Do you know what I really need?

Now you know the question.

42.0.

Torture victim: US soldier

Alyssa Peterson killed herself after being subjected to watching torture performed on prisoners. Oh, and just by the way since we didn’t mention it, some of our soldiers are being killed by Iraqi police.

Greg Mitchell has the full story in E&P.

Erin in Flagstaff has more.

Hat-tip to Majikthise, and changing gears, have you seen Vroomfondel lately? We got an answer out of this machine which suggests the question is at hand.

Midnight show

Update: replacement video:

PNAC starts a drum beat for full retreat

Like rats from a sinking ship, everyone points and leaves. Or is it a pander bear that eats shoots and leaves? Shakes Sis snaps along,

Richard Perle: “The decisions did not get made that should have been. They didn’t get made in a timely fashion, and the differences were argued out endlessly.… At the end of the day, you have to hold the president responsible.… I think if I had been delphic, and had seen where we are today, and people had said, ‘Should we go into Iraq?,’ I think now I probably would have said, ‘No’…”

Delphic, huh? Well, that’s the best euphemism for “vaguely cognizant of obvious facts” I’ve heard yet!

David Frum: “[I]t now looks as if defeat may be inescapable, because ‘the insurgency has proven it can kill anyone who cooperates, and the United States and its friends have failed to prove that it can protect them.’ This situation, he says, must ultimately be blamed on ‘failure at the center’—starting with President Bush.”

Dayum! Bitch, that’s cold. After G-Dub turned your “axis of evil” speech into the Shit Heard Round the World, all you’ve got to give back is shade?! That’s some serious ice, playa.

Kenneth Adelman: “I just presumed that what I considered to be the most competent national-security team since Truman was indeed going to be competent. They turned out to be among the most incompetent teams in the post-war era. Not only did each of them, individually, have enormous flaws, but together they were deadly, dysfunctional.”

Ouch!

Michael Ledeen: “Ask yourself who the most powerful people in the White House are. They are women who are in love with the president: Laura [Bush], Condi, Harriet Miers, and Karen Hughes.”

I don’t even know what that means, but it doesn’t sound good.

Frank Gaffney: “[Bush] doesn’t in fact seem to be a man of principle who’s steadfastly pursuing what he thinks is the right course. He talks about it, but the policy doesn’t track with the rhetoric, and that’s what creates the incoherence that causes us problems around the world and at home. It also creates the sense that you can take him on with impunity.”

Snap!

Michael Rubin: “Where I most blame George Bush is that through his rhetoric people trusted him, people believed him. Reformists came out of the woodwork and exposed themselves.”

Is he talking about the Iraq War, or Mark Foley?

Eliot Cohen: “I do think it’s going to end up encouraging various strands of Islamism, both Shia and Sunni, and probably will bring de-stabilization of some regimes of a more traditional kind, which already have their problems.… The best news is that the United States remains a healthy, vibrant, vigorous society. So in a real pinch, we can still pull ourselves together. Unfortunately, it will probably take another big hit. And a very different quality of leadership. Maybe we’ll get it.”

Fo shizzle.

Update: Brad R. has more commentary.

First the words, then the music

You are what you eat. Eat well.

Carnival number 9, second part of the first impression

Let there be rhythm.

Introducing a new category for hypocrisy

So sue me.

Hat-tip to Shakespeare’s Sister, who is not called Ayesha.

How crooked you’ve made your thin blue line

This man, Frank Cassell, is the sheriff of Henry county, about 50 miles south of Roanoke, Virginia. He’s been indicted, along with 12 current and former uniformed deputies, a former postal worker, a former probation officer, and five other people, for conspiracy and distribution of cocaine, steroids, marijuana and other drugs that were seized by the sheriff’s department in raids and then resold to the public.

Pretty profitable this “drug war” is for some people, isn’t it?

Read more from the Associated Press.

Hat-tip to mayan.

How easy it is to hack a voting machine

If I were a computer programmer (and I am) and I worked for a voting machine company (which I do not), and furthermore if I were a partisan who did not mind tweaking the results for my party’s benefit, then this is how I would perform a nearly undetectable hack. For every vote cast, overvote by one for my candidate, party or issue, then randomly drop one of the two votes to maintain a constant count. Maybe one line of code. That’s it. You could even incorporate a bit-test in the same line to make the overvote less obvious by having it only execute every so many votes recorded.

Of course, we can trust the closed-source machine vendors, right?

Electronic counting machines (i.e., optical scan) have other vulnerabilities, and many of both kinds of machines are being placed in the custody of poll workers for weeks, with the capacity for third-party hacks being proven in many cases.

I’m casting my votes in public, right here.

And now, for something completely different…

The unofficial Richard Bruce Cheney fansite.

Playing both keyboards at once, sometimes we forget the words…

Dynastic succession

The mandate of heaven is an interesting concept in eastern religious thought. The idea seems to be, and I will appreciate any correction, that the people follow leaders whom heaven blesses the authority of, but if they misrule the mandate of heaven would be withdrawn and given to another.

I want to take this concept and translate it into a different metaphor. My friend Chez likes to talk about the concept of hivemind. So if I use this metaphor maybe those like he will understand but others who have no idea what this is about might get confused.

We have a single consciousness made up of an uncountably infinite number of individual cells. Each of those cells is individually conscious and capable of self-awareness. Some of those cells do work, physical labor, to convert food to energy, to purify the blood of toxic wastes, to move all of these solids, liquids and gases to the appropriate places for use and disposal. Your body is a marvelous machine, and every part of it is conscious.

Of these parts a brain arises, and that has the mandate of heaven, for your body is in complete consensus on this point. Once upon a time bodies had brains in two places, one being the spine. Your spine is still conscious too, but defers mainly to the brain. Thus is an arrangement that has worked for millions of years. The dinosaurs who had the spine more powerful than the brain, died out.

But the spine consciousness did not in the least diminish, in fact it became a much more powerful consciousness, one which was intrinsically part of the new brain. This is the most basic level of your own consciousness even today, your brain stem and cerebellum, reptilian consciousness.

And so we evolved a new brain which incorporated the old, and did thereby honor to our ancestors. But we use our new brain to decide, because we are the deciders, and John Bush loses the mandate of heaven, but we will preserve our heritage and never forget. And those who decide to stay with the reptiles will equally be free to decide, and go their way in peace if they choose.

Juggling too many things

I’ve never been much of a juggler. I can do the thing with two balls where they are both in the air at the same time, and if I add a third ball (or perhaps a bean bag) I can keep all three going for maybe a few seconds. That’s not very impressive, but I understand the principle that the more balls you’ve got in the air the faster you have to juggle.

Really talented people try to juggle more than three things, I’ve seen seven flaming torches being juggled, and it’s pretty neat to watch. Often the best jugglers can make a profession of it, as people will pay to watch them.

Everyone has their limit, and then the things start to fall.