Slashdot Mirror
Dilbert Readers Rat Out Some Weasels
colinmc151 writes "Well, Dilbert's Way of the Weasel Poll Results are in, with 35,874 people voting. Weaseliest Organization was won by the Recording Industry Association of America. Weaseliest Company was won by Microsoft. The Weaseliest Individual award was won by George W. Bush. Weaseliest Profession went to Politicians. Weaseliest Country went to France. Weaseliest Behavior was 'Blaming fast food restaurants for making you fat.' Congratulations to all the deserving winners."
Doesn't it seem interesting that they were are all the stereotypical, most well known weasels?
France was right. There was nothing in it for them. I mean aside from *ahem* managing the 40 billion dollars that was stolen from the Iraqi people, and their vastly below market value deals for Iraqi oil that they made with Hussein, known butcher. I mean, God forbid any kind of integrity get between them and the money in their pocket.
Asshat, France and Germany could have stopped the war. Know how? Call the US's bluff. Give in to a hard line for invasive UN inspections backed up by military ultimatum. But they didn't want that. They were worried it would interupt their cash flow, and they'd become accustomed to the sweet sweet taste of Iraqi blood, sweat and tears. After all, the US could never be so foolhardy that it would just use its power as Uncle Sam saw fit, before the flacid and impotent europeons. WHOOOPS. Looks like they're about as wise as Hussein when it comes to predicting US reactions. Maybe they should stay out of the meta-game until they understand how the game itself is played.
In short the abberant, mercinary, apathetic hubris of the eurotrash who for some reason think it's their place to rule europe by Providence that made the war even possible by any measure. So when you're passing out blame, remember who the people who set the table are.
Voters want lower taxes, more spending, and less debt, and will vote for those things no matter how contradictory they appear to be.
I couldn't resist.
GW Bush's and the R's actions right now: Lower taxes, more spending, and Republicans accusing Democrats for any debt.
Students of Reagan?
I e-mailed Scott with a late nomination of SCO as the weaseliest company and Darl McBride as thw weaseliest induhvidual but apparently nominations were closed for this year.
...
Oh well, there's always next year. And at the rate the various cases are dragging out, the year after that, and the year after that,
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
Except that when people are forced (yes, like you have a choice) to work 40+ hours a week they likely become tons less effecient and the added stress gives all sorts of health problems.
Of course, I guess in the US no one can afford health care, so the health problems probably dont' affect your economy at all. At any rate, I'd sooner live free in france then as a slave to the US government and corporations. Hell, if I had a choice, I'd even learn french!
And trying to derail the California recall that was prescribed by the state constitution. They are supposed to be non-partisan, but aren't.
ACLU has unfortunately become a whole den of weasels.
-- Len
Dilbert is so old and tired, I can't help but feel that anybody who still follows that strip could spend their time in a better way.
I used to have a boss who was into Dilbert and she had her cube all decked out with the Dilbert saying, slogans, and novelties. Know how that makes you feel? You start to feel like 'Dilbert' is a convenient scapegoat, to encourage compacency and cynicism. Sort of a 'grin and bear it' thing, when we really shouldn't necessarily just grin and bear it.
The 'Dilbert' attitude is corrosive and cynical. We're capable of so much more. Scott Adam's jokes are all old tired cliches by this point in time.
But he's still got money to make in the franchise.
A Good Intro to NetBS
Everybody's heard of Microsoft, Dubya, France, and politicians. The tactics of the RIAA have been making mainstream press.
SCO and Darl McBride are hardly household words in any country, and certainly not in America.
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
...wmd programs have been found...
Nice hedge. I like the programs part. I didn't think anyone disagreed with that point, seeing as how the US sold the chemical precursors to Iraq in the Eighties, and how we destroyed so many weapons created by those programs after the first Gulf War.
(A long list of countries have similar research progams, with that list headed by the United States. In fact, I live fairly close to the United States' largest stockpile of chemical weapons.)
Conspicuously absent, however, are actual Iraqi chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons.
Oddly, no amount of the Bush Administration really really wanting to find programs actively producing weapons has made either such programs or weapons appear. In the United States many people believe that saying something often enough or shrilly enough will make it true, but to date that just hasn't made these weapons exist...weird ain't it?
Right now informed speculation suggests that any remaining chemical or biological programs were continued just as low-key research projects, maybe as a hedge against future usefulness. Underscoring that hedge, however, is the realization that these weapons were unlikely to ever be vary useful to Saddam, since their application to hostilities would have almost certainly resulted in the regime being crushed by foreign powers.
As for the terrorism links, even the administration has, reluctantly, agreed there aren't any. Which is entirely consistent with the logic that islamic extremist terrorists hated Saddam (who was fairly secular) almost every bit as much as they hated the US. Oh well, most Americans still believe the 9/11 terrorists were linked to Iraq...maybe that's because most Americans assume that we wouldn't have gone to war without good justification, or maybe it's because the Liberal Media Conspiracy is asleep at the wheel on this one?
What's really weird to me is that we're basing a policy of preemptive wars on our intelligience apparatus, which so far seems less than reliable...either that or our political leadership is lying through their teeth to justify, after the fact, in any way possible, a war that for reasons unrelated to terrorists, WMDs, etc, that for years it hasn't been shy about wanting to wage. Of course, I'm certainly not so cynical to believe that our political leadership would ever lie, distort the truth, or put up blinders to further its ideology!
Exercises for readers (be sure to cite your examples and/or evidence):
* What is today's reason we invaded Iraq?
* Did that justification exist before invading?
* Is this justification applied consistently to other countries?
* Which country should we have invaded if it were applied consistently to other nations?
* Does preemptively invading various countries make us safer?
* How about safer from terrorists?
* Does such an invasion enhance our international reputation and standing?
> The US went to war for many reasons. Go back and read some of the very early speaches on Iraq. What happened was the media picked up on WMD because it was a buzz word and a new one that hadn't grown stale yet. So the result of all this was whenever the president or someone spoke of the othe reasons, the press did the media equivilent of "Yes yes, but what about the WMDs?"
Those early speeches are what convinced some of us that the war was an evil venture in the first place. The Bush Administration never made a case for the war. They went to the US Congress and tried to shame them into supporting it by saying that the UN would if they didn't. Then they went to the UN and tried to shame them into it by saying the US would if they didn't. They went to the UN to "make the case" and got laughed at. Basically all they ever did was say whatever they thought would push the best buttons in the current context. And whenever anyone actually called them out on it and said, "you didn't make the case", they would reply "we'll make the case when the time is right".
And though much has been made of the fact that all the alarmism has turned out to be false, it was abundantly clear that the alarmism wasn't well supported even before the shooting started. If you got your news anywhere other than FAUX, you heard over an over again "The Bush Administration said today 'xyz'", followed by "our contacts in the intelligence community say that the evidence for 'xyz' is not reliable".
And just a couple of weeks ago, even after the White House had formally acknowledged that there were no terrorist connections with the Hussein regime, Mr. Bush still couldn't resist trying to push that button in his speech to the UN.
> What happened was the media picked up on WMD because it was a buzz word and a new one that hadn't grown stale yet. So the result of all this was whenever the president or someone spoke of the othe reasons, the press did the media equivilent of "Yes yes, but what about the WMDs?"
That is historical revisionism, pure and simple. While the Bush Administration was all over the map trying to find buttons to push, WMD and (the also non-existent) ties to al-Q were the boogeymen that they invoked most often to marshal public support in the USA. We were terrified with WMD before, during, and after the war. Hardly a day went by without the 'discovery' of a lab, factory, or cache, that had to be retracted a week later. The Administration made a big issue of the capture of a stash of chemical warfare suits... and then the news would cut to a scene of US soldiers training on the use of similar suits. The spin control was absolutely sickening.
And they haven't given it up yet; they tried like hell to spin the recent inspection report as a 'win' for the anti-WMD motivation - never mind the fact that the report was mostly empty spin to begin with.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
A lot of these polls, just like movie Oscars etc inevitably show how people simply vote like the media advertising tells them to - a few pop stars and influential news anchors propagate their opinions and it quickly becomes common sense opinion amongst the populist crowd seeking to be with the 'in' group. While I'm often ashamed of my fellow human's lack of critical thinking, I have to remember that the average IQ is by definition 100 and most are intellectual followers of leaders.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }