Well. It's starting to look like we might be back in business soon. More to follow.

(I.e., Yet Another 'Back in the saddle again.')

Soapbox: Prison, and "cruel and unusual punishment"

OK, it's time for me to vent about something that doesn't have anything to do with any particular current event, or something in my own life lately, or anything like that. In fact, that might be part of the problem with it, for prison rape pretty much never gets a mention in the news media. It seems to be accepted in U.S. society as just a constant in the background, something we pretty well know is going on, hence the surfeit of jokes and other alleged humour about it, but out-of-sight, out-of-mind, it never makes the papers.

For a rather unpleasant sample, there's a song by some Bob and Tom team called "Prison Bitch" (tasteless, disturbing YouTube video warning).

What I really loathe is how society as a whole seems to just accept this state of things in prisons, and treat prison rape as though it were merely part of a just and deserved punishment for the inmates. As Ezra Klein wrote a few years ago:

We've decided to tacitly accept rape in our prisons because we believe deeply and firmly in the guilt of all who enter -- this is just further punishment. Better yet, we're not the executors -- that such barbarism occurs behind bars is further confirmation that those we incarcerate are monsters. The assaults make us feel better, they vindicate our sentencing. And we can countenance them because we never face their horrors:...

However, we do, after all, have that pesky 8th Amendment "cruel and unusual punishment" clause, after all. And, if one considered this part of the punishment, I'm pretty sure it would qualify on both counts.

I don't take much stock in playing which-is-worse oneupmanship, but if I had to pick the more vile between this and waterboarding alleged Al-Qaeda-linked persons, I just might call the prison rape system worse, largely because the "punishment" is completely uncorrelated to the crime for which they've been convicted. Indeed, the HRW report linked below suggests that the worse offenders (prior to incarceration) tend more often to be the rapists, and the victims tend to be those who've committed lesser crimes, along with a few other factors unrelated to the severity of their crime.

Related sites and articles:

• Just Detention International (formerly Stop Prison Rape)
• No Escape: Male Rape in U.S. Prisons from Human Rights Watch
• Ezra Klein, The American Prospect: Prison Rape
• There's nothing funny about prison rape, also by Ezra Klein as it turns out, L.A. Times

Bitter commentary

Much of the response to the recent assassination of late-term abortion provider Dr. Tiller puts me in mind of this bit from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. I particularly have in mind the response from the likes of Michelle Malkin, about how we can't hold anti-choicers responsible for the act of this single lone gunman, and shouldn't take measures against future violence in the heat of the moment.

Please, please! This is supposed to be a happy occasion! Let's not bicker and argue about who killed who.

(Relevant section starts at about 5:04, key phrases at 5:48)

Meanwhile, back at the ranch....

Just a little note that I'm finally active again over at my other associated blog, Class Wargames. I'm taking a macroeconomics class, and blogging on subjects that come up during it over there.

On Means and Ends: Still Torture

In the midst of this also-otherwise-fine item from Juliet Lapidos of Slate, "There Are Four Lights! Revisiting Star Trek: The Next Generation's eerily prescient torture episode," is this key paragraph, as far as my own little obsession with means & ends goes:

The extended torture sessions take a toll not just on Picard but on his interrogator as well. The more time the Cardassian spends with Picard, the more he becomes fixated on breaking his prisoner. And so the supposed goal of torture—information—is sidelined, while the means by which the goal will theoretically be achieved—mental submission—becomes an end in itself. As Picard puts it, "Torture has never been a reliable means of extracting information. It is ultimately self-defeating as a means of control. One wonders it is still practiced."

Cf. On Means and Ends: Torture

Clark's Coincidence

OK, I usually steer clear of posting this kind of post, but it's time for some speculation, theorizing, hypothesizing, and rank rumourmonging.

It should come as no surprise to long-time readers of this blog (if any) that I'm a fan of the idea of retired General Wesley Clark as Secretary of Defense, but knowing that retired military can't serve as SoD too soon after their military time, I certainly wouldn't mind seeing him in any of various other Cabinet positions. (He does have a degree in economics from Oxford, after all; potentially useful in these times.)

Then, there was that overblown dust-up about his remarks that McCain's Vietnam service & POW-hood were not alone enough to qualify him for the Presidency.

Well, I don’t think riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to be president.

After which, the Obama campaign Largely disavowed him and his words. After that, I had pretty much abandoned any such hopes for him.

However, a couple of recent news items have me rethinking that. The first one that caught my attention in this regard was the appointment of Samantha Power to Obama's transition team. As you may recall, back in March, she was reported to have said:

[Hillary Clinton] is a monster, too — that is off the record — she is stooping to anything.

(A brief aside: I find it interesting that reporters will grant off-recordness by default to Bush administration officials, but report things from Obama advisors that are stated as off-the-record in midsentence.)

After this came out, Power resigned from the Obama campaign. However, it was recently announced that she would be part of his transition team for the Department of State, after Hillary Clinton was leaked as the likely (since official) choice for Obama's Secretary of State. This seemed like an unsubtle enough way of provoking those who were jumping on his campaign for misstatements and inartful phrasing that it got me thinking that there might be room for forgiveness for Gen. Clark, as well.

However, there was the talk of current Secretary of Defense Robert Gates staying on for at least a time with the Obama administration, also since confirmed. Apparently, Obama wants to keep him around while we withdraw our forces from Iraq, preferably within that 16 month time period that Obama had described during his campaign.

At this point, I thought to myself, "hmm, 16 months after inauguration, that would be in May 2010. I wonder when Clark would be eligible for an appointment to Secretary of Defense?" So I double-checked my recollection that it was a ten-year waiting period (10 U.S.C, Subtitle A, Part I, Chapter 2, § 113, "A person may not be appointed as Secretary of Defense within 10 years after relief from active duty as a commissioned officer of a regular component of an armed force."), and went to look up when Clark had resigned his commission. And what did I find?

Clark retired May 2, 2000; ergo, eligible May 2, 2010. The very same month that that 16 month period comes to an end. It could certainly be purest coincidence. But, as a famous presidential speechwriter once said, "Would it be irresponsible to speculate? It would be irresponsible not to!"

Election night prep

This is just a collection of links to the CNN election results pages for the races that seem to be of special interest, mostly for my own benefit, but feel free to follow along. Note that I'm extrapolating the likely URLs based on their 2004 results pages, so there likely will be dead links until the day, and might be even then; I'll update them if I find different URLs. And I'm publishing before all the names are filled in; I'll be completing it as time goes by.

• Presidential Election: Obama v. McCain
• Senate races:
  • Alaska: Begich v. convicted felon "Series of Tubes" Stevens
  • Colorado: M. Udall v. Schaffer
  • Georgia: Martin v. Chambliss
  • Kentucky: Lunsford v. McConnell
  • Minnesota: Franken v. Coleman
  • Mississippi: Musgrove v. Wicker
  • North Carolina: Hagan v. Dole
  • New Hampshire: Shaheen v. Sununu
  • New Mexico: T. Udall v. Pearce
  • Oregon: Merkley v. Smith
  • Virginia: Warner v. Gilmore
• House of Representatives:
  • Arizona: 8th: Giffords v. Bee
  • Colorado: 4th: Markey v. Musgrave
  • Florida: 8th: Grayson v. Keller, 21st: Martinez v. L. Diaz-Balart, 24th: Kosmas v. Feeney, 25th: Garcia v. M. Diaz-Balart
  • Minnesota: 6th: Tinklenberg v. Bachman
  • North Carolina: 8th: Kissell v. Hayes
  • Ohio: 1st: Driehaus v. Chabot, 2nd: Wulsin v. Schmidt, 15th: Kilroy v. Stivers, 16th: Boccieri v. Schuring

Update: Their URLs are inconsistent, and my predictions were wrong. Updating as I find what's where.
Senate races should all be updated now.
All links should be working now. Results are starting to come in.

Ayers, or ???

I just want to point out another overlooked but significant point about the alleged Obama/Ayers best-friendsness/acquaintance/heard-of-the-guy. What was the alternative, from Obama's point of view? Just ditch the committee, in effect saying, "well, fuck the poor, I can't work with this guy, so they're just going to have to suck it up?" What kind of character would have behaved that way?

On an unrelated note, I'd just like to say that one of the greater trivial annoyances (isn't that like "jumbo shrimp"?) of the past few days has been repeatedly having my nose rubbed in the fact that the English language consigns the verbs "pall" and "pal" (if you can even tolerate its having been verbed) to share identically spelled gerund forms. Curse them!!

Lipstick, pigs, & female dogs: Redux

They've gone and made the connection explicitly now. (Via Digby)

[Karl] Rove said he believed that Obama's "lipstick on a pig" comment was a "deliberate slap at Governor Palin," saying it came too soon after the Alaska governor's pitbull comment not to be.

Like I was saying, especially now that they're making the connection to the pitbull remark, this really points out that she went there first. Just because she's a woman, doesn't mean she couldn't be sexist, or make sexist remarks. (I'm not seriously suggesting that hers was a sexist remark, but it was at least as much so as Obama's.)

Lipstick, pigs, & female dogs

And just a quick note about the lipstick thing: If it is supposed that Obama's comparison of McCain's economic policies to a pig with lipstick was somehow really about Palin, shouldn't somebody be bringing up Palin's insult to hockey moms, when she essentially called them pit bulls with lipstick? And you know what they call a female dog, after all.... Is this really the line of reasoning (if I may take liberties with the term) that they want to follow?

Yet Another Alternative

Another unfounded assumption I've noticed in the discussion of Sarah Palin. Everybody seems to assume she's lying now about having "said thanks but no thanks" about the "Bridge to Nowhere". But could she not have been lying when she claimed to support the bridge while running for Governor, instead? She might be completely honest about her position on the bridge, now!

Take that, liberal media!

How about a Greek middle school? Would that work?

OK, this is a bit of a puzzle yet, and explanations are entirely speculative so far, so I'm going with the one that seems fairly likely for the purposes of this post. Whatever the actual explanation, though, it can hardly be favorable to the McCain campaign, except inasmuch as everything is.

So, apparently, Candidate McCain chose to (or at least ended up) give his big acceptance speech, the highlight of the Republican Convention, in front of an image of a ritzy, dare-we-say elitist, North Hollywood middle school (not entirely dissimilar to an expensive McMansion, for that matter). Going with the reasoning of the Republicans and their pet pundits, that Obama's backdrop of Greek columns (much like George Bush's background when addressing the RNC, incidentally) was supposed to present him as a Greek god (so what was Bush going for? Roman emperor?), the only reasonable conclusion is that the McCain campaign chose a middle school backdrop to make McCain seem younger.

Kidding aside, it seems likely that it was a mixup due to the middle school sharing a namesake with Walter Reed Army Medical Center. I think it says something about the staffers of the McCain campaign that they would think it reasonable that Reed looks that beautifully kept up. It would seem to fit well with delusions that the Army's medical services are keeping things completely shipshape for our wounded veterans, not a speck of mold or anything, and no expense has been spared in keeping it lovely. If anything, it looks like we might have spent altogether too much on fancy architecture and groundskeeping! Except, of course, that it isn't. Just another notion based on fantasy.

There's a mavericky madness to his method

I have it on good authority from a senior adviser to the McCain campaign* that the Maverick's choice for a running mate was sealed last Thursday morning, when he found Sarah Palin's face in his sunny-side up eggs for breakfast.

*What? I can't help it if one of the ferrets claims to be a senior adviser!

An alternative explanation?

Much of the foofoora about John McCain's choice of running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, seems to have an underlying unstated assumption for which I haven't seen the justification yet: that she was his first choice for a running mate. I don't have any particular reason to think she wasn't, but it grates on me to see all this talk that seems to just make the assumption, without any evidence cited.

And it would be amusing to think that maybe Mitt Romney, Joe Lieberman, and Tim Pawlenty had all been offered the slot, and fled from him like the proverbial rats from the ship, until he finally found a sucker willing to run as the sidekick's sidekick.

A Modest Contradiction

Candidate John McCain spoke of his new running mate selection, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin:

She's exactly who I need. She's exactly who this country needs to help me fight the same old Washington politics of 'Me first and country second.'

And yet... notice to what his first sentence refers. Notice to what his second sentence refers. Notice which sentence comes first, and which one comes second.

I guess McCain is his own "same old Washington politics" which he disparages by implication.

Workin' it: Answered

Over at TPM, Josh Marshall asks:

When Mitt Romney says that it was "hard work" that got John McCain all those houses that he got for marrying Cindy Hensley, what does he mean exactly?

I believe George W. Bush said it best, during the Sep. 30 debate in 2004:

You know, it's hard work to try to love her as best as I can.... I told her after we prayed and teared up and laughed some that I thought her husband's sacrifice was noble and worthy.

Incidentally, that was occurrence number eight of eleven that night, of the phrase "hard work". Just sayin'.