Copyright © 2009 Frank Lynch.
Copyright © 2009 Frank Lynch.
Me: Frank Lynch Home These are my mundane daily ramblings.
Email: |
A six year Senate term is not an "Al Franken Decade." But we'll take it for starters: Coleman has been handed another setback in his bid for reelection. (Of course, some Conservatives may think that a six year Senate term for Al Franken will feel far longer than a decade, but so it goes.) Franken's presence is important, of course, for the Democrats' move towards a critical mass. He'll only be the 59th, not the magic 60th (which is a bit of an overstated achievement given that the Democrats aren't as monolithic as the Republicans can be), but when 2010 arrives and the Democrats push to 60, they're better off with Franken than with Coleman.
Because I'm not quite in the mood yet to write about torture (Judy mentioned the WaPo article in one of her comments). But I'll get there. Take a deep breath with this clip first. OK, that was mind clearing. Now about that torture thing: most people here don't need to be reminded that our Constitution is our culture, it is America; moreso than amber waves of grain and purple mountains. Our tradition of treating our prisoners decently goes back to Washington himself, and while tradition shouldn't bind us unnecessarily, when someone makes a move to go against it, they should have the nerve to say they're doing so, and yes, even go so far as to say that they claim to know more about this than quaint George Washington. Recently, instead of going off into the sunset as part of the rejected ways of the Bush administration, former Vice President Richard "Dick" Cheney said on CNN that Obama had already made the country less safe. Cheney was of course aggressive in pursuing leads on terrorist arracks, and Ron Suskind made the point (in his book The One Percent Doctrine) that Cheney was overly-aggressive, not given to moderating his reactions according to probabilities and outcomes. For Cheney, all possible outcomes were so monstrous that every threat, even if it had only the slightest chance of fruition, had to be treated as if it were a certainty. That attitude pretty much set the stage for that tape which OBL sent out just before the 2004 Presidential election, in which OBL expressed satisfaction that with our over-reactions - - "So we are continuing this policy in bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy." At times Cheney has seemed a willing accomplice, although I'm sure his intentions have never been to bankrupt us and that he would never admit to having overreacted. But there is the issue of unnecessary torture, and how it has both produced bad leads costing us precious resources as well as endangerd our international relationships. (Beyond the obvious - - our international standing - - it's also hurt the internal political standing our allies once it became known that they were cooperating by providing "black sites" and such. When a country like Poland withdraws its support in Iraq, you have to understand that their are multiple causes.) Today General Petraeus was on the same CNN show where Cheney made his pronouncement, and he didn't quite reject Cheney's opinion out of hand, but sounded like he was leaning that way: "I wouldn’t necessarily agree with that." To be honest with you, I thought Petraeus was the wrong person to ask for an opinion on this, as his perview is only the military and doesn't encompass an agency like the CIA. But he was clear that torture wasn't something the military was going to do. That's good, for a start: our troops are more exposed to torture when it looks like our country condones it.
Why can't we be more like Spain? A court in Spain is looking into whether Bush Administration members broke international law by justifying torture. And the people they're looking at? Alberto Gonzalez. John Yoo. Doug Feith. David Addington. It's a dirty, thankless job, but someone's gotta do it. Finally, it looks like an old story isn't over yet.
Lorem ipsum dolor. Sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit. That's the provisional placeholder text when the words haven't been written. And then there's the cut and paste from the style guide. It's not supposed to be seen. But apparently someone at the LA Times was asleep. (HT Kevin Drum.)
Traveling to Prague this Summer? You might consider the train instead of the plane. Prague's Franz Kafka International Named World's Most Alienating Airport HT to The Transportationist.
Ed Henry's 15 minutes of fame. He can't let go. Not only that, he neither defends nor criticizes his question, and seems more interested in telling us the "inside baseball" about how a question like his gets asked. There's an apocryphal quote sometimes attributed to Lincoln about being better to remain silent than to make it clear you really are a fool.
Obama's retort to Ed Henry... Pressed by CNN's Ed Henry on why it took him two days to express outrage about the AIG bonuses, Obama retorted "I like to know what I'm talking about before I speak." It seems as if that spark was greatly appreciated. Seems to me Obama needs better briefers so he can get up to speed more quickly: that kind of deliberation served him well when he was a candidate, in contrast to John McCain running around like a chicken without his head, trying to cancel debates, "suspending" his campaign, and insisting that he needed to get back to Washington. But Obama's the President now, and it shouldn't take a couple days for him to get the information he needs to develop an informed opinion on something like this. Something in me says there was time taken out for political considerations on how to respond. Just an idea.
Or maybe for this box which Jay is bringing down the aisle? Wow, our government sure had a sense of humor during the Bush years, dinnit? Over US objections, two British judges have revealed that our proseecutors offered a Guantanamo detainee an absurd plea bargain:
What kidders! "We want to charge you with something, we just don't know what... Want some Poppycock Popcorn?"
What was Chuck Todd thinking? I'm just through watching Obama's news conference, and I may have more to say while trying to put up tonight's picture, but what was NBC's Chuck Todd thinking in that opening question about Obama's failure to ask Americans to "sacrifice" during this battle with the economy which Obama has equated with a war? Hundreds of thousands of jobs have been lost in the last few months... 401k's have been decimated, along with college savings, and increased home foreclosures. And Chuck Todd wants Obama to ask Americans to sacrifice? More of the same, Chuck. How about that? Please, sir, I want some more. UPDATE: OK, I've slept on this. Is it possible that Todd was referring to something along the lines of a war-time coming together, a volunteerism of some kind? If so, that's not too far out of line with what Obama called for in his inaugural address. And it's appropriate. But if that's what he meant, then the word "sacrifice" went in the wrong direction.
|
|
