Oh! The Irony

Instead of airing President Obama’s press conference the Fox Network is choosing to Lie To Me tonight. What else is new?

Did Fox ever not air Bush when he was president?

An Endless Limbo Of Injustice

Is torture more important to the United States than justice? The ultimate legacy of the Bush administration has been the redefinition of what it means to be an American. We don’t do justice anymore, we do torture instead. What have we gained from this? Safety? I don’t think so. We have lost our humanity, and gained nothing.

From The Red Cross Torture Report: What it Means by Mark Danner:

That is the central, unanswered question: What was gained? We know already a good deal about what was lost. On this subject President Obama in his 60 Minutes response was typically eloquent:

I mean, the fact of the matter is after all these years how many convictions actually came out of Guantánamo? How many terrorists have actually been brought to justice under the philosophy that is being promoted by Vice President Cheney? It hasn’t made us safer. What it has been is a great advertisement for anti-American sentiment. Which means that there is constant effective recruitment of Arab fighters and Muslim fighters against US interests all around the world…. The whole premise of Guantánamo promoted by Vice President Cheney was that somehow the American system of justice was not up to the task of dealing with these terrorists…. Are we going to just keep on going until the entire Muslim world and Arab world despises us? Do we think that’s really going to make us safer?

This is as clear and concise a summary of the damage wrought by torture as one is likely to get. Torture has undermined the United States’ reputation for respecting and following the law and thus has crippled its political influence. By torturing, the United States has wounded itself and helped its enemies in what is in the end an inherently political war—a war, that is, in which the critical target to be conquered is the allegiances and attitudes of young Muslims. And by torturing prisoners, many of whom were implicated in committing great crimes against Americans, the United States has made it impossible to render justice on those criminals, instead sentencing them—and the country itself—to an endless limbo of injustice. That limbo stands as a kind of worldwide advertisement for the costs of the US reversion to torture, whose power President Obama has tried to reduce by announcing that he will close Guantánamo.

Scared To Death

Fear is an insidious monster. At its worst it can kill. At its best it is merely crippling. Then why is the media peddling fear? We are currently suffering from swine flu "news" overload. Is it doing us any good? Or will more people become sick because of the stress on their immune systems courtesy of your smiling television anchorperson.

From Effects of Stress and Psychological Disorders on the Immune System by David B. Beaton:

Internal factors such as stress have been implicated in causing a deficient immune system because of the nature of the body's response in dealing with this problem. The capabilities of the immune system are diminished after frequent activation of the autonomic nervous system in the case of chronic stresses. The immune system is downgraded to be able to continuously functioning.

In a large study involving parents of both children with cancer and parents with children who were relatively healthy, the results showed that chronic psychological stress might reduce the immune system's reactions to hormonal secretions that were normally used to fight the inflammatory response (Miller, Cohen, & Ritchey, 2002).

Perceived mood also seems to play a role in immune system effectiveness. Having a positive attitude seems to correlate with an increased ability of the immune system in fighting diseases. In cases where patients have exhibited fear before a surgery, they have had a longer healing time afterwards. Correlations were observed in the number of lymphocyte cells and the person's level of optimism.

Cardiovascular diseases are another area where stress could have a negative effect. The natural response of the fight or flight activation mechanism could have a decidedly negative impact on the cardiovascular system. Since the activation of the fight or flight system involves an increase in the heart rate, a frequent activation could increase the possibility of a heart attack or other negative aspect of the disease. Specifically, a study was done in an industrial work environment in which a much higher frequency of cardiovascular mortality was found to correlate with an environment in which there was very little reward incentive (Kivimaki et al., 2002).

Even in relatively less dangerous health problems, mood can have an effect. A study with the common cold and emotions showed that participants with happy emotions exhibited a greater ability to fight off the cold when given a squirt of the rhinovirus (Jones, 2003).

Remember Y2K? Who was responsible for all that hype? Don’t get me wrong, I think that the swine flu is dangerous. However, there is such a thing as reporting the news, and there is such a thing as creating a panic.

Can A Rosary Be Used To Tell People To Shut Up?

From Rosary bawlers silence euthanasia lecturer:

A disturbing new breed of Catholic activists succeeded in stopping a lecture by Prof Len Doyal at Cork University Hospital.

The professor’s attempt to give a talk about euthanasia was called off soon after it had begun, when between 20 and 50 protestors jumped to their feet and began to loudly heckle the speaker. Some chanted the rosary while others accused him of being a “Nazi” and a “murderer”. One protestor shouted threateningly in Doyal’s face.

The emeritus professor of medical ethics at Queen Mary, University of London was escorted from the premises by security staff.

Read the rest here.

“In Reason We Trust”

From More Atheists Shout It From the Rooftops by Laurie Goodstein:

Two months after the local atheist organization here put up a billboard saying “Don’t Believe in God? You Are Not Alone,” the group’s 13 board members met in Laura and Alex Kasman’s living room to grapple with the fallout.

The problem was not that the group, the Secular Humanists of the Lowcountry, had attracted an outpouring of hostility. It was the opposite. An overflow audience of more than 100 had showed up for their most recent public symposium, and the board members discussed whether it was time to find a larger place.

And now parents were coming out of the woodwork asking for family-oriented programs where they could meet like-minded nonbelievers.

Read the rest here.

What You Talkin' 'Bout Sarah?

And I thought that Glenn Beck was incomprehensible. And I thought that George W. Bush had lowered the standards of political discourse to about as low as they could go.

Before we proceed, let’s take a timeout to remind ourselves what the word discourse actually means:

1 archaic : the capacity of orderly thought or procedure : rationality
2 : verbal interchange of ideas ; especially : conversation
3 a: formal and orderly and usually extended expression of thought on a subject b: connected speech or writing c: a linguistic unit (as a conversation or a story) larger than a sentence
4obsolete : social familiarity
5: a mode of organizing knowledge, ideas, or experience that is rooted in language and its concrete contexts (as history or institutions)

I believe it is the Republicans and the Fundamentalists who were responsible for the first definition’s archaicness.

From Help! Mom! There are Liberals Under My Bed! Review by Sarah Churchwell:

As part of her post-election media blitz, attempting to recuperate some political credibility, Palin’s problems with syntax grew so acute that she became spectacularly incoherent. When CNN’s Wolf Blitzer asked her if she had any new initiatives she wanted to unveil, Palin’s response was unintelligible:

Gah! Nothing specific right now. Sitting here in these chairs that I’m going to be proposing but in working with these governors who again on the front lines are forced to and it’s our privileged obligation to find solutions to the challenges facing our own states every day being held accountable, not being just one of many just casting votes or voting present every once in a while, we don’t get away with that. We have to balance budgets and we’re dealing with multibillion dollar budgets and tens of thousands of employees in our organizations.

Gah, indeed. I propose chairs, too. Although I’m not sure why.

Christian Torture

It seems to me that many of the people who claim that the founders were Christians are also the same people trying to defend torture. How twisted is that?

Would Jesus torture?

Sourcewatch

Why does Sourcewatch.org have pages for Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh, but none for Jon Stewart?

The Good Book

From Bible:

Many Christians, Muslims, and Jews regard the Bible as inspired by God yet written by a variety of imperfect men over thousands of years. Many others, who identify themselves as Bible-believing Christians, regard both the New and Old Testament as the undiluted Word of God, spoken by God and written down in its perfect form by humans. Still others hold the Biblical infallibility perspective, that the Bible is free from error in spiritual but not scientific matters.

If the Bible is the word of God and is perfect, then why do we need to have hucksters on television telling us over and over again what the damn thing means? Never mind that they also tell us over and over again how much they need our damn money as well.

“Revelations take on a whole new meaning in The Good Book…”

What Has Changed?

As far as I know the Bush/Cheney administration is the only administration in the history of the United States to condone torture. It is the only administration to have its lawyers “fix it” so that torture appears to be legal. Even Saint Ronald McReagan did not officially condone torture.

We went up against Hitler without officially sanctioning torture. We went up against Stalin without officially sanctioning torture. What has changed? Is Osama Bin Laden worse than Hitler and Stalin? Or is it that the Bush/Cheney administration is worse than Hitler and Stalin? After all, Hitler and Stalin never succeeded in destroying the ideals that the United States stands for. Bush and Cheney have come too damn close.

Broken Promises?

Rick Santorum doesn’t like it when Obama does what Bush did, even though Santorum liked it when Bush did it.

From The Elephant in the Room: Following Bush's playbook by Rick Santorum:

In spite of Obama's apology tour in Europe and his inability or unwillingness to defend America against socialist despots at last weekend's Summit of the Americas, most of his administration's national-security decisions have been downright Bushian.

He has almost unilaterally escalated our military presence in Afghanistan. He has launched Predator attacks on al-Qaeda in Pakistan. (Preemption, anyone?) He has found that, just as the Bush administration claimed, Guantanamo meets Geneva Conventions standards. And he has said he would hold the worst enemy combatants captured overseas without trial. And - the greatest broken promise of all - he continues to maintain Bush-like troop levels in Iraq.

Knowing Right From Wrong, Knowing What Works And What Doesn't

The latest right-wing talking point is that torture is immoral, but the “big” question is: Does it work? Supposedly, the right-wing dunderheads think that it does, or that maybe it does. So it was OK that we did it.

What is the next step here. Stealing is immoral, but it works. Murder is immoral, but it works. They get the job done. By the logic of the right-wing dunderheads we all should be stealing and murdering. They get the job done. And that’s all that matters. Right?

Actually, stealing and murder make more sense than torture. They work. They are effective. Torture doesn’t work. It is not effective. No wonder Bush and Cheney like it so much. Remember the last eight years and how effectively they ran the country? Is it any surprise that that the king fuck-ups of all time actually prefer something that doesn’t work?

From Have we really sunk so low as to seriously ask, Does torture work? by P.M. Carpenter:

On the other hand, despite recent revelations that Bush-Cheney's architects were grossly unschooled in the historical background of torture's efficacy in wringing accurate information, they, as reasonably well-educated people, had to understand the simple logic of duress = gibberish.

Why, then, torture? Why extract reams of unreliable information which sends thousands of other operatives scurrying about the globe in futile attempts to nail it down, especially when actionable intelligence was already being extracted through other interrogative means?

Why? I can think of no reason other than nakedly brutal revenge -- a deep-seated animalistic urge to inflict pain for pain caused. True confessions, false confessions, good information or bad information -- all of it, to the architects, at their deepest inhuman level (scarier yet, perhaps all too human), was essentially irrelevant. They just wanted the emotionally primitive satisfaction of savage payback.

Maybe there are throngs of behavioral psychiatrists that would tell me I'm all wet. But I doubt it. So as committees convene and hearings commence in the bewildering pursuit of answering the staggeringly malignant question, Does torture work?, perhaps they should first ask: Why even ask? At its root is sadistic barbarity, which was not, last I looked, a founding principle of this nation to be defended.

Update:
From Reclaiming America’s Soul by Paul Krugman:

It’s hard, then, not to be cynical when some of the people who should have spoken out against what was happening, but didn’t, now declare that we should forget the whole era — for the sake of the country, of course.

Sorry, but what we really should do for the sake of the country is have investigations both of torture and of the march to war. These investigations should, where appropriate, be followed by prosecutions — not out of vindictiveness, but because this is a nation of laws.

We need to do this for the sake of our future. For this isn’t about looking backward, it’s about looking forward — because it’s about reclaiming America’s soul.

Now I'm REALLY Pissed At Glenn Beck

This is the worst thing that Glenn Beck has ever done. Because of his Earth Day escapades encouraging chain-saw massacres my brain has become fixated on Beck having sex (I think he is probably incapable of making love) while he fantasizes about chain-saws clear-cutting a massive forest. (Does his wife know that this is what really gets him off?)

Out, I say. Get out of my head NOW!

Damn you, Beck!

Imagine Telling God That You Celebrated Earth Day By Encouraging People To Cut Down Trees

Glenn Beck is one sick, twisted puppy.

From Wikipedia:

Beck also is pro-life, including being opposed to euthanasia and the death penalty, in which he said that he could not "imagine telling God that he lived in a society that decided who should live or not."

Why do the pro-lifers like to kill everything except that of an embryonic nature?

Does Glenn Beck not think that trees are alive? Does Glenn Beck think that we would still be alive if there were no more trees? What the hell does Glenn Beck have against trees for Christ’s sake? Did someone tell him that all trees are socialist, fascist, registered Democrats or something?

If Beck thought that encouraging people to blow up kittens and puppies with dynamite would get him higher ratings, would he do it? What the hell is wrong with this man?

From Village Idiot Glenn Beck Gets a Woody on Earth Day by Kevin K.:

I signed up for the Glenn Beck newsletter yesterday and today my email box is stuffed with stupid:

On Today’s Program
Earth Day!

Glenn takes some callers eager to celebrate Earth Day by cutting down trees live on the air. There’s nothing better than the sound of a good chainsaw blazing away on Earth day. Check out this call from Tim in Cleveland, who is cutting down trees in Ohio.

Mike in Tulsa celebrates Earth Day by running all of his lawn equipment at the same time.

God, I hate these people.

[TRANSCRIPT OF CALL WITH TIM BELOW THE FOLD—5:05pm AUDIO ADDED]

April 22, 2009 - 12:21 ET

This message is brought to you by Evil Conservative Industries…

GLENN: Do we have Tim in Cleveland is a forest manager. He’s cutting down trees today in celebration of Earth Day. Do we have Tim on the phone? Tim, are you there?

CALLER: Yeah, I’m here, Glenn.

GLENN: Hi, how are you?

CALLER: Good, how are you doing?

GLENN: Well, I’m very good. I’m very good. Where are you cutting down trees, sir?

CALLER: I’m in Ashtabula County, Northeast Ohio. It’s a wildlife habitat. My landowner is a big hunter and we’re going through his woods and making a couple of half acre clear cuts and that’s where he will lay in wait for the deer to come. Deer are very curious creatures and they will come and investigate these clear cuts and he’ll shoot them.

GLENN: This is like nirvana here.

CALLER: Yeah.

GLENN: This is not only going to hack off all the environmentalists but all the PETA people, too.

CALLER: That’s exactly right.

GLENN: So Tim, how come I don’t hear the chainsaws running.

CALLER: I can start it up right now. Do you want to hear it?

GLENN: This is too good to be true. Tim, hang on just a second because I want to savor this moment. Hang on just a second. Let me give our commercial for this half hour and then you start.

CALLER: All right.

GLENN: Stu, this is like Dan, I need Barry White music. This is almost full fledged light some candles, this is eroticism.

STU: I’m just glad it’s so good for the Earth on Earth Day.

GLENN: You say is that and it sounds sarcastic.

STU: It sounds sarcastic? No.

GLENN: Give me a little Barry White on the program, will you?

(Break)

(Earth Day spoof)

GLENN: That’s right, it is time to go all green. We go back to Tim who is a forest manager. He is cutting down trees in honor of Earth well, not really in honor. We could say in honor of Earth Day, can’t we, Tim.

CALLER: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

GLENN: In honor of Earth Day. That’s fantastic. Are you ready?

CALLER: Yeah, I’m ready.

GLENN: Go ahead.

CALLER: I have to yell “Timber” first.

GLENN: You’ve got to what?

CALLER: I have to yell “Timber” first.

GLENN: Oh, okay. Don’t you do that right before the tree falls?

CALLER: Timber! (Chainsaw starting up).

All done. I laid down an Aspen tree with Glenn’s name on it and an Aspen tree with Stu’s name on it. So you are both involved.

GLENN: That is fantastic. Those are little teeny trees. Don’t you have like a big huge oak or something?

CALLER: No, no, we don’t cut oak. We cut Aspen and stuff like that and we leave behind the good stuff.

GLENN: Well, I’m looking for somebody else that would be willing to cut down the good stuff, you know. They are not American Elms, are?

CALLER: Well, actually they are. Yes, they are.

GLENN: They are? Because I know those are like here in New York City, you go to Central Park, American Elms, those are a big deal because they are almost wiped out and everything else. So I mean, give me another Elm, just give me another American Elm.

CALLER: I want to hear another American Elm? Coming right up. Let me fire this back up.

GLENN: Because they are so loved here in New York City.

My guess is that Beck never gets laid. That would explain a lot, wouldn’t it. Especially if he thinks this is nirvana and the height of eroticism. And that this is what God made Barry White for. Ooo Baby.

Does This Make Any Sense To Anyone?

I’ve been doing the Google concerning Glenn Beck and the raping of Mother Nature as a way of celebrating Earth Day and I came across what follows.

From Glenn not a Christian? by Glenn Beck:

Now, imagine, put yourself in this position. Let's say you are in Saudi Arabia where nobody's ever heard of the trinity. You're a Catholic. Nobody's ever heard of the trinity. What, the trinity? What, it's three in one, they're everywhere and nowhere. Jesus is on the cross but he's really God. So God has died but yet he didn't die and how does this -- imagine you've never heard this before. So you've never heard any kind of explanation. So it works. You know what I mean? You've never heard anybody say, no, no, no, wait, wait, wait, you've got to slow down. She asked me two questions about deep doctrine issues and I had in my ear, 40 seconds. Oh, well, hang on. I've got 40 seconds. Let me explain this to you. You can't explain it in 40 seconds. You can't explain anything of deep philosophical viewpoint or deep theological viewpoint. It took me a year of real studying to be able to understand some of the stuff in all of different doctrines, which leads me to this. Nobody really cares. Nobody really cares.

Look, I've said this before. You have more Jello with stupid carrots in it than you've ever -- I don't even know who came up with Jello and carrots but somehow or another the Mormons did and they're like, "Here, somebody's died, here, have some Jello and carrots." That just makes it worse for me. If you want to know, ask a Mormon. If the media wants to know, why don't you call somebody who, like, actually does this for a living. I hear the Mormons have a university. That's weird. Maybe you should call somebody at the university and talk about their theological doctrine. Have the theological issues taken care of by those people. But see, that's not what it's about. It's about an agenda. It's about an agenda that I'm telling you is going to backfire on the media because if Mitt Romney would get the nomination, Christians will then rally around him and say, whoa, wait a minute, hang on, this looks like it's a persecution of religion because that's exactly what it is.

If I got on the air and I said to you, I'm going to vote for Mitt Romney and I'm going to vote for Mitt Romney because he's a Mormon. Well, wouldn't you think that I'm the dumbest man in America? And you know what, you'd have every right to think that because if I just voted for Mitt Romney because he was a Mormon, I would also have to vote for Harry Reid, and I got news for ya. I ain't ever voting for Harry Reid. I don't care if he is Jack Mormon himself.

I repeat. Does this make any sense to anyone? If it does, could you please explain it to me?

Now, I think that Beck is certifiable. But this is simply weird and incomprehensible, even for Beck. My take on all of this is simply that Beck dropped some acid and the result was Glenn not a Christian?

Inside The Head Of Thomas Friedman

It’s a scary place to be. Apparently Matt Taibbi has taken a fantastic voyage inside the skull of Thomas Friedman so that he could inform of us of how Friedman’s brain works.

From Tom Friedman Strikes Again by Matt Taibbi:

He has these Socratic dialogues in his head between imaginary dream-people who sound like they’ve been forced at gunpoint to conduct a Crossfire-style political debate in a room pumped full of rubber cement fumes.

A Variation On Dumb And Dumber

Call it Dumb and Smarter. While Joe Barton seems determined to show the world how stupid he is, Steven Chu (along with Hilda Solis) wrote an op-ed for Earth Day.

From Building the American Clean Energy Economy by Steven Chu and Hilda Solis:

For decades, while Americans have worked to make a difference in their communities, some politicians in both parties have failed to adequately address the energy crisis, which imperils our economy, our security and our planet. Now, we have a unique and critical opportunity to attack the energy crisis head on and create a comprehensive energy policy that will bolster our economy, end our dependence on foreign oil and reduce the threat of deadly pollution that could devastate our climate.

The path before us is clear, but it will not be easy. To create entire new industries of clean energy jobs, break the stranglehold of foreign oil on our economy and punish the polluters who are devastating our natural resources, we have to be honest about the difficult tasks and hard choices ahead. Our goal must be a clean energy future that works for all Americans, so that we can pass on to our children and grandchildren not just a stronger economy but a cleaner planet.

Chu fills me with hope, Barton fills me with despair. How is it possible for people like Barton to have positions with so much power and influence?

Going Down The Road

If the road to hell is paved with good intentions, then where does the road paved with bad intentions lead to?

An Unbeautiful Mind

Is Joe Barton trying to compete with Doug Feith for the title of "the dumbest fucking guy on the planet"?


Barton’s youtube site describes this as “Energy Secretary puzzled by simple question” and “When Rep. Joe Barton asked the Nobel Prize winning Energy Secretary, Dr. Steven Chu, where oil comes from - he got a puzzling answer.”

Yes, all of this is from Barton’s own site, as if he is proud of all of this.

Texas sure knows how to pick the brilliant ones.

I shudder to think what the Republicans will come up with next.

Update:
Barton is all atwitter about this.

Update:
Barton has now disabled comments at his youtube site. Wonder why he did that? Will it be long before he pulls the video as well?

Happy Earth Day

Make the world a better place. Disobey God. Do not go forth and multiply. Disobey the pope, use a condom. Less people means more earth.