new depths of stupidity
Dec. 4th, 2008 11:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
solarbirdI saw this before, but didn't know whether to believe it, but now there's a second source that isn't townhall.com: Associate Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has decided to use the prestige of the Supreme Court to fuel paranoid conspiracy freak insanity about Barack Obama by taking to conference one of the various nutbar lawsuits against President-Designate Obama's citizenship. This is truly wretched. It's not just that the case has no merit; it's that Justice Thomas has decided to use the Supreme Court as a baiting toy to fuel the insane.
Glenn Greenwald has disturbing reports of possible backtracking - and the backtracking on the backtracking - on torture by Democratic leadership in the Senate. The Weekly Standard has, of course, been urging Chief Executive Bush to award the Medal of Freedom to torturers. Meanwhile, the New York Times still refuses to call torture "torture," and continues to label torture opponents as crazy leftists. More here, if you can stomach it.
Meanwhile, Pope Benedict has thrown Vatican efforts against a UN resolution calling for an end to the practice of criminalizing and punishing people for their sexual orientation. Yes: the Vatican, under Pope Benedict, is now actively working to keep queers illegal in many countries. The Catholic Church hierarchy is now effectively supporting the death penalty for homosexuality in Saudi Arabia.
Over in the Air Force, Capt. Christian Biscotti led a mandatory-attendence presentation at RAF Lakenheath declaring evolutionary theory a pro-suicide Marxist-Communist evil, and promoting Creationism as the antidote. Regular readers familiar with fundamentalist Creationist rhetoric will recognise many of the attack points made in the slides. The religious-indoctrination presentation was officially a "suicide prevention" exercise. Many more slides and a link to the entire presentation here.
Much of the above is borrowing/stealing from the highly sectarian The Purpose-Driven Life, by Pastor Rick Warren, who on the 3rd endorsed the assassination of foreign leaders he sees as "evil," supporting Fox News's Sean Hannity and his declaration that such actions are "righteous."
Closer to home, the University of Washington student newspaper The Daily has spurred protests after running an op-ed against same-sex marriage rights, bringing in the usual hate arguments that homosexuality is an emotional problem and that marriage rights for queers will lead to incest, bestiality, and pedophilia. (Original article here.) The article is accompanied by an abstract graphic of a generic man marrying a sheep. There's a student protest at 12:30, 5 December 2008, and a Facebook group here.
In creepy, creepy, creepy news, the number of troops the Pentagon is talking about deploying domestically has swelled to 20,000. The idea of any deployment was first floated a couple of months ago, and the number has grown five times since then. They are, of course, citing terrorism.
Finally, in somewhat more rational news, Vice-President Designate Biden came out in support of more and better support for passenger rail, particularly for in-city transportation.
eta: I've already had to use the banhammer once today on a newly-created account by an OBAMA IS A SEKRIT MUSLIM/birth-certificate crazy. I will continue to apply as necessary, so don't bother.
Glenn Greenwald has disturbing reports of possible backtracking - and the backtracking on the backtracking - on torture by Democratic leadership in the Senate. The Weekly Standard has, of course, been urging Chief Executive Bush to award the Medal of Freedom to torturers. Meanwhile, the New York Times still refuses to call torture "torture," and continues to label torture opponents as crazy leftists. More here, if you can stomach it.
Meanwhile, Pope Benedict has thrown Vatican efforts against a UN resolution calling for an end to the practice of criminalizing and punishing people for their sexual orientation. Yes: the Vatican, under Pope Benedict, is now actively working to keep queers illegal in many countries. The Catholic Church hierarchy is now effectively supporting the death penalty for homosexuality in Saudi Arabia.
Over in the Air Force, Capt. Christian Biscotti led a mandatory-attendence presentation at RAF Lakenheath declaring evolutionary theory a pro-suicide Marxist-Communist evil, and promoting Creationism as the antidote. Regular readers familiar with fundamentalist Creationist rhetoric will recognise many of the attack points made in the slides. The religious-indoctrination presentation was officially a "suicide prevention" exercise. Many more slides and a link to the entire presentation here.
Much of the above is borrowing/stealing from the highly sectarian The Purpose-Driven Life, by Pastor Rick Warren, who on the 3rd endorsed the assassination of foreign leaders he sees as "evil," supporting Fox News's Sean Hannity and his declaration that such actions are "righteous."
Closer to home, the University of Washington student newspaper The Daily has spurred protests after running an op-ed against same-sex marriage rights, bringing in the usual hate arguments that homosexuality is an emotional problem and that marriage rights for queers will lead to incest, bestiality, and pedophilia. (Original article here.) The article is accompanied by an abstract graphic of a generic man marrying a sheep. There's a student protest at 12:30, 5 December 2008, and a Facebook group here.
In creepy, creepy, creepy news, the number of troops the Pentagon is talking about deploying domestically has swelled to 20,000. The idea of any deployment was first floated a couple of months ago, and the number has grown five times since then. They are, of course, citing terrorism.
Finally, in somewhat more rational news, Vice-President Designate Biden came out in support of more and better support for passenger rail, particularly for in-city transportation.
eta: I've already had to use the banhammer once today on a newly-created account by an OBAMA IS A SEKRIT MUSLIM/birth-certificate crazy. I will continue to apply as necessary, so don't bother.
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no subject
Date: 2008-12-05 02:03 pm (UTC)I've never weighed in on the torture subject. It's barbaric. Seems pretty obvious. But aren't a lot of the "pro torture" people pointing out that any form or incarceration or punishment for criminal activity could be labeled as such? Does, er, that group that's name has fallen completely out of my brain so now I can't even look them up, the anti torture group, have a definition of the term which allows for incarceration but is against physical/mental abuse (besides the mental anguish casued by being incarcerated :P)? Holy crap I can't think of it's name and I JUST thought of it while reading your post. Annoying!
no subject
Date: 2008-12-05 04:52 pm (UTC)I'm sure they have extremest members who think tongue-lashings count as torture, and believe that their opinions are that of AI's. But I doubt they represent AI's views any more than the 'not a natural citizen' kooks represent the GOP.
no subject
Date: 2008-12-05 07:07 pm (UTC)Thanks it was driving me nuts
no subject
Date: 2008-12-05 05:18 pm (UTC)Not that I've seen. I could certainly see doing that as a red herring, so I'm sure someone has, though. But they're mostly arguing that things the US has always considered torture suddenly aren't torture if the US does them. Things like long-time-standing, sleep-dep, waterboarding (most well known), extreme cold treatment, things like that. Things the Allies prosecuted Nazis for after World War II, and the American army prosecuted its own soldiers for in Vietnam. You know, torture. When I talk about redefining words to mean nothing, this is a prime example.
Tho' in the last several months of this year, some of the prime offenders have stopped trying to redefine torture and just started using the word and saying torture is fine if we do it. I've linked to several examples over the past year. There've been proposals to legalise it outright, to set up legal structures (e.g., torture warrants) and so on. It's all barbarism, of course.