Liberal Media Elite

So I received the following letter from the Libertarian National Committee. (And, yes, it was indeed written in all caps, much like the writing of an indignant twelve-year-old on the internet for the first time.)

DEAR PHILLIP:

YOUR GIFT RIGHT NOW IN THE AMOUNT OF $10, OR EVEN MORE IF YOU CAN, WILL MAKE A DIFFERENCE FOR OUR NATION, YOUR STATE, AND YOUR COMMUNITY.

‘Kay. I’m gonna take a deep breath and not respond to this one just yet, and bring up another point by way of contrast.

At the last state convention, Bob Smith took the podium and made a very simple, direct, and somewhat moving plea for support. There was no bullying, no coercion: nothing more than a laying out of the facts and the consequences, and a respectful request for any aid that could be given.

Let’s compare this to the condescending “I’m not angry, just disappointed” tone being presented at the national level, shall we? This call to give them money for the sake of our glorious nation? This evocation to be “part of the team?” I’ve got news for you, mate: I’m not part of anybody’s team, leastways not the smegging shitwank who composed this letter. I’m happy to register with you guys, so you have one more head to count when you’re tallying up the numbers. And I’ll continue voting for your candidates for as long as they’re supporting principles that make sense to me. But I don’t owe you jack-shit. And nobody should talk about concepts like “loyalty to the Party” with a straight face outside of Communist Russia.

I grow especially impatient when alternative parties begin employing this sort of tone. I mean, the two-party duopoly? They have to be patronizing jerkwads. Their elections hinge on it. We, however, have the freedom to talk to adults like adults.

One thing I feel that I’ve learned in show business is that the idea of “selling out” is really kind of an illusion — you can’t achieve success by pretending to be something that you’re not. So why do the other parties feel that they have to legitimize themselves by adopting the demeanor of the ones that everybody else is voting for?

Via my friend Kevin McL., a handy tutorial on Hmong orthography from some dude in California.

Quick summary: to represent the sounds that make “Hmong” in Hmong, it’s spelled “Hmoo,” the double O standing in for the nasal ong sound. The B? It’s a tone marker! Instead of having all the diacritics (hard to type but cute) of Vietnamese, Hmong uses consonants that never occur at the ends of syllables to mark the rising/falling/medium/blah pitch. So it’s actually kind of genius, if a little strange looking.

I found this fascinating. Not political at all. Now you know. And I have to get cracking on trying to convince someone in charge of Somali writing to ease up on the double letters. Just use an acute accent to indicate length like they do in Hungarian. Really. Life’s much easier that way.

According to this nifty tool, I blog like a dude. Doesn’t mean a thing, but it’s a great way to waste a Friday morning.

One of my many dirty little secrets is that I’m an absolute junkie for professional football. As such, I’m probably prone to rationalizing the behavior of players I admire. For those of you who are sane and not NFL addicts, the league has been cracking down on personal conduct of players, coaches, staffers, etc. In alot of cases I think they’re being over the top.

But I’m really getting tired of the ongoing free pass this asshole keeps getting.

I cannot even begin to wrap my head around this one. Dig the quote at the end from the college regarding discriminatory and obscene language…which doesn’t appear to have anything to do with the prof’s actions.

Weird. And fucked up.

Remember the salmonella and e.coli outbreaks over the past year that resulted in the recall of a whole passel of peanut butter (Peter Pan and Great Value) and spinach? The FDA knew about the problems. So did the manufacturers.

It is a classic case of the failure of capitalism to regulate itself. As the number of food processors in the US have spiked, with a concurrent spike in the amount of imported food, the Bush Administration and its Congressional allies (through 2006) have gutted the budget and the enforcement authority of the FDA’s food safety organization. As a result there have been deaths and numerous illnesses specifically from (but not limited to) ConAgra’s peanut butter plant in Georgia (currently closed for updates, though the restart plans appear vague) and growers of spinach and other leafy greens from California’s Salinas Valley.

“We know that there are still problems out in those fields,” Robert E. Brackett, director of the FDA’s food-safety arm said in an interview last week. “We knew there had been a problem, but we never and probably still could not pinpoint where the problem was. We could have that capability, but not at this point.”

Before I hear any drivel about the market responding efficiently due to the damage to the Peter Pan brand and the drop in sales of California greens take into consideration the following:
1.) The loss of life and additional loss in productivity and reallocation of resources (money) to pay the medical bills associated with those who were merely sickened outweighs the loss to either of the large manufacturers involved (’cause you know, people were killed). It may not outweigh the dollar value of the loss to the offending companies. It outweighs it in the sense that the manufacturers outsourced the cost associated with safety to the people buying the products, and did so by fomenting an implication that their products were safe, an implication they knew to be false.
2.) The losses have not been limited to the guilty growers and manufacturers as the public freaks out and stops buying, for periods of time, all peanut butter and all spinach (sales of both, particularly of spinach, remain down). In this way the offending companies distributed the costs of poisoning the population across all companies in those particular markets. This is, officially, a market failure.
3.) In the case of spinach, both the FDA and the growers have known about problems and about increasing frequency of outbreaks since 1995 (enforcement was bad in the Clinton years, it has been deplorable under Bush) meaning that the offending growers were able to extract additional marginal profit off units sold for 12 years after becoming aware of the issue. Time value of money. Net present value. I’ll explain if needed. The same holds true of the peanut butter incident in which the plant guilty of killing people knew of the issue since, at least, 2004. Again, market failure.
4.) If some of the Dems in the House and Senate have their way not only will the FDA have its food safety budget dramatically increased and the parts of its authority that have been eroded under the Prezzz restored, but it’s a fairly safe bet they will shove some truly egregious regulation down the throats of the food processing industry. Guess what? The companies ain’t all bad. But the playing field will be leveled for the bad processors because the good processors will be saddled with the same compliance costs as the bad guys. Again, distributed risk. Again, market failure. With the ability to dress up any regulatory changes as a matter of national security (so the terrorists can’t poison the food supply) expect something that makes Sarbanes-Oxley look like a walk in the park.

This is, more than anything, a failure of the government to perform in its dual roles as a protector of the people and to supply the infrastructure and frameworks needed to regulate a market, any market (Adam Smith, y’all…markets need rules). Government, regulation, are in fact inherently inefficient in a market sense. In this case, the market was efficient all the way through the process…but so what? People died as a result of the endless worship at the altar of efficiency. Regulation can, however, be equitable (protect and enforce fairly), which is far more important… to me anyway. Though inefficient, government need not be incompetent. It is only incompetent when incompetent people run it. Kinda like now. The upshot is, due to the acts of a few bad players, good players face a very real risk of being saddled with overly harsh regulatory requirements because a new congress, appalled with the abdication of responsibility of the prior congress, will predictably over compensate.

I can’t remember the last time I paid attention to celebrity news, but this one got my attention today. I’d been hearing references to this all week but hadn’t heard the recording until today…the Alec Baldwin voicemail tirade to his 11 year-old daughter, Ireland.

It scared me just listening to it. Had to totally unhinge an 11 year-old hearing it coming from her old man. Among other things he threatens to “come out there” (presumably Los Angeles) for the day (April 20th) and “straighten your ass out”. He rallies at the end and leaves her with the tender, fatherly nugget that “you’re a rude, thoughtless little pig”. His whole drift is that she’s always blowing off his scheduled phone calls. After listening to this two thoughts occur…

1.) She’s a kid, dude. Caught between two volatile parents who have not divorced, um, amicably.
2.) Hell…I wouldn’t pick up the phone if my dad was that batshit crazy.

A family court judge who heard the recording temporarily suspended Mr. Baldwin’s visitation rights, thus heading off the April 20th meeting. A May 4th hearing is scheduled during which Mr. Baldwin’s visitation may be permanently suspended. An official representing Psycho-Daddy has said that he did call his daughter later in the week and apologize to her. Still…regardless of that judicial hearing on the 4th I gotta think it might be awhile before the little girl in quesiton is terribly enthusiastic about seeing pop. And I gotta think the ex-wife and mother are reluctant to allow that meeting to take place without a small birgade of armed security lurking nearby.

For those interested, there’s an excellent article in today’s Washington Post on the mixed results coming from the Surge in Baghdad. I know it’s easy to lock into a position and not see that there are complex realities. There has been progress made in areas of Baghdad, and that’s a good thing. There are parts of Baghdad where progress ain’t going on. There has been a decrease in sectarian violence and organized activities from both Sunni insurgents and Shia militias. If it means fewer of our guys are getting killed I’m all for it.

On the flip side, suicide bombings have skyrocketed and the infrastructure to limit the likelihood of horrific damage from them is limited and not expanding at an adequate pace. And, predictably, as the US and Iraqi’s focus on Baghdad and Anbar province there’s a scary spike in insurgent activities, and an accompanying heartbreaking spike in US deaths, in Diyala.

I have great sympathy for the relatively new military command team in Iraq. What they’re doing right now is embarking on the first cohesive and comprehensive counter-insurgency campaign of this war. Counter-insurgency is slow moving by nature (at least according to what I’ve read from military strategists who know one hell of a lot more than I do) and fraught with risk. Meaning that results are incremental and it can take awhile before you can truly evaluate the results and determine if it’s working. Awhile in this case being defined as a matter of years, not months. Had this policy been launched earlier than four years into the war I might be more receptive to it. As it now stands, I still think we gotta get our forces out of there. It is still a civil war and it still is costing US lives.

But that’s my opinion from reading the article. This piece of writing, I think, gives you both sides of the story pretty effectively. You may well walk away with a different view. So, you know, it might be worth a gander.

Just got back from the LP convention, and the somewhat raucous post-convention get-together (that’s fifteen consecutive hours of argument about individualist feminism, anarchism, and the role of the state — my head still hurts, and not just from the alcohol), at which a drunken female referred to me as “sexier than Batman.”

This is the greatest compliment that anyone has ever been paid.

From CNN…

Gonzales said more than 60 times that he “couldn’t recall” certain incidents. His former chief of staff, Kyle Sampson, used that explanation 122 times during his testimony weeks ago.

This explains alot. Like how they forgot the Constitution over in the Bush Justice Department.

I recommend they mosey on over to this site. Should be mandatory for the entire administration.

As a Republican Congressman you know that the one sign that you are officially fucked is when the Wall Street Journal (aka. The Paper of Record for Incredibly Wealthy Campaign Donors) goes front page with an investigation of your corrupt dealings.

He was so blatant in an attempt to extort a large copper company by forcing them to buy an alfalfa field owned by a business partner that they (knowing he’s one of the main proponents for extractive industries in Congress) started cooperating with the FBI. His Chief of Staff was so freaked out that he resigned and started cooperating with the FBI. And Paul Charlton, the US Attorney overseeing the case being built against this lock-step supporter of the Prezzz, was one of the USA 8 that got whacked by Gonzales.

The one moment of pause I have in all this is a grudging admiration for the wiley structures of Republican corruption. The Dems got Jefferson of Louisiana hiding bricks of cash in the high five figures in a refrigerator. The Repubs got dudes like Renzi with a network of shell companies and money laundering fronts that wash ill-gotten gains from overpriced land sold in trade for his votes on various issues.

I mean…bricks of cash vs. multi-million dollar land swaps. We gotta pick up our game, y’all.

I hope nobody minds if I respond with another post — I have a few too many thoughts to justify a comment.

First of all, an apology. My last post was intended to be an examination of my own thoughts and impulses — not anybody else’s. I in no way meant to imply that there was anything wrong with your emotional response to tragedy — merely that I suspected that there was something wrong with mine. I don’t know you, and I have no desire to pass judgment on anything going on on the inside of your skull.

That said, I’m prepared to defend my, er, cheap ideological point — which is that, yes! Compassion and empathy are noble human impulses! And that, unchecked by other noble human impulses, such as prudence and careful self-examination, they can lead us to unintentionally harm others. Does that really qualify as defamation?

If I’m not belaboring the argument, I’d like to specifically respond to your point about Iraq. Whatever the motives of the people at the top, in a democracy, international crimes have to sold to the people. (Well, at least in theory.) Nobody (outside of weapons manufacturers) is pro-war. Everybody knows that war is an evil. The only way to sell it to a population is convince them that it’s *necessary*.

Points that were used to sell it to us:

1) Liberating the Iraqi people. Empathy. (Bullshit, of course — our own government’s done plenty to create or support oppressive governments when it suited their purposes.)

2) Strategic movement in the larger war on terror. Empathy — nobody wants to see anyone else die in terrorist attacks. (Bullshit — there are plenty of other nations that form a more credible threat.)

3) The development of WMD’s. Empathy — nobody wants to see *those* unleashed on the planet again. (Bullshit — see last point. And, y’know, there were none.)

4) Control of and access to oil. Okay, not really empathy — but nobody used that as an argument to *sell* the war to anyone.

The only way anyone could be convinced to sign up for this was through the *manipulation* of that noble impulse. The impulse isn’t evil. Sometimes the application of it is.

One more point — not only in response to your post, but something I’ve been meaning to say for a while and this seemed to an appropriate place to do so — I’ve been hearing a lot of people complaining about the apathy of the American public when it comes to Iraq. I don’t think that’s true. I think that people are every bit as angry and disgusted with the situation as they ever have been. The reason we’re not hearing about it anymore isn’t because we don’t care, it’s because we’ve been worn out — we’ve been shouting and complaining and arguing for going on four years now, and all we’ve really gained is the knowledge that we *don’t* have any real influence on the situation.

It’s like when someone close to you dies — eventually, you pick up and find a way to move on. This is like someone close to us has died, every day, for four years. We’ve never been able to heal our wounds and move on from it, so eventually I think we’ve just started shutting down.

I’m not condoning it. I’m not condemning it. I’m just saying that I think the response has been mischaracterized. It’s not apathy. It’s exhaustion.

And, y’know — I can justifiably be accused of being a lot of unpleasant things, but apathetic is hardly one of them. A big part of the reason I’m a Libertarian is because I genuinely believe that a free-market economy works best for people on every rung of the economic ladder, including the bottom. Outrageous nonsense? Perhaps. But sincere outrageous nonsense.

The last post here seemed to suggest that empathy in the face of a horrible event is the wrong response. The wrong response emotionally, that is.

I beg to differ.

By all means, kill the messenger/CNN. Their coverage sucks, is sensational, geared towards shock value that transforms into bucks. Yes, it is all that. We have known that forever.

But what does that have to do with my emotions regarding so many people loosing their lives? Brilliant scientists and students alike. I want to weep when I read that a 76-year old professor put himself in the shooter’s way to protect his students and help them escape, and by doing so lost his life. I want to marvel at and admire the courage of that man. Not because CNN tells me to, I don’t own a TV, but because there was something in that man’s act that transcends all the pathos, all the sensationalist BS and leaves me with the precious feeling that the things I believe in are alive in this world. That I should love my neighbor as myself, or that I should act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law, or that if you save one life, you save the entire world, depending on what team you are on.

Please don’t tell me that my emotions are somehow misguided or hypocritical, or even worse, an impulse that may very well lead into the deluge of fascism.
That is outrageous nonsense. Listen to a speech of Goebbels and tell me again that fascists were promoters of empathy. I do not begrudge the isolationist/libertarian (there, I said it) worldview of the argument. What I do begrudge is the defamation of empathy, one of the noblest of human impulses, as was helpfully pointed out, to make a very, very cheap ideological point.
How silly to assume that only what happens in my close vicinity should determine my (good) actions. People in the world are suffering because of wrong politics that emanate from my country. But I shouldn’t care about the Mexican farmers whose livelihoods were destroyed by NAFTA, because I don’t see the people who got the buck passed to them so my tortillas are cheaper? And how, for the love of Christ, can the war in Iraq be the prime example for misguided empathy, when that empathy was so clearly not the driving force for starting the war in the first place?

As for the “people die all the time and nobody cares” argument that I have seen all over the internet: It’s true. They die all the time. It is also true that many people, especially in this country, don’t care. The conclusion is what? I shouldn’t care either? It’s almost like this is the distorted mirror image of the voyeuristic US-centric coverage on TV that neglects all the suffering in the rest of the world. A more sophisticated version of the apathy we decry on a regular basis. What dulled people so much that they are trying to encounter the apathy towards what happens in the world with a more elaborate form of apathy? That’s messed up.

Following up on the heels of my last post, I’d like to link to this excellent and articulate one that has spun out into a fascinating discussion. And one that’s left me asking myself the question — why do I feel so goddamn much? And I don’t mean that in some positive “look-at-me-aren’t-I-so-wonderful-for-being-so-compassionate” way — I think I get wrapped in other people’s tragedies in a way that’s actively unhealthy.

I mean, 9-11 changed my life, and I don’t mean that glibly. And it didn’t happen to my city (hell, I don’t even like New York), nobody I knew was involved — but that day has been stamped on every play that I’ve written since. Somehow it left me wracked with a guilt and nausea that hasn’t fully faded to this day. Why?

Thinking about this got me thinking (as most things do, sigh) about my Catholic upbringing, particularly a quote from Paul’s Epistle to the Romans:

“For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do.”

See, Catholics have this concept called a sin of omission, which means that you’re not only responsible for the evil that you do — you’re also responsible for all of the good that you fail to do.

There’s a degree to which this makes sense. I mean, if I walk past a guy dying in the middle of the street and don’t do anything to help him, then, yeah, I bear part of the responsibility for his death, even if I didn’t, say, run him over with my ‘95 Ford Taurus myself. Or if I neglect to mention that the door labelled “FREE COOKIE DOUGH” actually leads to a pit of venomous snakes, then I bear part of the responsibility for the fat German kid who ends up in the poison control center.

But what if I don’t actually see the dying guy? What if it’s a kid starving to death on the other side of the planet, and there’s something I could do to help him? Am I responsible for him, too? Following this line of reasoning, it’s not hard to arrive at the conclusion that you’re indirectly responsible for all of the evil that occurs in the world. And we laugh at this, like it’s somehow harmlessly neurotic, but it’s not. That mentality has destroyed far too many lives to be dismissed as harmless.

After all, what if we could invade the starving boy’s country, and see to it that nobody went hungry again? The very concept of a sin of omission implies that if we have the power to do such a thing, we have the responsibility to do so as well. And this clearly isn’t a hypothetical situation — how many have died in Iraq, because our “responsibility” to liberate the people?

Assuming responsibility for that much pain and suffering isn’t humility, it’s arrogance, more than a desire to protect, more than a desire to liberate, it’s a desire to be God — the greatest sin of all. A world ruled by benevelont self-interest — where everyone took care of themselves, reached out to help the people around them, picked the dying man up off the street — that would be a good world to live in. But we forget that the ultimate root of fascism isn’t selfishness, but compassion — that desire to lead everyone to the promised land, and thinking that you have The Way to do so.

I’m no Ayn Rander. Altruism isn’t evil. I believe that that impulse to help others is the one of the noblest of our species. But it’s important to remember that it’s almost impossible to help someone without hurting somebody else, and that same impulse that leads us to do good can also lead us to do great evil.

And I wonder if my strong emotional response to tragedy isn’t a reminder that I, too, have the capacity for both. Which is why I don’t own a gun. Which is why I’ll never run for office.

THE THOUGHTFUL RESPONSE

I don’t know what it is about school shootings. Usually I’m pretty good at maintaining a snarky demeanor in the face of tragedy — not because I’m callous but because it’s a coping mechanism for me — but something about school shootings really brings out this streak of sobriety. Maybe it’s because I was a social leper in high school who wore a trench coat at the time of the Columbine shootings, and I ended up getting a lot of the fallout from that. Or maybe it’s because I work with teenagers, and I have plenty of opportunities to recall what an eternal prison our education system appears to be from the inside. I never went to college, but I think these events have a certain resonance for all of us, because our time in school was so emotionally intense — it’s really not hard to imagine this kind of thing happening. What I don’t get is the shock — the real shock is that this isn’t happening all the goddamn time.

THE SNARKY RESPONSE

Finally, a large-scale act of senseless brutality from an Asian male! Perhaps this’ll finally dispel all that emasculated, “model-minority” bullshit that we have to put up with. We’re capable of being every bit as fucked up as any other race of people, thank you very much.

THE ANGRY RESPONSE

I’m growing truly tired of the e-mails flooding my inbox from liberals and conservatives alike — I’m hardly sure who to be more disgusted with right now. On the one hand, I’m annoyed with all of those on the left who are trying to take advantage of this tragedy to push through more anti-gun legislation — and all of those gleefully telling me that I’m directly responsible for this because of my support of gun ownership are welcome to go perform an anatomically impossible act upon yourselves.

On the other hand, folks on the right are welcome to go join them, especially if you’re posting shit like this:

“We can lay the blame on the ‘Red Star’ on their door step for all the deaths. They refuse to all individuals to protect themselves. They created the situation that lead to this. The paper needs to be picketed. May be a TV station or another paper like the Pioneer Press could cover an event like this. We would need a flyer to hand out explaining our position and creative signs to hold. This is I think a good oppurnity.”

Not that I disagree with the basic point. But if you’re prepared to characterize the deaths of thirty-two people as a “good opportunity”, then I don’t want to fucking know you.

It’s not the debate I object to, but the vitriol inherent in it. Emotions are running high right now. Isn’t some kind of mourning period in order before we go back to name-calling and mud-slinging?

THE LIBERTARIAN RESPONSE

I can’t help wondering how many of the students would be alive now if they’d been armed. Obviously, the campus’ ban on firearms didn’t prevent Cho from getting his hands on some. I look at events like the Appalachian School of Law shooting, a massacre averted by armed students, and a part of me worries that we’re doomed to repeat events like the Virginia Tech Massacre as long as we hold onto this illusion that weaponry is a substance we can effectively control. If I’m determined to kill a lot of people, I’ll find a way to do it.

THE NIHILISTIC RESPONSE

Above all, though, the aspect of this that troubles me most of all are the usual attempts to characterize the perpetrator as a “sicko” or a “wacko”, or often both at the same time, despite the inherent contradiction. We don’t know anything about him, and obviously the people around him didn’t, either.

Whenever someone does something truly heinous, from Adolf Hitler to Ted Kaczynski, we need to turn them either into a calculating villain or a raving lunatic — we have to turn them into something totally alien, something totally “other”, because the truth is so much more terrifying, that they’re human beings, that they have all the same parts that we do, that anyone’s capable of anything, and nobody has a fucking moral code outside of a Sergio Leone western.

THE PRACTICAL RESPONSE

After the Columbine shootings, we weren’t allowed to talk about what happened — I recall getting in trouble with teachers numerous times for trying to strike up conversations about it in the hallways — but we suddenly and without explanation began praying before every class.

When seemingly senseless events occur, there’s really nothing for us left to do but try to construct some kind of meaning out of it and go on with our lives, whether that meaning is religious, political, or artistic. But whatever that meaning is, it’s one that we choose to construct. We have to assume responsibility for our many contradictory responses, whatever they may be.

Because that’s the meaning I’ve chosen.

More and more the media tosses words like courage and hero like so many frisbees…meaningless discs floating through the air.

60 years ago today Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in major league baseball. A great many, probably a majority, of fans loathed him. Many of the players felt the same way. He was routinely humiliated and abused. But he did it anyway, setting the stage for all the great players who came after.

That’s courage. That’s heroism.

Gov. Jon Corzine of New Jersey was in a pretty gnarly wreck this week. Of course, we wish him the best in his recovery.

However…

The 60-year-old governor, who was apparently not wearing his seat belt in the front passenger’s seat, broke his leg, 12 ribs, his breastbone and suffered a broken collarbone. He also had a head laceration and a minor fracture on a lower vertebra.

The Governor had one surgery yesterday and has another coming up on Monday. The prognosis is good. He is, though, currently on a ventilator and unable to speak.

I know seat belts are a pain in the ass. But, y’all buckle up, okay?

Two things, that dovetail. Sort of.

First off, did you hear Tim Walz on NPR’s Midday yesterday? I knew I liked the guy (I did volunteer for him, you know) but, man, is he good or what? He spoke quite clearly about the need for foriegn policy that focuses on more than just defense. I don’t often hear lawmakers speaking that keep me that interested for that long. Sadly I missed the Q & A session, but luckily there are livebloggers for that sort of thing. He makes me that much more proud of our Democratic Congress. As always, to keep up on what Tim Walz is doing at anytime of the day (a herculean task), check out Ollie over at Bluestem Prairie..

In other news, a(nother) Bush appointee, shockingly, is drowning in his own corruption. Paul Wolrowitz, who screwed the pooch with such breathtaking ease on the war, got a promotion to President of the World Bank! Because such wonderful pooch-screwing should be shared with the developing world. Anyway, Wolfowitz went on a crusade against corruption.

“Corruption is often at the very root of why governments do not work,” Wolfowitz argued in a speech in Indonesia in April 2006.

Wolfowitz, being one of the masterminds of our current situation in Iraq, decides to fight corruption, with (wait for it) corruption! He got his girlfriend a sweet, under-the-table spot on the World Bank payroll.

Someone tell me this was some kind of genius maneuver. A kind of corruption trojan horse, wherein he tricks African “strong men” and Banana Republic dictators into thinking he’s not that different from them, and then, when they least expect it, smacks ‘em upside the head with accountability and transparency. Anyone? Bueller?

Needless to say, the Europeans are “delighted” and I’m hopeful that they’ll run him out of town on a rail.

Oh and just in case you’re having trouble linking a name with a face, recall this priceless moment, thanks to Youtube.

Now, this highlights exactly what Tim Walz was talking about. Only in a world where security is lone focus of foriegn policy would a hawkish yet neo-con idealogue like Paul “comb-licker” Wolfowitz be appointed to the a humanitarian organization like the World Bank. And, of course, he screwed the pooch there, just like he did on Iraq. Way to go, team!

Booo. Stupid solar flares.

In a startling new revelation, CREW has also learned through two confidential sources that the Executive Office of the President (EOP) has lost over five million emails generated between March 2003 and October 2005. The White House counsel’s office was advised of these problems in 2005 and CREW has been told that the White House was given a plan of action to recover these emails, but to date nothing has been done to rectify this significant loss of records.

You’d think a call to their buddies at the NSA would solve the problem.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has been paying a visit to Willmar, MN again:

Tim Counts, spokesman for ICE, said agents are conducting an ongoing investigation in the area for specific people. “This is not some sort of random action,” Counts said. “Our actions are based on specific leads.” While Counts maintained that ICE agents perform investigations year-round, he said an investigation is currently being carried out in the Willmar area. Counts would not elaborate on the investigation.

So this time it’s not one of those random raids (the ones you usually do?). No, you have specific leads. So specific that your agents have to go from door to door to ask “for the bad guys”.

Boy, that must feel good. Nothing better than having the feeling that your work actually counts in the grand scheme of things. Which, of course, is not the deportation of all estimated 12 Million undocumented workers in the US so elaborately outlined in your organization’s master plan called Endgame.

In fact, you want those workers here, because you know that the US economy would take a severe blow without cheap labor. So the real plan is to create hostile feelings against those immigrants in the US populace (not all of them are buying it, tho’). You raid a little here, and a little there, charge some of the detainees with identity theft, call them criminals and voilà, you put enough pressure on Congress to get support for a seemingly great compromise: A guest worker program like the one Bush touted recently.

It would allow companies to recruit hundreds of thousands of workers a year outside of the US, and put them to work here on temporary, employment-based visas. Without being hampered by things like minimum wages, worker’s rights, medical care, and all that other stuff that raises their executives blood pressure.

And without ever giving those people the chance to pursue their happiness in this country.

Pretty close to slavery.