The free Hump Day concert series begins here in Syracuse’s Inner Harbor today, with the Georgia Satellites. If you’re like me, you’re rather surprised to hear that the GA Sats are still around. I mean, how many years can you keep playing the same song? Oh well, it’s free, and next week is Marshall Tucker (who must be getting kinda old themselves). Speaking of Syracuse, everybody’s favorite Syracusan (not really), Terry McAuliffe, engaged in a three-way in Virgina yesterday and went down.

A three-way primary for the Democratic nomination for Governor. Get your minds outta the gutter. VA State Sen. R. Creigh Deeds ran away with the nomination, taking 50% of the vote, with McAuliffe and Brian J. Moran more or less splitting the rest. Poor Terry just can’t get no post-Clinton respect.

You may remember the 17 Chinese Muslims we decided to lock up in Gitmo. While it was later determined that they weren’t ‘enemy combatants,’ it was also determined that they couldn’t be returned to where they came from, and nobody wanted them here. So, they were left to rot in our Cuban dog pens. Well, good news for them, as the nation of Palau said they’d take them ‘temporarily.’ For about $200 million, we’ve got them off our hands. Seems like we could have just directly given them $10 million each and sent them on their way. We’d have saved money on the deal, and they could have bought Chrysler.

Nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah-nyah. The Brits do it too! Once again reinforcing the notion that when it comes to imperialism, oppression, and torture, we here in the US of A learned from the best: the British. The Times of London reports that:

Metropolitan Police officers subjected suspects to waterboarding, according to allegations at the centre of a major anti-corruption inquiry, The Times has learnt.

The torture claims are part of a wide-ranging investigation which also includes accusations that officers fabricated evidence and stole suspects’ property.
[…]
However, senior policing officials are most alarmed by the claim that officers in Enfield, North London, used the controversial CIA interrogation technique to simulate drowning. Scotland Yard is appointing a new borough commander in Enfield in a move that is being seen as an attempt by Sir Paul Stephenson, the Met Commissioner, to enforce a regime of “intrusive supervision”.

So-called “Blue Dog” Democrats appear to be starting to waver in their opposition to a public healthcare option. Sort of. They had said a public option would only be ‘triggered’ by the failure of private insurance to meet certain goals (I think the horse has left the barn on that one), but now at least 20 of the 51 members of the DINO caucus say they now back a public option without a trigger. Don’t worry, though, Jane Harman remains “staunch” in her assholiness.

Speaking of Single-Payer, the House Health, Employment, Labor, and Pensions Subcommittee is scheduled to hold a hearing titled “Examining the Single Payer Health Care Option” at 10:30 AM in room 2175 of the Rayburn House Office Building in Washington DC today.

Scheduled witnesses include Marcia Angell, M.D, Senior Lecturer in Social Medicine at the Harvard Medical School, Geri Jenkins, R.N., Co-President of the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee, and Walter Tsou, M.D., M.P.H., National Board Advisor Physicians for a National Health Program. Additional witnesses to be announced.

And tomorrow, the Senate Committee on Health Education and Pensions has invited Margaret Flowers, M.D., of Physicians for National Health Policy to testify at a hearing on health care reform. Flowers was one of the “Baucus 13” arrested three weeks ago protesting the exclusion of single payer from Senate Finance Committee hearings.

Time to boogie. Have a good one.