• Sometimes I wonder whether common sense is worth a damn. My (alleged) common sense tells me to worry some about recent earthquake swarms to the north. See "Perilous fault might be causing quake swarm near O.C."
All this concentrated shakin’ tells me to hunker down. The OC Reg’s Science Dude says there’s no use worrying about earthquakes, though he also says that we'd better prepare for the Big One.
• In an odd spasm of, um, common sense, the leadership of some local churches has been preparing for the Big One: "O.C. churches team up."
Yeah, on Friday, the OC Reg reported that “more than 30 people” gathered to learn about preparedness.
30 people. (Closet agnostics, all of ‘em, I bet.)
• The Dude ("UCI finds racial bias in Internet dating") also reports on a UCI study about, well racial bias in Internet dating.
The two sociologists that conducted the study are quoted as saying,“We argue that exclusion related to racialized images of masculinity and femininity, and shapes dating and marriage outcomes, and thus minority groups’ possibilities for full social incorporation.”
Please tell me that that sentence makes no sense. (A missing “is”?)
The missing verb is likely the Dude’s fault. But what about the hideous jargon? “Dating and marriage outcomes”? These outcomes are “shaped” by “exclusion,” I guess.
Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit (as Harry Truman used to say).
On the other hand, the female sociologist is photogenic.
• These sociologists’ shitty way of speaking reminds me that I’m still pissed off about Friday’s de facto slam of Strunk and White’s Elements of Style in the New York Times ("Happy Birthday, Strunk and White!").
Happy birthday? More like, “FU.”
• The OC Reg’s Rachanee Srisavasdi reports ("Carona") that former OC Sheriff Mike Carona “will be sentenced at 1:30 p.m. Monday by U.S. District Judge Andrew Guilford.”
Evidently, Judge Guilford can give "America's Sheriff" anything from probation to twenty years.
As you know, Carona believes in the Lord bigtime. When not making out with Russian bimbos or passing out deputy badges to morons, he does a lot of public praying and flag-pledging. He’s a typical right-wing OC politician: he’s pious and patriotic and corrupt, like his good pal and supporter SOCCCD trustee (and former OC GOP chair) Tom Fuentes, who, no doubt, will be at tomorrow night’s meeting of the SOCCCD board of trustees, praying and pledging and scheming and cheating. I can’t wait.
• Did you read Frank Rich’s column yesterday? (See "The Banality of Bush White House Evil.") Naturally, it's about torture, and it responds to new info about the Bushies' motives for their disastrous and dismal embrace of it.
It ends with:
Five years after the Abu Ghraib revelations, we must acknowledge that our government methodically authorized torture and lied about it. But we also must contemplate the possibility that it did so not just out of a sincere, if criminally misguided, desire to “protect” us but also to promote an unnecessary and catastrophic war. Instead of saving us from “another 9/11,” torture was a tool in the campaign to falsify and exploit 9/11 so that fearful Americans would be bamboozled into a mission that had nothing to do with Al Qaeda. The lying about Iraq remains the original sin from which flows much of the Bush White House’s illegality.
[Senate Armed Services Committee report chairman Carl] Levin suggests … that as additional fact-finding plays out, it’s time for the Justice Department to enlist a panel of two or three apolitical outsiders, perhaps retired federal judges, “to review the mass of material” we already have. The fundamental truth is there, as it long has been. The panel can recommend a legal path that will insure accountability for this wholesale betrayal of American values.
President Obama can talk all he wants about not looking back, but this grotesque past is bigger than even he is. It won’t vanish into a memory hole any more than Andersonville, World War II internment camps or My Lai. The White House, Congress and politicians of both parties should get out of the way. We don’t need another commission. We don’t need any Capitol Hill witch hunts. What we must have are fair trials that at long last uphold and reclaim our nation’s commitment to the rule of law.
• Meanwhile, Nick Kristof, a fellow well to Rich’s right, urges the institution of “an independent commission to investigate harsh treatment and tally its costs and benefits.” ("Time to Come Clean") He offers three reasons:
First, it could help forge a consensus against torture, for almost everyone in the national security world believes that the result would be a ringing affirmation that we should not torture….
…
Second, a commission could help restore America’s standing by distancing ourselves from past abuses. Alberto Mora, a former general counsel for the Navy, has said that some flag-rank officers believe that Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo constitute “the first and second identifiable causes of U.S. combat deaths in Iraq,” because they galvanized jihadis. An Air Force major and interrogator of prisoners who goes by the pseudonym Matthew Alexander told Harper’s Magazine that “hundreds but more likely thousands of American lives” were lost because of “the policy decision to introduce the torture and abuse of prisoners.”
Third, a commission could help counterterrorism efforts. Foreign governments have been wary of cooperating with us for fear of being tarnished by scandal. At home, Arab-American and Somali-American communities have been leery of reporting tips because they see the authorities as unjust and hostile to Muslims.
• I do hope our new President gets out of the way of our doing the right thing!
