Starting tonight at 11, Comedy Central's "The Daily Show" begins reporting from Iraq.

Yes, the Green Zone, not the Green Screen

http://www.truthdig.com/ear...

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Oh, and football fans should brace themselves, as the country's only liberal-leaning news broadcast, Countdown with Keith Olbermann, will air on NBC (one time only) this Sunday.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007...

Is the world ready for such truthiness?  What's next, Stephen Colbert at the White House Press Corps dinner?  (Oops.)

Seven questions for Conservatives

(A recent blog entry listed seven rather loaded questions for liberals.  One good load deserves another, right, Right?  How well do *YOU* know your arch-nemesis?)

1. When Clinton was in office, he had members of his administration slander and attempt to silence critics of his policies by "going after" their families.  In doing so he destroyed ongoing intelligence operations on numerous occasions and exposed the identities of intelligence agents.  Given that George Bush has termed this sort of behavior "treason," what punishment would you suggest for anyone who assisted him in that endeavor?  Is it too late now to prosecute?

2. Clinton misused the powers of the Presidency to commute the felony conviction of a member of his own administration (who could have been a material witness to criminal behavior and cover-ups in the White House itself.)  Would you support the appointment of a special prosecutor to look into the possible misuse of power?  Why not?

3. The number of Administration officials convicted of crimes or forced to resign from office during the Clinton Administration was the greatest of any presidency since that of Richard Nixon.  Was this the result of overzealous prosecution or an indication of real, underlying criminal behavior by the President himself, even though he wasn't actually convicted of any actual crime?

4. Clinton's presidency was marked over its first seven years by a net loss of jobs, many of them higher-paying manufacturing jobs shipped overseas.  This was true even though the Administration *PRECEDING* his managed record job growth, and the loss was unprecedented since the Great Depression. What do you feel is the economic impact of such a record, in particular to the kind of economic situation facing his successor in the White House?

5. In what seemed a real-life version of the movie "Wag the Dog," President Clinton launched a military campaign against a foreign "enemy" which posed no danger to the nation's security.  Ultimately the campaign cost thousands of US lives and literally billions of dollars.  Even though he declared it a military success (the dictator was brought to justice and is now dead) US troops remain stationed there to this day.  War crimes have been alleged by credible sources.  Would it be appropriate for the United States to send a former President to the Hague for possible prosecution before the World Court?

6. Even though the administration before his had actually reversed the growth of government through fiscal good management, Clinton presided over a huge increase in the number of federal employees (creating an entirely new federal bureaucracy in the process) and a massive explosion of federal debt.  To pay for his reckless spending, he signed the greatest increase ever in federal taxes.  Does this prove once and for all that his party is the true "big-government, big-spending" party or was it justified by the results?

7. Clinton's appointments to federal positions included a Surgeon General who later denounced his policies, an FBI director who alleged corruption, cover-up and outright perjury by Administration officials, and "anti-terror" experts who resigned after concluding that Clinton had no concept of the danger posed by Islamic fundamentalists and had actually increased the nation's vulnerability.  Should these people be discounted as simply disgruntled malcontents, or does their "insider" status give their criticisms added weight?

By the way, if you hadn't caught on by now, replace the word "Clinton" with the word "Bush" everywhere above before answering.  If I hadn't played to your prejudices about the most successful president of the last 40 years, would you have read this far?

Wait till Bush and the Iraqi puppet goverment pull their own Katrina in Iraq:

http://news.independent.co....

As world attention focuses on the daily slaughter in Iraq, a devastating disaster is impending in the north of the country, where the wall of a dam holding back the Tigris river north of Mosul city is in danger of imminent collapse.

"It could go at any minute," says a senior aid worker who has knowledge of the struggle by US and Iraqi engineers to save the dam. "The potential for disaster is very great."

.

(Just to be clear...Bush did not cause this dam to leak.  His policies and his actions are making it impossible to do anything about it, and he is therefore largely responsible for loss of life when it fails.)

As glacial ice melts, it may release into the oceans bacteria which have been isolated from us for eight million years.  Remember, if you're a typical life-form on Earth, you're a bacterium. 

(But if we're lucky, it'll only eat the lawyers...)

http://www.latimes.com/news...

(Now this one's to trigger Sam's objections to front-page hogging...:)

Again, for Ron.

You may already know about Sportsbook, the online bookie site.  You may even know that they post running odds on the 2008 Presidential Campaign.

http://www.sportsbook.com/b...

You may not know that Ron Paul's odds are now 8-1, tied with "frontrunner" Mitt Romney (get your bets down now, since his odds will improve next week).

You can still get 100-1 odds that Alberto "Abu" Gonzales will win the election, or 300-1 if you want to bet on Bill Clinton.  Another Bill is 750-1; I'm just waiting for Keith Olbermann to enter and make this a *REAL* horse-race.

For Ron...

This original piece, written as a fictional discussion, was inspired by the arguments of people whose opposition to abortion goes all the way back to the point of fertilization.  The analogy was intended to show just how big the numbers are, and how a pregancy is *NOT* something that fertilized egg does, but instead something a woman's body does over months and months of time, *USING* that fertilized egg. 

Along the way it grew to include a challenge to those who value that fertilized egg over the needs of rape or incest victims, and those who seem to value the life of a doomed fetus over the life of the woman.

=========================

 Anti-Abortion Believer:  Abortion is murder of a human being.  It is never justified.

 Me:  No matter how early in the pregnancy?  Even for so-called "morning-after pills" which prevent implantation of the egg?

 AAB:  It's all the same; human life begins at conception.

 Me:  I'll bet you five *BILLION* dollars, cash, in American money, that I can convince you I'm right and you're wrong.

 AAB:  You're on!

 Me:  My argument is that there's a huge difference between a fertilized egg, or even an embryo, and a human being.  You have no idea just how big a difference.

 AAB:  But the fertilized egg is a fertilized *HUMAN* egg, and you'll never persuade me otherwise.  Pay up!

 Me:  I guess you won, fair and square.  (Reaching into pocket)  Here's your five billion dollars.

 AAB:  What do you mean?  This is a penny!  Where's the rest of it?

 Me:  There's no difference between a penny and five billion dollars--

 AAB:  To the government, maybe...

 AAB: --except that five billion dollars is half a trillion times larger. Coincidentally, that happens to be about the difference between the number of cells in the fertilized egg and the smallest viable fetuses.  That's how big a difference we're talking about.  (The difference between the egg and a full-term baby is five to ten times bigger than THAT, and we're leaving out whole orders of complexity, but...)

 AAB: Now you're talking apples and oranges.

 Me:  No,  I'm talking dollars and cents.

 AAB: But you're leaving aside something important.  A penny is just a penny.  It'll never be anything else.  A human egg becomes a human being.  IS a human being, I mean.

 Me:  So, you *ARE* saying there's no difference merely due to scale.  But you're mistaken again, at least partly.  A human egg has maybe two out of three chances of making it to birth.  Probably less.  But at *LEAST* one out of three doesn't make it  Possibly two out of three.

 AAB:  Well, maybe since Roe v. Wade...

 Me:  No, it's always been that way.  The natural order of things is that about a third to two-thirds of all pregnancies result in spontaneous abortion, even without considering medical procedures.  It was probably worse before medical science and proper nutrition came along.  It's even worse for in-vitro procedures...

 AAB:  In-whatro?

 Me:  "Test-tube" babies.  You're talking odds where...well, you'd be better off playing Russian Routlette with five chambers loaded.

 AAB:  But there are so many test-tube babies born...who wouldn't have been born otherwise.

 Me:  And many, many more who don't survive the process.  Pretty poor odds.   Now, from my viewpoint they're just fertilized eggs or small clumps of cells, but if YOU want to be consistent you should be out picketing fertility clinics.  Now, if it doesn't bother you that so many fertilized eggs should die so that one can live, I've got a pro-stem-cell research petition here you can sign, so one frozen embryo could be destroyed and hundreds, possibly thousands of people live...

 AAB:  But still, you admit that there's a big difference here:  A penny is a penny is a penny.  It'll never grow up to be anything else.  Once the sperm meets the egg, it's a unique human being.  It wasn't human before fertilization, but...

 Me:  And once the copper disk meets the stamping die, it's a unique piece of American money.  It wasn't money before, but once the stamping's done there's a unique change, so to speak.

 AAB:  But it ends there.  Pennies don't grow up to be dollars...

 Me:  Oh, but you're wrong again.  All you have to do is put it into a long-term savings account at, say, four percent interest.  I'm sure you could get four percent over the time frame I'm suggesting.  Assuming you don't die in the meantime, the bank doesn't go belly-up, and the United States of America doesn't stop honoring "worthless pieces of paper" in the next, hmmmmm...688 years...you'll have your five billion dollars.

 AAB:  You said you'd give me five billion dollars NOW!

 Me:  And so I have.  By your reasoning, there is no difference in value between a penny and five billion dollars, just as there's no difference between a single, fertilized egg cell and something half a trillion times larger.

 AAB:  I didn't say there's no difference.

 Me:  No, you just said one has the same value as the other.

 AAB:  Besides, there's no bank in the world that'll take a one-cent deposit.  They'd lose money the first time they mailed me a statement. 

 Me:  Well, it's hardly MY fault that you're not creative.  There's lots of ways to do it.

 AAB:  Like what?

 Me:  Well, you could go in and open an account with a hundred dollars and one cent.  In one week, go in and draw out the hundred bucks.  Easy!  As far as the bank knows, you've got a lifetime relationship.  You just changed your mind.  So what could they do?

 AAB:  They have rules against that, minimum balance, and so on.  "Penalties for early withdrawal."

 Me:  Yeah, but they've got to find you first.  Maybe a judge might make you pay penalties, especially if you have other accounts with the bank.   But so what?  Once the penny is in the account, there's nothing they can do about it.  It's not *THEIR* money.  It's a completely separate account.  They don't get any say about it.  And eventually you'll have five billion dollars.  What's a couple bucks in penalties compared to that?

 AAB:  That sounds crazy.  It's their bank, of *COURSE* they can decide whether or not they'll take a penny deposit.

 Me:  Really?  It's just a bank rule, not a law.  And the courts could easily rule that they *CAN'T* void the account,  that they have to go through with it.  But that's just one possibility.  Go slip a ten-dollar bill and a penny to the bank president, and have HIM open the account for you.  They won't be able to say no to him, he's in a position of authority.

 AAB:  If he tried that, they'd fire him. 

 Me:  That's *HIS* problem, and not until after the penny is deposited, and by then you're set for life.  Well, providing it's a very *LONG* life.  But Methuselah would've lived to withdraw the proceeds, so it can be done.  The Catholic Church has been around *MUCH* longer than 688 years, so you can't argue that the bank couldn't last.

 AAB:  Lot of good that does *ME*.  And even if they agree to it, the bank might go broke.  Especially if it had to pay out $5 billion on a one-penny deposit.  That would force them into bankrupcy.

 Me:  It might.  But they took that chance when they went into business.  Oh, some people would say they shouldn't have to maintain the account if would endanger the business itself.  But that's the kind of moral relativism that got this country into so much trouble. They ought to do everything possible to save both the bank *AND* the deposit.

 AAB:  Even under the circumstances you outlined surely the bank can refuse to accept it *BEFORE* the penny gets into the account.  They just have to follow their own code of conduct.  So there goes my $5 billion and it's just a penny again.

 Me:  You're giving up too easily.  Just keep trying.  All they have to do is make ONE mistake, and you're in!  But yes, they may be careful.  So, just *MAKE* them take the deposit.  You just walk into the bank with a gun and *FORCE* the teller to take the penny.  Be sure you get a receipt, though.

 AAB:  *WHAT*?

 Me:  Why not?  It's not like you're stealing anything.  You're making a deposit.  That's what a bank is *FOR*.  If they didn't want to take your money, why would they put out all those TV ads?  Twenty-four-hour ATM's.  For God's sake, they walk around with those enticing interest rates and free checking accounts and toasters...they're begging for it.  And once again, once they've taken the penny, they don't get any say in the matter anymore. 

 AAB:  I'm not going to walk into a bank with a gun and...

 Me:  If you don't someone else will.  What about them?  Are you going to say the bank should get out of its obligations just because they say they didn't have a choice?   Why didn't they set off the alarm at once?  They were careless, they should have to pay.  It's not the money's fault, how it got into the bank.

 AAB:  This is seriously crazy.

 Me:  Well, let's sum up, then.  You don't feel there's any difference in value between a penny and five billion dollars.  You'd feel justified in calling the cops to report a multibillion-dollar robbery if someone stole a penny from your pocket.  Presumably the penalty should be the same for both thefts.

 If the penny gets deposited in a bank, then the bank cannot terminate an account, even if it would otherwise go bankrupt, even if the penny was deposited under false pretenses, or by a member of the bank's own family, or even at gunpoint.  It doesn't matter whether the bank wanted to accept the deposit or even took steps to keep it from being made.  Does any of this sound familiar to you?

 AAB:  Hmmm.  I'll think about it.  Do you want your penny back now?

 Me:  Five billion dollars for your thoughts?  Sounds like a fair trade.  Why don't you keep it?