A person really shouldn’t have to spend a half hour on the phone being shunted between three different departments for a simple return of a defective $30 USB hub.

Not a good way to maintain customer loyalty.

… transcript:

The man who sees absolutes, where all other men see nuances and shades of meaning, is either a prophet, or a quack.

Donald H. Rumsfeld is not a prophet.

Mr. Rumsfeld’s remarkable speech to the American Legion yesterday demands the deep analysis—and the sober contemplation—of every American.

For it did not merely serve to impugn the morality or intelligence — indeed, the loyalty — of the majority of Americans who oppose the transient occupants of the highest offices in the land. Worse, still, it credits those same transient occupants — our employees — with a total omniscience; a total omniscience which neither common sense, nor this administration’s track record at home or abroad, suggests they deserve.

Dissent and disagreement with government is the life’s blood of human freedom; and not merely because it is the first roadblock against the kind of tyranny the men Mr. Rumsfeld likes to think of as “his” troops still fight, this very evening, in Iraq.

It is also essential. Because just every once in awhile it is right and the power to which it speaks, is wrong.

In a small irony, however, Mr. Rumsfeld’s speechwriter was adroit in invoking the memory of the appeasement of the Nazis. For in their time, there was another government faced with true peril—with a growing evil—powerful and remorseless.

That government, like Mr. Rumsfeld’s, had a monopoly on all the facts. It, too, had the “secret information.” It alone had the true picture of the threat. It too dismissed and insulted its critics in terms like Mr. Rumsfeld’s — questioning their intellect and their morality.

That government was England’s, in the 1930’s.

It knew Hitler posed no true threat to Europe, let alone England.

It knew Germany was not re-arming, in violation of all treaties and accords.

It knew that the hard evidence it received, which contradicted its own policies, its own conclusions — its own omniscience — needed to be dismissed.

The English government of Neville Chamberlain already knew the truth.

Most relevant of all — it “knew” that its staunchest critics needed to be marginalized and isolated. In fact, it portrayed the foremost of them as a blood-thirsty war-monger who was, if not truly senile, at best morally or intellectually confused.

That critic’s name was Winston Churchill.

Sadly, we have no Winston Churchills evident among us this evening. We have only Donald Rumsfelds, demonizing disagreement, the way Neville Chamberlain demonized Winston Churchill.

History — and 163 million pounds of Luftwaffe bombs over England — have taught us that all Mr. Chamberlain had was his certainty — and his own confusion. A confusion that suggested that the office can not only make the man, but that the office can also make the facts.

Thus, did Mr. Rumsfeld make an apt historical analogy.

Excepting the fact, that he has the battery plugged in backwards.

His government, absolute — and exclusive — in its knowledge, is not the modern version of the one which stood up to the Nazis.

It is the modern version of the government of Neville Chamberlain.

But back to today’s Omniscient ones.

That, about which Mr. Rumsfeld is confused is simply this: This is a Democracy. Still. Sometimes just barely.

And, as such, all voices count — not just his.

Had he or his president perhaps proven any of their prior claims of omniscience — about Osama Bin Laden’s plans five years ago, about Saddam Hussein’s weapons four years ago, about Hurricane Katrina’s impact one year ago — we all might be able to swallow hard, and accept their “omniscience” as a bearable, even useful recipe, of fact, plus ego.

But, to date, this government has proved little besides its own arrogance, and its own hubris.

Mr. Rumsfeld is also personally confused, morally or intellectually, about his own standing in this matter. From Iraq to Katrina, to the entire “Fog of Fear” which continues to envelop this nation, he, Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney, and their cronies have — inadvertently or intentionally — profited and benefited, both personally, and politically.

And yet he can stand up, in public, and question the morality and the intellect of those of us who dare ask just for the receipt for the Emporer’s New Clothes?

In what country was Mr. Rumsfeld raised? As a child, of whose heroism did he read? On what side of the battle for freedom did he dream one day to fight? With what country has he confused the United States of America?

The confusion we — as its citizens— must now address, is stark and forbidding.

But variations of it have faced our forefathers, when men like Nixon and McCarthy and Curtis LeMay have darkened our skies and obscured our flag. Note — with hope in your heart — that those earlier Americans always found their way to the light, and we can, too.

The confusion is about whether this Secretary of Defense, and this administration, are in fact now accomplishing what they claim the terrorists seek: The destruction of our freedoms, the very ones for which the same veterans Mr. Rumsfeld addressed yesterday in Salt Lake City, so valiantly fought.

And about Mr. Rumsfeld’s other main assertion, that this country faces a “new type of fascism.”

As he was correct to remind us how a government that knew everything could get everything wrong, so too was he right when he said that — though probably not in the way he thought he meant it.

This country faces a new type of fascism - indeed.

Although I presumptuously use his sign-off each night, in feeble tribute, I have utterly no claim to the words of the exemplary journalist Edward R. Murrow.

But never in the trial of a thousand years of writing could I come close to matching how he phrased a warning to an earlier generation of us, at a time when other politicians thought they (and they alone) knew everything, and branded those who disagreed: “confused” or “immoral.”

Thus, forgive me, for reading Murrow, in full:

“We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty,” he said, in 1954. “We must remember always that accusation is not proof, and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law.

“We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men, not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate, and to defend causes that were for the moment unpopular.”

And so good night, and good luck.

As I work today, I’m listening to Rush Limbaugh rant about charity for the poor. An actual quote from a few minutes ago….

We didn’t teach ‘em to fish–we gave ‘em the fish! We didn’t teach ‘em how to butcher — how to slaughter a cow for the butter!

(Updated) The transcription of the entire rant is up on Limbaugh’s own site now. With typically drug-addled logic, he uses a report showing an epidemic of obesity among the poor — which any rational individual would understand to be the result of high-fat, low-nutrition diets — to conclude that we are, as a society, giving too much to the poor. And from this premise, the drug-addled host then dismisses the problem of — wait for it — starvation in Africa.

And so now we find out that there’s obesity and all this amongst the poor, more than amongst those who are not poor. It’s sort of a textbook case of what happens when we let liberals have their way. I mean, for decades all over the world we’ve been beat about the head that there are hungry people out there , that there are starving kids.

UNICEF? How many of you have trick-or-treated for UNICEF? Did you trick-or-treat for UNICEF, Brian? Did you? We all trick-or-treated. It’s one of the biggest scams on the face of the earth. The scam was to get everybody loving the United Nations. The scam was to get everybody thinking the United Nations is feeding poor people. Remember all these stories “A dime a day will feed 20 kids” in some outward place around the world, or 25 cents a day? Audrey Hepburn, Sally Strothers, all these people did it. I love Sam Kinison’s bit on all this. Sam Kinison did a riff on Sally Strothers, and she’s over there standing next to these poor kids in Africa with flies buzzing all around them, and they’re starving. You can see it by their appearance, and Sally Strothers is looking into the camera.

“Won’t you help? Don’t you care? Can’t you just make one phone call, a dollar a day will feed X numbers of hundreds of thousands of these people,” and Sam Kinison says, “You’re not sitting there hungry. I can see it looking at you. I know you’re not starving over there. You’ve probably got a picnic basket! Give that kid your sandwich; feed that kid! That kid is starving.” I laughed myself silly because it was classic. Here are these liberals right next to all these starving people doing television shows telling people thousands of miles away that they don’t care. “Can’t you help? Won’t you help?” You know, the underlying thought was: You slothful, lazy, cold-hearted bum!

Won’t you get off the couch and at least make a phone call? Well, it’s what happens when you let the left run things. We’ve been beat on the head. There are hungry people everywhere; UNICEF got it all started. We’ve seen the babies with the extended tummies, the walking skeletons, told that kids can’t learn unless they’re fed. We’ve been guilted into pouring resources on the problem, and now the latest crisis is that there is obesity among those who are impoverished because we are sympathetic; we are compassionate people; we’ve responded by letting our government literally feed these people to the point of obesity, at least here in America. We didn’t teach them how to fish. We gave them the fish. We didn’t teach them how to slaughter the cow to get the butter. We gave them the butter. The real bloat here as we know is in government.

You should really go read the whole thing. It’s an extraordinary example of what passes for thought on the right.

As noted above, I’m putting a few originals up for auction this month. This week it’s the very first appearance of Blinky the Very Nice Dog, from 1995:

… and a classic Sparky strip from 1998:

(Larger versions here and here).

The auctions are here and here, respectively. As noted in the descriptions, there are a finite quantity of original TMW strips (I went completely digital six years ago), and I’m increasingly reluctant to part with them. My plan is to put one or two more up this month, but after that, I seriously doubt I’ll be making any others available any time soon.

Alert readers will have noticed that I’ve been an absentee landlord these past few days. The trend is likely to continue a short while longer; thanks to my esteemed co-bloggers for picking up the slack.

Saddam Hussein is now on trial for his genocidal Anfal campaign against Iraq’s Kurds during the eighties. The U.S. media has covered it intensely, while almost uniformly failing to mention that the Reagan and Bush I administrations knew what was happening, helped cover it up, and continued their support for Saddam:

Google News results for “saddam kurds” in U.S. publications within past seven days: 1430

Google News results for “reagan kurds” in U.S. publications within past seven days: 4

However, there’s one significant exception to this—Jim Hoagland at the Washington Post, who deserves credit for writing this column today:

Change is news, and the important news from the second trial of Saddam Hussein is this: The U.S. government is helping expose the ex-dictator’s genocidal assault on Kurdish tribesmen instead of helping hide it.

Welcome the change. But do not rush past the original malfeasance: U.S. officials were directly involved two decades ago in covering up and minimizing the horrifying details that were finally spread on the legal record in a Baghdad courtroom last week. In a long history of U.S. involvement in Iraq stained by official mistakes, betrayals and misunderstandings, the initial coverup of Hussein’s Anfal campaign is among its darkest moments.

I visited Baghdad in May 1987, a month after Iraqi troops began using poison gas and burning Kurdish villages in a systematic program of ethnic slaughter and cleansing. The U.S. Embassy quickly learned of the devastation through a trip to northern Iraq by an assistant military attache. But he denied to me what I had learned elsewhere: that he had reported to Washington the beginning of the operation code-named Anfal. His report was promptly stamped secret…

The Reagan-Bush administration remained silent as it helped the Iraqis fight the Iranians; Washington even made sure Iraq was invited to a prestigious international conference on chemical weapons in 1988.

The important national moral obligation to Iraqis that such American actions have created must not be shoved aside in the debates over strategy and politics that proliferate as U.S. midterm elections approach.

Last night Christopher Hitchens told the audience on Bill Maher’s show they were “frivolous.” Then he gave them the finger and told them “fuck you”:

HITCHENS: [Ahmadinejad] says the Messiah is about to come back. Who’s looking for a war here?

MAHER: So does George Bush, by the way. [Audience applauds] That’s not facetious.

HITCHENS: That’s not facetious. Your audience, which will clap at apparently anything, is frivolous. [Audience groans, Hitchens gives them the finger] Fuck you, fuck you.

This prompted Instapundit to explain:

Should things go badly with the war, Maher’s audience — and, for that matter, Maher himself — will be cited by historians as evidence of the American opposition’s unseriousness.

Oh, if only it were possible for people like ourselves to be deeply, deeply serious like Christopher Hitchens and Glenn Reynolds. Sadly, that can never happen, for we are empty-headed ninnies.

1. I want to write something about people who made bets that Iraq had or did not have WMD. I myself bet $1000 they didn’t have anything, and I know someone who bet a dinner. But this really isn’t enough by itself. If you know anyone who made such a bet—in either direction—I’d really appreciate hearing about it.

2. As mentioned previously, Dennis Perrin of Red State Son will be appearing in a debate on the mideast this coming Wednesday the 30th in Tarrytown, New York, just north of Yonkers. Further information and ticket information is available here. Like I said before, if you go be sure to ask Dennis during the Q&A why he loves terrorism. I’ve never understood it.

3. DO NOT MISS these pictures by Bob of his seven favorite places on earth (mentioned in this Los Angeles Times piece he wrote, itself drawn from Prisoner of Trebekistan).

Ken Silverstein of Harper’s recent spoke to Michael Scheuer, chief of the bin Laden unit at the CIA’s Counterterrorist Center from 1996-99. The interview took place at an International House of Pancakes:

1. We’re coming up on the five-year anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. Is the country safer or more vulnerable to terrorism?

On balance, more vulnerable. We’re safer in terms of aircraft travel. We’re safer from being attacked by some dumbhead who tries to come into the country through an official checkpoint; we’ve spent billions on that. But for the most part our victories have been tactical and not strategic…

In the long run, we’re not safer because we’re still operating on the assumption that we’re hated because of our freedoms, when in fact we’re hated because of our actions in the Islamic world. There’s our military presence in Islamic countries, the perception that we control the Muslim world’s oil production, our support for Israel and for countries that oppress Muslims such as China, Russia, and India, and our own support for Arab tyrannies.

The rest.

This reminds me of a crazy fantasy I have. In this fantasy, a White House reporter stands up at a press conference and asks Bush the most mindbogglingly obvious question imaginable:

Mr. President, the former head of the CIA’s bin Laden unit has referred to U.S foreign policy as bin Laden’s indispensable ally. I’m sure you don’t agree with this characterization, but could you explain for us your understanding of why he says that?

Of course, I know it’s literally impossible for White House reporters to ask the President of the United States mindbogglingly obvious questions. It’s like wanting them to travel faster than the speed of light. Still, I dream my dreamy dreams.

Was hoping this piece in the Los Angeles Times online edition might not run until the book is actually out, but what the heck, here it is.

Deborah Netburn asked me to come up with a number of lists related to the book’s content, one of which was my seven favorite exotic places I’ve visited since starting to travel so much in the wake of Jeopardy!.

So this is the list I came up with.

Longtime readers here or over at Puduland will recognize some of the destinations. The one I remember best is the Cape of Good Hope, but that’s only because of the wild baboons chasing me around.

Incidentally, I know all this travel probably sounds expensive, but you might be truly surprised. One of the things I’m gonna get up over at PrisonerOfTrebekistan.com is a bunch of travel tips, including how to buy a round-the-world air ticket for not thatmuch more than some people spend on monthly rent. (Seriously.) I’ve got two weeks to pull those pages together before the book hits the stands. Wish me luck.

No?

Funny. Because August 22nd was supposed to be the day we all died. Remember?

If you can’t remember as far back as last month — a prerequisite for believing a word the right wing says — look here and here and here and here and here and here:

A slightly more sane commentator explained that it was all rubbish at the time. But you didn’t see him on CNN, I imagine.

Still, looking at the clock, depending on your time zone, there are still six to eleven hours left for America to be destroyed by a fanatic horde. So I guess there’s something the apocalyptic right can still secretly hope for.

And if it seems outrageous to suggest that Bush loyalists and armchair militants could possibly prefer watching Americans die in large number to simply admitting an obvious mistake… witness Iraq.