It's Everybody's Fault!

The White House countered by saying it was all the CIA's fault, and you can't blame us because the data was wrong.

Um, no, that's not how it works. The president is still responsible for his decisions and actions. Congress is also responsible for their failure to question that evidence thoroughly, the media is responsible for being zombie parrots, and Americans are responsible for buying into the whole 'booga-booga-Saddam-BOOM' meme.

Hell, during the ramp up to war, I was complaining that a) we needed to focus on Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda, which was lurking on the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, a nation with tested, deployable nuclear weapons; and b) Saddam Hussein was not an immediate threat, since he maybe/might have had a 'program' that could produce a nuclear weapon in three years. We've since discovered that Saddam didn't have WMDs, that he was every bit the coward and bully we thought, and that al-Qaeda is regrouping in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region, while our erstwhile ally is hanging on for dear life.

I think the media needs to take a good, long look at itself. Just in this week alone, we've had a constant stream of contradictory stories. Hillary is going to concede. No, wait, she's not. Hillary wants to be VP. No, wait, she doesn't. Obama's going to pick her. No, he wouldn't touch her with a ten foot pole.

The airwaves are filled with experts offering opinions and predictions and solemnly telling us what it all means, all of them in love with their own narratives. It's this kind of fact-free crap that feeds the 'mainstream media' nonsense.

And the media also needs to decide whether it wants another four years of Bush-think. Start applying some critical thinking to what's coming out of the White House, instead of whimpering about access. "We can't report on things if we can't get in," is meaningless if your reports end up being a servile regurgitation of talking points and a string of literal truths.

Senator John McCain thinks spying on Americans is good policy, reversing his earlier positions on executive power and domestic surveillance.

Let's make it simple. If the president is not bound by the Constitution and, in fact, can ignore its provisions on the basis of the country being at war or in a crisis, we're not in danger of becoming a dictatorship, we are a dictatorship.

That was the whole point of this Democracy thing - that we would have a leader answerable to the people, and not just every four years.

A Boot to the Head for former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, who said on a national radio program, "Unless (Obama) proves me wrong, he is a Marxist."

Can you get any more childish? Isn't this the exact lesson we teach our children, that we're not required to prove someone else's claims?

Burden of proof is on the claimaint, Tom.

Enough with the GREEN shit, already. It's gone past being a sensibility and has become both a political line and a trendy sales pitch.

Everything's GREEN. Green this. Green that. Now there's a green television channel, along the lines of History Channel, Animal Planet, and other meme-specific venues.

That's all well and good, but the majority of GREEN is sold on the same basis of 'carbon offsets' - you don't actually have to change your lifestyle, we'll offer you these nifty, guilt-free products, and has nothing to do with the subject of climate change.

It's fundamentally no different from the vocal minorities telling us we have to defend ourselves from encroaching Islam. In each case, actions we should be taking - serious development of alternative energy sources that can be licensed/marketed as an American product, or sensible security that doesn't have us hopping about like a bunch of frightened rabbits - are ignored in favor of theatrics.

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