If we think we’d do that, why is it so hard for us to understand that other countries are also going to do it? Are we that ethnocentric?

I think this deserves saying again. And again. Andagainandagainandagain. Until all those dickwads who keep baying about “crazy fundament’lst ‘Raqi turr’rists tryin’ to kill our boys” get some inkling of a hint of an idea that no-one is really going to roll over and let an occupying army, err, occupy.

Sorry, I’ll be in the corner with my grammar primer.

I was a 15th-century Christian mystic, author of The Imitation of Christ… but I was also a dirty fuckin’ hippie!

Oh ,here’s another nice newspaper product from today, courtesy George Mason economist Russell Roberts in the LA Times (to be fair, the Times also asked Peter Singer and the CPUSA’s Sam Webb the question: “Can you be too rich?”):

In the early part of the 20th century, rich people ate better than the rest of us, had nicer clothes and a few even had cars. Rich people had servants and lived one family to a house. By those measures, the masses fell into the have-not category. No servants. Cramped quarters. Coarser food and clothing. A longer and more physical working day. If you were in the bottom half of income distribution and you encountered someone in the upper half, you knew it.
But steady economic growth over the years has eliminated most of the tangible differences between us.

Today, almost every family owns a car. Most own their own home. Most of us have dishwashers and cellphones and computers and air conditioning, comforts only the richest of the rich had 40 years ago. Rich people work longer hours than poor people today. Neither is likely to encounter much danger on the job. A poor person having a heart attack gets the same treatment as a rich person, and both get better treatment than the richest fat cat received 25 or 50 years ago.

My question: what world is Roberts living in?

I know I’d prefer to employ people who are so batshit crazy that they kill dogs at random. One of my interview questions is “Are you afraid that I’ll fire you?” followed immediately by “What are you prepared to kill to prevent that?” I consider this sound corporate strategy.

Anyone can see that THAT would be a good strategy,… except liberal traitors.

Sure, the whole world knows that foreign policy is best conducted by people who wear their underpants on their heads and randomly slaughter strangers. After all, it’s been successful for the US for decades, although admittedly we’re still having trouble with the ‘underpants-on-the-head-but-still-hot-for-democracy-and-freedom-and-really-nice-folks-if-we’re-not-randomly-killing-people’ entirety of US foreign policy.

But we’re quite thoroughly convinced of the undeniable fact that the US is barking mad and liable to gnaw the heads off whippets at the drop of a hat. Completely and utterly convinced.

Next question, Gary?

[hangs head in technoshame].

Fixed.

Yeah, but what if you want your boss to think that you’re so crazy that you might also try to kill HIM?

Therefore, he’ll be too afraid to fire you and will just leave you alone.

Yes, I don’t want my boss to fire me, so it is best to make him think that I may kill him. That surely won’t have any dire consequences whatsoever.

Anyone can see that THAT would be a good strategy,… except liberal traitors.

Yeah, thinking things through and acknowledging there are these pesky things called consequences is so pre 9/11.

Is this a fake Gary?

Yeah, but what if you want your boss to think that you’re so crazy that you might also try to kill HIM?

Therefore, he’ll be too afraid to fire you and will just leave you alone.

Anyone can see that THAT would be a good strategy,… except liberal traitors.

And here’s a gem, “while Iraq illustrates the importance of challening intelligence estimates, there will also be risks in waiting for certainty…” See, see what he did there? He took the “exaggeration” and “cherry-picking” (aka lies) of the adminsitration and finessed them into uncertainty. Sweet.

Sure, a bunch of newspapers fell down on their knees to puff up a war the government wanted based on secret evidence no one was allowed to see. And sure, all hell has broken loose because of it, hundreds of thousands have died in Iraq, thousands of our soldiers, the costs are staggering, and every statement used to sell the war was proven not only wrong but falsified.

But, what, you think that’s enough to justify making newspaper editors, publishers, and owners UNCOMFORTABLE?

G** D***, they have worked their a**es off getting accepted as conforming elites who belong in the same crowds as the governing, political, and economic upper classes.

You want them to give all that up because they messed up on some lousy little war which loosed the demons of chaos throughout the cradle of Western civilization?

What kind of crazy, radical, lunatic fringe extremists are you people?

“There’s no question that the execution was disastrous. Having rolled the dice on what everyone understood to be an enormous gamble, Mr. Bush and his team followed up with breathtaking and infuriating arrogance, ignorance and insouciance.”

The easy way out is to blame [the executioners] President Bush, Vice President Cheney or former defense secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld:

Long and short of it is that they see the fact that the United States is the richest, most powerful nation on this planet and conclude that this means that the US is all powerful and can thus do anything it wants. Ironically, when countries challenge this illusion it means they must be crushed to demonstrate the all powerfulness of the US. Of course when that fails, we have to make MORE examples lest America look weak. Even more ironic is the fact that the crazed warmongering of the past few years has really made a lot of the world not just jealous of American power but resentful of it. The scary thing is even if you elected the most progressive Democrat president in ’08, I’d think twice before believing anything that came out of the Whitehouse.

A bunch of unkempt, loud, sexually promiscuous, and sometimes violent young people

Dirty Fuckin’ Hippies!