Social Media Outruns Real Life

The advertisement of the day:


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TCR: Salvatore Giunta

I've been reading about and watching this guy all week after he became the first living soldier to be awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor since the Vietnam Conflict and he's always been the very definition of humility. We need to find some way to clone Giunta whilst imprinting his sense of duty and bravery upon the DNA:

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.

Vegas, Baby!

That's right: when Sin City calls you have to accept the charges. I'll be back in a few days. Be careful of the Sasquatch traps I've set throughout the blog, they usually only snare idiots but better safe than sorry. I'm out.

9/12 Mindset: Police Detonate Suspicious Pony

I used to detonate my little sister's My Little Ponies via my G. I. Joe action figures and some strategically placed firecrackers but this is much more impressive:


I would just like to inform my local police department that I've heard and/or seen some suspicious activity coming from the black Lamborghini that's usually parked across two parking spots at my local Starbucks. Have at it, boys.

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September 11

Nine years later. I'd like to think that we've grown and learned something as a country since then yet I still hear the same stupid shit from the same close-minded people. The idea that understanding and accepting those who are different from us somehow portrays weakness or a lack of resolve on our part is chief amongst them. One idiot calls for the burning of Korans because he doesn't like Muslims, so another idiot answers by calling for the burning of the American flag as retaliation.

I know that as a country we're better and stronger than this and we will continue to be so but it's imperative that we also continue to elevate the dialogue and reclaim this narrative from the guttersnipes and haters amongst us. It's the Islamists and Christianists who want to start a holy war; cooler and more rational heads must prevail. I won't pray for those lost in the attacks on 9/11 but my heart does go out to their families and loved ones. You can read about how I spent that day in 2001 here, and you can view an animation of the proposed memorial here.

Hell Comes To San Bruno

If you haven't heard yet there was a massive gas pipeline explosion across the bay from me last night:

Four people are confirmed dead in the massive explosion and subsequent fire that rocked San Bruno, the San Mateo County coroner’s office said Friday morning.

San Bruno Fire Department Capt. Charlie Barringer said earlier Friday that six were dead, but the coroner's office has only confirmed four so far...

Barringer was one of three firefighters on Engine 52, the first to respond to the explosion.

“I thought a 747 had landed on us,” he said. “It shook our station right to its foundation.”

Within a minute, he had sounded a four-alarm fire, he said. Soon after, he said, firefighters discovered a gas line had exploded, destroying not only homes but the grid of water mains that supplied the local fire hydrants. His crew had no water to fight the fires.

“We were overwhelmed. We had multiple neighborhoods on fire,” he said.

The news is now confirming at least six people have died with dozens more injured. I play Words with Friends with a college student who lives in San Francisco, about ten minutes from the explosion in San Bruno. He tells me that he saw at least 50 homes destroyed last night and at least twice that many were damaged. I can't imagine what those folks must be going through right now. Stuff like this is so surreal.

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.

Fried Frito Pie Wins At State Fair Of Texas

This is an inspired idea:

Some compared it to a rookie winning the Super Bowl MVP when three culinary novices swept the Best Taste award at the sixth annual Big Tex Choice Awards yesterday.

The creators of Texas Fried Frito Pie beat out the competition to take the prize at the Texas State Fair, the Dallas Morning News reported.

The team was made up of Michael Thomas, the originator, Richard Roznowski, the motivator and Jeffrey Lovel, the facilitator, all of whom had a hand in creating the Texas Fried Frito Pie -- balls of cheese and chili rolled in corn chips and then battered and deep friend -- and getting it to the fair.

"We're all big time fair-goers. I probably go six or seven times a year, which for a 3 week fair is a lot. We'd been looking for a classic fair food that hadn't been done fried, and Frito pie just made sense," Lovell told Slashfood.

The trio tried many brands of chili, chips and cheese before settling on Texas Chili Company's chili and a "basic" cheese and chip, Lovell said. "We combine and the chili and the cheese and then we surround it in chips and then we freeze it and then we batter it and fry it."

They spent about six months on the recipe, the Morning News reported. "We had to increase our exercise considerably," Roznowski told the paper.

Since moving to California nobody I've met has ever heard of Frito pie, a staple of Texas cuisine, except for one chick who grew up in Arkansas. The Creativity Award was won by deep fried beer, essentially beer inside ravioli shells. I can't say that I particularly relish the thought of hot beer exploding in my mouth but I'm definitely pining for that basket of deliciousness pictured above.

(via, hat tip: Doug"E")

Something Unserious Someone Else Said

"This unfortunately is what happens when one challenges the Left. The Left generally lacks the capability and capacity to put forth a well reasoned argument so they are left with name calling, wishing those that disagree with them disease, death or other forms disaster, death threats, and ultimately the attempt to put those threats into action.

It is why you see that the vast majority of violence and attempted, in some cases actual, killing of others. There is always the attempt at "transference" to others because in most cases they want to deny or to try to fool people into believing they are not the perpetrators of the vast majority of these actions. How many people has the Left accused of these actions and then found out the perpetrator is a leftist or leans to the left? For them it becomes a sort of if one throw enough stones at others then nobody will recognize who is really at fault.

The left is true evil and is the Dark side of life. Go to any Leftist site and you see it demonstrated in 90 to 99.9 percent of the comments," -Dennis, one of the regular commenters at my conservative counterpart Donald Douglas' site American Power, as featured in Don's hyperbolicly named post, "The Left is True Evil".

It was recently brought to my attention that I declare an inordinate number of people and organizations unworthy of being taken seriously on this blog. I copped to it, but I also believe that it's usually a justified stance to take and I try never to do so without providing proof; the above is a case in point. Bad grammar aside, I quote Dennis not so much to claim that he and his opinions in particular are not worth taking seriously (although he and they are not) but rather that every other person like him, on the right and the left, who make similarly simplistic blanket statements such as his are not as well.

Yes, of course there are people on the left who say and do terrible things and there are just as many on the right who say and do the same. In fact, it's almost as if saying and doing terrible things is something that people do, regardless of their political affiliations. The way to tell the simplistic unthinking partisans from those one should actually listen to is to watch out for idiocy like this: definitively stating that people from their side of the political aisle are somehow immune from saying and doing those terrible things whilst simultaneously claiming that their adversaries do so almost exclusively.

And not for nothing but what kind of adult talks about "true evil" and "the Dark side" in any setting outside of a discussion about Star Wars and expects to be taken seriously by other adults? Why don't you just tell me that you think the Devil is a real person too so I can officially declare you insane, a child or both? I'm still laughing at people like this but I'd laugh a little harder if I knew they weren't voting this November. Please keep your comments on this post within this blog's accepted evilness range of 90 to 99.9%; all praise the Morning Star.

127 Hours Trailer

The amazing story of Aron Ralston, a man of more grit, determination and badassery than you and I will ever possess:


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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: The Parent Company Trap

So it turns out that FOX News is partially funding the so-called "Ground Zero" mosque. No really, they actually are. And the question now becomes: evil or stupid?

Friedersdorf Flips The Perspective

Lamenting his apparent failure to convince fellow conservatives that Imam Rauf of the so-called "Ground Zero" mosque is "with us" in the War on Terror (as in, "you're either with us or you're against us..."), Conor Friedersdorf decides to come at this question from another direction:

Perhaps it'll help my case to offer a flip in perspective. Take a look at an imagined conversation between two radical Islamists in Saudi Arabia who are having their own argument about whether Imam Rauf is with them or against them.

Jihadi 1: Maybe he is on our side. He does seem to sympathize with the Palestinians.

Jihadi 2: No more than lots of American liberals. Being pro-Palestine hardly makes him a soldier of Allah.

J1: He is also building a monument to Islam at Ground Zero.

J2: It's two blocks away. And he has publicly promised that he is going to let Jews in.

J1: Really?

J2: Yes, he even reached out to two rabbis before announcing the project.

J1: Even so, he seems critical of America.

J2: Yes, he is mildly critical once every few years, when he's not busy doing the bidding of their State Department, or helping to train their FBI agents.

J1: He cooperates with their FBI?

J2: He is very friendly with them. And he lets his wife go on television too. Without a burka or even a headscarf.

J1: I heard he attended a Hizb ut-Tahrir conference.

J2: It turns out that story is false. In fact, when radicals from the group confronted him, he defended the United States Constitution!

J1: Andy McCarthy thinks that he is a radical.

J2: You fool. Andy McCarthy also thinks that President Obama is allied with radical Islamists in a grand jihad against America.

J1: Seriously? That bastard Obama just killed an Al Qaeda cousin of mine with one of his drone strikes. At first I thought maybe he's just trying to shore up his domestic political support, but then I realized that his administration is taking pains to keep most of them secret. Still, I hear than the mosque being built will signify the beginning of the United States of Arabia, and that it marks their surrender to us.

J2: That makes no sense. Their voters can't even manage to pass gay marriage bans without them getting struck down and you believe people who say that they're about to submit to sharia law? And how would the construction of a mosque even be a factor in transforming their legal system. I think you're listening to too much of their talk radio.

Insofar as this conversation is unrealistic, it's because every actual radical Islamist would know perfectly well that an imam who works with the FBI, tours on behalf of the State Department, denounces terrorism, defends the US constitution in an Arabic exchange with radicals from Hizb ut-Tahrir, has a good relationship with New York City rabbis, and preaches on behalf of women's rights isn't on their side. In fact, he is exactly the kind of imam that Islamist radicals target and kill when they dare to do these sorts of things in other countries.

Now I'm not saying that Rauf is a saint or that he's never uttered anything controversial but when one takes the time to find out the things he's actually said and done it becomes clear that those who are automatically jumping to the conclusion that his motives are nefarious simply because he's a Muslim are doing so out of either ignorance, bigotry or both. And Friedersdorf's last point is an important one: moderate Muslims like Rauf are exactly who al Qaeda and other radical extremist organizations would like to see us turn against to help facilitate their war on the West. Now I'm also of course not saying that the Republican party is in league with al Qaeda but when your political party's current talking points mirror that organization's stated aims and goals of turning Christianity and Islam against each other, perhaps it's time to reexamine your stance on this particular issue. Sometimes constitutional freedoms and civil rights are more important than people's hurt feelings. Hell, they pretty much always are.

[Update: Jon Stewart connected a few more dots with his highlighter last Thursday:

I too denounced Heston and the NRA for their actions in Colorado several years back and I too was wrong to do so. Just as the NRA was not responsible for the Columbine tragedy, Rauf and his organization were not responsible for the attacks against America on 9/11 and conflating either event with an unrelated group of people is both dishonest and unAmerican. We need to be better than that.]

The "Ground Zero" Mosque

This looks about right but hey, fear can win elections.

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American Power And Nanny Statism

So it seems that my conservative counterpart Donald Douglas of American Power has once again declared his ignorance opposition to cannabis via California's Proposition 19, a ballot initiative that would legalize individual amounts of cannabis here in the Golden State, in his newest post "Oakland Pot Factory Sham is Shame of a Nation":

After the budget and jobs, drug decriminalization's likely the most important issue on the ballot in November's elections, and Oakland's at the forefront of the fight for sanity. (Note here that I'm always amused at JBW's childish arguments about getting the "nanny state" out of our lives, even more hilarious as he's down with Obama's uber-nanny nationalized socialism in every other area of the economy — but more on that later.) It turns out LAT has a piece on the "Walmartization" of Oakland's "medical" marijuana industry, and get a load out of that picture at the screencap. Looks like a bunch brothas from de 'hood be cruisin' down for some phat sweet-stick smokas, yo!
It's a scam, obviously... Unbelievable, really. But that's what the nihilist left wants in today's America.

Ignoring the fact that Don seemingly lost his own fight for sanity years ago, I'm always similarly amused at his own personal reefer madness when it comes to the issue of adults deciding for themselves what they can and can not put into their own bodies. Recall that I wrote my post "American Power And Hypocrisy" over a year ago as a direct rebuttal to Don's empty declaration at the time that cannabis is somehow inherently evil and he has yet to even attempt to refute me. Instead he prefers to deploy devastating rhetoric like calling people who disagree with him "losers" for doing so. Ouch.

But let's quickly unpack this latest post, shall we? First, the slang: as always it's as embarrassing as it is hilarious. Is it possible that being unhip is a chronic condition? This guy makes Michael Steele look like Jay-Z. Next, the hyperbole: notice that supporting President Obama in certain policy areas automatically means that I'm "down with Obama's uber-nanny nationalized socialism in every other area of the economy", whatever the hell that's supposed to mean. Apparently my desire for every American to have access to affordable health care is a much more oppressive policy position to take than is Don's own desire for every American adult who uses cannabis to be arrested, fined and imprisoned as a result.

That's just where we disagree about the role of government, I guess: I believe that the purpose of the government is to do for the people what they cannot individually do for themselves while Don believes that purpose is to protect people from themselves by punishing private personal behaviour that he finds distasteful. This is also why Don believes that adults should be arrested for frequenting prostitutes, that the government has the right to listen in to our phone conversations and monitor our email and even disappear American citizens terror suspects obvious terrorists who require no legal protections off of American streets and torture them to death overseas, all in the name of protecting the American people from those who would torture us overseas.

You see, neocons fear many dangers in the world today and they have no qualms about ceding a vast swathe of their personal liberties to a powerful government in order to feel all protected and safe in their beds at night. This is how Don can at times claim to be a libertarian out of one side of his mouth whilst simultaneously calling for the imprisonment of consenting adults participating in victimless crimes out of the other. Cannabis legalization in California obviously isn't going to destroy society and we could actually really use the additional tax revenue that it would generate (although from looking at the polls I doubt that Prop. 19 will pass this November but perhaps I'm wrong on that count) but Don can't afford to take that chance. His fear requires governmental nanny statism to protect him and the rest of us from anything and everything that scares him, our own liberties and freedoms be damned. That's the type of "free" society that cowards like Don would create with American power.

[Update: Don answers the above post by not answering at all:

Heh ...

Yo, JBW, 'nuff said:

Yeah, that's what I thought. Intellectual coward.]

The War On Cannabis

And all of its attendant societal woes:


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Picture Of The Day

Time magazine's latest cover is causing some controversy in the blogosphere:

Our cover image this week is powerful, shocking and disturbing. It is a portrait of Aisha, a shy 18-year-old Afghan woman who was sentenced by a Taliban commander to have her nose and ears cut off for fleeing her abusive in-laws. Aisha posed for the picture and says she wants the world to see the effect a Taliban resurgence would have on the women of Afghanistan, many of whom have flourished in the past few years. Her picture is accompanied by a powerful story by our own Aryn Baker on how Afghan women have embraced the freedoms that have come from the defeat of the Taliban — and how they fear a Taliban revival.

Now of course this photo is meant to be emotionally manipulative: how could you not feel sorry for this woman? What was done to her was truly reprehensible and horrible and I don't mind admitting that I would be quite happy to see something equally as horrible happen to her attacker in return. This sort of thing happens to women far too often in that part of the world and our troops are doing good work by trying to prevent further violence being perpetrated upon innocents. That said: do you consider this to be a form of exploitation? In their defense of running the cover Time claims that they neither endorse nor oppose the war effort but as I said, it's clearly meant to support an agenda of remaining in Afghanistan and I think this claim of objectivity would seem equally transparent if the cover photo featured the dead mutilated corpse of an American soldier instead.

We've occupied Afghanistan for nearly a decade now. Credible military experts and historians agree almost universally that it will be several more decades before any sort of functional civilized government will be able to run the country and maintain some semblance of peace in the face of Taliban aggression. As I've said before I see only two options for us in this war: either get out now largely on our own terms or else wait until a lack of money, troops and equipment slowly drains us dry before forcing us to leave in defeat. I'm sympathetic to the plight of people like Aisha and I wish the United States could stop all suffering on the planet through shear force of will but that's obviously logistically unrealistic and economically unfeasible.

So, how do we define "victory" in Afghanistan? Should we remain there indefinitely until it is achieved? Should we spend an infinite amount of money to achieve it? What about all of the other countries whose people endure equally appalling levels of suffering and cruelty, should we commit ourselves just as fully to achieving "victory" in those places as well? Should we truly become Team America: World Police? I think the short and inevitable answer is that we simply cannot, and I believe that President Obama was mistaken in doubling our military down on the war in Afghanistan. Just as important as striving to win a war is being able to recognize when that cannot be done, even if doing so leads to an increase in human suffering. That's a hard truth for Americans to accept but we must do so if we wish to avoid bankrupting our nation and retain the ability to help people around the world like the poor girl pictured above.

Something Someone Else Said

"Pick something that you pay no attention to. For my dad, I always suggest NASCAR. My dad has read a sports page every day since he was a little kid; he still gets (as do I) a real, honest-to-goodness local newspaper on his front porch every morning. He must have seen the names of NASCAR drivers thousands of times, but odds are he's only stopped to read a story if it had something in the headline that really caught his attention (someone from the Bronx, or Jewish, or both, might do it). If you asked him to name a NASCAR driver he'd probably look at you as if you were nuts...but if you named some of them, he'd probably recognize the names. The idea is that lots and lots of people have about that level of knowledge about most of what happens in politics. It's just background noise. We, the people who write and read political blogs, and watch debates, and pay attention to politics even in the off season --we're the minority." -Jonathan Bernstein, A plain blog about politics.

The analogy of NASCAR drivers is an apt one for me. Even when I got a paper back in the day I always found the sports section extremely boring and rarely read it but because of SportsCenter on ESPN my knowledge level of NASCAR is similar to that of Bernstein's father. I have to say that if the average American's knowledge of politics is indeed comparable to my own ignorance about NASCAR then it's no wonder we wallow in this perpetual cycle of electing corrupt politicians to a bloated inefficient bureaucracy. I mean, George W. Bush actually got reelected after all of the stupid shit he did during his first term in office. If that doesn't indicate that most Americans aren't paying attention to the actions of their elected officials then I don't know what does. It's lines of thought like this that scare me into considering the possibility that Sarah Palin just might be able to win the presidency someday: because lazy, ignorant people vote. Busch/Earnhardt Jr. in 2012!

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Serenity Now Trailer

The comedy was just a cover for the deep-seated pain and anguish lurking just below the surface:


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