Sub Lumen putting under the light of inquiry and analysis political, social and cultural issues and stories that intrigue or outrage Statistics Unique Visitors: Total Unique Visitors: Outgoing: Total Outgoing: 48 0 0 2712

Articles from Sub Lumen

"I will never leave Guantanamo" 2007-12-03 14:57:00 I don't read Daily Kos as frequently as I know I should. It's always been something of a rabbit-warren to me, with over a dozen Contributing Editors and who knows how many diarists. Today, though, they gave a pointer to this tool which may be of help in finding one's way through the labyrinth.I found something else there this morning, under "Recent Diaries." It's a discussion sparked by this heart-rending Op-Ed piece in today's Boston Globe.It's the story of a prisoner, a man who has been pronounced innocent by our military on multiple occasions, but who still spends his days chained to the floor of a cell in Camp Six, Guantanamo. Though they've determined that he's neither soldier nor criminal nor terrorist, it's the story of a husband and father who has resigned himself to the belief that he will never again see his wife, never again hold his child. It's the story of a broken man who is convinced that he will die there in that little piece of hell on earth, so lovingly craf ...

That Darn Uniform 2007-12-03 13:13:00 During a White House press briefing Friday while sharing the podium with U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator, Mark Dybul, Lying Press Secretary Dana Peroxide got into a nasty little spat with Helen Thomas. Here's the videoand here's the transcript:Q Does the President want no troops out from Iraq on his watch? I'm talking about all the troops.MS. PERINO: Well, 5,700 troops will be home by the end of the year, so that is some troops coming home. The President said that troop levels are going to be made by commanders on the ground, and that we're going to have to talk about --Q Why should it be? Why can't the American people have a say?MS. PERINO: -- return on success. The American people have had a say. They elected a President who is their Commander-in-Chief and is making decisions based on what his commanders on the ground are telling him.Q And you think that was the vote of the American people?MS. PERINO: They elected a Commander-in-Chief, and the President is bringing home 5,700 troop ...

Don Imus Back from the Grave 2007-12-03 11:20:00 Via the AP:Don Imus returned to the airwaves Monday eight months after he was fired for a racially charged remark about the Rutgers women's basketball team, and introduced a new cast that included two black comedians.Imus' lineup of guests featured two presidential hopefuls, Democrat Chris Dodd and Republican John McCain. As he did several times in the days after the episode, Imus condemned his controversial remark last spring and said he had learned his lesson [. . . . ] and called the ensuing furor a "life-changing experience."I never was an Imus fan. I tried watching his show simulcast on MSNBC some back in the '90s, but I never got his appeal, and found his endless pater with his mustachioed sidekick (a perpetual brown-noser who constantly referred to Imus as "I-man") painfully boring.His new show is on WABC (which also hosts such intellectual giants as Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity), which we can't pick up here in the hills of Arkansas. It's also synidcated on the network of ...

Progress with China on Export Subsidies? 2007-12-03 10:48:00 From the NYT, Friday:Bowing to American pressure on the eve of high-level talks to reduce economic tensions, China agreed Thursday to terminate a dozen different subsidies and tax rebates that promote its own exports and discourage imports of steel, wood products, information technology and other goods.The action mostly affects exports by Chinese companies that have foreign investors or are joint ventures with foreign companies. Nearly 60 percent of Chinese exports are produced by these businesses. Also affected were tax breaks that China gives its own companies if they do not import goods themselves.Top U.S. trade envoy, Susan Schwab proclaimed, “This outcome represents a victory for U.S. manufacturers and their workers,” and Michael Griswold, writing for Cato @ Liberty had an equally optimistic assessment:[T]he announcement shows how trade disputes with China can be resolved without resort to threats of retaliatory tariffs. This is not the first time China has changed its trade l ...

Larry Craig Update 2007-12-03 09:43:00 It's the story that won't quite go away, no matter how much the Republican Senator (and restroom enthusiast) from Idaho wishes it would.From the Idaho Statesman today (h/t to Michael D at Balloon Juice): five gay men, four of whom are willing to be identified, have come forward to say either that they have had sex with the Senator or that they were the object of sexual advances from him.David Phillips. Mike Jones. Greg Ruth. Tom Russell. [. . . .] They are telling their stories now because they are offended by Craig's denials, including his famous statement, "I am not gay, I never have been gay." Those words, spoken on live national TV on Aug. 28, are now memorialized on a just-released-for-Christmas Talking Senator Larry Craig Action Figure.[. . . .]A fifth gay man, who is from Boise but who declined to be named for fear of retaliation, offered a recent and telling account: He was in a men's restroom at Denver International Airport in September 2006 when the man in the next stall ...

I'm Tagged (5 Things About Myself) 2007-12-01 23:19:00 I was just reading a post by Wil, titled "5 Things About Myself," a blogging meme that issues a challenge of sorts to respond and pass the challenge along. Here are the rules as conveyed by Wil:(i) Link to your tagger and post these rules on your blog. (ii) Share 5 facts about yourself on your blog, some random, some weird. (iii) Tag 3 people at the end of your post by leaving their names as well as links to their blogs. Let them know they are TAGGED by leaving a comment on their blog.As I was reading this, I was thinking: "Gosh, I'm glad I don't have to do this... I don't know what I'd say, or to whom I would pass this." Then, after reading Wil's response to the challenge I saw that he had passed the challenge on to two others and me. What?!!?O.K. here goes....1. I'm not especially healthy: I have hypertension, diabetes, PAD, presbyopia, tinnitus and a few other maladies.2. I am shrinking. I have lost 55 pounds in the past seven months. But, I have about another 100 pounds yet t ...

Caturday 002 2007-12-01 17:23:00 ...

Joe Klein - Pompous Ass 2007-11-30 17:11:00 On the 21st of this month, Joe Klein, in a column for Time, mounted his high horse (yes, I see that I'm mixing metaphors... sue me) and began lecturing House Democrats for scandalous partisanship in dealing with the RESTORE bill and the whole domestic wiretapping issue. Timothy Lee at Cato:Klein wrote that the House Democratic proposal would, among other things, “require the surveillance of every foreign-terrorist target’s calls to be approved by the FISA court” and “give terrorists the same legal protections as Americans.” In an accompanying blog post he accuses Democrats of standing in the way of sensible legislation “because of blind, stupid partisan politics.”Klein was so wrong about so many things and had stirred up such a shit-storm of criticism that Time corrected the column... twice... and still got it wrong!I don't know if Joe Klein was acting out of malice or stupidity or some unholy marriage of the two. I do think that nobody has done a better job of nailing ...

Drama in New Hampshire Campaign Office 2007-11-30 15:55:00 There's no way to see inside. The most that any of the networks' telephoto shots can show us is the facade of the storefront office in Rochester, New Hampshire and the name "Hillary" in tall letters on the front window.Earlier today, a man claiming to have an explosive devise strapped to his chest (apparently one released hostage saw something wrapped in duct tape) entered the Clinton campaign's satellite office in Rochester and told everyone there to get on the floor. It appears that there were at least four hostages initially. A woman and child were released first, another woman later.The man reportedly has said that he wants to talk to Senator Clinton, who is in Washington, D.C. today, and was to make an appearance in Virginia this evening which has now been canceled. Her campaign staff says that she is remaining in close contact with law enforcement authorities in New Hampshire.This is obviously a tense situation, and a bit of an odd one for me. I have never blogged about a sto ...

More on the Thoughtcrime Bill 2007-11-30 12:48:00 Below watch an excellent, if chilling, discussion of The Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007 by Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! with Jessica Lee, reporter for the Indypendent, published by the NYC Indymedia Center and Kamau Franklin, an attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights.The video is in two parts on YouTube. A transcript is available here. Please watch or read and then act before it is too late.Part One:Part Two: ...

Karl Rove, Minister of Truth 2007-11-30 11:01:00 Eric Arthur Blair (whose nom de plume was George Orwell) is likely spinning dervishly in his grave.It's the United States, not Oceania, but Karl Rove is hard at work rewriting history in the fine tradition laid out in Nineteen Eighty-Four."War is Peace; Freedom is Slavery; Ignorance is Strength."The Dems did it! What a pile of ripe, steaming, fetid excrement.Nineteen Eighty-Four references are often over-used, but think about what is going on right now in addition to Rove's attempt to tell us that the invasion of Iraq was actually the fault of those darn pesky Democrats.The book deals with the concept of "perpetual war" -- a war with no clear ending conditions, which is used by the state to justify controlling the citizenry by draconian authoritarian means. Sound familiar? It should. That's exactly what Bush's never-ending War on Terror™ is... what the 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review Report labeled as "the long war" [.pdf file]. Since terror is a tactic rather than a government ...

Ron Paul and the Highway Conspiracy 2007-11-29 14:24:00 Oh, Ron, most of your performance in last night's non-debate was not so bad. It does seem sometimes that the other guys smack you around too much with "arguments" that would fit on a bumper-sticker (e.g., John McClain's "let them win!").But then there was that question from Arlington, Texas [debate transcript]:I’ve met a lot of your supporters online, but I’ve noticed that a good number of them seem to buy into this conspiracy theory regarding the Council on Foreign Relations and some plan to make a North American Union by merging the United States with Canada and Mexico. These supporters of yours seem to think that you also believe in this theory.So my question to you is, do you really believe in all this, or are people just putting words in your mouth?I cringed and held my breath, wondering if you would take the bait or find some way to disarm this. You did the former, saying:Well, that all depends on what you mean by “all of this.” The CFR exists. The Trilateral Commission ... Ron Paul

Huckabee and the Hortons 2007-11-28 13:48:00 The name Willie Horton has become code for a person whose criminal acts are likely to sully the reputation of a (presidential) candidate who had some involvement with them.First, a little history. [via Wikipedia]The original William R. Horton was/is a convicted felon who was the subject of a Massachusetts weekend furlough program that released him while serving a life sentence for murder, without the possibility of parole, providing him the opportunity to commit armed robbery and rape.Beginning on September 21, 1988, the Americans for [V.P. George H.W.] Bush arm of the National Security Political Action Committee, began running a campaign ad entitled "Weekend Passes," using the Horton case to attack [Gov. Michael] Dukakis. The ad was produced by media consultant Larry McCarthy, who had previously worked for Roger Ailes. After clearing the ad with television stations, McCarthy went back and added a menacing mug shot of Horton, who is African-American. He called the image "every suburban ...

Religious Quotas for a Romney Whitehouse? 2007-11-27 16:32:00 I'm nonplussed, speechless. Well, almost.Pander-Bear Former Gov. Mitt Romney has demonstrated again that he will say anything. This time it's that he couldn't justify appointing a Muslim to his cabinet because they don't represent a sufficiently large segment of the U.S. population.The question about a Muslim member of a potential Romney cabinet was asked at a Las Vegas fundraiser by Mansoor Ijaz, an American-born Muslim financier who writes an opinion column for the Christian Science Monitor. Ijaz related Romney's response in his most recent CSM column as, "based on the numbers of American Muslims in our population, I cannot see that a Cabinet position would be justified. But of course, I would imagine that Muslims could serve at lower levels of my administration.""Romney, whose Mormon faith has become the subject of heated debate in Republican caucuses, wants America to be blind to his religious beliefs and judge him on merit instead," Ijaz writes. "Yet he seems to accept excl ...

Dubyah and the Torture Gossip 2007-11-27 13:35:00 Yes, I'm deliberately getting all this gossip crap out of my system today.About ten days ago, in wrapping up an article about the possible roots of the attitude toward torture that our Torturer-in-Chief holds, has developed in the course of his life, I made allusion to a possible BDSM chapter in his past.This story is if anything more sensational than the Trent Lott gay sex rumor, but since I opened the subject here, I feel obliged to close it.It began when I discovered this on Welcome to Pottersville, a political blog I have read for sometime and one that I had not regarded as being given to wild speculations:Gather ’round, my children, and ye shall hear of the time your Commander in Chief used to get his ass tenderized with a leather whip by a dominatrice who would go on to write a tell-all book about her various clients only to turn up missing for several weeks thereafter.[. . . .]Now, if you ever charged George W. Bush with being casual about torture and degradation, let me assu ...