The Part They DON'T Tell You About James Bond (ATR)

Except: [The rendition story] is all very bad, of course, but I don't think enough attention has been paid to the smaller details. For instance:

Members of the Rendition Group follow a simple but standard procedure: Dressed head to toe in black, including masks, they blindfold and cut the clothes off their new captives, then administer an enema and sleeping drugs. They outfit detainees in a diaper and jumpsuit for what can be a day-long trip. Their destinations: either a detention facility operated by cooperative countries in the Middle East and Central Asia, including Afghanistan, or one of the CIA's own covert prisons.

The easy joke here would be the resemblance our foreign policy apparently bears to a peculiar, intricate sexual fantasy:

My greatest fantasy? Um, I'm wearing a costume, an all-black costume with a mask. Then I blindfold you and cut off all your clothes. Did I mention all this time I'm a secret agent? And that I've brought an adult diaper with me? Then, I, uh...

The less easy but more intriguing joke is that apparently there really is someone at the CIA whose job it is to administer INTERNATIONAL TOP-SECRET ENEMAS. Despite the undeniable horror of what we're up to, I can't deny I enjoy this. I enjoy the idea that out there right now there is a person who's the James Bond of Enemas.

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Your Progressive Opposition in Action
Tuesday, 06 December 2005

Hillary Clinton is co-sponsoring a bill with Utah Republican Bob Bennett that will make it a crime to "desecrate" a U.S. flag. (The word "desecration" should always be put in quotes in this context – because the American flag is not a sacred object, for God's sake! It's a national emblem, not a religious relic.) The law would ban protestors from "intimidating any person by burning the flag, lighting someone else's flag or [']desecrating['] the flag on federal property." Clinton "has compared the act of flag-burning to burning a cross." [From Newsday]

A few questions raised by this interesting story: When in the entire course of American history has a flag-burning protestor ever dragged someone from their house and lynched them, or burned down a church, or driven a family from their home, or proclaimed the God-ordained superiority of their race – and how could anyone with half a brain who was not shamelessly pandering to the worst instincts and most ignorant prejudices of the electorate in order to hoist themselves up the greasy pole of power make such an odious and frankly stupid comparison?

Next question: What exactly is the point of Democratic "leaders" who eagerly embrace right-wing policies like aggressive war, the destruction of the welfare system (thanks, Bill!), corporate deregulation, capital punishment (which was vastly expanded under Bill), and, in this case, utterly pointless lunatic fringe notions that address non-existent problems in the most ham-handed, un-Constitutional way?

Final question: "For what will it profit a woman if she gains the whole world, and loses her own soul?"

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