January 28, 2008 archive

News Flash: Republicans are hypocrites!

George Bush

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news…

Destroying human life in the hopes of saving human life is not ethical

show photos of Karla Faye Tucker, Iraq

robokos’ story on brawling priests

http://www.dailykos.com/story/…

Torture

You made me look like an asshole. I promised all those people I called on the phone that the new Democratic Congress would change things. All you’ve succeeded in doing, is continuing to do what they Republics were doing – only not quite as well as them.

Do Democrats in Washington think the people of this country are still cowering in fear in their basements, quaking in dread about the next terrorist attack? Do they believe that most Americans think it’s OK to wiretap their phones, track their Internet usage and torture them – because that is what we are coming to, and if you do not believe that, I do not know what to say to you – because those Americans think it will keep them safer?

Do Democrats in Washington believe that most people in this country believe that our continued occupation of Iraq is keeping us safer from terrorist attacks? Do they think that we believe that our interests are served by Blackwater and KBR receiving hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars to continue doing what they’ re doing?

Never faced an enemy like this before? What – an enemy that beheads its prisoners? An enemy that tortures its prisoners? An enemy that targets innocent women and children? [HERE RUN OKLAHOMA CITY PHOTO] Wrong. [LINK THAT TO TORTURE DIARY]

The so-called “ticking time bomb” scenario can also be blown out of the water [USE MARINE INTERROGATOR ON GUADALCANAL] During a time of war. And if anybody can actually point to a single example of the ticking time bomb scenario actually happening, I’d like to hear about it.

Nytimes article on zubaydah from sept 2006

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09…

http://www.progressive.org/mag…

Advocates of the ticking bomb often cite the brutal torture of Abdul Hakim Murad in Manila in 1995, which they say stopped a plot to blow up a dozen trans-Pacific aircraft and kill 4,000 innocent passengers. Except, of course, for the simple fact that Murad’s torture did nothing of the sort. As The Washington Post has reported, Manila police got all their important information from Murad in the first few minutes when they seized his laptop with the entire bomb plot. All the supposed details gained from the sixty-seven days of incessant beatings, spiced by techniques like cigarettes to the genitals, were, as one Filipino officer testified in a New York court, fabrications fed to Murad by Philippine police.

More on bojinka wapo 2001

http://www.washingtonpost.com/…

ticking time bomb

http://www.progressive.org/mag…

outstanding essay on crooked timber

http://crookedtimber.org/2005/…

and on fafblog

http://fafblog.blogspot.com/20…

va law review (PDF)

http://www.virginialawreview.o…

(Even the logic of the ticking time bomb scenario falls apart under any reflection. To wit: We are dealing with people who are willing to die – indeed, who look forward to dying – in the pursuit of their terrorist aims. If one of them is captured, for what possible reason on earth would they not be willing to die under interrogation? And – make no mistake – waterboarding is not “simulated” drowning; it is actual drowning, the pace of which is administered at the discretion of the interrogator.)

zubaydah bullshit

http://www.dailykos.com/storyo…

iraqi torutre complex found

http://www.dailykos.com/story/…

Paragraph from RadioShack get a headset.  The palest cellular get the new phones.

If torturing were necessary as a result of the terrorist bombings of September 11, why wasn’t it necessary as a result of the terrorist bombings of the Oklahoma City federal building?

Look up the Marine Corps General who advocated on or about December 20 for the mass release of Iraqi detainees.  Also, on the same day in the LA Times, look for the story of the Iranian who was released.

The destruction of the CIA torture tapes will reveal that Ilya carry out in this story, or whatever the agents suppose that name was, completely bogus.  No information of value was obtained, and torture definitely to place.  Where are the suppose of plots that were stopped as a result of this interrogation?  Who are the suppose that it terrorist operatives who were intercepted as a result of this interrogation?  Administration is never fail to trumpet its “successes” in this so-called war on terror; even though most of them have turned out to be dismal failures.  And here referenced the many court cases that have fallen apart for ridiculous so-called terrorist groups in the United States.

Mail the reimbursement check to the credit union.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/…

nosenko story

http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20…

“They’re murdering us here! Let’s move inland and get murdered!”

Note: This diary may require a suspension of disbelief – or, more precisely, a willingness to believe, at least for a few  moments, that congressional Democrats want to achieve the same things you want for them to achieve. Maintaining that conceit for just a couple of minutes will make this exercise more bearable. Thanks in advance for your flexibility – o.h.

Democrats, having gained a toehold on the beachhead of Congress in thier assault on Fortress Federal Government, have been fearful to the point of paralysis about attacking Republicans head-on.  They have made noises about “the Democratic agenda,” fretting that if they appear “too combative” about the issue of holding the administration and various Republican members of Congress accountable for their crimes over the past 6 1/2 years, they will be unable to move “the Democratic agenda.”

The fallacy in this argument, of course, is that, irrespective of how “civil”, “bipartisan,” “nonconfrontational,” and “collegial” they are, or have been, the “Democratic agenda” is not move forward, because of Republican obstruction and, ultimately, the president’s veto.

“a cataclysmic fight to the death”

There are several possible explanations for the behavior of those Democrats elected to Congress in November 2006 since they took control.  One is that they believe that by being nice to Republicans, that the Republicans will not turn on them and ultimately destroy them and their agenda.  Any Democrat who truly believes this is naïve beyond hope.  All one has to do is look at the track record of the Republicans since the Democrats took control to see how nice Republicans are willing to play.  Remember the remark about the cataclysmic fight to the death made by an administration aide shortly after the November 2006 elections.

h/t to Airpower, whose comment inspired this diary

I think of what Brigadier General Coda did when I see our “leaders” in Congress who do not have one-tenth of the guts that he and so many others displayed on “Omaha” beach.  A year ago we went to the polls and took Capitol Hill.  I am still waiting for a “General Cota” in Congress with the courage to stand up and lead the impeachment of that sadistic, brain-damaged, drunken SOB from Texas who has caused so much harm to the reputation of the United States — reputation bought and paid for the the blood of young Americans who fought tooth and nail for what was right during some very dark times.

Trust and betrayal

During Howard Dean’s keynote speech on Thursday night at YearlyKos, I was on my feet a great deal. Gov. Dean received many standing ovations, and I enthusiastically joined in every one.

But in the last few minutes of his talk, I found myself sitting on my hands. Gov. Dean had shifted gears, and in so doing, had put on display the same lack of fortitude and integrity that has tarred most of the Democratic leadership over the past 10 months.

During the presidential candidates’ forum on Saturday, I was impressed with the forthrightness shown by Sen. Chris Dodd – so much so that I chose to attend his breakout session afterward. But during that breakout session, when a question was put to him by Mike Stark, Sen. Dodd, too, jumped right on board with the yellow-bellied spineless talking points espoused by so many Democrats on one of the most important questions of our time.

And last week, in an astonishing display of cowardice, my own senator, Dianne Feinstein, betrayed me and every other American.

Howard Dean was wrapping up a rousing speech in front of one of the friendliest crowds he could possibly have faced: the 1,500 registrants at YearlyKos 2007. He

Feinstein – mcconnell promised

FreeFallin’s diary

http://www.dailykos.com/story/…

my runin with homeland security

http://www.dailykos.com/storyo…

dean’s talk

http://www.dailykos.com/storyo…

Don’t have enough time – but 6 mos. For fisa bill?

“I was never a Republican”  

maccabee;s diary on Frank Rich’s column

http://www.dailykos.com/story/…

You borke it, you bought it

No one likes to admit they bought a lemon – twice.

Upton Sinclair, The Return of Lanny Budd

http://www.google.com/search?n…

The Graf said that he had no personal hard feelings; German leadership at the top had been tragically incompetent and Germany had been defeated in a war which it had foolishly started. “As you know, Herr Budd, I was never a Nazi.”

It was the formula you heard all over Germany now. You heard it from the great industrialist who was trying to get back control of his plant. You heard it from the proprietor of the cafe and the waiter, and from the bootblack who sought your patronage outside. You might travel all over Germany and have difficulty in finding a single ex-Nazi.

leni riefenstahl

http://www.filmreference.com/D…

“If an artist dedicates himself totally to his work, he cannot think politically,” Riefenstahl says. Even in the late 1930s, she chose not to leave Germany because, as she observes, “I loved my homeland.” She claims that she hoped that reports of anti-Semitism were “isolated events.” And her image of Hitler was “shattered much too late. . . . My life fell apart because I believed in Hitler. People say of me, ‘She doesn’t want to know. She’ll always be a Nazi.’ [But] I was never a Nazi.”

“What am I guilty of?” Riefenstahl asks. “I regret [that I was alive during that period]. But I was never anti-Semitic. I never dropped any bombs.”

archbishop calls art “degenerate”

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wor…

not gay and never have been gay –

Larry craig

founder of swiftboat veterans on Thom Hartmann Ocober 3

said he made a mistake voting for bush

Who says government programs don’t work?

For the diary it’s what they do talk about public education being a success.  Compare the success rates worldwide for US students for a time period covering all the way back to before Reagan.  Other successful programs 911.

From MissLaura 10/18/07:

http://www.governmentisgood.com/

highways under Eisenhower, when taxes were 91%

On fetuses, faggots, ho’s and Others

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/…

On fetuses, faggots, ho’s and the distance between us

You can bet your ass that not one among the five Supreme Court justices who voted to allow women to die if their late-term pregnancies become too problematic has ever had an abortion, or has any consciousness of anyone who has. You can bet your ass that none of the right-wing assclowns who blame the Virginia Tech students for not being manly enough has ever faced down a crazed man pointing a loaded gun at them. You can bet your ass that

It’s easy to judge others. It’s so easy, in fact, that the Bible itself warns against it:

Judge not, that ye be not judged.

On Tuesday, nearly 200 people were killed in Iraq in acts of violence. Why was this not front-page news? Two hundred people, out of a population of 30 million – that would be like two thousand people in the United States. Why, then, is there not an outpouring of grief here, considering that it is the U.S.’s presence in Iraq that has precipitated such ghastly carnage?

Because those killed are Others. They are Not Like Us. They are therefore Not Human.

What is it about the United States? Maybe there really is something to this idea of American exceptionalism – only we’re exceptional in so many of the wrong ways. It is quite literally unheard of for something like what happened in Blacksburg, or at Columbine, or in Austin, to happen anywhere else on the planet. On. The. PLANET. And this is a big planet, with lots of people. Put 100 monkeys at 100 typewriters, and sooner or later you end up with the collected Shakespeare, or at least the best of e.e. cummings (opposable thumbs or no, simians don’t like the Shift key) – or maybe just Rebuilding America’s Defenses. But put 6 billion people on a temperate orb, and the only place – the only place – you’ll get madmen (and it’s always madmen, or the fancied image of men) killing with guns in numbers greater than you can count on both hands, is the United States of America.

Land of the free. Home of the well-regulated militia.

And what is it about our schools, that they are so often the sites of these abominable anomalies, these American avatars? And then they are committed by the young, the cream of our society? The educated young, no less, with so much opportunity in front of them. What is it? What is it? LIST OF MASS SCHOOL SHOOTINGS http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/…

What is “it”?

I don’t know. But I think part of any answer has to start with the Others.

Almost every society has its Others.

And

Why is it, for example, that so many Americans are such huge football fans? Why are they not instead, for instance, much bigger fans of golf, or of swimming, or track and field? What is it about the team sport of football that appeals to the visceral nature of so many who profess to be champions of the individual, of personal responsibility? What is it that possesses them to literally paint themselves in their team colors and rabidly cheer on people they’ve never met performing a meaningless  task that in the universal scheme of things is absurd on its face, and often to pay obscene sums of money to participate in such lunacy?

Tribalism.

Us vs. Them.

Me vs. the Others.

Many Americans – indeed, many humans – must have their “Others.” They feel the need to have another human being, or group of human beings, “Out There” to whom they can direct their anger and frustration, who they can make the focus of their fears, whom they can blame for their problems.

That is how otherwise educated friends of mine can forward e-mails to me telling me how Islam is a religion that as one of its central tenets promotes the killing of non-believers – as opposed to Judaism and Christianity, they say, which do not. They say this with great assurance, self-satisfaction and superiority, demonstrating by sending this e-mail to me that I am not one of those Others, that I can be trusted with this special knowledge and that indeed We Who Are Like Us must disseminate this special knowledge amongst Ourselves in order to protect Ourselves against the invading hordes of those Others, who obviously – since it is a basic tenet of their twisted, alien religion – want to kill all of Us.

Wrong, I write them back. On the contrary, the killing of nonbelievers is specifically ordered in at least two of the 613 Mitzvot of the Halakha, the center of Judaic law. So what? I ask. Have any Jews killed you lately because of those central tenets? How about Muslims? Any Muslims you know killed you lately?

But they, like so many, must have their Others, just as the ancient Jews needed theirs. Those Others provide scapegoats – a Toranic term, from Leviticus – upon which to place blame, when one wishes not to take responsibility for one’s circumstance. They must have those people who cover their heads differently than Themselves, whose worship songs are sung in Arabic instead of Latin English, whose prophet was descended from Abraham’s Other son.

What makes them ____ is not their actions, but Who They Are. They are no longer criminal – which would be a label placed upon one by their actions – but rather, they are Evil – a label placed upon one by their beliefs, by their ethnicity, by their politics. By their Otherness.

It allows the right to paint “liberals” as The Enemy. One no longer need commit a heinous act to be labeled heinous – one need merely to hold beliefs that are repugnant to the labeler.

The ironical difference in this regard between liberals and demifascists (I refuse to sully the label “conservative,” because I believe true conservatives do not feel the need to resort to such sophistry) is that liberals know that, as Jesus said,

by their fruits shall ye know them

and thus liberals judge people by their actions. Demifascists, on the other hand, need only place a label on anOther to “know” everything about them that they “need” to “know.” Individual responsibility? Purely a myth, a myth that has no place in the demifascist’s modus operandi, except as a convenient talking point when they want to escape their responsibilities to the community to which they inescapably belong.

And it might be – it just might be – that Americans are coming back to that understanding of the need for community, and rejecting the isolation that is the inevitable, soul-crushing, reductio ad absurdum of unrelenting separateness. Constantly putting the rest of humanity into the camp of the Others soon leaves one in a camp by oneself, and sooner or later the self-loathing that engendered the separation looks around and realizes it has no other object than itself to loathe. And that is not tolerable.

Ann Coulter has avoided acknowledging that reality for many years, and for so many years she has been a lifeboat for those desperate to cling to any piece of flotsam in a sea of self-contempt. But she is just one of many pieces of moral debris floating like scum at the top of that ocean of self-loathing; there have been and are many, many such hate projectors – literally, mouthpieces with a microphone who take their deeply buried self-hatred and project onto whatever Other is convenient at the time: Negroes, Chinese, Irish, Polish, Communists, hippies, women, homosexuals, Mexicans, liberals, Muslims. Don Imus was another such hate projector; it is not difficult to name a dozen more who have radio or television shows.

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/…

On fetuses, faggots, ho’s and the distance between us

You can bet your ass that not one among the five Supreme Court justices who voted to allow women to die if their late-term pregnancies become too problematic has ever had an abortion, or has any consciousness of anyone who has. You can bet your ass that none of the right-wing assclowns who blame the Virginia Tech students for not being manly enough has ever faced down a crazed man pointing a loaded gun at them. You can bet your ass that

It’s easy to judge others. It’s so easy, in fact, that the Bible itself warns against it:

Judge not, that ye be not judged.

On Tuesday, nearly 200 people were killed in Iraq in acts of violence. Why was this not front-page news? Two hundred people, out of a population of 30 million – that would be like two thousand people in the United States. Why, then, is there not an outpouring of grief here, considering that it is the U.S.’s presence in Iraq that has precipitated such ghastly carnage?

Because those killed are Others. They are Not Like Us. They are therefore Not Human.

What is it about the United States? Maybe there really is something to this idea of American exceptionalism – only we’re exceptional in so many of the wrong ways. It is quite literally unheard of for something like what happened in Blacksburg, or at Columbine, or in Austin, to happen anywhere else on the planet. On. The. PLANET. And this is a big planet, with lots of people. Put 100 monkeys at 100 typewriters, and sooner or later you end up with the collected Shakespeare, or at least the best of e.e. cummings (opposable thumbs or no, simians don’t like the Shift key) – or maybe just Rebuilding America’s Defenses. But put 6 billion people on a temperate orb, and the only place – the only place – you’ll get madmen (and it’s always madmen, or the fancied image of men) killing with guns in numbers greater than you can count on both hands, is the United States of America.

Land of the free. Home of the well-regulated militia.

And what is it about our schools, that they are so often the sites of these abominable anomalies, these American avatars? And then they are committed by the young, the cream of our society? The educated young, no less, with so much opportunity in front of them. What is it? What is it?

What is “it”?

I don’t know. But I think part of any answer has to start with the Others.

Almost every society has its Others.

And

Why is it, for example, that so many Americans are such huge football fans? Why are they not instead, for instance, much bigger fans of golf, or of swimming, or track and field? What is it about the team sport of football that appeals to the visceral nature of so many who profess to be champions of the individual, of personal responsibility? What is it that possesses them to literally paint themselves in their team colors and rabidly cheer on people they’ve never met performing a meaningless  task that in the universal scheme of things is absurd on its face, and often to pay obscene sums of money to participate in such lunacy?

Tribalism.

Us vs. Them.

Me vs. the Others.

Many Americans – indeed, many humans – must have their “Others.” They feel the need to have another human being, or group of human beings, “Out There” to whom they can direct their anger and frustration, who they can make the focus of their fears, whom they can blame for their problems.

That is how otherwise educated friends of mine can forward e-mails to me telling me how Islam is a religion that as one of its central tenets promotes the killing of non-believers – as opposed to Judaism and Christianity, they say, which do not. They say this with great assurance, self-satisfaction and superiority, demonstrating by sending this e-mail to me that I am not one of those Others, that I can be trusted with this special knowledge and that indeed We Who Are Like Us must disseminate this special knowledge amongst Ourselves in order to protect Ourselves against the invading hordes of those Others, who obviously – since it is a basic tenet of their twisted, alien religion – want to kill all of Us.

Wrong, I write them back. On the contrary, the killing of nonbelievers is specifically ordered in at least two of the 613 Mitzvot of the Halakha, the center of Judaic law. So what? I ask. Have any Jews killed you lately because of those central tenets? How about Muslims? Any Muslims you know killed you lately?

But they, like so many, must have their Others, just as the ancient Jews needed theirs. Those Others provide scapegoats – a Toranic term, from Leviticus – upon which to place blame, when one wishes not to take responsibility for one’s circumstance. They must have those people who cover their heads differently than Themselves, whose worship songs are sung in Arabic instead of Latin English, whose prophet was descended from Abraham’s Other son.

What makes them ____ is not their actions, but Who They Are. They are no longer criminal – which would be a label placed upon one by their actions – but rather, they are Evil – a label placed upon one by their beliefs, by their ethnicity, by their politics. By their Otherness.

It allows the right to paint “liberals” as The Enemy. One no longer need commit a heinous act to be labeled heinous – one need merely to hold beliefs that are repugnant to the labeler.

The ironical difference in this regard between liberals and demifascists (I refuse to sully the label “conservative,” because I believe true conservatives do not feel the need to resort to such sophistry) is that liberals know that, as Jesus said,

by their fruits shall ye know them

and thus liberals judge people by their actions. Demifascists, on the other hand, need only place a label on anOther to “know” everything about them that they “need” to “know.” Individual responsibility? Purely a myth, a myth that has no place in the demifascist’s modus operandi, except as a convenient talking point when they want to escape their responsibilities to the community to which they inescapably belong.

And it might be – it just might be – that Americans are coming back to that understanding of the need for community, and rejecting the isolation that is the inevitable, soul-crushing, reductio ad absurdum of unrelenting separateness. Constantly putting the rest of humanity into the camp of the Others soon leaves one in a camp by oneself, and sooner or later the self-loathing that engendered the separation looks around and realizes it has no other object than itself to loathe. And that is not tolerable.

Ann Coulter has avoided acknowledging that reality for many years, and for so many years she has been a lifeboat for those desperate to cling to any piece of flotsam in a sea of self-contempt. But she is just one of many pieces of moral debris floating like scum at the top of that ocean of self-loathing; there have been and are many, many such hate projectors – literally, mouthpieces with a microphone who take their deeply buried self-hatred and project onto whatever Other is convenient at the time: Negroes, Chinese, Irish, Polish, Communists, hippies, women, homosexuals, Mexicans, liberals, Muslims. Don Imus was another such hate projector; it is not difficult to name a dozen more who have radio or television shows.

O’Reilly’s hate speech

http://thinkprogress.org/2007/…

no reporting on right-wing domestic terrorists

http://www.dailykos.com/story/…

holocaust jokes at air force academy

http://www.dailykos.com/story/…

cho comparing himself to jesus christ

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/…

Chacounne’s comment

http://www.dailykos.com/commen…

My husband was a Vietnam vet

and a POW who was tortured by his North Vietnamese captors. He lived with his injuries for over thrity years, from his captivity until his fatal heart attack 22 months ago. His nightmare screams still haunt my sleep.

Let me just say that I COMPLETELY disagree with your stand on these issues. We are all part of the human family, what is done to one is done to all. There is no “other”. Torturers are damaged for the rest of their lives, as are the tortured. If you would not want your family to be disappeared and tortured it is hypocritical to believe others should be disappeared and tortured.

Torture is ALWAYS wrong, no matter who is doing it to whom,

For Dan,

Heather

great comment last year

http://www.dailykos.com/commen…

For the others at diary, look up mass shootings, for two reasons: first, how many of them occurred overseas?  Second, how many of them occurred in so-called red states?

Find out when the Koran was written.

Find the two citations and Sam Harris’s book on in the section on Islam where he first refers to them and us and prior to that dismisses the fact that he citations don’t appear in the Koran.

Your government is torturing people. And spying on you. Right now.  

How much worse does it need to get? Maybe only when 99.9% of Americans are without health insurance, in debt to their eyeballs and – here’s the clincher – so bereft that their electricity has been cut off, depriving them  thereby of their American Idol, PS3 and FaceBook – will they say, ENOUGH!

neighborhood surveillance

http://www.dailykos.com/story/…

mass arrests under truman, hoover

http://www.dailykos.com/story/…

1934 plot to overthrow america

http://www.harpers.org/archive…

Look. I’m only a screen name, visceral in nature. Yet, experience does creep in and informs my mainly emotional outbursts. From where I sit, in the cheap seats… the nose bleed section… Glenn Greenwald misses the essential problem in our government: it’s all an act.  

^{what screaming might look and/or feel like}