Good Torture - Some torturers are born; the best are made
May 10, 2009
by Bryan Zepp Jamieson
Now that Obama has gone all namby-pamby on torture accountability, and it’s beginning to look like some leading Congressional Democrats knew and even approved of torture, I’m covering my bets and coming out in favor of torture. Bring it on, I say! The more, the merrier! Torture all around!
Damn, I feel manly when I talk that way.
I mean, look, it’s not as if I’M the one getting tortured. The government promises to only torture people they don’t like, and darn it, I’m a likeable guy. They won’t come after me.
But you know, if we’re going to have torture, we have to make it as efficient as possible, and one of the main problems good freedom-loving Christian nations have when they decide to make torture a function of state policy is that of getting the right people for the job of torturing. Read more
Neo-Absurdists - They love America and hate the United States
May 3, 2009
by Bryan Zepp Jamieson
Research 2000 had a poll the other day that claimed that 32% of Republicans in Georgia would support leaving the United States. This compared to 5% among Democrats, and 14% among independents. As Daily Kos correspondent Arjun Jaikumar remarked, “Apparently, the most conservative of Republicans only love their country when they’re in power. Charming.”
It’s scary only until you realize that there’s not much left of the GOP these days, and the extremist nuts make up a disproportionate number of that GOP “base.” In Georgia, for instance, 25% of voters identify themselves as Republicans (which is higher than the country at large, which is now only 22% Republican. Incredibly, there were more Republicans in Georgia in the 1960s, when the party was seen as northern, anti-Jim-Crow, and liberal). Thirty-two percent of a quarter of the population is 8% of the total population. The eighth percentile will put you right out near the lip of any bell-shaped curve. Welcome to Wingnut World. The land of guns, gawd, and meth. Or “The Knights,” which is the new, done-over PR group fronting for the KKK. And while most mainstream Christians have deserted the GOP in droves, the not-inconsiderable apocalyptic snake-handlers who believe “The Omega Factor” is a gonna-be-true story, are still a fundamental part of that base. The four jackasses of the apocalypse and all that. Read more
Notes from the Class War - The right moves further and further out of touch
March 29, 2009
by Bryan Zepp Jamieson
An early question from NBC’s Chuck Todd posed to Barack Obama during his press conference went: “Why, given this new era of responsibility that you’re asking for, why haven’t you asked for something specific that the public should be sacrificing to participate in this economic recovery?”
Todd may or may not have felt that major investment houses and banks and insurance companies had made terrible sacrifices, but he clearly wanted to know why middle-class people weren’t making more of a sacrifice.
This came on a day when newspapers were reporting on the “tent cities” springing up across America, the 21st century equivalent of “Hoovertowns” during the Great Depression, shanty towns of planks and boards where the desperate homeless struggled to live. Sacramento opened up the state fair grounds for homeless families to pitch their tents where they might be a bit safer from the inevitable predators who have appeared to prey on such desperate families, and take what little they have left. Read more
A Canticle for Liebowitz - Media gets a gobsmacking it richly deserves
March 14, 2009
by Bryan Zepp Jamieson
The history of journalism includes historic interviews that illuminated, defined, enriched, and sometimes caused changes. Most people have heard of the famous Edward R. Murrow interview of Senator Joseph McCarthy, which marked Murrow as the first major journalist to take a stand in the face of the right wing demagogue’s bluster. The David Frost / Richard Nixon interview, recently celebrated in a major film, is the stuff of journalistic legend. Jann S. Wenner , of Rolling Stone, interviewed the complex and beguiling John Lennon, illuminating one of the most innovative and remarkable minds in rock music. The late, lamented Edward Bradley had several important interviews with Mohammad Ali, Bill Clinton, and Ronald Reagan. The rest of the “60 Minutes” staff have racked up hundreds of memorable interviews, with the famous, the obscure, the powerful and the needful. Some great interviews are a matter of fortuitous timing. BBC’s Martin Bashir interviewed Princess Diana of England, a meeting that would not have been memorable had the princess not died the next week. Some became famous and important too late. If more people had read George Sylvester Viereck’s Q&A with Adolf Hitler, maybe someone would have shot the son of a bitch before he went out and caused the deaths of some fifty million people. Read more
GOP: Feeling Rushed? - Frum the right: a warning
March 8, 2009
by Bryan Zepp Jamieson
With his private plane and his cigars, his history of drug dependency and his personal bulk, not to mention his tangled marital history, Rush is a walking stereotype of self-indulgence – exactly the image that Barack Obama most wants to affix to our philosophy and our party. And we’re cooperating! Those images of crowds of CPACers cheering Rush’s every rancorous word – we’ll be seeing them rebroadcast for a long time.
Rush knows what he is doing. The worse conservatives do, the more important Rush becomes as leader of the ardent remnant. The better conservatives succeed, the more we become a broad national governing coalition, the more Rush will be sidelined.
– David Frum
David Frum is something of a rarity in American politics these days. He’s a conservative who is intelligent, introspective, and nuanced. Fairly or not, the public thinks of “conservatives” when exposed to the stentorian bellows of Bill O’Reilly, the passive-aggressive snits of John Boehner, or the emotional toxicity of Ann Coulter. Read more
Budget 2010 - Obama shows that he means it
March 8, 2009
by Bryan Zepp Jamieson
Wow.
OK, Obama just answered my main question: is he willing to put his money where his mouth is?
I’ve been looking at his budget proposal over the past few days with a sense of wonderment. It’s a seminal document, as nation-altering as the “tax revolt” of the late 70s was, the one that led to Reagan and the supply side disaster.
The first number was the startling size of the deficit, roughly four times the size of any other deficit in the history of the country. (Not in constant-value dollars, of course: FDR had two that were bigger during World War II). $1.75 trillion dollars. One millionth of that would leave me set for life.
It really brings home just how serious the economic meltdown is. Democrats are normally the ones who reduce deficits and sometimes even balance the budget. Republicans are the ones who spend like drunken nymphomaniacs in a sex toy shop. Usually on the military and tax cuts for the rich.
Part of the deficit comes from the fact that Obama’s budget has one of the biggest tax cuts in the history of the country. If you didn’t already know that, I’m not surprised. The blow dried creatures of the corporate media, and the stentorian whiners of the right wing, all of whom make far more than a quarter million a year, are busily howling about “the biggest tax hike in centuries” that will “destroy what’s left of the economy.” That would be the fact that Obama proposes to let the Bush cuts on incomes over $250,000 lapse, rather than renewing them. Those rates would revert to the levels they were at in the mid nineties, a time of economic boom. It’s expected to add $637 billion in revenue, but that’s two years’ budget down the line. The tax rates don’t lapse until 2011. With any luck at all, the economy might be in slightly better shape by then. Read more
Happy Days - Recovering from the Recovery
February 25, 2009
©Bryan Zepp Jamieson
Why is Obama suddenly starting to sound like Herbert Hoover?
He’s talking about cutting the annual deficit in half by the time he leaves office. Even assuming he’s in office until 2017, that’s a pretty ambitious undertaking.
Hoover, of course, thought the same thing, and took a really nasty recession and deepened it into the Great Depression. FDR became alarmed at the size of the debt, and in 1936, under pressure from the right, tried balancing the budget. The economy was largely recovered from the Great Depression (despite RW propaganda, the GDP was 100% recovered by 1935, and unemployment, while still elevated, was one third what it was when he took office), and trying to balance the budget in 1936 led to a nasty, but brief recession in 1937.
In his weekend address yesterday, Obama said, “[Monday,] I will convene a fiscal summit of independent experts and unions, advocacy groups and members of Congress to discuss how we can cut the trillion-dollar deficit that we’ve inherited.” Now, he -did- say that this was going to be based on the premise that there was going to be an economic recovery first. The man hasn’t lost his marbles. Read more
Happy B-Day, Chuck - The science has evolved, but not the people
February 14, 2009
by Bryan Zepp Jamieson
Gallup ran a poll this week, asking, “Do you, personally, believe in the theory of evolution, do you not believe in evolution, or don’t you have an opinion either way?”
First off, it’s an idiotic question. I saw the poll over on Think Progress (39% “believe” 25% did not “believe” and 36% had no opinion either way). One of the bloggers over there, nymed 5th Estate, wrote “This kind of question irks me no end. How about ‘are you satisfied that evolution is the most satisfactory explanation thus far of the diversity of species?’ Or… ‘do you believe that the earth is 6,000 years old and that all dinosaurs were vegetarians and co-existed with humans and can you explain why the dinosaurs then disappeared and when?’ Or how about, ‘do you believe that airplanes are supported in flight by angels and that the engines are there just for show?” Read more
Poverty in America - The hidden cost of the meltdown
February 9, 2009
by Bryan Zepp Jamieson
Any idea what the poverty rate is right now?
Well, don’t feel bad. Neither do I. The most recent one I could find was for 2006, when an average of 12.6% of the general population were below the poverty level. [Zeppnote: a few days after writing this, I saw a column by Gene Lyons that placed the official poverty level at a stunning 17%] Read more
Making Republicans Misbehave - Or how I make Kay Bailey Hutchinson sound nuts
February 2, 2009
by Bryan Zepp Jamieson
Back a few years ago when even right wingers were beginning to realize what a mistake Iraq was, one of the less lucid people on Usenet came up with a novel theory as to why my opposition to the occupation of Iraq was anti American. It was because the occupation of Iraq had hurt America.
Now, you might be wondering how it could be that if I opposed something that hurt America, that would be un-American. I wondered the same thing, and, being bored, asked.
The problem was that I was (and am) a known liberal who opposed (and still oppose) the occupation. If I had had the good sense to keep my mouth shut in 2003, conservatives wouldn’t have pushed so hard for the invasion of Iraq because they wouldn’t have known that it would annoy me.
Well, my word. I had no idea I wielded so much personal power. Had I known, I would have written George W. Bush a letter, urging him in the strongest possible terms to never, ever drive a car at 120 miles an hour off a 1,000 foot high cliff, and that I would be really, really irritable if he did. Really. It would just ruin my whole morning. Still would. Don’t do it, George. Read more
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Bob's Bail Out Plan by bobl-tlm
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How Do You Like Deregulation Now? graphic politics by Dicky Neely
