Plaid is the New Plaid

Charles Krauthammer takes a look at Iraq and decides what it really needs are some Sunni strongmen to put down the "Shiite extremists". I know a guy who fits that description - oh wait, I think he was executed last year. Look, spreading democracy to Iraq is really important! It's way too important to be left to the people of Iraq and the men and women they voted for.

In fairness, he has been arguing for us to topple Maliki for at least a year; instead we should "change the composition of the government and assemble a new one composed of those -- Kurds, moderate Sunnis, secular Shiites and some of the religious Shiites -- who might be capable of reaching a grand political settlement."

PS - Best quote of the piece: "A sample of the countries that have chosen this absurd form of democracy -- Italy, Israel and Weimar Germany -- gives you an idea of the balkanized, unstable politics that party-list systems inevitably produce." I'm not one to just throw around charges of antisemitism like some other people but I was more than a little uncomfortable hearing an American lecture Israel on what constitutes an absurd and unstable democracy.

Ride Home Blogging

So as I'm waiting for the bus heading home who should drive by but the "Truth Truck" - complete with giant cross on top and bible banners on the side. I don't really have anything else to add, just thought the digital void would like to know.

It's Getting Funnier by the Minute

I am amazed by the amount of details that goes public in the Larry Craig ordeal. In case you still don't know what this ordeal is, it's the Idaho senator (Republican) being arrested for trying to solicit sex in the Minneapolis airport men's bathroom.

Several things still fascinate me even after days of continuous media coverage on the case:

(1) Do undercover cops just randomly decide to show up at an airport bathroom (of all places!) and see if anyone finds them hot enough to risk the embarrassment and the possibility of arrest to initiate sex?

Or is this whole thing planned out, an entrapment targeting the poor clearly-wrongly-accused senator? *ahem*

(2) It appears the two gentlemen were in separate stalls while the majority of the incident occurred. Funny - since you may not even have seen your potential sexual partner before you signal interest.

How does one really have any clue at all whether one's stall neighbor could potentially be interested in sex? Does it require a certain "Gay-dar", are they merely random thoughtless attempts, or did Mr. Undercover give the senator a little wink?

I mean, how many of you have experienced a little foot bump from the next stall whilst in public restrooms? If someone slips their hand (right or left) under to my stall, I'll probably think they just need tissue.

(3) Why on earth would this undercover cop not wait until they're in a compromising (and clearly undeniable) position before he arrests Craig?

Maybe the thought of possibly seeing the senator's manhood was too much to handle.

(4) Most interesting is to see how Republicans, and others on the hill, react to the whole thing. It seems like the bulk of the mistake that people have a problem with is in the senator soliciting male sex, rather than any sex at all.

And I still maintain that what public officials do, or how they're like, in their private lives are none of our business. Americans are a bit too obsessed with elected officials' "moral fiber" for my taste. They're elected to do very specific things, and we really should stick to whether those things that they've promised to do are done. What they've promised their wives, now that's between them.

What I have a problem with is politicians being lying hypocrites. But even then, I don't really give a flying F as long as they're not extending that part of their character to their service of their constituents.

Unfortunately, 99.9999% of the time, they are.

Someone please take that kid's keys away

My gut reaction was to agree with Matt and Josh about the need for a candidate to be able to confidently attack the horrific policies of the past 7 years - particularly if another attack were to occur.

But then Josh's line about Hillary possibly being afraid of the American peoples capacity to know what they want and wondered about the recurring phenomena of American Idol winners tending to fail spectacularly while runner's up tend to go on to be more successful. What happens to democracy when voters lose the ability - for whatever reason - to actually select their preferred choice?

Losing Vietnam

The big story of the week has been the President's decision to double down and claim that a) Vietnam was lost due to a lack of fortitude by the American people and b) that Iraq is just like Vietnam.

As one of those weak kneed Americans, I would respectfully submit that Nam was lost because of spoiled rich kids that decided they'd rather snort coke than answer the call to duty.

But on a larger note I seriously wish all the baby boomers would stop trying to make everything about them. The men and women my age (who are the ones dying in Iraq) are far too valiant to serve as props for the rest of you to relive your glory days.

In case anyone is actually reading this, if you haven't already you should take note of the fact that the Washington Post today essentially came out in favor of going to war with Iran. Iraq redux.

The Definition of Irony

I always thought it was editors that made newspaper writers act like morons, but apparently they are trained to do so.

This weekend some idiot journalism professor wrote an op-ed in the LA Times decrying how bloggers don't actually fact check anything or do original reporting. In the course of writing the piece, however, he forgot to actually do any investigation into his claims or fact check the assertions given to him by the Times editorial staff.

There are a million blogs out there that don't do any original reporting (mostly because, unlike reporters, they aren't paid to do investigative journalism). That he happened to pick the one that (I think it is fairly safe to say) does the most and best original reporting is hilarious.

Elections have consequences (like do what I say)

Re: "Comfort Women", I had the same reaction to the article. If a woman decides she wants to make a living having sex for cash, that's her choice. But having several friends who work on human trafficking and the sex-worker side of HIV issues, I know that rarely is it truly a free choice.

It is at times like this that I wonder how much democracy, or "liberty and freedom", as Mr. President puts it, is really worth when weighed against nothing else but just being able to be with your family, to watch your children grow up, and to grow old with your significant other.

While the President talks about liberty, freedom, and democracy interchangeably, they are not actually the same thing. Liberty and freedom are conceptually tied to liberalism, which is aimed at providing the individual the environment to govern their own life in an unencumbered manner. Democracy is a system of political organization for the government of a society. That democratic societies also tend to share similar characteristics of liberal societies does not mean they are the same thing.

Personally I never liked democracy very much. If the state is prohibiting me from doing something I want to do without much of a reason, I don't much care if it is because a single strongman leader doesn't want me to do it or because a bizarre coalition of lobbyists and activists organized enough votes (or campaign contributions).

The biggest conceptual shift in the current administration has been the move away from the promotion of liberalism - i.e. pushing societies to enact laws that liberate individuals from coercive force by the state or others - to a promotion of democracy. Far more disturbing has been the fact that we now seem to only promote illiberal democracy.

So, if you like forcing mothers to choose between becoming sex slaves or watching their kids starve vote for Rudy, Mitt, or Fred Thompson. If you don't you might consider giving Huckabee or Ron Paul a try.

The New "Comfort Women"

It breaks my heart reading this article on CNN about Iraqi women being forced into prostitution, not at gun point, not by soldiers or insurgents, but because of how difficult it has been to get by with no job that pays enough to feed their children and merely going to work might get you killed.

Oh wait, how is all this not because of the continued American occupation in Iraq and the cold-blooded insurgents that care nothing about the lives and wellbeing of their fellow countrymen?

It really doesn't make a difference whether these women are forced to have sex with men with guns pointing at them (as in the case of Comfort Women during the Japanese occupation of China and Korea). A threat of one's child not being able to live past next week, and the complete destruction of one's family, are just as much a gun to one's head as the real deal.

It is at times like this that I wonder how much democracy, or "liberty and freedom", as Mr. President puts it, is really worth when weighed against nothing else but just being able to be with your family, to watch your children grow up, and to grow old with your significant other.

The same strain, of course, is on American soldiers in Iraq desperately needing a reason for why they're there now or in the first place.

Some say that freedom is worth fighting for, worth losing one's life over. Well, really? It seems like a luxury that these Iraqis can't afford right now. More importantly, to truly have freedom, these people shouldn't be told that they should want to fight for freedom now should they?

Oh the hypocrisy of it all...