Snowy Baltimore open thread

Visiting Rob in Baltimore. It's snowing. Quite lovely. Listening to old Clinton speeches on NPR. Amazing. Man, what a difference a brain makes. Read the rest of this post...

Bush caught lying about Social Security

Experts say that the program does not disfavor blacks because, as Bush says, they die younger than white people. Another Bush lie bites the dust. Read the rest of this post...

Coulter makes a fool of herself

And Crooks and Liar has the video. :-) Read the rest of this post...

US embassy in Baghdad hit with rocket, 2 dead

Ongoing carnage. Read the rest of this post...

Mission Accomplished

Well, I just got off the phone with Sony support, and after asking immediately for a supervisor, which several of you had recommended, I informed her that Atrios had posted my plea for help to the top of his site, and that with 100,000 visitors a day, it might be good for them to fix this problem. The supervisor was VERY nice, and she got me on the phone with one of their big tech gurus, a guy they use as the emergency guy. He immediately said it sounded like my hard drive was fried, and he's Fedexing me one directly so I can install it Tuesday morning. As it is the weekend, and I couldn't get a new computer any quicker than that, I accepted the offer and hopefully come Tuesday morning all will be well.

I just wanted to thank you guys for helping out, and to thank Atrios and all of his people as well. In times like this when you just want to crawl in to a hole and scream (or cry) it's nice to know we've got a real community out there willing to help. Thanks again everyone :-)

And now back to the reason we're here - Bush-bashing :-)

JOHN Read the rest of this post...

Saturday noon open thread

The saga continues. On hold with Sony again. Atrios' listing this at the top of his blog shouldn't hurt (I didn't ask him, he did it on his own - he's really a nice guy).

Chat amongst yourselves. Read the rest of this post...

Chertoff also supported torture

But what's a good drowning between friends in this administration? My opinion of the Democrats in DC is slipping fast (only 12 voted against Condi? WTF?) and I hope that we see a better show of muscle when it comes time to voting for this crap. It's really encouraging to see that these "leaders" have approved tactics commonly used by the likes of the Khmer Rouge. Sure, Chertoff and Gonzales may not have been approving the most violent tactics but this is a slippery slope and we know that there have been deaths during "interrogation" so their hands are not clean.

In Southeast Asia during the war it was widely reported that a tactic used both by US troops as well as the Viet Cong was where cloth would be draped over a persons mouth and then water poured over it, precisely for the effect that Mr. Chertoff approved. There aren't any physical scars but tell me it's not torture. The big step between back then and now is that we didn't have legal reviews and approval. We're really reaching some new lows with this team.
Read the rest of this post...