Out of the Democratic Party, that is, because this shameful, disgusting excuse for why he voted against the ban on waterboarding is the last straw as far as I’m concerned:
In the worst case scenario — when there is an imminent threat of a nuclear attack on American soil — Lieberman said that the president should be able to certify the use of waterboarding on a detainee suspected of knowing vital details of the plot.
“You want to be able to use emergency tech to try to get the information out of that person,” Lieberman said. […]
“It is not like putting burning coals on people’s bodies. The person is in no real danger. The impact is psychological,” Lieberman said.
Because suffocating and feeling water flooding into your nostrils and lungs only causes psychological harm we should allow it? The same torture for which we convicted Japanese soldiers of war crimes after WWII is now just another tool in the war on terror? And who decides when this mythical Hollywood ticking time bomb scenario actually exists? George “I like to blow frogs butts off with firecrackers” Bush, that’s who. That’s the guy he wants making this unilateral decision on when to use this “not torture” torture technique.
Please. Just kick this “I’m an Independent Democrat (wink, wink)” Bush kissing, McCain loving bastard out of the Democratic party. He’s a disgrace to himself, to all Democrats and to America.
Honestly. This whole “torture society” we are becoming makes me want to throw some of these assholes on the rack.
Oh wait. I’m being a hypocrite. Still — I think Joe L. outta get some of the waterboarding treatment. Just a few hours worth. So he’s sure it’s not like using hot coals.
Americans who are unwilling to think for two seconds about how torturing people, for any reason, is not an American virtue — but an unconditional wrong — they make me absolutely fucking sick.
What the fuck have we become? Exactly what the fuck we say we are against.
PS. I just heard Larry Johnson got booted from dKos, or booted himself. Where did Larry go? He used to front page here, right?
Hey BostonJoe!
Larry has been busy making a disgrace of himself as a shrill and hack for Clinton. Language and intellectual honesty are at a dismal level in his current writing. Sad to see that SusanHu has drunk from the same koolaid.
Larry’s blog is No Quarter – I won’t link to his drivel.
Larry posts at his blog No Quarter where Susan also posts. I don’t know why Larry may have been booted from DKos, but he and Susan are big supporters of Hillary Clinton, and the Orange Planet is more and more a place filled with Obama supporters, especially since Edwards is now out of the race. If you want to read Larry and Susan’s posts just go to his blog.
As for Larry posting here, as far as I know he still can, but perhaps he no longer wishes to in light of BooMan’s support for Obama (and that is pure speculation on my part — I have no inside info whatsoever on the matter).
I should say “or if he has been booted from DKos,” because I don’t know if that story is true or not.
On a nostalgic note — (sorry to get off topic on your fine story) — you know who I miss so much. That Ductapefatwa. I rarely laughed so much or felt so moved by what some person wrote.
Has there ever been word of/from him as time has gone on?
He started a blog Mo Betta Meta with some other folks, but I’m not sure he posts there anymore. The trouble with community blogs is that eventually people get crosswise with each other who really should be friends and allies, in part I believe because of the lack of physical presence when the communication is going on. It’s a well documented phenomenon online regardless of the area of interest that created the particular online community in question.
I will say that having actually met a few tribbers when I marched in DC in 2005 (you among them) was very helpful to me, and I felt much more connected to those who I met there afterwards. Talking to someone in person is so much better than being limited to online discussions.
Yeah. Me too on the meet-up thing. Though to the anti-social (like me) that can be painful. 🙂
Me to Joe, miss him very very much..for his humor and his diaries which often times challenged you to really think about issues, sometimes to the discomfort of many.
I know his health wasn’t the best and I truly hope he is doing ok.
You can count me in too. I miss Ductape.
I’ve occasionally wondered what happened to him, and hope he just got disgusted with the whole thing and just wandered the off. The alternative isn’t very pleasant to contemplate — not only was his health not good, but he pissed off a lot of people and I hope one of them didn’t take matters into their own hands.
Yep Ductape could really piss some people off. He was however, when he chose to be, a very funny man.
He received a warning from Kos-admin 2-3 days ago (I can’t recall exactly why, but not banned).
Then wrote a GBCW entry at his own blog. I came across it by coincidence and read the first 3-4 paragraphs. It was horrible.
Curious.
How did you find out about the warning?
Follow Man Eegee’s link below. Larry explained it himself and had a screen shot of the warning.
Thanks
Oh. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t want to read his columns. 🙂
I’m content reading reasonable people like you Steven D.
I’m convinced — truly convinced — that our country would be so much better off without an agency dedicated to secrecy. If a society cannot be proud of its governments actions in the world — then I don’t think the society ought to be engaged in those actions. So the whole Larry Johnson era here — I was never a big fan. I just wondered where he got to.
The whole blogosphere seems at war with itself over this silly race.
Sad. These places — this mass communication — relatively unfettered — it has such great potential.
Good seeing you man.
I’ve had email comunications with Larry, and I consider him a friend. He and I don’t share exactly the same views on a lot of issues, but I do think his expertise in national security issues based on his time in the CIA was useful, particularly with regard to debunking Bush’s lies about Iraq and Iran.
I agree that people have really gotten into a pissing contest because of Clinton/Obama but that’s to be expected I suppose. People who blog on liberal/progressive blogs by definition care deeply about politics, and are more informed and also opinionated than the average person. It’s too bad really, but that’s life in America: rude, crude and socially unacceptable.
I can’t believe — quite honestly — how less informed I am now that I don’t read this and other blogs on a daily basis. I just do not have a detailed understanding of most stories. Get lost in work. And the institution that was the media — where when I was a young man — most/many people would read an entire newspaper daily — that is now gone — heck newspapers just drying up.
Seems that we are becoming a society that has access to everything — but that by and large — we’re less informed (excluding many here, i mean). Most people seem very informed about Paris Hilton. And who is the biggest loser. And who can pick a briefcase for a million dollars. And who can stick their nose up the real estate tycoons toupee. But man — we are a country of knuckleheads.
How hard is it to control this democracy? Critical thinking zero. (I’m not exempting myself here either — I’m citizen potato chip number one these days).
Anyway. Just saying.
You know, newspapers have been shrinking there content for years. Thank god for the internet, where I have access to a thousand thousand times more news sources than my local paper or even the old network nightly news could provide. The info is out there if you have an internet connection and the willingness to look for it.
In fact, I’d support any candidate who made proposed internet access free and available to all because I relly believe it would ultimately improve the level of civic knowledge among the American people as a whole.
I don’t read No Quarter, but the GBCW up there now was posted by someone with the handle jarhead5536, not Larry Johnson (who posts under his real name, AFAIK).
I think it’s safe to say that Larry will not be posting at DKos ever again.
Does look like a safe bet.
in his current manifestation, hopefully not here either
You’d have to talk to BooMan about that. Above my paygrade, lol.
l’m quite capable of just ignoring him…l would never ask boo to ban him…it’s still just a blog, if he can contribute in a positive fashion, which l think, in terms of the plame affaire, he did…l don’t have a problem
It certainly does have the look and feel of a burned bridge, doesn’t it?
Thanks, I obviously hadn’t seen that whole debacle.
Be grateful.
I’m sorry but I visited No Quarter and the very same behavior that Larry and the bloggers on his site accuse the KOS folks of engaging in is also happening at No Quarter. Larry Johnson is a valuable resource on a great number of issues and he is an extremely intelligent person but I feel the coverage is a bit lopsided in terms of the 2 candidates. I see a lot of preaching to the choir when it comes to Hillary over there. If he is going to demand that Obama be vetted, why not apply the same standards to Hillary? There are some that say she’s already been vetted but I suspect that this is incomplete.
Having said that, Larry should not have been banned from the KOS for posting informed criticism of Obama. And I support Obama. If liberals/progressives want credibility they should allow for open and honest discussion.
this is just one more reason, and a big one imo, that we need a massive sea change in the 08 election and a new senate majority leader…can you say dodd? l knew you could…strip this duplicitous, back stabbing bastard of his chairmanship, committee positions, and seniority, and relegate him to the back bench where he can keep the cushion warm until he retires or expires, whatever the case may be…because he’ll never get re-elected.
the RATpub’s won’t have any further use for him, so he’s screwed.
a more deserving ass would be hard to find…although l nominate salazar as deserving of similar treatment as well.
Amen.
Lieberman sees there’s a political uprising afoot and knows he’ll need a permanent home.
I read he’ll be attending the GOP convention. He’s been campaigning for McCain.
Lieberman sees there’s a political uprising afoot and knows he’ll need a permanent home.
Good riddance to bad rubbish! And I hope he doesn’t let the door hit him on the ass on his way out.
We don’t torture because we are supposed to be the good guys. Good guys don’t torture. Wanna be the good guys? Then don’t use torture. Its pretty freaking simple. Lieberman’s existence is torture enough.
Certainly his existence as a US Senator is torturous, lol.
Maybe it’s got something to do with Connecticut.
Dubya’s firecracker in frog butt thing reminded me of when Bush was a Yalie there was a big scandal about Bush as prez of his frat twisting a wire clotheshanger and branding the frat pledges on the butt. As I recall there was a story in the NY Times about it at the time (way back in the sixties).
Now between the frog and frat things you have two continuing themes: torture and butts.
If you didn’t know Dubya’s identity and you hear that some guy tortured animals as a boy and tortured men as a young man and now is torturing people, you wouldn’t be surprised. In fact, you’d wonder if he’d followed the typical sadistic profile and moved on to killing people. Which Bush actually has done too. Except that he’s got other people doing torturing and killing for him.
It just goes to show you what happens when you put a sick motherfucker in the White House.
Yes, and this deeply disturbed man has brought us daily features like Joe Liarman who has the gall to speculate publically about the subtlties of water torture and burning people with hot coals. Well, his beloved Bush knows something about all of this from first hand experience. Evidently Liarman first consulted the expert before he gave his opinon on the practices. Like the whole Bush bunch, this disgusting U.S. senator brings shame on all of us.
It would be a revelatory piece of framing to get people to start calling ‘waterboarding’ ‘water torture’ as it was named during world war two and the cold war.
I thought he’d been an “Independent Democrat” since he lost the primary.
He still in the caucus?
yes, he is still in the caucus and he is chair of the Homeland Security and Government Oversight Committee.
Why does this man have a chairmanship position? He’s supporting a Republican for president and votes with the Republicans on critically contested votes. And his own state Democratic party doesn’t want him. What are they thinking?
Do both Clinton and Obama support his chairmanship position?