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Republican Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign reprimanded an intern for claiming several Food Network recipes were those of McCain's wife, Cindy.
The campaign Web site had featured "McCain Family Recipes" including Passion Fruit Mousse, Ahi Tuna with Napa Cabbage Slaw and Farfalle Pasta with Turkey Sausage, Peas and Mushrooms, all seemingly identical to Food Network recipes. Another recipe, for rosemary chicken breasts and warm spinach salad with bacon, was similar to one by celebrity chef Rachael Ray.
McMoron...never reads his own site Bwahahahahahahahaha evidently! whata douche
How ELITIST of them to have little interns sending in "McCain family recipes." Can't they personally send in McCain family recipes or have PROFESSIONAL CHEFS served the McCain family so long they have lost all their family recipes. Its bad enough to have lost all your family recipes because you no longer cook for your family, but to have little interns doing your dirty work for you? OUTRAGEOUS and TOTALLY ELITIST!
See, this is why the entire ELITIST argument blows back right in Republican's faces. THEY JUST DON'T WANT TO HAVE THIS ARGUMENT. They have REALLY stepped in it this time.
"MCCAIN: We can look back at the past and argue about whether we should have gone to war or not, whether we should have invaded or not, and that's a good academic argument."
The Iraq War = "good academic argument" - ELITIST STATEMENT
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/04/16/mccain...
I think that there are probably about 4,000 dead Americans that would argue the Iraq War shouldn't be viewed as a "good academic argument." In fact, they would probably argue that statement is a HELLUVA lot worse than the intellectual gymnastics Republicans and Hillary are trying to employ to make Obama out as some sort of "elitist."
I lived in a city near a college campus -- it was a very dense neighborhood where building were close together and an alley ran behind them. Some student idiot in the next building apparently got a bof of M-80s somewhere. So, he and his buddies would stay up drinking all night and every hour or so --on a random schedule, whenever the mood struck them -- would light an M-80 and toss it into the alley. This was right under my bedroom window. I had no idea who exactly was doing it.
By about the fourth or fifth day, I was a mess. I couldn't think straight.. I couldn't work. I couldn't concentrate. I was about five seconds from punching someone in the face or shooting them. I was physically ill. I hadn't had more than 90 minutes of sleep at one time in almost a week.
So, I can see where a cleverly designed program of sleep deprivation could drive you insane.
In my case, luckily I poked my head into the alley one night just in time to see the kid toss the M-80, so I knew which apartment it came from. I called the building owner, who I knew well because of previous problems with the occupants in the building. He was very cooperative. I also called the school's liaison with the community. The kid was suspended from school and evicted from his apartment.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/975574.html
Seriously, if none of the above is torture... what is??
But really, what I don't understand about this whole torture thing is that if we went into Iraq for the oil, what is up with the torture? Why even do it? They got the war (occupation) they wanted and are earning money hand over fist. Why do it?
The most natural thing of all is to _combine_ the psychological and physical methods. It is also natural to combine all the preceding methods with:
21. Sleeplessness, which they quite failed to appreciate in medieval times. They did not understand how narrow are the limits within which a human being can preserve his personality intact. Sleepnessless (yes, combined with standing, thirst, bright light, terror, and the unknown -- what other tortures are needed!?) befogs the reason, undermines the will, and the human being ceases to be himself, to be his own "I." (As in Chekhov's "I Want to Sleep," but there it was much easier, for there the girl could lie down and slip into lapses of consciousness, which even in just a minute would revive and refresh the brain.) A person deprived of sleep acts half-unconsciousles or altogether unconsciously, so that his testimony cannot be held against him. ^15
They used to say: "you are _not truthful_ in your testimony, and _therefore_ you will not be allowed to sleep!" Sometimes, as a refinement, instead of making the prisoner stand up, they made him _sit down_ on a _soft_ sofa, which made him want to sleep all the more. (The jailer on duty sat next to him on the same sofa and kicked him every time his eyes began to shut.) Here is how one victim -- who had just sat out days in a box infested with bedbugs -- describes his feelings after this torture: "Chill from great loss of blood. Irises of the eyes dried out as if someone were holding a red-hot iron in front of them. Tongue swollen from thirst and prickling as from a hedgehog at the slightest movement. Throat racked by spasms of swallowing." ^16
Sleeplessness was a great form of torture: it left no visible marks and could not provide grounds for complaint even if an inspection -- something unheard of anyway -- were to strike on the morrow. ^17
"They didn't let you sleeep? Well, after all, this is not supposed to be a _vacation resort_. The Security officials were awake too!" (They would catch up on their sleep during the day.) One can say that sleeplessness became the universal method in the _Organs_. From being one among many tortures, it became _an integral part of the system_ of State Security; it was the cheapest possible method and did not require the posting of sentries. In all the interrogation prisons the prisoners were forbidden to sleep even one minute from reveille till taps. (In Sukhanovka and several other prisoners used specifically for interrogation, the cot was folded into the wall during the day; in others, the prisoners were simply forbidden to lie down, and even to close their eyes while seated.) Since the major interrogations were all conducted at night, it was automatic: whoever was undergoing interrogation got no sleep for at least five days and nights. (Saturday and Sunday nights, the interrogators themselves tried to get some rest.)
15. Just picture a foreigner, who knows no Russian, in this muddled state, being given something to sign. Under these conditions the Bavarian Jupp Aschenbrenner signed a document admitting that he had worked on wartime gas vans. It was not until 1954, in camp, that he was finally abale to prove that at the time he had been in Munich, studying to become an electric welder.
16. G. M___ch.
17. Inspection, by the way, was so totally impossible and had so emphatically _never_ taken place that in 1953, when real inspectors entered the cell of former Minister of State Security Abakumov, himself a prisoner by that time, he roared with laughter, thinking their appearance was a trick intended to confuse him.
pp. 142-143:
My interrogator had used no methods on me other than sleeplessness, lies and threats -- all completely legal. Therefore, in the course of the "206" procedure, he didn't have to shove at me -- as did interrogators who had made a mess of things and wanted to play safe -- a document on nondisclosure for me to sign: that I, the undersigned, under pain of criminal penalty, swore never to tell anyone about the methods used in conducting my interrogation.
I'm pretty well convinced that forced sensory deprivation is very much torture.
And I've had enough sleep deprivation to start hallucinating, so I understand that one, too.
Or you can get grabbed off a street or road because some neighbor is pissed at you, or some warlord will get 5000 bucks for an Al Queda, and find yourself being subjected to all kinds of nastiness.
Even forgetting what this does to OUR people, the people doing it, by definition either have to be sadistic MF's already, or if they are decent human beings, this will bite them in the ass...they will live among us (I wouldn't want to live next door to a government terrorist) and anyone stupid enough to now know that they will end up going over the limit, shouldn't be allowed to vote.
That's the main thing. How in the world can you get someone to understand how terrible sleep deprivation (well...if they had a kid, and it was "colic" tell them "it's like that only 100 times worse?) when their frame of reference is that POS show "24", and in their scenario we are the good guys, we only do what is necessary, the interoggator never loses their control and just goes ape, and the person is always a guilty, nasty, terrorist.
That is the main problem. People like this don't read Allende's "House of Spirits" where the right wing overlord (patron) finds out that the coup he has helped arrange, put nasty beasts in power, who torture his own daughter.
What I mean, get them to KNOW in their hearts that it is not just happening to "other people" because too many can accept all kinds of crap as long as it is being done to brown skinned arabic-like folk that speak some other language a world away...or even in the US. And as they move up the chain they will rationalize it all "cause, I have nothing to hide"...
Classic "until they came for me...".
Our world is filled with the human reaction to fear, the blind lashing out, the panic, the wanting some daddy figure "to make it all safe"....the country, and torture policy is in the hands of virtual 10 year olds, afraid.
No one told them there was real RISK involved in a democracy, that it doesn't mean you are completely safe, but they also don't seem to know that terrorism can happen even in police states, especially in police states, but in addition NO ONE has rights.
http://radamisto.blogspot.com/2007/08/irreversi...
http://radamisto.blogspot.com/2007/08/what-they...