If the Bible is the literal word of god, what does that make these people?

Thank the Lord — and the proofreaders at Peachtree Editorial and Proofreading — that the Bible refers to ??our ancestors” instead of ??sour ancestors,” and calls for an end to ??factions” — not ??fractions.” The proofreading service caught those typos and others before the latest edition of the Holy Book went to press.

At Peachtree, attention to detail is more than a job description. It’s a calling.

??Bible readers are less forgiving of errors because they expect perfection in the Bible text,” said June Gunden, who founded the business along with her husband, Doug.

Peachtree Editorial and Proofreading Service is believed to be the only one of its kind in the nation — and one of only a few in the world — to specialize in proofreading Bibles.
. . .
A list hangs in the Gundens’ office as a reminder of just how much rides on their work. The list, a collection of notorious typos found in the Bible, features one prominent error from a 1631 King James edition: ??Thou shalt commit adultery.”

??Obviously, you try to make sure anything that says, ?You shall not,’ you make sure you have the ?not,”‘ Doug Gunden said.

While such long-ago errors are good for a chuckle, the Gundens, who have been in the proofreading business for more than 25 years, realize that proofreading a Bible is serious stuff.

With an ordinary book, ??you can put up with more because it’s not something you’re basing your whole life on,” June Gunden said. ??It’s information, but it’s not really life-changing information. It’s not something you believe to be infallible.”

But wait a sec….I thought that people who were “blessed” with the job of translating the Bible were “guided by the hand of God”. If there’s enough screwups in there to consume a 16-person staff for two years, does that mean the Bible isn’t perfect?

Jeez, next you’re gonna tell me the Easter Bunny is fake or something…

At this point, there’s little question that Bush has been a horrible president. Now the question among historians seems to be who to compare Bush to :

The reasons stated by some of the historians for their choice of the presidency that they believe Bush?s to be the worst since are worth repeating. The following are representative examples for each of the presidents named most frequently:

REAGAN: ?I think the presidency of George W. Bush has been generally a failure and I consider his presidency so far to have been the most disastrous since that of Ronald Reagan–because of the unconscionable military aggression and spending (especially the Iraq War), the damage done to the welfare of the poor while the corporate rich get richer, and the backwards religious fundamentalism permeating this administration. I strongly disliked and distrusted Reagan and think that George W. is even worse.?

NIXON: ?Actually, I think [Bush?s] presidency may exceed the disaster that was Nixon. He has systematically lied to the American public about almost every policy that his administration promotes.? Bush uses ?doublespeak? to ?dress up policies that condone or aid attacks by polluters and exploiters of the environment . . . with names like the ?Forest Restoration Act? (which encourages the cutting down of forests).?

HOOVER: ?I would say GW is our worst president since Herbert Hoover. He is moving to bankrupt the federal government on the eve of the retirement of the baby boom generation, and he has brought America?s reputation in the world to its lowest point in the entire history of the United States.?
. . .
HARDING: ?Oil, money and politics again combine in ways not flattering to the integrity of the office. Both men also have a tendency to mangle the English language yet get their points across to ordinary Americans. [Yet] the comparison does Harding something of a disservice.?

McKINLEY: ?Bush is perhaps the first president [since McKinley] to be entirely in the ?hip pocket? of big business, engage in major external conquest for reasons other than national security, AND be the puppet of his political handler. McKinley had Mark Hanna; Bush has Karl Rove. No wonder McKinley is Rove?s favorite historical president (precedent?).?
. . .
EVER: The second most common response from historians, trailing only Nixon, was that the current presidency is the worst in American history. A few examples will serve to provide the flavor of such condemnations. ?Although previous presidents have led the nation into ill-advised wars, no predecessor managed to turn America into an unprovoked aggressor. No predecessor so thoroughly managed to confirm the impressions of those who already hated America. No predecessor so effectively convinced such a wide range of world opinion that America is an imperialist threat to world peace. I don ‘t think that you can do much worse than that.?

The guy who actually conducted the survey didn’t exactly have a favorable opinion of Bush either :

My assessment is that George W. Bush?s record on running up debt to burden our children is the worst since Ronald Reagan; his record on government surveillance of citizens is the worst since Richard Nixon; his record on foreign-military policy has gotten us into the worst foreign mess we?ve been in since Lyndon Johnson sank us into Vietnam; his economic record is the worst since Herbert Hoover; his record of tax favoritism for the rich is the worst since Calvin Coolidge; his record of trampling on civil liberties is the worst since Woodrow Wilson. How far back in our history would we need to go to find a presidency as disastrous for this country as that of George W. Bush has been thus far? My own vote went to the administration of James Buchanan, who warmed the president?s chair while the union disintegrated in 1860-61.

Who has been the biggest beneficiary of the horrible terrorism that struck our nation in September of 2001? The answer to that question should be obvious to anyone who considers where the popularity ratings and reelection prospects of a president with the record outlined above would be had he not been able to wrap himself in the flag, take advantage of the American people?s patriotism, and make himself synonymous with ?the United States of America? for the past two years.

That abuse of the patriotism and trust of the American people is even worse than everything else this president has done and that fact alone might be sufficient to explain the depth of the hostility with which so many historians view George W. Bush. Contrary to the conservative stereotype of academics as anti-American, the reasons that many historians cited for seeing the Bush presidency as a disaster revolve around their perception that he is undermining traditional American practices and values. As one patriotic historian put it, ?I think his presidency has been the worst disaster to hit the United States and is bringing our beloved country to financial, economic, and social disaster.?

Some voters may judge such assessments to be wrong, but they are assessments informed by historical knowledge and the electorate ought to have them available to take into consideration during this election year.

My favorite part of the whole article is this perfect summary of Bush’s economic policies :

Cut taxes three times, sharply reducing the burden on the rich, reclassified money obtained through stock ownership as more deserving than money earned through work. The idea that dividend income should not be taxed?what might accurately be termed the unearned income tax credit?can be stated succinctly: ?If you had to work for your money, we?ll tax it; if you didn?t have to work for it, you can keep it all.?

God, I hope we’re not doomed to repeat another Bush presidency…

I hate, hate, hate, hate Texas (via Kevin, Patrick, Julia…) :

According to the office of Texas Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn, a Denison Unitarian church isn’t really a religious organization — at least for tax purposes. Its reasoning: the organization “does not have one system of belief.”

Never before — not in this state or any other — has a government agency denied Unitarians tax-exempt status because of the group’s religious philosophy, church officials say. Strayhorn’s ruling clearly infringes upon religious liberties, said Dan Althoff, board president for the Denison congregation that was rejected for tax exemption by the comptroller’s office.

“I was surprised — surprised and shocked — because the Unitarian church in the United States has a very long history,” said Althoff, who notes that father-and-son presidents John Adams and John Quincy Adams were both Unitarians.
. . .
What constitutes religion? When and how should government make that determination? Questions that for years have vexed the world’s great philosophers have now become the province of the state comptroller’s office.

Questions about the issue were referred to Jesse Ancira, the comptroller’s top lawyer, who said Strayhorn has applied a consistent standard — and then stuck to it. For any organization to qualify as a religion, members must have “simply a belief in God, or gods, or a higher power,” he said.
. . .
Those who oppose the comptroller’s “God, gods or supreme being” test say that it can discriminate against legitimate faiths. For example, applying that standard could disqualify Buddhism because it does not mandate belief in a supreme being, critics say.
. . .
But the lack of a single creed is a hallmark of Unitarianism, Althoff said. Instead, Unitarian Universalists have seven guiding principles, including “respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part,” according to the Unitarian Universalist Web site.

The group also draws from various religious and philosophical traditions, including Jewish, Christian, humanist and Earth-centered teachings, but promotes individual freedom of belief, according to the Web site. It notes that Unitarians and Universalists have operated in the United States for at least 200 years, although the two groups did not merge until 1961.
. . .
Despite its lack of a specific creed, Unitarian Universalism is as much a religion as any other, Althoff said. From his perspective, religion is not just about the answers to life’s big questions, but also calls on people to evaluate the questions themselves.

“It seems to me that any [group] that is specifically organized to address and explore the issues of what constitutes the good life, both here and perhaps in the afterworld, would qualify” as a religion, Althoff said.

The Rev. Anthony David, lead pastor of Pathways Church in Southlake, said he is disturbed by the comptroller’s decisions because it ignores Unitarian Universalists’ belief that spiritual fulfillment can emerge in “different ways at different levels.”

“It reflects an incredible misunderstanding of what a church needs to look like,” David said.

Pathways teaches that God is a term that describes the source of ultimate meaning and purpose, but the church does not advocate a one-size-fits-all theology, David said.

“Creedlessness doesn’t mean no belief or anything goes,” he said.

Having been raised in the Unitarian Universalist (and Southern Baptist) churches, this story really hits a nerve with me. People are so married to the idea that church is the place where you go to have your beliefs handed to you, that many religious folks have a hard time comprehending what Unitarian Universalism is or why it’s considered a religion. Since I’ve answered this question a lot over the years, lemme see if I can quickly sum it up :

Like the article mentioned above, the Unitarian and Universalist churches were separate until the 60′s. Their roots faiths are basically liberal offshoots of Christianity. The Unitarians believed that there was one god (as opposed to the trinity) who didn’t necessarily need to be worshiped and the Universalists who believed that everyone would end up in Heaven (unlike the Catholic Church who, at the time, was selling tickets into the afterlife). Here’s a relevant quote from a pamphlet about the origins of Unitarian Universalism :

Unitarians and Universalists have always been heretics. We are heretics because we want to choose our faith, not because we desire to be rebellious. ?Heresy? in Greek means ?choice.? During the first three centuries of the Christian church, believers could choose from a variety of tenets about Jesus. Among these was a belief that Jesus was an entity sent by God on a divine mission. Thus the word ?Unitarian? developed, meaning the oneness of God. Another religious choice in the first three centuries of the Common Era (CE) was universal salvation. This was the belief that no person would be condemned by God to eternal damnation in a fiery pit. Thus a Universalist believed that all people will be saved. Christianity lost its element of choice in 325 CE when the Nicene Creed established the Trinity as dogma. For centuries thereafter, people who professed Unitarian or Universalist beliefs were persecuted.
. . .
Two thousand years ago liberals were persecuted for seeking the freedom to make religious choices, but such freedom has become central to both Unitarianism and Universalism. As early as the 1830s, both groups were studying and promulgating texts from world religions other than Christianity. By the beginning of the twentieth century, humanists within both traditions advocated that people could be religious without believing in God. No one person, no one religion, can embrace all religious truths.

So while most churches have a “one size fits all” approach to religion, UU is more about presenting religious ideas that are consistent with the church’s principles and purposes and letting the congregation figure it out for themselves. For this reason, UU churches often have very different personalities.

When I was in high school, I was pretty active in the UU church and I’ve been to quite a few churches throughout Texas. Having sat through UU services in Dallas, Austin, San Antonio, and Houston, I can say with authority that they all have a lot more in common with Christian Churches than bigots like Texas Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn would have you believe. All of the services I’ve attended have had ministers, sermons, pews, hymns, and prayers/meditations. They’ve also had plenty of references to the Bible and Jesus too, but apparently the sticking point is that Unitarian Universalism doesn’t beat you over the head with a system of beliefs that you must accept in order to be a member of the congregation. Well, if that’s the most important aspect of religion, then consider me proud to be a non-religious atheist.

Since I was away from the computer on Monday, I didn’t get chance to comment on the first gay marriages being performed (as pointed out in this comment) :

I was hoping to chime in about how this decision by the state judicial branch is going to cause that state’s electorate to actually lean to the right and give Bush Massachusetts in a couple months. But I never saw a post on The Talent Show about it. I’m kinda surprised, especially since you had been pushing for civil unions as a good middle-of-the-road policy, and therefore assumed you’d be worried about how the gay marriage fight is going to affect the election.

As mentioned above, while I’m a strong supporter of gay marriage, I still support those who are more comfortable with civil unions. Gay marriage is as decisive as any issue out there right now and a middle ground is probably necessary if we’re going to make progress in some of the less tolerant areas of the country.

To put it in terms of the Brown vs. Board of Education decision, the competing sides aren’t between whether gays should be allowed to marry or should have a “separate but equal” solution, but rather between marriage advocates and people who think homosexuality is a sinful abomination on par with incest. If the Brown case had been tried during reconstruction between people who wanted to fully integrate schools and former slave-owners who still saw African-Americans as being 3/5 of a person, our schools would still be segregated today. (Okay, so they are still mostly segregated, but that’s another issue entirely)

The fact is, integration wouldn’t have happened in the first place if it weren’t for segregation. While it means the march toward equality is moving slower than we’d like, it also means that the public’s unfounded and xenophobic fears are smoothed over. Yeah, I don’t think we should have to tip-toe around prejudices either, but that’s one of those things that comes along with living in a democracy. Being right often takes a back seat to being popular when it comes to getting anything done.

To bring it back to politics, I don’t think this will have a huge impact on the Presidential race. I think Kerry has a better chance of winning Texas than Bush does of winning Massachusetts. Even if this does cause the state to move to the right, it’s still Kerry’s home state. He’ll do fine. Plus, Bush’s pleas for an anti-gay constitutional amendment have generated about as much support as his plans to go to Mars or remove steroids from professional sports.

By the time the election rolls around, there will be six months of legal gay marriage and the Chicken Little’s out there will be able to see that the sky isn’t falling. I know the moralists are freaking out right now, but they’ll get used to it. If anything, I think the media attention will do a lot for the gay rights movement.

Did you guys notice anything missing from the news reports about gay marriages being performed? Unlike every other gay-themed event that the media covers, this was devoid of drag queens, leather men, and half-naked loudmouths (and I’m sure the cameramen were looking for them). Monday’s gay marriages weren’t about trying to grab the spotlight, but legally solidify existing relationships, and I think media coverage made this point fairly clear. Sure, there’s gonna be plenty of grumbling about “traditional values” for a while, but they’ll surely be contradicted by the lack of marital disasters in the wake of this landmark decision.

Slate has a new regular feature called Kerryisms which will take John Kerry to task for his “caveats and pointless embellishments” (I guess they’re just feeling a little guilty for the last four years of Bushisms or something). Here’s their first installment :

“Let me just say very quickly that the horrifying abuse of Iraqi prisoners, which the world has now seen, is absolutely unacceptable and inexcusable. And the response of the administration, certainly the Pentagon, has been slow and inappropriate. I believe the president needs to guarantee that the world is going to have an explanation. What happened there has done a disservice to all of our troops who serve with great valor and greater courage and, I think, with distinction. And it also undermines America’s own efforts in the region. It has the potential of putting our troops, the rest of them, in further jeopardy. It can increase acts of terror against America and Americans. And it undermines the overall effort of the United States in the region. So I think it is important to have an understanding of this as rapidly as possible and to make that explanation and any other appropriate comments to the world.”?Los Angeles, May 5, 2004

Pretty funny, huh? Yeah, I don’t think it’s that funny either. To help explain why we should be laughing, there’s an “English version” which has been obsessively picked apart. Of course, if you have to explain why something is funny, it probably isn’t that funny to begin with.

By contrast, here’s the most recent Bushism :

“This has been tough weeks in that country.”?Washington, D.C., April 13, 2004

It’s telling that there isn’t an “English version” included with the Bushisms. I guess the editors at Slate think it’s safe to assume that anyone reading the column is more intelligent than the man they’re quoting.

Personally I think having a President that doesn’t understand the most basic aspects of English grammar is much funnier (and scarier) than one that talks too much. That’s the choice we’ve got this November : The egghead or the fool. Or, to put this in “Must See TV” terms, we’ve got a choice between making Frasier or Joey our next president.

It’s an age-old question : How do you explain the purpose of the Federal Emergency Management Agency to children? Rap, of course. Here’s the sample lyrics :

Disaster . . . it can happen anywhere,
But we’ve got a few tips, so you can be prepared
For floods, tornadoes, or even a ‘quake,
You’ve got to be ready – so your heart don’t break.

Disaster prep is your responsibility
And mitigation is important to our agency.

People helping people is what we do
And FEMA is there to help see you through
When disaster strikes, we are at our best
But we’re ready all the time, ’cause disasters don’t rest.

If cultural misappropriation by people who don’t understand what they’re talking about makes you queasy, then prepare to vomit. When listening to this song, it’s as if the person who recorded it had read a couple articles about rap music written in the mid-80′s but still hasn’t gotten around to actually hearing it for himself.

Does this picture remind anyone else of the game Twister?

I can’t believe they’ve found a way to make the terrorism alert scale look even dumber than it did before.

Yeah, yeah. We’ve all heard about how touch-screen voting machines are error prone, easy to hack, and impossible to validate, but there’s a much bigger voting problem to concern ourselves with :

Many would-be “American Idol” voters are disenfranchised by overburdened phone lines and by “power dialers” who hog the system, the magazine Broadcasting & Cable reported.

According to the magazine, “the only people choosing the next ‘American Idol” are the ones lucky enough to get through – or skilled enough to get around – tremendously overtaxed phone lines.”

Fox TV, which airs the talent contest, has failed to address the difficulties viewers face in logging votes, the magazine said in a story for Monday’s issue.

The show is a ratings winner and valuable property for its producers and Fox, but Broadcasting & Cable said the network is alienating viewers who repeatedly get a busy signal when they try to call in their votes.

The voting system has been called into question in recent weeks as contestants who appeared to be front-runners have been dumped in favor of others who many viewers have complained were lesser performers. Last week, favorite La Toya London was voted off while Jasmine Trias survived a shaky performance.

Fox said both it and the show’s producers have “gone to great lengths” to ensure the integrity of the voting process.

“While acknowledging that dedicated fans may be unhappy with the outcome, the system only reports the decision of the voting public,” the network said in a statement.

Jeez, you’d think with terms like “disenfranchised”, “voting public”, and “integrity of the voting process” being thrown about, that this would be about something more important than a goddamn talent show. I wish there was a way to make the “politics are boring” folks as concerned with who’s going to lead the world’s most powerful country as they are with whether a record contract is going to be awarded to smiley George, that tone-deaf redhead kid, or “fantastic burrito”.

Don’t you hate that all the best stuff usually gets redacted before documents are released to the public? Well, now there’s a way to get around that problem :

European researchers at a security conference in Switzerland last week demonstrated computer-based techniques that can identify blacked-out words and phrases in confidential documents.
The researchers showed their software at the conference, called Eurocrypt, by analyzing a presidential briefing memorandum released in April to the commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks. After analyzing the document, they said they had high confidence the word “Egyptian” had been blacked out in a passage describing the source of an intelligence report stating that Osama Bin Ladin was planning an attack in the United States.
. . .
The technique he and Whelan developed involves first using a program to realign the document, which had been placed on a copying machine at a slight angle. They determined that the document had been tilted by about half a degree.

By realigning the document, it was possible to use another program Whelan had written to determine that it had been formatted in the Arial font. Next, they found the number of pixels that had been blacked out in the sentence: “An Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ) operative told an xxxxxxxx service at the same time that Bin Ladin was planning to exploit the operative’s access to the U.S. to mount a terrorist strike.” They then used a computer to determine the pixel length of words in the dictionary when written in the Arial font.

The program rejected all of the words that were not within three pixels of the length of the word that was probably under the blacked-out area in the document.

The software then reduced the number of possible words to just seven from 1,530 by using semantic guidelines, including the grammatical context. The researchers selected the word “Egyptian” from the seven possible words, rejecting “Ukrainian” and “Ugandan,” because those countries would be less likely to have such information.
. . .
In January, the State Department required that its documents use a more modern font, Times New Roman, instead of Courier, Naccache said. Because Courier is a monospace font, in which all letters are of the same width, it is harder to decipher with the computer technique. There is no indication that the State Department knew that.

I wonder if this would work on those 28 blacked out pages from the Congressional 9/11 Investigation?

So the question of the moment seems to be whether or not the Pentagon should release the latest Iraqi torture photos. While I think the potential propaganda uses by terrorist groups should be considered in this decision, in the end I’d like to see the pictures released. As Kevin Drum pointed out, releasing everything (no matter how disturbing) is important if the American public is going to make informed choices about the way our government acts :

This is the best reason ? and, really, the only one we need ? that the Abu Ghraib pictures should indeed have been published: because they’re true. Having seen them, we can then choose to insist that torture and abuse stop; we can choose to decide that perhaps they are unfortunate but necessary methods to win the war; or we can decide that the war isn’t worth it if this is what it takes to win.

But we do get to choose. And those pictures are an important part of that choice.

This reminds me of one of the bigger stories that’s flown under the radar this week, the reopening of the Emmett Till murder case :

The Justice Department said today that it was reopening the investigation into the death of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old black boy whose abduction and killing in Mississippi in 1955 for supposedly whistling at a white woman helped spark the the civil rights movement.

Two men were acquitted by an all-white jury at the time, an action denounced by critics as racist and contradictory to the evidence but all too common at the time. Moreover, for years the Till family and journalists have said that more than two people were likely involved in the killing.
. . .
“Emmett Till’s brutal murder and grotesque miscarriage of justice moved this nation,” Mr. Acosta said. “We owe it to Emmett Till, we owe it to his mother and to his family, and we owe it to ourselves to see if, after all these years, any additional measure of justice is still possible.”

Mr. Acosta said that the case was being reopened because of “renewed interest in the case,” including documentary films and other research that indicated that more than two men had been involved in killing Emmett. Mr. Acosta would not be more specific, but said all information would be re-examined.

“The murder of Emmett Till stands at the crossroads of the American civil rights movement,” he said. “Although too late to save Emmett, the slaying helped galvanize opposition to brutality of segregation and Jim Crow. In fact, it was just 100 days later that Rosa Parks famously refused to move to the back of the bus.”

The reason I bring up this case in relation to the ongoing Iraq torture scandal is the unusual circumstances of Till’s funeral :

In a recent PBS documentary, “The Murder of Emmett Till,” Emmett’s mother, Mamie Till Mobley, described seeing his body for the first time.

“I saw a hole, which I presumed, was a bullet hole, and I could look through that hole and see daylight on the other side,” she said. “And I wondered, was it necessary to shoot him?”

She made the decision to leave Emmett’s casket open during his funeral back in Chicago, something that let the estimated 50,000 visitors and the journalists she had invited view the horror of her young son’s murder. Visitors could gaze upon Emmett’s disfigured face, including displaced eyeballs and a bullet hole through his head.

Mrs. Till Mobley said the funeral home director, A.A. Rayner, had asked her if she wanted him to touch up the body.

“I said `No, Mr. Rayner, let the people see what I’ve seen,’ ” she said in the PBS documentary. “I was just willing to bear it all. I think everybody needed to know what had happened to Emmett Till.”

I remember seeing this picture of Emmett Till’s body when I was a kid and it’s an image that’s haunted me for the last 15 years :

Sometimes a shocking image is the only thing that can wake Americans up to brutal realities of war, whether it’s a war against an ill-defined foreign enemy or a war on our own people. Hearing words like “lynching” and “torture” can be meaningless if you don’t even have a vague idea of what those words mean.

The publishing of Emmett Till’s casket photos was one of the oft-overlooked moments that really lit the fuse of the civil right’s movement. Up until that point, white America hadn’t been really forced to confront the brutal murders that had been committed in the name of “southern justice”. While printing these gruesome photos was shocking (especially to children), it helped awaken people to the horror that they were all too willing to ignore.

Just like with the pre-civil right’s era, America is at a crossroads right now. We can either continue on the road we’ve been traveling over the last 40+ years of devil’s bargains with brutal dictators, arrogant international posturing, half-hearted support of human rights, and blatant disdain for international law, or we can take the high road and insist that America act like a moral superpower as well as a military one.

I love this segment from today’s Tom the Dancing Bug :

Which brings me back to what I think is the best post-9/11 comic I’ve seen by anyone :



If you haven’t picked it up already, I definitely recommend Ruben Bolling’s book All I Ever Needed to Know I Learned from My Golf-Playing Cats.

It gets even worse :

The abuse of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. military personnel included torture, humiliation and forced sex beyond what has been seen in public, members of Congress said Wednesday after viewing fresh photos and videos in the scandal that has shaken the Bush administration.

“I don’t know how the hell these people got into our army,” said Ben Nighthorse Campbell, R-Colo., one of several members of Congress who emerged grim-faced from lawmakers-only screenings in the Capitol.

Lawmakers said they saw disturbing images that included military dogs snarling at cowering prisoners, Iraqi women commanded to expose their breasts and photos of sex acts, including forced homosexual sex.

In addition, lawmakers said there were images of hooded Iraqi prisoners being forced to masturbate while cameras captured the scene.

Rep. Jane Harman, D-Calif., said she saw a clothed man hurling himself against a wall as though trying to knock himself unconscious.

What’s even worse is that these Congressmen would have the audacity to actually complain about this. Haven’t they heard about how much worse Saddam was? I’m sure those Iraqi men and women were thanking their lucky stars that their rapists were freedom-loving Americans instead of Saddam’s cruel toadies.

I apologize in advance for those of you who aren’t big goddamn dorks like me, but I gotta get one of these :

Here’s some specs from Nintendo’s site :

Dual Screens: Two LCD screens offer one of the most groundbreaking game-play advances ever developed: experiencing a game from two perspectives at once. Imagine the possibilities. In a racing game, drivers might see their own vehicle’s perspective on one screen and an overall track view on the other. In a role-playing game, the action could take place on the first screen while the second provides a reference for a player’s tools inventory. Game play also could use both screens at once, offering a giant boss for heroes to defeat. In the future, games could be created allowing users to play games on one screen while text messaging other DS users on the other. Each 3-inch screen can reproduce a true 3-D view and is backlit to assure comfortable play in any lighting condition.

Touch Screen: The lower screen will offer something never before provided by any game device: PDA-like touch capabilities. Players no longer have to rely on just buttons to move characters or shift perspectives. They can navigate menus or access inventory items simply by touching the screen with stylus or fingertip. A software-based keyboard might even allow the screen to be used as an input center for games and messaging. The possibilities are limited only by developers’ imaginations. The screen will have a tougher film cover for durability, and will come with a stylus.

Microphone: An available microphone port means that in the future, players might need only to tell their games what to do. DS software could identify everything from voice commands to hand-clapping. Players might be able to move their characters simply by telling them which way to go. The voice capabilities also could allow gamers to chat with one another over the Internet while playing.

Wireless: DS users will be able to connect with a local wireless network of up to 16 players. Nintendo’s guaranteed range is 30 feet, but will extend far beyond that depending on circumstances. It assures high response rates required for real time game play, and will make use of both IEEE 802.11 and Nintendo’s proprietary communication protocol, which provides low battery consumption. Players will be able to chat and play games without any connecting cords, completely untethered. The DS technology also provides for a wireless LAN connection, which could allow a theoretically infinite number of players to connect at a hot spot and compete at a central game hub on the Internet, even if they’re thousands of miles apart.

So, if anyone at Nintendo is reading this, feel free to send me a “review copy” and don’t forget to include a copy of that new Super Mario Brothers game you’re working on…

Okay, despite the flippant tone of my joke in the post below, let me make one thing clear : Saddam Hussein is evil and George Bush isn’t. That should be such common sense that I shouldn’t even have to mention it. In light of the faux outrage from conservative critics, I guess it bears repeating. I’ve written plenty about why I can’t stand George Bush, but he’s not guilty of the torture and murder of hundreds of thousands of people the way Hussein is.

With that out of the way, I wanna re-address this Jim Inhofe remark from yesterday :

I have to say when we talk about the treatment of these prisoners that I would guess that these prisoners wake up every morning thanking Allah that Saddam Hussein is not in charge of these prisons.
. . .
And I ask Mr. Chairman, at this point in the record, that this account of the brutality of Saddam Hussein be entered into the record and made a part of the record.

Whatever happened to the good/evil, black/white rhetoric? For all the shit liberals take about being wishy-washy and morally ambiguous, right-wingers sure are playing the moral relativity card a lot these days. It’s funny that conservatives constantly pride themselves for their moral clarity, but at the first sign of trouble, they quickly remind us how awful Hussein was.

Is this really a path conservatives want to walk down? One in which serious crimes are compared with those of brutal dictators? Does this mean Charles Manson should get a free ride because the Tate-LaBianca murders were nothing compared to the genocides perpetrated by Pol Pot or Slobodan Milosevic? Or that 9/11 was insignificant because the allies destroyed Dresden, Germany during WW2? Of course not, but that seems to be the implicit goal of those who defend American atrocities with reminders about the greater evils of others.

The torture, rape, and murder committed in Iraqi prisons by Americans is an evil act. The fact that sadistic methods of Saddam Hussein like boiling someone in oil have been replaced with more “vanilla” ways of murder like beating someone to death with a lead pipe isn’t something to be proud of. There’s plenty of room to argue about who should be punished and how, but the constant reminders of Saddam Hussein’s regime is a chickenshit debate tactic that’s disrespectful to the Iraqi people who have been abused by those working on our behalf. Sen. Inhofe, George Bush, and all the other torture apologists should be ashamed of themselves.

As Brian (megalodon) pointed out in the post below, those of us from Oklahoma have a sweet spot for our homegrown dickhead, Sen James Inhofe. Here’s a little more of his pearls of wisdom from today’s hearing :

First of all, I regret I wasn’t here on Friday. I was unable to be here but maybe it’s better that I wasn’t because as I watch this outrage — this outrage everyone seems to have about the treatment of these prisoners — I have to say, and I’m probably not the only one up at this table that is more outraged by the outrage than we are by the treatment.

The idea that these prisoners — you know, they’re not there for traffic violations. If they’re in cell block 1A or 1B, these prisoners — they’re murderers, they’re terrorists, they’re insurgents. Many of them probably have American blood on their hands. And here we’re so concerned about the treatment of those individuals.

And I hasten to say, yes, there are seven bad guys and gals that didn’t do what they should have done. They were misguided. I think maybe even perverted. And the things they did have to be punished, and they’re being punished. They’re being tried right now and that’s all taking place.
. . .
I have to say when we talk about the treatment of these prisoners that I would guess that these prisoners wake up every morning thanking Allah that Saddam Hussein is not in charge of these prisons.

When he was in charge, they would take electric drills and drill holes through hands, they would cut their tongues out, they would cut their ears off. We’ve seen accounts of lowering their bodies into vats of acid. All of these things were taking place.

I wonder if this whole “Saddam was worse” argument will hold any weight when these bastards finally stand trial.

“Yes, your honor, there is a video of my client raping an Iraqi prisoner, but I’d like to remind the court that Saddam Hussein was really really bad.”

I also assume Inhofe isn’t familiar with this Red Cross report :

U.S. forces in Iraq often arrested Iraqis without good reason, routinely used excessive force in the early hours of captivity and abused some prisoners for months to extract information from them, the International Committee of the Red Cross told the Bush administration earlier this year.

The treatment of prisoners who were considered valuable intelligence sources or were suspected in attacks against U.S. forces was sometimes “tantamount to torture,” the Geneva-based organization wrote in a February report made public today.

Military intelligence officers told Red Cross monitors that 70 to 90 percent of captives in Iraq last year had been arrested by mistake, the report stated. Some Iraqi families roamed the country for weeks trying to uncover the fate of their imprisoned relatives, who had disappeared into the military detention apparatus.

So let’s dispense of the “traffic violations” talk, shall we? Also, I know he’s a lame duck Senator and all, but wouldn’t it be nice if he at least had a staff member read the news and brief him about stuff like this before he goes on TV and shoots his mouth off like an ignorant jackass?

We shouldn’t be 100% surprised by this kinda talk from Inhofe though. He’s got a history of being a fool. He’s the same one who said “I believe very strongly that we ought to support Israel; that it has a right to the land. This is the most important reason: Because God said so.” That’s right, we should unconditionally support Israel because a book that’s thousands of years old, been translated into multiple languages, and is based on the oral traditions of nomadic people. I dunno about you, but I think we’d be better off basing our foreign policy on something a bit more…uh…modern. (No, I’m not talking about the Left Behind books.)