Twitter, the ever-ripe Republicans, Sotomayor and torture

Ah humanity. The variety and richness of your idiocy.
God, WHAT were you THINKING?—
when you created us. Are we your comic relief on those days of rest?
Are we a "beta" version?
Humanity 1.1?
I eagerly await version 2.0.
You got something more important going on in some other part of the universe?
Or what?

I'll have questions for Him, you betcha.

Anyway…

All kinds of upheaval going on in Iran. And the usual news organizations have been warned to keep their reporters away. So how are we going to find out what is going on there?
The answer, God help us, is Twitter!
Someone said "the revolution will come in 140 characters or less."
I wish it had been me.
As it turns out, all those internet activities which are so much fun to satirize and laugh at, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, are providing a window into the activities in Iran. Real news is coming to the world thru these vehicles. Who'da thunk it?
When the State Department asks Twitter to delay scheduled maintenance so they can keep getting news from Iran, you know something is happening here, don't you Mr. jones?

This is my official apology for my disdain.
I still don't think I need a lot of "friends" on Facebook or to have people "following" me on Twitter. But I will admit to the utility of those services.
And cell phones with cameras. Isn't it amazing? One wonders how the American revolution would have gone with those vehicles available at that time?
Somebody who actually knows how to write could make a novel out of this. Philip K. Dick, where are you?

And Republicans, ever ripe for mockery, ever ready to look foolish. Where do these people come from? Where to start?
Sotomajor. Ohh, this Latina is really screwing with the Repubs minds. Is she mean? Dear God, we can't have a mean Supreme Court Justice. Lindsy Graham of South Carolina is really concerned about this. Oh, but we don't want someone who is too "empathetic." Can't have someone who is soft on criminals, but she shouldn't be mean, either.

She's been making the rounds at the Senate, meeting with Senators so they can see she doesn't have horns and a forked tail. Only thing, I see a photo of her meeting with Senator Michael Crapo (now there's a name to conjure with), R-Idaho.
And she's wearing pants.
Omigod, she's wearing pants in an Idaho Republican's office? Doesn't she know she should look like a "lady?" He may think she really is mean, wearing pants and all.

There's been so much FUD (fear, uncertainty and disinformation) coming from the Repubs about this—she's mean, she's empathetic, she'll have a "Latina" perspective on the law (like Scalia doesn't have a Catholic perspective? He is Catholic, after all).And she has so many decisions to analyze for those devilish details that the Republicans need more time to read them all.
Oh, and she belongs to a "females only" judicial group. Horrors. This is disturbing news to the "Skull and Bones" crowd.

And more torture mems and other documents have been released, without the redactions of previous releases. I love that word "redacted." So much nicer than "censored."
Anyway, it seems that Khalid Sheikh Muhammed had said (redacted in an earlier released version) that he made up stories under torture. He said he didn't know where Osama was, they tortured him a while, and he made up somewhere where Osama could be. Of course one has to ask if he was lying under torture or lying for this deposition, but it still knocks a hole in Mr. Darth Cheney's assertion that torture got us useful information. Ol' Khalid, by the gov'ts. own admission, was waterboarded 6 times a day for a month. I already said somewhere on this blog that I would have implicated everyone I know under that kind of treatment—probably by the second waterboarding of the first day. Sorry friends, relatives, minister—you'd all be toast.

Fear, uncertainty and doubt. Those who use these means of control inevitably fall victim to them.

Oy.
It's quarter past midnight. I'm going to bed.
Hopefully, I won't have Republican nightmares.

I'm collecting stuff

Stuff like this quote from George Carlin: "The best thing about getting old is you're not responsible for remembering things anymore."

Works for me.

Also took this screen shot from the Rachel Maddow Show:









"the Dick" Cheney as Darth Vader.
An old joke by now but ever relevant.
This guy is something else. He is definitely the supreme example of someone who never will admit, or even consider, that he was, and is, wrong.

He seems to be taking his traveling Medicine Show around the country to friendly venues anywhere, (North Dakota?) where he might find some sympathetic response.

Waterboarding? Well, we only did it a little bit (183 times in one month to one guy).
And Obama is making the country less safe by not being the hard ass we were.
I mean, he's acting like a real American, with values and all that weak-kneed stuff.

Mr. Silence is now "Mr. Can't Shut Up." Go back to your underground bunker, Dick, we don't need you. Even Repubicans don't need you—you just remind everyone of the terrible botch-up your administration was.

Not that the Obama administration has been an unbridled joy—there is the problem of those pesky military tribunals, among others—but it is a model of probity and sanity in comparison to the recent past. And besides, we don't really want anyone to be perfect.

God knows what I'd do with my time if I didn't have someone in the Government to bitch about…

Besides, as a rule we humans don't really go for perfection all that much. It's one reason we keep God (and Jesus and Buddha and Allah and the rest of that deity crowd) at arm's length. To emulate them we'd have to give up too much. Being perfect is hard work—I'm here to tell you. It's a struggle every day, and I don't get no sympathy.

Now I got myself all depressed. I'm going to go cry myself to sleep.

I'm mad as hell and I'm gonna secede!

The Repubicans are SUCH sore losers. Can you believe it? Now a poll shows that 24% think their state would be better off not being part of America.
Geez.
Just when you think you've seen the nadir of stupidity already, something new comes up. Surely the variety of stupidities in this world is inexhaustible. Secede? What are they thinking? We went through this already about a hundred and fifty years ago.
I'm getting (non-drug induced) flashbacks to the sixties when many of my age group left the country rather than go to Vietnam. Of course they were facing going to risk their lives for something in which they did not believe. Still, they left, and I wish they hadn't.

But these disaffected Republicans aren't being asked to do anything any more onerous than living in a country where the President is from another party—something many of us have been doing for the last eight years, without thinking about secession.

I live in Massachusetts, a state which is essentially the epitome of and the very touchstone of the liberal way of thought, the Holy Grail home of left-leaning socialist commie knee-jerkers (ever have your knee jerked? It's painful), the veritable Elysian Fields of liberalism—and we never said we wanted to leave the US of A. Not 24% of us anyway.
But hey, you can always find malcontents if you look hard enough.

No, we didn't want to cut and run like those lily-livered Repubicans. Leave the country? Secede? Not in our DNA.

We wanted to stay and PLAN OUR REVENGE! BWA-HA-HA-HA-HA!


And now we have it.
It's imperfect,but it is here.

We still have to get Obama off this "don't look back" thing he's got going. I know he thinks it's somehow more honorable to not go after his predecessor and minions for war crimes and general malfeasance, but he's wrong. We need some closure here, and it won't come from letting "the Dick" Cheney run his mouth in his strip-mall office.

As long as I'm on a roll here—did you know this was the "National Day of Prayer?"

Somewhere along the line the idea of separation for state and church got muddled. Our forefathers, those guys the Repubicans and conservative "Christians" like to bring up all the time, definitely wanted to KEEP THE GOVERNMENT OUT OF THE RELIGION BUSINESS.
Most of them were Deists, which means they believed in a God who may have set the ball rolling but was staying out of the way as we tried to avoid getting run over by said ball.
They didn't want anyone forcing anyone else to believe in a certain vision of God or a certain church, or a certain way of avoiding that ball of inexorable history.

But there are always people who don't get it. There are people who live in fear of going to hell if they don't do things just right, believe in the right way, and also do their best to make others believe the same way they do. And some of them don't have any problems throwing insults into their demands.
One Wendy Wright of the (so-called) "Concerned Women for America," said tha Barack Obama should have done more to commemorate this day even tho he himself "may have problems believing in the Christian faith."
What an asshat. Bringing up surreptitiously the "Obama is a secret Muslim" slander.
So much for Christian charity.

I have more but it's getting late.
Goodnight, you two, or three.

I try to be nice…

…really I do. And, unlike many politicians, I make mistakes (one or two of my ex-es immediately come to mind) and I will admit it. I guess this is the moment to admit I was wrong about Paris Hilton being McCain's running mate. And I really wish I had been right about that.
A minor disappointment.
But then I see this stuff on Yahoo news, via the Associated Press about Sarah Palin:

By GENE JOHNSON, Associated Press Writer 47 minutes ago

ANCHORAGE, Alaska - Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin told ministry students at her former church that the United States sent troops to fight in the Iraq war on a "task that is from God."

In an address last June, the Republican vice presidential candidate also urged ministry students to pray for a plan to build a $30 billion natural gas pipeline in the state, calling it "God's will."

Palin asked the students to pray for the troops in Iraq, and noted that her eldest son, Track, was expected to be deployed there.

"Our national leaders are sending them out on a task that is from God," she said. "That's what we have to make sure that we're praying for, that there is a plan and that plan is God's plan."

A video of the speech was posted at the Wasilla Assembly of God's Web site before finding its way on to other sites on the Internet.

Palin told graduating students of the church's School of Ministry, "What I need to do is strike a deal with you guys." As they preached the love of Jesus throughout Alaska, she said, she'd work to implement God's will from the governor's office, including creating jobs by building a pipeline to bring North Slope natural gas to North American markets.

"God's will has to be done in unifying people and companies to get that gas line built, so pray for that," she said.

"I can do my job there in developing our natural resources and doing things like getting the roads paved and making sure our troopers have their cop cars and their uniforms and their guns, and making sure our public schools are funded," she added. "But really all of that stuff doesn't do any good if the people of Alaska's heart isn't right with God."

Palin attended the evangelical church from the time she was a teenager until 2002, the church said in a statement posted on its Web site. She has continued to attend special conferences and meetings there. Religious conservatives have welcomed her selection as John McCain's running mate.

The Assemblies of God, which claims nearly 3 million members, is one of the biggest Pentecostal groups in the U.S. Unlike most other Christians — including most evangelicals — Pentecostals believe in "baptism in the Holy Spirit." That can manifest itself through speaking in tongues, modern-day prophesy and faith healing. The Assemblies of God teaches that spirit baptism must be accompanied by speaking in tongues. Still, some churchgoers never have the experience.

Rob Boston, a spokesman for Americans United for Separation of Church and State, lamented Palin's comments.

"I miss the days when pastors delivered sermons and politicians delivered political speeches," he said. "The United States is increasingly diverse religiously. The job of a president is to unify all those different people and bring them together around policy goals, not to act as a kind of national pastor and bring people to God."

The section of the church's Web site where videos of past sermons were posted was shut down Wednesday, and a message was posted saying that the site "was never intended to handle the traffic it has received in the last few days."

Oh, so much here to gripe about it almost makes me cheerful—in a curmudgeonly sort of way.

The Iraq war, "a task from God?" It was a major blunder from George (wants to be God—or at least american dictator) W. Bush! Why would god want us to send our young men and women to fight and die in Iraq when the people really responsible for attacking us were somewhere else!?

And it's God's will that we drill and build a pipeline from the North Slope? Does she really think God gives a rat's ass about pipelines?

AAaarrghhh!!!

Where do these people come from?

Sarah Palin doesn't realize it, but her very existence is an argument against the idea of a benevolent God who watches over us.

And I believe in God. I just don't think She really cares about pipelines and wars, but She may really care about how gddm stupid and hypocritical we are.

So there.

It's late. I'm going to go and release my aggravation by chewing on an old tire for a while .

It's just mind-boggling how ignorant we can be.

God wants us to build a pipeline? Oy vey.

I guess that's better than asking us to sacrifice our first-born son, or to build an ark while He (it's a He in this case) destroys the rest of the earth.

Okay, I said I was going to stop.

But when stupidity comes up and slaps you in the face with such stupid authority, it's hard to stop kvetching. And retching.

Why oh why do these people think that what THEY want to do is what GOD wants to do?

I'm going to have to devour a Firestone radial and also kick a silver maple into splinters to work off this aggravation.

It's a good thing i am a non-violent person—but i have to admit to wishing i weren't sometimes.

Let's see, what am i going to do after i kick that tree into splinters…

Class Act

I haven't actually heard Hillary's concession speech but I read the transcript on the NYTimes website.
From what I see, it was a Class Act, a very gracious and politically savvy acceptance of defeat.
I had some problems with her campaign of late, I have a sneaky suspicion that Bill was more involved than he should have been. He did make an ass out of himself a couple times. It's hard for someone who was the most powerful man in the world to let other people take swipes at his wife. Even when he's familiar with the territory.
But I think Hillary had her own voice tonight, and she did good. She really has made a difference in perception for women, perception of their abilities and aspirations, and also a change for men. Hey she can take it and dish it out.

Yes, there was a lot of sexist bullsh*t going on every time someone reported about her, and yes somehow her mistakes, being a woman, were writ larger than the male Obama's mistakes (amazingly ignoring his Afro-american heritage), but still, she went the distance, and isn't that what we all admire, guys?

Grace in Hillary. She's got the goods.

The Afro-American thing for Obama will be raising it's ugly head this fall.
We'll have the die-hard Aryans (what the hell are Aryans anyway, besides a bunch of migrant sheepherders like everyone else?), the born again types who think they'd vote for him if he only accepted Jesus (on their terms), the "Confederacy Never Died" types who still think that blacks should be slaves.
This is going to be an interesting year, as in that old Chinese curse, "May you have an interesting life." i.e., expect a lot of pain.

Hillary better live up to her word and support this guy or Johnny Mac will be sitting in the oval office, or orifice, depending on how you look at it, come next January.

But for now, she is exhibiting a lot of class.
And I have run out of brandy and venom.
Good night, sleep tight.

More on our tendency to anthropomorphize God

Here's an old Sufi story, courtesy of Idris Shah, the late Sufi leader. It's in one of his books.
There was a guy who learned how to talk to ants. He found a couple ants one day and asked them "What is God like?"
One of the ants replied, "Oh, God, well, we only have one sting, but He has two!"
It should be obvious what this story is trying to say (at least on one level—Sufi stories have a lot of levels, but don't ask me about that, I'm not a Sufi) .
Don't obsess on the absurdity of talking to ants, it'll hold you back.

It may be that the reason and meaning of our existence is nil, just a copacetic accretion of biological events. Or there may be something more to it. Maybe life itself is a prime mover, an entity not like us of which we are nevertheless a part, and from which we came and to which we return. Jesus said "the kingdom of God is within you." He was trying to tell us something. Buddha said that this world is illusion. He was trying to tell us something. They both were talking about the same thing, only from different angles.

If that's making your brain explode, go back to worrying about talking to ants.

Ciao.