I Feel Your Bummers

[from 1/6/10]

I know 2010 will be an OK year. I have already explained the reason for this true fact over a year ago, in this space, Dec. 31, '08. Namely, 2001: A Space Odyssey was a great movie, and 2001 was one of the worst years in modern history. Not anywhere near as bad as 1348, but stinky. Whereas, 2010: The Year We Make Contact was a perfectly horrid movie (it "blew") so the real year 2010 has to correspondingly good, at least good enough to maintain the balance of the fluids in the cosmic spheres. If that doesn't make sense to you, you're not high enough and you're bringing us all down, dude.

I've been thinking a lot about bummers, in general. Believe it or not, I don't personally use non-prescription consciousness-altering pharmaceuticals. That rumor is entirely based upon assumptions engendered by my writing and not at all supported by any direct observation. I get high on absurdity. Nevertheless, I know what a bummer is, and I see what they do to people, and I can feel their pain.

It really is a tragedy that the other day some buzz-kill entered the screened area of Newark Airport by the "out" door, leaving TSA absolutely no choice but to rescreen thousands of travelers at one of three terminals. The CNN story had this: "I just saw one woman pleading with a gate agent, saying that she had two small children and a heart condition -- that she simply could not take this," Cho [a CNN personage] said. "But of course, there will be no exceptions."

"There will be no exceptions." We must have order. Because if we don't, the bummer will spread, and pretty soon everyone will have it. The bummer must be contained! All the bummers must be contained!

They never found the probable terrorist or TSA employee who entered backwards. He could still be hiding in Terminal C waiting for just the right moment to blow up his underpants. My guess: he exited by mistake and decided to return the same way. But people know TSA is looking after their safety.

In the last decade, we contained most of our bummers in Guantanamo, where we subjected them to enhanced interrogations, so as to guarantee our safety from "enemy combatants." With the election of Obama, that was supposed to change. We were going to stop the enhanced interrogations, try all the captives in courts, release the ones we couldn't convict, and imprison the ones we could with a clear bummer-free conscience.

But, mother of bummers, it turns out that all that application of our firm American beliefs in freedom and justice and human rights is just impractical and inconvenient, so, never mind.

Meanwhile, 5 enemy combatants of our enemies, former Blackwater mercenaries accused of manslaughter of civilians in Baghdad a while back, got their case thrown out because they were interrogated under threat of prosecution. Technically, it wasn't a threat, more of a statement of fact, but it was the way it was said, you know, frowny-faced and all.

So for our enemies, water boarding is fine. For our mercenaries, don't even hint that you might take their key to the HumVee away. As it should be, because if we started treating everybody in the world the way we treat our enemies, none of us would be having a good time, would we?

First they came to impeach our President, but we would have none of that, and he finished his term. Then, they wanted to try his Deputy Chief of Staff, but he resigned and later carped at the new administration for not doing enough to protect against terrorists, and we all listened. Then they came for the legal adviser who told them torture was legal, and our new administration wouldn't want to set a precedent like that. Finally they tried to try our mercenaries, but if we let that happen, gosh, who'd be next?

Yes, 2010 will be bummer-free for America.

I've Copped Feels

Disclaimer: I suck at philosophy.

I learned this crucial fact in my first college class of my first day in college. I was enrolled in what I would now call Philosophy 101. The professor, whom I would now call Baldy, told us at the outset that every freshman who had enrolled in the course expecting an easy breezy A writing incoherent papers dripping existential BS would show themselves most philosophic by dropping the course immediately. I stayed. As a result, 32 years later, I still wake up shuddering from a recurring nightmare in which I am called upon to write one single correct sentence explaining the point of Socrates' dialog with Gorgias, and then the horror continues on, as I realize I can't do it wide awake either.

I spent 5 weeks not learning anything about said dialog and spent the remainder of the course not learning anything about John Stuart Mill's Liberty and Henry David Thoreau's essay on civil disobedience. I really had high hopes for Thoreau's dealy, because the book was just the kind I like, being small in all three dimensions and exceedingly light. But all I could come up with when called upon to explain what I had read was some 500 words to the effect that civil disobedience was a really nifty idea.

I think part of the problem was that Mr. Thoreau's examples were chosen from a time I had not existed. If he had used examples from, like, you know, now, it would have made more sense.

I have since acquired a better feel for the subject of civil disobedience. I have copped a feel, you could say. I would like to share, in a little Socratic exercise.

I will cite three examples from times when I have existed. My apologies to younger people who missed these. 1) Rosa Parks won't get up for white people, 1955. 2) Dr. Michael Lippman spraypaints a Seattle Camel cigarette billboard to say "... a whole new world OF CANCER", 1986. 3) Cheney and friends torture detainees for half this decade or more.

I'll start with the last first. Cheney's justification for waterboarding, etc., is straight out of Civil Disobedience For Dummies. In essence: "Yes, we signed and ratified treaties outlawing it. Yes, (perhaps) those treaties have therefore the force of law, in accordance with our Constitution. But when American lives are at stake, a Higher Law must prevail." Cheney imagines himself as a Rosa Parks of a Post 9-11 World, innocent by virtue of bravely defying an unreasonable and unjust law for the sake of the people, to save lives. The torture memos were just a hedge allowing the "(perhaps)" to be inserted.

Dr. Lippman was caught and charged with a misdemeanor. He pled innocent on the grounds that cancer kills and cigarettes cause cancer and only by making that warning in large letters on that billboard could lives be saved. The law that said he may not deface that billboard, as it was someone else's property, had to give way to a Higher Good. He was innocent by virtue of defying a petty and unreasonable law unjust in its application, in order to save lives. And now nobody smokes.

Many liberals in Seattle then compared Lippman to Rosa Parks. To those of you too young to recall and who haven't had the history lesson, in 1955 Rosa Parks deliberately violated a law that said that a non-white person seated on a bus had to give up their seat to white people when told to do so by the driver, just as if all white people were disabled. She did it because the law was wrong, and she jailed and later convicted of disorderly conduct and fined. And now we have a black president.

So here's the deal. Before you can pass Practical Philosophy For Everyday Applications, you have to figure out whether these are all justified uses of civil disobedience, and if one or two are not, why not?

Yes, Geniuses Suck, Too

I want everyone to learn how to be a genius like me.

I was in the Real Change office yesterday afternoon admitting that I suck because I was already at that moment 6 hours past the deadline to write this, and hadn't started yet. (And at 18 hours later I hadn't started yet still! I suck more!) A trick I've learned in life is to always announce that you suck before anyone tells you. It's better if you say it first.

It's one of many techniques I have accumulated over the years, and may soon make available in a self-help audio-tape series for just $79.99 in one easy installment, to help you and you and you be a genius, too. In the same conversation the editorial staff and I discussed what is certainly the most important technique of all, which is Master the Obvious.

Actually, I don't know if being a Master of the Obvious makes you a genius, but I can pretend it does and encourage others to go along with it until they believe me! And 99% of being a genius is being declared one, because it isn't an objective condition!

See how it works? I just Mastered the Obvious!

Let's try it with the News of the day. I read this morning that Democratic Senator Birch Bayh, who voted to confirm Michael Mukasey for Attorney General, thought Mukasey to be "an improvement over Bush's previous attorneys general," being neither "excessively ideological" like Ashcroft nor "incompetent" like Gonzales.

Isn't that just all you can ask for in an attorney general? I mean, we can't ask for an exceptionally competent attorney general of surpassing wisdom. This is 2007. Those guys were all chewed up by the Peloponnesian War, right?

If only we had a president who was as well qualified as Mukasey. Neither bat-spit insane, nor brain-dead.

By the way, I just illustrated another technique of being a genius. Always let your mind free to wander off topic. Last night Anitra "OK on History But If She Gets Started On Worms Run For Your Lives" Freeman was recalling Machiavelli telling his Prince, "And he who becomes master of a city accustomed to freedom and does not destroy it, may expect to be destroyed by it, for in rebellion it has always the watchword of liberty and its ancient privileges as a rallying point, which neither time nor benefits will ever cause it to forget." What the hell was that all about? The Peloponnesian War! Machiavelli knew that Athens was trounced in the Peloponnesian war but they bounced back. They had tasted freedom!. I wouldn't have thought of that if I had the mental discipline to stay on topic! Mental discipline keeps you from being a genius!

[Above; You will all know that this is a picture of Machiavelli and not Adam Hyla, Real Change's editorial manager, by virtue of the hair being too long in the back.]

Of, course that has nothing to do with what I was saying, but I feel better having thought of it.

Another story, which may have been in the New York Times, but I read it on Military.com of all places, related the views of Malcolm Nance, a counter-terrorism and intelligence consultant for the special operations, homeland security and intelligence agencies. Nance called the debate over waterboarding "a crisis of honor," and said that accepting it as a tool of interrogation does the United States no honor.

It turns out Malcolm Nance could speak from experience because he has worked with SERE, the military's own Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape school, as a master instructor and chief of training, instructing our own soldiers and sailors, and airmen in how to deal with torture. He has conducted hundreds of waterboardings for his students so they would know what torture is.

Nance says our own guys are teaching waterboarding as a form of torture that "evil totalitarian enemy" would use "at the slightest whim" so our soldiers have to be prepared for it and ready to give evasive and misleading answers when faced with it.

"Is waterboarding torture?" The not-incompetent says it needs more study. The genius says, "Hell yes."

Rev. Haggard and Other Hazards

Five weeks ago we enjoyed Ted Haggard’s pronouncement that President George Bush is not Satan. Years before, the evangelical leader Reverend Ted Arthur “I Did Not Have Sex With That Male Whore And Never Used That Meth” Haggard made a key endorsement George Bush needed to win the presidency in 2000. He is a good honorable man and I, for one, totally believe his denials of wrongdoing.

Haggard was only being Christlike in his love for his male flesh merchant. His frequent payments of $200 to his for-hire boy toy were not for sex. They made Haggard an instrument of God’s Love to a poor struggling sinner. Likewise, when he bought unwanted meth from his drug-dealing hooker it was just a kind way to give without demeaning the recipient.

Who needs happy endings, when they’re on the Way to the Lord’s Eternal Happy Ending?

Speaking of lies, cowardice, and criminal conduct, as of last week I planned to spend this column conveying the idea that while Bush, Cheney, and a large percentage of their staff and cabinet are guilty of High Crimes and Misdemeanors galore and unquestionably deserve mass impeachment, it would be bad for the country to take that route.

There’s the NSA warrantless wiretapping surveillance program which violates the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and so violates the provision in Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution that Congress “shall make Rules for the Government & Regulation of the land and naval forces” and violates the provision, in Article II, Section 3, that the President “shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.” It undermines freedom of speech (1st Amendment) and the right of counsel and to fair trials (6th Amendment, because the government eavesdrops on client-attorney discussions) and citizen’s rights to due process (5th Amendment.)

Gosh, while I was making that list I plum forgot to mention the 4th Amendment. IT SAYS DON’T DO WARRANTLESS SEARCHES RIGHT THERE IN PLAIN ENGLISH. The Supreme Court ruled some time ago (1967) that wiretaps constitute searches for the purposes of applying the 4th Amendment.

That’s at least six provisions of the Constitution undermined, and at least 3 flagrant violations of both the letter and the spirit of provisions that speak to the heart of what makes the United States a great nation and distinguishes its government from a worthless dictatorship. So George Bush and accomplices are guilty of continuous disregard of our founding law.

Then there’s the 2003 Iraq War, which satisfied the legal definition of a war of aggression and therefore was and always will be a war crime under United States law. It violates Article VI: “all... treaties made shall be the Supreme Law of the Land” and “all executive officers shall be bound to support the Constitution.”

The use of “unlawful combatant status” is also a flagrant continuous unabated and unmitigated violation of treaty law ratified by the United States Congress and represents an insult to the Constitution and to every citizen who gives a damn that this is a country of laws not ruled by a king.

When before has it been necessary to remind any United States administration that to torture a state prisoner is to commit treason against that state?

But, hey, a mass impeachment would be disruptive, so I was going to say, let’s live and let live, it’s only 2 more years, blah, blah, blah.

Then I learned that George Bush intends to deny detainees (not yet proven guilty of any crime) access to lawyers and to keep them in isolation IN PERPETUITY, on the unbelievable grounds that they have been the unwilling subjects of secret interrogation techniques.

This is the most despicable, vile, disgusting, assault on American Law, on fundamental human rights, on common decency, and the good name of the United States since this country practiced slavery.

Now we have no other choice but to try this man and every one who has put him up to this, simply to show the rest of the world that we don’t condone such depravity.

Horsemeat and Other Indelicacies

Recently Andy Rooney started one of his 60 Minutes essays talking about spinach making people sick and ended with some observations having to do with the eating of horsemeat. I’m not actually sure what he was saying in-between because I was drowning his voice out with my screams. Later I spoke to Timothy “Perfess’r” Harris, our director, and asked him to shoot me if I ever wrote like that and he indicated that in that case I’d be shot about once every four weeks.

This may be one of those times. I’m high on NyQuil and I feel an irresistible urge to lead you all on a tour of my mind.

Speaking of tours, I was watching Rick Steves’ Europe the other day, and he was touring Turkey. While my eyes were watching, my mind was spinning with thoughts of cattle swimming the Bosporus, the cow jumping over the moon, and questions like, “If Turkey can be part of Europe, then why do we have wars, and why can’t we all have vacation property on Bora Bora?”

As my questions went unanswered I noticed that Rick Steves was playing backgammon with some Turkish people on the screen, and I listened long enough to hear him say that you can’t make a bad move in backgammon when playing the Turks, they won’t let you.

I immediately thought of Sudoku, to which I have lately become addicted. Sudoku isn’t remotely like backgammon, except that it’s a game. For the purposes of my immediate thought the only significant feature of Sudoku is that you do it by yourself. Therefore the great thing about doing Sudoku, the thing that makes it so appealing for me, is I don’t have to play it with some ego-crazed spoiled crybaby sitting across from me.

You see, I used to think that I might like to play chess. But I discovered that everyone within a radius of 3000 miles of me who was willing to join me at it was an ego-crazed spoiled crybaby. Thanks to Rick Steves I now know that I only had to move to Turkey to find people who could enjoy a friendly chess game like human beings. Provided I first hid their dice from them.

You may be wondering what any of this has to do with eating horsemeat. Well, one of Andy Rooney’s points, or pointlets, was that he was an American and Americans don’t eat horsemeat, and he, for one, wasn’t about to start.

Likewise, I would like to make a point, or pointlet, that I am an American, and that we Americans are by and large ego-crazed spoiled crybabies, and I, for one, have just about had it.

I’m not talking just about the lack of civil discourse evident during the current political campaigns, although that’s part of it. I’m talking about all the mean-spirited and uncivil and unsportsmanlike conduct that is revealing itself throughout our society at all levels, especially the highest, where it does the most monumental harm.

How can it be that I now have to write columns arguing against pre-emptive warfare and torture?

Last week George Bush signed the Military Commissions Act, which deprives almost all human rights to all non-Americans. It doesn’t prevent them from being tortured; it only requires torturers to avoid doing anything that might feel like organ failure or life threatening. So genital-electro-shock is out, thumbscrews are in.

The Act not only allows torture, it also lets the military tribunals use the evidence so obtained against the unlucky suspect. So if you are suspected of being a terrorist and they beat you or someone else into saying that you are a terrorist, then by the new rules, you’re a terrorist.

One of my former chess acquaintances made up the rule that he would always be White, because Black loses too much. I quit playing right about then. How soon before the rest of the world quits playing with America?

How long before the rest of the world catches on that our law treats them like dogs?

Today’s Lesson: Cell Spy-ology

According to our Justice Department, our government can spy on us, but we can’t spy on it.

Yesterday George W. said, “If somebody from Al Qaeda is calling you, we'd like to know why.” I expect tomorrow he’ll add, “If we don’t know someone from Al Qaeda is calling you, it’s because we didn’t spy on you enough.” Then he’ll come up with, “You may not have had a call from Al Qaeda yet, but there’s always a first time, and we’re gonna need to be there, listening in. America’s freedom is at stake.”

With excuses like that, and a little torture here and a little indefinite imprisonment without charges there, pretty soon you’ve got a real totalitarian state. Happy New Year!

Evidently, those of us who care about preserving this country’s actual freedom, and not just talking about it while destroying it, need to find creative new ways to counter the administration’s rhetoric. I say, if you can’t beat them, join them.

Let’s let them know that we understand the need for spying. We need all the information we can get about our enemies, with whom we are at war. But we also need to fight this war with good old American initiative. Just like we beat the bad fascists in WWII, so that we could be ruled by good fascists now, we need to hit the terrorists with the full might of the U.S.A. We citizens need to lock arms together and fight this war united.

That’s why all the information that the administration gets from wiretapping us needs to be made available to all Americans, so that we all will know where to go to kick Al Qaeda butt. The more of us that are in on Al Qaeda butt-kicking, the more butt-kickings are going to happen. This is America, and that’s what we do.

Bush has said, "We're at war, and as commander in chief, I've got to use the resources at my disposal, within the law, to protect the American people.” But, hey, in WWII, did we only send that old guy Roosevelt to Normandy? No! We sent everybody we had!

I’m not talking about sending people to France. That was then. This is a war of information. Bush himself has said that, too. He said, "There's an enemy out there. They read newspapers, they listen to what you write, they listen to what you put on the air, and they react."

They read newspapers! They react! We’ve got to read newspapers and react, too! You’ve got to fight fire with fire. They know where we are, and they can send suicide bombers after us. We’ve got to know where they are. So we can suicide bomb right back at them. It just stands to reason.

They’ve got no freedom. We need to have no freedom. They’ve got to hide in cells and fight independently from each other, never sure what the other cells are going to do. We have to split up into cells too. But that’s going to require information.

It’s not just something that some few patriots among us should be doing. It’s something we all have to do because it’s our duty. We all have to know who’s talking to Al Qaeda and when and why.

Let me illustrate with a potential scenario. Suppose Al Qaeda calls a pizza shop in our nation’s capital and says, “heh, heh, Pizza Hovel? Yeah, this is Al Qaeda, at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, D.C. Yeah that’s right, we’re THE Al Qaeda, Death to America, yadda, yadda, heh, heh, so we need 70 large pizzas, all with olives, mushrooms, green peppers, and anchovies. No pepperoni, no sausage. Ask for George, he’s paying.”

Our government needs to get a transcript of a call like that on the internet at once, so our loyal American cells in the D.C. area can take immediate appropriate action. And lay waste to that Al Qaeda party.

This Is Sheer Torture

“Homelessness is bad. War hurts people. Starvation is wrong. Poverty sucks. Pollution ruins the Earth.” These are just some of the messages that we here at Adventures in Irony detest bringing you week after week. It isn’t that we don’t agree with these messages, it’s just that we get tired of repeating ourselves.

Recently we have been forced to repeat, over and over again, “Torture is cruel and inhumane, and information obtained from torture is unreliable.” Please don’t make us say it again! We’ll tell you anything else you want to hear!

So we were ready to eat our own brains from the inside out when we read some news that offered an end to our agony. An AP-Ipsos poll determined that 61% of Americans along with a majority of people in Britain, France, and South Korea, think it’s OK to torture terrorist suspects under some circumstances. However the British, French, and South Koreans, are hypocrites: even though they’re for torture, they say they don’t want it in their own countries. Whereas the Americans, by a sizeable majority, don’t have a problem with it happening right here in the good old U. S. of A.

We have been protesting torture here unnecessarily. If the majority of Americans want to be able to be tortured just because someone suspects them of being a terrorist, who are we to stand in the way of democracy? And if the rest of the world is for torture but doesn’t want it in their own backyards, and Americans do, then excellent opportunities open up for American enterprise.

We hadn’t been thinking creatively about torture. We need to think outside of the box, about the box. It isn’t simply that, “if torture is outlawed, only outlaws will torture.” It’s that outlawing torture is bad for business, for the economy, and costs us a valuable tax base. If we legalize it, we can regulate it. We can tax it. It can help pay for our prisons, our jails, our schools, and our other centers of indoctrination and discipline.

We can stem the tide of out-sourcing of American jobs overseas. We can make this country a leader in torture throughout the world. Let the British, the French, the South Koreans beat a path to our door. We can’t provide technical assistance over the phone as well or as cheaply as Indians or Malaysians, but we can water-board better than anyone else, and we’re willing to do the dirty jobs that those others think they’re too good for.

Let’s let Americans do what Americans do best: innovate for the sake of progress and financial reward! Why should torturing be limited to the CIA, the military, and Iraqi intelligence officers? We need to license ordinary American businesses to do the business of torturing.

When we have permitted the franchising of torture to creative American corporations, the rest of the world will gladly send us their business. As an international leader in a newly invigorated industry, our businesses will be able to define and dominate the world market. Just as, centuries ago, the word “China” came to mean dishes, just as the word “India” came to mean ink, so the word “America” will come to mean torture.

Torture can reverse our trade deficit, and tax revenues from torturing the suspects of other countries can help us pay off the national debt. At a time when we owe 2 out of every 5 of our United States to Germans, Arabs, and Koreans, we can, ironically, regain full ownership of our own land by letting Germans, Arabs, and Koreans pay us to torture other Germans, Arabs, and Koreans.

Then, twenty or thirty years from now, when those of us who haven’t been tortured are all fat from torture money and our government coffers are over-flowing with torture revenues, then we can ban torture from public places, and 25 feet from their doors and windows.

While still keeping it legal, of course.

Goodbye Carrot-Head

We've got your Real Change right here! Out with the Old! In with the New!

When I started writing this column in the dim past I was beardless and thin and my head somewhat resembled a carrot. Thus "carrot-head man" was born as a self-portrait and we used him to represent me all these years on this page. But I am now bearded, fat, and my head somewhat resembles a bell pepper. Moreover, I can't draw bell peppers. So, goodbye carrot-head man. Hello some photograph, one that we will try to doctor to keep from scaring anyone.

As Real Change marches forward into its brave new future of weekly publication, I find myself pausing to reflect on the past. Mostly when I do this I reflect on my own past because other people's past would be history and I would have to study to reflect on that.

I reflect on poorer days, when I would sell myself to university psych professors and students as an experimental subject. I did so occasionally when I was a homeless college student. It made more sense to me than being a medical subject, because I figured they'd be less likely to do permanent damage. Plus, on my campus, they always paid $5 just for applying, even if they turned you down.

I got turned down once because I knew too much. The experimenters wanted someone who hadn't heard about Milgram's study of obedience to authority. That was the one where Stanley Milgram found that more than 60% of people studied, when told forcefully enough to do so, would administer dangerous and painful electroshocks to innocent strangers, even when it appeared that the victims might die. Since I knew that all I got was $5 that time.

All of this jumped into focus this week when I read an article in the Seattle P-I about a new study planned to find out if believing in God helps you deal with pain.

Now, a lesser-known aspect of Milgram's study and it's spawns were indications that the more religious subjects in such experiments were more likely to obediently torture their victims than were the less religious.

Of course, religious doesn't equate with believing in God. Still, I see a host of ironies rising up to drag me into a fiery pit of flaming sulfurous irony-hell.

In the new study volunteers will submit to pain and experimenters will see whose brains show the most pain activity, those of the believers or those of the non-believers. Then, to make things more interesting, they'll show various religious symbols, to "see if that helps."

What a great idea! Let's show a crucifix to a guy in agony and see if he gets the message! How about a nail or a martyr's knuckle? OK, maybe we should consider other sorts of symbols. How about one of those pictures of a lamb being led by Jesus? That would probably work.

Isn't it just wonderful that religion has now come full circle since the Inquisition? In the Olden Days it was a bitch rounding up heathens for torture. Nobody wanted to hurt. But now everyone wants to be the newest and best Jackass for Jesus.

First, you get paid. All of these kinds of studies pay their "volunteers," who are invariably impoverished college students and poor people living near colleges. Secondly, if you are at all religious, this is your chance to prove to the world that your gospel/doctrine/prophet/or whatever really works the one miracle everyone wants the most: numbness.

This might work: apply, but tell them you're a masochist. Get disqualified, take the $5 and run.

Perils of Pope Pauline

Personally, I don't like to talk about abortions. It isn't that I have any problem discussing such controversial issues as abortions represent. It's just that, personally, I can't have any. Abortions, that is.

For, contrary to any previous claims to the contrary, I am not now, and never have been, a woman. Thus, there is not now, and never has been, a pregnancy option on the old Wesmobile. Since I can't get pregnant it is extremely unlikely that I would ever have to decide whether I should get an abortion or not. I might want to decide such a thing. I might even want to have to decide it. But I wouldn't have to decide it.

Likewise the Pope doesn't have to decide whether he should get an abortion. Like 100% of all other Roman Catholic priests, the Pope, AKA Bishop 001, isn't a woman, has never been a woman, and if he became a woman at this late date he wouldn't be allowed to be pope anymore. There can't be a Pope Joan Pauline.

If the Pope became pregnant, they would snatch his pointy hat and curly stick away, refer him to a home for wayward girls, and call together the Electoral College of Bishops to do that weird thing they do with the colored rocks and the smoke and elect a new man to lead the club.

So it is something to wonder at that not only does the Pope want to decide who else should get abortions, but that he feels equipped to decide this issue himself, personally, without even so much as asking for input from anyone, like for instance a woman, who might ever have need to decide whether to get one.

Ordinarily what the Pope decides on behalf of all women, none of whom get any say in the matter, wouldn't be a huge concern of mine, since my one-time relationship with the Roman Catholic Church suffers from considerable neglect. But now one of their lesser bishops is forcing me to jump into the gravy and roll around in it, if you know what I mean.

Here's the deal. Some pea-brain bishop in Colorado heard that some other bishops were saying that politicians who are pro-choice shouldn't be allowed communion. Having a pea-brain, this Bishop Michael Sheridan decided that just punishing the politicians for disagreeing with him wasn't enough. He would punish the voters themselves. So if you're in his diocese and you vote for a pro-choice candidate for, say, the presidency, no more Body of Christ for you.

Never mind that he doesn't know who votes for whom. As he puts it, "God knows." He has the power of guilt working for him, and he takes for granted that these, his people, are guilt-ridden people. He relies on the honor system for now. (Maybe later he will scour rolls of campaign contributors.)

Now if you have followed me so far you should have caught the fact that I do not now regularly consume Christ Body, nor do I live in Bishop Pea-Brain's diocese. So you could very well be asking, "Wes, why the hell do you care?"

I'll tell you why I care. I don't want to trade my American citizenship in for citizenship in a New Christian Iran of America, where some Roman Catholic bishop sets himself up as the Ayatollah of Colorado Springs and starts issuing fatwahs against anybody who doesn't vote for his candidate.

I want a government that doesn't try to tell me that holding someone's head under water and pretending to drown them doesn't constitute inhumane treatment. I'm still waiting to hear George W. Bush order such treatment stopped at Guantanamo. What's taking so long? Do we have to wait for the Wizard to make him human?

I want to be proud of my country. I want the people in my country to vote for a president who would not dismiss the Geneva Convention under any conditions.

I want Americans to have a free choice between torture and not-torture. I also want them to be able to freely choose against unjust wars, pre-emptive wars, and/or wars of economic exploitation.

I take this all very personally. I don't want my country to torture in my name.

Torture Simplified

Warning: this won't be one of my more humorous efforts. Not only is the subject too sad, but I also think that I shouldn't have eaten that tuna fish casserole for lunch yesterday.

Continuing from last time and speaking of the value of a free press, has anyone out there reflected on the fact that CBS now plays an essential role in the briefing of the president?

If it weren't for 60 Minutes II, Bush wouldn't have known about the severity or the extent of Abu Ghraib abuses. Bush should publicly thank the 60 Minutes crew and invite them all to dinner at the White House. Bush should use the occasion to ask CBS to advise our military intelligence officers on how you actually learn things. For example they could explain to them that humiliating your sources doesn't work.

Or he could get Bob Woodward. Woodward got Bush and all sorts of administration officials under Bush to open up to him. I'm sure he didn't precede his interrogation of Bush by "softening him up" Pentagon style. He probably did it the way I would do it, by telling Bush what a great guy he is and what a cool president he's been, and "that tie looks absolutely fabulous on you, Sir," and "I'll bet you'll go down in history as the most compassionately conservative president we've ever had."

If I threw up during any of that I could blame it on something I had for lunch.

What we have here is a failure to communicate, on a scale so grand and epic it outdoes Hollywood. One hardly knows where to begin.

How about the fact that the Pentagon directed that some prisoners should receive "softening up" treatment prior to interrogations? Maybe that would be a good start.

So last October, when the Red Cross discovered that Iraqi prisoners were kept naked in dark barren cells for days at a time, and the interrogating officer said that the practice was just "part of the process," he was really describing a process that had been approved by the Pentagon.

Now to be fair where fair isn't deserved, the Pentagon's directive requires that such procedures only be used under orders from the top. But how does the Red Cross know who ordered what they saw? And how does the private who carries out the order in the prison to strip a prisoner know whether the original order came from a general or whether it came from the M. I. officer standing next to him telling him to do it?

The problem is, the description of what the Pentagon allows in the way of "softening up" (bad but not so bad) and the verbal descriptions of what was actually done are too easy to line up. I can easily imagine Rumsfeld, busy as he must be what with protecting the free world and expanding its borders by bombing the unfree world to bring freedom to it, would quickly skim a report of wrongdoing by prison guards at a military prison and not be alarmed.

He could have thought, "Oh, this isn't all that bad. They just got a little carried away doing what we told them to do. Hell, that's why we have a professional army, so we can expect our guys to have initiative."

Likewise it would have been easy to dismiss the Red Cross complaints. A general reviewing the complaints could easily convince him/herself that the Red Cross was misinterpreting the evidence. He/she could think that what they really saw was soldiers carrying out procedures that the Pentagon allows, procedures that would look similar to the abuse that was actually seen.

Meanwhile, Rumsfeld reminds us all that it's abuse, not torture. That is so true, Rummy, and we thank you all from deep in our hearts for pointing that out to us.

Torture is when I threaten to electrocute you if you don't tell me where you hid the nonexistent weapons of mass destruction. Abuse is when I threaten to electrocute you so you'll tell me an hour from now where you hid the nonexistent weapons. See the difference?

Good Grief, Indeed

I'm in for it this time: I let myself get talked into making this column about the death penalty and Ridgway's sentence deal. Look out, everybody, we're in for a laugh riot now!

This situation came about because our beloved "editor" Adam "Designated Cat-Herder" Holdorf wrote an Op Ed piece last issue (Nov. 13) on the same subject entitled "Beyond Retribution." That article contained elements which various of us other "editors" on the "Editorial Committee" thought was, well, let's just say we thought Adam was experimenting with unusual pesto recipes when he wrote it, if you get my drift.

Now we all know that anybody who reads Adventures in Poetry for fact-based analyses of deep contemporary issues would eat cardboard for the vitamins. We hate facts here the most. We hate detailed analyses the second most.

Growing up I had many traumatic experiences involving facts and analyses. I was repeatedly forced to compare and contrast things. It was torture. This one may have scarred me for life: "Compare and contrast the maple producing industry of the Northeastern United States to the production of papyrus in Egypt circa 1000 BC, indicating the social effect either has had. Be as specific as possible and incorporate at least one pie chart."

Because of that psychological scarring I now constantly make fun of facts and analyses. A day isn't complete unless I have found a fact to mercilessly tease and poke for my sick amusement. While I avoid targeting innocent people who might get in the way, I sometimes will inadvertently slip and tease a human who just happens to be standing next to an intelligent critique. I deeply regret these incidents. I want to especially apologize for the "pus-filled wonk" comment some time ago. It was horribly, horribly, wrong.

So I am naturally very reluctant to comment on Adam's Op Ed. But I must. Adam's piece was an intelligent critique if I ever saw one. It had a lot of good parts to it. Therefore, I need to pick at it. It is my twisted purpose in life, thanks to my twisted nurturing.

One of the very good parts of it is the part where Adam says that capital punishment is in no way a deterrent to murder. As strong as that statement looks, it isn't strong enough. There is strong evidence that capital punishment actually increases murder and other kinds of violent crime. There are other factors affecting the murder rate, such as economic and social and cultural conditions, that can mask these increases, but really the evidence is getting so massive that continued denial of it is beginning to look seriously stupid.

I mean if you're standing on railroad tracks and you hear a whistle blowing, you get off the tracks. You don't stand there and insist that it might not be a train.

It's a matter of survival. The evidence strongly supports the view that a brutalization effect is at work that is stronger than any deterrent effect. So to persist in supporting capital punishment is ASKING for more murders.

Yet it is now being suggested that this deal with Ridgway to trade his death penalty for confessions provides a new justification for the death penalty. In Adam Holdorf's words, "It indicates that, however cruel and arbitrary the death penalty may be, its existence functions as a tool to coax confession."

No! We can't be mandating the death penalty as a tool to engineer good grief management outcomes. "Coax confession?" The word is "extract" and we don't need to go there. We don't do torture. This is morally equivalent and subject to the same uncertainties. Torture does not guarantee truth.

What we need is to take the step to humanize society by doing away with the death penalty once and for all.