Antonin Scalia should be tortured

Anyone who defends torture as having nothing to do with punishment should be water boarded themselves.

I can’t even bring myself to call him “Justice” because there is nothing “just” about him.  In a recent “60 Minutes” interview with Leslie Stahl (whom I must admit did an awful job trying to match wits with Scalia) was trying to make the point that torture goes against the “cruel and unusual punishment” argument.  Scalia said that when a person is being tortured, they are not being punished for anything, it’s just that the interrogator is trying to get information and that’s not punishment.

If Stahl had a brain in her head she would have said that the torturer was behaving as if they alone were the judge and jury and had already convicted the victim, therefore, torture is the torturer’s means of punishment.  But Stahl couldn’t come up with that one.

But that doesn’t mean that Scalia shouldn’t be impeached.  I don’t even know if Supreme Court judges can be impeached but I do know that this “job for life” thing is a bunch of crap.  Where in the world do you get to have any job “for life” no matter what.  It is a ridiculous notion.  Since we can’t get rid of him, and torture is just fine in his own opinion, can we stick bamboo chutes under his finger nails until he resigns?

Bye Bye Bush

I was watching the evening news tonight and they said that Bush attended his last correspondents dinner and I thought to myself that I sort of feel bad for Bush.  And I really mean sort of because I will never actually have very much compassion for him but this is what I was thinking.

What must it be like for him to know that every time his face is seen, 70 percent of America, and about 99 percent of the rest of world look at him and think “What an asshole”.  I mean, he knows it’s true, he knows that’s what people think.  I wonder if he even cares.

The election of 2008

I have not written anything about polittics, or rather I haven’t written anything about anything in a long time because it all seemed so meaningless.  And I don’t believe in writing for writings sake.  I need to have someting to say.  And we have all had a lot to think about in the last few weeks.

Other than the election in 1864, when the incumbent president, Abraham Lincoln, had to risk his most sacred views and values, and put his heart, soul, and belief in man on the line for what he belived in, has an election been so important to this entire country.

I can not think of another election that is as important, as meaningful, as captivating, or as all encompassing as the election of November 2008.  We are at the precipice of creating a new and improved USA, a new direction of a relatively young country, at a time when everything we stand for is on the line.

Now, we are not talking about slavery this time, but we are talking about enslavelment.  The Bush administration that has made itself more important than the already written law of this country, is trying to hold on to its web of control based on lies, and dependent upon the what they conceive to be the stupid American public which, as it turns out, isn’t so stupid after all. The unevolved may have been fooled once or twrice but they will not be fooled again.

This forthcoming election is the most important of our lives.  All of us living and breathing at this very moment  hold in our hands the future of this country and and the future of the dreams and consciousness of this country.  We can NOT go on, not one foot further than we have gone in the name of national security.  We can not kill another human being and we can not allow another one of our citizens to be killed in the name of George Bush and the war against terrorism.

I am so much more afraid of George Bush and his caldron of haters than I ever could be of people who react in the name of their faith an religion.

 

Ryan Crocker – Iraqi Ambassador or befuddled patsy

Did you catch any of the testimony given by General Petreaus and Ryan Crocker on Tuesday.  Ryan Crocker could not complete even one, not even one, sentence without extreme drawn out pauses filled with UH, UH, UHM, UH, UHM, UMM, UH.

At some point I started to think he was doing it on purpose to distract those of us that were watching, including the Senate Foreign Relations Committee members themselves.

Now, I am probably the worst public speaker.  But I would never take a job where I was required to speak in public, on live TV, in front of a bunch of photographers scrambling around like merekats on the floor in front of me. 

If you’re going to take a job as an Ambassador, which quite frankly has been normally known as the cushiest job in government, you should either be a good public speaker or learn how to be.

Barack Obama has been criticized for using too many Ums and Uhs in his speaking, but you really have to pay attention and probably wouldn’t notice until after someone points it out to you.

With Crocker, it’s completely different.  Even if I never mentioned it, you would not be able to sit through anything he has to say, whether it be one sentence or a diatribe, without cringing at his vocal inabilities, all while fighting the urge to change the channel or hit the mute buttom.  That is assuming that you want to hear what he has to say.  To me it is easier just to shut him off.

On top of it all, his answers make no sense.  He talks in circles, adds lengthy extraneous information, and never answers the questions asked by the panel member.

It is almost as if he was appointed to his position even though they knew that nobody would have any idea what he is talking about.

I found only a few samples of yesterday’s testimony and they weren’t the best, but listen to Crocker’s responses and if you can (since there’s not much else to do while he’s talking) count all of the Uh and Ums even in the simplest of sentences.  If he’s not reading from a script, he can barely talk inteligably.  Here’s the text link in case the video link below doesn’t work: http://youtube.com/watch?v=7-JV7kWx0Rk.

 

More back door politics for Clinton and Ickles

Here comes the broken record.  The Clintons and their “posse” will do anything to win this nomination.  The tactics used by the Clinton team are exactly what makes Hillary Clinton herself so untrustworthy and unelectable. 

Clinton’s “Delegate Guru” Harold Ickes (insert joke here) finally admitted that he has pushed, and is pushing the “race” issue when communicating with yet unpledged super delegates.  Ickes has told these undecided democrats that Obama’s affiliation with Pastor Wright is a deal breaker for democrats and will be the demise of Obama when the Republicans use the Obama/Wright relationship in the same manner as the Swift Boaters did against John Kerry.

So essentially, he is saying to super delegates that Barack Obama is unelectable because he was a member of a black church that had an outrageous pastor, who said outrageous statements with which Obama himself has already said he does not agree.  But deeper than that, it is Obama’s race that, in Ickes mind, is a “problem”.  He backed off a bit when reporters pressed the issue.

This whole thing is the equivalent of school yard gossip.  He first said that the super delegates brought up the race issue to him: “Super delegates have to take into account the strengths and weakness of both candidates and decide who would make the strongest candidate against what will undoubtedly be ferocious Republican attacks,” Ickes continued. “I’ve had super delegates tell me that the Wright issue is a real issue for them.”

Asked whether he was specifically bringing up Wright to super-delegates, Ickes said: “I’ve said what I’ve said…I tell people that they need to look at what they think Republicans may use against him. Wright comes up in the conversations.”

So know we get to the real issue of typical Clinton style politics.  When I hear the words “I’ve said what I said” but I don’t hear what was said, that’s a problem for me.  This is then followed by “I tell people that they need to look at what they think Republicans may use against him”.  So what he means is, I’ll tell those super delegates how to think and what to think about.  All of this is ended by Ickes claiming that the Super Delegates bring up Wright in the conversation to Ickes, not Ickes to the Super D’s.

So Harold Ickes is trying to scrape up every possible delegate for Hillary Clinton.  This week, some of this activity was fueled by the “real” outcome of the Texas “prima-caucus” where, while Clinton still won the big picture, Obama ended up with more delegates than originally suspected.  So Ickes, brings up race as an issue but says he doesn’t bring up race.  Kind of confusing.  But isn’t that just another tactic of the Clintons?  Confuse them enough so they don’t even know what questions to ask.

I believe that Clinton should run as long as she wants to, but only until is is absolutely, mathematically impossible.  But we’re not there yet.  I also believe that as much as democrats are supporting ONLY their candidate and will vote against the OTHER candidate in a general election if their doesn’t win, I doubt it.  It sounds good but it is an empty threat.  Our drive to get the republicans out of the White House is stronger that our disdain for any candidate in the democratic party.