Bird Brains (old, defunct, non-working version)

Digging the grave

2006-12-14T21:47:00.001-08:00

by Liberal Beagle

You know the old murder mystery cliché. The dying elder patriarch is about to kick off, and his anxiously hungry relatives are all sitting around his bed, wondering who he'll write in and/or out of their will. Or who will take control of the family once the old man is gone. The relatives have all but buried him in their minds; all that matters to them is gaining the reins and taking over.

If you confronted a person with that mindset, they'd probably only tell you that they were being practical. Just thinking ahead. I mean, it's a done deal that the man is going to die, isn't it?

Certainly the media showed its true colors when Senator Tim Johnson of South Dakota had to be rushed to the hospital. The average person certainly found out about the thin balance of power the Democrats had. Some outlets were willing to assume Harry Reid would be sent packing, that South Dakota senator Mike Rounds was cracking his knuckles in wait to reset the balance of power in Congress to the way it should be -- that is, with it split down the middle and Dick Cheney gallumphing into break any ties.

Um, folks. The man isn't dead yet. In fact, there was no reason to assume the worst right from the gate, considering how other political leaders have survived worse and still stayed active in their fields.

Why were the shovels and picks not brought out when Craig Thomas was diagnosed with leukemia? Could it be that Wyoming's governor was a Democrat and it wasn't that gleefully exciting to think of who he could appoint as a replacement? And let's not even bring up 100-year-old Strom Thurmond, barely aware of his surroundings, who spent a great deal of his last term hospitalized.

Yet the media, drool dripping from their lips, sought a scenario where Rounds replaced Johnson because he was incapacitated. This isn't even in accordance with constitutional law. As much as it hurts the far right to realize this, Johnson would have to resign before anyone could replace him, and that would be his decision. Not CNN's, not Mitch McConnell's, not Mike Rounds', not Fox News' and not Dick Cheney's.

If I were Tim Johnson right now, I would stay focused on recovery for its own sake, which is all anyone should be focused on now. Even us liberals, increasingly on edge about maintaining the majority, need to step back from the political angle. Yes, there's a lot at stake. But this isn't what we're here for. We're here for the humanity. And we've seen the corporate media's lack thereof in full flower. There was never a better way to define ourselves in terms of opposites.

(Oh, and by the way, this is my first blog entry, so thank yous go to Liberal Eagle and Liberal Seagull for allowing a dog in their midst.)

Weeeeeee are the chaaaaaampiooooons, my frieeeeeeeeeend...

2006-12-13T13:20:00.000-08:00

by Liberal Eagle

In the final undecided congressional election of 2006, in TX-23, Democrat Ciro Rodriguez has decisively knocked off GOP incumbent Henry Bonilla.

That brings the Democratic pickup in the House to an even 30 seats.

In the "Republican revolution" of 1994, they picked up 29. That was good enough to make Speaker-to-be Gingrich the toast of the political world.

If Time's person of the year is someone other than Nancy Pelosi, and if I don't hear the phrase "Democratic revolution" in the media some time soon, I may conclude that our liberal media plot ain't working so good.

Botox redux

2006-12-12T14:43:00.000-08:00

by Liberal Eagle

CNN's Jeff Greenfield clucks that the way Barack Obama likes to dress--suit coat, no tie--reminds him of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

I find this a little bit dispiriting. In 2000, Al Gore lost at least in part because the media covered the way he dressed as if it had enormous significance, all of it a negative reflection on his character. In 2004, John Kerry had to deflect questions about whether he'd had botox.

I've been saying that, at least at this early stage, Obama is my favorite for the Democratic nomination in 2008, not because I necessarily like his policies better than anyone else's, or think he'd necessarily be the best president (though he'd look like Lincoln after what we've got at the moment), but because the press seems to love him. The Republicans will, likely as not, nominate John McCain, a man who the press, some recent negative coverage notwithstanding, generally treats as if he's a saint.

Elections can be won and lost on how the press covers you--I remain convinced that Gore lost because the press slimed him constantly and gave Bush a pass, and Kerry lost at least partly because the press gave the Swift Boat Veterans For Truth more legitimacy than they deserved. If the Republicans are going to run St. McCain, and we run someone who the press will smear (like, say, Hillary Clinton), it won't be a fair fight.

In general, the press has always treated Obama as a rock star. So I think he's the guy.

And Greenfield is just one idiot who said one thing, and I know I shouldn't make more of this than it really is, but I do worry that this may be an early sign that no democrat, not even Barack Obama, can overcome the middle-school-cool-kid-clique way the media treats democrats.

If it drinks like a duck and drives like a duck

2006-12-12T13:34:00.000-08:00

by Liberal Eagle

"Mallard Fillmore" creator Edward Bruce Tinsley arrested for DUI:

Hoosier Edward Bruce Tinsley, creator of the conservative comic strip Mallard Fillmore, was arrested in Columbus Dec. 4 and charged with operating a vehicle under the influence -- his second alcohol-related arrest in less that four months, according to the Bartholomew County Sheriff's Department.

Tinsley, 48, who lives in Columbus, had a blood-alcohol level of 0.14 -- almost twice the level at which an Indiana driver is considered intoxicated. He posted $755 bond.

On Aug. 26, Tinsley was arrested for public intoxication, according to the sheriff's department.

You know Tinsley. He's the conservative "cartoonist" who pretended that the parody of his strip that appeared in the Daily Show's America: The Book was actually an attempt to pass a fake strip off as his actual work, then drew Jon Stewart, who is Jewish, with a huge hooked nose, which is not actually what Jon looks like.

While there is nothing funny about drunk driving, there is also nothing funny about Mallard Fillmore.

EDIT: Via Tom Tomorrow, I see that Tinsley is, in fact, also a monumental hypocrite:

Kids who pull wings off flies

2006-12-11T02:00:00.000-08:00

by Liberal Eagle

Jonathan Schwarz notes that George W. Bush, apparently, asked no questions of the Iraq study group, and was remarkably uninquisitive about the finer details of Iraq before he invaded it.

But, he further notes, Bush is, according to Ron Suskind, very interested in every last sordid detail of how we're torturing prisoners:

“He was interested in a very specific, granular way all the time. He was constantly asking folks inside of CIA, ‘What’s happening with interrogations? Are these techniques working? Can we trust what we get?’ The president … is involved — some people say too involved — in the granular day-to-day grit of this war on terror.”

Schwarz concludes, depressingly and I think correctly, that "Not only is the president of the United States an eight year-old, he’s an unpleasant eight year-old, the kind you’d want the guidance counselors to keep an eye on."

This is something I've always hated about George Bush. I've never understood why so many people found him a "decent" and "likable" guy. To me he's just always come off as a smirking, macho frat boy, a rich kid who thinks the world should kiss his butt, a spoiled brat who's been shielded from the consequences of his actions and from any experience that might have made him a better person. Basically, Bush reminds me of any number of people I've loathed over the years.

Above, see George Bush, illegally sucker-punching a guy in the face for no discernible reason, in a Yale rugby match.

The fact that this aspect of his personality was underreported in both his campaigns, in which reporters behaved like those horrible little toadies who suck up to mean jocks in school, is the press's lasting shame. That George Bush has reached the age of 60 without becoming a better person than this, still fascinated with torture and bored by the lives and deaths of people his policies affect, is his lasting shame.

That we as a country would allow him two terms, when it was in our power to at least hold him to one, is our lasting shame.

The war on Christmas

2006-12-10T17:45:00.000-08:00

by Liberal Seagull

Seatac Airport has removed its Christmas trees.

I mention this because I'm sure it will be cited by Bill O'Reilly and his ilk as part of the liberal "War on Christmas" -- in spite of the fact that the complaint that caused their removal came not from an atheist, but from a rabbi who was unhappy that there was no Jewish religious icon on display.

Hearts and minds

2006-12-08T15:05:00.000-08:00

by Liberal Seagull

While the discussion goes on about how to win hearts and minds in the Iraqi Muslim community, it seems we're having a bit of trouble treating Muslims here decently.

Case in point: Katy, Texas, a suburb of Houston, is up in arms about a group that plans to build a mosque. A neighbor of the building site has put up a website protesting the plan, and has declared that he will hold weekly pig races on his property. (Apparently he doesn't realize that Muslims don't dislike pigs, they just don't eat them.) The County Commissioner has gotten letters protesting the mosque, including one that declared it a security risk and asked "Would you and your family safely and comfortably live next to this 11-acre Muslim mosque and facilities?"

Not only is this kind of bigotry distasteful, it's also counterproductive when it comes to national security. It's much easier to find criminals within a population that's integrated with society than it is to find them in a population that's been pushed into the shadows. In dozens of ways we've made it clear we, as a society, don't trust Muslims. This hardly encourages them to step forward and provide law enforcement with information about the small minority who might be up to no good.

This kind of treatment also breeds resentment that can eventually become civil unrest. The riots France experienced a year ago are an example of what can happen if you create a group of people who feel like oppressed, second-class citizens. Those riots were not so much about Islam as they were about unemployment, poor living conditions, and social discrimination.

We need to stop regarding Muslims as terrorist sympathizers and start treating them as real Americans.

Liberal Eagle's weekly top five

2006-12-08T12:58:00.000-08:00

5. Kings of Convenience, "Surprise Ice"
4. Pete Yorn, "Ice Age"
3. Calexico and Iron & Wine, "Burn That Broken Bed"
2. Tenacious D, "Tribute"
1. Sting, "Consider Me Gone"

The Saturday morning worldview

2006-12-08T12:22:00.000-08:00

by Liberal Eagle

"I wish you understood that there are people who want to kill us."

I hear this from war hawks all the time. Usually at the end of arguments, as if it's their trump card.

It's a little bit tempting to dismiss it as just a more sophisticated version of "yeah, well, you're a pootyhead." Do they really think those of us who were never for invading Iraq, want to stop occupying it now, don't want habeas corpus suspended, don't want to be wiretapped, etc., are walking around going "la la la la, nobody wants to kill Americans," and if the information that some people do want to kill Americans would just penetrate our thick skulls, we would suddely love Bush and want to blow up as many brown people as possible?

To believe that anyone who doesn't support the worst excesses of the Bush administration "doesn't understand that there are people who want to kill us" requires one to believe that because some brown people want to kill Americans, it is a logical response, in fact the logical response, to go to war in a country that had nothing at all to do with it, but is populated by other brown people with roughly the same religious beliefs, because, eh, one of 'em's the same as any other.

It seems not to occur to them that perhaps we think "someone somewhere, given the opportunity, would like to kill Americans" is not enough information, that we ought to also try to grasp why and how they would like to do so, whether they have the opportunity, what would be most likely either to prevent their doing so or to diminish their desire to do so, etc. I mean, sure, there are small clusters of radical ideologues all over the world who want all sorts of insane things. We should take them seriously, but just knowing that someone somewhere wants something extreme is not enough information, and failure to support the (disastrous) current policy is not a failure to grasp it.

I can already hear the gears grinding in some rightie's head. "But they already did kill some of us, dumbass! It was called 9/11!" This is the other response I always get. Well, yes, 9/11 was very bad. There are many things we could have done, could still do, that would decrease the chances of 9/11 happening again. Ramp up port security. Having invaded Afghanistan (which I supported doing), put our resources into rebuilding its institutions and infrastructure so it will no longer be a breeding ground for violent extremism. Actually catch Osama bin Laden (I think this would have been a lot more effective if we could go back and do it five years ago at Tora Bora, but ah well). The list goes on, but the point is it's mostly small stuff.

And I guess they wanted a big grand gesture, these people who think I don't understand that there are people who want to kill me. Little stuff just wouldn't make us feel like we were fighting The Terrorists. I hate that. Referring to everyone engaged in any kind of anti-American violence as The Terrorists makes them sound like some monolithic group, and they're not. Al Qaeda was a small band of guys training in the mountains in Afghanistan. Now it's more like a brand name you apply to yourself if you want jihadist street cred, so it's ridiculous to pretend that even the self-described members of al Qaeda who are blowing things up in Iraq have any connection to 9/11. And the insurgency there is home grown. It has a specific political objective: it wants the occupation to end. We are not preventing another 9/11 in any way, shape or form by fighting them; if anything, we're radicalizing more and more people and possibly causing one.

This is not terribly complicated stuff, but it's too complicated for Republicans (who are, in this day and age, kind of the Cult of Bush). Bush stands up there and declares, in a way that suggests he might actually think it, that Iraq is the central front in our battle with al Qaeda or The Terrorists or whatever group name he's using for "them" that day, and his followers run around talking like that too. And I just keep thinking, you could substitute the name "Cobra" or "The Decepticons" or "Skeletor's gang" (I'm sure I'll get letters telling me the name of Skeletor's group) and it would not sound at all out of place. This is not an adult view of the world. It's a Saturday morning cartoon view of the world. It's the Good Guys, us, vs. the Bad Guys, them. So, any time the Bad Guys attack you, the logical thing to do is go and attack the Bad Guys somewhere else, and it really makes no difference which Bad Guys as long as they look sort of the same, because the whole world is divided into the Good Team and the Bad Team.

Yes, I understand that there are people who want to kill Americans.

Do you understand anything else?

Sign of the times: too many churches

2006-12-04T18:24:00.000-08:00

by Liberal Seagull

According to a recent Christian Science Monitor article, some communities are starting to face the problem of too many churches. Churches are federally exempt from property taxes and from any local zoning regulations that would create an "undue burden," and they can create budget problems for small towns by using city services while not providing revenue. "Megachurches," in particular, can create significant traffic problems and require upgrades to water and sewage service. Underlying the debate is the question of whether religions organizations should be getting special treatment that exempts them from regulations that prevent other types of development.

Liberal Eagle's quote of the day

2006-12-04T12:14:00.000-08:00

Bob Cesca, in the Huffington Post.

Looking back at the last five years, I can't help but to compare our recent history to a time travel movie in which the time-space continuum has skewed into an alternate reality and the events that should've happened after 9/11... simply never existed. In other words, September 11 should have initiated an era of peace and collective world unity. But through the president's incompetence, stubbornness, ambition and greed, the polar opposite has occurred. For five years, we've existed along a false timeline in which Biff Tannen is a wealthy gambling kingpin -- his pearl-handled revolver aimed at Michael J. Fox's head.

The walrus was John

2006-12-04T11:52:00.000-08:00

We won't have John Bolton to kick around anymore.

The Worst Diplomat in the World, unable to get the Senate to confirm him even in these last Republican days (despite the fact that, apparently, that enormous wanker Joe Lieberman supported him), has stepped down as of the end of his current term (he got in on a presidential recess appointment last time, and apparently the president can't do that twice).

Elections matter. Elections determine who sits on the supreme court, who oversees our air and water regulations, and yes, who represents us at the U.N. Technically Bush didn't have the votes because Republican Sen. Lincoln Chafee said he would vote no--but Chafee's stated reason for that was that the Democratic victory signaled voter opposition to Bush's foreign policy.

So, look, people, you did good this time. Keep it up. Vote for the people who will do things you agree with. Don't let the punditry con you into voting for whoever would be more fun to have a beer with (funny how that's always the Republican, too, even when the Republican is both a teetotaler and a former obnoxious alcoholic).

Liberal Eagle's weekly top five

2006-12-02T16:41:00.000-08:00

Underappreciated R.E.M. songs edition.

5. Around the Sun
4. I've Been High
3. Daysleeper
2. Beat A Drum
1. At My Most Beautiful

Extreeeeeeme!

2006-12-01T15:39:00.000-08:00

I hear often, from various Beltway pundits as well as from people I know, that, okay, yeah, the Republicans have gotten really extreme--but both parties have gotten too extreme. This is usually followed by some statement like "we should just kill them all and start over."

I suppose it's unfair for me to say this, but I've always suspected people say things like this because it makes them feel so much more moderate, which in their minds makes them automatically virtuous. Deep down they're less concerned with actual principle than with positioning themselves as "centrists." It's bad to be "partisan." Therefore, if you're going to condemn one side, it's psychologically necessary to condemn the other, to create an equivalency any way you can, so you can continue to feel like you're in the middle. Why being, at any given time, on one side or the other is inherently unacceptable, I don't know, but there you are.

As Kevin Drum noted a while ago, there have been times when one party or the other had to purge itself of powerful extremist elements:

Every party has extremist elements. I can live with that, especially since most extremist elements have little actual power. But some political movements are so odious that decent people need to take active measures to shun them. In the same way that Democrats purged their party of communists in the 40s and Jim Crow racists in the 60s, and the Republicans purged their party of the Buchananites in the 90s, Republicans need to purge the Texas strain of messianic intolerance currently growing on their right wing. It is not harmless, it is not small, and it is not a joke.

Consider this. Suppose that very serious, very miltant communists took over the New York State Democratic party and wrote a platform advocating, say, nationalization of key industries and confiscatory taxation of all income over $50,000. And suppose that one of these New York Democrats had enough support in the party to become House majority leader. And then, finally, suppose that as communist influence spread throughout New England and beyond, Democrats pretended that nothing was amiss. A few communists here and there are harmless. Most of them don't really believe that stuff anyway, and we're just compromising with them on a few minor issues. Honest.

People go around saying the Democrats are as captive to the extreme left as Republicans are to the extreme right, but it's simply not true: if it were, it would look like what Kevin described, there, and obviously we just aren't seeing that. But what we are seeing is an extreme deep-southern far-religious-right taking control of the national Republican party. And any vote for the Republicans, today, is a vote for that movement.

Kevin also noted a while ago that, since Texas (home of Bush, DeLay, Rove, Armey, et al) represents in large part the beating heart of national Republicanism today, it's worth taking a look at the Texas Republican platform. What he sees there is pretty frightening: Texas Republicans stand for, among other things, abandoning sparation of church and state, criminalizing gay sex, banning all forms of abortion, teaching Biblical creationism in science classes, abolishing Social Security, abolishing the federal income tax, abolishing the federal minimum wage, eliminating the EPA and the Department of Education, getting out of the UN and possibly invading Panama.

A vote for any national Republican empowers the minds behind this agenda. Being "partisan" at a time when extreme and dangerous elements have taken control of one of the major parties is no vice. Being "centrist" when it means making nice with extreme and dangerous elements is no virtue.

It's important to stand up for what's right even when that makes you look "partisan." Only when moderate Republicans--you know, the heirs of Teddy Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower--take back their party will it do any good to seek bipartisanship.

Taller ants

2006-11-30T18:54:00.000-08:00

I agree with Liberal Seagull's last post (big surprise).

I want to add only that I really don't feel like I need to entertain allegations of "intolerance" from people who are not only themselves highly intolerant, but are accusing me of intolerance specifically for objecting to their intolerant views.

If you're at all outspokenly liberal, you know the argument I mean: "So you're unwilling to tolerate my belief that gay people should be beaten to death with sticks? So much for your liberal tolerance!"

Let's be abundantly clear, here. Saying that you think someone is wrong, even objectively wrong, even catastrophically wrong, is not in and of itself an act of bigotry. It may be "intolerance" by the dictionary definition of the word. Merriam-Webster's first definition for the word "intolerant" is, in fact, "unable or unwilling to endure." I would say that I am unable or unwilling to endure the notion that some members of society, who are doing no harm, should be denied the same rights everyone else enjoys simply because a loaded interpretation of a bronze-age religious text says they should be according to some people.

But the second definition offered there is A: unwilling to grant equal freedom of expression especially in religious matters; B: unwilling to grant or share social, political, or professional rights : BIGOTED." And I think, when people throw around the word "intolerant" in political discussions, this is the operative definition.

So, the argument conservatives who call argumentative liberals like myself "intolerant" are making is, in essence, "you're guilty of not believing in equality, because you refuse to regard my belief in inequality as being just as valid as your belief in equality."

To accept that, you must accept, logically, that believing in equality means believing that it's just as legitimate not to believe in equality. That logic rapidly disappears up its own butt and never re-emerges.

I'm going to continue to believe that being a bigot is, logically and morally, inferior to not being one. And I am never going to apologize for thinking that.

Is tolerance overrated?

2006-11-30T14:23:00.000-08:00

Liberal Eagle's recent post got me thinking about the subject of tolerance. It's common to see conservatives accusing liberals of being intolerant of their views. This is especially true of religious views on issues like homosexuality, abortion, and contraception. Since "tolerance" is usually regarded as a positive trait, this causes considerable angst. No one wants to be accused of intolerance.

Conservatives generally don't believe abortion, homosexuality, and ready access to contraception should be tolerated. Is a tolerant person required to accept viewpoints that are, themselves, intolerant? If so, tolerance is a sure path to political irrelevancy, since it would seem to preclude objecting to someone's stand on those issues -- or, in fact, on any issues.

Either "tolerance" is being defined overly broadly, or it's overrated as a personality trait. To refrain from objecting to anyone else's views in the name of tolerance is to completely abandon political debate, and that's definitely not a positive thing.

Things that annoy the eagle

2006-11-29T13:53:00.000-08:00

One thing I'm pretty thoroughly sick of being told is that I'm intolerant of differing views.

This is, really, almost always supported by the evidence that, since I openly disagree with differing views (by definition--I mean, what am I supposed to do, agree with everything anyone says?) I must therefore consider those views illegitimate.

That is, to be nice about it, such total crap I shouldn't even have to refute it, and yet, from time to time I find myself having to decide whether to explain once again that disagreeing with someone does not equal wanting to put them in concentration camps.

I'm serious. Someone actually said that to me, a couple years ago. It was one of those snarky one-line e-mails, something like "So, when do you plan to start putting us conservatives in concentration camps?"

This post was inspired by some idiot, more recently, lecturing me that "you believe that your view is the only possible right view and to hell with anyone who may have a different idea, ESPECIALLY if they're a member of the opposition party." (Funny, I thought I was in charge of what I believed, but evidently not.)

The lecture on the value of open debate continues: "You have to have dissenting opinions in order to have checks and balances. The problem is that being the opposition has turned into being the enemy and therefore they are the enemy and deserve no respect or quarter. That's what is destroying the American political system."

Apparently, if you have strong opinions and tend toward one end of the spectrum (the American spectrum--in most of the western world my views would be considered very centrist, but the American spectrum is pretty skewed to the right at the moment) you must therefore feel that people who disagree with you should be cleansed from the face of the earth. It is, apparently, inconceivable to some people that it is possible to hold strong opinions, forcibly argue them in public, and still see dissent as legitimate and even valuable.

I'm going to say this one final time: I think disagreement is legitimate and important. I will advocate my views, and I fully endorse the right of others, who hold different views, to do the same. I have never said otherwise. It is stupid to think that just because I have opinions, I must hate people who disagree.

Okay?

Holy Frist?

2006-11-29T10:17:00.000-08:00

Bill Frist has stated he will not run for President in 2008. That's not really news; it's been obvious for a while that he didn't really have a chance. More interesting is the file photo CNN chose, which makes Frist appear to be wearing a halo:

Nutjobs for Bush

2006-11-28T15:52:00.001-08:00

I'm sure most people who read this blog will be shocked--SHOCKED--to learn that according to a new study, there is a direct correlation between being psychotic, and voting for Bush.

According to the same study, Kerry voters were a lot more knowledgable than Bush voters, about current events. I know, duh, right? But it's nice to have outside confirmation.

Houses of cards

2006-11-27T12:26:00.000-08:00

Big shock, here: I think Atrios is absolutely right. I also think it ties in nicely with my own last post:

When the history of this era is written, I hope it is remembered that the President of the United States created a deck of cards with "bad guys" on it. The media, rather than seeing this is a bizarre and infantile thing, thought it was wonderful. So wonderful that they dutifully printed the graphics on their newscasts, and created lovely interactive web features around it.

We are ruled by dangerously silly people.

War is hell; hell is other people

2006-11-26T12:02:00.000-08:00

One frequent criticism of the warmongers currently running this country revolves around how few of them ever served in the military. In fact, a large number of them actively avoided it. George Bush, of course, famously got his dad to get him into a Texas Air National Guard unit stocked with the too-rich-to-fight-in-Vietnam (then skipped out on that). Dick Cheney has said he had "other priorities" during Vietnam; his wife also gave birth to their first child exactly nine months after Dick's type of draft deferment was ended. Rush Limbaugh had a cyst on his butt. Tom DeLay's excuse is that there were too many minorities serving, and they'd taken up all the slots (I swear I am not making this up).

I could go on.

There's nothing inherently wrong with supporting a war if you yourself have never been in the military. I myself have never been in the military. Not only that, I'd probably dodge the draft so hard I'd get motion sick, if it came up. (I can't imagine it would. I both ask and tell, among many other disqualifications.)

Nevertheless, I reluctantly supported the invasion of Afghanistan. Reluctantly not because of my own failure to serve, but because, well, any time you support a war it should be reluctant. Once again I find myself pointing out the bleedin' obvious, but war is bad. If war is sometimes necessary--and, sadly, I guess it is--that's because we have failed at preventing it. War is the breakdown of everything that makes humanity worthy of this earth.

Lao Tzu wrote that the best soldier fights without anger, and in fact goes into battle as if he were going to a funeral. I really believe in that. Which brings me to my personal issue with the supporters of this war. It's not just that they want other people to die in wars but skipped town when their turn came along. It's that there's this football spectator quality to the whole thing.

You know what I mean? That "we're goin' in there to kick some ass! Wooooooooooo!" quality of much of the original support for our current military engagements, most particularly Iraq.

My distaste for that sort of jingoistic cheerleading goes back to when I was a kid and the first Gulf War broke out. From how most people, on TV and on the radio and around me, reacted, you would have thought we were playing Iraq in a football game, instead of killing people (and getting Americans killed). I remember a Saturday Night Live sketch from the time, in which Dana Carvey's "Church Lady" character has Saddam Hussein on her show, and he starts explaining why he felt he had a right to invade Kuwait, and the Church Lady gets up and starts kicking Saddam's ass, and the audience goes "WOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" and apparently I'm the only one who's not happy.

Even when you think a war is necessary, you should conclude that sadly and reluctantly. You should not enjoy war. Ever.

That's why my contempt for George Bush was solidified when I learned that, in 2002, a full year before he stopped pretending he might not invade Iraq, he flippantly told some senators "fuck Saddam, we're takin' him out." Of course, he couldn't act like that in public, and he went around for a full year after that playing the part of a Very Serious Person who was only going to go to war if he was forced to to protect American lives. Which was always ridiculous; American lives were never on the line in Iraq, and the war was never avoidable once the neocons saw their moment to wage it. But a lot of people were duped into thinking we had no choice.

In a way, it's hopeful, to me, that what sold the war was the idea that there was no other choice. That tells me that even the casual warmongers were aware that most people don't view wars as a spectator sport. But there were people running around making arguments that made me really want to hurt them. Like the Washington Post's Richard Cohen, arguing that, after 9/11, we needed to start a war because it would be "therapeutic" (did Richard blink and miss Afghanistan?). Or Dennis Miller, who has really become a smug waste of space, grinning a shit-eating grin and declaring that, well, we had to go over there and mix it up with somebody to show we were tough, you know?

There's an obvious racism to both those arguments, at least in my mind. They seem to boil down to "we got attacked by brown people, so if we go attack some other brown people, that'll be a good response--they're all pretty much the same, right?"

And then you had the essential neoconservative argument, which, really, is what got us into Iraq to start with. All the talk of WMDs was pretty much a sales job; the Project For a New American Century, featuring such intellectual lights as Cheney and Wolfowitz, had been arguing since the early 1990s that if we knocked over Saddam and installed someone like Chalabi in his place, pro-western democracy would break out in the middle east.

Apart from being unrealistic, this has the distinction of being an argument for war as a first resort, war as a good thing in and of itself, put forward by a bunch of guys who mostly say they believed in the last war but avoided serving in it any way they could. When war threatens them, it's real. When they're not personally at risk, it's at best a pet ideological theory, and at worst a cheesy spectator sport.

And that's the part I find contemptible.

Liberal Eagle's weekly top five

2006-11-24T20:17:00.000-08:00

All Toad edition.

5. Toad the Wet Sprocket, "I Will Not Take These Things For Granted"
4. Toad the Wet Sprocket, "Windmills"
3. Toad the Wet Sprocket, "Something's Always Wrong"
2. Toad the Wet Sprocket, "Before You Were Born"
1. Toad the Wet Sprocket, "Fly From Heaven"

Why profiling doesn't work.

2006-11-23T13:01:00.000-08:00

I frequently hear conservative commentators complain that our approach to airport security is being crippled by political correctness. Their argument is that we should be focusing on Muslim-looking men, instead of inconveniencing everyone with random searches. Their example of how silly our current system is always involves some elderly grandmother being searched.

The problem, of course, is that terrorists adapt. If you only search people who fit a certain profile, they'll start recruiting people who don't. This was dramatically demonstrated today, when a 68-year-old grandmother detonated a suicide bomb, wounding two Israeli troops in the Gaza strip.

It's easy to fall into the trap of always fighting the last war. Just because all of the 9/11 hijackers were male and looked Arab doesn't mean the same will be true of the next attack. That is why random airport searches, to be effective, have to potentially involved everyone -- including 68-year-old grandmothers.

Fair and balanced

2006-11-21T15:37:00.001-08:00

1994: Republicans sweep into control of Congress, including picking up a 26-seat margin in the House. Not a single Republican incumbent anywhere loses.

Media conventional wisdom: The country has given the Republican agenda a broad mandate, and decisively rejected the Democrats.

2006: Democrats sweep into control of Congress, including picking up a margin of at least 26 House seats, probably more. Not a single Democratic incumbent anywhere loses.

Media conventional wisdom: A pox on both their houses. The voters have rejected partisanship, and want both parties to work together.

1994: Incoming House Speaker Newt Gingrich backs a political ally for Majority Whip, who goes on to lose to Tom DeLay for the post.

Media conventional wisdom: It doesn't matter; Newt is still the man. He's hailed as probably more powerful than President Clinton. Time Magazine names him "person of the year."

2006: Incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi backs a political ally for Majority Leader, who goes on to lose to Steny Hoyer for the post.

Media conventional wisdom: Pelosi seriously blew it. She's damaged goods, now. She cannot plausibly lead.

Liberal media, my tailfeathers.

Sometimes, imitation is the highest form of flattery. Other times, it's just lame.

2006-11-20T19:45:00.000-08:00

Slog (as well as many other news outlets) reports that Fox News is looking to launch their own news satire show, along the lines of the Daily Show, to lampoon "the sacred cows of the left" that they feel get a pass from existing satirical news outlets. This won't work, and not because there are no funny Republicans; there's something more generic wrong with it.

There's a long history of Republicans attempting to create their own, conservatively-slanted versions of products that express views they disagree with. Michael Moore Hates America, for example, was a direct response to the popularity of Bowling for Columbine. Unlike Bowling for Columbine, hardly anyone saw it; other than video sales and some screenings arranged for right-wing groups, it mostly sank without a trace. Perhaps even more absurdly, the Wood Flooring Manufacturers Association produced a book called Truax, complete with school lesson plans, to counter the anti-logging message of Dr. Seuss's The Lorax. You probably haven't heard of that one either.

The lesson here is that taking something cool and popular and trying to clone it, but with a different political slant, rarely works. It's calculated, for one thing, and calculation is the enemy of cool. (While the political right is most often guilty of this, it's worth noting that the left's attempt to clone right-wing talk radio, Air America, has not exactly been a resounding success either.)

There's something else wrong with a right-wing news satire show, though. The whole concept of right-wing satire borders on the grotesque, as anyone who has listened to Rush Limbaugh ridicule homeless people will attest. To quote Molly Ivins, "...satire can be quite a cruel weapon. It has historically been the weapon of powerless people aimed at the powerful. When you use satire as a weapon against powerless people, it is not only cruel, it is profoundly vulgar." While the Republicans' political influence is currently waning, they still represent powerful people -- corporations and the wealthy. They endorse policies that generally hurt the most vulnerable Americans. To then turn around and mock those people isn't funny, it's simply cruel.