This is a particularly obscure yet misanthropic author (like there are only a few like that). I can't remember his name right now, but there is a Wiki entry on him so he wasn't that obscure.

He's definitely an American author...

Idiocracy (2006) Mike Judge of Beavis and Butthead and Office Space fame

Most of you never heard about it, right?

http://www.amazon.com/Idiocracy-Luke-Wilson/dp/B000K7VHOG

Billmon observed it was probably loosely based on a satiric sci-fi short story by C.M. Kornbluth from the 1950's, "The Marching Morons".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Marching_Morons

1932 Presidential Election information

Candidates:

KPD- Ernst Thalmann (13.2%)

SPD- Paul Von Hindenburg (49.6%)

NSDAP- Adolph Hitler (30.1%)

Center- Franz Von Papen (?)

Since there was no clear majority winner, a runoff election was held one month later in April of 1932. Hindenburg was declared the winner with 53% of the vote, but the NDSAP votes had more than doubled in the last 17 months. Hitler receives 36% of the vote in the run-off election. Hindenburg soon appoints Hitler Chancellor.

1933 Reichstag election information

Results: (657 seats available in the Reichstag)

Party Seats Won % of votes received

KPD- 81 12.3

SPD- 120 18.3

NSDAP- 288 43.9

Center- 93 11.7

Other- 75 13.8

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_Party#Rise_to_power:_1925-1933

http://faculty.ncwc.edu/toconnor/428/428lect16.htm

http://home.ntelos.net/~write/sociopth.html

It's analogous to our strategy of "bombing Vietnam back into the stone age". That worked so well, the Israelis thought they'd give it a try.

Dan Halutz is the first IDF chief of staff who is not a soldier. He is a military aviator. I had missed that, but a statement attributed to a "senior officer" of the IDF in a New York Times story today caused me to look at IDF leadership. The "scales" have fallen from my eyes. "I believe in AIR POWER," the officer told the Times and Halutz is likely to be the officer who was interviewed.

He has no ground forces experience at all. He reminds me a bit of Rumsfeld, the one time naval aviator and opponent of the use of sizable ground forces. Like Rumsfeld he is a proponent of "modern" warfare, gee-whiz techno- equipment and disdainful of big, heavy armored forces. He has re-organized the armed forces so that the ground forces no longer report directly to him...

Bottom Lines:

-Air Power and artillery will not decisively defeat Hizballah or force it to withdraw from rocket range of Israel.

-The Lebanese government and army are not what the Israelis have once again dreamt of and they should have known that. The policy that Israel is following is truly a triumph of hope over experience.

-An international force that will fight Hizballah in the south to disarm it is a pipe dream. Who will do that? The only realistic candidate would be France in terms of military capacity. This would be a major irony of history.

Bottom Line Advice for Israel: Occupy the ground or expect to suffer the effects of failure.

Pat Lang

http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2006/07/post.html

"I guess it's no great surprise that Colorodo Springs isn't a reality-based community."

It couldn't be. Bart DePalma lives there.

Not if you were an Iraqi...

I'm almost certain we suffered a greater number of casualties from friendly fire than from hostile action.

I was pretty sure it would be "Bombs Away" LeMay. He was a lunatic that made Patton look sane by comparison and probably the model for Gen. Ripper.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curtis_LeMay

Tell the Vietnamese they've got to draw in their horns or we're going to bomb them back into the Stone Age.

--Gen. Curtis LeMay, May 1964

We are not about to send American boys nine or ten thousand miles away from home to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves.

--Lyndon Johnson, Oct. 1964

We are at war with the most dangerous enemy that has ever faced mankind in his long climb from the swamp to the stars, and it has been said if we lose that war, and in so doing lose this way of freedom of ours, history will record with the greatest astonishment that those who had the most to lose did the least to prevent its happening.

--Ronald Reagan, 1964

We should declare war on North Vietnam. . . .We could pave the whole country and put parking strips on it, and still be home by Christmas.

--Ronald Reagan, 1965

I see light at the end of the tunnel.

--Walt W. Rostow, National Security Adviser, Dec. 1967

"Am I right? Or do does someone else have a more accurate recollection?"

That sounds about right, Paul

or an concern troll so obvious that you couldn't miss it in the dark with a blindfold on.

Glenn is only doing what any great attorney does in a killer closing argument. I hope he continues chipping away at the rot in our media and government just as he has been. In fact, he's hardly reached an 8 on the dial and I bet the dials go up to 12.

Spinal Tap Amplifiers, Inc.

By request...

http://www.busybusybusy.com/images/fredhiatt06b.jpg

That's Jerry Seinfeld. I imagined Hiatt looks more like George. Maybe Kramer. Or Newman.