Progressive Idiocy: Missing The Obvious

Updated May 15, with new observations by Marcy Wheeler. Scroll to bottom of article to see.

The recently revealed targeting of Associated Press phone records by the Justice Department, which appears to have been both far reaching, unexplained, and possibly contrary to DoJ policy, is becoming yet another chance to see which liberal and progressive commentators have been asleep at the wheel these past few years.

First up is Steve Clemons, who wrote this in a Twitter message today:

Twitter message by @SCClemons

What's sad about this is that I've always thought of Clemons as being an astute observer of what's going on in DC. Yet here he is, basically without a clue as to what the Obama Administration have been up to these last five years regarding leak investigations and other actions against whistle blowers. Glenn Greenwald attempted to set him and others with this point of view straight today:

The key point is that all of this takes place in the ongoing War on Whistleblowers waged by the Obama administration. If you talk to any real investigative journalist, they will tell you that an unprecedented climate of fear has emerged in which their sources are petrified to talk to them. That the Obama administration has prosecuted double the number of whistleblowers under espionage statutes as all previous administrations combined has already severely chilled the news gathering process. Imagine what message this latest behavior sends to journalists and their sources: that at any moment, the phone records of even the nation's most establishment journalists can be secretly obtained by the DOJ, which has no compunction about doing so even in the most extreme and invasive manner.

Justice Department's pursuit of AP's phone records is both extreme and dangerous

[link from original article]

Even more sadly, Clemons is one of the smarter liberal pundits on this issue. At least he recognizes it as a problem. For an example of a journalist who doesn't seem to understand the problem, there's inveterate Obama-explainer Josh Marshall. After publishing an anonymous e-mail defending the DoJ's actions (which, as several of those links have said, the DoJ refuses to explain), he wrote:

I think there’s still a very live question of whether this was a prudent action on the part of the DOJ, as maximal restraint should always be used when subpoenaing journalistic records. But I do think he’s at least on to something that such an article would definitely have included more and different context if AP weren’t the party at issue and the ‘secretly’ phrasing does perhaps knowingly mislead.

A Conflict of Interest?

When a government agency retains records it obtained without notifying the target of those records long after its own guidelines say it should have, then that is as "secret" as I ever want to see it get. The DoJ is still refusing to purge or return those records, too. What does that tell you, Josh? Let's just say I find that article title more than a little ironic.

This is just the latest in a rather disturbing pattern of trying to control leaks that it doesn't want through any means at its disposal while freely making use of leaks it wants by the Obama Administration. As Greenwald points out, the Obama Administration has attempted to use the Espionage Act against whistle blowers more than all other presidential administrations combined. That such a longstanding and obvious policy could be such a surprise to people engaged in the profession of journalism is astounding. At least, it would be if I had been in a coma for the last few years. As it is, this is really just another example of the ability of progressives to not see what they don't want to see.

UPDATE: Kevin Gosztola notes that the AP may not have been the only news organization targeted:

“The Justice Department did not respond to a question about whether a similar step was taken in the other major government leak investigation Mr. Holder announced last June,” according to [New York] Times reporter Charlie Savage. So, it is unknown if the Times has been subjected to a similar fishing expedition. Regardless, the Justice Department engaged in this unprecedented act because people like Feinstein declared, “The leak really did endanger sources and methods,” and, “The leak, I think has to be prosecuted.”

No justification for Obama’s war on First Amendment

Like most of the links in this article's first paragraph, Gosztola's article is a good one for background on this issue.

UPDATE 2 (May 15): Marcy Wheeler makes an interesting point and a compelling one at her blog Emptywheel. First, the interesting one, concerning the subpoena the DoJ used to grab the AP's phone records:

[A]s this great piece by the New Yorker’s counsel, Lynn Oberlander on the issue notes, one of the worst parts of the way DOJ seized the AP records is that it prevented the AP from challenging the subpoena — and the details that are now being disputed — in court.

The cowardly move by the Justice Department to subpoena two months of the A.P.’s phone records, both of its office lines and of the home phones of individual reporters, is potentially a breach of the Justice Department’s own guidelines. Even more important, it prevented the A.P. from seeking a judicial review of the action. Some months ago, apparently, the government sent a subpoena (or subpoenas) for the records to the phone companies that serve those offices and individuals, and the companies provided the records without any notice to the A.P. If subpoenas had been served directly on the A.P. or its individual reporters, they would have had an opportunity to go to court to file a motion to quash the subpoenas. What would have happened in court is anybody’s guess—there is no federal shield law that would protect reporters from having to testify before a criminal grand jury—but the Justice Department avoided the issue altogether by not notifying the A.P. that it even wanted this information. Even beyond the outrageous and overreaching action against the journalists, this is a blatant attempt to avoid the oversight function of the courts.

I obviously don’t know better than Oberlander what would have happened. But I do suspect the subpoena would have been — at a minimum –sharply curtailed so as to shield the records of the 94 journalists whose contacts got sucked up along with the 6 journalists who worked on the story. Moreover, I think these underlying disputed facts — as well as the evidence that the gripe about the AP story (as opposed to the later stories that exposed MI5′s role in the plot) has everything to do with the AP scooping the White House — may well have led a judge to throw out the entire subpoena.

There’s a Place for Resolving Disputes, and the Administration Chose Not To Use It

So, the DoJ was trying to get around having to prove its case in court, which it quite probably would have lost. That brings us to emptywheel's compelling point, which should have been obvious to the Obama apologists in the press. That point is embodied in the article's title - there's a place to resolve such issues, and it's the courts. The Obama Administration simply went around that process and did what it wanted.

We're becoming more removed every day from being a government of laws.

Enhanced Obfuscation

There's something sad about the hoopla surrounding the opening of the George W. Bush Presidential Library today, something beyond the humorous notion that a guy who seemed to place no value on intellectual attainment is now opening a library. That something is exemplified by this article in Foreign Policy by John Hudson:

Not sidestepping controversy, Condoleezza Rice will defend the Bush administration's enhanced interrogation and rendition program at the dedication of the George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum on Thursday.

At Bush library, Condoleezza Rice to defend enhanced interrogation practices

Right off the bat, we see the deliberately obfuscating reference to "enhanced interrogation", which is torture by both U.S. law and common sense. To me, that particular euphemism epitomizes the cowardice and complicity of the part of the U.S. press that covers the federal government. No one will dare call torture for what it is, if a U.S. government official insists otherwise. After all, no one wants to be judgmental, right?

By the logic of the U.S. press, murder could be re-labeled as "enhanced use of weapons".

Sadly, that's not the worst of it:

"The president asked two very important questions in the decision to use these techniques," says Rice of her former boss's interrogation program. "He asked the CIA if it was necessary and he asked the Justice Department if it was legal. Both departments answered yes."

"Only when he was satisfied that we could protect both our liberties and our security did he signal that we could go ahead," says the former secretary of state. "The fact that we have not had a successful attack on our territory traces directly to those difficult decisions." At Bush library, Condoleezza Rice to defend enhanced interrogation practices

Nowhere does the article point out the obvious flaws in this argument. Maybe the author thought they were as obvious as I do, but the use of the phrase "enhanced interrogation" suggests otherwise. So, let me point out a couple of rather obvious ones:

First, that a President could appoint unethical sycophants to run government agencies who will tell him exactly what he wants to hear, and then hears what he wants to, shouldn't be a justification for any idea, no matter how brilliant. There were plenty of folks both at the Defense Department and the Justice Department who knew that torture was both illegal and unproductive.

Second, and maybe this is more important in light of this next quote, torture was clearly illegal both by U.S. law and international treaties we had signed. What in the world would possess a leader to not seek out alternative opinions? Only two possibilities occur to me - either he didn't want to, or he didn't care. Neither strikes me as a particularly desirable trait for a national leader.

Finally, there's this bit, which is why Barack Obama's picture appears at the top of this article:

The remarks may cause something of an awkward moment today, as they coincide with Barack Obama's visit to the Bush library. Though Obama and Bush have shared many counterterrorism policies, enhanced interrogation remains a key sticking point between the two administrations, with the president on record opposing Bush administration policies. "I believe that waterboarding was torture and, whatever legal rationals were used, it was a mistake," Obama said in 2009.

At Bush library, Condoleezza Rice to defend enhanced interrogation practices

What President Obama also said is that he wouldn't "look backwards", which means he refused to prosecute anyone for the acts he admitted were illegal. That's why Condolezza Rice and all the other sorry excuses for human beings who peopled that administration can go around bragging about what a great job they were doing when they grabbed up groups of random foreigners and brought them to our various "Black Sites" to be tortured, instead of enjoying a stay at one of those institutions.

If there's any justice in the world, the Barack Obama Presidential Library will be built right across the street from the G.W. Bush Presidential Library. It will be constructed using the worst practices possible, with absolutely no quality assurance or safety inspections. No one will be prosecuted or sued for this shoddy work, of course, because that would be looking backward. And, of course, there will be no windows placed anywhere it's possible to see that earlier library.

Cartoon Of The Day

Well, it appears that maybe Blogger/Blogspot/Google got over the problem of earlier today. Let's test that, shall we? Here's a wonderful cartoon that captures perfectly our government's current relationship to torture, and to treaties we've signed that say we aren't going to torture people (see NOTE 1)

Image credit: Kade Crockford/(via Glenn Greenwald) (NOTE 2)

NOTE 1: In addition to that treaty, we signed the Geneva Convention of 1949, which among many other things says we won't mistreat our prisoners.

NOTE 2: I don't have an attribution link, nor am I sure what the copyright status is, so I'm trying to check both. As sometimes happens, this could disappear soon. Perhaps what I should take from Blogger's software issues with images is that they're kinda tricky.

Quote Of The Day

Paul Rosenberg, discussing how both political parties are failing in America, cuts to the heart of Barack Obama's "pragmatism" by contrasting him with Franklin Roosevelt (FDR):

It is not that FDR was an ideologue - quite the opposite. FDR was a profound pragmatist, whereas Obama is a centrist, neoliberal ideologue, whose thinking is so rigid that he won't even consider empowering his own more leftish supporters, even to strategically counterbalance hard right Republicans, who still do not regard his presidency as legitimate.

Regardless of your own ideology - conscious or unconscious - you just have to wonder why Obama clings so doggedly to both substantive policies and political strategies that repeatedly fail so profoundly. No doubt there are multiple factors involved, but the most compelling answer, I have come to believe, comes down to a lack of vision: Obama quite simply cannot see any alternative. His politics are drastically confined by the crabbed nature of his neoliberal imagination, formed in the shadows of Reagan and Thatcher.

...

There was a time when virtually every Democratic officeholder, from dogcatcher on up, realised that their party's fate was inextricably linked to the welfare of its core constituencies. FDR Democrats knew that in the marrow of their bones. But Obama is a neoliberal Reagan Democrat, who knows nothing of the sort.

Double trouble: In US both political parties are failing - and in denial

I disagree with his assertion that the Democrats focused solely on diversity as a political goal; it's just something that the rich don't oppose enough to punish them for, so it's an easy goal. It's pretty clear that's all they have left at this point. Nonetheless, Rosenberg's conclusion that we're all going to end up equal in the poorhouse is all too true. Nor do I disagree with him at all about his conclusion about the state of the two parties:

The Republicans were once the Party of Lincoln, but they are that no longer. They are much, much closer to being the Party of Jefferson Davis, with their government hatred, animosity towards minorities and their knee-jerk fealty to the idea of states' rights.

Meanwhile, Democrats, under Barack Obama, are no longer the Party of FDR. They are much, much closer to being the Party of Herbert Hoover, following Obama's initial protection of the bankers and neglect of foreclosed and imperiled homeowners, and his persistent obsession placing budget-balancing over job-creation and caring for the most urgent needs of tens of millions, victimised by the bad behaviour, bad judgment and bad ideas of their so-called "betters".

Double trouble: In US both political parties are failing - and in denial

At least, other than to nit-pick that at least Hoover was willing to consider strong regulation of the banks after that collapse. Neither of our current political parties, nor our President, appear to care about that goal at all.

It's a sad place we've gotten ourselves to, that's for sure. It's worth reading Rosenberg's essay, if for no other reason than for a quick itemization of where our politics are these days.

UPDATE: Altered the second paragraph to say what I meant about Democrats and diversity.

Progressive Idiocy: Who Could Have Predicted?

Image credit: Twitter image via Matt Stoller

Over the next few days, there will be an opportunity to discover which progressive political commentators have been paying attention and which ones haven't. That opportunity is described by Jon Walker at FireDogLake:

If it wasn’t already abundantly clear there is now more proof President Obama really really really wants to cut Social Security benefits for current retirees. Obama will include the chained-CPI, which is a yearly and continuously growing cut to your Social Security benefits, in his budget.

Obama Is the Driving Force Behind Cutting Your Social Security

He quotes this Politico piece:

The budget proposal sets Obama up for major fights on his right and left. Republicans will not accept any new tax revenues and liberal Democrats have already signaled they will resist any cuts to Social Security and other entitlement programs that Obama is proposing.

The White House says the budget proposal would reduce the deficit by $1.8 trillion over 10 years, but it assumes the elimination of the sequester, which would otherwise account for $1.2 trillion in deficit reduction.

Already, Obama’s budget proposal goes farther than many in his own party and base said they would bear by including “chained CPI,” the adjustment that would over time reduce cost-of-living increases to Social Security and other federal benefit programs — effectively, a cut to Social Security benefits by tying them to inflation.

Boehner rejects Obama cuts-revenue proposal

The only good news there is that, once again, the Republicans are playing hard to get.

Still, Walker is one of the people who have been paying attention. It's not hard to figure out that President Obama has had a fetish for cutting Social Security since the Democratic presidential primary back in 2008. In his interview with George Will, he said quite clearly that something needed to be done about Social Security to "save" it. Why someone feels the need to "save" a program that's been funded for the next few decades is beyond me, other than as an excuse to cut it. Since then, he's hired Wall Street pirates as economic advisers, and set up a commission to resolve the "budget crisis" that was stacked with folks well known for their desire to cut entitlement programs.

So, if you're surprised that Obama would be cutting Social Security now that he doesn't have to worry about being re-elected, you weren't paying attention.

And who hasn't been paying attention? Let's start with Paul Krugman. After offering a good explanation for why cutting the CPI is a bad idea (worth reading, if you're not familiar with the concept), he then writes:

So what’s this about? The answer, I fear, is that Obama is still trying to win over the Serious People, by showing that he’s willing to do what they consider Serious — which just about always means sticking it to the poor and the middle class. The idea is that they will finally drop the false equivalence, and admit that he’s reasonable while the GOP is mean-spirited and crazy.

Desperately Seeking “Serious” Approval

Of course, this is absurd. President Obama is one of the "Serious People". He always has been. He has never said otherwise, near as I can recall. Yes, he promised not to cut Social Security once back in 2008, but he clearly misspoke. He was going to "save" Social Security and Medicare, even if he had to destroy them.

Over at Talking Points Memo, Brian Beutler seems similarly confused. He starts out well enough, explaining that Obama has always had a hankering to mess with Social Security, then goes off the rails:

First, policy. Obama has been clear about his willingness to reduce cost of living increases to Social Security for years — but only if Republicans agree to higher taxes on rich people simultaneously The not-so-secret truth is that some people in the Obama administration simply think it’s a good idea, which is why you occasionally hear them slip and call it “correcting the CPI” or some other euphemism.

But for some reason this has never been good enough for Republicans and media elites many of whom continue to act as if Obama’s never given an inch to Republicans on entitlement spending. So now it’s officially official. And the good news is we’ll soon have some closure on this frustrating chapter in U.S. politics. If throwing a benefit cut into his budget was the Kabuki concession Republicans needed to cut a deal, we’ll know soon. If they remain adamant that rich people’s taxes aren’t going up anymore under their watch, then this charade can come to an end and everyone can move on. That would leave sequestration in place, and thus many more months of weak job growth in the months ahead. But, the Obama administration hopes, at least opinion makers would have to stop playing the false equivalence game and tell the country who’s really at fault.

Bad News Friday

Yes, to some extent this is Beutler explicitly passing on conventional wisdom from the Obama Administration, but does anyone really believe that things are going to in some different direction if the press, which in DC is largely owned by conservatives, gives up on portraying this as "both sides" being unreasonable? There's not a chance of that happening.

As an aside, Robert Reich posted a video, explaining what the CPI is. He seems to have figured out the politics, too:

Why are Democrats even suggesting the inflation adjustment be reduced? Republicans aren’t asking for it. Not even Paul Ryan’s draconian budget includes it.

What’s The “Chained CPI,” Why It's Bad For Social Security, And Why The White House Shouldn't Be Touting It

So, for the moment at least, Reich appears to get it. He describes this budget proposal as clearly Democratic in origin, that the GOP had nothing to do with it beyond being intransigent supporters of the rich. These days, though, it's getting really hard for anyone with any sense of perspective to think they're the only major party who are on board with that platform.

Speaking of having no sense of perspective, several outlets, including NPR, have quoted MoveOn.org as saying:

From the liberal group MoveOn.org's Executive Director Anna Galland:

"Millions of MoveOn members did not work night and day to put President Obama into office so that he could propose policies that would hurt some of our most vulnerable people. Just as we fought and defeated President Bush's plan to privatize Social Security, we will mobilize and stop this attempt to diminish the vital guarantee of Social Security."

Obama Riles His Own Party With Social Security Offer

Image credit: Parody by Cujo359 (See NOTE)

Now, let me just pause for a moment, Dear Reader, and explain to you why MoveOn.org are idiots. When a political candidate tells you over and over and over again that he is going to cut Social Security when he gets into office, and you work for him anyway, you put him in office so he could do that. There were alternatives, including not supporting any candidate because they all suck too much, should MoveOn's membership have felt that way, yet they supported this con artist. This is obvious to the point of absurdity, yet MoveOn still seems unable to grasp this basic fact.

That's why they're idiots.

Oh, and another bit about perspective - note NPR's lovely headline. If NPR ever got over its urge to punch hippies I swear I'd never be able to stand up again, the vertigo would be so bad.

So, there you have it, a small sampling of the genius that makes progressivism the powerful force in politics that it is today. Ever onward, ever downward. As soon as the Progressive Caucus folds, we can get on with the process of lowering our expectations.

UPDATE: The often-entertaining Class War Kitteh gets the last word, at least for now:

Image credit: Class War Kitteh

Check the image credit link for commentary, and you can "like" it there, or some such.

Progressive Idiocy: A Pundit Awakens

Progressive columnist William Rivers Pitt apparently noticed something recently:

From the moment the Supreme Court decision came down in 2000 that gifted the White House to Bush, to the moment he was finally and forever out of power, I resisted him and his works, because I knew what he represented, what he was about, and what he was doing to my beloved country. My instincts were finely honed, and I gave probably a million words - in print, and spoken aloud on the road for some 800,000 miles - to the cause of thwarting him and everything he stood for.

And now? Now I'm suddenly wondering where that guy has been. He sure as hell isn't the one I see in the mirror. He lapsed into a moral coma, lulled by his idea of America and by the election of someone who can talk the birds out of the trees even as the lumberjacks clear-cut the forest.

Waking From My Moral Coma

I should point out that at least Mr. Pitt seems to be waking up to the reality of what's been going on all these years since the Little Bush Administration went to the great pig ranch in the sky. He's way ahead of some of his colleagues in that department. Still, you have to wonder why it took so long. I think that portion I emphasized explains why. I'll get back to that in a moment.

The proximate cause of Pitt's awakening was the case of Tomas Young, an Iraq War veteran whose spinal cord was severed by an insurgent's bullet not long after he arrived there. The man's health has deteriorated so much that he is contemplating suicide. It would be a tragic story even if the war he'd been engaged in was a necessary one. Unfortunately, it wasn't, and one hell of a lot of other people suffered similarly awful fates.

As Pitt writes:

I believe in the idea that is America, but Tomas Young is dying because he believed, too. He is dying, and the people who delivered him to the slow sunset of his death remain utterly unmolested by the rule of law we Americans take so much misguided pride in. I live with my idea of America in one hand, and the dying light of Tomas Young in the other, and when I look in the mirror, I cannot meet my own eyes. I spent all those years fighting against everything that is ending Tomas Young's life, I made documenting their serial crimes my life's work...and then I let it slide, because Bush was gone, and I couldn't summon the necessary energy to remain outraged over the fact that they all got away with the crime of the millennium scot-free.

Waking From My Moral Coma

That Pitt is late to "the party", as John MClane put it is mostly interesting because Pitt is right - he should have known better. Even now, though, he still mostly seems to be berating himself for not staying outraged enough.

But Barack Obama was so much more articulate than W. had ever been, Pitt seems to be saying. This is something that has had me grinding my teeth ever since Obama was inaugurated the first time whenever a progressive has uttered those words. All I can ever seem to say in response is "Who frigging cares?"

Really, what difference does it make? The man has delivered thousands more young men and women into the same hell Tomas Young inhabits. He has carried out assassinations at a rate Bush and his crew of thugs could only dream of, and most progressives haven't raised an objection worth noting. "Oh, you can't change things overnight", they'd say. Yes, he could. He had the power to order our armies home just as much as Bush had the right to order them there in the first place, maybe more. He didn't.

Pitt seems to disagree with that assessment, though:

Make no mistake, now: that's not an "Obama is the same as Bush" argument. Nobody is Bush, because Bush stands alone, and whoever makes that kind of equivalency either slept through the first eight years of this century, hit their head and forgot what those eight years were like, or is trying to sell you something.

Waking From My Moral Coma

I think that anyone who can write that has slept through the last five years, and let's not forget, Pitt is the one who said he was in a "coma". There's no difference that matters to me between those two. How they have conducted their business has been remarkably similar, and the differences don't always speak well of Obama. I'm outraged by Obama's actions for the same reasons I was outraged by the same actions when George W. Bush committed them. I was outraged when it was clear that Obama was going to give Bush and his torturers cover.

What someone does, measured against what he has the power to do, is what matters to most to me about a person. In that regard, Obama is as much of a failure as Bush. If Bush had made this country a better place while he was in office, or at least had tried to, I'd consider his bumbling verbal style nothing more than an amusing quirk. What matters is the work, and in that regard Obama has kept the Bush Administration alive into its fourth term.

Being articulate and educated doesn't impress me, in and of itself. What a person does with that education is what matters. When educated people do wrong, it's far worse than when people who might not understand the historical or social context do so. In short, educated people should know better. "Constitutional scholars" who violate the Constitution offend me more than lazy minded oafs who do the same.

Why do I think that's what Pitt was doing? This quote, for one thing:

I am finished with the moral geometry that says this is better than that, which makes this good. This is not good; this is, in fact, intolerable. Allowing the perpetrators of war crimes - widely televised ones at that - to retain their good name and go on Sunday talk shows as if they had anything to offer besides their ideology of murder and carnage is intolerable. Entertaining the idea that the billions we spend preparing for war cannot be touched, and so the elderly and the infirm and the young and the weak and the voiceless must pay the freight instead, is intolerable.

The pornography of America's global killing spree is intolerable, and, by the by, I am sick of hearing about drones. A child killed by a Hellfire missile that was fired from a drone is exactly, precisely as dead as a child killed by a Hellfire missile fired from an Apache attack helicopter, precisely as dead as a child killed by a smart bomb, precisely as dead as a child killed by a sniper, precisely as dead as a child killed by a land mine, or by a cruise missile, or by any of the myriad other ways instant death is dealt by this hyper-weaponized nation of ours.

Waking From My Moral Coma

Caption: A BLU-97 cluster bomblet found in Al Maajala, Yemen, in December, 2009.

Image credit: Amnesty International/Common Dreams

For that matter, dropping a cluster bomb on a "terrorist camp" is a war crime, too. It amazes me still that so many of the same progressives who proclaim loudly that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were war crimes have no comment on the indiscriminate use of our air power against targets in countries that we're not even at war with. At least our leaders in World War II had the excuse that they were fighting against real enemies with real armies, and they hadn't signed a treaty yet that made such things explicitly illegal. Using an area weapon like a cluster bomb in an area where civilians are located is the same thing, just on a smaller scale.

Obama is every bit as about those things Pitt decries as George W. Bush. It's just that Bush couldn't have come up with a phrase like "the moral geometry" to save his life. That kind of excuse-making is the sort that people with some logic and language skills devise.

So, if I were able to give Mr. Pitt advice, it would be this: don't worry about looking in the mirror. Everyone gets tired sometimes. I did. What I'd be thinking about if I were you is why you let it slide - what made you think that it was OK, or to use your terminology, what made you decide there was a "geometry" to the pointless deaths of innocent people when Obama was the Decider? Then, and I say this in all seriousness and with considered thought:

Don't fucking do it again!!

Pitt is still ahead of most progressives on this issue, if this recent article is any indication. So congratulations on waking up. Now pass it on.

Profiles In Fierce Advocacy: Why Not?

The true test of leadership is knowing how to have it both ways:

"We have cleared away the rubble of crisis, and we can say with renewed confidence that the state of our union is strong,'' Mr Obama said in an hour-long address.

Delivering growth and jobs will be the "North Star that guides our efforts", he added.

But he insisted that nothing he planned would raise the deficit "by a single dime".

State of the Union: Obama pledges to reignite economy

Yes, all roads will lead downhill, and the first 50,000 people through the door will walk away with a perpetual motion machine with a certificate of authenticity that will arrive in the mail.

And don't pay any attention to the guy behind the curtain who's fiddling with your Social Security and Medicare benefits.

I'm waiting for Prof. Krugman's breathless praise for this program.

Over The Fiscal Cliff

So, perhaps someone is wondering what I think of our government's solution to its "fiscal cliff" problem?

Well, let's see. Yes, we got screwed. We all got screwed a lot. And there are plenty of folks ready to make excuses for it or try to shame the critics.

For me, it comes down to the same thing I keep telling progressives - if you like this, keep voting for it.

No, none of them will pay attention this time, either. Some things really don't change. Perhaps some day I'll learn to take comfort from that thought.

What's Wrong With The Rice Nomination

A longish response to this article by Taylor Marsh concerning the Susan Rice debacle:

The sad truth is that in the U.S. career foreign policy establishment there are no diplomatic candidates that an elite politician as president could appoint that wouldn’t fall in line with more wars over more diplomacy.

John Kerry is a Better Choice for State Than Susan Rice

Well, yes, other than the thousands of former Foreign Service officers and thousands of former military officers whose careers included a lot of work with foreign militaries and the like. Surely, there are at least a few politically-savvy people among them.

Way back in 2008 I could already see the rough outlines of what Obama’s foreign policy was likely to be, thanks to who he listened to on the issues. Continuation of the “War on Terrorism” and rampant interventionism were likely goals, and most folks with a few functioning brain cells to call their own figured that out when they looked. Susan Rice was one of the reasons.

Leaders don’t appoint advisers who are likely to disagree with them. They don’t want to waste time listening to pitches and having discussions about things they’ve already decided. People who are likely to oppose a leader’s decisions are better off being part of the opposition. That’s not necessarily a bad thing in itself. When a smart leader realizes he’s been setting the wrong agenda, he can change, and find different advisers.

What makes that tendency a bad thing these days in America is that DC is full of people who are always willing to praise the leaders of their party no matter what. People dissenting on matters of fact or principle are rarely part of the conversation, and even when they are can be dismissed as either cranks or partisans. After all, how can you not be either a crank or a partisan and not recognize the wonder that is [Bush|Obama]? What amazes me about both George W. Bush and Barack Obama is how often and blatantly they disregarded the values of their base, and yet were praised to the heavens by many of the people who said they believed in those things. In an environment like this, I have to believe that leaders are even less likely to recognize their own failures and make adjustments.

To me, that’s the most basic problem that Susan Rice represents, even more basic than the particular problem of the nonsensical foreign policy priorities she represents. I don’t like her conflicts of interest, but just about anyone who is chosen from the inner circle of DC is likely to have at least a couple. It would be just lovely if people were chosen for cabinet positions based on their knowledge of the subject matter and willingness to speak out when they think the President is wrong, but that ain’t happening.

But, like one of those excuses for why the economy isn’t jumping up and succeeding, it’s not because there aren’t qualified people out there. It’s because DC doesn’t want to pay for them. In this case, that price isn't in wages, but in the bad publicity and "confusion" open disagreement among government leaders supposedly causes the public.

That's the sad truth of Susan Rice. Personally, I don't think John Kerry would be a better Secretary of State. For one thing, I don't think he has the ability to charm people that Hillary Clinton clearly had. But, more importantly, there's little reason to believe that he'd either speak out or resign on principle if President Obama tried to involve us in another costly and ultimately fruitless foreign adventure. He wouldn't even stand on principle when he was thinking about being our country's leader. How likely is he to fall on his sword now?

Quote Of The Day

Glenn Greenwald explains why we have rights:

[E]ven in most of the worst tyrannies, those who are content with the status quo and who refrain from meaningfully challenging prevailing power systems are free of punishment. Rights exist to protect dissidents and those who challenge orthodoxies, not those who acquiesce to those orthodoxies or support state power; the latter group rarely needs any such protections. The effect, and intent, of this climate of fear is to force as many citizens as possible into the latter group.

The true measure of how free a society is how its dissidents are treated, not those who refrain from meaningful anti-government activism and dissent. To apply that metric to the US, just look at what the American citizens quoted in this Times article this morning are saying and doing.

Laptop seizures by US government highlight 9/11-era climate of fear

I can't think of anything to add, other than that if I had ten dollars for every American who doesn't understand this, I could buy my own island, and not have to worry if there weren't enough who give a damn anymore.

I think the rest of the article is worth reading, by the way, because it shows how our government tries to intimidate dissenters into being quiet nowadays. It's an object lesson in why the Bill of Rights exists, and why when "the people" cannot "be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures", there really is no such thing as freedom any longer.

And I will note that the things Greenwald describes in that article have almost exclusively happened during the Obama Administration. This is yet another reason when people tell me what responsible adults they were for voting for Barack Obama this year, that I am not always successful in suppressing the urge to tell them to go screw themselves and the brain-dead horse they rode in on.

Depressions Past And Present

Taylor Marsh had this to say about last night's "debate" on foreign policy between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney:

The biggest casualty of this election is that we never had a real discussion about the wars we fight, beyond political party talking points made to make the man running for office the commander in chief hero when he’s not.

Wounded Vet: “The Mitt Romney I Know Cares Deeply About People Who Are Struggling”

She's right, of course, it’s a lot to do with many of us not seeing any difference that matters between these two. I think there’s another reason, though, why this election seems so utterly tragic, and almost pointless. That reason is best explained by this Real Clear Politics link. I'll summarize with this screenshot of that page:

Image credit: Screenshot of RCP poll page by Cujo359

We think the country is going in the wrong direction by a pretty hefty margin, and that margin has been getting generally larger since 2009. At one time during President Obama's first term, it was as bad as it had been after the crash. It looks like right now some folks are living in hopes that something will change thanks to the election. I beg to differ, but that's another subject.

I’m old enough to have had relatives and teachers who lived through the Great Depression. One of the most profound impressions I have of that era is that President Roosevelt gave the country reason to hope that things were going to get better. He gave people reason to think that there was someone in their national capital who gave a crap about how they were doing. The New Deal was started in 100 days. People could feel like there was hope, because there were people in DC who were willing to move heaven and earth to make them better.

Image credit: Parody by Cujo359 (See NOTE)

Contrast that with now, when there’s never a lack of excuses for why things can’t be done. The Republicans Are Obstructionists. We Can’t Change Things Overnight. Blah, blah, blah. There are also no lack of people, most of whom are doing just fine, thank you, who are happy to reinforce those lame excuses.

That’s the difference I see. Roosevelt gave us hope, and Obama gave us hopey-changey (AKA Sucks Less). Roosevelt told the rich and powerful who didn’t like his programs to get lost. Obama sucks up to them. Roosevelt would have won a fifth term handily had he lived long enough to run in 1948. Obama’s hanging on by his fingernails, hoping for all that extra post-presidency cash another term will bring.

It’s hard to underestimate the smarts of the average American voter, but this is one of those times when I think their behavior pretty accurately reflects the choice before us.

Economics In A Presidential Election Year

There are folks at a table near mine having a lively discussion about economic policy. Thankfully, I can only hear enough to understand the subject matter. I say "thankfully", because typically there is so much misinformation and outright nonsense in such conversations that it's nearly impossible to keep up with it, never mind refuting it. You typically hear stuff like this: "We have to watch our debts. Why shouldn't the government?" And other similar silliness. It's not that governments shouldn't watch their debts, it's that they need to know that there are times to accumulate them and time to pay them down. In contrast to most households these days, they're also not on fixed incomes. But it's not surprising that you hear (or read) this sort of thing way too often. To understand this, all you have to do is look at our national conversations on this issue and see why. Here's a recent example, courtesy of Reuters:

Romney has tried to make the election a referendum on Obama's economic stewardship, but many voters still pin the blame for the sluggish economy and high unemployment on his predecessor in the White House, Republican George W. Bush.

Five things to watch in the presidential debate

Here's what's true: Yes, lots of people blame George W. Bush, who deserves some of that blame. Unfortunately, as we've learned, it isn't entirely his fault that the financial system's casino ran out of money, either. To understand how all that came about, you need to look at the idiotic trend toward "deregulation" that started under President Jimmy Carter. You can thank that trend for Enron, the Savings and Loan crash, the electricity crises and Enron, not to mention the Dot Com and housing bubbles. By the time Bill Clinton was President, everyone who had any "serious" economic cred was saying that the way to prosperity was to deregulate just about everything, no matter how much we depended on it. He and the Republican-controlled Congress deregulated the banks, and you can thank that genius move for the crash of Lehman, Bear Sterns, and the near-collapse of everything else.

What we should have learned from this is that some regulations are good ones. Instead, what we learned is that George W. Bush is an idiot. The latter is true, but not as important as the former.

To continue:

"Until Governor Romney can show why his policies would be different from Bush's policies, then we think it is highly unlikely that he can win," Keefe, Bruyette & Woods analyst Brian Gardner wrote in a research note.

Five things to watch in the presidential debate

The problem here is that Barack Obama should have to explain the same thing. With the exception of the stimulus, which was way too small, there was nothing he did that a third Bush Administration wouldn't have, including utterly ignoring the criminal behavior of the people who were running the financial system. Bush bailed out General Motors, which in a sane world means that it would eliminate half of the slogan "Saved GM. Killed bin Laden" that so many Obama supporters are so proud of.

The article goes on to say:

The conservative National Review says Romney should acknowledge that problems like the mounting national debt and the Byzantine tax code were in place long before Obama took office, but argue the current president has failed to fix them.

Five things to watch in the presidential debate

Of course, Obama largely did what the Republicans wanted on tax policy. We still have the ruinous Bush tax cuts in place, despite how concerned everyone is about debt. That's why I said that governments aren't on a fixed income. They can raise taxes. This one just chose not to.

So, in an analytical piece by one of the world's leading wire services, we read an analysis of the economics debate that is almost complete nonsense.

Little wonder I don't want to overhear conversations on the economy.

The View From The Mountain

The recent gaffe by Republican presidential nominee Mitch Romney, in which he disparaged nearly half the country as being freeloaders, has certainly prompted a lot of commentary. What it reminded me is that there are a whole lot of people in America who were, to use Ann Richards' line about George W. Bush, "born on third base, and thought he hit a triple". And yes, I'll call this a gaffe, because even though Romney clearly intended the audience he was addressing to get the message he sent, he almost certainly didn't want that message leaking to the general public. Plus, as we've observed, one definition of a gaffe is telling a truth by mistake. To Romney, what he was saying in front of that group of rich supporters, people like him, is the truth.

My own remarks on an earlier speech by New Mexico Governor Susana Martinez at the Republican convention made the point that even people who genuinely worked hard and earned the money they received owe a lot more to the rest of their society than they're willing to let on, and a lot more to effective government than they seem to realize.

There are a couple of other interesting perspectives on the attitude of America's rich toward their society and the rest of us. The first is an editorial by Naomi Klein:

I have been noticing, with sadness, that politicians do not even bother invoking the American Dream anymore. They know that we know that everything is rigged against it now, and that the language no longer persuades even the most naive and idealistic; the best you'll get from a politician is a pledge, playing to nostalgia, to restore its lost promise. But what is striking about Romney's remarks is that they have replaced that commitment with a willingness to blame a vast swath of striving, middle-class Americans for their plight.

We thus see a turning-point in American conservative philosophy. This was the moment when the wealthy elite stopped believing its own PR, the self-affirming myth of that economic success can always be had for those who want it and are willing to work. Mitt Romney has told us that it's now simply class war: a struggle to stop the other half getting what "we" have. Thank you for your candor, Mr Romney.

How the Mitt Romney video killed the American Dream

You don't have to be anywhere near the bottom of the heap to realize that this has become true in America. Even most of our so-called "entrepreneurs" of late have been educated people from middle class backgrounds, and often upper middle class, at that. About the only poor people who make it big are athletes or entertainers, and I don't see many of them, either.

The other perspective, and maybe the most profound one, comes from Jon Stewart and The Daily Show:

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

His conclusion about the rich folks who buy into the idea that they are the job creaters:

If they have success, they earned it. If they fail, the government ruined it for them. If they get a break, they deserve it. If you get a break, it's a handout and an entitlement.

It's a remarkable insight, all the more so because Stewart has certainly made quite a bit of money for himself.

I've been careful here to avoid characterizing this as merely the attitude of Republicans. It's not. As this speech shows, Barack Obama has a similarly disparaging view of his base. He has made that plain enough times that you almost have to willingly ignore it not to see. It's the attitude of much of our political class, because, let's face it, we aren't the ones who give them the money. In the case of many poor and lower middle class citizens, we don't even give them votes.

That's why the outcome of this election won't matter very much, at least in economic terms. We will continue to see the gulf widen between the rich and the rest of us, because neither major party wants that to change. What is worth watching, though, is what our politicians tell us about themselves, and their view of us as well.

What Do The Poor Need? More Voodoo, Of Course

Sojourners, a group of leaders from various and sundry religions, asked President Obama and Mitt Romney, his principle challenger for office this year, what they planned on doing about poverty. Both candidates produced videos, but if you want to absorb all that smarmy nonsense in a tenth the time, you can read the transcripts I'm going to quote from.

On the basic question of the economy, here are the candidates' responses:

We can pay down our debt in a balanced and responsible way, but we cannot balance the budget on the backs of the most vulnerable.

Transcipt Of President Obama's Response (PDF)

and from the other guy:

A strong economy will reduce our budget deficits, and it will reduce poverty as well. But at this point, budget cuts are also going to be necessary and I intend to make them.

Transcipt Of Governor Romney's Response (PDF)

Translation: The voodoo (economics) will continue until the patient improves.

If I were a believer, I’d say praying was in order. Since I’m not, I’ll say it won’t do any less good than what these guys have in mind.

Of course, they spent a bit of time telling us how their faiths helped them reach this conclusion, etc. It's astonishing how homogeneous our presidential candidates are these days.

Quote Of The Day

In an interview with John Cusack at World News Daily, constitutional scholar Jonathon Turley said this about voting for President Obama this election:

[T]he question, I think, that people have got to ask themselves when they get into that booth is not what Obama has become, but what have we become? That is, what's left of our values if we vote for a person that we believe has shielded war crimes or violated due process or implemented authoritarian powers. It's not enough to say, "Yeah, he did all those things, but I really like what he did with the National Park System."

Obama's Constitution

In the end, that's what this election is about for me. I've written before, countless times, that the problem with voting for Obama, and the Democrats who support him, is that voting for them means that we will continue to go the direction we are going. The direction we are going is toward becoming an authoritarian country with a Third World economy.

Tiresome little douches like this guy can keep talking about how voting for a third party is pie-in-the-sky wishful thinking, but this is actually the reason that they're tiresome little douches. The only thing that is clearly wishful thinking is to think that continuing to vote for corrupt or ineffective leaders like the ones the Democrats offer is going to result in anything but what we've been getting, which is screwed. I may not get what I want voting third party, but I know the one sure way of not getting what I want is to not vote for it.

When you vote for a politician, he has done his job as well for you as he needs to. He has no reason to do any more for you than he already has. Maybe progressives will learn this lesson one day, but I'm not going to hold my breath.

(h/t Libby Liberal at Corrente.)

Quote Of The Day

Ralph Nader writes in OpEd News:

What would President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who signed the first minimum wage law in 1938, say about today's pathetic Democrats (with few exceptions like the more than 20 Representatives who signed on to Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr.'s H.R. 5901 bill to raise the minimum wage to $10 per hour)? Remember how FDR pushed his Democrats in the 1930s? He would not have tolerated today's Democratic Party of caution, cash and cowardliness.

The Democratic Party Sleeps on FDR's Legacy

So, tell me again how good it is that President Obama isn't FDR?

And yet, if the folks quoted in this USA Today article are any example, the Democrats and their sycophants still don't get it. After observing that many more Americans who don't plan on voting favor Obama than don't, the article goes on to quote the pollster:

"There's this pool of people that Barack Obama doesn't even need to persuade," says David Paleologos, director of the Suffolk University Political Research Center, which took the survey. "All he needs to do is find them and identify them and get them to the polls. It's like a treasure chest. But the bad news is that the treasure chest is locked.

Why 90 million Americans won't vote in November

Well, you see here's the problem, and anyone who knows much of anything about FDR would realize that he would have known this - when you don't take care of the base, it doesn't take care of you. It doesn't matter if it's because it won't or because it can't; it's probably both anyway. The sad fact is that when people have to work hard just to stay ahead of the rent, they don't have time to worry about who is President, or who is running Congress. And when the folks they sent to Congress to fix the problem hem and haw and then go home for recess without accomplishing a damn thing worth mentioning, then it's pretty clear that voting didn't make any damn difference anyway, so why should they bother?

A ten year old child could get this idea, assuming he wasn't motivated not to. Yet supposedly intelligent adults are stumped.

If there's anything we've learned about our politicians in the last few years, it's that they don't know what our lives are like out here, and most of them don't care.

A Tale Of Two Hypocrisies

Caption: The new, way better USS Zumwalt, a new class of destroyer scheduled to launch starting next year. In contrast to all those "entitlement" programs that just keep us healthy and employed, it has lots of shooty, blowy-uppy things. You want to pay for that, right?

Image credit: U.S. Navy/Wikimedia

Just a couple of things that caught my attention today that demonstrate what our rulers are up to these days. The first is an article at Talking Points Memo, explaining how all of a sudden defense contractors are into the "tax and spend" philosophy:

The very real possibility that defense programs will suffer deep, across the board spending cuts early next year has major defense contractors and their allies making an unusual plea to members of Congress: Put everything on the table to avoid the so-called sequester — including higher taxes. That might not sound like an extraordinary ask. But it’s typical for incumbent interests to leave all questions of ways and means to Congress. And given the defense industry’s enormous power and historic alignment with the GOP, it could have enough force to finally break the GOP of its anti-tax absolutism.

Defense Industry Leans On Congress — Avoid Cuts, Even If It Means More Taxes

Which just goes to show that within every conservative there's a liberal just waiting for self-interest to set him free.

Image credit: Parody by Cujo359 (See NOTE)

Not that the GOP is alone in its commitment to hypocrisy. Emptywheel fills us in on what the Obama Administration is claiming in a U.S. District Court regarding seizure of electronic data on the Internet:

The ruling sucks for al-Haramain. But it has larger implications. Effectively, the 9th Circuit is saying there’s no way to hold the government accountable for simply collecting your telecommunications illegally; you can only hold them accountable if they use that information in a trial.

9th Circuit: No Way to Punish the Government If They Illegally Collect (But Don’t Use) Your Telecommunications

We transact business over the Internet every day. Some people's entire business is done over the Internet - independent software vendors, for instance. Our bank records and all our other private information goes over it as well.

When are the courts going to catch up with events of the late Twentieth Century? The phrase “secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures” means the government isn’t allowed to seize those things without reason. That means that when the government collects information on the Internet, which includes what would be considered “papers”, they are seizing our papers without due process.

That provision doesn't just apply to trials. It means the government can't seize those things, period. They don't have to bring it to trial to use it against you. Just ask Eliot Spitzer.

Of course, as we learned during the 2008 primary, Barack Obama is no stranger to the idea that the rules are somehow different when something is composed of flowing electrons. Anyone who thinks that it's OK to seize someone else's work without paying for it because it's on the Internet is certainly not likely to be bothered by his government seizing anything else it can get its hands on. "Constitutional scholar", my furry butt.

So, there you have it - two tales of hypocrisy, one from each "side". So, not only are we fair here, we're balanced.

Lambert Strether: The Obama Enablers' Big Lie

Over at Naked Capitalism, Lambert Strether has written a strong rebuttal to one of the central excuses for the Obama Administration's and the Democrats' failure to do what we sent them to do back in 2009:

The bottom line is that “Republican obstructionism” is entirely of the Democrat’s making. What Reid (and Obama) want — or say they want — to do in 2013, and butchered doing in 2010, could and should have done in 2009, immediately after Obama’s inauguration. Republicans would have had no ability to obstruct had Obama and the Democrats not deliberately given them the power to do so. The gridlock is a gridlock of choice.

The Obama Enabler’s Big Lie: “We Never Had the Votes”

As Lambert notes, anyone who remembers the "nuclear option" back in 2005, when then-Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist threatened to use Senate procedures to eliminate the filibuster if the Bush Administration's Supreme Court nominees were blocked by filibuster, knows that there are ways around filibusters for politicians willing to employ them. Yet this remains a big lie of Democratic politics - that it was those nasty Republicans who spoiled it all. The truth is that things were much better for Harry Reid and President Obama if the insurance companies and other masters of the universe got what they wanted, and we didn't.

This is why no progressive with the least bit of sense thinks that merely electing more Democrats to Congress is going to fix what ails America. They clearly aren't motivated to do what they know they can, and most progressives seem perfectly willing to let them get away with it.

Quote Of The Day

Image credit: Parody by Cujo359 (See NOTE)

Bruce A. Dixon, of the Black Agenda Report discusses the upcoming presidential election:

What with choices limited to greater and lesser evils, or more and less effective evils, it might be time to ask ourselves, how is this politics of choosing evil working out for us? Can we, and why should we hold our tongues and noses to re-elect this fracking president?

Should We Really Re-Elect This Fracking President?

From the title, it is no doubt obvious that this comes near the end of an article discussing the Obama Administration's record on energy, which is pretty terrible. To know that, I think that all you need to reflect on is that the environment isn't one of my usual beats, nor Bruce Dixon's, yet we've both written about how awful this administration has been on the subject. Obama has allowed fracking to go on, as well as allowing the construction of a pipeline to carry Canadian shale oil to the Gulf Coast, the expansion of off-shore oil drilling despite the experience of Deepwater, and he's always been really sweet on "clean coal", a misnomer if ever there was one.

My answer to Mr. Dixon's question is no, we shouldn't vote for him. When you vote for evil, you're not only going to end up with evil, you're telling politicians that it's OK.

It's not OK. We can't afford it anymore.

Why They Lie

Image credit: Parody by Cujo359 (See NOTE)

At Naked Capitalism, Matt Stoller encapsulated Barack Obama and the reason so many people still believe in him despite his complete betrayal of what we thought of as Democratic Party principles once he took office:

Obama had shown this breathtaking tendency to con people as they knew they were being conned before, the most public time during the campaign being his cynical answer when he was asked about his promise to renegotiate NAFTA. He had said, when fighting for union votes with Clinton, “I will make sure we renegotiate (NAFTA).” Even as he said this, it turns out that campaign advisor Austan Goolsbee had gone to Canada to assure them this was a lie (sure enough, Obama’s trade policies are identical to Bush’s, or worse). And once the election ended, and Obama was asked about his broken promise by a reporter, he gave the following answer.

“This is fun for the press to try to stir up whatever quotes were generated during the course of the campaign,” President Obama said during his Transition in early December, when a reporter asked him about criticisms he and now-Secretary of State Clinton had made about each other’s foreign policy views.

“They’re your quotes, sir,” said the reporter, Peter Baker of the New York Times.

“No, I understand. And you’re having fun,” Obama continued. “And there’s nothing wrong with that. I’m not faulting it.”

This is cynicism as art. It’s literally a Presidential candidate running on hope and change saying that campaign promises are a joke and a ruse.

The Source of Barack Obama’s Power to Trick Us Comes from Our Willingness to Be Tricked

What Obama did there, in the starkest way imaginable, is meet our expectations of what a politician will be. "Hah, hah! 'The politician is lying again.' Can't you guys find some new material?", he seems to be saying there. Far too many of us simply expect to be lied to, as if this were the only way things could possibly be.

If that's our expectation, then politicians will never have to do otherwise. There's a difference between accepting that such a thing is inevitable, and assuming it's going to happen some or much of the time. In the former case, then the politicians we elect will live down to our expectations. In the latter case, they might learn to be better.

This wasn't a case of a politician making a campaign promise he either figured he couldn't live up to, or a campaign promise that he tried to live up to, but couldn't. Here, candidate Obama had absolutely no intention of living up to what he said on the campaign trail. It was nothing but a bald-faced, cynical lie, and plenty of his adoring supporters went along with this because, at least in his case, they don't expect any better.

If you want the world to be better, and your leaders to be better, then start by expecting them to be, and voting them out when they aren't. Until you do, you're not going to get what you want. Unless, of course, you like being lied to.