Here's a Q&A I've seen floating around, so I thought I'd list my responses so that my vast and devoted audience can gain some insight into the best blogger working today who is currently wearing my pants:
1. Which political party do you typically agree with? Neither. As the Republicans come more and more to resemble a bunch of Bible-thumping spendthrifts, I agree with them less and less. The core principle of the Democratic party seems to be “Whatever is the opposite of what the Republicans say, unless it’s really popular.” I don’t much like them, but my regard for them is not dropping over time as is my regard for the R’s.
2. Which political party do you typically vote for? Whichever is running the candidate I find less repellent. Illinois is an open primary state, so I vote in the primary of the party where there are specific candidates I want to vote for or against. But my candidate never wins, so I don’t know why I bother.
3. List the last five presidents that you voted for? I was too young by a month to vote in ’88, but I would have voted for Bush. ’92 was for Clinton. In ’96 I was too disaffected to bother voting. In 2000 I voted for Bush.
4. Which party do you think is smarter about the economy? The D’s like to stick their hands in the economy and muck around with it, via redistributive taxation, tax incentives for “socially desirable” activities, regulation, etc. To the extent that the R’s do less of these things, they’re smarter. But when it comes to running the government, do you like tax-and-spend Democrats or spend-and-don’t-tax Republicans? They both suck. The Dems a little less so these days.
5. Which party do you think is smarter about domestic affairs? They’re equally stupid in their own special ways. I could run through the list, but it’s too depressing today. Maybe later.
6. Do you think we should keep our troops in Iraq or pull them out? We made that decision last March. You can argue the wisdom of the decision to go in, but the consequences of quitting now are unthinkably bad. We’ve got to see it through.
7. Who, or what country, do you think is most responsible for 9/11? Al Qaeda specifically, but militant Islam in general. And the states that encourage it or at least allow it to flourish – Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Afghanistan (prior to the American defeat of the Taliban), Egypt, Iran, etc.
8. Do you think we will find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq? We did. That one sarin shell. But in the sense of massive stockpiles, probably not.
9. Yes or no, should the U.S. legalize marijuana? Yes.
10. Do you think the Republicans stole the last presidental election? No. If anybody stole it, it was Ralph Nader. (And I’ll bet Bush never even sent him a bouquet of flowers or anything, the ungrateful bastard.) Or maybe it was the Florida voters too dumb to perform the act of voting. The Supreme Court had to call a stop to it at some point, or we’d still be counting the damned ballots. If it had gone the other way, I’m sure it would be the Republicans alternating between crying in their beer and working themselves into white-hot spasms of fury over how the other guys stole the election.
11. Do you think Bill Clinton should have been impeached because of what he did with Monica Lewinsky? No. What he did with Monica was get head. He was impeached for lying under oath, as he should have been.
12. Do you think Hillary Clinton would make a good president? No. I would like to expand on that “no” to more fully communicate the extent to which I believe she would make a horrific president, but I have not the words.
13. Name a current Democrat who would make a great president: Joe Lieberman.
14. Name a current Republican who would make a great president: Richard Lugar.
15. Do you think that women should have the right to have an abortion? In cases of rape or incest, absolutely. As birth control, I’m not so sure. I’m still pro-choice, but not as absolutely as I once as.
16. What religion are you? Agnostic. No omnipotent deity would be obligated to arrange Its creation in such a way that it makes sense to the likes of me. And the apparent randomness and cruelty of this world may be irrelevant or even justified in some higher cosmic sense. But from where I sit… Man. This world is fucked. Up.
17. Have you read the Bible all the way through? No. But I was raised a good Baptist boy, even if it didn’t take, so I have read a fair amount of it.
18. What's your favorite book? The Last Convertible, by Anton Myrer.
19. Who is your favorite band? Favorite performer? Miles Davis’s sextet on Kind of Blue, with Cannonball Adderley on alto sax, John Coltrane on tenor, Bill Evans on piano, Paul Chambers on bass, and “Philly” Joe Jones on drums. A close second is Miles’s later quintet with Wayne Shorter on sax, Herbie Hancock on piano, Ron Carter on bass, and Tony Williams on drums. Favorite performer is (surprise) Miles.
20. Who do you think you'll vote for president in the next election? Kerry will take Illinois by a couple million votes, so it won’t really matter whom I vote for. I don’t think Bush or Kerry deserve my vote this year, so I may vote for the Libertarian as a protest. Or maybe I’ll write in Blackfive.
21. What website did you see this on first? Naked Villainy.
Representative sample: "It'd be considered harmless fun to gather 30 friends, put on horned helmets, and go pillage a nearby town."
Upon less sober reflection (note: Mmmmmm, Zinfandel) I've got to take that last post one more step. John McCain is the best man the Republican Party has. I don't claim either party, but if I were a Republican, I would hang my head in shame that my party chose to nominate a mediocrity like W. over McCain in 2000.
Bam!
UPDATE: I was going to respond to Ted's recollection in the comments to this post that McCain dropped out after being diagnosed with skin cancer. (The skin cancer came much later as I recall; maybe Ted is remembering Guliani dropping out of the Senate race after being diagnosed with prostate cancer?) So I Googled "2000 Republican primary" to refresh my memory of what happened, and I found this recent article in the Boston Globe about the Bush campaign's dirty tactics. To the modest extent that this was possible, it made me think even less of Bush.
John McCain gets it, while Dennis Hastert has been drinking the party Kool-Aid. From Yahoo! News:
"Throughout our history, wartime has been a time of sacrifice. ... What have we sacrificed?" McCain said. "As mind-boggling as expanding Medicare has been, nothing tops my confusion for cutting taxes during wartime. I don't remember ever in the history of warfare when we cut taxes."
Asked Wednesday about McCain's remarks, Hastert, who was rejected for military service because of a bad shoulder, first joked: "Who? Where's he from? A Republican?"
Then, more seriously, he said: "If you want to see sacrifice, John McCain ought to visit our young men and women at Walter Reed and Bethesda (two Washington area military hospitals). There's the sacrifice in this country. We're trying to make sure that they have the ability to fight this war, that they have the wherewithal to be able to do it. And at the same time, we have to react to keep this country strong not only militarily but economically. We want to be able to have the flexibility to do it. That's my reply to John McCain."
McCain stood fast in his reply to Hastert.
"The speaker is correct in that nothing we are called upon to do comes close to matching the heroism of our troops," he said. "All we're called upon to do is not spend our nation into bankruptcy while our soldiers risk their lives. I fondly remember a time when real Republicans stood for fiscal responsibility."
I remember it, too. It wasn't all that long ago. What happened? Our government's fiscal policy is sort of like deciding at 2 AM, after a long night of drinking, that another couple pitchers of beer is a great idea. Oh sure, there will be hell to pay later, but it feels so good right now.
Don't get me wrong, I like tax cuts as much as the next guy. But doesn't anybody remember the federal debt? It's got to be paid back. You can't spend money like a shipload of drunken sailors and cut taxes at the same time. I never thought I'd see the day when the Democrats were (at least compared to the Republicans) the party of sound fiscal policy.
Oh yeah, one more thing. Speaker Hastert? I can't believe you have the gall to suggest that John McCain doesn't understand military sacrifice. I cannot believe those words came out of your mouth. How can you not just keel over and die of embarassment? Do yourself a favor and STFU.
In my personal email today, I had 120 new messages in the Inbox. 113 of these were spam. 6 were legitimate emails from companies I do business with, but which I deleted without reading anyway. The only real message was from a friend, and it consisted entirely of the subject line, "'sup?".
Signal to noise ratio rapidly approaching zero.
Disembodied Voice of Dim Woman: Welcome to McHideous Clown's, can I help you?
Mr. Green: I'd like a steak, egg, and cheese bagel and a medium Diet Coke.
DVDW: A bacon, egg, and cheese bagel?
MG: No, steak, egg and cheese. And a medium Diet Coke.
DVDW: Do you want the meal or just the sandwich?
MG: Just the sandwich. With the Diet Coke.
DVDW: And that was a large Coke?
MG: No, a medium Diet Coke.
Helpful Display Screen: 1 MEDIUM COKE
DVDW: Okay, please pull around.
MG: [Decides preference for Diet over regular Coke isn't strong enough to justify any further attempts at communication. Shakes head and drives up.]
Dim Woman at Window: [Hands MG medium cold beverage] Here's your coffee!
MG: Thanks. [Takes drink, which turns out to taste like a 50/50 mixture of Coke and Diet.]
"Same-sex marriage is an oxymoron," said Rev. Vernon C. Lyons, pastor of Ashburn Baptist Church in Orland Park. "If we accept same-sex marriage, we may as well discard our rationality and accept square circles, dry rain, loud silence, low skyscrapers, pure adultery, honest lying and good murder."
Right. Because "marriage" is defined as being between a man and a woman. It's like when the term "woman voter" became a reality and water started flowing uphill.
This blog is the #1 Google entry for the phrase "Ted Rall sucks".
My mother would be so proud.
Today, May 17, 2004, is the beginning of the end of history. The first same-sex marriage licenses have been issued in Massachusetts.
Oh sure, the planet is still spinning on its axis same as always, the rivers aren't running red, Hillary Clinton hasn't been elected President. It doesn't seem that we have just destroyed all of civilization overnight.
But mark my words. It won't be long before the Homosexual Agenda is available in paperback, Wolfgang Puck starts inventing recipes for human infants, heterosexuals are sent to gay indoctrination camps, and the Whore of Babylon wins American Idol by repeatedly shrieking "God is dead!" as she rips Simon Cowell to pieces and devours his flesh.
Also, Ted Rall will still exist.
We're all gonna die.
The United States must accept that its occupation of Iraq will end when it transfers power to an interim Iraqi government on June 30, even though U.S. troops will lead the force that stays in the country, the French foreign minister said.
Michel Barnier said the Bush administration needs to understand that there must be "a real break" and that the caretaker Iraqi government must be consulted about the movements and operational use of the multinational force.
...
France was a staunch opponent of the war in Iraq, and Barnier ruled out sending any French troops to be part of the multilateral force. But he said France will work "in a constructive spirit" on a new U.N. resolution dealing with the transfer of sovereignty, and he stressed that France and America "have always been friends and allies."
What's French for "blow me"?
From the AP: "Catholics who vote for politicians in favor of abortion rights, stem-cell research, euthanasia or gay marriage may not receive Communion until they recant and repent in the confessional, the Roman Catholic Bishop of Colorado Springs said."
Why is it that religious organizations, many of which inject themselves into politics like this, are tax-exempt? Seems to me that if you want to play in the game, you ought to ante up.
Blackfive would have us believe that he has read a number of books without pictures.
Anybody who has met the man knows this to be a tall tale. In fact, now the truth can be told: He writes very well for someone who communicates primarily with grunts and gestures. When he does speak, it sounds eerily like Jodie Foster in Nell. The books he highlighted in his post are not books he has read, but books he has eaten.
From today's Chicago Tribune (registration required):
LONDON -- The abuse of Iraqi prisoners is causing staunch U.S. allies to re-examine their relationship with the Bush administration and is providing America's critics with dramatic and damaging evidence.
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German and French officials and citizens express vindication for their decision to stay out of the Iraq war, and they are beginning to question their overall security relationship with the United States, analysts said.
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The brutality has "confirmed everyone's worst fears, and confirmed feelings, in France and Germany especially, that they were right to stay out of this mess," said William Drozdiak, director of the German Marshall Fund's Transatlantic Center in Brussels.
"More and more Europeans are openly expressing their fear of getting too involved with the U.S.," Drozdiak said. "They are questioning whether a security relationship with the U.S. is becoming a negative instead of a positive."
Oh, no! Now the Europeans don't like us! That's so different from the way things were last week / last year / ten years ago!
Any time the Euros want to change their security relationship with the U.S., wherein the U.S. provides the all security and they provide all the bitching and snide condescention, they are heartily invited to do so.
"In normal circumstances, I could condemn the slaughtering of the American, but we are living in abnormal circumstances. I cannot condemn it now," said Egyptian columnist Nour al-Huda Zaki of Al-Arabi, who told The Associated Press that most Arab newspapers would avoid any coverage that implicitly condemned the beheading.
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Sawsan Al-Masri, a 24-year-old Gaza mother of one, smiled when asked about the beheading.
"He deserved it," she said of Berg. " . . . Do you think what the Americans did to the detainees was less ugly?"
Oh, no! You mean the Arabs and Palestinians hate us now too? That is so different from the way things were last week / last year / ten years ago!
Again, not to minimize what happened at Abu Ghraib, which should not have happened, but worrying overmuch what anybody else in the world thinks about us is a waste of time. Do you think that if we had run that prison like the Four Seasons that it wouldn't have been something else everybody was screaming about? The only way we could make everybody like us would be to totally disarm, make a gift of the entire country to the rest of the world to divide up how they see fit, then commit mass suicide by marching into the sea. And then they'd still complain that we didn't tidy up more before we left.
We shouldn't worry about Abu Ghraib because of what anybody else thinks, but because of what we think of ourselves.
Al-Qaeda would have us believe that the murder of Nicholas Berg was in retaliation for the prison abuse at Abu Ghraib. So I suppose we'd be justified in wiping out a couple of holy sites with MOAB's. Proportional response and all.
Abu Ghraib does not justify this. This does not justify Abu Ghraib, assuming the murderers were not actually in Abu Ghraib. The fact that we're not going to nuke Mecca in retaliation proves we're better than they are. Not that we should need reminding of this. Abu Ghraib represents a betrayal of our principles, while this murder represents an expression of theirs.
My doubts about the overall merits of the decision to go to war in Iraq or the ability of the Bush administration to successfully manage the effort notwithstanding, this is a prime reason why we have to win. The worst case would be that swine like them come to believe that they can defeat us if only they are sufficiently brutal.
A not-to-be missed story from Madam Cheese about how she blatantly and cruelly oppressed an idiot at work by not also being an idiot.
From the Free Lance-Star (whatever that is), comes an epistle from one Linda Wall of Concerned Women for Making America a Theocracy, Praise Jesus (Concerned Women for America for short), titled "Why is it so wrong to oppose homosexual behavior?"
Recently, there have been marches and debates in support of same-sex marriages in the Fredericksburg area. From college students all the way down to kindergartners, seduction into an unhealthy behavior is occurring in the schools of our state and our nation.
As a former lesbian who serves on the steering committee of Concerned Women for America of Virginia, I must share some truth on the subject to residents in the Fredericksburg area.
I was a college coed minding my own heterosexual life when an older woman seduced me into homosexual behavior. Oh, it started out "gay" and exciting, but the day came when I wanted out.
I know exactly what she's talking about. This is really painful for me to talk about, but... I am also a former homosexual. Yes, it's true. I was in college, minding my own healthy, normal, heterosexual business, and next thing you know I was giving the best blowjobs in the Midwest. I was young and confused, his name was Raoul, and when he introduced himself and shook my hand some of his gay rubbed off on me and was absorbed through my skin. All of a sudden, I was no longer engaging in regular manly pursuits such as drinking beer and scratching myself, but was instead skipping class to hang out in the numerous gay bathhouses of rural Indiana and listening to Bette Midler. Oh sure, it started out "gay" and exciting, but the day came when I wanted out. (But I was already "out", so I guess I wanted back "in". I couldn't think "straight".) And so I got out, and now I am a sexually repressed hypocritical liar who wants to use the legal system to inflict the morality by which I pretend to live on everybody else, because that's easier than accepting the truth about myself.
What's so wrong about that?
Is bourbon good for a cough? It is, isn't it?
Anyone?
UPDATE 7:50 PM First dose of medicine all gone. Improvement, but cough not completely gone. Will require second dose.
UPDATE 8:08 PM Second dose being applied.
UPDATE: 8:37 PM Second dose completed. Cough? What cough? Still, better safe than sorry. Third dose definitely in order. Mr. Green out.
Because there can never be too many crazy people in Congress, Cynthia McKinney is running to recapture her old seat in Georgia's 4th District. McKinney (D-Outer Space), who never met a conspiracy theory she didn't like, won't have to face the woman who ousted her in 2002 because Denise Majette is running for Senate this year.
McKinney is known for, among other things, insinuating that President Bush had advance notice of the 9/11 attacks and did nothing so that big defense contractors could profit. She is also koo-koo for Cocoa Puffs.
Thomas Sowell on HillaryCare 2004:
A huge headline on the front of a recent issue of the New York Times Magazine said more than they intended: "Now Are We Ready to Talk About Health Care?" Inside was an article with the same title by Hillary Clinton.
The casual arrogance of that question is staggering. We talked endlessly about Hillary's proposed government-run medical system a decade ago and decided against it for many reasons. Now this re-run of the same issues proceeds as if the question is whether the rest of us are "ready" to talk about such things.
The reason I oppose government-run health care is that I have seen up close and personal how the choices you make with health care can have unimaginably (if you've never been there) huge consequences on your life. I don't want some bureaucrat deciding for me or my family what constitutes "good enough" health care. I want to decide for myself what tradeoffs I want to make between health care and other goods. As Sowell says:
"Universal health care" is a lovely phrase with political resonance in some quarters. But what does it mean concretely?
First of all, since people differ in what they want, nothing can be "universal" without being mandatory. In other words, we are talking about forcing people to belong to whatever program the politicians and bureaucrats come up with, regardless of what the people themselves might prefer.
...
What the lovely phrase "universal health care" boils down to is politicians and bureaucrats forcing people to get their medical treatment and pharmaceutical drugs the way the politicians and bureaucrats decide.
Don't worry, though. Hillary knows what's best for you, because she's smarter than you and she cares.
Jeff Goldblum is watching you poop.
A commenter named "jackofnice" commented last week on an old Ted Rall post of mine. He asks/notes:
"Thanks Mr Green for what? Ignorance? Rall's trying to make a point here. American and Iraqi lives are being wasted. Bush and his hillbilly advisors have no idea what the hell they got us into. And anyone who thinks that only "terrorists" want us out of Iraq is either truly ignorant, or truly despicable."
I respond:
Yeah. I'm not as positive about the war as I was last November. Not as sure it is an essential part of the overall effort against terror, not as positive about our ability and willingness to see it through, not as sure the Bush administration had an idea of why we were doing it that would make any sense or had any idea that we would be committing most of our military force to a protracted exercise in nation building - an activity that Bush had in the past explicitly disavowed. I'm also not sure that bringing democracy to a nation where most of the population would like to vote themselves into an Islamist theocracy is such a hot idea. I'm starting to think this was a colossal misjudgement.
But, having said that, Ted Rall is still an asshole. We still aren't there for the oil, Iraq still isn't an American colony, Iraqis who kill U.S. "collaborators" are still murderers, and most of the people who are fighting us there really don't have the best interests of the Iraqi people at heart. And did I mention that Ted Rall really, really is an asshole? That part of my post, I think, has withstood the test of time. I'm pretty sure the observation that Ted Rall is an asshole is as close to eternal truth as I've come on this blog.
If a million monkeys sat down with a million pads of paper and a million pencils, sooner or later one of them would scribble out the complete works of Shakespeare.
The other 999,999 would produce work that is still funnier, more cogent, and better-drawn than Ted Rall working at the peak of his abilities, such as they are.
Actually, if the monkeys just flung their feces at the paper, it would still compare favorably to Rall's entire body of work. Pat Tillman is dead and this idiotic, cackling ghoul is walking the earth, and if you can face that fact and still believe in a benevolent God then I tip my hat to you.
Charles Krauthammer nails one of my biggest pet peeves in this week's Time. Everybody repeat after me: The President does not create jobs. Industry creates jobs.
If I had a nickel for every time I was only just barely able to restrain myself from grabbing whatever large, sturdy object was handy and bashing in the skull of some poor unfortunate who said "The X Administraton created Y new jobs", I'd be able to pay for real therapy for my anger issues instead of just self-medicating with bourbon and Scotch.
Or, more realistically, in addition to self-medicating with bourbon and Scotch.