On a more serious note, Josh Marshall nails it here :

This whole endeavor, from the very start, has been about taking tawdry, cheap acts and dressing them up in a papier-mache grandeur — phony victory celebrations, ersatz democratization, reconstruction headed up by toadies, con artists and grifters. And this is no different. Hanging Saddam is easy. It’s a job, for once, that these folks can actually see through to completion. So this execution, ironically and pathetically, becomes a stand-in for the failures, incompetence and general betrayal of country on every other front that President Bush has brought us.

Try to dress this up as an Iraqi trial and it doesn’t come close to cutting it — the Iraqis only take possession of him for the final act, sort of like the Church always left execution itself to the ’secular arm’. Try pretending it’s a war crimes trial but it’s just more of the pretend mumbojumbo that makes this out to be World War IX or whatever number it is they’re up to now.
. . .
These jokers are being dragged kicking and screaming to the realization that the whole thing’s a mess and that they’re going to be remembered for it — defined by it – for decades and centuries. But before we go, we can hang Saddam. Quite a bit of this was about the president’s issues with his dad and the hang-ups he had about finishing Saddam off — so before we go, we can hang the guy as some big cosmic ‘So There!’

Marx might say that this was not tragedy but farce. But I think we need to get way beyond options one and two even to get close to this one — claptrap justice meted out to the former dictator in some puffed-up act of self-justification as the country itself collapses in the hands of the occupying army.

What strikes me about all this is that Saddam’s guilty sentence (and to a lesser extent his punishment) were probably foregone conclusions, so the challenge to the Iraqi Government (read: the Americans pulling their strings) was to find the best method to try Saddam Hussein. They could have handed Saddam over to the International Criminal Court or postpone the trial until the American occupation is over, but that would have robbed them of the well-choreographed marketing campaign that the trial and execution of Saddam Hussein has become. It was a sham trial that didn’t have to be, and the decision to micromanage Saddam’s fate has probably been made at the expense of America’s image throughout the world. Again.

You mean to tell me we spent $300 billion just to hang the guy? Hell, for that kinda cash, they could at least set off some fireworks or launch him from a catapult or something.

Here’s a cool little bit of history from the blog Strange Maps.

The painter Gilbert Stuart was inspired by the awkward shape of an electoral district on a map he saw in a newpaper editor’s office. He decorated the snake-shaped district with a head, a set of wings and claws, making it out to be some kind of antediluvian monster.
“That will do for a salamander,” he said to the editor.
“Gerrymander!”, replied he to Stuart.

For the man responsible for the odd shape of that electoral district, in eastern Massachusetts, was Elbridge Gerry, governor of the state. His Democratic-Republican partisans had stitched together the district in such a way as to assure the electoral victory of their candidate and therefore the defeat of the candidate for the other main party, the Federalists. The year was 1812, and the first of many recorded uses of the term occurred that spring.

So for those of you hoping to spot a Gerrymander in the wild, here’s what the first one looked like :

And for a good example of how this beast has evolved, here’s a map of Texas’ 29th Congressional district :

For their next trick, those beltway geniuses are going to solve the Social Security “crisis”. Y’see, Cliff May just got an email from a top-ranking official in the Nigerian government…

Count me among those who thinks this is no big deal :

A long-awaited study by US scientists has concluded that meat and milk from cloned animals and their offspring are safe to eat and drink and should be allowed to enter the food supply without any special labeling.

Seriously. The freaking out over this is just stupid. Human beings have been been “playing God” with our food supply since the dawn of agriculture, so the neo-Luddite crap that accompanies every scientific advancement is getting old. Cloned meat is safe to eat, so calm down..

What’s extra funny about all this is the advocates in these debates who concede that even if cloned meat is safe to eat and is indistinguishable from the standard meat that comes from test tube calves, we should still have strict labeling laws. Now, I’m all for consumer transparency, but let’s not act as if this is happening in a vacuum. Here’s the context :

The FDA sees cloning as a natural extension of the livestock reproductive technologies — such as artificial insemination and in vitro fertilization — that have become routine, said spokesman Doug Arbesfeld.
. . .
But a study released this month by the Pew Initiative on Food and Biotechnology found that 64 percent of Americans are uncomfortable with animal cloning and that 43 percent believe food from clones is unsafe.

Why is that? Because “clone” is a scary word. I’d be more sympathetic to anti-cloning side if somebody could give a legitimate reason to believe that eating meat from cloned animals is worse for you than regular meat. Without that, the whole labeling issue seems like nothing more than an attempt to capitalize on the general public’s unfounded fears.

Before you call me a corporate shill in the comments, however, let me point out that the real reason you should be worried about cloned meat (courtesy of jb at Metafilter) has nothing to do with what you’re serving for dinner.

The cloned meat is just fine to eat, but that doesn’t mean cloning isn’t a danger. What happens when 90% of the animals in North American are only 5 genotypes? They might all be susceptible to the same disease, and then all will die. Whereas now, some are susceptible, but others (maybe not such good milkers) are immune.

We’ve already seen this in corn – the obsession with having uniform farming meant that som 70% or more of American corn was destroyed by the same disease in the 1970s, and the American corn industry had to be bailed out by Mexican corn, because they believe in having more variety in maize there.

If we start cloning animals, we have so much to lose in terms of genetic diversity. We’ll also lose traits that might not seem important now, but might be important in the future. Right now, we want maximum milk or maximum meat production in cattle, but what if in 100 years we want hardiness to drought? We will have bred all the variety right out of the cattle, which will make it so much harder to change our breeding programs.

We need to protect diversity in our farm products – everyone loves to talk about biodiversity in the Amazon, but it’s all the more important to us and our immediate survival that we have biodiversity in our agricultural plants and animals, because that is what keeps us alive. We can’t afford to let the quick buck now destroy the wealth of genetic diversity which we have, and which we have bred into our plants and animals.

So please people, if you’re going to go nuts over out-of-control corporate agribusiness, do it for the right reasons.

Like any member of the left in good standing, I despise religious people with a passion. At least, that’s what conservatives would have you believe about liberals any time one dares to suggest that government and religion shouldn’t mix. With that in mind, I’ve been confused this week to see two strongholds of “sensible liberalism” run hit pieces on Mitt Romney for the crime of being outspoken about his faith, but not being a mainstream or evangelical Protestant. From Slate :

Objecting to someone because of his religious beliefs is not the same thing as prejudice based on religious heritage, race, or gender. Not applying a religious test for public office, means that people of all faiths are allowed to run—not that views about God, creation, and the moral order are inadmissible for political debate. In George W. Bush’s case, the public paid far too little attention to the role of religion in his thinking. Many voters failed to appreciate that while Bush’s religious beliefs may be moderate Methodist ones, he was someone who relied on his faith immoderately, as an alternative to rational understanding of complex issues.

Nor is it chauvinistic to say that certain religious views should be deal breakers in and of themselves. There are millions of religious Americans who would never vote for an atheist for president, because they believe that faith is necessary to lead the country. Others, myself included, would not, under most imaginable circumstances, vote for a fanatic or fundamentalist—a Hassidic Jew who regards Rabbi Menachem Schneerson as the Messiah, a Christian literalist who thinks that the Earth is less than 7,000 years old, or a Scientologist who thinks it is haunted by the souls of space aliens sent by the evil lord Xenu. Such views are disqualifying because they’re dogmatic, irrational, and absurd. By holding them, someone indicates a basic failure to think for himself or see the world as it is.

By the same token, I wouldn’t vote for someone who truly believed in the founding whoppers of Mormonism. The LDS church holds that Joseph Smith, directed by the angel Moroni, unearthed a book of golden plates buried in a hillside in Western New York in 1827. The plates were inscribed in “reformed” Egyptian hieroglyphics—a nonexistent version of the ancient language that had yet to be decoded. If you don’t know the story, it’s worth spending some time with Fawn Brodie’s wonderful biography No Man Knows My History. Smith was able to dictate his “translation” of the Book of Mormon first by looking through diamond-encrusted decoder glasses and then by burying his face in a hat with a brown rock at the bottom of it. He was an obvious con man. Romney has every right to believe in con men, but I want to know if he does, and if so, I don’t want him running the country.

While I largely agree with the sentiments in the Slate and New Republic articles, I can’t help but remember all the times these same publications have bashed the left for making the exact same points about evangelical politicians. Needless to say, I think we’re going to see a lot more of this over the next couple of years as more and more pundits find new ways to make the argument that “Yeah, religious appeals by politicians are okay, but Mormons are weird.”

Hypocrites.

To commemorate the passing of Gerald Ford, here’s a repost of my favorite political ad of all time :

And while we’re talking about Ford’s legacy, let me echo what Atrios said :

As we all know, because everybody on the teevee will keep repeating it, Gerald Ford’s pardon of Richard Nixon was perhaps the wisest and awesomest thing anyone has ever done in the history of presidenting. Never mind that it wasn’t popular at the time. Never mind that it set an awful precedent which led to the pardoning of the Iran Contra figures and transformed corrupt Nixonites into distinguished elder statesmen and Bush administration officials.

We are told again and again that what they nation needed was “to heal.” That “the turmoil” needed to be over. That it was necessary to move on.

Ford’s presidency began by pardoning a criminal scumbag. It wasn’t “closure”, it was driving the getaway car. And while it may be impolite to point out Ford’s complicity in this shameful nadir in our nation’s history, it could be worse. When Bill Clinton dies, every obituary will contain the name “Lewinsky”.

That is all

Over at TPM, M.J. Rosenberg is giving me a serious case of deja vu :

I just watched Hillary Clinton on “the View.” And I realized something. Every time she lets go a little (like when she jogged into the room), she is very appealing.

Yeah, I remember thinking the exact same thing about Gore in 200 and Kerry in 2004. I’ve heard Republicans also say similar things about Dole in 1996. Which leads me to ask when are the Washington elite going to realize that Americans want a human being to lead them, not some talking-points shitting android who looks uncomfortable in his/her own skin?

On a related subject…

Robots could one day demand the same citizen’s rights as humans, according to a study by the British government.
. . .
The paper which addresses Robo-rights, titled Utopian dream or rise of the machines? examines the developments in artificial intelligence and how this may impact on law and politics.

The paper says a “monumental shift” could occur if robots develop to the point where they can reproduce, improve themselves or develop artificial intelligence.

The research suggests that at some point in the next 20 to 50 years robots could be granted rights.

If this happened, the report says, the robots would have certain responsibilities such as voting, the obligation to pay taxes, and perhaps serving compulsory military service.

Personally, I think this is far-fetched. Not just for the standard “where the hell is my flying car?” reasons, but the fact that i don’t see artificial intelligence ever getting to that point. Unless specifically programmed, artificially intelligent machines will lack human traits such as greed, lust, jealousy, compassion, fear, sadness, and joy that motivate our actions much more than intelligence. The idea that AI’s evolution will evolve to the point where “sentient” machines would have the same needs and desires as human beings is fanciful. If anything, as AI evolves towards more human-like behaviors, we’ll probably just cross into the uncanny valley and never return. That is, unless some AI genius decides it’s a good idea to program their robots to bitch about their taxes and have crappy taste in music. In which case, I say we tax the hell out of those rusty, metallic welfare queens. Get a job, IG-88!

It looks like Slate’s Explainer has a fun list of leftover questions from throughout the year. Reading through them, I can’t resist the urge to try to answer, so here’s my best guesses and/or smart-ass replies. Let me know how wrong I am about any of these in the comments. (via Kevin)

What comes after 999 trillion?

One Quadrillion

Why do train whistles at night always sound lonely and mournful? Not so in the daytime.

Because (a) lower traffic at night means less ambient noise and (b) we tend to associate darkness with loneliness and light with happiness.

Lasers are now powerful and small (at least I think they are), so why don’t our troops carry laser guns?

Handheld lasers probably aren’t that powerful. Even if they are, lasers are probably much more expensive to produce than traditional firearms. Plus, the United States still hasn’t signed on to the United Nations G.I. Joe/Cobra treaty which mandates the use of blue lasers for “good guys” and red lasers for “bad guys”.

Why is smooth peanut butter cheaper than nutty?

Because people are dumb enough to pay more for nutty peanut butter. Also, nutty peanut butter requires an extra step during the manufacturing process (ie. the adding of chopped nuts to smooth peanut butter).

If we taught animals to talk, how would that affect the world?

There would be more vegetarians, but we’d get definitive proof that cows are complete dumbasses.

What would happen to the stock market if a meteor impacted the earth? What would happen to the global markets and the U.S. market? Say a meteor hits inside U.S. borders and takes out two states.

The insurance industry would crash, but the U.S. government would bail them out. Unfortunately the same won’t be done for the millions of refugees created by the meteor strike. But at least the trillions of dollars wasted on the “war against meteors” will create a few more jobs, right?

Also, we must abolish the death tax.

Is it possible to collect all the cookie dough in Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough ice cream and actually bake cookies from it?

Yes, but the cookies suck. The “dough” in the ice cream was designed to be eaten raw, not baked.

I have been pondering this situation for as long as I can remember (maybe age 7-8) and it drives me nuts. It makes me feel like my head will implode if I think any harder. Is the universe infinite? It must end somewhere. But when it ends … there must be something on the other side … right?

Stop wasting your time obsessing over questions you’ll never be able to answer.

If a group of passengers on a hijacked plane wanted to, could they bring a plane down by all of them using their cell phones at the same time?

Are you really dumb enough to believe that?

Why do humans die so young? In biblical times, people lived for several hundred years; now living to 100 is considered a long life. What happened?

Probably the same thing that killed all of the unicorns.

How can I tell if I was the first person to use the term “K-fed-up” in relation to Britney’s divorce?

Take a deep breath and think about that one for a second. Do you really want to take credit for something that stupid?

Hi, how does nature make water? How does nature combine one oxygen atom and two hydrogen atoms to make water? If we knew how nature makes water, then perhaps we can then find an efficient way of separating hydrogen from oxygen, thus creating the ultimate source for energy.

That’s it. If I ever start a band, it’s gonna be called “the ultimate science for energy”.

Why is grilled chicken tasting increasingly rubbery and odd?

Because you’re a terrible cook.

i need more money…..what business can i start that will not take a lot of time…i have internet access daily………..and i have saturday morning free before 12 noon to run around. i work from 7am to 9:30 pm…………..

There’s a lot of money to be made in selling postal reply coupons.

Can you tell me how long it will take if you eat rat poison to see if it is going to affect you? Please e-mail me back. Because my niece ate some.

Is your niece dead yet?

PYGMIES: How/when/where/still in existence/do we mate with them?

Mate with them? Ummmm…are you trying to score a date with a Pygmy?

I have noticed that a lot of mainstream movies feature men peeing. Are the actors really peeing?

What kind of movies are you watching?! Can you pee on command for twenty takes on a set full of people?

What is the richest religion? Scientology has a lot of Hollywood stars and I think they actually make their members give money, but Catholicism is a very old religion with its own country. Also, Islam has a lot of members but I don’t know about their money situation.

Don’t rule out the fundies. They’re loaded.

Hello … Could you tell me if there’s been any kind of medical discovery in the last 30 years besides DNA.

No. Science has stood completely still since DNA was discovered thirty years ago…in 1953.

Are UFOs confirmed to be from other Alien Planets?

Yes, but the government doesn’t want you to know. Also, George Bush planned the 9/11 attacks.

I met a 40-year-old stripper back in February of this year. We had a special connection. Yet, she was homeless, going through a divorce and bankruptcy. She has three kids who live in Alabama and she pays $500 a month in child support. Moreover, she used cocaine. At one point, she was arrested for forgery. She spent a month in jail but was released under the condition that she become a narc for the police department. She gave the names of her dealers and would wear wires when drug deals were going down. I let her stay at my place and kept food in the refrigerator. This past Monday she took all her clothes, my money, and left. The night before, she hung out with some friends. I called her, and she said I was too good for her. She said she had never been treated so well. She said she would drag me down and she couldn’t bear to handle that. I told her my hopes and dreams the night before. I wonder if I scared her off. I don’t know what to make of it. I don’t know if she met someone else the night before and doesn’t want to tell me. It’s killing me inside. I cried for her. I really cared for her. Can you give me some advice?

It sounds like you’ve already got the world figured out. We should be the ones asking you for advice.

Well, shit. With Tom, Bob, and now Jonathan invading the publishing world, I guess I have to write a book now too. Any takers on “After the Laughter : The Greg Saunders Story”?

Seriously though, Jonathan’s book looks hilarious. Read some excerpts here.

Am I the only one starting to get annoyed by the whole “black vs. woman” attitude towards the Obama and Clinton 2008 speculation? The other day I saw a headline that was simply “Black Man vs. White Woman”, though Newsweek has been more subtle with their “Is America Ready?” as if the choice between the two is little more than which minority group Americans hate less. I understand the historical nature either presidency would have and I look forward to a day when being a white Christian man isn’t seen as an essential qualification for the presidency, but the way this has been bluntly reduced to discussion of the minority status of Obama and Clinton (and little else) is kinda tacky.

Speaking of Newsweek, this line from their Obama/Clinton piece struck me as funny :

Hillaryland is in a “how dare he?” frame of mind, insisting that the wet-behind-the-ears senator doesn’t have the standing to crash her party.

Yeah, how dare that first-term Senator from Illinois try to challenge the first-term Senator from New York.

That’s my entry, though it’s aimed more at the cheesy comments thread than the contest itself.