Category — Uncategorized

If I were a dedicated multimedia blogger I would have this post start the Dawn fanfare from Richard Strauss’s Opus 30: Also Sprach Zarathustra, a program piece based on the ever popular book, Thus Spake Zarathustra by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche. Nietzsche, Nazi, nitwit, and neocon all seem to go together in feeling that they can’t feel better about themselves unless they work to degrade others.

This is a reaction to an error I made before I consumed my first quart of coffee this morning: I deleted a real comment while ridding myself of a dozen bogus blurbs that promised either to reduce things or enlarge them.

The comment from Minou of French Tidbits dealt with the hypocrisy of violence during the month of Ramadan. This also connects into the this entire net of nut cases that people have had to deal with since someone thought it was a good idea to form groups larger than a family.

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The United States does not torture people. It’s written right in the Constitution. McCain, Warner, and Graham were afforded the opportunity to uphold traditional American values and they failed miserably. They have agreed to pass a bill that institutionalizes torture in the American government and moves us further along the path to a unilateral executive, also known as a dictatorship.

Billmon has a picture of one of the “terrorists” that supposedly make these measures “necessary.”

Glenn Greenwald has the links to his post at Salon detailing some the legal chicanery in the “compromise.”

Avedon Carol links to other analysis.

Lurch notes that others have seen his point about the real purpose of the bill being to keep the Shrubbery and company out of prison.

Michael and Steve Bates are beside themselves with anger.

Kevin issues a “call to arms” to stop this obscenity.

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A short lesson in international law for Charles Rangel and Nancy Pelosi: the United Nations complex is not, by international law, located in the United States, it is sovereign in its own right. That’s why people like Fidel Castro, who cannot legally enter the United States get to make speeches at the United Nations.

Further, when veteran observers, like Professor Juan Cole, and, according to my Mother, the less experienced daytime chat people on The View conclude that “Bush started it,” you might want to avoid making silly defenses.

I believe both Pelosi and Rangel were in government in 2002 when Hugo Chavez’s plans to address the United Nations were interrupted by a coup attempt, an event that Chavez blames on the Shrubbery.

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Happy 5767!

At sunset Rosh Hashanah begins, so get your honey, challah, and apples ready.

In the English Bill of Rights of 1689 it says:

That excessive bail ought not to be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted;

This was essentially copied for the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution:

Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

With a more detailed discussion provided by the decision in Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238 (1972).

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Back when the Shrubbery was planning his invasion of Iraq, I wasn’t blogging. While I opposed the entire operation, I did it on discussion lists, so who knows where the record is.

My basic argument was it made no sense to invade Iraq because we had Saddam between a rock and a hard place with the US/UK air supremacy and most of the infrastructure needed for the production of WMDs was seriously degraded by Operation Desert Fox in the late 1990s.

If he did anything, or tried anything, Iran, Turkey, Syria, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait would provide the troops needed to invade, but there had to be a real provocation by Iraq.

Based on what happened in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, I agreed with the coalition that fought the first Gulf War: overthrowing the government in Iraq would cause the artificial construct of Iraq to collapse – just like Yugoslavia.

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CBS reports Gonzales Wants New Web Rules. This is the same idea they have been flogging for a while: ISPs should be required to keep customer records for years because he might need to look at them to prosecute child pornographers.

Alberto doesn’t know or care what this would cost and he has no examples that point to deleted records as a problem, but he wants the ability to spy on people.

Every bad idea is justified as “protecting children.” Nothing should be private.

If you were wondering what to do with that extra €1 million [$1.4 million US] sitting in checking there’s always the Bugatti Veyron 16.4. With 1001 horsepower from an 8 liter [488 cubic inches] engine that drains its 100 liter [26.42 gallons] fuel tank in 12 minutes at full throttle. Actually, as explained in the Wiki article, the top speed is limited to 254 mph because that’s the highest speed at which the tires are rated safe.

Any problems are dealt with a factory mechanic being flown to your location.

Elayne should be ashamed of herself for providing the link to Pharyngula where PZ Myers provides a link to a Christian Pirate Puppet Rap video.  You are going to have to go to Elayne’s to get the link, I’m not going to be in the back trace on this one.

If you do it, remove liquids from the area surrounding your computer.

The BBC is stating the obvious in: ‘Coup’ sparks Thailand emergency. I would certainly think that having the military take over the government would tend to be an “emergency”, especially when they use tanks and such.

Riots in Hungary after the Prime Minister admits politicians lie to win elections. [You can tell this country is new to democracy when they are shocked to find out politicians lie.]

Amazingly enough, there were no Muslims involved in either of these problems and no tapes from al Qaeda claiming credit. Oh, neither the Shrubbery nor the Pope were involved. There are still countries that can make life miserable for their citizens without outside help.

Keith Olbermann scores another direct hit with: Bush owes us an apology.

Go and read it. You’ll need IE and Windows Media to see it on the MSNBC site, but I have confidence that it will be converted to other formats soon.

Via Watertiger [a nice person, but she should review her use of the word, Cracker, as Chambliss doesn’t make the cut] we arrive at Raw Story on Senator Saxby Chambliss (R-Georgia)

According to Roll Call‘s source, Chambliss said, “We need better intelligence. If we had better intelligence in the Civil War we’d be quoting Jefferson Davis, not Lincoln.”

A spokesperson for Chambliss said the story wasn’t correct and that what the Senator actually said said was, “If Gen. JEB Stuart had had better intelligence, we’d all be meeting in Richmond right now.”

How can a Senator from a Southern state makes such egregious errors? How can he blacken the memory of Major General James Ewell Brown Stuart, CSA? How can he call Lincoln’s Invasion [The War Between the States is acceptable if there are Yankees present], the Civil War?

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That’s the old symbol of Civil Defense, but these days you would have to visit a museum to see it, although some states and localities still use it in conjunction with their emergency management systems.

As Andante notes, those of us who attended school in the 1950’s and 1960’s still remember air raid drills and hiding under our desks.

This was the period of Mutually Assured Destruction, Nuclear Winter, Thermonuclear War. If I’m not terribly impressed with threat mongering, it is because I remember vividly what it was like knowing the planet could be rendered uninhabitable. The situation portrayed in On the Beach was the push of a button away. Dr. Strangelove means a whole lot more to those of us who remember Kennedy and Khrushchev.

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The Pope finally figured out what he had to do. and his personal apology seems to have calmed things down for the moment, but the Muslims are still edgy and their version of the Religious Reich are still stirring things up around the world.

It is a sad fact that the once famous Islamic tradition of learning and scholarship has been degraded to the point that much of the Islamic world is illiterate and dependent on their Imams for their news, rather than a diverse media.

People in the West act unaware that for much of the world there is no freedom of the press and the media reflects only what the government approves. This was evident in the Danish cartoon episode. The Danish government didn’t seem to understand that the people most upset were those who assumed the cartoons were printed with the approval of the government, because that is the system in place in much of the Islamic world.

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