Greg Saunders, at This Modern World (2006-02-22) recently noted that the civil war in Iraq is getting worse daily, and that the dude riding ramrod on this occupation doesn’t have a goddamned clue about what’s going on:

January 2003 the President invited three members of the Iraqi opposition to join him to watch the Super Bowl. In the course of the conversation the Iraqis realized that the President was not aware that there was a difference between Sunni and Shiite Muslims. He looked at them and said, You mean...they're not, you know, there, there's this difference. What is it about?

–former U.S. dilpomat Peter Galbraith

Jesus wept.

Greg adds this, by way of commentary, in the headline: This Is What Happens When You Vote For An Idiot.

… or, for that matter, when you don’t.

And there’s the rub. I, for one, didn’t vote for this idiot, and I don’t think Greg Saunders did, either. I sure know that the Iraqis didn’t get a vote on whether or not to have to deal with him or his flunkies. But we’re all of us stuck with him anyway. If democracy means that the majority get the government they deserve, that leaves us the problem of a minority getting stuck with a government that they, ex hypothesi, don’t deserve. A vote on your rulers means precisely nothing when other people get to vote on your ruler, too–after all, there’s always going to be more of them than there are of you.

Disunion now.

In the news the past couple weeks:

A perfect opportunity for hilarity:

LAFAYETTE — A 21-year-old man was accidentally shot by his 17-year-old girlfriend last night while they were hunting for raccoons near his farmhouse.

Josh Kayser, who lives just north of the Lafayette city limits, was taken to Avista Hospital in Louisville after a bullet grazed his right ear and left forearm, according to a report by Boulder County Sheriff's Commander Phil West. He is in good condition this morning.

The couple was hunting raccoons that had been preying on the family's chickens and as Kayser crouched to peer under a shed for a wounded raccoon, he was shot, West said.

His girlfriend, whose name wasn't released, was holding the .22-caliber rifle for him and it unintentionally discharged.

— Rocky Mountain News (2006-02-14): Lafayette man shot during raccoon hunt

A veritable laugh riot:

A 10-year-old was listed in critical condition Sunday night after being shot with a shotgun. Hampton Police say the boy and his friends were playing with it when it went off.

It happened around 7:30 at the Lincoln Park Apartments off of LaSalle Avenue. Police said the little boy was shot in the head and hand. Neighbors tell us it was a horrifying sight.

He was in a chair and there was blood on his head and stuff,> said Tanya Smallwood.

Police said there was an adult in the apartment when the shotgun fired. It’s unclear if the shooting victim lived there or was visiting. It’s also unknown if the gun belonged to one of the adults who lived in that unit.

Joanne Smith also watched on as the boy was put into the ambulance. She said he was conscious. She has two kids of her own. She wants to know how the gun got into the hands of a child. She said she always reminds her children never to treat guns like toys.

—WTKR Norfolk, Virginia (2006-02-20): Ten Year Old Accidentally Shot In Hampton

An investigation revealed that the victim was visiting relatives, when he was accidentally shot by another juvenile inside the home. The victim and two other juveniles were in a bedroom when the suspect retrieved the weapon.

The suspect was showing off the weapon, and the gun discharged striking the victim.

— WAVY Hampton Roads, Virginia (2006-02-20): Child Accidentally Shot in Hampton, Teen Charged

So funny it hurts:

The Modesto teenager, a Johansen High School freshman, was hunting Nov. 12 with his father and friends when he was hit in the chest, arm and head with a shotgun blast. …

Blake had a punctured lung from one of the pellets, but his heart was protected by his shotgun. Blake’s eyes were the most seriously injured. In December, after multiple surgeries, he wasn’t sure he’d ever be able to see clearly again. He could see light from one eye, but not the other.

Since then, said his mother, Robin Searls, his vision has improved, but doctors had to remove the lenses from both eyes because Blake was developing cataracts. At Easter or during summer vacation, she said, doctors will remove the oil they injected to keep the retina in his best eye in place and determine at that time whether to implant new lenses or give Blake contact lenses.

He went back to school last month, she said. We were able to get a bifocal prescription for him, and when he’s holding the book close he can read with his good eye.

We’re not sure at this point (what his prognosis will be). His eyes are still healing. He has bad scarring going on, and they’re keeping a close eye on that.

— Modesto Bee (2006-02-19): Teen knows about being shot

You see, there’s this one dude, and there’s this other dude, and one of the dudes shot the other dude. The injury may not be lethal but the victim’s going to need close medical care, possibly for the next several years. Har har har.

How much funnier can you get? What more perfect opportunity could you have for some chuckles, and making some snide little funny at the shooter’s expense? Maybe you can retread an old song from the 1990s to imply the shooter is dangerous. Maybe you could even write a nasty little shoot-em-up game featuring the the shooter and his other buddies!. Ho ho ho.

There’s nothing like a good laugh. It might all seem a little pointless; it might even seem a little mean. But hey, lighten up; it’s not like anybody got hurt or anything.

What is it that so unsettles me about Alberto Gonzales? Is it the coziness with torture and indifference to minimal norms of civilization? Or is it the haughty and contemptuous defense of Caesarian executive power? The rapid turns he routinely makes between dissembling, palavering, and baring the sharpened fangs in a grin or a snarl?

Yes, of course that all worries me. But there’s something else, a certain I-cannot-say-what. It’s in the hair, the eyes, the posture, the facial expression, the shape of the head… I’ve seen it before. But where? Oh, yeah.

I’m just sayin’.

(No personal jabs at Ron Perlman intended, by the way–if you don’t recognize the film and the character from the still, this almost certainly won’t be funny to you, but for the record, it’s from The Last Supper (1995). Just so you know.)

This week around the web…

• Pam Spaulding @ Pandagon (2006-01-31): A Towering Figure is Gone remembers the life and legacy of Coretta Scott King:

  This loss is so great because Mrs. King was an advocate for civil rights who believed that phrase was inclusive — those of us in the LGBT family knew that she was on our side. While other figures in the civil rights movement, including Coretta's daughter Bernice, have chosen exclusion, demonization, and marginalization of gays and lesbians, Coretta Scott King stood regally and spoke eloquently about why discrimination of any kind is wrong.

• Lynn Harris @ Broadsheet (2006-01-31): Ice cheerleader boos Rangers highlights a couple of recent stories about sexual harassment against women at Madison Square Garden, from the bottom to the top of the corporate ladder.

  From today’s New York Daily News: Madison Square Garden is a den of sexual harassment, according to the former Rangers City Skater who is suing the World’s Most Famous Arena, and heaven help the woman who complains about it.

  Courtney Prince, once the captain of the Rangers’ on-ice cheerleaders, sued the Garden for sexual harassment in 2004, claiming, among other things, that management basically pimped the skaters out to VIP guests. (Read the story for the rest of the gories.)

  The other woman who may need heaven’s help is Anucha Browne Sanders, who earlier this week filed a lawsuit accusing Knicks president Isiah Thomas of sexual harassment.

  This is a company that doesn’t have respect for women, Prince told the News. Anucha Browne Sanders is at the top of the organization and I’m a lowly cheerleader at the the bottom. I have to believe there’s something going on in the middle, too. I now see how polluted it is.

  MSG refused a settlement deal in 2004, committing to fight the charges in court.

  Prince says that in the meantime, she’s been the target of threats and attempts to defame her character. Regardless, she says, her perspective on sexual harassment has done a 180. I went into this being anti-feminist and I used to judge women who claim sexual harassment the same way I’m sure people are judging me, says Prince. But it’s been worth it.

  Be sure to follow the links, but only if you’re ready to be mad at men in suits for the next few hours (madder than you already were, I mean). It’s an ugly, ugly business.

• Kevin Carson @ Mutualist Blog (2006-01-26): Another Free-for-All: Libertarian Class Analysis, Organized Labor, Etc. rounds up, fleshes out, and adds to debate over socioeconomic class, the legitimacy of strikes and other union tactics, and the promise of old school Wobbly tactics such as the use of direct action on the job and the minority union to effect change without collective bargaining (and without the need for an NLRB permission slip, either). He also has some kind words for some comments of mine, here and in various comments sections.

  One of the most important effects of Wagner was to channel union activity into 1) state-certified majority unionism, 2) a contract regime relying heavily on the state and the union bureaucracies for enforcement against wildcat strikes and direct action on the job, and 3) reliance on conventional strikes rather than on forms of direct action more difficult to detect or punish. In short, Wagner channelled organized labor into the kinds of activity most vulnerable to employer monitoring and countermeasures. What’s more, Wagner got the federal government’s foot in the door for subsequent labor legislation like Taft-Hartley, which prohibited the secondary strikes that were so successful in the 1930s.

• fafblog! (2006-01-25): Q & A: Our Omnipotent President offers a guide for the perplexed.

  Q. Can the president spy on Americans without a warrant?
  A. The president has to spy on Americans without a warrant! We’re at war, and the president’s gotta defend America, and he’s not gonna wait for a permission slip from a judge or a senator or America to do it!

  …

  Q. Things sure have changed since the innocent days of mutually assured destruction! But is it legal for the president to ignore the law?
  A. Maybe not according to plain ol stupid ol regular law, but we’re at war! You don’t go to war with regular laws, which are made outta red tape and bureaucracy and Neville Chamberlain. You go to war with great big strapping War Laws made outta tanks and cold hard steel and the American Fightin Man and WAR, KABOOOOOOM!

• Twisty @ I Blame the Patriarchy (2006-02-01): My Jarring Experience has the displeasure of waking up to the second worst part of a film classic. Several commenters independently point out that part of the reason that the worst part of My Fair Lady is so appalling is because that’s not the way it was written to begin with, and that Shaw himself observed that only an idiot whose sensibility has been ruined by romantic comedy would expect things to turn out as, well, the Hollywood writers made it turn out.

• And, in the comments to No Treason (2006-01-31): Dear Karen (No, Not That One), I discuss a personal pet peeve: using the word suicide bombing as if it named a moral rather than a tactical category of attack.

  “I don’t think it justifies suicide bombings however.”

  There’s nothing about suicide bombings that makes them essentially or even presumptively unjustifiable. The problem isn’t the method of delivery but rather the use of the method to attack civilians. (Would it be better if Hamas bombed innocent people from planes?)

  Guerrilla tactics, even tactics as terrifyingly dangerous as body-bombing, aren’t the problem. The use of guerrilla warfare to attack innocent civilians is.

So it seems that Tom Friedman isn’t happy with the State of the Union speech that he’s likely to get; he decided to play make believe and write his own speech for Bush to read. If I recall correctly, this routine has been part of Friedman’s schtick for a few years; the whole thing seems more than just a bit self-important to me, but then, so does the State of the Union speech. Friedman’s idea, it seems, is that Bush should suddenly change into an alternative energy crank (or perhaps skip halfway steps and just suddenly change into Tom Friedman); and that he should use the bully pulpit to expound his newfound faith and lay down a Kennedyesque challenge to the American energy industry. (If he does not jawbone us about Friedman’s pet cause, apparently, you can stick a fork in the Bush Presidency.) So here’s what he’s informed Mr. Bush he’d like to hear tonight:

My fellow Americans, on May 25, 1961, President Kennedy gave an extraordinary State of the Union address in which he called on the nation to marshal all of its resources to put a man on the Moon. By setting that lofty goal, Kennedy was trying to summon all our industrial and scientific talent, and a willingness to sacrifice financially, to catch up with the Soviet Union, which had overtaken America in the field of large rocket engines.

While we cannot guarantee that we shall one day be first, Kennedy said, we can guarantee that any failure to make this effort will make us last.

I come to you this evening with a similar challenge. President Kennedy was worried about the threat that communism posed to our way of life. I am here to tell you that if we don’t move away from our dependence on oil and shift to renewable fuels, it will change our way of life for the worse — and soon — much, much more than communism ever could have. Making this transition is the calling of our era. …

— Tom Friedman, New York Times (2006-01-27): State of the Union

… and so on, and so forth.

Well, I have my own ideas about what’s important. So I humbly submit my own speech for Mr. Bush to consider giving tonight. I know that this is last minute, but it would be surprisingly easy for him to memorize. And I think it’s important. If Mr. Bush steps up to this challenge, the speech could be a new beginning for our country. If he doesn’t, you can stick a fork in this administration. It will be done — because it will have abdicated leadership on the biggest issue of our day. So here’s the speech I’ll be listening for tonight:

Mr. Speaker, Mr. Cheney, members of Congress, fellow Americans…

I resign.

Anything else is just going to mean more of the same old bullshit.

Postscript

Just remember: when these folks get in front of the camera they just lie. Politicians’ aims are political victory, not truth, and not justice. Hanging on the words and dickering about this or that point and fuming about this or that plain non sequitur will be talking past them entirely. You may as well spend the same amount of time cleaning your house, or sorting old photographs, or sucking on lemons.

Pointing out some piece of plain nonsense may have some value in provoking other people–the so-called rank and file, i.e., you and me–to think for a moment; and it may be worthwhile to use it to call on those other people to discourse that moves a bit beyond the braying of talking-points. But lingering on the endless talk of politicians or the professional political windbags inside the Beltway, as if these folks care what we think, or about what is true, is like trying to beat a street hustler at his three-card monty. It’s a scam. Just walk away.

— GT 2005-02-02: The State of the Union: live-blogged for you!