PostPanic director Mischa Rozema’s new short film, Stardust, is a story about Voyager 1 (the unmanned spacecraft launched in 1977 to explore the outer solar system). The probe is the furthest man-made object from the sun and witnesses unimaginable beauty and destruction. The film was triggered by the death of Dutch graphic designer Arjan Groot, who died aged 39 on 16th July 2011 from cancer.

Here’s an open thread as we gaze upon the Superb Owl…

DERP

The Dumbest Man on the Internet resorts to a flat out lie today, and is rewarded with a headline link at Drudge Report: Defense Secretary Panetta Admits Information From Waterboarding Led US to Bin Laden (Video) | the Gateway Pundit.

Yes, waterboarding worked.
Today on Meet the Press Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta admitted that information gleaned from waterboarded detainees was used to track down al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden and kill him.

“The real story was that in order to put the puzzle of intelligence together that led us to Bin Laden, there were a lot of pieces out there that were a part of that puzzle. Yes, some of it came from some of the tactics that were used at that time, interrogation tactics that were used. But the fact is we put together most of that intelligence without having to resort to that.”

Jim Hoft is such an amazing dimwit that he actually includes the quote that exposes his own brazen lies.

First, Panetta did not even use the word “waterboarding,” and he certainly did not say that information from waterboarding “led to bin Laden.” Hoft simply made that up out of nothing. Panetta specifically said that most of the intelligence that led to bin Laden was put together without using torture.

Second, Panetta’s very next sentence, directly following the section that Hoft clipped for his misleading video, was:

I think we could have gotten bin Laden without that.

This is an absolutely blatant, in your face example of how the right wing blogs tell each other lies, circulate them, and turn them into unquestionable articles of faith. It’s a microcosm of the reality-denying reactionary sickness at the heart of the conservative movement.

Here’s the clip from NBC of Panetta’s actual statement, including the critical sentence that Hoft edited out.