One, Two -- And A Warning

St. John the Turncoat

It seems Andrew Sullivan is willing to consider, at least, being as cynical as I am about McCain's behavior on the torture bill.

McCain, in other words, is a shrewd politician and he knows when to fight a battle he can win and when to punt on a fight he will lose. If he becomes president, he could, with the discretion given the president in this bill, rescind the torture that Bush has authorized. Maybe, he could repeal the bill, with a Democratic Congress or even a Republican Congress that returned to its decent conservative principles. At the same time, it's clear he has also acquiesced to giving complete legal impunity to the civilian architects of the torture policy within the Bush administration. Maybe that's the real deal here - I'll give you legal protection for past war-crimes if you give me the nomination in 2008. But surely McCain knows better than to trust the likes of Rove. He may have sold his soul ... for a promise from a professional liar. The tragedy of 9/11 keeps deepening, dragging with it men of conscience and principle into the pit of opportunism and Caesarism.

If McCain actually winds up as the front runner for Republicans in 2008, look for a sharp turn to the right during the campaign. Payback time is going to be fun, though, if he's elected, although I'm not as confident as Sullivan that he will immediately turn back the torture brigade. Things like that tend to stay in place in the absense of a strong backlash. You have the Christianists going googoo eyed over mistreating helpless people (why does that not surprise me?), and they still have some political muscle, even though BushCo. has been duping them for six years.

Sullivan has been hot on the torture issue, but nowhere near as forceful -- nor as lucid -- as Digby. Just go to Daily Dish and scroll down.


Deletions

I'm considering taking a couple of sites off my links because they show no evidence of thought and may be brain dead (although I am not about to diagnose on the basis of a home-made video). I may just put them in a new category, something like "Alternate Realities."

I'm thinking about it.


Off to the Wilderness

Not really (I wish!). I have to get myself organized so I can start writing a series of coordinated reviews around the idea of slipstream fiction (coming up on the next GMR). It's the first time I've ever deliberately tried to do a metareview.

We'll see.

If I figure out what slipstream is, I may post about it here.