Is the big bang theory wrong...?

Remember folks, its just a theory.  There is much about the Big Bang theory that makes it far from perfect.  Im not saying I've better ideas, just that the Big Bang Theory doesn't explain everything.  For example this large blob was found deep in space/time:

"The farther out we look into space, the farther we go back in time, " explained lead author Masami Ouchi, a fellow at the Observatories of the Carnegie Institution who led an international team of astronomers from the U.S., Japan, and the United Kingdom. "I am very surprised by this discovery. I have never imagined that such a large object could exist at this early stage of the universe's history. According to the concordance model of Big Bang cosmology, small objects form first and then merge to produce larger systems. This blob had a size of typical present-day galaxies when the age of the universe was about 800 million years old, only 6% of the age of today's universe!"

Somebody's got some 'splaining to do.

Stay Tuned...

Just a quick note to let you know the page has been updated with the information I currently have.  If you haven't checked it lately, I changed the target goal from none to $500.00 yesterday.  It seemed more reasonable to set an amount even while we're not sure of the final funds needed.  I'm proud to say we've surpassed 100% by $50.00.  What a gang.

I'm letting it run it's course for awhile for reasons stated on the page.  Any extra goes to DickDay.  Need I say more?

 

http://tpmcafe.chipin.com/tpmcafe

 

Here is one, please add more.

http://www.commissiononaccountability.org/page/invite/accountability?stg_signup_id=128626

It's been a long, a long time coming but I know
A change gon' come oh yes it will
- Sam Cooke

16 months "surveyed." From January 2008 to April 2009

Five different sections, excluding "news" pages written by TPM staff and contributors to "All Readers' Posts"

Persons in the following sections are "invited" to participate.

Twenty-one (21) total posts by

Eight (8) different writers, including

One (1) "member" of the Coffee House "regulars" from May 14 to July 14, 2008

Read more »

In today's Washington Post, Michael Scheuer trots out the usual argument about the "ticking timebomb scenario":

In surprisingly good English, the captive quietly answers: 'Yes, all thanks to God, I do know when the mujaheddin will, with God's permission, detonate a nuclear weapon in the United States, and I also know how many and in which cities." Startled, the CIA interrogators quickly demand more detail. Smiling his trademark shy smile, the captive says nothing. Reporting the interrogation's results to the White House, the CIA director can only shrug when the president asks: "What can we do to make Osama bin Laden talk?"

Let's pretend that this 0.0001% scenario -- which has never occured -- happens and that the US captures a top Al Qaeda member who has fresh info on a pending attack.

1.We wouldn't know that there was a pending attack. Scheuer's scenario is a joke: OBL would not say a word until it was over. A child could poke holes in this. Without being handed gifts of crucial intel by captives, we would be guessing. We might be wrong, and would likely (99% of the time) be torturing someone who doesn't know of a pending attack.

2. Even if we know, the enemy would simply lie. If tortured, they would lead you on a wild goose chase to the wrong location, the wrong city, and the bomb would go off anyway somewhere you hadn't evacuated. Indeed, if OBL tells us that within one hour, NYC will be destroyed, we would have to worry that this is misinformation meant for us not to evacuate DC. The incentive for the terrorist to lie and achieve success in their plot is immense. They are willing to die.

So, even though the terrorist would simply lie to us, the pro-torture camp is willing to destroy the ideals of our nation because of this one immature, paranoid fantasy. 

But wait, there's more! 

• Opportunity costs: How many valuable man-hours was wasted following up lies, and what is the opportunity cost of missed real leads? 
  
• How do you know it's really a terrorist? Innocent people could be tortured. Scheuer cleverly uses someone who is obviously a terrorist. But in real life, we might not know. The injustice of torturing someone who doesn't know anything or is the wrong person is grave.
  
• Our soldiers will be tortured. Get ready for American soldiers being waterboarded, and the video probably being uploaded to the internet. Worse still, we won't be able to complain and the world will feel little sympathy.
• We lose the moral highground and 'soft power' which buys us cooperation and respect around the world. Being respected means fewer people are motivated to attack us, and people are more likely to inform on people who might.
• (And this last one might not convince hardcore torture fans, but allow me to get on my soapbox.) We forget what we are fighting for and who we are as a nation. We once prosecuted Axis powers for their cruelty and abuses. How sad that some want us to adopt their methods. I thought the reason we fought Nazis and Communists was because they were evil, and not just because they were rivals. People fought and died for our freedoms and for our civilization and ideals.
  

Now how much would you pay for the "benefits" of letting yourself be duped by terrorists??

I also note that Wikipedia has an entry on this fallacy (perhaps some intrepid WaPo editor could have Googled it?)

Some human rights organisations, professional and academic experts, and military and intelligence leaders, have absolutely rejected the idea that torture is ever legal or acceptable, even in a so-called ticking bomb situation.^{[1] [4]} They have expressed grave concern about the way the dramatic force and artificially simple moral answers the ticking bomb thought-experiment seems to offer, have manipulated and distorted the legal and moral perceptions, reasoning and judgment of both the general population and military and law enforcement officials. .....They believe that simplistic responses to the scenario may lead well-intentioned societies down a slippery slope to legalised and systematic torture. They point out that no evidence of any real-life situation meeting all the criteria to constitute a pure ticking bomb scenario has ever been presented to the public, and that such a situation is highly unlikely.

The distorting and misleading nature of the scenario is in part due to the fact that it is most often presented in a manner that keeps many of its assumptions hidden. Once exposed, it becomes clear that the scenario is either wildly unrealistic or that any exception to the prohibition of torture would be much more widespread than the proponent of the scenario originally suggested. The scenario thereby manipulates moral and ethical judgment by obscuring the true moral cost of tolerating any act of torture.... 

For instance, it is asked whether torture would be limited to suspects, or whether one could torture the family and friends of a suspect to make him compliant. According to John Yoo (the former Department of Justice official who wrote memos justifying President Bush's policies on torture) this would be legally permissible, including crushing the testicles of the person's child to obtain information.^[6] If we imagine that officials might attempt to justify torture of people whose phone numbers happened to be in a suspect's mobile phone or agenda-book, in their desperation to find useful information, the range of possible victims of "ticking bomb" torture becomes much wider.

Another point is the notorious unreliability of the information gathered, e.g. Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi.

Pretty grim stuff -- torturing children of terror suspects. But according to the "ticking timebomb" spinmeister's logic, it is probably only a matter of time before the US is torturing children -- hey, if it saves New York City? If it's Osama Bin Laden's child and would get him to "talk", why not? How about it, Scheuer? Are you going to own the full implications of your argument?

Clearly, the only real "ticking timebomb" is this failed argument, which leads us down a dangerous and disturbing path.

The only question remaining is simply why is our media culture so intellectually inept that they can't poke holes in this very flawed argument, and perpetuate a fallacy that has been debunked so thoroughly?
 
(Also see also Mark Danner's opposing view in the same paper.)

Please let me know what you think. If you enjoyed this article, please recommend it. Thanks. Crossposted to Daily Kos

When Paul Krugman’s posted “The Defining Moment” on his blog April 24, the title was significantly more comprehensive than he probably intended, and while it defined the moment that defined the New York Times and the rest of the mainstream media in the United States, and it also defined Paul Krugman as a prestigious but essentially conformist contributor to the same self-prostituted hodge-podge of buzz-words and propaganda.

Almost nobody that anybody ever heard of stood up against the invasion of Iraq and the ridiculous “evidence” which was supposed to justify it… “And the question was, should you stand up against that? Not many did — and those who did were treated as if they were crazy.”

And now Paul Krugman says “I’ll never trust “sensible” opinion again.”

“Sensible” opinion?

What the heck are those “scare quotes” supposed to mean?

Rutabaga Ridgepole speculated about that peculiar phrase in a comment on Professor Krugman’s blog…

Paul Krugman says “I’ll never trust “sensible” opinion again,” and here “sensible” either means “mainstream,” or nothing.

The usual meaning of “sensible” as “indicative of good sense” obviously doesn’t apply to arguments for invading Iraq based on transparently false allegations. Any possible connection with “common sense” is also inappropriate, where the sort of evidence which common sense can judge never appeared.

So Professor Krugman can only mean that he will never trust mainstream opinion again, but because he writes for a mainstream newspaper, and wants to continue in his current venue, he can’t say that he will never trust mainstream opinion again, because that would make him “crazy,” that would make him a freak, and he would inevitably disappear from the New York Times, because the New York Times doesn’t publish freaks.

Rootie’s comment has been “awaiting moderation” on Professor Krugman’s blog for the last 36 hours, and it’s obviously destined to wait there forever, but the intellectual standard of comments which were already approved by the moderator isn’t exactly overwhelming…

“Yes, yes, yes. And today’s column was one of your best,” is mab’s complete comment, and that comment was posted within 15 minutes after mab composed it.

So Paul Krugman defined himself as one of the un-crazy non-freaky insiders with columns in the mainstream media and endowed professorships in the Ivy League, and although those “sensible” professors may have uttered a few modest chirps about the really crazy bullshit that took us into Iraq, they didn’t get shrill about it, and the few tiny ripples that they made disappeared in the tidal wave of approval by the New York Times and the Washington Post and dozens of Ivy-League graduates in the administration of George W. Bush, like Douglas Feith (Harvard magna cum laude 1975), Paul Wolfowitz (Cornell 1965), John Ashcroft (Yale 1964), and George W. Bush himself (Yale 1968).

But when the time came to expose that tidal wave of bullshit, the Ivy League was “sensible” instead of sensible, and the New York Times was “sensible” instead of sensible, and before you could find a common-sense exposé of all those lies, you had to get freaky, and travel so far out on the spectrum of freaky that you might even meet… a talking rutabaga.

I am concerned for our collective soul if we don't prosecute the Bush Administration for their kangaroo courts (i.e. Military Commissions) and the torture that appears to have been sanctioned by them.

but

I am encouraged that by making the C.I.A. memos public, they will be held to account by the American Public at large.

Mr. Cheney et al need to accept that what they did is unacceptable and be grateful for the gift Obama seems willing to give by not prosecuting them.

If they fear going to jail for what they did - or wanted to do - perhaps saying nothing so it can't be held against them would be a nice place to start.

President Obama can make me feel a whole lot better about 'moving forward' by including strict International Labor Standards in each and every Trade Agreement from now on.

Stopping the mistreatment of Labor for Profit seems a perfect way to send a sincere message of respect for Human Rights.

A couple of days ago somebody told me that people on TPM couldnt be friends becouse I've never met them. Well that got me thinking just what is a friend?  So I thought about it and then decided that I'd write about it here and see what you all thought.

  Well to me a friend is somebody thats always there for you when you need them. Doesn't matter if they agree with you or not but will still be there for you.  Well I have seen that here a lot. If someone is feeling down there seems to be a lot of people here that will go out of there way to help if they can. Ok so we have that one covered.

   A friend is also somebody that if your really desperate and need help there right there to help you.  Well the problems DICKDAY  had showed that there are a lot of people here that will help when the need is bad enough. So thats covered also.

  A friend is also somebody that you can be yourself around without getting put down for it.  Well that one is definetly covered here.

 Now here is the hard one a friend is someone you can hang out with and just have fun talking or fooling around.  Well that happens a little bit here.  But if any of you have ever gone to the chatroom that LisB and Bwak post about here every now and then  well lets just say it covers this part very well. The people that show up get pretty crazy at times and we have a blast.

 So with all that said I'M VERY GLAD TO SAY THAT YOU ARE ALL MY FRIENDS AND THE PERSON THAT SAID THAT NEEDS TO COME HERE FOR AWHILE AND SEE FOR THERE SELF JUST WHAT FRIENDS ARE.

and thank you very much for letting me be a TPM friend with you all.

 

hope everybody is having a fabulous day.  Don't forget to hug your loved ones today you never know when you wont be able to again.

Dear fellow Americans,

NO ONE IS ABOVE THE LAW

In America, no one is above the law!  Even the president can get impeached and then be compelled to resign.  So, how can the military pretend to create an extra-constitutional "legal enclave" in order to operate outside of the Constitution?  That is not possible.  The military is accountable for its actions in accordance with the Supreme Law of the Land, the Constitution of the United States of America.

Regarding the "torture memos," under our system of laws, it is good to refer to the Civil Rights Acts of 1866, and of 1871 commonly called "the Ku Klux Klan Act."  In addition, 42 United States Code, Section 1983, and 18 United States Code, Sections 241 and 242, also address alleged violations of human and civil rights of ANY person, by ANY person, within the jurisdiction of  the United States of America. 

It is not that we are giving to "unprivileged foreign combatants" the same rights that Americans have.  It's just that, in our country, that's the Law.  That has been the Law since AD 1871.  And the U.S. Supreme Court has already determined that these laws also apply to both the Armed Forces, and civilian Central Intelligence Agency personnel.  We must hold onto and uphold our values as a free republic, in which is deeply imbedded the noblest tradition ever given to men of mortal flesh, namely, representative self-government in constructive liberty in accordance with the rule of law.

All the above-noted bodies of law address conspiracy against rights and deprivation of rights under color of law, and cover both civil and criminal violations, regardless of the persons who commit them, and regardless of the persons whose rights have been violated.  They make provisions for both American citizens and foreign nationals who are within the jurisdiction of the United States, such as the Guantanamo Bay "prisoners," or "detainees."   Military personnel involved in this matter are American citizens and the "detainees" are "foreign nationals" who fall under the constitutional jurisdiction of our nation.  Under our system of laws, as soon as a person comes within American jurisdiction, civilian or military, he or she is protected.

Our military forces answer not only to the President, but also to Congress and other civilian authorities and are not an isolated "power unto themselves."  The Uniform Code of Military Justice deals with infractions of discipline and other violations by military personnel, internal to the Armed Forces, which may also have import for the civilian community within which they are present.  And when the transgressions involve more than just internal military operations, jurisdiction is enlarged to include the greater umbrella of civilian government to which the Armed Forces are still accountable.

America's Founders and elected public servants following the aftermath of the Civil War, desired to ensure that the United States would be different from all nations of the earth by securing protection for every person who happens to be within the constitutional jurisdiction of our government, whether it be in a State, a Territory, the District of Columbia, a military establishment or a place where our government functions, like an Embassy, for example, regardless of the person's place of birth or ethnicity.  It was to counter the egregious acts of the Ku Klux Klan and other lawless individuals.  For in the period preceding the Civil War and during its aftermath, lynch mobs were hanging all kinds of people in the United States.  In 1838, before he became President, Abraham Lincoln addressed this problem in a speech given to the Young Men's Lyceum, in Springfield, Illinois. 

Americans, and elected public servants, wanted to have the world respect America for being the place on the earth where the highest level of security of person, life and limb exists for all human beings, as we are a nation of laws, not of brawls, and as we are a country where constructive liberty reigns in its broadest morally edifying form, so that individuals can prosper and develop to their fullest potential.

Therefore, in accordance with our own laws, Guantanamo Bay "prisoners" or "detainees" have been judged to deserve their day in civilian Court, as has already been determined by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Given the spirit, letter and application of our laws, our government cannot invoke "state secrets privilege" on a broad, continuous basis that contradicts the enjoyment of our civil liberties, human rights, privileges and immunities of citizenship and guaranteed civil rights. And God forbid that our military forces should isolate themselves from the greater constitutional framework on which they depend for their very existence and "raison d'etre."  Under our system of laws, all branches and agencies of government must incur the rigors of legal scrutiny by checks and balances and other precautionary measures that are designed to prevent jurisdictional infringement or isolated corrupt practices.

In addition to the Civil Rights Acts of 1871, 42 USC, Section 1983 and 18 USC, Sections 241 and 242, the Fourteenth Amendment insures "equal protection of the laws," and access to due process of law, not only for American citizens, but for "other person(s)," or "any person," within the jurisdiction of the United States.  Guantanamo Bay "prisoners" or "detainees" did not receive constitutional due process of law, and the laws protecting their human and civil rights were violated.

The Founders framed American jurisprudence in contradistinction to the ignominies they had suffered under British rule, and therefore took great pains to infuse as many protections as humanly possible into the Constitution and subsequent laws. "Errare humanum est!"  Founders were not immune from errors themselves.  But they left us a constitutional and moral framework by which wrongs can be made right to the greater good and edification of all parties concerned.  For example, in order to sustain cohesiveness in the original Thirteen States until the federal government could, not only consolidate, but legitimize national power, Framers set aside A.D. 1808, as the earliest year they could address "the slavery issue." Congress attempted to do so, unsuccessfully, by the "Missouri Compromise," and the "Kansas-Nebraska Bill."  But as stated above, it is after the Civil War that comprehensive legislation was enacted to secure protections for all persons under the constitutional jurisdiction of our laws. 

These Acts read, in part: "Every person who under color of any statute, ordinance, regulation, custom or usage, of any State or Territory or the District of Columbia, subjects, or causes to be subjected, ANY CITIZEN OF THE UNITED STATES OR OTHER PERSON WITHIN THE JURISDICTION THEREOF to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution and laws, shall be liable to the party injured in an action at law,....."

Regarding the Guantanamo Bay "prisoners" or "detainees," the U.S. Supreme Court only endeavored to "right a wrong," which was long overdue.  America is a great nation and the eyes of the whole world are upon us, especially when we falter.  International leadership requires goodwill and trust in our form of government as a model to inspire all peoples of the earth. 

These protections do not allow real criminals who have been legally charged, tried and found guilty in a court of law to escape from justice, but state that substantive rights, such as civil and human rights, must be respected in accordance with due process of law, especially in cases of criminal indictment. In the case of the "prisoners" or "detainees," these rights were flagrantly violated.  From what we have heard, they were even tortured with a method called "water boarding," and with sleep deprivation, etc...

We cannot be a nation that allows such conduct from our military personnel.  Interrogation methods that involve unwarranted physical contact with prisoners for purposes of inflicting cruel and unusual punishment to forcefully extract confessions or other "evidence," are expressly prohibited by the Supreme Law of the Land, the Constitution of the United States and all other laws pursuant thereof.

We are not safer because these cruelties were perpetrated against "foreigners," because, at Great Lakes Naval Base, in Great Lakes, Illinois, there have been cases in which Marines, who were prison guards, beat sailors to death.  Please check the history - and they were all Americans like us, and no "foreign nationals" were involved.

Therefore, the "prisoners" or "internees" or "detainees" at the U.S. military facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, also have the benefit of these protections, falling under "other person," or "any person," as provided by the Acts.

No person can lose the right of Habeas Corpus or be confined for an indeterminate length of time - in these cases seven years - without charges being speedily brought against them.  What a long "interrogation period!"  Seven years?  If they were "criminal terrorists," why were they not lawfully accused, charged, tried and then judged, in the first place?  They cannot remain prisoners forever only for purposes of "interrogation."  That's unconstitutional. 

That has been the problem with imprisonment of men captured in the Middle East by our military forces. No charges had ever been brought against them for seven years.  From what we've heard, things like that only happen in China, and in the former Soviet Union!  Was it not a mistake to bring them here, even closer to our "home-base" national jurisdiction, to then proceed to violate their civil and human rights, which were, not only already secured by our own laws, but also by the Geneva Convention, regarding treatment of "prisoners of war?"  By what convoluted legal logic did our government determine that the Geneva Convention did not apply?

But these "prisoners of war," were first labeled "terrorists," without legal proof or charge; then, they were called "detainees". Nevertheless, the U.S. Supreme Court has already ruled that their rights must be restored, that they also have the right to be heard in federal courts, and that they cannot be held indefinitely without charge or court hearing. The Supreme Court decision only reaffirmed our values regarding protections that have already been secured for all persons who are within the jurisdiction of the United States, since A.D. 1871.

It is not that these issues are being "politicized" because they occurred during a Republican administration, but this is a matter of legal application of our own laws and of international law, an application of due process of law which is good for all Americans.  Remember Great Lakes Naval Base, in Great Lakes, Illinois - it's not the only instance of our own military perpetrating criminal abuse against our own citizens. 

And there may be cause for concern.  For, the danger is that, if the errors of Guantanamo Bay are not lawfully corrected, even with proper reparations where duly merited, a precedent or "stare decisis" situation might be set, whereby our government, with "legal verbiage" or so-called "administrative ruling" by some executive agency, could at some future time, extend this unconstitutional treatment to private citizens of the United States, as in cases of unlawful or unwarranted "wiretapping," or other violations, in accordance with the "Patriot Act," or "FISA."

A proper reading of our system of laws confirms that all persons within the constitutional jurisdiction of our government, even non-citizens, deserve and have already been granted protection of both substantive and due process rights, not only by the U.S. Constitution, but by all laws pursuant thereof.

"Vigilance," or "prudent watchfulness," is "the price of liberty." We must give careful attention to the way in which these cases will proceed and to the outcomes that will ensue from judgments therein rendered.  For, given our system of laws, these decisions could also affect us, Americans.  The world is watching and waiting.

Thank you very much.  God bless you and God bless the United States of America in Christ Jesus our Lord and Savior. 

Sincerely,  Leo

I think this entry has focused the geometrically expanding debate on this issue back onto the key point: What does the LAW say about these activities? I would suggest anyone read this post, if you haven't already - it articulates the admittedly fuzzy nature of my own rough thinking a lot better than I could.

If we truly accept the idea that we are a nation of laws, and the accompanying principle that no one is above the law, it greatly simplifies our task in deciding what should be done at this point: We must first understand the full letter and spirit of applicable law, and then we must INVESTIGATE to determine as thoroughly as possible the extent to which WHAT actually happened is within or outside those legal parameters. That seems to me a simple enough concept that properly avoids the pitfalls of getting prematurely bogged-down in all these extraneous secondary considerations.

A second vital point that Mr. Lava makes very well (and properly) is that any 'soldier' may be placed into a situation where he feels duty-bound to go against the established rules. If he does so, the morally correct course when caught is to explain himself as best he can, and hope for mercy based on extenuating circumstances, or on the tactical effectiveness of what he did (not an unreasonable prospect in these current difficulties). His PERSONAL fate in such a situation may have to take a backseat to what he perceives to be in the best interests of the country at a given point. What he does NOT do, is try to cobble the existing rules to his own advantage, and  accessorize the whole country in the lawbreaking by making a public political issue out of it as it is happening. 

So much hyperbole has been written about the violence of the Mexican drug wars spilling over the border, that I'm finding it hard to reconcile this ginned up media hype and the reality of living in a border region of the US.  There is elevated violence across the border to the south, but to say it is 'spilling' onto US soil appears, from my perspective, to be melodramatic fodder, designed to entertain those of us from northern climes, who dream of a more exotic America to the south.  Alternatively, it might be construed as a marketing pitch from manufacturers of security, surveillance, military and law enforcement gadgetry and services.  For those of us who live here along the border, things seem to be not so different than any other city, and in many cases, it's much better.  Josh Marshall recently linked to this compelling article in Austin's Texas Observer which is well worth the read in order to gain some perspective on this issue.  

While we were susceptible to the fears being hawked like poppies on veterans day in post 9/11 America, there was a massive shift taking place in security infrastructure on all our borders, but more especially on our border with Mexico.  There are problems with illegal immigration, most of which are not being dealt with effectively or economically through US immigration and border policy.   What is US imigration/border policy...  Stem the influx of illegal aliens entering the States and stealing low paid American jobs... check.   Curtail the flow of illegal drugs across a porous border with Mexico... check.  Remove a possible channel of ingress for terrorists, crawling through miles of arroyos in order to penetrate the heartland of our nation... check.  {{{{rewind}}}}    Are we successful in any of these policy goals, and to the extent that we are, can our policy be refined?  There is no economically feasible way forward in stemming the flow of narcotics into the US via our current policies.  The economics of the drug business, requires an escalation on the part of the traffikers for each escalation on our part in securing our borders.  It's a numbers game we are destined to lose.  I'm sure the government would like to tell us about the successes intercepting terrorists in the Sonoran and Chihuahuan Deserts if only it wouldn't compromise national security.  In the end, the terrorists are more refined in their approach and with better financial and intelligence resources than the poor Mexicanos wading the river in search or a minimum wage job.  Ironically, the contracting US economy probably does as much or more in stemming the tide of illegal immigrants into the country as the availability of jobs shrinks, as do our policies.  In addition, there is reason to believe that clamping down on illegal immigration from Mexico to the US will result in a net drain on the US economy, and that our money is better spent on other venues than building fences, and patrolling borders.

Read more »

I remember when you were considered 'crazy' for suggesting the Preznit was lying about WMD's.  I also have memories of people calling me crazy for suggesting that prisoner humiliation and degradation wasn't Ms. England's novel conception.

Am I still CRAZY for wondering exactly how two planes hitting high up on a couple of the world's largest skyscrapers started fires dozens of stories below ground and even covered by tons of debris somehow burned hot enough to keep rescuers at bay for weeks?

Just wondering cause I wouldn't want anybody to think I'm crazy.

Enjoy.

According to Politico; "Barack Hussein Obama is the nation's first hip president.":

...watch him walk. Listen to him talk. See the body language, the expressions, the clothes. He's got attitude, rhythm, a sense of humor, contemporary tastes.

This much is clear: Whether dealing with the Wall Street mess, shifting troops from Iraq to Afghanistan or fumbling to fill his Cabinet, Obama leans heavily on personal panache to push political policies. Truth be told, his style is rooted in something elusive and hard to define. Pure and simple, it's hip.

"Being hip is being able to navigate your environment and others' environments," like the way Obama traverses racial boundaries, said John Leland, author of the definitive book "Hip: The History."

Just how hip is he?:

(He's) so hip that school kids in Albany, N.Y., coined a term for it: "Baracking." And it doesn't stop there. Those in the know at Albany High greet each other by saying: "What's up, my Obama?" and they respond to a sneeze with "Barack you." Misbehavior is peer-corrected with the admonition, "Barack's in the White House," which translates, "Show some respect."

OK, he's hip, he's cool but politics is a contact sport, business is a blood sport, just what does all this street cred mean, and what have you done lately?  You know, like firing the CEO of General Motors, or having the CEOs of Bank of America, and CITI Group reaching for their Depends. 

How's this grab you; Obama Repeatedly Reminds House GOP Of Their Zero Stimulus Votes:

A GOP source familiar with the meeting said that the president was extremely sensitive -- even "thin-skinned" -- to the fact that the stimulus bill received no GOP votes in the House. He continually brought it up throughout the meeting.

But wait, there's more:

Obama also offered payback for that goose egg. A major overhaul of the health care system, he told the Republican leadership, would be done using a legislative process known as reconciliation, meaning that the GOP won't be able to filibuster it.

Congress has until October 15 to pass health care or student lending reform under the normal process. If it doesn't, reconciliation can be used to eliminate the 60-vote requirement.

Congress has until October 15 to pass health care or student lending reform OR it's reconciliation.   No, ifs, no, ands, no buts.  I wonder if the Republican's think Prez hip is like, kidding?

GOP aides, however, said that Obama was pretty clear that reconciliation would be used. "From what was told me, it sounded more like he would almost definitely use reconciliation for healthcare. I don't think he hedged much," said one.

And, if you call now, we'll throw in; Obama To Nelson: We're Going Around You.  That's right, word to, leathers wearing, motorcycle ridding, Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.), the Senate's fiercest protector of subsidies for student lending institutions, vower to block any effort to reduce those subsidies, like with a filibuster! 

An agreement struck between the president and House and Senate negotiators won't give Nelson that chance. A process known as "reconciliation" allows budgetary measures to be moved through the Senate with a simple majority, rather than 60. Multiple congressional sources say that congressional Democrats have decided to use reconciliation to go after student-lending subsidies, specifically to get around Nelson.

So, word to all my TPM, peeps, What's up, my Obama? 

And, to all my Limbaugh loving, tea bagging, Blue Dog friends, Barack's in the White House! 

Peace out.

When my fiesty, funny, iron-willed mother-in-law passed away some years ago, there is one image from her funeral that I will never forget. 

Her casket was placed gravesite and we were all gathered under the green canvas tarp to pay our final respects before burial, most of us seated in folding chairs provided by the funeral home.

I say, "most of us," because, standing behind her casket were three of her cherished grandsons--my son Dustin and his twin cousins, Travis and Troy.  At the time, the boys were all R.O.T.C. college students, and though they wore suits and ties, they stood ramrod-straight behind their grandmother's coffin, their hands clasped, staring out over the crowd of mourners with granite faces.

Travis and Troy are identical twins, and so resemble my son--or he resembles them--that we sometimes call them "the triplets."  They are all tall, dark, handsome young men, and all had short hair and were clean-shaven.

All three--and their younger cousin, Michael, who was in high school at the time--would go into the military,

Michael and Dustin into the Marine Corps as enlisted men, Travis and Troy into the Army, and they would all deploy to combat zones in Iraq and Afghanistan in "line" companies--which means, either infantry, artillery, Stryker brigades, or special forces--for a total of six deployments between them so far.

Since that day, Michael and Dustin have completed their active-duty commitments and moved into civilian life.  (They both intend to take advantage of the new G.I. Bill benefits this fall, Dustin for a second degree and Michael for his first.)

Travis and Troy decided to head into a career course as officers, as did their dad, who retired at the rank of brigadier general with the U.S. Army special forces, and both have assumed company commands.

But on that sad, sunshiney day, they were young college men who did not realize that, standing so straight behind their grandmother, they resembled Secret Service agents on protective detail.

Not that anyone expected bad guys to come crashing into the burial service; it's not that they were deliberately protecting her or anything.  It's just...

Words fail me.  Bear with me while I search for it...

That attitude of protective vigil was something that-- coming from a family of combat vets and career military men--it just came NATURAL to them.

A few years later, while Dustin still had a couple years to go to finish his degree and Travis and Troy were winding up their studies, 9/11 happened.  Troy was, at the time, in Washington, D.C., serving as one of the guards at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.  His dad was working that day at the Pentagon.

He raced over and helped pull bodies out of the smoking wreckage, not knowing for hours if his dad was one of them or not.

A few weeks after that, my son called me and told me of his decision to go into the military, even though, at the time, the country was gearing up for war with Afghanistan and, just as he was graduating, Iraq.

When explaining his decision to me, he said, "I don't feel comfortable being one of the ones needing protection.  I'd rather be one of the protectors."

I've never forgotten that, either, even though I was opposed to the Iraq war then and now.  It doesn't mean that I don't understand why he felt compelled to step up for his country.

When I was asked if I would consider reading and reviewing Susan Galleymore's powerful book, LONG TIME PASSING, Mothers Speak Out About War and Terror, I did so gladly, because Galleymore is, like me, a combat mom and also a peace activist.  (Although she is much more active in the peace movement than I am; my activities have been limited to speaking out and writing to end the Iraq war.)

For those of you who may not have heard of Susan Galleymore, she gained some small measure of celebrity when she actually traveled all the way to Iraq, to the Sunni triangle, during some of the worst fighting of the war--2004--in order to have an hour and twenty minutes to visit with her son, a soldier with the 82nd Airborne who was deployed at that time.

She is a founder of MotherSpeak as a radio host for Raising Sand Radio, and works tirelessly in the cause of peace.

She also works as a counselor on the G.I. Hotline.

However, I had some reservations when I agreed to read the book, and those have not changed after having read it.  I say "reservations," but perhaps the correct word might be "frustrations," because I see such a widening gap between those who work the hardest for peace on this planet, and those who are tasked with preserving it.

I am speaking, of course, about the U.S. military.

 

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I've been reading about the unholy combination of McCarthyism and MacArthurism that was the toxic atmosphere during the Korean War. Douglas MacArthur's father got his chance to try being Caesar in the Philippines, waterboarding and all, before President McKinley couldn't take him anymore. Harry Truman got a chance to repeat, or rather, rhyme, history, when he had to fire the son of the earlier MacArthur. It is not Shakespearean, but more a Greek tragedy, that this nativist, racist, jingoist strain of characters won't go away. Familiar name from Doug MacArthur's Tokyo sycophants---Alexander Haig. Add Buchanan, Cheney, Rumsfeld. Garnish with the new MacArthur, McCain, who wanted to be Eisenhower. Looked like the same effective mix. (In retrospect, it is a really scary thought to consider the alternative to Eisenhower in 1952, MacArthur. We were lucky.)

The rabid right was not all that happy with Eisenhower, so Kennedy had to out-hawk the hawks, and it trapped him into adventures that we were decades recovering from. I find myself hoping Obama is Eisenhower, with Johnson's domestic emphasis.

None of the dire consequences the rabid right warned of  happened, i.e. no dominoes, no global communism, and China buys our Treasury bonds. More recently we had the exquisite embarrassment of our president promising us he would protect us from Saddam's nonexistent arsenal. At least some people notice how wrong this crowd has been, and how often.

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Dear President Obama:

First of all, I am a big supporter.  In 50 years on Earth, you are the first political candidate I campaigned for and contributed money to. During the campaign, you surprised me several times, But after the first couple of times, I learned to ignore the chatter in the blogs and cable news and the fear and loathing in Washington; you soon had them waxing eloquently about your latest triumph.  I have not always agreed with you, but I did not expect to nor require that, and my support did not waver. And besides, your political calculus was far ahead of mine and all the pundits. I learned to trust that calculus along with confidence in your judgement of the facts of a particular issue facing our nation. But on one subject, I must admit lingering discomfort; the reticence to investigate and prosecute crimes, if any, committed by the previous administration.

Recently, for the first time, I have been in Washington for an extended period of time.  I have wandered the National Mall, stood at Lincoln's feet and read the inscriptions, Lincoln's own words,  in stone, much as I imagine you have.  Past the Vietnam and World War II memorials to our soldiers, past the Washington Memorial and the adult kickball teams, to the steps of the Capital. Many days I have walked past the White House with the smell of cherry blossoms in the air, stirring memories from childhood, spring and future promise, a sense I get from looking at the White House now.

And along the street named after our Constitution the words "The United States of America" are everywhere.  But if those are to be more than words printed on metal and carved in stone, our words, our laws must have meaning and equal enforcement for all. No partisan persecution, just the same crime and punishment any citizen faces. Whether FISA or torture or Wall Street, or corporate lobbyists, we cannot look away any longer. For if we look away, we lose our laws and we lose our country. You said words are important. words do have meaning. Words are all we have. Our laws are words - our constitution is words;.  They have to be true words.

Surprise me again, Mr. President. Keep the promise in the air.

Respectfully,

WW

It is so easy for some people. A year or so ago, they supported Sen Edwards, so every other Democratic candidate was wrong about almost everything. Later, they supported the eventual winning candidate, so that his opponent became the devil itself: a warmonger, no doubt, who was insignificantly different from even President Bush.

Those people always know the right thing to do. Though their voices were awfully quiet, they knew how to respond to the attack on our country and the murder of several thousand people who were simply trying to go to work on a beautiful late summer morning, or were flying to the west coast, or who tried to rescue people trapped in burning buildings.

Where was the President of the United States that day? Did he spend the month after being told an attack was imminent making sure the government did everything it could to prevent the attack? When he took over the presidency, by dint of friends in high places, and was told what the Taliban was all about, and that, in addition to torturing anyone in the country over which they ruled who did not share their religious beliefs, and destroying the symbols which were meaningful to others, despite their historical significance, that they harbored people who wanted to harm this country, did he do anything about that?

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I'm late on this - I should have known and posted about this before April 17^th.  (It is only slight consolation that most of my fellow bloggers missed it entirely.  Stories do get lost in the chaos, and sometimes the only way to keep on top of what is happening is to link to other bloggers, so if nobody catches it the first time around, it can 'fall through the cracks.')

But April 17^th was when this should have been all over the blogosphere.  Two reasons: April 17^th is the Annual Day of Silence held by the students of many schools in support of gay students and gay rights in general.  And April 17^th would have been the birthday of Carl Walker-Hoover.  Only he didn't see his birthday.  He had been mercilessly taunted by his fellow students for being gay, and, eleven days before his birthday, he hung himself.

There are two other facts that make the story more poignant.  One is the fact that there is no evidence that he thought of himself as gay or was gay - which really doesn't matter but which might open the hearts of some homophobes.

The other is the fact that, on April 17^th, 2009, Carl Walker-Hoover would have turned twelve years old.

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ThinkProgress has the dirt.

Basically: Newt got his ugly mug on the tee vee in Al Gore's commercials, toeing the tree-hugger line, sitting on the sofa next to Nancy Pelosi.

I guess he changed his mind. Maybe there's just not enough money in this carbon-capping business. Because Al Gore is only a HUNDRED-millionaire, a downright piker compared with the billions in profits Exxon's made for the last eight years.

This is hilarious.

Here's what I would have said to that whore masquerading as a public servant:

"You're asking me if I stand to make money from changing public policy regarding global warming?

"That's interesting, because it infers that I am greedy. That I have other than the purest of intentions. And more importantly, it infers that there's money to be made from this issue.

"Tell me; if your inference is really something you believe, that I'm a greedy whore interested in making money from this issue and the wholesale changes I think need to be made to save our species, then somebody's lying when they fearfully claim that these changes are going to bankrupt the nation.

"Next question."

Raw reports the Appeals Court says UK citizens who were once Guantanamo prisoners have no right to be immune to torture and cannot recover damages in any US court.

 

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I'm not very good at the whole deconstruction thing; finer minds around here do so much better. But here are a few things I keep reading between the lines in the MSM that make me worry that either I or they have gone insane. I hope it's not me.

1. Yes of course torture is a war crime, but it's really useful right now because we're at war.

2. Yes of course "I was following orders" is not a valid legal defence, but we can't prosecute interrogators because in future they might balk at following illegal orders.

3. Yes of course the Bush torture regime was illegal, but we've been doing this kind of thing for decades, so it would be unfair to start enforcing the law now.

4. Yes of course it would be nice to improve living standards for the poor, but that might slow economic growth which is really important for living standards.

5. Yes of course it would be nice to take measures to insure against catastrophic climate change, but it might slow economic growth a bit.

6. Yes of course we're the richest country in the world, but we just can't afford universal health care.

7. Yes of course financial innovation caused the crisis, but we shouldn't regulate banks too much because it might inhibit financial innovation.

8. Yes of course banks can't raise capital because no one knows which ones are insolvent, but we can't disclose which ones are insolvent because no one will give them money.

9. Yes of course bankers are paid absurd amounts of money, but we can't reduce their pay because they might leave finance and do something useful in life.

10. Yes of course this kind of thinking is paradoxical, but if you disagree you're a far-left wacko. 

Feel free to agree, disagree, add your own in comments.  

Many moderates among the chattering classes are now arguing for restraint in prosecuting those in the last administration who authorized or participated in the torture of detainees. The usual argument of these moderates is that, while the torture that occurred is deplorable, prosecuting its perpetrators would be too disruptive and divisive for our nation, particularly at a time like now when we face so many other serious challenges. Many also question whether prosecution of a prior presidential administration by a new one would create a dangerous precedent. And finally, some argue that the prior administration was struggling in good faith to keep Americans safe from a new and not fully understood threat, and so some mistakes should be forgiven given the circumstances.

To those who make these arguments, I have to ask two questions:

First, if we excuse war crimes in situations where there is an exonerating circumstance or when prosecution of the war crime is disruptive to the nation to which the war criminals belong, aren't we simply excusing war crimes in nearly all cases in which high officials of a country are involved?  Certainly, the prosecution of high-level officials and prominent political figures is always disruptive to any country. Are we really willing, then, to apply universally to all countries a standard that essentially says war crimes will be ignored if prosecuting them will be inconvenient to the nation whose officials are involved in those crimes?  And since war crimes by definition always occur during war and therefore always occur as officials are trying to defend against threats, wouldn't most war crimes automatically be forgiven by the standard being proposed? If we adopt such a lax attitude toward war crimes for ourselves, then we must apply it to the rest of the world. In doing so, we are essentially saying to the international community that war crimes no longer really matter.

Second,  if we exonerate the past administration for their war crimes, what message are we sending to future administrations?  Is it truly wise to set a precedent that war crimes will be forgiven just because prosecuting them is inconvenient or uncomfortable or otherwise problematic? If we do that, what administration will hesitate to commit war crimes when it believes doing so is politically expedient? Just as war crimes will no longer be taken seriously internationally, so will they be ignored domestically.

The only effective restraint on torturers and other war criminals is the threat of prosecution. If we exercise too much restraint in the prosecution of torture, therefore, we should not be surprised if the result, both at home and abroad, is torture unrestrained.

 

"In other words, human activity is maybe 3% contributing to the 3% of carbon dioxide that's in Earth's atmosphere. It's so negligible. It's a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a percent. It can hardly be quantified." -Rep. Bachman (R-MN)

Earth-like planets to be found soon...?

Ahhh, Exoplanets, the cool name for planets outside our solar system.  As detection methods continue to improve, smaller and closer (to their star) planets are being found all the time.  This week saw the announcement of the smallest planet found yet:

Gliese 581 e is only 1.9 times the size of Earth _ while previous planets found outside our solar system are closer to the size of massive Jupiter, which NASA says could swallow more than 1,000 Earths.

Gliese 581 e sits close to the nearest star, making it too hot to support life. Still, Mayor said its discovery in a solar system 20 1/2 light years away from Earth is a "good example that we are progressing in the detection of Earth-like planets."

Its apparant that there are likely billions of planets in our galaxy and its only a matter of time before earth-like planets (the right size in the right orbit around its star) are found.  Whether or not they support life will be a tougher question to answer.  For now though the search has begun in earnest.

If you like this stuff check out the Kepler telescope and its three and a half year search for more exoplanets.  From Nasa:

One new image from Kepler shows its entire field of view -- a 100-square-degree portion of the sky, equivalent to two side-by-side dips of the Big Dipper. The region contains an estimated 4.5 million stars, more than 100,000 of which were selected as ideal candidates for planet hunting.

"It's thrilling to see this treasure trove of stars," said William Borucki, science principal investigator for Kepler at NASA's Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, Calif. "We expect to find hundreds of planets circling those stars, and for the first time, we can look for Earth-size planets in the habitable zones around other stars like the sun."

Stay Tuned...

GM will drop the Pontiac brand.

General Motors is preparing to announce that the Pontiac car
brand, once marketed as GM's "Excitement division," will be
killed off, according to a source familiar with the decision.

One of the first muscle cars of the late 60s. But the time for such
things is long past and the brand has not been viable for quite some
time.

So as a tribute I offer this.
Little GTO - Ronnie and the Daytonas

Little GTO, you're really lookin' fine 
Three deuces and a four-speed and a 389 
Listen to her tachin' up now, listen to her why-ee-eye-ine 
C'mon and turn it on, wind it up, blow it out GTO 

Wa-wa,  
Wa, wa, wa, wa, wa, wa  
Wa-wa,  
Wa, wa, wa, wa, wa, wa  
Wa-wa (Ahhh, little GTO) 
Wa, wa, wa, wa, wa, wa 

You oughta see her on a road course or a quarter mile 
This little modified Pon-Pon has got plenty of style 
She beats the gassers and the rail jobs, 
really drives 'em why-ee-eye-ild 
C'mon and turn it on, wind it up, blow it out GTO 

Wa-wa, (Yeah, yeah, little GT") 
wa, wa, wa, wa, wa, wa  
Wa-wa,  
Wa, wa, wa, wa, wa, wa  
Wa-wa (Ahhh, little GTO) 
Wa, wa, wa, wa, wa, wa 

Gonna save all my money 
and buy a GTO 
Get a helmet and a roll bar 
and I'll be ready to go 
Take it out to Pomona 
and let 'em know , yeah, yeah 
That I'm the coolest thing around 
Little buddy, gonna shut you down 
When I turn it on, wind it up, blow it out GTO 

Wa-wa, 
Wa, wa, wa, wa, wa, wa  
Wa-wa, 
Wa, wa, wa, wa, wa, wa  
Wa-wa 
Wa, wa, wa, wa, wa, wa 


C

From his signing statement ratifying the UN Convention on Torture from 1984:

"The United States participated actively and effectively in the negotiation of the Convention. It marks a significant step in the development during this century of international measures against torture and other inhuman treatment or punishment. Ratification of the Convention by the United States will clearly express United States opposition to torture, an abhorrent practice unfortunately still prevalent in the world today.

The core provisions of the Convention establish a regime for international cooperation in the criminal prosecution of torturers relying on so-called 'universal jurisdiction.' Each State Party is required either to prosecute torturers who are found in its territory or to extradite them to other countries for prosecution."

Looks like the man each and every Republican Candidate that repeatedly quoted their hero, President Ronald Reagan, all during their campaign for the Presidency in 2008, as well as many other Republicans reminding us of what all he accomplished during his presidency, has just popped up from his grave and kicked them all right smack in the butt for ignoring the United States rule of law and 'his' signature expressing opposition to torture.

Really....we should free it!  It's been held captive long enough, yes no?

Oh wait....that's the whale.  D'oh!  Wrong post! 

We're offering free beer at the bar in the chat tonight, that's what I meant.

Hope you can all join us.  Cuz it's Friday night, and we've got free beer and good friends and good conversations and music and....family.

TGIF!!

come one come all for free beer and wine  well not really just wanted to get your attention  we are having a chat and would like all of you to join us  we go here a lot so here you go hope to see you therehttp://www.lingr.com/room/TPM-aholics

 

Maybe the Republicans are right, and it will cost that much - but I doubt it.  The main problem I have with their approach is that they have no approach at all.  Gingrich said we need to create a bill with "incentives" rather than cap and trade.  In the context of legislation, what is an incentive?  It's a tax break.  And if you give a tax break to energy producers, who ends up paying the difference?  The taxpayers.  So it's the same thing, and it will add to the budget deficit which our new deficit hawks will cry about...

I propose a gas tax where the revenue is dedicated to reducing overall oil consumption.  Houses, industry, road construction (asphalt) all use a lot of oil, and if the income from the tax was dedicated to switching to alternative energy use, we would incite demand destruction two ways: the tax would discourage excessive driving, and the revenue would reduce demand.  This might help keep oil prices modest, starve the oil-producing dictators of their prized revenue, and clean the environment in one fell swoop... As of now I believe federal gas taxes are dedicated to maintaining the interstate highway system, and that's not exactly the incentive that helps...

Lastly, wasn't cap and trade preferred by republicans over government regulation just a few years ago?  I thought that was the "market answer".  Or maybe they only meant Enron...

The focus of this week's TPM Book Club discussion is Liaquat Ahamed's riveting book, "The Lords of Finance."

John Lanchester of The New Yorker magazine writes:

"The sheer frictionlessness with which money moves around the world is frightening; it can induce a kind of vertigo. This can happen when you are reading the financial news and suddenly feel that you have no grip on what the numbers actually mean--what those millions and billions and trillions actually represent, how to get hold of them in your mind. (Try the following thought experiment, suggested by the mathematician John Allen Paulos, in his book "Innumeracy": Without doing the calculation, guess how long a million seconds is. Now try to guess the same for a billion seconds. Ready? A million seconds is less than twelve days; a billion is almost thirty-two years.) Or it can happen when you look at a bank statement and contemplate the terrible potency of those strings of digits, their ability to dictate everything from what you eat to where you live--the abstract numerals whose consequences are the least abstract thing in the world. Or it can happen when the global flow of capital suddenly hits you personally--when your apparently thriving employer goes out of business owing to a problem with credit, or your mortgage payments jump unpayably upward--and you think, Just what is this money stuff, anyway? I can see its effects--I can thumb a banknote, flip a coin--but what is it, actually? What do these abstract numbers stand for? What is the thing that's being represented? Wouldn't it be reassuring if it was more like a physical thing, and less like an idea? Wouldn't the global financial system be less vertiginous, less bizarre, if your money actually stood for something?

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This just in from senior psychic correspondent Ben Ostradamus with  PNS, the Prescient News Service.......
(audio only, video not available)
4:20 PM, Wed. 5/27/2009

Good afternoon fellow Americans, I have just been told that our Futurelink®™ video feed is down so I will describe the future afternoon's activities while our Best Team in Time®™ technicians work to get the feed.

On the future eve of Fox news personality Sean Hannity's waterboarding for charity, with at least $47,000,000,000 [forty seven billion dollars] pledged to charity on the condition that Mr. Hannity's waterboarding be filmed independently by both Michael Moore and Glen Greenwald , we are told that there will soon be an announcement regarding the event.

While we wait for that announcement, a few interesting facts. So far more than 234,000,000 Americans have pledged $47,000,000,000 to charity to see Mr. Hannity not tortured.  [Update: now more than $53,000,000,000 as of 5:13 PM]

Both Mr. Moore and Mr. Greenwald have also promised that all receipts from their respective documentaries will be donated to charity. The two primary charities are Planned Parenthood and the ACLU. [Update: now more than $67,000,000,000 as of 5:33 PM]

With less than an hour to go until the non-torture event, we still have no word from Mr. Hannity or his people.

The suspense is building, the crowd is getting restless. I am told that the total of pledges is now $73,000,000,000. Only minutes to go and still no Mr. Hannity. There are some who say that he will not show. I can only report and let you decide.

There seems to be some movement in front of the facility. My producer tells me that we are still without our Futurelink®™ video feed. I wish you could see the scene here. There must be at least 100,000 people waiting to see the event on the Bozotron®™ on the front of the building and who knows how many millions watching at home. Now we are seeing a rather nervous looking man who looks like a doctor stepping up to the microphone.

I will let you listen to what he is saying,

 "Ladies and gentlemen, I am Dr. Bogost, Mr. Hannity's personal physician. Just hours ago I diagnosed Mr. Hannity with a dangerous medical condition that precludes Mr. Hannity from participating in this charity event. It is a very rare condition for which Mr. Hannity and his colleagues seem to have a propensity. It is an intestinal condition known medically as Fortitudinus abandonalus.

Needless to say, Mr. Hannity is devastated that he can not participate and prove that waterboarding is not torture. His condition precludes him from making this statement himself. There will be no questions. Thank you."

Well, there you have it. More later in the future. This is Ben Ostradamus signing off. 

Very few people, if any, have pointed out the fact that the White House press secretary Robert Gibbs is a screw-up who does not know President Obama well enough to be Press Secretary.

CNN'S ED HENRY: Just so I understand, you're saying the people in the CIA who followed through on what they were told was legal, they should not be prosecuted? But why not the Bush administration lawyers who, in the eyes of a lot of your supporters on the left, twisted the law, why are they not being held accountable?

GIBBS: The president is focused on looking forward. That's why.

Yes, the President's views on torture are a big, delicate issue that needs to be addressed accurately. 

Today I learned that the President will first have a Town Hall Meeting in St. Louis on Wednesday and that evening have a Press Conference with the professional questioners of the White House press corps.  I thought I would pick up some easy bucks by making bets on which group would ask the more intelligent questions and I would take the "nonprofessionals" in St. Louis.  This project has been a failure.  I cannot find anyone who will take the White House press corps. Back to making an honest living.

Sometimes we need to remember that our President is a man.  Not a god, not an idol.  He is not omnipotent nor is he infallible.  He makes mistakes, changes his mind, says the wrong thing, scratches himself in inappropriate places, tells bad jokes and occasionally passes gas in public.  How do I know?  Because we all do.

He has a family that he loves, just as they love him.  He also argues with his spouse, becomes exasperated with his kids and makes them cry, spills coffee all over the place, throws his dirty socks on the floor and forgets to put the cap on the toothpaste.  How do I know?  Because we all do. 

He's a man with the most important and intolerable job in the world.  He has millions of bosses telling him what to do and how to do it within a million time frames.  Sometimes he feels discouraged, abandoned, afraid and alone.  How do I know?  Because we all do.

Our President is a man with a family trying to do his job to the best of his ability.  Agree or disagree with him vehemently - that is but one of the blessings of being a citizen of the United States of America.  But when you pause to take a breath ... spare one for him.

Take a look at these photos that are in the current edition of Time magazine.  His first 100 days.

http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1893255,00.html

  

With various matters such as... oh... I dunno... Locker Searches in High School or Police Road Blocks or Warrantless Wiretaps or any other violations of our liberties, I have heard this argument from those who thinking tends to be more in line with the Conservatives:

"Well, if you're not doing anything wrong, what do you have to worry about?"

You know the argument... I'm sure you've heard it before.  I mean, if you're not planning a terrorist attack on the phone, then you have nothing to worry about, right?  If you don't have any drugs in your locker then you don't have anything to worry about, right?  Etc... ad nauseum.

So.  I say this to all those Repukes who insist that President Obama should NOT be releasing these Torture Documents...  The same Repukes who say, "The US Doesn't Torture!"

Hey!!!   If you weren't doing anything wrong, what do you have to worry about?

Bitches.

Finally a number:  100.  TPM Reuters article says:

"Our leader has ordered that Taliban should immediately be called back from Buner," Taliban spokesman Muslim Khan told Reuters. He said there were only around 100 fighters in Buner.

Buner is an area with about one million residents.  It was recently invaded and terrorized by Taliban-led forces.   Locals initially organized a resistance and reportedly killed 17 Taliban fighters.  No data given on how many local casualties.  But then they gave up resistance apparently when the government and a local official didn't take steps to support their efforts.  So from reports it seemed like the Taliban had done a military takeover and were in a position to strike Islamabad.

I was quite curious to know how many Taliban troops were involved.  Can it truly have been only 100 or (or 117) or so who terrorized a population of one million?

SoS Clinton was taking this very seriously yesterday.  Today:

Pakistan's top diplomat in Britain said Clinton was "rather overstretching the issue", adding there was no question of giving in to the militants.

and he is reported to add this non-sequitur opinion:

He said his personal view was that U.S. President Barack Obama's plan for fighting Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan, which broadens the focus to Pakistan, was the "wrong strategy".

"Pakistan is a semi-developed country and Afghanistan is not at all developed. They have never had any rule of law in their country. You can't club the two countries (together)," he said.

The quoted remarks don't begin to justify the "personal view".

I have been gone for a few days. I have read what has been going on with dd and cant help but be thankful that i found this site with so many wonderful people on it.

    I was starting to lose faith in my fellow human beings becouse of a few things going on in my life right now. But once again my fellow TPMer's have showed me there are still good hearted people out there.

   I wish I could have helped out with dd I sure do miss his post but things have been going on that prevented me from doing so. If the need should arrive again for one of our TPMer's to need help I will be there.

    I sure have missed a lot of the people here in the last couple of days and will try not to miss anymore.   

 

 

hope everyone is having a nice day.   Remember a friend in need is a friend in deed

This will start my "Fun with Henwood" series.  Doug Henwood wrote a book called "Wall Street" back in 1997.  I discovered it while reading Nomi Prins' "Other People's Money".  She called his book "visionary" and it was in its prediction of bad times from bad behavior.  It is also written from a very left point of view and so has a direct, shooting straight from the hip, irreverent, and humorous style.  (He calls Greenspan's writings in the Ayn Rand "Objectivist" newsletter, "demented jottings".)
In the chapter on Market Models, Henwood explains modern economic theory and its belief in the purity and perfection of the market.  These words like pure and perfect make the market sound like some kind of temple with the high priests of finance ritualistically washing their hands and waving incense bombs.  Ironically with all this purity, Henwood points out that there is a very crude side to the players on Wall Street.  He says "Despite their reputation for sophistication most Wall Streeters hold a raw selfish view of the world."

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David gives the opinion  of TPM Reader JS. I have to say that I don't
really buy it. Obama may be more open than past presidents but he
still shows that he likes to play his cards close to his chest.

On the bail out which I and many others have railed about, I don't think
he has told all. At least all of the options he maybe considering. 
Though forcing the the insolvent banks into some sort of receivership
and breaking them up appears to be the obvious solution, it may not
yet be quite the right time yet for this option.

This makes think about FDR and Dentists. Come again ? (I hear you ask)
Yes...remember that FDR came into office after the economy had been on
the rocks for at least two years.  There had already been massive farm failures
do to the dust bowl, hundreds of banks had already failed, factories had closed
and unemployment had been in the double digits everywhere for years.
Getting his agenda through congress was not that difficult.

Now for the dentist analogy. Suppose one has a bad tooth ache but hates
dentists. Your hurting but aspirin can still kill the pain however temporary.
You consider going to the dentist ..... later. But now the pain is so bad
no amount of aspirin (or any other over the counter medication) has ANY
effect. Not only will you go to the dentist, but you'll even be willing to
have the thing removed while standing on your head, if need be.

Get the point. The country has not quite been hurting enough, long enough
to get the kinds of bills passed in Congress or to have the banks dealt with
in the appropriate manner to fix things up. Obama may have actually come
into office a bit too soon, in some respects.

Now as to prosecuting those responsible for torture he may want to, but
would rather have Congress take the lead on it. And/or the Justice Dept.
I refer to FDR here again. He wanted to go to war with Germany, and
to a lesser extent Japan, but the timing and mood was not right. Congress
as well as the population simply did not want to be involved.  The attack
on Pearl changed that in a big hurry.

So I am just guessing that Obama is moving on those things for which the
timing and mood is correct. I do not believe he would say or do anything
to obstruct any probe that is made into the Bush torture memos or those
responsible for them or the actions. But I am not surprised  he has not
come out and pushed it hard either.

After all he is a politician and a pretty good one at that.

Addendum:

But then again, I could be wrong. This is a bit crazy.

C


 

I have seen in recent days - in blogs, on tv, in the papers - people saying something to the effect of, "If thousands of lives are at stake, its alright to torture in order to save those lives."  These types of extreme and unrealistic dilemmas are better for movies than for policy making, but it raises important questions.  Is it really ok to torture?  Are there circumstance where torture should be allowed?  Should the laws be written so that governments can torture if they deem that they need to?  We can get into debates about whether or not it works, was used correctly, or it is being honestly reported as well as what actually constitutes torture.  But I want to ask the more fundamental questions. 

First, I don't think its as simple as torturing one person to save thousand.  The event does not end with the torturing.  The United States, as the most powerful country in the world, is an example for the rest of the world.  One person being tortured will lead to 1000s being tortured.  It can be a justification for other countries.  As well, it can become more prevalent in our own country. 

But the bigger question is whether or not we can ever trust our governments with the power to torture under any circumstances.  Is there any government that we can trust with that much power?  Some people might trust Obama, others might trust Bush, but will we be able to trust the next president?  Will we be able to trust the countries that deal with our citizens such as in South Korea today?  In even this limited circumstance, was the torture really done in the best interests of the country or was the torture done to try to justify a war for which there was no justification? 

If we justify torture based on an "ends justify the means" argument, and the government is defining the ends, we end up with a "government justifies the means.  Truly Orwellian. 

Torture is not, and can never be, acceptable.  We can argue about what is torture, where we draw the line, but when that line is drawn, it should not be crossed.  And if it is ever crossed, people have to be punished (imprisoned) to make it clear that we are a society that does not accept that.

The Gaming of Torture

The initial victory is, unfortunately, awarded to the evil doers of our time.  By cleverly goading the United States into debasing itself with a legalistic work around for the rule of law, Al-Qaeda scored an important victory.  Their own questionable tactics (the only ones realistically available to them for economic and logistic reasons) can now be cast in a somewhat less negative light --kill, maim, or injure innocents? Well, everyone does it when they're desperate don't they?  Even the self-righteous Americans, well, especially the self-righteous Americans, as soon as they're threatened all that talk of liberty and the rule of law (government) of the people, by the people, for the people --evaporates.
Leaving aside the historical evidence (evidence from non-fictional sources) that the use and precidence of torture seems to indicate that it is only (conditionally) effective as a tool or DOMESTIC suppression (suppression of dissent, suppression of political rivals), one must also consider how, after an initial victory from deligitimizing America and American governance, the future gaming of torture tactics may unfold.
I would humbly suggest that Al-Qaeda planners are now in same position as their Soviet conterparts were during the cold war.  The difference is of course that the Soviets were never able to get America to hand them such a complete propaganda victory as Al-Qaeda has.  Many may argue that the victory is in the telling or broadcasting of the truth in relation to torture, that is a childish and misguided perspective, the victory was in getting America to abandon it's core principles in such a vulgar, ignorant, unskilled, and OBVIOUS way.
However, now everyone knows suspects are tortured.  (No, we don't do that anymore! --uh, yeah, right, of COURSE you don't, wink, wink)  So, every operative will be given several fancifull and intricate "plans" some of which may be plausible, others, not so much.  Planners will ASSUME that operations will be compromised. When they are compromised they will still offer benefits (torture away, waste your life and resources chasing ghosts, losing credibility, and acting in ways that debase you and your way of life).  In this scenario, a successful operation may actually have less positive impact (from Al-Qaeda's perspective), and higher negatives than an unsuccessful one!
And so, I come to the most unlikely conclusion (from my own moral perspective):  perhaps it is possible to love torture policy (an alternative conclusion could also be that future attacks will harm the causes of those conducting them more than they will harm the intended targets, but that, I suppose, will require further analysis...)

Back before the election, during the primaries and the pre-primary positioning period, one of my frequent comment themes and arguments was that if you read his book and listened to what he was saying, the post-partisanship Obama was talking about not about the "bi-partisan" utopia of David Broder's fever dreams in which "the center" is defined as Joe Lieberman and Lindsey Graham.  Instead, I argued, it was about peeling away the remaining sane people who self-identified as Republicans or Republican leanders--who I estimated to be about 20-25% of the total--and getting them onboard to at least conditionally agreeing that we needed to try something else. The pitch was "I am for what works, not what some stale ideology says must be done." 

My point (which, rightly or wrongly, I felt was also Obama's point) was that, at the time, the country was stuck in a 48% vs. 48% rut where we were constantly fighting over only a tiny sliver of the electorate.  If we were going to accomplish anything, I said, we had to peel that remaining vestige of sane people away from the GOP.  To that end, I frequently, to the point of being annoying, admonished my fellow Democrats that these people existed, that they were finding the growing insanity of their fellow Republicans increasingly difficult to ignore and they they could be persuaded to cross over to our side of the barbed wire if we would refrain from giving them the impression we were going to spit big green loogies in their faces as soon as they were in range.   

It says, perhaps, something about how far we've come that I percieved this as a real problem at the time yet now I have to make an effort to remember why I thought it was a problem. 

Anyway, if peeling those people away was Obama's mission, he's accomplished it.   Dig into the numbers of this Gallup poll.  Note that about a quarter of self-identified Republicans say Obama is doing a good or excellent job and that a surprising 35% of them are at least giving him a grudging "just okay."   So congratulations Mr. President, you've managed to assemble just the kind of public coaltion necessary to do the big things you wanted to do. 

There's just one problem. 

In late 2007 and early 2008, I thought the crazyhead wing of the party was already long since off its meds and that their unmedicated craziness is what was going to drive the sane 25% away.  I mean, c'mon, Dick Cheney?  Rudy Guiliani? Tom Tancredo?  This was the mainstream of the party.  How could it get worse? 

My bad. 

I totally failed to grasp that the high-level radioactive lunacy radiating off the party in early 2008 is what the crazy people were like when they were on their meds.  I failed to understand that that 25% I was coveting were the ones who'd been handing out the little cups and making sure the inmates weren't just hiding the pills under their tongues.  Now those poor loons are locked up in that dank 19th century asylum with no light and and no one to talk to but each other. 

Seriously, the still accelerating mental and emotional breakdown of the GOP was a foreseeable yet unforeseen consequence of a Democratic president whose  approval ratings were in the high sixties.  Unforeseen by me, anyway.  So yeah, Obama is directly responsible for the growing derangement of the Republican Party.  Not in any journalistic ha-ha "Obama Derangement Syndrome" sense, but literally and directly.  He deliberately went after the support of a bunch of people who were the last remaining restraining force on the extremists and he stripped them away.  One wonders if he or his advisors really understood that doing so might inflict a mortal wound on their party. 

Elsewhere in this site I have talked a little about whistleblowing.  So I thought that here I would tell a whistleblowing story that I was involved in years ago.

I was working at a major pharmaceutical company.  This company has since been purchased several times and no longer exists.

The company had several successful and valuable drugs in the marketplace, but unfortunately they were short on recent successes and their was little in the pipeline.  The drugs that were making most of the money for the company (2) were due to go off patent soon and with nothing else to fuel the company there was of course a tremendous scramble to come up with something new quickly.

The company had an internal project developing a derivative of a drug that was in their intellectual property portfolio and applying it to the treatment of life threatening situation often seen in the emergency room.  Thus they had done a lot of hurried studies on the drug and had applied to FDA for permission to use it in the treatment of the acute life threatening condition.  Since there were at the time no drugs available to treat the condition FDA granted fast track approval for the commencement of clinical trials. 

As part of my work, I had become privy to certain research data in animals that raised some serious safety questions.  I inquired and was told that the mechanism of toxicity was assumed to be due to the peculiarities of the animal being used.  It was opined that the metabolism of the animal resulted in the formation of a toxic metabolite.  The effect of the metabolite was to 'liquefy' the heart of the animal.  Being of an inquisitive bent, I proposed certain investigations to try to clarify the issue.  At first my proposal was received well.  Some days later one of my supervisors took me aside and told me not to do the experiment, write anything down about it or even continue talking about it.  I asked why and was told that corporate management had made the decision. 

Ultimately, I spoke to the vice president of research and development for the company and was told essentially to shut up if I knew what was good for me. 

I took all of this as a signal that the worst would indeed happen, and began applying for other jobs.  No luck - I had been blackballed.  Since that time I have never worked for a major pharmaceutical company. 

After securing a new job and leaving the industry, I was driving along late one night and a news blurb on the radio came on and announced the trial of the drug in question had been called off, as more patients receiving the treatment than the control group had died. 

I found this sickening.  I tried contacting news outlets and was told 'we'll get back to you'.  I tried calling FDA - not interested, they said that bad things sometimes happen in clinical trials.  I tried to find the families of the dead patients - no luck.  Law enforcement, local and national, didn't respond.

So what does blowing the whistle get you?  I have the pride of knowing I was right, the shame of not finding an effective way to do anything about it and the dark feeling of having blood on my hands.

But nonetheless, I have persevered.

I'm on Firedoglake's subscriber list and over the last year, I've enjoyed getting emails about important political issues on topics like health care, the war, torture, the election, the absence of real journalism in the mainstream media, etc.  

At the end of the month, when I pay my phone bill, I'm much happier knowing that part of that money is going to groups like the ACLU and EFF. That's why I'm delighted to announce that our friends at CREDO Mobile are offering a special deal to FDL readers -- if you switch your mobile phone service to CREDO, they'll cover the cost of your current termination fee up to $200 (see below for all the details). CREDO supports nonprofits every year with 1% of their members' phone bills -- and members nominate those groups and get to vote on the how those donations are allocated.We've worked closely with the folks at CREDO on holding the Bush Administration accountable for illegal wiretapping, so I hope you'll take a minute to read what they have to say below and consider using your power of economic choice to do something good for all of us.

         

Here's a link to the actual offer

So what do you think?  Could Jane have handled this differently?  

... stovepipe the information you want to hear in a CIA report, David Kurtz:

Late Update: I'll leave it to others more expert than I am in the timeline of the evolution of our torture policy to figure out where those two CIA reports fit in, but I'm a little surprised at first glance by how late those reports are dated, coming well after the 2002 capture of Abu Zubaydah and the 2003 capture of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

Later Update: Ask and ye shall receive. Spencer Ackerman explains why those dates are significant. The point here is that by 2004-05, the Administration's self-justification for its torture policy was well underway. These reports are not contemporaneous accounts of what intelligence the torture yielded. Rather, the CIA and Cheney were papering the file well after the fact.

Well? You have a good idea now...

Somewhere in the avalanche of torture disclosures, peaking out from under a thick cloud of dust that the obnoxious overlords of apologetic sophism raise, is is an under appreciated fact.  Most of us are reasonable people.

That does not bode well for the diminishing minority of people who are not.

Enjoy.

I ride my bike a lot; it's how I get to and from the office, and the way that I decompress on Sunday mornings as long as weather allows.  I ride on the road a lot, and have had everything from horns honked (don't care) to AA batteries thrown (care) at me from passing cars.  Cops are something that I never thought I would have to worry about.

Both Tony and Ryan say that to keep from being run off the road, Tony quickly pulled ahead while Ryan braked and fell in behind the cruiser. Ryan says that once he was behind the cruiser, the Deputy slammed on his brakes, but Ryan evaded the imminent crash by riding around the cruiser. As Ryan cleared the cruiser, he says the Deputy opened his door and attempted to body-check him, but missed. Ryan caught up with Tony but, significantly, Tony says that Ryan didn't tell him what had just happened; unaware of what had just transpired, Tony continued riding, with Ryan following behind him. Having failed to run the two cyclists off the road, the Deputy got back in his car, and raced ahead. ...

By now, Tony says he was doing his best to defuse a situation that was rapidly spiraling out of control, but as he explains, the Deputy just kept making the situation worse. Tony says that after the taser had failed to have its desired effect, the Deputy pulled out his telescoping baton, and began swinging at Tony. However, he wasn't having any more luck with his baton than he did with the taser; Tony says the baton failed to open fully, so the Deputy kept flailing away at Tony while trying to grab him and simultaneously attempting to hold up his pants-which were threatening to drop to the ground with each swing. The scene was both comical and deadly serious.

The crime?  Riding two abreast on a road.  And I know, it's a small-town deputy that most likely fits every related stereotype (though not all do), and cops do a lot of other things that are good that no one writes about.  But this guy should not have a badge.  Period.

I can't believe I am typing this.

This morning around 9:45 I though I "FELT" a sonic boom, didn't hear it FELT it.

For about 10 or 15 seconds it just felt weird. Little did I know. Anyways my two cats tails were HUGE for about an hour. I didn't know why, until just now.

I have now been through an earthquake. Now for those of you in the "EQ zone" this 3.4 quake is nothing, but to me it was amazing.

Anyways I just had to tell you all about it today.

 

Look =======> HERE 

I am in awe.

 

Carl Hulse at the New York Times just posted a report on the Democratic leadership's plan to make some use of the budget reconciliation rules in the process of passing health care reform bills.

Hulse's description of reconciliation includes the following phrases:

"the use of an obscure procedure known as a reconciliation," and  "the arcane maneuver"

Fromn Hulse's description, you'd never know that reconciliation was used to pass " tax cuts, oil drilling, trade authority, and much else" during the Bush years (quoting Ezra Klein at http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=the_fifty_vote_senate).

Rather, the term "obscure procedure known as reconciliation" has become a bit of Washington-village cliche, preset and ready for journalists to import into every article that mentions the term. The very fact that there's a cliched form built on the term suggests that it's neither obscure or arcane, any more than the filibuster or the unanimous consent agreement is. Rather, reconciliation is a piece of Congressional rules that has been used regularly at least since the 1980s.

I don't know whether putting some or all of health care reform into budget bills and passing them under reconciliation rules is a legal or political good idea: I just know that there's nothing obscure or arcane about the possibility, and labeling it so is just unthinking cover for particular views.

As for Hulse's remark that employmen of reconciliation would " likely to touch off a nasty partisan fight with Republicans": Well, what do you call the current situation, where Republican legislators continually call the President a socialist, hold up lots of nominations on flimsy grounds, and filibuster 'most everything that comes up in the Senate? Would Hulse describe the current legislative atmosphere as "healthy bipartisan debate," perhaps? As "cooperation in moving the nation's agenda"? Has Hulse, a New York Times reporter, been paying any attention at all to the political discourse and actions of the minority party over the last month?

Worth a look:

General impression: NOM is in serious trouble - derision hurts, but irrelevance is fatal.

Random notes:

Interesting framing from Richard Piatt of LDS-owned KSL: "Given the past power of the ultra-right on this issue ..."

Huntsman: "If it equates to equal rights for all of our citizens, it's a conversation we need to have."

Lisa Riley Roche (Deseret News): "Do you support that [NOM] campaign that seems to be suggesting there's an increasing threat to the American way of life by people seeking equal rights?"

Huntsman: "I haven't given that [campaign] a second's thought."

Ouch.

Irrelevance.

But then Huntsman pivots with a nod to (what he seems to agree/suggest are) supposedly more pressing concerns (food, shelter, clothing and the like). A false choice? Sure. Am I bothered? Not so much. If/when Huntsman decides to run, Steve Schmidt will be on staff. This Steve.

Moving on ...

Huntsman: "The Republican Party needs to let a thousand flowers bloom ... [allow] preeminence [to] stand taller than partisanship ... and see where that takes us ..."

Amen to that, Guv. Amen.

P.S. Speaking of Steve Schmidt, this recent NOM press release exemplifies, for me, all that's wrong with Maggie's and Brian's and the ultra-right's approach:

PRINCETON, NJ, April 17 /Christian Newswire/ -- Today, the National Organization for Marriage (NOM) responded to Steve Schmidt on CNN:

"Steve Schmidt's first national TV address this week is part of a coordinated campaign to manufacture a message point: Americans are ready to give up on the marriage issue. I'm not worried about this press spin, because the people who believe it are going to wake up to find the political landscape is very different than they imagine," said Brian Brown, executive director of NOM. "People are responding very powerfully to our ads and other messaging because they don't want politicians imposing gay marriage on them or their children or their grandchildren."

"Steven Schmidt? Isn't this the guy who ran a failed presidential campaign, who advised a failed governor (Arnold Schwarzenegger) who insiders say was recently fired by Meg Whitman?" Brown continued, "Sure, we can understand why Steve would be looking for a way to make some new friends -- but why would anyone take his advice on how to win elections at this point?"

"Imagine what America -- or the GOP -- will be like when anyone who believes marriage is the union of husband and wife can be excluded from high office, or public influence, in the way we now exclude bigots and racists. What does that do to the electoral map?" Brown asked.

"There is no conservative case for gay marriage. Gay marriage represents the overthrow of the core idea of marriage in our tradition and every faith tradition. And it will put government on the side of excluding traditional faith communities from the public square," said Maggie Gallagher, President of NOM.

To schedule an interview with Maggie Gallagher, President, or Brian Brown, Executive Director of NOM, contact Elizabeth Ray (x 130, eray@crcpublicrelations.com) or Mary Beth Hutchins (x.105, mhutchins@crcpublicrelations.com) by calling 703-683-5004.

So, if you happen to work for a media outlet that might benefit from an in-person display of NOM's increasingly ugly and shrill appeals to fear, I guess you now know the numbers to call and the folks to email. Enjoy. But, your professional predicament aside, on a personal level, just talking among ourselves, before you decide to make that call or send that email to Liz or Mary at CRC, please know that I would enjoy reading your admission (even if merely posted anonymously in comments here) that you, too, also realize just how sad and pathetic NOM's schtick has become. I mean, at this point, who among us still believes that NOM has any useful advice left to give regarding how to win elections? I mean, at this point, even our colleagues in the Utah press have gathered that they don't.

Why? Because since their Pyrrhic victory in California, NOM have done nothing but lose.

Why? Because, at this point, NOM have become ringleaders of the sort of media circus that any right-minded conservative abhors and any serious Republican recognizes as the central challenge facing the party: how to best usher their clowns offstage to the benefit of both the GOP and the country.

Final thought: Last time I checked, Steve was not a member of the press, Brian. But you insinuate otherwise.

Why? Because you're a clown, Mr. Brown.

This has been a remarkable week of politics watching in DC what with the Senate Armed Services Report on Torture, Pres. Obama's waffling on going forward and the media's, and hopefully the public's, seemingly evolving firestorm. The seeds of my addiction to the news were planted with watching the events of the Watergate scandal in high school and following the Congressional hearings in early college.

Damn, I think that I am getting the same feelings this week that I had back then that this could be huge for the future of our country. Don't know for sure yet.

I admit that I probably watch too much MSNBC, but it seems to be the only place on my cable to get any reality, albeit in irregular doses. But one of the most remarkable spots I saw was Lawrence O'Donell the other night on Hardball lambasting someone (I can't remember who right now) about the courage, actually the lack thereof, of those lawyers who conjured up the torture memos and those above who gave the green light on torture. For what it is worth, I have been practicing law close to 30 years and I can't imagine engaging in the mental gymanstics and pretzel logic it took for now Federal Appeals Court Judge Bybee to write his torture memo.

Half the time I want to scream at Lawrence, but I was quickly mesmerized by his admissions that he is a coward and that virtually all who were in these critical torture policy formulation and implementation positions are cowards too because they, unlike those brave men and women who do serve,  were too chicken to volunteer their time to armed service. The best part was Lawrence pointing out that the chickenshits who authorized the use of torture did so mainly because torture would definitely work on chickenshits like themselves and that torture is probably not going to work on those with strong convictions, such as our own armed forces or religous zealots like Al Qaeda.

 It dawned on me that Lawrence was spot on with this analysis. I also thought he showed a lot more courage than for which he was giving himself credit by pointing these things out on prime time TV- the same criticism could be wielded against virtually every pundit and Beltway reporter in the MSM- heck we may never see Lawrence on TV again.  

If the last eight years should have taught the country anything is that Fear is a most powerful emotion that can be misused and manipulated not only in one to one situations, but on a mass scale. Of course, anyone who has studied the 1920-1940's already knows this.

 

Through my own personal traumas and experiences as a teenager, I learned that being fearful is usually a wasting and draining emotion. In times of conflict with others, showing fear could be devastating. I learned that it is better to channel the adrenaline that fear provokes into more useful responses to the particular situation.  I have learned that the scent of fearlessness is just as strong and as contagious as the scent of fear. I have never had a problem walking around major metropolis downtowns. I sense that with Pres. Obama.      

 

I am struck this week watching and reading the pundit handwringing which seems to have a common underlying prop-- Fear. Fear of what investigations and prosecutions would do to our country, fear of what would happen if you did not allow our protectors in the CIA, Armed Services and I guess contractors like Blackwater/Xe to torture detainees, fear that Pres. Obama is too socialist to protect us, Fear of another 9/11.

 

Morning Joe has been exceptionally pukey this week with such handwringing. I would have thought that Lawrence O'Donnell was talking specifically about Joe Scarborough. I have no doubt that Joe S would cave with the first droplets touching his face.  Chuck Todd and David Gregory certainly seem fearful to go to the heart of any issue.  They are the worst sorts pretending to have backbone on nonsensical issues, running away from substantive journalism.  

 

Most of the wrongheaded decisions coming out of Congress are grounded in a fear of not being reelected. Corporate America lavishes money on Congress out of fear of being forced by law to do the right thing or fear that a competitor gets a leg up.

 

Thank God that our founding fathers were not too fearful to stand up to a tyrant like King George III and the British Army and that they were not too fearful 

As Anhirsch said today in a TPM Reader posting: "The argument against torture is simple: It's wrong.  It is against the law, against common sense, and against common decency."

I hope Eric Holder and the Justice Department show the fearlessness that comes from being common sensical, moral, right and steadfast.  

To Congress, Morning Joe and the rest of the MSM: Quit being such chickenshits. Quit being part of the problem and let's clean up this mess and set our country in the right direction. Maybe you will smell the scent of fearlessness instead of fear. 

    

  

   

Those who oppose investigating and possibly prosecuting those responsible for creating a bureaucratic cover for illegal torture have claimed that it would be a criminalization of policy difference and politicize justice. They are wrong. Failure to prosecute for fear of political fallout is politicized justice.

What they are accused of is illegal. It was illegal when they did it. They did not change a policy, they broke laws. When political elites argue that they are above the law, that is politicized justice. When  we are asked to move on past this ugly spectacle, that is politicized justice.

But then. I have to stop and consider the immensity of gall and hypocrisy it takes for any Republican to complain about politicized justice. The party who hired and fired US Attorneys based on loyalty to the GOP and their willingness to bring specious cases against Democrats, including cases that judges have said are crazy. The party of Ken Starr - the walking personification of politicized justice - really should not talk about politicizing Justice. There are literally cases of documents detailing how they made their entire Administration, including the Justice Department, a cog in their reelection machine.

It is beyond shameful that reporters are not laughing in their faces.

Not sure if you saw this or not.

Representative Joe Barton (R-TX) looked like an idiot this morning. He asks "where does oil come from?" to the Sec of Energy, then gets shown up by someone who actually knows. Chu gives a short, to the point, accurate description of how oil is formed. Barton then gloats on Twitter: "I seemed to have baffled the Energy Sec with basic question - Where does oil come from? Check out the video."

He went so far as to post the video on YouTube himeself under the title: "Energy Secretary puzzled by simple question"

WOW! What a moron. He has no idea what plate tectonics and continental drift are, then say its Energy Secretary who doesnt know anything.

This was my comment on Paul Krugman's blog entry today defining moment.  I'll provide the link momentarily.

Tom

My defining moment came during the Vietnam War when I realized the government's explanation of what was happening in Vietnam was not accurate. It was compounded when I found out that Lyndon Johnson had snookered the American people and the Congress with his Gulf of Tonkin Resolution.  It's a shame that during the run-up to the Iraq so many people ignored, ridiculed, and berated those of us who were ware we were being conned.  It's a sad commentary on the level of education in the United States that so many people fell for the Bush/Cheney propaganda line.  However, I'm proud to say that many of my 9th and 10th grade students in 2002-3 were able to correctly analyze Colin Powell's speech to the UN as being inaccurate.  They did this by reading the foreign press online.  Also, let's honor the millions of people around the world who took to the streets on February 15, 2003 to try to prevent Bush's "March to Folly" in Iraq.

April 24, 2029

After a decade of development, China has announced the completion the controversial Great Fan project. The massive 900-meter tall nuclear-powered fan has been designed to relieve the impacts of global warming on Beijing and surrounding areas by blowing millions of cubic meters of hot air towards its northern neighbors. Russia has vigorously protested the construction of the fan before the United Nations, the International League of Justice, and the Asian-Pacific-Plus-Denmark Large Claims Court, but China has so far succeeded in blocking the suits using its veto power, bribery, and tricky lawyers.

In retaliation, Russia has begun construction of its own great fan directly opposite China's fan. According to Russian officials, the fan will be 1200 meters tall and include an "extra high" setting capable of blowing back all of China's hot air. But the Chinese are already said to be developing a second generation great fan with a swivel base that would neutralize the Russian defense. Amnesty International has expressed concern that Mongolia will be caught in the crosswinds and suffer severe sandstorms, but the Chinese-backed Mongolian government has supported China's plans and agreed to lease its borderlands to Chinese wind energy developers seeking to capitalize on the windfall.

International analysts predict a global fan race, as nations seek to propel hot air into one another's territories. Several other nations are already reported to be developing their own great fans, including the United States, Israel, India, and Talibakistan. U.S. officials have also accused of Iran of secretly purchasing fan technology from the Chinese with the intent of building a great fan. Iranian president Mohammed Akantprnouncit, disputed the accusation, declaring that "the peaceful Iranian people seek only giant rotors that will turn prettily in the breeze." Officials in Saudi Arabia have warned darkly that a fan-backed Iran would force them to develop their own fan, but Akantprnouncit dismissed the threats, declaring, "We are not concerned with the Sunni heretics. If they try to build one, the Shiites will really hit the fan."

China's Great Fan is scheduled to be switched on at midnight tomorrow. The Chinese government has promised to keep the fan on a "low" setting until the environmental impact has been determined, but environmentalists have expressed concern that the giant fan will injure migrating birds and disrupt the mating rituals of the Siberian horny toad. The environmental activist group, Green War, is planning worldwide protests and selling millions of bumper stickers and T-shirts that read, "The Fan Blows," "We're Not a Fan of the Fan," "Not By the Hair of My Fanny-Fan-Fan." Proceeds from the sales, including tickets to the demonstrations, are expected to top ¥500 billion worldwide.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

News From the Future is a series of dagblog.com exclusives about events that have yet to occur. We've received the articles through a glitch in the blogosphere known as a bunghole. You can subscribe to all our posts via RSS feed or email.

The Times supplies its story with a screaming headline...

Banned Techniques Yielded 'High Value Information,' Memo Says

Torture works! Who knew? 

Kos has a great post up just now with some interesting ponderables for the Texas Wingnut Party:

So we now know that half of Texas' Republicans want to secede from the United States. So I have some questions for that crowd:

• Are you flying an American flag? Because you don't get to do that when you cry and take your ball home.

• Do you have a bumper sticker that says, "These colors don't run"? Because it sure looks like you're running.

• Do you still pretend that your party is the "Party of Lincoln"? If so, what part of Lincoln exactly, would that be?

• Since you've spent the last eight years saying "America, love it or leave it", is that an admission that you don't love America? Because we liberals? We loved it and stayed, even when your idiot of a president was trashing the place.

• Was your patriotism (My country, right or wrong) so skin-deep, that it depended 100 percent on the guy in the White House?

• That $200 billion Texas got in defense contracts between 2000 and 2007? No more of that. No more Ft. Hood. No more NASA. No more federal largesse. You okay with that?

• You do realize that the Cowboys will no longer be "America's Team", right? Though they'd dominate the two-team Texas Football League (TFL).

Ha! Maybe the TFL will eventually get good enough that they can compete in the World Cup?

Maybe their new motto should be "America, We Don't Love It, So We're Leaving."

In your questionable zeal to make Sean Hannity appear more foolish (he really does not need any help), and obfuscating your motives through charitable giving, you have succeeded in further trivializing torture.  You are aiding in turning water-boarding into a parlor game.  No matter how many seconds Hannity would survive the water, it is unlike any water-torture our "enemies" would have received, in that they would never know it would stop.  You got suckered into a game, Mr. Olbermann, and the result will be that waterboarding will become mundane, even thinkable.  It should not be; it should remain a thought and picture that we should all recoil from. 

  You should not want him or anyone waterboarded, nor should the gleeful commenters on blogs discussing your offer.

  Even the debate on whether or not torture "works" is rather beside the point.  That cannot be proven; there will be opinions everywhere, and no objective truth.  It essentailly does not matter; it is against our laws, against international law, and it is wrong, and immoral.  Stop playing cutesy with fox news pundits; you degrade yourself, as well as the issue.  What you are doing smacks a little of revenge, which is the one mostly unspoken motive of torturers and the authors of torture.

MSNBC's Keith Olbermann announced on Thursday that he is willing to pay $1,000 to charity for every second that Fox News anchor Sean Hannity undergoes waterboarding torture.

As HuffPost noted yesterday, Hannity was prodded by actor Charles Grodin into agreeing to subject himself to waterboarding to benefit a charity for the families of U.S. soldiers.

"What a breakthrough it would be if, by having reality literally forced upon him, a buffoon like Hannity were to realize the deadly seriousness of this," Olbermann said. "The searing truth: that the moment of torture automatically makes the presumed bad guy recipient the victim, and makes the torturer into the evildoer."

"For every second you last, a thousand dollars -- live or on tape, provided other networks' cameras are there. A thousand dollars a second, Sean, because this is no game. This is serious stuff. Put your money where your mouth is, and your nose. Oh, and I'll double it when you admit you feared for your life, when you admit the horrible truth -- waterboarding, the symbol of the last administration, is torture."

If I knew where to donate I would.  I'd give a lot to see Hannity undergo this torture.  And I mean the exact treatment that any prisoner of ours was subjected to (15-20 seconds of rough treatment).

Be sure to make an offer by emailing Hannity at: hannity@foxnews.com

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tBb4cjjj1gI

The Katie Couric rhymes at 1:21 is wicked tight! 

Enjoy!  :)

With all the crap, we all have to deal with on a daily basis it is days like the last few that, for me, make it bearable. I can think of nothing more rewarding than what you guys and gals did to help out a friend, that, I am guessing none of you have actually met in the flesh.

THINK ABOUT WHAT WAS DONE. IN LESS THAN A WEEK AN ONLINE GROUP OF PEOPLE THAT HAVE NEVER MET GOT INVOLVED AND HELPED OUT A FRIEND IN NEED.

So often I have seen folks stand on the sidelines and watch the world go by when JUST A WORD, A WORD could make all the difference to someone.

I feel I can speak with authority on the "just a word or two" statement above because I saw what can happen if someone just speaks up. I wanted to help out a friend and just TYPED the words and look what happened.

So the next time you wonder whether you should speak up remember what happened here on TPM this week, and just say what is on your mind. By the way, I still have a computer if it is needed.

 

I put the following on a couple of blogs today but it bears repeating: 
PLEASE take the time to enjoy the ... don't know the right word... How about... "GLOW" of helping a friend out.
You ALL deserve a tremendous pat on the back.
I sincerely hope we can keep things going with this "TPM Helpers Club" in some way.
To everyone THANK YOU FOR doing 2D right. IT MADE MY DAY.
To you 2D, pen to paper... "U.S." can hardly wait.

 

So I ask you to REALLY keep the feeling you have in your hearts today, alive by feeding it once in a while by helping out a friend or even a stranger.

I would also ask that we figure out a way to make this group a permanent fixture on TPM. I don't really know how to do it, I just know that we should. If ANYONE can figure out a good way to keep it going AND making a difference "speak up". 

Again, THANK YOU ALL for this, I am proud to be associated with each and every one of you and hope it is OK that, in the future, I call you all:

       MY FRIENDS, MY VERY GOOD FRIENDS!

VTY,

O¿O

 

PS: Grouch, I envy you.

Just a q&d idea:  we know what happens with a "free market" -- bullies emerge, monopolies grow & become entrenched... big ugh.

What We the People really want is a FAIR MARKET.

Said monopolistic bully companies don't want that, of course, so they wheedle regulatory agencies, in anyway they can, to cement their mastery of their given marketplace.  Thus, the marketplace competition grows companies that are very good at wheedling regulators, instead of better providing the service or product they create or mediate.

A "FAIR MARKET" includes regulatory agencies that would be largely "hands-off", but prevent the kind of idiocy that we see in various U.S. markets.  My person pet peeve is the FCC's shirking of their duties to FAIRLY regulate telecommunications companies, leaving us with places that have a "duopoly" of ILEC vs. Cable companies, with no other competition in the marketplace.  This is not only unfair, it is unethical (and probably illegal, too.)

That's my 2 cents.  Happy Friday!

 -Scott

No other explanation. Now...will South Carolina governor Mark Sanford reject any un-constitutional, budget-busting Federal monies? Will he accept a Presidentially-ordered state of emergency, and suck at the teat of the U.S. largesse--at the expense of our grandchildren's debts?

First Mount Redoubt, and now South Carolina. God is still speaking, neocon nutjobs...and such timing, too, is nothing less than unmistakable.

God is speaking, all right--and he's saying: "STFU!"

Can I get an "Amen!" on that one?

I "embraced and extended" this from a post on 40 Years in the Desert, where I note how well Rachel Maddow ties the torture issue together, and leaves a finger pointing to the very top.

She links torture to political needs, as opposed to security needs. ( below, 13:23)

So, we already have reports, the famous "Mayberry Machiavelli" quote, that there was really no policy apparatus in the Bush White House, just a political one.

We also know that they were waterboarding some suspects six times a day for at least a month, which only makes sense if you want to coerce a lie, as opposed to uncovering actionable information.

The need to torture was less a policy decision than one to justify and gain support for an invasion if Iraq, and this invasion was driven to a large degree by a political consideration that "finishing the job" there would secure reelection for George W. Bush.

So the alpha and omega of the decision to torture was really politics and electioneering.

And whose office did politics and electioneering go through?  Whose office was at the center of any discussion of political calculus?

Karl Christian Rove, that's who.

From a political standpoint, he has to realize that constantly bringing up Bush and Cheney hurts the Republican party that he professes to love, so why is he bring them back, if just to defend them?

The answer is that it's not about the Republican Party, it's about keeping Karl Christian Rove out of jail.

Macroeconomics doesn't get much plaudits around now, but here is a real-life story that should hearten those who think the field is really broken.  It concerns Andres Velasco, a distinguished macroeconomist who is currently the minister of finance in Chile, and who also happens to be a good friend, colleague and co-author. 

Until the current crisis hit, Chile's economy was booming, fueled in part by high world prices for copper, its leading export.  The government's coffers were flush with cash.  (Chile's main copper company is state-owned, which may be a surprise to those who think Chile runs on a free-market model!)  Students demanded more money for education, civil servants higher salaries, and politicians clamored for more spending on all kinds of social programs. 

Read more »

Liz and Meghan go after one another, or at least each others
political folks. But why does this seem more like cheesy
female mud wrestling than a mature discussion.

Because their both republicans ?


C

Michelle Obama is too kind when she talks about Bo, the new Obama family dog.

"It was like 10 o'clock. Everybody was asleep and we hear all this barking and jumping around," the First Lady said to more than 100 children invited to a White House program marking the annual Take Your Child to Work Day. "The president and I came out and we thought somebody was out there. And it was just Bo. He was playing with his ball. And it was like there was another person in the house.

"He's kind of crazy, but he's still a puppy. So he likes to play a lot."

I had to laugh out loud as I read this.

Kinda crazy?

Michelle Obama is too generous.

The First Lady and the president and I are like millions of other people who did not grow up with a dog in the house. To people like us, there is always that lingering "why is this animal in the house with us" feeling that comes over us whenever we temporarily forget about the dog and then he just pops up when we're trying to do something important, like sleep.

It doesn't matter if it's one of those Vietnamese Water Torture dogs like the First Family has, or one of these Chihuahua looking half breed mongrels like we've got, all dogs seem to sense when they are around people who are not totally smitten by them the way true dog lovers are.

The Obama's daughters chose the name Bo for the pup because first lady Michelle Obama's father was nicknamed Diddley, in reference to singer "Bo" Diddley.

S.'s dog is named for Tito Jackson of the Jackson Five (don't ask). S.'s dog is really the Resident Diva's dog, or at least he was until she got tired of him after a couple of months and wanted to send him back. But by then S. was in love with his yappy little ass. He looks just like that damned dog on the Taco Bell commercials, but he's not a purebreed - he might be a Chihuahua and a terrier mixed together.

That little son of a bitch is thirteen pounds of attitude. He has a stubby little chest, a lean, high behind, and a face like an old man. He thinks S. is a toy. He is either jumping into her lap, nuzzling her breasts, nipping at her face or licking her ears - I think he's in love with her.

Now,if he and I are alone here together - there is silence. He doesn't make a sound.

He parks his doggy smelling ass on a couch or a chair, AS IF HE OWNS IT, preening and napping and stretching his little legs like a teenager at the beach. If I'm eating something, he sidles over to the table and tries to give me the "sad eye" routine. Most of the time, I'll hook him up with a bite or two of whatever I'm having, in the hopes of buying some goodwill.

Let S. come home - the son of a bitch loses his mind, as if he has been fighting for his life since she's been gone.

When I wake up in the morning, he goes off like a banshee if I creak the bed rolling over. He snarls and yowls and grunts and warbles if he doesn't get his way, just like a damn two year old.

His most common nickname is "that motherfucker." "S., I'm tired of that motherfucker." "Motherfucker, we rescued your mongrel ass off of doggy death row and all this fucking barking is the thanks we get?" "S., that motherfucker looks just like my old roommate Herb. Look, look, look - look at how he's shrugging his shoulders! Look at the way he's crossing his long ass front legs! Look at that hang dog face! Those droopy eyes! Those tawny brown wrinkles around his mouth! Put some glasses on that son of a bitch and he looks just like Herb! I'm telling you - this damned dog looks like Herb!"

When he's being a real annoying ass because he can't get his way, I call him "M." - the name of S.'s dead mother. "Yep," S. says, "he's acting just like mamma. Trying to control everything. And refusing to shut up." Even now, after I finish writing this, he will be waiting for my foot to hit the wrong floorboard so he can get in a last growl or two before I go to bed.

The most satisfying part of any trip we take, at least for me, is at the beginning, when we are pulling out of the parking lot of the kennel, sans dog. You have no idea how good it feels to know that he is locked up for a few days, and will not be barking when you least expect it, and has no possible way to leave one of those pungent little gifts for us to discover in when he doesn't get his way.

I see why the president is out of town so much lately.

There are a lot of people who are bent out of shape about the president not keeping his promise to get a rescue dog. First Lady and Mr. President, I live with a rescue dog. He is tended to by a lifelong dog lover, who could not give him any more attention if she tried, and he is still hard to handle most of the time, and unpredictable as hell the rest of the time. Getting a rescue dog is a crap shoot at best. Since you two don't look like gamblers, I will tell you - the odds in crap shooting are terrible. Trust me, first time dog owners who are as busy as you two are had no business even thinking about getting the kind of dog that would need that much attention.

At some point this country has to decide we want to be a nation which conducts it's affairs ethically, morally and within the framework of existing law. So far we have only pretended to do so. That pretention has led to actions which are undeniably criminal. I've had it with our government officials spinning this every which way. With every passing day where they knowingly decide not to observe the law we increasingly become a rogue nation where laws are meaningless, where powerful people do what is convenient and where ordinary citizens suffer tremendous harm. Our failed financial system is merely another instance of the same lawlessness. Setting this tone of lawlessness, calls into question the quality of our entire national leadership and is front and center a core element of the decline of this country.

            In 1992, Bill Clinton made headlines by denouncing racially charged comments made by hip-hop artist Sister Souljah.  As time has passed, Clinton's denunciation has become more myth than fact, both with regard to the amount of political courage it required and its effect on voters.  Nevertheless, a "Sister Souljah Moment" has become shorthand for criticizing someone on your side of the political aisle.  In the 2008 Democratic primary, unfortunately, the term was abused to the point that one thoughtful commentator called for its retirement.

            Not so fast.  It's time for the GOP to have its own "Sister Souljah Moment."   The Obama Administration's recent release of several Department of Justice legal memoranda written to justify the CIA's use of torture has sparked a long-overdue public debate.  This debate has tied Republican apparatchiks in knots as they have bounced between the Orwellian declaration that if the United States does it, it's not torture and the amoral rationalization that if good intelligence is produced, any means of interrogation is justified. 

            The argument against torture is simple: It's wrong.  It is against the law, against common sense, and against common decency.  There are persuasive utilitarian arguments as well, stemming from torture's proven ineffectiveness and tendency to induce false confessions, but those arguments concede too much.  Even if torture produces helpful information, it is impossible to know if that information could have been obtained by different means, and it is never the case that the end justifies the means.  Torture also makes us less safe, as it costs us allies, cooperation and standing in the world.  

            There is an opportunity for an enterprising Republican to both do the right thing and score political points by standing up against torture.  All this person must do is declare that (1) the acts identified in the DOJ memos are torture and; (2)  the U.S. should never torture again.  This hypothetical Republican could even oppose prosecution of the actual interrogators, though they would have to support, at a minimum, some sort of Truth Commission or bipartisan investigation. (Sorry, Sen. McCain, not good enough.)  Any Republican who came out against torture would become an instant media celebrity, would see their approval ratings among independents go through the roof, and could use their perch as the Republican co-chair of a Torture Truth Commission to great electoral and substantial success.

            Yes, the criticism from the Club Gitmo Caucus would be fierce.  Our fictional GOP'er would be subject to the full Limbaugh and would likely be kicked off the National Review cruise.  He or she could not be facing a closed primary in 2010 (sorry, Sen. Specter) because the dittoheads would make it their mission to run him or her out of town on a rail (which, according to them, is not torture, but merely an "enhanced personal removal method").  How about Rep. Aaron Schock, all of 27 and representing Peoria in Congress?  Or Rep. Joseph Cao, born in Vietnam and now representing New Orleans?

            Why am I begging for a conservative politician to step forward?  The future of America's character depends on it.  Humane treatment of prisoners has been a cornerstone of western civilization for centuries. We have inscribed it in the Eighth Amendment to our Constitution.  Due process of law goes back to the Magna Carta of 1215, Clause 29 of which reads:

 

NO Freeman shall be taken or imprisoned, or be disseised of his Freehold, or Liberties, or free Customs, or be outlawed, or exiled, or any other wise destroyed; nor will We not pass upon him, nor condemn him, but by lawful judgment of his Peers, or by the Law of the Land. We will sell to no man, we will not deny or defer to any man either Justice or Right.

 

We will not deny or defer to any man either Justice or Right.  In the other corner, we have the GOP, proudly shredding eight centuries of humanity, decency and progress. 

Even though I'm a Democrat and think denouncing torture would improve Republican electoral chances, I am still hoping beyond hope that someone will do it.  Not torturing is supposed to be one of those things we agree on regardless of political predilection, regardless of who is in power at the moment, and regardless of the inhumanity of our enemies.  It is supposed to be part of what makes America America.  Yet conservatives' fear and zeal have, for now, overpowered their fidelity to the founding principles of our country.  Their shame should be obvious, but the deleterious effect on our national security is, sadly, only going to be felt over time.  Unless we acknowledge and right our wrongs, not as two parties but as one country, we will be inviting greater harm.  This Democrat would be willing to lose an election or two to maximize America's security and restore America's identity.

In June of 1963 (as in 1961 and 1962) President Kennedy was not looking to take on Civil Rights as the defining issue of his presidency.  He had lots of other foreign and domestic policy issues and crises to address, and saw the elemental political stalemate that existed in Congress and the world of politics regarding Civil Rights legislation.  But as the scale of violence increased and the issue became too big to ignore, he gave a televised speech on June 11, 1963 that defined race relations, civil rights and segregation in starkly moral grounds.  In part he said this:

Biden Predicted International "Torture" Test Of Obama

by Ron Powell

Back in October, two weeks before the election, Joe Biden warned that America's enemies would test Barack Obama with an international crisis within six months if he was elected president. "Mark my words," Biden told donors at a Seattle fund-raiser.

"It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. The world is looking. We're about to elect a brilliant 47-year-old senator president of the United States of America. Watch. We're going to have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy. And he's going to need help . . . to stand with him. Because it's not going to be apparent initially; it's not going to be apparent that we're right."

Who could have known that one of the qualities Joe Biden would bring to the Democratic Ticket, and then, the Vice Presidency would be clairvoyance. His October predictions have been spot-on. To date, President Obama has shown that he has the requisite intelligence and capacity to allow his thinking to evolve into a positive response and course of action.

Be sure to visit my blog, The Modern Times Post.

The last time there was a big secessionist movement, it was because the south did not want to think of black people as fully human.

This time, it's ... well, it's pretty much the same.

Oh sure, it gets dressed up with lots of other stuff.  It did then too.  But this thought has been working its way through my head ever since the other day, when either Olbermann or Maddow noted that the failure of the "socialist" label to stick was now causing the wingnuts to attempt to use the "fascist" label, and wondered what they would say when that one failed to stick.  I realized the answer: the Becks and Limbaughs and so on would, if they were really honest, grab hold of the nearest bored-looking voter, shake him vigorously, and yell: "my God, man, haven't you noticed that the President is black?!?"

Russia remains a cornerstone of Western security

It's been a while since the election when last I checked in on my fellow Idahoans.  A couple of interesting things popped out.  Thought maybe some folks might enjoy a change of pace ... so here they are:

Musings of a disillusioned republican ...
One of my favorite Idaho-centric sites, The MountainGoat Report, highlights this enlightening 2 part missive by conservative-leaning blogger Gary Eller:

Death of a Republican (Part I)
Death of a Republican (Part II)

Both parts are fascinating ... the 2nd gets more into the meat of the current political environment.  Seriously - at least skim it. This is one of the best things I've read recently regarding the plight of the GOP.

There are many take-away thoughts ...  one that strikes me is this being the first place I've seen Meghan McCain pointed to as an example of the right direction for the republican party in a truly genuine context.  Watch that girl.

My street has a Bard?
Someone has proclaimed themselves the bard of my little street ... so I thought I'd share their springtime contribution to the world of exceedingly short poetry.  The picture doesn't match the poem, but since a tulip-slug combo is hard to come by .... here's a pic from down at the visitor's center.

In warm April sun

while birds sweetly sing,

look-- on that tulip --

the first slug of spring.

-The Bard of Sherman Ave. (poem & photo via Huckleberrys Online)

The Aryan Nations Re-Emerge?
A couple of recent news  articles regarding Aryan Nations activity here in Coeur d'Alene caused some idaho bloggers to take note.  Apparently teabagging day inspired them to spend the quarters and nickles they usually use on beer to print up some fliers at kinkos - which they used to kick off a "recruitment drive" by papering random homes.

Granted, back in the day, the Aryan Nations was a menace. But comparing this group to the Aryan Nations of a decade ago is laughable.  This is like if Andy Griffith died, the town of Mayberry was burned to the ground, and Barney Fife, Gomer, and Otis decided to reestablish Mayberry from their new perch in a West Memphis crack house (without legal rights to the name "Mayberry").

These ass-clowns rent a house across from the local IGA ... and are best known for purchasing their beer with fists full of coinage (they aren't allowed to use more than $.25 in pennies).  The entire group could be eliminated by donating a $300 POS car to their cause.  They'd all be arrested in 2 days when pulled over in an unregistered vehicle for DUI and possession of meth. 

One good thing about this is that it will probably spur flagging financial support  for the Human Rights Education Institute which has seen donations wane since the decisive blow delivered to the original Aryan Nations movement several years back.  The group is very proactive in reaching out to the community and pursuing civil (and criminal) action.  The only negative to their success has been the community sort of forgetting about them, so this is a good reminder.

Dammit ... I missed a Tutu.
Speaking of the HREI, last month they hosted a fundraiser/banquet/awards thingie.  Ordinarily, even reading about the existence of such a thing would make me run screaming into the woods to hide, appearing otherwise engaged in ANYTHING, until the whole affair is likely to be over.  But this shindig featured Nontombi Naomi Tutu as the keynote speaker ... who apparently gave an excellent speech on race that I would really liked to have heard.

Next year ... I swear ... I'm going to figure out how to go to this sort of thing without having to deal with the ancillary bullshit.  Leave early ... show up late ... smile, make the donation ... whatever.

Local nonsense:
The big news in Idaho: our Governor is a total douche.  Ok, that's not really the news - we've known it for quite some time - but his douchey move of vetoing 35 bills in 2 days is really quite impressive.  Between the idiots in Boise and our new moron congressman, Walt "Idaho doesn't need your stinking earmarks" Minnick, it seems Idaho is likely to go back to unpaved roads traversed by people with a right fine 3rd grade education.

Gaaa .... I'm walking down to the lake to remind myself what I love about this place.  It sure isn't the politicians!

So that's Idaho this spring ... I promise, next time I'll learn how to make the "read more" feature work ... this got pretty damn long.

Open a window.  Open them all, let the gentle breeze of spring wash over you.  Breathe deeply, allow your lungs to experience the freedom of the cool, fresh air.  Inhale slowly.  Catch the scent of the flowers, the weeds, the trees all bursting forth.  Close your eyes.  Remember?  The earth under your feet begging to be captured by your footprints as you ran through the day.  The sneezes that made no sense except that they emptied your head and made your friends laugh.  Picking dandylions to string together, waiting for the watermelon to ripen ever so slowly.  No, no.  That's for the summer ... not just yet.  The first firefly on an especially warm night,  the first mosquito bite.  It's here.

Why can't we appreciate it?

Read more »

Paul Krugman (4-23-09, excerpt): 

For example, would investigating the crimes of the Bush era really divert time and energy needed elsewhere? Let's be concrete: whose time and energy are we talking about?

Tim Geithner, the Treasury secretary, wouldn't be called away from his efforts to rescue the economy. Peter Orszag, the budget director, wouldn't be called away from his efforts to reform health care. Steven Chu, the energy secretary, wouldn't be called away from his efforts to limit climate change. Even the president needn't, and indeed shouldn't, be involved. All he would have to do is let the Justice Department do its job -- which he's supposed to do in any case -- and not get in the way of any Congressional investigations.

I don't know about you, but I think America is capable of uncovering the truth and enforcing the law even while it goes about its other business.

The many roads of inquiry into the Bush administration's abusive "interrogation techniques" all lead to one stubborn, inconvenient fact: Torture is not just immoral but also illegal. This means that once we learn the whole truth, the law will oblige us to act on it.

This time last year, I was making a lot of enemies.  There was nothing but fighting going on, between parties, candidates, regulars, trolls....

This time last year, I hadn't yet met any of my fellow TPM'ers and, quite frankly, I didn't want to.

This time last year, I had a feeling Obama would win and I had a feeling he'd wave a magic wand and make our country beautiful, o tis of thee, the minute he got sworn in.

This time last year, I was barely able to speak with my mom about politics.

This time last year, I didn't know half as much as I know now, having learned so much.  A lot of tough stuff, I've had to learn, too, and I'm just talking about eHarmony, LOL.

This time last year, I still had a roommate that was a former boyfriend but we were trying to work it out and stay friends so he could stay here and save money while looking for a place to live.  (I didn't know I'd have this big-ass hdtv screen in me living room to show for it after he left, not that I'm complaining...)

This time last year, I thought for sure Hillary was gonna be the death of me yet.  Let alone Dijamo.

This time last year, I didn't know Dick from SleepinJeezus.  Didn't know Old Grouch from Olden Golden Decoy.  Didn't know Stilli from Aunt Sam, wwstaebler from TheraP.  Didn't know so many people like Lux could come and then go before having had a chance to say goodbye, let alone hello.

This time last year, I only had one family, and they were related by blood only.

This year.....no matter what happens, I know I have one big family, related not by blood but by love alone.

Sometimes you have to sit back and just look at all the good stuff we have, here, and in life.  Thank you all.  Thank you café.  Thank you Josh.  Thank you TPM.

The conversation tonight on various media outlets has been about the Democrats in the House and Senate that were supposedly told about this torturing of prisoners. 

Speaker Pelosi denies being told the techniques were actually used; only that they could be, and if they were ever used, they would be informed immediately by the White House.  They were never told the actions were used.

Personally I would think the better answer (if you are lying or not) would be, "I was under oath; this information was top secret and classified.  I would have been sent to prison for treason if I had leaked or told others what the President planned on doing.   Now that the information is declassified I can admit to the actions and fight till my last breath to keep it from ever happening again."

That would have been the easier answer; but instead Pelosi told the truth, yes, they heard of the possibility of using waterboarding; but as far as she knew, these enhanced interrogations were never actually used.

Knowing for a fact how secretive the Bush administration was, we should all believe the Speaker.  Just look at the present conversation and documents that are being released.  For years we were told we were not torturing prisoners or spying on Americans -- now we know they were doing so all along.

Once again Republicans backtrack on their beliefs about America's Rule of Law.  Once again their memory is conveniently lacking the facts. 

I'm sure many of you remember the Impeachment trial of former President Bill Clinton, right?  Do you also remember the arguments that Republicans used as reason for trying to Impeach and convict President Clinton?  If not, here are a few examples of what some of the more well known figures said back then about the Rule of Law:

Here's what former House Majority Leader Tom Delay said back in 1998 when the House was debating whether to impeach President Clinton:

I believe that this nation sits at a crossroads. One direction points to the higher road of the rule of law. Sometimes hard, sometimes unpleasant, this path relies on truth, justice and the rigorous application of the principle that no man is above the law.

Now, the other road is the path of least resistance. This is where we start making exceptions to our laws based on poll numbers and spin control. This is when we pitch the law completely overboard when the mood fits us, when we ignore the facts in order to cover up the truth.

Shall we follow the rule of law and do our constitutional duty no matter unpleasant, or shall we follow the path of least resistance, close our eyes to the potential lawbreaking, forgive and forget, move on and tear an unfixable hole in our legal system? No man is above the law, and no man is below the law. That's the principle that we all hold very dear in this country.

Judiciary Committee Chairman Henry J. Hyde (R-Ill.) said the following:

He called Clinton a "serial violator of the oath" to tell the truth. "Equal justice under the law, that's what we're fighting for," he said. "And when the chief law enforcement officer trivializes, ignores, shreds, minimizes the sanctity of the oath, then justice is wounded, and you're wounded, and your children are wounded."

Rep. J.C. Watts (R-Okla.) said:

"If our country looks the other way, our country will lose its way"

House Speaker Bob Livingston(R) said:

"We're not ruled by kings or emperors and there is no divine right of president."

Bill Bennett said in his article, "The Death of Outrage":

And so the question the House Judiciary Committee must decide during the next month is the same one that faced the committee a quarter-century ago, when it considered whether to impeach Richard Nixon: Will it reaffirm the time-honored American ideal that no man is above the law?

Bill Bennett also said this:

In particular, the thirteen House managers who prosecuted the Clinton case in the Senate are truly, in the words of William Bennett, "authentic profiles in political courage," men who were willing to risk their careers to stand up for principle and the rule of law.

Rep. John Boehner(R) said the following during Clinton's impeachment event:

Mr. Speaker and my colleagues, every member of Congress takes an oath of office to uphold and defend the Constitution. And today we're challenged to do our duty under that oath. No person in this House is without fault or without sin, but the question before us is not whether the president has sinned. The question before us is whether the president has committed illegal acts, including perjury, obstruction of justice and abuse of power.

Under the Constitution that we swore to defend, these are serious crimes, crimes that our constituents would go to prison for. And do we hold the president, the top-ranking law enforcement official in our country, to a lower standard?

John Locke once wrote, "Where the law ends, tyranny begins." Mr. Speaker, if we believe in our Constitution, then the law does not stop at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. In our constitutional democracy, no one, not even the president, is above the law.

None of us sought the burden of impeachment when we ran for this office, but every one of us raised our right hand and swore to support and defend the Constitution of the United States. And who are we to ignore that obligation by turning a blind eye to crimes by the leader of our government?

I have no choice but to honor my oath of office. I have no choice but to impeach this president and send this matter to the Senate, as my oath of office requires me to do.

 

My fellow Americans, as former President Ronald Reagan once said, "Facts are stubborn things!"

The United States signed the Geneva Convention saying we would NOT torture prisoners.  President Bush, VP Cheney and many other top officials from the Bush administration have now admitted they water boarded prisoners.  We now have written documentation saying we waterboarded prisoners.

Waterboarding is torture.  People of been put to death or gone to prison for committing this crime in our past history.

The RULE OF LAW has been ignored my Republican friends, get over your political posturing and admit it.  Stand up and defend your Constitution like you 'claimed' to be doing during the Clinton Impeachment trial.  We must punish those that authorized these war crimes.

 

You'll find them in chain restaurants such as Applebees, Mimis, Outback Steakhouse and Old Chicago Pizza. They are children's menus with fatty food choices. Major items may include corn dogs, burgers, chicken fingers, fries, sodas and desserts. Mac and cheese might be the healthiest item. Most are 'combos.'

On RealClearPolitics, there's a transcript of the interview between the Ambassador of Pakistan and Wolf Blitzer on CNN.

Here's the part:

BLITZER: Joining us here in THE SITUATION ROOM, the Pakistani ambassador to the United States, Husain Haqqani.

Mr. Ambassador welcome back.

HAQQANI: A pleasure to be here.

BLITZER: I wish it was under different circumstances. I don't remember a time hearing the secretary of state of the United States offer this dire assessment.

What's going on in your country right now?

HAQQANI: Well, I don't think that the dire assessment should be seen as an assessment. I think it's the sentiment more than an assessment. There are factual errors in the way this story has been revealed just now.

For example, yes, Swat is 60 miles from the capital, but it's not 60 miles on the highway. It's 60 miles as the crow flies. So there are mountains that have to be taken over. It's not like Islamabad...

(CROSSTALK)

BLITZER: But it sounds like the Taliban is gaining and gaining strength right now.

HAQQANI: I don't think that is a correct assessment, Wolf. The fact of the matter is that Swat is an isolated valley surrounded by mountains. Yes, the Taliban have made an advance there in the sense that the Pakistani government cut a deal with a movement that supports the Taliban, but is not the Taliban itself. The idea was that the Taliban would lay down their arms as a result. It's sometimes important to have dialogue to prove the point that the government is moving...

(CROSSTALK)

BLITZER: There's no sign they have laid down their arms.

HAQQANI: And if they haven't then the government has the means. Pakistan also has one of the largest armies in the world. The army can and will move, as it has done in many other parts of the country.

BLITZER: Because we checked. You have a standing army of at least a half a million troops, and a reserve of another half a million. You have a million-man army right now that could easily go into Swat and end this.

HAQQANI: And the important thing is, what would be the collateral damage? After all, it's much easier talking about what's happening in the Swat Valley sitting in Washington, D.C., than it is sitting in Pakistan. These are Pakistani citizens we are talking about. We have to move -- in all insurgencies, you have to move very methodically.

BLITZER: She says this is an existential threat to the government of Pakistan right now. If they come into Islamabad, who knows what could happen?

HAQQANI: Wolf, first of all, what she's saying is essentially that the threat of terrorism is in existential threat to Pakistan, and that is something that the government of Pakistan and the people of Pakistan generally agree with. The only question is, is just the recent development in Swat an existential threat to the government of Pakistan? And my answer to that is that is not.

I guess we can breath a little easier now?

The NYT's Scott Shane's At Core of Detainee Fight: Did Methods Stop Attacks is a tantalizing slice of bait titling. The question presents us with another, more troubling philosophical question before we even get to the first word of the text: is the title's question - assuming it can possibly be answered - a legitimate one to even ask? Any direction we lean in presents us with a problem.

Of the several possible answers, none of which will satisfy anyone, the two most desired ones are yes or no (though a firm maybe is the most likely outcome). The chances of receiving any sort of clarifying shake of the head are infinitesimally small. In fact, the chances are so ludicrously small as to make the question not even worth asking. It's akin to the query, "What color is God's hair?" The question implies that there is a god and that that god has some sort of hair. All answers, from "I don't know," to "God's bald," to any particular wavelength across the visible spectrum, accepts the existence of a god with hair. If you don't believe in a god, then the question is irrelevant and, actually, one that is quite mad. But if you do believe in a god and want to take a crack at it, the fact is that your guess is as good as anyone else's. (I'd go with azure blue if I believed in a god, but only because I like azure blue.)

The use of the term methods in the Shane's question implies that there are, obviously, more than one way to skin this cat. For the sake of argument let's reduce it to a generalized two: those methods that complied with the Geneva Convention (GC) and those that didn't. Or what about this pair: those that complied with the U. S. Constitution and those that didn't. For the sake of simplification, lets just lump it into legal or illegal, which is, I know, clear as mud. But back to Mr. Shane's question. If an attack was, in fact, foiled by the acquisition of information from any sort of interrogation, one can correctly assume that either a legal or an illegal method of information withdrawal was employed. (If data was gathered in Egypt, Libya, Morocco, Djibouti, Jordan, Azerbaijan, Diego Garcia (a US naval base, not a cigar nor a relative of Zorro) or any of more than a dozen other cooperative countries that hosted black sites, then we can generally say that it was collected outside the confining bounds of any U.S. constitutional constraint. Why else would you sub your questions out to Egypt? Guantanamo Bay, the U. S. extra-judicial penal colony at the southeast end of communist Cuba, squarely falls into the "beyond GC" class. This doesn't leave many information extraction points that would unquestionably fall into the legal category. Lake Wobegon is still a candidate, but no one yet has been able to find it. I understand that Dick Cheney is a person of interest in its disappearance.)

But back to the NYT and the serious business concerning the hair of God. If we were able to somehow miraculously discover that actual attacks were thwarted through the employment of illegal interrogation methods, what should the next question be? If there is proof enough that torture effectively ensured national security would that be justification to spin it into a new law - with caveats, of course. We are, after all, a civilized bunch, are we not? And would one of those caveats be that torture could only be legally used on illegal enemy combatants? But there we go again, treading out onto that mushy ground of who, pray tell, is an illegal enemy combatant? According to Douglas Feith, the former Under Secretary of Defense for Policy in the Bush Administration, impassioned Zionist and neoconservative, people of a failed state are not afforded the protection of the Geneva Convention. That the failed state he referred to was Afghanistan and that the people whom he targeted were Muslims, were not, we can most certainly be assured, a reflection of his personal political agenda.

Another question that immediately pops to mind is "Who are we, members of a nation found on laws, to step away from those laws, if we are, in fact, who we say we are?" If there were laws and they were seriously misshapen to fit into a twisted agenda, then those who bent the laws are necessarily accountable, to some degree or other. In the Roman Catholic list of do's and don'ts there is a greased pig of a natural law clause called 'rightful appropriation,' a godly wiggle that allows a person's soul to remain unblemished while taking or taking back something that rightfully, in spirit, belongs to him or her: say the Holy Lands, late Middle Ages. (Or in my case, comic books from a local bookstore when I was eleven. I'm not sure how I got around to fuzzily claiming ownership, but jigging around a blemish can wind you through a lot of weird meanders that you never knew existed until you wanted something so badly you could taste it. Superman!) A lot of slaughter went down in those medieval messes, but that's what happens when you fiddle with the language of the law. Imagine what the newly-converted Roman Catholic Newt Gingrich would do with this one if he were ever to giddily spin in the Oval Office's big chair?But let's not try to think too much about that.

And on that note, let's try not to think too much about Pakistan either, a Non-NPT (Nuclear Proliferation Treaty) member of the nuclear club that each day spirals further into chaos as the Taliban advances on Islamabad with the generous backing of Saudi oil money that America has been so eager to provide. (It sounds like somebody's getting ready to steal more comic books.)

So, what's the rule on a failing state with nukes that shares a border with India and China, the immediate downwinders, which includes one-third of the world's population? Ask George W. that question if you can find him. Chances are he's not talking. But maybe it's a lot easier to ask Fox News to cross the Potomac and underhand that question at Dick Cheney. He seems to have given a lot more thought to these sorts of things than his former boss was ever able to give to any issue that required the consideration of a future. (Perhaps George is more Boulder Buddhist than any of us ever knew: "I live in the moment; tomorrow is too much to ask. Ooo-wahhh, Ooo-wahhh") Dick will have given that one some serious thought, you betcha. And his answer will be all about Obama coming to town. Nothing to do with him and his good buddy, DoD Don, not wanting to see the CIA succeed in dealing a crippling blow to al Qaeda at Tora Bora back in December 2001, seeing as how it would have ruined their plan to go to war with Iraq. It almost feels like Dick Cheney fed nukes to the terrorists in some sort of self-fulfilling messianic scheme. I know, this all gets pretty complicated. Too much for me to figure out. Kind of makes me want to ask easier questions.

So, what color do you think God's hair is?
 ________

PS: I just received an email I sent to myself from my iTouch 19 days ago. The contents of the email were personal notes I'd taken as I was reading Ron Suskind's The One Percent Doctrine. I wondered where it had gotten to, then figured it was a lost lamb that had gone astray and been eaten by some digital predator. And so, I forgot all about it. Then today, miraculously, the lamb wandered back into the herd, nearly three weeks after its disappearance. It came through my Google mail with an ad for www.america.gov/persian, all the words in the ad in Arabic with the exception of the URL.

Here is the inexplicably found email (they are notes, so disregard the grammatical mistakes):

Chapter 2

p. 64: the exiled 1990s Neocons - Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Feith & Perle - were now at the wheel, not looking for international diplomatic consensus building, but rather using strength and might to force their will as the last and mightiest ones left on the block. The Superpower. Power is useless if left untapped, if not, at the very least, used to enforce a "national" will, one defined by the neocons. What good is it if it is not used as overarching threat.

p. 65: and then along came the non-state transnationalists, the border-ignoring terrorists. The 'transnats.'

p. 77: "Every CIA success is a DoD failure." - Rumsfeld, early 2002

p. 81: "We have come to know truths that we will never question: evil is real, and it must be opposed." - GeoW, 2002. Charles Krauthammer referred to this speech as a declaration of war against Iraq.
________

An interesting grouping of 'threat' keywords. I wonder where this one wandered while it was away, and who may have read it before it finally found its way into my inbox? Baaaaaaa. I thought those guys had gone home a few months ago.

Notes to myself:
"Take Inertia more seriously! OK. I will, I will!"
"Re-watch Werner Herzog's Every Man For Himself and God Against All.

In Hollywood it's called "high-concept."  It means you can summarize the plot of a movie in one sentence.  The classic example is, "Shark terrorizes New England town."

Up until Tuesday I've been pretty ambivalent about prosecuting torture up the chain of command.  I sided with President Obama, "we need to look forward." 

Tuesday is when the 232 page Senate Armed Services Committee report was declassified.  There it was, the narrative, the high-concept that put it all into perspective, "Bush authorized torture to justify invading Iraq." 

If I had any doubts about the story line, Ali Soufan an F.B.I. supervisory special agent made it perfectly clear in a NYT Op-Ed; My Tortured Decision:

FOR seven years I have remained silent about the false claims magnifying the effectiveness of the so-called enhanced interrogation techniques like waterboarding. I have spoken only in closed government hearings, as these matters were classified. But the release last week of four Justice Department memos on interrogations allows me to shed light on the story, and on some of the lessons to be learned.

One of the most striking parts of the memos is the false premises on which they are based. The first, dated August 2002, grants authorization to use harsh interrogation techniques on a high-ranking terrorist, Abu Zubaydah, on the grounds that previous methods hadn't been working. The next three memos cite the successes of those methods as a justification for their continued use.

I can handle the truth:

It is inaccurate, however, to say that Abu Zubaydah had been uncooperative. Along with another F.B.I. agent, and with several C.I.A. officers present, I questioned him from March to June 2002, before the harsh techniques were introduced later in August. Under traditional interrogation methods, he provided us with important actionable intelligence.

End of the first act, Bush tortured to cover his ass.  Now what?

Act II - Build The Case

Firstly, after releasing the Torture Memos President Obama becomes a secondary character.  Glenn Greenwald writes in Salon; Obama recognizes: whether to prosecute is not his decision:

Whether to commence criminal investigations and prosecutions of specific acts of alleged criminality is not Obama's decision to make.  It is the duty of the Justice Department, and ultimately the Attorney General, to make those decisions based strictly on legal considerations, and independent of the political interests of the White House.

The Senate can investigate, and according to Sam Stein at HP; Lawmakers: Congress Will Investigate Torture, Bipartisan Support In Place:

...on Thursday morning, Sen. Claire McCaskill told MSNBC that she was "sure there will be some form of investigation in Congress." She said she could not make the same value judgments about the other two forms of investigation.

Meanwhile, one of the few legislative vehicles actually geared toward starting the torture investigation process already has bipartisan support. Legislation backed by House Judiciary chairman John Conyers to establish "a national commission on presidential war powers and civil liberties" has one rather notable co-sponsor: Republican Rep. Walter Jones, a vocal GOP critic of the Bush administration. Jones' office did not return requests for comment but Conyers' office confirmed the North Carolinian remains a co-sponsor of the legislation.

A Congressional investigation is the last thing the President wants or needs:

The president has said that if an investigation were to happen, he wanted it done in an independent and non-partisan matter by people above reproach -- qualities sometimes tough to come by in Congress.

The Congressional investigation is not a good idea for reasons beyond the political, mainly if Congress grants immunity there can't be a criminal prosecution, and can you see Dick Chaney taking a Congressional subpoena seriously.  Yeah, right.

What's left are two options; creating an independent commission, which carries the same charges of politicization, and the immunity issue, or having the Department of Justice tackle the problem, most likely by appointing a special prosecutor.  The special prosecutor might be the best option; but when?

Not so fast according to former federal prosecutor and U.S. attorney's chief Elizabeth De La Vega.  She explained to Countdown's Keith Olbermann that Attorney General Eric Holder should not immediately appoint a special prosecutor to investigate those members of the Bush administration responsible for torture but it was better to let the story develop first in the media.  (Murry says, "Like decanting a fine wine.")  See the video: Why Now Is NOT The Time For A Special Prosecutor For Torture Crimes

What Are The Political Implications?

The Republicans are already trying to protect their own.  Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.), Joe Lieberman (ID-Conn.), and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) penned a letter to the President Wednesday, asking that Obama shut the door on prosecution. They invoked the president's previous insistence that the administration should look "forward" instead of "backward" and added that Justice should not consider legal action against Bush administration lawyers.

But it's not going too well.  Nico Pitney at HP has the mind blowing story; Shepard Smith Uncensored: "We Are America, We Do Not F**king Torture!"  The Fox-Online video (the lower one) is a must see.

Fox News viewers witnessed a rather incredible scene on Wednesday as anchor Shepard Smith and Fox contributor Judith Miller (of CIA leak infamy) repeatedly and passionately condemned torture, with Smith declaring at one point, "We are America, we don't torture! And the moment that is not the case, I want off the train!

And, there's more,  actor Charles Grodin was a guest on the the Sean Hannity show:

GRODIN: You're for torture.
HANNITY: I am for enhanced interrogation.
GRODIN: You don't believe it's torture. Have you ever been waterboarded?
HANNITY: No, but Ollie North has.
GRODIN: Would you consent to be waterboarded? We can waterboard you?
HANNITY: Sure.
GRODIN: Are you busy on Sunday?

Jason Linkins at HP has the video; Hannity Offers To Be Waterboarded For Charity (By Charles Grodin!).

Then there is the encounter Chris Matthews had with Senator John Ensign on Hardball; Don't Call Me Inflammatory!  Ensign's voice and body language betray how hard it is to defend torture to defend a war built solely on lies.   How would you like to be a Republican running in the mid-terms having to defend Bush and Chaney?  The Democrats could end up with a 70-vote majority, in the Senate!

Who do you go after?

It's pretty clear, not the interrogators, they were indeed just following orders. (Pardon Lynndie England).  Why else would Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates support the release of memos on detainee interrogation methods?  Defense Chief Gates Says He Backed Releasing CIA Memos

There's not a very good case against the lawyers; Prosecuting 'torture memo' authors called 'a real stretch'

"It would be a real stretch. As long as they thought they were honestly interpreting the [anti-torture] law, they are not criminal conspirators," said Stephen A. Saltzburg, a law professor at George Washington University and a former prosecutor. "They may be bad lawyers who gave extremely bad advice," he said, but that is not a crime.

The answer is you go after the Five-Horsemen of the Apocalypse, Bush, Chaney, Rice, Rumsfeld, and Ashcroft. 

Act Three - The Unknown

The third act is yet to be written; will it be a happy ending with the fab-five in orange jumpsuits shackled together like the cast of Seinfeld in the last episode, and locked up with each other for eternity.  Or will it be an unsatisfactory end like Watergate with the bad guy getting off scott-free.

One thing is for sure, the results of the investigation will take up an entire wing of the Bush Presidential Library, and "Hall of Shame."  That alone is high-concept.

For those of you who have been keeping up on the situation with dickday's computer, he finally called just a few minutes ago.

He will accept the computer with more gratitude than he is able to express. As it stands right now, it looks like the computer that Face was offering in his initial post (THANK YOU for getting the ball rolling, Face!) will not work, but Seashell has one that will and she has been rehabbing it today. She will ship it to him. "Thepeoplechoose" has a 19" monitor that will be shipped, as well.

Old Grouch will be going to help him set it up if he needs help. He already has broadband, so it sounds like purchasing that for him will not be necessary.

I don't know how much the shipping will run, but Barefooted will be handling the money end of things and will do a post if we need to take up a collection for that...If, for some reason, the used computer falls through, we will be asking for donations to come up with another one, but at least he has accepted the offer to get him up and running and we'll work out any details as it is necessary.

That is my best info at the moment...if anything I wrote is incorrect, please let me know.

Bottom line, DD should be back to us soon! He can hardly wait, and I know we can't either!!!

Thanks to all of you who contributed time, energy, ideas, and made offers to help financially or just gave moral support. We done good, guys! I'm proud of us all...

PLEASE REC SO EVERYONE CAN SEE WHERE WE STAND ON THIS!

There have been many sober pronouncements lately about the end American hegemony. Some have reacted with despondence, others with glee. It may be that the end is nigh--it has to end sometime--but we should keep in mind that the forecasters of doom emerge from their caves during every period of hardship. They were last seen in force in the 80's as American manufacturing foundered and Japan floated into the economic stratosphere on a very large bubble. The end-of-the-hegemony pessimists are the antimatter twins of the eternal-hegemony optimists who imagine that every stock market rally will last forever. Neither should be trusted.

So let's take the measure of this hegemony thing: what is it, where is it going, and who really cares anyway?

Read more »

There is something bothering the absolute hell out of me.  I have been listening and reading all day about TORTURE.  Waterboarding.  Who did it, who signed off on it, who is in prison for it.  The information gleaned is good...no, it's bad.  I have heard that waterboarding was used to get 'operatives' to admit that there was a connection between Osama and Saddam.  

My avatar shows me smiling. Believe me, I am not. Last night I stumbled upon one of the entries in the TPM Book Club entitled "Race, Racists and Journamalism," by Aaron Schwartz. I stopped to read the story and was gobsmacked by one member of this week's discussion group (Mr. Schwartz) calling the another (Steve Sailer) a racist. Helpfully, Mr. Schwartz included a link to Mr. Sailer's Wikipedia biography and a "interesting" quote from him.

After reading Sailer's bio, and challenging him for the "context" he claimed was absent from Schwartz's assessment of him, I, too came away wholly convinced that yes, indeed, Mr. Sailer is a racist. (And never one to shy away, I told him so.)

But all day, what I first read about him and his covert participation at TPM was nagging at me for two reasons:

Read more »

And the betrayers of language
        ...and the press gang
And those who had lied for hire;
The perverts, the perverters of language, the
        perverts, who have set money-lust
Before the pleasures of the senses;
howling, as of a hen-yard in a printing-house
                    Ezra Pound


Political language...is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind...The great enemy of clear language is insincerity.
                    George Orwell



Language, and the powerful, poetic use of it, was the thumbprint on my soul from the beginning. 

Even before I knew how, I knew I wanted to write, and it is something I have done, in one form or another, for my entire life. 

I didn't really understand the power of words until I began to be published, and I would receive hand-written letters in the mail from as far away as the former Yugoslavia, Australia, and the Yukon.

The letters would tell me what my words had meant to them, and how they had helped to make their lives more bearable or more entertaining or more thoughtful.

Occasionally, words of mine would be printed that I didn't even know about.  For 16 years I did a local newspaper column on raising kids in the country, and I'd written about an experience I'd had researching a book on arson, how I'd been permitted to don full turn-out gear and go into a training fire with the real firefighters.

Months later I learned the column had been reprinted in a firefighting magazine.  (I didn't mind, but I'd liked to have known about it so I could have gotten a copy.)

Once, a small article I had published in an inspirational magazine on dealing with chronic illness while yet still young, and with small children, brought about a flood of letters and phone calls that went on for months past when the piece had been published.  (In the days before widespread use of the Internet, people would pick up an aging magazine in a waiting room or library somewhere, read the piece, and track me down.)

While still researching books, I would always send a copy of one of my books to a potential source when requesting their help with my research.  Once they'd read the book, and seen the respect I'd shown other professions, it opened all kinds of amazing doors. 

(My favorite was when I was invited to attend an advanced homicide course provided for local and federal law enforcement officers.  We worked with cadaver dogs and forensic anthropogists and forensic entymologists and so on, long before television caught on to the idea.  During the case-exchange portion of the course, I learned that horrifying murders were taking place along the Texas border on the Mexican side, some spilling over; it was one of the few times my work actually brought on terrible nightmares.  This was years ago.  But when I approached my literary agent about doing a book about it, he said prophetically, "Nobody cares about the border.")

Now, of course, with the advent of blogging, it is becoming more commonplace to begin dialogues with complete strangers who feel a common chord because of something you or I have written.

Or to come under attack from those who disagree.

In any event, words are important to me.

Words matter.

I fell in love with the words of Barack Obama before I'd done a single Google-search or attended any rallies or organizational meetings, when I first read his two books more than two years ago.  In those books, he laid out exactly the kind of man he was and what he wanted to do for this country, and how he thought it could be done.  I remember weeping as I underlined so many passages that I practically obliterated the printed word.

There was something to those words.

I knew it.

Even when he was 30 points behind Hillary and everyone was dismissing him as a brash young upstart, I knew better, because of his words.  I knew that if he could be given a chance, he would, by his actions, bring those words to life.

When he was campaigning for the presidency, it was almost too easy for his opponents--both during the primary and also during the general election campaign--to poke fun at his eloquence.

To deride his contributions as, "just words."

I would get so angry when I heard that.

JUST WORDS?

Let's see now....


We hold these truths to be self-evident...

Ask not what your country can do for you...

The only thing we have to fear...

I am not a crook.

Love thy neighbor as thyself.

Have you now or have you ever...

Methinks thou dost protest too much.

Houston, we have a problem.

I have a dream...


All of these were "just words," and yet they can be quoted ver batim by almost every American, even those who, like comedian Craig Ferguson, are naturalized citizens.

I could go on for pages, as could anyone reading this post.

WORDS HAVE POWER.

It is that simple.

And the quickest way to tell if someone who is in power is lying is to notice when they distort or, to quote Ezra Pound, "pervert" language.

I am certain that one of the primary reasons for my constant anguish and distress during the Bush years was my certainty that virtually every word out of the mouths of the administration and their muppets was a lie.

As Ernest Hemingway said in, appropriately enough, A Farewell to Arms, "Abstract words such as glory, honor, courage, or hallow were obscene."

Writing in the New York Times today, Roger Cohen goes right to the heart of the matter in his op-ed, "No Time for Retribution":

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/23/opinion/23iht-edcohen.html?_r=1&pagewanted=print

(my link mechanism appears to be disabled, sorry):

Language is lethal. The Bush administration's legal memos opening the way to torture are a reminder of the intimate link between a bureaucrat's lawyerly subordinate clause and a man's near drowning.

Now we all know what "interrogation with enhanced techniques" means: an insect in a human cage.

Don't say what you mean when you mean to do the unspeakable. That's an old rule. It was perfected in the 20th century from Moscow to Buenos Aires.

Opacity is the refuge of the faceless tormentor. The constitutions of totalitarian states are always unreadable, impenetrable -- and very long. In a thicket of words lies plausible deniability when the time for horror's accounting arrives. That hour always comes around.

I keep re-reading some of the sentences in the memos from the dark side. Like a labyrinth, they lead back in on themselves: "You have, however, informed us that you expect these techniques to be used in some sort of escalating fashion, culminating with the waterboard, though not necessarily ending with this technique."

The "technique" has a "culmination" that is not necessarily an "ending"; and on round again, several hundred times.

To some degree, words failed us all in the aftermath of 9/11, a time of fear and disorientation. Journalists did not meet the challenge of holding the executive branch accountable, politically and morally, in the run-up to the Iraq war. Such failures, it is true, were not gross manipulations of the law in the service of inhumanity, but they were failures nonetheless. And they carried a human price.

So I'm wary of the clamor for retribution. Congress failed. The press failed. The judiciary failed. With almost 3,000 dead, America's checks and balances got skewed, from the Capitol to Wall Street. Scrutiny gave way to acquiescence. Words were spun in feckless patterns.

Mr. Cohen's piece speaks to me on many levels, not the least of which is his own eloquence: "language is lethal," "don't say what you mean when you mean to do the unspeakable," "opacity is the refuge of the faceless tormenter," and my favorite, how the sentences, "like a labyrinth...lead back on themselves."

He is describing in terms both poetic and precise that the Bush administration's galling play on language gave them political cover to do the unspeakable, from invade a country to torture.

"Words," says Cohen, "were spun in feckless patterns."

As an author, perhaps I'm more sensitive to the patterns of language and the nuance of phrase.  It was that very fecklessness of word-spinning that left me dizzy, disoriented, and outraged during year after year of lie stacked upon lie.

Cohen's next paragraph may come as a surprise to many; but for me, not so much.  In fact, I agree:

Those checks and balances are recovering now. I don't think this recovery would be served by prosecutions, either of C.I.A. operatives or those who gave them legal advice. Such legal action, if initiated, would split the intelligence services and the military in paralyzing ways at a time when two wars, in Iraq and Afghanistan, are still being fought. The country would be lacerated.

The right balance between retribution and reconciliation is always hard to find in the aftermath of national trauma. Ask the Bosnians or South Africans about the trade-offs between justice and recovery. When wars are ongoing, it is wise to err on the side of caution. There's work to do. Obama's right: America should look ahead, not back.

A Truth Commission could address the broad collapse of accountability that opened the way for an imperial presidency and the use of cruel and inhuman treatment, while avoiding a facile search for scapegoats that would allow too many to disregard their own small measure of responsibility.


Cohen is not saying we should turn our backs on this institutionalized wounding of our nation's honor--not at all.  He mentions a commission which, I gather from my reading, would do much the same job as the one which investigated the events leading to 9/11, and the one on the Iraq War.  There would be light shined on the worm-crawling darkside of the Bush administration's perversion of national security.

But to take it further, to demand criminal charges and trials we progressives might find cathartic--leading all the way up to the Oval office, if we had our way--would not, in fact, play out in that manner in the public forum.

Rather, this nation would be rent asunder by the packs of howlers.

Where I live, a small pack of coyotes can yip and howl and make so much racket that your skin can crawl.  They sound as if they stand just outside the gate and, on a quiet evening, this can be disturbing and frightening because coyotes kill pets. 

The ranch dogs will set up ferocious barking and you'll run out on the porch and strain eyes and ears into the echoing darkness...but really, the beasts are merely over the next ridge.

They may be far away but they seem so near.

Already, I can hear the coyotes howling--right-wingers yelping for validation and justification of their sacred cow post 9/11 policies; left-wingers howling for justice and accountability and unanswerable answers to questions such as Does torture work? and Should we care? and Is it a sign of strength or of weakness? and Why are we even DISCUSSING it?

Scrambled words and shouted words and italicized words and viral e-mailed words and angry words and worried words, all jumbled together in a toxic soup of chaos and confusion and cacophony, all jockeying for position on cable-chatterworld, late-night TV, the blogosphere, and our wearied minds.

As with most complex questions, there is usually a common-sense solution somewhere in the middle.

Words of reason CAN cut through the noise:


With Obama, words have begun to have meaning again. Declarative sentences are back. I couldn't take my eyes off that photo of Obama shaking hands with President Chávez of Venezuela; it cut through so much epic posturing. But his use of language has been more liberating even than such images.

Two sentences uttered recently by the president in Turkey are an example: "The United States has been enriched by Muslim Americans. Many other Americans have Muslims in their family, or have lived in a Muslim-majority country -- I know, because I am one of them."

It was one of those moments when you realize just how scary Obama must be to America's jihadist enemies. Knowing Islam across the dinner table, he has no fear of it. His predecessor, in Facebook terms, went on a spree of de-friending that made terrorist recruitment easier. Now the tables have been turned.

The U.S. has emerged from eight years of dyslexia. It has now revealed how dangerously words were manipulated and is learning again to speak a language the world can understand. America's narrative is inclusive once more, as it must be by the country's very nature. The power of language to reconcile is as great as its power to kill.

At his first press conference in February, Obama said: "The strongest democracies flourish from frequent and lively debate, but they endure when people of every background and belief find a way to set aside smaller differences in service of a greater purpose."

That's a sentence you don't have to read twice. The differences today are not small -- they concern the rule of law and torture -- but the spirit of Obama's words still provides a useful moral compass for this moment of American self-questioning and anguish.


I don't mean to imply that all this requires is for Uncle Obama to come out and say something soothing.  Not at all. 

But I do think outrage must be tempered by wisdom.

It is unfortunate that a 24-hour news cycle can set up false narratives that can bring down administrations. 

One president's foolish foray into forbidden appetites brought our government to a standstill for YEARS and dominated news coverage to a nauseating degree.  Governing came to a virt