We found out today that the Bush Administration wrote a memo that authorized the use of insects as an interrogation enhancement. Here’s the creepy crawly from Time:

The CIA desire to use insects during interrogations has not previously been disclosed, according to two civil liberties experts contacted by TIME. The Bybee memorandum, which was written on August 1, 2002, described the CIA’s plans for using insects this way:

“You [the CIA] would like to place Zubaydah in a cramped confinement box with an insect. You have informed us [the Department of Justice] that he appears to have a fear of insects. In particular, you would like to tell Zubaydah that you intend to place a stinging insect into the box with him. You would, however, place a harmless insect in the box. You have orally informed us that you would in fact place a harmless insect such as a catapiller in the box with him.”

An additional sentence at the end of this paragraph is redacted in the copy made public Thursday. Later in the same memo, Bybee concludes that “an individual placed in a box, even an individual with a fear of insects, would not reasonably feel threatened with severe physical pain or suffering if a caterpiller was placed in the box.” Bybee adds, however, that the interrogators should not tell Zubaydah that the insect sting “would produce death or severe pain.”

This sounds like the rejected script of a James Bond film or something. The evil guy, who has a lair inside a mountain, tortures Bond with insects. No, no, the rewrite says they have to use snakes. Hey, even Indiana Jones hates snakes!

Man, this is lame. The Bushies simply had no imagination. They should have had Simon Cowell lecture the terrorist suspects, or just shown them pictures of Dick Cheney and his friend with the shot up face. These guys needed some serious advice. Insects, indeed. What about the SNAKES!

This is terrible news. As someone who has suffered from a “mild” TBI for over 10 years, unable to work and severely limited in my interaction with the outside world, I have been hoping that some new treatments might be developed, finally, due to this condition in the troops.

What many people don’t understand is that mild TBI’s often don’t have any “verifiable” symptoms – MRIs may be normal and many other tests too. Symptoms may seem more severe than the objective data can find, and the medical establishment will do their best to make you feel like a hopeless failure because of that. Testing is often not sensitive enough to detect abnormalities, and so it is deemed a mental health issue. Depression is the garbage diagnosis given when the docs don’t know what to do.

Mental health issues do pile on pretty quickly when your quality of life is severely eroded and no one believes you when you tell them your symptoms.

And don’t think because I can express myself well I can have a normal life. I have terrible light sensitivity and visual processing problems, and I can’t be around fluorescent lights because of the flickering. Extreme exhaustion sets in after a few hours of any activity – my brain just quits. My main “treatment” is staying home 90% of the time as it’s the only way I can control sensory input. The smallest bonk on the head results in a full blown concussion, intensifying all the symptoms. And don’t even get me started on the behavioral problems that can result, and the hopelessness that can set in when you’re suddenly acting like a 7 year old. And because you look ok, no one understands.

Ten years ago, hardly anyone, including myself, had heard of TBIs. It took me 4 months to find out there was a name for what was happening to me, and it wasn’t from a doctor. These researchers don’t even know the definition of TBI apparently, since they reason that most concussions clear up in a couple days, there’s no reason to screen for TBI. They are right about the concussion part, but a TBI isn’t a concussion. Don’t leave the troops to fend for themselves with this issue. Believe me, their problems aren’t going to go away with a scrip for an antidepressant and xanax.

The poll is from Public Policy Polling and shows overwhelming support by Minnesotans for Norm Coleman conceding the election and for Governor Tim Pawlenty certifying Al Franken as winner of the Senate race. Here’s a bit about the poll from Public Policy Polling’s web site:

63% of voters in the state think that Coleman should just concede the race himself. That
includes almost all of Franken and Dean Barkley’s supporters, as well as a third of
respondents who voted for Coleman last fall.

59% express support both for Pawlenty certifying Franken as the winner and for Franken
being seated immediately.

While Democrats and Republicans predictably have different views about the various
issues related to resolving the election, it’s notable that independent voters fall on
Franken’s side with 61% thinking Coleman should concede and 54% saying Franken
should be certified and seated.

“With the ruling of the three judge panel it appears that most Minnesota voters are now
ready for this election be over,” said Dean Debnam, President of Public Policy Polling.
“Folks seem to think that Franken is the rightful winner and that he should be allowed to
take his seat instead of the process being dragged out further.”

Yes, there will be risks for both Coleman and Pawlenty if they keep the appeals going. Pawlenty, of course, could certify the results while allowing Norm Coleman to keep his farce going, but I expect Pawlenty to keep supporting Coleman so he can appeal to the GOP base in three years. Sure, it might actually help Pawlenty win the Republican nomination for President, but it might also cost him the vote from Minnesota. What chance would he have in 2012 if he couldn’t carry his home state?

As to the poll, it is also interesting that there’s little difference in opinion along racial or gender lines. This might be partisan, but it isn’[t breaking divisively in other ways.

The Nanny State? I’ll bet that term was invented by conservatives who were trying to get the best of liberals. They think government is too large when it works to protect people from their own actions. Sort of a libertarian critique on liberal government, I suppose, that demands personal responsibility rather than an all-protective government.

As a general rule, I think I’m there with a critique of government that indemnifies people fromt heir own mistakes. I’d rather see a government not protect people from being responsible for their actions. So a critique of the Nanny State sits well with me, to some degree. Still, conservatives use the term innapropriately, and frankly they depend on the government to bail them out time and again. The bottom line here for most conservatives is they want enforcement of the laws they like, and funding of the programs they like, and all other laws and programs are provided by “The Nanny State.” Yes, hypocrisy is the rule of the day for Republican conservatives, as usual.

Here’s an example. It is surely ludicrous, but it is from the reddest of red states. Two eleven year old boys sit down at their computer in class and go hunting for porn. By typing “lesbian” into the search engine they get around the school filters and hit the mother lode, which they show off to friends, of course. The story is from the Salt Lake Tribune:

Two American Fork fifth-graders could face criminal charges for looking at pornography on a school computer, but some people are wondering how they were able to access the images in the first place.

Police were called last week after two 11-year-old boys at Forbes Elementary School pulled up images of sexual acts on a school computer and then showed the pictures to nine other students, said American Fork Police Sgt. Gregg Ludlow. The incident came to light when one child told a parent and another told the principal.

Ludlow called the images “pretty explicit” but declined to elaborate. He said the boys made multiple attempts on different days to access inappropriate material. Ultimately, they typed the word “lesbian” into a search engine and were able to pull up pictures not blocked by the school’s Internet filter.

The school suspended the boys for two days. They could face charges in juvenile court of dealing in material harmful to a minor or lesser charges for viewing pornography at school, or be referred to the probation department instead of going to court, among other possibilities, said Chris Yannelli, deputy Utah County Attorney. If they are adjudicated in juvenile court, consequences range from community service to serving time in a juvenile detention facility, he said.

Rhonda Bromley, Alpine School District spokeswoman, said district officials decided to involve police based on the seriousness of the case.

“The bottom line is, because of the age it’s obviously a sensitive thing, but what they did was inappropriate, and it was wrong, so as educators and a society hopefully we need to help them learn that,” Bromley said. “It’s a little disappointing to hear people say, “Boys will be boys.’ … I don’t know what the magic age is when people can stop saying –Well, boys will be boys.’”

Ludlow said the boys subjected the other children to something they might not otherwise have seen.

“Our main emphasis is not to hammer these kids,” Ludlow said. “If we can get them into the juvenile justice system and make sure they’re getting some counseling or other services, that’s our end goal.”

First of all, I’m not so startled by this crime. I remember being exposed to porn the summer before the first grade, and being more excited about doing something we were hiding from adults than by the images. OK, that was a long time ago and the images were what we would now call “quaint,” pictures of topless women dressed up in cowboy gear – vests and chaps and the like. The illicit images set my then 10 year old heart aflutter, but it was the illicit part, not the nudity per se. But I digress.

They’re consigning these two boys to the juvenile justice system, spending their taxpayer dollars when they could just dish out punishment at the school and at home. I don’t know these boys, and I’m not claiming that 11 year olds can’t know the consequences of their actions and all, but this seems like a denial of both parental and school responsibility. No, I’m not making the argument that the school should have a better internet filter, as will likely be made, but that there is no need to so frivolously hand over 11 year old miscreants to the Nanny State when the school and the parents could handle the job. I’ve got no argument that there is a legitimate concern about children being exposed to pornography in school, but ratcheting up the punishment over natural curiosity is excessive. That’s not the mere “boys will be boys” argument, but one that says that natural curiosity must be nurtured, not punished excessively. By the time these folks are finished the boys will likely be registered as sex offenders.

It seems my opinion here matches that of the readers of the Salt Lake Tribune. (Should I be worried?) Here in the reddest of red states they were all gung ho over the teabagging thingie yesterday, but when it comes to policing the sexual development of their sons, they’d rather iron hand of the state do that. Meanwhile, a couple boys doing naughty things are shuffled off into the juvenile justice system, which likely will do far more damage than the appropriate punishments handed out by parents and schools. I suppose the right wingers in Utah are so traumatized by the very word “lesbian” that they want the state to handle the case so they don’t have to. Yeah, all these laws about sex registries and regulating the sexuality of these precious snowflakes are a great way to spend the tax dollars Utah residents don’t want to pay anyway.

I was not a witness to any sex acts in the appropriately named Love Park, but phillybits was, and he’s put up an AWESOME picture of Brendan Skwire of Brendancalling teabagging a couple teabags. Oh, and Brendan himself has some pictures of the Love Park Republican kinkfest!

Phillybits also has a slide show that shows the all white teabagging group of around 200 people gathered in Love Park. One guy has on a camoflage jacket. Fashion faux pas, for sure. I mane, it should be illegal to wear camo int he city. Who’s he trying to hide from, anyway?

If this election turns out to be about religious ideology…while ignoring the real implications of electing a candidate who supports the same policies of the president who created the troubled economy we’re now enduring…it may well be appropriate to call this “The Loaves and Fishes Election”…although I doubt either will be abundant…and they most certainly wont be free.

Troubling as it is, a number of voters seem poised to place matters of morality in front of their own economic self-interest. What remains to be seen is the depths to which voters are willing to sacrifice their pocket books in deference to the religious rhetoric being bantered about by the GOP.

Perhaps the news of the decision by the government to take over the troubled mortgage giants, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, will provide the impetus for voters to think twice before granting the GOP another four year…on top of the eight during which the national debt nearly doubled and personal income failed to advance.

Let me attempt to make this simple. Under the Bush administration, huge tax cuts were enacted…primarily for the wealthiest of Americans. At the same time, mortgage interest rates were kept artificially low. That allowed for a housing bubble which enabled millions of Americans to borrow and spend newfound equity. It also allowed for those with capital (think those who received the tax cuts) to invest in and profit from the financial market.

Jump forward to the end of 2008. The Bush administration and John McCain favor extending the tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans…arguing that we can’t raise taxes in a down economy. The problem with that logic is that the tax cuts helped facilitate the shoddy economy we have. It also allowed the rich to get richer and it allowed millions of Americans to borrow what they thought was an expanading equity in their homes. That ability to access equity served as the candy coating on an otherwise unsound economy.

However, as they say, it’s now time to pay the piper. So what does this mean for the average American? Well, it means that millions of Americans will see their home values decline, their debt increase, their access to better jobs diminish, and ownership of an expanding national debt that will have to be addressed.

And what does this mean for the wealthiest Americans under John McCain’s more of the same administration? It means that they will have benefited from years of a reduced tax burden. It means they were able to invest this and other money in a finance industry that was fueled by artificially low interest rates…w

The Iowa State Senator in question is Matt McCoy, the only openly gay State Senator in Iowa. Here’s the story from the Quad City Times:

Lt. Mark Logsdon of the Iowa State Patrol confirmed Monday that Sen. Matt McCoy, an openly gay lawmaker and Des Moines Democrat, has reported being the target of a death threat.

McCoy was seen emerging from a meeting with law enforcement officials at the Capitol late Monday afternoon.

“That’s all I can say, I’ve been threatened,” McCoy said when asked what the meeting was about, but confirming it was a death threat.

Logsdon said the threat came to McCoy’s Des Moines office at the Greater Des Moines Partnership.

Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal, D-Council Bluffs, and House Speaker Pat Murphy, D-Dubuque, also have been the target of “troublesome phone calls,” Logsdon said.

“At the very least, it’s certainly a harassment of a public official,” Logsdon said.

Opponents of the same-sex marriage ruling rallied at the Capitol again Monday, promising to turn up the heat on state officials to get them to start the process of amending Iowa’s Constitution to ban same-sex marriage.

Is anyone surprised at this turn of events? The heat of the rhetoric has certainly heated up, especially with videos like that of the National Organization for Marriage, which distorts facts all over the place in presenting its dire warnings. OK, maybe that wasn’t the real video. Neither is this video. Sorry, I think NOM has taken the real stupid video off the air after everyone got hold of the audition tapes of the actors hired to portray real people. But you get the idea. These people are afraid, so they are making others afraid. It doesn’t take much to figure out that threats would result.

I’m hoping none of these folks are big fans of Glenn Beck. Just sayin’.

Isn’t it sweet, that Sarah Palin and Nancy Pelosi are the bottom dwellers when it comes to trust about identifying and solving problems for our nation. Of course Obama still ranks high in the trust of the people in this Public Strategies poll, consistent with other polling over the last few months. But Pelosi and Palin together? Odd bedfellows, eh? From Politico:

In a new Public Strategies Inc./POLITICO national survey of 1,000 registered voters, Obama outdistances figures on both the left and the right in earning the public’s trust, with two-thirds of respondents saying they trust the president “to identify the right solutions to the problems we face as a nation.”

Of those who said they trust the president, 31 percent said they trust him “a great deal.” An additional 35 percent said they have “some” trust that Obama will find the correct solution. Thirty-one percent said they trust Obama either “not very much” or “not at all.”

Voters were asked the same question of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Republican Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska, former Massachusetts Republican Gov. Mitt Romney, conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh and the two major political parties. Among those choices, only the Democratic Party was trusted to find the right solutions by a majority of voters, 52 percent to 40 percent. Forty percent of those surveyed said they trusted the Republican Party, compared with 54 percent who did not trust the GOP.

Only 26 percent said they trust Pelosi, the lowest total in the group. Palin attracted the highest percentage of those who did not trust her at all to identify the right solutions, topping Pelosi 33 percent to 32 percent. Romney got a mixed reaction, with 38 percent of voters saying they trust him and 39 percent saying they don’t.

Sane people didn’t trust Palin anyway, but I’d say it is encouraging that more people are waking to their own sanity. Still, who are those numbnuts saying they trust the woman to run the economy? Man! Even John McCain won’t mention her name.

Brian Tierny, CEO of the Philadelphia Inqurier has surely been trying hard to revive his small piece of the failing newspaper industry, Philadelphia Newspapers, Inc., the parent corporation that publishes the Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia Daily News. Heck, Brian has brought in insipid and failed Republican shills like Rick Santorum to write columns on the OpEd page, and he’s placed advertisements on the front page. The ad campaign for the papers boasts of the huge savings one can get from coupons rather than the fine reporting that used to be the core of the paper. Meanwhile, the reporters who are responsible for that fine reporting, are ever in danger of layoffs.

It turns out that just a couple of weeks before Brian Tierney took the company into bankruptcy he accepted a bonus for his stellar efforts. From Editor and Publisher:

The company filed for bankruptcy in February, citing $395 million in debt, much stemming from the 2006 purchase by a group of local investors led by Tierney.

The newspaper company recently lowered its 2009 income projections from $25 million to about $10 million before taxes, interest and other expenses.

Nonetheless, the company in a court filing defended $1.34 million in bonuses paid to 45 employees at the end of 2008, shortly before the Feb. 22 bankruptcy petition. The filing did not specify the amount of Tierney’s bonus, but published reports have put it at $350,000, on top of his $518,000 salary.

Let’s see. In 2006 money was easy to be had, so Brian Tierney, in all his forward-thinking wisdom, brought together investors who leveraged themselves in order to buy the paper from McClatchy, which had recently acquired the paper in its takeover of Knight Ridder. Times change. The newspaper industry may just be going the way of the buggy whip, as John McCain might say. Of course, the lenders owed money by PNI are not all that happy with Brian Tierney, as reported, honestly, it seems, by his own Philadelphia Inquirer, complete with Tierney’s whiney defense:

Tierney said he was looking forward to testifying on the taping and the lenders’ charges that he was enriching himself with raises and bonuses despite the company’s financial distress.

The lenders said in a court filing that Tierney “has used the debtors’ assets to further his own self interests.. . .”

Tierney said the major creditors had sought to retain him as CEO and offered him generous compensation if he instituted their restructuring plans.

“They offered me $2.5 million in equity value . . . up front,” Tierney said. He said they also offered him an additional $1.2 million in salary and bonus, that would bring the entire package to $3.7 million.

“This is what I will testify under oath next week,” he said. “I have it in writing. I rejected this. This is why it’s so disingenuous for them to say they’re upset.”

The bottom line for me is that if a company is failing so much that it is headed for bankruptcy protection, handing out bonuses for strong performance is idiotic. Of course, it is possible these are not bonuses for strong performance, but bonuses negotiated by Tierney that kick in no matter his performance. It isn’t like a Republican shouldn’t be rewarded for his incompetence, after all.

OK, this one shouldn’t be surprising. We know, for instance, that the whack jobs on the social conservative extremist end of the GOP spectrum are a bit on the dim side and don’t play all that well on the internet. We,, it was last Wednesday that the National Organization for Marriage launched their 2M4M campaign, not understanding that “M4M” is a standard abbreviation in personalsfor “man looking for man.” In other words, their cute slogan reads like a solicitation for group gay sex. Hey, even Rachel Maddow has made fun of it. Today we find that the National Organization for Marriage was so stupid as to not buy up the domain names for their new initiative.

www.2m4m.org is now a place of inclusion that stands for civil rights. You may go there for stories from people who support gay marriage, and you may go for links to very good videos explaining the distortions spewed forth by the right wing whack jobs. The site is expanding fast from its apparent launch yesterday. And I hope 2m4m.org takes a leading role in this fight for gay marriage, helping all Americans secure their religious freedom from those on the extremist right wing who wish to keep religious freedom only for themselves. Therefore my plug.