Messages from the Ether

Activists, I tell you!

Many commenters in the Slashdot discussion on the SCOTUS ruling on habeas voiced the same slack-jawed terror that I felt when I heard the news: 5 to fucking 4?!? I guess it reflects how long we persisted with these insane ideas and how long it took to get us back to sanity, but it appears more likely that the forces of insanity are still strong. One commenter pointed out that Scalia has made similar convoluted leaps in defending torture. Thanks to Think Progress for the source quote, in response to a question asking if torture is cruel and unusual:

No. To the contrary. Has anybody ever referred to torture as punishment? I don’t think so. ... When he’s hurting you in order to get information from you, you wouldn’t say he’s punishing you. What is he punishing you for?

If this were a scene in a movie, you'd be justified calling the writing unrealistic. Until now. In its unlawful combatant entry, Wikipedia outlines the options as described by the Red Cross: Every person in enemy hands must be either a prisoner of war and, as such, be covered by the Third Convention; or a civilian covered by the Fourth Convention. The gray area that Bush et al. slithered around in is due to the fact that the phrase "unlawful combatant" does not exist in the Geneva Conventions. Read the opening section of that Wikipedia article for a good overview.

Particularly distasteful is Scalia's threat that the decision will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed. Fuck you.

Obama roundup

• Looking Back: How Different Groups Voted - From NYT, each state plotted in percentage of support of one or the other candidate, grouped in 16 demographics
• Where Candidates Found Support - A static map, also NYT, showing when and where geographically votes came from.

• Michelle and Barack's awesome fist bump - Plus Michelle is sporting her best Jackie O pearls and dress

  

• The Democrats' Delegate Showdown from On Point - Discussion on the Michigan and Florida delegate decision. A little late to listent to, but interesting commentary along with one thing I didn't know: the RNC penalized five states in the same way that the DNC penalized Michigan and Florida.

Followers

Reddit's comments, for political stories, will often turn aggressive when praise or defense of Obama is posted. Decrying the blind acclaim of Obama "fanboys," many posters will drop whatever the discussion at hand is and instead bring up his more lackluster moments. Certainly Obama has a passionate following, but it's not nearly as intense as Ron Paul--a Reddit darling--and not nearly as arrogantly optimistic as when the Republican field was still mutable and Ron Paul had a chance.

That being said, you don't see any Hillary fanboys in those comments. Nature of the environment, I guess. When I hear her defenders interviewed on NPR, I'm a little terrified. A certain segment of her followers say they will vote for McCain if Obama gets the nomination, repeating the accusations of sexism, a persecution that Hillary has passionately nurtured. The attempt to punish their own party for imagined sexism perpetrated by ... who? ... is like Bush invading Iraq for the sins of others. And, with the supposed similarities of Clinton and Obama, to choose the Bush disciple McCain over Obama is equally Bush-like and childish.

Admittedly, I've heard Obama supporters puzzle over the Hillary-or-McCain question if Obama doesn't get the nomination (a question asked more and more infrequently, given the recent results). Are they--myself at times included--being as petulant as the disgruntled Clinton supporters? Part of me is not so sure, and part of me reads the dutiful enumerations by Olbermann of Clinton's deceitful gaffes and sees the comparison as apples and oranges. Read for yourself:

We have forgiven you your insistence that there have been widespread calls for you to end your campaign, when such calls had been few.

We have forgiven you your misspeaking about Martin Luther King's relative importance to the Civil Rights movement.

We have forgiven you your misspeaking about your under-fire landing in Bosnia.

We have forgiven you insisting Michigan's vote wouldn't count and then claiming those who would not count it were Un-Democratic.

We have forgiven you pledging to not campaign in Florida and thus disenfranchise voters there, and then claim those who stuck to those rules were as wrong as those who defended slavery or denied women the vote.

We have forgiven you the photos of Osama Bin Laden in an anti-Obama ad...

We have forgiven you fawning over the fairness of Fox News while they were still calling you a murderer.

We have forgiven you accepting Richard Mellon Scaife's endorsement and then laughing as you described his "deathbed conversion."

We have forgiven you quoting the electoral predictions of Boss Karl Rove.

We have forgiven you the 3 A-M Phone Call commercial.

We have forgiven you **President** Clinton's disparaging comparison of the Obama candidacy to Jesse Jackson's.

We have forgiven you Geraldine Ferraro's national radio interview suggesting Obama would not still be in the race had he been a white man.

We have forgiven you the dozen changing metrics and the endless self-contradictions of your insistence that your nomination is mathematically probable rather than a statistical impossibility.

We have forgiven you your declaration of some primary states as counting and some as not.

We have forgiven you exploiting Jeremiah Wright in front of the editorial board of the lunatic-fringe Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.

We have forgiven you exploiting William Ayers in front of the debate on ABC.

We have forgiven you for boasting of your "support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans"...

We have even forgiven you repeatedly praising Senator McCain at Senator Obama's expense, and your **own** expense, and the Democratic **ticket's** expense.

But Senator, we cannot forgive you this.

Oil

My first impulse was that the executives of the major oil companies testifying before congress was a waste of time, but then I listened to them and realized that it was all for the benefit of those companies. NPR reported on the farce. They were testifyin', and I was rollin' my eyes at the meaninglessness, and then the hammer dropped: In the United States, access to our own oil and gas resources has been limited for the last 30 years prohibiting companies, such as Shell [guess, if you can, who's speaking - ed.], from exploring and developing resources for the benefit of the American people. It was OJ on the stand insisting that he'll find the real killer. Tech people always talk about the Big Money that Microsoft or Google makes and then are shut up by the absurd profits that a multi-corporation monopoly can make while pleading for more special treatment from the government to save them from the abyss of-whose-edge-they're-on.

I know, railing against the oil companies is like ... well, railing against the oil companies. They've neatly become the devil we know. But you still want to expect a limit to their shame.

Message sent to NPR's ombudsman

I just listened to your story on Bush's vow to give up golf out of respect for the families of the US soldiers in Iraq. The story continued with a reflection on previous presidents' relationship with golf while in office.

I was stunned that the story did not contain the more serious and salient aspect of Bush's statement: the fact that he broke that vow around two months after he made it.

This may seem like a petty complaint for what was essentially a puff piece, but I believe that with this sobering fact, it should have never merited as a puff piece. Only injudicious editing of surrounding facts allowed you to play it as such.

With the furor that it caused in the online community, I'm sure I'm not the only one communicating my irritation.

I left out the "fuck you" that I said in the car after I heard the story...

The internet hearts Helen Thomas

Send Helen Thomas some flowers. You know you want to.

Give to Barack Obama

Please? (I guess I should have done one of those "FREE BEER--NOW THAT I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION" things, but whatever.) Someone set up a fund to give a dollar for each word in his "More Perfect Union" speech. Cheeky, yes, but it got me to give, and I'll shill for others to give more. HERE.

Obama, NPR, right-wing god

I don't look to them to be the caricature that the right-wing makes them out to be, the caricature that the right-wing media actually is, but I expect some sort of level-headedness and a credit-where-credit-is-due sort of thing. NPR today gave the most limp assessment of Obama's speech that you could imagine. And this after I actually watched the whole thing, so I had some perspective on its strengths. That speech was 30 minutes of honesty in the middle of an election cycle that needed it. He praised his reverend and their friendship, denounced the hatefulness of what was said, and pleaded that the media drop its shallow obsession with the inelegant speeches of both his and Hillary's associates. (And, oddly, he didn't once point out what everyone else is saying: that 300 white preachers can say America is decaying from its forced gayness and abortion fetishists, but a black preacher can't say that America is decaying from its international meddling and racism.) I really wanted more fire from him, and it's good that he didn't give it and chose reconciliation instead.

Leak

Fascinating story about Wikileaks getting taken off the internets. Wikinews reports that they first were the target of a 500Mbps DDoS, then their main servers' UPS was destroyed in a fire at their Swedish hosting site, finally their domain was taken offline in the US after a decision in a District Court in California.

Wikileaks hosted documents leaked from a Swiss bank. The documents revealed possible tax evasion from wealthy and politically sensitive clients in several countries including the US. Although their main site is unavailable, the Wikipedia article lists http://wikileaks.be and http://88.80.13.160/wiki/Wikileaks as alternatives still accessible in the US. Reddit has a good list of related articles, the most useful is at Daily Kos.

Wikileaks is what makes the internet so valuable and although it's a shame that the US is playing China's tune, this information will never disappear.

Lies and the lying liars you voted into office

TPM has a list of government programs/reports that were discontinued after they produced too much information countering the Bush administration's faulty belief system. Read it; I dare you. My mind has been duly boggled. And don't give me that "every administration moves government a little left or a little right" argument. It's going to take a huge pendulum swing to fix what they've done to government and just get it back to spec.

Political links

• BBC documentary on the fiction of al Quaeda - Reddit comments then contain a quick flurry of other recommended documentaries viewable online.
• "What Our Top Spy Doesn't Get: Security and Privacy Aren't Opposites" by Bruce Schneier - As usual, he hits it out of the park. Money quote: Security and privacy are not opposite ends of a seesaw; you don't have to accept less of one to get more of the other. Think of a door lock, a burglar alarm and a tall fence. Think of guns, anti-counterfeiting measures on currency and that dumb liquid ban at airports. Security affects privacy only when it's based on identity, and there are limitations to that sort of approach.
• NPR fact-checks the SOTU - A quick look at each of his points. SOTUs are an easy target because they tend towards the rose-colored end of the spectrum of glasses, but Bush's was just wildly disconnected from reality (surprise?).

Watching the debates

So much is misstated (or lied about) during the debates that it is almost more worthless to watch them than not. NPR provides a dissection of the facts behind statements made in last night's NPR debates. Indeed, the analysis is usually more enlightening than the candidates' answers.

Candidates

Lisa and I were talking the other night and realized that (1) the only man more evil than Cheney, Rudy Giuliani (see war mongering, 9/11 mishaps, socialized medicine, etc.), will probably get the Republican nomination, and (2) if Clinton gets the Democratic nomination, Giuliani will likely win. Scary. At this point, we're both interested in an Edwards/Obama ticket, know that many others are too, and yet also know that it's unlikely to ever come about.

I still have some interest in Kucinich (not just because the vote-o-meters recommend him for me) and am hoping for the best, but I feel that he's a tougher sell for the country and could get trammeled by The Beast that is Giuliani.

Speaking of longshots, Huckabee seemed to have captured the Xtian vote (possibly because he denies evolution) until the only man more evil than Creflo A. Dollar, Pat Robertson, gave Giuliani his support. While all of the Republican candidates show a disgusting love of war and torture (to paraphrase many others: how are we even debating that torture is OK?!?) and their party is in the middle of epidemic homosexual repression, the Democratic party is failing the country on a monumental scale (see telco immunity, Mukasey, Cheney impeachment, etc.).

Not much hope. I guess that's why I'm interested in the more optomistic ticket of Edwards/Obama. Obama's 2004 DNC speech (part 1 and part 2) captures what I think they represent. And people need to shut up about the experience canard they're still throwing out in criticism of him.

Colbert

What his next move should be: create his own political party called South Carolina for Colbert.

Lanier

Arguments I've heard:

• Georgia owns the lake, so the other states can suck it.
• So much water was released for mussels that they were at flood level while Atlanta suffered restrictions.
• We should be helping people, not mussels. Damn Endangered Species Act.

From Wikipedia (emphasis mine):

The lake's original and authorized purposes were to provide hydroelectricity and flood control. Since the lake's construction, metro Atlanta has been taking water from the lake to use for municipal drinking water, which was only authorized by Congress as an incidental use secondary to hydroelectricity.

Since the 90's, the Corps of Engineers, Florida, Georgia, and Alabama have all been fighting for use of the water held in Lake Lanier. Law mandates that when a river flows between two or more states, each state has a right to an equal share of the water. Additionally, other laws such as the Endangered Species Act require that water be available for threatened or endangered species that live in or around Chattahoochee River and Apalachicola Bay.

In June 2006 the USACE revealed that the new lake gauge at the dam, replaced in December 2005, was not properly calibrated, yielding a lake level reading nearly two feet (over half a meter) higher than the actual level. Because of this, nearly twenty-two billion U.S gallons (over eighty-two billion liters) of excess water was released over and above the already planned excess releases to support both the successful spawning of gulf sturgeon in the Apalachicola River and to protect several species of mussels in Apalachicola Bay from excessive saltwater intrusion.

Georgia Governor Sonny Perdue said that the Corps had created a "manmade drought", because most of the state is already experiencing dry conditions. This came at a time when outdoor water-use restrictions were already being put in place by local governments, because of enormous water use on the many lawns which have replaced the forests in newer suburban areas. Mainly because of this incident at the lake, the state then declared a drought and enacted a ban on outdoor water use from 10AM to 4PM, in addition to the permanent weekly odd/even address system. Other local counties have imposed further restrictions or even total bans, based on each water system's conditions.

So, Georgia doesn't have 100% rights on the lake, the flood release was bad calibration and not excessive species protection, and our whining is based on vanity lawns and not actual need. Everyone's screaming gloom and doom and that somehow we're sacrificing people for mussels. Bullshit. They also like to ignore the nuclear reactor that's downstream. Here's a suggestion: stop wasting so much fucking water, Atlanta. There, problem solved.

Shot in the head

This, not from an internet kook but from Naomi Wolf:

I read the news in a state of something like walking shock: seven soldiers wrote op-eds critical of the war — in The New York Times; three are dead, one shot in the head. A female soldier who was about to become a whistleblower, possibly about abuses involving taxpayers’ money: shot in the head. Pat Tillman, who was contemplating coming forward in a critique of the war: shot in the head. Donald Vance, a contractor himself, who blew the whistle on irregularities involving arms sales in Iraq — taken hostage FROM the U.S. Embassy BY U.S. soldiers and kept without recourse to a lawyer in a U.S. held-prison, abused and terrified for weeks — and scared to talk once he got home. Another whistleblower in Iraq, as reported in Vanity Fair: held in a trailer all night by armed contractors before being ejected from the country.

Yet I get eyes rolled at me if I even bring up such things.

Innocence

Excellent interview with Richard Halpern about his book Norman Rockwell: The Underside of Innocence. His question: America's always been involved in horrendous transgressions so why are we continually shocked when they come to light? My simple answer: some are shocked by the evil of the action and not necessarily by the actor, while others less historically informed are understandably shocked by the actor. This isn't the stuff that 6th grade Social Studies classes should be composed of, and not everyone goes to college or digs deeper into American history. However, the information is (generally) there for those who want to know.

It still doesn't make the evil of America's actions against Maher Arar and continued actions to ignore responsibility any more palatable. Nor does it make the FBI's threats to torture a man's family and their subsequent disappearing of the evidence easy pills to swallow.

America can be as evil as any other country, and as a sole superpower we're simply honing our skills. And, c'mon, wouldn't it be boring if our only national shames were Native American genocide and slavery?

Dodd v. Tyrants

Fuck yeah, bitch. Let's hope for the best. He's still not my candidate, but he's at least doing what he was elected for.

Tools

Dems suck at returning our rights to us, although they're really good at colluding with tyrants. Work to your strengths, I guess. Ultimately, the barrier-to-entry on cases challenging this has been raised, so I suspect that it still could be struck down. A commenter in the /. thread discussing this points to this Wikipedia entry stating that Ex post facto laws are prohibited in federal law by Article I, section 9 of the U.S. Constitution and in state law by section 10. But with a majority of the Republican candidates vowing such craziness as war with Iran (and getting cheered), is there really much hope for sane solutions to our gov't's current power imbalance?

Also, newsy go-to gal Lara Logan points out that the situation in Iraq still sucks [ via Digg which has some additional/related links ]. But to the commenter who said that Everyone knows things are going bad over there. Everyone: apparently, you're not around some of the people that I am. I sortof envy you.

Finally, a good re-post from Reddit of "A Layman's Guide to the United States Supreme Court Decision in Bush v. Gore" written by an attorney right after the decision. Amazingly, the author (now a journalist) posted the first comment on it with interesting additional info. Good to know that his article is taught in law shools now. Re-read and relive your despair like I got to!

Vote-o-meter

I had taken this candidate test before and gotten Kucinich (the Pocket Master!) and just took this one from USA Today [ via a comment at thisisby.us ] and got the same. For what it's worth...

Ron Rand

Reddit provides us with a hearteningly pessimistic discussion on the slash-and-burn philosophy of Ron Paul.

Iran

Trying to absorb the sad sad state of public discourse on Iran.

• Four Myths Government and Media Use to Scare Us About 'Dictators' - Overview of the bait-and-switch (or maybe strawman?) that warmongers use to demonize Iran in general and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in particular
• Real Time with Bill Maher: Democratic Rep. Rahm Emanuel and panel discuss how to end the war - Maher's comments comparing the rhetoric of Ahmadinejad to that of US politicians was pithy. Rahm had a strong start but really fell apart when he tried to defend his vote for more weapons but not for withdrawal.
• Iran's president at Columbia University - a transcript - Bollinger, truly, was an ass. Ahmadinejad was magnanimous in his response to the insults but then quickly moved to dubious interpretations of religious quotes that support the pursuit of science. Odd. And he says the etymology of the (Farsi) word science is "illumination" or "brightness" (as opposed to "knowledge" or "to separate" with English). I'll need to email Language Log and see if they have an opinion. The rest of the speech was otherwise a very reasoned comparison against Iran and the West. Most accusations leveled by Bollinger were easily paralleled by examples of US misconduct. Iran is not innocent, but they're certainly not evil.

I'd have a beer with this guy

"San Diego Mayor Supports Gay Marriage." With a heartfelt statement against separate-but-equal, he shows the stark contrast between those who feel begin gay is a "random fetish" or an "abomination" and those who are smart enough to know that yes, the world is round. I'll stick with the inclusionary humanists, thank you, and let the closeted, self-hating hypocrits continue on their merry path.

Iran, Iraq, and you!

Recent and related news:

• "Blackwater license being pulled in Iraq" - They killed civilians recklessly, so the Iraq gov't has kicked them out.
• "More than 1,000,000 Iraqis murdered" - The Lancet numbers were 1/2 that and supporters of the war balked that they were impossibly high.
• "Iranian influence increasing in Iraq" - Iranians are bolstering Iraq's economy through tourism and trade.
• "Iranian TV series follows fate of Jews in World War II" - Iran's version of Schindler's List is a hit on Iranian television.

The war against Iran didn't happen

There's been a lot of buzz on Reddit over the past week about an impending invasion of Iran likely to occur in the first half of this month. Daily Kos has written several times about it. This interview with a Naval officer outlines the attack as quick and massive and that no American will know when it happens until after it happens. This article from The Daily Telegraph examines in more depth the way the administration is close to attacking Iran. Cheney's pushing for it yet Ahmadinejad views the threat as mere sabre rattling. The article shows that Ahmadinejad is the more level-headed one and points out the "upbeat" report from the IAEA. Other, primarily foreign, newspapers are also reporting on a planned attack. Hersh has been warning us about this for at least a year.

One nitpick on the Telegraph article: they again mis-quote Ahmadinejad on "wipe Israel off the map" by allowing an administration official to repeat it uncontested. He did not say that.

This craigslist post has a more humorous (if very darkly so) approach to the subject titled "So you’re about to be invaded by the United States."

Today's reading list

• "Whistleblowers on Fraud Facing Penalties"

  US soldier get kidnapped and tortured by other US forces for reporting corruption. How many more stories like this are needed before people realize that no, this should not be business as usual? I'm reminded of what the one veteran (under cowardly anonymity) said when he was asked about the whistle-blower in the Abu Ghraib scandal: if this was Viet Nam, he would have never gotten home alive. But that's a ridiculous comparison.

• "Comcast throttles BitTorrent users", "Comcast Cuts Off Heavy Internet Users"

  Let's just hope the geeks can start a backlash against these assholes. These issues, along with their and others VoIP packet blocking, can possibly be market-driven to death by new, neutral ISPs such as Copowi.

• Here are some Tiny animals on people's fingers.

Crazy is

Ron Paul on "Wait, Wait ... Don't Tell Me!" gets the first two answers about quirky (to say the least) politicians because--and I am not making this up--he believes the conspiracy theory of the first and personally knows the second. Uncomfortable jokes follow. More RP craziness as Daily Kos...

Explanation?

Uh, what's going on? Yesyesyes, everyone is talking about those idiot Democrats in Congress, but no one's given an explanation beyond ... that they're idiots. I mean, this legalized wiretapping shit could've been made up by Jon Stewart. It's just unbelievable that the people we put in to check the evils of the Republican party end up being worse.

Josh Rushing, new book and Stewart appearance

Josh Rushing, of Control Room "fame," on Jon Stewart two nights ago (just catching up...). I loved Control Room and consider it--only slightly flippantly--to be part of The Iraq War Trilogy along with Fahrenheit 9/11 and Team America. The three are at polar opposites in all aspects, yet together I think the 50-years-from-now citizen will get an idea of what we were about. Intelligent, angry, and reflexively sardonic all at once.

Rushing on Stewart was necessarily precise yet cumbersome with his humor. In Control Room, he (playing himself) was the eternal model of earnestness and honesty. Who can imagine the experiences he was thrust into since fame and the fame of an inarticulate war took his life? At times, the Daily Show audience did not seem too happy with his new earnestness about international news organizations w/r/t those of American. I may be misreading the silences, but their silences to me suggested discomfort when an "outside" judge--as opposed to Stewart's judgment-by-compadre that leaves the viewer innocent.

Either way, a good interview not a great one. Re-watch Control Room. And maybe try to hunt down videos of Al Jazeera International on YouTube. My one recommendation to coworkers who thought that watching two oppositely biased news organizations (yes, those two) would somehow allow them to approach the truth, was to tell them to watch more international news. I don't believe that that is the answer. But I know it's better than the battle of corporate passions that we currently have within out media borders.

Balance

The false equality of bipartisan corruption [ via Kyle Gann ] is being passed off as some sort of insight from conservatives. As if a low-level clown like Jefferson is equal to the DeLay-Libby-Cunningham-etc. cabal of theives that are regularly forgiven by the Republicans.

OK, enough of that.

Boom

Although presidential "debates" make you cry for democracy, you can't help but wonder at the horrible/absurd statements that come out of them.

Goes around

I like how this is getting international play. If it were just looped on FOX, it'd be justifiably dismissed. But with the BBC echoing what every embarrassed Democratandliberal is feeling, there's no denying it. Pelosi really-really needs to fix this. I'm not holding my breath though.

What goes around

Olbermann points out that Democrats are pussies (although, to be fair, he continues to give greater vitriol to the President). ~8 minutes and, as always, worth it. Unfortunately, for the war crowd who still defends Bush with the bon mot that "he would be praised if only the war were going better," it will now all be about how the Democratic leadership fell apart. Which, to a point, is a tacit admission of corruption and feeble morality cutting both ways.

50 years from now, historians will dig up Olbermann's comments and pair them with those of the majority of present-day political analysts. Olbermann the rare man-on-the-street voicing dissent and hinting that citizens of our time are not the reckless and shallow idiots that we appear to be. Maybe.

Bill Moyers, Jon Stewart

Good stuff from Jon Stewart:

You know, one of the things that I do think government counts on is that people are busy. And it's very difficult to mobilize a busy and relatively affluent country, unless it's over really crucial-- you know, foundational issues. ...

... It's sort of this odd and I've always had this problem with the rationality of it. That the President says, "We are in the fight for a way of life. This is the greatest battle of our generation, and of the generations to come. And, so what I'm going to do is you know, Iraq has to be won, or our way of life ends, and our children and our children's children all suffer. So, what I'm gonna do is send 10,000 more troops to Baghdad."

So, there's a disconnect there between — you're telling me this is fight of our generation, and you're going to increase troops by 10 percent. And that's gonna do it. I'm sure what he would like to do is send 400,000 more troops there, but he can't, because he doesn't have them. And the way to get that would be to institute a draft. And the minute you do that, suddenly the country's not so damn busy anymore. And then they really fight back, and then the whole thing falls apart. So, they have a really delicate balance to walk between keeping us relatively fearful, but not so fearful that we stop what we're doing and really examine how it is that they've been waging this.

(Emphasis mine.)

Bill Moyers, "Buying the War"

Watching the show, I felt at first that it indicted the media for its collective laziness (all except the true American heroes from Knight Ridder, Warren Strobel and Jonathan Landay). Around halfway through, I realized that it was laziness yes, but laziness spurred on by a populace that boycotted, phone protested, and emailed death threats. In other words, what we're all afraid of: a belligerent and ignorant populace.

A contradiction?

So, I go along with the rest of the world in thinking that government diplomacy doesn't work by ignoring those you don't agree with. Talk with Cuba and North Korea and Iran shouldn't be deferred until they do-what-we-want-them-to. That kinda ignores the whole need for this thing called "diplomacy." Anyway, that seems somewhat obvious to me et al. but then I think about Google and their China thing. My position at the start was--and their position now is--that you shouldn't be complicit in the mechanations of human rights violators (to say the least). Is there a contradiction here?

Back-bites

The current surface-debates on the internets: Hillary can't sing and has grotesque freeze-frame expressions, Edwards combs his hair for longer than 10 seconds before appearing on TV, and McCain thinks Baghdad streets are safe for Americans and then immediately disproves it.

Assuming that there's equal idiocy to go around: I really am surprised that the Republican web-kids are so much less savvy than the Democratic web-kids sound-biting the other side to death.

Democrats allow Bush to start another baseless war

Read about this last night and hoped there'd be more mitigating details in the morning. There weren't.

Exasperated

Bush funds Sunni cadres of the 9/11 attack to fight Shias. He makes no mention, however, of his righteous indignation over Middle Eastern countries' monetary interference in Syrian violence. Because of the Patriot Act, Bush is now able-to-and-active-in firing well-regarded US attorneys based--apparently--on his desire to seed those who are friendly to his pet projects. Some would call his appointees activists. John Gibson of Fox News criticizes as snobs those news organizations that choose to cover the Iraq war instead of Anna Nicole Smith. The White House is disappearing from its web site all speeches where Dick Cheney made idiotic remarks about Iraq. Surprisingly, no, it's not all of his speeches. As soon as the recent "proof" of Iranian weapons were presented--accusations from this administration going back to 2005 at least--the evidence was dismissed as circumstantial. Yet the accusations still drive arguments from the White House. Drudge shockingly reveals the increased energy consumption of the Gore family household and yet conveniently forgets to balance the rest of the equation. Cheney lectures a post-satellite-destroying-China on the proper and moral use of power. Really.

What am I missing here?

Now I get it

If a work of art comments on recent erosions of privacy by the government--such as with Orwell's 1984 and Bush's wiretapping et al.--then it's considered prescient. If a work of art echoes the recent loosening of ethics by the government--such as with Fox's 24 and extraordinary rendition etc.--then it's just fiction and not to be taken too seriously.

"Republic or Empire" at Harpers

Republic or Empire by Chalmers Johnson.

In explaining the economic dysfunction of the military-industrial complex, Johnson quotes Senator Robert La Follette Sr. (1855-1925). Many of his quotes comment on 50s McCarthyism and the 2000s 9/11 alarmism. It has me vacillating between the dread of impending doom and the rationalism of a history of cycles. Take, for instance, this La Follette quote:

The purpose of this ridiculous campaign is to throw the country into a state of sheer terror, to change public opinion, to stifle criticism, and suppress discussion. People are being unlawfully arrested, thrown into jail, held incommunicado for days, only to be eventually discharged without ever having been taken into court, because they have committed no crime. But more than this, if every preparation for war can be made the excuse for destroying free speech and a free press and the right of the people to assemble together for peaceful discussion, then we may well despair of ever again finding ourselves for a long period in a state of peace. The destruction of rights now occurring will be pointed to then as precedents for a still further invasion of the rights of the citizen.

I would emphasize one or two phrases here, yet they're all telling. I'm reminded that modern America did not invent fascist tendencies, but also that cycles don't necessarily return to an equivalent state. Knowing that free-speech zones exist and are enforced is difficult to get out from under no matter how many people invoke a defense in the form of pendulums and counterweights. How also to explain that All forty-two previous U.S. presidents combined have signed statements exempting themselves from the provisions of 568 new laws, whereas Bush has, to date, exempted himself from more than 1,000?

To cut to the climax, here's Johnson's final assessment:

The more likely check on presidential power, and on U.S. military ambition, will be the economic failure that is the inevitable consequence of military Keynesianism. Traditional Keynesianism is a stable two-part system composed of deficit spending in bad times and debt payment in good times. Military Keynesianism is an unstable one-part system. With no political check, debt accrues until it reaches a crisis point.

He looks at Roman descent from empire to a destructive military fascism and British transformation from empire to the sustainable democracy of a more modest kingdom, and sees neither available to America before our military economy humbles us.

Links for the week

• Journalist Sy Hersh has harsh words for Bush - A scary/real prediction of more insanity to come:

  "He's a total radical, probably the most radical president we've ever had in terms of his definition of the power of the presidency," he said. "There's nothing more dangerous than a radical who doesn't have information, doesn't learn from information and doesn't learn from the past."

  Seymour Hersh is, unfortunately, rarely off-base.

• The Passion of Mary Cheney - Dan Savage shames Mary Cheney as the careless idiot she is:

  Yes, it’s a baby, not a prop. My kid isn’t a prop either, but that never stopped right-wingers from attacking me and my boyfriend over our decision to become parents. The fitness of same-sex couples to parent is very much part of the political debate thanks to the GOP and the Christian bigots that make up its lunatic “base.” You’re a Republican, Mary, you worked on both of your father’s campaigns, and you kept your mouth clamped shut while Karl Rove and George Bush ran around the country attacking gay people, gay parents, and our children in 2000, 2002, 2004, and 2006. It’s a little late to declare the private choices of gays and lesbians unfit for public debate, Mary.

• Scientists offered cash to dispute climate study - The best part of this story is a quote I heard on NPR from a representative of the AEI. He defended the money by attacking those who think the money is a bribe. He said that anyone who would think that reputable scientist could be bribed doesn't have much faith in the scientific community. A second, more sane, interviewee pointed out that the money will only help create astroturf that will be heavily lobbied to lawmakers who don't understand the value of peer-review.

• Hillary Clinton Drops Madrassa Bomb on Barack Obama - First, Fox News says that Obama attended a fundamentalist Muslim school and that Hillary Clinton leaked the story (Dem v. Dem!). Quickly, and with unusual accuracy, CNN investigated and found out that neither assertions were true. The story, of course, continued to be reported on in its original form by Fox. Obama then kicked Fox News in the nuts.

More hope

This has been noted by many and deserves reiteration: Pelosi's Democrats are following through on their 100-hour promise. I repeat: my people are the shit. Now, the only fear is that some doofus will try to fuck it up.

Studied

I have yet to hear a coherent policy out of the Democratic side with respect to an alternative.

- Dick Cheney

Here're some Democrats that have offered an alternative: Vernon Jordan, Jr., Leon E. Panetta, William J. Perry, and Charles S. Robb. They're one half of the Republican-led Iraq Study Group. You can also look for Democrats in the U.S. officials (includes civilian and military) in the 10-page list [ pdf ] of those people that the ISG committee interviewed.

Sadly one word--surge--is more catchy to the president than a list of 79 researched-yet-difficult recommendations. The president is taking the easy way out, and Cheney is dutifully diverting attention.

Secret law stays

The Supreme Court has declined to hear the case of Gilmore v. Gonzales. Papersplease.org has a succinct writeup (someone please flesh out the Wikipedia entry!):

John Gilmore is disappointed that the Supreme Court refused to act on the danger posed by the unconstitutional position of the TSA, and its refusal to release the text of the law that it uses to require travelers to show identification. ... This country has a remarkable history of publishing its laws, to give the public notice of the behavior the government demands of them. John has pursued this effort because, as he said on www.papersplease.org, [u]ntil Americans have the ability to know the contents of the laws being applied to them, our Republic is in danger.

You read that correctly: he's asking simply that the law stating that you must show ID to fly be made public. Yipes.

John Edwards, again

Daily Kos links to some weird poll that shows John Edwards more popular than John McCain. McCain's an idiot, but I would've suspected that the lies being passed around about Edwards-the-evil-trial-lawyer would cancel him out with our well-read public.

Olbermann v. Gingrich

Mother. Fuck.

Olbermann ties in not only the obvious history of supression, but the present technological offenses that Gingrich--the most offensive of ignorant historians--ignorantly feels he should mimic. China walls in their internet citizens and the geeks of the world work to route around it; Gingrich hopes to do the same to America and call it a necessary means to an end. Olbermann's argument is obvious but obviously needs more voice if such a known name as Newt Gingrich is part of the evil that's purveying it.

Are these kooky times or am I just now realizing it?

My people are the shit

(if we don't pull a Gingrich)

100 Hours:

• ...clean up Congress, breaking the link between lobbyists and legislation...
• ...implement the recommendations of the independent, bipartisan 9/11 Commission...
• ...raise the minimum wage...
• ...make health care more affordable for all Americans [and] promote stem cell research...
• ...cut interest rates for student loans in half...
• ...achieve energy independence by rolling back the multi-billion dollar subsidies for Big Oil
• ...fight any attempt to privatize Social Security...

Although: Why not join the rest of the sane world by following the global warming recommendations in the Stern report et al.? For that matter, why not pledge to stop ignoring your own science advisors and the NAS? Why not get the fuck out of Iraq? You can't un-drop an atomic bomb: we screwed that country and don't have a fraction of the resources required to un-screw it. Our presence is only destructive. Finally, why not eliminate all of those worthless security measures that the Republicans (and Democrats) shackled us with?

The Republicans have taught us the caustic and devisive meaninglessness of both "family values" and "staying the course." They have themselves undermined both phrases and continually revised them to their liking (at times making them their own antonyms).

Whatever happens, we can at least savor this short period of hope.

Weekend update

Watched a little of Weekend Update on SNL last night. Some pretty good jokes on current events, most memorable: This week on Tuesday night, in an ironic turnaround Iraq brought regime change to the US. Heh.

Suck the vote

/. points to an article over at Computerworld that provides a state-by-state overview of e-voting. Basic information on what each state has along with its legal requirements. Here's Georgia's. Ars Technica paints a bleak picture for anyone hoping to have their vote count:

[T]wo major new reports from independent research groups detail the myriad security breaches, and procedural and technical problems in the 2006 Ohio primaries; stories from early voting in Texas indicate that the paperless DREs in at least two counties may have a partisan bias; another major new report from the University of Connecticut details a whole raft of security vulnerabilities in Diebold's optical scan voting machines; finally, BlackBoxVoting.org has released "push this, pull here" instructions for multiple voting on a Sequoia DRE, no hacking skills necessary.

My initial impulse is that extra fear is being spread in order to exaggerate the problems and dissuade people from voting. That is: dissuade only the segment of the population that feels they'll be disenfranchised. I'm tired of being the fringe person that has to bring up the subject of 2004 electoral fraud and be treated like I'm praising the scientific honesty of Chariots of the Gods? Still, the more Rolling Stone articles and Ars Technica editorials I read and the more I feel that maybe the sky is falling and people just don't care. The current alerts about Diebold, although they could be considered within acceptable fault range, hold more weight coming after the research of the Kennedy article. What appears to be paranoia just isn't so.

I heard on NPR that the next generation (13-19?) trusts the UN more than the US government. Nice. That one good thing that will come out of the corruption and deceit of the Bush administration.

Habeas crapus

I resisted the urge to allow my head to explode from the insanity of the Military Commissions Act and its implications w/r/t habeas corpus and the Geneva Conventions. The urge was immediately countered by the possibility that it wouldn't pass, or that it'd be thrown out from it's first challenge. Although, how many people will be hidden away from the possibility of challenge? Reading and commentary has made me re-think the level-headed, calm approach.

Required reading/watching:

• Congress' shameful retreat from American values (4 Oct 2006) - Garrison Keillor allows his head to xplode. None of the men and women who voted for this bill has any right to speak in public about the rule of law anymore, or to take a high moral view of the Third Reich, or to wax poetic about the American Ideal. Mark their names. Short opinion piece, and he's seething.
• Olbermann: the beginning of the end of America (18 Oct 2006) - Olberman takes us on a history lesson and details the offenses of the Military Commissions Act and builds on Keillor's anger. And then some. Crooks and Liars has a transcript.
• Olbermann: the death of habeus corpus (10 Oct 2006) - Olberman's warning when the Military Commissions Act was first presented in the Senate. Less angry and more aghast and satirical (with a cheeky reminder of the importance of trial by jury taken from faux-redacted excerpts from some sort of colonial Declaration of Independence or something thanks to modern post-9/11 thinking, those rights are now fully alienable...). Still, he emphasizes the basics of what's at risk.
• Why Guantanamo? (5 Oct 2006) - This, and many links provided in the Military Commissions Act article from Wikipedia linked above, comes from JURIST. It tellingly counters a comment I heard on NPR and hear from many conservatives: that they don't think the US Constitution should protect aliens in this country. Usually expressed "why should terrorists have the same rights as US citizens." With beliefs like that, a good deal of the population seems already willing to give up due process and presumed innocence. From JURIST: That purpose [of the Due Process Clause] is not just to protect citizens; if it were, the clause would presumably contain an explicit restriction, as some clauses do. Indeed, the Supreme Court has made clear that it protects non-citizens within the United States.

Deteriorating

"While All Eyes Are On Foley, Iraq Is Rapidly Deteriorating"

First kooky thought: the Republicans allowed the Foley scandal to happen in order to deflect from the recent and serious issues revealed about Iraq and Afghanistan. Intelligence reports and skyrocketing death tolls were becoming a nuisance.

Second, more depressing, kooky thought: the Republican unleashed the scandal for such a purpose, and didn't expect that a Congressional Pedophilia Corruption Ring would be more repulsive to the American public than the catastrofuck that they unleashed in the Middle East.

Ben Stein is sick sick sick

APCB picks apart the idiocy (however obvious) of Ben Stein's partisan defense of Mark Foley. To understand the depths of Stein's corrupted logic: he actually defends his position on Foley by using the phrase I have many gay friends and they are great people. Really? Then go ask them if they also equate pedophilia with homosexuality.

Time to download the patch...

You know how you look back on version 1s of software you've used and shake your head. "Primitive" and "ungainly" would be better marketing bullets than whatever adjectives were used in the ads. Or, if you look back on your first draft of something. The ideas may be there but in clumsy, Frankenstein form. If the stumbling, first intentions of any of our efforts were written in stone, life would ramble along painfully and incoherently.

Reading Salon's recent invective pointing out that, although Afghans and Iraqis have the right, Americans do not from their constitution have an inherent right to vote. The facts, laid out by the Supremes in Bv.G, read The individual citizen has no federal constitutional right to vote for electors for the President of the United States unless and until the state legislature chooses a statewide election as the means to implement its power to appoint members of the Electoral College.

Our empire is creating the next versions of democracy and quietly obsoleting itself.

So what, why is that not within the law?

fuck you

(and fuck everyone who voted for you)

Reversal

Senate Republicans block Clinton on expanded wiretapping back in 1996. Also, check out conservative responses from USENET at the time. Although selective, they mimic those concerns that liberals had when the (illegal) Bush wiretapping actions were revealed. I was told recently that an issue I was railing against was "unimportant" because it wasn't picked up by major news sources. Really.

MoveOn

I followed MoveOn's alerts for a while now and have even donated at your request. However, after reading FactCheck.org's assessment of your TV ads on military spending, I cannot continue to support your organization.

"MoveOn.org: Caught Red-Handed Applying A Double Standard"

Please, for the sake of integrity, stop using such deceitful tactics.

Scott D. Strader

sstrader@mindspring.com

Katrina timelines, re-post

My list from September of last year of several timelines of key events.

Weird politics

Apparently it's those who cannot be classified that deserve smear campaigns from the conservatives. From the Wikipedia entry (note the odd combinations):

Congressman John Murtha is a Democrat with a relatively populist economic outlook.[3] He opposes abortion, consistently receiving a 0% rating from NARAL; however, he supports stem-cell research. Murtha was also one of the few Democrats in Congress to vote against the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002. However, he is strongly “pro-labor”, and opposes both NAFTA and CAFTA. Like other Democrats, he opposes Bush's tax plan and Social Security privatization, and he also opposes the Federal Marriage Amendment. Unlike other Democrats, he generally opposes gun control, earning an A+ from the National Rifle Association. He supports conscription and is generally more supportive of military excursions than is the typical Democrat.

In 2001, he co-authored (with Congressman Duke Cunningham, R-CA) the Flag Desecration Amendment which passed the House of Representatives, but not the Senate.

In late 2005, he led the effort of House Democrats to offer a motion to endorse language in a military spending bill, written by Senator John McCain, a Republican from Arizona and a fellow Vietnam veteran, that would prohibit abusive treatment of terror suspects.

[ 10:34, 8 August 2006 ]

I would say "hell no" to Murtha on some issues and "hell yes" to him on others. Would I try to denigrate his service? Man, I hope not.

Apologists

I continue to read tortured explanations that attempt to obviate the seriousness of Bush's rhetorical bumbling. And yet none of that can explain away his transparent and destructive simplemindedness presented with many examples by Matthew Yglesias in his article for The American Prospect. You see, the irony is what they need to do is get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop doing this shit and it's all over. Everyone focused on the explitive (and, inexplicably, many were impressed by its supposed "honesty") and somehow missed the sixth-grade stupidity of it all.

Enough with the Bush apologies: he's more ignorant than the office of President should allow and you know it.

Stem cells

The Daily Show - 2006.07.20 - Stem Cell Research - Jon Stewart points out the Bush hypocricy of unacceptable stem cell research and acceptable civilian casualties (conservatively estimated at 100,000 back in 2004).

Stem cells: Bush's shameful first veto? by Scott Rosenberg at Salon - Pointing out the Bush hypocricy of unacceptable stem cell research while [t]housands and thousands of embryos are destroyed every year in fertility clinics. They are created in petri dishes as part of fertility treatments like IVF; then they are discarded.

Michael J. Fox (with Parkinson's) talks Stem Cell research - Dispassionately expressed and yet earnest. Where are the jackasses now who say that celebrities have no right to voice their political opinions?

Campaigns wikia

One of the brains behind Wikipedia has set up a wiki for US politics [ via BoingBoing ]. Its goals are still very formative (sign up and help decide), but it looks like it could provide some aspect of I asked for last December: a wiki to address and counter the quick-forming talking points as fast as they appear.

Reading list, 4th of July edition

I was finally getting around to research on the Hamdan v. Rumsfeld decision and found a concise explication by Glenn Greenwald. Recommended. Also check out his hilarious roundup of that ridiculous battle by the administration against the NYT. Tracking banking records was bragged about by Bush yet for anyone else to talk of it is treasonous; publishing photos of Cheney's vacation house is allowed by conservative outlets but proof of sheer un-American-ness by others. Disclosing public knowledge is no longer a semantic contradiction, it's now apparently unlawful.

On a lighter note, I was told that an otherwise conservative relative (I mean really conservative) feels that Gore is right about global warming (although, humorously, that's "the only thing he's right about"). Maybe this country is turning around...

Bush's speech this morning

Only a quick listen, but it was unbelievably rife with SNL-quality reflexive-gaffes. Bush: "when Saddam was in charge, he siphoned money that belonged to the people of Iraq," (compare with "Where has all the money gone?" from the London Review of Books, detailing the siphoning of hundreds of millions caused by our government's mismanagement).

Stewart and Bennett

What was amazing about Jon Stewart's argument with Bill Bennett was not so much Stewart's re-framing of the issue right under Bennett's feet (Bennett: Look, it's a debate about whether you think marriage is between a man and a women. Stewart: I disagree, I think it's a debate about whether you think gay people are part of the human condition or just a random fetish.) but what happened a little later. As Stewart brought up Cheney's position on a gay marriage ban (surprisingly con) and we all winced at Stewart's misstep, Bennett echoed our thoughts and warned him to avoid specific examples because examples in the opposite direction could just as easily be found. Anecdotal evidence is not absolute.

With this warning, it became obvious that Bill Bennett doesn't actually believe what he's saying, only that he knows how to frame limited facts to support his beliefs. Earlier in the argument, Bennett tried to say that allowing gay marriage was a slippery slope that would eventually allow polygamy. Both Stewart and the viewers were frustrated that Bennett willfully ignored the difference between a social choice such as polygamy and a biological assignment such as homosexuality. Does he doubt the scientific evidence? I suspect it's more that he's willfully ignoring it. He's smart enough to see through all poor arguments except his own.

Courage

Just saw Caroline Kennedy on Jon Stewart speak about this year's Profiles in Courage awards. When she mentioned that a former general counsel to the Navy was one of this year's recipients, I remembered The New Yorker article that came out a few months ago on that recipient, Alberto Mora (John Murtha was the other recipient). The JFK Library site has a short description of Mora's actions, but The New Yorker article really digs in (aha, aparently I posted about it in February). Worth a duplication, and, as Ms. Kennedy said, it's kind of disspiriting that we're awarding--as unusually brave--the act of speaking out against torture. The act of someone associated with our government speaking against torture.

Our country sucks

Rolling Stone publishes Kennedy's detailed summation of the lawlessness of the 2004 election (these facts were very well known and ignored in 2004 and 2005). A blogger at Salon points out that unless international observers are present, expect more and worse in future elections. Our best reporters are saying that it's impossible to report about what's really going on in Iraq. Our administration cozies up to murderous dictators far worse than Saddam, to terrorist supporters, and to human rights violators, then tries to drape itself in a morality it hasn't earned. Patriotism can go fuck itself.

Wired links to EFF/AT&T documents

The print page of the Wired article containing Mark Klein's document and the PDF of Klein's document with links expanded. He states: It's not just WorldNet customers who are being spied on -- it's the entire internet. What the fuck would Republicans say if Clinton tried this shit? Probably exactly what Klein says in closing: This is the infrastructure for an Orwellian police state. It must be shut down!

Jean Rohe, in the moment

Paired with Stephen Colbert's left-handed praise of the President should be Ms. Rohe's defense of her speech at the New School [ via Scott Spiegelberg ] where she had given a preemptive strike against McCain's re-hashed Liberty U. speech. Her speech was quick and clear; her defense is more personal and passionate and ably skewers some of the early criticisms coming in.

Difficulty

The closer this administration gets to (at least the appearance of) fascism, the more difficult it is for liberals to argue against it. When we do, we just come across as if we're over-reacting because the offenses are so much worse than anyone could imagine. Let me just say that Godwin's law has been invoked in more conversations in the past two weeks than can be dismissed by stochastic slip-ups.

And if this has been happening--to anywhere near this degree--in previous administrations, it's sure weird that it took the presence of a classify-fevered, FOIA-hating administration--during "war-time" no less--to allow us to learn about it.

Do your duty

Stephen Colbert's speech improves over time and yet it is being marginalized. He excoriates the press and then is dutifully ignored. This is silly/offensive.

From A Perfectly Cromulent Blog:

Colbert managed to singlehandedly tear down much of the sycophantic and misleading bullshit surrounding the current Administration on a national stage, and he did it with the President sitting not 15 feet away. The man has, as Bullet Tooth Tony might say, "big brave balls."

A classic tactic of misdirection is occurring: Colbert's routine is being labeled "non-funny" to Bush's opening "funny" bit parodying his, I-shit-you-not, problems with Big Words, so the discussion is now over humor and appropriateness instead of what Cobert actually said. Ignore the content of the event and instead discuss the event as event. Bah. Good roundup over at The Washington Post.

Government drops bomb on EFF

This has been brewing over the last few days: the gov't is trying to block the EFF's civil case against AT&T. See also the Friday article from Wired and of course the full info (with helpful FAQ) on EFF's site. This and net neutrality are a couple of the more important stealth issues of our day. Don't allow them to be forgotten.

The EFF and Amnesty are the two institutions that I support. Charity's a personal choice, I know, but consider them. I've decided to update my front page.

Iran link

Re-reading this recent history lesson on Iran.

9/11 comes along, the Iranians are overflowing with sympathy. Mass candlelit vigils are held in Tehran. Iran offers aid and cooperation.

Iran hates the Taliban who have executed Iranian diplomats and massacred Afghan Shiites. Iran hates Saddam Hussein. Iran hates Al Qaeda which is a Sunni Fundamentalist organization which declares Shiites infidels and subhuman.

Iran shares its intelligence with America - they even arrested Taliban members and handed them over to US custody.

So we've got the Iranian spring; things are finally going to sort out.

And what happens? The Bush administration rebuffs every Iranian overture and does its best to instigate a cold war. [emphasis mine]

Many comments, plus this criticism:

I enjoy rants like the one above. That's what the Web is for! But you cannot just take a breathless worst case scenario and ignore all other possibilities. Kind of sensationalist, isn't it?

Not that I consider attacking Iran is anything close to a good idea.

I tend to think that the US Govt. is going to be so broke soon that it won't even be able to fly its own troops back home. Families will be asked to step up to pay for airfare or other forms of transportation to get their kids back safe. ...

Mixed messages

A woman who lost her husband in the towers on 9/11 was commenting on the Moussaoui trial on NPR. She watched the trial on closed-circuit TV and calmly dismissed the importance of a death penalty verdict. "He's a jihadist wannabe. ... Give the firefighters radios that work; fix the FBI; find bin Laden. Don't think that Moussaoui is a proxy for me." Another woman saw evil in his eyes and felt that the chance that some sense could have been made of his limited knowledge and contradictions earned him the death penalty. Weeks earlier, another trial observer commented that he'd love to see Moussaoui burn, but he feels that from the testimony in the trial all of the blame goes on our own government. I'm torn he said with understatement.

Civility

Shut up with the irrelevant argument over whether Iraq is-or-is-not in a civil war. The label doesn't matter when the facts are obvious: Iraq is in chaos and different factions are vying for power. Call it whatever you want, it doesn't change the screw-up that we've made of the place. Arguing over the "civil war" issue is simply a way to avoid talking about the real problems.

Rights

Habeas Shmabeas, stories from Guantanamo on This American Life this week (will be available on their site in a week). Our country, truly, knows no limit to the depths of its moral depravity. Don't listen if you don't want to be repulsed.

Hybrid

I applaud Consumer Reports for clarifying the costs/benefits that the hybrid cars present. Now quick, when some jackass throws it up to "prove" that conservation is a waste of money, ask them (1) if polluting less is a waste of money and (2) if lowering our economic and political dependency on the Middle East is a waste of money. "Conservation is hard. Let's go shopping! Also, check out OmniNerd's recent and detailed article on the subject.

No time of peace

Please, someone bootleg this on Cafe Press t-shirts:

Forever

The Memo by Jane Mayer: How an internal effort to ban the abuse and torture of detainees was thwarted. [ via The New Yorker, outlining retired General Counsel of the U.S. Navy Alberto J. Mora's struggle to stop torture by American agents ]

Unbelievable. I'm so tired of well-meaning jackasses accepting the morally deluded ticking timebomb argument when people in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo have been held for months and years and there is in fact no ticking timebomb. But, I guess, you could say that with terrorists you never know if there is a ticking timebomb so every captive and every citizen must be treated as if there is, and we're in a continual state of emergency. Finally, now I can imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever.

Some quotes:

[David] Brant [ former head of the N.C.I.S.] informed Mora that he was disturbed by what his agents told him about the conduct of military-intelligence interrogators at Guantánamo. ... Speaking of the tactics that he had heard about, Brant told me, “Repugnant would be a good term to describe them.”

Qahtani had been subjected to a hundred and sixty days of isolation in a pen perpetually flooded with artificial light. He was interrogated on forty-eight of fifty-four days, for eighteen to twenty hours at a stretch. He had been stripped naked; straddled by taunting female guards, in an exercise called “invasion of space by a female”; forced to wear women’s underwear on his head, and to put on a bra; threatened by dogs; placed on a leash; and told that his mother was a whore. By December, Qahtani had been subjected to a phony kidnapping, deprived of heat, given large quantities of intravenous liquids without access to a toilet, and deprived of sleep for three days. Ten days before Brant and Mora met, Qahtani’s heart rate had dropped so precipitately, to thirty-five beats a minute, that he required cardiac monitoring.

...

Between confessing to and then recanting various terrorist plots, he had begged to be allowed to commit suicide.

Lawrence Wilkerson, whom Powell assigned to monitor this unorthodox policymaking process, told NPR last fall of “an audit trail that ran from the Vice-President’s office and the Secretary of Defense down through the commanders in the field.” When I spoke to him recently, he said, “I saw what wa