Daily Dose

The President of the United States is not the fucking Commander-in-Chief. People do not elect a Commander-in-Chief.

The President of the United States is the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces. That's it.

If you are not a current member of the military, he is not your Commander-in-Chief. He's not even the Commander-in-Chief, because that title is not applicable to a vast majority of the country.

If you're a journalist making this stupid flub, you're promulgating a dangerous error. The difference in context is not minor. It is the difference between a Republic (no matter how tenuous) and a Military Dictatorship.

It's telling that the President's own Press Secretary enjoys using this turn of phrase. But that doesn't mean you have to follow her deliberate propaganda with your own acquiescence.

Get it right.

And start acting like citizens, for goodness' sake. You're embarrassing us in front of the rest of the world.

Hardship

Ugh, Presidential Primary season.

Guess what, GOP, you're not the only party who can shamelessly exploit religious sentiment.

I'm asking way too much, but I'd like the head of the Executive Branch of the United States to not believe in some magical fucking sky-being and his wacky undead son. Please?

Really, whatever. Hilary wants to reassure us that she will carry a great huge bag of deity-worship into the White House just like any other candidate.

Edwards, too. And Obama.

Thanks, guys. That will serve us well - schizophrenia with a firm grounding in circular logic - as we tackle issues of global import.

I get that we will have a black lesbian President before we have an atheist President, I do. I just wish someone could articulate that religion should be made as separate from policy as possible. Could we get a candidate who will promise to disband the Office of Faith-Based Initiatives on Day One?

Just once I'd like to see someone called on it when they say that faith got them through a rough patch. What does that mean, faith? Faith in God? So you relied on a nebulous image of something good and powerful and loving to comfort you, visualization can be relaxing. Did you pray? So you talked to yourself, not a bad way to think through a problem. Did you go to church? Oh, so you spoke with friends and authority figures, that's another good way to work things out. Did you read the Bible? So you read a vaguely-written pseudo-history and managed to apply it to your situation and draw comfort from universal similarities in the human condition, cool, you should try using something by Mark Twain next time.

If you can't tell, I love both politics and religion.

Repercussions

"I remember talking to [Paul] Wolfowitz, in his office, in the Pentagon, and telling him -- this was after the propaganda build up had started, before the war. I said, 'You know, these guys are not going to welcome you.'

"He said, 'Why?' I said, 'For one thing, these guys detest foreigners, and the few who really like you are the least representative of the various breeds of people there. They're going to fight you, then, if you occupy the place there's going to be a massive insurgency.'"

"He said, 'No, no, they'll be glad to see us,'" Lang continued. "This will start the process of revolution around the Middle East that will transform everything.'

No, Lang told Wolfowitz, "that's not gonna happen. It's just an impossibility. They're not like that. They don't want to be us."

-via The Washington Note

Wolfowitz was a Team B mutherfucker, that group of know-nothing sad sacks whose job was to invent Soviet Union supervillain scenarios in order to push their various agendas: direct conflict, inflating defense budgets, undermining the CIA. Team B was fantastically wrong about everything. The big question is whether they bought their own bullshit.

From the opening quote it seems that maybe Wolfowitz swallows bullshit for breakfast. Maybe he really thought there were Soviet stealth submarines. It certainly sounds like he believed in our own Reverse Domino Theory, US fairy dust sparking off the Glorious Owners' Revolution. Or maybe he's just good at regurgitating the party line and was signaling to Lang that real expert analysis wouldn't be necessary.

They weren't cherry-picking intelligence. They were cherry-picking stupidity.

And ensuring that the stupidest were given the plum jobs.