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.

Inanity and Insanity

In other words—Republicans in congress.
Some of the arguments they have been making are ridiculous, and still mired in that old thinking about tax cuts being the only thing that works for everything. One of the idiots, John Thune, of South Dakota, I believe, had the old easel and signs showing how high a stack of a trillion dollars worth of hundred dollar bills would go.
How pathetic.
Some of us are worrying about losing our homes, have no job, and guys like him are resorting to puerile arguments to try to defeat the stimulus bill.
And they believe a tax cut will get me out of the red? Ho ho.

Dinosaurs, all of them.
Can't admit they've been going down the wrong alley all this time.
Some of these guys, if you try adding their IQ levels together, you start getting negative numbers.

It took the prez long enough to get around to calling them on their silliness. He's going out now to show them, the Republicans, and the press as well, how "ordinary" citizens feel about out economic situation. Best part is the enthusiastic receptions he is getting in typically Republican strongholds.

I hope that at some point his administration will get around to clearing out some bureaucratic
obstacles in the process of helping people. here's a good one: I went to the state unemployment agency today because my state benefits ran out and I need to apply for the federal extension. So they can't just put in for the fed's extension. I have to re-apply for benefits to the state, get turned down (as I will) and then, and only then, they can kick in the federal extension. In the meantime, I'm left with three weeks of no benefits. Oh well.

Didn't Dante put the merry-go-round of pointless government bureaucracy somewhere in the inferno?

Well it was a nice day anyhow, and i listened to the new Amanda Palmer album (probably my last personal pleasure expenditure for the foreseeable future) on the way down to the office and back. Seemed to go well with the day's efforts. "Who killed Amanda Palmer?" Highly recommended by me.