The Sneaky Rabbit

They Don't Know Who The Enemy Is

2006-09-14T21:17:00.000-04:00

A point we should be making more clearly:

Democrats think we're at war with Al-Qaeda. Republicans think we're at war with all Muslims. Or at least, all terrorists.

Guess whose war is winnable? Guess who's more likely to stop the people who are actually trying to kill us?

Guess who's out of their frikkin' minds?

The Old Boy's Lament

2006-09-07T11:39:00.000-04:00

Dana Milbank feels really bad for Joe Lieberman, the ex-Democrat who's now running against the Democratic nominee in Connecticut. Apparently Joe hasn't been well-received by the people he's now fighting against:

After Lieberman was vanquished by antiwar candidate Ned Lamont in last month's primary, 40 of the 45 members of the Senate Democratic caucus abandoned their longtime colleague and their party's former vice presidential nominee. In this town, partisanship is thicker than friendship.

Yeah, it's sad that Lieberman's receiving so few hugs. To explain it in the high school terms that seem disturbingly appropriate, Dana, Lieberman dumped the democratic party before they dumped him. If they treat him like he's switched sides, it's probably because he has.

Milbank quotes Harry Truman saying if you want a friend in Washington, get a dog. Okay, fair enough. But how about this: if you want to be friends with someone, try not being their enemy.

And then this just gets weird:

Lamont made clear that even in victory he wouldn't be magnanimous. When asked if he would vote to confirm Lieberman to replace Donald Rumsfeld at the Pentagon, Lamont said he would not.

I don't see anything rude about declining to endorse your opponent for Secretary of Defense. But then, I'm not part of the Old Boys' Network that sees Lieberman's huglessness as a gross injustice.

Process of Elimination

2006-09-06T06:44:00.000-04:00

I just heard a GOP talking head say that we were on the right track because we had "gone on the offensive against these people in Afghanistan and Iraq."

The only possible meaning for "these people" I can see is "Muslims." Saddam and the Taliban didn't have anything else in common.

At least we're clear.

The Truth About The Da Vinci Code

2006-09-06T06:42:00.000-04:00

The movie confirms my strong sense that reading a Dan Brown book is like reading a really poor writer describing a moderately interesting movie.

Note from a Planeful of Arabs

2006-08-20T07:36:00.000-04:00

As a rule, I never read, much less comment on, Ann Coulter, who I am convinced is a liberal Democrat pulling the world's longest-running prank on our media. It gets less funny all the time. But on this new column makes me think her column is ghost-written by a 12-year-old in a bunker somewhere:

To pull off a 9/11-style attack now, literally half the passengers on the plane would have to be terrorists. (At least the airport screeners wouldn't have to worry about confiscating a lot of deodorants.)

I think a planeful of Arabs would attract attention — except from people who had recently completed a government training program teaching them not to notice anyone's appearance. Not even a group of liberal Democrats flying off to a Renaissance Weekend would stand for that.

Am I wrong, or does she mean that "Not even a group of liberal Democrats [blah blah blah] would stand for" a "planeful of Arabs"? (And yes, she assumes that non-Arabs wouldn't help out with a terrorist attack. This sort of racist ignorance probably hurts Richard Reid's feelings.)

Anyway, I can assure Ms. Coulter, who has apparently led a rather sheltered life, that planefuls of Arabs arrive in United States airports every day. Not only do liberal Democrats like me stand for it; we ride on them. Just last week, I boarded a planeful of Arabs, and had the best flight of my life. (And imagine: One of my travelling companions, in fact, was a conservative Republican.) They're called planes from the Middle East.

Emirates Airlines, it turns out, is not only a sane and well-run operation, it has 500 channels of movies and TV. I watched "Inside Man" and "Mission Impossible III," and then fell asleep because I was so comfortable and secure.

The Fog of Getting It Right

2006-08-16T22:19:00.000-04:00

It's nice that George Will has come so firmly around to the Michael Moore camp on the Iraq issue. His new column acknowledging that Kerry was right in his approach to the war on terror does everything but admit that Will himself was wrong:

Cooperation between Pakistani and British law enforcement (the British draw upon useful experience combating IRA terrorism) has validated John Kerry's belief (as paraphrased by the New York Times Magazine of Oct. 10, 2004) that "many of the interdiction tactics that cripple drug lords, including governments working jointly to share intelligence, patrol borders and force banks to identify suspicious customers, can also be some of the most useful tools in the war on terror." In a candidates' debate in South Carolina (Jan. 29, 2004), Kerry said that although the war on terror will be "occasionally military," it is "primarily an intelligence and law enforcement operation that requires cooperation around the world."

And Will rightly attacks the Bush administration for idiotically insisting that references to law enforcement demonstrated a misunderstanding of the war on terror:

"The idea that the jihadists would all be peaceful, warm, lovable, God-fearing people if it weren't for U.S. policies strikes me as not a valid idea. [Democrats] do not have the understanding or the commitment to take on these forces. It's like John Kerry. The law enforcement approach doesn't work."

This farrago of caricature and non sequitur makes the administration seem eager to repel all but the delusional. But perhaps such rhetoric reflects the intellectual contortions required to sustain the illusion that the war in Iraq is central to the war on terrorism, and that the war, unlike "the law enforcement approach," does "work."

Reporters should have laughed at anyone who tried to make this argument. And Democrats should have jumped on it every time they tried it in '04. We understand that the war on terror requires a vast global network of government agencies--law enforcement and intelligence and military--working to track down the bad guys. Any time anyone mentions law enforcement, however, Republicans start jumping up and down on their hats and spouting delusional garbage about not understanding that we're at WAR WAR WAR. This is not the way you catch a terrorist.

You'll note that Will uses the word "farrago" to make this point. If you know what he means, consider yourself unrepresentative of the American population at large. (As for me, I'm not going to look it up, as a matter of principle.)

It almost makes you wonder if Will is trying to make sure that only intellectuals and wonks keep reading far enough to realize he's attacking the Bush administration.

By the way, George Will, about this little bit of snark:

The official is correct that it is wrong "to think that somehow we are responsible -- that the actions of the jihadists are justified by U.S. policies." But few outside the fog of paranoia that is the blogosphere think like that.

It must really kill you that the "fog of paranoia" was right about Iraq when you were wrong, huh? Massive vocabulary and all?

Headlines in Today's NY Times Written in the Form of Questions Whose Answers I Am Not Interested In Knowing

2006-08-14T00:55:00.000-04:00

Does Testosterone Build a Better Athlete?

Is It a Urinal, or Is It Art?

In Steroid Era, Will Golf’s Integrity Stand Test?

Matt Bai's Twist Ending

2006-08-13T14:21:00.000-04:00

So here's a sentence from the first paragraph of Matt Bai's article on the Lamont victory. Try to guess how it ends:

If anyone was in a position, then, to assess the significance of the Connecticut rebellion, it was

Okay, you'll never guess, so I'll tell you. Bai picks Jeffrey Bell, a Republican who in 1978 won a primary challenge against the Republican incumbent senator in New Jersey. Apparently Bell, an aide to Ronald Reagan, ran on an extreme anti-tax platform.

Yes, Matt, if anyone is in a position to explain to you media people what's happening in the Democratic party, it's a 1970s Republican extremist. Let's interview Jane Fonda about Grover Norquist. Then let's interview a three-year-old Scandinavian child about the mayoral election in Kalamazoo.

Or better yet, let's ask the three-year-old Scandinavian child to write the New York Times' articles on the Democratic party.

Second Thoughts About Free Will

2006-08-10T22:18:00.000-04:00

On the sign in front of a church at the end of my street, there's a message that reads, "God Never Says Oops." This is clearly not true. For example, one can only imagine what came out of His mouth when He read this Jacob Weisberg piece in Slate:

The problem for the Democrats is that the anti-Lieberman insurgents go far beyond simply opposing Bush's faulty rationale for the war, his dishonest argumentation for it, and his incompetent execution of it. Many of them appear not to take the wider, global battle against Islamic fanaticism seriously. They see Iraq purely as a symptom of a cynical and politicized right-wing response to Sept. 11, as opposed to a tragic misstep in a bigger conflict. Substantively, this view indicates a fundamental misapprehension of the problem of terrorism.

Dear Jacob,

Please cite one example of an anti-Lieberman insurgent who does not take the wider global battle against Islamic fanaticism seriously.

Love,
Polonius

P.S. If we Democrats think it didn't help the war on terror when we invaded a country that didn't harbor al-Qaeda, does that indicate a fundamental misapprehension of the problem of terrorism?

P.P.S. I bet God had a lot of fun trying to figure out how the same person could write these two sentences in the same article:

The invasion of Iraq was, in ways that have since become hard to dispute, a terrible mistake.

[ . . . ]

Whether Democrats can avoid playing their Vietnam video to the end depends on their ability to project military and diplomatic toughness in place of the elitism and anti-war purity represented in 2004 by Howard Dean and now by Ned Lamont.

Right. So the war was a terrible mistake, and 60% of Americans are perfectly aware of this, but "anti-war purity" is a bad thing.

Just out of curiosity, would you consider Democrats "tough" enough if they advocated going to war against the actual terrorists? Just for example. Or when you said "elitism" did you mean being too stuck up to invade irrelevant third countries? That's all I can figure--that you think Democrats are too snobbish about who to invade because we insist on some actual connection to the people who are trying to kill us.

P.P.P.S. Seriously. What the hell are you talking about?

They're Keeping A Close Eye On Things

2006-08-10T18:41:00.000-04:00

So apparently 30% of Americans have no idea what year 9/11 happened in.

30% is also the number of Americans who want a Republican to represent them in Congress.

Coincidence?

Love Them Or Leave Them -- Or Both

2006-08-10T18:17:00.000-04:00

I can't help but find this kind of funny: in this post, Marty Peretz accuses Human Rights Watch of lying about the war in Lebanon ("The biggest lie is the one being spread by Human Rights Watch . . . that Hezbollah has not entwined its network of weapons, launching sites, and command centers into the fabric of ordinary civilian life"). Earlier in the same post, he complains about the "press corps" citing a figure of 60 dead in the Qana attack, when the real figure is 28.

Where did Peretz get this figure of 28? Apparently from Human Rights Watch.

I Must Be Missing Something

2006-08-10T17:52:00.000-04:00

Wow. Apparently the Rand Corporation did a study and found that teenagers who listen to sexual music are more likely to have sex:

Teens who said they listened to lots of music with degrading sexual messages were almost twice as likely to start having intercourse or other sexual activities within the following two years as were teens who listened to little or no sexually degrading music.

Among heavy listeners, 51 percent started having sex within two years, versus 29 percent of those who said they listened to little or no sexually degrading music.

Putting aside the question of what kind of person says "yes, I like sexually degrading music," back when I was a teenager, the word we used to describe conclusions this obvious was "duh," or sometimes "a-doy-a-DUH." But the Rand Corporation in its wisdom goes on to find causation here:

Exposure to lots of sexually degrading music "gives them a specific message about sex," said lead author Steven Martino, a researcher for Rand Corp. in Pittsburgh. Boys learn they should be relentless in pursuit of women and girls learn to view themselves as sex objects, he said.

"We think that really lowers kids' inhibitions and makes them less thoughtful" about sexual decisions and may influence them to make decisions they regret, he said.

But nothing in the Rand summary of the study suggests they even thought about whether correlation proves causation. In other words, okay, Rand, you proved that kids who like sex like music about sex. Great. Kids who like rodeos probably like songs about cowboys. Does that mean that listening to country music causes increased rodeo attendance?

For that matter, I really like Watership Down; I own two copies. Is that the reason I own two rabbits?

Rand was asking the wrong questions when it spoke to these kids. I suspect most high school science students could have explained the difference between correlation and causation. Or at least, the kids could put them in touch with a science teacher who could.

Three Reasons Lieberman Won't Drop Out

2006-08-10T17:14:00.000-04:00

(1) Because this is Joe "We're In A Three-Way Tie for Third" Lieberman, who thought that coming in fifth in the presidential primaries was the voters' oblique way of saying they loved him. He's no more capable of taking no for an answer than Pepé La Pew.

(2) Because his insistence on staying the course in Iraq is a symptom of a deeper character flaw. It's called stubborness. If Joe knew when to abandon a bad policy, there would never have been a primary. (And yes, pundits, taking an unpopular stand is admirable--when that stand isn't crazy.)

(3) Because if Joe "It is time for Democrats who distrust President Bush to acknowledge . . . that in matters of war we undermine Presidential credibility at our nation’s peril" Lieberman cared at all about the Democratic Party, none of this would have happened in the first place.

Okay, and one bonus reason: Lieberman, remember, is the Democrat who defended the Alberto Gonzales memos misrepresenting and undermining the Geneva Conventions. In other words, his moral compass has been demagnetized. Don't expect it to point him out of the race.

How to Get Your Talking Point Swallowed

2006-08-10T10:20:00.000-04:00

I don't know why this works, but it works. Josh Marshall notes the absurdity of the Republican talking point about how Ned Lamont is bad for the Democratic party because he makes us look weak on security.

But note the way they phrase it:

“It’s an unfortunate development, I think, from the standpoint of the Democratic Party, to see a man like Lieberman pushed aside because of his willingness to support an aggressive posture in terms of our national security strategy,’’ Mr. Cheney said in a telephone interview with news service reporters.

The trick is to assume the talking point is true, and then comment on it. Don't say "Lieberman was pushed aside because he's willing to be aggressive against terrorism." That's obviously false.

Instead say "It's unfortunate that Lieberman was pushed aside because he was aggressive against terrorism." For some reason, burying your talking point this way makes it much easier for journalists to swallow and print. Apparently this creates a little glitch in the journalist's mental process that makes them think, "Oh--the debate isn't about whether Democrats are aggressive against terror; it's about whether their non-aggressiveness is unfortunate or not."

It's very similar to the way telemarketers try to keep you on the phone by framing their questions in a way that makes it difficult not to respond. So how do we teach the journalists to just hang up?

Spam Sublimity

2006-08-05T11:40:00.000-04:00

I feel a duty to preserve this wonderful piece of spam. From "Malone Lavelle," it was titled "re: Voxan" and reads in its entirety:

You do. And of course you are Jim of the Rats. Welcome, welcome
all.

There was plenty of handshaking and glad cries of joy before Heimskur

(This accompanied by an image containing the advertising.) It reminds me of some of Danielle Pafunda's poetry, especially the first stanza.

"Heimskur," incidentally, is apparently an Icelandic adjective meaning "stupid."

There should be awards for this stuff.

Library Name of the Week

2006-08-03T08:30:00.000-04:00

The Candor Free Library in Candor, NY.

Shorter Stanley Fish

2006-07-22T19:20:00.000-04:00

Academic freedom doesn't mean freedom to say things people think are crazy; it means the freedom to study things they think are boring.

Okay, so this Kevin Barrett character sounds like an idiot, possibly enough of an idiot to deserve a good firing or two. But Fish has gone off several deep ends at once. Yes, it would be nice to have professors who come up with interesting ideas about shoes. But when most people think of academic freedom, I suspect Galileo comes to mind more than Derrida. We let professors think crazy things, objectionable things, because sometimes, centuries later, it turns out they were right. A million Kevin Barretts are the price we pay for that.

And what on earth is wrong with professors urging activism? Professors are the canaries in the coal mine; they're often the first ones to see what's gone wrong. If they don't urge activism, there's often no one who will.

[I'm not back, really, just in between jobs and free to post for a while. --Polonius]

Oath as Incantation

2005-12-20T17:30:00.000-05:00

I know, it’s a REALLY stupid time to start blogging again; especially anti-Bush sentiment. But hey, at least I don’t belong to PETA.

It’s getting downright frightening now. You don’t need me to tell you that. But I thought I’d share one frightening thing I heard during yesterday’s press conference.

Bush was asked whether, given the fact that there is no end in sight to the war on terror, we can reasonably expect the “permanent expansion of the unchecked power of the Executive.” He responded by “disagree[ing] with” the reporter’s “assertion of unchecked power.” (Funny, I thought Bush was the one asserting unchecked power). So, what was the first thing he countered this assertion with? His (and presumably others’) oath of office:

Reporter: Well—

Bush: Hold on a second, please. There is the check of people being sworn to uphold the law, for starters.*

It seems that Mr. Bush mistakes the nature of an oath, which is a promise to live up to certain expectations of conduct, with the nature of an incantation. His oath of office as incantation casts a spell making all of his conduct constitutional, rather than articulating a high standard by which his conduct is measured.

The question of whether Bush is psychotic or just stupid has been a popular one, but whichever it is, it spells disaster for this country, and I don’t think it will be tolerated long. In my own part of the country, the rural south, dyed-in-the-wool conservatives are furious with him, and only the most willfully ignorant of the Christian middle class continue to let themselves be blindsided enough by the faux-issue of retail’s “war on Christmas” to fail to notice the war George W. Bush is waging upon their civil liberties.

*From whitehouse.gov. He went on to say that his briefings of the congress on this program were the other check and balance upon the power of the executive. Other commentators have said plenty about this already.

The War on Christmas

2005-12-20T17:29:00.000-05:00

Overheard, today, in the liquor store:

Customer (leaving): Have a good holiday!

Clerk (to manager, after customer leaves): It’s Merry F----ing Christmas! Ha!

Manager: (unintelligible).

Clerk: Well, he’s a f---ing flamer, anyway. Ha!

Robert Bork, Still an Insufferable Dumbass

2005-07-01T11:27:00.000-04:00

Well, Sandra Day O'Connor is retiring, and I've been lucky enough to catch it all in real-time on CNN, complete with Bill Frist's strange eulogy on the Senate floor and President Bush's "don't you fuck with me, senate" speech in the Rose Garden.

But the real news is that CNN's Daryn Kagen has confirmed that Robert Bork is still, 20 years later, an insufferable, boorish dumbass. Bork was contacted by telephone around 12:15 today for a televised conversation on Justice O'Connor, and wasted no time in reminding the American people what dumbasses are made of. No sooner had Kagen finished her introduction than Bork was declaring that she had no real "judicial philosophy."

To Kagen's credit, she challenged Bork on this, asking whether it was fair to make such a characterization, and suggested that there may be a difference between having a philosophy that was different from Bork and having no philosophy. That maybe she was a moderate while Bork was more conservative. Then Kagen changed her shoes and walked over to picture picture.

But Bork was unmoved, and chastised Kagen for using the word "moderate." (Something like "I really wish you'd stop using the word moderate!") Kagen asked what word he might prefer. "Activist," said Robert Bork, who went on to accuse O'Connor of numerous and significant departures from "The Actual Constitution."

"The actual constitution?" said Kagen. "Did Rush put you up to this?"

A Brief Review of the Title of Zell Miller's New Book ("A Deficit of Decency")

2005-05-11T15:41:00.000-04:00

Boy, those truth in advertising laws are a bitch, huh?

#1 On The List of Unpleasant Phrases That Linger In My Head After I Hear the Beatles' "Come Together"

2005-05-08T18:53:00.000-04:00

"Spinal cracker."

The Frightening Road to Self-Discovery

2005-04-16T16:22:00.000-04:00

I just caught myself thinking, "For my money, there's no finer pop album than the Fine Young Cannibals' The Raw and the Cooked."

Am i going to turn into a werewolf?

Hootie's Feeding Tube

2005-03-27T17:51:00.000-05:00

Let's face it: all of our consciences have been affected this week by the omnipresent question: should Hootie's feeding tube be removed?

Back in the day, Polonius and I shared the experience of working for a major tobacco company. Our boss was a woman who drove around threatening convenience store owners who didn't bring in enough under-eighteen business. But all that's for another blog. The point is, that was also about the time that Hootie sounded the first note in his death knell for American culture. Our cigarette boss loved him.

Now he's back, and more powerful than ever, with his whopper-hawking version of "Big Rock Candy Mountain."

Anyhow, here are the real lyrics to that song: (The last verse, which gives us the real story the song is telling, is especially relevant to the Hootie situation).

One evening as the sun went down
And the jungle fires were burning,
Down the track came a hobo hiking,
He said, "Boys, I'm not turning
I'm heading for a land that's far away
Beside the crystal fountain
I'll see you all this coming fall
In the Big Rock Candy Mountain

Oh the buzzin' of the bees
In the cigarette trees
Near the soda water fountain
At the lemonade springs
Where the bluebird sings
On the big rock candy mountain

In the Big Rock Candy Mountain,
It's a land that's fair and bright,
The handouts grow on bushes
And you sleep out every night.
The boxcars all are empty
And the sun shines every day
I'm bound to go
Where there ain't no snow
Where the sleet don't fall
And the winds don't blow
In the Big Rock Candy Mountain.

In the Big Rock Candy Mountain
You never change your socks
And little streams of alkyhol
Come trickling down the rocks
O the shacks all have to tip their hats
And the railway bulls are blind
There's a lake of stew
And whiskey too
And you can paddle
All around it in a big canoe
In the Big Rock Candy Mountain

In the Big Rock Candy Mountain
The cops have wooden legs
The bulldogs all have rubber teeth
And the hens lay soft-boiled eggs
The farmer's trees are full of fruit
And the barns are full of hay
I'm bound to go
Where there ain't no snow
Where the sleet don't fall
And the winds don't blow
In the Big Rock Candy Mountain

In the Big Rock Candy Mountain,
The jails are made of tin.
You can slip right out again,
As soon as they put you in.
There ain't no short-handled shovels,
No axes, saws nor picks,
I'm bound to stay
Where you sleep all day,
Where they hung the jerk
That invented work
In the Big Rock Candy Mountain.

The punk rolled up his big blue eyes
And said to the joker, "Sandy,
I've hiked and hiked and wandered too,
But I ain't seen any candy.
I've hiked and hiked till my feet are sore
And I'll be damned if I hike any more
To be buggered sore like a hobo's whore
In the big rock candy mountain

2005-02-26T08:30:00.000-05:00

Another victory for the "poor and lower middle class!" (Today's NYT)

With Friday's vote, Wal-Mart can continue to say that not one of its 1.2
million American workers belongs to a union. Support for organizing dissipated
here after the company repeatedly showed workers videos about what were
portrayed as the shortcomings of unions, and transferred into the shop six new
workers who, Mr. Noble said, had been screened by the company to ensure their
antiunion sentiment

Peggy, You Ignorant Slut

2005-02-25T10:22:00.000-05:00

Did we need Peggy Noonan to tell us that Hunter Thompson had a drug problem? Do we need her to psychoanalyze him, too?

He must have been very scared to get tanked like that to write. The empty page,
the blank screen, is scary. But so is a mortgage. So is the stillness of a
courtroom before you make the closing argument. And so is a broken leg that
needs fixing fast. We all have jobs.

Thank you, Peggy. Your moral courage is a comforting example to us all; most especially, I'm sure, to the family of the deceased.

Nordlinger Gives Up "Honest Debate"

2005-02-25T09:05:00.000-05:00

In a shocking turn of events this week, the National Review Online's Jay Nordlinger has given up trying to "reason with" people on the political left.

You want to have an honest, robust debate with your political opposition — you
really do. But what if they think you're out to screw old people and enrich Wall
Street? Can you talk to such people?
Can you?

It seems Nordlinger's well-meaning attempts at a mutually elevating dialogue have sustained one too many blows from the emotionally charged fictions that fuel such things as Wal-Mart protests and university conferences.

Yet, though discouraged, he comes out of the battle with the liberal elite with the truth at his side, still secure in the knowledge that "Wal-Mart is a godsend to the poor and the lower middle class." While we might think at first that he means lower middle class and poor Americans, who don't happen to work in manufacturing, want to join unions, or make a living wage, Nordlinger anticipates our misreading and misinformation. Yet, rather than succumbing to the temptation to mock the ignorant liberal reader, Nordlinger serenely turns away from the technique of making straw men out of the opposition and delivers us the cold hard facts, setting us straight about the Wal-Mart issue:

The anti-Wal-Mart mindset is a kind of religion, like dumb
environmentalism, or dumb devotion to gun control, or dumb hatred of the SUV. You can't reason with these people, can't have an honest debate with them: Wal-Mart is simply their devil.

After clearing up the whole Wal-Mart thing, Nordlinger moves on to make a compelling argument against the problems in the (other-than-Bob Jones) universities of today:

At Weinstein Auditorium in Wright Hall, you can attend a panel concerning
"What is the new surveillance? An overview of current conditions." Later you can
hear from such scholars as Joy James, "Africana Studies, Brown University," and
Amrita Basu, "Women and Gender Studies, Amherst College," and . . .
I could go on, but it's too depressing. One thing's sure: I bet they're not "invested in
the complexity of human endeavors across the planet"; I bet they regard things
as pretty simple.

Nordlinger's relentless, brilliant logic is almost too much. It's no wonder his attempts at dialogue with liberals don't work; his arguments are too complex, too mercilessly dazzling in their subtlety and intricacy. All the poor overwhelmed liberal can do in the face of such an opponent is abandon any attempt at logical engagement and resort to name calling and gross generalization, pathetic rejoinders like "oh yeah? Well I bet you regard things as pretty simple! Ha!"

Somewhere, there is a secret academy where minds like Nordlinger's are trained. Until a liberal is admitted to its halls, our cause is hopelessly shackled by primitive thinking and cult-like fidelity to an ideology that ignores the facts. In the meantime, we should be grateful that Nordlinger is still publishing, and take this opportunity to learn from the enlightened.

Liberating Brigitte

2005-02-13T09:15:00.000-05:00

My favorite thing on T.V.? “Strange Love,” the new reality show on VH1 chronicling the romance of Flava Flav and Brigitte Nielson. There are few sights more gratifying than that of Flav jumping around in a white bathrobe, slippers, and a Viking helmet, upon whose horns he has impaled two croissants, declaring his love for an aging, brain damaged hysteric.

But this is not your usual reality T.V. show. It is, in fact, a heartfelt homage to the first term of George W. Bush.

When we first tune in, we find Flav on vacation. Already, we begin to see the parallels.

He is attempting to wrest Brigitte (a sort of Iraq-figure who is fond of long, flowing head scarves) from the clutches of her fiancée--in France. His aim is to take her back to New York with him and show her what life’s really about.

But when Flav gets a bit crazy and breaks her stuff while they’re in the bath tub (Baath-tub?), we see Brigitte’s Arab-like ambivalence surface with some not-quite-intelligible verbal abuse. Flav makes it up to her by firing her maid.

Of course, during this difficult but morally correct courtship, Flav, like W., has to deal with the snobbery of old Europe. An Italian vintner is at a loss for what to do with him when, after being invited to stomp on a few grapes, Flav decides to go on stomping for hours on end, demanding more and more grapes, and screaming “we gonna get drunk tonight!” (Purple toes—purple fingers?)

Brigitte puts the whole thing in perspective for us, renewing our sympathy for our noble but misunderstood commander in chief, when she comments to the viewer that “Fufie Fufie” has to understand Europe isn’t like America.

What happens next? Will Brigitte make the transition to Flav’s Laissez-faire values? Or will she remain in the service of her despotic fiancée, content to enjoy the support of the old European establishment, haunted by the painful knowledge of what could have been as her life continues to dissolve into chaos? If he fails in this first attempt, will Flav be able to make the case back home to Chuck D. and Terminator X to loan him more money so he can go back to Europe to finish the job? Only time will tell.

Update

2005-02-06T08:33:00.000-05:00

That transcript from Scarborough Country is here. Even better is the next step, in which Scarborough, interviewing Tom Lucero of the Colorado Board of Regents, gets on board with the ever-more popular characterization of liberals as irrational, hate-mongering enemies of free speech (after all, they interrupted the Board of Regents), and asks Lucero point blank if he has "the guts to fire" Churchill.

Try Asking Another Body Part

2005-02-04T09:22:00.000-05:00

From MMFA:

Sinclair's Hyman wrong on Ohio voting problems

Poor Sinclair.

Let's Clear This Up

2005-02-04T08:58:00.000-05:00

Perhaps it was a show of solidarity with George W. Bush. Or maybe the self-satisfied boasting of the proverbial Ugly American at its most abhorrent. Or just some kind of twisted souvenir.

But whatever anyone says, that purple ink on the fingers of Republicans at the State of the Union was not a show of solidarity with the Iraqi people.

The Great Terror Comes to Scarborough Country

2005-02-04T08:09:00.000-05:00

Yes, Ward Churchill is probably an idiot.

An argument along the lines of Chomsky's "Manufacturing Consent," that we are all part of a bigger problem involving capitalism, military power, and oppression may be plausible. But to claim that suicide bombers are a good means of counteracting that problem is absurd. Fine.
But the fun hasn't stopped there.

Of course, I don't need to go on and on about free speech here. But I do ask you to take a moment of your time to reflect on how freakin' scary this whole thing is getting: look at the power wielded by Bill O'Reilly, for example.

From his website:

Hamilton College has decided to cancel its engagement this week with controversial University of Colorado Professor Ward Churchill. Congratulations, Factor fans! While the college cites security concerns as the reason for the cancellation, we believe that the volume of your messages sent to Pres. Stewart criticizing his appearance was the real factor in deciding to shut down the event. To express your approval for the decision to cancel the Churchill lecture, please contact the school.

Okay, maybe it wasn't all those calls from "Factor fans" that were responsible for the decision. Maybe it really was a death threat from some psychotic right-winger. None of whom are Bill O'Reilly, or his fans.

But no matter. Now the game is on in Scarborough Country. Last night, Scarborough called for the firing of any state-school professor who expresses views contrary to those of the Cult of the Purple Finger. (Transcript to follow as soon as MSNBC posts it). This wouldn't have bothered me so much before all the fair and balanced questioning Joe and his creepy, slightly dazed junkyard dog, Pat Buchannan did with the Swift Boaters, or before the whole Churchill business.

At the moment, however, it seems like the Great Terror has come to Scarborough Country. These people are in power now, and they can't be satisfied.

Really

2005-02-04T08:07:00.000-05:00

Who gives a damn about Kinky Friedman?

The Meaning and Promise of Liberty: Doing the Math

2005-01-21T18:15:00.000-05:00

I haven’t been doing much pundit-surfing at all this week, but I imagine a lot of folks have picked up on Bush's mind-blowingly empty rhetoric. Yet Bush told us:

When the Declaration of Independence was first read in public and the Liberty Bell was sounded in celebration, a witness said, it rang as if it meant something.

Well, yesterday Bush seemed to be saying the word “liberty” as if it meant something, but that something seems a bit hard to pin down. All we seem to get is that liberty is something authored by God and spread by America. Be that as it may, we can still have a look at how the word is used in his speech and get some idea, if not of its meaning, of it's function.

In a world moving toward liberty, we are determined to show the meaning and promise of liberty.
That's great. We're all ears.

I In the long run, there is no justice without freedom, and there can be no human rights without human liberty.
Assuming that freedom and liberty are synonyms here, liberty is a necessary condition for justice, as well as human rights. What does that mean?
For all you fans of 10th grade math out there, we’ll do it this way:

Let L=Liberty
Let J=Justice
Let HR=Human rights

~ L --> ~ J ^ ~ HR

II Liberty will come to those who love it.
Here Bush might be reasonably taken to mean that love of liberty is a prerequisite for liberty itself. So:
Let LOL=Love of liberty

~LOL--> ~ L
~ L -->~ J ^ ~ HR
----------------------
~LOL--> ~ J ^ ~ HR

III Some, I know, have questioned the global appeal of liberty though this time in history […]We do not accept the existence of permanent tyranny because we do not accept the possibility of permanent slavery.
Here, Bush is implying that questioning the global appeal of "liberty" is tantamount to the acceptance of permanent slavery. Not questioning liberty per se, but it's global appeal. Liberty itself is of course undefined as yet, except that it is something spread by America through the will of it's author, the Almighty. Certainly, an acceptance of slavery is not compatible with love of liberty. So:

Let Q= questioning the global appeal of liberty

Q--> ~LOL
~LOL --> ~ L
~ L --> ~ J ^ ~ HR
-------------------------
Q-->~J ^ ~ HR

Wow.

Vote or Die

2005-01-07T11:19:00.000-05:00

Michael Rubin over at the National Review, perhaps another pundit with a close relationship to The Pragmatic Thinker, has identified that certain something that leads to the emergence of a real democracy: “The worsening atmosphere is driving the Iraqi desire to vote.”

Now all the cynical critics of the war can see that 100,000 dead Iraqis, more than 1,000 dead Americans, a depleted military without the resources to intervene in Darfur, and the ire of the rest of the world are not the consequences of deranged and deluded thinking or poor planning. And if they are, so be it: we now have fertile ground for democracy. Iraq has become P. Diddy’s wet dream:

Insurgents and terrorists may kill Iraqis lining up to vote. They may assassinate winning candidates. But only through voting, can Iraqis choose their own government, one that will have the moral authority to undertake remedies forbidden by professional diplomats and intelligence operatives who have had trouble letting go of the old order.

Call me idealistic, but I just can’t get over that misplaced comma after “But only through voting…”

The Pragmatic Thinker

2005-01-06T17:31:00.000-05:00

"You could argue, maybe this is God's hand, because some of their brethren struck Christian America. Maybe God speaks the truth but waits. Seeks the truth and waits. I don't know. You could argue: God struck them."
--Michael Savage on the (Muslim) Tsunami victims: 12.31.04

If there is a funny side to this, it's that one of the nutjob formerly known as Michael Weiner's advertisers is called "the pragmatic thinker."

(You can find the others here).

Intermission

2005-01-06T16:45:00.000-05:00

Polonius has suggested that I keep the seat warm for him over the coming months. I’ve had mixed feelings about the whole thing, after my own blog went the way of so many others sometime around the first week in November. You know the story: I got mad, lost focus, drank too much, started wearing a bow tie, and was eventually confronted on live television by Jon Stewart, who begged me to stop. Then Blogger pulled my column, publicly siding with him. What a world.

But Polonius has asked, and I must answer. All you, er, rabbiteers who have come to anticipate the incisive wit and depth of information this site has come to offer can continue logging on to find--at the very least--complete sentences. Think of me as a screen saver, keeping you mildly interested until Polonius re-installs.

But for now, I gotta go. Crossfire's on.

So Long And Thanks For All The Fish

2005-01-03T01:08:00.000-05:00

So I'm afraid I'll be signing off for a while--at least until May, and maybe even longer. Why? For one of the following reasons:

(a) I am an undercover operative with the U.S. Secret Service, and I'm on the verge of cracking a major drug ring, but to do so I'll need to go undercover like Kiefer Sutherland did during that interminable sequence of 24 episodes where the Mexican girl got shot at the end for no frikkin' reason.

(b) I just can't do the research any more. If I have to read the National Review website one more time, my head is going to pop like a water balloon.

(c) I am going into hiding to avoid agents of Jerry Falwell, who threatened my life after I revealed the existence of Falwell Confidential to a breathless world.

(d) I am actually Senator Larry Craig (R-ID), and I'm tired of the whole facade.

Or possibly it's none of those. Anyway thanks for stopping by; you've been a great crowd.

Predictions for 2005

2005-01-02T23:28:00.000-05:00

Okay, I'll play too. Here are a few random guesses:

Rehnquist will resign, and Clarence Thomas will be appointed Chief Justice. During the confirmation process, Democrats will relentlessly be called racist by Republican surrogates; Republican elected officials will for the most part refuse to distance themselves from these attacks. Dick Durbin will give a really good speech on the Senate floor explaining why they're wrong.

To fill Thomas' seat, Bush will nominate a Latino, because that way he can accuse Democrats of being racist again.

Donald Rumsfeld will continue to insist that things are going well in Iraq.

The new Harry Potter book will be somewhat disappointing.

Bush will push his immigration initiative a bit, but his guest-worker proposal will get so many anti-immigrant provisions attached to it that even the guest workers will start opposing it. Nonetheless, right-wingers will oppose anything that even sounds like it might help immigrants. After the proposal tanks (this will actually be sometime in 2006) the media will blithely announce that Bush has helped his standing among Latinos.

Because life is unfair, nothing particularly bad will happen to Bob Novak.

Barack Obama will give some really good speeches on the Senate floor.

Dr. James Dobson, head nut at Focus on the Family, will choke on something over dinner but fail to wonder whether God is warning him to cut it out.

Alan Alda will not become President on The West Wing--it'll be that other guy, the one Josh likes.

Senate Republicans will fail to pass the "nuclear option," their weird plan to end Democrats' filibusters by having Dick Cheney declare a rules change. They will be pretty angry about this.

Rush Limbaugh will say something racist, and not lose a single advertiser.

There will be negative stories in the national media about Rudy Giuliani, because right-wingers are worried about him running for president and will dig up some of the mountains of dirt on him just to give us all an early taste.

Bush will spend some quality time on vacation.

Thousands of authors trying to get their books published will read The DaVinci Code, and feel their universe stop making sense as Robert Langdon, the stupidest protagonist since The Sound and the Fury, gets everything explained to him five times and still fails to understand the obvious plot twists.

In desperation, some of these aspiring authors will pick up Dan Brown's first book, Angels and Demons. They will be rewarded with koan-like sentences such as "The thought was inconceivable" or the one where Langdon "falls into step with" a character who's in a wheelchair. Most of these would-be authors will give up writing and begin drinking heavily, or vomiting.

More "torture memos" will leak, but people won't get that upset about it.

Michael Moore's new interest in health-care will cause him to be called a communist by Ann Coulter and Michele Malkin.

Hundreds of American soldiers will die in Iraq. Hundreds or even thousands of Iraqis will die, too. American public opinion will continue to swing against the war, but not by more than five or ten percentage points, because it's hard for people to admit the war is wrong when so many people have suffered so much for it.

Meanwhile, in Heaven, Jerry Orbach will make some extremely inappropriate jokes to the recently deceased about the way they died. In spite of themselves, they'll laugh and groan at the same time, and feel a little better about things.

The rest of us will get through somehow.

The Fifth Circuit House of Horrors

2005-01-02T23:06:00.000-05:00

Creakings, as of old wood, and groanings, as of souls long tormented, rise quavering through the dim, foggy air. A ghoulish old caretaker gives a yellow-toothed, humorless grin to his nine customers. “Welcome,” he hisses, “to the Fifth Circuit House of Horrors, Frights and Chills.”

Antonin gulps, and turns to Old Bill. “Bill,” he says, “maybe it’s better you wait here. With your health…” A moan echoes from the tottering structure looming before them. “You’re right,” says Bill. “I’m not up to this. I’ll sit here on this bench.”

The eight go on without him. The caretaker takes their tickets, and waves them into two rusty cars. Stephen, Ruth, David and John Paul climb gingerly into the first. Antonin, Clarence, Anthony and Sandra Day settle in to the second. The bars clang down across their laps. “I don’t much like that,” Sandra Day says, her strong voice sounding small and hollow as it echoes out into the gloom. The cars lurch forward with a screech, metal grating on metal.

A recorded voice comes over the speakers, the deep voice of a troubled old man. “Welcome,” it says. “You are entering the Fifth Circuit. Leave your hope at the door.” Doors crash shut behind them, and a cold breeze brushes their cheeks in the darkness. Anthony looks around in alarm, and draws his coat a little closer around him.

“If you listen close,” the spectral voice says, “you can hear the whisperings of the ghost of Charles Pickering.” An eerie murmur arises; a hushed, indistict, worried sound that is not quite human. “They say he has unfinished business here,” the speakers intone, and a series of bright lights and banging sounds startle the company.

The cars screech around a corner. Suddenly the air is very warm. A giant figure with bulging muscles and a costume of black leather straps holds a gargantuan battle-axe over the neck of a whimpering Mexican. Wailing faces become visible in the background, arms reaching out as if trying to grab the axe and stay its fall—the desperate faces of the International Court of Justice.

“What’s that, Mr. Medellin?” the giant booms, sarcastically. “You want to talk to your consulate?” The axe rises up, and Stephen notices that the giant has scrawled the word “consulate” on it, in what look like letters of blood. “Here you go!” The axe falls, and the Mexican’s head drops into the little basket. The faces of the ICJ wail louder.

“Did you see that?” gasps Antonin. “International law!” Antonin’s face is pale, and quickly begins to go green. Clarence throws a reassuring arm around his shoulders. “Don’t worry,” Clarence says. “There’s no such thing as international law.”

Antonin nods quickly, as if trying to convince himself. Clarence repeats himself like a parent singing a lullaby: “There’s no such thing as international law…there’s no such thing as international law…there’s no such thing as international law…”

The cars move on, and creak past a filmy window, opening on a tranquil view of the outside. A river is visible in the distance, and Ruth thinks wistfully of the First Circuit, where the winters are harsh but mental illness is blessedly rare.

Suddenly a fist comes from nowhere and bangs on the window, and a white staring face lurches up behind it—the crazed eyes of Priscilla Owen, mouth open, bellowing “LET ME IN!” The company starts back in horror as more wide-eyed faces appear at the window, fists banging.

Sandra Day notices the word “filibuster” engraved on the window, just below a great crack beginning to snake its way across the glass. “This glass isn’t going to hold!” she shouts. “Let’s get the hell out of here!”

She jumps out of the car and runs along the little walkway next to the track. But after three steps, she stops in horror. The track and the walkway dead-end, dropping away into a horrible void.

Clarence and Antonin are at the window now, their face inches away from the glass and the horrible faces outside. Clarence turns to face them, his face strangely unperturbed by the screeching and hammering just inches from his head.

“I’m afraid no one’s going anywhere,” Clarence says, an eerie grin playing across his face. Antonin flips a big switch. There is the distant hum of electricity flickering off. Lights flicker off behind them. The group is lit now only by the moonlight filtering in past the screeching creatures at the window. “Things are going to be a little different from now on,” Clarence says. “You might as well get used to the place. And to calling me Chief.”

The glass shatters. The ghouls swarm in.

Thoughts On "Merry Christmas" vs. "Happy Holidays"

2004-12-22T10:25:00.000-05:00

Boy, our friends on the right seem pretty angry that religious minorities exist in this country, don't they? They just can't stand it when people make allowances for that.

Liveblogging Getting Home and Channel-Surfing After A Few Drinks And A Bit Of Dancing

2004-12-18T01:11:00.000-05:00

On TNT, Lou Diamond Phillips seems upset that someone called someone else on the phone; meanwhile, Marky Mark, apparently without the Funky Bunch, is holding a Japanese schoolgirl hostage, but his heart isn't in it.

On CNN, someone sitting in for Larry King finished an interview with Bernie Goetz by explaining that he "fought back." Actually, if I remember right, he shot a bunch of dudes execution-style after they asked him for cash. Apparently the woman standing in for Larry King approves of this.

On Bravo, Dave Navarro just announced that if he wins this poker game, it will be the most important thing that ever happened to him. Jane's Addiction aside, I have very little trouble believing that.

I like to think I'm not a violent person, but it frightens me to think what I'd be capable of if I was in a room with these people singing the Old Navy commercials. I don't think I'd last more than a minute or so before it started to look like Reservoir Dogs in there.

TNT seems inappropriately proud of the four Steven Seagal movies they plan to show tomorrow. Comedy Central seems inappropriately proud to be showing a Wayans Brothers movie (I'm trying to avoid learning which one).

On Channel 56, a bunch of cartoon robots seem pretty angry with each other.

On Fox News, Neil Cavuto is pretending to interview a guy pretending to be Santa about his stock picks. I imagine they mean it as a joke, but to me it doesn't seem markedly different from interviewing Donald Rumsfeld about the future of Iraq.

I get the feeling the SciFi Channel's heart just isn't in it tonight.

On Channel 53, someone just said, "There literally are no quacking ducks in Argentina." It's amazing what you can learn without really trying these days. I changed the channel pretty fast.

Things are not going well for Marky Mark. Or anyone associated with this movie he's in.

From VH1, I learn that Johnny Depp has his own private island. Then they move on to Britney and how much she spent on her new husband. I would rather gargle sewage for a living than be one of the people VH1 is interviewing for comments on Britney and Kevin's lifestyle.

Okay, time for bed.

Tonight I Made Some Pork Explode

2004-12-16T01:16:00.000-05:00

So, yeah. True story. Tonight I was microwaving some pork--a medium-sized piece, no weird marinade or anything--and I did all the usual things (take pork out of refrigerator, put pork on plate, put plate in microwave, turn it on).

After about thirty seconds, I heard a loud BANG. Once I figured out that it had come from the microwave, I walked over, turned it off, and opened it up. There was pork all over the inside.

I didn't even know pork could explode.

If any of you have any insight into this, I'd love to hear it. Why did my pork explode? I really don't have any thoughts, other than that if this story reminds you of the whole Bernard Kerik saga, well, me too.

Unintentional Truth in Advertising

2004-12-14T19:29:00.000-05:00

Seen today on Fox News: a banner that read: "ONLY ON FOX: GOOD NEWS OUT OF IRAQ."

Indeed.

How To Get John Ashcroft Not To Execute You

2004-12-13T01:41:00.000-05:00

Okay, so the right wing supports the death penalty, but opposes assisted suicide. Doesn't that mean that if a condemned killer decides he wants to die, like this guy in Connecticut, they have to call off the execution?

I'm glad I'm not a right-winger--there's so much to keep track of.

Second Thoughts About Destroying Christmas

2004-12-12T13:47:00.000-05:00

So I got distracted for a minute and forgot what we liberals were supposed to be working on this week. Fortunately, Concerned Women For America reminded me: we're trying to get people to watch this movie about that Kinsey guy, because it's the only way to spread porn and gay sex, and thereby reach our Ultimate Goal:

Kinsey's work has been instrumental in advancing acceptance of pornography, homosexuality, abortion, and condom-based sex education, and his disciples even today are promoting a view of children as "sexual beings." Their ultimate goal: to normalize pedophilia, or "adult-child sex."

Right, right, right. Got to remember to normalize pedophilia. Aside from kidnapping and mutilating family pets, I think normalizing pedophilia should be liberals' number one priority. Or possibly helping the homosexual activists attack Salvation Army bell-ringers:

When Target announced the end of the Salvation Army’s exception to the store’s non-solicitation policy, it blamed an “increasing number of solicitation inquiries.”

“Gee, could some of those requests be coming from homosexual activists, who have had the Salvation Army in their gun sights since the charity decided to uphold marriage and refuse to fund homosexual relationships?” asked Robert Knight, director of Concerned Women for America’s Culture & Family Institute.

Note: this is possibly the longest sarcastic sentence beginning with "Gee" in recorded history. But there's more:

“Perhaps the organizers of a campaign created as a parody of the Salvation Army were among them?”

“Celebration Army,” a proposed fundraising effort, had planned to solicit donations at Minneapolis’ Nicollet Mall and other Minnesota locations this Christmas season with kettles and bell ringers. Funds would go to Open Arms of Minnesota to provide meals to those with HIV-AIDS.

Our secret plan revealed! Isn't it deliciously evil? We want to feed the hungry and take care of the sick. Next thing you know, we'll be giving the thirsty something to drink, clothing the naked, and visiting those in prison, thus turning Matthew 25:34-46 to our own nefarious purposes.

It's like we're using the word of God to advance the homosexual agenda. We rule! But there's more:

Celebration Army was created by Charlie Rounds, president and co-founder of RSVP Productions Inc., a St. Louis Park-based travel agency catering to “gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender [GLBT] travelers.”

Hah! Yes! It's all a plan to send the homos on vacation! Feeding the hungry and sending the homos on vacation! These are our number one priorities.

But Jerry Falwell seems to disagree. I'm not sure if I'm allowed to talk about this, because it's on a section of his website called Falwell Confidential, but I'm going to chance it. Jerry thinks our priority isn't Kinsey or gay vacations on the backs of Salvation-Army Santas; it's destroying Christmas.

The spiritual Grinches in our nation are accelerating their war against Christmas as never before.

I hate Christmas so much. And with all due respect to Concerned Women For America, Fox News seems pretty sure that destroying Christmas is liberals' number one priority. When Fox and Falwell agree, I'm afraid I'm leaning away from pedophilia and towards destroying Christmas. There just aren't enough hours in the day for both.

But adherents of this colossal effort to create a secular utopia have forgotten two significant realities:

1. Our Founders were men who explicitly embraced Judeo-Christian principles in the founding of this nation. Even those who were Deists openly recognized the need for the citizenry to fall to their collective knees and beseech God’s favor. They understood the need to recognize God in our Constitution, in our courts and in our schools.

Falwell's right, you know. The Founders thought God was so important that they mentioned him in the part of the Constitution that says what day it was signed:

Done in Convention by the Unanimous Consent of the States present the Seventeenth Day of September in the Year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and Eighty seven...

See? It says "the Year of our LORD." Obviously the Framers meant "Separation of church and state is a bunch of crap." Maybe we shouldn't destroy Christmas after all, guys.

2. Our fellow citizens do not want a spiritual sanitization effort to sweep out all vestiges of Christianity from the public square. One need look no further than an AOL poll this week. An astounding 89 percent of respondents (as of Wednesday afternoon) answered in the affirmative to the question, “Should religion be included in public holiday celebrations?”

Absolutely astounding. Look, I know how important it is to all of us to win the war on Christmas. But I think we're going to have to bow to the will of the AOL-using community here. If we're not accountable to the membership of AOL, to whom are we going to be accountable?

So, good point, Jerry. Maybe I'll go back to pedophilia after all. After all, it's the Ultimate Goal.

I'm So Funny

2004-12-12T10:42:00.000-05:00

So NASA administrator Sean O'Keefe is going to retire. You know what I bet he's going to miss? Going, "Come on, people, this isn't rocket science." I bet that never gets old.

The War On Checks and Balances

2004-12-10T10:43:00.000-05:00

Democrats are desperately in search of a narrative, everyone seems to agree. Okay, well, here's the story I think we should be telling about the Republicans. (It has the particular advantage of being true.)

It's the oldest story in government: they want power, and they'll do anything to get it. They hate checks and balances. They hate accountability. They hate the rule of law, because it stands between them and more power. They want to destroy any institution they can't control.

Hence all the meaningless garbage about "activist judges"--the judiciary has power over the President, and they can't stand it. Hence "tort reform"--juries are not under their control, so their power must be limited. Hence their interest in destroying Senate procedural rules like the filibuster--anything that can check executive power is a threat. Hence their loathing for universities and intellectuals--universities teach students to question the beliefs of those in power. Hence their weird triumphalism over the Dan Rather scandal, and their bizarre insistence that the whole media is against them.

And, in today's news, hence their vehement opposition to the international rule of law. The U.N. and the international legal structure which the US fought so hard to build only works if the US follows the rules it advocates. For the right, this idea is poison. Even if the rules clearly benefit us (like the Geneva Conventions, which protect our soldiers), they are rules, so they have to go.

This is why we hear lawmakers like Rep. Scott Garrett (R-N.J.), laser beams shooting from their eyes as they swat helicopters away from their scaly snouts, saying things like:

"To me the question should not be whether Kofi Annan should be in charge. To me the larger question is whether he should be in jail at this point in time."

You can hear the pain in his voice, can't you? It hurts him, to have to say these things about Kofi Annan. Either that, or the amphetamines are wearing off.

Over at the National Review ("Barking Mad, Feeling Good"), Andrew McCarthy is stirred to righteous anger by the Red Cross' daring to suggest, in private meetings with US officials, that the US shouldn't be abusing prisoners at Guantanamo.

It is high time for the American people to ask: Just what is international law? Is it a body of obligations, rooted in the principles of consent and comity, that provides sovereign nations with a path toward avoiding provocation and bloodshed? Or is it a subversion by which foreign entities and their activist nongovernmental organizations trump democratic choices and sovereign self-determination?

Guess which one he thinks it is. Hint: after finishing his article, you may find yourself worrying that international human rights organizations are trying to poison our food supply.

Presumably it's this kind of brilliant work that leaves Michelle Malkin so outraged that Andrew McCarthy is not a candidate in Legal Affairs magazine's on-line poll, asking people to select the greatest living legal thinkers. Inexplicably, Malkin does not seem outraged that they omitted Bozo the Clown, a legal thinker of comparable distinction.

You know why? Because Bozo, like all funny people, represents a potential threat to Republican power. Humor is the last, best weapon of the little people against power that takes itself too seriously.

Watch out, clown, your day will come.

This Man Thinks "No Limit Texas Hold'em" Is A Theory Of Constitutional Rights

2004-12-09T01:03:00.000-05:00

Okay, you want examples of embarassing Thomas decisions? Here you go. From Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, where Thomas--failing to bring any other justice, even Scalia, around to his bizarre, monarchical view of presidential powers--found it okay to detain someone, forever, on the mere say-so of the president:

Undeniably, Hamdi has been deprived of a serious interest, one actually protected by the Due Process Clause. Against this, however, is the Government's overriding interest in protecting the Nation. If a deprivation of liberty can be justified by the need to protect a town, the protection of the Nation, a fortiori, justifies it.

It's just that simple in Thomas' mind. The security of the Nation is at stake, so "the protection of the Nation, a fortiori, justifies it." Following this reasoning, what deprivation of liberty would not be justifiable "a fortiori"? No one's liberty can be more important than the protection of a nation, right? Thomas seems to balance them one-to-one. This is the reasoning of Korematsu, which I think even most right-wingers can agree is an embarassment. I hope.

In Thomas' mind, the war on terrorism means you have no rights at all. This sounds like hyperbole, but it's not--this is what he thinks our Constitution means. This is what he thinks the Framers fought for. This is his best work. Welcome to the world of Clarence Thomas.

"Embarassment" doesn't begin to cover it.

The Truth About the Monster Thickburger

2004-12-07T15:26:00.000-05:00

One of the bloggers over at Southern Appeal has a self-righteous post about the new Monster Thickburger, a giant piece of meat selling for $5.49 at Hardee's.

He thinks we liberals will be offended by this.

Of course this will offend all the usual suspects. I have no doubt that the health and safety Nazis will add this to their crusade against fun. The Monster Thickburger will take its place alongside SUVs and guns as the third member of the eco-hostile Axis of Evil.

Heh. No, Joel, we liberals are thrilled; this particular right-wing habit (unlike, say, pre-emptive war) has no impact on us at all. We'd also recommend you right-wingers take up smoking, and driving with horse-blinders on.

You see, the Monster Thickburger is just evolution having its way with people who don't believe in it.

The War on Terror Is a War of Values

2004-12-07T13:29:00.000-05:00

There's an important post by Digby, suggesting a new theme for Democrats: we should lead the war on terror because, at heart, it's a war on fundamentalism:

We start by having the womens' groups decrying the Islamic FUNDAMENTALIST view of womens rights. These FUNDAMENTALISTS want to roll back the clock and make women answer to men. In AMERICA we don't believe in that. Then we have the Human Rights Campaign loudly criticizing the Islamic FUNDAMENTALISTS for it's treatment of gays. In AMERICA we believe that all people have inalienable rights. The ACLU puts out a statement about the lack of civil liberties in Islamic FUNDAMENTALIST theocracies. In AMERICA we believe in the Bill of Rights, not the word of unelected mullahs.

Good idea. Take it further: Democrats have always led the war on fundamentalism. Liberalism is the opposite of fundamentalism. We are the party that stands for American values, the opposite of everything the Taliban and their ilk believe. Democrats represent equality, freedom, justice, the rule of law, everything we're supposed to be fighting for around the world, in Afghanistan (and, now that we have no choice, in Iraq).

And Republicans have fundamentally misunderstood the nature of the war on terror. They've failed to see that it's a moral struggle, a struggle about values. They think we can win by dragging America through the dirt. They want to throw away our Constitution by holding people forever without trial; they want to turn a blind eye to torture; they want to quiet dissent. Just look at Bush's expression when someone asks him a hard question.

They don't understand that we win by being good, by being the good guys. Strength means more than military power--you have to be strong in your heart, strong enough to win without debasing yourself. In a war for hearts and minds, you can't win any other way.

This is why people like Sean Hannity are on the wrong side. His book is called "Deliver Us from Evil: Defeating Terrorism, Despotism, and Liberalism." (On principle, I'm not providing a link.) "Defeating Liberalism" is Osama bin Laden's job, not ours. It's what Mullah Omar tries to do every day. It's what Kim Jong Il has mastered in North Korea.

Defeating terrorism is liberalism. The war on terror is a war of values between liberals and fundamentalists. Time to pick sides.

A Permanent Majority of Visigoths

2004-12-06T16:46:00.000-05:00

So Newsweek thinks they know what Karl Rove's secret plan is. Apparently it has something to do with creating a "permanent majority," whatever that means. (Sounds a little spooky to me--in order to create a "permanent majority," you'd need to come up with a "final solution," don't you think?)

Anyway, Newsweek hasn't got a clue. Senior investigative journalists in The Sneaky Rabbit's newsroom have uncovered Rove's true plan, which involves completely getting rid of the federal tax code. How will they pay for a federal government without taxes?

One word: plunder.

Why not? It worked for the Vikings. Simply raid and pillage whichever other countries still have cash. Sounds crazy, I know, but it ties in neatly with Bush's secret plan to replace his Treasury Secretary with those hordes of irritating Visigoths from the CapitalOne commercials (first reported right here at The Sneaky Rabbit.) Next time you see Karl on TV, think, "Yaaaaarrr." It makes sense, right?

In a related development, radio behemoth Clear Channel will shortly begin broadcasting content from toilet behemoth Fox News.

Yar.

I've Lost That Loving Feeling

2004-12-03T14:02:00.000-05:00

So apparently it's okay to use evidence gained by torture against Guantanamo detainees.

Evidence gained by torture can be used by the U.S. military in deciding whether to imprison a foreigner indefinitely at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as an enemy combatant, the government says.

Of course, this is an obvious incentive to torture. Good thing we don't have a problem with that.

A confidential report to Army generals in Iraq in December 2003 warned that members of an elite military and CIA task force were abusing detainees, a finding delivered more than a month before Army investigators received the photographs from Abu Ghraib prison that touched off investigations into prisoner mistreatment.

Meanwhile, former CIA director George Tenet wants to stop the internet from getting into the wrong hands:

[...] Tenet yesterday called for new security measures to guard against attacks on the United States that use the Internet, which he called "a potential Achilles' heel."

"I know that these actions will be controversial in this age when we still think the Internet is a free and open society with no control or accountability," he told an information-technology security conference in Washington, "but ultimately the Wild West must give way to governance and control."

[...] Access to networks like the World Wide Web might need to be limited to those who can show they take security seriously, he said.

I take security seriously! I take security seriously!

So does Brian Boyle, principal deputy associate attorney general of the United States (do you think his business cards have to be two-sided?), who explained to a federal judge yesterday why the US should be able to detain as "enemy combatants" people who've never been near a battlefield:

"The military has an interest in holding people who pose a risk," Brian Boyle, principal deputy associate attorney general, said of the Pentagon's decision to hold some people for nearly three years. "We're not detaining these people just because there's some enjoyment in it."

Do you think anyone actually suggested that Brian enjoys detaining people, or is the PDAAG sounding just a tad defensive here?

[...] "If a little old lady in Switzerland writes checks to what she thinks is a charitable organization for Afghanistan orphans, but it's really supporting . . . al Qaeda, is she an enemy combatant?" the judge asked.

Boyle said the woman could be, but it would depend on her intentions. "It would be up to the military to decide as to what to believe," he said.

You know, when I used to hear Republicans arguing that we need the Second Amendment because the people need guns to defend ourselves from the government, it never occurred to me that they meant defending ourselves against them. Okay, guys, I've learned my lesson--you can stop the scary stuff now.

The Truth About Christopher Hitchens

2004-12-02T01:42:00.000-05:00

The Sneaky Rabbit's intrepid research team has discovered that Christopher Hitchens, (pictured below appearing on tonight's Daily Show) looks like the frikkin' twin brother of Herbert Lom, better known as Chief Inspector Dreyfus, the villain from the Pink Panther movies. Judge for yourself:

For me, the scary thing is that between the two of them, Hitchens actually has the more intense evil-mastermind glare.

We report, you decide. Of course, you may remember that Chief Inspector Dreyfus came to a rather bad end:

In the memorable scene pictured above, Dreyfus has just blown up the United Nations with his Doomsday Machine. Hitchens, take note: it may sound like a good idea, but this was the beginning of the end for the Chief Inspector. Put down that laser.

Casting the First Stone in Alabama

2004-12-01T11:57:00.000-05:00

Last night I saw an excellent bumpersticker: "ARE YOU FOLLOWING JESUS THIS CLOSE?"

The answer from Alabama, where state lawmaker Gerald Allen, R-Cottondale, wants to ban all books that mention homosexuality from Alabama libraries, is an emphatic no:

Allen said that if his bill passes, novels with gay protagonists and college textbooks that suggest homosexuality is natural would have to be removed from library shelves and destroyed.

"I guess we dig a big hole and dump them in and bury them," he said.

So much for casting the first stone. One wonders if he's talking about the books, or the gays.

Law Schools' Faces Get in the Way of Military's Fist

2004-11-29T23:59:00.000-05:00

A federal judge ruled today that law schools have a First Amendment right to enforce their anti-discrimination policies against recruiters from the military. In other words, the policies say, if you discriminate against gays (as the military does), you can't recruit on their campus.

Of course, there was a dissent:

"What disturbs me personally and as a judge," Judge Aldisert wrote, "is that the law schools seem to approach this question as an academic exercise, a question on a constitutional law examination or a moot court topic, with no thought of the effect of their action on the supply of military lawyers and military judges."

What disturbs me personally and as a citizen is that the military seems to approach this question as if there were some legitimate reason to discriminate, as if there were some reason why the British and Israeli militaries could include gays but ours couldn't, with no thought of the effect of their action on the supply of military lawyers and military judges.

Howard J. Bashman, who helped write a supporting brief on behalf of students who favored the law, said the decision would hurt the military and the public. "A ruling of this sort will cause the military to end up with a lower quality of lawyer," Mr. Bashman said.

The Sneaky Rabbit wonders if Mr. Bashman has noticed that policies like Don't Ask, Don't Tell will cause the military to end up with a lower quality of lawyer.

Why is everybody blaming the law schools for having an antidiscrimination policy, instead of blaming the military for making itself ineligible to recruit on any self-respecting campus?

P.S.: I don't usually comment on other blogs, because that's just too meta. But I'm disturbed by people who, like the Volokh Conspiracy's David Bernstein, describe this decision as "allowing private universities to discriminate against military recruiters."

David actually supports the decision, because he likes the idea of defying antidiscrimination laws. But this is really offensive spin. THE LAW SCHOOLS ARE NEUTRALLY APPLYING THE SAME POLICY TO THE MILITARY THAT THEY APPLY TO EVERYBODY ELSE.

Here's how it works: The law school asks all recruiting employers to sign a piece of paper saying, "We won't discriminate against people on the basis of race, religion, blah blah, or sexual orientation." The military says, "We can't sign that, because we discriminate against gays." The law school says, "Oh, we're sorry. If you don't sign, you can't come onto campus."

This is the opposite of discrimination.

And if you want to argue that it's unfair to include DADT within anti-discrimination policies, because DADT doesn't discriminate against gays, ask yourself whether it'd be okay for the military to allow Jews to serve on condition that they didn't let anyone know they're Jewish.

Those Lucky Immigrants

2004-11-29T16:59:00.000-05:00

Headline in the Times: "Bush Picks Immigrant Who Rose to Executive for Commerce Post."

What if you're an immigrant who didn't become the CEO of a major company?

By all reports Virginia Feliz had been a happy 6-year-old before her mother's expulsion [deportation]. Two months later, doctors at the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Program of Bronx-Lebanon Hospital Center found that she had a major depressive disorder marked by hyperactivity, nightmares, bed-wetting, frequent crying and fights at school. Now, medical records show, she takes antidepressant drugs and sees a therapist, but the problems persist.

[....] In Brooklyn, similar cases cause concern for Birdette Gardiner-Parkinson, the clinical director at the Caribbean Community Mental Health program at Kingsbrook Jewish Medical Center. In one, she said, an outgoing, academically gifted 12-year-old began failing classes, mutilating herself and having suicidal thoughts after her Colombian father disappeared into removal proceedings. In another case, nightmares and school failure plague the youngest of six children whose father, a cabdriver with 20 years' residence in the United States, was deported to Nigeria six hours after he reported for a green card interview, seemingly for unpaid traffic fines, Ms. Gardiner-Parkinson said.

So maybe they were illegal immigrants, the people who left these children behind. But do you want to be the one to explain to their children why they have to live without a parent? Why it's morally right that they live without a parent?

Do Your Homework Next Time, People

2004-11-29T14:30:00.000-05:00

So apparently most Americans want a Supreme Court justice who'll uphold Roe.

Fifty-nine percent said Bush should choose a supporter of Roe v. Wade, while 31 percent said they want a nominee who will try to overturn the decision, according to the poll. Support for Roe v. Wade was seen among both men and women, across most age and income groups, and in urban, suburban and rural areas, AP said.

Presumably millions of these people were in the 51% that voted for Bush. Boy, are they going to be mad when they find out Bush was the Republican candidate!

Thank You, VH1

2004-11-27T01:51:00.000-05:00

Without you, I would probably have been unable to find out what Sir Mix-A-Lot thinks about the fitness craze of the early 1980s.

Why do I feel like shooting myself?

Notes On A Scene From "13 Going On 30" That My Family Is Watching Downstairs

2004-11-26T23:25:00.000-05:00

So there's this romantic scene where Jennifer Garner and some dude are smooching on a playground in New York City, and I think I can provide you with some personal insight into it.

In this scene, you can see Manhattan in the background. Jennifer Garner and the dude are lying on the ground, and apparently not worried about there being nasty stuff on the ground, even though this is a playground in New York at night. Also there is an inexplicable lack of winos and weird dudes watching them.

Now, it so happens that I walked past that exact spot earlier this year. The view of the bridge and the way the ground curves along the river are very distinctive. There's no playground there; it's a little park in Greenpoint. You wouldn't want to make out with somebody late at night there. Not even Jennifer Garner.

When I walked past, for example, there was a big fat guy lying on his back in a little Speedo on the grass. He looked dead. It was not at all romantic. There were several people lounging around who were not at all concerned about the nearly-naked possibly-dead guy, or much of anything else. I imagine these people had to be removed so that Jennifer Garner could make out with the guy there, and I also imagine that they cleaned the ground for her.

My friend and I walked past the little park, and then turned so that I could take a picture of my friend with the bridge in the background. As I was taking her picture, I realized that the bush a few feet behind her was not uninhabited. There was a head popping out of it. This also was not romantic.

It was the head of a rather disturbed-looking man who seemed not to have any clothes on. I took the picture quickly and we moved on. The man in the bush retracted his head. I still have a picture of the head in the bush.

I wonder if they noticed that guy when they cleaned the sketchy characters out of the park for the playground scene. If not, it'd be fun to go back and ask him what he thought of Jennifer Garner's performance. Maybe we could get him into a debate with the fat possibly-dead guy.

Well, the theme of "13 Going On 30" seems to have something to do with sudden life lessons in maturity. I imagine that if they ever release a "making of" DVD extra, and it includes the real story of the shooting of the playground make-out scene, we'll see that everyone involved learned some interesting lessons. Especially the dude in the bush.

Liveblogging the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade

2004-11-25T11:58:00.000-05:00

...I think the muppets are lip-syncing.

Rock N' Roll Fact Check

2004-11-24T10:27:00.000-05:00

Welcome to Rock N' Roll Fact Check.

Just now, I heard a song by Maroon 5, where the singer insists that "I don't mind spending every day / Out on the corner in the pouring rain."

But according to their website, Maroon 5 is from Los Angeles.

What corner in LA gets "pouring rain" "every day"? The intersection of Implausible Street and Lying to the American People Avenue.

Shame on you, Maroon 5. The American people deserve the truth.

"A Booby-Trapped Raghead Cadaver"

2004-11-22T18:33:00.000-05:00

The "hearts and minds" campaign starts with our hearts and minds, and apparently we're losing quite badly. Media Matters posts this excerpt from "Imus in the Morning":

Well people, [war] is still hell -- as the young Marine who plugged that bastard clearly understood from the previous day's combat when he had lost a comrade to a booby-trapped raghead cadaver and had gotten shot in the face himself. Was the NBC News embed unit there to record any of that, so that we could witness that bit of action from our living room sofas? Apparently not. Rather, we are treated to this episode, without benefit of combat context, so that we can have our knee-jerk "moral confusion" and guilt buttons pushed.

And pushed by what? By pictures of a soldier dispatching an enemy combatant who had sworn fidelity to some bearded fatwa fairy...

There's a reason those "knee-jerk 'moral confusion' and guilt buttons" are there, you despicable jackass. It's to keep us human.

"Without benefit of combat context"?

There is no context that matters. That's the point. Shooting a helpless wounded soldier has been wrong for hundreds of years, and it's still wrong. Even if the other side breaks the rules. That's the point. War is hell: sometimes you have to play by the rules, and risk your life for the rules, because that's the only way to know you're fighting for the right side.

CNN Tonight

2004-11-21T11:18:00.000-05:00

5:00: The Dulcet Tones of Wolf Blitzer, TV's Whitest Man
6:00: The Lou Dobbs Rabid Xenophobia Hour
7:00-9:00: I Don't Care
9:00: Larry King Makes Awkward Small Talk With A Wrinkly Rich Person To Whom Something Mildly Interesting Happened in 1983, Then Gets to the Bottom of the Mystery of How Bob Woodward's Kids Are Doing
10:00: Dizzying Tautologies With Aaron Brown

I can watch everything but the Xenophobia Hour. Honestly, Lou, what did immigrants and foreigners ever do to you?

The Way Things Are Going

2004-11-19T19:28:00.000-05:00

You know who I think Bush is going to appoint as Secretary of the Treasury?

Those hordes of irritating Visigoths from the CapitalOne commercials.

Like Dogs After A Chipmunk

2004-11-18T19:04:00.000-05:00

Prediction: Even if Hillary Clinton dies without running for President, the media will not stop looking for reasons to think she's running. A full 25% of American reporters will camp out permanently on her grave-site, squinting at the inscription on her tombstone, trying to read a campaign into it.

A Christmas Miracle

2004-11-18T14:39:00.000-05:00

All I want for Christmas is for us to not invade Iran.

Really.

The Era of Big Government Is Over

2004-11-18T11:34:00.000-05:00

BBC News has a fascinating little portrait of life in Grover Norquist's paradise: complete laissez-faire, no government bureaucracy, everything privatized. I'm talking, of course, about Somalia.

My favorite part of the BBC story is the feedback request form at the end:

Have you lived in a country without a government? Send us your experiences.

They're practically begging for bizarre fantasies from members of the Club for Growth.*

*Note: I will not, under any circumstances, provide a link to the website of the Club for Growth. Protocol be damned.

The GOP's Awkwardly Big Tent

2004-11-16T20:53:00.000-05:00

Boy, this one's not easy to spin:

House Republicans were contemplating changing their rules in order to allow members indicted by state prosecutors to remain in a leadership post, a move designed to benefit Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) in case he is charged by a Texas grand jury that has indicted three of his political associates, GOP leaders said today.

So watch the Republican spin doctor fake towards the endzone, then make a surprise dash towards total absurdity:

Changing the rule is not a sign that lawmakers think DeLay will be indicted, Cantor said, but rather a public rebuke of an investigation they feel is wholly unwarranted.

Right. That'll show those prosecutors! And if those damn law enforcement officials continue trying to enforce the law, maybe the House GOP should change their rules to let child molesters serve in leadership positions! That'd really teach 'em!

I think it's now officially okay to mess with Texas.

Purple Prose

2004-11-16T13:53:00.000-05:00

One of the greatest sentences of the year is snuggled into the end of today's New York Times story on Chuck Schumer's decision not to run for governor:

"Now that America has gone red, New York has special strength because we are both blue and talented," said Mr. Green.

When they said stop and smell the roses, this is what they meant.

The Insider Cabinet

2004-11-16T13:36:00.000-05:00

So Rice will succeed Powell, and Hadley will succeed Rice. (Based on their records, those are probably the last two successes either of them will ever experience.) Apparently Bush has no hiring criteria other than loyalty and closeness to the president.

Mrs. Polonius makes a prediction: "Karl Rove will be the next Secretary of Homeland Security. And then Bush's dog will get Interior."

A nation waits...

Showdown at the Senate Judiciary Committee

2004-11-14T22:23:00.000-05:00

The hyenas are beginning to circle around Arlen Specter, the pro-choice Republican who--according to Republican rules of succession--is entitled to take the chairmanship of the Senate Judiciary Committee in January. But there is fear and loathing in the Republican caucus.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Sen. Arlen Specter must prove to his Republican colleagues that he is the right man to head the Senate Judiciary Committee in the next Congress, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said Sunday.

Onto one end of the dusty street steps lonely Arlen Specter, the Last Republican Moderate, spurs clinking defiantly in the desolate wind. Onto the other end of the street steps a squinting Rick Santorum, clad in tight black leather: the man who saved Arlen's life in the fierce primary shootout with Black Pat Toomey. Rick Santorum, the man who risked his own skin to save Brother Arlen, teeth gritted with a horrible determination that Specter not leave this town walking upright.

Bill Frist, the bartender, wipes his spectacles on his apron and shudders as he calls out the rules of the duel. "Count of three, gentlemen, then fire when ready."

Specter is all alone, and knows it. But behind Santorum there is an army of angry cowboys, with Hoppin' John Cornyn already describing Specter's gruesome death to the local reporter, and Orrin Hatch, his suit and tie somehow looking cleaner than ever in the dust and wind, muttering darkly about vengeance.

The town's liberals crouch in doorways and behind overturned tables and wagon-wheels, watching fearfully as the gunmen spit on their hands and test the wind. They say on days like this you can hear the sound of Robert Bork's laugh, echoing through the back alleys and across the dried-up pond.

A fit of coughing can be heard from Bill Rehniquist's room upstairs in the saloon. "Hurry," says the doctor, poking his head out the window of old Bill's room, "he hasn't got much time." Crazy Tom Coburn growls something about rampant lesbianism, and Santorum grins a little wider.

The sun beats down. Frist begins to count.

Another Loss

2004-11-14T14:18:00.000-05:00

A moment of silence wouldn't be appropriate; it wasn't ODB's style. But spend a few minutes today appreciating how deeply, brilliantly weird he was:

Yo...!
I come with that ol' loco
Style from my vocal
Couldn't peep it with a pair of bi-focals
I'm no joker! Play me as a joker
Be on you like a house on fire! Smoke ya!
Crews be actin like they gangs, anyway
Be like, "Warriors! Come out and playiyay!"
Burn me, I get into shit, I let it out like diarrhea
Got burnt once, but that was only gonorrhea
Dirty, I keep shit stinks in my drawers
So I can get fzza-funky for yah
Murder, taste the flame of the Wu-Tang RAHH!
Here comes the Tiger verse Crane!
Ow, be like wild with my style
Punk! You playing me, chump, you get DUMPED
WU! Is comin THROUGH! At a theatre near YOU!
And get funk like a SHOE!
What?!

Dickens on Ashcroft

2004-11-13T18:26:00.000-05:00

From the Washington Post:

Attorney General John D. Ashcroft said yesterday that federal courts have endangered national security by ruling against the Bush administration on issues related to the war on terrorism.[...]

"The danger I see here is that intrusive judicial oversight and second-guessing of presidential determinations in these critical areas can put at risk the very security of our nation in a time of war," Ashcroft said in a speech at the Federalist Society's national convention.

He added later: "Our nation and our liberty will be all the more in jeopardy as the tendency for judicial encroachment and ideological micromanagement are applied to the sensitive domain of national defense."

So much for swearing to uphold the Constitution. Mr. Bring-Back-the-Monarchy was referring, apparently, to a recent decision saying that President Bush couldn't lock someone up incommunicado forever without counsel or a hearing (Hamdi v. Rumsfeld), and a more recent decision that, duh, the Geneva Conventions apply wherever there's an actual war going on, even if the President says "no they don't." (Hamdan v. Rumsfeld).

And herein he ranged with that very numerous class of impostors, who are quite as determined to keep up appearances to themselves, as to their neighbors.

Charles Dickens, Our Mutual Friend, p. 52

Narcissus in the East Room

2004-11-12T13:26:00.000-05:00

Here's a New York Times goof, which was corrected immediately -- but not fast enough for the alert readers of THE SNEAKY RABBIT.

Is this some kind of a shot at Blair for being too much a Bush-clone?

We report, you decide.

A Brief Review of the Scott Peterson Trial

2004-11-08T19:55:00.000-05:00

At least, for those precious seconds while the media is broadcasting this irrelevant crap, they're not misinforming Americans about something that matters.

Eerie Parallels Between Colin Powell's "My American Journey" and Hunter Thompson's "Kingdom of Fear," Part One

2004-11-07T23:08:00.000-05:00

Okay, as a public service and a celebration of our democracy, THE SNEAKY RABBIT will now begin an occasional feature in which we note the weird similarities between the autobiographies of Colin Powell and Hunter S. Thompson. We begin in early childhood:

"They say our earliest memories involve a trauma, and mine does. I was four[...] I was playing on the floor and stuck a hairpin in an electrical outlet. I remember the blinding flash and the shock lifting me off the floor." ["My American Journey," page 7]

"My first face-to-face confrontation with the FBI occurred when I was nine years old. Two grim-looking Agents came to our house and terrified my parents by saying that I was a "prime suspect" in the case of a Federal Mailbox being turned over in the path of a speeding bus.[...] I had done it, of course, and I had done it with plenty of help. It was carefully plotted and planned, a deliberate ambush[....] I clearly recall thinking, Well, this is it. These are G-men....WHACK! Like a flash of nearby lightning that lights up the sky for three or four terrifying split seconds before you hear the thunder[....] What? What if I didn't confess? That was the question.[....] I learned a powerful lesson: Never believe the first thing an FBI agent tells you about anything." ["Kingdom of Fear," page 3]

We report, you decide.

Shut Up Shut Up Shut Up

2004-11-03T22:32:00.000-05:00

Three years after a catastrophic terrorist attack which sent President Bush's approval ratings up to 90%, a liberal (yes, Kerry's pretty liberal) senator (remember, senators aren't supposed to be able to win) from Massachusetts (the rules already said a northeastern liberal couldn't win--even before Mass became the home of gay marriage) who rose to national prominence as a leader of the anti-Vietnam-war protest movement came within 22 electoral votes of beating a Republican president in a time of intense anxiety about terrorism and an ongoing war.

Can we please stop talking about "what Democrats did wrong"? I'm all in favor of re-examining our strategy, and looking to build a permanent majority. I think it's essential. But for the love of Christ, shut up about who lost this election. The laws of physics lost this election. We almost walked on water. That's nothing to be ashamed of. Seriously.

Good News, Bad News

2004-11-03T10:24:00.001-05:00

THE GOOD NEWS:

History will place the blame for the disaster in Iraq squarely and unambiguously on George W. Bush and his radical conservatism. The right wing will not be able to blame it on liberal Democrats. We have been spared generations of arguments that "liberal weakness lost the Middle East."

THE BAD NEWS:

We're all going to die.

Hide the Women and Children

2004-11-03T10:22:00.000-05:00

Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.

H.L. Mencken

The One Night When the Media Doesn't Control the Story

2004-11-02T20:27:00.000-05:00

Norah O'Donnell on MSNBC just referred to "the Karl Rove, in his war room..." Then, a little later, "The Ken Mehlmann." I highly approve of this approach and recommend the rest of the media pay closer attention.

Election Prediction

2004-11-01T09:19:00.000-05:00

Alan Keyes will be on a reality-TV show within a year.

A Special Moment

2004-10-31T14:18:00.000-05:00

Today Thomas Sowell, a professional idiot over at Townhall.com, writes a column about how awful the media is for publishing the disappearance-of-enough-explosive-to-stock-car-bombs-for-months story.

This is, of course, an essential part of the conservative strategy: attack all sources of information that are not controlled by the right. In its most extreme form, this approach leads to book-burning, brainwashing, etc, but even Karl Rove has a hard time spinning those things as pro-democracy, so for the moment we stick with these dumb "media bias" arguments.

Okay, okay, you knew that. I just wanted to point out a remarkable moment in the history of rhetoric:

Evan Thomas of Newsweek has estimated that media bias may add as much as 15 points to Kerry's vote.

...thus actually disproving his own argument by making it. No anti-Bush media would ever print such a preposterous piece of anti-Democratic spin.

Nimble! And thanks to Mr. Sowell for bringing it to our attention.

SNEAKYRABBIT Special: Translation of the New Bin Laden Tape

2004-10-30T01:12:00.000-04:00

Because Bin Laden's latest attack on the American people involves forcing us to listen to moronic analysis of whether his latest tape proves he's rooting for Bush or Kerry, we here at THE SNEAKY RABBIT are pleased to offer a translation of the key passage unavailable anywhere else in the media.

Your security is not in the hands of Kerry or Bush or al Qaeda. Your security is in your own hands. Any nation that does not attack us will not be attacked.

Translation:

I don't particularly care whether Kerry or Bush wins. See, I want to kill all of you equally. I'm fucking Osama Bin Laden. You know how little difference Ralph Nader sees between the presidential candidates? I can't even see any difference between them and Nader. I can't fucking tell any of you apart, because my eerily pleasant eyes are completely clouded by bloodlust. I am trying to kill you. All of you. Period.

Do I prefer Kerry? Well, is he American? Then I prefer to kill him. But please don't think killing Kerry will make me want to kill Bush any less. I also continue to be interested in killing you.

I am getting pretty tired of people arguing about who I'm rooting for. I'm rooting for you all to fucking die. Especially Howard Fineman.

A Brief Review of Tom Waits' "Real Gone"

2004-10-29T11:43:00.000-04:00

The last album, Mule Variations, really was a series of variations on the theme of "Get Behind the Mule": "You got to get behind the mule in the morning and plow."

Real Gone is one big "GODDAMN IT, NO I DON'T! GBLARGHAYAABLAAR!"

The Truth About Hobbits

2004-10-28T19:47:00.000-04:00

You realize what this means, of course.

The Lords of the Rhymes now officially have a healthier relationship with the truth than the Bush administration.

I'm Missing Something Again

2004-10-27T23:33:00.000-04:00

About this Raisin Bran Crunch commercial that they keep playing:

So the guy is sitting at his desk eating a bowl of Raisin Bran Crunch. And the boss comes by, and says hey, Johnson, didn't I fire you? In fact, didn't I fire you yesterday, and the day before that, and the day before that?

But Johnson can't hear his boss, because the Raisin Bran Crunch he's chewing makes a noise inside his head like a trash compactor being amplified through Neil Young's guitar amp. It's really quite unpleasant.

As I see it, there are only two conclusions here: either Johnson's boss stops by at exactly the same moment every day -- which seems unlikely; the boss seems to have been on a random stroll, not a regular patrol -- or, as I'm forced to conclude, Johnson has been eating Raisin Bran Crunch for at least four consecutive days.

Now, I eat Raisin Bran sometimes. And it always worries me a little bit that if you don't wash the bowl immediately, the leftover Raisin Bran turns into a sort of brown teflon coating which can only be scaped off with power tools.

So can you imagine what Johnson's intestines look like after four days of non-stop Raisin Bran Crunch? Between that and the soul-destroying noise of his own chewing, one imagines that Johnson is by now just a shell of a man, frail and disturbed, barely able to pronounce his own name without bursting into tears.

In a way, he's a perfect symbol for all of us who can't tear ourselves away from politics this Zero Week.

And the Raisin Bran Crunch, of course, is a symbol of Bob Novak.

The Least of These

2004-10-27T16:48:00.000-04:00

Next time you hear someone say it doesn’t make a difference whether Bush or Kerry wins, ask them to repeat it 37 times—once for each time John Ashcroft has overruled a local prosecutor’s decision not to seek the death penalty, and ordered the prosecutor to seek death against their better judgment.

That’s 37 people it makes a pretty big difference to.

I suspect there are others.

It's Worse Than You Thought

2004-10-26T17:34:00.000-04:00

Thought I'd check to see how the wingnut community is handling the stress of Zero Week, so I wandered over to Townhall.com, "Your First Stop For Nuttery."

What's on their minds, apparently, is their own feces. "Every time I flush the toilet, I think of Congress," writes an exhilarated Paul Jacob. Apparently he's angry about water-saving toilets.

Which, frankly, is a scandal the liberal media has been covering up for years. Apparently the regulation began in 1992 or something, "And, with this, American frustration with their toilets began in earnest."

So that's when it was!

To me, the toilet is a triumph of private enterprise and human ingenuity.

Instead, I prefer to see what's left in the toilet bowl as a symbol of Congress. A clogged mass of disgusting waste.

[...]My wife complained to me, recently, about our twelve-year-old clogging the toilet again. I defended the poor kid. Don't blame kids, blame Congress!

I'm not kidding; it goes on for a whole column.

Maybe your kid wouldn't clog the toilet if you'd stop feeding him Grapes of Wrath and Sandwiches of Vitriol, Mr. Jacob.

And for the rest of you, look, I realize Townhall.com is an easy target, but I'm busy, and it's pretty damn funny. Check out the guy's picture! Can't you just see him staring into the toilet, muttering darkly to himself about the Clean Water Act?

Do you think he'll get a cabinet appointment if things go badly next Tuesday?

Are you ready to mutter darkly into your toilet yet?

.

UPDATE: Jawbones and his intrepid team of researchers have sent in this late-breaking picture and report from the front lines:

Paul Jacob reconstructing the scene...

A Brief Review of the Movie "White Chicks," Based Only On A Commercial For It I Saw On Comedy Central

2004-10-24T01:27:00.000-04:00

The only words that can adequately convey my horror and loathing are "toilet water in the ice-cube tray."

Dr. Thompson's Plea for Civility

2004-10-22T01:12:00.000-04:00

Some people say that George Bush should be run down and sacrificed to the Rat gods. But not me. No. I say it would be a lot easier to just vote the bastard out of office on November 2nd.

This is worth reading. After his plea for civility, Thompson writes his own press release:

Thompson, long known for the eerie accuracy of his political instincts, went on to denounce Ralph Nader as "a worthless Judas Goat with no moral compass."

"I endorsed John Kerry a long time ago," he said, "and I will do everything in my power, short of roaming the streets with a meat hammer, to help him be the next President of the United States."

I won't ruin the ending, but here's the build-up:

As we rode to the event, I told [Kerry] that Bush's vicious goons in the White House are perfectly capable of assassinating Nader and blaming it on him. His staff laughed, but the Secret Service men didn't. Kerry quickly suggested that I might make a good running mate, and we reminisced about trying to end the Vietnam War in 1972.

That was the year I first met him, at a riot on that elegant little street in front of the White House. He was yelling into a bullhorn and I was trying to throw a dead, bleeding rat over a black-spike fence and onto the president's lawn.

We're lucky to be alive.

The Worst System of Government, Except for All the Rest

2004-10-19T09:23:00.000-04:00

In case you were feeling like the candidates sometimes talk down to their audience, here's this recent survey of Tennessee voters:

only about half of Tennessee adults can accurately name Kerry as the candidate who supports rescinding the recent federal income tax cuts for people earning over $200,000 a year. About a quarter (23%) incorrectly attributed the proposal to Bush, and 27% admit they don’t know which candidate supports the measure. Similarly, only about half (50%) rightly name Bush as the candidate who favors giving parents tax-funded vouchers to help pay private or religious school tuition. Thirteen percent attribute the plan to Kerry, who actually opposes it. Over a third (37%) admit they don’t know.

Overall, in fact, Tennesseans averaged only two right answers when quizzed about which candidate held which view on the five issues. A fifth (20%) got no right answers, and 19% got one answer right. Another fifth (20%) got two right answers, and still another fifth (20%) got three right answers. Only 13% got four right answers, and a mere 8% got all of the answers right.

So I guess maybe it'd be appropriate for me to swallow my liberal elitism and accept that candidates are going to have to do some repeatin' to get their message across.

Then again, maybe even that wouldn't help:

Nevertheless, Tennesseans profess a high degree of interest in the campaign, with 71% describing themselves as “very interested,” and 23% as “somewhat interested.” Only 6% say they are “not at all interested.” ... Over a third (39%) say they watched the presidential debates at “every single opportunity.” Another 22% say they watched “most of the time,” and about a quarter (24%) say they watched “only some of the time.” Just 16% say they never watched.

So they are paying attention. It's just not helping.

American democracy: a system wherein every four years, the most important decisions in the country are given to those least qualified to make them.

By which I mean, of course, the media.

Strict Constructionism

2004-10-16T13:55:00.000-04:00

Just for anyone who thinks it doesn't matter whether Bush or Kerry wins, a federal judge in Utah has recently given us a great example of what Bush meant when he said in the debate that he wouldn't appoint activist judges.

Judge Paul Cassell, a George W. Bush appointee in Utah, recently held that illegal immigrants have no rights under the Fourth Amendment.

In his May 2003 ruling, Cassell determined that Esparza-Mendoza, a Mexican national previously deported from the United States, was illegally detained by police in October 2002. However, Cassell also found that the violation was inconsequential because Esparza-Mendoza was not entitled to Fourth Amendment protections.

This may seem shocking to some. But Judge Cassell is clearly correct on the law. After all, look at the text of the Fourth Amendment:

The right of the people to be secure...against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated...

It's not like illegal immigrants are people, right?

Walrus v. Mouse

2004-10-14T15:43:00.000-04:00

The media's attempts to sound objective while fact-checking the debates are almost cute. They're like trying to report on a see-saw with a walrus on one side and a mouse on the other, and make it sound like the whole thing is balanced. Here's ABC News:

Kerry sharply criticized Bush on port security inspections of ship cargo, saying "95 percent come in today uninspected. That's not good enough."

Kerry's claim ignores that the manifests of all U.S.-bound cargo are screened before they reach American ports and all high-risk cargo is identified. U.S. officials then physically inspect the high-risk cargo which accounts for about 5 percent of the overall total.

Oh! So as long as the terrorists put their bombs on the manifest, that'll be fine, then.

Kerry says the see-saw is tipping heavily to the walrus's side. But Kerry's claim ignores that there is a mouse on the other side of the see-saw.

Honestly, do they read this stuff before they post it?

The Next Republican Talking Point

2004-10-12T09:09:00.000-04:00

John Kerry says stem cell research could help save Christopher Reeve's life.

In fact, Christopher Reeve is already dead.

John Kerry: there's what he says, and then there's the truth.

The Gray Lady Doth Protest Too Much

2004-10-11T09:56:00.000-04:00

I don't have much of an opinion on whether the First Amendment allows journalists to be jailed for refusing to disclose their sources. But yesterday's op-ed from the chairman and CEO of the New York Times is interesting.

It talks about how Times reporter Judy Miller is facing jail time for refusing to respond to a subpoena in the criminal investigation of the government officials who leaked CIA agent Valerie Plame's identity. So here's the Times' argument about why Miller shouldn't have to give information about White House officials who called her to talk about Plame:

The founders of our democracy understood that our government was also a human institution that was capable of mistakes and misdeeds. That is why they constructed a First Amendment that would give the press the ability to investigate problems in the official branches of our government and make them known to the public. In this way, the press was sensibly put in a position to help hold government accountable to its citizens.

An essential tool that the press must have if it is to perform its job is the ability to gather and receive information in confidence from those who would face reprisals for bringing important information about our government into the light of day for all of us to examine. Without an enforceable promise of confidentiality, sources would quickly dry up and the press would be left largely with only official government pronouncements to report.

Right! That sounds great. But in this case, Judy Miller is going to jail -- as best I can tell -- for refusing to expose government wrongdoing. The government is going after her here because she isn't "bringing important information about our government into the light of day." It's a little harder to be sympathetic when the press is actually protecting government officials who've misused their authority and their access to the press.

And I know, reporters are going to have to promise confidentiality to their sources. How about we just add another term to that contract: if you call me with confidential info, I'll go to jail to protect you, but if you call me looking to leak a national secret in order to retaliate against a political enemy, that's a story, and I'm going to report it. If you abuse the process and exploit confidentiality, expect to get burned.

Besides, it's nice to see the Times all up in arms about the duty to expose government wrongdoing, but it'd be a lot nicer to have seen it when we were all being scammed on WMDs.

Sometimes I get the feeling the press is suffering from a sort of collective Sucker Guilt -- they know they've been used to convey all sorts of misinformation, from WMDs and Saddam/9-11 links to the Swift Boat garbage, and every once in a while they spring up with a belated, and often irrelevant, defense of the Fourth Estate's sacred role in our democracy. That's great and everything, but how about just asking some tough questions once in a while?

Being Better Off

2004-10-10T21:19:00.000-04:00

Listen carefully when someone tries to justify the war in Iraq by saying, "The world is better off without Saddam Hussein." It's a rhetorical trap meant to ensnare liberals, but it speaks volumes about the people who use it.

"We're better off because of this war" is a long way from "we had no choice but to go to war." "Better off" is not a high bar. I'd be "better off" right now if I had a massage and a glass of 18-year-old Scotch. But that doesn't mean I'm going to send a hundred thousand troops to war to get them for me.

Clearly, the world is "better off" without Saddam Hussein. But anyone from the administration who justifies the war on that basis is quietly acknowledging that we did not go to war as a last resort. If we went to war just to make the world "better off"--without much, much more--then we fought an unjust war by almost any standard.

Which makes none of us better off.

Great Expectations

2004-10-09T13:55:00.000-04:00

Our President, from last night's debate:

I can see why people think that he changes position quite often. Because he does.

[...]

Look at the record of the man running for the president. They don't name him the most liberal in the United States Senate because he hasn't shown up to many meetings. They named him because of his votes. And it's reality.

Has anyone ever asked President Bush how Kerry could be (a) the most liberal member of the Senate, and (b) an inconsistent flip-flopper?

Does anyone even expect the Republican spin to make sense anymore?

A Cheap Shot I'd Like to Take

2004-10-09T13:18:00.000-04:00

Question I'd like to see someone ask President Bush:

Of all the things that have gone wrong during your three and a half years in office, can you name one that you haven't blamed on 9/11?

A Brief Review of "Tough Crowd with Colin Quinn"

2004-10-07T23:30:00.000-04:00

So painfully not funny, it's like watching half an hour of someone kicking a nun.