George W. Bush !! Torture !!!! '24'??

In the online edition of Newsweek, Evan Thomas writes about the effectiveness of torture and cites the TV show '24' as a touchstone of what American's assume torture is.

"It’s probably not too farfetched to say that what most Americans know about torture comes from watching the TV show “24.” (There is even a Web site called The Jack Bauer Torture Report.) Jack and his comrades and enemies have at various moments on the Fox television program used electrical wires, heart defibrillators, old-fashioned bone breaking and chemical injections to wrest information from their captives. In one episode, Agent Bauer forced a terrorist to watch streaming video—staged—of his child’s execution. The terrorist talked."

Uh huh. In fairness, Evan goes on to write about how wildly inaccurate '24' is and how torture, by and large, does not work. But with a lead in like that how do you take the rest of the article seriously? If you're going to start like this, go full force. Here's my revised and upgraded opening paragraph for Evan Thomas:

"It's probably not too far fetched to say that what most Americans know about torture comes from watching the movie "Lethal Weapon". Gary Busey as Mr. Joshua, with a lot of help from his hentchman Endo, hook a car battery up to Mel Gibson. (There is even a website dedicated to Endo. Did you know he played Ghengis Kahn in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure?) Mel Gibson sure got his in that movie, huh?"

Just trying to help Mr. Thomas. But the question that's not asked is, is this really how average Americans get their information regarding U. S. policies? Really? Am I just being optomistic when i assume that your average, everyday regular Joe and Jane can watch a TV show or a movie and think "wow, what horrible dialogue, plot and acting? why am i wasting my time on this piece of shit ENTERTAINMENT?". Are we really at a point where we assume that what we see on TV, no matter what it is, or how obviously fake it is, that it is actually fact?

That might actually explain a lot. That's probably why people keep voting Republican, right? Because Jimmy Smits won the election, and Alan Alda lost, so we need to balance out the the branches of power. Makes total sense.

My point: I think Evan Thomas is vastly underestimating the intelligence of the average person. I think your average person knows that '24' is as real as 'The A Team' or 'Snakes on a Plane'. I don't think anyone draws any sort of conclusion about torture based on a TV Show. But hey, maybe I'm wrong, maybe people really are that stupid. What do I know?

DeVos + Intelligent Design taught in Classroom = Hilarity!

I wish I was joking! I really do. I'm amused, for now. Less so if we're actually dumb enough to elect senor douche bag. Anyhow, here's the story:
LOLOLOLOMGOMGOMG!!!!11!!
It's on the AP, it's legit, it's for real. And boy, howdy, does it say a lot about Dick "dick" DeVos.

I think he just unintentionally handed Granholm a gift. Run with it Jennifer, run!

MI GOV - 06

Some new and fun stuff regarding your best friend Dick DeVos.

First- here's the latest ad by the Michigan Democratic Party. I like this message. Hit Dick square in the balls and keep hitting until he goes down.

Second- new Jennifer Granholm ad. Similar message, more Granholm based. Love it. Keep swinging.

On a national front, W. keeps insiting that violating the Constitution is perfectly legal, cuz he is the law, and that former Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell
is confused when it comes to his opposition to torture. Which makes
sense. What would a General, and former Joint Chiefs of Staff know
about that kind of thing.

Don't get 'Dick'ed

Funny.
My friends got the following voice messages regarding Jennifer Granholm.

This one is about her environmental record.

This accuses Governor Granolm of "race baiting".

You're all class Dick. Notice how the messages don't tell you who funded the call. The phone number associated with the phone calls goes to a voicemail message that tells you they have nothing to do with the content of the messages sent from the numbers they lease.
The number: 1-702-308-7831
If you have some free time, I'd appreciate it if someone could do further research.

More later

Hey, one person who's been checking this site. I'll be back up this weekend. Currently averaging 14-19 hour work days.
Give me money to do this and i just might quit my job.
Lots of stuff happening. dKos and Mydd have the info. Clicky le links (2-3-4).

The Keith Olbermann smack down of Donald Rumsfeld

Here's the Quicktime courtesy of Crooks and Liars

Here's the blog of the text. Please read. It is critical.

Feeling morally, intellectually confused?

The man who sees absolutes, where all other men see nuances and shades of meaning, is either a prophet, or a quack.

Donald H. Rumsfeld is not a prophet.

Mr. Rumsfeld’s remarkable speech to the American Legion yesterday demands the deep analysis—and the sober contemplation—of every American.

For it did not merely serve to impugn the morality or intelligence -- indeed, the loyalty -- of the majority of Americans who oppose the transient occupants of the highest offices in the land. Worse, still, it credits those same transient occupants -- our employees -- with a total omniscience; a total omniscience which neither common sense, nor this administration’s track record at home or abroad, suggests they deserve.

Dissent and disagreement with government is the life’s blood of human freedom; and not merely because it is the first roadblock against the kind of tyranny the men Mr. Rumsfeld likes to think of as “his” troops still fight, this very evening, in Iraq.

It is also essential. Because just every once in awhile it is right and the power to which it speaks, is wrong.

In a small irony, however, Mr. Rumsfeld’s speechwriter was adroit in invoking the memory of the appeasement of the Nazis. For in their time, there was another government faced with true peril—with a growing evil—powerful and remorseless.

That government, like Mr. Rumsfeld’s, had a monopoly on all the facts. It, too, had the “secret information.” It alone had the true picture of the threat. It too dismissed and insulted its critics in terms like Mr. Rumsfeld’s -- questioning their intellect and their morality.

That government was England’s, in the 1930’s.

It knew Hitler posed no true threat to Europe, let alone England.

It knew Germany was not re-arming, in violation of all treaties and accords.

It knew that the hard evidence it received, which contradicted its own policies, its own conclusions — its own omniscience -- needed to be dismissed.

The English government of Neville Chamberlain already knew the truth.

Most relevant of all — it “knew” that its staunchest critics needed to be marginalized and isolated. In fact, it portrayed the foremost of them as a blood-thirsty war-monger who was, if not truly senile, at best morally or intellectually confused.

That critic’s name was Winston Churchill.

Sadly, we have no Winston Churchills evident among us this evening. We have only Donald Rumsfelds, demonizing disagreement, the way Neville Chamberlain demonized Winston Churchill.

History — and 163 million pounds of Luftwaffe bombs over England — have taught us that all Mr. Chamberlain had was his certainty — and his own confusion. A confusion that suggested that the office can not only make the man, but that the office can also make the facts.

Thus, did Mr. Rumsfeld make an apt historical analogy.

Excepting the fact, that he has the battery plugged in backwards.

His government, absolute -- and exclusive -- in its knowledge, is not the modern version of the one which stood up to the Nazis.

It is the modern version of the government of Neville Chamberlain.

But back to today’s Omniscient ones.

That, about which Mr. Rumsfeld is confused is simply this: This is a Democracy. Still. Sometimes just barely.

And, as such, all voices count -- not just his.

Had he or his president perhaps proven any of their prior claims of omniscience — about Osama Bin Laden’s plans five years ago, about Saddam Hussein’s weapons four years ago, about Hurricane Katrina’s impact one year ago — we all might be able to swallow hard, and accept their “omniscience” as a bearable, even useful recipe, of fact, plus ego.

But, to date, this government has proved little besides its own arrogance, and its own hubris.

Mr. Rumsfeld is also personally confused, morally or intellectually, about his own standing in this matter. From Iraq to Katrina, to the entire “Fog of Fear” which continues to envelop this nation, he, Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney, and their cronies have — inadvertently or intentionally — profited and benefited, both personally, and politically.

And yet he can stand up, in public, and question the morality and the intellect of those of us who dare ask just for the receipt for the Emporer’s New Clothes?

In what country was Mr. Rumsfeld raised? As a child, of whose heroism did he read? On what side of the battle for freedom did he dream one day to fight? With what country has he confused the United States of America?

The confusion we -- as its citizens— must now address, is stark and forbidding.

But variations of it have faced our forefathers, when men like Nixon and McCarthy and Curtis LeMay have darkened our skies and obscured our flag. Note -- with hope in your heart — that those earlier Americans always found their way to the light, and we can, too.

The confusion is about whether this Secretary of Defense, and this administration, are in fact now accomplishing what they claim the terrorists seek: The destruction of our freedoms, the very ones for which the same veterans Mr. Rumsfeld addressed yesterday in Salt Lake City, so valiantly fought.

And about Mr. Rumsfeld’s other main assertion, that this country faces a “new type of fascism.”

As he was correct to remind us how a government that knew everything could get everything wrong, so too was he right when he said that -- though probably not in the way he thought he meant it.

This country faces a new type of fascism - indeed.

Although I presumptuously use his sign-off each night, in feeble tribute, I have utterly no claim to the words of the exemplary journalist Edward R. Murrow.

But never in the trial of a thousand years of writing could I come close to matching how he phrased a warning to an earlier generation of us, at a time when other politicians thought they (and they alone) knew everything, and branded those who disagreed: “confused” or “immoral.”

Thus, forgive me, for reading Murrow, in full:

“We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty,” he said, in 1954. “We must remember always that accusation is not proof, and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law.

“We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men, not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate, and to defend causes that were for the moment unpopular.”

And so good night, and good luck.

It's simple, but it's a start

Over at the Daily Kos, bonddad posted a simple idea for a commercial. I thought it was interesting, and, again, simple, so I created and loaded it up to YouTube.
Enjoy the simplicity.