Analogies always limp.

Mary Matalin claimed on CNN yesterday, in regards to the latest item on the CIA torture scandal that implicates then-VP Dick Cheney as mastermind behind covering it up, that Dick Cheney was no Darth Vader. Here's a small snippet from CNN's ticker:

“Every time they get in trouble . . . they dredge up a Darth Vader story,” Matalin also said, making a reference to past comparisons between Cheney and the villain in the “Stars Wars’ movies.

And of course she threw in the obligatory fear-talk that revealing the extent of BushCo corruption would give information to "the enemy." Of course, I tend to see corrupt governments that undermine the basic principles of our nation as "the enemy," but apparently Matalin thinks it's more important to defend eight years of misrule than 220 years of our little "American experiment."

However, Matalin does have a point in the comparisons between Cheney and Darth Vader. In the end, Darth Vader does renounce his association with evil and helps Luke defeat the power-mad emperor. I don't see Cheney doing that.

The dream of purity.

Ah, that sceptered isle...you know, for all our racial problems, at least in the U.S. a political party so forthrightly racist as the British National Party would never be a serious political force...oh who am I kidding? If we had parliamentary representation instead of a winner-take-all two party duopoly, we'd probably have the same proportional amount of right-wing wackos in Congress. I mean, Trent Lott managed to get re-elected numerous times.

So Nick Griffin, the leader of the UK's heir to the even more virulent National Front (a good comparison would be David Duke before he shed the sheets and David Duke in a three piece suit), has come out with the seemingly surprising statement that even the BNP doesn't want an all-white UK...which of course gives us the easy punchline of "after all, who would fill the servant ranks..." ba-dum-dum.

Here's Herr Griffin himself on the BNP's position:

Mr Griffin, who is due to take up his seat as an MEP for the North West, said the idea of a UK without ethnic minorities was "simply not do-able".

Speaking on the BBC's Andrew Marr Show, Mr Griffin said: "Nobody out there wants it or would pay for it."

He said claims that he was a fascist were "smears" but said the European Union was "very close to fascism".

Mr Griffin told the BBC's Andrew Marr Show that the BNP would put more money into voluntary repatriation programmes for members of ethnic minorities "who want to go back to their lands of ethnic origin".

Ah yes, "simply not do-able," so the real objection is that it's not practical to practice large scale ethnic cleansing in the UK, because, as he astutely notes, no one "would pay for it" (the final bit of that sentence heavily qualifying the "want" portion -- as in "I don't want it at that price."

Now his pledge -- should the BNP manage some sort of hellish miracle and take control of the UK -- to fund voluntary repatriation programs is most interesting and begs the question of where they draw the line at "ethnic minority," since the history of the UK is the history of invasion and immigration. The Welsh are an ethnic minority, except in Wales, but I'm wondering if he's offering to pay moving expenses for the Welsh living in England, Scotland, or the north of Ireland? And speaking of that other island, who's the ethnic minority over there in the six counties? Should they all leave?

And that's only the beginning...going back to the Norman Invasion as a good example, let's see if the BNP is hoping to repatriate those of Norman descent to France. Or maybe the Anglo-Saxons to Germany. But maybe they're the majority now, and it's the Britons who should be repatriated. It's getting too confusing. Maybe they should all just wear gold stars or pink triangles or some sort of identity markers...

24/7/365

It's time to put some serious government regulation on "always on" media. That means television (network, cable, satellite), radio, and their associated streaming sites on the internet. But especially on the so-called news channels. In fact, I'm in favor of an outright ban on any stations that pretend to offer 24 hour news coverage.

You think I'm joking.

OK, I might be. But only a little.

I'll be the first to admit that I don't watch these channels. In fact, I haven't watched CNN on a regular basis since the 1st Gulf War, and I never watched Fox, MSNBC, or CNBC on a regular basis. The 1st Gulf War was really a turning point for these channels. Back then CNN was the only game in town, but that war coverage led the way in making war into entertainment. While Vietnam coverage brought the war into the living room to show its horror, the Gulf War coverage was there to show the power and the glory of technology and American military might (never mind that the US v. Iraq was basically the equivalent of an early September pre-conference football game for Penn State or Florida State).

Now before I get too Baudrillard on everyone, let me cut to the chase: the 1st Gulf War showed that it was the presentation of spectacle and not the importance or lack thereof of the object itself that mattered. It also showed that you could talk about one subject 24 hours a day if you just pretended you had different takes on it...so panels of experts appear out of nowhere, hour long pundit shows spring up to vary the delivery of the same information. And it doesn't only work for wars: the OJ Simpson chase and trial, Monica Lewinsky, etc. and now the Michael Jackson death can all be given the same treatment.

Enough is enough. Has anyone seriously reported on the G8? The length of time spent on unraveling actual stories that affect the world in a real way, like the G8 summit or Darfur or unrest in China? No, and the reason is that these stories aren't sexy. And they're dangerous. Sure war is dangerous, too, but the payoff is too great to ignore if it's a U.S. war. G8 summit coverage takes too much time, what with having to explain all the complex financial and political implications of a small cabal of industrialized nations getting together to decide how to maintain their influence. Darfur is, well, kind of dangerous, and so, well, 2008. And who wants to anger the Chinese government with coverage of internal unrest when China may decide to buy controlling interests in your news channel next year (OK, I jest on that last one, but only a little).

Complex analysis doesn't sell. You will learn more in one hour of the PBS NewsHour than you will in 24 hours of CNN or Fox. In other words, you don't need 24 hours of coverage to cover stories well, and you certainly don't need companies whose main goal is to fill 24 hours of time with about two hours worth of news (if that) fluffing stuff up like super-whipped butter on the IHOP buffet.

I'm willing to bet there's a direct correlation between how little you know about a lot of things and how much you watch cable news. And in the case of Fox, I'm willing to bet there's a direct correlation about how much you don't know and how much you watch Fox.

I think I've vented my spleen sufficiently.

I can't quit you baby...

It's an odd thing to announce the week after you've announced that you're quitting, but Sarah Palin, the governor every Democrat hoped Obama would be running against in 2012, declared as much looking folksy in her hip waders on a family fishing trip. The soon-to-be ex-governor told CNN:

"I am not a quitter. I am a fighter," Palin told CNN on Monday while on a family fishing trip, on the heels of her Friday bombshell announcement that she was resigning as Alaska's governor.

Catchphrases are cheap, but deeds are often a bit more lasting. Let's assume that there's no real reason for her quitting (no tawdry sex scandal, no federal ethics investigation, no details emerging that she planned all along to secede from the Union and join her friends in the Alaska Independence Party). Let's assume that she simply quit -- can I say that? she's not a quitter...um what exactly did she do? Is "resign" essentially different than "quit"? -- to recharge her batteries for the 2012 push.

Well, actually she did give CNN a few reasons during the interview:

She resigned because of the tremendous pressure, time and financial burden of a litany of ethics complaints in the past several months, she said. The complaints were without merit and took away from the job she wanted to do for Alaskans, Palin said.

Now, she may have a little short-term sympathy from her supporters over the pressure etc. of the, as she says, unfounded ethics complaints, but I'm willing to bet that all she's doing is adding to the burden of any 2012 run. Can you imagine the Democratic debate prep experts sitting around salivating over comparing the pressure of being President of the United States of America to being President of a single state, and despite its size a relatively remote and low populated state at that?

On top of that, does failing to serve out your term really inspire confidence in the masses whom you need to vote for you (let's set aside the 25% of the population who still thought Bush was doing a good job at the end of his term and therefore are never going to vote for anything but a Republican even if said Republican is a sock puppet)?

Obama's been in office for about 6 months. There's a long time to go until the next election and I don't think getting yourself out of active politics is a bright move no matter how you cut it.

Cast out of Eden...

The oddly named Liberty University has decided not to recognize the College Democrats as a student organization, apparently because they believe the Democrats stand against the moral principles upon which the school was founded.

I'm trying to figure out how many College Democrats there were on a campus that's mainly a breeding ground for didacticism and denial. I mean, if you were a young person feeling so political that you wanted to join the spiffy, earnest young person's wing of the Democratic Party, why the hell would you go to a school that more or less stands against everything the Democratic Party stands for? I can understand there being a large contingent of College Republicans at Liberty, and a fair number of College Fascists (not really an official group, but they're trying...), as well as several other groups whose main plank in their charter calls for rounding up Democrats, longhairs, beatniks, and other pinkos and shipping them off to Gitmo, but I'm having trouble believing there was a vibrant contingent of College Democrats at the School that Hate Built.

The College Republicans are just lucky that starting wars, killing foreign civilians, neglecting the poor, and lying through your teeth aren't against the moral principles on which Liberty was founded.

Routine isn't always routine.

The other day I nearly hit a kid with my car. I was driving "over the mountain" as they say and coming through one of the little hamlets that dot the hillside. I had just pulled away from a stop sign and was picking up speed, while up ahead in the opposite lane sat a man in his car talking with people on the porch of an apartment building on my side of the street.

I'm about fifteen yards from this man's car and he beckons to someone on the porch. A kid, maybe six or seven, comes running off the porch with his backpack, straight into the traffic lane -- no sideways glance, no hesitation. I'm ten yards away now, tops. I'd never had this happen to me in my 24 years of driving. I slammed on the brakes and the car slowed down, inching closer to the kid, who was in no position to get out of the way.

I think the car stopped about a foot from the kid.

He looked at me half a second then ran to the man's car. The man, who was probably his father, starts to yell at him. I catch the man's eye, mouth the word "sorry," because it shook me up and I bet it shook him up a bit, too, and then I drive on.

That's how quickly something so everyday can change on you. I don't know if that kid learned a lesson about checking the roads, or if the father learned a lesson about beckoning your kid out into the street without checking the road (or how about a lesson in not doing a pickup sitting in the traffic lane?!), but I learned a lesson about not taking even a routine trip for granted.

Let's get it over with...indict this frothing madman.

Dick Cheney may not be the most reprehensible human alive, given that he has to work within a functioning democracy and therefore isn't free to exercise his will like those thugs he supported like Pinochet and Botha, and those still living who continue to represent living evil, like the Burmese Junta, Kim Jong-il, and their ilk. So he still has some betters, living and dead, within the Ministry of Evil, but in American politics he may be the worst we have. Ruthless, remorseless, relentless.

Cheney has been out there telling anyone who will listen that torture isn't torture, and besides we got lots of great information from it...blah blah froth sneer blah.

Now Lawrence Wilkerson, a former aide to Colin Powell is coming out with revelations that the focus of the torture program wasn't gaining information to safeguard America, but rather to gain information to justify the absolute boondoggle and vain blunder that was the illegal Iraq War:

"Its principal priority for intelligence was not aimed at preempting another terrorist attack on the U.S. but discovering a smoking gun linking Iraq and al Qaeda," Wilkerson wrote in The Washington Note, an online political journal.

So says CNN. Well, we all know how that turned out: Bush and Cheney were unable even with torture to uncover any link between formerly-US supported strongman Saddam Hussein and 9/11. I seriously don't know how many prescription pharmaceuticals were being consumed in the White House during this time, but I'm fairly certain that even a college-bound senior, given an assignment to investigate Hussein and Islamic fundamentalism, would be able to figure out that Hussein's government, brutal and totalitarian though it may be, was largely secular and a target of criticism from al-Qaeda and the like.

All torture could hope to produce in this case would be false confessions, which shows how cynical and at bottom criminal Cheney actually is. It really is time to indict him.