Freakolitics

Freakonomics was such a big hit, I had to wonder why nobody has published Freakolitics, but of course in our America, that's probably redundant. Still, that all these weird parallels and weirder contradictions go past us without remark seems worth talking about.

John McCain's medical records, for instance. He used to give us straight talk and his medical records were open for inspection - until after 1999 when he was treated for Melanoma, a very deadly skin cancer. Now, despite promises, no records are forthcoming. Freaky coincidence? Maybe.

But nobody can really accuse Americans of foolish consistency; it's our inconsistencies that distinguish us. Republican owned media generally encourage people like Don Imus and Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter to cross boundries of decent behavior and the public laps up the idea that they are rebels against a Liberal minority, yet it was the real liberal media; namely Air America that booted Randi Rhodes off the air for calling Hillary a whore. Ann seems only to have benefited by calling Edwards a "fag." We still hear about he Liberal Media bias.

The boot licking Bushites still insist that people who don't believe we should have invaded Iraq; that don't believe Saddam had no WMD, that don't believe Saddam helped blow up the WTC, that don't believe Saddam wasn't training insurgents for al Qaeda - even if at one time or another the very government that thought up these things has admitted they weren't true, insist that it's only a Liberal Lunatic fringe who disagree. Recent polls show that the lunatic fringe is over 80% of the public.

I was resoundingly chastised for mentioning in several blogs, the loud boos the President received the other day. I was reassured that it was only a "vocal minority" as Nixon used to call the vast majority of us. Perhaps though, the stands were packed with historians. Crooks and liars details a poll of historians that overwhelmingly ranks Bush as the worst president ever. Tell it to the bleachers.