Today is my birthday. It is also the anniversary of this little adventure called The White Papers.

It is also the 4th year of the Iraq war. The paranoid conspiracy theorist in my head still thinks that part of the reason for starting the war on my birthday was so that the neocons could get one more giant dig into a progressive. But I’m not really that important.

So it’s four years into this pointless and badly planned war and no one seems to have any idea what to do about it. Surging is pointless, we don’t have and can’t commit enough troops to turn Iraq into the lock down, high security prison state that Bush dreams of. If we stay the course then the horrible bloodshed will either maintain its current intolerable level or, much more likely, get worse. And if we pull out, completely leave Iraq to its own devices, then there really will have been nothing gained and much lost after four years of horror and blood.

But pulling out is the only way for Iraq to find its footing and eventually some peace.

The current powers that be, namely Bush and Cheney and their foaming mouthed sycophants, still think we are a country capable of creating puppet “democracies” like we did in Latin America for most of the last century. But not this time. There was no real “Big Man” in Iraq like there was in Chile with Pinochet. Well, there was and we helped put him there, but recently the Iraqi people had their former leader executed.

The Iraqi people need the Americans out so that they can create their own government, be it a democracy or theocracy or flat out anarchy. It is not our place to force a government of any kind on Iraq. One of my favorite quotes is that “Democracy through tyranny is still tyranny”. By imposing ourselves and our politics on Iraq we are the worst kind of tyrants- ineffective. If we could justify our presence in the country by showing that the Iraqis are now safe from violence or ethnic divisions, that they are free from the starvation and shortages that they suffered under Saddam because of the embargo, that they could even walk out of their houses everyday to go to work or school, then maybe we could justify staying in the country to promote peace. But everyday life for Iraqis becomes harder and we are the cause.

So we must pull out. It will cause a power vacuum, it will increase violence in the short-term, and every death that follows our leaving will be just as much our fault as the deaths that are caused by our being there. But the Iraqis will then have to deal with each other without the excuse of the Americans as occupiers to continue the violence. Without us there, then the influence of Al Qaida (that only exists since we have invaded Iraq, not before as the foaming mouths will have you believe) will diminish.

Iraq needs a chance to organically develop a leader to take charge of their country and as long as we are there that WILL NOT HAPPEN. Anyone who works with the Americans will be suspect as being a puppet, anyone who works against the Americans will be fodder for our troops. The Iraqis must have a chance for a strong leader to develop the support and organization needed to drag a country out of civil war. It will be bloody, it will most likely be another dictator, and the Sunni minority will probably be the biggest losers. But it is up to the Iraqis to fight or accept that. All we can do at this point is throw money at the infrastructure of the country that we destroyed (and not put that money through government contracts where palettes of money disappear like political Latin Americans in the 70s).

We have failed the soldiers of our country by putting them in harms way for reasons based on lies. We have failed the people of Iraq by taking them from a dictatorship that they knew to a bloody civil war where no one is safe. Saddam was certainly not a saint, but I am pretty sure most Iraqis would prefer a false sense of security over perpetual war. We must admit our hubris and withdraw.

Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone came out with a fab piece on the Bush 2008 budget and correlation between the elimination of the estate tax for the country’s wealthiest families and cuts to social programs.

I’m not going to rehash his entire article, but for reference, these are some of the disgusting examples he sites:

If the Estate Tax were to be repealed completely, the estimated savings to just one family — the Walton family, the heirs to the Wal-Mart fortune — would be about $32.7 billion dollars over the next ten years.

The proposed reductions to Medicaid over the same time frame? $28 billion.

the heirs to the Mars candy corporation — some of the world’s evilest scumbags, incidentally, routinely ripped by human rights organizations for trafficking in child labor to work cocoa farms in places like Cote D’Ivoire — if the estate tax goes, those assholes will receive about $11.7 billion in tax breaks. That’s more than three times the amount Bush wants to cut from the VA budget ($3.4 billion) over the same time period.

Cox family (Cox cable TV) receives $9.7 billion tax break while education would get $1.5 billion in cuts

Nordstrom family (Nordstrom dept. stores) receives $826.5 million tax break while Community Service Block Grants would be eliminated, a $630 million cut

Ernest Gallo family (shitty wines) receives a $468.4 million cut while LIHEAP (heating oil to poor) would get a $420 million cut

In typical fashion, the libertarian and conservative yahoos posting comments on blogs that have written about this article are using the same old, tired, untrue arguments.

For Example:

Whahhhhh, you want to STEAL from dead people!

Whahhhh, rich people earned their money, they should get to keep it.

Whahhhhh, all the money the government gets from taxes just disappears and no good comes from it.

Whahhhhh, those poor people who want social services should pull themselves up by their bootstraps like the rich heirs to trust funds do.

Etc.

But those are all false. Government services are like food in a restaurant, sometimes you get surf ‘n turf with a really good wine, sometimes all you can afford is a hamburger and a coke. But you pay for what you get, or at least you are supposed to. Bushco has been trying to turn that around for years so that us hamburger eaters are paying surf ‘n turf prices while the mucky-mucks get their lobster free.

For example, I do not need a trade agreement with China or Mexico and the Doha trade talks won’t really do anything for me. But Wal-Mart needs Uncle Sam to go in and get China to whip up some Peking Duck on the cheap. It is not my container ships or trucking companies that need to make sure oil is free flowing so that my goods are too. And I don’t need some jacked-up war in Iraq or Iran or wherever we are fighting this week so that I can fatten my pocketbook with military contracts or pilfered oil resources. Those are expensive, steak and lobster level meals that the wealthiest in the country need and need to pay for.

I need healthcare, education, safe water and food, transportation and domestic security. So do you. Those are hamburger meals, nothing fancy. And we pay for them.

Whining that the estate tax is stealing from the dead is ridiculous. When do you pay your restaurant tab? The only time you pay it before you eat is at an all-you-can eat buffet (think socialism) where everybody gets to take what they need for the same price and nobody eats for free. (very simple analogy- but suck it if you’ve got a problem)

Nope, you pay your restaurant tab at the end of the meal when you know you’ve had your fill. Those who die with mountains of money generally have had a much better meal than the rest of us. Shouldn’t they pay for what they’ve eaten? What, you think they should be able to pass it onto their heirs instead of paying their government waitstaff? Whose gonna pay their tab then? Whose gonna pay for Doha talks and free trade agreements? What, all the rest of us who gain little to no benefit from such things? Why? Capitalism is supposed to mean you pay a fair price for the goods and services you get. You can’t very well go around screaming that capitalism is the best way if your not willing to pay your tab at the end of the night. No dine and dash for the wealthy, they need to pay for what they eat just like the rest of us.

Dear Andrea Otanez:

Please pull your head out of your ass. I have no idea where you get the impression that women “do not follow politics or foreign policy, and that some, if married, rely on their husbands for political news. Men read newspapers and news magazines for that kind of information while women, in general, do not.” But I think it must come from inhaling “exceptionalism” fumes.

Let’s see, just today I have read the NY Times, LA times, Salon, numerous political blogs, and obviously the Seattle Times, where you thought it was ok to spew your ignorance. I plan on checking out the Guardian and Le Monde once I am done telling you to shove it. Oh and I read the Economist and Atlantic Monthly because they are both just damn good magazines.

Yes, women are busy. We still do the lion’s share of the housework and child care. We work full-time, go to school, take care of elderly parents, etc. All of these things may make us run around with endless to do lists, but they also make us acutely aware of the personal costs of government policies. We know how sad educational funding is because we are volunteering at our children’s schools to make up for budget shortages. We know how screwed up the healthcare system is because we make the doctor’s appointments. We worry about the current wars and the ones Dear leader wants to start because we have husbands or boyfriends or girlfriends or sons and daughters who already are fighting, or may have to go fight in the future .

These things make us more compelled to read the newspaper, not less. They make us more aware of how personal the political is.

Your argument that women let their husbands do all the news hunting for them is almost as old as the “we can’t let the little ladies vote cause it would corrupt them” idea. It should have gone out with the corset.

I mentioned exceptionalism before because you seem to think you are special, one of the few women in a sea of men with enough sense to read the paper daily. You are not so special. Please stop lecturing us women on how we should be more informed and get some actual information next time. You are a journalist and professor, shouldn’t you spend more time teaching and writing about facts rather writing idiotic columns with no purpose other than to give you a platform to spew bullshit and make you feel superior?

Sincerely,
Red Queen

PS- I have no idea whose Anna Nicole Smith’s baby daddy and a large portion of us would like to see more real news and less celebrity sensationalism, or in the case of your column- journalistic hubris.

For the last few weeks I’ve been working on some little cartoons. This is the first one and sadly, the basis for all of these are situations I’ve actually been in. I need to come up with a name for them, but no reason not to post them for now.

I really hate the phrase “knows how to treat her man”. It translates to “Will put up with my whiney little boy demands and not expect me to act like an adult”.

With all the bust up in the blogosphere over the last few weeks about Shakespeare’s Sister and Amanda at Pandagon, I thought it was time to remind a few people what it is that free speech means.

Free speech means that as long as I am not saying something slanderous or threatening, I have the right to say what I want. I can be idiotic, I can be a bigot, I can be a complete and total asshole. But with that I also have to expect that someone else has the right to use their free speech to call me on my assholery.

Unless what I am saying is threatening, I cannot be jailed for what I say.

That said, nothing that Amanda or Shakes wrote was bigoted towards Catholics, but even if they had written something bigoted, the death threats and rape threats that they both received are not free speech.

When this country was still just an idea in a bunch of revolutionaries’ heads, Benjamin Franklin printed an ad in the Pennsylvania Gazette for an ocean trip. The ad stated “No black gowns” were allowed. This did not mean that the ladies had to leave their little black dresses at home. It meant no clergy allowed. In the brouhaha that followed the printing, Franklin wrote:

If all printers were determined not to print anything till they were sure it would offend no body, there would be very little printed.

A few years later, in 1735, John Peter Zenger was prosecuted for seditious libel, or for having printed derogatory comments about the government. This is where the basis for our idea of free speech and freedom of the press comes from, so pay attention. Under this law, it was even more illegal to print derogatory truths about the government than to print derogatory lies. The point was, lies could be disproved but printing the horrible truth could not.

Zenger’s lawyer argued that printing the truth was more important than protecting the government from public scrutiny. The jury agreed and went against the law and the judge to acquit Zenger.

For us in the here and now, this means criticising the government for it’s actions in Iraq is not, in fact, treasonous or traitorous. It means that Joe Wilson’s actions in the Yellow Cake debacle were not something that the government could take punitive actions for (like endangering his wife by exposing her CIA status).

Now in the case of the above mentioned bloggers, the screaming meemies on the right were calling for blood because they had been offended by the bloggers’ opinions.

Let’s make a big distinction here folks- opinions, whether you agree with them or not, are not facts. They are hopefully based on facts (not always- see Bill O’Reilly). Opinions can be agreed with or disagreed with, but having a different opinion from someone else does not give you the right to threaten them with harm.

Some examples:

Fact (or truth): Numerous Catholic Priests in the United States were child molesters and there is evidence that the Catholic Church hierarchy used measures to hide this from their parishioners.

This is a fact because it has been proven, repeatedly, in a court of law. There is evidence to back it up and court decisions to support it.

Opinion: I think the Catholic Church hierarchy is a slimy piece of work for having risked the children in their parishes rather than deal with pedophile priests.

This is opinion because it is what I think. If you disagree you are free to state an opinion to the contrary- maybe you want to say that “Those children were blessed by the priests’ hot sticky love fluid and should shut their pieholes”.

Threats (actual threats taken from Pandagon)

It’s just too bad your mother didn’t abort you. You are nothing more than a filthy mouth slut. I bet a couple of years in Iraq being raped and beaten daily would help you appreciate America a little. Need a plane ticket ?

This is a threat because this person has stated that Amanda should be raped and beaten (both things are illegal- for those too ignorant to know)and the oh so literate author wants to helpcommit those illegal acts by sending her to a place where she will be raped and beaten.

Nowhere in our constitution does it say that if you have offended me with words that I have the right to escalate the fight into physical violence.

Nowhere in the constitution does it say that you can counter someones opinion by threatening to commit illegal acts.

Nowhere in the constitution does it say that there is a right to not be offended.

Update!

Two different t-shirt designs are now up here.
All profits will go to Shakes to offset the job loss.

In 1933, the Nazis took control of Germany with only 37% of the vote. Obviously, they were not the majority voice of the Germans. But most of the Germans that didn’t vote for Hitler kept their heads down and their mouths shut. Maybe in the privacy of their homes they would disagree with the new image of Nazi Germany, but the majority did not fight agaist the hate mongering.

They didn’t fight when the fight would have been easier, in the begining. They didn’t fight after Chrystalnacht. They didn’t fight when their neighboors were being sent off in cattle carts to concentration camps.

Maybe they disagreed. But they didn’t fight. They did not stand up to say “This is not my country, this is not my belief, this is not right!”

So here and now, in the begining of the fundamentalist takeover of our country, it is up to those of you who would be good Germans to stand up and say “This is not my God, this is not my religion, this is not right!”

I come from a family of good, progressive Christians. But because progressive Christians are not muscling their way in to be the voice of opposition to people who claim to share their faith, those good, progressive people who actually follow Christ’s teachings will be tarred with the feather of being “Good Germans”.

Jovial- I am not the person you need to fight on this. I am not responsible for the fact that the religion you claim has taken a turn for the crazy. I am responsible for calling them on their crazy, but you are picking the wrong fight. I am more than willing to help you fight against them.
But I am not the enemy to your beliefs, I am not the reason that those of us on the side of ration and reason are disgusted by the screaming biggots in priest’s robes.

By keeping your head down, or by picking the wrong fight, you do no help to fixing the image of Christians as extremists.

Go fight the actual extremists.

Below are just a few choice quotes from emails sent by supposed “Christians” to Amanda Marcotte of Pandagon. It’s soooo refreshing to hear them spew out how they really feel, and their choice of words is exactly what i think Jesus would have said. Oh wait, no they aren’t.

Problem with women like you, you just need a good fucking from a real man! Living in Texas myself, I know you haven’t found that real Texan yet. But once your liberal pro feminist ass gets a real good fucking, you might see the light. Until then, enjoy your battery operated toys b/c most real men wouldn’t want to give you the fucking you deserve b/c the shit that would come out of you ears.

i like the way you trash talk i don’t particularly want to have sex with you but i would like a blow job.

It’s just too bad your mother didn’t abort you. You are nothing more than a filthy mouth slut. I bet a couple of years in Iraq being raped and beaten daily would help you appreciate America a little. Need a plane ticket ?

YOU RACIST WHORE. FAT UGLY BITCH. SUCK MY LONG COCK ASSHOLE I HOPE YOU KIDS NEVER LIVE AND YOUR PARENTS DIE A TRAGIC DEATH YOU ASSHOLE BITCH!
I HOPE YOUR WOMB IS BARREN AND YOUR CAREER PLUMMETS TO HELL YOU BITCH