Americans hate torture

post from Daily Kos on 06 November 2007 12:19:49 PM. © Daily Kos

We go to DC with the Democrats we have, not the ones we wish we had. And the ones we have think that capitulating and caving in to every Republican threat is a sign of "strength", yet standing up for what the American people believe is "being weak".

A majority of Americans consider waterboarding a form of torture, but some of those say it's OK for the U.S. government to use the technique, according to a poll released Tuesday.

Michael Mukasey said waterboarding is repugnant, but he stopped short of saying it was torture.

Asked whether they think waterboarding is a form of torture, more than two-thirds of respondents, or 69 percent, said yes; 29 percent said no.

Asked whether they think the U.S. government should be allowed to use the procedure to try to get information from suspected terrorists, 58 percent said no; 40 percent said yes.

DC is a funny, funny place.

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Bush Beats Nixon!!!

post from Eschaton on 06 November 2007 12:15:00 PM. © Eschaton

woo-hoo!

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Winning the Hearts and Minds of Turkey's Kurds

post from IraqSlogger.com on 06 November 2007 12:12:44 PM. © IraqSlogger.com

While the prospect of a military incursion into northern Iraq has consumed the biggest part of media coverage on the border tensions, the Turkish National Security Council has been quietly going about discussing plans for psychological, sociological, and economic measures designed to combat the appeal of Kurdish separatists.

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In Which I Rail Against Hitler Analogies, Then
Use One

post from Ezra Klein on 06 November 2007 12:10:00 PM. © Ezra Klein

Over at TAP, Justin Logan delivers 20 lashes to the scores of Hitler-invoking hawks who keep demeaning Munich and trivializing Adolph in service of bombing Iran. I sort of think folks miss the point of the Hitler analogies, though: They're...[...]

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Bush beats Nixon’s disapproval ratings.

post from Think Progress on 06 November 2007 12:10:00 PM. © Think Progress

Sixty-four percent of Americans disapprove of the job President Bush is doing, and for “the first time in the history of the Gallup Poll, 50% say they ’strongly disapprove’ of the president. Richard Nixon had reached the previous high, 48%, just before an impeachment inquiry was launched in 1974.”

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Shrieks of Democracy

post from Hick With A Master's Degree on 06 November 2007 12:08:00 PM. © Hick With A Master's Degree

I don't know where you voted, but my voting location was an elementary school cafeteria. While I chose to approve or disapprove propositions that will determine who gets how much for what and when, the room rang with voices.

There is a wall of sound only dozens of seven-year-olds can achieve. And somehow--and this is why I steer clear of them and do as they ask when they spot me--they can eat and shriek simultaneously. It's a sustained pitch, a kind of white noise that I will now and forever associate with the demands of democracy.

"Kids, can you please put all of your trash in the bin at the end of the room, and exit without knocking over any voters...? Kids? KIDS?"

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McCain blasts Giuliani over Waterboarding
comments

post from Crooks and Liars on 06 November 2007 12:00:55 PM. © Crooks and Liars

This is just crazy talk by Rudy:I do know a lot about intensive questioning and intensive questioning techniques. ? Now, intensive questioning works. If I didn?t use intensive questioning, there would be a lot of mafia guys running around New York right now and crime would be a lot higher in New York than [...]

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On Five Ways of Thinking: Pythagoras

post from My Left Wing - Front Page on 06 November 2007 12:00:00 PM. © My Left Wing - Front Page

Philosofactory: Pythagoras
Philosophy On A Porch

(by pyrrho for publishing jointly at MLW and DocuDharma)

Pythagoras: A Mathematical Universe zeno

I will be using the print version of the Oxford "Dictionary ofPhilosophy" to refresh myself for this series.

Links offered may or may not have been referenced to research this post. Imay or may not believe their assertions or have been exposed to them, butthey are given to ease your direct research further into Pythagoras. I try topresent them fairly and clearly. I am a skeptic myself, a relativist withopinions on all these schools, and a tendency to eschew the doctrinaire sideof each of these schools, but as a skeptic, I'm equipped to give a philosophya fair shake. Myself, and tend to seek and emphasize the reusable tools eachschool has to offer.

Most of you will know Pythagoras from the Pythagorean Theorum, butPythagoras was not just a mathematician and geometrician. His mathematics wasnot separate from his life and his ideas were not limited to mathematics. Aswith all these ancient philosophies I am covering in this series, Pythagoras'is also has a whole system concerned with how to live... a worldview. Thisworldview is what I am looking at in this series, because these philosophiesserve as archetypes for worldviews, archetypes I seem to encounter daily, andwhich you do to. Archetypes not fundamental, but nevertheless ancient andsoaked into us. The epicurean is looking for a pleasurable life, to find thesmall pleasures and live simply Simply, perhaps, but still nearby thesepleasures. The stoic is more hardened, does not expect pleasure as reward andeven scoffs at it as such, being as indifferent to pleasure as they havechosen to be to pain. The pythagoreans then are those that have their head inabstractions. One imagines the sort that has had no time for epicureanpleasures like meals, having been preoccupied with a logical proof. To thesesort, the sublime superiority of a mathematical pattern was and remains asobvious as the rising sun.

This series is presenting five ancient schools of philosophy asarchetypes. In the interest of honesty I must state my own philosophicalarchetype is skepticism, but skepticism affords me the freedom to see thestrengths of these other archetypes. By no means are these five archetypesmeant to be limiting, according to a relative and skeptical approach anynumber of archetypes can be constructed and used, but these do have theparticular quality of having been developed and infused into our "WesternCulture" over thousands of years, at least.

Their framings still exist, not merely as maxims come to mean otherthings, linguistic ornaments merely, but at conceptual levels, such that onecan recognize a well worn conceptual tool with novel expressions inlanguage.

The archetypes are so far as follow:

Epicurean: "Enjoy the simple pleasures, such as friendship, food and wine. Nature is filled with pleasure and suffering alike."
Stoic: "Live with virtue and be indifferent to the harshness of life. Nature is indifferent but ordered."
Pythagorean: "Truth and beauty lie in the abstractions of mathematics and geometry. Nature can be described with number."
???
???

Indeed, the followers of Pythagoras were prone to taking Pythagoras himselfas a god become human to teach mankind these sublime truths. I do not find itsurprising that such a man led to a philosophy including vegetarianism and asemi-divine presumption. If that sound dismissive, I share the pythagorean'ssensibilities, if more humbly so, with an eye to the errors it introduceswith its beauties. As for the nearly religious awe I can feel before amathematical truth, take pi, a ratio that relates, among other things, thelength of the side of a circle to the length of the sides of a square, suchthat, if you were to take the width of a square, and the radius of the circlehaving the same circumference as the "circumference" of the square, then therelation between the two involves a number whose digits never end, whichcannot be finitely represented. To me that's stunning, but that turningsquare into a circle requires a transcendental number is not stunning butfitting. It is sublime, divine, and while expected, only ironically. And thatthe ratio is well named as a "transcendental" number is no doubt a product ofour shared if inexplicable love for the beauty of math and geometry.

Concomitant to this, however, is removal of the self from the materialworld into the world of abstraction and the illusion that abstractions arenot even of this world. The pythagorean spirit, as archetype, might not evenconcern itself with math or geometry, but some other family of abstractions.But abstraction are made from material facts, from astronomy, from counting,from imperfectly drawn lines in the sand, and from deducing concepts that canexplain the facts abstracted all at once. This has proved a practical andrewarding endeavor, but it is a part of the loss of reason to consider anabstraction so fine it's not a part of this world. But now I have begun todescribe Plato... Pythagoras himself might in fact object, thinking the worldof mathematics imbued the world around us all the material reality it had forus to perceive. If I may accept this archetype in such a light, it remains atactile abstractionism, we feel the mathematical world about us always. Weare not imperfect beings separated from this glory, but are abstract beautiesourselves, actually made of it.

It is easy to forget that Pythagoras was not a mathematician, because, infact, geometry and mathematics were to him really the most important things,things which justified the world, and study of which made for a good life. Asfor the specifics of worldly life style of pythagoreans, they were on thevery self disciplined side of living, following traditions of silence andobservance of various taboos, such as prohibition on eating flesh and beans.For those that mistake a love of mathematics and the belief that mathematicsunderpinned the universe for a modern scientific perspective, please considerthat Pythagoras was much more of a mystical and spiritual teacher than that.For example, it was said Pythagoras was able to remember each formerexistence, being as they believed in reincarnation. Further, the form ofreincarnation they believed in was transmigratory, the spirit may come toexist, or have existed, in plant or animal form in addition to humans. That'sa view of reincarnation I personally endorse very strongly in the "if you aregoing to believe it, you should also believe...". To study the world ofmathematics, or, metaphorically, abstractions, had a spiritual valueaccording to Pythagoras, it could free the soul from this cycle ofincarnation and let it rejoin the cosmos as one. This is what combined hisworldview with his philosophy of mathematics and geometry.

Pythagoras and the pythagoreans were prone to numerology, and by extensionmetaphorically any modern pythagorean-types are be prone to mysticism aboutabstractions themselves. Often attributed to him is the view that all thingsare numbers. This is undoubtedly a simplification of his views, but stop andconsider the success of that theory. Viewing things quantitatively, which isto reduce them to numbers, has been very successful in engineering, science,and I think especially, computer science. This love for abstraction isoverboard in pythagoras, I suspect, but it is also somewhat warming and nicefor one to be so driven to seek this kind of beauty, for it is that whichseeks the patterns of the universe... and finds some.

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Confronting Dr. Evils Stranglehold

A classic Dr. Evil moment…Froomkin points to a couple of very useful tidbits on Dick Cheney. The most intriguing is from a column last June:…The roots of the crisis go back to the blind bargain Washington made after 9/11 with the regime that[...]

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http://www.firedoglake.com/2007/11/06/confronting-dr-evils-stranglehold/

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SCHIP kills Republicans

From the subscription-only Roll Call:

“Last week we saw the latest evidence that our fight to provide health coverage to 10 million children through SCHIP is continuing to resonate with the American people — especially in key Congressional districts,” Van Hollen wrote. “As [DCCC poll] findings confirm, vulnerable Republicans who continue to vote in lock step with George Bush against SCHIP will be held accountable by their constituents.”

Van Hollen cited internal DCCC polling in Michigan’s 9th district, where Democrats are targeting Rep. Joe Knollenberg (R), and in Missouri’s 9th district and Virginia’s 2nd district, held by Reps. Kenny Hulshof (R) and Thelma Drake (R), respectively.

Knollenberg is a major Democratic target this cycle, and Drake’s district is one the DCCC targeted in 2006 but has no challenger for yet. Hulshof’s district gave President Bush 59 percent of the vote in 2004 and has not been considered a major battleground in recent cycles [...]

According to this survey, portions of which were obtained by Roll Call, Knollenberg’s lead over his likely challenger, state Lottery Commissioner Gary Peters (D), was at 7 points — 42 percent to 35 percent — a 5-point drop from the advantage the incumbent held in April.

Knollenberg’s 7-point lead turned into a 7-point deficit after respondents were read both a push question characterizing his position on SCHIP, and the Democratic and Republican arguments for and against the program.

“As you may know, Joe Knollenberg voted AGAINST preserving and expanding the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, which provides health care to children in low-income families,” this portion of the poll read.

“Let me read you two statements about this: Democrats say that Knollenberg voted three times against the bipartisan plan to provide 10 million children with access to affordable health care, including 100 thousand children here in Michigan.

“Joe Knollenberg says he supports children’s health insurance, but this plan is socialized medicine which would insure children from families making more than $70,000 per year.”

SCHIP will decimate the GOP in 2008, and for what? Bigger Democratic majorities in the House and Senate, along with a Democratic president, will give us an even better version of SCHIP, covering even more kids and maybe even -- gasp! -- some young adults.

So let them keep vetoing.