I before "E" except after "C"

I think its interesting to imagine a sect of people dedicated to this maxim, regardless of the evidence or examples that could repudiate or mitigate their beliefs, they hold firm to this doctrine as the foundation of their belief in the English language. You could argue the sufficiency and weirdness of the rule all you want, but these people are unwilling to budge from their position. These people would be widely viewed as crazy.

There are many people, including members of Congress, who are unable or unwilling to accept that Global Warming exists. They will seek validation in the one paper that describes ice thickening in a section of Greenland, ignoring the overwhelming preponderance of evidence and examples in the peer-reviewed scientific press that substantiate global warming as a result of human activity. I can't explain the rationale of these exceedingly ignorant people... perhaps they believe it is a global anti-corporate conspiracy, or just can't stomach the ramifications of what global warming means to the human race.

Similarly, there are a Disturbing amount of people in this country, including members of congress, who will flatly deny evolution, and try to make an argument that the half-assed abomination of science they call "intelligent design" ought to at least stand on equal footing to what they view as the work of scientific quacks. Again, I am unable to explain the motivations of these people, other than to say that perhaps they are simply misguided by a philosophical zeal. One cannot be a thinking, intellectual person and deny evolution.

And then this. With the release of the Iraq Study Group's Report, aka the Baker-Hamilton report, the shrill caterwauling of the extreme Absolutist spin machine has reached a new, even more hopelessly ignorant pitch. And this all comes after this much-anticiapted report seems to have really nothing new to say that anyone who has been paying any attention to what is going on in Iraq already was more or less aware of.

No, I have not read the report, but I can tell you the first two sentences read like this: "The situation in Iraq is grave and deteriorating. There is no path that can guarantee success, but the prospects can be improved." It doesn't get much clearer than that, I suppose. The second sentence of the second paragraph in the "Executive Summary" which opens the report reads like this: "Our most important recommendations call for new and enhanced diplomatic and political efforts in Iraq and the region, and a change in the primary mission of U.S. forces in Iraq that will enable the United States to begin to move its combat forces out of Iraq responsibly."

I read that as "there is no such thing as clear victory," and an endorsement of the "phased troop withdrawal with regional diplomacy" angle that has been ridiculed by Bush, et al. as "cut and run" and "talking with terrorists." "Victory is our only out," and "We're not going to leave until the job is done" are both apparently bullshit sentiments in the eyes of this report, yet these are the simpleton's platitudes we have been hearing from Bush, et al. for months.

Consider, if you will, that not a single member of the committee that produced this report stood out against the war when it started.

The fact is, this report is clearly not a panacea, however, it stands as yet another piece of evidence that Bush, et al. can't ignore. The message, at this point, becomes that much more clear. It was a monumental fuck-up to even get started with this in the first place, and now, thanks to You, Bush, et al., there is no good way out of this overwhelming clusterfuck.

Last month I facetiously mentioned that the "Iraq Solution" is to "spin" our way out... actually, I was 25% serious, but now I am 75% serious, 25% facetious about I this. "Spin" is what got us into this bullshit, and "spin" is what needs to get us out. Define an arbitrary achievable objective that is 6-9 months off, and upon meeting this goal, begin a phased troop withdrawal. It will only be "cut and run" if that's what we call it, and it will only be "bowing to the enemy" if that is the label we stick on it. This massive Absolutist Spin Machine is so fucking good at what they do, I have no doubt they can come up with the proper rhetoric to label our actions.

At this time, it is important to remember the anti-intellectual "thinking" (lack thereof) that got us here. The Absolutists, including O'Reilly/Limbaugh, et al. and Bush, et al. decided that that War With Iraq was "'I' before 'E' except after 'C'" and embarked on a mission of philosophical folly so profound I am pretty sure it is unmatched in American history. They were fixated on a remarkably small piece of the overall Intelligence puzzle, a loose and poorly corroborated notion that Iraq had: a) so called WMD -- aka nuclear and chemical weapons -- capability and/or deployability, and b) Iraq was a major international state sponsor of terror. Both these notions we now know are not only untrue, they were almost entirely lies. It was Lies that got us into this clusterfuck, lies laid out to push forward a political agenda that the individuals adhering to it weren't smart enough to realize wouldn't work.

The overwhelming preponderance of evidence and examples stood to mitigate or repudiate this small segment of the puzzle the Absolutists were Fixated on. It was their folly, and inability or unwillingness to apply any sort of intellectual approach to this, that got us here. They are strikingly similar to the ignoramus that will insist the Earth is 6000-some years old, and that Global warming as a result of human activity is a Liberal scare tactic.

People like this should not be running a government... hell, people like this should not be running a McDonald's.