The "Mini-benchmark"

Requires a micrometer caliper to measure

Wounded wingnuttia truly is a vicious, desperate, cornered beast, mixing and matching absurdities like "mini-benchmarks" in what's really a pitiful attempt to claim the ultimate soft bigotry of low expectation "success" in Mesopotamia, while their fellow mouth breathers continue to spew flat-out lies and bullshit when it comes to the Gulf Coast, the only region in the country where insurance claim payments are considered federal government charity.

Linking the twin failures of Team Bush in Mesopotamia and the US Gulf Coast continues to be valid, in my mind--indeed, it provides a means of at least analyzing what wingnuts consider "logic," and what the rational world calls "batshit insanity."

Besides, the very idea that we can somehow "succeed" by ANY standard in Iraq is absolute bonkers if we can't fix the Gulf Coast. That's like claiming you'll ace advanced calculus after failing basic algebra.

Indeed, the only thing wingnuttia demonstrates ANY grasp of is myth...and the myths get ever more bizarre and convoluted. Hence, Iraq isn't utter wingnut boondoggle stupid, it's Dolchstoßlegende. They're "sick and tired" of "giving New Orleans money," even though the "gift" spans a five states, mostly went towards urgent matters of basic sanitation/hygiene--debris removal/waste haul-away--or to the military for rescue and recovery, which, not to get too cynical or ugly, is also a matter of basic sanitation and hygiene...and then you've got insurance claims.

No, it's free money going to "those people," who are only going to waste it the way "they" always do, on drugs, gambling, whores, etc. (not like good family man David Vitter, who'd...never mind).

The myth of the Mississippi renaissance is also just that--a myth--and there's more than a little bit of racism involved, given that wingnut mythology, for the moment, considers Mississippi to be as white as a magnolia flower. If/when this perception changes, you can count on the perception of the Mississippi miracle to likewise do so.

Yet the same folks insisting on abandoning New Orleans can't spend lives and money fast enough in Iraq, to the point where up to our ears in hock to China in order to pay. Indeed, there's a certain perverse pleasure they take in such spending--despite the fact that it's pretty goddamned clear that the Iraqis don't exactly like us, don't mind killing us, and sure as hell aren't going to become an ally when all is said and done. Kind of like cutting off one's nose to spite one's face...but on massive doses of steroids. Wingnut "logic" in action...