Category: Politics

As if it weren’t bad enough that President Bush is taking shots at Amnesty International, he has to do it by senselessly murdering innocent words:

Mr Bush said its accusations therefore stemmed from “people who hate America, people that have been trained in some instances to disassemble, that means not tell the truth”.

As if it weren’t bad enough that me meant “dissemble,” he has to go and attempt to define the word he’s misusing.

This comes after last week’s charming bon mot:

“See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda.”

Here are some things I discovered in The Week today about the drilling that will most likely go on in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) soon:

• “The oil will most likely not go to the U.S. Because the global oil market knows no national boundaries, oil is usually shipped to the most convenient market…probably to Japan, Korea, and other Asian markets.”
• “Most of the big companies are dubious whether it will prove economically rewarding to pump oil in ANWR…Chevron Texaco, British Petroleum, and Conoco Phillips have stopped paying Artic Power, ANWR’s leading pro-drilling lobbying group; Exxon Mobil still contributes, but only minimally. ‘No oil company really cares about ANWR,’ one Bush administration official told The New York Times. ‘If the government gave them leases for free, they wouldn’t take them.'”

WTF? Why the hell are we doing this thing if not to help ease our reliance on foreign oil? Who benefits from this if even Big Oil isn’t excited about it? Who is pushing for this and why? This is seriously freaking me out.

This is from a Sidney Blumenthal article at Salon.com a couple months back:

According to two eyewitnesses, Rove had shown keen interest in everything he saw, and asked questions, including about costs, obviously thinking about a future Bush library and legacy. “You’re not such a scary guy,” joked his tour guide. “Yes, I am,” Rove replied. Walking away, he muttered deliberately and loudly, “I change Constitutions, I put churches in schools …” Thus he identified himself as more than the ruthless campaign tactician — as the invisible hand of power, pervasive and expansive, designing to alter the fundamental American compact.

This sounds way too…perfect…to be true. It’s the kind of thing I always figured about Rove, yet I can’t imagine he would be so brazen to say these things in public. Must not the Dark Side always remain hidden? It must be getting easier for the Dark Side to walk in the light of day. Certainly Jeff Gannon made it into the White House press corps without much dispute. Fortunately he’s crawled back under his particular rock.

A comedic actor/writer and author makes a very good point.

“The people who want power and money are unfortunately more adept at wielding power than the people who want to make things better.”

-Terry Jones

Salon has a great article with Terry on politics and the state of the world. He brings a very historically informed opinion on today’s issues, more so than one would generally expect from a man known to the world as the guy who directed a very silly movie about Arthurian knights running about with coconuts for horses.

This is a perfect example of how the US political system works, and why it’s performing so poorly:

Fact: The popular vote in the 2004 Presidential Election was 59,459,765 for Bush, 55,949,407 for Kerry.
Republican meaning: Bush won the most votes in US history.
Democrat meaning: Bush won by the slimmest margin of any incumbent president in US history.

Each side will interpret raw data in whichever light is most positive to their side. Republicans will tend to deal in absolute truths (the Most Ever), while Democrats will more often choose relative truths (Compared to Previous Margins).

This is just one example out of thousands that are presented to us every day. It’s a variation on the glass is half full versus the glass is half empty. Depending on the situation, each side will choose to focus on whichever interpretation suits them at the time. Had the election been the reverse, each side’s analysis would change.

I just realized the most troubling aspect of the entry below is that the room fell silent until someone changed the subject. The problem is not Bush’s idiocy, it’s that no one calls him on it. In a room full of yes-men, nobody is going to challenge him. What if the Swedish Army had made a good anchor in the West Bank? What if Bush had made an important decision based on that kind of incompetence? I would imagine he already has many times over, but that’s just me, the liberal critic. What if the only reason we went to Iraq was because Bush thought Saddam was a threat but nobody really questioned him, or at least if they did it wouldn’t alter his resolve?

It’s easy to dismiss the example as “ha ha, Bush is silly,” but he’s basing critical world decisions on his own lack of knowledge and no one is correcting him. I’m more afraid of him than I have ever been.

Also, on this red-letter date in the history of science, November 5th, 1955: Dr. Emmett Brown developed his theory time travel.

More fun excerpts from Ron Suskind’s “Without a Doubt“:

…Lantos went on to describe for the president how the Swedish Army might be an ideal candidate to anchor a small peacekeeping force on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Sweden has a well-trained force of about 25,000. The president looked at him appraisingly, several people in the room recall.

“I don’t know why you’re talking about Sweden,” Bush said. “They’re the neutral one. They don’t have an army.”

Lantos paused, a little shocked, and offered a gentlemanly reply: “Mr. President, you may have thought that I said Switzerland. They’re the ones that are historically neutral, without an army.” Then Lantos mentioned, in a gracious aside, that the Swiss do have a tough national guard to protect the country in the event of invasion.

Bush held to his view. “No, no, it’s Sweden that has no army.”

The room went silent, until someone changed the subject.

A few weeks later, members of Congress and their spouses gathered with administration officials and other dignitaries for the White House Christmas party. The president saw Lantos and grabbed him by the shoulder. “You were right,” he said, with bonhomie. “Sweden does have an army.”

AAAIIGHH! This is what you’ve wrought, America! This is the man you chose! Are you happy now?!

Some thoughts on the single most surreal election victory in US history:

1. I’ve been saying for years that the further away you go from urban areas, the further back in time you go. For example, in Harrison there are still sack boys who bag your groceries and carry them to your car for you. This just isn’t done anymore in big cities. Also, Harrison is a haven for white power organizations which are getting harder to find these days. For better or worse, rural = past, and urban = future and somewhere in between is the present day. While watching the election results last night, I was struck by the fact that nearly all urban areas tended to vote Democrat and nearly all rural areas vote Republican. Now, I don’t want to sound elitist, and it should be noted that I come from a very small town, but the division of stupidity in this country clearly weighs heavily on the side of rural. To make a broad generalization (but one that I would wager is demographically sound), the Republican Party is the party of the rural and the rich, and that’s a powerful combination because the latter can so easily manipulate the former. Factor in the “don’t switch horses in midstream” school of foreign policy, and there’s your Bush win.

2. The Electoral College is still a sham. People who live in a state surrounded by people who disagree with them are essentially wasting their vote. Whether you are a liberal in Arkansas or a conservative in New York, you are disenfranchised by the Electoral College.

3. This nonsense about waiting for Ohio’s provisional votes is ludicrous. Oh how I prayed that Kerry would win the electoral vote and not the popular vote, just so I could watch everyone who trumpeted the virtues of the Electoral College four years ago change their tune.

4. H.L. Mencken said “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it, good and hard.”

5. I don’t know if I can take four more years of angst, anti-science, environmental rape, no-bid contracts, lowered standards, higher body counts, cynical manipulation of facts, shouting smug punditry, neoconservative empire-building.

6. As usual, Mark Morford says it better than I.