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

Best Email Ever

So I'm going through my email and cleaning out the junk box. For some reason, I'm on an email list for the Rev. Lou Sheldon at The Traditional Values Coalition. Most of the time I skip over those emails, as well as the ones from Wisconsin Right To Life (Right to Be Forcibly Pregnant, is more like it), but then this headline caught my eye:

Obamunist Nominee Gave U.S. Port To Communists

I had to see this article. Unfortunately, I was disappointed. There's only one line that address this issue. The first half or so of the article reminds us that Panetta worked for Clinton, and CLINTON HAD A BLOWJOB! DID WE MENTION THAT HE HAD A BLOWJOB? BECAUSE HE DID. No loony theories that China was going to take over the U.S., no speculation that Islamomarxofacist hoards are going to infiltrate the country. I really expected better.

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!"

Light at the End of the Crazy Tunnel

You know, I'm getting kind of sick of the "bipartisan" call on behalf of Republicans and the Beltway.

Face it, suckers, you lost.

Real America voted for the Black Man as President because he was speaking our language: change from the status quo, infrastructure rebuilding, bringing back our civil liberties, not to mention fixing our communities. I was talking to someone the other day who admitted that he voted Republican, but was glad that Obama won. I was walking down the street to the mall, and there was a group of people just walking around yelling "Obama won!" and cheering for the sheer joy of it.

That's Real America, motherfuckers. Get over yourselves. You lost.

Even if the Presidental Limo gets outfitted with spinners and those air-freshener crowns in the back, I don't give a fuck as long as I get my tax cut and we get alternative energy spending. Spinners on a car have never bothered me one bit, some are actually cool, and as for those crowns, well, my 60 year old mother thought they were awesome. And we're white. So suck on it losers, we won.

This election was a referendum on Republican policy, and America bitchslapped it with a resounding "Hell, NO!" at the polls. If George Bush had a mandate in 2004 with a few thousand votes, Obama's got a SUPERMANDATE, and doesn't have to be bipartisan, bitches. Go on, grab at those straws, but it's still not going to erase the EPIC FAIL that is the Republican party, take your motherfucking ball and just go home. Your game was good for a bit, but someone who knew what they were doing came to the court and wiped your ass with it. Now you're just being whiny about it. You've lost your power, at our hands. And you damn well deserve that, what with all the destroying of our country you've done. And I will do what my parents did for me, and remind the youngsters of this time, so that they grow up and never vote for you depraved motherfuckers.

Young people voted, and do you think that they voted just for themselves? They see what trouble their parents are in, their grandparents, aunts, uncles...and they voted for someone who would make a reasonable stab at change, so that the hardships they see for their family members might ease up. Why on earth do people think that only old people vote for "the children"? Do you think those young adults are totally incapable of voting for a candidate that would make Mom and Dad's life better? Apparently, there are some people out there who don't know any young people.

We're all in this together, us and the whole fucking world. You can take your isolationism and and exceptionalism and shove it straight up your ass.

And your bipartisanship? Launch that into motherfucking space - I don't want to see that shit again, unless you're talking bipartisanship with socialists and progressives. You lost, fair and square, America has spoken, and we resoundingly said that we don't want to listen to YOU.

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'.

I'm Confused

From Sadly, No! comments, someone linked to this post at Pharyngula. Total Catholic Meltdown over someone "stealing" the communion wafer.

But I'm puzzled. Why on earth would you want to take one home? There's really nothing special about the taste. What was that guy thinking? "Damn, these are tasty, I'm going through the line again!!" or "Wow, I would like to taste that again!" If he fakes an illness for which he can't leave his house, he could call up his local parish and even have it delivered to his home! Complete with Mass!

Why? It just seems so odd. Granted, the people sending death threats have to chill the fuck the out. But as a Catholic myself (more culturally now than when I was younger), I'm more bemused at the idea than outraged. Why would you want to take with you a plastic-y wheat-tasting wafer?

If you really, really are longing for that taste, I suggest buying these instead. The wafer taste is very similar to the outer coating, and communion wafers completely lack the fun-filled sugar balls in the middle. Now those would be worth taking from Church!

Is It A Funny?

I really hope that this was meant to be a funny, and not, say, serious.

Under their belief-system, every single individual in the entire country can elect to be on drugs. What would our society look like if this happened? People's lives would be destroyed and their productivity in our society would be unarguably compromised. In essence, people will have the right to govern their bodies but our country will lose its ability to effectively govern as well. This will then jeopardize the freedoms of people everywhere.

Just because you can't handle your drugs, doesn't mean that other people can't. And being on drugs is possibly the only explanation for our embarrassment of a president, but last time I checked, he was a Republican, no matter now much the wingnuts claim he isn't.

Remember: Happiness and freedom are both protected under the constitution.

Where's my fucking pony?

Perhaps the most vexing element of Libertarian thought is their implicit (and often explicit) contempt for our government.

Because there is absolutely no reason whatsoever for anyone to have contempt for our government. No Siree, nope, no contempt here! I do agree that not everything should be a cutthroat capitalistic society because there are quite a few things that need government oversight, or should be provided by the government because I fucking pay taxes. Glam wars are not part of that equation.

That would be quite the concept: want to start your own war? Get a bunch of people together and go fight it in the name of [your entity here], personally funded by you and whatever delusional freaks you manage to swindle. Hell, it worked for Oliver North!