Call of Cthulhu

... the dense and hastily drafted House version of the bill to implement the September 11 commission recommendations includes a provision widely seen as an attempt to legalize "extraordinary rendition" -- a technical euphemism to describe the practice of sending suspects to the Syrians or Jordanians so we can avoid doing the dirty work of torture ourselves. The Torture Convention naturally bars parties from sending anyone to a country where "there are substantial grounds for believing that he would be in danger of being subjected to torture." But the House bill would lift this prohibition, enabling the United States to deport (or "render") foreign nationals to countries long condemned by the U.S. State Department for widespread practices of torture and other gross abuse.

• Spread the word: Post your feelings on this as far and wide as possible. Make sure that other politically active people are aware of what the rightards are trying to legalize in our name.


• Write your local papers: Short, civil letters to the Editors still cary weight. This is an explosive issue, but they need to be made aware of it.


• Write your Congress-critter: Democrat or Rethug, make them aware that you know about H.R.10's true meaning, and that you won't stand for it. Keep the pressure on.

TYPICAL NEWS CYCLE

For example, Bush is speaking, suddenly he stops, drops his pants and eats a baby.

Initial impression --- Bad, film of Bush holding baby by neck, his bloody face buried in the infant's midsection. His face withdraws from the now quivering torso covered with blood and entrails, a crazed look in his eye.

First GOP response: I heard it from another guy, who knows this guy that was Osama's baby and it was loaded with explosives.

Instantaneously Drudge Reports: Bush saves crowd from Osama's Bomb

NY Post reports: Bush saves world from Demon Baby

Wash. Times reports: Bush saves world from Demon Baby just like Reverend Moon fortold.

Typical Freeper: Bush saves crowd from Osama's Bomb, linky linky

Newscycle ends.

Next morning newscycle:

NY Times: Baby was not Osama's, not loaded with explosives.

NBC: Our report last night saying that the Baby might have contained explosives was not correct.

John Kerry: When John Kerry is president he will not eat an innocent child. The President needs to apologize.

Ed Gillespie: I think it is terrible that John Kerry now criticizes President Bush for acting quickly to protect people given the information he had at the time.

Associated Press: Security experts say there was no information that it was necessary to eat a baby, especially while not wearing pants.

The Corner: We know it looks bad that Bush ate a baby, but Cliff May says he knows the mother of the baby, and its well known she is a terrorist.

Typical Freeper returns: Roh, Roh, Baby may have been terrorist after all.

Wash Post: Baby's mother is named Shirley Gustafson, is from Wisconsin, a baptist, and works as a Greeter at Wal-Mart.

Wall Street Journal Editorialist: You cannot tell me that Kerry didn't kill and eat all sorts of babies in Vietnam! In fact, I spoke to John O'Neil who says that Kerry once ate an entire Vietnamese Orphanage.

Fox News: The baby was already dead when he found it, killed by insurgents before he arrived. He was eating the baby out of compassion, to spare its parents the trauma of seeing the body.
--Liz

Tom Ridge/Homeland Security: The baby was trying to cross the border without proper papers-Ted Nugent brought it down with a bow and arrow. Ann Coulter was there to verify the kill.
--The Culture Ghost

SecDef Donald Rumskull: Reports that say that the President ate a baby are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known babies; there are babies we know we know. We also know there are baby unknowns; that is to say we know there are some babies we do not know. But there are also unknown babies — the babies we don't know we don't know.
--Great Cthulhu and Donald Rumskull

The recently returned vet describes how a senior British officer explained his army’s philosophy: “We stay back until they become very bold and over-extend themselves. Then we jump out, counterattack and drive them back.”

“That’s how the Brits lost the American Revolution,” the vet observed. “The Iraqi insurgents avoid direct contact until they’re ready to engage on their terms at their time.”

Just before he came home, one Brit battalion was moved to the mean killing field of Baghdad – where he notes that “they better seriously change their style of doing things if they want to stay alive.”

“What's your view on Poland’s (2,460 troops) and Italy’s (3,000) threat to follow Spain’s pullout from Iraq?” I asked him.

“No big deal,” he replied, “because they don’t bring much to the party. We had to take An Najaf two times, once from Saddam and once from Sadr. We ended up paying in blood twice for the same real estate while the Poles and Spanish (1,300) let one of the most peaceful areas in Iraq go to hell.”

“Many of our coalition partners have yet to learn you can’t hunker down in mud forts and expect insurgents to kick back,” says another good soldier, who’s been working with coalition troops for almost a year. “For example, a Bulgarian...leader, fed up with being mortared night after night, asked his Polish commander why his unit wasn’t sending out patrols to kill the attackers. The Pole replied, ‘Well ... it’s very dangerous out there.’ By giving up the initiative, the Poles have allowed the insurgents to determine where and when they will strike.”

According to this source, the problem isn’t just with the Poles: “When Spain bugged out, sadly the Hondurans (368) and Dominicans (302) followed. These guys were fierce fighters like the El Salvadorians (361), who fortunately stayed. As for the Spanish, they left with every bullet they brought.”

[snip]

...the Japanese (240) are doing a great job. And anyone planning to shoot at a Bulgarian (480) will find himself dead before he takes aim. Mongolians (160) have also proven their steel, and the Australians are superb, while the Ukrainians’ (1,600) performance is mixed.

...if the Brits, Poles and Italians would rather leave than take the initiative, the consensus is: let them pack their coolers, teapots and beach umbrellas and go home.

OK City = 5,000 pounds/2,300 kg of ammonium-nitrate and nitromethane.
This mix has a TNT equivalent ranging from 3%-10%, i.e. the OK City bomb is the equivalent of 150 - 500 pounds of TNT.

AQQ = 380 tons of RDX, HMX and PETN. RDX and PETN have a TNT equivalent value of 170%. Converted into TNT, the AQQ stockpile equals 646 tons or 1,292,000 pounds of explosives.

Convert this back into my OK City metric, and this means that the lost material at AQQ equals betwen 2,584 - 8613 OK City-size bombs. That's one hell of a lot of material to be on the street -- enough to fuel a car-bomb and IED-based insurgency for years, if not decades.

Famed shareholder attorney William S. Lerach will hold a news conference at 1 p.m. today to discuss insider self-dealing by officers of Sinclair Broadcasting, the Baltimore-based television chain that is forcing its affiliates to show a propaganda film that attacks presidential candidate John Kerry. He will release a set of demands aimed at making Sinclair executives disgorge millions of dollars in unjustified profits taken out of the firm when stock prices were high during the past 12 months. Yesterday the company's stock fell a further 8 percent after being down more than 50 percent from the year's beginning, as advertisers pulled back to avoid the station's self-generated political controversy.

Albert Schumacher, president of the Canadian Medical Association, also warned doctors yesterday to avoid giving U.S. visitors any of the vaccines purchased by provincial health plans, which represents the vast majority of the supply in Canada.

"The stuff that's sitting in my fridge isn't for them," Dr. Schumacher said.

With half of the U.S. supply choked off by quality-control problems, clinics such as the border outpost of the Northwestern Health Unit in Fort Frances, Ont., have been getting a steady stream of calls from worried Americans.

"There was even somebody from Florida wanting to purchase a dose," said Cindy McKinnon, the clinic's vaccine specialist.

Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force; like fire, a troublesome servant and a fearful master. Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action.
--George Washington

STEWART: See, the thing is, we need your help. Right now, you're helping the politicians and the corporations. And we're left out there to mow our lawns.

BEGALA: By beating up on them? You just said we're too rough on them when they make mistakes.

STEWART: No, no, no, you're not too rough on them. You're part of their strategies. You are partisan, what do you call it, hacks.

CARLSON: Let me ask you a question on the news.

STEWART: Now, this is theater. It's obvious. How old are you?

CARLSON: Thirty-five.

STEWART: And you wear a bow tie.

CARLSON: Yes, I do. I do.

STEWART: So this is...

CARLSON: I know. I know. I know. You're a...

STEWART: So this is theater.

CARLSON: You need to get a job at a journalism school, I think.

STEWART: You need to go to one. The thing that I want to say is, when you have people on for just knee-jerk, reactionary talk...

CARLSON: Wait. I thought you were going to be funny. Come on. Be funny.

STEWART: No. No. I'm not going to be your monkey.

CARLSON: I do think you're more fun on your show. Just my opinion. OK, up next, Jon Stewart goes one on one with his fans...

STEWART: You know what's interesting, though? You're as big a dick on your show as you are on any show.

A 17-member Army Reserve platoon with troops from Jackson and around the Southeast deployed to Iraq is under arrest for refusing a "suicide mission" to deliver fuel, the troops' relatives said Thursday.

The soldiers refused an order on Wednesday to go to Taji, Iraq — north of Baghdad — because their vehicles were considered "deadlined" or extremely unsafe, said Patricia McCook of Jackson, wife of Sgt. Larry O. McCook.

"He told me that three of the vehicles they were to use were deadlines ... not safe to go in a hotbed like that," Patricia McCook said.

Hill said the trucks her daughter's unit was driving could not top 40 mph.

"They knew there was a 99 percent chance they were going to get ambushed or fired at," Hill said her daughter told her. "They would have had no way to fight back."

HORSTMAN: Mr. President, why did you block the reimportation of safer and inexpensive drugs from Canada which would have cut 40 to 60 percent off of the cost?

BUSH: I haven't yet. Just want to make sure they're safe. When a drug comes in from Canada, I want to make sure it cures you and doesn't kill you.

Bush: We're working with Canada to hopefully -- that they'll produce a -- help us realize the vaccine necessary to make sure our citizens have got flu vaccinations during this upcoming season.

But that vaccine is not licensed for sale in the United States, and thus meeting FDA requirements in time for this flu season "is doubtful," Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson told reporters Thursday.

It was a study called "The Effect of Country Music on Suicide" that garnered the prize for Medicine for Steven Stack of Wayne State University and James Gundlach of Auburn University.

According to the study, published in Social Forces, "The results of a multiple regression analysis of 49 metropolitan areas show that the greater the airtime devoted to country music, the greater the white suicide rate."