Politics and Press

The interaction of the press and politics; public diplomacy, and daily absurdities.

Obama

2009: The Summer of Hate

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Autumn has not come soon enough. The summer of 2009 was characterized by some of the ugliest and most stupid political nonsense that the country has ever had to put up with. Birthers question Obama’s citizenship and search for evidence of his secret African, Muslim birth certificate; Obama’s efforts to reshape a disastrously expensive and inadequate healthcare program has turned into accusations that he wishes to organize death panels to move the country toward forced government-run euthanasia; dumbbell radio has initiated rumors that Obama is plotting to put conservative, white voters in prisons, etc. ad nauseum.  Republican senators and congressmen are making careers out of outright lies and there are enough people looking for reasons to hate Obama that those lies find fertile ground. Former Governor Palin continues to shock us with her vapid stupidity and ugly posturing, Senator Grassley suggests that death panels might actually be in the wind, South Carolina gives us a Congressional mediocrity who shouts “you lie” at Obama and thousands of less than ordinary people march in Washington shouting stupidities and lies into the TV microphones. “Town Hall” meetings to discuss healthcare reform frequently included the sideshow of idiots with guns, roaring their disapproval of healthcare reform while screaming their rights to carry assault rifles to political rallies. What do we do with people who rant they want no government role in healthcare and in the next breath rave about keeping government’s hands off their Medicare? What can be said to people who in one breath call Obama  “Hitler” and in the next, “Stalin”? What can we make of Fox cable commentators that promote the lie that Obama  wants America to be a “socialist” country – or even a communist country? Or that Obama “hates white people”?

American politics has always had its nutcases but mostly they have been on the fringe and political parties have tolerated them while trying to maintain at least a moderately high road of discussion and dissent. This is no longer the case with Republican politicians milking the cow of hatred and fear to further their meager agendas and much of the press reporting their lies and fabrications as if they deserve equal time. The current healthcare debate is the focus of much of the ugliness and it seems increasingly likely that we will get a watered down mess of a bill that will fail to reduce costs and improve quality largely because of the stupidity of a small portion of the country, the cowardice and venality of politicians on both sides of the aisle, and the pathetic performance of a mainstream press that focused on process issues and largely avoided calling out the liars.

A more general question is why such ugliness? Has any president in memory been insulted, lied about, and threatened the way Obama has? There has always been a robust political discourse in America but the current atmosphere is different – and I join Maureen Dowd who in today’s NY Times calls it by its hidden name: racism.

Obama and the Politics of Disappointment

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As the Obama presidency approaches the six-month mark the record is decidedly mixed. Our friends, the brothers Mackenzie, have indicated their disappointment in a recent posting critical of the “Buy American” element of the stimulus package and lays the blame on the “Obama regime”. While American presidents do not normally have the luxury of leading a “regime”, Bob and Doug point out the need for a more vigorous political stance by the president.

“Buy American” represents a gut response from politicians unwilling to provide leadership to the electorate, and unable to resist foisting easy answers onto a population whose inability to accept the reality of the decline of America leads them into a mythical America Uber Alles. A Buy American campaign fails to recognize that foreign companies hire many Americans and it begs for retaliation by other nations, leading to even greater trade imbalances and reduced employment in the future. Globalization is here to stay and politicians need to recognize that and deal with it honestly and realistically.

While the Republicans in Congress continue on an obstructionist journey to oblivion, Democrats in Congress share the blame for Buy American sentiments as well as for more serious failures looming on the horizon. Solidarity is not a keystone of the Democratic Party so while the Republican Senate and House of Representatives could support just about anything George W. Bush dreamed up, Democratic Senators and Representatives lack the kind of party discipline needed for a Democratic president to move the country toward major change – change perceived by some as threatening to lobbyists and major campaign contributors. Obama’s apparent commitment to  “pragmatism” in working with Congress in developing policy leads inevitably to disappointment.

While disappointments are there, more are sure to come. Prisoners remain in Guantanamo while members of Congress from both parties cower in fear over the possibility that any of them might be housed in prisons in their states; the stimulus package is far from successful and may very well end up an economic fiasco; a variety of security programs of questionable legality initiated by the Bush administration remain in place; the war in Afghanistan is beginning to look like a project of questionable value to the national interest; the health care debate seems headed toward the continuing of private insurance programs with no public alternative; the Congress  is unlikely to allow the Department of Defense to shake off the influence of the military industrial complex and  many major  public welfare initiatives are likely to fall victim to the economic  recession.

The current Congress lacks the statesmanship, ethics and intelligence necessary to deal effectively with domestic policy that has been built on a long history of private gain at public cost. There is an argument that capitalism has been the great strength of the United States but as we become increasingly committed to bailing out inefficient and even crooked industries, capitalism as we’ve known it begins to look more like the problem than the solution. If Obama is to have success it appears that it may have to be in foreign affairs, where presidents have more power and less need to coddle members of congress.

TORTURED LOGIC

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“Thus, although the subject may experience fear or panic associated with the feeling of drowning, the waterboard does not inflict physical pain. As we explained in Section 2340A Memorandum, “pain and suffering” as used in Section 2340 is best understood as a single concept, not distinct concepts of “pain” as distinguished from “suffering.”… Even if one were to parse the statute more finely to treat “suffering” as a distinct concept, the waterboard could not be said to inflict severe suffering. The waterboard is simply a controlled acute episode, lacking the connotation of a protracted period of time generally given to suffering”….Jay Bybee, former Dept. of Justice Lawyer in the Bush Administration and current 9th Circuit Judge

Judge Bybee, a graduate of the University of Obfuscation Law School, might also have noted that chopping off a prisoner’s leg is allowable since he had two of them. He did not comment on what to do when you run out of legs but perhaps there are other body parts to consider– testicles, arms, kidneys etc. Reading the memoranda makes it clear that in this and other instances our Law Schools have helped create some monsters that would make Goebbels proud.

The release of four selected torture memoranda from the Bush Justice Department have raised two firestorms, each interesting in its own way. From the right we get the old familiar argument to screw the law and do anything we wish to anyone we think might want to hurt us, regardless of evidence and American values. A deep thinker from the Heritage Foundation reminded us on TV that in the white heat of post 9/11 it seemed clear that we needed to make sure we got the information needed to protect the country regardless of our laws or international law. He conveniently forgot that some of the memoranda were written as late as 2005 and that – in fact – we HAD the information that 9/11 was around the corner, that the information was given to Bush and National Security Advisor Rice – and ignored by both, and that there is little if any evidence that the subsequent use of torture ever improved the quality of information received.

It was not a huge surprise to see an op ed piece in the Wall Street Journal, criticizing the release of the information by former CIA Director Michael Hayden and former Attorney General Michael Mukasey who were apparently upset that leaking the memos’ “…effect will be to invite the kind of institutional timidity and fear of recrimination that weakened intelligence gathering in the past, and that we came sorely to regret on September 11, 2001.” They must have missed the part – referred to above – where Rice and Bush were warned well before 9/11 – a warning based on intelligence gathered via more traditional – and legal – means. But then Hayden and Mukasey both have metaphorical blood on their hands in this matter so it’s not so surprising they take this view.

The blast from the left is criticism of Obama for deciding not to prosecute Intelligence operatives for torturing prisoners with the approval, even urging, of lawyers from Bush’s Department of Justice. (a piece in today’s NY Times details one such case) This is a quandary since to say “they were only following orders” has a 1940s reminiscent stink about it, but this was clearly a decision intended to protect intelligence operatives from the consequences of the folly of their masters and to avoid harming those agencies that – like it or not – we depend on for a degree of security. As for bringing the likes of Judge Bybee and others in leadership positions to justice, it seems unlikely until and unless Obama gets a much larger majority in the Congress. And even then, he would more likely argue for a kind of Commission on Reconciliation and Truth but when looking at the Bush administration and his cronies in Congress it is hard to imagine anything like truth or reconciliation being of any concern to them. And to be credible, such a Commission would need to be bipartisan.

In other news: President Obama welcomed Texas Governor Rick Perry’s suggestion that Texas secede from the Union and offered his assistance in facilitating the process. There is a strong rumor that George W. Bush would emerge from retirement to fill the Office of Texas Monarch, leaving Perry with even less of a job than he has currently.

Reflections on the Inauguration

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“George W. Bush did enormous damage to America’s standing in the world and its strength at home. Yet the vitality of the US system resurfaced, and American voters have chosen in Barack Obama a man of vision and statesmanship. It now falls to him to renew the confidence and restore the reputation of the American republic.” Financial Times editorial, January 18, 2009

The inauguration was a blast –for many reasons: it was the end of the Bush/Cheney era; it was a symbolic period at the end of a long sentence of overt and then nuanced racism; it was the end of a generation of conservative mis-rule of America’s treasure; and an opportunity for people to celebrate possibilities and for a few days put aside the worries produced by the destruction of the Bush years.

As someone who tends to avoid huge crowds I felt some anxiety as I headed for the mall with my friend John for the Sunday concert. Joining some 800,000 people between the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument turned out to be a glorious event – full of great music, thankfully brief speeches (has Joe Biden ever before spoke for less than five minutes?) and a huge crowd of happy and grateful citizens. No one complained about the cold or the relatively brief wait to get through security. John and I began our hike back to his car as the President-elect spoke, thinking the concert was over but were brought up short as the recognizable voice of Pete Seeger came loud and clear singing Woody Guthrie’s “This Land is My Land”.  Stopped us in our tracks.

Following a festive dinner Monday night, Tuesday began with an early morning trip to the security point to get to a law office on Pennsylvania Avenue to which a friend’s brother-in-law had gotten invitations for us to view the afternoon parade.  My wife and I then spent three hours in what the press later called a “line” but which was actually a mob. The National Park Police and DC police had efficiently managed Sunday’s security, but on Tuesday we were under the control of the Secret Service. It is enough to say that after 2.5 hours in a “line” two-plus blocks long and 15-20 people across in frigid weather, moving at a dead snail’s pace, we were confronted by a DC policeman who declared a medical emergency and ordered everyone to disperse. This turned out to have no effect; the crowd simply surged forward threatening to crush the people in front against the metal cage security gates. Imagine a Brazilian soccer crowd on an acid trip and you get the drift. So we bagged it.

We gave up standing in the bitter cold for the comfort of seats at a friendly bar at Dupont Circle two feet from a flat screen TV and Bloody Mary mix. The bar was full for the actual inauguration and people drank, wept, cheered and totally ignored Bush and Cheney when they were introduced. Someone wondered whether old white guys would tear up when Obama took the oath. The answer? Yes we can.  Yes we can.

The Lost Honor of John McCain

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For many if not most Americans the presidential campaign has gone on far too long, been characterized by too much ignorance and character assassination, and is ending with the passing away of an American hero’s honor. This passing can best be characterized as a political suicide, committed out of desperation, with a lack of respect for the American political process, and lust for power. Among its collateral damage is the loss of respect for science, rational thought, truth, and civil discourse.  When 23% of Texans believe Obama is a Muslim, when white voters in Pennsylvania express worry that a President Obama would enslave white Americans, when a significant number of voters allow themselves to believe that Obama is “palling around with terrorists”, and when elements of the press present ludicrous formulations by candidates as legitimate grist for the campaign mill, then we are all cheapened.

When faced with questions regarding some of the nastier slurs of their campaign, McCain advisors always refer to the fact (sic) that they are only doing what the Obama campaign has done. Anyone who has watched the campaign over the past few months knows this to be untrue. Obama has been accused by McCain and his know-nothing running mate from Alaska of being a terrorist, of being a socialist – (perhaps even a Marxist!) – of being ready to raise everyone’s taxes, of supporting total sex education for kindergartners, and aiding in voter fraud. None of these charges is true and of course they know it but in the ultimate insult to the American people they peddle the accusations over and over again in the hope that enough confused or ignorant voters will fall for one or more of them. And of course they are right to a degree.

I have never been a fan of the “man-in-the-street” interview because it makes it too easy for journalists to avoid trying to analyze what is real and what is not and it typically gives airtime to airheads like Joe the Plumber. But it does, after all, expose the quality of thought that is out there – the woman from Pennsylvania who said she feared Obama would  “enslave the white race”, or the poor souls who believe that Obama is a Muslim and – ergo – not fit to live in American let alone be president. OR the people who rant about Obama’s tax plan without bothering to know what the plan actually is, and et cetera.  This points to a larger problem than the venality of people like McCain and the ignorance of people like Palin. In our headlong flight away from elitism into the dark recesses of ignorance we are creating a culture in which people are too lazy to do the work of a democracy; too lazy to read, too lazy to think, too scared to explore differences, and too satisfied with the mediocrity of so much of American politics and culture. McCain’s choice of Palin is a vivid reflection of that mediocrity and either a harbinger of things to come or merely the last shovelful of dirt on the grave of John McCain’s honor. Regardless of who wins this election there will remain the question of just what McCain thought he meant by his slogan, “Country First”.

Death of the Straight Talk Express

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“Here is a Communist Daily Worker of March 9, containing seven articles and a principal editorial, all attacking McCarthy. And the same issue lists Mr. Murrow’s program as — listen to this! — “One of tonight’s best bets on TV.”…. Now, this is a question which can be resolved with very little difficulty. What do the Communists think of me? And what do the Communists think of Mr. Murrow? One of us is on the side of the Communists; the other is against the Communists, against Communist slavery.”
–Senator Joe McCarthy on Edward R. Murrow 1954

Our opponent … is someone who sees America, it seems, as being so imperfect, imperfect enough, that he’s palling around with terrorists who would target their own country,”… “This is not a man who sees America like you and I see America, We see America as a force of good in this world.”
—Governor Sarah Palin on Senator Barack Obama – 2008

I suppose it was inevitable that the McCain/Palin campaign would sink to new lows as their poll numbers went south. While it is difficult to find a silver lining in the way they have run their campaign of smears and lies perhaps there will be one if American voters provide a strong enough signal that they will not be dragged, scared or bullied into the sewer.

There are two weeks left for McCain/Palin to flood the country with mindless personal attacks on Senator Obama and it appears that, having nothing useful and substantive to say, they will do just that. Two years is a long time – too long for many – to have to put up with a presidential campaign. But ironically, it is that extended campaign that has allowed the country to watch the decomposition of the old McCain and his party’s morphing into a reincarnation of the Know Nothing party of the 19th century. Sarah Palin is a near-perfect example of that with her witheringly ignorant rants on issues foreign and domestic and McCain’s selection of her places him at the helm of what has become the Strait Jacket Express.

A Tale of Two Elections

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The Canadian election was called 6 weeks before the vote on Oct. 14. the day after Thanksgiving, and has provided journalists and media types with plenty of largely vacuous material to keep them employed for the period. Among the specialties of the Canadian six-weeks are the two debates among the now 5 major party leaders, one of whose parties has never had anyone elected, first in French and one night later in English. The spectacle of 3 native English-speakers attempting to use their various levels of high-school French (from pretty primitive to B plus) to outargue two very smart native French speakers provides a certain amount of sadistic humour, but wears thin after 15 grueling minutes. And then vice versa on the next evening, since amazingly none of these five leaders is as bilingual as thousands of kids attending French schools in Vancouver, not to mention many scores of thousand bilingual Chinese speakers. In the long run, it seems clear that this election, despite all its energy and windbag rhetoric, will not change the makeup of parliament very much at all, and there will be another minority government.

The US election with a set date, on the other hand, has gone on seemingly forever and cost scores (hundreds?) of millions of dollars, something which does not seem to have been mentioned in the current financial crisis, where that money might have been used for something more useful, like hiring more inspectors and controllers of financial institutions. But for all its own brand of windbagging rhetoric, a huckstering media performance, and sideshow shenanigans like a vice-presidential debate, the US system does allow the main candidates to give some indication of what they are really made of, something hard to argue for the Canadian system. It is an exhausting process and a youngster like Obama should have a real advantage over an old warrior like McCain, but the old soldier seems to be hanging in there quite admirably and ultimately the vote should come down to which of the two convinces more people of the superiority of their view of the world, assuming they put functioning ballot boxes in states like Ohio and Florida, and that the Palin fiasco doesn’t lead to comicall voting patterns. You’d have to be gambler to bet against Obama but at least the game seems to have been played on a level field.

Hockey Mom Kneels at Feet of War Criminal

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If you put lipstick on Henry Kissinger he would still be a pig.

Sarah Palin has decided – or been ordered –to learn something about the world and who better to teach her than Henry Kissinger. He has been a lead player in almost every major American debacle since he leeched onto Richard Nixon in 1968.The record is one of stunning mistakes, arrogant denials and a supine press licking his backside.

So, Sarah Palin, hockey Mom, nutty evangelical, and would be Vice President went back to school today with a private tutor with the following qualifications:

– In 1970 Kissinger organized the assassination of Chilean General Rene Schneider to facilitate the removal (and death) of Chilean President Salvador Allende because apparently President Nixon did not want Allende to be president of Chile;

– Over 20,000 American soldiers died in Vietnam while Kissinger waited for a “decent interval” before calling it quits AFTER he had declared a “secret peace plan\” during the 1968 election campaign;

– Ordered secret and illegal bombing on Laos and Cambodia in 1969 for nor good purpose. The bombing led to an estimated 600,000 civilian deaths;

– In 1974 Kissinger worked with Turkey to invade Cyprus and assassinate Cypriot President Archbishop Makarios.

– Kissinger’s support of Chilean government terrorist organizations led to the assassination in Washington DC of Chilean dissident Orlando Letelier and American co-worker Ronni Moffitt in 1976;

– The Indonesian government launched its bloody invasion of Portuguese East Timor in December 1975 with the concurrence of President Gerald Ford and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. It led to over 100,000 civilian deaths.

The list could go on, but what is truly amazing is that this tired, self-promoting criminal continues to be treated seriously and respectfully by the press. If you want a reason for the world’s distrust of America you could look no further than Henry Kissinger. And he is the man chosen to instruct the naïve, silly, empty vessel Sarah Palin. You could not make this up.

Getting to know you – Dubja style

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Despite vociferous criticism of the press recently that is is longer doing its researched investigative job, occasionally a story comes out that shows that some informative journalism still takes place. The Vancouver Sun, for instance, published in its August 6 edition, startling information about US State Department grasp of foreign affairs, when, after a 3 and a half year wait, it received information it had requested under the freedom of information act, about the protocol guide prepared for President Bush and his staff before Bush’s first visit to Canada in Ottawa and Halifax from Nov. 30-Dec 1, 2004. Documents included by the U.S. Office of the Chief of Protocol prepared the president for the culture shock he would experience when travelling far from home.

Under social customs and courtesies, designed to prevent USERS from accidently offending the natives, were the following:
“On being introduced the customary greetings are firm handshake, customary “Hello” or Bonjour” in Quebec.”
“During conversations remove sunglasses.”
“While indoors remove hats.”
“Canadians, for the most part, place importance on education, skill, modesty and politeness”.

Under advice on deciphering a foreign tongue
‘”eh” is pronounced “ay”, is used mostly in rural areas and roughly translates as: “You know?” or “Isn’t it?”‘

While concluding “that most Canadian gestures are the same as those in the US it notes some exceptions:
“To call someone to you, use the entire hand rather than the index figure.”
“In Quebec, the thumbs down sign is considered offensive.”

In a follow-up analysis of the visit, the document also deals with serious political matters such as expected anti-US demonstrations, noting that protesters ranged from anarchists to raging grannies:

but “The Belly Dancers Against Bush were nowhere to be seen… they do tend to be active in the summer, for obvious reasons.”

No we assure you that these are not the fantasies of Rick Moranis, Joe Flaherty, John Candy, Martin Short, Andrea Martin and my brother and me in one of our finest hours. If you don’t believe me, put in your request for freedom of information documents, and in three and one half years, you will see why my brother and I can no longer do satire like we could in the good old days when we blew up things real good. Now it’s done by bureaucrats who should be stand-up comedians. By the way, your president by then will probably be a chap who recently announced that he would like to talk to the president of Canada. If he ever had made the trip 100 kilometers north of his home base (which he hasn’t), he would find out there was no such thing. Oh no, not another one! I wonder if he knows which country is by far the US’s largest trading partner and which country is by far the leading source of its fuel. There must be some documents on the topic in the secret vaults that he could take a look at before it’s too late.