Nurse! Nurse!

Coinciding with the release of a Senate Armed Services Committee report which says that the torture at Guantanamo and elsewhere was not the actions of a few bad apples but the result of decisions made by Rumsfeld and other administration officials (no fucking kidding), the USA Today has an article about the “progress” of Guantanamo, in other words a transcription of whatever Gitmo public relations officers tell them. Basketballs, DVDs, cultural sensitivity (tiptoing during prayers, cutting images of Western sluts out of their complimentary copies of USA Today, etc), and of course nutritious torture: “And while 20 inmates remain on a hunger strike, they are fed through a tube that supplies at least 4,500 calories a day. ‘Several of them will complain if the nurses are late,’ [Cmdr. Pauline] Storum said.” No one likes an unpunctual force-feeding. Especially when they’re strapped down in restraint chairs.

I’m not sure I see the point of some of Bush’s last-minute shenanigans. Like the new rules letting decisions affecting endangered species to be made by bureaucrats without consulting scientists. We’re told it will take months for Obama to reverse the regs, but what stops him from issuing an order that no such decisions be made without consulting with the Fish and Wildlife Service?

The Republican Party seems willing to destroy the entire American auto industry in order to take down the UAW, but honestly do you want to be out on the highway knowing that those several-ton steel vehicles barreling down the road next to you were made by workers who were screwed as badly as the GOP wants them to be screwed?