Cobb

Rise of Nations

I've made the plunge and picked up a PC strategy game. My choice: Rise of Nations. I played for about 4 hours last night (and early this morning) and have found it to be just as good as I thought it would be.

My first time out, I basically got to medieval and beat up my neighbors. But they started it. I would have liked my first time out to be a bit more peaceful so that I could regard the economics a bit closer, but I just generally found that I would have a surplus of life. That is to say the game put me in a situation rather quickly where I would get bored and rich but not able to expand my population, the question of military adventure arise quickly.

It's clearly addictive, deep and complex without taking huge amounts of time to make progress. More to come.

Multicultural Radio 1: Air America 0

On 1580 AM, you're not going to hear Al Franken. You're going to hear the same spanish language stuff you heard 3 weeks ago. Evidently, Air America f'd with somebody's money and got kicked to the curb.

The somebody is Multicultural Radio Broadcasting. You gotta know how I get a kick out of this. What did the Airheads think, that they were going to get a free ride? I can't tell you with any certainty that MRBI is not white-owned, but my guess is that there was a little wink wink nudge nudge we're all liberals kind of koolaid sold. Clearly MRBI ain't drinkin', which has got the Airhead panties in a twist.

"MultiCultural Radio Broadcasting's conduct in this matter has been disgraceful. To shut off a broadcast that listeners rely on without warning and in the middle of discussions is the height of irresponsibility and a slap in the face of the media industry. In addition, it is a clear violation of their contractual obligations, and we are seeking legal remedies against them in court."

Oh this is just too delicious.

Pushy, Nice People

I just politely closed the door on some evangelists who were selling Awake! magazine door to door. This weeks cover story is "Nuclear War, How Real Is It?". I have my own guess about how likely it will be, which is not. On the other hand we may very well have an nuclear accident, and in that case, a lot of people like me might not close the door at all.

Now that I have become rather proficient with dealing with disappointment and borderline tragedy, I see an interesting sort of pushiness. One of the first things I noticed, and that my mother noticed at the beginning of her hospital stay was that people would come around about three times a day asking to pray over you. And sure enough, it wasn't 30 minutes before a large woman with somewhat disheveled hair but a very warm voice came around and prayed over Moms. Her prayer was practiced and non-specific and moved along quickly, and though I respectfully bowed my head, I wondered exactly what's up with these amatuer chaplains running around the wards.

At Harbor General, there's no registration. You just walk through the metal detectors and you're in. The wards upstairs and over on the East Wing are wide open and there seem to be folks there at all times who are just visiting. It's very unlike the security I recall at Northside in Atlanta when we were bearing the girls. But I imagine that maternity is probably more locked down here than the general part where Moms was staying. At any rate, there seemed to be no deterrent to anyone who decided to do a good turn or fifty by praying for people who have been incapacitated.

The persistant desire to do good is something we are fortunate to have in our society and I'm confident that it manifests itself in all kinds of ways I probably haven't really recognized before. It's something I see in women in their 50s and 60s. They are pushy and nice; willfully charitable. Picture them in your mind. Relax and let them help.

George, Uh, Said It

What does George W Bush have in common with Ronald Reagan? Not enough. Reagan, after all, was the Great Communicator.

I can't recall sweating so much for somebody. He says the right thing and you understand him, but he's like an inarticulate child that only a parent can love.
What are we supposed to do? Yike. After about the 47th time he said 'Freedom' I switched off the radio. Fortunately, there wasn't much else to say. I was just shocked that he couldn't quip with the greatest failure question.

Anyway, I'm glad that's over and it's clear why he doesn't do it that often. Sheesh.

FBI Systems

Listening to Janet Reno this morning on CSPAN, one wonders exactly what kind of system is being built. This thing seems to be magical, because with it, they're going to be able to really catch the bad guys, and without it they seem to be lost without a clue.

At least we can be reasonably sure that this is an IT assignment that won't be outsourced.

Iraqi Council: Professionals Wanted

Updating my information and opinion on the Iraqi Governing Council, I don't think there's a hell of a lot to be lost if the IGC is expanded beyond 25 members. It's a concession to loudmouthing but it isn't clear to me that it will make Iraq any more governable.

As I was informed this afternoon, the problems with the IGC was not so much that the 25 were appointed by Americans, but its competence to govern was questioned when it tried to make its first appointments. The 25 bickered so much that every subordinate organization they appointed was done without consensus, so that instead of appointing a 10 member constitutional drafting committee, they appointed one with 25 members. My understanding is that they've done this twice.

So adding new members to the highest council, as is being demanded from all Iraqi quarters will only add to the madness in my opinion. Nevertheless, in accordance to UN Resolution 1511, there are some reasons to do this.

If Bremer continues to punt to the UN, I doubt that it will really help the Iraqi people. But I can see how shutting up Americans by doing so would have some domestic political currency. My guess is that this is what Kerry's appeasment process would be all about (appeasement to the Left wing of the Democrats that is).

I would draw the line, however, at adding some ethnic or tribal quotas to the IGC expansion. The bottom line is competence, and that seems hard enough to come by. Iraqi professionals need to be able to contribute.

None of this will speed up elections. None of this will get Sadr to pipe down. I don't see how the Iraqis are going to run an army when Sadr gets his own religious militia. I don't see who is going to arrest all the kidnappers and guerilla groups in the country when the handover is done. There's a great deal of complaint about the American presence in Iraq, but when the new government takes over, the American military is not going to just disappear. So when the screamers start throwing bricks over the walls of the American military compound, which Iraqis are going to make arrests?

Just Reading

I'm about 1/3rd the way through 'The Man Who Warned America'. I find it difficult to believe those screechy voices asking why, why, why would find JPO a good guy.

Uncool

Blogs are supposed to be cool, right? No. Blogs are supposed to remind us, from a personal and biased perspective, what living life in America is about and what it should be about. The best bloggers are those who journal our lives and remind us through their own personal commitment to the introspection and self-improvement, the currency of democracy.

The best blogs do that. When I forget to read them, I forget about one of the things I'm supposed to be all about. Jump back, slap myself, ouch! But seriously, deal with this. GV is on top of the game, and reminds me of the kind of writing that makes a difference to me.

Practical Tangent

I don't know what kind of partisan I am. I suppose I'll measure myself by my peers, but what I do know is that I like John O'Neill. So pursuant to all that, I'm not going to weigh in on Rice or Clarke again until I hear from the perspective of O'Neill's biographer whose book I picked up at the airport this evening.

As far as I'm concerned, what we continue to face is AQ and other terrorists, and really the only thing that gives me any comfort is the work and dedication of CT professionals. Furthermore I have my positive biases for the FBI for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that I have a couple friends and associates that work for the Bureau, one who in fact works CT in California.

So if my litmus tests go off the predetermined scale, it's because I'm going on the practical tangent of learning what it is that CT folks do for a living and what one of their best learned.

It's Not About Rice

I have yet been unbusy enough to read Rice' testimony or read Clarke's book, but I'm rather perturbed on how questions about Rice' competence have risen to the level of chatter without any real smoking gun. I've heard talk about her 'performance', which all sounds to me like stupid expectations which will second guess whether or not she is 'intelligent and articulate'. Given that there's only so much that can come out in a couple hours, I expect that she would find a way to defend the White House and her good family friend, GW Bush, half of which is her job.

I don't think anybody is going to say that Condi Rice is the world's best CT expert, but it is important to know whether or not her personality is or is not a barrier to get the the best CT experts to work for the President. So I don't care so much about Rice' future outside of that context.

Again, all of these people we elected to do something other than fight AQ, so all of them will have been caught flat-footed at some point. If there's going to be some political fight about it, I don't hear anybody from the Bush Lied crowd saying the names of other CT people who should have been heeded. If Clarke hadn't stepped forward, nobody would be hounding Rice. So calls for her head are disingenuous from the perspective of lacking evidence of others more competent.

Think about it this way. Have a commission investigate the American public's political pressure on the Bush CT strategy. They've had since nine-eleven to come up with people better than Tom Ridge, Ashcroft, Rice, Perle, Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld. Who are those people? Not even Kerry knows.

So Rice is a poor friggen NSA compared to who, and for what reasons? Sure she's flacking for Bush, that's her job. But what specifically did she do wrong in the prosecution of her duties, and who on the planet is leaking the stories to the media about what royal fuckups she's made? Nobody is leaking stories, so perhaps she's not such a goofball after all. Nobody has the names of people saying she has done anything which rises to the level of the Valerie Plame matter.

So this is not about Rice, it's just another litmus test on the Bush 43 White House.

Yet and still, there are details which ought to be pursued in the interest of getting our country better prepared to deal with the ghost of terrorism yet to come, rather than the ghost terrorism past. Clarke has written a book. Anybody else?

The Elephant in My Backyard

I am in the process of the grass roots work in the community I grew up in. Not without a little trepidation, I will be the representative of the new West Los Angeles chapter of the California Congress of Republicans. Interesting times lie ahead.

My immediate task is to get my own papers in order with a gaggle of GOP orgs, membership and whatnot. Then we've got to get the accounts started so I can start building the organization. My territory is the 47th Assembly District which includes parts of Westwood, Cheviot, Miracle Mile to the edge of Koreatown, the Cadillac area around Kaiser, Palms, Culver City, Ladera, Baldwin Hills, Crenshaw, View Park, Liemert Park and the Mid-City over to USC, including Rampart (I think).

That's a lot of territory to cover, but I know it. I'm very excited about building up a base and getting to know people all over. Thus begins my education about Republican politics in the real world.

Karen Bass stomped the last Republican candidate, Dale Everett, 23.5k votes to 5.6k. So I suppose I'll start by talking to him. Then I'll start looking for places to meet with folks.

We've had some grief from Daniel Pipes, but he's just doing a suspicious rah-rah. I pay it little mind.

Blix' (Little) Bombshell

Hans Blix, frustrated internationalist, confirms what I've been saying all along. Italics mine.

But if getting Iraq right was tough, getting the diplomacy right was much easier. Reading this book one is struck by how, at the end, the United States had become uninterested in diplomacy, viewing it as an obstacle. It seems clear that with a little effort Washington could have worked through international structures and institutions to achieve its goals in Iraq. Blix and ElBaradei were proving to be tough, honest taskmasters. Every country -- yes, even France -- was coming around to the view that the inspections needed to go on for only another month or two, that benchmarks could have been established, and if the Iraqis failed these tests the Security Council would authorize war. But in a fashion that is almost reminiscent of World War I, the Pentagon's military timetables drove American diplomacy. The weather had become more important than international legitimacy.

So here's the calculation. Let's imagine that the Pentagon's best calculation was that if we waited 2 more months for the invasion of Iraq, we would have lost about 4000 more soldiers than we did. Would it be worth it for international support?

More specifically, if you were the President of the United States of America and the troops are sent into Iraq by your sayso, would you send them later knowing that decision would both cement your international coalition and kill 4000 more Americans. How many American troops are worth the diplomatic victory?

Have I made this point clearly enough? 4000 is a number picked out of thin air, but somebody had to make that decision and the Pentagon knows what that number is. If the number was negligible then we have a problem. The question, I think, most clearly falls on the head of Colin Powell. After all it was his doctrine was that we go in with the big force at the right time.

One more thing to consider here, which in a way typifies the nature of timetable justifications. We all know that some dodgy intel suggested that Saddam Hussein himself had been pinpointed. On that tip we launched several tons of cruise missles which hit their target but missed Saddam. This upped the original timetable by 2 or 3 days. One can argue that this kind of aggressive opportunism characterizes the Administrations persecution of this war. The only imprudence I see in that is political, and I sleep just fine with that.

O'Neill Was Right

As I speculated and continue to believe regarding the pre-nine eleven state of readiness, John O'Neill was right.

So Rice is technically correct. But her "context" for the case omits the bigger picture -- which tends, in fact, to corroborate Clarke's version, and moreover paints Rice and her Team Bush cohorts in a decidedly incompetent light.

The bigger picture includes what happened next: Namely, FBI agents and the Clinton counterterror team, headed by Clarke -- realizing the enormity of what Ressam represented -- sprung quickly into action and soon uncovered most of the rest of his co-conspirators. Ressam, it must be remembered, was scheduled to bomb L.A. International Airport. However, there were at least three other millennium plots, all outside the U.S. but against mostly American targets. (As far as I know, the speculation that the Space Needle was targeted has been mostly discredited.) More to the point, investigators began uncovering a much broader assortment of Al Qaeda terrorist cells operating within the U.S.

This happened largely because of Clarke's "battle station" status for officials in Washington. The Seattle FBI agent investigating the case, Fred Humphries, was quickly brought under the wing of John O'Neill, Clarke's counterterrorism chief (and himself a victim of 9/11, having been forced out by the Bush administration). And O'Neill, as Clarke explained in a PBS interview last year, used Ressam to springboard into a broad swath of terrorist cells -- and because of that, the other components of the Millennium Plot were stymied:

Orcinus demonstrates the patience I lack these hectic days in his review of the Rice testimony vis a vis Clarke's claims. I questioned her placement in the Bush Administration but only in hindsight. She's a cold warrior and her bailiwick is Russia, it is certainly reasonable to question what she does (and why) when the war has turned to terror. Surely she's not contemplating what the Russians are doing in Chechnya.

At any rate, this is a rabbit hole I am likely to pursue with the understanding that as a long time advocate of cloak & dagger activities against terrorists I am likely to land on the hawkish side of affairs. Clarke, with only a cursory review, appears to be more intelligently hawkish on the matter than Rice and his suggestion that there are profound differences in the interpretation of the same facts is quite damning of the wisdom of the current administration - namely Rice if CT is indeed her job.

Rice can't be blamed entirely. She rode in on the coattails of GWBush who was not elected in the context of terror. It would have been McCain. So when and how Rice knew O'Neill is what I want to know next.

Whatever to Dodd

It has come to this. Apparently, Chris Dodd (D-CT) uttered 14 words as part of a verbal tongue bath of Robert Byrd which is supposed to make us all loose our bowels over its 'racist' implications.

I can only hope that serious folks attached to this wispy chain of evidence and courtly commentary will read my thoughts regarding the failures of anti-racism and the post-racial future. As BTD Steve notes, I am not generally in a gracious mood when it comes to going over point by point what I actually know in this regard and it makes me appear to be more intransigent and ignorant than I am. But I have decided that for my own health it's better not to stress over these things.

As a general example of Americans being manifestly unable to extract competence from their government officials, this charge of racism is a par for the course. While there are more serious folks who will make the proper points, I think they will be lost on the general and partisan public whose mass (if you consider 30% voter turnout to be massive) will decide matters in a binary fashion. It's no wonder that lobbyists have a field day on Capitol Hill, 'everyone else' is a Dolt by comparison.

Anyway, remark noted.

PC Gaming

Ooh baby, I'm cooking with gas. Now that I've got the Shuttle fully righteous, I'm willing to be down with the PC game crowd. Not since A-Train and The Sims, have I done much PC gaming. I have come to understand that I've missed a little bit.

A couple years ago in my pre XBox days when I suffered the indignities of getting thrashed in Super Mario Kart by a 7 year old boy, I said to myself it was time for a change. So before I spent a grip on a console, I looked for what was hot. The result was Sin, Everquest and Black & White. I was told that these were the finest the PC had to offer.

Sin was actually fairly enjoyable even though it overburdened my machine. I really never got past any decent level and once I got stuck at a checkpoint with a non-elidable cut scene, I tossed it. I found Black & White to be fairly entertaining for a time but I really got annoyed with the UI. Once my monkey was on a leash, I had all these stupid leash commands that never quite worked. He got tangled up at the entrance to the temple and I dumped that one. Also, one of the shoulder angels glitched so I could see but not hear him. Ick. By the time I started the tutorial to Everquest and found that I couldn't jump up a ledge, I thought, well maybe I'll just use magic for the whole game. By that time, I ran into some ducats, said f it and bought my XBox. I've never looked back.

Recently, however I've gotten the urge to do a real seriously grown up strategic kind of thing. All I can think of is 'Age of Empires' because it sounds grown up and strategic. (Whereas Condi Rice makes 'strategic' sound like excuse making.) So I'm asking for a little help here. BTW I've got a big fat flat panel and a Radeon and an optical cordless mouse, I think things can be more pleasant.

Three Degrees of Stupidity

As an Update to the Moronic Inferno, I have come up with Three Classes of Subpar Intelligence.

Class Three: High Function Stupids - Cognizant Stupidity
Cognizant stupidity involves a paticular and localized lack of intelligence. This is generally transient but clearly noticeable. Such people are often taken advantage of primarily because they have something to lose. Most cognizant stupid people function well in society. It takes some time to determine their stupidity - they can be lucid for prolonged periods of time.

Fools are the most commonly and widely dispersed of the type. A Fool, also known as a Dupe is someone whose stupidity lies in a narrow area. Some Fools are often mistaken for intelligent people who are 'fatally flawed'. Foolishness can be rewarded in society however that doesn't quite make up for the lack.

We often also encounter Idiots, who function quite well in society, but there are a class of things they just don't get. Idiots are generally smart enough to avoid their own idiotic behaviors, but they have a surprising amount of tolerance for their own idiocy, which they can sometimes convince others as 'unique genius'. Idiots are particularly annoying because they generally believe that they know what they're talking about even after it becomes clear that they don't. They will call it a 'difference of opinion', but they're simply idiotic.

Stooges at the low end of the cognizant totem pole, never quite avoid stupidity. Stooges however are intelligent enough to use their stupidity to their own advantage, and usually are most recognizeable by their capacity as Flacks, Namedroppers, Flunkies and Brownnosers. Stooges are deceptive by nature and function best under the color of authority. Stooges, once discovered, do what they do best, blame somebody else.

Class Two: Low Function Stupids - Chronic Stupidity
Chronic stupidity manifests itself in a variety of ways, however a chronically stupid individual is almost immediately recognizeable as challenged by ordinary life. As low function individuals, they are generally found in co-dependent relationships with each other or sympaticos.

The classic LFS is a Doofus. Easily recognizeable, a Doofus has difficulty making sense of common social conventions, such as dressing properly, laughing without snorting, or using breath mints. A Doofus who sees you tomorrow will retell the joke you told him today. As a social incompetent, a Doofus aims to be a geek, but alas is too stupid to convince anyone save perhaps their poor suffering parents. At the same level of a Doofus but with an emphasis on physical stupidity is a Spaz.

However there are fairly stupid people who do manage some ability to pass themselves off as socially acceptable, that is until they open their mouths. Meet the Airhead, also known as the Twit. Both are capable of talking at a reasonable speed but are they saying anything? No. These stupids are remarkably unselfconsious about their stupidity, but that is because they generally are able to seek and find each others company. If you know more than one Airhead, check yourself.

Also very common are Dolts. Also known as blockheads, knuckleheads, and shitferbrains, Dolts are generally incapable of thinking on their feet. Dolts have one-track minds which can make them fairly good athletes, thugs and gas station attendants. A dolt has a favorite song and she's always singing it. Dolts never get over the death of a pet or Curt Cobain.

A Doofus who is also a Spaz is generally known as a Moron. Morons are at the bottom of the low function chain. Morons tend to remain out of sight and out of mind, but they can make their presense spectacularly known. Driving on the sidewalk is a moronic activity, as is setting fire to cats. Most winners of the Darwin Awards are Morons.

Class One: The Pathological Stupids - Terminal Stupidity
Uh, what can I say? These are a group that one doesn't often encounter in the mainstream of society, however there are many who remain uninstitutionalized. It is not generally considered polite to discuss the behaviors of the PS crew, but who gives a fart about that?

The most charming of the Pathologicals is the Imbecile. Imbeciles generally have sunny personalities, which means that they can smile without drooling. In the company of an Imbecile, most people are pleasantly surprised that they can do anything at all. In fact, imbeciles are about as bright as 7 year old children. Give them cookies, but when they start talking about 'doody' it's time to leave.

The most common of the low end are Retards. Retards have a hard time maintaining any train of thought whatsoever. Not only do they speak in non-sequiturs, life itself is one stream of non-sequiturs for them. Although it's snarkily cool to call someone a Retard, as I am prone to do, true Retards need personal attention at all times and must be kept away from sharp objects.

Cretins are the lowest of the low. You've never seen one, and that's a good thing.

Brass Tacks

Moronic Inferno

Clarke v Rice is on in the peanut gallery, and we have critics of critics of 17 year old criticisms trying to determine if Dr. Rice is a moron. Beside the obvious, which is that few of us are in a position to tell what level of stupidity can rise to the top of the US Government, I find it absolutely incredible that the basis for this comes from these 563 words.

Since I'm stating the obvious, some people would say that any researcher who can't tell a man from a woman probably is more of a moron than one who can't tell a "former military scientist" from a "communist agent". That's just my opinion, I might be wrong.

Inglewood Kicks Wal-Mart to the Curb

But retail analysts don't think this is the end.

"It's good for Wal-Mart to get into California but it's not as if Wal-Mart's future depended on this vote," said Yannas. "At the same time, what the Inglewood decision could have some effect on is Wal-Mart's attempts to get closer to metropolitan cities, especially if we see other cities around the country putting up similar opposition to having Wal-Mart in their neighborhood."

So here's where this thing can go. Wal-Mart can go back to the Inglewood City Council (ballsy move, that) and make a big deal public concession to the environmental and other regulations. Or Inglewood could stick it to Wal-Mart by inviting Costco to open a store on the same spot.

It really depends on what Kenneth Ulmer says. Now here's an interesting story. It was my understanding that Ulmer was in favor of the project. But this story contradicts that, which leaves me with an odd feeling considering I've been told that Ulmer owns the property. Perhaps the city of Inglewood is involved in the purchase of land to be occupied by Wal-Mart, or he had a lease in mind. But if he suddenly changed his mind, then the matter was doomed. Perhaps he's figuring out a way to get more money. This leaves me with a strange feeling...

There's much more here than meets the eye.

Randi Rhodes, Barrelfish

You have to hand it to the Airheads. They know how to pick 'em. Randi Rhodes is just about as shrill a lefty as one could possibly imagine. She is a nightmare, a perfect goose for the Dittohead gander.

Last evening she said something that sounded perfectly logical. In fact, if it's possible to be exactly half right about something, that's where she was.

In defending Liberalism, she gave as an example the US Military. She paraded her Air Force cred and then spoke in terms of raising all boats. The Military, she says, preaches liberalism. You are only as strong as the weakest among you. In your squad or platoon or battalion, it is your first priority to find the weakest link on your team and make them stronger. The failure of the weakest person puts everyone at risk, a scream at the wrong time, an inability to keep up; in the presence of danger weakness can put the strongest member in harm's way. This is why the entire team is punished when the weakest person messes up, they suffer together when any of them suffer. Quoth Randi Rhodes, the Military teaches Liberalism.

So why, she asks do Republicans, who value the military, find excuses to be anything other than Liberal? I'll answer that one.

The Military is not a Democracy.

You have no choice in the matter of teamwork in the military. You are trained for life and death struggle, fortunately public life in this free country is not so harsh. In the military, you don't have freedom of association, you are no longer a citizen. Your entire life is subjugated to hierarchical authority under a completely different set of rules. You submit your mind, body and a good portion of your soul to your unit, your group and your commanders. You don't own yourself, you are a GI, period, end of story.

Yes, Randi, the Military teaches Liberalism, and that liberalism is the inevitable result of there being top down control of every aspect of every soldier, and every soldier's life debt owed to their superior officers and commanders. It serves a very valuable purpose which is to defend America, not to become Sparta.

I am not given to believe that the Left is authoritarian by design, but more often than not, such sentiments bespeak a Hobbsian intervention. Here's to hoping they don't get their way in the land of the free.

Shuttle XPC

Callisto is the name of my newest computer. I love it. I can say without qualification, that it's the sweetest machine I've ever owned, well with the exception of the original 6085.

It's a Shuttle XPC SB75G2. And for the first time in life, I assembled the whole thing myself. I got all the goodies: Serial ATA 7200 RPM Maxtor 120GB drive,
Sony DVD-Rom (I'm going to get the Plextor DVD Burner later, I didn't really need to burn DVDs right now). It's got the multithreading P4 3GHz CPU and an ATI Radeon 9600 SE video board. I don't need more than that since I'm a console gamer, not a PC gamer.

I'm not overclocking anything and I didn't use thermal grease on the chip. I'm still having a bit of trouble with the ATI card, but since graphics aren't a priority I can let it slide for the moment. The weird thing was that I had to stick in an old Ethernet card because the native interface is too fast for my LAN. It has got a 1394 which runs some gawdawful 400Mbps. My pathetic little routers don't handle that, and they're brand new.

So if you don't see me blogging, it's because I'm deep into file transfer hell.

Say What?

Wishful Sedition

Yesterday, amongst the giggle girls, F9 and F7, I hung out with George and his lovely.

On what turned out to be a fairly bright day after late night and early morning low clouds and fog along the coast, we strolled down the promenade and pier in Redondo. The awkwardness of having an n-way conversation with a top blogger and your own daughters finally broke when they discovered the huge fishtank in the seafood restaurant and we got down to political sputtering.

I realised rather quickly that I need some stronger struts in my theories. Taken on their own, the arguments I present make perfect sense. But it doesn't all add up coherently. George was polite enough to not raise his eyebrows too high. What's interesting in this first person exposition is that I'm a bit more anti-left than I sound. It doesn't make me particularly comfortable to say so but it is true so I may as well flesh it out properly.

What emerges in my theory is a very strong appreciation for Things That Work, which is very much a part of my attraction to religion (in that it works for centuries) and for America (in that it functions despite major dislocations). For example, I often cite the story of Orange Juice, which can be gotten in any ghetto or any desert in this nation at any time of the year. As well, I cite the fact that OKC can happen, LA Riots can happen, NYC Blackouts can happen, and we don't have soldiers on the street being shot. We don't have kids throwing rocks at cops or Molotov cocktails tossed through storefronts.

Riots in America are not political and this is why the Left is marginalized - why it cannot remain a majority party. We're not agitated enough. The Left has to look for trouble because as uncomfortable as we may get, we are not in trouble as a nation. We're peaceful, we're happy, we watch television. The economy makes us squirm and it punishes many of us, some it absolutely destroys. But even so, you won't find Enron survivors or Dot Com survivors striking in solidarity with Southern California grocery strikers, and nowhere will you even find roughneck miners or steelworkers tussling with cops. Capitalism has been reformed so that we may never see another Debs. Too many families have climbed up, and there remain too many below who still hope to climb for the prophets of doom to solidify their grip on the downtrodden. America isn't downtrodden quite enough. So the Left is really a Sorta-Left and incapable of gathering the kind of steam we recently saw in Spain. These are poor times for disaffection.

At the same time, I don't think anyone is prepared for the know-knothing cynical dysfunction of the kind of Republicans who have been running things. At the heart of the Republican schitzophrenia is disdain for government and an emnity against its competence in anything but tax abatement and military superiority. They hate themselves. They run for re-election on premises which would support their ouster and so all they can do to justify their existence is as a placeholding foil to their Democrat rivals. There was no clearer manifestation of this than Newt Gingrich's bullheaded willingness to stop the government dead in its tracks. None of this logic would survive the most basic scrutiny in the business world Republicans treasure so much. Hire me, I'll do less than the other guy. Republicans have a very difficult time employing the word 'productivity' to the operation of government. That is why I believe them more prone to graft and corruption. But that's a discussion for another day.

With the kind of miserable Republicans we suffer, what would the Left do? Since I believe a little class warfare is healthy, I suggested a deck of cards outlining the top enemies of the Left, with Carl Rove at the top. Even I can't stand his trickeration, but given this Republican conundrum, it is natural that such a man rise to the top. All the emnity of the Democrats is focused on the White House, because after all, in Congress everything is relative. If Republicans give the elderly 5 pills instead of the 7 the Democrats proposed, it's considered 'fiscally conservative' regardless of the fact that the elderly don't need pills at all, but crutches. So the presidential race is a kind of all or nothing battle (with much sound and fury).

Given that America survives OJ Simpson and nine-eleven, what kind of disaster could the Left cook up in order to raise voter turnout to something around 70%? It would have to be huge, Vietnam War sized. That's not anything they could invent, they simply would have to react to disaster in a better way than the incumbent Right can manage it. But there aren't enough body bags coming back from Iraq for that to happen. America can afford that too.

Perhaps only acts of desparation would work, thus the title of this post.

I am quite happy these days. But even in my unhappy days when I was equally mad about Osama and GW about the economy and the foul mood my fellow citizens in the wake of the darkest deeds of terrorism; in those days at the beginning of this blog, I sat down to write. And I think most Americans would rather sit down to write than to get up and fight given the levels of threat we deal with on a daily basis. It speaks volumes about the stability of this great civilization and the excellent qualities of American people themselves. We have quite enough fighters and even in war we can afford the apathy of the kinds of voter turnout we have.

I don't buy that Americans are ignorant by and large. We're spoiled, and so we don't need to know so much. All human beings understand inately when their lives are threatened, and we are not close to desparation. When things get ugly there are plenty of competent folks to handle them. We always have heroes to rise to the occasion - hell half of our popular fiction is all about that very idea and fact.

So I will continue to stay with the Republicans, as they require a bit of principled reform from moderate black nationalists. Yet I am honestly sympathetic with the Left to the extent that they truly understand and are willing to deal with the problems of their particular concern. Still it remains the case that this is America, and that's a good thing. So long as it is, conservatives will remain in power, wishful sedition notwithstanding.

Shocked!

It appears that some enterprising Americans have found new ways to shock and disgust. In a tale of obscenity and censorship, a highschool faces the outrage of the finger. OK three fingers.

In May of 2000, it was reported in the local paper that thirty-four students who had attended Hanover High School in Pennsylvania had had their pictures taken for the school yearbook giving an obscene gesture. The principal, John P. Cokefair, had sent a letter to the thirty-four students' parents explaining that because of the preponderance of this gesture in the photos, the offending photos would be re-taken, without the gesturing students, and these students would bear the cost of the re-shoot.

Here is more evidence that I am becoming a cranky old fud. Kids today!

Marginal Issues

I've been hanging out with the Afrofuturists for a spell explaining as a grouchy old man about the bad old days. I just happened upon an interesting transcript from 11 years ago, from Compuserv. Check it.

We've come a long way.

Difference

Your Competition

Could you do this?

Mexican woman performs own Caesarean to save baby
LONDON (Reuters) - A woman in Mexico gave birth to a healthy baby boy after performing a Caesarean section on herself with a kitchen knife, doctors said Tuesday.

She Beat Me

Even though I know better, I like to occasionally poke fun at feminists for not having all the answers. Plus, I'm Dad, so I get to stand up as a very fulfilled individual patriarch, aka proud poppa.

Sure there's some folks who like to beat me up about letting my kids play video games, but I think I'm on good ground when I suggest that they're better than television. So on that limb I suppose it's a good thing that my daughters are gaining skills as button mashers in Soul Calibur 2, and they're kicking my butt.

So what are we to make of it when a 9 year old girl opens a can of whoopass on her dad? Well, it's all great fun and that's all we care about around here.

I didn't think that I was going to like this game as much as I have, being a Virtua Fighter snob from way back when. It turns out to have all of the subtleties of the VF series including blocking, throws (although not reversals), side motions and combos. The game is pretty large with a narrative section, a bunch of alternative weapons, corny dialog and very cool combat environments.

Most impressive of all is the practice mode. All cheats are built into the system so that you can see what moves there are. So you can have an infinite life and practice until your fingers get numba;dn...

MTC

It's a pleasure to try out this new toy I have. It's going to allow me to correct my spelling mistakes and do a lot of other cool things. It's called the MTC or MT client tool. Big props to Prometheus 6 for building this doohickey.

Strange Fruit in Fallujah

I read Healing Iraq for the first time a day or so ago. The feeling of utter frustration really struck a chord in me. What we witnessed on the front page of the NYT and other papers was nothing short of a lynching. According to Zayed, some of this is nothing new. And for that reason, Iraqis have my deep sympathy. So it wasn't a surprise to hear the following:

Iraqis know very well who those 'pious' people are. They are gangsters, rapists, murderers, thieves, kidnappers, looters, and criminals. They are only using religion as cover. I can't even dream of what would happen if those people were left to make trouble on our streets that way without punishment. I believe that it's now time for Al-Sadr to experience a very bad accident soon. We will be sorry for him I assure you, "Oh poor fellow, what a terrible misfortune, what a great loss" we would say to each other knowingly. It's scenes like these that make me sometimes wonder to myself if Saddam wasn't justified in assassinating all those clerics.

Although it's difficult to parse the details of foreign places, this kind of brutality carried out in the streets in front of children shows the depth of depravity that has befallen these people. I sense that it parallels our American South in the worse era of Jim Crow. Just as the Islam used in justification could only be a travesty of true Islam, Christianity was used to justifty Klan acts of terror. Our sense of revulsion that such things could be makes us react with anger. I know that anger. We all do.

I think we are fortunate to have the kind of reflective society that brings thoughtful influence to bear on the kind of reactions we could charge our forces to inflict. And as odd as it may sound, our experience with Jim Crow will help us moderate our anger when we see this kind of horror. In our gut, we want to wreck shit, but we know better.

Annenberg, Finally

More than a decade ago, I watched McNeil Lehrer with religious devotion and frequency. First weened off network news there, I felt that finally I was getting somewhere in knowing things computer geeks don't get in undergraduate studies. My favorite regular guest was Kathleen Hall Jamieson, who would dessicate the political spin with aplomb. Finally, she's got a website.

FactCheck.org. Thanks Deb.

The truth is stranger than fiction.

Strikes Against Bush

I think it's reasonable for me to document my strikes against GWBush right about now. I'm a Republican he is in danger of losing, not that I was very strong for him in general rather than on the biggest issues.

• Slime & Defend
  Carl Rove must die.
• Valerie Plame
  This was unconscionable. Outing a CIA operative for political gain was dastardly, and he never owned up to it or rolled a head for it. He can not be forgiven.
• Steel Tariffs
  Never made sense, and backfired to boot. This was pure heavy handed manipulation, without any regard to matters of free trade, he almost got us hauled into WTO sanctions.
• Colin Powell
  Bush's timetable on Iraq has set our foreign policy backwards and has put the agenda of the PNAC ahead of that of the State Department. He has taken an American Hero and turned him into an emasculated flunky. Powell and Armitage should be kicking Perle & Wolfowitz' asses, but because of Cheney, they're not.
• Compassionate Conservatism
  That's Arnold Schwartzeneggar, not GWBush. Your domestic agenda is a joke. This is moderated by the fact that the Bush White House has all but muted Tom Delay, Bob Barr and Trent Lott. This Congress *did* pass McCain Feingold. But his fake 'hispanic' is ridiculous.
• Deficit Spending
  Republicans don't fool me with their promises not to spend. They goddamned do spend. Missile defense is a classic boondoggle. At any rate, the Federal budget has gone to hell in a handbasket, and there's nobody stopping the train.
• Microsoft
  GWBush allowed Microsoft to get away with murder. Anti-Trust law is there for a good reason, and Microsoft flaunted it. Playing this like it was a loony lefty scheme of Clinton's was stupid and wrong.
• Amicus Against Michigan
  Stupid and wrong.

  What GW Bush has done right is obvious. As a mediocre President, he has risen to the challenge of staring down Saddam. Nuff said about that.

Freak

Kerry - McCain?

Just for the chance to get John McCain in the White House I'd probably go for this ticket. John McCain is a straight-talker and he walks the walk too. Who else has the cojones to outlaw soft money? Somebody who is not all political hacking that's who. And of course Russ Feingold gets props too.

So on the odd chance that this could happen, let's keep an eye out for Conservatives for Kerry, by another Republican blogger who isn't afraid to say about Richard Clarke what I said.

The Google Bubble

I read the latest set of articles about Google in Wired. I swear they almost made me feel it again. You know, the fever, that feeling that the scientific advances are starting to work like magic on the finances of mere programmers.

This stings particularly badly not only because I don't want to feel like a sucker, but because I turned down a job at Google last year. I took the calculated risk that life in Northern California is simply not worth it despite the deflationary forces of the past two years. Aside from that I was told that my database group, the financial database group would not necessarily rub shoulders with THE database group. Not that I wouldn't have bogarded anyway.

So the sword of Damocles hangs over my head as I bite my nails through the Google IPO. Was I right, or was I wrong? I hope I was right. This will be the second time. I turned down Microsoft over a little thing called Visual Basic back in 1991.

Too Black?

On Kos

For what it's worth, I think Matt Stoller has got the right idea and perspective on what's going on regarding the dust-up over Kos' 'monumental' blunder.

In a nation that seems incapable of allowing men with beards to run and win for public offices, the kind of gotcha games that scandalists line their policical credibility ar bound to find a gold mine in the web.

Grammar God

You are a GRAMMAR GOD!


If your mission in life is not already to
preserve the English tongue, it should be.
Congratulations and thank you!


How grammatically sound are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

Why AA Is Like Church

Dean Esmay is dealing with private demons and public criticism. I think his conflict is very instructive of the kinds of unique questions Americans face with regard to their choices of institutions.

Since our culture is institutionalized, it makes it more accessible to all ethnics, creeds and persuasions, but it also opens up questions of personal development and recovery to cultural and institutional critics. A difficult prospect to face, but also a direct consequence about the fact that we have choices. In this there are even market mechanisms of public opinion at work which have no real bearing on the effectiveness of the institutions criticized.

Fascinating.

Dread

Two summers ago, I was reading Martin Amis in Houston. His book on the crimes of Stalin, 'Koba The Dread' opened a wound in me that has never healed.

In some ways, after reading what I could never finish for breaking down into tears, I felt that I had lost my individuality. It is the acknowledgement that 20 million people can be killed, the enormity of hubris and evil, which destroys the pretension of uniqueness. One cannot be unique when one is dead, one can only symbolize what is missing in what remains. You become a memory like everything else, you fail to arouse reactions, you become one with the spirit world. You are passive when you are dead, and even as you live, in everything you do, you are only preparing those around you for how you persist in memory. Or not.

It is this understanding of humanity that stays with me now. And somehow I think it returns me to the constant angst of adolescence. Nobody understands what I feel - nobody cares about me. It's not that they actually don't, but that the chances that this understanding will persist beyond my contribution to its maintenance are slim. I think that is always true of everyone and the presence and the pressures of love or work makes us forget it. We believe that those who know us will always know us more or less fixedly. We assume the consistencey of meaning. A kiss is always just a kiss. So you kiss those you love, but as time goes by a kiss becomes something else entirely. Your dead body cannot be kissed.

In memorializing my grandfather, I could never tell you what his kiss was. He buried the woman who kissed him most, and if he wished to be known in that dimension of love, he would be eternally frustrated. He would have to go around kissing people. It seems hardly worth the effort, and what can one do to be ever what one was in the days beyond the grave?

I think such dissapation would cause a great deal of anxiety, but I am not particularly anxious. I have my Buddha, I consciously humble myself to the infinite possibilities beyond the dusty concerns of domestic tranquility. I may never be known in any way I wish to be, and this is the case for all of us. We know not the hour nor the circumstances of our death, and we must finally acknowledge the probability that the significance and meaning of our death may completely overshadow the significance and meanind of our life.

I don't know where it is written that a man at middle age comes to contemplate death. I never really bothered to read about Rabbit. But I'm at that spot. As many things have happened over the past 3 years, I've hesitated to call it the period of death, but that is what it has turned out to be not only symbolic.

So as I work through the ethics of death and loss:

• I sit with thousands of dollars in the bank waiting for the inevitable robbery.
  
• I stand in opposition to the optimism of American youth.
  

What is to be done about conformity?

More later..

The Shores of Tripoli

I have recently come to discover that Libya just may become the place to be 20 years hence. If I were a rich man, I would seriously consider getting there first with the resort money.

Kadaffi, the country's leader who has been cut down to size via cruise missiles and international courts is sitting on a gold mine. Actually, it's water. A huge amount of it. Sooner or later, as they get it to the surface and golf course architects get whiff, Libya will be transformed.

Kadaffi's son is already saying nice things about America (IIRC, he attended university here) and Israel. We also know that in the wake of the fall of Saddam Hussein, Kadaffi himself took a timely opportunity to come clean about his weapons programs.

I don't know if Lebanon is back to normal or that Beirut is calm enough for tourism as it once was, but Tripoli may soon become a destination for people with megapixel cameras, mobile phones and short pants. Between now and then, watch the international engineering firms.

Talk

On Air America

I have been pleasantly surprised by the depth of seriousness of Al Franken and have snorted at Randi Rhodes with such derision I have practically deviated my septum. So is Air America of questionable value? No it is objectively miraculous, for the moment.

Within one week, I've heard Richard Clarke, Joe Biden, Pat Buchannan speaking seriously on this radio network. It's got clout to swing. Despite the amateurish production values, the miserable fidelity of AM broadcasts, and the retarded mattress commercials which tend to interrupt conversations at random intervals, Air America is a breath of fresh air and a dash of salt to boot. Right now they are turning heads and they've got the jump on all media. This salutory effect is very useful for all of us, no matter what side of the fence we stand.

The best thing about Air America right now seems to be their ability to say what 'The Liberal Media' cannot. They do so with aplomb and not a small amount of style. Let's hope they don't get smug.

Crucifixes & Cigars

I think I just saw one of those signs that America is back. He's red, he smokes cigars, he's shy in love and he works for his dad.

Hellboy brings back a kind of superhero that undoes Batman, Spiderman and comes closer than anyone has to being a regular good guy since Indiana Jones. The film that carries him disturbs our desire for snarky quips and delivers them halfway, but adds a remarkable amount of genuine affection.

You'll also be surprised to see that the film represents Catholicism directly into its themes of of good and evil. How could it not with a character named Hellboy? Good is not simply ordinary innocence violated reaction as with Spiderman, nor wealthy philanthropy as with Bruce Wayne, but comes from self-doubt and a genuine desire to prove oneself of value.

What was merely hinted at with the freakiness of the XMen, is fully fleshed out in Hellboy and in him is the warmest hero the big screen has seen.

Presupposing God

I think I almost understand what is being said here.

As soon as I'm able to abstract it to general logical stuff, I think it will be a useful tool in my theologics. Not only that, I think it can work on matters of political philosophy. Explain adherance.

Osama's Motivation, America's Capability

I have just been reminded of something I believe everyone has forgotten. The reason that Osama Bin Laden attacked America was because we had American troops in Saudi Arabia. And why did we have troops in Saudi Arabia? To protect Saudi Arabia (for oil reasons) from Saddam Hussein.

Osama Bin Laden believes that America should have no business with the Muslim world. Presuming that he is rational, we could just remove our troops from Saudi Arabia and the jihad would be terminated. But that would be a fool's bet. What we can count on for certain is that AQ continues to threaten peace and security all over, and that Bin Laden's rationale is not to be appeased.

But it is worth pointing out that we are at war with AQ because we went to war with Iraq in 1991. The Wahabists of Saudi Arabia started getting their knickers in a twist when confronted with the possibility of seeing American women driving military vehicles on the street.

Let me also add a notable contribution to clarification from Senator Joe Biden yesterday. (Yes I was listening to Franken again). The PNAC still finds acting against states as fundamental to the combat of terrorism. I concur and think it is wise despite the obvious consequences to priorities with regard to the deployment of American forces. Clearly in retrospect, it was a mistake to focus on anti-missle defense (whose very physics are a matter of intense debate) in contradiction to the priorities Richard Clarke would have had the Administration support in 2001. But none of that proves that actions against rogue states is a poor idea. Afghanistan is proof.

What the American military and its allies have proven beyond a doubt in Iraq is that it is capable of dealing with a rogue nation's army and can take down a tyrant. What America has yet to prove is that on the heels of such a coup, it can transition an entire nation more or less, to democratic rule. The failure of such a transition implies the reversion to the kinds of coups the CIA has orchestrated in the past, substituting one dictator for another. If you like the old style of puppets, then you should be cheering for the US to get out yesterday, constitution or no.

We also have not yet proven that we are capable of coordinating intelligence and alliances of the sort a global cell busting organization requires. After all it was the invocation of Chapter Five of the NATO treaty that got Germany, the UK and (yes) France, fighting along side Americans in the ugly back country of Tora Bora. I hear calls for more of this multilateralims but I don't hear it called for specifically with regards to joint military offensive action. I think the recent fighting in norther Pakistan which has dragged on for at least a week, demonstrates that covert coups are not going to work.

So someday we may have a new kind of Army - the kind Rumsfeld talks about. But we did what we could do well. Hopefully we'll get good enough, soon enough to rid the planet of AQ. But let us not forget that we must still deal with states, both friends and enemies. We are not constituted to do much anything else, unless you are particularly fond of the old CIA tactics.

Why Not Bomb Fallujah?

Air America did two things yesterday. It cranked up the juice on its transmitters and it cranked up the juice in its commentators. Whichever woman I heard yesterday evening talking about the stocks of American and United Airlines proves that this new radio station can be as crackpot as Pacifica. Certainly as Pacifica goes broke, they'll all bleed over. Al Franken is good, period. These other loonies are voices from the insane asylum.

While I'm not likely to subject myself to any such bleating in the near future, I have already heard enough of their theories (preheat oven to 200 degrees and warm for 3 minutes) to know that they are the sort who are full of Itoldyaso over the recent incident at Fallujah in which several Americans were literally roasted and then hung from a bridge. To these wild and wooly lefties, GWBush is the bloodthirsty tyrant who is looking at every opportunity to expand his thoughtless reign of unilateral militaristic domination of innocent brown countries. The mob at Fallujah represents to them nothing more than the justified reaction of cornered pawns in a geopolitical chess game in which America is a rogue red queen. This Air American airhead literally said that our purpose was to bomb Iraqi villages in order to save them.

But what does it take to bomb Fallujah and why are we not doing so? Can anyone honestly say that it is beyond our capability? We could carpet bomb the entire place with a day's notice. But we don't. It's not because we can't; it's because we don't want to. It is inconsistent with America's purpose in Iraq, which is not to bully people around or teach them a lesson in anything other than post-tyrannical life. Self-governance is the lesson, and we can only hope that the new government of Iraq has learned something from our forebearance. Clearly other people in Fallujah make it plain that they do not wish to learn any such lessons, but since we have such hardheaded fools domestically, such stubborness comes as no surprise. We can be thankful that Airhead Americans have as their only weapons of miniscule destruction, the power of AM radio. Not that they could shoot straight.

Day One

It's cancer, of course.

As far as anyone can tell, it's renal cancer which has spread to my mother's liver. How big this mass is, has not yet been entered into the computer, so the attending physician who answered my questions yesterday wasn't able to tell me.

My brother and sister and father dropped down to see Moms yesterday at the County hospital in Torrance. After I got the phone call, I was in something of a stupor. I didn't get particularly weepy, but I was on the edge of it, trying to think of something to clear my head of woe. The phone call came just after I finished changing the banner for my big hilarious joke for the season, but at least I got my one laugh out of that.

So now I have to put together the care package I had promised from two nights ago. She needed a few personal items and I used my new color printer to print up a couple photos: the happy collage of the kids and my worried about the world picture. F7 had also crayoned a get well picture that was very nice. But I needed something else. What could it be?

This Changes Everything!

Al Franken is a genius. He is single-handedly going to swing the pendulum back to the left.

His O'Franken Factor is the keystone show of the new Air America radio network. I am left, having listened to him all afternoon, thinking that I have taken leave of my senses in embracing the Republican view of the world. In fact, I believe that the more people listen to him, the more problems Republicans are going to have in covering up the lies and fraudulence of their every utterance. He makes it so clear, he undermines my confidence in Conservatism just by speaking.

So let me be the first to say it. I recant. I am no longer a Republican. I'm going back to the Democratic Party and I'm going to immediately review everything I've said in this blog for a sanity check.

What has done it? Well, simply stated it was Al Franken. I mean when he said that he's been to Kosovo three times and has done USO shows for the troops, I realized that liberals aren't all traitors. He has quite correctly pointed out that Rush Limbaugh, aside from being a big fat idiot, is a drug addict as well. All the times I have listened to Rush Limbaugh just pretending to be entertained, I was really subjecting myself to a kind of subliminal comotose state. I was being slowly boiled like a frog, and only hearing the humor and wit of Franken on the AM radio makes me realize how far from reality I have strayed.

You know since I thought Kerry was the best Democratic candidate all along, perhaps I knew deep down that I retained some sense. This changes everything.

I know that my conservative readers are going to hate me for this, but I am free to change my own mind. And I think of all the folks I have alienated and confused by my controversial appeal as a black Republican. It's just not worth it anymore. I mean with Condi Rice just about to show her ass in Congressional testimony, I think it's a great time to just get out before it's too late for all of us.

I hope I'm not too late. Maybe the Kerry campaign could use a convert. I mean maybe that's the best part of it. I could show out the Republican scam from the inside out. A black reverse David Horowitz! What could be better.

I feel so much better just letting this all out. I mean liberalism is all our natural state, it's not worth maintaining all the contradictory fictions of conservatism. What's the point? I should just be more charitable to my fellow man. I think I'll start with gays. Everything I've said here about same sex marriage - hey. It was just to curry favor with the right wing. I don't really care. Hell I'm like Humpty and I say Doowhachalike. It's a free country and a free world. So long as you don't harm a hair on my head, I won't harm a head on your hair, whatever.

OK and while I'm being charitable, let's pull some troops out of Iraq. I mean what are we trying to prove over there anyway? Leave them alone. They'll work it out. We need to be home spending those billion dollars raising the minimum wage. The whole thing was about oil anyway, and where's our oil George? I'm paying $2.15 a gallon for gas. What is this, France?

And another thing. Walmart. They're just another scam perpetrated on the American people.

I feel such a burden lifted from my shoulders now that I'm free of the ideological shackles of the right. I'm going to go celebrate with a blunt.

Last but not least, I want to personally apologize to Janeane Garofalo for everything negative I ever said about her.