"After racking my brain, I can come up with only one reason why Padilla was held for 3 1/2 years without charges and tortured. It was not because Padilla had 3 1/2 years of information that needed to be elicited it from him. It was not because what he may have known was a state secret. Padilla was imprisoned and suffered simply because Bush wanted to prove he had the power to do so. To anyone, even Americans.
Why? Why would Bush want to do that? What does he - more importantly, what does the country - gain from this kind of totalitarian behavior? Well, once again, Bush is making a point, that the president has the power to do whatever the president wants, without having to provide reasons to anyone. Especially during "wartime."
And Bush thinks, and the Bush administration thinks, and Republicans think, that it is a Good Thing. They must destroy America in order to save it. Shrink the American government down to nothing, so it drowns, as Norquist once said. What no one ever asked Norquist was what Republicans would replace the American government with.
Well, now we know.
Sickening. Absolutely sickening."
* samefacts:
"This morning's press conference was one of the scariest public events of the last few years. Bush appears to be crumbling before our eyes; I can't believe they let him out in the condition he displayed. His responses were rambling and unfocused, stringing together irrelevant bromides and half-thoughts, the discourse of someone not getting any sleep. His response styles were even more alarming, bouncing from whining about all the hard decisions he has to make; to a sort of sneering impatient condescension, with which he explained simple falsehoods as though to children and as though they were obviously true; to the recital of incompletely rehearsed talking points, cut up into phrases and reassembled at random; to his familiar fake-macho pronouncing style. There was a round of joking about reporters' clothes that just made him appear clueless about the importance of the North Korean bomb and the collapse of his party's electoral prospects, completely tineared in the context of the event. One response after another headlined a simple unexplained and unembroidered refusal to hear facts, from poll results to the new estimates of Iraqi deaths. And the word unacceptable apparently means "if it continues, I will say it's unacceptable, but louder, so watch out!"
Bush has always been a man who knows a few simple things, to assert if not to act on coherently, and who is not in the business of increasing this stock. Now those are one-by-one turning out to be silly, bad guidance, or just vacuous, and his handlers are coming up empty giving him lines and tricks to get through the week. The man is not only in desperate straits but, what is new for him, beginning to recognize it. It was a really chilling spectacle; we're all in a bad situation here. It's not good for anyone that the president becomes a humiliating occasion for ridicule, a midget drum major prancing on the sidelines, beating out a rhythm no-one else is keeping, while the band breaks up into chaos on the field."
6 comments:
nothing new here...he's been a humiliating occasion for ridicule for years now, especially when he's on foreign soil.
i wanna see him crumble into blethering drunken and/or pilled-up nonsense complete w/the wringing of hands and/or tearing of hair on nation-wide tv (and BBC!)
mainly, so i can write a post titled 'LIVE ON NATIONAL TV? JESUS HAROLD CHRIST ON A FUCKING RUBBER CRUTCH, IS THIS HAPPENING TO ME?' (the Tommy Lee Jones southern asshole in Natural Born Killers.)
step up, journos--we deserve better than this (and i need a good laugh).
i've often said that i'm amazed he hasn't 'melted into pool of self-loathing'
Bush is a psychopath. Google "psychopath" and start reading. That's some chilling stuff. I did that the other night. There are some excellent books on the subject.
Psychopaths make up 4% of the population, which means there are many more of them than anorexics. They do harm and injury without conscience, even kill without a second's guilt. In fact, the need to injure and kill for them is like you or I need to breath and eat.
They are able to identify each other in crowds, and they gravitate into one another's social circles. Although possessing charm and excellent social skills so as to hide their mental infirmity, most of them are below average intelligence. The few very intelligent ones are among the most dangerous. The worst of them enlist others to assist them in their evil schemes.
Psychopaths frequently rise in corporations and many are wealthy, making their fortunes by questionable methods and lawbreaking. Usually, they are never caught. People cave to psychopaths out of fear or just wanting to get rid of them.
Psychopaths who become leaders of nations go to war immediately because they see exterminating the 96% of people who are mentally normal a biological necessity. They frame their rationale in some "acceptable" way, but their real motive is mass extermination. That was a chilling revelation to me, because I made that claim about Bush years ago, before I read that, just the other day.
The world desperately needs a successful way of identifying psychopaths and ensuring they are barred from working in public service. And, this reading proved to me what I've suspected for most of my life, that war is nothing more than the plaything of psychopaths. It always was, and it always will be. How sad, then, it is that some people are inspired to fuzzy, warm, patriotic imaginings when their country goes to war, failing to see what it really is. Knowledge and the truth are the antidotes of evil. Call these people what they are--psychopaths.
as i've said here and on my site last week, 'the last six years should’ve taught US that from now on in, EVERY goddamned potential candidate for president needs to be tested for emotional maturity, intellectual capacity, knowledge of foreign policy, geography and diplomatic skills before they’re even nominated, and examined by a totally non-partisan group of shrinks while being recorded for public viewing.'
Thank goodness for that, Rimone. Keep up the good work. If we survive The Bush Coup, maybe that will one day come to pass. I wholeheartedly agree. It serves nobody's interests to have an insane man's finger on the button of the world's largest nuclear arsenal.
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