One thing I find amusing in the weeks since the election is the backpedaling of conservative pundits on the definition of a mandate.

If you’ll remember in 2004, when Bush “won” with a whopping 50.7% of the popular vote, you couldn’t turn on a television or radio without hearing the word “mandate” about a hundred billion dozen times per hour, as though the outcome was some sort of epic landslide. Robert Novak crawled out from his coffin in the cellar of a Transylvanian castle long enough to hiss out the following in response to a question on whether Bush’s “win” was really a mandate:

Of course it is. It’s a 3.5 million vote margin. But the people who are saying that it isn’t a mandate are the same people who were predicting that John Kerry would win. … So the people who say there’s not a mandate want the president, now that he’s won, to say, Oh, we’re going to accept the liberalism that the — that the voters rejected. But Mark, this is a conservative country, and it showed it on last Tuesday.

Peggy Noonan warbled out the following on the same topic:

George W. Bush is the first president to win more than 50% of the popular vote since 1988… The president received more than 59 million votes, breaking Ronald Reagan’s old record of 54.5 million…It will be hard for the mainstream media to continue, in the face of these facts, the mantra that we are a deeply and completely divided country. But they’ll try!

And, of course, all you have to do is toss this idea into the echo chamber of conservative commentators, and the message gets spread far and wide as incontrovertible fact: Move over, everyone — the country has spoken, and our Fearless Decider now has a free pass to oppress gays, privatize everything, create even larger gaps between haves and have-nots, and basically do whatever in fuck we damn well please.

Well, jump ahead four years, and what do these same pundits (and likely the myriad others who drink the Kool-Aid they make) think about Obama’s victory with 53% of the vote?

Here’s Robert Novak, just before grumpily slamming his coffin shut:

The first Democratic Electoral College landslide in decades did not result in a tight race for control of Congress.

When Franklin D. Roosevelt won his second term for president in 1936, the defeated Republican candidate, Gov. Alf Landon of Kansas, won only two states, Maine and Vermont, and Democrats controlled both houses of Congress by wide margins.

But Obama’s win was nothing like that. He may have opened the door to enactment of the long-deferred liberal agenda, but he neither received a broad mandate from the public nor the needed large congressional majorities.

[Emphasis mine.]

What did Peggy “our country is united under the banner of conservatism” Noonan have to say about this?

This is already a dramatic time — two wars, economic collapse — and people are rattled. “Moderation in all things.” It should be noted here that the split in the popular vote was 53% to 46%. That is a solid seven-point win for the new president elect, but it also means more than 56 million voters went for John McCain in a year when all the stars were aligned against the Republicans…Mr. Obama has a significant portion of the nation to win over. He acknowledged this in his sterling victory speech, when he spoke of “those whose support I have yet to earn.” He does have yet to earn it.

So 50.7% > 53%, apparently. I mean, that’s grade school math, right there, and they fuck it up so bad it’s pathetic.

Now, it’s true that over 46% of the country voted for John McCain — over 50 million Americans. That’s a lot of people, and an election victory doesn’t mean you get to just ignore that many people just because your side was victorious. Real democracy means considering the wishes of the minority as well. But, see, here’s the difference: Conservative policies tend to be extremely oppressive, or at least facilitating of oppression. Bush had to ignore the wishes and demands of liberals, because implementation of conservative policies is on the whole fundamentally incompatible with freedom.

For instance, it’s impossible to dictate who an adult can and can’t love while also giving that same adult the ability to decide for themselves who they do and do not love. It’s impossible to give religious freedom while denying the right to perform marriage rights to churches and individuals who believe they can’t deny any two consenting adults the ability to marry each other regardless of genitals. It’s impossible to force teachers to propagate the message that science has nothing to do with the scientific method while also allowing them to teach their students what science actually is. It’s impossible to outlaw abortion while still giving a woman the right to her own body. It’s impossible to ban pornography and contraception while at the same time giving individuals the right to sexual freedom.

Conversely, Obama can for the most part ignore conservatives’ wishes and demands, because conservatives in the end are still free to do as they themselves please (save for oppressing other people, which is a right they should unquestionably and forever be denied). Their churches don’t have to marry gays and they themselves don’t have to have gay relationships just because gay marriage is legalized. They can still send their children to “Sunday School” without worrying that some third party has the right to come into their Bible study classrooms and countermand everything they teach. They have the right not to get abortions or use contraception, and not to look at pornography.

Ultimately, it’s difficult to claim a real electoral mandate in the case of either a 50.7% or a 53% win. Obviously, Obama won by a larger percentage, substantially more electoral votes (which is really meaningful, given that the Electoral College is skewed in favor of more conservative states) and over 7 million more people, but anything in the range of just over 50% isn’t really a mandate. The real mandate comes from the fact that liberal policies give the individual the right to be individual — that they don’t oppress anyone in the same way conservative policies almost always do. The real mandate comes from the fact that oppression is wrong.

Jabberwock

For the first time in a long, long while, I’m feeling proud to be an American. I know Obama isn’t going to fix every problem in the world, and that having a rather immense majority in Congress, while nice, isn’t necessarily going to bring about all the necessary reforms and things that we so desperately need, but it’s finally — at long last — a step in the right direction, an indication that there is still hope for us and that we are capable of learning from our experiences. So thank you, America, for not completely fucking things up.

In Michigan, a medical marijuana initiative passed by a landslide, surprisingly, and restrictions on stem cell research were loosened.

There is, however, some bad news out in California, where cruel, bigoted morons managed to triumph over morality and decency and Civil Rights and human kindness by passing Proposition 8. I’m feeling such a profound hatred for so many people right now in an Ahab-style “chest/cannon heart-fire” way that if my wrath could somehow manifest itself, millions of humanity’s most bigoted members would suddenly find themselves immortal with instant regenerative capabilities, roasting ceaselessly and inescapably on the surface of the sun. It really is a shame that we have so little protection against the use of democracy as a tool of oppression.

If these people, these immoral cretins, are going to piss-parade around the ever-increasingly-laughable idea of the “sanctity of marriage”, then I’m going to have to demand that they outlaw divorce, and, further, that people (with much overlap with those who voted “yes”, here, I’m sure) stop dressing up their hideous little inbred monstrosities of pets in tuxedos and dresses and giggling in embarrassing, anthropomorphizing glee about how Pongo and Perdita are getting “married”.

Shame on you, California. Words cannot possibly express the profundity of my disappointment in so, so many of you. To every one of you who voted “yes” on Proposition 8: May every misfortune and tragedy that has the opportunity to befall you succeed in doing so, so that you may yourselves sample the misery you’ve inflicted (and will likely continue to inflict) on so many of your fellow human beings — people who have done you no wrong, yet you persist in your baseless sadism and cruelty.

Let the outcome of Proposition 8 serve as a reminder that we cannot ease up after this one victory, however major — as meaningful and amazing this election may have been, it’s only one battle in what will assuredly be a long, difficult struggle to drag the ignorant kicking and screaming (and perhaps kicking them and screaming at them) into enlightenment.

Jabberwock

This election will be an illustration of how America deals with having taken a wrong turn: We’re seeing signs ahead saying “ASS RAPE: 2 MILES” and “PRIVATE ROAD: TRESPASSERS WILL BE SHOT ON SIGHT”, and so the question is, do we turn around and try to get back onto a road that might actually take us somewhere, or do we just speed up and wrap our car around a tree? It’s alarming that we actually have to wrestle over the steering wheel with the other passengers in order to keep the car on the road.

Which is why I’m probably going to be depressed even if Obama wins, because I’ll still have to come to terms with the fact that the 40%+ of American voters who’ll be casting their ballot for McCain/Palin are gleefully voting for one of the worst tickets in history after eight years of one of the worst administrations in history. Granted, I don’t think Obama is going to revolutionize the world the way many people think he is, but it’s at least a step in the right direction after years of plodding ever deeper into a bog of radioactive, tar-like shit.

Jabberwock

It’s strange to me how so many Americans get so easily lured into this trap, along the campaign trail, of caring so much about how much money about three percent of the population makes that they lose sight of the importance of the quality of their own lives.

First, let’s address the subject in question, and then we’ll get to the obsession with “redistribution of wealth” as some kind of ideological profanity.

There’s something very wrong with the fact that Person A is paid maybe $12,000 a year to successfully flip hamburgers while Person B is paid $58,500,000 a year (at least for the first year) to unsuccessfully run AIG, to the point of nearly destroying the American economy. I’m sure we can all agree about the problem with paying executives large amounts regardless of performance. Where our paths may diverge, however, if you subscribe to laissez-faire and trickle-down economics, is that I see something tremendously wrong with Person B receiving 4,875 times the yearly income of Person A regardless of whether they’re not running the business into the ground.

No one could credibly argue that Person B is doing 4,875 times the work as Person A. Granted, it’s more stressful a job in certain ways, and one’s decisions regarding the direction of a company will have much greater an impact than deciding how much salt to put on the fries when you take them out of the deep fryer, but the difference certainly isn’t enough to warrant that much of a pay disparity. Surely those decision-making skills aren’t equivalent to the mind power of thousands of people.

In the 1950s-60s, the average executive salary was roughly 20 to 50 times as much as the average employee. Over the last half-century, it’s gone up into the hundreds and thousands, averaging out at around 411. Have executive positions become that much more valuable over that span of time? Doubtful, especially when you consider how many business-damaging executive scandals, abuses, and mismanagements there have been over the last eight years alone — and those are just the ones we know about. Meanwhile, the minimum wage has, adjusted for inflation, decreased on the whole over that same period of time, from an average of around $6.00 in the late 50s and through the 60s to an average of around $4.50 from 2000-2007 (in 1996 dollars).

So, executives, on the whole, are making far more than ever before, and — especially those performing poorly — far more than their jobs actually warrant. Yet, the biggest concern seems to be ensuring these executives and other Americans making millions of dollars a year will be able to keep everything they made, or at least not pay any more in taxes than Americans making only tens of thousands or a couple hundred thousand dollars a year, since imposing greater taxes on those who make more is somehow “unfair”. Hey, after all, the guy with eight houses has precisely as much to lose by the failure of American social programs as the guy living in a trailer park, right?

See, some people have a problem with wrapping their minds around why the rich need to pay more in taxes than the poor. One of the primary reasons by far is that the rich have far more to lose when government programs fail. Either you directly have more to lose when, say, the military or the police force or the fire department fails and you lose one or all of your houses and/or are robbed, or you have more to lose indirectly when those whose work your wealth is dependent on no longer have, say, a bus system to get to work, or access to a working medical system to keep them healthy. (Of course, beyond that, there’s the fact that “what’s mine is mine” is a really rather primitive way of thinking, but I’ll get to that in the “The Case Against Economic Liberalism” essays.)

We also run into the illusion that higher taxes on those with higher incomes is somehow a disincentive for success, but that’s rather a specious assertion when you consider that A) People who make $12,000/year don’t all just pack it in and shoot themselves and still do their best to make as much as they can; B) It’s not like life is going to be miserable if you’re taking home $6 million out of $10 million per year. I don’t see any of those people packing it in and shooting themselves, either, because their success is somehow “limited”.

There’s also the claim — also mostly specious — that “I EARNED that! It’s MINE!” which is laughable when you consider that many people in the wealthiest category of Americans make a large amount of money simply from capital gains. It’s like leaving a piece of bread out on the edge of the sink and congratulating yourself months later for all the hard work you put into getting mold to grow. (Here’s another place where the “disincentive” argument is ridiculous: Are people going to suddenly say ‘well, fine, I won’t make more money just from having more money’ and take their balls and bats and go home?) But even for the wealth that doesn’t come from capital gains, if you’re making more than a few million dollars a year, you have to have one hell of an ego to claim you actually earned all of it, compared to all the work done by those making less than even $100,000/year. You’re delusional or in denial if you don’t think that a large portion of what you’re making at that point is just an added bonus for being one of the elite.

Yet the fairness of putting soft, flexible limits on exorbitant salaries and amassments of wealth in order to better the lives of the vast majority of us who didn’t have the same opportunities is considered this vile, terrible concept, and referred to in a snide and disgusted tone as “redistribution of wealth” as though it were the ideological equivalent of a profanity. And somehow, there are Americans who eat that up even though what they’re all clamoring to drag out with pitch forks and lynch is something that when implemented benefits them tremendously at the minor inconvenience of 2% of the population, and when unimplemented makes hundreds of millions suffer and fall into poverty and credit cesspools so that 2% of the population can ultimately keep even more money than the immense amounts they already rake in — numbers so large that any difference is almost arbitrary and serves no purpose but bragging rights.

What in the fuck, America? Wake up!

Jabberwock

My sense of reality has been absolutely shattered. It’s… I mean… if this isn’t real, then what is? Now I feel like anything could happen! Pigs raining from the sky… hats growing teeth and developing an appetite for human brains… light waves from the sun turning into water on contact with the color green. I mean, how could this have been a fabrication?

Well, it turns out that it was. That’s right, the woman with the fake-looking shiner and the “knife wound” that looked like fingernail scratches and the tale of the amazing gigantic scary black liberal who was able to somehow psychically figure out which car belonged to her on a crowded street apparently made up the whole thing.

Gee. Shocker.

Jabberwock

I don’t know that it was always this way, but, for as long as I can remember, just as we move into the final weeks of the Presidential campaign the focus shifts to the undecided voters. “Who are they?” the news anchors ask. “And how might they determine the outcome of this election?”

Then you’ll see this man or woman — someone, I always think, who looks very happy to be on TV. “Well, Charlie,” they say, “I’ve gone back and forth on the issues and whatnot, but I just can’t seem to make up my mind!” Some insist that there’s very little difference between candidate A and candidate B. Others claim that they’re with A on defense and health care but are leaning toward B when it comes to the economy.

I look at these people and can’t quite believe that they exist. Are they professional actors? I wonder. Or are they simply laymen who want a lot of attention?

To put them in perspective, I think of being on an airplane. The flight attendant comes down the aisle with her food cart and, eventually, parks it beside my seat. “Can I interest you in the chicken?” she asks. “Or would you prefer the platter of shit with bits of broken glass in it?”

To be undecided in this election is to pause for a moment and then ask how the chicken is cooked.

You can find the full essay at the other end of this link.

Jabberwock

While I’m all in favor of dogs receiving treatment for injuries and overwork, it’s a little fucked up to me that there are a bunch of dogs getting better healthcare treatment than hundreds of millions of human Americans, all on the taxpayers’ dollar. It’s not that I don’t support a single-payer healthcare system or anything — I’m all for socialized healthcare, since I strongly believe that being alive and healthy should be a right and not a commodity — but it’s infuriating that government officials are green-lighting this kind of shit while letting vast numbers of the uninsured suffer because of ridiculous “everything needs to be privatized” ideologies that would be horrific if fully implemented but are even worse when some of their so-called proponents are actually corporatists who spend even more of taxpayers’ money than socialist-capitalists ever would.

Jabberwock

After spending the last week or so riling up American prejudice and hatred with ridiculous accusations that push all the right fear buttons for a particular variety of Americans — the type who subsequently chant violent sentiments that terrify Americans like myself — McCain is now scrambling desperately to figure out a way to weasel out of being called on his shit.

I still don’t quite get why anyone would want to vote for this asshole.

Jabberwock

So, the McCain campaign has been stirring up a snake pit of reactionary morons in order to incite hatred against Obama over his working on an educational board with a guy who set off some bombs in Washington D.C. almost half a century ago, who has since had the charges dropped against him, become a professor, and won Chicago’s Citizen of the Year award.

Either McCain and Palin are just so profoundly goddamned dumb that they had no clue that there are many particularly ignorant Americans who would react this way, working themselves up into a terror tizzy wherein anything that sets off even the remotest neuronal association with 9/11 puts them into a kind of irrational base-brain panic mode where clear facts and logic can be suspended so that the witch hunt they feel is necessary to protect their families can continue unabated and the perceived danger — however illusory — can be eliminated, or they actually want to get an angry mob to lynch Barack Obama.

On that note, it makes me so confident for a better, brighter future that over 40% of American voters plan on casting their ballot for the ticket that’s either extremely just profoundly fucking dumb and out of touch with the people, or incredibly evil and manipulative and willing to incite lynch mobs and keep children from finding out what “bad touch” means so long as it helps them get into office. (And don’t give me any shit about “well, the McCain campaign is urging people to be respectful” — if you take a basket full of snakes and shake it as hard as you can, release it in a preschool and then sing a lullaby, you don’t get points for trying to calm the snakes.)

One would think that inciting an angry mob against an individual would fall under the definition of “terrorism”. I am genuinely afraid that one of these stupid pieces of shit is going to take it upon themselves to assassinate Obama.

But no, that’s not terrorism — actually inciting terror like that by stirring up violence and hatred. Geez, what was I thinking? Terrorism is serving on some education board with a jumped-up hippie asshole who set off some non-fatal bombs half a century ago and making it clear that you detested what the man did back when you were eight years old.

Somehow, eventually, these hatred-mongering motherfuckers will reap exactly what they are sowing, and I assure you it will be one incredibly ugly potato.

Jabberwock

Right Down Their Throats

So, are advocates of laissez-faire economics ignorant or evil?

If history is any indication, there’s strong evidence for the latter. See, the funny thing about laissez-faire economic policies is that they’re generally extremely unpopular. When people have a say on economic and business issues (especially when they actually make an effort to educate and inform themselves, and aren’t just led by the nose via manufactured consent, which I’ll address in another section), they have this strange tendency to vote against things that will drive them into destitution. For instance, very few people (aside from business owners and the foot-soldier proponents of laissez-faire economics with delusions that they’ll themselves somehow magically become millionaires the second we adopt ‘pure’ capitalism) are going to vote positively on an initiative to abolish the minimum wage.

Leaders throughout the world have discovered this to be true, which is why every implementation of broadly-applied laissez-faire policies has come not through democratic processes but through the complete sidestepping thereof, usually including suppressing other individual freedoms and imprisoning those with opposing viewpoints — a necessity when pushing through policies that are intrinsically unpopular with an informed working-class majority.

In her thoroughly-researched book The Shock Doctrine, in which she depicts the disturbing untold history of liberal economics, Naomi Klein provides numerous examples of such violations of freedoms that were committed in order to push through Chicago School doctrines of corporatism and laissez-faire economics. In Chile, Pinochet and his regime murdered and “disappeared” critics of the shock-therapy-style laissez-faire policies he was pushing through at the behest of Chicago School Friedmanites known as “The Chicago Boys”. The same tactics took place in country after country throughout South America.

Of course, those countries weren’t democracies, which is part of the point, really — in order to push through radical Chicago School capitalist policies in countries that were otherwise on their way to nationalizing companies and implementing enlightened social policies, militant right-wing factions had to pull off coups and eliminate democracy and collectivist leanings. But the same happened in newly-formed democracies as well: Poland, for instance, just after breaking free of the Communist rule of the USSR in favor of a socialist/nationalist movement, was forced by the United States and the IMF (at this point stacked heavily with Chicago Boys) to adopt laissez-faire capitalist policies that sold off publicly-owned businesses to foreign interests in order for the country to receive any kind of debt relief. (One of our favorite things to do, it seems, is force newly-liberated countries — like Bolivia — to pay for the debts of their oppressors, thus effectively continuing their oppression indefinitely.)

These policies — which the public never would have voted for, and which defied everything they expected from the leaders they elected — were pushed through in back-room deals without any democratic oversight. Of course, the leaders of these countries were hardly to blame — what real choice did they have, burdened with the debts of the regimes from which they were recently liberated, and with the only possible help (e.g. the IMF) demanding that the only way they’d receive any debt relief was through implementation of these policies?

What happened — consistently — was exactly what one would expect: The lower class expanded immensely, poverty erupted, a handful of the already-wealthy or -powerful increased their fortunes, and Western interests made massive amounts of money from speculation and buying up all the formerly-subsidized or nationalized businesses.

In Chile, for instance, “45 percent of the population had fallen below the poverty line. The richest 10 percent of Chileans, however, had seen their incomes increase by 83 percent. Even in 2007, Chile remained one of the most unequal societies in the world.” In Poland, “unemployment skyrocketed, and in 1993 it reached 25 percent in some areas — a wrenching change in a country that, under Communism, for all its many abuses and hardships, had no open joblessness. [...] For those under twenty-four, the situation is far worse: 40 percent of young workers were unemployed in 2006, twice the EU average. Most dramatic are the number of people in poverty: in 1989, 15 percent of Poland’s population was living below the poverty line; in 2003, 59 percent of Poles had fallen below the line.” (From The Shock Doctrine)

So you tell me: Does it seem as though the liberal economists responsible had the best interests of the general public in mind, with “the Market” bringing about a new era of prosperity for the general populace, or was it more about increasing the prosperity of a handful at the expense of the many, screwing over entire countries in order to accomplish this supposedly “free market”? I guess that’s the thing, really — whose market freedom is it? Certainly not the working class. And unequivocally not Iraq, where all of this gets even worse.

Continued in Part IV: Everybody Wants Iraq to Wind a Piece of String Around

Jabberwock

Say you’re one of Sarah Palin’s associates who was called to testify in the ongoing probe — one of the ones who finally gave in and decided to, y’know, actually comply with a court order. You’ve already demonstrated that you’re willing to break the law by refusing to comply with subpoenas — what’s to stop you from lying? If you already clearly have no respect for the legal process involved, there’s no real reason for anyone to expect what you say to have any greater a respect for it just because you finally broke down and agreed to be present to give a statement. It’s practically meaningless to even show up at this point. What Palin and her friends have done, effectively, is ensure that regardless the conclusion of the probe (if it actually carries through to completion, read below), she will forever be potentially guilty if she’s “exonerated” by her associates’ statements — perhaps not legally, but realistically. We can, at this point, never know the REAL truth based on witness testimony, since there’s immense doubt as to whether they’re telling the truth.

Palin is right that the probe has been tainted by partisan politics — her own. As soon as she became a candidate for the vice presidency, an investigation that had already been in progress was suddenly something she felt she didn’t have to participate in because it was potentially politically damaging and she just had better things to do than respond to an investigation’s questions that Americans deserve to know the answers to.

One thing’s for certain: If the probe is indeed shut down, as many Republicans and the extremely inappropriately-named “Liberty Legal Foundation” (unless “liberty” refers to “ours and not yours”) are demanding happens, then Sarah Palin is even more guilty of abusing her authority for personal gain than what she’s accused of doing in the probe itself.

Jabberwock

The McCain/Palin campaign has recently begun attacking Obama for “associating with terrorists”. Specifically, a man named Bill Ayers, formerly a militant activist associated with Weather Underground (though all charges against him were apparently dropped decades ago), now a University of Illinois professor with whom Obama has met a few times over the last decade.

Palin cited an article in Saturday’s New York Times about Obama’s relationship with Ayers, now 63. But that article concluded that “the two men do not appear to have been close. Nor has Mr. Obama ever expressed sympathy for the radical views and actions of Mr. Ayers, whom he has called ’somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was 8.’ ”

Several other publications, including the Washington Post, Time magazine, the Chicago Sun-Times, The New Yorker and The New Republic, have debunked the idea that Obama and Ayers had a close relationship.

Now, we could sit here all day laughing about how pathetic and desperate this makes the McCain/Palin campaign look, dragging up shit from almost half a century ago when Obama himself was fucking eight years old. We could talk about how people can change, and that Ayers is now a professor and that regardless of what he was doing four decades ago, there might be just a slight difference between 1960s Ayers and 2000s Ayers… or that meeting with someone several times over the course of a decade hardly qualifies as “palling around”, as Palin referred to it… or we could talk about what a massive fucking waste of time it is to expend so much effort on these kinds of tactics… or how pathetic it is for them to apparently be banking their entire campaign on mud-slinging attack politics… or any of the other logical, rational conclusions that can easily be drawn that clearly illustrate that McCain’s and Palin’s accusations are fucking ridiculous.

Instead, how about we take an equally ridiculous look at John McCain’s own questionable history with American enemies:

FACT: John McCain was seen in direct proximity with the NVA during the Vietnam War.

FACT: John McCain was at least a pointed stick’s distance away from NVA soldiers.

FACT: Sure, he was put in a cage, but there are many people who enjoy that. This may go beyond “palling around” and well into an erotic relationship.

FACT: John McCain was ultimately released by the NVA — what kind of “enemy” could they have considered McCain if they let him go?

QUESTION: If John McCain was really against the NVA and Vietcong, then why was he captured? Why didn’t he go out guns blazing?

QUESTION: John McCain: Buddy to the NVA? Friend to militant Communism? …ENEMY of AMERICA?!!???!?!??

Edit: I was a moron and, as reader JC points out, got my Vietnamese War hostiles mixed up. This has been remedied. I’ve corrected the mistake, but didn’t want to make it seem as though I never made it.

Jabberwock

Q: My car doesn’t run! What’s wrong with it?

A: It doesn’t matter what’s wrong with it. Let’s just fix it.

Q: How much will it cost me?

A: Well, since we’re not even going to attempt to diagnose the cause of the problem, we’re just going to replace each part starting alphabetically and see if it has any effect. Now, if it turns out the problem is your, say, carburetor, it’ll cost you probably under a thousand. But if it’s, say, your transmission, on the other hand, it’ll run you maybe twenty grand?

Q: Wouldn’t it just be easier and more affordable for everyone involved to actually just figure out the cause and then address that?

A: No, because I DON’T WANT TO ARGUE WITH ANYONE ABOUT THE CAUSE OF THE PROBLEM BECAUSE THERE STANDS A GOOD CHANCE OF IT IMPLYING THAT USE OF GASOLINE MIGHT BE PARTIALLY RESPONSIBLE.

Jabberwock

Presidential and Vice-Presidential Debates Drinking Game instructions: Every time you hear the word “maverick”, drink.

NOTE: Be sure to have at least a case of beer handy, or at least two full bottles of hard liquor.

Jabberwock

So, after we bombed Iraqis with more Tomahawk missiles in a single day than were used over five weeks during the Gulf War, allowed the widespread looting of houses and museums despite being warned about it prior to the invasion by experts and advisers, eliminated millions of Iraqi jobs so that U.S. contractors could take them over — and subsequently fail to do the jobs and rebuild only about ten percent of the infrastructure they were all collectively paid billions of dollars to do — and fired a bunch of soldiers (many of which had joined the Baath party just to keep or enhance their jobs) who took their guns home angrily, and then put out a per-head reward for the arrests of “suspected terrorists” (70-90% of which were released after being tortured and humiliated and told it was all “a mistake”) which effectively turned our military prison facilities into factories for creating insurgents, and failed to take the steps necessary to prevent sectarian violence, and stamped out local Iraqi elections so that Paul Bremer could install his appointed government that was far more friendly to the wholesale selling-off of Iraq and its infrastructures and businesses to U.S. contractors (nearly all of which have strong ties to high-ranking American political officials)… I’m not entirely sure what “winning” could possibly look like at this point.

It’s like setting your house on fire to find your cat, and then it comes charging out the door and you’re all “yay, I won the cat-finding game!”

Jabberwock