And God Saw The Peanut Butter, And Said It Was Good. Mmmm, Peanut Butter

I've been wrong all along and peanut butter showed me the way...

Gratuitous Puppy Pic

Stupid Wildlife Part II

"Bush Fish and Wildlife Service appointee not only sends internal government reports to industry lobbyists but also to online gaming 'virtual friend' for unbiased second opinion"

via Talking Points Memo

Which directly contradicts what I posted earlier:

"Chris Tollefson, a spokesperson for the service, says that while it's accurate to characterize the agency as trying to keep the draft under wraps, the agency has every intention of communicating with the public about the proposed changes; the draft just hasn't been ready. And, he adds, it could still be changed as part of a forthcoming formal review process."

It's okay to send internal reports to lobbyists (and "virtual" friends), but not to the general public.

And, again, from my previous post:

"'Please Keep close hold for now. Dale [Hall, director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service] does not want this stuff leaking out to stir up discontent based on speculation.'"

They'll let lobbyists and virtual friends speculate, though.

Wow, you can't see the forest through the corruption.

Jailing Killing The Sick

20 years with HIV. Using marijuana to keep meds down. Arrested.

"Caught in the nexus of this sick web of federal blackmail, misplaced law enforcement priorities, and prosecutorial excess is Mr. Branson, who anticipates a slow, painful death if convicted, or if by way of a plea he is forced to give up his marijuana. He has indicated that he'll commit suicide instead.

As Harsanyi explains, it's easy to get lost in the details of this case. What's quite clear is that Branson is a very sick man. He isn't and wasn't selling marijuana. At least two doctors feel he needs it. So his apparent crime was to trust the word of a doctor who due to federal law, not state law, couldn't give him her prescription in writing. For this, and for a measly 12 plants, the state of Colorado wants to send him to prison, and possibly kill him."

via Sullivan

And for you edification:


"The most toxic recreational drugs, such as GHB (gamma-hydroxybutyrate) and heroin, have a lethal dose less than 10 times their typical effective dose. The largest cluster of substances has a lethal dose that is 10 to 20 times the effective dose: These include cocaine, MDMA (methylenedioxymethamphetamine, often called "ecstasy") and alcohol. A less toxic group of substances, requiring 20 to 80 times the effective dose to cause death, include Rohypnol (flunitrazepam or "roofies") and mescaline (peyote cactus). The least physiologically toxic substances, those requiring 100 to 1,000 times the effective dose to cause death, include psilocybin mushrooms and marijuana, when ingested. I've found no published cases in the English language that document deaths from smoked marijuana, so the actual lethal dose is a mystery. My surmise is that smoking marijuana is more risky than eating it but still safer than getting drunk.

Alcohol thus ranks at the dangerous end of the toxicity spectrum. So despite the fact that about 75 percent of all adults in the United States enjoy an occasional drink, it must be remembered that alcohol is quite toxic. Indeed, if alcohol were a newly formulated beverage, its high toxicity and addiction potential would surely prevent it from being marketed as a food or drug. This conclusion runs counter to the common view that one's own use of alcohol is harmless."

via American Scientist

Farm Subsidies And Health: A Connection

I never made the connection between The Farm Bill and the health of our Nation. This is eye-opening.

The, as they say, Money Quote:

"It only takes a stroll down the supermarket aisles to understand how Farm Bill dollars flow into the country’s food chain. A dollar buys hundreds of more calories in the snack food, cereal, or soda aisles than it does in the produce section. Why? Because the Farm Bill favors the mega-production of corn (resulting in cheap high-fructose corn syrup) and soybeans rather than regional supplies of fresh carrots, healthy fruits, and nuts. Unfortunately, eating a diet high in calories doesn't necessarily ensure that one is well-fed — even if that food is cheap.

While the USDA's food pyramid emphasizes the nutritional advantages of five daily servings of fruits and vegetables, Farm Bill funding for diversified row crop and orchard farming remains relatively disconnected from the balanced, healthy diet that professional nutritionists endorse. Meanwhile, most consumer food dollars spent in farm country end up leaving the region because our agricultural areas have effectively become 'food deserts.'"
The rest

via Slog

Naturally George Bush Reads This Historian...

...what Andrew Roberts writes is completely wrong.

I was a European History Major in college (Medieval France and Renaissance Florence), so the accuracy of any book on history, of any era or place, is, for lack of a better word, sacrosanct. So, to hear Bush likes this charlatan really, well, doesn't surprise me, but makes me fear for out future (at least the next two years).

Just how much does Roberts get wrong in his "history" book? Well...

"The San Francisco earthquake did considerably more than $400,000 in damage. Virginia Woolf, who drowned herself in 1941, did not write for Encounter, which began publication in 1953. The Proposition 13 Tax Revolt took place in the 1970s, not the 1980s—an important distinction because it presaged Ronald Reagan's election in 1980. Michael Milken was not a "takeover arbitrageur," whatever that is. Roberts cannot know that there were 500 registered lobbyists in Washington during World War II because lobbyists weren't forced to register until 1946. Gregg Easterbrook is not the editor of the New Republic. "No man gets left behind" is a line from the film Black Hawk Down, not the motto of the U.S. Army Rangers; their actual motto is "Rangers Lead the Way." In a breathtaking peroration, Roberts point out that "as a proportion of the total number of Americans, only 0.008 percent died bringing democracy to important parts of the Middle East in 2003-5." Leaving aside the question of whether those deaths have brought anything like democracy to Iraq, 0.008 percent of 300 million people is 24,000—off by a factor of 10, which is typical of his arithmetic. If you looked closely enough, I expect you could find an error of one kind or another on every page of the book."

There are more example in the ariticle, so go and read for yourself.

via: Slate

DOJ And The Destruction Of An Idea

Josh Feit over at The Strangers SLOG posted about his dad's birthday and, well, why don't you read it.

The Alberto Gonzales scandal is shocking, and it gets people like me in a fevered partisan pitch about Bush's fascism and his Stalinist purges and the end of Constitutional rule.

But you don't have to be Dennis Kucinich to feel outraged or … hurt.

My dad is long retired. I called him on Monday to wish him a happy birthday. What he wanted to talk about though, was the Attorney General.

You see: My dad worked at the DOJ for over 30 years. Sometimes I forget he worked there because he finished up his career at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. But his heyday was definitely at the DOJ in the Solicitor General’s Office. (I'm proud of my old dad. He argued in the U.S. Supreme Court 13 times, representing the feds, getting a government salary while arguing against some corporate gun who was probably making equivalent pay just for that day's big gig. I got to see my dad argue in the Supreme Court twice.)

"What do you think of this Gonzales stuff?" dad asked me.
Spacing out on the significance of the question coming from my dad, I leapt off into some riff from dailykos probably about contempt of Congress.

"I worked there," my dad said, interrupting me quietly.
"Yeah," I said. "Yeah, I know that."
"I worked at the DOJ," he said. "Isn't this a disgrace?"
I stopped with the rave, and said, "Yeah. It's a disgrace."
We started talking about something else.

Thanks for ruining my dad's birthday, Alberto Gonzales. For that alone—you should resign.

Josh's post, I feel, perfectly encapsulates what the Attorney General scandal really means, the loss of what is supposed to make our country work, the rule of law separate from politics. With BushCo in office we have seen the complete disregard for this country. And I do mean this COUNTRY. The United States of America is not just a group of people in a geographical location, it is an idea. An idea that gives everyone a fair shake, an opportunity to do good and do better and the rule of law. BushCo, for the last six years, has thrown that idea out the window for power and cronyism. I may sound snarky and cynical when I write about what BushCo is doing, but I am truly tired of...of this group of criminals that run our country. It makes me sick to my stomach to see how BushCo has destroyed what this country is supposed to stand for. Just sick.

To paraphrase Josh: George Bush, thanks for ruining The United State of America. Thanks.

San Francisco Bans Plastic Grocery Bags

San Francisco is, again, first in the nation. San Francisco has banned those plastic grocery bags which, admittedly, are convenient and all that, but environmentally, not so convenient.

My cynical side is waiting for business "leaders" to protest that market forces should determine this sort of thing. Well, I don't trust those elusive market forces one bit. If we trusted market forces, I really think we would still be riding around in cars with no seat belts, airbags, crumple zones, exploding gas tanks, etc. If we put our trust in market forces, we would still be hearing about workers dieing in coal mines (oh, wait)...We would still being hearing about garment workers burning alive.

This is where government must take the lead. Market forces are fine when dealing with issues of quality of product(Toyota? Ford? - which would you buy?), levels of service, taste of consumer, location of store, etc. But to trust market forces to take the lead in of safety, environment, and worker's rights? Not so good (market forces look at the bottom line, and the environment is never factored into the bottom line).

So, YAY for San Francisco

update on the whole market forces thing:
Burger King Shifts Policy on Animals

In what animal welfare advocates are describing as a "historic advance," Burger King, the world's second-largest hamburger chain, said yesterday that it would begin buying eggs and pork from suppliers that did not confine their animals in cages and crates.

Good for Burger King.

Let's hope this is a trend that continues into other fast food outlets.

via Andrew Sullivan

Senate Votes To Pullout...Of Iraq (dirty!)

Senate vote preserves withdrawal deadline

The Senate voted to keep the deadline for withdrawal from Iraq on a vote of 50-48.

Not sure how I feel about this. On the one hand, this may just tell the insurgent/terrorist/islamist (whatever they are called) to pull back until we leave. On the other hand, BushCo has had 4 years to get this thing right and to continue to let him "manage" this war so badly would be folly. There is also the thinking that buy setting a deadline, the leaders of the Iraqi government will, finally, start to actually govern the country (if that is even possible, at this point).

I am tilting toward thinking this is good with the hope that the Iraqi government will now make a better effort at governance. But I also understand how this could create a islamist state filled with nutso fanatics that what to kill us (and any non believers) for the glory of Islam. Sheeesh. This is tough.

Andrew Sullivan wrote (sorry, couldn't find the link) that the Democrats should just give BushCo the money he requested and let him leave office with a failed war. Andrew thinks that now that the Democrats have set this time table, Bush will now be able to blame the Democrats saying the Democrats ham-stringed him and that's why the war failed. I can see the logic in that argument, but I am unwilling to sacrifice anymore lives (wasn't willing in the first place) to make a point.

Cancer Sucks

Tony Snow, White House spokesperson's cancer has returned and spread to his liver.

Scary shit.

Stupid Wildlife

How does BushCo want to change the Endangered Species Act? Why in secret, of course.

"In recent months, the Fish and Wildlife Service has gone to extraordinary efforts to keep drafts of regulatory changes from the public. All copies of the working document were given a number corresponding to a person, so that leaked copies could be traced to that individual. An e-mail sent in March from an assistant regional director at the Fish and Wildlife Service to agency staff, asking for comments on and corrections to the first draft, underscored the concern with secrecy: 'Please Keep close hold for now. Dale [Hall, director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service] does not want this stuff leaking out to stir up discontent based on speculation.'"

"Many Fish and Wildlife Service employees believe the draft is not based on 'defensible science,' says a federal employee who asked to remain anonymous. Yet 'there is genuine fear of retaliation for communicating that to the media. People are afraid for their jobs.'"

To be fair, "Chris Tollefson, a spokesperson for the service, says that while it's accurate to characterize the agency as trying to keep the draft under wraps, the agency has every intention of communicating with the public about the proposed changes; the draft just hasn't been ready. And, he adds, it could still be changed as part of a forthcoming formal review process."

Every time BushCo keeps things "under wraps," I can't help but see a warning sign blinking "cover up!"

I know I sound like a broken record about BushCo, but there's just so much!

I don't know, maybe what BushCo does is...Christian, or something?

via Salon

New Links

I've added some invaluable links to the "Political Blogs!" bar to the right.

Talking Point Memo is from the mind of Josh Marshall and company. This is the blog that broke the Attorney's General scandal, so we have mucho to thank Josh and his crew for exposing, yet again, the corruption of BushCo.

TPMmuckraker is from the another blog "dedicated to chronicling, explaining and reporting on public corruption, political scandal and abuses of the public trust of all sorts." Sounds good to me.

Anyway, check them out. Be informed. Write your Congressman. Don't be complacent.

You Say Corruption, I Say BushCo

That was a tough week. Wasn't sure if I was going to be able to hold out on the "no politics" pledge, but I made it! Anyway, on with the show....

Gonzales's Senior Counselor Refuses to Testify!

"The senior counselor to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales will refuse to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee in the unfolding U.S. attorneys scandal, invoking her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, her attorneys said today."

And the award for most corrupt administration in recent memory goes to...Bush!

Not sure what legal ramifications there are for invoking the Fifth Amendment for a Congressional hearing, but it doesn't look good for BushCo.
via: Americablog

And how does the White House communicate via email? By not using the White House email system (so easy to subpoena, you know), but using the Republican National Committee's email system!

"Multiple congressional investigations have uncovered evidence that White House appointees regularly communicate using email accounts provided by the Republican Party. As CREW has argued, such activity violates the Presidential Records Act, which requires the White House to preserve such records"

"The RNC has said that the committee provides email addresses to White House personnel so that they can keep their official and political duties separate.

So what's the official/political breakdown for Karl Rove?"

Well, it seems 95% of good ol' Karl's email have been sent using the RNC's email server. Now why would he do that?

via TPMmukraker
and
Talking Points Memo

Sit back, we're not done yet...

Just how in the pocket of the political elite is the main stream press? Just ask Glenn Greenwald.

"Think about this: there are only two instances in the last six years where real investigations occurred in any of the Bush scandals -- this U.S. attorneys scandal (because Democrats now have subpoena power) and the Plame case (due to the fluke of two Republican DOJ officials with integrity, James Comey and Patrick Fitzgerald). And in both cases, it was revealed conclusively that top Bush officials -- at the highest levels of the government -- repeatedly and deliberately lied about what they did. Isn't that pattern obviously extremely disturbing? And imagine what would be revealed had there been real investigations -- journalistic or Congressional -- of all the other scandals that ended up dying an inconsequential death due to neglect and suppression."

via Glenn Greenwald

Should I go on? No? Yes? Oh, alright, one more.

This whole Attorney's General scandal? Nothing but a mistake made with a blackberry,

"'Either Elston did not scroll down on his BlackBerry to read the last section [of the e-mail] or it made no impression on him, because he knew that it did not reflect the department's plan for replacing the U.S. attorneys who would be asked to resign,' says spokesman Brian Roehrkasse."

No longer can you say, "I don't recall," it's "I didn't scroll."

via TPMmuckraker

Hayes Valley

This is one of the designs that will be built (assuming the Board of Stupidvisors don't cackle it away with meeting after meeting).


While this design is slowly growing on me, I can't help but feel that if I lived there, every time I opened my medicine cabinet I would hear a voice say, "If you have a problem, don't hesitate to ask for assistance CALL 348-853".

via: SFgate

Calling In Ridiculous

Would it be unproffesional of me to call my boss and tell him I'm not coming into work because my job is completely ridiculous?

I'm Rich! Rich! Rich! Rich!!

How rich am I? I am the 59,763,923 richest person on earth! That puts me in the top 0.99% richest people on earth.

How rich are you?

Gratuitous Puppy Pic

This puppie pic totally reminds me of my favorite book when I was a wee child, The Pokey Little Puppy, by Janette Sebring Lowrey. I think my mom still has the book somewhere.

Harry Potter Goes Green...

at least 30% green.

"A 'deluxe edition of the new book, which has a first printing of 100,000, will be printed on paper that contains 100 percent post-consumer waste fiber.'"

fiddlel fob fee bee didleslip dipp doo

battle faddle did see neoop isf shejfef doop inck nock sin ahh. disluciekn dipoiedcbbdkdie dkddkgdkeow glogken slhop tonee snip dip onlyky noyep sneip;- fiddle sgabver cergaps doo slwqp.

MEME And No Politics

I've decided to try and not blog about Bush (see corruption), politics (see corruption), religion, or what not for a week. Instead, I will answer a small MEME a friend emailed me...

What are you reading?
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles by Haruki Murakami (translation by Jay Rubin)
and
The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins. What can I say, I'm a multitasker
What did you eat for breakfast this morning?
Oatmeal, toast - dry (I am out of jam), green tea

Favorite food?
Difficult to answer...I guess, Mexican. Unfortunately, I have yet to have good Mexican food since moving to San Francisco 14 years ago. Sad, sad state of Mexican cuisine here in the Bay Area.

What was the last book you read?
The Monk by Matthew Lewis.
Didn't finish it, though. I found it to be a bit boring.

Tell me something I don't know about you?
I really like Howard the Duck

Glass half full or half empty?
It's a glass with milk.

Stuck on a desert island. What would you do to get off (the island! Dirty man)
Don't know, but I would sell the story to a network and assure everyone I know what I'm doing.

You awake in a room. There are no lights on, but there is a faint glow emanating from the ceiling that is just out of reach. When you speak, you do not hear your voice, but that of Majell Barret (Star Trek computer voice, wife of Gene Rodenberry). The walls are black and appear smooth to the touch. Where are you?
First of all, I don't think I am actually awake, but dreaming. Having said that, I think the room is a manifestation of my anxiety I have about my job (not anxiety about losing, rather the anxiety I have for not liking my job (feel trapped in a box with a faint glow of hope just out of reach.). The voice of Majell Barret (is that how one spells her name?), signifies my sense of losing my self and becoming something foreign (see, anxiety about my job). That or I ate too many almonds before going to bed. Definitely a dream I would have after eating too may nuts! That was fun.

Do you miss having a car?
Not at all.

If there was one thing you would like to change about yourself, what would it be?
If I told you that, I would be revealing too much about myself.

One person you want to meet?
One person? Hmmm...This sounds strange, but I can't think of anyone I want to meet. There is actually a reason why I don't want to meet any one person. Inevitably, whomever I meet will be a disappoint; not at all like I thought they would be.

New Blog

There is a new blog called Bootstrapping Andrew Sullivan: An essential companion reader. The authors says, "I love reading Andrew's blog, but I find it hard to be a passive listener." Sounds good to me. It's a good antidote for those who may not agree with Sullivan's take on many issues and his often (seemingly) willful naivete of the motives of politicians and the sometimes over-the-top pronouncements of Americablog.

I've posted the link under "politics" to the right.

Have fun!

via Americablog

Quotes Of The Day

"I have no knowledge of any investigation in my office."
-Dr. James Knodell, director of the Office of Security at the White House testifying to the congressional committee today that he was aware of no internal investigation or report into the leak of covert CIA agent Valerie Plame 3/16/2007

"I welcome the investigation. I am absolutely confident the Justice Department will do a good job. I want to know the truth. Leaks of classified information are bad things."
-George Bush, President of the United States, 3/11/2004

Quote Of The Day

"Karl Rove must go to prison. No not country-club Republican I-ripped-off-your-grandma-with-junk-bonds prison where he can join the Dartmouth or Princeton rowing squad and walk by a state of the art outdoor weight-lifting facility his two-seats-on-Southwest ass would never even think about using.

I mean real prison. Like the kind you go to if you're caught in Kuala Lumpur with Rush's medicine bag.

Once again, I just can't abide by these Johnny-come-way-too-latelys who now realize George W. Bush is challenged by My Pet Goat and "The Google," Dick Cheney's an evil right-wing assclown and Karl Rove is, to quote a not so bright man, 'a grotesquely corpulent, politically sociopathic parasite who destroys all government he touches.'"

Cliff Schecter not holding back writing in Americablog

Andy Barker, P.I.

If there is a reason to watch a new show on TV, this sentence gives that reason: "[W]hen an entire episode is based around a 'murderous chicken cartel,' there's not too much room for improvement."

murderous chicken cartel!!! Now that's must see TV.

Oh, it's on NBC.

Now Obama's Non-Answer-Rephrase-The-Question "Answer"

Obama can't even answer whether gays are immoral, he even goes further to re-state what the "question should be"...

Newsday caught Obama as he was leaving the firefighters convention and asked him three times if he thought homosexuality is immoral.

Answer 1: "I think traditionally the Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman has restricted his public comments to military matters. That's probably a good tradition to follow."

By the way, it's not tradition for Armed Forces personnel to restrict their comments, it's part of regulations. Army: AR-670-1, Marine: MCO P1020.34.

Answer 2: "I think the question here is whether somebody is willing to sacrifice for their country, should they be able to if they're doing all the things that should be done."

Answer 3: Signed autograph, posed for snapshot, jumped athletically into town car.

Atheist Like Me

Celebrities

Politician

Hillary Clinton And Those Moral (maybe, you'll have to ask someone else) Gays

Hillary Clinton just made perfectly clear one of the reasons why I could never vote for her.

Jake Tapper asked Hillary Clinton whether she though gay were moral. Her "answer":

"Well I'm going to leave that to others to conclude," she said. "I'm very proud of the gays and lesbians I know who perform work that is essential to our country, who want to serve their country and I want make sure they can."

Can she take a stand of anything?

via Andrew Sullivan

Garrison Keillor : "Do As I Say, Not As I've Done.."

Garrison Keillor of Prairie Home Companion fame has adopted the Republican mantra, "Do As I Say, Not As I've Done" by writing an piece in Salon about his idyllic upbringing in a traditional mixed-gender marriage (the only kind that should be, he says. Forgetting to mention he is thrice married, his latest wife is a product of cheating on his second wife. He conveniently forgets to mention that). Here's some of what Garrison "adulterer" Keillor has to say about the importance of monogamous heterosexual marriage:

"I grew up the child of a mixed-gender marriage that lasted until death parted them…. Back in the day, that was the standard arrangement. Everyone had a yard, a garage, a female mom, a male dad, and a refrigerator with leftover boiled potatoes in plastic dishes with snap-on lids….
Under the old monogamous system, we didn’t have the problem of apportioning Thanksgiving and Christmas among your mother and stepdad, your dad and his third wife, your mother-in-law and her boyfriend Hal, and your father-in-law and his boyfriend Chuck. Today, serial monogamy has stretched the extended family to the breaking point. A child can now grow up with eight or nine or 10 grandparents—Gampa, Gammy, Goopa, Gumby, Papa, Poopsy, Goofy, Gaga and Chuck—and need a program to keep track of the actors."

Dan Savage, as usual, pulls no punches writing about Keillor.

"Keillor has been married THREE TIMES. He has children from two of his marriages, children who presumably need a program to keep track of their step-siblings, half-siblings, and sprawling extended families, children that have to be apportioned out on Thanksgiving and Christmas. Okay, fine, whatever. Keillor can recognize marriage, life-long commitment, and less complicated family structures as the ideal, even if he himself has failed—failed spectacularly—to live up to that ideal. It might have been nice, however, if the withered old hypocrite has admitted to Salon readers that he has failed to live up to the ideals he’s espousing. How about a little full disclosure, Garrison, you old adulterer you?"

How can Keillor right this crap? Does he not understand what hypocrisy means? sheesh.

Read This Book

For those of you that think there is nothing to read, I give you some titles you (and Oprah) might have missed:

"The Stray Shopping Carts of Eastern North America: a guide to field identification," by Julian Montague.

"People Who Don't Know They're Dead: How They Attach Themselves to Unsuspecting Bystanders and What to Do About It," by Gary Leon Hill.

Those people that don't know their dead, might want to read "Better Never To Have Been: the Harm of Coming Into Existence," by David Benatar.

via: SFgate

A New Beginning Or The Coming Apocalypse?

That venerable 70's and 80's pop band, Genesis is reuniting for a North American Tour.

Pat Roberston is quoted, without any hint of linguistic irony, *"See! See, I told you the Apocalypse is coming, and Genesis is just the beginning."

via: SFgate

* ;-)

Glenn Greenwald Hits The Nail On The Head

I sure you have all heard what Ann Coulter said about John Edwards during a speech at the Conservative Political Action Comitee meeting the other day:

Glenn Greenwald eloquently parses what this says about the conservative movement in the U.S. today. He voices what I have been feeling for some time, now. Glenn talks about how conservatives are more interested in the appearance of a strong, masculine leader, not the reality. I was reminded of an example that perfectly illustrates how conservatives think. Do you remember during Ronald Reagan's funeral procession, there was a riderless horse at the lead? Well, if you remember, there was a pair of boots in the stirrups; the boots were facing backwards, though. Now if you know military history, when a soldier of glory dies, it is considered the a high honor to have a riderless horse at the front of the funeral procession with an empty pair of boots placed backwards in the stirrups. This is exactly what was done for Ronald Reagan, a man that was never in the army, never saw a battle except in the movies he starred. For me, that is the perfect example of the emptiness of the modern conservative movement and, ultimetly, the danger. The modern conservative movement is all smoke and mirrors, without any of what the term conservative truly stands for.


Here's Glenn's take on Reagan:

Ronald Reagan never got anywhere near the military war (claiming eyesight difficulties to avoid deployment in World War II), and he spent his life as a Hollywood actor, not a rancher, yet to this day, conservatives swoon over his masculine role-playing as though he is some sort of super-brave military hero. Meanwhile, Jimmy Carter, who actually graduated the Naval Academy and was assigned to real live nuclear submarines, is mocked as a weak and snivelling coward who should not have a ship named after him.

And let's not forget Bush's embarassing "Mission Ac[con]plished" flight suit nonsence:


The modern conservative movement: Smoke and mirrors with no sense of responsibilty for their delusional celebration of war, Gitmo, Abu Ghirab, etc...

I really encourag you to go and read Glenn's post on the real consevative movement.