[A man stands in front of a house. He's facing the street, garden hose in hand, watering his lawn. Smoke billows from the house behind him. A neighbor approaches.]

Neighbor: [pointing] "Sir, your house is on fire."

Man: "No it isn't."

Neighbor: "Yes it is. Just turn around and look."

Man: [still facing street] "No need to look. It wasn't on fire when I came out here."

Neighbor: [grabs him and physically turns him around] "Well it's on fire now. See the smoke coming out of the roof? Maybe you should spray it with that garden hose you have in your hand, put the fire out."

Man: "Well, maybe it is on fire and maybe not. Maybe houses just smoke sometimes. You never know. And besides, even if it is on fire I'm not gonna spray it with water. Water costs money, you know. See, I can't afford to have my water bill going up."

Neighbor: [walking away shaking head and blinking furiously] "Sure, I guess that makes sense."

Man: Damn right! I know what I'm talking about.


It looks like the Bush administration is finally getting some much needed Congressional oversight regarding it's continuous supression of the science behind global warming. They are stonewalling as much as possible, but with two years left in office, the facts are going to come out.

In the past the White House has said it has only sought to inject balance into reports on climate change.

Inject balance. That's Bush-speak for allowing a report based on years of scientific study by hundreds of scientists from around the world to be "refuted" by a couple of hand-job pseudo-scientists from one of the half-dozen or so "think tanks" funded by Exxon-Mobil. With the Dems new authority to hold hearings into any and every evil thing this administration has done, the general public is finally going to hear what science junkies like myself have known from the very beginning. The preznit and his people are evangelical when it comes to science. Any reports containing findings that conflict with their previously held beliefs or threaten corporate profits are edited or watered down or stalled or otherwise just ignored.

Bush has acknowledged concerns about global warming, but strongly opposes mandatory caps of greenhouse gas emissions, arguing that approach would be too costly.

This is classic Bush obfuscation. Give the appearance of making a concession while not actually doing so. He finally acknowledges that global warming is real, but flatly refuses to do anything about the greenhouse gases which cause it. Next he'll start talking about having more studies done to try to find ways to address the problem that won't effect our economy. I assume he'll find a fresh batch of scientists who agree with the conclusions he wants reached to conduct these studies. Kinda like he found a whole new batch of generals to run his war when the old ones didn't agree with the surge plan. In both cases it will get him through to the end of his presidency without having to actually change course in any way. All the Dems will be able to accomplish is to humiliate him by unearthing more and more of his fuck-ups until he leaves office, and I sincerely hope that's what they do. Regardless, when he finally scurries back to Crawford, we'll be 8 years behind schedule in confronting the problem of global warming. I worry what 8 years of a do-nothing, simpleton, anti-science president now might mean a few decades in the future.

As the nation waits breathlessly to play the State of the Union drinking game tonight, the preznit's approval rating has dropped to 28% according to this CBS poll. I'm amazed that it's still that high. Two thirds of the country is dead set against his plan to escalate this war, but he's doing it anyway. Americans don't like being told they don't know what they're talking about, especially by a guy who even his staunchest supporters will admit is just not too fucking bright. He'll use his speech tonight to try to shore up support for his never-ending War on Terra, but I'm guessing he's not going to get much of a boost. This turd is circling the bowl and the American public is finally waking up. When The Surge goes badly (and honestly, don't we all know it's going to?), I'm betting dubya will start pointing fingers and blame everyone from his puppet government and new military leaders in Iraq to Congress and the media in the US. If I'm right, that will pretty much be the end of him. He's becoming more transparent every day. This next failure will seal his legacy as the clueless, arrogant, spoiled little man that he is.

The pundits are all saying that he will largely avoid the topic of Iraq in his speech and concentrate more on domestic issues. Here are my predictions for what he'll talk about tonight:

1) He'll talk about Iraq first to get it out of the way, just hitting the highlights. He'll introduce his new commanders on the ground and describe The Surge as the only way to keep Iraq's vast oil wealth out of the hands of terrorists or jihadists or insurgents and ensure victory for Amurka in the War on Terra. He'll take a quick back-handed shot at his critics by saying that disagreeing with him emboldens our enemies.

2) He'll say he's looking forward to working with the new Democrat-controlled Congress in a bipartisan manner. He'll use the minimum wage hike as an example and suggest tax cuts for the employers who will pay the new minimum wage.

3) He'll take credit for the stock market gains and suggest making his tax cuts permanent to keep the economy rolling.

4) He'll talk about immigration reform and his legalized slavery guest worker program and use the phrase "our friends to the south." He'll also suggest tax incentives for businesses that hire the guest workers.

5) He'll make some grand statements about a not-quite-ready-to-release-but-in-the-finishing-stage proposal for cleaning up the environment. He may use the phrase "clean coal technology." A few days after the speech, this new proposal will be revealed as nothing but more tax cuts for the fossil fuels industry.

6) He'll make some "bold" new proposal on health care that will basically be stolen from the Democrats, but will differ in that it will include a lot of deficit spending and some kind of tax incentives for health care providers and/or pharmaceutical companies.

7) Since it was such a big hit last year, he'll revisit the bit about America's addiction to oil and suggest tax breaks for ethanol producers.

Rather than play the drinking game I linked to above, I'm going to play my own game. I'm going to take a drink every time the preznit uses one of the phrases I've highlighted in red, and every time he hits one of my 7 overall predictions perfectly I'm going to chug a can of cheap beer and eat a boiled (maybe even pickled) egg. That way if I have a successful evening, I'll be able to share it with the people I work with tomorrow.

The wife and I did something different last night. We left the kids at home (they were not pleased) and went to the movies. It was the first time in several years that we were able to see something that wasn't by Disney or Pixar. Hell, I can't even remember the last R-rated movie I saw in a theater. Anyway, based on this review by my buddy sammyray over at his blog, we saw the film Children Of Men. It's a great flick. Or as sammyray says:

The film, a devastating look into the near-future collapse and extinction of the human race, is seared onto the screen with unflinching bravura by director Alfonso Cuaron. Endless adjectives could feebly attempt to describe his techniques in this film, and fail utterly; suffice it to say that a better directing job has not been seen in theaters in years, if not decades. Two sequences in particular will be required study by film students from now on. Absolutely stunning.

I'm like the blonde chick in the HDTV commercial. I totally don't know what that means, but I want it. I don't know squat about the mechanics of film-making, but I know what I like. For me, a good theater experience is about sitting in the dark, huge screen in front of me, sound blasting all around and completely immersing myself in the movie. No distractions and no sense of time. Just me and my box of Sno-Caps. It takes a pretty good movie to really pull it off. Children Of Men is better than pretty good. Of course, with all his fancy book-learning, sammyray says this better too:

The world Cuaron creates is totally submersive; you are surrounded on all sides by decay, grime, hatred, and shocking violence. The special effects integrate perfectly into the hand-held shots, and some of the long, long takes in this film are so incredible in both their immediacy and technical complexity that I can scarcely believe that he pulled it off. As simply a technical exercise, “Children of Men” is a landmark achievement.

After seeing the film, I understand some of what he's saying there. My wife and I both felt that it was a disturbingly realistic and believable depiction of the breakdown of modern society. We left the theater feeling a little wrung out. I certainly got my 8 bucks worth. I may double down and see it again. It's that good.

Ever since 9/11 all the preznit's men and all their right-wing cheerleaders have been squawking about "the stakes" in dubya's War on Terra and the existential threat to the US presented by the Islamo-homo-commie-liberal-mexi-fascistanis. They used the same rhetoric to justify the Iraq invasion and they're still using it as an excuse to prolong the (failed) occupation. I don't get it. Where is this threat that, if realized, is going to cause the US to cease to exist? I've tried to imagine some way this threat could magically materialize upon the re-deployment of our troops and I just can't see it. The US is the world's only remaining superpower. That means there is no conventional military force of sufficient size or capability to challenge us. What does that say for the chances of a bunch of loosely connected groups of sectarian guerilla car-bombers and suicidal jihadists to conquer our military and overthrow our government? It's ridiculous.

I can imagine more terrorist attacks taking place in the US. In fact, I expect them. Guerilla warfare is essentially indefensible, especially when carried out by determined enemies willing to die for their cause. But I also assume that the Bush administration has taken sufficient steps to prevent the hijacking of the huge flying bombs that jetliners are. This alone should prevent another 9/11, but even if terrorists do manage to pull off another large scale attack, are the American people going to suddenly throw up their collective hands in despair and decide to dissolve the Union? No.

The only existential threat I can see does, however, lie in what we do to ourselves. Or rather in what we allow our own government to do to us. Every time dubya says his number one job is to protect the Amurkin people, he's really saying "be afraid." This constant fear-mongering has been used by the administration to facilitate the implementation of policies antithetical to our ideals of a government by the people and for the people as laid out in our constitution. Under the guise of keeping us safe, the same idealogues who brought us previous right-wing presidential over-reaches (see Nixon and Reagan) are attempting to move us toward a strict authoritarian government by redefining the Presidency as outside the laws of the land and usurping the authority of the other two branches of government. I really do think that we are approaching a constitutional crisis that can only be averted by a bi-partisan Congress re-asserting it's power of executive oversight and giving the boy king a little taste of humility.

I'm watching the football playoffs and I keep seeing one commercial that bugs the crap out of me. It's the one of a deli crowded with customers all moving through the line in synchronization with the music, placing orders, receiving the filled orders and paying for them with their Visa check card. Everything comes to a screeching halt when one customer decides to pay with cash. It bugs me because I'm that guy. I prefer to pay for my everyday purchases with cash.

For many years I have avoided credit cards because I have a personal rule that, with the exception of major purchases like a house or a car, I never spend money I don't have and credit cards make it entirely too easy to do so. I did, however, recently succumb to the lure of pay-at-the-pump, so I got myself a debit card. Funny thing is, I still find myself hitting the ATM and using cash instead. I just chafe at the fees. When I got the card it was explained to me how to answer the question every retailer asks when I whip out my shiny new plastic money. Just say credit. You see, even though my card is only a debit card and not also a credit card, if I say "credit" when they complete the sale the transaction fee gets paid by the retailer instead of my bank. If I say "debit" the transaction fee goes to my bank and they, of course, pass it on to me. The whole idea of someone charging me (or anyone else) to spend my own money irks me. I just don't get it. How can an entire multi-billion dollar industry grow out of nothing but American impatience and laziness?

UPDATE: After letting this post percolate through my brain for a couple days, I've had another thought. As we move inexorably toward a paperless economy, at some point don't these charges stop being fees for carrying out transactions electronically and become nothing more than a corporately imposed tax?

Remember the Mission Accomplished banner on the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln on May 1st, 2003? That was when the preznit announced that major combat operations in Iraq were finished. Sure it was all a big photo-op for dubya to take credit for our military's capabilities and score some political points, but the basic statement on that banner was true. The original mission given to our forces—invade Iraq, overwhelm it's military and topple it's government—was indeed accomplished. With considerable speed and relative ease. That's what you would expect from what is literally the most powerful military in the history of the world, right? My point here is that they were given a distinctly military mission and they carried it out. Our current problems in Iraq arise from the subsequent political mission assigned to our armed forces.

Our military has essentially been tasked with changing the culture of a people. We're trying trying to force people who hate each other and have been fighting with each other for centuries to cooperate and get along well enough to form a lasting government. There's not going to be any grand mission accomplished moment for dubya this time because there is just no military solution to the problem. How can we expect to solve the problem of ever-increasing chaos in Iraq by escalating the violence? How can we even define success? We'll stand down when they stand up isn't a military objective, it's a slogan.

Big news! The preznit announced the troop surge that everyone has known was coming for 3 or 4 months. The more cynical among us might think that the delay was some sort of stall tactic. Of course those same cynics probably believe that the surge itself is a stall to get dubya through the last 2 years of his presidency without having to learn any new speeches, but they're just a bunch of h8rz.

And lo and behold, it's a twofer. At a press conference this morning, Robert Gates, our new Secretary of Defense revealed the numbers for dubya's planned increase in overall troop strength. He wants to add 65,000 soldiers and 27,000 Marines. That's 92,000 more troops that our military doesn't need. Here's the money quote:

The emphasis will be on increasing combat capability," Gates said.

Okay, I was never a big fan of Gates' predecessor, Donald Rumsfeld (gasp), but if there is one thing that dried-up, diabolically evil, nasty old bastard did right, it was the reduction in size of our military. Rumsfeld's "vision" was of a smaller, lighter, faster military possessing advanced technological expertise. The idea was to move away from a boots on the ground mentality and instead rely on vastly superior firepower. It was a very effective approach (see the Afghanistan and Iraq invasions) and as a bonus it reduced our casualties during any conflict. To me, an increase in overall troop levels signals the intention of our military leaders to reverse course on the Rumsfeld Doctrine. They apparently see a future of more missions like our current fiasco in Iraq. I see a lot more dead soldiers.

I've been looking at a bunch of polling data and it looks like the vast majority of Americans have had enough of the Iraq war. The numbers vary a little from one poll to another, but roughly 70% think dubya has thoroughly screwed the pooch. That didn't surprise me, but I couldn't help wondering what the 30% that still support him are thinking. I ventured over to Lucianne to find out. Holy shit! I had forgotten just how bloodthirsty and batshit crazy they are over there. Check out some of these gems from the comments.

I believe the American public will rally behind a plan that looks like a plan. Most of the people have no heart for chaos and the media does its best to spin Iraq as chaotic. Only segments of it are out of control. Large areas of the country are calm.

Large areas of the country are calm? I guess that's technically a true statement. Large areas of uninhabited desert can certainly be described as calm. The areas containing people? Not so much.

Of course the vast, solid majority of Americans support this war, and the dims KNOW IT! They knew it before the election. 64-66% of Americans support the president on the war, and his speeches about it prior to the election were drawing support solidly to him.

That's why the Republicans kicked some serious Democrat butt in that election. No wait, I mean uhh...whuh? These next two are a pretty common theme over there.

Americans want to support the president and the troops. Well, most Americans. I don't think the Dem leaders and big sections of the Dem voter base want anything but failure.


#14, if the democrats are our only chance, then we've got no chance at all. I could say the democrats are cowards, but that to simplistic. There's more than enough evidence for a reasonable American to assume that they prefer defeat, over victory. Why, because they hate capitalism and Christianity more than they hate Islamic facsists. In their warped worldview terrorists represent oppressed third worlders fighting evil global capitalists.

That's right. The Democrats and their supporters want to lose. The party of women's equality and minority rights and gay rights and abortion rights and freedom of (or from) religion wants to surrender to a bunch of religious nut-jobs who believe in exactly none of those ideals because...ummm...well they just do, that's all. Okay, a couple more and I'll stop.

We are winning, and the president is not going to change his stance; we can count on him to stay committed.

Committed. Hee-hee. That one's just too easy.

The Long War is being fought and won, despite the lies of the Enemedia/Defeatocrats. Have courage, groveling Defeatocrats and RINOs.. America can count on President Bush and our fine Troops!

I saw that "enemedia" term several times. I guess the idea is that if all the media would just get on board and start repeating the mantra that we're really winning then somehow we would actually be winning or at least everyone would think so. They're pushing for maximum public ignorance. The 30% still supporting dubya are mushroom people. They want to be kept in the dark and fed bullshit.

Back when Wesley Clark ran for the Democratic nomination for president, I didn't know very much about him and I wrongly assumed his only qualification for the job was his military experience. Even that made him more qualified than dubya, but he was never really in the running. I've since learned a lot more about him and I like what I've learned. In 2005 he spent a few days guest blogging at TPM Cafe. You can read a couple of his posts here and here. He took the time to respond to questions and comments from readers and he came across as straight-talking and intelligent. I was particularly impressed that a retired Army general and former NATO commander was calling for less military action and more diplomacy from the Bush administration. He's still doing so. Check out this editorial he wrote for today's Washington Post regarding dubya's expected plan to escalate the war in Iraq.

Yes, several additional brigades in Baghdad would allow for more roadblocks, patrols and neighborhood-clearing operations. Some initial successes would be evident. But how significant would this be? We've never had enough troops in Iraq. In Kosovo, we had 40,000 troops for a population of 2 million. That ratio would call for at least 500,000 troops in Iraq; adding 20,000 now seems too little, too late.

Since Clark was in charge of the US intervention/regime change in Bosnia and it was by all accounts successful, I think we can assume he knows what he's talking about. He thinks we're about to get a bunch more of our troops killed and gain nothing by doing so.

The truth is that the underlying problems are political, not military.
Vicious ethnic cleansing is underway, as various factions fight for power and survival. In this environment, security is unlikely to come from smothering the struggle with a blanket of forces -- and increasing U.S. efforts is likely to generate additional resistance, especially from Iraq's neighbors. More effective action is needed to resolve the struggle at the political level. A new U.S. ambassador might help, but the administration needs to recognize that the neoconservative vision has failed.
Well before the 2003 invasion, the Bush administration was sending signals that its intentions weren't limited to Iraq; "regime change" in Syria and Iran was often discussed in Washington. Small wonder then that both countries have worked continuously to feed the fighting in Iraq.

Read the whole thing. This guy is a thinker and surely America is ready for one of those in the White House.

Housekeeping: I've previously been using Tangerine for quoted material, but today I'm trying Cayenne. Better? Worse? Who cares?

Not Your Mama over at Coyote Angry has been busy the last few days giving fundamentalists like Fred Phelps a beatdown. In this post I learned that in the state where I was born it's against the law for me to run for public office.

Arkansas, Texas, Massachussetts, North Carolina, South Carolina, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and Maryland all have state constitutions containing language expressly barring non-theists from holding public office. Some contain language also barring many non-Christians of other faiths.

I haven't lived in Arkansas for many years, but it still irritates me to learn things like this about my home state. It doesn't really surprise me, but it still bugs me. I live in Missouri now, which apparently doesn't have that particular discrimination written into it's constitution, but other than the urban areas of St. Louis and Kansas City it's just as much a red state. I bet if an evangelical atheist like myself were to run for local office (even if they were smooth talking and pretty) they would get more death threats than votes. I'd sure like to see it happen though.

I was a flabbergasted yesterday when dubya announced that he would submit a proposal in February that would balance the budget by 2012. This guy inherited the largest surplus in history, promptly turned it into the largest deficit in history by giving enormous tax cuts to the wealthy, and now thinks he should be commended for coming up with a plan to fix it by cutting government spending. And by cutting government spending he doesn't mean military or corporate welfare spending, he means cutting funding for social programs and education and infrastructure.

"We've got to make sure we spend the people's money wisely," the president said in a Rose Garden statement.

Yeah, he really said that. And now he plans to walk the walk by balancing the budget 3 years after he leaves office. He's so responsible.

The White House and Congress need to "keep this economy growing by making tax relief permanent," Bush said

Why is it not obvious to everyone that this administration is systematically destroying our government? They have successfully instilled two myths into the minds of the American public. One is the notion that paying taxes is somehow un-American and the other is the ridiculous idea that whatever is good for the rich is by definition good for the country.

I went in search of some numbers and quickly bored myself, but here are a few morsels I've been chewing on. According to the latest data from Citizens for Tax Justice, the total cost of dubya's tax cuts is estimated at 2.4 trillion dollars, and interestingly enough, these treasury figures show that he has added roughly the same amount to the national debt in his 6 years as president. I also learned that the national debt is approaching 9 trillion dollars. The vast majority of our citizens are oblivious to it but every man, woman and child in the US has over $28,000 as their share of that debt. We spend over 400 billion dollars per year just paying the interest. Our government cannot sustain this kind of fiscal irresponsibility forever. There's going to be a lot of anger when the bills start having to be paid.

My paranoia may be getting the better of me. I was looking over my last post about Pat Robertson and his direct line (it must be dial-up) to gawd and thinking I should make some predictions of my own for 2007. Hell, Pat has shown that you don't even have to be good at it to make a ton of cash. So I put on my thinking cap and the first thing that popped into my head was Iran.

I remember reading somewhere that the US had dispatched a carrier battle group to the Persian Gulf (in addition to the one already there). Normally I would assume that this is a normal turnover of one battle group arriving on station before the other's departure, but like I said, I'm feeling a little paranoid. Two battle groups in the Gulf and dubya presumably getting ready to increase troop levels in Iraq by 20 to 40 thousand to try to quell sectarian violence, a lot of which is being perpetrated by Iranian-backed Shias. I can't help thinking that we may be about to do something even stupider than our invasion of Iraq. If we were to carry out an air assault against Iran's nuclear facilities, we would definitely need a few thousand more troops to deal with the inevitable backlash in Iraq. I know we recently pushed sanctions through the United Nations to try to force Iran to stop uranium enrichment, but this administration is on record as believing that sanctions aren't effective (see Iraq) and they've demonstrated their belief that all problems have a military solution (see Katrina), so am I really going out on a limb in predicting that the Beta version of Shock and Awe 2.0 - The Persian Carpet Bomb will be released in 2007? I don't think so.

I guess I'll just use the Pat Robertson/Jeanne Dixon method and make a more ambiguous prediction. Mark my words. The situation in the Middle East will get worse in 2007. The Flying Spaghetti Monster told me so.

Pat Robertson has been talking to the invisible cloud-daddy again. Even worse, he thinks the cloud-daddy is talking back. He's now predicting another terrorist attack for late 2007 and hinting that it may be nuclear. Since his god told him about it, it must be true, right? But hold on a second. The story lists some of his other predictions and their accuracy. Let's just say Pat's not always money. In his own words:

"I have a relatively good track record," he said. "Sometimes I miss."

That's right folks. Sometimes he misses. And even his hits are pretty weak. Like his prediction that storms would hit America's coastline in 2006. Get out your map and look at how much coastline the US has (don't forget Alaska and Hawaii). Is it even conceivable that an entire year could pass without storms hitting our coasts somewhere? Feh.

Robertson's latest prognostication is a Homeland Security Alert direct from the man upstairs himself. That's gotta be off the scale on the threat level color chart. I'm thinking INFRARED - PISS YOUR PANTS AND HIDE UNDER YOUR BED level. But there's no specificity at all. Sometime "after September" there is going to be a terrorist attack and many people will die. That's a pretty vague warning to be coming from a supreme being. Maybe god has a capricious sense of humor akin to that of a child kicking anthills. Or maybe this "prediction" is a wild guess pulled right out of Robertson's ass. It's ridiculous, and what's worse is that when it fails to happen, he won't be tarred and feathered and chased out of town. He'll make some lame excuse, give god and dubya credit for sparing us all, and go right on stoking the fires of fear and hate to an audience numbering in the millions. Amurka the irrational.

My source in the White House recently sent me what appears to be the final draft of the Iraq invasion plans. I think it may actually be from dubya's own hand. It's written in blue crayon and I've read that's his favorite color. Anyway, here it is in it's entirety.

1. Invade
2. Occupy
3. ???
4. Profit!!!

I know. I know. Hindsight is 20/20 and all that, but it seems obvious to me that more thought needed to go into step 3. We've gotten a little hung up there.

If you want to get a feel for what the Iraqi people have been going through for the last few years, you should check out Baghdad Burning. It's a blog written anonymously by an Iraqi female who calls herself Riverbend. She doesn't pull any punches and she doesn't try to hide her anger at what we have done to her country. I just checked out her last two posts for 2006 and, as usual, I left there with a deep sense of sadness.

I disagreed with this invasion from the very beginning, but having said that, I do think that right after Saddam's regime was toppled there was an opportunity for the US to create a better Iraq than existed before. We fucked this up so badly. Just imagine what could have been if all the pre-war rhetoric about spreading freedom and democracy and making the world safer had been anything more than a smoke-screen for small-minded men with dreams of Empire to hide behind. It's too late now. We can't fix what we've broken. About the best we can do at this point is get out and hope the Iraqis can somehow fix it themselves. I personally doubt that the nation of Iraq, as we once knew it, will ever exist again.