Something Someone Else Said

"Lately I have been having issues with the term “Founders” or “Founding Fathers” because it’s pretty nebulous and undefined. There’s Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, who signed the Declaration of Independence but had no involvement in the Constitution. Alexander Hamilton and James Madison did a lot of the heavy lifting in drafting the Constitution but neither signed the Declaration of Independence. Thomas Paine wrote Common Sense and worked for the Continental Congress but pretty soon became a persona non grata thanks to his religious views. Patrick Henry gave the famous “Liberty or Death” speech but was also one of the most articulate voices against adopting the Constitution. Which of these are “Founders”? All of them? None?

Even if we accept all of these men as “Founding Fathers” (which I think most would), to say that they disagreed on fundamental political principles is the height of understatement. And an attempt to put together the varying strains of conservative thought under the same “Founders” rubric is overly simplistic and misguided," -Alex Knapp, Outside the Beltway.

I think the Founding Fathers would have agreed with this...

Your Tax Dollars At Work: Drug Warriors

Imagine if this was your home these men came to:

That is how quickly lives are lost in the war on drugs. When police invade private homes in search of drugs, anything and everything can go wrong, and even the slightest misunderstanding becomes a matter of life and death. The victim in this case, Todd Blair, brandished a golf club in terror as armed men stormed his home in the night. We'll never know for sure if he realized they were police. But we do know that only a small amount of drugs were found in the raid that took his life.

That drugs and violence often go hand in hand isn't a mystery to many among us – the bloodshed gripping Mexico is old news by now – but this is a very different kind of drug war violence than the infamous turf wars of the cartels. This is a rare glimpse into the unbelievable level of force our own public servants unleash routinely in order to protect us from ourselves. This man was just a drug user. Whether he ever sold drugs is in dispute, but there's no question that he lived and died in poverty, and not from drugs, but from police who gunned him down in his own home.

Warning: you're about to watch a man get shot to death by his own government because he wanted to decide for himself what he could put into his own body:


Your tax dollars funded this man's death, and they pay the salaries of every politician in Washington who votes to continue their tragically unsuccessful War on Drugs against the American public.

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Something Someone Else Said

"I never cease to be amazed at what a festering bundle of resentments Palin is. Just a few years ago she was the mayor of a tiny town in Alaska, and today she's one of the most famous people in America. Despite her modest talents, there are millions of people who believe, and tell her constantly, that she ought to be the most powerful person on planet Earth. She's made millions of dollars in the last two years, for the easiest of things -- giving some speeches, having ghost-writers pen a couple of books, doing appearances on Fox, letting cameras trail her around while she goes fishing. And yet she can barely open her mouth without going on and on about how terribly victimized she is, and how everyone has done her wrong," -Paul Waldman, The American Prospect.

Posted because apparently my little buddy Donald Douglas of American Clown Shoes has been lamenting the fact that I've been letting the blog lie mostly fallow lately, and if anyone knows about being a professional victim it is most certainly he. Here's to you, Chubs.

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FDA Proposes New Cigarette Warning Labels

This is a bit much in my opinion:

Federal drug regulators on Wednesday unveiled 36 proposed warning labels for cigarette packages, including one showing a toe tag on a corpse and another in which a mother blows smoke on her baby.

Designed to cover half the surface area of a pack or carton of cigarettes, and a fifth of any advertisements for them, the labels are intended to spur smokers to quit by providing graphic reminders of tobacco’s dangers. The labels are required under a law passed last year that gave the Food and Drug Administration the power to regulate, but not ban, tobacco products for the first time.

Public health officials hope that the new labels will re-energize the nation’s antismoking efforts, which have stalled in recent years. About 20.6 percent of the nation’s adults, or 46.6 million people, and about 19.5 percent of high school students, or 3.4 million teenagers, are smokers.

And yes, that's actually one of the proposed images above; you can see more here. Because just giving people the facts about cigarettes isn't enough, the government has decided that it's also necessary to appeal to one's emotions and fear of death and disease in order to control individual behaviour. My conservative counterpart Donald Douglas of American Clown Shoes accurately intuits my stand on this issue:

I don't know. Maybe some folks are so stupid they actually need these warnings. Besides, what would folks like egghead JBW do without some Nanny Statism to gripe about? Get rid of warning labels and marijuana laws in one fell swoop!! Then everyone would have equal opportunity to death!

Now I'm not a Republican so I don't consider the moniker "egghead" to be the epithet that Don does but I will admit that I do agree with him on this, at least partially: I'm absolutely convinced that some (hell, many) folks are so stupid that they actually need these warnings, there's no maybe about it. Even after several decades of government health reports stating definitively that cigarettes cause cancer and thus death, even after several multi-billion dollar lawsuits against tobacco companies for making false claims about the safety of their products all these years and even though cigarettes have had health warnings on them since the mid sixties people still smoke them! Why do they do this despite all of the warnings and evidence about how dangerous it is? Well, even though I'm an egghead (which is defined as being "elitist" and "out of touch") I understand a truth about myself and my fellow humans that Don does not: human beings have a fundamental need to alter their brain chemistry.

Ever wonder why the War on Drugs has been such an abject failure? Or why people smoke or chew tobacco, drink too much alcohol and eat too much fat, salt and sugar? Of course you don't because you know why people do these things: because it makes them feel good, and no amount of warning labels and government babysitting is going to make them stop doing so. Now this isn't to say that I think cigarettes shouldn't have warnings on their packages. I have no problem with the small amount of government intervention that is required to force companies to provide adequate information to the public about their products but these pictures of diseased lungs and choking children seem to me political correctness run amok.

Now I have no doubt that they'll have the desired effect of convincing a certain number of people not to smoke who weren't deterred by a mere written warning but how far should we as a society be willing to take this? Should the winery that produces my Pinot Noir be forced to place a picture of a hardened liver on every bottle? How about forcing fast food companies to print pictures of a guy having a coronary or having his leg amputated due to diabetes on their cheeseburger wrappers? Or we could even up the ante to things that still hold an element of danger yet don't even alter brain chemistry or directly affect our health, like forcing car companies to place pictures of bloodied corpses on their windshields or forcing the airlines to print pictures of a crashed burning fuselage on every ticket. Hell, we could force companies to put a graphic warning about the worst consequences of every product and activity under the sun on their respective packaging and advertising, then nobody would ever do anything stupid and we'd all be safe from ourselves, right?

Wrong. We could do all of that and more and people would still do stupid things that are dangerous to their health but we've decided as a society that we're OK with that because it's the price of personal freedom in this country. Full disclosure: I don't smoke, in fact I hate cigarettes. One of my great laments is that almost every cute girl I know in California is a smoker but I still defend the rights of smokers to do so because I believe in the principle of individual liberty. Being a hypocrite Don is comfortable letting his government dictate ever more restrictive advertising codes for tobacco and positively draconian anti-drug laws because he doesn't smoke or use illicit drugs, hence he could care less about the individual freedoms of people who do. I would imagine that he's quite all right with the recent San Francisco ban on toys in Happy Meals (gotta protect the kids, you know) and the massive sin tax that California has placed on alcohol and tobacco products (I missed that part last time I was reading the bible), all while he squeals incessantly about big government running wild and Obama ramming his health care reform down our throats.

What this ultimately boils down to is personal responsibility and the philosophy that adults, even stupid adults, should be able to decide for themselves whether or not to engage in behaviour that is dangerous to themselves and their health. Children are obviously different and because their reasoning skills are not yet mature they require additional governmental protection but even then I doubt Don and the rest of his tea partying ilk would want the government telling them how to raise their children in most respects. But telling an adult like him that he can and cannot ingest certain substances and chemicals because in the eyes of the government he's essentially too stupid to decide these things for himself? Well, maybe he needs these warning labels to protect him. Perhaps then despite varying levels of individual stupidity our societal "opportunity to death" might not be equal, but at least we'll all be safe from our own behaviour.

Well what do you know, I wrote this entire post without invoking the phrase "nanny state" even once. You're welcome, Don. Now go do what your government tells you like a good little drone.

My '10 Election Predictions

Continuing my biennial tradition of making a mockery of the democratic process by treating it as a sporting event to be wagered upon I've made my predictions for tomorrows midterm elections. The Republicans need to gain 39 seats in the House of Representatives to take control of that body and I have no doubt that they will get them. In fact, I'm predicting they'll take 50-60 with no more than 75. They also need to gain 10 seats in the Senate to take control of that body as well but I just don't see that happening. I'm predicting that they'll take 6-8 with a high of 9, leaving Democrats with a slim majority.

Despite delirious prognostications about Democrats getting "crushed" tomorrow I think that this will be a net positive for President Obama, whom regular readers know I like much more than his party as a whole, going into the 2012 elections. These past two years have been rough ones for Americans but I think Obama has done a fairly good job playing the hand he was dealt coming into office, despite pussified Democrats, obstructionist Republicans, Bush's tanking economy, Bush's two unfunded wars and the myriad of other albatrosses hanging from his neck. Now the Republicans will have two years to propose something, anything substantive that will help get America back on its feet and Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell has already stated the central plank of their bold new strategy:

The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.

That's their plan: politics over governance. No serious proposals to reinvigorate the economy or reduce the debt or deficits, just a party-wide retrenchment and digging in of heels with a constant refrain of tax cuts (which is hardly a serious proposal based on the massive deficits we're dealing with). You see, there are only two ways to reduce government deficits: increase revenues (raising taxes) or reduce spending, and since they wouldn't even consider the possibility of the former if Fort Knox was on fire that leaves the latter. But what have they proposed cutting?

As I've said, nothing substantial or specific, just vague platitudes about reducing spending and eliminating waste. 75% of our federal budget is used to pay for only three things: Social Security, Medicare and military spending; everything else, everything else, makes up the other 25%. Any serious proposal to reduce our deficits and steer us back towards fiscal solvency must address the fact that cuts have to be made in those three areas. And even though cuts to these areas will be hard to make and less than popular with voters, any proposals by either party that do not do this should not be taken seriously. And what has the latest proposed spending cut by the so-called party of fiscal conservatism been? The 1.5% of NPR's funding that they get from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting: about three million dollars. Our national debt is around thirteen and a half trillion dollars, about four million times that.

"So how does losing the House help Obama?", I hear you asking. Well, if the Republicans win the House and are actually serious about reducing deficits and making spending cuts then they will compromise and work with Obama's bipartisan deficit commission to shore up the economy: win for Obama and more importantly, win for Americans (and many of those Americans will be voting in 2012). If however they do what I expect and continue to try to derail everything he proposes whilst simultaneously proposing to repeal health care and financial reforms that are popular with Americans and even possibly shut down the government, I think it will become fairly clear to voters that Republicans are more interested in regaining power than in trying to help the country: win for Obama and more importantly, huge loss for Americans (and many of those Americans will be voting in 2012).

The president inherited a full plate when he came into office and he needed a strong party that controlled both houses of congress to have his back as he tried to institute his ambitious agenda for America. Unfortunately for him and that agenda, he's had to make due with the Democrats, who to their credit and despite all the shit I talk about them have done a lot of things right over the past two years. But they've also done a lot of things wrong and that, combined with a recessed economy, high unemployment and allowing the Republicans to consistently control the narrative in Washington, is why they're going to lose a substantial number of seats in tomorrows midterms.

But those losses come with a silver lining: in the minds of the voters Republicans will finally be forced to own part of the economy Bush left on his desk two years ago and if the only solution they have for the next two years is still merely "NO!" then they should enjoy tomorrows victory while it lasts because they're gonna have a hell of a time running a presidential candidate on that nihilistic platform. Voters will have two choices when they enter their voting booths: one party that irresponsibly spends your tax dollars like hell and another party that irresponsibly spends your tax dollars like hell whilst simultaneously and hypocritically swearing up and down that they do not. The main difference between them at this point is that the first party has an actual adult as their leader. Please make sure you vote tomorrow everyone.

TDS: Negative Campaigning

Case in point:

Something Someone Else Said

"In the Western world today, there is a group of people who live in a haze of unreality, and are prone at any moment to break into paranoia, hallucinations, and screaming. If you try to get between them and their addiction, they will become angry and aggressive and lash out. They need our help. I am talking, of course, about the Drug Prohibitionists: the gaggle of politicians, bishops and journalists who still insist that the only way to deal with the very widespread drug use in our societies is for it to be criminalized, where it is untaxed, unregulated, controlled by armed criminal gangs, and horribly adulterated," -Johann Hari, The Huffington Post.

Illogic is indeed powerfully addictive.

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Something Hilarious Someone Else Said

Perhaps he should also chow down on a shot gun and complete the analogy? I'm just kidding, I know absolutely nothing about this kid other than that he looks like a lesbian and little girls want to fuck him. I understood Cobain's popularity; this kid's, not so much.

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TDS: Postcards From The Pledge

So, you don't like the way things are going in America today and despite the fact that many of our current woes originated during the last Republican administration you're still thinking of voting them back into power for some new leadership and fresh ideas. Jon Stewart takes a look at their new Pledge to America and finds a few things that might look a little familiar:

The Worthlessness Of Pennies

I've written before that I think pennies are an anachronism and should be phased out of our society but this guy makes a much more compelling argument:


I had no idea that nickles were also so useless. Societal stupidity like this really annoys me.

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American Power And Don Douglas Hearts Juses

So it seems that my conservative counterpart Donald Douglas of American Power has acknowledged his recent Sasquatch FAIL, albeit without giving yours truly the requisite credit for the pwnage:

So "SASQUATCH ISRAEL" is really truly "SASQUATCH IS REAL." And there's even a website for that, on Facebook.

Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I'm dumb.

I stand by what I wrote, either way.

That said, the towering intellects at Sadly No! are all too ready to point out any discrepancies, throwing in a little snide dig at the "Juses" for good measure: "Don Douglas Hearts Juses."

Yes, I do.

But that begs the question: The brilliant leading lights at Sadly No! don't?

Actually, I'm not surprised.

Leftists hate moral clarity. And they hate Israel. We don't need a Sasquatch myth to figure that out. So, a hearty F*** You to the lot of you, assholes.

The boys at Sadly No! fail to link to me as well but they do give the hat tip to bjkeefe, who does in turn credit yours truly. I'm pretty sure however that Don knows who to attribute his newest FAIL to for two reasons: 1) this post is reminiscent of so many others in which he references me in that he's disabled commenting in the mode of an intellectual coward and 2) I left a specific comment on another thread at his site a few days ago that I'm certain he knows was me under the name "Sasquatch Israel", which he of course deleted, again in the mode of an intellectual coward. And how fucked up and myopic is his claim that "hearting Jesus"="moral clarity"?

To answer Don's question which should have been directed at myself however: no, I do not heart Juses no matter how brilliant a leading light I am. I actually think that he was probably a good guy and I like his style (except for the whole naive "turning the other cheek" thing, of course) but I do seriously doubt the veracity of his oft acclaimed magical abilities. My favorite part of this though is that Don stands by what he wrote, i.e. the whole Israel as persecuted mythical Sasquatch meme 'cause Don Douglas ain't ever wrong, even when he's quite obviously wrong. And I don't hate either moral clarity or Israel, although I do think that both have a rabid unthinking fan base consisting partly of simple child-like intellects. I also think that I deserve my very own personal hearty F*** You from the man. Fair's fair, after all.

[Update: Don has posted a follow up in which he ironically takes the boys at Sadly No! to task over grammar and spelling mistakes in an email. Still no mention of yours truly so I left a pithy comment linking to this post and politely asked for my F*** You. It was deleted and commenting was disabled shortly thereafter. I love this guy.]

Masturbate To Christine O'Donnell Day

If you haven't yet heard, Christine O'Donnell is the newly minted Republican nominee in Delaware's U.S. Senate special election to fill Joe Biden's former seat. She was endorsed by the Tea Party and Sarah Palin and beat out moderate Republican and former governor Mike Castle for the nomination. But this isn't her first foray into public life: Rachel Maddow recently dug up a clip from MTV's decade old series Sex in the '90's (which, coincidentally, is the same decade yours truly started having sex), specifically the episode entitled "The Safest Sex of All":


My favorite part of this is her theory at the end there that if guys masturbate then they will have no use for sexual relations with women. Makes sense: what guy would want to eat filet mignon when he can have Hamburger Helper anytime he wants? OK, it's actually one of the dumbest theories on sex that I've ever heard and is only disproven by both evolution and the vast history of human existence. Have I mentioned before how incredibly stupid I think religion is? Yeah? OK, good. Anyway, this flashback video inspired the following comment from a reader on Dan Savage's sex advice blog at the Stranger:

The time has come for you to use your influence to pick a day between now and the November election, and declare it "Masturbate to Christine O'Donnell Day" in either the state of Delaware or the entire United States of America. If there needs to be a male equivalent, so be it. This needs to happen, and you're the only guy who can do it.

Hiding At The Elusive Fuzz Under Christine's Knockers

The "male equivalent" caveat is because Savage is gay but I intend to pick up the heterosexual slack myself. Absent an officially announced date I hereby pledge that this wanton act will be performed at least once by myself sometime before the general election in November, hopefully with "What If God Was One Of Us" playing softly in the background (but I reserve the right to forego listening to that song if it makes everything seem too weird, which it almost assuredly will). I've already worked out several hot O'Donnell/Palin/Bachmann lesbo cougar scenarios that I won't go into any further here but rest assured, it will be the safest sex of all. I just hope they all still respect me in the morning.

American Power And Anti-Semitic Hominids

So my conservative counterpart Donald Douglas of American Power was in New York City over the weekend for the ninth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. His main post on the events has a lot of pictures taken from around the city and while it's a little heavy on religion and rantings about "the left's Media-Industrial-Islamist-Complex" it's still rather interesting to check out but it's his follow-up post about "the America-bashing, anti-Israel left" amongst the sign-carrying protesters of the various ideologies present that day that I found particularly entertaining. Amidst his claims about supposedly out-debating some anti-war "leftists" on the street I found this gem of an accusation:

Then turning around, I saw this kid yacking it up for the crowd, obviously having a blast with this ugly Jew-hating sign. And what does that mean, "SASQUATCH ISRAEL"? This is a play on the "legitimacy myth" of Israel's existence. As there's of course a "Sasquatch myth," it's worth noting the implied comparison: that Israel is also an ape-like beast existing only in historical folklore. Absent legitimacy, Israel has "no right to exist." This kid's sign is but one more example of eliminationist anti-Semitism. And look at how overjoyed he is in boasting this hatred. Creepy.

I'm sure you're all just as familiar as I am with this oh-so-common yet extraordinarily awkwardly worded insult comparing the country of Israel to the cryptozoological creature known as Sasquatch in order to advance the agenda of anti-Semitic eliminationism, right? You know, all those political cartoons you've seen in which Israel is portrayed as a large hulking fictional beast crashing through the dense underbrush of the Middle East with the words "SASQUATCH ISRAEL" written across its chest? Wait, you're not? Yeah, neither am I and it's because Don's claim qualifies as the very definition of the phrase "desperately grasping at straws". Here's a picture of said kid:
Now tell me, if you had to make a guess would you say that his sign reads "SASQUATCH ISRAEL" or does it perhaps read "SASQUATCH IS REAL"? One might even guess that there's a very good reason that this kid is seemingly "overjoyed" and "having a blast" whilst holding up his sign:
So he's either just some kid having a laugh (or being somewhat serious, who knows?) about the disputed existence of Sasquatch or else he's an unabashed anti-Semite openly boasting of his ugly Jew-hating agenda, thus confirming Don's paranoid fears about the "nihilist left" (oh, and he can't spell very well either). This is what happens when the modern Republican persecution complex goes looking for anti-Semitism around every corner: it inevitably finds it, even in the face of incredulity at the obviously nonsensical nature of it. And on a personal anthropological note, I haven't seen a case of Sasquatch FAIL this bad since the fake freezer Bigfoot from a few years back. I've always suspected that the Sasquatch had a liberal bias...

American Power And American Taliban

I'm not planning on reading Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas' new book "American Taliban" for two reasons: 1) it's apparently mostly filled with extreme rhetoric from the political left that's tailored to reinforce and stoke liberal and progressive hatred by pointing out the worst behaviour currently emanating from the political right and I'm already well-versed in that subject, and 2) being well-versed in the worst behaviour currently emanating from the political right I can definitively say that it's nowhere near as bad as that currently emanating from the Taliban and other terrorist organizations. Moulitsas is merely taking advantage of the extremely partisan nature of American politics today by making outlandish claims combined with a controversial title in order to sell as many copies of his book as possible. His rhetoric no more represents the views of the majority on the left than do his claims represent the actions of the majority on the right, and only an extraordinarily bitter partisan hack would think otherwise.

Speaking of extraordinarily bitter partisan hacks, my conservative counterpart Donald Douglas of American Power seems to agree with me on this point in his review of the book:

It's not scholarly. In fact, there are no footnotes to document the majority of the outrageous claims offered. What's important to note is Moulitsas' tactic of finding the most out-of-the-mainstream personalities and foisting these off as mainstream conservatives. It's a smear-by-numbers approach that at times pulls in top Republicans like Sarah Palin, etc., adds a couple of the more colorful quotes from said personalities, and voilà! You're got the modern conservative movement 100 percent equivalent to the medieval barbarian Taliban, REAL TERRORISTS who cut off noses of Afghan women and behead apostates from the Islamist creed, and not to mention Americans such as Daniel Pearl. It's absurd, of course.

Of course. The political right in America is not nearly as dangerous or brutal as terrorist groups like the Taliban and making the blanket claim that one half of the political spectrum is so only makes Moulitsas look like a partisan fool. Now some of you are probably asking, "But James, Don has proven himself to be a partisan fool innumerable times in the past: how is it possible that he's suddenly become a rational thinker as it applies to this subject?" And the inevitable answer to that question is: it isn't. Because after unequivocally declaring how absurd Moulitsas is for claiming that the American right is in league with the Taliban and America's other enemies, in the exact same post, he writes the following in response to another blogger's more positive characterization of Moulitsas' book:

No, Digby, American Taliban's whole point is that the American religious right is perfectly indistinguishable from the Taliban of South Asia --- and the "American Taliban" is the bigger threat to the U.S. than global jihad. Folks really need to read this book and quit lying about what is or isn't said there. Digby is right up there with Markos Moulitsas as a crazed leftist demonologist who wants a revolution to topple the traditional bases of American politics, if not the constitutional regime itself. Don't be fooled by these people. THEY ARE ALLIED with the Taliban, al Qaeda, and global jihad to destroy American freedom. It's plain as day. I write about it all the time.

You see, according to Don, definitively declaring that the political right is in league with terrorists and wants to destroy America is completely absurd. Outrageous accusations like that only divide Americans and distract us from the very real threat we face from international terrorism. It should be obvious to any sane individual that it's the political left that's in league with terrorists and wants to destroy America. Duh! All kidding aside, this is what I'm talking about when I say that certain people and their opinions are not to be taken seriously. Now some of you are probably also asking, "But James, if Don isn't to be taken seriously why do you read his blog and post about the things he writes?" Again, two reasons: 1) his fail is just too entertaining, and 2) irony is like a drug to me. And if irony were a drug, Don would sell it by the gram.

Bolton For President?

Chris Matthews can hardly contain his laughter at the idea that former Bush administration U.N. ambassador John Bolton might make a run for the presidency in 2012:


Bolton is a far right ideologue so Matthews is right to scoff at the idea that he could have any kind of shot at the presidency but he ignores the elephant... I mean, walrus in the room: Bolton's never gonna live in the White House as long as he keeps sporting that 'stache. Americans haven't elected a president with facial hair in 100 years and I don't see it happening anytime soon. Hell, Jon Stewart couldn't even keep his goatee for more than a couple of weeks and he's not even in politics. It's a sad fact that being too tall, too fat, too bald, too different looking automatically disqualifies anyone from that office. Democracy can be really stupid sometimes.

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American Power And Imaginary Numbers

My conservative counterpart Donald Douglas of American Power breathlessly cuts and pastes the following from FOX News in his recent post "Total Costs of Iraq War Less Than Obama-Democrats' Economic Porkulus Package":

As President Obama prepares to tie a bow on U.S. combat operations in Iraq, Congressional Budget Office numbers show that the total cost of the eight-year war was less than the stimulus bill passed by the Democratic-led Congress in 2009.

According to CBO numbers in its Budget and Economic Outlook published this month, the cost of Operation Iraqi Freedom was $709 billion for military and related activities, including training of Iraqi forces and diplomatic operations.

The projected cost of the stimulus, which passed in February 2009, and is expected to have a shelf life of two years, was $862 billion...

And how's that "stimulus" working out?

Now I've mentioned on several occasions that economics is not my strong suit and that I even find that field of study fairly boring but I do speak English pretty well and I'm no slouch when it comes to basic mathematics so I was able to detect a few flaws in Don's argument here. Ignoring the fact that I automatically take people who use cute little nicknames like "Porkulus" when discussing serious political topics less seriously than those who speak like actual grown ups, the operational word one should really pay attention to in the above article is "projected".

The cost of the Bush administration's war in Iraq is stated flatly and in the past tense, as if the final bill has arrived in the mail and therefore will not increase past the stated $709 billion price tag while the final $862 billion cost of the stimulus is "projected" well into next year. Now this disparity might prompt an honest (or at least curious) person to ask, "Say, is there also a 'projected' final cost for the Iraq war as well?" Interestingly enough, there is:

As of February 2010, around $704 billion has been spent based on estimates of current expenditure rates^[1], which range from the Congressional Research Service (CRS) estimate of $2 billion per week to $12 billion a month, an estimate by economist Joseph Stiglitz.^[2]...

According to a Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report published in October 2007, the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan could cost taxpayers a total of $2.4 trillion dollars by 2017 when counting the huge interest costs because combat is being financed with borrowed money. The CBO estimated that of the $2.4 trillion long-term price tag for the war, about $1.9 trillion of that would be spent on Iraq, or $6,300 per U.S. citizen.^[9][10]

Stiglitz, former chief economist of the World Bank and winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics, has stated the total costs of the Iraq War on the US economy will be three trillion dollars in a moderate scenario, and possibly more in the most recent published study, published in March 2008.^[11] Stiglitz has stated: "The figure we arrive at is more than $3 trillion. Our calculations are based on conservative assumptions...Needless to say, this number represents the cost only to the United States. It does not reflect the enormous cost to the rest of the world, or to Iraq."^[11]

So the projected cost of Bush's war (which he never paid for in any of his budgets because apparently deficits didn't matter back then) is actually conservatively estimated at almost four times that of Obama's stimulus bill, which he passed in order to pull the country out of the economic recession and possible depression he inherited from Bush and company. And it seems that FOX News is having a little trouble with their own research as well. From the AP last week:

WASHINGTON — President Obama’s stimulus measure has created or saved as many as 3.3 million jobs and continues to boost economic growth in the second half of 2010, but it’s come at a higher price tag than originally billed.

Congressional analysts released new figures today estimating that the law enacted in January 2009, when it projected to cost $787 billion over a decade, would cost $814 billion. But that’s still less than the Congressional Budget Office estimated in January, when it said the measure would cost $862 billion.

So FOX's difference was only off by $48 billion or around 6% (maybe their researchers haven't read the news since January) but admittedly the stimulus did go over its projected budget by $27 billion or almost 4%. Now everyone knows that government spending almost always goes over its estimated costs so the 4% run over isn't surprising but noting that the stimulus went over its original projected cost might also prompt an honest (or at least curious) person to ask, "Say, was there also a 'projected' original cost for the Iraq war as well?" Interestingly enough, there was:

WASHINGTON — At the outset of the Iraq war, the Bush administration predicted that it would cost $50 billion to $60 billion to oust Saddam Hussein, restore order and install a new government.

Five years in, the Pentagon tags the cost of the Iraq war at roughly $600 billion and counting. Joseph E. Stiglitz, a Nobel Prize-winning economist and critic of the war, pegs the long-term cost at more than $4 trillion. The Congressional Budget Office and other analysts say that $1 trillion to $2 trillion is more realistic, depending on troop levels and on how long the American occupation continues.

Based on the time periods cited those numbers are from 2 1/2 years ago so they've obviously increased since then but if we use the higher original Bush administration estimate of $60 billion as well as the older CBO estimate of $1.9 trillion (much lower than Stiglitz's own current conservative estimates) the Iraq war will eventually go over its original projected budget by at least 3200%, again estimating extremely conservatively. Not only is this scenario the exact opposite of what Don tried to claim above but it's cost overruns are higher by several orders of magnitude.

Now I don't blame Don for foolishly stating what is an extremely obvious falsehood about the comparisons between the Bush administration's profligate wartime spending and the Obama administration's relatively modest depression averting spending. I actually had to Google complicated phrases like "original cost iraq war", "original cost stimulus", "projected cost iraq war" and "projected cost stimulus" to gain access to all of this esoteric information. And I don't know if you noticed but those phrases contain several words each, some of them are even multi-syllabic! So I guess Don can be forgiven for lazily cutting and pasting a story from the propaganda media wing of the Republican party rather than doing actual minimal research to make sure that what he's posting isn't an outright partisan lie. The man only has one PhD. after all. Hey, it's hard out here for a hack.

Something Someone Else Said

"Personally I’m not interested in “limited government” as an end in itself, but as a means to greater individual liberty. I’m opposed to government programs that waste taxpayer dollars because higher taxes restrict my freedom. But I’m much more opposed to government programs that use taxpayer dollars to restrict freedom directly. I’m not interested in joining a “limited government” movement that considers the two equivalent. And I’m definitely not interested in being part of a movement that gives torture and preemptive war a free pass under the heading of “national defense” while it focuses instead on fighting the tyranny of SCHIP and unemployment insurance," -Timothy B. Lee, Bottom-Up.

I completely agree with this sentiment. It seems to me that there's a real disconnect between those on the political right who call themselves conservatives and even claim to endorse the philosophy of libertarianism and their simultaneous enthusiastic embrace of the military and security culture of our government. Yes, rising taxes and government waste are problems that I believe we need to address but I hardly find those issues as insidious as our government's relatively recent proclaimed power to tap your phone and read your email without warrants, kick in your front door and ransack your home, lock you away without charging you with a crime or reading you your rights and yes, torturing you to within and even beyond an inch of your life.

I too care about how my tax dollars are spent but I care even more about my personal bodily liberty and civil rights and it appears that those aforementioned "conservatives" are quite happy to cede what I consider to be more than a few personal rights and freedoms in exchange for their nanny state government claiming to protect them from every conceivable danger in the world, even from themselves. To me this world outlook smacks of fear, which would definitely explain the desperate bouts of bravado and jingoism these people so often go through to compenate for it. While on principle I agree with them on several issues of fiscal responsibility their hypocrisy as it pertains to personal liberties unfortunately prevents me from taking them seriously on most other issues.

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TDS: Stewart And Cooper Look At Gaping Holes

OK, forget what I said about Basil Marceaux.com: Republican Representative and all around fruitcake Louie Gohmert should be given as many opportunities to speak in front of a microphone and/or camera as is humanly possible:

Picture Of The Day

Class, class, class:

At Barack Hussein Obama's taxpayer-funded Ramadan dinner last night, not only did the alleged president give the assembled Muslims the tremendous gift of support for building the Ground Zero mosque, but he also gifted them with the multi-purpose "Presidential Seal Boxcutter" which will soon be available in the Cordoba House gift shop.

This handsome and practical souvenir is an exact replica of the one which Barack Hussein Obama uses to direct the flight destinations of Air Force One!

The pattern from the political right starts to become clear after a while: first insist that President Obama is a secret Muslim for a couple years, then proceed with the current theme of conflating Islam and all Muslims with the radical extremists who attacked us on 9/11. He directs Air Force One with a box cutter: get it? The president's a terrorist! And he approves of and arms other terrorists! Do you think they'd be calling him by his middle name all the time if it was "Holden"? Subtle these guys are not.

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American Power And "Chunky Vomit"

The next impotent volley from my conservative counterpart Donald Douglas of American Power has been duly served and it barely cleared the net this time with "Brain Rage Chunky Vomit":

I guess I hurt JBW's feelings with my last post repudiating the Brain Rage embrace of death-wish drug abuse:

...my favorite part of this post is Don's continued insistence, albeit indirectly this time, that I should somehow embrace him as some type of mentor based on his 13-14 years seniority of me. I hate to disappoint the guy but I've tried this particular song and dance in the patriarchal sense twice in my life and the results were less than stellar both times: my father ignored me until he was on his death bed and my step-father was a serial dick throughout my childhood, so I'm sure I can be excused for not embracing the intellectual arguments of someone who consistently calls me a loser or worse.

Been there. Done that.

It sucks JBW when no father-figures have been there for you. That's called father-hunger. My heart bleeds for you buddy. And of course your pain helps explain why you'd take cocaine over camaraderie. So I'll be blunt: Drugs suck. They're for losers. If you don't want to be a loser. Don't do drugs.

P.S. Sorry to hurt your feelings, but your post truly reminds me of "chunky vomit." And like the flummoxed muscle-bound macho teacher at the clip, you're hightailing it outta there when it comes to sophisticated engagements. Get some help dude.

First, I'd wager that there are few things you or most anyone else could say or do in this world that would legitimately hurt my feelings, Don. I know your old man was a less than stellar role model as well and I sympathize (I also assume it's why you're so quick to be so confrontational; me too on that count, perhaps...) but contrary to your characterization I don't feel any need to fill any void caused by this: I've only gained strength from it. I wasn't lamenting my upbringing so much as it was merely full disclosure for my readers. I think honesty's a good thing and I try to exemplify that as much as I can when I write.

Again, the conflation of cocaine use within a discussion about the merits of cannabis is a desperate straw man deflection but I'm going to let you in on a little secret that the rest of us adults already know: not everyone who uses drugs does so to alleviate pain. Drugs can be quite fun and stimulating when used responsibly (hell, they even cure some diseases) but you and your nanny state ilk would deny that freedom and responsibility to everyone else because you either can't handle it yourselves or simply can't grasp the grown-up concepts I'm delineating here. You don't need your government to prohibit you from using drugs if you don't like them, Don: just don't use them. That's what adults do.

I understand now why you're so afraid that your sons might try drugs someday: merely telling them that "Drugs are bad. You shouldn't do drugs." might work for a while when they're young and naive but at some point (if you've raised them correctly) they'll start to question such a simplistic world view and they'll soon find that your black or white tropes have ill-prepared them for a complex and dynamic world. They're going to realize after looking around outside your little cocoon that not all drugs are the same and that drug use does not necessarily equal drug abuse and then they'll wonder what else you've been lying to them about. You can and should do better than your old man on this count.

On a lighter note, your homosexual vomit fetish video was quite silly and not at all to my liking. In the future I would prefer any posts about myself to include video of strict school marms disciplining naughty young girls to your depictions of teenage boys eating fake vomit for the benefit of their gay gym coach. I'm not judging you for your proclivities and I similarly don't expect you to judge me for mine (although yours are somewhat gross and pretty damn gay). NTTAWWT!

I'm not sure how I'm "hightailing it outta there when it comes to sophisticated engagements" by constantly challenging you to sack up and honestly debate your side of this argument but I'm sure your cognitive dissonance allows you to somehow believe this and think yourself superior as a result. When you're ready to use your big boy voice I've got a swollen cranium full of clever bon mots to lob at whatever emaciated arguments you'd care to put forth in defense of your side of this discussion. The chance to make your brain my brain's bitch is all the help I need, dude.