A floating libertarian dictatorship

Pharyngula linked a story today about Freedom Ship, a proposed libertarian paradise that would be a floating version of Galt's Gulch.

Apart from creationism, there are few things I enjoy reading more than a good rant about libertarian fantasies. As weird as the whole story is, this one part caught my eye in particular.

On Freedom Ship there will be a jail, a “squad of intelligence officers,” and a “private security force of 2,000, led by a former FBI agent, [that] will have access to weapons, both to maintain order within the vessel and to resist external threats.” And while technically the law applied would be that of whichever state lends its flag, Freedom Ship officials make no bones that “the captain’s word will be final.”

Zoinks! Who the hell is going to be stupid enough to sign up for that?!?

I think this little detail is a perfectly distilled example of what is wrong with libertarianism. In stripping away a planned government, which includes detailed rules and restrictions on what the government may not do, they have simply pared away all possible civil protections in order to reach the smallest possible government: one guy. One completely unaccountable guy who makes all the rules.

Look, what people call "big government" exists for a reason. The United States has an elected, distributed, multi-faceted government, composed of different people who do not agree and who do not have absolute power. This in itself is the best way to ensure that people are not ruled for long by petty tyrants. Richard Nixon expressed the opposite point of view in its most pure form:

FROST: "So what in a sense, you're saying is that there are certain situations, and the Huston Plan or that part of it was one of them, where the president can decide that it's in the best interests of the nation or something, and do something illegal."
NIXON: "Well, when the president does it that means that it is not illegal."

Yep, that's what Nixon said, right before he resigned in disgrace. (He gave his farewell speech exactly one month to the day before I was born. As my dad once said about himself and Mussolini, "He must have seen me coming and figured the jig was up.)

A trifecta of suck

I just want to point out that over on Daily Kos, DHinMI has been running an interesting series of posts drawing connections between three things I frequently write about with derision: Blackwater, Amway, and Bushies. It's worth a look.

"Bush Authoritarianism: Blackwater+Amway=GOP"

• Part 1
• Part 2
  
• Part 3
  

Also linked from the latest entry, there is a great piece about Amway magnate Dick DeVos, whom I mentioned in my Blackwater post.

Be all that you can be in the mercenary reserves

Conservatives and libertarians alike generally claim that anything that "The Government" does is bad more or less by definition, and that a smaller, leaner government which manages fewer services is better.

One notable exception, at least where Republicans are concerned, is the military. The one truly legitimate function of government, as far as they're concerned, is in maintaining a kick-ass defense force that can take on the world. In fact, according to this source, the U.S. currently spends more of its budget on the military than the next fourteen countries combined, and that accounts for about 43% of all the military spending in the whole world.

So conservatives hate government but love the military, which should come as no surprise to anyone who's had a pulse at any point in the last 25 years. And I'm not going to pass a value judgment on the relative amount we spend on the military, at least not in this post. All I'll say is that there are lots of things in the world that can kill people, and foreign armies are only a few of them. Like, say, hurricanes. Collapsing bridges. Poverty. Those kill people too.

That's not to say that people don't die from military attacks as well. I'm just saying, you know, if the purpose of spending money on the military is to prevent Americans from dying, then what you've got is a minimax problem: save the most lives for the least dollars. And I find it hard to believe that for our current spending rate, you couldn't save a few more lives by doing something else with the cash we could save by reducing our total military spending a bit. Say we used only 40% of the total world expenditures on military. Say we only spent as much as the next 12 countries combined. That's a lot of repaired bridges, know what I mean?

I'm not a pacifist, though. I believe that maintaining a certain level of military is necessary to the survival of a country. You need to keep the Visigoths from sacking the city, as it were. It's just that reasonable people can disagree on what the ideal level is, and I happen to think the level is substantially less than ten times that of our nearest ally. Speaking of the Roman Empire, bear in mind that they maintained a badass army for a long time before they experienced a financial collapse due to bad management. It was only after that, that the barbarians who had waited politely outside the gates for centuries got to just stroll in the crumbling front door.

Anyway, if there's one thing conservatives like more than spending money on the military, it's privatizing functions that are currently managed by government. After all, everyone knows that when you leave things up to the Stupendous Free Market, you guarantee that they will be done much better and more efficiently than if you, um, took concrete steps towards actually getting them done. Really. Just trust us on this one.

So anyway, under the Bush administration, apparently the military no longer gets a special exemption from this rule. That's why we are now paying for Blackwater, a private security contractor that is now in charge of guarding diplomats. We pay approximately $445,891 per year for the privilege of hiring a Blackwater security specialist. By contrast, a military sergeant costs us around $69,000 per year on the high end, including room and board. See how efficient the private market is?

I was never tempted to join the army. Call me a coward or a spoiled brat, I'll probably own up to it. I'd also probably make a lousy soldier, because I'm not good at unquestioningly following orders. I question tasks a lot at my job, not because I'm trying to be a pain, but because I feel that I can execute a task more effectively when I understand what the intention is behind the task. I'm not saying this to brag or show that I'm in any way "better" than a big tough military guy. I'm just saying that my mindset is somewhat different from what's required in a military role, and they'd have to beat a lot out of me to get me there. I recognize that having an army that is willing to follow order is pretty important, however.

I'm taking a class in Project Management right now -- hooray for the LAST class I need to complete for my Master's! One of the issues that is discussed in the text is that the larger your project gets, the more important it is to maintain a strict structure in your organization. The proverbial "two guys in a garage" can accomplish a small project very well, but a hundred people who all demand creative control over the same project is a disaster waiting to happen. Now apply that to the military, which is arguably one of the biggest freakin' projects anybody could ever undertake. I mean, post-surge Iraq currently has around 175,000 soldiers on the ground, to say nothing of the people at home who are connecting them with the civilian leadership.

I can't really imagine what's involved with organizing so many people, but it's pretty clear to me that if you have a general telling his underlings saying "We need to accomplish X, see that that gets done," and then a colonel below him says "All right men, let's figure out how to do Y, which is a sub-task on the way to accomplishing X," and then some clown of a Lieutenant way down the line says "No, screw this task, I don't want us to accomplish X anyway!" then you've got a problem. It's not because that lowly Lieutenant is necessarily wrong about the quality of the final objectives, or because he couldn't necessarily do a better job of managing the war than the general. The problem is that everybody can't be a general, and if you let all 175,000 soldiers make the decisions then you've got a fine mess, and people are fighting against each other instead of working toward a common goal.

Of course, a military that works as a single unit can do great evil. Of course, a single individual can also do great evil. But there's MORE of the military, so they can do MORE evil because they're acting as a single body. We need a military, because there is this one big task that is necessary to accomplish. Adequate national defense is absolutely vital to the health of a nation in a non-utopian world. So is executing wars, in such cases where war is necessary and right. By which I mean, not this war.

The problem with the military right now is not that it is a military; it's that it's a military in the hands of people who are hell-bent on using it towards nefarious ends. No, strike that. They don't set out saying "Let's all do bad things now." Really. Not even Bush. The key to understanding the Bush presidency is personal cronyism. Bush didn't pick "Heckuva job Brownie" to head FEMA because he intended to put an incompetent boob in the job. No, the chain of events is: first Joe Allbaugh was given the job because he helped run Bush's 2000 campaign, and then Brownie was picked to succeed Allbaugh because he was Allbaugh's old college buddy.

By and large, the members of the Bush administration see government jobs as an opportunity to make money, and to kick more money over to their friends. Other people may get hurt, killed, or impoverished as a result of this focus, but that is a by-product of the official policy, not the intention of the policy itself. What's happening here is that the president and his cabinet all have an attitude that, basically, who gives a crap if government is effective, as long as I'm helping out my friends? And that attitude gets trickled down through the ranks, because people with that perspective will pick friends who often have the same perspective, who in turn pick THEIR friends who have that perspective, and so on.

The military privates aren't part of this tree of mutual back-scratching. Demographically speaking, if they were well-connected then they probably either wouldn't be signing up (like me), or else they would be signing up as lieutenants rather than privates. But the privates are following the orders of people in the back-scratching tree. Orders to do annoying things like "treat prisoners humanely" and "follow the Geneva conventions" and "Please don't kill civilians if you can help it" ultimately need to come from the top of the command chain, and the problem is that those orders aren't coming. It's not because the kids signing up for the military are bad people. Rather, doing those things to improve international relations is harder than not doing them, and everyone has the capacity to do evil and then rationalize it, given the right circumstances and enough peer pressure. I believe that this probably includes many of the very fine and moral people here, myself as well. But for people who voluntarily joined the military, gave up many of their civil rights, and accepted a program of unquestioningly following orders, maybe it's especially true. I don't know.

But really, the problem is the lax attitude at the top, and nowhere is this better exemplified than in Blackwater. Blackwater is given that sweet deal that nets them over 400 grand a year. They are paid by the US government as if they were a military force, but they are not subject to the military code of justice. In essence, there is no law governing them, which goes some of the way towards explaining why they keep getting involved in incidents like this recent one where they gunned down 14 Iraqi citizens in cold blood.

If the Blackwater employees were soldiers, they would be directly accountable to the their commanding officers and the US government, who still at least have SOME standards of behavior, and have the authority to court martial and imprison the offenders in extreme cases. But no one has any such authority over Blackwater. Even though we're paying them with our tax dollars, they are not required to do anything we ask them to.

And astonishingly, the Bush administration is standing behind them and refusing to give anyone the go-ahead to investigate this incident. Nuri al-Maliki, the US-picked prime minister of Iraq, now wants to ban Blackwater from his country. Only Bush doesn't want to let him.

It's worth pointing out that the head of Blackwater is a member of an evangelical political group called "Christian Freedom International", and is well-connected in politics by virtue of being related by marriage to Amway magnate and Republican gubernatorial candidate Dick DeVos. See? It pays to be connected. Ahhh. Good old Amway.

So, you know, don't blame the military. While lots of bad things are done by military grunts who are required to do whatever they are asked to, even worse things are being done by people who have no orders to follow. They're given free reign of the place, they're not required to follow any international codes of conduct whatsoever, and their only real objective is to do their job in such a way as to loot as much money as possible. Both from Iraqis and from Americans.

The fact that military personnel do bad things does not mean that the institution of the military is the problem. Just like the fact that corrupt crony governments doing bad things does not mean that "government" is the problem and should be abolished. The problem is that we have some really bad leaders right now, who are turning a blind eye towards violations of ethical conduct, if not outright endorsing it.

More 9/11 about 9/11 Rudy 9/11 Giuliani

As I mentioned in yesterday's post, the data analysis for my Master's Report indicated that some of the most well-beloved topics on Digg.com are about how much Rudy Giuliani sucks. But why does he suck so much?

One of the top recommended stories on that front search page, currently sitting at 2,796 diggs, is a blog entry entitled "Mr Giuliani Please Stop Mentioning 9/11". But give Rudy a break, he can't stop mentioning 9/11 because he has absolutely nothing else to run on. He wasn't a particularly popular leader until, like Bush, the photo opportunity of a lifetime fell in his lap. (The photo opportunity also fell in Bush's lap, I mean. I don't mean that Bush fell in Giuliani's lap.)

Since then he has exploited 9/11 in virtually everything he says and does. Like most of the other Republicans, Rudy talked about 9/11 constantly during his address at the 2004 convention. One of his supporters recently hosted a fundraiser for him asking for donations in the amount of $9.11. When told about asbestos hazards at the site of the World Trade Center, he told reporters "I was at ground zero as often, if not more, than most of the workers ... I was there working with them. I was exposed to exactly the same things they were exposed to. So in that sense, I'm one of them."

A couple of weeks ago Rudy gave a speech for the National Rifle Association. Trying to convince NRA members to support him even though he was a strong gun control advocate when he was mayor, he explained: "I also think that there have been subsequent intervening events — September 11 — which cast somewhat of a different light on the Second Amendment and Second Amendment rights. It doesn't change the fundamental rights, but maybe it highlights the necessity for them more."

But wait, that's not all. During that speech, he pulled a ham-handed political stunt by (in my opinion) pretending to take a phone call from his wife while he was talking. He said some cutesy stuff to her at the podium, and then said "I love you honey," receiving approving applause from the assembled crowd. Later, when Giuliani was asked in an interview why he took that call, he explained: "quite honestly since Sept. 11 most of the time when we get on a plane we talk to each other and just reaffirm the fact that we love each other."

That's adorable. Even more so when you consider the fact that on September 11, 2001, Rudy Giuliani was married to a different woman. (He married his current wife, Judith Nathan, on May 24, 2003.)

And Rudy is the Republican front runner. Right now he's the favored candidate to win the nomination by a significant margin. As much as people apparently love to read stories that bash Giuliani, that means the other candidates are considered even worse.

Speaking as a partisan Democrat, I think that's totally awesome.

Starting to collect results

So far I've managed to scan every Digg.com story that relates to my chosen topics. When you search Digg for a story, you get a list of all the stories that were ever submitted to Digg with the search words appearing in the title. First somebody submits a page, and then other people come along and recommend the page. The page winds up with a "score" that indicates the total number of people who recommended the same site.

Collected below is output from my analysis that shows how many stories appeared, followed by the average score of all the stories.

Welcome to News Miner 1.0.
The database has been opened.
What shall we do today, hmmm?
1. Get monthly news clusters (one topic)
2. Get monthly news clusters (all topics)
3. Explore current clusters
4. Get new Digg scores (one topic)
5. Get new Digg scores (all topics)
6. Generate results table
7. Analyze results
0. Quit
7

There were 14 topics
topic "Anna Nicole Smith": size 752, mean 3.5226063829787235
topic "Barack Obama": size 756, mean 6.994708994708994
topic "Blackwater": size 358, mean 9.997206703910615
topic "Britney Spears": size 3019, mean 3.1570056310036434
topic "Giuliani": size 1468, mean 18.582425068119893
topic "Gulf Coast": size 61, mean 3.459016393442623
topic "Harry Potter": size 2502, mean 5.09912070343725
topic "Hillary Clinton": size 996, mean 7.945783132530121
topic "John Edwards": size 566, mean 7.80565371024735
topic "Mitt Romney": size 426, mean 7.030516431924883
topic "New Orleans": size 858, mean 5.970862470862471
topic "Paris Hilton": size 2497, mean 3.644373247897477
topic "Rupert Murdoch": size 127, mean 7.52755905511811
topic "Tiger Woods": size 390, mean 3.546153846153846

I've highlighted a couple of interesting numbers in bold italics. Notice that "Paris Hilton" and "Britney Spears" both have a very high numbers of pages, indicating that many people found stories about those people that they considered were worth submitting. (Most of them, by the way, are jokes or empty promises of smut.) But other people either don't read those stories, or don't like them enough to recommend them.

On the other hand, look which topic is far and away the clear winner of the Digg scoring game: Rudy Giuliani with an average of 18.6. In fact, Rudy's average score is more than twice as high as the average of his next political competitor Hillary Clinton.

So that means that people love Rudy Giuliani, right? Ermmm... not exactly. Look at the headlines on the page showing the all-time highest rated stories about Giuliani.

• Mr Giuliani Please Stop Mentioning 9/11
• Rudy Giuliani Constitutionally Ineligible To Be President
• Anger at Giuliani 9/11 fundraiser "$9.11 for Rudy" in poor taste
• America's Worst Nightmare: President Giuliani
• Giuliani: "For Me Every Day Is An Anniversary Of Sept. 11" GET OFF IT!
• Rudy Giuliani: "Freedom is Slavery"
• Rudy Giuliani's daughter is supporting Barack Obama
• DIGG this! Soldier to Giuliani: Have you done your foreign policy homework?
• Reporter Arrested on Orders of Giuliani Press Secretary
• Giuliani Closed Off Streets to Avoid 9/11 Victims' Families

Um, yeah. Are you noticing a pattern here? They're all negative. Not some of them. All of the top nine stories. Apparently people love to read about Giuliani so they can reinforce how much they hate him.

To be fair, Hillary Clinton's page has a lot of negative stories too, but certainly not all of them. Many of the hits are anti right wing coverage, and people apparently reacted well to her TV spoof of "The Sopranos" with Bill.

Disclaimer: Digg users are not a representative sample of the general public, but they are my stand-ins for them. Digg users are a self-selected group of active news readers. What Nixon referred to as "The silent majority," aka "People who don't pay attention" are not represented here, and I have no way of knowing which stories they would recommend if they were asked.

Presidential candidate or Buffy villain?

Yeah, we already know I'm a sucker for those side-by-side similarity pictures. The similarity in these pictures at AmericaBlog really is impressive.

If you're not a Buffy fan, you can look here to see who the creepy guys are.

Cargo cult comedy canned

The cargo cult comedy show, "The 1/2 Hour News Hour," has been canceled.

All together now: "Awwwwwwww."
Of course, I wouldn't even know this if it hadn't been for liberal radio, since lately it hadn't even occurred to me to wonder whether it still existed.

I loves me some Chris Dodd

Hmmm, never cared about him that much before, but I gotta give Chris Dodd props for his utter smoothness in facing down Bill "O'Really?"

If you haven't been following this wacky controversy, Bill's been looking for ways to smear the political blog Daily Kos, and hit on the brilliant strategy of highlighting a bad photoshop image posted in the one of the thousands of comments they get every day. Now he's trying to intimidate presidential candidates into staying away from the Yearly Kos convention. Dodd wasn't having any of it.

To me, the funniest part of the video is when Dodd calls O'Reilly to task for saying hateful things on his own show, like talking about al Qaeda bombing San Francisco. Bill loudly denies that he EVER SAID ANY SUCH THING: "You don't know what the hell I said! You got it from Media Matters!!!"

Well, of course, that story is on Media Matters, among other places. There's also an audio clip of him saying it. So in addition to all the other "smearing" that Media Matters does, they apparently have an incredibly convincing Bill O'Reilly impersonator on the staff!

The Daily Show blows a comic opportunity

I was waiting in eager anticipation for last night's "Daily Show," since they didn't discuss the YouTube Democratic debate on the night of the debate itself.

In one sense I wasn't disappointed, because they focused the first 2/3 of the show on the debate and it was funny. But they focused mostly on the form of the debate, and very little on the candidates' responses. For my money, easily the most mockable moment in the entire debate was when someone asked the question "How many of you arrived on a private jet?"

Several candidates (mainly Clinton, Obama) confidently put their hands up, at least being honest about the question. Bill Richardson put his hand halfway up, glanced nervously around at the others to see who else was copping to it, and then sheepishly raised his hand the rest of the way. That had my home audience busting up. Unfortunately, Team Stewart must not have seen the comedy potential in that incident.

Scooter goes free

When I first heard the news that Scooter Libby escaped from jail, my first impulse -- apart from the obvious disgust -- was just apathy. Eh. Libby is a small potato. He was put away for obstruction of justice, and not the main perpetrator of the crime. They should have kept following the trail until it reached Rove, Cheney, or Bush.

But then I realized: The crime of outing Valerie Plame is the ONLY crime that has been prosecuted in the service of investigating going to war based on lies. And Scooter Libby is the ONLY person who has received any kind of punishment for this crime. And now he's gotten off, with a mere word from the president.

Yeah, now I'm pissed. This wasn't a pardon of some "family man" based on a bunch of whiny commentators feeling sorry for his kids. This was the Bush administration brazenly pardoning themselves and ducking responsibility for their actions yet again.

Coulter vs. Coulter

Bet you never thought you'd hear Ann Coulter call president Bush "stupid," did you?

Ann Coulter, 5/30/07:

"Americans -- at least really stupid Americans like George Bush -- believe the natural state of the world is to have individual self-determination, human rights, the rule of law and a robust democratic economy. On this view, most of the existing world and almost all of world history is a freakish aberration."

Gosh, what are we to make of American citizens who don't support our dear president? Oh, I know!

Ann Coulter, 6/23/04:

COLMES: "Are all the American people that don't support him dumb?"
COULTER: "No. I think, as I indicated in my last book, they're traitors."

Git a rope.

John McCain has some big, dumb shoes to fill

I've just had to explain this story to two people, so I thought I'd better blog it before I have to tell it again.

Now that George Bush is a lame duck, oh who will be brave enough to come out and tell us how great things are going in Iraq? Answer: John McCain to the rescue!

Last week, McCain goes on Wolf Blitzer's show and snidely admonishes Wolf for suggesting that things are not going so well over there. McCain lectures Wolf, saying:

"You know, that's why you ought to catch up on things, Wolf. General Petraeus goes out there almost every day in an unarmed Humvee. You want to -- I think you ought to catch up. You see, you are giving the old line of three months ago. I understand it. We certainly don't get it through the filter of some of the media.

Later in that same show, Baghdad correspondent Michael Ware responds:

"No way on earth can a westerner, particularly an American, stroll any street of this capital of more than five million people.

I mean, if al Qaeda doesn't get wind of you, or if one of the Sunni insurgent groups don't descend upon you, or if someone doesn't tip off a Shia militia, then the nearest criminal gang is just going to see dollar signs and scoop you up. Honestly, Wolf, you'd barely last 20 minutes out there.

I don't know what part of Neverland Senator McCain is talking about when he says we can go strolling in Baghdad."

You can watch the video of Ware berating McCain, it's great fun. Michael Ware sounds a bit like the late Steve Irwin, and Possum Momma mentioned that she kept expecting him to yell "CRIKEY!" and leap on top of McCain. Except, of course, that they were half a world apart at the time.

Anyway, the comedy could have just ended there. But obviously McCain never learned the rule that you always leave the audience wanting more. So what did he do? He gave us more.

Earlier this week, McCain and fellow Republican Senator Lindsay Graham went on a field trip to Neverland. As the intrepid Senators proved, it's perfectly safe for a couple of high ranking members of the U.S. Government to walk around freely in a perfectly ordinary Iraqi marketplace. Graham later gushed: "We went to the market and were just really warmly welcomed. I bought five rugs for five bucks. And people were engaging."

So as you can see, it is easy to walk around unharmed... as long as everyone involved is wearing bulletproof vests.

AND...

surrounded by 100 American soldiers as bodyguards.

AND...

escorted by 3 Blackhawk helicopters.

OH YEAH, AND ALSO...

2 Apache gunships.

Yep, perfectly safe. At least until after all those troops left. The next day, the marketplace was bombed, killing 14.

By the way, if you're looking for an ideal hot spot for your next vacation, why not consider a visit to scenic Baghdad?

Cargo cult comedy

At last, the long-awaited Daily Show rip-off has arrived on Fox News. Produced by 24 producer Joel Surnow, The 1/2 Hour News Hour runs with the tagline: "Unfair. Unbalanced. Unserious."

Apparently they should have added "Unfunny" as well. The kindest review I've seen so far comes from the Washington Post, which declares:

"In a nutshell: It isn't terrible."

Wow, high praise. Other than that, reaction seems to be universally bad, even from right wing blogs like this one:

"It is SO not funny. And it should have been hysterical. There are so many brilliant, funny conservatives. How did they pick this bunch?"

And this one:

"Finally, while there is work to be done to make the show 'workable', the initial offerings or 'taste tests' have left a very sour taste in my mouth as well I'm sure many others. If I were the head of FOXNews I would strongly consider pulling the show and working out some of the kinks before launching a show that appears to be an amateur offering."

Here's a bit of fun pigpiling from the left side...

Not surprisingly, the second biggest (fake?) laughter of the show came in reaction to the title of a spoof magazine called BO: Barack Obama Magazine. I just snarfed, because B.O. is too funny. Here's a perfect example of how Republicans don't understand satire. If Senator Obama was known to have body odor, then the joke would've been funnier. But to my knowledge, he doesn't. Then again, he is a black and they're usually all stinky and black-smelling, aren't they? Seriously, it's a terrible joke.

So why use it? Because body odor is funny. If you're six or, evidently, a Republican.

Here's a clip for you:

When I first saw this, my immediate thought was "They're doing cargo cult comedy."

A refresher on cargo cults, as told by Wikipedia:

The classic period of cargo cult activity was in the years during and after World War II. The vast amounts of war matériel that were airdropped into these islands during the Pacific campaign against the Empire of Japan necessarily meant drastic changes to the lifestyle of the islanders, many of whom had never seen Westerners or Japanese before. Manufactured clothing, medicine, canned food, tents, weapons and other useful goods arrived in vast quantities to equip soldiers — and also the islanders who were their guides and hosts. With the end of the war the airbases were abandoned, and "cargo" was no longer being dropped.

In attempts to get cargo to fall by parachute or land in planes or ships again, islanders imitated the same practices they had seen the soldiers, sailors and airmen use. They carved headphones from wood, and wore them while sitting in fabricated control towers. They waved the landing signals while standing on the runways. They lit signal fires and torches to light up runways and lighthouses. The cultists thought that the foreigners had some special connection to their own ancestors, who were the only beings powerful enough to produce such riches.

Like a cargo cult, Fox News is imitating the form that produces results, and they hope that the results will naturally follow. The show LOOKS very much like The Daily Show, the hosts use the same style of wry smarminess that works so well for Jon Stewart, and there is laughter. But there aren't any jokes, just sarcasm.

Why do they keep insulting our troops?

Three times yesterday, I turned on C-SPAN while futzing around in the kitchen. All three times, there was a sanctimonious legislator giving a speech -- once in an interview, twice on the Senate floor. All three had an "R" next to their name, and all three were saying something nearly identical. It went something like this:

"My Democrat [sic] colleagues are destroying troop morale by arguing against this war. The biggest enemy our troops have is not foreign fighters, but lack of resolve at home. Every time we discuss plans to end the war, we are helping the terrorists win."

After pondering this for a while, I have decided that one of two things must be true:

1. They think that our troops are complete cowards. It would seem that the troops can face a hostile foreign populace, car bombs, and IEDs, but they run away screaming when they hear a Democrat say "The president has not handled this war well."
2. They think the troops are not very bright or cannot handle debate. No matter how the war is actually going, the troops should be shielded from any frank discussion of progress, unless the news is good.

The thing is, I don't think any of these speakers has attempted to produce a serious case that the war has not been badly botched, nor an actual plan for winning apart from "We'll throw 15% more troops at the region and then all the problems will miraculously clear up." A few months ago supposedly we'd "never been stay the course". Now apparently we are again.

So they haven't actually done anything to make the war either go better or end; their only tactic is to react in shock, horror, and indignation when somebody says that the war is not going well. They're not concerned about fucking up; but they're deathly afraid of hearing someone say that they fucked up.

And one more thing. What's up with all the comparisons to Vietnam by Republicans? Years ago, anyone who suggested that the war was anything like Vietnam was automatically dubbed as narrow minded and shallow at best, or more usually an anti-American idiot. Today, the Republicans are falling all over themselves to say that Iraq is Vietnam all over again. "Didn't we learn anything from Vietnam?" they ask. But instead of learning the lesson that you should pick your battles intelligently, apparently the "lesson" of Vietnam is that no one should criticize any action taken by a sitting president, ever. Because, you see, the right thing for people to do is smile and go along quietly for a 16 year war, and even if things look bad after all that time, you'd better smile and accept the possibility that it could continue indefinitely. Clearly wars are never lost except by popular opinion. Historians take note.

I guess what I'm asking is, why do Republicans hate America so much?

See Al Run

Run, Al, Run!

On Monday, Al Franken announced that his show's last episode will be February 14. Air America is still rolling under new management, and not expected to go down any time soon despite the recent bankruptcy filing. Thom Hartmann will be filling Al's time slot.

At that point, Franken was still being coy about his intentions, saying: "If I make a decision before the show ends, I'll make sure you, my listeners, are the first to know... after Frannie. And my kids. Okay, my listeners will be the eighth to know."

I expected this day to come, and I wish him great success in his campaign. I am, however, a bit saddened. Franken frequently comments on his show "We have to repeat things sometimes because we know that nobody listens to all three hours." Ironically, I have heard this comment over and over, because I do listen to all three hours via podcast. In fact, I don't believe there have been any episodes since the show's inception that I have not heard at least a part of. It is the only daily show that I make a point of not missing. I also had the pleasure of seeing the show produced live a couple of years ago, with guest Molly Ivins, who sadly just died yesterday.

So long, Al, and give Norm Coleman hell.

Divided we stand?

I posted this over in a comment at The Atheist Experience blog, but I think it bears repeating.

There is an argument I keep hearing from well-meaning Libertarian atheists after the show. The argument goes: This has been a bad administration only because one party is controlling everything. If Democrats were controlling all three branches, they would be just as bad. Divided government is always best, because a government that accomplishes things will always be bad, and the only way we can be successful is to always have gridlock and prevent anyone from doing anything. Frankly, I think that is a vacuous argument with no evidence to back it up.

I don't want a government that is incapable of getting anything done; I want a government that is interested in doing the right things. The horrifically bad response to Hurricane Katrina last year really should highlight exactly what the consequences are of a government that can't get anything done.

Yes, a Republican administration with a Republican-controlled house and Senate has been pretty much an unmitigated disaster. That doesn't in any way support the notion that every party would be an unmitigated disaster; that's a hasty generalization fallacy. The simple fact is, Republicans have a lot of really bad ideas.

Does that mean I think Democrats are perfect? Of course not; there are bad Democrats and there are good Republicans. But if you believe that proves that both sides are equally bad, then you are falling for the same fallacy that many creationists do. You know -- "We collected 500 signatures of scientists who support creationism, so what we have here is a genuine scientific controversy." No we don't. We have a tiny, tiny anomaly among scientists.

The point being, just because there are two sides to an issue doesn't mean that the sides have equal merit and equal credibility. By and large, it isn't Democrats who are in the pockets of the religious right. It isn't Democrats who pushed this stupid, stupid war. The Republican controlled legislative branch hasn't merely been conventionally corrupt, in the ways people say that all politicians are corrupt. By many accounts they have been the most corrupt Congress in history.

I don't mindlessly vote a straight party ticket, IF there are worthy individuals from other parties who are running. However, I do to a very large extent favor Democrats over Libertarians and Libertarians over Republicans. I really don't buy this argument that just because there are two types of candidates available, they should be installed in government in equal amounts. If, for example there are "Christian nation" fundamentalists running, I will vote against them every single time. I do not believe there need to be a certain number of fundamentalists in Congress to keep a check on the non-fundamentalists.

Rumsfeld flip-flop

LMAO at seeing these two stories side by side.

Reuters, 10:50 AM:

Democrats' win alone won't drive Rumsfeld out

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, the face of U.S. war policy and a lightning rod for critics worldwide, will not be forced out just because he faces a tougher time from resurgent Democrats.

...
"He's not resigning," said one of those officials. "He's best when he's criticized."

Bloomberg, 1:02 PM:

Rumsfeld Resigns as Defense Secretary, Official Says

Republican hides behind children

Facing a press conference with embarrassing questions about his cover-up of the Mark Foley child-buggering scandal, Republican campaign chairman Tom Reynolds decided on a bold strategy. He surrounded himself with little children, then refused to make them leave the room when questions of an adult nature came up.

The video is here.

This reminds me of a scene in the first Burton Batman movie. While being beaten up by Batman, the Joker reaches into his pocket, whips out a pair of glasses, and puts them on. Then he says, "You wouldn't hit a guy with glasses, would you?" (Note: Greg Kuperberg reminds me that Bugs Bunny did that joke first.)

Also, doesn't this remind anybody of a certain OTHER organization that is well-known for internally covering up evidence that high ranking officials were taking sexual advantage of little kids?...

Anatomy of a propaganda attack

Anybody heard about this one?

There was this dad in Lexington, MA, David Parker, who has embarked on a crusade to protect his seven year old from hearing about gay people. The son brought home in a reading bag with books about different types of families, including gay families. He complained to the school board - which is fine with me. I don't agree with his attitude, but I suppose he should have the right to opt out. In this case, he carried his protest so far that he refused to leave the school grounds and got arrested.

Then a few weeks later, this story pops up: Seven-Year-Old Beaten at School For Father's Stand Against Homosexual Activism.

I first encountered the story on alt.atheism last week. Naturally, every right wing media outlet picked it up as fast as they could and used it as a bludgeon. You can probably guess what they said, along these lines: "Shameful! These so called 'tolerant' liberals support physical assault to intimidate believers in family values! Why won't the liberal media pick up this story?"

The first question that springs to my mind is, "How do they know that the beating had anything to do with the dad's anti-gay crusade?" The second question is, "Seven year olds are really THAT concerned with gay politics?"

Here's the school's side of the story:

Some of you may be aware that the press has received a news release related to a playground incident at Estabrook. The Estabrook principal has investigated the issue over the past two days, talking to the adults and children involved. The following are the facts as she understands them.

On May 17, several first graders were involved in a disagreement over who would sit where in the cafeteria. As a result, upon going outside one child took another by the hand and brought him to a third student in an area of the playground that is somewhat difficult for the adults to see. (The student who was hit said that he went willingly.) All children who saw agreed that the third student then hit the student who had been brought to him two to four times in the chest/abdomen (children’s accounts vary) and he fell to his knees. The student who was hit says he was hit when down; the other children say he wasn’t. One child reports that one student held the arm of the student who was hit; however, the child who was hit and the other children did not report this. The children involved named five children who were nearby watching but not directly involved. Several other students were close enough to see a cluster of students but not close enough to see what was happening. The student who did the hitting suggested that others also hit, but none of them did so. Based on the children’s accounts, this all may have happened in under a minute. The aide on duty saw a group of children gathering, and as she walked toward them was approached by a child that said someone was being bullied. When the aide inquired what was going on, the child who was hit identified one student who hit him, and the other children agreed. The child who was hit said he was not hurt and did not want to go to the nurse. He reported that his feelings were hurt, because the child who hit him was his friend.

The child who did the hitting was sent to the assistant principal’s office and while talking with her acknowledged his behavior. As a result, he filled out a “think sheet,” to reflect on his behavior and choices, missed recess on two days, and wrote an apology. In addition, the classroom teacher called both sets of parents and a class discussion was held about not hitting and speaking up when there is a problem on the playground. The teacher indicated that both parents took the matter seriously and seemed satisfied with the outcome. Following the incident the boys were observed arm in arm at school and subsequently the child who was hit went to the house of the child who hit him for a play date.

On May 31, the parents of the child hit casually inquired of the assistant principal as to the consequence given to the other child, and they were told that the child’s parents were informed and a consequence given. Other than this brief interaction, between the time of the phone call by the teacher to the parents on May 17 until June 14, there were no complaints of injury or dissatisfaction with the process to the teacher, nurse, or the administrators. On June 14, school administration received a call from a local paper stating that they had received a press release that a child had been assaulted at Estabrook.

In this case, we followed all of our usual procedures and worked with both sets of parents to resolve this issue. We are surprised that it has resurfaced in a press release issued by a group calling itself Mass Resistance without any prior contact with the school. The press release states that the incident was "fueled and incited by adults (and yes, school officials).” We have found nothing in our investigation that would support this allegation in any way. Nonetheless, in the interest of an open and thorough review of the incident, the matter has been referred by the superintendent to the Lexington police, District Attorney’s office, and the Department of Social Services for independent investigation.

At Estabrook, playground safety and student behavior are school improvement goals each year. The school, like all of the schools in Lexington, works hard to establish behavioral expectations, teach students social skills, and provide strong supervision on the playground. In the seven years that Joni Jay has been principal, we have more than doubled the adults watching students on the playground and our coverage ratio at Estabrook is at or above all other Lexington elementary schools. We have separated older and younger students and have fewer students on the playground at one time. We have trained and hired skillful aides who stay actively involved with children, equipped with walkie-talkies and actively walking around identifying potential problems and working through them with students. The Open Circle program, adopted this year, has provided students with skills to help them resolve problems verbally. Administrators discuss with children the reasons for what happened, the consequences, and future alternatives every time there is a problem. We involve parents and teachers when a child has broken school rules, and if the nurse treats a child due to a playground incident. Each incident is documented, and referrals are made to the counselor and other support personnel when appropriate. As a result of the efforts of staff and parents working together, physical altercations on the playground have been reduced significantly.

A major goal of the Lexington Public School system is both to help all children feel safe as well as to help the child who has erred learn. We are continuously looking to improve the playground experience for children and welcome your input.

A few points of interest in the story:

1. David Parker claims that "a group of 8-10 kids suddenly surrounded Jacob and grabbed him." The school says that it was one kid who actually hit him.
2. In the conservative media story, "According to Mr. Parker, school authorities determined from an investigation into the assault that the beating was indeed planned and premeditated." While according to the school, they had not determined any such thing. Rather, the kids "were involved in a disagreement over who would sit where in the cafeteria."
3. Despite the allegedly severe beating, the parents declined to file a complaint with the police. Apparently, filing a complaint with a local right wing mouthpiece was enough... two weeks later.
4. "Following the incident the boys were observed arm in arm at school and subsequently the child who was hit went to the house of the child who hit him for a play date."

My conclusion? Unfortunately, kids get in fights. This is a bad thing and should not be excused in any way. The little brat who attacked Jacob Parker should be (and seemingly was) disciplined.

But the father seems to have used his status as a loudmouth political activist to act like his child was a victim of anti-bigotry-bigots. The conservative press jumped all over this claim without even bothering to verify that he had any evidence.

More thoughts on Ann Coulter

Jeff, Denis and I had a very interesting discussion about Ann Coulter this weekend on the Non-Prophets this weekend. I'd say it lasted a solid half hour, and Jeff gave me a new perspective on what her motives might be in naming the book "Godless".

In her latest train wreck of a column, Coulter complains that people aren't getting properly offended by the central thesis of her book.

My book makes a stark assertion: Liberalism is a godless religion. Hello! Anyone there? I've leapt beyond calling you traitors and am now calling you GODLESS. Apparently, everybody's cool with that. The fact that liberals are godless is not even a controversial point anymore.

To Coulter, "godless" is a worse insult than "traitor." And she's frustrated that this isn't what bothers people.

Jeff Dee wrote a blog entry a year ago that addresses what this issue is all about. Like many things I write, some of this post is a wholesale ripping off of ideas that he gave me.

First of all, the reality. Most atheists do in fact vote Democratic. It's simply a fact... somewhere around 70-80% of the atheist vote went to Gore, and then to Kerry.

But of course, most Democrats are godful. Not all Democrats are atheists; many are liberal Christians, or wiccans/pagans/new agers/whatever. This reflects that fact that Democrats are actually a highly diverse coalition of people and interests. The godless and the laid back religious form one issue oriented segment; then there's gay rights advocates, pro-choicers, environmentalists, pro-science people, anti-war people, civil rights pinkos, and so on. Many times these interests converge, but not always. Democrats have varying individual agendas and tend not to move in lockstep. Being "liberal" on one or several issues is no guarantee that you'll agree with the rest of the party platform.

This is as contrasted with the Republican party, which by and large demands complete loyalty on all issues. Sure, they have the "enrich the rich" big money guys on one hand and the very poor rural theocrats on the other. But the poor rural theocrats have also been persuaded to believe that eliminating the estate tax is in their interest; while the big money guys regularly use hyper-religious language to woo the rural theocrats. In short, Republicans have managed a kind of cohesion that Democrats don't have.

Ann Coulter's nasty routine tries to drive a wedge into the already tenuous alliance among Democrats. Liberal Christian Democrats are driven to say "We're not Godless, you mean lady! Look how much we love God!" And then they try to find ways to make the Democratic party more overtly religious.

Then what happens? It alienates the atheists, of course. We atheists -- who make up a not insignificant fraction of the party's base -- see that the Democrats are starting to pander to the religious left, and we get discouraged, and the votes start to fall off.

THIS is what Coulter and her ilk are really after. Internal rifts in the Democratic party. With the last two elections being won by less than five points, a chunk of 10-20% of Democrats becoming convinced that there's no difference between the parties could ensure Republican victories for a long time to come.

If Democrats were smart, their reaction to being called Godless would be one of unambiguous solidariy with atheists. Easy for an atheist to say, right? But they don't have to agree with our position. They could say, "You know, most of our party are not godless, but we gladly accept people of all religions and no religion. We understand that there are differences among individuals, but we celebrate those differences." The people who find "godless" to be an automatic insult will avoid the Democratic party, but they already do that anyway.