Author: cdymek

My friend Dave and I were joking around this weekend over my refusal to eat apple pie at the rehersal dinner Friday night, with him asking after my KGB case officer.

Still, it’s no joke that the US has decided to run detention centers in Eastern European countries. What’s more disappointing is the utter ridiculousness of the response from the Administration. While they defame all the ctiizens of this country by engaging in barbaric acts and demonstrating their utter lack of moral regard, they continue to try to drag others down with them. Take this response to the outrage generated in Europe over the recent announcement that the CIA had flown individuals being transported to the torture centers through European countries.

“The key point will be ‘We’re all in this together and you need to look at yourselves as much as us,’ ” one official said to the Washington Post, on condition of anonymity. “People in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.”

So our official response to the concerns raised in Europe is to insinuate they’re torturers and human rights abusers too? Wow, there’s a good case. Let’s not lead by example or anything.

And this line from the article is even better!

Irish Foreign Minister Dermot Ahern told the New York Times that Ms Rice told him in Washington that she expected allies to trust that America does not allow rights abuses.

Honestly! Trust us. Just ingore everything you’ve heard over the past few years. Those secret prisons don’t exist. We didn’t abuse those detainees in Iraq. The photos were all made up.

What’s most disappointing is that, right or wrong, this sets America on the same level as all the leaders we argue should not be allowed on to the UN Human Rights commission, or that we otherwise pressure to be removed from power. We forfeit the moral high ground by engaging in activities that those people we claim are morally wrong engage in. We begin to look like those we argue against.

We can’t lead from a position of moral authority as long as these immoral goons are running amok.

In the bad day column, we have a modern day Scarlet Letter story, where a mail thief was sentenced to wear an “I stole mail” sign during his workday. Of course, that doesn’t compare to the deadly peanut butter kisses. Then you have to wonder what kind of severence pay Darshan Singh will receive now thathe’s been fired from his job as Singapore’s executioner.

Finally, Kazaa will install an anti-piracy filter, with new projections showing that after the filter is installed the number of media files available will drop to 3, which will be traded back and forth by the two remaining users.

Corruption is everywhere in the capitol these days, according to an editorial in the CS Monitor. Like most writeups on the seemingly recent discovery of mass corruption in the Republican government, the article attempts for the most part to maintain a sense that both parties are equally corrupt and responsible for both the marginal and brazen acts that legislators have been caught doing. However, the article does slip up toward the end, stating

Other recent ethics scandals in Washington, almost all involving Republicans, point to weaknesses in current laws and a need for some sort of public campaign financing.

However, the article quickly recovers, continuing

They also highlight Congress’s inaction toward further campaign-finance reform and ethics watchdogging – an inaction that seems purposeful: “Members of Congress, Democrats and Republicans alike, have used ethics allegations as a political weapon for years,” Common Cause stated after Cunningham’s guilty plea.

While ethics allegations have been used by both parties over the years, culminating in a huge abuse of power with the impeachment of Bill Clinton (which is worse, a false war or lying about sex?), the truth here is that the culture of corruption is most prominently a Republican phenonmenon, with the revolving door between lobbyists, corporate powers, Congress, and the Executive Bracnch being the primary culprit. Those running the show are solely in it to enrich themselves, with Cunningham only the most visible and egregious example to date.

A conservative war theorist speculates on the costs of pulling out of Iraq.

I just read a hillarious tidbit on Bush’s speech the other day over his Iraq “plan”, delivered two years late and many brain cells short.

My favorite line of the writeup was how “t is a little-known fact, I’m afraid, that, in a series of speeches extending over a period of years, President Bush has articulated his policy vision more consistently and more eloquently than any President since Lincoln.”