Not Vicious
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
WHEEEEEEEEEEEEE
Broder's boy bounces all the way to 24%.
# President Bush’s latest ratings are 24 percent positive and fully 75 percent negative. Previously, his worst numbers were 26 percent positive and 72 percent negative in April of this year. His ratings are substantially worse than those of any president, except for Jimmy Carter (22%-77% in July 1980), since Harris first started measuring themin 1963.
# Vice President Cheney’s ratings are even worse, 18 percent positive and 74 percent negative, compared to his previous low of 21 percent positive, 74 percent negative last July.
# Secretary of State Rice’s ratings are much better than those of the President and Vice President, but also have fallen to their lowest point ever, 39 percent positive and 54 percent negative, compared to 42 percent positive and 51 percent negative last October.
# Only 14 percent of the public think the things in the country are going in the right direction and fully 80 percent think they are on the wrong track.
(ht pony boy)
Narrative Down
The Right has been pushing the ZOMG PEOPLE HATE MICHELLE OBAMA narrative into the mouths of their mainstream media sock puppets for a long time. And remember that CNN article which asked if Cindy McCain was perfect? Oh well.
Forty-eight percent of Americans in a new ABC News/Washington Post poll see Obama favorably, vs. 39 percent for McCain, a 9-point Obama advantage. Slightly more, though, also view Obama unfavorably – 29 percent vs. McCain's 25 percent.
War Criminals
McClatchy:
And there you are.
It was largely the work of five White House, Pentagon and Justice Department lawyers who, following the orders of President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, reinterpreted or tossed out the U.S. and international laws that govern the treatment of prisoners in wartime, according to former U.S. defense and Bush administration officials. The Supreme Court now has struck down many of their legal interpretations.
The lawyers drafted legal opinions that circumvented the military's code of justice, the federal court system and America's international treaties in order to prevent anyone — from soldiers on the ground to the president — from being held accountable for activities that at other times have been considered war crimes.
And there you are.
Iraq 4Evah
I can remember when only dirty fucking hippies talked about how we were planning to the there forever.
Right now, they are counted as 12. But in the continental United States, the military officially considers them as only one, Mr. Pike says. So just a small accounting change could, in theory, easily reduce 250 or more bases to 58 or less.
In any event, it is not clear why the United States would need more than a handful of big bases in the future, and most if not all of those are already there and looking quite permanent, from the KFC and Burger King outlets, to the car dealerships, to the 6,000- person mess halls.
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
At Least I Know I'm Free
Thanks Oh Wise Old Men Of Washington.
WASHINGTON — The U.S. military hid the locations of suspected terrorist detainees and concealed harsh treatment to avoid the scrutiny of the International Committee of the Red Cross, according to documents that a Senate committee released Tuesday.
...
The administration overrode or ignored objections from all four military services and from criminal investigators, who warned that the practices would imperil their ability to prosecute the suspects. In one prophetic e-mail on Oct. 28, 2002, Mark Fallon, then the deputy commander of the Pentagon's Criminal Investigation Task Force, wrote a colleague: "This looks like the kind of stuff Congressional hearings are made of. ... Someone needs to be considering how history will look back at this." The objections from the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines prompted Navy Capt. Jane Dalton, legal adviser to the then-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Richard Myers, to begin a review of the proposed techniques.
Names
While Mrs. Atrios obviously shares a pseudonym with me, she didn't share a last name. We didn't think much about this when we got married - there were a few purely practical reasons it was easier for her to keep her name - but it seems perfectly normal. Normal, at least, until we realize that for a lot of people it's a freaking weird thing to do.
Anyway, I don't really care. I can understand reasons why people share names, and reasons why they don't, but again, who cares? It just isn't important.
Anyway, I don't really care. I can understand reasons why people share names, and reasons why they don't, but again, who cares? It just isn't important.
Did I Say 11?
Make that 51+...
Thanks Oh Wise Men Of Washington for all that you have done for these people.
BAGHDAD — A car bomb set to explode during the busiest time of day killed at least 51 people and wounded 75 Tuesday evening as shoppers were strolling through a Shiite neighborhood market in Baghdad. It was the deadliest attack in the Iraqi capital in more than three months.
Thanks Oh Wise Men Of Washington for all that you have done for these people.
People Vote Too Often
For those who live in MD-4 make sure you go out and vote for Donna Edwards in the special election today.
A couple of people have asked why Donna's name appears on the Eschaton challengers list when she's almost guaranteed a win. As soon as she wins I'll move her to the incumbent list, but it's important to support progressive candidates even once they are in office. Raising money isn't just about winning elections, it's also about making yourself more independent from the powers that be and building a base of power. The "better" part of more and better Democrats doesn't just involve electing better Democrats, but also empowering them.
A couple of people have asked why Donna's name appears on the Eschaton challengers list when she's almost guaranteed a win. As soon as she wins I'll move her to the incumbent list, but it's important to support progressive candidates even once they are in office. Raising money isn't just about winning elections, it's also about making yourself more independent from the powers that be and building a base of power. The "better" part of more and better Democrats doesn't just involve electing better Democrats, but also empowering them.
Calling Foul
Yglesias:
While I'm not the duly-appointed keeper of the Book Of What Liberals Think, I don't really think this is an accurate characterization (or caricature). I think the liberal position is that a lot of perceived gender-based behavior differences have strong cultural roots and reinforcement, and that even the perceptions of differences, which are not always correct, are strongly culturally defined. While men and women are clearly different in some sense, there isn't really evidence out there to prove that many of the stereotypical "differences" (girls are bad at math!) have a genetic or biological basis.
Most of all liberals understand that the effort to pin it on genetics is part of a movement to convince the world that the lack of proper female representation at higher levels of power and success is just "natural" and therefore nothing we should worry our pretty heads about. But that's not the same as thinking that no differences with genetic roots could exist.
Liberals tend to believe that sexual orientation is determined by genetics but that gender-difference in behavior is not, whereas conservatives tend to believe the reverse. But, of course, as we see here these are related issues.
While I'm not the duly-appointed keeper of the Book Of What Liberals Think, I don't really think this is an accurate characterization (or caricature). I think the liberal position is that a lot of perceived gender-based behavior differences have strong cultural roots and reinforcement, and that even the perceptions of differences, which are not always correct, are strongly culturally defined. While men and women are clearly different in some sense, there isn't really evidence out there to prove that many of the stereotypical "differences" (girls are bad at math!) have a genetic or biological basis.
Most of all liberals understand that the effort to pin it on genetics is part of a movement to convince the world that the lack of proper female representation at higher levels of power and success is just "natural" and therefore nothing we should worry our pretty heads about. But that's not the same as thinking that no differences with genetic roots could exist.
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