The 8th Level

This is Scott Shane and Jane Mayer on Charlie Rose last night, talking about the CIA, torture, rendition, secret prisons, and Cheney. Long but worth watching.

A lot of folks, including Glenn Greenwald, think AG Holder's investigation of torture will only be directed at low-level operatives like at Abu Ghraib. This is probably so, but...

The last 5 minutes of this 27 minute clip address this. To crudely paraphrase Ms. Mayer, "Probably not legally containable...their lawyers have already prepared charts showing up to 8 levels of authorization...fingers pointed straight up...Bush and Cheney authorized it (big smile)".

When Holder rubs the lamp the teeny little bit he plans to, he's liable to get a bigger genie than he ever thought. This is good.

I wonder if the Republicans realize ...

How bogus they sound to an American with more than 2 functioning brain cells? I mean, when they're not whining like schoolchildren, they're trying to 'hide' their racism behind code words.

Why don't you all just come out and say it? "We don't want no spic bitch on the Supreme Court." It's not that hard. Everybody knows what you're saying around your "ethnic" and "empathy" and "sympathy" proclamations. Say it. "We don't want her letting more of the brown folks share the American Dream." Simple. It's what you're saying amongst yourselves anyway. It's what you're trying to get across to the clowns who vote for you. Hint: They only have two brain cells; you want to make sure they have no doubt about what side of the fence you come down on.

Take Jeff Sessions. This dork couldn't find his ass with both hands tied behind his back, yet he sits there and lectures a woman far more accomplished, far more intelligent, than he could ever hope to be. A woman who knows the law at least as well as her own children. To paraphrase Lawrence O'Donnell: 'You don't have to pass a test to be a committee chairman (or ranking member), you just have to sit in Congress longer than everyone else.' That he has the balls to talk about "prejudice" is the ultimate in hypocrisy and chutzpah.

These are the same people who swore John Roberts and Sam Alito were pillars of the legal community*, completely unbiased, and questioning their "empathy" and "sympathy" were out of bounds:

... Jeffrey Toobin, a well-respected legal commentator, has recently reported that "[i]n every major case since he became the nation's seventeenth Chief Justice, Roberts has sided with the prosecution over the defendant, the state over the condemned, the executive branch over the legislative, and the corporate defendant over the individual plaintiff." Some umpire. And is it a coincidence that this pattern, to continue Toobin's quote, "has served the interests, and reflected the values of the contemporary Republican party"? ...

Lotta empathy going on there, just not for people of color (or ethnicity). Hopefully, that tool Lindsey Graham was right when he said, paraphrasing: 'Barring an earth-shaking scandal, Judge Sotomayor will be confirmed as the next Supreme Court justice.'

The Republicans have become a joke, an obvious one. Between Sarah Palin, Rush Lintball (and all of his ilk), and the racist hypocrites in Congress, they will eventually be laughed into oblivion. Thing is, it ain't happening soon enough and they stand to fuck up even more stuff in the interim.

DenuciaRush

*Link via Digby.

Death Squads, Cheney, and American Standards

The Rude Pundit. I am leaving out his first paragraph because it will make you seriously consider not eating lunch.

The point here is that, right now, with just a little revealed and a more-than-likely horrible lot more waiting in the shadows like Orson Welles in The Third Man, it seems that Dick Cheney was, at the very least, concocting with the CIA a plan for a secret assassination army. Surely, we'll hear soon about how many terrorists were killed by crack shots, their heads brought to Cheney so he could use them for a delicious freedom stew, keeping the skulls as trophies until he had enough to construct a throne of bone. And, really, and, c'mon, what would be surprising would be to find out that Dick Cheney wasn't constructing a skull chair.

Yet, bizarrely, some Republicans are saying there shouldn't be an investigation into the potential that the CIA was putting together a death squad and that the Vice President told the CIA to lie to Congress about it. It's as if they're throwing up their hands in a comical "what can you do?" gesture, as if they're saying, "Well, that's just Cheney," and a laugh track will play to cover their asses.

While it's screamingly frustrating to keep saying, "But...but...if Clinton..." and just sigh, Republicans set the bar lower than a snail turd as to what's a scandal worth having investigated. Fucking "Travelgate"...

There's your scales of Republican justice: travel office employees fired? It's a crisis that demands millions of dollars spent to discover nothing. Potential secret CIA death squads and the involvement of at least the Vice President in lying to Congress in violation of the law? Nah, why bother? Let's move forward, not look back.

Yet the very nature of investigation and criminal proceedings is to look backward, with the knowledge that the past very much impacts the present. If Attorney General Eric Holder does go forward with a probe of Bush-era torture policies and if Dianne Feinstein and other Democrats are serious about looking into the CIA/Cheney story, then we will be making baby steps back to being a nation that actually gives a flying rat's fuck about the laws we pass.

And if we don't look back, if we simply attempt to bury the past in our inexorable march forward with the knowledge that unpunished crimes have been committed, then we, all of us, become co-conspirators. We all carry that burden then, that we know we are a country that has done wrong, but we are unwilling to prove it and punish those who ordered the commission of crimes in our name.

Amen.

Sotomayor hearings

BuzzFlash:

Live Blogging on Sotomayor Hearings. Watch for the GOP to Play to the Palin Know-Nothing Peanut Gallery.

Gee, ya think?

More on 'C'ult Street

In case you missed it:

Oh, the irony...and a serious note.

Ironic Times

Illinois Senate Race Wide Open
Early bidding frantic.

British Scientists Create Human Sperm in Laboratory
With nothing more than a men's magazine.

“Waterboarding,” “Staycation” Added to Merriam-Webster Dictionary
“Wet Willy,” “Middle Class” dropped.

??? ~ News Quiz ~ ???

Marines training in the mountains with pack mules for the mission in Afghanistan is a good example of:
A ) resourcefulness, imagination
B ) ingenuity, ability to adapt
C ) determination, tactical brilliance
D ) why we shouldn’t be there and won’t succeed
Hint: can you spell “exit strategy?”

The answer is:

E) The more you sweat in peace, the less you bleed in war.

The use of mule pack trains is very common in the Sierra Nevada (example) and the base where they do this is right down the street from me. Go read this.

Bottom line: I want my Marines so trained up on whatever they gotta do to get over in Clusterfuckistan that they get home alive. 'Exit strategy' is not up to them.

When life gives you lemons ...

Make lemonade. Jill:

...

But l'Affaire Ensign has served one useful purpose, and that is to blow the door off of the "C Street House", which seems to be the headquarters of "The Family"'s efforts to replace American democracy with something akin to Divine Right of Kings ...

It's time to clear the Jesus freaks out of government and the military. It's all these fucking 'pillars of morality' who got us into messes we're in to begin with. This is fucking America, you cult-ass motherfuckers. No one has a divine right to any-fucking-thing and the military is not 'God's Crusading Army'. I'm tired of these sanctimonious, hypocritical, fuckwads deciding what's good for me and millions of people around the world who neither believe nor accept their fucked up worldview.

Fuck you. All of you. If you wanna preach 'god's word', go back to the congregations who believe your mystical bullshit. I'm tired of having to put up with your false morality, American exceptionalism, and all around disrespect of anyone who doesn't believe your drivel. You wanna live in a theocracy? Move to Iran. But I'll be damned if I let you turn Washington into Tehran.

A few 'bad apples' ...

I had a little hope there for a while when AG Holder hinted in a Newseek article that investigations into the 'torture regime' might be in the future. Yeah, well if there is an investigation, it won't be of those ultimately responsible for the war crimes. Greenwald boils down all the bullshit:

Yesterday, I treated this new Newsweek report that Eric Holder is "leaning toward appointing a prosecutor to investigate the Bush administration's brutal interrogation practices" as something to celebrate. But new facts about what that investigation would entail and, more importantly, would exclude -- facts added by today's Washington Post -- strongly suggest it's the opposite. At least if that article is to be believed -- and it seems clear that Holder dispatched his allies to leak his plans in order to gauge reaction -- the investigation will only target "rogue" CIA interrogators who exceeded the limits of what John Yoo authorized, and would not include high-level policy makers who authorized the torture tactics and implemented America's torture regime ... [my em]

Let's see. In my book, any 'authorization' Yoo gave went far beyond the limits of the Constitution and Geneva Conventions to begin with. It wasn't just 'a few bad apples'. The entire bushel was rotten to the core:

...

But just as was true for the Abu Ghraib abuses, many of the worst instances of detainee abuse cannot be extricated from -- but rather are directly attributable to -- the torture policies authorized at the highest levels of the government. To target low-level interrogators while shielding high-level policy makers would further bolster America's two-tiered system of justice, in which ordinary Americans are subjected to merciless punishment while the most powerful elites are vested with virtual immunity from the consequences of their lawbreaking ...

Once again, those at the top will skate when it was their cowardly bed wetting after 9/11 (and the realization of the potential profits) that created the culture we saw in Abu Ghraib, Gitmo, and the secret CIA gulags in Eastern Europe. It wasn't 'rogue operators' who set these things up. arranged the funding, staffing, and logistics; that came from the top.

I put this in the same category as I do health care. If the Obama administration doesn't want to do it right, they shouldn't even bother because the results will be worse than we have now. We all voted for Obama and the Dems because they promised change. Since he's been in the White House, the places change was needed the most have remained status quo.

Does he think his novelty and intellect alone will restore America's credibility in the world after two terms of Bush? Does he think his daughters will charm everyone into respecting us again? Like the majority of U.S. citizens, those around the world are looking to us for change and inspiration.

As we saw in Africa this weekend, millions of people welcomed the message of hope and dedication he brought them. He told them they must prosecute their war criminals and end governmental corruption, yet Mr. Obama is unwilling to do that back home. Let me tell you, even the most downtrodden, hopeless, and desperate people understand hypocrisy when they see it. If you're inclined to lecture others about cleaning their houses, you might want to get out the broom yourself.

No change will come anywhere until Obama authorizes full and complete investigations into what went on during the Bush years. Giving inspirational speeches abroad and spouting platitudes at home won't cut it, not so long as the cover up of abuses continues.

The other Linda ...

Gord's post of the great tune by Linda Ronstadt and Emmylou Harris got me in the Linda Ronstadt mood but my favorites are more along these lines:

Linda Ronstadt - Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered

Partita ...

As I love Mozart's Divertimenti, so I also love Bach's Partitas:

Scott Ross (Harpsichord) - Bach Partita #1 (I)[BWV 825] (II, III)

Across The Border

A pretty song and a nice slide show of Western scenes from coolram52.

The Bruce Springsteen song "Across The Border" from the CD "Western Wall/The Tucson Sessions" by Linda Ronstadt and Emmylou Harris. Neil Young joins in on harmony vocals and a mean harmonica (my favorite harmonica solo next to Stevie Wonder in "Isn't She Lovely"). This was a really underrated CD in my opinion.

This is a song sung from the viewpoint of someone getting ready to head north across the border. The mention of the Brazos and the word 'corazón' lead me to believe it's not about the Canadian border despite all the pretty gabachos in the video.

Slim Palin rides 'er on down

Click to embiggen

Daddy Frank on Palin. Links at site:

[...] Most important, she stands for a genuine movement: a dwindling white nonurban America that is aflame with grievances and awash in self-pity as the country hurtles into the 21st century and leaves it behind. Palin gives this movement a major party brand and political plausibility that its open-throated media auxiliary, exemplified by Glenn Beck, cannot. [...]

That resentment is in part about race, of course. When Palin referred to Alaska as “a microcosm of America” during the 2008 campaign, it was in defiance of the statistical reality that her state’s tiny black and Hispanic populations are unrepresentative of her nation. She stood for the “real America,” she insisted, and the identity of the unreal America didn’t have to be stated explicitly for audiences to catch her drift. Her convention speech’s signature line was a deftly coded putdown of her presumably shiftless big-city opponent: “I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a community organizer, except that you have actual responsibilities.” (Funny how this wisdom has been forgotten by her supporters now that she has abandoned her own actual responsibilities in public office.)

Funny. Ha. Ha.

Even now, the so-called mainstream media can grade Palin on a curve: at MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” last week, Palin’s self-proclaimed representation of the “real America” was accepted as a given, as if white rural America actually still was the nation’s baseline.

The Palinists’ bogus beefs about double standards reached farcical proportions at Fox News on the sleepy pre-Fourth Friday afternoon when word of her abdication hit the East. The fill-in anchor demanded that his token Democratic stooge name another female politician who had suffered such “disgraceful attacks” as Palin. When the obvious answer arrived — Hillary Clinton — the Fox host angrily protested that Clinton had never been attacked in “a sexual way” or “about her children.”

Americans have short memories, but...

These are the cries of a constituency that feels disenfranchised — by the powerful and the well-educated who gamed the housing bubble, by a news media it keeps being told is hateful, by the immigrants who have taken some of their jobs, by the African-American who has ended a white monopoly on the White House. Palin is their born avatar. She puts a happy, sexy face on ugly emotions, and she can solidify her followers’ hold on a G.O.P. that has no leaders with the guts or alternative vision to stand up to them or to her.

Weird ain't it? The Repugs don't have the guts to stand up to a loudmouth minority that can't possibly elect them, and the Dems don't have the guts to stand up to the Repugs in favor of the people who elected them.

Former CIGNA executive says Michael Moore was right all along

citisven at Kos

Ok, so haven't seen anyone write about this, and while we right here all know that the insurance companies literally go over dead bodies in their profiteering ways, in an interview with Bill Moyers that aired tonight on PBS, Wendell Potter, former Head of Corporate Communications at CIGNA, admits that Michael Moore nailed it on the head in his movie, Sicko. It's a 30 minute interview that comes close to a confessional of the health insurance industry's enslavement to Wall Street, and I really really hope everybody in this country gets to see this. It's the only thing you'll ever need to show if anyone ever questions the public option or rambles on about the dangers of government bureaucrats. IT'S THE ONLY TV YOU'LL EVER NEED TO WATCH TO KNOW THAT WE'VE BEEN COLLECTIVELY GETTING JACKED.

I watched the show last Friday night and he's right.

I recommend everyone go and watch this video and then forward it to as many people as you can.

So do I.

Update: people in the comments were suggesting that this would be a great time to rewatch Sicko, especially since Wendell Potter has come out to say it's the ultimate education tool. Thanks to teh google it can be imbibed in its full length right here.

I got the email Michael Moore sent out and it has this youtube link to the part of the interview where Potter talks about industry strategies of discrediting him:

More here.

Cheney Is Linked to Concealment of C.I.A. Project

NYT

The Central Intelligence Agency withheld information about a secret counterterrorism program from Congress for eight years on direct orders from former Vice President Dick Cheney, the agency’s director, Leon E. Panetta, has told the Senate and House intelligence committees, two people with direct knowledge of the matter said Saturday.

The report that Mr. Cheney was behind the decision to conceal the still-unidentified program from Congress deepened the mystery surrounding it, suggesting that the Bush administration had put a high priority on the program and its secrecy.

I have no idea what the program was, but it doesn't surprise me one damn bit.

Hooker Jay and the Health-Care Fatwah

We got this comment on this post:

And Gord, about that bloggin' bug biting me on the ass again. Well, a video bloggin' bug bit me instead! Just might have to be quiet for a while again. Then again, maybe not -- they haven't gitmo'ed Rude Pundit yet so I could stay in the clear!

This is our old pal Sizemore. A few more lefty rants like this and the Repugs'll be hidin' under their beds! Well, those that aren't already. They like it under there. They can touch each other. We need a lot more lefties, progressives, Dems, and just plain pissed-off folks to sound off like this.

Hooker Jay, formerly of the "A Corrupted Kids Show" podcast, goes off on a health care rant blasting politicians, lobbyists, rightwing Tali-Born Again preachers, pill poppin' pundits, crony Capitalists, and so called centrists. America's health care system must have a public option that is exactly like a beer run -- everybody chips in, everybody gets it, and nobody gets rich.

Damn, sounds a little like me too. Heh. I like it! I don't agree with him 100%, but plenty close enough.

Caution: Not work safe. PG+ to R-rated for language, nudity, violence, and general attitude.


I'm sure comments are welcome at YouTube as well as here, and go to his YouTube channel and subscribe. YouTube will let you know right on your sign-in page when he puts up a new one.

Good question ...

Jim "Mimus" Yeager asks:

where are all the third-party folks? how come they aren't going out of their way to make any noise? seems to me, now that the republicans are thoroughly discredited and the democrats clearly prefer catering to the special interests who donated the most to their campaigns to serving the people who elected them, the time is ripe for a great third-party awakening.

...

Never really been a 3rd party guy. I was always hoping the Dems, after being kicked around for so long, would do some kicking back, since they're in fat city and all. Apparently not. Maybe it is time for another party that can actually compete but I would think, cynic that I am, such a party (with that type of influence) would be coopted by the special interests soon enough.

Liberties ...

Only a coward like David Brooks would sit through this:

...

BROOKS: You know, all three of us spend a lot of time covering politicians and I don’t know about you guys, but in my view, they’re all emotional freaks of one sort or another. They’re guaranteed to invade your personal space, touch you. I sat next to a Republican senator once at dinner and he had his hand on my inner thigh the whole time. I was like, ehh, get me out of here.

...

Anybody, man or woman, who would take liberties like that with me, uninvited, would be making a visit to the emergency room to get the bones in their fingers reset.

...

Let me ask you something. If someone puts his hand on your inner thigh, do you just sit there? Even if he is a Senator, I'm pretty sure I would move the hand --- or stab it with a fork. Do these media parasites value their access so much that they are willing to grant any kind of "access" themselves? And here I thought the term mediawhore was a metaphor.

...

Whores, in the truest sense of the word.

Last Night In Baltimore

Seeing as how our playful un-PCness has already got us in trouble with the distaff side (we're used to it), might as well fuckin' go for it! Heh.

I've piled off a few ships with my shipmates and a pocket fulla money and done this, but this is a common experience even for men who've never seen a ship, so this is dedicated to every man out there who at some point will nod knowingly and say, even if very quietly, 'been there, done that, when do we do it again?'.

Also, this might very possibly be the highest and best use of anime.

This is another anime/boggard crossovers clip featuring the tune "My Last Night in Baltimore," which was performed by the world famous Poxy Boggards. I hope you enjoy it.

Thanks to LordDrakoArakis, who has lots of these.

Weekend CaliPot Update

Censorship in California: Marijuana Ad Campaign Rejected by TV Stations

We'll take up the slack. Yo, MPP, send us a check. Or a prescription. Heh.

From MPPstaff.

Legal pot, taxed or not: 6 public health issues

On the data side, I compiled every bit of published research about marijuana (positive and negative) from the previous thirty years, researching every conceivable symptom and/or adverse event. The results were published and widely cited. I also gave talks using this same information about the health implications (and the quality of the data to support or refute claims) to any group interested in hearing it.

So how'd that go? While giving the exact same talk, using the exact same slides, I received impulsive, giddy gifts from both a San Francisco medical marijuana club (an enameled marijuana pin - "finally, a physician willing to speak the truth about how safe marijuana is!") and from the Santa Clara police department (a navy-blue district attorney mug - "finally, a physician willing to tell the truth about how dangerous this drug is!"). I had simultaneously become the unwilling darling of both ends of the spectrum. I learned from this experience two things:

1) there is a desperate need for data-based information looking at marijuana in the less-emotional context of a pharmaceutical medication, and

2) no matter how data-dry and context-bias-free you present marijuana information, passionate people will often hear what they want to hear.

Enjoy the rest.

Boom Time

Click to embiggen

Graffiti at Fixer's house?

New photo gallery from Operation Khanjar.