The Atheist Communist Caliphate Made Flesh, Spread the Clusterfuck Around Thread

[Dr. Nguyen Van Falk]

Leave it to the Onion to point out the utter ridiculousness of the "debate" over whether or not we should use torture.

http://www.theonion.com/content/video/is_using_a_minotaur_to_gore?utm_source=videoembed

Also, the chairman of the GOP wants you to know that:

- We need to protect Medicare, but government-run health insurance is bad.
- We can't make cuts to Medicare, but we need to make it more efficient.
- We need regulation, but not by the government.
- Nuance is bad.

While the GOP claims to be stridently anti-Affirmative Action, there's no way this guy would be holding this job if he weren't Negroid.

I don't get this Forklift strikethrough at all.

[Quality Start Machine]

Leave it to the Onion to point out the utter ridiculousness of the "debate" over whether or not we should use torture.

http://www.theonion.com/content/video/is_using_a_minotaur_to_gore?utm_source=videoembed

Also, the chairman of the GOP wants you to know that:

- We need to protect Medicare, but government-run health insurance is bad.
- We can't make cuts to Medicare, but we need to make it more efficient.
- We need regulation, but not by the government.
- Nuance is bad.

While the GOP claims to be stridently anti-Affirmative Action, there's no way this guy would be holding this job if he weren't Negroid.

I don't get this Forklift strikethrough at all.

I batched it, but basically, there's some validity in Stein's insane rant about nihilism and the GOP. Rather than assemble an agenda and offer it as an alternative, they just counterpunch now. Palin was the counterpunch to Hillary, Steele is the counterpunch to Obama.

Without some sort of new ideas, all they'll do is ratchet up the hatespeak, and they won't actually accomplish anything.

Hell, they can't even find anyone to stand up and say there's no such thing as death panels.

[R-V]

A good case for a modern-day version of the Church Committee.

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090914/hayes/print

And so: the CIA contracted a Mafia boss to murder Fidel Castro, sent biotoxins to the Republic of Congo with orders to poison Patrice Lumumba and tested LSD on unsuspecting citizens (one of whom jumped out of a window to his death). It fomented coups and bloodshed against democratically elected governments, while the National Security Agency, in coordination with the major telegram companies, read every single telegram coming in or going out of the country for three decades. The FBI infiltrated peaceful antiwar groups, breaking up marriages of activists with forged evidence of infidelity, while surveilling civil rights leaders with an assortment of bugs and break-ins. It even attempted to blackmail Martin Luther King Jr. into committing suicide, shipping him tapes of him midcoitus with a mistress and a note that said, "There is but one way out for you. You better take it before your filthy, abnormal fraudulent self is bared to the nation."

We know all this (and much more) thanks to the work of the Church Committee.

Public debates over intelligence are qualitatively different from other policy discussions. In a debate over whether, say, the economic stimulus has been effective, there is a presumption that all participants are working from a common set of data--GDP growth, unemployment, government spending, etc.--but with different interpretations and emphases. Such is not the case when the issue is the effectiveness of intelligence programs or the scope of covert activities. Those debates are conducted on fundamentally unequal footing. Critics may charge that torture is counterproductive and produces bad intelligence, but defenders of the secret government can wave away such concerns by saying, more or less, You don't know what we know.

What the Church Committee did was to eliminate this inequality by wrenching an entire segment of the state into the light of day. It created a universally accepted set of facts, a canonical public record that turned the secret conversations of the powerful and initiated into the material for a broad debate. It brought the world of intelligence into the public sphere, the place where self-governance ought to take place.

[Dr. Nguyen Van Falk]

Too funny...

http://swampland.blogs.time.com/2009/09/01/e-mail-of-the-day/

[Slaky]

Wow, I don't know if this is true or not. There's no proof to say it didn't happen. I fear it may have happened.

[Eli]

Wow, I don't know if this is true or not. There's no proof to say it didn't happen. I fear it may have happened.

Until Glenn Beck comes out and denies this, I'm afraid we'll have to assume it's true.

[Eli]

Deny this, Glenn Beck.

[Slaky]

Deny this, Glenn Beck.

Jeez, he looks guilty. So many people think he is, so the story must have legs.

[Wheezer]

Where is he supposed to have obtained the propofol novacaine?

[R-V]

THESE.

The judicial branch (which, under Marbury v. Madison, has the ultimate duty to determine "what the law is") has determined that waterboarding is torture (see U.S. v. Lee, decided in 1984 by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit). The Bush administration has admitted to waterboarding captives. The corpus delicti of that crime exists. For there to be investigation now is unexceptional.

The only exceptional thing is the parties involved: the former vice president of the United States, his counsel David Addington, Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) lawyer John Yoo and their private contractors Bruce Jessen and Jim Mitchell, psychologists who designed the torture program.

Looking only at the evidence that has become public so far, is there a viable theory of criminal liability arising out of this corpus delicti, the torture of America's captives?

There is substantial evidence of legal malpractice by lawyer Yoo. His opinions were even withdrawn under the Bush administration, and they are the subject of an unprecedented internal investigation by the Department of Justice.

There is substantial evidence of a back channel between Addington and Yoo.

There is substantial public evidence of exceptional access provided to the private contractors.

There is substantial evidence that the waterboarding went outside what was approved by the OLC opinions. The opinions themselves disclosed this fact.

None of this evidence creates a complete case, yet. But it suggests theories of criminal liability that are not foreclosed by the evidence so far.

When the evidence is all in, it may prove that all the conduct surrounding American's descent into torture was proper, protected by good-faith legal defenses. But it's too early to responsibly reach that conclusion. Investigation is what allows such a conclusion to be reached.

[Wheezer]

You should stick to Lincoln-Douglas style.

[TDubbs]

You should stick to Lincoln-Douglas style.

You should stick to being an anti-dentite.

[Quality Start Machine]

Because the Senate needs more douchebaggery.

In case you were wondering if Rupert Murdoch's ownership would change the Journal at all, check the photo caption.

[Oleg]

Because the Senate needs more douchebaggery.

In case you were wondering if Rupert Murdoch's ownership would change the Journal at all, check the photo caption.

Yes, the state that had two of the most libral members of the Senate (according to whatever reports keep track of such nonsense) for a combined 70 years liked W a lot.

If Lynn Swann can't win in PA, Schilling sure as shit ain't winning in MA.

Now if only we can see a Cheney/Palin 2012 ticket...

[Quality Start Machine]

Because the Senate needs more douchebaggery.

In case you were wondering if Rupert Murdoch's ownership would change the Journal at all, check the photo caption.

Yes, the state that had two of the most libral members of the Senate (according to whatever reports keep track of such nonsense) for a combined 70 years liked W a lot.

If Lynn Swann can't win in PA, Schilling sure as shit ain't winning in MA.

Now if only we can see a Cheney/Palin 2012 ticket...

Hell, just use the signs from 2008...