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Evil? Stupid? Which is worse?

And is there really a difference, when they’re both killing you?

This was brought on by Riverbend’s recent post.

“The Americans have done a fine job of working to break [Iraq] apart. This last year has nearly everyone convinced that that was the plan right from the start. There were too many blunders for them to actually have been, simply, blunders. The ‘mistakes’ were too catastrophic. The people the Bush administration chose to support and promote were openly and publicly terrible- from the conman and embezzler Chalabi, to the terrorist Jaffari, to the militia man Maliki. The decisions, like disbanding the Iraqi army, abolishing the original constitution, and allowing militias to take over Iraqi security were too damaging to be anything but intentional.”

I wonder. My immediate reaction is the same as hers. Nobody could be that stupid. (I adhere to the conspiracy theory that says it’s about oil. Once you have the war of the all against the all, they grind themselves to rubble, and then you have a free hand to come in with your siphon and get the black gold for next to nothing.)

But the scientist in me insists on considering the null hypothesis: What if they are that stupid?

Think about it. What if they really are that stupid? The mind reels. It’s actually easier to think they could be that evil instead of that stupid.

And the implications for democracy are staggering. It means there really is a minimum of wisdom required to run a country. It implies not everyone has it. We’d have to start limiting the pool from which leaders can be elected. But how? Any limits always seem to wind up selecting for rich and powerful nincompoops. Which is where we are now.

My head hurts.

Technorati tags: Iraq, politics, oil , conspiracy

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Fraud, funding, and science

Everything from health to wealth depends on science in the modern world, so, obviously, scientific results had better be rock-solid. And yet honesty in science is enforced by what amounts to a gentleman’s agreement, and the penalities for breaking it are nothing more than career damage. Contrast that to financial dishonesty. Its only direct effect is loss of money, but it is regulated by hundreds of laws, and the penalties include jail time.

Scientific honesty has been in the spotlight recently because of fraud in stem cell work by Dr. Hwang in South Korea. Science, which is the premier forum for publishing scientific results together with Nature, plans to have high profile work more stringently reviewed. This is good and necessary, but it only scratches the surface.

Fame and fortune in some fields of science only mean that the corrosive influence money on the scientific process is more noticeable. It’s present everywhere, and is arguably more insidious when it’s invisible. Dealing with that influence at all levels would be more effective than trying to promote stopgap honesty at the top. Read more »

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Weaponized Free Speech

Knowing the Enemy: The anthropology of insurgency, by George Packer, is an insightful article in the current New Yorker (Dec 18, 2006). He discusses how the information / propaganda / media component of any fight has become hugely important, and how insurgents / freedom fighters / terrorists around the world have been quicker to use the new tool than established armies.

‘Just before the 2004 American elections … [in] Bin Laden’s public statements … that offered a list of grievances against America: Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, global warming. … The odd inclusion of environmentalist rhetoric … made clear that “this wasn’t a genuine list of grievances. This was an Al Qaeda information strategy.” … Bin Laden shrewdly created an implicit association between Al Qaeda and the Democratic Party, for he had come to feel that Bush’s strategy in the war on terror was sustaining his own global importance. … Al Qaeda’s core leadership had become a propaganda hub.”‘ [italics in original]

Read more »

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Advertising: what you don’t know gets you

Advertising is a nuisance. We tune that stuff out. Right?

Well, yes. Right. Which turns out to be exactly what gives it its power. If we didn’t tune it out, it wouldn’t work.

A while back, 1997 to be precise, there was an article in Nature showing that subliminal messages (i.e. below-the-threshold messages, tuned-out messages) influenced product choice more than conscious ones (via Mindhacks).

This study was done by Adrian North and colleagues from the University of Leicester. They played traditional French (accordion music) or traditional German (a Bierkeller brass band – oompah music) music at customers and watched the sales of wine from their experimental wine shelves, which contained French and German wine matched for price and flavour. On French music days 77% of the wine sold was French, on German music days 73% was German – in other words, if you took some wine off their shelves you were 3 or 4 times more likely to choose a wine that matched the music than wine that didn’t match the music.

Did people notice the music? Probably in a vague sort of way. But only 1 out of 44 customers who agreed to answer some questions at the checkout spontaneously mentioned it as the reason they bought the wine. When asked specifically if they thought that the music affected their choice 86% said that it didn’t. The behavioural influence of the music was massive, but the customers didn’t notice or believe that it was affecting them.

Read more »

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Condom Sizes

I have to add my two cents’ worth. I can’t help myself. It’d take a much stronger person than me to resist something so giggle-worthy.

The big news is:

The conclusion of all this scientific endeavour is that about 60% of Indian men have penises which are between three and five centimetres shorter than international standards used in condom manufacture.

Newsflash, guys: it’s not length that matters. It’s width.

I mean, use your head. (No, not that one. The other one. The one with an actual brain in it.) All length does is enable the penis to reach the cervix of the uterus, which lies at the end of the vagina. The cervix has the same level of sensation as an internal organ. Pushing on the cervix is a lot like palpating the liver: it’s not that you can’t feel it, but it’s just pressure and not terribly interesting. A short penis might not reach as far as the cervix, but who cares? Only guys involved in measuring contests. Width, on the other hand, affects all the extremely sensitive and very interesting parts near the surface.

But, to be perfectly honest, even width is a minor matter, compared to knowing how to use what you’ve got and she’s got. Ability, and caring enough to use the ability, that’s what makes all the difference. So, now do you see why Zsa Zsa Gabor, or somebody, said years ago that the sexiest part of a man is his mind?

Technorati tags: condoms, condom sizes, size doesn’t matter

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Next: Life on Mars?

It sure looks like NASA photos show liquid water currently present on Mars. Now. Not a few hundred billion years ago.

the same crater on Mars, dry in August 1999, and with a frozen water seep in September 2005
(Caption: New Gully Deposit in a Crater in the Centauri Montes Region.) If that’s not a frozen water seep, I’ll eat my hat.

close-up of seep

The implications are vast. So far, we’ve found life everywhere on Earth that has even the occasional molecule of liquid water. Maybe that’s just Earth. But if it’s something that happens whenever there’s liquid water, the implications for finding life in the rest of the universe are huge. And the news of water now on Mars means we can actually find out which of the two possibilities it is. Is it just Earth? Or does life just happen?

I can’t imagine a more important question. Memo to NASA, ESA, Japan, EVERYBODY, go, now, to Mars and find out!

If we do find life on Mars, there’s another fork to the fascination. If Mars life is very different from ours, it’ll give us some idea of what we can expect as far as variation in life in the universe goes. If it’s very similar, then it’s even more of a puzzle. Did Mars life come from Earth? Vice versa? Did both come from some third place? And if so, is it within or outside our solar system? Or is it, perhaps, just the most common way for life to evolve, and is Earth-like life what we’ll find out among the stars?

Technorati tags: life, Mars, water, exobiology, NASA

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Not about oil (yeah, right)

There’s been much hoohah over the Iraq Study Group’s report and it’s suggestions about how to rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic with a troop movement here and a withdrawal there. Lost in the static is this gem:

From Antonia Juhasz, Alternet, Dec. 7th:

The ISG report, however, goes further, stating that “the United States should assist Iraqi leaders to reorganize the national oil industry as a commercial enterprise.” …

If these proposals are followed, Iraq’s national oil industry will be privatized and opened to foreign firms, and in control of all of Iraq’s oil wealth.

Mission Accomplished.

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Fiji’s military coup: it’s not so simple

For those who don’t keep close tabs on the situation there (and why don’t you, hmm?) I’ll give some background.

They just had a military, but bloodless, coup that deposed the elected government. This is Not Good and is meeting with widespread condemnation.

But, for once, it’s not that simple.

The military should not overthrow elected governments. This is absolutely true. And yet it’s Commodore Bainimarama who has most of the truth on his side, even if what he’s had to do about it is regrettable.

First the history: The source of the trouble goes back over a century when the British imported thousands of Indians to work the sugar plantations. Ethnic Fijians, like other Melanesians, feel that community is like family, and when any member of the community is in need, others should fill that need. This makes it hard to accumulate wealth, and also makes it hard to control workers with the threat of being fired. If you’re fired, your village tides you over till you find something else. And there’s no point working your butt off, because as soon as you get enough money, some relative will ask you for some of it. Kerekere, as the principle is called, has its very good sides and its not-so-good sides. But what it definitely does is make for less controllable workers. Hence the vast numbers of Indians brought in.

Fast forward to the present. Read more »

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Males prefer older females

Not among humans, of course. This is among chimps, as reported in the Nov 25th, Science News (sub. reqd.), based on work done by Martin N. Muller and others reported in the Nov 21 issue of Current Biology (abstract).

(I’m not sure why this is big news at this point. I heard much the same thing in primate anthropology classes I took decades ago. This has been observed repeatedly.)

Muller’s explanation, though, is what led to this post, just as soon as I stopped hooting with disbelieving laughter. From the SciNews article, “…nothing beats the sex appeal of an old female chimp. If that preference makes no sense to the average human male who’s entranced by young, smooth-skinned women, it’s because the mating game has evolved in different directions in chimps and in people…. People usually form long-term sexual partnerships. Men thus tend to look for women’s physical signs of youth, which signify childbearing potential for years to come….”

This is the first time I’ve seen one of these just-so story explanations based on male monogamy. The very first time. I mean why didn’t I think of that? Of course human males have to go for young women, because after they’ve found their one and only, they’ll never ever have sex with anyone else. If they go for some licentious old hottie, fwump go their chances of fathering more than a couple of kids before she’s past it.
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Civil War, Uncivil War

Does it matter which one is happening in Iraq? If it’s “not a civil war” does that mean it’s “okay”? If it is, does that mean anyone plans on doing anything different?

This is yet another way of avoiding the issues. They aren’t hard to articulate:

1) Saddam Hussein was one of the world’s outstanding sadistic dictators. He needed to be deposed.

2) Killing the patient in order to save them is bad.

3) The US, with it’s hamfisted operating procedures and oil-murky motives, is busily killing Iraq. The US has an absolute moral obligation to stop destroying the place and to make reparations in whatever way is acceptable to civilian Iraqis.

4) While the US fiddles, arguing about how many hundreds of thousands have died and what the definition of war is, people are perishing, families are falling apart, and the land is turning into waste.

Update a few hours later. Well, that’s a relief. The whole thing has been cleared up because, as happens so often, Jon Stewart and The Daily Show have come to the rescue. What we’re dealing with here is a “minor linguistic flareup.” Also a “faith-based melee.” Or, just possibly, a “territorial argle-bargle.” The incomparable crooksandliars.com has the clip.

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Bridging the West-Muslim Divide

There is a big divide, important people say. Muslims are furious about the treatment of Palestinians, about discrimination, humiliation, and marginalisation. To demonstrate how to treat people right, they blow them up. The West is furious about people being blown up. To demonstrate how to treat people right, they blow up mosques. And people, but always only as a regrettable side-effect. It’s not terrorism when the West does it. Remember that, or nothing will make any sense.

The West has some other issues that get less press. Oil, for instance. This is not about oil. Do not think about oil. Think about the clash of civilizations. (Are you thinking about it? Good.)

And then there’s human rights. The idea of having to live with the restrictions, uptightness, and all-around neuroticism that most Muslim societies seem to consider normal horrifies the vast majority of Westerners. But since they don’t, themselves, have to live with it, not much is said. It would be intolerant, or meddlesome, or it’s an internal affair. Sort of like wife-beating used to be something between a man and a woman. However, just because almost nobody talks about it, doesn’t stop it from being a source of hostility. Too often, it’s over-generalized hostility, as things that aren’t voiced usually are.

There’s a common thread there. The anger is about occupation, humiliation, poverty, violence, and abuse. These are not religious issues. They aren’t even cultural issues.

They are issues of justice. Nobody, whether Western, Muslim, or Western and Muslim, wants to be poor, hurt, or humiliated. A world united behind impoverishing and abusing people would be worse than our current one, not better. It is not unity anyone wants. It is justice, at least for themselves.

Let me go through a few examples, just to make my meaning clear.

  • Palestine. The Jews, having been atrociously treated by the Europeans, decided they needed a Jewish state. Personally, I don’t think it’s possible to have a benign government without the separation of religion and state, but I’m also a strong believer in consenting adults doing whatever they damn well please. So I’ll blink the separation issue for a moment, and grant the concept of a Jewish state. They wanted that state in the Promised Land. The only problem was, the land had been promised to some other people as well (perhaps proving not only that God exists, but also that he wouldn’t pass his real estate license). So Palestinian people got turfed out to make way for Jewish people. No matter how you look at it, that is an injustice. The consequences of that injustice will continue to resonate until it either stops (which means the Palestinians can live in peace in their own country, whether that’s a non-religious state or a separate, viable Palestine) or everybody is dead.
  • It doesn’t stop because the US is too busy supporting Israel, right or wrong. So we’re currently headed toward the second alternative while we waste time talking about bridging a non-existent divide. There is no divide. Nobody wants to be booted out of their country or have to pass checkpoints to reach a hospital. There’s only a lot of people who’d rather do what’s easy (for themselves) than what’s right. There’s a lot of people who’d rather use poor refugees as irritants against their enemies, or ignore the crimes of their client state. In other words, there’s only a lot of people who’d rather have (other) people die than do what it takes to right a wrong. No divide there either, unfortunately.
  • Lack of respect for Muslim traditions. Some traditions should not be respected. Cannibalism. Slavery. Female genital mutilation. Only the first is not well-known from at least some Middle Eastern lands. None of them have anything to do with Islam, but the appalling treatment of people in majority Muslim societies puts the religion in a bad light. So why aren’t the clerics making sure these things stop? Instead, some come out with statements favoring wife-beating and rape. There are psychopaths everywhere. But the right-thinking clerics should be ostracizing the crazies, not meeting them with, at most, embarrassed silence.
  • Many of these so-called traditions have to do with depriving women of basic human rights, such as freedom of movement, and even the basic ability to choose one’s own clothing. But they’re not limited to that. There are also ludicrous pronouncements about music and shorts, things that call to mind some of the excesses of Southern Baptists. When Muslims stop demanding respect for travesties of human rights, both serious and silly ones, and start demanding respect for traditions that deserve it, like the Middle Eastern concept of hospitality, at least they’ll have justice on their side.
  • Globalization. That’s what it’s called. In actual fact, it gives corporations new ways to make money, new ways to avoid environmental laws, and new ways to avoid labor laws. Even in the US itself, that supposed bastion of globalization, when consumers tried to buy medicines from other countries where they were cheaper, the corporations soon put a stop to that. Globalization for me but not for thee. Nobody wants to be a cash cow for the wealthy. There’s no divide. There’s just rich people, Western and non-Western, who’d rather make money off less-rich people. Nothing new there, not even the diversionary tactic of riling up the poor with religion instead.
  • State-sponsored terrorism, aka war. Killing people because it suits your purposes is bad enough, but I want to focus on the demonization that is necessary to allow it to happen. There is, we are told, some kind of “clash of civilizations.” On one side there are the blond, blue-eyed heroes, and on the other a bunch of cheating, thieving, no-good Semites.

     Wait, that’s the old script. Those were Jewish Semites. This time, it’s totally different. On one side are fine, upstanding followers of Western, Christian values, and on the other are a bunch of cheating, thieving, terrorist Arab Semites. Totally different.

  • Every single cleric who is allowed to call him- or herself a Christian ought to be condemning this. Instead, there are a few fundamentalist Christian preachers who not only condone it, they promote it. By giving criminal heads of state religious cover, a few clerics make the religion seem like nothing but a bandage for an oozing wound.
  • Small-scale terrorism, aka terrorism. Targeting civilians because you can’t get at soldiers is Bad. Not Honorable. Thoroughly despicable. Every single cleric who is allowed to call himself a Muslim ought to be condemning this. By giving criminals religious cover, a few clerics make the religion seem like nothing but a bandage for an oozing wound.

Not one of these issues is anything people disagree about. The only disagreement is how much it matters when they hurt other people. Trying to find “agreement” on that is either despicable (“Okay, I won’t discuss human rights for women if you’ll stop harping on human rights for Palestinians.”) or irrelevant (“We can agree that both Christianity and Islam are great religions”).

By pretending that the problem is some kind of cultural divide instead of injustice, it’s possible to pretend that the only thing needed for a solution is a bit of talk and understanding. Interestingly enough, nobody is ever quite agreed on what to talk about first. Is it respect for religion? Or tradition? Or market forces? Or not committing acts of war without a license? Pretty soon, we’re talking about talking, and that’s even easier than not solving the problem by talking about it.

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Turkana nomads understand global warming

Fergal Keane of the BBC wrote a sad piece about the desiccation of the way of life of the Turkana in northern Kenya. The always dry climate has been suffering years of deepening drought. Decades of lethal corruption have also done their part to make life increasingly impossible. The whole article is well worth reading (and if there was some way to watch his and Darren Conway’s film, Nomads of the Shore, on BBC News24 this weekend, I would), but I wanted to mention one sentence in particular that leapt out at me. Keane is sitting around the campfire after dinner, talking.

They ask me about Iraq: “Why are people fighting?”

Some of them believe the steadily heating climate is being caused by the war.

They have a better grasp of world events than some world leaders I could mention. After all, we wouldn’t have the war if nobody needed oil, and if we didn’t burn oil, we wouldn’t have global warming.

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Republicans: a method to their madness

Well, either theirs or mine. What follows is my wild-eyed conspiracy theories about what could be behind some recent gibberings from that quarter.

Start with why the hell Rummy resigned only when it would do nobody any good except himself. Why didn’t the Shrub ask him to leave when it could have helped the Grand Old Perverts in the election? Because Shrub’s just the face people (used to) want to have a beer with. He can’t fire Rumsfeld. Rumsfeld is one of the triumvirate running the place. None of them can fire each other because they all know too much. If one of them backs out, it’s because he damn well wants to.

Rummy’s nuts, but not stupid. He knew people would come hopping after him with hatchets the minute he was out of power. He wasn’t going to give up his protection unless the alternative was nothing but endless days of being polite to pesky Congresscritters. When it looked pretty hopeless, Shrub got his heads-up to draft Robert “Iran-Contra Escape Artist” Gates to stand by. Once there was no hope, none at all, which only happens after the results are in, then Rumsfeld resigned. In his own good time. He doesn’t give one single solitary microhoot about the election priorities of a bunch of peons who need votes.

The next one of the three to go, if any of this has anything to do with reality, will be Rove. There’s no further kingmaking for him to do. He’s not going to be able to kick Congress around the way he’d like to. And his day job is going to be listening to the Shrub’s tantrums. I see him “pursuing other options.”

And what about Dick “I like ducks” Cheney? He might find out he’s had heart trouble all these years. It may become necessary for him to spend more time with the board of Halliburton. Then somebody could be slotted into Veep-space who could run in 2008.

Outside the White House, why is McCain (and the Liebermouse) still pretending that all we need is more troops for total victory? Are they really that stupid? I don’t think so. There’s not a snowball’s chance in Washington that 500,000 troops will be sent to Iraq. There is also no chance that Iraq will end well before the next election. This way, he can say, “If only you’d followed my advice. But you didn’t. Now see the mess we’re in.”

Possibly, just possibly, my wild-eyed theories are wrong. They were last time.

But that opens a possibility that threatens to unseat reason, at least what I’ve got of it. It means that maybe, perhaps, these guys really believe it. I mean, really. They really think they’re serving the country with this shit. As if they thought we were all really flies, and not human beings. It beggars my imagination. It’s much easier to assume that they must be rational, and have breathtaking chasms of amorality. But then the hugeness of the vacuum in the place where they ought to have souls is beyond me.

Either they are mad, or I am.

And I know it’s not me.

Technorati tags: Republicans, Rumsfeld, Gates, McCain, election

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US Elections: It’s all over but the shouting

So I went off and voted. I’m in a true-blue, majority Hispanic precinct here near Los Angeles. No point jimmying anything or intimidating anyone because the results here are never even close. Nice poll workers–several below seventy this time!–and everything working smoothly.

The funniest thing here is that in California the voters decide. We’re supposed to decide four pages worth of water board officials, harbor masters, dogcatchers, judges, referendums on everything, and the occasional Governor and such. These ballots are the size of young tablecloths, bigger than some tabloid newspapers. The voting “booth” is a little fold-up plastic table with privacy screens, and the surface is several inches shorter. The ballot is too big to lie flat in there, so it curls up against the screens and generally tries to escape. You can’t fold it because the paper is optically scanned afterwards and has to be undamaged. You know you’re in trouble when the ballot no longer fits in the voting booth.

The news from elsewhere is not so good. Machines malfunctioning in Democratic-leaning precincts all over the place. Lines out the door at seven in the morning. People waiting to vote, standing in the rain, and finally having to bag it because Democrats do have to work. When have I seen this movie before?

Josh Marshall’s Talking Points Memo is doing much to keep track of the enormous number of irregularities at their Election Central. They’ve already pointed out that there’s a nationwide pattern in the repeated, harassing phone calls to people in contested districts. The robocalls seem to come from Democratic candidates, but are actually from Republicans, although that fact is hidden. (Illegally so.) Of course, the convictions for all the cheating will come months, more likely years, after the election. The election, meanwhile, is trashed. The law needs to be amended to disqualify cheaters, something even the sports world has no trouble understanding.

The thing I find most curious about the “false flag robocalls” is that the Republicans are the party that has always blocked any legislation to limit the plague of telemarketers and spammers. After all, they wouldn’t want to reduce the profits of their contributors. That’s bad enough. Now it appears that not only are they aware of how screamingly annoying these pests are, they’re willing to use it to cement their dictatorship. And there I was, thinking the Devil was supposed to be a man of wealth and taste.

But the really hair-raising news comes from Greg Palast, as it so often does on this issue. In an article for The Guardian’s comments section, he points out that the Republicans have been making a concerted effort to strike millions of likely Democratic voters off the rolls. They’ve been quietly at it for months. How successful they’ve been, we’ll find out today when the poor blighters go to the trouble of showing up at the polling place, only to be told that they’re not wanted.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, democracy can’t work unless we make sure of it. It requires a good voting process in which everyone can participate, and a well-informed electorate. Our local dictators-in-training are working very hard for the opposite, as dictators do. So could the international community please send enough observers here to help this struggling democracy?

Update, November 26th
Any time would be good for you lot to send observers. Hello? Hello?
NYTimes article about tens of thousands of votes electronically vaporized, and that’s just the ones we already know about.

Technorati tags: midterm, elections, US, American, voter suppression, stolen election, 2006

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So this is cynicism

I don’t like it. Nothing looks hopeful or promising. I find myself seeing everything going to the dogs, no matter what. Strike that. There’s nothing wrong with dogs. I’m talking about the cockroaches in suits who currently run the country.

For instance, all the normal signs are that the Democrats will take over one or both Houses of Congress. The Democrats are not saints, but they’re also not totalitarians. For one thing, they’re just not organized enough. A Democratic takeover ought to mean that the thuggery and criminality of the last six years is finally investigated. It ought to mean some kind of justice is done. It ought to mean that the US starts behaving like a country instead of a gang. I ought to be full of pleased anticipation.

Instead, I’m thinking the polls mean nothing. The thugs will have some military adventure to pump up their popularity. Admittedly, it’s getting late in the day for that. I expected it a week ago. They’ve scheduled Saddam’s verdict for four days before the election. The thugs are presenting vague non-evidence that the usual suspects plan to topple Lebanon. No doubt, they’ll arrest a bunch of “terrorists” shortly, thereby saving the country from a fate worse than death. That should give them about five percent at the polls. They’re at about 40% now, in round, national numbers. The remaining 5.1% can be handed to them by rigged voting machines. Presto: 51%.

When I think I’m being too pessimistic, and that the level of ill will is so high that even Diebold won’t save them, then I figure that the Democrats will be too spineless to actually DO anything. They’ll fart around being all centrist instead of just mucking in there and doing what’s right.

And then I get even grumpier, and I think that whether they do anything or not, it doesn’t matter. Come 2008 and the next presidential election, everything will magically become the Democrats’ fault if they control anything at all.

It’s hopeless.

Except that I do hope I’m wrong.

Update: November 25th
Well, They tried the scare tactics, but nothing big enough to pull their fat out of the fire. Maybe the military is so mad by now that enough officers wouldn’t play along. And They tried messing with the election itself (tens of thousands of votes electronically vaporized, and that’s just the ones we already know about). But I was wrong that They would be able to do enough. So far, so good.

It’s a new feeling, enjoying being wrong. Now I have to worry about whether it’ll last.

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Good God. The Power of Prada.

Oct 9, via the BBC, buried down at the bottom of the toothless UN sanctions imposed on North Korea:

Bans export of luxury goods to North Korea

I hear scuttlebutt that the dictator with the bad hair has a wife with a well-developed fashion sense.

Today, I see N Korea ‘not planning more tests’

Hmmm.

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