Trump Administration Considers Re-instituting CIA Torture and "Black Sites"

An executive order apparently drafted by the Trump administration calls for a policy review that could authorize the CIA to reopen “black site” prisons overseas and potentially restart an interrogation program that was dismantled in 2009 after using methods widely condemned as torture.  The document, a copy of which was obtained by The Washington Post, would revoke former president Barack Obama’s decision to end the CIA program and require national security officials to evaluate whether the agency should resume interrogating terrorism suspects.  The unsigned draft represents the clearest signal from President Trump that he intends to at least explore ways to fulfill campaign threats to return the CIA to a role that supporters claim produced critical intelligence on al-Qaeda but that ended in a swirl of criminal investigations, strained relationships with allies, and laws banning the use of waterboarding and other brutal interrogation tactics.  Clearly this is a rush headlong into the past of the George W Bush administration when you're talking about renditions and "Black Sites".   Dick Chaney said, "We have to go to the dark side" to justify things like waterboarding.  Dick Chaney was "the dark side" of President Bush, whom he repudiated in the later years of his administration.  

The Trump Follies continue with one that involves immigration.  We were told yesterday we’d get an executive decision on immigration today.  President Trump has ordered that sanctuary cities in any form will not be allowed or they’ll be denied certain federal funding.  While this was expected it’s likely to affect more cities than first believed.  Trump also wants to get the border wall thing going right away.  Trump is also eliminating visas for Muslims from Iran or Iraq.  This is late breaking news.  In Los Angeles and other cities law enforcement is against this sanctuary city order demanding that ANY one suspected of being an illegal alien be turned over to ICE.   Police say if you’re in an accident or have some other emergency you are calling the police about, like a stalker outside your house, you want them to call so they can deal with the problem but illegal aliens often don’t call the authorities if they don’t trust them because they’re afraid they’ll be turned over to the immigration authorities.  San Francisco takes it a step further saying that even serious crimes committed by illegals won’t involve ICE.  There is a sensible line that must be drawn here between people who are the victims of a crime and those that might be involved in a serious crime.  Meanwhile now it’s reported that Trump is like Chauncy Gardener in that he doesn’t read the news as much as “he likes to watch”.  Trump gets his briefings not from federal intelligence but by watching Sixty Minutes and Meet the Press.  He’s obsessed with tweeting back at people like Morning Joe if they say something he doesn’t like.  He has this obsessive quark in his brain that won’t let a grudge go even with events that happened decades ago.  There was a lot of talk on the Stephanie Miller show about what prostitutes say about Trump’s small penis.  Stephanie kept using the P word every sentence.  Meanwhile the Dow Jones Industrial Average has topped twenty thousand today for the first time.  No doubt Trump would like to take credit for this too even though it was almost 20,000 on January 19^th.   Trump’s like a little kid who believes he’s entitled to heaping praise for things he wasn’t even responsible for.  And we aren’t even done with Trump’s first week in office yet.

Mary Tyler Moore died today at age eighty.  That made her awfully young when she did the Dick Van Dyke show.  Many women today I’m sure grew up in their formative years watching the Mary Tyler Moore show and seeing a single woman and being assured to the theme music of “You’re gona make it after all”.

I had the Gary and Shannon show on before noon and they had “The house whisperer”.  According to him every house has a “story” and the way he made it sound like at first was like every home was haunted or something.  The further east you go the more of a “story”.  But he strongly believes the resident’s personality should be manifest in the design of the house and rather than just get into specifics like maple or oak paneling you have to pick the ‘feeling” you want your house to represent about you. 

Well Abigail has finally come out of her shell playing the seductress on Days of our Lives with this computer nerd.  Her husband almost seemed surprised at how sexy she could be.  Of course since it isn’t the same actress playing the part as before it’s almost like being introduced to a new woman.  I guess she managed to download some of that controversial hard drive on to her phone to get the needed algorithms.  Meanwhile Roman has ordered that Clowie and Holly take a DNA test to see if Clowie or Nicole is the mother and the baby will be awarded to the winner, after Nicole gets out on bail.

Just a couple of rock compilation notes here.  THY KINGDOM COME is an album we little reference that's actually a third incarnation of a compilation that originally came out late April of 1979.  This incarnation is listed in For the Record from mid June of 2013.   It contains a couple of overlaps with other compilations but it was granted an exception because it was a revision of a previous classic album.  I would have you know that "It's All Right, Ma" by Dylan has been dropped from the line up of the album called "Break On Through" from August of 2006.  There are two simple reasons.  This disk is too long in running time for an earth CD, and also this song is covered in "Thy Kingdom Come".   Also they are re-releasing the album "Out of Our Heads 2006" renaming it "Out of our Heads 2017".    No new rock compilations are planned at this time.