Posts from — May 2009

Tomato Nation has some advice and tough love for people my age

My favorite part is number 19:

Take care of yourself. If you are sick, visit a doctor. If you are sad, visit a shrink or talk to a friend. If you are unhappy in love, break up. If you are fed up with how you look, buy a new shirt or stop eating cheese. If you have a problem, try to fix it. Many problems are knotty and need a lot of talking through, or time to resolve, but after a few months of all complaining and no fixing, those around you will begin to wonder if you don’t enjoy the problems for the attention they bring you. Venting is fine; inertia coupled with pouting is not. Bored? Read a magazine. Mad at someone? Say so — to them. Change is hard; that’s too bad. Effort counts. Make one. Your mommy’s shift is over.

I do most (but not quite all) of the things on the list. It’s a good read.
(via kottke)

I saw Flight of the Conchords last night.. it was a great concert, as expected. This was their last concert of the tour, it turns out. One of my favorite songs they played was the song for epileptic dogs (from season 2 of the show):

They also had a pretty good rendition of Free Bird, but all the versions I found online were generally incomprehensible.

(or probably 93)
I’m still flabbergasted that 90 senators voted in favor of something so astronomically stupid as preventing the transfer of Guantanamo prisoners to maximum security prisons in the US.

A total of 6 senators voted against this measure, listed here:
Durbin (D-IL)
Harkin (D-IA)
Leahy (D-VT)
Levin (D-MI)
Reed (D-RI)
Whitehouse (D-RI)
(source)

There should have been 60 senators voting against this, not 6. This is classic political fear-mongering and once again we have the spineless Democrats buying into this ridiculous idea.

Then again, I guess Magneto made it out, so we probably shouldn’t risk it.

Harry Reid explains why he opposes having Guantanamo inmates transferred to American prisons:

REID: I’m saying that the United States Senate, Democrats and Republicans, do not want terrorists to be released in the United States. That’s very clear.

QUESTION: No one’s talking about releasing them. We’re talking about putting them in prison somewhere in the United States.

REID: Can’t put them in prison unless you release them.

QUESTION: Sir, are you going to clarify that a little bit? …

REID: I can’t make it any more clear than the statement I have given to you. We will never allow terrorists to be released in the United States.

(via ThinkProgress)

I’m in awe of how spectacularly stupid this whole thing is. Prisoners hold dangerous people. We have more prisoners per capita than any other country in the world- there are plenty of places to go. We keep acting like terrorists are superhuman, we keep elevating them with stuff like this. I’m shocked that this faux-fear is still an issue and is seemingly having political consequences. As the questioner says, “No one’s talking about releasing them”, but that’s the position against which they keep arguing!

Greenwald has a good post on this subject, starting with:

The “debate” over all the bad and scary things that will happen if Obama closes Guantanamo and we then incarcerate those detainees in American prisons is so painfully stupid even by the standards of our political discourse that it’s hard to put into words

And for some evidence:

How utterly irrational is that fear? For one thing, it’s empirically disproven. Anyone with the most minimal amount of rationality would look at the fact that we have already convicted numerous alleged high-level Al Qaeda Terrorists in our civilian court system (something we’re now being told can’t be done) — including the cast of villains known as the Blind Shiekh a.k.a. Mastermind of the First World Trade Center Attack, the Shoe Bomber, the Dirty Bomber, the American Taliban, the 20th Hijacker, and many more — and are imprisoning them right now in American prisons located in various communities.

Torture supporters seem to be really excited about the prospect of Nancy Pelosi being involved or implicated in the torture crimes. To be clear- they’re right, Pelosi should be investigated, along with everyone else. But why do they think that this is somehow a rebuttal in the debate?

I had no idea for a while, but then I realized this: they think that it’s a partisan debate. If it were, then the Pelosi counter-point would be tactically sound. Importantly, for them it is a partisan debate… this is just “the left” trying to get back at GWB. I don’t doubt that there are some people in favor of investigation for whom this is a partisan issue, as well, but they’re wrong too. No matter how much the media might want to frame it as such, this isn’t about left vs. right, republican vs. democrat, this is about violations of the law and our national character.

Ex-Navy Seal Jesse Ventura plows through Elizabeth Hassleback’s talking points on The View. It’s really spectacular to watch:

Money quote:

If waterboarding is OK, why don’t we let our police do it to suspects so they can learn what they know? If waterboarding is OK, why didn’t we waterboard [Timothy] McVeigh and Nichols, the Oklahoma City bombers, to find out if there were more people involved? … We only seem to waterboard Muslims… Have we waterboarded anyone else? Name me someone else who has been waterboarded.

I’ll write about why Hassleback keeps bringing up Pelosi soon.

(catching up on the last couple of weeks’ news..)

I’m still undecided about Obama’s decision to withhold the release of photos of American interrogations. His rationale is that the photos would risk American lives does resonate with me- I’ve heard from plenty of sources that the Abu Ghraib photos were great recruitment tools for Al Qaeda (and similar groups), and more photos wouldn’t help. This is a major reason I’m so opposed to torture- it does help our enemies. Torture memos don’t have the same visceral effect of photos, and they are more easily taken out of context.

On the other hand, photos may be necessary to fully understand the crimes committed. “Use of dogs” and “human pyramids” don’t sound so bad, but the photos from Abu Ghraib give a more accurate portrayal what happened. Obama claims that the pictures don’t depict anything we don’t know about, but is it a good practice to let the executive decide what evidence should be released when investigating executive crimes? (I know it’s not the same executive, but I think the point is still relevant.) This is suppression of evidence of war crimes, but I think there’s a lot of evidence already.

One thing I had to consider was this: what if Bush had made the same decision? I’m pretty sure that I’d be outraged by it. I thought about this for a little while, as it seemed to make my lack of outrage seem rather flimsy. There are some key differences, though:
1. While Obama has incentives not to have to investigate torture, Bush’s incentive would be far more direct and dramatic. This would essentially be the defendant deciding on what evidence was admissible.
2. This is happening /after/ the torture memos were released. The memos are far more damaging that the pictures would be (most likely) and the lack of photos does not prevent an investigation from taking place.

From the Columbia Tribune with my added emphasis:

“Interfaith Alliance and Jews on First sent a letter this month to President Barack Obama asking him to declare that the National Day of Prayer is for Americans of all faiths — and even for nonbelievers.”

Who are they supposed to be praying to, Joe Pesci?
(non-worksafe language, offensive to some video link of George Carlin if you don’t get the reference.. watch around 7:20)

Amazon.com’s product listing for Tuscan Whole Milk, 1 gallon, 128 fl oz has been a great repository for hilarious reviews for quite a while, but I recently re-read a bunch of them. Here are a couple of my favorites.

The currently top-rated one is brilliant:

One Friday, Without the Milk
By Catherine Swinford
He always brought home milk on Friday.

After a long hard week full of days he would burst through the door, his fatigue hidden behind a smile. There was an icy jug of Tuscan Whole Milk, 1 Gallon, 128 fl oz in his right hand. With his left hand he would grip my waist – I was always cooking dinner – and press the cold frostiness of the jug against my arm as he kissed my cheek. I would jump, mostly to gratify him after a time, and smile lovingly at him. He was a good man, a wonderful husband who always brought the milk on Friday, Tuscan Whole Milk, 1 Gallon, 128 fl oz.

Then there was that Friday, the terrible Friday that would ruin every Friday for the rest of my life. The door opened, but there was no bouyant greeting – no cold jug against the back of my arm. There was no Tuscan Whole Milk in his right hand, nor his left. There came no kiss. I watched as he sat down in a kitchen chair to remove his shoes. He wore no fatigue, but also no smile. I didn’t speak, but turned back to the beans I had been stirring. I stirred until most of their little shrivelled skins floated to the surface of the cloudy water. Something was wrong, but it was vague wrongness that no amount of hard thought could give shape to.

Over dinner that night I casually inserted,”What happened to the milk?”
“Oh,”he smiled sheepishly, glancing aside,”I guess I forgot today.”

That was when I knew. He was tired of this life with me, tired of bringing home the Tuscan Whole Milk, 1 Gallon, 128 fl oz. He was probably shoveling funds into a secret bank account, looking at apartments in town, casting furtive glances at cashiers and secretaries and waitresses. That’s when I knew it was over. Some time later he moved in with a cashier from the Food Mart down the street. And me? Well, I’ve gone soy.

My old favorite is this one (though I can’t find it on amazon right now):

I had a problem where my roof was leaking. I poured some Tuscan Whole Milk over it to seal it up and it just flowed right into the hole and didn’t do anything. I now have milk constantly dripping down from the ceiling and it has stained the drywall as well. The milk trapped in the ceiling is now rancid and smells horrible. It has also induced a pest infestation problem. The pest control company won’t deal with it because the odor is unbearable in the house. My wife and children are now leaving me as well.

This product has ruined my life. Do not buy this product, I suggest some roof caulking or tar instead.

Shepard Smith asks a question that needs to be asked, but can’t get an answer:

Boston trip has ended, more posts on the way…