You can ‘doggie’ a dolphin? Doubt it.

Otherwise, hints at a derivation for cornholing.

*SQUANK*

Incumbent Arizona Governor Jan Brewer engaged Democratic candidate and Attorney General Terry Goddard in a debate Wednesday night. She began the evening by freezing like a deer in the television headlights when asked to recite a perfunctory, self-laudatory greeting. That alone is talk of the political world today: a gubernatorial candidate that couldn’t manage her own opening statement.

Perhaps she hadn’t done enough to embarrass herself.

During the debate, Goddard called on Brewer to recant a lie she had told, one meant to drive up the hysteria surrounding the evil immigrants and the destruction of her precious Arizona: they had been killing and beheading people out in the desert. Goddard correctly pointed out that it was absolutely false and that it made Arizona look like a haven for lurid violence. Brewer just ignored the call.

Until she got confronted by the press after the sorry event. Christina Boomer from ABC 15, among others, confronted her: Why haven’t you admitted the beheadings never happened? The press were in agreement — it’s not a trivial matter, do you really still believe the rumor to be true? Oops, now Brewer was stuck.

Or was she?

Naw, no problem.

Back in the old days, politicians were much more in agreement about things like this . . the public were always owed the truth. It was so universally embraced as a political tenet that even a single lie, especially left unaddressed, could easily and justifiably derail a candidacy. A politician’s scrupulous honesty might have been the one thing that both parties demanded from their people, with almost no exception.

Times have changed. Jan Brewer doesn’t owe you a thing.

Sure, all sorts of people, the mortals, will geek in the middle of a debate when they’re trying to recall certain facts, numbers and statistics. When an opponent attacks, sometimes you might frustratingly freeze while searching for the vital ammo you need to fight back. All the pressure, the lights, the cameras, the endless amounts of esoteric info — they take their toll.

But the intro?! Your own self-prepared statement?

She couldn’t manage “Hello, my name is Jan Brewer, and I fight for the people of Arizona”? Or “Arizona is a leader in business, technology and innovation”?

A professional politician can’t begin with anything better than this? . .

“I have, uh . . . . . . . . . . done so much, and I just cannot believe that we have changed everything since I be-ha-come your governor in the last 600 days. Arizona has been brought back from its abyss. We have cut the budget, we have balanced the budget, and we are moving forward. And we have done everything that we could possibly do . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . *laugh* . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . We have, uh . . . . did what was right for Arizona. I will tell you that I have really did the very best that anyone could do. We have pushed back hard against the federal government, we have filed suit against Obama healthcare, and, and, we have passed Senate Bill 1070, and we will continue to do what’s right for Arizona. I ask for your vote, thank you.”

“I have really did the best that anyone can do”? That’s the person that will end up as Governor of Arizona? C’mon, being Governor is a very big deal — governorships are where Presidents are born. Governor Ronald Reagan, Governor Jimmy Carter, Governor Bill Clinton, Governor George W. Bush.

It’s one thing to end up in the office by default, but to be voted in by the citizens? Jan Brewer? Wow.

. . Americans who oppose what amounts to an Islamic Niketown two blocks from ground zero are the real victims of a climate of hate, and anti-Muslim backlash is mostly a myth . .

Really? The victims manage to carry on, the poor intrepid souls:

Fire At Tennessee Mosque Construction Site Now Under Federal Arson Investigation

MURFREESBORO, Tenn. — . . authorities told mosque officials that four pieces of heavy construction equipment on the site were doused with an accelerant and one set ablaze, said Camie Ayash, spokeswoman for the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro . .

. . and . .

Student Arraigned in Anti-Muslim Stabbing of Cabdriver

. . Mr. Enright asked the taxi driver, who was from Bangladesh, whether he was Muslim, Mr. Zaleta said. After the driver said he was, Mr. Enright responded with the Arabic greeting, “Assalamu alaikum,” according to the criminal court complaint.

Then Mr. Enright said, “Consider this a checkpoint,” before pulling out a Leatherman utility knife and slashing the taxi driver’s throat, Mr. Zaleta said. The driver turned and Mr. Enright slashed him in his face and forearms, Mr. Zaleta said . .

. . and . .

Drunk shouts ‘terrorists,’ urinates on mosque rugs

NEW YORK — In the latest in a spate of anti-Muslim incidents over the last two days, an intoxicated man entered a mosque in Queens on Wednesday evening and proceeded to urinate on prayer rugs, New York police officials said.

The man, identified as Omar Rivera, reportedly shouted anti-Muslim epithets and called worshippers who had gathered for evening prayer “terrorists.” One witness told the New York Post the man was “very clearly intoxicated” and had a beer bottle in his hand at the time . .

. . and . .

Man Charged With Hate Crime For Allegedly Punching Turban-Wearing Store Clerk

A 35-year-old Seattle man has been charged with a hate crime for allegedly punching a 7-11 clerk in the head.

Police say Brock Stainbrook walked into the 7-11 just after midnight Aug. 24, approached a clerk wearing a turban, threw change on the floor and then punched the clerk in the side of the head.

“You’re not even American, you’re Al-Qaeda. Go back to your country,” he then said, according to police . .

Muslims are a fractionally small part of the U.S. population. Strange that so many high-profile violent and bigoted attacks would target them, considering their marginal presence. They’re having a mysteriously bad American Summer.

. . so I checked my Bizarro closet, and darned if I didn’t have it:

Glenn Beck this weekend: “I know that many in this country think that I’m a fear-monger. It is not a . . it is not a label that, I think, applies . .”

Glenn Beck previously:

–“I think what’s coming is horrific. I don’t even want to speak it out loud . .”

–“I can tell you there will be rivers of blood . .”

–“Are we headed for a one-world government . .”

–“A global economic holocaust is coming . .”

–“It’s September the Eleventh all over again, except we didn’t have the collapsing buildings . .”

–“If you haven’t done your homework yet — what is it going to take? I urge you to catch up on it, and catch up on it fast. It’s kind of important, for a couple of reasons. One . . uhh . . the whole end of time thing . .”

Ah, yes, the end of time. It’s on Obama’s agenda.

All Glenn Beck’s ever done to become one of the biggest and richest media figures in this country is lie from the minute he gets on camera to the second the credits roll. Now that he wants to be a civil rights leader, ushering a radical new era in American history, all he did this weekend was lie some more, including lying very obviously about his lying.

Why do right wingers want and need to be lied to? My father, a right-winger, who passed away a few years ago, had a life-long friend of his we’ll call Jim. Jim is the salt of the earth. He would never lie to you in almost any reasonable circumstance, I can’t fathom it. As a businessman, he carries the same reputation he does in private life, not a dishonest bone in his body.

But as soon as politics comes up, he can’t stand to listen to anybody who isn’t lying to him: Limbaughs and Hannitys and such. When he brings up one of their gems of ‘truth’ while around me, and I’m in the mood to shoot it down (he’s an awfully nice man, after all), he’s genuinely shocked that it might not be true.

That contrast is so stark, it’s shocking really. You’d have to torture the guy to get him to lie, and yet, of politics, he would never apply even a wisp of that behavioral standard to the media figures he trusts.

I mention this to point out how people get and indulge their politics, especially those on the right: it is a drug. It provides the sort of visceral reaction or catharsis that a decent drug would. For them, the veracity of a political thing is secondary — the primary thing is the buzz it delivers.

So your Glenn Becks are the biggest drug dealers, they deliver the best shit. They know how to distill their message so that just a little bit of it goes a very long way. And that’s why they’re all filthy rich, too, like a bunch of drug dealers. There is a hungry, jones-ing market for political smack, and the Bill O’Reillys will deliver as long as they’re able. If you can deliver the high, you get rewarded with power.

Which brings me to this, the President’s interview with Brian Williams:

“I can’t spend all my time with my birth certificate plastered on my forehead,” Mr. Obama told NBC’s Brian Williams in an interview in New Orleans. “The facts are the facts. And so, it’s not something that I can I think spend all my time worrying about. And I don’t think the American people want me to spend all my time worrying about it.”

He’s wrong there, I think.

A CBS News poll conducted in April found that 20 percent of Americans believe the president was born outside of the United States. Those numbers rise among self-identified Republicans and Tea Partiers. Mr. Obama was born in Hawaii. Meanwhile, a Pew Research Center poll released earlier this month showed that 18 percent of Americans incorrectly said they think Mr. Obama is Muslim. Another 43 percent said they didn’t know the president’s religion, while just 34 percent correctly said he is a Christian.

I can’t imagine a whole fifth of the country buying outrageous lies about any Republican president. Obama is wrong to believe that it’s only silly ridiculousness. Huge sections of the country are walking around with heads full of Glenn Beck’s Terrorist Purple Haze. At some point, as it is with any drug that distorts perception and reality, if enough people are under the influence, bad things will happen.

You can’t seriously believe this has no deleterious effects upon the political environment and the tenor of the times. When one side of the country believes things wildly untrue and is getting very well rewarded for doing so, viscerally and psychologically, you are setting the nation up for some serious stress at some point. You may even be headed towards violence. You can’t ignore so many people and think it will help you, as a President or a nation, in the long run.

As the first seriously contending Black presidential candidate, you may have been able to run by ignoring the lunatics on the right, but you’re the President now. You’ve got to attend to the whole nation. If you don’t start seriously pushing back at these caustic lies, you’re running a dangerous course for everybody involved.

Legacy of Torture
EDITORIAL | Published: August 26, 2010

. . Because federal judges cannot trust the confessions of prisoners obtained by intense coercion, they are regularly throwing out the government’s cases against Guantánamo Bay prisoners.

A new report prepared jointly by ProPublica and the National Law Journal showed that the government has lost more than half the cases where Guantánamo prisoners have challenged their detention because they were forcibly interrogated.

The report details how the use of torture abroad, with the silence or assent of the U.S., and the use of George W. Bush’s ‘Enhanced Interrogation Techniques’ in American facilities have produced a multi-tentacled legal monster, gumming up or destroying case after case against detainees, some of whom are probably legally responsible for crimes against Americans.

Judges have found it impossible to be sure of the detainees’ confessions given the circumstances under which they were obtained.

The government’s case for keeping the Guantánamo Bay prisoner locked away seemed airtight. He had confessed to overseeing the distribution of supplies to al-Qaida fighters battling U.S. forces in Afghanistan, even describing the routes where pack mules hauled the packages.

But a federal judge rejected Fouad Mahmoud Al Rabiah’s confessions, concluding that he had concocted them under intense coercion.

So insidious and long-lasting are the effects of torture that virtually all subsequent confessions become suspect as well:

Al Rabiah

Even statements that the government insisted Al Rabiah had made under noncoercive, or “clean,” questioning were tainted, U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly ruled, and she ordered that Al Rabiah be released.

The government has lost eight of 15 cases in which Guantánamo inmates have said they or witnesses against them were forcibly interrogated . .

To wit:

Government lawyers didn’t contest that [Saeed Mohammed Saleh] Hatim, while held for six months at a U.S. military base in Afghanistan, had been beaten repeatedly, kicked and “threatened with rape if he did not confess to being a member of the Taliban or al-Qaida,” according to U.S. District Judge Ricardo Urbina’s opinion. Instead, they submitted confessions he gave after arriving at Guantánamo, under cleaner questioning. But Urbina found that Hatim’s confession was “tainted by torture” and ordered that he be released. The government is appealing the decision.

Does any of this surprise anybody? I doubt it. And the negative legal reach of torture isn’t trivial, moving well beyond the cases of the victims:

Last year, Justice Department lawyers tried to show that Farhi Saeed bin Mohammed was an al-Qaida fighter by using statements from another detainee, Binyam Mohamed, whose “harrowing” interrogation ordeal was described in an 81-page opinion by Senior Judge Gladys Kessler.

Binyam Mohamed, now free

For two years, beginning with his capture in April 2002, foreign interrogators holding him “at the behest of the United States” beat and kicked him, chained him to a wall, kept him half-standing for long stretches and cut him with a blade, including on his genitals. He was “fed information” and “told to verify it.” During that time, he was also interrogated by the FBI and CIA.

The government’s lawyers didn’t contest the allegations of mistreatment but instead argued that the treatment of the informant didn’t undermine the evidence he gave later . .

But Kessler didn’t buy that better treatment had done the trick. Given that, “throughout his detention, a constant barrage of physical and psychological abuse was employed in order to manipulate him and program him into telling investigators what they wanted to hear,” she wrote, it was “more than plausible” that he had also manufactured details in nonabusive questioning.

So, even with American handlers, under reasonable treatment, making statements against somebody else, the evidence is still junk.

Didn’t we all know we’d end up here? I think so.

If you’re considering the use of torture, you’re going to have to change completely the character and habits of a nation in order to be honestly successful. Good nations produce good legal systems. When the use of torture becomes apparent, the system rejects the ‘evidence,’ and the cases die. It’s predictable. Otherwise, you’d have to become Saudi Arabia or Egypt to rack up many wins. It looks bad now, but the tossing of so many cases is actually good news.

Oh, and haven’t the predicted verdicts come in against shortsighted Dick Cheney and his boss, George W. Bush, as well? Losers.

Okay. Number One: suave, thoroughly skull-ectable candidate:

Janny! You got my vote.

Number Two: Who’s sufficiently expert to volunteer testimony before the Senate Committee on Lipsticked Sloth Snacking?

Jan Brewer! Yay!

. . and whatever, who cares, it’s a peach Skele-Jan:

Marry me! Mexicans suck!

Pastor says armed militia to protect church during Quran-burning event
CNN Wire Staff | August 24, 2010 10:47 p.m. EDT

(CNN) — An armed Christian organization, Right Wing Extreme, will protect a church that is planning to host an “International Burn a Quran Day” on September 11, the church’s pastor said Tuesday.

The Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, Florida, says it is hosting the event to remember 9/11 victims and to take a stand against Islam. With promotions on its website and Facebook page, the nondenominational church invites Christians to burn the Muslim holy book.

Dove’s Facebook page, set up for the September event, has nearly 6,000 fans. The initiative has also drawn critics.

Dove World Outreach Center Pastor Terry Jones has accepted the support of Right Wing Extreme, which he said offered to come to the church with between 500 and 2,000 men on September 11. He described the organization as an armed civilian militia group . .

This is beyond the normal hysteria and bigotry. This has become some sort of nasty zeitgeist.

Strange thing that it’s all happening now — 9 years after 9/11. Now they’ve gone anti-Muslim batshit. They sure weren’t acting this badly during the Bush administrations, it’s very curious.

There has to be a reason for everybody wigging out right now. Like there’s something, I don’t know, in the air.

Some sort of black cloud hanging over people. A dark, mysterious threat. Something inking its way into the tissues of some folks’ reactionary brains.

And it gnaws at them and won’t let go. Perhaps something odd and out of place, like a stain. One that — even after months, or years — won’t go away.

Hmm. I wonder what it is . . .

You’re thinking, ‘What does Jonah Goldberg think about all this?’ And this is where the rest of us say ‘GOOD ONE,’ and we tousle your hair a bit and buy you a couple of beers. Oh, you.

Islamophobia? Not really
The supposed anti-Muslim backlash among Americans is mostly a myth.
ByJonah Goldberg | August 24, 2010

I’m shocked — shocked! — that Jonah didn’t read the previous Tn’W entry where I posted a video of protesters closing in on a man who looked an awful lot like a Muslim.

Aside: What was that New York carpenter thinking? Looking like a Muslim? Just think if he’d actually been a Muslim, he could have caused an unsightly scene.

Nor did Jonah read Newt Gingrich’s comments equating American Muslims to thoughtless WWII Nazis and Japanese soldiers. The backlash ain’t no myth.

Nonetheless, there Jonah goes . .

Here’s a thought: The 70% of Americans who oppose what amounts to an Islamic Niketown two blocks from ground zero are the real victims of a climate of hate, and anti-Muslim backlash is mostly a myth . .

Hoo BOY. Two wholly crazy ideas piled on top of each other. It’s the ‘Americans who oppose’ the community center who ‘are the real victims of a cliimate of hate.’

When the New York bigots are called ‘bigots,’ it’s a sad day in America. Pity those islander rank and file with an honest, hate-felt opinion. Pity a startled but soldiering truth-teller, for America, Dick Morris: