Domestic Terrorism

The rightwing squealed like stuck pigs at the warnings about domestic terrorism in the recent Homeland Security report but the truth of it is that sealing our borders and torturing Muslims won't stop this. Certainly not as long as the Party of Limbaugh keeps their cretinous followers all whipped up into a frenzy and talking the trash that keeps them comfortable in the lifestyle to which they have become accustomed. Speaking of cretins, here's what TexasFred had to say:

1st, I am going to say, ANY church that would accept this SOB as a member is NOT much of a church. 2nd, I wonder how that retroactive late term, VERY late term abortion felt for the good doctor? Burn in HELL you murdering bastard!

God help us. For sanity on the subject of rightwing domestic terrorism, go here.

The rocks in "rock bottom" keep sinking

It could be pointed out to those of us who are calling for investigations and prosecutions of Bush administration war crimes that it's really a pointless endeavor since even Republicans who are convicted somehow - and often with the help of Democrats, no less - end up back on the street with sweet gigs that enable them to prosper and spew all manner of filth into our already hopelessly poisoned public discourse. "Liberal media" indeed.

Empathy

We're hearing from wingnuts that "empathy" is something to sneer at (an attitude that our wingnut troll, Mark, has already made us very familiar with)- and I think this tells us all we need to know about about wingnuts and why the GOP is now in the minority.

Mahablog has a good post up about this and other "arguments" righties are throwing out against Sotomayor.

UPDATE: From hilzoy:

But that's nothing compared to Mike Huckabee thinking her first name is Maria. Any moment now, I suppose someone will ask how we know she's in this country legally.

UPDATE: Scott L. says it all in a post entitled The Wait To Reach Rock Bottom Is Over:

When I see that Sonia Sotomayor's competence is being questioned by John Yoo -- you know, the guy who constructed a farcical argument that a Constitution that gave Congress numerous specific powers over warmaking was actually intended to replicate monarchical executive power? And did so to justify an arbitrary torture regime? -- I...what else can you say?

UPDATE: Oh lawdy, Scott spoke too soon. Now she's a "bigot". Righties truly don't care about embarrassing themselves, do they.

Happy Birthday Ramsey Lewis

In which Obama makes me, a DFH liberal blogger, very happy

Two things happened in the last couple of days that made me very happy and proud of our President Barack Obama:

First was this, and then, this morning, there was Sotomayor!

Well done, Mr. President!

What to remember

Ruth has thoughts for today.

Thanks, also, to TBogg:

Uh oh, Mike

I think this one is for you.

It's Friday on a Holiday Weekend!

I need to cheer myself up. Mike has a Beatles post up, so I'll go along with that! I was 12 years old in 1964 and this song hit the radio. I was never into the Beatlemania that many of my girlfriends were, but this was great music to learn to dance to (the graphics in this version are cheesy, but it was the best recording):



Then, in 1967, they blew everyone's mind with Sgt. Pepper's and we all went to hell in a handbasket:



And it was just a wild journey from then on out. Seatbelts be damned!



We eventually calmed down, sort of:



and became more pensive:



but it didn't last long:

More on Obama's speech

Hilzoy is, as usual, pitch perfect:

Freedom is not always easy, and it is not always safe. Neither is doing the right thing. Nonetheless, we ought to be willing to try. I wish I saw the slightest reason to believe that we are.

To put it bluntly - and I'm not joking - the terrorists won.

As I said yesterday, there were some positive aspects to Obama's speech. His resolve to close Guantanamo in the face of all the fear-mongering, like his release of the OLC memos, is commendable. But the fact that a Democratic President who ran on a platform of restoring America's standing and returning to our core principles is now advocating the creation of a new system of indefinite preventive detention -- something that is now sure to become a standard view of Democratic politicians and hordes of Obama supporters -- is by far the most consequential event yet in the formation of Obama's civil liberties policies.

Our country's populace and political leaders are now united by terror in support of destroying some of our most fundamental principles of freedom. Good job, Bin Laden. Pat yourself on the back.

Obama's speech

Dan Froomkin:

Obama spoke passionately about his commitment to transparency, but offered up the same lousy and unpersuasive excuses he did last week for his decision to fight the court-ordered release of more photos of prison abuse. In particular, the weight he put on his responsibility not to release information that would inflame our enemies was deeply disturbing.

He offered no additional clarity regarding his position on the state secrets doctrine, where his lofty promises still stand in dramatic conflict with what his administration is actually doing.

And in continuing to oppose the creation of an independent commission that would fully investigate the abuses of the Bush administration, he marginalized those of us who want to find out what happened as polarizers, much like those who continue to doggedly defend Bush policies. He said the recent debate has obscured the truth -- when all we want is to let it free.

Warning

May cause projectile vomiting.

Apparently those of us who believe in upholding the rule of law (because we "decry enhanced interrogation")in our country are now "Two-faced moral absolutists". Sheesh. We used to be vilified for being "moral relativists", now we're "moral absolutists". I wish righties would make up their minds, but then I guess you'd have to have a brain in order to do that.

I'm having a difficult time with this issue right now, and I'm very upset. I've been mulling over how to write about it for most of last night and this morning, then I saw this editorial - and now I need to go calm down. The temptation to waterboard someone is quite strong, so it can't be said that I'm unsympathetic to Our MenAndWomenInUniform who are confronted with these VeryDifficultDecisions.

That's it. I'm stopping now. Before I write something I'll regret.

Rhyme time!

There once was a yokel named Huckabee
Who flamed as a Pres'dential wannabe.
Since leaving the trail
His put-out's been pale,
So he's spicing it up with some poetry!

Our national media

I had the local news on this morning as I was getting ready for work and even though I was only half listening to it, what I did hear was so annoyingly stupid I grabbed the remote and clicked over to MSNBC just to see if it was at all better over there. It wasn't. The show was "Morning Joe" and consisted of, as best I could tell, Joe Scarborough and three guests I'd never heard of screaming mind-bendingly stupid things at one another. Screaming and interrupting each other so that nobody could really say anything. Maybe that was the point.

Anyway, thanks and a H/T to Eric at Obsidian Wings for reminding me that I haven't visited The Editors in awhile and today they had this to say about, well, that. Sort of.

Rick Perry is an asshole.

Yeah, I know. Big News, right? But he is, and I liked the sound of that as a blog post title. Might even make it into a series like, you know, Wanker of the Day or Deep Thoughts.

It will be interesting to see what the wingnuts he was pandering to when he made his comments, like our very own TexasFred, think of this mealy-mouthed backpedalling.

LATER IN THE DAY UPDATE: So far, zip from one of our Lone Star State's wingnuttiest wingnuts, ol' Fred hisself. He's too busy hyperventilating about plans for someplace in the US to open a four-year Islamic University. ZOMG THEY'RE COMING TO KILL US ALL!!

A compendium on the torture issue

H/T Digby: This is an excellent resource.

Moral Kombat

H/T Talking Points Memo and God Bless Jon Stewart:

x arial; color:#333; background-color:#f5f5f5' cellpadding='0' cellspacing='0' width='360' height='353'>The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10cMoral Kombatthedailyshow.com

How to really make Americans safer

Immediately empower a Truth Commission with subpoena and prosecution authority to investigate the war crimes of the previous administration. Prove to the world that we don't enable and shelter criminals, and that our national honor is something we take seriously.

Does it matter?

What Digby said:

I actually take this argument a step further and say that by refusing to completely repudiate torture and hold those who devised the regime responsible, we are making ourselves substantially less safe. Superpowers which are seen as tyrannical and which believe that the ends justify the means are not considered trustworthy by the rest of the world. It's possible that it doesn't matter if the rest of the world finds us threatening and, frankly, evil. But it is going to cost us a huge amount in blood and treasure to maintain our security under those circumstances. (I won't even mention the potential economic fallout of becoming a pariah nation.)

This gets to the fundamental difference of opinon between liberals and conservatives about America's role in the world. They think we are a military empire which must constantly prove its toughness and brutally demonstrate its willingness to do whatever it takes to "defend" its interests (which is defined as dominance.) Liberals (would like to) see America as a powerful leader of nations and an example of civilized, cooperative behavior based upon trust and mutual interest. Conservatives believe we must dominate, liberals believe we should engage.

Torture, of course, stands alone as a despicable betrayal of decent human values. But as the argument evolves, we are seeing the foreign policy implications start to emerge as well. I always assumed that the Obama administration understood this better than anyone and it is one of the things about which I was truly optimistic. But it's looking less likely that we are truly going to see a break with the bipartisan consensus on American military power and substantive change in our approach to world leadership.

People around the world do like Obama and still have great hopes. But it won't last forever if the only thing they get is lip service and it appears that the administration is driving down America's hawkish road, just like the ones who came before him. To persuade them that America has truly repudiated the Bush years, he's going to have to do more than simply assure everyone that "America doesn't torture" and leave it at that. After all, George W. Bush said exactly the same thing.

And Joan Walsh.

Adios

And don't let the screen door hit you in the ass on your way out.

WTH happened to Garrison Keillor? Has he just recently gone 'round the bend or was he always such a prick?

Who are we?

Apparently there was a CNN poll the other day that concluded that Americans are, by slightly more than half, in favor of not pursuing any further investigations or prosecutions into the Bush administration's authorization of the use of torture. I can't help but believe that this reflects a profound failure on multiple fronts, and I was starting to think that maybe 9/11 did in fact "change everything", but perhaps the problem is deeper than that.

Rebranding

TexasFred is all a-quiver at the prospect of a BRAND NEW POLITICAL PARTY FOR CONSERVATIVES! He is absolutely certain that this is the wave that is going to carry "conservatives" like him and his racist gun-fetish pals to glorious victory, and you know what he thought the name of this new Party ought to be? "The Tea Party". I kid you not. So apparently there has been some discussion about this issue and another name is being floated today that might not garner quite so much the snickering derision as that first try and it is (drum roll, please): The American Conservative Party. Catchy, huh.

Well, I was thinking about this new development when I saw Josh's question and I think I have it.

How about The American Bonehead Party?

Bring it on

Mark envisions Republicans gearing up for a fight.

Travis suggests a way to give it to them.

Goodbye to Dom Deluise

He was a funny, funny man:

Idealism needed

Dan Froomkin smacks down more standard beltway CW saying we should just let bygones be bygones concerning torture. Here he is quoting an article by Deepak Chopra in the SF Chronicle:

"People don't want to hear about bad things from the past when the present is loaded down with more than enough bad things. But inconvenience and fatigue aren't good excuses. There is anger from the left — and not just the left — about an inexcusable Bush policy. There are demons in the closet, and shutting the door on them won't make them go away. Better to deal with it now, when a new president's idealism is still fresh. It will take idealism to face the torture issue. Otherwise, any truth commission will either turn into a vengeance squad or go the other way and sweep too much under the rug.

"The more the right wing tries to justify the torture policy, the worse they look. Using national security to justify torture is just a bald-faced attempt to hide the truth. What really went on was simple. The Bush administration felt that Al-Qaida could not be defeated while still preserving what America stands for."

Demographics

I heard Cokie Roberts yammering this morning on NPR about how Republicans are busy trying to figure out how to win over more voters, and about how Democrats have won over the majority of Hispanics, Blacks and women. Well, I think we can say with certainty that Republicans have the whackjob demographic pretty well sewn up.

This link is included in the post referenced above, but be sure you check it out.

Happy May Day!

SWINE flu

And I will never knowingly eat or purchase another Smithfield product. Ever.

I'm not a vegetarian but I am very willing to pay more for meat products that come from animals raised in a humane and environmentally responsible manner.

Taking bets

Who will Obama pick to replace Justice Souter?

Wanker of the Day

Asshole of the Decade, Charles Krauthammer.