have shown that some dinosaurs also grew feathered wings, which led scientists to suggest that perhaps birds are a living group of specialised dinosaurs.

The latest work on Archaeopteryx, the first specimen of which was discovered just two years after Charles Darwin's The Origin of Species was published in 1859, lends further support to the dinosaur origin of birds. Gerald Mayr of the Forschungsinstitut Senckenberg in Frankfurt, Germany, and his colleagues describe details of their investigation into the 10th and best-preserved specimen of Archaeopteryx in the journal Science.

It will be interesting to see if ID and especially young-earth creationists use the eyes and brains and sense of reason that their God supposedly gave them, and think about this latest addition to the veritable mountain of evidence at hand.

Wait. Scratch that. It won't be interesting at all. We all know exactly what their response will be, starting with "LA LA LA" and ending with "I CAN'T HEEEAAR YOU!".

The foot is better preserved than any previous Archaeopteryx specimen. It shows a hyper-extendible second toe, rather like the killer claw of Velociraptor, the vicious theropod dinosaur depicted in the film Jurassic Park.

"These observations provide further evidence for the theropod ancestry of birds," the scientists say. The hyper-extendible second toe blurs the distinction between this ancient bird and the theropod dinosaurs, which brings both closer together as a group, they say.

The theropod dinosaurs ate meat and hunted on two legs, using the claws on their forelimbs to grasp and manipulate their prey.

One theory is that some theropods grew feathers for insulation, but these were useful for escaping from larger predators because flapping feathered forelimbs helped the animals to run and jump. This behaviour eventually resulted in gliding and powered flight.

There's that word again -- "theory". They don't know that it was or wasn't on Noah's ark. Perhaps it was there on the afternoon the Grand Canyon was carved by the Great Flood. Schmience is tricksy that way.

The Natural History Museum in London owns the first Archaeopteryx specimen to have been discovered, which it bought for £750 in 1862. Now, it is probably the most expensive fossil the museum possesses.

Twenty years ago, some scientists claimed that the fossil was a fraud made by sticking feathers into cement around a fossil reptile. But museum scientists soon proved the fossil genuine.

Heh. Faking a piece of evidence sounds exactly like what a dedicated young-earther would do to "prove" his point; in fact, Levantine hucksters are notorious for faking artifacts that were supposedly owned by Christ. You may remember the guy in Israel that got busted a few years back for claiming an ossuary to be that of Jesus' brother.

Maybe that's why the young-earthers are so quick to claim fakery of actual scientific evidence -- because they really would do such a thing to bamboozle the faithful. They've been doing it all along.

A Cry For Help

I am not in the habit of watching Paula Zahn's late-night show on CNN. Usually by that hour I am either sleeping soundly, drinking heavily, or masturbating with the fury of a rabid chimp. So it was by pure chance that I caught this little gem (about 3/4 the way down the page), involving a Catholic church whose "weeping statue" has attracted the usual gaggle of morons.

Let's take a quick peek at what passes for journamalistic objectivity. I have no idea whether Paula is always this obtuse, or if there's just such an insatiable need to play politically correct with all religious issues, even completely ridiculous ones like this. Whatever the case, it's nothing that a hastily-convened panel on blogger ethics can't cure.

Coming up next, a statue that is drawing crowds to a California church. Do you believe in miracles?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I think curiosity, and I get choked up. I have that faith, and even if it isn't a true miracle, I've never seen a miracle.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It happens so often, as far as I know, that they don't even bother investigating it anymore.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ZAHN: The question tonight is, what caused those tears? Coming up, we'll ask someone who investigates these kinds of things for a rational explanation.

And a little bit later on, two men, a cage and absolutely raw violence. There is no doubt that this is a bloody sport.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

Sorry, I couldn't resist that. There's something about reading the transcription of the teaser that neatly encapsulates what a tiresome, shameless clusterfuck the vaunted MSM really is. Even the reporters who aren't carrying water for the criminals in office are still trolling the streets of basic cable in their fuck-me pumps.

ZAHN: Now we want to tell you about a mystery that has crowds flocking to a small Catholic church in Sacramento, California. The faithful say the statue of the Virgin Mary is actually shedding tears. Skeptics, as you might expect, aren't so sure.

Here's Rusty Dornin.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

RUSTY DORNIN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): There are the curious ones, but mostly, they are the faithful. Answers are not necessarily what these pilgrims seek. Sometimes it's enough just to see for themselves.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I kind of think it's a miracle. And I told my class about it a little bit, and I think it's just fascinating.

DORNIN: The statue of the Virgin Mary at the Vietnamese Catholic Martyrs Church in Sacramento, California. At first glance you see only her cool white face. But a closer look at the left side reveals what resembled tears and some believe it's tears of blood.

They first appeared in early November, but were wiped away by the parish priest. Then parishioners here say they reappeared before mass on Sunday, November 20th.

Since then, hundreds have made the pilgrimage, even in the pouring rain, adding certainty for some.

We had a big rain and the tears are still there. And I thought, oh, that's interesting. Once again, it just gives us hope and faith. Who knows if it's a miracle.

DORNIN: A miracle or just some odd event or prank. Miracles do happen, says Father James Murphy. But in this case, the church is not planning to check.

(on-camera): The church is not going to investigate this?

FATHER JAMES MURPHY, SACRAMENTO ARCHDIOCESE: No.

DORNIN: Why?

MURPHY: Because the vast majority of them end up having eventually a natural explanation emerges and then it just wanes.

DORNIN: But wouldn't it be better to quickly decide that rather than to let people go on believing?

MURPHY: No, the church thinks a century is not tomorrow's news and the position always has been wait and see what happens.

DORNIN (voice over): But some Catholics question that.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It happens so often as far as I know that they don't even bother investigating it anymore. But I believe they should. It pays to see whether it's a hoax or not.

DORNIN: People watch and wait and for some, there is the hope the miracle they've been waiting for has arrived.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

Not sure what Father Murphy's cryptic nonsense about "a century is not tomorrow's news" is supposed to mean exactly, or how it's relevant here, but observe how Dornin softsoaps the whole thing.

ZAHN: Rusty Dornin, thanks so much.

And joining me now is someone who has investigated a lot of phenomenon like this. Joe Nickell is editor of a magazine called "The Skeptical Inquirer" that investigates claims of paranormal and miraculous phenomenon.

Good of you to join us sir.

So what do you think has caused these tears on this statue?

JOE NICKELL, EDITOR, THE SKEPTICAL INQUIRER: Hi, Paula.

Well, I have some good news and bad news. The bad news is I'm pretty sure it's a fake. The good news is that probably the faithful won't believe me.

ZAHN: And what evidence would you base the fact that you believe this is a fake on?

NICKELL: Well, common sense says that if it's weeping, it should be weeping in a natural way and that to see it coming only from one eye and seeing that one of the rivulets is coming not from the tear duct, not from the corner of the eye, but from actually outside the eye and above it, so it's really not only obviously a hoax, it's not a very good one.

You would have to see a picture of this thing to get what Nickell's referring to, but I don't feel like bothering with it, so let's just stipulate that he's right. There's one rivulet coming from the outside corner of the left eye, and one coming from the inside corner of the same eye. The one on the inside actually starts well above the corner where, erm, the tear duct would be.

I feel stupid even having to point this much out. Look at Zahn's last question in the excerpt above and think about it for a second. What evidence do you have that this is fake, Mr. Smart Guy? Um, gee, I dunno -- statues can't cry? That work well enough for ya, sweet cheeks?

ZAHN: Is there any other explanation for it?

NICKELL: Well, there are, of course, always the possibility in any given case that there could be some natural explanation.

For example, sometimes the statue that has glass eyes, that's a wooden statue or plaster statue might have condensation, something like that, and be just a natural explanation. And, of course, whether it's a miracle or not is always debatable by the faithful. But science has never found a single case that's authentic, and I think the church is equally skeptical of all these cases.

This actually somewhat interesting, to hear a plausible explanation of it being a naturally occurring phenomenon. It doesn't necessarily have to be a hoax. Northern California has had some odd weather as of late. The last two weeks of November were more like April, 75º and sunny. Then around the 25th, we got a storm in from Alaska. Last week was stormy and cold, and since Thursday it's been sunny and cold, around 40-50º or so (which is cold for this area; sorry, Fargo). The point is that such drastic, sudden changes in temperature and humidity do weird things, like build up condensation in unlikely places.

Whatever the case, this mealy-mouthed objectivity is eerily similar to how the MSM has completely botched the discussion of "intelligent design", and indeed any area where religious beliefs are in conflict with science. Look, it's simple -- either the statue is weeping blood, or it isn't. Now, unless we are hopelessly insane, we stipulate that it is impossible for statues to actually weep. Therefore it is either a hoax or a naturally occurring phenomenon.

The problem is that Zahn (and obviously she's not the only culprit, or even a main culprit) portrays this as if the cranky ol' skeptic is obstinately insisting that 2+2=4, while the sincere people of faith believe with all their hearts that 2+2=6. Perhaps 2+2=5? That would bring a balanced "objectivity" to our little nuanced discussion, would it not?

No. It would not. It is neither "balanced" nor "objective" to assert that 2+2 might equal 5 -- or even 6, simply because the faithful believe it sincerely enough. Statues do not cry; the fossil record does not lie; Noah did not have baby dinosaurs on the Ark; and the fundamental principles of evolutionary development can be quite easily observed in both the plant and animal kingdoms. And one can recognize all of these scientific facts as such, and still persist in their belief that out of billions of galaxies and trillions of stars in an impossibly enormous universe, it was all created just for them, by someone who looks just like them. Faith and science are not mutually exclusive; indeed, were they not constantly hijacked by political hucksters, they could be somewhat complementary.

But like all of these sad little events, it's really about people indulging themselves anyway.

ZAHN: So when you see these crowds show up, day after day, what would you tell them about what you think they are looking at. They do believe it's a miracle.

NICKELL: They do. They are working on faith rather than evidence. If they would look at the evidence, they would see that it's really not credible. We don't see a flowing.

And there are cases like this. You know, there have been statues that wept blood. That in Italy, for example, it turned out with a DNA test that the DNA matched that of the woman who owned the statue. So they are really bad news for most of these cases when they are investigated.

ZAHN: You just heard Rusty interviewing the, I believe it was the archbishop from the church there. Would you like to investigate this if given the chance?

NICKELL: Well, I think it's always good to investigate. One would look for a better case than this, where at least at face value looked more promising or looked more mysterious.

I find this really rather laughable at face value. But we always investigate cases when we're permitted, and I think we should neither foster belief nor suppress it but just investigate with a view toward solving it.

ZAHN: In the meantime, the crowds keep coming.

And that's really all that matters. Suckers show up, we cover it. They trample each other in Walmart on Black Friday to get some deal on another discounted doodad to assuage their failures in life, and it merits coverage. Same shit, different shovel.

As an added bonus, check out the subsequent segue, as Paula prepares to pass the torch to the inimitable Larry King, who is simply worth his weight in self-parody gold:

ZAHN: And at 12 minutes before the hour, we're moving up on the start of "Larry King Live." Let's check in with him right now and find out who will be joining him tonight.

Hi Larry.

LARRY KING, CNN ANCHOR: Hi, Paula.

We've got a good show tonight. Rick Warren is with us, the author of "The Purpose Driven Life," that book has been a phenomenal best seller. He's an extraordinary guy.

And then later in the show, Donald Trump joins with Alla Wartenberg, that's the girl who got kicked off his show last night. But she's a multi-millionaire to boot. It's unusual.

All that ahead following Paula Zahn.

ZAHN: We'll be watching, Larry. Tell the Donald I said hello.

KING: I will.

Yep. That's your intrepid news-gatherin' celebramajournamalists. Rick Warren humps one leg, Donald Trump humps another, and Paula briefly recalls that incident when The Donald grabbed her ass at a party and offered a million bucks worth of Trump Tower chips for 90 seconds of combover glory. (If the carpet matches the drapes, women must just run screaming from the room.)

Hey, Larry. Tell The Donald I also said hello, and that I wish he'd stop splattering his jism all over America. I don't want to watch his stupid show, I don't want to buy his stupid books, I don't want to lose my house at his casino while he comps me $15 rum & cokes, and I don't want to hear about his next mail-order bride. How's that for fuckin' news?

It's Pat!

Pat Buchanan, who veers from anachronistic isolationism to chickenshit bluster with the care and finesse of a town drunk, lays it on the line for us. The "it" in this instance, of course, being George W. Bush's tremendous elephant cock:

"America will not run in the face of car bombers and assassins as long as I am your commander in chief," George W. Bush declared to the midshipmen of the Naval Academy in the most dramatic moment of his "Strategy for Victory" speech.

Earlier, he said that conditions on the ground, not "any deadline set by politicians in Washington," will determine the timetable for U.S. troop withdrawals. He just gave Capitol Hill the wet mitten across the face.

The "wet mitten"? Is that something from Scooter Libby's childrens' book, The Bear Who Was Trained To Rape Little Girls? It's hard to maintain a rep as a hard-hitting Irish boyo when you make weird little foppish metaphors, Pat.

And you can see what professional toadies like Buchanan really look for in a speech -- moments of high drama, climactic tension, the psychosexual frisson of dressing up in that Waffen SS uniform you surreptitiously sought in the back room of the surplus store that humid August day....like any drug, the subsequent rushes never quite measure up to that first magical one. Still, the mark of the addict is that he keeps pursuing it all the same, even if it's with other people's money and other people's children.

Bush appeared more serene and confident than he has of late, and it suggests he is a man who, after a long dark night of the soul, has made up his mind. He believes in the cause in Iraq. He knows he and we are going through a rough patch politically at home and militarily in the field. But he is resolved to see this through, even if he is the last man standing behind his policy. If the ship is going down, he is going down with it.

Well, it is going down (at the very least foundering), Pat, and he is going down with it. If he drags the rest of his scummy followers down with him, so much the better. There was a point in time when I found the cranky contrarianism of people like Bill O'Reilly and Ann Coulter almost strangely amusing, if irredeemably stupid. Now merely stupid would be a blessing; they seem to start their tirades by lashing out at everyone to the left of Attila the Hun as seditious, and finish up by tacitly advocating violence against them. In a polemically "humorous" way, of course.

But note how Pat simply glosses the situation we're in right now as a mere "rough patch". This is simply a criminal understatement. We can't stay, we can't leave, we can't win, and we can't afford to fail. We're fucked, and when the Europeans get tired of subsidizing our Hummers and Expeditions with temporarily affordable oil, the resultant gas prices are going to make us feel like Jenna Jameson after a marathon orgy scene -- turned-out and tired and covered with random fluids.

(And regardless of whatever decision is finally made, it will be largely decorative unless and until Bush and his team are brought to account for their sheer cretinism and bad faith, if not outright malevolence. As I've said before, the first step is to admit there's a problem.)

That our credibility is shot for the next half-decade minimum is of no consequence to Buchanan, who would love nothing better than to roll up the razor wire and cordon off Fortress America, and keep all the wogs out once and for all. Even if this were somehow portrayed as a remotely moral option, how he would propose to disengage from the accelerated paradigm of global interdependence without sending us all into the poor house would make for a fascinating comic book, I'm sure.

Republicans and Democrats are now on notice that if they break with the president on Iraq, he breaks with them, and if the war is the issue in 2006, so be it, the war is the issue. Bush is telling his own party that he will not be influenced by Republican wailing that they face horrible losses if he does not tailor his course to public opinion.

The president's strength is that he believes in the cause and, second, he knows his presidency and place in history hang on the Iraq war. If he brings the troops out too early, and Iraq collapses in chaos and civil war, no one will absolve him by saying the country demanded he pull out.

Bush's place in history is shot, as is his noble cause. This has been hopelessly botched from the get-go, and even Bush, in his secure little bubble, must realize it by now. No one's going to absolve him because there will be nothing to absolve. Iraq is already careening into civil war -- it's not like there's going to be some formal declaration.

Sadly, Bush may even be right on the issue of staying -- the civil strife will assuredly get worse, and the death squads that are already operating will run rampant. Plus, you know, the oil. We can lob the "how did our oil get under their sand" meme back and forth as long as we want, but the bottom line is that the huge upsurge in gas prices didn't markedly change consumption habits, not really. And now that prices are temporarily back down again, it's like nothing happened. Apparently the economy's going great guns again, not that anyone batted an eye regurgitating this factoid. As if a 30% increase in gas prices in one month had nothing to do with a sharp increase in reported revenues for the third quarter. Jesus Christ, whatever happened to connecting the dots?

And I'd love to hear the pom-pom crowd's explanation for noted CIA asset, former "legitimate" interim Iraqi political leader, and one-time bomber of school buses and movie theaters Iyad Allawi asserting that human rights -- you know, the real reason we're doing this -- have gotten even worse than they were under the evil despot who kept a lid on rebellious theocrats with an iron fist:

In a damning and wide-ranging indictment of Iraq's escalating human rights catastrophe, Allawi accused fellow Shias in the government of being responsible for death squads and secret torture centres. The brutality of elements in the new security forces rivals that of Saddam's secret police, he said.

Allawi, who was a strong ally of the US-led coalition forces and was prime minister until this April, made his remarks as further hints emerged yesterday that President George Bush is planning to withdraw up to 40,000 US troops from the country next year, when Iraqi forces will be capable of taking over.

Allawi's bleak assessment is likely to undermine any attempt to suggest that conditions in Iraq are markedly improving.

'We are hearing about secret police, secret bunkers where people are being interrogated,' he added. 'A lot of Iraqis are being tortured or killed in the course of interrogations. We are even witnessing Sharia courts based on Islamic law that are trying people and executing them.'

Hey, stuff happens. Democracy is messy. Problem solved. All hail the wisdom and resolute resolve of Dear Cheerleader, who for some reason is unable to take his case to a crowd of actual civilian American citizens. Everybody used to beef about how Clinton "hated" the military, but what kind of love is Bush showing them by using them as cheap props every time he wants to lie to us?

Buchanan is a political animal, so it's no surprise he prefers to focus on the Republican politicans who are distancing themselves from Bush as quickly as they can. But like every other hack conservatard "analyst", he continues to ignore the small fact that, for quite some time, a serious majority of American citizens have expressed disapproval and dissatisfaction with what is supposed to be Bush's Iraq policy.

Americans have a short institutional memory, and are easily swayed by fundie mumbo-jumbo, so the tide could turn back yet again, given the Democrats' notorious incompetence in capitalizing on opponents' weaknesses. But if Pat's talking high-stakes poker, that's a pretty tall bluff to try to pull off. Bush really does have nothing to lose by this ploy, and it's bound to fail. We can repaint a million schools that we destroyed in the first place, it won't change the fact that US troops continue to be blown up daily, the Iraqi forces we're replacing them with are poorly disciplined and corrupt, and the mullahs will be in charge here in another couple years.

I Know, It's Only Rock 'n' Roll, But This Is Fucking Ridiculous

In its annual effort to show people the insouciant irrelevance that only hack rock critics can muster, the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame announced its next roster of inductees.

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame voters have chosen an eclectic new class broad enough to encompass jazz trumpeter Miles Davis and the punk-pioneering Sex Pistols, but they once again snubbed rap.

Other members of the induction class announced today were Black Sabbath, Lynyrd Skynyrd and Blondie.

Miles Davis? See, this is one of the RRHF's main problems -- this incessant need to get all multi-culti on everyone, and throw in politically-correct "kumbaya" picks that have fuck-all to do with either rock or roll. That's not a slam against Miles, but jazz is not rock, and rock is not jazz. You think the Jazz Hall Of Fame plans on inducting Van Halen any time soon? Me neither. I suppose one can give Miles the benefit of the doubt, given his frequent collaborations with quasi-rock guitarists like John McLaughlin, but still, this pick smacks of political correctness and institutional genuflection. Call me crazy, but that seems just a tad un-rock to me.

Now, Lynyrd Skynyrd, eh. I never thought much of 'em, I loathe Sweet Home Alabama and its redneck racism (though much to my chagrin, I did do it in my cover band days), but at least you can make an argument for them. They certainly spearheaded the southern boogie rock movement, lamentable as most of it is, and influence counts for something (indeed, it should be a key criterion for nomination, much less induction, and there is a section of nominees called "early influences", though I have no idea what modern musician demonstrates any influence of, say, the Staple Singers). So I can see where they merit induction.

Sabbath is about the only pick from this list I can really endorse, and it has more to do with taking a look around at the rock music trends of the last....oh, I don't know, 20 years or so, and hearing a great many of them directly or indirectly influenced by Tony Iommi's sinister tritone riffs and Ozzy's methodical chants of the perils of the modern age. Very few bands show the influence of, say, the Stones or the Beatles, even though they are constantly held up as the be-all end-all of the genre. Almost every hard-rock or metal band out there flaunts their Sabbath influences right up front.

(And frankly, even just in the narrower category of '60s rock, I think The Who and The Kinks were each superior bands to the Beatles and Stones. They were far more thematically and musically developed, and far more willing to push the conceptual boundaries of the genre without falling into the twee acid-tinged pastiches of For The Benefit Of Mr. Kite and the like.)

Then we come to the joke picks. I mean, The Sex Pistols? One album gets you in now? Well, sounds like they run quite a tight ship down there in Self-Referential Rock Critic Asshole Land. And Blondie, a cheesy disco band with two or three very minor pop gems and one dumb, campy "rap" thing about men from Mars eating cars or some weird cokehead shit. Nicely done, folks. Shall we induct Rick Dees next, for the timeless greatness that is Disco Duck?

I mean, you don't have to find five performers every year, now do you? If you just ran out of people you thought merited admission, say so. Don't further demean an already largely irrelevant concept by pretending a couple of trendy one-hit goofballs belong up there with Elvis and Led Zeppelin.

Here is the RRHF's list of 500 songs that shaped rock 'n' roll. There's a lot that's good about this list; there's some that's odd. If I were going to pick one song from ZZ Top to put in, that signified what that band was all about, it sure wouldn't have been Legs. But that was their biggest single, I suppose, which is what this is really all about.

For a second consecutive year, hip-hop's prime candidate, Grandmaster Flash, failed to gather the necessary support from the 700 rock historians overseeing nominee selection.

"Rap is the most important cultural phenomenon this country has ever exported," Russell Simmons, a trailblazing hip-hop business owner, said Monday. "I shudder to think that an institution like the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame can continue to exist and ignore hip-hop."

"It's blasphemous," added Public Enemy frontman Chuck D. "We can't afford to have another piece of black art history go undocumented."

Really? We can't? Why the hell not? Jesus Christ, have they noticed how heavily weighted the lists are to soul and R&B artists?

I note for the record that Public Enemy's Fight The Power is on the list of 500 songs, incidentally. Seriously, I like Chuck D and all, but this insistence that Grandmaster Flash had something to do with rock is just nuts. Certainly there were successful crossover rap and hip-hop artists, who will probably get their props in due time. Run-DMC, Public Enemy, and their peers will get recognized....or, they may just punt and give some love to MC Hammer and Tone Loc. You just never know.

Here is a complete list of RRHF inductees to date. And I, for one, am a better man for knowing that The Impressions are on that list. Whoever they are.

Acts are eligible 25 years after releasing their first recording. Musicians who debuted in 1980 could be elected this year, but the hall's nomination committee found exactly zero names from that field worthy of induction.

That opened the doors for a number of acts that had been given years of chilly treatment from hall voters. They had been excluded due to the disdain of music critics (Skynyrd and Sabbath), a perception that they belonged in a different music genre's shrine (Davis) or the simple fact that their body of work was too small (the single-album Sex Pistols). The final wallflower was Blondie, the New York new wave band that was nominated four times before voters deemed it essential to the hall's gallery.

In other words, they had nothing. Which is astonishing to me. I mean, I'm not trying to engage some silly fanboy obscurantism and sing the manifold praises of Can or Aztec Camera. But shit, how about The Cars, a power-pop dynamo that ruled the early '80s with infectious hooks and the tastiest guitar solos this side of Jeff Beck? And Ric Ocasek still does fine work, producing albums for bands like Weezer, in between marathon sex romps with Paulina Porizkova (I assume).

How about Todd Rundgren, a fantastic multi-instrumentalist and a great American pop/rock songwriter? How about harder groups that are well overdue, like Motörhead or Rush? Both groups are still on top of their game after over a quarter-century, without all the unnecessary hype that accompanies every greasy dump or knocked-up Brazilian model associated with Mick Jagger. How about Frank Zappa, a true American original, the philosopher-king of some of the most unique and scathing musical satire/commentary of the last century. Are we still seriously thinking about Blondie and the fucking Sex Pistols?

It's best not to dig too much into the mentality of weird little clubs like the RRHF, because it's not really about the music. Like the commercials that pillage a few key phrases from the choruses of minor hits from 30 years ago, these things are meant to evoke a frisson of nostalgia, a wistful yearning for a time and place that never really existed, not in the framework that's being sold. Soundtracks for karaoke machines and shitty commercials, that's what it boils down to.

Robert Fripp, in commenting on the decisions about art vs. commerce that every serious musician must eventually make, helpfully offered the zen axiom that in commerce, the musician makes the music, while in art, the music makes the musician. We can extrapolate this idea quite easily to observe how music is consumed at large in the public arena. It is used most frequently in the advertising milieu, to encourage folks to buy shit they don't really want with money they don't really have. Or it can be used to roll out a "live concert tour", where chances are you will pay north of $100 to watch a band ape its hits to a backing track. The goal here is to use the thrill of a captive "event" as a vehicle to get you to pay $6 for a bottle of water, not realizing that you could just save yourself the trouble and pop their CD into your car stereo, drive to the 7-11, and pay $1.49 for the same bottle.

Or you could stay home, crank up the stereo, and drink from the tap. It's a world of possibilities.

I am overly cynical about the uses of music, paradoxically, because I am overly idealistic about the transformational power of truly excellent music. I am currently looking over my new DVD of Rush's 30th anniversary tour last year. (Why yes, I did play Dungeons & Dragons when I was in high school. How did you guess?) To be sure, it is flawed, in the way all great bands are flawed -- there is simply too much to draw from to please everyone. There are worse flaws to have.

Now, what a band like Rush (and there are many others, but they were the first to demonstrate this principle to me as a young aspiring musician) brings to the table is not just their instrumental virtuosity. They were really the antithesis of a shithead prefab band like the Sex Pistols in so many ways. There were bands with a punk ethos that I liked quite a bit back in the day, but the Pistols were not one of them. They were stuck in a contradiction -- either they were fake, or they were cheating their fans with non-existent effort and notoriously awful performances.

But Rush did not worry about the confines of the four-minute radio single, nor did they confine themselves to the usual lyrical tropes of getting some action and driving in my car, looking for some more of said action. They have been content to let the music do the talking, and the work ethic back it up. And I defy you to find a good rock drummer who does not claim at least some influence from Neil Peart. The guy has been the undisputed dean of rock drumming for a couple decades now. The other two guys aren't half bad either.

Motörhead, believe it or not, has a very similar approach to the craft. Pound for pound, they may be the all-around best straight-ahead rock band on the planet. I say this having seen them play a pissant 300-seat club in a cow town out in the middle of nowhere, and bring it like it was Madison Square Garden. That is the quintessence of kicking ass, which is really what rock and roll is supposed to be about.

Yet bands like these get ignored year after year by the "mainstream" "music" press, because most of them are little putzes who just read each others' screeds and try desperately to spot the new trend before it jumps the shark. Some of it is the bands' own fault; they do not fall into the usual "rock star" paradigm. Big-titted groupies are not anxiously waiting to blow Geddy Lee in the stadium parking lot.

But to get back to my point, a lot of it has to do with the way music is perceived as a product, with the accompanying consumption rituals. Used to be that the album or tour was the product in itself; now it's just something to sell something else. This is reflected in the vertiginous A&R corporate structure that has the conventional record industry on the verge of collapse. Though the music industry has never been a bastion of ethical conduct, at least back in the day major record companies tended to be run by people like Ahmet Ertegun of Atlantic, who wanted to make money, but also genuinely liked being part of a creative process. Thus innovative bands like Led Zeppelin and Yes were given plenty of time to develop a following and a cohesive sound.

Since the mid-'80s, the corporatization of the music industry has sent the creative process into something of a tailspin. Don't get me wrong; there's still good music out there. But bands are no longer given much time to get it together. If the first album stiffs (or just doesn't quite perform as well as expected), a band can easily find itself out.

Using Atlantic as an example once again, consider some of the truly innovative rock bands they had on their roster in the late-'80s -- King's X, Saigon Kick, Enuff Z'Nuff, Mr. Big. (Yes, I know, right now you're saying "Mr. Big?" as if they were Poison or something. But aside from the two power ballads that made them money and got them lumped in with hair bands like Warrant, they were actually an excellent straight-ahead rock band, with arguably the most talented guitar-bass tandem ever, in Paul Gilbert and Billy Sheehan.)

What did Atlantic do with all those bands? Well, they never knew what to do with the first two in terms of marketing, so they just sent them out on the road together with no promo and no radio support. The other two were more pop-metal in style, but aside from the aforementioned Mr. Big power ballads, neither band got near their due. (Though Mr. Big did get an opportunity as the opening act for Rush on their Presto tour.) Because that was the age of the blockbuster album, and every A&R weasel was expected to find the next Guns 'n' Roses. So bands no longer got cultivated properly by the record companies. They'd just send an A&R guy to hang out on the Sunset Strip, check a couple shows, throw some money at a few spandex bands with a weedly-weedly style guitar player, and see if anyone bought it. When they stopped buying it, the companies were at a loss.

The trend accelerated in the '90s, hitting its low point with the advent of the boy bands. By this time the majors had decided that the smart financial move was to just dump all the promo money into the rollout for one favored artist on their roster, to turn it into that blockbuster. Meanwhile everyone else on the label got short shrift.

Thankfully, the steadily-declining prices of digital equipment, coupled with the development of the internet, have all but rendered record companies obsolete, by democratizing the tools of production and distribution. They're still with us; the dinosaurs didn't die off overnight either. But their time is up, and as the CD itself is rendered obsolete by innovations in portable hard-drive technology (iPods, etc.), even the need for physical distribution channels is gone, and that was the sole remaning strength of the corporate music entity.

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is part of that bloated, wasteful entity, as are the loathsome Grammies and the rest of the masturbatory award shows. It's all corporate weasels slapping each others' backs, grateful for yet another holiday season that consumers got bamboozled into shelling out $20 for a Britney Spears CD with one hit and the rest filler. Occasionally they get it right with Green Day or System of a Down, but more often they get it way wrong.

So maybe it's better to let the RRHF have the Sex Pistols and Blondie and such. Maybe it'd be an insult to a band with integrity to get recognized by the kewl kidz, who really peaked in high school when you get right down to it. (And yes, I realize that there are plenty of bands with integrity in there, like Aerosmith, Queen, and U2. Even a stopped corporate clock is right twice a day, provided that the committee signs off on it at the board meeting.)

But just for the hell of it, feel free to throw in your own vicarious nominations in comments.

The Memory Hole

This is bad even for Faux "News".

In a stunning display of historical revisionism, Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace argued this morning that President Bush never tried to link al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein:

[T]hat specific quote there where you say he couldn’t distinguish between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, he wasn’t saying that they were linked at all. He was saying one was as bad as the other, and when he said in that same answer something about that Saddam Hussein would like to use a terrorist network, he wasn’t saying that they would like to use al Qaeda. So you’re making a link there that the President never made.

Wallace focused on a single statement President Bush made on September 25, 2002. (“[Y]ou can’t distinguish between al Qaeda and Saddam when you talk about the war on terror.”) But that statement was part of a series of statements that intentionally and explicitly linked Saddam and al Qaeda in the lead up to war. For example, this statement by Bush on February 8, 2003:

Saddam Hussein has longstanding, direct and continuing ties to terrorist networks. Senior members of Iraqi intelligence and al Qaeda have met at least eight times since the early 1990s. Iraq has sent bomb-making and document forgery experts to work with al Qaeda. Iraq has also provided al Qaeda with chemical and biological weapons training. And an al Qaeda operative was sent to Iraq several times in the late 1990s for help in acquiring poisons and gases.

Virtually none of that was true. The administration’s hand picked weapons inspector, David Kay, concluded “We simply did not find any evidence of extensive links with Al Qaeda, or for that matter any real links at all.”

Jesus, what a shameless hack. If I were Mike Wallace, not only would I disown my idiot son, I'd ask him to change his surname so as to avoid association. I might even remind him that shoveling shit doesn't necessarily require an actual shovel.

These people are just grotesque. I hope Chris Wallace is making a lot of money to sell out his country with out-and-out lies, because that's exactly what he's doing.

[via Atrios.]

The Adults Are In Charge

A BBC article checks further into the allegations that Blair had to talk Bush out of bombing Al Jazeera's Qatar headquarters:

The head of al-Jazeera is delivering a letter to Tony Blair demanding the facts on reports that President Bush suggested bombing the Arab TV station.
He wants a memo published which is alleged to show Tony Blair dissuaded President Bush from bombing its HQ.

Last week the Daily Mirror reported what it said was the contents of a memo showing Mr Blair had talked the US President out of the attack last year.

....

According to press reports, the memo includes a transcript record of Mr Blair attempting in April 2004 to persuade Mr Bush not to bomb al-Jazeera's HQ in Qatar.

Qatar is an ally of the US and was the location of US military headquarters during the Iraq war.

The White House dismissed reports of the conversation as "outlandish", but US officials have openly accused al-Jazeera of being a mouthpiece for al-Qaeda.

....

[British Attorney General] Lord Goldsmith also denied the Act was being used to prevent political embarrassment.

"It is not being used to save the embarrassment of a politician. That is completely not the case at all."

He also refused to confirm the contents of the memo.

BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner says this latest row follows a history of tension and mutual suspicion between al-Jazeera and the US administration.

Many of al-Jazeera's employees have long been privately convinced that their offices in Kabul and Baghdad were deliberately targeted by the Pentagon in 2001 and 2003 respectively.

Gee, ya think so? Clearly it's true -- if it weren't all Lord Goldsmith would have to do is deny the contents of the memo. Anytime someone feigns neutrality and refuses to confirm or deny, you know there's at least some truth to it.

So let's recap: after "accidentally" bombing their Baghdad and Kabul offices, and after "accidentally" killing one of their cameramen in the field, we were ready to bomb their headquarters in an allied nation that was allowing us to garrison our troops.

The big mystery here to me is what Blair could possibly stand to gain by remaining mum at this late stage of the game. His political career is toast. He may have been able to make the good faith case a couple years ago, but no longer. Perhaps it's honor among thieves.

Whatever the case, it's just the latest in a seemingly endless parade of irresponsible, reckless decisions made by an unserious, uninformed little man, and the usual gang of cronies trying to figure out how to divvy up the spoils. It's nice that Blair was able to talk Bush out of actually doing it, but the fact that he had to be talked out such action is testament to how he -- and they -- think.

Slam Dunk

Kinsley nails it.

One might also argue," Vice President Cheney said in a speech on Monday, "that untruthful charges against the commander in chief have an insidious effect on the war effort." That would certainly be an ugly and demagogic argument, were one to make it. After all, if untruthful charges against the president hurt the war effort (by undermining public support and soldiers' morale), then those charges will hurt the war effort even more if they happen to be true. So one would be saying in effect that any criticism of the president is essentially treason.

Lest one fear that he might be saying that, Cheney immediately added, "I'm unwilling to say that" -- "that" being what he had just said. He generously granted critics the right to criticize (as did the president this week). Then he resumed hurling adjectives like an ape hurling coconuts at unwanted visitors. "Dishonest." "Reprehensible." "Corrupt." "Shameless." President Bush and others joined in, all morally outraged that anyone would accuse the administration of misleading us into war by faking a belief that Saddam Hussein possessed nuclear and/or chemical and biological weapons.

Yes, how dare we note the facts that we all can see? How dare we point out that not only is the emperor buck nekkid, but he's been streaking the stadium the entire damned time?

And really, when Vice President Go Fuck Yourself and his unholy minions start whinging about the incivility of it all, you just have to wonder for a minute just what sort of planarian such tactics are aimed at. On one hand, nobody could actually be stupid enough to buy into such hypocrisy, but on the other hand, that "more in sorrow than in anger" horseshit is aimed at somebody.

And it has been pointed out quite voluminously that Big Time's real contribution to the institutions of American government is the consolidation of executive power. You want the imperial presidency? 'Cause that's exactly what he's given us.

Interestingly, the administration no longer claims that Hussein actually had such weapons at the time Bush led the country into war in order to eliminate them. "The flaws in the intelligence are plain enough in hindsight," Cheney said on Monday. So-called WMD (weapons of mass destruction) were not the only argument for the war, but the administration thought they were a crucial argument at the time. So the administration now concedes that the country went to war on a false premise. Doesn't that mean that the war was a mistake no matter where the false premise came from?

So does this mean we can take back Slam Dunk Tenet's Medal O' Freedom, then? Can we adopt a resolution censuring Colin Powell for his shamelessly irresponsible water-carrying? Oh, he's sorry now, but he fucking well knew better then, and he allowed himself to be trotted out in order to win over some of the fence-sitters. He knew he was getting jerked around, that Rummy and Cheney essentially had put him on a need-to-know basis, and he still went ahead and played the company-man role.

You know, when you get right down to it, we're in this because the bureaucrats who were supposed to provide oversight failed miserably to function in that capacity. Had they done their jobs with a modicum of honesty and probity at the time, we wouldn't be having this argument. Instead, we get a bunch of ex post facto "we told you so"s from Larry Wilkerson. Too little, too late.

Cheney and others insist that Bush couldn't possibly have misled anyone about WMD since everybody had assumed for years, back into the Clinton administration, that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. That's why any criticism of Bush on this point is corrupt, reprehensible, distasteful, odiferous, infectious and so on. But this indignation is belied by Cheney's own remarks in the 2000 election. In the vice presidential debate, for example, Cheney was happy to agree with Bush that Saddam Hussein's possession of weapons of mass destruction would be a good enough reason to "take him out." But he did not assume that Hussein already had such weapons. And he certainly did not assume that this view was the general consensus. "We'll have to see if that happens," he said. "It's unfortunate we find ourselves in a position where we don't know for sure what might be transpiring inside Iraq. I certainly hope he's not regenerating that kind of capability."

If you're looking for revisionist history, don't waste your time on the war's critics. Google up Cheney's bitter critique, in the 2000 campaign, of President Bill Clinton's military initiatives, specifically the need for more burden sharing by allies and a sharply defined "exit strategy." At the time, there were about 11,000 American troops in Bosnia and Kosovo, working alongside about 55,000 from allied countries. If only!

Mm-hmm. And you can bet your last buck that had Clinton elected to go into Iraq and take out Saddam, you'd have found Ann Coulter hanging from the rafters on the callow, careless manner in which Clinton regarded the troops. Instead we are inundated with the post-Stalinist "get in line" commentary of her and her fellow travelers, insisting that anyone who tells the truth is some fifth column useful idiot. It's shameless and despicable, and its usefulness to them seems finally to be dwindling.

Is It Douche-y In Here, Or Is It Just Me?

Via Kos we see this little gem which neatly encapsulates the deep thinking behind the big dog-and-(ahem)pony show:

Former FEMA Director Michael Brown, heavily criticized for his agency's slow response to Hurricane Katrina, is starting a disaster preparedness consulting firm to help clients avoid the sort of errors that cost him his job.

''If I can help people focus on preparedness, how to be better prepared in their homes and better prepared in their businesses -- because that goes straight to the bottom line -- then I hope I can help the country in some way,'' Brown told the Rocky Mountain News for its Thursday editions.

You know how you can help the country in some way, Mikey? Go back to the pony show. Oh wait, they fired your dumb ass, too. Never mind. I'll give you ten bucks to clean my fucking gutters, just 'cause I do my best to help the losers of the world when possible. I'm a people person, when you get right down to it.

Brown said officials need to ''take inventory'' of what's going on in a disaster to be able to answer questions to avoid appearing unaware of how serious a situation is.

In the aftermath of the hurricane, critics complained about Brown's lack of formal emergency management experience and e-mails that later surfaced showed him as out of touch with the extent of the devastation.

The lawyer admits that while he was head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency mistakes were made in the response to Katrina. He also said he had been planning to quit before the hurricane hit.

''Hurricane Katrina showed how bad disasters can be, and there's an incredible need for individuals and businesses to understand how important preparedness is,'' he said.

I love this section, just for the sheer disjointedness of it all. The first sentence portrays him as a proactive problem-solver; the second contradicts the first; the third leaves one assuming that Brown felt underpaid for his incompetence (why else would he quit to stay in the same line of, um, "work"?); and the fourth is just a "no shit, Sherlock" bit that underscores this clown's opportunism.

But it's this last part where Mikey shows his true colors, those of a petulant, self-indulgent little whiner:

''I'm doing a lot of good work with some great clients,'' Brown said. ''My wife, children and my grandchild still love me. My parents are still proud of me.''

Oh, they should be, Mike, they should be. After all, you are a fashion god, and you have the horsie show trophies to prove it. I'd love to know which "businesses" are lining up to sign on Mike's disaster expertise, and which ones just want to sniff his ass for lucrative government contracts. There's a special place in hell for people like Mike Brown.

Foe Foe Foe

[Working subtitle: Virgin Mary, Crazy Jerry.]

As in Jerry Falwell, who's on the warpath to save Christmas from all those hedonistic merchants.

Evangelical Christian pastor Jerry Falwell has a message for Americans when it comes to celebrating Christmas this year: You're either with us, or you're against us.

Falwell has put the power of his 24,000-member congregation behind the "Friend or Foe Christmas Campaign," an effort led by the conservative legal organization Liberty Counsel. The group promises to file suit against anyone who spreads what it sees as misinformation about how Christmas can be celebrated in schools and public spaces.

The 8,000 members of the Christian Educators Association International will be the campaign's "eyes and ears" in the nation's public schools. They'll be reporting to 750 Liberty Counsel lawyers who are ready to pounce if, for example, a teacher is muzzled from leading the third-graders in "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing."

An additional 800 attorneys from another conservative legal group, the Alliance Defense Fund, are standing by as part of a similar effort, the Christmas Project. Its slogan: "Merry Christmas. It's OK to say it."

See, they don't seem to have a problem with the overall commercialization of the season per se. After all, if you can't run down to your local big-box retailer to plunk down for the light-up snowman, life-size talking Santa, and a little nativity diorama, all for under $37.99 plus tax, where's the joy in the season?

Fanning the Yule log of discontent against what the Liberty Counsel calls "grinches" like the American Civil Liberties Union are evangelical-led organizations including the 150,000-member American Family Association. It has called for a boycott of Target stores next weekend. The chain's crime, according to the group, is a ban on the use of "Merry Christmas" in stores, an accusation the chain denies.

Huh. So someone's full of shit here. Let's play devil's advocate for a second here, as it were, and say it's true -- why would Target take such a stance? In what way would such a blanket policy benefit the corporate bottom line?

Ooh! Ooh! Mista Kotta! I know! I know! Because more customers might be put off by the perceived Christianization than are expecting the perceived Christianization. That is the only scenario in which such a policy would be functionable, much less even desirable, for any corporation to enact.

Do I think that's the case? No. Then again, I'm much more inclined to believe the pencil-pushers at Target than the barking loons at the AFA, who usually spend their time counting doo-doo and pee-pee references on network TV. Salutations to them for broadening their horizons.

Target cares about one thing, and one thing only -- making more money for Target. Every company has this mission, and it is glorious in its simplicity. If the people who ran Target thought there was more money in it for them endorsing a given religion, they'd do it, and us secular heathens would just have to deal. Indeed, pretty much every other strip mall has some Christian book and knick-knack store or other scrunched between the Kinko's and the crappy wicker craft shop. Ever see any more than three people at a time in those things?

The truth is that, as religious as America comes off when polled on certain loaded questions, most people of faith prefer that faith to be personal to them. They practice it at home and at church. Where they intersect with the public is incidental; if a given place says or does things that offend their sensibilities, they just find somewhere else to satisfy their consumer need. Such is the magic of the free marketplace.

So Falwell and Wildmon may want to check the factuality of their premises. Can it be that they are basing all this on flawed assumptions? Can it be that this is merely an instance of manufactured controversy?

On his show last week, Fox News commentator Bill O'Reilly offered a list of other retailers that he says refuse to use "Merry Christmas" in their store advertising.

In signing on to "Friend or Foe" this month, Falwell urged the 500,000 recipients of his weekly "Falwell Confidential" e-mail to "draw a line in the sand and resist bullying tactics of the ACLU and others who intimidate school and government officials by spreading misinformation about Christmas."

Standing on the other side of that sand line are religious, liberal and secular organizations such as the Anti-Defamation League, whose national director, Abe Foxman, recently bemoaned the religious right's efforts to "Christianize" America.

"This amped-up effort shows how these groups want to push into the classrooms more," said Tami Holzman, assistant director of the Anti-Defamation League's San Francisco office.

"There is no war against Christmas," said Barry Lynn of Americans United for Separation of Church and State. "There is no jihad against Christians. There is nothing going on around Christmas except these groups' incessant fundraising."

Amen to that. And as bizarre as it sounds that there are actually 500,000 people willing to subscribe to Falwell's weekly crackpottery, it's a drop in the bucket of 300 million citizens. Can it be that this is just another crock of shit to fleece the flock with?

While nowhere near being the preeminent fundamentalist figure he was during the halcyon days of the Moral Majority more than a decade ago, nevertheless, Falwell can still command media attention. Moreover, unlike the Rev. Pat Robertson, whose awkward commentaries have become so common that they have become boring, Falwell picks his targets a bit more carefully.

These days he has latched onto a doozy of a controversy: In a recent edition of Falwell Confidential, the online "insider weekly newsletter to The Moral Majority and The Liberty Alliance," he maintained that Christmas is under attack. Christians, Falwell advised, should, "draw a line in the sand and resist bullying tactics by the American Civil Liberties Union, Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, the American Atheists and other leftist organizations that intimidate school and government officials by spreading misinformation about Christmas."

"Celebrating Christmas," Falwell declared, "is constitutional!"

(Coincidentally, the organizations Falwell points out as responsible for attacking Christmas are several of the same groups he blamed for the 9/11 terrorist attacks. He later issued a rather understated apology.)

Targeting left-wing Grinches trying to drive Christmas out of the public square, Falwell wrote, "In many public venues, and in our schools and workplaces, many Americans have discovered that they are not permitted to erect Christmas decorations, exchange Christmas cards or sing Christmas carols."

Guess what, Jerry? You can't just hang your birthday cards up in public places either. Look, there is a nugget of truth to his complaint -- I certainly have no problem with Christmas carols in school and nativity scenes in the public square. I'm not sure who's actually bothered by bland, rote expressions of holiday spirit, but it ain't me, and obviously I'm pretty fiercely anti-religion. I would note for the record, though, that these are the same mutts that howl at the moon any time anything remotely ecumenical is done to reach out to Jews or Muslims in schools and public places.

If they were honest (you know, like it says to be in the Ten Commandments) they'd come clean and just say they want Christianity in the public square, not just the generic "religious expression". They don't want Muslims out in full force celebrating Eid al-Fitr, or Jews celebrating Chanukah in the town square. They want taxpayers to fund their public enclave. And they have acted in bad faith in the past with these things, using them as leverage to get more overt displays and expressions of faith in public offices and schools.

On the Fox News Channel, ranting about liberals out to destroy Christmas is as ubiquitous and inaccurate as the station's "fair and balanced" credo. Last year, according to Media Matters for America, "In a 'Talking Points Memo' devoted to "[h]ow Martin Luther King would view things today,'" O'Reilly said that King "would be appalled by the secular culture" and by "the attacks on Christmas, the demonizing of Christianity."

In addition to plugging Gibson's book, Fox's Bill O'Reilly recently ranted about the anti-Christmas practices of two major retailers, Sears/K-Mart and Kohl's. On his November 9 2005 broadcast, O'Reilly told his audience:

Here's what we found out: Sears/Kmart would not answer our questions. Spokesman Chris Braithwaite simply ducked the issue. Their website banners: "Wish Book Holiday 2005." They were the worst we had to deal with. OK? Sears/Kmart. JCPenney says its catalog is always called "Christmas catalog." Federated Department Stores -- Macy's, Bloomingdale's, Burdines -- says the words "Merry Christmas" will be used in most advertising. Same thing at May, Filene's, Lord the company will deal with Christmas. Dillard's, however, will use the slogan "Discover Christmas, Discover Dillard's." So there you go. Shop where you like the atmosphere. Just remember, Kohl's and Sears/Kmart, basically, not all right.

Wow, sounds like a real conspiracy there, fellas. Sure you're not just out to hump a few crappy books and get the rubes all whipped up about nothin'? Is this an indication that the "God Hates Fags" thing has already jumped the holy shark?

National Therapy

Perhaps, being human (I presume, but just in case, welcome to our non-human readers), you have experienced some sort of trauma somewhere in the course of your life. It may not be merely a random collection of isolated events; it may be continuous in some form. It may not even be "real", in the sense that other people would necessarily find it traumatic; it may, as we say in the 'hood, just be "all in your head". Maybe it's just the usual frustration and alienation common to most people who are paying attention to the world around them.

Doesn't matter all that much either way -- to you it's still there, and very concrete. It must either be dealt with or avoided. Each strategy takes some form of actual effort to carry out, and each has its benefits and problems. People who are deemed successful at their personal strategies are said to be "well-adjusted". Really, it all depends on the severity of what they were dealing with -- again, whether real or imagined.

Frequently people attempt to mask their anxieties with various addictions -- drugs, sex, gambling, whatever. Anything to take their mind off the problem at hand. Conversely, they may project the anxieties on to others, accusing friends of doing what they themselves are doing. Each is merely a coping mechanism; neither is particularly effective for dealing with the problem itself.

Sometimes these demons manifest themselves much more fiercely, resulting in pathological behaviors, sociopathic, even psychopathic, destructive (self or others) behavioral patterns, etc. Everybody knows somebody who has bottomed out in such fashion, frequently with tragic results. Loved ones might attempt, in the therapeutic parlance, to have an intervention.

Interventions, like funerals, tend to be more beneficial to the bereaved than to the subject. An exception (in my humble secondhand knowledge) is if the person is simply too out of it to have realized up to that point what sort of pain he was causing his loved ones. This is rare. Usually the person is well aware that they're fucking up royally, they have just prioritized much differently than rational people expect.

But occasionally those things are successful, and the person with the problem attempts some sort of proactive rehabilitative program, and gets on with their life, or what's left of it. Even once rehabilitated, there is always the potential for recidivism, for falling back to old ways and bad habits. This is not so good.

So what do you do when such irrational behavior has taken place on a collective level? How does a huge nation set about the task of unfucking itself, and getting out of its vicious cycle of denial and projection?

I commented way back in January, right before the wave of purple-fingered freedom swept Iraq, about the advent of Shiite death squads. Sure enough, it turns out that some of them have been found to be torturing civilians to death in horrific ways:

British-trained police operating in Basra have tortured at least two civilians to death with electric drills, The Independent on Sunday can reveal.

John Reid, the Secretary of State for Defence, admits that he knows of "alleged deaths in custody" and other "serious prisoner abuse" at al-Jamiyat police station, which was reopened by Britain after the war.

Part of rehabilitation will be coming to terms with the fact that we don't even know what we don't know -- and that many people prefer it that way. Not me. If something is right, then it's right, and there's no need to hide your light under a bushel, right? If these people took a power drill through the skull, we should find out if it was for a just cause, n'est-ce pas?

There is something so shamelessly duplicitous about all this, when you get right down to it. Bush lectures from the podium in Panama about how "we do not torture" even as Cheney insists on exemptions for just that for the CIA. Plus extraordinary rendition, plus what we already know about Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. So perhaps we need to parse "we", "do not", and "torture", the way we used to parse "is" and "alone" in a more innocent time.

I believe the American people are starting to do just that, just as they instinctively know that it doesn't matter what the technical classification of Willy Pete happens to be, they just know they'd be furious if it were used on American troops, much less American civilians. This too is a cause for national therapy, even without the requisite photo of a naked screaming Iraqi child, scorched by napalm or Willy Pete, fragged by a daisy cutter bomblet, whatever.

And if Big Time and his rotten little henchmen want to chuck stones at perfidious Democrats who have reasonable doubts about the Great Strategery, what does he have to say to the democratically elected leaders of Iraq?

Cairo -- For the first time, Iraq's political factions collectively called for a timetable for withdrawal of foreign forces Monday as the Bush administration battled pressure at home to commit to a pullout schedule.

The announcement, at the conclusion of a reconciliation conference here backed by the Arab League, was a public reaching-out by Shiites, who now dominate Iraq's government, to Sunni Arabs on the eve of parliamentary elections that have been put on shaky ground by weeks of sectarian violence.

....

In Cairo, about 100 Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish leaders, many of whom will run in the election on Dec. 15, signed a closing memorandum that "demands a withdrawal of foreign troops on a specified timetable, dependent on an immediate national program for rebuilding the security forces."

The statement said: "The Iraqi people are looking forward to the day when foreign forces will leave Iraq, when its armed and security forces will be rebuilt, and when they can enjoy peace and stability and an end to terrorism."

....

The statement, while condemning the wave of terrorism that has engulfed Iraq, also broadly acknowledged a general right to resist foreign occupation. This was another effort to compromise with Sunnis who have sought to legitimize the insurgency. The statement condemned terror attacks and religious backing for them. It also demanded the release of innocent prisoners and an investigation into allegations of torture.

So if Jack Murtha's a cut-and-run pussy, what does that make Ibrahim Jaafari? No matter. Murtha never proposed cutting and/or running in the first place -- his proposal was entirely reasonable, and involved keeping troops safely nearby in friendly countries like Kuwait and Qatar.

But if there's one thing this administration understands well, it's how repeating the same falsehoods over and over again tend to take on a life of their own, and the benefits nearly always accrue to the propagandists. Especially in the absence of an effective opposition party.

Not so much this time, though not because the Democrats have suddenly grown a backbone. No, they're content to keep their powder as dry as possible until the next election cycle begins after the holidays, then hoo boy, watch out Republicans! Prepare to be pimp-slapped by the likes of Rahm Emanuel, fool! No doubt Rove and the rest of them are quivering in the corner at the very prospect of getting Rahmed.

It turns out that the American people have finally started to give up whatever good faith they had been holding out for this gang to get its shit together. Independents and moderates are giving up on the Bushies in droves, and on the selfsame issues of personality that got Bush installed in the first place. The notion of having a beer with a gutless lying tool suddenly doesn't sound like such a hot ticket. Imagine that.

And note just how sotto voce this little gem just floated over the transom. In the British media, naturally [emphases mine].

Iraqis face the dire prospect of losing up to $200bn (£116bn) of the wealth of their country if an American-inspired plan to hand over development of its oil reserves to US and British multinationals comes into force next year. A report produced by American and British pressure groups warns Iraq will be caught in an "old colonial trap" if it allows foreign companies to take a share of its vast energy reserves. The report is certain to reawaken fears that the real purpose of the 2003 war on Iraq was to ensure its oil came under Western control.

The Iraqi government has announced plans to seek foreign investment to exploit its oil reserves after the general election, which will be held next month. Iraq has 115 billion barrels of proved oil reserves, the third largest in the world.

According to the report, from groups including War on Want and the New Economics Foundation (NEF), the new Iraqi constitution opened the way for greater foreign investment. Negotiations with oil companies are already under way ahead of next month's election and before legislation is passed, it said.

The groups said they had amassed details of high-level pressure from the US and UK governments on Iraq to look to foreign companies to rebuild its oil industry. It said a Foreign Office code of practice issued in summer last year said at least $4bn would be needed to restore production to the levels before the 1990-91 Gulf War. "Given Iraq's needs it is not realistic to cut government spending in other areas and Iraq would need to engage with the international oil companies to provide appropriate levels of foreign direct investment to do this," it said.

Yesterday's report said the use of production sharing agreements (PSAs) was proposed by the US State Department before the invasion and adopted by the Coalition Provisional Authority. "The current government is fast-tracking the process. It is already negotiating contracts with oil companies in parallel with the constitutional process, elections and passage of a Petroleum Law," the report, Crude Designs, said.

Earlier this year a BBC Newsnight report claimed to have uncovered documents showing the Bush administration made plans to secure Iraqi oil even before the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the US. Based on its analysis of PSAs in seven countries, it said multinationals would seek rates of return on their investment from 42 to 162 per cent, far in excess of typical 12 per cent rates.

Taking an assumption of $40 a barrel, below the current price of almost $60, and a likely contract term of 25 to 40 years, it said that Iraq stood to lose between £74bn and $194bn. Andrew Simms, the NEF's policy director, said: "Over the last century, Britain and the US left a global trail of conflict, social upheaval and environmental damage as they sought to capture and control a disproportionate share of the world's oil reserves. Now it seems they are determined to increase their ecological debts at Iraq's expense. Instead of a new beginning, Iraq is caught in a very old colonial trap."

Well, gee, I guess we can all put two and two together and take a stab at what Chalabi's little secret meeting with Big Time was about the other day. Hint: it wasn't about the so-called Energy Task Force.

Now, we have some tough choices to make here in the U.S. of A., and we don't seem terribly inclined to make them. Oh sure, more and more of us are getting pissed at the lying. But we continue to lie to ourselves. In terms of long-term US strategic and economic interests, we're screwed royally whether we stay or we leave tomorrow. Jim Kunstler puts it well:

Maybe we ought to ask: what happens to the oil supply of the Crusader West when none of its representatives maintains a garrison in the Middle East? I use the term Crusader not to be cute, but to remind you how Europe and America are viewed by many people of the Middle East. They don't like us. They have a longstanding beef with us. Some of them would like to punish us.

America is leading the current crusade because we are the society most desperately addicted to oil, and the Middle East is where two-thirds of the world's remaining oil lies. The one thing that we apparently cannot bring ourselves to talk about is our addiction itself. The commuters whizzing around the edge cities and metroplexes of this land probably got a big charge out of Congressman Murtha's anti-war blast taking over drive-time radio on Friday. I wonder if they thought about how it might affect their commuting.

This whole spectacle -- both the inept war itself and our debate about it here at home -- is particularly shameful for the official opposition, my party, the Democrats, because we could be talking about the so-called elephant-in-the-room, namely how we live in America and the tragic choices we've made, and the things we might do to change that -- but the party leadership is too brain-dead or craven to do that. As long as we don't, we're going to be wrassling a tarbaby in the Middle East.

Unless an anti-war opposition has a plan to withdraw from the project of suburban sprawl, we're going to have to keep soldiers in Iraq, if not in the cities, then out in desert bases guarding the oil works and keeping planes ready to fly in case some al-Zarqawi-type maniac mounts a coup in Saudi Arabia. It would certainly be legitimate for the Democratic party to oppose the idea that we can continue to be crippled by car-dependency, or that we ought to keep subsidizing that way of life -- which Vice-president Cheney called "non-negotiable." We'd better negotiate that or somebody else is going to negotiate it for us, and that is exactly what they are doing with IED's in Iraq and elsewhere.

That's exactly it. It's nice that the demand for Hummers has waned so precipitously that GM is shitcanning 30,000 Americans and Canadians, but that is not remotely a solution to the bigger problem at hand. It is going to require a great deal of discussion and debate, and real scrutiny of where we are at, and what the true sustainability of our little petroleum paradise is now. We can't pull out and sacrifice access; we can't stay in and lose our souls.

The first step is to admit that we have a problem, and we -- the American citizenry -- have still somehow not reached that point. Shudder to think what it's going to take to get there.