Yes, thank God we’ve got John Boehner around to set the record straight and call things by their real name. No beating about the bush with that guy. Such a mensch.

Yeah, you know…torture and whatnot.

John Boehner thinks torture is when the salon runs out of Bronze #12.

I recently watched a documentary on Hunter S. Thompson. It seems one of his obsessions was to report on the death of the American dream.

The assassinations of King and Kennedy were mortal blows. The Vietnam war was also a giant sucking wound.

The election of Nixon was grave and the re-election and subsequent Water Gate fiasco that went unpunished which then allowed the continued viability of the Cheney and Rumsfeld executive power torch bearers to scuttle off in the darkness was almost the end.

The Bird of Democracy flew the coop in 2000 and that allowed Dick Cheney and his drunken hand-puppet George to throw sand on lady liberty’s face, throw some spiders in the box and nail that fucker shut.

It’s time to commission the monument because President Obama may be the most decent man to have been elected since Jimmy Carter, but that still doesn’t mean he can work miracles and bring the dead back to life.

Up on the hill you can hear the fat lady singing as the bag-piper is beginning his procession down the hill and into the darkness.

George Carlin said it and I’ll repeat it. America is finished.

-G

As a kid I bought the American Exceptionalism. We were toe-to-toe with the mighty commie juggernaut, playing fair, and were still kicking their ass. The trade off of letting them “cheat” was fine with me. We owned the moral high ground. That, even as a childs idealistic notion, is gone. The cascade of falling “notions” from foreign policy through the Bill of Rights is crushing. Fuck you Bush, and fuck you to the party of Nixon.

There aren’t many blogs where I can go for Posies references.

But the NRO said they didn’t kill any Americans when they tortured those dark people, so it doesn’t really count.

It really is profoundly disturbing that we’re having a “torture debate” that’s not at all about the fact that we, you know, tortured people even though it was clearly illegal, but has somehow been transformed by The Villagers into a pseudo-intellectual panel discussion on the possible merits of doing shit that’s illegal but convenient, and the consequences — if any — of lying and breaking the laws.

As the parent of a 10-year old who is an obsessive Daily Show fan, I’m finding it increasingly difficult to argue convincingly why he should refrain from referring to any of these self-important people as anything other than “total douchebags.” His teachers may frown if he puts that in his social science paper, but personally I think the attitude will give him a fair fighting chance in the corrupt and bankrupt (morally and fiscally) America he’s set to inherit.

Ding! Ding! We have a winner.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: If you’re trying to get as close as possible to what you’d consider actual “torture”, without it actually being what you would call “torture”, then it’s torture.

On the other hand, since I wrote that, they seem to be moving closer to embracing the term “torture”, and arguing that torture is justified, instead.

Nomenclature’s really beside the point. The argument’s completely wrong whether it was “enhanced interrogation” or “torture.” Look, since these nuts think torture works and they have their little Jack Bauer fantasies about how the scenes play out…ask them this: if it’s NOT torture, then WHY DOES IT WORK? You don’t think committed religiously motivated jihadi terrorist radicals could resist a little slapping around and scaring with bugs? That is, since in their view it works, that means it’s torture. Why would it work otherwise?

Of course in the real world…it doesn’t work, it extracts false information…and it’s goddamn well still torture.

These people are monsters and should be destroyed because that is what you do to monsters.

More of this needs to be said. Kid gloves need to come OFF.

Torture lovers’ feelings should not be spared or coddled.

It thrills me to no end that ten year olds (at least one) watch The Daily Show. Huzzah! for that.

Damn, I meant this reply for ThingWarbler.

Face it, neo-conservatives, all with shit for brains, were scared shitless that 9.11 actually happened especially since they’d been warned and ignored it. Neocons figure if they through enough shit around, no one will remember that they allowed the tragedy to happen. They are out of luck on that one. It will take decades for us to figure out what was their most disastrous choice. In eight years, Bush the Lesser and Darth Cheney left us too many disasters to sort through. I say put the neocons in a pen and hose them down. When they’ve come clean they’ll tear each other apart and leave the rest of us to rediscover peace without them.

Let me know when it devolves to: “Torture is okay because a terrorist is less than 3/5 of a human being….”

I hear Olbermann has issued a challenge to Hannity: $1,000 for every minute he can withstand waterboarding, with the cash to go to a military charity. Oh, and he’ll double it when Hannity admits waterboarding is torture.

Keep poking him with that stick Keith; you’ve about sent O’Lielly around the bend and if Hannity is so convinced waterboarding is not torture, then a big he-man like him should be able to take 20 minutes and then stand up and say “do it again bitches!”. Right, Sean? As Colbert would ask, do you have the balls for it? I’m betting you don’t.

That was an offer of $1,000.00 per second, and if Hannity made it to ten I would be suprised.

John Boehner. AKA, “The Boehnality of Evil”.