An Egyptian blogger is sentenced to three years in prison by the Egyptian military. Progress!
Category: Meet The New Boss
Oh look
Meet the new boss, same as the Bush boss!
Egypt
So Mubarak IS stepping down. The military is taking over, which is good because it’s seen as the counterweight to the secret police, I guess. So what happens after that?
That said, this is some outstanding and inspiring television.
Standing with democracy!
Mubarak to step down, take the $60 or so billion he stole with him, and the torturer in chief will take his place. Progress!
UPDATE: Conflicting reports. Stay tuned.
Meet the new boss
“The extraordinary rendition program landed some people in CIA black sites—and others were turned over for torture-by-proxy to other regimes. Egypt figured large as a torture destination of choice, as did Suleiman as Egypt’s torturer-in-chief.
At least one person extraordinarily rendered by the CIA to Egypt — Egyptian-born Australian citizen Mamdouh Habib — was reportedly tortured by Suleiman himself.
… In October 2001, Habib was seized from a bus by Pakistani security forces. While detained in Pakistan, at the behest of American agents, he was suspended from a hook and electrocuted repeatedly. He was then turned over to the CIA, and in the process of transporting him to Egypt he endured the usual treatment: his clothes were cut off, a suppository was stuffed in his anus, he was put into a diaper—and ‘wrapped up like a spring roll’. In Egypt, as Habib recounts in his memoir,My Story: The Tale of a Terrorist Who Wasn’t, he was repeatedly subjected to electric shocks, immersed in water up to his nostrils and beaten. His fingers were broken and he was hung from metal hooks. At one point, his interrogator slapped him so hard that his blindfold was dislodged, revealing the identity of his tormentor: Suleiman.”
—Oh, no. At Al-Jazeera, UC Santa Barbara professor Lisa Hajjar writes an extremely damning of portrait of the spy man overseeing Egypt’s “transition” to democracy. I’d like to be more optimistic about this. But it’s awfully difficult.
Hack
NJ Gov. Chris Christie and his advisors are trying to sell him as a “principled” man who does the right thing no matter what, but a closer look reveals an egomaniacal political hack who is a lot more concerned about his image than anything else. Now he blames a good little wingnut soldier like Bret Schundler for his very expensive temper tantrums, and apparently his major decisions are being dictated by the local right-wing talk radio:
Before rejecting a compromise with teachers that would have won New Jersey a $400 million federal education grant, Gov. Chris Christie’s main objection was that it would appear that he had given in to the teachers’ union, a former education commissioner testified on Thursday.
The governor, who had battled the union all year, said “that he was not going through the fire with all of their attacks on him merely to cave in to the union,” the former commissioner, Bret D. Schundler, told a State Senate hearing investigating the loss of the federal grant. “And he said that emphatically and for a rather extended period of time.”
Continue reading “Hack”
Grayson Is Right
Robert Gibbs should be fired. But please don’t confuse that goal with the larger problem, which is that the White House agrees with him. Punish Gibbs, by all means, but don’t stop there.
Gibbs is a weasel and always was, even back when he worked for John Kerry and was leaking attacks on Howard Dean. Don’t get distracted, it’s the guy at the top we need to watch. Personally, I think the poll numbers are so low, they’re going to have to appoint Elizabeth Warren in a frantic attempt to excite the base — but only after they fill up all the agency slots with Geithner minions, who will actively work to undermine her.
Yep
So let’s say Obama’s people have correctly deduced that there’s no chance in hell of getting anything through Congress. They have two basic options. First, they could get on the teevee every day and say, “This is my plan to help. Republicans in Congress won’t pass it.” They could hold rallies in Maine. Allies could run ads. At least people would know who is for and who is against…and just what it was that people are for or against.
Option two is back off proposals you’ve previously made and have Axelrod get on the teevee and say, “there is some argument for additional spending in the short-run to continue to generate economic activity.”
There are still people who are defending Obama with that favored catch-all phrase, “What would you have him do?”
What I’d have him do is act like a goddamned leader for a change. Pick a side, our side, and STICK WITH IT. Stop splitting the difference on every goddamned thing, because SOME THINGS ARE JUST WRONG.
Post-Game Commentary
The interview went very, very well and they really liked me. Two more rounds of interviews…
Bait and Switch
Marcy Bmaz explains why it’s not Ben Nelson, but Barack Obama who hung OLC nominee Dawn Johnsen out to dry. She concludes:
There is your answer. In brutal black and white. And progressives better wake up and start paying attention, because what you see here is extremely telling about the mindset and backbone, or severe lack thereof, the Obama White House has for the coming nomination and confirmation battle to replace Justice Stevens. If past is prologue, we are on the cusp of shifting the ideological balance of the Supreme Court severely to the right – under a Democratic “liberal” President.