"We prosecuted Japanese officers for subjecting prisoners to waterboarding in World War II"

I Can't Wait To Be Waterboarded: John Ashcroft "...responded to questions from the audience. The first question came from a woman who asked if Ashcroft would be willing to be subjected to waterboarding.

'The things that I can survive, if it were necessary to do them to me, I would do,' he said."

Whatever the fuck that means ?

"Ashcroft apparently believes that torture should be allowed as long as it doesn’t kill him.

Reps. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) and William Delahunt (D-MA) have introduced the 'American Anti-Torture Act of 2007' to make clear no U.S. government agency feels it can apply the Ashcroft standard while interrogating detainees. They write:

'Waterboarding is not 'simulated drowning.' It is drowning. It involves restraining a detainee — usually by strapping him or her to a board — with the head placed lower than the feet. The face or mouth is often covered or stuffed with rags and water is poured over the face to force inhalation. The victim’s lungs fill with water until the procedure is stopped or the victim dies. Waterboarding has been considered torture — even by our own government — until recently. Indeed, we prosecuted Japanese officers for subjecting prisoners to waterboarding in World War II.'"

"Show me better facts and I'll gladly change my mind." - Phill Sawyer

"Don't Celebrate Turnaround in Iraq Just Yet": "Thomas E. Ricks: Well, that's the big question. Are the warring sides standing down until Uncle Sam gets out of the way? The Sunnis have largely stopped fighting while they seek to cut a deal to get a place at the table in post-Saddam Iraq. And the Shiites have stopped fighting the Americans for at least six months, they say -- and why not? With the Sunnis standing down, Uncle Sam would be focusing all his firepower on the Shiites. But what if the Sunnis get sick of waiting? And what happens when U.S. forces start declining in number next year?"...

...(a question posed to Rick) "Boonsboro, Md.: When will it be okay to state that we are winning in Iraq and all the naysayers ("the war is lost") were wrong? Even the New York Times is admitting things are going well.

Thomas E. Ricks: Well, things are going better. I just got back from Baghdad last week, and it was clear that violence has decreased. But it hasn't gone away. It is only back down to the 2005 level -- which to my mind is kind of like moving from the eighth circle of hell to the fifth.

I interviewed dozens of officers and none were willing to say we are winning. What they were saying is that at least now, we are not losing. But to a man, they were enormously frustrated by what they see as the foot-dragging of the Baghdad government."

"I am writing about someone I used to know."

"Like a lot of sensitive, gifted boys, he drifted into magic." - Steve Martin's self-penned 'Biography':

"'The appeal of writing', he added, was that 'I feel like I can get to the point where I know I did the best I can. I really love the sense of finality in writing, the sense of getting it right in a way that only I can know about. In comedy, if they’re not laughing, there’s no doubt.'...

"...he taught himself to play as a teenager from a Pete Seeger instruction book, practicing alone in his car with windows rolled up even on hot summer nights...

...he picked up the banjo and played a bluegrass song he had been learning. 'When I play music, it’s like an alternate form of living,' he said."

The Ann Hole

The Vagina Diatribes: "Perfected: The Ann Coulter Song (And The Barely Political Business Model)...

All the personal attacks on Ann show how we are deeply afraid of her."

Afraid ? Of What ?

She's a bomb that's already exploded. The danger is over.

If I had the time I'd train her to bark for you.

But if all you're looking for is an aging, neutered moll with enough cash to be obnoxious to store clerks, she's your bimbo. "

Small In So Many Ways

Prince Threatens To Sue Own Fans Over Fansites: He is so fucked-up on this issue that it's almost breathtaking. Getting sued by this little schlubb will be a badge of honor.

For a guy that uses no notes that aren't on the scale and uses no words not in the dictionary, the upwardly grabby little idiot somehow believes he should own what your eyes can see and what your ears can hear.

The honorable thing might be to steal everything he owns and give it to homeless kids. Then scream in his face until he cries.

How small is he going to get? "

"Waterboarding is torture, period"

Cleanse this stain from our national honor: "'Waterboarding is torture, period,' Malcolm Wrightson Nance, a former Navy instructor of prisoner of war and terrorist hostage survival programs, told a House constitutional subcommittee. I believe that we must reject the use of the waterboard for prisoners and captives and cleanse this stain from our national honor."

Then we hear from the less-than-men that the GOP coughs up in defense of its barbarity.

"Rep. Trent Franks, R-Ariz., said at the panel's hearing that he is against torture but that 'sometimes we have to take measures to protect the innocent that we do not like.'

'Severe interrogations are sometimes part of doing that,' said Franks, the ranking Republican on the panel..."

"...Nance described the experience as a 'slow motion suffocation' that provides enough time for the subject to consider what's happening: 'water overpowering your gag reflex, and then feeling your throat open and allow pint after pint of water to involuntarily fill your lungs.
The victim is drowning.'

Republican Rep. Trent Franks, Arizona, is a vile man with a diseased thought process.

"I would put him at a second level wannabe kiss ass"

"If you put it in writing and press that send button your butt can be on the line" - Yet John Matel Is As Safe As A Rightie In Crawford, Texas - Guess Why...:

"Being a retired civil servant, let me give you my take on this post, this guy is well connected, he has his ticket punched, 10 to 1 he is very close to the top and is required to make very little interaction with the locals. I would put him at a second level wannabe kiss ass. Second, if he did not want someone to see his letter - he cited the military, then why did he release it? Supposedly he is a smart guy and any internet savy person automatically knows that if you put it in writing and press that send button your butt can be on the line.

Not to sound paranoid, but considering the machinations of this administration why should I believe anything from anyone who supports their view. Frankly there is too much factual evidence from those on the ground, the grunts, and I believe them more than anyone else, that contradicts even the slightest reason to have an open embassy there." - arkansawtravler, on HuffPo

The "Nasty Man"

Rudy's Torture Talk: "John McCain, who is understandably appalled by the casual advocacy of torture, noted that Giuliani and the others in the GOP field come by their faux toughness without benefit of military service. This is a fair point, because as both McCain and Colin Powell have noted, all a POW has going for him is the hope of reciprocity. If we don't torture, maybe they won't, either.

This means nothing to Giuliani. He rebutted McCain with one of his signature your-mother-wears-a-mustache responses. McCain, he said, has "never run a city, never run a state, never run a government." Yes, but he has been tortured.

McCain's experience, though, makes no impression on Giuliani. He likened "intensive questioning," the term of art for a wee bit of torture, to what he practiced as New York's U.S. attorney and then mayor: "If I didn't use intensive questioning, there would be a lot of Mafia guys running around New York right now."

Is he serious? Did he waterboard the Gambinos? Did he deprive the Genovese family of sleep? Did he hang the Colombos by their thumbs? Did he bombard the Luccheses with opera from a regional company?

You could dismiss Giuliani's statements as campaign hot air and leave it at that. But to those who know something about his time as mayor, it is reminiscent of Giuliani's scary lack of empathy for victims and a concomitant inability to distinguish critics from enemies. These are the qualities that made him so unpopular in New York's black community (and elsewhere), and prompted Ed Koch to title his book about Giuliani The "Nasty Man."

I doubt Giuliani had Orson Swindle in mind when he trivialized sleep deprivation as a pillowless night on a bumpy campaign flight. But he should have had a somber appreciation for the realities of torture and not, as he did, make it sound like a scene out of a movie. Swindle laughed when he heard Giuliani's comment. "He obviously doesn't understand what he's talking about," Swindle said.

It's a habit."

Rudy can be stopped, but it might be very messy.

Rudy The Water-Boarder

"A small man in search of a balcony", according to Jimmy Breslin.

"Now, intensive questioning works."

America now means that place where - once upon a time, it was possible to see God smiling on our efforts.

For Whom the Writer's Strike...

"Let your life be a friction against the machine", said Henry David Thoreau. The writers strike should not be seen as the usual, ordinary petition by workers for greater pay and benefits, but as a battle in the new war by Big Rich against the individual.

"The fact is, this fight is very much about the future of our relationship to giant corporations. As individuals, as artists, as workers, as citizens. It is not a fight between one group of unlikable shallow and out of touch people on the coast and another. It is a fight for the value of work itself in a changing world."

It is a deadly fight for control of our identities and for a stake in the future of our culture.

The CNN Loon

Tom Friedman Drops the Dime on Lou Dobbs: In the student's question, "he references Dobbs and asks about 'the nativist spirit' and protectionism, asks about the way issues are presented, and whether this is all more about mindset than about policy.

Friedman, three time Pulitzer Prize winner and author of bestsellers "The Lexus and the Olive Tree" and more recently "The World is Flat" (which sold a million and a half copies, far more than Dobbs' viewership -- or ours, by the way), begins his answer. "One of the problems", he begins, explaining that we need leaders who can explain the complexity, not who will just stir the pot, "is we have politicians that are making us stupid, who are throwing sand in our eyes." But then he goes on: "And then you have a blithering idiot like Lou Dobbs, in my view, who's using the platform of CNN in...the frame of a news show. This is not news. And so we have a political class not making sense of the world for people and that's why the public...is so agitated."

Peter Paul Mounts Anything

Getting Money is Paul's Plan: "Mr. Paul has a criminal past that includes a guilty plea for cocaine possession and trying to defraud the Cuban government of millions of dollars in 1979. He has been seeking attention for his claims against the Clintons, and he sued Mrs. Clinton in California."...

But it does not interfere with his general malfeasing...

"A 13.4-minute video accusing Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of campaign finance fraud is being shown on college campuses and has generated significant Web attention."...

According to a Clinton spokesperson, “Peter Paul is a professional liar who has four separate criminal convictions, two for fraud. His video repackages a series of seven-year-old false claims about Senator Clinton that have already been rejected by the California state courts, the Justice Department, the Federal Election Commission and the Senate Ethics Committee.”

Increasing the scratch is the favored pastime of most GOP drudgebunnies.

"I Will Fuck Up The World Mightily"

Rudy Licks 1967 Stamp - Acts Weird All Day: "This is the world we live in. It's not this happy, romantic-like world where we'll negotiate with this one, or we'll negotiate with that one and there will be no preconditions, and we'll invite Ahmadinejad to the White House, we'll invite Osama bin Laden to the White House," Giuliani said.

'Hillary and Obama are kind of debating whether to invite them to the inauguration or the inaugural ball,' he added."

Great leadership manner.

Butterballs in Print

Lucianne Goldberg Poured Ink on her Blue Dress and Jonah Began to Form: "There is, supposedly, a Chinese proverb that goes, 'How is it that a toad this large comes to stand in front of me?'

One of the clammy fantasies of people like Jonah Goldberg - and a great aching desire of all deep-dish American Conservatives, has been to convince ordinary people that Liberals were the Actual, Genuine Fascists of the 20th Century.

Mission Unaccomplished.

Jonah's strained writing, reeking of gibberish, allows him to jog alongside the GOP bus with the other rightie losers - like the pools of small fish that converge at the anus of a whale.

And that's why Lucianne named him Jonah."

The Judith Miller Movie

It's like 'Behind The Green Door' - only it smells like fish

Trying to glam up Judith Miller is almost insulting.

The only way this works is if the movie delivers Miller as an Uber Toppen Hanna Reich landing her airborne beemer in a Berlin maze of rubble and road - rushing into the bunker for that one last chance at a date with the big guy.

Glenn Beck Pisses Off God - Righties Burn To The Ground

Beck Dumps It - Then Forced To Eat It: " 'I think there is a handful of people who hate America. Unfortunately for them, a lot of them are losing their homes in a forest fire today.' "

Ooops. He shoulda shut his mouth - his favorite God evidentally didn't cotton to that kind of remark, so within hours a whole bunch of GOP schmucks would lose their homes in the San Diego infernos.

Beck is a criminal and he will burn to ashes in his own time. Check his record. It's the story of a foul and failed junior gladiator with a head full of so much hatred and sin that he is barely a soul.

As Rush Limbaugh suggested, "We're going to find out where your kids go to school."

Since Beck pimps himself as a religious sort, pehaps he'll enjoy things better when it's all visited on his kids. That's why I wouldn't worry too much about the fate of this creep. It's all on automatic.

Pray for his family.

"I doubt very much that we would've taken that animal away," says SPCA Spokeswoman

Local animal official disagrees with decision to take dog from Ellen DeGeneres' hairdresser: " 'Ellen has a fabulous reputation - her interest in animal welfare is well-known and well-documented,' said Pasadena Humane Society & SPCA spokeswoman Ricky Whitman.

DeGeneres and her partner, actress Portia de Rossi, adopted Iggy, a Brussels Griffon mix, from Mutts and Moms, a volunteer, non-profit dog rescue organization in Pasadena on Sept. 20. But, after Iggy and the kitties didn't mix, DeGeneres gave the dog to her hairdresser, whose 11- and 12-year-old daughters bonded with it..."

"..Sunday, the agency sent a representative to the hairdresser's home and took the dog..."

"...Though the local humane society has the same policy, saying adopted dogs who aren't working out should be returned to the shelter rather than given away, Whitman says her group 'would've handled this very differently.'

'I doubt very much that we would've taken that animal away,' she said. 'From what I've read, the family is just devastated. Ellen is certainly devastated. That's not what you want. You want people who have animals to be happy, and you want animals to be in wonderful environment.' "

Hicks, Applebees, Ah Shucks, and Much Much More

Mickey Finn vs. Huck Finn:

At a quick glance, Giuliani - the slightly scary soprano wannabee, appears to be the most attractive candidate the GOP could choose. Granted, he will be soft with the uber-rightie mouthbreathers, but with his undeniable attractiveness to some traditional Democrats he will be able to carve some moderates away from Hillary, giving him an actual chance in the general election.

It all seems so clear that Giuliani is the most dangerous Republican to run against - except perhaps for this unknown force out there with the name Huckabee. This guy's chances are difficult to assess, but his appeal to many progressives is revealing something about the electorate in general that may be a bedeviling force for Democrat’s chances in the election. On so many core issues Huckabee is the antithesis of the progressive’s dream world. He publicly states a disbelief in evolution, a hard-right absolutist stance on reproductive choice; would probably acquiesce to the incarceration of active, practicing gays if he could, and I suspect that he would bring progressive government to a halt using means far harsher than his genial smile would suggest.

So what is Huckabee doing on the sunny side of the polls? Well, I think it is 3 things - with a chaser. He has a great face, he has a very pleasant manner of speaking, and he can talk about healthcare better than most of the competition - so far anyway. And to finish it all off, he has the best name in the game.

Baptists Tell Romney - "You're a Cultist!"

The garden of Eden was located in southern Illinois : "They probably have no idea that the faith calls for belief in Jesus's having come to America hundreds of years ago, or that the garden of Eden was located in southern Illinois, or that the American Indians are actually 'lost tribes' of Israelites. Likewise, they are probably unaware that until the late 1970's, black people were considered as a matter of church doctrine to be morally incapable of reaching the highest realms of the hereafter. "

We definitely need to get back to some old-fashioned Scientology !

"There is a way around everything if you are smart enough"

Actress Deborah Kerr Dies at Age 86: "'I have never had a fight with any director, good or bad,' she said toward the end of her career. 'There is a way around everything if you are smart enough.'"

The 3 movies with Deborah Kerr that I remember most - and liked best, are:

"Heaven Knows Mr. Allison"
"The King and I"
"An Affair to Remember"