Here and There

“Heckuva job.” - President Bush, too many times too index here, and about many nefarious characters who were soon to be sacked.
“The right guy for Iraq.” - President Bush, today, about Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, whose fitness for the job, just days earlier, Bush’s National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley questioned. I can easily see Adolf telling Benito the same.

*** I’m not claiming that George W. Bush is a Nazi, or that Nouri al-Maliki is a Fascist, or vice versa. Nor am I saying that Bush is German and al-Maliki Italian. No, that would be irresponsible of me. It’s simply a convenient analogy, one that could easily have been substituted with “Stalin-Milosevic,” “Tito-Kim,” or “King George-Pinochet.” You see how name recognition breaks down? That’s what forced my hand in the title of this post.

Thousands of years from now, I’d like to see a first-generation iPod look so good.

Calling it a civil war or not doesn’t change the fact that Iraq is reportedly (and with near unanimity) in a state of utter chaos and lawlessness.

I really don’t think the people fighting and dying in that former country (let’s have a debate about that, yeah?) care too much what we call their war. Hell, we can call it a butterscotch lollipop — it won’t stop the killing, sect on sect, criminal on criminal, terrorist on terrorist, whatever you want to call the people killing one another.

How typical that in the U.S. the argument over what to call something concisely divides people along the same tired ideological lines while obscuring the truth. Gee, that’s never happened before.

Meanwhile, Thomas Friedman somehow manages to cull the unsolvable logic problem in my own head with a simple math equation: 10 months or 10 years. Read this column.

It’s Monday, November 27, 2006. The conflict civil war in Iraq has now lasted longer than U.S. involvement in World War II. And the White House, responding to NBC News’s decision to listen to blogs like the one you’re reading, says no. It’s not a civil war.

Though its origins are difficult to pin down, I don’t think I’ve ever been resistant to the idea that Iraq is at war with itself. This seemed apparent at least as far back as the summer after the U.S. invasion, when suicide bombers added Iraqi civilians to their target lists.

But my god, how can people like George Bush and Dick Cheney justify their refusal to call what we see in Iraq now a civil war? Bush, a recovered addict, especially should know that acceptance is key to understanding and being able to correct a problem.

The U.S. doesn’t have to take sides in a civil war. Instead, we can (get ready to be shocked) use our collective brain power and diplomacy to bring about a peaceful solution. My limited-brain-power pick would be something like the Biden-Gelb partition plan, ensuring shared oil revenue to sustain the national government and economy. And this plan should be backed by international peacekeeping forces.

Iraq isn’t Israel/Palestine. But it is Iraq. What I mean by that is the relationship between its main sects are dynamic and complicated. Saddam ruled by iron fist, and while that eventuality is least desirable, some sort of modern state-like solution seems possible. But the distrust, even the hatred between groups must be recognized to be understood. It must be central to any framework-building effort.

Admission of the significance of real events by the architects of this war would be a good start.

I’m agnostic, and feel no shame admitting to that. And I’m mostly liberal when it comes to political issues. No embarrassment there, either.

But when I read things like this post, from Newsweek and The Washington Post’s “On Faith” series, I almost want to puke.

While I appreciate the logical thread underlying the author’s argument, he’s too caught up in semantics for me to be able to stand on his side here. “Thank god” (doesn’t matter to me whether the “G” is uppercase or down) is a colloquialism, plain and simple. Thousands of atheists and agnostics (who maybe don’t take themselves or their views too seriously) use it, at no detriment to their beliefs.

Offering “Thank goodness” as an alternative, on the other hand, doesn’t win you any points in the PC camp. It’s a phrase lifted straight from Leave It to Beaver, and it’s just lame. Still, I wouldn’t fault anyone for using it anymore than I would if someone said “Thank god.”

And I happen to share the author’s idea of gratitude, but come on. It reeks of sentimental nonsense that belongs in greeting cards, not in an polemic on reality.

As an aside, I nearly died when the page loaded and there was a mug of the author, Daniel C. Dennett, looking every bit like Santa Claus. I did a double take a wondered if this were some kind of newsroom humor. I doubt it. The guy just looks like Santa.

Maureen Dowd’s column in tomorrow’s New York Times, which drew a few audible chuckles from me, touches on something I’ve been thinking about recently.

As much as I never favored going to war in Iraq, and as much as I detest the fact that it happened, I do not see the U.S. military’s abandonment of that country as an option. At least not anytime soon.
And my reasoning goes a little further than “you broke it, you fix it.” Maybe.

The fact is, we’re there now. Period. Leaving amounts to a great moral failure, and is about the only thing I can see that might further damage U.S. national security.

We didn’t create the horrific situation Iraq now finds itself in, but we aided in its birth. And while it’s true that Saddam’s rule prevented sectarian bloodshed such as we’re seeing today, Saddam was a tyrant and something needed to be done.

The whole scenario is an enormous balancing act, like a see-saw covered with razor blades and dynamite. Not too much fun to watch or to try to control.

A story to warm everyone’s heart.

The California Supreme Court has ruled that anyone posting third party content online is immune from defamation claims. Good work.

Let me say LOUDLY, once and for all:

1) I do not care that Nancy Pelosi is the first female Speaker of the House. I do care that there was a transfer of power in Congress, and that the general gist of the ideas behind that transfer may put an end to the dangerous ideas and actions of the Bush Administration.

2) I do not care that Hillary Clinton could become the first female major party candidate for president in 2008. Regardless of the triviality behind that notion, Hillary Clinton pretty much sucks.

3) I do not care that Barack Obama could become the first African-American major party candidate for president in 2008. Regardless of the triviality behind that notion, Obama would be a great president, black, white, brown, yellow, purple, male, female.

Sorry if I sound bitter. I’m just a little tired of being patronized with questions like, “Isn’t it about time we had a (black, female) (president, speaker of the House)?” Such an idiotic question doesn’t even merit a response. And speaking of merits, what happened to judging public officials based on their ideas and actions, not something inherent and ultimately of little or no consequence, like race and/or gender?

I’m annoyed.

My god, this wireless battery charger would be so cool.

It’s not even January yet, and Democrats in the House are already behaving like bad politicians.

Neither of these jerks deserves the majority leader position. Never mind her endorsement of Rep. John Murtha, D-Penn., any-day-now-Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., should step in now and disqualify them both. Or something like that.

As much as I really want to not like cars, this new fuel cell vehicle from Honda offers promise.

Been compiling a spreadsheet based on results of last week’s House of Representatives election (which I chose to cull from the New York Times). None of the data-parsing is groundbreaking in any way, but I would’ve hated doing all that work for nothing.

So here’s what I found:

• Nationwide, voters chose Democrats over Republicans 37,079,756 to 33,989,399, or a difference of a little more than three million and roughly 52 percent to 48. Keep in mind that just two years ago, U.S. voters re-elected George W. Bush, the Republican candidate, by a 3,012,499-vote margin. That’s a six million vote turnaround in two years.
• Overall, 28 out of 50 states saw more votes for Democrats than Republicans.
• Also compared with states’ presidential vote in 2004, the states that went Democrat then added 10 more to their ranks this time. The GOP states from 2004 added only one state to theirs (Delaware, oddly enough). If this election had been for president (which of course isn’t fair or valid as there were no national candidates), the Electoral College outcome would’ve been 328 Democratic to 110 Republican. Obviously this skews the national political picture, but in a way only the Electoral College knows how to.

That’s all. I may publish my data, if anyone’s interested. I’m sure there are errors throughout. To future critics out there, I say this: I challenge you to manually enter information from over 400 election results!!!

Loyal Here and There readers may remember a day, way back when, that saw a brazen show of support for one Senator Russell Feingold, D-Wis (to say nothing of an entire category devoted to the man).

All speculation of Feingold’s presidential ambitions were put to rest Sunday, as the senator announced he wouldn’t run. And somehow, I’m not upset. Relieved, you might even say.

With the Senate now being lead by the Democratic Party, I see certain individuals, like Feingold, better suited for congressional leadership. Others agree.

And plus, let’s be honest: He never would’ve mustered the national appeal necessary to even gain the party’s nomination.

In other news, Rudy Giuliani has cranked the levers of a presidential bid. His candidacy is an idea worth looking into. Yes, I’m serious.