What are they thinking?

Sister, not invited to wedding,
shows up anyway, tears out
clumps of bride’s hair.

What can they be thinking? Republicans are threatening to filibuster the stimulus package. On the face of it this would seem to be virtually suicidal for a minority party that is already severely out of favor. Blocking a massive relief program at the moment so many are suffering would not seem to be a good idea for such a precariously placed political party. It violates common sense. Or does it? First, set aside any delusions that the Republicans are truly concerned about what happens to the country, even if they claim they have a better bill. If they have a bill at all you can rest assured it will not be better for the recovery or the country, but will probably be much better for corporations and the filthy rich. This kind of obstructionism only makes sense if you assume the Republicans are betting on the fact that Obama will fail, and his failure will return them to power. This may be a good bet for two reasons. One, they know the task facing Obama and his administration is virtually impossible to begin with, thanks to the incompetent and criminal activity of their Bush/Cheney administration, and two, they believe they still have enough influence to insure that he will fail because of their ability to obstruct things at every turn. It’s like a self-fulfilling prophecy: it’s going to fail because we can make it fail. If it succeeds they will have lost nothing because they are already so far gone it just won’t matter. If it fails they win, or at least they think they will. If Obama and his people can make it clear to the American people just how sleazy, unpatriotic, greedy, short sighted, underhanded, and basically treasonous these power-mad creeps really are they will ultimately lose no matter what.

So, Joe Lieberman thinks waterboarding is a subject for jokes and doesn’t constitute torture, “’cause it’s not like putting hot coals on someone.” Let’ settle this once and for all. I suggest an experiment in which we waterboard Lieberman; if he still thinks it’s not torture we put on the hot coals and have him explain the difference. Of course we could use the hot coals first. No, I guess that wouldn’t work. Now John Yoo has surfaced with an op/ed someplace or other in which bemoans Obama’s abandonment of torture, with the same claim that it works that others have claimed. We know this isn’t so. I believe the only explanation to the resistance to the truth about torture is that certain individuals possess a genuine streak of sadism in their personalities, an inclination too powerful for them to overcome. I am convinced this is true of our three chief sadists, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Bush, and would seem to be true of Yoo as well.

Was anyone really surprised that Walt Minnick voted with ten other Democrats against the stimulus? He started off in government as a Republican and now claims to be a Democrat. He’s still a Republican at heart.

There are hints that Obama may not accelerate the “war” in Afghanistan after all. What a blessing that would be, if true. He is going to have to truly resist a great deal of pressure from the right if he is to be able to accomplish anything worthwhile in foreign policy. The MSM in the U.S. has long given us a truly distorted idea of Iran, Hamas, and Hezbollah, and of course they go to great lengths to describe Israel as a poor victim of Arabs. If the vile Netanyahu gets elected peace in the Middle East will be impossible. He is opposed to the two state solution, which means he favors the overwhelming defeat, if not destruction, of the Palestinians, and their being placed on small, separated reservations where they can be kept in poverty and completely controlled by Israel. I assume this has to be the case because there cannot be a one state solution that would be in Israel’s best interests. A one state solution would have to be an apartheid situation with Arabs as second class citizens. This would inevitably lead to an Arab rebellion, demanding equal rights, and as they would be a majority they would ultimately win out. The election of Netanyahu would signal to the world that Arabs, and particularly Palestinians, are not regarded by Israel as fully human (which is already the case but seldom admitted publicly). Obama is going to have to possess virtually superhuman powers if he wants to try to settle the Israeli/Palestinian and Iranian problems and overcome the entrenched but distorted views we have been fed for all these years.

LKBIQ:
Every man, wherever he goes, is encompassed by a cloud of comforting convictions, which move with him like flies on a summer day.
Bertrand Russell

TILT:
Mother rabbits commonly nurse their young once a day and only for a short time.