Battlefield USA

photo: Steve Rhodes


Monday, Nov. 28th : Robert johnson, Business Insider: Secret Bill To Be Voted On Today Would Allow The Military To Sweep Up US Citizens At Home Or Abroad

Either Monday or Tuesday the Senate will vote on a bill that allows the US military to imprison civilians with no formal charges and hold them with no trial.

The ACLU reports even US citizens wouldn't be immune as the legislation aims to declare national territory part of the "battlefield" in the War on Terror.

Termed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) and drafted behind closed doors by Senators Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.)

Tuesday November 29th: Dave Dayden, Firedoglake: Udall Amendment Fails, Setting Up Showdown on Defense Authorization Bill | FDL News Desk

Mark Udall’s amendment to strip out indefinite detention provisions from the defense authorization bill failed today, and the bill will likely pass.


Senate rollcall for the Udall amendment:
Which reads, "To revise the provisions relating to detainee matters."


Incidentally, voting against the Udall amendment included

Bob Casey (D-PA)
Kent Conrad (D-ND)
Kay Hagan (D-NC)
Daniel Inouye (D-HI)
Mary Landrieu (D-LA)
Carl Levin (D-MI)
Joe Manchin (D-WV)
Claire McCaskill (D-MO)
Ben Nelson (D-NE)
Mark Pryor (D-AR)
Jack Reed (D-RI)
Jean Shaheen (D-NH)
Debbie Stabenow (D-MI)
Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI)

While Republicans Rand Paul(KY) and Mark Kirk(IL) voted for the amendment.

And FDL commenter wrote:

Dayden: If Obama follows through with the veto, there will have to be some change to the bill, if the 37 voting for the Udall amendment hold out. I smell an unsatisfying compromise.

There really aren’t 37 votes it’s all staged when the chips are down. That’s why they have cloakrooms to decide who’s the hero and who’s the Goat . And the waiting for the “peoples” president to veto it Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha .

Over at the libertarian Daily Paul, another commenter wrote:

Cowards Udall and Ron Wyden both voted FOR warrantless wiretaps – twice this year, but got favorable publicity for coming out against warrantless wiretaps.
In a nutshell, this bill will provide a loop-hole to our legal system, effectively nullifying the 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, and 9th amendments.

I'll admit that BHO saying he'll veto doesn't reassure me. And as far as the second comment goes, I'm reminded of how back in the '90s Phil Gramm supposedly took credit for social programs he'd voted to ax beforehand, and how some New Republic writer referred to it as Gramm-standing.

I note also that neither senator from Alaska voted.(the vote was 60-38.) Maybe they were fishing.


Politically engaged bloggers and others often think Americans are especially dense, and certainly too many are. But I note that if you rely on major news portals to tell you what's been going on today, you're far more likely to have heard about Ann Coulter cursing on a talk show or Conrad Murray being sentenced than any of this, so it's not all the fault of ignorant people that they're ignorant. We often hear of "low-information voters," usually referred to disparagingly. Maybe another part of the problem is "medium-information voters", who are led by CBS, CNN, ABC, MSNBC, et al, to believe that they are in fact high-information voters and getting all the information they need. Ironically, Fox News as a reassuringly nutty counterpoint probably helps reinforce this impression for some. And if you are one of those medium-information voters and somebody tells you about these things, after such a convincing portrait of the lay of the political land has been offered to you, what must you think?

"Oh, what a whack-job."

Yes, a lot of people are goons who if they knew about this would cheer it on. While still others might feel squeamish about such a development, but would try to reassure themselves that the purpose is to protect us, and surely "they" wouldn't abuse it, etc, not because they necessarily believe it, but because it makes not fighting and just ducking your head and abiding with how things are a bit more bearable.(I have a feeling this group is much larger.) But how many people who would oppose this will even know?

"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they attack you, then you win."

Yeah, sure. If you like the Gandhi quote, there's also this:


"The incestuous relationship between government and big business thrives in the dark"- Jack Anderson

I've never once seen that on the bumper of an automobile. Why, I don't know.



see also Information Clearing House, Senators Demand the Military Lock Up American Citizens in a “Battlefield” They Define as Being Right Outside Your Window
(via Mr Pez)

Fort Worth Star-Telegram/AP "Senate panel pushes defense bill with detainee provisions White House opposes"






...

Ron Paul and 9/11, etc

Apparently Ron Paul was on Face the Nation on Sunday. I didn't watch it, but CNN's Kevin Liptak discusses it here,

"Ron Paul reissues claims on American policy and 9/11"[1]


Liptak:

Presidential candidate Rep. Ron Paul reiterated his controversial stance Sunday that some policies of the United States contributed to the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001.
[...]

Paul said American intervention in foreign nations was a trigger to potential terrorists, who he said were sending the message: “We don’t like American bombs to be falling on our country.”

He cited withdrawing a military base from Saudi Arabia immediately after 9/11 as an indication that U.S. military policy was partly responsible for the actions of terrorists.Paul has previously said that the military presence in Saudi Arabia was a motivator for terrorists, who were angered by American troops in the Islamic country.

The Texas congressman made clear he did not think America’s form of government and economy were to blame, but rather the specific foreign policies pursued by the United States.

“To deny this I think is very dangerous, but to argue the case that they want to do us harm because we're free and prosperous I think is a very, very dangerous notion because it's not true,” Paul said.

He continued, “You're supposed to be able to criticize your own government without saying you're un-American.”

This video below, intercutting footage from a GOP debate with an RT story was uploaded 12 September 2011.[link]





In a more rational world Ron Paul's "surprising claim" would not be remotely controversial, as Liptak deems it. I've observed before that the big media's job is to encourage viewers to be unreflective and stupid, and our job in turn is to comply, in hopes of approval and cheeseburgers and sundry pleasant diversions on the TV. The other day Duncan Mitchel wrote

...I have long believed that elites consider literacy dangerous. They'd love to limit it -- ideally, by direct intervention into the brain so that readers could only look for, read, or understand, approved texts. That's because elites need the rabble to have minimal functional literacy in order to serve elite ends; but once you teach someone to read, it's hard to predict or control what she'll read next. This is why schools teach reading and writing so badly, in order to get a few fluent readers and writers, and many who just stumble along, regarding text as something vaguely unpleasant.

I'm not saying that someone sat down and consciously decided to do it that way; but our current, traditional approach works well enough for official purposes, to produce enough literates to do the necessary work while leaving the rest only half-taught. The ongoing drive by corporate and government elites to censor the Internet might just give a boost to physical print, though: the forbidden, as Butler pointed out in connection with slaves' great desire to learn to read and write, automatically becomes attractive.

(He's referring to Octavia Butler, per a discussion she had at MIT with Samuel R. Delany in 1998, which Duncan references in "Literally Literate")


Shifting gears a bit, a recent Slate article also touches upon this:

Christopher Hitchens, "In God They Trust: How the conservative belief in American exceptionalism has become a matter of faith"


Hitchens calls it a conservative belief, not a republican belief, but at the Slate web page there's a still photo from another recent GOP debate, which seems like the layout is meant to imply that American Exceptionalism is a conspicuously Republican Party idea. (If only that were so, then it might be easier to eradicate. Then again, if only we had a viable opposition party, as opposed to the democrats, who weren't a viable opposition party even in 2009-2010, when they controlled all three branches of government, and the president was denounced for his supposed socialism. To paraphrase JFK and put words in his dead mouth he never would have said, we are all republicans now, even if Ike was a lefty by our new standards...)

Hitchens:

I remember Bernard-Henri Levy saying, in the early stages of the Iraq war that he opposed, that America had been essentially in the right about combating fascism and Nazism, and essentially right about opposing and outlasting the various forms of Communism, and that all else was pretty much commentary or, as one might say, merde de taureau. Something of the sort seems to apply in the present case, both in recent developments in Burma and Vietnam as well as in Libya and Syria. The crowds have a tendency to be glad that there is an American superpower, if only to balance the cynical powers of Moscow and Beijing. Perhaps if it were not for President Obama being in the White House, our right wing would be quicker to see and appreciate this point.

Does Hitchens really believe the crowds in Libya and Syria "have a tendency to be glad there is an American superpower"? I guess he might; mostly he seems to believe that the West is the best, so he may decide to also believe that Libyans and Syrians, et al, look at things the way he does, because it helps reinforce his belief.[2]


How do you separate American Exceptionalism from "they hate us for our freedoms"? I don't see how you can. The former functions as a set of blinders, which prevents one from seeing the latter with anything like objectivity. If we're awesome and everybody knows we're awesome, a truth universally acknowledged and so forth, what other reason could there be? The politicians know they have to say it, even if they don't have to believe it, and the network reporters also have to say it, and who the hell knows what they believe? Presumably they believe in adapting and surviving and having an up-to-date demo reel.

Maybe the problem arises if our awesomeness is so self-evident, then we just have to assert it and it is so. This frees us of having to actually be awesome, or even just decent and well-behaved, which a lot of the world would happily settle for. We create our own reality, or at least our elites do, as a commenter recently reminded me.



Laurie Fendrich, Chronicle of Higher Education: "America Is Exceptional, but Keep It to Yourself" November 20, 2011. I may discuss this article and the related Pew poll a little more in a few days.

Two from the Christian Science Monitor:
Ron Paul's strength in Iowa shows it's too soon to write him off[3]

Did Ron Paul win GOP's national security debate?


[1]on CNN.com's front page this story was linked as "Ron Paul's Surprising 9/11 Claim" I've mentioned this trend on news web sites before, to give their stories more than one title, depending on where you find it on the site. Slate and the Christian Science monitor both do it quite a bit too. I don't know what to make of it, apart from possibly being a SEO (search engine optimization) tactic to increase traffic, to increase the number of key words that might lead to the url.

[2]I've had the idea for some time of a post discussing Hitchens and Tom Friedman plus possibly a couple of other figures who strike me as pretty overrated, "Wrong except when they're right."

It would be about persons who often spew nonsense but occasionally offer more useful observations, seemingly because while they function as gatekeepers of conventional wisdom, they also need to say something that's not so merde de taureau-ey once in a while, whether to protect their reputations or as a tacit wink to knowledgeable cynics who may be listening. Of course the occasional non-wackjob sensible comment also helps create verisimilitude, so the officially agreed-upon crazy is easier to accept.

[3]I find it hard to believe Paul has a shot, even if all the candidates still in the GOP race still have a mathematical shot, even Rick Santorum. But part of the establishment media being the establishment is demonstrating they aren't marginalizing anybody, so what the hey.

"...all this stuff twirling around in my head."

Arthur Silber:

The great majority of people remain resolutely focused on the trivia of the day, and the latest "controversy" of the moment. Developments over a period of years and even decades bore them, and they have no interest in understanding them. Our politicians specialize in such ignorance, and most bloggers indulge their stupidity, and imitate it to varying degrees.

(update below)

That's what Silber wrote in 2007, in "The Worsening Nightmare" and he quotes himself Monday, in "I Care for Myself Too Much to Write About Iran." If you are familiar with Silber's writings you already know he does this a lot, although the newer posts generally have a lot of new content too. He can be a "heavy" writer and seem humorless at times, but if you don't haven't read Silber before you probably should. It's good to see him posting again.

Arthur's comments have a sort of serendipity about them, he posting the above on the same day as the now famous Herman Cain Libya flub. Maybe in a society that places a premium on being too cool and too innocent to know terribly much about the big world outside our borders, Herman Cain is the kind of candidate we deserve.

In a way, his foreign policy misstep was a kind of treat for establishment reporters, they getting to self-indulgently point a finger at him for his ignorance, while gliding past the fact that the marquee reporters and commentators themselves conspire to keep the electorate ignorant much of the time.

And then there's the fact that this "zinger" came via reporters at a small-market newspaper just doing their job who were not even trying to stump him, but just asking him boring old-fashioned questions about his stands on sundry issues. You know, as opposed to demonstrating their rarefied cleverness in endless, postmodern speculation on how the candidate's behavior will be perceived and so forth. In fact the vacuousness of much national-level news coverage may have contributed to Cain feeling it probably wasn't that important that he have considered opinions about Obama's foreign policy.







I suppose his impromptu concern that we not leave a post Qadaffi Libya in ruins should be touching, once he got his bearings straight and realized he needed to have a comprehensible opinion or two about the whole thing. In fact if he meant it, it would be both a sensible and decent thing for him to say. But you'd think if he meant it he'd have less difficulty remembering that he felt that way.

In a way the "gotcha" narrative the national level reporters apply to this story reflects badly not only on themselves and Cain, but people who buy into it, as it is more than a reflection of how insular the national media is, but how actively pernicious their influence is. It suggests that a presidential candidate has to demonstrate knowledge of US foreign policy just as a formality, and we will judge him mostly on his polish and poise in response, and actually taking tedious questions about how the US behaves towards other countries seriously is just being fussy. Come to think of it, this view is probably why we have a president like Obama.


The full Milkwaukee Journal-Sentinel interview is below. And yes, Herman's just another ambitious empty suit. But the conduct of non-marquee, non-beltway political reporters(the unfortunate sound quality notwithstanding) is actually more interesting, serving as a reminder of how journalism was done 30 plus years ago. (Follow up questions? What are those?)




update: I changed the 1st clip to a slightly longer version which may give you a better sense of the context.

13 November 2011: Iran, etc

Is it just me, hearing Fareed Zakaria's pain at restraining himself, wanting to say he recognizes part of his job is placating war loving oligarchs nutballs? We could feel bad for him, but one imagines he's well compensated to talk out both sides of his mouth, to hint that war with Iran would be crazy, that they are complying with regular inspections, but "who can say" what their intentions are?

Who, who?

Maybe this is as close as a talking head on TV can get to saying that US foreign policy is deliberately counterproductive and stupid, which is to say not very close. And another thing you can't say on television is that Saddam and Qadaffi were both allied with the US at one time, then US policy changed, so see what it got them. Or to put it another way: the Iranians must by now conclude that it would be insane to not get nuclear warheads.


Two from the Christian Science Monitor:
1.Iran nuclear report: Why it may not be a game-changer after all The Iran nuclear report released yesterday by the UN nuclear watchdog agency sought to corroborate details provided by US intelligence in 2005. But some nuclear experts are unconvinced.

In a 14-page annex to its quarterly report on Iran released yesterday, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said new intelligence and other data gave it "serious concern" about the allegedly peaceful nature of Iran's nuclear program. But the casus belli for military strikes that anti-Iran hawks in the US and Israel expected to gain from the IAEA report is far from clear-cut.

Imminent Iran nuclear threat? A timeline of warnings since 1979

The report is based on more than 1,000 pages of information shared with the agency by US intelligence in 2005, one year after they were apparently spirited out of Iran on a laptop computer. But deep skepticism about the credibility of the documents remains – Iran has long insisted they are forgeries by hostile intelligence agencies – despite a concerted attempt by the IAEA to verify the data and dispel such doubt.

"It's very thin, I thought there would be a lot more there," says Robert Kelley, an American nuclear engineer and former IAEA inspector who was among the first to review the original data in 2005. "It's certainly old news; it's really quite stunning how little new information is in there."

and 2.Mystery surrounds deadly blast at Iran ammunition depot

Lew Rockwell,"12 Facts About Money and Congress That Are So Outrageous That It Is Hard To Believe That They Are Actually True" [via Mimi]

Brayden Goyette, Truthdig, "Flat Taxes Are Big in the Former USSR. Have They Worked?"

Arthur Silber re OWS

Scott Olsen, the vet who was injured at the Oakland OWS protests last month, discusses his progress since surgery at his Google Plus page in a public posting, here.[via Gary Farber]

Alan Simpson interview (30 June 2011)

above: June 30 - Chrystia Freeland talks with former senator Alan Simpson at the Aspen Ideas Festival.


from yesterday's post:

This is that Reuters interview with Alan Simpson from June 30th at the Aspen Conference, when the debt ceiling faux debate was still going on. As I said, I think this is interesting because, by turns, he plays scandalous truth-teller and shifts back to shilling for collapse. (It takes a lot of brass to shill for 1890s style government, as he does in the debt commission report, and simultaneously attack the GOP for being unduly influenced by Grover Norquist.)



From Arthur Silber,regarding Elizabeth Warren and some other things. A lot of people are worried about you Arthur, and happy to hear from you again. Be well.


Rob Payne, "The Hitler syndrome and Iran"

Obama was the worst thing that could have happened to American politics. Weak, venal, self serving, a habitual and incurable liar, Obama has almost single handedly wiped out what passed for the anti-war movement in America. Obama had a mandate and full support of the majority of Americans to overturn the past eight years of Bush policy but instead of a president who might have tried we got Obama. That opportunity is long gone thanks to Obama and will likely not return for many years.

Christian Science Monitor:"To define poverty, US has a new (and improved?) formula"


Harvard Crimson, "Group Endorses Walk Out in Economics 10"

Students staged a walkout from an intro Macroeconomics class taught by famed economist Greg mankiw, protesting his teaching that a minimum wage is inefficient, which they regarded as imposing a right-wing slant on his course.


Jeff Nilsson,Saturday Evening Post: Taxing the Wealthy: The Continuing Controversy

Editorials from 1913 and 1935 show how the Post changed its mind about higher taxes for the wealthy.



ABC News, Pa. Cafe Boss: I Made Black Man Cashier, Got Fired
By JOE MANDAK Associated Press
PITTSBURGH November 3, 2011 (AP)

A white man claims he was fired as manager of a suburban Panera Bread shop for repeatedly having a black man work the cash register instead of putting him in a less visible location and having "pretty young girls" be the cashiers.

Scott Donatelli contends in a federal lawsuit he was denied extra medical leave and was fired in September after double hip replacement surgery earlier this year. He claims the reason was that he bucked race-related personnel rules communicated to him by a district manager for Sam Covelli, a franchisee based in Warren, Ohio, about 80 miles northwest of Pittsburgh.

Earlier this year, Donatelli says, the district manager told him, "It's what Sam wants and what our customers want. They would rather see pretty young girls" at the cash register.

Zachary Roth, Yahoo News: "Bankrupt church wants donations for pastor’s sick wife ferried in limo"

Some members of a bankrupt Orange County, Calif. megachurch are expressing outrage after fielding an email request for congregants to deliver food to waiting limos so that it can ferried to the founder's sick wife. The appeal comes weeks after a lawsuit charged that the founder of the Crystal Cathedral house of worship, Rev. Robert Schuller, and his family had been paying themselves lavish salaries and other benefits while the church was in financial straits.

30 October 2011

2 from CNN:"meet the 99%"(photo essay)


"Iraq project not worth the millions spent"
(note the original title, per the url, seems to be: "Report deems major Iraq project not worth investment or lost lives")


Two from Ian Welsh: “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”

In our current age the word demand has been debased. A day does not go by without some person or organization “demanding” an apology or retraction or that someone do something. These are not demands as a prior generation would have understood them.

and

Education and retaliation in OWS


Naked Capitalism, "The Natural Chaos of markets"(also here)

Prominent skeptic says he now believes in global warming(also here and here)

Evidently this study cost about 600,000 bucks and a quarter of the funding came from a Koch brother, which is apparently supposed to be a big deal. Is it? I'm reminded of the recent news that Goldman Sachs gave 5 grand to a credit union in NYC then demanded it back when the CU had dealings with the OWS people. Climate change is not a religious tenet, or at least it shouldn't be. Koch pays for goodwill like any other corporate entity, whether it's sponsoring a show on PBS or a study. Speaking of Goldman Sachs, it seems the sponsor "snagfilms.com" including "the art of overcoming poverty" which has people and images but I'm not sure what it's supposed to tell the viewer about overcoming poverty, the title notwithstanding. They also include some Buñuel and some anti-Islamic agitprop.


Republican lawmakers spin funding tall tales(also here)

see also
The Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature site.


Lisa Margonelli| Slate: Alms for the Rich How policies meant to promote alternative energies are actually hurting the middle class.
Christian Science Monitor, Jared Bernstein, Guest blogger / October 27, 2011 "Republican tax plans will make inequality worse"

Jason Linkins, Huffington Post, Occupy Wall Street: Not Here To Destroy Capitalism, But To Remind Us Who Saved It (via Jack Crow, "Safe For Business")
Both reference a recent NYT op-ed by Nicholas Kristof regarding OWS. Jack Crow's commentary seems more useful, and Linkins essentially rehashes Kristof, both reassuring presumed squeamishly bourgeois readers that OWS represents nothing that should frighten them. Perhaps the co-op op-ed will soon be recognized as a new genre.


As I mentioned before, Jodi Dean of I Cite has been closely keeping up with goings on at OWS, and has offered a lot of interesting recent commentary.


Dmitry Orlov, Stages of Collapse Revised: “Joined at the Wallet”

I thought that government interventions in private finance would prolong the agony somewhat; what I didn't think was that they would prolong it even onto the death of the governments themselves! The effect of the interventions since then, in the US and in Europe, have been to knock down every firewall between public and private finance, to the point that now we are faced with two monstrous, and monstrously sick, conjoined twins, and the death any one of them is sure to spell the death of the other. Trying to separate them with a cleaver will be of no use: they will simply hemorrhage red ink and die sooner than they would otherwise.

Perhaps their early demise would be useful. Now that economic growth is pretty much over and done with, big finance and big government stand directly in the path of an orderly shriveling-up of the global economy. What I mean when I say “an orderly shriveling-up” is a process by which the economy shrinks at a healthy rate, corresponding to rates that were once considered to be a healthy growth rate, but in a way that allows most people to survive by providing a few essentials, such as food, shelter, security, access to medical care, ability to raise children and so on.
[...]
I wished for an orderly cascade of collapsing institutions, with enough of a gap between them for public psychology and behavior to adjust to the new reality. But almost four lost years of both government and finance betting on a future that cannot exist, doubling down every time they lose again, has dashed those hopes. The effect, I think, will be to compress collapse into a single chaotic episode. Global commerce will not be far behind, because it is dependent on global finance, and if international credit locks up then the tankers and the container ships don't sail. Shortly thereafter it's lights out.

He references his earlier article from February of 2008, "The five stages of collapse"[see also PDF link]

Oakland, October 2011: Scott Olsen

Huffington Post, Oakland Police Critically Injure Iraq War Vet During Occupy March

The local police's use of force seriously injured an Occupy activist and Iraq War veteran. Scott Olsen, 24, remains sedated on a respirator, in stable but critical condition at Oakland’s Highland Hospital after being hit in the head with a police projectile. Olsen's roommate, Keith Shannon, 24, told The Huffington Post that Olsen is still in the emergency room.
[...]
Activists staged Tuesday night’s march through downtown Oakland in response to a violent police raid on the Occupy Oakland encampment earlier that day, during which officers rained tear gas and rubber bullets on the activists in an effort to clear the camp. Police arrested scores of protesters during the eviction.

When reached at her Wisconsin home, Sandra Olsen, Scott's mother, told HuffPost that her son's condition was serious. "He has a head injury," she said. "They are still trying to figure it out with him. I don't want to tie up the phone line. He's not in the best shape."

San Jose Mercury News, Marine Scott Olsen injured during Occupy Wall Street confrontation in Oakland

Yahoo/AP: Iraq war vet injured during Oakland protests
(also here: Boston Globe)

Scott Olsen, 24, suffered a fractured skull Tuesday in a march with other protesters toward City Hall, said Dottie Guy, of the Iraq Veterans Against the War. The demonstrators had been making an attempt to re-establish a presence in the area of a disbanded protesters’ camp when they were met by officers in riot gear.

It’s not known exactly what type of object struck Olsen or who might have thrown it, though Guy’s group said it was lodged by officers. Several small skirmishes had broken out in the night with police clearing the area by firing tear gas and protesters throwing rocks and bottles at them.

What hit him? Who knows. Who threw it or launched it? Also unclear. But evidently the protesters definitely threw rocks and bottles. It's plausible that they did, or at least some of them did, but still.

Oakland: 25 October 2011

The first clip, from RT, seems to be from earlier in the day, while the second was posted around 11 pm or midnight Pacific Time.

Yahoo/AP: "Patience with protester waste, crime wears thin across U.S." MEGHAN BARR - Associated Press

Also here: Boston Herald, ABC News

Whose patience is unspecified, at least in the headline. Possibly it's unimportant.

Tuesday, Oct 25, 2011
Justin Elliott, Salon: "Police in riot gear raid Occupy Oakland And tear down protesters' tent city"

Alternet.org: An eyewitness account of the protesters' eviction from Frank Ogawa Plaza


2 things from Facebook:

2. somebody else: Incredible!!! I just listened to the audio of an Oakland TV station talking about the crackdown there tonite. So why, one flak asked, do you think the violence started here in Oakland when there are so many other locations?Was that jerk kidding? He's got the most violent police force in the country, with that track record established over many YEARS, and he wants to know why the violence started there? Here's a clue, jerkwad. Look for the guys wearing uniforms. They're the perps.

Also, the jerks on that TV station were all agog over what they said were tear gas explosions, and how much further they were being launched this time. I could only hear what they were seeing, but that crap wasn't tear gas. That was the percussion bombs, and those dorks didn't even know the difference. No wonder the public ends up stupid.

I don't know what teargas canisters sound like when they discharge, nor what percussion bombs sound like, but it's definitely true that the Oakland P.D. has a bad reputation. Maybe it's ironic that I hear a helicopter overhead as I type this. Maybe police forces all over are a bit nervous right now.


see also
"Oakland police Sgt. Derwin Longmire sues city" April 7th, 2010

"Oakland Police Chief Anthony Batts quits" October 11th, 2011

Oh, why can't those *&%$in' OWS protesters lay off the bongo drums and comb their hair when there are TV reporters lurking nearby?

Occupy Wall Street! From: theresident| Oct 7, 2011



2 updates below

Lori Harfenist("the resident") writes: "You know I wouldn't be doing my thing if I didn't have a little fun, but in all seriousness, I very much am in support of what these folks are doing."

Maybe this is true, but I'm skeptical; I've posted other videos of Harfenist's before, generally appreciating them, but in at least one she comes across as a bit of a reactionary. Obviously she doesn't have to be supportive in her stance towards OWS to report on them, but I wonder if her interview subjects were mostly chosen to make OWS look like a bunch of flakes.

I get the impression this is a common establishment media tactic. I couldn't help but notice that lots of more clean-cut looking persons kept passing by in the background during the first 30 seconds while she talked to the guy who said he intended to stay until there was change or "the world blew up." The older man she talks to in the very next sequence suggests that the younger people who are there aren't in need of work, which sounds in context like a criticism of the first subject, who never mentions jobs, and the narrative sequence suggests he has all the time in the world. Finally, I would have been interested in seeing more of the person interviewed in 1:45-2:10, as he seemed articulate and thoughtful. (Note there's a jump cut in the middle of the segment which makes you wonder what was taken out.)


By contrast, there's this from Occupy LA from this past Saturday October 15th, uploaded by "wrestlingdivanewyork"

Look at those decadent Californians, trying to fool us by looking so...normal.

You know they're up to something.


wrestlingdiva:I heard them coming in, and had to catch this for you all to see, the estimate is there are 10,000+ people here.



Occupy Austin(Texas):
WHEN : 10/6/2011 @10am - 12/6/2011 @10pm


Occupy Portland(Oregon):


Occupy Columbus


Occupy L.A.


October 8th: "Democracy is for those who show up"

Let me be clear: I'm not saying the "hippie-looking" and "flaky-looking" protesters are less important or that their views have less validity. It's just that the reporters seem to zero in on them as an editorial strategy designed to make OWS seem foolish, and it needs to be noted. It's not just Lori Harfenist by any means. Her report reminded me of the CNN clip from Erin Burnett I posted the other day, and if anything Burnett's piece seems even more brazenly slanted.

update:

Ms Xeno in comments writes,

When it comes to reality shows or sports, the mass media can't get enough of funny outfits or goofy behavior. Why shouldn't they duplicate such priorities in their coverage of OWS? After all, the media's real job is to trivialize an important event and render it as disposable as they possibly can. What better way to do this than to use the same techniques they use to cover trivial, disposable events that are meant to be consumed like popcorn and then promptly forgotten...

also, Rob Payne mentions this from Pam Martens in Counterpunch:

Meet the “Lower Manhattan Security Initiative” Wall Street Firms Spy on Protestors In Tax-Funded Center

update 2:

Also, as I mentioned in comments, you should really check out Jodi Dean's recent posts regarding OWS.

And from Good Media, "Fox News Won't Air Wall Street Protester Who Humiliates Fox News"


...

Days of Rage, Evenings of Indifference

above: uploaded 17 Sep 2011, below: 20 September 2011



below CNN:Erin Burnett: Wall St. protesters vague on details 4 October 2011



Slate, "Even the Protesters at Occupy Wall Street Are Confused About What They’re Protesting"
(This article was also titled: Vacant: The Occupy Wall Street protests and the creation of the post-Obama left. By David Weigel Monday, Oct. 3, 2011, at 3:24 PM ET)

Douglas Rushkoff, CNN: "Think Occupy Wall St. is a phase? You don't get it"
updated 1:09 PM EST, Wed October 5, 2011

Peter Hart, Fair.org, "Erin Burnett Hears the Critics--But Still Misses the Point"
10/05/2011


Dennis Perrin writes:

I admire these kids. They're off their asses. Agitating. Arguing. Providing a living example. There's passion and feeling in their dissent. They're willing to be punished. It's easy to mock them, but how many of you would take their place? Primarily when the cops attack?
[...]
Our owners fear any rustling from below. They'll throw whatever they have at those unsatisfied with our paradise. There are signs that the Wall Street protests will expand nationally. If so, get ready for serious shit slinging.

Yet I have doubts. The class war from above demoralizes as much as it incites. Countless people have surrendered. Faded from view. To demonstrate or occupy corporate turf doesn't seem like a wise option. You'll get beaten and arrested. For what? Making mortgage payments is tough enough.

I've been checking Pollingreport.com for signs of any thing related to Occupy Wall Street. They have links dedicated to Nancy Pelosi, Chris Christie, "Is the Supreme Court too liberal?", "Kids of illegal immigrants", even "Is Social Security constitutional?" But Occupy Wall Street? Thus far, zilch.

There are, admittedly, some items that may be peripherally related: "Can you trust Washington?" and "Distribution of money and wealth" but these are summaries of older and unrelated polls. You'd think the establishment media was blithely unaware of 'OWS',(Ha!) but one assumes they've been hoping the kids would just go away. I'm not even sure how accurate it is to characterize them as all or mostly kids but either way they didn't just go away, at least they haven't yet. One assumes the powers that be have a certain patience threshold with respect to how long OWS may go on, but it hasn't been reached yet. They recognize it's in their interest to seem indifferent at this point.

Finally, CNN released a poll today about OWS, saying that roughly half the population has heard of the protests going on. If a poll conducted after this has been going on for over two weeks shows 49% of respondents still haven't even heard of "Occupy Wall Street", how many do you suppose were even aware of the various one-day demonstrations in D.C. over the years, whether related to the Iraq war or other things ? 20%? 15%?

(I mean the noncommercial ones of course, mounted by the A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition and their ilk, as opposed to those media spectacle faux demonstrations sponsored by Fox News or Comedy Central.)

It reminds me of the conceit of looking for "untainted" jurors for high-profile murder trials. I've always wondered about that, why it's supposed to be preferable to have incurious lunkheads as stewards of the juroring, or whatever you call it.



Poll: Half the country has heard about the Occupy Wall Street protests

An ORC International Caravan Poll released Monday[pdf link] indicates that 51% of Americans say they've heard about the Occupy Wall Street movement, with 49% saying they haven't heard about the demonstrations, which started in New York City 24 days ago and have spread to cities across the country.

According to the survey, 27% say they agree with the movement's overall position on the financial system and social change, with 19% saying disagree with Occupy Wall Street on those issues. Fifty-four percent of those questioned have no firm opinion about Occupy Wall Street.

The pdf link CNN provides barely scratches the surface. Maybe there were many other questions. I'm curious how people's views correlate to age, whether or not they usually vote, to level of education, and obviously viz-a-viz employment status and income. The perennial drum-beating about how persons with bachelor's degrees making so much more over the course of a lifetime than high school grads has struck me as a bit fishy for some time, and I wonder about how those numbers are derived.


A detour, of sorts: Discussing Slavoj Žižek means you get to use diacritical marks, which is always fun. I've read people like John Caruso and BDR saying he's an overblown fraud, but have tried to reserve judgment because I haven't read any of his books, just an occasional essay in The Guardian or Counterpunch. But he comes across as a clueless, egocentric jerk in this linked 2 part Youtube video [via] of his visit to OWS from this Sunday. Why do the kids co-operate with his insistence that they repeat everything he says, like extras in The Life of Brian? So Fox News can make fun of them?


Cain: Not rich? No job? Blame yourself (CNN Political Ticker)


Herman Cain: "Don't blame Wall Street. Don't blame the big banks. If you don't have a job and you're not rich, blame yourself."

( And he's supposed to be one of the less wacky candidates.) I hope somebody asks him about the phenomenon of CEOs occasionally getting performance bonuses for trimming their workforces, in light of the above.

He's right though, that ultimately the Occupy Wall Streeters represent a critique of capitalism, but I suspect that now that the establishment media has their angle of "the liberal tea party", this critique will be increasingly difficult to discern for people watching on television. At any rate, it probably behooves us to mistrust our own reactions sometimes, when we are convinced

"the American People are so...[insert quality x]"

because the media often works to make us give up on each other.

9 October 2011

via Crooks and Liars, from yesterday. I think programming this is part of the reason I watch much less TV nowadays.


from a couple of weeks ago, via Dennis Perrin: Marisol Bello, USA TODAY, Poverty affects 46 million Americans



Paul Craig Roberts: Is the war on terror a hoax?
(via KFO's Buck v. Bell, where he has some additional comments. BvB was apparently named for this case from many years ago.)

Guardian UK, "Revealed: US spy operation that manipulates social media"

Dan Hancox,"The Real Reason Why Police Cage Peaceful Protestors" October 3, 2011

Duncan, "In my back yard"

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak said in a recent interview that a lot of talk about "sustainability" is misconceived, because the lifestyles people want to sustain simply aren't sustainable. And some well-meaning people just don't get it: one person commented on Facebook, "When I have enough to feed myself for the month and not Overdraft...Overdraft ..I will undoubtedly suffer help I those less fortunate." It's a nice sentiment, but it misses the point. Personal, private charity can't fix the systemic structural problems the world faces.

...

Pictures of goats in trees

update below
According to Yahoo:

In Morocco, the native Tamri goats are so enticed by the berries of Argan trees that they have become adept at climbing the branches to reach their food. Even stranger still, the goats' droppings contain seed kernels which local farmers then grind into an oil that is used in cooking and cosmetics.

I'm skeptical. Maybe the Morocco Export Council is thinking, "Oh, those stupid Americans. Surely if we post some pictures of native Tamri goats in trees, we will be able to sell more berries. They will never for a moment suspect we know how to use the photoshop because they think we don't understand these things. Ha ha ha ha!" Or maybe somebody else is thinking this.

Note also the reference to Abbas' speech at the UN. The speech urging the UN to recognize Palestine as a state is harmful or not harmful to the peace process. Leaving aside the questions of what exactly the peace process is, i.e. whether it can only occur under US-sanctioned auspices or at least with US approval of the process, the blurb on Yahoo's front page functions as a barrier, positing "helpful or harmful" to the peace process, as opposed to many other possible questions:

Why the P.A. taking is the initiative, why they would want to, or feel they have to, or of the US losing its primacy in the Middle East, and if so, why do others see the US's influence as less useful or relevant than before, or simply whether or not its the best course of action for the Palestinians to take, to further their interests. No, its important for Americans to regard other people as children, and therefore, ironically, important for the press to treat Americans as children to help perpetuate this.

Do people actually buy this, and look at things, and avoid looking at other things, the way this approach dictates? Undoubtedly some do. I suppose the stereotype of Palestinians dancing in the streets probably helps, reinforcing the image of those hot-headed, passionate desert peoples, etc.

Reuters,"Abbas stakes Palestinian claim to state at U.N."(the Yahoo news link above)

"Obama sold Israel bunker-buster bombs"(also here)

"Israel on alert for possible Hamas attack"

Lt. Col. Avital Leibovich, an army spokeswoman, says there is "concrete intelligence" that Hamas and maybe other militant groups are trying to infiltrate the border.

She says an attack might be timed to torpedo the Palestinian statehood bid at the U.N., an effort being led by Hamas' chief rival, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

Israel has more to benefit from an attack by Hamas at this point than Hamas does, in terms of the propaganda value of being able to point to it as yet another proof of the brutishness of the Palestinians, and Hamas has a lot to lose if they attack Israel, especially now, in terms of credibility and goodwill. That doesn't automatically make the assertion of "concrete intelligence" so much hogwash, but it still reminds me of the goats in the trees.

Cross-posted here at Hugo Zoom.

update: Rob Payne kindly references this goaty discussion, here. Also, he mentions this by Philip Giraldi:"Biggest Losers in Palestine Veto? The American People" as well as a recent Counterpunch piece by Uri Avnery. All three are worthwhile.

I wonder if US and Israeli politicians are feeling boxed in now, as if they have no choice but to be even more recalcitrant. Maybe they feel this in part because of how the political zeitgeist has shifted so far to the right in both countries, which of course is something they had a hand in creating. Or maybe they blame it on the Palestinians, for not co-operating in the the continual confirming and reconfirming of their own agreeable powerlessness, and committing the crime of embarrassing the two countries.

But they're not boxed in. All they have to do is acknowledge Palestine's claim as legitimate, as opposed to continuing the fictional peace process that fools fewer people each day. If they actually did this it could even lead to a nonfictional peace process. Could you imagine that?

The Ides of September: Dickensian blogging for Yahoos

update below

Look, even the OKC neurosurgeon and his wife are selling their Oklacastle at a loss, so that means everybody's hurting. OK?

No, Yahoo doesn't actually say that. I'm kidding, OK? I'm such a kidder. And to be fair, maybe I've been excessively critical of Yahoo on occasion(also here). I imagine they're not substantially better or worse than average as far as corporate new media go. For all I know the people updating their front page actually put these kinds of items in stark opposition deliberately, to obliquely comment.


A Medieval-Style Castle in Oklahoma
By Rob Bear, Curbed September 13, 2011

"...they've put their Oklahoma City travel alternative up for sale at a loss, despite having filled the place with glamorous European light fixtures and furnishings. The castle was first listed for $4M in early 2011 and took a quick $500K price cut in May.
[...]
At 9,600 square foot, "[i]t's a big home and everything suits it," the owner says. "The chandeliers and the big door handles. Everything is more perfect than I could pick out in a million years." Yet the six-bedroom manse, a hodge-podge of faux finishes and architectural styles, might be one of the most muddled designs we've come across.

Yahoo Finance/AP: Mortgage default warnings surged in August
Report: Mortgage default warnings spiked in August, signaling potential new foreclosure wave
(also here, and here)

update:

Rob Payne of Halcyon Days adds some useful information, in the comments:

I assume it’s part of the bailout, the subsidizing of banks who are holding onto foreclosures. It’s a really bad situation, the banks won’t loan because often the foreclosures have serious problems, damage, termites, sometimes the people who lost their home damage the property but the bottom line is they are often in terrible condition. And the question is, if the bank loans on a decrepit home, who fixes it? Who pays for it? You can bet the banks don’t want to.

I’ve read that the banks are holding onto properties to keep the number of homes for sale down so that it doesn’t further drive prices down. If they dump them on the market prices would no doubt plummet again depending on the geographical area. Rich neighborhoods are by and large not affected nearly as much as working class neighborhoods. For the wealthy prices have only dropped slightly and in some cases not at all. That’s the advantage of the wealthy and upper middle classes...

-the rest is in the third comment.

23 August 2011 Nuclear concern

Video above is via Jay Taber(here).

August in Tripoli

Narratives establish verisimilitude by including a wealth of believable details, and the plucky freedom-fighting rebels may well be on the verge of capturing the Libyan capitol, and they may well represent the authentic aspirations of the Libyan people. And it may be jealousy[1] on my part to note that this just looks like a guy in a hotel wearing a kevlar jacket talking into a camera, and for all we know he may be in Terre Haute or Akron.

Let me be clear, I don't actually question that reporter Matthew Chance really is in Tripoli. Nevertheless, the abstract, stage prop quality of this report seems emblematic of much of the reportage we've gotten about the NATO campaign against Libya, plucky rebels or no plucky rebels.

We're told the war is about this, or that, or something else, so it must be so. Humanitarian interventions are humanitarian interventions because we're told they're humanitarian. And they're interventions, so they can't be wars, and we're picking sides, and picking the right one, because the government says so, or Samantha Power says so, or some guy on TV says so, etc.

Could we be making things worse by interfering? As "Davidly66" pointed out recently,

"Denying the myth of American exceptionalism will quickly get you accused of blaming America for all the world's problems."

It takes belief in our exceptionalism, or at least insufficient skepticism of the justness of those with authority and power, to believe that we will inevitably choose the right side when we interfere in somebody else's conflict, that there is a clearly right (and wrong) side, that we should interfere, and that any accusations of nefarious ulterior motives are just mean-spirited and wrong(like for example, that we're stealing somebody else's oil.)

See also

Jyoti Prasad Das, "Why Is Libya in the Crosshairs of the West?"

Rob Payne, "Fifteen to One"

Fred Kaplan, "It's Not What We Ought To Do, But What We Can Do"

(Apparently the original title of this article, per the bookmark data, was

"Humanitarian intervention: Why is NATO bombing Libya but not Syria?"

Maybe this made the war-mongering quality of Kaplan's argument too obvious. I think it's also useful to note that "R2P" was originally described, according to the note at the bottom, as "right to protect" and later changed to "responsibility to protect." Kipling should have been Fred Kaplan's copy editor.)


[1]I say jealousy because several years ago, in 2005-2007, I tried to raise funds to go to Iraq and report on events there but was largely unsuccessful. The persons who helped me were very kind and decent, but it wasn't enough and frankly I went about it the wrong way; I should have attached myself to a graduate program in either journalism or film, and I failed to do this.

ABC News vs. tax hikes

note: update below.

The video is from the ABC nightly news, "Debt Ceiling Crisis: What Would You Do?"


It really should be titled, "what would you cut?" because it certainly seems that this was how things were presented to these panelists: that addressing the current budget debate requires believing that the budget has to be cut, taking this as received wisdom. Also, we have the sense of the false limit of a "spectrum" that runs from Tea Partier to "Liberal Democrat", i.e., you have to believe in the system(and accept that the Tea Party is part of that system, while anybody to the left of the supposedly liberal Obama is not.)

I note the two GOP types are older and seem more self-assured in their demeanor, in contrast with the other three participants, who seem more sheepish and unsure of themselves; maybe they were selected for this. The diffident three end up being cowed by the tea partier and the other republican regarding raising taxes on the wealthy, while the panel cuts social security, raising the retirement age to 68. Additionally I have to wonder how much this process and their conclusions were steered by the reporter and how it may have been further steered in the editing.

Meanwhile, from Andrew Leonard in Salon(via Duncan):

How to make a bad economy even worse:New GDP numbers should be a warning bell for Obama and Congress. But they're not listening
[...]
Yes, we need a deal that avoids default. But if the GDP data proves anything, spending cuts shouldn't be part of it. Shrinking state and local budgets are already a significant drag on growth. Consumer spending is weak. And yet everyone seems to agree: Obama, Republicans and Democrats, that the first order of business should be shrinking government even further, subtracting even more demand from the economy, and likely accelerating our economic decline.

One of the problems with critiquing the shortcomings of mainstream news reportage and figuring out what's really going on is that corporate and agenda-driven journalistic portals are rarely uniformly biased or distorted; if they were they would be reliably unreliable. Salon editors sometimes make excuses for Obama, but to their credit they also provide a platform for Glenn Greenwald. Leonard is absolutely correct here that shrinking state and local budgets are having a harmful effect on economic growth, but he also describes GOP brinksmanship as incompetence, which is highly questionable. This Shock Doctrine-esque behavior has been highly effective in moving the debate to a point where the failure of the 2009 stimulus is now axiomatic and the debate is essentially cutting entitlements a little versus a lot, as opposed to, say, that the stimulus was bungled, or too small. (At least he acknowledges that Obama seems to assent to the hacking away.) Of course it would be nice if ABC's Brian Ross had exposed his panel (and the viewers) to an argument like Leonard's, and discussed the traditional economic position that cutting government budgets in a recession hurts the prospects for an economic rebound.

ABC's panelists in the video above were familiar with the notion that raising taxes on the wealthy hinders job creation, and selecting a college aged democrat to debate this with a self described businessman representing this talking point seems like a tailor made lay-up for the GOP position. (For what it's worth, I tend to think the businessman believes this, and isn't just deliberately misleading the kid. Maybe Brian Ross believe it too.)

see also, Bruce A. Dixon, "Obama & the Fake Debt Ceiling Crisis: This President Is Really Just Smarter Than You Are"(via KFO)

But what if President Barack Obama never intended to fight for jobs or justice? What if he believes the nonsense about Wall Street being “job creators” instead of economic vampires?
[...]
What if Obama is not weak, or timid, or vacillating or waiting for us to “make him do it”? What if what we've seen is all there is, all there ever was?

The truth is that Barack Obama's actions are entirely rational, understandable and even predictable if you suppose him to have been a vicious, vacuous and cynical right wing operative from the very beginning.

The historic pattern of post-sixties Democratic candidates has been to come in on the high tide of public disgust at Republican rule, but to push the pro-corporate agenda further than would be allowable under Republicans.

The rest is here and well worth your time.

update: also via KFO, from the Economic Collapse blog: "Broke! 10 Facts About The Financial Condition Of American Families That Will Blow Your Mind"
(incidentally, re no. 7, I think they still want your 2½ percent.)

the above video has moved, here.

28 July 2011: Yves Smith on th' Real News, etc

note: update below

video: "Yves Smith: Debt Ceiling Extortion"

Yves Smith of Naked Capitalism is a lady? Apparently so! The name Yves makes me think of Yves Montand, so all this time I pictured a middle aged French guy who put himself through grad school making WWII movies featuring him smoking Gauloises and shrugging a lot.



Forbes, "There Is Rage At The Rich Paying Only 18% Taxes"

www.quickanded.com: "Effective Tax Rates of the Richest 400 Americans"

The IRS has just released an analysis of the richest 400 American tax filers (pdf link). The top-line finding drawing the most attention is that these 400 earned about $138 billion, collectively, in 2007, the most recent year of data...

BBC, Arundhati Roy: India's success a 'lie'

Novelist Arundhati Roy speaks about how India's apparent economic success hides growing poverty and oppression

CNN, "Poll: 52 percent approve of God’s job performance"
(pdf link)

Mark Thoma, "Why Taxpayers Are So Angry and So Wrong About Spending"

"The real reason that the U.S. public is so dead set against tax increases and so apoplectic about government spending is growing income inequality. In addition, many taxpayers underestimate their consumption of government services..."

I don't know. It's getting harder to say "the public feels x" and feel confident that you've made an accurate observation, whatever thing x may be. The public is both atomized and polarized. Yes, many people are angry about wealth inequality, but when some people say they want the government to cut spending they're talking about vague, amorphous 'social programs', while others are talking about our massive military expenditures, etc. And I don't think 'the public' is all that against increased taxes. Most people do believe in progressive taxation, even if they have never heard of the phrase. (Yes, there I go making a sweeping statement about the public mood.)

update: see also Duncan's post about the Mark Thoma article.

21 July 2011

The video is by way of Glenn Greenwald's column from earlier today,
"Cenk Uygur and the ethos of corporate-owned media"

Also from Salon(via Mahablog):

“Corporate America’s Sunshine Patriots.” “… as of last week, as per the website Zero Hedge and data analysts Capital IQ, 29 public companies — including Bank of America, JP Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, GE and Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway — each have more cash on hand than the U.S. Treasury.”

from Rolling Stone, "Corporate Tax Holiday in Debt Ceiling Deal: Where's the Uproar?"

Two from Dissident Voice,

Alton C. Thompson, The New Society: Part III: Toward a New Moral Equivalent of War

(Part 1, and part 2 are here.)

Phil Rockstroh, "The Arts of Life They Changed into the Arts of Death: Bachmann, Palin, Robertson and the limits of logic"

Piers Morgan vs Louise Mensch

Added On July 19, 2011
CNN's Piers Morgan tackles British MP Louise Mensch, who accused him of admitting to phone hacking.

Update July 20th,2011, with a newer link, below.


Speaking of news organizations making it difficult to embed their videos, as I was the other day, it seems CNN is transitioning to a new and supposedly improved system which won't offer the embed codes. You'd think they'd appreciate bloggers who make their clips available to people who otherwise avoid watching teevee. I guess not.

This, I guess, is what it takes to get CNN to stop taking about Casey Anthony: The Aftermath. (Cue the reverb.)

As you may know, members of the US Congress are also protected from litigation regarding things they say on the house or senate floor as British MPs are, but can you imagine an American pol taking an American marquee journalist to task the was Louise Mensch does with Piers Morgan? Maybe it has happened, but I'm pretty sure it's been a while. I haven't read the book she refers to and have no idea of the veracity of her assertions, but naturally my curiosity is now aroused. Speaking of appreciating people, you'd think Morgan would appreciate Mensch calling attention to his book, instead of trying to bait her into saying something litigation worthy, which is what he seems to be doing. (Incidentally, I think the UK laws on slander make it even easier to successfully sue somebody than those here.)


I wonder if her colleagues ever refer to her as The Mensch.

Update: there's a recut version of the previous video here. This time it has Morgan mentioning his book by its title; I don't know if he did so in his entire conversation with Mensch, but the snippets from the previous version of their exchange did not feature this. And of course both are very brief, so neither may include the entire exchange. At any rate there's a lot less of her talking in this second version.

Confuse dem

part 2 is here; MSNBC used to offer embed codes for their online videos, as I recall, but this one didn't have one.


1."Why Obama is winning the debt war"
[MSNBC video link is here] If you want to watch all of the video continuously it's here.

July 12: "MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell explains how President Obama continues to outsmart, out-strategize and out-talk the Republicans, in the debt ceiling standoff."

2.Salon, "Why Mitch McConnell will win the day", Robert Reich


3.Scarecrow(at Firedoglake), "Why Is Larry O’Donnell Implying Obama Lied to the Country and the Tea-GOP?"

The clip of Lawrence O'Donnell has to be seen to be believed. You probably should watch it continuously via the MSNBC link. I'm reminded of the healthcare debate in late 2009 and early 2010, when I got the distinct impression that the administration was trying to confuse people about what exactly was covered by the Democrat's/Obama's healthcare bill and how he regarded the public option McGuffin, as numerous interim versions of the bill were reported on, many released as downloadable PDFs[pdf; pdf2] but even the one that was finally voted upon in March '10 was in fact supposed to get some more fiddling down the road.

Now of course both Obama and the GOP are trying to confuse people, and getting able help from people like O'Donnell. In national polls you often hear about how people have a low opinion of the news media in general, but my impression is that they trust reportage a lot more than a positive or negative response to a poll question may suggest. After all, even though a majority of people polled are against increasing the debt limit, most of these people didn't worry about it one bit prior to 2009, while the federal debt grew like a cancer under George W. Bush, and majorities of republicans, democrats and tv reporters said nothing.

At any rate, FDL's Scarecrow(above) is absolutely correct that bragging about how crafty and dishonest Obama is being in negotiating with the republicans is absurd, even risible. O'Donnell's spin is duplicitous on several levels, apart from the obvious one of pleasing corporate, as BDR might say. He speaks (we assume) to democrats, congratulating them on their presumed worldliness and canniness in being "in on the con," encouraging them to find gamesmanship and opacity laudable, in much the way the grown ups in the story of the Emperor's new clothes thought they were being reasonable and adult by playing along. So a concession is not a concession, and anyone who says otherwise is not cool. Of course even MSNBC has millions of viewers, and one imagines some of them are republican, or at least lean that way. So at another level he's doing his job by annoying those republican viewers with that same schtick; one man's craftiness is another man's flim-flammery. On a third level, perhaps, is contempt for both of them.

Many observers have suggested that it took raving anti-communist Nixon to go to China and so it follows that it takes Obama the purported Muslim-Socialist-Commie to cut(or gut) social security and medicare. It certainly looks like we're headed in that direction, and the dancing around is meant to make sure stupid republicans will blame Obama and stupid democrats will blame the GOP. What if they're both right?

Maybe if Obama does as he's told he'll get to run against wacky Michele Bachmann, and if he doesn't he'll get to run against Mitt I-got-your-healthcare-reform-right-here Romney.(And if he really misbehaves, Rick Perry!) Speaking of polls, many recent ones suggest that even republicans generally worry about preserving these programs. To be mystified by who wants this to happen requires a belief in the 'combat' between the two parties and that the guys on your side are looking out for you, no matter what they may actually say or do. So it helps if you are confused.


see also

Mike Whitney, "Debt Ceiling Kabuki"

Rob Payne, "Balloon payment"

Dennis Perrin, "Obvious Things"