Teh Cheney is at it again. Rachel Maddow lets him have it with an investigative piece that cuts to the heart of the question of whether “torture works” and what that even means.
Of course, this completely ignores the fact that when someone says, “torture works”, there may be multiple unstated meanings of the phrase.
Some people are under the misapprehension that the only possible correct interpretation is “torture results in us getting evidence that is timely, correct, and usable”. They have to ignore the fact that we tortured people for years who could not possibly have had new information, some of whom we knew were innocent, and thus could not possibly have had any information. As far as usability, somebody please share hard information on the signal to noise ratio that demonstrates we could even tell the difference.
A more cynical and probably more correct interpretation is that torture gave a lot of sadists a sexual thrill at being able to hurt people who might otherwise have been brought to a rather mundane trial or released for lack of evidence. How boring that would have been!
And don’t get me started on the Bush administration’s attitude toward the concept of truth, that there is no absolute truth. “Truth” is just how you frame what you want people to believe in order to get what you want.
And they claimed liberals are relativists concerning the subjectivity of truth!
And a brilliant piece of satire on the issue of whether the effectiveness of torture should be a consideration.
My personal opinion is that the current administration is playing the public to make it appear that they are following popular opinion, rather than going after the previous administration, which could be (and would be) interpreted as a political act.
When I hear a story that is too good to be true, an unbelievable story, I tend not to believe it, just like when I went to that McCain rally as a Democratic mole and heard his fake POW story, the one he plagiarized out of a book and wrote himself into. And then there was the Solzhenitzen story he did the same with, and the Wikipedia article that ended up as his speech about the Georgia crisis…
I had heard rumblings about McCain as a pilot who had crashed multiple planes, a man with a nasty temper and a streak of vindictiveness that he saw as independence, stories about how he abandoned his first wife after she had a disfiguring accident, carried on an affair with a rich young heiress while still living with his wife, and even taking out a marriage license before his divorce became final.
But thanks to Rolling Stone Magazine, we have all the pieces put together in a long, sordid narrative of the life of John McCain.
I’ve always said that getting captured and spending 5 years in prison camp may have been an honorable ordeal, but hardly an achievement. Well, it turns out that his life has been a series of events that could best be classified as “hardly an achievement”, yet he has managed to manufacture himself a myth of integrity, dignity, and all kinds of other positive traits that it seems he doesn’t possess.
Republicans are saying it’s not fair to tell the truth about their candidate. Live with it. It’s just truth.
That question hasn’t been asked, nor has it been answered.
The assumption seems to be that McCain’s years of experience in the military and in Congress of course give him the background and tools he’d need in the White House. As Britney might say, “Duh! For sure he’s qualified!!! He’s Mac!!!”
But is that true? Does McCain have the right stuff?
A careful look at McCain’s biography shows that he isn’t prepared for the job. His resume is much thinner than most people think.
Here are some reasons why McCain would be a mediocre president.”
I am so tired of reading about how unfit McCain is. I just wish he had any redeeming value as a human being. Unfortunately he does not. He is a vicious twit, stupid and incompetent, bought his way to the top. There is something fatally flawed about a selection process that routinely forces to the top candidates that are suited only to be puppets for their handlers. And now it looks like McCain is not even a particularly good puppet, as he is so often out of control and saying things that reveal that he knows little and understands less that his handlers have found it necessary to keep him away from the press and from telephones. It is just sad.
“Tape: Top CIA official confesses order to forge Iraq-9/11 letter came on White House stationery .”
“The transcript was posted Friday by author Ron Suskind of an interview conducted in June. It comes on the heels of denials by both the White House and Richer of a claim Suskind made in his new book, The Way of The World. The book was leaked to Politico’s Mike Allen on Monday, and released Tuesday.”
Deny, deny, deny. But once the can of worms has been opened, it’s impossible to get them back in.
Here I was, pissed-off about how Congress has been colluding with the President to dismantle our Constitution, how by all appearances a shadow dictatorship has been setup, and Congress overrides a veto. Well whoop-de-doo! Maybe if it was some issue that wasn’t overwhelmingly supported by the public, or if it wasn’t too little too late, it might have meant something. But they’ve already given the keys to the crooks and stood guard while they cleaned out the national treasury and sent the money to Lichtenstein, Dubai, and the Cayman Islands for Dick Cheney and his cronies to enjoy.
So what happens but I see this 2001 Onion article, a wonderful piece of prescience. Whoever wrote it had much more on the ball than you-know-who, our chimp-in-charge.
In case you’re unaware, the Onion is a news magazine of humor, parody, and cutting insight.
That’s the name of the video, and it’s also clear that he did. It’s typical of his imperious, vindictive behavior that the mainstream press never seems to report. A quick search on McCain behavior will turn up a surprising number of unconsionable acts that you might not have heard of.
So Hillary has been using this Bobby Kennedy assassination hypothesis as an excuse to stay in the race since March, though she has only used the A word a couple of times. But it turns out that her comment about her husband being in the race until mid-June was a bunch of baloney. Here’s the smoking gun:
OK, so why did she lie? Is there something about high public office, or merely the ambition for high public office, that makes normal people into pathological liars? Or does it mostly attract pathological liars in the first place?
Hillary is going to stay in the race until the last superdelegate is pledged, regardless of the cost to the party and the country. If she won’t pull the plug, it’s time for the superdelegates to do it for her. Stop pussyfooting around, stop with this stupid grandstanding. Commit. KTHXBAI
Hmm. You’d think that the fact that the programs have no effect on the rates of pregnancy or STDs might be a consideration in determining how successful they are, and that this success rate ought to be used to calculate the cost effectiveness of the programs, and whether it’s worth it to continue to spend a lotta tax dollars on them.
Perhaps we should take into account the fact that students who take part in these programs learn that condoms are completely ineffective, and are less likely to use condoms.
But the powers that be are not willing to let go of these programs. There might be a program that is working. Besides, teaching abstinence is the right thing to do, whether or not it works. Those pesky facts get in the way of god’s truth. The fact is that god wants people to have the opportunity to sin as much as possible, to separate the sinners from the holy, or at least from the holier-than-thou’s. And above all, god wants sinners to get caught. Pregnancy prevention, AIDS prevention…nope. That’s going against god’s will. And besides, more sinners equals more unwanted babies available for adoption.
It’s such a small thing, not really a recession. Not anything like a recession, is it? Oh, no, of course not. How could it be a recession if the people in charge who are looting the economy keep telling us we’re doing fine?
Besides, everybody knows that a rising tide floats all boats. So if rich people are getting richer, then poor people must be better off. Well, either that or they never mattered. see more crazy cat pics
I had heard rumblings about McCain as a pilot who had crashed multiple planes, a man with a nasty temper and a streak of vindictiveness that he saw as independence, stories about how he abandoned his first wife after she had a disfiguring accident, carried on an affair with a rich young heiress while still living with his wife, and even taking out a marriage license before his divorce became final. 
I’ve always said that getting captured and spending 5 years in prison camp may have been an honorable ordeal, but hardly an achievement. Well, it turns out that his life has been a series of events that could best be classified as “hardly an achievement”, yet he has managed to manufacture himself a myth of integrity, dignity, and all kinds of other positive traits that it seems he doesn’t possess.
But the powers that be are not willing to let go of these programs. There might be a program that is working. Besides, teaching abstinence is the right thing to do, whether or not it works. Those pesky facts get in the way of god’s truth. The fact is that god wants people to have the opportunity to sin as much as possible, to separate the sinners from the holy, or at least from the holier-than-thou’s. And above all, god wants sinners to get caught. Pregnancy prevention, AIDS prevention…nope. That’s going against god’s will. And besides, more sinners equals more unwanted babies available for adoption.