Something Someone Else Said

" I guess I don’t think it’s entirely preposterous for Americans to see themselves as a people. But any conception of the American creed sufficiently general to encompass most widespread American conceptions of individual freedom, equality, tolerance and so on is going to be so general that it will do very little to distinguish American identity from, say, Canadian identity. And that’s clearly not what Glenn Beck or the staff of National Review have in mind when they talk about American values, promote a conception of American identity, or encourage Americans to see themselves as a people. ...

The conservative conception of American identity is so selective and so specific that it tends to suggest to its adherents that many (maybe even most!) Americans aren’t real Americans, or are Americans who betray real American ideals," -Will Wilkenson.

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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.

Newsweek's Newest Cover

Jonathan Alter chronicles the ever lengthening list of myths, lies and distortions that have been spread thus far about President Obama:

Our maddening times demand that the truth be forthrightly stated at the outset, and not just that the president has nothing in common with the führer beyond the possession of a dog. The outlandish stories about Barack Hussein Obama are simply false: he wasn’t born outside the United States (the tabloid “proof” has been debunked as a crude forgery); he has never been a Muslim (he was raised by an atheist and became a practicing Christian in his 20s); his policies are not “socialist” (he explicitly rejected advice to nationalize the banks and wants the government out of General Motors and Chrysler as quickly as possible); he is not a “warmonger” (he promised in 2008 to withdraw from Iraq and escalate in Afghanistan and has done so); he is neither a coddler of terrorists (he has already ordered the killing of more “high value” Qaeda targets in 18 months than his predecessor did in eight years), nor a coddler of Wall Street (his financial-reform package, while watered down, was the most vigorous since the New Deal), nor an enemy of American business (he and the Chamber of Commerce favor tax credits for small business that were stymied by the GOP to deprive him of a victory). And that’s just the short list of lies.

Most of these should come as no surprise to anyone who's been paying attention to national politics for the past few years but it's always telling to see how long the list has gotten. Newsweek's critics are claiming that the cover is merely a publicity stunt to sell more issues and perhaps they're correct on that count but that certainly makes the sentiments expressed in the article no less true or relevant. David Cross, perhaps my favorite comedian, touched on this topic in his newest special Bigger and Blackerer as well as addressing the right's jingoistic hypocrisy when it comes to criticizing America:


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Man Already Knows Everything He Needs To...

...about Muslims. From the "It's funny because it's true" file:

SALINA, KS—Local man Scott Gentries told reporters Wednesday that his deliberately limited grasp of Islamic history and culture was still more than sufficient to shape his views of the entire Muslim world.

Gentries, 48, said he had absolutely no interest in exposing himself to further knowledge of Islamic civilization or putting his sweeping opinions into a broader context of any kind, and confirmed he was "perfectly happy" to make a handful of emotionally charged words the basis of his mistrust toward all members of the world's second-largest religion.

"I learned all that really matters about the Muslim faith on 9/11," Gentries said in reference to the terrorist attacks on the United States undertaken by 19 of Islam's approximately 1.6 billion practitioners. "What more do I need to know to stigmatize Muslims everywhere as inherently violent radicals?"

"And now they want to build a mosque at Ground Zero," continued Gentries, eliminating any distinction between the 9/11 hijackers and Muslims in general. "No, I won't examine the accuracy of that statement, but yes, I will allow myself to be outraged by it and use it as evidence of these people's universal callousness toward Americans who lost loved ones when the Twin Towers fell."

"Even though I am not one of those people," he added.

"Muslims are bad." Yeah, I know people who "think" like this.

Something Someone Else Said

"In a rather curious and confused way, some white people are starting almost to think like a minority, even like a persecuted one. What does it take to believe that Christianity is an endangered religion in America or that the name of Jesus is insufficiently spoken or appreciated? Who wakes up believing that there is no appreciation for our veterans and our armed forces and that without a noisy speech from Sarah Palin, their sacrifice would be scorned? It's not unfair to say that such grievances are purely and simply imaginary, which in turn leads one to ask what the real ones can be. The clue, surely, is furnished by the remainder of the speeches, which deny racial feeling so monotonously and vehemently as to draw attention," -Christopher Hitchens, Slate, commenting upon the cultural insecurity of Beck and Palin followers at the prospect of their soon being outnumbered by immigrants and minorities.

Oh, the persecution a conservative white heterosexual Christian must endure in America today. Victims, victims, victims; always the victims.

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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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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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This Post Now Has A Title

Apologies for the lack of posting lately, a lot of things have been piling up. I'm happy to say that my NFL fantasy draft went fairly well this morning (even got a few Dallas Cowboys on my team) and my book club meeting earlier this evening was all fundamentalist Mormonism, sushi and martinis; good times and a great combination. Regular posting will resume tomorrow.

Something Wise Someone Else Said

"Write drunk, edit sober," -Ernest Hemingway.

I do enjoy writing much more than I do editing. Salut, Papa.

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