Memorial Day Bat Shit Crazy

The man on the podium in front of the kastle looked a lot like a smirking chimpanzee and was certainly screaming like one, "Now is the day of our national humiliation ... ! First there was the Big K ... then there was the Big V ... and today we are engaged in our own personal National Quagmire ...the Big I!!"

The crowd roared it’s approval.

"And yes! we have reached the Turning Point, we can see the Light At the End of the Tunnel which is Mission Accomplished: stalemate and utter frustration is in hand and we are well and truly fucked!"

More roaring. I felt faint. It seemed to me that I had heard these words before, somewhere in a rotting jungle, warping the fetid ether as they croaked from the speaker of a bullet-riddled swift boat. The crowd was pressing closely around me and I was sweating like a Mexican field hand; I had to get out of there but my way was blocked by a business-suited, steely-eyed Secret Service man, thinly disguised as an RNC thug, his label button gleaming malevolently at me, his ear wired to the Great Spook in the Sky. Even as I stood there undecided as to which way to go, the words of the Fumbling Warrior washed over me:

"Democracy is on the march, and even though it's hard work, we can work it, as hard as we can, and it's hard!" The crowd nearly went berserk. "Freedom!" the chimp screamed. "It's hard ... it's ... it's hard work!"

It's hard getting out of this crowd, I thought to myself. How did I ever get in here? and why?

"We can measure progress … the body count, I don't care about the body count, but we can measure that ... the bodies are exploding, they don't count ... women and children and the screaming ... it doesn't count, it's the democracy that counts, 'cause we caught their Number Three Man again and HE counts!"

Jesus, I asked myself, how many frigging Number Three men do they have? This is a nightmare, all right and I really gotta get out of this crowd. The bats were due at any moment and danger was near. I could feel it: my embedded ID microchip was starting to throb.

"Our puppets are in place, the troops' morale has never been higher, and the oil is flowing! Surely the God that speaks to me is pleased with our Crusade!" Women began fainting. "God has granted our Marching Democracy great progress, progress that cannot be measured, even though we could measure it, progress that will march around the world, progress ... progressing as it shoves aside the gutless French in their fancy French berets as our Green Berets stride the world for patriotism and uh marching for democracy, making the world safe for terrurism!"

An aide tugged frantically at the Great Chimp's sleeve and bent to whisper in his ear. The radar-like ears of the smiling simian slowly swung back in the direction of the crowd, rotated, sweeping back and forth over the strict-constructionalists massed before him. They passed over me once, then twice, then they stopped: the chimp's ears were focused on me; I had been spotted. My microchip was positively humming now and the RNC doppelganger was turning my way, too.

"We have found the Weapons of Mass Destruction, and the Weapons are us!" I couldn't agree more, I mused as I edged my way to the rim of the crowd, the RNC stooge close behind me. "If you're not with us, you're against us!" The suit was joined by another and they began stalking me, grimacing as, no doubt, the Great Spook in the Sky screamed orders in their ears. The bats should be here right about now, I thought. Suddenly my Blackberry went off and I pulled it from my pocket, scowling at the image on the screen, an all-seeing eye hovering over a pyramid. Perhaps help was on the way. I plugged in my earpiece and literally got an earful.

"The way is blocked," a female voice chirpped. "But we have assistance ready and the way will be opened for you. We never fail to come to the assistance of a Brother in need." Thank Ghod that Gore invented the Internet, I thought. "Look to your left." I did and I saw another suit shove his way through the crowd.

"Thousands have been detained and there will be thousands more! Just as no children have been left behind, no terrorist will be left behind, or even here, even if we have to invent them!" Well, the crowd went bonkers over that, our Great Simian was making no sense, but nobody cared, the smell of fear and loathing was in the air and I could use all the cover I could get. Around me the frenzied crowd began producing Korans and waving them wildly in the air, some ripping pages out of their copies and throwing them to the wind. Under the cover of the Koranic confetti I decided to make my move. Suddenly, a giant cockroach loomed up before me, it's mandibles clicking furiously. I was baffled at first, then realized it was talking in code ... C++. "Follow me," it was clicking. It jerked around and the crowd fell away before it as I rushed after, the suits close on our heels and ... appendages.

We cleared the crowd and an open field opened in front of us and in the near distance I spotted a black limo, a great Snark HTML Compiler, it's rear door open and the motor running. We scrambled for it. The RNC stooges had drawn their weapons and began firing pot shots at us as we dove for the safety of the dark interior of the Snark. With a slam of the door, we sped off.

It was cramped in the backseat, what with the roach being eight feet tall and all those ... appendages, but I didn't care, I was safe at last. Then the privacy divider lowered and I got a look at the driver as he turned to reassure us that we had made good our escape.

Good grief, it was Joe Lieberman!

“Not to worry, bubbala,” he chortled, “as a double agent, I can get us through any roadblock.”

Fearful and trembling unto death, I could only curse that Dean had been unavailable and pray that this clown knew how to drive.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - In memoriam: HST (1937 - 2005)

This item was originally posted on DKos May 31, 2005

Pornography isn't torture

and what the hell is the definition of "is", anyway?

Title 18 is a part of the US Criminal Code, specifically the felony stuff, like murder, grand theft, fraud and conspiracy. Stuff like that. What we are concerned with here is the torture section, which makes it illegal to torture people pornographically, especially prisoners, whether civilian or military (which is also covered by the Geneva Convention on the Conduct of War, 19 something or other), defining it as a Class 1 felony, punishable by pretty stiff jail sentances, like 25 years to life and a good browbeating.

All of the above are "high crimes," to use a phrase found in the US Constitution. Now, while the Constitution provides for immunity from arrest and prosecution of elected officials while they are engaged in the peoples' business, esp. while Congress is in session, they do not exempt perps from civil prosecution after an appropiate impeachment process. Now, just to lay it on a bit thicker, Article VI states that any and all treaties entered into by the United States, having been ratified, are the "law of the land." The Geneva Convention would fall into that category, i.e., the prohibition against torture of prisoners is the law of the land. Nobody disputes that. Well, almost nobody, and they're all French.

The sneaky part, our loophole, is when people start splitting hairs over definitions of torture. It would seem to me, and to most folks, I should imagine, that if you strip a guy naked and toss him in a cell and then play, say, Def Lepard at 110 decibels at him all night long, that would be torture. You don't need for his eardrums to be ruptured and his eyeballs rolling back in his head and he's gone comatose on you for there to be a diagnosis of torture. You've pretty much tortured him, and most people would agree with that, your 14-year-old son exempted, of course.

Now the guy in the street (that would be you and me) would agree that Def Lepard at 110 decibels is torture, and while no bodily organs had been "crushed," and there is no outward "physical trauma" and given some chicken soup and compassionate, in-depth psychoanalysis, our naked man could probably recover and go on to live a productive and fullfilling life, still, he had been tortured.

But in Abu Ghraib, and other places under US control, we've gone way beyond that. The details are revolting to say the least, involving dogs, genitals, photography, humiliation, electrodes, water boarding, religious harassment, etc., and don't bear repeating in a family publication, still, we are torturing people.

But Alberto Gonzales, George Bush, John Woo, John Bybee and any number of others say if we don't "crush" their "internal organs" or leave "scars," or "damage bones or tissue," it isn't torture. Mere "cruel, inhumane or degrading" doesn't cut it. Well, these guys are high-powered lawyers, passed the Bar exam and everything, and I've never been examined in a bar, except maybe that time I fell off the stool and the EMTs had to come, so I don't know ...

Gonzales and Woo are both on record as defining torture as "physical trauma" only, like they never heard of Chinese water torture. Didn't they go to the movies as kids? Everybody knows about Chinese water torture. The slow drip drip drip pause drip pause pause drip of Chinese water torture. Drive you right around the bend, that drip drip drip will. And no tissue damage! Make you spill your guts and sell out your country, that drip drip drip will. Now imagine what forcibily participating in a homoerotic dogpile with twenty sweating, naked Arabs, all genitally wired while being photographed by a smirking American female blonde would do for your morale. That ain't torture? Makes me shudder to think of it. Hmmm, come to think of it ...

Wait a minute, no no no, it's torture. Good old American improvise-on-your-feet torture. Authorized torture, condoned torture, defined as not-torture torture. Because it's all in the words, see. It ain't torture if we say it ain't, and we're in charge, it's our ball, we get to set the rules, and fuck the Geneva Convention. Even though not a single Iraqi has ever been found to be involved in 9/11, because they started shooting back when we invaded their country and we won, we get to call them terrorists and torture haze interrogate make fun of them.

John Woo and Alberto Gonzales said it's OK.

This originally was posted to DailyKos Thu May 26th, 2005 at 12:58:07 PDT

Frist Hangs On to Nuclear Option

Well, damn the torpedoes and full speed ahead. Our erstwhile House Majority Bill Frist has promised that the nuclear option (he cutely uses the phrase "constitutional option" - some kind of Newspeak, like the Repugs didn't invent the former phrase) is not off the table, and if the Dems so much as burp during the nominations of more of Bush's wacked-out judicial candidates, he's gonna drop the bomb.

While the arguing about the exact meaning of the compromise worked out by the Senate Gang of Fourteen (love those coinages) is going on all over the blogosphere and the editorial pages, your more non-intellectual members of the Senate are claiming that a literal interpretation is in order: to wit, if the Fourteen will vote 'up' for a couple of social morons like Brown and Owen, then they become the gold standard for judicial appointees, the bar has been set, and the Repugs feel free to nominate a retard to fill Rhenquist's seat when he retires or dies from thyroid cancer, due soon.