Saturday morning thoughts on the non-government shutdown.

I actually thought that there would be a last-minute agreement reached once it became apparent that the sticking points were funding Planned Parenthood and some heavy-handed restrictions on the EPA. The Republicans were going to look like total fools for shutting down the government over stuff like that. It was no longer about budgetary issues. It was about Republicans trying to foist their agenda on the U.S. through the only branch of the federal government that they control. They were going to get absolutely killed next election. They still might. But I figured, once we got to that point, there would be an agreement. Anything less would have been political suicide, or at least some major self-inflicted wounds.

Great, the government isn't going to shut down. Troops will continue to get paid, 700,000 federal workers (including me) will go to work on Monday morning. But we are going to have to live with the medium to long range fallout of this agreement. I believe the number that the R's and D's agreed to cut from the federal budget from last year's is 38 billions dollars. 38 billion. That's a LOT of money. Now, I am absolutely certain that there are large areas of wasteful spending that could be cleaned up. But 38 billion, all in this year? Where is that money going to come from? There is already a very large amount of what I consider to be damage done to how the government operates. People are going to lose their jobs, services are going to be cut. I am a great believer in the Law of Unintended Consequences. 38 billion, at this point, is still mostly just a number that the R's and D's were arguing about. Very soon, the rubber has to meet the concrete. Where is this money going to come from? I am going to guess our national parks are going to take huge hits, for one thing. I would bet anything that most federal agencies get edicts like "reduce your workforce by X%." There will be lots of social programs that people, here and now, depend on that will be cut or greatly reduced. On and on. We have yet to see the very real fallout from this arbitrary number that people agreed to last night.

And, as for looking toward the future, I've got news for you (if you thought otherwise, and you probably didn't), the Tea Party types did not give up after last night. They will come out fighting that much harder in order to achieve their goals. (Just what those goals are, from the "bigger picture" perspective, aside from "shrinking government", I really don't know.) They are going to want that 38 billion to come from all the programs that they seem to detest; education, environmental protection, any sort of oversight of business and industry, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, any programs which give financial support to the poor, disadvantaged and out of work, etc. And on top of this, they are going to continue to demand more and more tax cuts for the rich and for corporations and an overall reduction of spending and revenue collected by the U.S. government.

Lastly, I find it amazing that all of this thrashing about in the last few weeks was SOLELY about cutting spending. There was not a single word spoken about increasing revenue through letting the Bush tax cuts expire on the rich to very rich, nor was there any discussion about making American businesses (e.g., GE, Boeing) actually pay corporate taxes like everyone assumes that they are already doing. No discussion about closing up tax loopholes. None. That subject seems to be totally off-limits.

There was also no discussion about jobs, other than some very unsupported declarations by the Republicans that jobs would come streaming back when the government's deficit was reduced. I am not an economist, but that assertion makes absolutely no sense to me, and it certainly doesn't to some very smart people who should know, such as Paul Krugman. (I may go try to find a link for this later. For now, you can go do a Google search yourself if you are that interested.)

The Dems, even though they control both the Senate and the Presidency, still have handed the nutjobs running the Republican Party right now a very large victory, even if those self-same nutjobs don't recognize it as such right now. The discussion is solely about spending, not taxes. It is solely about which programs to cut or get rid of entirely. The public will not know who's to blame when they don't get the services they want.

The Dems have found a way to continue on this path that the Tea Party has defined for this country. Oh, they didn't get everything they wanted, but they certainly got a lot. They certainly didn't get enough pushback to think that this approach isn't going to work in the future.

I can't imagine what this country is going to look like in 25 years. Well, I do have my own thoughts on the matter. I hope I am wrong. But I have a feeling that most of the people in this country will look at the state that things are in and wonder how they heck the United States of America ended up there.

Apparently, a lot of insiders are predicting Republicans will shut down the government on March 4th.

Check this story out in the Washington Monthly.

I'm of a firm belief the government will shut down after March 4th because the House and Senate won't be able to come to a conclusion on a CR [continuing resolution]. So it isn't a question of "if" in my mind, it is a question of "how long."

It's becoming clearer and clearer everyday that Republicans in the House have no connection to reality and are willing to burn it all down. Staff have sat dumbfounded over the last few days watching the floor, which no media is reporting on, to see how disconnected Republicans are from basic math. Their CR would do practically nothing to address the debt, but it will stunt any economic recovery (which they will blame on Obama).

What I don't hear people talking about is that so many members of the House are millionaires and don't seem to care how this will affect people. I don't know how they can look their staffs in the eye, who will be royally screwed by this.

The wild card is President Obama. As we discussed last year, he has yet to prove he has a spine. I fear he will cave and give in on most if not all of the Republican demands. In that case our last defense would be a small set of Dem Senators who have yet to lose their minds. But we will see.

As that post states, the current crop of Republicans are so divorced from reality that they don't even stop to consider whether they should stop and consider whether this is actually a good thing to do. All they know is that they have power and, by God, they are going to use it. Besides, the Democrats don't want this to happen, so it MUST be a good thing, right?

I just wonder how long it will be before our news media really starts reporting about how insane these people really are.

I would certainly be affected by this. I am an employee of the federal government. I have already had my salary frozen for the next couple of years because of these yahoos. As I said before, I actually don't mind making a sacrifice if it is the common good. But all I feel is that I am subsidizing tax cut extensions for millionaires and billionaires. But for this latest bit of insanity, a government shutdown would result in a forced furlough for me. However, don't feel bad on my account! It would just amount to a paid vacation, on top of my other paid leave days I get. I couldn't do any work, even from home. I wouldn't get paid during that time. However, once the government gets back up and running again, guess what? I would get back pay for all that time I would have been forced to take! Paid vacation, courtesy of John Boehner!

However, I think my case is the exception. Vendors who work with the government wouldn't get paid. Contractors who essentially work for the government but aren't direct employees wouldn't get paid. The last time this happened, back in the Newt Gingrich days, many of those people were forced to go out and find temp jobs to pay the bills. And that isn't to mention all the people who receive social security checks from the government. I am wondering what is going to happen to all those nice TSA people at the airports who pat you down or take x-ray pictures of you through your clothes. Are there enough private firms to jump in there and take up the slack? Would that even be allowed? How about things like Air Traffic Control? Would our military personnel, many of them stationed overseas with their families living paycheck to paycheck, get paid? Would the VA Hospital have to stop taking new patients or scheduling surgeries? I have no clue.

The thing is, neither do these nutcases who now are in the majority in the House of Representatives. They have many elder statesmen in their own party telling that this isn't a wise move in the least, and they don't care! They have the power and they are going to use it! I am Tea Party! Hear me roar!!

It occurs to me that this is pretty extraordinary.

But somehow, I bet it won’t be covered much in the MSM.

From Think Progress.

Former President George W. Bush canceled a February 12 visit to a Jewish charity gala in Switzerland, reportedly out of fears that legal action would be taken against him for his role in authorizing torture. Human rights groups, including Human Rights Watch, the International Federation of Human Rights, and Center for Constitutional Rights, said they had intended to submit a 2,500-page case against Bush in Geneva “on behalf of two of men, Majid Khan, who remains at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and Sami al-Hajj, a former Al Jazeera cameraman who was released in May 2008.”

The Jewish charity group, United Israel Appeal, said it was canceling Bush’s invitation on security grounds, not due to legal action. “The calls to demonstrate were sliding into dangerous terrain,” Robert Equey, a lawyer for the organization, said. Protesters urged attendees of the rally to bring a shoe, recalling the moment when an Iraqi journalist threw one at Bush.
The human rights groups had a different interpretation. “Whatever Bush or his hosts say, we have no doubt he canceled his trip to avoid our case,” the Center for Constitutional Rights and others said in a statement. “He’s avoiding the handcuffs,” Reed Brody, counsel for Human Rights Watch, told Reuters.

Oh, sure. There is a bunch of chaff throwing and excuses being made to make it just possible that this isn’t the reason that George W. Bush, who admitted to war crimes, isn’t making this trip. But I wouldn’t put much money on it.

How extraordinary is this? Very, I would say. This would put George Bush in the same category as, say, Augusto Pinochet or Jean Bertrand Aristide.

I am of the opinion that it will take a very long time for the country as a whole to come to grips just what was done in the eight years that George Bush was president. If we aren’t rewriting history or pretending unpleasant things didn’t really occur that undermined who we are as a nation, then we seem to be trying to convince ourselves these things really were for the “protection of the country.”

Self-reflection isn’t a strong suit for us right now.

Who do conservatives hate? Mexicans or Muslims? I forgot.

They keep changing. For most of the summer, there was high hysteria about illegal immigrants and immigrants in general. It got to be where any immigrant was equated with illegal immigration. It was one big mass freak out where conservatives were howling about fixing the immigration problem, sealing the borders, building a fence, etc. etc. Mexicans were taking over ranches in Texas. Headless corpses were being found in Arizona. (Neither of which turned out to be true, of course.) Illegal immigrants were going to be the downfall of the United States.

Then came the uproar about the building of a mosque, which is really a community center with a swimming pool and a basketball court, at “ground zero”, which turns out to be two block away, further than a strip club and a couple of other, small mosques. That is now the freak out. People in Missouri, Wisconsin, Tennessee and California are so freaked out that there have been protests and violence against mosques in communities in those states, which are not even close to “ground zero.”




I was not around at the start of WWII. But this seems so much a replay of our fear, paranoia and xenophobia that occurred back in the 40's, after the start of the war. The Japanese Empire, being run essentially by the military, bombed our navel forces at Pearl Harbor. The national trauma and confusion was, no doubt, extremely high. We were hurt and wanted to hurt back. Luckily, there was the Japanese Empire sitting there, smirking at us. Declaring war on them was easy. But what else did we do? On the west coast of the United States, the government rounded up American citizens who just happened to be of Japanese heritage, made them give up all their belongings and forced them into internment camps. Let me repeat that. The U.S. government put American citizens, who had done nothing wrong except share some genetic heritage with our enemy, into camps. They were surrounded by barbed wire and guards with guns. Even small children were put away, all to help sooth our national hurt and suspicion of anyone who didn’t look like us.



Did the U.S. put people of German heritage in camps? No. But American citizens of Japanese heritage were rounded up and deprived of their liberty. What was the difference? The real difference, in my mind, was that people of Japanese heritage DIDN'T LOOK LIKE US. They were strange, they were foreign. We were hurting after Pearl Harbor and these people, these American citizens who owned their own businesses, paid taxes, went to school, had sons in the military, looked like our enemy. Japanese = enemy. It was so easy, especially since it reinforced the thinking of many people anyway. If Germany had bombed our Navy in a sneak attack that killed thousands of people on a Sunday morning who were doing nothing more than just sitting around or going to church, whatever one does in Hawaii on a Sunday morning, would we have rounded up American citizens of German heritage? We will never know, but I very sincerely doubt it. Germans looked like us. Japanese people, even third generation American citizens, didn't.

What is going on now? People are now trying to equate anyone of the Muslim faith with a bunch of evil terrorists. People are being attacked because they are Muslims. Politicians who should know better are saying, in the national press, that there shouldn’t be any mosques built in the U.S., period. And, for the most part, these are the same people who adore the Constitution when it comes to the freedom to own and carry guns. Brown skin, thick accent, "strange" religion (i.e., not Christian or Jewish) is now equated with terrorists. Yes, let's all focus our anger and hatred of anyone who doesn't look like us at another group of innocent people! That's the American spirit! Kill the infidel before he kills us!

If the current crop of Republicans were in total control of the government right now, meaning the presidency and both Houses of Congress, do you think there might be a danger of the government trying to do the same thing to people of the Muslim faith, even though they are American citizens, that the government did to people of Japanese heritage back in the 40’s? Because, based on the rhetoric that I am hearing, that would be a distinct possibility. Once a mob mentality takes hold, it is very difficult to stop it. I find this very reminiscent of an old Twilight Zone episode, "The Monsters Are Due On Maple St." One line from that episode is very relevant in this discussion.

"You're standing out here all set to crucify someone! You're all set to find a scapegoat! You're all desperate to point some kind of a finger at a neighbor! Well, believe me, the only thing that will happen is we're going to eat each other up alive!"

Our country should be better than this.

Photos from here.

It's one thing to make mistakes. It's altogether something else when you don't learn from your mistakes.

The general consensus emerging about the elections this year is that Democrats are poised to lose big. How big, no one really knows for sure. But it appears that the Dems may lose control of the House of Representatives.

How could anyone living through the eight years of the Bush presidency and the first years of the Obama presidency think that Republicans can govern the country? The is incomprehensible to me. But then, I am trained as an engineer and scientist, so I am used to dealing with observable facts and making informed judgments based on those facts. That ability seems to be quite beyond a large percentage of the people in this country.

This is going to be quite a mess if the Republicans get back in control of the levers of power. I really cannot believe we are looking at this as a reasonable probability.

I've have concluded two things about politics in the U.S..

1) The U.S. government is essentially and forever broken. It's broken-ness is forever and will never return to a government "for the people, by the people." It is sort of "directed" (but not totally run by) by Big Money, War-Mongers, Egomaniacs and Fundamentalist Religionists. The U.S. government does not have the best interests of its citizens in mind. Only when those best interests coincide with the interests of at least one of those other groups does anything actually happen.

2) The citizens of the U.S. deserve exactly the kind of government we are getting, because we let this happen and we did not push back when it was hijacked by these special interests. We're screwed, and it is now too late to do anything about this. The only thing that I can see that a single person can do is keep his/her head down and hope the unpleasantness doesn't sweep him/her up.

So, that summarizes everything I could put in a political post, I think. Everything else is just more details about those two points above.

Merry Christmas.

We are going to spend a long, LONG time coming to grips with the Bush presidency.

There are just so many things that are oozing out from underneath the carpet that they are very difficult to ignore. Many people, including Bush/Cheney apologists, neo-cons, conservatives, and the well connected (both politically and powerfully) who are doing their utmost to keep all this crap that the Bushies swept under the rug from ever seeing the light of day. That includes, most unfortunately, many people within the Obama administration, including President Obama himself. The big question is, will we ever find out everything that happened during the Bush years?

I, personally, doubt it very much. There are too many people conspiring to keep everything hidden. I don’t know if Obama’s reasons are deeper than his professed position of “moving forward and not looking backward.” If that’s really it, then this is certainly an example of when obstinate pragmatism may serve the person well in the short term, but that might be a disastrous position to have in the long term.

So Dick Cheney lied again. He ordered people at the CIA to not Congress, which has, if I am not mistaken, a Constittuional obligation to oversee the CIA and to reign them in if they get too out of control. From HuffPo:

Former Vice President Dick Cheney directed the CIA eight years ago not to inform Congress about a nascent counterterrorism program that CIA Director Leon Panetta terminated in June, officials with direct knowledge of the matter said Saturday.

Subsequent CIA directors did not inform Congress because the intelligence-gathering effort had not developed to the point that they believed merited a congressional briefing, said a former intelligence official and another government official familiar with Panetta's June 24 briefing to the House and Senate Intelligence committees.

Panetta did not agree.

Upon learning of the program June 23 from within the CIA, Panetta terminated it and the next day called an emergency meeting with the House and Senate Intelligence committees to inform them of the program and that it was canceled.

Cheney played a central role in overseeing the Bush administration's surveillance program that was the subject of an inspectors general report this past week. That report noted that Cheney's chief of staff, David Addington, personally decided who in Bush's inner circle could even know about the secret program.

But revelations about Cheney's role in making decisions for the CIA on whether to notify Congress came as a surprise to some on the committees, said another government official. All spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the program publicly.

Wow, what a surprise. Dick Cheney in charge, and was being secretive. I really wonder if George really know what his VP was doing...

Photo from here.

Good Lord. Some policemen in San Diego are under the impression that the U.S. is a fascist police state.

Here are a couple of stories from Talking Points Memo about an incident that I doubt will ever show up in the big time MSM.

The San Diego Union-Tribune reports that a fundraiser for Francine Busby, who previously ran for the deeply-Republican Fiftieth District and came close to winning in the 2006 special election and subsequent regular election, was raided by sheriffs after an unnamed neighbor made a noise complaint. Busby now calls it a "phony" noise complaint, and the article says that multiple neighbors said there was no great noise at all.

Here's the twist: The fundraiser was hosted by a lesbian couple, and shortly before the sheriffs came a particular neighbor had shouted anti-gay slurs at the assembled crowd. "It was a quiet home reception, disrupted by a vulgar person shouting obscenities from behind the bushes," Busby says.

As one neighbor told the paper: "We didn't hear anything until the sheriff came, with eight patrol cars and a helicopter."
The sheriff's department claims that somebody kicked an officer. By the time it was over, multiple people were pepper-sprayed, one of the hostesses was arrested, and the whole neighborhood got to see quite a scene.

Eight patrol cars? Pepper spray?!? A HELICOPTER?!?! For a noisy party complaint? This seems it might warrant, at most, a warning for excess noise. And, although my little excerpt doesn’t say this, the gathering was made of up mostly middle age folks, you know, the kind of people who don't play Aerosmith at Extremely High Volumes and who really aren’t looking to get into a physical confrontation with armed police.

What the hell is up with the SDPD? Are the words “Democratic Fundraiser” so much of a warning signal that the police need to send out the riot squad, looking for trouble? And this person “behind the bushes” yelling sexual epithets and who is probably also the person who phoned in the noise compliant, what is his deal? Is he now proud of himself for disrupting a fundraiser for a Democrat, hosted by a lesbian couple? Does he feel he made a valuable contribution to society?

Stalin would have been proud. I now understand perfectly about how a monstrous government like the Soviet Union, along with their terrifying secret police, can come about. It’s because many people believe that they should behave like this. They enjoy causing pain, anguish and grief for people they deem as their enemies. I’ve said it again and again here. I have no idea how these people even live with themselves. They obviously have no idea of what democracy really means. None whatsoever. I hope several people lose their jobs over this one.

Onward Christian Soldiers, indeed.

This is now kind of an old story, as things go these days. I haven’t gotten around to posting about it, but it is something I felt like I should.

It’s not a secret that the armed forces of the United States has become a very Christianized place in the last 10 years. Oh, no doubt, the various services were always pretty conservative, which usually goes hand in hand with religion. But under President Bush and his Iraq War, Afghanistan War, War Against Islamic Terrorists, Global War on Terror, etc. etc., the trend has become a full fledged avalanche, gathering speed and mass as it careens downhill. I have read stories about what has been going on at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs for years. I don’t like this and firmly believe that religious fervor and military should NOT be sharing the same bed. That’s pretty much a recipe for disaster.

What is finally coming to light, however, is yet another thing altogether. GQ magazine broke a story about how Donald Rumsfeld and the Pentagon put together daily briefings for President Bush on how the wars were going. That’s not really newsworthy by itself, but the nature of the briefings were. Here is part of a column by Frank Rich at the NYTimes.

But Draper’s biggest find is a collection of daily cover sheets that Rumsfeld approved for the Secretary of Defense Worldwide Intelligence Update, a highly classified digest prepared for a tiny audience, including the president, and often delivered by hand to the White House by the defense secretary himself. These cover sheets greeted Bush each day with triumphal color photos of the war headlined by biblical quotations. GQ is posting 11 of them, and they are seriously creepy.

Take the one dated April 3, 2003, two weeks into the invasion, just as Shock and Awe hit its first potholes. Two days earlier, on April 1, a panicky Pentagon had begun spreading its hyped, fictional account of the rescue of Pvt. Jessica Lynch to distract from troubling news of setbacks. On April 2, Gen. Joseph Hoar, the commander in chief of the United States Central Command from 1991-94, had declared on the Times Op-Ed page that Rumsfeld had sent too few troops to Iraq. And so the Worldwide Intelligence Update for April 3 bullied Bush with Joshua 1:9: “Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be terrified; do not be discouraged, for the LORD your God will be with you wherever you go.” (Including, as it happened, into a quagmire.)

What’s up with that? As Draper writes, Rumsfeld is not known for ostentatious displays of piety. He was cynically playing the religious angle to seduce and manipulate a president who frequently quoted the Bible. But the secretary’s actions were not just oily; he was also taking a risk with national security. If these official daily collages of Crusade-like messaging and war imagery had been leaked, they would have reinforced the Muslim world’s apocalyptic fear that America was waging a religious war. As one alarmed Pentagon hand told Draper, the fallout “would be as bad as Abu Ghraib.”

I really don’t know what I find more disturbing. That Bush might be swayed by such crap, or by the fact that Rumsfeld, who is not really a “true believer”, would cynically play such games with Bush to manipulate him into what Rumsfeld really wanted to do. Both are really disturbing to think about. This is what might have been going on in Europe back in the 16th century. It should not be going on in the United States in the 21st century.

And, as always, some people are upset that these things are being made public. It’s not the fact that they even exist. No, that’s not the problem. But showing them to people and talking about them, well, that’s just terrible.

I wish all politicians, but mostly Republicans, would stop and think for a second about this. If you think there might be some bad repercussions if what you are doing eventually becomes public, then doesn’t that immediately tell you something about what you are doing? If you are worried about your actions showing you in a bad light, then maybe, just maybe, that is something you shouldn’t be doing? For example, it’s O.K. to torture detainees that haven’t been charged with a crime, but boy, no one better talk about that. That would endanger this country!

This is, without a doubt, a very warped way of thinking. It’s never your fault, it’s always someone else’s fault. To me, such thinking is a sign of either criminal behavior or a deep psychological problem, and possibly both. To me, everything that is coming out about the Bush administration just confirms the absolute worst that all us DFH's have always suspected. These guys were delusional. They were megalomanics. They were criminals who knew what they were doing was criminal and tried to hide their actions behind a curtain of fog and legaleze that no lawyer with an ounce of integrity would try to sell to a judge.

And all of them are going to get away with their misdeeds. I find that sickening.

Image from here.

It’s beginning to look a lot like suspects were tortured not to prevent an attack on the U.S., but to provide the Bush administration with a rationale

I’ve wanted to write a post about the daily revelations coming out about our use of torture for a few days now, but I just couldn’t really find the enthusiasm. This is just too disheartening. It’s getting worse and worse each day, and I thought we were at a point where it couldn’t get much worse about six months ago. And I keep hearing promises that there is more to come. More pictures, more briefings, more paper trails. It seems very apparent right now, although this is still not being reported in the mainstream media yet, that we were torturing people not to “prevent attacks” on the U.S., but to find a rationale for the Iraq War. We were torturing people who were already giving us good information with other, non “enhanced” means. But they weren’t giving us what we wanted to hear, which was that there was a direct link between Iraq and Al-Queda. We needed a reason, besides the phony WMD issue, to give the neocons the war they wanted. Even after waterboarding KSM 183 times in a single month, we didn’t get the information the interrogators wanted to hear.

Doesn’t this PROVE that the information gained by torturing someone is unreliable, at best? If they haven’t given it to you after being waterboarded six times a day for a month, then it isn’t likely they are not going to give it to you? And if they do give you something, what does it mean? This sounds so much like the “confessions” elicited by clerics back in the 1600’s, where they would keep piling rocks on you until you agreed you were a witch, or were in league with Satan, or whatever they wanted to hear. When you confessed, they killed you. If you died before you confessed, that meant you were actually innocent. Of course, you were dead, but hey, you weren’t in league with Satan.

This is, of course, ignoring the fact that torturing people is morally wrong and illegal, regardless of whether of not the information you gained was correct or not. But what’s the big controversy of the day? Whether Nancy Pelosi knew about this or not. I don’t give a rat’s ass whether she knew or not. If she was complicit in the whole thing, then let her take the fall along with all the other perpetrators of this evil done in the name of the United States of America. However, I will say that guilty people don’t usually go around calling for release of documents and a truth commission.

I am just so disheartened about all this. Check out this story at Washington Monthly for more info.

THAT'S NOT A TICKING TIME BOMB.... About a month ago, McClatchy reported that the Bush administration abused detainees in part because officials were desperate for non-existent evidence linking al Qaeda to Saddam Hussein's regime. The piece talked to a senior former U.S. intelligence official who said Cheney and Rumsfeld were "demanding proof of the links" in 2002 and 2003. When the imaginary evidence wasn't produced, the administration "blew that off and kept insisting that we'd overlooked something, that the interrogators weren't pushing hard enough, that there had to be something more we could do to get that information."

Yesterday, this became a subject of renewed interest.

Lawrence Wilkerson, Colin Powell's former chief of staff in Bush's State Department, raised a few eyebrows with this item:

What I have learned is that as the administration authorized harsh interrogation in April and May of 2002 -- well before the Justice Department had rendered any legal opinion -- its principal priority for intelligence was not aimed at pre-empting another terrorist attack on the U.S. but discovering a smoking gun linking Iraq and al-Qa'ida.

It wasn't just Wilkerson.

Writing on The Daily Beast, former NBC producer Robert Windrem reports that in April 2003, Dick Cheney's office suggested that interrogators waterboard an Iraqi detainee who was suspected of having knowledge of a link between Saddam and al Qaeda.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse was questioned on the issue today in two TV interviews. Speaking to CNN, Whitehouse allowed: "I have heard that to be true." To MSNBC, he noted that there was additional evidence of this in the Senate Armed Services committee report, and from Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Colin Powell. "This thing is just getting deeper and deeper," said Whitehouse, noting that if it were true, it would significantly bolster the case for prosecutions.

And MSNBC's Chris Matthews also picked up on the issue this evening, as did Ed Schultz of the same network.

Torture is wrong (and illegal, and counter to our national security interests) regardless of the Bush administration's motivations. But many -- in the media, on the Hill, etc. -- seem inclined to think doing the wrong thing for the right reason is somehow tolerable. Bush/Cheney was wrong to torture, the argument goes, but they were only trying to protect Americans from another terrorist attack.

Which is precisely why these revelations, if accurate, have the potential to be devastating. There was no "ticking time bomb," but there was a political agenda. Getting a detainee to offer evidence of a non-existent link wouldn't have furthered our security interests or saved American lives, but it would have made the Bush White House's sales pitch for an unnecessary war a lot easier.

Are the same torture apologists we've heard from lately willing to also accept "extracting false confessions" as a reasonable justification?

UPDATE: Even Maureen Dowd in getting into the act. Maybe the logjam is really starting to break apart, regardless of what the Obama administration does or does not want.

More and more the timeline is raising the question of why, if the torture was to prevent terrorist attacks, it seemed to happen mainly during the period when the Bush crowd was looking for what was essentially political information to justify the invasion of Iraq.

I used to agree with President Obama, that it was better to keep moving and focus on our myriad problems than wallow in the darkness of the past. But now I want a full accounting. I want to know every awful act committed in the name of self-defense and patriotism. Even if it only makes one ambitious congresswoman pay more attention in some future briefing about some future secret technique that is “uniquely” designed to protect us, it will be worth it.

Dick Cheney has “formally requested” that the Dept. of Justice release more torture memos.

Cheney seems to think that waterboarding the mastermind of 9/11 182 times in a single month has really given us good information that “kept this country safe.” Most people are rightly asking, what could we POSSIBLY have gotten after the 182nd time that we didn’t have after the 163rd? Or event he 5th, if waterboarding is so damn effective (but isn’t torture)? Six times a day? And they think this guy wasn’t lying to them to get them to stop? And that was only a single month. How many times, overall, did this guy get waterboarded?

The question I would like someone to answer, however, is a bit different. Cheney “officially requested” that the DOJ release more memos, with the reason being that he believes that something out there will vindicate his position that torturing all these people (including over 100 that died due to these procedures) really produced information vital to the security of this country. So, how is Cheney able to request anything of the government? Other than having secret service protection for the rest of his life, how is this man, who did so much damage to this country, able to official request anything at all of the government? He is no longer in office. He has no power. He isn’t even an ex-president. He’s just an ex-vice president. Even George Bush is pretty much keeping quiet these days. Maybe Cheney is going the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request route. I kinda doubt it, though.

This guy is a monster.

I’ll have more to say later on President Obama’s decision to let everyone involved in this very dark chapter of this country to skate. No punishment for breaking the law. I am sick to my stomach and I am now no longer willing to give Obama much benefit of the doubt. I hope he rescues the economy of this country, but “unhappy” doesn’t even begin to describe how “unhappy” I am about this.

UPDATE via Washington Monthly. I guess I was not the only person who thought Cheney’s “request” very odd.

It's not all clear what "formal" request Cheney made to the CIA. He's a civilian with no authority at all, so what did he do, write Leon Panetta a nice letter? For that matter, what's the point of the declassification? Even if Cheney could produce instances in which torture led to reliable acquired intelligence, there's little chance that President Obama is going to say, "You know what? Cheney's right; committing war crimes isn't such a bad idea after all."

But Greg Sargent did a little digging today and found that the CIA apparently hasn't received any "formal" requests from Cheney.

"The agency has received no request from the former Vice President to release this information," [an intelligence source familiar with the situation] told me a few moments ago.

Last night, Cheney said he'd asked the CIA to release memos he had read containing all the intelligence that had been collected via torture. "I've now formally asked the CIA to take steps to declassify those memos so we can lay them out there and the American people have a chance to see what we obtained and what we learned and how good the intelligence was, as well as to see this debate over the legal opinions," Cheney said.

According to the source, there are several ways this could happen: Cheney could lodge a Freedom of Information Request (which is hard to imagine a former Veep doing); he could contact CIA officials; or he could submit the request via the White House. Cheney said he'd made the request to the CIA.

But at this point, the claim is at least suspect. And given Dick Cheney's record of breathtaking dishonesty, it seems safe to wonder if the former vice president just made this up out of whole cloth to impress the Fox News audience.

And then again, it could be that Cheney is just batshit crazy. As Wee Mousie suggests in the comments, it probably would be a good thing to get all these memos out there. "Sure, Dick. You want all these released? Sure thing." I seriously doubt that anything at this point would vindicate his position that torturing people really has kept this country safe. If anything, and many people have said this, all it has done is bring more people INTO the mob of people that hold a grudge toward the U.S. So, sure, let's get them all out there. I was just questioning how Cheney had any power to request anything like that. If he still DOES retain some sort of power within government, then this is yet one more thing that needs serious looking into.

I just saw a clip where George Bush said, in a very loud and angry voice, “We do not torture!”

God, what a liar this person is. The four newly released torture memos give specific details about how to go about torturing someone. The only logic, however flawed, involved in the Bush administration’s position is that, since it is obvious that we don’t INTEND to torture anyone, then, by definition, it isn’t torture! We even have a doctor on the scene, so that proves beyond a shadow of a doubt we care mightily about the overall health of the person being interrogated. See how easy it is?

Republicans seem to be able to rationalize anything these days.

What is it with Oklahoma anyway?

I don’t really mind insulting individual persons, like the truly insane James Inhofe, senator from Oklahoma. However, one person’s insanity shouldn’t really be used to come to a blanket conclusion regarding a large population of people. But really. I am really beginning to wonder about who votes in the elections in Oklahoma. Do they really believe we are still in the 1700’s?

The state house in Oklahoma is considering a couple of bills. One of them registers their disapproval of teaching modern biology at the Univesity of Oklahoma. The other registers their disapproval that UO has invited Richard Dawkins (the author of “The God Delusion” and “The Selfish Gene”) to speak.

Here are some excerpts from the two bills. (From religionclause.blogspot via Washington Monthly.)

[T]he Oklahoma House of Representatives hereby expresses its disapproval of the current indoctrination of the Darwinian theory of evolution at the University of Oklahoma and further requests that an open, dignified, and fair discussion of this idea and all other ideas be engaged in on campus which is the approach that a public institution should be engaged in and which represents the desire and interest of the citizens of Oklahoma


...[T]he Oklahoma House of Representative strongly opposes the invitation to speak on the campus of the University of Oklahoma to Richard Dawkins of Oxford University, whose published statements on the theory of evolution and opinion about those who do not believe in the theory are contrary and offensive to the views and opinions of most citizens of Oklahoma.

One very astute commenter at religionclause noted the following:

Umm . . . aren't these two statements in open contradiction? The first statement valorizes the "open, dignified, and fair discussion of [evolution] and all other ideas." The second condemns Univ. Oklahoma for inviting Richard Dawkins to campus, presumably for . . . an open, dignified and fair discussion of his ideas. Seems the OK legislature needs to bone up on it's logic.

I am not a religious person and do not really understand the seemingly basic need to explain the universe in other-than-scientific terms. But I do try to be mindful of other people’s beliefs, and I try not to say insulting things (unless they insult my beliefs, or lack thereof, first). But really, folks. When fundamentalists start objecting to teaching biology, that isn’t being supportive of your religion. That is trying to impose a religion of ignorance on everyone else. I’m sure UO won’t buckle to these small-minded buffoons, but just ponder where a mindset like this might take us. Are we to go back to the days of blood letting (along with getting a haircut) as a way of maintaining good health? Shall we all go back to believing that the Earth is the center of the universe, because do to otherwise would infer that human beings aren’t all that important in the grand scheme of things?

I thought we, as a civilization, had dispensed with this nonsense hundreds of years ago. Sheesh.

UPDATE: More crazy, crazy stuff from Oklahoma. From Americablog.

Dunkley and his father, Daniel Reddy, who live in Tulsa, went to Broken Arrow on Tuesday night for a hunter safety course normally required to get an Oklahoma hunting license....

But when father and son arrived at the lesson, the volunteer instructor, Kell Wolf, asked if any of the students voted for President Barack Obama.

Reddy, a transplanted Californian — and former Marine — raised his hand.

According to Reddy and others in the room, Wolf called Obama "the next thing to the Antichrist" and ordered Reddy and Dunkley from the room. When Reddy refused, Wolf said he would not teach "liberals" and would cancel the course if Reddy didn't leave.

So Reddy and Dunkley left, as did a few others.

I've said it before and will no doubt say it again. The hardcore conservatives of this country have determined that liberals are not even humans. We are not to be tolerated, we are not to be cooperated with, there is nothing that can be gained from exchanging ideas with a liberal... No doubt if people like this were given total control, we would end up sewing a yellow capital "L" onto our clothes.

And people call liberals "angry".

Republicans are patting themselves on the back for not voting for the stimulus bill.

The modern Republican party is truly beyond me. I cannot truly believe that so many people elected to public office can be so small minded and self centered. Yes, sure, I know there are going to be many, many areas where Republicans and Democrats disagree with each other. But there really has to be a time when they stop playing games and work to find common areas where both parties can come together and help this county. And this would seem to be one of those times. See this post on the finanacial crisis.

But no. Republicans are bound and deteremined to be “the opposition party” both in name and spirit. Anything the Democrats want to do is either bad, so they must oppose it, or else it might actually be good and if it works, that would be good for the Democrats, and they must oppose it as well. They have pretty much admitted that is their mindset these days. The last two elections have taught them absolutely nothing.

I must give President Obama a lot of credit for trying to get bipartisan support for this stimulus bill. There are many good reasons what that, in principle, would be a good thing to do. But the Republicans, after they initially made some hopeful signals, reverted to their true form. Zero votes from the House Republicans, three votes from Senate Republicans. And they are congratulating themselves on this! Michael Steele, the new leader of the Republican party, said “The big fat goose egg you laid on the president’s desk was just beautiful!” They are congratulating themselves for this, and are going around making statements like, “I hope the White House learned their lesson!”

You know what? I think that the White House may have indeed learned their lesson. However, it’s not the one that the Republicans may have desired. I found this quote from a post at Washington Monthly.

Advisers concluded that they allowed the measure of bipartisanship to be defined as winning Republican votes rather than bringing civility to the debate, distracting attention from what have otherwise been major legislative victories. Although Mr. Obama vowed to keep reaching out to Republicans, advisers now believe the environment will probably not change in coming months.

Rather than forging broad consensus with Republicans, the Obama advisers said they would have to narrow their ambitions and look for discrete areas where they might build temporary coalitions based on regional interests rather than party, as on energy legislation. They said they would also turn to Republican governors for support -- a tactic that showed promise during the debate over the economic package -- even if they found few Republican allies in Washington.

So, what it looks like to me has happened is that the Republicans shot themselves in the foot on this one. And it took them all of three weeks as the minority party! They are proud of trying to scuttle a measure that around 65 percent of the country wants! They have cut themselves out of future deliberations on controversial issues. The working assumption by President Obama might now be that Republicans are going to obstruct anything that he wants to accomplish, so might as well go around them. Truthfully, this is the advice that many progessive bloggers and columnists have been giving Obama since Day One. But it looks like he may have learned his lesson the hard way.

The Republicans may have also learned a hard lesson. However, I am thinking that the current crop of Republicans, except for a tiny minority, has such rock hard heads that absolutely nothing is going to soak in. Such will be the next four years, and most likely, eight. They appear, to me, to be working tirelessly to make themselves irrelevant. But, as long as they can feel all righteous and indignant while doing so, I guess that's all they want.

Let's get back to government oversight where oversight is necessary to protect the American public, shall we?

This business about salmonella laced peanut products is old news by now. But the relevations about how this company in Georgia operated, with absolutely no regard for public safety, is intolerable.

Via Americablog:

A Georgia peanut plant knowingly shipped salmonella-laced products as far back as 2007, at times sending out tainted products after tests confirmed contamination, according to inspection records released Friday.

Food and Drug Administration officials earlier had said Peanut Corp. of America waited for a second test to clear peanut butter and peanuts that initially were positive for salmonella. But the agency amended its report Friday, noting that the Blakely, Ga., plant actually shipped some products before receiving the second test and sold others after confirming salmonella.

Federal law forbids producing or shipping foods under conditions that could make it harmful to consumers' health.

In 2007 the company shipped chopped peanuts on July 18 and 24 after salmonella was confirmed by private lab tests. Peanut Corp. sold products "on or after the positive salmonella results were obtained," the FDA report states.

In other cases, the company didn't wait for a second round of salmonella tests.

"In some instances, peanut products were shipped by (the company) prior to having assurance that the products were negative for salmonella," said Michael Rogers, head of field investigations for the FDA.

Jesus H. Christ. How could ANYONE actually operate a business like this, sending out product they know is tainted with something that could actually kill someone, or at least make someone very sick? And Conservatives of this country don't understand why Liberals and Progressives don't trust putting oversight of an industry, any industry, into the hands of the very people who are being regulated.

From the Department of Very Small Blessings.

I’m amazed that George Bush hasn’t pulled several hundred muscles in his stretching to find rationales for his actions and silver linings in a huge wall of black clouds. For instance, who could forget his hyping the “benefit” from global warming, that it will make ship traffic through the Artic easier?

Here’s one via Dan Froomkin:

And in yet another exit interview, Bush tells Tara Wall of the Washington Times about the upside to the current economic crisis: "One aspect of these recent times that has been overlooked is the fact that the price of gasoline has gone down from near $4 to under $2, which is stimulative, because people have got nearly $2,000 on an annualized basis in their pocket -- that's $2,000 per family -- as a result of gasoline going down," Bush said. "That's stimulative."

Is this really something to be bragging about? The economy of this country seems to be collapsing around us. There are numerous and varying reasons why this is occurring, but many of them seem to stem directly out of the free market (read, “no regulations”) economic policies that are the cornerstone of the modern Republican party. To scale that down a bit, you also might say that one positive aspect of having the engine in your 1987 Volvo blow up is that you won’t have to buy gas for it anymore. You aren’t able to actually, you know, GO anywhere. But you don’t have to pay those pesky gas bills. Lots more money in the pocket!

Sheesh. After next Tuesday, I am hoping we all hear very little from George W. Bush.

Dick Cheney; Worst Vice-President ever?

I have seen this story a couple of times, based on a survey from CNN. Here is part of the story from the Nation.

Twenty-three percent of Americans surveyed by CNN say Dick Cheney is the worst vice president in history.

Another 41 percent say Cheney has been a poor No. 2.

So, as the draft-dodging, corporation-coddling, obscenity-spewing, torture-sanctioning shredder of the Constitution prepares to leave the position he should have been forced from by Congress, almost two-thirds of Americans rank Cheney as bad or worse than Spiro Agnew.

But that was before Cheney acknowledged on national television that he had violated his oath to defend a Constitution that bars cruel and unusual punishment by promoting the use of waterboarding.

I am glad that Cheney is getting the recognition he deserves. In my estimation, he is a monster. This guy ran a shadow government, declared all sorts of things that are not supported by any sort of rational reading of the Constitution, and I firmly believe that he was responsible for pushing for “normalization” of torture as an everyday tactic. I believe that the last eight years would not have been as disastrous as they have been, except for the presence of Cheney and his legal attack-dog David Addington. He deserves all the negative accolades that he gets.

However, I am unsure about the validity of such a question. Outside of Spiro Agnew, who most people under 50 don’t really remember, there haven’t been any memorable Vice Presidents in our collective memories by which we could make such a comparison. Sure, there’s Dan Quayle, but he was memorable only because of the fact he came across as a doofus. He was most certainly not evil. My point is that most Americans have no frame of reference of past Vice Presidents by which to judge Cheney. That’s the relative judgment, i.e., a judgment is being made on the basis of a comparison. However, there is also an absolute judgment. No comparisons are being made. Without any sort of comparison to any past VP, Cheney is certainly the most devious, malicious, paranoid, hard-hearted anti-Constitutionalist that I would ever hope to see again in my lifetime.

Taxi to the Dark Side.

I would like to make clear that this is not a movie review. I sometimes do movie reviews at this website, and this isn’t one of them. This is about the content of Taxi to the Dark Side, and what it says about us as a nation, our ideals, our morals, our souls.

The wingers of this country are so calcified in their politics and views of the world that this movie, if they were forced to watch it, would probably be viewed with the same scorn and distain as something from Michael Moore. But for those Americans who are still sentient beings, this documentary is something that should make you sick to your stomach.

I won’t go into the details of the film. Take a look at the IMDB entry here, if you want to know what the film is about. Let’s just say it lays out how the United States of America, that beacon of freedom for the entire world, has come to view torturing people, many of them who are not guilty of anything other than being in the wrong place at the wrong time and of having a different skin tone than ivory white, as not only acceptable but mandatory. This film lays out in great deal how the U.S. ended up torturing and ultimately killing an innocent taxi driver. That is how his death certificate was signed by the U.S. military. “Homicide.” That’s what his death certificate says. And this unfortunate person is only one of over 100 people who have died while in the custody of the U.S. military.

As I said, I sat there through the entire film with a white-hot knot in my stomach. Anguish, anger, depression, you name it. It was all there. I was not sure what I was feeling when listening to the actual prison guards (M.P.’s, they were called) in describing how they treated prisoners in general and this guy in particular. They felt like they were under orders to do this, and they didn’t want to be see as “going against their buddies.” I have taken enough psychology courses to know that human beings, when put in very crazy and stressful situations, can end up doing things that they would have never considered they would be capable of doing. Still, I felt little remorse for the fact that they received a dishonorable discharge from the military. But the overwhelming feeling that I came away with is that Dick Cheney is a monster. Absolutely. He was behind it all, and said as much on some interviews he gave to people like Tim Russert. John Yoo and Alberto Gonzales are shown to be slimy little toadies who would do anything their masters called for them to do, including fabricating nonsensical legal judgments that do nothing else than protect their masters from legal jeopardy. All of them should be subjected to exactly the same treatment they decided to perpetrate on others.

Make no mistake about this. The Bush administration has done incredible damage to the United States of America that will take decades to repair, if we even can repair that damage. Politicizing every single department of the government, including the Department of Justice, is just one of their transgressions that will almost certainly go unpunished. But legitimizing and “normalizing” torture under the guise of “protecting” our country has changed the fabric of what this nation is and has proudly stood for since 1776. We have voluntarily brought ourselves down to the same level of the worst third world dictators and Soviet-era police states. We have no moral credibility left with the rest of the world. We cannot even morally object if some other country picks up one of our citizens or soldiers and tortures them. On what rational basis could be possibly object?

I absolutely cannot understand how these people can go to sleep at night. Aside from the fact that it is a proven fact that people being tortured will tell their interrogator anything to get them to stop, including very, very incorrect information, torture is morally wrong. Any country who aspires to be called “civilized” should not condone it; much less actively pursue new ways to administer it. What the United States has been doing for the last eight years is repugnant and sickening.

Morons like Rush Limbaugh wonder aloud (while getting very well paid for it) why some citizens of this country “blame America first.” Jesus Christ. Open your f*ckin’ eyes once in a while, and maybe you would understand.

Photo from here.

These last couple of weeks have been just too weird to even contemplate.

I just can't get my head around any of this. But watching John Boehner blame Nancy Pelosi for the defection of 2/3 of the Republicans of the House, on a bill which he, President Bush AND John McCain were all supporting, is just too weird. After all these years of Republicans essentially calling Democrats every insult under the sun, including "traitors" and "wanting the terrorists to win", Republicans get all bent out of shape when the Speaker of the House refers to the excesses of the Bush presidency that allowed all this to happen? Every Republican really WANTED to vote for this bill, of course, because our financial institutions would "melt down" if it didn't pass, but they just couldn't vote for it because Nancy Pelosi insulted them. Republicans would rather see this melt down than to take an insult (which I found to be not all that insulting) and turn the other cheek, you know, FOR THE GOOD OF THE COUNTRY.

I don't normally use swear words on this blog, but all I can come up with at this point is, you have GOT to be shittin' me! Je-sus.

UPDATE: This is why I don’t blog about daily events. Things just change too quickly for this blog to look like it is keeping up with current events. However, here is what happened YESTERDAY. I am sure there will be something new today.

The insincerity and dishonesty of the Republicans in this country are breathtaking. Go read this story at Americablog. Here is a little bit to show you what I am talking about.

We now find out that the Republican party cut ads, and sent them to TV stations around the country, opposing the bailout bill even BEFORE Pelosi spoke before the vote yesterday. The Republican National Committee, the official "party," was planning on the bill passing, and then was going to attack Democrats who voted FOR the bill. Talk about calloused

That’s great. Republicans were hoping that the bill would pass, and then they would try to score more political points against Democrats as being the ones who were “giving away taxpayer money” to fatcats on Wall Street. They even went so far as to make the attack ads before the vote was taken. Yet, there were John McCain’s surrogates, out on all the morning talk shows, actually taking CREDIT for getting all the Republicans in line to vote for the bailout bill, thus showing how presidential he was in saving this country from a financial calamity. And boy, did they end up looking like the asses they are by taking credit for something that never happened. Sort of like a sports star taking credit for winning the big game when, in fact, three hours later, his team LOST the big game.

And, it turns out, several Republican congresspersons came out and publically stated that Pelosi's speech had absolutely nothing to do with the way they voted and that was an insult and a lie to say something like that.

Jeez, these people are so dishonest. I think bashing Democrats and attempting to blame them for every single thing has become so ingrained in the Republican Party that it is now part of their DNA. They absolutely cannot do anything without first blaming the Democrats. McCain tries to blame Obama for playing politics with this crisis, and look at what he has been doing the last few weeks. However, it is very interesting to see the entire Republican party crumbling before our very eyes. It couldn't happen to a more deserving bunch.

Condi Rice unleashes her Klingon death stare.

Steven Hadley looks on in bemuse-
ment.


Photo from Princess Sparkle Pony.