Bad Deeds for 4-23-2009

 

Glenn Beck Expresses ‘Erotic’ Joy From Caller Hunting And Cutting Down Trees On Earth Day – It turns out that the unrelenting insanity that I had hoped Glenn Beck might put on display on Teabag Day, he saved in reserve for Earth Day! On Beck’s radio show, Beck talked to some forest manager, who was going to be cutting down trees for some hunter.

“This is like Nirvana here,” he said, “This is not only going to hack off all the environmentalists but all the PETA people as well. I need some Barry White music!” Beck exclaimed, “This is almost full-fledged light some candles! This is eroticism!” (Every time Glenn Beck speaks, a demon gets it’s wings.)

 

Conservatives Use Tortured Logic About Torture – In response to the revelations about the use of torture, conservatives like Cheney, Rove, Hannity, O’Reilly and other talking heads still claim that our immoral acts kept us safe for eight years. Really? I am reminded of Red Buttons’ story of a man standing on a corner, repeatedly clicking his fingers. When asked what he was doing, he replied, “I’m keeping the elephants away.” The questioner shockingly replied, “But there are no elephants around here.” The man responded, “See, it works.”

 

U.S. Soldier Killed Herself — After Refusing to Take Part in Torture – Alyssa Peterson, 27, a Flagstaff, Ariz., native, served with C Company, 311th Military Intelligence BN, 101st Airborne. Peterson was an Arabic-speaking interrogator assigned to the prison at our air base in troubled Tal Afar in northwestern Iraq. According to official records, she died on Sept. 15, 2003, from a “non-hostile weapons discharge.”

Here’s what the Flagstaff public radio station, KNAU reported:

Peterson objected to the interrogation techniques used on prisoners. She refused to participate after only two nights working in the unit known as the cage. Army spokespersons for her unit have refused to describe the interrogation techniques Alyssa objected to. They say all records of those techniques have now been destroyed.

She was then assigned to the base gate, where she monitored Iraqi guards, and sent to suicide prevention training. “But on the night of September 15th, 2003, Army investigators concluded she shot and killed herself with her service rifle,” documents disclose. Here’s what Kayla Williams, a woman who served with Alyssa, told Soledad O’Brien of CNN : “I was asked to assist. And what I saw was that individuals who were doing interrogations had slipped over a line and were really doing things that were inappropriate. There were prisoners that were burned with lit cigarettes.”

 

To Republicans , Torture = Safety, but Healthcare = End of the World – More than half a million people will die from cancer this year. Many more from other diseases. Your chances of being killed at the hands of a terrorist, on the other hand, are comparatively remote. Some estimates show the odds at one in 9.3 million.

Why, then, are Republicans — from the very serious moderates to the buggy-eyed Glenn Beck spasmodics — embracing the broadly condemned and immoral act of government sponsored torture, while, often in the same talk radio segment, predicting the end of the world due to government plans guaranteeing that Americans will be able to afford healthcare? Somehow, irrational fear wins the day once again over a very rational desire to be treated for an illness without going broke.

[Authoritarians use physical punishment to teach right from wrong and use more severe punishment for those who refuse to learn their right from wrong. Authoritarians are also strong individualists – for those that can’t solve their own problems, like taking care of one’s health, are “on their own.”]

 

Host of Fox and Friends, “feel[s] better” knowing that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed was “waterboarded 183 times” – Brian Kilmeade, host of Fox and Friends, “feel[s] better” knowing that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed was “waterboarded 183 times.” During the Cuban Missile Crisis, it might’ve felt good to preemptively launch a few warheads, but cooler — moral — heads prevailed. It might feel good to walk into your office this morning and punch your boss in the mouth. But civilizations practice restraint because, more often than not, the alternative is unspeakably evil.

 

Hostile Questions at General Electric Shareholders Meeting Were From Fox News Associates – At the GE (parent of NBC and MSNBC) shareholders meeting, company brass were hit with questions from some shareholders critical of an alleged leftward political slant at MSNBC. First up was a woman asking about a reported meeting in which CEO Jeff Immelt and NBC Uni CEO Jeff Zucker supposedly told top CNBC executives and talent to be less critical of President Obama and his policies. Immelt acknowledged a meeting took place but said no one at CNBC was told what to say or not to say about politics.

Other questions came from Tom Borelli of the Free Enterprise Action Fund and a four-year critic of Immelt. A Google search showed that Borelli has appeared on Fox News more than once. Further, the previously unidentified woman who asked a question is Borelli’s wife.

Another one of the questions came from Jesse Waters, a producer on “The O’Reilly Factor.” Waters apparently did not publicly identify himself as a Fox employee. Waters has built a reputation as an ambush interviewer, specializing in on-the-street confrontations. But this is arguably the boldest move by a Fox newsie to utilize the tactic inside their chief rival’s tent, as it were. GE pointed out that Waters had Fox News cameras waiting outside the Orlando meeting.

 

Rep. Joe Barton Makes Himself Look Stupid on YouTube – Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX)–the ranking member on the House Energy & Commerce Committee–says on Twitter, “I seemed [sic] to have baffled the Energy Sec with basic question – Where does oil come from?” Barton was so proud that he thinks he baffled the Nobel-Prize winning scientist that he posted a video of the exchange on YouTube. Just four problems for Joe: (1) The answer is not simple, and (2) Barton only gave Secretary Chu only six seconds to respond, and (3) Secretary Chu’s response was correct and (4) Barton is not smart enough to know it. You see, conservatives like really simple answers where everything has direct, simple cause and effect relationships. They want that “obvious” answer, as Barton called it. Real science is just too complicated.

Regards,

Jim