A reader writes:
I think it was a pal who originally floated the Nixon/pantsuit line to you. I’m glad you found it of use. Another pal of mine nailed one yesterday as we were chatting about CNBC’s debate.
Rob is a political novice of sorts, but said that Mitt’s seemingly programmed and automaton style made him look like
"a Manchurian candidate but without the military service."
A reader writes:
Thank you. After struggling with the "torture issue," those were exactly the conclusions I’d come to. It really is simple.
Number One: The government of the United States of America is torturing human beings.
Number Two: The "evidence" gained from this torture, from any torture, is deeply suspect. We have sold our soul for nothing.
Number Three: We should be willing to die for the freedoms we hold so dear. We should be willing to die for the Constitution. From the beginning, we have asked Americans to spend their lives to preserve the ideals of liberty. Yet today, we hysterically trade those ideals for fleeting security. We tell ourselves not to worry about the Constitution, or habeas corpus, because American lives are worth more than that.
They are not.
I would add a fourth: we didn’t exactly decide these things at all. They were decided for us – and for generations of Americans and Westerners – in secret, by a handful of people, pushed through against the law, against the advice of many decent people in the government, and then lied about systematically. Yes, by re-electing the Decider, we perpetuated it, and we knew what was at stake at the time. But this was ultimately a function of ceding the rule of law to the rule of one man – not for a one-off emergency, but permanently, indefinitely, because this war has no end, and the Republican establishment believes that the president has no limits on his power in a permanent state of war.
It has come alive again – largely because of new revelations that the Bush administration lied to the Congress and the world by saying three years ago that such practices were abhorrent and no longer in operation. My two-pronged counter-argument to Bret Stephens’ recent piece in the Wall Street Journal can be read here and here. Senator Clinton’s strained words on the subject are dissected here. A plurality of Americans think the president is lying here.
(Photo: a Khmer Rouge waterboard, which the Wall Street Journal and Bret Stephens do not believe was an instrument of torture. It is, for some reason, in a museum dedicated to recording the history of torture techniques in Cambodia during the genocide. The Cambodians don’t seem to understand that the Khmer Rouge were simply employing "enhanced interrogation," as practiced by the US under president George W. Bush.)
A contest. Some strong contenders: Magnus Magnusson, Dick Pound, Stirling Mortlock (gratuitous beefcake shot above), and Powers Boothe. Grrr.
(Photo by Cameron Spencer/Getty.)
This is something we should publicize more widely:
The fact that we see so many Muslim refugees in our courts suggests that people should think twice before claiming that the U.S. is not a force of good in the Muslim world. After all, for plenty of Muslims who fear being sent home to their Islamic countries, we are their best hope, the claims of Usama Bin Laden notwithstanding. Many Muslims would rather be here, so much so that they have increasingly taken advantage of our generous asylum laws and legal procedures that give them a fair shot at proving their well-founded fear of persecution. The surprising fact is that Muslims are more likely to sue for asylum when their home countries are Muslim countries than non-Muslim countries. Pakistan – an Islamic state – is the most common country of origin for Muslim asylum claimants who seek judicial review of the immigration authority’s denial.
Former president Jimmy Carter accuses the president of authorizing the torture of prisoners. He is, of course, right, if words still have any meaning and the rule of law remains in force.
So many astronauts …:
Your partner will need to be anchored to the wall and/or to you, which is why designers are working on special garments, like the 2Suit. Sad, really. All that moonlight, but not much romance – not in a pair of four-legged underpants.
A pretty staggering insight into how the wealthy regard extra-marital sex and divorce:
Of those confessing to an affair, more were women (61%) than men (43%)… Most men responding to the Prince & Associates survey (75%) said cost is their main obstacle to getting a divorce, and 61.5% said they feared it would hurt business dealings and opportunities. Just 7.7% of men cited harm to the kids."
How do you keep a party together that includes these people and the Christianists? The short answer is: you don’t.
I posted about the joys of the single blade here. The Onion, as so often, nails the rest.
A plurality – 42 percent, that is. 30 percent – the 30 percent who would believe him if he said black is white – believe him. 28 percent are not sure. If 42 percent of Americans believe Bush practices torture, what percentage of foreigners do? The damage to this country’s reputation and soft power is incalculable and indelible. Milt Bearden notes another consequence of the new policy:
"One can expect a torrent of cases to be filed against the men and women of the CIA in the coming months and years. They’ll have to get used to either staying pretty close to home, or taking their ski holidays in North Korea. Stepping off a plane anywhere in Europe will become a little dicey."
That applies to Cheney, Addington, Rumsfeld, Tenet and Bush as well.
