Paralysis of the Mind

Yes, everyone and their mother shows up with a best/worst of list at the end of the year. But you know, they're fun, they can spark really enjoyable discussions (I went over this one with a friend and we ended up chatting for about 3 hours over the various points) and, yes, they're fairly easy and quick to write.

So, we'll start with the big and small news of the year. Tomorrow, the best and worst of pop culture this year. And somewhere just past the ringing in of the new year, we'll hit the 10 best moments of 2005, for anything I didn't catch the first two times around.

Overrated story of the year: Plame leak investigation
I know, it's a big deal that Bush/Cheney/Rove/Libby dished on a CIA agent in retaliation for her husband's comments about how ridiculous the administration's claim was about WMD in Iraq. It really is. But that this gets coverage -- and not the fact that Joe Wilson was 100% right about those claims -- is pretty silly. Yes, Al Capone was taken down for mail fraud, but this seems like standing in a storm watching the raindrops -- and ignoring a cyclone. Stay tuned, though, this could certainly explode into something a lot bigger.

Underrated story of the year: Duke Cunningham's fall from grace
A sitting (and powerful) Congressman from California gets busted for raking graft? How this was not enormously-headlined front-page news still shocks me. Here's someone who took millions while sitting on THE committee in the House of Reps... and it was two days of story? One of them with his hilarious tearful semi-quasi-not-really-an-apology apology? I know we expect the worst of politicos, but damn. This seemed like a top 10 story of the year to me, and it's been almost completely brushed aside.

Overrated political angle of the year: Bush's unpopularity
The world can gleefully note how unpopular Bush is, but can't forget that he got re-elected, his party controls every facet of government, and he remains on track to implement whatever sort of unsettling agenda he wants to. Furthermore, Americans are dumb and fickle when it comes to political considerations; note how Bush's numbers have bounced back a little now that gas prices have settled back down a little bit. The government is a fringe player in setting gas prices, so he's taking stupid heat over something he has very little say in. Iraq's unpopular, but in the immortal words of Tina Fey: "66 percent of the country disapproves of Bush's handling of the country; the other 34 percent think Adam and Eve rode dinosaurs to church." Bear in mind, this is the same guy who after winning one of the closest elections in history, said he'd earned plenty of political capital, and was going to spend it. Don't think 40 percent approval ratings are going to slow him much, do ya?

Underrated political angle of the year: Unpopular state Republicans
When George Pataki unveils his adorable "Pataki '08" campaign, it'll be celebrated by this blog. (Believe me, we'll have pictures, sounds ... I might even Podcast for the event. Stay tuned.) But it masks something else interesting in my home state: When the Gov announced he wasn't seeking another term, it was widely assumed that he was simply gearing up for a Presidental run. But, in reality, he's also facing an almost unbeatable challenger in Eliot Spitzer, NY's Atty. General. The Republicans are treating Spitzer like the natives of Skull Island treat King Kong: by staying the hell out of his rampage. But lo, NY is a blue state; we should have a blue governor. But Ohio is seeing plenty of tumult, with their governor raking in a solid FIFTEEN percent approval rating in a poll two months ago. Saddam Hussein polls higher! Oh yeah, and Ahhnold has worn out his welcome pretty damn fast. Idiot journalists were suggesting he was plotting a run for higher office a year and a half ago; now he'll be lucky to make it to the next election. Can Democrats take advantage in these three super-important states? Probably not, but the Republicans are doing their best to hand back a few state houses.

Overrated political move of the year: Steroids hearings on Capitol Hill
John McCain needs to shut up. Seriously. Just stop talking for a while, champ.

Underrated political move of the year: Reid, Democrats get closed-door hearing
I'm sure nothing happened. I'm sure it was a totally useless political ploy. But whenever you, as the opposition party, get the chance to thumb your nose and screaming "Yo momma!" at the top of your lungs at the ruling party, you have to take it. Simple as that. Harry Reid has been a surprisingly good thorn in a lot of important sides this year. I have to say, I wasn't really expecting that from him.

Talking head of the year: Nancy Grace
What can be said about Grace that hasn't already been said? She just takes it to a new level every night. I tip my cap, ma'am.

Husky voice of the year: Rita Cosby
I do a FANTASTIC Rita impression. I just slay people at parties.

Pundit of the year: Bill O'Reilly
So, "Merry Christmas" are two simple words that nobody should be offended at. But "Happy Holidays" are two simple words that should offend everyone? That's some consistency, there. If I was O'Reilly's neighbor, I'd wish him a happy Ramadan. Every. Damn. Day.

Anchor of the year: Keith Olbermann
I mean, a watchable news program? Who came up with that idea? Olbermann looks at serious stories, he looks at funny stories, has a mixed bag of guests and is sarcastic to the point of being salty. I just love it. Of course, Olbermann leans a little left. Which brings me to my next point: He *leans* left. Not "he'd run over his mother if she insulted Bill Clinton"... not "has changed his tune 8 times on an issue because the Democratic party has" and definitely not "rabidly frothing at the mouth because there's a conservative in the room." He's the only reason to watch MSNBC at any point in time.

Biggest shakeup of 2005 that may blow up in 2006: The NSA spying on us
The killer of this story is the simple fact that it's SO damn easy for the government to get the permission to spy within America. The FISA court says "No" much less than 1 percent of the time. It would, literally, take an extra 12 hours for Bush to have gotten this permission in the first place totally legally. The fact that he didn't just shows, again (I mean, again and again and again) that he has far less respect for his office than Clinton or Nixon, far less respect for the people than Reagan or Bush, Sr, far more secrets than Kennedy and, yes, even appears to be chasing Harding for 'Most scandals in one administration.' It's really quite nice. Nothing will happen to him, of course, because he'll drop "War on Terror" (or, as he's wont to do, stand like Big Brother in front of a huge screen shreiking "WAR ON TERROR" in 8-foot tall letters imposed over a shaded globe) and people will be like, "Oh, okay! So long as you did it during wartime!"

If Clinton had said the blowjob was due to the vagraties of the war in Bosnia, well, things might have been different, right?

Biggest shakeup of 2005 that won't matter in 2006: The passing of JP2
Look, I'm the wrong person to go to if you're looking for religious news, but the way John Paul II's death was covered was just sickening. Seriously, enough already. We treat child molesters as the lowest-class citizens in America, but we treated our former Pope -- who blithely helped cover up priestly molestations for years -- as though it was the passing of a God. His treatment of gays and the African hemisphere (no condoms!) was downright disturbing. And it continues to not matter, because in this day and age, the pope is -- at best -- an ancillary figure in international politics. JP2 did some good stuff too, but as with everyone who dies, all of his failings were vanished into nothing upon his death. The story was overrated, his reach was overrated -- and Church doctrine continues to be vastly overrated, too.

Guy I'll miss the most in 2006: William Raspberry
He wasn't a columnist, he called himself a "solutionist." And he was, he was. I have no doubt he'll be replaced by someone who isn't fit, as a writer, to hold onto Mr. Raspberry's shorts. But that's how the cookie crumbles. Maybe Jonah "Let's attack Canada so they'll stop spending money on health care" Goldberg can parlay this into more national prominence. Yikes. I just vomited in my mouth.

Tune back in tomorrow for the best and worst in pop culture.

Here's what Bush has pretty much tallied up over the past week:

"Iraq is good. Not as good as I promised, but good. Better, even, than before. It'll be awesome when we achieve victory. I'll let you know what victory is when I see it. We are always at war with the terrorists. Therefore, we must spy on our own citizens. It's legal because I say it's legal. During wartime, anything is legal. I'm disappointed in Congress for voting down the Patriot Act. Those measures, which I have already gone past illegally -- but legally because I said it's legal -- are vital to the nation's security. Iraq is vital to our security because that's where the terrorists are. We had faulty intelligence before going into war. There were no terrorists or weapons of mass destruction, but the war was the right decision because Saddam is very bad and we have to fight the terrorists. 30,000 Iraqis have died, according to our intelligence, good, good intelligence. I'm angry the press has reported on my wiretapping; we can't let the terrorists take away our freedoms by allowing them to know what we're doing to stop them."

And here's what free-thinking, moderate to leftist thinkers have been saying this week:

...

That's silence. Mostly because our heads have exploded and/or we're running around screaming like our hair is on fire.

Blowjob, not OK. Breaking Constitutional law, OK. If nothing happens to Bush because of this, it's already too late for this country of ours.

Maureen Dowd recently released a book entitled "Are Men Necessary?" Dowd, a moderately-respected opinion columnist and sorta-silly gadfly, was looking into her, uhm, tortured soul and came up with the idea to make the case that because she's had some bad dates in her time, men probably aren't necessary.

Obviously, to anyone who knows where babies come from, her book asks an unbelievably idiotic question in the title. I assume Dowd and her mom or dad had "The Talk" at some point in her life, so she was trying to be either clever or stake out one of those wild talking points everyone is so enamoured with these days.

Which brings me to a point: Opinion writing these days is absolutely ghastly. Turgid. Depressing. Unreadable. You can pick your favorite adjective and go with it from there. Dowd, who as a New York Times columnist should be able to publish a book with a little more dignity than a Moaning Myrtle effort about men, proves this more than anyone.

But hoo boy, she's FAR from alone.

Opinion writing has turned into a game of "Can you top this?" Anne Coulter happily beats non-Conservatives with baseball bats. Michelle Malkin interns herself in a camp during WWII. Molly Ivins takes a chainsaw to President Bush. Dan Savage... well, jeesh, Mr. Savage pretty much deserves a plaque for everything HE'D like to see happen to those he doesn't agree with.

It's become that little game, where people stake out their talking points -- the more insane the better -- and defend them beyond logic and sense. Which is fine, in its own way, say on "Pardon the Interruption" or "Crossfire." But opinion writing is supposed to be about ideas, and instead of making a case (really, for anything), almost every opinion piece comes out as a scratch against someone else's ideas. Or, more often, it's just a long string of insults.

Opinion writers, too, have turned into caricatures. Dowd is the effeminate "limosuine liberal," concerned with appearance over substance, whiny about men, overly feministic, and soppy to the point of some readers wanting to dab her newsprint with a Kleenex so they don't get her tearstains on their fingers before reading. Jonah Goldberg -- a painfully inspid writer -- is the rich and obviously untalented heir to the family business who got his start because he inherited the family company. Kathleen Parker is the fearful "fill-in-the-blank" Mom (was soccer mom, now 'security' mom) who files her dispatches from the war zone of her dinner table. David "Bobo" Brooks gives the sort of "inside the heartland" tidbits about "Real Americans" that only an outside, Ivy League-educated elitist can.

All these people keep pounding out their columns, each as interchangable as the last. What do they lack? Well, ideas, for one. Outside of Goldberg, who happily pilfers ideas fresh off National Review Online, not one of those writers ever makes an implementable suggestion. And since Goldberg rarely has a thought of his own that hasn't been approved by Mom, Karl Rove or legions of right-wing bloggers, it's hard to call those real ideas.

Some of these people are good writers, too. Dowd can be clever and funny, Parker is widely popular among people who know nothing of politics (I dunno why, either, but I guess that's her audience) and some of the invective from a Coulter-type can be amusing. But again, nary an idea betwixt 'em.

Meanwhile, there ARE opinion writers who do offer ideas. Sensible types like Thomas Friedman (I'll overlook that his ideas are really REALLY dumb), George Will, David Broder, William Raspberry (my personal favorite), and even the completely insane Pat Buchanan.

Buchanan, in particular, comes off as a total looney tune -- yet remains one of the most principled commentators out there. He has always hated gays and been deadset against immigration. Disagree or not, at least you know he isn't going to backtrack to cover up and change his tune later as the Democrats/Republicans later may warrant. And basically, you can say much the same about the other semi-sensible commentators: Broder espouses his '50s-Eisenhower-Republican-Centrist-Insider schtick, and always has; Will is deadly serious, even about baseball, and Raspberry is just sensible.

What do they have? Why, it's ideas. Buchanan wants to put up electric fences, Will wants to reanimate Ronald Reagan, Broder wants Ike back and Raspberry offers ideas in just about every column. And that's the sort of thing you can take to the bank. After all, we can hear tales of "Rummy" or have someone say, "Why can't this be done?"

Opinion writing isn't an easy task, and it can very easily lead to excesses. But at the very least, is it too much to ask for writers to add to the dialogue, rather than simply be another annoying voice in the crowd? Or saying another *obviously* ridiculous talking point?

If those that helped shape public opinion were somewhat more respectful, less ideological and more thoughful, then the debate would follow. But instead we have Democratic beatings, life with Rummy, how we hate buck-toothed Condi and real Americans believe we must nuke the towelheads. No wonder we can't find consensus on anything in this country; we've been led astray by the very people who were supposed to help us figure out what to do next.

And I don't think that's just an opinion.

What would Jesus do?

Apparently, he would beat up someone who mocked Christian fundamentalism.

Now I'm not a theology scholar -- oh oxymoron of oxymorons -- but I'm pretty sure it doesn't say in the Bible: "Lo, and go forth and and tailgate those who speak out against you, and when the opportunity comes, you must beat them with your fists and possibly a metal pipe."

I don't understand why religion gets free passes anymore. "Moderate" Christians and other people will be all over this story, apologizing and waxing philosphic about how what these people did isn't right. But when they discover who did it, are there going to be excommunications? No chance. And plenty of people in our wackjob country are nodding their heads saying, "Good, serves that commie-hippie-atheist right."

Religion in this country can't have it both ways. I'm sick of it. We can't have Bill O'Reilly losing what's left of his mind over the fact that people say "Happy Holidays" instead of giving everyone a "Merry Christmas" and then, at the same time, have people rushing out to condemn religiously-motivated attacks. Because if this is a Christian country, then we need to take a good, hard look at what the hell we're doing. I posted before about The 10 Commandments and I can say, in plain fact, that as a country we're violating several of them. Which condemns us all, if we're a Christian nation.

Or we're not, and we need to crack down on religious crimes and actually live up to the First Amendment. Religious beating? It should be a hate crime (and the people who did it should be excommunicated and refused Communion for the rest of their existence). Target says its OK not to fill birth-control prescription because the pharmacist is religious? Absolute violation of civil rights. And hell, wishing me a Merry Christmas? Who the @!#$%^ are you to tell me that I have to celebrate your corrupt little spending spree? Eighty percent (give or take) of this nation is Christian/lapsed christian/quasi-christian/ex-christian/goes to church on Xmas/now in christian rock band, but that's still at least a 1-in-5 chance that you're rapping with someone who ain't like that. If you want to do that, cool, but we'll see how sniffy you feel when I peg you for a Muslim. Anyone up for a Happy Ramadan?

But it won't ever happen. Because in this country, freedom of religion just doesn't mean freedom from religion. So Merry Christmas, everyone... and I do mean everyone.

Because that's how Jesus would have wanted it.

We have our elected officials worrying about steroids in baseball, Donald Rumsfeld sitting at home thinking about what to call insurgents (instead of insurgents) and now, we have a whopper that Texas Congressman Joe Barton wants to talk about the BCS

For non-sports fans, the BCS stands for Bowl Championship Series, which is a series of computer programs and human-done polls that figure out who are the best two teams in college football. They then play each other for the championship.

Barton, who apparently doesn't watch, listen to, or know anything about college football, says things are "deeply flawed." This despite the fact that a) there are only 2 high-level Division I-AA teams that are unbeaten b) the two unbeaten teams were ranked No. 1 and No. 2 coming into this season and c) every independent watcher of college football has been expecting the two teams in question to be the best and play in the championship game since Day One and d) Texas University is one of those teams. So obviously, they're not getting screwed here.

And hey, there's a war on, a mixed economy, an unpopular president, rogue nukes and bird flu to consider. But if we're going to be calling Congressional hearings for any old thing, how about these, instead:

1. People who consistently zip through red lights (I mean seriously, I see this happen 5-10 times a day. You're telling me this is less important than deciding that Georgia should be ranked 4th instead of 6th in the AP poll?)

2. Not getting good cell phone reception in my apartment (This needs to be fixed post-haste)

3. When you buy a box of clementines, there's always one that's nasty on the bottom. (WTF?)

4. The fact that we haven't come up with a non-invasive way to test for strep throat. (When I was 8, I figured we'd have Tricorders by now, at the very least.)

5. There is not a pill you can take so that you can drink beer before liquor. (Again, WTF?)

6. The amount of packaging on medication is obscene; for 20 pills of Mucinex you get an oversized cardboard shell -- with an empty compartment inside -- then you have the pillbottle which is 5 times the size it needs to be and it's full of 4 big wads of cotton and one of those plastic sulfa things. And there, skulking at the bottom, are those 20 pills. (Seriously. That stuff costs $17.99 for 20 pills and 8 gallons of packaging.)

7. There's no cure for PMS (Warrants mentioning.)

8. There's no cure for male pride (See above.)

9. After many years of good use, my CD's sometimes end up scratched. (I demand answers that don't involve me making new copies/buying new ones)

10. Sometimes, there's nothing good on TV. (A shame)

11. Kids who use weird slang like "lolx" or "plz" or "OMG!!!" have to be rounded up and tossed in jail. (Might be terrorist code)

12. Many people are on the Do-Not-Call Registry, yet they still get calls. (Discuss)

13. Will Ferrell needs to go back to SNL; the show needs saving (I don't even think we need a meeting. This ought to be priority #1)

And that only took me a few minutes. So, to Congress, when you're done talking about college football, y'all mind taking a few minutes to shore up a few of my concerns?

Oh, and if you have any concerns yourself, feel free to add them to the list. I'm sure Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, will be happy to take a look and call a few more hearings on those matters.