teaching how to torture, the toy and child brides...

turns out the new iraqi "government" has been busy utlizing tactics honed by the former president. just when you were starting to feel good about progress in iraq, what with elections and all (and only a few candidates being gunned down) here comes another torture scandal. only this time it is the police and military which the united states and coalition (who is left in the coalition anyhow?) taught everything they know. is anyone really surprised that age-old police tactics continue to be used in a place where they are all anybody has ever known?

here's the amusing part...to put a stop to this, the united states military is going to be inspecting detainment facilities throughout iraq. couple years ago this might have worked...somehow today i doubt this will make much of the rest of the world feel any better about what may or may not be going on behind those doors. maybe we can at least teach them how to do it right and keep it under wraps...although we aren't very good at that anymore. or maybe this would be a really good time for the gop to start listening to mccain instead of trying to rewrite the rules (literally)...

richard pryor died last week. as a white suburban kid my first introduction to pryor was in the film the toy. later i was introduced to his comedy by a teacher...at which point i finally got a lot of the toy that went over my ignorant head when i was younger. it may not seem like such a big deal now, and i was too young to know then (if i was even born yet), but social and racial commentary through comedy took some balls. so when you crack open that beer/wine/liquor/colt 45 tonight, pour a little on the curb for one hell of a funny man...

apparently some kid in nebraska plead guilty to sexual assault of a minor for impregnating his girlfriend. they are married now. problem is they started dating when he was 20 and she was 12. disgusting yes...but you know what the really frightening part is...they got married with her parents blessing when she was 13. wow. not sure which is worse, a 20 year old man that can't relate to a girl unless she is in middle school...or parents who would let this guy then marry their daughter instead of giving him a good old fashioned ass-whooping for being a pervert.

i was in love with the place in my mind...