From Deepest, Darkest Bubbledom

Jon Stewart continues to do public service

Yeah, Peg. Mystery. Right.

Meanwhile, I am entertained to discover that my correspondent yesterday was, as it disturbingly common these days, dutifully acting the part of mind-numbed robot for Limbaugh by parrotting from him the utterly absurd claim that waterboarding somebody 183 times *proves* it wasn’t torture.

So the Administration’s position was “We only waterboarded three guys” while leaving out the fact that this mean “Two guys were waterboarded a total of 266 times”. Limbaugh’s cultists are fighting the rear guard action of trying to lie that waterboarding somebody 183 times is not torture, but even guys like Jonah Goldberg are starting to crack a bit on that outrageous bit of bullshit. They might even one day start to wonder about the roughly 100 other prisoners who died violently while in our custody–and the many many more who did not, but whom the International Red Cross describes as having been tortured.

Still, never underestimate the power of rationalization. So those who are (finally) admitting that Bush/Cheney lied through their teeth when they said “we do not torture” seem to have no problem granting total and complete credulity to everything else they say. “It yielded great intelligence!” “They had i8t coming!” “War means moral carte blanche for whatever we feel we have to do.” All these and many other dubious assertions and outright lies continue to circulate on the Rubber Hose Right and will do so–because Obama has no intention of doing anything about it.

That’s not because Obama is a great big huggy bear who just wants to forgive and forget. It’s because George Dubya Bush handed all future executives some really nifty power and government is like a roach motel: right go in but they do not come back out again.