THIS MODERN WORLD

I feel like I’ve been bringing this up for years, as have many other bloggers and commentators … would be nice if it ever pierced the public consciousness, that waterboarding was only the start of what went on in those twisted evil hellholes the Bush Administration bequeathed us (and which Obama apparently intends to maintain)…

Today the ACLU and many bloggers who are concerned with the fact that the United States tortured prisoners and apparently has no intention of holding anyone responsible for it are blogging about a little known fact about the issue: the US Government didn’t just torture a bunch a prisoners, as bad as that was, and as horrible as it remains for those who survived it. The United States tortured many prisoners to death. This does not seem to be common knowledge, but the evidence is quite clear that this happened. Torture and death by torture was not isolated.

More, plus links. If this is somehow a revelation to you, then please take the time to read through.

… of everyone who wrote after this cartoon ran to let me know what a reprehensible and entirely wrongheaded person I was for suggestesting that some rightwingers actually seem to be hoping for another terrorist attack on American soil.

Because, well, gosh. Here’s one now.

Health care reform: here we go again. For anyone who was old enough to be paying attention in the early nineties, there’s a depressing familiarity to the current debate.

I’m slowly emerging from what may have been one of the most intense, busiest periods of my working life — particularly the last month or so. It’s been very frustrating, to have so much going on, and to not be able to write about most of it. I’ve had some extraordinary experiences over the past few months, and come the fall, I hope to be able to lift the veil of secrecy somewhat.

I can say this: one of the joys of the past six months or so has been working with people who give a damn about what they’re doing. This has not always been my experience in recent years, with publishers and so on. But both with the album cover and with the children’s book, I had the great good luck to be collaborating with people who were genuinely focused on the quality of the end product.

And I’ve just received an advance copy of the actual, physical, published kid’s book, and I couldn’t be happier. When you’re in production on something like this, there are a million details you have to work out, and even when you’re working with good people it seems like you’re inevitably going to miss something — but the Mayor turned out exactly as I’d hoped. I really couldn’t be happier with it.

The book, which I wrote about in more detail in this post, will be available in stores in September (as will the PJ album — it’s going to be an exciting fall). And there are pre-order links on the very official Very Silly Mayor placeholder homepage.

All about US: the American right responds to the turmoil in Iran.