Go And Sin No More

As always, the question is: what are they not telling us?

Over 100 detainees died during U.S. interrogations, dozens due directly to interrogation abuse. Gen. Barry McCaffrey said: "We tortured people unmercifully. We probably murdered dozens of them during the course of that, both the armed forces and the C.I.A." Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba, who oversaw the official investigation into detainee abuse, wrote: "there is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes. The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account."

I think Obama may have made the right call by allowing a whitewash - as shitty as that seems, and as thoroughly depressing as it is.  The Bushies knew how to play it.  They made sure practically everybody shared the guilt - not just the bosses and the party apparatchiks, but the career bureaucrats as well.  Obama couldn't just go after a few at the top because that'd look too politically motivated.  And if he tried to let the thing go wherever it needed to go, then he'd have to spend every waking moment riding herd on it.  Once you start that kind of thing, it quickly turns into a witch hunt, and then the careerists and the cynical manipulators are about the only ones who really benefit.  Obama had to be thinking the costs of that level of disruption outweigh the benefits.

I'm hoping big time that Obama's working behind the scenes (thru the IG Offices maybe?) to root out the bad guys and cut 'em loose.  Unfortunately, I think once somebody gets around to writing The Decline And Fall Of The American Empire, this episode will be cited as a signal event.

About DumFux News

From Cynthia Boaz at truthout:

There is nothing more sacred to the maintenance of democracy than a free press. Access to comprehensive, accurate and quality information is essential to the manifestation of Socratic citizenship - the society characterized by a civically engaged, well-informed and socially invested populace. Thus, to the degree that access to quality information is willfully or unintentionally obstructed, democracy itself is degraded.

-snip-

The basics:
Panic Mongering
Ad Hominem
Projection
Revision of History
Scapegoating
Violence = Power, Opposition to Violence = Weakness
Bullying
Confusion
Populism
Invoking the Christian God
Saturation
Disparaging Education
Guilt By Association
Diversion

In debating some of these tactics with colleagues and friends, I have also noticed that the Fox viewership seems to be marked by a sort of collective personality disorder whereby the viewer feels almost as though they've been let into a secret society. Something about their affiliation with the network makes them feel privileged and this affinity is likely what drives the viewers to defend the network so vehemently. They seem to identify with it at a core level, because it tells them they are special and privy to something the rest of us don't have. It's akin to the loyalty one feels by being let into a private club or a gang. That effect is also likely to make the propaganda more powerful, because it goes mostly unquestioned.

A Word From Mr Carnegie

“Take away my people, but leave my factories, and soon grass will grow on the factory floors. Take away my factories, but leave my people, and soon we will have a new and better factory.” --Andrew Carnegie

I think Carnegie understood there are ways to get what you want and still be a human being about it.

Also, by retiring and spending his last 18 years disposing of his wealth (about $4.3 Billion adjusted), he ended up turning his fortune back to the people who helped him amass it in the first place.

Kind Of A Dick

I've said many times that whatever the issue is, and whatever the politician says about the issue, we're never hearing the full story.  There's always something they're not telling us.  And so, it's the first priority of a properly functioning free press to find out what we're not being told.

Unfortunately, the Corporate Press has been almost completely co-opted, and serves more of a PR role than anything else.  But they still need to believe they're doing something; and they need to make it look like they're doing something other than simply repeating what they're told at the "news conference".

That's what gives us the Horse Race style of "reporting".  There's very little actual substance they can get from the politicians, and if they get too pushy, or they snoop too much, they'll start to lose their access to the politician and to the staffers, etc.  So what we get is a variation on Yakov Smirnoff's line:  The politicians pretend to do the people's business, and the Press Poodles pretend to tell us about it.

What's crazy, tho', is that when we do get some real news about some pretty amazing fucked-up-ed-ness, it feels like nothing is done about it for fear that it'll look too much like political retaliation - which is (usually) exactly how the Press Poodles present it to us.  (example): By rights, half of the people in the last Bush Administration should be doin' hard time in federal prisons, but all we hear about is how this horrendous official behavior will affect the turnout for the next election.

And so it evolves into a game of Beat The Scandal.  Politicians and power brokers need to make sure we don't realize how thoroughly mangled and corrupt the system is, so they throw us a nice juicy story of some Brand Name politico's misdeeds.  It has to be sexual tho'; official misconduct attracts too much of the wrong kind of attention, and since practically everybody's crooked, then everybody gets roasted if the public knows too much.  The Press Poodles, knowing they're part of the power-and-money problem, tend to play it up in order to give us the illusion that they're digging for the truth and "keepin' 'em honest".

Instead of learning anything at all from Mark Halperin about what prompted him to say Obama was "kind of a dick", we get nothing but the standard package of phony outrage for 2 solid days.  And the thing ran out of steam so fast, they had to shift the focus to the failures of the technology and/or production process that allowed the comment to make it out over the air.

We know Bush lied about Iraq
We know about torture and extra-legal prisons
We know Scalia and Thomas are as crooked as the day is long
We know Big Banking put a thirty-year hole in the world economy
We know Big Corporate buys politicians
We know Obama is outside the War Powers Resolution in Libya
We know Obama signs orders to assassinate people he deems "enemies"
We know there's a storm coming because of the budget hassles

We know all of this - and a lot more - but nobody's being held to account for their fuckups in the past - and nobody's being asked about how we prevent more fuckups in the future.

The World Spins Madly On

From The Weepies

More about Ryan Woodward here

Careful What You Wish For

h/t Crooks & Liars

Stating The Obvious

Maybe the Dems are finally starting to get it.  Michael Tomasky:

It’s about time the Democrats started saying openly what has been clear for months or even years now—that as long as economic recovery would work to the political benefit of Barack Obama, the Republicans have been, are, and will be in favor of sabotaging the economy. Senators Chuck Schumer and Dick Durbin made the point in a press conference in the Capitol Thursday. Noting that his GOP colleagues are coming out against business tax cuts (read that again: Republicans against tax cuts for businesses) that Democrats happen to support, Schumer said, “It almost makes you wonder if they aren't trying to slow down the economic recovery for political gain.”

A politician doing something for political gain is not news.  But looking at what exactly that politician is trying to do, and how he's doing it can be hugely important.

And while I don't think Chucky Schumer has a lot of room to criticize, it'll be interesting to see if playing the Repubs' main game and making them defend their positions (for once) will work to the Dems' favor.

Get Ready Cuz Here It Comes

Are you ready for the next big collapse?  NYT has a ruin-your-whole-day kinda piece today, all about the frenzy over how Natural Gas will save us.

The Late Great US of A

From a story in the LA Times:

The would-be CIA director tells the Senate Intelligence Committee that the U.S. should consider a policy for using special interrogation techniques when information is needed right away to save lives. John McCain, a fellow opponent of recent 'enhanced' methods, agrees.

Quick aside: David Patraeus was nicknamed Peaches in high school - and never mind how I know that.

Anyway, I'm pretty sure this is what that famous Slippery Slope actually looks like.

First, tho', I think it's important to remember that when these guys talk about this stuff in public, they're not talking about everything they know about it.  There's always something they're not telling us  - either because it really is justifiably secret, or because it would make them look like assholes &/or idiots.  Getting past the obstacle of Information asymmetry is what journalism is supposed to be all about - and what we have to remember about the Press Poodles is that they're show dogs, not workin' dogs.

So, now what're we supposed to get outa this little dog-and-pony show?

Main Point: We're the good guys, so of course, we don't torture people.  But if you fuck with us, we'll rip off your eyelids and make you watch as we feed 'em to the dogs.

Over time, this will evolve.  Before too long, "for the sake of public safety" will be used to justify harsh treatment of anybody in custody; and eventually, detention and harsh treatment will not be limited to "the terrorists".  Remember that it's already been established in the law that the president can point at anybody, and calling that person an enemy combatant, make that person disappear.  Don't even try to suggest that it couldn't or won't happen here because America is exceptional (and therefore superior).  It will happen here because now it can happen here.  We removed all the safeguards that always worked to keep it from happening.

Generally, people don't gravitate to the centers of power because they think it'll be fun to work 18 hours a day for crappy wages "in service to the people".  There are some of those of course, but the ladder climbers are the same people you find in any other line of work.  They're hyper-competitive and coldly ambitious, and they're not there seeking the noble fulfillment of doing well by doing good.  They want the power for its own sake.

Oops

It's an axiom of politics that a gaffe is what they call it when a politician accidentally tells the truth.

Mitch McConnell was trying to talk about why so many senate Repubs are suddenly against military adventures in arab countries.

"The only thing I can tell you at this point is that there are differences. I’m not sure that these kind of differences might not have been there in a more latent form when you had a Republican president. But I do think there is more of a tendency to pull together when the guy in the White House is on your side. So I think some of these views were probably held by some of my members even in the previous administration, but party loyalty tended to mute them. So yeah, I think there are clearly differences and I think a lot of our members, not having a Republican in the White House, feel more free to express their reservations which might have been somewhat muted during the previous administration."

What's right? What's best for US interests? What's really their honest opinion?  None of that matters.  The only thing that matters is the political advantage that can be gained or lost for you own party.

These people have no soul and no honor.