Here are some excerpts from the May issue of Harper's Index (not yet on-line):
• Percentage of lawyers and fast-food workers, respectively, who say their jobs may make the world worse: 3.6, 42.3
• Number of insect fragments allowed by the FDA in a standard jar of peanut butter: 153
• Percentage of doctors who admit to having lied to a patient within the last year: 11
• Portion of black American households that have no assets other than a car: 1/4
• Total advertising revenue of the U.S. newspaper industry in 2011: $23,900,000,000
• Of Google: $36,500,000,000
• Date on which a Slovakian government agency opened on-line voting to name a bridge over the Morava River: 2/21/2012
• Percentage of voters who sought to name the bridge after Chuck Norris: 75
Blast from the Past. At Daily Kos on this date in 2007:
Even the most hackneyed of Hollywood schlockmeisters wouldn't dare to reuse a plot so often. Iraq. Katrina. The story is always the same. It starts with some vaguely formed plan that, while it may be packed in words we usually think of as good (freedom, democracy, etc.) lacks any real substance or detail.
Said plan is then executed with blind arrogance, and a stiff-necked insistence that reality must be ignored until it can be made to conform with the goals. And while the rest of the world is forced to smash its nose against the fantasy, those in charge bumble on with the confidence that their vision is so innately superior that they can act as they will.
No one executes this script like Paul Wolfowitz. As the chief architect of Iraq policy, Wolfowitz was "certain we will be greeted as liberators."
His plan called for us to march along flower-strewn streets wearing crowns of laurel leaves, watch as Iraqi's renamed their capital Georgebushdad, and ride the tidal wave of freedom that would sweep the Middle East. Funny thing is, that's still the plan. One of the core concepts of any neocon fantasy is that if at first you fail, just keep putting more people in harm's way until the bad guys tire of killing them. 100,000 U.S. casualties, maybe a million dead Iraqis. Then comes the flowers, just you wait and see.
After failing upward into the leadership of the World Bank, Wolfowitz launched a crusade against corruption. [...]
Having secured for his girlfriend a job at the State Department where the World Bank treated her to a $193,000 tax free salary (which is, by the way, greater than that of Condoleezza Rice), Wolfowitz's credentials as a fighter of corruption are now on par with Kim Jung Il's bona fides for pushing democracy.
He's followed the neocon script to the letter. Launch a quixotic but laudable-sounding quest, disregard how your actions may be harming the people you are supposedly helping, and demonstrate your disdain for the rules as they apply to yourself. Truly, nobody does it better.
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