It's been 11 days since I posted anything. I've been too busy working around the house lately to sit down and write, but it's raining today so I get to sit on my ass in front of the computer without feeling guilty.

Over the last few days, as I was getting sunburned while treating my deck, I managed to somewhat follow the Congressional hearings on the US attorney firings. I can't help thinking that the Bush administration was somehow caught off guard by this whole thing. They seem to have grown complacent after spending 6 years with Republicans in control of Congress exercising no executive oversight whatsoever, all the while treating the minority Dems like dogs to kick around. Now that the Dems have control of Congress and subpoena power (and a grudge), every time an administration official gets caught telling a whopper the only responses they can come up with are exceedingly feeble. It's much too early in the Democratic reign for dubya and company to be wearing out old standbys like "Mistakes were made" and "I don't recall." They keep accusing the Dems of playing politics like that's some kind of grievous insult, but honestly, isn't playing politics what politicians are supposed to do?

The preznit is having trouble accepting the new reality. His administration can't get away with investigating and exonerating itself anymore. That alone gives me hope for the future, but they have so fucked up the way our government works that it may never fully recover. Case in point, check out this story from TPM Muckraker regarding another "heckuva job" Bush appointee, this one trashing the Fish and Wildlife Service. You just know this kind of thing has been going on in every department or agency under dubya's control from the very beginning of his administration. It's been like an untreated cancer on our country. It may have grown too large to completely remove.

Since dubya wasn't having anything to do with the press after his speech today, CNN was kind enough to bring on that lying, fat-fuck, asshole hypocritical morals czar Bill Bennett to further massage the preznit's message. I listened long enough to hear him tout the latest right-wing meme before I turned it off. These people are the absolute kings of the soundbite. They can't govern for shit, but they can sure come up with a snappy comeback. The latest rhetorical turd, in response to Democratic calls for a timetable for withdrawal and questions about a contingency plan if The Surge doesn't produce as advertised, goes something like this: The left keeps asking the preznit what he's going to do if The Surge fails, but what are the liberals going to do if it succeeds?

There are so many things wrong with this bullshit talking point that I scarcely know where to begin. How about we start with the fact that this is an evasion of the fucking question?! Congress wants to know if the administration has a backup plan. Considering their performance thus far in this Iraq fiasco, I think it's a good question, logical and timely. And I think their failure to answer it exposes once again the key weakness of this administration. They are only capable of pursuing one idea at a time, and whatever that idea happens to be, they believe in it with the blind fervor of an ideologue, disregarding any and all remotely contradictory evidence. It's exactly the same thinking that got us into Iraq in the first place. They never learn a damn thing from their past mistakes. They consider planning for possible failure as weakness, so when their plans do fail, they find themselves literally denying reality while they flounder around for the next big idea to sell the public. It's pathetic.

As for what the liberals will do if The Surge succeeds, if the exceedingly unlikely happens and The Surge brings our troops home, this particular liberal will dance a little white-boy jig and pound a few beers. But first I need to know the definition of success. How many killings/bombings per day is considered acceptable? And when we reach that number and begin troop withdrawals, what happens when those numbers start to rise again? Do we re-Surge? I've not heard any administration official describe what success looks like. Is it like the timetable excuse? Dubya says we can't set a firm date for withdrawal because it invites our enemies to wait us out. By extension, does that mean we can't tell the enemy what we consider victory to be because they might give it to us? Wuh?

I just happened to catch the preznit speechifying about Iraq a few minutes ago. Today is the 4th anniversary of the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom, also known as The Clusterfuck That Took Vietnam's Place As The Clusterfuck By Which All Future Clusterfucks Will Be Measured. It was about a 5-minute speech, really just dubya reading (poorly) a list of neo-con talking points; We must stay in Iraq to protect Amurka, if we leave Iraq things will get worse, The Surge is working, 9/11, War on Terra, aren't our troops the most wonderful, professional, dedicated and capable troops ever?

And when he finished reading, he turned and walked straight out of the room like a man with intestinal problems who knows the restroom is a long way down the hall. For the first time ever, I was disappointed when this preznit stopped talking. I wanted him to stick around and answer a few questions. I'm working on a new theory on the psychology of dubya and I need to observe him under pressure to put the final touches on it, but it boils down to this. You know how when dubya is fumbling and stumbling through one of his rare press conferences and someone will ask him a question that catches him by surprise? How he'll take one of those uncomfortably long pauses, his face will redden and he'll look lost for a few seconds and then give that little whimper/giggle thing he does and continue on script, usually not really answering the question that was asked? I think that long pause is when jeebus is talking to him.

It's turned cold again here in Misery, but for a few days we had a taste of Spring. I was twice able to venture out of the bunker and spend some quality time with my mistress, Pearl. It had been quite a while and at first we were fumbling and clumsy with one another, but like long-time lovers will do, we soon found our ryhthmn and set a pace we were both happy with. Not too fast and not too slow, but brisk and mutually satisfying, lasting not minutes, but hours. A stolen and all too brief reunion of kindred spirits, a remembrance of times past and a sweet taste of glorious days to come.

A good friend of mine forwarded one of those hate-mongering e-mails to me today. She included me in a large list of recipients just to spin me up, and of course it worked. It was one of those idiot feel-good-because-you're-a-Christian, but-keep-hating-on-the-Muslims pieces that make me want to scream. I had to resist a strong temptation to go crazy on it, picking out all the lies and distortions, and then hitting Reply To All, but one of my motivations in starting this blog was to stop doing rude things like forcing my opinions on others, so I just replied to my friend only, pointing out a few discrepancies in the e-mail. Those things aren't really much of a challenge anyway.

It did get me to thinking about the people these little electronic hate campaigns are aimed at, though. These are the people about whom the phrase "ignorance is bliss" was coined. They are essentially people who never developed critical thinking skills and therefore rely on various authority figures to make all their decisions for them. They are dubya's base, the 30% of Amurka that believe every word that comes from between his smirking lips. NotYourMama over at Coyote Angry calls them Social Regressives and since I find the term very descriptive, I have stolen it.

So, how does one get to be a Social Regressive? I think it starts with religion because, let's face it, that's where most people first learn the concept of unquestioning belief. The idea that one should make a conscious decision to believe in the existence of something for which there is no visible supporting evidence of it's existence, while purposely turning away from abundant evidence contradictory to that existence. It is an intentional turning off of the mind, a cessation of rational thought. For most believers this lack of rationality only exists in the area of religion, in all other aspects of life their mind functions pretty much the same as that of non-believers. This is not so for the Social Regressive. Whether due to laziness or a lack of education or simple genetics, they exhibit the same close-mindedness toward all things social and political. This is what allows them to be led by the right-wing noise machine to vote against their own interests and to believe things that are patently false.

Some characteristics of Social Regressives:

They believe America was founded as a Christian nation (despite the lack of mention in the constitution) and god has somehow been removed from our government and our schools and must be returned there. In short they believe in a non-existent past. They see the separation of church and state as persecution of Christians.

They believe dubya's War on Terra is an existential battle pitting good and decent and righteous Christianity against evil Islam, and they therefore have nothing but hatred for those who seek peaceful solutions. They believe what we are doing in Iraq is making the world a better place, and they believe liberals want to surrender to the terrorists and let al-Qaida win.

They believe the bible is the undisputed word of god, but most of them really haven't read it.

They don't read books or newspapers either. It's this lack of intellectual curiosity that I find unforgivable and un-redeemable in both Social Regressives and our preznit. He validates their beliefs because they they see a part of themselves in him, they just don't realize that it's the part that is dumb as dirt and overly proud.

It's amazing to me that our nation's leaders have been having the same argument for two years. Most of the Dems and a few rational Repubs have recognized the fact that Iraq is never going to be fully under our control, and it is therefore time to start working on the inevitable exit strategy. But dubya gives them the squinty-eyed tough guy act and says, "Nope, cain't do it. See, setting up a timetable just invites your enemy to wait you out. That's not the way to victory in the War on Terra. And if 9/11 taught us anything, ... terra, 9/11, war on terra, 9/11, 9/11, victory for Amurka. Oh, and 9/11." How long can he continue to stonewall with stupid?

The preznit says we only lose if we leave, but absolutely refuses to understand that the basic premise of guerilla warfare is waiting out the occupying force. It's always been that way. Whether you call them guerillas, rebels, insurgents, freedom fighters or militias, the thing they all have in common is they actually live in the area of conflict. Short of genocide, they cannot be defeated because they are never leaving. The occupying force is in reality left with two choices; permanent occupation or loss. When you leave you lose. That's why guerilla warfare is so effective.

In Iraq they are already waiting us out. The Mahdi militia was ordered to stand down before The Surge ever started. I heard the mayor of Sadr city say so himself. So they will all put their weapons away and play all meek and mild and contained for a few months, maybe long enough for dubya to have another little "mission accomplished" moment. Then, when we leave, they can get back to drilling holes in Sunni heads.

What gets me is that a lot of the dinosaurs in this administration were also part of our government when Russia was making the same mistake in Afghanistan. Our CIA even contributed substantially to Russia's humbling failure by using Saudi funds to build and train the insurgency in Pakistan. And yet now this administration seems to have been caught completely by surprise when the same tactics were used against our own empire-building. They use shock and outrage to cover their own incompetence and lack of planning. Did they really just assume that it couldn't happen to the US 'cause we're the good guys? Occupiers wearing white hats are still occupiers.

Okay, I know the Dems are getting a lot of mileage out of the problems at the Walter Reed Army Medical center, but I have to call them the way I see them, and this is just not all the preznit's fault. The VA has been a complete mess for decades and everybody knows it. I've been hearing about veterans getting fucked over and around and every which way by the VA since I was in high school in the '70s. The VA is chronically undermanned and underfunded. This is not a new story. What is new is that it appears there's a chance something will finally be done about it.

Though there's no doubt that dubya made the existing situation worse (that is, after all, what he does best) by cutting funding and installing unqualified political cronies in positions of authority while at the same time overloading the existing system with casualties from his never-ending War on Terra, he seems to actually be taking steps to try to remedy the situation. He's commissioned a panel headed by Bob Dole and Donna Shalala to review veterans health care. Shalala was Secretary of Health and Human Services during the Clenis administration. She had this to say of her meeting with dubya:

He made it very clear that if one soldier doesn't get high-quality treatment and isn't transitioned back into civilian life or back into the military, that's unacceptable.
"And you could sense his anger and his anxiousness that we move as quickly as possible while the Defense Department is moving to make corrections at Walter Reed," Shalala said.
"I don't want to overstate or understate [the mission] other than it's going to be comprehensive. It's going to be vigorous," she said.

It sounds like a good start and I hope dubya follows through. With veterans coming out of the woodwork to voice their dissatisfaction with the quality of service, and with Iraq in flames as a background this story is not going away anytime soon. The panel's report is due in 45 days. It will, of course, call for more spending and for me that is the real issue here. The American public needs to know about the hidden costs of war. Taking care of grievously wounded veterans after they leave military service is very expensive and the funding for this care is not part of the Department of Defense budget.

Moving on, there's this story.

The Bush administration is ... asking Congress for permission to use up to a quarter of the Food for Peace budget to buy food from foreign farmers.
But to legislators like Colin Peterson (D-MN), who is chairman of the Agriculture committee in the House of Representatives, the aid programs exist to send American food abroad — not American money. And he intends to keep it that way.

I don't fully understand this, but dubya appears to want to do something for purely humanitarian reasons. And of course there's a Democrat right out there in front fighting him on it. You can bet the Democrat in question is deeply in the pocket of the American farm lobby. We spend more than a billion dollars annually to help feed starving populations world-wide, but virtually all that money is spent buying American grain from American farmers at the artificially inflated American price. It's really just agri-business welfare under the guise of humanitarian aid. By buying grain from farmers closer to the area of need, we could simultaneously boost foreign economies and save a great deal on shipping costs. Not to mention the fact that the foreign grain would be cheaper, allowing us to feed more people for less money. I'm with dubya on this one. It's the right thing to do.

So, I agree with two decisions the preznit has made in one week after disagreeing with everything he's said and done for the past 6 years. WTF? I'm thinking somebody slipped me some of that strong Republican kool-aid. Hopefully it'll wear off soon.

Well, I guess I'll stop doinking around with the site layout and get back to blogging. This is pretty much how the site will look for a while. I may still change the banner again. I was completely in love with the idea of using Penrose tiling (a projection of a five-dimensional crystalline structure onto two dimensions) as the background image, but I'm just not that thrilled with my efforts. It reminds me of the brightly colored patterns on the polyester dresses my grandmother wore to church in the '70s. Not exactly what I was going for.