QuagMyers

* g makes a good point:
"Bush's press conference was a joke...it killed me when he answered questions about progress in Iraq with his usual meaningless blather, then responded to the "No Child Left Behind Act" with something about, "well, we all know that if you don't have specific ways to measure progress, you'll never achieve it"...What I wouldn't have given to have someone followup with 'Well, what then are your objective measurements for progress in Iraq?"..."

the silo nature of discourse drives me batty. the repugs seem to have little mini-worlds where they (pretend to) have a model which may (or not) be consistent within a constrained bubble - but the laws of physics within that universe are irrelevant to any other universe. there is no coherence, and it seems that it doesnt even matter to them that their world-view is incoherent (which will always drive the reality-based folk crazy). hypocrisy is part of the equation, but i fear that it doesnt fully explain the phenom.

many of us wouldnt argue with the premise that its generally a good idea to measure stuff. marakon 101. but somehow the egadmin can say that its important to identify and measure the kpi's wrt, say, education - but at the same time its ok that they underfund NCLB to the tune of $30bn - and that example is even *within* the same universe.

of course, as g points out, extending a basic premise from nclb to iraq is inconceivable. what would blinky's response be to g 's question ? 'hang on - i thought we were talking about nclb.' and that would be the end of the conversation. if we pretend for a minute that blinky allowed the question to stand, the dialogue would go something like this:
blinky: we'll leave when they can look after themselves
g: when will that be?
blinky: when they have enough troops trained - i wont give an artificial timetable - that'd be like letting the terrorists win
g: ok - but u must have a plan. how many are already fully trained? how many do u need trained? how quickly are u training them?
blinky: we have 150,000 trained
g: are they all fully trained? and turning up to work?
blinky: 911. we'll fight them over there so we dont have to worry about them here. socsec will be bankrupt in 2041. the commander in chief must not waver. if you don't have specific ways to measure progress, you'll never achieve it...
g: thats what i was saying
blinky: that last bit is about nclb.
g: grrrr
g: ok, last week, General QuagMyers said: ""Almost any indicator you look at, the trends are up, so we're definitely winning." but we've seen a bunch of attacks recently, causing crazy amounts of dead iraqi's - mostly police and other govt officials - apparently the handiwork of zarqawi.
blinky: we dont do body counts. we found a mass grave with 1300 women and children that saddam killed.
g: grrrr