Colin Powell Still Republican and More

Colin Powell appeared on Face the Nation this morning. Powell addressed many issues of the day including the future of the GOP, torture, and Gitmo. I’d like to draw attention to his comments on the GOP and Gitmo.

You may remember about two weeks ago Dick Cheney said, on Face the Nation, that Colin Powell had already left the Republican Party. Cheney said Powell’s endorsement of Mr. Obama in the election showed his true side.. “I assumed that that is some indication of his loyalty and his interest,” Cheney said. Cheney also commented that Rush Limbaugh is a better representation of the Republican Party than Powell.

Well until Powell comes out and says he switches parties then he’s still a Republican.

from CBS

“I am still a Republican. I’d like to point out that in the course of my 50 years of voting for presidents, I have voted for the person I thought was best qualified at that time to lead the nation. Last year I thought it was President-now Barack Obama,” Powell said.

Powell shows yet again why I respect him a great deal. He votes his conscious, not party lines. Shouldn’t that be what America is about? The best person for the job? Powell gets it. These words mean a great deal to moderates out there tired of their parties being hi-jacked by extremist nut-jobs. Do the research. Vote for you believe will do the best job, regardless of party lines.

Powell chastised President Obama’s handling of Guantanamo.

from CBS

“I think President Obama didn’t handle it very well by going up to the Congress and asking for $80 million without a plan. And by, frankly, giving enough time to opponents of it to marshal their forces as to why we shouldn’t do this,”

Powell said he has told President Obama all of his concerns and worries that the president gave his opponents too much time to react to the plan. He hopes that the politicizing of the decision will start to die down.

Acording to Powell, Bush wanted to close Gitmo during his presidency. Bush was unable to close the deal on how to properly execute the closure, something Obama is struggling with now. Powell uses this as a jumping point to smash Cheney again.

from CBS

“Mr. Cheney is not only disagreeing with President Obama’s policy. He’s disagreeing with President Bush’s policy. President Bush stated repeatedly to international audiences and to the country that he wanted to close Guantanamo. The problem he had was he couldn’t get all the pieces together,” Powell said.

That wraps a great interview from a personal favorite of mine. Any thoughts on the GOP, party politics, Gitmo, Powell, or anything else?

Watch CBS Videos Online

Ventura vs Hasselbeck – Call a spade a spade

You may or may not know that I watch The View. It’s kind of like watching Morning Joe, Golden Girls ( I mean no disrespect to that classic), and a Real Housewives reunion show all at the same time. Yesterday, Jesse “The Ex-Governing Body” Ventura appeared with the ladies to talk recent politics. When Ventura was governor of Minnesota I wrote him off as a joke. It appears, in my youth, I was a bit quick in my judgement. Here’s a clip from the show.

Ventura 1 Hasselbeck 0

Ventura embarrassed Hasselbeck in this clip. This really shows why I don’t like Hasselbeck, which I have addressed before. Having nothing to do with her politics, Hasselbeck just spouts of talking points without ever giving any real thought or insight to what she is saying or the actual facts behind them. Ventura called Hasselbeck on her BS and she crumpled like paper. A commenter at Donklephant articulates their dislike for Hasselbeck. It was so spot on I had to repost it.

from Donklephant:

Justin, as someone who is constantly on your @ss about being biased against conservatives, let me say this.

Hasselbeck IS a right wing idiot.

She is in no respect a thoughtful person, at least not on the air. She demonstrates ZERO in the way of strong-sense critical thinking. What VERY little critical thinking she does perform is limited to weak-sense critical thinking. That’s what you get when you begin by assuming that your premise is correct, and then you defend that premise only by marshaling whatever justifications you can find. You do your best to make the available facts fit the interpretation that you have already taken on faith to be true.

Enough Hassel-bashing, on to the main thrust of the clip: does the US torture?

Ventura’s point is one that right-wing parrot (Hasselbeck) could not avoid. I could start referring to DDT as “happy sunshine spray”, but that wont make it any less carcinogenic. You can call water boarding an “enhanced interrogation technique”, but that doesn’t change what it fundamentally is. If you want to try to defend water boarding call a spade a spade. Don’t do a thesaurus dance to try to make it more palatable. If it were so easy to defend it on it’s description alone one wouldn’t need to rename it. Just a move from the Karl Rove playbook.

Hasselbeck and water boarding defenders cannot ignore history either. The Japanese and Germans both used water boarding during WWII. During war crimes trials a member of the Doolittle Raid testified that his Japanese captors used water boarding during interrogation. Those who used water boarding were considered torturers and hanged.

As Ventura mentions, during the Vietnam War the North Vietnamese regularly used water boarding, and other torture methods, to interrogate POWS in the infamous Hanoi Hilton. The US military court-martialled a soldier in 1968 after the Washington Post ran a picture showing the soldier and two South Vietnamese performing water boarding.

These are just two instances where we have said water boarding was torture. We have recognized that water boarding is unacceptable, to put it mildly. Remember your history. Ditch the propaganda. If we are going to assume the moral high ground then we must walk the walk as well as talk the talk. Terrorists will see through the BS and we will provide them with yet another recruitment tool. Do we really want to do that?

Ventura vs Hasselbeck – Call a spade a spade

You may or may not know that I watch The View. It’s kind of like watching Morning Joe, Golden Girls ( I mean no disrespect to that classic), and a Real Housewives reunion show all at the same time. Yesterday, Jesse “The Ex-Governing Body” Ventura appeared with the ladies to talk recent politics. When Ventura was governor of Minnesota I wrote him off as a joke. It appears, in my youth, I was a bit quick in my judgement. Here’s a clip from the show.

Ventura 1 Hasselbeck 0

Ventura embarrassed Hasselbeck in this clip. This really shows why I don’t like Hasselbeck, which I have addressed before. Having nothing to do with her politics, Hasselbeck just spouts of talking points without ever giving any real thought or insight to what she is saying or the actual facts behind them. Ventura called Hasselbeck on her BS and she crumpled like paper. A commenter at Donklephant articulates their dislike for Hasselbeck. It was so spot on I had to repost it.

from Donklephant:

Justin, as someone who is constantly on your @ss about being biased against conservatives, let me say this.

Hasselbeck IS a right wing idiot.

She is in no respect a thoughtful person, at least not on the air. She demonstrates ZERO in the way of strong-sense critical thinking. What VERY little critical thinking she does perform is limited to weak-sense critical thinking. That’s what you get when you begin by assuming that your premise is correct, and then you defend that premise only by marshaling whatever justifications you can find. You do your best to make the available facts fit the interpretation that you have already taken on faith to be true.

Enough Hassel-bashing, on to the main thrust of the clip: does the US torture?

Ventura’s point is one that right-wing parrot (Hasselbeck) could not avoid. I could start referring to DDT as “happy sunshine spray”, but that wont make it any less carcinogenic. You can call water boarding an “enhanced interrogation technique”, but that doesn’t change what it fundamentally is. If you want to try to defend water boarding call a spade a spade. Don’t do a thesaurus dance to try to make it more palatable. If it were so easy to defend it on it’s description alone one wouldn’t need to rename it. Just a move from the Karl Rove playbook.

Hasselbeck and water boarding defenders cannot ignore history either. The Japanese and Germans both used water boarding during WWII. During war crimes trials a member of the Doolittle Raid testified that his Japanese captors used water boarding during interrogation. Those who used water boarding were considered torturers and hanged.

As Ventura mentions, during the Vietnam War the North Vietnamese regularly used water boarding, and other torture methods, to interrogate POWS in the infamous Hanoi Hilton. The US military court-martialled a soldier in 1968 after the Washington Post ran a picture showing the soldier and two South Vietnamese performing water boarding.

These are just two instances where we have said water boarding was torture. We have recognized that water boarding is unacceptable, to put it mildly. Remember your history. Ditch the propaganda. If we are going to assume the moral high ground then we must walk the walk as well as talk the talk. Terrorists will see through the BS and we will provide them with yet another recruitment tool. Do we really want to do that?

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