National Review, as always, has its own agenda spin

[solarbird]

And that agenda is supporting torture. Widespread, regularised, institutionalised torture. As they put it, "Waterboarding Wins" in Massachusetts, and they chalk Mr. Brown's Senate race victory directly up the torture that he both supports and he pretends is "not torture."

Comments

[leftbase.livejournal.com]

Ordinarily I don't care what most people think, but today I'm finding it very important to mention, at every possible opportunity, that I voted for Coakley. I wish it had occurred to her some time before voting day that there was a possibility she might not win.

America has Become a Nation That Tortures

[tamahori]

I'm not meaning the American population, but Obama had a very small window to stop the US being put in the same category on the subject of torture as China (we all know they do it, they don't care who knows it, they are too big and scary to ask them to stop) by the rest of the world, and didn't take advantage of it. I'm fairly bitter about it too, and I'm not even from the US.

I suppose it's good for some people that they actively are happy about this, though I like to think the vast majority of the US still thinks being the 'bad guys' isn't a good thing. I miss the days when the US were the 'good guys' and proud of it, I really do. I have no idea how the majority of your country is going to get control of it back again, but I really do wish you the best of luck with that.

Sorry if this is coming across and cynical and depressed, but I think I'm getting burnt out on it. I mean my reaction when I read the news report was "Oh, so another bit of proof of what we all knew what was happening anyway ... I wonder how long till this gets buried/ignored." ... and that reaction, even more then the news itself, bothers the heck out of me, but there you have it.

America was founded on some great ideas, and I hope that at some point in the future it will live up to those again, but for the time being the US Political System has turned it into the the big bully in the classroom that does anything he wants, has the teachers scared of them, and all you can really do is hope you don't piss them off today. And I do blame the system, because I think short of swapping out the majority of the current elected people in one massive move, I don't see anyone being able to change it. The US Political System has gotten _very_ good at defending itself from any threats (where threat is this case is the people that vote for them) over the years.

I think a cleaned up media would be a good start. Democracy (Representative or otherwise) requires a well informed population, and any place where the elected representatives can say anything they feel like on camera, and never get called on it even if they made an utterly blatant lie, no matter how bad, then you're not going to get a well informed population.

Honestly, I think Rupert Murdock may have more to do with the current bad state of things then any other living person.

-- Brett

[phillipalden.livejournal.com]

It staggers me how much we fail to learn from the past, (ours and others.) Almost as much as it staggers me how we fail to take responsibility for the actions that have brought us to this point.

Terrorists don't just pop out of the woodwork. Even a third-grader should understand cause and effect.