From The Beast

Here’s New York Times columnist and pillar of mediocrity, David Brooks, at his gag-inducing best on the issue of free trade:

“Economists differ over how much outsourcing will change the American job market in the future, but there is little evidence that trade has been a major cause of job loss or even wage stagnation so far.”

“Just as Fallon took over Centcom last spring, the White House was putting itself on a war footing with Iran. Almost instantly, Fallon began to calmly push back against what he saw as an ill-advised action. Over the course of 2007, Fallon's statements in the press grew increasingly dismissive of the possibility of war, creating serious friction with the White House.

“Last December, when the National Intelligence Estimate downgraded the immediate nuclear threat from Iran, it seemed as if Fallon's caution was justified. But still, well-placed observers now say that it will come as no surprise if Fallon is relieved of his command before his time is up next spring, maybe as early as this summer, in favor of a commander the White House considers to be more pliable. If that were to happen, it may well mean that the president and vice-president intend to take military action against Iran before the end of this year and don't want a commander standing in their way."

— from the Buffalo Beast

Something astonishing happened the other day in the House: The Democratic leadership found some courage. After over a year of demoralizing, often inexplicable capitulation, they actually gathered the fortitude to push back slightly against Republicans on so-called national security issues. The Republicans’ response was swift: They took their ball and went home, after a brief stop at a prearranged press conference on the Capitol steps.

Two issues caused the dispute: One, in a stunning display of rudimentary oversight, the House issued contempt citations for two former Bush staffers, Harriet Meiers and Josh Bolten, who’ve been ducking House subpoenas for months now. This was predictably dismissed by weepy Minority Whip John Boehner as a “partisan fishing expedition,” a boilerplate cliché if ever there was one.

It can still amaze me sometimes, how little cable news pundits need to go on to manufacture a “political controversy” where none really exists.

Obviously, there are a lot of baseless lies perpetrated by repetition in the media every week. Recently, there was the infuriating “government has learned the lessons of Katrina” bit they kept pushing with the California wildfires story. Funny, I thought Kanye West articulated the lesson of Katrina quite well when he famously said “George Bush doesn't care about black people.” So how does the fact that a largely affluent, white community were well cared for during their disaster imply that anything has been learned? It doesn't.

You've really got to hand it to the Democrats. With Republicans registering somewhere between Carrot Top and the Ebola virus on the popularity scale, the Democrats are still finding new, more confusing ways to appear clueless and irresponsible on the world stage.

In a move that has caused Turkey to pull its ambassador out of the US and threaten a severe curtailment in cooperation with the US war effort, the House Committee on Foreign Affairs approved a bill condemning a terrible act of genocide—the killing of a million Armenians—which occurred 92 years ago. Of course, it was genocide, and it's asinine that Turkey continues to deny it to this day. But now, with the Turks acting as a base of operations for the Iraq war, it's pretty damn stupid to be pissing them off. Still, it's not the strategic advantage our alliance with Turkey affords our current idiot war that I'm most concerned about. It's the fact that Turkey, which has been consistently threatening to invade Kurdish Northern Iraq, will be much more likely to disregard our protestations if the bill gets congressional approval.

“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.”
--Ralph Waldo Emerson

An amusing study published September 10th helps to explain America's red/blue political divide: our brains are different.

The study, led by NYU political scientist David Amodio, was simple—tap a key when you see one letter on the computer screen, and don't tap a key when another letter appears.

According to AFP: “The researchers examined activity in a part of the brain—the anterior cingulate cortex—that is strongly linked with the self-regulatory process of conflict monitoring.

“The match-up was unmistakable: respondents who had described themselves as liberals showed 'significantly greater conflict-related neural activity' when the hypothetical situation called for an unscheduled break in routine.

“Someday soon, you might wake up to the call to prayer from a Muslim muezzin. Millions of Europeans already do. And liberals will still tell you that 'diversity is our strength' – while Talibanic enforcers cruise our cities burning books and barber shops... the Supreme Court decides sharia law doesn't violate the 'separation of church and state' ... and the Hollywood Left gives up gay rights in favor of the much safer charms of polygamy.”
- Promotional text for Mark Steyn's America Alone: The End of the World As We Know It.

9/11 really changed everything. Before, the press covered some events of genuine importance. Now, Americans are subjected to a constant deluge of "holy crap"-style terrorism coverage. Our heightened anxiety over 9/11 has been cultivated and stretched out over the past six years, to the point now that any event which even superficially resembles a terrorist attack, no matter how briefly, gets week-long national coverage. A steam pipe blows in New York? It's “especially frightening, considering what happened on 9/11.” Some rich douchebag crashes his helicopter into an apartment building? “A chilling reminder of the events that took place on 9/11.” We're so pathetically traumatized that an entire city can now be brought to its knees by an ad for Aqua Teen Hunger Force. It hardly speaks of America as the proud, tough nation it imagines itself to be.

“We have given the Iraqi people the chance to have freedom, to have their own country. It is up to them to decide whether or not they're going to take that chance.”
-Hillary Clinton

“We're spending $2 billion a week, $8 billion a month, over $400 billion over more than four years. They now have to assume the responsibility of their own future.”
-Chris Dodd

"We should put the responsibility for Iraq's future squarely where it belongs—on the Iraqis. We cannot save the Iraqis from themselves."
-Carl Levin

I can't take this anymore. It was bad enough when the White House started pushing that “when the Iraqis stand up, we'll stand down” crap last year, but now the Democrats are chiming in with this “lazy, ungrateful Iraqis” trash, seemingly all at once.

"I had an armed escort because, because that’s what General Petraeus thought we ought to have. I was glad to go outside of Baghdad and have over an hour opportunity to talk to the people that I talked to. Now, they are very different from the people that, that you are quoting here and others. They said, 'I’m glad to see you. Things are better here. We have, we have seen improvement.' ... I didn’t call for the kind of, quote, 'protection' that was around me. But I am not afraid, and I’m glad to go any place that I can to talk to the people of Iraq and tell them of my commitment to see that they have a free, democratic government where they don’t have to face the bombs going off and the suicide bombers and the--and can start leading normal lives… And I’ll be glad to go back to that market with or without military protection and, and humvees, et cetera."
-John McCain on “Meet the Press,” May 13

April Fool’s day, Baghdad:

Translator: Greetings, Senator McCain. I’m Sergeant Mosley and I’ll be your personal translator for this trip.

Senator John McCain: Wonderful! How are you today, Sergeant?

There’s a semantic problem with the word “politics.” It has two major meanings, which are connected but distinct. Politics is the art of governing nations, but it can also mean the tactics employed to attain or retain governmental control. This creates an obstacle for the person who reads the “politics” section of his favorite newspaper or website, or who watches shows which purport to cover politics, with the intent of learning about what his government is doing. Often, there’s really nothing at all about running the government; it’s all about running for government. Check out the last four stories that plopped out of the Associated Press “Politics” feed as I write this:

• Sharpton denies disputing Romney's faith
• Obama overstates Kansas tornado deaths
• Edwards discusses time at hedge fund
• Spitzer, O'Malley to endorse Clinton

Last November’s mid-term election gains for Democrats, we were told repeatedly at the time, were all about the war. Just the war, and nothing domestic. But while all eyes are supposedly focused overseas, the Bush administration has all along been quietly destroying the regulatory systems put in place by better men to protect Americans from the ravages of capitalist extremism.

Virtually every department, from the FDA to the EPA, is a shameless mockery of its former self. The Labor Department invites the eradication of whistleblower protections. The EPA lobbies against its own obligation to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. The FDA approves drugs against its own advice. The USDA’s lax inspection practices allow tainted produce and Mad Cow meat to enter our food supply. And now they’re killing our pets.

If you watched the news last week, then you know that Nancy Pelosi is a traitorous felon, working with her fellow Islamic fundamentalists to undermine our nation. Seriously, this is the editorial opinion of such “respected” publications as the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post. She wears a goddamn headscarf in a show of the kind of respectful diplomacy so sorely lacking these days and so-called journalists are literally calling for her to be jailed.

It’s becoming rather common these days for conservatives to call for their opponents’ prosecution. It’s not an encouraging sign, to say the least, for the future of democratic debate in America. But what’s so frustrating here is the sheer volume of willful intellectual dishonesty. To each of these conservative opinion-makers, seemingly from the most exalted columnist down to the very last blogger, it just doesn’t matter that for each of Pelosi’s supposed crimes, there are numerous instances of Republicans doing precisely the same thing, only more so. What matters is that they like Republicans, and they don’t like Pelosi. They are rubber, and Democrats are glue.

http://buffalobeast.com/114/the_truth_spin.htm

[Editor’s note: Obtained from our anonymous source in the White House custodial department, this memo from what appears to be a secret group in the Pentagon formed at the Vice President’s behest proposes a stunning shift in the way the White House talks about the war in Iraq. While we were unable to contact any of the members of the group, we were told by several sources that it had been abruptly dismantled and its members have not been seen or heard from since.]

TO: Vice President Richard Cheney
Secretary of Defense Robert Gates

Eenie, Meenie, Miny, Moe: Blogger & journalist Brad Friedman of The Brad Blog on the hijacking of democracy, why a paper trail isn't enough, and the Democrats' flawed remedy.

Do you think that the Democratic gains in the midterm elections have had a deflating effect on the election integrity movement?

Actually, by and large no, and I’m happy to say that because I was concerned about that. I think it has had a deflating effect only in a very small respect, in that the general public out there—the folks who were terrified, “Oh, are they going to throw another election?” Those people have turned their attention to other things for the moment. But the election integrity movement as a whole is really making as much noise and raising as much hell as ever. And that is good to see, because the entire movement sort of came out of 2000, and then certainly 2004, and you had a lot of progressive folks, folks on the left who made it up. Now, mind you, there are a bunch of Republicans and libertarians and intellectually honest conservatives—when you can find them—that are in the movement as well, but by and large there’s a lot of progressives. And I did have those concerns, and it has not come to pass. In fact, in many ways it has made the fight a lot easier, because there was that notion, the sore loser, sour grapes notion that had always been used; “Oh you guys are just mad because you can’t win elections.” And now folks like that can say, “We won the election and we are still mad.” I used to hear that a lot: “You’re just an angry lefty who is angry that Kerry didn’t win,” and I always had to point out, “Well, frankly, I didn’t vote for John Kerry.” It has never really been about that for me. So I think that it has actually been good. I also think what happened in Florida-13 in many ways has been a godsend.

[Scene takes place in the interior of an auto repair garage. Charles Krauthammer is seated behind a counter. America walks up and addresses Krauthammer.]

America: Hey, I've got a problem here.

Krauthammer: Welcome to Kristol and Krauthammer Kollision. Can I help you?

America: Uh—yeah I was just in here... I paid you guys to fix my car? It was making a knocking sound?

Krauthammer: Yes?

America: Yeah, it broke down in your driveway right there.

(original page)

For all the complaining I do about deception in the media, I have to admit I get a giddy thrill out of reading it. As with any addiction, I’ve developed an increasing tolerance and require an ever purer dosage of insidious mendacity and appeals to conformity to get off. Now I have a special appreciation for the most extreme variety of corporate press dishonesty: pieces written solely to impugn reality.

There’s a pattern that articles seem to follow when some poor bootlicking journalist is tasked with refuting an objectionably true piece of information, despite having no coherent case against it. Usually, the majority of the piece will assess the offending claim and generally summarize the evolution of the controversy. This first 80% or so of the article will read like a regular, reasonably evenhanded piece of journalism, perhaps even containing sympathetic quotes from the suspect claim’s proponents. Then, having nearly filled their word-count and still at a loss for a decent argument, the author will make a wild u-turn and hurry through a brief, entirely subjective, incomplete and patently idiotic dismissal of whatever point they were just explaining, a tacked-on “there, there” to soothe their tender, easily rattled readers. It reeks of editorial interference, but what’s really remarkable is how clumsy and transparent the process is.

Written by Allan Uthman & Ian Murphy
with contributions from Jacob Drum & Josh Bunting
Illustrations by Ian Murphy

(Note: If you're going to link to this on your site/blog/forum/whatever, do me a favor and use the original page. We need the hits.)

50.
Ryan Seacrest

“I understand the polls show only 18 percent of the American people support my position. But I have to do what’s right... In war, my dear friends, there’s no such thing as compromise. You either win or you lose.” - Senator. John McCain

Funny--it's the same way with elections.

So John McCain has joined Bush in throwing a shit fit over the Iraq Study Group’s recommendations. What’s bothering him? Well, it’s certainly not the fact that no one who participated in the ISG had the foresight to oppose the war in the first place. McCain yelled at Baker and Hamilton last week because they didn’t like his proposal to increase troop strength in Iraq by a number somewhere between 20 and 40 thousand (about 100,000 short of anywhere near enough to establish a semblance of security there). But the real bone in McCain’s increasingly freakish craw? If the ISG recommendations are followed—an unlikely event considering Bush’s classic “whatever” dismissal—US combat troops will be out of Iraq before McCain has a chance to get his election on.

The "Blue Wave"
Remember how stupid Bush sounded when he called his 2004 election squeaker a mandate? Remember how dumb it was that the media supported the idea? Well now, it's the Democrats who have supposedly been given a mandate in this "whupping." In fact, the Democrats barely eked by on razor-thin margins, and their Senate majority is actually an equality--49 Democrats, 49 Republicans, and two guys who kind of, sort of, are likely to vote with the Democrats, probably. This is not a mandate; this is an incremental nudge. It's the same confused, misled country it was in 2000, 2002 and 2004, only both parties have moved far enough to the right for the Democrats to get the overlap for once.

George Allen's Near-Win
Exactly how racist does a guy have to be to lose an election in Virginia? If Senator George Allen had scheduled a photo op burning a cross on a black family's lawn on the eve of the election, would it have helped or hurt him in the polls? And if he had won, would it have mattered that voters in a half dozen counties received phone calls giving them fraudulent "new voting locations?"

Crush, Kill, Destroy: Screw bipartisanship; it’s time for revenge.

You see it in the movies all the time. The hero, having vanquished his foe after a long and arduous struggle, rescues him from a certain death—usually the villain hangs from a window ledge, begging for his life, and the good guy proves his nobility by saving him. We all know what happens next: The villain pulls out a concealed weapon and tries once again to kill his savior.

In the movies, it’s just a way to morally insulate the hero from the ramifications of killing—this way, the audience’s bloodlust can be satisfied without moral qualms. It’s a nice cliché, but let’s face it: in real life, you’d let the guy drop the first time.

Scene: Allan Uthman is walking down a street in Buffalo, NY, when an unmarked black van pulls up alongside him. The side door slides open and two armed Homeland Security officers aggressively drag him into the van. The door slams shut and the van speeds away. Uthman is quickly shackled to an eyebolt in the van's floor. One of the officers retires to the front passenger seat of the van, while the other one sits on a crate facing Uthman.

Homeland Security Officer: Hi, my name's Dennis and I'll be detaining you this evening.

Allan Uthman: What--what the fuck is this?

HSO: Just relax; that's what I'm here for, to help ease you through this transition.

"I recount that history because once again we face similar challenges in efforts to confront the rising threat of a new type of fascism... But some seem not to have learned history's lessons."
-Donald Rumsfeld

I've always thought that the Bush administration's rhetoric displayed an unhealthy amount of Freudian projection, but this really tears it. Do I really have to tell you how accusing your political opponents of endangering the nation and appeasing the enemy is a classic fascist tactic?

Right wingers lament the tendency among liberals to use words like fascist and Nazi in describing the Republican agenda. But if the new White House strategy to deflect criticism is to call their critics Nazi sympathizers, I'd say all bets are off. So let's talk about fascism.