another use for Duct Tape

It's not December 31st yet, but I'm ready to crown US Congressmember Jean Schmidt as "CFRP Patsy of the Year" after her fumbling attack on Jack Murtha last Friday. She quoted a Marine reservist (and Ohio state congressmember) named Danny Bubp, saying (in effect) that anyone who thinks we should give Iraq back to the Iraqis is a coward. By inference, if that shoe fits Murtha (war veteran), well ... he must be immediately vilified (Karl Rove Tactic #1). Later, she asked that her comment be stricken from The Record, but .. the damage was done.

What an idiot. I repeat: part of the qualification for being elected to Congress should be an intelligence test. And I'm not talking about something as absurd as the TAKS test here in Texas* (college freshmen are admitted based on a set of questions to a specific test, but are otherwise functionally illiterate).

* Today's lesson: Compare And Contrast the TAKS to the NAEP (National Assessment of Educational Progress).

No, I'm thinking more in line of a Stanford Binet (or Mensa-accepted test) although it would be impractical to hold them to a Top 2% threshold. Maybe the top 80% .. just enough to weed out the nice folks such as Ohio's Jean Schmidt, who doesn't understand that not every communication deserves to be repeated.

Deep Thought #80: Speaking of repeating stuff (!) I read somewhere that the few "mixed Islam" cities (villages?) in Iraq are starting to trend one way or the other (Sunni or Shia). If that's true, it lends more credibility to the idea of an eventual civil war after the American/British troops leave, splitting the country into 3 parts. When/if that happens, the big challenge will be keeping Iran, Syria and Arabia out of their internal struggle. It'd be fascinating to see a map of the area in 20 years time, where entirely new countries have formed from today's chaos.