The World Around You

Andrew Sullivan posted this link: Honda Ad. No special effects were used in this ad. You really ought to check it out.

NOTE: The annual Rube Goldberg finals are held at my alma mater, Purdue University.

Well, somehow I missed Michael Kinsley’s piece in Slate on the subject of WMD’s

According to a Harris poll out Wednesday, a majority of Americans still think the Bush administration was telling the truth before the war when it said it had hard evidence of WMD. A Knight Ridder poll released last weekend reports that a third of the populace believes that the weapons have been discovered. A Fox News poll last week found that almost half of Americans feel that the administration was “intentionally misleading” about Iraq’s weapons, but more than two-thirds think the war was justified anyway. A Gallup Poll released Wednesday concludes that almost 9 out of 10 Americans still think Saddam had or was close to having WMD.

By now, WMD have taken on a mythic role in which fact doesn’t play much of a part. The phrase itself—”weapons of mass destruction”—is more like an incantation than a description of anything in particular. The term is a new one to almost everybody, and the concern it officially embodies was on almost no one’s radar screen until recently. Unofficially, “weapons of mass destruction” are to George W. Bush what fairies were to Peter Pan. He wants us to say, “We DO believe in weapons of mass destruction. We DO believe. We DO.” If we all believe hard enough, they will be there. And it’s working.

The most striking thing about polls like these isn’t how many people believe or disbelieve some unproven factual assertion or prediction, but how few give the only correct answer, which is “don’t know.” In the Fox News poll, vast majorities expressed certitude one way or the other about the existence of WMD in Iraq, the likelihood of peace in the Middle East, and so on. Those who voted “not sure” (an even more tempting cop-out than the pollsters’ usual “don’t know”) rarely broke 20 percent and usually hovered around 10. Four-fifths or more were sure about everything
…
Are there weapons of mass destruction in Iraq? Sure there are—in every sense that matters, reality not being one of them.

Kinsley also answers the question many have posed about how he forms his opinions. He flips a coin!

That aside, he’s also correct. The debate about WMD’s existence is really academic at this point, most people have moved on. Yet, I’ve never been one to shy away from academic discourse.

I agree with Steven at Poliblogger.com about the “Bush Lied” crowd. The President did not deliberately lie. He took the evidence that supported his position and crafted it into a somewhat coherent case for war against Iraq.

However, where he is being disingenous is in the defense of that position. The administration is now peddling the concept that we didn’t really go to war because of WMD’s. There wouldn’t be such an issue with many people if the administration was saying, “Hey, maybe we were wrong, but we went with the best information we had at the time. It’s still a good thing we got rid of Sadaam.” Instead Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, Fleischer and others continue to push the idea that there were plenty of other good justifications to go to war, when we know America would have had to go it alone without the emphasis on WMD’s.

On that front, it’s really Tony Blair who will be hung out to dry if WMD’s are not found. He faces a much more rabid anti-war public and has the potential to be removed from office by a swell of negative feelings. This is where the story is really going.

The Mobile Register takes Wallace Malone, CEO of SouthTrust to task for his rejection of the Governor’s tax and reform package as too costly.

Mr. Malone, CEO of SouthTrust Corp., claims that higher taxes will cost the state thousands of jobs. He disingenuously argues that the governor should have asked for a $600 million increase rather than the estimated $1.2 billion the plan would bring in.

That’s a wily argument, because it allows him to appear to favor tax increases while at the same time advocating a plan that undoubtedly would fail.

The fact is, a $600 million increase would be just another Band-Aid approach to Alabama’s systemic problems. It wouldn’t cover next year’s projected deficit of $675 million, but could still be criticized as being the largest tax increase in Alabama history. That’s a lose-lose proposition.

Mr. Malone also is suggesting that tax increases would be so large under the governor’s plan that people would have to scramble to pay them. But that’s hooey. More than half of the state’s population will see their income or property taxes decrease. At least another 10 percent will see no change, and for many of the others, the increases will be minimal.

Those who would and should pay substantially more are rich folks like Mr. Malone and companies like his bank (with assets of more than $51 billion) and Alabama Power. The wealthy and the big corporations (who have been enjoying an unconscionably light tax ride for decades) are the ones who can afford it.

They also praise the efforts of Charles McCrary, CEO of Alabama Power for his support of the package.

I echo both of these sentiments. The time has come to finally move this state out of the Dark Ages and come up with a solution that will work in the long-term, and that most people will never feel in their pocketbooks. Combined with the federal tax reductions that are forthcoming, almost everyone will pay less in taxes, including the richest among us. If there was ever a time that this plan had a chance, it’s now. Seize the moment.