Death from Natural Causes Considered a Blessing in Iraq

From NPR's Morning Edition on Wednesday:

In Iraq people die every day from acts of violence: a roadside bomb, a suicide attack, a sectarian assassination. Though it's hard to lose a loved one no matter what, in this kind of world it's considered a divine gift when someone dies a natural death.

Another reason why the death penalty sucks.

The case of Troy Davis.
This man doesn't sound like a murderer to me.

If you agree, or just disagree with the death penalty, here's Amnesty International's action letter to the Georgia State Board of Pardons and Paroles.

Trust, but verify.

I can't count how many times I've heard politicians (particularly GOP presidential hopefuls) drop that Reagan quote in the last six months, but in the last six days, it's really peaked in the zeitgest. Now, even Democrats like Pat Leahy are using it.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Patrick Leahy at today's press conference on the latest subpoenas:

You know, I remember that sort of made-up saying, although I loved it, and President Reagan did it so well. I remember when he said, "Trust, but verify." It was a Russian slogan, even though nobody could find it.

But it's a wonderful slogan. And President Reagan was right on that, on arms control. He was right on that and so many other things.

So I consider myself a strong Reaganite here.

I trust, but I want to verify. And I want to verify under oath. I want to verify on the record. And I don't want to verify behind closed doors.

The Fourth Branch of Government...

... is the vice president's office?
Dick Cheney seems to think so.

Heckuva Job, Pete.

Peter Pace spent what was theoretically the pinnacle of his career as the scapegoat and whipping boy of Donald Rumsfeld.
So it's not exactly ironic that he goes out on the same note, with barely a whimper.

It's about time...

... moderate (and former "lifelong" Democrat) Mayor Michael Bloomberg admits he doesn't really want to be a Republican anymore.
Early pundit reaction basically translates this as the first step toward an independent run for the White House, a move that would greatly threaten the GOP nominee's chances and be another breakthrough election for third parties.
So there's really nothing not to like in this story, as far as I'm concerned ;)

The Continuing Shame of Abu Ghraib...

... the sad story of the rise and fall of General Antonio Taguba, by Seymour Hersh in The New Yorker.

Read this and weep.

Quote du Jour: Bob Schieffer

From "Face the Nation" today:

And finally today, I have never been much for third parties and independent candidates. For all its flaws, the old two-party system has brought us a long way in this country, and I'm slow to change.

But as I watched the Senate fumble around with the immigration bill, it made me wonder, has our two-party system lost the ability to get anything done?

We keep hearing that both parties are playing to their base. Republicans don't want to offend conservatives, so they block real immigration reform. Democrats fear the liberal left, so they don't want reform.

Result: nothing gets done on that or anything else. Yet polls show a majority of Americans want reform, want a guest worker program for illegal immigrants in this country, favor a way to make their status legal.

Who speaks for that segment of the electorate?

Certainly not Democratic and Republican leaders, who are so busy pacifying those so-called base voters.

You know, I hope we do see a third-party candidate in the presidential race next year, not because I favor anyone who might run as an independent, but because a third choice would force both the Republicans and the Democrats to move more to the center, to stop an independent from siphoning off moderate voters.

If both parties are forced to shift their hunt for votes to the center, rather than the edges of their parties, who knows?

They may find some common ground every once in a while, and actually get something done.

Congressional Quote du Jour: A Little Grammar Review

from Wednesday's House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform's Hearing on the GSA Administrator Investigation

REP. JOHN YARMUTH (D-KY): I have two questions. One is that you said, sometimes, you have a problem with tense. And basically there are only three tenses.

LURITA DOAN, GSA ADMINISTRATOR: No, that's not true.

YARMUTH: Past, present and future.

DOAN: No, there's, like, present perfective. There's present progressive, past progressive...

YARMUTH: In the time continuum -- that's grammar. But in the time continuum, there are only -- it either happened, it is happening or it will happen.

DOAN: Or it's ongoing as we talk.

YARMUTH: I'm trying to get a handle on exactly where the issue of tense might relate to whether or not you actually were speculating about what you might do, what you may have in fact done or what you were in the process of doing.

DOAN: Well, I thought I was using, like, a hortatory subjunctive right there, in which...

YARMUTH: OK.

Well, she was an English professor, who graduated from Vassar with honors in English... as the blogger linked above points out, maybe she does know her tenses after all.

You Don't Have to Be Crazy to Hear Voices...

... although, no doubt, it helps.
But that cheap joke aside, Daniel B. Smith, who was on The Colbert Report last night, has written what looks like a fascinating book on the phenomenon of auditory hallucination through the ages, centered around the story of his own father, an otherwise normally functioning attorney who heard voices throughout his life.

Muses, Madmen, and Prophets: Rethinking the History, Science, and Meaning of Auditory Hallucination

For the Time Being: The Current Strategy

'We have made a deal with the devil,' from crooksandliars.com, by Steve Benen

Apparently, U.S. forces have not only aligned themselves with dozens of Sunni militiamen, we’re now cooperating with sectarian militias, working outside the Iraqi security forces, that include insurgents that have attacked Americans in the past. What’s more, we’re allowing them to procure weapons and we’re granting them the power to arrest other Iraqis.

“We have made a deal with the devil,” said an intelligence officer in the battalion.

The dynamic is not without complications. Joshua Partlow’s report explained that “fighters on both sides appeared nearly identical,” using the same weapons and wearing similar clothes. “Now we’ve got kind of a mess on our hands,” a leader of a U.S. Stryker team remembered thinking. “Because we’ve got a lot of armed guys running all over the place, and it’s making it very hard for us to identify which side is which.”

Might these militias turn on the U.S. sometime soon? No one knows. Ali Hatem Ali Suleiman, a Sunni militia leader said, “Let’s be honest, the enemy now is not the Americans, for the time being.”

When September Ends: A "vast metaphysical question."

Remember when September was the moment of truth as to whether or not the surge plan was working in Iraq?
Tony Snow doesn't, as of today, although the press corps tried to jog his memory.

QUESTION: The president himself has said, not just in the Reuters interview but in others, that in September we will find out whether it's working. He's been blunt about it.

SNOW: Well, again, you'll be able to see what's going on at the juncture.

(CROSSTALK)

QUESTION: He has said "We'll know whether it's working in September."

SNOW: OK, but what I'm saying -- OK.

QUESTION: Is that what you think?

SNOW: No, I think my concern is that the expectation that seems to be raised is that suddenly, in September, there may be an expectation that the report says, "OK, all the problems are solved."

No. But what will happen in September is that we will have an opportunity to assess what's going on. Yes, we'll have an opportunity to say...

(CROSSTALK)

SNOW: ... whether it is working -- whether it is working. That does not mean that we'll have all the work. It will not be completely successful at that juncture. "Is working" where you have it in the motion of a present imperfect, I think, is fine. So...

(LAUGHTER)

QUESTION: Is it a moment, though, for judging -- I understand the difference between -- it's not going to be over then, but is it the right time to judge whether the new way forward is working?

SNOW: Again, we'll see. We'll have to take a look. I just...

QUESTION: That sounds like backpeddling.

SNOW: No, it's not backpeddling. It's just it seems to me to be such a vast, metaphysical question.

Is your kitchen soap breeding superbacteria?

Antibiotics have an important role in modern medicine, but apparently using them for the kitchen sink may not be such a good idea...

Actually, antibiotics are one thing that are probably best not taken in moderation...

Congressional Quotes du Jour: The Good, the Bad and the Dangerously Insane

Ron Paul (R-TX) from Tuesday's Republican Presidential Debate on CNN:

We have a lot of goodness in this country. And we should promote it, but never through the barrel of a gun. We should do it by setting good standards, motivating people and have them want to emulate us.

But you can't enforce our goodness, like the necons preach, with an armed force. It doesn't work.

Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) discussing the William Jefferson indictment on the House floor this week (Jon Stewart's moment of zen yesterday):

When we talk about the standard here, we all know that bringing dishonor on this House is a standard that all of us attempt to meet.

Trent Franks (R-AZ) in yesterday's House Armed Services Committee hearing on body armor, in which he suggests that the committee just suit up a couple of staffers in the sets of armor in question, find Jim Webb's gun and go down to the basement to do their own damned ballistics test. Hey, if NBC News can do it:

And it's just perhaps a little bit unusual, the suggestion, Mr. Chairman, that -- we've got a gun range in the basement of this building. And I think we ought to take a couple of sets of both sets of this body armor and have both sides have a sworn affidavit that this is indeed the exact armor that's going into the field, and that we all go down and have some experts there to make sure that the tests are fair, and witness this for ourselves.

Bill of Rights Monument Project

Here's another cool thing I just learned about: Juggler/comedian Chris Bliss started a nonprofit corporation dedicated to installing Bill of Rights monuments (with different designs/ sculptures in each city) in each of the state capitals, and elsewhere across America.

Play Pumps: just heard about this...

Someone had a good idea:
Children playing instead of their mothers or themselves spending hours a day carrying water from the river.

Welcome back, Jack

Dr. Kevorkian leaves prison after serving eight years.

Eight full years... and you think about some of the violent criminals who spend far less time than that, for crimes that don't seem to compare, either in degree or kind.

Death of Panda Released into Wild: Sad, but not surprising...

... the strategy of protecting the habitats in the first place seems the better and more cost-effective approach, as a WWF director notes.

New Sudan Sanctions: A Different Perspective

Not everyone agrees that the U.S.'s unilateral sanctions are the best approach. My sense remains that they are necessary, but the truth is, I don't have a clue what's actually going on over there, so how could I possibly say for certain?

This guy, the Sudanese ambassador, John Ukec Lueth, a former government dissident now representing the so-called unity government, spoke rather passionately to the National Press Club yesterday about his perspective:

We just want the people of the United States to know that their government is going the wrong way. The situation in Darfur is more complex. You know, don't run away with the issue of genocide. We do not like any woman to be raped. We do not like anybody to be killed. These are our brothers and sisters. We are more concerned about them than anybody who pretends to say that. If they have a fiduciary interest, they should stop that. They should think that, "These are our brothers. They are our brothers and our sisters."

And in the end, I was fighting the Sudanese government. I am back now. They embraced me, and we are trying to build a new Sudan. That's what we said. And as a result, leave the custody of our people in our hands. Leave the solutions of the problem in our hands and help us where we ask for.

We have asked for the African Union to come and help us. Let them come. We will determine on the ground how many troops we need. We will also provide them with what we have. And we will have the U.N. and the African Union, as well as the Europeans, to help us also.

We appreciate also the help that the United States has given us. They have spent $1.3 billion in Darfur and southern Sudan. We do not ignore that.

We must go on the right track. And this unilateral taking of decisions is not a good thing in diplomacy, in good neighborlihood. You know, even though a country is so small, like my country, it has its guts. It belongs -- it is -- we own that country. It is our home. And we cannot be overtrodden about it.

Anything else?

I appreciate you all coming. I am available any time. If you want to know more, I will give you more. I'm around here. I came here to do this. And I want people out there -- you are the medium for getting the truth out there. You know better of how things should be constructive and objective.

I believe most of you are objective. That's what made you come here this afternoon. And thank you for coming. Thank you very much.

The Cold War: We'll meet again, don't know where, don't know when...

Apparently, Putin has looked into GWB's soul and seen an imperialist aggressor. Or maybe he just wants an excuse to try out some new toys. Either way, it's not building a safer world for any of us.