To paraphrase Sir Walter Scott: Mark their names and mark them well.

I posted this just over a year ago. We have not learned a thing, and the debate goes on. Do we torture, what is torture, do we want another Attorney General who stands with Bush and his heartless regime?

Garrison Keillor was blunt in his quote:



This is very moving and painful to read. The part about the Methodist Church in Dallas is devastating. I have a friend who goes there...wonder if she applauded.

He lists the names of the ones who voted for the torture bill. He condemns them.

Congress's Shameful Retreat From American Values



Let's see, did I miss any of the Democrats who voted YES for torture?

Carper, Landrieu, Lautenberg, Lieberman, Nelson, Nelson, Rockefeller, Salazar, and Stabenow.

Let me know if I missed some.

We are facing the same issue of torture and what is and what isn't, and it is a year later. There should be no question, no debate. America does not torture. Period, bottom line.

Here is Keillor's report on his speech in the Methodist church in Dallas. This is chilling. What has happened to my country?



Yes, it does sound like a church Bush would be a part of. It really does sound that way to me.

Keith Olbermann was our conscience tonight. I seldom see my hubby cry but he did. He's a veteran, Korea. He is shocked we are justifying any kind of torture.

I watched part of Vincent Bugliosi's event on C-Span last night. I recorded it, and we are watching it in bits and pieces. Right at the beginning he said he writes only when he is angry and passionate. I know just how he feels.

You are spot on MF. We have learned nothing. We have done nothing to protect America from its gradual erosion of basic values.

Two nights he has done that. Putting up their pictures and concentrating on it. There is no excuse at all.

Breathes there a man with soul so dead
who to himself has never said.....
this is my own my native land...
whose heart has ner'er within him burned
when home his footsteps he has turned (and then the other quote starts)

----

Now this I learned when I was in the fifth grade ....and at the most I was only nine years old...I remembered it...

Isn't it called "Man without a Country. About somebody name Nathan who was a traitor and was not allowed to come back to the United States. I think it was a sort of true story ..and since I am now 75 I can't remember the guys last name. I am going to do a search and satisfy my curiosity.

The guy who wrote the story was Nathan Hale.

It has been years since I had to read anything of his. Looks like one of the stanzas from there. You were right about the first part.

Breathes there the man with soul so dead
Who never to himself hath said,
This is my own, my native land!
Whose heart hath ne’er within him burn’d 1
As home his footsteps he hath turn’d
From wandering on a foreign strand?
If such there breathe, go, mark him well!
For him no minstrel raptures swell;
High though his titles, proud his name,
Boundless his wealth as wish can claim,—
Despite those titles, power, and pelf,
The wretch, concentred all in self,
Living, shall forfeit fair renown,
And, doubly dying, shall go down
To the vile dust from whence he sprung,
Unwept, unhonour’d, and unsung. 2
http://www.bartleby.com/100/338.html

Perhaps that is the paraphrase. Looks like Keillor made it plural instead of singular.

Kurt Vonnegut's last book was A Man Without A Country

I thought I understood the title. I certainly understand it more now.

From the link:

have desecrated the graves of our fathers and grandfathers who gave their lives in ww2. they have died in vain....i hope to god they never receive peace for what they have done to those brave men.

i really do not expect any republican to have such values as to care about the dead because they care even less for the living

We who as a nation have always claimed The High Moral Ground may now count ourselves among the Fascists, the Soviets, the Dictators and the Banana Republics, festering in our lies and servicing the carnal needs of The Evil One.

God Damn them all, and us if we support them.

Oh yes. I always loved the curse of Zouber Pasha from the movie "KHARTOUM":

Get thee from my house.
May ye die in the desert, alone and untended.
May vultures consume thy flesh, sands thy blood.

By the way, how do you stand it living as one would say, in the "Belly of the Beast?"

I was marooned in Texas for the worst 10 years of my life. If I had a choice between going back and taking up residence in a Federal Prison, I might have to flip a coin.

"The U.S. Senate, in all its splendor and majesty, decided that an "enemy combatant" is any non-citizen whom the president says is an enemy combatant, including your Korean greengrocer or your Swedish grandmother or your Czech au pair, and can be arrested and held for as long as authorities wish without any right of appeal to a court of law to examine the matter. If your college kid were to be arrested in Bangkok or Cairo, suspected of "crimes against the state" and held in prison, you'd assume that an American foreign service officer would be able to speak to your kid and arrange for a lawyer, but this may not be true anymore. Be forewarned."

it will spur me on.
Both my senators are on it - expected but still enraging.