Quote of the Day: Andrew Sullivan on Obama and torture

President Barack Obama

It’s hard to believe that Andrew Sullivan of The Daily Dish is actually a self-identified conservative, given how very few of his stances align with the views and acts of modern conservatives in general. You’d think he was a closet liberal with the number of decidedly progressive ideals he seems to hold. And one of them, and something that most conservatives are quick to deny, is his staunch opposition to the torture regime set by the Bush administration and that continues to be neither prosecuted, nor even investigated, under President Obama’s rule. He then argues that Obama should actually be held accountable as a war criminal for deliberately violating international laws and conventions such as the Geneva Conventions and the UN Convention Against Torture.

Here’s the money passage from his September 09 post, “The Untamed Prince”:

As Glenn [Greenwald] notes, Obama as executive quickly co-opted the kind of blanket secrecy and protection of the national security apparatus from the rule of law that plagued us in the Bush-Cheney administration. Yes, torture ended. That matters a huge amount. He will always deserve credit for that. Of course, I have to trust him on this, since there is precious little way for someone outside the government to test this or know this for sure.

But Obama's insistence on protecting every Bush era war criminal and every Bush era war crime from any redress or even scrutiny is a sign both of how cold-blooded he can be, but more, I think, of how powerful the security state now is, how it can protect itself, how it exists independently of any real accountability to anyone, how even the metrics of judging it are beyond the citizen's reach or understanding.

Returning to the abuser

This about sums it up:

Cartoon: ‘Mike Luckovich on the economy’ (by Mike Luckovich) | The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (ajc.com)

Yes, the Democrats have screwed up, but only because they were foolish and naive enough to believe that any sort of progress could be made by working with the Republicans. But I say this: Anyone planning to vote Republican simply because the Dems aren’t fixing the country fast enough is a fucking amnesiac idiot who deserves blame for whatever future darkness the US is headed into.

(via @todayspolitics)

Tags: Mike Luckovich • cartoons • Democrats • Republicans • economy

Daily Blend: Friday, September 17, 2010

Poster: Rally to Restore Sanity

This morning, I learned that you really need to remember to write down your “security question” answers somewhere. Stupid TD Canada Trust website.

• Featured: You ARE going to the Jon Stewart & Stephen Colbert rally(s) [Stewart’s rally pictured] in D.C. on October 30, riiight? *curses living across the border*

• Conor Liniham has an ironic title.

• Ancient Mexican religious ceremony impacts fish evolution.
  (via The Daily Grail)

• Canadian scientists claim they’re being muzzled by the government.
  (via The Daily Grail)

• Meet Adrian Gray, balancer of giant rocks. Cool stuff.
  (via The Daily Grail)

• Ann Coulter: Even unintentionally, she’s still spreading misery.
  (via @todayspolitics)

• Amazing illustrated diary from WWI soldier discovered after 90 years.
  (via The Agitator)

• More Texas Board of Education follies: They’re now discussing how Islam should be treated in textbooks – ie. if kids should learn about those filthy Moslems.
  (via Right Wing Watch)

If you have any story suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments or send them in.

Tags: Conor Liniham • Ireland • Minister for Science • fish • Zoque • Canada • scientists • Canadian government • Adrian Gray • Ann Coulter • Michael Gross • WWI • Kenneth Wootton • Texas Board of Education • schools • textbooks • Islam

Friday Canine: Let’s play jump the invisible obstacles!

[source: Matt Wright | click for full size (602×427)]

Tags: dogs

Fail Quote(s) of the Day: Pope and Donohue attack atheists

Pope Ratzi

Why, it’s a double serving of anti-atheist stupidity today. Firstly, as you may know, Pope Ratzi is now in the U.K. And, naturally, the first thing to do once he arrived on British soil was to claim in his speech how “atheist extremism” drove Hitler and the Nazis to purge Europe of 11+ million victims during the Holocaust [emphasis added]:

Even in our own lifetime, we can recall how Britain and her leaders stood against a Nazi tyranny that wished to eradicate God from society and denied our common humanity to many, especially the Jews, who were thought unfit to live. I also recall the regime’s attitude to Christian pastors and religious who spoke the truth in love, opposed the Nazis and paid for that opposition with their lives. As we reflect on the sobering lessons of the atheist extremism of the twentieth century, let us never forget how the exclusion of God, religion and virtue from public life leads ultimately to a truncated vision of man and of society and thus to a “reductive vision of the person and his destiny” (Caritas in Veritate, 29).

You would think that a man seated at the helm of an organization that claims moral authority over billions of people would be aware of some basic historical facts about the things he pontificates about (haha, a pun), rather than repeating baseless anti-atheist canards all over again. There is nothing about the Nazi’s rule or ideology (nor Hitler’s) that was even remotely atheistic. As has been pointed out numerous times, the religious beliefs of the Nazi movement were complex and somewhat difficult to analyze, but Hitler himself openly embraced Christianity time and time again, and even used numerous failed attempts on his life to claim that he was guided and protected by divine providence. Hardly the words of a man who lacks any belief(s) in any and all gods.

Naturally, the British Humanist Association took exception to the pontiff claiming that atheist ideology somehow led to genocide during the 1930s and ’40s and released a statement condemning his nonsense. Which brings us to our second Fail Quote from self-anointed Defender of the Catholic Faith^TM, Bill Donohue:

The Daily Mash speaks the truth about Pope Ratzi’s state visit to England

“And then there's the hat”

I can’t tell whether this is satire or merely accurate reporting. Can you?

THE Queen will today have soup and sandwiches at her Edinburgh home with an insane German criminal she met off a plane.

Joseph Ratzinger, originally from Munich but now living in Italy, wrote to the Queen last year asking if he could pop in on his way to meeting Susan Boyle in the middle of a park in Glasgow.

Her Majesty agreed to his request despite concerns over his involvement in covering up paedophilia and his quirky belief that being gay is worse than raping a child.

Experts have also stressed that Mr Ratzinger's claim that everything he says is infallible means that instead of swapping gently amusing anecdotes with the Queen and being driven about in a bullet-proof ice cream van, he should really be in a secure, windowless room and injected every half hour with a thunderous dose of temazepam.

[…]

"So yes, in that sense Britain is like a third world country, the key difference being that thousands of people aren't dying of AIDS every day because some mad old fucker in a pointy hat told them that johnny bags are made by Lucifer."

We totally need The Daily Mash and The Onion duke it out over the barmy old codger. You could make it a pay event.

(via RichardDawkins.net)

Tags: The Daily Mash • Pope Ratzi • Pope Benedict XVI • Joseph Ratzinger • England

Daily Blend: Thursday, September 16, 2010

Pedobear

I think it would be best if Democrats didn’t cheer Christine O’Donnell’s upset in Delaware too loudly. Sure, she’s a ridiculous nut … but she won her primary, no? And you really should’ve learned to expect absolutely anything by now, given how the GOP has turned in the last two years. Cautious optimism, folks.

• Man who burned pages of the Quran at the site of the planned Park51 center fired from his job. ACLU assures he should get his job back under First Amendment rights. He should, even if he’s an asshole.
  (via @religionnews)

• SWAT responds to a complaint about a man holding a gun … at a gun store.
  (via The Agitator)

• California’s San Luis Obispo County Sherrif’s Department issues public warning about … pedobear [pictured]. Methinks someone needs to learn about Know Your Meme. Or even Wikipedia.
  (via The Agitator)

• Kyle at Right Wing Watch digs up old news articles that show Tea Party favorite Christine O’Donnell (R-Delaware) has always been a gay-fearing, sex-hating fruitcake.

• Morality in Media’s Bob Peters warns against an evil, family-desecrating new show set to air on TLC about polygamy. Run for the hills!
  (via Right Wing Watch)

• Two things about this story: The poor guy should not be fired, but reprimanded at best for a simple slip-up, and the editorial writer seriously needs to get a grip, and a clue.

• “Atheists bent on painting Pope as a rape-happy ogre” Nope, more like: “Rational people determined to convict Pope for happily shielding child rapists”.

Massive sea-life kill reported in Louisiana

Take a look at this photo, below. Three guesses what it is you’re looking at. (Hint: It ain’t some gravel road.)

That’s a southern Louisiana waterway in Plaquemines Parish, west of the Mississippi River. It’s also completely covered in dead fish and various other species of sea life, such as crabs, stingrays and eels. There was even a whale, reportedly.

Now, to be fair, it’s not yet sure how much of this can be blamed on the BP spill in the Gulf, though it likely accounts for at least some part of it. Large fish kills like this are actually a rather common phenomenon in the area thanks to “dead zones” where lower oxygen levels lead to widespread die-offs. The causes behind these lifeless zones are varied and mostly unknown, though naturally, human activity through the spread of toxic chemicals and waste are likely suspects.

Unthinkable movie about the unsinkable ship: ‘Titanic II’

‘Titanic II’ (2010) [source: Doobybrain.com]

What if I told you how excited I was, in my capacity as a fan of James Cameron’s Titanic (1997), to hear that a sequel has since been released? Well, you can forget about it, because it’s not an actual sequel but a stand-alone movie (or perhaps a mockbuster), and one that needs to suffer the same fate that struck its great namesake nearly a century ago. I repeat: This is a real movie, not some prank or high school film project. From low-budget, direct-to-DVD knock-off factory The Asylum comes a flick that definitely tickles my sensibilities, and not in a favorable way (other than mockery and derision). Everyone, meet Titanic II [video below the fold]:

“Draw Muhammad Day” cartoonist forced into hiding

Cartoon of Muhammad with a bomb-turban, by Kurt Westergaard

Last May 20 was “Everybody Draw Muhammad Day”, an event created originally as a farce in response to thinly-veiled death threats from radical Muslim group Revolution Muslim that led Comedy Central to censor South Park’s 200^th episode, which purportedly featured the Islamic prophet Muhammad, any depictions of whom are expressly forbidden under Islamic law. (Never mind the fact that Muhammad has already been in South Park back in July of 2001 and that no-one so much as raised an eyebrow at the time.)

Of course, “Draw Muhammad Day” served as an occasion to send a peaceful and creative message to Muslims, particularly the radicals: that their laws forbidding them from depicting their beloved prophet does not apply to non-Muslims, and that everyone else can very well wipe their ass with Muhammad-themed toilet paper if they wished. Muslims do not have the right to force others to obey their own silly rules, just as no-one else has any right to impose their own religious customs upon Muslims.

But then, try telling that to a group of people whose mindset dictates that any offense towards their prophet or beliefs, no matter how trivial, must be met with outrage and violence and death threats. So, naturally, the cartoonist who originally launched “Everybody Draw Muhammad Day”, Molly Norris, received the treatment reserved to blasphemers like Kurt Westergaard and Lars Vilks with clerics calling for her death and so on, even though she tried to remove herself from the event once it began gathering steam.

So now, there is no more Molly Norris. Oh, not that she’s been killed or anything – she’s just decided to follow the urgent advice of FBI security specialists and is now “going ghost”, similar to entering a witness protection program: changing her identity, moving and basically wiping her slate clean. Erasing her entire life and social history – because of some reactionary, religion-fueled fanatics who can’t handle the fact that other people have no obligation to respect their superstitions and ridiculous rules and customs.

Daily Blend: Wednesday, September 15, 2010

Glenn McConnell (R-SC) as Confederate General with two Blacks dressed as slaves [source: Think Progress]

• The Evil Microsoft Corp.: Defending your rights from federal copyright raids. … Wait, what?
  (via @todayspolitics)

• Democrats are screwed come November. Yes, I weep.

• On the grim irony of United States’s knack for prosecuting foreign torturers – just not their own.

• How animals made us human. Sorta.
  (via The Daily Grail)

• 25 things chefs never tell you.
  (via The Agitator)

• Republicans attack healthcare reform in 20-state lawsuit. God, how I wish these parasites would just vanish.

• Michele Bachmann apparently doesn’t think much of following campaign rules.

• Media Matters apparently thought wasting money on a reasonable, factual and measured ad to air on Fox News was gonna help make Fox viewers think for themselves. Are they really that naive?

• Oh, dear: S.C. Senate President Glenn McConnell (R) poses as a Confederate General with a pair of Black Americans dressed as slaves [pictured]. Really, do Republicans just have a common defective gene or something when it comes to this sort of thing?
  (via @todayspolitics)

If you have any story suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments or send them in.

Tags: Microsoft • NGOs • Russia • copyrights • Democrats • USA • humans • anthropology • chefs • Republicans • healthcare reform • ObamaCare • Michele Bachmann • elections • Media Matters • Media Matters for America • Fox News • News Corp • racism • slavery • Civil War • Glenn McConnell

The Continuing Adventures of Bad Fetuses

Oh no! Our enemies are plotting against us – from before the cradle!