the election
I hate it. Hate hate hate. It has stolen my brain and I want it back.
I wish for Vishnu arms so I can hear no evil and see no evil at the same time.
must stop
My poor brain is tired of trying to absorb all the stories about all the crazy junk that whatsername did up in Alaska. Is someone making a list with the help of a suitable computerized digital electronic list-making device of some kind, I hope?
I’m pretty sure I heard that her husband was a member of a secessionist political party until 2002 and that she spoke at that party’s convention and that she’s under investigation for using her office to try to get her sister’s ex fired and that she tried to fire a librarian for insufficiently supporting her idea to ban library books and that she fired the sheriff for supporting her opponent in the election and then lied about it to a reporter and that she cut programs to educate teenage mothers and that she’s for abstinence-only sex education and that she invited international scrutiny of her teen daughter’s sexual behavior and that she thinks she should be able to use the power of government to make other women’s reproductive decisions for them and that she asked her church to pray for a deal to build an oil pipeline and that she lied about opposing the bridge to nowhere and that she hired a lobbyist to acquire $27 million in federal earmarks for her town of 10,000 people and that she goes on about Alaska’s ability to be “self sufficient” and that she nonetheless left that town of 10,000 with $20 million in long-term debt and that she lied about visiting Ireland and that her pastor said Kerry voters and Bush critics would be damned to hell and oh crap, who can keep track?
She’s pro-life enough to satisfy your basic Dobsons and Robertsons and so on, though, so I predict she’ll go far. Plus she’s all mavericky and stuff, just like John McCain!
I really need to stop paying attention to this crap before I give myself a migraine with all the forehead-slapping.
the crazy pole
It’s been a weekend of politics-as-dadaist-performance-art, and didn’t we have fun?
Whether McCain wins or not, Sarah Palin is a harbinger of the future. The fact there was no one able to prevent McCain from choosing such an obviously inadequate imperial manager, and choosing her in such a bizarre, panicked way, indicates that—as during the decline of Rome, or the last years of Saddam’s regime—everyone sane has already been eliminated from the power structure. And thus we’re left with nothing but the whim of whoever’s clambered to the top of the Crazy Pole.
( Schwartz )
If I go all loopy-lou and wear hats made of fish and maybe foam at the mouth just a little, can I be like, a cabinet secretary? I’m thinking Interior, ‘cuz I’m totally an Eagle Scout and stuff.
Actually, I applaud McCain’s choice. It’s politically astute in that everyone knows all those Hillary supporters just wanted a vagina to vote for, and one vagina is as good as the next, right? Plus now McCain gets to go up to Kay Bailey Hutchison and Olympia Snowe and Christine Todd Whitman and Condi Rice and sort of put up his hand for a high five, and then when they put up their hand he sort of yanks his back and says “psych ha ha ha IN YOUR FACE” and walks off, and when Liddy Dole says “but I was THE PRESIDENT OF THE RED CROSS” he can be all, “whatevs”, ‘cuz he’s a maverick, baby.
do svidaniya, millennium
Dig that hot Russian-on-Georgian action!
Cold warriors all over the country are wetting themselves with glee over this opportunity to wax moralistic over The Great Bear, cuz’ man, if we’re going to warp domestic and foreign policy by framing everything in terms of a grand conflict, those cold, white people with the funny alphabet are just so much more credible than a bunch of turbaned beardos in caves!
Seriously, blowhards on the right and the left are so excited to replay history from 1949 to 1989 all over again. They are rubbing Ben-Gay into their pontificatin’ muscles. They are blowing the dust off their Tom Clancy paperbacks and rewinding their VHS copies of Red Dawn.
Will the Cold War 2.0 be as, like, totally rad as the first one? Let’s find out!
Afghaniwhaa? Iraqistan, you say? Who cares? Taking off your shoes at the airport to foil The Terrists is way not as cool as mutually assured destruction!
Let’s ship our boys home from the front so they can start shipping our Star Wars tech to Poland!
WHEEEEEE
Update: huzzah, the stupid has begun.
your papers, comrade
This heartwarming story of TSA officials confiscating airplane meal utensils from a pilot is a pretty hilarious example of what I’ve long been thinking of as the Soviet-ization of America.
A less hilarious example is the recent craven capitulation of Congress to President Bush’s every whim on the whole warrantless wiretapping thing. Way to not stand up against an overwhelmingly unpopular president on behalf of the American people and the Constitution, guys! Did you remember to deliver the bill to the White House on your knees and avert your eyes in the presence of His Bushness?
The summative problem of the Soviet Union is that it had a powerful government that served a select few while remaining insulated from most of its citizenry. Much of our cold war rhetoric was predicated on the idea that central economic planning was the main problem… but it seems clear in retrospect that central economic planning was merely an implementation detail. Don’t you think America’s stumbling economy, celebration of mediocrity, military worship, and descent into Panopticon-like surveillance state give the place a sort of retro-Russky feel? Maybe it’s time to replace the eagle and pyramid on the back of our dollar bills with snapshots of a tank and a decaying concrete housing block.
friendly
Remember when the army covered up Pat Tillman’s death by friendly fire?
Well now they are covering up this young woman’s death by friendly fire:
The additional wrinkle is that along with friendly fire, LaVena Johnson also suffered friendly rape and friendly getting-burned-with-acid and friendly being-set-fire-to.
Oh, and since we wouldn’t want to hurt morale back home, the Army classified her death as a suicide.
She is not the only person to receive such treatment.
Yay this war! USA! USA!
oh futile bloggering
I stumbled on this interesting story about Iranians at a shopping center attacking a group of religious police who were attempting to arrest a young woman for a dress-code violation:
That was when the large crowd, predominately made up of young people, rose up against the police and attempted to liberate the young woman themselves. Faced with a full-blown riot - complete with angry crowds with garbage cans being set on fire - the frightened police jumped into the van and fled the scene, except for one unfortunate officer who was left behind. The policeman was reportedly attacked and beaten by the mob.
It’s a disturbing but strangely heartening story; your heart goes out to the people who have to live under such a regime, and you want to cheer for those who stand up to it.
Unfortunately, the story was posted on an idiotic right-wing blog; the comments cheered on those who fought back, and went on to blame Iranian problems on 1) Islam (”satan’s religion”) and 2) Jimmy Carter.
Stupidly, I added my own comment. I doubt it’ll actually be published on the site; one of their regular bloggers was a participant in Iran-Contra and continues to spout the most idiotic prescriptions for fixing Iran’s problems. But I liked my comment, so I’m reproducing it here:
What a great story. So heartening to see ordinary people spontaneously rouse themselves against the kind of routine tyranny they’ve suffered all of their lives. I can only hope that this will scale up into a full-on regime change, though I admit I can only fantasize about how such a thing might work in practice.
Iran is a beautiful place, filled with great people, and there’s a wonderful culture hiding under all that oppression.
I can only shake my head at the people who would show support for the Iranian people’s thirst for freedom by damning their religion. How would you feel if someone offered to help solve your problems by eliminating Christianity? Conflating the religion with the regime is both incorrect and counterproductive; it’s also the tactic used by the oppressors themselves, and that should give you pause.
I’m also disappointed to see some people stooping to partisan point-taking by dropping the responsibility for the 1979 revolution onto Carter’s stooped shoulders. Do you really think that the previous administrations’ support of the Shah had nothing to do with it? He outlawed all but his own party and built torture chambers for dissidents, for crying out loud. Do you find the subsequent administration blameless for selling Iran arms even as they continued to kidnap Americans and attack our embassies and airplanes into the 1980s? Partisan hackery isn’t going to free Iran, nor is bloodlust, nor is insulting the faith or intelligence of average Iranian people.
+1 Iranian shoppers, -1 American blog commenters.
