So much for frivolity.

One thing that’s been driving me absolutely nuts since the Democrats won back Congress is how much the inside-the-beltway folks are completely ignoring their constituents.

Personally, I’m used to being ignored; my Senators are both hard-right Republicans (including the execrable John Cornyn), and “my” Representative is Lamar Smith, who doesn’t “represent” me in any way whatsoever. I hate it, but I’m used to it.

On the other hand, it really frosts my country ass that these Democrats that were put into Congress specifically to stand up to President Bush are caving in left and right. And it angers me even more that they not only flagrantly ignore their constituents, but also, like Nancy Pelosi, actually scorn them. Pelosi sneered at people protesting her limp Speakership by saying “If they were poor and they were sleeping on my sidewalk, they would be arrested for loitering, but because they have ‘Impeach Bush’ across their chest, it’s the First Amendment.”

Yes, Nancy; exercising their Constitutional rights–which you’re trying to give away at the behest of a President with a 24% approval rating–is so annoying!

As if that isn’t bad enough, the “liberal mainstream media” continues to pump out the meme that Democrats are stupid and doomed if they stand up to Bush. With the support for the war hovering around 30%, and with Democratic support for the war in single digits, the press nonetheless continues to opine that Democrats who stand up for civil rights, for pulling us out of Iraq, for returning to sane domestic policies, are stupid or naive or self-immolating.

You can read it over and over: Howard Kurtz, David Broder, David Brooks, Shailagh Murray, David Ignatius . . . pretty much anywhere. There are a few who step outside this nonsense, like Paul Krugman and Dan Froomkin (See? Not all Jews support neocons/Likud!), but in the main, the press is not listening to the people they theoretically serve. And they wonder why their subscription numbers are decreasing!

When the politicians we elect and the press that’s supposed to keep an eye on them aren’t paying attention to what “the people” want, where does that leave us? Personally it leaves me battling fury and depression.

This is completely frivolous. You have been duly notified.

I have a son who’s only 9 and loves the usual 9-year-old boy stuff; cartoons, superheroes, transformers, and that sort of thing. He dragged me to see Transformers in the theater (which wasn’t nearly as painful to watch as I was afraid it was going to be). And of course he had to have the latest Fantastic 4 movie as soon as it came out.

So here’s the thing: Jessica Alba, while a pretty wooden actress, is a babe; no doubt about it. A very attractive woman (although personally I prefer her with her natural brunette hair color). And what I can’t figure out is how they managed to make her look unattractive in this movie. I mean, seriously. She looked fine in the first one; why does she look so weird in this one?

Partly it’s her hair; they did something to it that makes it look like it was ironed flat, like an early-’60s folk singer. And partly it’s those blue contacts; like a lot of people who don’t wear contacts regularly, she does this round-eyed thing when she has them in. But somehow, throughout the whole movie I was distracted by this strange-looking woman wearing spandex who sort of looked like Jessica Alba, but not really. It was weird.

Yes, these are the things that sometimes occupy my tiny brain. Hey, I told you this was frivolous. I don’t rant about politics all the time!

You know, it used to be that “conservatives” (with a small “c”) were the ones who wanted the Constitution to be adhered to strictly and stringently. It was conservatives who wanted limited government, a balanced budget, and a government that was most assuredly made up of three coequal branches. It was conservatives who said, “Government isn’t the solution; government is the problem.” It was conservatives who told us not to trust the government.

Not any more, I guess.

In an article in the “Weekly Standard,” Michael Goldfarb instead tells us what the new Conservative (big “C”) position is: we should all shut the heck up and do whatever the government tells us to do, because it’s the “patriotic” thing. Because now we can trust the government. And of course it doesn’t matter that they’ve stripped habeus corpus away; these good ol’ boys that are in charge couldn’t possibly want to jail and arrest anyone but “bad guys.” These folks are good people, and will always do the right thing!

Forgive me if I bear in mind this idiotic war in Iraq, the fact that these “good people” were illegally spying on folks for years, and the fact that they now want to bomb Iran to “smithereens.” (Hey, Norman Podhoretz said it; I ain’t making it up).

How on Earth are we going to make it through the next year intact with these nuts in charge? Tom Paine would have started shooting people by now. I think Heinlein put it well in “The Cat Who Walks Through Walls,” believe it or not:

I sat down and shut up. I felt that I now understood the new regime: absolute freedom . . . except that any official from dogcatcher to supreme potentate could give any orders whatever to any private citizen at any time.

So it was “freedom” as defined by Orwell and Kafka, “freedom” as granted by Stalin and Hitler, “freedom” to pace back and forth in your cage. I wondered if the coming interrogation would be assisted by mechanical or electrical devices or by drugs, and felt sick at my stomach.

I’m not one for hysterics and crying “Wolf!”; I’ve got friends who do it a lot better than I do. But in this case, how can I help it? I hope we make it through the next year intact.

I can’t believe I’m even writing this, but that’s the level political discourse has sunk to in this country, I guess.

Barack Obama is taking heat–and I honestly can’t believe this–for saying he won’t wear an American flag pin in his lapel. There are stories on Fox News, Time, and probably everywhere else.

This bugs me in so many ways it’s hard to unravel, but the first thing is, isn’t it bad enough that the press spends ‘way more time talking about poll numbers and fund raising figures rather than what the candidates actually, you know, say they’re going to do on healthcare or the environment or taxes. Now they’re talking about a friggin’ lapel pin. What next, what the candidates eat for breakfast? “Obama eats yogurt for breakfast! What an effete wimp!”

It also reminds me, disgustingly, of how much politics and the inside-the-beltway media are like High School. Doesn’t matter how smart a guy is, doesn’t matter what he stands for; it just matters what he looks like. Does he look “Presidential?” Oh my God, he wore a red tie today; what does that mean? And the pressure to conform to what the clique thinks. Don’t do something out of principle; conform. Everyone must wear a lapel pin! Everyone must eat with Real Folks in a diner in New Hampshire in the dead of winter. Everyone must put on a flannel shirt and stride across a corn field in Iowa, post-harvest. Conform conform conform!

And the final thing is, ask yourself this: how many people out here in the “real world” wear lapel pins at all? Hell, in my industry damn few people wear suits, and those that do–salespeople and marketing people–are not exactly held in high regard by the technical folks. And I have never seen any of them wear lapel pins. (Here in Austin in the summer, most folks don’t wear socks, let alone suits.)

I know it’s different in the NorthEast to some degree, but even so most of the people I see all the time, in two states, wouldn’t go near the $800+ suits the candidates all wear. They’d look kind of silly in a cornfield, or a tire repair shop, or laying pipe at the shipyard, or on a hacker writing code. And lapel pins? Feh.

So we have a manufactured flap over a piece of accoutrement that probably no one would have noticed if the press hadn’t picked it up. And now the bloviators are trying to get Obama to regret it and conform.

Man. And people wonder why my generation is so darn cynical.

I was just thinking the other day about “liberals” vs. “conservatives,” and came to the realization that they both are kind of silly when taken too seriously.

Think about this: Conservatism, to some degree, can be boiled down to “let the market work it out.” In other words, they have a lot of trust in Big Business, but distrust Big Government. Liberals, on the other hand, have a lot of trust for Big Government, but distrust Big Business.

The obvious internal contraction of these positions seems to slip by most everyone.

If you can trust Big Government, why are you so distrustful of Big Business? And vice-versa? A big, faceless Entity that is run by a whole lot of People You Don’t Know; trusting either one of them too far seems the height of folly to me.

Take global warming, for example. The impression that I get from conservatives is that they would like the Invisible Hand of the market to deal with it. The thinking being (I guess) that eventually it would become more economical to do something about global warming than ignoring it, and the companies would switch to more environmentally sound policies. (Or alternatively, customers would stop buying environmentally damaging products, forcing producers to come out with environmentally sound products.)

I don’t believe it, however. If watching the auto industry fight tooth and nail against any government-mandated innovation–including seatbelts, for crying out loud!–is an reasonable example, my belief is that, say, energy companies would continue to burn coal and oil and whatever else in as polluting a way as possible until they ran out of coal and oil. At which point they would demand government subsidies for alternative energy research, and start selling home and personal filtration systems to prevent folks from getting sick on all the gunk in the air.

But, you know, I’m a cynic.

On the flip side, the believers in government would have the government crack down on everyone in the industry. The natural follow-on to that–that business will become so inefficient that it will die or jack up the price to the stratosphere–seems to escape some folks. So they will squawk when their gas rises to $7 a gallon and their monthly heating bill rises to $1000. And then they’ll want government to do something about that.

These are extremes, obviously. I’m exaggerating for effect. But the point is, you have to have a balance. There are some thing business is better at (goods and services at low cost–how many stories have you read about overbudget government projects?), and there are other things (worker safety and watching the environment being a big pair) that Big Business has a proven track record–hundreds of years, baby!–of sucking at.

So let the radicals at either end rail on–there wouldn’t be any progress without pushing the boundaries. But let’s not go overboard, because Big Anything taken at its word is dangerous, it seems to me.

People located all over the political spectrum tend to overuse terms like “fascist” to describe their foes. Catastophisizing and demonizing is a lot easier to do than engaging in actual debate. The downside is, the actual meaning and power of those terms gets diluted and worn down through overuse (similar to comparison to the Nazis), so that when they might actually be valid, people just roll their eyes.

But consider some facts. These are actual facts, not hyperbole.

Yesterday, at an appearance by John Kerry at the University of Florida, a student who was unruly and disruptive was in the process of asking John Kerry a long, hostile, and somewhat incoherent question. The other students in attendance were trying to shout him down, but Kerry requested that they let him finish. What happened? The police came, Tasered him, and took him away.

In its first term, the Roberts court considered the case of Morse v. Frederick, where the Court upheld the School District’s right to suspend a student because he put up a banner that said “Bong Hits 4 Jesus” when the Olympic torch bearers ran by. Not during school, mind you; outside of school.

(I’m not going to go into here the mental gymnastics the members of the Supreme Court go through to justify this nonsense. Just as an example, donating large sums of money is constitutionally protected free speech, but wearing arm bands to school is not. Yeah, okay; whatever. Jefferson and Hamilton are probably fighting for grave-rolling privileges with John Jay.)

In its term of office, the Bush Administration has suspended habeas corpus and given themselves the right to slap American citizens in jail without trial and without accusing them of a crime indefinitely simply by calling them “enemy combatants.” Bush has unilaterally declared entire sections of various laws invalid simply by issuing “signing statements.” And finally, he’s continuing a war in direct defiance of the opinions of a majority of Congress and the American people.

These are facts; I ain’t making this stuff up.

At the risk of being pedantic, “fascism” is defined as “a political philosophy, movement, or regime that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition.”

Now I know some people will consider it hyperbole, and we are certainly a ways from, say, Germany in 1937, but what term other than “fascist” can be used to describe where we are today? We have police tasering people to shut them up; people pretending to be secret service and stopping citizens from attending speeches because of bumper stickers on their cars; White House press secretaries saying that we “have to watch what we write; watch what we say”; people who dare to debate the wisdom of public policy not disagreed with, but accused of being traitors and “giving comfort to the enemy.”

And when when we have a President who values personal loyalty above competence, who fires military leaders when they dare to say things publicly that are at odds with what he wants to hear (remember Gen. Shinseki?), and whose Administration engages in vicious retaliation against anyone who doesn’t do their bidding (Carol Lam, the former U.S. Attorney in Los Angeles, who was fired for not persuing “illegal voting” hard enough, and of course Valerie Plame being outed as a covert CIA operative as punishment for husband having the temerity to question Bush in the pages of the NY Times being just two examples), what else can we call him but “dictatorial?”

So as much as it puts me in danger of being accused of hyperbole, I have to say we live in a fascist state. It is not being abused to the point it could be, no, but it’s a fascist state. If the State Apparatus wanted to slap me in jail tomorrow under some trumped-up pretext, they could. And that’s a fascist state, folks.

I have a huge amount of trouble listening to Bush speak. For one thing, he’s a miserably bad speaker, even worse than his father. For another, his policies are asinine, and that bothers me immeasurable. But finally, the way he swallows his words drives me absolutely insane.

Even so, I listened to part of his speech tonight, and have a few comments:

Bush: “In Iraq, an ally of the United States is fighting for its survival.”
Doug: I kept wracking my brain wondering which ally he was talking about. Great Britain? No; they were leaving, and their survival was assured. Iraq itself? They weren’t a country yet. The Shiites? The Sunnis? The Kurds? He must be talking about Iraq, even though it doesn’t have a central government, and isn’t really an “ally,” so much as a colonial state.

Bush: “Eight months ago we adopted a new strategy.”
Doug: No; eight months ago you ordered a new strategy. We didn’t have anything to do with it, and something like 2/3 of us don’t agree with it.

Bush: “We are seizing the initiative from the enemy.”
Doug: What enemy? It’s a friggin’ civil war. It’s like fighting fog. Doesn’t he even read his NIEs? I’m so sick of this guy dividing the world into “enemies” and “allies” I could just hurl. The world’s more complicated than that, Mr. President.

Bush: We will reduce from 20 combat brigades to 15 by next July.
Doug: We would have to do that no matter what happened with “the surge,” unless we wanted to implement a draft. If Bush dropped a rock, he would take credit for the force of gravity when the rock crashed to the floor.

Bush: “As . . . the Iraqis assume more control over their own security, our mission in Iraq will evolve.”
Doug: How is this different from “As they stand up, we will stand down”? It’s back to the future, baby!

Bush: “I have benefited from their advice.”
Doug: Since when? Has there ever been a time when Bush has followed advice that’s contrary to what he wanted to do in the first place?

Bush: “The principle guiding my decision on troop levels in Iraq is: ‘Return on Success.'” (Trust me: you could hear the capitals and quote marks when he was speaking.)
Doug: Horseshit. The principle guiding your decision is: ‘Turn the Mess Over to My Successor.'”

Bush: Talks about future presidents remaining in Iraq.
Doug: I am absolutely overwhelmed by the arrogance of this man trying to force us to follow his insane, moronic policy after he leaves office. His nerve is simply unbelievable.

Bush: He mentions Iran gaining nukular weapons if we are “driven” out of Iraq. (How about if we just, ya know, leave?)
Doug: I pray every day that Cheney doesn’t get his way, and get a war with Iran before he and Bush leave office. I hope others are praying with me. I say this with no irony whatsoever. It scares the crap out of me thinking about it. They are clearly beating the drum for it. How they think they can fight another war when they are already breaking our military apart, I have no idea. (A draft in the waning days of next summer?)

Bush: “Iraq could face a humanitarian nightmare.”
Doug: He really doesn’t listen to his daily briefings, does he? After more than 2 million refugees, with power and water only intermittently available in the capital city, let alone the other cities, he doesn’t think Iraq is a humanitarian nightmare now?

Bush: He links Iraq to 9/11 again.
Doug: Why does he still get away with that? Has he no shame?

Bush: He reads an email.
Doug: I sure wish he would read one of the ones I’ve sent him. He could delete the curse words for public consumption.

Bush reminds me a lot of guys I used to read the postings of on USENET back in the day (late 80s, early 90s). It’s clear that he believes that if he repeats something often enough, it must be true (“Iraq is a central front in the war on terror;” “We can succeed;” “Iraq was a safe haven for terrorist prior to 9/11;” etc.). You would think that, by the age of 61, he would have learned that just because you can repeat something 3 or more times doesn’t make it true.

At the beginning of his speech, Bush said “In the life of all free nations, there come moments that decide the direction of a country and reveal the character of its people.” He’s right. Unfortunately, this country–or at least, the political class of this country–will not make those decisions by either defunding the war or impeaching this horrible President and Vice President. So we are stuck with this insane, suicidal policy that means nothing but death, destruction, loss of American credibility, and further waste of money, until he leaves office. I sincerely hope that the next President does not follow Bush’s idiotic advice and continues his stupid adventure in Iraq. I pray that we don’t. But nowadays, I believe anything is possible.

God bless America, and please please hurry.

So good ol’ General Petraeus–who I am sure is an excellent general, as well as clearly being a sharp man–is explaining to us why we should remain in Iraq basically indefinitely. Let’s review a few facts–just facts–about Iraq. Just for perspective, y’know.

• Since the Iraq war began, the U.N. estimates that 2.2 million people have fled Iraq. The population of Iraq prior to the war was 26.7 million people. For perspective, 2.2 million people is more than the entire population of Houston, TX, the fourth largest city in the country. Imagine the entire city of Houston leaving the country. Imagine everyone in San Francisco and San Jose packing up and leaving those cities empty. But it’s worse. If the same percentage left the U.S., it would mean 24.8 million people leaving the country. That would empty out the entire state of Texas and New Hampshire and Vermont.
• Estimates of Iraqi deaths since the war began range from 426,369 to 793,663. Again for perspective, the population of San Francisco is 744,000.
• We are spending two billion dollars a week on this war. Just today on the radio I heard that the Austin Independent School District received a grant for 330 million dollars over the next five years for drug prevention. So five years of an entire school district’s drug prevention money is less than 20% of one week’s worth of funding for the Iraq war.
• President Bush and General Petraeus have both trumpeted Anbar province as a success story recently because they have been working with Sunni sheiks. On Septeber 3, President Bush met with Sheik Abdul-Sattar Abu Risha. Yesterday, Sheik Abdul-Sattar Abu Risha was killed by a roadside bomb.
• On August 19, seven U.S. soldiers in Iraq had an Op-Ed published in the New York times in which they were highly critical of our mission there. On Monday, two of them died. Another of them is currently terribly injured from a gunshot wound to the head.

(If these last two items aren’t as eloquent an indictment of a failed policy as anything I have ever heard, I don’t know what could be.)

These are facts about the Iraq war. This is raw data. This is not spin. This is just data about the war that Bush and his enablers (such as the folks at National Review Online, The Weekly Standard, and so on) want to keep going indefinitely. This is the war that the Washington political establishment and the “mainstream media” have collectively decided is going to go on unchanged until there is a new President 16 months from now.

Can someone please explain to me why we–and by “we” I mean the 2/3 of this country that doesn’t want us to be involved in this war–are still in Iraq? What madness is this?

Today (and tomorrow and for the rest of the week, for all I know) General Petraeus and Ambassador to Iraq Crocker (how appropriate!) will be testifying before Congress about conditions in Iraq.

We all know what those conditions are, of course: the Bush Administration’s incompetent war has unleashed a civil war and sectarian violence; there’s ethnic cleansing going on; several million refugees have fled the country; Americans are not considered “liberators” but “occupiers”; no progress towards a “national” government is being made (nor should we expect any, since the tribes pretty much hate each other); and we are now trying to police all this with 160,000 troops, many on their third, fourth, or fifth deployment, in a country of, what, 40 million or so? Those are the conditions.

So Petraeus and Crocker will get up and spill their absurd blather about the “progress” that’s been made, the cowardly Congress will fork over more billions to the incredibly unpopular Bush–who has proven again and again his inability to run a war–and we will continue this charade until a new President takes office in 2009. Despite poll after poll showing that Americans overwhelmingly want us out of Iraq. As do the Iraqis. As does most of the rest of the world.

And honestly, just once I’d like to see a few things happen:

• While testifying before Congress, I’d like a Senator or Congressman say to Petraeus or Crocker, “Bullshit. That’s all bullshit. The situation there is a mess, our presence is making it worse, and we should get the fuck out. You are excused from this committee. Don’t let the door smack you in the ass on the way out.”
• While giving yet another B.S.-fueled press briefing, I’d like the White House press corps to absolutely refuse to swallow the baloney spewed by Dana Perino or Tony Snow, and start throwing rotten fruit when they say things that are obviously and demonstrably lies.
• I’d like one of these loudmouth Senators who grandstand about being tough to actually vote that way. Phil Specter leaps to mind.
• I’d like to see someone the entire White House press corps agree beforehand on a question to press President Bush on, and to keep asking him. No matter who he calls on, keep asking the same question until he actually friggin’ answers it. Even the foreign press people. Even the Fox News people. It’s high time Bush actually gave a straight answer.
• I’d like to see someone interview a high-ranking official and when they blatantly lie, call them on it. For example, when Cheney said, “You’re out of line,” I wanted the interviewer say, “No, sir, I am not, and the American people deserve an answer to the question.” These people are criminals, and we deserve answers. It’s time to stop letting them get away with their dodging and ducking.
• When Bush goes one of these obnoxious photo ops, when he uses the press as his sickening lap dogs to sell this absurd war to the public, I want them to stand up in a body and say, “No thanks; we’re not going to be part of your propaganda machine.” If he gives one of his heavily-scripted speeches in Iraq, and no one is there to film it, did it happen? Would that whatever press maven he invites on his next Turkey Trip to Iraq this November have the juevos to say “No,” so that his trip is only filmed by official Army propagandists.
• I’d like to see Bush booed, seriously booed, at one of his major speeches. No matter how carefully they vet the audience, how carefully the script the speech, I want him booed, long and loud. At the State of the Union. In front of the VFW. I don’t care; I want that guy booed. I want him to know how the other 77% of us feel, and I want him to know it in his bones.

Hey, a guy can dream, can’t he?

As a method of dismissing arguments against various Bush-authored or Bush-proposed policies without presenting counter-arguments, some folks on the Right like to say that their opponent suffers from “Bush Derangement Syndrome” (BDS). Said syndrome, the implication goes, means that the sufferer cannot see the good and wise things in whatever it is that Bush proposes because of their blinding hatred for All Things Bush. And they certainly have a point to some degree; there definitely are some people who can’t listen to Bush without rejected whatever he says out of hand. (Of course, I would argue that Bush has brought this on himself to a large degree.)

But there is a flip side to BDS, and that is that some folks on the Right simply can’t see anything wrong with things that Bush proposes because of their blinding love for All Things Bush.

I personally think this is exemplified by Kathryn Jean Lopez of National Review Online (who was kind enough to print my accusation of same in its entirety, but too cowardly to print my contradiction of her implied [but not stated] argument), as well as anyone whose last name is Kagan, or is related to that family in any way by marriage.

But it reached an absurd height when Fred Kagan recently opined that Bush has reached Lincolnian rhetorical levels in Iraq. To recap: Bush snuck out a side door of the White House, concealed his destination from most of the press corps, avoided Baghdad (presumably because the insurgents now have sufficient anti-aircraft capability to make it dangerous to fly in and out of the Baghdad airport), landed in al Anbar, had a photo op, looked al Maliki “in the eye,” and then scurried on to Australia. Kagan’s view: Bush’s speech in Iraq was comparable to The Gettysburg Address, and turned a corner on the Iraq war. (Another one! We’ve turned so many corners there now, I’ve lost track.)