Quis torture ipsos torturers?

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Saturday April 25, 2009 · 10:55 AM PDT

2009/04/25 · 10:55

Now there's documentary proof the Bush administration tortured prisoners, right down to the Spanish Inquisition approved methods and the numbers of times they were applied, everyone is asking if it worked. Considering that torture has been with us since the dawn of recorded time, this is probably the stupidest question in history. Of course torture works. It all depends what you want it for.

jcnossiter

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Saturday April 18, 2009 · 12:47 PM PDT

2009/04/18 · 12:47

So now we know. The true agenda of the pro-America Americans, the "real" Americans, is secession. Governor Rick Perry of Texas and fatties like Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck are being vilified in some quarters for their splittist views while adherents consider them true heroes. But here's the thing. This is the same crowd whose motto used to be "America – love it or leave it." For them, criticism of government policies like the war in Vietnam or the setting of dogs on civil rights demonstrators was equivalent to treason. Now they're criticizing government policies and wanting to leave the union. Does this mean they are traitors who hate America?

jcnossiter

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Thursday April 16, 2009 · 4:12 PM PDT

2009/04/16 · 16:12

The great Republican tax protest, the nationwide tea bag party, came and went yesterday. According to fivethirtyeight.com over three hundred people turned out in Nebraska alone. But bold plans to dump a million tea bags in the Potomac, for mob rule across the land, and for Texas to secede from the union, all came to naught. The day, in other words, was a fizzle despite the trouble and expense gone to by Fox News and other rightist organizations. Here's how to avert similar let-downs in future:

jcnossiter

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Sunday April 12, 2009 · 4:20 PM PDT

2009/04/12 · 16:20

It's all over. Focus on the Family founder James Dobson just announced that the culture wars are lost. "We are awash in evil," he told supporters. As a man who's worked tirelessly to spread hatred and intolerance across the land, Dobson knows whereof he speaks. He's heading for a well-earned retirement of drawing pentagrams and sacrificing goats, but he leaves the rightist evangelical movement in the lurch. At this crucial juncture, with the good fight seemingly lost, who is to assume the mantle of rectitude and carry on the struggle?

jcnossiter

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Saturday April 11, 2009 · 4:09 PM PDT

2009/04/11 · 16:09

At ASU they agree
Not to confer a degree
On their speaker at commencement
The USA's first black president.

For this the U. faces opprobrium
Their own Pres accused: Racist bum!
And can they mean it when they say
It's because Obama has yet to find his way?

But the criticism is much too hard
Obama's already degreed at Harvard
And at Columbia as well
Degrees just don't get more swell.

With his degrees so very pedigreed
ASU rightly feels of theirs he has no need.

The Genius of the GOP

jcnossiter

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Friday April 03, 2009 · 4:56 PM PDT

2009/04/03 · 16:56

"It's not a stimulus but a spending bill," complain the sages of the GOP, not quite grasping that government spending is by definition stimulative. Instead they propose deregulation, tax cuts, and a bigger budget for the Pentagon, not perhaps realizing that that formula, rigorously applied during eight years of the Bush administration, has brought the world economy to its knees.

jcnossiter

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Saturday March 28, 2009 · 11:37 AM PDT

2009/03/28 · 11:37

Confused? Please try to follow:
We lend money to speculators
To buy speculative assets
From banks who speculated.

The assets are bankrupting
The very banks who own them.
But if sold at a good price
To the speculators
The banks will do nicely, thank you.

Won't the speculators go bust
If the assets bankrupting the banks
Are owned instead by them?
Not really.

Because speculators are buying the assets
With your money.
But not to worry. Silly.
You won't own the speculative assets:

The speculators will.
And if the assets are worth anything
The speculators profit.
And if not?

It's only money.
Your money.
And since you didn't really have it anyway
You won't miss it at all.

Memo to the Obama Admin

jcnossiter

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Friday March 27, 2009 · 4:27 PM PDT

2009/03/27 · 16:27

Bank of America chief Kenneth Lewis now thinks banks must separate their investment from their lending activities. How quaint. The Roosevelt administration had the same thought back in the thirties. Legislation was passed imposing strict rules on commercial bank activity, as in, "if you take deposits, you are not allowed to take risks with them."

jcnossiter

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Sunday March 22, 2009 · 4:48 PM PDT

2009/03/22 · 16:48

Now that we're all incensed with the Obama economic team, is it too late to point out that we should have seen this coming? We keep lavishing rewards on a couple of inveterate bone-heads, a fiscal Laurel and Hardy team that resembles the original in every way but one: there's nothing funny about them. Two men, one red-faced and stout, the other pale, lanky, and with stand-up hair. They are handed plum after plum job, positions of power, influence, and great responsibility – and every single time they screw up, comprehensively, embarrassingly, catastrophically. The smartest move the Obama administration can make right now, both for its own survival and ours, is to hand Larry Summers and Timothy Geithner generous "separation" bonuses in return for their promise to disappear from public life forever.

jcnossiter

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Thursday March 19, 2009 · 2:09 PM PDT

2009/03/19 · 14:09

How to get rich in America?
Let me count the ways
You could work hard
And play by the rules.
But only if your enjoyment
Is eventual unemployment.

Some prefer the ponzi scheme
And the noble art of fraud
Whereby the dollars flow
Like waters over Niagara.
A pity this well-worn trail
Tends in the end to lead to jail.

Better by far is the corporate route
And the largest corner office.
From whence you execute
Schemes and transactions
To swell your own compensation
At the expense of a clueless nation.

The living is nothing short of regal
And best of all it's perfectly legal.

Twinkie Finance

jcnossiter

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Wednesday March 18, 2009 · 1:11 PM PDT

2009/03/18 · 13:11

Watching Milk was a reminder of the ludicrous excuse made by Harvey Milk's killer, Dan White: the "Twinkie defense." Sorry your honor, too much junk food forced me to assassinate in cold blood San Francisco's mayor and one of his supervisors. Not to be flip, but White's blame-shifting exercise borrowed much from a 60s comedian named Flip Wilson whose tag line was "the devil made me do it." Don't blame me or, as the French are fond of saying, "ce n'est pas ma faute." Some external agency, or maybe fate itself, is responsible. Kismet. What must be, must be, and so it is written.

jcnossiter

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Thursday March 12, 2009 · 2:26 PM PDT

2009/03/12 · 14:26

As giant headlines shriek his guilt, as the boobesphere division of the blogosphere calls for his evisceration, drawing and quartering, whatever, as crowds with pitchforks and burning torches cheer Ponzi King Bernard Madoff's one way trip to a federal pen, whither his partners in crime? Not his unsavory family, nor his Potemkin village employees or "accountants." Some among them are doubtless criminals too, but petty ones. So, in the end, is Madoff. Oh sure he lost billions of others' money, bankrupted charities and schools, destroyed lives and retirements, triggered at least two suicides. But compared to leveling our entire financial system and bringing the global economy down with it, his crimes are minor. His firm was never anything more than a small-time player in the Wall Street casino. The high rollers had hundreds of times his resources, thousands of times his destructive power. So what's happened to them?

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Quis torture ipsos torturers?

USA: Loving it, Leaving it

Tea Bagging Improved

Wanted: A New Savior

ASU Unjustly Condemned

The Genius of the GOP

Truth in Lending: The Geithner Plan

Memo to the Obama Admin

Laurel and Hardy go to Washington

The Road to Riches

Twinkie Finance

Madoff Jailed? Hold the Celebrations