The McClatchy newspaper group has done excellent independent reporting on the excesses and illegalities of the Bush administration. A recent series, Guantanamo: Beyond the Law, highlights the travesty of the United States’ Cuban-based detention center. As a comprehensive series of stories, interviews, photos and videos makes clear, many of the prisoners that have spent years detained in harsh conditions had little or no connection to terrorism. Many were instead turned over to U.S. forces for reward money or revenge for local slights.
Get Fuzzy Made Me Laugh Today
Consider this to be the equivalent to taping this strip to a very big refrigerator.
For those unfamiliar with the strip, Get Fuzzy is a daily comic produced by Darby Conley. Most of the humor revolves around the malevolence of Bucky Katt and the sweet stupidity of Satchel, the dog. Pet owner (and Conley stand-in) Rob Wilco is responsible for maintaining some semblance of order (while also using his job for some work gags from time to time).
Wordplay is a common vehicle for jokes. In this instance, Bucky has spent the past couple weeks designing Soviet-themed products that he thinks will be a hit in Russia. As you can see, his instincts are rarely on the mark.
McCain Is Not a Centrist
Among the nonsense that’s sure to be bandied about in the election ahead is the absurd notion that John McCain is some sort of centrist. I’ve blogged about the emptiness of this claim before, but I wanted to highlight Paul Krugman’s take on the subject.
There are ways to assess politicians’ position on the left-right scale. Ignore the National Journal, which has a somewhat subjective method, and always manages to find that the current Democratic candidate is an ultra-liberal. Instead, we can turn to the Poole-Rosenthal-McCarty analysis, which is based on a systematic, no fiddling technique using rollcall votes.
And they tell us that, based on his voting record, McCain is the eighth most conservative member of the current Senate. That’s right: he’s been voting on the right wing of the Republican party.
But has he just moved right to curry favor with the GOP base? No: he was the second most conservative member of the previous Senate.
Add: Barack Obama, by contrast, while more liberal than the average Democrat, is considerably closer to the center than McCain.
Ralph Gamelli Podcast at Clonepod
FLYMF alum Ralph Gamelli has a podcast of his story, “The Invisible Man is Innocent,” up at Clonepod. Check it out. The story was originally published on McSweeney’s.
Ralph’s stories for FLYMF include How Long Before I Use My Ejector Seat?, Twilight Zone Episodes For the Internet Age, and Rocky Balboa Gives Inspirational Speeches Too Frequently.
A World Of Photos
Collective photo agency Magnum Photos has an excellent website featuring slideshows, profiles of their prominent cadre of photographers and thousands upon thousands of excellent photos. I came to their site via a photo essay compiled of shots that Wayne Miller took of Chicago’s African-American community from 1946-1948, but there are plenty of other wonders to explore.