Dementia?

Am I the only one who thinks Pat Robertson is suffering beta-amyloid buildup?

The Abyss is Gazing Back

Why are we even having a conversation about the merits of torture?

After all, the motivation behind the Geneva Conventions was morality, not legality and despite neocon yattering to the contrary, torture doesn’t yield reliable information from patriots (and yes, all people willing to die for their cause consider themselves patriots) as witnessed by Sen. John McCain.

Let’s recap: If a combatant is captured, they can do you no harm. Torture doesn’t work anyway. Don’t torture.

Now for the most part, the objections to the objections about torture seem to hinge on the fact that the global terrorists aren’t following the rules, therefore we (the good guys) shouldn’t have to.

Unfortunately, this is like saying it’s OK for the class bully to twist the arm of of some kid (who not coincidentally pissed him off before) to tell the bully which of his friends just smacked him in the head with a spitball* so the bully can beat them up and take their lunch money. The bully justifies himself because shooting spitballs is wrong and he is the biggest and strongest so nobody can stop him. But let’s face it, the kid whose arm is in a bind is not going to give up his friend. After enough resistance to satisfy his own self esteem, he will blurt out the name of weird kid with glasses, hoping the bully won’t hit a kid with glasses but if he does, oh well, it’s the weird kid but at least he may still have a shot at throwing a curve-ball.

The problem here is that if the bully continues to indiscriminately twist arms without ever finding out who is behind the spitballs (especially if everyone thinks it’s obvious that he already knows who shot the spitball), not only will he continue to take spitball fire every time he turns his head, eventually the class will decide, “Enough, already” and gang up on him. Not coincidentally, the bully’s grades are gonna drop since he’s no longer paying attention to his home work because he’s obsessed with enforcing the spitball ban.

Perhaps the bully should watch the news instead of 24 reruns.

 

Whoever battles with monsters had better see that it does not turn him into a monster. And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you. – Nietzsche 

(*My spitball analogy is not intended to trivialize what happened at the WTC. We appropriately responded to that by going after Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. At least it would have been appropriate if we’d actually completed that mission rather than getting distracted by the Food for Starving MIC Executives Welfare Program in Iraq. My intent was to highlight the juvenility of the justification of torture.)

They may change their minds

My Weblog » Blog Archive » I MovingTo Dever After Gradution

Denver voted to legalize marijuana possession last month. The measure, which passed on November 3 2005 with 54 percent of the vote, the law is adults 21 and older may possess up to an ounce of marijuana without penalty in the city. I think that is awesome because arrested people for marijuana passion is waste of police recourse and tax payers. That would get Dever’s Policemen more time to deal with real crimes and tax payers money will be spend on people who deserve to be in jail. But, there is still little conqusense for having possession of marijuana. You can get $100 fine but no jail time, if you are caught having an ounce of marijuana on you. A few other cities, including Seattle and Oakland, have laws that make marijuana possession a low priority for police.

Perhaps some people shouldn’t do their mandatory blogging while under the influence.