What'll They Think Of Next?

They may be wacko, but wacko is what makes 'em creative.

So Sir John of Orange has decided to sue Obama for - uhm - not sure for what exactly, but it doesn't matter cuz Obummer's not one of us so he must be up to no good somehow, and if we just keep pissing into the wind, we're bound to get sumpthin' important wet eventually.

Anyway, great idea, right?  This is USAmerica, Inc after all, and if you want somebody to stop doing something you don't want him to do; or you want him to start doing something he's not doing that you think he oughta be doing - sue the fucker.

Quick tho't: isn't it one of the basic tenets of "conservative thinking" that we should do everything possible to prohibit frivolous lawsuits?  Or is Tort Reform really just another instance of Repubs trying to recapture the glory days when The Law and The Courts and The Government were all reserved for the landed gentry?

BTW - "conservative thinking" - now there's an oxymoron for ya.

But let's consider what Ol' Doc Maddow pointed out for us on Thursday - that there's no process in place that makes it possible for The House of Representatives to sue The Prez over a dispute about some political or even legal point.

In order to make that happen, Boehner has to pass new legislation (something he has shown himself to be woefully inept at accomplishing); it then has to pass The Senate, and then Obama has to sign it into law.

Why are we paying these guys for this shit?

Who'da Thunk It?

So Iraq's all fucked up.  I was going to hang the word "again" on the end of that sentence, but when I look at almost any reporting from that part of the world in the last year or 30, it gets pretty clear that the joint is practically never un-fucked up.

Somebody please tell me how we managed to ignore every warning about how something like this was bound to happen if we went in there and started knocking shit down - warnings that came from all those damned dirty hippie libruls, going all the way back to about 1990.

And it's not that it wouldn't have happened anyway - guys like Saddam always end up stepping on their own dicks eventually - it's just that we wouldn't be standing here holding an empty bag.

We didn't get the oil, we didn't put any holes in al-Qaeda (cuz al-Qaeda wasn't fucking there until we showed up - duh), and we didn't get any strategic positioning worth a good goddamn.  But we did get 4500 dead uniforms and we got 15,000 maimed to the point of being cripplingly dependent on dope or a stoopidly inadequate VA healthcare system or both, and we got maybe millions more with varying degrees of PTSD and assorted other Invisible Wounds which means we could have thousands of human time-bombs walkin' around here in USAmerica Inc just waiting for something to set 'em off.

From WaPo:

IRBIL, Iraq — Insurgents inspired by al-Qaeda rapidly pressed toward Baghdad on Wednesday, confronting little resistance from Iraq’s collapsing security forces and expanding an arc of control that now includes a wide swath of the country.

By nightfall, the militants had reached the flash-point city of Samarra, just 70 miles outside Baghdad, after having first seized Tikrit, Saddam Hussein’s home town, and other cities while pressing southward from Mosul.

The stunning speed with which the rout has unfolded in northern Iraq has raised deep doubts about the capacity of U.S.-trained Iraqi security forces, and it has also kindled fears about the government’s grip on the capital.

In a country already fraught with sectarian tension, with parts of western Iraq already in Sunni militant hands, the latest gains by insurgents from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria prompted cries of alarm from leaders of Iraq’s Shiite Muslim majority.

Bush, Condi, Cheney, Hillary, Wolfowitz, Kerry, Kristol, Rummy, Perle, Biden, Powell, Reid, etc etc etc - all you guys own this shit.  And the only thing's that's more tragic than the colossal cluster fuck itself is the simple fact that there will never be any reckoning for it - because if everybody's responsible then nobody can be held accountable.

And as usual, if you wanna know the real deal, ask Juan Cole:

The fall of Mosul to the radical, extremist Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) is a set of historical indictments. Mosul is Iraq’s second largest city, population roughly 2 million (think Houston) until today, when much of the population was fleeing. While this would-be al-Qaeda affiliate took part of Falluja and Ramadi last winter, those are smaller, less consequential places and in Falluja tribal elders persuaded the prime minister not to commit the national army to reducing the city.

It is an indictment of the George W. Bush administration, which falsely said it was going into Iraq because of a connection between al-Qaeda and Baghdad. There was none. Ironically, by invading, occupying, weakening and looting Iraq, Bush and Cheney brought al-Qaeda into the country and so weakened it as to allow it actually to take and hold territory in our own time. They put nothing in place of the system they tore down. They destroyed the socialist economy without succeeding in building private firms or commerce. They put in place an electoral system that emphasizes religious and ethnic divisions. They helped provoke a civil war in 2006-2007, and took credit for its subsiding in 2007-2008, attributing it to a troop escalation of 30,000 men (not very plausible). In fact, the Shiite militias won the civil war on the ground, turning Baghdad into a largely Shiite city and expelling many Sunnis to places like Mosul. There are resentments.

Legalized Dope

I'm hoping I never go back to smoking anything, and I'm not convinced (yet) that fully legalizing marijuana is such a great idea - but all that said, so far so good.  At least it seems Colorado is making it work.

From Nation of Change:

Not counting medicinal weed sales, Colorado sold nearly $19 million in their recreational weed market in the month of March, and $1.9 million of that goes straight into government coffers and towards building schools. At this pace, according to PolicyMic, Colorado will make $30 million this year in pot taxes alone.

--and--

Crime rates in Colorado have dropped by 10.6% while Dunkin Donuts has begun expanding its brand in the state (really). It looks like a really good future for people living in Colorado, or any state that legalizes both medical and recreational marijuana – though it is admittedly too early to tell.The cherry on top of this tax-generating cake? Crime rates are also down in Colorado, so while kids are hopefully going to get a better education, the government (idealistically) will spend more money improving infrastructure and other business opportunities for Colorado citizens, and unemployment rates are plummeting. The Colorado police can take a little rest from their duties.

We'll see what happens down the road, of course - the likelihood of Murphy's Law kicking in with a powerful vengeance increases by at least an order of magnitude when you put politicians in charge of just about anything.

What seems pretty cool tho' is that first, you're generating some decent revenues (both private and public) which pumps up the dollar circulation in many hundreds of localities, which gooses lotsa local economies, which makes for more jobs, which makes for more taxpayers, which makes for better revenue streams etc etc - all of which means it gets a little easier to make that big ol' wheel go 'round.

But the thing that really stands out for me is that Colorado is reporting a fair drop in crime.  There's nothing totally concrete about linking pot sales to a drop in crime - altho' in my experience, it's a lot harder to do all that macho shit when you're stoned - but it's not outa the question and anyway, I think the obvious benefit is that the Law Dogs can stop wasting time and energy and money trying to enforce a buncha really stoopid Pot Rules. Plus, we should see a drop in the truly shitty activities of the Cop Entrepreneur - the kinda crap where cops make a bust solely because they can confiscate the property of a "Drug Kingpin" in order to pay for a coupla cruisers or body armor or because they can pick up a surplus MRAP left over from Iraq and Afghanistan, but they'll need a few extra hundred K so they can qualify for the matching funds from their buddies at DHS or DEA or BATF or whoever else is sending their kids to Preppy Mills by funneling public dollars into private coffers.

So anything that kinda mellows us out, and potentially puts a hole in the crony-go-round bullshit that is The War On Drugs?  Sounds like a pretty good idea to me.

Pot Smokers Beware!

Via Reuters:

Young, casual marijuana smokers experience potentially harmful changes to their brains, with the drug altering regions of the mind related to motivation and emotion, researchers found.

The study to be published on Wednesday in the Journal of Neuroscience differs from many other pot-related research projects that are focused on chronic, heavy users of cannabis.

The collaborative effort between Northwestern University's medical school, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School showed a direct correlation between the number of times users smoked and abnormalities in the brain.

"What we're seeing is changes in people who are 18 to 25 in core brain regions that you never, ever want to fool around with," said co-senior study author Dr. Hans Beiter, professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Northwestern University.

In particular, the study identified changes to the nucleus accumbens and the nucleus amygdala, regions of the brain that are key to regulating emotion and motivation, in marijuana users who smoke between one and seven joints a week.

The researchers found changes to the volume, shape and density of those brain regions. But more studies are needed to determine how those changes may have long-term consequences and whether they can be fixed with abstinence, Beiter said.

"Our hypothesis from this early work is that these changes may be an early sign of what later becomes amotivation, where people aren't focused on their goals," he said.

The study, which was funded in part by the National Institute on Drug Abuse and the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, comes as access to pot is expanding following 2012 votes in Washington state and Colorado to legalize its recreational use. The drug remains illegal under federal law.
Medical pot is allowed in 20 U.S. states.

Pot legalization advocates make the argument that marijuana is safer than alcohol a central part of their campaigns.

Other research has found drinking alcohol alters the brain, Beiter said. But while researchers do not know exactly how the mental rewiring seen in pot users affects their lives, the study shows it physically changes the brain in ways that differ from drinking, he said.

This latest study fits with other research showing marijuana use has significant effects on young people because their brains are still developing, and Beiter said he has become convinced that marijuana should only be used by people under 30 if they need it to manage pain from a terminal illness.

So first, this tiny little study - funded by the 2 most influential anti-drug policy shops in the US Gov't, and which seems not to be particularly well-designed - has somehow managed to reach certain conclusions that confirm and/or reinforce what the current policy happens to be?  Imagine my surprise.

But secondly, the researchers have found that smoking pot has a pronounced effect on your "emotions" and your "motivation".  They spent how much of my money?  To find out that potheads get kinda giggly sometimes - or maybe a little gushy?  And that they're a bit lax about things like deadlines and/or that when some people get stoned, they tend not to do much of anything more strenuous than hittin' speed dial to order a fuckin' pizza?

Sweet screamin' Jesus, you guys - does anybody up there ever fucking wonder why everybody shits on your heads about wasting time and money?  Whose brother-in-law do I have to blow to get a few of those bucks flowin' this direction?

This reads like The Onion.  Tell ya what - why not just ask The Prez what was up with him when he was smokin' that shit?  That way, you find out exactly the same thing, but you save a shitload of tax dollars; and then you could send about 20% of that money to me as a Consultant's Fee, while you crow about how diligent and frugal you are.  Fuck.

Today's Irony

...but more like The Law Of Unintended Consequences - unless you're convinced that Evil Geniuses control our legislative process from outside the visible political spectrum.



Ms Seabrook came pretty close to screwing the pooch on this one by not addressing some important questions, which are basically:
What was the rationale for the fucked-up-edness in the first place?
What deals had to be struck that made the thing the way it is?
Who were the major players at the time?
Who was lobbying for one side or the other?
She never asks the questions directly, but maybe that's OK because she's trying to focus on outcome instead of process(?) - anyway, she does (kinda) get to those points eventually.

And while Mr Johnson spins a bit of conspiracy about poisoning the well, he puts up a very good conclusion - ie: if it seems like the gubmint ain't listening to you, it's prob'ly because this law makes it really hard for the gubmint to listen to you.  And since lawmakers have the power to do something about it but continue doing nothing about it, the conspiracy angle just gets harder and harder to dismiss.

Like the man said - nobody's going to get elected running against something called The Paperwork Reduction Act.

The numbers mentioned in the clip:
Hours spent every year by Americans doing their tax returns: 2,147,483,647
...which converts to 244,983 years.

Sochi 2014

Walt Putin is a Soviet era kinda guy, and he's having a difficult time breaking with the old Soviet habit of trying to get style to triumph over substance. (not that he's the only politico who seems always to fall for his own bullshit - just sayin', y'know?)

Read about some of this shit at UK's Daily Mail.

The Rollout

Yeah - so far Obamacare pretty much sux.  Which isn't really true at all, because we don't know if Obamacare sux because the means by which we're supposed to be able to access Obamacare ain't workin', so how the fuck are we supposed to make a call on this thing anyway?

But wait - in states where they took the Federal dollars to expand Medicaid and put up their own exchanges, the thing is working pretty well.  In California (eg) it's doing just fine thanks very much.  But in the states where they refused to do anything, they have to rely on the Federal Government's version of the exchange, and that one ain't doin' so good.  Gee - I wonder if there's a correlation there?  I wonder if the states having all the problems are the ones where a certain political party has control of the government.

New products that get launched before they've been adequately tested and tweaked are just always disasters.  Wanna talk Windows8?

But after a coupla weeks (of oops; and uh-oh; and fuck - again!?!) isn't it time for somebody to suggest that the wingnuts are jamming and/or hacking the site just to make it all look worse than it actually is?

I'm not saying it's not fucked up - it looks pretty fucked up from where I'm sittin'.  I'm just saying that if both sides are the same and both sides pull the same shit and both sides are always exactly equally to blame, then where's the leftie version of "those bad ol' conservatives sabotaged our thing"? - followed of course by the counter charge of "those libtards crashed their own system so they could blame the conservatives who are chaste and pure and blameless and would never pull anything underhanded like that. blahblahblah.

Meanwhile, nothing gets fixed and we're right back in the same ol' bucket o' shit.

Oh, I See

The "deal" everybody was so tickled about early yesterday - the one that had Mitch and Harry locked in the kind of mutual stroke-fest that'd make Harry Reams blush - fell apart when the House TeaPublicans blanched at the idea that there could be a few Dems in Washington who might actually have the balls that everybody keeps telling them they need to find.

From PoliticusUSA:

Do you want to know what Republicans get out of the proposed Senate debt ceiling deal? Nothing, but a crushing surrender.

Republicans will get no changes to Obamacare. They will get no further spending cuts. The government will be funded until mid-late December, and here’s the kicker according to Greg Sargent, “According to the Democratic aide, Dems are likely to demand a debt limit extension into early summer — nine months, rather than six – with the idea being that the closer to the 2014 elections we get, the harder it will be for Republicans to stage another debt ceiling hostage crisis. Democrats don’t want such a crisis. They would prefer that Republicans simply agree to extend the debt limit cleanly. But by pushing this so deep into the 2014 election season, they are giving themselves a kind of insurance policy that guarantees that if Republicans do stage another debt limit crisis, Republicans will pay a serious political price for it.”

They saw it as unconditional surrender.  And worse yet, surrender to a guy they refer to as (alternately, and sometimes simultaneously) a "Commie Muslim Nazi Coon, and his jack-booted LibTard henchmen".  I guess we should've know it was never gonna fly.  But it did get their attention even tho' there are still way too many Repubs who are stuck in the same bubble that had them believing Romney was going to win last year.  The problem now is making sure the Dems don't over-reach, but y'know, the temptation is strong to just slap their stoopid face around the other side o' their head.

Dear Mr Hurt

I'm on the mailing list of my congress critter, and he sends me this kinda crap every week.

My reply:

Mr Hurt -

Your little update is chock-full of passive language, and if you were paying any attention at all in English Comp class in high school, you'd know that another way of saying "passive language" is this: bullshit.

You guys in the House took the hostages - you shut down the government, and you're threatening default. But you insist on painting yourself as either an innocent bystander, or some kind of victim of the bad ol' Democrats. But no matter how hard you try to spin it, people are finally getting hip to your tricks. 74% of us know you're lying to us when you say the ridiculous things you've said (eg) in this email. And what's even worse is the simple fact that you're willing to spend so much time and energy lying to yourselves as well. That horse is dead - you can stop beating it now.

There are certain things normal people just kinda know without having to be told, but apparently, you're in need of a reminder, so here's the short list:
Never piss into the wind.
Never pet a burning dog.
And never ever negotiate with hostage takers.

I look forward to the time you're selling shoes down at the mall.

Mike Roberts
434.960.8698
evillemike2009@gmail.com

Today's Quote

Explaining the Repub strategy on Shutdown/Debt Ceiling impasse:

"The rules are: I go first, and I refuse to take my turn.  And you can't take yours until I'm done.  I know you're upset, but we're both to blame here, so let's negotiate: I agree to take my turn if you agree that I win." -- Stephen Colbert

Today's Welfare Cheat

Chris Hayes may be the smartest guy on the TV box right now.

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Today's Quote

(updating a post from a coupla days ago - Kinda Says It All)

The president also mocked Rep. Marlin Stutzman (R-IN) for saying Wednesday that his party has "to get something out of" the shutdown fight, even though he doesn't "know what that even is.”

"You have already gotten the opportunity to serve the American people. There's no higher honor than that," Obama said to applause. "You've already gotten the opportunity to help businesses like this one. Workers like these. So the American people aren't in the mood to give you a goody bag to go with it. What you get is our intelligence professionals being back on the job. What you get is our medical researchers back on the job. What you get are little kids back in the head start."

That's the Obama we need to hear from on a much more regular basis.

I'm not saying The Prez should match nasty for nasty, I'm saying there's no need to suffer fools.  You get a chance to grab a dipwad like Stutzman by the heel and dangle him in the sunshine so everybody can see him for the small and empty-souled know-nothing leech that he is, then you should do it.  And as for pickin' on some junior putz who nobody's gonna remember when he's gone?  Fuck him - little man wants to be in the majors, then he plays the full nine.

'Cuse Me, Mr Speaker

...release the hostages, and then we can talk.

Kinda Says It All

"We're not going to be disrespected," Rep. Marlin Stutzman (R-Ind.) told The Washington Examiner. "We have to get something out of this. And I don't know what that even is."

These guys are a buncha belligerent hyper-testosterone teenagers, arguing that no matter what actually happened, what they insist on believing is that they've suffered an unendurable insult and they're gonna get some payback.

The Shutdown Thang

Don't kid ourself - fuckin' up Da Gubmint is what the Radical Repubs want.

They campaign on it.  They raise money on it.  They get elected on it.  And then they go to Washington or their state capitals or whatever and they proceed to fuck up Da Gubmint some more so they can start the whole thing over.

Sometimes, Doc Maddow gets close enough to touch it:

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A little gerrymandering, anyone?

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I guess the point here is that we're not done with this - not by a long shot.  We have to figure out how to step up and put these fuckin' brats to bed.

A Few Special Pix

Today's Best (Blog) Paragraph

God love Wonkette:

It has been some time since we have heard anything about our old friend BENGHAAAAAAAZI!!111!!!! We are of course referring to the insidious act a year ago when Hillary Clinton traveled via wormhole to Libya to smother Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans with her vagina while one of her vast army of clones went to the White House to roofie President Obama, drag him out to the putting green on the South Lawn, and leave him to wake up thirteen hours later clutching a bloody nine-iron in his hand with vague memories of pummeling American heroes to death in a frenzy of murderous rage. It’s really the only scenario that makes sense.

I didn't have to read any more - that made my day - but it's worth a quick perusal.

Food Stamps Theater

It seems like the Repubs in Congress are just all about doing nothing but making symbolic gestures - mostly of the raised middle finger variety.

The House voted yesterday to cut $40 billion from SNAP (food stamps) over the next ten years.  First off, it really doesn't "sound like all that much" (we're still gonna spend $700-800 Billion in those 10 years), but when you look at how little help SNAP provides for individual households, it's a real blow.

Center on Budget Policy and Priorities:

The 2009 Recovery Act’s temporary boost to Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits is scheduled to end on November 1, 2013, resulting in a benefit cut for every SNAP household. For families of three, the cut will be $29 a month — a total of $319 for November 2013 through September 2014, the remaining months of fiscal year 2014.[2] That’s a serious loss, especially in light of the very low amount of basic SNAP benefits. Without the Recovery Act’s boost, SNAP benefits will average less than $1.40 per person per meal in 2014. (See Table 2 for estimates of the size of the SNAP cut in each state in fiscal year 2014.) Nationally, the total cut is estimated to be $5 billion in fiscal year 2014.

It seems unlikely that Congress will enact legislation to remedy this problem, as President Obama and some members of Congress have proposed. Consequently, states need to prepare for the benefit cuts — including determining how they will provide information about the upcoming benefit reduction to participating households and other stakeholders as well as how to manage increased client inquiries when the cut takes effect.

So yeah, it sucks but it prob'ly doesn't make any real difference because the thing has practically no chance in the Senate - Debbie Stabanow has been calling it "a monumental waste of time", which it most certainly is.

It's just standard issue bullshit.  Repubs get to cast a feel-good vote to show their wealthy contributors how willing they are to get all hard-ass and tough-lovey, while further stoking their constituents' sense of being victimized by those rotten undeserving illegal aliens and welfare cheats; and their Democrat enablers.  And nothing but the date and the time will change.

But there're a few questions I keep thinking somebody in "the press corps" might wanna ask Eric Cantor or John Boehner or any of these jag-offs who can't manage to get Ayn Rand's dick outa their mouths long enough to think about what happens to actual flesh-and-bone people who have to live with the results of these fever-dream hallucinations they keep trying to enact into law.

(I know - silly me - actually thinking one of these Press Poodles might figure out how to do his job; and expecting a certain brand of politician to behave like a mensch).

Here's one question: In a year's time, do you think the cuts you're proposing will cause  fewer people to be poor?
And another: What's your plan if by some crazy happenstance your plan doesn't reduce the number of people in need of food assistance?

Here're some more:

• Will the cuts in Food Stamps lead to more grocery stores being opened in poor neighborhoods?
• Will there be jobs in those neighborhoods?
• Will the people who live in those neighborhoods have reliable ways to get to those jobs?
• Will the banks make capital available so all those newly minted poverty-level entrepreneurs can start the bidness of their dreams, thus inventing jobs for themselves instead of relying on somebody else to give them jobs? 
• An awful lot of families who rely on Food Stamps include children - are those kids supposed to get jobs (or create their own jobs) too?
• Do the kids need to be drug tested?
• If the parents test positive, do the kids lose their benefits as well?

One more: How long do you think it'll be before somebody in one of those neighborhoods decides to beat you with a broom handle the first chance they get?

Pay What You Owe

So here we go again.  We're still in a position of having to borrow money from ourselves to pay the bills, and we'll have to raise the debt limit (again) in the next coupla months, and of course that means the Repubs are making noise (again) about "getting some concessions" from the president in exchange for their support.

OK - as if we weren't all just sick o' this shit - here it is (again):  The House of Representatives decides how much money we're going to spend on what things.  It's right there in Article 1 of the US Constitution - look it up.  The Prez and the Senate and your dead Aunt Tilley can submit budget requests until Michele Bachmann grows a brain, but nobody spends one brass farthing if John Boehner and his merry band of Sludge Divers don't agree to it ahead of time.

So Boehner says it's OK to spend the money; Obama spends the money; and then Boehner says whoa, you spent too much money - we'll have to punish you for spending the money we told you it was OK to spend, so instead of paying for all the shit we told you to buy, we're going to shut down the whole government until you agree to keep us from telling you to spend all that money next time, which will cause our credit rating to drop, which will cost us even more money - and it's all your fault.

How in the blue-eyed-buck-naked-fuck does this make sense to anybody?

A Blind Hog

Even a blind hog roots up an acorn once in a while.

With that in mind, let's check in with the late great WaPo, where it doesn't matter what's true or what's good or what's right (this is the age of "New Media" y'know - all that matters is delivering readers to advertisers).  But I'll pat 'em on the back on that rarest of occasions when they manage to break through the deafening clutter (that they're helping to create) with something that isn't just their usual Red Team / Blue Team bullshit:

For prosecutors, the key question is whether there was a clearly articulated “quid pro quo.” If so, the gifts were bribes. If not, they were gifts. To me, as an anthropologist, this largely misses the point.

Across the massive cornucopia of human culture, anthropologists have found relatively few universals. One of the strongest of these, however, concerns gift-giving. Gifts are given in all cultures, and to remarkably similar effect. As every graduate student in anthropology learns, gifts by their nature create social ties and a sense of reciprocal obligation. To give a gift is to expect something in return, though it undermines the power and mystique of the gift to spell out too clearly what that something is. It would be uncouth to give a friend a birthday present and say “now when it’s my birthday I expect you to give me this model of this product,” but the expectation of a well-chosen gift in return is no less powerful for that. The failure to give something in response can end a friendship.

 --and--

When politicians accept gifts such as Rolex watches and Oscar de la Renta gowns from multimillionaires, they often lack the means to reciprocate as equals. Surely, Williams has wealthy friends — his equals — with whom he exchanges gifts, but the McDonnells are not wealthy. From an anthropological perspective, Williams gave McDonnell gifts that the governor lacked the means to repay in order to subordinate him. Unable to afford, say, a $10,000 purse for Williams’s wife in return for what was given to his own wife, the governor can only return Williams’s generosity by lending him the power of his office in some way. Whether the expectation of a return was ever crisply articulated as a “quid pro quo” is really beside the point — even if it is the whole point to lawyers.

My guess is that Vaginal Bob will dodge the indictment, and maybe get slapped around a bit by an "ethics committee" stacked with politicians who will give us a great look at Irony In Action by deciding not to be so "hypocritical" as to condemn McDonnell for something most of them have been doing for as long as they've been in politics - all in the name of good government and bipartisanship and fairness.

But, of course in the end, it all fits neatly into the "Both Sides Do It" narrative.

If everybody does it, then there's nobody to hold anybody accountable for anything - and we're right back to status quo.  Never mind.