Tag: FJM

No cute intro. Doug Giles responds to the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell as only Doug Giles can.
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Doug, for the record, joins David Brooks in the thrice-FJMed club. Congratulations, Doug. You are not only a very stupid person but also one who thinks he is much funnier than he is. Which is to say, Doug thinks he is funny. You can be the judge of whether he is correct. So get ready…you have all won free first class accommodations on the HMS Retard of the Seas, and your Captain is Doug Giles. If you think the title is nonsensical ("Why Gays Should Dial Down with 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell'") wait'll you get a load of the words that follow it.

I can understand why homosexual men would want to join the military.

This is like Choose Your Own Adventure. Turn to page 32 if DG is about to make a joke about "shower time." Turn to the next page if you want to see something about "guns going off." Turn to page 69 if you just want to hear some uninspired crap about the parade of hard, hetero male bodies that is the United States Military.

Number one: It’s Dude Central.

Formerly Dudeland^tm, a subsidiary of Dude Solutions, Inc., now a part of Worldwide Dude Holdings, a subsidiary of Lockheed Martin Advanced Telemetry and Hot Cock division.

Number two: The military lends itself to the gays’ fastidiousness over everything being orderly

Yep, they're pretty much all the same. Every one of them. And conveniently enough, they are exactly like TV sitcom stereotypes about Teh Gays, so DG can write with authority about What Homos Are Like without ever having met one. Oh, who am I kidding. He meets tons of them at TownHall World Headquarters. He just doesn't realize it.

because everyone, from top to bottom,

HA HA HA HA HA!!!!!!!!!1!!!! DO YOU SEE WHAT HE DID THERE?? Thank god this sofa is covered in a fabric that resists staining and odor absorption, because I just blasted an involuntary deuce from all of this convulsive laughter.

is required to keep their clothes, boots, room and gear nice, neat and shiny.

And don't forget their Streisand albums! And their pink tutus! And their antique collections! And everything else an imaginary Doug Giles TV Gay has.
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But, the third—and probably most important reason why I’m guessing that homosexuals would want to join our armed forces—is that they get to kill al-Qaeda and their murderous Muslim ilk.

Well, this took a sharp left turn on What the Fuck Boulevard.

I get that. And I appreciate it because if Muslims had it their way you cats would be extinct. As in the first to go. As in Sharia don’t like you.

While this is an accurate statement, I can't help but notice the implication that there is a serious threat – or even a remotely plausible scenario – of al-Qaeda somehow "winning" and subjecting the U.S. to Sharia law. And for the record, Doug, the Army does a pretty good job of weeding out the psychopaths who join explicitly to get to kill people. Really.

Geez Louise, you think Christians are a problem? Heck, we’re plain peachy compared to Achmed and his mob.

Achmed the TV Muslim Terrorist, meet Phineas J. Minceypants, the TV Gay Guy. I'll give you two some time to get acquainted here in Doug Giles' imagination.

If you think I’m wrong, please note that Adam Lambert’s GlamNation Tour didn’t have any stops in Iran, Saudi Arabia, Mauritania, northern Nigeria, Sudan, Somalia or Yemen. Coincidence? I don’t think so.

This is what happens when Doug Giles tries to be funny. I mean, just look at this trainwreck. Doug, the fact that those countries are Muslim is like 15th on the list of reasons this makes no sense. Lack of functioning electricity and concert venues seems like a more realistic problem. This is just so stupid. Think about this, Doug. In what world would anyone schedule any kind of international tour that would include a stop in the Sudan? Jokes need to be remotely plausible, or at least invoke the willing suspension of disbelief. This merely invokes the urge to kick you in the nads.

In regard to why lesbians join the military, this is also an easy one: no heels, no makeup, no chatty chicks on cell phones, you can cart a few extra pounds without being shamed into looking like Lindsay Lohan by Michelle Obama, and … you get to blow crap up and wear camo. I can empathize.

Yeah, Army women are usually pretty chubby! Lots of extra pounds on active-duty military people, what with all the sitting around eating fuckin' Funyuns that they do over in Afghanistan.
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OMG I almost forgot to notice how funny this is though! Hahaha! Lesbians all look like auto mechanics and they hate makeup and they pee standing up.

No doubt patriotism is a major reason why some homosexuals would want to serve because they’re shrewd and they get that America, with all its foibles, is still the place to be.

None of the explanations for why Teh Gays would join the military is the slightest bit different than why Teh Heteros would: patriotism, poverty, mild sociopathy, idealism, or the judge told them to sign up or go to prison. The idea that there is some kind of secret Gay Covenant to join the Army and protect Gayness from Islam is one of the many bizarre figments of Doug's imagination. I'd wager they're a lot more worried about A) being outed and either dishonorably discharged or shunned, and B) the Christian right in the good ol' U.S. of A.

Yes, you don’t hear much about the Mexican Dream, or the French Dream, or the Slovakian Dream, but we still hear the American Dream touted,

Yes, we still hear about the American Dream…because every day more people are talking about how it no longer exists. We hear about it in the same way that we hear about the Titanic or the Dodo.
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and I’m sure that protecting this status is the reason why most gays want to .50cal the idiots who hate us all to an early hell.

"I'm sure of it, based on my fertile imagination, this 1947 psychology book entitled Healing Homosexuality, and the zero gay people I have spoken to in my life."

But here’s my beef with homosexuals

Oh, good.

Do you really have to be flamboyant about your gayness every place you go? Can’t there be one sector of our society where you dial down with your sexual bent, say, for the greater good?

Oh, I agree, I agree. I mean, with DADT repealed the military is going to explode into one giant, messy gay sex riot. You'll hardly be able to walk around the barracks with all the empty poppers and tubes of AstroGlide. Teh Gays will be walking around in Speedos, fornicating like bunnies while bombs are going off all around them. The Straights will hardly be able to aim a weapon without their vision being blocked by a bunch of gay dudes 69ing each other and doing Village People dance routines.

Also, dialing down one's sex drive is a key prerequisite to being in the military, where 97% of the conversations among straight male enlisted men are certainly not about pussy and the acquisition thereof.

FYI to the G-A-Ys, the vast majority of men and women in our sacred military, however, are not gay, and they’ve got a deadly serious mission to carry out that doesn’t need the added distraction of your desire to strut that you’re gay.

If you need any additional evidence that Doug formed these ideas based on a late night viewing of The Birdcage (or perhaps Boat Trip) and some faded memories of early 1990s news footage of gay pride parades, here it is.

Isn't it possible that this repeal is more about gays not having to, you know, live in fear that their "secret" will be found out? Anyone who can rub two functioning neurons together can see that this is less about "strutting" and more about being left the hell alone. Which seems more plausible: that newly-protected (in the legal sense) gay servicemen are going to run around like coked-up Project Runway contestants painting rainbows on everything and organizing Judy Tenuta nights, or that they're going to breathe a little sigh of relief and carry on as usual?

Matter of fact, I’m a guessin’ that if you don’t chill out on this issue there will be a mass exodus of straight troops from our armed forces.

Regardless of what exactly he means by "chill out on this issue", I am confident that this is the dumbest prediction in the history of the internet. And that's saying something, DG.

Yep, if I were gay and in the service, I wouldn’t be distracting the multitudinous heterosexual troops who are kicking ass abroad or at home because, as stated, with this perennial enemy named Islam, you guys will be the first to be purged from the earth if they ever have it Mohamed’s way.

And that's exactly what they're doing, Doug – thinking of ways to distract The Heteros. Gays are uncontrollable sex fiends whose sole joy in life is to join the Army and whip their cocks out for straight guys. When the Taliban is attacking, 9 guys out of 10 will fight back while the last one dons assless chaps and tries to distract his comrades by offering them reacharounds.

You know what's going to happen now that DADT is repealed, Doug? Nothing. Nothing is going to happen. Nothing is going to change. That is why despite the best efforts "social conservatives" to stem the tide, the gay rights movement is making such rapid progress. For all the stories of child molestation and orgies and homosexual recruitment drives and all of the other Boogeyman stories that Jerry Falwell's kind have been telling for decades, every time gay people are formally "allowed" in some new arena of society nothing happens. Everything goes on exactly as it did before. And eventually sane people realize, "Hey wait a second…nothing happened. Gay teachers are not raping our kids. Gay NFL players are not trying to sodomize their teammates in the showers. Gay cops are not 'distracting' straight cops from doing their jobs. Gay politicians have voting records indistinguishable from their non-gay colleagues."

The world will go on exactly as it did before and some day we will look back with a mixture of bemusement and shame that anyone ever believed all of the shit the Moral Majority claimed that the Homosexual Agenda would do to our country. We will wonder how anyone considered such ridiculous predictions to be plausible, and those of us who lived through it will be at a loss for words.

I try to resist the temptation to go slogging around through the sewers of the internet looking for things to dissect, and in fact it is rarely necessary. The mainstream cadre of wingnut bloggers and columnists are so tenuously tethered to reality that they provide all the stupid I could ever hope to FJM in a lifetime. But beyond "respectable" wingnuts like Malkin, Coulter, Beck, etc. – the kind who are clearly insane yet still regularly invited onto news shows – there is another layer of crazy, a wingnuttosphere so wacky that even most Republicans dare not make eye contact with it.

In the brown, sticky layer of detritus on the bottom of the internet barrel there are sites like Renew America to bring us the thoughts of people who might have politely been asked to leave a John Birch Society meeting for being too crazy. Long story short, I was weak and I succumbed to the temptation to go on a canned hunt. I bring you Renew America's Carey Roberts ("Carey Roberts is an analyst and commentator on political correctness. His best-known work was an expose on Marxism and radical feminism.") in his revelatory new piece "2010 Will Be the Year of the Man." Isn't it about time men had a year?

Before we proceed, please be aware that this is Carey Roberts:

Oh hell yeah. It's about to get all crazy up in hee-are.

"Granddad, why are all those football players wearing pink shoes?" That was the topic of conversation this past Monday evening as my 13-year-old grandson and I watched the star-crossed Minnesota Vikings take on the New York Jets.

"Because they're a bunch of homos, Billy. Back in my day, gridiron warriors didn't need all these helmets and pads…in any color! Bronko Nagurski! Now that was a football player. This Favre fellow looks like a poof. Look! Look right there! He's a-tryin' to give the center a reacharound!"

"I think he's just lining up to take the snap, Granddad."

"Horsefeathers! Can't you tell a homo when you see one? Why they're practically humping right there on the field!"

I sagely explained that October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. His logical mind now ratcheting into overdrive, he tried to pin me down: "So when do the players wear blue shoes for prostate cancer awareness?"

I don't think he knows what "sagely" means.

Carey, I don't know you. And I'm not going to call you a liar.
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Wait, yes I am. There is no way in hell that this was your 13 year old grandson's response. None. It's going to turn out that you don't even have a grandson and this whole conversation took place in your head, isn't it? You know, like Fight Club. I'm sure you've read Fight Club.

That proved to be a harder question.

A) Because the season is 4 months long and they can't devote a month to every possible disease that needs curing
B) The Komen Foundation is incredibly well-organized and media savvy

The most time consuming part of coming to this conclusion was typing it. All told I'd say it took 10 to 12 seconds from question to typed answer.

In 1992, Barbara Boxer, Diane Feinstein, Patty Murray, and Carol Moseley Braun swept into the Senate in dramatic fashion, instantly inspiring the catch-phrase, "Year of the Woman." After the 1992 influx, female legislators continued to score steady gains, and now represent 17% of lawmakers, by interesting coincidence in both the Senate and the House.

Yes, it certainly was dramatic, the fashion in which these women swept into the Senate. Murray arrived in a burning, crash landing 737 from which she parachuted into the Capitol moments before it exploded. Moseley Braun leaped the Potomac on a dirt bike before barrel-rolling into the White House and crushing two Mountain Dew cans on her forehead. Feinstein was held hostage by the Shining Path. Boxer walked into the Senate calmly defusing a bomb.

(By the way, "interesting coincidence" is wingnut speak for "insidious conspiracy.")

But this coming November 2, the number of women in Congress is predicted to decline, the first time that's happened since 1978. David Wasserman, analyst at the non-partisan Cook Political Report, is now forecasting the number of females in the House will drop by 5-10 persons. In the Senate, the current count of 17 female lawmakers will be lucky to hold its own. Although the Chicken-Littles are already yelping about the impending social calamity, the reasons for this sudden reversal of political fortune deserve scrutiny.
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Has anyone – ANYONE – thought about this for one second over the past year? Has anyone written or even thought about this election in terms of the gender balance in Congress?
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Carey, I'd say your guess about why this is happening is as good as mine. I would say that, but unless your guess is "Female Democrats happen to be running in states in which things look good for Republicans," your guess is nowhere near as good as mine.

First and foremost, women are more likely than men to be of the liberal persuasion.

Really? After all the GOP has done to reach out to women? Apparently the ladies of this great nation haven't been paying enough attention to incontinent old men who write exposes of radical Marxist-feminism!

As columnist Allison Brown once put it, "Most women are natural socialists."

*spit take*

Well, the word of columnist Allison Brown is all the evidence I will ever need. Where is she a columnist, you ask? Why, LewRockwell.com, of course! The refuge of people who get kicked out of the Ron Paul movement for being bonkers. One step up from writing op-eds in the Michigan Militia's monthly newsletter. Yes, that LewRockwell.com. Members who sign up today receive a free 30-round magazine (5.56 NATO) and an email telling them when and where they are to report for their mandatory blowjob of a transvestite prostitute made up to look like Murray Rothbard.

That fact doesn't sit very well with a disaffected electorate that has been moving steadily to embrace the tenets of conservative philosophy.

'Bout time we give conservatism a try in this country!

It wasn't too many years ago, of course, that female candidates openly voiced the view that female lawmakers are more trust-worthy and less corrupt than their greedy male counterparts. Remember Hillary Clinton's chestnut that "Research shows the presence of women raises the standards of ethical behavior"? Hillary's declamation was instantly self-refuting, of course, in light her notorious Travelgate incident, cattle futures scam, and other ethical escapades.

Travelgate? Travelgate?!?!?! Jesus Christ, Carey. I realize that your cultural reference points are all from the Harding years, but bringing up the B-list Clinton era scandals, the ones no one cared about when they happened…which was twenty years ago??

And remember Nancy Pelosi's vow to run the "most ethical and honest Congress in history"? Then came the steady drumbeat of Democratic congressmen and women who were discovered to be delinquent on their taxes, forgetful with asset disclosure forms, or deceitful in funneling scholarship monies to family members.

Conservatives really believe strongly in paying their taxes. Really, ask Joe Miller, he'll tell you all about it. They are also above nepotism. Ask Bill Kristol. And they would never "forget" several million dollars in assets on disclosure forms. Ask Nathan Deal.

It's a political truism that fiscal conservativism appeals primarily to men. According to an April 18 Pew poll, 52% of men, compared to only 42% of women, favor cutting back government programs.

I like political truisms, like the one that statistics like this are only used to justify arguments by lazy hacks who don't understand how little numbers like these actually mean. But congrats on being able to use Google to sift through old surveys until finding one that says what you want it to say, Carey! That's more computer-savvy than I expected from you.

For the millions of men who gave the nod to Barack Obama two years ago, the turning point was the news that Obama had jiggered the stimulus package to favor school teachers, social workers, and other female-dominated government jobs, leaving millions of unemployed male factory hands and construction-workers holding the bag. Shuttling millions of formerly well-paid men onto the welfare rolls — that's what progressives call "social justice." And that's what Barack Obama meant when he told Joe the Plumber, "when you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody."

Is this a joke? Does Carey Roberts exist or is he the creation of some smart-assed journalism grad students in Brooklyn? Obama's plan was…to screw over men? To…favor women? By "jiggering" the stimulus package (from Congress) to favor "female-dominated government jobs"?

As a result, the perennial gender gap has tacked strongly in favor of men. "Men make up a larger share of the likely voter pool," according to Quinnipiac pollster Doug Schwartz. This year is "among the bigger gender gaps we've seen," reveals Democratic pollster Celina Lake. And a Marist poll conducted last month found 48% of Republican men were "very enthusiastic" about voting, while only 28% of Democratic women rated themselves in like manner.

In January, we saw the gender gap bare its hairy chest in Massachusetts race. While 52% of the female electorate pulled the lever for Democrat Martha Coakley, 60% of the smaller but more unified male vote swung sharply in favor of Republican Scott Brown, handing the political unknown a stunning upset victory.

According to a statistic I just made up for this post, 64% of gay Hindus preferred the Delta Airlines in-flight meal over any of its competitors. However, follow-up studies show that they were less satisfied with their flight experience if the in-flight movie featured Mary Steenburgen.

But hey, this guy really knows how to selectively use poll data. That's not something you're born knowing how to do. It's a skill, and it can only be acquired through a diligent regimen of practice and barium enemas.
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Commenting on recent presidential races, former Brandeis University professor Linda Hirshman explains, "With the possible exception of 1996, women have never voted a candidate into the White House when men thought the other guy should win."

Meaning…what?

Now back to the pink football cleats, pink gloves, pink chin straps, pink wrist and biceps bands, pink-crested baseball caps, pink towels, pink lapel ribbons, and of course the pink-themed Half-Time Show.

THANK GOD! I NEED CLOSURE ON THIS ANECDOTE! But seriously, check out these Pro Writing chops. Start the column with an anecdote, and then…wait for it…conclude by returning to it! Begin and end with the same pointless, made-up anecdote involving an utterly implausible conversation between Carey Roberts and his imaginary grandson named, for the sake of argument, Gulliver.

Seriously, why isn't the National Football League giving equal play to prostate cancer? After all, funding for prostate cancer has long lagged behind research for breast cancer. "Answer that question," I counseled my droopy-eyed grandson, "And you'll understand why 2010 is destined to be the Year of the Man."

Yes, that makes perfect sense. Yes, yes, of course. Tell me more.

*slowly lures Roberts toward a waiting van*

I know, I hear the voices too. Yes, I see that Gulliver's eyes are droopy. No, I don't know why. Why do you think they're droopy, Carey?

*prepares to drop giant net on the disoriented man shambling across his lawn*

Yes, I promise we'll take you to a male doctor. He's so male, it hurts. His name is Sergeant Ian Bonesteel and he doesn't cure diseases, he punches them. No, there won't be any women in the hospital. I know, I know, they're all Bitches, Granddad. You've warned me many times. Yes, we've heard all about the prostitute who gave you the Drip on that island after the Battle of Corregidor. Yes, we know you don't believe in insurance; Dr. Bonesteel accepts payment in buried yard gold. Just relax, Granddad. Relax. Here, have another prune. That's the best cure for what has you so cranky.

(New to FJM? It's defined here.)

I am about to do something mean.

Atlantic Monthly comedienne Megan McArdle labors mightily, and almost always unsuccessfully, to write columns that do not immediately collapse under the weight of mild scrutiny. It counts as a victory when she writes something that seems logically consistent for the length of time required to read it, even if for no longer. In short, at her top-dollar best she attains contemporaneous plausibility. Readers of her work might, provided they are not well versed in economics and tend to believe everything they read in Serious Media Outlets, think "Hey, this makes some sense!" in real time. That what they just read is stupid beyond comprehension hits them like a thunderbolt only in hindsight when she is on her game.

That's McArdle at her best. When everything goes right. It's McArdle as Michael Jordan scoring 63 over Larry Bird in Boston Garden in '86. Given that, it's almost cruel to subject her writing to the withering glare of hindsight. Something that seems ridiculous a day after it is written is not going to look much better a few years down the road.

Or will it?

No. No it won't. And I'll prove it. Because I am a dick, I present you Megan McArdle (back in the pseudonymous "Jane Galt" days) on March 26, 2003 musing on the cost of Dick & George's Iraqi Adventure in "How much is the war going to cost?" Ho ho ho. Hoo boy. Heh. Ho. Hah. Oh man. Let's do this.

I've seen a number of claims like this one from Eric Alterman:

The first $75 billion is just a downpayment. Expect to pay hundreds of billions in the short-term, trillions in the long run. Expect it to come out of your schools, your police forces, your highways, your future and your children's future

Megan introduces her piece with some wild, hysterical predictions from a Liberal Blogger about the cost of the impending Iraq War.

Anyone who's sat through a budget meeting

Which excludes Megan, of course, although she had yet to reveal her identity when this was written. It sure helped make her seem like a person who had sat through a "budget meeting" (technical term) rather than someone who has never had a real job, save a few months at the firm of one of her dad's pals. And this sweet-ass columnist gig.

knows that almost everyone overestimates their successess (sic), underestimates their costs; it's easier to go back for money later, when you can wave a nice hunk of sunk costs around, than say up front that you think whatever it is you're proposing will be expensive as hell.

Wait a second, I think she WAS sitting in on White House budget meetings! That was Dick Perle's argument. Almost verbatim. Wolfowitz chimed in with "Yeah, fuck 'em!" while Robert Kagan tore apart a Muslim doll with his teeth.

But trillions? US GDP is roughly $10 trillion.

"Roughly. Because I have never figured out how to look up a number." I bet no one knows what the GDP really is. It and the fate of Judge Crater are the only real mysteries left in this world. I asked Google "What was the GDP in 2002?" and all I got was lines of code like the Matrix and a horrible, piercing klaxon.

Alterman is saying that over the long run, this war is going to cost us at least 20% of GDP. That's nuts, and it's not the first time I've seen those sorts of numbers around.

Hee hee. Ho ho ho. Hoo boy. Oh.

Reality check: the entire US military budget is in the range of $350b.

Therefore, by definition this sandy misadventure could not cost more. Unless…the administration repeatedly went back to Congress for "emergency" supplemental funding requests? Nah. No one would fall for that.

Saying that this war will cost trillions in any term short enough for us to care about (I mean, he's probably right, if we use a timescale of several hundred years, but that's not very useful)

McEstimate: it will take several hundred years for the war to cost "trillions." Kids, this is why you shouldn't make a lot of predictions in a medium that archives everything.

is saying that this war is going to cost nearly as much as the entire military budget, year in and year out, for decades. For reference, the next six months are estimated to cost $60b on military spending. (I'm excluding the humanitarian and domestic segment of the budget submitted by the President.) Even with a fudge factor of 50%, that's $90b over the next six months, $180b a year. At that rate, assuming you do absolutely no discounting at all, it would take us over 10 years to get to $2t, thus meeting the "trillions" criteria.

UNLESS…nah. We already went over that. But here we see McTardle Tactic #1A: including lots of numbers parsed with high school algebra skills to create the appearance of precision and the reassuring veneer of facts. Everyone knows that half of $180b is $90b, and half of a year is 6 months. This is the kind of thing you learn at University of Chicago's MBA program.

Which is madness.

It sure is, cubby!

By that logic, we were spending as much on WWII in 1953 as we were in 1943.

WWII was over in 1953. But I see the point because the Iraq War will be over in, like, 6 weeks! And with no casualties. In fact, I think the pre-Iraq War plan was to send over one Marine to wipe out the Hussein regime by himself. It was totally plausible because it's a really big Marine and he's armed with Mjolnir. And once the Iraqi Army is defeated, the war is over, DUMBASS. What don't liberals get about that?

If you don't know, military spending during WWII was over 50% of GDP

Ixnay on the condescension, Chet.

it was in the 10% range during Korea, and dropped sharply thereafter. This while we were still occupying Japan, still garrisoning Germany, had a mandatory draft, and were building up for the Cold War. Even if you attribute the entire cost of the Cold War to WWII, and none of it to Stalinist imperialism, you still don't get the kind of numbers required to make the occupation cost as much as the battle. The difference is even more stark now, for you must remember that we have an all-volunteer army, which gets paid whether or not they're in Iraq.

OK, just to review, apparently her argument is that since our military is all-volunteer and we are paying their salaries anyway, the Iraq War really isn't going to cost much of anything at all. Everyone get that? Good. "For you must remember" it.

The extra, non-labor cost of the war is heavy on things like ordnance

Well I guess she's allowing that it will cost a few bucks. But remember: 6 weeks!

which we won't be expending once we control the country.

(requires sound)

"Which we won't be expending once we control the country." I could not make this shit up if I tried, people. And I have. Lord how I've tried to make up something as funny as McTardle. I subjected a number of baboons to severe head injuries in an effort to replicate her style. It didn't work, and the Animal Liberation Front has burned down my house three times.

Where do they get these numbers?

Certainly not from the ironclad reserves of logic and basic math that lustily fornicate to produce McTardle's numbers!!!!111!!!!one!

With gems like this from James Galbraith, son of the amiably paranoiac pop-economist John Kenneth Galbraith.

That's not a sentence, but OK. Here I have redacted a lengthy quote from Mr. Galbraith, which you can read here and in which he makes some outlandish predictions like that the war might take 5 years or 200,000 troops. Put down the crack pipe, dude!

He offers vague possibilities, making no attempt to quantify them, much less calculate their probability

Yeah, Megan's a real stickler for sources, attribution, and precision.

He conflates all sorts of costs into one big amorphous bundle. He only looks at costs on one side; for example, discussing the cost in lives of the war, without discussing the cost in lives of Saddaam's regime and the sanctions that are the likely alternative to the war.

What we need is a close look at the specifics, not just a bunch of hypothetical bullshit.

If we kill 300 Iraqi civilians and 300 American troops ousting Saddaam (sic), and Saddaam's (sic) secret police are murdering 1,000 people a year, and 5,000 people a year are dying from the humanitarian crisis brought on by sanctions, it is not a net "cost" in human lives.

There is nothing I could write that would be funnier or sadder than this. 4,000 U.S. dead later…but how about those 300 civilian deaths!

Oh.

Likewise, he examines only the negative consequences the current uncertainty might have on the economy, without mentioning that, for example, a successful war might boost the consumer confidence dampened by fears of terrorism,

Yeah, it boosted the shit out of the economy. Especially because…

or that lowered security risk in the Middle East might result in both lower oil prices, and higher investment in highly oil-dependent industries.

…post-2003 oil prices fell like a stone. God, it's like she was staring into a crystal ball.

He offers unsourced references for large numbers — "One estimate for the cost of rebuilding Iraq runs to $2 trillion" — in order to give his claims a false patina of precision.

If anyone can find an example of a Megan McArdle piece in which A) numbers are sourced or B) the sourced numbers outnumber the hypothetical made up numbers, you will win Megan McArdle's home address, a one-way bus ticket to said address, and a flaming suitcase full of dog shit. Do with those what you please.

He cites any number of highly speculative, unquantitative "costs" in terms of US prestige and other such intangibles that have nothing to do with economic costs. He posits "opportunity costs" of not doing things that many of us don't want to spend federal money on in the first place. An opportunity cost is a precise economic term: it means the next-best alternative use for your money.

Thanks for the econ lesson, professor! Boy, anonymity was McTardle's friend, wasn't it? She sounded more authoritative before she revealed that she has no economic training or experience of any kind, and in fact is just a talentless rich kid with an absurdly high opinion of herself and the good fortune that twentysomething glibertarian tools find her attractive.

You can't claim that our failure to institute national health care is an opportunity cost of the war when such a thing would cost far more than the money being spent on the war

Well, it cost way more than the One Marine Swinging Mjolnir version of the War, but not so much the Reality Based one.

Thus, Eric Alterman is enabled to claim that the cost to the US taxpayer will be over $2t, even though most of the larger costs cited by Galbraith aren't going to be borne by Americans either directly or indirectly, but by Iraqi oil.⁶

Ah, yes. Remember, the war that really isn't going to cost anything to begin with (because we're already paying the Army, stupid) was going to be self-financed by Iraqi oil. Note that this sentence is followed by a footnote, which reads in its comedic entirety: "Am I suggesting that the Iraqis should pay for occupation expenses? Nope. We can afford it, and there's something repellent about making impoverished Iraqis pay for a war foisted on them by an evil dictator. But most of that $2t, if it is any sort of a real number, will be stuff for Iraqis: roads, schools, hospitals, government buildings, power plants and sewers and all the good stuff that lets us live like citizens of the 21st century. That stuff should come out of Iraqi oil revenues."

Again, there isn't much I can add to this. I tried. I got nothin'.

The war will certainly cost more than the $60b and change that the President is asking for. But it is not going to run us several trillion dollars (though even if it did, that would work out to less than 0.1% of GDP over the next 20 years.)

To recap: "The war isn't going to cost us anything much of anything, although it will surely cost more than the amount Bush requested, and even if it does cost a lot it's not so bad so long as we look at the GDP over this arbitrary 20 year timeframe I just pulled clean out of my puckered butthole."

I don't know how much more, and neither does anyone else, although I'm sure the military has better guesses than I could make.

"This is unknowable. The military knows."

Megan, they can tell us with some precision what various scenarios will cost. The fundamental problem here was that the scenario posed to them – a six week war costing only a few grand for Private Smith's salary and a couple of weeks of Mjolnir rental at standard rates – was retarded.

It's important to think about the economic cost of the war — the pro-war side has mostly dropped the ball on this, and it's an important calculation when we consider whether or not to go. But making up ridiculous numbers in order to support your predisposition isn't helpful — and when the war doesn't cost us $2t, people are going to remember that the next time you talk about the costs of a program you don't like.

The first draft had a footnote here: "And when it does, I will look like the biggest (idiot/tool/brain-dead sycophant) this side of an audience at a county fair tractor pull."

This…this article almost FJMed itself. I think the best way to enjoy this is simply to click through and read her original post. Read it again and again. Marvel at it. It's like a time warp back to 2003. Remember 2003? Remember how awful it was? How 70% of the country thought this was a good argument? Six week war! Oil riches to pay the tab! 100 casualties, max! Well, I want you all to do something for me. Think of one person who you really, really wanted to punch in 2003 because this torrent of shit spewed so readily from their mouths. Send them this column. Fire off a quick email and let them know that no matter how hard the McArdles of the world pray that we will forget, we remember.

Ideally this would make him or her feel embarrassed – Megan, if you ever read this (and I sure hope you do!) I have no idea how you can look back at what you've written and do anything other than either die of shame on the spot (something roughly akin to Obi-Wan becoming a Force Ghost on the Death Star) or come to grips with the fact that maybe writing isn't for you – but we know we are dealing with a kind of person so intellectually languid that he or she is incapable of feeling shame. Shame requires being intelligent enough to realize that you were wrong and, more importantly, that it matters that you were so incredibly wrong.

What is this, number four for Mr. Very Serious Brooks? It may seem like he is given the Treatment far too often, but in reality I applaud myself for showing almost superhuman restraint in featuring him in this format as rarely as I do. Every word he writes begs for this kind of response. Every New York Times column, not to mention every television bobblehead appearance, is like a massive nuclear explosion producing a giant cloud spelling out "Ed! FJM me!" It is so tempting to comply. His web archive makes me feel like a kid in a candy store whereas actually trudging through his columns makes me feel like a diabetic kid in a candy store…I can see all kinds of treats on the Times website but I can't have any of them. I have to read goddamn David Brooks.

Being the good Sensible, Adult Moderate that he is, Mr. Brooks must take the occasional stab at liberal cred, which is as difficult as you might expect for someone who is basically a less hirsute Mitt Romney. But DB sure does try, most recently in last week's excruciating "The Long Strategy." The nondescript title does not betray how bad the ensuing column really is. Let me put it this way: if you ever wanted to meet David Brooks in his high school years, this is as close as you can get. Now that I've really sold it, buckle up. This FJM is made possible through the generous support of the Sanctimonious Pud Foundation.

I was a liberal Democrat when I was young. I used to wear a green Army jacket with political buttons on it — for Hubert Humphrey, Birch Bayh, John F. Kennedy and Franklin Roosevelt.

"Don't you think I'm cool now? I was also into Foghat. I knew Timothy Leary. I played tambourine for Country Joe & the Fish for a couple of years. I banged Squeaky Fromme. Ever hear of the Baader-Meinhoff group? I was Baader."

I even wore that jacket in my high school yearbook photo.

PICS OR IT DIDN'T HAPPEN.

It’s a magic green jacket.

Holy shit! Can we call it the Dream Coat from now on? Oh. I guess that's taken.

But the moral of the story is that no one F'ed with DB in high school, not with his Cloak of Invisibility and +3 Bag of Holding.

I can put it on today and, suddenly, my mind shifts back to the left. I start thinking like a Democrat, feeling a strange accompanying hunger for brown rice.

Ha ha! He knows 1960s liberal stereotypes! Oh, that's rich.

When I put on that magic jacket today, I feel beleaguered but kind of satisfied.

"Not unlike that time I barfed in Morley Safer's bathroom but mostly missed the toilet. He's a dick. God, we drank so much Keystone Light. You wouldn't tell by looking at him, but Ed Bradlee turns into Wolverine after a sixer."

I feel beleaguered because the political winds are blowing so ferociously against “my” party. But I feel satisfied because the Democrats have overseen a bunch of programs that, while unappreciated now, are probably going to do a lot of good in the long run.

Wait…they did things right? Things that David argued against when proposed?

For example, everybody now hates the bank bailouts and the stress tests. But, the fact is, these are some of the most successful programs in recent memory. They stabilized the financial system without costing much money.

Brooks on Charlie Rose, 2/9/09: Bank bailouts = bad.

The auto bailout was criticized at the time, but it’s looking pretty good now that General Motors is recovering.

Nov. 2008: "Bailout to Nowhere." Auto industry bailout = bad.

But the magic jacket-wearing me is nervous about the next few years.

Regular jacket-wearing you was nervous about the last few, too. Good thing the government didn't listen to him.

I’m afraid my party is going to get stuck in the same old debates that we always lose. First, we’re going to have the same old tax debate. We’re going to not extend the Bush tax cuts on the rich. The Republicans will blast us for killing growth and raising taxes as they did in 2000 and 2004.

"And I'm certain of it, because those will be my next three columns as soon as I take off the Magic Jacket and replace it with my Dickhead Sportcoat, Smug Slacks, and a size 10 pair of Platitude Shoes."

Then we’ll get stuck in the same old spending debate. We’ll point to high unemployment and propose spending programs too small to make much difference.

Right, we will settle on spending programs too small to make a difference after people like non-Jacket David Brooks rail endlessly about how the proposal is too expensive.

The Republicans will blast us for bankrupting the country with ineffective programs, and the voters are so distrustful of government these days that they’ll side with the Republicans on that one, too.

Have to go with DB here; they pretty much have this one down to a science. Run the government into the ground, campaign on "small government", and assume that people aren't paying enough attention to figure it out. Brilliant.

So I sit there in my magic green jacket and I wonder: What can my party do to avoid the big government tag that always leads to catastrophe?

"Now that we all agree that big government is bad, how can the party accused of favoring it run against the party that consistently implements it?"

Then I remember President Obama’s vow to move us beyond the stale old debates. Maybe he couldn’t really do that in the first phase of his presidency when he was busy responding to the economic crisis, but perhaps he can do it now in the second phase.

Oh crap. You all know what's coming, right? You've seen this before, right?

It occurs to me that the Obama administration has done a number of (widely neglected) things that scramble the conventional categories and that are good policy besides. The administration has championed some potentially revolutionary education reforms. It has significantly increased investments in basic research. It has promoted energy innovation and helped entrepreneurs find new battery technologies. It has invested in infrastructure — not only roads and bridges, but also information-age infrastructure like the broadband spectrum.

Well, that's all pretty tame. But yeah, most sane people would think those are good ideas – meaning that about 60% of the American public does.

These accomplishments aren’t big government versus small government; they’re using government to help set a context for private sector risk-taking and community initiative.

No, they're SOCIALISM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Where have you been, David? Liberal fascism! Hitler! Stalin! Neville Chamberlain! FEMA internment camps in the desert! Sharia law! Death panels! Reparations! My precious fluids!

They cut through the culture war that is now brewing between the Obama administration and the business community. They also address the core anxiety now afflicting the public. It’s not only short-term unemployment that bothers people. What really scares people is the sense that we’re frittering away our wealth. Americans fear we’re a nation in decline.

Well, for once, Americans are fuckin'-A right.

So I sit there in my green jacket, happily chewing on a Twizzler that I probably left in a pocket in 1979,

"Probably?" That's the kind of thing you would know, David. You'd know. Also, how many times are you going to bring up this jacket?

and I think: What would happen if Obama sidestepped the fruitless and short-term stimulus debate and instead focused on the long term? He could explain that we’re facing deep fundamental problems: an aging population, overleveraged consumers, exploding government debt, state and local bankruptcies, declining human capital, widening inequality, a pattern of jobless recoveries, deteriorating trade imbalances and so on.

Yes, those are our problems. Also bear attacks, and those two astronomically expensive wars.

These long-term problems, Obama could say, won’t be solved either with centralized government or free market laissez-faire. Just as government laid railroads and built land grant colleges in the 19th century to foster deep growth, the government today should be doing the modern equivalents.

That sounds like a good idea. What is the modern equivalent of a system of enormous, well-funded state universities and a nationwide network of railroads?

Not much is going to get passed in the next two years anyway, but the president could lay the groundwork for a whopping second-term agenda: tax simplification, entitlement reform, a new wave of regional innovation clusters, a new wave of marriage-friendly tax policies.

David, even for you this is pathetic.

Some kind of regressive flat tax, privatizing and/or slashing Social Security, gutting Medicare, and coming up with some new tax breaks to reward people for…getting married, I guess? Which one of those is like the railroads, David?

If the president is looking for a long-term growth agenda, he could read “Path to Prosperity,” co-edited by Jason Furman and Jason Bordoff, or “The Pro-Growth Progressive” written by Gene Sperling. Some of these guys already are on his staff.

Yes, he needs to listen to even more people telling him that the key to succeeding as Democrats is to support all of the policies of the Republicans. Because what the American public really wants is a Republican Party with some sort of different name.

Eventually, I see a party breaking out of old stereotypes, appealing to entrepreneurs and suburbanites again, and I start feeling good about the future. Then I take off the magic green jacket and return to my old center-right self. A chill sweeps over me: Gosh, what if the Democrats really did change in that way?

Well, then we'd have a one-party system like the Soviet boogeyman that you and your kind can't stop bringing up even though it means almost nothing (at least nothing accurate) to most of the country. Is this really your dream, David? Is this the Big Change you want to see in the world? The Revolution According to Brooks: a Democratic Party that completely buys into Alan Greenspan economic theories but is a little more liberal than Tom Tancredo on social issues.

As a small child, David also dreamed of being an average player on a 4th-place baseball team. Of joining NASA and being the guy who greased the gimbel joints on the Saturn V. Of moving out to Hollywood and being a grip. Of being the soundman for a mediocre band. Of writing the Decent American Novel. Of winning a Bronze medal…at the Pan-American Games. Of someday living in Kearney, Nebraska. Of winning honorable mention in a pie-eating contest.

David Brooks: always dreaming big. And insisting that if only the Democratic Party was more conservative its success would know no limits.

Picture this: a grown woman is driving around the Chicago suburbs and encounters three little girls with a lemonade stand. Upon learning that they are giving away the lemonade for free, the aforementioned grown woman goes after them like she just found the fucking Taliban making VX in a garage in Palatine. At the end of this psychotic episode, she writes about it with the intention of publishing it because she is proud of what she just did.

Did you picture all of that? Good. Now do it. Do it and you too can be a columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times. You can be the next Terry Savage. It is not often that I read a simple opinion column and conclude that the author is quite lucky to have avoided ending up in police custody as a result of it. This ("There is No 'Free' Lemonade") is one such occasion. In fact it is the only such occasion I can recall aside from Doug Giles' ill-advised 2001 column "A List of Problems I Have Solved By Raping Things."

I ask if you are ready only rhetorically today, because having read this column I know for a fact that you are not.

This column is a true story — every word of it.

Well there goes the insanity defense or the ol' "It was satire / artistic license!" argument.

And I think it very appropriate to consider around the Fourth of July, Independence Day spirit.

Please keep this line in mind as she explains what she did. This is what she likes to do in celebration of major holidays. Check back in November for her column about beheading a vagrant in the Thanksgiving spirit.

Last week, I was in a car with my brother and his fiancee, driving through their upscale neighborhood on a hot summer day. At the corner, we all noticed three little girls sitting at a homemade lemonade stand.

Why, this just sounds like a Norman Rockwell painting. How sweet. How all-American. How totally not a reason to lose your shit and go after three little girls like you are a starving dog and they are wearing dresses made of honey baked ham.

We follow the same rules in our family, and one of them is: Always stop to buy lemonade from kids who are entrepreneurial enough to open up a little business.

Aside from wondering why your family feels the need to have such an esoteric rule, I find it regrettable that the Savage clan does not have rules about the basic tenets of human interaction. They might have come in handy here.

My brother immediately pulled over to the side of the road and asked about the choices. The three young girls — under the watchful eye of a nanny, sitting on the grass with them — explained that they had regular lemonade, raspberry lemonade, and small chocolate candy bars.

I see nothing out of the ordinary here. Then again, I am not Terry Savage.

Then my brother asked how much each item cost. "Oh, no," they replied in unison, "they're all free!"

OH SHIT. OH SHIT OH SHIT OH SHIT OH SHIT OH SHIT OH SHIT OH SHIT OH SHIT OH SHIT OH SHIT OH SHIT OH SHIT OH SHIT OH SHIT OH SHIT OH SHIT OH SHIT OH SHIT OH SHIT OH SHIT OH SHIT OH SHIT OH SHIT OH SHIT OH SHIT OH SHIT OH SHIT OH SHIT OH SHIT OH SHIT.

RUN.

I know you still can't see how this could be a precursor to a rage-filled outburst for any normal person but RUN. THERE ISN'T TIME. I WILL EXPLAIN LATER.

I sat in the back seat in shock. Free? My brother questioned them again: "But you have to charge something? What should I pay for a lemonade? I'm really thirsty!"

Note that 99.999 percent of…well, actually, everyone on the goddamn planet except for Terry Savage and Brother Savage…would have said "Aw, how cute! Thank you so much!" and enjoyed a cold Dixie cup of Country Time Imitation Lemonade Substitute at this point. That, I daresay, would be a normal response.

His fiancee smiled and commented, "Isn't that cute. They have the spirit of giving."

Well, one person in the car was relatively normal.

That really set me off, as my regular readers can imagine.

OK, from this point forward this reads like a police report.

No, Terry, we can't imagine. Even your most devoted readers cannot figure out why you are about to start yelling at three little girls for offering you free lemonade. Your motives are as comprehensible as a Japanese game show.

"No!" I exclaimed from the back seat. "That's not the spirit of giving. You can only really give when you give something you own. They're giving away their parents' things — the lemonade, cups, candy. It's not theirs to give."

Well, presumably this stuff became theirs to own when THEIR PARENTS FUCKING GAVE IT TO THEM. Wait a minute. Why am I debating you on the minutiae of your "argument" when the real question here is broader: What in the hell is wrong with you?

I bet the fiancee was profoundly thankful for this lecture. And she certainly did not turn the car ride home from their visit with you into a "If we have to see her more than once a year, we're getting divorced. In fact I have the divorce paperwork prepared. It needs only a signature." conversation for your brother.

I pushed the button to roll down the window and stuck my head out to set them straight.

Oh good.

Adults should always pick fights with kids in furtherance of "setting them straight." It's not only smart, it's socially acceptable and indicative of a healthy personality.

"You must charge something for the lemonade," I explained. "That's the whole point of a lemonade stand. You figure out your costs — how much the lemonade costs, and the cups — and then you charge a little more than what it costs you, so you can make money. Then you can buy more stuff, and make more lemonade, and sell it and make more money."

"You must charge something for the lemonade," I explained…TO A GROUP OF SEVEN YEAR-OLD STRANGERS. Kids, if you're reading this, take Mr. Ed's advice on something: if an adult stranger ever says any of this to you, one member of your group should run to ask an adult to call the police and the remaining two should attempt to make a lot of noise and stand together to create the impression that they are a large animal.

True, that is actually how one should respond to brown bear attacks. But it will also work on Terry Savage. Trust me. And don't get between her and her cubs.

I was confident I had explained it clearly. Until my brother, breaking the tension, ordered a raspberry lemonade. As they handed it to him, he again asked: "So how much is it?" And the girls once again replied: "It's free!" And the nanny looked on contentedly.

I would like to hear this story from the girls' perspective. Or perhaps the nanny's. This part would be something like "So after this bitch started lecturing us on classical economics, they asked us how much it cost. We wanted to see if we could make their heads explode, so we told them it was still free. The driver man swore at us and the old lady in the backseat pulled a stiletto knife out of her purse. Then they saw Officer Harry's car at the end of the block and they ran away."

No wonder America is getting it all wrong when it comes to government, and taxes, and policy. We all act as if the "lemonade" or benefits we're "giving away" is free. And so the voters demand more — more subsidies for mortgages, more bailouts, more loan modification and longer periods of unemployment benefits.

Wait. Did you have some lemonade or not? I need closure on this anecdote, not a segue into the worst metaphor in recorded history. "Some nice kids tried to give me lemonade for free, and I decided that the lemonade represents everything that is wrong with society. Because I am psychotic. I pick corn from my own crap and glue it back on the cob. Then I eat it again. And again."

They're all very nice. But these things aren't free.

You know what was nice as well as free? THE DAMN LEMONADE.

The government only gets the money to pay these benefits by raising taxes, meaning taxpayers pay for the "free lemonade." Or by printing money — which is essentially a tax on savings, since printing more money devalues the wealth we hold in dollars.

She is now explaining that when we give the government some of our earnings, we often demand benefits in return for giving them said money.

Slow down, T-Bone. We're not all economists here. Is there any scientific effort to study and explain this bizarre behavior? Personally I am surprised that people want the government to provide things other than the Joint Strike Fighter in exchange for keeping a quarter of our paychecks.

If we can't teach our kids the basics of running a lemonade stand, how can we ever teach Congress the basics of economics?

Reach further, Terry! Reach higher! Reach! This lemonade transaction (or was it a non-transaction? I NEED TO KNOW.) represents everything that is wrong with America. It also explains why Congress doesn't understand "the basics of economics (but I bet Terry does!) The lemonade also represents AIDS in the developing world, the problem with the music industry today, and 19th Century institutionalized racism.

The other day I was shopping and I saw that wax paper was on sale. Of course my first thought was, "This is why we won the space race."

Or maybe it's the other way around: The kids are learning from the society around them. No one has ever taught them there's no free lunch — and all they see is "free," not the result of hard work, and saving, and scrimping.

I think it is valid to conclude that "no one" has ever given American students the hackneyed wisdom that "there's no free lunch."

Maybe the lesson the parents hoped to teach was that sometimes, especially when you are a person of considerable wealth, it is nice to do things for your fellow man without expecting to be paid. That it's OK to give someone 1 cent worth of powdered lemonade just to be friendly. That parents don't want their kids to grow up to be asocial assholes like Terry Savage.

If that's what America's children think

"And based on my random, double-blind study of these three girls, it is fair to conclude that they do,"

— that there's a free lunch waiting — then our country has larger problems ahead. The Declaration of Independence promised "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." It didn't promise anything free.

Right. It promised us a government that would allocate the resources we grant to it in ways that are to our benefit. Who ever said we expected the government to do all this stuff for us "for free"? We work. We contribute. Oh wait, I forgot how the Metaphor of the Lemonade explains how we all want things for free. Good point.

Something to think about this July 4th holiday weekend.

Or, you know, fireworks and barbecues.

And that's the Savage Truth!

This is the most embarrassingly bad catchphrase I have ever seen. I recommend something like:

– I Am Completely Fucking Insane!^tm
– I Can't Be Trusted with Your Children!^tm
– Fluids! My Precious Fluids!^tm

Despite the fact that I've trademarked that, Terry, you are free to use it. You've more than earned the right. What's that? No, it doesn't cost you anything. You can use it for free. I don't care. No. I don't want anything for it.

Oh jesus. She's advancing on me with that murderous glare again. You all slip out the back while I distract her. This may take a while.

Hey, I spend a lot of time in the classroom, so when I see a column entitled "Our Kids Deserve Balance in the Classroom" I perk up like an chemically stimulated prairie dog. All along I have been under the impression that Your Kids deserved to be given accurate information and taught how to process it. How wrong was I. It turns out that what kids really deserve is "balance"! You know, two sides to every story. Teach the Controversy.^tm But I doubt that Steve Mroczkiewicz – scholar at the Independent Women's Foundation project Balanced Education for Everyone – would raise such an issue lightly; he's a goddamn expert on Balance. Move over, Flying Wallendas. Let's discover how Unbalanced our schools are with the ultimate goal of Balancing them like the scales of justice.

This FJM is made possible through a generous grant from the Steve, Shut The Fuck Up Foundation. SSTFUF: A Better Tomorrow is Possible if Steve Shuts His Piehole Today.^tm

We as parents have a lot on our minds these days. Too many of us are out of work and struggling to pay the bills. While trying to pay our mortgage and prepare for retirement, we are also trying to save to help our kids go to college. Of course, we are also concerned about the quality of our children's schools, though few have the time to follow closely what goes on in those classrooms each day.

OK, Steve isn't a professional writer. This much will be abundantly clear. Regardless, there's something inherently dangerous about opening anything other than a letter to the Penthouse Forums with this many industrial strength platitudes. And don't worry, parents who lack the time to follow what goes on in the classroom each day – Steve's on it.

As a father of six—five of whom still attend Attica, Indiana public schools

Remember this. It's going to be relevant in a minute.

I know first-hand the difficulty of keeping up with all the responsibilities that parents face. Yet I also know how important it is to remain engaged in our children's schools to make sure that they get the education they need and deserve.

This passage was nominated for the 2010 Award for Redundancy Award of 2010.

It has been more than a month since Earth Day, and most of our children are finishing their studies for the year. One area that I would encourage all parents to pay extra attention to is what's happening at your school regarding climate change education. Ideally, it is supposed to encourage students to consider the importance of preserving our natural resources. Unfortunately, too often it's used as a platform to push a misleading, ideological brand of environmentalism.

Ideally…according to whom? This sounds an awful lot like a segue into the classic "My kids are not being told that my beliefs are correct, so it's time to change what they're taught" argument.

I’m a Ph.D. scientist

And yet you can't figure out how condoms work, according to the earlier admission.

I’m a Ph.D. scientist and work as a Field Research Scientist for a global crop protection company, so I have a special interest in how my kids are taught the subject.

Great. You have a biology Ph.D., proving that you have mastered titration and whatnot (I don't know if titration is relevant to what biologists do, but it's one of the most phonetically pleasing hard science-y words I know). This makes you an expert on many things, including global warming.

I also have a Ph.D., Steve, so when I get done writing this I'm going to draw up architectural blueprints for a skyscraper and invent a new state of matter.

To me, teaching science properly means presenting all sides of scientific theories and helping kids develop their own critical thinking skills.

Teaching Science Properly by Steve Mroczkiewicz is apparently the least useful book ever written. It receives serious competition for that honor only from The Encyclopedia of Phrenology, Modern British Dentistry: A Practical Guide, and On Diplomacy by Ariel Sharon.

Steve, teaching science properly means presenting the "sides of scientific theories" that are either correct or have evidence to support them. Not "all" sides. We can, you know, skip the ones that are wrong or utterly devoid of merit. When we teach the shape of the planet, we generally do not give Round and Flat equal time.

Regrettably, it seems that too many in our public education system see their role differently.

Strangely and regrettably, most teachers don't see the value in teaching unsupported crackpot theories or industry-funded denialist claims. Baffling.

I first became concerned about how my children's school was teaching global warming last year when a group of teachers orchestrated a school-wide showing of An Inconvenient Truth during class in celebration of Earth Day.

They showed a multi-multi-award winning documentary by the former Vice President in a public school? My god. What country do we live in?

I was alarmed that parents weren't even able to pull their kids from this assignment (fortunately, with some work, I eventually got that policy changed).

Ooh, goodie. We're playing "I was alarmed by…" I love this game. OK Steve, I was alarmed by the suggestion that parents – parents who might be, and often are, dumber than a bag of hammers – should be able to decide what their kids are and are not exposed to.

OK, your turn.

The problem isn't just that the school shows An Inconvenient Truth, a movie found by a judge to be riddled with serious scientific errors and which grossly exaggerates the potential damage of man-made global warming. It also fails to provide any counterweight to this environmentalist propaganda.

Aww, I thought we were playing. Anyway, Steve, no judge accused the film of scientific errors or "gross" exaggerations. A British judge in a civil trial agreed with an attorney's claim that the film exaggerates the potential damage of human-induced climate change – which is a pretty strange argument, by the way, given that both the judge's and the filmmaker's exercises are inherently speculative. But like any documentary, I won't argue that the film in question is strongly argued and probably includes some exaggerations by zealous True Believers. Documentaries are never "fair."

Schools do have options. For more than a year now, I've been trying to get another film, Not Evil, Just Wrong, shown in our school to provide some balance.

Awesome. Schools have options, like showing a straight-to-video piece of shit (funded by a wealthy Irish nutcase) that repackages every tired global warming denialism argument of the past 30 years. Do you understand how bad a movie has to be before it can't secure a theatrical release? For christ's sake, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed opened on 1000 screens and it was so bad that most people who paid to see it shot themselves.

Maybe part of the problem is that the film begins with the tale of how hysterical environmentalists got DDT banned and caused 40 million people to die of mosquito-borne illnesses – ah, the perils of scientific Chicken Little-ism – which is a great point except that DDT is still used to kill mosquitoes and always has been. And it's uphill from there!

Not Evil, Just Wrong thoroughly reviews the flawed science of global warming, specifically addressing the many errors and gross exaggerations in An Inconvenient Truth. Our children deserve to hear this information so they don't believe that there's only one truth about this important issue.

Read that again. "…so they don't believe that there's only one truth about this important issue." Our goal, of course, is to have them believe that there are many, equally valid "truths" about important issues! Why, that just sounds great. What a great world we would live in if everyone thought that opposing sides of objective issues were equally valid.

Unfortunately, getting balance into my children's school has been an uphill battle. I’ve spoken to teachers, the principal, the superintendent and the school board. I’ve loaned copies of the film so teachers could see it and make an informed decision.

Are you getting the sense that Steve is "That Guy" in his school district? The one who harasses the administrators to an extent that verges on stalking and who rises at every board meeting to deliver the same harangue about Communist water fluoridation or free energy suppression or Noah's Ark or whatever his idiotic pet issue happens to be? I bet he's quite popular in his community.

Yet only two teachers in the whole school bothered to view the film, and none of them would show it.

Shocking.

I made my case publicly during the open session of a school board meeting.

I bet you did, Cubby.

The only result was that a group of teachers publicly complained to the board for giving me a hearing.

Well that could mean a few things. You've been at this for a full year, so let's assume they understand your argument. Either they are closed-minded, ideologically narrow bigots hell-bent on suppressing your Truth, or your argument is entirely without merit and no amount of explanation is sufficient to make you understand that.

Most recently, the superintendent declared Not Evil, Just Wrong isn’t suitable because it lacks the endorsement of the National Earth Day Foundation. You can see what I’m up against.

I more clearly see what the school district is up against, but yeah, I feel for you. Going up against reality and facts is hard.

This isn’t just ignorance of the science behind climate change, this is an ideological position. I will continue to fight for our students to be taught rather than indoctrinated.

Steve, your point of view as expressed here makes clear that you loathe indoctrination. You just have the very reasonable and open-minded view that your children should only be taught what you want them to be taught irrespective of its accuracy.

I haven't been able to change the curriculum so far, but I have succeeded in raising awareness of the problem.
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I would urge other parent to do the same.

"No one is listening to me. It's lonely here at the helm of the USS Batshit. I need 30 stout men for a voyage to where there be dragons."

Ask questions about how global warming is being presented in your school. Find out if movies like An Inconvenient Truth are being used on Earth Day or as pillars of the science curriculum. Make sure that your kids are hearing the other side of the story.
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(The one with no evidence to support it.)

We should encourage our schools and teachers to address this imbalance during the summer break.

Once again Steve shows his keen understanding of reality by stressing that the best time to get the attention of educators is during the summer.

I realize many of us are busy, but our children's education starts at home. You shouldn't trust that your local school is providing the balanced education your children deserve.

"Just homeschool your kids already. That's the only way to keep them Pure of influences other than the voices in Mom and Dad's head. Isn't it about time you took dictatorial control of every piece of information that reaches your child? How else can we ensure that they will grow up creationist, heavily armed, and utterly unable to function socially?"

Thanks Steve, whoever the hell you are, for taking the idea of scientific inquiry out behind an abandoned warehouse and fingering it. I can think of no one I'd rather have in control of the future of our educational system. Being lectured on objectivity and balance by Steve Mroczkiewicz is like having Bible study with the Pope himself.

This is where I usually do a quasi-witty intro. Today, I've got nothing for you. This is honestly the worst opinion column I have ever read. It reads less like an opinion column than the final Facebook post of a lone wolf militiaman before he sets out in his weapon-laden 1988 Ford Econoline van to kill as many Latinos as he can find. It's part suicide note, part ransom note, part plea for psychological help, and part woefully failed attempt at humor. Doug Giles, who previously took an FJMing with a column that I naively thought represented the nadir of the English language in print, is still giving this writing thing a try for some reason. After you read this masterpiece of satire ("Mexico's Calderon Condemns the Country that Keeps His Haggard Land Afloat") you will join me in wishing that Doug would take up a career more suited to his skills and personality, such as working in a prison, being held for observation and psychiatric care, or wrapping his lips around the barrel of a gun and trying desperately to think of a reason not to pull the trigger.

This is…not good. I warned you.

Y’know, there’s nothing like being chastised by the president of a parasitical border nation whose trespassing citizens are wreaking havoc on our soil.

"Y'know"? Some 14 year old girls called, Doug, and they want their Livejournal post back. They called me because Doug Giles is not allowed to receive phone calls from minors pursuant to the provisions of Suzie's Law and an out-of-court settlement in the matter of Girl Scouts of America v. Doug Giles in a Clown Suit.

Mexico’s Presidente Felipe Calderon carping about our country’s laws on our turf this past week in D.C. is like a fat tick complaining about the dog he’s sucking the life out of. Hey Felipe, haven’t you ever heard the maxim “beggars can’t be choosers”? Evidently not.

Mexico is sucking the life out of the U.S.? Do you understand how illegal immigration works, Doug? They come here and do shit work for peanuts to subsidize the price you pay for produce. I do not think you have properly conceptualized the tick-dog relationship. If the ticks risked their lives to reach your dog so they could clean the caked dung out of the fur around his butt for $1 an hour, that would be a good analogy. As it stands, it isn't.

One must hand it to Calderón for having the cojones to condemn the country that’s keeping his gaunt nation buoyant. I wouldn’t have had the courage … or stupidity, or indecency … to do that.

Oh, don't sell yourself short, cubby. You're plenty stupid. Plenty.

Matter of fact, if I were president—or better yet, King of Douglandia

If this little hypothetical makes you cringe, you may want to get a drink before tackling the rest of this column. Doug thinks this is really, really clever and he's going to clutch it to his chest and break into a dead sprint like his ass is on fire and the nearest water is at the end of the column.

and Douglandia happened to have milked, oh … let’s say … $21 billion last year from the prosperous border country to our north

Curious about this oddly specific figure, I did more research than Doug Giles has done cumulatively in his life – which is to say I googled "Illegal immigrants $21 billion." It turns out that this is the amount that they sent out of the country as remittances in 2009. So "milked" is a strange choice of words given that A) they earned the money, mostly by B) doing horrible shit-work for which American businesses actively recruit illegals they can pay in change and Jarritos. As far as I'm concerned – and this is where Doug and I differ – someone who works 10 hour shifts cleaning slaughterhouses for $4/hr can do whatever the hell they want with the money. Mail it to Mexico, blow it at a casino, put it in the bank, set it on fire…once you've cleaned the rendering tank at a ConAgra slaughterhouse you make the call.

all the while my residents were:
– Creating chaos in our generous neighbor’s land by the exportation of tons of drugs to their kiddos,

Mexican illegal immigrants make your kids smoke pot. If there were no illegal immigrants, American kids would not have drugs and hence would not do drugs.

– Kidnapping and killing their citizens

This is just an epidemic. And again, without illegals this would not happen.

– Trashing their ranches and national parks,
– Disrespecting their laws and flag,

Is "disrespecting" a law the same as violating it?

Nothing is quite as sad as watching an adult deliver any variant of the "Flag-burning should be illegal!" argument. It indicates a failure at some stage of one's emotional development, the one that teaches you that symbols only mean what we decide they mean. In practice, it doesn't bother me much when people, legal or illegal, "disrespect" the fifty cent made-in-China piece of plastic bearing the pattern of the American flag. People who venerate an object are modern descendants of the barbarians who made offerings to please the sun.

– And spawning political turmoil in our over-gracious buddy’s government

Yes Doug, it is Mexico's fault that you're bursting a blood vessel in your neck over this issue and flying into a pant-shitting rage over the shocking idea that the people who pick your tomatoes for a buck an hour might not be in this country legally.

I wouldn’t dare open my stupid mouth

Oh, I doubt that. Wait for it…

and complain about the Constitution and the cops of the nation my civilians happen to be violating if I were invited to be speak in said nation.

Swish. Nothing but net. Giles 1, things that doubt Giles 0.

Yep, if my crew caused all this crap in another country and I were asked to address the land that folks from Douglandia were pillaging, my speech would be very short and very sweet:

Can you pretend that you've been invited to speak in Edlandia and work that short/sweet magic here? Because every word of this is like rolling a giant boulder up a steep hill. I pray for a merciful death in lieu of reading another sentence. This is like watching Uncle Larry get ripped to the tits on peppermint schnapps at Thanksgiving and deliver one of his patented monologues about the coloreds or the vaccine-autism link or the Jews or free energy suppression or the children he stabbed in Vietnam.

It would mirror Borat’s sentiments toward the USA, and I would say, “Hello. My name is Doug from Douglandia. I like your country. It’s very nice. Please forgive what my gypsies have done to your land and people. I will discipline them upon my return like I did my sister when she tried to sell her sexy bits.”

Giles: "Ha ha! I saw a movie once." And what are the odds that TownHall readers (average age: 97) have seen anything released after Serpico?

After that gratitude-laden speech I would pass out patriotic Frisbees celebrating their land to all in attendance and offer free airfare passes on Douglandia Airlines to our few quasi-decent resort destinations to all the pusillanimous politicians who were aiding and abetting the raping of their nation by my criminal constituents.

Reading your column, Doug, I can't figure out why Mexico's president did not react this way or offer anything but obsequious gratitude to the American people. Why, he should have been giving Obama a reacharound as he addressed the crowd. Free trips to Cancun, everyone! Why? Because Mexico needs to repay us for that demeaning work that our businesses pay its people to do!

Yep, after my broke joke nation had received billions of dollars I sure as heck wouldn’t be complaining about the land I was milking (at least not to their faces).

"Broke joke." Hey, that rhymes! Radical, dude. Gag me with a spoon.

Are you ready? It gets a little unhinged at this point. Yes, even compared to what he has already said.

Matter of fact, on second thought, I would have gone the biblical extra mile with the violated country after my brief lecture. Indeed, after my gracious speech and the distribution of parting gifts, I would have pulled out my Butt-Smacker magnum-sized lip balm and commenced to literally kiss the backsides of everyone in attendance in gratitude for not building a wall between our nations so huge it could be seen from Pluto.

Read that again. I've got nothing. Literally nothing. This reads like he is shouting it to a police negotiator over a bullhorn right before he starts executing hostages. And just to be clear, he is literally suggesting that Mexicans should be kissing our asses. I wonder why they don't like you, Doug.

Upon my return to my dog-eared land-of-no-opportunity, I would immediately dispatch squadrons of maids and trash picker-uppers to go and clean up all the mess my people had made trashing the countryside when they “migrated” to the great northern feeding grounds.

YES, DOUG. IF ONLY MEXICO WOULD SEND SOME MAIDS AND "TRASH PICKER-UPPERS" TO THE UNITED STATES. IF THERE'S ONE THING MEXICO HASN'T SENT HERE, IT'S MAIDS AND PEOPLE TO PICK UP OUR TRASH. Does this guy know what an illegal immigrant is? Does he know which people are the Mexican ones?

In addition, I would immediately capture and incarcerate those criminal miscreants who had made it to the Land of Plenty and acted untoward to such a benevolent place, as their bellicose behavior could possibly cause the faucet to shut off on the multi-billion dollar chunk of change we were getting from our benefactors.

Doug Giles is a shining example of our benevolence – as if I needed to point that out. And I wouldn't worry about that faucet shutting off. The only thing that will stop the flow is to pay Americans minimum wage to do the work immigrants do. And we know that is about as likely to happen as Doug Giles reading a book that has more words than pictures.

Yes, that’s what I would have done if I were Calderon, but then again, my mother raised me right.

Aside from his obvious and crippling anger issues and assorted other mental problems, does anyone else get the impression that Dougie wrote this column in about 10 minutes? The last three or four paragraphs scream "past deadline" like nothing I've seen since the last time I degraded myself by reading Andrew Breitbart.

I know Intellectual Chernobyl doesn't have much in the way of journalistic standards, but even with that in mind I am shocked that they ran this. It quite literally reads like a transcript of an unstable person coming unhinged and screaming at passing cars. Even Teabaggers who agree with Doug about his substantive message here (which I believe is "MEXICAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANS! GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHH!!") aren't going to read this incoherent dreck. The author they do read, Glenn Beck, is the Tiger Woods of hate speech. In comparison Doug Giles is like a suburban golf fanatic who bends his clubs in half and punches out a caddy after failing on his 15th attempt to get out of the sand trap.

With age comes experience, and with experience comes the ability to recognize the exceptional when it flutters through one's life. I see a lot of FJM-worthy material, columns with pedestrian names like "Why Liberals are Stupid" or "Tea Parties: a New American Revolution?" These pieces are fun to dissect but they lack greatness. They are run-of-the-mill conservative boilerplate. This is why alarm bells start ringing when I see something entitled "Discrimination is Necessary: Subjecting kids to weirdos undermines standards of decency" by the editorial board of the Washington Times. This promises to unfasten its fly and piss excellence all over America. Prepare for a golden shower of wisdom and logic. While enjoying the moist, salty waves of truth you should ponder the mystery of why the Times is bankrupt, fired most of its staff in December, and is searching for a buyer. You know, the same Washington Times founded and owned by the Moonies and so far to the right that even most Republicans can't take it seriously. On the plus side, since the paper can no longer afford proper maintenance for its office the remaining staffers must contend with meter-long black snakes in the building as they pretend to work and search desperately for new jobs. So that sounds exciting.

Grab an umbrella, kids, because the Moonie Times is about to go all Pacman Jones on us and make it rain.

First-graders should not be forced into the classrooms of teachers undergoing sex changes.

Whoa. I didn't hear about this. Media: fail.

Religious broadcasters and faith-based summer camps should not be forced to hire cross-dressers.

This neither. Why wasn't this all over the news? Certainly it derails the Levin-Sanders Pre-Op Tranny and Transvestite Fairness in Summer Camp Employment Act currently occupying most of the Senate's time.

Women should not be forced to share bathrooms with people with male body parts who say they want to be females.

Huh. This is getting weird. This all sounds quite controversial. Should be on the news. And for the record, while I understand the logic of separate bathrooms based on one's genitals, how in the hell does anyone know what the person in the next stall is using to urinate? I mean, someone could walk into a women's restroom in a dress, close a stall door, and pull out a penis – or a nice novel, or an otter pelt, or a gold-plated kazoo, or the Shroud of Turin – and you'd be none the wiser. And it really wouldn't make any difference, would it?
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Yet those are some of the likely results if Congress passes H.R. 3017, the so-called Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), which is due for a vote this week by the House Education and Labor Committee.

OK, now I see why I haven't heard about any of this: because you just made it up. It's your fevered, juvenile imagination playing the slippery slope game and trying to shock whatever remaining shut-ins and Teabaggers are still reading this rag. And while we're here, what does "so-called" mean in this context? Am I reading the so-called Washington Times? It's the name of the damn bill, not a proposed new state of matter. It's not the shadowy leader of an underground gang of supercriminals. It's not a tip on the whereabouts of Judge Crater.

ENDA purports to "prohibit employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity."

Does it "purport" to prohibit those things or does it prohibit those things? I'm really enjoying this alleged column by the purported editors of the so-called Washington Times.

Clever politically correct wording aside, this is a direct attack on common sense.

I don't think you people know that adjectives have actual meanings. They are not simply things inserted in sentences to make them sound prettier. How is this "clever"? Speaking of bathrooms, I have read better things scrawled on the walls of a few in my life. Like the bar in Bloomington that briefly had "FUCK BILLY OCEAN" on its bathroom wall three-foot-high letters. That was way better than this.

On some matters, it is good to be discriminating.

Choice of newspapers? Yes, then you should be discriminating. Equal application of basic rights? Not so much.

It is right to discriminate between honesty and dishonesty, between politeness and impoliteness, between right and wrong. And it assuredly is right to be discriminating in choosing who teaches our children. ENDA would make it impossible for a non-church-based charter school, for instance, to remove from the classroom a "she-male" who insists on exposing her pupils to her unnatural transformation.

Slow down there, Professor Science! I can't keep up with these medical terms like "she-male." I thought the proper term was "Chix with Dixxx."

This is no idle threat.

No one suggested that it was! Who would take lightly the hypothetical prospect of a child at a non-church-based charter school – and who doesn't have a few of those?
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– whose teacher gets a sex change? That has to include, what, like 50% of America's teachers? Maybe 70% in our non-church-based charter schools.

ENDA would supersede the laws of 38 states that do not have laws treating those with an unusual "gender identity" as a legally protected "class" of citizens.

That "sounds" like the segue into an "interesting" "argument" by these "writers."

Andrea Lafferty of the Traditional Values Coalition wrote in the April 20 edition of Roll Call

Well this seems like a good source – the kind of group that should be deciding who gets what legal protections.

about several examples of cross-dressing or sex-changing teachers who claimed protections under state disability laws (in the 12 states that do indeed protect "gender identity") and were able to remain in the classroom despite parents' protests.

Wait, you mean schools don't just bend over and do whatever hysterical and in some cases barely-literate parents demand they do? Well this whole system is just broken.

Perhaps the worst was at California's Foxboro Elementary School, where a music teacher underwent surgery to become a man, but parents originally were not even notified because administrators feared running afoul of medical privacy laws.

You mean their well-grounded fear of violating privacy laws by arbitrarily sending home a letter to let parents know that a teacher had an elective surgery?
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Shocking.

Even if California wants to be so foolish, the residents of the 38 states without such absurd legal strictures shouldn't be forced to do the same. States have a sovereign right to set standards governing behavioral – as opposed to immutable – personal characteristics.

Wooo! Chalk up another noble cause for the States' Rights argument.

ENDA does provide supposed exemptions for churches and church-based schools to refuse to employ sex-changers and cross-dressers. But the exemption is far less than meets the eye.

Look out, St. Michael's Summer Camp for Pale Young Boys! This means you, Camp Hope for Unwed Teenage Mothers! The trannies are a' comin'!

Even religious organizations, under the standards cited, are prohibited from making employment decisions based on the worker's sex. ENDA opponents rightly cite last year's 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals note in Prowel v. Wise Business Forms that "the line between sexual orientation discrimination and discrimination 'because of sex' can be difficult to draw."

Note that this passage has absolutely nothing to do with the previous statement about alleged holes in supposed "exemptions" for purported churches.

In short, courts easily could decide that even parochial schools must hire she-males to teach their kindergartners.

Flawless. Just flawless logic. "Here is an exemption that disproves the weak-ass point we've been making. Here is basically an unrelated case from a low-level Federal court. In conclusion, the exemption is clearly meaningless." It's like Clarence Darrow rose from the grave, which is ironic given that we are reading the modern-day William Jennings Bryan.

Similar problems abound in this bill, which treats a conscious decision to choose a new or different sexual identity as if it were an inherent, unavoidable condition. But it's not. It's actually a psychological disorder, officially listed as such by the current American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

Well, gender identity disorders are listed. Sex change operations aren't, which makes sense given that they are a treatment for said disorders. If you believe something is a psychological disorder (which is debatable, but let's run with it) it wouldn't make a lot of sense to oppose someone taking steps to address it.

Our children and our co-workers should not be forced by law to be held hostage to such disorders, nor should employers be forced to have psychologically troubled persons as the public face of their businesses.

I'd actually take my chances with a trans person than one of the thousands of teachers in America – right now – who believe the Earth is 6,000 years old. Or one of those teachers who bang 13 year old boys. Yeah, I'd definitely go with the post-op over that.

It seems like there are two larger problems here. One, parents want the state to step in and save them from having to explain things to their children. Yes, this could be very difficult for young kids to grasp. Maybe it would be beneficial for teachers to have these procedures done over the summer or on a medical leave before starting fresh with a new class in the fall. I'm not entirely unsympathetic to the underlying argument here – 6 year-olds might not be able to process this. That they should be legally protected from it because it is "wrong" or whatever is an argument undeserving of my sympathy or that of anyone else.

Second, the Moonie Times is clearly in its death throes and pursuing a fairly logical strategy in response to its desperate situation: running as far to the right as humanly possible and hoping to carve out a niche as THE newspaper for people who hand-load their own ammo and homeschool their 11 kids. There's an inherent flaw in this plan to corner the Teabagger/neo-Bircherite audience: they don't read newspapers. Not even a newspaper that spits back what they want to here in the simplest English will find enough subscribers among this demographic to remain solvent. Reverend Moon is rapidly discovering that there is a very small market for a newspaper aimed at people who reflexively hate reading.