Tortured logic

Both Glenn Greenwald and Dan Froomkin have taken the Obama administration to task for Obama's sudden reversal about releasing further photos taken at Abu Ghraib.

Froomkin, in a Washinton Post editorial lambasts Obama and pulls apart each and every excuse the administration concocted to explain their reversal.

Greenwald admits to puzzlement over a public which seems to agree that our government should not release evidence of its own wrongdoings. It's what the Bush administration did, again and again. To see the Obama administration walk this path is frustrating, angering and impossible to understand.

It's pretty clear. Either we tortured, or we didn't. And the answer to that question, inevitably seems to be, "we tortured."

And if we tortured, then we broke laws, we allowed immoral, unethical behavior in our names, and the people who put us in this postion need to be revealed, at all levels, and brought to justice so it never happens again.

As a torturing country we are in the company of Stalin's Russia, Pinochet's Chile, Idi Amin's Uganda, Saddam Hussein's Iran, Marcos Phillipines.

While it drains the life from any moral imperative we thought we had, new evidence shows that on a practical level, it may increase the use of terrorism on these shores.

Each and every one of us needs to stare hard at what our leaders ordered the men and women of the military to do. Then, only after we've seen every photograph, should we decide whether men like Dick Cheney, John Yoo, Donald Rumsfeld and George Bush belong in a cell.

The comfy chair

Yesterday I suggested that tarring and feathering a banker might be a way for the general public to feel that the folks who got us into this mess were adequately chastised.

I didn't know that Nicholas Kristof had suggested the same thing in the New York Times.

Trouble is, our feckless political leaders don't seem to agree. Yes, they paraded the naughty bankers before their congressional committee yesterday and, yes, they talked tough to them, but when it comes down to walking the walk, they were merely taunting the bankers from behind the barricades of their congressional credenzas.

The Washington Post is reporting that the stimulus package arrived without the promised executive pay cap for companies which receive bailout money.

I'm angry, are you?

We want tar and feathers. They give the bankers "the comfy chair."

"That one" reads AND writes

Imagine a president who can sit at a computer and knock out an op-ed. Alright, alright, I suppose he might've gotten help, but I'm sure that since he'll be accused of not writing it, that it is, in essence, his.

Read it and weep ye promoters of stupidity. We've got a thinking man in the White House.

Slowly, slowly the slime dries in the sun

Creepy Joe Lieberman's character sinks lower still as the Washington Post reveals that he supported the opponents of Sentorial candidates who spoke on his behalf.

What an imitation of a man.

Sealing the tomb with excrement

It's not bad enough that George Bush has dragged us into a futile, illegal, draining war. That he's stripped citizens of civil liberties. That he's enriched his cronies, and Wall Street executives while impoverishing the middle class, retirees and anyone who has been forced to tithe to the God of the free market through 401k plans. That he's alienated allies. That he's institutionalized secrecy, torture, legal abductions. That he's thumbed his nose at the Constitution.

Now, at the end of an administration that is as dark and rank as a gangrenous limb, he is pushing through executive regulations which will pollute Appalachian streams, fill the atmosphere with global warming pollutants, strip the ocean of sea life, and make water sources less safe to drink.

This, Nancy Pelosi, is the reason he should have been impeached and driven from office, because these regulations, will be very difficult for the next President, and the next Congress to undo. We will have to drag Bush's legacy of failure with us for decades like the stinking corpse of an unloved relative.

The pricks who run your government...

(Mara - Washington Post)

...and don't want your fucking permission for anything they'd like to do. And that's whether they will grab an American citizen off the street and send him off to a detention camp, or give the President legal permission to crush the testicles of an alleged terroist in order to get that detainee to "confess."

Here's Dan Millbank's take on the disdain Yoo and Addington have for the likes of you.

What's Abramowitz know that we don't?

Monday, in a Washington Post preview to the State of the Union, reporter Michael Abramowitz writes:

That is the dilemma Bush faces as he prepares to deliver his seventh and probably final State of the Union address tonight.

I don't know about you but the phrase "probably final State of the Union," bothers me. Under what circumstances would Monday's address, not be the final one for Bush? If he declares martial law and cancels elections in November, using his buddy Pervez Musharef's strategy? If he leads a coup against whoever wins the November election? If he forthrightly admits his disdain for the Constitution and declares himself king? If, somehow, whoever is rightfully elected, is not able to serve?

Come on. This was his final State of the Union, right Mike? Right? Tell me it was a typo, please?

Waterboard, waterboard, morning noon and night, and what do we get?

Apparently not much of anything, but a reputation as a 21st century Spanish Inquisition.

Bush uses fanatasy to justify torture

In a speech yesterday, our conniving commander-in-chief, cited examples of so-called, "prevented terror attacks" to justify torture.

Dan Froomkin of the Washington Post writes:

In this morning's speech at National Defense University, Bush unfurled a vicious rhetorical campaign against opponents of the harsh CIA interrogation techniques he approved for use on suspected terrorists
"This program has produced critical intelligence that has helped us stop a number of attacks -- including a plot to strike the U.S. Marine camp in Djibouti, a planned attack on the U.S. consulate in Karachi, a plot to hijack a passenger plane and fly it into Library Tower in Los Angeles, California, or a plot to fly passenger planes into Heathrow Airport and buildings into downtown London," Bush said.
"Despite the record of success, and despite the fact that our professionals use lawful techniques, the CIA program has come under renewed criticism in recent weeks. Those who oppose this vital tool in the war on terror need to answer a simple question: Which of the attacks I have just described would they prefer we had not stopped?"
The last time Bush suddenly disclosed alleged plots that had been allegedly stymied through CIA interrogation, most if not all were called into question.
So my questions for the White House are these: Which of those attacks was more than a fantasy? And which would not have been stopped with more humane and arguably more effective interrogation techniques?

Bush is asking the wrong questions. He should be asking: "If we did this to your brother, father, sister, mother, how would you feel?"

It's unAmerican. It's unconstitutional. It's treason.

Colbert pokes at the soft underbelly of politics, and finds it gutless

I have to say that I really don't enjoy Stephen Colbert's satirical take on right-wing punditry as much as I love John Stewart's straight-out mockery of news, culture and politics.

However, Colbert will always remain a hero for jabbing repeatedly at the President and the White House Press corps in his unforgettable appearance as keynote comedian at the annual press corps dinner.

And as of his appearance, last night, on John Stewart's show, he says, he's considering announcing that he's considering running for President of the United States.

As my cousin Chris Cillizza (he grew up in Marlborough, the son of my second cousin John, and his wife Maryellen) wrote yesterday in his blog, The Fix, at the Washington Post, in one poll, Colbert has surged ahead of Richardson, Kucenich and Gravel.

The irrefutable power of television.

Now we just have to figure out who Colbert is laughing at, us, or them.