The Distant Ocean

Turns out that satire is not dead:

In a late-night appearance in the East Room of the Imperial Palace, Lord Vader declared that “justice has been done” as he disclosed that agents of the Imperial Army and stormtroopers of the 501st Legion had finally cornered Kenobi, one of the leaders of the Jedi rebellion, who had eluded the Empire for nearly two decades. Imperial officials said Kenobi resisted and was cut down by Lord Vader's own lightsaber. He was later dumped out of an airlock.

You should definitely click through to get the full effect.  And you'll want to read the comments as well, lest you miss jewels like this:

This website is pure lies and Empire propaganda. The only sites I trust for information are HothToday and WookieLeaks.

Or this:

It makes me LAUGH all these Lefties, they are like "he should of been taken to a court not killed without a trial" oh please, can you imagine Kenobi in a court? He would of Jedi mind tricked them all, there would be NO JUSTICE. DO not foget he is respoinsible for killing MANY of our STORMTROOPS!!!____Maybe if you complain that we are WINNING the war on galacatic terrorism you might want to think twice who you'reREAL FRIENDS friends are!!!____THANK YOU LORD VADER!!!

Taken as a whole, this is actually some of the most astute political satire I've seen in a long time.  Thanks to Mr. Consequence for the link.

AND: Speaking of Star Wars (not a phrase I get to use that often around here), you're all fine and intelligent people, so I'm sure you know The Phantom Menace sucked.  But if you've never heard someone spend over an hour explaining exactly why it sucked, you owe it to yourself to watch this review, which is so funny that you may not even notice the first time through what a perceptive bit of film criticism it is.  Trust me, your life will be richer for the experience.

I've always harbored a secret desire to call up Michael Weiner's (aka Savage's) talk show and offer up a sufficiently retrograde question to get past the screeners—like, say, "What can we do to stop these gays from recruiting our children?"  Then once I was talking to the man himself I'd start off with my question, but quickly interrupt it with, "Oh hey, I've always wondered: is your last name pronounced WIENER, or WHINER?"

(You thought this was going to be about Anthony Weiner?  What could possibly be newsworthy about him?  I mean, sure, the guy's engaged in some despicably shameful behavior, but it's not much worse than what every other Democrat in Congress does.)

ADDING: There are many things I expect from Amy Goodman, but I can honestly say that a dick joke wasn't one of them.  In fairness, it's tough to talk about this ludicrous foofaraw without making one (even unintentionally)—but still, she had to work pretty damn hard (see?) to make "Longfellow" even remotely relevant.

I was talking with a friend about how conservatives get their marching orders from their news outlet of choice, to the point that they convince themselves they're genuinely outraged over Hugo Chavez or death panels or the war on Christmas or whatever other asinine talking point they've been programmed to spout this week, and I suggested that this would be an appropriate motto:

• Fox News: It's easier than thinking

But since I'm an equal opportunity cynic (in the Shaw sense), I added that there was another thought-related slogan that applies just as well to liberals' preferred news sources as that one does to Fox:

• PBS: If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you

While that probably needs no explanation, I've got nothing better to do, so: whereas conservatives are typically content to listen to the people they like bash the people they hate, liberals generally enjoy having their positions subjected to scrutiny and debate, in no small part because it makes them feel that their own beliefs are more than just received wisdom.  But they fail to distinguish between genuine debate and the illusion of debate—and while PBS (and NPR, and the New York Times, and other favored liberal news outlets) offer a neverending supply of the latter, you may as well wait for your dog to sprout wings as look there for the former.  If you're satisfied with tactical disagreements that never stray outside the ribbon-thin confines of mainstream policy or question fundamental assumptions, though—validating your worldview even while they appear to be challenging it—man, have they got you covered.

(Thanks to Don Marquis for the quote, and much more.)

I'm not the biggest Takashi Miike fan; Dead or Alive was worth it for the ridiculously over-the-top, well, everything, but Gozu more than balanced that scale in the other direction.  But I have to say his 13 Assassins was one of the best samurai movies I've seen; great plot, characters, dialogue and action, and good direction.  If you have any interest at all in Japanese guys running around with katanas you should give it a try.

And while we're on the subject of movies, here are some of the best ones I've picked up from the liberry* in the past year or so:

• Off the Map
• The Unknown Woman
• Untitled (best joke: "Wall surrounding space")
  
• The Black Balloon
• Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (no, really, it was surprisingly good)
• Sunshine Cleaning
• Good Dick (a film I thought I'd be turning off after 10 minutes, but which I ended up watching twice)
• Tully

I'd watch any of these films again—high praise in my world.  But the last two in particular stuck with me, and Tully is the kind of movie I thought just wasn't being made anymore, and was happy to find out I was wrong.

If you've got any recommendations of your own, please do share.

* (The cheap bastard's better-than-Netflix movie source, at least in my town, since they have a surprisingly good selection and you can have up to 10 movies checked out at a time for up to two weeks.)

ADDING: Two more in the wildly-exceeded-my-low-expectations category:

• Patrik, Age 1.5
• Please Give

So I was watching Exit Through the Gift Shop, which spends a lot of time on Shepard Fairey's efforts to plaster his OBEY image far and wide, and I thought, wait, don't I know this guy?  And moments later the film reminded me that this was the same schmuck who would later create the Obama HOPE poster, because, and I quote:

I have made art opposing the Iraq war for several years, and making art of Obama, who opposed the war from the start, is like making art for peace. I know I have an audience of young art fans and I’m delighted if I can encourage them to see the merits of Barack Obama.

Curious to see how delighted Mr. Art-For-Peace has been feeling after watching President Merit kick the war machine into hyperdrive, I happened across this essay of his from last September:

I support President Obama. I believe he is an intelligent, compassionate person, with many good policy ideas. If Obama runs for reelection in 2012, I will support him.

And while I wish he was more bold in action on issues of most concern to me -- health care, global warming, the war in Afghanistan, Wall Street reform, education, immigration reform -- I realize he is trying to do the best that he can given the obstructionist, "just say no to anything," opposition he faces from the Republicans in Congress.

Yes, it's a crying shame how the Republicans in Congress have forced Obama to massively increase drone strikes in Afghanistan and Pakistan, cut backroom deals with pharmaceutical and health care corporations, blackmail countries into accepting his administration's attempts to defer any meaningful response to global warming, wage war in open defiance of not just the Constitution but the War Powers Resolution, persecute whistleblowers with a ferocity that makes Nixon look like a bong-smoking hippie, etc etc etc.  Curse you, John Boehner!

You can read the rest if you want, but I warn you that "he is an intelligent, compassionate person, with many good policy ideas" is as deep a political insight as you're going to find.  But I did want to highlight this sobering challenge from another Obama defender (writing in response to some grousing malcontents in the comments):

Whatever happened to "Think what you can do for your country?" Instead of whining about what Obama has not achieved, look in the mirror. What have you achieved for Obama?

Man, that stings.  What have I achieved for Obama?  I haven't backed a Latin American coup, raised a single dime from Wall Street, expanded executive privilege so much as a centimeter, forced any Haitians back to their earthquake- and cholera-stricken hell on earth, shot an unarmed man in the face, lobbied for corporate tax cuts, or blown up even one measly Afghan wedding party.  And then I have the audacity to complain when he does it all himself!

So before we presume to criticize Obama any further, let's take a good long look in the mirror and think about what we can do for him.  Couldn't we ship a handgun or two to the Israeli army, just so he'll know he's not in this alone?  Yes we can!

In case you're wondering, this time around they looked something like this:

And this:

I'm heading out of town, so there won't be much to read here for a few days.  While I'm gone I'll no doubt be listening to (and with any luck, capturing the spirit of) Afternoon Song—one of my favorites since the moment I first heard it, and one of very few songs I know of where the music and lyrics work together so perfectly to express the underlying meaning.  Here's a small sample, though nothing can do Justin Sullivan's lyrics justice except to hear them sung (especially so in this case where the harmonized, chant-like vocal melody is used as a contrast to the chaotic energy in the music itself):

Time passes slow...
Fields stretch out across open acres
Time passes slow...
The giant steps of mankind touch us so little in the great lands

Our little storm
Whirls away out across calm wide oceans...
In this sacred breath
You and I falling for ever and ever and ever

And here's the song itself.  Enjoy.

(Previous forays into similar musical territory here and here.)

Every once in a while Ross Douthat is right:

Imagine, for a moment, that these were George W. Bush’s policies at work. A quest for regime change in Libya, conducted without even a pro forma request for Congressional approval. A campaign of remote-controlled airstrikes, in which collateral damage is inevitable, carried out inside a country where we are not officially at war. A policy of targeted assassination against an American citizen who has been neither charged nor convicted in any U.S. court.

Imagine the outrage, the protests, the furious op-eds about right-wing tyranny and neoconservative overreach. Imagine all that, and then look at the reality. For most Democrats, what was considered creeping fascism under Bush is just good old-fashioned common sense when the president has a “D” beside his name.

But (this being Ross Douthat) he's usually right for the wrong reasons, and you can count on him going on to draw the wrong conclusions:

Having one of their own in the White House has forced Democrats to walk in the Bush administration’s shoes, and appreciate its dilemmas and decisions. To some extent, the Bush-Obama convergence is a sign that the Democratic Party is growing up, putting away certain fond illusions, and accepting its share of responsibility for the messy realities of the post-9/11 world.

This really does demonstrate an impressive inability to grasp one's own point.  Douthat goes straight from a) accurately observing that most Democrats are now treating Bushian policies as "common sense" simply because a Democrat is carrying them out, to b) attributing this rank partisanship to "growing up", "putting away certain fond illusions", and "accepting responsibility".  Does he really not understand that they'd turn on a dime yet again if Newt Gingrich were to move his horns and pointy tail into the White House in 2012?  It's as though after demonstrating the conservation of energy, Joule decided it was just a transient phenomenon rather than a law of some sort.

Mitt Romney and Obama apologists have plenty of differences, but one thing they do agree on is that Obama's health care plan that will force people to buy private health insurance is clearly different from Romney's health care plan that forced people to buy private health insurance, and it would be absurd to equate or even compare the two.  Romney was at it again this week, acknowledging that the similarities between the two plans are a liability for him while still trying to explain why this rose isn't actually a rose as long as he calls it a chicken pot pie:

“Our plan was a state solution to a state problem,” Romney said of the 2006 health-care measure he signed into law as governor of Massachusetts. “His is a power grab by the federal government to put in place a one-size-fits-all plan across the nation.”

Sure, Mitt, whatever you say.  But unfortunately for both Romney and Obama apologists, the White House is eagerly embracing its Republican role model:

“We have said before that health care reform that then Governor Romney signed into law in Massachusetts is in many ways similar to the legislation that resulted in the Affordable Care Act,” White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said in an off-camera briefing at the White House. [...]  “We wholly endorse flexibility and we obviously feel that Massachusetts took a smart approach towards health care reform,” the press secretary added.

I watched a debate a few years ago between Romney and a doctor from Physicians for a National Health Program—whose rejection of Romney-style private insurance mandates and advocacy for a single-payer health system was so commonplace as to be a banal article of faith among Democrats at the time.  Of course, that was before a Democratic president's embrace of Romney's system changed many of their minds for them, and they switched from opposing private mandates to supporting them, usually without even passing acknowledgment of the extreme cognitive dissonance.

It's hard to imagine a better illustration of Obama's Midas touch: all he has to do is adopt Republican policies as his own, and they instantly turn from liberal defeats into golden progressive achievements!

(Previous trip to Massachusetts here, if you're interested.)

Jonathan Schwarz has an excellent catch based on entries from Osama bin Laden's journal:

In one passage, Bin Laden wondered how many Americans would have to die in U.S. cities to force the U.S. government to withdraw from the Arab world. He concluded that it would require another mass murder on the scale of the Sept. 11 attacks to spur a reversal in U.S. policy, an official said.

So...it turns out bin Laden's real, private motivation was exactly the same as his stated public motivation: to stop U.S. intervention in the mideast.

Click on over there to see the rest of his analysis, which is spot on as usual.  This hearkens back to something I wrote at Jon's site a while back, in response to someone saying we should take bin Laden's claimed motives with the same degree of seriousness we'd give to Bush's:

George Bush has become the most powerful man on the planet by lying about his motivations in order to service the needs of the wealthy, and he's lived in comfort and privilege as a result. Osama bin Laden rejected a life of extraordinary wealth and privilege to live in caves, constantly on the move, at risk of dying at any time either thanks to the price on his head or from easily treatable illnesses—all in order to fight for the causes he believes in.

Whatever I might think of his tactics or ethics, I don't doubt his stated motives.

This is just one of the reasons why I've never seen any reason to doubt that bin Laden really did mean every word he said about the U.S. presence in the Arabian Peninsula, the treatment of Palestinians, the sanctions in Iraq, U.S. puppet governments in the Middle East, and so on.  You don't toss aside a gazillionaire playboy lifestyle to pick up a gun in Afghanistan, move on to making yourself the most wanted human being on the planet, and then fill your steady stream of long, rambling manifestos with lies intended to disguise your true motivations and goals.

(Especially when your stated motive for removing U.S.-backed governments is not to give the people the right to govern themselves however they see fit, but "to make the Shariah the supreme law"—just one example where strategic deception would have gone a long way toward making the message more appealing to the presumed target audience.)

And on the equally-important flip side: if someone's pursuit of power and privilege eventually lands them the presidency of the United States, and then they continually use that office to do things that contradict the elevated rhetoric that got them there in the first place—like servicing corporate benefactors, backing coups, punishing whistleblowers, expanding government authority and impunity, and vaporizing human beings around the world—that's an unmistakable indication that their words were nothing more than sound waves propagated through the vibration of air molecules.

Such a simple lesson, so regularly ignored.

Joe Conason:

Everyone who feels pride and satisfaction in bin Laden’s fate must also acknowledge the bold action and sound priorities of President Obama, who has coolly and cleanly fulfilled a promise he made during his campaign. [...] The performance of the president and those around him should permanently dispel the perennial right-wing slur against Democratic leaders as deficient in the strength and courage to defend our security.

Glenn Greenwald:

This was a week for flag-waving, fist-pumping, and nationalistic chanting:  even -- especially -- among liberals, who were able to take the lead and show the world (and themselves) that they are no wilting, delicate wimps; it's not merely swaggering right-wing Texans, but they, too, who can put bullets in people's heads and dump corpses into the ocean and then joke and cheer about it afterwards.

In the media tidal wave following the killing of Osama bin Laden, I've run into a few commentators noting approvingly that Obama didn't take the John Kerry route of treating terrorism as "primarily an intelligence and law enforcement operation" and forego this opportunity at extrajudicial execution.  After I managed to contain my gag reflex and get my eyes back inside my skull, I decided it would be worthwhile to re-run a posting of mine from seven years ago that speaks to Kerry's homicidal bona fides.

And as long as we're taking this trip down memory lane it seems like a good time to remember Bill Clinton's deep commitment to due process, human rights, and other similarly quaint notions:

"We're not inflicting pain on these fuckers," Clinton said, softly at first. "When people kill us, they should be killed in greater numbers." Then, with his face reddening, his voice rising, and his fist pounding his thigh, he leaned into Tony, as if it was his fault. "I believe in killing people who try to hurt you. And I can't believe we’re being pushed around by these two-bit pricks."

People who still think of Clinton as the good Democrat should keep rereading this quote until they can recite it from memory.  Of course committed Democrats wouldn't see anything wrong with it, just as they're oozing with joy over Obama's latest achievement:

It is always a happy moment when Americans are reminded of our country’s greatness, especially when we are so often warned about its imminent decline—and the elimination of Osama bin Laden, fanatical murderer of thousands of Christians, Jews and Muslims, was certainly such a moment. [...] Everyone who feels pride and satisfaction in bin Laden’s fate must also acknowledge the bold action and sound priorities of President Obama, who has coolly and cleanly fulfilled a promise he made during his campaign.

("Elimination" and "fate" are so much less offensive than "assassination", aren't they?  They don't harsh that glow of pride and satisfaction.)

And now let's set the Tardis back to October of 2004:

-----------------

The Kerry campaign has obviously decided that it's important for Kerry to emphatically state, over and over, just how much he wants to "kill" terrorists. In fact, the full approved phrase appears to be "hunt down and kill." With Bush and Cheney, the word choice has more often been along the lines of "capture and kill" or "bring to justice"; as on so many other issues, the Democrats are attempting to outflank Bush from the right by making their rhetoric even more extreme.

Kerry and Edwards bleat the "kill" mantra whenever they get a chance; they literally said it in every single one of the debates. Here was Kerry in the first debate:

Appropriate for so many reasons on this particular Mother's Day:

Click on the image if you just can't get enough of this heartwarming indoctrination.  This one might be my personal favorite given everything the Clinton and Obama administrations have been doing to make the Earth "feel better again", but it's hard to choose with so much top-flight competition.

If you need a laugh, check out this Internet belch (which was the vector for the influx of petulant Democratic apologists on the "Words speak louder than actions" posting).  I warn you that if special liberalism were a city, that site would be one of the dingiest back alleys of the red-light district, where the sewer covers are always off and the crackheads don't even bother demanding your wallet before they try to roll you.  So if you do click through just try not to step in a vomit puddle.

It reminds me of the old joke:

Q: What's the difference between FreeRepublic and Democratic sites like this?

A: I don't know either.  Better CSS?