When Demonization Fails

For 30 years, Democrats were at the mercy of GOP demonization. Even when dems didn't literally faint and cower in a corner, whimpering, whenever repugs called them liberals, the effect was the same.

Democrats lost the White House, the Senate, the House, the states to repugs who couldn't recognize a Constitutional principle or articulate a rational policy to save their lives.

Even Bill Clinton survived only because he pacified the repugs by sacrificing the middle class to the piranhas of Wall Street.

Yes, Barack Obama was a once-in-a-century candidate, but the repugs are caught in feedback loop of self-destruction because they finally took demonization too far.

Steve M. explains:

Why was the GOP hit with an electoral backlash? It wasn't social issues per se. It was the ratcheting up of the entire GOP culture of demonization. Or actually it wasn't even that -- it was the ratcheting up of that demonization even as the broad public became increasingly skeptical about whether the GOP's top demons were really so scary.

The GOP failed the demonization smell test over and over again. Straight people on Main Street U.S.A. began to meet more and more out gay people and started wondering what the hell harm could come to them if gay people were allowed to marry. Barack Obama turned out to be not a scary Mau-Mauing monster, but the most reasonable-seeming guy on earth. Saddam Hussein turned out not to have WMDs. Protesters against the Iraq War didn't burn flags or spit on troops or engage in '60s-style terrorism (and turned out to be right). Rosie O'Donnell and Barbra Streisand and the Dixie Chicks never seized control of the country.

And the demonizers themselves, handed power, actually turned out to be the menace they said all kinds of other people were. They screwed up the economy and foreign policy and Katrina and everything else they touched.

So, no, it wasn't a fixation on social issues, in and of itself, that brought the GOP to ruin. It was the general public's sense that the GOP had a lot of the wrong enemies -- and not nearly enough of the right ones. Republicans toppled Dan Rather, but they let Osama bin Laden and the bandits at AIG get away scot-free.

It helps that President Obama ignores the repug attempts to bait him with schoolyard insults, but Janet Napolitano's ludicrous apology for a completely accurate report that was ordered by the previous administration proves that some Democrats are still vulnerable to GOP intimidation that has lost all its power.

Cross-posted at They Gave Us A Republic ....

Bad Bet of the Year

How desperate was Mitch McConnell to keep Arlen Specter in the Republican Party? And how much does McConnell hate his fellow Kentucky repug Senator Jim Bunning?

So much that in March McConnell gave $10,000 to the re-election campaign of a man who just six weeks later became a Democrat, and not one thin dime to a repug on the verge of losing his seat to a Democrat.

Herald-Leader star John Cheves has the story:

Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell may be fuming at Sen. Arlen Specter now, but a month ago, he was cutting him a $10,000 check.

McConnell, the Senate Republican leader, gave $10,000 to Specter’s 2010 re-election campaign on March 11 through his leadership political action committee, the Bluegrass Committee.

SNIP

“Well, obviously we are not happy,” McConnell told reporters Tuesday.

By the end of 2009’s first fund-raising quarter, there was no sign of McConnell giving to the campaign of fellow Republican and Kentucky Sen. Jim Bunning, who also is running for re-election next year.

Hey, Mitch: here's a piece of advice, free, gratis and for nothing: Don't place any bets on the Derby Saturday.

Cross-posted at They Gave Us A Republic ....

The Morals of Atheists

The indispensable PZ Myers demolishes the latest attempt to prove that only good white murkins who have been saved by the precious blood of baby jeebus are moral.

We are social animals. We are the children of a particular kind of animal that improved their chances of survival and reproduction by cooperation, working together as a family/tribe/nation. We have an operational, working definition of what is good and evil that is defined by our history: goodness is that which has promoted the survival of our community and ourselves. Anyone who has a reasonable grasp of Darwinian logic ought to be able to see that this is the kind of property that can emerge from forces entirely within a group's history, with no exogenous agent required.

I certainly do have grounds to be outraged at the use of torture. Those are fellow human beings who are experiencing pain: I empathize with them, I see them as fellow members of the greater community of humanity, and I can rationally see that a society that allows torture is one in which I and my family are less safe. I do not need a little god sitting on my shoulder, whispering in my ear, "Oh, PZ, you aren't supposed to enjoy that person's suffering".

My sense of horror and outrage points me to a common humanity, not some invisible magic man who wills it because he works in mysterious ways.

Read the whole thing, and don't skip the comments.

I will never understand the mindset that believes the most effective way to influence behavior is through a combination of threat (Hell) and bribe (Heaven.) What a low opinion of one's fellow humans is required to think they respond only to fear and greed.

Rational human beings need neither carrots nor sticks to do the correct, moral thing; doing so is its own reward.

A Rude Theory on Specter

I think the Rude Pundit is giving Arlen Specter too much credit in this one, but it's still not to be missed.

Warning: X-rated.

America's Divine Right of (Republican) Kings

"But where says some is the King of America? I’ll tell you Friend, he reigns above, and doth not make havoc of mankind like the Royal Brute of Britain. Yet that we may not appear to be defective even in earthly honors, let a day be solemnly set apart for proclaiming the charter; let it be brought forth placed on the divine law, the word of God; let a crown be placed thereon, by which the world may know, that so far as we approve as monarchy, that in America the law is King. For as in absolute governments the King is law, so in free countries the law ought to be King; and there ought to be no other." - Thomas Paine

"the very definition of a republic is an empire of laws, and not of men. . . . that form of government which is best contrived to secure an impartial and exact execution of law, is the best of republics." - John Adams

"No man is above the law and no man is below it; nor do we ask any man's permission when we require him to obey it. Obedience to the law is demanded as a right; not asked as a favor." - Teddy Roosevelt

After the Abu Graib torture and NSA domestic spying scandals failed to faze fanatic Smirky/Darth supporters, I said that such people would still worship Bush even if they saw him ass-rape a five-year-old live on national television.

Boy it really pisses me off when my best hyperbole is trumped by reality.

Glenn Greenwald brings his patented eloquent outrage to the insistence by the Beltway Media Villagers that no crime is terrible enough to justify forcing high government officials to be prosecuted for breaking the law.

It just cannot be said enough that our political elites truly do believe that "law" is only for the dirty, filthy masses -- but not for them. It really is that explicit. Joan Walsh was on Howie Kurtz's CNN show yesterday and the other guests -- The Washington Post's Chris Cillizza and former Bush speechwriter David Frum -- responded to her like she was from Neptune all because she repeatedly made one point -- torture is against the law and therefore those who ordered it, by definition, committed crimes. This is a point they literally could not comprehend. That's because they reject the necessary premise in which this simple proposition is grounded: that political leaders are bound by what we call "law." The reason we have become the country we've become is because we've fallen all the way down to Jon Meacham and David Broder from what, at least in principle, used to guide us.

SNIP

If one surveys the wreckage that has become our political class, this explains much of it: we've gone from Paine ("so far as we approve of monarchy, that in America the law is King") and Adams ("an empire of laws, and not of men") and Roosevelt ("No man is above the law") to Newsweek and Jon Meacham ("That is not to say presidents and vice presidents are always above the law") and David Broder (holding leaders accountable for lawbreaking is ugly, destructive, populist vengeance except when it involves a sex scandal).

It's difficult to imagine how nauseated (though perhaps not surprised) people like Paine and Adams would be if they would have known that, a mere 230 years later, we'd have as opinion-making elites people like David Broder and Jon Meacham declaring that "presidents and vice presidents are [not] always above the law" -- this is the American President we're talking about; criminal prosecutions are inappropriate for his crimes-- as though that theoretical concession represents the reasonable, centrist, responsible view rather than the authoritarian, lawless, establishment-revering, deeply un-American tripe that it is.

Read the whole thing.

Don't Count McConnell Out Yet

McClatchy's saying Arlen Specter's switch to the Democratic Party "will likely rob Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of his strongest tool — the filibuster."

I wouldn't bet the farm on it.

Specter makes the Magic Filibuster-breaking Sixty only if:

• Minnesota's Al Franken is seated before the 2010 elections, which Specter's defection makes significantly less likely;
• Traitor Joe Lieberman fails to realize what a huge opportunity this is for him to peddle his ass back to the repugs, AND
• Specter actually votes with the Democratic caucus on closure votes, instead of trying to have it both ways by supporting repug filibusters.
  

A technical 60-vote Democratic caucus also assumes that Harry Reid can hold Evan Bayh's Cocksucking Caucus in line, a feat of which he has proven singularly incapable to date.

Specter's defection gives the Blue Dogs the balance of power in the Senate. That is extremely bad news for Democrats and President Obama.

Cross-posted at They Gave Us A Republic ....

The Atheists Next Door

Come out, come out, come out of hiding all you atheists. If we can go public in South Carolina, we can go public anywhere.

More than ever, America’s atheists are linking up and speaking out — even here in South Carolina, home to Bob Jones University, blue laws and a legislature that last year unanimously approved a Christian license plate embossed with a cross, a stained glass window and the words “I Believe” (a move blocked by a judge and now headed for trial).

They are connecting on the Internet, holding meet-ups in bars, advertising on billboards and buses, volunteering at food pantries and picking up roadside trash, earning atheist groups recognition on adopt-a-highway signs.

They liken their strategy to that of the gay-rights movement, which lifted off when closeted members of a scorned minority decided to go public.

“It’s not about carrying banners or protesting,” said Herb Silverman, a math professor at the College of Charleston who founded the Secular Humanists of the Lowcountry, which has about 150 members on the coast of the Carolinas. “The most important thing is coming out of the closet.”

Polls show that the ranks of atheists are growing. The American Religious Identification Survey, a major study released last month, found that those who claimed “no religion” were the only demographic group that grew in all 50 states in the last 18 years.

Nationally, the “nones” in the population nearly doubled, to 15 percent in 2008 from 8 percent in 1990. In South Carolina, they more than tripled, to 10 percent from 3 percent. Not all the “nones” are necessarily committed atheists or agnostics, but they make up a pool of potential supporters.

Read the whole thing.

As PZ Myers notes:

This is the kind of article that should cause the religious to worry. It's not their common hysteria about the vicious atheists coming to eat their puppies…it's about the reality of atheism, which is that it is made up of mostly good people who want to live their lives well.

The Cheap, Easy, Quick Renewable Energy We Could Have Today

If Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear is serious about promoting renewable energy in this state (yeah, yeah, I know he's not, but bear with me), there's a quick, easy, no-cost way to vastly increase renewable energy production in Kentucky, goose the economy and vault Kentucky to the top rank of clean energy states at the same time.

It's called a feed-in tariff, and it's making Gainesville Florida green-energy-self-sufficient and everyone in town filthy rich.

This winter, as Congress was scrambling to pass the stimulus package, the bottom fell out of the renewable energy sector—the very industry that lawmakers have held out as our best hope of salvaging the economy. Trade groups like the American Wind Energy Association, which as recently as December was forecasting "another record-shattering year of growth," began predicting that new installations would plunge by 30 to 50 percent. Solar panel manufacturers that had been blazing a trail of growth announced a wave of layoffs. Some have since cut their workforces in half, as stock prices tumble and plans for new green energy projects stall.

But there is one place where capital is still flowing: Gainesville, Florida. Even as solar panels are stacking up in warehouses around the country, this city of 120,000 is gearing up for a solar power boom, fueled by homegrown businesses and scrappy investors who have descended on the community and are hiring local contractors to install photovoltaic panels on rooftops around town.

SNIP

Why is the renewable energy market in Gainesville booming while it’s collapsing elsewhere in the country? The answer boils down to policy. In early February, the city became the first in the nation to adopt a "feed-in tariff"—a clunky and un-descriptive name for a bold incentive to foster renewable energy. Under this system, the local power company is required to buy renewable energy from independent producers, no matter how small, at rates slightly higher than the average cost of production. This means anyone with a cluster of solar cells on their roof can sell the power they produce at a profit. The costs of the program are passed on to ratepayers, who see a small rise in their electric bills (in Gainesville the annual increase is capped at 1 percent). While rate hikes are seldom popular, the community has rallied behind this policy, because unlike big power plant construction—the costs of which are also passed on to the public—everyone has the opportunity to profit, either by investing themselves or by tapping into the groundswell of economic activity the incentive creates.

Read the whole thing.

This is win-win-win-win-win ... which of course means that Kentucky will jump on the feed-in-tariff bandwagon just about the time it becomes obsolete.

(While Kentucky has some of the cloudiest weather in the nation and dozens of fewer sunny days per year than Gainesville, solar panels do produce energy here, if not as much as in sunnier places.)

Cross-posted at They Gave Us A Republic ....

Killing Us Quickly With Coal Mining

Never let it be said that Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear does not have an overdeveloped sense of irony.

The day after an expert on coal mining's effect on Eastern Kentucky gave a speech condemning all strip mining, brazen coal cheerleader Beshear announced his heartfelt commitment to "renewable energy."

I put "renewable energy" in scare quotes because, as usual, Beshear either thinks blasting mountains to smithereens and destroying the freshwater streams upon which local communities depend in order to get cheap coal qualifies as "renewable," or he's lying.

Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear today announced that he is joining the U.S. Governors’ Wind Energy Coalition.

SNIP

While studies show that Kentucky does not have the classic Level 3 winds currently required to produce enough wind power for base-load generation, many business people and farmers are interested in distributed wind generation.

In other words, Beshear is endorsing a form of renewable energy that has precisely zero chance of becoming viable in Kentucky, far less than zero chance of challenging King Coal's death-grip on the Commonwealth, and 100 percent chance of providing a fig-leaf for Beshear and other state politicians while they rake in millions in campaign cash from the Mountain-Destroying Community Killers of Big Coal.

This bullshit comes from Beshear just hours after he listened to this:

Ron Eller, Eastern Kentuckian and former direct of UK's Appalachian Center, was on a panel yesterday with Dan Mongiardo and Steve Beshear at the Eastern Kentucky Leadership Conference, and.... well, let's just say that he spoke truth to power.

He started by saying he wanted “to be a little more frank with you tonight.” He told the crowd he’d undergone triple by-pass heart surgery and “that sometimes gives you a different outlook on life.” He said he wanted to address the assembly “as one of you, someone from the mountains, not someone from Lexington.”

Eller was more than just “a little frank.” He said things many who live in the mountains don’t want to hear.

“We must change how we understand this place and how we understand our place in it,” said Eller. “We must look beyond an extraction based economy to one that values and enhances the landscape and the resources it holds.” He said the region needs a new generation of political leadership and new ways of looking at developing “the good life” for the people who live there.

Then, he delivered the most provocative statement of the night.

“We must begin – I think – by abolishing surface mining, including the radically destructive practice of mountain top removal. Mountain top removal isn’t necessary to the region or the national economy. It’s just cheaper.”

Forty-six years ago, Harry Caudill wrote everything you need to know about how coal destroys everything alive, good and worthwhile in Eastern Kentucky, in his classic Night Comes to the Cumberlands.

Forty-six years later, Big Coal's grip on Kentucky is tighter than ever, Eastern Kentucky is poorer than ever, destruction from strip mining is more horrific and fatal than ever, and Kentucky's political leaders are stupider, blinder and more corrupt than ever.

Cross-posted at They Gave Us A Republic ....

Door's Open for Single Payer - Push Hard Now

As Jonathan Cohn wrote, Reconciliation is a game-changer. We can stake out a position so far to the left of the Blue Dogs that it'll blindside 'em coming up on the right.

... it means the Democrats will have the ability to pass health reform with just fifty votes, if they choose, rather than the sixty required to break the inevitable filibustering by Republican opponents.

It's hard to overstate how radically the reconciliation option would shift the dynamics of debate. It's not just that it would make passage of a bill more likely. It's that it would utterly redefine the conversation.

Put yourself in the shoes of a health care industry group--say, for example, the insurance industry. You probably have the power to swing at least a handful of senators your way, through advertising, astroturf organizing, and direct lobbying. If it's sixty-votes-or-bust in the Senate, reformers will probably need those senators to pass a bill. That means you have enormous leverage. You can hold out for the best possible deal and, barring that, simply walk away.

In other words, you know that there will eventually be two options on the table. A bill you like or no bill at all.

Now imagine Democrats have the option of using reconciliation. They need just fifty votes, which means they may not need your support after all. If you demand too much, they may just ignore you altogether--and craft a bill, perhaps with the help of more cooperative lobbyists, that is not in your self interest.

In this scenario, there are three options on the table. A bill you like, no bill at all, and a bill you really hate.

So what do you do? Chances are, you concentrate a lot harder on trying to get that bill you like.

"Reconciliation instructions" on the budget means that if the universal health care plan negotiated in the Senate doesn't have 60 votes by October 15, then passage will require only a straight majority - 51 votes.

Even if nine DINOs throw hissy fits over the government spending - vapors! - money to help people, the plan still passes. Harry Reid can tell Evan Bayh and Joe Lieberman and Blanche Lincoln and Claire McCaskill and the rest of the repug-fellators to fuck off and die, we don't need your cowardly Blue Dog votes.

So NOW is when we need to carpet-bomb Congress with demands for single-payer.

Repugs know that with reconciliation, President Obama and Congressional Democrats are going to get the universal health care plan they want. We have to make sure that the Democratic opening negotiating position is a plan that will so terrify the repugs that they'll agree to anything else.

In order to get something really super-fabulous, like Medicare For All, let's demand perfection.

• Full coverage, cradle-to-grave, for everything short of cosmetic surgery. No co-pays, no deductibles, no limits.
  

• Full power of the federal government to negotiate payments for everything including prescription drugs.

Drop a pressure anvil on every member of Congress to pass single-payer so that Democrats can point to that public pressure and say, "Gee, guys, we'd really love to go back to the public/private plan we asked for back in March, but now with a majority of Americans demanding single-payer, Medicare For All is the best we can do."

Right now, Democratic members of Congress, progressive activists, liberal policy wonks and advocates for the uninsured are in the strongest position we've ever been in. We have an almost unimaginable amount of power to sweep the board and take it all.

If we don't use that power to secure for Americans the basic right to health care that is enjoyed by every industrialized nation on earth, then we might as well hand the government back to Dick Cheney, because we'll have proven we can't do anything.

Cross-posted at They Gave Us A Republic ....

Americans DO Torture, and Then They Go to Prison

We cannot let the criminals skate on this one. Torture is a crime and the Americans who committed torture, approved torture, justified torture, defended torture are criminals and must be subjected to the rule of law: investigated, arrested, charged, arraigned, indicted, prosecuted, judged and if guilty sentenced.

Anything less is abject surrender to the forces of anti-democracy, the cynics who have said for 200 years that American idealism couldn't last, the corrupters who have been waiting for us to fall. And to fail.

Readers at Talking Points Memo are still fighting for genuine American ideals.

Past as Predicate

More on torture, from TPM Reader PB:

"I think something else tends to get lost in the current arguments about torture. The whole issue has been framed as "moving forward" and looking to the future (good) versus doling out "retribution" and dwelling on the past (bad). This is not merely the Republican framing of the issue, as Obama and many Democrats seem to have accepted this framework.

"But this framing is entirely wrong. A better way to look at is that we can either choose to do something about the fact people were tortured by the United States government, or we can choose to ignore it. Either outcome will have a profound effect on what happens in this country "moving forward."

"Choosing to ignore profound and systematic violations of international law creates a bad precedent that can (and no doubt will) be followed by future administrations. The current administration might be inclined to have a "no torture" policy, but the next one might think more like the Bush Administration. What expectation would members of future administrations have of being prosecuted for violating the law if we don't hold the past one accountable?

"In many ways the decision to "move forward" and pardon Nixon set the stage for Iran-Contra and the Bush administration's myriad law breaking. What future horrors will ignoring the fact that the Bush administration codified torture as a "legal" interrogation technique set the stage for? This is not a can that can be kicked down the road because we have other problems we have to deal with. But no matter what we do now, this is about what might happen in the future as much as it is about what did happen in the past."

It's All About Us

From TPM Reader CR:

"One odd thing about this torture debate is that it's all about *us.* Whether we committed a crime, how it affects our collective soul, how the wheels of justice ought to move (if at all). But nobody is talking about the victims--it's as if torture were analogous to smoking the marijuana you grew in the woods behind your house. Something technically illegal, but something that only hurts yourself, so everybody else should just butt out.

"But what nobody is talking about is who (apart from super-duper bad guys KSM and Abu Zubaydah) actually *was* tortured, how many people were tortured, whether any of them were children, what the physical and psychological results of that torture was, how many people died as a result of that torture, whether any of these people have since been recognized as harmless, and whether any of these people were American citizens."

Late Update: TPM Reader ZZ responds:

"Following up on your post from CR, how has there not been more focus on OUR people who were actually asked to do these horrific things?! What becomes of the people who waterboard the same man 183 times?

"Asking American ... to commit these heinous acts was a crime against them, as well. And their voices should be a part of this story and our sense of collective outrage."

TPM Reader MB disagrees:

"CR raises some questions that merit consideration, but I think miss the point. If all of those questions were answered, and it came out that none of the detainees died and none were harmless or children or American citizens, does that make the torture okay? Of course not. Having any of those questions answered the other way only raises the outrage level, but does nothing to change the fundamental facts about morality and the rule of law.

"In fact, I find it odd how few people are talking about the other ways this story *does* affect us. Give the government the freedom to torture, and they will someday use it on *us*, if they haven't already. Torture is a fine recruiting tool for Al Qaeda, which creates enemies for *us*. And so on."

TPM Reader CH wonders what became of justice for all:

"I think there is a significant issue not being addressed in any sort of sufficient manner; namely, there were several people prosecuted and convicted as a direct result of the policies of the people who signed off on torture. These people were [I hate to say it] thrown under the bus as "a few bad apples". What is to happen to these folks? How come the policy makers, notably wealthy individuals, get off Scot free?

"Some folks have already paid a pretty hard price, deservedly so, but they were the small-fry scapegoats.

"We need to move forward and demand accountability from those who actually were responsible for the policy of torture as high as that goes."

Repugs like to throw out warnings about American values every time a liberal sneezes and scream about how shaking hands with a Latin American pipsqueak shatters the foundations of our democracy.

But the debate over whether or not to prosecute torturers - and the outrageous fact that such prosecution is even subject to debate at all - is, indeed, a battle for America's soul.

Cross-posted at They Gave Us A Republic ....

That's not a hat; THIS is a HAT

Big story in Frankfort is that Kentucky First Lady Jane Beshear has chosen her Derby Hat.

Stop laughing. This is Genuine Big News, and I'm going to tell you why. First, because it's going to be raffled off and the proceeds given to the Kentucky Breast Cancer Coalition.

But more importantly, because it is the Official Kentucky Derby Hat of the Kentucky First Lady.


The tradition of the Derby Hat is sacred in Kentucky. Every year on the first Saturday in May, at the Kentucky Derby, ladies - and if you're wearing a Derby Hat, you're a lady, regardless - compete to display the biggest, fanciest, most Derby-specific, most unusual, most sophisticated, mostest-of-the-mostest Derby Hat of them all. Real Kentucky ladies would not be caught dead at the Derby without a Derby Hat.

Derby Hats get the bulk of television coverage of the Derby, which on Louisville and Lexington television stations begins around 9 a.m. on Saturday and continues non-stop for more than 9 hours until after the two-minute race, which is scheduled at 5:30 p.m. and is always at least half an hour late.

But that's OK, because there are always more hats to be filmed, even if no horses can be found. The ratio of Derby Hats to Derby Horses is about 1,000 to one, both at Churchill Downs and on the television coverage.

This year, the recession is causing great consternation among Derby Hat aficionados, who fear that ladies may cut back on Derby Hat expenditures.

This article explains.

It's an AP story so the fuckers won't let me copy any of it, but I encourage you to click on it because it includes a Derby Hat slide show that is not to be missed. They range from sedate through splendiferous, past spectacular and well into un-fucking-believable.

Meanwhile, Page One Kentucky is keeping the Derby Hat tradition hot with a plea for Derby-goers to donate their hats for charity.

Are you important? Maybe an elected official? A celebrity of some sort here in the Bluegrass? Maybe you’re married to a celebrity/pseudo-celebrity or know one?

Then you should buy and/or design (it can be goofy, don’t worry) a hat for the Kentucky Derby and give it to us when you’re finished. Why?

Because we want to auction them off– on the internets– to benefit the Exploited Children’s Help Organization.

And no, nine days out this is not remotely close to the peak of Kentucky Derby craziness.

Cross-posted at They Gave Us A Republic ....

Torture is for Perverts

People who defend torture are perverts who can't get it up without witnessing or imagining someone screaming in pain from unspeakable torture.

From McClatchy:

The Bush administration put relentless pressure on interrogators to use harsh methods on detainees in part to find evidence of cooperation between al Qaida and the late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's regime, according to a former senior U.S. intelligence official and a former Army psychiatrist.

Such information would've provided a foundation for one of former President George W. Bush's main arguments for invading Iraq in 2003. No evidence has ever been found of operational ties between Osama bin Laden's terrorist network and Saddam's regime.

The use of abusive interrogation -- widely considered torture -- as part of Bush's quest for a rationale to invade Iraq came to light as the Senate issued a major report tracing the origin of the abuses and President Barack Obama opened the door to prosecuting former U.S. officials for approving them.

People who defend torture are perverts who can't get it up without witnessing or imagining someone screaming in pain from unspeakable torture.

From the New York Times:

"In a series of high-level meetings in 2002, without a single dissent from cabinet members or lawmakers, the United States for the first time officially embraced the brutal methods of interrogation it had always condemned.

This extraordinary consensus was possible, an examination by The New York Times shows, largely because no one involved -- not the top two C.I.A. officials who were pushing the program, not the senior aides to President George W. Bush, not the leaders of the Senate and House Intelligence Committees -- investigated the gruesome origins of the techniques they were approving with little debate.

According to several former top officials involved in the discussions seven years ago, they did not know that the military training program, called SERE, for Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape, had been created decades earlier to give American pilots and soldiers a sample of the torture methods used by Communists in the Korean War, methods that had wrung false confessions from Americans.

Even George J. Tenet, the C.I.A. director who insisted that the agency had thoroughly researched its proposal and pressed it on other officials, did not examine the history of the most shocking method, the near-drowning technique known as waterboarding.

The top officials he briefed did not learn that waterboarding had been prosecuted by the United States in war-crimes trials after World War II and was a well-documented favorite of despotic governments since the Spanish Inquisition; one waterboard used under Pol Pot was even on display at the genocide museum in Cambodia.

They did not know that some veteran trainers from the SERE program itself had warned in internal memorandums that, morality aside, the methods were ineffective. Nor were most of the officials aware that the former military psychologist who played a central role in persuading C.I.A. officials to use the harsh methods had never conducted a real interrogation, or that the Justice Department lawyer most responsible for declaring the methods legal had idiosyncratic ideas that even the Bush Justice Department would later renounce.

The process was "a perfect storm of ignorance and enthusiasm," a former C.I.A. official said."

People who defend torture are perverts who can't get it up without witnessing or imagining someone screaming in pain from unspeakable torture.

Steve Benen on how even the best evidence the torture perverts can muster in their defense is a complete lie.

The terrorist plot against the Library Tower is the loyal Bushies' favorite. Indeed, Thiessen has used it in more than one Washington Post op-ed, and it's been repeated by Bush administration officials many, many times over the years. Both George W. Bush and Dick Cheney have even told the story on several occasions, citing it as proof that their abusive tactics were a success (the former president would often call the Library Tower the "Liberty Tower")
.
The entire claim has been exposed as dubious over the years, but as long as torture apologists are going to keep bringing it up, it's probably worth taking a moment to periodically set the record straight.

SNIP

Remember, according to Bush, Cheney, and their most ardent supporters, the thwarted "plot" against the Library Tower is the single best piece of evidence that torture -- waterboarding, in specific -- saved American lives.

Demagogic hyperbole notwithstanding -- "a hole in the ground in Los Angeles to match the one in New York" -- the claim is bogus.

Read the whole thing.

People who defend torture - even after all that and much, much more - are perverts who can't get it up without witnessing or imagining someone screaming in pain from unspeakable torture.

Cross-posted at They Gave Us A Republic ....

Because Being That Rich and That Clueless Is a Crime

Tom B over at They Gave Us A Republic .... has the best outburst of populist rage I've read since Molly Ivins died.

This is, of course, coming from a guy whose never CREATED a single penny of wealth, probably in his entire life. Look around you Nick. What the hell does a "financial services" company contribute to society in general?

Punished for making money? Bullshit... you're being expected to do something to EARN your hideously large piece of the pie... something of value to somebody besides yourself. If you haven't learned the difference between EARNING money and simply making it, there's no hope for this country. You don't fricking DO better than anyone else. You just get paid more for whatever it is that you DO do, that's all.

Wealth distribution??? This guy's entire career is built around "redistributing wealth". This guy has never created a goddamn thing but sits on his plush ass on some plush chair in some plush office somewhere, directing or "redistributing" the flow of wealth from the pockets of those actually creating it into those of those who think they're entitled to all of the wealth in the country simply by virtue of BEING wealthy. This circular logic is at the expense of everyone else in the damned country and for this, he gets to "redistribute" a little chunk of it for himself.

That's all he fricking does. He's never built anything, never invented anything, never healed anyone, never treated or rescued anyone, never pursued a criminal, never tried a case, never sold anything, hauled anything, fixed anything... in short he's never done a f**king thing that is of any intrinsic value to anyone except himself and the turdmaster bosses he works for. He's a parasite, plain and simple and, as often happens, the parasites now think they're more important than the hosts.

I have no idea how much damage these people think they can do to our economy and our society and still have the fricking unmitigated gall to look me in the eye and tell me they're somehow worth more than the guy driving that Sysco truck because they went to Columbia or Wharton but I have a feeling we're going to find out. My favorite Yogi-ism has always been, "It ain't over 'til it's over.", and this ain't over.

Read the whole thing.

Getting rich is the American Dream, and the self-made millionaire the American Icon, but both demand humility and gratitude for the American Opportunity.

One of the most insidiously destructive aspects of the Reagan Era, through which we are still suffering, is the profoundly un-democratic and un-American idea that rich people are somehow "better" and "more deserving" than non-rich people.

It's particularly disgusting coming from trust fund babies and Wall Street lottery winners whose billions appeared as if by magic, with no effort on their part.

It's a poison that kills every progressive initiative: single-payer health care, the living wage, workers' right to bargain collectively, top-flight public schools, social justice, public transportation, affordable college, regulation of corporations and of course clean (publicly funded) campaigns.

So don't let the rich fuckers get away with it. Challenge them at every turn. Get "How have you made the world better today?" tattooed on your forehead.

Demand a Torture Prosecutor

Stop bitching about President Obama's inexplicable failure to prosecute blatant war crimes of torture and put your digital signature where your keyboard is.

If you saw the front page of the New York Times today, you saw them pick up an important story that Marcy Wheeler broke on FDL on Saturday -- Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times in one month.

She reported how the interrogators went far outside of anything they were legally allowed to do, even under the expansive laws written by the Bush Administration.

Marcy's work shows just how important it is that Attorney General Eric Holder appoint an independent special prosecutor to investigate the torture of detainees.

You can sign the petition here.

The ACLU will be delivering the signatures to Secretary Holder later this week. The deadline for signatures is 9am ET, Thursday, April 23.

Thanks for taking the time to stand up for the rule of law.

Jane Hamsher
firedoglake.com

Do it now.

April Discloures Bring May Excuses

If you, like me, sneered at the new earmark transparency rules as yet another toothless gesture by Congress toward the pretense of responsibility, you might want to dig into your local representative's website.

The Lexington Herald-Leader went prospecting in the website of earmarker extraordinaire Hal Rogers (R-KY5) and found gold.

For nearly 30 years, U.S. Rep. Hal Rogers has used his sway on powerful committees to steer billions in federal funds into his Eastern Kentucky district.

Now, new rules requiring members of Congress to publicize their requests on their Web sites offer — for the first time — an early glimpse into exactly which projects the Somerset Republican, a senior member of the House Appropriations Committee, favors before those multimillion-dollar requests are tucked into federal spending bills.

There are 103 requests totaling $466.6 million on Rogers’ 22-page request form, which is buried several pages deep on his Web site.

Those requests benefit Rogers' hometown, his extended family, and his campaign contributors.

Those requests include roughly $40 million for programs that Rogers created or that are housed in Rogers’ hometown of Somerset at the Center for Rural Development, a sprawling, state-of-the-art facility known locally as the “Taj-Ma Hal.”

The National Institute for Hometown Security, a non-profit organization that Rogers helped create and has few staffers, is slated to net $15 million “to continue to provide leadership in discovering and developing community-based critical infrastructure protections solutions.”

The Department of Homeland Security has never requested any funding for the National Institute of Hometown Security, though former DHS Secretary Tom Ridge came to Kentucky to announce the non-profit’s formation several years ago.

SNIP

Rogers sees the connection as coincidental. He says he’s “never been shy about working to bring jobs to southern and Eastern Kentucky” and is merely doing what he was elected to do.

Read the whole thing, then go to the website of your own House member and find out what she thinks is a good use of tax dollars.

Cross-posted at They Gave Us A Republic ....

"Spending Their Money Wisely"

President Obama's Weekly Address, on making federal spending efficient and effective.



Read transcript here.

How to Retire the U.S. Debt: Auction Roy Moore

Steve Benen has a post on Judge Roy Moore's plan to run for governor of Alabama.

Moore, of course, is the Dominionist freakazoid who wants to turn the U.S. into a Talibantastic Xian theocracy. Lucky Alabama Democrats! Whether Moore's the repug nominee or runs as an independent, this is the dems' chance of a lifetime. Moore would get every freakazoid vote in the state, but if dems play their cards right, he wouldn't get a single vote from anyone else.

Man, I'd pay plenty for a repug candidate like Moore. If we'd had Roy Moore running as an independent against Mitch McConnell last year, we'd have taken that Senate seat for the dems.

How much would you pay to have Roy Moore ensuring dem victories in your state?

Hey, here's an idea: let's auction Roy Moore off. State and local Democratic parties, PACs, big donors can bid on a Roy Moore candidacy for whatever race needs a pro-dem boost.

This is the key: all proceeds go to retire the U.S. debt. If we allow Moore to run in multiple states during the same election cycle, we could put the nation back in a surplus before the end of President Obama's first term.

Cross-posted at They Gave Us A Republic ....

Christianity Explained

Via PZ Myers.

Without Torture Accountability, All Obama's Victories Are Ashes

Thirty-five years ago this fall, Gerald Ford turned the U.S. into the kind of banana republic that manages peaceful transitions of power only by excusing departing presidents from accountability for their crimes.

Richard Nixon never faced American justice, thus establishing the precedent for future repug presidents to commit crimes against the Constitution and American people without consequence.

Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush got away with Iran-Contra, and Smirky/Darth with crimes of treason too numerous to list here. It will happen again as long as succeeding presidents continue to allow their predecessors to avoid prosecution.

Barack Obama can put a stop to this criminal legacy only by prosecuting George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and all their acomplices, and doing it now.

Keith Olbermann explains:



Transcript here.

Cross-posted at They Gave Us A Republic ....