I Hate What You Just Said

The Bush administration is making America safe for dangerous chemicals:

The Labor Department is racing to complete a new rule, strenuously opposed by President-elect Barack Obama, that would make it much harder for the government to regulate toxic substances and hazardous chemicals to which workers are exposed on the job.

The rule, which has strong support from business groups, says that in assessing the risk from a particular substance, federal agencies should gather and analyze “industry-by-industry evidence” of employees’ exposure to it during their working lives. The proposal would, in many cases, add a step to the lengthy process of developing standards to protect workers’ health.

Public health officials and labor unions said the rule would delay needed protections for workers, resulting in additional deaths and illnesses.

If you are looking for evidence that we have a completely f—ked up culture, look no further:

A man working for Wal-Mart was killed on Friday when a throng of shoppers surged into a Long Island, New York, store and physically broke down the doors, a police spokesman said.

The 34-year-old man was at the entrance of the Valley Stream Walmart store just after it opened at 5 a.m. local time and was knocked to the ground, the police report said.

The exact cause of death was still to be determined by a medical examiner.

Four shoppers, including a 28-year-old pregnant woman, were also taken to local hospitals for injuries sustained in the incident, police said.

Wal-Mart said it was saddened by the death of the man, who was working for a temporary employment agency serving the discount retailer, and by the injuries suffered by shoppers.

Personally, I find this story even creepier since the trampled man is referred to only as “a man.” He remains a namlelss martyr to Always Low Prices™ — a primitive blood sacrifice to placate the angry gods of the market.

Happy Holidays from everyone here at I Hate What You Just Said!

Sounds good to me:

The White House isn’t inclined to grant sweeping pardons for former administration officials involved in harsh interrogations and detentions of terror suspects, according to people familiar with the situation.

Some Republicans have been pushing for President George W. Bush to grant pre-emptive clemency to officials who fear being investigated by Democratic critics. White House officials have countered that such pardons are unnecessary, these people say. The officials point to Justice Department legal opinions that supported the administration’s methods of detaining and interrogating terror suspects.

Liberal groups and some legal scholars say they will push for criminal investigations of former Bush officials. The officials in their sights include Central Intelligence Agency interrogators and lawyers at the Justice Department and the White House who formulated or approved tactics that critics labeled as torture.

I’ve got Pope Ratzinger Benedict XVI in my bracket to make it to the sweet sixteen of worst Popes ever:

In comments on Sunday that could have broad implications in a period of intense religious conflict, Pope Benedict XVI cast doubt on the possibility of interfaith dialogue but called for more discussion of the practical consequences of religious differences.

The pope’s comments came in a letter he wrote to Marcello Pera, an Italian center-right politician and scholar whose forthcoming book, “Why We Must Call Ourselves Christian,” argues that Europe should stay true to its Christian roots. A central theme of Benedict’s papacy has been to focus attention on the Christian roots of an increasingly secular Europe.

In quotations from the letter that appeared on Sunday in Corriere della Sera, Italy’s leading daily newspaper, the pope said the book “explained with great clarity” that “an interreligious dialogue in the strict sense of the word is not possible.” In theological terms, added the pope, “a true dialogue is not possible without putting one’s faith in parentheses.”

In the future, I will be sure to only refer to the (Pope).

Getting off on the right foot:

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Friday sent a message to Democrats that Republicans are not prepared to bend to a stronger majority.

In letter to Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), McConnell urged Reid to adopt a more conciliatory tone and warned him that Republicans will unite against Democrats if he does not. The letter was signed by all 40 GOP senators and two Republican incumbents who are awaiting the results of elections in Georgia and Minnesota.

Funny that ol’ Mitch is so testy here. It wasn’t but three years ago when he was doing this:

Senate Majority Whip Mitch McConnell said yesterday that Republicans have enough votes to invoke the “nuclear option” to limit Democrats’ ability to stall by filibuster consideration of President Bush’s nominees for federal appeals courts.

From Fox News late-night host Greg Gutfeld:

Back in 2002, [John] Podesta formed a group called the Coalition for Freedom of Information, which demanded access to secret government records on UFOs.

So right after 9/11, the worst attack on American soil ever, thank God there was someone in D.C. who had their priorities in order. I mean, maybe Martians did bomb the World Trade Center.

Look, I don’t dispute that aliens exist, but there are more urgent matters to deal with, other than wrinkly creatures with a knack for anal probing.

But enough about Barney Frank.

From JimLarkinsGhost (quoting the APA):

Researchers at the University of Georgia conducted an experiment involving 35 homophobic men and 29 nonhomophobic men as measured by the Index of Homophobia scale. All the participants selected for the study described themselves as exclusively heterosexual both in terms of sexual arousal and experience.

Each participant was exposed to sexually explicit erotic stimuli consisting of heterosexual, male homosexual and lesbian videotapes (but not necessarily in that order). Their degree of sexual arousal was measured by penile plethysmography, which precisely measures and records male tumescence.

Men in both groups were aroused by about the same degree by the video depicting heterosexual sexual behavior and by the video showing two women engaged in sexual behavior. The only significant difference in degree of arousal between the two groups occurred when they viewed the video depicting male homosexual sex: ‘The homophobic men showed a significant increase in penile circumference to the male homosexual video, but the control [nonhomophobic] men did not.’

Just sayin’.

(Photo by David Shankbone - http://shankbone.org/)

The results of California’s Proposition 8 vote were deeply disheartening.   But the following is from the Good News Department here at IHWYJS:  people are making their voices heard.  Americans from coast to coast - gay, straight, young, and old - are speaking out on behalf of tolerance, decency, diversity, and equality.

One might have expected pro-gay rights demonstrations on Saturday in San Francisco, or in other California cities like San Diego and Sacramento.

But people also spoke out on Saturday in favor of marriage equality in New York.  And Boston.  And Pittsburgh.  And Charlotte.  And Honolulu.  And Orlando.  And Indianapolis.  And Seattle.  And Houston.  And Portland.  And Kansas City.  And Cincinnati.  And Providence.  And Atlanta.  And D.C.  And Baton Rouge.  And Phoenix.  And Detroit.  And Nashville.  And St. Louis.  And Chicago.  And Denver.  And Fargo.  And Des Moines.  And Oklahoma City.

And Salt Lake City.

And Idaho Falls.

Get the idea?

The AP reports that Obama insiders have stated that there will be no criminal investigations of Bush administration officials for human rights abuses or war crimes.

Instead, it seems that the president-elect favors something in line with a truth-and-reconciliation model:

Obama has committed to reviewing interrogations on al-Qaida and other terror suspects. After he takes office in January, Obama is expected to create a panel modeled after the 9/11 Commission to study interrogations, including those using waterboarding and other tactics that critics call torture. The panel’s findings would be used to ensure that future interrogations are undisputedly legal.

The article quotes Robert Litt, a former Clinton official in the Justice Department, offering the reasoning that is likely to win the day:

“Both for policy and political reasons, it would not be beneficial to spend a lot of time hauling people up before Congress or before grand juries and going over what went on,” Litt said at a Brookings Institution discussion about Obama’s legal policy. “To as great of an extent we can say, the last eight years are over, now we can move forward — that would be beneficial both to the country and the president, politically.”

Opposing this logic is Michael Rater, a professor at Columbia Law school, who argues that

“The only way to prevent this from happening again is to make sure that those who were responsible for the torture program pay the price for it,” Ratner said. “I don’t see how we regain our moral stature by allowing those who were intimately involved in the torture programs to simply walk off the stage and lead lives where they are not held accountable.”

It is a certainty that Litt’s argument will prevail. However, if I were Rumsfeld, Bush, Cheney, Gonzales, Yoo, or Addington, I would not step foot outside of the United States for the rest of my lifetime.

What a great country we have. We’ve decided that it is acceptable that a single person has the ability to order the capture of individuals wherever they might be on the globe, hold them prisoner indefinitely with no access to a legitimate court, and subject them to torture. There is no other word for this than absolute and abject tyranny.

I was really hoping for a war-crimes trial so that I could see Dick Cheney deliver this line from the witness chair:

You can’t handle the truth! Son, we live in a world that has walls, and those walls have to be guarded by men with guns. Who’s gonna do it? You? You, Lieutenant Weinberg? I have a greater responsibility than you can possibly fathom. . . . And my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves lives! You don’t want the truth because deep down in places you don’t talk about at parties, you want me on that wall! You need me on that wall! We use words like Honor, Code, Loyalty. We use these words as the backbone of a life spent defending something. You use them as a punchline! I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom that I provide, and then questions the manner in which I provide it! I would rather you just said “Thank you” and went on your way. Otherwise, I suggest you pick up a weapon, and stand a post. Either way, I don’t give a damn what you think you are entitled too!

Obama’s FCC transition team suggests that big changes are coming for telecommunications legislation. Susan Crawford and Kevin Werbach, both active defenders of net neutrality and diversity in media ownership:

The choice of the duo strongly signals an entirely different approach to the incumbent-friendly telecom policymaking that’s characterized most of the past eight-years at the FCC.

This March at a telecom policy conference in Hollywood, for example, Crawford bluntly told Ambassador Richard Russell, the White House’ associate director on science and technology policy, that he lived in a fantasyland when he asserted that the United States’ roll-out of broadband is going well.

“I think it’s magical thinking to imagine that we’re somehow doing fine here, and I just want to make sure that we recognize that even the [International Telecommunications Union] says that between 1999 and 2006 we skipped form third to 20th place in penetration,” she noted acidly at the annual Tech Policy Summit, a gathering of top officials in the world of tech policy (of which Wired.com was a participant and sponsor.)

“We’re not doing at all well for reasons that mostly have to do with the fact that we failed to have a US industrial policy pushing forward high-speed internet access penetration, and there’s been completely inadequate competition in this country for high speed internet access,” she said.

And in a final introductory statement during her talk (that’s likely to send shivers down the spines of telecom company executives) she said that she believes internet access is a “utility.”

“This is like water, electricity, sewage systems: Something that each and all Americans need to succeed in the modern era. We’re doing very badly, and we’re in a dismal state,” she said at the time.

You can listen to Crawford discuss telecom policy here, and read Werbach’s columns on tech policy at internet-infrastructure journal Circle-ID.

Wired

These choices seem to echo the Obama plan for Technology and Innovation:

A key reason the Internet has been such a success is because it is the most open network in history. It needs to stay that way. Barack Obama strongly supports the principle of
network neutrality to preserve the benefits of open competition on the Internet. Users must be free to access content, to use applications, and to attach personal devices…

Barack Obama believes that the nation’s rules ensuring diversity of media ownership are critical to the public interest. Unfortunately, over the past several years, the Federal Communications Commission has promoted the concept of consolidation over diversity. Barack Obama believes that providing opportunities for minority-owned businesses to own radio and television stations is
fundamental to creating the diverse media environment that federal law requires and the country deserves and demands. As president, he will encourage diversity in the ownership of broadcast media, promote the development of new media outlets for expression of diverse viewpoints, and clarify the public interest obligations of broadcasters who occupy the nation’s spectrum. An Obama presidency will promote greater coverage of local issues and better responsiveness by broadcasters to the communities they serve.

The NY Times with a fascinating look at one of the central architects of our financial crisis: free-market fundamentalist, Phil Gramm.

This interview clip is heartening.  President-elect Obama has put himself on record - he will “close Guantanamo” and he will “make sure that we don’t torture.”

The contrast between Obama’s remarks and the moral decay of the Bush administration is striking, and it is just one of the many reasons that November 4 marked a new era of hope for America.

In January, we can all celebrate our new President’s inauguration. And then we must do our job - we must hold him to his words.