According to the AP, George W. Bush recently did a good and honorable thing:

President Bush is backing legislation to prevent people from losing their jobs or health insurance based on genetic testing.

Bush on Wednesday signed into law an anti-discrimination measure that drew enormous support in Congress. It forbids employers and insurance companies from denying employment, promotions or health coverage to people when genetic tests show they are prone to cancer, heart disease or other ailments.

He also did a good thing in 2003 when he signed into law the National No-Call list. Here’s that story:

President Bush on Tuesday signed legislation creating a national “do-not-call” list intended to help consumers block unwanted telemarketing calls.

I want to make sure I recognize that, for the past 7 years, George W. Bush has accomplished two things of which I approve. It’s important to take the time to recognize the accomplishments of people.

So there you are: two good things in seven years.

It’s my opinion, however, that virtually every other thing President Bush has done for the past seven years has been incompetent, dangerous, ignorant, dishonest, bigoted, divisive, corrupt and damaging to the reputation, economy and way of life of those living in the United States. Hence, I agree with this post.

The next time someone gets all misty-eyed when talking about the saintliness of Mother Teresa, have them read this post by Ebonmuse at Daylight Atheism. Here’s an excerpt:

Teresa was a friend to vicious dictators, criminals and con men. As Christopher Hitchens documents in his book The Missionary Position, Teresa was acquainted with a startling number of unsavory characters. Two such were the Duvaliers, Jean-Claude and Michelle, who ruled Haiti as a police state from 1971 until they were overthrown in a popular uprising in 1986. (They looted the country of most of its national treasury when they fled.) Teresa visited them in person in 1981 and praised the Duvaliers and their regime as “friends” of the poor, and her testimony on their behalf was shown on state-owned television for weeks. Bizarrely, she also visited the grave of brutal Communist dictator Enver Hoxha in 1990, laying a wreath of flowers on the tomb of a man who had viciously suppressed religion in Teresa’s native Albania. The list also includes the Nicaraguan contras, a Catholic terrorist group who unleashed death squads on the civilian population in their bid to conquer the country.

Teresa was also a friend to Charles Keating, a conservative Catholic fundamentalist who served on an anti-pornography commission under President Nixon. Keating would later become infamous for his role in the Savings & Loan scandal, where he was convicted of fraud, racketeering and conspiracy for his involvement in a scam where customers were deceived into buying worthless junk bonds, resulting in many of them losing their life savings. Keating had donated $1.25 million to Mother Teresa in the 1980s, and as he was awaiting sentencing, she wrote a letter to the court on his behalf asking for clemency.

The above post is a potent counter-balance to all the Mother Teresa hype.

My biggest concern with Mother Teresa was her destructive approach to family planning. How is it possible that she didn’t see the connection between the out-of-control birth rate and the resulting poverty? I suspect that she did see the connection, but was unwilling to speak the obvious. That would have caused people to stop adoring her. Further, Mother Teresa was far too enamored with the rich and famous and she was unwilling to give up that limelight. In the meantime, her irresponsible approach to family-planning created an ocean of grief which she tried to clean up, a teaspoon at a time.

Simple-minded self-ignorant acts of kindness can be destructive in the aggregate. Mother Teresa’s advocacy of the lack of family planning is on a continuum with all of those politicians who kiss all those babies (perhaps because they really do like babies), but then go back to Washington to rip away their health care coverage.

To cap it all off, Mother Teresa was intellectually dishonest, living a closeted a life as an agnostic while publicly proclaiming her alleged great faith.

There’s not nearly as much work for saints to do when we all start living responsibly and honestly, focusing on the root causes of problems.

Slate asks why Bush hasn’t given up his other amusements. Or maybe Slate is asking what is so damned patriotic about giving up golf. However you frame it, there’s hypocrisy in the air.

Neil Shubin recently published a book celebrating the discovery of a life form that clearly constitutes a transitional life form: tiktaalik, a fish that crawled out of the water by use of its rudimentary limbs. In a post in which I described Shubin’s book (Your Inner Fish: A Journey Into the 3.5 Billion Year History of the Human Body (2008)), I argued that every life form is a transitional life form. We’re all on the way to something else, at least those of us who will leave biological offspring. But some life forms are more obviously transitional than others and no currently living animal is more obviously transitional than the platypus.

The May 8, 2008 issue of Nature (articles available online only to subscribers) announces: “Top Billing for Platypus at End of Evolution Tree.” The article starts out by describing the platypus, one of nature’s oddest creatures:

Seemingly assembled from the spare parts of other animals. The semi-aquatic monotreme is a venomous, duck-billed mammal that lays eggs, nurses it’s young and occupies a lonely twig at the end of a sparse branch of the vertebrate evolutionary tree.

The Nature article describes the findings of a study analyzing the genome of the platypus. It was conducted by Wesley Warren of Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. The study found that the platypus genome contains both reptilian and mammalian elements.

The study also explains the emergence of the many odd features of the platypus. For instance, the platypus does produce true milk (although it doesn’t have true nipples). The new study shows that the platypus has the genes for caseins (milk proteins) which map in a way that corresponds to the protein mapping in humans.

This is a sign that one of the genetic innovations that led to the development of milk occurred more than 166 million years ago, and after mammals first split from the lizard-like sauropsids that gave rise to modern reptiles and birds.

The platypus results from a mix of reptile and mammal genes. “The genomic features of what are now two separate lineages can coexist in the genome of a single organism.”

Apparently the Pacific Justice Institute is suing a couple of Berkeley professors for putting up a website that explains evolution. The PJI apparently sues anyone who might constrain Christian evangelism in America, including in public schools. I read about this current suit here, on CitizenLink.org.

CitizenLink is a newsletter for Focus on the Family, a non-profit political action group for Pro-Life, evangelical Christian, and/or Young Earth education policies, but with redeeming social action programs. As long as they don’t mention candidates by name, they don’t have to pay taxes.

The legal claim is that evolution is a faith-based idea, and that the professors used Federal Grant money (National Science Foundation grant no. 0096613) as part of the funds needed to develop the site. Apparently the site disregards Creationist sources and ideology, and as such is religiously biased and violates the separation clause.

www.UnderstandingEvolution.com is full of references and citations, explanations, illustrations, and teaching guides to try to lead one to an understanding of many facets of what evolution is, and how it affects, well, everything. Topics include easy to follow answers for skeptics, like “How does evolution impact my life?”, “What is the evidence for evolution? ” and “What is the history of evolutionary theory?”. There are guides for teachers at all levels.

As such, this site has been a thorn in the side of Intelligent Design since 2004. Let’s see how much mainstream press this current nuisance suit attracts.

In my daily scan of Creationism related news, I found this historical analysis of presidential faux pas. Author Wm. C. Shelton explains in detail how Dubya’s lowest presidential approval rating in history is not his reason for rating our present leader the “Worst Ever”:

The measure of a bad presidency, for me, is neither popularity nor lack of accomplishment. It is lasting damage to the Republic and the wellbeing of its citizens. Such a judgment requires assessment of past failed presidencies and their impact on our shared history. By that measure, I judge the younger Bush to be the worst U.S. president ever.

The article proceeds to compare and contrast various “bad” policies and decisions of various presidents in light of their eventual historical significance.

So refresh your knowledge of G.W.B’s less luminary predecessors and read this article to get an idea of how history may regard leadership in our current era.

Traditional American Family
Nate Beeler, The Washington Examiner

McCain the Maverick
Keefe, The Denver Post

Untapped Natural Resources
Nate Beeler, The Washington Examiner

Oso Cheney
Adam Zyglis, The Buffalo News

[Amenazados = threats]

[All cartoons reprinted with the permission of Cagle Cartoons.]

Imagine that you were about to accept one of three comparable jobs. You need to choose the job. Would the house your future boss lives in provide information that would assist you to choose?

The person who would be your boss for Job A lives in this house:

The person who would be your boss for Job B lives in this house:

The person who would be your boss for Job C lives in this house:

I believe that there is a strong tendency to believe that the boss who has more money (which is indicated by the house in which he/she lives) is the better boss or friend or lover or whatever).

I think of this gut tendency as house-ism, which is related to car-ism, vacation-ism and school-ism (i.e., people who attended more expensive schools are perceived to be more successful). I’m not trying to be preachy. I find this tendency in myself.

We have a deep-down impulse to judge people by their things. I’m not announcing anything new here. I’m merely wondering whether we humans have any hope of ever moving on so that we judge other people by the content of their character rather than by the price of their houses.

[BTW, I took the first two photos last week in St. Louis. I took the bottom photo in Bejing, China in 1999--right around the corner was a terrific neighborhood restaurant. ]

McCain’s honesty problem has been condensed into this short YouTube video by Robert Greenwald.

The mainstream media needs to focus on what McCain himself has claimed.   This is not character assassination, but forcing McCain to deal with his own statements.

Sen. Robert C. Byrd, D-W.Va., has endorsed Barack Obama for President.

As reported by Ben Smith:

Byrd, 91, a master of Senate rules and Iraq war foe, has spent much of his political career repenting the racism of his youth. He’s acknowledged having joined the Ku Klux Klan in 1942, and campaigned against civil rights legislation in the 1960s.

What do you do about all of those college students who have no business being in college? If you’re a conscientious English teacher, you flunk them. And when you get incredibly frustrated that you really must flunk so many of them, as did “Professor X,” you write about your dilemma in The Atlantic.

The following excerpt is from the June 2008 issue of The Atlantic:

Sending everyone under the sun to college is a noble initiative. Academia is all for it, naturally. Industry is all for it; some companies even help with tuition costs. Government is all for it; the truly needy have lots of opportunities for financial aid. The media applauds it—try to imagine someone speaking out against the idea. To oppose such a scheme of inclusion would be positively churlish. But one piece of the puzzle hasn’t been figured into the equation, to use the sort of phrase I encounter in the papers submitted by my English 101 students. The zeitgeist of academic possibility is a great inverted pyramid, and its rather sharp point is poking, uncomfortably, a spot just about midway between my shoulder blades.

For I, who teach these low-level, must-pass, no-multiple-choice-test classes, am the one who ultimately delivers the news to those unfit for college: that they lack the most-basic skills and have no sense of the volume of work required; that they are in some cases barely literate; that they are so bereft of schemata, so dispossessed of contexts in which to place newly acquired knowledge, that every bit of information simply raises more questions. They are not ready for high school, some of them, much less for college.

I am the man who has to lower the hammer.

Americans are increasingly complaining that the cost of food is going up. Two recent articles demonstrate that Americans are profligate wasters of food in at least two major ways:

1) Obese people consume 18% more food energy than lean people and more than sixty million Americans are obese. Simply put, it takes more calories to maintain an obese body than a slimmer body, assuming both of them engage in similar amounts of activity.

2) Americans throw away an incredible 27% of their food. According to this article in the NYT:

Americans waste an astounding amount of food — an estimated 27 percent of the food available for consumption, according to a government study — and it happens at the supermarket, in restaurants and cafeterias and in your very own kitchen. It works out to about a pound of food every day for every American.

These two problems suggest two solutions. To save money on one’s food bill: A) Bring your body down to its appropriate and healthy size and B) Stop wasting good food by throwing it away.

Here’s a recent example of an incredibly bizarre habit of the mainstream media. As you can see from this video, the reporter introduces George Bush as the “The Leader of the Free World.”

They need to stop using this title because George Bush has proven that he is not the “Leader of the Free World.” Rather he is a menace and a disruption to the free world. There is no other country in the world that considers George W. Bush to be their Leader.

There is endless evidence that Bush is a horrible leader. Here are some examples:

• Bush ordered a preemptive invasion of Iraq based upon delusions and lies.
• Bush has continuously lied that there has been “progress” in Iraq. And see here
• Bush approved of torture.
• He has allowed his administration to overrule the careful findings of scientists on topics as diverse as global warming, the destruction of the environment, pollution, energy issues, dangerous chemicals and medical issues.
• Bush has spied on Americans and lied about it.
• Bush has worked hard to keep Americans from choosing how and when they will have babies.
• Bush is incapable of stopping himself from lying.

I am not aware of a single way in which any other country of the free world looks up to George W. Bush as its “leader.” It’s time to stop calling Mr. Bush the “Leader of the Free World.”

Instead, it’s time to throw him in prison for the damage he has irresponsibly caused.

Amy Goodman of DemocracyNow is on tour promoting her new book, Standing up to the Madness: Ordinary Heroes in Extraordinary Times. Amy co-authored this book was with her brother David Goodman. I had the opportunity to hear Amy speak last week while she was in St. Louis.

Amy’s asked a simple question: “What would happen if we freely published the images from Iraq for one week in our mainstream newspapers?” I agree with that the outcome is quite predictable. There would be a public outcry, the politicians would finally “get it,” the American occupation of Iraq would quickly wind down. Unfortunately, we don’t have a mainstream news media that has the guts to publish those photos, certainly not in prominent places. It’s surreal that the public is not being kept up to date on the results of a project on which such vast amounts of money are being spent. Instead of seeing everyday photos of what’s on the street, we hear specious claims that everything is going well.

You know, if everything were going that well, let’s have a big parade right through the middle of Baghdad (not the Green Zone). George Bush should lead that parade, to celebrate how well we’ve stabilized Iraq. After this big celebration winds through the main streets and Americans see how well things are going, perhaps we’ll have a national consensus about whether the United States is intellectually and morally qualified to attempt to improve Iranian culture and politics.

The first chapter of Goodman’s book is called “We will not be silent.” This quote quote comes from the fourth leaflet distributed by Sophie Scholl and Kurt Huber, before they were captured by the Gestapo in Nazi Germany.

In that first chapter, the Goodmans quote a warning (variously attributed to Sinclair Lewis and Louisiana governor Huey Long): “When fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in the American flag.” These are harsh words, but Goodman’s new book contains the disturbing substantiating evidence. For instance, we have a news media that readily manufacturers consent for going to war, rather than exploring whether it is necessary to go to war.

Goodman points to a survey that determined that out of the 343 interviews conducted by network news prior to the Iraq invasion, only three involved an antiwar spokesperson. What we have, then, is a news media that gladly beats the drums for war (as they are now doing with Iran). The news media has become “a conveyor belt for the government.” Goodman points out that what we have “is not a mainstream media. We’ve got to take it back.”

In her book (and at her talk) Goodman described the incredible story of a Connecticut librarian named George Christian, who was handed a national security letter (NSL) demanding subscriber information, billing information and access of any person that had used computers in any of 27 public libraries on one afternoon in February, 2005. The letter indicated that the information was sought “to protect against international terrorism.” (more…)

I ended up with a copy of this humorous problem solving flow chart about 30 years ago. I don’t know who created it or when. I kept it in a folder all these years.  I find its sardonic logic impeccable.

If anyone knows the history of this chart, let me know so I can give proper credit.

David Horton asks “How do you recognize a civilized country?” He has a list of 25 criteria so far.  Here are the first six:

1. The military-industrial complex plays no role in government.
2. Religion plays a very small role in society, not forbidden, but not compulsory.
3. Scientists, teachers, nurses, artists, are all valued more than sports people and celebrities.
4. Speech is free and the media varied.
5. There are few if any guns.
6. The environment is cared for.

Barack Obama spelled out his vision for U.S. foreign policy in South Dakota today.

Well I want to be perfectly clear with George Bush and John McCain – if they want a debate about protecting the United States of America, that’s a debate I’m ready to win, because George Bush and John McCain have a lot to answer for.

“…in the Bush-McCain worldview, everyone who disagrees with their failed Iran policy is an appeaser. And back during his “No Surrender” tour, John McCain said anyone who wants to end the war in Iraq responsibly wants to surrender; he even said later on that he would be ok keeping troops in Iraq for 100 years, but yesterday he said our troops could be home by 2013. He offered the promise that America will win a victory, with no understanding that Iraq is fighting a civil war. Just like George Bush, his plan isn’t about winning, it’s about staying, and that’s why there will be a clear choice in November: fighting a war without end, or ending this war. Because we don’t need John McCain’s prediction about when the war will end – we need a plan to end it.

What Obama says makes perfect sense to me. He calls out Bush-McCain as fear-mongerers with naive and destructive versions of foreign policy.  Iraq, Iran, the Palestinian Territories and North Korea are Exhibits A, B, C and D.

Obama invites McCain to an open debate on foreign policy. He even savors that opportunity and so do I.

Don’t assume that you know what types of causes are being touted on those message bracelets until you take the time to actually read them. A friend of mine wears this one:

He explained that he is “supporting the people who have rabies.”*

[*From 1980 to 1997, there were 22 documented cases of rabies in the U.S.]

You may have heard that the California Supreme Court has ruled that the state has no pressing interest in inquiring into the gender of two people wishing to declare their undying love for each other.

And this time, couples might might end up with something more than a souvenir like this one (the marriages conducted San Francisco’s 2004 spring and summer of love are alas, still null and void.) As Mark Morford writes in the San Francisco Chronicle:

It might not be such an easy trick this time. This is the good news. It is the twilight of the Bush Endtimes and the right wing hate machine is no longer the nasty Hummer of bloviated pain it once was. What’s more, there’s this pesky thing known as a $3 trillion war. There is brutal economic recession. There is environmental collapse. Really, who cares about happy gay people getting married when it costs 4 bucks a gallon to get to Wal-Mart? Priorities, people.

What’s more, it was one thing for an uppity and slick San Francisco mayor to try and make a name for himself and enter the gay history books by allowing all those happy gay people to stand in the rain back in 2004 and get married in City Hall, only to have it all annulled by the courts.

But it is quite another when a powerhouse seven-member Supreme Court — six of whom are moderate Republicans — of the largest and most potent state in the union says, hey, you know what? It appears we’ve had it wrong all along. It appears there is actually nothing the slightest bit wrong or unlawful or even dangerous about allowing people of the same gender to buy overpriced formalwear and drink way too much champagne and dance to crappy ’80s power ballads in the Chardonnay Room of a low-rent winery up in Napa, and call it a wedding.

Who can argue with that? Hell, to this very day, cultural conservatives still have no idea exactly why they hate gay marriage. There is still zero articulation. There is a complete lack of fact or understanding and I have yet to meet a single person of any political stripe who can adequately explain exactly why gay marriage is so dangerous, or who’s threatened, or how. Same as it ever was? Yes. Only now, their misunderstanding feels quite a bit less dangerous, and far more pathetic.

Finally, this is the funniest response to the ruling I’ve seen yet. The joke isn’t exactly new, but they do it so well and they’re just so darn cute!

I spotted this video on one of Eddie Roth’s posts at The Platform.

There has been lots of news lately that John Edwards has endorsed Barack Obama. I realize that John Edwards was a United States Senator and that he is highly accomplished, but it puzzles me why anyone should care so much about what Edwards (or any other individual) thinks regarding the presidential campaign. After all, most of us have the ability to think for ourselves, and we each have the ability to read and contemplate before voting. Despite our status as grown-ups who can educate ourselves as to the issues and make decisions on her own, it still somehow matters what John Edwards thinks. Or at least the media wants to make us think it’s important.

I’m not trying to pick on John Edwards. I think he’s a good and decent fellow. Nor am I trying to pick on Barack Obama.  I haven’t disguised very well that I admire Obama and I have great hopes for him.  My point is really about endorsements and politics in general. Why should anyone care that some prominent person stands up and announces that he or she prefers one of candidates over another? Are we that spineless or are we that empty-headed that we wait to see what someone else does before we follow suit? Or do human animals feel a deep need to run in herds, and that’s just the way it is?

So then it occurred to me that this entire political process is actually a rehash of high school. To be more specific, it’s a rehash of a student government election in high school. Many of you are probably familiar with this phenomenon. There is a lot of energy spent, a lot of people stroking each other and lots of talk about who is “supporting” whom. There are numerous posters and speeches and jealousies.  Sometimes it gets so wacky that it seems like Lord of the Flies. Lots of scapegoating, ad hominem attacks, name-calling, back-biting and ostracizing. It’s all done for sport, not anything of substance, and it all goes on far too long until someone is chosen to be the “President” of the student body.  At that point, the President and all the other elected officers strut about but proceed to do not much of anything important. I’m not denying that it seems very important to those student government officers (and those who get caught up in the frenzy). Back in high school, though, I wondered what the difference was between a school that had an elected student government and one that did not. I couldn’t think of any significant difference. Whether it has a student government has nothing to do with how good a school it is.

So here we are, in 2008, and it seems like high school every time I read the political news. There’s always another new story about somebody twisting someone else’s words unfairly, or somebody claiming that someone else does or doesn’t like them on the basis of something that has nothing to do with how to run the country.  There’s people suggesting that we shouldn’t vote for someone because his last name reminds them of someone else.  There’s arguments that old candidates are better and that old candidates are worse.

And then there’s that earnest voice of Barack Obama trying to explain how he would address serious problems facing the country, yet getting drowned out by loud and tedious voices of ignorant and yackity competitor candidates, so-called news reporters and pundits. And occasionally we hear from people in the street who are almost proud that they know nothing about the country and nothing about the candidates. It’s all crazy, except that we now live in a country that really does face numerous dangerous challenges and we need somebody to focus on real solutions that will involve difficult choices.  Instead of doing the legwork to understand these serious issues (economic, energy, environment, health care), we make sport of sniping away at things that don’t matter to anything at all, except for the raw quest for political power.

We have such a strange way of selecting candidates! Imagine if we were trying to choose between two brands of laundry detergent. One way to make that choice would be to compare the properties of the two brands of soaps. One of them works better in hot water, while the other makes clothes smell cleaner (or something like that). Or maybe one of them costs a little more than the other. In a rational world we would soberly compare these differences and make our choice based on our needs.

Now imagine two soap companies competing against each other like our political candidates compete. One of those soap companies would start insinuating that the other was a brand for appeasers, or gays, or that the president of the rival company has funny eyebrows or that the other brand of soap fails to display a little American flag on the front of the box. And then there would be an intense barrage of commercials, for months, having nothing to do with the actual properties of the soap, and people would get all caught up in whether it’s OK for one brand of soap not to have a little picture of an American flag on the front. And then one of the brands of soap would start giving publicity to famous people who would endorse buying Brand X over Brand Y. And then maybe Brand Y would suggest that the company making Brand X is less patriotic. Or something like that. And then some of us would run out and buy Brand X because some famous person said that he would buy Brand X.

Doesn’t it remind you of high school?  Can’t we do better than this?

As I wallowed in my last bout of withdrawal from television over the last few weeks, I read a few books. I regularly join QPB to get a handful of books for about $25, and then cancel after fulfilling the membership requirement. I also have a few hundred well-worn science fiction paperbacks, and some in hardcover. Those are comfort reading; familiar meanders through futures that haven’t come to pass.

I most recently completed “A Briefer History of Time“. This survey of cosmology from the ancients through the latest theories of everything is easier to read and understand than the original. Even less math, better images, and more up-to-date science. It is briefer, yet covers more than the original.

I’d read “Molecules at an Exhibition” before that. It was weaker than Emsley’s previous book, but still a fun survey of everyday molecules that one doesn’t usually think about.

I finally read “The God Delusion” in one part of the house while reading “Two Complete Novels” by Douglas Adams in another. To my surprise, Dawkins cited one of these Adams novels in his book. They balanced each other: One never quite getting to a point, and the other never letting go of one. Both worth reading. But beware of mental whiplash if you too try to read ‘em in tandem.

(more…)

Last summer, I found myself dancing as an unpaid extra in a reality show. I’d been a dancing extra in a TV movie back in ‘98, and at least got lunch and minimum wage. This time I not only did it for free, but I had to sign a non-disclosure document. This time the show will have a wider audience than the (bad) movie that I was in before.

Why, you may well ask, do I mention it now? Well, that very show is finally being broadcast. The bit in which St. Louis Contradancers like myself will appear is just a couple of episodes away. It’s the CW’s iteration of “Farmer Wants a Wife” filmed just barely in the next county, near where the Missouri river joins the Mississippi. I say iteration because the show had already been a local reality show hit in 11 other countries before a U.S. company picked it up.

Now, I can’t say who was still standing in our episode. I don’t even remember. I don’t really care.

I am amused by the middle-of-nowhere pretension. Sure, it is in the flood plain, and out of sight of any big city. But it is also less than a half hour drive from major population and commercial support. The St. Charles airport that they flew into is about 15 minutes closer to the farm by bus than is Lambert International Airport. Lambert was the primary hub for TWA, before the industry crashed in 2001.

We were just there for a barn dance. It was fun. Cameras were everywhere, all the primaries wore wireless mikes, and camouflaged lighting kept things warm up in that depression era barn loft. Backstage has always had more appeal to me than the audience point of view.

But now I’m watching my first reality show. Sure, we record it and watch it when convenient. It is fun to see people on TV that we’ve met, in places where we’ve been. But now I have even more awareness of all the setup, production, and post production that goes in to making these 40 minute episodes.

Have you seen Jon Stewart’s interview of Doug Feith?

It is obvious that Feith appeared on the The Daily Show in an attempt to try to:

A) salvage his own sordid reputation, and
B) convince the audience that the Bush Administration didn’t lead the charge to invade Iraq, drumming up false intelligence in the process.

Feith failed miserably on both accounts because Stewart refused to play the role of a nodding bobblehead. In fact, Stewart showed himself to be a better interviewer than most members of the mainstream news media. It was refreshing to see Stewart challenging Feith at every turn.

For an evidence-based version of how this country came to occupy Iraq, watch “Buying the War,” a Bill Moyers video, showing that the Bush Administration consciously and intentionally pulled all the necessary strings and the mainstream media marched in lockstep.

The United States didn’t end up in Iraq because of a series of accidents and mistakes, as Feith tries to argue. The Downing Street memo and Richard Clarke’s accounts, among much other evidence, shows that the Bush Administration planned to march into Baghdad regardless of the evidence. They got their way, and now they, including Feith, are acting like it’s not their fault. Now we’re seeing an extended media campaign of shameless revisionism.

Our President just can’t stop himself. Here are two of his recent bald-faced lies:

1) He can’t use email while he’s President “for security reasons.”

2) He gave up golf after UN envoy Sergio Vieira de Mello was killed in Iraq.

I know that no one cares anymore. It wouldn’t do any good to impeach him because an equally prolific liar, Dick Cheney, would then officially take over. How many more days until the next President is sworn in?