And Suck It Again, Obama Haters

POSTED BY JHW22

As Broadway Carl eloquently stated in his previous post, "Suck it!" And I want to join in.

After hearing all day how the getting of Bin Laden is because of Bush, I just wanted to state, ignorant as I may seem, that I didn't know Bush invented interrogation. Funny, I thought that asking someone questions to solve a mystery had been around since at least Columbo or even Murder, She Wrote. But listening to all those who can't give credit where credit is due (to Obama), you'd think questions weren't invented until the era of Bush.

Oh, but more specifically, the torture-style of interrogation is what they mean when they say Bush policies single-handedly led to the catching of the guy THEY couldn't get until "that one" was in office. Oh, so again, I learned something today. I didn't realize Bush invented torture. Funny, I thought trying hurt something out of someone had been around since at least The Princess Bride or something.

But nope. Bush is the mastermind behind capturing the mastermind all with the ask of a question followed by a beating. All those TV shows and movies made long before Bush was President, that showed people with toothpicks in their eyelids and stuff, weren't real. Well, duh, Jen, they were movies! Duh.

So what was that the North Vietnamese did to John McCain if that wasn't torture or interrogation? Because if Bush created those techniques of intelligence-gathering, then it certainly wasn't what we thought it was.

I guess I should agree with Sarah Palin and give thanks to President BUSH. Because if he hadn't created the genius idea to ask people questions in order to get answers, where would we be today? See! I JUST asked a question. Holy shit. I should thank Bush for the ability to do that. I never could have done that without him.

But now I am perplexed. If Bush was the one who set up this way of getting information, how did the Clinton Administration get all that information on Bin Laden that the Bush Administration ignored? Oh, wait, because the premise of interrogation or that of torture didn't exist, then I guess all intelligence was moot, thus ignorable.

THAT must be why it was easy to blame Clinton for not having a stragery to get, or help Bush get, Bin Laden before 9/11. And since Dana Perino informed us that 9/11 didn't happen on Bush's watch -- but the invention of interrogation did, THAT is why we must now bow to Bush for Bin Laden being found 10 years after 9/11 and about that many years after the invention of interrogation.

So, next question (I love this invention of asking questions thing) is: what could Bush have done better to see to it that the magical act of interrogation yielded results BEFORE a long, drawn-out, expensive war -- scratch that -- BEFORE TWO long, drawn-out, expensive warS? I am so curious to find out. Maybe when Obama completely ends the wars Bush started, we'll know what Bush invented to allow Obama to do that. Because, as I have learned today -- the black man ain't accomplished shit until the white man takes credit for it in contortionist revisionist bullshit.

A personal note

POSTED BY JHW22

I had to take my son to the dentist for the first time ever today. I had to endure Glenn Beck in the waiting room. I think that experience was worse for me than it was for my son.

Thank you. Good night.

Quote of the Day

"I have always been on the record, in fact, since 2003, with the concept of living our values. And I think that whenever we've perhaps taken expedient measures, they've turned around and bitten us in the backside. We decided early on, in the 101st airborne division, we just said, we decided to obey the Geneva Conventions...

...we have found that the use of interrogation methods in the army field manual that was given the force of law by Congress, that that works."

~ General David Petraeus explaining his disagreement with the Dick Cheney doctrine of enhanced interrogation, AKA torture.

Greenwald vs Chuck Todd

Yesterday, Glenn Greenwald blogged about and criticized the latest back and forth between Chuck Todd and Morning Joe co-host Mika Brzezinski & Pat Buchanan and their discussion on a possible investigation into the Bush administration's interrogation (ie. torture) policies, specifically criticizing Todd for blurring the line between being a journalist and a pundit, between stating the facts and stating his opinion. Todd contacted Greenwald to talk about his post and debated about those torture issues. They agreed to have an interview.

The half hour podcast is here. Must listen intertubes!

Nooners feels the shock of recognition

posted by Armadillo Joe

...and fires a parting shot as she just walks on by.

Sarah Palin's resignation gives Republicans a new opportunity to see her plain — to review the bidding, see her strengths, acknowledge her limits, and let go of her drama. It is an opportunity they should take.

[...]

In television interviews she was out of her depth in a shallow pool. She was limited in her ability to explain and defend her positions, and sometimes in knowing them. She couldn't say what she read because she didn't read anything. She was utterly unconcerned by all this and seemed in fact rather proud of it: It was evidence of her authenticity. She experienced criticism as both partisan and cruel because she could see no truth in any of it. She wasn't thoughtful enough to know she wasn't thoughtful enough. Her presentation up to the end has been scattered, illogical, manipulative and self-referential to the point of self-reverence. "I'm not wired that way," "I'm not a quitter," "I'm standing up for our values." I'm, I'm, I'm.

[...]

...she is... a seemingly very nice middle-class girl with ambition, appetite and no sense of personal limits.

In Which I (probably) Make An Unpopular Choice

posted by Armadillo Joe

But a predictable one. I have been critical of Obama, for the most part, for simply being a centrist -- though to be clear I am not surprised by his centrism fetish because I knew what I was buying when I voted for him. And, further clarification, I am not blaming Obama for what happened to Dr. Tiller, not by a long-shot, but apologizing for a DHS report warning of right-wing violence is exactly the kind of centrist capitulation by the Obama Administration which I think is not just innocuously convenient, but is actually dangerous. If we ever needed a more unambiguous object-lesson that being a frog on the scorpion's back or a frog squished in the center of the road, it is the assassination of Doctor George Tiller.

We can draw a lesson from this horrific situation. The lesson is this:

Choose. A. Side. They have.

Cultivating a fetish for centrism has been a ploy by the Rethugli-goons since the days of Nixon's Southern Strategy to force the center of gravity in American politics to the right and it has worked beautifully, but in some arguments "middle ground" is a mirage that will only lead the pathetically gullible among us morally astray; the torture "debate" is Exhibit A. The abortion "debate" is Exhibit B through...

Either women have control of their own bodies, or they are mere baby-pods owned by the state and leased to the males in their families. The other side so thoroughly hates the idea of female self-determination that they are willing to kill to suppress it; indeed, they just did. The GOP has been playing with fire on this issue for decades, hoping they could use just a touch of authoritarian evil for short-term electoral gain with no eye to the future, and now we reap what they have sown.

Which is why Obama must speak out more forcefully. His centrism is not noble, it is politically convenient. Says a commenter at AMERICAblog:

Obama's push for understanding and for a mushy centrism is giving aid and comfort to the enemy, the extremists on the right. Prop 8 succeeded in part because of his "leadership" which empowers bigots. It's, "Hey, if Obama can be against gay marriage and be OK as a Democrat and a black man, then so can I." Or, "If Obama can oppose abortion, then that is a pretty legitimate point of view." As we have discussed before here and elsewhere, relating to the media, there just are NOT two legitimate sides to every social issue. Obama needs to choose and to lead. He is the President for God's sake and he must use the bully pulpit to bully, to lead on significant social issues not to cop out. Neutrality supports the status quo and is thus the right wing position.

My sister and I traded text messages on Sunday morning, just as the news was breaking about Tiller's assassination. Her Master's thesis was about the language of the abortion debate and her conclusion was basically that we can never, ever reach an accommodation on this issue because we are literally not even speaking the same language. Obviously, the particulars are more complicated than that, but this is a blog not an academic journal. The abortion debate is very, very important to her. And she summed up the zeitgeist this way:

Its starting again. We gain power they start shooting us.

Choose a side, Mr. Obama. They have declared war on our side and it has now broken into the open. We need your leadership. The fate of the soul of this nation depends on it.

President Obama's National Security Speech, May 21, 2009

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Jesse Ventura Continues His Torture Rant on The View

Elisabeth Hasselbeck continues to defend torture. Ventura sets her straight. She also tries to fudge the facts of KSM giving up all pertinent information after he was waterboarded when the fact is that it was before he was waterboarded.

The interesting part is that she shows she's not stupid. She's overmatched by the facts and Jesse Ventura so she throws the kitchen sink at him including Nancy Pelosi and Hillary Clinton, as if they were the architects of "enhanced interrogation." Ventura never flinches and doesn't get sidetracked.

...what he said...

posted by Armadillo Joe

As per usual, Atrios finds a way to say something far more succinctly than I ever could.

Regarding this whole "What-did-Nancy-know-and-when-did-she-know-it" non-scandal scandal, Atrios, in a post titled "Monsters," sez:

We should always remember the morality of Elite Villagers, those who supported the pointless war in Iraq and who mostly are now decidedly not horrified at the fact that the administration tortured the shit out of people in order to justify the atrocity that was the Iraq war. The Villagers loved their little war. It made them feel heroic. They wanted justification for it, too.

Amen, brother.

I don't remember which famous blogger said it first, but Washington D.C. is truly hard-wired for Republican rule. Which makes a certain amount of sense, actually. Money and power accruing in the capital city of the richest, most powerful nation the planet has ever known and perverting its policies and corrupting its priorities with regards to the well-being of that nation's entire population -- not just the wealthy ones -- is intuitively correct.

And, naturally, that money and power will trump whichever regional or religious or ethnic or socio-economic affinities may have driven the voters of any given district to elevate whichever huckster to national office. And it stands to reason that those elected hucksters will attract a great many hangers-on -- whether lobbyists or journalists or assorted wannabe "insiders" and unprincipled deal-makers -- who will all desire reflected glory or power or status and the money and priviledge those things can bestow. Whether pre-Revolutionary Russia or Imperial Rome or Versailles circa 1789, the whole thing eventually devolves into an insulated, closed loop of self-referential circle-jerking on route to unquestioned IMPORTANCE, because running the world is hard work and the rest of us should be more appreciative.

Those people are too IMPORTANT to really care about the little people who, you know, have to live with the policies they enact and lobby for and report about because, to them, being in Washington D.C. is not just a job but a lifestyle and everyone else around them is in that clique, too.

Whether making widgets in a factory or enabling and endorsing a torture-regime, a job's a job and we've all got to eat and pay rent, right?

Drudge rules their world.

Scandal Sells

What is going on with the MSM feeding frenzy on tyring to put Nancy Pelosi smack dab in the middle of the torture scandal because of Intelligence briefings? While the networks all reported that Pelosi accused the CIA of "lying" in her briefing in opposition to the CIA's assertion that she knew the specific interrogation methods had been used, none of the reports noted that in a letter accompanying the documents, CIA Director Leon Panetta suggested the information in the documents may not be "an accurate summary of what actually happened."

I'm not a Pelosi fan, and if she is not being truthful then she should be gone as well. That being said, she's asked the CIA to release the documents that prove them right and her wrong, but they've refused. If they have her nailed to the wall, then why the refusal? She's also suggested for a truth commissin to sort this all out. Would someone who is lying ask for truth commission? If your operation is being called bogus, then it's in the CIA's best interest to release said documents and prove Pelosi wrong, shut her up and save face. Why won't they do that?

It's also come to light that the former head of the Intelligence Committee, Sen. Bob Graham, is siding with Pelosi. His meticulous notes confirm attendance at only one meeting in which they were not told about waterboarding being used while the CIA said he'd been briefed four times.

Graham: "When I asked the CIA when I had been briefed, they gave me four dates, two in April and two in September of '02. On three of the four occasions, when I consulted my schedule and my notes, it was clear that no briefing had taken place on that date and eventually the CIA concurred in that. So their record-keeping is a little bit suspect."

Ultimately, this is a distraction from the fact that waterboarding was used in August of 2002 and the committee wasn't briefed until September of 2002. That's the story.

The media focusing on Nancy Pelosi and the CIA discrepancy over torture techniques and when they were used is the equivalent of dangling a carrot on a stick in front of a mule. "Oooh! Pelosi called the CIA liars!"

It's a distraction from what they should be covering. It also sells. The CIA is a department with no face. Scandal loves a face, and if they can connect a little, grandmotherly type like Pelosi to torture it sells papers. What are they going to do, post a picture of the CIA building entrance next to the type? Have the CIA logo over the talking heads' shoulders while they try to blame torture on a department instead of someone in the former Vice President's office? Doesn't Pelosi's face over that pundit's shoulder look more scandalous?

Chickenhawk Cheney

I love this cartoon in light of the news that despite the fact that harsh interrogation techniques have not been used since 2004, Cheney is still going on the Sunday news line up and saying President Obama is making us less safe because of the change of interrogation policies (AKA no torture) and the release of the torture memos.

"...no torture or harsh interrogation techniques were employed by any U.S. interrogator for the entire second term of Cheney-Bush, 2005-2009. So, if we are to believe the protestations of Dick Cheney, that Obama's having shut down the "Cheney interrogation methods" will endanger the nation, what are we to say to Dick Cheney for having endangered the nation for the last four years of his vice presidency?"

- Col. Lawrence B. Wilkerson, former chief of staff of the Department of State during the term of Secretary of State Colin Powell

(H/T Bob Cesca)

Politics and Pragmatism

Yesterday was a rough day for me*. My usual weekend off (Mondays and Tuesdays) was negated due to special events at the theatre and an extra maintenance call... so no days off. I was on my eighth of twelve straight days of work which can tend to leave some people tired and moody, so it was a major disappointment to me when I learned that President Obama had decided to reverse his decision and attempt to block the release of the latest detainee abuse photos in a Pentagon case, in which the Pentagon had sided with the ACLU and agreed to release the photos.

The shoot from the hip response would rightly be, "So much for transparency" and that's what I've been hearing from friends, colleagues and what little I've read on the blogosphere. But since I didn't have constant access to The Internets™ yesterday, I was able to formulate some of my own theories on why the President chose to take this action. I've read his statement but haven't heard others' speculation, so forgive me if I'm repeating what has already been said.

Here is President Obama's statement:

Now, let me also say a few words about an issue that I know you asked Robert Gibbs about quite a bit today, and that’s my decision to argue against the release of additional detainee photos.

Understand these photos are associated with closed investigations of the alleged abuse of detainees in our ongoing war effort. And I want to emphasize that these photos that were requested in this case are not particularly sensational, especially when compared to the painful images that we remember from Abu Ghraib. But they do represent conduct that did not conform with the Army Manual; that’s precisely why they were investigated and, I might add, investigated long before I took office. And, where appropriate, sanctions have been applied.

In other words, this is not a situation in which the Pentagon has concealed or sought to justify inappropriate action. Rather, it has gone through the appropriate and regular processes. And the individuals who were involved have been identified, and appropriate actions have been taken.

It’s therefore my belief that the publication of these photos would not add any additional benefit to our understanding of what was carried out in the past by a small number of individuals. In fact, the most direct consequence of releasing them, I believe, would be to further inflame anti-American opinion and to put our troops in greater danger.

Moreover, I fear the publication of these photos may only have a chilling effect on future investigations of detainee abuse.

And, obviously, the thing that is most important in my mind is making sure that we are abiding by the Army Manual and that we are swiftly investigating any -- any instances in which individuals have not acted appropriately and that they are appropriately sanctioned. That’s my aim, and I do not believe that the release of these photos at this time would further that goal.

Now, let me be clear: I am concerned about how the release of these photos would be -- would impact on the safety of our troops. I have made it very clear to all who are within the chain of command, however, of the United States Armed Forces that the abuse of detainees in our custody is prohibited and will not be tolerated.

I have repeated that since I’ve been in office. Secretary Gates understands that. Admiral Mullen understands that. And that has been communicated across the chain of command.

Any abuse of detainees is unacceptable. It is against our values. It endangers our security. It will not be tolerated.

All right? Thank you very much, everybody.

Security

As much as I hate that he used the line, "the most direct consequence of releasing them, I believe, would be to further inflame anti-American opinion and to put our troops in greater danger," because it echos what we've heard before from the previous administration, the fact remains that we cannot disprove that statement. It is his opinion, most likely an informed opinion especially after reviewing the photos, that they could be used as a further recruiting tool for extremists and cause inflammatory actions against our troops. I'm not certain about this theory and I'm not happy about it either. But it can't be ruled out. Most of us agree that our continued presence in the Middle East and our imprisonment of detainees without habeas corpus and our treatment of them under the Bush regime has been a recruitment tool for Al-Qaeda. Why not more photos of abuse?

Distractions

Nothing that the President does can be looked at in a vacuum. Every word he utters, every decision he makes has repercussions. Currently, there are congressional hearings on the use of torture techniques and their effectiveness, or lack of, going on. Just yesterday, FBI interrogator Ali Soufan was before a Senate hearing on the use of "harsh interrogation" techniques and how those techniques actually hindered intelligence gathering in his opinion. I think I'd rather watch the 24/7 news cable talking heads discuss that Senate hearing than get inundated with a slide show presentation of five or six released photos in a continuous loop every 15 minutes on MSNBC. Is this part of President Obama's thinking? That the release of these photos would only serve as yet another distraction rather than trying to get at the heart of the matter in terms of torture? I don't know, and neither does anyone else outside the walls of the West Wing.

Apathy

What's the first image that pops into your mind the second you hear "photos of Abu Ghraib"? I think of two particular photos. The hooded man standing on a crate with electrodes on his hands and naked pyramids. That's what it's been reduced to in my mind. So I ask myself what good would it do to release these new photos? You would think that the actions of Abu Ghraib would have been enough for anyone to protest in the streets with pitchforks and torches, but the "outrage" lasted a month, maybe two, and after Donald Rumsfeld attributed it to "a few bad apples," it has been forgotten by the general public. I have no reason to doubt the President when he says, "these photos that were requested in this case are not particularly sensational, especially when compared to the painful images that we remember from Abu Ghraib." We know abuse happened. We know there are factions in the government trying to cover it up. Why do we need to see the photos? Not only would it serve as a distraction to "future investigations of detainee abuse" but would anyone really care?

Priorities

This is the theory I'm going with. Think about the position in which President Obama finds himself. He takes office in the worst recession (bordering on depression) since the Great Depression. We are fighting a war on two fronts. Job losses mount to the tune of 500,000 to 650,000 per month. The stock market declined 6,000 points in a year before his first day in office. Record home foreclosures are creating homelessness and making tent cities commonplace. The banking industry is tanking and he must take over a $700 billion bailout by the Bush administration. The US auto industry is tanking and he must take over a $17 billion bailout by the Bush administration. 48 million Americans have no health insurance.

To stop the bleeding, President Obama begins a Recovery plan to infuse $787 billion into the country to create jobs, including the largest middle class tax cut in US history, and needs all the support he can muster to reform the health insurance industry. Is this the best time to release these photos? It's very possible that they will be released by the courts anyway, so why should we expect President Obama to rock the boat while he's standing on the bow?

More and more details are coming out daily regarding the torture memos and Dick Cheney's deeper involvement than originally thought. Congressional hearings and investigations are coming to a head. I'm just a little too young to remember Watergate first hand, but I do know that investigative reporting and the hearings during Watergate took a long time to get the truth out. My prediction is that within 18 months, the current snowball of scandal will turn into an avalanche. There will be indictments, prosecutions and jail time for some of the big wigs that were involved in Torturegate, as well as the possibility of war crimes committed for starting a war on intentionally false pretenses. That all takes time.

I'm going to expect President Obama to prioritize and try and get something done for the near future. There will be enough independent investigation without Obama looking like he's out for partisan blood. The last thing we need is self sabotage by initializing investigations that will be misconstrued as partisan witch hunts which can derail his agenda by Day 114. I have to give him that time. I voted for change, but I'm realistic enough to know that change doesn't happen overnight... or over 114 nights.
___________________________
* My day concluded with the Mets losing an 8-7 game in 12 innings, the Senate voting against the Credit Card bill and my softball game being rained out this morning. *Sigh*

Jesse Ventura: I Was Waterboarded. It's Torture.

Larry King (@ 1:07): "Alright already with Bush, okay?"

Nice try, Larry, but Ventura is smart enough to realize that you can't judge in a bubble and that making judgments on President Obama 100 days in to his four years without grading it on a curve because of the horrendous hand he was dealt is not a fair assessment. Dismissing what happened for the previous eight years and asking how Obama is doing when we all know that he's still trying to climb out of a hole the size of the Grand Canyon is completely misleading.

I'm also glad Ventura called waterboarding what it is and dispelled the myth that it's different because "you know you're not going to drown." Obviously mistakes can be made, and others experts have attested that it can cause cardiac arrest as well as a suffocating esphogeal collapse hours later.

And calling Dick Cheney a coward and a chickenhawk is always a bonus.

(H/T Bob Cesca)

A Few Basic Rules

posted by Armadillo Joe

Hey, you Blog-O-Maniacs! B'way Carl has again asked me to mind the store in his absence, but told me no SUPERTRAINS! so I'll have to find something else to write about.

How about social justice?

Or just basic vengeance?

Because when we evolve out of our natural state, when we build institutions and organize ourselves into entities that coerce or persuade through incentives or through the naked threat of violence (or the actual use of violence) the lone caveman to stop bashing other cavemen on the head and taking their cavegirls, we have formed a government.

No one ever signed on for such an enterprise, mind you, because we don't choose the time and location of our births. Besides, someone has to be in charge and who was that first caveman to tell all the other cavemen to stop bashing heads? Well, he was the baddest MF of them all and what he says goes. Until some bigger and badder MF comes along and does the same to him. And that leads us to all sorts of questions about lines of succession and who gets to be in charge, because if its a simple matter of just bashing heads until no one is left to say you can't have the throne, anyone can eventually become king, right? Its still true to this day for dictatorships throughout South America and Africa. Thus, the folks at the top of the food chain eventually declared that god himself put them there and everyone else should just accept that fact and go about their business of growing food and otherwise fighting and dying for the king's ambitions.

What could go wrong with a system like that?

Which is why, by the 17th & 18th Centuries A.D., a bunch of idle rich hanging out in the salons of the European continent who had grown weary of hearing this whole "divine right of kings" crap to justify every cockamamie idea that ever popped into a monarch's head -- ideas which usually resulted in the deaths of hundred or thousands of their countrymen, too boot -- and who were young and idealistic (as youth are wont to be) finally cooked up a bunch of alternate ideas about social contracts and "consent of the governed" to explain how and why we got here, with all those kings and bureacracies and gendarmes and all that sort of thing. For a few decades, all their lofty rhetoric and fancy words remained just the college newspaper Op-Ed screeds of their day, laying fallow and unheeded, until a bunch of yeoman farmers in a far-flung British colony over on the American continent (and the wealthy transplants who owned the land those farmers worked and saw a way to keep even more of their money) got a hold of those ideas as a way of giving the finger to that clown King George who thought he could do whatever he wanted because, well, he was king.

A couple of years and one semi-hot revolution later, we had ourselves a king-free government, though not for lack of trying on the part of a great number of our so-called Founding Fathers. Luckily, our own George (Washington, that is) had read enough of all that coffee house prattle from Yurp to actually believe some of it and, to our everlasting relief, declined every attempt to put a crown on his head.

But other mischief was afoot back on the Continent and enough peasants got tired enough of starving and dying for Marie Antoinette's pearls that they had a little revolution of their own. You might recall it had something to do with guillotines and some cat named Robespierre. From that blood-soaked chaos, some time later (like almost 30 years later), the dictator who rose up from humble origins on a small island off the French coast to have royalty bow down before him was ultimately defeated on a battlefield in Belgium, but not before reshaping the way government ruled over the people who resided on the land it controlled. Consent of the governed became our notion of the Rule of Law and the people were assured a voice in their own government. OK, only if they were white and male, but at least divinity was no longer a pre-requisite for governing and that put us on the road to the expansion of suffrage, battles which are being fought -- even in this country -- to this very day.

All of which brings me to this quote:

“No offense to Middle America, but if someone went to Columbia or Wharton, [even if] their company is a fumbling, mismanaged bank, why should they all of a sudden be paid the same as the guy down the block who delivers restaurant supplies for Sysco out of a huge, shiny truck?” e-mails an irate Citigroup executive to a colleague.

I think you guys can predict my response to this Marie Antoinette from Citigroup:



Because when I use the phrase "Ruling Class" to refer to a certain group of people in this country, I'm not kidding. I'm not exaggerating. They are a direct line from the aristocracy of a former day -- not always by blood, mind you, but always by disposition -- and they really and truly think this country, all the people in it and its institutions and all of its natural resources, belong to them. The purpose of this country and all the people in it is to support them in the oppulent lifestyle to which they have grown accustomed and to do whatever they require to maintain the economic and political structures (domestic and foreign) that enable that lifestyle, which is why they have no qualms about soaking up our tax dollars when they try so hard to avoid paying any taxes at all and then sending the poor and brown-skinned among us either to prison or off to a war they themselves are too precious to fight. Like Vietnam, Iraq is a rich man's war and a poor man's fight.

The previous president is from the Ruling Class and he sure as shit acted like the military was his personal revenge and ego-boosting tool, which Cardinal Richelieu Dick Cheney was more than happy to exploit for his own nefarious ends.

Whether AIG bonuses or torture to justify a ginned-up war, the impulse is the same for these people, the logical waters they drink are drawn from the same poisoned well, and the natural political home for their functionaries is the GOP. But these people and their pet political party didn't come out of nowhere. They have deep roots in human history and this country is no exception, no matter what our glorious mythologies may tell us about what a free and noble people we are, about what an exception to history our story represents.

For more on that, go read driftglass.

Plus, some SUPERTRAINS! --

Choo-choo trains RAWK!

Red State: Waterboarding = High School Swim Team Practice

Silly me! Of course being on the high school swim team is exactly like waterboarding! Those long practices were "torturous"! Why didn't I see this to begin with?

As a matter of fact, I do recall seeing pictures of Olympic Gold Medalist Michael Phelps being strapped down onto an inclined board with his feet higher than his head, while his swimming coaches blinded him, stuffed a rag down his throat and poared water onto his face, into his nose and onto the rag which would then seep into his throat as part of his training regimen. And what does he have to show for it? 14 GOLD MEDALS, BABY! (Two bronze medals too, but that's because he wasn't waterboarded enough, that pussy.)

No one remembers those pictures though. All we get is the bong hit photo - fucking LIBERAL MEDIA!

Oh, the other difference between waterboarding and the swim team? Waterboarding is torture... and you can always quit the swim team.

(H/T Bob Cesca)

St. Ron Got It Right...

... at the UN Convention in 1984. And yet we're now hearing Ronald Reagan's party arguing for the use of torture. There is no debate. America does not torture.

(H/T Bob Cesca)

Pitchforks & Torches (UPDATED)

guest posted by Armadillo Joe

I know that Obama has an army of monied interests ranged against him and against the implementation of the ideals of the people who've come to power in his wake and that limits all of their options. I know that everything can't magically change overnight. I know times of epochal change like the one we're living through right now are usually frought with violent and bloody back and forth before the new age becomes evident and the old guard fades into oblivion or dies off. I know all of that, but depending on which side of an historical conflict a society plants its flag and deploys its resources, the resolution of the conflict can and usually does mean the end of one civilization's hegemony for ascension of its opposition.

OK, time to stop being vague.

The history of human conflict has always been about the clash between the haves and the have-nots. This conflict is scalable and operates at every level from the micro to the macro from interpersonal to international from the beginning of time to right now, from two cave-men duking it out fireside over a leg of mammoth meat or a beautiful, curvy cave-girl all the way up to our invasion of Iraq to sieze control of their oil fields. In recent centuries, we've come to describe this conflict in terms of left and right, liberal and conservative, blue and red or what have you. But the conflict is always the same. It is always between those who want to restrict citizenship (i.e. - power and wealth, meaning agency over one's own fortunes) and those who want to expand citizenship to the masses (i.e. - "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal...", itself imperfect, or "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need").

And right now, I think Obama and company's fetishization of bi-partisanship puts him on the wrong side of history.

The last eight years have been the culmination of a decades-long program of willful destruction of the mechanisms of equality by the wealthy ruling class of this country. From 1776 forward, they were never really on board with that whole "democracy" thing anyway and only tolerated it to the extent that it was good for their personal fortunes. In flush times, the more prosperous the non-rich became, the more the ruling-class saw their power erode because -- unlike wealth, which can expand for the benefit of all people in a society -- the question of who wields power in any society is truly a zero-sum proposition: winning means someone else has to lose, because we can't all have everything we want all the time.

By the time ruling class' on-again/off-again program for total domination of the American economy had again failed more spectacularly than ever seen before in the 1930's, their power was probably at its lowest point in human history. That is why FDR was so often called a traitor to his class, because he could see the grand sweep of history and knew his breed were not unlike dinosaurs. Ever-expanding material wealth and the power it accrues cannot be limited to the priviledged few forever, just ask the Romanoffs. Afterall, royalty is just wealth so old nobody remembers the crimes that built the fortune.

But FDR's correcting of the societal tally sheet couldn't be allowed to stand by the wealthy families who had to surrender power, fancying themselves as they did as a kind of unaccountable American royalty (again, bad plan - just ask the Romanoffs). If FDR's New Deal hadn't been responsible for the widespread middle-class prosperity that followed our victory in World War 2, we might have seen a return to a kind of corporate feudalism much, much sooner. Afterall, the ruling class did try to oust Roosevelt-the-Traitor in a coup, including 43's grandpappy (he was never punished, obviously). So, instead of a swift and merciless overthrowing of the lefties, our country's ruling class had to take their time. Decades, in fact. Through Nixon's Southern Strategy and Saint Ronnie of the Ray-Gun's "Revolution" and the impeachment of a popular president for a blowjob and the theft of an election (or two) and, most of all, the selling-off of America's vast resources -- natural, industrial, human -- have been the preferred modes, means and methods of buoying the wealth at the top end while eroding the buying power of everyone else.

It almost completely worked. They were almost done. And then the bottom fell out of their plans this last September, before they could snatch another election.

They had to do something, and fast, before anyone could figure out what was happening.

From day one, the TARP was obviously a massive, last-ditch smash-and-grab for all the shit that hadn't already been gutted from Treasury (part of that "starving the public sphere for the sake of the private" thing I wrote about yesterday) and I said so at the time on my old blog:

The bailout, which is SOOOO last week I know, is (as Mr. Sideshow wrote a couple of weeks ago), long before Hank "The Donald Rumsfeld of Economics" Paulson's "Give-Me-All-The-Money-And-Don't-Fucking-Ask-Me-Any-Questions-Or-The-Economy-Gets-It" three-page plan was scuttled in The House - the People's Chamber - by the "Tru-Believers" in the Rethugli-bot coalition (before being rescued by The Senate - The Plutocrat's Chamber) because - weaned on the poison milk of the Reagan Revolution as they are - they never understood that all that free-market rhetoric was just so much malarky spread by the Ruling Class to get their signature pet policies package-dealt with all those the Culture War rostrums that get the shrieking wingnut brigades nice and agitated for the end result of election victories that translate via Abramoff and Delay and the like into more money in the pockets of the Monied Class.

Now, Obama's Money Boy -- Tim Geithner -- and all the other "serious" people who got us into this mess in the first place but somehow merited a job in the new administration anyway (bi-partisanship, I guess) have decided to go ahead and give away the rest of the money anyway with no additional strings or oversight, because why would we want to demand accountability from the Wall Street Masters of the Universe who got filthy, stinking rich putting the rest of us in this mess in the first place?

From the New York Times online:

The new financial industry rescue plan, to be outlined in broad terms on Monday in a speech by the Treasury secretary, Timothy F. Geithner, will not require banks to increase their lending. That is despite criticism that institutions that already received money from the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP, either hoarded it or used the funds to acquire other banks.

The incentives to investors could be in the form of commitments to absorb some of the losses from any assets they purchase, should their values continue to decline. The goal is to relieve the banks of their worst assets so that private investors might then provide more capital.

And I agree with David Sirota's assessment of that cozy arrangement:

...in a nutshell, banks get more taxpayer cash, but taxpayers will not force the banks to lend more, nor will taxpayers have the leverage to throw out the economy-destroying management of the banks that we now own. Instead, our money will be used to ensure that huge private investors that put money into those banks don't lose any money on their risk.

[...]

Taxpayer money is being handed over to the Manhattan millionaires who created this crisis, and we get absolutely nothing in return - not even the illusion of anything, really.

[...]

They've turned this moment of political change and economic meltdown into an opportunity to distill kleptocracy into its most pure form.

I will make this prediction: No one responsible for this mess will every suffer any punishment. Ever.

Now prove me wrong.

Just like I'd like to be proved wrong about punishment for the lies about WMD in Iraq, Justice Department corruption and torture. I won't hold my breath.

UPDATE (2/8/09 12:30pm):

In the comments, Michael says:

I think you have seriously missed here. Obama cannot simultaneously be the good guy you imply in your first paragraph, and then do all the things you say in the rest of the article. It's time to face the music: the reason the administration is filled with the thugs who ruined things and continue to do so is because they are the people Obama supports and hires. Blaming bipartisanship is bullshit. He had choices, and he made them. He's not a good guy; he's one of them. It's bait and switch, yet again.

And I take his critique to heart. He's right, Obama cannot be both the crusader for good in the first paragraph and the typically-corrupt Washington politician in the remainder at the same time.

My writing was unclear.

Now, I have been called out before for making a claim just like Michael's ("Meet the new boss, same as the old boss") -- by the proprietor of this website, as a matter of fact -- back over at my old place, so I am not unfamiliar with feeling like Obama could prove to be part of the same hypocrisy. With that said, though, I want to clarify my train of thought in building the above post.

I believe Obama is fundamentally a good man, well-intentioned with the sort of strong moral compass that grows from seeing real human suffering up close and personal (something most of our monied class has no idea about). I also believe that Obama is a wily politician with a finely-tuned social radar from growing up never fully belonging to any one social group (being mixed-race when America was ripping itself apart over racial issues) and the same chameleon-like ease of movement one learns when moving up through the Ivy Leagues and on into the corridors of power from the lowest of the lower classes in this country. Bill Clinton, going from poor, fatherless Arkansas white-trash to President of the United States, had the same skill-set for many of the same reasons.

In many ways, Obama's background makes him the anti-Nixon. Nixon also grew up poor, but his class-consciousness didn't broaden his horizons and open his heart to human suffering, instead it rotted his soul, made him bitter about his upbringing and ultimately gave this nation the myriad petty and high crimes of his administration, derived as they were from the paranoia of a fundamentally sick, wicked man, surrounded by cronies equally twisted.

Obama sees the precipice this nation has either gone over or is about to, I feel certain, but I fear his inclusion of so many of the guilty parties in the effort to fix our condition comes not from corruption as much from naivete, trust and hopefulness. But it may be too late. The glorification of greed and acquisitiveness in the English-speaking world since Saints Maggie and Ronnie clawed their way into power three decades ago means that now "the lack of scruples in America and Britain has gone beyond the tipping point, and is going to exact high societal costs. The parasites are eating the host." (H/T C&L)

I am not confident that Obama can do much about our problems without some widespread suffering pulling down the forces that got us here, and those forces have money and the instruments of governmental power to protect them. We need us some good old-fashioned, people-powered populist politics to force out the kind of comfortable corruption that has become the norm in Washington D.C., which Obama must tolerate to get anything done. I think he is very much the outsider still. It remains to be seen whether or not he'll be frozen out by the permanent social classes of Washington the way "Billary" was 15 years ago. The way the Senate bill went down this week at the hands of a few squishy-centrists is but a small window into the smug self-righteousness that is the true heart of the "bi-partisanship" he fetishizes (along with the rest of the D.C. Villagers) and I hope the ugliness of what happened in the Plutocrats' Chamber will be a lesson to him and his people about what actual bi-partisanship actually means.

That's what I meant by pitchforks and torches in the title. I believe he can lead us out of this morass, but we the people must make him do it, even as our ruling classes scream and howl at the injustice of it all. Frank Rich writes about this exact topic today.

Obama can lead us, if we call him to it.

Olbermann's Special Comment: Bush Guilty Of Torture

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

There is nothing but to agree with the assessment that at the very least, investigations must take place into the interrogation activities under George Bush's watch. It must also be an independent investigation to dissuade Republican cries of a partisan witch hunt. There must be accountability. Bush has said time and time again, "The United States does not torture." It's time for him to back that up.

The Bush Legacy Project

For an administration so adept at the Reverse Midas Touch, where everything they touch turns to shit, the one thing I give the Bushites credit for is their ability to spin. They are Rembrandts in the art of Flim-Flam. They were able to, for eight long years, fool enough of the people enough of the time to remain in power just long enough to fill their coffers and almost destroy the country in the process. And the P.T. Barnum of the political three-ring circus that is the White House? Karl Rove.

Ron Suskind, 2004: In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in Esquire that the White House didn't like about Bush's former communications director, Karen Hughes, I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House's displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn't fully comprehend -- but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency.

The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors... and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."

We all now know that "the senior adviser" in Suskind's piece was Karl Rove. And Rove was right. Study we did. While everyone was flipping out over the latest Bush Administration outrage, the Bushites were creating another and another. And another. Until this endless avalanche of bullshit was so overwhelming, the focus of the "judicious students of history" Rove was talking about splintered apart. There was no consolidated front. There was no one particular story that would stick.

Hurricane Katrina was really the first time they took a big hit, but how many people still talk about Bush and Cheney testifying together, not transcripted and not under oath during the 9/11 Commission investigations? How many of us are still thinking about Alberto Gonzales and the mockery he made of the Justice Department? And when one jamoke resigns, another is ready to take his place and condone torture while avoiding answering what torture is. Who talks about the devastation that still haunts New Orleans over three years later? Or even the slow recovery efforts of Hurricane Gustav's wake just a couple of months ago?

We all know the long, long list that George W. Bush leaves as his legacy: 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, The Patriot Act, The Military Commissions Act, illegal wiretapping, cherrypicking intelligence reports, the Iraq War, rendition, torture, waterboarding, Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, economic meltdown, record foreclosure rates, and on and on. That's just scratching the surface. Amazing isn't it?

And here we sit, eight years after the first national Bush atrocity that no one could have anticipated would become the norm from the crooks residing in the White House. Yet we are now hearing that Karl "Bush's Brain" Rove, former Bush communications director Karen Hughes and other senior Bush advisers are brainstorming ways to salvage Bush's legacy. A Bush legacy project. And they're meeting in the White House with current officials. They're doing it on our dime! How does one wrap their mind around the dilemma of attempting to create a positive spin on Bush's "legacy"? And since when is a president's legacy part of a White House agenda? Legacies are made, not manufactured.

This think tank's plan is to rewrite history. Already we're seeing Bush's farewell tour, kicked off with a Charles Gibson/ABC interview in which the Chimp in Chief tries to pass the buck in a sad, Bart Simpson-like "it was like that when I got here" attempt.

GIBSON: Do you feel in any way responsible for what's happening?

BUSH: You know, I'm the President during this period of time, but I think when the history of this period is written, people will realize a lot of the decisions that were made on Wall Street took place over a decade or so, before I arrived in President, during I arrived in President.

"... before I arrived in President, during I arrived in President." What the fuck?! How does one turn that into anything positive? And isn't it ironic that Karl Rove, the man who only a short time ago was plotting a permanent Republican majority (possibly the last Republican majority for at least a generation), the man Bush nicknamed "Turdblossom," now has the dubious task of polishing a turd?

leg⋅a⋅cy  [leg-uh-see]noun, plural -cies.

1. Law. a gift of property, esp. personal property, as money, by will; a bequest.
2. anything handed down from the past, as from an ancestor or predecessor: the legacy of ancient Rome.
3. an applicant to or student at a school that was attended by his or her parent.
4. Obsolete. the office, function, or commission of a legate.

Hmmm.... Oh, here's one!

leg⋅a⋅cy - A gift of property by will, esp. of money or personal property; a bequest. Also Fig.; as, a legacy of dishonor or disease.

That last line nails it. Bush will be remembered for his indifference; for his lack of curiosity; for his ineptness; for his butchering of the English language; for his disregard of that "goddamned piece of paper," the United States Constitution; for his preference to be at his photo-op Crawford, Texas ranch; for the hubris of his crony appointments.

But most of all, the George W. Bush legacy will be one of dishonor to the office of the Presidency. His legacy is one of a parasitic disease that sucked our treasury dry, bled us of our moral standing in the world and crippled the last remaining superpower (if such a thing still existed). And no amount of revisionist history will scrub The Shrub's "legacy" clean.

American Stories, American Solutions

Here's Barack Obama's thirty minute infomercial that ran last night in case you were not one of the 29 million viewers who watched it.



I'll be posting reaction to this video from the punditocracy and the wingnut right as I come across it with frequent updates. I already hear Rush Limbaugh is making fun of the families in the video... because they were fat. Try and figure that one out.

UPDATE (9:20pm):

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC): "Anybody see the infomercial last night? Thank god for cable! If we had played that at a prison camp it’d have violated the Geneva Convention."
Graham joking about torture when the candidate he is backing voted against a ban on waterboarding. Classy.