Greece: “Oh, yeah?  What happened to our WWII reparations, Nazi gold thieves?”

Germany: “Fuck you, Greek deceivers, swindlers, beguilers, double-dealers, fraudsters, scammers, dupers, impostors, peculators, embezzlers, cheats.”

Thus, by first gently and graciously grooming one another’s perceived character flaws, without excessively slavish preening, the negotiations can grind directly into the brass tacks.

It’s called finesse.

Congratulations, American Psychological Association (APA), on re-writing your guidelines to unambiguously not justify or defend violations of human rights.  While a policy of not justifying or defending human rights abuses is not the strongest language possible, APA has unequivocally graduated beyond justifying or defending the ancient black arts of coerced confessions and abject psychological domination brutally secured using physical and psychological crowbars into consciousness.  

I don’t have a lot to say about this except that a profession that professes to excel at understanding the human psyche probably should not have availed itself of that knowledge to inflict expert levels of long-lasting psychological trauma on their fellow humans, or be associated with those who do, regardless of who asked or paid for such services.

I’ll refrain from offering any further sneering congratulations on the nature of these grave lapses in judgment or on the modest language not justifying or defending human rights abuses, and instead offer a heartfelt “thank you” for addressing this oversight at long last, insofar as you have, as well as thanking APA members who withheld their dues and/or support for APA until this policy was unambiguously clarified to not justify or defend human rights abuses.  

Let’s acknowledge this modest, but unambiguous win in the language of policy for all concerned.  Abusers of human rights can no longer use the APA policy to justify or defend themselves.

The newer, unambiguous guidelines (below) go into effect in June, 2010.

In the WSJ, John Yoo, Dick Cheney’s legal architect for torture and war crimes, attempts to galvanize the collusion of Obama’s and Holder’s DOJ in war crimes, principally by daring them to do jack squat about his blatant guilt.  This Week in Tyranny shows us the game plan inherent in the war criminals’ efforts:

Dick Cheney is shameless and is eager to be publicly guilty. He has made his life an open, defiant challenge to the US government. Does anyone have the courage to take him down, and unleash the inevitable whirlwind? Or does the entire DC establishment prefer to live in quiet, peaceful acquiescence? Those are the only options at this point. Cheney wants to cast as wide a net of complicity as possible; he wants not just his White House implicated but future ones. Not just the White House, but the executive branch. Not just the executive branch but the legislative and judicial branches as well. He wants as much company as possible so he does not go down as a singular villain. It is working, and will continue as long as our leaders prefer to put their immediate comfort over their obligations.

On the topic of cutting deficits at the expense of the social safety net, Barack Obama is a genuine charmer:

Everybody’s going to have some skin in the game.

Digby nails the key problem with Obama’s channeling of Rahm Emanuel:

The problem, of course, is that the best case has millionaires “sacrificing” being able to buy a bigger airplane while the average retiree has to sacrifice eating protein. This “game” we’ve all got our skin in has some much more serious consequences for some of us than others: since certain of the wealthy players just crashed the financial system a whole lot of soon-to-be seniors lost their nest eggs in both the real estate and stock markets (and are being priced out of the health care market just when they need the coverage the most.) If there’s a worse time to require these particular people to sacrifice more I don’t know what it is.

It’s also true that often the people for whom “sacrifice” is nothing more than a minor inconvenience are prone to lecture those for whom it is quite painful. It’s irritating.  

It’s well beyond “irritating,” beyond the need for sensitivity training, even beyond infuriating, embittering, enraging, or making my blood boil.  This wanker is a total riot, a real side-splitter.  A tumultuous uproar.  A howling, boisterous romper stomper of high jinx and merry-making.  

Rather, he’s keeping us safe, which is well within his powers as commander in chief.

These included Yoo’s findings in the memorandum that: 1) the Fourth Amendment would not apply to domestic military operations designed to deter and prevent future terrorist attacks; 2) “broad statements” suggesting that First Amendment speech and press rights under the constitution would potentially be subordinated to overriding military necessities; and 3) that domestic deployment of the Armed Forces by the President to prevent and deter terrorism would fundamentally serve a military purpose rather than law enforcement purpose and thus would not violate the Posse Comitatus Act.

It’s testicle crushing as a symbolic gesture of other rightful powers of the President.

I don’t know if you got peanut butter on my chocolate, or if I got chocolate in your peanut butter, but two things strike me as natural conjunction in our civic evolution.  America, here’s a very tasty idea to win the war on terror and generate jobs.

Let’s face it: the long war is here to stay.  You can’t protest it away.  Sternly worded letters have failed.  And take my word for it, voting the bastards out or failing to pay your taxes has no discernible effect on the American juggernaut.  This sucker [economy] could go down, but until that happens, we will continue to borrow money into oblivion to fund the damned war machine.

Plus, the war is not going well.  We need more troops, but Americans hate big American body counts.

At the same time we have massive long-term unemployment that is eating away at the social fabric and services to which we’ve grown accustomed.  Wouldn’t it totally suck if you were foreclosed on and lost your Naugahyde Barcalounger and TV remote?  Yes, but it need not be.  And is there anyone better at electronic distractions in the comfort of our living rooms?  Some may be competitive on remotes and joysticks, but we’ve got the pioneer spirit and the eagerness to work, and our patriotism pretty much ices that cake.

So, let’s kill two or fifty birds with one stone.  

Have government hire us to conduct remote-controlled warfare in the nether regions of the world.  Sure, we’ll have to kill people half-way around the world we know nothing about, but we’re doing that anyway, and part of the beauty of remote control is that it is completely a one-sided fight, with no chance of your being killed.  Think about the on-the-job training: a little hand-eye coordination, Three, Two, One, Rifle!  Moments after: Splash!  You just earned a paycheck.  Salaries, commissions, whatever free-market solution tickles you.  You can do it while you’re making dinner!  

Plus, we nail outsourcing and Keynsian stimulus in one fell swoop.  And talk about getting everyone on the same national page.  Hell, it would be difficult and unpopular for government to stop the damned wars!  I smell electoral victories into the foreseeable future.  That’s a plan with a lot of plusses.

Remember when the bank bailouts happened virtually overnight?  

Hank Paulson said, “boo,” and Congress sat bolt upright: Here’s the first trillion!  Here’s the second trillion!  Here’s the third…

Everyday Americans going jobless for years?  Losing homes?  Health insurance? Going hungry?

Nada.  Zilch.  Dick.  Go fuck yourselves, really.  It’s still happening.

Compare and contrast.

“Emanuel worried that such investigations would alienate the intelligence community…,” Mayer reported. “Emanuel couldn’t complain directly to Holder without violating strictures against political interference in prosecutorial decisions. But he conveyed his unhappiness to Holder indirectly, two sources said. Emanuel demanded, ‘Didn’t he get the memo that we’re not re-litigating the past?'”

“Bring me their skulls!” thundered the Office of Professional Responsibility.  “We have stripped from them all human dignity and autonomy, we have branded them with an absolute sense of self-alienating vulnerability to the agonizing sovereignty of their inscrutable, perverted, and god-like tormentors, we have blocked all avenues of justice, we have forever sealed their grievances in their tormented souls, and now we must fuck their skulls.”

In his diminished role as valet for the economic and military elite he serves, Obama has swept the gross miscalculations, embarrassments, and criminal messes caused by the excesses of the America’s elite under the rug.  

Normally, Obama works discreetly, as when quietly continuing various national states of emergency, or conducting deals with PhRMA.  He may even tell us what he is doing in direct, declarative, candid and politely calculated sentences, as when he reversed himself on illegal wiretapping, offering boilerplate national security justifications.  Occasionally, he will marshal more robust campaign-style intonations, e.g., at his Nobel acceptance, when defending starker imperial prerogatives, offering resolve and stuffed magniloquence  in lieu of remotely credible justifications.

His modus operandi is clearly not change, but carrying on the status quo with discretion, sweeping unsightly things under the rug, or obscuring them as much and as circumspectly as possible.   Keeping up appearances is his special sleight of hand, a Jedi mind trick of a deceitful and morally weak man having grave consequences beyond himself, God, and the fencepost.

By abstracting the purposes of imperial aggression, he robs other humans of their self-determination and their very lives.  By denying due process to Guantanamo detainees and other secret prisoners, he denies justice and humanity.  By hiding the transgressions of previous imperial stewards, he defrauds the Constitution.  By sweeping the banking crisis under the rug, he plunders our wealth, our jobs, our standard of living, and endangers us further, as the underlying debt has still not been resolved.  His pretenses to passing credible healthcare will only make us poorer and sicker.  In his impeccable service to the American elite, he is driving the rest of us into a condition of sub-humanity, making us weaker, poorer, sicker, morally degraded and hopeless.

People will argue that it is unfair to cast aspersions on his motives.  Blame the policy, not the man.  He is just acting in ways he honestly feels are best for the country.  That is the argument for “authentic” perdition.  Heckuva job.

I’m pretty sure David Brooks spends the majority of his time unplugged and lifeless in a mop closet at the NYT.  A couple times a week a custodian shoves some D cells up his ass, which boots Brooks into a quasi life-like artificial intelligence to mechanically crank out a column as the totally fucking inept protocol droid for the Washington elite he is.  I mean, there are mindless blatherers, and there are mindless blatherers.  David Brooks is the latter.  I once read a Brooks column to a potted plant, and it jumped out the window.  Reading his “thoughts” is like being flashed by a middle-aged man who looks a lot like David Brooks.

Writing from the context of complete closeted oblivion, Brooks examines the ontological question of why harmful robots like him exist in a meritocracy, and his lack of self-awareness explodes in a bifurcation of chaos.  This bionic op-ed appliance has so many design flaws you can hear the components popping and snapping and sizzling before he attempts to rub the first two wires together.

One of the great achievements of modern times is that we have made society more fair.

Snap, pop, sizzle.  The dude shorts out.  Reflections on being, BZZZT.  I believe the rest of the column resulted from his wrecked parts thrashing and slumping on to the keyboard.

At least his editor ran it through the spell-check before publishing it.

I’m so-o-o-o-o tired of buhdy, ek, nightprowl, edger, momcat…I’m just going to unleash, so here it comes.  I’m going to start breaking things.  Hey: Eventually, all pretense of decorum broke down.  Not my fault.

“What is the state of our moral being when Lloyd Blankfein taking a $9 million bonus is viewed as this great act of contrition, when every penny of it was a direct transfer from the taxpayer?” asks Eliot Spitzer…

A Moral Taxonomy:

There are, it has been said, two types of people in the world. There are those who, when presented with a glass that is exactly half full, say: this glass is half full. And there are those who say: this glass is half empty.  The world belongs, however to those who can look at the glass and say: ‘What’s up with this glass? Excuse me? Excuse me? This is my glass? I don’t think so. My glass was full! And it was a bigger glass! ”

-tibor fischer, The Collector Collector

Ha, ha.

President Barack Obama’s deficit-reduction committee will consider all options to reduce the government’s ballooning deficit, including cutting spending in areas currently protected by the administration’s formal budget proposal, or raising taxes for those earning less than $250,000, Peter Orszag, director of the White House’s Office of Management and Budget, told CNBC Thursday.

“What the president was very clear about first was that [raising taxes] was not what we proposed, but that we have to let this commission do its work, and that everything’s on the table,” Orszag said. “All options need to be examined.”

If that doesn’t give you naughty, paradoxical, bipartisan titters, then nothing will.  I’m positively giddy.