I've spent a good chunk of the day reading about Katrina. Food and water have run out, the dead bodies floating in the streets are a disease threat, and the city is being evacuated, probably for two or three months. In Iraq, hundreds people were killed in a stampede during a Muslim pilgrimage. Oh, and in the Phillipines, Gloria Arroyo has not only lost it, but has now gotten away with losing it.

Grr. Tomorrow I'm going to give blood and money to the Red Cross. But today, I am not going to post about this. Read the Scalia post instead. I'm going to go see The Constant Gardener, which is directed by the director of City of God and from a novel by the author of The Tailor of Panama, two very excellent movies.

The Onion:

WASHINGTON, DC—A genie freed from a battered oil lamp by Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia granted the conservative jurist a strict constructionist interpretation of his wish for "a hundred billion bucks" Monday. "Sim sim salabim! Your wish is my command!" the genie proclaimed amid flashes of light and purple smoke, immediately filling the Supreme Court building with a massive herd of wild male antelopes. When Justice Scalia complained that the "bucks" had razed the U.S. Supreme Court building, trampling and killing several of his clerks and bringing traffic in the nation's capital to a standstill for hours, the genie said, "Your honor, your wish is a sacred and unalterable document whose interpretation is not subject to the whims of society and changing social context."

Not kidding

"Somewhere along the line, major Israel providers figured this was a good way to appeal to the youth market," said Alex Sharone, the 24-year-old national director of Habonim Dror, a progressive Zionist youth movement sponsoring a wide array of summer and year-round programs. Habonim Dror doesn't overtly promote Sexual Zionism through its itineraries, but given the target demographic the message is all but inescapable. "It's about sexualizing a love for Israel," Sharone continued. "You're 15, going through puberty and visiting Israel for the first time. While you're learning the history and culture of the land, you're simultaneously scoping out potential mates. It's about forging a positive association with Israel, and for teens and young adults that often means sex."

Heh. I'm not into indoctrinating 15-year-olds into anything, but this is so much cooler than Love In Action. If you're gonna brainwash 15-year-olds into religious crap, you should at least make sure they get laid.

I realized this morning with a start that I cannot remember the last time I sat down and finished a book. A wave of panic overcame me as I realized that I have devoted so much time to work, and blogging, and watching film and TV that it has been weeks—literally weeks—since I have been able to devote any serious amount of time to the act of reading, which is to me the single most fulfilling act there is, spiritually and intellectually, and, hell, physically as well, when there's a nice comfy chair and a good mocha or something involved.

Well. Just as soon as I finished writing that, I realized that in the last month or so, I've read two very good books and three excellent collections of comics—excuse me, graphic novels. No reason to panic, but by my standards that's something of a disappointment, so I must make a mental note to get it into gear.

What have I been reading?

• #22 – Anno-Dracula  Kim Newman
  
  Ah, yes. I've read this before, several times. In fact, Anno-Dracula makes it on all my top-ten lists and discussions o my favorite books. It's really that awesome.
  
  The 19th century is drawing to a close, as is Queen Victoria's long reign, and England is racked with changes that rock the core of Britian's empire. Great, sweeping changes that herald the coming of a new age and the dawn of the twentieth century, filled with peril and promise. Specifically, vampires.
  
  Newman changes the ending of Bram Stoker's novel, allowing Dracula to triumph over Van Helsing's little band. The changes snowball into a new world of Newman's devising: Dracula, Prince Consort to the Queen, sits on the throne in Buckingham Palace; Van Helsing's head sits on a pike outside said palace; the consulting detective, Mr. Holmes, is imprisoned in a camp called Devil's Dyke, along with others who oppose the new regime; characters from Dracula, along with Mycroft Holmes, Inspector Mackenzie, Dr. Jekyll, Mrs. Stoker, and others wander London, dealing with the changes as best they can; and in Whitechapel, a killer stalks the streets, murdering vampire prostitutes with cold precision, and his name is "Jack the Ripper."
  
  
• #23 – The American Presidency  Gore Vidal
  
  This little book, only 88 pages, is the transcript of a television program aired some time ago on the BBC, with additions throughout and an afterward. It was basically Vidal's three half-hour episode summary of American history. As you might expect, there's not much you don't already know. But is there an over-arching clarity that ties it all together as the great history books do? Dunno: I only got it out of the Library of Congress forty-five minutes ago (right after I finished writing the bits on Anno-Dracula) and I haven't had a chance to digest it yet. So instead of a review, here's a few particularly good quotes:
  
  
  
  • "Life" and "liberty" are two cherished old friends when it comes to political rhetoric, as they always make a nice contrast to death and slavery, two conditions most human beings would rather avoid.
    
    
  • [Andrew Jackson] was the people's president to such an extent that those who supported him called themselves the Democratic Party. He even invited "the people" to the White House on the day of his inauguration. They wrecked the place, and he had to spend his first night as president in a hotel. Personally, he never much liked the folks.
    
    
  • [On T.R.] Give a sissy a gun and he'll shoot everything in sight.
    
    
  • Starting in 1964, I used to go on television and debate what seemed to be the entire American establishment. I did this for eight years. I thought the war was perfect folly. And I used to ask the president's advisors, on air, "What is this war about? Why are we in Vietnam?"
    
    At first they said, "To contain China, forever on the march." When I pointed out that the Vietnamese and the Chinese were ancient enemies, the subject would mysteriously change
    
    
  • [So easily rewritten.]
    
    Starting in 2004, no one used to go on television and debate what seemed to be the entire American establishment. No one did this for far too long. No one used to ask the president's advisors, on air, "What is this war about? Why are we in Iraq?"
    
    At first they said, "To contain Terrorism, forever on the march." When no one pointed out that whack job terrorists and tin-pot dictators are natural enemies, the subject would mysteriously change.
    
    
  • "Hello, Neil and Buzz, I'm talking to you from the Oval Room at the White House, and this certainly has to be one of the historic telephone call ever made from the White House."
    
    Why was [Nixon] so pleased with himself? Well, Teddy Kennedy had just gone off the bridge at Chappaquidick, so Nixon's chief political rival was out of the picture and re-election was a certainty.
    
    
  • When I asked Katherine Graham, owner of the Washington Post, why her brave journalists had not demanded Reagan's impeachment over "Iran Contra," a criminal conspiracy quite as mischievous as Nixon's dark plottings, she said, "Oh, we couldn't go through all that again just fourteen years later."
    
    The media flourishes on the hundreds of millions of dollars that must still be spent at election-time four television ads which carefully steer clear of anything political, like health care, while indulging in ever more daring character assassination. Pedophiles now face off necrophiles. Toss a coin.
    
    
  • As I ended the program, I meditated on Nixon's "silent majority"—not the fierce bigots that he had in mind, but the dead—specifically those dead in our wars. The camera then showed Washington—a city crowded with funerary monuments, from Arlington Cemetery to the Lincoln Memorial.
    
    And now, my home city of Washington has become nothing but a vast memorial to those dead in wars that have glorified the odd president, enriched the military-industrial complex, but left the rest of us—we the people, the nation—with this:
    
    

I have, in addition to Vidal's book, the collected letters of George Santayana, and there are far too many to read before hunger gets the better of me and I head off for lunch. In fact, I simply flipped through the index looking for names I recognized and saw only a "thank you for your letter" letter to Oliver Wendell Holmes.

Well: I am hungry, so I will get to the comics—graphic novels—and the other book, Senator Robert C. Byrd's Losing America, later on.

While walking past the under-construction Newsuem™ on Pennsylvania Avenue this morning (located in the heart of D.C. between the Canadian embassy and a Starbucks) I dawdled by a long board which presents the front page of a newspaper from every state and a dozen countries. With some dismay, I noticed that Utah has seen the Deseret Morning News replace the Salt Lake Tribune. Then I realized I didn't care, which was a freeing thought.

Then I noticed this front page article in today's Des News:

In perfect deadpan [Bobby Hendersen, a 25-year-old Oregon State grad] wrote [to the Kansas State Board of Education] that although he agreed that science students should "hear multiple viewpoints" of how the universe came to be, he was worried that they would be hearing only one theory of intelligent design. After all, he noted, there are many such theories, including his own fervent belief that "the universe was created by a Flying Spaghetti Monster." He demanded equal time in the classroom and threatened a lawsuit.

Soon he was flooded with e-mail messages. Ninety-five percent of those who wrote to him, he said on his Web site, were "in favor of teaching Flying Spaghetti Monsterism in schools." Five percent suggested that he would be going to hell. Lawyers contacted him inquiring how serious he was about a lawsuit against the Kansas board. His answer: "Very."

Click here to read Hendersen's letter and learn more about his church. Oh, yeah.

The New York Times reports:

A top Army contracting official who criticized a large, noncompetitive contract with the Halliburton Company for work in Iraq was demoted Saturday for what the Army called poor job performance.

The rest of us call it Bush doing his usual thing. Humph.

The official, Bunnatine H. Greenhouse, has worked in military procurement for 20 years and for the past several years had been the chief overseer of contracts at the Army Corps of Engineers, the agency that has managed much of the reconstruction work in Iraq.

Known as a stickler for the rules on competition, Ms. Greenhouse initially received stellar performance ratings, Mr. Kohn [her lawyer] said. But her reviews became negative at roughly the time she began objecting to decisions she saw as improperly favoring [Halliburton subsidiary] Kellogg Brown & Root, he said. Often she hand-wrote her concerns on the contract documents, a practice that corps leaders called unprofessional and confusing.

In October 2004, General Strock [commander of the Corps of Engineers], citing two consecutive performance reviews that called Ms. Greenhouse an uncooperative manager, informed her that she would be demoted.

She was a very uncooperative manager, worrying about those little things like "corruption" and "$10 billion hand-outs to Dick Cheney's pet company." Very uncooperative, indeed.

Sunday morning at some nice little Belgian breakfast place, and I've just heard the Sunni negotiators have rejected the draft constitution. Depressing way to start the day.

From the AP article, the Sunni negotiators are rejecting the Constitution because of the issues of federalism and because it mentions the Ba'ath party.

When it comes to federalism, the situation is rather fucked up. My particular wild guess (as good as anybody else's at this point) is that a powerful central government is a bad idea in Iraq; that a sort of Articles of Confederation would better serve the interests of stability. But because a Sunni state would have less oil money and influence than Kurdish and Shi'ite states, the Sunnis feel threatened by federalism. ("They feel threatened by everything," notes the boyfriend.)

But on the other hand, when I hear that the constitution mentions the Ba'ath party—banning it, I assume, though nowadays even the AP leaves something to be desired, journalism wise—I wonder how serious the Kurdish and Shi'ite delegations ever were about including the Sunnis in government. After all, the Kurds and Shi'ites dominate in parliament and can probably get a constitution passed in October's referendum without votes from the Sunni areas.

So that's what's wrong in Iraq today, August 28, 2005. Every time I try to end a post about Iraq with a few suggestions about how the US can help improve Iraq, I have to ask myself, "Why bother?" I think about the idea after idea flowing out of places like DemocracyArsenal and the few center-left think tanks, and then I think about the administration's uncanny ability to do precisely the wrong thing in Iraq at every juncture, and the President's determination to ignore all voices critical of him and his literal refusal to admit any mistakes...

I feel like I'm watching a train wreck. You see it coming, but you just have to sit there.

On the plus side, the breakfast was excellent, and my new wireless keyboard is awesome. Out waitress was from Northern Pakistan. ("Peshawar," David tells me, and then he spells it for me, too.) If you're in DC, check out the Belgian place on the bottom of the string of restaurants on 18th and Columbia. Contemplating a train wreck of a government and eating very good food. Welcome to D.C.

So: It will be a slow blogging day, because I'll be spending the bulk of the day packing up boxes for the office move next week. Here's the good news: while the movers are doing there thing next week, it will be a safety hazard to come in to the office. So as long as we've got our cell phones on and aren't too far away from the office, we'll be counted as "working." The upshot of all this?

Next week I will spend my time hanging out at the National Gallery of Art and blogging at the Library of Congress, and I will be getting paid to do so.

God bless the United States of America.

Have a good weekend, folks, and if you're wondering what to serve for breakfast, how about Pat's Age-Defying Protein Pancakes?

Well, it's been a slow day. Grr. I'm frustrated with my own lack of discipline.

Click the picture to watch the best TV commercial ever made. (And go ahead and try and find a picture from that commercial that isn't some cheap photoshop of the girl with the hammer wearing an I-pod. No, go ahead. I dare ya.)

Past day or two, Andrew Sullivan's been going off on an eminently appropriate and utterly necessary harangue against sport utility vehicles. He posted a reader's email today:

I am about as left as you can get and still be considered a mature thinking adult. To my shame, my wife and I (we do have four kids) bought a luxury Lexus SUV last year. We had even put ourselves on the waiting list for a Prius when we were shopping for a new car. What finally put us over the fence is that the Bush tax cuts allowed me, a sole proprietor, if I used the vehicle solely for business (which I do) to deduct the entire cost of the largest size SUV from my taxes in the first year if I bought a vehicle weighting over 6000 lbs. This worked out as a subsidy worth over $17,000 for the purchase of this car. (This has since been modified). No wonder there was such an explosion of luxury SUV's on the road. Curiously, the car we bought weighed in at 6005 lbs and there were a couple of BMW, Mercedes, Cadillac, Porsche and other models which were marginally over the threshold as well. (There are also models which are way over the 6000 lb mark but it is obvious the car companies were reading, perhaps writing, the tax law very closely).

This perverse tax incentive effectively allowed me to buy this luxury SUV gas guzzler (17MPG) at greater than a 1/3 discount to whatever price I could negotiate. On purely economic terms, it was a no brainer ... we were almost compelled to buy the car.

Andrew responds simply: "This is what happens when Dick Cheney is your Vice President." Here's my submission to his anit-SUV bumper sticker contest:

John Hinderaker's latest post begins with an admission:

It is universally acknowledged that public support for the Iraq war is eroding. Some of the polls supporting this claim are faulty because they are based on obviously misleading internal data, but the basic point cannot be denied: many Americans, possibly even a majority, have turned against the war.

As I put it yesterday, the argument that's starting to gain some traction. Anti-war protests continue in Crawford, Salt Lake City, and pretty much anywhere else President Bush touches down. For the doves, it's a vindication. For conservatives like Hinderaker, an explanation must be found. In this case, it's the media's fault.

News reporting on the war consists almost entirely of itemizing casualties. Headlines say: "Two Marines killed by roadside bomb." Rarely do the accompanying stories--let alone the headlines that are all that most people read--explain where the Marines were going, or why; what strategic objective they and their comrades were pursuing, and how successful they were in achieving it; or how many terrorists were also killed. For Americans who do not seek out alternative news sources like this one, the war in Iraq is little but a succession of American casualties. The wonder is that so many Americans do, nevertheless, support it.

I can't disagree too harshly with anyone who wants to complain about our media. After all, what inadequate, inane reporting they do on the war is squeezed in between the latest missing white girl and "Producer Plans Reality Show for Sperm Donors." There's practically no discussion of the day-to-day operations of the Iraqi government or the American forces or of any sort of overall strategy or plan.

Unfortunately for John, the stories the media isn't covering in Iraq are not all a "fail[ure] to report the progress that is being made." For example, the day before yesterday, the media failed to report that

The Iraqi Board of Supreme Audit, in a confidential report delivered to Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari and reviewed by Knight Ridder, has uncovered widespread fraud and waste in $1 billion worth of weapons procurement contracts involving senior Iraqi officials in the Defense Ministry. The audit report indicates that as much as $500 million may have been lost through three intermediary companies that hid “kickbacks they received from contracts involving the purchase of unnecessary, overpriced or outdated equipment”, Knight Ridder reported. Iraqi Defense Minister Saadoun al-Dulaimi confirmed most of the audit board report’s findings in an interview, according to Knight Ridder. He said that at least $500 million in Iraqi money essentially has disappeared. Al-Dulaimi has fired nine senior officials, including Ziad Cattan, the ministry’s former procurement chief.

And then today, the mainstream media is failing, so far, to report that

A former worker for a Halliburton Co. subsidiary faces as long as 20 years in prison and a fine of as much as $1.25 million after pleading guilty to taking kickbacks in Iraq. It was the second case this year of a Halliburton worker facing criminal charges in connection with the company's work in Iraq.

So, that's the Akron Beacon Journal and an accounting magazine leading the way there. Hooray for the modern media.

Brock Peters died Tuesday.

Filmgoers of a certain age remember Peters from To Kill a Mockingbird. But to me, and other Trekkies, Brock Peters is instantly recognizable as Admiral Cartwright and then, in a later incarnation, as Joseph Sisko. He was one of the first black actors to bring dignity and strength to television and genre films like Star Trek or Soylent Green. He can be seen on everything from "Murder, She Wrote" to the first "Battlestar: Galactica." He set the stage for actors like Dennis Haysbert and even Denzel Washington.

In 2003, he gave the eulogy for Mockingbird co-star Gregory Peck: "In art there is compassion, in compassion there is humanity, with humanity there is generosity and love... Gregory Peck gave us these attributes in full measure."

So did Brock Peters.

Remember when The Onion used to be a satire?

Iraq Declares Partial Law
BAGHDAD—Citing the chaotic state of his occupied nation, president Jalal Talabani declared a state of partial law in Iraq Monday. "We must preserve a few laws and some order," said Talabani in a televised address. "If not for our own sake, then for the sake of the peace-loving citizens who make up nearly half our population." Talabani said the state of partial law is temporary, promising that within the decade, his interim government will be replaced by a more stable fascist theocracy.

I do not believe in the inexcusable pun. But Wil Wheaton is pretty close:

Dr. Pauly and I sat beneath a cloud of smoke that had drifted from the craps table, over the velvet rope, and into the "smoke free" poker area. We drank scotch and talked about cool poker nicknames.

"I don't have one," I said, "really." I folded a hand I call "Michael Jackson," which is any Queen with a little kicker.

Just in case yesterday's posts weren't enough, let's talk some more Iraq, m'kay?

The head of the committee drafting Iraq's constitution, Humam Hammoudi (at right doing his Ayatollah impression, which kills at parties) is skeptical that the Sunni negotiators can be brought on board with the constitution as written. Hammoudi pointed out that the Sunni negotiators are not elected, "therefore, who can say that they represent the people on the street?" He suggested that if the Sunni negotiators don't agree to the constitution, it can be brought before the Shiite and Kurd dominated parliament.

That insurgency? Last throes, I swear. Over at the Powerline, John remains "pretty confident that the outcome of the current bargaining will be positive."

Ultimately the question is, is Iraq really a country? Before the war started, this was my biggest worry: that "Iraq" might be just a fiction that would fall apart as soon as the Saddamite tyranny was destroyed. But that seems not to be the case. All of the parties appear to be united on the main point: there really is a country called Iraq, and they really are debating its future.

Um. If we leave aside the fact that federalism is an unresolved issue, and if we leave aside all the other issues, like the Islamic nation/Arab nation debate or the rights of women, that also content for the "main point" distinction—well, if we leave all that aside, all we're left with is a really bad pun about what happens when you translate "Saddamite" into Arabic.

Over at the Arsenal, Suzanne Nossel continues her discussion with Kevin Drum, most of which I cannibalized yesterday, so why stop now?

There are at least 2 scenarios in terms of what's behind the insurgency, and I have been unable to uncover definitively which is correct. One maintains that the U.S.'s presence in Iraq is the prime motivator behind the insurgency - if we leave, it goes away. The other suggests that while the U.S. presence is part of the picture, the insurgency is mainly a domestic political power struggle.

Whichever it is, I don't see the insurgent fervor being dampened by an announcement of plans for a December 2007 withdrawal. If indeed the insurgents are compelled mostly by a drive to push us out, a statement that we definitively plan to leave some 27 months hence stands a good chance of only emboldening efforts to get us out sooner by raising the human cost of staying. Our terrorist enemies would love the feather in their cap of sending us running ahead of an orderly deadline. If there motives are mainly political, knowing that we aren't going to stand in their way for long may encourage them to "wait us out."

I'd like to respond to Susan's theory about there being two possible scenarios in terms of what's behind the insurgency. It's a mistake to regard the insurgency as motivationally monolithic and make it a puzzle for us to find the right motivation. Clearly the various fighters that make up the insurgency, who run the gamut from the radical Sunni nut-bars to Al Qaeda foreign nationals, and the various groups who support them, from the Iraqi wannabe warlords to the Iranians to who-the-hell-knows—North Korea? Cat Stevens? The Breen?—are motivated by a mix of both the factors Suzanne mentions. If we were to announce a phased withdrawal, the reaction of the insurgency would likely be just as mixed.

That might not be altogether a bad thing. It's likely that the various groups I've mentioned above would split, into a "wait 'em out" crowd and a "last push" crowd. It would of course be of military value to destabilize the insurgence, even if the groups that keep fighting fight harder. More importantly, the Sunnis who sit back and wait for the Americans to leave would be a possible place for the Iraqi government to do business. On the other hand, as Suzanne puts it,

All this is not to say that we should not plan for withdrawal. And this Administration has proffered nothing that comes close to a strategy for achieving our goals under current circumstances. Absent such a strategy, withdrawal is preferable to continued loss of life.

That's not a very optimistic argument, but it's one that's starting to gain some traction. Yesterday in Salt Lake City, over 2,500 people showed up to protest the visit of President Bush, at the urging of the city's mayor. (The President can be seen at right shaking hands with Utah Governor John Huntsman, Jr., and First Lady Ellen Tigh.) Salt Lake Tribune columnist Holly Mullen holds forth:

The most thoughtful people at this gathering - and they voiced this to me repeatedly - know that demanding an immediate withdrawal of troops in Iraq would spell disaster in the region. No matter what grand plans the Bush team has for a blossoming democracy in Iraq, the Shiite majority and Sunni minority aren't even close to embracing a constitution.

Pull out U.S. forces now, and we virtually ensure a Shiite Muslim stronghold of Iran and Iraq - a cleric-powered juggernaut that could take aim at the Sunnis and make Saddam's beastly human rights record look golden by comparison.

So here we sit, deep inside a conflict built on a series of Bush blunders.

In essence, this question that Suzanne, Mullen, Drum, and the rest of America keep bumping our heads against asks us how we can do the least harm. It was clearly a mistake to go over there, and no we need to decide if the least damage is done by staying for as long as necessary, or by a measured, step-by-step retreat. It's a difficult, complicated question. (It's not a question the President entertains. Speaking with reporters from a ranch in Idaho this morning, Bush implied that all the anti-war protesters want an immediate withdrawal, and that the only alternative to that is to "be optimistic.")

The one argument that might convince me we should leave was made by the aforementioned mayor of Salt Lake, Rocky Anderson, seen at left meeting with a pro-war protestor who is calling for his impeachment. (There's a badly-lit, but somewhat more interesting picture of him here.) Mullen asked Mayor Anderson what he thought we should do in Iraq. After granting out that "a sudden pullout from Iraq would be disastrous," he pointed out why we can't stay:

"We are setting the Muslim world afire by having no plan to end the war."

Earlier today, I posted a nice chunk of Suzanne Nossel's not-very-cheery view of the prospects in Iraq if we cut and run, as the saying goes. And yet there are voices calling for withdrawal across the blogosphere. Here are two examples. First, Kevin Drum gives the rational case for a well-planned, well-articulated phased withdrawal. Then, National Review contributor Andy McCarthy explains the emotional punch packed by the latest news.

Drum:

But what I learned over a couple of decades of product management was this: pay attention to big trends, not to the daily ups and downs. If the big trends are in your favor (growing market, solid product), individual setbacks shouldn't panic you as long as your overall execution is respectable. Sure, it's a drag to lose a big deal or miss a launch deadline, but those things won't kill you if you're working in a broadly healthy business environment.

Conversely, if the big trends are against you, don't kid yourself into complacency by cherry picking minor pieces of good news. Thursday's sales were up! We just got a callback on that big IRS bid!

That's where we are with Iraq. Yes, the constitutional deadlock might end. And we might have individual military successes here and there. But the big trends are inescapably against us. The insurgency is not dying down and shows no signs of doing so. American forces are viewed as occupiers. Ethnic tensions continue to boil barely below the surface. Rebuilding is going so slowly as to be almost invisible. We're undermanned, and additional troops are not in the cards from either the U.S. or the rest of the world. Militias are running broad swaths of the country and the training of Iraqi security forces is obviously going poorly. The almost certain end state is either civil war, an Islamic state, or both.

One of the biggest differences between good managers and bad managers is that good managers are willing to face up to bad news and act on it. That's what needs to happen here. There are too many big trends working against us to allow us to pretend that a few schoolhouses and half a dozen squads of Iraqi MPs are going to turn the tide.

So: we can wait until things get even worse and withdrawal becomes even more painful, or we can announce a plan now that makes the best of a bad situation and encourages the best outcome still plausibly open to us. We can put specific goals and specific timetables in place, do our level best to meet them, and then leave. Or we can wait until disaster forces us out. But don't let minor events fool you. One way or another, we'll be gone soon. Shouldn't we do it on our terms?

McCarthy:

Now, if several reports this weekend are accurate, we see the shocking ultimate destination of the democracy diversion. In the desperation to complete an Iraqi constitution — which can be spun as a major step of progress on the march toward democratic nirvana — the United States of America is pressuring competing factions to accept the supremacy of Islam and the fundamental principle no law may contradict Islamic principles... Like most Americans, I would like to see Iraq be an authentic democracy — just as I would like to see Iran, Syria, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, etc. be authentic democracies. But I would not sacrifice American lives to make it so.

But even if I suspended disbelief for a moment and agreed that the democracy project is a worthy casus belli, I am as certain as I am that I am breathing that the American people would not put their brave young men and women in harm's way for the purpose of establishing an Islamic government. Anyplace...

And if the United States, in contradiction of its own bedrock principle against government establishment religion, has decided to go into the theocracy business, how in the world is it that Islam is the religion we picked?

The emphasis is his. The feeling is mutual.

The Hollywood Reporter has a story that can only be described with two words.

Fucking. Awesome.

The Old English epic poem, which is thought to have been written in the eighth century, chronicles the exploits of Beowulf, a Scandinavian hero who saves the Danes from the indomitable monster Grendel.

Ray Winstone has signed on to play the title character and will be joined by Crispin Glover as Grendel and Angelina Jolie as Grendel's mother. Rounding out the cast are Anthony Hopkins, Robin Wright Penn, John Malkovich, Alison Lohman and Brendan Gleeson.

Director? Robert Zemeckis. Writer? Roger Avary and Neil Gaiman. That's right. Pulp Fiction meets American Gods in a bar and they rewrite Beowulf together.

Fucking. Awesome.

Blogger just ate a massive post I'd been working on all morning talking about President Bush's visit to my hometown of Salt Lake Today. Arrgh.

I'm not in the mood to re-write 800 words and ignore my, y'kno, job all afternoon too. So. Here's the photos I had included in the post. You're smart people. You piece 'em together.





  

There. It's pretty obvious how those are related, isn't it?

So, were you having a good day? Perhaps getting the work week off to a nice good start?

Well, Suzanne Nossel won't stand for that:

There is genuine uncertainty over whether, at this point, there’s anything the U.S can do to turn things around in Iraq. Kevin Drum suggests that the only reason to hesitate in calling for a pull out is the fear of looking weak. As we debate what’s next, though, its worth considering what the consequences of a failed Iraq will be.

I define failure as a situation in which the result of the U.S.’s invasion and subsequent occupation are not the stability (never mind the democracy) that we all hoped for, but instead continued chaos, factionalism, violence, and uncontrollable outside influence by the likes of Iran and Syria. It’s a scenario in which Iraq’s domestic security forces never gain the upper hand against insurgents, the economy does not recover, the fractious politics never coalesces into a functioning government, and the violence goes on unabated. In short, current conditions persist.

Noone, neither hawk nor peacenik, wants this to happen. But as we contemplate options that we long dismissed, its worth remembering why we’ve said for so long that the prospect of Iraq as a failed state was unacceptable. Even if we come to the conclusion that – though it may leave the country in ruins - U.S. withdrawal from Iraq is the best of an array of terrible options, if Iraq becomes a failed state that choice will not be without devastating consequences...

It's Elsa Lanchester and two homosexuals. Have a good weekend and I'll see ya on Monday.

I wasn't even going to say anything; I was going to be all professional about it and act like it was just a business-as-usual upgrade...but can you believe inappropriatecontent.net wasn't taken? Awesomeness—in a can!

There's still a little tweaking to do with the new site design. (I wrote every single bit of code myself, and hooray for Cascading Style Sheets!) In any case, I'll be off-line all weekend, so y'all folks have a great late-summer break! Go to a picnic or something.

From Tim Russo's recent post on Howard Dean's trip to Armenia:

The fact that Howard Dean is a Dashnak guest in Armenia is bizarre, and should pose Mr. Dean with some very uncomfortable questions, first among them being why the FUCK is Howard Dean coddling with electoral fraud professionals? As Katy at Blogrel wonders, I doubt the man has any idea what he's gotten himself into.

Those of us who love Howard Dean have a very special sort of sigh we make when he does something exceeding bone-headed. It turns out that Dean is going with Los Angeles City Councilman Eric Garcetti to sign a "sister city" agreement between Yerevan and L.A.'s Little Armenia neighborhood. According to Garcetti, Dean is "a friend, [and] he's going to come along as the chair of the DNC." So, apparently, he really doesn't know what he's getting himself into.

sigh...

If my theory proves to be correct, the Germans will say I am a German, the Jews will say I am Jew and the French will say I am a citizen of the world. But if turns out to be incorrect, the French will say I'm a German, the Germans will say I'm a Jew and the Jews will say I'm a citizen of the world.

—Albert Einstein

That little gem was left in a comment by Robert O. It's just one of literally several comments that have been left recently by people who are not my family, or my family impersonating officials from the Reagan administration. I just wanted to take a moment to thank everyone who reads this site, and assure you that I read every single comment posted on InappropriateContent, no matter where you post it. (They get e-mailed to me.) Keep reading!

From The White House Gift Shop. Get it as a T-Shirt, button, or coffee mug.

A few minutes ago, I was sitting at my computer, engrossed in a project I'm doing, when the director walked out of his office and stopped in front of my cube. It was at that point that I realized I was absent-mindedly sucking on the middle finger of my right hand, which was still smeared with ink from the printer I'd fixed earlier.

Before I could deal with this somewhat embarrassing realization, I realized that the director was sticking out his hand for me to shake.

Now it's a little disconcerting when anyone finds you sucking your own questionably hygienic finger and immediately attempts to engage in physical contact with that same finger. In this case, however, it wasn't just anyone, it was my bosses boss. I mean, granted, the director of one administrative office within the Forest Service, which is itself merely an agency within the Department of Agriculture, well...he's not exactly Henry Kissinger, but he could still buy and sell my livelihood a dozen times over. So, naturally, I was a little concerned.

Unsteadily, I stood up, and gave him a hesitant, somewhat slimy handshake. This, I thought to myself, is the man who will be your bosses boss and the highest authority this side of the Potomac River* for the next several years of your life.

And then he told me he's retiring.



*I work on the Virginia side of the Potomac river. Everyone higher up than the director is in the main building near the Washington Monument. The Forest Service runs a free shuttlebus every fifteen minutes.

The ECFR, in conjunction with the Christian Coalition and other Christian conservative action groups, is calling for public-school curriculums to give equal time to the Intelligent Falling theory. They insist they are not asking that the theory of gravity be banned from schools, but only that students be offered both sides of the issue "so they can make an informed decision."

"We just want the best possible education for Kansas' kids," Burdett said.

More timely reporting from The Onion.

It's Phoblographer*!

CYD President Crystal Strait listens intently to a Convention Keynote Speaker. CYD Parliamentarian [and my old boss] Christiana Dominguez is far too enamored with her headwear to be bothered.

Yay, Phoblographer*! And the fact that she used "1000 Words" as the title for her post must mean she reads this blog regularly! Or is passingly familiar with common colloquial phrases!

Bloomberg reports:

"We estimate right now if we get relief in [Darfur], we'll lose a third of a million people, and if we don't, the death rates could be dramatically higher, approaching a million people," [U.S. Agency for International Development Chief Andrew] Natsios said after a United Nations aid meeting in Geneva.

No one can say we had know way of knowing how bad it was going to be.

In her August 4th column in the Wall Street Journal, Peggy Noonan complains about liberal elitists who leave their Manhattan and Georgetown condos to visit the countryside and treat the locals like children. Then she describes her recent visit to West Virginia.

Ms. Noonan has just returned from her first visit to the state, which she keeps describing as “real.” (Apparently her last vacation was a three-night cruise through Fiddler’s Green.) The hills, the small towns, the people: all “real.” West Virginia is perfectly macho, with a town named Artie, a town named Bud, and a county that took the ‘La’ off ‘Lafayette’ because it was “a little lah dee dah.” I’m sure a certain senator from Pennsylvania could appreciate that.

Ms. Noonan’s description doesn’t sound very much like the place I lived, went to school, and worked in for most of last year. That’s because, notwithstanding her fondness for the adjective “real,” Ms. Noonan’s West Virginia is almost a Frank Capra movie, albeit without Jimmy Stewart. She wants West Virginians to be salt of the earth folk, untouched by the elitist liberal Hollywood culture and perfectly happy in their simple, pure lives. She succeeds only in making them look stupid.

West Virginians, according to Ms. Noonan, have a “particular dignity and humility,” which sounds very nice until you read that this particular dignity comes from being “left so alone by history.” West Virginians “aren’t sure why [the New River] is called the New and think Lewis and Clark were surprised to come upon its broad gray power.” Apparently West Virginians don’t realize that the Lewis and Clark expedition took place thousands of miles away, centuries after the New River was named. After all, they’re simple people.

She goes on:

Few people I met seemed interested in politics. I got the impression they see it as something dull and far away, as a normal person would.

And isn’t that just charming? Perhaps Ms. Noonan truly believes that normal people don’t care about politics. Only those poor, not “real” people in Washington—Ms. Noonan, for instance—worry about all those dull, far away things like taxes and wars. “Real” people don’t take an interest.

Ms. Noonan immediately contradicts herself, explaining that West Virginian do, indeed, have politics—and apparently the type of politics Ms. Noonan and the Journal prefer: talking points.

It’s a tall state...with winding roads, except where it’s broad and beige and full of highway, courtesy of Robert Byrd. The highways are perfect looking, unstained by wear and tear, and not many people seem to use them.

Well, I don’t supposed I can begrudge Ms. Noonan a cheap shot at the GOP’s target of choice in 2006 (I’m sure she won’t begrudge the similar shot I made at a certain senator from Pennsylvania). But I would be curious to know how she got around the Mountain State, if it wasn’t on those highways. After all, the only alternatives are mule and helicopter.

There are little churches in every town, where the highest thing is the steeples, and road signs with exhortations to follow Jesus, and big crosses made of white wood on the side of the road. The ACLU would do well not to come here and do their church-state thing.

I’m not sure what surprises Ms. Noonan about this. Surely she can’t think that Washington D.C. doesn’t have churches. Perhaps she’s used to places like National Cathedral, St. Johns Church, and the Adas Israel Synagogue. Maybe she doesn’t think D.C. has any little churches with road signs and wooden crosses. (That would mean she’s never been east of the Anacostia river, of course, but that’s entirely possible of a woman who thinks “West Virginia's people seem to be largely what they were, of Scots-Irish descent, and have remained vividly so.”) Maybe she’s slyly implied that the ACLU’s “thing” is to get rid of churches so often, she’s actually forgotten about National Cathedral, St. Johns, Adas Israel, and the literally hundreds of other congregations in Washington, D.C.

Of course, the ACLU is hard at work at it’s “thing” in West Virginia. Most recently, they helped a Clay County woman regain custody of her daughter after her partner, the girl’s biological mother, was killed in a car crash. Over the past few years, the ACLU has also gotten the ten commandments removed from West Virginia classrooms and stopped a West Virginia judge from conducting prayers in his courtroom, and regardless of how you feel about those cases, Ms. Noonan’s nonsensical claim that the ACLU isn’t in West Virginia demonstrates just how observant she was during her visit to the “real” West Virginia.

Someone else said, approvingly, "Everyone keeps a gun in West Virginia. Crime is low." Later I would be told it has the lowest violent crime per capita in the United States. It is very nice, when traveling, to see your beliefs and assumptions statistically borne out.

And while crime is low in West Virginia, whoever told her it has the lowest crime per capita hasn’t seen the FBI’s most recent violent crime statistics, which show that in 2003, Howard Dean’s Vermont had less than half the violent crime of West Virginia; that Delaware and Connecticut had fewer murders; that New Jersey had less rape; and that the gun-keeper’s paradise, Texas, had twice the murder rate of West Virginia and three times that of Vermont.

Perhaps I’ve contradicted myself; I’ve said I want to defend West Virginia; yet I’ve told you about it’s high crime rate and vicious politics. Ms. Noonan, too contradicts herself. She tells us that few West Virginians are uninterested in politics; then she tells us what West Virginians think of gun control, the ACLU, and Robert Byrd’s highways. She tells us “the people I was meeting were kind and easygoing, but something tells me you don't want to get them mad;” then she tells us tells the horror story of a mining boss who politely and respectfully disagreed with a local politician, and how the politician eventually admitted that the mining boss had a point. She tells us “particular and distinctive survive, especially in West Virginia;” then she tells us of the crowds of outsiders coming to West Virginia (presumably on those highways she told use no one uses).

Well, life contradicts itself too. The difference is, Ms. Noonan contradicts herself because she wants to describe the “real” West Virginia, which she wants to be a paradise, still free of the evils of liberalism, of the city, of the “lah dee dah.” She wants it to be “like an emerald you dig from the hills with your hands.” I contradict myself because I want to describe the West Virginia I where I worked, studied, had sex (proving there’s more “lah dee dah” around than Ms. Noonan thinks), slept every night, made friends, where I lived.

My West Virginia is far messier and more complicated than Ms. Noonan’s West Virginia; but I’ll take the real world over a childishly simple “real” world any day. Because I don’t like those big-city elitists who leave their Manhattan and Georgetown condos to visit the country and treat the locals like children.

Oh, that? It's just the liberal media New York Times trying to make things look bad.

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Aug. 10 - Armed men entered Baghdad's municipal building during a blinding dust storm on Monday, deposed the city's mayor and installed a member of Iraq's most powerful Shiite militia.

While I continue to work on my vacation posts—which are becoming alarmingly philosophical—here's a few pictures.



Sam Watkiss made one pie too many. I don't know what Paul's excuse is.


I convinced Isaac and his girlfriend, Chelsea, to actually hang out with us; this made it much easier for Isaac to convince us that he didn't make Chelsea up.


The other Sam, enjoying coffee.


Me, enjoying the mountain air.

The dry desert heat in Utah was so much better than the muggy, malarial, marinating heat in the District that I almost forgot how good the weather can be here. Fortunately, I have quickly been reminded: a storm is brewing, and with it, the sort of electric, voodo thunder that wraps itself around the city with such animate intensity that I can almost believe, if not in a divine sky-god, than in the anthropomorphic pantheons of story and song.

Neil Gaiman's gods.

I brought my collection of 'The Sandman' back from Utah. 'Sandman' is a story about ideas, literally—Dream and Death are main characters—and very, very far from my usual reading, which relies on timeliness and clever wordplay, two things Gaiman entirely avoids, with the exception of a brief appearance by Richard Nixon in Volume VIII. He talks about being president.

Nixon: You don't get to make a difference. You don't get to do jack shit. You know what you get?

Young Man: Sir?

Nixon: You get an entry in the history book, and every 15 minutes, every day at Disneyworld, an animatronic puppet wearing your face will smile or nod when the spotlight hits it. So take it for what you can get, kid, and milk it for all it's worth.

Young Man: Sir—

Nixon: Power. That's the only thing worth going for. Forget money. Power comes with money. Forget chasing skirts. You got power, the skirts chase you. Even that dumb [expletive deleted] Jack Kennedy, even he knew that.

Young man:
Sir? What about making the world a better place?

Nixon: I, uh, I'm not following you.

More on my trip tomorrow.

Greetings and felicitations from Detroit, Michigan.

My last few trips, I've been able to get away with only bringing carry-on bags, but not this time. I forgot how long it takes to check baggage. Northwest took the opportunity to screw me out of fifty bucks—it's what capitalists do—and then gave me a three hour layover in Detroit, which is just mean-spirited.

An auspicious beginning, don't you think?

I'm off to Salt Lake City for the rest of the week. I even got a hotel room like a grown up. (Sadly, it looks like I'm going to have to impersonate a grown-up for the rest of my life.) Tomorrow night, my friends from high school and I are going to a silly little diner in Salt Lake where we used to spend the time we should have spent in class. Later, we'll go to play pool, or go clubbing*, or watch bad TV in my hotel room, or start the revolution and overthrow the man.

It depends on who shows up, really.

To hold you over until I renew my blogging next week, here's a photograph of a heavily armed penguin. Hooray!



Photo by this guy.

*Actually, we can't go clubbing because the last time a nightclub in Utah was open on a Tuesday night, it was to celebrate the re-election of the president. Specifically, Eisenhower.