Living Large In Carson City: Candy Is Dandy But Liquor Is Quicker Edition

Posted on by technoscribe50: Gary Brady-Herndon

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Another week, another turn of events that no one expected or  could have foreseen. Thursday saw Dr. Christine Blasey Ford and Brett Kavanaugh telling their sides of the brouhaha that came about when allegations arose pointing to Kavanaugh and his friend Mark Judge having sexually assaulted Blasey Ford back when the three were in high school. Predictably, other women came forward with increasingly disturbing accusations about Kavanaugh’s less than honorable actions toward women that occurred throughout his high school and college careers.

Then there is the drinking thing. In his fiery rebuttal to Blasey Ford’s accusations, Kavanaugh went full metal jacket attacking, denying and sanctimoniously portraying himself as nothing less than a saint among sinners during his high school and college days. It worked for the optics, but reality has different parameters.  Old friends stepped up countering Kavanaugh’s claims that he never drank to excess during those formative years. One comment from his freshman roommate, James Roche, sums up the gist of what most thought of Kavanaugh’s denials,

“Although Brett was normally reserved,” Roche explained, “he was a notably heavy drinker” and was “frequently drinking excessively and becoming incoherently drunk,” and that Kavanaugh “became aggressive and belligerent when he was very drunk.”

Thursday was an amazing day for a look at how our government, the Senate specifically, has gone off the rails. Partisan bickering is the law of the land these days, and no one seemed to know how to get the engine back on the rails. At the end of the marathon Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, most people who endured the spectacle were drained emotionally and mentally. I know I was. Yet, nothing seemed to have been decided on any front. The tone deaf Republicans on the committee maintained their insistence on plowing ahead with a vote for confirmation despite the allegations and the veracity of Blasey Ford excruciating account of what transpired all those years ago. It felt as if the Republicans had unceremoniously punked us all.

Then, lo and behold, Jeff Flake (R-AZ) grew a pair. Disturbed by Kavanaugh’s wildly partisan and often disrespectful engagement with the Judiciary committee’s Democrats, and an encounter with two sexual assault victims in an elevator, Flake had his come to Jesus moment. Partnering with Chris Coons (D-DE), Flake decided to vote for passing Kavanaugh out of committee with the caveat that the FBI reopen the Kavanaugh investigation for no longer than one week to investigate the accusations that surfaced against nominee.

The FBI at this moment is two days into an investigation of sexual misconduct by  Kavanaugh dating back to his high school and college days. Trump stated early on that the FBI will conduct the investigation however they deem necessary. In and article on NBC’s website, the authors, Ken Dilanian, Geoff Bennett and Kristen Welker, quote Trump as saying,

Trump said the FBI had “free rein” in the investigation.

“They’re going to do whatever they have to do,” he said. “Whatever it is they do, they’ll be doing—things that we never even thought of. And hopefully at the conclusion everything will be fine.” NBC News

This is where I get off the bus. The accusations of sexual assault are serious, but the investigation seems doomed by partisan chicanery on the Republican’s part. Don McGahn, White House Counsel and Assistant to the President, is orchestrating the investigation and, at this point, seems hell bent on not allowing the FBI to do a thorough inquiry into what happened or to look at all accusations beyond Blasey Ford and one other woman’s claims of misconduct. Few people would be surprised by this fact having witnessed the Republican duplicity that has surrounded the confirmation hearings to date.

The point that most people are beginning to see as central to the confirmation proceedings is that Kavanaugh is a liar, pure and simple. People for the American Way published a blistering summation of how Kavanaugh has dissembled and mislead both the Senate Judiciary Committee and the American people. What is disturbing is how callous the Republicans and their supporters have been throughout the process. Facts are superfluous. The pain and suffering of the alleged victims means nothing to these people. They disguise their partisanship by openly and falsely accusing the Democrats of exactly what they are guilty of doing and by painting them as unpatriotic and driven to ruin Kavanaugh’s good name and future as a Supreme Court justice.

In the end the extension of the FBI investigation is more of the same in what goes on in Trump’s universe. It’s a distraction. Trump and his minions, including Mitch McConnell (R-KY), honestly believe that the sexual accusations are superfluous to whether or not Kavanaugh is confirmed. Regardless of the FBI conclusions, they believe that they have the votes to push him through.

Flake is an outlier, but does he have the backbone to stand up to his Republican counterparts? Sure, he’s on his way out of the Senate next January, but how deep does his allegiance to the party run? Can he live up to his claim that if Kavanaugh lied to the committee about sexual allegations it would be a deal breaker? What about Kavanaugh’s lies about drinking, misrepresenting his judicial accomplishments, and other lies that he told as a matter of course?

There is also this to consider. In an article for Quartz by Heather Timmons titled, Inexperienced and “sanctimonious:” Trump’s top Supreme Court pick was downgraded by peers, makes this point,

In 2003, “it was noted that he had never tried a case to verdict or judgment; that his litigation experience over the years was always in the company of senior counsel; and that he had very little experience with criminal cases,” the ABA’s 2006 report says. The additional interviews in 2006 “expanded upon those earlier concerns”:

One judge who witnessed the nominee’s oral presentation in court commented that the nominee was “less than adequate” before the court, had been “sanctimonious,” and demonstrated “experience on the level of an associate.” A lawyer who had observed him during a different court proceeding stated: “Mr. Kavanaugh did not handle the case well as an advocate and dissembled.” Other lawyers expressed similar concerns, repeating in substance that the nominee was young and inexperienced in the practice of law.

Yet, the Republicans have circled the wagons and intend to go through with a vote for confirmation as early as Friday of this week. On one hand, the Republicans see Kavanaugh as a win/win candidate. If he is confirmed, viola, they have an ideologue on the bench for possibly the next 20 or 30 years who they can depend on to deliver the deciding vote on wide range of topics that could remake the American experience as we know it. If he is voted down, they have an instant rallying cry that could spur their base next month to get out the vote and jeopardize the expected Blue Wave putting taking back the House by Democrats in peril. You can forget about the Senate entirely.

There is only one thing to take away from the Kavanaugh debacle. Just when you think our elected officials have mucked things up past repair, their capacity for self-destruction makes them want for more. How our Republic has lasted this long is a true mystery to me.

Living Large In Carson City: The I Don’t Want To Hurt You, but . . . Edition

Posted on by technoscribe50: Gary Brady-Herndon

Answer the Question: Is Torture Immoral?

Youtube

Gina, Gina, Gina . . .
This an easy one. Yes, torture is immoral. Say it with me Gina, “Torture is immoral.” There, feel better? I know I do. Really, though, Americans know that you don’t think it is immoral or even inhumane. After all, if you thought it was inhumane, you wouldn’t have tortured in the first place.

Many Americans don’t know that torture is an international crime and has been since 1987 when the United Nations Convention against Torture took effect. The idea behind the prohibition of torture is pretty straightforward. Don’t do to your enemy what you wouldn’t want done to you. Sounds a lot like the Golden Rule, yes? For people like Haspel, however, the ends justify the means. What’s a little session of waterboarding’s harm in the big picture? And therein lies the rub. How can the big picture become clearer if the person being tortured will say just about anything to get the torture stopped?

Caveat: I began this blurb shortly after Haspel first confirmation interview ended. Admittedly, anyone watching her responses, not just about the morality of torture, but how she would conduct her duties came away a little puzzled as to exactly what she would or wouldn’t do as director of the CIA. Stonewalling was one word that was used by a variety of news sources in their description of Haspel’s lack of clarity in her answers.

One interview I watched, however, made me think. It was on Jake Tapper’s show with a panel enclosed to discuss Haspel’s performance as the director of a black ops site, and her future as the director. Senator Kamala Harris (D-CA) had just finished an interview with Tapper and had little good to say about Haspel’s performance as to how she would conduct herself as CIA director if she was confirmed. To be clear, Harris asked three yes/no questions to which Haspel obfuscated to say the least. The first question, “Do you think torture is immoral?”, the CIA director wannabe’ could not deliver the simple yes/answer Harris expected. The upshot was Harris came away from the meeting saying she would not vote for Haspel’s confirmation, citing Haspel’s inability to answer the questions in a straightforward manner coupled other classified details that came to light in the closed-door session that preceded the public setting.

On the panel was former CIA Counterterrorism Official, Phil Mudd. In the past I’ve always liked Mudd. He is a loose cannon cowboy who often surprises news moderators by his passionate, and sometimes, potty mouth retorts. Often, he is a breath of fresh air when paired with ideologically inclined guests who toe the party line. In his response Mudd didn’t disappoint on one hand but also wandered into La La land on the other.

Mudd states he was a part of the Congressional hearings into the use of Enhanced Interrogation Techniques (EITs) fifteen years ago. He noted that Harris could vote however she liked, but what he objected to was the “collective amnesia” that Harris and others seem to be suffering from on the topic. Essentially, his contention is the torture techniques that were used were condoned by the Justice Department, President Bush and a host of lawyers who claimed the techniques were legal.

In his view since the torture techniques used were sanctioned by the government, the interrogators were not the torturers, but the United States as a whole. Since Americans elected a president who appointed an Attorney General who said the techniques were legal, voila, it was America’s responsibility, and not in this case Haspel’s problem. She was just following orders.

The Attorney General at the time was Alberto Gonzalez, America’s first Hispanic AG. He was also Bush’s lap dog who acted as little more than a rubber stamp for anything Bush threw his way. The biggest cheerleader for using torture was not Bush or Gonzalez, however, but Dick Cheney, the Darth Vader of American politics.

In an interview with Chuck Todd on Meet the Press, Todd asked the vice-president if he condoned the past use of torture and how did he justify the torture of innocent people.

CHUCK TODD:
25% of the detainees though, 25% turned out to be innocent. They were released.
DICK CHENEY:
Where are you going to draw the line, Chuck? How are–
CHUCK TODD:
Well, I’m asking you.
DICK CHENEY:
–you going to know?
(OVERTALK)
CHUCK TODD:
Is that too high? You’re okay with that margin for error?
DICK CHENEY:
I have no problem as long as we achieve our objective. And our objective is to get the guys who did 9/11 and it is to avoid another attack against the United States. I was prepared and we did. We got authorizing from the president and authorization from the Justice Department to go forward with the program. It worked. It worked now for 13 years.
We’ve avoided another mass casualty attack against the United States. And we did capture Bin Laden. We did capture an awful lot of the senior guys at Al Qaeda who were responsible for that attack on 9/11. I’d do it again in a minute.

An AG willing to condone anything his president asks and a psychopathic would-be killer vice-president do not American policy make, or at least, it certainly leaves the topic up for debate. Mudd’s contention is that since torture was deemed legal then it was policy. Policy that Haspel carried out with all too much relish if her detractors can be believed.

So, in the end, the question is not whether or not Haspel tortured. She did. The real question is would she do it again. She says no, but if confronted with another 911 scenario, how long would she continue to say no. The answer is not long.

Some of us remember the infamous Milgram’s Experiment on Obedience to Authority. Author Gregorio Billikopf Encina tells how Social Psychologist Stanley Milgram devised the experience to determine the effect of authority on obedience. Milgram set up an experiment where random people were asked to participate as either students or teachers. In reality, all of the participants were teachers. The parts of students were played by paid actors. Teachers were given a list of questions they were required to ask students. If students gave wrong answers (as actors they gave plenty), the teacher had the option of administering a jolt of electricity to the student between 75 and 450 volts. The students didn’t actually receive shocks but faked their reactions for the benefit of the teacher.

According to Encina, the results were somewhat unsettling,

Milgram’s experiment included a number of variations. In one, the learner was not only visible but teachers were asked to force the learner’s hand to the shock plate so they could deliver the punishment. Less obedience was extracted from subjects in this case. In another variation, teachers were instructed to apply whatever voltage they desired to incorrect answers. Teachers averaged 83 volts, and only 2.5 percent of participants used the full 450 volts available. This shows most participants were good, average people, not evil individuals. They obeyed only under coercion.

In general, more submission was elicited from “teachers” when (1) the authority figure was in close proximity; (2) teachers felt they could pass on responsibility to others; and (3) experiments took place under the auspices of a respected organization.

How does this play into Haspel’s penchant for torture? Encina notes Miligram found that in the face of authority, people were more likely to comply and shock the students who gave wrong answers or refused to shock the student for wrong answers. Miligram found,

Milgram divided participants into three categories:

Obeyed but justified themselves. Some obedient participants gave up responsibility for their actions, blaming the experimenter. If anything had happened to the learner, they reasoned, it would have been the experimenter’s fault. Others had transferred the blame to the learner: “He was so stupid and stubborn he deserved to be shocked.”

Obeyed but blamed themselves. Others felt badly about what they had done and were quite harsh on themselves. Members of this group would, perhaps, be more likely to challenge authority if confronted with a similar situation in the future.

Rebelled. Finally, rebellious subjects questioned the authority of the experimenter and argued there was a greater ethical imperative calling for the protection of the learner over the needs of the experimenter. Some of these individuals felt they were accountable to a higher authority.

Miligrams findings bode darkly for Haspel and whether she would again condone torture, her assurances to the contrary, if pressure from an authority demanded it, and we all know Trump has made clear he would support, even demand, torture.

Or as Encina wrote,

Why were those who challenged authority in the minority? So entrenched is obedience it may void personal codes of conduct.

Good luck on that one America.