The Poor Man Institute

Legendary catch by mm. Hurry, hurry. And, yes, it’s as good as you knew it would be.

I don’t understand this Facebook. There’s like all these people, and there’s a “News” feed and a “Live” feed, and they’re different, but hell if I know what the difference is, let alone what’s so newsy or lively about them. And I have a “Wall” for some reason, which I guess I’m writing on? Or something? Am I writing on a wall? Is this news? Am I live? Don’t anybody try to explain it to me, because I’m not listening, and I refuse to RTFM. This is supposed to be a web-site, and web-sites aren’t supposed to have FMs. They should explain themselves. So I’m taking a stand here because, dammit, somebody should. I’m making a stand because I don’t know what I’m looking at or who’s looking at me or where I left my shoes. I feel like a 90-year-old grandmother trying to install Linux on the space shuttle. But for unrelated reasons.

I sort of suspected this is something for “The Kids”, as it were, and now I’m suspecting these suspicions were correct. Does Facebook come with a “Lawn”, somewhere, over my “Wall”? Because I want everybody off it.

Related.

I know it’s Erick Erickson, so I shouldn’t really expect much, but still, this causes tremors in my cerebellum:

Today Barack Obama is going to announce that the terrorist mastermind of September 11th, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, will be sent to New York City for a criminal trial in a civilian court.

In that trial, the terrorist will get all the rights afforded an American citizen in a criminal trial, including the right to a fair trial, the right to a taxpayer funded attorney, the right to review all the evidence against him, potentially including classified intelligence matters, the right to exclude evidence against him including, potentially, any confession obtained through enhanced interrogation techniques, etc.

At best, this will be a show trial fit not for the American Republic, but a third world kleptocratic totalitarian regime. At worse, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed will gain access to classified material he can then leak to other terrorists while New York yet again becomes a target for terrorists.* We have already had occasions in this country where terrorists’ sympathetic lawyers have conveyed information, orders, and plans to other terrorists.

First of all, the actual best case scenario would be a fairish trial that leads to a conviction with a nice interminable sentence in the clinky.  And it’s not beyond the bounds of imagination that we could get something close to that (with the glaring caveat being that whole prior torture thingy, which the court will kind of have to pretend never happened – bygones and all that).

That obvious point aside, I wanted to focus on the bizarre concern about the proceedings devolving into a show trial.  The guy is ostensibly concerned that such a show trial would betray American ideals, besmirch our good image and put us in the company of “kleptocratic** totalitarian regimes.”  But his solution is…indefinite detention without any form of trial, complete with as much torture as we’re inclined to dish out.

Which totally wouldn’t stain our image, trample on our supposed principles and cause us to resemble despotic regimes. 

Moran.

Addenda:

*What does he mean “again”?  Was there some consensus amongst terrorists that New York had immunity after 9/11 and the anthrax attacks?   

**Of what signficance is ”kleptocratic” in that sentence.  Are kleptocratic totalitarian regimes known for their penchant for show trials above other totalitarian regimes?  Why?)

Somehow, this strategy seems…how do I say it…dumb as a fucking bag of rocks hanging from a stick of stupid?: 

Writing for The Nation, Aram Roston has uncovered a tangled web of former military and CIA officials, relatives of the Afghanistan President and Defense Minister and various other shady characters who act as a pipeline from the U.S. treasury to the Taliban:

In this grotesque carnival, the US military’s contractors are forced to pay suspected insurgents to protect American supply routes. It is an accepted fact of the military logistics operation in Afghanistan that the US government funds the very forces American troops are fighting. And it is a deadly irony, because these funds add up to a huge amount of money for the Taliban. “It’s a big part of their income,” one of the top Afghan government security officials told The Nation in an interview. In fact, US military officials in Kabul estimate that a minimum of 10 percent of the Pentagon’s logistics contracts–hundreds of millions of dollars–consists of payments to insurgents.

Here’s how the chain works: The U.S. government pays trucking firms to move supplies around Afghanistan to its rural and far flung outposts. These trucking companies then pay private security contracting firms, operated by druglords, warlords, the Taliban and relatives of senior Afghan Administration officials, or consortiums of any or all of them, for safe passage to American installations. As one American trucking executive said, “”The Army is basically paying the Taliban not to shoot at them. It is Department of Defense money.”"

As part of the Sunni Awakening movement in Iraq, the United States paid Sunni insurgents who previously fought American forces to secure their own neighborhoods from foreign fighters, with the promise that they would later be folded into the Iraqi national security apparatus. That is very different then the way operations are being conducted in Afghanistan, where we are essentially telling insurgents “Here is some money, just don’t attack us here. Attack us somewhere else.” Then, we give them the money to do it.

I would argue that any situation that is so fubar that we have to pay our adversaries to attack us in more convenient locales is a situation that we should seek to remove ourselves from ASAP.  Especially when we have to pay billions of dollars a month for the privilege. 

But then what do I know. I’m nothing but a soiled, anti-establishment character from the 1960s engaging in coitus.

Using the Fox News/Glenn Beck/(Gary) Rupert Murdoch hidden racism decoder ring, I’d say this interview excerpt puts Michael Steele squarely in the Killwhitey With Attitude camp:

MARTIN: One of the criticisms I’ve always had is Republicans — white Republicans — have been scared of black folks.

STEELE: You’re absolutely right. I mean I’ve been in the room and they’ve been scared of me.

Normally, pointing out the fact that the head of the RNC is a flagrant racist would be stating the obvious in a man-bites-dog kind of way.  But under the circumstances, there’s at least a little glitter on the paste.

Clearly, the biggest takeaway from the Fort Hood shootings is that political correctness has run amok, and the American people are overly cautious in calling out the Moslemofascists in our midst:

Alexios Marakis, a Greek Orthodox priest visiting the U.S., got lost in Tampa and tried to stop and ask directions from Marine reservist Jasen D. Bruce. But instead of offering help, “Bruce struck the priest on the head with a tire iron.” The reservist believed Marakis, who spoke limited English, was an Arab terrorist. Bruce chased the priest for three blocks, “and even called 911 to say that an Arabic man tried to rob him.”

Yeah, but Greece is right next to Turkey, and swarthy is swarthy, so what’s the diff, amirite? 

Either way, don’t sweat the details my fellow Americans, just ”knock off the PC nonsense” and knock in some skulls like brave Jasen Bruce. 

He keeps it realz in the face of the PC squares.  As do these irreverent bastards.

Only in very serious minds can these conceptions of the US government co-exist:

1. The US government is so hopelessly inefficient and incompetent, that any attempt to deliver government-provided health insurance (or the option thereof) to the uninsured (and some/all of the already-insured) is an unprecedented fool’s pipe dream of a fantasy of a boondoggle with no chance for any positive outcome.  Also, socialism. 

And at a price tag of $1.2 trillion dollars over ten years, there is no way we can afford to chase such fantastical chimera.

AND

2. The US government is so remarkably efficient and competent that it can transform (wholesale) Iraqi and Afghan societies (at the same time) and remake those societies into US-friendly, Western-conceived models of good governance, free market economics and liberal democracy all through multi-decade armed occupations.  These goals are easily attainable for a government so adept at devising and delivering effective political, economic, social service and governance measures, and resounding victory is almost certain, as long as we don’t lose our nerve and do something foolish like withdraw. 

And at a price tag of $3-4 trillion dollars over the past 8 years, the continuation of these policies at that burn rate for the next 25-50 years would be a bargain.

Quotable Roy:

This is the whole culture war in a nutshell: free marketers outraged that the market has rewarded something they don’t like, and practicing to be commissars in the totalitarian states of their minds.

Yeah, reminds me of all the outrage from the family values set at the prevalence of sex and violence in our culture.  It is a righteous and panicked anger, yet one totally lacking in self-awareness at the fact that the cult-of-greed capitalism - the sacrosanct ”market” that they defend tooth and nail - has  long ago realized that sex and violence sell. 

And selling being the only variable that counts, and money made the only measure of a man, so it is that every product is marketed with a prurient innuendo.  Also, lots of explosions.

But fear not oh ye faithful, our lord and savior Jesus the market will solve this conundrum on its own.  As it always does.

While the previous posts’ title titilated the imagination of many a reader, stoking an expectation that there would be some form of obituary for Irving Kristol in the post that followed (perhaps a eulogy by Keyboard Kommando?), alas, there was none.  

So now, although a tad late, allow me to pass along this paltry bit of consolation courtesy of the Demonic Shakira Worshipper hisdamnself:

Which brings me to this charming vignette, courtesy of blog commenter Harry Hopkins:

“I remember back in the late 1990s, when Ira Katznelson, an eminent political scientist at Columbia, came to deliver a guest lecture. Prof. Katznelson described a lunch he had with Irving Kristol during the first Bush administration.

“The talk turned to William Kristol, then Dan Quayle’s chief of staff, and how he got his start in politics. Irving recalled how he talked to his friend Harvey Mansfield at Harvard, who secured William a place there as both an undergrad and graduate student; how he talked to Pat Moynihan, then Nixon’s domestic policy adviser, and got William an internship at the White House; how he talked to friends at the RNC [Republican National Committee] and secured a job for William after he got his Harvard Ph.D.; and how he arranged with still more friends for William to teach at Penn and the Kennedy School of Government.

“With that, Prof. Katznelson recalled, he then asked Irving what he thought of affirmative action. ‘I oppose it,’ Irving replied. ‘It subverts meritocracy.’ “

Thanks Irving.  Awesome.*

Speaking of making meritocracies work for you, remember kids, follow these simple lessons and you will rise fast in the ranks on your way to becoming a super serious chin stroking elder statesman foreign policy elite (because you earned it!):

1.   Being “strong” on a given foreign policy subject is directly proportional to your willingness to blow people/things up, with as little hesitation as possible.  Considering any other option betrays your weakness, indecision and inner Frenchman.   Further, refusing to bomb a given country is always the equivalent of Chamberlain appeasing Hitler and such reticence will have similar results.  Always.

As a corollary, supporting a disastrous war will always earn you more credibility than opposing a disastrous war.  You probably opposed it for the wrong reasons, and would oppose the next catastrophe based on the same faulty reasoning.  Better stick with the guy with the happy trigger finger.  Just to be safe.

2. Victory can never be achieved by withdrawing troops, no matter what.  Escalation, or continuing an occupation, are themselves perpetual victory.  There is no point at which costs of an occupation outweigh the benefits.  What matters is that other countries/populations realize that no one can ever make us leave a given conflict.  Without that level of respect, we are doomed.

As a corollary: the only reason any conflict is ever unwinnable is because of lack of political will (ie traitorous dissenters on the home front weaken our spirit).

3. If there is an ongoing conflict involving US troops and it’s not going well, the answer is always send more.  There is literally no problem that more troops can’t solve.

4.  If there is an ongoing conflict NOT involving US troops, the answer is always send US troops.  Bonus points if you can think of new and unique justifications to send troops into combat, such as to escort aid after a natural disaster.

5. Diplomacy is always weak.  Merely meeting with a foreign regime is itself a gift of enormous value for the lucky regime.  Argue that it will bolster the legitimacy and popularity of the foreign regime even if our leaders are extremely unpopular with the applicable population.  

As a general rule, don’t give away your precious bodily fluids celluloid images for the mere possibility of reaching a negotiated settlement when you can bomb them into compliance instead (See #1 above).

6. The military budget must never be cut.  Cutting it even slightly will leave the US instantly and completely vulnerable to the invading [INSERT ENEMY DU JOUR] hordes.  The proper level of spending should be equal to, or greater than, the rest of the world combined.  Because what if the rest of the world teamed up on us?  What would we do then?

7. There are unlimited troops for unlimited missions.  Never let logistics or pesky facts about actual available troops interfere with advocacy for more and better wars.  Serious people don’t let such concerns interfere with being strong on a given policy.

8. Play for spite whenever possible, think of the world of international relations as a zero sum game, and treat every conflict as an existential crisis and/or the “Greatest Challenge of Our Time.”

9.  Never criticize: Israel, any actions of US troops, the size of the military budget or any active or retired general.

10.  Never question our motives, or suggest something unseemly.  We are always and only invading other countries to help them, out of a selfless magnanimity.  What do we stand to gain?  Flowers and candies only.  That is our motivating force.

11.  Never suggest that our foreign policy choices lead to resentment/backlash or anti-Americanism.  People are just jealous or evil.  Some may also be brainwashed or insufficiently grasp the fact that we’re here to help.

12. Brutal dictators that support our policies are moderate, enlightened reformers slowly implementing democracy for their adoring people.  Brutal dictators that don’t support our policies are dangerous extremists, and each the next Hitler (regardless of military strength) who need to be toppled for the sake of their long suffering people.

And so on.

(as inspired by)

(* This minor correction only bolsters my point.  Or something.)

Query: What kind of misierable low-life steals someone’s welcome mat?  What, did you also kick a puppy and punch an old lady as you were carrying it off?

Addendum: And dude, if you live in my apartment building, you won’t even get to use it without running the risk of me seeing it and us throwing down…over a fucking welcome mat.  Which would be just about the greatest casus belli ever. Unless you’re planning on gifting a used welcome mat to someone.  In which case, you are even more of a miserable son of a bitch than I imagined.

It really tied the hallway together.

Epilogue: But fuck it.  It’s the weekend, so I’m gonna go out, get drunk, mourn my welcome mat and dance like this (in my mind at least. The actual version will be decidedly, um, flailingier.  Yes, that’s a word.)