August 27, 2003 by lonbud

A Left & A Right

I have felt just the tiniest bit of pride in heretofore producing this series of essays wholly out of the cloth of my own thoughts, informed, I hope, by the various threads of texture, color, and substance I manage to glean by having an open mind, an inquisitive spirit, and a desire to distinguish between fact and fiction in this wacky world.

Of course, I’m working on turning all that mindfulness toward my heart in the hope of striking a fair and balanced relationship between my thoughts and my emotions. If I manage to live a while longer, I might be able to work on that thorny pride issue.

In any event, at present, I can’t resist relating an email exchange I had today with a friend of mine who happens to be, if not an arch conservative or a true libertarian, he’s at least a big fan of Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, and Talk Radio. He’s also a media mini-mogul himself, but that’s quite beside the point.

The whole thing stemmed from a little skunk-poking I engaged in after reading the first hundred pages of Al Franken’s new book, Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right.

Get this book, y’all. Even if you don’t learn anything you will laugh yourself silly. And Lord knows we could use a few laughs around here.

From: Lonnie Lazar
Date:Wed Aug 27, 2003 12:00:31 AM US/Pacific
To:
Subject: Fox News update

Did you hear?
In the wake of the recent News Corp. v. Franken imbroglio, the network is changing its slogan –to

Fox News: Wholly Without Merit

Hope all is well -LD

PS: Service personnel still dying in the desert almost daily; still no WMD. What’s up with
that?

From: “William”
Date: Wed Aug 27, 2003 5:12:12 AM US/Pacific
To: “Lonnie Lazar”
Subject: Re: Fox News update

In addition to George Bush I & II, Tony Blair, the UN as well as Saddam’s own admission, why don’t you ask Bill Clinton? He publicly spoke of the need to reinforce the
“no fly zone” and destroyed of an aspirin factory ( in between Oval Office blowjobs) in the Sudan as a clear justification of thwarting Hussein’s WMD program.

This past week, enriched Uranium was found hidden in Iraq by American troops. I will forward that article. I suppose they had it there for laughs?

I will assure you that a massive amount of the world’s most dangerous weaponry will eventually be discovered. Due to the delay of the American and British destruction of the Hussein dictorial regime caused by the leftist, anti-American and envious sentiment of our freedom and greatness, Hussein had every opportunity to sell, hide or destroy his arsenal. Now there is a report his weaponry might be hidden Lebanon’s Bekka Valley guarded by such marvelous friends of yours as the Syrian, Hezballa and Iraqi’s terrorist squads.

Hang in there, the weapons will be discovered, although I know for you, even that would never justify any courageous act of the Bush Administration. Again, Lonnie, you have written many a word condemning American acts of self-defense. However, you have never written of sentence offering your alternative suggestion of what the leader of the free world should do when the most venomous regimes are feverishly working day and night to develop weapons for the sole reason of destroying our very existence. Let alone, the continued butchery and enslavement of their own citizens. Just once and without the
sarcastic diatribes of hatred toward anything Republican or Conservative, let us
know what YOU suggest when dealing with today’s current challenges. Before you
respond (if you can), you might wish to review all history offers which indicates that appeasement and ignoring evil only results in the destruction of the innocent.

I believe the slogan you now attribute to Fox News is actually that being used by the New York Times. No, wait a minute, their new logo is “All the News Fit to Print – whether true or not”. Wonder why Fox News’ audience is twice that of CNN? Or why Conservative radio thrives and NOT ONE national liberal talkshow can garner enough audience and advertising support to exist? I think the public has grown weary of your tired, negative and
long-failed policies.

I haven’t even had coffee this morning!

From: Lonnie Lazar
Date: Wed Aug 27, 2003 12:00:25 PM US/Pacific
To: “William”
Subject: Re: Fox News update

Morning Bill:

I’m flattered you felt compelled to respond to my bit of wake-up humor before you even had your first cup of coffee. Perhaps that would account for your mistake in believing American troops found enriched uranium in Iraq last week. Actually, the news is INTERNATIONAL WEAPONS INSPECTORS found TRACES of enriched uranium in IRAN, which has previously admitted to having an advanced nuclear program. Now, I admit, when I first saw the story yesterday I thought it referred to Iraq as well, so I looked a little more closely. Did I have to do any in-depth research to get it straight? No, I just had to re-read the headline: Iraq, Iran –just one letter apart– even a dyslexic like George W. Bush
could make that mistake. Here’s the link to the story:

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/27/international/middleeast/27NATI.html

I’ll be standing by for your reference to the story about American TROOPS finding
enriched uranium in IRAQ.

Now that we’ve cleared up your misconceptions about current news, I’ll take a moment to address the old business you brought up. GHW Bush quite plausibly had good reason to send US forces to Iraq over a decade ago, after Saddam threatened US interests in the Persian Gulf by INVADING Kuwait. Clearly, defending US interests and rescuing a defenseless country from Iraq’s evil designs on hegemony in the Middle East are legitimate reasons for the exercise of American police powers. Full disclosure: I was against Operation Desert Storm at the time, for reasons too complex to get into here, but in the perspective of
hindsight I’ll admit Saddam’s aggression left W’s old man in a real pickle. At the very least, it represented the worst kind of ingratitude for our having sold him chemical weapons during the Reagan administration, sales, by the way, which Poppy engineered as the Gipper’s VP.

Tony Blair, for reasons known only to him and his PR team, chose to hitch his wagon to W’s falling star, and in the process will be shown to have destroyed his own political career as well as possibly driving British subjects to invest power in the hands of the Tories, of all people. The unintended consequences of that blunder are yet years away from becoming manifest, but stay tuned: it ought to make for some very funny Saturday Night Live skits one day.

The UN and Bill Clinton spoke of reinforcing the “no fly zone” and using international weapons inspectors to keep a lid on the Pandora’s box Poppy Bush opened when he went to Iran as head of the CIA and secretly negotiated the illegal arms-for-hostages deal that put Reagan into office in 1980. Clinton was the Commander-in-Chief who OK’d eight years of constant US military enforcement of the no fly zone in Iraq, slowly, persistently chipping
away at whatever little military bite Saddam had left after Desert Storm. Yes, he also bombed an aspirin factory in Sudan (who says Clinton was soft on terrorism and Islamic fanatics?), but that had less to do with stopping Saddam’s or Iraq’s megalomania than it did with his determination to deprive them of headache relief as long as he was having to deal with Kenneth Starr and THAT wholesale waste of taxpayer revenue.

Speaking of which, how is it that Clinton was able to govern amist a shitstorm of opposition in the media and in Congress and still leave W with a several TRILLION DOLLAR SURPLUS, while his successor, bolstered by a fawning, lapdog press and sympathetic majorities in BOTH houses of Congress, has managed to evaporate the surplus and create a
multi-billion dollar deficit in under three years? Bush obviously learned a few things during those cozy tete-a-tetes with his pal Kenny Boy Lay.

I HAVE HAD A LITTLE COFFEE THIS MORNING; FORGIVE ME IF I’M GOING TOO FAST HERE.

Now, you say I never make any suggestions about how I would do things differently. That is plain wrong, Bill. I HAVE offered policy suggestions to you, suggestions which I have pleaded with you to address. You have ignored them or dismissed them as unworthy of your response. Despite your refusal to engage me in any useful debate on these important matters, I will offer this suggestion about how I might have responded differently than your Hero with the Short Attention Span:

By tomorrow, the Cost of the War in Iraq will have reached $71BILLION and counting. See here.

I would have, on 9/12/01, stood before the entire world and pledged to spend, say, $50 BILLION over the next two years (making generous allowance for inflation and the way the cost of government spending programs –which your man misleads the public into believing he is rapidly banishing from existence- tends to balloon. But that’s a whole ‘nother story.) on food, medical, humanitarian, infrastructure, and technical aid to a) the United
Nations Fund for International Development or b) Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Libya, Sudan, Indonesia, Syria, Lebanon, and North Korea directly through US corporations and NGOs – you choose. I wouldn’t give dick to Saudi Arabia, though, because they are the root of the creeping vine of Islamic fundamentalism (yes, kudzu grows in the desert, too). And the
Palestinians? Who the heck ARE the Palestinians again? I don’t know what the fuck to do about them, but if you could find a representative body who would effectively get my program laid on them, they could have some, too.

And I’m not talking about Cadillac Escalades in every driveway or flush toilets in every tent, either. Nosiree. Wait a second. Full disclosure time again: I’ve never visited any of these
countries I’m proposing we HELP instead of BOMB, but I have traveled on lean budgets in a few Third World countries, something your President has never done, and will never do in this lifetime. I’ll put my whole stack of chips on the idea you could at least get the ball rolling, if not turn the whole freakin’ jihad deal on its head with some expert American plumbing out there on the shifting sands of the Cradle of Western Civilization. Book it.

So that’s my plan, Bill. What do you think?

Before I go, I must really stress my previous recommendation that you ease up on using Fox News for your background and understanding of what is going on in the world. Your President and his administration lie to them and they repeat the lies to you. Not necessarily
because Rupert Murdoch believes in everything Bush stands for. No, Rupe is only in it for the money, as proven by his willingness to kowtow and capitulate to the demands of that Ultra-Evil, Last-Bastion of Semi-Superpower Communism, land of the Red (or is it Yellow?) Menace -China- when it came time to shit or get off the pot on access to several billion TV sets. No web link here, but see Alterman, What Liberal Media?, pp.234-242.

Now, here’s a little something I remember from Logic, a few courses with which I managed to bring up my grade point average in High School and college: A tautology is something that cannot be disproved. In other words, a True Statement. Sort of like, “A true statement cannot be disproved.” A syllogism is an argument composed of tautologies, that is, an irrefutable argument. Here’s one for you by way of example:

Reality is comprised of things which are Real and
Things which are True are Real;
Reality is comprised of things which are True.

Got that one? Stay with me.

If Things which are False are Not True and
Things which are Not Not True are Not False,
Then Things which are True are Not False.

As we saw above, Reality is comprised of things which are True.

Therefore: Reality is comprised of things which are Not False.

Therefore: A person who bases his or her understanding of Reality on Falsehood cannot understand Reality.

Chew on that and get back to me.

All the best -Lonnie