manunderstress.com

Fred Kaplan on recent remarks from the Bush administration:

4. “George Washington’s long struggle for freedom has also inspired generations of Americans to stand for freedom in their own time. Today, we’re fighting a new war to defend our liberty and our people and our way of life.”

On Feb. 19, to celebrate George Washington’s birthday, President Bush gave a speech at Mount Vernon comparing himself to the father of our country and the Iraqi war to the Revolutionary War.

In the past, George W. Bush has likened himself to Harry Truman, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Teddy Roosevelt, and John F. Kennedy.

I just adore the megalomania with which certain politicians liken themselves to vastly superior historical leaders. Dubya sitting around thinking he is like George Washington is like my 5 year old nephew sitting around thinking he is like Batman. Of course this is simply propaganda to battle with free-falling popularity ratings by glossing over the particulars of reality with fuzzy patriot-nostalgia of yore. Who could argue with Pearl Harbor? With WW2?

Kaplan continues:

Sound familiar? It’s obviously meant to, but it shouldn’t. Here’s an awkward question: By Bush’s own description, which side in the Iraq war most resembles the “ragged Continental Army” and which side the “mighty empire”? I don’t mean to draw moral (or any other sort of) equivalences, because there is nothing at all equivalent about those two wars, or these two presidents, and it degrades the serious study of history to pretend there is.

Douglas Feith, former underling-bitch of Donald Rumsfeld, is vehemently defending the work of his Office of Special Plans, a Defense Department policy wonk agency that is widely known to have contradicted CIA intelligence assessments with it’s own, uh, special reality. The recent Pentagon Inspector General’s report is damning, but little more than a hand-slap for Feith, concluding that his actions were inappropriate but not illegal. According to the report:

The office of the under-secretary of defence for policy developed, produced and then disseminated alternative intelligence assessments on the Iraq and al-Qaida relationship, which included some conclusions that were inconsistent with the consensus of the intelligence community, to senior decision-makers.

Note that this report is not part of phase two of the Senate Select Committee’s investigation, part of which was released in September, concluding that the intelligence community was strongly disputing alleged links between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda, even while Bush administration officials were asserting those links.

Does it strike anyone as odd that none of these folks are in jail yet?

I’m not sure what to make of this whole AEI melodrama. Are research groups and “think tanks” just platforms for sophistry? Do we expect them to pay for meaningful research that supports both sides of an issue? I don’t think so. I agree mostly with Jonathan Adler on this one, as I just don’t see enough real evidence that the AEI was trying to “bribe” scientists. For that matter, David Frum points out that the AEI is no different from any other think tank regarding their methods for obtaining research. Don’t get me wrong: if there is any evidence that the AEI was trying to manupulate scientific data, that would be one thing, and I’d gladly see them go down for it. But ironically, this “scandal” reemphasizes how biased and sensationalist the news media, particularly the Guardian and Reuters, continue to be regarding anything that can be remotely tied into Dubya’s Evil Empire. It’s getting tired, people. Think outside of the box.

Ultimately, this is a buyer beware world we live in, and better that way to encourage good judgment and analysis. In the end, you compare research groups, think tanks and idea armies, and make your informed decision. It may be difficult to pull concrete answers out of the noise, but it’s not impossible. Am I conceding that “the truth is out there?” Perhaps. Probabilistically, at least. In the end, even most cynical libertarians have conceded that humans are causing global warming. What policy now needs to be enacted to address matters is another can of worms you can bet you’ll see plenty of high paid research on.

Chuck Norris, perhaps the biggest GOP celebrity-clown since Ted Nugent, filled in for Hannity on Fox News the other night. Could it be that Fox is forsaking all appearances of responsible journalism for self-parodying performance art? The joke could be on us.

All I can say about Chuck’s website is that all websites are better with audio welcome messages, right?

There is a lot of talk in Atlanta, about what can be done to save Underground, the perpetually soulless downtown tourist complex containing, “unique shopping, dining, history and entertainment.” They’ve tried lots of government sponsored and taxpayer funded measures to no avail. Not even an extended 4am last call could help. Now the Zoo is considering relocating from it’s current Grant Park home. Need I state the obvious solution here?

Atlanta cops are on a real tear recently. After lying to get a warrant for a no-knock drug raid, in which a dangerous drug beast in the form of a 92 year old woman was gunned down, they terrorize and arrest an oxford historian for jaywalking. Fucking jaywalking sting! Brilliant! So needed in this age of TERROR! More homeland security dollars please, we just can’t decide who to arrest! And let the poor eat fucking Kevlar vests for dogs!

Hmm, what’s next, I wonder. Perhaps I’ll get tasered by some cops on segways for photographing a government building. That’s what I’m hoping for at least. Do you have a favorite way you want to go down?

CNN charges for web content older than a day or two, which is lame. Fortunately we have youtube. Here’s a package from December on Castro’s missed birthday parade by Cuba’s CNN correspondent, affectionately known by some of us as simply, “Mogre.”

For some reason the embed isn’t showing, click here.

I’ve always dug the culture jamming ethos, as bratty and hypocritical as it can sometimes be, because it’s so often really fucking clever. Nothing blows my dress up like good satire. Jean-Christian Bourcart gets it right with his incredibly impressive guerrilla art photography project of images of Iraqi dead projected on unsuspecting suburban houses and churches. You may have already seen it if you read Boing Boing, but this project just struck something deep within…simply awesome.

The culture Nazis are at it again, promising to save you from your fat selves, and NYC is leading the pack.

Last week alone, New York City banned the use of trans fats in restaurant meals, and an Ohio law passed in November that bans smoking in virtually all business establishments (even in company-owned vehicles such as trailer-truck cabs) went into effect. However different the actions may seem on the surface, they share something all too common in today’s America: They rob us of the right to make decisions–however stupid, unwise or repugnant to refined sensibilities–about how we want to live, work and eat.

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Most important, these bans reduce all of us to the status of children, incapable of making informed choices. Is it quaint to suggest that there’s something wrong with that in a country founded on the idea of the individual’s rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness?

Now if we can come together as collective buffoons and “ban” supposedly legal items or actions, what’s the distinction between legal and illegal in the first place? The ways we deceptively suppress freedom and individual choice in a country that was founded to protect these things never ceases to amaze me.

I’ve got an idea. Let’s ban stupidity. No more stupids, stupid thoughts, stupid words, anywhere, ever. Ok? Ah, I can breath freer already….

There’s been a lot of analysis recently about the GOP’s demise, if it was in part due to losing the libertarian vote, if it was just reaction to the war, or just because people grew tired of scandal and bad news. It’s futile to to try and pinpoint exactly why people vote how they vote, but suffice it to say that people wanted the GOP out for a number of reasons, and that the fact that they failed to live up to what a conservative party is supposed to be all about, is probably one of them. Argues Brink Lindsey:

Libertarian disaffection [with the GOP] should come as no surprise. Despite the GOP’s rhetorical commitment to limited government, the actual record of unified Republican rule in Washington has been an unmitigated disaster from a libertarian perspective: runaway federal spending at a clip unmatched since Lyndon Johnson; the creation of a massive new prescription-drug entitlement with hardly any thought as to how to pay for it; expansion of federal control over education through the No Child Left Behind Act; a big run-up in farm subsidies; extremist assertions of executive power under cover of fighting terrorism; and, to top it all off, an atrociously bungled war in Iraq.

This woeful record cannot simply be blamed on politicians failing to live up to their conservative principles. Conservatism itself has changed markedly in recent years, forsaking the old fusionist synthesis in favor of a new and altogether unattractive species of populism. The old formulation defined conservatism as the desire to protect traditional values from the intrusion of big government; the new one seeks to promote traditional values through the intrusion of big government. Just look at the causes that have been generating the real energy in the conservative movement of late: building walls to keep out immigrants, amending the Constitution to keep gays from marrying, and imposing sectarian beliefs on medical researchers and families struggling with end-of-life decisions….

Sebastian Mallaby suggests that the GOP implosion has been caused by growing divisions between conservative/libertarian republicans and the religious right:

…Christian conservatives now press for affirmative state action on behalf of traditional values: amendments to the constitution to bar gay marriage, government efforts to teach abstinence, federal payments to faith-based groups. All these policies appall libertarians.

And concerning the red state / big government collusion of supreme irony:

The most solidly red states in the nation tend also to be the most reliant on federal handouts — farm subsidies, water projects and sundry other earmarks. It’s hard to be the party of small government when you represent the communities that benefit most from big government. George W. Bush tried to straddle this divide by pleasing libertarians with tax cuts and traditionalists with spending. The result is a huge deficit.

I’ve thought for sometime now that this is the perfect time for the Democrats to reinvent themselves as the small government party. They don’t have to sell it like that, they could bill it as the more efficient government party, whatever. But it’s the perfect time for them to steal the (truly) conservative thunder and run with it. Do I think it will happen? Probably not. Already it looks like business as usual, or worse. But ya never know.