blue girl

Freedom Fries!

Andrew Sullivan needs to stop writing about the Iraq war: 

Rumsfeld and Cheney were great at projecting confidence, competence and management skills. And we were all still traumatized by 9/11 and grappling with how to respond to it. But we know now they were as terrified as we were, and their fear drove them to abandon restraint or skepticism or competent military and intelligence advice.

This feels like an academic debate. But it isn’t. I have blood on my hands. However many times I try to wash them, the blood will not come off.

How is he (and others) trying to wash off that blood? By writing blog posts? How courageous of them. How meaningful for that little dead boy in the photo he included in his post. (Warning, the photo is graphic.)

Rumsfeld and Cheney were were great at projecting competence and management skills?

Is he on glue?

I don't get why you were so terrorized, Andrew, but if you say you were, then I guess you were.

Boo!

But you really think Cheney and Rumsfeld were terrified (OMG, hahahaha) and their fear (OMG squared) drove them to abandon restraint or skepticism or competent military and intelligence advice? You are embarrassing yourself. I am embarrassed for you. Please stop. Stick to writing about product placement in digital media. As far as I know, no one's kids are going to die hawking Coca Cola.

Working to Change My Reality

 

I can relate to Shep's reaction. Actually, I've been thinking that way for about 40 years now. Yet, I thought we were trying to fix it. I thought we'd learn.

Why do I keep paying attention? What does it matter? Weird, creepy and being totally divorced from reality seems to be the point.

 

Oh Joy

It's terrible I've left that awful Nazi post up so long! I've been looking for something to post to replace it. Something a little light, a little happy, a little joyful, perhaps. Maybe a little hopeful?

Let's just say this isn't exactly what I had in mind.

*Sniff*

h/t Mr. Wolcott

We Do Not Want the Something that They Will Have to Offer

From Andrew Sullivan:

I find the current GOP about as repellent as anyone. I can also believe, as I do, that the stimulus of the last two years was a sadly necessary measure to prevent the bottom falling out in ways no one could have controlled, once started. Now I want a focus on long-term debt reduction. Do I trust the GOP on the debt? Is the Pope gay? Do I trust the Dems? No. Do I think Obama is suited to forging a sane compromise out of the debt commission? Yes. Do I think the GOP can rise to the occasion? Probably not.

But in a strange way, the more anti-debt and anti-spending their rhetoric becomes and the plainer it is that serious defense and entitlement cuts are necessary for the problem to be solved, the more I'd like to see the GOP be deprived of their obstructionist no-responsibility posturing of the last two years. I'd like to see their bluff called on spending to escape the current impasse and get to a real debate rather than a phony one. If they win back the House, as it seems inevitable they will, they will have to offer something at last instead of criticizing everything in comically tired tropes and waiting for 2012, as the president is stymied from enacting the reformist change we elected him for.

I remember talking to my brother-in-law's mother right before the 2004 election. She didn't want Bush re-elected but she said, "Well, if he wins, at least he'll have to clean up all of these messes he's made!"

And for one eensy, weensy second, I thought, "Yes, that is true!" But I knew better. The Republicans never, ever have to do anything they don't want to do. And four more years of Bush proved that.

So, if the GOP takes back the House, will they offer something at last instead of criticizing everything [Obama does] in comically tired tropes?

I'm calling it now: NO.

No probably nots about it.

They'll keep hammering Obama, while not doing a thing, except possibly, no -- most probably -- making everything even worse all the way to 2012, all the while blaming Obama for how horrible everything is. And people will buy it. And I'll end up reading whatever version of Distrusting Republicans, But Voting For Them Anyway is written then.

Took me less than an eensy, weensy second to get there.

"What is the matter with us? Have we been drinking?"

...A well-educated population also is crucially important if the U.S. is to succeed in an increasingly competitive global environment.

But instead of exercising the appropriate mental muscles, we’re allowing ourselves to become a nation of nitwits, obsessed with the comings and goings of Lindsay Lohan and increasingly oblivious to crucially important societal issues that are all but screaming for attention. What should we be doing about the legions of jobless Americans, the deteriorating public schools, the debilitating wars, the scandalous economic inequality, the corporate hold on governmental affairs, the commercialization of the arts, the deficits?

Why is there not serious and widespread public engagement with these issues — and many others that could easily come to mind? That kind of engagement would lead to creative new ideas and would serve to enrich the lives of individual Americans and the nation as a whole. But it would require a heavy social and intellectual lift.

From the always excellent Bob Herbert. Read the rest of his column here.

Lost on Us

From Charles Pierce:

The poison dulls the mind and enervates the body. It leaches away the critical faculties and leaves in their place a kind of dull-eyed acceptance that borders on chronic lassitude. We accept what we cannot change and then decide we can't really change anything, and thereupon, we accept anything. A political party that embraces public lunacy in its candidates, and public dereliction in its elected officials, should pay a political price for that. It will not, because the only people motivated at the moment are the people who are motivated in support of the lunacy and, in fact, who would like to see more of it. And they may well do so. Instead, we study the lunacy as if it were a phenomenon detached from our daily lives, the way that we have detached ourselves from the discipline and responsibilities of self-government, congratulating ourselves on how fair-minded we are for giving the lunatics a hearing and then becoming mystified when we realize that, if they are empowered in the government, they mean to do what they say.

An unemployment rate that nudges 10 percent should occasion societal upheaval. Instead, we give a polite hearing to responsible "moderates" who argue that it's pretty much the way it's going to be for a while, and to conservative voices telling us that the unemployed are simply entitled parasites, drowning in indulgence and flat-screen TV's. And we congratulate ourselves for being broad-minded enough not to call an obscenity what it is out loud. In a properly functioning, self-governing republic, the corporate criminality that nearly brought down the economies of the world, and the corporate criminality that has turned the Gulf of Mexico into flaming toxic stew, would demand a vigorous political response. But, generally, we accept the notion that the latter would be impractical, that it essentially would be requiring one conjoined twin to beat the other one over the head.

That this is a mortal sin against what we are supposed to be, a primary heresy against the American faith, is lost on us.

Read the rest here.

Mindless Worship

From Nancy Nall:

I don’t think politics is a zero-sum game. I don’t think heads-I-win has to mean tails-you-lose. I really, truly and stupidly believe that politics should be concerned first and foremost with the good of the country and its people — all of them — and that no party has a monopoly on solutions to its problems.

But people like Barton are part of the problem, this mindless worship of business and corporations at the expense of all commonsense or perspec­tive. They represent a huge chunk of the Republican party. It’s time every­body knew what the logical end of their butt-kissing is.

I get why Barton worships at their feet. Traitor! He's bought and paid for by them. What I don't get are the Republican working stiffs I talk to who defended and continue to defend the likes of Halliburton and Blackwater and every other sleazy business out there. A fantasy that one day they'll be raking in the dough like they do, I guess.

It's like they have metal plates in their heads that commonsense can't penetrate. It drives me insane.

Read all of Nancy Nall's post here.

The Price of Awareness

I was dusting the living room, watching MSNBC. The Skimmer came home from running errands.

"I'm glad you were gone and didn't just hear what I heard. Your head would have exploded! There was some woman from Money Magazine on and she was talking about what all is going to happen with health care next year. Premiums are going to increase 25% in 2010! The average family will be paying $4,000 a year! And guess what else?! Co-pays are on their way out. Know what I mean? The $20 you pay upfront? They're phasing those out and you're gonna have to pay 20 - 30% of the total services up front! 20 - 30% of the total! Who's gonna be able to afford that? What is going on is going on in this country? What?! You know why she said they're going to start doing that? So we all become aware of pricing. Now we have to pay for awareness. Now no one's going to go to the doctor. No one! I can't stand it anymore. I can't take it!"

"Turn that off. Turn it off! Stop watching it. It's going to give you a heart attack. And we can't afford that right now."

On Our Own

We've got a government bought and sold by corporations. It's evident in our defense policy, it's evident in our economic strategies, it's evident in the clusterfuck known as healthcare reform, it's evident everywhere one looks. And neither of the parties give a shit, because politics is all about money now, and corporations are the ones who've got it. They might still tell themselves stories about how they need corporations' money to get elected to do the job for their constituents, but there are very few people left in Congress for whom some corporate sponsor isn't their primary constituent.

And we're on our own.

From Melissa.