The Happy Tiddler Winks

BEFORE the week is out we’d like to add a couple points about the Court’s refusal to hear Indiana’s appeal of its Planned Parenthood ban (which, somehow, didn’t have the Chilling Effect On Our Precious Right Of Free Speech that some extra IRS paperwork did). First, I think the Hoosier State once again leads the nation in money spent defending futile un-Constitutional gestures slapped down by even the last two generations of Judical Clown Shows, including the banning of violent video games, the confusion of bondage photographs and snuff films, an obscenity ordinance based on one which had already been laughed out of court, and the Indiana House’s pursuit of the First amendment principle of petitioning non-sectarian Jesus to stop by and help spend taxpayer monies.

Second, for those of you scoring at home, that leaves “Right” to “Work”, the half-built but fully paid for I-69, a wholly mistaken property tax “reform”, and convincing people that Turd + Sugar = Tootsie Roll as the last remaining “accomplishments” of the Daniels administration. Unless you’re counting what wound up in the pockets of his pals. As I know they are.

Finally, now might be a good time to remind ourselves that in 2005 then-Indiana Attorney General Steve Carter sent his investigators to a Planned Parenthood office with instructions to wait until some intern was covering the desk at lunch, insinuate that they were police officers, and seize records without a warrant. This was necessary, he explained, because his office was charged with policing Medicare fraud. Plus they were probably covering up the rape of thirteen-year-old girls.

Carter’s gang got about a dozen records; he conceded a legal battle for more about a year later. On his way out the door, in 2008, he tried to start up another investigation spurred on by FOX contributor Lila Rose, the female James O’Keefe (right down to the Pimp & Hoe get ups, at least outside).

We’re still waiting for the fraud and child endangerment charges, Steve. Just in case you’ve forgotten.

I Never Thought I'd See The Day When I'd Say "Gee, I Miss Bob Dole". And I Still Don't.

Daniel Politi, "Bob Dole: Ronald Reagan Wouldn't Make it in Today’s GOP". May 26

I LOVE this construction. Absolutely cannot get enough of it, whether it comes from Reagantots like Davids Brooks and Frum, who somehow went from late adolescence through middle age imagining that they were the sort of people running the Republican party, or guys like Dole, who watched from the distant vantage point of the United States Congress as Barry Goldwater took over his party, Richard Nixon marched it Southward, and Ronald Reagan booted his ass out of the primaries in 1980.

“I doubt it,” said Dole when Fox News’ Chris Wallace asked him whether “your generation as Eisenhower Republicans, moderate Republicans” could “make it in today’s Republican Party.” In fact, said Dole, “Reagan couldn’t have made it."

Whose work d'ya think Congressional Republicans imagine they're advancing? What, exactly, would Reagan be standing athwart these days, saying Stop? He wouldn't be an incontinent tax cutter today because political realities in the 80s forced him to raise some? Bullshit. He wouldn't have already spent a political lifetime delivering anti-immigrant one-liners? All he'd have to do is change "hippie" to "wetback" to update his material. He's the shining star of Anti-Government Patriotism; you mean to tell me he wouldn't be on the front lines now, just because he quadrupled the Debt in eight years back then? He did that by spending lavishly on big-ticket military items and reducing the size of the middle class. What, he'd be fucking shunned today?

I'm sorry, but if Reagan survived an assassination attempt today he'd have been photographed in his hospital bed waving George Patton's ivory-handled Colt. I will grant you this: he might well have managed to change his tune at some point on marriage equality, assuming he discovered he had a gay son or something.

But then Dole manages somehow to double down. (I guess that's in a Republican's blood):

"Certainly Nixon couldn’t have made it, because he had ideas."

Yup. Give the man his due, he was chockablock with ideas. None of which a Midwesterner would mention in front of his grandma. Except the ones involving blacks and Jews.

Still, ya know what? I have a feeling both of 'em would have found a way to adapt.

And I still wanna know one thing: where were all of you while this great change was occurring?

Pyyyyyyle!

SO Tuesday the FBI basically shut down the 25th floor of the City-County Building in Indianapolis for half a day, seizing records from the Department of Metropolitan Development. And the US attorney, Joe Hogsett, announced five corruption indictments, including the head of the Land Bank and one of its project managers, a former spokesman for Mayor Gomer F. Ballard, USMC, plus two operators of local non-profits and a real estate agent (for a company in which the Land Bank director was a silent partner). They're accused, variously, of bribery and wire fraud for a scheme which used the Land Bank, tasked with getting rid of the city's thousands of abandoned buildings, to cherry-pick properties to sell to the non-profits for pennies. They would then flip them quickly to developers.

This was, you might expect, fairly big news. Mayor Gomer went missing for 24 hours, though he was presumed safe. His mouthpiece at first tried to insist that Hizzoner didn't actually appoint the people who work for him, before rendering that comment inoperable, and allowing as how the Mayor was deeply troubled by the fact that this was revealed on his watch.

He resurfaced on Wednesday, giving reporters a chance to record his soundbite in a steady rain. But then Channel 8 went missing.

I watched a half-hour of the morning news. Took them twenty minutes to get to a simple recitation of the basic facts, that is, that the FB Fucking I had raided the seat of Indianapolis government the previous morning. I know, you have to give people two weather reports and three recitations of the two traffic accidents slowing the morning commute first, or they'll just get confused and stay home. And you need to tell everyone about Game One of the Pacers-Heat series, so the audience can remember that you can't be bothered reporting sports anymore, except as an act of civic boosterism, or to explain why professional sports clubs can't afford to do the maintenance on the stadia we built 'em.

Then I watched the first hour of the evening news. Zero mentions. [I should note here that I tried and failed somehow (old) to tape the last half-hour, so maybe that was wall-to-wall coverage and a thorough examination of the theft of taxpayer money. Yeah, probably.]

Channel 13 teased it on opening. Had a reporter out in the rain who actually asked Mayor Gomer a pointed question. Interviewed the Star's political reporter Matt Tully, who'd fairly called out the Mayor for his Tuesday disappearing act.

Oh, but 8, and its political reporter Jim Shella, the Dean (Broder) of Statehouse hackery, did manage to work in a political story or two:

• Indiana Teabag parties believe they may have been targeted by the IRS.

• Indiana Governor Mike Pence once co-sponsored a media shield bill in Congress.

•Indiana Governor Mike Pence pledges to complete the uncompleted half of the half-completed I-69.

•Indiana Governor Mike Pence probably has some idea where he might get the money to do that, but he'd as soon not be asked.

• Indianapolis is planning to make another Super Bowl bid, probably in the future.

• President Barack Obama is mired in scandalisms.

Okay, look, I understand. Free drinks aren't really free.

It's Okay America, The Guy Who Killed Cameron Todd Willingham And Then Tried To Impede The Investigation Is On The Case

VIA Pierce we hear that  the investigation of the West Fertilizer explosion has definitely concluded that something or other sparked the explosion. Quite possibly some sort of ignition:

WEST (May 16, 2013)—The State Fire Marshal's Office and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives have identified three possible causes of the fire that caused the deadly April 17 fertilizer plant explosion in West, two accidental and the third intentional, officials said during a late afternoon news conference Thursday.

Investigators determined that the fire that led to the powerful explosion was caused either by a battery-powered golf cart that was kept in the fertilizer and seed building in which the fire started, the building’s 120-volt electrical system or by an intentional criminal act, said Robert Champion, special agent in charge of the Dallas office of the ATF.

Good news if you had "Either an Accident, or Arson" in the office pool.

Guess it might be good news, or as good as you're going to get, if you're trying to prosecute that West paramedic for making pipe bombs, also.

The total amount of ammonium nitrate on the site was about 150 tons, less than 270 tons that federal records indicated was stored at the plant.

Ah, so only 750 times the amount that was supposed to trigger the federal reporting they didn't do. Not the 1350 times reported earlier by the lying Media. What was all the fuss about?

By the way, the owner of West Fertilizer, Donald Adair, didn't get any mention at all. Damed Media; always ignoring the Jobs Creators.

I Thought I'd Missed The Kickoff, Then I Realized That Was Sixty-Five Years Ago

I'VE been working on my bike tan, finally. I'm sorry that this did not result in the photograph it should have, that of a young woman in running clothes (everyone's in running clothes. People wake up, put on running clothes, then walk two blocks of the Trail to get a coffee, and walk back) holding her cellphone to her face as she wept openly. The picture was entitled "Why you shouldn't carry a cellphone on the Trail", but I didn't get it because I don't have a cellphone.

Anyway, it's been nice to approach Scandal Scandal Scandal from the perspective of Not Exactly Giving Two Shits. Benghazi! Benghazi! Benghazi!!!? First, it began on FOX News, which is itself a finding of fact. Second, since when are Americans supposed to be interested in something that has three consonants in a row? Finally, the only real scandal here is that had we listened to the wise counsel of the Republican party we'd have had thousands of boots on the ground in Libya, and none of this would have happened. If I remember correctly. 

The AP case? Yeah, I'm with you. Leaks? Welcome to Richard Nixon's America, those of you who may've dozed off for a few decades.

However, of all the things giving Jon Stewart the opportunity to show his principled bi-partisanship (what did the Daily Show staff do over spring break? They're still fucking hung over. My Poor Wife has already expressed her willingness to skip the recordings right over to Colbert) the one I'm down with is the IRS giving the stinkeye to Teabag slush funds for a good ten minutes before passing. Welcome, Brothers! Hey, before we begin, why don't you open your orientation materials to the 40 volumes entitled The FBI Ignores Organized Crime To Focus On Commie Celebrities? Then I'll need your signatures on this Apology Letter to the Rosenberg children. Glad to see you all made it out with your hats! 

Beware! Hippies!

From Transparent To Transparency

HEY, just thought I'd pop in to congratulate Indiana Governor Mike "Deacon" Pence for signing SEA 162 into law this week, a bill which will increase public knowledge of the workings of the Indiana Economic Development Corporation, except for the stuff it's been lying about all along. The signing completes this year's efforts to get the Indiana General Assembly out from under all the Mitch Daniels Boondoggles it enthusiastically supported until the Bantam Menace left office. Well, there is still I-69, but you can't exactly expect them to rip a highway out of the ground when it's almost half-completed.

Besides, it's bad form to correct a project while it's being investigated by the Feds for land fraud.

The IEDC was the public/private partnership (on the standard model: public money and private deals) Daniels got the Legislature to replace the fusty old Commerce Department with, either because existing regulations would have slowed down his henchmen plucking the thing like a chicken, or because none of 'em thought of sticking "Freedom" in the title somewhere. The IEDC had a three-pronged mission: 1) make it sound like Mitch Daniels was ushering in an era of New Economic Leadership instead of Old Shady Dealings; 2) to hold the funnel while tax abatements and development funds found their proper mark, and to hold the microphone while the beneficiaries thanked Mitch Daniels for Indiana's great business climate; and 3) to exaggerate the Jobs created by such Creative Jobs Creation Events by at least a thousandfold. And as a result of the new law, Hoosiers will now be able to get a look at (2).

Pence had already brought back the Commerce Department without eliminating its doppelgänger, apparently on the grounds that you don't fire the cook until you've counted the knives. The original bill also would have required the IEDC to report specific job numbers for each company being suckled, but that requirement was dropped from the final bill after objections. From the IEDC.

Earlier this year the General Assembly effectively killed Daniels' Coal Gasification Plant deal (which, irony of ironies, had been eagerly supported by the General Assembly at the time) by reneging on its promise to make the project profitable in perpetuity. This caused our "partner" in the deal, Leucadia National, to announce that, under the circumstances, the project just didn't look profitable to them any more.

For some reason, no one mentioned the 600,000 jobs that will be lost.

Kid Stuff

Kathleen Parker, "Prude or prudent? the debate over access to Plan B". May 3

ANYONE else wishing that the Bureau had shown 1/10th the public relations doggedness about the Anthrax Letter Bomber?

Anyway, "Pulitzer" Parker's fingerprints are all over this one:

They lost me at the word “women.”

Yeah, in 1971.

As so often happens in contemporary debate, arguments being proffered in support of allowing teenagers as young as 15 (and possibly younger) to buy the “morning-after pill” without adult supervision are false on their premise. 

Here’s an experiment to demonstrate.

Couldn't we have an example of the arguments you're demolishing first?

Question 1: Do you think that women should have access to Plan B, also known as the morning-after pill, to be used at their own discretion? Yes! 

Question 2: Do you think that girls as young as 11 or 12 should be able to buy the morning-after pill without any adult supervision? Didn’t think so. 

Question 3: If you answered yes to Question 2, are you a parent? Didn’t think so. 

Perhaps a few parents answered yes to Question 3, but not many, I suspect.

Because nothing improves an experiment like providing the answers to your own questions. Unless it's admitting you're making shit up.

Yet, repeatedly in the past several days, we’ve heard the argument that any interference with the over-the-counter sale of Plan B to any female of any age is blocking a woman’s right to self-determination.

IKR? I had to roll up my truck window at a stoplight Thursday to drown out the group of ladypeople next to me chanting "Nine-year-olds are women, too!"

Fifteen-year-olds, where the Obama administration wants to set the limit, are girls, not women. And female parts do not a woman make any more than a correspondingly developed male makes the proud possessor a man.

Question 1: If someone says so-and-so "is acting like a child" do we assume he means a petulant 9-year-old? Yes! Or a sullen teenager? No!

Question 2: So is it possible that maybe "girl" is not an empirical category, but a cultural term whose meaning is determined by the circumstances? Didn't think. So.

This sort of public argument, where on one side we have a problem, and people trying to solve it, and on the other persons like yourself hurling imaginary noodles at a wall, is one of the reasons laws have to be specific. No one could possibly  think that one's fifteenth birthday, or fiftieth, confers some sort of wisdom. Dear God, how much time do you have to spend around the average 18 or 21 year-old before you despair of the future of the race?

But, then, how much time do you have to spend reading WaPo opinion pieces to despair of the present? Child! seems to be your only argument here.

The dominant question is legitimate: Even if we would prefer that girls not be sexually active so early in life, wouldn’t we rather they block a pregnancy before it happens than wait and face the worse prospect of abortion?

Ah, yes, the Reasonableness Ploy. "Sure, sure, the world is in such a sorry state these days that my moral pronouncements no longer magically solve things, as they used to. So meet me halfway for admitting it."

The pros are obvious: Plan B, if taken within three days of unprotected sex, greatly reduces the chance of pregnancy. If a child waits too long to take the pill, however, a fertilized egg could reach the uterine wall and become implanted, after which the drug is useless. 

You see how the word “child” keeps getting in the way.

Yeah, because you keep throwing it out there.

There’s no point debating whether such young girls should be sexually active. Obviously, given the potential consequences, both physical and psychological, the answer is no. Just as obvious, our culture says quite the opposite: As long as there’s an exit, whether abortion or Plan B, what’s the incentive to await mere maturity?

Twelve words. That's how long the Reasonableness Ploy can be sustained before we get to Sex Education Turns Girls Into Sluts.

What about the right of parents to protect their children? A 15-year-old can’t get Tylenol at school without parental permission, but we have no hesitation about children taking a far more serious drug without oversight?

Y'know, we just spent a week hearing how most five-year-old gun owners behave responsibly...

These are fair questions that deserve more than passing scrutiny — or indictments of prudishness. A Slate headline about the controversy goes: “The Politics of Prude.” More to the point: The slippery slope away from parental autonomy is no paranoid delusion. Whatever parents may do to try to delay the ruin of childhood innocence, the culture says otherwise: Have sex, take a pill, don’t tell mom.

Once and for all and forever, Ms Parker: you've heard this argument since puberty, as I have. It's well past time to quit pretending that we're having a moral disagreement about teen sex. It's time to quit pretending that the Evil Sexualizing Culture isn't your culture, one you celebrate when it's producing consumer crap those "children" can't live without. Or, for that matter, those guns you can't keep track of. Go fight with the 1950s. Go picket 7-Eleven for carrying Playboy. Times change. Life moves on. Sex is now widely seen as enjoyable.

Better yet, go tell the parents. Go tell 'em that your argument against "ineffective" gun control laws goes double for social moralizing aimed at controlling a pastime considerably more popular than shooting people. At least in most countries. Go tell 'em that if they want to avoid having a fifteen-year-old daughter who needs Plan B they should have one with access to birth control and the knowledge to use it. Tell 'em if they want a "child" who isn't sexually active they should stick to rearing something they can spay or neuter at a young age.

Lahrs

WON'T someone please overlook the children?

“Down in Kentucky where we’re from, you know, guns are passed down from generation to generation,” Cumberland County Coroner Gary White said. “You start at a young age with guns for hunting and everything.”

What is more unusual than a child having a gun, he said, is “that a kid would get shot with it.”

Y'know, there're more seat belts than there are people thrown headlong through windshields, too.

Phelps, who is much like a mayor in these parts, said it had been four or five years since there had been a shooting death in the county, which lies along the Cumberland River near the Tennessee state line.

Let's holster the self-congratulations, Your Honor. The population of Cumberland county in 2011 was 6,832. That gives a death by gun rate of 0.0037%. In 2011 New York City's was 0.0072%.

“The whole town is heartbroken,” Phelps said of Burkesville, a farming community of 1,800 about 90 miles northeast of Nashville, Tenn. “This was a total shock. This was totally unexpected.”

Not by the rest of us it ain't.

White said the shooting had been ruled accidental, though a police spokesman said it was unclear whether any charges will be filed.

“I think it’s too early to say whether there will or won’t be,” Trooper Billy Gregory said.

You leave a kid in the car here while you run in the 7-Eleven for smokes, and not only will she be in the custody of Child Protective Services by the time you get back, and you in handcuffs, you'll be the lead story on the local news.

“It’s a little rifle for a kid. ... The little boy’s used to shooting the little gun,” White said.

Let's be fair: you can't expect a five-year-old to distinguish between proper and improper targets every time.

The company that makes the rifle, Milton, Pa.-based Keystone Sporting Arms, has a “Kids Corner” on its website with pictures of young boys and girls at shooting ranges and on bird and deer hunts. It says the company produced 60,000 Crickett and Chipmunk rifles for kids in 2008. The smaller rifles are sold with a mount to use at a shooting range.

The only five-year-old who needs to kill birds or deer is one who needs to eat them, too.

According to the website, company founders Bill McNeal and his son Steve McNeal decided to make guns for young shooters in the mid-1990s and opened Keystone in 1996 with just four employees, producing 4,000 rifles that year. It now employs about 70 people.

So much for "generations" handing down cherished weapons. The real tradition here is Jab It In Your Fucking Eye, which dates to 1964 or so.

There's nothing about sensible gun regulation that would take one bit of "tradition" away from you people. And nothing is what will bring back that little girl, or repair that family. You have been sold a load of shit, with a free side order of cultural resentment. Will anything teach you any different?

The Sound Of One Man Clapping

Charles "Merkwürdigeliebe" Krauthammer, "The Bush Legacy". April 25

YOU wanna know how awful the human condition is? While I was opening this I actually entertained a small notion that Chuckles here might let Dubya have it right between those close-set smirky eyes.

I mean, really, what did he have to lose? Karl Rove wouldn't return his calls for two days? He wouldn't get invited to Crawford? What? Like George Eff Will, Chuckles occasionally says something sane just to make it sound like he thinks things over. The Republican party, if there is such a thing, doesn't need Bush. It sure didn't for its last two conventions. Scoring a 5% increase in Bush "approval" ratings means squat. And in exchange you own two wars, a huge national disaster, one global economic meltdown facilitated by your core beliefs, and enough hapless decision making and malevolent intentions for twelve Trump reality programs.

The desire to palliate is strong. Especially when the disease is incurable. Ladies and Gentlemen, George W. Bush.

Clare Boothe Luce liked to say that “a great man is one sentence.” Presidents, in particular. The most common “one sentence” for George W. Bush is: “He kept us safe.”

Oh, fuck. I mean I thought it was "Oh, fuck."

Not quite right.

Okay, just for the record, this did not get my hopes up. Even in the salons of D.C., let alone Fred Hiatt's Petting Zoo, "Not quite right" is not a polite synonym for "Absolute fucking bullshit."

With Bush’s legacy being reassessed as his presidential library opens in Dallas, it’s important to note that he did not just keep us safe. He created the entire anti-terror infrastructure that continues to keep us safe.

It's a funny thing: the people most likely to tell you that "History" will decide a thing--usually a thing whose current reputation they don't like, or are responsible for in some small way--are also the first ones to tell you some PR spasm or transient tic on the face of public discourse represents a thoughtful reconsideration.

By the way, the "anti-terror infrastructure" has been in place, in various forms, at least since the FBI started hunting spies and Fifth Columnists in the 30s, and the umbrella placed over the damn business during the Reign of Error--namely, the Department of Security, Preparedness Drills, and Surplus Military Hardware Reallocation--was something Bush opposed when it was first thunk up.

That homage was paid, wordlessly, by Barack Obama, who vilified Bush’s anti-terror policies as a candidate, then continued them as president: indefinite detention, rendition, warrantless wiretaps, special forces and drone warfare, and, most notoriously, Guantanamo, which Obama so ostentatiously denounced — until he found it indispensable.

Yeah, to his eternal shame, at least once History gets ahold of him. Fact is, though, that Candidate Obama's anti-Bush terror policies stance always seemed more than just a little facile, more than a little forced, and conspicuously vaporous. He's also the candidate who wanted hot pursuit into Pakistan.

Quite a list. Which is why there was not one successful terror bombing on U.S. soil from 9/11 until last week.

And that's entirely correct, except for the part with words.

And how you play with them. There was the University of Oklahoma football stadium bombing in 2005, which killed the bomb maker. We decided after the fact that that wasn't terrorism, because the FBI couldn't find any Muslims to tie Joel Henry Hinrichs III, to. There were two bombings in 2008 that didn't kill anyone: the Times Square military recruitment station bombing, and the Fed Ex bombing in San Diego. Does that make them "unsuccessful"? "Non-teroristical"? Maybe we need a War on the Slightly Disturbing. That fall there was a bombing at a Dalton, GA, law firm, which injured four and killed the bomber. That one doesn't count because the perp was a white guy pissed at the judicial system? You're the guys who want to toss around "terrorist" when it suits you. Give us the definition that excludes those.

Oh, did you think we were done? We ain't. Leave alone the question of why our "anti-terror infrastructure" gets credit for stopping theoretical terror attacks and a pass for not stopping real ones when they aren't Muslim enough. Why do only bombs count? Several terrorific "successful" gun attacks in that same period. For that matter, thanks to George W. Bush's Anti-Terror Infrastructure ™, foreign terrorists didn't have to come here to kill Americans. We sent plenty to them.

The Boston Marathon attack was an obvious security failure, but there is a difference between 3,000 dead and three.

Except when it comes to generating political hysteria.

Moreover, Bush’s achievement was not just infrastructure. It was war. The Afghan campaign overthrew the Taliban, decimated al-Qaeda and expelled it from its haven. Yet that success is today derogated with the cheap and lazy catchphrase — “He got us into two wars” — intended to spread to Afghanistan the opprobrium associated with Iraq.

Wait, isn't that George Bush's One Sentence?

Difficulty one: as odious as the Taliban was, and is, it didn't have anything to do with International Terror, Inc. It happened to be a handy, barely functional location for al-Qaeda training, seeing as how that's where all the soldiers and weapons we bought in the 80s for fighting the Soviets were. Second, we can argue exactly what it was transpired in Afghanistan after the Invasion of the Willing, but you people will have to stop celebrating your imaginary victory first. Those two things were done quickly, because they were relatively easy. Yet we're still there, because the hidden portion of that particular iceberg was never planned for. It didn't exist.

As if Afghanistan was some unilateral Bush adventure foisted on the American people. As if Obama himself did not call it a “war of necessity” and Joe Biden, the most just war since World War II.

Which, frankly, was not exactly a difficult standard to reach. Once again, and absolutely, Barack Obama was an opportunistic politician on the issue of George Bush's Two Wars™. He couldn't be tied to either, unlike his primary opponents. He got to sneer at the unpopular one and keep his hands clean on the Just one. He got waaaay too much credit for making a single sidewalk denunciation of Iraq War II. Absolutely. Democrats in the US Congress were enthusiastic about invading Afghanistan. So was the country. In this their judgement was hasty, disingenuous, and filled with a roaring in the ears. And ultimately wrong. And there was one man in the country who could have spoken for Reason, and called for Somewhat Coolish heads to prevail, at least for a minute. And that man was George W. Bush. Instead, he gave the Taliban until sundown to turn over its national sovereignty to US. Instead, he played the television version of that President he wasn't elected to be. Tell that to his Interactive Decision Maker 2000™.

So let's be fair. That's all we could have expected from him, and do not tell me that a sizable percentage of the American public didn't realize that part of the reason it was shitting itself continuously was that George W. Bush, Dinner Theatre Lenny Small, was President. Do we know that we could have negotiated our way to getting bin-Laden turned over? Like, maybe, instead of spending a couple trillion over the next six years, we just slipped Two Large into the right hands, without waving our balls in public? No. We never will. What we do know is that Bush's public stance--once he was willing to show himself in public--was something no government in the world--even one as sketchy as the Taliban--would have agreed to. Unless we already owned them.

Is there any question that the American public was howling for blood? Nope. Could it have been reconciled to a President waiting a week to use military force? If he'd stood up and made the case, particularly when he was the leader of the Shoot First party. You think the public didn't want Hirohito on a platter on December 8, 1941? Roosevelt steered most of our military resources to Europe. What George Bush did in the aftermath of 9/11was to play out every right wing wargasm fantasy. And of course it worked. Sort of. It's the goddam poorest nation on earth. It's also one with a sterling history of resistance to international invaders (yet another lesson we'd steadfastly refused to learn in Vietnam). We were almost guaranteed to be able to scatter the "government" of Afghanistan (which, in the event, we didn't really have the stomach to do ourselves, and so when bombing didn't work immediately we had the Northern Alliance handle the dirty work); we were almost certain to face protracted resistance after that. It was guaranteed that much of that resistance would pour over the "border" into Pakistan. Which is exactly what happened.

Could it have been different? I don't know. Could it have gone any more predictably? No. George Bush took the popular, and the most painless route, and he announced ahead of time that the Battle for Civilization Herself wasn't going to cost any of his party's backers any tax dollars. I did not support the war as announced--which made me one of a half-dozen of my fellow citizens--but I can certainly understand how many who did came to feel that Bush had screwed the pooch, however just or necessary the cause.

The dilemma in Afghanistan was what to do after the brilliant, nine-week victory.

Like "terrorist", "victory" is a word you really need to define before you start slinging it around. "Brilliant" you're just fucking with.

There was no good answer. Even with the benefit of seven years’ grinding experience under his predecessor, Obama got it wrong. His Afghan “surge” cost hundreds of American lives without having changed the country’s prospects.

The Afghan "surge" was, if anything, considerably more popular--or at least recognized as necessary--than the "wildly successful" one in Iraq.

It turned out to be a land too primitive to democratize, too fractured to unify.

Guess there was no way of knowing that ahead of time.

The final withdrawal will come after Obama’s own six years of futility.

And while I'm in favor of him withdrawing American troops oh, four years ago, had he done so that's what you'd be complaining about today. He did stay there long enough to get bin-Laden, though, which I'm sure you celebrate as sincerely as if your boy had done it in his seven years of über-futility.

Iraq was, of course, far more problematic. Critics conveniently forget that the invasion had broad support from the public and Congress, including from those who became the highest-ranking foreign-policy figures in the Obama administration — Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, Chuck Hagel and Biden.

No, we don't. But warfloggers and Bushfellators seem to conveniently have never noticed how much pure bullshit that administration put out in the year before. Yeah, Congress, foolishly (or intentionally) backed into a corner, took the easy route of believing the administration. Having done that, one is allowed to blame the administration when it turned out to have lied about shit. Thass how the game is played.

And they forget the context — crumbling sanctions that would, in short order, have restored Saddam Hussein to full economic and regional power, well positioning him, post-sanctions, to again threaten his neighbors and restart his WMD program.

Nope. Context: paranoid fiction as told by people who believe Israel is our most important state. Got it checked off right here.

The Iraq War had three parts. The initial toppling of the regime was a remarkable success — like Afghanistan, rapid and with relatively few U.S. casualties.

Well, slightly different, in that Iraq had once had a tenth-rate military, now reduced to Afghanistan levels.

The occupation was a disaster, rooted in the fundamental contradiction between means and ends, between the “light footprint” chosen by Gen. George Casey and the grand reformation attempted by Paul Bremer, who tried to change everything down to the coinage.

Hey, it's nice to see the underlings get some credit.

(As we've said here many a time, the "light footprint" bit is bullshit; we didn't have the troops to do the job without waiting too long for the Bush plan to segue into the 2004 elections. Ask Eric Shinseki. And Bremer was Bush's man. In fact, he was his fucking doppelgänger.)

Finally, the surge, a courageous Bush decision taken against near-universal opposition, that produced the greatest U.S. military turnaround since the Inchon landing. And inflicted the single most significant defeat for al-Qaeda (save Afghanistan) — a humiliating rout at the hands of Iraqi Sunnis fighting side-by-side with the American infidel.

That would make a great graphic novel. Or pile of ordnance for a buffalo chip-hurling contest.

We'll just see what the Surge really accomplished when Iraq is on its own. Getting the Press to stop covering the daily violence for the Duration is my bet.

As with Lincoln,

Just shut up.

Obama had one task: Conclude a status-of-forces agreement and thus secure Iraq as a major regional ally. He failed utterly. Iraq today is more fragile, sectarian and Iranian-influenced than it was when Bush left office — and than it had to be.

Bullshit. Iraq, strategic American ally? US troops there for a hundred years, like Korea? We didn't have enough troops to conduct the war in the first place, you twit.

Like Bush, Harry Truman left office widely scorned, largely because of the inconclusive war he left behind.

And, like Bush, being dumb as a bag of hair.

In time, however, Korea came to be seen as but one battle in a much larger Cold War

When did this happen?

that Truman was instrumental in winning.

When did this happen?

He established the institutional and policy infrastructure (CIA, NATO, the Truman Doctrine, etc.)

Thought Bush did that?

that made possible ultimate victory almost a half-century later.

Wait, the CIA "won" the Cold War? NATO "won" the Cold War? The Truman Doctrine did something else besides cost us trillions of post-war dollars on paranoid, nuclear-fueled fantasies? Oh, and opening new markets for Coca-Cola?

The Soviet Empire collapsed under the weight of economic and military hubris, dogmatic policy covering for petty thievery and mass murder, a profound, culture-based addiction to paranoia, and--maybe most importantly, in the modern age--an aversion to open scientific inquiry.

The Truman Doctrine, on the other hand, died a long time before that, if it wasn't stillborn in the first place. It didn't survive the "Who Lost China" debate, or the derisive laughter over Quemoy and Matsu. Unfortunately, a lot of people didn't get the joke for fifty years. In fact, some still don't get it.  Meanwhile, Chuck, if you'll have a look, we're still in fucking Korea.

I suspect history will similarly see Bush as the man who, by trial and error but also with prescience and principle, established the structures that will take us through another long twilight struggle and enable us to prevail.

Oh, maybe we might wait and see what History--not some David McCullough hagiography much beloved of people who want to pretend that Truman is "supposed to be" the standard bearer for the party they don't belong to--really thinks about ol' Give 'Em Hell.

The world doesn't follow your dreams, Chuckles, nor is it judged by how closely it resembles them. This is the best evidence for a belief in God I have yet found.

Thursday Olio: Must Be The Contrails Edition

•Krishna H. Vishnu, Ed Rogers, "The Insider: Why do they hate Bush?"

All the vitriol directed at him bewilders me. Why all the personal animus? It wasn’t because of what he said. Bush never called anyone a name.

Not anyone who wasn't a major league asshole.

His most controversial decisions surrounding the invasion of Iraq were almost universally supported by Democrats at the time.

The majority who didn't believe a President would lie the country into a war, maybe.

Bush brought character to his decision-making. He must have believed what he was doing was right because so many of the decisions he made avoided taking the easy way out and were, at best, politically risky.

Class?  Anyone?

I don’t understand the level of contempt his critics have for him. The only thing I can see is that the left hates much of what he still stands for and how he has lived his life.

You hit the nail of the head there, Ed. Just not the one you were aiming for.

Bush went to church and he was not shy about his Christian faith.  He is a southerner, a Christian, a family man, a conservative and a white Texan, and he beat the Democrats at the ballot box — twice.

Oh, you mean in Texas. Had me goin' there for a minute.

• No finer family than the Lawrence Coonrods.

Lawrence police were called to an apartment at 5766 Devers Drive on Saturday, where they were flagged down by Curtis Coonrod, 58. 

He told police he had been robbed at gunpoint by a man who kidnapped his girlfriend, Cheyenne Poole, 21, and stole his car. 

Coonrod said he and Poole were in the apartment, which he leases for her, when a man burst through the door with a gun, demanding money and saying, "I don't know you. I don't care about you. I will kill you," according to the police report. 

Coonrod told police the man taped him to a chair while forcing Poole to go to an ATM and withdraw $500 using his bank card. 

The man then left with the alarm code to Coonrod's house, taking Poole with him, Coonrod told police. 

Investigators traced Poole's cellphone to Indianapolis' south side, where they spotted her driving Coonrod's stolen car, according to the police report. Poole then led police on a high-speed chase, running stop lights before blowing a tire on stop sticks and eventually stopping, police said. 

Poole and her passenger, Ralph Lopez, 24, were taken into custody. 

Police said Poole then admitted to orchestrating the robbery and kidnapping plot with Lopez, her new boyfriend. 

Poole told police she had met Coonrod on a dating website, "something like SugarDaddy.com," police said, and that he had been supporting her financially for about five months.

Time passes. Two days, anyway.

The woman accused of robbing former Marion County politician Curtis Coonrod plotted against him after feeling overwhelmed by his repeated sexual advances, she told The Indianapolis Star on Wednesday. 

“He wanted kissing and feeling, and that was something that did not interest me at all,” Cheyenne Poole, 21, said in an exclusive interview from the Marion County Jail. “But I never wanted to tell him that, just because I didn’t want him to be angry.” 

Poole confessed to organizing an armed robbery Friday against Coonrod, a former Marion County auditor and City-County Council member. Coonrod has insisted the two were just friends, but Poole said Coonrod wanted something more not long after meeting her on the “SeekingArrangement.com” dating website. Its motto is the “Elite Sugar Daddy Dating Site for those Seeking".

A gentleman never tells:

Coonrod, who is single, told The Star he could not recall having a profile on the dating site but did not deny meeting Poole there. 

“I’ve heard of that site, and I’ve seen it,” said Coonrod, 58, Lawrence. “So I just don’t remember if that’s where I met her. But she says it was, so I’m not disputing that.”… 

“I don’t think it’s appropriate to talk about what we may or may not have done,” Coonrod said. “But I certainly never got the impression that we did anything that made her feel uncomfortable.”

True love waits:

But Coonrod remains convinced Poole is innocent, even saying he feels confident the charges will be dropped. He is furious, he said, that he hasn’t been able to speak to Poole since the robbery. That is because of an order of protection the court placed on Poole, which bans suspects from talking to victims. 

“They are bullies, the Lawrence police detectives,” Coonrod said. “I don’t detect that they are interested in justice. They are interested in proving themselves right, and they decided before there was any evidence that she was guilty.”

Curtis Coonrod is the former Marion country Auditor and two-term City/County councilman. I'll check on his party affiliation and get back to you.

•Damn. I've got me one a' them HD washing machines rotates like a turbojet, and it don't spin like that. Your Weekly Standard:

After being read Miranda rights, the Boston bombing suspect in custody, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, has stopped talking to authorities, officials tell the Associated Press. 

"The surviving suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings acknowledged to the FBI his role in the attacks but did so before he was advised of his constitutional right to keep quiet and seek a lawyer, U.S. officials said Wednesday," reports the Associated Press.

Good thing he was goin' down anyway, huh? Though in fairness I think we have to admit that the Times We Live In do call for waving your balls around in public, rather than being 10% smarter than your average perp.

But, then, you didn't think I chose Bill Kristol's Monthly Hot Flash as a news source for nothin', did you?

But while it might not "matter in court," it will likely matter in the intelligence gathering process, which will likely be hampered.

And, somewhere, al-Qaeda's Latest #2 Man breathes a little easier.

It's Worse Than I Thought, Just Like I Always Thought

Joan Walsh, "Rand Paul’s missing spine: I thought he was a joke, but after he filibustered over drones, wondered if I'd been wrong. Nope." April 24

YE Gods and pygmy goats:

I was on vacation when Rand Paul staged his filibuster to get more answers about drones from the Obama administration, or else I probably would have embarrassed myself by praising him.

Were you on vacation, or taking leave of your senses? If the latter, did the airlines lose your luggage?

I’m concerned about drones and targeted assassinations and I think it’s a perfect place for a left-right alliance.

Stop it.

So I was glad to see Paul’s filibuster.

Which had nothing to do with targeted killings, and everything to do with making the Obama administration initial a piece of paper about targeting killing of Americans on American soil. Which some wiseasses on the Right thought was a big PR deal. And which has about as much to do with the US drone program as Sadam Hussein had to do with 9/11.

Bonus points one: the filibuster was actually about Benghazi!! Benghazi!!!! BENGHAZI!!!!1! and the urban legend behind Paul 2.0's concern about drones--there's an urban legend behind everything the man believes, Joan; look it up--was the idea that the Interior Department or Homeland Security or the US Department of Sharia Law is flying drones over federal waterways to snoop on Western ranchers and oil and mineral interests, aka, Sen. Rand Paul (Kook-Kentucky)'s natural constituency.

Bonus points two: assuming there's any earthly reason for any sentient voter to desire a left-right alliance on anything, "targeted killing of Americans on American soil" ain't it, and a signed policy statement is utterly worthless even if it was. There's plenty enough wiggle room under standard federal law enforcement powers to fly a fleet of drones through, on either side of the truck you are driving. Either the current President of the United States has no plan for the wholesale killing of Americans on American soil via Death Drone (just as the previous President of the United States did not mastermind the 9/11 attacks), or else the world is so fucking irredeemably insane there's nothing a piece of paper, forty days and nights of filibustering, and Protective Sponge Helmets for every citizen ("They're Just Like The One Rand Paul Wears!™") can do to protect us.

Bonus points three: somebody smarter than Rand Paul--yes, it is a large sample--came up with the "make Holder sign this" routine. Paul's "opposition" to drones, such as it was, was just one anti-fluoridationalist fantasy hitched to another-Benghazi!! Benghazi!!!! BENGHAZI!!!!1!--and I'm not quite sure how anybody managed to miss that, or think well of him for an instant. Even while on vacation.

Even though I disagree with Paul on virtually every other issue and generally consider him to be kind of a joke, I’d have been happy to be proven wrong. Maybe he had a conscience. Maybe he would become a much needed civil liberties leader on the right.

Just for the record, how can you consider someone a joke without actually realizing just what sort of joke he is?

Alas, I haven’t been proven wrong.

Except for that narrowly-avoided "Rand Paul, Much Needed Civil Libertarian on the Right!" column.

Mr. Filibuster, the tribune of civil liberties, now says that drones should have been used against the Tsarnaev brothers in Boston – not only that, he told Fox’s Neal Cavuto, they should even be used against someone robbing a liquor store. 

Strangely enough, Cavuto himself seemed a little spooked by the technology that was deployed in the hunt for 19-year-old Dzohkhar Tsarnaev, including the thermal imaging that was able to find him in a boat and even to get some sense of the extent of his wounds.

Okay, so now would be a good time not to imagine you saw signs of incipient humanity in Neil Cavuto just because he was standing next to Rand Paul.

“I have never argued against any technology being used against having an imminent threat, [or] an act of crime going on,” Paul replied. “If someone comes out of a liquor store with a weapon and 50 dollars in cash I don’t care if a Drone kills him or a policeman kills him.” 

Wow. So Paul has gone from “your rights to trial by jury are precious, that no American should be killed by a drone on American soil without first being charged with a crime, without first being found to be guilty by a court” to “If someone comes out of a liquor store with a weapon and 50 dollars in cash I don’t care if a drone kills him or a policeman kills him.”

Hey, I don't know if he's telling the truth, or if he even recognizes "truth" as a category, but so far as I know Paul avoided speaking of imminent threats. That was part of the charade. Professional wordsmithers are supposed to catch that sort of thing.

Back during his filibuster, I briefly thought Paul might prove a formidable 2016 GOP presidential candidate, if he channeled American discontent with the Obama administration’s drone policy and other national security excesses. I shouldn’t have worried.

Nor admitted it in public, Joan.