Apparently Cheney wants detainees to take regular baths:

“You know as a matter of common sense that the vice president of the United States is not going to be talking about water boarding. Never would, never does, never will,” [Presidential press secretary Tony] Snow said. “You think Dick Cheney’s going to slip up on something like this? No, come on.”

In an interview Tuesday with WDAY of Fargo, North Dakota, Cheney was asked if “a dunk in water is a no-brainer if it can save lives.”

The vice president replied, “Well, 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.”

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I have noticed people [Eccentricity and Sideshow ] have been wondering how a company like Diebold, that produces thousands of ATMs, can make a product as flaky as the electronic voting machine they sell.

The first thing you need to know is that Diebold didn’t develop the voting machine in-house, they bought a small company that created them. After the purchase they kept the sales and marketing people and fired the technical people. The assumption was that Diebold’s own technical people could deal with the new product.

The technical people working on Diebold’s ATM equipment have a stable, proven platform that was created to exacting standards and reviewed by technical people from the banking industry. There are no cutting edge technologies in a Diebold ATM, everything is bullet-proof and over tested.

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Robert C. of Interstate 4 Jamming wonders: Have Public Officials Gotten A Huge Case Of The Stupids Lately?

Yes, they have. It is a well know facet of Stalinism, that the ruling elite don’t feel constrained by mere laws.

When Education Secretary Rod Paige calls the National Education Association a “terrorist organization” and Representative Peter King (R-NY) calls AARP and the NAACP “radical organizations”, it is an extension of the Stalinist policy of attacking dissidents. When you fail to follow the Party line, you have to be minimized because you are an “enemy of the people.”

Glenn Greenwald of Unclaimed Territory complains about Monday morning quarterbacks among the pundits.

Glenn, when you are a pundit, you have to be ready to airbrush the losers from the pictures when the winds change. Punditry is predicated on short attention spans and bad memories. You only have to keep up the pretense until the “history” is adjusted to prove you have always been right. The Shrubbery may be gone in two years, but the Party is eternal.

Glenn is also concerned about networks refusing to accept ads that “disparage” the Shrubbery. Self-censorship is one of the most powerful tools of the propaganda machine. When you control the news long enough, you find that people censor themselves and the “correct message” is always presented.

What Do You Mean, Your Chair?

Well, if you would make Dot share the seat, you could have the back.

[Editor: While Ringo is more than capable of jumping from the floor to the back of the chair, she prefers to climb it like a tree.]

Friday Ark