Whiskey Fire

Demons Are Real

Re: Murder in Kansas.

See, now that Bush is out off office and we've given over to the politics of appeasement in the face of religious extremists bent on violence, the homeland is once more the target of terrorism.

Because it's terrorism, terrorism that works, and we're clearly not prepared to confront it as such.

UPDATE. BTW, this is gallows humor, duh. Looking at the actual record, while an abortion provider has not been killed since 1998, that hardly means that there has been no anti-abortion terrorism since then, as even a cursory examination indicates. The murder of Dr. Tiller is anything but an "isolated incident." So much for waterboarding keeping "us" "safe."

Which just goes to show, while this may be repulsive, it at least has the virtue of being ethically consistent: 

I can’t help but to follow the logic. “Doctor” Tiller is committing late-term abortions, which by any sane person’s calculation is infanticide. This is murder. Through perversion of the law, this is permitted, despite it flying the face of the history of civilization. This has been tolerated for two decades, and nothing has happened to stop the killing. He would have continued to commit this crime.

I can’t escape the conclusion that killing Tiller was the right thing to do. I am uncomfortable with this conclusion because it’s dangerous. But nevertheless, it was the ethical thing to do. Tiller would have continued to take numerous lives. Nothing was going to stop him. So someone did stop him. And now fewer lives will be taken.

Never mind that the author of this Red State comment next decides to compare Tiller's killer to Rosa Parks (!).

Look, if you think abortion is "murder," this commenter's position is not very far out there. I don't, so I can say that it is pretty far out there, which it is. But the people who do think abortion is murder do tend to correlate pretty closely with those who think that, say, something as awful as torture is justified in entirely imaginary scenarios (no bombs were in fact ticking, remember) involving the mass loss of life. Well, following this "logic," with abortion, arguendo, you have an actual mass loss of life. Why be willing to get all twisty about the "rule of law" in regards to the subjunctive threats posed by terror subjects but not the (again, arguendo) empirical killing of innocents?

Far be it from me to suggest that the anti-choice crowd aren't willing to accept the consequences of their arguments, but, well, actually, that's exactly what I'm saying. See also (passim) the unseriousness of the idea that "murder" ought to "be left to the states to decide," or that women who pay to have someone commit "murder" on their behalf ought to face no legal penalty.

FINALLY. Clearly, abortion is just a form of birth control. Late term abortions especially.

Fallen Angel

Has there ever been a better time to be alive? I mean, Netflix movies beamed straight to the Tivo? Books on the Kindle? Twenty or thirty movie channels? All this entertainment right at our fingertips. Bread! Circuses! World's Dumbest Criminals! It's all there for you ... but if you want to enjoy it all, don't make Neil Postman's 1985 Amusing Ourselves To Death the first e-book you read. Please, Morpheus ... just plug me back in.

Of course, having to work 80 hours a week to pay for this much entertainment is a bit of a problem. I wish I could afford to hire somebody to watch all the TV I'm missing.

But I'd give it all up, all this access to old movies, new movies, HBO specials about the dildo industry, to live in the film world of the 1940s. Not the real, full color world of the 1940s, with its segregation, polio, etc., but the black and white world of film. Evil and corruption are everywhere, but at least they look like evil and corruption. And there's smoking. And hats. Cops in hats, gangsters in hats, nurses in hats.

This brings me to Fallen Angel, which I caught on Netflix recently ... available for instant download. It's a nice little movie ... it's not Double Indemnity, but it has a lot of that film's strengths: lots of attention to the visual aspects of storytelling, crisp dialogue, and fine acting, in particular from Dana Andrews, who successfully sells sympathetic sociopathy. We don't get a lot of backstory on this drifter who lands in town when his traveling money runs out, but he manages to imply it credibly. There's a lot of anger there, and Andrews lets it show through, but that's no surprise ... he's usually very good. The character makes decisions a lot of people wouldn't make, but you buy it.

And then there's Linda Darnell. Good God. She has to make us believe that a bunch of smart guys will do stupid things with the right incentive, and she succeeds, as well as Barbara Stanwyck ever did, and better than Lana Turner with John Garfield in The Postman Always Rings Twice. Which is saying something. Not just the drifter, and not just the retired cop played by Charles Bickford, who ought to be in every movie ... even Pop, proprietor of Pop's Eats, is smitten. Darnell plays tough but vulnerable to perfection. We talk a lot about children growing up too fast today, but I gotta tellya, Linda Darnell makes twenty-two look a lot more--well, a lot more--than most of the twenty-two year old adolescents I deal with.

A reviewer on IMDB says Fallen Angel is better than Preminger's better-known film Laura, but I'm not willing to go that far. It's just a short step down, though, and some may prefer the more straightforward, chronologically linear narrative. Laura is in that class of genre-transcending films, while Fallen Angel is a great example of its genre ... a distinction that won't matter to some people and doesn't much matter to me.

A final note: John Carradine's turn as the medium, Professor Madley, is delightful ... Preacher Casy in a parallel universe.

It's Only "Identity Politics" When Other People Do It.

-By Jake T. Snake

Been doing some reading about the president's supreme court nominee Sonia Sotomayer. The response from the right has been predictable and loathsome, as usual.  A large bone of contention in the right blogosphere seems to be that not only is she Latina and female, but acknowledges that both of these things have influenced her world view. Duh! This leads to the inevitable slur of identity politics being thrown at her. Ms. Sotomayer, unlike recent nominees to the court is honest about who she is and what has influenced her.

Here's a newsflash, white men practice identity politics and form their worldview on the basis of being white and male. The right can't see this is racism in its purest form. Us white dudes are culturally seen as the normal default setting, the baseline, if you will. Any divergence from us is identity politics. White guys denying anyone different from them voting rights is just good old fashioned protecting American Values (but whose american values). You can catch up with these guys on the weekends dressed in Confederate civil war garb reenacting the battles the Confederacy won and blathering about states' rights. Then when the battle is over, its home for a quick change into the silk robes and out for a cross burning.

I also wonder why the court is "activist" only when it not hewing closely enough to a hard right conservative agenda.

The sad, but amusing part of this spectacle is watching some of our countries most strident racists (Rush Limbaugh, Newt Gingrich) accuse the nominee of being racist. The complete and utter lack of even a shred of insight would be funny if it wasn't so pathetic. Let's also grow up and realize that there might be a difference between recognizing one's racial identity and incorporating it into your identity versus using power in a way that actively harms people of other races or genders or sexual orientation or religions or...nevermind.

John Roberts is practicing identity politics and sadly will be for the next 30 years. The question is this. What identity do we want our nation to have as a result of its supreme court? Do we want our court to represent all the countries constituents or just to act as a tool of the rich and the powerful to disenfranchise the vast majority of us?

No Patience

This is getting absurd, grotesquely so.

Retired Army Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba denied reports that he has seen the prisoner-abuse photos that President Obama is fighting to keep secret, in an exclusive interview with Salon Friday night.

On Thursday an article in the Daily Telegraph reported that Taguba, the lead investigator into Abu Ghraib abuse, had seen images Obama wanted suppressed, and supported the president's decision to fight their release. The paper quoted Taguba as saying, "These pictures show torture, abuse, rape and every indecency."

But Taguba says he wasn't talking about the 44 photographs that are the subject of an ongoing ACLU lawsuit that Obama is fighting.

"The photographs in that lawsuit, I have not seen," Taguba told Salon Friday night. The actual quote in the Telegraph was accurate, Taguba said -- but he was referring to the hundreds of images he reviewed as an investigator of the abuse at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq -- not the photos of abuse that Obama is seeking to suppress.

OK, so these 44 pictures are not the ones showing "an American soldier apparently raping a female prisoner while another is said to show a male translator raping a male detainee," or "sexual assaults on prisoners with objects including a truncheon, wire and a phosphorescent tube." Those are other photographs, apparently.

I don't like this. If these 44 pictures are really no worse than what we've seen before, which are revolting enough, then why would releasing them be especially explosive?

And that leaves open the question of the really dangerous, sickening images. Where are those? Taguba says they exist, and he's seen them, and he's described them, in graphic detail. So, apparently, rape happened. Has anyone been prosecuted for rape, specifically?

There's just too much messing around here. I think it's gotten to the point where it's clear the "worst" images exist -- and one way or another, they're bound to appear, sooner or later.

The issue now is how they are going to appear. Will it be with full disclosure and a transparent commitment to accountability? Or a leak, a scandal, and an embarrassing attempt at a legalistic explanation for what's inevitably going to look like a coverup -- because, good intentions or not, that's what it will be?

I'm not unsympathetic to the argument that a release will put troops in danger, but I also think we're past that point. Taguba said the pictures exist, somewhere. I don't think he's lying. I don't think they can be forever suppressed. Best to expose the shame and show justice was done. If doing so would pose too much danger to the troops, then the troops should be immediately sent home, because then it's not at all clear what they're fighting for, anyhow, something that's already pretty goddamn murky enough. Are Americans who we say we are, or not? That's the question.

It Is Hard to a Illiterate Conservative

Gosh. It seems we are rebutted. "Spic" is not, you see, an ethnic slur, as we alleged, and we are poopyheads. Why?

It is Hard to a Liberal (very sic)

It is hard to be liberal.   This blogger recently got noticed by the blog Whiskey Fire....

Sadly, I must decline the honor.  My quoted article, was not in in response, to Sotomayor’s nomination of yesterday, 26 May this.   Rather, it was posted on 5 May

....

Say what you will, Stotomayor is no Scalia.    With such neo-conservative stalwarts as Jeffrey Rosen and Stuart Taylor, Jr.  how can I go wrong.    David Souter wasn’t much of a justice, but Sotomayor appears offer even less than Souter.    Doesn’t say much for the one’s vaunted judgment, does it?

But wait! None of that actually has anything to do with the fact that "spic" is an obvious slur. The only objection raised is that he was tossing around the slur weeks ago as opposed to days ago. Which is a fascinating argument that would be clever were it not completely inane. Here, for the record, is the original quote:

Not surprisingly, Obama appears to be focusing demographics  and not judicial factors.    Obama isn’t looking for a liberal Scalia.   He looking for a spic chic.   Enter Sonia Sotomayor....

But let's be charitable. It's entirely possible that the BitsBloggers are too dumb to know what a "slur" is in the first place; heck, there's even a sporting chance they think "spic" is pronounced "speek." Which would, if nothing else, explain the apparent failed attempt at rhyme.

Even  by wingnut standards these fellows are, well, let 's say, "especially challenged." I wouldn't bother with them, except they're too stupid to understand the code -- which is helpful for understanding the code. They're the response part of the GOP/Limbaugh call and response in regards to the attacks on Sotomayor. They hear the call, and they respond: "spic." That's how it works.

Bible Study With Erick Erickson

by va

Erick Erickson of Red State has taken his Peter Principle and hung it out for all to see, together. He is sad because "All of us, every single person regardless of political persuasion who reads this, have a tendency to deny our friends and fellow travelers at times." He wishes this were not so, especially in the case of Rush Limbaugh, who has lately on repeated occasions been denied. JUST LIKE CHRIST.

Peter, under pressure and fear, denied Christ not just once, but three times. Peter, though, feared death. The strain on Peter was great. The rest of us, though, typically fear the opinions of others.

There are those who like it when we feel guilty for associating with someone. More troubling, in the conservative movement and in the greater right-of-center coalition, there are many, many fellow traveller who would rather spend their time throwing their own under the bus than fighting the left.

[...]

The incidents of late with Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin, Dick Cheney, and others is why I raise this. Putting it bluntly, were these guys on the left, their fellow leftists would at best be cheering them on and at worst silently nodding along. There wouldn’t be any on that side rushing to the nearest microphone to condemn them.

Thus did the cock crow. Let those "moderates" who have denied Rush et al. feel duly ashamed, for they have made the Entire Conservative Movement seem as a Flock of Ugly Ducklings. Yea, those who would deny Rush only appear to be "fellow travellers" and so it is THEY who must be denied, like it says in the Bible somewhere.

Many of these weak minded fools are not really fellow travelers. Like a vulture flying in flock with swans, they benefit from the work the rest of us are doing to gain themselves credibility. The media plays along calling the vultures swans so others, they hope, see ugly ducklings around the vultures instead of swans.

In the original Greek, this would read, fap fap, fap fap fap, fappity fap fap fap. One cannot but hear a lot of fapping, of wings. But hark! For Erikson Erikson has a parable of appropriate shunning:

This is not to say there are some who should not be shunned. We should be mindful of William F. Buckley tossing out the Birchers. But therein lies part of the present burden on our movement. There are lots of creeping leftists in the conservative movement who want to exile large segments of the movement so the media will declare them the next William F. Buckley.

Be not confused, O flock. For while it may appear that Erikson is holding up William F. Buckley as a wise elder, he is in fact lamenting the exclusion of the Birchers back in the day. And so it was writ: what a fucking nutter.

The Cellar under the Subcellar

My general rule for the Bush years was to always assume that, bad as it seemed on the surface, deep down, it was always worse. This rule worked out pretty well, but it did leave me wondering just where it would end. When do you finally hit bottom? Where do you go after "appalled"? What was worse than Abu Ghraib, for instance?

Well, apparently, it was... Abu Ghraib. Even Hell has a cellar.

Photographs of alleged prisoner abuse which Barack Obama is attempting to censor include images of apparent rape and sexual abuse, it has emerged.

At least one picture shows an American soldier apparently raping a female prisoner while another is said to show a male translator raping a male detainee.

Further photographs are said to depict sexual assaults on prisoners with objects including a truncheon, wire and a phosphorescent tube.

Another apparently shows a female prisoner having her clothing forcibly removed to expose her breasts.

Detail of the content emerged from Major General Antonio Taguba, the former army officer who conducted an inquiry into the Abu Ghraib jail in Iraq.

Allegations of rape and abuse were included in his 2004 report but the fact there were photographs was never revealed. He has now confirmed their existence in an interview with the Daily Telegraph.

The graphic nature of some of the images may explain the US President's attempts to block the release of an estimated 2,000 photographs from prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan despite an earlier promise to allow them to be published.

Maj Gen Taguba, who retired in January 2007, said he supported the President's decision, adding: "These pictures show torture, abuse, rape and every indecency.

"I am not sure what purpose their release would serve other than a legal one and the consequence would be to imperil our troops, the only protectors of our foreign policy, when we most need them, and British troops who are trying to build security in Afghanistan.

"The mere description of these pictures is horrendous enough, take my word for it."

What a nightmare.

A Note on Bad Language

For those who think there may be too much bad language on this blog, consider yourselves fortunate you were not in my general vicinity yesterday afternoon, when I discovered, at the damndest possible moment, that the person who sold us our used minivan apparently did not include a jack handle in the purchase price.

Because at that particular moment I said some things that were somewhat impolite.

Nuts

Insanely busy. More so than anticipated.

But let me just say: this? Wasn't me; I just read P O'Neill. Best of Both Worlds is a great blog and Mr. P O'N deserves more readers. Highly recommended. Sharp, sharp stuff.

Wisdom Teeth

No. Really? John Yoo? You horrible shit?

President Obama’s nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor shows that empathy has won out over excellence in the White House. Sotomayor has sterling credentials: Princeton, Yale Law School, former prosecutor, and federal trial and appellate judge. But credentials do not an excellent justice make. Justice Souter, whom Sotomayor would replace, had an equally fine c.v., but turned out to be a weak force on the high court.

John Yoo is a disgusting human being. He is going to go down as one of the really spectacular shits of American history: the man who tried to make torture legally swell.

When I have some time tomorrow I'll get to why the "wise Latina" line that the Moron Chorus is croaking against her is very silly. Long story short, the idiots made me read the whole speech that line comes from, and now I am a fan of hers.