Nicholas Kristoff is generally despised in the liberal blogosphere, for reasons I might be able to divine if I ever read his columns, which are usually about following whores around Africa. But my first taste of Kristoff is enough to make me want to throw up. I thought the title was ironic, so I clicked on the link for a dose of snark: Bush, A Friend of Africa.

Instead, he offers this: “So as the G-8 summit meeting convenes this week, focusing on Africa, it’s worth acknowledging that Mr. Bush, and conservatives generally, have in many ways been great for the developing world. At their best, they bring a healthy dose of hands-on practicality to their efforts.”

Practicality, like these people are so fucked why bother to even try practicality. Most of the aid Bush has given to Africa–if it even makes it there once it’s appropriated–was arm-twisted and shamed out of him, and he ties it to impractical practices, like abstinence-only sex education. And we don’t even have money to lend, thanks to a completely impractical war being fought with an impractical lack of strategy.

In the absence of substantial aid, monetary or otherwise, a practical president interested in helping the country out of its ditch could try to do something about Robert Mugabe, could do something about what’s going on in the Sudan, and would give more than Bush has–European leaders on their way to the G8 summit are begging Bush to commit more resources, but he refuses, and he has even cut off funding for the UN Population Fund. For all Bush seems to care about Africa, it may as well not exist.

Shit gets more and more Austin Powers every day. I’d laugh if it weren’t so funny.

“U.S. Alert: Terrorists May Blind Pilots With Lasers
Federal officials are concerned that terrorists could try to down aircraft by blinding pilots with laser beams on landing.”

The New York Times is reporting that NASA officials have said that “the two astronauts aboard the International Space Station have been asked to curb their calories because of a food shortage.”

The article quotes the NASA space station manager, William Gerstenmaier, who said, “This is not easy and requires lots of compromises.”

“For example,” he added, “if the shortage persists, our astronauts may need to compromise by curbing their calories further, for example by not eating any food at all, and slowly starving to death in an environment where, as the movie Alien reminded us, no one can hear you scream.”

Upon further questioning, Gerstenmaier admitted that the astronauts would be so weakened by hunger as to be unlikely to scream. “A weak kind of moaning is more likely,” said Gerstenmaier. “Maybe something like a kind of soft, ‘Help,’ or ‘Tell my baby girl I love her,’ then nothing.” Gerstenmaier suggested that the two astronauts would likely use their remaining energy to fight over scraps of food or the chance to devour one another. “If the victor even has the energy to chew through those polyeurethane suits I’ll be a monkey’s uncle,” said Gerstenmaier.

This week’s “Shut the fuck up, Ralph Nader” is devoted to New York Times columnist David Brooks. On the face of it, Brooks seems to have much in common with Decry. Like Decry, Brooks is arrogant, smug, and self-righteous, and like Decry, he writes publicly.

But that is where the similarities end. Unlike Decry, Brooks is paid to write, and the readership of his New York Times exceeds the readership of Decry by infinity percent, which is what you get when you divide 1,500,000 by zero. And most importantly, unlike Decry, Brooks is a stupid, whiny conservative who desperately wants people to believe that he’s an intellectual.

Brooks is not the only New York Times columnist who should relinquish his job to someone more like me (see future entries “Shut the fuck up, Bill Safire,” “Shut the fuck up, Thomas Friedman,” and “Quit being such a pussy, Nicholas Kristof”), but he is the most obnoxious. Just look at his picture. As if that weren’t enough, Brooks also has goofy teeth and irritating mannerisms, like twitching his head to the side every time he finishes a sentence. You can watch him doing this while discussing his multiple moves to and from suburbia here.

I would forgive Brooks his puniness and ugliness if it weren’t for the screed that he makes me read every three days. His most recent column is again a steaming pile of crap that describes a fantasy world of global welfare and credits it to free trade.

November 27: “Good News About Poverty”

Brooks leads off by saying that he “hates to be the bearer of good news” because “only pessimists are considered intellectually serious.” Oh yes, David Brooks, we know how important it is to you that you be considered intellectually serious. We can see it reflected in your silly glasses and in your affectations, and in the way you howled when it was observed on November 3rd that nearly every literate American voted against George Bush.

Brooks continues on to make a willfully ignorant case that globalization helps poor people worldwide, principally by citing national economic indicators from Asian countries and rehashing a trickle-down argument. He quickly dismisses all of sub-Saharan Africa as an outlier, blaming their troubles on “bad governments and AIDS.” It is not clear why David Brooks thinks he is qualified to discourse on global flows of capital and world suffering; perhaps he learned about these things while cutting his journalistic teeth as a police reporter for the Chicago City News Bureau.

“Write this on your forehead,” Brooks pukes, “Free trade reduces world suffering.” Well, no thank you. But here’s what I will write on my forehead, you foreskin: “Shut the fuck up, Ralph Nader.”

Choice excerpts from the New York Times’s semi-obituary for Ol’ Dirty Bastard:

“Somehow an entropic octet obsessed with obscure kung fu movies and even more obscure neo-Gnostic theology became one of the decade’s most visible pop-culture brand names.”

“No cause of death has been determined, but already, as often happens, wild anecdotes and bits of speculative biography are threatening to obscure the exhilarating music that won him so many fans.”

Bob Jones III, president of the fundamentalist college of the same name, has written a letter to the president telling him that “Christ has allowed you to be his servant” so he could “leave an imprint for righteousness,” by appointing conservative judges and approving legislation “defined by biblical norm.”

“In your re-election, God has graciously granted America - though she doesn’t deserve it - a reprieve from the agenda of paganism,” Mr. Jones wrote. “Put your agenda on the front burner and let it boil. You owe the liberals nothing. They despise you because they despise your Christ.”

Text of the resignation letter, dated Nov. 2 and released Tuesday, from Attorney General John Ashcroft to President Bush:

Dear Mr. President:

Nothing in my life compares to the high honor of serving America as Attorney General in your administration.

The cause of justice is indeed a serious calling. Americans have been spared the violence and savagery of terrorist attack on our soil since September 11, 2001.

During the last four years our violent crime rate has plunged to a 30-year low. By that I mean that the number of violent crimes has actually risen on my watch. There have been more robberies, more assaults, more household burglaries, more car thefts, more theft in general, and more property crimes. And it’s a good thing we don’t count murders as “violent crimes” because the number of murders actually increased between 2002 and 2003. And the claims of a reduction in violent crime are based on victim interviews, so when I say there has been a reduction in violent crime, I mean there are fewer people who think they have been the victim of a violent crime.

Under your “Project Safe Neighborhoods” the number of gun crimes has fallen to its lowest level in modern history, although American kids are still 16 times more likely to be murdered with a gun than kids in the 25 other industrialized nations, and because only 2% of federal gun crimes are actually prosecuted, they don’t really count as crimes in our statistics, so ka-ching! Plus, we prosecuted 5% fewer gun traffikers in 2003 than in 2002 and we didn’t file one case against a gun retailer for illegal sales in 2003–which means there are fewer guns falling into the wrong hands. And there’s more, Mr. President! The proportion of homicides committed with guns has risen to its highest level since 1997 and the FBI says homicide rates have actually increased. I strongly support an aggressive restructuring of the FBI.

Drug use among America’s young people has fallen and continues to fall significantly. Well, if a couple of tenths of a percent is “significant.” Use of inhalants has actually increased, and I look forward to arresting and torturing these young men and women once they turn 18.

Corporate integrity has been restored despite the work of your Corporate Fraud Task Force, which has been working tirelessly to defraud investors and deceive the American public. The record number of high-profile scandals is the best way to demonstrate your policies are working, just as the rising casualties in Iraq show you are successfully luring terrorists into your trap. As a result United States markets have reinforced their position as the trusted allocators of the world’s capital resources.

Thank you for your leadership which has made these and many other justice-related achievements program activities possible. And thank you for ensuring that we never realize these possibilities.

The demands of justice are rewarding, depleting, and erotic. I take great personal satisfaction, if you know what I mean, in the record which has been developed, so to speak. The objective of securing the safety of Americans from crime and terror has been achieved. So, I guess you can call off that war on terror thing. Because there is no more terror. No backsies.

The “rule of law” has been “strengthened” and “upheld” in the courts, and where no rule of law exists, we have initiated a “rule of secrecy” whereby we can torture Arabs without the meddling interference of the “international community.” Yet, I believe that the Department of Justice would be well served by new leadership and fresh inspiration. I believe that my energies and “talents” should be directed toward other challenging horizons, like not fucking up the Department of Justice any more.

Therefore, I “humbly” state my desire to resign from the office of United States Attorney General.

It would be my pleasure, if you know what I mean, to structure the announcement of this resignation and the ensuing transition in conjunction with you so that your administration and the cause of justice are served optimally. No, I don’t understand that part either, Mr. President. Hand this note to Karen Hughes.

I have handwritten this letter so its confidentiality can be maintained until the appropriate arrangements mentioned above can be made. I hope this letter also serves as proof to historians of the future that I can write.

I am grateful to you for the profound “honor” of serving under your clear, principled leadership and under the leadership of the higher power we both revere.

May Gogdra continue to bless, guide, and direct you and your family as you lead America forward in freedom.

Most Sincerely,

John Ashcroft

don’t get mad get even. fuck ‘em. we’d have had a lot of work to do even if kerry had been elected. now that the election is over, let’s all admit that kerry is, like al gore, a weak-kneed politician — hardly the champion that we’d need to lift us out of this mess. did any of you ever *really* believe in john kerry? i didn’t. i just knew that having him in office would make our job easier. we’d have continued backsliding, but at a decreasing rate. democrat politicians can’t be trusted to accomplish anything, especially those that these party idiots have convinced to shoot for the centrist vote.

as i also said four years ago: ralph nader is wrong for the right reasons — we DO need a revolutionary change in the way things are done here. yeah, he’s an asshole, yeah, he shouldn’t have run, yeah, his timing was wrong, yeah, he’s partially to blame for the part of the mess. but his basic premise is spot-on. we’re not going to “win” anything (in the broader sense) until we take a rovian approach. we don’t need the middle; the middle can’t make up its puny mind. it never will. the middle will always split down the middle, by very virtue of its being the middle (see that logic?). we need a revolution, and it has to come from the very bottom. i was in a las vegas slum on saturday and knocked on the door of a young black woman, who stood there simultaneously talking to me, talking on her cellphone, and screaming at her three kids. i gave her my spiel and then she told me that she wasn’t registered.

george bush is not really the problem, he’s a manifestation of problems. a problem is that 33% of voters vote as evangelical christians. a problem is that some majority of Americans votes on terrorism and jingoism above jobs, above the environment, above civil liberties, above mercy, above knowledge, above race and gender equity. until we change these things, we will have this problem every four years, ad infinitum, will carp and pout on election night about these fuck-heads in [insert state name].

karl rove is not really an evil genius, he’s just the only political strategist in the country with a pair of nutz big enough to break from the center. it’s not machiavellian wizardry; it’s common fucking sense and good arithmetic. let’s stop giving the jackass more credit than he deserves.

so what’s up? power to the fucking people, that’s what’s up. i hear you saying, “easier said than done, rob. those people just feel disenfranchised, rob. they don’t feel like there’s anything to gain from participating in the system. they just don’t care. we’ve tried; they still won’t vote.”

well, shut up. that’s a facile excuse. we can’t hide behind it anymore.

so, boo hoo and sniffle. now wipe your snotty nose and get ready.

So two of the debates are over. It would be nice if the debates determined the presidency more directly. Kerry and Edwards would win 3-1 or something, which is not so far off from winning 4-3, as Bush did in 2000.

One point I wish Kerry or Edwards would make is the dubious way the Bush administration claims America is safer. Kerry and Edwards are both alluding to uninspected luggage in planes’ cargo holds, but they tend to stop there. On Friday, after Bush brags about killing “thousands of Al Qaida,” I want Kerry to say:

“Killing people in Afghanistan does not make America safer. What makes America safer? The President does not seem to know, but I’ll tell you. Securing our ports makes America safer, so I don’t know why the President refuses to devote the resources to do so. Inspecting every bag that goes on an airplane makes America safer, so I don’t understand why the President refuses to do so. Keeping tabs on nuclear material makes America safer now, not in 13 years, which is how long President Bush plans to take gathering rogue nuclear weapons. Putting more cops on the street makes America safer. Making sure our veterans and their families are financially secure so they can focus on fighting terror makes America safer. Sending our manpower and resources to Iraq instead of using them to secure our nation has left the United States vulnerable to attack. And now the President says that because I am standing here telling you the truth, I am sending the wrong message. Only a stubborn leader on a failed course would say the truth is the wrong message for the American people.”

It seems like one of the problems the press has with covering the Bush administration&#151aside from sucking ass&#151is that in order to make their own coverage seem dignified and serious, it must make the administration seem dignified and serious. So the press takes seriously what the administration says, even when the administration is clearly full of shit.

Take this article from the Washington Post. The Post has stood out this year for its slowly growing sense of responsibility to the American public, which has manifested itself in articles timidly critical of President Bush. The headline reads, “Management Style Shows Weakness.”

In order to have something to write about, and to contribute to the increasingly ragged image of the United States as a competently-run nation, the Post must dignify President Bush’s total lack of engagement with his job by claiming the President “has long prided himself for focusing on big goals rather than on niggling details and delegating significant responsibility to his aides.” In his “autobiography” A Charge to Keep, Bush writes, “My job is to set the agenda and tone and framework, to lay out the principles by which we operate and make decisions, and then delegate much of the process to them.”

In other words, Bush is a figurehead&#151his presence symbolizes a set of common ideals. And don’t we want a president who does more than “set the tone?” Does Bush really believe that stubborn ideologues like Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz give a shit about the “tone” he sets? By claiming he sets the tone rather than calls the shots, Bush gives his underlings a blank check and distances himself from the fallout. He excuses himself from making difficult decisions and frees himself to reverse those decisions, at no cost to himself, if they don’t do well. If Bush had not set a tone for himself of mulish stubbornness, he might have taken better advantage of the consequence-free presidency he has created.

This so-called management style doesn’t just excuse the president from managing. It’s spin: Bush’s handlers have made his lack of curiosity and inability to govern an asset, and no one misses a chance to praise him for it. Fat, pockmarked White House counsel Alberto R. Gonzales, who recently called the Geneva Conventions “quaint,” said actaually taking care of business is “contrary to the way this president operates, and I think it’s really sort of bad government, to try to micromanage — particularly the military.” We’ve all seen what happens when members of the military are left to their own designs within the “tone” Bush sets for them.

It has long been obvious that Bush is a mirage. He has no substance at all (it is no longer cool to think Bush is an idiot, everyone loves talking about how shrewd he is, but since when is shaking hands well shrewd? Would you ever call a doofy frat boy shrewd simply because he was popular? Bush is an idiot.), and to stretch the metaphor, he’s leading Americans thirsty for leadership into a hostile wasteland of bad choices.

So Bush, with his mirage of hands-off leadership, manages to preclude, deflect, and delegate criticism and responsibility. Take the prison abuse scandal, which no one seems to give a shit about any more (hopefully they’ll give a shit about the fact that Douglas Feith got drunk and told Ahmed Chalabi about breaking Iran’s secret code, which Chalabi told Iran). Bush simulataneously passed the buck to Rumsfeld, claimed the tone he set did not allow for this kind of thing, and stood firmly behind Rumsfeld. He shored up his image by claiming he knew nothing about the scandal (he was “above it” rather than ignorant of it) and Rumsfeld weathered a couple days of criticism after admitting he didn’t tell the President about the situation when he should have (Rumsfeld gets in trouble, sort of, for Bush’s ignorance). But that is precisely the kind of shop Bush runs&#151people don’t tell him things because he has made it clear he does not want to hear them. His hands-off management style keeps his hands clean and frees him from dealing with pesky nation-running demands when he’d rather play Minesweeper. People don’t know how to respond when the president both denies knowledge of something and refuses to do anything about it.

Anyway, the Post is flirting with reality in this article. But the press seems to feel invested in dignifying the president. It’s important to have a president who is respected for a lot of reasons. But that’s the president’s job. Once again he has delegated responsibility, this time to the press. So because it has such a grave responsibility, instead of criticizing Bush for being unable to make decisions, the press pretends he makes decisions in a certain way that have not produced great results. The only sources qualified to comment on his management style are sycophants like Gonzales and Karen Hughes (If Karen Hughes’s brain was a blue dress, it would be covered in Bush’s management style.), who get their influence from the fac that they work for someone who does not like to make decisions.

Our nation seems to care equally about “being presidential” and having a president you can “have a (non-alcoholic) beer with.” You can’t have both. I’d much rather have a president who runs the nation capably. Then I can relax and have a beer with my friends.