bees in my bonnet

There are several stories which have been bugging me today but don't really have time to comment more extensively on them so I'll just post the links here so you can read more.

• There's this story about the degree to which the mainstream media has adopted the US government's framing of what most sensible people call torture. The study covered in the story reveals that waterboarding before 2004 had almost always been called torture but that from 2004 until the present, the newspapers with the widest circulations in the US have largely shrunk from calling it torture and have used many euphemisms.


• The GOP doesn't care about poor people.


• John Boehner is an asshole, part 28496.


• Sharon Angle is also an asshole though not quite of the same vintage as John Boehner. Boehner's assholiness is assholiness at its most accomplished. One can't just get up in the morning one day and decide to be an asshole of the quality of John Boehner. It takes years and years of practice, decades of misrepresenting, and a great deal of projecting in defense of one's shifty political decisions to be such a complete asshole as John Boehner. Still, Angle is certainly well on her way, particularly with the volume of insensitivity she has coughed up in her short time on the national stage. If she keeps up this pace, she will be one of the All-Star Asshole Greats of All Time one day.


• Naomi Klein points out that while there was vandalism during the G20 summit, the REAL crime scene was within the buildings where the leaders met. While the banks made the financial crisis, the G20 finance ministers, in their wisdom, have vowed to cut public debt by half by 2013. So poor folks, kids, old people, the disabled, will be punished for the drunken binges of bankers.


• The financial reform bill looks toothless. The consumer protection agency is gutted and there's no regulation of derivatives.