Bedtime for Gonzo

At last:

Bush administration officials say Attorney General Alberto Gonzales will announce his resignation today.

The embattled attorney general has been under increasing pressure by lawmakers in both parties, amid accusations that the Justice Department has been used for political purposes.

Seems like Fredo needs to spend more time with the family.

All You Need to Know About Libertarians

BradRocket:

Megan McArdle, a.k.a. Jane Galt, is up to her usual tricks:

An exchange with a blogger who is apparently a philosophy student at the University of Virginia leads me to believe that many people are still misunderstanding my point about the morality of single payer healthcare. Many people responded to my first post by saying, “But we have a duty to care for the sick!” Trying to make myself very clear, I wrote 2,000 words explaining that even assuming, arguendo, that we have a duty to make sure people don’t die from lack of health care, this is not a good moral argument for single payer. At which point I got more posts, including from said philosophy student, saying “But we have a duty to care for the sick!” Length having failed, let me try brevity:

1) Single payer transfers money from anyone who is young and healthy to anyone who is old and sick, regardless of their need for the money.

Basically, yes.

And as someone who is young and healthy (Really! I go on three-mile runs thrice a week and lift weights twice a week!), I have no problem with this. The reason? Well, because I have no problem paying taxes to help old sick people now, because I’m going to be old and sick in the future. That’s the basic principle involved here. But for peeps like Meghan, whose only thought is “MEEEEEEEEEEE-me-me-me-me-MEEEEEEEEEE!”, this line of thought is deeply immoral.

If McArdle was in, or knew someone in, a similar situation, how do you think she would act? Lack of empathy = psycho.

Be Honest

This is why we are still fighting:

And bring Dick with you. Josh:

His entire legacy as president is bound up in Iraq. Which is another way of saying that his legacy is pretty clearly an irrecoverable shambles. That is why, as the folly of the enterprise becomes more clear, he must continually puff it up into more and more melodramatic and world-historical dimensions. A century long ideological struggle and the like. For the president a one in a thousand shot at some better outcome is well worth it, no matter what the cost. Because at least that's a one in a thousand shot at not ending his presidency with the crushing verdict history now has in store. It's also worth just letting things keep on going as they are forever because, like Micawber, something better might turn up. Going double or nothing by expanding the war into Iran might be worth it too for the same reason. For him, how can it get worse?

And when you boil all this down what it comes down to is that the president now has very different interests than the country he purports to lead.

Still, it's always great fun to have a beer with an incompetent narcissist!

But it isn't just the president. It's also all of the Very Serious People who have no trouble doubling down on their bets again and again. They're playing with other peoples' money and other peoples' lives, and why not wait another Friedman or two to see if that lottery ticket hits.

People will continue to die for their egos.

Party like It's 1970!

Hunter rant.

Guess Where?

We must liberate them!

Baggy pants that show boxer shorts or thongs would be illegal under a proposed amendment to [place]'s indecency laws.

The amendment, sponsored by [local politician], states that sagging pants are an "epidemic" that is becoming a "major concern" around the country.

"Little children see it and want to adopt it, thinking it's the in thing," [politician] said Wednesday. "I don't want young people thinking that half-dressing is the way to go. I want them to think about their future."

The proposed ordinance would also bar women from showing the strap of a thong beneath their pants. They would also be prohibited from wearing jogging bras in public or show a bra strap

Meanwhile,

Nigeria is learning this lesson the hard way. Examples abound: 23 Christian women have been brought before Islamic courts, charged with non-compliance with the Muslim dress code, or prostitution (i.e., being unmarried and older than 13 years). At the University of Maiduguri in Borno state, female students have been forced to adhere to the Islamic dress code in order to sit for exams, and some are being expelled from the university for failing to do so. Eleven female nurses were fired in Azare when they refused to exchange their nurse uniforms for Islamic attire.

Just shut up and do as we tell you.

Vietnam Followup

After you read this you'll be able to scrape your brain off the wall with a spatula and chew it like bubble gum - POP!!!

George W. Bush on Wednesday said the consequences of a US withdrawal from Iraq could echo the “killing fields” genocide that destroyed Cambodia after the US pulled out from Vietnam in the mid-1970s.

In a speech signalling Mr Bush is in no mood to compromise with his Iraq war critics, the US president threw down the gauntlet in advance of Democratic plans next month to revive a congressional vote setting a deadline for withdrawal of most of the 160,000 US troops in Iraq.

Much of Mr Bush’s speech, which was delivered in Kansas City to the US Veterans of Foreign Wars, focused on the history of the US occupation of Japan and Germany after the second world war and on the aftermath of the US military pull-out from Indochina.

“The price of America’s withdrawal from Vietnam was paid by millions of innocent citizens whose agonies would add to our vocabulary new terms like “boat people”, “re-education camps” and “killing fields”, Mr Bush said. “Iraq is a central front in the war on terror. Withdrawal without getting the job done would be a disaster.”

The US president, who appeared to be in ebullient spirits, also reprised his controversial linking of democracy to religious values. “We are still in the early hours of the current ideological struggle,” he said. “Our world will never be safe until the people of the Middle East know the freedom that our Creator intended for all.”

An understanding of cause and effect is necessary for functioning. No wonder we're so fucked. I've mentioned this before, but be sure to read the Harper's article on the Stabbed in the Back myth. It's what Bush is trying to set up for whomever the Democratic president is who takes us out of Iraq. Yes, it will be a disaster, but for Bush to say something like that ignores both his role in creating the disaster and the disaster that will continue to happen whether we're there or not. Yes, it's still a disaster.

The logic is "as long as we're trying we're free from blame, because it implies that we could succeed, which would make everything worthwhile." That is absolutely morally and causally specious logic. Trying? How much? Without a draft? Without properly equipping our troops? Without any plan? How about some other questions like are we making things better or worse? What about the cost? What do the other actors think and why? None of these questions are being asked, not by the administration, the media or the very serious people in our foreign policy community. Just shut up and cheer.

Adding, that last quote is precious. Freedom to do exactly as we tell them.

I'm sure Josh Marshall will have more on Bush's speech later, but he's already got a post up after reading the prepared remarks:

The story of the 'boat people' is unquestionably tragic. And there's little doubt that there are many Iraqis who will pay either with their lives or nationality for aiding us in various ways during our occupation of the country. But to govern our policy on this basis is simply to buy into a classic sunk cost fallacy. A far better -- and really quite necessary -- policy would be to give asylum to a lot of these people rather than continuing to get more of them into the same position in advance of our inevitable departure.

More concretely though, didn't the killing fields happen in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge rather than Vietnam? So doesn't that complicate the analogy a bit? And didn't that genocide actually come to an end when the Communist Vietnamese invaded in 1979 and overthrow the Khmer Rouge regime? The Vietnamese Communists may have been no great shakes. But can we get through one of these boneheaded historical analogies while keeping at least some of the facts intact?

Not a snowball's chance in hell.

History Major

I don't think it means what Bush thinks it means:

In a departure from his standard Iraq rhetoric, Mr. Bush will directly compare the Iraq conflict to Vietnam -- another long-running conflict where U.S. involvement became controversial and calls for withdrawal ultimately became politically irresistible. But he will make the case that the Vietnam conflict was part of a long and ultimately successful battle in Asia against militarism and communism.

I am oversimplifying, but as a result of Vietnam, we learned that the Domino theory was bunk, since we effectively lost our war in Vietnam and communism did not continue to spread, we destabilized Laos and Cambodia as well as gave China a reason to arm, both of which promoted militarism, and bled our country. Our involvement in Vietnam was irresponsible, immoral and ultimately destructive to all parties involved. If Bush had learned a single thing about Vietnam, as a history major he would not be able to say any of those things.


This book is a good place to start.

Spectator Sport

Leahy fumbles the ball:

"The time is up. The time is up," Leahy announced yesterday. "We've waited long enough."

But what would Leahy do about it? The first questioner riddled Batman with this.

"The full Judiciary Committee will have to sit down and determine whether to seek contempt from the full Senate," said the noncommittal action hero.

Does that mean he would seek a contempt-of-Congress citation? "What I want to do is get the response to these things," Leahy demurred.

Rebecca Carr of Cox News tried again to pin him down, but Leahy continued to escape. "What we have to find out is what happened here," he answered.

How about withholding money from the administration? "Let's take it step by step," he proposed.

Holy incrementalism, Batman!

He had a chance to back up his words with action and demonstrate that Congress still has relevance, but he blew it. I think many of our well-meaning Washington actors do not understand how this sport is played. They think they can say anything or do anything and get away with it. Unfortunately for them, unlike a real sport, there is no coach who decides who to bench and who to field, and there are no last minute comebacks. In this sport, if your fans decide that you are not playing up to snuff they can vote you off the team. Furthermore, politicians words and actions shape their fans' opinions of them. It seems to me that the Beltway crowd views the media and punditry as their coach, which could not be further from reality.

Maybe politics really is a spectator sport after all - but one in which the spectators actually count for something.

Pure Evil

Bush.

The Bush administration, after years of allowing states to cover more children from higher-income families through a popular state-federal health-insurance program, is putting the brakes on expansion.

The policy change will affect states that seek to or already cover children from families with income at 250% of the federal poverty level, or $51,625 for a family of four. (The federal poverty level is $20,650 for a family of four.) At least 16 states had received permission over the years to expand to or beyond that level.

The step will also put the administration on a collision course with Congress, which has approved legislation with tens of billions of dollars to expand the program to cover more children. The House and the Senate are expected to work out a compromise after the August recess.

Administration officials said President Bush will veto the final bill if tighter controls and spending limits aren't enacted. They argue that the program's expansion has gone beyond its original goal to cover low-income children at the 200% poverty level, or $41,300 for a family of four. The expansion, they say, has led some families to drop private health coverage in favor of the program, known as SCHIP, for State Children's Health Insurance Program.

Because children on public, as opposed to private, healthcare are morally decrepit. As for tighter spending? I cannot take someone seriously who spends over $200 million every day in Iraq.

Manamana