Search
RSS Feed
You are currently browsing the CrazyDrumGuy weblog archives for January, 2008.
Archives
- December 2008
- November 2008
- October 2008
- September 2008
- August 2008
- July 2008
- June 2008
- May 2008
- April 2008
- March 2008
- February 2008
- January 2008
- December 2007
- November 2007
- October 2007
Blogs Eric Reads
Archive for January, 2008
Translating Washington Speech
Dana Milbank runs a pretty good column over at the Washington Post called Washington Sketch–one of my recent favorites is on the Congressional hearings on lead in Chinese toys. Today, he’s left his usual venue to head over to the Atlantic, where he’s put together a snarky little phrasebook for visitors to that mosquito-infested swamp on the Potomac called Washington, D.C. Some sample translations:
You are either with us or against us.
You are against us.We identified weapons of mass destruction–related program activities.
We could not find any weapons of mass destruction.The president has always said …
The president is announcing a new position.This should not be a political issue.
My party has a winning political issue.It’s time to stop playing politics.
The other party has a winning political issue.The American people don’t want open-ended fishing expeditions.
A member of my party is being investigated for wrongdoing.Congress must fulfill its constitutional oversight obligation.
A member of the other party is being investigated for wrongdoing.
Check out the rest.
One Year Countdown
Today’s the day! In exactly one year, George W. Bush will no longer be President of the United States. Who will be taking over form him remains to be seen, but whoever it is will have a whole lot of shit to fix. Some wisdom from our friends on the other side of the pond:
In Greek mythology, Hercules washed away that mess by re-routing the rivers Alpheus and Peneus. Whoever takes the oath of office next 20 January will face a similar task in repairing America, both at home and in the eyes of the world. By almost every yardstick, the country is in a worse state than seven years ago – a state virtually unimaginable when the new century dawned.
…
The new occupant of the Oval Office can but hope today’s dislike for America is directed at a leader, not at a country. That may well be, but one thing is for sure. Never again will the US occupy that extraordinary position of supremacy – military, moral and economic – that it held in the interlude between the demise of Communism and the attacks of September 2001.To the 44th President falls the task of explaining that truth to the country, as well as dealing with the concrete day-to-day problems left by George Bush. Indeed, one wonders, why would anyone want the job?
Rudy Finally Does It: Includes 9/11 Footage in Ad
We all knew it was going to happen eventually. Ever since he entered the presidential race, Rudy has built his entire campaign on September 11. Joe Biden said it best:
Rudy Giuliani. There’s only three things he mentions in a sentence — a noun, a verb, and 9/11. There’s nothing else! There’s nothing else!
But it hasn’t been working. In Michigan’s Republican primary, Rudy only picked up 3% of the votes–he got half as many votes as Ron Paul! So Rudy’s ad team whipped up this last-ditch effort to save the Giuliani candidacy, using actual footage from the 9/11 attacks. And as we watch buildings collapsing, killing hundreds, and innocent people fleeing, we hear:
When the world wavered, and history hesitated, Rudy never did.
“All these people ran away from Ground Zero, but Rudy didn’t. Fire crews and EMS waited around trying to work their broken radios, but Rudy was there for the photo op.”
Truly sickening. Up until this point, Rudy only verbally exploited the tragedy of 9/11 for his own political gain. Now, he’s reminding you to vote for him over footage of people dying in the World Trade Center. This disgusting caricature of a man can should be locked up, not put in the White House.
Get Flash to see this player.
Just in Case: AP Prepares Britney’s Obit
I generally don’t follow “celebrity news” because, well, there are lots of more important things going on. This, though, is truly fucked up. For the past month, the Associated Press–that’s no tabloid, folks–has been preparing Britney Spears’ obituary so they can get the jump when she kicks the bucket.
“We are not wishing it, but if Britney passed away, it’s easily one of the biggest stories in a long time,” AP entertainment editor Jesse Washington tells Us.
“I think one would agree that Britney seems at risk right now,” Washington adds. “Of course, we would never wish any type of misfortune on anybody and hope that we would never have to use it until 50 years from now…but if something were to happen, we would have to be prepared.”\
Anything for a scoop, I guess. I just hope that, when she does eventually pass, that her death doesn’t inconvenience the media.
Canada Says the U.S. Tortures
The title says it all. This should be no surprise to anyone, since there’s overwhelming evidence that the United States tortures prisoners at Guantanamo Bay (and those are posts from just one blog!). The Canadian government is just making it official.
An official Canadian government document has put both the United States and Israel on a watch list of countries where prisoners run the risk of being tortured, CTV television reported on Thursday.
…
The document mentions the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba where a Canadian man is being held.CTV said the document was part of a course on torture awareness given to Canadian diplomats to help them determine whether prisoners they visited abroad had been mistreated.
It said the document mentioned U.S. interrogation techniques such as “forced nudity, isolation, and sleep deprivation.”
Yep, it’s all torture before we even get to the “question” of waterboarding–which, by the way, is only a question because the U.S. government says it is.
Oh, and guess which foreign governments the Bush administration is taking after?
Other countries on the watch list include Syria, China, Iran and Afghanistan, CTV said.
The Founding Fathers must be rolling in their graves. American values and dignity are the newest casualties in the War on Terror, and the terrorist-in-chief is George W. Bush.
Save the Whales! (From George W. Bush)
I’m starting to think that there might be some truth to National Treasure because there are just so many things written between the lines of the Constitution. Like, for example, the part where the president can overrule federal law, state governments, and federal courts through sheer willpower.
Under the Coastal Zone Management Act, a decision of the California Coastal Commission (a state agency), and a federal court judge’s ruling, the U.S. Navy must:
create a 12-nautical-mile, no-sonar zone along the California coast and to post trained lookouts to watch for marine mammals before and during exercises. Sonar would have to be shut down when mammals are spotted within 2,200 yards, under the order.
This isn’t an unreasonable order, since evidence from a number of groups show that sonar hurts whales. But George Bush doesn’t like it. The Navy needs to do exercises at this exact place, regardless of the presence of marine life in the area, or the terrorists win. So the government is using the courts in the way they were designed by appealing the federal judge’s ruling.
The court system is old-fashioned, though, and too slow–after all, we’re fighting a war, and the Navy needs to train now, whales be damned! That’s why President Bush today did with the Coastal Zone Management Act, the California Coastal Commission, and a federal judge the same thing he does with any laws he doesn’t like: ignore them.
President Bush exempted the Navy from an environmental law so it can continue using sonar in its anti-submarine warfare training off the California coast — a practice critics say is harmful to whales and other marine mammals.
The White House announced Wednesday that Bush had signed the exemption Tuesday while traveling in the Middle East.
The Navy training exercises, including the use of sonar, “are in the paramount interest of the United States” and its national security, Bush said in a memorandum.
“This exemption will enable the Navy to train effectively and to certify carrier and expeditionary strike groups for deployment in support of worldwide operational and combat activities, which are essential to national security,” the memo said.
And just like that, everything he doesn’t like disappears.
There is no longer a Constitution, no longer the rule of law in the United States. George W. Bush must be removed from office before the damage he has done to our beloved democracy is beyond repair. January 20, 2009, cannot come soon enough.
Because McCain Sounds So Much Like Romney
Most Democrats probably weren’t paying attention to today’s primary in Michigan since the DNC stripped all of Michigan’s delegates and only Clinton, Dodd, Kucinich, and Gravel were on the (meaningless) ballot.
For Republicans, however, today was the day that a clear frontrunner for the Republican nomination could have been determined, and it was especially important for Mitt Romney, who was banking on a Michigan victory in order to stay in the race. And Romney did indeed win this evening with a 9-point lead over second-place John McCain.
Unfortunately for Romney, the Michigan Republican Party lost interest in the primary as the day grew later, so they hadn’t been paying attention when they released their official congratulations for the winner.
The Michigan Republican Party mistakenly sent out a news release Tuesday night congratulating John McCain for winning the state’s GOP primary.
…The Associated Press named Romney the GOP winner when polls closed in Michigan’s western Upper Peninsula at 9 p.m. EST.
The first GOP release went out just minutes later and stated, “In a close-fought victory, Senator John McCain succeeded again (in) the Michigan Republican primary, winning over a traditionally unpredictable voter base in Michigan.”
Five minutes after that, the party sent a release that said, “In a close-fought victory, native son Governor Mitt Romney won an important contest here tonight.”
Whoops. Okay, so it’s a silly little mistake, but Romney’s victory and the fact that the Michigan GOP was itching to give McCain the nod are indicative of a larger problem plaguing Republicans: they have no idea who they want to be President.
The convincing victory by Mitt Romney in the Michigan primary on Tuesday means three very different states — with dissimilar electorates driven by distinctive sets of priorities — have embraced three separate candidates in search of someone who can lead the party into a tough election and beyond President Bush.
…
On the most tangible level, the vote on Tuesday was proof from the ballot box of what polls have shown: this is a party that is adrift, deeply divided and uninspired when it comes to its presidential candidates and unsure of how to counter an energized Democratic Party.
Romney’s victory (which will keep him in the race) begins another chaotic month for the Republicans. May it be filled with money-wasting ads and swift-boating.
And apologies to the Michigan Republican Party which oh-so-badly wanted McCain to win on Tuesday. Of course, they should be used to this kind of thing; after all, they voted for Dewey.
Huckabee Wants God in the Constitution
Holy Fuck.
Mike Huckabee’s newest bit of fundamentalist craziness goes way beyond a simple marriage amendment (although he still supports that). Last year–as in two weeks ago in December–the Huckster claimed that he would respect the core American value of religious freedom.
“The key issue of real faith is that it never can be forced on someone,” Huckabee said. “And never would I want to use the government institutions to impose mine or anybody else’s faith or to restrict.”
That makes perfect sense since, you know, that’s how the First Amendment works. Of course, that was then. Check out Huckabee’s New Year’s resolution.
I have opponents in this race who do not want to change the Constitution. But I believe it’s a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the word of the living God. And that’s what we need to do is amend the Constitution so it’s in God’s standards rather than trying to change God’s standards so it lines up with some contemporary view of how we treat each other and how we treat the family.
I guess in Huckabee’s mind there’s only one Founding Father–with a Founding Son and a Founding Holy Ghost.
The truly scary thing is that this is just the tip of the iceberg of Mike Huckabee’s Islamofas… er, religious extremism. PERRspectives has the Top 10 Moments and Ten More Moments of Mike Huckabee’s extremism, if you aren’t already scared.
Watch the Gospel of Mike below.
Waterboarding Americans? Now That’s Torture
First of all, a hello and Happy New Year to everyone! I’m back from my trip to Israel. Pictures will be along shortly.
Now, let’s talk about waterboarding. It’s a very controversial issue these days. Some people say it’s torture. Some people say it’s not torture. Still others won’t even bother to answer the question. That’s why, no matter how many times we watched waterboarding in action, nobody could definitively say where it fell on the spectrum of legality in the United States.
Until now.
Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell has cleared up the question of whether waterboarding is torture once and for all. His answer… well, see for yourself.
U.S. intelligence chief Mike McConnell said in a magazine interview that waterboarding would be torture if it was used against him personally, but stopped short of condemning the controversial interrogation technique.
Wait, what? There’s no possible way that last sentence could be right… is there?
McConnell, Director of National Intelligence, was quoted in the New Yorker edition released on Sunday as defining torture as “something that would cause excruciating pain.”
Asked if waterboarding — the practice of covering a person’s face with a cloth and then dripping water on it to bring on a feeling of drowning — fit that definition, McConnell said that for him personally, it would.
“If I had water draining into my nose, oh God, I just can’t imagine how painful!” McConnell said in the article. “Whether it’s torture by anybody else’s definition, for me it would be torture.”
But he rejected a suggestion that he personally condemned the practice.
Wow. So, if somebody strapped you down and tried to convince you you were drowning, that would be torture. But do it to someone else… and you can’t say? Only the twisted mind of a true Bushite could justify this unique kind of hypocrisy.
Thanks for clearing up those sticky legal questions, Mike. Anyone waterboarding Americans: torture. Americans waterboarding anyone else: not torture.
Hey, world! This could be you!
