Fine, then send your own kids to die

"'I maintained throughout the release of these prison photos, perspective was what was needed,' Rush Limbaugh declared on his radio program.

'They're the ones who are sick,' he added. 'They're the ones who are perverted. They are the ones who are dangerous. They are the ones who are subhuman. They are the ones who are human debris, not the United States of America and not our soldiers and not our prison guards.'

John Gibson, an anchor on the Fox News Channel, echoed that view. 'Where is the outrage?' he said Tuesday after the decapitation video was made public on an Islamic Web site. 'The same people screaming about American abuses at Abu Ghraib are now conspicuously silent about this outrage directed against an American.'" - NYT

What a bunch of fucking assholes. First Limbaugh. What is this, Stalinist Russia? We are the United State of America, therefore per se we can do no wrong. Right, one of our soldiers butt-fucked an Iraqi with a glow stick - that counts as human debris in my book, perhaps to Rush that's just a lucky Saturday night. As for John Gibson, what is he even talking about? Right, John, no one was repulsed by the beheading of a 26 year old, no, not at all. That's why it's been all over the new for the past 12 hours.

What FOX News and Rush Limbaugh fail to realize is that it's not news when a terrorist acts like a terrorist, or at least it's not exactly eye-opening (though in the case of the beheading, it's been the top story all day). But what is news, and what is shocking, and what is especially troubling isn't when we discover that a terrorist is actually evil. Rather, what's really troubling is when we discover that we possess the same capacity for evil in our hearts, and that in some ways, on same days, some of us can be just as bad as some of them. That shocks me and saddens me, and I'm no family-values conservative.

While it shouldn't surprise me, because I know they're all hypocrites, it still bothers me that when push comes to the shove, the people who talk about values and morality the most are the people who often have the least respect for either. Read More......

Welcome Chris, my guest blogger

Hopefully in the next day my friend Chris, an American living in Paris, will be joining us a guest blogger. Chris is a good friend and married to a French-American woman (another good friend of mine), and for a guy living in Paris follows US politics to a remarkable degree (it's amazing how the Internet and cable TV have made geography irrelevant). Anyway, I'm hoping Chris can add a unique perspective, as an American expat, on all the issues we care about, and hopefully give us a sense of what the Europeans are saying about our little democracy. Expect his first posting manana. Read More......

Bush's Poll Numbers Hitting the Danger Zone

Reuters has a more thinky piece on a variety of the latest polls and how they spell doom and gloom for Bush. The country thinks we're headed in the wrong direction, according to the polls, which is hardly surprising given the news of late. And still, the growing unease with Bush isn't yet spelling any great boon for Kerry. But a number of the poll watchers say that presidents don't win re-election when their numbers are this bad, partly because even if Kerry's numbers aren't great, when there's this much dissatisfaction, people turn to any alternative as being potentially better.

It is odd that Bush's numbers are going down overall, yet concerning the specific scandal of late, the prisoner abuse saga, polls were showing that people thought Bush was handling it well. I think what may finally be sinking into people's heads is that while they aren't willing to fault Bush for anything in particular, they are finally starting to fault him for everything in general. Meaning, they can't point to any one thing that ticks them off with him, but overall they're realizing that he's the reason things aren't going so well. Hallelujah. It's about time. Read More......

FBI Saw Berg During Iraq Police Detention

Maybe this is nothing, but it is an awful coincidence... Read More......

Mexico Air Force Video Creates UFO Stir

Ok, it's not politics, but it's cool. You can watch the AP video showing the objects via this page. Read More......

Kerry says his first choice as Sec Def is McCain

Dying to see what McCain has to say about this. I'd LOVE to see him as Secretary of Defense. Even more interesting, I'd like to see when and if McCain endorses Bush for re-election.

Ok, now that I read that poorly-written article again, I realize that it's not clear whether Kerry means he would make McCain HIS Secretary of Defense, or whether he's only saying McCain would make a good replacement for Rumsfeld right now. An enterprising journalist would ask him about this. Read More......

Arabs Divided Over Beheading of American in Iraq

Actually, the article quotes a large number of quite reasonable Arabs making some damn good points (other than the last two quotes, which are just nasty). It's worth a read, if only to see that they're not all barbarians, as some might think. Read More......

Wisconsin paper accused of pro-Bush bias

Faced with a scarcity of letters praising the president, a newspaper in a Republican-leaning district appealed for pro-Bush letters, then backed off the request Tuesday amid complaints of blatant politics. Last week in an editorial, The Post-Crescent said most of its letters had been coming from one side and asked readers "to help us 'balance' things out." - AP

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General Who Made Anti-Islam Remark Tied to POW Case

This general is toast, and it puts Bush in an impossible position. The religious right is already starting to rabble-rouse around the idea that the abuses weren't really that big a deal, and General Boykin, the guy who made the anti-Muslim comments, is a hero to the very-anti-Muslim religious right. Bush has no choice but to do something about Boykin now, but in so doing, he will majorly tick off the religious right, which means that Bush will have to make it up to them by giving them something else. Five will get you ten that the quid pro quo will either be something restricting abortion or slapping gays (I say it'll be the constitutional amendment on gay marriage). Either way, prepare for the fundies to start a campaign to save this guy, further embarrassing the Bush administration domestically and internationally.

Reuters: "The U.S. Army general under investigation for anti-Islamic remarks has been linked by U.S. officials to the Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal, which experts warned could touch off new outrage overseas.

A Senate hearing into the abuse of Iraqi prisoners was told on Tuesday that Lt. Gen. William Boykin, an evangelical Christian under review for saying his God was superior to that of the Muslims, briefed a top Pentagon civilian official last summer on recommendations on ways military interrogators could gain more intelligence from Iraqi prisoners.

Critics have suggested those recommendations amounted to a senior-level go-ahead for the sexual and physical abuse of prisoners, possibly to 'soften up' detainees before interrogation -- a charge the Pentagon denies.

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I've added an upgrade to the "comments" feature

If you have cookies enabled, and java enabled, on your Web browser you can now see how many of the comments below a post are "new" since you were last on the site. This means that you won't need to keep clicking on the comments to see if anything new was posted, you can just see if it tells you anything new was posted. Again, this will only work if you have cookies and java enabled. It's working on my browser, and it's pretty cool. Enjoy, JOHN Read More......