Religion, Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Cognitive Dissonance

Cognitive Dissonance.

It hurts. Its uncomfortable. Disquieting, even.

That nagging feeling that things just aren't as they should be.

Perhaps I've too quick in discounting the contributions religion (and Neo-Republicanism) can make to calming a fretful mind.

Many people are uncomfortable with the use of torture in Guantanomo Bay. To accept out torture of other humans leaves us with no justification to protest the torture of our own by others.

Not so for Acquaintance X. Acquaintance X (X to his friends) believes that what the Japanese did to enemy and prisoner alike during WWII was horrid and continues to haunt that country to this day. The torture carried out by the W administration is different, however.

How can a normal, thinking person handle this dichotomy? Easy: religion.

Religion gives one the practice to promote beliefs that that one not only doesn't understand, but make no sense.

X didn't just happen to rebuild his religious zeal in the last few decades. He did it for a reason. Something just didn't feel right.

Advocating that today's young men and women should be subject to a draft into Iraq while studding such opinions with anecdotes of how he just barely missed the draft himself creates mental conflict no longer. The practiced soma of religion allows these and thousands of other contridictions to cause no disquiet at all.

sleep....sleep restless mind!

Lotophagi

The Switftboating of Edwards Begins

It almost two years away but the race for president has already begun.

Given the experience with W (not to mention the very similar experience with Nixon) it's looking like the chances of a Republican presidency in '08 are all but nil. Neglecting that W is MVP for the dems, it looks like the Republicans are gunning to take out Edwards first.

The swiftboating began with the Republican Harpy calling Edwards "gay". That stirred up a bit of media attention and gave their pollsters a chance to judge the public reaction. Not much repulsion so it looks like they've decided to stick with the theme.

The mantra they're sticking with is "pretty". Edwards is "pretty".

Sad, but the American's may be sucking this one up as readily as the idea that W is a "cowboy". Having not sliced off any of one's appendages with a chainsaw seems to be enough to let the "manly" image stand without further question.

Addendum:
Some questions.

How to Solve Several Problems at Once

Let's rattle off several of America's (if not mankind's) biggest problems:

- Insane gunmen kill tens in a single go (VT being the latest).
- "Terrorists" killing thousands
- Insane people running loose killing people.
- Criminals robbing and killing.
- Unwanted, uneducated and poorly-raised homeless children abound.
- Drugs are destroying our society.

What do these problems have in common? Why we need more "control".

- Insane gunmen can be stopped by outlawing guns.
- Insane killers can be stopped by incarcerating anyone that acts suspicious.
- Criminals can be stopped by surveillance cameras at every corner.
- Homeless children can be stopped by requiring permits to have children (heck, you even need a permit to have a *dog*!)
- Terrorists? Well, apparently we take care of them by blowing up unrelated countries. But that doesn't fit into the model of the discussion here, so being inconvenient we'll just ingnore that one.
- Outlawing drugs and couple that with severe prison sentences.

Ok, well the outlawing guns things can only be expected to work as well as outlawing murder has. Granted, it would make it harder to get guns, but we've outlawed all manner of drugs wholesale. Heck, we've filled the prisons with drug violators and we now have more citizens in prison than any other developed country. A crime syndicate in Japan just shot and killed a mayor (!) and guns have been outlawed there since then end of WWII.

Throwing anyone that acts wierd into a mental instutution to keep them from harming people didn't work out because for the few we did catch, thousands more lost their rights as they rotted in asylums for no reason other than someone else thought they were "wierd".

Requiring licenses for people to have kids is basically eugenics. Any eugenics fans out there?

Surveilance cameras have been a huge success and have led to the immediate capture of 2 suspects of the 20 millions crimes committed annually in the US (I made those numbers up, but you get the point.)

So what do we have? Basically, giving up our liberties produces no real gains.

Didn't Franklin say something about this?

I agree (as do many) that automatic weapons don't belong in the general populace. Reasonable gun control laws can help. But there's no gun control law out there that can stop gun violence. Yet there a many laws out there that can severly limit the rights of innocent citizens for very little safety in return.

Ironically, I'm even more inclined to resist mandatory gun permits since seeing the scary job W has done to America. We're now closer than ever to a dictatorship with his support for torture, rampant corruption, tapping phones without warrant, firing federal prosecutors for failing to attack his political foes sufficiently and his wholesale violation of the constitution through signing statements (who needs line item veto when you can just ignore any bit of the law you don't like?)

What's stopping a president like that from saying, "Ok, knock on the door of every person with a gun permit and take away their weapons. My next political move isn't gonna be popular and I don't want any trouble from 'voters'."

Reminds me of a bumper-sticker: "The only people that fear an armed citizenry are dictators, criminals and politicians."

Not completely accurate, but close.

Training the Servants of the Future

From an e-mail correspondence:

Me:

That if China ever did decide to attack us, the first thing it would do is poison the food it sends us. I've seen reports that less than 1% of our food imports are even checked by FDA.

Taking out the cats first?
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070419/bs_nm/wilburellis_petfood_dc;_ylt=AiEX_vCwAZQIm5Nor84zYRJZ.3QA

D.S.:

Quality Control
It is at odds with profit, as is Marketing at odds with production.
(To the short-sighted.) If you have no quality Control, you ship damaged goods, poisoned dog food, sub-par components or pieces or systems.
You lose your name, and likely your business. But, offsetting that, is you have saved lots of money up front, and already built up your Swiss savings account.

China may never neeed to attack directly. As her economy grows, as ours diminishes, what reason is there to notsimply allow America to wither on the vine?

We are almost totally dependent upon imports now, we can't buy anything once our credit rating drops to zero, and it's heading there quickly.
Our balance of trade deficits and the amount of our debt held overseas
grows monthly.

Our job skills have been outsourced and copied worldwide, and no matter how much they'd like to think otherwise, the American CEO is not unique.
Anyone can press the big red button on their desk. You don't need to be American to do that.

Our Population ranks well below that of China, and India, and is
nearly equaled by Indonesia. We are barely 1/2 the size of Russia, and while fractionally larger than China and Brazil, we are smaller than Canada.
Our education system consistently lags other countries, and yet our univerities fill with their students as well as our own, at the cost of our own kids education. (There are only X seats in a classroom!)

As we run out, or run low, on raw materials, our dependence on imports
will cost us at an ever-increasing rate.

What are we doing to offset these mounting catastrophies?
Why we're opening up service industry jobs, so we'll be better servants to our new masters, whom-so-ever they may be.

But that's OK, let's stay the course!

Republican or Religious Nut?

Writer to Andrew Sullivan:

... doctrinaire, authoritarian, exclusive, dishonest and generally obnoxious in the way they coated their realpolitik with a transparent veneer of moral self-righteousness.

They behaved then and, I understand, behave now like a bunch of middle-aged, self-important know-it-alls around whom the stench of hypocrisy hovers like a visible fog. Or, they are perceived as too dim-witted to know any better.

Trucker Boycott

If this article is accurate, it appears that driving trucks is yet another job Americans don't want to do.

World Net Daily

Bolton, Iraq and Abortion

Bolton defends the Iraq War:
Andrew Sullivan

There seems to be a parallel between Bolton's defense of overthrowing Saddam:

He's very concerned about Iraqi's beforehand...
(paraphrasing): "Oh, that's fine if you don't mind living in a dictatorship" (poor creatures!)

But couldn't give a damn about them after they've been "liberated"...
(paraphrasing): "The failure to establish a government in Iraq is the Iraqi's fault."


The far right's opinions on fetuses seems to be very similar. They are absolutely opposed to abortion, but the second the child "hits air" they feel no compunction to provide or care for it.


So they want to run other people's lives, but they accept no responsibility when they screw them up. The worst sort of dictator.

Lee Iacocca Recommends Change

Border's excerpt

Excerpt
Where Have All the Leaders Gone?

By Lee Iacocca with Catherine Whitney

I
Had Enough?

Am I the only guy in this country who's fed up with what's happening? Where the hell is our outrage? We should be screaming bloody murder. We've got a gang of clueless bozos steering our ship of state right over a cliff, we've got corporate gangsters stealing us blind, and we can't even clean up after a hurricane much less build a hybrid car. But instead of getting mad, everyone sits around and nods their heads when the politicians say, "Stay the course."

Stay the course? You've got to be kidding. This is America, not the damned Titanic. I'll give you a sound bite: Throw the bums out!

You might think I'm getting senile, that I've gone off my rocker, and maybe I have. But someone has to speak up. I hardly recognize this country anymore. The President of the United States is given a free pass to ignore the Constitution, tap our phones, and lead us to war on a pack of lies. Congress responds to record deficits by passing a huge tax cut for the wealthy (thanks, but I don't need it). The most famous business leaders are not the innovators but the guys in handcuffs. While we're fiddling in Iraq, the Middle East is burning and nobody seems to know what to do. And the press is waving pom-poms instead of asking hard questions. That's not the promise of America my parents and yours traveled across the ocean for. I've had enough. How about you?

I'll go a step further. You can't call yourself a patriot if you're not outraged. This is a fight I'm ready and willing to have.

My friends tell me to calm down. They say, "Lee, you're eighty-two years old. Leave the rage to the young people." I'd love to—as soon as I can pry them away from their iPods for five seconds and get them to pay attention. I'm going to speak up because it's my patriotic duty. I think people will listen to me. They say I have a reputation as a straight shooter. So I'll tell you how I see it, and it's not pretty, but at least it's real. I'm hoping to strike a nerve in those young folks who say they don't vote because they don't trust politicians to represent their interests. Hey, America, wake up. These guys work for us.

Who Are These Guys, Anyway?

Why are we in this mess? How did we end up with this crowd in Washington? Well, we voted for them—or at least some of us did. But I'll tell you what we didn't do. We didn't agree to suspend the Constitution. We didn't agree to stop asking questions or demanding answers. Some of us are sick and tired of people who call free speech treason. Where I come from that's a dictatorship, not a democracy.

And don't tell me it's all the fault of right-wing Republicans or liberal Democrats. That's an intellectually lazy argument, and it's part of the reason we're in this stew. We're not just a nation of factions. We're a people. We share common principles and ideals. And we rise and fall together.

Where are the voices of leaders who can inspire us to action and make us stand taller? What happened to the strong and resolute party of Lincoln? What happened to the courageous, populist party of FDR and Truman? There was a time in this country when the voices of great leaders lifted us up and made us want to do better. Where have all the leaders gone?

The Test of a Leader

I've never been Commander in Chief, but I've been a CEO. I understand a few things about leadership at the top. I've figured out nine points—not ten (I don't want people accusing me of thinking I'm Moses). I call them the "Nine Cs of Leadership." They're not fancy or complicated. Just clear, obvious qualities that every true leader should have. We should look at how the current administration stacks up. Like it or not, this crew is going to be around until January 2009. Maybe we can learn something before we go to the polls in 2008. Then let's be sure we use the leadership test to screen the candidates who say they want to run the country. It's up to us to choose wisely.

So, here's my C list:

A leader has to show CURIOSITY. He has to listen to people outside of the "Yes, sir" crowd in his inner circle. He has to read voraciously, because the world is a big, complicated place. George W. Bush brags about never reading a newspaper. "I just scan the headlines," he says. Am I hearing this right? He's the President of the United States and he never reads a newspaper? Thomas Jefferson once said, "Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate for a moment to prefer the latter." Bush disagrees. As long as he gets his daily hour in the gym, with Fox News piped through the sound system, he's ready to go.

If a leader never steps outside his comfort zone to hear different ideas, he grows stale. If he doesn't put his beliefs to the test, how does he know he's right? The inability to listen is a form of arrogance. It means either you think you already know it all, or you just don't care. Before the 2006 election, George Bush made a big point of saying he didn't listen to the polls. Yeah, that's what they all say when the polls stink. But maybe he should have listened, because 70 percent of the people were saying he was on the wrong track. It took a "thumping" on election day to wake him up, but even then you got the feeling he wasn't listening so much as he was calculating how to do a better job of convincing everyone he was right.

A leader has to be CREATIVE, go out on a limb, be willing to try something different. You know, think outside the box. George Bush prides himself on never changing, even as the world around him is spinning out of control. God forbid someone should accuse him of flip-flopping. There's a disturbingly messianic fervor to his certainty. Senator Joe Biden recalled a conversation he had with Bush a few months after our troops marched into Baghdad. Joe was in the Oval Office outlining his concerns to the President—the explosive mix of Shiite and Sunni, the disbanded Iraqi army, the problems securing the oil fields. "The President was serene," Joe recalled. "He told me he was sure that we were on the right course and that all would be well. 'Mr. President,' I finally said, 'how can you be so sure when you don't yet know all the facts?'" Bush then reached over and put a steadying hand on Joe's shoulder. "My instincts," he said. "My instincts." Joe was flabbergasted. He told Bush, "Mr. President, your instincts aren't good enough." Joe Biden sure didn't think the matter was settled. And, as we all know now, it wasn't.

Leadership is all about managing change—whether you're leading a company or leading a country. Things change, and you get creative. You adapt. Maybe Bush was absent the day they covered that at Harvard Business School.

A leader has to COMMUNICATE. I'm not talking about running off at the mouth or spouting sound bites. I'm talking about facing reality and telling the truth. Nobody in the current administration seems to know how to talk straight anymore. Instead, they spend most of their time trying to convince us that things are not really as bad as they seem. I don't know if it's denial or dishonesty, but it can start to drive you crazy after a while. Communication has to start with telling the truth, even when it's painful. The war in Iraq has been, among other things, a grand failure of communication. Bush is like the boy who didn't cry wolf when the wolf was at the door. After years of being told that all is well, even as the casualties and chaos mount, we've stopped listening to him.

A leader has to be a person of CHARACTER. That means knowing the difference between right and wrong and having the guts to do the right thing. Abraham Lincoln once said, "If you want to test a man's character, give him power." George Bush has a lot of power. What does it say about his character? Bush has shown a willingness to take bold action on the world stage because he has the power, but he shows little regard for the grievous consequences. He has sent our troops (not to mention hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi citizens) to their deaths—for what? To build our oil reserves? To avenge his daddy because Saddam Hussein once tried to have him killed? To show his daddy he's tougher? The motivations behind the war in Iraq are questionable, and the execution of the war has been a disaster. A man of character does not ask a single soldier to die for a failed policy.

A leader must have COURAGE. I'm talking about balls. (That even goes for female leaders.) Swagger isn't courage. Tough talk isn't courage. George Bush comes from a blue-blooded Connecticut family, but he likes to talk like a cowboy. You know, My gun is bigger than your gun. Courage in the twenty-first century doesn't mean posturing and bravado. Courage is a commitment to sit down at the negotiating table and talk.

If you're a politician, courage means taking a position even when you know it will cost you votes. Bush can't even make a public appearance unless the audience has been handpicked and sanitized. He did a series of so-called town hall meetings last year, in auditoriums packed with his most devoted fans. The questions were all softballs.

To be a leader you've got to have CONVICTION—a fire in your belly. You've got to have passion. You've got to really want to get something done. How do you measure fire in the belly? Bush has set the all-time record for number of vacation days taken by a U.S. President—four hundred and counting. He'd rather clear brush on his ranch than immerse himself in the business of governing. He even told an interviewer that the high point of his presidency so far was catching a seven-and-a-half-pound perch in his hand-stocked lake.

It's no better on Capitol Hill. Congress was in session only ninety-seven days in 2006. That's eleven days less than the record set in 1948, when President Harry Truman coined the term do-nothing Congress. Most people would expect to be fired if they worked so little and had nothing to show for it. But Congress managed to find the time to vote itself a raise. Now, that's not leadership.

A leader should have CHARISMA. I'm not talking about being flashy. Charisma is the quality that makes people want to follow you. It's the ability to inspire. People follow a leader because they trust him. That's my definition of charisma. Maybe George Bush is a great guy to hang out with at a barbecue or a ball game. But put him at a global summit where the future of our planet is at stake, and he doesn't look very presidential. Those frat-boy pranks and the kidding around he enjoys so much don't go over that well with world leaders. Just ask German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who received an unwelcome shoulder massage from our President at a G-8 Summit. When he came up behind her and started squeezing, I thought she was going to go right through the roof.

A leader has to be COMPETENT. That seems obvious, doesn't it? You've got to know what you're doing. More important than that, you've got to surround yourself with people who know what they're doing. Bush brags about being our first MBA President. Does that make him competent? Well, let's see. Thanks to our first MBA President, we've got the largest deficit in history, Social Security is on life support, and we've run up a half-a-trillion-dollar price tag (so far) in Iraq. And that's just for starters. A leader has to be a problem solver, and the biggest problems we face as a nation seem to be on the back burner.

You can't be a leader if you don't have COMMON SENSE. I call this Charlie Beacham's rule. When I was a young guy just starting out in the car business, one of my first jobs was as Ford's zone manager in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. My boss was a guy named Charlie Beacham, who was the East Coast regional manager. Charlie was a big Southerner, with a warm drawl, a huge smile, and a core of steel. Charlie used to tell me, "Remember, Lee, the only thing you've got going for you as a human being is your ability to reason and your common sense. If you don't know a dip of horseshit from a dip of vanilla ice cream, you'll never make it." George Bush doesn't have common sense. He just has a lot of sound bites. You know—Mr.they'll-welcome-us-as-liberators-no-child-left-behind-heck-of-a-job-Brownie-mission-accomplished Bush.

Former President Bill Clinton once said, "I grew up in an alcoholic home. I spent half my childhood trying to get into the reality-based world—and I like it here."

I think our current President should visit the real world once in a while.

The Biggest C is Crisis

Leaders are made, not born. Leadership is forged in times of crisis. It's easy to sit there with your feet up on the desk and talk theory. Or send someone else's kids off to war when you've never seen a battlefield yourself. It's another thing to lead when your world comes tumbling down.

On September 11, 2001, we needed a strong leader more than any other time in our history. We needed a steady hand to guide us out of the ashes. Where was George Bush? He was reading a story about a pet goat to kids in Florida when he heard about the attacks. He kept sitting there for twenty minutes with a baffled look on his face. It's all on tape. You can see it for yourself. Then, instead of taking the quickest route back to Washington and immediately going on the air to reassure the panicked people of this country, he decided it wasn't safe to return to the White House. He basically went into hiding for the day—and he told Vice President Dick Cheney to stay put in his bunker. We were all frozen in front of our TVs, scared out of our wits, waiting for our leaders to tell us that we were going to be okay, and there was nobody home. It took Bush a couple of days to get his bearings and devise the right photo op at Ground Zero.

That was George Bush's moment of truth, and he was paralyzed. And what did he do when he'd regained his composure? He led us down the road to Iraq—a road his own father had considered disastrous when he was President. But Bush didn't listen to Daddy. He listened to a higher father. He prides himself on being faith based, not reality based. If that doesn't scare the crap out of you, I don't know what will.

A Hell of a Mess

So here's where we stand. We're immersed in a bloody war with no plan for winning and no plan for leaving. We're running the biggest deficit in the history of the country. We're losing the manufacturing edge to Asia, while our once-great companies are getting slaughtered by health care costs. Gas prices are skyrocketing, and nobody in power has a coherent energy policy. Our schools are in trouble. Our borders are like sieves. The middle class is being squeezed every which way. These are times that cry out for leadership.

But when you look around, you've got to ask: "Where have all the leaders gone?" Where are the curious, creative communicators? Where are the people of character, courage, conviction, competence, and common sense? I may be a sucker for alliteration, but I think you get the point.

Name me a leader who has a better idea for homeland security than making us take off our shoes in airports and throw away our shampoo? We've spent billions of dollars building a huge new bureaucracy, and all we know how to do is react to things that have already happened.

Name me one leader who emerged from the crisis of Hurricane Katrina. Congress has yet to spend a single day evaluating the response to the hurricane, or demanding accountability for the decisions that were made in the crucial hours after the storm. Everyone's hunkering down, fingers crossed, hoping it doesn't happen again. Now, that's just crazy. Storms happen. Deal with it. Make a plan. Figure out what you're going to do the next time.

Name me an industry leader who is thinking creatively about how we can restore our competitive edge in manufacturing. Who would have believed that there could ever be a time when "the Big Three" referred to Japanese car companies? How did this happen—and more important, what are we going to do about it?

Name me a government leader who can articulate a plan for paying down the debt, or solving the energy crisis, or managing the health care problem. The silence is deafening. But these are the crises that are eating away at our country and milking the middle class dry.

I have news for the gang in Congress. We didn't elect you to sit on your asses and do nothing and remain silent while our democracy is being hijacked and our greatness is being replaced with mediocrity. What is everybody so afraid of? That some bobblehead on Fox News will call them a name? Give me a break. Why don't you guys show some spine for a change?

Had Enough?

Hey, I'm not trying to be the voice of gloom and doom here. I'm trying to light a fire. I'm speaking out because I have hope. I believe in America. In my lifetime I've had the privilege of living through some of America's greatest moments. I've also experienced some of our worst crises—the Great Depression, World War II, the Korean War, the Kennedy assassination, the Vietnam War, the 1970s oil crisis, and the struggles of recent years culminating with 9/11. If I've learned one thing, it's this: You don't get anywhere by standing on the sidelines waiting for somebody else to take action. Whether it's building a better car or building a better future for our children, we all have a role to play. That's the challenge I'm raising in this book. It's a call to action for people who, like me, believe in America. It's not too late, but it's getting pretty close. So let's shake off the horseshit and go to work. Let's tell 'em all we've had enough.

Glenn Greenwald: Neocons Espouse Bush "Near-Dictatorship"

Glenn Greenwald at Salon

The Weekly Standard's Michael Goldfarb participated in a conference call with former Senator George Mitchell yesterday, during which Mitchell advocated a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq. This is what Goldfarb wrote about that call:

Pam Hess, the UPI reporter who gave us this extremely moving and persuasive glimpse of the liberal case for the war in Iraq, asked if timetables for withdrawal "somehow infringe on the president's powers as commander in chief?" Mitchell's less than persuasive answer: "Congress is a coequal branch of government...the framers did not want to have one branch in charge of the government."

True enough, but they sought an energetic executive with near dictatorial power in pursuing foreign policy and war. So no, the Constitution does not put Congress on an equal footing with the executive in matters of national security.

So apparently, the American Founders risked their lives and fortunes in order to wage war against Great Britain and declare independence from the King -- all in order to vest "near dictatorial power" in the American President in all matters of foreign policy and national security. And, of course, for the Michael Goldfarbs of the world, "war" and "national security" -- and the "near dictatorial power" vested in the President in those areas -- now encompasses virtually every government action, since scary and dangerous Muslims are lurking everywhere, on every corner, and the entire world is one big "battlefield" in the "War on Terrorism," including U.S. soil.

Until the Bill Kristols and John Yoos and other authoritarians of that strain entered the political mainstream, I never heard of prominent Americans who describe the power that they want to vest in our political leaders as "near dictatorial." Anyone with an even passing belief in American political values would consider the word "dictatorial" -- at least rhetorically, if not substantively -- to define that which we avoid at all costs, not something which we seek, embrace and celebrate. If there is any political principle that was previously common to Americans regardless of partisan orientation, it was that belief.

But The Weekly Standard has an agenda single-mindedly focused on the Middle East and Muslims that outweighs everything else, and nothing can impede that agenda -- certainly not something as comparatively unimportant as the American constitutional framework. That's why, to Goldfarb, there is nothing at all odd about advocating "near dictatorial power" vested in the President (at least the current President). For this faction, anything that promotes the all-important agenda of Middle East hegemony and war against "our" enemies is, by definition, good.

More

Why Bush "Doesn't Care" Where Bin Laden Is

It's become increasingly clear why Bush is "uninterested" in finding Bin Laden.

Bin Laden is in Pakistan.

W has made an ally with Mushareff in the "war" with Al-Queda. Only Mushareff isn't powerful enough to wage war against the tribal areas where the Taliban has taken root. His position is so tenuous in fact that he is also either unwilling or unable to root out support for the Taliban within his own government.

So now instead of getting Bin Laden while he was in Afghanistan, W pulled troops from that effort to fight his Toy War in Iraq. This allowed Bin Laden to move into Pakistan... a country armed with nukes.

Makes this next effort to root out Bin Laden a bit more dicey, eh?

Iraq Turns Another Corner... and Explodes... Again

We all knew this was gonna happen. A big explosion rips apart a significant building in the Green Zone.

We all knew this because (most) people know that a bad idea aren't bad ideas simply because people don't stick with them long enough.

"The Surge" isn't working for the same reason that the rest of the American occupation of Iraq isn't working: it was a bad idea at its genesis. Bad Idea.

W was the tough sheriff that bursts into the bar and shoots up the place to show he's tough.

Only he didn't shoot up the bar where the bad guys were hanging out but the one two counties over.

America isn't just tired of the Iraq War because it was a bad idea. They're also tired of the war because it is a strategy that W refuses to change or adapt. The Surge is just a re-tread of the existing strategy that also didn't work.

America is tired of the war because it was a bad idea that W has repeatedly lied about.

Looking at the video of W's press conference addressing the explosion, it's clear from W's expression that he's tired of this war too.

Torture: Our Boys Lie, Terrorists Confess

After years of torture, KSM's "confession" is paraded through the media. KSM is reported to have admitted to being a ringleader to every terrorist act of the last 100 years. (Guess Bin Laden was really innocent after all. Is that why Bush doesn't care where Bin Laden is?)

We tortured him for years, he gives a factual confession.


But when Iranians bind British troops and subject them to less than two weeks of individual cells, the wiley British cleverly lie to the Iranians through false confession in order to regain their freedom.

A reader over at Andrew Sullivan observes:

During the the hostage/POW (depends on the context) ordeal, British "confessions" offered contrite prisoners, apparently well-treated and healthy. After a relatively brief period, they were returned home where they immediately repudiated the "confessions" as coerced.

The conventional wisdom response: "of course they were coerced." Honestly, did anyone believe for a second that the British Navy had equipment so sketchy that they couldn't settle their location? No, the sailors said what they needed to in order to get home.

Meanwhile, the U.S. position is that torture (or torture-like) techniques garner valuable information as opposed to false statements engineered to end discomfort. Anybody else see a disconnect here?

Today's Award for Succinctness in Journalism

goes to TPM:

"Now, however, he is also wildly unpopular in his own country. And all his initiatives on the world stage are seen at home and abroad as unmitigated disasters.

In response, the president has withdrawn into a cocoon of his fantasies, ignoring most of the stuff that's actually happening in the world..."

Software is Never "Done"

Often there is confusion between hardware and software types because the two have very different schedules.

In hardware design, it is very expensive to have an error "escape", because the cost of the repair can often exceed the value of the product. (This is often the case with embedded software as well, but this is becoming somewhat less true over time.)

Software is often seen (whether true or not) as being easily upgraded in the field. This has led to a common software production strategy of limiting the testing of software with the plan of fixing any defects "in the field".

This came to mind recently when I overheard a conversation between a software type and his boss. His boss wanted to know when the software would be "done". The software guy responded "software is never 'done'".

This made the hardware side of me the think sarcastically, "Yeah, software is never done...it is abandoned."

:-)

Iraq not Vietnam... Except When Convenient to Republican Arguments

First Iraq was nothing like Vietnam.

Now it is.

Make up your damn mind.

Future Regrets: SUV's, W. Bush

There are two things (at least) that we're really gonna regret in 10 years time: huge SUVs and George W. Bush.

Not because of their trashing of their environment, etc. but because they're just gonna be plain embarrassing to look back on. Sorta like those wide 70's lapels, disco and bell bottoms.

Our kids will ask, "Why did America elect George W. Bush" and we'll just respond, "Honestly, I really don't know."

Not to mention how our kids will wonder exactly *how* he got elected when no one in the future will actually be willing to admit they voted for the guy.

Most killed: God vs. Satan

Digg poster Ozroy points out:

This is the thing I have never understood about religious people. God isn't a very nice person. If you actually read the Old Testament and Satan is by far the better person. God wanted us to remain mindless worshipers and punished us whenever we strayed from that. Satan is the one who actually gave us consciousness, self awareness, and the ability to think for ourselves, but Satan is the Evil one.

Republicans Reduced to Courting Felons for Votes

Maybe because so many Bush Republicans are *becoming* felons?

Quotes to Remember

Aldous Huxley
(1894 - 1963)
"Folly is often more cruel in the consequences than malice can be in the intent."

"A country which proposes to make use of modern war as an instrument of policy must possess a highly centralized, all-powerful executive, hence the absurdity of talking about the defense of democracy by force of arms. A democracy which makes or effectively prepares for modern scientific war must necessarily cease to be democratic."

"At least two-thirds of our miseries spring from human stupidity, human malice and those great motivators and justifiers of malice and stupidity: idealism, dogmatism and proselytizing zeal on behalf of religous or political ideas."

"Maybe this world is another planet's hell."

Pensees Pascal
"Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction,"

Tiny Big Tobacco Settlement and Attorney General Scandal

Found this while trolling in the backwaters of my inbox:

Tampering at Justice
Originally published on Tuesday, June 21

Even with the Bush administration’s well-earned reputation as a lap dog for
big
business, the Justice Department’s sabotage of its own racketeering case
against the tobacco industry is, like smoking itself, breathtaking.

Over the strenuous objections of career departmental lawyers running the case,
Associate Attorney General Robert D. McCallum ordered them at the close of a
nine-month trial to reduce the penalties being sought from $130 billion to $10
billion.

According to The New York Times, which obtained a copy of the memo, the two
principal lawyers on Justice’s trial team, Sharon Y. Eubanks and Stephen D.
Brody, wrote to Mr. McCallum on May 30: “We do not want politics to be
perceived as the underlying motivation, and that is certainly a risk if we make
adjustments in our remedies presentation that are not based on evidence.”

The two attorneys also warned Mr. McCallum that a recommendation of lower
penalties would weaken Justice’s position in any settlement with the tobacco
companies and would “create an incentive for defendants to engage in future
misconduct by making the misconduct profitable.”

How touchingly naïve.

This is the presidency, after all, that lets the energy industry shape energy
policy, that allows a former oil-industry lobbyist now at the White House to
edit reports on global warming, that steers large contracts to the Vice
President’s former employer, that saw Enron’s chief as the President’s
close
friend.

In this case, the Justice lawyers had laid out a compelling case that a
feasible national smoking-cessation program — one that could repair the
damage
of half a century of fraudulent industry claims about smoking — would cost
$130
billion over 25 years.

But Mr. McCallum, an old Yale buddy of the President’s, ruled instead that
$10
billion for a weak five-year program was more reasonable — even though no new
circumstances warranted changing Justice’s demands.

So barring an unlikely reversal, a pesky Clinton-era case is undercut, and a
prominent and generous corporate ally of the President gets a break.

And if, in the process, an opportunity to help 45 million American smokers
turns to ashes, well, too bad. In this administration, the needs of the rich
and powerful come first.

With GonzoGate, explains this question quite nicely, doesn't it?