A couple of small towns in Vermont passed an unenforceable law to declare Bush and Cheney criminals. I like it. Personally, I favor something more like Megan’s Law, in which Bush and Cheney would forever after be required to register with local law authorities where ever they go, with their names, photographs, addresses, and a list of their offenses made public. (I’m actually not a big fan of Megan’s Laws, but if we’re going to publicly track one kind of monster, I think far more wicked monsters should be subject to the same penalties.)

It’s good to hear that God has retracted his endorsement of Mike Huckabee. That’s one pious fraud out of the race.

There’s still one more servant of theLord in the running, though, and I’m still conflicted about it. I’ll vote for him, alright, but contrary to the assertions in that link, his pious musings have elicited a peep or two of protest from this nonbeliever.

We now have an estimate of the cost of the Iraq war. Remember when our administration was blithely proposing that it would require a few billion dollars?

The authors present a damning “Nightline” transcript in which one official, Andrew Natsios, blandly told Ted Koppel that Iraq could be completely reconstructed for only $1.7 billion. (With the war now costing $12.5 billion a month, Natsios’ estimate would have been accurate if he had stipulated that it would pay for four days’ worth of reconstruction. Which, considering the delusional nature of most of the Bush administration’s pre-invasion estimates, may have been how long it thought it would take to rebuild the country.) Other officials settled on a figure of $50 billion to $60 billion. Larry Lindsey, Bush’s economic advisor, went way out on a limb, suggesting that the war might cost $200 billion — a figure derided by then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld as “baloney.”

So how much has it cost? $3 trillion. That’s a bit of money.

In 2005, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that the war had so far cost about $500 billion. That figure was obviously far higher than initial Bush administration estimates, but Stiglitz and Bilmes suspected it was still much too low. After researching the issue, they published a paper in January 2006 that conservatively estimated that the true cost of the war would be between $1 trillion and $2 trillion. Even at the time, they regarded that estimate as excessively conservative, but didn’t want to appear extreme. Stiglitz and Bilmes’ book, which is based on that paper, doubles their earlier estimates to $3 trillion, making Iraq the second most expensive war in U.S. history, trailing only World War II, which cost an adjusted $5 trillion (and in which 16.3 million Americans served in the armed forces, with 400,000 dying). But the authors regard even their new figure as conservative: Their estimates range from $2 trillion, in the best-case scenario in which the U.S. withdraws all combat troops by 2012 and fewer veterans need medical and disability pay, to more than $5 trillion. Add in the cost to the rest of the world, and the price tag could exceed $6 trillion.

Bush was the evil incompetent who got this wasted effort started, but I can’t blame him alone: anyone remember that immense principled effort the Democratic party made to oppose the ramp-up to war? Nah, neither do I.

Those Canadians have got a few prigs running things up there, and they’ve apparently trying to pass some laws to slap down those darned naughty artist types. There’s just one line from the sour old prude that’s worth mentioning, the rest is the usual noise.

A well-known evangelical crusader is claiming credit for the federal government’s move to deny tax credits to TV and film productions that contain graphic sex and violence or other offensive content.

Charles McVety, president of the Canada Family Action Coalition, said his lobbying efforts included discussions with Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day and Justice Minister Rob Nicholson, and “numerous” meetings with officials in the Prime Minister’s Office.

“We’re thankful that someone’s finally listening,” he said yesterday. “It’s fitting with conservative values, and I think that’s why Canadians voted for a Conservative government.”

I’d like to make a distinction here.

“I will not watch movies with graphic sex scenes” is a good moral value; it’s defining a standard of behavior for yourself. If McVety, Day, and Nicholson wish to abstain from watching movies with sex, then that’s fine. Personally, I am unperturbed if someone else wants to watch porn, as long as they don’t force me to watch it too, and I think that’s a reasonable value as well.

Conservative values don’t seem to have anything to do with personal standards, at least as they are expressed by politicians and the media. “You will not watch movies with graphic sex scenes” is not what I would consider a moral good. It’s the imposition of values on someone else, not yourself. There really are only two possibilities here: 1) McVety, Day, and Nicholson already do not watch movies with graphic sex scenes, in which case this law causes them no hardship and they can’t be said to be acting for their own good; or 2) McVety, Day, or Nicholson do watch movies with graphic sex scenes, in which case they are hypocrites imposing a standard on others to which they do not adhere themselves.

We’ve been living with “conservative values” here in the US for a long time now, and they rarely seem to have anything to do with a social good, or with people actually setting exemplary moral standards for themselves. It’s always about narrowing experiences, constraining others to a single permissible range of behaviors, and punishing others outside your domain of accepted social norms.

You know, it is possible to be a liberal, progressive sort of person who doesn’t do any of the “bad” things that conservatives detest — who doesn’t drink to excess, use addictive drugs, or gamble, who is faithful to a single spouse and doesn’t spend time on pornography or prostitution. That people don’t do those things is not the distinguishing characteristic of conservative vs. liberal at all. The real difference is that conservatives take sanctimonious pleasure in requiring everyone else to be just like their ideal, and seem to be less interested in measuring up to their own standards themselves than in demanding that others do so; liberals are people who put first priority on abiding by their own standards, and a second priority on allowing others to live their lives as they see fit.

John Hagee is one of the most contemptible people to have an unwarrantedly prominent voice in our country. He’s an obese, smug televangelist whose claim to fame is a terrifying dedication to the apocalypse, war and death, and prophecy and damnation. He is a perfect example of how arrogant ignorance can slide directly into evil. The man is a walking talking nightmare, and even more frightening, some people take this raving nutcase seriously.

The latest to bend over and praise this demented fuckwit is none other than John McCain.

It’s unbelievable. The Republican party is still in thrall to these vile goblins of the religious right.

Perhaps I’m not as disappointed as Greg, but I am unimpressed with the ‘presidential’ debate at the AAAS. What we had was two assistants to the Clinton and Obama campaigns (the Republicans were complete no-shows) pop in to run through some canned promises. There was no debate. There was no commitment from the candidates themselves.

I think that the ScienceDebate2008 idea is a great one, and the failing is really on the part of the candidates and the parties themselves. Obama will happily leap to appease the faith-heads of an organization like Call to Renewal; Clinton thinks the Decorah First Methodist Church is an appropriate campaign venue; the Republicans traditionally kowtow to training grounds for anti-science morons like Bob Jones University; but none of them could invest a day speaking to scientists at one of the biggest science conferences in the country, sponsored by a prestigious organization like AAAS? Their priorities are clearly screwed up.

A presidential science debate is a grand idea. What we need to do now, though, is not praise them for a pathetic, back-handed, minimal effort, but rake them all over the coals for their inadequacies.