The Commentariat -- Dec. 10, 2014
Internal links removed.
The Torture Presidency
Mark Mazzetti of the New York Times: "A scathing report released by the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday found that the Central Intelligence Agency routinely misled the White House and Congress about the information it obtained from the detention and interrogation of terrorism suspects, and that its methods were more brutal than the C.I.A. acknowledged either to Bush administration officials or to the public." ...
... Greg Miller, et al., of the Washington Post: "An exhaustive, five-year Senate investigation of the CIA's secret interrogations of terrorism suspects renders a strikingly bleak verdict of a program launched in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, describing levels of brutality, dishonesty and seemingly arbitrary violence that at times brought even agency employees to moments of anguish." ...
... Scott Shane of the New York Times: "The bitter infighting in the C.I.A. interrogation program was only one symptom of the dysfunction, disorganization, incompetence, greed and deception described in a summary of the Senate Intelligence Committee's report. In more than 500 pages, the summary, released on Tuesday, paints a devastating picture of an agency that was ill equipped to take on the task of questioning Al Qaeda suspects, bungled the job and then misrepresented the results." ...
... The Los Angeles Times is liveblogging reactions to the report. The Guardian is liveblogging reactions. ...
... The summary report is here. ...
... Katie Zavadski of New York: "Five appalling takeaways...: 1. The "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques" went beyond what the agency ever admitted.... 2. The interrogators were poorly screened and basically untrained.... 3. Torture didn't really provide great intelligence.... 4. The CIA did everything it could to avoid critical oversight.... 5. The CIA tortured innocent people -- including, accidentally, its own informants -- and killed at least one detainee." ...
... Here's the New York Times' summary of seven key points. ...
... ** The Biggest Liar. The Washington Post publishes a side-by-side comparison of (1) then-CIA Director Michael V. Hayden's testimony to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on April 12, 2007, & the findings in the Senate's summary report. The report entries begin with something like, "This testimony is incongruent with CIA interrogation records" or "This testimony is inaccurate." These aren't "misstatements"; they're active, purposeful making-stuff-up lies. Hayden is currently running around denouncing the Senate report on Fox "News" & many major media outlets. ...
... Shane Harris of the Daily Beast: "Interrogations that lasted for days on end. Detainees forced to stand on broken legs, or go 180 hours in a row without sleep. A prison so cold, one suspect essentially froze to death. The Senate Intelligence Committee is finally releasing its review of the CIA's detention and interrogation programs. And it is brutal. [Harris recounts] some of the most gruesome moments of detainee abuse from a summary of the report." ...
... Charlie Savage & James Risen of the New York Times: "Months before the operation that killed Osama bin Laden in 2011, the Central Intelligence Agency secretly prepared a public relations plan that would stress that information gathered from its disputed interrogation program had played a critical role in the hunt. Starting the day after the raid, agency officials in classified briefings made the same point to Congress. But in page after page of previously classified evidence, the Senate Intelligence Committee report on C.I.A. torture, released on Tuesday, rejects the notion that the agency would not have found Bin Laden if it had not tortured detainees."
... Jesse Singal of New York: The Senate report "highlights and adds some details about the important role two psychologists had in both developing the 'enhanced interrogation' program and carrying it out.... "Both the New York Times and NBC News have identified them as Jim Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, two psychologists who have been previously singled out for their roles in developing and legitimizing the torture program." According to the report, the contractors "received $81 million prior to the contract's termination in 2009. In 2007, the CIA provided a multi-year indemnification agreement to protect the company and its employees.... The CIA has since paid out more than $1 million pursuant to the agreement." ...
... Taylor Berman of Gawker: George W. Bush realized he was too scatterbrained to keep a secret & "asked not to be told the locations of CIA detention facilities because he was worried he'd 'accidentally disclose' the secret intel.... This man was president for eight years." ...
... Scott Shane: "Senator Saxby Chambliss, the ranking Republican on the Intelligence Committee, and five other Republicans released a 100-page dissent attempting to refute the 6,000-page main report, which was written solely by Democratic committee staff members. Those Republicans denounced it as a sloppy, partisan effort that got the facts wrong.... The program's outspoken defenders say the C.I.A. was advised that its methods were not torture, that the program played a critical role in dismantling Al Qaeda and that the interrogators deserve praise, not vilification." ...
... Statement from President Obama: "Today's report by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence details one element of our nation's response to 9/11 -- the CIA's detention and interrogation program, which I formally ended on one of my first days in office. The report documents a troubling program involving enhanced interrogation techniques on terrorism suspects in secret facilities outside the United States, and it reinforces my long-held view that these harsh methods were not only inconsistent with our values as nation, they did not serve our broader counterterrorism efforts or our national security interests. Moreover, these techniques did significant damage to America's standing in the world and made it harder to pursue our interests with allies and partners. That is why I will continue to use my authority as President to make sure we never resort to those methods again." The full statement is linked. ...
... Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) issued a "summary of the summary" upon releasing the report. ...
... Statement by John Brennan, now CIA director: "... despite common ground with some of the findings of the Committee's Study, we part ways with the Committee on some key points. Our review indicates that interrogations of detainees on whom EITs were used did produce intelligence that helped thwart attack plans, capture terrorists, and save lives. The intelligence gained from the program was critical to our understanding of al-Qa’ida and continues to inform our counterterrorism efforts to this day." The full statement is linked. ...
... Ed Kilgore: "... does the current leadership of the CIA get to have its own position on the basics that contradicts the president's?" CW: Yes, apparently so. This does seem like the perfect time to fire John Brennan. ...
... ** When your right-wing friends tell you the report is a partisan screed against an agency dedicated to "keeping us safe," blah-blah, tell them this. David Cole of the New Yorker: "The committee, which reviewed over six million C.I.A. records, based its report entirely on the agency's own documentation of what transpired. The records depict a program founded on false premises, maintained for five years despite the absence of any evidence that it worked, and covered up by repeated falsehoods to the White House, Congress, and the American public. The report's central lesson is that when government officials abandon the obligation to treat human beings with dignity, that decision will corrode all that follows." Emphasis added. Read the whole post. ...
... The Onion (satire): "Warning that it would be reckless to release the full findings to the general public, critics in Washington condemned the Senate's 480-page report detailing the CIA's interrogation tactics Tuesday, saying it puts the country at considerable risk of transparency. 'Publishing the results of this five-year investigation is an extremely hazardous move, as it gravely jeopardizes our country's ability to obscure and cover up human rights abuses that may or may not have occurred following 9/11,' said Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL)...." ...
... Even the Onion could dream up this one:
... You can read the CIA's redacted response to the report, dated June 2013, beginning here. ...
The United States of America is awesome, we are awesome. But we've had this discussion. We've closed the book on it, and we've stopped doing it. And the reason they want to have this discussion is not to show how awesome we are. This administration wants to have this discussion to show us how we're not awesome.... They apologized for this country, they don't like this country, they want us to look bad. And all this does is have our enemies laughing at us, that we are having this debate again. -- Andrea Tantaros, Fox "News" host of "Out Numbered," explaining why Senate Democrats released the report
I have deep sympathy & compassion for the developmentally diabled and I love 10-year-olds. I just don't think they should get their own teevee opinion shows. Yoo Ess Ay! Yoo Ess Ay! -- Constant Weader
... K. T. McFarland of Fox "News": "Democrats in the Senate are behaving like tenants who got evicted and decide to trash the house on their way out the door.... Yes, it's another chance it's to blame Bush! This is the apology tour on steroids." ...
... Torture Report Released to Axe "Gruber Day." Jason Easley of Politics USA: "Like clockwork, Fox News and Rush Limbaugh are in full paranoid conspiracy mode and claiming that the release of the Senate's report on torture is a conspiracy to distract from Obamacare.... Rush Limbaugh ... [said], 'The Democrats, the main story, the lead story today, by design, is the release of the Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA torture, dumping on the Bush administration on 'Jonathan Gruber Day.'"
... Paul Waldman: "... prior to 9/11 the CIA had virtually no experience in interrogation, and they had no idea what would be effective and what wouldn't. But they were being told by the White House that they needed to be 'tough,' and torture is tough. The people who actually had experience in interrogation tried to tell the CIA that it wouldn't be effective, but they were shut out because their methods weren't tough enough.... The people who created, executed, and defend the torture program don't want history to declare them the villains of this story. But that's what they are. And one day -- even if it takes some time -- there will be a consensus on that." ...
... Charles Pierce: "As was the case with the Church commission [1975], I believe, this Senate investigation shrank from demonstrating to the American people the kind of monsters they freely elected. I believe this investigation shrank from the obvious conclusion that the legislative branch fell down on its oversight responsibility and, therefore, to its responsibility to the country.... George W. Bush, and Richard Cheney, and a whole host of others ... are now acting out of spectacular ingratitude and excoriating the report that allowed them largely to walk away from their crimes in office ... because they know, by defending the CIA and the criminals within its ranks, they are defending themselves as well ... against the CIA itself." Read the whole post. ...
... New York Times Editors: "The litany of brutality, lawlessness and lack of accountability serves as a reminder of what a horrible decision President Obama made at the outset of his administration to close the books on this chapter in our history, even as he repudiated the use of torture.... Republicans, who will soon control the Senate and have the majority on the intelligence panel, denounced the report, acting as though it is the reporting of the torture and not the torture itself that is bad for the country." ...
... Pardon the Bastids, Ctd. Jonathan Bernstein of Bloomberg View: "As generously as possible (and whether he believes it or not), the president should say that the Bush administration was motivated by only the best intentions in dealing with an unprecedented scary situation and that the mistakes they made by authorizing and using torture should be forgiven. This step is critical to keep the issue from becoming partisan, with Democrats being against torture and Republicans allowing it. If torture is to remain banned, it's going to take reviving the consensus of the elite against it that was broken in the Bush administration. Pardons take care of the legal jeopardy part for the officials; generous pardons might lessen their reputations as bad guys."
Jake Sherman, et al., of Politico: "Government funding, which expires Dec. 11, is not in peril, and a shutdown is still very unlikely. House leaders are set to offer a short, one-to-two-day funding bill in order to allow the Senate time to complete work on the broader 'cromnibus'; funding package and avoid any chance that federal agencies would be forced to close, House GOP aides said Tuesday." But negotiators are still squabbling over aspects of the bill, and Republicans are blaming Elizabeth Warren "for dragging the negotiations to the left." ...
... Update. Ed O'Keefe of the Washington Post: "Congressional leaders unveiled a massive $1.01 trillion spending bill Tuesday night that will keep most of the federal government funded through September. The legislation is expected to pass in the coming days and will allow the incoming Republican-controlled Congress to clear the decks of lingering spending issues while setting the stage for a prolonged fight with President Obama over immigration policy."
Daniel Strauss of TPM: "Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) made clear on Tuesday that she is not swayed by supporters of Obama administration nominee for Treasury undersecretary for domestic policy Antonio Weiss. Warren upped the ante in the unusually heated nomination fight, even mocking his defenders who point out that he supports 'poetry.'"
"Jonathan Gruber Day." (All Is Not Lost, Rush.) Dylan Scott of TPM recounts the big moments in the House Oversight Committee's interrogations of Jonathan Gruber & Medicare and Medicaid Services administrator Marilyn Tavenner. ...
... Dana Milbank has more on the "zany coda to Darrell Issa's tumultuous tenure.... It was the last scheduled hearing under Issa's chairmanship.... Issa, who hit his term limit as chairman of the high-profile panel, has been assigned to legislative Siberia: chairmanship of the Judiciary Committee's intellectual property subcommittee."
People Who Don't Have to Wait in Line Don't See Waiting in Line as a Big Deal. Adam Liptak of the New York Times: "The Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled unanimously that a temp agency was not required to pay workers at Amazon warehouses for the time they spent waiting to go through a security screening at the end of the day. The workers say the process, meant to prevent theft, can take as long as 25 minutes." CW: Let me just say this is an incredibly stupid ruling. These people waiting in line are at work, for pete's sake, & like the young women who died in the Manhattan shirt factory, they can't get out till they get frisked, an insulting, humiliating, invasive routine. So, thanks, each & every one of you Supremes, for adding injury to insult.
American "Justice," Ctd. Lindsey Bever of the Washington Post: Overnight, Missouri & Georgia each executed a man with a low IQ.
Ken Kurson of the New York Observer: "... in the wake of Rolling Stone's blockbuster story about campus rape at the University of Virginia and the subsequent fire that that story's reporting has come under, the magazine's deputy managing editor [Will Dana] offered to resign.... Sean Woods[, who edited the story, also] presented a letter of resignation to founder and publisher Jann S. Wenner.... Mr Wenner ... declined to accept the resignation." Wenner said the story is "not true." "According to the source, Rolling Stone is right now planning to assemble a 're-reporting project' akin to the one the New York Times put together in the wake of the Jayson Blair fabulism scandal...."
Presidential Election
Philip Rucker of the Washington Post interviews the "new" Rick Perry. "Perry comes across as studious, contemplative and humble.... After Republican Greg Abbott is sworn in as governor Jan. 20, Perry's immediate priority will be to make serious money, something he has never done." ...
... OR, as Ed Kilgore puts it, "First step for Perry is getting filthy rich.... Unsurprisingly, Perry's proto-message for 2016 will focus on his 'economic miracle' claim, based on the exciting new idea of growing the economy by whorishly giving 'investors' any damn thing they want. But ... the trouble with encouraging governors to hang out with extremely rich people in the guise of 'economic development' is that they start wondering Why ain't I as rich as my new friends? ... Something tells me Ted Cruz is going to eat Perry's lunch as the candidate of feral Texas conservatives while Perry's trying to 'make serious money' and convince people he's not as stupid as he sometimes sounded four years ago."
News Ledes
New York Times: "A federal appeals court on Wednesday overturned two of the government's signature insider trading convictions, a stunning blow to prosecutors and their campaign to root out illegal activity on Wall Street. In a 28-page decision that could rewrite the course of insider trading law, sharply curtailing its boundaries, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in Manhattan tossed out the case against two former hedge fund traders, Todd Newman and Anthony Chiasson. Citing the trial judge's 'erroneous' instruction to jurors, the court not only overturned the convictions but threw out the cases altogether."
Washington Post: "A senior member of Palestinian administration in the West Bank died Wednesday after a confrontation with Israeli forces at a protest march over land seizures, Palestinian officials and witnesses said. The death of Zaid Abu Ein, a longtime member of the Palestinian Authority cabinet, could further sharpen tensions after a recent wave of protests and clashes over a contested holy site in Jerusalem."
Share Article
Reader Comments (15)
There is one American who will benefit from the truth. Thanks to Dick Cheney, Benedict Arnold will no longer be the perfect example of treason.
Another gap in my education discovered. Never heard of the Powell memo. I thought it must be something Colin Powell wrote. I read the damn thing. Now I can only think of what PD left us with yesterday:
I can't go on like this.
I am so beyond furious that I may not be able to write a coherent comment! Truly. What I want to happen is for Richard Bruce Cheney to be called out by Obama--then indicted, found guilty of treason, sentenced for life in solitary confinement--and his cold, dead body left in a freezing concrete secret cell.
How could this have happened? Rachel Maddow explains it better than anyone, but even her explanation left me feeling helpless and angry that Obama has done nothing to punish the offenders--not really the AIPAC Neo Cons, but Cheney and his little shadow, Michael Hayden, former CIA director. Both are demons. And psychopaths.
I do not excuse Dubya; however he is stupid and has the emotional IQ of a 6 year old. (Did not want to know where the "secret" torture sites were, because he was afraid he would "tell.") Yikes! The only skill he had/has is painting his feet in the bathtub. A mere puppet of the evil Cheney.
And, yes, Cheney is not only heartless, he is truly evil. He knew what he was doing and did it anyway--knowing he could control his little puppet, The Decider, and satisfy his sadism. It is America's shame that "we" elected this little ass wipe and his puppeteer for two terms in the Big White House. And we may do it again next time. America has lost its soul--if indeed we ever had one, which I doubt more and more after reading Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz's "An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States." We have been greedy, heartless and entitled from the get go. It is not Denmark where something is rotten.
I agree with Marvin Schwalb. Thanks to Darth Cheney, Benedict Arnold will not longer be the perfect example of treason!
Americans. Will you ever stop this exceptionalism nonsense? Even Obama yesterday: 'One of the strengths that makes America exceptional is our willingness to openly confront our past, face our imperfections, make changes and do better. ...and that the United States of America will remain the greatest force for freedom and human dignity that the world has ever known.'
This extraordinary national narcissism has led your country down some very dangerous paths; this ability that you can do no wrong, that criticism is unpatriotic, that your way of living is better than any other way, yadda yadda. It's unhelpful, and, well, just plain wrong.
Why am I not the least bit surprised?
Check out the Phoenix Program:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_Program
No experienced torturers?
@evil is evil; I agree. But I don't think throwing people out of helicopters was ok'd at the Presidential level like drowning people was.
I do think the correct response is "Duh."
I highly recommend this documentary if you can get your hands on it about how the French taught American officials about their torture methods which were developed during their IndoChina and Algerian wars, and then how the US appropriated and advanced the methods because the American officials were "such good students."
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/the_americas/summary/v061/61.3mcsherry.html
Now THIS is egregious!
Meet the Psychologists Who Helped the CIA Torture
"In 2006, the value of the CIA's base contract with the company formed by the psychologists with all options exercised was in excess of $180 million; the contractors received $81 million prior to the contract's termination in 2009. In 2007, the CIA provided a multi-year indemnification agreement to protect the company and its employees from legal liability arising out of the program. "
http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2014/12/meet-the-shrinks-who-helped-the-cia-torture.html
So lets see the part that Republicans seem to have missed. If the CIA needed this 'enhanced interrogation' it must be because they are totally incapable of doing their job. Or to put it another way, the 'I' should be deleted from their name.
The likes of Mark Danner (has been writing about this for years) and Jane Mayer (author of The Dark Side––see the 2008 NYT review by Alan Brinkley below citing much of what we are learning today including the name of James Mitchell, one of the psychologists getting paid MILLIONS) must feel vindicated at last. As the review reminds us this country throughout its history has committed egregious acts, but these torture methods and its secrecy has taken it to a whole new level. There should be a cover on some magazine with Uncle Sam hanging his head in shame.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/03/books/review/Brinkley-t.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
I watched part of the Gruber hearing and never have I seen a person react so like a dog that has been whipped and reviled. If Gruber could have crawled on the floor over to all those interrogators and licked their boots he would have, but he did such a fine job of self flagellation that it wasn't necessary. One of the highlights featured a Mrs. Loomis (R-WY) who was questioning sad looking Ms Tavenner and proceeded to tell her that she and her husband had enrolled in "Obamacare", but then when her husband was at his doctors discovered they were not enrolled (some mixup with something) so the husband refused a test that would have indicated a heart problem and consequently died some weeks later. By that time the Loomis' learned they indeed were enrolled. "I am not blaming you for my husband's death, Ms Tavenner, but I am blaming the screw-up of the implementation of Obama care." The face of Tavenner was a sight to behold.
Willfully blind as we are, we simply choose not to notice the many morally bankrupt aspects of our culture. We avert our eyes, deny, point the finger at someone or something else, say yeah maybe, but we're not as bad as that fellow over there, all in the interest of never confronting the reprehensible character of much that we do.
In fact, the natural tendencies of many of the institutions we have created to organize ourselves and distribute the planet's resources reflect and encourage the worst, not the best, within us.
Corporate capitalism, which is based on the bedtime story that large institutions, acting in their own short-term self interest, will shower manna equally on all. As we say here, it's (and the defective personalities that business leadership often attracts) awesome. Institutionalized selfishness is still selfish. We just don't notice.
Police forces, which recruit, minimally train, and provide a home for people who in too many cases must already possessed the urge to order other people around. The line between "leader" and "psychopath" is thin and too often blue.
And spy agencies, peopled by critters who glory in the dark and all the power that dark anonymity bestows. Rather than being surprised or shocked that the CIA frequently misbehaves, the real surprise would be that it does not. Even without the moral vacuity of the Bush administration, the natural tendency of any secret society is to do the kinds of things we would not tolerate in the daylight. While the behaviors of the CIA and fraternity initiations that go awry may be lightyears apart, the kinship between the two is equally apparent. Each attracts the dark side and finds the dark side attractive.
In short, we create institutions which encourage and reward bad behavior, and because that behavior is part of the institutional apparatus, we excuse ourselves from noticing or naming it. We take the behavior as an institutional given, somehow distinct from the person who acted badly, and give it and the person a pass.
Maybe we've all become LLC's. More likely NLC's, no liability at all.
End of sermon. Lucky, it's not Sunday.
I won't revisit yesterday's rant over the murderous bastards who saw the infliction of excruciating suffering up to and including death, as their god-given right as Leaders of an Exceptional Nation. Rather, I'm thinking about how torture fits neatly within the Bush-Cheney paradigm and the larger archetypes of right-wing policy making and political calculation.
Why torture someone? No actionable intelligence came of it. This is clear. Even John McCain, someone who knows firsthand the inefficiency of torture as a method of extracting actionable intelligence, has decried its use by the Bush Administration and has, correctly, pointed to the ineradicable stain such heinous action leaves on the entire country.
I won't run down the litany of its uses, but I believe torture was employed by Bush and Cheney for two simple reasons. First, they're sadistic bullies. Bullies lash out in predictable but largely irrational ways, especially at those who are not in a position to challenge them. Torture makes the bully feel respected, powerful, in charge. Plus it has the added benefit of handing out punishment for making the bully feel stupid (9/11). Intelligence was never really the goal. The goal was punishment. Making someone hurt because they, or people who looked like them, made the bully look bad.
The second reason is a two-parter: their sense of the politicization of the situation coupled with their essential incompetence. They sensed that something had to be done but neither the administration nor the CIA was prepared to adequately and intelligently address the problem. You can't just sit around jerking off, hoping something will happen. So put bags over the heads of brown people, spirit them away to some black site and torture the shit out of them. Such manly men. Such men of action. Men who ran like hell when it was their turn to serve.
These reasons are also at the heart of the Bush War of Choice. Bullies need to punish someone. Anyone. If the real source of anguish is too smart or inaccessible, or might require time and patience to capture, it's much easier and more immediately satisfying to use "Shock and Awe, Dude!"
Bullies think a big show of force will be enough to restore their sense of self-esteem. Plus, it looked like there wouldn't be much resistance in a country that actually had nothing to do with 9/11. The previous Iraq adventure was over in a month. Flowers, music, dancing in the streets, statues raised to Bush and Cheney. That's what they expected. Also, Fox needed something to feed the yokels every night. A well planned and executed long game that would net them Bin Laden and most of the core Al Qaeada leaders would take time and wouldn't offer much eye candy. But bombs and shit blowing up. Now you're talking.
Political expedience lay heavily on their little brains. They had to feel manly again. So war, not intelligent, effective action. And surely not competence. The easy way. At least so it looked at first. Bombs and torture. What could go wrong?
But this MO has become standard on the right. Problems require immediate, not thoughtful, solutions.
Crime? More prison cells.
Immigration problems? Bigger walls and more guns.
Not enough voters like your ideas? Stop them from voting.
Black man gets elected president? Run the country into the ground.
Someone attacks you? Bomb the shit out of everyone.
Government programs help people who might not vote for you? Kill it.
Intelligent, well thought out solutions take time and don't make great headlines. They also aren't useful for whipping up hatred and anger and keeping the base fired up.
But time and again, the easy way favorted by the right, has proven to offer the worst possible outcomes. Conservative thinking has brought us economic devastation and inequality, war, torture, and moral turpitude and has deformed what used to separate the United States, as an idea, from most all other political and social systems.
Bush and Cheney are just the tip of the iceberg. But their arrogance, cowardice, incompetence, and savagery will forever blot the narrative of the last decade of American history.
The window is shifting on what constitutes cruel & unusual punishment. Bush & Cheney did not reinvent the wheel & pain thresholds do not change as drastically as our tolerance for accepting the inhumane. Let us not remember the barbaric Bush years with an edgy nostalgia. As is, the torture response accomodates much too much dissociated apathy. Nobody gives a damn about ill treatment on some island paradise until the full context is brought into view. Torture is terrifying & nothing to shrug off.
Lots of things are okay to wingers. Torture, war, denial of the voting franchise, racially motivated killings....and also hunger and poverty.
According to the Texas Food Bank Network, one in four children in Texas live below the poverty line. It's actually a bit more, 26.6%. Texas also has the 7th highest economic disparity level between the rich, always growing richer, and the poor, growing poorer and adding more to their ranks every day.
"Children who grow up in poverty suffer lasting consequences: poverty affects cognitive development, academic attainment, future earnings potential, and health outcomes. Taken together, this will cost our state and nation greatly, undermining economic competitiveness and our future prosperity. So while it’s morally unacceptable to ignore the millions of Texans living in poverty, it’s also a devastating mistake."
Guess who doesn't care.
Need a hint? Great haircut, new glasses to make him look smarter, racist name for his family hunting lodge, and wants to cut three government departments but can only remember two.
You got it. Rick Perry doesn't give two shits that kids are poor and hungry in his state. Know why? Because god. That's why. Perry, quoting the Bible, shrugs his shoulders because "the poor will always be with us" so, hey, what can you do?
I'll tell you what ol' Ricky does. According to an interview with Perry in yesterday's WaPo, he's hosting seven lavish dinners in the palatial surroundings of the taxpayer supported Texas governor's mansion for 600 of the wealthiest wingers in the country, looking for $100 million for his upcoming presidential bid.
I guess they won't go hungry. Or poor. There must be something else in the Bible that says "Fuck the poor. Feed the rich."
Perry is taking that to heart. Whadaguy.
The sickos in the torture saga aren't the ones on the couch!
More and more details are emerging about the two psychologists who designed the torture, oversaw its implementation, assessed its effectiveness, and got paid handsomely for it, read at http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2014/12/psychologists-cia-torture-report This Vanity Fair article adds that New York Times investigative reporter, James Risen describes collusion between the American Psychological Association and the C.I.A. in his excellent new book, "Pay Any Price: Greed, Power and Endless War."
Whatever happened to professionalism?
And then a BBC story fills in more details about these two despicable 'psychologists." http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-30405918
And get this: "Under the CIA's current contract with the company (Mitchell Jessen and Associates), they are obligated to pay legal expenses (for this firm that has received millions) until 2021"