Tortured Logic on Torture

Sen. John McCain was on Face the Nation Sunday morning, and the contortions he went through to let the previous administration off the hook for their illegal torturing was astounding. He tried to claim that it was all just the result of some bad legal advice. Early in the interview McCain makes the claim that he believes no other Administration will ever make the same mistake (of using bad legal advice…I guess), and torture again.

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2008 Election Wrap-up

Last Tuesday night/Wednesday morning was certainly a bittersweet time. As I’ve said before, I’m not one of the millions of Obama-maniacs, but I was glad he won. I think America will soon be in far better hands than she is now. I was even more pleased to see a good number of hateful and bigoted Republicans kicked to curb, and their nasty campaign rhetoric repudiated. Obviously though, the passage of the three anti-marriage amendments was a great disappointment. In this post, I’ll provide my observations on where we are now relative to the election.

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Social Security and The Economy

I seem to recall that George Bush was all in favor of privatizing Social Security and having us all put all of our retirement funds in the stock market. I have a 401K at work. Unfortunately the company doesn’t contribute to it, but that’s not what this post is about. I checked yesterday, and my annual rate of return on it so far this year is -24%. (Yes, that’s a minus…negative in front of it.) So where would people be who depend solely on Social Security if their accounts had suddenly taken a 24% hit.

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Closing and Layoffs-Fundamentals Are Fine

If, like John McCain, I had a wife worth $100 million dollars, I guess, like him, I too would probably think the economy was just fine. I don’t have a significant other that is worth that, in fact, he like me, probably has negative net worth. Based on what I’m seeing around here with a lot of closings, the evidence is pretty strong that we’re into a major slowdown.

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White House Still Pushing Torture

Reuters has a story saying that the White House has been meeting with Sen. John McCain in an effort to obtain an exemption so that the CIA can torture people. I continue to find it abhorrent that we are even discussing how this country might use torture. It’s proven to be ineffective, so to what end is Dick Cheney so interested in keeping this option open.

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