I'm Back

Nothing much else to say--went to a wedding this weekend, and I'm back now. Hope you are all super terrific.

Does it Matter?

So we invaded Iraq to rid the world of Saddam's nuclear missiles. And now we can't find them. In Esquire, Paul Wolfowitz has apparently stated that justifying the war by the Weapons of Mass Destruction was settled on because "it was the one reason everyone could agree on."

We failed to definitively rid the world of Saddam. Iraq is in danger of falling into the same chaos as Afghanistan.

Does it matter? Do we care? Nope, not really. The war played well on TV and that's what counts. Paul Krugman comments, "So what's the problem? Wars fought to deal with imaginary threats have real consequences. Just as war critics feared, Al Qaeda has been strengthened by the war. Iraq is in chaos, with a rising death toll among American soldiers: "We have reports of skirmishes throughout the central region," a Pentagon official told The Los Angeles Times."

So I guess you just have to ask yourself, does it matter?

Turnabout is . . . something . . .

Senator Byrd has been in the news a lot lately for his fiery rhetoric against President Bush. He's become something of a hero to many leftists as the one Democrat willing to stand against President Bush. He's also popular with people on the right for his former (1940's) involvement with the Ku Klux Klan. Brent Bozell doesn't mention that tidbit, but does call him a nut in an article today.

He then trots out this old chestnut, "When Clinton's opponents mobilized against him, when they circulated speeches on the Internet, Time called them "Clinton haters," remember? In fact, anti-Clinton politicians were maligned before they even got started."

Of course there is a difference. President Clinton's opponents were well-financed and absolutely dedicated to ending his presidency. Senator Byrd is a lone man, and, by Bozell's own argument, wields little power or influence within his party.

You also have the spectacle of Democrats giving the President everything he wants in order to invade Iraq whenever he wants, and Byrd being one of the few voices of dissent against this strategy. Can you imagine the Republicans giving Clinton that kind of authority? Neither can I.

Of course there is also the standard rhetoric about how Byrd has been proven wrong about Iraq. Our quick victory over Iraq proves that we can defeat a third world military, which apparently Senator Byrd contested. Of course the larger point that Senator Byrd made over and over again was that this attack would not make us safer and would in fact make the world more dangerous. It would give recruiting opportunities to al-Queda. It would increase tension between the United States and the Middle East. And the people of Iraq would end up more or less as they started. I hope that that last prediction does not end up being correct, but there's evidence to suggest that it will. At any rate, any of those predictions may still come true.

Aerosol is Doomed

Well, we've had a cold winter, so that apparently proves that Global Warming is a bunch of hooey. Got that? One cold winter = no Global Warning.

Ann Coulter brings us this happy news, but there is a sad side to this story as well. As Miss Coulter explains, "The key to the U.N.'s global warming study was man's use of aerosol spray. You have to know the French were involved in a study concluding that Arrid Extra Dry is destroying the Earth. In a world in which everyone smelled, the French would be at no disadvantage. Aerosol spray. How convenient."

So you see the use of Aerosol is doomed. After their impressive diplomatic victory against the United States in which they prevented us from invading Iraq, the French are heady with success and have chosen a new target. Soon all the world will be unable to use deodorant.

Well, except me, I use stick deodorant. So I'll smell good while the rest of you aerosol users will not. Hmmmmm. Maybe there's an upside here.

Remember Iraq?

Well Iraq is dissappearing off the front page, which is presumably how the Campaign to reelect President Bush wants it. Rember our glorious victory over the Iraqi army; forget our obligation to the Iraqi people (and the fact that we didn't get Saddam Hussein). Thomas L. Friedman commented on this today at the New York Times.

In Iraq, it's still not clear to me how much the Bush team wants to do nation-building there. The Rumsfeld doctrine of small-force, high-tech armies may be great for winning wars, but you need the Powell doctrine for winning the peace: a massive, overwhelming investment of soldiers, police and aid. We should be flooding Iraq with people and money right now. Start big and then build down — not the other way around. Ditto on the politics side. In destroying the Iraqi Army and Baath Party, we have destroyed the (warped) pillars of Iraqi secular nationalism. We need to start replacing them, quickly, with alternative, progressive pillars of Iraqi secular nationalism; otherwise, Shiite religious nationalism will fill the void.

Jim Carrey and America

Ben Shapiro, writing today at Townhall, stated "America has been renewed. We were tired after the Clinton administration. Indifference had crippled us; scandal had jaded us. But Sept. 11 revitalized us by showing us the face of evil. We were revolted, and we vowed never again to slide into the morass of moral lassitude. If audiences keep flocking to unchic, cheesy, moralistic Jim Carrey flicks, we're on the right track."

Anybody remember Jim Carrey's last ditty, a hepped out groove called the Majestic? About the Red Scare and how it worked to destroy lives? "Peter is called for HUAC questioning, because he once attended a Communist meeting in college, but only in an effort, he protests, "to impress a girl." Suddenly [he is] blacklisted and dumped by Sandy." Yeah I guess that is a good message for America.

Or how about the Truman show, where a guy lives in a totally phony world created for the profit of a cable producer. There might be a message in that as well.

Slavery

Interesting article at Salon today on the struggle concerning how to tell the history of the Confederacy. Louise Witt traces the changes that have occurred at the Museum of the Confederacy along with Gov. Doug Wilder's ambition to have a National Slavery Museum built. Witt writes;

And yet, where African nations such as Senegal and Ghana, and even the small Caribbean island, Curaçao, have slave museums, the United States does not. This country has a national museum on the Washington Mall to commemorate the Holocaust, a profound global tragedy, but one that occurred in Europe.

To Wilder, it's striking that it seems easier for Americans to confront the shameful history of Nazi-sponsored genocide. "None of it ever happened here, none of it," he says. "To the extent that Jews were persecuted here, they were persecuted along with African-Americans. There was anti-Semitism, anti-black, anti-Catholic, anti-anything in terms of people who weren't the true bloods. I want to show that there aren't any true bloods in America. I don't want to talk about what was good and what was bad and who was right and who was wrong. I want to lay out the facts, so you can tell the story for yourself."

Salon's a hassle, but the article is quite good. Or you could become a member and not have to click through so many ads.

Paul Krugman on Taxes

So the first story involved Paul Wolfowitz, and this one involves Paul Krugman. Watch for an update on Ms. Pauls fishsticks later on in the day.

At any rate, Krugman has some sobering comments on the current tax cut mania in the Bush Administration.

Here's one way to look at the situation: Although you wouldn't know it from the rhetoric, federal taxes are already historically low as a share of G.D.P. Once the new round of cuts takes effect, federal taxes will be lower than their average during the Eisenhower administration. How, then, can the government pay for Medicare and Medicaid — which didn't exist in the 1950's — and Social Security, which will become far more expensive as the population ages? (Defense spending has fallen compared with the economy, but not that much, and it's on the rise again.)

The answer is that it can't. The government can borrow to make up the difference as long as investors remain in denial, unable to believe that the world's only superpower is turning into a banana republic. But at some point bond markets will balk — they won't lend money to a government, even that of the United States, if that government's debt is growing faster than its revenues and there is no plausible story about how the budget will eventually come under control.

At that point, either taxes will go up again, or programs that have become fundamental to the American way of life will be gutted. We can be sure that the right will do whatever it takes to preserve the Bush tax cuts — right now the administration is even skimping on homeland security to save a few dollars here and there. But balancing the books without tax increases will require deep cuts where the money is: that is, in Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security.

The pain of these benefit cuts will fall on the middle class and the poor, while the tax cuts overwhelmingly favor the rich. For example, the tax cut passed last week will raise the after-tax income of most people by less than 1 percent — not nearly enough to compensate them for the loss of benefits. But people with incomes over $1 million per year will, on average, see their after-tax income rise 4.4 percent.

Something to consider.

Neocon Means Jew

Yep, conservatives are still pushing this one. Joel Mowbry, writing at Townhall today, commented on a recent Business Week article about the Neocon philosophy. Apparently several figures (including Paul Wolfowitz and Richard N. Perle) were identified as Neocons, but Secretary Rumsfeld and Vice President Cheney were not. This proves that Neocon means Jew, as Wolfowitz and Perle are Jews and Rumsfeld and Cheney are not.

Or it alternatively means that Wolfowitz and Perle have been more articulate and energetic in formulating the Neocon Philosophy than Rumsfeld or Cheney.

"Ironically, nowhere in the article does one find "Jew:" or "Jewish," although Mr. Dunham did manage to cite unnamed critics who have called the neocons a "Zionist cabal." But that's par for the code-word course. People who mean Jew or Jewish carefully avoid use of either word, often allowing the word "neocon" to roll off the tongue, injected with a tinge of disgust." It's funny that the conservatives are finally admitting to understanding the idea of Code Use. For Decades they've used a form of this in the South to talk about African Americans and have consistently denied it, often denying the very idea of talking in code.

Also what does it mean? Are they saying that the only reason to oppose the neocon worldview is because of anti-semitism? Are they saying the writers and editors of Business Week were animated by anti-semitism when they wrote that article? Any disagreement with the policies of Paul Wolfowitz is anti-semetic?

New Quote

Pretty obvious, but it's still true.

Malcolm X beat out Winston Churchill, who said, "When I am abroad, I always make it a rule never to criticize or attack the government of my own country. I make up for lost time when I come home."