I'll be curious to compare what I saw on my boob tube with what I can see online when the clip becomes available. Jayzys! I hate the tube. Just abhor it.

Pataki's aggressiveness is well suited to this kind of exchange. When did shouting down, or over, your opponent become an accepted form of debate? I honestly can't listen to this crap which seems to be governed by one rule: May the loudest, most aggressive speaker win. On an intellectual scale, you and Nadler had the best arguments, but if one used their reptilian brain to judge, Pataki scored all the points. He's a twitchy SOB, isn't he?

As for, Why are such glaring truths about the effects of our policies continuously ignored?

I really like Andrew Gebert's response from yesterday. In response to your observation regarding the cowardice on the right, Andrew wrote:

Terrorism represents a threat to state sovereignty in the most classic (and primitive) sense: an effective monopoly on violence. Such violence is central to the right's sense of value and legitimacy. Terrorism threatens this, something the right very genuinely fears. This is why it was so crucial that 9.11 be defined as war (so that the full measure of state violence could be brought to bear) rather than crime (requiring the socially negotiated response of law). Trying the 9.11 suspects in a normal court of law is seen as a threat to the right's grip on (legitimate) violence in ways that strangely parallel the original act of terror. — Andrew Gebert

This observation works on an array of levels. Violence is something the Right is quite comfortable with, and something - at the most fundamental level - defines sovereignty since the state does have a monopoly on it.

As muntaba observes, where any insubordination is dealt with harshly for fear of the house of cards coming down. And, this fear of insubordination goes to the very heart of an authoritarian world view. The house of cards, of course, being their authority. And, particularly, their authority to deploy violence.

If the violence deployed is insufficient to quash the insubordination, then the answer becomes more violence or a harsher form of violence. It is a cowardly, insecure, pig-ignorant response to extremism of any stripe. It is an irrational first choice among those too inadequate, and too intellectually limited to consider alternatives. And, the inadequacies and limitations of their followers is too well understood by those they choose to lead them.

Which brings me back to your interview with Ratigan. Pataki employs the verbal form of quashing insubordination. His verbal and physical aggressiveness - in the absence of an actual argument, or evidence to the contrary of your own and Nadler's - is the same strategy deployed in a different environment. He, obviously, can't display an overt physical aggression - as much as his twitchiness suggests he might like to - so he unleashes an argument style that mimics it.

I deliberately spelled his name wrong and straight away you were on to it rather than on to anything of importance.

Just like Barkleys vs Barclays, right?

Safe journey fellow traveler. If you are correct, history will eventually demonstrate that you are. If you aren't, you can take comfort in the oblivion of a retired username.

Be well.

Wow. Thanks for that.

With Few Strong Cases, Government Rushes Toward Plea Deals for Guantanamo Detainees
by Dafna Linzer
ProPublica - November 13, 2009 11:59 am EST

http://www.propublica.org/feature/few-strong-cases-govt-rushes-to-plea-deals-for-gitmo-detainees-1113

One defense attorney said federal prosecutors had so little on his client that they asked the detainee to suggest a charge he would be willing to plead guilty to.

Words fail.

It's really nice to see you here.

Ritualized sacrifice to warn off the demons of randomness and uncertainty. We'll try to find the most "appropriate" victim, the one we've successfully associated with that random event that so upset our equilibrium, and then through a ritual we will appease our need for the illusion of control. In the end, for many, it matters not at all that we might not have chosen our victim well, as long as the sacrifice goes off without a hitch. And, the ritual works, until it doesn't.

No Comment
Scott Horton
November 12, 1:31 PM
Government to Pay $3 Million in Unlawful Surveillance Suit

Establishing a valuable precedent in a case involving unlawful surveillance and botched state secrets claims, the Justice Department has named its price. Wired reports:

The U.S. has agreed to pay $3 million to a former government worker who accused officials with the CIA and State Department of spying on him with a bugged coffee table. Rather than comply with a court order to provide lawyers in the case with what the U.S. government says is classified information, the government has agreed to settle to end the 15-year-old suit....

http://www.harpers.org/archive/2009/11/hbc-90006086

Bugging a coffee table? If only the legs could talk.

Lots more. Link at sig.

Damn. More of that secret stuff that is so secret that even the illusions of non-secrecy have secrets of their own. This nested illusion stuff is a difficult function to imagine. I mean when it's so super-duper secret that you can't even risk imagining it, how can you cheer that illusionary team that never existed? No wonder I find the geometry of baseball difficult.

Yep. Which is why I'd rather focus on Major League B-Ball. I mean, LL who?

I figure if the Yankees can pull of the series then NYC is gritty enough to deal with KSM's trial. NY-ers are tough as nails. I ♥ NY Grew up upstate. Family still there. Cheering the Yankees was actually fun this year. What my grandfather used to call them is unprintable in polite company. ;-)

How about them Yankees...?

You're a special kind of treasure. I'm so glad you're in these threads.