Who writes this shit?

I signed up for spam from the odious RNC so that I can keep tabs on what bile the nefarious Ken Mehlman is spewing to the base. Today brings some good stuff. You can also read the full text at www.gop.com/News/Read.aspx?ID=5411 (sorry, you'll have to cut and paste, as I don't want to show up as a referrer in the gop.com logs).

Conservatism is the ideology of the future. Republicans are driving the course of history with new solutions to promote opportunity at home and freedom abroad. And it is the left, including unfortunately many of todays [sic] Democratic leaders, who seek to turn back the clock and obstruct the march of history. Today we are the party of freedom and progress. And the Democrats have become the party of reactionary liberalism. ...
[...]
You see, many of today's reactionary Democratic leaders aren't democrats. They're elitists. Democrats trust the people. They don't. ... [Ed: D'you mean 'Republicans trust the people,' Kenny-boy?]

Let's see, where have we heard this type of talk before?

Will the insanity never stop?

From Road to Surfdom:

Bad news: deaths from cervical cancer are on the increase.

Good news: there's a new vaccine that stops the virus that causes the cancer.

Unfortunate news: the virus in question, human papilloma virus (HPV), is sexually transmitted.

Obvious news: you simply have to vaccinate girls before they become sexually active.

Unbelievable news: "religious groups are gearing up to oppose vaccination, despite a survey showing 80 per cent of parents favour vaccinating their daughters." Bridget Maher of the Family Research Council, a leading Christian lobby group says, "Giving the HPV vaccine to young women could be potentially harmful, because they may see it as a licence to engage in premarital sex."

Krugman on health care

Fantastic Krugman piece in today's NYT on the bloated wastefulness of the American private health-care system. Every American should be aware of these fundamental problems. (Yes, if only.)

There was an interesting bit on NPR this morning about Sigmund Freud and his nephew Edward Bernays, dean of American advertising and public relations, who was the first to figure out how to sell stuff to people not through reason but by appealing to their base instincts. In the 1930s, Bernays discovered that Josef Goebbels had apparently applied some of his theories in whipping up anti-Semitism.

Thinking about Emigrating

Well, I came back from New Zealand convinced we should move there, at least for a couple of years. It's a beautiful, sane country, and who ever says, when they're on their deathbed, "I really wish I hadn't lived abroad. What a big waste of time that was."

Max was, as some of our readers have no doubt heard through private channels, less convinced. Mr. Biscuit is more cosmopolitan than Mrs. Biscuit, and expects a little bit more from a big city than Auckland can give him. Mrs. Biscuit saw lots of beaches, a couple of decent bookstores, fabulous produce, dairy, meat, and wine, and a possible future in which she never has to hear the words "wintry mix" again, and that was enough for her.

So we still haven't decided what we're doing.

Some people have commented to me that it seems like, since we got back from New Zealand, my reasons for wanting to leave are less about politics and more about what seemed great about New Zealand. This is true, and it is partly due to my actually having seen the place, and liked it. But it's also because I'm feeling a little bit tired of my role as the torture girl, and because telling people we're thinking of moving to New Zealand because I really like beaches and sauv blanc is easier than calling their entire worldview and existence into question by saying we're leaving for political reasons. Which would you rather hear at a dinner party? "I'd like to leave because I don't want to be a torturer, and I think our country has been taken over by insane people." or "Well, New Zealand just seems like a cool place, and I've never lived abroad before." One of those statements requires that you consider for yourself just how insane America has become, and just how much more insane you think it might get. One of those statements requires you to really consider that people might make real, life-changing decisions on the basis of politics. It requires you to think about the fact that our country tortures people. How much easier it is to leave the decision in the realm of the personal. Just an adventure we'd like to have. We almost moved to France a few years ago, cuz Max likes it. No one objected to that. Perhaps we would have returned eventually; perhaps not. Lots of people become expats for personal reasons. They leave, and they just never come back.

But to say "I'm leaving because the United States disgusts me, and I think the country is getting more and more dangerous (yes, even for us!)" -- this is unacceptable. "No," you say. "Stay and fight! It's precisely good people like you that we need." But I ask you, oh friends and family, would you prefer me to stay and go to protests and be arrested (perhaps for civil disobedience, perhaps for nothing at all, just for being there.)? Shall we spend our money on legal fees instead of moving companies? Or is what you mean that we should stay and fight, in a quiet way, in a safe way.? Why go looking for trouble?

Leaving is a radical option. Fine. Yes. But these are radical times. Time Magazine thinks Ann Coulter is an important public intellectual. The U.S. Air Force Academy is a hotbed of evangelical Christian harrassment of non-Christians. Bill Frist thinks the filibuster is being used as a weapon in a "against people of faith," while Tom Delay blames Congress for letting decades of judicial review go by unchallenged. Some dumbfuck on Fox News is propagating the meme that Iraq was behind the Oklahoma City Bombing. Republicans are blaming Democrats for turning Terri Schiavo into a partisan political battle. The White House, surprise surprise, is blocking investigation into who decided it was a good idea to pay Armstrong Williams to hawk No Child Left Behind. Rick Santorum complains that the Democrats are using the filibuster to "push through their agenda," and indulge in minority rule.

Don't tell me things will just get better. These things may go in cycles, but we cannot predict when we'll hit bottom, or precisely how far down we'll go before we do.

The truth is, I don't think I love this country enough, anymore, to want to stay and fight for it. Don't leave, you say? I already have.

read it and shriek

(with laughter):

www.abstinenceonly.com

(via Apostropher)

Me, as described by the advertisements in this week's New Yorker

I'm very focused on cars. I I drive a Lexus (for intuitive climate control), or a BMW ("Somewhere along the road to success lie the cones of mediocrity, urging you to take the expected route. To this we counter with the new BMW 7 Series, the driver's luxury automobile."). But I'm looking at a new Chrysler Crossfire instead ("supercharged horses take you from zero to nirvana in seconds."). Or a Cadillac. Or maybe those are the cars my parents drive now, and I drive a Jetta, "All grown up. Sort Of." I dream of Jaguars, though, "a car that listens to your every word," although it does not also dispense prescriptions. Max is interested in an Acura, since he'd If I didn't have a kid I'd dream of a Mini Cooper Convertible instead. I do not drive a Jeep Grand Cherokee, or or a Mercury Four Wheel Drive Mariner (intelligent, with Anti-Lock brakes), but I apparently have friends who do, or in any case wish they did, and will break out at any moment and buy one. "Our driveway really is very steep. Yes, we know it's awful, but it just makes us nervous when everyone else is driving along in those Hummers, to be so low. Like, can they even see us in regular old cars? I don't want to be decapitated!" my friends will say, when they show up at dinner in their new SUV. And why'd they drive here anyway, when they live a ten-minute walk away and I'm serving cocktails of Grey Goose Vodka and Grand Marnier (with Glenlivet single malt scotch whiskey to follow the meal? Well, my friend just got new Stilettos at Banana Republic (after briefly considering the sale Pradas at Saks Fifth Avenue), so she can only hobble half a block.

Max will give me a Louis Vuitton watch for my 30th birthday, apparently. Or a cruise on the Queen Mary 2, so that I may take my "place in history". Maybe both. Anyway, definitely some cruise, possibly, if I'm more adventurous, to someplace I'll need to take Malarone tablets (visit their website for a $20 rebate.) He'll wear his new Zegna suit to dinner on the ship. Over dinner, we'll discuss how it's really time for us to have a "Quiet Conversation" of our own, with our good friends at Northwestern Mutual, because we could "really use expert financial advice." Or perhaps we'll just go with a TIAA-CREF account, to salve our consciences while creating wealth (after all, they offer "Financial Services for the Greater Good." ) Also, now that I'm thirty, I'd like a "Stressless" leather chair to relax my body and free my mind. I will furtively read about a "cosmetic breakthrough" that's "better than botox," and consider installing an 'endless pool" to stay fit, since "when exercise is a pleasure, fitness is easy."

God, I hate myself. What a pathetic little poser I am. A grasping, spoiled, snotty, self-indulgent piece of cosmopolitan crap. No wonder America hates me, as described by David Brooks.

And yet, the only ad in this week's New Yorker that has any appeal for me is an ad for a new Richard Feynman book, a collection of his letters (of course, you groan, that's what she'd want. The greasy little intellectual, all hot and bothered over books.) I want no luxury cars, or quiet conversations about wealth creation, or luxury cruises. And I like to think that other New Yorker readers feel the same. And yet, don't the advertisers know what they're doing? So who are these other readers, the ones who want this stuff? Where are they hiding?

Actually, on second thought, I don't want to know. I'd rather not meet them. So come, Mr. Brooks, and write of this new pinnacle of elitism, that I can divide the readership of the New Yorker into two groups: the group of readers the advertisers want to reach, and the deadweight, like me.

Biscuit Variety Pack - Two Day Old Special

The St. Petersburg Times on controlling dissent at Bush events

Backdoor Draft Update

U.S. says detained Iraqi women were not held hostage, despite all evidence to the contrary says Reuters.

U.S. CEOs, those not going to prison, continue to rake in the cash.

Peak Oil Goodness. One of Max's major concerns about Auckland, in particular, is that its public transport sucks and it is tied too much to cars. I submit, however, that New Zealand, as a country, is more likely to gracefully beef up its public transport than we are. It is, actually, a small country; it does still have a rail network, though passenger rail service is basically nonexistent; and people there already understand and accept the general ideas of "we're all in this together" -- i.e. public social spending.

"Starve the Courts", says Phyllis Schlafly. Maybe she should go on a very long hunger strike herself, in protest....

No comment necessary...

Police Lied About Republican Convention Protestors, says New York Times:

:A sprawling body of visual evidence, made possible by inexpensive, lightweight cameras in the hands of private citizens, volunteer observers and the police themselves, has shifted the debate over precisely what happened on the streets during the week of the convention.

For Mr. Kyne and 400 others arrested that week, video recordings provided evidence that they had not committed a crime or that the charges against them could not be proved, according to defense lawyers and prosecutors.

Among them was Alexander Dunlop, who said he was arrested while going to pick up sushi.

Last week, he discovered that there were two versions of the same police tape: the one that was to be used as evidence in his trial had been edited at two spots, removing images that showed Mr. Dunlop behaving peacefully. When a volunteer film archivist found a more complete version of the tape and gave it to Mr. Dunlop's lawyer, prosecutors immediately dropped the charges and said that a technician had cut the material by mistake.

I am Sister Rail Gun of Enlightenment

and a proud member (at least this week...) of the Unitarian Jihad movement. Get your own Unitarian Jihad name here.

Francophobia in... the Post Office?

Today I went to the Post Office to mail our taxes to the IRS. The line was long, and in boredom I looked at the forms for international shipments: customs forms, return receipts, etc. Much to my surprise, I found that the customs forms (printed January 2004) are now exclusively in English.

If I recall properly, the Universal Postal Union conventions, dating from the mid-19th century, require that international postal forms be available in local language and French. (This was how I managed to properly fill out some forms when I was mailing some books home from Hungary in the early 90s.)

The forms printed in pre-Bush days are in both languages.

Was the Post Office directed to remove the French? Did they do it on their own initiative? Did the UPU rules change so that French is no longer required?

The Blogging Treadmill

Well, we're back from EnZed, so I'm sure our readers are expecting a return to constant news updates. We're still pretty busy with real life things, however: awkward conversations with family about "the whole New Zealand thing" (generally unpleasant); backbreaking toil in three different garden plots preparing for a bonanza of vegetable planting come May (generally pleasant), chasing after two-year-old, etc. Blogging about current events is not relaxing.

So here's my only comment for the day: All the libs are citing recent polls that show that a majority of Americans think the government overstepped on the Terri Schiavo case, and that the Dems need to rein in the Administration and keep them from such excesses. It's a watershed moment, everyone says. The tide is turning against these guys.

It could be that the tide is turning. I certainly hope so. But we've all learned recently that when all the water at the beach suddenly recedes very quickly, it's probably not a good sign at all.

Three months ago the Senate confirmed a man for Attorney General who promulgated a policy of torture. Two months ago a male prostitute was found to be working as a journalist in the white house, pitching softball questions during the president's press conferences. Last month it was revealed that the CIA quite un-extraordinarily renders people it thinks might be terrorists to countries that will torture them, a policy Porter Goss supports because "The U.S. does not support torture" and the countries in question just promise not to do it. Also, the Administration was found to be regularly producing propaganda videos to be played, without revealing their source, on local TV news, a practice which it refuses to renounce, even though it did renounce actually paying journalists to shill for them. This month,while flying back from the pope's funeral, President Bush had the following exchange with a reporter:

Q Italy is going to pull out 3,000 troops, I think, by the fall. Will you be able to absorb that?

THE PRESIDENT: I don't know why you say that. I'm not sure why you said what you just said.

Q I thought that was the number of troops Italy had in Iraq, and I --

THE PRESIDENT: They've got 3,300 now, and you said they're going to pull 3,000 out by the fall?

Q Well, I guess -- I don't --

THE PRESIDENT: Okay. What I did hear was is that the Prime Minister wants to work to make sure we complete the mission. But I'm not sure where that came from.

Q Do you think he'll leave troops in if, in fact, enough haven't been trained?

THE PRESIDENT: I think we'll work to complete the training mission of the Iraqis.

So I am not especially comforted by the idea that Americans are a teeny bit annoyed at the president for butting in to the Schiavo thing. I still think it might be a good idea to go to higher ground and climb a tree.