Media Asks The Wrong Question... Again

Today over at Slate.com, Jacob Weisberg has an interesting, yet fatally flawed piece up today that gets everything wrong and reveals the underlying bigotry underlying most Mainstream Media discussions of religion (hint: it'ts not what you think):

Romney's Religion
A Mormon president? No way.
By Jacob Weisberg

Someone who refuses to consider voting for a woman as president is rightly deemed a sexist. Someone who'd never vote for a black person is a racist. But are you a religious bigot if you wouldn't cast a ballot for a believing Mormon? The issue arises with Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney's as-yet-undeclared bid for the 2008 Republican nomination.

The piece goes on to tell us the history of famous Mormons in federally elected positions, and to discuss the likelihood of a Mormon ever being elected president, and that's all well, and good, but it's the underlying unasked question I take issue with. See if you can spot what's wrong with THIS paragraph:

But if he gets anywhere in the primaries, Romney's religion will become an issue with moderate and secular voters—and rightly so. Objecting to someone because of his religious beliefs is not the same thing as prejudice based on religious heritage, race, or gender. Not applying a religious test for public office, means that people of all faiths are allowed to run—not that views about God, creation, and the moral order are inadmissible for political debate. In George W. Bush's case, the public paid far too little attention to the role of religion in his thinking. Many voters failed to appreciate that while Bush's religious beliefs may be moderate Methodist ones, he was someone who relied on his faith immoderately, as an alternative to rational understanding of complex issues.

While that's a great dig about Bush's immoderate reliance upon the voices in his head as a replacement for actual advisers, Weisberg not only dances around the real point raised by his article, but by positing the question as he does, he reinforces its implicit prejudice. Here's the REAL question we should be asking ourselves as a nation:

Why can ONLY politicians who profess belief in ancient magikal tales of Gods & Devils be elected president?

Weisberg says that objecting to someone based on his religious beliefs isn't the same thing as a prejudice based on religious heritage, race or gender, then continues:

Nor is it chauvinistic to say that certain religious views should be deal breakers in and of themselves. There are millions of religious Americans who would never vote for an atheist for president, because they believe that faith is necessary to lead the country.

And Zing, Weissberg is done, flowing into whether or not he would vote for a Hassidic Jew:

Others, myself included, would not, under most imaginable circumstances, vote for a fanatic or fundamentalist—a Hassidic Jew who regards Rabbi Menachem Schneerson as the Messiah, a Christian literalist who thinks that the Earth is less than 7,000 years old, or a Scientologist who thinks Earth is haunted by the souls of space aliens sent by the evil lord Xenu. Such views are disqualifying because they're dogmatic, irrational, and absurd. By holding them, someone indicates a basic failure to think for himself or see the world as it is.

So... Atheism which rejects ALL dogmatic, irrational and absurd unprovable religious beliefs in invisible superpowered Gods is equal to Scientology and people who think Satan put dinosaur bones into the Earth to trick us?

Right. WE'RE the ones who are unreasonable. I mean, God forbid anyone elect an atheist!

Weisberg continues:

By the same token, I wouldn't vote for someone who truly believed in the founding whoppers of Mormonism. The LDS church holds that Joseph Smith, directed by the angel Moroni, unearthed a book of golden plates buried in a hillside in Western New York in 1827. The plates were inscribed in "reformed" Egyptian hieroglyphics—a nonexistent version of the ancient language that had yet to be decoded. Smith was able to dictate his "translation" of the Book of Mormon first by looking through diamond-encrusted decoder glasses and then by burying his face in a hat with a brown rock at the bottom of it. He was an obvious con man. Romney has every right to believe in con men, but I want to know if he does, and if so, I don't want him running the country.

Nicely done. You've managed to tie Romney's belief in his hokey fairytales to his ability to govern rationally... except I don't find the idea of magic diamond-encrusted decoder glasses to be any more or less ridiculous than I do the idea that God formed the world in seven days a mere 5000 years ago and populated it with the offspring of Adam and Eve. In other words, the stupid shit that Mitt Romney believes is no more ridiculous than the stupid shit that George W. Bush believes or John Kerry and Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama all profess to believe. Oh, but Weisberg is ready for MY sort:

One may object that all religious beliefs are irrational—what's the difference between Smith's "seer stone" and the virgin birth or the parting of the Red Sea? But Mormonism is different because it is based on such a transparent and recent fraud. It's Scientology plus 125 years. Perhaps Christianity and Judaism are merely more venerable and poetic versions of the same. But a few eons makes a big difference. The world's greater religions have had time to splinter, moderate, and turn their myths into metaphor. The Church of Latter-day Saints is expanding rapidly and liberalizing in various ways, but it remains fundamentally an orthodox creed with no visible reform wing.

One may object that all religious beliefs are irrational. Chrisianity and Judaism are better than Scientology or Mormonism because they're more ancient and their baloney has been translated over the years into beautiful religious metaphor Nice wiggle language, but guess what? Those religions, beautifully splintered, moderated and metaphorical though they may be, are just as fucking ridiculous as the Mormon faith. The con men who concocted Judaism and Christianity and Islam were no different than Joseph Smith and L. Ron Hubbard. We just have better record-keeping for the last two centuries than we do for 2000 years ago, that's all.

Belief in supernatural Gods is a salve for the simpleminded. The idea that invisible supermen live in outer space spying our every deed and eavesdropping our every thought in order that they may correctly decide at the end of our life if we get angel wings or burn in a lake of fire is purely stupid. Gods of any kind are a fairy tales invented to keep people in line.

More importantly "God" doesn't work in a globalized world where religious fanatics of all stripes are only a $300 ticket away from smacking a 767 into the side of the World Trade Center. If you believe that God exists and that he chooses sides, then you should convert to Islam right now because God obviously allowed 9/11 to happen because He hates America and loves Osama Bin Laden. See? Shocking to say, and yet, by the logic of belief, it's utterly true. In fact, if you'll remember, several of America's holiest men like Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell insinuated that we got hit on 9/11 because God Hates Fags (or whatever kinder words they used at the time).

What's good for the goose is good for the gander: if you're silly enough believe in ANY God, you're not allowed to deny the existence of anyone else's God or to proscribe anyone else's religion, including fundamentalist Islam and fake religions made up by convicts so they can legally smoke dope. Otherwise you're just another "my religion is the only TRUE religion" hypocrite. It's all stupid and just because the magical fairytales of Virgin Birth and burning bushes and plagues of frogs in the Bible are older than the magical fairytales of Joseph Smith's magic sunglasses doesn't make them any more useful or credible in today's world.

Which brings us back to Mitt Romney. No, idiot, you don't get to be President, because as Weisberg correctly points out,

Romney has never publicly indicated any distance from church doctrine. He is an "elder" who performed missionary service in France as a young man and did not protest the church's overt racism and priestly discrimination before it was abolished in 1978.

The Mormon Church is a regressive, conservative, bigoted, power-hungry institution whose followers are cult-like in their exclusion of The Other, up to and including, up until 1978, naming black people as the evil against which mankind must struggle. I'm already saddened that their church has bought itself 2 U.S. Senators. Hell, screw Clearwater, Florida... the Church of Latter Day Saints shows the way forward for Scientology and other modern financially well-endowed "alternative religions." Wyoming only has 500,000 residents... surely Scientology can convince a million of its members to move there and electorally seize control of its governmental institutions? With two Senators in their pocket, Scientology would suddenly be a force to be reckoned with, that's for sure. I'm fascinated mostly by the fact that they seem not to have realized they already have the power to do it.

Weisberg's piece correctly posits that

Various evangelical sects continue to view Mormonism as heretical, non-Christian, or even satanic. But because of their shared faith in social conservatism, evangelical leaders seem open to supporting Romney.

That's true... but Evangelical leaders are ONLY supporting Romney because of their common cause of turning back America's Moral Clock to the 1800's... once the god-fearing dummies who voted for GW twice find out about some of the juicier aspects of the Mormon religion, however, I predict that they'll quickly rush to Sam Brownback's side (and yes, they'll tell themselves, although Brownback's a born-again Evangelical who converted and became a filthy Catholic, at least THAT evil papist-led false church has a few thousand years of history and beautiful religious metaphor behind it).

Don't take MY word for it..., let's allow noted Christian writer Jack T. Chick to show us what's going to happen:

"Worst Of The Worst" Set Free

Majority of Gitmo Detainees Freed in Other Countries
By Andrew O. Selsky
The Associated Press
Friday 15 December 2006

The Pentagon called them "among the most dangerous, best-trained, vicious killers on the face of the earth," sweeping them up after Sept. 11 and hauling them in chains to a U.S. military prison in southeastern Cuba.

Since then, hundreds of the men have been transferred from Guantanamo Bay to other countries, many of them for "continued detention."

And then set free.

Decisions by more than a dozen countries in the Middle East, Europe and South Asia to release the former Guantanamo detainees raise questions about whether they were really as dangerous as the United States claimed, or whether some of America's staunchest allies have set terrorists and militants free.

The United States does not systematically track what happens to detainees once they leave Guantanamo, the U.S. State Department says. Defense lawyers and human rights groups say they know of no centralized database, although one group is attempting to compile one.

When the Pentagon announces a detainee has been moved from Guantanamo, it gives his nationality but not his name, making it difficult to track the roughly 360 men released since the detention center opened in January 2002. The Pentagon says detainees have been sent to 26 countries.

But through interviews with justice and police officials, detainees and their families, and using reports from human rights groups and local media, The Associated Press was able to track 245 of those formerly held at Guantanamo. The investigation, which spanned 17 countries, found:

Once the detainees arrived in other countries, 205 of the 245 were either freed without being charged or were cleared of charges related to their detention at Guantanamo. Forty either stand charged with crimes or continue to be detained.

Only a tiny fraction of transferred detainees have been put on trial. The AP identified 14 trials, in which eight men were acquitted and six are awaiting verdicts. Two of the cases involving acquittals - one in Kuwait, one in Spain - initially resulted in convictions that were overturned on appeal.

The Afghan government has freed every one of the more than 83 Afghans sent home. Lawmaker Sibghatullah Mujaddedi, the head of Afghanistan's reconciliation commission, said many were innocent and wound up at Guantanamo because of tribal or personal rivalries.

At least 67 of 70 repatriated Pakistanis are free after spending a year in Adiala Jail. A senior Pakistani Interior Ministry official said investigators determined that most had been "sold" for bounties to U.S. forces by Afghan warlords who invented links between the men and al-Qaida. "We consider them innocent," said the official, who declined to be named because of the sensitivity of the issue.

All 29 detainees who were repatriated to Britain, Spain, Germany, Russia, Australia, Turkey, Denmark, Bahrain and the Maldives were freed, some within hours after being sent home for "continued detention."

Some former detainees say they never intended to harm the United States and are bitter.

"I can't wash the three long years of pain, trouble and humiliation from my memory," said Badarzaman Badar, an Afghan who was freed in Pakistan. "It is like a cancer in my mind that makes me disturbed every time I think of those terrible days."

Overall, about 165 Guantanamo detainees have been transferred from Guantanamo for "continued detention," while about 200 were designated for immediate release. Some 420 detainees remain at the U.S. base in Cuba.

Clive Stafford Smith, a British-American attorney representing several detainees, said the AP's findings indicate that innocent men were jailed and that the term "continued detention" is part of "a politically motivated farce."

"The Bush Administration wants to be able to say that these are dangerous terrorists who are going to be confined upon their release ... although there is no evidence against many of them," he said.

When four Britons were sent home from Guantanamo in January 2005, Britain said it would detain and investigate them - then released them after only 18 hours. Five Britons repatriated earlier were also rapidly released with no charges.

Murat Kurnaz, a German-born Turkish citizen, was also quickly freed when he was flown to Germany in August, bound hand and foot, after more than four years at Guantanamo.

U.S. officials maintained he was a member of al-Qaida, based on what they said was secret evidence. But his New Jersey-based lawyer, Baher Azmy, said he was shown the classified evidence and was shocked to find how unpersuasive it was.

"It contains five or six statements exonerating him," Azmy said.

In October German prosecutors said they found no evidence that Kurnaz had links to Islamic radicals in Pakistan or Afghanistan and formally dropped their investigation.

The United States insists that the fact that so many of the former detainees have been freed by other countries doesn't mean they weren't dangerous.

"They were part of Taliban, al-Qaida, or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners," said Navy Cmdr. Jeffrey Gordon, a Pentagon spokesman.

But Joshua Colangelo-Bryan, a lawyer representing several detainees, says the fact that hundreds of men have been released into freedom belies their characterization by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld as "among the most dangerous, best-trained, vicious killers on the face of the earth."

"After all, it would simply be incredible to suggest that the United States has voluntarily released such 'vicious killers' or that such men had been miraculously reformed at Guantanamo," Colangelo-Bryan said.

Mohammed Aman, a 49-year-old Afghan who describes himself as a former low-level member of the Taliban, said he initially wasn't worried when U.S. troops detained him.

"I was relaxed because I was innocent," he said. "I was sure I would be freed. I was always thinking that today or tomorrow I will be free."

He spent three years at Guantanamo until he was finally put on a plane at the base, blindfolded and with headphones covering his ears. When he made it back to his home in Malaik Khail, Afghanistan, villagers streamed out to greet him, many weeping.

Detainees are held at Guantanamo Bay because a military panel classifies them as an "enemy combatant," which refers not only to armed fighters but to anyone who aids enemy forces. Every year, each gets a hearing to determine whether he remains a security threat to the United States or has intelligence value.

Using those hearings as guidance, Deputy Secretary of Defense Gordon England decides whether to keep the detainee at Guantanamo, release him, or send him to another country for detention.

This year, through Nov. 20, he had ruled on 149 prisoners. He decided that 106 should be held, 43 should be transferred to custody of other countries and none should be released outright.

Azmy, the New Jersey lawyer, said the distinction between release and transfer is largely a fiction because recipient countries are under no obligation to imprison the returnees. The United States doesn't even ask them to.

A senior U.S. State Department official acknowledged that "We do not ask countries to detain them on our behalf, so when a decision is made by a country to move forward with an investigation for prosecution, that is something they have decided to do pursuant to their own domestic law."

Requesting anonymity because she is not authorized to speak on the record, she said about 15 former detainees returned to the battlefield after being freed. The Pentagon was unable to provide details.

"That's the risk that goes along with transferring people out of Guantanamo," she said. "It's not foolproof."

Some former detainees still face the justice systems of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and France.

Six Kuwaitis returned from Guantanamo stood trial on terror-related charges. Five were acquitted, and on Dec. 5 an appeals court overturned the conviction of the sixth, Nasser al-Mutairi.

In France, the trial of six transferred Guantanamo detainees has focused as much on the U.S. prison camp as on their prosecution on charges of "criminal association with a terrorist enterprise."

Prosecutor Sonya Djemni-Wagner has requested light sentences, saying she took into account the defendants' "arbitrary detention ... at a facility outside all legal frameworks."

She is seeking one year in prison plus suspended sentences for five suspects and no sentence for the sixth, all of whom are currently free.

Their time already served behind bars in France should be counted toward their sentences, she said, meaning that even if convicted, none would be locked up.
###

So... over half of the "worst of the worst" were no so bad that they could be released. Nice! This comes in addition to the news that several dozen of the detainees were under the age of 17 when first captured in 2002, and that many have undergone torture since being imprisoned at Gitmo.

Those of us on the "Commie Traitor Left" said from the beginning that paying cash money for "Al Qaeda" captives would result in nothing more than kidnap for bounty among hostile Afghan tribes. We were jeered at and told that the men in Gitmo had ALL been captured "on the battlefield."

Then we said that using torture as a routine questioning tactic was immoral because several hundred of them HAD to be innocent of all charges. We were sneered at and told that these men were "the worst of the worst" and deserved whatever they got.

Then we said that without trials, these men were being held illegally by a President out of control. We were laughed at and the GOP slammed Bush's "Torture Enabling Act" through a willing Congress.

Now we find out that everything we said was true: torture, underage kids, innocent tribesmen, and much much more. America's reaction? More sneering, jeering & ignoring the fact that their government has set aside all Rule of Law in its pursuit of this Gitmo Gulag.

I'm now of the opinion that the people of the US are a complaisant lot who deserve the Imperium that's coming. One day soon they'll wake up and realize that their country is broke, that their jobs have disappeared, and that they're in a political re-education camp...

and then they'll blame it on the Democrats.

What Happened and Why (And Don't Be Fooled)

The outcome of this election is as clear as it gets. Unfortunately, the Mainstream Corporate Media is out there spin, spin, spinning this election, spreading myths about what happened. The stickiest spin is that this election is somehow a victory for Conservatism and Conservative Democrats... the reasoning being that if Democrats want to stay in power, they have to be more like Republicans.

Sorry, no, not buying it.

In the interests of clarity, let's examine EXACTLY what this election meant versus what everyone is claiming:

(1) This is a devastating defeat for the Republican Party. Excuses are being made that this is "standard 6th-year losses for the President's party." If that's true, why did Democrats GAIN seats in the House in Clinton's 6th year in office? The truth here is that the President and his party are deeply unpopular and out of touch with America's desires. This win for the Democrats is a historically humiliating defeat for Bush and his supporters and they know it. We should be proud enough to acknowledge it and to force the Corporate Media to stop regurgitating Republican Talking Points.

(2) These election results are a resounding rejection of the core, defining premises of Bush's Republican Party. While the war was definitely on voters' minds, this election was NOT only about Iraq. The Democrats who won did so by opposing the main tenets of Bush's GOP: unchecked Presidential power, One-Party Rule, warmongering, war profiteering, bloated Federal deficits, tax cuts for the rich and the corruption which has fed the GOP elections machine for the last 12 years. Nine corrupt Republican incumbents were kicked out by the voters, and that's with the Corporate Media generally ignoring their crimes. When the Ethics Rules are tightened come January, and the investigations begin in earnest, another 9 will probably follow.


3) This election does NOT show support for "Conservatism" or for a new "Conservative Democratic Party."

When the Republicans took the House in 1994, their success resulted from picking off vulnerable Democrats in the South. By contrast, Democratic candidates won Tuesday in every part of the country and in the reddest of red states like Arkansas, Kansas and Indiana. The Republicans are rapidly collapsing into the Party of the Racist South... but even there, they lost incumbents and support. As we saw in Kansas where 9 major Republicans switched parties and ran as Moderate Democrats, the GOP has catered to the deranged Theologist Religious Right for so long that they've alienated middle of the road voters from their own party.

Most devastating for the Republicans, Democrats got 30% of the White Christian Evangelical vote. The message is sinking in for religious people: Republicans stand for power not for Jesus. There's no Christian message in fucking the poor and extending the life of Teri Schiavo, only hate-mana thrown to a small and deranged band of religious extremists. There's nothing Christ-like about scapegoating Gays while molesting Congressional pages. There's no message from God about shifting money from the poor to the rich through regressive tax cuts.

Furthermore, Democrats of all stripes and ideologies won... from the first honest-to-god Socialist to ever serve in the House to Jim Webb, former Secretary of the Navy for Ronald Reagan.

Yes, some conservative Democrats were elected. Some of them are pro-Life and some are opposed to gay marriage. Big Deal. Harry Reid is both of those things, but he's still a clear progressive whose stances on those issues kept Karl Rove from running distracting sideshows the real issues, like he has for the last 3 elections. The same goes for guys like Casey in Pennsylvania... I'd rather have a pro-life Democrat than a theocrat like Rick Santorum any day of the week.

Best of all, for the first time in 12 years, Democrats didn't win by pretending to be Republicans... they won because they emphatically and unapologetically vowed to oppose what the Republican Party has become and to put an end to its destructive one-party rule. No one voting thought they were getting Republican Lite. Democrats won by aggressively attacking everything Bush stands for, not by trying to be a slightly modified and duller version of it like they did in 2000, 2002 and 2004.


(4) The Blogs Won This Election. Many of the Democrats who won were candidates who were supported most enthusiastically by the most liberal blogs who raised money for only a handful of challengers, many of whom won against Republican incumbents in previously red districts: Sherrod Brown, Ben Cardin, Chris Carney, Kirsten Gillibrand, Amy Klobuchar, Nick Lampson, Tim McNerery, Patrick Murphy, Joe Sestak, Jon Tester, Tim Walz and Jim Webb, among others.

Many of those Democratic winners weren't initially supported by the Democratic Party, either... especially McNerey in his race against Dick "I Hate The Earth" Pombo, who got $300,000 or so from the DNC versus the $1.6 million that the GOP pumped into that race. The Blogs and Environmental Movement made the difference in overcoming a corrupt polluter who spent over $7 Million against an expert in Wind Power.

Not every Blog-support candidate won, but that doesn't mean that liberal blogs weren't effective. Bloggers tended to support underdog Democratic candidates who were challenging Republican incumbents... the seats which are the most difficult to win. Most blog-favored Democrats who lost were ones running in extremely red districts against GOP incumbents -- such as Angie Paccione (against the heinous Marilyn Musgrave) and Victoria Wulslin (against the equally disgusting Jean Schmidt) -- and they came very close to winning.

Given those facts, the idea that this election was some great repudiation of the Progressive Blogger Branch of the Democratic Party is wishful thinking by those who wish it were so. The Democrats who won have one thing in common: aggressive opposition to the monstrosities of the Republican Party.

(5) Karl Rove is not All-Powerful and The American People aren't retarded -- or -- You can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time.

For the last six years, Bush and his cronies have run rampant across the political landscape destroying our freedom, limiting our Civil Rights, and fatally wounding the Constitution. They've gotten away with it because they out-strategized their Democratic opponents at every turn.

In 2000, voters bought into Rove's talking points of "Compassionate Conservatism," "Clinton Fatigue," and "No Child Left Behind." Rove pointed Bush squarely at the middle, while simultaneously telling Christian Evangelical Theocracy-lovers that once in office Bush would outlaw abortion, evolution, stem cells and make being gay an executable offense. The mainstream Corporate Media refused to see the truth before their eyes, didn't notice that Bush wasn't sending "dog-whistle" code signals to religious voters (such as constantly quoting from the Bible and obscure right-wing Hymns in his speeches) and pretended that Bush's lies about the failure of his policies in Texas were equivalent to Gore's overstatements about the Social Security Lockbox and him personally inventing the Internet (which he didn't even say).

At the same time, Gore's handlers were telling him to run a Republican-Lite campaign. To aid this, Gore brought on Joe Lieberman, who proceeded to make the election about who loved God more, him or Bush. God, god, god, blah blah social security lockbox, god, god, god, earth-toned suits, God, god. Blechhh. Progressive voters stayed home, Gore won the popular vote and then blinked in Florida when confronted by clear voting fraud. His scrambling attempts to only recount Dem-leaning counties made him appear partisan. When the Supreme Court handed down their illegal and unprecedented ruling, Gore blinked again: Democratic "Leadership" advised Gore to step away gracefully to maintain his future electability, despite later recounts which showed that Gore had clearly won the state of Florida.

Having thus won in 2000, Rove and Tom Delay set about establishing permanent One-Party Rule of America. There was no tax they wouldn't cut, no legislation they wouldn't pass, so long as they got a corporate campaign contribution in return.

In 2001, before 9/11, Bush's popularity was hovering around 39%, the lowest for any President that early in his career. The Republicans were headed towards massive midterm losses. After 9/11, the Republicans used the boogeyman of Osama Bin Laden to scare voters into voting against their own economic and political self-interest. As proof of their weakness, the Democrats were even unwilling to challenge the legitimacy of Rove's terror alert issued in the week before the election. Rove made the 2002 elections a referendum on whether Democrats had the stomach to confront Saddam Hussein. Weak-kneed Democratic "Leadership" like Tom Daschle and Dick Gephardt were unable to adjust to this new scaremongering reality, unable to rationally prove that Saddam was a paper tiger, express a clear alternative vision for the nation, and voted FOR the President's desired war. Thus, by playing Republican-Lite once again, they were swept from office by the Rove Machine.

In 2004, Democratic "Leadership" decided that instead of a popular progressive Governor who was against the war, the party machinery should instead be rallied behind a career political insider Senator who had voted for the war, a lifetime politician with a career full of procedural votes which could easily be twisted to mean anything the Republicans wanted ("he voted NO on giving our troops body armor"), NO charisma, no ability to speak movingly or clearly to the common man, an excessive love for nuanced speech ("I voted for the bill, before I voted against it), an inability to define his own career successes and a complete inability to fight back when aggressively attacked, either with labels (flip-flopper) or even about his own history (Swift-boats Veterans for Truth).

Faced with The Decider or The Equivocator, America voted for Rove's candidate. It helped that he had anti-gay ballot measures on 24 state ballots to drive his religious hate-filled partisans to the voting booth.

This time around, though, new Democratic Leadership rejected the Republican-Lite theory. Howard Dean, Rahm Emmanuel, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid kept a generally straight line as they marched towards Rove with bayonets lowered: The President is out of touch, the Republicans are corrupt, and the war is probably already lost. Faced with a unified opponent unwilling to play Republican-Lite, Rove's vaunted machine failed; today, he is a rejected loser. Karl Rove's ability to hypnotize zombified Americans with distractions like the New Jersey court ruling on gay civil unions, or John Kerry idiotic comments, or moronic buzzphrases has worn thin. No longer will catchy slogans about how Democrats "support terrorists" and their "San Francisco values" work to divide people like before... so long as Democrats don't allow themselves to stand still and allow the Republicans to define them.

Rovism is dead. Americans see Bush's Republican movement for what it is and have begun the process of smashing it.

(6) The Democratic victory is only one small step towards the restoration of our country, the Constitution and the Rule of Law. This President feels that Congress is irrelevant and has shown a propensity for ignoring any law that it passes and for ignoring any and all rebukes shown him by the Supreme Court. Reversing the damage done by six years of One-Party Rule will take time and concerted effort: there is still accountability to be imposed, subpoenas to be issued, crimes to be uncovered, radicalism to be reversed, and tons of damage to be undone... and none of that will be easy. Democrats still face a dysfunctional and corrupt national media, apathy on the part of some Americans, the potent use of propaganda by the Bush administration, voter suppression tactics, gerrymandering and fundraising corruption.

Lastly, let's not ignore the threats that still face us. Just because Karl Rove didn't wheel Osama bin Laden out in the week before this midterm election doesn't mean he's not saving him for 2008. Let's wait and see some serious examinations of the voting machine results in close elections before we admit that Diebold's machines are fine when they clearly are NOT fine. Let's also not forget the mindnumbing panic and fear that 9/11 produced which allowed this cabal of Authoritarian psychotics to gain absolute control of our country for four years. If another attack should happen, we need to be ready to point out that retreat into Despotism is NOT the answer.

Get to work, Democrats. Otherwise you're just part of the problem.

Election Wrap-Up

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The BTK Presidency - Cheney Confirms Waterboarding

Dick Cheney, the black heart of this presidency, has spoken out forcefully for his right to Bind, Torture and Kill people his boss has unilaterally designated as "enemy combatants."

In an interview with conservative talk show host, Scott Hennen, on Tuesday, Vice President Dick Cheney confirmed that U.S. interrogators subject captured prisoners at America's gulag in Guantánamo Bay to the interrogation technique known as "waterboarding:"

Hennen: "And I've had people call and say, please, let the Vice President know that if it takes dunking a terrorist in water, we're all for it, if it saves American lives. [...] Would you agree a dunk in water is a no-brainer if it can save lives?"

Cheney: "It's a no-brainer for me, but for a while there, I was criticized as being the Vice President 'for torture.' We don't torture. That's not what we're involved in. We live up to our obligations in international treaties that we're party to and so forth. But the fact is, you can have a fairly robust interrogation program without torture, and we need to be able to do that. And thanks to the leadership of the President now, and the action of the Congress, we have that authority, and we are able to continue the program."

Swell. Our Vice President just admitted to drowning people until they confess to being terrorists... but it's okay, he's assured us, because drowning isn't torture.

Except that it IS torture. In 1947, the United States prosecuted a Japanese soldier for war crimes and sentenced him to 15 years hard labor for using the technique on a U.S. prisoner. The US court described the crime as "torture."

The physical effects of waterboarding can be extreme pain and damage to the lungs, brain damage caused by oxygen deprivation and sometimes broken bones because of the victims struggling against their restraints. The psychological effects of waterboarding can also be longlasting. Dr. Allen Keller, director of the Bellevue/N.Y.U. Program for Survivors of Torture, has treated a number of people who had been subjected to waterboarding. In an interview with The New Yorker, Dr. Keller explained that some victims were still traumatized years later... one patient couldn't take showers, and panicked when it rained.

This brings up an interesting question: What IS waterboarding, exactly? America's TV News has done a very poor job of explaining the technique to the American people, thus giving the impression that it's acceptable behavior, or that "The Terrorists" are only getting "dunked" in some water. See the attached newspaper illustration, which doesn't nearly get across the methodical, vicious and deliberate nature of modern CIA-improved waterboarding.

There are three historical variations of waterboarding:

(1) The Spanish Inquisition Method: the victim is strapped to a board, their arms and legs immobilized, and they are submerged in water until the prisoner believes he or she is drowning. The Inquisition started without the board, but soon realized that using the board prevented the victim from fighting back. Whenever possible since, the board has been used.

(2) The Vietnam War Method: the victim is strapped to a board with a wet towel placed over their face and water is dripped into their nose until they think they are about to drown.

(3) The CIA's Improvement: this is the system currently used in Guantánamo and in the CIA's secret Eastern European gulags. The victim is strapped to a board, the board is inclined about 20 degrees so that the feet are above the head, saran wrap is wound over the face so that it covers the eyes, nose, and mouth (facial hair is shaved to ensure a tight seal), and then, through a plastic tube, water is poured under the saran wrap covering the face, running down from the chin to the forehead, so that water is forced into the nose. Because of the angle of the victim's body, the water fills up the sinuses, then the throat and the mouth in that order. Unavoidably, the gag reflex immediately kicks in and a terrifying fear of drowning leads to almost instant pleas to bring the treatment to a halt. Because of the angle of the body, the lungs are NOT filled with water keeping oxygen in the blood and prolonging the victim's sensation that they are drowning. The saran wrap is there as a bonus multiplier. If the victim coughs to try to blow the water out of their throat or mouth, the plastic catches the water and shoves it back. The saran wrap also acts as a one-way valve, opening to let more air out and then closing again to prevent inhalation. Eventually the victim ends up with collapsed, empty lungs, no ability to inhale more air, a throat, mouth, and nose that's still full of water, and no capacity to get the water out since they've already fully exhaled.

Modern CIA-designed waterboarding isn't about asphyxiation (like, say, the Nazi method of merely shoving a prisoner's head into a tub filled with water)... it's much more diabolical. Waterboarding is about the uncontrollable physical response to forced sustained water inhalation. If you've ever accidentally inhaled water you know that even the smallest amount of liquid in the larynx and trachea is an immediate, hardwired hotline directly to the panic portion of the brain that death is imminent. The terror of imminent drowning is the key element of the technique. According to ABC News, CIA officers who subjected themselves to the waterboarding technique lasted an average of 14 seconds before caving in. They said al Qaeda's toughest prisoner, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, won the admiration of interrogators when he was able to last between two and two-and-a-half minutes before begging to confess.

The White House has redefined "torture" thusly: ""must be equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death." That pretzled, logic was designed explicitly by the president's staff to exclude waterboarding. While Bush and his torture-happy staff might not think waterboarding is torture, experts such as John Sifton of Human Rights Watch disagree: "The person believes they are being killed, and as such, it really amounts to a mock execution, which is illegal under international law." And it's not just gay liberal terrorist enablers like Human Rights Watch, either... The U.S. Army, senior Republican lawmakers, human rights experts worldwide and many experts on the laws of war also consider waterboarding cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment that's banned by U.S. law and by international treaties that prohibit torture.

Most dishearteningly, not only is waterboarding clearly torture, but it's also pointless as an intelligence gathering tactic. Sure, victims confess... but many experienced intelligence agency and military interrogators argue waterboarding often provides false or misleading information because the victim gets so desperate that he begins telling interrogators what they want to hear in order to make the waterboarding stop. In at least one instance, ABC News was told that the techniques led to questionable information aimed at pleasing the interrogators and that this information had a significant impact on U.S. actions in Iraq.

The CIA's escalating interrogation method is reported this:
(1. The Attention Grab: The interrogator forcefully grabs the shirt front of the prisoner and shakes him,
2. The Attention Slap: An open-handed slap aimed at causing pain and triggering fear,
3. The Belly Slap: A hard open-handed slap to the stomach. The aim is to cause pain, but not internal injury like a punch would,
4. Stress Positions: Among the most effective techniques. Prisoners are forced to stand, handcuffed and with their feet shackled to an eye bolt in the floor for more than 40 hours. Exhaustion and sleep deprivation are effective in yielding confessions,
5. The Cold Cell: The prisoner is left to stand naked in a cell kept near 50 degrees. Throughout the time in the cell the prisoner is doused with cold water. and finally,
6. Waterboarding

According to CIA sources, Ibn al Shaykh al Libbi, after two weeks of enhanced interrogation, made statements that were designed to tell the interrogators what they wanted to hear. Sources say Al Libbi finally broke after being waterboarded and then placed in a stress position and forced to stand naked in his cold cell overnight where he was doused with cold water at regular intervals.

His statements became part of the basis for the Bush administration claims that Iraq trained al Qaeda members to use biochemical weapons, which was touted as another rationale for the Iraq War. It was later established that al Libbi had no knowledge of such training or weapons and fabricated the statements because he was terrified of further harsh treatment. Al Libbi does not appear to have sought to intentionally misinform investigators, but rather to please his torturers... but the result is the same: more false "intelligence" which is used as "proof" that the waterboarding was necessary in the first place, thus leading to more waterboarding being used to obtain more "intelligence" which justifies more waterboarding and so on and so on.

Confessions obtained this way are an unreliable tool. There is little to be gained by these techniques that could not be more effectively gained by a methodical, careful, psychologically based interrogation. According to a classified report prepared by the CIA Inspector General John Helgerwon and issued in 2004, the techniques "appeared to constitute cruel, and degrading treatment under the (Geneva) convention." Former CIA office Bob Baer says that waterboard is "bad interrogation. I mean you can get anyone to confess to anything if the torture's bad enough." Larry Johnson, a former CIA officer and a deputy director of the State Department's office of counterterrorism, recently wrote in the Los Angeles Times, "What real CIA field officers know firsthand is that it is better to build a relationship of trust … than to extract quick confessions through tactics such as those used by the Nazis and the Soviets."

It's important for Americans to recognize that noted characteristic... waterboarding is the tool of the Spanish Inquisition, of the Nazis, of the KGB, of the Cambodian Khmer Rouge, of the South American Dictatorship... it's not a technique to gain intelligence, it is a technique designed and used exclusively in the past to gain forced confessions by despotic regimes when knew that the confessions were coerced but didn't care. But now the BTK administration has made waterboarding a key element of their intelligence services, which can ONLY lead to more false confessions and incorrect assesments of the real-world threats facing us. Torture and false confession are now the official voted-on policy of the United States of America and its Bind, Torture, Kill President.





Incidentally, it's also important to note that the individuals who George B.T.K. Bush is torturing have not been convicted of anything. Guantanamo Bay currently holds over 500 prisoners. The Bush administration has repeatedly described these men as "the worst of the worst." Ten have been formally charged with crimes and will someday face military tribunals. The rest wait to learn what they have done wrong. Instead they have been denied the right to a fair trial free of evidence coerced through torture, non-rebuttabal hearsay evidence, and "classified" evidence that the defendant is not able to dispute. They have been denied the right to counsel, they are denied the most basic human rights, and now the BTK Congress has signed off on laws allowing them to be tortured and eventually murdered by their Republican BTK President.

*** a reader wrote in to inform me that one of the key purposes of drenching people with water and making them stand in cold rooms afterwards is to induce a state of Hyperalgesia, which is an extreme sensitivity to pain, which in one form is caused by damage to nociceptors in the body's soft tissues. Hyperalgesia can be experienced in focal, discrete areas (commonly associated with wounds), or as a more diffuse, body-wide form (like that intended at Guantánamo. Conditioning studies have established that it is possible to experience a learned hyperalgesia of the latter, diffuse form... meaning that after doing this to a victim a number of times, the torture victim can LITERALLY feel the all-over-body pain without even being subjected to the cold or water. Neato! Pavlov would be proud. Or sickened. The idea that military doctors are cooperating with this torture bullshit is beyond the pale. First do no harm, scumbags.

The Democrats had better rescind all of this shit, should they take over the House & Senate.

More Sex Scandals On The Way

For many Americans, the recent political news seems more and more like a multi-count indictment, what with Bob Ney pleading guilty to bribery last week, the Tom Noe "Coingate" trial reaching the courts in Ohio, the Duke Cunningham scandal, the investigation into Jim Kolbe's camping trips with pages, Curt Weldon's sudden FBI problems, and lingering questions about Dennis Hastert using highway earmarks to increase his net worth from $300,000 to $6 million by forcing a freeway to go across land he owned. All of this crap is also piled between two slices of sandwich bread known as Tom DeLay and Mark Foley. The bad news for the Republican Party just keeps getting worse and worse and it keeps going on and on, one new corrupt example after another...

the punchline being that President Bush has declared October 15th-21st to be National Character Counts Week. No irony intended, I'm sure, though it abounds, regardless.

There's also the as-yet-unexploded "Hookergate" scandal involving various Republican congressmen taking sex as bribes in return for votes and earmarks for Brent Wilkes, a corrupt defense contractor/pimp who is said to have paid for poker 'n' poontang parties at the Watergate Hotel (yes, THAT Watergate). Duke Cunningham has already been investigated for it, and the FBI has been unable to get the hookers' madame to flip on her Congressmen clients, but a simple examination of Wilkes' money takes us to (on the Armed Services Committee) Duncan Hunter (CA), Chairman - $43,200, Jim Saxton (NJ) - $1,500, Ken Calvert (CA)- $8,000, (Appropriations) Jerry Lewis (CA), Chairman - $86,252, Bill Young (FL) - $6,500, Tom Delay (TX) - $70,000, Henry Bonilla (TX) - $19,500, Joe Knollenberg (MI) - $13,000, Robert Aderholt (AL) - $2,000, John Doolittle (CA) - $103,000, Don Sherwood (PA) - $1,000, Mark Kirk (IL) - $5,000, (Select Committee on Intelligence) Peter Hoekstra (MI) - $4,000, Heather Wilson (NM) - $3,000, Darrell Issa (CA) - $5,000, as well as Roy Blunt (MO) - $21,000, Larry Craig (ID) - $43,000, Benjamin Gilman (NY) - $42,146, Robert Livingston (LA) - $10,000, Devin Gerald Nunes (CA) - $13,000, Ronald Packard (CA) - $11,000, Charles Robb (VA-Senate and the only Democrat on this list) - $17,000, Billy Tauzin (LA) - $18,587 and Jerry Weller (IL) - $10,000. No word on this story lately, so it's up in the air as to whether the FBI is simply waiting until AFTER the election before dropping the bomb, or if the case has honestly gone nowhere.

Ah, but now, there's rumors of yet ANOTHER House page sex scandal, this one involving a 16-year-old female page and supposedly a congressman from Illinois who is supposedly going to resign tonight from the House (but, obviously, not before the House Leadership can get their lies straight this time). Rumor has it that it's a Republican Congressman, which means another pickup for Dems.

Interestingly, there aren't a LOT of Republican Congressmen from Illinois, so it's pretty easy for someone to figure it out in advance, if there is ANY truth to this rumor. We're limited to a suspect pool of: Henry J. Hyde (R - 06), Mark S. Kirk (R - 10), Gerald C. (Jerry) Weller (R - 11), Dennis Hastert (R - 14), Timothy V. Johnson (R - 15), Donald A. Manzullo (R - 16), Ray LaHood (R - 18), or John Shimkus (R - 19). There's also Judy Biggert (R - 13), but we'll go on the assumption that the rumors of Illinois/Republican/Male/Straight Sex are all correct. Pretty much ANY of these guys (except for Kirk who seems somewhat sane) would be great to shoot out of a scandal cannon into a brick wall, but Hastert, Shimkus, LaHood and Hyde are all virulent homophobes.

Shimkus is already toast because of his involvement with the Foley scandal (including allowing Foley ufettered access to pages even after being made aware of Foley's "problems" and hiding the entire scandal from the one Democrat in charge of the pages). I hope it's not Shimkus. I doubt it's Hastert... he'd have to be utterly retarded to get caught with his hand in the cookie jar like that. I'd love for it to be any of the Super Moralists such as Ray LaHood, Tim Johnson, Jerry Weller, or Don Manzullo, all of whom are homophobic war-loving retrograde maroons.

Again, this is all going on the assumption that the rumors of Illinois/Republican/Male/Straight Sex are all correct.

One certainly hopes that it's a Republican, if only to blunt the recent accusation/twist/spin making waves in Evangelical circles that the Foley Scandal isn't a case of powerful Republicans ignoring a child molester in their midst to maintain their political power, but instead a problem created by the existence of a cabal of closeted gays in the Republican Party.

A good straight Male-Republican-Congressman-on-underage-female-page scandal should let ALL the air out of that anti-gay scapegoating bullshit, though probably not in time to head off the Republicans' rumored purge of all gay staffers. I'd feel bad for the gay staffers in question... but they helped write and pass laws which stripped them of their own legal rights when confronted by firing for sexual orientation, so my pity meter is rather low when it comes to self-emasculating idiots.

So, let's see what Dana Milbank's got up his sleeve, shall we? And let's see it before the election.

President Bush Signs Torture Enabling Act of 2006

President George W. Bush signs into law S. 3930, the "Military Commissions Act of 2006," during a ceremony Tuesday, Oct. 17, 2006, in the East Room of the White House. Joining him on stage, from left are: Utah Rep. Chris Cannon, Indiana Rep. Steve Buyer, Wisconsin Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, California Rep. Duncan Hunter, and Sen. John Warner of Virginia. General Peter Pace, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales are in the background.

Now... look closer...
Closer... closer... closer on the photo...YES! Your president is SMILING while he signs into "law" a bill which allows him to torture anyone he wants, then use their testimony gained under torture as "evidence" in kangaroo court "trials" and execute these "enemy combatants" at his whim, all without Supreme Court interference, which the lickspittle Republican Congress cut out of the picture by stripping the combatants of their rights to Habeus Corpus.

Why are Republicans so THRILLED to reverse 791 years of Ango-American jurisprudence? One can only suppose that it's because they know the TRUE identity of George Bush: