When you take the gloves off, your own hands get hurt

Joe Scarborough and the right-wingers are apparently flipping out about Rosie O'Donnell asking whether Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was tortured into his 31 confessions.
But ABC's Matt Lauer is also asking whether Mohammed's confessions can be trusted - and yes, I'm wondering about this myself.
Sad, isn't it, that in their bloodthirsty eagerness to "take the gloves off", the Bush administration has ensured that these confessions may not be believed even in America itself, not to mention in countries where scum like this may be sanctified as martyrs to a cause.
UPDATE (as of Friday night): Somehow, I don't think the progressive blogosphere is taking those scary terrorists seriously enough! TBogg notes

. . . While the left discusses possible obstruction of justice and perjury within the Justice Department that may cause the Attorney General to either step down or be fired, the right is concerned with what Rosie O'Donnell said on an afternoon talk show.

while Attaturk says:

Khalid Ron Jeremy, er, Mohammad confessed not just to 9/11 apparently, but to more than 30 other acts and plots which were:
Attacking Chicago, attacking Los Angeles, attempting to assassinate Presidents Clinton, George H.W. Bush, and Carter. Taking part in forging the Zimmerman Telegram and writing the Protocols of the Elders of Zion; rubbing down Barry Bonds; the 18-minute gap; clubbing Jon Benet to death with Jimmy Hoffa's femur; an unauthorized biography of Howard Hughes; revealing Thers name and address to Jeff Goldstein; Piltdown Man; being the fifth dentist in the Trident commercials; trying to steal Whitney Houston away from both Bobby Brown AND Osama; the donation of Constantine; shacking up in the Pacific with Amelia Earhart; shooting Harry Whittington; being the inspiration for 'A Million Little Pieces'; molesting CNN anchorbots; not anticipating the breaching of the levees, or ironically anticipating flying planes into buildings; designing Tori Clark's suitcoats; blogging for Edwards 2008; replacing a restaurants expensive coffee with Folgers Crystals; belonging to Hannidate; that he eats aardvarks, armadillos, bears, boars, cats, bats, dawgs, hawgs, stoats, goats, yaks, and old gnus, but prefers ducks; watching "The World According to Jim"; choosing Barabas; laughing at Carrot Top; being a fugitive from OJ's justice; killing both Jerry Mathers & Mikey from the Life Cereal commericials in 'Nam; paying to see "Ishtar"; being Richard Hatch's financial advisor; plagiarizing Ben Domenech; clubbing Mrs. Richard Kimble to Death with Jimmy Hoffa's humorus bone; trying to put together a coalition of terror groups including rustlers, cut throats, murderers, bounty hunters, desperados, mugs, pugs, thugs, nitwits, halfwits, dimwits, vipers, snipers, con men, Indian agents, Mexican bandits, muggers, buggerers, bushwhackers, hornswogglers, horse thieves, bull dykes, train robbers, bank robbers, ass-kickers, shit-kickers, RedState readers and Methodists; dumping Maureen Dowd because she was so clingy; and joining the John Podhoretz Handsome Man Modeling Agency.

And I guess now everyone is supposed to forget about Gonzales and Plame and Iraq and start some hysterical witchhunts against brown-skinned school bus drivers. Look, look, its a shiny thing up in the sky?. . .

More red tape, please

Murray Dobbin has an interesting column on deregulation posted at Rabble.
I'm not sure whether I agree with all of it -- in particular, there is an implicit assumption that all regulations brought into effect prior to 1990 were good and useful and necessary, and therefore any dismantling of these regulations is dangerous and motivated by an unseemly desire for profits. It is, I think, possible to overdo good things, to the point they become bad things -- such as requiring so many tests for drugs aimed at rare medical conditions that the drug companies can't afford to develop these drugs.
That said, however, here's his main point:

Deregulation is one of neo-liberalism's five big initiatives (free trade, privatization, service cuts and tax cuts make up the rest). And it shows how successfully they have framed the issue.
Who in their right mind would want more red tape?
Well, for starters, pretty much anyone who flies in Canada, eats food, drives a car, uses prescription drugs or lives some place that could catch fire. That's just the short list.

And yes, that covers a fair number of us, doesn't it?
And Dobbin has an interesting discussion of the difference between the old 'precautionary principle', and the new 'risk management' model that is worth keeping in mind whenever a politician starts preaching deregulation:

The concept that drives this deregulation train is referred to as “risk management.” In the good old days of government in the public interest a different principle prevailed: the precautionary principle. That held that if there looked like there might be a problem, then you assumed in your decisions that there would be a problem. In other words, the goal used to be: err on the side of caution. Now we err on the side of profit.

Dobbin concludes with some warnings for the future -- and guess what? Why, it's our old friend, the Security and Prosperity Partnership, rearing its ugly head once again:

It can only get worse given two initiatives that are currently working at increasing the speed and breadth of deregulation.
The first is the deep integration initiative — now formally called the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America — which aims to harmonize all such inspection systems to create a “single North American economy.” The SPP, driven and guided by the powerful Canadian Council of Chief Executives, is the biggest single initiative in deregulation. According to New Democrat MP Peter Julian “We're looking at potentially 300 different areas where Canada is accepting lower American standards.” . . . The second initiative is TILMA*, the B.C.-Alberta investors' rights pact that hands over responsibility for deregulation directly to business.
The two measures, in fact, work hand in hand. Because a great deal of regulatory activity in Canada happens at the provincial and municipal level, harmonizing at the level of national governments still leaves thousands of regulations in place. There are strong suspicions that the federal government had a hand in pushing Alberta and B.C. to take the first step in bringing all the provinces (and municipalities) into a massive deregulation project that would smooth the way for deep integration.

Thanks, but no thanks. Given the alternative, I'll take the red tape.

*If you hadn't heard of TILMA before -- and neither had I - here is a link

Great line of the day

Digby on the incompetence of US foreign policy in the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld/Rice/Wolfowitz/Pearl "Bush Doctrine" era:

Their defining characteristic, in fact, is that they have always been wrong about everything and they never, ever learn anything from their experience. It is also the case that their animating principle in the first few years of the administration was to do the exact opposite of Clinton in all things. It was a simple, easy to remember formula (for simple, forgetful people) that unfortunately led them to reject long-standing, bipartisan foreign policy along with everything else. When you combined the neocon and harcore hawk track records with a mandate to reject anything that Bill Clinton might have endorsed, you ended up with the hacktacular mishmash of sophomoric chest thumping, mindless military actions and conscious rejection all mutual understanding with our allies.

Emphasis mine.

Canada's little red hen

"I'll do it myself" said the little red hen -- it's Stephen Harper's slogan.
As the second year of "Canada's gnu government" progresses, trust is given to fewer and fewer people, while delusions of grandeur mandate doing all himself.
CP is reporting that Harper has decided now to dismantle Environment Canada's climate change policy group. Why? Once again, to do it himself:

Two departmental sources said the change is motivated by a desire to consolidate power in the Prime Minister's Office.
"People who used to work on climate-change policy are all being regrouped - some into stakeholder engagement, some went into economic analysis. They're all being farmed off," said a bureaucrat who requested anonymity.
"The (policy) work now is being done by a very small handful of people under the direct supervision of (the Privy Council Office) and PMO."
"Even the people working here say, 'Who's really accountable for making climate change policy anymore?' Right now we don't know who's accountable."

But its all just smoke and mirrors, really -- Harper's envirnomental plans are just a rehash of what Stephane Dion wanted to do in 2005:

Liberal Leader Stephane Dion said even Wednesday's announcement was a rehash of a plan to create a $200-million Pierre Elliott Trudeau Nature Conservation Foundation when he was environment minister.
The Liberals called the structural change just another rebranding exercise from a government that recycles old ideas and passes them off as its own.
"They're pursuing a campaign of propaganda like we've never seen before at the federal level," said Liberal environment critic David McGuinty.
"They're trying to simply discard all of the former climate change programming . . . and trying to deny that there was a previous government."
One of the bureaucrats who spoke on background agreed.
"Almost word for word, everything being set up was already negotiated and ready to go. It's just being repackaged. These are the same announcements being rolled out."

I may be wrong, of course, but at some point I do believe that Harper and/or his PMO is simply going to collapse under the strain of trying to run everything after they have fired all of the people who knew how to do it.
Maybe the opposition parties should just pass next week's budget -- and let Harper start explaining why he isn't actually capable of fulfilling all of the promises he has made.

Creepy

Wanna read something really scary?
Try this!
Ya know, I do recall two other people who also thought they were on a mission from God:

But this was was just a movie.

Hookergate may rise again

Here's the "well, duh!" story of the day: Senator Dianne Feinstein believes the ouster of San Diego U.S. Attorney Carol Lam was connected to Lam's prosecution of former Republican congressman Randy 'Duke' Cunningham, even though the Bush administration has denied it. Well, deny away, folks, but as Josh Marshall notes, a May 11, 2006 email from Gonzales' deputy Sampson talked about "the real problem we have right now with Carol Lam" --and here is Josh's summary of what their problem was:

April 28th, 2006 -- Cunningham-Wilkes-Foggo "Hookergate" scandal breaks open. Probe grows out of San Diego US Attorney's Office's Cunningham investigation. CIA Director Goss denies involvement.
April 29th, 2006 -- Washington Post reports that Hookergate's Shirlington Limo Service had $21 million contract with Department of Homeland Security.
May 2nd, 2006 -- Kyle "Dusty" Foggo confirms attendence at Wilkes/Cunningham Hookergate parties.
May 4th, 2006 -- Watergate Hotel subpoenaed in San Diego/Cunningham/Hookergate probe.
May 5th, 2006 -- WSJ reports that Kyle "Dusty" Foggo, who Goss installed as #3 at CIA, is under criminal investigation as part of the San Diego/Cunningham investigation.
May 5th, 2006 -- Porter Goss resigns as Director of Central Intelligence.
May 6th, 2006 -- WaPo reports on questionable DHS contract awarded to Shirlington Limo, the 'hookergate' Limo service under scrutiny as part of the San Diego/Cunningham investigation. Similar report in the Times.
May 7th, 2006 -- House Committee to investigate DHS contract with Hookergate's Shirlington Limo.
May 8th, 2006 -- Lyle "Dusty" Foggo resigns at CIA.
May 11th, 2006 -- LA Times reports that Cunningham investigation has expanded into the dealings of Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-CA), House Appropriations Committee Chairman.
May 12th, 2006 -- Federal agents working on the San Diego/Cunningham investigation execute search warrants on the home and CIA office of Kyle "Dusty" Foggo.

Now you may be wondering why this whole scandal didn't get a lot more coverage at the time -- particularly the $21 million Homeland Security contract to a limosine company owned by a guy with a 62-page rap sheet (sounds like a "made" guy, doesn't he?)
Well, me too. The mess was dubbed "Hookergate" but for reasons I have never been able to understand, it soon died from the news radar screen.
No congressional hearings, I guess.
And right around then the NSA phone call database story broke.
But there was also so much other important stuff going on right then -- Anna Nicole Smith won her Supreme Court case! And a diner at TGI Friday's found a human finger in his burger! And Katie Couric was leaving the Today show! And Paris Hilton launched a video game! And Tom Cruise was acting all weird! And . . .

Bully for Bugs

What are the odds?

What odds will someone give me?
It's at least ten to one that Saskatchewan won't actually get the revised equalization formula Harper promised a year ago, regardless of what Alberta may say. There will be a heavy dose of gobbletygook in the federal budget speech -- I expect to hear some blather about "maintaining our commitment to a coordinated fulfillment approach" and other buzzwords to that effect -- but in the end our resource revenues won't be deleted from the formula. The bottom line is that Saskatchewan will be hundreds of millions of dollars poorer. And Calvert's complaints will be dismissed as "whining". Whadda ya wanna bet?

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away...

Vanity Fair has the Annie Leibovitz Star Wars album. I haven't been following the movie series lately -- they lost me when Yoda sounded just too much like Fozzi Bear (because both were done by Frank Oz)-- but the last of the six films is being released this month.
So finally we can contemplate watching all six in the right order -- the baby boomer's dream will be fulfilled. Or maybe all six will someday be re-enacted with bunnies!
Anyway, these photos are beautiful.

The unreal life of the internet?

Over at the Poorman, Sifu Tweety has done what I think is a profound post on the Internet as a "fictional" or "unreal" reality:

. . . Every time I’ve seen criticism of communication on the internet it has made the point that people online feel free to say things they wouldn’t in real life. Well, yeah they do: they’re acting! Nobody would expect Carl Weathers to refuse to shoot a man while he was in character as Action Jackson. This is what makes the internet good: a fundamentally imaginative character. When people go online for anything, including work communications, they’re creating a character. They can create multiple different characters, with different timelines, different goals, different qualities. It’s exciting, and novel, for the same reason that creating movies is fun. Actors playing off each other. If I thought for one minute that people wouldn’t somehow hold it against me for being “Sifu Tweety” when I went to do wholly different things, out of character, as [REDACTED], I wouldn’t be so coy about my real name. And if I thought for one minute that community theater would be as intellectually engaging and entertainingly mean-spirited as blogging is, I’d put on a one-man show at the senior center.
Now, you don’t have to do things the way I do. You can create a single character, and attempt to have it hew as closely as possible to your self - goals, history, mores - but just because you do that doesn’t mean making everybody else do things that way won’t be crappy and boring for you, too.
None of this is to say that there aren’t things that can be done with the internet’s facilitation that have real world consequences. There are lots. We learn about more every day . . . the biggest problem: that so many people still don’t understand how the internet works, because they keep seeing it as one thing - an exact one-for-one copy of every person using it, rendered into smileys and cat pictures - when it really is something completely different: an almost infinite collection of anonymously written fiction, continuous, based on real events, with occasional, but very squirrelly, correlations with the “real world.”
It’s a problem pretty directly linked to age, and will hopefully peter out eventually, at which point the law can evolve rationally. Like ordinary literacy, computer literacy is only really possible in those who learn it young. The generation now running things, is in fundamental ways, computer illiterate, no matter how much they’ve used computers. Shit, I’m borderline: the technology just wasn’t there when I was young enough. Why do you think that seventeen year olds put so little thought into whether or not they should put things online? Because they intuitively understand that they aren’t providing a record of a “real life” . . . and they assume that everybody else understands things the same way, because that’s just how the internet is.

I'm going to have to think about this for a bit. I think maybe he's got something here -- maybe this helps to explain that we seem to be chatting with "personas" sometimes, rather than with people.
And yet, I don't feel that the people I have gotten to know from around the world through the comments on my own blog, and through reading other blogs, are "lying" to me or to themselves about who they really are. In fact, sometimes I think we find it less difficult to be the best that we can be on the internet, because on the net we are only our words; we aren't distracted by appearance or class or what kind of car we drive.
Anyone have opinions about this?

And worth every penny?

Mounties paid $25,000 to help Zaccardelli prepare for Arar hearings:

The RCMP paid a communications consultant almost $25,000 in taxpayers' money to help Giuliano Zaccardelli prepare for parliamentary hearings that ultimately led to the commissioner's resignation.

Well, I guess we can conclude that it was money well spent.

Great lines of the day

From Jacob Weisberg in Slate, the four unspeakable truths about Iraq:

. . . the war was a mistake . . . American soldiers being killed, grotesquely maimed, and then treated like whining freeloaders at Walter Reed Hospital are victims as much as "heroes." . . . American lives lost in Iraq have been lives wasted . . . America is losing or has already lost the Iraq war . . .

Emphasis his.

Newt!

Yes, definitely Newt Gingrich should run for President!


This is certainly the guy that represents the true heart of Republicanism today.
Now, the Democrats are going to win in 2008 -- americans are so fed up with Bush and his gang of idiots that the Democrats could run a turnip and still win. But with Newt, the Republicans wouldn't take a single state.
As Digby says -- Run, Newt, Run!

And a good time was had by all

Apparently everyone at Harper's announcement today got a good chuckle about how Harper dissed our premier, Lorne Calvert:

"I know the government of Saskatchewan is not a supporter of our party federally, but I don't think partisan politics should stand in the way of making a good deal for the people of Saskatchewan,” [Harper] said to a round of partisan applause.
Mr. Calvert's government has been pushing Mr. Harper's Tories to live up to their election promise to exclude non-renewable resource revenue from the equalization funding formula.
Mr. Harper said all will be answered in the March 19 budget.
“These will be a series of policies to establish predictable, principled, long-term transfer arrangements between the federal government, the provinces, and other levels of government.
“I'm confident we will fulfill our commitment and Saskatchewan will be a big winner. Whether it will be enough for the NDP is another question,” he said to laughter.

Apparently Calvert wasn't invited to the announcement, nor even informed that it was happening.
I guess it just doesn't matter that this isn't Conservative money he's handing out, it's Canadian money -- some of which may actually have been collected from me and from a few other people in Saskatchewan who have been known to vote NDP in the past.
And note how the spin is already underway about how the NDP are just a bunch of whiners and complainers.
Why do I get the feeling that we're not going to be seeing the resource revenue Harper promised?

The Meaning of American Pie