At least there's SOME good news...

So depressed about the Abu Ghraib scandal and the killing of Nicholas Berg that I don't even want to touch the news for a few days. Still some news is more heartening than others. I only wish it didn't take the mass version of shock therapy for people to start waking up to the absolute incompetence of this administration. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, and other homey truths that somehow never-the-less ring true.

Why Andrew Why? I just don't understand...

I just read Andrew Sullivan's discussion of how Bush's "strength" might also be his weakness. It's a typically too-clever-by-half Sullivan analysis that almost completely misses the real point about why Bush needs to go, while at the same time once again reducing all liberal thinkers to about four idiotically simplistic types, and then arguing against the lame positions of those types as though they actually stood in for the actual thoughtful analysis of intelligent lefties. It's as annoyingly reductionist as when a liberal talks about the position of the mythological "Middle American". At least he refrains for the time being from suggesting that we're all "America-hating". That comes a few blogs later...

But what really kills me is when Sullivan dismisses out of hand the suggestion that the President is in any way a liar. For one thing, this is easily disproved, even with something as petty as Bush's insisting during a press conference that the White House had not put up the Mission Accomplished banner on the U.S.S. Lincoln, only to have to trot out Dan Bartlett in the next few days to say that, well, okay, maybe, yes actually the White House did... kind of... put up that silly little banner... Or when the President insists, not once, but TWICE, that we had to invade Iraq because Saddam NEVER LET THE U.N. INSPECTORS INTO IRAQ (followed up by Rummy insisting the same thing a few press conferences later). At moments like this, I'm suddenly so transported into an alternative realm, that, for a moment, for a brief second, I actually question myself... uh... maybe Hans Blix, Mohamed ElBaradei, and company really WEREN'T there after all! It's a neat psychological trick the President plays, and one, mysteriously, that the press barely registers. The President of the United States has just uttered a complete and total either a)delusion or b)lie - and no one bats an eye. No headlines the next day: President Insists UN Inspections of Iraq Never Took Place. Nothing. Not a blip. If it weren't for irate liberal bloggers, this little aberration would probably never have been noted at all.

More importantly perhaps are the lies and abuses that come out of the Administration at large, lies and distortions and near-criminal acts that under any other President would, rightfully, implicate the President himself directly. But, as a result of Bush's brilliantly executed strategy of hugely diminished expectations, no one ever seems to want to actually come out and suggest the simplest, most straightforward idea imaginable: that maybe Bush not only knows about (which would be bad enough) but actually is behind and/or actively approves of the following: the misstatement of the cost of Medicare to congress, the Valerie Plame scandal, the presence of the infamous sixteen words in his 2003 State of the Union address, and the long term cover-up of Abu Ghraib, etc. etc. ad nauseum. And yet, on the face of it, esp. considering how he endlessly refuses to take anyone to task for any of these unfortunate incidences, it would seem only obvious that he in fact knew exactly what was being done in each case. And the only possible alternative, that he is so out of touch with his staff that they can do such things, over and over, without fear of reprimand or firing, is only slightly less deplorable a quality in a President. But one has to choose either option A or option B. And Sullivan, only begrudgingly and under the duress of inescapable evidence, chooses option B. Barely. For Sullivan it is only that the President is so darn stubborn - a quality he is only beginning to concede might just possibly have its downside. Perhaps Sullivan values in the President (at least the President he has created in his own mind) exactly what he values about himself - a determination to hold on to a path, to "stay the course", regardless of how clearly the evidence might suggest that the path was misguided from the moment one set oneself to follow it...

Have to go to bed - getting up early for E3 tomorrow. It's a whole new brave new world of video games out there...

My Press Conference

My brother sent links to a couple of good articles in the New York Times. The first, by Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center, should ease the minds of overanxious lefties all too ready to despair at Kerry's current inability to bolt ahead of Bush even while Bush's support goes steadily south.

The second by Adam Clymer is a good breakdown of the misinformation presented by both campaigns in their negative ad campaigns.

My only problem with the second article is the contention that "68 percent do not know that (Bush) proposes cutting the federal deficit in half". I don't dispute that fact, of course. I'm sure Bush PROPOSES to cut the federal deficit in half. He's proposed a lot of things over the years.

I thought about this. I can propose things too! In fact, I've put forth a proposal to be a millionaire in a year and a half...I'm holding a press conference, at which I'll tell everyone: "I'm doing a superb job achieving the designs of my proposal. (True, I don't actually have any more money at the moment.) But the proposal is building momentum! And I'm staying the course!" As a result, everyone will think I'm a bold, decisive leader. Such bold, decisive proposals, and I'm always determined to stay the course.

That's the way it works, isn't it?

Frustrated Liberals Anonymous

So I'm starting a blog. Actually, it wasn't my idea, it was Kelley's. I think I was starting to drive her nuts with the political talk, and who can blame her? I'm driving me nuts with the political talk. I'm driving me nuts with the political thought, it's a twisted obsession. I'm sick to death of it, and yet I can't seem to stop. So I'm doing this to blow off a little semi- or pseudo-public steam. To create for myself the false illusion of a public platform for my NON-OBJECTIVE HIGHLY SUBJECTIVE ideas. And to bitch about Andrew Sullivan.

My accupuncturist had this idea about a Frustrated Liberals support group. Hmm.....

Subjecting Myself to Objections

This is not meant to be a source of objective analysis in any respect. What it is going to be is a person - me - attempting to make some kind of sense of the madness that people in the media - mostly on the right, but also on the left - attempt to perpetrate on people in the world - namely, me. I'm sick of preaching to the choir. I'm tired of talking with fellow lefties in the office about the egregiousness of the filth floating out of the mind of the right these days. Because what good does it do? It seems like an unfortunate mass of Americans eat it all up and ask only for more. How can a person fight against the rising tide? How can a person stay sane, remain convinced that everything in life is still worth it, when not only straightforwardly imbecile, but in fact otherwise intelligent humans are capable of wearing such blinders? Andrew Sullivan, I'm talking about you, buddy. I'm talking about others of course, but I'm really talking about Andrew Sullivan, who is one of the most maddening commentators in the political world - possibly the most infuriating of them all - because he sees so clearly when his mind is suddenly jolted with undeniable moments of truth such as the hash Bush-plus-Republican-Congress have made of the fiscal health of our government, or Abu Ghraib, or probably most shocking of all - just shocking! - when Bush sucked up to the religious right by "defending marriage" from the "gay agenda" with the Federal Marriage Amendment. Andrew Sullivan was shocked - shocked! - shocked and dismayed that his fearless leader would do such a thing, when of course to anyone with eyes unhampered by conservative blinders, such a thing from George W. Bush is exactly what one expects.

In the beginning

was the word, or many words, full of sound and fury, signifying dismay - justified, unjustified, who can say - at the state of a world in which people like Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter hold such sway over the minds of so many. Including, sadly, one's parents. One's own parents, who gobble that garbage down like Neuhaus chocolates. It all feels like a really bad 70s horror flick sometimes, or this dream I had when I was five and everyone around me started, one by one, turning into these really awful violent, hateful lion/tiger creatures stealthily pursuing me through the comfort of my own home, bloodthirsty, out for the kill, waiting for me around every corner. Anyway - that's what this is for - to blow off steam - to come up with ridiculous equivalencies - to get mad as hell and to not take it anymore - to rail against idiocies of all stripes - and then whatever - maybe I'll finally cure myself of the politics bug - maybe I'll start fictionalizing my life in a blog site - maybe I'll huggermugger at will - movie reviews, pointless opinions about this and that, subjects in any case far away from left vs. right, blue state vs. red state (isn't it odd that red=conservative AND communist? I think there's something there really)... anything has to be better for the head, in the end than politics, yikes... but there it is - the Bush-induced bug in the head. I have to thank him really - before him, I hadn't thought much about it at all. Sometimes it takes something just horribly bad to go wrong to make you appreciate the way things really should be and work hard to make sure they get back to being that way...