Wages of Deceit - The Legacy of Cheney

"My sort of overwhelming view is that the enhanced interrogation techniques were absolutely essential in saving thousands of American lives and preventing further attacks against the United States, and giving us the intelligence we needed to go find Al Qaeda, to find their camps, to find out how they were being financed."

~ Dick Cheney on Foxnews Sunday yesterday.

The problem, among many of course, is that nobody believes Cheney, except the wingnuts, anymore. Thus by extension trust in the government in this program has been eroded. It may be the case that Cheney tortured vital lifesaving information out of someone that was unavailable by other means. It is dubious but possible. Irregardless, Cheney is simply not credible anymore. The fault is entirely his own.

Think about it this way. If Cheney is right and torture can be morally justified, explained anyway in Orwellian terms, or the harmful affects, whether physical, emotional, or psychological, managed by technocratic means, there is no trust to continue the torture regime. The Bush Administration, in the end, eventually disaffirmed torture after all. But if Cheney is right that torture is crucial, it would be ironic that one of the reasons for its demise is the dishonesty of Cheney. If he is right and only torture can save lives in some situations, then any lives lost will thus be lost due to Cheney’s pervasive deceit during the 8 long years of the Disaster that was known as the Bush Administration.

Conspiracy REVEALED!

We’ve all heard of the Death Panels in which government bureaucrats replace insurance industry bureaucrats in determining whether or not to pull the plug on Grandma. So far Republicans are united in the belief that (1) Insurance Industry executives should retain the right to pull the plug on Grandma and that (2) Democrats want to replace these insurance tycoons with government bureaucrats who would enact Nazi euthanasia programs for the old and infirm.

This seems to be an odd confluence of contradictions that first death panels do in fact exist and

some death panels are better than others. Well, let’s not be polite this is not odd, it is stupid. Stupid as it may be, apparently such distortions work and the rabble have been rouse to fight a fiction.

As bad as the Death Panels may seem, the crazy kept on coming when the good folks at the NRO and the Foxnews told us about the Death Book which would be used against veterans, possibility by dropping copies of the book on them from Black Helicopters flying high overhead or forcing the veteran read the god awful book, boring themselves to death in the process. Anything is possible, so why not this?

Low and behold it now appears that there is a method to the madness as it is not just the old an infirm but conservative activists that may be in the cross hairs of the Death Panel.

According the Grand Old Party, it is reasonable for registered Republicans to fear Insurance and Healthcare reform because the Government may withhold care from Republicans.

It is not just the old and infirm, it is Republicans too, which may be hit with a death ray from a death panel.

Ladies and Gentlemen, a conspiracy so grand and so large yet as to be almost unimaginable has been revealed before your very eyes. Millions of people are involved …..nameless, faceless bureaucrats, your doctors and nurses, and healthcare workers of all types!

Trust NOBODY!

Remember that provision of the Patriot Act that allow the FBI to infiltrate religious institutions like say Mosques or for that matter Churches? I’d say one might not be too cautious with any new members that may have joined your church in the last 7 ½ years or so.

You never know, they could be part of the Death Panel.

Palin Abandons Pro-Life Group in Time of Need?

Why is the news of Sarah Palin backing out on a speaking engagement at the last moment not surprising? Because she does it all the time! This time it is a Pro-Life rally that gets the shiv:

Alaska Family Council President Jim Minnery said it was news to him when a reporter told him that Stapleton was saying Palin had no knowledge of the speech, which his group has been promoting. He said organizers have been talking to Palin "contacts" for weeks about it.

"All we can do is take people at their word that we've worked with in the past," Minnery said. "We've been working for several weeks on the event, promoting it very heavily. It would be a grave disappointment if she doesn't show up but the show will still go on."

The event to rally the faithful for a ballot measure to requiring parental involvement in teenage abortion decisions will go on but without Sarah. I wonder why she backed out.

It seems that she is good at making a commitment, but not so good at fulfilling commitments. Anyone can make a commitment; that is the easy part. The fulfillment of that commitment is the hard part. 5 Colleges for a 4-year degree, abandoning her post as Oil and Gas Commissioner and later as Governor come to mind as examples. And don’t forget the other awesome speeches she blew off:

It would be at least the fourth time in recent months that an anticipated Palin speech has fallen through after Palin and her camp disputed they had ever confirmed it. That includes the brouhaha over whether she'd speak at the annual congressional Republican fundraising dinner in Washington, D.C., this summer.

I totally understand backing out of that Republican fundraising dinner, who wouldn't want to avoid that? This is different.

Doesn’t she know that this lack of resolve will only embolden the abortionists to do more abortions?

He that knoweth his master's will, and doeth it not, shall be beaten with many stripes.

How the did the Torture regime get engrained, adopted and praised amongst the Base of the GOP. Just 5½ years ago all Americans shared the belief that Torture was unjust and a practice that our Government should oppose vehemently.

Today that is not the case.

Republican Peter King is outraged and is playing the treason card on those who would bring accountability to those who sanctioned Torture and cast it upon the American polity. I would posit to say that the real outrage should be cast at those that turned the Nation to torture not those who would turn it away.

How did so many of the GOP come to approve of Torture? Maybe it is when you fuse religion and a political movement into a seamless identity, one covers for the other and in the process each is degraded by association with the other.

Let’s ask Fredrick Douglass what he thinks:

I assert most unhesitatingly, that the religion of the south is a mere covering for the most horrid crimes,—a justifier of the most appalling barbarity,—a sanctifier of the most hateful frauds,—and a dark shelter under, which the darkest, foulest, grossest, and most infernal deeds of slaveholders find the strongest protection. Were I to be again reduced to the chains of slavery, next to that enslavement, I should regard being the slave of a religious master the greatest calamity that could befall me. For of all slaveholders with whom I have ever met, religious slaveholders are the worst. I have ever found them the meanest and basest, the most cruel and cowardly, of all others. It was my unhappy lot not only to belong to a religious slaveholder, but to live in a community of such religionists.

Frederick Douglass: The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass An American Slave

Fredrick Douglass is describing an example where religion has been used to sanction cruelty and justify an injust political order. An extreme comparison maybe, but an apt example of the degradation that occurs when God gets fused with Government.

The quote above is by no means the harshest thing Douglass has to say about his former masters. He expounds more in the Appendix of his book.

One thing is clear, however, and that is the unmistakable fact that Peter King is a loser.

Just Following Orders - Move Along Now

Quote of the Day:

"It’s bullshit. It’s disgraceful. You wonder which side they’re on."

Peter King (R-NY), Ardent George Bush Enthusiast blasting efforts to investigate the torture regime that occurred during the reign of George the Incompetent.

What Comrade King wants us to understand is the maxim that holds that acts of the sovereign are, by definition, lawful in all respects and to question otherwise is treason against the State.

We have heard this before, of course. You are either with us or the terrorists comes to mind.

Peter King is a neo-con. From his perspective, he may well be acting rationally. Neo-cons believe that America is surrounded by enemies and that anything that limits a President ability to wage war or the peoples’ confidence in the President’s war power is the gravest peril.

So what to do when there has been a manifest abuse of power? The answer of course is to shout treason from the roof tops.

Oh……now I get it they were talking about the DEATH BOOK!

This is what happens when you miss a few days of wingnuttery, you are totally at risk to be unable to understand a Foxnews broadcast. In terms of healthcare and your health, this is a good thing.

I turned on the Foxnews on Sunday to see Chris Wallace conduct part of an incomprehensible interview with Tammy Duckworth Assistant VA Secretary yesterday. Little less than a few minutes later, I confoundedly reached for the remote control to mercifully change the channel. The discussion centered on a pamphlet and/or a website which may or may not have been updated in 2007 and/or 2009. I really had no idea what was going on, presumably it would have been more clear had I seen the beginning of the interview, but I hadn’t. The matter of discussion concerned Wallace greatly for some reason so he battered Duckworth over and over with a repetitive series of (seemingly) meaningless questions.

Or it would seem meaningless to me, fore I had not been following the latest wingnuttery. I have heard about the “Death Panel” which is an ominous group of dark clad bureaucrats who travel the country in black helicopters deciding who needs to be euthanized and who may live a little longer. Hard to believe, yes, but there could be Death Panels someday and that is all that counts. As frightening as these Death Panels may seem, there is a new threat, which may or may not be true, lurking amongst us.

Apparently this new threat is something known as a “Death Book” and this is what Wallace was worked up about on Sunday.

Now I am not quite sure what the Death Books is or how it is to be used, but if it is anything like the “Death Panel” the Death Book will either be dropped on the infirm by these black helicopters from great heights ending their live prematurely or it will be forced upon VA patients with the intent to “Bore them to DEATH!“ Either way, the “Death Book” will lower healthcare costs and that is why the nameless faceless bureaucrats must want it. This is about as plausible as any other scenario, so I am going with it. Now you can see why these people just keep getting more and more frightened.

I don’t really know what to expect next from these guys, but the more that I think about it, the more I realize that the wingers working at Foxnews must love their jobs. You don’t have to worry if what you say on air is true or not and you get to make up some crazy stuff. Always make sure you have a tape recorder while boozing it up at the Bar so you can capture the craziness before you blackout.

And remember the rule about wingnuttery: it doesn’t matter one bit if the wingnuttery is true or false. All that matters is that it feels good. All this carrying on about the “Death Book” must have felt real good to Chris Wallace.

Hit Tip / Jonah Goldberg

UPDATE: Hold on to your hats, because word on the street now has it that the "DEATH BOOK!" is part of a Nazi eugenics program started by George W Bush (which nobody knew about until now because it never existed).

I imagine the reason why wingers were not concerned about the Bush program, if it had existed was that Bush was so incompetent that there was no reason to believe that he'd ever be able to to implement the program. Now that we have a competent President, they are scared.

Frightening times brother.

There is Conservative and there is Crazy

Quote of the Day:

As long as individuals remain free to exit government-subsidized health care or to pay for more treatment than the government will cover, I not only don’t find it offensive for the government to set a limit on the procedures it will reimburse, I darn well hope it does. But perhaps the conservative critics mean to argue that the ultimate endpoint of the Democrats’ reform plans will be a government takeover of the entire health system—a scary proposition–and are using rationing as a rallying cry to gin up opposition.

~ Heather McDonald

I don’t know what point many conservative critics are trying to make either. I feel her pain.

But when you have republican members of congress, and I mean actual members of congress as opposed to the usual half-witted fringe, saying Obama is going to usher in a Stalinist and/or Nazi style Gestapo security force, send conservatives off to re-education camps and then implement euthanasia programs, it would not seem appropriate to give the conservative critics the benefit of the doubt these days.

Presumably these critics speak English and should be able to reduce their criticisms to clear and cogent arguments where one would not be in the position of guessing what argument the conservative critic may mean to make.

From what I understand from the Economist (a center right publication), the healthcare plan most likely to pass (if at all), is the approach endorsed by the Economist and one modeled on the Swiss system. This would hardly be a take over of the entire system but would rather use carrots and sticks via the tax code to increase participation in the existing system.

If use of the tax code in this manner is objectionable, critic should so say so. I am sure many would concur with objections of this sort. Maybe enough of the population would also concur.

But as it stands, if the rhetoric of convenience with death panels administered by nameless faceless bureaucrats in black helicopters is the best its champions can muster, conservatism as a serious concern, is seriously screwed.

Wingnut on Wingnut SMACK DOWN - Death Panels are REAL!

Over at RedState Blog Erick Goat F*&king Erickson is calling out the Heritage Foundation, a loony wingnut welfare organization for not being team players in the healthcare disinformation war:

Butler [a heritage foundation guy] is defending Emanuel and attacking Palin at the precise moment the Democrats are in full scale retreat on the issue because of Palin’s offensive. Sigh. These guys have the political instincts of amoebas. They cannot afford to hide behind being policy guys. That policy plays hand in hand with politics and political instincts must be brought to bear in this fight. If they cannot or will not, Heritage must shut these guys up before they cause great damage in the fight.

Interpretation: You are there to print the propaganda of the moment. Don’t forget it, a$$holes!

My favorite Heritage guy is Thomas Sowell who is flat out hilarious. Maybe Sowell is a Hoover guy instead of a Heritage guy but it really doesn’t matter because it is all really the same wingnut welfare operation.

Huck-MENTUM!

Looks like of Mittentum of Willard Romney has fallen to Huckmentum for the moment with Mike Huckabee leading the 2012 polling in a potential match against President Obama.

Not surprisingly Sideshow Sarah comes in last.

Headline of the Day:

Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court!

If Orrin Hatch by chance reads this headline he’ll surely rejoice at least till he clicks on the link.

Quote of the Day:

A “dark chapter in the department’s history. It’s behind us.”

~ Justice Department lawyer John Tyler describing Alberto Gonzales’ tenure at the head of the Department of Justice.

The context of the quote is that this DOJ official wants judge to dismiss a class action over politicized hiring decisions during the Bush years. There are 100s of potential plaintiffs who were passed over for positions at DOJ for Monica Goodling types who may be eligible to join the suit.

Word of advice: staffing the government with Michael Browns and Monica Goodlings leads to poor results.

Beware of Concepts and Panels and other Deadly Stuff like that

Quote of the Day II:

Government "panels" making "rulings" over your body: Acceptance of that concept is what counts.

~ Mark Steyn, a right wing NRO blogger covering for Sarah Palin’s death panel deceitfulness.

Now that the fake issue of Death Panels has been raised and is infecting the lunatic fringe, the gate keepers of the mob have to present the lunacy in the most positive light. Hence "The Death Panel" may no longer be an actual eugenics program but rather relates to the scary proposition that government bureaucrats may replace insurance industry bureaucrats in some health care decisions.

Oh, those scary bureaucrats and their panels and concepts and such!

But not so long ago, the GOP showed great confidence in government employees, presumably panels of these employees, to safeguard your most basic human rights should you meet up with the WATERBOARD.

This is actually the Republican position on Torture.

The republican position is that government bureaucrats with a well defined regulations and legal opinions can effectively determine who to “detain” without judicial review and then can administer “Enhanced Interrogation” practices formerly known as torture to these “detainees” without violating legal prohibitions on torture. In essence government bureaucrats with adequate procedures and expertise and safeguards can render torture a safe and effective interrogation practice. Just trust'em.

We have been told that one should not question the government over torture (and spying) but now we are told that it is life threatening to trust government employees (or even doctors according to Sideshow Sarah Palin) on issues of health care.

Summing things up: government panels making “rulings” over ones body when it comes to torture are good and government panels on health care are inherently dangerous to liberty. Got that?

How much longer before the NRO starts warning the people about the Black Helicopters? We have death panels and birth certificates, they certainly are scary. But helicopter are worse, especially if the black helicopters enforce the death panel decrees using death rays.

Look at the evidence of this winger going of the deep end.

FYI: this is not Mark Steyn.

The Big Government Ratchet is coming to get you!

Quote of the Day:

This is a big-stakes battle: If we cross this bridge, there's no going back. Being "moderate" is not a good strategy. It risks delivering the nation to the usual reach-across-the-aisle compromise that will get Democrats far enough across the bridge that the Big Government ratchet effect will do the rest.

~ Mark Steyn, a right wing blogger describing America slide into Socialism

If you think about it, we’ve been warned about the slide into social for 75 odd years and have been told that our way of life is under dire peril of imminent collapse. Yet it never seems to happen.

If you go back a little further in the history books, you’ll see that this nation fought a war over the issue of property rights in human chattel (i.e., slavery) in which over a million people were killed or maimed. Think about all the sacrifice.

I have a hard time understanding how anyone can buy into the conspiracy theory that America is becoming a socialist country. If this is true, the socialism movement has been a huge failure because private industry is still alive and well and remains so (notwithstanding the Bush-league incompetence of the last administration, - we are still paying for that) after every so-called ratchet.

More Craziness..... a sign of the coming Apocalypse?

What will be the next great Crazy meme to infect the inmates of the wingnut-O-sphere? Recent memes include the one that Radical Transnationalist Harold Koh would replace awesome United States law with effete international law and/or scary Sharia Law despite having no power or desire to do so. There has been the birth certificate and death panel craziness. How about this sign of the apocalypse prophesized in the Book of Revelation:

The sixth angel poured out his bowl on the great river Euphrates, and its water was dried up to prepare the way for the kings from the East. Revelation 16:12,

along with this headline:

Iraq Suffers as the Euphrates River Dwindles

The shrinking of the Euphrates, a river so crucial to the birth of civilization that the Book of Revelation prophesied its drying up as a sign of the end times, has decimated farms along its banks, has left fishermen impoverished and has depleted riverside towns as farmers flee to the cities looking for work.

Surely this should get some of the predictable people worked up. What’s not to like about end of times? All the wingers need to do is to connect this sign of doom to the current administration.

On the bright side, maybe a portion of the Republican base will just disappear one day and take some of the craziness with them.

On Conspiracy Theories and Craziness

“If people decide they’re going to deny the facts of history and the facts of science and technology, there’s not much you can do with them. For most of them, I just feel sorry that we failed in their education.”

Fmr Senator Harrison Schmitt, the pilot of the lunar lander during the last Apollo mission empathizing about Crazy Moon Landing Conspiracy Theorists.

Is this so-called astronaut (if in fact astronauts exist) saying that conspiracy theorists are products of a failed education? Since we have been to the moon six times, one would have to think the answer is affirmative.

Would the same be true for other conspiracy theorists like the former Governor of Alaska?

Now that I think about it, Sarah Palin did seem to burn through several schools to get her four year degree. A dozen or so colleges, or maybe closer to a half dozen, I think.

Say what you want, but the Senator is more charitable than I am. At some point in their lives these conspiracy theorists are going to have to step up and take personal responsibility for the decisions that they have made. You just can’t keep blaming others for your mistakes. If you were asleep at the switch during your school years and believe crazy made up stuff, then there is not much we can do about it.

Quote of the Day:

"Dick Cheney is back in the news. ... He's talking about his memoirs. Cheney said that George Bush stopped taking his advice during the second term of their Administration. And in Bush's defense, I think it's pretty natural to lose trust in a guy who shoots his friends in the face." ~ Jimmy Fallon

Watch your back Junior. If you turn your back on him, expect Dick to do what comes naturally to him.

Complementary Quotes for the Day

Democrats are beginning to notice that opponents of health care reform have discredited themselves. They ramped up much too quickly. When smaller, conservative groups Astroturfed, they inevitably brought to the meetings the type of Republican activist who was itching for a fight and who would use the format to vent frustrations at President Obama himself. There were plenty of activists who really wanted to know about health care, and some who were probably misinformed -- scared out of their chairs -- to some degree, but the loudest voices tended to be the craziest, the most extreme, the least sensible, and the most easy to mock. [em-mine] ~ Ambinder

This makes sense. There are a lot of crazy people out on the lunatic fringe. If they are getting the spotlight, they maybe dragging the respectable center down to their level. But just who may Ambinder be referring to when he talks of loud, crazy and easy to mock?

How about the ever vigilant defender of Real Americans who recently denounced the sinister albeit fake plan to euthanize the disabled like her youngest son by:

"Obama's 'death panel' so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their 'level of productivity in society,' whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil."

Sarah Palin bringing on the Krazy.

Now I don’t know if Ambinder was referring to Sideshow Sarah, aka the Wasilla Wingnut, but that is who obviously comes to mind quickly when discussing the loudest and craziest voices which are easy to mock.

All this craziness takes me back to the goods ol’days just before Y2K when the right wing conspiracy chatter centered around Bill Clinton using Y2K, Martial Law, and Troops to overthrow the Republic and declare himself King. Oh, for simpler times.

I wonder if the Wasilla Wingnut is on the record somewhere discussing her concerns with the pending doom sure to follow Y2K.

Orrin Speaks!

Orrin Hatch clearly and concisely tells the world why he voted against judge Sotomayor:

"In their charter, the people of Rhode Island state:

'In the words of the Father of his Country, we declare that ‘the basis of our political system is the right of the people to make and alter their constitutions of government; but that the constitution which at any time exists, till changed by an explicit and authentic act of the whole people, is sacredly obligatory upon all.'

The Constitution belongs to the people. The people established it, and only the people can change it. This essential and unquestionable principle would be a farce if the people could change the words, but judges could change the meaning of those words. Judges would still control the Constitution, and their oath to support and defend it would really be an oath to support and defend themselves. America needs judges who are guided and controlled not by subjective empathy that they find inside themselves, but by objective law that they find outside themselves.

I take a generous approach to the confirmation process. I believe that the Senate owes some deference to a President’s qualified nominees and that qualifications for judicial service include not only legal experience but, more importantly, judicial philosophy. A judicial nominee must understand and be committed to the proper role and power of judges in our system of government. Evidence for a nominee’s judicial philosophy must come from her entire record.'

This is the best Orrin could do in explaining why Sotomayor is unfit for the job (while Harriet Miers is eminently qualified).

I am not quite sure what the reason is with the whiff of sexism and elitism in the air, though he assures us he has one. And now it is safe to say that it is time to move on until the next time Orrin is called upon to share his wisdom.

It will be about as insightful as this time. Count on it.