Cheap Blogging Crutch 07.02

Zombie Meat. For when you want a blue peppered jerky snack that makes it seem like you're eating the flesh on a re-animated dead body.

In America Has An Awful News industry news, Adam Serwer goes into detail about how waterboarding moved from being "clearly torture" to "erm..... *clears throat, tugs at collar* a matter.... of.. debate?" in the New York Times during the Bush Administration because of politics and GOP messaging. It turns out that high level journalistic arts requires giving credence to both sides of an issue, even if there aren't two sides and one is just craven ass-covering.

Think Progress compiles a list of Senators who not only have successfully blocked extending unemployment benefits, pretty much the least thing we can do to combat the bad job market, but have also essentially helped block doing anything substantial about jobs. What's so great about this list? They all come from states with double digit unemployment that is much higher than the national average. Hey, when you're trying to sink the economy further to help your electoral prospects in November, you can't be concerned with little things like people or people who elected you.

Now we know why Arizona had to enact that Walking While Latino law. Apparently there are roving gangs of crazed illegal immigrants decapitating law abiding citizens. So says Governor Jan Brewer. Some liberals, media types, Latino groups, and people with common sense say that this is a completely fabricated lie intended to scaremonger about the Mexicanos, but I don't know; illegal Latin guillotine gangs sounds so plausible. Maybe this is a new breed of Mexican coming here searching for a job and a head (or cabesa as they call it). No dice, Pablo, those jobs and heads are ours.

Scientists believe they have found the earliest known form of complex cellular life: weird scallop things that are 2.1 billion years old. Do you know how they figure out how old the organism was? It was carrying an ancient bible and they just added up all the ages of the people inside it.

The Amazing Kreskin has offered up his services to the Pittsburgh Pirates, saying that unless they hire him they'll continue to lose for at least two more years and he'd offer his help to stop their 18-year losing streak. Unless Kreskin can go a solid 7 every five days and keep his ERA under 3 or has some serious gap power, I don't think he can do much for us. Unless he has no ethical qualms about hypnotizing Bob Nutting into committing suicide. Plus, the Bucs would never hire him; they can't lowball him in arbitration or trade him for several middling mentalist prospects.

In Rich People Have Too Much Money news, a Russian billionaire has commissioned an Australian goldsmith to create a $21,000 golden diamond encrusted vuvuzela. *dusts hands off* God, send the meteors, I think we've clearly bottomed out as a society.

21st Century Milgram

Remakes are popular in Hollywood nowadays. God help you if you have an original idea and can't find a way to tie it to a board game, comic book, or movie everyone like, remembers and agrees shouldn't be remade. Well it seems that science is in a similar mood, but this time the abject creative bankruptcy has a useful point. And footage of it is going to be more watchable than most films released this year.

French researchers have reenacted the famous Stanley Milgram's social psychology experiments at Yale. The ones that let people think they were administering lethal shocks to an unseen person at the behest of a teacher and measured societal obedience to authority. The test was conducted in relation to the then recent capture and trial of Adolf Eichmann and was intended to look at whether or not something like the holocaust happened because all the people perpetrating it shared the same goals or were people just following orders no matter how much those orders violated their moral beliefs.

This time the experiment is attempting to measure what people would be willing to do for the promise of money and fame on a TV game show.

A French TV documentary features people in a spoof game show administering what they are told are near lethal electric shocks to rival contestants.
...
They say the documentary shows how many participants in the setting of a TV show will agree to act against their own principles or moral codes when ordered to do something extreme.

The Game of Death has all the trappings of a traditional TV quiz show, with a roaring crowd chanting "punishment" and a glamorous hostess urging the players on.

And you want to know the chilling part? In Milgram's experiments only 62% of the people would end up administering lethal shocks. In the game show experiment, with people thinking they were on TV and winning money? 80% doled out lethal shocks.

Stay classy, society. On the BBC website they have footage of the 'gameshow'. It's essentially Who Wants to Be A Millionaire with a torture chamber. Which is to say it's a less painful version of Who Wants to Be A Millionaire.

Cheap Blogging Crutch 03.12

Waterboarding for dummies
We all know that waterboarding was like a gentle dunk into a lavender and lemon scented bath. Not only that, but Guantanamo is literally like a day spa. But some people, like those who read internal documents outlining our nation's waterboarding practices, want to claim that the procedure was brutal, involved the special design of torture tools, and a liquid diet so that the detainees would not choke to death on their own vomit and lose consciousness. They also devised the use of a special saline solution to drown people with, because the volume of water being forced down the brown people's throats was so great that they were in danger of ultra-rare hyponatremia. You know, frat house prank stuff. Stick out that chest with pride America, it was all done in your name to little discernible benefit.

Nebraska Prenatal Bill Stirs Fight Over Immigration
The typical sarcastic jibe towards pro-lifers is that "life begins at conception and ends at birth", noting how many right wing "life" advocates try to fuck those kids medically, socially, economically, and politically the second they are born. But in Nebraska we're seeing another new strain of pro-life advocacy: the fetus is a life... unless it's a Mexican one, then who gives a fuck? It's part of the Nebraska legislatures new attempt to deny prenatal care to poor, pregnant immigrants. Seriously. I guess it's biblically valid, Jesus weren't no Mexicano.

Did Focus On The Family Board Force Dobson Out?
James Dobson has been pushed aside by Focus on the Family. He founded the organization in 1977 as a vehicle to explain to Americans how gays were causing earthquakes and tornadoes, and has now been removed from the chairmanship of the group and forced to give up his radio show. The reason is presumably that the board doesn't want their organization to bee seen as hatefully crazy and that some have even broached the idea that people who don't vote Republican might be legitimate humans. So they're attempting to modernize and court Democrats. Yeah, I just shuddered at that last sentence too. Anyway, they point is that James Dobson is out of work. So if you happen to have some gays in your neighborhood that need shouted at or some sluts that need shamed... you could do worse. Give him a call.

Church Abuse Scandals 'Creeping Ever Closer' To The Pope
For those of you who like watching the Catholic Church collapse under the wight of it's own crimes, cover-ups, and inability to actually follow the teachings of that beard guy with the holes in his hands, you might want to take note at the recent goings on at the Vatican with Pope Versace I. Yes yes, gay prostitution scandal, but must you focus on the tawdry? There's an actual physical abuse scandal... that involves the Pope's brother. Okay, there's allegations of sexual abuse too, but the man has already admitted the physical abuse charges. At least they're branching out, keeping things fresh.

Health Care Close After Democrats, White House Meet
Are you ready to get your hopes up one last time? It seems that House Democrats, Senate Democrats, and the White House are thiiiiiiis close to hashing out a compromise to get the fuck over themselves and pass a goddamned health care reform bill. Again. You'll note that this is totally different from the last time they all announced they were thiiiis close to hashing out a compromise and that they were going to move on health care soon. And it'll probably lead to another situation where they announced that they have moved even closer to hashing out a compromise to pass a reform bill. If only they had the same conviction for voting on a health care bill as they had for announcing that they were close to voting on a bill, well, we'd have a bill passed. But don't worry, they're getting to it. They promise. Just a few more months. They're close.

He's a peach, isn't he?

John Yoo is a busy man these days, what with his course load of classes to teach at Cal, writing for the Philadelphia Inquirer, not being in prison, and providing tenuous legal justification for crimes and massive ethical breaches the whole world 'round. It must be exhausting.

But we're not here to talk about what lack of prosecution from the Justice Department is allowing John Yoo to do now, we're here to talk about what John Yoo did. Classic Yoo. Just the greatest hits. You know, stuff that makes internal watchdog's and review panels at the Justice Department conclude that he committed "intentional professional misconduct" and should be referred to their state bar organizations for disciplinary proceedings, at the least.

The chief author of the Bush administration's "torture memo" told Justice Department investigators that the president's war-making authority was so broad that he had the constitutional power to order a village to be "massacred," according to a report released Friday night by the Office of Professional Responsibility.
...
"What about ordering a village of resistants to be massacred? ... Is that a power that the president could legally—"

"Yeah," Yoo replied, according to a partial transcript included in the report. "Although, let me say this: So, certainly, that would fall within the commander-in-chief's power over tactical decisions."

"To order a village of civilians to be [exterminated]?" the OPR investigator asked again.

"Sure," said Yoo.

Classy. Yoo also advocated, along with David Addington, that the President is a God-King with no restraints on his power and the ability to override and invalidate laws. I don't think they used those exact terms though. There's also the reveal that people in the Bush JD were so worried about prosecutions, you know, for the stuff they all say is totally legal, that John Ashcroft wanted to issue "advance pardons" for people who participated in torture. Apparently they couldn't find any shady legal precedent for that and it was scrapped.

So a round of applause for the great human being and wonderful addition to the legal and war-making history of this country, John Yoo. He apparently sleeps soundly at night. I don't think you realize how incredibly difficult that is.

Oh, I forgot the best part of this story: senior JD lawyer David Margolis has overruled the OPR findings that Yoo, among others, should be trussed up in a burlap sack and beaten with sticks... or professionally reprimanded. One of those. So nothing will end up happening to Yoo. See! Justice does work!

Why don't I trust these quotes?

From an AP article on how our government is trying to find new and better ways to question brown people:

An elite US interrogation unit will conduct "scientific research" to find better ways of questioning top suspected terrorists, US intelligence director Dennis Blair said Wednesday.

"It is going to do scientific research on that long-neglected area," Blair told the House Intelligence Committee, without elaborating on the nature of the techniques being tested.

Why doesn't that "scientific research" part fill me with a lot of hope? Sure sure, they say that their charter requires them to abide by the US Army Field Manual, but... US interrogators haven't exactly inspired the most confidence in their.. let's say... humanitarian concerns with people we deem to be bad Muslims. Plus, I'm not sure I'd say that research into interrogation has been a "long-neglected area." I'm pretty sure we've just done almost a decade's worth of research into the field.

Still, I must applaud them. This is a much better policy than their previous "Did the Spanish Inquisition or Khmer Rouge do it? Yes? Good. But did they do it to elicit false confessions? Yes? Even better." line of interrogation based scientific research. Baby steps.

My God, what are we doing?

If there is one thing we know about the war on terror and terrorists in general, it's that the only way to get useful information is though not only violating the Constitutional rights of Americans and through the brutal interrogation methods that are totally not torture. If you want intel you use waterboards, stress positions, hot and cold rooms, sonic and mental warfare, sensory deprivation, beatings, barking dogs, rendition to countries that aren't so nice, and the removal of all ethical, moral, and legal protections. As we've learned from some of our manliest and patriotic elected leaders and political pundits: it's the only way.

Which is why I'm sure that this was just a one time, fluke,... a mistake.

The family of the failed Christmas Day bomber, Umar Farouq Abdulmuttalab, played a pivotal role in getting their son to start cooperating with federal authorities in sharing information about Al Qaeda, a senior administration official said Tuesday evening.
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“One of the principal reasons why his family [helped] is because they had complete trust in the US system of justice and believed that Umar Farouq would be treated fairly and appropriately," the senior official said. "And that they would be as well.”

The FBI and Abdulmuttalab's family approached the subject and “gained his cooperation. He has been cooperating for days," the official said.

Talking? Getting the family involved? Engaging in a "'thorough and comprehensive' background investigation"? Trying to gain an "understanding of the subject”? Miranda rights? Trials in US courts? No torture? I mean, no enhanced interrogation? This doesn't give me a war on terror boner, no, this doesn't give me a boner at all.

How this country supposed to feel like a man if it doesn't know that terrorists aren't being brutalized in order to extract intelligence? How is this country supposed to feel about freedom if at the very least thousands of volts haven't been applied to the testicles of a suspected terrorist in an Estonian gulag? How does this make us feel a sense of revenge for that thing with the buildings that happened a while back? God damn these seemingly more effective methods and Abdulmuttalab's co-operation!

We need to decide, as a country, what's more important: feeling good about ourselves my beating up terrorists and suspected terrorists while attempting to cover up and legitimize Bush era abuses or do we want and effective defense of this country and sensible terrorism policies. I think we know the answer to that question. Someone go get 183 buckets of water and a barking dog.

I think I'll enjoy the architectural beauty of Dubai from afar, thank you very much

I'm not sure I quite understand the aims and goals of Dubai and the United Arab Emirates. It seems to me that they have two quite contradictory goals. One, create some of the most ridiculous buildings, structures, and resorts known to man in an attempt to lure business and high end tourism dollars. Two, subject anyone who goes there to the most arcane, regressive, and unfair judicial system anyone could possibly conceive of. I'm no rich Arab oil sheik or developer, but those two goals don't seem to mesh together.

Let me explain.

A United Arab Emirates sheikh was acquitted Sunday of charges connected to the videotaped beating and torture of an Afghan grain dealer.

Sheikh Issa bin Zayed al-Nahyan, a member of the emirates' ruling family, was charged with rape, endangering life and causing bodily harm in connection with the nearly three-hour long tape shot in 2004 in the desert outside Abu Dhabi, one of the United Arab Emirates in the Persian Gulf region.

See, they're just like us! Sure, one might say that he's probably guilty just because there's a three hour tape of the man pouring sand in a victim's mouth before beating him with a nailed board, burning his genitals with a cigarette lighter, shocking him with a cattle prod, leading him to believe he would be shot, pouring salt into his wounds, and repeatedly driving an SUV over him. But others would say, that you should shut up. I mean not only was he taking prescription medication that caused all of this, probably Rapinex or Abusitol, but they say that tape doesn't show everything the tape explicitly shows in graphic detail. Who can really argue with that?

Then there's stuff like this.

A father-of-three who was found with a microscopic speck of cannabis stuck to the bottom of one of his shoes has been sentenced to four years in a Dubai prison.
...
A search by customs officials uncovered a speck of cannabis weighing just 0.003g - so small it would be invisible to the naked eye and weighing less than a grain of sugar - on the tread of one of his shoes.

Frankly the man should have known better: there was that case where a man was imprisoned for having three poppy seeds. Then there's that whole thing where you're at fault if you get raped there. It works that way for both women and men. Equality!

So there are positives and negatives. Sure, you get to partake in five star hotels and the lavish life of the ultra rich... on the other hand you'll probably be raped and tortured in the desert, get thrown in jail for letting it happen to you, and then get an extra four years tacked on to your sentence of "1st degree getting raped and tortured" because they found out you had lemon poppyseed cake at breakfast. But, on the other hand, those buildings are really crazy and they have a massive hotel shaped like a giant wind sail! Agassi played Federer on its helipad! So I guess you'll have to make that decision for yourself. I think I'll just Google architectural reviews of their follies and "Dubai financial collapse" from afar.

Oh, I forgot to mention the slave labor and... we'll just call it "all the other stuff". Don't ever go there.

Legalese

per·son (pûrsn)
n.
1. a human being, whether man, woman, or child
2. a human being as distinguished from an animal or a thing.
3. You know, except if they're imprisoned by the US on Guantanamo Bay: See unperson

What, don't believe me? DC circuit court ruled it so and the Supreme Court upheld it, making it the law of the land.

Today, the United States Supreme Court refused to review a lower court’s dismissal of a case brought by four British former detainees against Donald Rumsfeld and senior military officers for ordering torture and religious abuse at Guantánamo. The British detainees spent more than two years in Guantanamo and were repatriated to the U.K. in 2004.

The Obama administration had asked the court not to hear the case. By refusing to hear the case, the Court let stand an earlier opinion by the D.C. Circuit Court which found that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, a statute that applies by its terms to all “persons” did not apply to detainees at Guantanamo, effectively ruling that the detainees are not persons at all for purposes of U.S. law.

Furthermore their rights under the Geneva Conventions were waived because “torture is a foreseeable consequence of the military’s detention of suspected enemy combatants.” Makes sense to me. I mean if you don't want to be tortured, you shouldn't allow the US to say you're an enemy combatant.

Furthermore it was ruled that anyone being charged with torture wasn't liable, because after all, how was our government supposed to know that laws governed their actions and that detainees had rights? Again: makes sense. Courts have been affirming this standard for years; no one can be reasonably expected to believe that detainees have rights in this country.

Don't worry, this is only for the purposes of US law. If these guys wanted to get credit cards and adjustable rate mortgages, they'd still be allowed to.

So just in case you were worried, don't be. The garish social morays of the 20th Century, where torture was called torture and men were prosecuted for it, is dead and buried. Torture is no longer a war crime, it's a "foreseeable consequence". People who torture are no longer "war criminals", they're just men who couldn't be expected to know that laws mean something. As we've seen: laws don't mean anything. And what's most heartening is now we have two Presidents and a Supreme Court who agree. I just hope they call up the Oxford dictionary people, we'll want to get that whole "person" definition modified up to US legal standards ASAP. Otherwise we'll just look like idiots.

Cheap Blogging Crutch 11.23

The Fall of Greg Craig
I try not to get too mad at the Obama Administration, I do. I mean there's only so much they can do when ramming their head up against the unending juvenile idiocy of the world's greatest deliberative body. But then again...there's all that war on terror stuff they do that riles the bile back up. Take the case of White House counsel Greg Craig. Or should I say former White House counsel Greg Craig. Why is he a "former" and not a "current" because he made the dumb ass mistake of trying to do his job according to the principles Barry ran on; like not being so fucking secretive. But what sounds good when you're running doesn't sound as good when you have the power, plus it clashed with what Rahm Emanuel preferred. So now we do basically all the same shit the Bush Administration did and Craig has the word "former" attached to his job title. Isn't life grand?

Future Perfect
Newsweek's article on Iran and how the clerical establishment is sick of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and is unlikely to ever appoint a Supreme Leader again. Boy, you make a guy the religious dictatorial authority of an entire country and then he just goes and abuses it by acting like a religious dictator. Who would have ever thought that would happen? I'm sure their new system of being ruled by a group of religious dictator assholes with designs on being the sole asshole in charge will work out much better.

Best of What's New 2009: The Year's 100 Greatest Innovations
Popular Science bring us it's list of the year's 100 greatest inventions. From bombproof wallpaper, to giant ass plasma TV's, privately built and launched rockets, and electromagnetic depression helmets, it's a cornucopia of altruistic items from benevolent scientists. *sighs* When is someone going to invent a death ray or giant robot with crushing gripper claws? Another year another disappointing showing from our mad scientist community. For shame.

Conservative media frequently accuse progressives of "raping" Americans
If there's one thing that right wing commentators love more than telling their audiences that some law some Democrats wants is going to kill them, its telling them that some law some Democrat ones is going to kick in their door and rape the shit out of them. Media Matters took it upon themselves to catalog just a few of the rape references that the Beck and Limbaugh's of the world (actually it's really just those two doing it) like to dredge up when the vile spectre of cheaper health care rears it's head. Oddly enough, want to know what one of the things that isn't like rape to them? Actual rape. Classy as always, gentlemen.

Should We Laugh? Cry? Both?
Jon Cohn of the New Republic offers up one of the many treatises you'll read in he upcoming weeks about how even though the entire process has been and will continue to be infuriating, there's still a lot of good that will come of the bill and it isn't all bad. I'm not convinced. I think I prefer the arguments of my good friend the honorable Jack Daniels: drink more happy juice, forget sadness, sleep. Ahh Jack, you always do put things in perspective.

Cheap Blogging Crutch 11.10

Glenn Beck loses 'raped and murdered' arbitration
In a strike for first amendment rights, comedy, and questions over whether or not Glenn Beck did rape and murder a young girl in 1990, the World Intellectual Property Organization ruled that is was well within the rights of satire to ask question about what Glenn Beck may or may not have done to that poor girl on a dark day in 1990. Good thing Beck sued, otherwise this story wouldn't have blown up into a huge internet meme. Maybe next time he'll try to hush up his raping/murdering (alleged) a little better.

Teacher Claims Fingerprinting Is ‘Mark of the Beast’
Sweet Jesus Texas, I'd sell you back to Mexico if they'd take you. Yes Texas, where an evangelical schoolteacher is suing the state over a law that requires her to give fingerprints as part of her teaching permanent record. Why is she afraid? Did she rape and murder a young girl in 1990? No, fingerprinting is the "mark of the beast" that Satan will use to blah blah blah. Not so much the fingerprints or the ink and paper, though those a good candidates for the Devil, no the mark of the beast is the computer hard drive that stores those fingerprints. What are you willing to bet she teaches science?

NASA on a crusade to debunk 2012 apocalypse myths
Since NASA doesn't have anything better to do, like fly space missions or go to the moon, they've taken to cobbling together their nickels in an attempt to drill reality into conspiracy theorists heads that a giant hidden planet called Nibiru isn't going to smash into the Earth in 2012 and the Mayans didn't know dick. Because nothing convinces conspiracy theorists like hard science, facts, and evidence from a government organization. As a last ditch effort NASA is planning on locking these people into a screening of the film 2012. Then, when the horror is over, mockingly ask them "Seriously, that's what you fucking believe in? John Cusack outwitting the earth in a limo?" Shame and the forced viewing of a terrible movie is the only way these people will learn.

FBI Interrogators Argued in 2002 That ‘Enhanced’ Interrogation Techniques Were Illegal and Ineffective
Well what do you fucking know, the FBI knew what pretty much everyone else knew about "enhanced interrogation": that it didn't work, led to false confessions, and violated a myriad of US and International laws. But, of course, they're only the FBI, so what the fuck do they know? Not as much as Dick Cheney, the Pentagon, and the CIA, that's for sure. Still though, I find it hard to believe that the Bush Administration deliberately ignored the opinions of the best trained and most experienced people in the government about interrogations. That just doesn't seem plausible. I'm sure they never got the memo. That must be why they had to torture.

What's 'V' really about?
Were you curious about the new show "V", but didn't think you could plausibly graft a conspiratorial right wing theory about Obama and health care onto the plot? Well you aren't as smart as the New York Post. I don't know if I should trust the Post on this one. I mean if it was this obvious, shouldn't Glenn Beck have sniffed this one out and shouldn't the pilot at least have inspired a few tea bagger signs at the Super Bowl of Freedom? It's a shame that Obama's government issue, appendix eating nanobots have sidelined him or Beck would have had this all diagrammed out on a chalkboard by now. Until then, I'll just avoid it until half a season has passed and we can all be sure that it isn't harboring a liberal agendas, like all TV.

Cheap Blogging Crutch 11.09

Iranian student dares to criticise Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to his face
An Iranian student totally clowned an Ayatollah the other day, taking an opportunity he was given to ask Khamenei a question and turning into a 20 minute diatribe about all that stuff Khamenei has done. Of course the Ayatollah responded to this by saying "Nuh-uh" and leaving, making sure to give a press release saying they totally allowed him to ask that question because of freedom and stuff. Meanwhile, the student, Mahmoud Vahidnia, gets to dodge literal and figurative bullets because he chose to do it in such a public, televised place. Well done, sir. It's going to be such a shame when we find out you committed suicide by beating yourself to death with multiple police batons.

Hany Farid, Dartmouth Scientist, Says Controversial Oswald Rifle Photo Real
As if the past few days weren't weird enough, how does this strike you: that Oswald photo of him with the rifle that everyone says is fake...is real. So says an expert. Hmmm, so maybe Oswald did do it. It's all well and good, with so many conspiracies about things that are going on now and think it's time we put to bed some of the old classics. Unless Glenn Beck comes up with a way that Oswald shooting Kennedy ties into Barack Obama becoming President, perhaps through ACORN or Oswald himself planting fake birth announcements in Honolulu papers to legitimize our Kenyan sleeper agent President, then I think we might have to move on.

Gadgets and Ideas to Revolutionize Healthcare
Wired Science gives us a look and the TEDMED conference and some of the revolutionary ideas and gadgets that were shown, including wireless medical monitors, the chemical compound resveratol, and tissue engineering, that some see as the future of health care. Sadly no one at the conference had invented the one device that would revolutionize health care the most: a robotic whirling dervish or chainsaws, weedwhackers, and blowtorches that would be used against our elected betters in an attempt to make them pass single payer health care. Though one scientists from MIT did unveil a prototype device that would administer a 50,000 volt shock to Joe Lieberman's anus any time he got a "notion" about getting himself on the TV more.

A media orgy of rumors, speculation and falsehoods
Salon's Glenn Greenwald chronicles the latest failure of the TV media to provide accurate, relevant, and informed coverage on a breaking story, this time the Ft. Hood shootings. From numerous mistakes involving the number of shooters, to the fate of the shooter(s), to the background of Hasan, to the weapons used, to all sorts of other unverified miscellaneous claims, anyone actually watching the coverage would have struggled to even understand anything other than the fact that a shooting happened. Greenwald goes on to discuss how damaging this kind of thing is in creating false zombie narratives and dimwitted conventional wisdom that shpes public perceptions. But hey, who cares if it's all misinformation, it made for some damn fine TV. And isn't that the whole point of TV news?

Exclusive: I Was Kidnapped by the CIA
With the recent in absentia conviction of CIA agents in Italy for their rendition and torture program, perhaps it's best to actually take a closer look at what it was they were accused of. Mother Jones was prescient enough to have a full account of the case of the man, Abu Omar, that the CIA agents were convicted of rendering and torturing for their March/April 2008 issue. Congratulations America, this was done in your name! I hope you like it.

Cheap Blogging Crutch 11.04

Italian court finds CIA agents guilty of kidnapping terrorism suspect
Well that makes one country that's actually serious about prosecuting torture, rendition, and kidnapping in the name of America's war on terror. Surprisingly it's Italy, who can't even convict its openly corrupt prime minister. That's a bit of a shocker. But Italy has tried and convicted 23 Americans in absentia for the CIA's "extraordinary rendition" that resulted in an Italian citizen being kidnapped and tortured. Sadly none of the convicted are named Bush, or Gonzales, or Cheney. Italian courts are also considering putting out international arrest warrants to capture the men. Someone want to roll up a copy of this news and hit the President and the Attorney General over the head with it?

Democrats’ healthcare bill would pay for ‘prayer’ treatment
Ahh Democrats, you could fuck up a one car funeral. Sure, you can't get a good health care bill passed and something simple like a woman have rights over her own body is going to prove to be a challenge, but you can make sure that the bill lets charlatans get money from the government by making "prayer treatments" actual medical expenses. Didn't you get the memo: prayer is basically most people's health care system of choice right now, and it's not because they want it that way. Do you think, maybe, we could just take that money and spend it on, I don't know, something that will actually improve the health of people or drive down medical costs? Or, we could just flush the money down the toilet in deference to the alligator god, who will in turn reward us with a healthy harvest. Doesn't that sound good?

Russia Leads Nuclear Space Race After U.S. Drops Out
Russia is seeking to take the lead in awesome when it has a $600 million nuclear spaceship flying into obit by 2012. Meanwhile the US is still dicking around with rocket fuel. This should allow the Russians to make their rockets twice as efficient and allow them to do longer and more elaborate deep space exploration and missions. We, on the other hand, will fart around in low orbit while Richard Branson and his Virgin: Galactic space tourists get within "flipping the bird" distance at us. The article also has an interesting history of nukes and space, if you wish to sigh at the path not traveled.

Flu fears help Clorox sales
Well at least this pandemic is making someone money, you know, other than the vaccine companies and the conspiratorial conglomerate of Nancy Pelosi/Barack Obama/the Bilderburg Group/the Secret Society of Jewish Bankers/the Yankees/Freemasons who created the disease for their own socialist political ends. Yes, bleach sales are driving a stock spike for Clorox as worried and paranoid parents buy it by the pallet to marinate their pork in it, make their kids drink it, and obsessively and compulsively wash their countertops with it in order to protect themselves from Porcine AIDS. It won't work, they'll all be dead while the last remnants of us fight it out in Boulder and Vegas, but it's nice that Clorox, as well as the makers of Glaad bags and Brita filters have profited in this time of irrational flu panic.

A Material Based on Sharkskin Stops Bacterial Breakouts
How badass are sharks? Even their skin pattern kicks the living fuck out of weak ass bacteria. That's right, using a sharkskin pattern on a protective film cuts the rate of disease and bacteria spreading because those rotten little microbes can't attach themselves to the sharkskin pattern. How slick is sharkskin? Scientifically speaking: slicker than greased goose shit. A man with a PhD said that, honest.

Cheap Blogging Crutch 11.03

Palinoia
Matt Taibbi gets out his long knives for Sarah Palin in story he wrote over the summer but never published, during her whole resignation embarrassment. I don't know why he didn't publish it. It has great discussions on gems like the "campaign trail version of Mommie Dearest" she put the McCain camp through, the through line of "nutty-ass paranoid behavior" that permeates everything she does, as well as her political supporters to seem to rally behind her because it "validates [their] insane sense of fucked-overness". Worth a read, if only to remind yourself that she's never going to go away and there's still a large chunk of people who want to hand her power.

How Goldman secretly bet on the U.S. housing crash
McClatchy news joins the "bludgeon everyone at Goldman-Sachs with a truncheon" bandwagon with Matt Taibbi as they start up an rather exhaustive series on how our economic betters at G/S have looted government, bet against the country, manipulated markets, and screwed everyone everywhere over for copious amounts of cash. Click on the sidebar for a full rundown. It misses Taibbi's outraged fury, but more than delivers in jaw dropping detail. McClatchy runs a pretty good news operation, shame he couldn't run a baseball team. Ah well Kev, this, and your reporting on Iraq and the war on terror more than make up for running the Buccos into the ground. All is forgiven. Ah, who am I kidding, I'm still fucking pissed off about the Pirates. Fuck you, McClatchy!

Racial disparity: All active ethics probes focus on black lawmakers
Whoops! I'm sure that's just a coincidence. Nice to see that no matter how high up you get in this country, the justice system still works the same way. I'm sure that it's just that there aren't any white crooks that have been elected. As Rod Blagojevich, Eliot Spitzer, Mark Sanford, Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Larry Craig, Tom Delay, Jim Traficant, and George Bush have taught us: it's the black politicians you have to watch out for.

Second Circuit Affirms Dismissal of Arar
Something you probably won't hear too much about today and tomorrow as our press decides whether Republicans winning in historically Republican states and districts means that Obama should resign immediately or take two weeks off and then resign: the fact that a US court said it's OK for the US to illegally detain, render to a foreign country, and brutally torture an obviously innocent man without evidence as long as a.) government swears their complete violation of the law was totally for national security purposes, b.) prosecuting the crimes would force a court to scrutinize the effectiveness and legality of government programs and the high level officials that made them and c.) the victim cannot complete the bizarre and completely impossible legal hurdles the court places in front of him. This is the country we live in, America. Be proud.

Omnibusted
On the anniversary of their admittance to the union, The Edge of the American West looks at how the Dakotas and other mountain territories became states. In case you were wondering how states with more sheep than people get two senators with which to fuck over states that actually have people in them, the simple answer is corruption, fear of polygamist Mormons, racism towards brown people, and a desire by Republicans to pack the Senate with more Republicans. So just in case anyone tries to tell you otherwise, the Senate was never a place of congenial good, there was never a "better time" in its history, it was always an awful, stupid and corrupt place. Happy birthday Dakotas!

Cheap Blogging Crutch 11.02

Pa. high court tosses 'tainted' juvenile cases
Thankfully for the basic tenets of justice, the courts tossed thousands of juvenile cases that were tainted by a kickback scheme that ultimately resulted in a crooked judge sending kids to a for profit detention center in return for bribes. Have to hand it to Judge Ciavarella, throwing people in jail for money is a step up. Usually people just get tossed in on the basis of race, religious, social, or economic status. You free marketed the shit out of legal malfeasance.

Car maker develops its own flower species
Now the Japanese are rubbing our noses in it. Not just content to beat our heads in over the regular car and hybrid markets, now they're making special flowers that absorb nitrogen oxides and take heat out of the atmosphere. When fully grown one of these flowers can actually flip the bird in the correct geographical direction of Detroit while it wipes its own ass with GM stock. Progress, it's a beautiful thing

'Torture flight' plane spotted in Birmingham
The European Parliament is up in arms because of the reemergence of the infamous CIA torture/extraordinary rendition/"frat house hazing" plane that jetted terrorist suspects all over the world to CIA black sites during a refueling in Birmingham and a meeting with British SAS forces. Lest you think that this means Obama is somehow reneging on yet another one of his war on terror campaign promises and that this is not "change we can believe in", know this: that plane used to refuel in Leeds. Now who feels silly? You, that's who.

Ford Posts an Unexpected Profit of $997 Million
Look at that, another quarter, another massive loss by the car indust...wait, what the fuck? Almost a billion in profit? Did Ford find some Nazi gold Harry buried out behind the headquarters? rich uncle die or something? *gasp*...is an American car company being....run intelligently? Sources cite the cash for clunkers program as well as an extensive and intensive 17 hour surgery that removed many of the executives' heads from their collective asses. Ford hopes to make a full year profit by 2011, at which time the sheer unlikelihood of an American car company running itself well will cause the universe to collapse in on itself.

Obama Strategy on Health Legislation Appears to Pay Off
Yup, that's right. According to the NY Times, Obama's strategy is paying off. What strategy is that, you might ask? I have no clue. Because to me it looked like they dicked around for months, fobbed off decision making and power to the legislative bodies, made sure that the "moderates" had the power, needlessly courted Republicans they knew would not support the bill in any shape or form, hamstrung progressive, kneecapped the public option, publicly tried to oppose measures that were not only popular within the caucus and the American public but had been campaigned on by the President himself, then no legislative pressure or arm twisting was applied, Harry Reid was told to basically go it on his own, the White House still fought against even the milquetoast weak public option that remained in the Senate bill, and now Joe Lieberman is threatening to blow up the whole thing unless the weak bill is made even weaker and more ineffective after Obama saved his ass within the caucus and lobbied for him to keep his Senate committee chair. Yeah....looks like that "strategy" really paid off. Note to Rahm or Axelrod or whoever ghostwrote that article: I wouldn't be too eager to claim credit for what just happened and what's about to happen.

Cheap Blogging Crutch 10.22

Held By The Taliban
If you're interested in reading a great story, the New York Times has a a massive 5 part account of journalist David Rohde's 7 month long imprisonment by the Taliban in Afghanistan. Beyond the simple interest in the personal story of Rohde it also gives great insight into the way Afghans view our war on terror and what fuels the anti-Americanism and extremism.

AT&T hits Internet vote
In case you were wondering where the next frontier of the government's never ending battle to stand with corporations over the interests of the American people, look to the intarwubs. AT&T is engaging a full court press on net neutrality and gaining a lot of support for its attempts to be allowed to place restrictions on access to content an services. On the side of freedom: the President, the Google, Skype, and Facebook. But I can see why they're having trouble opposing AT&T. I mean who isn't for restricting information on the internet?

Rage Against Torture: Top Musicians Demand Records On How Bush Admin Used Their Songs Against Detainees
Trent Reznor, R.E.M., Pearl Jam, Jackson Browne, Rage Against the Machine, Rosanne Cash, Billy Bragg and the Roots have all joined together in a group called Zero db to protest the use of music during torture in the future and the use of music in torture during the Bush Administration. That's all well and good, but I think that Rage and Trent, maybe Pearl Jam, are the only ones who have to worry about their music being used in torture. I doubt Dick Cheney authorized the use of "Running on Empty" and "So. Central Rain (I'm Sorry)" on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed before telling them to put on Mermaid Avenue Volumes I and II and "just let it play all the way through."

Pay Czar to Slash Compensation at Seven Firms
Hey, turns out that after months and months and months of doing nothing of pay for firms that got bailed out (read: all of them), it seems that the pay czar, whose only job is doing things related to CEO salaries of bailed out companies, decided that he might as well put in a half day of work and push forward with a proposal that is popular with the American people. Of course the business community is outraged. I guess the people that set fire to the world's money will have to make due with half a million in salary with bonus compensation not to exceed $10 million. I hope they'll still be able to afford food with cuts that drastic.

Google's Android Allows Soldiers to Put Drones on Buddy List
Who here wanted a cell phone that could not only compete with the iPhone in terms of price, innovation, and technology, but could also sync up with a Predator drone on a bombing run in the mountains of Afghanistan and get streaming video of the attack. I know I have and those fuckers in the Apple apps store have not heeded my demands. Thankfully Raytheon is on the case and using Google's Android operating system to do so. So is this going to be in the Droid phone or am I going to have to join the military to get the app?

Cheap Blogging Crutch 09.22

Waterboarding Doesn’t Work, Scientists Say
I don't want to blow your minds too hard before noon, so let me slow walk you through this one: the use of waterboarding, stress positions, and sleep deprivation are proven to actually destroy memory functions cause frontal lobe damage. So let's see, that makes it morally, ethically, legally, medically, and scientifically wrong to use waterboarding as a torture enhanced interrogation method. Do we need more, or must we unearth an ancient stone tablet that says it too?

Better world: Be nice to people
Great, now science says that being nice and altruistic acts spread through non-internet social networks and that being kind within your social groups can come back to benefit you, if you want to think about it selfishly. In a related study they show that negative acts and bad vibes can spread the same way, and that, more or less, Sean and I are responsible for the genocide in Darfur. Sorry. Our bad. We'll try to perk it up a bit here.

F.D.I.C. May Borrow Funds From Banks
Turns out that the FDIC is almost out of cash due to a little matter of all the banks failing. Now, desperate for cash, instead of turning to the Treasury Department for a always available line of credit, they're just going to borrow from the banks that haven't collapsed. In a related story, WE CAN SEE THE FUTURE! Don't offend us lest we use our awesome powers on you.

U.N. Climate Conference Opens With Call for Unity
The UN Climate Conference has started with big speeches from Barry and Hu Jintao talked of the need for large action on climate change and pollution controls before the ceremony ended when both simultaneously faked fainting spells when they were directly asked about concrete actions their countries were taking. Whew! That was a close one there, boys. You almost had to mention a concrete plan. Artfully dodged.

Kirk Cameron's 'Origin Of Species' Plan: Ex-Actor To Distribute 50,000 Altered Darwin Books
Far be it from me to mock those who follow the teachings of evangelical former TV stars, after all, I handle venomous snakes for Jesus at the church Alan Thicke started near my house. But isn't Kirk worried that trying to indoctrinate children with a fancifully distorted text filled with lies is going to infringe on what the church does? I smell a lawsuit. Still, I'm sure that altering a scientific text to include ominous Hitler, racism, and misogynist accusation towards the author is what God would have wanted. I'm just a little surprised, I thought Kirk's banana video would have converted everyone who believed in evolution.

Yeah, that seems about right

via Tom Tomorrow. It's nice to know that with even more revelations coming out about CIA doctors and human experimentation that we have our great media establishment out there making sure that America hears the drumbeat: prosecuting people, even the lowest level people, for torture is wrong. We shouldn't even take that sideways glance. Thanks.

Cheap Blogging Crutch 09.03

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Shocking revelations of an unfathomably surprising nature

Cheney Says He Was Proponent for Military Action Against Iran

Former Vice President Dick Cheney hinted that, in the waning days of the Bush administration, he had pushed for a military strike to destroy Iran's nuclear-weapons program.

In an interview on Fox News Sunday, Mr. Cheney described himself as being isolated among advisers to then-President George W. Bush, who ultimately decided against direct military action.

"I was probably a bigger advocate of military action than any of my colleagues," Mr. Cheney said in response to questions about whether the Bush administration should have launched a pre-emptive attack prior to handing over the White House to Barack Obama.

Wouldn't that have just been the perfect ending to the Bush Administration? "Here black dude, we just bombed the everliving shit out of Iran because Dick really, really wanted to. I think that makes it three wars in the Middle East we're leaving you with. Oh, and the crippling economic collapse. Ah well, good luck. I'll be in Dallas if you need me!" Those must have been a hellish last couple of weeks for various Bush Administration officials. You're trying to find a new job after this current one has tainted your reputation and every few days you have to run over to the White House to form the opposition to some half baked military invasion that Dick Cheney wants to enact, whether it's Iran again or he wants to carpet bomb Central America because he thinks the guy that fucked up his lunch order was vaguely Panamanian.

This was all part of the Dick's wide-ranging, some would say tragically sycophantic, interview with Chris Wallace. In the interview they covered such subjects as why Cheney is not only cool with torture, he's cool with interrogators going above and beyond the specific torture methods they approved, as well as his consternation about how politicized the Justice Department is now, and a few overt dares to investigate his various crimes. He even caused John McCain to stand up and take notice, deriding the effectiveness of torture and the vapidness of Cheney's arguments, though with the caveat that despite the illegality and Geneva Conventions violating nature of the crimes that the best way to move forward and make sure it never happened again was to not investigate one single thing about it.

God love Dick Cheney's media tours, he's such a font of rage inducing hypocrisy. Did I mention he's writing a book? I can't wait for that thing to come out, I think it might cause Keith Olbermann and Bill Maher's heads to explode at the same time.

Quote of the day

Former Vice-Criminal Dick "Thunderlips" Cheney

The documents released Monday clearly demonstrate that the individuals subjected to Enhanced Interrogation Techniques provided the bulk of intelligence we gained about al Qaeda. This intelligence saved lives and prevented terrorist attacks. These detainees also, according to the documents, played a role in nearly every capture of al Qaeda members and associates since 2002. The activities of the CIA in carrying out the policies of the Bush Administration were directly responsible for defeating all efforts by al Qaeda to launch further mass casualty attacks against the United States. The people involved deserve our gratitude. They do not deserve to be the targets of political investigations or prosecutions.

Of course, unsurprisingly, none of what he says is true. But you really have to appreciate the moon sized brass balls of a man who decries the alleged politicization of someone else's Justice Department after the tenure of the JD the Bush Administration presided over.

Still one hopes that his impotent dishonest shrieking does get Holder and Obama to change the one politically motivated part of the impending torture investigations: the fact that it isn't going to investigate guys like John Yoo, Alberto Gonzales, and Dick Cheney.