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Great Idea, Abruptly Rejected: Children of Jeopardy Contestants Tournament

Kerry's Majority, Gun Control, Disgusting Yoo, Bush, Cheney, And Co-Conspirators Support Communist Devised Torture As Interrogation Method

July 04, 2008

Kerry's Majority

First, it was the Ukrainian Orange Revolution, supported by the U.S. because of the disparity between exit polls and reported results. This spring (culminating in the "sham election" last week) it was Mugabe in Zimbabwe whose lies were exposed by the equivalent of exit polling. Is there no one with a sense of irony, or a memory that extends back to the first Tuesday after the first Monday of November in 2004?

A lot of analysts have been quoting the "fact" that a Dem has not won over 50% of the popular vote since about 1976 and only once since 1944. This is incorrect.

Over 50.1% of the vote was cast for John Kerry in 2004--if all the votes cast were actually counted.

The liberal blogosphere, and the Democratic Party, has been unwilling to unable to realize or acknowledge that simple fact; the facts were established by reporting independent of exit polling. The facts were also established by the national exit polls

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Gun Control

Justice Scalia's majority opinion in the Second Amendment case is a stunning example of activist judges legislating and re-writing the Constitution. It is also a stunning rejection of the so-called "Originalism" doctrine which Scalia had been smilingly offering and unctuosly proffering in a farcically reassuring manner as a facade for his judicial activism. This excuse was on display just a few days earlier on PBS. For purposes of his tortured reasoning, he erased the first words in the 2nd Amendment ("A well regulated milita being necessary to the security of a free state" - those words no longer exist in the 2nd Amendment - courtesy of Karl Rove, Al Gore, and John Kerry). Here's an artist's rendering of that action.

Save on gas this summer, instead of visiting the Wild West, just go to Washington, D.C. - remember to bring all of your guns. The Founders could not possibly have had in mind banning personal use of weapons based on fizz and fuse. So, remember to bring yours, it's what the Founders intended.

Disgusting Yoo

I am disgusted that I pay John Yoo's salary with my California tax dollars. Hhe "teaches" law (!!???!) at the University of California, Berkeley. Here's a man who wouldn't know a straight answer if it bitch-slapped him. Asked if it is legal for a president to bury someone alive as part of an interrogation, Yoo responded, "No president would do that." Now, I don't know about you, but where I come from, that doesn't answer the question. But, apparently, it is legal for a president to inflict any pain that is not the equivalent of death or organ failure, according to a memo which Mr. Yoo helped draft. Also, apparently, he does not know the meaning of the word implement, judging from his sworn testimony to Congress. I don't know about you, but I don't want my lawyers trained by a man who doesn't know the meaning of the word implement. Or, for that matter, the meaning of the word "torture." Gosh, I hope no enemy of the United States ever captures Mr. Yoo; I wouldn't want to be there when he's interrogated.

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Pick your headline:

Bush Supports Communist-Devised Torture As Interrogation Method
Republicans Support Communist Devised Torture As Interrogation Method
Bush, Cheney, And Appointees Support Communist Devised Torture As Interrogation Method
Bush, Cheney, And Co-Conspirators Support Communist Devised Torture As Interrogation Method

Here's the headline the New York Times chose: China Inspired Interrogations At Guantanamo

Guantanamo interrogators trained to use methods in chart of techniques used by Chinese Communists during the Korean War to obtain confessions, many of them false, from American prisoners.

The third paragraph was the so-called "money" graf. Kudos to Times which usually puts what passes for news in the last paragraph. "The recycled chart is the latest and most vivid evidence of the way Communist interrogation methods that the United States long described as torture became the basis for interrogations both by the military at the base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and by the Central Intelligence Agency."

McCain votes to enable/support this conduct while saying something quite different; actions speak louder than words. One wonders why the Times did not hold this story until 2009 out of fear it might affect an election (i.e., inform the electorate). Remember the story about warrantless wiretapping held from October 2004 to December 2005).

Sen. Carl Levin (D. - Mich.), current chair of the Armed Services Committee, voted against the Authorization For The Use Of Military Force Against Iraq. He therefore was opposed to this conduct from the start; he has standing to comment. He said, after reviewing the evidence, "every American would be shocked" by the torture chart. He also said: "What makes this document doubly stunning is that these were techniques to get false confessions. People say we need intelligence, and we do. But we don't need false intelligence."

It has been previously reported that at least one U.S. military intelligence training officer began each class by deflating those who were about to become intelligence officers in one of the U.S. military services by reminding them: "There are three kinds of intelligence: human, animal, and military. In that order."

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Briefs
  • The Real John McCain
  • Electoral Vote Map: Looking Good, but still close enough for the GOP to steal, again.
  • Nuclear weapons: you CAN set them off by hitting them.
  • Andrew J. Bacevich is professor of history and international relations at Boston University. His new book is "The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism." He wrote an op-ed piece for the Boston Globe, What Bush hath wrought
  • Welsey Clark was Not impugning McCain's patriotism or record--just pointing out that being shot down and imprisoned is not a qualification for the presidency, any more than Obama's lack of military service is a disqualification.
  • Milt Bearden, a 30-year veteran in the CIA's Directorate of Operations, served as senior manager for clandestine operations. He is the author, with James Risen, of "The Main Enemy: The Inside Story of the CIA's Final Showdown With the KGB." For the website Washington Independent, he wrote Truth Is Out on CIA and Torture: Spy Agency Continues to Carry Out White House Policy

Posted at 06:33 AM in Politics |