What we talk about when we talk about torture. For the record, the description in the final panel is taken from this article by Mark Danner. Everyone currently seems fixated on waterboarding and waterboarding alone, much in the way that public discourse after the release of the Abu Ghraib photos focused on just how many — or exactly how few — bad apples were involved in that extremely isolated incident which certainly did not have larger implications and only a DFH would think otherwise.

Anyone who’s been paying attention for the past few years knows that waterboarding’s just the start of it. More than 100 detainees have died in U.S. custody, and more than 30 of those have been investigated by the military as homicides.

Digby:

If you are a conservative you can’t believe that something like an epidemic or a pandemic could even exist or you would have to grant that the necessity for public health — a government function. Indeed, you even have to grant that a pandemic requires that people are going to be forced to behave in ways that explicitly explicitly define their own personal survival with the common good.

Rush is right to be a little bit nervous about this, though. Public health crises tend to focus the public on the usefulness of things like science, international cooperation, government coordination. You know, the sort of thing that liberals think are necessary. Something like that simply doesn’t fit into the conservative worldview. They see all problems and challenges in schoolyard terms of good guys and bad guys. This kind of challenge (like global warming) falls outside the paradigm by which they organize their world. Pandemics, like hurricanes, can’t be dealt with by using tough talk and threats. So, they are lost.

A small offering for those of you who have young children, or who know someone who does: my first kid’s book will be published in September. (You can pre-order it here.)

I’ll post some sample pages as the date draws nearer. And I’ll warn you in advance: I’m going to be promoting this one relentlessly. The publisher is a very small operation out of Brooklyn, and my advance was minimal, so sales of this one will have a real, direct impact on their lives and mine.

And just to be clear: this isn’t one of those kid’s books that’s actually aimed at adults. It’s a genuine children’s book –with Sparky!

…adding: I know it doesn’t mean a lot in terms of actual numbers, but I love that the Mayor is #5000-something on Amazon as I write this, five months before the pub date. My publisher, Ig, is almost literally a mom-and-pop outfit (recommended to me by my friend Jen Sorensen, whose compilations they also publish), and this is their first children’s book, and I’m really hoping they don’t lose money on it.

Another visit to the incredible shrinking Rightwingoverse.

A cartoonist friend just sent an email reminding me of my open letter to the Pulitzer Board from April of 2006. The situation hasn’t changed much since then.

…to the “Get a Brain! Morans” guy:

More here.

In the grand scheme of things, getting people to complain about taxes on April 15th might be the easiest thing in the world. It’s right up there with “eating ice cream on a hot summer day” and “laughing whenever Glenn Beck cries”. Bitching about taxes is America’s true pastime. So when a few thousand people gather on tax day to whine about their taxes (after getting massive tax breaks, btw), it’s hardly the second coming of the American Revolution. Hell, I remember a time six years ago when millions of people took to the street to protest the government. We all saw how well that worked out.

When their rallying cry is “Grrrr…I hate you TAXES!”, there won’t be a whole lot left to keep the tea bagging movement together after April 15th. Manufactured-populism and a fractured-understanding of American history will only take you so far. The great-great-great-great grandchildren of liberty will have to find some other crusade to motivate them like birth certificate forgeries or investigating whether Bo Obama was really a rescue dog. Sure, some die-hards will stick around like the asshole who keeps flipping through your DVD’s at three in the morning oblivious to the fact that the party is over, but within a few weeks, the only people left to carry the “tea party” torch will be the GOP & Fox News personalities trying to recapture the “good times” with all the subtlety and humility of Chubby Checker trying to get everyone to do the twist.

I’m going to miss the “Tea Party” movement. I’m going to miss the powdered wigs and the lunatic ranting. I’m going to miss the ideological uncertainty and the unpragmatic futility (seriously, you’re mailing tea bags to the White House to demand lower taxes after you just got a tax cut?). Most of all, I’m going to miss the jokes. These last few weeks have been a golden age for juvenile humor that passes for insightful political commentary. It’s a rare movement that chooses to describe itself with terminology that also means “testicle slapping” and those of us who relish in the foolishness of conservative activism will be much worse off for it.

Subject line on my daily email update from Townhall: Your Tea Bag Might Be on TV April 15th!

The new cartoon touches on Glenn Beck’s strange view of history, which one imagines he has cobbled together from late night visits to fringe conspiracy websites maintained by psychotics, as the voices in head murmur, the symbol, on the back of the dime … it all makes sense now, doesn’t it Glenn …

Unfortunately I ran across this, via the invaluable David Neiwert, too late, or I would certainly have worked it into the cartoon somehow.

Ok, let’s walk through this. F.D.R. headed up the war efforts against the Nazis during World War II. Henry Ford did everything he possibly could to prevent the United States from fighting the Nazis because he was a fan of the Nazi regime. Henry Ford was awarded and accepted the highest medal that Germany bestowed upon foreigners in 1938. The Ford factories in Europe helped build the Nazi war machine. The rabidly anti-Semitic paper that Ford published helped inspire the Holocaust and popularized the notorious Protocols of Zion.

But in Beck’s warped, alternate universe, Henry Ford is anti-fascist because he didn’t like the New Deal … - while the guy who actually headed up the government while it fought and defeated the fascists is a fascist. Here’s a clue for the eternally clueless Beck: we actually had fascists in America during the New Deal - and some of them were opposed to it precisely because they were fascists.

Henry Ford, anti-fascist. Henry Ford. Brilliant.

… is the deal with these “this is the second notice that your car warranty has expired” robo calls? They’re like digital cockroaches, my landline and cell are both infested. And if you wait to get a human being and tell them not to call you anymore, they just … hang up on you.