The Hackenblog

“WASHINGTON - A U.S. military officer warned Pentagon officials that an American detainee was being driven nearly insane by months of punishing isolation and sensory deprivation in a U.S. military brig, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press.

“While the treatment of prisoners at detention facilities at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and in Afghanistan and Iraq have long been the subject of human rights complaints and court scrutiny, the documents shed new light on how two American citizens and a legal U.S. resident were treated in military jails inside the United States.

“The Bush administration ordered the men to be held in military jails as “enemy combatants” for years of interrogations without criminal charges, which would not have been allowed in civilian jails.”

~snip~

“The 91 pages of e-mails and documents produced by U.S. Fleet Forces Command, which runs the military brigs in Norfolk, Va., and Charleston, S.C., detail daily decisions made about the treatment of Hamdi and Padilla, then both American citizens, and Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri, a legal resident. All were designated as by the White House as ‘illegal enemy combatants.’

The White House just threw these men in jail forever, tortured them, and took away their legal rights and the White House got away with it. What country do we live in now?

“The paperwork show uniformed officials at the military brigs growing increasingly uncomfortable and then alarmed that they were being directed to handle their prisoners under the rules that governed Guantanamo.

“The authors and recipients of the e-mails are censored from the documents. They appear to be going to either military or Pentagon legal counsel and policy offices.

“The documents show that some officials at the Charleston brig were deeply skeptical about the mandate that Guantanamo rules should apply in the United States, a decision made by the defense secretary’s office, according to the documents.

“‘You have every right to question the “lash-up” between GTMO and Charleston — it was the first thing I ask (sic) about a year ago when I checked on board,” wrote one official to another in 2006. “In a nutshell, they gave the Charleston detainee mission to (Joint Forces Command) who promptly gave it to (Fleet Forces Command) with a ‘lots of luck’ and nothing else.’”
Documents say detainee pushed near insanity. Light shed on how prisoners were treated in military brigs inside U.S., MSNBC, October 7, 2008

We are better than the past eight years. At least I hope so. Let’s prove it in November by electing Barack Obama President of the United States.

“LONDON (Reuters) - Taliban leader Mullah Omar on Monday urged U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan to withdraw or face a similar defeat to occupying Soviet troops a generation ago.

“In a rare message, posted on militant websites and monitored by the U.S.-based SITE intelligence group, Omar offered a bargain to the U.S.-led forces that drove the Taliban from power in 2001 but are now fighting a fierce insurgency by the Islamist militia.

“‘Reconsider your wrong decision of wrong occupation, and seek a safe exit to withdraw your forces,’ said the message, which the Taliban said came from Omar.

“‘If you leave our lands, we can arrange for you a reasonable opportunity for your departure,’ he said, adding that the Taliban posed no harm to anyone in the world.”
Taliban’s Omar offers deal to U.S. on withdrawal, Reuters, September 29, 2008

Haven’t we been looking for this guy as long as we’ve been looking for his son-in-law? And he just pops up and sends us a message? Weird. Even for me, this is weird.

“Citing sources within the aviation industry, ABC News reports an overzealous TSA employee attempted to gain access to the parked aircraft by climbing up the fuselage… reportedly using the Total Air Temperature (TAT) probes mounted to the planes’ noses as handholds.

“‘The brilliant employees used an instrument located just below the cockpit window that is critical to the operation of the onboard computers,’ one pilot wrote on an American Eagle internet forum. “They decided this instrument, the TAT probe, would be adequate to use as a ladder.’

“Officials with American Eagle confirmed to ANN the problem was discovered by maintenance personnel, who inspected the planes Tuesday morning… and questioned why the TAT probes all gave similar error indications.

“One Eagle pilot says had the pilots not been so attentive, the damaged probes could have caused problems inflight. TSA agents “are now doing things to our aircraft that may put our lives, and the lives of our passengers at risk,” the pilot wrote on the forum.”

~snip~

“The TSA has NO BUSINESS putting untrained personnel in a position to damage aircraft. Their bizarre games, in the name of security, do NOTHING to enhance security and do much to inhibit safety. Aviation personnel — pilots, A&P’s, ground personnel — are all either licensed or supervised by licensed personnel and this kind of tampering, had it been accomplished by anyone else, would have subjected that person to criminal charges.

“In this case, ANN strongly recommends and encourages the criminal prosecution of this so-called inspector and his immediate supervisors… it is a matter of time before one of these morons does something stupid and gets someone killed… and with the way these incidents are occurring, we believe it is a virtual certainty that a TSA ‘Inpector’ will hurt or kill someone in such a manner. No kidding.

“A few other notes.. ANN spoke directly to the TSA PAO in this story, Elio Montenegro… a man who desperately needs to get his stories straight. When ANN talked to him early Tuesday evening, Montenegro first stated that no aircraft were tampered with, and thereafter attempted to minimize the issue by stating that a TSA Inspector “may have touched” the aircraft… which American Eagle ’sorta’ objected to. He claimed that there was no attempt to enter the aircraft, and when he was asked if TSA was, in fact, authorized to attempt such an entry — out of the sight/knowledge/supervision of American Eagle personnel — he said that he thought that I had asked a good question, did not know the answer, and promised to get back to me… in direct conflict with other reported statements. TSA can not keep their stories straight… and lying to the media… especially that part of the media that actually knows a thing or two about airplanes, was just plain foolish… if not a deliberate attempt to mislead.”
Commuter Flights Grounded Thanks To Bumbling TSA Inspector, Aero News Net, August 20, 2008 (via the indispensable B12 Partners)

Isn’t this Inspector a terrorist for tampering with aircraft? Just asking.

No wonder everyone hates to fly now.

Where has Dr. Aafia Siddiqui been for the past five years? And what’s been happening to her?

“On August 5, US newspapers carried the story of the capture of Dr. Aafia Siddiqui, a Pakistani woman who was trained in neuroscience here in the United States. Typical of the stories was this one in the NY Times. The report was fairly neutral, but there were some gaps in the coverage which seemed a little puzzling. Dr. Siddiqui was brought back to the US and charged in a New York federal district court for the crime of shooting at FBI agents. There was no other terrorism related charge, yet she was identified as someone who worked closely with Al Qaeda. Rather curious, don’t you think?

~snip~

“‘Ridley has been running a campaign called Cage Prisoner for the release of a mysterious female prisoner who has been held at the Bagram airbase in Afghanistan in total isolation and regularly tortured for five years.

“‘The unknown female prisoner, known as the Prisoner No. 650 or the Grey Lady of Bagram, was brought to the world attention after Ridley read about the woman in a book by fellow Briton Moazzam Begg, a former Gitmo and Bagram prisoner. In his book, Enemy Combatant, Beg talks of a woman’s endless screams for help as she was tortured. Beg first thought he was imagining his wife’s screams.

“‘”We now know the screams came from a woman who has been held in Bagram for some years. And she is Prisoner No. 650,” Ridley disclosed at a recent Press conference in Pakistan.

“‘And I strongly suspect that Prisoner No. 650 is none other than Dr Aafia Siddiqui. It is quite possible that her captors decided to end her isolation after the Pakistani Press and activists like Yvonne Ridley began increasingly talking about the Prisoner No. 650 and how she was tortured and abused physically, mentally and sexually for the past four years.’”
A New Low, Cab Drollery, August 17, 2008 (via)

A new low does not begin to describe five years of torture under the aegis of the United States. What the hell is going on here? Please read the whole post and spread the word about this. My hands are shaking too much to write more about it.

Update 091808: Aafia Siddiqui’s Son has been detained, but no one know what happened to him for the past three years in Afghanistan either. This situation gets more disturbing with every new piece of information, but we need to know how bad it was and punish whoever is responsible, which might be the United States government.

“NEW YORK - How mud-wallowingly deep may a multi-millionaire US presidential campaign go? Way deep - deeper and deeper. And this is only early August.

“Republican Senator John McCain’s presidential campaign’s strategic decision is now all too obvious. Swift-boating Democratic Senator Barack Obama is the only way to go.

“The McCain-painted Obama is emerging as a US-hating, terrorist-friendly, deeply suspicious, radical, vapid black celeb - Puff Daddy with a Harvard degree. This “new bogeyman” picture travels well in those vast swathes of flyover US territory where urban hipness not only evokes envy and contempt but is regarded as a mortal sin.

“The McCain campaign knows that is the only chance in heaven and hell for their candidate in November. What can a strategist do when US voters desperately want change and reject the Republican brand in droves, your candidate is senile and insufferably boring, knows absolutely zilch about the economy, and supports a mega-unpopular war?

“So abandon all hope those who yearn for a serious political debate in the US. And it gets worse: signs are the McCain campaign ’strategy’ is working.”
Old Wrinkly’s Roverian cancer, by Pepe Escobar, Asia Times, August 8, 2008

“‘California’s largest union local and a related charity have paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to firms owned by the wife and mother-in-law of the labor organization’s president, documents and interviews show.

“‘The Los Angeles-based union, which represents low-wage caregivers, also spent nearly $300,000 last year on a Four Seasons Resorts golf tournament, a Beverly Hills cigar club, restaurants such as Morton’s steakhouse and a consulting contract with the William Morris Agency, the Hollywood talent shop, records show.

“‘In addition, the union paid six figures to a video firm whose principals include a former union employee. And a now-defunct minor league basketball team coached by the president’s brother-in-law received $16,000 for what the union described as public relations, according to the union’s U.S. Labor Department filings and interviews.’” (LAT, 08/09/08)

“Labor unions constantly have to battle the usually false perception that they misuse funds, and face a well-funded right-wing campaign that seeks to undermine unions for even the slightest error. Most unions, including those I’ve been a part of, are very scrupulous about how they use money to avoid even the appearance of impropriety, so I am very surprised to hear that this was going on.”
SEIU Local 6434 Faces Financial Criticism, by Robert in Monterey, Caltics, August 9, 2008

Jesus, first that crazy chickie Cindy Montanez, now this! What next? A plague of frogs? Locusts? Fiery hail? An earthquake? Oh wait, we just had one of those. I was on the freeway so didn’t even notice. I’m talking about the earthquake, yes.

Shape up LA. I’m starting to feel kind of embarrassed.

Honestly! If you really want to know what’s going on in the world, you have to read the Asia Times.

“GORI, Georgia (Reuters) - Georgia called for a ceasefire on Saturday after Russian bombers widened an offensive to force back Georgian troops seeking control over the breakaway region of South Ossetia.

“President George W. Bush said Russian attacks on Georgia marked a ‘dangerous escalation’ of the crisis and urged Moscow to halt the bombing immediately.

“Russian President Dmitry Medvedev told Bush the only solution was for Georgian troops to quit the conflict zone.”
Georgia calls for ceasefire in South Ossetia, by Matt Robinson, Reuters, August 9, 2008

Well, this is horrible, and here’s some background you might have missed:

Don’t panic, this is from 2002:

“As Georgian troops began their ‘anti-terrorist’ operation in the Pankissy Valley last week, an alleged Russian air strike against a village in the valley made Georgian-Russian uneasy relations dangerously hostile. In reference to the incident, Georgian President Edward Sheverdnadzhe demanded an apology from Russia to normalize damaged relations, while the Georgian ambassador to the United Nations accused that country of state terrorism. The sudden escalation of hostility between the two neighboring countries reflects the growing sense of insecurity of Russia since the deployment of American “military advisers” in Georgia. It also indicated Georgia’s increasing boldness in its relations with Russia, stemming from its expanding military relations with the United States, a growing power in the Caucasus and Central Asia.”
Georgia and Russia square off, by Hooman Peimani, Asia Times, September 3, 2002

But closer to the present…

“The Caucasus Republic of Georgia, as nations go, is not apparently a major global player. Yet Washington has invested huge sums and organized to put its own despot, Mikhail Saakashvili, in the presidency in order to close a nuclear North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) iron ring around Russia.

“US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visited the capital Tbilisi and made sharp statements against Moscow for supporting the separatist Georgian states of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, in essence blaming Moscow for an imminent war Washington has incited in order to bring Georgia into NATO by the December NATO summit.”

~snip~

” The underlying issue is the fact that since the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact in 1991, one after the other former members as well as former states of the USSR have been coaxed and in many cases bribed with false promises by Washington into joining the counter organization, NATO.”

~snip~

“Although the United States has trained several crack Georgian units in the past few years, the fighting effectiveness of all other elements is uncertain. There are no trained sergeants, and troop morale is running low. Only about 50% of the military equipment is operational, and coordinated operations in adverse conditions are impossible.”

~Ah, but here’s the crux of the matter:~

“However, Georgia under Washington’s man, strongman President Mikhail Saakashvili - a pretty ruthless dictator as he recently showed against domestic opposition - refuses to back off its provocative NATO bid.

“Georgia is also a strategic transit country for the Anglo-American Caspian oil pipeline from Baku in Azerbaijan through Georgia to the Turkish port of Ceyhan. As well, the Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum gas pipeline has been key to Azerbaijan as an alternative to the control of the Russian state monopoly Transneft in order to convey its oil and gas resources toward the West. The entire Caucasus is part of what can be described as a new Great Game for control of Eurasia between Washington and Russia.

“As the Moscow Times sees it, ‘One way to disrupt Georgia’s NATO aspirations would be to heat up the conflict in Abkhazia to a level that would make it unacceptable for the Western alliance, which acts by the consensus of all members, to offer membership. Georgia’s leadership could be escalating tensions in hope of prompting Abkhazia and Russia to make a move that would leave the West with no chance but to intervene.”
A war waiting to happen, by William Engdahl, Asia Times, July 16, 2008

Where there’s oil, there’s trouble.

And also:

“Last week, the gloves finally came off the Dmitry Medvedev presidency in Russia. It had to happen sooner or later, but few would have expected this soon. It was crystal clear US President George W Bush administered a diplomatic snub to Medvedev on the sidelines of the Group of Eight (G-8) summit meeting at Hokkaido, Japan.

“Bush characterized him patronizingly as a ’sharp guy’ soon after they met in Hokkaido on July 9, but that was after making sure Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice proceeded to Prague and signed a deal just the previous day to install a US radar system as part of its missile defense system in Central Europe.

“If Medvedev’s core mission in Hokkaido was to underscore Russia’s growing role in the world arena as a power with which the West has to contend, Bush acted as if he couldn’t care. The US was also plainly dismissive of Medvedev’s proposal at the G-8 for a pan-European security system that would include Russia. Medvedev expressed his ‘dismay’ on hearing about the Prague deal. As if to rub in the snub, Rice proceeded from Prague to Bulgaria, where the US has for the first time established a military base, and then on to Georgia to discuss its plans of joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

“While in Tbilisi, she called for international mediation to stop violence spilling over in Georgia’s beakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abhkazia, which have been sources of rising tensions, with Georgia accusing Russia of trying to annex the regions. To carry matters further, the US began a joint military exercise with Georgia codenamed Immediate Response 2008, near Tbilisi, which will continue through the month of July.”
Russia’s energy drive leaves US reeling, by M K Bhadrakumar, Asia Times, July 19, 2008

And any secret deals or promises of aid from the bush administration to Georgia are out the window. Or should be, but bush might be like his dad and leave a Somalia-like mess for his successor. Poor, Georgia. They just didn’t know not to go out on a limb during an election year. Because whether the U.S. intervenes or not, lots of people are going to die and none of them will be named Bush or Cheney.

Why do the Republicans need the Cold War so much? Why? I thought they wanted it gone more than life itself. And yet they’re doing everything they can to resurrect it. Obviously the U.S. needs more conflict so the bush mafias can rule through fear. They sure can’t govern through consent worth a damn.

(Whew…blogging like this really wears me out. No wonder I don’t do it anymore.)

Now Edwards:

“WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Former U.S. Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards has admitted to having had an extramarital affair with a woman he met in a New York City bar in 2006, ABC News reported on Friday.

“ABC said an interview with Edwards would be broadcast later on Friday on the network’s show ‘Nightline.’

“According to the ABC News Internet site, ‘Edwards told ABC News correspondent Bob Woodruff he did have an affair with 44-year-old Rielle Hunter, but said that he did not love her.’”
John Edwards admits affair, Reuters, August 8, 2008

Why are men so stupid? Even the ones that seem like good guys. And cruel, John, you cheated your wife, who had and still has breast cancer, so it’s cruel squared. Why? Jerk.

Or why don’t you guys just pick a better class of women to cheat with? You, too, Bill.

“On Monday, the first American war crimes trial in since World War II opened at Guantanamo, the United States presenting its case against Salim Ahmed Hamdan before a jury of US military officers. Hamdan, who at the time of 9/11 was Osama bin Laden’s driver, is charged with conspiracy and providing material support for terrorism. Two surface-to-air missiles were found in a car he was driving – he says it was a borrowed vehicle and that he had no idea what was in the trunk. The judge has thrown out confessions Hamdan made in Afghanistan after his capture. ‘The interests of justice are not served by admitting these statements,’ the judge said, ‘because of the highly coercive environments and conditions under which they were made.’ Hamdan was bound for long periods of time, with a bag over his head.

“You will know us by the company we keep. The burners of witches and the medieval masters of thumbscrews and Iron Maidens, the interrogators of the Spanish inquisition, the North Vietnamese soldiers who beat John McCain and his fellow American prisoners of war into false confessions. We have joined their ranks. In the almost seven years since 9/11, we have countered terror not only with vigilance and war but fear, imprisonment without due process and yes, torture.

“Torture is no more about learning the truth than rape is about sex. Both are about the violent abuse of power.”
Michael Winship: The Company We Keep, Bill Moyers Blog, July 28, 2008

It ain’t right. It just ain’t right.

I loathe American irony, but I found this apt:

Voter Registration in all 50 States. Ginger doesn’t want to hear you didn’t know how to register to vote. She knows baby is muuuuuch smarter than that.

This sounds more like Dee Patterson is making a case for divorce. I know For Better or For Worse is supposed to be some kind of paean to marriage and family but I’ve never seen it that way. Reading FBOFW has always been looking at a car accident I missed.

Full disclosure: I do know some happily married het and gay families, I am not anti-family or anti-child or anti-love, but FBOFW just takes all the joy out of it for me and I can’t imagine any kids reading this would think the trapped creepy hopeless, but financially secure blandness of the Patterson milieu is at all desirable. Foxtrot, Jump Start, Calvin and Hobbes, Zits, Kevin and Kell, and Rose is Rose do a much better job of making growing up, loving, and having a family much more fun than FBOFW. I suspect Lynn Johnson wants her readers to know that successful het society is a very exclusive club and they’ll have to earn their happiness if they want to be like her. But, hey lady, even I know there’s more joy in growing up, loving, and having a family than the Pattersons make of it. FBOFW does to relationships what Mary Worth does for growing old: they make them suck more than they really do.

“Finally, there are the “Tier 3″ sex workers, who can charge in excess of $10,000 per rendezvous. They may have only four or five clients, and they typically charge their clients an additional monthly surcharge for their various needs—rent, clothing, medicine.

“Both Tier 2 and Tier 3 workers can typically do more to safeguard a client’s privacy. There are no guarantees, of course, but they tend to shun contractual relationships with agencies that advertise their services. There is less of a paper trail. They typically will only take a john via a referral, and even then, they may require that the john ‘date’ them for weeks before deciding to offer up sex. I have heard of Tier 2 and 3 sex workers who vet prospective clients for months, sometimes hiring a private detective to see if the john is stable—psychologically and financially. As a former attorney general, Spitzer must have known all this.

“What high-end clients pay for may surprise you. For example, according to my ongoing interviews of several hundred sex workers, approximately 40 percent of trades in New York’s sex economy fail to include a physical act beyond light petting or kissing. No intercourse, no oral stimulation, etc. That’s one helluva conversation. But it’s what many clients want. Flush with cash, these elite men routinely turn their prostitute into a second partner or spouse. Over the course of a year, they will sometimes persuade the woman to take on a new identity, replete with a fake name, a fake job, a fake life history, and so on. They may want to have sex or they may simply want to be treated like King for a Day.”
Skinflint, by Sudhir Venkatesh, Slate, March 12, 2008

I mean, wtf? guys? I hate to tell you this but there’s more to life than your dick and you ego.

And Spitzer, you threw away your chance to make the world a better place. You, your dick and your ego can rot in hell as far as I’m concerned.

And, sisters, $10K a month to prop up some guy’s ego and maybe blow him? Advantage capitalism. Christ. I know women who work two jobs for the luxury of doing that. Oh, but they’re in love, so that’s different.

How lucky I found this, too!

Fablog and YouTube.

Hmmm.

Yeah, I’m shocked, too.

“Economists teach that if the economy is going into a recession, lower interest rates and give people money. That wisdom is so conventional that the only quibbling seems to be over timing, amount, and who gets the money.

“But this recession has one very special feature: Never in history have we hit a recession with the American consumer so loaded down with debt. Shouldn’t that cause someone to pause before concluding that more consumer spending is the way out of this hole?”

~snip~

“There’s another implication to this huge debt load: interest. Interest operates just like a tax–it has to be paid month after month, in good times and in bad. Unlike a tax, however, interest isn’t calculated on something good like income; it is calculated on debt loads. For the average family carrying credit card debt, interest payments alone have become a more significant household expenditure.

“In 2006, credit card companies collected about $90 billion from American families in interest, fees, late fees, penalties and the like. That’s $90 billion that didn’t go to buying socks or movie tickets or Big Macs. The American consumer can’t keep it up.”
Same Solutions, Different Problems, by Elizabeth Warren, Credit Slips, January 27, 2008

Dan Savage goes down to South Carolina and lives!

Cognitive dissonance anyone? Are there enough voters like this in the country to get Huckabee elected? This is scarier than anything I can think of right now. Of course, I haven’t had any coffee yet, so I might be back later with something more horrifying.

Thanks, Logan, I needed this.

Oh, man, ya gotta love Dan Savage! And we did at J LHLS in this 2003 interview. Did it all seem so much simpler then? Or was it just not an election year?

“Two ninth-grade girls at Newport Harbor High have been arrested in connection with the beating of a girl from a nearby intermediate school, a video of which was posted online at MySpace.com and YouTube.com.

“Earlier reports indicated the 13-year-old assault victim was developmentally disabled. But police said Wednesday that was not the case and the victim was an eighth-grader at Ensign Intermediate, across the street from the high school.

“Police said the victim was ‘dragged by her hair, spit on, kicked and punched’ Jan. 10 at a park near the two campuses. School district officials said the victim ’suffered some bruises, abrasions and cuts’ but was not hospitalized and was back in school after missing one day. The two 14-year-old girls were arrested Tuesday and taken to Orange County Juvenile Hall, where they are being held on suspicion of conspiracy to commit assault with a deadly weapon. Their names have not been released because they are minors.
(more…)

“A young man arrested in the deaths of two teenagers at a Mojave Desert bunker had posed with firearms and written darkly on an Internet blogging site of ‘killing people at random’ but had no clear motive for the shootings, authorities said Friday.

“Collin Lee McGlaughlin, 18, of West Covina was arrested Thursday night on suspicion of killing Bodhisattva Sherzer-Potter, 16, of Silver Lakes and her boyfriend, Christopher Cody Thompson, 18, of Apple Valley. A second suspect, David Brian Smith, 19, of Covina, also has been booked on suspicion of murder, according to the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department.
(more…)

Does this (video on right) seem wrong to anyone else?

Via new dad supremo Mr. Dan Kelly.

Even if it’s Hillary, even though Bill recently said the US should leave some troops in Iraq to protect the Kurds from the Turks (also here), which is one the worst ideas I’ve heard in a long time. Nothing against the Kurds or Turks, but I’d rather leave diplomats and NGO aid and development agencies and money we can more or less keep track of there and work with the rest of the world on it. I mean, hopefully next year and beyond, the US can become a country in the world and not a world in a country.

However, if a Republican is inaugurated next year, we can just kiss everything that matters good-bye anyway:

“The religious right—in the form of its umbrella organization the Arlington Group, formed in 2002—is certainly split and unenthusiastic about the presidential candidates. Pat Robertson has endorsed Giuliani; Richard Land, the head of the Southern Baptist Convention, has said he could never vote for Giuliani and would consider backing a third-party candidate if Giuliani is nominated. So the unanimity on Bush’s behalf we saw in 2000 and in 2004 will likely be gone. But as far as policy is concerned, the Christian right has only one overriding goal: a promise from candidates that they’ll appoint ’strict constructionist’ judges. And every one of the candidates, Giuliani included, has made that promise resoundingly and repeatedly, in public and presumably in private. As recently as November, Giuliani told the conservative Federalist Society that ‘we need judges who embrace originalism’ and vowed that he would appoint justices in the mold of Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.[8]

“That, above all, is what the Christian right needs to hear. It is well worth remembering that when the next president is sworn in, John Paul Stevens will be three months shy of his eighty-ninth birthday. It seems unlikely that he would be able to outlast a Giuliani or Romney or Huckabee or McCain presidency. One more judge like John Roberts or Samuel Alito will mean not only the probable end of Roe v. Wade but of affirmative action (sharply curtailed already), efforts at school desegregation (school systems have resegregated to a surprising extent in recent years), and many other progressive social goals. All of the four major Republican candidates have vowed to see to these outcomes. Paradoxically, the personally pro-choice Giuliani, if elected, could go down in history as a hero to the Christian right—the president who finally ended Roe—in a way that even Ronald Reagan has not.”
How the Republicans Have Become Prisoner of Their Own Ideology, Naked Capitalism, December 29, 2007

Gah! C’mon, Dems! It’s crunch time! (It has been for awhile, but that’s moot now.)

Huckabee’s son
was packing a gun.
A carry-on Glock
at Little Rock
airport.
Huckabee’s Son Arrested With Gun at Little Rock Airport, AP on FoxNews, April 26, 2007 (via Jill at Skippy’s)

Mad Kane is so much better at this than I am. Really.

(Wow this story is old. Anyway. These stories have a bad habit of disappearing, so there’s a pdf of it here.)

“For many, (Michael Stephen) Baker came to symbolize the church’s failure in protecting its most vulnerable parishioners: He was a man who allegedly molested more than 20 youngsters in his 26 years as a priest and had confessed his problem to Cardinal Roger Mahony in 1986. Instead of alerting police, Mahony sent Baker to a treatment center in New Mexico and later reassigned him to serve at nine other parishes where he victimized other young boys.

“And, when authorities sought records from the church to help build a case against Baker, church officials vigorously fought to keep that information secret.”

~snip~

“Among the more than 500 alleged victims and 200 clergy members accused of misconduct, Baker’s case was the one Mahony has said ‘troubles’ him the most.”
Notorious ex-priest pleads guilty to molestation. Michael Stephen Baker, left, allegedly molested more than 20 youngsters in his 26 years as a priest, by John Spano, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer, 3:01 PM PST, December 3, 2007

I think this should trouble Cardinal Mahony very much. I think this makes Cardinal Mahony an accessory before and after the fact. Don’t we have laws about aiding and abetting child molestation in our civilized nation? Or do they just not apply to white men who wear dresses to work?

Goddammit.

“One common assumption about the subprime mortgage crisis is that it revolves around borrowers with sketchy credit who couldn’t have bought a home without paying punitively high interest rates. But it turns out that plenty of people with seemingly good credit are also caught in the subprime trap.

“An analysis for The Wall Street Journal of more than $2.5 trillion in subprime loans made since 2000 shows that as the number of subprime loans mushroomed, an increasing proportion of them went to people with credit scores high enough to often qualify for conventional loans with far better terms.

“In 2005, the peak year of the subprime boom, the study says that borrowers with such credit scores got more than half — 55% — of all subprime mortgages that were ultimately packaged into securities for sale to investors, as most subprime loans are. The study by First American LoanPerformance, a San Francisco research firm, says the proportion rose even higher by the end of 2006, to 61%. The figure was just 41% in 2000, according to the study. Even a significant number of borrowers with top-notch credit signed up for expensive subprime loans, the firm’s analysis found.”
Subprime Debacle Traps Even Very Credit-Worthy, By Rick Brooks and Ruth Simon, WJS online, December 3, 2007 (via Dr. Kruguman via Dr. Delong)

I would say buyer beware, except I’ve been talked into bad deals my own self.

Okay, let’s bail ‘em all out. 60 year mortgages for everyone who wants one!

And while I have you, when did bankers get so stupid? The greed thing I can sort of understand, some people call it market capitalism, but the stupidity part puzzles me.

If I’m going to read this mess, by Elvis, I’m going to blog some of it. Proceed at your own risk:

(more…)

“It was Keynes, too, who anticipated and helped prepare for the ‘craving for security’ that Europeans would feel after the three decades of war and economic collapse that followed the end of the Gilded Age. Thanks in large measure to the state-provided public services and safety nets incorporated into their postwar systems of governance, the citizens of the advanced countries lost the gnawing sense of insecurity and fear that had dominated and polarized political life from 1914 through the early Fifties and which was largely responsible for the appeal of both fascism and communism in those years.

“But we have good reason to believe that this may be about to change. Fear is reemerging as an active ingredient of political life in Western democracies. Fear of terrorism, of course; but also, and perhaps more insidiously, fear of the uncontrollable speed of change, fear of the loss of employment, fear of losing ground to others in an increasingly unequal distribution of resources, fear of losing control of the circumstances and routines of one’s daily life. And, perhaps above all, fear that it is not just we who can no longer shape our lives but that those in authority have lost control as well, to forces beyond their reach.”
The Wrecking Ball of Innovation, a review of Supercapitalism: The Transformation of Business, Democracy, and Everyday Life, by Robert B. Reich. Review by Tony Judt, NYT Review of Books, December 6, 2007

This isn’t an easy read, but I highly recommend it. Not only are we living in interesting times, we’re living in vicious times, too.

I’ve always liked and respected Robert Reich, but after I read his first post-Clinton book, I could not help but think he was something of a lamb among wolves, or maybe just Border Collies with OCD, in the Clinton administration. This review doesn’t change my opinion.

“In the early 1980s, Gray, who teaches European thought at the London School of Economics, was the most capable defender of Friedrich von Hayek as a social philosopher rather than just a propagandist for free-market policy. But he later became decidedly critical of any notion that the future belonged to liberal democracy. In 1989, as the Soviet Union was reforming itself out of existence, he wrote that this would not inaugurate ‘a new era of post-historical harmony’ but rather ‘a return to the classical terrain of history, a terrain of great-power rivalries, secret diplomacies, and irredentist claims and wars.’ Over the following decade, he advanced a critique of globalization that sounded, at times, profoundly anticapitalist, if by no means Marxian.

“Such an ideological itinerary seems like a calculated effort to lose friends. But whatever its twists and turns, Gray’s thought has in fact been remarkably consistent, with his journalistic writings simply framing, in the most provocative possible way, theses that have accumulated in more sedate works like ‘Enlightenment’s Wake’ (1995) and ‘Two Faces of Liberalism’ (2000). His latest book, ‘Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia,’ treats fundamentalist Islam and Western triumphalism as similar and related phenomena. This argument revisits themes Gray developed in ‘Straw Dogs,’ a volume of pensées originally published in 2002 and now reissued in paperback by Farrar, Straus & Giroux.

“‘Humanity’ does not exist,’ he announced in ‘Straw Dogs.’ ‘There are only humans, driven by conflicting needs and illusions, and subject to every kind of infirmity of will and judgment.’ This may be the key to all of Gray’s thought, and it is no accident that he echoes Margaret Thatcher’s famous statement that there is no such thing as society. (As she put it, ‘there are individual men and women, and there are families’ — but nothing else.) The irreducible plurality of human ‘needs and illusions,’ Gray argues, means it is utopian to imagine that any single kind of political or social order could ever be good for everyone. ‘If there is such a thing as spontaneous social evolution,’ he writes in ‘Black Mass,’ ‘it produces institutions of many kinds.’

“Alas, conservatives have completely lost track of this crucial point, at least by Gray’s lights, which is why ‘traditional conservatism ceased to exist’ at some point over the last few decades. What has emerged instead is a faith that the marketplace and the values of liberal society are universal in principle, if not yet in geographical distribution. Resistance is futile. And if people in benighted lands resist anyway, the use of military power can force the pace of progress.”
What Price Utopia?, by Scott McLemee, NY Times, November 25, 2007

Progress? What progress?

There has got to be a better way to fight the war on terror:

“In the UK:

“A man who had gone into a diabetic coma on a bus in Leeds was shot twice with a Taser gun by police who feared he may have been a security threat.

“In Maine:

“A powdered substance that led to a baggage claim being shut down for nearly six hours at the Portland International Jetport was a mixture of flour and sugar, airport officials said Thursday.

“Fear is winning. Refuse to be terrorized, people.”
More war on the unexpected, Bruce Schneier, November 22, 2007 (Original War on the unexpected post)

“I’d like everyone to take a deep breath and listen for a minute.

“The point of terrorism is to cause terror, sometimes to further a political goal and sometimes out of sheer hatred. The people terrorists kill are not the targets; they are collateral damage. And blowing up planes, trains, markets or buses is not the goal; those are just tactics. The real targets of terrorism are the rest of us: the billions of us who are not killed but are terrorized because of the killing. The real point of terrorism is not the act itself, but our reaction to the act.

“And we’re doing exactly what the terrorists want.

“We’re all a little jumpy after the recent arrest of 23 terror suspects in Great Britain. The men were reportedly plotting a liquid-explosive attack on airplanes, and both the press and politicians have been trumpeting the story ever since.

“In truth, it’s doubtful that their plan would have succeeded; chemists have been debunking the idea since it became public. Certainly the suspects were a long way off from trying: None had bought airline tickets, and some didn’t even have passports.

“Regardless of the threat, from the would-be bombers’ perspective, the explosives and planes were merely tactics. Their goal was to cause terror, and in that they’ve succeeded.

“Imagine for a moment what would have happened if they had blown up 10 planes. There would be canceled flights, chaos at airports, bans on carry-on luggage, world leaders talking tough new security measures, political posturing and all sorts of false alarms as jittery people panicked. To a lesser degree, that’s basically what’s happening right now.

“Our politicians help the terrorists every time they use fear as a campaign tactic. The press helps every time it writes scare stories about the plot and the threat. And if we’re terrified, and we share that fear, we help. All of these actions intensify and repeat the terrorists’ actions, and increase the effects of their terror.”
What the Terrorists Want, Bruce Schneier, August 24, 2006

A man who had gone into a diabetic coma on a bus in Leeds was shot twice with a Taser gun by police who feared he may have been a security threat.

They tasered an unconscious guy? WTF?

When most 14-year olds are worried about their grades, Antionio Nunez must be living every waking moment in utter terror:

“The issue is being litigated in court. Last March, two criminal defense lawyers filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus in the California Supreme Court challenging the sentencing of Antonio Nunez, who is serving life without parole after being convicted of kidnapping and attempted murder in 2003.

“Nunez, who was 14 when the 2001 crimes occurred, was riding in the car of a 27-year-old man he had met at a party. The man offered him a ride home, and on the way kidnapped another man and then negotiated with the man’s brother for ransom.

“‘Nunez’s case is the only known case nationwide in which a 14-year-old was sentenced to die in prison for his involvement in a single incident in which no one was injured,’ according to the petition filed by attorneys Bryan A. Stevenson of Montgomery, Ala., and Jack M. Earley of Irvine. They contend that the sentence violates the Eighth Amendment prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.

“The California attorney general’s office recently filed papers opposing Nunez’ release and the California Supreme Court may might hear the case next year.”
California a leader in number of youths in prison for life. The state has 227 inmates serving such sentences for crimes committed before they were 18, a new study says, by Henry Weinstein, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer, November 19, 2007

Nunez’s case is the only known case nationwide in which a 14-year-old was sentenced to die in prison for his involvement in a single incident in which no one was injured…

Are we fucking insane doing this to a 14-year old child? God, I’m disgusted with California sometimes. Hey, Jerry Brown, CA AG, this is your big chance to do the right thing. I was wondering where you were and what you were doing lately.

So these thoughts will be out here and not in my head anymore:

Waterboarding is torture.

How is this or any kind of torture acceptable to the country the United States likes to think it is?

Not unlike historical waterboarding:

And also:

“Illustration from A Popular History of the United States by William Cullen Bryant. New York, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1896. One ‘foolproof’ way to establish whether a suspect was a witch was ducking. With right thumb bound to left toe, the accused was plunged into a convenient pond. If he or she floated, it proved an association with the black arts, with the body rejecting the baptismal water. If the victim drowned, he or she was innocent. A ducking stool or diving chair was also used in America for witches.”
Hawthorne in Salem

And, at the very end of this clip, some cinema waterboarding:

As I recall, the waterboarding at the end of this clip goes on longer, like forever, it was terrible to watch. But I was lucky, I couldn’t find the full clip, however, if anyone can point me to it, I will add it to my collection of torture horrors. Dig those tidy uniforms.

Thank you for your attention.

“A long-simmering dispute about whether a leading engineering organization whitewashed the role of the Army Corps of Engineers in the failure of the levee system during Hurricane Katrina has broken into the open with a bitter YouTube spoof and a demand for an ethics investigation of the organization’s staff.”
Engineer group not amused by online spoof of levee review, by Mark Schleifstein and Sheila Grissett, The Times-Picayune, November 13, 2007

Whoo-hoo!

And Levees.org.