A Message From The Future

A History All Thier Own

Media Matters has put together an entire alternative history based on Glenn Beck's version of events. My favorite:
1787: Constitution's drafters include $10 tax on persons "imported" into country to teach immigrants the "value" of being American.

This exercise is useful to show how much of a parallel universe Beck has created. The gap between the conservative and the real grow ever further apart.

On the Unbelievable WW2

This is the most brilliant thing I've read today. Do you really expect us to believe all that? No one is that evil!

Trying Too Hard

Inside the sad, earnest effort to convince the world that George W. Bush was a great President. I doubt that running around telling people that Bush was great will do it. Carter revampted his image by going around and doing good things - building houses and ushering in democratic elections. There's no Peanut Foundation out there trying to convince people that the Iran hostage crisis was really a triumph. If and when the economy recovers and the US is exstracted from Iraq, that won't reflect well on Bush, it will reflect well on Bush's seccesor (What was his name again?) for cleaning up his mess. It will not make the mess-maker look better. An arsonist doesn't get the reflected glory from the firefighter.

Side By Side (Lost Spoilers!)

I know some who think its too much, but love the new parallel worlds set-up on the final season of Lost. Lost is here to frak with your brain, and frak with it they will. Here's a side by side cut of the two worlds: With the crash and without:

Scene From a Different World

Via the Monkey who knows Kung Fu, the coolest thing I've read all month:

Scenes From An Alternate Universe Where The Beatles Accepted Lorne Michaels’ Generous Offer

Wow. Just Wow.

What Does Alternative Me Watch?

Right now in a parallel universe in which Nazi Germany won World War II, alternative me (who I hope is secretly working to overthrow the regime) is really looking forward to a new Sci-Fi channel series about an alternative universe where Nazi Germany lost the war. I know this, because whatever versions of me exist out there in the metaverse, I know they are all nerds.

Who wonder about alternative versions of themselves.

Pat Buchanan: Hilter Appologist

Into the mouth of madness.

The Road Not Taken

Check out the Obama logos that didn't make the cut. Some real disasters were averted.

I mean could you have voted for a guy who used this as a logo:



Oh, how history turns on the subtle turns of graphic design.

Question

Blogs might have stopped Hitler.

Discuss.

The War for History

A. Serwer at TAPPED highlights efforts by both the Bush team and Bush himself to shore up his historic legacy. Apparently, there is a Bush legacy project already meeting at the White House, staring all the old favorites, including Karl Rove.

We need a Bush legacy Team B. Something to counter this. Someone to show up on TV ten years from now and remind everyone just how bad the Bush years were. Whenever someone tries to publish a book rewriting history or to rename a school or a courthouse after Bush, they need to be there.

Worse. Ever.

Bush is going to be regarded as the worse President in history. Charles Krauthammer is hoping for a Truman-style redemption down the road, but he is wrong. I don't have time to go into details right now, but rest assured, whole books, series of books, ten-part volumes will be written on how bad this President was.

Good Question

When you think about it.

Keyes!

Alan Keyes is back! The nuttiest nut of all got back up on that stage at the latest GOP debate. Keyes was last seen being crushed by our man Barack Obama by a laughable 70%-27% margin for a Illinois Senate seat. Now in the unlikely event Keyes gets the GOP nomination and the increasing likely event that Obama gets the Dem nomination, the historic parallels are clear:

The Lincoln-Douglas Debates. Thats right, first they fight over a Illinois Senate seat then the Presidency of the United States. Of course, Lincoln lost the Senate seat and won the Presidency. So if Obama is Douglas and Keyes Lincoln, that means Keyes will win the Presidency. And a civil war will break out...

Second though, lets stay away from historic parallels. Safer.

Great

Sure, why not give Victor Davis Hanson the National Humanities Medal. Its a fitting for our times. The Bush Administration: Where no act of stupidity goes unrewarded.

Dumber Nation

The President, more than any other individual, sets the national debate. So when the President makes a mind boggling dumb speech invoking Vietnam in support of his Iraq adventure, he renders the entire nation dumber.

As Kevin Drum says:

Another longtime conservative fantasy makes its way out of the fever swamps and into the public discourse, where we'll all be expected to stroke our chins and pretend to take it seriously for the next week or so.

We can't ignore these lunatic ravings, because they aren't coming from that guy with crazy eyes down on the corner. They are coming from the President of the United States. These ideas gain credence just because the President has said them. Add making us dumber to the long list of damages that Bush has inflicted on the Country.

Counterintuitive!

Ah, Victor Davis Hanson, the right-wing's favorite historian. Deservedly thumped both at this blog and many, many others.

But I shall surprise my audience and win myself New Republic style counter intuitive points by agreeing with something his has written. Read his call to study military history. I agree. There should be more study of military. So we can put the interpretation of military matters out of the hands of people like Victor Davis Hanson. Liberals need to study military history.

Hanson is right that military history is out of fashion on campus. During my undergraduate years I took courses on both the American Revolution and The Civil War, and both professors took extreme care in avoiding any discussion of military matters. We dealt with economics, sociology, government, everything except the battle, tactics, and strategy. Not say this stuff isn't interesting, or important, but it leaves one unequipped to deal with the Hansons of the world.

Look, you know about things you like and don't spend time on things you don't. Conservatives love war so they study war. Which mean when the time comes to debate this war or the next war, conservatives can invoke Thucydides or Germany 1944 and liberals come back with who?, when? You've got to know that their interpretation of Thucydides is complete crap and that Germany 1944 has nothing to do with the current situation.

And to know that, you must study military history. So Professor Hanson is right. About that one thing. Nothing else.

I'm Tired

Of abusing historic comparisons. Here's Thomas Sowell trying to say that Iraq isn't that bad "historically"

If and when that 4,000th American death in Iraq is reached, we need to recall that more Marines than that were lost taking one island in the Pacific during World War II.

During the Civil War, more than twice as many Union soldiers as that were killed -- in one day -- at the battle of Shiloh, and again at Gettysburg.

Look, WW2 was the worse conflict in the history of the world. It involved total war between all the major industrial powers of the world. It included the only use of nuclear weapons ever and the mass extermination of an entire race of people. There is no comparing it to any other event in history. So yes casualties will be much higher in WW2 than in our little misbegotten Iraq adventure. It doesn't make Iraq any less misbegotten. The American Civil war involved mass mobilizations of huge armies. The tactics of the day called for these armies to line up across from each other and fire volleys of rifle fire at close range. So yes lots more people were killed in the Civil War than in the current slow grinding insurgency. That doesn't make Iraq good or easy or a small mistake.

Lets use some other wars for comparison. Just to pull an example out of my ass - The US lost 1725 killed in action in the Mexican-American War. We've suffered over double that number of casualties in Iraq. And we were able to steal California. What does our 3600 dead buy us in Iraq? Spanish American War - 3,289 U.S. dead (432 from combat) and Cuba got free and we got the Philippines and Puerto Rico .

Welcome

To Crazytown:

At the Creation exhibit, two young T. rexes peacefully watch fish swim in a placid pond. Two curly-haired robotic kids play nearby. In any other place, this would be the setup for a massacre. But this pre-Noah's-flood Jurassic Park is benign. The animals are vegetarians and plants don't have thorns. The fossil record, says the museum, confirms all of this.

Mark Looy, co-founder of Answers in Genesis, is walking me through the museum. He explains that the great flood is responsible for the fossil record. Plants and animals are distributed in different strata based not on the time of their formation, but on where the flood waters moved them before receding. Those areas where no thorns or other defensive or hostile plants are found, he explains, are pre-flood forms.

Thats right, the Creation Museum

Whack a Braveheart

Alex Massie, spurred by the fact that Randall Wallace is going to be doing a movie out of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged (Staring Angelina Jolie! Talk about a libertarian wet dream.) to give Braveheart the serious whacking it deserves.

My personal favorite Braveheart crime against history was staging the Battle of Stirling Bridge without the bridge. That's like leaving the beach out of the D-Day invasion or taking the crossing of the Delaware River out of the Battle of Trenton.