Floating over the coral… 14 May 2009
Posted by marisacat in 2010 Mid Terms, Culture of Death, DC Politics, Inconvenient Voice of the Voter, WAR!.trackback
Corals and mangrove grow at the protected Bunaken National Marine Park in Manado, Indonesia. Rising water temperatures, sea levels and acidity are threatening to destroy the vast Coral Triangle in South East Asia, the World Wildlife Fund said in a new report. [Romeo Gacad/Agence France-Presse -- Getty Images]
IOZ (drawing from this NPR report):
[T]he United States has always tortured. The sudden decision of the Obama administration to air its predecessor’s dirty laundry concomitant with its denigrating the possibility of seeking to prosecute either the authors of torture policy or the practitioners thereof indicates only that the current regime seeks to return the practice of torture to the legal demimonde where it is practiced circumspectly and in a manner that allows it to be denounced when made public, i.e. a return to the status quo ante. Note that even as Obama “ended torture,” with a few loops of the executive pen, he reaffirmed the procedure known as extraordinary rendition, which is nothing other than the venerable American tradition of hiring others to do our dirty work. The new focus on so-called contractors as the main advocates for torture is part of the same effort, to make non-policy policy, always maintaining a degree of deniability, something the clumsier Bush administration was never able to accomplish.
A paragraph that gave me a headache, in all its curlicues not unlike our wink and nod policies. We avert our eyes.. and all is fine. Aversion therapy.
Hallelujah! and Amen! and Praise be Jesus!
Tapper has a story up tonight on the military tribunals issue…
Just booked italia tickets… I’m really going..
not sure what to think.
Bravo!
Have to get passport renewed… like, tomorrow.
I’m worried about the kitties… already.
No one you trust to care for them in their home?
Plenty of people to trust… not looking forward to the grudge. Since I’ve had them, I’ve never been away for more than 5 days – and that’s rare. 15 days is a different thing. According to my roomates, they gather by the door about 3-5 minutes before I come home every day… meaning they smell me from the street – and that makes them really happy. 15 days is a long time. I don’t want to make them sad.
oh I know what you mean. Thankfully Baby was always so happy to see me again… she would forgive pretty quickly. What she REALLY hated was that for just two nights or so, I would put her in boarding at the vet. Make sure hse had a nicer, bigger top cage and make friends with the person who took care of the boarders… and fortunately he did like her… but still, she moped.. Take her own favorite foods with her and a couple of toys that smelled like the house and used pillow case from my bed.
But she hated it… Once when I went to pick her up, the tech broght her and her carrier to me and said he had never seen a cat so happy to know the designated human had come. It was almost embarrassing.
My roomates will be here to care for them, and I’ll ask their mother, my ex to check in a few times. While I have no doubt that Lucy will be fine with that, Gizmo is really sensitive, and gets badly depressed when I’m not around. When I go to work, he picks up my dirty socks in his mouth, runs around with them, chews them, and meows at the top of his head. I’m not privy to animal psychology, but he doesn’t do that when I’m home. And he also gets angry at me when I haven’t come home.
one of the worst I ever saw was when my mother first crashed and was in hospital for 32 days … Her cat Maggie hid for 3 weeks. I never even found where. Occasionally a little food would go in the night. Then a few days before mother came home, she crawled from wehre ever she was, to me. And smelled like a dirty athletic sock. No bathing no caring for herself. When I got mother home and in bed a few days later, she crawled out again and got on the bed and did not leave for days.
This cat was weened too soon. I’m his mother & he’s never replaced that. I got him when he was about 4 weeks old, abandoned by his mother. And because I [as an ignorant human] never told him no when he suckled, he still believes that I am a teat! It doesn’t matter if no food comes from licking my clothing or skin… I am simply a teat. Mix that with his emotional relationship with me over his nearly 6 year life, and… well.
My first expedition in parenting – I failed miserably.
oh well leaving mother too soon does make a difference. when we had litters, 2 of them, we kept the kittens with the mother cat for 3 months.. They, father and mother, were both here and they box trained the kittens.
And shit – 6 weeks out I got the tickets for $761. High season. Non-stop NYC to Rome.
Is that high or low these days?
I have no idea, but the last time I flew high season to the Mediterranean it was about $1,000 with a flight change in Paris… so I kind of feel like that’s a deal – especially given that I don’t have any connecting flights.
Owen Paine over at SMBIVA has a to the point post on the Marcy Winograd run agaisnt Jane Harmon.
And… a comment rounded it all off:
And, as a bonus, they can point to the defeat as proof the Democrats (in present formulation) are as far left as the public want them.
Box training was never a problem… neither of my cats [both infant rescues] have ever had box issues… They’re just very attached… to me. They actively try to prevent me from leaving the house. They’re smart as shit. If I ever take out luggage to pack, they know & they immediately ignore me – grudge in advance. When I put on my coat to go out, they know, and Lucy tries to block the door…. crazy kitties
the little mother cat here had arrived as a rescue, someone found her and brought to the local pet groomer near us… who would take in rescues. SHE arrived with suckling issues.. but I noticed as she had her own litters, that sort of drifted off. I am all for cutting down on the pet population, not having homeless cats and dogs, etc. and euthanised and so on.. but we do end up with stunted critters.
Very true. For whatever reasons my female cat doesn’t have those issues, though she was abandoned at a couple of weeks. My male cat never recovered. The only reason my female cat licks me is to clean me – armpits and such. But when Gizmo licks… it’s entirely different. He doesn’t care what he licks – so long as it is something I’m wearing, a blanket in proximity to me, something that smells like me, or my skin, he purrs like a hoover and, despite him being an overgrown monster, behaves like he is a suckling kitty. It’s kind of insane. He reminds me of a typical boy.
FWIW (less then the cost of an expresso!) Balz has a piece up on Nancy… and the progression of statements. Wonder what “let’s move forward” pretzel thinks of it all.
At the very least a lot of squirming in DC. And lying.
According to whom?
hmm Gareth Porter on McChrystal:
You almost have to laugh: we’re still at, “Wouldn’t be prudent”.
hmmm Chalmers Johnson reviews a new book out on our global military base sprawl: The Bases of Empire: The Global Struggle Against U.S. Military Posts
These via a BBC comment thread
on Obama and Gitmo trials:
Obama is just a far better ‘brand’ than Bush.
LOL Back when Sully was 26, during the GE in 1992, and much smarter than he is now, he said the same of Clinton: “He’s a better Bush”.
LOL. Somebody popped me a lunchtime treat:
Panetta basically calls Pelosi a liar.
Popcorn!
Oh this poor man… They just kept throwing mney at him, so he took it! And he’s finlly found love through financial catastophe!
I read that during the night… the economics reporter for the NYT?
I thought it was heart stopping.
I mean – it’s certainly sad, but I can’t believe the level of denial of the upper middle class. And then the financial media has the gall to blame the financial crisis on ‘those poor minorities who shouldn’t have bought homes in the first place’.
Wonder what the house is worth now…. 2004, they bought not too far off the top of the market… roughly.
Also from what I have read, if you walk on your original mortgage it is a very different ball game in terms of your credit than if you walk on a re-fi.
[not that I understand these things]
I’m sure it’s come down some, but given the DC market, I don’t think you’ll see a CA or NV style collapse in areas like Silver Spring. My brother bought a house in Baltimore in 2003 and his is actually worth more now than it was then [though that is not true of people who bought condos, etc. downtown]. He’s also put a lot of work into though…
Anywho, have no idea what the difference would be for original vs. re-fi.
Also – something I’ve noticed reported recently on Calculated Risk, it appears that there are far more prime than sub-prime loans now in default. It’s people like this reporter who are defaulting on their mortgages, not the lower income minorities.
Frankly, from this whole mess, I sure as hell hope the federal government gets rid of the mortgage interest deduction. Not only is it incentive to take out loans that one can’t cover, it also give’s incentive to the re-fi business as attested to in the article, whereby you run up $50,000 in cc debt and then re-fi your house to make the interest tax deductible. Utter bullshit if you ask me.
we are gettign now what is called “unemployment foreclosures”
Can’t wait for commercial RE to tank – or whatever is the looming nightmare.
I say float us to Guam NOW… LOL get it over with!
commercial real estate is what sends us into the great depressio for reals. apparently the little banks and credit unions, who were not as wrapped up in the derivatives bullshit like the megabanks, are heavily invested in CRE. when that goes, and the wave of prime foreclosures starts to bite everyone else left standing, we’ll get those bank runs.
ugh. and the state cutting anything helpful at the same time.
And the foundations and charities pulling back. As one reporter put it, for a couple of decades, the government, in all its parts and pieces, has consistently pulled back on social welfare, of all sorts. Foundations, charities and churches filled in. Now, less and less.
Meet the Press: DNC’s Kaine, RNC’s Steele. Roundtable with Haass, Noonan, Brownstein, Meacham.
This Week: Sens. Kyl, Webb. Roundtable with Liz Cheney, Steve Schmidt, Carville, Vanden Heuvel, George Will.
Fox News Sunday: Notre Dame’s Rev. McBrien, National Director of Priests for Life Rev. Pavone, Sen. McConnell
Face the Nation: Rep. King, ACLU’s Romero. Roundtable with Dickerson, Biskupic.
State of the Union: OMB’s Orszag, Rep. Boehner, Sen. Chambliss
that lineup’s like getting an enema with gasoline administered by a nurses assistant smoking a cigar.
It’s so bad.
All it lacks is DiFi.
Just in case I forgot to mention it, there are some desperately stoopid people over at the Big Orange Kool-Aid Factory.
Huh. I just stopped over there to gawk and ran into this…
EPA clears 42 of 48 mountain top removal permits for approval
Change! CHAAAANGE!
And remember, thru the ages, Obama TRIIIIED… he did! Over and over they will tell us, ”Look Not At What He Did Not Do, Remember Only That He TRIIIIED!”
It was bound to be a bad story for Appalachia under Ob and Oblings. The NYT declared the region racist. I don’t care whether it is or not. But it is “sacrifice land”. That should end.
oh AND they tried to tell us for the umpteenth time it mattered, (how?) that Jackson was black or part black. WHO GIVES A SHIT? She was lousy in NJ and is lousy now.
Sharks being jumped all over the place.
Forked tongues in both mouths.. all sides of both mouths… via Tapper:
Apparently there’s a huge political meltdown in the UK over MPs’ expenses – a crisis that one CDN reporter described as one of the worst threats to democracy (or some such wording) that he’s ever seen. I guess the amount spent by an MP to get a light bulb screwed in at their home matters more than your gov’t torturing and supporting an illegal war – or something.
well I think – from what i have read – they were using their office expense monies to maintain their homes.
Of course here they just use their PAC money. One is a budget from the state for official needs – and one is money given by lunatic supporters.
Robin Blaser’s obit’s now been written – only the Canadian press seems to have noticed – I only found out yesterday
The Truth is Laughter
RB, The Holy Forest, p. 295 (1st gathered in Pell-Mell 1981-1988)
oh thanks for posting that Arcturus…
From the first link at Globe and Mail… LOL last I looked Gino and Carlo’s was the same… only the slightly set apart area at the back held aging Italian peacocks… keeping an eye out. And few youthful poets about.
hmm Just saw this in the TruthOut email….
May they all claw away…
‘Hellish’ torture images shock US lawmakers—2004!
http://www.freespeechzoneblog.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=4287
Sheehan’s on Flashpoints right now, talking about La Nan & the briefings- (roughly): ‘she’s either stupid, or a liar – why not split the diff & call her a stupid liar?’
Schumer Scores 2 for NY Jewish Mafia
Obama of Soft Buttocks ,
Retainers and Hacks of every stripe rejoice.
Life Inc.
Scahill has a piece up at C-Punch on torture…
It’s been clear for years, what the US Gov (no matter who runs it) is afraid of, is brutal depiction of sexual torture getting out (and th e more i read, this too likely ties into the selection of McChrystal and where he has been and what he has done).
But Ob says the photos are “not sensational”.
I think we are way past political pragmatism here. Which has been an over used fig leaf. Along with “unprecedented” and “historical”.
Scahill profiles several cases, one Omar Deghayes, a case being investigated by the Spanish court, who was arrested in Lahore Pakistan following 9/11
Scahill indicates in the last section of the article, that the worst of the torture teams “the IRF” are still operating at Gitmo.
Oh but we are closing that so no worry. Right?
“forced petrol and benzene up the anuses of the prisoners.”
ugh, now I feel guilty for the gasoline enema joke above. Who the fuck DOES that to another helpless human being?
It’s been clear for years, what the US Gov (no matter who runs it) is afraid of, is brutal depiction of sexual torture getting out
Uncle Sam the tough cop, Uncle Sam the soldier,
Uncle Sam the Hero, yeh it sold for a while.
Uncle Sam, the in-to-leather-sadist
rendering death by sodomy in the basement ?
In such a lovely home?
Now what will become of Aunt Israel?
Too funny!
Tom Ricks says Ob was rolled by his generals. Twice. So what is new? They are IN CHARGE, the mil is… and they are rolling us downhill and into a gully.
This is the danger of a president with no personal power. None.
They slapped him on the prow of the ship, and said SMILE!
Ricks dresses it up for the public… more funnies:
He’s getting rolled to gain power. Or tit for tat. Or getting used to being rolled. Or he agrees. Getting rolled for pragmatism. Historical rolling. Unprecedented rolling (well that it’s not!)
Teh One just named Republican Gov. Jon Huntsman from Idaho to be Ambassador to China. Anybody know anything about him? Too lazy just yet to google.
only thing i’ve been able to figure out is that huntsman is fluent in mandarin, adopted a chinese daughter, did his mormon mission in taiwan in the 80s, and was an ambassador to singapore for bush the elder. nothing about his view re. china, asia or taiwan, although i’m guessing he’s in line with the overall corporate pro-biz in china angle. if he’s anything bus dismissive of taiwan (much less its democracy) it’ll be a pleasant surprise.
the mormons can be irritating as all hell, but to their credit they do actually get outside the american bubble on mission, and learn languages. crazy motherfuckers riding bikes here, what with the traffic and the muggy heat.
Thanks for the info …
I had to turn the news off. They’re fawning over the Op Rescue nutters in Indiana, and actually broadcasting those horrible posters as they stand in front of the zealots.
oh, and huntsman is from utah, not idaho. recently made some waves by backing civil unions in idaho, as a GOPer.
Weakland says he didn’t know priests’ abuse was crime
wow. just wow.
I feel sorry for this guy for having been saddled with a name like Rembert Weakland. Think he got beat up a lot in the fourth grade?
Was It the National Security Bureaucrats Who Forced Obama to Hold on to the Torture Photos?
If that’s so, where were they when Bush was driving the country over a cliff? Oh, that’s right … many of them AGREED with Bush/Cheney. Or as Dean says, maybe this mighty beast was run over by Bush/Cheney, which raises the question about just how powerful and smart they really are:
I think all pics of Jesus’ torture on the cross should be banned. What do you say, Obama?
Even with Obama in charge, anti-war Democrats powerless
Death in Libya, betrayal in the west
Doing Gaddafi’s dirty work.
CIA Outsourced Development of Interrogation Plan
New, useful word! “metarded”
As we wave from the dock:
Secretary of State who?
Obama’s face is all over everything. His cabinet is invisible.
I see that one of his readers had to point out to this meathead that this would be a SECOND trip to Africa, since Egypt is IN Africa.
lol: Good Democrats MUST Back Speaker Pelosi by buhdydharma
LOL. Why? Because according to DK’s
“recommended” list,
I mean the WhOoop’s! Fucked Again Gang hasta- maybe after a consult, then downing their pasta ,
they just gotsta sort out their narrative on La Nan.
Faye Raye? Dorothy?
Swarmed by every gorilla and flying chimp in DC?
Or Stealthy Super- Dupo- Hero-ette?
Aquawoman is it? For La Nan?
She just happened to be in the underwater neighborhood
when she heard about the Waterboarding?
hmm Perrin writes an epitaph for The Nation. Years overdue and if I may say so, far too nice – still. A nice slam or two at Katrina who should be removed or never have been allowed to ascend….. tho it hardly matters anymore. And a good slam or two at another particularly unctuous ObRama lover. They both perpetrate what I think of as soft “academic-styled lies”. Modulated, moderate, mild… offered in a teaching or worrying mode… careful never to disturb But still lies.
gah.
New one
LINK
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LOL.
In a Kestrelton Heston post on DK, on the latest little snit in what is becoming Terry McAuliffe Freakshow in Virginia,
a Battle of the Blogshills ensues,
Jerome Armstrong ends up getting called out
and lo and behold , Armstrong shows up IMMEDIATELY,
~ to defend his honor.
Then Runs Away at the mention of the SEC.