Bachmann will never admit shes wrong. Ever.
Monday, November 22, 2010
Bachmann flamethrows more Falsehoods
Bachmann will never admit shes wrong. Ever.
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
Does torture work? [UPDATED]
According to the released torture memos, KSM gave up specific operatives before torture or waterboarding were applied. He gave up Majid Khan because he believed other operatives were "talking" (p 64-67 of this PDF), and not due to enhanced techniques. He gave information regarding Hambali and the planned bombing of Library Tower in LA, but nowhere in the memo does it say that enhanced techniques were required to obtain that information. KSM had been interrogated multiple times before enhanced techniques were used.
So while I may want to believe Hayden, I have no evidence to corroborate his opinion, and he was not director at the time. Meanwhile, the FBI interrogator, Ali Soufan, disagrees.
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I'll conclude with John McCain:
“It’s unacceptable,” McCain said, adding:
"One is too much. Waterboarding is torture, period. I can ensure you that once enough physical pain is inflicted on someone, they will tell that interrogator whatever they think they want to hear. And most importantly, it serves as a great propaganda tool for those who recruit people to fight against us....McCain later reiterated his point, “The image of the United States of America throughout the world is a recruiting tool for Islamic extremists.”
Although Helgerson said he accepted the conclusions of CIA managers that the brutal torture of detainees resulted in “valuable” intelligence, he believed the CIA has yet to provide definitive answers as to whether specific torture techniques were “effective” and “necessary” in obtaining intelligence or whether the same information could have been obtained through “traditional methods.”
Tuesday, November 09, 2010
Links to Drink By-- fetus-in-a-jar Edition
Brits deny Bush's claims that torture helped foil terror plots.
Doctors in other fields have always looked down their masked noses on their obstetrical colleagues. Obstetricians used to have trouble attracting the top medical students to their specialty, and there seemed little science or sophistication to what they did. Yet almost nothing else in medicine has saved lives on the scale that obstetrics has. Yes, there have been dazzling changes in what we can do to treat disease and improve people’s lives. We now have drugs to stop strokes and to treat cancers; we have coronary-artery stents, artificial joints, and mechanical respirators. But those of us in other fields of medicine don’t use these measures anywhere near as reliably and as safely as obstetricians use theirs.(Excellent piece; if you read one thing today, read this entire article)
Scrubbing the stink off Bush's Legacy
Former Bush administration official, Nicole Wallace, discusses the lack of WMD in Iraq. She thinks the whole world is as clueless as Lawrence O'Donnell who allows her to spew a boatlaod of lies. Entire video is here. The pertinent 30 second clip:
But EVERYone wanted to go to oust Saddam Hussein, so how can we blame our President for making a greivous error?
Unfortunately, Gerhard Schroeder, former German chancellor, says "Bush is not telling the truth."
Meghan McCain (still) doesn't get it
Olbermann needs to determine if he is a commentator or a journalist. It never really crossed my mind that he was considered a journalist by anyone, just like I never assumed that anyone considers Glenn Beck a journalist. And, for the record, neither does he. Both Beck and Bill O’Reilly (as recently as his appearance on Real Time With Bill Maher) said they fall on the commentary side of the network. This is the state of the media. No one should really be surprised by Olbermann’s donations. What should surprise people is that entertainment, commentary, and journalism have fused into such a state that it is difficult to differentiate among the three.
Fun with Google
Sunday, November 07, 2010
Bill Moyers: Passionate but delusional
BIll Moyers presents the narrative:
Early this year the five reactionary members of the Supreme Court ruled that corporations are "persons" with the right to speak during elections by funding ads like those now flooding the airwaves [re: Citizen's United]. It was the work of legal fabulists. Corporations are not people; they are legal fictions, creatures of the state, born not of the womb, not of flesh and blood. They're not permitted to vote. They don't bear arms (except for the nuclear bombs they can now drop on a congressional race without anyone knowing where it came from.) Yet thanks to five activist conservative judges they have the privilege of "personhood" to "speak" - and not in their own voice, mind you, but as ventriloquists, through hired puppets.
Does anyone really think that's what the authors of the First Amendment had in mind? Horrified by such a profound perversion, the editor of the spunky Texas Observer, Bob Moser, got it right with his headline: "So long, Democracy, it's been good to know you."
You'll recall that soon after the Court's decision President Obama raised the matter during his State of the Union speech in January. He said the decision would unleash a torrent of corrupting corporate money into our political system. Sitting a few feet in front of the president, Associate Justice Samuel Alito defiantly mouthed the words: "Not true."
Not true? Terry Forcht knew otherwise. He's the wealthy nursing home executive in Kentucky one of whose establishments is being prosecuted by Attorney General Jack Conway for allegedly covering up sexual abuse. Conway is running for the Senate. Forcht has spent more than $1 million to defeat him. Would you believe that Forcht is the banker for one of Karl Rove's two slush funds, American Crossroads, which has spent nearly $30 million to defeat Democrats.
What's that, Justice Alito? Not true?
Alan Grayson, for one, got it. He's a member of Congress and knows how the world is made to work. He recently said: "We're now in a situation where a lobbyist can walk into my office...and say, "I've got five million dollars to spend and I can spend it for you or against you. Which do you prefer?"
Alito was either disingenuous, naïve, or deluded. He can't be in this world without knowing he and his four fellow corporatists were giving big donors the one thing they most want in their campaign against working people: an unfair advantage.
My friend and colleague, the writer Michael Winship, told a story this week that illuminates the Court's coup de grace against democracy. It seems the incorrigible George Bernard Shaw once propositioned a fellow dinner guest, asking if she would go to bed with him for a million pounds (today around $1,580,178 US dollars). She agreed. Shaw then asked if she would do the same for ten shillings. "What do you take me for?" she asked angrily. "A prostitute?" Shaw responded: "We've established the principle, Madam. Now we're just haggling over the price."
I love Moyers' passion; he goes on to imply that the wealthy corporations in the US should voluntarily rescind their political hegemony that has been granted to them by our legislators and our Supreme Court.
Moyers: "You would think the rich might care, if not from empathy, then from reading history."
Saturday, November 06, 2010
Fox is not News
Friday, November 05, 2010
Huckabee Knows Healthcare... Not!
I was just watching Huckabee on van Susteren's FOX show and he was criticizing the Obama health care reform. I don't know if he was calling for complete repeal or not, I couldn't figure that out, but I did pick up one argument. (Video is here and argument starts at about 4:30).
Links to Drink By-- We're broke and the inmates took control of the asylum
30% of Republican voters want more government spending in order to create jobs... why the hell did they vote Republican? WTF?
Orrin Hatch, on whether he sees wiggle room on Bush tax cuts: "No, I don't." Nice.
And finally, a couple jokes from Harry Newton:
A 54-year-old woman had a heart attack and was taken to the hospital. While on the operating table she had a near death experience. Seeing God, she asked “Is my time up?”
God said, “No, you have another 15 years, 2 months and 8 days to live.”
Upon recovery, the woman decided to stay in the hospital and have a face-lift, liposuction, breast implants and a tummy tuck. She even had someone come in and change her hair color and brighten her teeth! Since she had so much more time to live, she figured she might as well make the most of it.
After her last operation, she was released from the hospital. While crossing the street on her way home, she was killed by a bus.
Arriving in front of God, she demanded, “I thought you said I had another 15 years? Why didn’t you pull me from out of the bus’s path?”
God replied: “I’s sorry. I didn’t recognize you.”
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A man goes to see a psychiatrist.
“It’s terrible, I think I'm a dog,” says the man. “I walk around on all fours, I keep barking in the middle of the night, and I can’t go past a lamppost anymore.”
“Okay,” says the psychiatrist. “I can help. Get on the couch.”
The man replies, “I’m not allowed on the couch.”
"I read it somewhere...."
Howard Dean said recently that he will refer to Fox News only as "Fox" from now on, because it has no resemblance to "news".
Thursday, November 04, 2010
Wednesday, November 03, 2010
Let's Tea Party!!!
I admit it's exciting! The House of Representatives, the legislative body from which all spending bills come, has been overtaken by fiscal conservatives. Never one to discount the collective wisdom of large crowds, I'll take the bait and accept that this might be beneficial. Let's light this candle.