Today's fine satire

In response to this MSNBC story, Farkers have torn into the government's timeline and all but proven that torture in secret prisons, at least in this case, produces nothing of value and hurts American standing. I'm going to post the best stuff here, by a guy named jarrett, because it sets the stage for the finest satire I've read in a while:

submitter: Gitmo detainee confession helps nab terrorist. Suck it, libs

According to the article, the so-called informant, Abu Zubaydah, was not even at Gitmo during the Jose Padilla investigation.

So the timeline breaks down like this:

May 8, 2002
Jose Padilla, an American citizen, is arrested on American soil under allegations of planning a "dirty bomb" attack.

June 9, 2002
Bush administration declares Padilla to be an "enemy combatant" citing dirty bomb plan and transfers him to a military prison. Padilla has no contact with the outside world or legal counsel. Padilla later claims he was tortured while being detained in South Carolina.

Nov. 22, 2005
After being held for 3 1/2 years, Padilla is finally indicted for conspiring to kill or kidnap people overseas. The indictment makes no mention of the "dirty bomb" and alleges no plans for attacks in the US. At least one of the charges has already been dismissed.

Today
The government claims that a secret interrogation from a secret prison led the government to capture the "dirty bomber" who apparently, um, wasn't. The informants also claim they were tortured while detained.

A few comments later, jarrett lays in with the satire:

What you guys don't seem to be considering is that these people might kill everyone you know and love if given the chance. So torturing and indefinitely detaining suspected terrorists (one of whom happens to be an American citizen) is very necessary. Sure, there's no "evidence" that Padilla had access to radioactive materials, but why take chances? He's brown. No one will miss him.

Besides that, it doesn't matter what our government does. As long as we're one step above "beheading someone on VHS", the United States maintains the moral high ground.

Also, let's not forget that the detainees get meals and a prayer mat while sitting in a cell for years without indictment or any form of due process. So even though they've lost every freedom and semblance human dignity, they probably have it much better than they did in their homeland with their family.

Finally, we all know our government does everything Good and Right, and is free from human error or corruption. I feel completely comfortable giving our government absolute power over peoples' lives, completely free from the strictures of the Geneva Conventions (which we ratified in the pre-9/11 world), and free from any oversight for those human-rights tree-hugging terrorist-lovers. I don't see why any patriotic citizen would feel any differently.

Any bets on how many people in our administration wouldn't see this as satire?

Iraq, re-visioned

The Wall Street Journal's opinion site offers a stunningly ignorant and biased view of the war in Iraq. Yes, folks, it's true: Historical revisionism is already coming to a quagmire near you.

The article really needs to be read in full to capture all the nuances, because its very tone is pervasive and astonishingly bad. But let's look at select bits:

We are told by careful pollsters that half of the American people believe that American troops should be brought home from Iraq immediately. This news discourages supporters of our efforts there. Not me, though: I am relieved. Given press coverage of our efforts in Iraq, I am surprised that 90% of the public do not want us out right now.

Note here that this concerns only press coverage. The fact that generals think the war is a debacle, or that 100,000 may have been killed in Iraq's internal violence, or that a militia literally took over a town. Our Mr. Wilson -- not the bad guy with the CIA wife, this one -- is only looking at how the media covers Iraq.

The idea is flawed on its premise. You can't look at how the media covers something without looking at the reality of the something. Wilson does not do that. He wants to say that the negative portrayal of the Iraq war means the media is negative. You can't do that without looking at the reality, which is that dozens of bodies turn up mutilated -- decapitation seems to be a favorite -- every single day. Not, unfortunately, to Wilson:

Naturally, some of the hostile commentary reflects the nature of reporting. When every news outlet struggles to grab and hold an audience, no one should be surprised that this competition leads journalists to emphasize bloody events.

You'd better believe if 30 headless corpses were found in Wilson's hometown, he wouldn't be complaining about adverse media coverage. Perhaps the media should write about all the people who weren't decapitated yesterday?

Then James Q. Wilson runs ahead and assaults the New York Times for its coverage of the wiretapping program -- illegal as it appears to be. Is the media supposed to ignore a huge violation of the law, when a legal remedy would be incredibly easy? (e.g., get a warrant!)

Then he attacks the New York Times and LA Times for covering the international financial monitoring program ... conveniently leaving out his own Wall Street Journal. Nor should it matter that the existence of the monitoring program was bragged upon by the White House shortly after it was created.

There's much more in the column. I particularly appreciate how he says Vietnam reporting turned negative because of weak political leadership and a basis of lies -- without necessarily extending the parallel to Iraq. Instead, he says political leadership in Iraq has been strong.

What? Leadership is the act of leading. If we had strong political leadership, there would be a strong consensus developed by our leader, a common understanding of the facts, a common cause or drive pushing us forward. The simple fact is none of that is happening, and exactly the inverse is true.

James Q. Wilson here is drinking his Kool-Aid, and loving every drop. Let's hope no one else in his cult will follow.

Disappearing civil rights

Glenn Greenwald offers a lengthy description of a guest in America who has now been held for five years now -- without the right to see a lawyer, or get a trial. It's definitely worth a read. He concludes:

As always, the most extraordinary and jarring aspect of cases like this one is that these principles -- which were once the undebatable, immovable bedrock of our political system -- are now openly debated and actively disputed by our own government. By itself it is astonishing -- and highly revealing about where we are as a country -- that such precepts even need to be defended at all.

How are we supposed to be promoting democracy and civil rights around the world when we fight them at home?

Frightening Vietnam parallel

There's a new parallel between Iraq and Vietnam, and this one is simply awful: As a Buddhist monk did in Vietnam, a Chicago man immolated himself in protest of the war, reports the Chicago Reader and Pitchfork.

Democracy regained

With control of Congress returned to another party, we should begin to see the oversight role properly used.

And that's just what the LA Times is reporting.

"The American people sent a clear message that they do not want a rubber-stamp Congress that simply signs off the president's agenda," said Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.), who is in line to become chairman of the House Judiciary Committee.

"Instead, they have voted for a new direction for America and a real check and balance against government overreaching."

Conyers and other Democrats say that sort of scrutiny has been noticeably absent over the last six years. Democrats accuse Republicans of being complicit as Bush has led the nation into an unwinnable war and adopted economic polices that favor the affluent and big business.

...But even some scholars say recent GOP oversight has been lax. "This could be remembered as a historically unique period in which an administration got immunity from Congress to engage in errors with impunity," said Charles Tiefer, a University of Baltimore law professor and a former House counsel.

Sure, this wouldn't be American politics without the search for the truth taking on political bents. But that's OK; in fact, that's arguably what the Framers wanted. The three pillars of American government are supposed to be opposed. It's not efficient time-wise, but it worked for a couple hundred years. It's time for it to work again.

This comes on the heels of one branch of government deciding it was inconvenient to stop abdicating its power to another branch. It's pathetic, and it put the Constitution in peril.

Screwing more voters

Wikipedia is following the latest nitwit to try to screw up voter rights: Talk show host Laura Ingraham, who encouraged listeners to flood voter problem hotlines.

We've also got discouragment efforts from a goddamned cartoon strip, Mallard Fillmore, here and here.

A discussion on Daily Kos offers some radical, but perhaps worthwhile, ideas. One poster pasted in a picture of the coffins of U.S. soldiers flying to the Dover mortuary: "Arlington National Cemetery is full to bursting with those who paid for our right to vote. NO, it is not funny."

Another post:

I've been thinking that perhaps the only way to end voter supression tactics is to seriously up the criminal penalties. It is, in essence, a form of treason, undermining our system of government. If you can disenfranchise people, do a couple years in jail, then come out set for life by the party you put in power, there's no real penalty.

I'd say 20 years is a good starting point. Make sure that when they get out of jail the people who put them in power have long forgotten about them.

--- The path to hell is paved with good intentions. Bush invaded Iraq based on good intentions. Thus we are staying the course on the path to hell.

by sterno

Another poster argued that voter disenfranchisement amounts to sedition.

For whatever party, for whatever candidate, for whatever reason, efforts to strip away the right to vote are abominable.

Screwing history

Via Fark.com is this truly appalling video, in which an arrogant, stupid White House tried to alter history so it didn't look as stupid and arrogant as it once did.

Screwing the voters

So, just a few years after the New Hampshire Republicans, who were supported by the national apparatus, decided to screw the voters, the national party is trying, yet again, to screw voters.

The newest is an illegal subterfuge designed to piss off voters. TalkingPointsMemo reports:

The lead into the call starts with the speaker saying 'I'm calling with information about' Dem candidate X. Then there's a short pause.

At this point, you know it's an annoying robocall, so a lot of people just hang up. If you hang up then, you think it's a call from the Democratic candidate.

Second, the repetition. And this part is the key. If you don't listen through the whole message, the machine keeps calling you back, often well in excess of half a dozen times with the same call. It only stops if you listen all the way through.

As you can imagine, that's driving a lot of people through the roof.

In other words, the Republicans behind the calls win either way. If you keep hanging up, you think you're being harassed by the campaign of the local Democratic House candidate. If you give up and listen all the way through, you hear the political attack. The true source of the call, the NRCC, the GOP House campaign committee, is only revealed at the end of the call.

(Federal regulations dictate calls be identified at the top of the call.)

CrooksAndLiars offers links to CNN video. The CNN reporter offers the hard-hitting observation that the FCC requires a phone number and the name of the caller up front and at least one ad "doesn't seem to do either." Hello -- it does or it doesn't. Are you afraid someone's going to find a stage whisper at -30db in the recordings?

Either way, it's interesting, and appalling, stuff. The New York Times offers a link through MediaNation, with a sign that this silly, evil bullshit could backfire:

David Kaplan, a registered Republican in Connecticut who has received more than two dozen of the calls, said he was so annoyed that the Republicans might “have shot themselves in the leg” in terms of winning his vote.

Is it too much to ask someone to follow the law?

Psychotic hypocrisy

Years ago, MeTheSheeple heard Richard Dreyfuss talk. Someone asked him about what it was like working with Bill Murray in "What About Bob?" Dreyfuss said he'd dodged that question for years, then started telling the truth.

"Bill Murray," Dreyfuss said, "is a psychotic bully."

Bill Murray's political counterpart seems to be running for election, and boy, she can't even keep her story straight.

After a whole series of stories and polls showing Kerry Healey's attack ads are backfiring -- more people dislike her -- the Globe runs a final story, "Doubts are voiced on Healey tactics."

Now, rather than admit she was being a psychotic bully -- and a political moron, to boot -- Healey blames the media. No, really:

In an interview with the Associated Press yesterday, Healey defended the ads that focus on the Democratic nominee's advocacy on behalf of convicted rapist Benjamin LaGuer. One, which features a woman walking alone in a parking garage, has drawn national attention for its negativity.

Healey said she never intended that so much attention be paid to the ad.

"The media has spent too much time focusing on this one issue, and therefore we as a campaign have ended up spending more time talking about this one issue than about . . . the many other substantive issues," Healey told the Associated Press.

Yes. You see? It's the media's fault that this was even an issue. It's got nothing to do with her making it an issue. Yeah.

A lot of teen movies feature scenes in which the bully finally gets his; MeTheSheeple loves the scene in "A Christmas Story" in which Ralphie goes simply ape-shit and begins pounding the school bully while cutting loose with a seemingly endless stream of profanities.

The polls show that, on Tuesday, voters will give Healey the bully exactly what she deserves. It's a shame there will be no place to write in comments like "You'll shoot your eye out! You'll shoot your eye out!"