Letters to the Editor
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@bystander
(I ducked out of here for most of the day -- I had homework to do -- LAUGH)
FWIW: Something found at CrookedTimber. (Paraphrasing) "If you're at the stage where you are thinking about a PhD, go lie down until the feeling passes." Economically/Financially speaking, it's good advice. The empirical research backs that up. Unfortunately, I know that, too. C'est la vie, non?
It's good advice. I took it for about a year after my masters. Sadly, the feeling didn't go away and, after another year of doing the whole application/decision thing, here I am.
Some people call this sort of thing madness. Others call it a calling. For me, it depends on the day. ;-)
You're welcome for the encouragement. Hope you're around in 2-3 years to send some of it back when I'm thinking the same thing you are right now!
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@bystander's post to RMP
Excerpteded from your quote from TPM:
Senate Republicans want to help unclog the gridlock they can stop blocking legislation. It's not rocket science.
Well, it's spin of course. The thing is, why aren't the Democrats out there saying what TPM is in response? Why aren't they bringing up the fillibuster problem every time anyone asks them anything about not getting much done? Sure, the poll cited by Broder says twice as many folks blame the Republicans as the Democrats, but if NOTHING gets done when the vast majority of the American public just hears the same old story about how the Dems are now the majority but they're not getting anything done, is it possible for those numbers to hold?
I'm sad to say that most people in this country probably forget all the procedural stuff that goes on in Congress as soon as they stop having to take Civics lessons. They know there's politics involved, but they don't bother themselves with the details. Trent Lott is still right -- it's still working for them. And it works even better for them when they've got Dems voting for things like Kyl-Lieberman and the absolutely absurd MoveOn censure.
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"Sweet Fanny Adams"
Consider that one stolen!
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Wonder if Glenn will mention this tomorrow
Editorial, On Torture and American Values
New York Times, Published: October 7, 2007
Once upon a time, it was the United States that urged all nations to obey the letter and the spirit of international treaties and protect human rights and liberties. American leaders denounced secret prisons where people were held without charges, tortured and killed. And the people in much of the world, if not their governments, respected the United States for its values.
The Bush administration has dishonored that history and squandered that respect. As an article on this newspaper’s front page last week laid out in disturbing detail, President Bush and his aides have not only condoned torture and abuse at secret prisons, but they have conducted a systematic campaign to mislead Congress, the American people and the world about those policies.
After the attacks of 9/11, Mr. Bush authorized the creation of extralegal detention camps where Central Intelligence Agency operatives were told to extract information from prisoners who were captured and held in secret. Some of their methods — simulated drownings, extreme ranges of heat and cold, prolonged stress positions and isolation — had been classified as torture for decades by civilized nations. The administration clearly knew this; the C.I.A. modeled its techniques on the dungeons of Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the Soviet Union.
The White House could never acknowledge that. So its lawyers concocted documents that redefined “torture” to neatly exclude the things American jailers were doing and hid the papers from Congress and the American people. Under Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, Mr. Bush’s loyal enabler, the Justice Department even declared that those acts did not violate the lower standard of “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.”
That allowed the White House to claim that it did not condone torture, and to stampede Congress into passing laws that shielded the interrogators who abused prisoners, and the men who ordered them to do it, from any kind of legal accountability.
Mr. Bush and his aides were still clinging to their rationalizations at the end of last week. The president declared that Americans do not torture prisoners and that Congress had been fully briefed on his detention policies.
Neither statement was true — at least in what the White House once scorned as the “reality-based community” — and Senator John Rockefeller, chairman of the Intelligence Committee, was right to be furious. He demanded all of the “opinions of the Justice Department analyzing the legality” of detention and interrogation policies. Lawmakers, who for too long have been bullied and intimidated by the White House, should rewrite the Detainee Treatment Act and the Military Commissions Act to conform with actual American laws and values.
For the rest of the nation, there is an immediate question: Is this really who we are?
Is this the country whose president declared, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall,” and then managed the collapse of Communism with minimum bloodshed and maximum dignity in the twilight of the 20th century? Or is this a nation that tortures human beings and then concocts legal sophistries to confuse the world and avoid accountability before American voters?
Truly banning the use of torture would not jeopardize American lives; experts in these matters generally agree that torture produces false confessions. Restoring the rule of law to Guantánamo Bay would not set terrorists free; the truly guilty could be tried for their crimes in a way that does not mock American values.
Clinging to the administration’s policies will only cause further harm to America’s global image and to our legal system. It also will add immeasurably to the risk facing any man or woman captured while wearing America’s uniform or serving in its intelligence forces.
This is an easy choice.
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Alexander Cockburn on EFPs in Iraq
This article by Alexander Cockburn was published in the Feb. 16 LA times. It's entitled "In Iraq Anyone Can Make a Bomb" and those homemade bombs include EFPs: http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-cockburn16feb16,0,6714688.story?coll=la-opinion-center
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“This is not my beautiful Right.”
Into the blue again / after the money´s gone
Once in a lifetime / water flowing underground.http://nytimes.com/2007/10/08/opinion/08krugman.html
The New York Times
Monday, October 8, 2007
SAME OLD PARTY
by Paul KrugmanThere have been a number of articles recently that portray President Bush as someone who strayed from the path of true conservatism. [...] Mr. Bush hasn’t strayed from the path at all. On the contrary, he’s the very model of a modern movement conservative.
[...]
Now, as they survey the wreckage of their cause, conservatives may ask themselves: “Well, how did we get here?” They may tell themselves: “This is not my beautiful Right.” They may ask themselves: “My God, what have we done?”
But their movement is the same as it ever was.
- - Paul Krugman
The "Stop Making Sense" live version of "Once in a Lifetime":
http://youtube.com/v/Kw54-rCIrPs -
Darn! You beat me to it sysprog
Krugman's column is beautiful.
I wonder if it's a subtle response to Brook's deep philosephering aabout intricacies of conservatism last week in the same page?