Rust Belt Raconteur

Even for someone as thoroughly cynical as me, this is even somewhat startling:

Absent lawmakers are still voting on bills. How? Other people vote for them.

- I don’t get the people who said Ahmadinejad shouldn’t have been allowed to speak. It’s like everyone completely forgot the entire Cold War, except for the whole winning part. Engage your enemies! Sure, we’re giving that guy more legitimacy on the world stage than he deserves, but we can’t pick other countries’ elected officials. (Well, we can, if you’re willing to watch thousands of soldiers die.) You embarrass them — and not by scolding them, like the jackass president of Columbia University did. You let them say crazy shit like “we do not have homosexuals in our country.” Yeah, he actually said that. We should have taken that guy all over the damn place. And, head’s up, economic sanctions don’t work. What are we expecting these people to say? “Because you won’t buy my exports any more, I’m going to stop being a repressive theocracy and give my people complete civil rights!”? Right. What you do is drop all those copies of Britney Spears’ trashy new album that no one here will buy on Tehran. Flood the zone with American “culture.” Sure, it’s not the optimal solution, but would you rather have them be shallow idiots or nuclear-armed xenophobic religious extremists?

- John Grisham’s latest novel, hawked tonight on The Colbert Report, has nothing to do with legal drama. Playing for Pizza focuses on a former Cleveland Browns quarterback, banished to play football for the Parma Panthers of NFL-Italy after choking in the fourth quarter of the AFC title game (versus Denver, no less). Speaking for Cleveland sports fans … are you some kind of sadist, Mr. Grisham? Not cool. You’re dredging up our collective traumas for profit? You’d better hope the Indians win it all this year if you know what’s good for you.

- As bad as that is, you could be in Michigan right now. The United Auto Workers, apparently intent on destroying the American auto industry even sooner than previously expected, are now in Day Three of their strike against General Motors. Essentially, the union is demanding that GM promise to not outsource any jobs — essentially preventing them from ever making money, since union contracts over the years have tied them down with absurd health and pension expenses (that GM was stupid enough to sign onto back when they thought they would forever be the unchallenged lords of the universe). There are five GM retirees for every two actual workers; $1600 of each car goes into paying for all the absurd benefits that the UAW stuck the automakers with. (Industrial unions in the US are the last vestige of the delusional socioeconomic model that the French adore: Demand absurd concessions from business and government, then shut the country down when they state the obvious fact that you’re fucking insane.) Of course, at the same time, GM executives are making tens of millions of dollars by basically siphoning blood off of a dying industry, so they’re not exactly angels among men either. They all have one thing in common: They expect the “system” to bestow great riches upon them for producing an inferior product. So honestly, I’m hoping the strike will never end and all three US automakers go out of business. We’d all be much better off (not immediately, granted … damn you, Keynes!). And yes, the state government there is about to shut down because of a budget crisis. Having lived through that here last year … it’s a fun time. Nothing like millionaire politicians fiddling as Rome burns. Here’s an idea: Government budgets of $0. It sure would cut down on the negotiations.

The Washington Post reports the most important exchange of the last two days thusly:

Sen. John Warner, in his courtly Virginian manner, cut to a key question: “Are you able to say at this time, if we continue … that that is making America safer?”

[Gen. David] Petraeus responded, in a low-key manner, “Sir, I believe that this is indeed the best course of action to achieve our objectives in Iraq.”

“Does that make America safer?” Warner persisted.

“Sir, I don’t know actually,” Petraeus said. He explained that he has been thinking about the mission in Iraq. “I have not stepped back” to look at the global picture.

If the commander on the ground can’t answer that question with a wholehearted “yes” … then why the hell are we over there? Why are our soldiers dying for this?

Cleveland starts QB Charlie Frye on Sunday, then trades him on Tuesday.

My thoughts on 9/11/06 are just as relevant today … and here they are.

… I’m starting to think Bush not only knows where bin Laden is and refuses to capture him (which I think falls into the category of extremely well-established fact), but that there is some sort of communication going on between the world’s arch-terrorist and the executive branch of the United States.

I can’t prove this, of course, but it’s an interesting development that he just happens to release a tape now. Sure, the sixth anniversary of 9/11 is Tuesday, but it’s been almost three years since anyone in the civilized world, allegedly, has heard from him. If you recall, the last tape was released right before the 2004 election and basically told us not to re-elect Bush, echoing the administration’s efforts to paint their opponents as terrorist-appeasers. Not surprisingly, we got four more years of this FUBAR presidency. Now here we are in September, the month that Bush has been talking about since January where Gen. Petraeus would present a report (notably, the White House’s report, not actually his own) and Congress would debate the state of the war (even though Bush has already decided to stay the course). Guess who reappears to frighten the American people with the specter of 9/11 at exactly that time, pushing people toward making that nonexistent connection between it and Iraq once more? It’s auspicious for Bush, to say the least.

Bin Laden, notably, is someone who is now a figurehead and a propaganda symbol more than a day-to-day “evildoer,” considering that the mantle of al-Qaeda has been taken up by homegrown franchises worldwide (he doesn’t warn of or call for attacks in his 30-minute diatribe). His speech urges the American people to overthrow the capitalist system (citing the mortgage crisis in the process), strongly echoing Soviet-style rhetoric.  He suggests that a way out of Iraq is to convert to Islam and settle our conflicts peaceably under its banner. He mocks Bush for “harvesting nothing but failure” in Iraq. He praises Noam Chomsky (notably a favorite philosopher of fallen hero Pat Tillman), for crying out loud.

In other words, bin Laden is sounding not so much like a terrorist, but a left-wing activist. He sounds exactly like the sort of caricature that neocons try to project onto the Democratic Party. On top of that, he fits insanely neatly into the villain archetype that Americans are used to fearing and loathing from simpler wars past — the perfect Emmanuel Goldstein character to be the subject of our Two Minutes Hate. The question practically jumps off the page: Is this a coincidence? Or is someone whispering sweet nothings in his ear, telling him and his lieutenants what to include in the videos released to the world, perhaps in exchange for allowing him continued freedom and maybe even some weaponry or covert support?

Before you say that such a scenario is completely preposterous, consider that we quietly armed not only bin Laden in the 1980s, but the Iranians as well, despite the fact that we were denouncing them in the wake of the hostage crisis, placing them under economic sanctions, and arming Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in their war against Iran as well. And if you wonder why Bush would allow Americans’ lives to be placed in increased danger unnecessarily, well, I’d suggest that having our troops die to sustain an Iraqi government that doesn’t appear to want to sustain itself (or, more cynically, to sustain the multi-front war itself into the next president’s term) clearly qualifies. I’d even suggest that his economic policy of ever-deepening deficit spending and the repeated erosion of checks against executive authority would qualify as well, though the impact is clearly less immediate.

It’s just a theory. But would you put it past this president?