Alarming News: I like Morgan Freeberg. A lot.
American Digest: And I like this from "The Blog That Nobody Reads", because it is -- mostly -- about me. What can I say? I'm on an ego trip today. It won't last.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: We were following a trackback and thinking "hmmm... this is a bloody excellent post!", and then we realized that it was just part III of, well, three...Damn. I wish I'd written those.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: ...I just remembered that I found a new blog a short while ago, House of Eratosthenes, that I really like. I like his common sense approach and his curiosity when it comes to why people believe what they believe rather than just what they believe.
Brutally Honest: Morgan Freeberg is brilliant.
Dr. Melissa Clouthier: Morgan Freeberg at House of Eratosthenes (pftthats a mouthful) honors big boned women in skimpy clothing. The picture there is priceless--keep scrolling down.
Exile in Portales: Via Gerard: Morgan Freeberg, a guy with a lot to say. And he speaks The Truth...and it's fascinating stuff. Worth a read, or three. Or six.
Just Muttering: Two nice pieces at House of Eratosthenes, one about a perhaps unintended effect of the Enron mess, and one on the Gore-y environ-movie.
Mein Blogovault: Make "the Blog that No One Reads" one of your daily reads.
The Virginian: I know this post will offend some people, but the author makes some good points.
Poetic Justice: Cletus! Ah gots a laiv one fer yew...
Is My Downstairs Neighbor A War Criminal?
You say, “I’m going to leave you chained up on the floor in the fetal position with no chair and I’m going to fiddle around with the room temperature until you tear your hair out” and without knowing who you’re referring to, I say “gee, that sounds like Pol Pot.”
Would I say that?
You say “I’m going to play rap music really loud all night long and force you to listen to it” and I’m going to say “that sounds just like the Soviets in their gulags” or “that sounds an awful lot like Hitler.”
Hitler & Stalin were all about playing bad music and cranking the volume?
I know this is just crazy talk. But in the United States Senate it makes a lot of sense, apparently. Quothe Richard Durbin, Democrat from Illinois:
On a couple of occasions, I entered interview rooms to find a detainee chained hand and foot in a fetal position to the floor, with no chair, food or water. Most times they urinated or defecated on themselves, and had been left there for 18-24 hours or more. On one occasion, the air conditioning had been turned down so far and the temperature was so cold in the room, that the barefooted detainee was shaking with cold. . . . On another occasion, the [air conditioner] had been turned off, making the temperature in the unventilated room well over 100 degrees. The detainee was almost unconscious on the floor, with a pile of hair next to him. He had apparently been literally pulling his hair out throughout the night. On another occasion, not only was the temperature unbearably hot, but extremely loud rap music was being played in the room, and had been since the day before, with the detainee chained hand and foot in the fetal position on the tile floor.
If I read this to you and did not tell you that it was an FBI agent describing what Americans had done to prisoners in their control, you would most certainly believe this must have been done by Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime–Pol Pot or others–that had no concern for human beings. Sadly, that is not the case. This was the action of Americans in the treatment of their prisoners.
Now it’s clear what is happening here: I’m capturing the utter ridiculousness of something said on the Senate floor, by treating it as if it is an expression of thought when it’s really an expression of emotion. There’s no way Dick Durbin really wants to compare playing rap music, with what the Nazis did. In all likelihood, he said what sounded good at the time and appealed to his constituents, and didn’t realize how silly it is until he saw it in writing.
But that’s unfair of me, isn’t it? After all, the Senate is not a place where people follow logical arguments and make sound decisions about courses of action based on reasoned opinions which in turn are based on principled deliberations of established, solid facts. Heavens, no. The Senate is a place where emotion is supposed to rule the day, right? We’re talking about defending the lives of millions of innocent men, women and children. Emotion must trump logic, of course, even when it places the systematic extermination of millions of political dissidents and innocent jews, on par with playing yucky music really loud and monkeying around with the AC.
Just to review: I made what Dick Durbin said, look pretty silly, but I didn’t do it by poking fun. All I did was take what he said, down to the letter, seriously, as if he really meant for it to be taken seriously. This is the most intellectually devastating thing you can do to a piss-poor silly nonsensical idea.
Do we like nonsensical ideas to be argued when the issue is protecting our country from people who are trying to kill us?
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