Bizarro World: Cheney Demands Document Release, Obama Keeps Photos Secret

Bizarro Obama, claiming the need for secrecy, prepares to wrestle Bizarro Cheney, armed with customary shotgun, who demands document release.

The two Super Bizarros of the Right and Left prepare to battle

Harry Shearer in the Huffington post has called the new reality the Mirror World edition. Did somebody yell, “Simon Says: Everybody switch sides”? Screw it, Harry, I think it’s worse than that, we’ve formally entered BIZARRO World. We’ve been phasing in and out of Bizarro World ever since 9/11, when people were evacuating shopping malls in the midwest, convinced that Saddam Hussein was about to bomb them, but now with Cheney demanding the release of documents to show how effective our use of torture was and with Barack Obama, Mr. Transparency in Government, deciding to fight the release of torture photos, I think we’ve taken up permanent residence and Kal-El ain’t gunna come to rescue us. William Rivers Pitt thinks everyone is damn scared that the real dirt will come out and if Seymour Hersh is right, there’s some really horrible stuff we’re going to find out about how we conducted our “enhanced interrogations.”
Now, President Obama has decided to revive the military tribunals for Gitmo prisoners–you know, the ones he promised to end during the election campaign? And Republicans are dancing all over Nancy Pelosi for allegedly being untruthful about she knew about prisoner interrogations, in order to distract the country from the lies that President Bush told us about “We don’t torture.” Right is left, up is down, in is out…
In other news, after all that brouhaha about Obama addressing the Notre Dame commencement, a little over 2 dozen protestors showed up and Obama entered to a standing ovation and gave his speech to thunderous applause. The official White House transcript includes a protestor’s boo that Katharine Zaleski said showed his commitment to greater transparency. While being open about dissent is admirable, being transparent about the little things while maintaining secrecy about the big ones is backasswards…Bizarro World.

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More Torture Memo Fun: Shepard Smith Finds a Conscience

Not-So-Innocent Condoleezza After All

Do you realize that Dick Cheney has seen the surface world more times in the last three months than in his entire tenure as Vice President? As usual, his current surfacings have been to tell us how bad a President Barack Obama is, how he’s endangering us with his reckless transparency and, of course, how effective our torture program was to gain information. Of course, we can’t find out if this is true because the documents are classified but Darth Cheney, aka, the Penguin, told us he made a formal request that they be declassified. Well, guess what? He isn’t VP anymore, just an ordinary mortal like the rest of us. He COULD have declassified the information himself before he left office, but naturally he assumed that Obama would just shut up about his predecessors misdeeds since that is the way the game has traditionally worked. But it seems Cheney didn’t ask the CIA about this, he made a FOIA request to the National Archives who, as of 2006, were 4 millions pages behind in filling FOIA requests. I don’t think they’ve caught up.
But what intel did we get? Marcy Wheeler of the Empty Wheel Blog dug through the 9/11 commission reports and found only 10 pieces of information obtained through the waterboarding of Abu Zubaydah. The first three, to give examples of the quality of info we got, were: 1. “Abu Zubaydah describes his role running the Khaldan and Derunta training camps.” 2. “Abu Zubaydah describes Rahim al-Nashiri’s success as a recruiter.” 3. “AZ describes Bin Laden’s popularity.” (See Marcy Wheeler: 83 Waterboardings, 10 Pieces of Intel in the Huffington Post. Wow, that must have saved innumerable lives, Mr. Cheney.
Notice however, that Cheney never really addresses the moral issue of whether or not we should torture. His argument is strictly, “It’s effective, therefore we should do it.” And apart from being little Miss Innocent, it’s seems Condi (Condoleezza) Rice was actually one of the FIRST to OK waterboarding Rice OK’d CIA waterboard request as Bush adviser. All the top people, Bush, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld and Tenet were involved. Only Colin Powell appears to have been out of the loop, but remember, CIA is part of the State Department, which he headed.
In other news, Fox News anchor Shepard Smith has a new growth someplace on his body. It looks like…a conscience! I’m sure the Fox News health plan provides for the removal of these growths, but in the meantime, let’s take a look at HIS reaction to the memo problem. We have to agree with Shep’s response to Cheney. It doesn’t matter if it works. We’re America. We don’t torture.

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Torture? Only Following Orders? Get Out Of Jail Free!

Obama bails out the banks, gives freedom from prosecution to torturers, but will only snicker at legalizing marijuana....

And when Oprah takes a vacation, Obama has offered to substitute for her.

Oh, that Obama! Just like Dorothy in The Wiz, he wants nothing more than to ease on down, ease on down the road! Right smack in the middle. Doesn’t matter if one side is better than the other–might get someone upset if I don’t stay right in between. Don’t look back, there’s a whole lotta road ahead of us. Let’s just ease on down, ease on down the road!
The problem is–sometimes you DO have to take sides. Sometimes, staying in the middle doesn’t give you the optimal position, but a NEGATIVE optimum. In other words, if there’s a valley in between the two sides instead of a hill. Take these torture memos that just were made public. Omigod, the Bush administration really did authorize torture, they were fully aware of what they were doing and all the steps they took were simply to look like they weren’t committing war crimes. What to do, what to do? I know–we’ll make the documents public, but then we’ll say that we won’t prosecute anyone for it. That ought to satisfy both sides.
Well, now the conservatives are mad because the documents WERE made public–after all, now Al-Qaeda will know what kind of tortures we performed and aren’t allowed to use anymore! Despite the fact that both according to international laws and OUR OWN LAWS, torture is forbidden. And the liberals are none too happy either, because we’re letting these war criminals from George Bush on down to Private Joe Blow off scot-free. After all, they thought they were doing their patriotic duty and besides, everyone below the administration level was just following orders. I guess all those Nazi war criminals we hanged can now demand re-trials.
I think Obama suffers from Oprah-itis. He wants everyone to love him. Whenever possible, he tries to take a middle course in order to make everyone happy. The financial crisis, the tortures of the prior eight years. After all, Solomon tried a middle course with that baby the two mothers claimed. But if you take a middle course between good and evil, you wind up being neither, and not being good is not a good thing for the man who ought to set our moral compass as a nation. Let us leave behind the pain and suffering. But Obama, we were the ones who caused the pain and suffering. We CAN’T forgive ourselves for something we did to SOMEONE ELSE. Only they can forgive us. We need to show we mean business about no longer accepting torture as one of our standard operations–and we must take a hardline and punish those who authorized it. Otherwise, there’s no justice. We’re like the major leagues, looking away when everyone is using steroids because the big home run hitters bring in the crowds. If you get caught cheating, well, naughty naughty, promise you won’t do it again.
Yes, let’s ease on down the road. But let’s not leave a pile of crap where we’ve been. We need to clean it up and if a few people won’t like you for it, Barack, tough tushies. Let’s have no more “Get Out Of Jail Free” cards given out to people who did wrong and knew it.
BTW, April 20 is National Pot Smoker’s Day. While I am not a pot smoker…ummmmm, these days…I did partake in my youth. Consequently, I find it appropriate to nooge our President on another subject, legalization. Yes, it may only save a few billion dollars and that isn’t going to solve anything, Mr. President. But it will free up jail space for criminals who actually deserve to be behind bars, free the police to pursue real criminals instead of some silly potheads, and take money away from the drug gangs, as well as opening up marijuana to be used for legitimate medical purposes. You smoked when you were young–don’t be a hypocrite. And don’t snicker about it just to please the right wing.
And that’s the news.

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Let’s Go A-Viking

What? Didn't you know it was a global crisis?

With our parochial vision, the people of the United States … AND its government … seem to think that the present economic “recession” — meaning meltdown — is somehow just a problem in the United States. Especially the people who brought it on. Well, guess what? We’ve managed to crash the entire world economy. Now that’s an accomplishment that George Bush can be proud of. Of course, he wanted to blame it on Clinton. And Sean Hannity wants to blame the lack of an immediate solution on Obama. But let’s face it–the world has been screwed. Iceland went bankrupt. The government that was supposed to take care of the problem has already fallen. Yet still we think that if we only throw enough money at the banks whose greed and rapacity are the main villains in this comedy, everything will be alright. Ah, well, none are so blind as those who will not see.

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