Is it time for a new language, or whatever it is that lolcat is? Some of this stuff is pretty amazing:
Pres Obama while u sightseeing in Paris u said ‘time to delivr on healthcare’ When you are a “hammer” u think evrything is NAIL I’m no NAIL
by DougJ| 83 Comments
This post is in: General Stupidity
Is it time for a new language, or whatever it is that lolcat is? Some of this stuff is pretty amazing:
Pres Obama while u sightseeing in Paris u said ‘time to delivr on healthcare’ When you are a “hammer” u think evrything is NAIL I’m no NAIL
by DougJ| 27 Comments
This post is in: Open Threads
Via Sully, a number of conservative blogs are condemning Ed Whelan for outing publius: Volokh, Tom Maguire, Dave Riehl, Rod Dreher. Good for them. At least we agree on something!
by John Cole| 92 Comments
This post is in: Open Threads
I have a ton going on so you all are on your own for the rest of the day.
by John Cole| 43 Comments
This post is in: Domestic Politics, Republican Stupidity
The unemployment situation is getting worse than was expected, something we all knew anyway:
The White House says America’s employment picture is worse than the Obama administration had anticipated just a few months ago. The somber admission follows the latest jobless report showing the highest unemployment rate the United States has seen in more than 25 years.
U.S. unemployment jumped a half percent in May, to 9.4 percent prompting this comment by Austan Goolsbee, a member of President Barack Obama’s Council of Economic Advisors:
“The economy clearly has gotten substantially worse from the initial predictions that were being made, not just by the White House, but by all of the private sector,” said Austan Goolsbee.
Economists point out that the current jobless rate is already higher than the hypothetical rate that was used to calculate the health of banks and other financial institutions in so-called “stress tests” earlier this year. And, the upward unemployment trajectory is expected to continue in coming months, even if the overall economy begins to recover.
The funny thing about this (but not really) is how this will be spun. Republicans will frame this as a failure of the Obama administration, and in fact, if you check memeorandum, they already are. We’ll be told the stimulus didn’t work, we’ll be told the Obama team didn’t do enough, and so on. However, the only thing that won’t be mentioned is what the Republican plan was and is- do nothing. Also conspicuously absent from this critique will be any criticism from the left flank on the issue- from the Krugman wing and from others, that if this is a failure of the Obama team, it is a failure to do enough.
So, yes. The economic disaster that team Obama inherited is worse than predicted. And the Republicans still want to do nothing but fling poo.
by John Cole| 25 Comments
This post is in: Media, War on Terror aka GSAVE®, Clown Shoes
Here we go again, this time in the form of a concern trolling op-ed that is very concerned that we are not torturing enough:
THE Pentagon now confirms that at least 74 former Guantanamo detainees have resumed terror ist activities after claiming they weren’t terrorists.
Such recidivism points up an alarming intelligence failure.
These dangerous prisoners should never have been cleared for release. Why did interrogators fail to find the cracks in their stories and alibis?
Why wasn’t more intelligence gathered to predict they’d rejoin al Qaeda or the Taliban?
In a word, politics. Gitmo interrogations have been emasculated to placate critics of waterboarding and other “torture,” say two senior officials there.
This has to be the most repeated study since Masters and Johnson, and every time it is repeated, it is done so incorrectly. You can read the report here via ABC News- Guantanamo Recidivism (.pdf). For those of you who do not have .pdf, here is an important snippet which is never mentioned:
So depending on how you define “suspected” and “terrorist activity,” this rapidly becomes a lot less sensational. But here is the most important part, and the part that is almost never discussed. Every single Gitmo detainee who was released and appears on this list, starting with Sabi Jahn Abdul Ghafour and going all the way to Haji Sahib Rohullah Wakil, happened during the Bush administration. Every single one was released between 2003 and 2008, with the bulk being released before 2005 and then another burst of releases in 2007.
In other words, all those harsh interrogation techniques presumably were used on these individuals, and the Bush administration let them go anyway. The NY Post author has no idea what he is talking about.
I’m sure you are shocked.
This post is in: Domestic Politics
So when do we get to start torturing this guy:
The man charged with murdering a high-profile abortion doctor claimed from his jail cell Sunday that similar violence was planned around the nation for as long as the procedure remained legal, a threat that comes days after a federal investigation launched into his possible accomplices.
A Justice Department spokesman said the threat was being taken seriously and additional protection had been ordered for abortion clinics last week. But a leader of the anti-abortion movement derided the accused shooter as “a fruit and a lunatic.”
Scott Roeder called The Associated Press from the Sedgwick County jail, where he’s being held on charges of first-degree murder and aggravated assault in the shooting of Dr. George Tiller one week ago.
“I know there are many other similar events planned around the country as long as abortion remains legal,” Roeder said. When asked by the AP what he meant and if he was referring to another shooting, he refused to elaborate further.
Since there is no doubt that we have a history of anti-abortion domestic terrorism, and since we know that evangelicals already support torture for everyone, when do we get to start waterboarding this guy? Does he have any children whose testicles can be crushed? Will we keep him up for weeks on end in stress positions in extremely cold rooms to get him to break? Beat him? All the right made a very good show of how shocked and appalled they were when this man killed Dr. Tiller, so surely they will not object. So when do we get to start torturing this guy?
And of course, the answer should be “NEVER.” Torture is wrong. Torture is immoral. Torture is evil. Torture is illegal. Torture does more violence to our values than it does to the individual being tortured. Torture is unreliable. Torture is counter-productive- everything someone says after being tortured should be treated as suspect.
Just do your job and investigate. No need to become as bad as the criminal.
*** Update ***
Great minds and all that.
*** Update #2 ***
There are no original ideas on the internet. The previous update was to Jeff Fecke, who had the same idea and beat me to it by a couple hours. Now here is Booman, who had the same idea a day earlier.
Sigh.
by John Cole| 18 Comments
This post is in: Military, Television
This:
It was Sunday night in Baghdad, and President Obama was ordering Gen. Ray Odierno, the commander of the American troops here, to shave Stephen Colbert’s head. (Not to give everything away, but the general is not as brutal with an electric razor as one would expect a bald man to be; Mr. Colbert’s hairdresser, on the other hand, has a merciless streak.)
War, as things go, is a fairly unironic exercise. Sure, there are endless incongruities to be found and parodied in the speeches about war from politicians, generals and heads of state. But war itself — the dirty, dangerous business of soldiers on the ground — seems to be about as earnest a trade as you can find.
Into this comes Mr. Colbert. He is taping four episodes of “The Colbert Report,” the Comedy Central show featuring his egotistical, fake-macho, nationalist blowhard alter ego, in Baghdad this week. It’s the first time in the history of the U.S.O. that a full-length nonnews show has been filmed, edited and broadcast from a combat zone.
Good for him.