The Kentucky Lethal Injection Case

For those of you who have not seen or read about the decision in Baze vs. Rees (553 US 2008), the US Supreme Court upheld Kentucky's method of lethal injection as constitutional. Oddly enough, the condemned inmates who brought the suit did not argue that capital punishment in and off itself is "cruel and unusual" in violation of the 8th Amendment (it isn't), rather they argued that the three drug compound used to carry out the procedure, as well as the lack of an anesthesiologist, EMT and nurse, made the procedure so fraught with potential difficulties as to create the opportunity for "distress" and "unnecessary pain".

It was a pretty clever argument for the petitioners. By arguing against the lethal injection cocktail, the same mixture being used in all states that currently have the death penalty and the Federal Government, and not the procedure itself, they opened up several potential avenues to get their murdering hides off death watch.

One of their more ingenious arguments was that absent a nurse, EMT or anesthesiologist there was no real way to make sure the first drug, once administered, was doing its job. The first drug, sodium thiopental, is designed to basically knock you out and make you unable to feel your own death. Petitioners argued that you needed a medical professional to make sure it worked and the condemned was really out of it, otherwise being awake for your own death is "cruel and unusual". Fortunately for them, the American medical community, EMT's and nurses associations all have standing ethical guidelines prohibiting their participation in capital punishment. Had the Court upheld this request from the condemned, it would have effectively banned capital punishment in the United States on a technicality. Nice try, better luck next time.

The petitioners also requested the Court order the states to find a new lethal cocktail, arguing that the present three-cocktail mix takes too long to inject and suffers from the aforementioned problem of unreliability in observation and confirmation of unconsciousness. They also argued that the tubes could become clogged. Not that it ever has, for they present no documented instance in support of their contention, but that it could. They therefore contend that it would be better if the states were ordered by the Court to adopt a new one-dose mortal martini. Since, as aforementioned, every state in the nation which has capital punishment on the books uses the same three-dose lethal injection method, and they admit there is no new one-dose injection waiting in the wings, the Court rightfully dismissed this as a stalling tactic and an attempt to get the Court to become a "Board of Inquiry" with authority to perpetually reexamine the death penalty every time someone argued that a better method had been developed, stripping the State's of their sole Constitutional authority to do so. They realized that if the Court had ordered the States to go to a one-dose method, without any scientific basis to do so, indeed, without any such drug currently available, it would amount to a moratorium on the death penalty while such a drug was created, tested and undoubtedly filed suit against in state and federal courts. Justice Clarence Thomas, as usual, brilliantly observed;

It is not a little ironic—and telling—that lethal injection, hailed just a few years ago as the humane alternative in light of which every other method of execution was deemed an unconstitutional relic of the past, is the subject of today’s challenge. It appears the Constitution is “evolving” even faster than I suspected. And it is obvious that, for some who oppose capital punishment on policy grounds, the only acceptable end point of the evolution is for this Court, in an exercise of raw judicial power unsupported by the text or history of the Constitution, or even by a contemporary moral consensus, to strike down the death penalty as cruel and unusual in all circumstances. In the meantime, though, the next best option for those seeking to abolish the death penalty is to embroil the States in never-ending litigation concerning the adequacy of their execution procedures.

The "text or history" about which Justice Thomas spoke was the original meaning of the "Cruel and Unusual" punishment prohibition, which he elucidated by looking at every previous case against capital punishment upon which the High Court had ruled. The Court has never invalidated a method of execution on the grounds that it was "cruel and unusual" because the Court has never found a method of execution in the United States of America to be "tortuous". In the opinion, the majority was divided into separate concurring opinions and one united dissenting opinion. Only Justice Thomas took the time to explain why, using tried and true original intent methodology, lethal injection could not be "cruel and unusual". Basically, it is because we never impose "super-capital punishments".

Back in the day (a very research-y term I know) death was a proper punishment for a whole host of offenses. Certain crimes in Europe; like lese-majesty, high treason, witchcraft and mariticide, that is, crimes that were seen as pernicious to the entirety of the social order, were punishable by super-capital punishment. These kinds of punishments were designed to inflict severe pain on the victim as he was dying and to destroy his body in the process. In essence, the punishment was designed to be a "fate worse than death". It was a "cruel and unusual" punishment. He quoted In Re Kemmler (136 U.S. 436, 446; 1890);

“Punishments are cruel when they involve torture or a lingering death; but the punishment of death is not cruel, within the meaning of that word as used in the Constitution. It implies there something inhuman and barbarous, something more than the mere extinguishment of life.”

This was designed to be a brief overview of the holding in the case, for a more thorough understanding you must, of course, read the 97-page decision your-own-self.

US Military Casualties in Comparison

A little something for the people who like to pretend they care about soldiers as an excuse to end the war in Iraq. This especially applies to people who think that President Bush has grossly mismanaged the War on International Islamic Terrorism and produced terribly high casualty numbers in the process.

I will let the numbers speak for themselves:

US Military Deaths 1992-2000 under US President Bill Clinton: 8,807
US Military Deaths 2000-Present under US President George W. Bush: 10,946

So, to elaborate more fully, under President Clinton's "Peace" Presidency we lost 2,139 less soldiers than we did during President Bush's two-front wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. President Bush secured two countries, Iraq and Afghanistan and President Clinton bombed and Aspirin factory in the Sudan. President Bush became the first person in modern history to conquer Afghanistan, President Clinton attacked the Balkans (and put good soldiers lives at risk) to cover up an affair and his subsequent impeachment.

These numbers show that by all accounts the operations in Iraq and Afghanistan are the most well carried-out, well-executed and most precise operations in military history.

You won't see that on your nightly news, because they're too busy trumpeting each and every combat death as further proof that we cannot win despite the lowest casualty figures of any modern military campaign of this size or scope.

Source: US Department of Defense

NYT endorsements are out (be still my beating heart)

The New York (High Crimes) Times has endorsed John McCain. As if any more proof were needed he's not a Republican, or a Conservative. So, he's locked up the virulently left-wing leak state secrets and troop movements to our enemies to undermine the President newspaper vote, (though don't accuse it of bias) what more to come I wonder? If he gets the Washington Post endorsement, we'll know that it doesn't consider him one of those naive and pernicious American mercenaries who already got it too well.

To steal a quote, the problem with quoting "intellectual" mainstream Democrats is that when you do, they accuse you of mudslinging.

YOU are not progressive

Attention Democrats, all of you. Attention FDR worshiping academics, Noam Chomsky acolytes, college students for "change", the news media, interest groups, cheering throngs for Clinton, billionaire financiers, etc.

You are NOT progressives. You never have been. There is absolutely nothing progressive about what you do, what you want, the American you want to see built, or your policies.

You are, at best, regressive.

True progressives were John Stuart Mill, who argued for private property and the rights of the citizen. True progressives were men like Thomas Jefferson, who wanted to enshrine a system of a government which governs best is one that governs least. Progressives were men like John Locke, who argued for the contract with government, and against the foundations of monarchy.

We have been successful in recent years appropriately tarnishing the label "big l" Liberal. People came to associate your cause, correctly, with reversing all we and the founding fathers had worked so hard to create. We had managed to associate, in the popular consciousness, the term "Liberal" with the altar of weakness, the shrine of UN-worship, the excesses of government, the fear of an independent citizenry, the revulsion at the concept of individual self-defense, militant atheism, disrespect for tradition, disregard of values, hatred of America, the cult of child murder, and an overriding collectivist mentality that, to quote Hillary Clinton from "It takes a Village", wanted to set up giant telescreens around the city telling you the government's preferred method of raising your children.

Seeing that the term "Liberal" had reached this point in popular consciousness, they began to refer to themselves by a term we all learned in schools. They were now "progressives". They were the scions of the reformers who fought to limit working hours for women, extend the franchise, change the Constitution, outlaw liquor, enforce reasonable standards of work and wage for the poor and urban dwelling. They were the heirs to this. We, the Conservatives, were like the forces of old.

Here's the problem, we have come to the point where as a nation we enforce human rights laws, enforce reasonable standards of work and wage, tax punitively, redistribute wealth, punish companies that sin against their employees, etc. We have reached that point.

Needing something to do, these "liberals" spend their time trying to create new human rights, not content with the ones we have now. The law of diminishing returns being what it is, we have already reached the pinnacle, so the only way we have to go is not up, but to go back around, to head down the other side of the curve.

We have the best performing, highest quality, most equitable, more efficient health-care system in the world. Foreigners come here for health care (drive to the Canadian border and look at the Canadian license plates in our clinics, then drive across and look in vain for American license plates in their clinic parking lots). Something is not right, though, because hospitals make money. And since medical care has suddenly become a human right, that's unfair.

True progressive reformers fought to break the private sector from the yoke of absolute government control. To free the people from central planning in the capital. To create a system where an individual could function independently of the state. Modern liberals are working the other way around, like the clock hitting midnight and heading back to 1, and are now working to put healthcare under the suffocating grip of the state. To put it metaphorically, true progressives are trying to let you design a house, modern liberals are demanding all families live in an identical one. Classic progressives worked to make the family and the individual the masters of their fate, modern liberals are working to put a government accountant in that role. Classic progressives fought for individual rights, to make a man's name mean something. Modern liberals invented the social security number, to help the government better keep track of your movements, and remove the problem of names altogether.

There is nothing progressive about you.

Classic progressives worked to guarantee, like the Second Amendment to the Constitution, the right of the individual to defend himself independently of the state. To be an armed, fully participating member of society. Modern liberals are working as hard as they can to take your right of self-defense away. They are working to make your self-defense absolutely dependent on the state. I respect the police, I am the son of a police officer and the grandson of a military police officer. The police cannot be everywhere, nor should they be, but modern liberalism is working tirelessly to put you at the mercy of an officer's reaction time.

There is nothing progressive about you.

True progressives fought for "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness". Modern liberalism has embraced the death cult of abortion. It is no longer a "baby", it is now a "fetus". True progressives fought for the inherent worth every human has by virtue of being a human. Modern liberalism has decided that you are a life when your mother decides you are worth it. They play rhetorical games, calling human life "parasitic" and claiming that they simply want to make sure "every child is wanted". True progressives toiled to make every man a king, his own master, to free him from arbitrary autocracy. Modern liberalism has made a child the victim of the most arbitrary of decisions, with fatal consequences if they decide incorrectly.
The issue of stem-cell research, which we have been fully vindicated on, comes to mind. Conservatives argued that stem-cells should be used that do not require the death of any human being, or potential human being, and we were labeled as mad for it. In the back of my mind I believe that, even if it was subconscious, that the drive and support for fetal stem-cell research by the Democrat party was to create a market for aborted children. If murdered babies could be used to cure disease, then hopefully self-interest would take over and abortion would become sacrosanct to the public at large. Democrats are losing the abortion debate, evidenced by the numbers of women choosing note to have them, by the membership in pro-life organizations. This issue had to be a godsend (if they believed in one) to them, to finally make abortions necessary to our quality of life. To make them a moral necessity. They tried it before with the overpopulation arguments, but human kind is not so forward-looking. A cure for Parkinson's was a more immediate, tenable, justification for continuation of the cult of child murder.

It is much the same principle with radical environmentalism, which has decided that the advances of the last hundred years need to be regressed. We have scholars seriously debating the merits of "extinction-driven reproduction controls". It does not take much intelligence to see that the draw of the global warming hoax is that it justifies misanthropic policies and ideas that twenty years ago would have put you in the asylum for sociopathy, but now is treated as a legitimate belief structure.

There is nothing progressive about you.

True progressives recognized the value of lively, free, open debate. If a man is afraid to speak, he is not free. True progressives ended censorship, detested thought control and propaganda. The citadel of modern liberalism, the university, wrote the book on propaganda. They created speech codes, protected classes of people legally exempt and protected from opposing thoughts, created Orwellian programs to indoctrinate incoming students on how they should "feel", how guilty they are, what they are responsible for as members of one race. True progressives rewrote the definition of treason to make corruption of blood forbidden, modern liberalism has embraced race-guilt and happily disseminates the falsehood to anyone who listens. Universities have, in reality, become centers with fully operating reeducation centers for violators convicted of opposing abortion, speaking out against homicide bombers, supporting Israel, believing in Jesus. True progressives believed the entire country to be a free speech zone, modern Liberalism has created the free speech zone on campus, twenty square feet on the plaza, and any document posted outside of it must be approved by the regulatory commissars to be completely sure it is not "offensive".

If I sound angry, believe me I am. I know what true progressivism is, and I know what these charlatans are today. Every time I hear someone refer to themselves as a "progressive" I want to inform them that they are, in fact, regressive statists.

True progressives recognized the worth of every individual, on his merits. Modern liberalism has embraced the soft bigotry of race-based admissions and affirmative action. I don't understand how many of these people, be they black, women, etc. can take this the way they do. You are being told, by the benevolent white elites, that you can't hope to compete with white kids, therefore you need the state to order colleges to let you in, companies to give you jobs, the state to give you welfare, because we know best. If you don't believe in any of this, you are obviously a knuckle-dragging Conservative, the people who are actually responsible for your plight. They create these protected classes of people, protected from criticism, from opposition, from free and fair competition, and then blame us when the statist model fails and they learn that when you do not require merit from people, they don't develop any.
We're the racists for recognizing that you don't need the state to be great. Real progressives said you were born with it, modern liberalism has decided it is a gift from the omnipresent government.

This will be updated, infrequently, as more issues come to my mind, or as I get angry when some autocrat decides he's actually a progressive.

My choice for the next four years

Now that Fred Thompson, my candidate, is out of the race for the White House I am left with a decision that is not easy to make. This is one of those deep, soul-searching, meaningful, major decisions that will be with me for 4 years at least, maybe 8. I think you may have an idea what decision I am trying to make.

I am trying to decide whether I want to be a racist or a misogynist.

See, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are the only real democratic candidates running for president. John Edwards is running for the VP spot again, but this time he has a protected class of people opponent in Hispanic New Mexico Governor and former Clintonista Bill Richardson. How can the eternally tolerant and perpetually guilty Democrat Party not put a Hispanic on the ballot? More on this later...

In the lead up to the Democratic primaries the media was abuzz over whether America would be willing to elect a black man. When Obama won Iowa, we heard that America might had finally maybe sorta kinda overcome its latent racism and voted for him. Immediately afterward, often in the same breath, we heard that America was unwilling to elect a woman, probably due to some ingrained misogyny (I love false dichotomies). When Hillary won New Hampshire, we immediately heard from the sympathetic Democrat-controlled media that maybe America's latent racism had magically resurfaced (and our misogyny disappeared), and now we were voting for the white woman over the black man.

Never once, of course, did old media ask whether a Democrat voter was voting for Obama or Hillary on the basis of their announced positions (of which there are none unless you count constantly repeating "change" so often I thought I was out front of a McDonald's downtown where that one panhandler always stays). No, the only possible reasons for voting for Hillary over Obama was because you were too racist to vote for the black guy. Conversely, the only reason to vote for Obama must likewise be because you are too old-fashioned and misogynistic to vote for the white woman.

One of these two people will be the nominee for President, I hope it's Hillary (she's VERY beatable), but Obama has no record, no substance, and no idea that I can't flip open the "Communist Manifesto" and find in under a minute or two (Tax the rich! Increase regulation! End the vicious cycle of wealth and prosperity! It's all so terribly novel).

So, leading back to my original statement, should I be a racist or a misogynist? I am not happy with the current crop on Republican candidates. Only Thompson said what I knew to be true. I could never vote for McCain. Paul is insane. Huckabee is a Democrat who is only a Republican because he believes that anyone with a belief in God has to be. Romney was a lib until he got into office, whereby he decided to be the Conservative in the race. I fear that this may be the first race in my lifetime where I cannot in good conscience cast a vote for President.

When the election comes around, it'll be RINO vs. Workers of the World. Whether the DNC candidate is liberal messiah Obama or heir-apparent Clinton is not too important to me. What is important (okay, not important, humorous) is what the media will be calling half of America when it comes around. No matter what the result, there will be near-constant talking-head pontificating. It will go something like this:

Alphabet-soup network interchangeable host: "Now that Obama/Hillary is the Democratic nominee, it leads us to a very interesting question."

Talking head 1: "That it does Mitch (Mitch is a good name for a host), is America ready for a black/woman president?"

Talking head 2: "This is important, because Obama/Hillary is really trying to play up in middle-America, where many believe that latent racism/misogyny will be a stumbling block."

Talking head 1: "Indeed, as we know the Democrats fear that Republicans will pull out dirty tricks on Obama/Hillary to pander to their base, which is suspected of being very receptive to such racist/old-fashioned rhetoric."

Talking head 2: "And many feel that if you go to the polls and vote against Obama/Hillary, especially after the disastrous presidency of George W. Bush, you are either mentally ill or the DNC is right, and America is just to flawed to elect a black man/woman like Obama/Hillary."

Alphabet-soup network interchangeable host: "Are you saying that anyone who votes against Obama/Hillary is somehow a racist/misogynist?"

Talking head 1: "I think at this point the evidence points inescapably to that conclusion."

Talking Head 2: [nods in agreement]

I sincerely hope that Hillary gets the nomination and asks Richardson to be her VP nominee. That way when I don't vote for them, I can be a misogynist AND a racist at the same time!

Tax the Children!

A Doctor in Australia has advocated that the government impose a carbon tax on families to offset the toll on the planet that life (human, that is) takes on innocent mother Earth. He advocates sterilization procedures to bypass the tax, and mandatory condom use otherwise.

This is officially the most outrageous thing in the history of mankind.

Ever.

If there is one constant in the universe, it is that leftists the world over are leftists first. Their answer to everything is taxation and then government control. One of the reasons the whole global warming hoax is being perpetrated is that it justifies everything, every social program, every new tax, every new form of government control of individual rights and responsibilities. While Germany and Japan are scrambling to find new ways to increase their plummeting fertility rates, the advanced world is trying to find ways to wipe itself out. It would be ridiculous if it didn't garner such widespread support.

Democrats constantly accuse of us being the "party of the rich" despite the fact they have more millionaires and are more likely to have inherited their wealth than earned it, so I think we should call them the "left-wing fear-mongering party of taxing the poor, the children, and anything else that moves".

As a refresher course, here is a list of everything that causes or aggravates global warming:

1. Childbirth
2. The Elderly
3. Private health care
4. Private property
5. The US
6. Republicans
7. Private enterprise
8. Deforestation
9. Small arms ownership
10. Wealth
11. Capitalism
12. Pollution
13. Electricity
14. SUV's (except when celebrities and Democrats drive them)
15. Trucks
16. Shipping
17. Sports teams
18. Cows
19. Pigs
20. Chickens
21. Armadillos
22. Cheese graters
23. Computers
24. Blogs
25. Breathing
26. Asphalt
27. Astroturf
28. Blinds
29. Hunting
30. Wax candles
31. Catholics
32. Protestants
33. Jews
34. Mormons
35. Eastern Orthodox Christianity
36. Musli....wait, they can't be responsible for anything
37. Immigration
38. Emigration
    
39. Building a wall across the border
40. Pamphlets (except when they warn about global warming)
41. Artillery
42. The US Military
43. Airplanes
44. Hammers
45. Screwdrivers
46. Curtains
47. Door knockers
48. Hotel room keys
49. Class rings
50. Cell phones
51. Book publishing
52. Ink cartridges
53. Bankruptcy
54. TVs
55. Radios
56. Clapping
57. Lightbulbs
58. Israel
59. George W. Bush
60. Barbers
61. Thinking
62. Cracking your knuckles
63. Brushing teeth
64. Backflips
65. The Charleston
66. Moonwalking
67. Dick Cheney
68. Mass Transit
69. Walking
70. Bicycling
71. Cars
72. Happiness
73. Sadness
74. Anger
75. Depression
76. Surgery
77. Exercise
78. Running around in circles
79. Running up stairs two-by-two throwing open the door and shouting "HAHA! Caught you Margaret!"
80. Et cetera

Anyone who has followed the global warming mass hysteria will find how anything and everything causes global warming (as long as humans do it) and anything and everything must be controlled to stop it.

Ridiculous

Phase 7 rears its ugly head

Anyone who reads this blog regularly will remember my post entitled "Please excuse me from Socialized Medicine" in which I cataloged the phases Socialized Medicine goes through as it slowly collapses in on its own inefficiency eventually destroying itself (and the people unfortunate enough to live under such a system). You can read the original post HERE.

Go back and read Phase 7 of my post, about how the government starts requiring people to live their lives a certain way because by controlling the medical system it controls you, and then read this article HERE.

President Bush, idiot genius on YouTube

It always amazes me the doublethink people are capable of when discussing President Bush. He is either a brain-dead moron who can't even tie his own shoes -OR- a brilliant manipulator on a global scale.

Here is my reason for this little entry. Earlier I was checking out the Onion's "Inventory" archives, where they post "Top" whatever lists of "Depressing Summer Songs" or "truly original movie soundtracks" or whatever. I am a big fan of lists, don't really know why, but I like seeing how other people organize information and present it, though not in the boring accountant way but more in the this is an interesting way to look at the best movies of all time type of way. Anyway, I came across an article about "musicals you can really sing along to". I found The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas amongst them. For the uninitiated, Whorehouse is a truly awesome musical about a whorehouse (in Texas!) which mostly minds its own business, because the town and the sheriff are in cahoots with the brothel. Well, a dogooder finds out about the "chicken ranch" and starts a national media craze about it mostly to draw attention to himself and show how deeply troubled he is by the whole situation. (The song, "Texas, has a whorehouse in it! [Lord have mercy on my soul!]" reveals the whole situation...find it on YouTube, better yet, just go rent the movie).

The best song and dance in the musical though is hands down "the Sidestep" played by a wonderfully footloose and ornery Charles Durning as a fast-talking and quick moving Governor who excels at never, ever answering a question directly. (Not to mention his awesome ability to put his hat on sideways, then quickly turn into it so the hat falls on his head when he runs off). This song, which you can watch HERE, is a classic.

On the comments page I discovered that virtually everyone was referencing this song and the Governor's performance to President Bush. "This was written for him" one commenter said, "though Bush ain't as smart as him". Another poster compiled a collection of pictures of President Bush and played the song on top of it while talking about the "Military-Industrial Complex" and all the billionaires making cash off the dead in Haliburton's war for oil. (Yawn)

For the love of God people, it's just an old song from an old play about an old governor who, like most all politicians, avoids making a statement about a controversial issue until he has talked it over with his advisers and his pollsters.

That got me thinking on a deeper level, though. Some posters were talking about how they modeled the governor in Whorehouse after the President when they did local performances of the play. Others talked about how this was Bush uttering platitudes but never answering questions. The thing they're missing, though, is that the Governor is portrayed as a very intelligent and quick-witted guy in the play and the movie. He out-thinks, out-smarts, and out-dances every reporter he comes into contact with.

That leads me to believe that most of the people who saw the clip have never seen the movie and immediately jumped on the "Bush is stupid" bandwagon to feel all warm and fuzzy with the other idiot posters. Others, who have seen the movie, may fail to make the connection between how smart the Governor is in Whorehouse and how stupid they believe President Bush to be, but since it allows them to call Bush stupid they ignore it.

Enter doublethink.

He is portrayed two ways by his detractors:
1. An imbecilic moron who can't tie his own shoes, form a cogent sentence, pronounce "nuclear", run a tight ship, or have an original thought.
2. An evil genius who outsmarted the Europeans, tricked the all-powerful and all-knowing United Nations, subverted a genius like Tony Blair, and invaded Iraq (which was sovereign, in case you forgot) to get the precious oil for Haliburton; in the process creating a massive, overarching conspiracy that would have required the duplicity of thousands of government bureaucrats, officials, and general people who are supposed to be so much smarter than him.

This is doublethink, plain and simple. If Bush is an idiot, not just an idiot, a low-IQ dimwit with the mental capacity of a dried turnip, how could he have concocted a scheme to throw the entire world into chaos to get precious oil (which we import more of from Canada than we ever did from Iraq, and whose profits are going to, SURPRISE, rebuild Iraq)? "Well", they say, "it was his advisers. Brilliant neo-cons like Rumsfeld and Cheney! Puppetmasters!"
If Bush was under their control, then, how did he manage to not let the secret details of his secret machinations slip out during his speeches to Americans and the world? If Bush is as thoroughly stupid as his detractors claim him to be, there is no way he could have not failed to give up the ghost during the lead up to the war.

So Bush is entirely stupid, yet a brilliant mastermind. He can't tie his own shoes, but he can manipulate the world into a war for oil. He can't eat a pretzel, but he can trick the UN. He can't say "nuclear" but he can secretly arrange the "murder" of innocents around the world to fulfill his evil ambitions. He even brought down the twin towers, ya'know.

People seem to have no problem accepting these two mutually exclusive ideologies at the same time, these pleasant falsehoods that allow them to justify being routinely, and often painfully, bested by a man they abhor so completely. Every time they think they have him, he has something new waiting on them. "Oh well," they say "he's so stupid he won't be able to manage the war anyway" right after he "started it by engineering the attacks on 9/11".

Another aspect that gets on my last nerve and then tap-dances across it is the self-congratulatory way in which they mock the President. Here is a re-enactment:

Lib 1: "I called Bush evil"
Group: [Ooh's and Aaah's]
Lib 2: "Well, I called him Bushitler"
Lib 1: "Wow! Because he is both Bush AND Hitler!"
Group: "Whoa, new and exciting!"
Lib 3: "I am going to post a video of President Bush on YouTube using unflattering pictures of him, then I am going to spell out 'Nu Q Lur'."
Lib 2: "Mocking his way of pronouncing nuclear!"
Lib 1: "That's a brilliant idea!"
Lib 2: "Wait, according to the dictionary, 'nuke-you-lur' is an older pronunciation of 'nuclear' and completely acceptable..."
Libs 1+2: [silence]
Lib 3: "But Bush is so stupid, he would probably mispronounce it no matter how it was spelled."
Lib 1: "That's true!"
Lib 2: "Why don't I go onto YouTube, find something wholly unrelated to Bush, like a car commercial or something, and add a comment about how it is all Bush's fault that the car was taken off the market because he cares more about enriching his gang of criminal cronies than he does about healthcare for the workers who made it!"
Lib 3: "Because he does only care about the rich!"

If you think this is a stretch...you're wrong. Cruise around YouTube for five minutes and you will find postings everywhere, on every conceivable topic, about how stupid Bush is, about how he caused X or hates Y. And you will find it in a painfully self-congratulatory manner. The entrance exam in "Bush is stupid" YouTube Mensa apparently requires you only to find a video and link it to Bush, then you're bloody brilliant.

In my student newspaper here at Pitt I saw a column with two columnists expressing their opinions about current events. One article they covered was President Bush visiting the wildfire sites in California. One of them opined that, basically, Bush was trying to show he was not a complete incompetent by visiting the site of the fires, trying to make up for Katrina, which he horribly bungled. The other "noticed" that Bush chose to visit an area where most of the homes destroyed where owned by white people. This proved Bush hates black people. The logical tap-dance necessary to share these two ideas is astounding. On one hand, if President Bush had not shown up it would have been "Bush doesn't care, is incompetent, stays away not to look like an idiot" so when he shows up it is "Bush hates black people".

Doublethink, (noun): Thought marked by the acceptance of gross contradictions and falsehoods, especially when used as a technique of self-indoctrination (George Orwell, 1984)