Things Can Only Get Better

Things Can Only Get Better! Current mood: Charmander! Char!

So,

Today marks the end of another spectacular week of Bengals football. Not only did the Bengals plow through another hapless opponent (in this case the Cleveland Browns) but... Pittsburgh lost! On Monday Night Football no less. To Jacksonville, who, frankly, looked scary, but that's a moot point until the playoffs, as we don't play Jacksonville this year. As of this writing we are a game ahead of the Steelers and we're going into Pittsburgh this week in a position to do ourselves a lot of good and silence a lot of critics who thought that the Steelers and Ravens were the teams to watch in the AFC North this year.

The Ravens of course kept pace with us by beating the Raiders, which is annoying, but I can't get too worried about the Ravens until they actually beat a halfway decent team and start taking advantage on offense of all the opportunities their defense wins them against inferior competition. Yes, the score was grim for the Raiders, but those points mostly came on field goals and the Ravens mostly looked ugly on the offensive side of the ball. I suspect that when the Bengals play the Raiders, it's going to be much worse. Closer to 50 than 30 probably. Although Coach Lewis does seem to try and show teams mercy in the 4th quarter so it may not be as bad as it could. Anyway, the Bengals go to Pittsburgh on Sunday and they're going to play a team that really hasn't looked very good yet this year. Yes, the defense has been good, but it didn't look as scary as Jacksonville's, and on offense they really haven't gotten much going. They almost lost to the Dolphins in Week 1 for crying out loud. They look beatable and it looks like the Bengals are coming to town at just the right time. Very excited about this game.

Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: let's talk about it. Alright, I just got it today and so far it's... alright. Really easy, almost to the point of boredom, but not quite. Part of it is the little quiz they gave me ended up making me a bulbasaur, which is lame. At least I've got a Squirtle as my partner, but still. I've only recruited one other pokemon so far, a Magnemite, and I have hopes that the game will pick up as I play. So far, like I said... it's alright.

I have to go to a seminar at Potomac Mills tomorrow. I have to get something like12 more hours of continuing education before the end of the year in order to keep up my title license and tomorrow I pick up two hours. Two hours with Jeannette and Amy. Then lunch! Then I drive back to Fairfax and work for another 3 hours at least. The good thing about it is that it does mean missing office time. About 45 minutes to get there, 2 hours there, an hour for lunch at least 45 minutes to get back. So, yeah, if I breeze in at 2pm that will actually be about right. Not like a day off or anything. But probably better than sitting at my desk. We'll see.

I feel obliged to do a brief current events thing here. The President's proposed bill to allow "high value detainees" to be interrogated using "alternative methods" should make every American ashamed of what's happening in this country. Let's not dick around here, let's say exactly what we mean. The President of the United States, not the President of Kazakhstan or Uzbekistan or Turkmenistan - The President of the God-Damned United States of America - wants Congress to pass a law authorizing the Pentagon and the CIA to torture people that they suspect might be terrorists. These are the people they had in their SECRET PRISONS, not the people in Guantanomo Bay, because, whoops, it turns out most of those people didn't actually do anything. Well, they probably did something, but it was most likely something like piss off one of their neighbors who turned them into one of the local militias in Afghanistan as an Al Queda member so that their neighbor could collect the bounty offered by the Americans. That's us, in case you forgot. Pretty much the entire Republican Party seems like they have. We're Americans. We don't torture people. The Nazis tortured people. Stalin tortured people. WE DON'T FUCKING TORTURE PEOPLE! If it wasn't so fucking obvious it would be in the Bill of Rights. Oh wait, it is. Cruel and Unusual Punishment blah-blah-blah. Oh well. Sorry, darkies, you should have been born in America.

Okay, so there have been breakdowns in our human rights respecting awesomeness before. Smallpox blankets for Native Americans, dissenters and pacifists jailed indefinitely, American citizens of Japanese Ancestry herded into camps; but it's never been this bad before. It was always done in the darkness and everyone was at least ashamed when they found out. Not now. Nope, the President calls a press conference and is sending his smallpox blanket bill to Congress.

There are so many worst parts to all this that I can't decide which is the worst, worst part. One of the very worst, worst parts though is the fairly persistent and hard to ignore subtext of this bill. The shifty eyes when they discuss it, the guilty schoolboy body language that practically screams "We really, really need this law because we've kind of already been doing this for 4 or 5 years and when the full extent of all this inevitably comes to light under a Democratic administration, we'd rather not be prosecuted and sent to prison forever". Yeah, I imagine none of them relish the thought of going on trial for torture or crimes against humanity or whatever and having to take the stand and claim they were only following orders. That doesn't really go over too well these days.

I really think that's the main reason they want this bill now. Torturing people is such a stupid idea that they can't really want it just to be able to do it. I mean, yeah, you get people to talk under torture, but you can't believe anything they say because they're only talking so you'll stop torturing them. If that was all this was about I think they'd just drop the idea quietly and try to cut taxes again. But I really think they're starting to get worried about what's going to happen if the Democrats regain control of Congress or the White House and start throwing some sunlight (and subpoenas) on all these little legal blackholes they've set up.

The other reason they're doing this of course is the one of the other very worst, worst parts about this mess. The gradual corrosion of our democratic process. In other words, politics. One of the top 5 plays in the Republican playbook goes something like this:

Pick an issue, doesn't really matter what, let's say welfare for instance. Put together the most evil welfare bill you possibly can. Have it include putting anyone without a job through a meat grinder and sold to low income families as a food source. Their kids will be put in orphanages run by the Department of Corrections. Whatever, doesn't matter what you put in it because nobody with a soul will ever vote for it, so it's never going to make it into law. You have a slim majority in the House so you can ram it through more or less intact. Now the fun starts. Practically every single Democrat possesses at least a rudimentary soul, so they all voted against the bill. Run to the highest hilltop you can find and start screaming about how the Democrats want to give anybody that's too lazy to get a job a Rolls Royce and a New York Penthouse with the taxpayers money and that's why they voted against your evil, evil bill. You can do this in complete safety because no one will ever know what is actually in the bill. No newspaper or TV anchor will ever use the phrase "this bill is the work of Beelzebub and actually caused my conscience to start screaming like the damned when I read it". No. They will talk about how the bill contains some "extreme" provisions favored by "hardliners" the examples they use will actually be some of the tamer items, and they will reassure everyone that most of the "extreme" stuff will be removed in the final version by the Senate. This is true. You also have a small majority in the Senate, but Senators aren't as easy to push around as House members and there are at least 5 or 6 Republican Senators that can vaguely remember what it was like to have souls if they concentrate. So a deal is cut to bring Senator John Reasonable (R) Arizona or Senator Lincoln Moderate (R) Rhode Island on board. You cut out all the truly insane stuff and end up with a bill that merely forces single mothers to get three jobs and leave their kids at home to take care of each other. During this whole process you continue to wail about how the Democrats don't care about regular hard-working Americans to anyone that will listen to you. Have a big rally of your supporters and take a few semi-good-natured potshots at Senator Reasonable for screwing everything up. The new, incredibly harsh but at least no one's going to be eating Soylent Green bill passes both Houses of Congress on a near party-line vote and the President signs it into law while decrying the "Democratic obstructionism" that prevented a truly "revolutionary solution" from being implemented. Chuckle to yourself briefly before going on Hannity and Colmes to scream about how all the Democrats are Communists that want to give all your money to poor people so they can spend it on heroin.
That's basically what's happening on this torture bill, except that the 4 Republican Senators aren't going lukewarm over their opposition they way they usually would, talking about "differences" or "tweaks" or "softening" the bill. They are getting right in Bush's face and doing everything but calling him a traitor and Nazi. They have their own bill this time. They're calling in big guns. They are not being polite. So, this kind of backfired this time. The Democrats aren't saying a word and the Republicans are so busy fighting each other that they don't really have time to make their point about how Democrats are too chicken-shit to even torture people to protect America. So, sad.

On a final note, apparently the pope said something kind of bad about Islam? Something about it being a nasty religion that was spread by the sword? And Muslims everywhere are reacting like Terrapins fans after they win a National Championship? Newsflash to everyone: At some point in its history, EVERY religion was a nasty religion that was spread by the sword. Even the Jews had their turn, very early on in the game. Alright fine. Except for Wicca. Sorry, Wiccans.

Admiral Halsey, out.