"I'm very proud of what we did in terms of defending the nation for the last eight years successfully," Cheney said....
"I guess the other thing that offends the hell out of me, frankly ... is we had a track record now of eight years of defending the nation against any further mass casualty attacks from Al Qaida," Cheney said. "The approach of the Obama administration should be to come to those people who were involved in that policy and say, 'How did you do it? What were the keys to keeping this country safe over that period of time?'"
Fake right-wing pundit: "I think it's sad that the word 'neverending labyrinth of pain' are synonymous with the errors made by one loose-cannon minotaur who, yeah, admittedly went too far."
To those blithely dismissing all of this as things that don't seem particularly bothersome, I'd say two things:
(1) The fact that we are not really bothered any more by taking helpless detainees in our custody and (a) threatening to blow their brains out, torture them with drills, rape their mothers, and murder their children; (b) choking them until they pass out; (c) pouring water down their throats to drown them; (d) hanging them by their arms until their shoulders are dislocated; (e) blowing smoke in their face until they vomit; (f) putting them in diapers, dousing them with cold water, and leaving them on a concrete floor to induce hypothermia; and (g) beating them with the butt of a rifle -- all things that we have always condemend as "torture" and which our laws explicitly criminalize as felonies ("torture means. . . the threat of imminent death; or the threat that another person will imminently be subjected to death, severe physical pain or suffering . . .") -- reveals better than all the words in the world could how degraded, barbaric and depraved a society becomes when it lifts the taboo on torturing captives.
(2) As I wrote rather clearly, numerous detainees died in U.S. custody, often as a direct result of our "interrogation methods." Those who doubt that can read the details here and here. Those claiming there was no physical harm are simply lying -- death qualifies as "physical harm" -- and those who oppose prosecutions are advocating that the people responsible literally be allowed to get away with murder.
I been dipped in double meaning.
I been stuck with static cling.
There's too much paranoias
There's too much paranoias
A "profanity-laced screaming match" at the White House involving CIA Director Leon Panetta, and the expected release today of another damning internal investigation, has administration officials worrying about the direction of its newly-appoint intelligence team, current and former senior intelligence officials tell ABC News.com.
Amid reports that Panetta had threatened to quit just seven months after taking over at the spy agency, other insiders tell ABCNews.com that senior White House staff members are already discussing a possible shake-up of top national security officials.
"You can expect a larger than normal turnover in the next year," a senior adviser to Obama on intelligence matters told ABCNews.com.
"Leon will be leaving," predicted a former top U.S. intelligence official, citing the conflict with Blair. The former official said Panetta is also "uncomfortable" with some of the operations being carried out by the CIA that he did not know about until he took the job.
By pitting Barack Obama and his moderate allies in Congress against the more vocal fringes of the Republican Party, the media has moved the centre of the debate over reform far to the right. Add to this dynamic the idea that bipartisanship equals moderation and you may wonder, how can a health-care proposal be moderate if it attracts no Republican support?
But the truth is that Mr Obama has all but ceded control of reform to the likes of Max Baucus and other moderate senators. And if the media focused on that, we'd see that the debate over health care is occurring in the middle of the political spectrum, with the main focus on the "gang of six". As for bipartisanship, on this issue (and perhaps many others) it seems like a faulty measurement of moderation—how can it be accurate if the Republican's chief negotiator, the relatively moderate Chuck Grassley, says he might vote against a bill that gives him everything he wants? (Emphasis mine)
I appreciate the "an ok bill is better than no bill" arguments, but things have changed since 2004. Health costs have continued to go up at absurd rates. Dems have 60 senators, a big majority in the House, and we just elected a popular president whose central campaign issue was... health care reform. There can be incremental improvements later, possibly, but they can also make it worse. Given the way things work in that stupid town, we get one big bite at the apple. An "ok" bill lets the insurance company skimmers keep stealing their share for doing nothing useful other than denying people care. Maybe it means they get to do this a bit less aggressively than they do now, and maybe it means some more people get somewhat better health care, but it also leaves the skimmers in place.
Whether the Court actually rules on the issue, however, appears to depend upon whether the Administration is able, when Congress returns from summer break, to persuade the lawmakers to change the federal law at issue. The disclosure issue arises under the Freedom of Information Act, and proposals are now pending in Congress to undo the Second Circuit’s interpretation of the FOIA section at issue. If the legislation passes, the photos would be protected from public release, and there would be nothing left at issue legally. (There are no constitutional issues even implicit in this dispute; no one is claiming a constitutional basis for public access to the abuse photos.)
Although the case focuses on a single two-word phrase in one section of the FOIA, the dispute actually has major significance for transparency in wartime: at issue is whether the government can prevent the public disclosure of unclassified evidence of military misconduct during wartime, based on a generalized claim that release will threaten harm to U.S. military forces in the field.
Silver Spring, MD: I remember the days after the election when there was talk of investigations and trials about the Bush administration. My neighbor, who is even more liberal than me, was thirsting for retribution against Rove, Cheney, Bush, et al. I told him "no." It is simply not in the nature of Americans to do that; we are always wanting to "move on" to the next thing.
For all of the anger and denials around Rove and the firing of the prosecutors a few years ago, I think most Americans today would shrug and say:
"Sure, Rove and the administration wanted to boot the appointed prosecutors who were not supporting their agenda. We don't have a tape of him saying that directly, but everyone knew it. So what? It's 2009 and we have a lot of important things going on NOW."
America, always moving forward.
Carrie Johnson: Thanks for your comments. You've hit on a real, ongoing point of debate here.
If you were White House counsel and someone from the White House political shop approached you, just before the midterm elections, about intervening with the Justice Department to help out a congressman from your party under criminal investigation, you would:
(a) Fire his ass on the spot.
(b) Drop kick him from the West Wing to a closet-sized office in the EEOB, never to be heard from again.
(c) Send a memo to everyone in the political office warning against any contacts with DOJ officials regarding any ongoing investigations.
(d) Get the deputy attorney general on the phone and see whether you could get him to publicly exonerate the congressman, then dutifully email back the political operative to report on how the call went.
If you answered (d), you're qualified to be nominated to the Supreme Court.
Clinton: We’ve done this so many times before. We’ve had former presidents do it. We’ve had sitting members of Congress do it. It is something that, you know, it is absolutely not rewarding them. It is not in any way responding to specific demands.
It is a recognition that certain countries that I think are kind of beyond the pale the rule of law hold people and subject them to long prison terms that are absolutely unfair and unwarranted.
“You couldn’t sell this script in Hollywood,” White House press secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters of the conspiracy theorists, called birthers.
“Tell me if you’ve heard one that’s this totally crazy,” Gibbs said. “A pregnant woman leaves her home to go overseas to have a child -- who there’s not a passport for -- so is in cahoots with someone…to smuggle that child, that previously doesn’t exist on a government roll somewhere back into the country and has the amazing foresight to place birth announcements in the Hawaii newspapers? All while this is transpiring in cahoots with those in the border, all so some kid named Barack Obama could run for President 46 and a half years later. You couldn’t sell that to the WB.”
A source familiar with the planning of the visit said the (Obama) administration's consensus choice to travel to Pyongyang was former vice president Al Gore, who co-founded the news channel that employs the journalists. But North Korea rejected Gore as an envoy.
Study: Redheads' extra pain may cause fear of dentists
By Madison Park
CNN
(CNN) -- Despite two injections of anesthetic, Amy Anderson felt like her dentist was jamming rods into her tooth during a root canal. She writhed in pain as her infected tooth was hollowed with a drill, its nerve amputated, and then sealed.
"I knew this time something was wrong. I could feel my lips," said the Syracuse, New York, resident, who told her dentist the drugs weren't working.
Her doctor kept assuring her she had given her a proper dose and said: "I'm almost done."
"I was hurting so bad, I was hitting myself in the stomach," said Anderson, a redhead. "I almost wanted to hit her."
Studies have indicated that redheads may be more sensitive to pain and may need more anesthetics to numb them.
New research published in this month's Journal of American Dental Association found that painful experiences at the dentist might cause more anxiety for men and women with red hair, who were twice as likely to avoid dental care than people with dark hair.
"Redheads are sensitive to pain," said Dr. Daniel Sessler, an Outcomes Research Department chair at The Cleveland Clinic, in Cleveland, Ohio, who is one of the authors.
"They require more generalized anesthesia, localized anesthesia. The conventional doses fail. They have bad experiences at the dentist and because of the bad experiences, they could avoid dental care."
"Dave Chappelle remains in hiding. Tyler Perry's oeuvre is, essentially, one long-running, feel good "yo momma" joke. The kind of monumentally new, staggeringly fresh hip-hop album the Obama Event seems to cry out for has not emerged. The Wire proved that virtually all the best actors in America are African-American. Why is Idris Elba not doing Othello on Broadway right now?"
"... last November, the world called their bluff, and the color of Obama's skin doesn't make a damn bit of difference in the daily business of running the world."
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