Despite countless burnings by the lies of Bush administration officials, mainstream journalists still haven't learned to be skeptical of what they're told by government insiders.
The latest case in point is the so-called "secret" nuclear site being built by Iran. Even usually reliable media sources, such as McClatchey newspapers' Washington bureau,
reported without question or qualification the Obama administration's assertion that the facility was "discovered" by western intelligence agents and "revealed" by President Obama on Sept. 25.
The fact is that Iran disclosed its building plans to the International Atomic Energy Agency on Sept. 21. According to Marc Vidricaire of the IAEA:
“I can confirm that on 21 September Iran informed the IAEA in a letter that a new pilot fuel enrichment plant is under construction in the country.”
“In response, the IAEA has requested Iran to provide specific information and access to the facility as soon as possible." (Update: The head of IAEA is en route to Iran to schedule the requested inspection.)
“The Agency also understands from Iran that no nuclear material has been introduced into the facility.”
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran said, "The U.S. president made a big and historic mistake."
That he did. And he seems intent on making a bigger and more historic one: the illegal invasion of or attack upon a sovereign state.
Remember the WMDs that weren't there? The yellow cake that was neither yellow nor cake? The aluminum tubes that were only good for the passage of hot air? The al Qaeda meeting that didn't happen?
Get ready for Iraq II. Operation Iraqi Freedom needs only to change one letter to become a noose around Obama's neck.
When will they ever learn?
"Don't tell Momma I'm a journalist; say I play the piano in a whorehouse."
Saturday, October 3, 2009
Thursday, October 1, 2009
George W. Obama
Once again, President George W. Obama has made it clear that he doesn't want nosey reporters poking around the inner workings of his administration.
Not that there are many nosey reporters left in this country. But that's another story.
The New Dubyah, taking essentially the same position as the original, has sent underlings to tell Congress to back off from legislation that could protect reporters from being imprisoned if they refuse to disclose confidential sources who leak material about national security. Or so at least reports the New York Times, quoting several unnamed leakers.
The congressional bill includes safeguards that would require prosecutors to exhaust other methods for finding the source of the information before subpoenaing a reporter, and would balance investigators’ interests with “the public interest in gathering news and maintaining the free flow of information.”
But under the administration’s proposal, such procedures would not apply to leaks of a matter deemed to cause “significant” harm to national security. Moreover, judges would be instructed to be deferential to executive branch assertions about whether a leak caused or was likely to cause such harm, the leakers told the Times.
The main Senate backers of the bill, Chuck Schumer of New York and Arlen Specter, the Republican-turned-Democrat from Pennsylvania, waxed wroth over the White House shenanigans. "Totally unacceptable," snorted Mr. Specter. Schumer said: “The White House’s opposition to the fundamental essence of this bill is an unexpected and significant setback." This suggests that Schumer actually believed the Obama campaign rhetoric about a transparent administration back when he was still Barrack.
Ben LaBolt, a spokesman for the new Dubyah, called the proposed changes appropriate and argued that the administration was making a significant concession by accepting any judicial review. He even cited the Original Dubyah's position that such review would be an incursion into executive power.
Plus ça change, plus c'est meme chose.
Not that there are many nosey reporters left in this country. But that's another story.
The New Dubyah, taking essentially the same position as the original, has sent underlings to tell Congress to back off from legislation that could protect reporters from being imprisoned if they refuse to disclose confidential sources who leak material about national security. Or so at least reports the New York Times, quoting several unnamed leakers.
The congressional bill includes safeguards that would require prosecutors to exhaust other methods for finding the source of the information before subpoenaing a reporter, and would balance investigators’ interests with “the public interest in gathering news and maintaining the free flow of information.”
But under the administration’s proposal, such procedures would not apply to leaks of a matter deemed to cause “significant” harm to national security. Moreover, judges would be instructed to be deferential to executive branch assertions about whether a leak caused or was likely to cause such harm, the leakers told the Times.
The main Senate backers of the bill, Chuck Schumer of New York and Arlen Specter, the Republican-turned-Democrat from Pennsylvania, waxed wroth over the White House shenanigans. "Totally unacceptable," snorted Mr. Specter. Schumer said: “The White House’s opposition to the fundamental essence of this bill is an unexpected and significant setback." This suggests that Schumer actually believed the Obama campaign rhetoric about a transparent administration back when he was still Barrack.
Ben LaBolt, a spokesman for the new Dubyah, called the proposed changes appropriate and argued that the administration was making a significant concession by accepting any judicial review. He even cited the Original Dubyah's position that such review would be an incursion into executive power.
Plus ça change, plus c'est meme chose.
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Step Aside, Judas
Save your kisses, Judas Iscariot. Stop praising Caesar, Brutus. Make room in your special hell, Benedict Arnold, Axis Sally and all traitors of any age and stripe. Make room for five United States Senators named Max Baucus, Kent Conrad, Blanche Lincoln, Bill Nelson and Tom Carper.
Today they gave their souls to the insurance industry, tacitly licensing private insurers to withhold health insurance from the sick, the poor and the dying; to amass fortunes on the pain of sick, suffering people; to thumb their noses at the quaint notions of compassion and human decency.
Today those five nominal members of the Democratic party voted to send out from the Senate Finance Committee a so-called health care bill that has no government-run option to compete with the rapacious private insurers.
Rapacious. That's the word Sen Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia rightly used in the debate before the vote. Generous, I suppose, is the term the Traitorous Five would use, because their campaign funds -- which will one day augment their Senatorial pensions -- have been exponentially swollen by donations from the insurers.
Thus the United States of Goldman Sachs proudly admits to its ruling oligarchy the Supreme States of Blue Cross/ Blue Shield, Cigna, Aetna and United Healthcare.
Today, the Infamous Five not only betrayed the best traditions of their party. That betrayal is minor compared to their greater treason: against the 50 million American citizens without health insurance today; against the millions more who have been victimized by loopholes, fine print, lies and bullying of the insurers and now will continue to be so victimized; and against the Constitution they swore allegiance to, whose preamble demands that they promote the general welfare, not the welfare of rapacious corporations.
This is a sad day for the Republic. With representatives like Baucus, Conrad, Lincoln, Nelson and Carper, its people will suffer many more sad days. Too many more.
Today they gave their souls to the insurance industry, tacitly licensing private insurers to withhold health insurance from the sick, the poor and the dying; to amass fortunes on the pain of sick, suffering people; to thumb their noses at the quaint notions of compassion and human decency.
Today those five nominal members of the Democratic party voted to send out from the Senate Finance Committee a so-called health care bill that has no government-run option to compete with the rapacious private insurers.
Rapacious. That's the word Sen Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia rightly used in the debate before the vote. Generous, I suppose, is the term the Traitorous Five would use, because their campaign funds -- which will one day augment their Senatorial pensions -- have been exponentially swollen by donations from the insurers.
Thus the United States of Goldman Sachs proudly admits to its ruling oligarchy the Supreme States of Blue Cross/ Blue Shield, Cigna, Aetna and United Healthcare.
Today, the Infamous Five not only betrayed the best traditions of their party. That betrayal is minor compared to their greater treason: against the 50 million American citizens without health insurance today; against the millions more who have been victimized by loopholes, fine print, lies and bullying of the insurers and now will continue to be so victimized; and against the Constitution they swore allegiance to, whose preamble demands that they promote the general welfare, not the welfare of rapacious corporations.
This is a sad day for the Republic. With representatives like Baucus, Conrad, Lincoln, Nelson and Carper, its people will suffer many more sad days. Too many more.
Saturday, September 26, 2009
Wave the Flags. Again.
Few of today's journalists were around in the days when lazy editors who wrote wishy-washy editorials on subjects nobody knew or cared about were held guilty of "Afghanistanism."
Of course, few of today's journalists are held to any of the standards that made journalism -- especially newspaper journalism -- a respected craft back then.
One might conclude that mainstream journalism's inadequate, inaccurate or lazy coverage of what once was called "the good war" can be attributed to their perception that most Americans don't know and don't care much about what's happening in Afghanistan.
If that were their perception, it would be only half right. While American citizens are, on the whole, the most poorly-informed and ill-educated among the world's advanced nations, and know little about that part of the world, they do care about the war there. Wherever "there" is. They tell pollsters that they'd like it to be over rather quickly.
For the most part, nobody in government is listening. The military commanders want more troops there, a lot more. The military always wants more of everything. The president is considering another option, but not one that would bring the end of the war appreciably closer. The Congress is divided along party lines, which is meaningless anyway because the Congress is controlled by the vast, private, corporate shadow government that really runs the country. What President Eisenhower called "the military-industrial complex" is by far the largest and most powerful component of the shadow government, and it sustains itself by perpetual war.
If not Cold, then hot. If not Korea, then Vietnam. If not Panama, then Granada. If not Iraq, then Afghanistan. If not Afghanistan, then Iran. Or Korea again. Bush left us with a wonderful, cover-all phrase for the perpetual war that sustains our shadow government: war on terror. Perfect! Whatever we bomb, whomever we kill, wherever we establish bases and missiles and aircraft and tanks and troops, we're waging a "war on terror." Wave the flags! Paste ribbon symbols on the SUVs! Support our troops! Round up some ragheads! Torture them, depersonalize them, don't bother charging them with anything, keep them far away from any system of law or justice! Hooray for our side!
It's so easy for the American media to "cover" terror wars. Transcribe what the generals say. Send it to the bosses back home. Hit the bar in the hotel that houses the journalists safely away from the bullets and bombs. Swap gossip and report it as truth -- as long as it reflects "glory" on the troops and their leadership. So it was our own fire that killed the football star? Cover it up, make up a hero story, who'll ever know the difference? So the bad guys simply let the captured woman warrior walk away from the hospital when she was well enough? Make up a hero story about commando raids and a defiant machine-gun toting Amazon riddling al Qaida baddies like swiss cheeses.
The flag-wavers back home lap it up.
But even the flag-wavers will tire of this war in -- where was it? Oh, yes, Afghanistan, wherever that is --as it drags on and on.
That's the exit strategy.
By then everyone inside the Beltway will agree on a reason to move the perpetual war to Iran. And the media will applaud the flawless reasoning behind this invasion. And the flags will wave again.
Always, the flags will wave.
Of course, few of today's journalists are held to any of the standards that made journalism -- especially newspaper journalism -- a respected craft back then.
One might conclude that mainstream journalism's inadequate, inaccurate or lazy coverage of what once was called "the good war" can be attributed to their perception that most Americans don't know and don't care much about what's happening in Afghanistan.
If that were their perception, it would be only half right. While American citizens are, on the whole, the most poorly-informed and ill-educated among the world's advanced nations, and know little about that part of the world, they do care about the war there. Wherever "there" is. They tell pollsters that they'd like it to be over rather quickly.
For the most part, nobody in government is listening. The military commanders want more troops there, a lot more. The military always wants more of everything. The president is considering another option, but not one that would bring the end of the war appreciably closer. The Congress is divided along party lines, which is meaningless anyway because the Congress is controlled by the vast, private, corporate shadow government that really runs the country. What President Eisenhower called "the military-industrial complex" is by far the largest and most powerful component of the shadow government, and it sustains itself by perpetual war.
If not Cold, then hot. If not Korea, then Vietnam. If not Panama, then Granada. If not Iraq, then Afghanistan. If not Afghanistan, then Iran. Or Korea again. Bush left us with a wonderful, cover-all phrase for the perpetual war that sustains our shadow government: war on terror. Perfect! Whatever we bomb, whomever we kill, wherever we establish bases and missiles and aircraft and tanks and troops, we're waging a "war on terror." Wave the flags! Paste ribbon symbols on the SUVs! Support our troops! Round up some ragheads! Torture them, depersonalize them, don't bother charging them with anything, keep them far away from any system of law or justice! Hooray for our side!
It's so easy for the American media to "cover" terror wars. Transcribe what the generals say. Send it to the bosses back home. Hit the bar in the hotel that houses the journalists safely away from the bullets and bombs. Swap gossip and report it as truth -- as long as it reflects "glory" on the troops and their leadership. So it was our own fire that killed the football star? Cover it up, make up a hero story, who'll ever know the difference? So the bad guys simply let the captured woman warrior walk away from the hospital when she was well enough? Make up a hero story about commando raids and a defiant machine-gun toting Amazon riddling al Qaida baddies like swiss cheeses.
The flag-wavers back home lap it up.
But even the flag-wavers will tire of this war in -- where was it? Oh, yes, Afghanistan, wherever that is --as it drags on and on.
That's the exit strategy.
By then everyone inside the Beltway will agree on a reason to move the perpetual war to Iran. And the media will applaud the flawless reasoning behind this invasion. And the flags will wave again.
Always, the flags will wave.
Monday, September 21, 2009
Do Not Tolerate Another Failure
Succeeding the worst president in United States history, and doing so with the support of majorities in both houses of Congress, Barack Obama ought to have led us into a golden age of reform in American government.
He has not.
The private institutions that were allowed to wreck the economy under Bush have not been reformed.
The unjustified foreign wars that Bush lied us into continue to be fought. The military brass want still more troops to bleed and die in Afghanistan.
The health care reform that nearly three-quarters of the American public demands teeters on the brink of disaster under the weight of the money bags of unregulated health care profiteers.
This week, the President and his majorities in Congress have an opportunity to undo the most sweeping desecration of the Constitution in the history of the republic: the so-called USA PATRIOT Act.
Russ Feingold and nine other Senators have introduced the JUSTICE Act to correct the worst of the crimes of the PATRIOT Act. It must pass.
Hearings are scheduled also in the House. Its members must remember and remember well the words uttered by one of its most distinguished members on Feb. 17, 2002:
How can we justify in effect canceling the First Amendment and the right of free speech, the right to peaceably assemble?
How can we justify in effect canceling the Fourth Amendment, probable cause, the prohibitions against unreasonable search and seizure?
How can we justify in effect canceling the Fifth Amendment, nullifying due process, and allowing for indefinite incarceration without a trial?
How can we justify in effect canceling the Sixth Amendment, the right to prompt and public trial?
How can we justify in effect canceling the Eighth Amendment which protects against cruel and unusual punishment?
We cannot justify widespread wiretaps and internet surveillance without judicial supervision, let alone with it.
We cannot justify secret searches without a warrant.
We cannot justify giving the Attorney General the ability to designate domestic terror groups.
We cannot justify giving the FBI total access to any type of data which may exist in any system anywhere such as medical records and financial records.
We cannot justify giving the CIA the ability to target people in this country for intelligence surveillance.
We cannot justify a government which takes from the people our right to privacy and then assumes for its own operations a right to total secrecy.
Dennis R. Kucinich no doubt will remind his colleagues once again of their sworn duty to uphold the Constitution . He will urge them to restore the Bill of Rights without compromising our national security.
It can be done. It should be done. It must be done.
He has not.
The private institutions that were allowed to wreck the economy under Bush have not been reformed.
The unjustified foreign wars that Bush lied us into continue to be fought. The military brass want still more troops to bleed and die in Afghanistan.
The health care reform that nearly three-quarters of the American public demands teeters on the brink of disaster under the weight of the money bags of unregulated health care profiteers.
This week, the President and his majorities in Congress have an opportunity to undo the most sweeping desecration of the Constitution in the history of the republic: the so-called USA PATRIOT Act.
Russ Feingold and nine other Senators have introduced the JUSTICE Act to correct the worst of the crimes of the PATRIOT Act. It must pass.
Hearings are scheduled also in the House. Its members must remember and remember well the words uttered by one of its most distinguished members on Feb. 17, 2002:
How can we justify in effect canceling the First Amendment and the right of free speech, the right to peaceably assemble?
How can we justify in effect canceling the Fourth Amendment, probable cause, the prohibitions against unreasonable search and seizure?
How can we justify in effect canceling the Fifth Amendment, nullifying due process, and allowing for indefinite incarceration without a trial?
How can we justify in effect canceling the Sixth Amendment, the right to prompt and public trial?
How can we justify in effect canceling the Eighth Amendment which protects against cruel and unusual punishment?
We cannot justify widespread wiretaps and internet surveillance without judicial supervision, let alone with it.
We cannot justify secret searches without a warrant.
We cannot justify giving the Attorney General the ability to designate domestic terror groups.
We cannot justify giving the FBI total access to any type of data which may exist in any system anywhere such as medical records and financial records.
We cannot justify giving the CIA the ability to target people in this country for intelligence surveillance.
We cannot justify a government which takes from the people our right to privacy and then assumes for its own operations a right to total secrecy.
Dennis R. Kucinich no doubt will remind his colleagues once again of their sworn duty to uphold the Constitution . He will urge them to restore the Bill of Rights without compromising our national security.
It can be done. It should be done. It must be done.
Sunday, September 20, 2009
Portrait of the Evening "News"
I am of the generation of print journalists who harbored some respect for certain of our competitors on the broadcast side -- especially if they worked for CBS.
The likes of Fred W. Friendly, Edward R. Murrow, Walter Cronkite and their colleagues provided us with a great deal of good journalism -- and would have provided exponentially more if they had ever managed to persuade CBS to make the nightly news an hour long.
Another of the truly fine journalists of my generation, Mort Persky, closely monitors the performers, actors and entertainers who pose as journalists on TV these days.
This is one of his reports:
Alas, I don't think Walter Cronkite met his maker before seeing what happened to the TV news business since his, Murrow's and Bill Paley's day. Even without Fox, we actually have non-cable TV news telling us what it wants to tell us, the facts be damned. And the network "newscasts," by being a bit stealthier, do a better job of fooling their public than Fox, which because it is believed in like God, doesn't need to fool anyone. I've watched this on the 6:30 newscasts for years, though the only way I can stomach even two minutes of Fox is when it shows up as a clip on Olbermann or Maddow.
Here's CBS last week, following up its report on Obama's healthcare speech (or is it the "You lie" speech?) with what they call their "USERS GUIDE To Healthcare" (official looking visual right here emphasizes how factual this is gonna be. NOTE: Beware when ABC or CBS does something official looking like a "Users Guide" or a "Fact Check"; that's when the distortions flow thickest). Anyway, this "USERS GUIDE" purports to explain what a Public Option really means. But its target is bigger -- "government-run healthcare." For balance, they start with a white couple in Florida who run a small accounting firm and have to pay $2,000 a month -- one-fourth of their income -- for health insurance to cover themselves and their two sons, one of whom has a chronic illness. They're in their 50s, and can't afford to hire the employee they need and pay for health care too, They're rooting hard for the public option.
For Point B, CBS moves to its man in Tennessee, which has, or had, a public system called TennCare. First, they show poor black woman benefiting from TennCare, unable to do without it. 2. Now they "report," then repeat and repeat that it damn near broke state of Tennessee and had to be cut back. Two persons are quoted on camera: Rep. Phil Roe, a Repub from the state's NE corner who was an obstetrician and pisses all over Tenncare. Also quoted is,Mary Bufwack, CEO of United Neighborhood Health Services of Nashville. She says, "Tenncare's lesson is a cautionary tale for us all. Tenncare's lesson is "Control costs, control costs, control costs." Hmmm. Why quote her? I smell a rat, and think her organization is some kind of anti-healthcare outfit with a cover-up name (a common subterfuge on CBS and ABC; the few-seconds quote and who's saying it is quicker than the eye). So I look up Ms. Bufwack's group, and it appears to pass the smell test. I drop her an email asking how she feels about the way she was quoted on CBS News.
She answers a day later: "Mort, let's put it this way....One of my comments that did not get into the story was that the issue of TennCare's runaway costs wasn't that the state was too involved, the issue was that the state wasn't involved enough in controlling costs. I also noted that one cannot leave cost controls to the private sector. How perceptive of you. Mary."
CBS segment continues: Mark Strassmann, their man in Tennessee, closes out with a glimpse of Rep. Roe and a few dark words about how TennCare didn't work, cost way too much. His last words are, "Another reason many here will never trust government-run health care again."
Portrait of the unbiased evening news on Walter Cronkite and Ed Murrow's old network. Congratulations, Katie!
--M.P.
The likes of Fred W. Friendly, Edward R. Murrow, Walter Cronkite and their colleagues provided us with a great deal of good journalism -- and would have provided exponentially more if they had ever managed to persuade CBS to make the nightly news an hour long.
Another of the truly fine journalists of my generation, Mort Persky, closely monitors the performers, actors and entertainers who pose as journalists on TV these days.
This is one of his reports:
Alas, I don't think Walter Cronkite met his maker before seeing what happened to the TV news business since his, Murrow's and Bill Paley's day. Even without Fox, we actually have non-cable TV news telling us what it wants to tell us, the facts be damned. And the network "newscasts," by being a bit stealthier, do a better job of fooling their public than Fox, which because it is believed in like God, doesn't need to fool anyone. I've watched this on the 6:30 newscasts for years, though the only way I can stomach even two minutes of Fox is when it shows up as a clip on Olbermann or Maddow.
Here's CBS last week, following up its report on Obama's healthcare speech (or is it the "You lie" speech?) with what they call their "USERS GUIDE To Healthcare" (official looking visual right here emphasizes how factual this is gonna be. NOTE: Beware when ABC or CBS does something official looking like a "Users Guide" or a "Fact Check"; that's when the distortions flow thickest). Anyway, this "USERS GUIDE" purports to explain what a Public Option really means. But its target is bigger -- "government-run healthcare." For balance, they start with a white couple in Florida who run a small accounting firm and have to pay $2,000 a month -- one-fourth of their income -- for health insurance to cover themselves and their two sons, one of whom has a chronic illness. They're in their 50s, and can't afford to hire the employee they need and pay for health care too, They're rooting hard for the public option.
For Point B, CBS moves to its man in Tennessee, which has, or had, a public system called TennCare. First, they show poor black woman benefiting from TennCare, unable to do without it. 2. Now they "report," then repeat and repeat that it damn near broke state of Tennessee and had to be cut back. Two persons are quoted on camera: Rep. Phil Roe, a Repub from the state's NE corner who was an obstetrician and pisses all over Tenncare. Also quoted is,Mary Bufwack, CEO of United Neighborhood Health Services of Nashville. She says, "Tenncare's lesson is a cautionary tale for us all. Tenncare's lesson is "Control costs, control costs, control costs." Hmmm. Why quote her? I smell a rat, and think her organization is some kind of anti-healthcare outfit with a cover-up name (a common subterfuge on CBS and ABC; the few-seconds quote and who's saying it is quicker than the eye). So I look up Ms. Bufwack's group, and it appears to pass the smell test. I drop her an email asking how she feels about the way she was quoted on CBS News.
She answers a day later: "Mort, let's put it this way....One of my comments that did not get into the story was that the issue of TennCare's runaway costs wasn't that the state was too involved, the issue was that the state wasn't involved enough in controlling costs. I also noted that one cannot leave cost controls to the private sector. How perceptive of you. Mary."
CBS segment continues: Mark Strassmann, their man in Tennessee, closes out with a glimpse of Rep. Roe and a few dark words about how TennCare didn't work, cost way too much. His last words are, "Another reason many here will never trust government-run health care again."
Portrait of the unbiased evening news on Walter Cronkite and Ed Murrow's old network. Congratulations, Katie!
--M.P.
The Nuts and the ACORN
When I witness the hilarious mouth-frothing of the Foxes over the great ACORN scandal, my memory takes me back to a musical theater stage in post-riot Detroit. In John and Dorothy Ashby's splendid jazz play, "Three Six," the approach of the white police would be signaled by the distant sound of sirens, whereupon the black cast would break out into song: "Ring around the ghetto, keep the Niggers in. Let them knife each other, fighting' over gin."
As the police arrived onstage they heard a torrent of misinformation that sent them scurrying off on wild goose chases. Then their real prey, the king of the numbers books and his runners, emerged from hiding and resumed the day's business.
"Three Six" was a whimsical depiction of real life in the black ghetto as it existed on the evening when a white police raid on a black after-hours drinking and gambling dive set off the rampage that killed what was then America's fifth-largest city.
Against a similar backdrop, the Foxes are shocked, SHOCKED!, that some ACORN employees were receptive to and willing to help establish a house of ill repute suggested by the Fox scammers who set them up.
Fox conveniently did not mention the ACORN employees who saw through the ruse. One threw them out of the office. Another gave them some hum -- "Ah done kilt bof' ma husbins" -- which the big fools bit into and didn't even retract when the local sheriff reported that both men were alive and well and laughing like hell at Beck, O'Reilly and the other whiteys who were so easy to fool.
ACORN is a grassroots outfit that has tasked itself with showing ghetto residents how to lift themselves up by the bootstraps. One of its operations is a vast, nationwide effort to register poor blacks, hispanics and others as legal voters. To give them a voice in a government that otherwise is hostile to them. It recruits most of its employees and most of its fee-for-servicer voter registration workers off the streets of the ghetto.
Is it really shocking, SHOCKING ! that some of these people, approached by slick-talking dudes in fine threads and flashing very long green, might think that a nice, clean, well-run whorehouse could be good for the neighborhood? Bring in some tax-free white money, fix up a rundown place and make it look real nice, provide a few jobs. What's surprising is that so many of these rung-in "Niggers" were smart enough not to fall for the Foxes' hoax.
Virtually all of the legitimate voters enrolled by the ACORN workers vote Democrat, which is what really worms the Foxes.
The registration teams, recruited right off the ghetto streets and paid serious Johnny Walker Red money for each voter they signed up, of course gamed the system and registered thousands of non-existent voters, or ineligible ones. Grow up on the streets and that's what you know: game the system.
Who's guiltier, the ACORN dudes with sixth-grade educations in ghetto schools who enrolled fictitious voters, or the Yale and Liberty Law School educated lawyers and shills who disenfranchised thousands of legal voters in Florida, Ohio, Indiana and elsewhere to steal elections for the GOP?
American racism comes in subtle tones, not always in black and white. The hypocritical flap over ACORN is just one more racist bleat from the white far right.
They cannot get over the fact that there's a black man -- A BLACK MAN! -- in "their" White House.
As the police arrived onstage they heard a torrent of misinformation that sent them scurrying off on wild goose chases. Then their real prey, the king of the numbers books and his runners, emerged from hiding and resumed the day's business.
"Three Six" was a whimsical depiction of real life in the black ghetto as it existed on the evening when a white police raid on a black after-hours drinking and gambling dive set off the rampage that killed what was then America's fifth-largest city.
Against a similar backdrop, the Foxes are shocked, SHOCKED!, that some ACORN employees were receptive to and willing to help establish a house of ill repute suggested by the Fox scammers who set them up.
Fox conveniently did not mention the ACORN employees who saw through the ruse. One threw them out of the office. Another gave them some hum -- "Ah done kilt bof' ma husbins" -- which the big fools bit into and didn't even retract when the local sheriff reported that both men were alive and well and laughing like hell at Beck, O'Reilly and the other whiteys who were so easy to fool.
ACORN is a grassroots outfit that has tasked itself with showing ghetto residents how to lift themselves up by the bootstraps. One of its operations is a vast, nationwide effort to register poor blacks, hispanics and others as legal voters. To give them a voice in a government that otherwise is hostile to them. It recruits most of its employees and most of its fee-for-servicer voter registration workers off the streets of the ghetto.
Is it really shocking, SHOCKING ! that some of these people, approached by slick-talking dudes in fine threads and flashing very long green, might think that a nice, clean, well-run whorehouse could be good for the neighborhood? Bring in some tax-free white money, fix up a rundown place and make it look real nice, provide a few jobs. What's surprising is that so many of these rung-in "Niggers" were smart enough not to fall for the Foxes' hoax.
Virtually all of the legitimate voters enrolled by the ACORN workers vote Democrat, which is what really worms the Foxes.
The registration teams, recruited right off the ghetto streets and paid serious Johnny Walker Red money for each voter they signed up, of course gamed the system and registered thousands of non-existent voters, or ineligible ones. Grow up on the streets and that's what you know: game the system.
Who's guiltier, the ACORN dudes with sixth-grade educations in ghetto schools who enrolled fictitious voters, or the Yale and Liberty Law School educated lawyers and shills who disenfranchised thousands of legal voters in Florida, Ohio, Indiana and elsewhere to steal elections for the GOP?
American racism comes in subtle tones, not always in black and white. The hypocritical flap over ACORN is just one more racist bleat from the white far right.
They cannot get over the fact that there's a black man -- A BLACK MAN! -- in "their" White House.
Friday, September 18, 2009
Why Are We Such Cowards?
Chris Hedges, whose work as a reporter and thinker I have long admired, has issued a call to anger to Americans outside the madness of the far right. Although our deluded national passion for war is an important target of his essay, citizen passivity that enables war and other government failures is what he's really railing against.
This is his concluding paragraph:
It is we who are guilty, guilty for sending (our) young men and women to wars that did not have to be fought. It is we who are guilty for turning away from the truth of war to wallow in a self-aggrandizing myth, guilty because we create and decorate killers and when they come home maimed and broken we discard them. It is we who are guilty for failing to defy a Democratic Party that since 1994 has betrayed the working class by destroying our manufacturing base, slashing funds to assist the poor and cravenly doing the bidding of corporations. It is we who are guilty for refusing to mass on Washington and demand single-payer, not-for-profit health care for all Americans. It is we who are guilty for supporting Democrats while they funnel billions in taxpayer dollars to sustain speculative Wall Street interests. The rage of the confused and angry right-wing marchers, the ones fired up by trash-talking talk show hosts, the ones liberals belittle and maybe even laugh at, should be our rage. And if it is not our rage soon, if we continue to humiliate and debase ourselves by begging Obama to be Obama, we will see our open society dismantled not because of the shrewdness of the far right, but because of our moral cowardice.
Why are we such moral cowards? Why do we permit parrots of the trash-talkers to perpetuate hateful myths and utter falsehoods in our local media? Why do we allow the far right to rewrite the political vocabulary, so that "liberal" becomes a term of derision, "pro life" becomes the euphemism for those who believe in killing abortion providers, and the moral imperative of government-guaranteed health care for every citizen becomes "socialism?" Why do we demean the handful of courageous members of Congress who saw through the emotionalism and deliberate falsehoods and dared to vote against the so-called Patriot Act, against the invasion of Iraq and against the Military Commissions Act that makes a mockery of our Constitution? Why were we not present in greater numbers than the confused and angry right-wing marchers, outshouting them and demanding that the failed policies of the preceding eight years be overturned, reversed, repealed, undone and that true reform begin to take place . . . .NOW!
Why not a better country? Why not NOW?
This is his concluding paragraph:
It is we who are guilty, guilty for sending (our) young men and women to wars that did not have to be fought. It is we who are guilty for turning away from the truth of war to wallow in a self-aggrandizing myth, guilty because we create and decorate killers and when they come home maimed and broken we discard them. It is we who are guilty for failing to defy a Democratic Party that since 1994 has betrayed the working class by destroying our manufacturing base, slashing funds to assist the poor and cravenly doing the bidding of corporations. It is we who are guilty for refusing to mass on Washington and demand single-payer, not-for-profit health care for all Americans. It is we who are guilty for supporting Democrats while they funnel billions in taxpayer dollars to sustain speculative Wall Street interests. The rage of the confused and angry right-wing marchers, the ones fired up by trash-talking talk show hosts, the ones liberals belittle and maybe even laugh at, should be our rage. And if it is not our rage soon, if we continue to humiliate and debase ourselves by begging Obama to be Obama, we will see our open society dismantled not because of the shrewdness of the far right, but because of our moral cowardice.
Why are we such moral cowards? Why do we permit parrots of the trash-talkers to perpetuate hateful myths and utter falsehoods in our local media? Why do we allow the far right to rewrite the political vocabulary, so that "liberal" becomes a term of derision, "pro life" becomes the euphemism for those who believe in killing abortion providers, and the moral imperative of government-guaranteed health care for every citizen becomes "socialism?" Why do we demean the handful of courageous members of Congress who saw through the emotionalism and deliberate falsehoods and dared to vote against the so-called Patriot Act, against the invasion of Iraq and against the Military Commissions Act that makes a mockery of our Constitution? Why were we not present in greater numbers than the confused and angry right-wing marchers, outshouting them and demanding that the failed policies of the preceding eight years be overturned, reversed, repealed, undone and that true reform begin to take place . . . .NOW!
Why not a better country? Why not NOW?
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Memo to Bill Moyers
FROM: Mort Persky
Dear Bill-- I learned some worthwhile things from your Nancy Youssef interview, but was troubled by most of what I heard. Aren't two of the most important things Ms. Youssef said at irreconcilable odds with virtually everything she says about the situation on the ground in Afghanistan, especially the war?
These are the two things I'm talking about:
1. She said Gen. McChrystle wants and needs more time to get it right, and that it would be a good thing if he gets that time. How much time? Years? Months? And more importantly, to do what, to achieve what? As far as I can tell, she doesn't know, nor does anyone else.
2. She said it was good news that the U.S. seemed on the verge of "committing itself" to the war. Can it be good to commit ourselves to a war that fits her description of it?
She describes a war and a country in which we aren't sure what we're doing or need to do, don't know who the enemy is even when we see him (or think we see him), a country so big and uncontrollable it resists any strategy we can execute or envision now (or with "more time"?) a country filled with people who want desperately to be left alone by us and the Taliban, who will never leave because it's their country and "they own it.".
Under these circumstances, how can it be good news that Gen. McChrystle might have "more time to get it right" or that our country would commit itself to doing the job? What job? Ms. Youssef either doesn't know or can't say, and she's hardly alone.
"We wanted that war to be relevant," she says, "and that's an important goal." Is that what we've got a "too small" contingent of 100,000 coalition troops fighting for -- the goal of being relevant when nobody knows what that means, much less what it requires of us?
Monday, September 14, 2009
Dealing with Race (Part II)
Three widely separated recent events underscore the insidious way in which racial tensions have risen in the United States to a point unequaled since Watts, Newark and Detroit exploded into deadly rioting.
One of them famously brought a white Cambridge policeman and a black Harvard professor to a beer-sipping truce talk at the White House. The sudsfest accomplished little except to bring a modicum of civility into the adversaries' agreement to disagree.
Another was the white South Carolina congressman's shouted insult, "You lie," on the floor of the House of Representatives during a joint session of Congress for a Presidential address on the most important issue facing the reppublic at this time.
The third was on a tennis court in Flushing, N.Y., when a white linesman made a call that triggered a profanity-laced rage by a black player at a critical point in a United States Open semifinal match.
There were different complexities surrounding each episode, but in each the first and most profound question was essentially the same.
Case No. 1: Would the white policeman have responded in the same manner if the Harvard professor breaking into his own home had been white?
Case No. 2: Would the white congressman have been treated with the same kid gloves, even hero worship in some quarters, if the President had been white?
Case No. 3: Would the tennis player have been treated so severely if she had been white?
I suspect that roughly 47% of Americans would answer those questions one way, and 53% would answer the opposite way. No, it is NOT coincidental that those were exactly the percentages of the votes cast last November for the Republican and Democratic candidates for president.
Rather than bringing us together in a new era of melting-pot American togetherness, the election of our first Black President has brought the dormant racism in the body politic to boil to the surface.
It is time for President Obama -- who has been a disappointment to me and many other supporters -- to dart into a phone booth, change clothes, and emerge as Candidate Obama. To punch out the lying villains with forthright, carefully engineered, moderately progressive policies on the economy, peace, justice, health care and civil liberties, and to lead us vigorously to their enactment.
And on race.
Mr. Obama should re-read the words he spoke to the nation on March 18, 2008, in the shadow of those icons of American democracy, Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell.
We have come far, he said, because "Americans in successive generations were willing to do their part – through protests and struggle, on the streets and in the courts, through a civil war and civil disobedience and always at great risk - to narrow that gap between the promise of our ideals and the reality of their time."
Where are the risk takers now?
To the haters, the gun-and-sign-toters, he said: "we cannot solve the challenges of our time unless we solve them together – unless we perfect our union by understanding that we may have different stories, but we hold common hopes; that we may not look the same and we may not have come from the same place, but we all want to move in the same direction – towards a better future for our children and our grandchildren."
For that appeal to unity he got Rush Limbaugh pasting a Hitler mustache on his image, "birthers," tea-party nuts and Joe Wilson.
Candidate Obama pointed to his primary victories against a white opponent in states "with some of the whitest populations in the country" including Joe Wilson's South Carolina. He did not mention the deep racial divides revealed in any analysis of those votes.
Candidate Obama addressed the Christians on the other side of the divide:
"What is called for is nothing more, and nothing less, than what all the world’s great religions demand – that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Let us be our brother’s keeper, Scripture tells us. Let us be our sister’s keeper. Let us find that common stake we all have in one another, and let our politics reflect that spirit as well."
Our politics. It's not a game wherein our better angels often prevail.
Take off the gloves, Mr. President. Take off the gloves and put on the brass knuckles and wade into the bigots and ignoramuses and draw some blood.
One of them famously brought a white Cambridge policeman and a black Harvard professor to a beer-sipping truce talk at the White House. The sudsfest accomplished little except to bring a modicum of civility into the adversaries' agreement to disagree.
Another was the white South Carolina congressman's shouted insult, "You lie," on the floor of the House of Representatives during a joint session of Congress for a Presidential address on the most important issue facing the reppublic at this time.
The third was on a tennis court in Flushing, N.Y., when a white linesman made a call that triggered a profanity-laced rage by a black player at a critical point in a United States Open semifinal match.
There were different complexities surrounding each episode, but in each the first and most profound question was essentially the same.
Case No. 1: Would the white policeman have responded in the same manner if the Harvard professor breaking into his own home had been white?
Case No. 2: Would the white congressman have been treated with the same kid gloves, even hero worship in some quarters, if the President had been white?
Case No. 3: Would the tennis player have been treated so severely if she had been white?
I suspect that roughly 47% of Americans would answer those questions one way, and 53% would answer the opposite way. No, it is NOT coincidental that those were exactly the percentages of the votes cast last November for the Republican and Democratic candidates for president.
Rather than bringing us together in a new era of melting-pot American togetherness, the election of our first Black President has brought the dormant racism in the body politic to boil to the surface.
It is time for President Obama -- who has been a disappointment to me and many other supporters -- to dart into a phone booth, change clothes, and emerge as Candidate Obama. To punch out the lying villains with forthright, carefully engineered, moderately progressive policies on the economy, peace, justice, health care and civil liberties, and to lead us vigorously to their enactment.
And on race.
Mr. Obama should re-read the words he spoke to the nation on March 18, 2008, in the shadow of those icons of American democracy, Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell.
We have come far, he said, because "Americans in successive generations were willing to do their part – through protests and struggle, on the streets and in the courts, through a civil war and civil disobedience and always at great risk - to narrow that gap between the promise of our ideals and the reality of their time."
Where are the risk takers now?
To the haters, the gun-and-sign-toters, he said: "we cannot solve the challenges of our time unless we solve them together – unless we perfect our union by understanding that we may have different stories, but we hold common hopes; that we may not look the same and we may not have come from the same place, but we all want to move in the same direction – towards a better future for our children and our grandchildren."
For that appeal to unity he got Rush Limbaugh pasting a Hitler mustache on his image, "birthers," tea-party nuts and Joe Wilson.
Candidate Obama pointed to his primary victories against a white opponent in states "with some of the whitest populations in the country" including Joe Wilson's South Carolina. He did not mention the deep racial divides revealed in any analysis of those votes.
Candidate Obama addressed the Christians on the other side of the divide:
"What is called for is nothing more, and nothing less, than what all the world’s great religions demand – that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Let us be our brother’s keeper, Scripture tells us. Let us be our sister’s keeper. Let us find that common stake we all have in one another, and let our politics reflect that spirit as well."
Our politics. It's not a game wherein our better angels often prevail.
Take off the gloves, Mr. President. Take off the gloves and put on the brass knuckles and wade into the bigots and ignoramuses and draw some blood.
Thursday, September 10, 2009
GOP Looks in Mirror, Sees Joe Wilson
The true nature of the opposition to health care reform was exposed on national television Wednesday night for all the world to see.
A South Carolina Republican leapt to his feet and shouted "You lie!" to the President of the United States during a special session of both houses of Congress.
It was an unprecedented breach of civility for such an occasion -- and a perfect demonstration of the tactics the Republican right wing has used over and over again to turn the public debate on the most important national issue of the day into a hate-spewing shouting match.
Joe Wilson was simply following the playbook.
The media bought, hook, line and sinker, the "spontaneity" of the shouts at the disrupted town hall meetings, where similar uncivility was directed at congressmen and senators. At that same time, the media ignored what was happening at free, public health clinics all around the country: the uninsured, and the under-insured, camped out and stood in line for eight to 28 hours, just to see a dentist or get a prescription for Grandma. There could be no more powerful case for significant health care reform -- now.
Yet it went unreported.
And we are left to realize that the president's eloquent and cogent and detailed message for health care reform is not carrying the day.
Joe Wilson is carrying the day.
To our everlasting discredit.
A South Carolina Republican leapt to his feet and shouted "You lie!" to the President of the United States during a special session of both houses of Congress.
It was an unprecedented breach of civility for such an occasion -- and a perfect demonstration of the tactics the Republican right wing has used over and over again to turn the public debate on the most important national issue of the day into a hate-spewing shouting match.
Joe Wilson was simply following the playbook.
The media bought, hook, line and sinker, the "spontaneity" of the shouts at the disrupted town hall meetings, where similar uncivility was directed at congressmen and senators. At that same time, the media ignored what was happening at free, public health clinics all around the country: the uninsured, and the under-insured, camped out and stood in line for eight to 28 hours, just to see a dentist or get a prescription for Grandma. There could be no more powerful case for significant health care reform -- now.
Yet it went unreported.
And we are left to realize that the president's eloquent and cogent and detailed message for health care reform is not carrying the day.
Joe Wilson is carrying the day.
To our everlasting discredit.
Saturday, September 5, 2009
A Tale for Texas Children
When the Texas schools decided to protect their students from the President's seditious teachings about responsibility and hard work, they offered readings of fairy tales instead.
This is one of them (translation from the original Algonquian Arapaho dialect by Ann White Feather):
A giant came into the forest and began to harvest all the walnuts. Soon, squirrels were starving.
The surviving squirrels summoned a council and elected one of their number, Bushy Tail, to appeal to the forest gods.
"Only you are powerful enough to control this giant," Bushy Tail told the gods. "Please save some walnuts for us to eat."
"The nut market regulates itself," the chief god said. "Stop whimpering."
And so all the squirrels in the forest died.
Another giant appeared in the forest and began to take all the berries and honey. Soon the bears were starving.
The bears summoned a council and elected one of their number, Smokey, to journey to the forest gods and appeal to them for succor.
"Only you are powerful enough to regulate this giant," Smokey said, "and save some berries and honey for us to eat."
"Sorry," said the chief god, "but it's not a bear market. Stop whimpering."
Soon all the bears in the forest were dead of starvation.
Another giant came into the forest. This giant dug up the bushes and small trees and sold them to landscapers in Las Vegas. Soon the deer were starving.
The surviving deer summoned a council and elected Bambi to appeal to the forest gods on their behalf.
"Only you are powerful enough to stop this giant," Bambi told the gods. "Please save some forage for us to eat."
"That would make you a welfare queen," the chief god told Bambi. "Stop whimpering."
Soon all the deer in the forest were dead.
Another giant came into the forest. Before this giant could decide what to take from the remaining resources of the forest, the surviving animals and birds and insects held a council.
"Let us organize," said Bobcat. "Yes," said Beaver, "together we can protect everyone's food supply and force the giants to go elsewhere." And so they formed a union.
When the giant went to harvest walnuts, Eagle clawed at him and Woodpecker drummed a Gene Krupa riff on his skull while Groundhog gnawed on his anklebone. So the giant left the walnut trees alone and went to harvest berries and honey. But the bees stung him and Skunk sprayed him and Turtle gummed him a wicked one on the great toe.
The giant appealed to the forest gods. "The animals formed a union and now they're stinging me, biting me, pecking me, clawing me and otherwise preventing me from pillaging the forest resources."
"This is socialism," the chief god decreed. "It must stop."
The giant summoned other giants and they took what they pleased from the forest.
All the birds and animals and insects of the forest died.
The giants called a meeting on the mountaintop and threw a grand old party.
"I've got more walnuts than any giant in the history of the world," the first giant declared.
"My supply of berries and honey is so large that I can charge any price that I want for them," the second giant said.
"I've got the last remaining green things in the world," said the third giant.
When the party was over, the first giant, gorged on walnuts, began to suffer the worst symptoms of dyspepsia. Being near him was so unpleasant that the other giants shunned him.
The second giant tried to sell his berries and honey for a great deal of money, but there was no one to buy them.
The third giant had no place to plant his greenery, so it withered and died.
The giants asked the gods for help.
"Your walnuts are moldy," the chief god said, "your berries are rotten, your honey is stale and your plants have died. Why should we save you?"
"Because we're too big to fail," the giants said.
"OK," the chief god said. "Restore the forest to the way it was when you found it and you can have anything you want."
The giants agreed. By now they were very weak and hungry, but they stumbled down the mountain and made their way to the forest.
"What now?" asked one of the giants.
And that's when they realized they only knew how to take. They hadn't the foggiest notion how to give back.
This is one of them (translation from the original Algonquian Arapaho dialect by Ann White Feather):
A giant came into the forest and began to harvest all the walnuts. Soon, squirrels were starving.
The surviving squirrels summoned a council and elected one of their number, Bushy Tail, to appeal to the forest gods.
"Only you are powerful enough to control this giant," Bushy Tail told the gods. "Please save some walnuts for us to eat."
"The nut market regulates itself," the chief god said. "Stop whimpering."
And so all the squirrels in the forest died.
Another giant appeared in the forest and began to take all the berries and honey. Soon the bears were starving.
The bears summoned a council and elected one of their number, Smokey, to journey to the forest gods and appeal to them for succor.
"Only you are powerful enough to regulate this giant," Smokey said, "and save some berries and honey for us to eat."
"Sorry," said the chief god, "but it's not a bear market. Stop whimpering."
Soon all the bears in the forest were dead of starvation.
Another giant came into the forest. This giant dug up the bushes and small trees and sold them to landscapers in Las Vegas. Soon the deer were starving.
The surviving deer summoned a council and elected Bambi to appeal to the forest gods on their behalf.
"Only you are powerful enough to stop this giant," Bambi told the gods. "Please save some forage for us to eat."
"That would make you a welfare queen," the chief god told Bambi. "Stop whimpering."
Soon all the deer in the forest were dead.
Another giant came into the forest. Before this giant could decide what to take from the remaining resources of the forest, the surviving animals and birds and insects held a council.
"Let us organize," said Bobcat. "Yes," said Beaver, "together we can protect everyone's food supply and force the giants to go elsewhere." And so they formed a union.
When the giant went to harvest walnuts, Eagle clawed at him and Woodpecker drummed a Gene Krupa riff on his skull while Groundhog gnawed on his anklebone. So the giant left the walnut trees alone and went to harvest berries and honey. But the bees stung him and Skunk sprayed him and Turtle gummed him a wicked one on the great toe.
The giant appealed to the forest gods. "The animals formed a union and now they're stinging me, biting me, pecking me, clawing me and otherwise preventing me from pillaging the forest resources."
"This is socialism," the chief god decreed. "It must stop."
The giant summoned other giants and they took what they pleased from the forest.
All the birds and animals and insects of the forest died.
The giants called a meeting on the mountaintop and threw a grand old party.
"I've got more walnuts than any giant in the history of the world," the first giant declared.
"My supply of berries and honey is so large that I can charge any price that I want for them," the second giant said.
"I've got the last remaining green things in the world," said the third giant.
When the party was over, the first giant, gorged on walnuts, began to suffer the worst symptoms of dyspepsia. Being near him was so unpleasant that the other giants shunned him.
The second giant tried to sell his berries and honey for a great deal of money, but there was no one to buy them.
The third giant had no place to plant his greenery, so it withered and died.
The giants asked the gods for help.
"Your walnuts are moldy," the chief god said, "your berries are rotten, your honey is stale and your plants have died. Why should we save you?"
"Because we're too big to fail," the giants said.
"OK," the chief god said. "Restore the forest to the way it was when you found it and you can have anything you want."
The giants agreed. By now they were very weak and hungry, but they stumbled down the mountain and made their way to the forest.
"What now?" asked one of the giants.
And that's when they realized they only knew how to take. They hadn't the foggiest notion how to give back.
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