Best Earth Day Ever...

Earth Day... April 22, 2009:

Earnest, smiling young female enviroweenie handing out pamphlets in front of library: Happy Earth Day!

Me... Before brain-to-mouth filter can engage: Blow it out your ass.

 

I must admit I should have felt some regret over being that rude, but I didn't. That makes this the best Earth Day I've ever been subjected to.

Comments

[richard mcenroe]

There's rude, and then there's just plain fun

[markg8]

That's the fun part about politics though she probably doesn't think so Dennis. I'll never forget the night I was phonebanking looking for a Mrs. X. Mr. X answered the phone and from the sounds of it he was in the kitchen keeping the kids in line while his wife was preparing dinner.

He suspiciously asked me what the call was about and when I explained he snarled, "oh, she doesn't want to talk to you." For lack of anything else to say I asked, "are you sure?"

Dripping with sarcasm he said, "No, I have sex with this woman every night and we have three children together and I don't know what she thinks."

Imagining the look she shot him as the children tittered all I could do was chuckle, "alright."

And no doubt her reaction, standing there spatula in hand, mouth agape, wondering why her husband is talking about their marital relations on the phone to a perfect stranger in front of the kids no less, irritated him even more, he then unloaded on me telling me I was a giant jackass and I could tell my candidate he just lost two votes. I managed to wish him a nice night before I hung up and burst out laughing.

A buddy of mine, evidently a much quicker thinker than I am, got a guy on the phone who said he was making love to his wife. He swears he responded, "I have 30 seconds to wait if you want to finish up."

When asked how it went your friend from the library will no doubt answer, "pretty well, except for the guy who told me to blow it out my ass without even looking at the flyer." Everybody needs a story to tell Dennis and you gave her one.

What I want to know is where you come up with the pictures?

[richard mcenroe]

The local Whole Foods held an Earth Day BBQ in their parking lot. When we asked them about the grille's carbon signature they got cranky. Don't know why.

[Dennis the Peasant]

Mark-

It's amazing what you can find in the way of pictures if you use really demented search criteria... Although I am careful to put Google search on "safe" to give me demented rather than perverted.

[markg8]

Just for you Richard. FBI agent Ali Soufan writes in the New York Times about the torture memos.

One of the most striking parts of the memos is the false premises on which they are based. The first, dated August 2002, grants authorization to use harsh interrogation techniques on a high-ranking terrorist, Abu Zubaydah, on the grounds that previous methods hadn’t been working....It is inaccurate, however, to say that Abu Zubaydah had been uncooperative. Along with another F.B.I. agent, and with several C.I.A. officers present, I questioned him from March to June 2002, before the harsh techniques were introduced later in August. Under traditional interrogation methods, he provided us with important actionable intelligence.

....There was no actionable intelligence gained from using enhanced interrogation techniques on Abu Zubaydah that wasn’t, or couldn’t have been, gained from regular tactics. In addition, I saw that using these alternative methods on other terrorists backfired on more than a few occasions — all of which are still classified. The short sightedness behind the use of these techniques ignored the unreliability of the methods, the nature of the threat, the mentality and modus operandi of the terrorists, and due process.

George W. Bush told us all Abu Zubaydah was "one of the top operatives plotting and planning death and destruction on the United States." Which brings us back to what Ron Suskind heard about him.

Abu Zubaydah, his captors discovered, turned out to be mentally ill and nothing like the pivotal figure they supposed him to be. CIA and FBI analysts, poring over a diary he kept for more than a decade, found entries "in the voice of three people: Hani 1, Hani 2, and Hani 3" -- a boy, a young man and a middle-aged alter ego. All three recorded in numbing detail "what people ate, or wore, or trifling things they said." Dan Coleman, then the FBI's top al-Qaeda analyst, told a senior bureau official, "This guy is insane, certifiable, split personality."

Abu Zubaydah also appeared to know nothing about terrorist operations; rather, he was al-Qaeda's go-to guy for minor logistics -- travel for wives and children and the like. That judgment was "echoed at the top of CIA and was, of course, briefed to the President and Vice President," Suskind writes.

And yet somehow, in a speech delivered two weeks later, President Bush portrayed Abu Zubaydah as one of al-Qaeda's top
operatives.

For torture lovers I suggest you clamp jumper cables to your own balls or get someone to water board you. It will save just as many American lives as it would if we tortured more Iraqis and the resulting media coverage would make many Americans and Iraqis happy. If it's good enough for Christopher Hitchens, it's good enough for you. The question is do you have the balls for it?

[just passin by]

Mark, who obviously has years of military service and intelligence training, knows that militants that intentionally blow up women and children are more susceptible to reason over a warm cup of tea then they are to harsh interrogation. And don't call them terrorists; AP wouldn't approve.

[just passin by]

Dennis,

The brain-to-mouth ratio is overrated. You need it during business hours so that your moron customers don't become moron ex-customers.

But the mental picture I have of the brain-to-mouth filter in operation is a bunch of clenched teeth Ivy Leaguers standing around with cocktails classes in hand and boring the shit out of each other.

[markg8]

Why no JPB I don't have years of military service and intelligence training. I count on people who do have real interrogation training and they all say torture is ineffective.

Incredibly enough the Bush/Cheney torture tactics were derived from SERE training, (Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape) developed in the US after the Korean War when Chinese and North Korean interrogators used torture to illicit false confessions from US prisoners.

It seems kind of stupid to use torture techniques the Reds used to to get false confessions out of our guys to force Al Qaeda members to spill the beans about pending terror attacks. But it turns out they were trying to get the already mentally deranged Abu Zubaydah and Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the 9/11 plot's mastermind to admit to nonexistent Al Qaeda collusion with Saddam Hussein. Just like the North Koreans Bush and Cheney ordered the torture to illicit false confessions.

Abu Zubaydah confessed to all kinds of plots against shopping malls, banks, supermarkets, water systems, nuclear plants, apartment buildings, the Brooklyn Bridge, the Statue of Liberty. With each new tale, "thousands of uniformed men and women raced in a panic to each . . . target." And so, Suskind writes, "the United States would torture a mentally disturbed man and then leap, screaming, at every word he uttered."

Bush and Cheney broke our laws to torture lies out of these men to back their own lies. They threw our country's reputation in the toilet and flushed it for nothing.

[richard mcenroe]

Mark... strangely, that isn't what they say until they get called into the Boss's office and ordered to recant the briefing they gave that same boss just days before... much like Obie's current DNI.

As for it not working, here is a great chance for Obie to show how much smarter he is than the eeeeevil Bush and Cheney. All he has to do is release the memos Cheney is demanding be released. Boy, that will show him, huh, since those memos must surely show how ineffective the interrogation techniques were.

As for FBI Ali, I haven't had much time for his set since the FBI's Arab translators were caught celebrating after 9/11.

By the way, I've been gassed in NBC training AND waterboarded in SERE, have you?

[richard mcenroe]

BTW, mark, your previous comment to Dennis? Spoken like a true bitter telemarketer. Guess what he had every right to scorn those clowns and the people you were calling had every right to resent you for interrupting their home lives. Deal. With. It.

[Guesst]

earth day is just kwanzaa for white liberals.

signed,
Mrs. X

[Eric Blair]

"earth day is just kwanza for white liberals" ooooooo....I'm swiping that one! Thanks!

[PeterUK]

"Why no JPB I don't have years of military service and intelligence training. I count on people who do have real interrogation training and they all say torture is ineffective."

Who would be?

Whilst Obama is a revelatory frame of mind,how about his birth certificate and educational record?