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.