The Dish

"To teach how to live without certainty, and yet without being paralyzed by hesitation, is perhaps the chief thing that philosophy, in our age, can still do for those who study it," – Bertrand Russell, introduction to "A History of Western Philosophy."

I’m happy to see him come around.

Well, JPod and I agree on this, so the obvious caveat:

If the Democrats don’t blow it, 2008 could be the election that finishes off the pro-GOP salience of the tough-daddy-soft-mommy paradigm. Because the Republicans are being rapidly rebranded as a party of men who exemplify the least attractive, most pathetic aspects of the gender—they are the stubborn, arrogant, lazy, incompetent (Iraq, Katrina), hypocritical, crude, nasty fathers, Homer Simpson crossed with Tony Soprano, the kind of men who snarl and posture as old-fashioned patresfamilias but don’t come through when and where it counts. The GOP is becoming the deadbeat-daddy party.

Unlike chimps, they do it to toughen the skin. It doesn’t work.

This exhaustive study surely requires my good friend’s rebuttal. Money quote:

Tax increases appear to have a very large, sustained, and highly significant negative impact on output. Since most of our exogenous tax changes are in fact reductions, the more intuitive way to express this result is that tax cuts have very large and persistent positive output effects.

Bloggingheads does marriage equality.

John Hodgeman’s priceless Daily Show skit. Really a piece of satire that finally matches the material we’re getting.

Stephen Hawking on "The Simpsons."

A reader writes:

As Reagan would say, "there you go again……" … giving the Bushies credit for having a master plan, when all evidence we have so far points to the fact that they really are just total fuck-ups. I know, I know. It seems implausible that they would fail to plan for the post invasion Iraq at all, right? I mean we have Cheney himself on tape back after the first Gulf War saying he knows it would be a quagmire! So, chaos in Iraq must be their goal, their secret master plan to justify hitting Iran, right? Sure, but it is also equally plausible that they really are just THAT incompetent!

Look at every other endeavor this administration has taken on or been in charge of (Hurricane Katrina?) that hasn’t been a complete disaster (Medicare reform). I look at the same information as you and see an administration that realizes there is not positive way out of this mess and they’re trying to run out the clock so they can blame any ultimate failure on whomever takes over. They want to be able to point and say, if we had only stayed longer we would have won, therefore our failure in Iraq and all its consequences are really your fault. They’re covering their asses and worrying about their "legacy" now.

I guess at this point, I’m hoping for incompetence over malevolence. But they are not mutually exclusive categories.

Remember that excellent, scholarly, reasoned plea from seven soldiers on the Op-Ed page of the NYT calling for withdrawal from the quicksand of Iraq? Two of the seven were killed Monday; one other was recently shot in the head and is very slowly recovering, as Fred Kaplan points out. That we are losing these best and brightest in this war without end or enduring purpose makes it all the more incumbent that we remember what they were trying to tell us:

In a lawless environment where men with guns rule the streets, engaging in the banalities of life has become a death-defying act. Four years into our occupation, we have failed on every promise, while we have substituted Baath Party tyranny with a tyranny of Islamist, militia and criminal violence. When the primary preoccupation of average Iraqis is when and how they are likely to be killed, we can hardly feel smug as we hand out care packages. As an Iraqi man told us a few days ago with deep resignation, ”We need security, not free food.”

In the end, we need to recognize that our presence may have released Iraqis from the grip of a tyrant, but that it has also robbed them of their self-respect. They will soon realize that the best way to regain dignity is to call us what we are — an army of occupation — and force our withdrawal.