Why Obama Is The Choice

I apologize for my recent absence. I was busy moving to Canada.

A recent exchange between John McCain and Barack Obama is the best evidence yet for why the latter is not just the greatest candidate for the presidency, but maybe the greatest candidate in history.

Consider that Obama said he would withdraw troops from Iraq, but also that he would act “if Al Qaeda is forming a base in Iraq.” We must assume that “acting” would involve fighting Al Qaeda with troops. McCain predictably retorted that we’re currently fighting to keep Al Qaeda from forming a base in Iraq.

Obama then responded brilliantly: “There was no such thing as Al Qaeda in Iraq until George Bush and John McCain decided to invade Iraq.” This man is so confident that he’s able to admit he’s wrong and that McCain is right, by admitting in the first half of his statement that we’re already fighting Al Qaeda in Iraq. Then he skillfully follows up by adding a fact that’s irrelevant for our current situation in Iraq: that things would be different had we not invaded. (After all, when you need to make a decision about your five-year-old child, it doesn’t help to lament having had the child in the first place.)

He’s smooth enough and brave enough to not feel as though he needs to have a coherent stance on Iraq. He’s sticking to his guns: U.S. out of Iraq, no matter what the consequences, no matter what the costs, no matter what’s best for their country and ours.

O-ba-ma! O-ba-ma!

The L-Word: Not Just Hot Lesbian Sex OR The L-Word: It Ain't "Liberal"!

I always thought the show was a gleaming bastion of liberal thought. But lately I’ve realized that the writers are subliminally trying to pass on fascist and immoral messages to their audience. In short, I think the L-Word is a pro-war vehicle in disguise. It’s written by fascists who want to make homosexuals and pacifists look like cretins.

In recent episodes, a new lesbian has been introduced to the cast. She’s a soldier who has fought in Iraq. All the lesbians in the show rightly point out that the “liberation” was immoral. The lesbian Iraq veteran counters desperately with the screamingly lame proclamation that “There are some really good people in the armed forces!” Then there was hot lesbian sex.

At first, I tried to give the writers the benefit of the doubt and assume they’re just a little dim. But you tell me: Would writers brilliant enough to center a show on hot lesbian sex be dim enough to portray a soldier as having nothing to say about the war than that one line?

No. They would suck it up and have the soldier make all the ridiculous arguments that people who support the war make: that it’s “just” to overthrow a “murderous tyrant”; that “human rights” and “freedoms” of women, religion, and the press are worth fighting for; that homosexuals shouldn’t be “murdered”. The writers would suck it up and create characters capable of refuting these arguments by proving we’re no better than the people who deliberately target civilians with suicide bombs, beheadings, and power tools.

In another episode, a lesbian refers to the war in Iraq as “morally bankrupt”, and another character (the one having hot lesbian sex with the soldier) agrees without hesitating. Then there was hot lesbian sex.

Again, it’s tempting to simply assume the writers are dim. After all, they’re writing a show about (and to a large extent for) homosexuals, yet the writers portray the very things homosexuals want — respect, the safety to live their lives without fear, equal rights under the law — as immoral to fight for in Iraq.

The only explanation is that the L-Word writers are fascists disguised as morally impotent liberals. They’re secretly part of the corporate system and they’re trying to pawn their pro-Bush views on us in ways that we’re not supposed to notice.

That’s why the soldier couldn’t come up with anything better as a rebuttal. She’s meant to seem impossibly stupid. That’s why the lesbians are portrayed as too shallow to think of the conflict as anything other than “morally bankrupt”. They’re meant to seem like hopeless knee-jerk ideologues. They’re meant to seem too selfish to believe that the rights they want — nay, expect — are rights that gays in foreign countries deserve as well.

If the writers were genuine anti-war thinkers, they would be more responsible. Instead of creating laughably stupid characters, they would have created characters intelligent enough to warrant inspirational counter-arguments. These morally responsible characters would then educate us all on why it’s wrong to fight for freedom against torture, why it’s wrong to fight against rape and murder, and most importantly why it’s wrong to fight for gay rights.

Until the writers are replaced, all you have is a morally embarrassing show centered on hot lesbian sex. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, if y’know what I’m sayin’…!

Don't Let Him Get Away With It!

Freddy Thompson maintains that there were WMDs in Iraq!

Let’s be honest here. It all depends on which way you want to hate America. If we’re talking about WMDs in Iraq as a justification for an immoral "liberation", WMDs didn’t exist. If we’re talking about how America is immoral, they did exist and we sold them to Iraq.

As most of the commenters on the article understand, it’s not the facts (nor the spelling, punctuation, and grammar) that matter so much as having it both ways. In this case, Thompson’s implying that the WMDs Hussein used to kill 100,000 Kurds and 50,000 Iranians were real. We can’t let him get away with that immoral view, just as we can’t let people think that the 500-or-so canisters of WMD materials we’ve recovered since the invasion suggest that Hussein ever had WMDs.

Loyal readers, as long as Thompson and others maintain that there were WMDs, we need to argue that the “slaughters” of the Kurds and Iranians were faked. They were staged by the same people who faked the moon landing and who organized the inside-job conspiracy of 10,000-strong to rig the World Trade Center with countless explosives.

If you doubt the effectiveness of the Jewish cabal that controls the world, consider this: They’re deviously savvy enough to know that the best way to get us to invade Iraq was to use not one Iraqi as a “hijacker.”

If you still doubt the effectiveness of this Jewish cabal, consider this: Not one person involved in any of these conspiracies — from the moon landing, to the “massacres” in Iraq, to the “attack” on the World Trade Center — has ever come forward. Be afraid.

Eh?-Okay: The Magic of the Forty-Ninth Parallel

I know these absences are hard on my millions of loyal readers. Rest assured that when I take long periods of time off, I am doing so for the sake of gathering information that will help me write my next brilliant article. This will be one such article.

I’ve just spent a few months in Canada. It is, without a doubt, the greatest place I’ve ever visited.

You wouldn’t think it possible, but I swear to you on the lives of my future children that as you pass over the border you can feel a difference. The air is instantly cleaner, the ground instantly less littered, the people instantly less ignorant. All this is attainable simply by heading north, showing your passport to a half-asleep border guard, answering a laughable question or two, and continuing onward.

Truth be told, I was skeptical. After the last Canadian federal election, I assumed that Canadians had dropped their default liberal ways and had made a turn toward the Right (something that even France — France! — has done), because they elected fascist candidate Stephen Harper. I don’t know anything about Harper’s views or what he’s done since he was elected, but a conservative government isn’t a good one, no matter what it does, even if it does liberal things, which it never would do, because conservative governments are bad.

But Harper’s best efforts at turning Canada into a fascist wasteland have proven limp. The country is as liberal as ever. For instance, you can still get a legal abortion in Canada as late as the day you’re due to deliver. I’ll bet everyone has a good laugh when a woman, faced for the first time with the excruciating pains of labor, cracks and yells, “I changed my mind! Abort it!”

Not only is Canada as liberal as ever, it’s as anti-American as ever. Take the Canadian healthcare system, for example. Everyone has a certain amount of free coverage. The entire country suckles at the same teat, removing the chance that lucky or ambitious people get any kind of advantage. It is the only country in the West that doesn’t allow its citizens to pay for their own healthcare. This is the way it should be, of course.

The World Health Organization (WHO) recognizes the brilliance of Canadian healthcare. In 2000, the WHO released a comprehensive rating of 191 countries’ healthcare systems. Canada ranked a spectacular 30th, a full seven spots ahead of America’s disgraceful showing at 37th. Canada managed to outperform America despite the fact that a) America has the unfair advantage of spending more money per capita on its patients than any country in the world, and despite the fact that b) the WHO ranked America first in the world in terms of what should be considered unimportant factors such as responsiveness to patients' needs for choice of provider, dignity, autonomy, timely care, and confidentiality. Not a bad victory for a country of people who regularly travel to the States for better medical options!

A crazed few in Canada believe that government agencies sometimes result in inefficient bureaucracies, and that, to “remove some of the strain” on the one “overworked” healthcare teat, it might be a good idea to allow a privatized option to those who have the means. Thankfully, most believe that not only is this not an option (because it’s fascist), but that even if it were shown to improve healthcare for everyone involved (fewer people at the common teat would mean better and more efficient care, so the silly theory goes), Canadians would largely refuse to privatize for the most glorious of reasons: That would be kind of like what they have in America.

That would be kind of like what they have in America! Canada is a country whose identity isn’t derived from a common history or from pride in its role in the world. This is a country that decides what to do based on what America isn’t doing, whether it’s “beneficial” or not. You rarely see a protest in Canada that isn’t about something America’s doing.

Similar to the healthcare issue is the gun registry bill that was put into effect by the previous Liberal government. When introduced, the bill was supposed to cost around $119 million. Unfortunately, it has cost upwards of a billion dollars. And sadly, all the evidence that the registry has reduced Canadian gun violence has been suppressed. In fact, the fascists have even gotten to the head of the commissioner of the Ontario Provincial Police, who has come out in opposition to the registry, arguing that the money could be much better spent elsewhere, like on “anti-terrorism” measures. (Yes, fascists try to scare Canadians with invented enemies, just like they do in America.)

A lesser country might have scrapped a seemingly useless billion-dollar “disaster”, but not Canada. Even though Stephen Harper has tried to “fix” the problem by repealing mandatory gun registration, his bill has yet to pass in Parliament. And if it ever becomes a major issue again, I trust that Canadians will fight to keep tax money where it is: well spent on anti-American principles for their own sake. This way, responsible Canadians who are law-abiding and unlikely to commit gun crimes are forced to register their guns. They serve as an effective example and deterrent for the criminals who have unregistered guns and intend to commit harm.

Another beautiful thing about Canada is that you’re far more likely than in America to find fans of revolutionary leaders, such as Fidel Castro or Hugo Chavez. Indeed, it’s quite common in downtown Toronto to see brave and thoughtful college-age kids wearing Che Guevara t-shirts. These kids aren’t bullied by the crackpot notions that Guevara stood for murder, thuggery, and oppression. They know he stood for the uncompromising ideals that have given us the Republic of Cuba. Viva la libertad!

When it comes to the “War On Terror”, Canada impresses yet again. Canadian soldiers are fighting “terrorism” in Afghanistan, and yet an impressively small number of cars display a “Support Our Troops” ribbon. If it weren’t for these misfits, you wouldn’t know that Canada’s at war. The war itself is an issue of contention, because many Canadians rightly hold America and Bush responsible for the fact that Canadian men and women are dying in the defense of “democracy” and “reason”.

But undoubtedly the greatest thing about this glorious nation — indeed, what fuels all its other greatness — is the fact that “true patriot love”, while prominent in the national anthem’s lyrics, no longer exists. An unrelenting multiculturalism is the law of the land here. Canada doesn’t waste its time with notions of a melting pot that engenders a feeling of “community” and “solidarity” and “sharing something greater”. Immigrants, foreign-born Canadians, and second-generation Canadians generally identify first with their nation of birth or their parents’ nation. If you ever doubt the greatness of Canada, consider that immigrants who flee a country for a better life in Canada prefer to wave the flag of the country they fled!

Yes, Canadian-born citizens sew the Canadian flag onto their backpacks in order to avoid being tortured with power tools when they’re traveling abroad. If forced to make the choice, who wouldn’t take patriotism over torture? But otherwise, Canadian patriotism ends there. Some are too polite or caring to be proud of Canada, lest a foreigner take that as an insult to his or her country. Others just don’t really care either way.

And still others — the most sophisticated and enlightened — prefer to see themselves as “citizens of the world”. As such, Canadians understand among other things that average Americans are archaic and immoral when they vote for the leaders they like, or who have the same values as they do, or who they think will do the best job of improving their lives and the lives of their friends and family.

This kind of selfish voting is acceptable for Canadians, Germans, Australians, the French, the British, the Spanish, the Portuguese, the Japanese, and everyone else in the free world. But Americans who want to be serious and responsible should ignore their own lives and vote for the leaders they believe will be best for Canadians, Germans, Australians, the French, the British, the Spanish, the Portuguese, the Japanese, and everyone else in the free world, as well as those in the not-so-free world. It’s only fair: another price of being “great”.

Oh Canada, we liberals stand on guard for thee! And if there’s another Republican voted into the White House, we American liberals will look up your immigration website yet again and briefly consider moving to Canada.

Looking at 2008: Barack and a Hard Place

My last piece wasn’t meant to argue that we shouldn’t vote for Obama. I’m a raging liberal. I like blacks better than whites. I like Hispanics and Asians better than whites. I even kind of don’t hate Jews. So of course I’m pulling for Obama — he’s blacker than the white males. Half-black, while not as good as black, is still better than white.

But this brings up an interesting dilemma. Experience and ability don’t matter here. So barring those factors, which candidate should true and honest liberals support in 2008, the half-black man or the white woman? Obviously, a black woman would be perfect, unless it were Condoleezza Rice (she’s a Republican and therefore must have fake pigmentation). But we don’t have that luxury.

The best way to solve this problem is to figure out which group — women or blacks — has been shafted more throughout history. Whichever candidate is part of that group gets the support of the honest liberal.

I don’t want to get into detail about the advanced math that I used to figure this out, but it has become clear to me, after much struggle and analysis, that women have been shafted far more than blacks.

Yes, blacks were royally screwed during the slavery era. But women have been subjugated since the dawn of time. We’re only now evening the playing field. Trailblazing policies like lower physical standards for female police officers and firefighters not only right the wrongs of the pigheaded male mind, but they weaken our fascist law enforcers so that fewer criminal suspects are caught and beaten for no reason.

So it seems Hillary wins, right? Not so fast! There is one factor that prevents anyone of conscience from supporting Hillary: her vote for the Iraq war. Before we support her, Hillary has to renounce her initial, vociferous support and vote for the “liberation” of Iraq. Until then, it’s Obama all the way.

It will be tough for Hillary to renounce her war vote, because many will ask her how she can honestly go back on a vote in favor of the possibility for human rights in Iraq. The best way for her to do this is to play dumb, just like John Edwards. She needs to convince us that she was duped into thinking that it was noble to vote in favor of fighting in Iraq for women’s rights, gay rights, freedoms of the press and speech, and a government elected by the people. He was fooled, she was fooled, we were all fooled. The stupider she shows herself to be, the better a liberal presidential candidate she is.

Black?: Barack's Lack

I hate to ruin this love-in we’re all enjoying, but Barack Obama isn’t black.

First, Obama, unlike ideal black leaders like Louis Farakhan and Al Sharpton, doesn’t loathe and distrust white people. Where’s the anger? Where’s the indignation? Luckily, he’s a Democrat. If he were a Republican, Obama would be less black than even Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell.

Second, he’s only half-black. His mother was white. And as the Spike Lee faction will remind you every chance they get, half is definitely not full. Need an example? Take former Guns n’ Roses guitarist Slash. He’s half-black. And instead of being into rap or soul or funk or R&B, he’s into hard rock and plays a guitar. And when Slash was still in Guns n’ Roses, singer Axl Rose wrote the epithet “nigger” into a song and Slash didn’t quit the band. (Note: This doesn’t mean that the white side is more powerful. It simply means that, like the Dark Side of the Force, the white side is evil, more seductive, and can keep one from making the right decision.)

Some might argue that Jimmy Hendricks and Lenny Kravitz suggest that even “full” blacks can indeed be into rock without it diminishing their blackness. I’d argue that they’re the exceptions that prove the rule, but I don’t have to. They aren’t exceptions: Hendricks had a British accent, so he can’t really be black, and Kravitz is a Jewish name. You can’t be black if you have a Jewish last name. Just ask Farakhan.

Third, and most importantly, the black heritage Obama does have is faux. Even though he has lived his whole life with dark skin, and even though that would put him in the same psychological mindset as anyone else with darker-than-white skin, Barack Obama can’t possibly understand what it means to be black. He’s not black in the ways that count.

For your blackness to be black, you have to be a descendant of a West-African slave. If you’re a descendant of an African who wasn’t a slave, you’re simply an American of African descent. If you’re an African who moved to the States, you’re an African who moved to the States. If you’re from the Caribbean, I have no idea what you are.

But unless a distant relative of yours was whipped by a cracker-ass cracker, you’re not black, regardless of the size of your penis. As Debra Dickerson suggests in her piece that courageously points out Obama’s fake blackness, Obama is only “ ‘black’ as a matter of skin color and DNA”. Case closed.

The ideal, of course, is for everyone to live as One, with as few arbitrary divisions as possible, with humanity holding hands and sharing everything. But it remains important for minorities to create sub-divisions among themselves so that, for example, true blacks can ostracize fake blacks. This way, true blacks get a feel for what it was like for whites when they ostracized blacks. The more racial distinctions we make among ourselves, the closer we are to dropping racial distinctions and living as One.

Slowly, the world is starting to realize that your pigmentation doesn’t determine your worth as a human being. Now we must convince the world that your pigmentation doesn’t determine the color of your skin, either.

The Democrats’ Lot: Iraq and a Hard Place

Even though the Democrat party pretends to be mildly leftist, it isn’t. It isn’t as far to the right as the Republican party, but it’s still too right-wing for a reasonable person. Still, they can sometimes help. This is the case with the war in Iraq.

Democrats know that in order to position themselves as an alternative to the Bushes and McCains and Grahams who want to “win” against the jihadists and secure an oppressive regime of democracy, they need to be the party of exit strategies. So it is their political lot right now to have to call for a withdrawal of troops.

The spin of it is that it’s up to Iraqis to step up and take full control, because the Iraqi government will be better able to defend itself from the chaos without 150,000 American troops getting in the way. But behind this façade is the truth: They want to leave Iraq to its rightful heirs — those who understand what would be lost if Iraq were to permanently fall victim to a modern representative government.

It’s about time. As I’ve written before, the best way to get back at the Bush Administration is to force him to bring the troops home. As we watch the horrors unfold, we can all turn to Bush and blame him. It will make everyone hate him more than they already do, and that’s the goal, no matter who has to die.

We need to support the Dems as much as we can. We need to help them win the presidency in ‘08. Then and only then can we be 100% sure that the alliance of America and traitor Iraqis will lose the war.

How Low Can He Go?: 21,500 More Reasons To Hate Bush

As I’ve written before, the only stance more immoral than Bush’s “stay the course” strategy of not letting Iraq’s fledgling democracy crumble was McCain’s desire for more troops in Iraq. McCain is the very definition of a fascist, which is why he fought in Vietnam, why he never said a word to sell out America while under torture, and why he’s such a media darling in the U.S.: The media is as anti-Left as Hollywood.

So under pressure to make some kind of change in Iraq, Bush decides to send in more troops. He has ignored the people, most Democrats, and even some Republicans. He has descended one huge rung on the ladder of morality. More troops in Iraq means more dead freedom fighters and a greater likelihood that Iraqis will remain enslaved by the ideals of Western democracy. If these extra troops manage to secure Baghdad and Anbar, it might seem as though America is winning this war. Worse, it might actually be that America is winning this war.

Let’s just hope that 20,000 troops isn’t enough to snuff out the freedom fighters who are sacrificing themselves every day to ensure they do not become repressed by human rights and democracy.

Looking at 2008: Slim Pickin’s

Sorry I haven’t been writing much. I’ve been busy organizing war protests at military funerals so that, at the most sensitive and desperate time in their lives, the families of the fallen know just how much we hate the choice their lost loved-ones made. Rubbing it in is an important part of the anti-war movement.

So it’s time to gear up for the 2008 presidential election. I think we all know Hillary’s going to take the Democrat nomination pretty easily. Obama has a chance, but he’s an Uncle Tom and a little green. And they’re both way too conservative, but these are the best chances we’ve got at taking back the White House from the Nazis.

As it stands right now, Hillary will likely be taking on John McCain or Rudi Giuliani. This brings up an interesting choice for the Republicans, and a brutal choice for the rest of us: If Hillary can’t win a general election, who would be better between McCain and Giuliani?

On the one hand, you’ve got McCain, who’s a fascist for going to war and because of his extreme right-wing voting record. He seems like a good choice for the Nazis, but for some reason conservatives don’t trust him. This could be because he tries to bypass partisan bickering to work with traitor Democrats to get things done. It could also be that he has repeatedly butted heads with Bush, most recently over the immoral “liberation” of Iraq. McCain wants more troops — more troops! — over there to, I suppose, lower the violence and kill more terrorists. If there’s a more immoral stance than Bush’s “stay the course”, it’s putting more troops in Iraq — this might actually help our troops succeed, which would be a total disaster. So as far as I’m concerned, McCain would be an evil president.

On the other hand, there’s Giuliani, who will always have a lot of support because of his “leadership” during 9/11. What a joke. Bush most likely planned 9/11. I’m sure he warned Giuliani about what was going to happen. So, being prepared, of course both leaders acted with courage and poise. (Michael Moore’s a fool for thinking that Bush’s 7-minute inaction after finding out about the attacks was real — it’s so obviously fake. And horrible acting, I might add.) The charade worked well, because their “leadership” impressed the world who now looked at America and was duped into thinking, “Wow, they have great leaders over there!” There was so much good will that America was unobstructed — helped, even — in immorally deposing the Taliban and “liberating” Afghanistan.

Then there’s Giuliani’s governing record. And that, my friends, is as fascist as it gets. Any mayor who was able to turn New York around from the dump that it was to the city it is now must have been an immoral tyrant. A good, fair mayor would have never succeeded like that. Needless to say, I think Giuliani would be an evil president too.

If I had to choose between the two, I guess I’d go with McCain because of his age. He’s old enough that he could pass away while still president. This would be a “tragic” event, which we need more of in America.

Barely a Victory

I held off writing about the midterm elections until we knew everything for sure. Now that we know the Dems have control of the House and Senate, let’s admit one thing to ourselves before we get too excited: This was a very small victory.

First, the Dems’ majority in the Senate is tiny. This means that they could need Republicans to vote with them on bills. This isn’t good. Any bill a Republican would vote for isn’t a good bill. After all, let’s not forget that it was the Republicans who abolished slavery, and it’s widely known that blacks had it worse after slavery than they did while it existed. This is an early example of Republicans, just as they have in Iraq, immorally thinking ahead instead of bowing to the immediate hardships of the present.

Second, an unfortunately large number of the newly elected Democrats are relatively moderate or even conservative. From Bush’s perspective, if Democrats were going to take Congress, these were some of the best candidates. And let’s not forgot that we still have to deal with Mr. Triple Threat (traitor, fascist, and thief of what should have been a Democrat seat), Joe Lieberman. Basically, Congress went from being Republican to Republican Light.

Third, and most dishearteningly, last night on The Daily Show With Jon Stewart, Howard Dean said that the Dems will not impeach Bush. This means that Nancy Pelosi sold us out. I really had faith that she would initiate impeachment proceedings. Now we see her at the White House making nice with Bush and saying they’re going to work together. That’s disgusting and it makes her just as bad as he is.

I just don’t understand. It’s obvious that for the good of the country the Dems should investigate and vilify our path to war, and make public all our immoral national security strategies so that the world (including jihadists, because we need to treat everyone equally) knows exactly how we're protecting ourselves. As I’ve written before, the very best way to undermine this war would be to impeach Bush and then Cheney once he took over. Nancy Pelosi, being the Speaker of the House, would then become our president. But today Nancy has proven that she’s a coward. She doesn’t deserve to lead us. She's become a tool of the right wing.

One last thought. While discontent about the war was an issue, Dems otherwise won this battle largely for superficial reasons. Would it surprise anyone if, in two years’ time, Americans were resentful that Republicans lost as much national power as they did because Mark Foley made a pass at a male page and George Allen called someone “macaca”? This could be a shot in the arm for Republicans who, in 2008, could easily exploit the fact that the Dems still don’t really have an organized platform about … anything.

For now, yes, we can celebrate a small victory. But don’t hold your breath for a much-needed redistribution of wealth, let alone a nation-wide hippie commune.

Double Standards: The Price of Being “Great”

In theory, Saddam Hussein should be punished for the murder of 148 Shiite Muslims in the city of Dujail. But not in practice, because the practice is immoral.

First, Saddam should go free on technicalities. Consider what would happen to a criminal in America if he were caught and brought to trial by illegal means. Even if the criminal had raped every little girl in the country, the case would be thrown out of court. And even if it weren’t, all the evidence would be inadmissible. Given that the war to depose Saddam was strictly immoral and illegal, he should not have to face a trial, let alone be punished. Making him take responsibility for his oppression and mass murders is unfair from a legal standpoint.

Second, Saddam should go free on moral grounds. We seem to be forgetting something that should be glaringly obvious. Even a child should be able to recognize that the massacre was justified. After all, the Dujail villagers tried to assassinate Saddam to end his tyranny. Hello? Saddam was a dictator! We have to put ourselves in his shoes! What do we expect him to do when faced with a group who wants to end his reign? He had no choice but to massacre everyone he suspected to be associated with the plot, including a few others for effect. If he’d simply killed only those few who were actually involved, he would have looked weak in front of other dictators who might doubt his psychopathy.

Some conservatives might want to argue that, because Saddam tried to assassinate the Elder Bush, by my logic he deserved to be reprimanded like the Dujail villagers. I’d like to remind them that the situations are completely different. Younger Bush, like his father did, pretends he’s not a dictator. And if you’re “not a dictator”, you can’t use force.

If Bush were open about being a dictator, maybe he would have been justified in retaliating against Saddam by invading Iraq and building an elected representative government. But you can’t have it both ways. As long as you pretend to be the “elected” head of a free society, diplomacy is the only acceptable course of action. This is just another reason why the invasion of Iraq and Saddam’s trial were immoral — they were carried out by a democracy and not a despotic regime. The only thing that should ever be killed by a responsible, moral society is an unwanted unborn child.

These kinds of double standards are essential. They effectively ensure that America is judged by a separate set of rules from most of the world. They guarantee that when a jihadist saws off an innocent civilian’s head on the internet, we apathetically wonder how someone could do that, but when an American soldier flushes a Koran down the toilet, there is violent worldwide outrage.

America made its bed. Now it’s gotta lie in it (yes, pun intended). That’s the price of being “great”.

War is Bad (But Tony Blair Has Confused the Issue)

Conventional political wisdom considers the war on terror to be an issue mostly characterized by the Left vs. the Right. The Right is fascist, so they want to capture or kill terrorists, while we on the Left know that if we’re nice to jihadists they’ll drop their jihad faster than they can say “allahu akbar”.

And yet Tony Blair, supposedly a good-hearted Lefty, is the number-two gangster — Vader to Bush’s Emperor, Starscream to Bush’s Megatron, Destro to Bush’s Cobra Commander — in this atrocity of a war. Obviously, those to the left of Blair support the freedom fighters and know the war is immoral. This goes without saying. What’s confusing is that Blair’s war critics also include the opposition Conservative Party.

Granted, politics in Britain is different from here. But not that different. And yet in Britain we have an immoral global war on terror being waged by a sitting pro-war Leftist government (in name only, mind you) that’s being resisted and criticized by a right-wing anti-war opposition. It seems that, at least from an American perspective, Britain is bizarro world.

What does this mean? Does it mean that the war’s not about Left vs. Right? Is the war more about simple right vs. wrong? Alone, each of these analyses is overly simplistic. I hate simplistic explanations for things. There is truth in both. Yes, of course the debate over the war is very clearly right vs. wrong. But it’s also Left vs. Right, because the Left is always right. Only in Blair’s messed-up Britain, and only on this issue, is it the other way around.

By supporting Bush’s war, Tony Blair has confused the issue into something more complicated than simply “war is bad”. This is unforgivable. We need “war is bad”. The beauty of “war is bad” is that it absolves you from thinking too hard. It shelters you from getting confused enough to think that it’s wrong to abandon those who want democracy.

If it weren’t for Tony Blair, his party would be against the war, and the conservatives would be for it. For conclusive evidence of this, we need only look at the way Britain’s conservatives oppose the war. They don’t argue that the war’s immoral, as they should — as we all should. They simply point out that the reasons for invading Iraq weren’t truthful enough. (Duh! Even a moron knows that the WMD materials we have recovered in Iraq don’t prove that Iraq ever had any WMDs.)

In other words, British conservatives’ opposition to the war is purely half-hearted. They know they need to distance themselves from Blair if they’re going to have any chance of being elected, so they opportunistically oppose the war. You’re a fool if you were duped into thinking British conservatives are any less immoral than conservatives here and everywhere else.

At this point, it seems Blair’s with Bush until the bitter end. All we can hope for is that he goes one step further in being like Vader, Starscream, and Destro: Hopefully, for whatever reason — selfishness, jealousy, or to save his son from destruction by the blue lightning Bush is firing from his fingertips — Blair eventually decides to sell out the number-one gangster, just like he sold out the British Left by confusing the war issue.

The Truth About Terrorism, Part II: X-ray-ted

I was watching The Daily Show With Jon Stewart the other night when he and his guest were discussing a very good point: Republicans and the pro-Republican media are making too much of an issue about the threat of terrorism. I’ve touched on this before. After all, as Stewart and his guest pointed out, the chances of the average American being killed in a terrorist attack are very slim.

The reason for this is simple to even the dimmest observer: We only have conclusive evidence that terrorism can kill Americans and that terrorists want to kill Americans. But that’s not what’s important. What’s important here is that the evidence we do have is only one very serious terrorist attack on American soil. Just fewer than 3,000 of us were killed. So there’s only a modest statistical likelihood that the average American will be killed in a terrorist attack, as compared with, say, the likelihood of dying from a stroke.

As humans, we naturally try to be proactive about threats to our safety. We have doctors to help us lower the risks of a stroke and other medical dangers. We have parents to teach us not to bring the radio into the bath with us. And we have common sense to teach us not to drive into oncoming traffic.

However, the unique thing about the threat of terrorism is that we don’t have such control over it. Unless we dismantle the entire Western world, there will always be terrorists who want to kill us. For this reason, we not only shouldn’t make a big deal out of the threat of terrorism, but we should just drop the issue altogether. All we’re doing is stressing everyone out about a threat we can’t alleviate. And even if there were something we could do to protect ourselves, like wiretapping known jihadist militants, we shouldn’t do it, because, again, the evidence we have for this threat is only one major attack on our soil.

To put this in perspective, consider car accidents. Right after America’s very first fatal car collision, there was very little chance for the average American to die in a traffic accident — most didn’t have cars, because cars were relatively new. So there wasn’t much point in worrying about another fatal accident. It would have been a waste of time to refine traffic rules, improve road signs, and encourage people to drive carefully. The same goes for the aftermath of the first fatal plane crash. Most people weren’t regularly flying on planes, so what would have been the point in taking a look at what went wrong and trying to prevent it from happening again?

Likewise with terrorism, until we allow a few more attacks on American civilians, there isn’t enough direct evidence to worry. In fact, there might never be, because there’s little reason to think there will ever be another attack on American soil.

For these reasons, it’s outrageous that the threat of terrorism is such a big issue with the media and with politicians, especially Republicans, who pretend that they want the country to be safe. Why haven’t we been warned about other dangers like, say, smoking or AIDS or drugs or E. coli or drunk driving or killer bees or Ebola or guns or the flesh-eating disease or Walmart or obesity or the bird flu or Y2K or McDonald’s?

If you ask me, the terrorism card is played so that Republicans can avoid addressing the greatest danger to us: man-made greenhouse gasses. Those who point out that there is no conclusive evidence that it is man-made greenhouse gasses that are warming the climate should remember something: The conclusive evidence we have of the threat of terrorism (one major attack) is only slightly more than the conclusive evidence we have of man-made greenhouse gasses being the major cause of global warming (nothing). One and none, or something and nothing, aren’t very different.

But Stewart’s guest had a different and very interesting view on why terrorism might be such a prominent issue. It’s not because jihadists want to destroy the Western world. And it’s not because, as Stewart regularly points out, we’ve made them even angrier than they already were, by “liberating” Iraq and Afghanistan. According to Stewart’s guest, terrorism is a leading issue because of the puppetry of the X-ray industry.

With all of our unnecessary security these days, particularly in airports, X-ray machines are in higher demand than in previous years. The X-ray industry decided that it enjoyed the extra profits and set out to bully Republicans and every outlet of all major media across the country into constantly reminding us that there are determined people who would kill us if they had the chance. As Tim Robbins in Team America: World Police would say, the X-ray Mafia scaring us is just another case of the corporations being “corporationy”.

I don’t know how the X-ray Mafia was able to rise to such power, and I don’t think I want to know. But if anyone offers you an alternative argument about why terrorism is such an important issue, I trust that you won’t need an X-ray machine to see through it.

John Kerry, Reporting for Fatuity

Let me just point out that I don’t like John Kerry, because his politics are way too right-wing for me, and because he volunteered to be a fascist in Vietnam. That said, contrary to everyone else, what bothers me about this fiasco isn’t what Kerry actually said. Everyone makes mistakes like that. President Bush has made about 4,566,765,346,899,996,898 since taking office. (Have we forgotten the “fool me once” delight?)

What is embarrassing about this incident is what Kerry meant to say — that if you don’t study hard and do well in school, you’ll get the country stuck in Iraq like Bush has. Apparently Kerry's advisors don’t realize that all it takes is about a minute on a search engine to find out that at Yale, the university that Kerry and Bush attended, our president (the first with an MBA, no less) had a higher grade point average than Kerry. In the interest of keeping alive the notion that he’s smarter than Bush, maybe it was for the best that Kerry made the gaffe and kept everyone's attention away from his academic ineptness…

So John Kerry embarrasses us liberals yet again. Can’t Howard Dean put a leash on him already?

Propaganda of Our Fathers

I haven’t seen Flags of Our Fathers, and I can guarantee you I never will. It’s a piece of propagandistic trash. Does Clint Eastwood have no shame? Another movie about WWII? Fine, tens of thousands of Americans, Canadians, Brits, and others gave their lives to put a stop to a worldwide threat to the overrated institutions of democracy and all that other stuff. We get it.

No, I won’t ever see the movie. But I have seen the commercial a few times, and I’m outraged. So should you be. We’re supposed to believe that one simple picture — the marines raising the flag at Iwo Jima — inspired a nation to get behind our troops in WWII? One picture suggested to America that we were winning, thereby galvanizing our morale, which helped our men and women defeat a worldwide danger to human rights? One picture? Is that all it takes?

First of all, it’s a cheap victory if we needed the aid of a picture of our marines hoisting a flag. This is like Barry Bonds using steroids — he doesn’t deserve his records, we didn’t deserve to end Nazism and Japanese imperialism.

Second of all, what is Eastwood really trying to say here? Is the implication that the mainstream media should occasionally acknowledge our positive steps in Iraq? That if they did so, our troops might be in a better position to win, because they wouldn’t have to constantly hear that the vast majority of us no longer seems to believe in what they’re doing?

No way. The media shouldn’t be bullied into this. The media is there to make sure we never consider the bigger picture, that we never consider anything more complicated than the fact that when there’s a war going on, bad things happen.

I’m no fan of the media, because they’re all pro-Bush lapdogs, but I must admit, just as I was with Katrina, I’m impressed with and thankful for their wonderfully mal-focused coverage of the war. You can always count on the media to follow (and irresponsibly exaggerate) nothing but the blood and guts, no matter how one-dimensional a strategy it is.

It is self-evident that America shouldn’t be in Iraq and Afghanistan, and it’s imperative that all Americans are convinced of this. So it’s good that most don’t know that significant areas of Iraq have been completely handed off to Iraqi security forces. It’s good that most don’t know that there’s only a handful of very chaotic regions that are anywhere close to resembling a civil war. It’s good that most don’t know that, contrary to the immoral three-month Battle of Normandy in which Allied forces lost approximately 17% of their soldiers “liberating” Europe, the immoral three-and-a-half-year campaign to “liberate” Iraq has cost America approximately 2% of its entire force.

And it’s good that, because the media focuses on little other than the worst of Iraq, people still think of Iraq as the bad war, Afghanistan as the good war, even though at this point there is hardly any difference between the two campaigns: Both are immoral battles against those who are fighting for freedom from the oppression of an open, elected representative government.

Hell no, it is not the media’s job to tell us anything positive about our wars. Flags of Our Fathers is nothing more than the usual Hollywood Bush-loving war propaganda that we see time and time again. For even hinting that the media might be able to do some good and help us win our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Clint Eastwood should be ashamed of himself.

The Truth About Terrorism

They’re lying to us about terrorism. We’re perfectly safe. Think about it. Don’t you ever wonder why there aren’t terrorist attacks, of varying significance, every day in America?

It’s clearly not difficult to get a gun here. Even in countries that pretend to be gun-free, like Canada, anyone who really wants a gun can get one. So why hasn’t there been a jihadist with an AK-47 blowing people away from the top of a mosque? Or even from the top of a synagogue, for a dastardly irony to help underline his point?

Fine, I know, gunning people down might not be a couth method of killing people. I can respect that — it’s not very creative and you wouldn’t die with everyone. You’d have to decide when the best time would be to stop shooting at civilians and turn the gun on yourself. Your last decision before death would have to be when to stop murdering people. Who wants to go out on that kind of a downer? And who wants the pressure of deciding how many murders is enough?

But there are other things jihadists could do. For instance, how hard would it be to jump onto a bus, murder the driver, and take control of the vehicle? From there it would be pretty easy to swerve into oncoming traffic or barrel into an elementary school. Plenty would die and so would the hijacker. Sounds like a winner, but I suppose a potential problem is that all the violence might seem accidental or maybe even senseless.

So it seems we’re left with the traditional (and somewhat trite) method of suicide bombing. I’m no chemist, but it can’t be that hard to build small bombs. Kids mix dangerous chemicals in high school chemistry classes every day. It’s perfectly conceivable that a jihadist could acquire household chemicals, make a small bomb, and detonate it in a mall or a bank or someplace similar. Such a small bomb, however, might not obliterate enough people. Given that it can be hard to predict where very large groups of people will be from day to day when they’re going about their lives arrogantly minding their own business, a bigger bomb might be the only answer.

This seems a little difficult to pull off until we consider that the New York Times, CNN, and others have very clearly shown us as well as eager-to-learn terrorists that, among many other tips, it isn’t hard to smuggle a bomb into the country. In particular, cargo that comes through our harbors remains largely unchecked. Just ship 'er in!

So why aren’t there bombs going off here every day? Most believe that our security has been beefed up so that we’re better able to prevent such attacks. Hogwash. There’s little question that the Bush Administration doesn’t want us to be safe from terrorism, because the more attacks there are on American soil, the more people will want to retaliate and kill terrorists. And the more people want to retaliate and kill terrorists, the more they’ll want to keep the Bushies in power. It should be no surprise then that the New York Times, CNN, and others are educating potential terrorists on how to best attack America. After all, they’re nothing more than pro-Bush lapdogs.

I’ll tell you why there aren’t terrorist attacks here every day: Terrorism is largely a myth. Plain and simple. There’s nothing more than a miniscule amount of people who would be willing to kill innocents for the jihadist cause (and not one of them was ever in Iraq). And every one of them would be a decent, peace-loving person were it not for America’s selfish and conceited notion that Arabs are ready for and capable of democracy.

I Hate Bush (the President, Not the ... Y'know)

Can I just tell you that I hate President Bush? I really, deeply hate the man. We need to curb his power as soon as possible. Luckily, the mid-term elections are coming up. This is big. If enough good guys get into Congress we might actually be able to bully the Bush Administration into pulling out of Iraq, which is long overdue.

Some say that it’s the wrong move, because it would show us to be soft on the War on Terror and because it would cause Iraq to crumble into chaos. … Exactly!

Let’s be honest with ourselves. We are soft on the War on Terror! Most of us oppose this war because it’s immoral to kill terrorists. We are no better than they are. Terrorism is the only way these people can fight back. Maybe Native Americans, African-Americans, and Mexican-Americans would be sitting pretty these days if they’d considered flying planes into buildings. But they didn’t. They were “too good” for that. Well, jihadists aren’t. And who are we to judge? After all, who’s to say their culture is any worse than ours, which includes similar horrors such as intelligent design and Ashley Simpson? If we murder those who murder, we’re no better than the murderers.

In fact, we might even be worse than our enemies. Why? Because we created them. How many peace-loving people have turned to terrorism because of the Iraq occupation? Sadly, we’ll never know, because coalition troops are trying to kill them all. But think about it: If an alien race invaded America and there were no way for Americans to win the war, other than to wait until the aliens’ media spouted enough doom and gloom to make them lose heart, the best way to defeat the aliens would be to strap a bomb to yourself, go to the mall or the movieplex or the subway, and blow up fifty or sixty people. You might even blow up one or two of the aliens, if you’re lucky.

Look, as much as it might offend, we need to accept that our enemies are freedom fighters. They’re fighting for freedom from democracy. They’re fighting for freedom of oppression, for freedom of tyranny. Our enemies have every right to overthrow the elected representative government and keep the area firmly nestled in the seventh century. We need to respect that right.

Besides, we should want Iraq to descend into chaos. We should want a civil war. What better way to prove to Bush that he was wrong? Too many people die every day in Iraq, and it’s Bush’s fault. If we reverse Bush’s Iraq policy and leave now, even more people will die every day. That will be Bush’s fault too. All potential for Iraqi human rights will vanish — Bush’s fault. Most importantly, much of the potential for dealing with this ideology through diplomacy will disappear with the emergence of a hard-line Islamic theocracy that’s bitter about having had to kill so many people on roadsides and in markets just to restore their ability to kill from the pulpit with impunity. That’s not just Bush’s fault, it’s also a blessing in disguise, because we shouldn’t be acknowledging, much less pursuing diplomacy with, an immoral regime.

If the Dems win control of Congress, maybe we’ll even get the chance to impeach Bush. Then Cheney will become president. And he’s arguably worse than Bush, so we’ll have to then impeach Cheney too. Hopefully this will all take just under two years, so that we will have wasted everyone’s time and money distracting the world from what’s important in order to remove from power an administration that was about to leave anyway. The beautiful absurdity here would be a parting slap in the face to the Bush Administration — look what you made us do, guys! Hope you’re proud!

So vote in November. Vote Democrat. If you’re particularly devoted to the Democrats — the real party of democracy and freedom — vote more than once, in multiple states. Try to convince your Republican friends (which I hope you don’t have) to stay home. Consider strapping a bunch of hotdogs to your body and showing up in heavily Republican areas. Threaten to blow everyone up unless they don’t vote. Hell, even consider using real dynamite to threaten them. In fact, even consider going all the way and blowing everyone up. You never know, there could be 72 virgins waiting for you (even though there’s exactly no reason to believe there are).

The bottom line is that we need to get as many Nazis out of Congress as we can, no matter what it takes or who has to die.