Rude Awakenings

There is a growing realization among some legislators that the Bush Administration, in recent years, has conflated what is an intelligence operation and what is a military one in order to avoid fully informing Congress about what it is doing.
  —Seymour Hersh in the New Yorker

• Santa Claus doesn’t exist.
• The refrigerator light goes out when you shut the door.
• Use of a brand-name hygiene product does not turn the women around you into ravenous beasts.
• Mystical creatures are not involved in the production of factory cookies.
• Four out of five dentists are paid to agree, while the fifth is holding out for more money.
• Your favorite plush characters all have hands up their asses.
• Dancing with earbuds makes you look like a dork to those surrounding you.
• Saying somebody’s name three times in front of a mirror does not initiate a supernatural event.
• Attacking a country without provocation tends to rally the populace around their criminal leadership, allowing it to aggrandize power, silence dissent, spy on its citizenry, and engage in rogue military adventures.
• This will, in fact, hurt a bit.

Preparing the Battlefield [New Yorker]