Monday, September 25, 2006

Do you remember...

...when we had a president who, even when obviously caught off guard, flustered and angry, could eloquently trace out a reasonable argument, speaking in complete sentences and documenting his assertions the entire time?

Think Progress >> VIDEO: Clinton Sets The Record Straight On Terrorism, Smacks Down Fox News

Frequently, I'll point out my favorite part of these links. Honestly, I love the entire thing. But, there is a statement which made me chuckle ruefully - right at the beginning, Chris Wallace says
"There’s a new book out, I suspect you’ve already read, called The Looming Tower...."
Now, see that part I've emphasized up there? When was the last time someone could confidently state that they suspected George W. Bush had read a specific book? Hell, any book at at all?

Seriously, as a thought experiment, imagine what a stuttering mess George W. would've been if he'd been blindsided this way, invited to speak primarily on one, innocuous topic and asked why he failed to protect our country? Can't you see him: ears flapping, eyes bugging, his monosyllabic circumlocution taking the form of catch-phrases and assertions that are patently false but right on-message? Look at him! He's a chimp in a behavioral experiment, constantly grabbing the electro-shock banana and gazing at the two-way-mirror with confused, liquid eyes and quivering lower lip. "It's not fair," he seems to say. "I've been abused. I am a victim. Feel my pain."

And let's not even consider the accusations which would've followed such an interview - the accusations of "liberal media bias" and the vague but insistent implication that it is at least in bad taste if not downright treasonous to question the failings which might've led up to the 9/11 attacks. If we question our authority figures now, we show weakness and division in the face of evil, and the terrorists will already have won.

If anyone had told me in 2001 that five years later I'd be longing for the days when an opposition-led witchhunt with no clear mandate managed to impeach a sitting president for lying about something that was nobody's business anyway, I'd've winced and smirked at them with eyebrows all askew. The sad truth, though, is that I do miss those days.

Call me crazy, but in my mind one man lying about not having "sexual relations with that woman" is better than an entire administration asserting that there is a "clear threat" from "weapons of mass destruction"; that one man's embarrassing, public admission to enjoying hummers from marginally attractive women who aren't his wife is preferable to this consistent denial that our country's war effort is failing to stabilize the Middle East, failing to assuage the burgeoning hatred and disgust we are engendering even among our historical allies, and failing to make us - this country's citizens - any safer.

As if I wasn't...

...feeling disgusted and cynical enough, there's this little gem:

Coroner: Suspect says she drowned kids - Yahoo! News

The quote that made me simultaneously laugh and pound my head against a wall?
"This is an opportunity for people to turn to God," said Debra Kenton, a member of the New Life Community Church. "Who else can explain things like this?"
God's got an explanation for a 24-year-old woman butchering her pregnant friend and drowning three children?

Wow! This I gotta hear....

Just so I'm clear on things...

BBC NEWS | Africa | Somali port 'falls' to Islamists

In addition to making the U.S. safe from terrorism, we're also in Iraq to make certain that the Iraqis have freedom and aren't suffering under an oppressive, fundamentalist regime, right?

So why aren't we in Somalia? Oh, yeah: no oil. Not really in our best national interest, I guess.