Archive for Torture
Obama Just Ran Out Of Slack
Posted by: | CommentsThe media was quick to declare the Obama honeymoon over this summer. Yet supporters exhilarated by Barack Obama’s stunning win in November 2008 were still willing to cut him a lot of slack. That slack just ran out.
(Cross-posted from Campaign for America’s Future and today’s TomPaine.com)
Opposable Thumbs
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If you’ve been paying attention to the site in the last few days, you’ll notice that some wacky little thumb buttons have appeared beneath each person’s post. Thumbs can be useful things: they’ve allowed humans to operate tools, like Playstation; they’re good for sticking in dykes and in pies; there’s a rule named after them; they show up in gladiator movies; they’re essential for hitchhiking; they hurt like hell when you whack them with a hammer; and, it’s really hard to blow up a balloon (much less tie off the end) without them.
But what do these buttons mean in the context of this site? Hell if we know. Do they indicate one’s agreement with a post or simply an appreciation for its quality? Are they informative at all…or merely useful for diffusing boredom and frustration — the blog equivalent of bubble wrap?
Green thumb, red thumb…Red thumb green. Green thumb, up thumb! Up thumb green! Red thumb, bad thumb…Thad thumb thad. Good thumb, Up thumb! Bad poem, bad.
We welcome your thoughts on this very important matter.
The Elephant’s Graveyard
Posted by: | CommentsI’ve gotten a lot of guff for my post last week handicapping the Republican congressional primary field here in the 11th…not for what I predicted so much as the fact that the prediction appeared here in this pinko e-rag and under my own shiny new byline. You see, for today’s Republicans, this is a betrayal of the first order: “Thou shalt not lie with liberals as with conservatives: it is an abomination!”
Of course, there are so many orders of betrayal among local Republicans these days it’s kind of hard to keep track anymore.
Having worked for Republican candidates all my life and professionally for the last three years here in Asheville — heck, above my screen hangs a picture of me and President Reagan at a White House Christmas Party and another of me and President George H.W. Bush at a private BBQ on the south lawn of the White House; I could go on, but you get the idea — I can honestly say that I can’t see this happening again anytime soon. The Republican Party I knew for so many years has gone off the rails — effectively destroyed here locally from within — by sanctimonious bigots, religious zealots, misanthropic doctrinaire Randians, and most importantly by piss-poor, unelectable candidates.
Torture Memo – The Song
Posted by: | CommentsThe entire torture affair is a terrible chapter in our American history. This song captures the angst. Via BoingBoing:
Monday Reading: The Obama Era Upon Us
Posted by: | CommentsPresident Barack Obama moved immediately to close the Guantanamo Bay prison for terror suspects within the next year. As part of the plan, he asked his staff to review each of the 200+ cases. That’s where we started bumping up against the Bush Legacy:
“President Obama’s plans to expeditiously determine the fates of about 245 terrorism suspects held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and quickly close the military prison there were set back last week when incoming legal and national security officials — barred until the inauguration from examining classified material on the detainees — discovered that there were no comprehensive case files on many of them.
Instead, they found that information on individual prisoners is “scattered throughout the executive branch,” a senior administration official said.
[...]
Several former Bush administration officials agreed that the files are incomplete and that no single government entity was charged with pulling together all the facts and the range of options for each prisoner. They said that the CIA and other intelligence agencies were reluctant to share information, and that the Bush administration’s focus on detention and interrogation made preparation of viable prosecutions a far lower priority.”
Palin Supporters’ Tortured Logic
Posted by: | CommentsOver at Powerline, a major message center in Right Blogistan, they’re trying to explain why it’s o.k. for Sarah Palin to say that she was against the Bridge to Nowhere without ever explaining that she was a fan of it before she was a rival. They do a standard “attack the left wing media” angle and then this happens:
It’s true that when Palin uses her “thanks, but no thanks” line she omits certain information — her initial support for the project, the fact that Congress revoked the earmark, and the fact that Bridge had become an embarrassment by the time Palin nixed it. But the fact remains that nothing Congress did would have prevented Alaska from using federal money to build the bridge. It was Palin who stopped this from happening.
Hilarious.
Drinking Liberally: Nothing To See Here
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While you’re anxiously waiting for the Starbucks to open on the ground floor of the Parkside Condo Highrise, come bite your fingernails with a gaggle of liberals down at the Asheville Brewing Company. In this brave, new Asheville where condo developers can scheme with City and County staff to buy our public park land and turn it into luxurious living for the millionaires among us, it’s vital that we plebians behave as though nothing is wrong.
We can ignore Maj. Gen. Taguba leveling war crimes charges against George W. Bush and KBR telling our military to suck on it in Iraq. We can ignore the occupation of Iraq altogether while pretending that the do-nothing Democrats in Congress have already held the Bush administration to account. Global warming? Fuggedaboutit. Gas prices? F5 that shit. A massive wave of foreclosures, ballooning national debt, the plunging value of the dollar? Who has the time?
Come whistle while Rome burns tonight at the Asheville Brewing Company, 77 Coxe Ave., Downtown Asheville. Drinking Liberally, that left-leaning cabal of well-educated, well-heeled, well-bourbon political love children comes together for another Thursday night praising the light and cursing the darkness. We’ll start at 7ish and go until the goings gone. Everyone’s welcome. The only cost is your tab.
George W. Bush – War Criminal
Posted by: | Comments“There is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes. The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account.” – (Ret.) Major General Antonio Taguba
Major General Taguba was responsible for investigating the torture at Abu Ghraib.
Congressman Shuler, will you stand up for human rights and the American way of life, or will you stand idly while war criminals skate by without being held to account? Please call for a War Crimes Tribunal to be formed and held in the public arena. Please do this without another moment’s delay.
Washington Post via dKos
Shuler: Yes To Big Telecom, Maybe To HRC, No to Torture
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Our mixed bag Democrat has really been taking the schizoidal cake lately. Even his good votes have lately left me limp. Take the vote to override Bush’s veto on the the Intelligence Authorization Act, H.R. 2082 – Shuler said this in a press release:
I, like every other member of Congress, am committed to protecting our nation from terrorism. Our generals, including General Petraeus himself, however, have told us that torture is an ineffective tool in gaining useful and actionable information,†said Rep. Shuler
Shuler voted against torture, which, while hardly going out on a limb, is the right thing to do. However, Shuler leans on the St. Petraeus argument to make his case. Come on, Heath, you know torture is bad. Do you have to have General “I Heart Bush” Petraeus tell you that? If Petraeus said “Torture Rocks!”, would you support it?
Anyhoo. Shuler’s a superdelegate of course. He came out for John Edwards early and has been uncommitted since Edwards left the race. Hillary! had a dinner party and invited some of the Democratic Congressmen to come over and get shmoozed:
Trying to win over those who are undecided, Clinton wined and dined 17 superdelegates this week at her posh Washington home.
At the dinner was Rep. Heath Shuler, D-N.C., who had once endorsed former Sen John Edwards’ presidential run, and represents a conservative district in western North Carolina.
He said he pointed out to Clinton that even with Edwards on the Democratic ticket in 2004, Bush-Cheney won his district with 60 percent of the vote.
How, Shuler asked Clinton, could she compete?
“I’ve been winning rural and swing districts all over the country,” Clinton told him, according to sources at the dinner. Shuler remains uncommitted.
Rep. Jason Altmire, D-Pa., also attended the dinner at Clinton’s home, but he had a different question.
“If Sen. Obama finishes this process after all the states have participated and he’s still leading in the delegate count and he’s won more states and he has a higher popular vote, why would a superdelegate at that point choose to go the other way?” he asked Clinton.
Shuler’s going to keep on remaining undecided, leveraging his position for whatever he can get. I get it, but that hasn’t stopped me from wondering aloud to his staff whether it wouldn’t be a more principled position to simply agree to cast his “super” vote depending on how his constituents vote on May 6th.
So there’s your kinda-sorta good, your waffly-wavery maybe, and here’s your nakedly awful: Shuler was one of only five Democrats to support George W. Bush and his Republicans in protecting Big Telecom companies from obeying the law. I don’t know what kind of reach-around Shuler’s getting to ask his constituents to accept this blatant contempt for civil liberties, but I sure hope the ecstasy is worth the agony. Donna Edwards is a progressive Congresswoman and someone who recognizes that Democratic Party folks don’t like it when their representatives stupidly support President 20%. She says this about the Democratic victory in Bush and Shuler’s attempt to excuse Big Telecom from the law:
Republican Congressional Candidates On Parade
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For most of you I know that local Republican politics is a “Hooligans watch it so you don’t have to” arrangement, but I wanted to clue you into the debate scheduled for Thursday, February 21, at 7PM at the YMI Cultural Center, 39 S. Market St. in downtown Asheville. I learned about it from a newly formed west Asheville GOP precinct blog:
“The 11th Congressional District Republican Debate will offer a unique opportunity to hear from all 3 Republican candidates for Congress. The candidates participating include (with information taken from their websites)”
I’m thinking we might have to pre-empt Drinking Liberally for this. Who’s interested in attending? I’m not suggesting anything hooliganesque outside of the occasional titter or tipple, but I think it’s exciting to watch the local GOP have public debates to determine their next candidate. This kind of openness in the process ought to be applauded whenever it happens.
