A little too honest.

Rudolph Giuliani is asked whether he thinks waterboarding is torture. His answer: "It depends who does it." Click the video below to see an example of an interrogation technique that, according to Rudolph Giuliani, is torture when it's done to us, but Jim Dandy when we do it to prisoners we hold.

Hillary 2008 Store: My Favorite Item

I've been taking a gander at the Hillary Clinton 2008 campaign store, and I must say that my favorite item has got to be the official Hillary 2008 "Why don't you come over here and say that to my face, you punk?!" button.

They Paid The Price For Their Hatred

The New York Times reports that two more bodies have been found in a burned out home near San Diego. Maybe if they hadn't hated America they'd still be alive today.

Conservative Dictionary: Most

Most: (adj.) A part equalling between 2% and 8% of the whole. For example:

"The signers of the Declaration of Independence were 'brave people, most of whom, by the way, were clergymen.'"




I'm going to try and make the "Conservative Dictionary" a regular feature of this blog starting today. Today we opened with the definition of "most."

Just to reiterate...

Blackwater's new logo

Blackwater USA, the North Carolina based Mercenary outfit with a knack for shooting up civilians in Iraq has retired its previous logo and replaced it with a new, kinder, gentler logo.

However, we here at Patriot's Quill have our own suggestion that we feel better does justice to the company's reputation for excellence in urban pacification:

Wait, who hates America?

The New York Times reports today on forest fires in California that have forced more than 300,000 people to flee their homes. Many, doubtlessly, have lost everything they own to the flames: the homes in which they were raised, their photographs and memories, family heirlooms, anything they did not have time or room to carry with them as they fled the approaching fires. In most cases, a tragedy such as this would inspire sympathy. But since California is a "blue state" and many of the fire's victims were doubtless Democrats, the devastation is a cause for gloating for some on the Right. Popular conservative talk-show host Glenn Beck, for instance, had this to say about the fires:

"I think there is a handful of people who hate America. Unfortunately for them, a lot of them are losing their homes in a forest fire today."

Now, to reiterate, Glenn Beck is a right-wing talk show host. So just like Rush Limbaugh, who was never admonished for referring to anti-war veterans as "phony soldiers," you can expect that Beck will suffer no adverse consequences for expressing these vile sentiments. The sad fact is that a media conglomerate will only sanction a host if his audience is appalled by what he says and demands corrective action. That's why Don Imus was fired from CBS and MSNBC when he made shameful, racist remarks about African American basketball players on a women's basketball team. Many of Imus' listeners were liberals or political moderates, and they demanded some sort of accountability. But right-wing radio is different. Its listeners feed on hatred, invective, bile, xenophobia, homophobia and just about any form of bigotry one can imagine. So not only did Beck fail to enrage his listeners when he suggested that California residents were getting exactly what they deserved as they stood helplessly by and watched horrified while flames engulfed their homes, Beck no doubt was expressing what many of them were also thinking.

Hollywood Fred goes to Church

So the Republican candidates show up at the "Values Voters Summit" (because, as we've seen already, only biblical-literalist extremists have values) to genuflect before the leaders of the Christian Right and kiss their rings. Which is great, because who isn't tickled pink by a wealthy divorced actor who rarely attends church showing up to one of these with a trophy wife 34 years his younger and proclaiming his undying love for Jeeeeesus? It's almost as amusing as watching the audience lap the performance up as if they truly believed what he was saying (which surely they don't, right? Right? Hello... is this thing on?)

At any rate, this go 'round Fred Thompson hit upon a brilliant gimmick, sure to please the assembled masses when he announced that he'd spend the first hour of his presidency locked in the Oval Office praying for divine guidance (and, presumably, resisting the Devil's offer of all the kingdoms of the world if he will just bow down to him).

Now, ever since FDR put in place most of his New Deal programs within the first 100 days of his presidency, candidates and newly elected presidents have felt the need to outline an ambitious agenda for their first 100 days in office. Ronald Reagan, for instance, vowed to start a nuclear war within his first 100 days and balloon the national debt. George Bush Sr. vowed to sow the seeds of his electoral defeat in 1992. Bill Clinton vowed to know the names and favorite drink of all the interns on his staff, and George W. Bush vowed to stay off cocaine and bring about the second coming of Christ. All of these men kept to their word and that's a large part of the reason why politicians still feel obliged to announce ambitious proposals for their first three months in office. Recent advances in microprocessor technology, however, have allowed politicians to speed things up and compress their time table considerably. When Democrats took control of both houses of Congress in 2006, for instance, newly elected Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi , pledged to end poverty, implement universal health care and pull the U.S. out of Iraq within the first 100 hours of the new congress. It was an impressive legislative agenda, but of course, as we all know by now, they pulled it off without a hitch and have the public opinion ratings to prove it.

Well, Fred Thompson knew he had to go a step further and so, eschewing a 100 day legislative agenda, and even a 100 hour plan, Thompson announced a bold plan for the first hour of his presidency. Sure, there will be naysayers out there who, seizing on Thompson's well established tendency to spend his time putting a minimal amount of effort into doing almost nothing, will insist that this "1st hour" plan is little more than an excuse to go into a room, close the door behind him and do very little for the next 60 minutes of his life. However, we at Patriot's Quill aren't quite so cynical, and assume that Fred means it when he says that that's his plan.

We do, however, wonder if Thompson thought things through before making his announcement. As a guy who spends almost no time at church, old Fred may not have realized mow much of a drag it would be to actually lock yourself in a room for an hour, drop down on your knees and pray...for an hour...non-stop. Hell, sitting at the dinner table and waiting for grace to be said as you gaze at a landscape of roast beef, green beans and buttered mashed potatoes can seem like an eternity sometimes. And if the pastor's invited over for dinner then forget it. You're in for a prayer that resembles something of mini sermon, and though it only takes a couple of minutes at most, you'd swear the broccoli whithered, went to seed and sprouted up again in the interval.

So, locking yourself up in the oval office and praying non-stop for an hour? Let's just say that about the only guy I can imagine pulling that one off sucessfully is the albino monk from The Da Vinci Code (and maybe John Ashcroft). I'm not saying Fred's intentions aren't good ones. I'm just saying that if he is elected and does go through with it... well, I hope he sneaks in a Nintendo Gameboy in his jacket pocket.

Never Again.

One of the ugliest by-products of the Iraq was is the recent campaign by right-wing Jewish groups to suppress the memory of a genocide that occurred nearly 100 years ago. Under withering pressure from the Bush administration, congress is shelving plans to vote on a resolution acknowledging and condemning the genocide of Armenians under the Ottoman empire. The Bush administration's motives are purely a byproduct of realpolikal considerations: worried about antagonizing Turkey, a nation that is playing an important support role in Iraq, the Whitehouse would rather that this proposed Armenian Genocide resolution simply fall by the wayside, the way other such attempted resolutions have fallen by the wayside in the past. This is, perhaps, to be expected. After all, why should the Bush administration care about the deaths of a few million foreigners 90+ years ago, when they've shown so little concern for the well being of the American people today. However, when organizations such as the Anti-Defamation League lobby congress to drop such a resolution, this is evidence that something has gone terribly wrong with a group that, on the masthead of its website, proclaims its mission to be the securing of "...justice and fair treatment for all." Joey Kurtzman, writing in the journal Jewcy, focused on this sad state of affair when he called for the firing of Abraham Foxman, president of the ADL:

It is a scandal of unprecedented proportion when one of the most prominent figures in our community, a man who claims to speak on our behalf, publicly challenges the historicity of another community’s genocide. Foxman’s ADL no longer represents the interests of the Jewish community. In fact, it seems the only interests it represents are its own.

This is a scandal, because just as right-thinking people everywhere were outraged when Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, called a conference to "debate" the historicity of the Jewish Holocaust, it is unthinkable that a genocide that occurred some 40 years before is still spoken of only in hushed tones for fear of offending or alienating the present-day descendants of its perpetrators. And yet some prominent right-wing Jewish organizations and pundits insist that we continue to do so, lest we upset the tender sensibilities of the Turkish government that is so generously allowing us to use their territory as a staging ground for our occupation of Iraq (though the reasoning is not always explicitly stated). Writing today in the Washington Post, for instance, Charles Krauthammer insists:

...to pass a declarative resolution in the House of Representatives in the middle of a war in which we are inordinately dependent on Turkey would be the height of irresponsibility. The atrocities happened 90 years ago. Not a single living Turk under the age of 102 is in any way culpable.

The Jewish Holocaust ended in 1945. That was over 60 years ago. Should we simply forget it and "move on" in 30 years or so, when there is not a single living German under the age of 102 who is in any way culpable? Should we then raze the Holocaust museum at that time for fear of alienating German skinheads and extreme-right-wing political parties in that country?

But more shameful, perhaps, is this sentence from Krauthammer's column:

Even Mesrob Mutafyan, patriarch of the Armenian community in Turkey, has stated that his community is opposed to the resolution, correctly calling it the result of domestic American politics.

In appealing to the "authority" of one of the descendants of the of the Armenian genocide who is still living as an ethnic minority among the ethnic majority descendants of the perpetrators of the crime, in a state that is at best a tenuous democracy and at worst an authoritarian society living under constant threat of a military coup, Krauthammer shows he hasn't got even the slightest sense of shame about him. For all it matters, it might as well be Krauthammer holding the gun to the man's head and telling him what to say.

Just as hideous is the position of Max Boot, who, arguing against the resolution in Commentary magazine noted that ethnic Armenians:

...form a powerful lobbying group that donates a lot of money to politicians especially in states like New Jersey, Michigan, and California. (It is no coincidence that legislators from those states are leading the push for the Armenian genocide resolution.)

And then, as if to excuse himself from potential accusations of bigotry he immediately adds:

It’s common, and completely innocuous, for various ethnic groups to get involved in lobbying. It’s only a scandal, it seems, when the lobbyists in question are Jewish. In that case, their activities are denounced in odious anti-Semitic tracts, most of them published by groups like the John Birch Society, the Lyndon Larouchites, and the Ku Klux Klan, but some of which appear bearing the imprimatur of supposedly prestigious institutions like Harvard University, the University of Chicago, and Farrar, Straus, and Giroux.

Way to have you cake and eat it too, eh? Simultaneously denouncing the "powerful" ethnic Armenian lobby while also denouncing as anti-Semites those who say the same things about right-wing Jewish lobbies. That's really quite an audacious rhetorical sleight of hand.

This refusal to acknowledge the Armenian genocide (even if "just not right now") is so offensive that Alan Dreshowitz (no shrinking violet when it comes to defending the interests of Israel) has felt compelled to object thus:

The Association of Genocide Scholars and the community of Holocaust scholars, as well as numerous others, have written that this horrific event was genocide. In 2000, 126 leading Holocaust scholars -- including Nobel Prize laureate Elie Wiesel -- published a statement in The New York Times that sought both to "affirm the incontestable fact of the Armenian Genocide and urge Western Democracies to officially recognize it."
...
To deny genocide victims their history and suffering is tantamount to making them victims again.

Justice and memory demand that we recognize the Ottoman Turkish genocide against the Armenians for what it was: the destruction of a large part of an ancient and vibrant community as well as the horrible model of what Hitler did to Jews and what the janjaweed is doing to the victims of Darfur.

What's perhaps most important to take from this is that organizations such as the ADL, commenters such as Krauthammer, and lobbying organizations such as AIPAC do not speak for the Jewish people. As much as they attempt to don that mantle, the right-wing politics that they espouse are, in fact, out of step even with the majority of American Jews in many issues. In fact, today, 77% of religious Jews in America say the war in Iraq was a mistake (contrary to Krauthammer, and every other group save African American protestants at 78%) and back in 2002, before the war, the Jewish community was evenly divided on the impending invasion at a time when the country as a whole favored the war at a 2-1 ratio. Of course, you'd never know that fact if you subscribed to a "conventional wisdom" that has been carefully cultivated, manufactured and promoted by a powerful alliance of right-wing Jewish groups, conservative evangelicals and the conservative movement more broadly that sees its interests furthered by the widespread acceptance of such a notion. Even the term "the Jewish lobby" plays into this game, as it allows right-wing pundits and organizations to denounce critics of organizations such as AIPAC as anti-Semites while simultaneously promoting the notion that they themselves are, indeed, representatives of Jewish interests and opinions. Yet in fact, they at best represent a minority view within the community.

I'll conclude with a statement that Krauthammer makes in his piece:

So why has Pelosi been so committed to bringing this resolution to the floor? (At least until a revolt within her party and the prospect of defeat caused her to waver.) Because she is deeply unserious about foreign policy.

It would appear that being deeply serious about foreign policy requires that one be deeply unserious about justice. At least in Krauthammer's mind.

Larry Craig: Internet Mogul

One reason you can be absolutely, positively, without a doubt sure that closeted-self-loathing-gay Senator Larry Craig had no idea that the bathroom in the Minneapolis airport where he was totally unjustly busted for supposedly soliciting gay sex (as if!) had a widespread reputation as a gay hookup zone is that he doesn't use the internet. He never has and would have no idea how to use it even if he wanted to... Or maybe not.

This Man is Insane

Remember back in the day when Oral Roberts stunned the nation by announcing that he'd dreamed a vision of a 900 foot Jesus who had threatened to "call him home" if he didn't raise $8 million for his medical center? Well, as the following video demonstrates, that was probably one of the least crazy things ol' Oral ever preached.

(Warning: explicit language inappropriate for minors)

A Video Everyone Should See

Here's a video everyone should see:

Coulter's Site Hacked

Looks like anncoulter.com was victim to a hilarious hack earlier today. As of 1:15 pm EST, if you follow this link, you'll still see the following "archived" message to readers (click the image to expand):


The text reads:

An Open Letter to Readers
by Ann Coulter
October 15, 2007

Dear Readers,

I've been participating in a charade for nearly eleven years, now. Quite frankly, I'm sick of it. You have all been a part of a sick joke that I began considering shortly after first getting on the air. At first, it was quite interesting to see how people would react when I would use twisted logic and poorly masked bigotry.

But eleven years is a long time to be living a fake life, and I can no longer tolerate this falsity. Even someone as fake as I tires out eventually.

Here's the truth, I don't care what people believe. Jews don't need to be "made perfect" as I so arrogantly proclaimed to Editor & Publisher not a half week ago. I don't even care if people are Muslim. Granted, I don't know much about the religion or the people, but they are people. This is something that we cannot forget, they are in an abhorrent situation. These people are in need of education. Perhaps if we did not participate in causing them misery, they would not hate us so.

In fact, does it really matter whether we are Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Atheist, or even Pagan? We are one nation. One. We should not let petty differences separate us, we are all American, and should act in that manner.

And with that, my precious viewers, I bid you adieu. My career as a media figurehead is over.

Signed,

Ann Coulter


P.S. - Oh, and Bill O'Reilly is also just acting.



Haha, did it again. Oh, those silly web admins...they just embarrass themselves.

(Admins, check for an e-mail address in the CMS. Find it. I know you will.)

And though there was much speculation on the internets as to the authenticity of the message (especially given the enigmatic last two lines), increasing the archive count by 1, alas, revealed a follow-up from the hacker that included an e-mail address and the following message:

E-mail me about your security issues and we can talk.

Oh, well. Nice one, though.

(Update: apparently this message was briefly on the site's front page!)

Bob Jones Dean Endorses Romney

"Robert R. Taylor, dean of [the Bob Jones University] college of arts and sciences, said he believes the former Massachusetts governor [Mitt Romney] is the only Republican candidate who both stands a chance of winning the White House and will reliably implement the anti-abortion, antigay marriage, pro-gun agenda of Christian conservatives."

Schoolyard Bullies of the Right

Michelle Malkin hides behind her blog and Fox News as she hurls insults at the left and attacks the lower-middle-class families of sick children who've had the nerve to appeal to the government for help in treating their children's injuries rather than liquidate their assets and become paupers. But when a patriotic blogger challenges her to debate the subject on neutral ground, she scurries away like a cockroach down a drain when the lights are turned on. Here's a sample of one of the right's "fearless" champions justifying her cowardice and lack of spine:

I’m. Trrrrembling.

With. Laughter.

A good-faith debate would require that Respectable Liberal Blogger Ezra Klein actually be a person of good faith. He is treated as such in some elite conservative circles, where his work is linked frequently and intellectual repartee among the Beltway boys’ club is warm and chummy. He is free to continue traveling in those cozy circles where highbrow right-wingers are not so mean and scary.

But I’d just as soon share a stage, physical or virtual, with Respectable Liberal Blogger Ezra Klein as I would with Chris Matthews, Geraldo Rivera, or an overflowing vat of liquid radioactive waste.

So basically, if you disagree with her from the left you're part of the "nutroots" and if you're more principled than her from the right, then you obviously run in the sort of "elite conservative circles" that Malkin wants no part of. Apparently the term "elite conservative circles" refers to those conservatives who aren't afraid to engage their opponents in open debate, or to consider their ideas seriously, as opposed to dismissing them out of hand with an insult and a not-so-clever joke. I must say, though, that I was tickled by Malkin's rejoinder: "I'm trembling / with laughter." It reminds me of a schoolyard bully who's scared to fight the older brother of one of his perennial victims and justifies his cowardice by claiming that, of course he'd like to fight, but he's worried he'd kick his opponent's ass so badly he'd have to go to jail for it. Yeah, right Michelle, lay another one on me. At any rate, if you're curious about the reference to Chris Matthews in Malkin's piece, then youi really should take a look at the following Youtube video. It shows what happens when someone (Matthews) refuses to take any shit from a gutless conservative (Malkin) and insists that she stop hurling baseless insinuations and actually stand behind her calumny, lies and slander:

What a class act...

Great White Hope? Nope.

Well, so I watched the Fred Thompson debate yesterday (at least that's what the media were calling it), and I must say that were I a Republican what I saw would have given me little comfort. It was Fred Thompson's moment in the sun, or at least it was supposed to be. And yet it really turned out more like the Mitt and Rudy show (which one was the cat and which the mouse, I'm still not sure).

The simple fact is that when you take away the slow zoom, the gel lens and the patriotic background music, Thompson just doesn't have all that much stage presence. He's certainly no Ronald Reagan. Most disheartening was probably his answer to Maria Bartiromo's question about the negative effects of a weak dollar on the U.S. economy. Fred seemed pretty clueless... not quite Miss Teen South Carolina clueless and not quite George Bush explains Tribal Sovereignty clueless, but certainly at a loss for words. In fact, he was only able to enumerate the benefits to the export sector of a weak dollar, but not the negatives, which is what the question was about (for the record, a weak dollar makes imports more expensive and makes the U.S. less attractive to foreign investors).

As for the other candidates, I continue to be impressed with Mitt Romney. I find his political views pretty much abhorrent, but the guy does exude an air of competence. And he's not a pie-in-the-sky ideologue or a confused theocrat. Had he been president these last four years I have little doubt that we wouldn't be in anything like the mess we're in today (of course you could say that about a Spongebob Squarepants presidency, too, or just about anybody). It's just too bad for the GOP that they've built their party on religious and ethnic bigotry, because Mitt the Mormon hasn't got a snowball's chance if he turns out to be the nominee. You can't win an election by appealing to unaligned voters and a handful of defectors from the other party but without the support of your base.

Excessive Force

22 Years ago the Philadelphia Police department, in a move that has come to epitomize the use of excessive force and official recklessness, dropped a firebomb on the roof of an apartment building housing a black separatist group known as MOVE. The bomb ignited several barrels of gasoline, burned down over 60 adjacent apartments and caused the deaths of 11 people including numerous children. Before all was said and done, the city of Philadelphia was ordered to pay over $30 million in compensation to victims of the bombing.

The MOVE bombing has become emblematic of why it is a bad idea to employ military grade weaponry and tactics to police civilian populations. And similar scattered incidents that have occurred over the years have led to tremendous anger and even civil unrest on the part of significant segments of the US population. Let us not forget that when Timothy McVeigh bombed the Murray building in Oklahoma City, OK, in the single most spectacular (and grisly) terrorist attack on U.S. soil prior to the events of 9/11, he did so out of anger at the Federal government's mishandling of the Branch Davidian crisis in Waco, Texas. And while the full extent of the network that aided and abetted McVeigh in planning and carrying out the OK city bombings may never be known, it is a undeniable fact that the Waco incident that motivated McVaeigh sparked tremendous outrage among certain segments of the population (mostly rural conservatives) and provided a great deal of impetus to the formation and arming of numerous armed paramilitary organizations across the country that were overtly hostile to the Federal Government. These organizations were collectively referred to as "the Militia Movement."

I think it important to review this history, because as our newspapers report once again on the deaths of innocent civilians at the hands of U.S. equipped mercenary bands operating in Iraq with a grant of full immunity from prosecution by authorities in that country, it is vital that we understand (by looking back at our own responses to such outrages) the hatred that such incidents engender in the local civilian population. Try to imagine if the MOVE, the Waco incident, the Kent State massacre were regular occurrences in our own country, carried out by private paramilitary organizations under the employ of a foreign government and who have been granted immunity from prosecution by our civil courts. Today the New York Times reports on two women killed by private "security contractors" in Iraq. As is too often the case in these incidents, the victims were guilty only of being in the wrong place at the wrong time:

The women were in a white car that drove into the Masbah intersection in the central Karradah district as the convoy of three white and one gray SUVs was stopped about 100 yards away, according to a policeman who witnessed the shooting from a nearby checkpoint.

The men in the SUVs threw a smoke bomb in an apparent bid to warn the car against coming forward, said Riyadh Majid, the policeman. The woman driving the car tried to stop, but was killed along with the passenger when two of the guards in the convoy opened fire, Majid said.

The pavement where the attack occurred was stained with blood and covered with shattered glass from the car windows.

He said the convoy then raced away and Iraqi police came to collect the bodies and tow the car to the local police station.

There's no possible way we can defeat an insurgency while employing such tactics, and no question that we further drive the civilian population into our opponents ranks. Just ask yourself this question: if it had been your mother and your sister in that car, what would you do? If you answer that question honestly, and are not a coward, then you'll understand why the occupation is just as good as lost.

WTF, people?!

The opening line of this New York Times piece set my head a-spinning:

AFTER the 2004 elections, religious conservatives were riding high. Newly anointed by pundits as “values voters” — a more flattering label than “religious right” — they claimed credit for propelling George W. Bush to two terms in the White House. Even in wartime, they had managed to fixate the nation on their pet issues: opposition to abortion, gay marriage and stem cell research.

I've got to ask the question: has the right so dominated the propaganda wars that they've managed to christen themselves "values voters" while implicitly and by extension re-defining the rest of us as hedonistic nihilists?

When in February of 2002 I marched through the streets of New York along with 200+ thousand like minded lefties in opposition to a looming, "pre-emptive" war of choice that would bring death to thousands of innocent men, women and children, were those not my values on display?

When I vote for the candidate who promises to extend health coverage to the needy who cannot afford it, are those not my values on display?

When I pull the lever for the candidate who assures me that he will ensure that our nation's elderly do not sink into destitution when they retire, are those not my values on display?

When I vote for the candidate who promises to allow scientists to inform the people of the environmental dangers we face in the coming decades, without censoring their speeches or de-funding their research, are those not my values on display?

When I rise in protest against a death penalty that almost all other industrialized nations have discarded, and which places these United States in league with totalitarian dictatorships such as Burma and China, are those not my values on display?

When I pen a blog entry lamenting the Bush Administration's promotion of torture as an acceptable form of interrogation for detained suspects, are those not my values on display?

The simple answer to these questions is that, yes, those are my values on display. I am not a nihilist, or a solipsist, or a hedonist. I am a values voter, and so are all the like minded people who I've met along the way, at political gatherings, at rallies, at universities, at churches and at work. And so to all those dime-store propagandists who wear the mantle of "pundit" and who would seek to convince the nation that I and my like-minded compatriots are valueless, I extend a hearty fuck you. I'll put my compassion and love of humanity up against your greed, your xenophobia, your jingoism, your warmongering, your homophobia and racism any day of the week as far as values go.

Not half as funny

OK, so conservatives have talk radio and liberals have satirical, "fake" news shows... and never the twain should meet. You'd think the Right would have figured this out sometime after the disaster that was Fox News' "Half Hour News Hour," but apparently the geniuses at the conservative "media watchdog" site Newsbusters didn't get the message. Take a gander at this nuttyness:





Egad, that's pretty awful stuff, canned laughter and all.

Update: I just realized how much this guy, Mark Ellis, looks like an asshole-fratboy version of Peter Lorre:



Again... not good.

Democrats: their prices are insaaaaane

According to Mitt Romney, supporting the Democratic proposal for an expanded SCHIP program is so unwise that it'd be like offering a customer a 10% discount on top of your already low, low 10% sale price in order to move a product:

“Can you imagine doing something like that in your enterprise, saying we want to get a new customer, so we’re going to lower the price to get this new account by 10 percent but then we’re going to go to all of our old customers and all give them 10 percent off too?” Mr. Romney said.

Which, apparently no businessman would ever contemplate* because they're already selling under invoice, and you can't find prices like these at any of their competitors and they're already losing their shirts at this price and it's just too crazy and insane and just plain zany an idea to even contemplate, but I tell you what: let me run it by my sales manager and see what he says!!!


*Except maybe on President's Day, and the day after Thanksgiving, and maybe Dec. 26, or if you're a mattress salesman maybe every other week... at most.

Patriotism pays off:

It pays to be a patriot:

Torture & Tossed Salad

It happened again the other night. Debate moderator Tim Russert directed the following question at Democratic candidate, Senator Hillary Clinton:

"Senator Clinton, this is the number three man in Al Qaeda. We know there's a bomb about to go off, and we have three days, and we know this guy knows where it is. Should there be a presidential exception to allow torture in that kind of situation?"

To her credit, Senator Clinton responded by disavowing torture under any and all circumstances: "As a matter of policy it cannot be American policy, period," she said. But to her shame, this was not the position she held in October when she told a New York Daily News reporter that there should be narrow exceptions allowing for government sanctioned torture in some cases. Whether her change of position reflects a genuine moral shift or simply a new political calculus cannot be known for certain. But whatever it is that moves this change of position, and the similar disavowal of torture we heard from the mouths the other major candidates at last night’s debate, I’ll take it. It’s certainly better than we’ve seen from the Republican candidates in recent months. Indeed, apart from the very notable exception of John McCain --the only genuine torture survivor among the group-- the major Republican candidates for the presidency all seem to delight in reassuring their conservative audiences that they would not hesitate to grant interrogators the right to torture olive skinned foreigners if doing so might prevent an attack on honest, God fearing Americans.

At a debate in South Carolina last May, both Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney responded to a similar question by assuring the audience that they would give interrogators wide latitude in the use of harsh interrogation techniques, while slyly denying that such techniques would constitute torture. You could almost feel the breeze as candidates and audience members traded a collective wink and a nod. Both men went on to specifically endorse water boarding, a method of torture whereby a prisoner is repeatedly brought to the edge of asphyxiation and made to believe he is drowning. And Mitt Romney further insisted that the prison at Guantanamo Bay Cuba should be expanded to twice its size rather than boarded up, as some critics contend.

Reflecting a bit on the Republican Party’s fondness for torture, a question occurred to me that I would really, really like to be afforded the opportunity to pose at a future candidate’s forum. The question would go something like this:

"Mayor Giuliani, Governor Romney, this is the number three man in Al Qaeda. We know there's a bomb about to go off, and we have three days, and we know this guy knows where it is. We’ve been torturing him for weeks, but to no avail. He won’t give up the information. But then one day he wakes up and says: ‘OK, OK, I’ll tell you guys where the bomb is. But only if Rudolph Giuliani or Mitt Romney will fly down here to Gitmo and toss my salad.’ I ask you, Mr. Mayor... Governor... Would you do it? Would you toss his salad if it might potentially save hundreds of innocent lives? "

Now, if you don’t know what it means to toss someone’s salad, then I suggest you forego looking the expression up, and just accept that it’s not a very nice thing to have to do. Yes, you will find an explanation for it in the hip & with it, online, Urban Dictionary. But you’ll wish you hadn’t. Trust me. Just accept that tossing someone’s salad is not something you want to find yourself doing every day... or ever, actually. It’s an activity that’s kinda on the degrading side... sorta the way planet Jupiter is kinda on the big side, or the surface of the sun is kinda on the hot side.

And that’s just the point. You see, these candidates and their enablers in the media (I’m speaking to you Brit Hume and you Tim Russert) never seem to tire of assuring us that they would be more than willing to degrade America and drag her name through the dirt, compromise her values and betray her founding principles all in the name of foiling a fictional terrorist attack scenario that exists only in the imaginations of Hollywood script writers and fear mongering propagandists. But what I would like to know is whether they’d be just as willing to degrade themselves, drag their own names through the mud, compromise their own values and betray their own principles all in the name of foiling that same attack.

“Now, hold on there,” I hear you say. “The scenario you’re describing is preposterous. No terrorist is going to ask Rudy Giuliani or Mitt Romney to toss his salad in exchange for information that might enable U.S. authorities to foil an attack.” And right you are. But then, no real-life example of the so-called “ticking time-bomb” scenario, which could have been prevented through torture, is ever known to have occurred in all of recorded human history. This is probably because the scenario itself is so preposterous. Consider all the pieces that would need to fall into place, as described in a recent publication of the Association for the Prevention of Torture (PDF):

· You’d have to have the guy in custody.

· You’d have to know an attack was imminent.

· The attack will kill a lot of people.

· The guy has enough information to prevent the attack.

· If you torture this guy he’ll give up the information.

· There’s no other way to get this information.

· There’s no other way (i.e. evacuation of a building) to prevent a loss of life.

In addition I might add:

· This guy’s important enough to know about the plan, but not so important that the fact that he’s out of commission won’t by itself prevent the plan from being carried out.

· The bad guys don’t know you have this guy, so they won’t alter the plan.

So we’re talking about a very improbable scenario here. Indeed, one has to assume further, that once the bad guys know that we’re torturing their captured officials, they’ll give their field operatives enough leeway in choosing targets and hideouts that no other member of the organization could have enough information to prevent it (this is assuming they don’t already operate in this manner).

“But wait,” I hear you say, “this scenario is not really so improbable. After all, I see it played out every week on T.V. and in the movies” And to this I respond that if movies are your metric for plausibility, then I think that you’ll find plenty of movies in which the bad guys do, in fact, offer to mend their evil ways in exchange for a salad tossing. They’re just found in a different section of the rental store, that’s all, a little dank, musty room in the back alongside a whole host of other unusual titles with names you’ve never heard of and some very unconventional cover-art.

So once again, the question stands: Mr. Mayor, Mr. Governor, if you could prevent a terrorist attack upon these United States of America by tossing a terrorist’s salad, would you do it? Please, don’t be shy, Patriotic Americans wants to know.