I applaud you for standing up on this torture principle.
Please allow to relay what I saw in Iraq from Feb 2005-Mar 2006. I saw torture, definitely. The Iraqi soldiers routinely beat, burned, electrified...etc. the folks they picked. I never saw or heard of a U.S. Marine torturing anyone. In fact, I remember distinctly one of my lieutenants (who is now an FBI agent) coming in from a long day of "advising" the local Iraqi company. He said, "You know what sir, I think I just saved a terrorist today. I'm not really sure how to feel about it."
You see, he did a no-notice walk thru inspection of one of the Iraqi's barracks and found a poor fellow hanging by his feet from the ceiling. The Iraqi soldiers were whipping his soles and heels trying to get him to turn in his neighbors for being, or helping, insurgents. Well, after a few minutes of this, he was giving up his whole neighborhood. Was it true? Who knows?
We get a small amount of pleasure from touching our mouths. The pleasure declines after it is “harvested” and takes several minutes to become available again. This mechanism evolved because it kept our lips moist. At the time it evolved, people spent little time sitting. The pleasure was obtained by pursing or licking your lips, which moistened them. Predictions: 1. if you watch people whose hands are busy, they will purse or lick their lips roughly as often as people in an audience touch their mouths. 2. The more you lick or purse your lips, the less you will touch them with your hands. 3. The more you touch your lips with your hands, the less you will purse or lick them.
"I am embarrassed by these mistakes and the embarrassment it has caused the paper,'' - David Broder.
So he'll return the corporate lucre, right? Just like Krugman returned Enron's? Oh, I forgot: they're journalists, not politicians. Ethical standards are lower for journalists.
A Chihuahua named Elwood sits with his tongue out before the start of the 20th Annual Ugliest Dog Competition at the Sonoma-Marin Fair June 20, 2008 in Petaluma, California. Owners of ugly dogs travel to Petaluma from all over the country to participate in the annual contest. By Justin Sullivan/Getty Images.
Rauch chronicles GM's gamble on a plug-in car. It' an eye-opening piece:
In conversations with everyone from staff engineers to Rick Wagoner,
the chairman and CEO, I heard references to the Apollo program. “John
Kennedy didn’t say, ‘Let’s go to the moon and, you know, we’ll get
there as soon as we can,’” Wagoner said in a recent interview in his
office, atop a high-rise in Detroit. “I asked our experts, ‘Guys, do we
have a reasonable chance of making it or not?’ Yes. ‘Well,
then, let’s go for what we want rather than go for what we know we can
do.’” With the Volt, GM—battered, beleaguered, struggling for
profitability—hopes to re-engineer not just the car but the way the
public thinks about cars, the way the public thinks about GM, and the
way GM thinks about itself.
Delays are a fact of life on Amtrak—a symptom of a system that’s been on life support since birth. By the 1960s—due largely to the boom in passenger air travel—private rail companies were struggling. By 1970, after a string of bankruptcies and mergers, only five companies were left standing, and their future seemed in doubt. The survival of the rail companies was seen as crucial to the nation’s economic stability: Trains were, and continue to be, the single largest mover of freight in the country. But money-losing passenger service was considered a major sore on the system. So in 1971, Congress and President Nixon relieved the rail companies of the burden of moving people, eventually forming the National Railroad Passenger Corporation, more commonly known as Amtrak (which is an only slightly less awkward moniker than Railpax, its original incarnation) to take on the losses associated with passenger rail. Though the company is entirely owned by the U.S. government, funded at the government’s discretion, and has its leadership appointed by the president and subject to Senate approval, it still has a mandate to achieve profitability and financial independence. In essence, it is a private company wholly owned and operated by government bureaucracy. Nixon’s aides figured Amtrak would only last a few years.
You know: the evidence that proves that the inmates are, in the words of the president, the "worst of the worst". It needs revision before real courts look at it:
The government has stood behind the evidence for years. Military review boards relied on it to justify holding hundreds of prisoners indefinitely without charge. Justice Department attorneys said it was thoroughly and fairly reviewed.
Now that federal judges are about to review the evidence, however, the government says it needs to make changes.
Marc has a National Journalcover story on veep vetting:
So what makes a VP search a good one? And at what point can that be determined? Is it once the nation reacts to the nominee's announcement? By that standard, Bill Clinton's choice of Al Gore in 1992 was masterful. Yet Gore's selection of Joe Lieberman in 2000 was initially greeted with enthusiasm, largely because the senator from Connecticut was the first Jew on a major party's ticket. Gore's aides, however, found that Lieberman was not as much of a team player as they had expected. Is it on Election Night? Think back to 1960, when John F. Kennedy decided he could stomach running with Senate Majority Leader Lyndon B. Johnson, who had led a "Stop Kennedy" movement. The Texan helped the Democratic ticket win the Lone Star State--and with it the election. Is it once the choice has served as vice president? Although George W. Bush's selection of his vice presidential search team head, Dick Cheney, led to weeks of distracting questions during the 2000 campaign, once in office, Cheney--even his critics agree--made the vice presidency more powerful than ever before. Or is a selection that creates no unwanted drama good enough? In 1988, political considerations principally motivated Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis to select Sen. Lloyd Bentsen of Texas. And Bentsen certainly chewed up Quayle during their lone debate.
Hilzoy isn't happy with Obama's FISA compromise but isn't surprised:
...he's a politician. He's going to disappoint us. If I were one of those people who I suspect live mostly in the imaginations of columnists at the National Review -- the people who think Obama is the messiah, capable of making the lion lie down with the lamb, cooling the planet with the touch of his hand, bringing the dead back to life, and so on -- I suppose I'd have just dissolved in tears and sworn off politics for life. Luckily, I'm not. And at times like this, I just cast my mind back over previous Democratic nominees -- Kerry, Clinton, Dukakis -- and think: FISA compromise or no FISA compromise, he's still the best candidate I can remember.
The Economistthinks Webb would be a bad veep pick:
The main worry about Mr Webb, however, is that he is a genuine fire-breathing economic populist. He appears actually to believe the sort of stuff that Mr Obama only says during Democratic primaries. Since vice-presidents sometimes become presidents, this matters. American workers, says Mr Webb, “are at the mercy of cut-throat executives who are vastly overpaid, partly as a consequence of giving [the workers’] jobs away to other people.” Illegal immigration and globalisation “threaten to dissipate” the American middle-class way of life. He predicts that, unless the government acts to restore “economic fairness”, America “may well go the way of ancient Greece [or] greed-ridden Rome”.
They're pissed at Obama over campaign financing. I find it hard to get worked up over this. If he were taking money from a few corporate interests it would be one thing. But finding 1.7 million donors is somehow a threat to democracy? Please.
One of Clark’s great strengths in Starbucked is in exposing the almost
fanatical level of calculation that goes into every corporate decision,
from the colour of the walls to the layout of the stores to the music
on the stereo, “which changed in mood throughout the day to reflect the
needs of customers in each ‘day part.’” While Schultz speaks in
artificially elevated, New Age language about the vaunted “Starbucks
Experience” and about Starbucks as a mythical “third place,” separate
from home and work, where customers can retreat to rejuvenate their
spirits and to feed their souls — Schultz claims that the chain was
“built on the human spirit” — the entirety of the company is the result
of relentless planning and constant focus groups, the quizzing of
potential customers about their “need states” and their “lifestyle
segments.” The soulful experience that Starbucks patrons putatively
crave is the result of a carefully micromanaged plan that
systematically erases any kind of individuality or the flaws that allow
for uniqueness. The “Starbucks Experience” is the apex of cookie-cutter
corporate sameness.
The song that became "Happy Birthday to You," originally written with different lyrics as "Good Morning to All," was the product of intense creative labor, undertaken with copyright protection in mind. However, it is almost certainly no longer under copyright, due to a lack of evidence about who wrote the words; defective copyright notice; and a failure to file a proper renewal application.
Reihan doesn't think Obama not taking public funds is a big deal but wants a bigger reform:
...why should the Stewart Motts of the world be denied the opportunity to make their own vast contributions alongside small dollar donors? If George Soros or Michael Bloomberg wrote Obama a check for $500 million, he'd surely continue to build his more sustainable network of small donors. He'd also be able to buy hours of time on primetime network television to share his vision of America's future. Or he could literally put a chicken in every pot, or create a series of Obama-themed daycare centers across the country, winning the support of stressed-out parents everywhere. He could create a parallel to the YMCA - the Young People's Obama Association (YPOA) - that would provide urban youth with an outlet for the athletic and creative energies. Instead of just walking away from the public financing system in this year's election, Obama should seriously consider leaving the whole tangled mess behind and using his brand to build a powerful charitable network that rivals those of the Catholic and Mormon churches. That is the kind of bold, hopeful change we need.
I'm afraid that commercialis based on a lie, and a lie the left frequently tries to propagate. It is the lie that politicians "make" people go to war. The United States military is a VOLUNTEER force. When Alex becomes an adult and therefore eligible to join the army, it will be his CHOICE to join the army, not John McCain's or his mother's. So unless we have a draft instituted, it will be completely up to him whether or not to go to Iraq as a member of the U.S. military. And since the whole premise of the commercial is that a John McCain presidency will continue the "occupation" of Iraq for the next 100 years, Alex will be fully aware of the consequences of his choice when he comes of age.
Fredrick Shaba, a local official for the Zimbabwean opposition party Movement for Democratic Change, sits in a hospital after being treated for stab wounds June 20, 2008 in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe. Shaba said that he was attacked the previous night by about a dozen members of President Robert Mugabe's ruling party. Human rights organizations and independent observers have charged the Mugabe regime of mass voter intimidation and violence against opposition members ahead of the upcoming presidential runoff election between Mugabe and opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai. Voters are scheduled to go to the polls on June 27. By Getty Images.
A calculating and practical liberal administration will be much less of a torment for conservatives interested in clarifying and revitalizing their intellectual position than an administration driven by the passionate pursuit of the Democratic party platform. Obama has shown plain enough for anyone to see that he’s a liberal. Really there are only two dangers that Obama poses to conservatives — one, perhaps he can turn huge new numbers of Americans into liberals by sheer force of personality, and two, perhaps he can do the same by actually winning arguments with conservatives on the merits. One way Obama will not be able to do either of these things is by cementing his credentials as a party hack. He knows this. Does Gerson?
Now you know why the Clintons hung on for so long. They knew the fundamentals made this a Democratic year:
Obama is running much stronger at this point in the race than his two
most recent Democratic predecessors, Sen. John Kerry and Vice President
Al Gore, who both failed in their bids to win the White House. In a
July 2004 NEWSWEEK Poll, Kerry led Bush by only 6 points (51 percent to
45 percent). In June 2000, Gore was in a dead heat with Bush (45
percent to 45 percent)—which is essentially where he ended up when that
razor-thin election was finally decided.
You need to go back to Dukakis to find a similarly big Democratic lead. But George H.W. Bush had Reagan's record to run on; McCain has W's. All of this can change - and Gallup shows no such thing. But anyone who still thinks Obama is unelectable needs to get a reality check.
James Olds, a Professor of Computational Neuroscience, writes in:
Since I was quoted in Carr's piece, I thought it might be useful for me to respond to Scott Esposito's point: no one would dispute that the brain is vastly complex. But similarly we also have the existence proof (patients like President Reagan's press secretary who recovered language function) that this incredibly complex piece of biology is also very plastic. Recent work by a number of investigators (Mike Merzenich at UCSF comes to mind) makes it pretty clear that the adult brain can re-wire on the fly and that the mechanisms are very likely the same ones that allow us to store new memories. In particular, there is a cadre of neuroscientists who believe that software specifically crafted for learning-disabilities can perhaps make a difference in receptive language disorders. From there it's not such a long stretch to Carr's meme.
Hillary Clinton's favorables are up, but her veepstakes chances are down:
The prospects are worse among those not already supporting Obama; just 12 percent of those not backing the Illinois senator in this poll would be more likely to vote for him if Clinton were his selection, while 37 percent would be more inclined to choose John McCain.
The fact remains: he was right about the surge. Not necessarily about what to do next, or what our long-term goals in Iraq should be, but about the need to reduce violence and reach a minimum level of stability before we could expect any political progress. He was not just lucky-right; he was right because he understood the military requirements, and how a measure of military success might give the Iraqi government room to maneuver.
Andrew Sprung has some illuminating testimony from Gates' confirmation. I hope I've acknowledged, with due caution, the fact that McCain was right and I was wrong around a year ago. I don't think the skeptics should be blamed for not giving the Bush administration the benefit of the doubt. But I do think they're wrong to deny the success since. Where that leaves us, of course, is a different question. And one in which Obama - unfairly perhaps - has the advantage.
Joe Klein defends the FISA compromise. As often with Joe, and despite my sympathies with Glenn's anger at Bush, I can't disagree:
My feeling, from the start, has been that the NSA data-mining operation is a necessary tool in the hunt for terrorists who mean to do us harm--but that the FISA law needed to be updated to include civil liberties protections and limitations guiding the use of the program. The Bush Administration--as usual, arrogantly and outrageously--thought it didn't need the legal authority to conducting the NSA operation and then--as usual, outrageously--tried to use the legitimate Democratic call for legislation as a "soft on terrorists" political bludgeon.
I favor the compromise because I believe the civil liberties encoded into the law are important, and because I wanted to deprive the Bush Administration, and the McCain campaign, of the political bludgeon.
As a Chicagoan who has watched Obama emerge on the national scene, I couldn't agree with you more about his cunning and charisma. Before things really started ramping up, people asked me whether he had a chance against the Clinton attack machine and I said "I look at all his opponents on both sides of the aisle and think, you poor, sad fools. You don't even know what you are getting into."
Every time I read articles about this I think about Herndon's statement about Lincoln:
"That man who thinks Lincoln sat down calmly and gathered his robes about him, waiting for the people to call him, has a very erroneous knowledge of Lincoln. He was always calculating, and always planning ahead. His ambition was a little engine that knew no rest."
That describes Barack Obama to a tee which is precisely why he is such an incredibly deadly politician.
Think of it in the same light as the pork-busting campaign. Although it appears as a solution to a problem, it's actually a trivial effort designed to distract from the real challenge: fiscal balance and energy independence, respectively. To put it plainly:
I don’t know about you, but I’m embarrassed when the president of the
US, allegedly the most “can-do” nation in the world, repeatedly goes to
the Saudis and begs for increases in oil production to sustain our
ridiculous habit. Just as futile, drilling in and around the US for oil
is nothing more than searching the couches for loose change, and the
analogy holds when you consider just exactly what you can buy with
loose change- almost nothing.
It strikes me that Ross bases his argument on the assumption that the porn watching offends the non-watching partner. In that case I can understand his claim that the watching constitutes a form of adultery, though I strongly disagree. Surely it is, at most, an act of dishonesty -- one that has to be weighed against the right to privacy that persists even within the closest of relationships.
But, of course, his original assumption doesn't hold in many cases. I watch porn; so does my girlfriend. Sometimes together, sometimes alone. Individually, it's a turn-on; mutually, a happy addition to our sex lives. We're hardly unique. The key is that we both know about the other's porn-watching and heartily approve of it. There's no betrayal involved. There's friendship. And some other delightful things that also begin with F.
Patrick Ruffini thinks oil drilling is a winning issue for the right. Hewitt concurs - with his usual purely partisan dishonesty:
Voters understand this issue. They know that scarcity is behind the
high prices, not oil company perfidy. Democrats are banking on the
voters' collective ignorance of supply and demand, but voters know.
Well, they know the profit-gouging argument is baloney. But they also know that China is the real culprit for exploding demand, that off-shore drilling won't make any difference to anything in the next few years, and that getting off our oil addiction and innovating non-carbon energy is the only effective way forward. Last time I checked, the cure for oil addiction is not providing more of it.
Scott Esposito responds to Nicholas Carr's instant-meme essay:
“Obviously the human brain isn't just another machine. And since it's not, Carr should know that the brain isn't so easy to mess around with. I recently read that there are more potential neural pathways in the average brain than there are particles in the universe. Lots more.
The brain is so huge and amazing and enormously complex that it's far, far off base to think that a few years of Internet media or the acquisition of a typewriter can fundamentally rewire it. Yes, its true that, our machines will have an impact on our lives, but that doesn't mean that we're just machines too.”
Obama shows he's not going to allow the GOP and Fox News to define him as an alien, commie, Muslim, wimpy extremist. Not without a fight anyway. Here he is in an aggressive national buy - all that campaign money will be spent - touting his white roots, working class support, and Kansan patriotism. Matt giggles: "My Mom's White! And I'm From America!" But it's effective precisely because it's so crude, though not as crude as Hannity. Isn't this the candidate the Democrats have been longing for since Clinton?
Jonathan Martin says no major anti-Obama 527s are currently in operation:
...in explaining the absence of any anti-Obama groups this time around, every individual interviewed for this story cited the same central reason: a fear that their party’s nominee will publicly denounce them and hold a grudge.
June 15, 2008 - June 21, 2008
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