Jersey City
Gun Powder, Shrapnel and Ball Bearing
Factory

Saturday - Caught up on sleep, finally. No time for Warcraft 3 though.


Bad Movie Night - 2012: Doomsday. This movie was made by Jesus freaks and they put in no effort to hide it. I don't understand this though: if you want to make a movie about how Jesus saves and all that rot, shouldn't you at least try to make a good movie? We also watched one of Lisa Lampanelli's shows, ate fried chicken and drank wine from a really big jug. J's cupcakes were fucking amazing. Good times.


Sunday - Did nothing all day long and it felt sooo good.


Warcraft Sundays - BadToast & I took on a team that claimed to suck, but we weren't taking any chances. Then we pincered another team more often than they'd've liked.


Finished reading Logicomix, a graphic novel about Bertrand Russell's search for the foundations of mathematics. Beautiful, wonderful book. Charles Petzold is a much better writer than I, so please go read his review.


SG:U 1x08 - This episode started off annoying but quickly turned into my favorite. :3

Also, be serious: they show these people fucking all the goddamned time because that's what BSG did and everyone liked BSG, right? But they're not allowed to swear because that would be wrong.

The stargate has built in safety mechanisms to keep time travel from happening. The only way it would normally happen is if you DIY. That's the whole point of the DHD! The ending was unsurprising, but you have to remember: the Destiny doesn't visit planets at random.

These guys could've really used some Zat'ni'katels. Bet they wished they packed better!

Before the 1st season of Stargate: Atlantis ended, Elizabeth Weir had the unpleasant duty of notifying the next of kin of 2 of her soldiers. There were lots of casualties in the first season, but she was speaking about the 2 most recently killed when the Genii stormed the city. This is not the duty she signed up to perform when she agreed to lead the expedition. Her scene doesn't even last 30 seconds, but you know what she's doing and you feel her pain. Now compare this to Stargate: Universe: when Chloe died, I can't imagine anyone not cheering, "FINALLY!" What a lovely influence BSG has...


Deeply disappointed by Virginia Senator Jim Webb's unnecessary outburst against the trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

I have never disputed the constitutional authority of the President to convene Article III courts in cases of international terrorism. However, I remain very concerned about the wisdom of doing so. Those who have committed acts of international terrorism are enemy combatants, just as certainly as the Japanese pilots who killed thousands of Americans at Pearl Harbor. It will be disruptive, costly, and potentially counterproductive to try them as criminals in our civilian courts.

Jim Webb

Webb should know better. This country survived the British, the Confederates, the Japanese, the Nazis and the Soviet fucking Union. This country will survive al-Qaeda too, but only if we stop trying to dismantle it whenever something goes wrong!

I consider [trial by jury] as the only anchor ever yet imagined by man, by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution.

Thomas Jefferson

Representative government and trial by jury are the heart and lungs of liberty.

John Adams

This decision by the Obama administration demonstrates faith in the American way of life, and a conviction that even the worst mass murderers can be dealt justice by democratic institutions.

…

Al-Qaeda number 2 Ayman al-Zawahiri mocked the US that real liberty ". . . is not the freedom of Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib." The Republican way of dealing with terrorists gave enormous propaganda tools to al-Qaeda.

Obama just took those propaganda tools away from the enemy and began the process of repairing America's reputation and its fidelity to its own ideals.

Juan Cole

I'd feel a fuck of a lot better if the Obama Administration had enough faith in this country's ideals to try the others in civilian courts, but Obama only ever seems capable of baby steps.


Meanwhile, on the other side of the country...

the Right's reaction to yesterday's announcement -- we're too afraid to allow trials and due process in our country -- is the textbook definition of "surrendering to terrorists." It's the same fear they've been spewing for years. As always, the Right's tough-guy leaders wallow in a combination of pitiful fear and cynical manipulation of the fear of their followers. Indeed, it's hard to find any group of people on the globe who exude this sort of weakness and fear more than the American Right.

People in capitals all over the world have hosted trials of high-level terrorist suspects using their normal justice system. They didn't allow fear to drive them to build island-prisons or create special commissions to depart from their rules of justice. Spain held an open trial in Madrid for the individuals accused of that country's 2004 train bombings. The British put those accused of perpetrating the London subway bombings on trial right in their normal courthouse in London. Indonesia gave public trials using standard court procedures to the individuals who bombed a nightclub in Bali. India used a Mumbai courtroom to try the sole surviving terrorist who participated in the 2008 massacre of hundreds of residents. In Argentina, the Israelis captured Adolf Eichmann, one of the most notorious Nazi war criminals, and brought him to Jerusalem to stand trial for his crimes.

It's only America's Right that is too scared of the Terrorists -- or which exploits the fears of their followers -- to insist that no regular trials can be held and that "the safety and security of the American people" mean that we cannot even have them in our country to give them trials. As usual, it's the weakest and most frightened among us who rely on the most flamboyant, theatrical displays of "strength" and "courage" to hide what they really are. Then again, this is the same political movement whose "leaders" -- people like John Cornyn and Pat Roberts -- cowardly insisted that we must ignore the Constitution in order to stay alive: the exact antithesis of the core value on which the nation was founded. Given that, it's hardly surprising that they exude a level of fear of Terrorists that is unmatched virtually anywhere in the world. It is, however, noteworthy that the position they advocate -- it's too scary to have normal trials in our country of Terrorists -- is as pure a surrender to the Terrorists as it gets.

Glenn Greenwald

TPM Reader LL, in saltier language than I'll use, laments that the trial of KSM et al. won't take place in his home state of Texas because he's not sure he can rely on a New York jury to give them the death penalty. So he's sorry that the Governor of Texas is too scared to bring them to Texas.

Josh Marshall

This is a great point. After being waterboarded 183 times, Mohammed is physically and mentally disabled, helpless and defenseless. Exactly the time of prisoner Texas specializes in executing.


Speaking of 9/11, the more we learn, the worse we look. And we learn it from John Farmer, the 9/11 Commission's top counter-terrorist.

As senior counsel to the 9/11 Commission, Farmer, who was the attorney general of New Jersey and is the dean of the Rutgers School of Law, investigated the derelict conduct of the national security apparatus. He was well prepared to do so. In their valuable account of the commission's activities, "Without Precedent," the commission chairman, Thomas Kean, and the vice chairman, Lee Hamilton, noted that shortly after the attacks, Farmer -- "one of our most important hires" -- established a victims' assistance center in New Jersey and helped the F.B.I. uncover important evidence in garbage at Newark International Airport. But the commission's efforts to reconstruct the tragedy itself were, at best, resented and, at worst, impeded by the sprawling defense bureaucracy and the Bush administration, both of which had much to hide. Even two reports by the inspectors general of the Defense and Transportation Departments, released in 2006, whitewashed government failures. Now that numerous transcripts and tapes have been declassified, however, Farmer draws on them to assail the government's official depiction of 9/11 as so much public relations flimflam.

Perhaps nothing perturbs Farmer more than the contention that high-ranking officials responded quickly and effectively to the revelation that Qaeda attacks were taking place. Nothing, Farmer indicates, could be further from the truth: President George W. Bush and other officials were mostly irrelevant during the hijackings; instead, it was the ground-level commanders who made operational decisions in an ad hoc fashion.

…

Yet both Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Vice President Dick Cheney, Farmer says, provided palpably false versions that touted the military's readiness to shoot down United 93 before it could hit Washington. Planes were never in place to intercept it. By the time the Northeast Air Defense Sector had been informed of the hijacking, United 93 had already crashed. Farmer scrutinizes F.A.A. and Norad records to provide irrefragable evidence that a day after a Sept. 17 White House briefing, both agencies suddenly altered their chronologies to produce a coherent timeline and story that "fit together nicely with the account provided publicly by Deputy Defense Secretary Wolfowitz and Vice President Cheney."

Farmer further observes that the Bush administration wrongly asserted that the chain of command functioned on 9/11; that President Bush issued an authorization to shoot down hijacked commercial flights; and that top officials at F.A.A. headquarters coordinated their actions with the military. Farmer's verdict: "History should record that whether through unprecedented administrative incompetence or orchestrated mendacity, the American people were misled about the nation's response to the 9/11 attacks."

Jacob Heilbrunn

Wake up, sheeple! (via)


Only soldiers who don't believe in Jesus Christ suffer post traumatic stress disorder, and anyone who says otherwise is unpatriotic.

During the Iraq war, however, the great difficulty veterans experienced in getting psychiatric care--greater than before--was not a product of cost-cutting, but of conviction: many Bush administration officials believed that soldiers who supported the war would not face psychological problems, and if they did, they would find comfort in faith. In a resigned tone, one prominent researcher who worked for the VA, and asked that he not be identified because he was not authorized to speak to the press, explained that high-ranking officials believed that "Jesus fixes everything." Benimoff and the others who returned with devastating psychological injuries found a faith-based bureau within the VA. At veterans' hospitals, chaplains were conducting spirituality assessments of patients.

…

Sullivan was working as an analyst at the Veterans Benefits Administration in Washington in early 2005 when he was called to a meeting with a top political appointee at the VA, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Policy Michael McLendon. McLendon, an intensely focused man in a neatly pressed suit, kept a Bible on his desk at the office. Sullivan explained to McLendon and the other attendees that the rise in benefits claims the VA was noticing was caused partly by Iraq and Afghanistan veterans who were suffering from PTSD. "That's too many," McLendon said, then hit his hand on the table. "They are too young" to be filing claims, and they are doing it "too soon." He hit the table again. The claims, he said, are "costing us too much money," and if the veterans "believed in God and country . . . they would not come home with PTSD." At that point, he slammed his palm against the table a final time, making a loud smack. Everyone in the room fell silent.

"I was a little bit surprised," Sullivan said, recalling the incident. "In that one comment, he appeared to be a religious fundamentalist." For Sullivan, McLendon's remarks reflected the views of many political appointees in the VA and revealed what was behind their efforts to reduce costs by restricting claims. The backlog of claims was immense, and veterans, often suffering extreme psychological stress, had to wait an average of five months for decisions on their requests.

…

McLendon and many of the other high-level officials at the VA shared political convictions that, along with doubts about the science of PTSD, made them less likely to push for additional psychiatric services for veterans. They believed in streamlined government and free markets, and they supported a prominent role for faith-based organizations. The secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs, R. James Nicholson, had previously served as chairman of the Republican National Committee and as ambassador to the Vatican. McLendon's politics closely mirror his boss's, and under Nicholson's watch, veterans had increasing difficulty in obtaining adequate psychological care.

…

The 2010 budget proposed by President Obama includes the largest funding increase for veterans in the past thirty years, and much of it is devoted to treatment of PTSD. The new secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs, Eric Shinseki, a retired general who was injured in Vietnam (and fought with Rumsfeld over the size of the force needed in Iraq), has shown a strong commitment to the care of veterans. Unfortunately, bureaucracies are slow to respond. After years of neglect during the Bush administration, veterans now have nearly one million claims pending, a record high for the agency. VA officials say that, technically, it is not a backlog, because thousands of claims are resolved each month, and thousands more are added. But none can deny that the situation is enormously frustrating for suffering veterans.

Tara McKelvey

Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney wrote checks they had no intention of cashing. The damage these people did to this country cannot be undone simply by removing them from power. (via)