Political Jokes

Newt Gingrich, according to Bill Maher, was so confused by events in Libya that he made a pass at his own wife. Maher also noted that Michele Bachmann is running for President seeking the support of those who find Sarah Palin too literate.

I'll throw in the suspicion that Sarah Palin, recently visitor to Israel, took a harpoon to the Wailing Wall.

The worst joke came yesterday when Eric Kantor, second in command of the Republican House of Representatives, announced that they planned to pass their vicious budget a second time, which would make it the law of the land. And he wasn't joking. Apparently Kantor doesn't know that a budget has to pass both houses of congress and be signed by the President.

Juan Cole

It happens at times that you run into issues so sticky that no matter what position you hold, you end up with dirty hands. The United Nations' intervention in Libya, led by NATO, is an instance of this phenomenon. If you support the intervention, you will be in part responsible for the casualties that come in any military battle, including the deaths and maimings of the poor sods who were coerced or drafted into Gaddafi's forces. If you reject or remain neutral about the intervention, you will share the blame for what might be the deaths of the tens of thousands of ordinary Arabs Gaddafi has promised to kill.

The intervention is well under way, of course, so the question has become, says Juan Cole, can the American Left walk and chew gum at the same time? The Left is opposed to interventions and opposed to potential genocides; does it oppose interventions in potential genocides?

The World, by and large, has spoken. Even nations openly reluctant to intervene (Russia, China, Germany) got out of the way once Gaddafi said he intended to kill many workers and middle class Arabs in Libya. Juan Cole has spoken: he won't turn his back on the working class and middle class people fighting for their lives in the streets of Libya. That's good enough for me.

Two Rules for Genocides

As a card-carrying member of the American Far Left, which is unique among Far Lefts in the world, I have been looking for insights into how to react to the United Nations intervention in Libya. This is a confusing matter, but I believe I have figured out the underlying rules for correct responses.

Rule One: The United States and the United Nations should never intervene in a genocide if the country involved has oil reserves. That would cost us our personal moral integrity. We might gain the world and save millions of lives, but we would lose our souls. (See Libya, for example.) What really matters here is not the Libyans but our rejection of situational ethics.

Rule Two: We should not intervene in a non-oil genocide unless we intervene in all genocides--I estimate that at any time in human history, there have been roughly ten genocides going on. To intervene in one genocide while ignoring the other nine would be logically inconsistent. (See Bosnia, for example.) Also, this rule is retroactive in the sense that if we failed to intervene in earlier genocides (the Trojan War, the fall of Jericho, the Persian Wars, the Holocaust) we would be wrong to intervene today.

Ann Coulter, One Toke Over The Line

I picked up this amazing story from Cynthia Boaz's Facebook page. It seems that Ann Coulter has been arguing that radiation is "good for you."

In a column called "A Glowing Report On Radiation," Coulter wrote that many scientists have been studying the effects of radiation and have found that, as she put it, "at some level--much higher than the minimums set by the U.S. government--radiation is good for you," and actually reduces the risk of cancer.

She repeated this assertion to a skeptical Bill O'Reilly, who told her that, even if there was scientific discussion going on about the effects of radiation, it was the media's job to be "responsible" and "err on the side of caution" about radiation. "You have to report the worst-case scenario," he said, adding that there is a clear scientific consensus that "some radiation will kill you."

Coulter said she disagreed, and said that the scientific consensus has changed, but that the media are not reporting it.

MICHELE BACHMANN AND POSTSTRUCTURALIST NON-THOUGHT

My children started college near the end of the poststructuralist boom that had swept aside rational thought in some elite English departments. I paid tuition, good money, to support air bending English professors who were teaching my offspring that "there are no facts."

Actually the existence of the word "fact" is a fact.

My children easily survived this miseducation, as so many do, by ignoring it in favor of things they found more interesting.

Congressninny Michele Bachmann, on the other hand, remains a true deconstructing poststructualist. Yesterday she made a speech in which she placed the battles of Concord and Lexington and the "shot heard around the world" in Vermont, although most believe that they occurred in Massachusetts. Of course if there are no facts, then where the Revolutionary War began is a matter of opinion. I personally think the war started north of Napa, inside a winery, and I am entitled to my opinion. I feel certain I am right. That's all that matters.

Tsunami of Stupidity Hits Washington

A Republican plan passed by the House of Representatives will cut $126 million dollars from the agency that warned Hawaii and the West Coast about the tsunami coming from Japan (at about 500 mph). This cut will cause rolling closures of the agency's offices.

The Presidential Arabian Menagerie

As someone who visited the naval base at Guantanamo about 55 years ago, I can comment on the new Presidential Menagerie being constructed there (my sources include Wickipedia and Jon Stewart).

Menageries have been with us for some time. The oldest known zoological collection was found during excavations at Hierakonpolis, Egypt, in 2009, of a 3500 B.C. menagerie. The exotic animals included hippos, hartebeest, elephants, baboons and wildcats. Other well-known collectors of animals included King Solomon of the Kingdom of Israel and Judah, Kings Semirami and Ashurbanipal of Assyria, and King Nebuchadrezzar of Babylonia.

The new Arabian Menagerie will follow what has become a standard practice of approximating a natural environment--Gitmo is surrounded by a desert. Following the tenets of the American Zoo Association, the Presidential Menagerie has stopped the practice of having Arabs perform tricks for visitors.

Some may object to the idea of Arabs displayed in cages, but that is not an innovation. In September 1906, William Hornaday, director of the Bronx Zoo in New York—with the agreement of Madison Grant, head of the New York Zoological Society—had Ota Benga, a Congolese pygmy, displayed in a cage with the chimpanzees, then with an orangutan named Dohong and a parrot. The exhibit was intended as an example of the "missing link" between the orangutan and white man. The public reportedly rushed to see it.

Persons were also displayed in cages during the 1931 Paris Colonial Exposition, and as late as 1958 in a "Congolese village" display at Expo '58 in Brussels.

Some Arab rights people have objected on the grounds that Arabs should be afforded the same consideration as human beings (see the Magna Carta). Gary Francione has argued that Arabs need only one right: the right not to be property. Despite the different approaches, advocates broadly agree that Arabs should be viewed as non-human persons and members of the moral community and should not be used as food, clothing, research subjects, or entertainment.

Critics of the rights movement argue that Arabs are unable to enter into a social contract or make moral choices, and for that reason cannot be regarded as possessors of rights. A parallel argument is that there is nothing inherently wrong with using Arabs as resources so long there is no unnecessary suffering, a view advocated by the Arab welfare organizations.

A Note to Birthers

Last night Jon Stewart pointed out that no one denies that the President's parents were married in Hawaii or that his mother was three months pregnant at the time. If you hold that a fetus is a person, our future President was in the United States at the time.

Writer's Cramp

Good luck to the mismanaged Press (Corporate) Democrat, our county newspaper, which has increased its price by 50% while cutting 1.5 inches off the width of its little page. The paper's columnists are learning extreme brevity. I suspect that many old readers (and the newspaper readers tend to be old) won't pay 75 cents for this truncated collection of tiny tidbits, while the young people get their news off the 'net.