Yay, a trip to the bathroom resulted in excruciating pain, the sweats, the shakes, and nausea to the point I really did think I was going to throw up and pass out.

Back in bed now. Nice bed. Good bed.

Took off the lidocaine patch, in case that was making things worse.

Please Jebus, please don't make me have to get out of bed for a good long time.

You know, I was going to leave the Republican thing alone. I respect people's right to have a different opinion than me. However, your referring to waterboarding as "getting wet" was so offensive to me that I'm responding.

Regardless of whether you think that it's enhanced interrogation, torture, or "torture' it is still making someone believe that they are about to drown, and treating it so casually with a cute little name is demeaning.

Miranda rights: I stand corrected on whether they apply to non-Americans. I will ask those who know more about these things if Miranda rights apply to enemy combatants. The Christmas bomber was not a shoplifter. He was an agent of a non-state enemy of this country, wearing no uniform, and actively attempting to kill American civilians. Whether caught on U.S. soil or otherwise, I think that (should) effectively take him out of standing for Miranda rights, but I'm not a lawyer.

If someone is arrested, they must be read their Miranda rights, because they should not be treated as an "enemy combatant" until adjudicated as such by the relevant body. Until that point, they have all of the rights and privileges as anyone else who is arrested and that includes Miranda and 4th amendment rights.

As for the "hatred" of Bush, Cheney and Palin, I don't hate them, I hate what they do/did. I hate that I lost trust in my government because they lied to me, even if they believe it was for a good reason. I also think that Sarah Palin is not intelligent, and would be dangerous in any position of leadership because she would be led by those around her (worse than Bush on that front, because he at least listened to his handlers, she's a "maverick"). Frankly, anyone who cannot name a supreme court case other than Roe v. Wade or name any newspaper when asked should not be leading anything.

Vortex, I'm sorry my words offended.

I've been reading a lot on this subject from Marc Thiessen, such as this

Thiessen served as Chief Speechwriter to GWBush, and was a member of the White House senior staff. His book's title is ridiculously inflammatory, "Courting Disaster: How the CIA Kept America Safe and How Barack Obama Is Inviting the Next Attack" but the articles of his I've read make sense to me.

If you only lost trust in your government when GWB ran it, you're younger than I thought, and certainly younger than I am :-)

I personally don't want Sarah Palin for Prez, either, FWIW.

Well said, Vortex.

Seriously! I have over $2000 to get reimbursed via my FSA, and I know it won't take me long to do the paperwork, and yet...

Y'all who would come into a bit of money for just doing some paperwork - I'll do your paperwork for you for a cut....

Y'all who would come into a bit of money for just doing some paperwork - I'll do your paperwork for you for a cut....

I was thinking a task swap might be in order here! Sometimes it's way easier to take care of someone else's business than your own.

If you only lost trust in your government when GWB ran it, you're younger than I thought, and certainly younger than I am :-)

You know what? I'm not Vortex and she can certainly stand up for herself, but this is enough to make even me poke my head into this discussion. I think the nation, as a collective whole, lost their innocence and trust in government with the Watergate scandal because that was such a thorough unveiling of the machinations of the government and the Commander in Chief by the media, rather than using the protective gauze curtain which had been the norm until then.

Even so, I think the public wanted to believe it was an isolated incident; sadly, not the case. However, the country that Bush inherited command of and the one he left behind were most assuredly not the same and much of it was because of his own mishandling of situations, buffoonery, and the cast of Machiavellian characters with whom he surrounded himself and whose advice he chose to follow (or rather, whose machinations he chose to ignore). That he could leave a country in which such a substantial chunk even consider Sarah Palin to be a viable candidate is fearful, in and of itself, and I think you can definitely attribute that to the fearmongering and sheer ignorance which Bush and his toadies so diligently advocated.

So yeah, I was cynical about government before Bush, but in his wake left utterly disenchanted and fearful of it in a way that can only be compared to say... 1930s Germany or Poland or perhaps 1789 France.

Make of that what you will.

I have to go shovel snow again. Wah.

Holy fuck. It's amazing to me how a tiny little slip on ice that doesn't even result in a fall can fuck up one;s back to the point that they WANT TO DIE if for no other reason than it would put them in a lying down position that they wouldn't get much shit for.

Then there's the whole issue that since we signed the Geneva Convention, we are prohibited from torturing, and are required to prosecute allegations of torture. What ever happened to Republicans upholding the rule of law? I think GWB should have just said, "We're withdrawing from the Geneva Convention because we want to torture people." Instead, they attempted to redefine torture to allow what the Bush administration wanted to do.

I'm still very disappointed in the Obama administration for not prosecuting Cheney et al. Cheney has admitted to war crimes (when he stated that he endorsed the waterboarding of suspects). We are now required to prosecute him, as are the other signatories to the Geneva Convention should Cheney ever set foot in those countries.

If you only lost trust in your government when GWB ran it, you're younger than I thought, and certainly younger than I am :-)

I suspect this was humor intended to lighten the moment. But I will just share that I voted for Bush the first time around and he *made* me a Democrat. I am probably still a fairly conservative person but after 8 years of Bush, I can't shake the feeling that he and other leaders of his party are just mean or at best indifferent, particularly to poor people or people in minorities.

I can't remember the name, but there is this Supreme Court case in which the holding was essentially "despite majority voting, the majority can't use its majority to pick on minorities."

Not sure how relevant that is. But it's what I think of every time people discuss losing faith in government. I really should look up the name of that case.