The Distant Ocean

Second verse, same as the first

Why does this statement from Obama sound so familiar?

[W]e will reevaluate Iran's posture towards negotiating the cessation of a nuclear weapons policy.  We'll evaluate that at the G20 meeting in September.  And I think what that does is it provides a time frame.  The international community has said, here's a door you can walk through that allows you to lessen tensions and more fully join the international community.  If Iran chooses not to walk through that door, then you have on record the G8, to begin with, but I think potentially a lot of other countries that are going to say we need to take further steps.

Oh, right, now I remember:

Why did the Administration wait until September to make its case against Iraq? White House chief of staff Andrew Card told The New York Times last week, "From a marketing point of view, you don't introduce new products in August."

And compare Obama's expansion on those "further steps"...:

[W]e're not going to just wait indefinitely and allow for the development of a nuclear weapon, the breach of international treaties, and wake up one day and find ourselves in a much worse situation and unable to act.

...with this:

[Condoleezza] Rice acknowledged that "there will always be some uncertainty" in determining how close Iraq may be to obtaining a nuclear weapon but said, "We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud."

It's like everything old is new again!

Kissing cousins

I can't think of a better example of the incestuous relationship between the media and the government than this panegyric, in which "the CIA's house reporter" Walter Pincus (who nonetheless formally receives his paychecks from the Washington Post) reflects on the death of his close friend, war criminal Robert McNamara.  He cites his dear chum's commitment to peace, as when McNamara reportedly wrote to Lyndon Johnson saying that "we've got to reduce the casualties" in Vietnam—this of course meaning worthy American casualties, not meaningless Vietnamese casualties.  Move over, Gandhi.

Pincus didn't have any similar kind words for truth hero Gary Webb, who he helped hound to professional ruin and eventual suicide in 2004, but that's understandable; after all, Webb spent his career exposing the crimes of the powerful while Pincus has devoted his to covering them up.  And anyway, Pincus was probably too busy getting misty thinking about how "lucky" he was to have lunch dates with genocidal government officials.

ADDING: You should definitely take the time to read Noam Chomsky's brutal assessment of McNamara—possibly the most concise dismantling of received wisdom I've ever seen him deliver.  Thanks to Dennis Perrin for the pointer.

My aspirational goal to swallow only a quart of sulphuric acid

Still out and about, but this caught my eye:

The U.S., European Union and 12 of the world's largest nations plan to embrace "an aspirational goal" of reducing emissions of global-warming gases by 50% by 2050, according to a draft declaration by world leaders set for release next week in Italy.

Hey, that's great.  I'm sure the captain of the Titanic had "an aspirational goal" to avoid ramming into any large, frozen ocean-based obstacles too.

But at least the Obama administration is doing everything it can to break with the manipulative, corporate-friendly, obstructionist policies of the Clinton and Bush administrations that drew such criticism from other nations, right?

The base year against which emissions reductions will be measured continues to divide the U.S. and Europe. The EU would like reductions measured against 1990 emissions levels. The U.S. favors the baseline be based on more-recent data.

You've got to appreciate that "based on more-recent data" locution; the smoke it's blowing is apparently intended to obscure Obama's attempts to keep U.S. emission levels as high as possible in the future.  In case you're wondering about the specifics the article skirts, the baseline Obama wants to use is 2005—a year in which U.S. emissions were 17% higher than in 1990.  So when he talks about cutting carbon emissions 14% by 2020, that means 14% lower than 2005 levels, which works out to about 1% more than the 1990 levels.  In other words, Obama's "reduction" doesn't even reach the baseline value the rest of the world is talking about.  And all his talk about 80+% reductions in years after 2020 is of course pure pie in the sky, since he'll long since have moved on to memoir-writing, compensated speech-giving, and other assorted in-cashing.

At least now we know what President Snowjob actually meant when he said he'd "lead the world toward a new era of global cooperation on climate change."

Money for nothing

I'm sure you'll all be as pleased as I was to hear this news ("Bonuses bounce back on Wall Street"):

Financial markets are recovering and the jostling for talent is intensifying as securities firms once again are making money - and they look set to spread the wealth with their employees should the good times continue.

Based on earnings forecasts for 2009, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. is on track to pay out $20-billion this year, or about $700,000 per employee. That would be nearly double the firm's $363,000 average last year, and slightly higher than the $661,000 for the average Goldman employee in fiscal 2007, according to analyst estimates reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

Hey, as long as it's going to people who actually work for their money and not some pathetic parasites who go running to the government every time they're in trouble.

Missing inaction

The blog forecast calls for light to no opining for the next two weeks or so, with a chance for occasional squalls if I have the time and the inclination.  Enjoy the break.

If you're looking for something worthwhile to read in the interim, here's an essay (assembled from several speeches) by Joe Bageant—one of a number of people whose writing I don't actively seek out but nonetheless always enjoy when I happen across it.  This is one of the most thought-provoking and insightful things I've seen from him; I've excerpted the (happy) ending below, but it works best as a whole.  If you do take the time to read it I'd be interested to hear what you think.

__________________

[E]ach of us is but one strand in the vast organic web of flesh and blood chlorophyll. All things and all beings are inextricably connected at the most profound level. Any physicist will confirm this. We are bound by its every wave and particle, all of us -- the lonely night clerk at Motel 6 and the leviathans of the deep, the sleeping grandmother in New Haven, Connecticut and the maimed Iraqi child in Kirkuk. It can be understood by anyone though, simply by owning one's own consciousness. And in doing so we find that ownership and domination are both temporary and meaningless. And that the animating spirit of the earth is real and within us and claimable.

The purpose of life is to know this. Einstein glimpsed it. Lao-Tzu knew it. So did St. Francis. But you and I are not supposed to. It would shatter the revered, digitized, super-sized, utterly meaningless hologram. The one that mesmerizes us, and mediates our every experience, but isolates us from universal humanness and its coursing energies. Such as love. Or mercy. Compassion. Existential pain. Hunger. Or the unmitigated joy of simply being alive one finds in children everywhere, even among the poorest. Most of the human race still lives in that realm.

Blessed is the one who joins them. Because he or she learns that the truth is not relative, and that because the human mind seeks balance, social justice is not only inescapable in the long run, but inevitable. I won't be around for that, but on a clear day if I squint real hard I can see down that road ahead. And on that road I can see the long chain of decent human beings like yourselves walking toward the light. And for your very presence on this earth and in this room, I am grateful. Thank you all from the bottom of my heart.

I'm glad that's settled

There's never been any question where the vast majority of the world stands with regard to the legality of Israeli settlements, as expressed in documents like UN Security Council Resolution 465:

The Security Council, [...]

5. Determines that all measures taken by Israel to change the physical character, demographic composition, institutional structure or status of the Palestinian and other Arab territories occupied since 1967, including Jerusalem, or any part thereof, have no legal validity and that Israel's policy and practices of settling parts of its population and new immigrants in those territories constitute a flagrant violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War and also constitute a serious obstruction to achieving a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in the Middle East;

6. Strongly deplores the continuation and persistence of Israel in pursuing those policies and practices and calls upon the Government and people of Israel to rescind those measures, to dismantle the existing settlements and in particular to cease, on an urgent basis, the establishment, construction and planning of settlements in the Arab territories occupied since 1967, including Jerusalem;

But two years ago we found out that the Israeli Foreign Ministry's legal adviser came to the same conclusion in 1967, before the settlement project had even begun (and has unequivocally reiterated that conclusion):

A senior legal official who secretly warned the government of Israel after the Six Day War of 1967 that it would be illegal to build Jewish settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories has said, for the first time, that he still believes that he was right. [...]

The legal opinion, a copy of which has been obtained by The Independent, was marked "Top Secret" and "Extremely Urgent" and reached the unequivocal conclusion, in the words of its author's summary, "that civilian settlement in the administered territories contravenes the explicit provisions of the Fourth Geneva Convention."

And this week we discovered that the United States reached the same conclusion as well, in a legal opinion that still stands:

Thirty years ago, the State Department legal adviser issued an opinion in response to an inquiry from Congress: The establishment of Israeli settlements in occupied Palestinian territories "is inconsistent with international law."

The opinion cited Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which states that an occupying power "shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies." [...]

Despite the passage of time, the legal opinion, issued during the Carter administration, has never been revoked or revised.

I'm sure you'll agree this is wonderful news!  Now that we know that the entire world—including Israel and the United States—is unanimous in recognizing that Israeli colonization of Palestinian and other Arab territories occupied since 1967, including Jerusalem, has been in direct contravention of the Fourth Geneva Convention, surely it'll be just a few weeks before this whole sordid chapter of history is closed.  Given this universal understanding that settlements are illegal, I'm sure Israel (with U.S. backing) will do everything it can to get those international law-breaking, human rights-denying settlers out of there in no time!

Now, I'm sure some people might doubt this will happen, and I guess I can understand their skepticism.  Much worse, though, I'm sure there are a few who feel that Israel and the U.S. should ignore their own unequivocal legal advice.  But clearly the only people who'd want upstanding, law-abiding nations like Israel and the U.S. to continue behavior that the world unanimously recognizes as flatly illegal are unrepentant America-haters and anti-Semites—people who want nothing more than to make these two paragons of virtue look bad.

So from now on, whenever you hear someone defending Israeli settlements or calling on the U.S. to lend any support to the settlement project (including the slightest compromise on "natural growth"), no matter who it might be, you can rest assured they're motivated by nothing more than their implacable hatred for both Israel and America.

Yes we koan!

This article in the LA Times ("Environmentalists baffled by Obama's strategy") strikes me as the perfect summation of the abyss of cognitive dissonance facing Obama's legion of increasingly confused but as yet still trusting supporters:

As a candidate for president, Barack Obama wooed environmentalists with a promise to "support and defend" pristine national forest land from road building and other development that had been pushed by the Bush administration.

But five months into Obama's presidency, the new administration is actively opposing those protections on some 60 million acres of federal woodlands in a case being considered by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. [...]  Administration officials say that in some cases, they are defending the [Bush administration] policies to prevent the courts from settling the issues -- a prospect that would restrict the government's ability to set the environmental agenda. [...]

Whatever the overall strategy, the result has been a series of cases in which Obama appears to be taking positions in court that run counter to his stated goals.

Yeah, that's a shocker alright.  We certainly haven't seen that before.  Really, I'm stunned.

But the article hits its dadaist peak with the closing sentence:

If the courts agree with the government and allow the building of more roads in wilderness areas, the administration could face enormous difficulties in achieving its ultimate goal of keeping the roads out.

I know it's difficult not to burst into laughter (or tears?) when you read a sentence like that, but remember, this is the same Obama who demonstrates his anti-war credentials by increasing the military budget, his commitment to open government by refusing to release White House visitor records, his deep respect for the rule of law by opposing habeas corpus rights for the people we've kidnapped, etc, etc.  If anyone can fight to allow the building of more roads in wilderness areas in order to advance the ultimate goal of keeping roads out of wilderness areas, he's the one.

Now, maybe I'm wrong to respond skeptically to these machinations.  Maybe there really are plans within plans within plans here, and when we look back we'll see that Obama did it all because of his deep commitment to the environment.  And if it really does end up that the the forests erupt in song and the bear dances with the woodchuck and the lion lies down with the lamb and the lamb lies down on Broadway, I'll be the first one cheering zen master Barack—the only person in all of human history who can build a house by setting it on fire.

But until then I think I'll just follow the path of least resistance and assume that if it looks like a betrayal, that's exactly what it is.

GEEK TIME: My all-time favorite koan, by way of the Unix fortune program:

A new koan:
If you have some ice cream, I will give it to you.
If you have no ice cream, I will take it away from you.
It is an ice cream koan.

And another favorite fortune that fits the theme:

Q:  How many surrealists does it take to change a light bulb?
A:  Two: one to hold the giraffe, and the other to fill the bathtub with brightly-colored machine tools.

Barack Obama, Naderite

A presidential election ends in a bitterly contested result, and Barack Obama offers this analysis:

"It's important to understand that although there is amazing ferment taking place...the difference...in terms of their actual policies may not be as great as has been advertised."

It's like 2000 all over again!

ADDING: There are a few key differences, though:

• The right-wing scumbag who's claiming victory may actually have won the election.
• Peevish Mousavi voters aren't whining that Mehdi Karroubi was nothing but a spoiler who threw the election to Ahmadinejad.
• Iranians are rioting in the streets to demand their rights, whereas their American counterparts signed numerous online petitions and even made a phone call or two.

Everything old

Whatever else you might say about it, Binyamin Netanyahu's speech was a "dramatic transformation" for him.  Wasn't it?

Let's take a look at a 1996 interview with David Bar-Illan, then a top advisor to Prime Minister Netanyahu 1.0:

Mr. Netanyahu has often said that he wants the Palestinians to have as much self-rule as possible, as long as it does not endanger the security of Israel. Now if you have a sovereign state, obviously you can have as large an army as you can raise, you can produce or import all sorts of weapons.

So in 1996 Netanyahu endorsed Palestinian self-rule without actual sovereignty.  By comparison, Netanyahu mentioned the word "sovereign" or variants three times in his latest speech—all in reference to Israel.  The most significant of those was "This tragic history of powerlessness explains why the Jewish people need a sovereign power of self-defence"—a recognition that the right to self-defense is a feature of a sovereign nation, which makes the meaning of his requirement that any Palestinian state be demilitarized crystal clear (and of course the Palestinians, with their triumphant and powerful history, don't need to defend themselves from anyone).

Going back to 1996, Bar-Illan continued to explain this notion of not-quite sovereignty he and Netanyahu shared:

If we say the Palestinian entity must have limited sovereignty, we can impose it primarily if we are still on the Jordan River, because we can immediately close any connection between the Palestinians and the Hashemite Kingdom if we want to. If we are not there, it’s impossible to close that border.

(This would be the official excuse for Israel's effective annexation of the Jordan Valley.)  And just in case anyone wasn't getting the point, Bar-Illan drove it home in no uncertain terms:

I am not talking about the State of Palestine, a state implies sovereignty, but the entity of Palestine, commonwealth, whatever you want to call it, that is what the prime minister meant when he talked about a possibility of limited sovereignty, at least for a time. [...] Semantics don’t matter. If Palestinian sovereignty is limited enough so that we feel safe, call it fried chicken.

This, then, is what Netanyahu and his top advisor were saying in 1996.  So Netanyahu's "dramatic transformation" in his speech this week was that he finally, fully embraced Bar-Illan's understanding that semantics don't matter, and he could mouth the meaningless words "Palestinian state" in reference to the fried chicken Israel is willing to grant to the Palestinians—who can then pick up the trash and run the prisons in their bantustans, and generally pretend that what they've got is a real state, just like the big kids have!

(This was similar to Ariel Sharon's realization that withdrawing from the Gaza Strip—which was all but worthless to Israel anyway, except as a bargaining chip—would "supply the amount of formaldehyde that's necessary so that there will not be a political process with the Palestinians."  Every once in a while the insane far right realizes that the whole "crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentation of their women" talk that expresses the deepest desire of their shrivelled, blackened hearts doesn't play well to a general audience, and gets a little smarter about covering it up.  Which is also when they're the most dangerous.  By contrast, the ostensible left understands the need to blow smoke constantly about what it's doing, which is why it's usually more dangerous than the right.)

With that out of the way, it's worth noting the specific contexts in which Netanyahu used this semantically-meaningless phrase:

• "there is a real danger that an armed Palestinian state would emerge that would become another terrorist base against the Jewish state"
• "It is impossible to expect us to agree in advance to the principle of a Palestinian state without assurances that this state will be demilitarised."
• "If we receive this guarantee regarding demilitirization and Israel's security needs, and if the Palestinians recognise Israel as the State of the Jewish people, then we will be ready in a future peace agreement to reach a solution where a demilitarised Palestinian state exists alongside the Jewish state."

So we have one mention of the threat a Palestinian state would pose to Israel, one assertion that it's "impossible" to expect Israel to agree in advance to the principle of a Palestinian state, and one statement that Israel may be ready in some vague and distant "future peace agreement" to "reach a solution" involving some form of Palestinian "state" (or fried chicken, or whatever else you want to call it).

Now that is one hell of a dramatic transformation.

UPDATE: I somehow missed Netanyahu stating point blank in his speech that he'd told Obama "if we could agree on the substance, then the terminology would not pose a problem."  Nice to have it straight from the horse's ass's mouth.

Shell game

I've written before about the proliferation of misunderstood memos, but it looks like the problem is even deeper than I realized.  Consider the case of some of the letters Shell sent to the Nigerian government and security services:

In one document written in May 1993, the oil company wrote to the local governor asking for the "usual assistance" as the Ogoni expanded their campaign. There was a stand-off between the Ogoni and the US contractor Willbros, which was laying a pipeline. Nigerian military were called in, resulting in at least one death.

Man, you send one innocent message about the "usual assistance" and the next thing you know someone's dead—when all you really wanted was, oh, I don't know, translation services for gas flaring regulations.  And the comedy of errors just continued:

Days later, Shell met the director general of the state security services to "reiterate our request for support from the army and police". In a confidential note Shell suggested: "We will have to encourage follow-through into real action preferably on an industry rather than just Shell basis". The Nigerian regime responded by sending in the Internal Security Task Force, a military unit led by Colonel Paul Okuntimo, a brutal soldier, widely condemned by human rights groups, whose men allegedly raped pregnant women and girls and who tortured at will. Okuntimo boasted of knowing more than 200 ways to kill a person.

That's "real action" all right.  So what did Okuntimo do, thanks to his utter and complete misreading of Shell's benevolent intentions?

In October 1993, Okuntimo was sent into Ogoni with Shell personnel to inspect equipment. The stand-off that followed left at least one Ogoni protester dead. A hand-written Shell note talked of "entertaining 26 armed forces personnel for lunch" and preparing "normal special duty allowances" for the soldiers.

But surely they'd have gotten those "special duty allowances" whether they'd attacked the Ogoni protesters or just reasoned calmly with them over a few drinks, as Shell no doubt intended.  Right?  And Shell was probably just giving them lunch to make them feel better for the terrible mistakes they'd made based on their misinterpretations of Shell's intentions.  Who's with me on this?

Shell is also accused of involvement with the MPF [aka the "Kill and Go"], which worked with Okuntimo. One witness, Eebu Jackson Nwiyon, claimed they were paid and fed by Shell. Nwiyon also recalls being told by Okuntimo to "leave nobody untouched". When asked what was meant by this, Nwiyon replied: "He meant shoot, kill."

Yeah, yeah, we get the picture.  Look: it's not Shell's fault if its entirely innocuous requests were constantly misread by the Nigerian soldiers and paramilitaries they were paying, feeding, and harmlessly arming with Beretta semi-automatic rifles and pump-action shotguns.  If you think about it, it was just like a zany episode of Three's Company—except instead of Mr. Roper finding Jack in bed with Chrissy, some protesters were beaten and shot.  Oh, right, and hanged.  But otherwise exactly the same.

Whatever your feelings about all of this, though, I think we'd all agree that human communication is rife with misunderstandings.  For instance, if I say that Shell is a vicious corporate criminal willing to bathe in vats of human blood to boost its profit margins, you might think I'm being critical, right?  But you'd be totally mistaken, because all I really meant is that Shell is a major oil company and an important part of the global economy.  You see how it happens?

Help with definitions

Binyamin Netanyahu explains what he meant when he used the seemingly-clear but actually quite subtle phrase "without preconditions":

Therefore, a fundamental prerequisite for ending the conflict is a public, binding and unequivocal Palestinian recognition of Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people. To vest this declaration with practical meaning, there must also be a clear understanding that the Palestinian refugee problem will be resolved outside Israel's borders. [...]

Palestinians must clearly and unambiguously recognise Israel as the state of the Jewish people. The second principle is: demilitarisation. The territory under Palestinian control must be demilitarised with ironclad security provisions for Israel. Without these two conditions, there is a real danger that an armed Palestinian state would emerge that would become another terrorist base against the Jewish state, such as the one in Gaza. [...]

Regarding the remaining important issues that will be discussed as part of the final settlement, my positions are known: Israel needs defensible borders, and Jerusalem must remain the united capital of Israel with continued religious freedom for all faiths.

Wow, who knew such a straightforward phrase was fraught with such complexity!  Now you can see why peace in the Middle East is so difficult.

(In fairness to Netanyahu, the full quote was "Let's begin negotiations immediately without preconditions," and he didn't specifically say negotiations on what—so maybe he's just looking forward to getting together with some Palestinians to decide if they should get a falafel and, who knows, maybe play some foosball.  Or perhaps "preconditions" is actually a Swahili word which translates roughly as "a chance in hell of success.")

The utility of interpretations

In an apparent oversight, the State Department may actually add a group to the terrorism list even though it's targeting an official enemy:

The United States State Department is considering placing Jundullah on its terrorism list to send a conciliatory signal to Iran.

Jundullah has killed scores of Iranian soldiers and border guards since 2003. Most recently it has claimed responsibility for the Thursday suicide bombing in an Iranian mosque that killed 25 and wounded 125.

But at least they haven't completely forgotten the terrorism list's second and more important purpose as a political bludgeon:

Some US officials argue that the administration should swiftly place a terrorist label on Jundullah as a sign of Washington’s good faith.  Others, however, see the move as a premature giveaway.

Yes, we wouldn't want to "give away" anything to Iran by adding a terrorist organization to the list of...terrorist organizations.  And there's at least one  good reason for the State Department to be reticent:

A Pakistani tribal militant group responsible for a series of deadly guerrilla raids inside Iran has been secretly encouraged and advised by American officials since 2005, U.S. and Pakistani intelligence sources tell ABC News.

The group, called Jundullah, is made up of members of the Baluchi tribe and operates out of the Baluchistan province in Pakistan, just across the border from Iran.

It has taken responsibility for the deaths and kidnappings of more than a dozen Iranian soldiers and officials.

(Considering that a New York man was convicted of "material support" of terrorism and sentenced to nearly six years in prison for nothing more than broadcasting Hezbollah's television station, just imagine how many years U.S. officials will spend in jail for this!)

Adding Jundullah to the list wouldn't be entirely unprecedented, though; on September 10, 2001, the Bush administration's State Department added the AUC (right-wing Colombian death squads) to the terrorism list, despite the fact that the U.S. had spent years supporting and financing them indirectly through the Colombian military.  So when our terrorists either outlast their usefulness or go a little too far, they may find themselves on the list.

And in any case, the Obama administration is already working on putting things back to their natural order:

The Obama administration says it will consider putting North Korea back on the list of state sponsors of terrorism, and is pressing for a U.N. resolution authorizing the boarding of North Korean ships to search for nuclear materials.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton says recent activity by North Korea, including nuclear tests and missile launches, is forcing the United States to consider placing Pyongyang back on a list of state sponsors of terrorism.

"Obviously they were taken off of the list for a purpose, and that purpose is being thwarted by their actions," said Clinton.

There, that's more like it.  If restored to the list, North Korea will again join the ranks of menacing terrorist powerhouses like Cuba—a country which threatens our very way of life with its...uh...illicit exports of potentially-exploding cigars?  Tarantula-infested bananas?  Red hot salsa dancing?  Help me out here.

WIBSI?

On November 5th, 2008—the day of the ascension of the last great hope for America, and indeed of all humankind—Chris Floyd coined the indispensable acronym WIBDI, which he explained as follows:

This user-friendly analytical tool provides a quick and easy way of determining the value of any given policy while correcting one's perception for partisan bias. Simply take a particular action or proposal and submit it to the WIBDI test: If Bush did this, would you think it was OK? Or would you condemn it as the act of a warmonger, or a tyrant, or a corrupt corporate tool, etc.?

(If you haven't already, you should read the whole thing—read it, love it, live it.)

In the process of writing about the habit of skepticism I realized there's a minor but useful corollary to Floyd's rule, namely, the WIBSI test: if Bush said this, would you still find it as convincing?  Would these exact same words coming from that beady-eyed, simian face sound as reasonable and persuasive to you?  Would you give them as much of the benefit of the doubt?  Or if Bush said it instead of Obama, would you bring every last one of your critical faculties to bear?

To give WIBSI a proper chance you have to do one thing I've been doing for years now: reading political speeches rather than watching or listening to them.  I found it necessary to do this starting with Clinton* and continuing through the Bush years, since listening to either of these smug, hypocritical bastards put me at risk of major organ failure.  And although Obama doesn't inspire as visceral an allergic reaction (yet) as those two did for me, I can still feel my gorge rising as the glib, thought-smothering propaganda starts to pile up.

There are plenty of benefits to reading political speeches.  The first is that it takes far less time—not only because you read faster than they speak, but because you don't have to sit through interminable programmed applause moments and you can skip the formulaic hosannas to our national greatness.  Reading a speech also instantly puts you at one remove from the charm and charisma that people like Clinton and Obama have in spades, insulating you from the visual and auditory cues (the easy grin, the soothing baritone) that are meant to sneak their talking points right past the watchful neocortex and into the poor unsuspecting limbic system.

But reading on its own still won't quite make you immune, because you'll still know that it was Obama saying the words, and so you're likely to hear that voice—that rational, thoughtful, seductively reasonable voice—in your head as you read.  No, to get the full benefit, you not only have to read Obama's speeches rather than listening to them, you have to read them in Bush's voice.  I know it sounds painful, because it is.  But it really does work.

Give it a try—go ahead and find any quote from Obama and read it normally, then read it again in that smirking halfwit's drawl.  See how it instantly sounds less convincing?  How you find yourself wanting to disbelieve rather than believe?  How you can practically feel fences going up around your brain?  I'd submit that that's clearly the best mental state to be in when you're reading any speech from an American president.

* (If you're wondering what took me so damn long, so am I.  The answer is here.)

Hyperbole world record attempt!

Background:  the Vatican put out an order to Catholic Charities a few years ago instructing them not to place adoptive children with same-sex couples.  In response, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors passed a nonbinding resolution condemning the Vatican's order.  And in response to that, the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights filed suit against San Francisco, accusing it of not sufficiently separating church and state or some such nonsense.

Got it?  Ok, with that background in place, we can now watch with bated breath as Richard Thompson, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, takes a stab at the HYPERBOLE WORLD RECORD.  Can he achieve this awesome feat?  Let's watch:

"It is not a stretch to compare the San Francisco board's actions to that of the Nazi Germany policy of Gleichschaltung, vilifying Jews as an auxiliary to and laying the groundwork for more repressive policies, including the final solution of extermination."

Success!