Quote of the Day

From the AP:

The Guantanamo facility keeps terrorist suspects from resuming their fight and affords them humane treatment. "I take issue with folks who say people are being mistreated in Guantanamo," he said, adding, "I don't know what I say to Mom and Dad if their son or daughter is killed by someone we once held at Guantanamo." - Attorney General Alberto Gonzales

A couple of things wrong with that statement. First, is it proper to lock up terrorist suspects indefinitely? It would suck to be the poor slob who was just driving a cab and ended up in Gitmo for years.

Also, notice the use of the words "are being". I'm not claiming there is abuse going on right now. I'm sure they are being treated humanely now. That doesn't mean they weren't abused before.

Is it Gonzales' job to determine who stays and who is released? As I pointed out a few days ago, they just released 2 more. What would Gonzales say if they struck again?

Still, it's all more of that fear mongering. I did some rough calculations. You have about a .014% chance of dying in a car accident in any particular year, and a .0004% chance of being killed in a terrorist attack. Keep in mind that terrorist attack percentage is inflated because of 9/11. If I averaged over the last 50 years instead of the last 5 years, the odds would be negligible, while the car accident percentage would be quite a bit higher.

The point is - the Republicans have taken a core principal of this country; due process and humane treatment, and thrown it out the window for something that is a statistical blip on the radar.

You know what.. go watch Gladiator for some perspective. It wasn't too far back in the history of mankind that you could just be having a nice quiet life, and the Roman army would invade your country, kill all the men, and rape and pillage everything else.

We've got it easy now.. so lets stop getting so bent about all the "terrorists". The only real thing they can do is make us go bat-shit crazy, which is what they have done. That's it.

By the way, when I got home from work yesterday, I flipped on CNN to see the latest media attrocities, and the story they had on? It detailed the trial of a young man accused of shooting 3 police officers to death. Apparently the man was in custody, took the officers gun, and went on a bit of a rampage. His lawyer is going to try the "GTA defense" according to CNN.

I did some checking and I can't find any information on the case, which seems odd considering the circumstances. But what I found incredibly amusing was that yesterday I ripped the media for twisting the statistical facts regarding youth violence in order to panic parents about violent video games, and the first thing on my TV when I get home from work was yet another "games make kids kill" story.

That was just funny as hell..

So, while we all know that I've considered organized religion the root of all evil in the world, I need to append the media to that. It's not enough for us to have fun and productive lives in statistical saftey. The media needs to twist and distort our perception of the world so that we lock our front doors and don't talk to strangers.... oh.. and everything we eat is going to give us cancer.. or something like that..

Religion + Media = hate hate hate * fear