Open Thread

post from Crooks and Liars on 23 December 2010 11:30:32 PM. © Crooks and Liars

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I've never watched "The Jersey Shore," but it's some kind of distinction to be

universally

What's your best, worst, whatever of TV this year? And open thread below....

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http://crooksandliars.com/bluegal/open-thread-544

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Hispanic-Majority Districts: Boon or Burden for
Democrats

post from FiveThirtyEight on 23 December 2010 11:26:37 PM. © FiveThirtyEight

Trying to gauge what the creation of more Hispanic-majority districts will mean for the Democrats.

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http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/12/23/hispanic-majority-districts-b
oon-or-burden-for-democrats/

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Open Thread and Diary Rescue

post from Daily Kos on 23 December 2010 11:15:44 PM. © Daily Kos

Once again, another fabulous Diary Rescue comes to you because of the diligence and hard work of the following Rescue Rangers: jlms qkw, ItsJessMe, dopper0189, srkp23 and vcmvo2. Much like a rumor, dadanation is said to have both rescued and served as tonight's editor.

Diaries (rescued)

quibblingpotatoes uses the ratings handed out by politifact.com to do a complete analysis of the truthfulness of leaders from both political parties in Republicans Lie a Lot: Here's the Proof. (dopper0189)

Lib Dem FoP updates this hot button issue in Europe in UK: Identity Cards Consigned to History AGAIN. (jlms qkw)

epjmcginley evocatively describes Mudcat by the Bay. (jlms qkw)

As historic legislation passes, Forgiven discusses The Cost of Victory, past and future. (ItsJessMe)

Activist humanist Ahadave wishes the dkos community a Merry Secular Christmas celebrating peace on earth and goodwill toward our fellow humans. (ItsJessMe)

doc durango takes a historical look back at Jefferson, Madison, Hamilton: Left-wing Radicals. (ItsJessMe)

Understanding Modern Money is the key to understanding such topics as social insurance and modern society in general, explains TruthMerchant. (ItsJessMe)

shenderson provides an interesting analysis on language use in The Year of Ebullient Bigotry. (vcmvo2)

My Semester Abroad finds Future Dems offering a fascinating take on how the US is perceived across the pond. (dadanation)

Not only is all politics local, but it is also personal. jmannatl reminds us about this when writing about Why the repeal of DADT matters- to me. (dadanation)

Jan Barry writes powerfully about PTSD and Living with Death’s Shadow. (srkp23)

outofstepper shares a sweet story in I Still Believe in Santa. (srkp23)

Lenny Flank investigates various anti-corporate tactics tried by unions and others in this final installment of History of Corporations Part 14. (srkp23)

RLMiller reports EPA tackles Texas, old power plants, refineries. (srkp23)

Suspects (usual)

jotter scores once again with High Impact Diaries: December 22, 2010.

Ed Tracey brings us tonight's Top Comments: My All-Time US Cabinet edition.

Closing (requisite)

Please use this as an Open Thread as well as your chance to promote your favorite diaries of the day. Respectful engagement is most welcome here. Please keep in mind that each Diary Rescue's daily purview extends from 3pm PST yesterday to 3pm PST today.

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-Rescue

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Late Night: Pouting Baby Doesnt Understand Why
Gov. Scottdemort Hates People Who Dont Have Jobs

post from Firedoglake on 23 December 2010 11:00:39 PM. © Firedoglake

Why do Governor Scottdemort and his helpers hate people who don't have jobs?[...]

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http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/firedoglake/fdl/~3/ywEU4Ci3x_A/

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C&L's Late Nite Music Club With Buck Owens

post from Crooks and Liars on 23 December 2010 11:00:07 PM. © Crooks and Liars

Genre: Buck OwensTitle: Santa Looked A Lot Like Daddy
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Ho Ho Ho...

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http://crooksandliars.com/jared-shade-reynolds/cls-late-nite-music-club-buck

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Thursday Stuff

post from The Liberal Doomsayer on 23 December 2010 10:31:00 PM. © The Liberal Doomsayer

Not sure how I forgot this one, but somehow I did, almost...

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...and I know I gave him static for playing at Flush Limbore's wedding, and he doesn't quite get the whole thing going on in Arizona, but Sir Elton is still OK anyway ...

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...and I thought this was pretty neat, in case you're in the mood for a Christmas lights show and can't make it to Longwood Gardens in these parts...

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...and it wouldn't be the eve of Christmas Eve without this one, would it?

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http://liberaldoomsayer.blogspot.com/2010/12/thursday-stuff_23.html

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UN to investigate treatment of incarcerated
Bradley Manning

post from Daily Kos on 23 December 2010 10:30:04 PM. © Daily Kos

While Julian Assange has been the subject of reams of media reports, one of his sources has languished in military detention for five months, in conditions so extreme the UN's top anti-torutre envoy is investigating his treatment. Glenn wrote about the conditions in which he's been held last week.

Since his arrest in May, Manning has been a model detainee, without any episodes of violence or disciplinary problems. He nonetheless was declared from the start to be a "Maximum Custody Detainee," the highest and most repressive level of military detention, which then became the basis for the series of inhumane measures imposed on him.

From the beginning of his detention, Manning has been held in intensive solitary confinement. For 23 out of 24 hours every day -- for seven straight months and counting -- he sits completely alone in his cell. Even inside his cell, his activities are heavily restricted; he's barred even from exercising and is under constant surveillance to enforce those restrictions. For reasons that appear completely punitive, he's being denied many of the most basic attributes of civilized imprisonment, including even a pillow or sheets for his bed (he is not and never has been on suicide watch). For the one hour per day when he is freed from this isolation, he is barred from accessing any news or current events programs. Lt. Villiard protested that the conditions are not "like jail movies where someone gets thrown into the hole," but confirmed that he is in solitary confinement, entirely alone in his cell except for the one hour per day he is taken out.

In sum, Manning has been subjected for many months without pause to inhumane, personality-erasing, soul-destroying, insanity-inducing conditions of isolation similar to those perfected at America's Supermax prison in Florence, Colorado: all without so much as having been convicted of anything....

Just by itself, the type of prolonged solitary confinement to which Manning has been subjected for many months is widely viewed around the world as highly injurious, inhumane, punitive, and arguably even a form of torture.

Torture expert and psychologist Jeff Kaye is less equivocal about whether these conditions amount to torture.

Indeed, the conditions of solitary confinement are so onerous it led the International Committee of the Red Cross in a 2004 report to state, in regards to the CIA’s detention of so-called high-value detainees, that “strict solitary confinement in cells devoid of sunlight for nearly 23 hours a day constituted a serious violation of the Third and Fourth Geneva Conventions.” While Bradley Manning is not being held as an “enemy combatant,” the conditions under which he is being held are redolent of the torture inflicted upon U.S. “war on terror” detainees, or suffered under the terms of the military’s Army Field Manual Appendix M, where such detainees are held in conditions of isolation, including significant limitations on sleep and certain forms of overt sensory deprivation....

Even if Bradley Manning is not being held in conditions as horrific as those CIA black site prisoners suffered in the early days of the Bush administration, his situation, like those of thousands of Supermax prisoners in the United States, are onerous and destructive enough. We must ask that the unnecessary POI orders be lifted, and Manning allowed social time with other prisoners, according to normal prison rules and safeguards. He should have full access to mail and the ability to write to others, and to exercise unrestricted by shackles and chains. He should be allowed normal bedding, and greater rights of privacy.

Isolation is a technique well-known to break down individuals. Why does the U.S. government wish to break down Bradley Manning? Is it to get him to confess, to force a plea bargain, to implicate Julian Assange or other people, or to make an example of him to those who would choose a higher good over the machinations of the U.S. government in a senseless and criminal war?

The Pentagon says the threat to national security Manning poses is the reason for this level of detention, though presumably restricting his access to communications devices would be enough to safeguard the nation. It's not as though the kid is one of Osama bin Laden's numerous number two deputies and has access to loose nukes. They also say that it's for his own protection, though he's never been on suicide watch. Hopefully, the intervention of the UN torture envoy will be adequate impetus for the Pentagon to revise Manning's detention.

David House, one of the few people allowed to see Manning, has much more on Manning's detention conditions and his mental health.

Read The Full Article:
http://feeds.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/RTWQtvvllug/-UN-to-investigate-tre
atment-of-incarcerated-Bradley-Manning

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Dear Congress, Almost No One Knows or Cares About
Your Kabuki

My advice to any political party is to focus the bulk of their energy on doing what ever possible, as quickly as possible, to deliver real improvements for the electorate. People pay attention to how the government is affecting their lives, not the show[...]

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Maddow: 'Newt Gingrich is a direct mail scam
artist'

Maddow: 'Newt Gingrich is a direct mail scam artist'

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Speaking to a live audience at the 92nd Street Y Wednesday, MSNBC's Rachel Maddow blasted former House Speaker Newt Gingrich for his opposition to federal unemployment benefits.

"I'm opposed to giving people money for doing nothing," Gingrich insisted during a recent speech to GOP activists in South Carolina.

"Let is review for just a second how Newt Gingrich makes his money," Maddow began. "For starters, he hands out fake awards in exchange for cash."

"Newt Gingrich makes money right now running a fake awards for small businesses scam," she continued. "Last year he tried to give one of his fake awards to a small business called The Lodge in Dallas, Texas."

In exchange for a $5,000 donation, Gingrich offered The Lodge, a strip club, a certificate, a novelty gavel and a dinner with him.

"When Mr. Gingrich realized he was giving one of his fake awards -- for a $5,000 donation -- to a strip club he decided to rescind the award and the dinner invitation," Maddow noted.

In mid-December, Gingrich sent another letter to The Lodge and asked them for a $2,000 donation to his American Solutions organization.

"This is how Newt Gingrich makes his money but he doesn't think that you earned yours," Maddow observed.

"Newt Gingrich is a direct mail scam artist. He hires the analog equivalent of spammers to troll the Yellow Pages, looking for businesses he can fool into thinking they are winning a 'Newt award,' and then he cons money out of them for accepting it," she said.

Read The Full Article:
http://crooksandliars.com/david/maddow-newt-gingrich-direct-mail-scam-artist

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Julian Assange & Cenk Uygur full interview

Yesterday Cenk Uygur interviewed WikiLeaks' founder Julian Assange for 15 minutes on the Dylan Ratigan Show. It's a good interview; Cenk does well, with his assortment of questions, to bring out Assange's thoughts.

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There is so much here. Please take the time, if you have it, to watch. The key questions:

? Are you a member of the press? (1:00) He's a journalist; has been for years. Other more timid journalists think they can keep themselves safe by "selling us out" and saying "we're not journalists." They won't be safe; "they're going to be next."

? What's your answer to "high-tech terrorist" charge? (7:15) He talks about the definition of "terrorism" and contrasts what he does with calls for his assassination in high circles of the Republican party, and some parts of the Democratic party. He feels some of these critics are guilty of "incitement to commit murder" and should be charged. (11:00)

? Is Bradley Manning being mistreated? (11:20) Assange doesn't know if Manning is the source; their technology is set up to protect source identities. But if the allegations are true, Manning "acted for political reasons" and is therefore "a political prisoner, without trial, in the United States." Assange feels this should be investigated.

(For more on Manning's confinement, see here and here. For Glenn Greenwald's comments, see here. For a Bradley Manning?WikiLeaks timeline, see here. For an analysis of inconsistencies in the story accusing Bradley Manning, see here.)

Assange also feels that the goal of Manning's treatment is to wring a confession implicating Assange in a "conspiracy to commit espionage." While his organization doesn't contact sources directly, other journalists do contact sources. He implies that this is a slippery slope that endangers all investigative journalism.

Note that by most accounts, the goal of torture isn't to produce the truth, but a false confession. Here's M. Gregg Bloche, law professor at Georgetown University and a Brookings Institution fellow, and Jonathan Marks, a barrister in London and bioethics fellow at Georgetown and Johns Hopkins, writing in the New York Times in 2005 (my emphasis):

How did American interrogation tactics after 9/11 come to include abuse rising to the level of torture? Much has been said about the illegality of these tactics, but the strategic error that led to their adoption has been overlooked.

The Pentagon effectively signed off on a strategy that mimics Red Army methods. But those tactics were not only inhumane, they were ineffective. For Communist interrogators, truth was beside the point: their aim was to force compliance to the point of false confession.

Again, this is a widely held opinion, and one that comports with even the lowest level of common sense (for example, adolescent stories about Nazis and Commies). Much to consider.

Whither us? I've said for a while that this period, from the mid-term election to the end of the Lame Duck, seems a turning point, a major one ? and not just in reality, but in perception, in the way people see their world. Rightly or wrongly, this has me very concerned.

GP