Waterboarding, Food-Stamp heat for DiFi (Code Pinko // Ca. Assn of food banks kids m, ages 2-16)

InsideBayAreaBuzz.com ^ | 11/05/07 | Josh Richman

[NormsRevenge]

Any U.S. Senator will get unhappy visitors now and again, but Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., has had a tough couple of days.

Everyone knew she would take heat for announcing Friday that she’ll give former judge Michael Mukasey a crucial Democratic vote in the Judiciary Committee for his confirmation as Attorney General. (Read her rationale for the vote here.) Sure enough, CodePink protestors went to Feinstein’s home in San Francisco’s Pacific Heights on Sunday with a simulated waterboarding device so people could try it out and decide for themselves whether or not the interrogation technique amounts to torture. Several Democrats including Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., refused to support Mukasey’s confirmation after he wouldn’t definitively say during his confirmation hearings that waterboarding is torture.

Feinstein was in D.C. on Sunday… and so were other CODEPINK activists (including co-founder Medea Benjamin of San Francisco) who enacted a live waterboarding demonstration for Feinstein as she entered CNN’s studios there:

At about 4 p.m. today, children ages 2 to 16 will arrive at Feinstein’s San Francisco office (as well as the Los Angeles office of Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif.) to invite the Senators to their homes to experience Thanksgiving on $1 a meal — the amount most Food Stamp recipients can afford.

Sent by the California Association of Food Banks, the kids are urging lawmakers to support full funding for the Food Stamp program in the 2007 Farm Bill (H.R. 2419), which reaches the Senate floor today and will set the program’s budget for the next five years. Though the Senate recently made a move to increase funding for the Food Stamp program by $1 billion over 5 years, neither of California’s Senators have guaranteed that they would vote “yes” on a funding increase. About 2 million Californians, or about 5.5 percent of the state’s population, rely on Food Stamps; about 80 percent of those households include children.

The kids will bring home-baked pumpkin “pie charts” depicting the percentage of a modest Thanksgiving meal that the current average Food Stamp benefit of $1.09 per person per meal can purchase (8.9%). Although the minimum monthly benefit has remained frozen at just $10 since the Food Stamp program’s inception in 1977, the price of a Thanksgiving meal for a California family of four has risen by more than 300 percent.

At least the activists aren’t planning to waterboard the kids in her office’s lobby.

[NormsRevenge]

There's some YouTube as well.

CODEPINK Shows Senator Feinstein Waterboarding

[maine-iac7]

just the chickens coming home to roost - love that their attacking their own

[Sudetenland]

Didn't look to me like the guy thought he was going to die, in fact, right at the very last, it sounded like he was laughing.

Why do these idiots care what France thinks about us? No enemy that we have ever fought has followed the Geneva Conventions. Why should we handicap ourselves in combat against others who feel no such compunction.

I keep seeing John McCain criticize waterboarding as torture and state that we must not torture because it only provides an excuse for our enemies to use it, but our strict adherence to the Conventions did nothing to ameliorate the loving care he received at the hands of the North Vietnamese.

Personally, I believe that the Geneva Conventions are a bunch of crap and need to be scrapped since the only nations that follow them are non-belligerent democracies and republics such as our own.

I don't give a rat's you know what if other nations despise us. As the late Lord Mountbatten once said, "Britain was never as powerful as when the world hated her."

We should take heed of that.

[dynachrome]

And always remember that the Geneva Conventions apply to UNIFORMED combatants.

[NormsRevenge]

DiFi doesn’t look amused at all.. too bad. I agree that the Pinkos are insufferable. Too bad she didn’t just hang it up as is.

If she had any class , she’d resign her seat and take Babs with. The only downside if that ever happened, aRnie would probably appoint Maria and Susan Kennedy in their places. ;-)

[maine-iac7]

Ah well, all mentioned do live on the Pacific Plate, tectonically speaking...San Francisco is bemoaning the fact that traditional families are leaving the city in record numbers, (and they can't understand why - )

and then there's Hollywood - maybe God's getting his chess pieces in place ==