August 10, 2010, The end
My country is trying Omar Khadr, a man who was 15 at the time of an alleged war crime, to wit, killing a soldier in combat, although, of course, at the time, Khadr was almost certainly unconscious and full of American shrapnel, which interrogators refused to treat him for while he was interrogated, and later, he was threatened with rape if he didn't confess, and this is... President Obama's first military commission trial. A shining example of American, ahem... justice. Trying a juvenile for what isn't even a crime, and using his tortured confession as "the evidence." We can't even do kangaroo court trials right.
Moving right along, I'm actually sorry to read about the death of former Senator Ted Stevens in a plane crash in Alaska. Stevens was 86, and was the longest serving Republican senator ever. Say what you will about Stevens (who, ironically, survived a plane crash in the 1970's in which his first wife was killed), If a senator's job is to bring the bacon home to his state, Stevens may well have been the best there was. His career ended after losing to Mark Begich (in yet further irony, whose own father Nick Begich, then Alaska's Congressman, was himself killed in the same plane crash that took out then House Majority Leader Haley Boggs), but that loss was on the heals of a corruption conviction in Washington-- conviction later vacated on appeal. Again, say what you will about Stevens... a plane crash is not the way I'd like to go. Rest in peace, Senator Stevens.
And while I've already said in no uncertain terms that I have little or no further use for the Obama Administration, which, of course, I believe has sold out virtually every value I hold dear and I confess it was reliance on the promise of Obama at least trying to achieve those values that was the basis on which I originally supported my college classmate the President (Greenwald has a very nice outline of the specifics)... well... the White House just wants me to know that it has no use for me either... and not just no use for irritating amateurs like me, but no use for the dirty hippy losers of "the professional left." (Madow... you watch your ass)." That should get our support, not to mention our enthusiasm.
Of course...after Gibbs' "we're going to lose the House" gambit of a few weeks ago, it is quite clear that the plan is to lose one, and preferably both houses of Congress this November, and then "triangulate" into reelection in 2012, hoping that someone as articulate and hateful as Newt Gingrich emerges as a useful foil (and perhaps some White House official perhaps rumored to have some nebulous ties to the First Lady can be found dead in a park in Virginia), we can party like its 1996, maybe get another internet bubble, and yada yada yada... it's Bubba all over again, with $100 million in hedge fund, book and speech money, bitches.
Well, I don't know about you, but I'm not going to worry about these people. I'm going to worry about my life... my house, my vegetable garden, my pets, my family's health and welfare... that sort of thing. I urge you all to do the same. Because other than that... what's left?