So, this will be too short for a diary, but it's something we can hold on to whenever we are confronted with the sort of shit that Scalia was spouting the other day, and that Republicans have used as a cudgel to scare people into allowing the administration to usurp powers not granted to it in the Constitution, and in many cases, to act in direct contradiction to the Constitution.

It's about the idea that torture is "justified" in cases in which you've got a ticking bomb, and are lucky enough to have the one person in custody who can stop the bomb from going off.

Follow me around the bend for a little more of this...

There: I said it.  We did it.  It's all our fault.  Everything bad in the US, everything bad in the world, all comes down to the fact that the boomers spent money that should go to their children, voted for idiots like Bush and Bush and Reagan, are latte-sipping, Volvo-driving pansy-asses who can't get off the couch and leave their wide-screen TVs and surround-sound cocoons long enough to do anything good for anyone.

In short, it's all our fault.  We take this moment to apologize.

But wait:

or "How to spend millions of dollars to move us back to the dark ages."

Today I and several of my colleagues received in the mail a very large (I'm talking 20-pound) book called The Atlas of Creation, by one Harun Yahya (no jokes, please -- it's a pen name for Adnar Oktar (no jokes, please, that's the real name)).  

It is a lavishly-illustrated (beautiful color plates, on every one of its 800+, 11" x 14.4" pages) compendium of fossils that "display the invalidity of the theory of evolution."

Heh.

This will be brief and less than authoritative; I'm home, doing this from memory, and my memory sucks.

Via digby I read of an Orcinius story discussing the fact that the CBS blog has suspended reader comments on stories about Obama because they are filled with persistent, nasty, racist comments.

It's interesting: if Obama is popular in the polls, one wonders why this sort of vituperative is so loud and common that CBS has to suspend comments on Obama stories.  

One explanation is called "aversive racism" (sometimes called "modern" or "symbolic" racism).  Follow me over the fold for a little more on it.

Here in my little psychology department in my little blue island in our very red state, we've been interviewing candidates for a position in social psychology.  I love social psych, especially social cognition, because it's so applicable to what's going on in the world today.

Well, one of the candidates gave a teaching demonstration (we are a teaching college), and the topic was reasoning biases (which I love), and she specifically focused on what's called the status quo bias, a tendency to prefer stability to change.  I immediately was reminded of Republicans, especially the ordinary folks who consistently vote for the appearance of stability rather than progressive change -- even if that change would benefit them.

Follow me over to the dark side for a brief lesson and some comments... (And an explanation for the poll.)

From the Great OKAY STATE OF KS...

Some Late Night Kansas Snark!

NEWS FLASH! - Kansas' worst air disaster occurred when a small two-seater Cessna 150 plane, piloted by two University of Kansas students, crashed into a cemetery earlier today.

Search and Rescue workers in Lawrence have recovered 300 bodies so far and expect the number to climb as digging continues into the evening.

Okay, not so funny.  Kansas is, as you all know, the butt of many jokes, most of which involve Toto or Dorothy.  But this is a serious place, let me tell you.  For example, we've got a lot of septic systems, and as anyone who has ever had one can tell you, septic systems are very serious indeed.  

But we got other stuff!  We do!  Really!  Things are here!  We've got amber waves of grain!  And other stuff!

So follow me around the bend to There's Moreville and this impromptu, holy-crap I've got to do Cheers! & Jeers! lame-ass counterfeit edition of our glorious master's Koufax-award-winning blog-column right [Swoosh!!] RIGHT! [Swoosh!!] Ri... [Swooosh!!] [Swooosh!!] [Swooosh!!]

Crap.  

Just follow me over the fold, okay?  Right now!

I don't know why this is on my mind this morning, but it is, and I feel like writing a bit.  It's seven degrees outside and there's a full moon shining on the snow on the ground and it's so bright out there and beautiful; there's a really hot fire going in my woodstove warming my little farmhouse, and life is good.

Maybe that's what got me going on this.  

Here's the deal: I lived and worked in New York on 9/11, and part of my commute took me through Penn Station.  There are several things about that day and the aftermath that are sort of seared into memory: the ashen-faced department secretary who was frantically tuning the radio in her office to get word on what was going on, the group of us huddled around a radio down in my office wwaiting for word, any word at all about what was happening, the images of the towers collapsing that I watched from one of the student center TVs.

But follow me over the flip to see what really got me.

My younger brother is ending a year-long tour of Afghanistan soon.

He sent me an American flag that had flown on a mission, and I am going to go out and get a flagpole for it.

I sent him a note of thanks, and in his reply he told me how much "those colors" mean to him.

I told him they mean a lot to me, too.  And this was the letter I subsequently wrote him

Over the flipside is the text of it.

Because we are contaminating the Open Thread, I thought an alternative venue would be good.

So with the approbation of His Highness BiPM, I offer this, an ersatz kiddie pool.  I think anyone posting here should feel free to jump in later, when His Honorariness Himself posts the real thing.

This was what I wrote this morning, just to get us started...

Hello, good morning, and best wishes to the restayas: bobs, bobettes, bobitos, bobolios, bobaramas, bobarooskis, and everyone.

. . . .

But quiet....  Sssh!  I detect a disturbance in the force... no DarkSyde Science Friday diary... no Cheers & Jeers....  No one in the office....

I find myself, strangely (that's what they call me, "Strangely"), writing into the void, anticipating, anticipating, anticipating... uncertain whether things will be as they have been before... whether gravity will continue to draw myself down into the chair.... wait.... Sshhh... I'm floating... up into the air....  I feel a strange attraction... drawing me toward the HIBs.... I feel myself growing in anticipation.... growing.... growing....  I am now a very large middle-aged man, floating above my computer....

. . . .

Yo, and howdy!

We are still looking to corral any Kossacks in the general vicinity of Lawrence, KS on Friday after Thanksgiving -- that would be this Friday -- for a meetup!  Bring your post-repast gastroenteritis and soothe that indigestion with the company of some like-minded, recently-victorious, progressive Democrats!

The plan is to meet at Freestate for beverages and screaming (it can be sort of loud in there), and then if it's too loud there we can move to an alternative venue.  Just wear something orange (and avoid anything purple -- it's Jayhawk country around there).

We can use this diary to hammer out details, or to discuss whether another day would be better.  Last announcement there seemed to be interest in moving it to another date.  And the * after Kansas is to denote that it's for more than just Kansas people; anyone in the general area of Eastern KS or the KC metro area would be welcome!  

Add comments below, and make them snarky, dammit!

Reccomend this one, and unrecommend the last one.

Can't put up a one-line diary, so I'm just making shit up.

Today in the WaPo there's a story about how many of the people who are currently critical of the war are engaging in the hindsight bias.

Hindsight bias is the tendency to say "I knew it all along" when talking about some current unfortunate event (mostly; it can sometimes operate for good things, too).

Excuse me, but holy crap: the article looks like an excuse to write a little bit about some psychology (which is something that I think should happen in more newspapers), but it's doing it by minimizing the fact that thousands of people predicted a disaster.

Follow me over the edge for a little more discussion, and a request for help.

I was reading BarbinMD's diary about Bush's probable fear of prosecution, and decided that I have questions for the man, too.  So today I was reading Digby, and in there is a discussion of a Fred Barnes column on Bush's "head's up" meeting with journalists.

In that column, Barnes quotes Bush thusly:

I've never been more convinced that the decisions I made are the right decisions.

I bet you've already figured out my question, but follow me over to the other side for the (somewhat vulgar) asking of it.

I love this country.

But what I mean by "this country" is an ideal; it is an ideal established in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, and furthered in Amendments to the Constitution in the couple hundred or so years since 1789.

But I find myself sad, even depressed, because I see this country, my country, unraveling.

All because of fear.  A fear of personal safety, not a fear about a threat to the republic.  I am reminded of Patrick Henry and his "Give me liberty, or give me death."  Today it seems we'd have 50 million Republicans chant, "Give me liberty, or ... not.  Just don't let anyone hurt me."

Yesterday in my local rag, I read an editorial by (apparently) the owner/publisher.  It goes something like this (link here, but free registration is required):

Simons: Security measures necessary to the war on terrorism

By Dolph C. Simons, Jr.

Saturday, August 12, 2006

What would the majority of Americans prefer: Allow wiretaps, the ability to trace financial transactions, intercept and study incoming and outgoing foreign phone calls, strict enforcement of the Patriot Act and other security measures designed to protect Americans from deadly terrorist actions, or severely weaken our country's security policies and consequently increase the possibilities of deadly initiatives against U.S. citizens?

Follow me over the edge for a little more, and my reply (in 250 words or less...)

hekebolos has a diary up highlighting a WaPo article about the disastrous morale among our soldiers and marines in Iraq; as I was reading the article, I caught this quote, one that has been thrown around for a very long time as justification for our continued bleeding in Iraq:

[Spec. Joshua] Steffey got up to leave the porch and go to bed.

"You know, the point is we've lost too many Americans here already, we're committed now. So whatever the [expletive] end-state is, whatever it is, we need to achieve it -- that way they didn't die for nothing," he said. "We're far too deep in this now."

This canard has been used for quite some time now as a reason to stay in Iraq.  It's idiocy, of course, but for some strange reason appears to appeal to a great many people.  It seems, to them, to be a sufficient reason to keep getting more and more people killed.

Please, follow me onto the flip side to maybe understand this sort of thinking, and for a suggestion about how to help people from sinking into this delusion.

So, the other day in a diary we were discussing why we're at war, and it got me thinking: there are many factions with tremendous influence in the White House, all of whom stand -- independently -- to benefit from war in the Middle East.  Each alone probably doesn't have the power to drive us to war or to embroil us deep in a wide war in the middle east, but there is a horrible confluence of interests, all of which stand to reap enormous benefit from such a war, and together, well, together they sure can do it.

So if sometimes it seems that the White House really doesn't give a shit about the entire ME erupting in flames, there's a reason for that.  And if it seems that the White House doesn't know what it's doing, it's because no one is in charge: it's decision-making by (horrible) committee.  

Follow me around the corner and see some of the players....

Meet Nancy Boyda, a candidate for KS-02 (Jim Ryun's seat).

I live in KS-02, and do not like Jim Ryun, and I am not happy with Republican control of the House of Representatives.  So I would like to see Nancy Boyda elected and Jim Ryun sent back to the bowels from which he crawled.  (So what if he ran a 4-minute mile.  We were all young, once.)

Here's my plan: I tell you about Nancy and the race, you tell me what questions you would ask of a candidate you consider worthy of your financial support.  I go to Nancy and get answers, and I post them in a subsequent diary, along with buttons to facilitate your largess.  If you think the answers are good and you think that a surprise pickup of a seat from (gasp!) Kansas would make you happy, you press a largess button and drop $10.01 or $20.01 or even $5.01 into her campaign tip jar.  I think this is a winnable race for the good guys, and if you follow me over the break, I'll tell you why.