Seen on the street in Kyiv.

Words of Advice:

"If Something Seems To Be Too Good To Be True, It's Best To Shoot It, Just In Case." -- Fiona Glenanne

“The Mob takes the Fifth. If you’re innocent, why are you taking the Fifth Amendment?” -- The TOFF *

"Foreign Relations Boil Down to Two Things: Talking With People or Killing Them." -- Unknown

“Speed is a poor substitute for accuracy.” -- Real, no-shit, fortune from a fortune cookie

"If you believe that you are talking to G-d, you can justify anything.” — my Dad

"Colt .45s; putting bad guys in the ground since 1873." -- Unknown

"Stay Strapped or Get Clapped." -- probably not Mr. Rogers

"The Dildo of Karma rarely comes lubed." -- Unknown

"Eck!" -- George the Cat

* "TOFF" = Treasonous Orange Fat Fuck, A/K/A Dolt-45,
A/K/A Commandante (or Cadet) Bone Spurs,
A/K/A El Caudillo de Mar-a-Lago, A/K/A the Asset., A/K/A P01135809

Tuesday, October 30, 2007

The Torture Presidency

“Coercion has opened the dialogue.” Sen. Christopher Bond (R-MO)

Yeah. I bet if I kick you in the nuts a few times, Chris, you'd be more than willing to talk to me about anything.

The relevant article, in today's NY Times, had this quotation about the Burmese crackdown:

"At a House hearing on the crackdown on dissent in Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, where protest leaders have reportedly endured waterboarding, Jeremy Woodrum, a director of the United States Campaign for Burma, said American conduct was thrown back at him, testifying: “People say, ‘Why are you guys talking to us about this when you have the mess in your own backyard?’ ” "

Translation: We have lost the moral high ground. This is something that I have been saying would happen, and I have been saying this since word first broke of the reliance on torture by the Bush Administration. Our own bad conduct is being thrown back in our faces by the repressive regimes of the world.

"Lost" is too generous a word, for it implies that there was a struggle of some kind, as when you lose a hill or a battle in a war. No, we not only surrendered the moral high ground, we, as a nation, willingly strolled away from it.

We are now morally aligned with some of the more repellent governments on the planet, governments that, in the past, we condemned for the same conduct we have engaged in. That is the shameful legacy of the Bush Administration.

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