Viva W, Torture Si!

The Editors have King George W. dead to rights:

With WPE’s veto of a bill banning waterboarding, we now have a list of nine laws that our President thinks are so wrong-headed that he can’t simply ignore them like he usually does with laws he doesn’t like. The offending legislative initiatives, in order:

1. Funding for potentially life-saving research using stem cells.
2. Benchmarks for the Iraqi government to meet, that we might someday leave that country.
3. Again, funding for potentially life-saving research.
4. Health insurance for children.
5. Water resources act: the one veto which it can be plausibly argued had something to do with fiscal discipline.
6. A bill that would ban the use of thimerosal, which crazy people think has something to do with autism. Sure, okay, whatever.
7. Again, health insurance for children.
8. A defense authorization bill pocket-vetoed at the last minute for somewhat puzzling reasons (Jack Daniels)
9. A ban on (some kinds of) torture

So to recap: health insurance for children: very bad. Potential cures for crippling disease: very bad. Spending on infrastructure: occasionally bad, but way to close the barn door after burning the building down. Mercury in vaccines: not a problem (which, to give him credit, is probably true). Torture: absolutely vital. Jack Daniels: awesome.

Of all of those, asserting the unilateral right to torture other human beings is perhaps the lowest, although denying kids health care and life-saving research are pretty far up there, too. It's like the Kentucky Derby of the most morally offensive act!

On Being Patient

Picking up where I left off about the President sounding like a junkie needing a little more of a fix today in asking for patience, The Editors note that the President wasn't at all patient in letting the weapons inspectors finish their work in Iraq before the war, and ends with this sublime passage:

Today, we find Bush asking us to be patient with progress in Iraq, and warning of dire consequences should Democrats succeed in denying Bush the chance of passing on responsibility for losing the war to the next administration. A noble goal, to be sure, and one can certainly imagine the American people granting patience to the troops, or to the Iraqi people who desperately want peace in their country, or to any of the other people who have suffered from Bush’s still-unexplained impatience with the inspectors four years ago. Unfortunately for all involved, the troops are not under the command of the American people, they are under the command of the Commander-in-Chief, President George W. Bush. And the Iraqis are not subject to the decisions made by the American people today, they are subject to the decisions made by the Macho Macho Conqueror of Iraq, President George W. Bush. The American people only have control over who their elected representatives are; and the American people, after being entirely too patient, have lost patience with President George W. Bush, and with his cronies and sycophants. They have lost patience with his conduct of the war - and, as no one else can conduct the war, they have lost patience with the war itself. And I doubt they are much inclined to hear sermons on “patience” from the man who was so anxious to rush into a war that, four years later, he still can’t justify.

Man, if you can write funny, you can write any way you want. The Poor Man has been more about prog rock lately than any real analysis, but this is perfect. The best I've seen on this anniversary day.

Half-Half Black

The Editors at The Poor Man deliver a national monologue on race. Not to be missed.

It is ridiculous, a bunch of white people sitting around wondering whether or not a black man is black enough.