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Via Crooks and Liars: I hadn’t realized that Bertrand Russell, the mathematician, philosopher, and general trouble-maker, had written a children’s book:

In these political times, so polarized with heated rhetoric, I was pleasantly surprised to stumble across a copy of Bertrand Russell’s The Good Citizen’s Alphabet. A important philosopher, Russell had the wisdom to realize that certain words require proper definition to be used correctly in political and social discourse; words such as, “asinine,” “erroneous,” even “nincompoop.” Of course, there are also words that inspire: “liberty,” “sacrifice,” even “zeal.” Russell aspired to educational enlightenment, believing “the ABC, that gateway to all wisdom, is not made sufficiently attractive to immature minds.” In his research with this teaching tool, respondents found his explication of the alphabet both “wise” and “foolish,” “right-minded” and “subversive.”

Well, it’s not really a children’s book. Like the Pat Bagley books, it uses the form of a children’s book to comment on grown-up concerns. “Asinine” is defined as “What you think,” and “Bolshevik” as “Anyone whose opinions I disagree with.” “Liberty” is “The right to obey the police” — I see that Bush, Cheney and Gonzales aren’t breaking new ground after all.

You can see the entire book by viewing the slideshow.

Clueless George Goes to War, by Utah political cartoonist Pat Bagley, is a parody of the Curious George children’s books.

It’s the first of three such books. The others are Clueless George is Watching You and Clueless George Takes on Liberals. They’re short — each one less than 30 pages — but they’re funny, and they land some sharp jabs at this disastrous administration.

As The Man tucks him into bed at the end of Clueless George Goes to War, George worries about some of his critics.

“They were obviously America-hating, evildoer-loving liberals,” The Man patiently explained.

“So that’s why you sent them all to Geronimo Bay…” mused George. “Shouldn’t we have given them trials?”

“The answer to that is very nuanced,” said The Man.

This administration tries to “nuance” our rights out of existence. The proper response to that isn’t nuanced at all.

You can find sample pages from all three books, other books and pins here.

Part of the legend of King Arthur says that Arthur is not dead, but only sleeping under a hill in Avalon, waiting to return in England’s hour of greatest need. It’s a myth, of course. Arthur himself is at least half myth.

Today is the 198th birthday of Abraham Lincoln, and I can’t help thinking that this country sure could use him now.

Of course, Lincoln can’t return to save us from our current troubles, any more than Washington or Jefferson could solve the troubles of Lincoln’s own day. “It is for us, the living,” and it always has been.

We will not be saved unless we save ourselves.

On the PBS NewsHour tonight, essayist Julia Keller said of this portrait, “It is less of a face, maybe, than a soul, worn inside out.”

Lincoln is a source of comfort and encouragement in our hour of need. He was a mortal, fallible human being, like ourselves. He showed us just what a mortal, fallible human being can do. His life challenges every one of us to do better.

St. Augustine was ahead of his time. Why, he might have been talking about “intelligent design” here:

Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he hold to as being certain from reason and experience.

Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn.

The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men. If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods and on facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason?

Reckless and incompetent expounders of Holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren when they are caught in one of their mischievous false opinions and are taken to task by those who are not bound by the authority of our sacred books. For then, to defend their utterly foolish and obviously untrue statements, they will try to call upon Holy Scripture for proof and even recite from memory many passages which they think support their position, although they understand neither what they say nor the things about which they make assertion.

(I’ve broken the quote into shorter paragraphs.)

On Thursday, Stephen Colbert interviewed Chris Hedges, author of American Fascists. Hedges said of right-wing TV evangelists like James Dobson and Pat Robertson:

The image that they present of Jesus and of the Christian is essentially a warrior cult. I mean, it’s that obsession with violence, it is that notion that America can use its imperial power and use its violence to create a Christian nation. They condemn other ways of being, other religion as satanic — I mean, they’re constantly blasting Islam, nominal Christians, liberals. It is a message that’s deeply anti-Christian, and, I think, filled with a lot of bigotry and a lot of intolerance.

When Colbert challenged him for being angry, Hedges, a former seminary student, said, “I don’t think anger’s a bad thing,” and quoted St. Augustine:

Hope has two beautiful daughters. Their names are anger and courage; anger at the way things are, and courage to see that they do not remain the way they are.

I took the precise quote above from Wikiquote. There’s more there worth reading.

Remember the good old days, when the United States was the greatest proponent of human rights around a world, and a thorn in the side of many a dictator? Those days are gone.

Representatives from 57 countries on Tuesday signed a long-negotiated treaty prohibiting governments from holding people in secret detention. The United States declined to endorse the document, saying its text did not meet U.S. expectations.

So now the United States is aligned with the Pinochets and Pol Pots and the Stalins.

Boy, I can’t wait until George W. Bush is out of office.

CNN says 9/11 security changes come with big price tag:

A bill to enact the 9/11 Commission recommendations — one of the first bills passed by the new Democratic-led House of Representatives — will cost $21 billion over five years if enacted into law, congressional budget officials said Friday.

See, there’s big, and then there’s BIG:

The Bush administration will ask for another $100 billion for military and diplomatic operations in Iraq and Afghanistan this year and seek $145 billion for 2008, a senior administration official said Friday.

Good thing the kids and grandkids are picking up the tab for all this.

Suddenly George W. Bush is worried about future generations:

President Bush, poised to submit his new budget to Congress next week, insisted Saturday that unless programs like Medicare and Social Security are changed, future generations will face tax hikes, government red ink or huge cuts in benefits. …

“Unless we act, we will saddle our children and grandchildren with tens of trillions of dollars of unfunded obligations,” Bush said.

George W. Bush has done more than any human being in the history of the planet to push current debts off onto future generations, so please excuse me if I don’t quite believe this new concern for “our children and grandchildren.”

George W. Bush never said that global warming wasn’t real. He only said, year after year after year, that the matter needed more study.

Six years into his administration, there has been study after study, and the answer seems inescapable: global warming is real, it’s caused by humans, and the results will be catastrophic. And the Bush Administration will stay the course:

Despite a strongly worded global warming report from the world’s top climate scientists, the Bush administration expressed continued opposition Friday to mandatory reductions in heat-trapping “greenhouse” gases.

The one thing we must never do is learn.

Creators Syndicate has a Molly Ivins archive and a final tribute.

A cartoonist’s tribute at I Drew This.

John Nichols of The Nation remembers Molly. So do Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne, Bill Moyers and many others. Editor & Publisher repeats a November interview.

The Associated Press has compiled some quotes and quips.

Via Pharyngula:

I don’t care what fool they put in office. We’ve just got to rebuild the whole system. That’s how it’s gonna change. From us, not them.

I was talking with a friend earlier today. He’s a tennis buff, and he said many players put a lot of energy into learning just what brand of racquet, or shoes, or sweatband is used by an Andy Roddick or a Venus Williams or some other favorite professional player. Then they spend a lot of money to buy those products, expecting a big improvement in their own game.

That gave me an idea. I thought perhaps I could buy an old Ansel Adams camera and become a great photographer. Or maybe get ahold of Molly Ivins’ typewriter, and be a great writer.

Sad news:

Molly Ivins, the liberal newspaper columnist who delighted in skewering politicians and interpreting, and mocking, her Texas culture, died yesterday in Austin. She was 62. …

In her syndicated column, which appeared in about 350 newspapers, Ms. Ivins cultivated the voice of a folksy populist who derided those who she thought acted too big for their britches. She was rowdy and profane, but she could filet her opponents with droll precision.

After Patrick J. Buchanan, as a conservative candidate for president, declared at the 1992 Republican National Convention that the United States was engaged in a cultural war, she said his speech “probably sounded better in the original German.” …

Her Texas upbringing made her something of an expert on the Bush family. She viewed the first President George Bush benignly. (“Real Texans do not use the word ‘summer’ as a verb,” she wrote.)

But she derided the current President Bush, whom she first knew in high school. She called him Shrub and Dubya. With the Texas journalist Lou Dubose, she wrote two best-selling books about Mr. Bush: “Shrub: The Short but Happy Political Life of George W. Bush” (2000) and “Bushwhacked” (2003).

The Washington Post says she “poked fun at the powerful,” but she did more than that. I read “Shrub” and “Bushwhacked,” and under the surface humor is a trove of information and insight that should have been a warning to all of us. She was a stunningly good writer — she could express a thought with such sharpness and clarity that a reader might never think about a topic in the same way after reading Molly’s take on it.

I sure hope that talent and that spirit came from the typewriter she used. If not, we’ve suffered a grievous loss.

Ms. Ivins learned she had breast cancer in 1999 and was typically unvarnished in describing her treatments. “First they mutilate you; then they poison you; then they burn you,” she wrote. “I have been on blind dates better than that.”
But she kept writing her columns and kept writing and raising money for The Texas Observer.

Indeed, rarely has a reporter so embodied the ethos of her publication. On the paper’s 50th anniversary in 2004, she wrote: “This is where you can tell the truth without the bark on it, laugh at anyone who is ridiculous, and go after the bad guys with all the energy you have.”

In her final column, she offered some advice to all of us:

We are the people who run this country. We are the deciders. And every single day, every single one of us needs to step outside and take some action to help stop this war. Raise hell. Think of something to make the ridiculous look ridiculous. Make our troops know we’re for them and trying to get them out of there. Hit the streets to protest Bush’s proposed surge. If you can, go to the peace march in Washington on Jan. 27. We need people in the streets, banging pots and pans and demanding, “Stop it, now!”

The talent, I fear, she took with her. But reading her columns, I think she left the spirit here with us.

Cartoonist Ruben Bolling:

When President Bush was asked what sacrifices he’s called on civilian Americans to make in support of the enormous sacrifices made by those in the military in Iraq, he replied: “They sacrifice peace of mind when they see the terrible images of violence on TV every night.”

So Bolling gives us some “Posters For the Homefront.”

Yes, you’ve done enough. Now, let somebody else bear the burden of our “existential conflict.”

George W. Bush on Friday:

One of the things I’ve found in Congress is that most people recognize that failure would be a disaster for the United States. And in that I’m the decision maker, I had to come up with a way forward that precluded disaster.

You’re resigning?

On Talking Points Memo, Josh Marshall cites some GOP spin, and links to an illuminating chart of the U.S. budget deficit or surplus since 1961:

[F]ormer RNC Chair Ed Gillespie … waxing poetic about President Bush’s plan to balance the budget by 2012 and claiming that the last time the budget was balanced was in 1998.

… Back on planet earth we know that the budget became balanced during the Clinton presidency and remained in balance until he left office in 2001.

You’ve got to give Bush credit for turning this country around.

In 1972, I cast my very first presidential ballot for Sen. George McGovern of South Dakota.

I was proud of that vote then, and I’m proud of it still.

Eleanor McGovern, the senator’s wife, has died at the age of 85.

“I still carry a trace of bitterness about poverty,” she wrote in [her 1974 memoir] “Uphill.” “It was not ennobling for my father and grandfather to scratch out a living on land rendered barren. The poor have few choices in life. About all they can do is persevere.”

My condolences to Sen. McGovern and his family in this time of their loss. This is a loss for all of us.