1. Iraqi prison abuse This is how I figure Chomsky would look at this (otherwise known as the look from the 24th century). Administration wants information. The order slides down to CIA who want more info. They must not care much about quality of information, as long as there is plenty of it that can be processed. The Jailer's part in this is fairly obvious and sadly natural. Is our reputation forever damaged?
2. Lou Dobbs had Tom Donahue, CEO of Chamber of Commerce. Nice. Lou is really much better then people give him credit for. Chamber of Commerce decided to blame the public education for the outsourcing of jobs. Real Nice.
3. Kevin Drum of Washington Monthly Political Animal states that Bush is the "CEO President" with all the appropriate consequences. I'm not posting a link, but you should still go and read WashingtonMonthly.com regularly. Oh yeah, go read TalkingPointsMemo.com as well. Anyway. I have noticed for a while that we live in a Dilbert Cartoon. The whole country. United States of Dilbertania. Bush as the Boss. We all are somewhere in between. Some are lucky enough to be Dogberts, some are Ratberts and others are Wollys. But the rules of the game are pretty clearly spelled out in the Dilbert Principle. Read it. It's lots of fun with lots of pictures. I suspect that there's more on this later.
4. Structure vs. Dictatorship. On one hand. People want structure. People need structure. Without enough oversight things descend into chaos of short-term gains. Whether that's business or political functionality makes no difference. On the other hand Dictatorship is far easier - you don't have to build institutions so fast and risk your career and reputation - as long as most of the people are afraid of you. So you show enough good will and show of force to keep the populous at bay. You can do it with less good and more evil - North Korea - comes to mind. Or you can do it with more appeasing the people and less force - Netherlands - comes to mind here. There's a theory that Russian people need a firm hand. Well how about they need more stable institutions that will run the place? You can go from one to the other, but you can't have both. Checks and balances is what we're due for.
5. Now that Howard Dean is not running for office and just speaks, I just love the man. He and Dr. Phil. And Judge Judy (but I don't care for her.) So Mr. Dean will be Dr. Dean? Or Governor Dean? Whatever. He is on Chris Matthews and was earlier on CNN (I watch way too much News during the day). He's like a talking Liberal Blog. I do believe that most Americans at this point should be liberal, because the right is getting more narrow and smaller. Only a handful of people can escape on that lifecapsule.