You keep deflecting my point to me having hurt feelings. Not true at all. It's not hurt feelings to be disgusted with being called "shit-bagger"," full of shit," "fuck you Kali." This is the stuff so many of you LIKE. You get off on it. And you won't admit to it. Worse is the sly and implied character assassination you enjoy with a pile-on. Why won't someone admit that this is more than a pointed discussion than its true nature? It may not matter to any of you that others are not only repulsed but lose respect for you in such comments, or your lack of commenting against the vitriolic style. But, even as you fight for the continuation of your blog, you group of steady posters one again renew your compact with incivility. Oh, just Kali again. When will one of you step up and take SOME responsibility? You've toned down your comments this week in an effort to show TPM how constructive the Cafe can be. Were it not for that, these comments would be full of the regular "fuck you" and "Shit bag" stuff. Right? If you've recently said "fuck you," think on it.I read your blog at TPM-Cafe... yikes, you did get attacked for your opinion. I didn't want to jump in, but essentially I think you are correct. I haven't blogged there in a very long time, because it becomes so personal, so vitriolic, man.. anyway, I understand exactly where you are coming from, the vitriol chased me away long ago.
God is a metaphor for that which transcends all levels of intellectual thought. It's as simple as that.
Every religion is true one way or another. It is true when understood metaphorically. But when it gets stuck in its own metaphors, interpreting them as facts, then you are in trouble.
It is by going down into the abyss that we recover the treasures of life. Where you stumble, there lies your treasure.
Myths are public dreams, dreams are private myths.
Participate joyfully in the sorrows of the world. We cannot cure the world of sorrows, but we can choose to live in joy.
Your life is the fruit of your own doing. You have no one to blame but yourself.
Your sacred space is where you can find yourself again and again.
[Note: M.J. Rosenberg has a dispute with the author of the article excerpted above. I've asked Rosenberg if the statement above is true.]
If you had to declare a winner among Internet media companies today, the victor easily would be Arianna Huffington. Her site, The Huffington Post, attracted 24.3 million unique visitors last month, five times as much traffic as many new-media rivals, more than The Washington Postand USA Today, and nearly as many as The New York Times. HuffPo's revenue this year will be about $30 -million--peanuts compared with the old-media dinosaurs, but way better than most digital competitors. And HuffPo has finally started to eke out a profit.24.3 million unique visitors. More than the Washington Post. Almost as many as NYT.
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..the strike... killed the province's deputy governor, a respected local leader who Yemeni officials said had been trying to talk Qaeda members into giving up their fight.The strike was
a secret mission by the United States military, according to American officials, at least the fourth such assault on Al Qaeda in the arid mountains and deserts of Yemen since December.
The attack offered a glimpse of the Obama administration's shadow war against Al Qaeda and its allies. In roughly a dozen countries -- from the deserts of North Africa, to the mountains of Pakistan, to former Soviet republics crippled by ethnic and religious strife -- the United States has significantly increased military and intelligence operations, pursuing the enemy using robotic drones and commando teams, paying contractors to spy and training local operatives to chase terrorists.A new role for C.I.A.:
The administration's demands have accelerated a transformation of the C.I.A. into a paramilitary organization as much as a spying agency, which some critics worry could lower the threshold for future quasi-military operations. In Pakistan's mountains, the agency had broadened its drone campaign beyond selective strikes against Qaeda leaders and now regularly obliterates suspected enemy compounds and logistics convoys, just as the military would grind down an enemy force.
For its part, the Pentagon is becoming more like the C.I.A. Across the Middle East and elsewhere, Special Operations troops under secret "Execute Orders" have conducted spying missions that were once the preserve of civilian intelligence agencies. With code names like Eager Pawn and Indigo Spade, such programs typically operate with even less transparency and Congressional oversight than traditional covert actions by the C.I.A.
Yesterday, as part of the "professional left" coverage, a clip from one of Obama's campaign speeches concerning drug companies was played. "Thanks, but no thanks, " he said to drugs that are more expensive here than abroad. He supported the "safe importation" of drugs. He said that if the American people could have hope that together we could make such a change. That really burned. Yeah, made me want to make lots of plans to work on his campaign for re-election.
Obama's soul-stirring promise - the kind of promise that made so many work for him -was specific about taking on the drug company special interests. That position was embodied in the Dorgan Amendment, a bi-paritisan act opposed by the drug companies, which still almost passed despite Obama's opposition.
UPDATE: Wendy Davis has found it within a longer clip. Here are her instructions to watch it:
Watch this clip - the Drug Import part starts at 56 seconds, ends at a minute and 25 (1:25, I guess):
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036677/ns/msnbc_tv-countdown_with_keith_olbermann/#38650001
Obama's made a specific and emphatic promise, then the White House worked behind the scenes to defeat the amendment.
What happened? Did his advisors change his mind?
And why should we have to guess what happened ?
If there was a good reason, then goddamit, why didn't Obama have the courage to give a speech and tell ME why he broke his promise ?
You're funny Mr. Gibbs with that Canadian quip.
What you should have said was, "they won't be happy until they have the same prices for drugs as the rest of the world and we bring down health costs for citizens and the government. " So screw you.
And Obama. Where is political honesty and courage ? Because from where I sit, you ain't got them. Get on the friggin' tube and TELL ME WHY.
Obama said that he was surprised that the left was so critical of him, I said that it would continue to be critical so long as he issued signing statements before passage of a law. He asked which one I objected to, and I said that any are unconstitutional. At the end of the meal, he went around the table one time more to ask if there was a final bit of advice we would give. When my turn came, I joined those who had already warned him about an Afghanistan quagmire. I said that a government so corrupt and tribal and drug-based as Afghanistan's could not be made stable. He replied that he was not naïve about the difficulties but he thought a realistic solution could be reached. I wanted to add "when pigs fly," but restrained myself.
As Greg Sargent wrote last April:
..the word "torture" is politically treacherous for the White House right now: It's a reminder that those granted immunity by Obama used techniques prohibited by the international treaties Obama has vowed to uphold.
A quick look at many of the public statements by Obama and his advisers since the release of the torture memos last week shows that use of the word has all but evaporated
.
At the White House press briefing yesterday, press sec Robert Gibbs avoided the word "torture," instead using the phrase "enhanced interrogations" twice in answering a questioner who had used the T-word. At a religious conference yesterday, according to reporter Beth Marlowe, top adviser David Axelrod refrained from the T-word and instead referred four times either to "these practices," "techniques," or "enhanced interrogation tactics."
In an ABC News interview on Sunday, Rahm Emanuel referred to "these techniques and practices." In his statement last Thursday announcing the release of the torture memos, Obama repeatedly referred to "interrogation techniques," a phrase he repeated during his speech to CIA employees yesterday.
--Greg SargentMathew Alexander, a former interrogator wrote in an Op-ed in New York Times
Americans can now boast that they no longer "torture" detainees, but they cannot say that detainees are not abused, or even that their treatment meets the minimum standards of humane treatment mandated by the Geneva Conventions, the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 (the so-called McCain amendment), United States and international law, or even Mr. Obama's executive order.
If I were to return to one of the war zones today -- as an Air Force officer, I was sent to Iraq to head an interrogation team in 2006 -- I would still be allowed to abuse prisoners. This is true even though in my experience, torture or even harsh but legal treatment never got us useful information. Instead, such tactics invariably did just the opposite, convincing detainees to clam up.
The revised Army Field Manual
does not explicitly prohibit stress positions, putting detainees into close confinement or environmental manipulation (other than hypothermia and "heat injury"). These omissions open a window of opportunity for abuse.
The manual also allows limiting detainees to just four hours of sleep in 24 hours. Let's face it: extended captivity with only four hours of sleep a night (consider detainees at Guantánamo Bay who have been held for seven years) does not meet the minimum standard of humane treatment, either in terms of American law or simple human decency.
And if this weren't enough, some interrogators feel the manual's language gives them a loophole that allows them to give a detainee four hours of sleep and then conduct a 20-hour interrogation, after which they can "reset" the clock and begin another 20-hour interrogation followed by four hours of sleep. This is inconsistent with the spirit of the reforms, which was to prevent "monstering" -- extended interrogation sessions lasting more than 20 hours. American interrogators are more than capable of doing their jobs without the loopholes.
The Field Manual, to its credit, calls for "all captured and detained personnel, regardless of status" to be "treated humanely." But when it comes to the specifics the manual contradicts itself, allowing actions that no right-thinking person could consider humane.
Matthew Alexander -Op-Ed, New York Times
In his first few days in office, Mr Obama was lauded for rejecting policies of the George W Bush era, but it has emerged the CIA still has the authority to carry out renditions in which suspects are picked up and often sent to a third country for questioning.
The practice caused outrage at the EU, after it was revealed the CIA had used secret prisons in Romania and Poland and airports such as Prestwick in Scotland to conduct up to 1,200 rendition flights. The European Parliament called renditions "an illegal instrument used by the United States".
According to a detailed reading of the executive orders signed by Mr Obama on Jan 22, renditions have not been outlawed, with the new administration deciding it needs to retain some devices in Mr Bush's anti-terror arsenal amid continued threats to US national security.
Alex Spillus - Daily TelegraphDouble-speak and obfuscation have created a climate in which:
The greatest shame of the last year, perhaps, is that the argument over interrogations has shifted from debating what is legal to considering what is just "better than before."-Matthew Alexander
Out of sight, out of mind? Do we torture? Yes or No ? Does it matter? Yes or No?
]]>The Jonas Brothers are here; they're out there somewhere. Sasha and Malia are huge fans. But boys, don't get any ideas. I have two words for you, 'predator drones.' You will never see it coming. - President Obama